BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Latvia is interested in attracting investments from Azerbaijan in transport and logistics sector, Dainis Garancs, Ambassador of Latvia to Azerbaijan told Trend.

"We are interested in attracting investments from Azerbaijan in the transport and logistics sector, which would be mutually beneficial. There are good opportunities to develop the transit potential of our countries by cooperating in the Eurasian transport networks and using both rail and air transport," he said.

Garancs pointed out that Latvia and Azerbaijan have a great potential for cooperation, which is still not fully used.

"It is important to develop cooperation in various fields. Entrepreneurs from both countries will have to look for new forms of cooperation. For facilitating bilateral trade, it might be necessary to assist businesses in finding new partners," said the ambassador.

He went on to add that one of the highest priorities is cooperation in the education field.

"Latvia is interested to develop direct contacts between educational and research institutions of both countries, promoting the mobility of students, researchers and academic staff, exchange of information and experience, as well as implementation of joint projects. We support cooperation between higher education and research institutions of both countries within the framework of the EU programs "Erasmus+" and "Horizon 2020" as well as other future initiatives. As a practical example of direct contacts development, I can mention the videoconference "Customs and Border Management at the Current Pandemic Times: Main Challenges and Opportunities" which took place on 8th of May and was organized jointly by the Azerbaijan Customs Academy and the International Business and Customs Institute of Riga Technical University," said Garancs.

He noted that after the epidemiological situation improvement, the two countries will work to further develop co-operation in the field of tourism.

"For the people of Azerbaijan it could interesting to open the eco and health tourism opportunities offered by Latvia," said the envoy.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Tamil Nadu: Mechanised boats to resume fishing from June 22

June 22,2020 | Source: The Hindu

Mechanised boats in Nagapattinam district will be venturing into sea from June 22 after 90 days due to the COVID 19 lockdown. Representatives of fishing hamlets have urged the Fisheries Department to make arrangements for auction of the catches in conformity with social distancing norms at the Nagapattinam Harbour. According to Fisheries department officials, exporters have been told to offer the right prices for their catch including squid and shrimp. Operators of mechanised boats had the option of venturing into the sea from June 1, but chose to wait as there was no assurance on procurement of the catches by exporters and other traders. The traders, on their part, had expressed problems faced by them due to interception of the loads at the check posts. The district administration subsequently convened a meeting of fishers and exporters to arrive at a solution.



This year, the 61-day fishing ban period that commenced on April 15 was preceded by COVID 19 lock down restrictions that prevented fishers from entering into the sea. At a meeting this week, representatives of Keechankuppam, Akkaraipettai, Nagore and a few other fishing hamlets urged the Fisheries department to disinfect the harbour and to make arrangements for thermal scanning at the location. It will be ensured that 40 to 50 mechanised boats are operated every day on a turn system from June 22 onwards, officials said, adding that the safety protocol will be complied with.
Tehran, June 22 : Iranian Deputy Minister of Justice for Human Rights Mahmoud Abbasi said that Iran is ready for the exchange of prisoners with other countries on humanitarian grounds amid the COVID-19 pandemic, official IRNA news agency reported.

"We have extradited 108 Iranian prisoners from Georgia and transferred a number of foreign prisoners to their respective countries in the past two months," Abbasi said on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

More than 2,000 Afghan convicts in Iran can be transferred to their country, he added.

Iran has also announced its readiness to extradite 44 Pakistani prisoners and is awaiting the response from the Pakistani authorities, the deputy minister noted.

Meanwhile, Abbasi expressed concerns over the situation of Iranian prisoners in the United Arab Emirates.

"Our prisoners in the United Arab Emirates are deprived of the minimum human rights, including consular services and fair trial," he explained.

Recently, Iran and the United States swapped prisoners.
An ashen-faced Sally Obermeder has revealed she was "understandably shocked" when she learned Ryan Phelan, her Channel Seven co-star, had been charged with allegedly assaulting his girlfriend.

As The Daily Edition went to air on Tuesday afternoon, Obermeder greeted viewers sitting alone at the desk she had shared with Phelan.

The Daily Edition co-presenter Sally Obermeder. Credit:Dave McKelvey

"Before we go on," she told viewers. "I want to take the opportunity to address Ryan Phelan's absence from the program."

"Ryan will not be returning to The Daily Edition due to the serious allegations that have been made against him. Now, the network was unaware of these allegations until notified last night.
Dr. Danielle Kilgo studies media portrayals of social movements. Journalists, Kilgo finds, wield immense power when it comes to how protests are perceived by the public. By choosing what stories focus onfor instance, prioritizing dramatic arrests over the demands and agendas of protestersjournalists contribute to a publics understanding of the legitimacy of uprisings such as those seen in Minneapolis and throughout the country in recent weeks.

The news medias approach to such protests varies in significant and revealing ways. In a recent story for The Conversation, Kilgo compares protests including anti-Trump demonstrations and the Womens March to those against anti-Black racism and Indigenous rights. The former, she writes, gave voice to protesters and significantly explored their grievances. The latter, however, received the least legitimizing coverage, with [protesters] more often seen as threatening and violent.

CJR spoke with Kilgo about what her work tells us about media coverage of current protest movements as she made her way from Indiana to Minneapolis, to begin a new role as the John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity, and Equity at the University of Minnesota. Our interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What the media coverage tells us is that its still really challenging for the status quo to say, We need police reform.

How did media coverage of protests become the focus of your research?

I started my research looking at visual communication, specifically memes. I was working on figuring out how to quantify memes when unarmed Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. People in my lifemy neighbors, my friendsdidnt understand why this was such a big deal. Thats really how it started: wondering how people find these ideas. I started reading about public-opinion formation, and the biggest influence was the mass media. So I turned toward journalism, the people with the leading role.

Last summer you co-authored a comparative studyProtests, Media Coverage, and a Hierarchy of Social Strugglethats particularly relevant now.

I compared all of the protests that happened in 2017, to find out what the media coverage patterns looked like. We used four key frames in protest coverage: riot, confrontation, spectacle, and debate.

We found that about half of the coverage, 43 percent, has this riot frame: protesters are blocking your highways and making you wait, setting things on fire, or destroying your property. Confrontations such as arrests showed up at about 25 percent. The spectacle framesensational, dramatic, individualistic narrativesshowed up at about 50 percent. Less than a quarter of coverage, 22 percent, had the debate frame, which includes the grievances, demands, and agendas of protestors.

My research shows that the medias over-emphasis on riots and confrontation is almost always going to reduce public support for protest movements and its almost always a lasting reduction. It doesnt take much of the riot frame to make people think a protest is violent.

When I look at the coverage of the current protests, I see more of the same. Weve made progress when it comes to a lot of different social issues, but when it comes to anti-Black racism, were still seeing Black men, women, and children killed by police without cause. What the media coverage tells us is that its still really challenging for the status quo to say, We need police reform.

As uprisings have unfolded across Minneapolis and the nation, what have you noticed in media coverage?

The coverage usually emphasizes the violence, the disruption to our lives, the confrontation with police, or arreststhe drama. All of that is worthy, of course, but its not accompanied by a significant amount of coverage that emphasizes the grievances, agendas, and demands of protesters.

Its harder to see in moments what I see in patterns over time, but I still see an emphasis on protester violence without it always accompanying police instigation or police behavior. I see a lot of pictures with protesters and fire. Photojournalists are out to get their best picture, and the one with fire is the one thats the best. Its visually appealing; however, it makes people think everything is burning. And, honestly, everything is not burning.

Theres a lot going on that I havent seen before, too. Police behavior has been discussed a lot more than it has in the past, especially when it comes to journalists being injured during protests. But its the exception, not the rule.

I think for the first time in many journalists lives, theyve seen themselves repressed by the police alongside protesters, and thats worth reporting. If there has to be anything good about journalists getting hurt, when it comes to unraveling these norms and routines that are really contributing to suppression of progress in our society, there is more attention paid to police behavior. Journalists are keenly looking at what the police are doing and how theyre doing it so that they can protect themselves. This inevitably rolls over to helping validate and legitimize protesters and their actions in the process.

A group of people identify with this issuethat Black people have been killed on a regular basis, without cause and without the justice systemand theyre out in the street and theyre angry about that. Thats a very different narrative than angry people protesting, and its a fair narrative.

In thinking about things like the New York Times Tom Cotton op-ed, what role does journalism as an institution play?

The biggest problem is the norms and regimes that have long been used to teach us journalism. Objective is still a part of what journalists think they are, say, and do. They abide by this idea that their job is to be fair and accurateand, therefore, that they are fair and accurate.

Sourcing is another issue, particularly around breaking news and official sourcingusing police reports, what the mayor said, what the police chief said, what a politician thinks. This means that official sources dominate the narrative. It seems more difficult for a journalist to want to go out and discuss with protestors why theyre there in that short amount of time.

There are also norms in terms of language. Were going to call this a riot because there was property damage. Clearly this protest is now a riot. Or when the police decide to crack down on the curfew: Were going to call that a clash between protestors and police. Clash is a vague word to use. As journalists, we have to be really specific about the words that we use, but norms drive us to use some words that we thought, or other people thought, were specific enough. These words show up so often, and theyre not nearly reimagined or thoroughly critiqued.

Editors are journalists, too, and editors play a huge role in what this endgame is. I think that we have a lot of journalists who perhaps say things in a different way, which then gets edited back to the norms. It is hard to break norms and change routines, especially when you have guides that perhaps could be updated as well. The AP Stylebook recently updated their direction about when you can call something racist if its racism. Before they were telling journalists to call it racially-charged.

What can journalists do to begin to change the status quo?

One of the easiest choices to make is to use active voice. Police teargassed protesters. Assign entities to actions they perform. Make police responsible for their actions, just like journalists make protesters responsible for their actions.

If youre going to call people angry protesters, it is so important for you to include why theyre frustrated, why theyre furious. Any time you use an emotion word, explain whats behind that emotion to legitimize the movement as not just a bunch of angry people out on the streets making cars stop. A group of people identify with this issuethat Black people have been killed on a regular basis, without cause and without the justice systemand theyre out in the street and theyre angry about that. Thats a very different narrative than angry people protesting, and its a fair narrative.

Find protesters who are able to articulate what things to say in a more quotable fashion. For grassroots collective action, people rally around an idea, but they dont necessarily have a press kit. Sometimes youll get soundbites from particular protesters, but listen to multiple voices and make sure that you synthesize the real reason why people are there. Try to look for quotes that can directly articulate a grievance, demand, agenda, or all three.

Another thing is diversifying newsrooms and editors. When the Philadelphia Inquirers front page says, Buildings Matter, Too, that cover got through a couple of editors. Diversity in the newsroom isnt going to fix all these problems, but it could help you avoid that particular problem. I hope that newsrooms would take seriously the need to add different perspectives into their newsroom, and value that as a way of achieving fairness and accuracy in their coverage comprehensively.

ICYMI: Introducing the Journalism Crisis Project

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Cinnamon Janzer is a Minneapolis-based journalist who focuses on lesser-told stories. She writes broadly about cities, politics, culture, economies, business, and travel. You can reach her at www.cinnamon-janzer.com.
Having further acknowledged her long years of managerial experience at the top echelons of multilateral institutions, her established reputation as a fearless reformer, her excellent negotiating and political skills, her experience of over 30 years as a Development Economist with a long standing interest in trade, her excellent academic qualifications, her positions as Managing Director World Bank, and currently as Board Chair Gavi, and African Union Special Envoy to Mobilize Financial Resources for the fight against Covid19,
Photo: (Photo : GoFundMe)

On Saturday, Aisha "Pinky" Cole, school and alumna, promised full scholarships to Rayshard Brooks' four children. Cole, the CEO of the Slutty Vegan Restaurant and the Pinky Cole Foundation, announced the good news in a joint statement.

Scholarships grant to Brooks' four children

George T. French Jr., Clark Atlanta University President, said that, without hesitation, they partnered with their notable alumna, Cole, to give help to Mr. Rayshard Brooks' family and children.

He said that the black dad's senseless death would surely have long-term financial effects on his family. Adding to that, he said that the scholarships that they will provide would not only offer a means to world-class education access but also lead a pathway of success.

Brutal killing incident

On June 12, an Atlanta police shot the black man at a Wendy's parking lot. The 27-year-old succumbed to his injuries after undergoing surgery. Police had received a complaint that he was asleep in a car parked at a drive-thru.

The father of four resisted the arrest, so the officer installed a Taser, and a struggle ensued, killing Brooks. He had four children, Blessing, and Mekai, 13, Memory, 2, and Dream,1, to wife Tomika Miller.

Cole said that when she saw Miller in pain, her heart led her to want to help Brooks' wife and their kids. She also said there is a level of momentum lost when a person loses someone close.

Apart from that, she said that the black man could have been her brother, father, or significant other. She wants to remind Miller that it takes a village and they are a part of her village.

Worth more than $600,000, the scholarships will cover full tuition, meals, and room and board for Brooks' four children. After graduating from high school, they may choose to attend university they want which will be covered by the scholarships.

Tyler Perry offered help

People exclusively confirmed that Tyler Perry has offered to pay for the college education of Brooks' children. Perry spoke to the victim's family, saying he wanted to do something to help. He said that his heart goes out to his family during this tragic time, a source said.

Paul Howard, Fulton County District Attorney, announced last week at a press conference that Garrett Rolfe got fired from his role. The Atlanta police officer who brutally shot Brooks, Rolfe, has also been charged with a felony and ten other crimes.

Howard said that Rolfe allegedly kicked Brooks after shooting him, as the victim was on the ground struggling for his life. He also alleged that Devin Brosman, the other officer present, stood on top of the victim after being shot.

Rolfe faces the possibility of the death penalty because he is charged with several aggravated assault charges. Other than that, he also had criminal damage to property and seven violations of oath of office.

Brosnan, on the other hand, is charged with two violations of oath of office and aggravated assault.

Other related articles:

Barbra Streisand Makes George Floyd's Daughter a Disney Shareholder

Teen Who Cleaned Streets After Protests Received Scholarship and a Car

Black Mom Confesses How She Feels Raising a White Child
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Petrol and diesel prices have increased for the 16th consecutive day. There has been an increase of 33 paise for petrol and 58 paise for diesel on Monday. Prices for petrol have increased by Rs 8.30 and Diesel by Rs 9.5 in 16 consecutive hikes. Diesel is currently at an all-time high.

According to state-run oil marketing companies, a litre of petrol costs Rs 79.56 in Delhi, while it costs Rs 86.36 in Mumbai, Rs 82.87 in Chennai and Rs 81.27 in Kolkata. Diesel on the other hand has shot up to Rs 78.85 in Delhi and Rs 77.24 in Mumbai. The increase in the rates of petrol and diesel varies across India depending on local taxes and VAT.

Here's the price of petrol and diesel in the metro cities:

Delhi: Petrol: Rs 79.56 per litre, Diesel: Rs 78.85 per litre

Mumbai: Petrol: Rs 86.36 per litre, Diesel: Rs 77.24 per litre

Kolkata: Petrol: Rs 81.27 per litre, Diesel: Rs 74.14 per litre

Chennai: Petrol: Rs 82.87 per litre, Diesel: Rs 76.30 per litre

Taxes make for most of the retail selling price for both petrol and diesel. When it comes to the breakup, the base price for petrol is Rs 22.11 in Delhi. Along with freight charges of 0.33 per litre, excise duty of Rs 32.98, VAT of Rs 17.71, and other charges, the total price ends up at nearly Rs 80 in Delhi.

Similarly, in diesel, the base price is Rs 22.93 in Delhi. But the retail selling price includes Rs 31.83 of excise duty, Rs 23.23 charged to dealers and Rs 17.60 of VAT.

Meanwhile, Brent crude rose 9 cents, or 0.2 per cent, to $42.28 a barrel on Monday, while US crude was at $39.76 a barrel, up 1 cent. Both contracts rose about 9 per cent last week and Brent crude futures flipped into backwardation, where oil for immediate delivery costs more than supply later, usually an indication of tightening supply. Oil prices increased on tighter supplies from major producers, but concerns that a record rise in global coronavirus cases could curb a recovery in fuel demand checked gains.

Also read: Petrol, diesel prices today; fuel rates hiked by up to Rs 8.88 in 15 days

Also read: Petrol, diesel prices hiked again today; up to Rs 7.67 per litre rise in 13 days
Investors like the messengers, not shooting them. It's just a question of which one they like more.

The rivalry between Slack and Microsoft Teams is heating up, with Goldman Sachs downgrading Slack's stock on Friday to sell because of what it expects to be an "enduring battle" for customers between the two messaging apps.

"While we continue to view Slack as a best-in-class team messaging offering that is favored by the technical community, we expect MSFT Teams to continue to try and leverage its packaging within Ofce 365 to drive increased adoption, thus creating the potential for a more competitive environment," analysts wrote.

Wall Street traders are also taking sides. Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer at Laffer Tengler Investments, was in Goldman's camp.

"It's the right call," Tengler told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Friday, also citing The Wall Street Journal's article about cloud payments taking a hit as a result of the coronavirus-driven economic slowdown.

"Slack has 25% of their revenue exposure in the small business space," the likeliest group to forgo payments, Tengler said.

"Yes, the technology is better than Microsoft, but [Microsoft's] 258 million [user] installed base and the fact that they're focused on growing this business has shown up in the recent numbers," she said. "In March and April, their growth was tenfold that of Slack's. Compare that to 2018, when Slack was at fourfold growth faster than Microsoft. We own Microsoft. We like it here. It's got a lot of levers to pull. So, I'd make that swap as an investor."

Craig Johnson, senior technical research analyst at Piper Sandler, took the other side of the trade.

"I like it," he said of Slack in the same "Trading Nation" interview, pointing to its technical chart.
India's decision not to endorse China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in the SCO poses no threat to the bloc as its structure is democratic enough to allow a member country to opt-out of projects backed by others, its General-Secretary Vladimir Norov said.

Beijing-headquartered Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an eight-member economic and security bloc.

India and Pakistan were admitted into the grouping in 2017. Its founding members include China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In a wide-ranging interview with PTI, Norov, who is also a former foreign minister of Uzbekistan, addressed issues related to India's role in the bloc which is focused on the economic and security related issues including the joint cooperation to counter-terrorism.

India has strong reservations over Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is officially declared as its flagship project.

New Delhi has gone public with its concern on Beijing's strategic initiative at various international fora over the past years. The government is specifically concerned over the CPEC that passes through Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).

In June 2018 at the end of a two-day summit of the SCO in China's Qingdao city, India was the only country which opposed the BRI with Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserting that any major connectivity project must respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries.

In his address at the summit, Modi, in a clear reference to the BRI, said any mega connectivity project must respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries and assured that India will support projects which ensure inclusivity.

China had unveiled the BRI in 2013 with an aim to link Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf region, Africa and Europe with a network of land and sea routes.

President Xi has already announced that China would invest around USD 126 billion for the project. However, there has been suspicion among several countries that the main aim of the project is to expand China's influence globally.

The initiative also led to allegations of smaller countries reeling under mounting Chinese debt after Sri Lanka gave its Hambantota port as a debt swap to China in 2017 on a 99-year lease.

Norov, when asked about the role he sees for himself to reconcile the difference between India's principled position on the BRI and that of other members, said that while making decisions in the SCO, the member states are guided by the principle of consensus. The same principle also applies to the approval of political documents.

At the same time, there are precedents in our practice when, in cases when a state is not interested in the implementation of certain cooperation projects that are of interest to other member states, he said.

The non-participation of the said member states does not prevent the said member states from implementing such cooperation projects and, at the same time, does not prevent the said member states from further joining the implementation of such projects.

Such a situation is legally fixed in the SCO Charter, demonstrating democracy and flexibility in decision making on practical and procedural issues. Therefore, I do not see anything dramatic in the discrepancy between the views of India and the majority of Member States on BRI, Norov said.

The main thing in the SCO is the ideology of cooperation, non-confrontation, aiming at peace, cooperation and security, he said.

We need a rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open and comprehensive multilateral trade system oriented towards the World Trade Organization (WTO).

India is committed to creating an environment for the full expansion of the economic activity, which is a priority for the SCO member states, Norov said.

On the counter-terrorism issues, he said: I would like to note India fully shares the SCO's approach to countering terrorism and extremism as a major threat to regional security and stability.

The SCO fully agrees with Prime Minister Modi's position that a united, peaceful, secure and prosperous Afghanistan is an important factor for stability and security in the SCO region.

Highlighting the SCO's success in counter-terrorism issues, Norov said that in 2019, under the coordination of its executive committee, 5,500 bank accounts and 24 channels for terrorist financing were blocked.

India's active participation in the SCO security mechanisms, including within the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure through secretaries of security councils, ministers of defence, interior, justice, attorney generals, judicial authorities and others.

We attach great importance to the participation of Indian Army units and divisions in military anti-terrorist exercise, he said.

All SCO states share common concerns about the threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking, Norov said.

Countering the financing of terrorism is viewed by the SCO member states as one of the priority areas of multilateral counter-terrorism cooperation, he said.

The SCO countries have consistently emphasised the need to consolidate international efforts to effectively address this issue. Our focus is on the growing symbiosis between international terrorism and other cross-border challenges and threats, he added.
Here's the big question in modern neuroscience: how does structure and activity in the brain relate to function? One of the major ways neuroscientists study the dynamics of those relationships is by measuring neural activity through fluorescent imaging in the mouse brain, a process made difficult by the density of brain tissue and its interwoven and overlapping nerve fibers. Researchers at the Buck Institute, in a team effort with collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco, have developed tools that make it easier to ask that big question by making the imaging of neural circuits easier and more precise. Results are published in Neuron.

Led by Buck assistant professor Jennifer Garrison, PhD, researchers utilized the ribosome, a large "machine" within the cell that makes proteins, to anchor sensors in the cell body, or 'soma'. Neurons have a unique architecture, with fibers that branch off the soma called axons and dendrites. These fibers often account for over 90% of the cell's volume. When fluorescent proteins spread throughout all parts of a neuron, and that neuron is embedded in brain tissue that is densely packed with other neurons and their intermingled branches, it can be tricky to separate signals from individual cells.

In this study researchers showed that a nanobody tethered to a subunit of the ribosome can be used to trap green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the soma and exclude it from axons and dendrites, enabling direct visualization of previously undetectable low levels of fluorescence. They also tethered genetically-encoded calcium sensors (GCaMPs) to the ribosome to trap them in the cell body. Calcium channels open when a neuron is activated, making changes in calcium levels a proxy for neuronal activity. The new riboGCaMP tool can track calcium dynamics within the somas of intermingled neurons, while eliminating contaminating cross-talk from tangled networks of nerve fibers in the tissue.

"It's a twist that adds functionality to the existing molecular imaging toolbox used by neuroscientists," said Garrison, adding that current imaging techniques often require the use of many analytic tools to clean up imaging data after it is collected. "In the mouse it solves the problem of getting rid of that background fluorescence and spurious activity coming from surrounding axons and dendrites. We think this will be widely useful for the community, which is exciting."

Garrison says ribo-GCaMP can be used for long-term imaging experiments in the mouse brain, given that the ribosome is reliably expressed over time in the cell body. "It's possible to go back and image the same neurons for up to six months, which is really helpful when you are imaging in a live animal - it allows us to longitudinally monitor neuronal activity the same animal, rather than looking at different cohorts over time."

The tool also works in the nematode worm C. elegans, enabling whole-brain imaging with faster kinetics and brighter fluorescence. Currently most imaging in the worm brain employ GCaMPs localized in the nucleus, which is farther from the synapse where neuronal transmission occurs. "In both worm and mouse brains, you can measure neuronal activity at the population level. In worms, you can look at all neuronal dynamics at the level of the whole-brain, which is key to understand how neural circuits function" said Garrison.

###

Citation: Soma-targeted imaging of neural circuits by ribosome tethering DOI: /10.1016/j.neuron.2020.05.005

Other Buck Institute researchers involved in the study include Heeun Jang and Aygul Subkhangulova. University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) contributors include Yiming Chen, Perry Spratt, Seher Kosar, David E. Taylor, Rachel Essner, Ling Bai, David E. Leib, Tzu-Wei Kuo, Yen-Chu Lin Mili Patel, Saul Kato, Evan H. Feinberg, Kevin J. Bender and Zachary A. Knight.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health: T32 AG000266, DP2DK109533, R01DK106399, R01NS094781, R35GM119828, S10OD017993, DP2MH119426, R01NS109060, R01DA035913, R01MH112729, R21MH112117. Further support was provided by the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the American Diabetes Association Pathway Program, the American Federation for Aging Research, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the E.M. Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, the Rita Allen Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Sandler Foundation, the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation, the Whitehall Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the UCSF Diabetes Center, the UCSF Nutrition Obesity Research Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

About the Buck Institute for Research on Aging

At the Buck, we aim to end the threat of age-related diseases for this and future generations. We bring together the most capable and passionate scientists from a broad range of disciplines to study mechanisms of aging and to identify therapeutics that slow down aging. Our goal is to increase human health span, or the healthy years of life. Located just north of San Francisco, we are globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in efforts to target aging, the number one risk factor for serious diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease, and diabetes. The Buck wants to help people live better longer. Our success will ultimately change healthcare. Learn more at: https://buckinstitute.org
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) calls on reporters during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 22, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Schumer Requests Inspector General Probe into Firing of US Attorney Berman

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called for an investigation into the firing of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman. The Senator sent a letter to the Justice Department inspector general to investigate the ousting of Berman by President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr.

As the Attorney General was not truthful when he initially represented that U.S. Attorney Berman was stepping down, this corrupt firing cannot be explained by cause and gives the impression that the President interfered in ongoing criminal investigations into himself and his associates, Schumer wrote Monday. To help restore confidence in and prevent further abuses to the administration of justice, the American people deserve to know the truth, wrote Schumer.

Schumer sent the letter to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Jeffrey Ragsdale.

Barr first announced on June 19 that Berman was stepping down, to which Berman responded that he had no intention of resigning.

Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service, said Barr in his June 20 letter to Berman. Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment about the firing.

After that, the New York Attorney formally resigned. Democrats are accusing President Trump and Barr of firing Berman because he was investigating Trump.

In light of Attorney General Barrs decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting U.S. Attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately, Berman said in a June 20 statement.

During his time in office, Berman led the prosecution against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, before Epstein committed suicide in jail. He has not brought charges against any of Epsteins associates despite widespread calls to do so.

Berman has also probed several people who were once close to Trump, including Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen, and his current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

In his letter, Schumer mentioned that investigators conducted a similar probe in 2006 during the Bush administration after several U.S. attorneys said they were forced to resign by senior Justice Department officials.

At the conclusion of that investigation, your offices found that the removal of these U.S. Attorneys and the controversy it created severely damaged the credibility of the Department of Justice and raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecutive decisions, Schumer said.

No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bush administration was found in the 2006 firing of those U.S. Attorneys.

The position vacated by Berman has yet to be filled, but in response to reports that Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton might be considered for the position, Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) issued a statement of opposition on Saturday, echoing Democrats call to block any nominee.

I will not be complicit in helping President Trump and Attorney General Barr fire a U.S. attorney who is reportedly investigating corruption in this administration. Jay Clayton should withdraw his name from consideration immediately and remove himself from this sham. President Trump cannot be allowed to desecrate our nominations process further.

Schumer said in a press briefing Saturday, that he hopes Berman will voluntarily testify before Congress about the reason for his firing.

I calling for a three-pronged investigation into the Friday night massacre that occurred in the Justice Department with relationship to the Southern District of New York, and Im asking Mr. Berman to voluntarily come and testify to the Congress, so we know exactly what has happened, said Schumer.

Other Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called on Barr to resign or even face impeachment.

Nadlers comments to CNN come after he said in a statement Saturday that his panel will open an investigation into the Trump administrations move to fire Berman.

The House Judiciary Committee will immediately open an investigation into this incident, as part of our broader investigation into Barrs unacceptable politicization of the Department of Justice, said Nadler, who served as an impeachment manager in Trumps Senate trial.
CLEVELAND, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorneys Jeremy Tor, Dennis Lansdowne, and Nick DiCello of Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP have brought a police brutality lawsuit against five officers of the Garfield Heights Police Department on behalf of a man with diagnosed mental illnesses who was beaten, Tased, and belittled by them in January. The lawsuit claims the officers acted with excessive force and violated the plaintiff's civil rights.

The plaintiff is Kenta Settles, who lives with multiple mental health difficulties. On January 23, 2020, Officer Michael Malak of the Garfield Heights PD stopped Settles and immediately tried to detain him. There was never any explanation as to why he was being stopped. Within moments, a second officer joined to force Settles to the ground, where he was Tased multiple times, beaten viciously about the head, and mocked.

Settles was taken into custody and indicted for felonious assault on an officer. He was put in the county jail on a $250,000 bond, where he remained until June.

The officers claimed Settles had been belligerent and uncooperative.

Bodycam footage reviewed in June showed a much different situation than the officers reported: Settles appears to be cooperative before being abused. Once the footage came to light, the county prosecutor dismissed the charges against Settles.

Once Settles was out of jail, he came to Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP to discuss his legal options. Attorneys Jeremy Tor, Dennis Lansdowne, and Nick DiCello have filed a police brutality lawsuit on his behalf and will be working as the lead counsel for the case, which seeks fair compensation for the injustice

Cleveland.com recently released a full article about the developing case and lawsuit, which can be read at https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2020/06/mentally-ill-man-spent-nearly-5-months-in-jail-before-body-cam-video-revealed-garfield-heights-officers-beat-tased-and-mocked-him.html. Inquiring parties can learn more about Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP and Attorneys Jeremy Tor, Dennis Lansdowne, and Nick DiCello by visiting https://www.spanglaw.com/.

SOURCE Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP

Related Links

https://www.spanglaw.com/


Five girl inmates among the 57 who tested positive for coronavirus in the state-run womens rescue home were found pregnant, leaving the Kanpur administration on tenterhooks.

CPI (M) polit buro member Subhashini Ali met SSP Kanpur Dinesh Kumar P on Sunday and submitted a formal complaint raising questions about the issue. She said pregnancy of girls in the home as well as infection among them needed to be investigated. She said it had emerged that one of the inmates was HIV positive and another had Hepatitis C. Hygiene and sanitisation were major issues in the rescue home, she said.

The SSP said he had asked SP Kanpur South Aparna Gupta to look into the complaint.

But district probation officer Ajit Kumar who feigned ignorance about the pregnancy of girls till Saturday, said the girls who were pregnant were brought in Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act-related cases.

He, however, denied having any knowledge of two of them being HIV and Hepatitis C positive. The DPO is in charge of the womens rescue home and reports to the district magistrate.

Member of state womens commission Poonam Kapoor dispelled the notion that the girls got pregnant while staying in the home. There were others who were lodged in POCSO cases and were pregnant, she said.

Kapoor said it appeared that two girl inmates caught the infection when they were sent to LLR hospital for check-up . Since they all lived together, the infection spread among others.

Two days ago, a girl complaining of flu like symptoms and breathing problems tested positive for Covid 19. After that, samples of 33 girls were tested and they were also found positive. Later, 16 and then seven more girls tested positive. Since then, the womens rescue home in posh Swaroop Nagar has been sanitised and the girls have been quarantined.

Late on Sunday night, commissioner, Kanpur division, Sudhir M Bobde and district magistrate Dr Brahmdev Ram Tiwari said there were total seven girls pregnant in the rescue home and five of them were Covid-19 positive. They were pregnant at the time they were brought to the rescue home, they said. Two of pregnant girls have been admitted to LLR hospital and three to Rama Medical College for Covid treatment.
The New York Times

On 20 November last year, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month. It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed, the report said.

That was it.

Nothing else has emerged since.

Not the date, not who arranged the menu, the venue, the seating, not the full guest list.

And not whether some kind of deal got done between two of the most powerful men in the world.

The news cycle moved on, and the dinner became one of the unsolved mysteries of American power.

But I was able to pry some of those details loose last week from White House officials along with current and former senior Facebook employees and people they speak to. Most said they would only talk on the condition their names not be used, since the company is not eager to call attention to Zuckerbergs relationship with the president.

Their accounts painted a picture of an unusual gathering  something in between a high-stakes State dinner between the leaders of uneasily allied superpowers and the awkward rehearsal dinner before a marriage that has both families a little rattled.

Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pulled together the dinner on 22 October on short notice after he learned that Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, would be in Washington for a cryptocurrency hearing on Capitol Hill, a person familiar with the planning said. The dinner, the person said, took place in the Blue Room on the first floor of the White House. The guest list included Thiel, a Trump supporter, and his husband, Matt Danzeisen; Melania Trump; Kushner; and Ivanka Trump. The president, a person who has spoken to Zuckerberg said, did most of the talking. The atmosphere was convivial, another person who got an account of the dinner said. Trump likes billionaires and likes people who are useful to him, and Zuckerberg right now is both.

But looming over the private dinner is a question: Did Trump and Zuckerberg reach some kind of accommodation? Zuckerberg needs, and appears to be getting, a pass both on angry tweets from the president and the serious threats of lawsuits and regulation that face other big tech companies. Trump needs access to Facebooks advertising platform and its viral power.

Both men are getting what they want, and its fair to wonder whether this is a mere alignment of interests or something more.

I believe they have a deal, said Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who is now a fierce critic, who added that it was probably implied rather than explicit.

Marks deal with Trump is highly utilitarian, he said. Its basically about getting free rein and protection from regulation. Trump needs Facebooks thumb on the scale to win this election.

Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a new nonprofit group pushing Facebook to tighten controls on its platform, suggested that the two men have a tacit nonaggression pact. Trump can rage at Big Tech and Mark can say hes disgusted by Trumps posts, but at the end of the day the status quo serves both of their interests, Lehrich said.

Officials at Facebook and in the administration scoff at the notion that there is some kind of secret pact. And its hard to imagine that anyone  certainly not Zuckerberg  would be dumb enough to make a secret deal with a president known for keeping neither secrets nor deals.

Trump and Zuckerberg had met just once before the dinner, an Oval Office encounter last September. Afterwards, the president boasted about his giant following on the platform. But October was a hot political month at Facebook: Zuckerberg was in an open battle with a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was threatening to break up Facebook and whom he called an existential threat to the company. The morning of their dinner, a top British official demanded answers on why Facebook would tolerate false political advertising.

Zuckerberg, a Facebook executive said, seems to view Trump as a peer. By contrast, he told amused top aides at one of his regular Monday meetings in March that Kushner was calling him so often about help with the administrations coronavirus response that he couldnt keep up, two people familiar with the meeting said. (Mark does not think of himself as a peer to this president or any president, a Facebook spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said, adding that Zuckerberg had initiated the conversation with Kushner about the coronavirus response.)

Zuckerberg has played the high-stakes and unpredictable politics of the Trump years as well as any other corporate executive. And a week before the dinner last October, he made clear in a speech that his interests and the presidents aligned: Zuckerberg would reject a growing movement to limit the false or inflammatory statements of the American president.

I dont think its right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy, he said in the address at Georgetown University on 17 October. We dont do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.

Trump, for his part, has been notably softer on Facebook than on Amazon, Google, Twitter or Netflix at a moment when his regulatory apparatus often focuses on the political enemies he identifies in tweets.

Still Facebook, like other tech giants, finds itself in a political bind: Democrats hate and distrust them because they spread right-wing misinformation and helped elect Donald Trump; Republicans hate and distrust them because theyre run by California liberals and delete some right-wing speech. But Facebook has avoided that trap deftly over the last three and a half years, by moving faster and more earnestly than its competitors to mollify conservatives.

Facebook has always had a keener ear to the Right side of Washington than much of Silicon Valley, directed in part by Joel Kaplan, a Zuckerberg friend and former Bush administration official who is Facebooks vice-president of global public policy. But it began focusing intently on winning over the conservative media in the spring of 2016, when Gizmodo alleged that the content moderation on the short-lived Trending Topics product on Facebook suppressed conservative news. A right-wing apparatus that had spent decades claiming bias in the media turned its sights on the tech giant. And Zuckerberg gave them the response theyd always hoped for  he shut down the product, welcomed his critics to meetings and signalled that he shared their concerns.

The next year, Trump continued to push the norms of truth and civility, and the social media platforms began reckoning with their broader misinformation and harassment problem. That set him on an inevitable  and to his supporters, welcome  collision course with the new gatekeepers. Trumps dependence on Facebook as an advertising vehicle  he spent $44 million on the platform in 2016, and is expected to far exceed that this year  means that he needs the company as much as it needs him. And, as Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and Cecilia Kang reported in May, Zuckerberg increasingly embodies his company.

So Zuckerbergs warm relationship with the president and his family is a victory for the companys internal policy team led by Kaplan. But the company, people involved in its political strategy say, has been having an internal debate over balancing the reality of Republican control of regulatory agencies with the fact that Democrats are far more likely, in the long run, to actually push through new oversight or try to break up the company by forcing the sale of Instagram or WhatsApp. The balance, in the Trump years, has shifted right. Sheryl Sandberg, a leading Democrat and Zuckerbergs powerful deputy, has seen her connections with Democrats fray as the company defies them and her power in the company fades as well.

Trumps administration has reciprocated. The Justice Department is currently conducting antitrust investigations of the tech giants. But while Google and Amazon face mature investigations, the Facebook inquiry is not real at all, a person who has been briefed on the investigation said. And Facebook has acted like a company with no worries in Washington. It has continued to acquire companies, as Isaac reported last week, and moved to allow users to send messages between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram  a merging of the services that could further fuel monopoly concerns. (Facebooks view is that its far less dominant in any market than the other big tech companies and has less to worry about than Google or Amazon.)

The summer of 2020 is one of those moments when corporate Washington starts to panic. What had looked like deft Trump-era politics now looks like exposure and risk. Top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi  who was infuriated when a distorted video of her went viral  have singled out Facebook as a bad actor. Trump is, at the moment, viewed by Washingtons insider class as likely to lose in November, though Biden poses less of a threat to Facebook than Warren would have.

While executives across Facebook insist that Zuckerbergs position on free speech on the platform is a matter of long-term planning and principle, not political expediency, his political team also recognizes that they are badly out of position for a Democratic administration. And in recent days, Facebook has been eager to show its independence from the White House. The company has been unhesitatingly enforcing existing policy against Trumps posts, and has been quick to point it out to the media, as it did last Thursday, when a Trump ad used a symbol associated with Nazi Germany.

Zuckerberg has not budged, however, on his core insistence that Trump should be able to say what he wants on the platform, and most of what he wants in ads  including false statements, as long as they arent misleading on specific, narrow topics, like the census. But he did reportedly tell Trump that he objected, personally, to Trumps warning that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. And he and Chan wrote to scientists funded by their non-profit organisation that they were deeply shaken and disgusted by [Trumps] divisive and incendiary rhetoric.

Those gestures may have appeased Facebooks workforce, but theyve gone largely unnoticed in Washington.

All the big companies tacked to the right after Trump won, and Facebook probably moved farther than the others, said Nu Wexler, a Democrat who worked in policy communications for Facebook in Washington. But the politics of tech are changing, and companies should be worried about Democrats as well. The days of just keeping the president happy are over.

Ben Smith c.2020 The New York Times Company
COVID-19 has forced Houstons prominent funeral services industry to look to the future to better honor those whove passed.

With coronavirus-related state mandates limiting gatherings to 10 people until late last month, funeral home operators continue to be obligated to reduce the number of an events attendees to 50 percent of capacity for indoor spaces. As a result, such businesses have rapidly turned to online tools such as Facebook Live and Zoom to allow more people to attend funerals virtually while more are regularly adopting the practice of selling their products online instead of in person.

Broadly, the industry has been 10 to 15 years behind the times from a technological perspective, said Chris Cruger, chief operating officer of Phoenix-based funeral management consultant Foresight Cos. The last 90 days have been an accelerant.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Corona Diary: Houstonians tell their pandemic stories

Nowhere is this more evident than with Houston-based Service Corporation International, North Americas largest funeral services provider. With daily appointments plummeting by two-thirds shortly after coronavirus spurred stay-at-home orders across the country in March, the company was conducting almost 40 percent of its sales calls virtually by late April and had added Facebook Live streaming capabilities at more than 1,000 of its locations, CEO Thomas Ryan said on an April 30 conference call with analysts.

Its kind of reinventing the way we serve families during a difficult time, said Rodney Molitor, Houston market director for SCIs Dignity Memorial brand, who estimated that about a third of families offer live-streaming at their loved ones funeral services.

The number of families whove opted for the virtual (funeral) arrangement opportunity has increased dramatically, he said.

Funeral home operators that have traditionally pitched their personal touch have been forced to evolve and accept online product sales as both a valuable way to keep both staff and customers safer at a time when COVID-19 cases continue to grow and as a natural progression paralleling other industries.

Still, some industry workers and family members said the growing dependence on live-streaming services was bittersweet.

Distant relatives

With her 95-year-old grandmother passing away on the East Coast in early May, Los Angeles resident Michelle Montany was one of 14 grandchildren forced to attend the service via Zoom. She and her sisters paid tribute by playing a pre-recorded poetry reading and a song vocal that was amplified through a speaker at the cemetery. Montany said that about a dozen people, including her grandmothers five children, attended in person, while a family member at the service filmed the video that was fed into Zoom.

It was better than nothing, but its not what anyone had in mind, said Montany, who estimated that about 100 people wouldve likely attended the longtime Manchester, Conn., residents service under normal circumstances. It still doesnt feel real.

Texas Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox

We had a service in April, and the gentleman was 25 years old. We had to keep it to 10 people, and (the family was) disappointed, said Eddie Martinez, area general manager for NorthStar Memorial Groups South Park and San Jacinto Funeral Homes, which together host about 725 funerals a year. But we had 1,900 people view the service, so the family was appreciative.

Such changes have had an outsized impact in Houston because of the areas status in the U.S. funeral services industry.

The National Funeral Directors Association says there are more than 19,000 funeral homes in the nation and, citing U.S. Census Bureau figures, pegs the industry at about $16.3 billion annually. SCI, founded in Houston in 1962, generated $3.23 billion from its nearly 2,000 North American funeral homes and cemeteries last year.

Additionally, Toronto-based Park Lawn Corp., Canadas largest publicly traded funeral, cremation and cemetery operator, based its U.S. headquarters in Houston, while closely held NorthStar Memorial Group, which overseas more than 75 funeral, cremation and cemetery locations, is also based in Houston.

Houston is also home to the National Museum of Funeral History, founded in 1992 by SCI founder Robert L. Waltrip and boasts the cheeky motto, Any day above ground is a good one.

Such homespun philosophies are now colliding with the realities of social distancing in ways that workers and consultants said will likely permanently change the way much of the business is conducted in whats long been considered an industry thats relied on the personal touch.

New skills

Martinez, whos worked in the industry for 27 years, said that as social distancing measures have become the norm the idea of showing items such as vaults and caskets via video is becoming more accepted. Additionally, with tools such as DocuSign, about 90 percent of families are signing funeral arrangement contracts online, compared with about 15 percent at the beginning of the year.

He added that funeral directors have been forced to become more adept at coordinating services to accommodate both in-person eulogies and virtual tributes from a predetermined group of friends and family.

It wont be open to everyone, because that can go crazy, but we coordinate and identify certain people to be part of the speaking panel, said Martinez, who as of early June was still limiting attendee capacity at both South Park and San Jacinto to about 50 people each.

Morning Report: Get the top stories on HoustonChronicle.com sent directly to your inbox

On the attendees side, attitudes are changing as well. Foresight Cos. Cruger, citing an early May online survey of more than 2,500 people, said about 26 percent indicated they felt strongly about needing to attend a funeral in person, down from 42 percent before the pandemic, suggesting a broader acceptance of virtual viewings.

People have been forced to adopt these changes at a rate that probably wouldnt have ever taken place without (the virus), said Cruger. The funeral director will have to be almost a production coordinator.

Still, others note the continuing need for personal touch in times of grief, and say a multiphased approach is being taken by families who recognize the need to both social distance now and grieve together later.

As of late April, SCIs Ryan estimated that more than 1,200 families had booked future services with his companys facilities on a day that was yet to be determined.

COVID-19 has created an environment where many families are realizing the importance of grieving when surrounded by a service, so there are families looking to have services in the future, which wasnt the norm in the past, Molitor said.

Were planning on having a proper memorial this summer, added Montany, who said she expected for it to be at her grandmothers home. Its about the little things we do now (to pay tribute) until we get together and hug it all out, which is what she wouldve wanted.
In his classic treatise The Spirit of Law Montesquieu sorted good and bad governments into two categories of political system: monarchical and despotic. In the ensuing 272 years Spain has had its share of monarchs who had a chance or not to prove their usefulness as guarantors of the social contract that a democratic society of free citizens in the 21st century represents.

This week marks the 6th anniversary of King Felipes ascension to the Spanish throne following his fathers entertaining abdication. Critics and supporters of the House of Bourbon have taken stock of Spains political system and the precariousness of its constitutional monarchy today. Despite the lack of official data it is no coincidence that the CIS, Spains public pollster, wont release any, we do know that the kings approval rating in Catalonia has hit rock bottom. The Catalan public opinion is highly critical of the Spanish monarchy and the CEO, the Catalan governments polling body, reports that 71.2 per cent of Catalans would rather live in a republic than in a monarchy (14.4 per cent).

The official narrative, whereby a supposedly impeccable political transition following General Francos death brought us a stable political system that is respectful of Spains diverse regions, has been shattered. Likewise, the veil of silence surrounding King Juan Carlos personality has been suddenly lifted, putting an end to the state of opinion that prevailed for decades, propped up by the kings supporters, who praised his alleged contribution to democratic stability, and the monarchs own constructed public image that presented him as an approachable, likeable king.

Juan Carlos reputation is in tatters as far as most people are concerned, although he can still rely on his court of political and media supporters who have always been sympathetic with the perennial vices of Bourbon kings in history: namely, capricious womanising and helping themselves to the state coffers.

Marx wrote that history repeats itself, first as a great tragedy, second as a sorry farce. Spains incumbent head of state would do well to review his history notes and realise that, in a modern democracy, only the ballot affords auctoritas. Cutting his father loose once he was already being probed internationally does not discharge King Felipe of his responsibility.

On 14 April 1931, when King Alfonso XIII Juan Carlos grandfather fled to exile, street crowds could be heard shouting Aliron, aliron, Alfonsito es un ladron [Here we go, here we go, little Alfonso is a thief]. Spanish author Valle-Inclan wrote that the Spanish people have kicked out the last of the Bourbons, not because he was the king, but because he is a thief. The ever-present confusion about whose cash it is. Today a Geneva prosecutor has pressed charges against lawyer Dante Canonica, Corinna Larsen (King Joan Carlos former mistress), and the Spanish kings financial advisor, Arturo Fasana. Fasana was initially probed in the Gurtel graft scandal in Spain. They all stand accused of holding accounts in tax havens with funds from government contracts awarded to Spanish corporations by Saudi Arabia. The impending judicial action has forced Spains Supreme Court Prosecutor to investigate the commissions allegedly paid to King Juan Carlos, and now Corinna Larsen who seems unwilling to be the scapegoat is allegedly being threatened by the states security apparatus. As a matter of fact, one of the best-informed courtiers, journalist Jaime Penafiel, has explained that Juan Carlos had set up his bosom friend and her son [from an earlier marriage] in a house only a few hundred yards from the kings own Zarzuela palace [the monarchs official residence in Madrid]. Pilar Urbano has written that Juan Carlos gathered his children to announce that he intended to divorce their mother, Sofia, and marry Corinna, which prompted his son Felipe to urge him to abdicate first (El Mundo, 20 June).

Reports about King Juan Carlos shady business dealings are hardly new, but they have been mostly ignored by media. In his book Adolfo Suarez, ambicion y destino (Debate, 2009) author Gregorio Moran published a letter signed by King Joan Carlos and addressed to his beloved brother Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the last Shah of Iran on 22 July 1977 asking him to contribute ten million dollars so that Adolfo Suarez may consolidate a centrist political coalition [] that supports the monarchy [] and preserves western civilisation and the established monarchies. Moran also explains that in Jose Garcia Abads biography of Adolfo Suarez (Adolfo Suarez. Una tragedia griega. Madrid, 2005) the author claims that the cash donation mostly stayed in Zarzuela and that rather than being part of the history of Adolfo Suarezs political party, the episode should more accurately be seen as an example of royal craftiness. Garcia Abad describes the mutual understanding between Adolfo Suarez and King Juan Carlos and how the Kings administrator, Manuel Prado y Colon de Carvajal, travelled to Saudi Arabia and agreed to a payment of one billion dollars.

Does a monarchic Spain stand any chance of regeneration? If we consider the countrys history, the answer would be no. Reformists tried to revive Spanish society after what they called the 1898 disaster and spoke about the Spanish nations prostration following the loss of its colonies as the European empires consolidated their position. Yet today the oligarchy and local strongmen have not been fully replaced by education. In Spain any demands of regeneration have traditionally led to an unfair fiscal relationship and the imposition of patriotic values that are at odds with a large segment of Catalonias public opinion.

The kings meddling in the political arena is not over, either. While for centuries the two parties that alternated in power liberal and conservative had protected the monarchy, the onset of a multi-party system and political fragmentation means the establishment is feeling seriously threatened.

If King Felipe wished to distance himself from his dads shady dealings, he has missed that train. He also made a tragic error of judgement with his TV speech on 3 October 2017 [apropos the Catalan independence referendum two days earlier]. He blew his chances of ending a tradition that is threatening to devour him.
Indore, June 23 : Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) on Monday secured a week's extension of remand for Gutkha baron Kishore Wadhwani, the prime accused in evading the tax worth over Rs 300 crore.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Brijesh Singh after hearing the prosecutors and defendants sent Wadhwani in judicial custody till June 30.

The prosecution said the clique headed by Wadhwani had manufactured and transported a huge amount of pan masala and tobacco products. If he was granted bail, he would destroy evidence and escape the law. Wadhwani was the main beneficiary.

He held a UAE residence visa and could go there, DGGI special public prosecutor Chandan Aron submitted.

A Pakistani national who had sought refuge in India and his three local accomplices involved in siphoning the illicit funds have also been arrested. The court was told that the investigations had so far revealed evasion of over Rs 300 crore and the amount might go up.

Wadhwani was arrested from a hotel in Mumbai last week by DGGI as part of "Operation Cancera after the revelation of massive GST evasion.

Pakistani national Sanjay Mata who along with his family has taken refuge here, along with three locals Vijay Kumar Nair, Ashok Kumar Daga and Amit Kumar Bothra involved in the racket had been arrested earlier.
President Trump poses a danger for the republic and his re-election would put the country in even greater peril since he wouldnt be constrained by electoral considerations in a second term, John Bolton warns.

Trumps former national security adviser said the president has little regard for facts and that his decisions arent rooted in philosophy, grand strategy, or policy but are solely geared toward his own political future.

When asked how history will remember Trump, Bolton said: 'I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from.

'We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence - even if it's not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton (left) warned on Sunday that the country would be in danger if President Trump (right) won re-election this fall

"Minds were made up on Capitol Hill."



John Bolton defends his decision not to testify during the impeachment trial, telling @martharaddatz, "It would not have made a difference." https://t.co/jiL4cpAnp7 pic.twitter.com/P3z87I43AM  ABC News (@ABC) June 22, 2020

'Two terms, I'm more troubled about.

'But I'm really troubled about the absence as well of a viable national security wing in the Democratic Party.

'So this is an election for me of a choice of two unacceptable alternatives. And it's not one I relish.'

Bolton told ABC News that the president is not fit for office, lacks 'the competence to carry out the job,' and is not a 'conservative Republican.'

'I'm not gonna vote for him in November,' Bolton said.

'Certainly not gonna vote for Joe Biden either.

'I'm gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in.

'But this comes back to the point of why I wrote the book.'

Earlier on Sunday, Bolton denied a report that he plans to vote for Joe Biden.

Bolton gave an interview with The Daily Telegraph on Sunday in which he said he had no plans to vote for Trump in November.

But a spokesperson for Bolton told Axios that the newspaper incorrectly reported that the lifelong Republican hawk would cast a ballot for the Democrat, Biden.

This statement is incorrect. The Ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden, Bolton spokesperson Sarah Tinsley said in a statement to Axios.

He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican.

Bolton is promoting his new memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which tells of his time as Trump's national security adviser

Let there be no doubt - he will not be voting for Trump or Biden.

Bolton has been doing media interviews in recent days promoting his new memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which offers a scathing assessment of President Trumps fitness for office.

The Trump administration unsuccessfully sought to block publication of the book, claiming that it contained classified information.

The Telegraph quoted Bolton as saying: In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again.

My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back.

Bolton continued: The president does not have a philosophical grounding or strategy.

He does not know the difference between the national interest of the US, and the interests of Donald Trump.

There is confusion over the national interest and his personal interest, which is very dangerous for the country.

When you are in a senior position you have an obligation to tell the truth, he added.

I was concerned after 17 months in the administration that he (Mr Trump) did not have the requisite competence to be president, and the American people need to know about that.

Bolton also was perplexed at how Trump can refer to himself as a 'stable genius.'

'Really? Well, how can anybody call himself a stable genius?' Bolton said.

'It's hard for me to imagine somebody who would say that.

'He did say it a couple times when I was in his presence. And I just didn't react to him.'

Bolton said that Trumps behavior shows a pattern quite contrary to the image he would like to convey, of a decisive president who knows something about what he's doing.

Bolton denied a report that he intends to vote for Joe Biden (above)

There really isn't any guiding principle - that I was able to discern other than - what's good for Donald Trump's reelection,' Bolton told ABC News on Sunday.

Now, look, you can't take the politics out of politics. It plays a role in every aspect of decision making in the executive branch.

But there's no coherent basis, no strategy, no philosophy.

And decisions are made in a very scatter shot fashion, especially in the potentially mortal field of national security policy.

This is a danger for the republic.

In the interview, Bolton defended his decision not to testify before Congress during the impeachment proceedings.

He writes that the House committed malpractice by tailoring impeachment exclusively to Ukraine.

The Democrat-led House impeached the president after it was alleged that Trump sought to withhold aid from Ukraine unless the government in Kyiv investigated Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

As Barack Obama's vice president, Biden was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine. The president and his supporters allege that Hunter Biden obtained a position on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm because of his father's standing.

The House Intelligence Committee sought to bring Bolton in for testimony during its impeachment probe into Trump's conduct toward Ukraine, but he didn't participate, to the consternation of some Democrats who said he was saving material for his book.

When asked why he didn't testify, Bolton said the process in the House was too partisan.

'I was fully prepared [to testify] - if I got a subpoena like everybody else who testified got a subpoena,' Bolton said.

'I think the way the House advocates of impeachment proceeded was badly wrong.

'I think it was impeachment malpractice. I think they were determined because of their own political objectives to conduct an impeachment proceeding that was very narrowly focused on Ukraine, and that went very, very quickly.'

Bolton accused Democrats of managing the impeachment so as not to 'mess up the Democratic presidential nomination.'

Bolton said he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) 'plays Trump like a fiddle.' The two men are seen above during a news conference in Helsinki in July 2018

'Now, I find that conduct almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump,' Bolton said.

'That they're torqueing one of the gravest constitutional responsibilities the House of Representatives has, the power of impeachment, around their presidential nomination schedule.'

Bolton added: 'And they failed utterly to accomplish what they wanted. In fact, they made things worse.

'Because their strategy fitted with the Trump political strategy.

'Keep it narrow, and move it fast. So what did they do? The House advocates said, "We have proven Trump is impeached forever, and that he'd learn a lesson from it."

When asked if Trump learned his lesson after impeachment, Bolton said: 'It's absolutely 180 degrees the opposite of the truth.

'Because he was acquitted in the Senate. He didn't learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail - is the election this November.

'I think the House Democrats built a cliff, they threw themselves off of it. And halfway down, they looked up and saw me, and said, "Hey, why don't you come along?"'

Bolton also said Trump was no match for some of America's toughest adversaries on the world stage, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un.

The former national security adviser said that Putin thinks he can play Trump 'like a fiddle.'

'I think Putin is smart, tough,' Bolton said. 'He plays a bad hand extremely well.

'And I think he sees that he's not faced with a serious adversary here [in Trump].

'And he works on him, and he works on him, and he works on him.'

'President Putin prepares very comprehensively for meetings,' Bolton said.

'He knows the people he's talking to. He thinks about what he wants to say. He thinks about the points he wants to accomplish.

'And I think he looks at somebody like Donald Trump and says to himself - as an old KGB officer, "How am I gonna get him to the place I want him to be?"'

Bolton added: 'I think that's a level of preparation, of thoroughness, of pre-planning that just would not register with Donald Trump.

'That's not to say Putin succeeds all the time. But he has a plan and he pursues it.

'And I can just see the smirk when he knows he's got him following his line.

Bolton claims that during Trump's first-ever meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June 2018, the US president was more preoccupied with the number of reporters covering the event rather than actual substantive negotiations between the two countries

'It's almost transparent.'

Bolton said that Trump yielded to Putin when it came to Syria.

During their meeting in Helsinki in the summer of 2018, Putin managed to get Trump to agree to policies on Syria that were more favorable to Moscow, according to Bolton.

'[Putin] could tell what he wanted was the United States out of Syria and Trump was moving in that direction,' Bolton said.

He told ABC News that Trump was outmatched by Putin given the Russian's experience in national security matters and the US president's unwillingness to acknowledge that he didn't know enough about the subject.

'Presidents don't come to the office - no president does, knowing everything,' Bolton said.

'So it's no wrap on anybody to say, "Well, they don't know about strategic arms limitations talks."

'But when you're dealing with somebody like Putin, who has made his life understanding Russia's strategic position in the world - against Donald Trump, who doesn't enjoy reading about these issues or learning about them - it's a very difficult position for America to be in, notwithstanding our objective superiority over the Russians in all these areas.'

Bolton also paints an unflattering picture of Trump's dealings with North Korea.

During Trump's historic, first-ever meeting with Kim in Singapore in June 2018, the president was more preoccupied with the number of journalists who were there to cover the event rather than any substantive issues linked to the negotiations.

Bolton said he was concerned that while Trump got press attention and a photo op, the US lost ground strategically to North Korea.

'When we were in Singapore for the first summit, one of the things he said over and over again - was to ask how many press people were gonna be present for his final press conference,' Bolton said.

'And I think the final number, it was a very large number - as it should have been, 400, 500.

'By the time we left Singapore, he was at 2,000. And I think that number went up from there.

'That's what he was focused on. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity - first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea.'

Bolton said he has tried to make sense of Trump's claim that Kim 'loves' the US president because of letters the North Korean leader has sent. 'I think Kim Jong-n gets a huge laugh out of this,' Bolton said. 'I mean, these letters that the president has shown to the press...are written by some functionary in the North Korean Workers Party Agitprop Office.'

Bolton added: 'And he got enormous attention from it. I thought it was a strategic mistake.

'The US itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot.

'The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator.

'And didn't accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program.'

Bolton lamented the fact that Trump agreed to a longstanding North Korean demand - the suspension of war games and military exercises with South Korea.

He said that decision caused 'enormous heartburn at the Defense Department.'

Bolton added: 'They felt they had been left out of the decision. So had I, so had [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo, so had [then-White House Chief of Staff] John Kelly.

'We had all been left out of that.'

Bolton added: 'This was a case where after almost two years in office, the president didn't seem to understand that the war games, as he called them, were critical to American and South Korean ability to be ready to withstand pressure from North Korea.'

North Korea has long demanded the lifting of international sanctions, though it has resisted American demands to shut down its suspected arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Bolton told ABC News: 'To be clear, I don't think North Korea is ever gonna voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program.

'They have tried this line for onto 30 years now. And one successive American administration after another has fallen for it.'

Bolton also raised eyebrows over Trump's attempt to send Kim a CD of Elton John's hit song Rocket Man. Sir Elton is seen above in Australia in November 2019

Bolton was also asked about Trump's bizarre claims that Kim 'loves' him and that they have struck up a deep friendship as evidenced by letters that the Pyongyang ruler has sent to the White House.

When asked if Trump really believes that Kim loves him, Bolton said: 'I don't know any other explanation.'

He added: 'I think Kim Jong-un gets a huge laugh out of this.

'I mean, these letters that the president has shown to the press - off the record and whatnot, but I've been in the room when he's done it - are written by some functionary in the North Korean Workers Party Agitprop Office.

'And yet, the president has looked at 'em as evidence of this deep friendship.

'Even if it were a deep personal relationship, it doesn't change the fact Kim Jong-un is never gonna give up his nuclear weapons program.

'And from the US national security point of view, that is the only thing that matters.'

Bolton also raised eyebrows over Trump's attempt to send Kim a CD of Elton John's hit song Rocket Man.

In his early months in office, Trump derisively called Kim 'Rocket Man' after the North Korean leader tested missiles.

'I don't think we've heard from Kim Jong-un what he thought of Elton John's song,' Bolton said. 'That'll be an interesting tidbit in history.'

Bolton added: 'But this is the kind of focus that leads you to wonder whether there's an ability [on the part of Trump] to discern what's cosmetic here from what's truly serious.'

Bolton alleges in his book that Trump sought Chinese President Xi Jinping's help to win re-election during a 2019 meeting by making agricultural purchases, and Trump also encouraged Xi to go ahead with building camps in Xinjiang.

Trump has denied the accusations.

The United States since last year has placed import restrictions on some Chinese companies and visa bans on unnamed Chinese officials linked to Xinjiang but has not imposed harsher Treasury sanctions.

Trump signed legislation last Wednesday calling for sanctions over Xinjiang, drawing threats of retaliation from China. He insisted, however, he had discretion to decide any application of the measures.

Trump acknowledged on Sunday that he held off on imposing tougher sanctions on Chinese officials blamed for a crackdown on China's Uighur Muslim minority because of concern such measures would have interfered with trade negotiations with Beijing.

'Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal. And I made a great deal, $250 billion potentially worth of purchases,' Trump was quoted as telling Axios on Friday when asked why he had not enacted Treasury sanctions against Communist Party officials linked to repression in the Xinjiang region.

Trump has denied a claim made by Bolton that the US president sought Chinese President Xi Jinping's help in getting re-elected by having Beijing purchase more American farm products in states that are key to winning in November. Trump and Xi are seen above in Beijing in 2017

The United Nations estimates that more than a million Muslims have been detained in camps there.

The State Department has accused China of subjecting Muslims to torture and abuse.

China has denied mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training and help fight extremism.

US officials previously told Reuters that since late 2018 they had weighed sanctions against Chinese officials over Xinjiang but refrained because of trade and diplomatic considerations.

Under a Phase 1 trade deal negotiated in 2019 that took effect in February, China agreed to buy at least $200billion in additional US goods and services over two years.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 22, 2020 | 11:38 AM | METROPOLIS





A woman was arrested for allegedly stealing a phone in Metropolis on Thursday.Metropolis Police were informed of a theft at a Huck's gas station on June 18. The victim told the police she had left her phone in the bathroom and that she went to retrieve it. As she approached the bathroom, another woman, later identified as 46-year-old Jodi Smith of Brookport, was exiting the bathroom.The victim said she asked if Smith saw the phone and she denied seeing it before quickly leaving the store.The officer and the victim reviewed the security video. An officer found the truck Smith was seen leaving in a few blocks away.The phone was found and Smith was arrested for theft. She was transported to the Metropolis Police Department for processing and was released on bond.
A national mask mandate is critical for the large-scale resumption of business travel during the coronavirus pandemic, CNBC's Jim Cramer argued Monday.

"Unless everyone wears masks and there's a unified decision from Washington that everyone must wear a mask, I think ... corporate travel is just not going to come back the way people think," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."

Cramer said he believes businesses may be hesitant to welcome into their offices a person, or group of people, who just flew from a city where it's possible people weren't wearing a mask. "It's just too dangerous."

To avoid those complications, businesses may stick with videoconferencing on such services as Zoom and Cisco's Webex as long as they remain popular, the "Mad Money" host said. "If you can use Zoom or Webex to get the deal done, and everyone else is using Webex, it means your competition is the same."

Cramer's comments Monday came after Delta CEO Ed Bastian told Axios that a national mask mandate would boost the company's ability to enforce its own policy.

"If the government were to mandate it, I think that would help," Bastian said in an interview that's set to run Monday night on "Axios on HBO." "Because if the government were to mandate it, then you can enforce it."

Delta, like all major U.S. airlines, requires a mask onboard.

On Delta's website about its mask policy, the company said those who choose not to comply with this or other safety requirements risk future flight privileges with the carrier.

American Airlines last week temporarily banned a customer who was removed from a flight in New York for refusing to wear a face mask on the plane.

Airlines were decimated by the Covid-19 outbreak due to stay-at-home mandates and other restrictions on travel. But as states relax restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus, travel has started to pick back up  albeit still far below last year's figures.

On Sunday, 590,456 people went through TSA checkpoints, according to the agency's data, compared with more than 2.7 million a year ago, before the outbreak. Sunday's checkpoint numbers were the highest since March 20, when 593,167 went through security. Some days in April saw less than 100,000 people go through security, TSA data shows.
(Natural News) Jack Posobiec, the Washington, DC-based correspondent for One America News Network (OANN), broadcast live from the Seattle, Washington, autonomous zone Monday morning, revealing that he had been undercover there since Friday.

(Article by Joel B. Pollak republished from Breitbart.com)

Posobiec streamed live on Periscope for just over 20 minutes as he appeared to be leaving the six-block region known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ)  or, more recently, the Capitol Hill Occupied (or Organized) Protest (CHOP).

Field Source LIVE in CapHill https://t.co/NjI59m3sd0  Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 15, 2020

The CHAZ was set up last week after the Seattle Police Department was ordered by local authorities to abandon the Eastern Precinct after days of confrontation with Black Lives Matter demonstrators, who quickly took over the area.

Posobiec walked alongside a colleague as the two described what they had seen over three days and nights. The day crew, he said, which was typically shown to the outside world, was completely different from the night crew who inhabited the zone overnight.

Posobiec called rapper Raz Simone, who has been described on social media as the zones unofficial leader, a tin-pot warlord, adding: Theres no rule of law whatsoever. It was mob rule and mob justice.

Posobiec said that a member of Razs crew had assaulted another journalist for filming inside the zone.

Also, they tried to set fire to a local auto yard, earlier, he reported, noting that someone had broken into the facility.

He added that he had spent the entire night with Raz, and promised more reporting to come.

On his Twitter feed, Posobiec had posted several videos showing law enforcement inside the zone at night:

BREAKING: Raz is now chasing down an accused thief in CapHill pic.twitter.com/taqSOdkc0l  Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 15, 2020

Raz has ordered the accused thiefs bag searched pic.twitter.com/LYS5AWbonD  Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 15, 2020

The zone was being policed, Posobiec said, by Raz and elements of Antifa, both of whom are armed. So the medias somepletely lying to you when they say theres no armed security. He said there was no de-escalation policy to avoid conflict.

The media narrative on this place has been an absolute lie  absolute, utter lie, Posobiec said, filming large piles of trash. This place need to be shut down. He added that several people had been transported outside the zone by ambulance due to drug overdoses.

Posobiec said: Im perfectly fine with people wanting to peaceably assemble there.  But youve got to have some level of public safety.  Something bad is going to happen.

Its the mob, Posobiecs associate said.

They reported no sanitation and no social distancing, despite the threat of renewed coronavirus infections.

Were done. Were not going back, Posobiec said, noting that he had other sources inside, as well as sources who would continue entering and leaving the zone.

He promised a documentary to come.

Over 45,000 people had watched Posobiecs broadcast, as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday.

Read more at: Breitbart.com
PSKOV, Russia -- The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), a human rights watchdog founded by Hollywood star George Clooney and his wife, Lebanese-British lawyer Amal Clooney, will be monitoring the high-profile trial of Russian journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva, who is accused of "justifying terrorism."

Prokopyevas lawyer Tatyana Martynova told RFE/RL on June 22 that the CFJ will be represented at the trial in the northwestern Russian city of Pskov by lawyer Maksim Kuznetsov, who will monitor the trial's legality.

Prokopyeva told RFE/RL that the monitoring "will play the role of a 'social searchlight' that will permit the evaluation of the case that we were hoping to get," adding that because of coronavirus restrictions many international organizations have been unable to attend the trial.

On June 16, when the trial resumed, Prokopyeva reiterated her stance, rejecting charges that she had "justified terrorism" by publishing an online commentary that linked a suicide bombing to the country's political climate.

Prokopyeva, a freelance contributor to RFE/RL's Russian Service, was charged in connection with a commentary she wrote in November 2018, published by the Pskov affiliate of Ekho Moskvy radio. In the text, she discussed a bombing outside the Federal Security Service (FSB) offices in the northern city of Arkhangelsk.

The Russian media had reported that the suspected bomber, who died in the explosion, had posted statements on social media accusing the FSB of tampering with criminal cases.

In her commentary, Prokopyeva linked the teenager's statements to the political climate under President Vladimir Putin. She suggested that political activism in the country was severely restricted, leading people to despair.

Prokopyeva has described the case against her as an attempt to "assassinate freedom of speech" in Russia.

If found guilty, she faces up to seven years in prison.

"The charges against Svetlana are bogus and should be dropped, so that she and other Russian journalists can continue their efforts to address the important questions that Russians are contending with without fear of legal penalty," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch called Prokopyeva's prosecution "a violation of freedom of expression, but not just hers."

"It sends yet another chilling message that in Russia, raising uncomfortable questions can have severe repercussions -- a lesson the authorities have been giving the media for years," the New York-based rights group said.

The case has drawn criticism from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and media-rights groups like Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the European Federation of Journalists.
New Delhi, June 22 : Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying "disinformation" on the Chinese transgression will be a "betrayal" to the sacrifice made by the Indian soldiers at the LAC and it was neither a "substitute for diplomacy" nor "decisive leadership".

Manmohan Singh was criticising Modi's statement at the all-party meeting on Friday and later clarification by the Prime Minister's Office on the June 15 night's violent face-off between the Indian and Chinese sides at Galwan Valley on the Line of Actual Control that led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, including a commanding officer.

The PM statement was used by the Chinese to get away from their misdeeds at the Galwan Valley.

"The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further," said the former Prime Minister.

Manmohan Singh in a statement said: "We remind the Government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership." "The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements," added Manmohan Singh.

Singh said Prime Minister should be "mindful" of the implications of his words.

He said in Indian democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our Nation's security as also strategic and territorial interests.

The former Prime Minister said China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date.

"The Nation, lost twenty brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh on June 15th-16th, 2020. They laid down their lives in the ultimate act of sacrifice, valour and duty to our country. Our bravehearts defended the motherland till their last breath and for that we owe them, and their families, our eternal gratitude," said the statement "However, their sacrifice cannot be allowed to be in vain. At this moment, we stand at historic crossroads. Our Government's decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us. Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty.

"We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity," said Manmohan Singh.

"This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat and the Prime Minister and the Government have to rise to the occasion, to ensure justice for Col. B. Santosh Babu and our jawans who have made the ultimate sacrifice and resolutely defended our territorial integrity." "To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the people's faith," said the statement from Manmohan Singh.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The requested page is currently unavailable on this server.

Back to [RTHK News Homepage]
New Zealand governments online program featuring adult-film actors has gone viral on social media. In a bid to raise awareness against young children searching for porn online to learn about intercourse, the government started a campaign called keep it real online. In the unique move, the New Zealand government features two adult stars who come to the home of a young boy called Matt who had previously searched about both of them online. In the one-minute-long advertisement, the parent of the boy can be seen getting surprised and calls for her son who is left thunderstruck on seeing both the adult stars at his home.

In the brief interaction hoping to raise the conversation around sexual education, the stars can be seen telling the parent about her son searches for them online and who probably doesnt understand how misleading porn is or what "consent" means. In the end, the mother can be seen talking to herself about having an open conversation about sexual intercourse with her son. The governments online campaign is specially made to target those parents and guardians who are raising a child in the digital age where everything is available just a click away.

Many young Kiwis are using porn to learn about sex. Get help & advice at https://t.co/fecIsQwi3b#KeepItRealOnline pic.twitter.com/AWRyuhYeyj  keepitrealonline.govt.nz (@onlinesafety_nz) June 11, 2020

Read - New Zealand Seizes $90M From Russian Bitcoin Fraud Suspect

Read - International Yoga Day: People In New Zealand Perform Yoga To Mark The Occasion, See Pics

'Bold move'

While many internet users have seen calling it a bold move, in a conversation with an international media outlet, an official from the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs has said that they wanted to be 'picked up' so that parents understand the risks that are involved with their kids online environment. The lawmaker also said that they know about children coming across pornography accidentally online which ends up being 'quite drastic and dramatic' for them.

Other than that, there are teenagers who purposefully access such adult websites which is also not the advisable way for them to learn about intercourse. The government official also said that it is important to have discussions with the children about key issues and understanding what the online interaction of the children. Welcoming such an initiative by the government, many Kiwis were seen thanking the lawmakers.

Smart. Pragmatic. NZ does it again.  Tony Dun (@Tony_Dun_) June 16, 2020

Read - New Zealand Reports Two New COVID-19 Cases After Couple Tests Positive

Read - Gippy Grewal's 'Ardaas Karaan' Set For Re-release As New Zealand Theatres Re-open; Read
[June 22, 2020] VASS and Modyo Sign Partnership for Digital Acceleration of Customers in Europe and America

We are pleased to announce that VASS, the Spanish leader in digital solutions, and Modyo, a fast growing software company with a Next-Generation Digital Experience Platform, have signed an alliance to promote digital acceleration to clients in Europe and America. Over the past several months, the two companies have been collaborating and investing with each other to accelerate the design and implementation of digital solutions on the Modyo platform. As part of the alliance, VASS will offer the Modyo platform to its clients as a hub for the implementation of portals, hybrid mobile solutions, content management, digital onboarding/a> and private transactional customer portals, among other customized digital experiences. Modyo's Digital Experience Platform, with a focus on integration to business systems, radically accelerates digital transformation initiatives. The two companies have already successfully deployed their first large client engagement together in Latin America.



Comments on the News: "Having an ally like VASS is a sign of confidence and security for our customers and prospects. Their experience and ability will accelerate our double-digit growth and support our global expansion strategy," said Juan Manuel Cortes CRO of Modyo.

Mark Bonnell, CEO of Modyo, said, "As one of Spain's leading digital solutions companies, their technology capabilities and domain knowledge with digital transformation will be a winning formula for our international clients to receive world-class solutions." "For VASS the signing of this alliance reinforces the company's commitment to continue being a leader in digital solutions and will allow our customers to create innovative solutions, with highly personalized experiences to accelerate digital transformation," said John Martinez Head of Latin America. "We believe that Modyo solves an important challenge for our customers as Modyo provides the combination of features in their platform that empower companies to design and build better digital experiences fully aligned and integrated with business needs," said Alvaro Sanchez VP International Unit. About VASS VASS is a company that leads digital solutions at a global level. The headquarters are in Madrid, Spain, and operates in 9 other countries, in Europe and America. With a staff of over 2,200 people, VASS bases its strategy on the excellence of the talent of the company, ensuring continuous training in leading market technologies and on its technology innovation in collaboration with leading market IT vendors. VASS has built a unique brand ecosystem with its own agile methodology, VASSXtreme, that covers the entire field of digital transformation, from strategy to operation, helping its clients to transform opportunities into business. About Modyo Modyo is a fast growing software company that helps digital leaders from financial institutions & large enterprises transform their mobile and web channels with a next generation digital experience platform. With 100 employees today spread across 3 continents we accelerate digital transformation for our clients and partners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005576/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The plans for the revamp of Balbriggan Harbour

A seven-year rejuvenation project for Balbriggan will bring a 10m revamp of the town's harbour.

The scheme is part of an overall 30m project led by Fingal County Council in co-operation with the town's Leadership Group.

The plans will mean Quay Street gets a linear park, Main Street will become a green corridor and Bremore Castle will be fully opened to attract tourists and boost employment.

The commuter town, also named Ireland's youngest and most diverse town, will have the harbour transformed into a visitor attraction.

The county council has its eye on a two-storey nightclub at the harbour which it wants to turn into a culture centre, complete with water sports.

This project aims to acquire key buildings "to reimagine this scenic location as a premier destination" and improve access to the beach.

Abandoned

"The facilities at the harbour are not up to speed now. There's no storage for nets and many of the boats are abandoned," said long-term resident Independent councillor Tony Murphy.

"There's not a lot of employers and many people commute to Dublin for work. The harbour would be a tourist and visitor hub and hopefully provide a way of increasing employment."

The Our Balbriggan project is entering its second year and so far 30m has been committed by the council - but this may increase to 50m as the plans roll out.

In its first year 20 goals were reached, including establishing two playgrounds, a skating area and the library refurbished with office pods, a meeting hub and high-spec IT hardware.

Balbriggan has more than 20,000 people and has been named Ireland's fastest-growing town, said Mr Murphy.

An office space has already been identified which will be operated by the county council for the Our Balbriggan project, to engage with the public and let people make suggestions.

Balbriggan Chamber of Commerce president Richard Berney, who owns an accounting business in the town, said the project was much needed.

"The chamber is very supportive of the plans and it's going to see a huge improvement to local business and the community," he said.

"The harbour is very close to the centre of town so it's a natural focal point.

"It's currently used by a combination of fishing and leisure craft, with people taking their own boats out."

He said the town had seen "money going out" as the majority of residents worked in the capital and travelled daily.

"It's much needed and the engagement from the community has been very positive," he said.
Petoskey High School band directors, assistant principal remain on administrative leave

Superintendent Chris Parker addressed the situation regarding three band instructors and an assistant principal who are all currently on paid leave during Thursday's board of education meeting.
Monika Monalisa By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: As the Indo-China border issue came to a boil, the simmering tension has entered our kitchens too. Amid calls for boycott of Chinese food and restaurants in India, several people are calling out the authenticity of the desi-Chinese cuisine that we relish regularly at the nearest noodle shop or a pan-Asian outlet.

City-based hospitality professional Aslam Gafoor says the Chinese cuisine available here is more suited for the tastebuds of Indians. "One can trace back their history when they started migrating to India and having their own settlements. The recipe might be the same but the ingredients they used were different. The chillis and other spices which they started using were grown in India and tasted different," says Gafoor, who jokes that if one tries to serve manchurian or fried rice to a person of Chinese origin even they would not be able to relate to the food.

However, getting rid of Gobi manchurian or Schezwan fried rice from the menu might not prove to be as easy as breaking a TV set made by a Chinese brand. "After Indian food, its the most popular cuisine among people," adds Gafoor.

Busting various myths about Chinese food, Vivek Salunke, co-partner of Dofu in Indiranagar, says in its home country, the flavour varies according to regions and topography. "We have a limited knowledge about the ingredients that go into making their dish. How many of us know that curry leaves are widely used in Chinese kitchen? They also use a mix of mustard oil, sesame oil and groundnut oil," says Salunke, adding that enjoying authentic Chinese flavours is an acquired taste. However, chefs are trying to educate themselves to make the dishes as authentic as possible.

He also explains that just like the Indianised version, the Chuka recipes (Japanese way of making Chinese food) are also gaining popularity in Bengaluru. Also, theres no one particular kind of Chinese food available in India, says Amit Ahuja, who owns restaurants like Misu and Lucky Chan in the city.

"The dishes prepared here are heavy on the use of soya sauce and chilli sauce. They can be categorised into two kinds  the Indianised version and the international Chinese cuisine, which is also available in places like Dubai, Tokyo and New York," says Ahuja, pointing out that the one stark difference is in the usage of meat. "For example, Cantonese street food comprises a lot of meat, such as rabbit, snake or octopus. But we dont use anything beyond chicken or seafood," he adds.
Los Angeles

Dave Franco says the drive-in premiere for his directorial debut was "perfect" but admittedly "a little weird."

The 35-year-old actor found himself at the center of Hollywood's evolving response to the coronavirus pandemic Thursday as he premiered his directorial debut "The Rental" to more than 1,300 people at the Vineland drive-in theater in Southern California.

Joined by stars including wife Alison Brie, Dan Stevens and Sheila Vand, he took off his mask to pose for photographers in a massive parking lot, then answered questions via Zoom from his car after the film ended.

It beat a traditional, more buttoned-up red carpet event, Franco said.

"It didn't feel like there was a spotlight on me or the cast. It felt more like this communal experience where everyone was just excited to get out of their homes and, you know, let loose with a group of fellow movie lovers. It was perfect," he said Friday.

Franco says Brie calmed him down about the shortcomings of an outdoor screening. "Trust me, it is not what I do. I am a crazy perfectionist. I annoy everyone around me because I won't stop until it's perfect. And so it was hard for me to let go, but it was nice having Alison next to me," he said.

His movie is set to be released via video-on-demand and at drive-ins and traditional theaters on July 24. But the nation's largest theater chains have been adjusting their reopening plans regularly in response to health officials.

Franco is hoping to hold another premiere event closer to the film's release  maybe even in a traditional theater.

"Just seeing how many people are flocking to drive-ins around the country, it just proves that the movie-going experience is so special," Franco said. "There's a lot of talk about the future of film being mainly digital. But I think right now we're really seeing how much people love going to the movies."
Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi recently announced that India must become Atmanirbhar (self-reliant). One aspect of this could be that India will remove barriers within its internal markets to truly become a single market. It will remove the hurdles to efficiency improvements and become more competitive. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was a step in this direction. Recent decisions to remove hurdles in inter-state agricultural trade are also similar. For agricultural and industrial products, as well as capital, India is increasingly becoming a single market. The creation of a barrier-free domestic market is also an intent reflected in Article 301 of the Constitution.

However, there is one market where frictions are being added rather than reduced. This is the labour market. For different reasons, leaders from out-migration and in-migration states have made statements suggesting that there may be more impediments to the inter-state migration of workers. Some states have announced preferential treatment for workers from within the state. Others have spoken of instituting an approval system before allowing their workers to move to other states, in the backdrop of how they were treated.

There are compelling reasons for internal migration in India.

First, India has much higher economic differences across states than comparable countries  with the per capita income of the richest large state (Haryana) being more than six times that of the poorest state (Bihar). The wage gap between states is as high as 100% for regular workers and 250% for casual workers. It is, therefore, no wonder that workers from the poorer states migrate to richer states for work. As of now, the best option for many poor people looking to escape poverty is to leave the states they live in, because of economic opportunities in richer states. This movement is difficult since the cost of living is also higher in richer states. However, millions still migrate and brave squalid conditions in in-migration states because they need livelihoods.

Second, some of the poorer states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have younger and larger populations, with many more workers than work opportunities. While these states must develop their economies, in the short-term, migration is an essential component of development for them.

Third, Indias growth has been largely services-led. For most services, the availability of physical labour is essential. For services such as cooking, driving, hairdressing and security, there is a need for workers to be physically present to provide the service.

While beneficial for migrants, migration also has negative implications. Migration can put downward pressure on wages in richer states, with the increase in the supply of workers. This creates an incentive for regional and local leaders to generate anti-migrant sentiments, and to promote policies that favour local workers. This dynamic is not very different from the one seen in international migration  after a point, a political economy develops to oppose migration.

Throughout Indias history, states have enacted laws and measures that are discriminatory vis-a-vis non-resident migrants. Many state laws discourage or prevent non-residents from applying for government jobs or other professions that require government licensing (auto, taxi licences), or deny them the benefits of educational reservations. Other laws, prevalent in some states of the Northeast, regulate the entry of non-residents within the state. Yet another category of laws prevents non-residents from owning property (such as in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and others). The Union government has recently announced One Nation One Ration Card because non-resident migrants are currently ineligible for many state welfare schemes.

Even though Article 19(1)(d) of the Constitution guarantees free movement and residence, states have enacted reasonable restrictions to disfavour non-resident migrants. Article 16 outlaws discrimination in employment on the grounds of residence, but the criteria for determining reservations is usually linked to local demographic characteristics. The courts have also largely upheld positive discrimination in employment and education that nonetheless discriminates against non-residents. They have upheld not just residency as a ground for eligibility for jobs and educational seats, but also the charging of differential capitation fees based on residency. In doing so, courts have generally privileged the equality interests in the Constitution at the cost of free movement and residence.

While such measures ostensibly serve to protect local constituents, they inhibit migration and thus the law of comparative advantage from operating to the benefit of in-migration states. Bengaluru could not have become a hub for information technology if it had imposed restrictions on the movement of skilled professional migrants who eventually settled in the city. Contrary to nativist sentiments, Karnatakas population has been a net beneficiary of this in-migration because of the increased contribution of Bengaluru to Karnatakas Gross Domestic Product (GDP) besides the value of diversity.

This benefit is not limited to skilled or high-end services. To the extent that Bengalurus economy powers Karnatakas growth, a migrant hairdresser working in Bangalore is also important for the states economy. This was evident recently when the Karnataka government wanted to prevent migrants from leaving for their home states because of their importance to the construction industry. It is, therefore, time to seriously re-examine the legal framework that inhibits the movement of migrants across the country, and prevents them from accessing safety, shelter and welfare services on equal terms as residents.

KP Krishnan is a retired bureaucrat and Anirudh Burman is an associate fellow, Carnegie India

The article is co-authored with Suyash Rai, a fellow at Carnegie India, New Delhi

The views expressed are personal
My children are enrolled at schools in Harare, which I believe to be in their interest. I am alive to the fact that schools are still closed, but rumours are that they might reopen soon. If the rumours are true, it would mean that I would have to return my children to Harare from Gweru and look for someone to take care of them, Chipanda said.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Three people were killed and six others were wounded early Monday when multiple people fired into a crowd at an impromptu celebration in North Carolina, police said. Five others were hit by vehicles.

The shooting happened at an impromptu block party in Charlotte that was a continuation of Juneteenth celebrations, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Gerald Smith said at a media briefing Monday.

About 400 people gathered on the north side of the city when someone in the crowd was struck during a hit-and-run accident, Smith said. Police responding to the scene heard shots being fired. Police believe more than one person fired weapons because videos recorded sounds from guns of different calibres. Authorities recovered around 100 casings from the scene.

Maliyah Cook, a witness and relative of one of the victims, said the mood of the crowd leading up to the shooting had been calm. Suddenly, she heard gunshots.

I really feel like it was a good party. I dont know what happened, Cook told The Associated Press. It came out the blue.

As Cook was running, she said she looked down to see her cousin, 29-year-old Kelly Miller, fatally wounded in the middle of the street. Police have said Miller was pronounced dead at the scene while 28-year-old Christopher Antonio Gleaton was pronounced dead after being transported to the hospital.

On Monday afternoon, police said a third victim had been pronounced dead, 39-year-old Jamaa Keon Cassell.

Matthew Torres, a Charlotte radio personality who goes by the name Chewy, said that with fewer police and organized activities than previous nights, the atmosphere was tense preceding the fatal shootings. Police say gatherings Friday and Saturday in the area ended without injuries and that the crowds dispersed in a mostly peaceful fashion.

But on Sunday, Torres said some in the crowd seemed angry and that he had a hunch something was going to go on.

You could see they were angry for whatever reason, not knowing what they were angry for, Torres said in a phone interview.

Late Sunday night, cars were doing tricks in the street including one that performed a donut and blew a tire, he said. Soon after, an ambulance arrived and then gunshots rang out. He said it sounded like multiple people in the crowd were firing at once.

You had one gun sound and then maybe like a half a second later you heard two and then half a second later after that, thats when anybody and everybody who had a gun was letting it go, Torres said, adding: We were looking at bodies in the street.

Smith said no motive was clear for the shooting.

Near the scene hours later, Myra Stewart said she was saddened by the shooting.

Weve been protesting, and weve been saying that Black lives matter. But not only do they have to matter to white people, they have to matter to us, too, said Stewart, an African American resident of Charlotte.

Betty Oates, another Charlotte resident, noted the deaths heighten the sense of crisis during the coronavirus pandemic and a nationwide movement by protesters to highlight racial injustice in the wake of deaths of Black men in police custody.

We are already in a crisis, she said. God, here we are in another crisis on top of another crisis.

On Monday afternoon, a group gathered to lay flowers near the scene of the shooting after police cleared it.

Its also a reality check that we have to do more than create catchy hashtags and cool signs. We need to get out there and stand up for our people, Katrina Cherry said.

Smith said the situation grew so chaotic after the arrival of authorities early Monday that a rescue team had to be sent into the crowd to pull people off the backs of our firefighters who were treating people hurt at the scene.

Smith also acknowledged that some officers had weapons drawn as they sought to gain control of the scene.

They were doing the best that they can to make sense out of something that is chaotic, a mass casualty scene, he said.

Smith said that no witnesses have come forward to describe how or why the shooting started and urged the public to help with the investigation.

No one was in custody by midafternoon.

Of the other seven who were shot, three had life-threatening injuries, Smith said.

The five people hit by vehicles are believed to have suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, police said in a news release. Police say four of them appear to have been struck by vehicles fleeing the scene.

Juneteenth, for which celebrations started Friday, commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 years ago.

___

Tulp reported from Leawood, Kansas. Associated Press writer Jonathan Drew contributed to this report from Durham, North Carolina.
Amaravati, June 22 : The Andhra Pradesh High Court has reserved orders on writ petitions by eight South Korean nationals from petrochemical major LG Chem, who alleged that the state police is not allowing them to leave India.

They had arrived in India on May 13 to look into the cause of May 7 gas leak incident at LG Polymers factory at Visakhapatnam, which had claimed 12 lives and affected hundreds of others.

The petitioners submitted to the court that they don't belong to LG India and that they are employees of the parent company in Korea. It was further argued that the police had issued a notice asking them to be present for inquiry. They also claimed that they are not being allowed to leave the country by the police.

However, Advocate General S. Sriram informed the court that the petitioners were never stopped from leaving the country. The police had issued the notice as the delegation was on a mission to find the facts behind the gas leak accident and hence, their inputs would be crucial for the investigations.

The court was told that the police completed their inquiry and also took the statements of the petitioners. They were asked to present themselves before the police, if it is required in the future to corroborate some evidence.

The Advocate General further submitted to the court that the petitioners be required to file affidavits stating that they would be willing to come to India and present themselves before the police if it is required during the course of investigation or thereafter.

The High Court observed that in case the petitioners do not appear before the police when asked by them to do so, the government may approach the High Court by way of an affidavit and whatever is necessary will be done.

The eight-member technical team from Seoul headquarters of the company was sent to Visakhapatnam last month to investigate gas leak from LG Polymers India plant.

LG Polymers India, a unit of LG Chem had stated that the team will work closely on-ground along with the authorities to resolve the situation and assist with real-time remedial and rehabilitation measures.

The team, comprising experts from production, environment, and safety areas, aimed to investigate the cause of the incident and support rehabilitation.
The death has occurred of Elaine Clancy

Leixlip, Kildare / Drimnagh, Dublin

CLANCY, Elaine (Leixlip, Co. Kildare and formerly of Drimnagh, Dublin 12) June 20th, 2020 (peacefully) in the loving care of the staff at St. Francis Hospice, Blanchardstown. Beloved wife of Alan Berry and much loved mother of Adam and Lily. Sadly missed by her loving husband, son, daughter, mother Maureen, father Tom, sister Paula, father-in-law Noel, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, relatives and friends.

May she rest in peace.

A private funeral will take place due to government advice regarding public gatherings. When the current circumstances have passed we look forward to celebrating Elaines life with friends and extended family at a later date.

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral; but due to current restrictions cannot, please leave your personal message by selecting Condolences below or alternatively leaving a message at www.cunninghamsfunerals.com.

Family flowers only, donations if desired to St. Francis Hospice, Blanchardstown.

The death has occurred of Breda Dempsey (nee O'Shea)

Moorefield Park, Newbridge, Kildare / Cahirciveen, Kerry



Peacefully, at home, surrounded by her loving family. Sadly missed by her loving husband John, daughters Philomena and Fiona, sons in law Len and Ger, grandchildren Daniel, Jason and Gary, sisters Kathleen and Maryann, brothers in law, sisters in law, nephews, nieces, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May Breda Rest in Peace

A private family funeral will take place in St. Conleth's Parish Church, Newbridge, on Tuesday at 1pm. Mass will be live-streamed on the Newbridge Parish Website. Burial afterwards in St. Conleth's Cemetery, Newbridge.



The death has occurred of John (Ted) Doherty

Rahylin Glebe, Galway City, Galway / Donadea, Kildare



Doherty, John (Ted), Rahylin Glebe, Galway City and late of Timahoe, Donadea, Co. Kildare, June 19th 2020, peacefully at home. Pre-deceased by his brother Martin and sister Majella. Sadly missed by his loving parents Martin and Kathleen, sisters Catherine, Anna and Noeleen, brothers in law, nephews, nieces, relatives and many good friends.

Rest In Peace

In accordance with government directives and in the interest of public health, a private family funeral will take place for John. Those who would like to attend the funeral, but cannot due to the current restrictions on public gatherings are invited to leave a personal message for the family below.

John's funeral Mass can be viewed on Tuesday morning at 11am by clicking on the following link https://www.mcnmedia.tv/camera/christ-the-king-church-cooleragh. Family flowers only please, donations can be made to the RNLI.

*Ted will depart from Galway Hospital on Monday morning at 10:30am and he will make his last voyage to the docks before travelling home to Kildare.

The death has occurred of Sean Ferguson

Celbridge, Kildare



FERGUSON, Sean (Celbridge, Co. Kildare) June 20th, 2020 (peacefully) at Glenashling Nursing Home, Celbridge. Beloved son of the late John and Eileen and dear brother of Joan, Patricia and Marie. Sadly missed by his loving sisters, brother-in-law, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

R.I.P.

A private funeral will take place due to government advice regarding public gatherings. Seans Funeral Mass will be available to view online on Tuesday 23rd June at 11am by following this LINK and selecting "Main Camera".

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral; but due to current restrictions cannot, please leave your personal message by selecting Condolences below or alternatively leaving a message at www.cunninghamsfunerals.com. Family flowers only please. Donations, if desired, to Dogs Trust.

The death has occurred of Peter Goulding

Ballyteague Lock, Ballyteague, Kildare



Ex Bord of Works.

Peacefully, in the wonderful care of the staff of Maynooth Lodge Nursing Home. Brother of the late Jack and Peg. Sadly missed by Sean, Geraldine, Andrew,Catherine and their families, relatives, neighbours and friends.

May Peter Rest In Peace

A private family funeral will take place in The Church of The Immaculate Conception, Allenwood, on Tuesday at 11am. Mass will be live-streamed on the Allen Parish Facebook page. Burial afterwards in Allen Cemetery.





The death has occurred of Valerie KAVANAGH (nee O'Shea)

Hawkfield, Newbridge, Kildare



KAVANAGH (nee OShea) Valerie (Hawkfield, Newbridge, Co. Kildare) - 20th June 2020 (peacefully) surrounded by her loving family; sadly missed by her loving husband Tony, children Evan, Muireann, Patrick and Con, brothers and sisters, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, extended family, relatives, neighbours, work colleagues in Scoil Naomh Uilig, and friends.

May Valerie Rest in Peace

Due to government advice on public gatherings, a private family funeral will be held on Tuesday at 11 oclock in St. Conleths Parish Church, Newbridge. Mass will be live-streamed on the Newbridge Parish Website

https://www.newbridgeparish.ie/webcam/ Burial afterwards in St. Conleths Cemetery, Newbridge.

House private all day Sunday and on Tuesday morning, please.

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions cannot, can leave a personal message for the family on the condolence page below.

The family thank you for your co-operation, understanding and support during this sensitive time.



The death has occurred of Caroline Behan (nee Gillis)

Celbridge, Kildare



BEHAN (nee Gillis), (Celbridge, Co. Kildare) June 19th 2020 in the loving care of the staff at the Mater Private Hospital. Caroline, beloved wife of John. Sadly missed by her loving husband, sisters Margaret and Imelda, brother Paul, brothers-in-law, sister-in-law, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandnephews, grandnieces, relatives and friends.

May she rest in peace.

A private funeral will take place due to government advice regarding public gatherings. When the current circumstances have passed we look forward to celebrating Carolines life with friends and extended family at a later date.

Please follow the link below to view Carolines funeral mass which will be streamed live on Monday (June 22nd) at 11.00am.

https://www.mcnmedia.tv/camera/st-patricks-church-celbridge

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral; but due to current restrictions cannot, please leave your personal message by selecting Condolences below or alternatively leaving a message at www.cunninghamsfunerals.com. Family flowers only please. Donations, if desired, to the Irish Cancer Society.
An Iranian cargo ship carrying food has docked in Venezuelas capital, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on June 22, amid a scarcity of basic goods in the South American country.



The goods are to stock the first Iranian supermarket in Venezuela, Iran's Embassy in Caracas tweeted on June 20, adding that the delivery marks another success in friendly and fraternal relations between two countries.

Foreign-currency shortages amid Venezuelas deep economic crisis mean the country is barely able to import food, medicine, and everyday necessities. U.S. sanctions against President Nicolas Maduro's government have also made imports difficult.



The food shipment comes after Iran last month supplied 1.5 million barrels of fuel to Venezuela, once South America's top oil producer, helping to alleviate a gasoline shortage.

Iran also provided Venezuela with key ingredients needed to restart refineries and resume producing its own gasoline.

Both Iran and Venezuela are under U.S. sanctions, and Washington has warned governments, seaports, shippers, and insurers that they could face measures if they aid the tankers.

President Donald Trump softened his tone toward Venezuela slightly in an interview published on June 19 in which he said he would consider meeting Maduro.

"I would maybe think about that, Trump said in the interview with the news website Axios.

And in a tweet on June 22, the U.S. president said he would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!

Trump expressed an openness to meeting Maduro once before, in 2018, and the Venezuelan leader also made overtures for talks, but nothing materialized and the United States instead added extensive sanctions that have added to the South American countrys economic woes.

He also indicated waning confidence in Juan Guaido, who was recognized by the United States and other Western countries as the legitimate leader of Venezuela in January 2019 after what most consider a sham election that kept Maduro in power.

While the United States has maintained pressure on the Maduro regime, largely through sanctions, Maduro has retained the support of the military as well as the backing of Russia, Cuba, China, and Iran.

Maduro earlier this month said he would visit Iran shortly to sign cooperation agreements in energy and other sectors after Iran sent the oil, which arrived in five tankers.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, Axios and dpa
The government is aiming to set up an international education and research center to help rebuild coastal areas in Fukushima Prefecture, which were devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

This plan envisions research fields unique to the areas affected by the nuclear disaster, such as decommissioning technology. The center is also expected to contribute to solving the problems of Japan as a whole, such as population decline.

The road to reconstruct Fukushima continues to be difficult. Even in areas where evacuation orders have been lifted, the number of residents is less than 20% of the pre-disaster level. Only about 30% of the 12 municipalities around the plant have resumed farming.

A panel of experts of the Reconstruction Agency said in the proposal that the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework - a national project to concentrate new industries in coastal areas of the prefecture - had just been regional efforts that lacked horizontal ties among research institutions and administrative organizations. The proposal compiled on Monday suggested that the new research center should serve as a control tower for industry creation and human resource development through industry-government-academia cooperation, to accelerate the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework. It is also suggested that establishing universities and graduate schools, that are strongly requested by local governments, should be considered in the future.

The region that Fukushima is trying to model is located near the U.S. nuclear facility, Hanford Site, in Washington State, where plutonium had been purified for military purposes. Research institutes and companies working to clean up radioactive contamination had gathered, and the industry has since developed in cooperation with local governments. The population has nearly doubled in 30 years from about 150,000 in 1990.

The proposal said the research center in Fukushima should focus on primary industries, energy and robots, which is expected to develop into related industries, in addition to reactor decommissioning technology and radiation safety, "which can only be studied in Fukushima." It also said the center should become an ultimate model for regional revitalization that will offer solutions to problems common across the country, such as population decline, a shortage of farmers and global warming.

Masahiro Sakane, chairman of the panel and adviser of major Japanese construction machinery manufacturer Komatsu Ltd., said, "Fukushima can start with a clean slate, although other regions have various restrictions," showing hope to attract talented people and promising start-ups from Japan and abroad through drastic regulatory reforms. His comments are based on his experience as a member of the government's council on national strategic special zones.

According to the outlook presented by the panel, the number of researchers and staff is estimated at about 600, while local job creation is estimated at about 5,000. The prefectural and municipal governments will work together to set up a "research town" with schools and medical facilities to increase the number of residents.

The new research center will be partially opened in the spring of 2023, with the aim of fully opening by March 2025. An official of the Reconstruction Agency said, "[The schedule] is quite tight, but if there is too much time [before opening], the interest [of universities and others who want to collaborate with the center] will decrease." Before the ten-year anniversary of the earthquake next year, a blueprint must be drawn that will appeal to many young people and companies.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents a daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 22.06.2020:

 Armenian parliament discussed Monday the draft amendments to the Constitution.

The opposition Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia factions were not participating in the sitting.

According to the amendments, the Constitutional Court (CC) judges who have been in office for 12 years and more shall be removed from office, while the current president of the court, Hrayr Tovmasyan, will continue to be a judge of the court, but no longer as its president.

[UPDATE] Armenian parliament passed, in the second and final reading, the draft amendments to the Constitution. A total of 89 MPs voted for the bill.

 The Venice Commission said in a statement it regrets that a proposal for constitutional amendments was introduced in the Armenian Parliament on the day of the adoption by the Venice Commission of its opinion.

According to Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric, "the constitutional crisis in Armenia can be solved with the Venice Commissions guidance."

"I invite all authorities to be guided by the Venice Commission recommendations to overcome the constitutional crisis through smooth implementation of the relevant provisions of the 2015 Constitution and in accordance with Council of Europe standards," she concluded.

 Yerevan court of general jurisdiction denied the petition to arrest Prosperous Armenia Party leader Gagik Tsarukyan who is charged with obstructing the will of voters through electoral fraud. Tsarukyan doesnt accept the charge and views the case against him as unlawful.

The Prosecutor's Office will appeal the decision.

According to the National Security Service statement, taking into account the public interest in fully solving the aforesaid crimes, the NSS also expects to receive public aid, and therefore it urges Armenian citizens to immediately notify the body conducting the proceedings if they have any information about this case.

 Armenia recorded 320 COVID-19 new cases on Monday bringing the total number to 20,588: the total number of tests conducted so far is 96,843, while 10,980 people are currently being treated and 9,131 people have already recovered.

The death toll in Armenia has reached 360.

According to the World Health Organization, a record number of COVID-19 infections have been confirmed globally during the past day.

The total number of COVID-19 cases has exceeded nine million. The death toll is over 470 thousand, and over 4.8 million people have already recovered.

 A woman about 45 years old fell from the 8th floor of a 9-story building under yet unknown circumstances on Monday morning in Armenia's Gyumri.

The woman died on the spot.

"The ambulance brigade found the woman already dead; the residents have not provided any information about her identity," the ambulance station added, in particular.
Hello and welcome to all about food. Time to enjoy some seasonal delights

Ask Gingergirl:

Hello gingergirl,

Im enjoying the return of my local Farmers Market and Im delighted to report that I am planning my familys meals around what Ill pick up. I am however a little concerned that I dont have the creative streak when it comes to cooking! I would appreciate your help.

Catherine

Hello Catherine,

Farmers Markets continue to grow in popularity across the country with most towns and villages hosting their own weekly market. I have written extensively about the positive impact such markets have; creating community, supporting local producers and using seasonal produce to name just a few. When visiting your local market I recommend you talk to the traders and ask them for suggestions on how to cook their produce. Traders love to talk (believe me!)

Courgettes are in season at the moment, are very versatile and easy to cook. These little cakes are always a big hit and are great served with salsa or tzatziki (cucumber and yoghurt) and salad.

Courgette & feta potato cakes

3 medium courgettes

2 potatoes, peeled

1 large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

2 spring onions, chopped2 tablespoons of fresh mint, roughly chopped

200g of feta cheese, crumbled

1 large egg, beaten

1 tablespoon of plain flour

The zest of 1 lemon

Olive oil

Coarsely grate the courgettes and place in a colander with a teaspoon of salt - this will draw out the excess the moisture - leave to drain for half and hour. Meanwhile, parboil the potatoes in salted water for ten minutes, drain and set aside to cool. Once cooled, grate the potatoes using the coarse side of a grater, into a large bowl and season. Rinse the courgettes under cold water and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Spread the courgettes over a clean tea towel, roll it up and wring out every drop of moisture. Add the courgettes to the potato along with the spring onion, chilli, feta cheese, lemon zest, mint and the beaten egg.

Gently mix together with a fork, divide the mixture into eight and shape into rounds about 1cm thick before lightly dusting the cakes with flour.

Place a baking tray the oven and heat the oven to 220c. Brush the cakes on both sides with a little olive oil and once the oven and trays are heated bake for fifteen minutes. Carefully turn over each cake and return to the oven for another ten to fifteen minutes until golden. Serve immediately.

Contact Gingergirl

www.gingergirl.ie

email: helen@gingergirl.ie
One of the returning wolves in Flanders area of National Park Hoge Kempen was accidentally hit by a local Belbus on Friday morning. The wolf survived the accident and was latter spotted uninjured. (Photo : Pixabay)

A German bus accidentally hit one of the few returning wolves in the Flanders area of Hoge Kempen National Park on Friday morning. The wolf survived the accident and was later spotted uninjured.

Landschap, a non-profit organization that is behind the returning wolves to nature in the national park area, reported the incident.

Belbus is a minibus service which plies in remote areas where there is no regular bus service. Pickups of costumers can be arranged through calling the Belbus numbers.

According to the spokesperson for Landschap, Billy was crossing the ring to the vast central reservation and decided that the other side of (Turnhout center) is not a desirable place for a wolf. As he returned, he was hit by a van that fortunately had already slowed down when the driver saw the wolf."

The wolf was thrown some distance but appeared to have survived the accident and walked away.

Wolf enthusiasts are concerned that the animal might have sustained significant injuries. A search was staged to look for the wolf, but sniffer dogs could not find it.

Institute for Nature and Forest Research attended the accident scene and took samples of DNA and hair from the minibus bumper.

Two reports of the healthy wolf in the region off Turnhout came in on Friday evening. The two reports were consistent in terms of location and time frame, and observation that it is a smooth-running wolf. The animal seemed to get off with fright, with some reservation after the accident will remain, Landschap said.

Jan Loos of Welkom Wolf, the organization that monitors the re-entry of wolves in Belgium, does not want to jump into conclusions: "It seems he hasn't sustained any injuries, though we need to be cautious before drawing any conclusions" he said.

Two weeks ago, Billy arrived in Belgium from Den Bosch area in the Netherlands and traveled to Duffel, north of Mechelen.

A report of Billy striking in the Turnhout area, killing a couple of sheep, although further DNA research is needed to provide certainty that the wolf was actually Billy. Welkom Wolf says this attack indicates that Billy is in good health.

A Comeback of Wolves in Belgium

Naya, a female wolf, is the first wolf that made its way to Belgium from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany in 2018. A year after the first wolf sighting Belgium, Naya was killed. Her death caused a massive outcry in Belgium.

Despite the incident, the re-establishment of wolves in Belgium continued. There are around 10 wolves in Belgium to this date, Jan Loos said.

A couple was introduced in the Ardennes, the southeast of Belgium, and in Limburg, the north-east area. The couple in Limburg is expecting cubs as of two months ago.

The government of Limburg issued the strictest mandate to protect wolves in the region. Five years in jail and a fine of 500 await the poachers, and hunting in the wolf territory is prohibited.

The presence of wolves in Belgium is crucial for the future of wolves in Europe: it could reconnect the French-Italian and German-Polish wolf population after 200 years of total separation.
Fifty-seven girls at a state-run children's shelter home in Uttar Pradesh''s Kanpur district have tested positive for COVID-19, with five of them found to be pregnant, an administration official said on Sunday. Two other girls in the shelter home, who are also pregnant, have tested negative for the virus, he said.

Kanpur: Fifty-seven girls at a state-run children's shelter home in Uttar Pradesh''s Kanpur district have tested positive for COVID-19, with five of them found to be pregnant, an administration official said on Sunday. Two other girls in the shelter home, who are also pregnant, have tested negative for the virus, he said.

"The five pregnant girls, who have been found COVID-19 positive, were referred by the Child Welfare Committees of Agra, Etah, Kannauj, Firozabad, and Kanpur under the POCSO Act. Two other pregnant girls have tested negative for COVID-19. The seven girls were pregnant at the time, when they came to the shelter home," Kanpur DM Brahma Dev Ram Tiwari told reporters.

The district magistrate added that two girls are undergoing treatment at LLR Hospital in Kanpur, while three others are undergoing treatment at a private hospital.

In a Facebook post, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had attacked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh over the media reports about the girls being found pregnant at the shelter home.

"The entire story of the Muzaffarpur shelter home case is in front of the country. Such a case had also come to light in Deoria in UP," Priyanka Gandhi said.

In this scenario, such an incident again coming out shows that everything is suppressed in the name of investigations, but very inhuman incidents are taking place in government child protection homes, she said
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has announced that a very limited number of pilgrims from various nationalities who already reside in Saudi Arabia would be able to perform Hajj this year (1441 H/ 2020 AD), a Saudi Press Agency report said.

The decision will mean that international visitors will not be able to make the pilgrimage due to the restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19).

This decision has been taken to ensure that Hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective while observing all preventive measures and the necessary social distancing protocols to protect pilgrims from the risks associated with this pandemic and in accordance with the teachings of Islam in preserving the lives of human beings, a ministry statement said.

An estimated two million people annually visit Makkah and Madinah for the annual religious gathering.

The ministry's statement said the decision has been taken in light of the Covid-19 spreading to more than 180 countries around the world and the continuing risk from the virus.

Saudi Arabia's priority is to always to enable Muslim pilgrims to perform Hajj and Umrah rites safely and securely and since the beginning of the pandemic it has taken all necessary precautionary measures to protect pilgrims, including by suspending the entry of Umrah pilgrims while ensuring the safety of the pilgrims already present at the holy sites, it said.

"The Government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques is honoured to serve millions of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims annually and it confirms that this decision stems from the top priority it accords to maintain the safety of pilgrims on its land until they depart to their home countries," it said.

"We ask Allah the Almighty to protect all countries from this pandemic and keep all humans protected and safe," it added.
Virgin Galactic has signed a new deal with NASA that will see the Richard Branson owned firm prepare future commercial astronauts for flights to the ISS.

Under the agreement, Virgin Galactic will develop a new private orbital astronaut training program and look out for potential space tourist candidates.

This is a new initiative for the sub-orbital space firm that is expected to start offering paying passengers trips to the very edge of space in the coming year.

The Space Act Agreement, signed with NASA, will see the company use its expertise in preparing 'future astronauts' and apply it to a wider commercial space operation.

Virgin Galactic will take on responsibility for finding companies and organisations interested in sending people up to the International Space Station.

The Space Act Agreement, signed with NASA, will see the company use its expertise in preparing 'future astronauts' and apply it to a wider commercial space operation

Virgin Galactic has signed a new deal with NASA that will see the Richard Branson owned firm train future commercial astronauts for flights to the ISS

They will also be responsible for finding the right transportation to get them there - such as with SpaceX, Roscosmos, Boeing or other future firms.

It's a wide ranging agreement that will also require Virgin Galactic to coordinate the necessary resources in space and on the ground to make the trips a success.

They will basically become a space tourism agency - similar to Space Adventures that puts trips together for wealthy customers who fly on Russian rockets to the ISS.

'The next generation of space traveler is interested in a variety of space experiences,' said Virgin Galactic in its statement on the agreement.

Building on its commercial spaceflight training experience, Virgin Galactic believes it can provide an 'unparalleled, personalized customer experience' for orbital travel.

NASA is seeing greater demand for use of the ISS for scientific and technological research and development, commercial activity, and international collaboration.

Virgin Galactic will take on responsibility for finding companies and organisations interested in sending people up to the International Space Station

Private astronaut experiences could range from private citizen expeditions to government-enabled scientific research missions.

As part of this partnership, NASA will leverage Virgin Galactic's commercial expertise and industry knowledge.

Virgin Galactic will also contribute end-to-end program management and integrated astronaut training packages for private passengers, tailored to meet the needs for a commercial orbital space flight experience.

'The partnership also serves as a pathfinder for the ISS National Laboratory by demonstrating additional involvement by the commercial sector in human spaceflight', the company said.

It's hope this could also lead to commercial participants conducting research and other commercial activities aboard the ISS in future.

Virgin Galactic has already developed a Future Astronaut Readiness program for its customers flying out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The existing space experiences could play an important role in the training for orbital travel, allowing passengers to become familiar with the environment in space, such as G-forces and zero-G.

Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic's home base, will be used for some elements of the training program, using the facilities designed for private astronaut training.

George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic said it was an exciting development.

'We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight program, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies,' he said.

As part of this partnership, NASA will leverage Virgin Galactic's commercial expertise and industry knowledge to help the agency launch its private astronaut service

The existing space experiences could play an important role in the training for orbital travel, allowing passengers to become familiar with the environment in space, such as G-forces and zero-G.

'Based on the unsurpassed levels of spaceflight customer commitments we have secured to date, we are proud to share that insight in helping to grow another market for the new space economy'

'We want to bring the planetary perspective to many thousands of people.'

While Virgin Galactic has yet to send a customer into space, it has worked extensively with its 'future astronauts', preparing them for launch.

The firm argues that this experience makes it qualified to run this kind of program for NASA, adding that many Virgin Galactic staff once worked for NASA on human spaceflight programs.

NASA has to review any proposal put forward by Virgin Galactic before the company can begin to offer private astronaut missions to the space station.

'Virgin Galactic's plans to develop a new private orbital astronaut readiness program directly support NASA's broad strategy to facilitate the commercialization of low-Earth orbit by U.S. entities,' NASA said in a statement.

They will basically become a space tourism agency - similar to Space Adventures that puts trips together for wealthy customers who fly on Russian rockets to the ISS

This is the latest in a string of commercialisation moves by NASA, including contracting SpaceX to fly astronauts to the space station earlier this year.

Boeing is also developing its own crew capsule called the Starliner, but that has been delayed due to technical problems in test flight.

NASA is also working with commercial partners on its Artemis mission to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024 and then to continue a sustainable presence on the lunar surface going forward.

It currently costs about $60 million for a seat on the SpaceX Crew Dragon, $90 million for a Boeing Starliner seat and $80 million for a Soyuz ticket.

Virgin Galactic hasn't said which of the three options it would consider for flight, or whether something new was int he works.

Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic president, said they would tailor their training program to whichever capsule the future astronauts opted to use.

The firm is already in talks with a number of potential customers - from commercial purposes to research but couldn't say who or why.
The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will carry out the serological survey to assess the Covid-19 spread in the national capital for the Delhi government, a senior official aware of the process said on Monday, as officials in the city administration and the Union health ministry worked out details of how the programme will be launched later this week.

The serological survey -- a random test of 20,000 people from across the city to assess if they have in the past been infected by the coronavirus -- was suggested by the Union government in an effort to intensify efforts to contain the outbreak in Delhi, which now has 62,655 cases, second only to Maharashtras 135,796, data collated by HT showed on Monday.

The survey is scheduled to begin from June 27. HLL Lifecare Limited is procuring antibody test kits on behalf of Centre for testing in Delhi. And National Centre for Disease Control under the Union ministry of health and family welfare will conduct the sero surveillance for Delhi government, the senior government official, who asked not to be named, said.

Around 20,000 people representing a cross-section of Delhis population will be tested across the 11 districts within two weeks under the revamped action plan issued by the ministry of home affairs after a meeting chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday.

Antibody tests detect the presence of antibodies produced by the body to fight Covid-19 infection. It helps identify people who have recovered from Covid-19 without being tested because they were asymptomatic, had mild disease, or could not get tested for some reason.

Finding these hitherto undetected cases will help the state government estimate the true burden of Covid-19 in Delhi and plan an appropriate response.

According to district-level officials, the protocols for the survey are being worked upon. We have yet to receive the guidelines for sero-surveillance in Delhi. The details will be worked out through out the week. Currently, our teams are focussing on antigen testing, said a district official, asking not to be named.

Delhi started using rapid antigen tests  that can give results in 15 minutes  on Thursday. Over 7,000 people were tested on the very first day, followed by over 12,000 people the next day. This has led to an increase in the number of cases in the city, with 3,000 cases being recorded on Sunday.

The focus is likely to be on north-west, central, west, and north districts that have been reporting a high number of cases.

It was not immediately clear which antibody test kits will be used, since previous attempts had to be aborted due to problems of reliability. In April, the Delhi government started using antibody testing in hot spot areas to check the prevalence of the infection. Only 62 people were tested using the rapid kits in Nabi Karim, all of which were negative. The government, as per the directions of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), stopped using the antibody kits made by two Chinese company after they showed varying results across the country.

We had placed an order for 50,000 tests in March but cancelled it after Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stopped antibody tests after kits from the two companies from China were found to be defective. We havent placed an order for more kits yet, said an official from Delhis health department.

US-based medical devices company Abbott on Monday said it will supply one million laboratory-based antibody testing kits to various states, including Delhi, by the end of June.

Earlier this month, ICMR revealed the result of its pilot sero-surveillance study of 26,000 people from across India. The overall percentage of general population that was found to have been infected in the past is 0.73%, with urban areas having shown higher Covid-19 prevalence of about 1.09%, the study had revealed. These tests were carried out by kits made by Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila.

The ICMR director general Dr Balram Bhargava said the low prevalence rate showed there was no community transmission of the infection in India.

With the source of the infection unknown in nearly half the Covid-19 cases in Delhi, the health minister Satyendar Jain had said on June 10 there was transmission of the infection in the community in Delhi, but to term it as community transmission was up to the centre. This survey might help answer the question.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Nicola Sturgeon with husband Peter Murrell, the SNP's chief executive - AFP

Nicola Sturgeon and her husband could be forced to give evidence under oath to a Scottish Parliament inquiry into the mishandling of misconduct claims against Alex Salmond.

The Scottish First Minister also faces having to hand over her personal phone records as a specially-convened Holyrood committee gathers evidence over the summer. She has previously pledged to cooperate fully.

The committee met for the first time since Mr Salmond was acquitted of 13 counts of sexual assault in March.

It issued a list of witnesses from whom it wants written testimony in the first instance "with a view to inviting a selection of these individuals to give oral evidence."

They included Ms Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell, who is also the SNP's chief executive, Mr Salmond and Deputy First Minister John Swinney.

Ms Sturgeon's chief of staff and her most senior mandarin, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans, are also on the list as the committee examines the botched inquiry by civil servants.

Leslie Evans, the Scottish Government's permanent secretary

Donald Cameron, a Tory committee member, proposed taking evidence under oath to maximise its accuracy amid "conflicting" claims.

It is understood that no formal decision was taken in a private session that followed the public hearing after some opposition from other committee members.

Refusing to take an oath is an offence punishable by up to three months in jail or a 5,000 fine. Giving false evidence could attract a five-year prison sentence.

Mr Salmond won a judicial review last year when Scotlands highest civil court found that the way the Scottish Government investigation was handled was unlawful.

The case was abandoned on the eve of a Court of Session hearing after the government admitted it had breached its own guidelines by appointing an investigating officer who had prior involvement with two civil servants who had made complaints.

The SNP administration he once led paid him 512,250 of taxpayers' money to cover his legal costs after the judge Lord Pentland ruled the inquiry was "procedurally unfair" and "tainted with apparent bias".

Story continues

The committees inquiry into the debacle was suspended when Mr Salmond was charged with sexual offences, but it was kickstarted after he was cleared.

Alex Salmond leaving the High Court in Edinburgh in March - Getty Images Europe

The sessions will be held in person and could take place in Holyroods debating chamber to ensure social distancing.

MSPs will likely investigate three meetings, including two at her home, and two phone calls Ms Sturgeon held with Mr Salmond.

Mr Cameron, an advocate, said that witnesses should have to give sworn evidence on oath to ensure the evidence is as accurate as possible, "not least because we are likely to get conflicting versions of events and there will be disputed areas of fact."

He added: We are dealing with very serious matters involving the highest echelons of the Scottish civil service and the conduct of very senior ministers past and present. Taking sworn evidence underscores the gravity of the subject matter of the inquiry and will ensure we get the best possible evidence.

Jackie Baillie, a Labour committee member, said the committee had already written to Ms Sturgeon looking for paper or electronic records of her "personal telephone messages and also copies of emails."
With the Supreme Court allowing the historic Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra at Puri, the Odisha government on Monday activated its administrative machinery on a war footing for smooth conduct of the annual festival to be held on June 23.

IMAGE: Priests and policemen pull the three chariots of Lord Jagannath, Balarama, and Subhadra from the construction site (Ratha Khala) to Jagannatha Temple for the annual Rath Yatra, scheduled to start from Tuesday, in Puri, on Monday. Photograph: PTI Photo

Chief Secretary A K Tripathy and Director General of Police (DGP) Abhay rushed to the pilgrim town to make the necessary arrangements.

"The DGP and I are rushing to Puri to take stock of the situation as per the direction of the chief minister. We will camp there," Tripathy said.

"I am confident that the Ratha Yatra will be conducted smoothly tomorrow without devotees and strict adherence to the COVID-19 guidelines," he said.

The Puri district administration held a preparatory meeting for the historic event and different departments were directed to keep their apparatus ready for the festival.

"All the departments like health, police, drinking water, energy, sanitation and local municipality are ready," Puri district collector Balwant Singh said and appealed to the people to cooperate with the administration and maintain discipline.

Shree Jagannath Temple Administration chief administrator Krishna Kumar said all the departments are well prepared as they are ready with their micro-planning.

The priests of the 12th century shrine performed the ritualistic 'Agyan Mala Bije' (a token garland signifying permission of the deity for the festival) for the three chariots.

Senior servitors of the temple carried the 'Agyan Mala' from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple and went in a procession to the three gigantic chariots of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra and performed puja.

According to the tradition, the three chariots will be pulled only after getting 'Agyan Mala' from the Lord.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) core committee, headed by N C Pal, also inspected the three wooden chariots and verified that they are safe to be pulled.

MEanwhile, the Odisha government imposed a 'curfew-like' shutdown in Puri district ahead of the historic Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra and appealed to citizens to refrain from stepping out of their homes when the chariots roll out on the Grand Road on June 23 in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 'curfew-like' shutdown will be in force across the district from 9 pm of Monday till 2 pm on Wednesday, said DGP Abhay and appealed to the people to abide by the Supreme Court's directives while celebrating the historic Rath Yatra amidst the COVID-19 crisis.

The DGP also said that more than 50 platoons (one platoon has 30 personnel) of police force are being deployed for the security management of the nine-day festival.

"We have already started deployment of force since Sunday evening expecting to hold the Rath Yatra," Abhay said.

As holding of the Rath Yatra is permitted only in Puri this time, force deployment will be a difficult task and the whole focus of the police will be on the pilgrim town, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Soumendra Priyadarshi said.

While the residents of Puri should refrain from moving out to watch the Lord's journey, people from other parts of the state have been urged not to proceed to the seaside pilgrim town, the DGP said.

"All the devotees, both in Puri and outside, can watch the proceedings on television," he said.

All the entry points to Puri have been sealed and no vehicle other than those for the purpose of the Rath Yatra preparation is allowed into the temple town, a senior official said.

Apart from the chief secretary and the DGP, all senior officials of the state government of different line departments have rushed to the pilgrim town for preparation for the festival, which is barely a few hours away.

The chief secretary said, "All the related departments are fully prepared. The Rath Yatra will be devotee and visitor less on Badadanda. All directions of the Supreme Court will be fully followed."

The Puri municipal authorities have asked all street vendors to vacate the Grand Road (Bada Danda) by Monday evening so that chariots can be pulled on Tuesday.

"We have no objection to vacating the place. The shopkeepers are happy that the chariots will roll on the Grand Road," said a shopkeeper.

Police said it had received a report saying that eggs were hurled at the house of Odisha Vikash Parishad president Sushanta Padhi, who had moved the Supreme Court to stall the Rath Yatra at Puri.

Padhi's car was also damaged in stone pelting by angry people who also raised slogans against him prompting lathi-charge by police to disperse the crowd.

Forces were deployed near his house at Bomikhal in Bhubaneswar.

Police said that CCTV footage is being checked to identify the attackers.

The apex court, while allowing the festival in Puri, said that it cannot micro-manage the rituals and left it to the wisdom of the state, the Centre and the temple management to deal with that issue.

The Centre has informed the court that the Rath Yatra can be conducted without compromising on the health of the citizens.

The Supreme Court's nod for the annual festival was granted on the basis of the state governments assurance that the Rath Yatra will be conducted by a limited number of servitors without any public participation in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- New UK fund cornerstoned by 50 million investment from the British Business Bank, through its Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) programme

- Epidarex Capital III UK LP will invest in new life science companies from emerging research hubs across the UK, including spinouts from highly regarded universities

EDINBURGH, Scotland, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Epidarex Capital ("Epidarex"), a transatlantic life science venture firm, announces that it has closed Epidarex Capital III UK LP (the "Fund") at 102.1 million. The Fund will build new life science companies based on world-class research and innovation from emerging hubs across the UK, including spinouts from highly regarded universities. Typical initial investments will range from 2 million to 5 million.

The new Fund has been cornerstoned by the British Business Bank via a 50 million commitment from its Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) programme for early stage venture capital. The programme combines private and public money to enable equity investments in high-growth businesses, and since its inception it has committed over 1.36 billion (including third-party investment) to facilitate finance to 540 smaller UK high growth businesses. The Bank's investment in Epidarex Capital III UK makes it the largest ECF to date, and the first to specialise in life science.

In addition to the British Business Bank, the Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow and Aberdeen, alongside Strathclyde Pension Fund and several global investors have committed capital to the new Fund.

With its UK headquarters in Edinburgh and its US base in Bethesda, Maryland, Epidarex is a transatlantic venture firm that creates and invests in early stage, high-potential life science companies in emerging research hubs. Epidarex partners at an early stage with top scientists and entrepreneurs in the UK and the US to develop highly innovative products addressing major unmet needs in the global healthcare market.

Sinclair Dunlop, Managing Partner at Epidarex, said: "We are grateful for the tremendous support from the British Business Bank and from returning investors, which has allowed us to close this significant new UK fund. Epidarex's differentiated approach to life science investing draws from our global network of experts and long-standing relationships with multiple highly regarded universities and research institutions. Epidarex can now significantly expand and support its portfolio of UK life science start-ups with the potential to both transform patient outcomes and generate competitive investor returns."

The Fund's first investment founded Lunac Therapeutics, a spinout from the University of Leeds, which received 2.65 million in a Series A financing round. Lunac is developing next-generation anticoagulants to minimise bleeding risk and capitalises on a decade of academic research, which was supported by the University.

The Fund expects to announce several further investments in the coming months.

Ken Cooper, Managing Director, Venture Capital Solutions at the British Business Bank, said: "We know that equity finance is crucial for innovative life science and health technology businesses. The Bank's Enterprise Capital Funds programme is a key tool in helping to develop and maintain an effective venture capital provision in the UK. By supporting Epidarex Capital III UK, we are looking to ensure the successful financing of early stage, high-potential businesses that are built upon cutting-edge UK life science research. We are very pleased to be backing this new UK fund, which itself represents an important milestone as our largest ECF fund to date and the first dedicated to investment in life science."

Minister for Business and Industry, Nadhim Zahawi said: "It is our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business, and that means backing innovation as we rebuild and revitalise the UK economy.

"The UK is already home to one of the strongest, most productive health and life science industries globally and today's 50m government investment will help to ensure this crucial sector continues to thrive, transforming people's lives."

Steve Bates, OBE, Chief Executive Officer of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA), said: "Accessing world class life science venture expertise is key to creating and scaling successful innovative UK life science companies. This has been a BIA policy objective for many years, so it's fantastic to see UK life science industrial strategy in action  further enabling Epidarex to back some of Britain's most promising life science entrepreneurs. Having transatlantic expertise and a base in Edinburgh, gives Epidarex real insight in building new UK life science companies, including beyond the South East of England  an area that has traditionally been under ventured despite the presence of world-leading research and innovation."

Kyparissia Sirinakis, Managing Partner at Epidarex, said: "The new fund that we have announced today will enable us to continue towards our goal of creating extraordinary new life science companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Based on our expertise and approach I am confident that we can continue to make a meaningful impact on the UK life science ecosystem by helping ambitious entrepreneurs and scientists build high potential companies across the UK."

Notes for Editors

About Epidarex Capital

Epidarex Capital is a transatlantic venture firm that invests in early-stage, high-growth life science companies in under-ventured markets. Epidarex focuses on providing risk capital and expertise to create, support and build young companies, including spinouts, from leading research institutions in both established and emerging life science hubs. The fund's international management team has a track record of successfully partnering with top scientists and entrepreneurs to develop highly innovative products for the global healthcare market.

www.epidarex.com

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government's economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank programmes are supporting more than 7.7bn of finance to over 94,900 smaller businesses (as at end of December 2019).

As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses:

The Business Finance Guide (published in partnership with the ICAEW and a further 21 business and finance organisations) impartially sets out the range of finance options available to businesses at all stages  from start-ups to SMEs and growing mid-sized companies. Businesses can take the interactive journey at www.thebusinessfinanceguide.co.uk/bbb

The new British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to high-growth businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. The new site also features case studies and lessons from real businesses to guide businesses through the process of applying for growth finance.

As the holding company of the group operating under the trading name of British Business Bank, British Business Bank plc is wholly owned by HM Government and is not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The British Business Bank operates under its own brand name through a number of subsidiaries, none of which are authorised and regulated by the FCA.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website .

The investment from British Business Bank into Epidarex Capital III UK LP does not amount to any endorsement or warranty from the British Business Bank, British Business Bank plc, or the government of the UK.

Enterprise Capital Funds are administered by British Business Finance Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Business Bank plc.

British Business Bank Enterprise Capital Funds (ECFs) are managed by experienced fund managers from a variety of backgrounds  including teams from the venture capital industry as well as serial entrepreneurs with a history of success in building early stage UK companies.

They are commercially-focused funds which bring together private and public money to make equity investments in high growth businesses. The British Business Bank's rolling investment programme of commitments to new Enterprise Capital Funds is a competitive process, with typically 2 to 3 investments made per year. The Epidarex Capital III UK LP is the 29th ECF in the programme.

Contacts for Epidarex

Sinclair Dunlop Managing Partner Tel: +44 (0)7767166156 Kyparissia Sirinakis Managing Partner Tel: + 1 (301) 298-5456 For media enquiries: Citigate Dewe Rogerson Sylvie Berrebi/ David Dible/ Frazer Hall/ Mark Swallow Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 9571 Email: [email protected]

Contacts for British Business Bank

MHP Communications [email protected] Suzanna Jebbitt Corporate Communications Manager 07827 552 301 / [email protected]

SOURCE Epidarex Capital

Related Links

http://www.epidarex.com


Kyle Sandilands isn't happy with Karl Stefanovic - and he wasn't shy about venting about it on air.

Detailing the context to his KIIS FM co-host Jackie O on Monday, the radio host, 50, fumed as he explained that he rejected Karl's offers to hang out for a 'beer and a chat' at the weekend.

However, he was soon left stunned to discover that Karl went on to spend his weekend at the races with his arch-nemeses, Ben Fordham and Ryan Fitzgerald.

Soured friendship: On Monday, Kyle Sandilands, 50, revealed he is disowning his friend Karl Stefanovic after he was seen hanging out with two of his arch-nemeses, Ben Fordham and Ryan Fitzgerald

Kyle hilariously explained: 'Stefanovic wanted me to come around to his place on Saturday. I said "nah". He then said, "I'll come around to yours then."

'I just sort of brushed him off. Nice bloke and everything but I'm not giving up my Saturday to drink beers and chat. That's not me - I don't do that!'

Continuing on, Kyle said: 'Anyways, he couldn't have the gold class friendship happening on the Saturday, so then I noticed he dropped back to a bronze sort of situation because I saw him at the races with Fitzy and Ben!'

'I'm finished and done with him! He was with two enemy broadcasters. I can't hang out with someone who has a friendship with two losers,' Kyle vented.

Story: Detailing the context to his co-host Jackie O on Monday, the radio host fumed as he explained that he rejected Karl's offers to hang out for a 'beer and a chat' at the weekend

This comes after the shock jock revealed he's preparing to undergo a throat operation soon.

He made the shock revelation on air last week during a segment with the show's resident psychic Georgina Walker - who warned Kyle that he would experience bad luck on July 8.

'I think I do have to have an operation on my throat,' Kyle replied.

'It's not the 8th of July by any chance?' Georgina gasped, to which Kyle responded: 'Oh my god, actually I don't know. I go today to find out what the date is. Imagine if it's the 8th of July?'

Oh no! However, he was soon left stunned to discover that Karl went on to spend his weekend at the races with his arch-nemeses, Ben Fordham and Ryan Fitzgerald

He gave no further details about the nature of his operation, nor the reason why he's undergoing the invasive procedure.

Kyle is a self-confessed chain smoker and recently joked on air that he sometimes even smokes in the shower.

He has also admitted to being 'massively addicted to smoking marijuana' in the past.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Kyle's management for comment.
The amendments are to be voted in a national referendum on July 1.

An amendment to the Russian Constitution related to the "protection of sovereignty" is required to make it impossible to return the annexed Crimea to Ukraine.

"This is spelled out so that no one could seriously alter legislation by which Crimea could be transferred to Ukraine," said co-chair of the working group on the development of amendments to the Russian Constitution and the Federation Council envoy to the Constitutional Court of Russia Andrey Klishas, the Russian news agency RBC reported.

"This is done so that not a single state authority, including president, or parliament, or government, could seriously negotiate, for example, the Crimea return to Ukraine," he said.

Read alsoMerkel says new Russia sanctions not ruled out

The senator claims the amendment will not be used to "chase bloggers or monitor social networks to see if someone has called for handing Crimea back."

The amendment is worded as follows: "The Russian Federation protects its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Actions (with the exception of delimitation, demarcation, re-demarcation of the state border of the Russian Federation with the neighboring states) aimed at alienating part of the territory of the Russian Federation, as well as calls for such actions, shall not be allowed."

The amendments are to be voted in a national referendum on July 1.
Police at the scene of a fatal shooting in Manchester (Peter Byrne/PA)

Police are investigating a double murder which followed a lockdown street gathering of hundreds of people in Manchester.

A 36-year-old man died after reports of a shooting near Caythorpe Street, Moss Side, at about 12.55am on Sunday.

A 21-year-old was also taken to hospital with gunshot wounds but died later on Sunday, Greater Manchester Police said.

Expand Close (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp (PA Graphics)

No arrests have been made.

A cordon is in place surrounding a residential courtyard between Caythorpe Street, Broadfield Road and Bowes Street.

A forensic tent partially covered a Skoda car, with litter strewn across the ground including bottles of alcohol and canisters of laughing gas, also known as hippy crack.

Footage on social media of the gathering shows a crowd of revellers tightly packed in the courtyard in darkness and dancing to loud music.

Expand Close Police at the scene in Moss Side (Peter Byrne/PA) PA / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Police at the scene in Moss Side (Peter Byrne/PA)

Detective Inspector Andrew Butterworth said: Firstly, our thoughts are with the victims loved ones, who are understandably devastated.

A thorough and fast-paced investigation is already well under way to establish the full circumstances surrounding this incident and arrest those responsible. As we speak, dedicated teams of officers are carrying out house to house inquiries and reviewing CCTV.

We are aware that, in the hours before this incident, there was a community event in Moss Side. This event was monitored by Greater Manchester Police in conjunction with partner agencies  it was not an illegal rave and it had concluded prior to this incident.

It does appear that the incident took place at what we believe was an unplanned event near to the location of the earlier community event.

We know that there were a number of people in the area at the time and, if they havent already, I appeal directly to them or anyone else with information, photographs or videos which may aid our investigation, to contact police straight away.

Finally, I would like to use this opportunity to offer the community some reassurance.

I understand this news will cause concern but there will be an increased police presence in the area throughout today and the coming week  I would encourage anyone with any concerns at all to speak.

Expand Close A police tent covered a Skoda car (Peter Byrne/PA) PA / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp A police tent covered a Skoda car (Peter Byrne/PA)

A primary school teacher, who lives a couple of streets away, said he heard loud music from about 10pm and that it continued past midnight as he and his wife went to bed.

The man, who did not wish to be named, said: Its a really normal neighbourhood with an occasional spike in violence.

I had a walk out to see what was happening and I would say there were hundreds of people around but I did see police patrols. Later, we heard an helicopter overhead.

He said he did not feel a need to call 999 because the police were already there, but others did and were reportedly told that officers were unable to break the party up because it was too large.

Another neighbour said they saw a DJ in the courtyard with music equipment.

Earlier this week, Greater Manchester Police vowed to take serious action to deter more illegal raves after two gatherings in Trafford and Oldham last weekend.

A dedicated operation was set up by the force after a 20-year-old man died of a suspected drug overdose, an 18-year-old woman was raped and three men were stabbed at the two events attended by more than 6,000 people.
Crude oil demand could recover to levels last seen before the coronavirus pandemic sometime next year, Russias Energy Minister Alexander Novak told German daily Handelsblatt in an interview.

Of course, it wont happen this year, he said, referring to the recovery in oil demand. We hope it will happen next year, but it could take another two or three years.

Novaks comments come on the heels of a statement by the head of Russias sovereign wealth fund, Kiril Dmitriev, who said there was no point in extending the deepest OPEC+ production cuts beyond the end of July, suggesting that the oil market should be nearer balance by then.

Oil demand has been recovering across the world as pandemic-forced national lockdowns began to be lifted and borders reopened. However, the situation is still very fragile, with little clarity as to whether demand will in fact improve to pre-crisis levels, especially given plans for a green recovery in Europe, which will be tied to lower oil consumption.

One thing, however, seems to unite forecasters: the expectation that this oil demand recovery will take a long time. One reason for this is a permanent change in consumer behavior, prompted by the pandemic, including less commuting because of permanent work-from-home options, and less international travel for fear of infection. Another reason is the economic fallout of the pandemic, with high unemployment, reducing consumers ability to spend. Related: Rebound In Oil Prices Helps Prop Up Midstream Sector

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), oil demand will take over a year and a half to (potentially) return to the levels before the pandemic. This year, demand is expected to drop by 8.1 million bpd, the biggest-ever decline, the IEA said in its latest Oil Market Report for June.

OPEC expects an annual decline in demand of 6.4 million bpd for the second half of the year, after an estimated 11.9-million-bpd contraction over the first half.

According to Moodys, oil demand may well have peaked last year and will never recover to pre-crisis levels.

By Irina Slav

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Under the change to the protocols that are jointly developed and overseen by the league and the NFL Players Association, the handful of unvaccinated players assigned to the eight remaining playoff teams will now will be tested only when they have symptoms, as with vaccinated players and team staffers.
GCSE and A-Level exams could be sat later in 2021 to give students more time to prepare after being housebound by coronavirus, Gavin Williamson said today.

The Education Secretary confirmed a consultation has been launched into whether the tests could be moved from May to July - traditionally during the school holidays.

Students preparing for exams next summer have missed three months of lessons, mocks and and exam preparation due to coronavirus and such a move would allow them extra time to catch up.

It came days after he unveiled a 1 billion fund to help children 'catch up' with lost learning after months out of school amid the pandemic.

Ministers have come under huge pressure to act after failing in attempts to ensure all students spent a month in class before the summer break.

Some years have returned but universal return is not expected to happen until September.

Speaking in the Commons this afternoon in response to a question from Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke, Mr Williamson said: 'One of the key elements of the billion-pound package is making sure those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have extra support in terms of one-on-one tutoring and tutoring in small groups.

'My honourable friend raises an important point about how do we add more teaching time in?

'And that is why we will be consulting with OfQual about how we can move those exams back, giving children extra time in order to be able to learn and really flourish and do incredibly well.'

The Education Secretary confirmed a consultation has been launched into whether the tests could be moved from May to July - traditionally during the school holidays

Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke has campaigned for exams to be pushed back next summer, and the Government is now examining the move

Coronavirus surge in teaching applications A 'huge surge' in people wanting to train to be teachers has been registered during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the schools minister. Nick Gibb faced calls in the Commons to help schools make use of those with specialist skills who are losing their jobs to deal with the shortage of physics and maths teachers. In reply, Mr Gibb said there has been a 12% increase in teacher training applications in the three-month period to the end of May. Speaking at education questions, Conservative former minister Sir Christopher Chope said: 'Sadly many people are losing their jobs or threatened with redundancy and we know there's a shortage of teachers in physics and maths in particular. 'So will (Mr Gibb) enable schools to second people from industry to fill those vacancies so that people with talent can fill the vacuum?' Mr Gibb replied: 'The organisation Now Teach set up by Lucy Kellaway, which we support, has seen a huge surge in interest from people such as those (Sir Christopher) suggested. 'It helps career changers to come into teaching and we've also seen a 12% increase in applications to teacher training in the last quarter to the end of May.' Advertisement

Further Government plans for all children to return to school will be revealed next week, Mr Williamson also revealed.

He tore into Labour, accusing the opposition of blocking a return to classrooms for students, as he took questions in the House of Commons.

Mr Williamson was challenged this afternoon by shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, who said said: 'All of this uncertainty could have been avoided if the Secretary chose to listen to the sector.

'So would he confirm today that he will now formally convene a taskforce of trade unions, education childcare leaders and staff, local authorities, parents' organisations and health experts to dress these issues urgently?'

Mr Williamson replied: 'There is a reality - that this side of the House is committed to getting every child back into school and we understand that actually this is where they are going to benefit from.

'If it was up to the party opposite we wouldn't see any children back into the classroom, but what we've already got, we've got nursery back, we've got reception back, we've got Year 1 back, we've got Year 6 back, we've got Year 10 back and we've got 12.

'We've given schools extra flexibility to get more children in and we've made it clear that next week we'll be outlining plans for a full return of every single child in every year group back into school.'

However, he did not gve a date for getting the children back into school, with fears that they will have to return on a part-school, part-homelearning basis in September.

Friday's announcement included a multimillion-pound tutoring programme for pupils worst affected by coronavirus closures.

It was widely welcomed but concerns have been raised about the ability of some schools to pay towards the subsidised scheme.

The 350 million year-long initiative is due to start in autumn and will see state primary and secondary schools in England able to access 'heavily subsidised tuition' from an approved list of organisations.

The other 650 million will be shared across state primary and secondary schools over the 2020-21 academic year to help children from all backgrounds who have missed out on teaching time.

Mr Williamson was challenged this afternoon by shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, who said that 'all of this uncertainty could have been avoided if the Secretary chose to listen' to experts

The Government's aim is that providers who run holiday clubs and activities for pupils over the summer break will be able to open - if the science allows it.

The funding has been welcomed by the Local Government Association, the children's commissioner and unions who have described it as a 'vital and significant investment'.

But some concerns have been raised around schools being able to contribute to the costs, the quality of the tutoring, and autonomy over how the money is used.

In a fiery clash Mr Williamson added that the Government's scheme to help the education sector 'will deliver results and make a difference'.

Ms Long-Bailey said: 'Now last Thursday evening the Government issued a press release clearly stating the Government has announced 700 million will be shared across early years, schools and 16-19 providers.'

She added: 'However less than an hour later the Government amended the press release, the funding was not for early years and 16-19, it was 650 million, not 700 million, it would not be available until September and now I hear that schools will need to find 25% of tuition funding themselves.

'So I ask the Secretary, what on Earth happened?'

Mr Williamson replied: 'The difference between our scheme and (Ms Long-Bailey's) scheme is that our scheme will deliver results and make a difference.'

He added: 'It is going to deliver and close the gap in terms of attainment much more effectively than any of the proposals that the party opposite has done.'
Boohoo shoppers praised the company for sharing unedited photos of a model, revealing her natural beauty and stretch marks.

The British online retailer selected a photograph of a 'curvy' model with visible stretch marks to advertise its Ribbed Seamless Dip Front Thong.

Impressed by the decision, Facebook user Lisa Evans, who lives in South Lanarkshire, sparked a discussion about the use of models with 'normal' figures.

Boohoo shoppers praised the company for sharing unedited photos of a model, revealing her natural beauty and stretch marks. The British online retailer selected a photograph of a 'curvy' model with visible stretch marks to advertise its Ribbed Seamless Dip Front Thong (pictured)

Some questioned whether the image was only published in its unedited state due to the impact lockdown has had on the business and noted the same model has previously appeared in heavily edited images on the website. Pictured, an example of an edited image of the model

The post racked up over 10,000 shares and hundreds of comments, with the majority praising the decision not to edit.

The photo appears to have been taken by the model at home using a camera timer.

Some questioned whether the image was only published in its unedited state due to the impact lockdown has had on the business, and noted the same model has previously appeared in heavily-edited images on the website.

One posted: 'She's beautiful but I've seen on there where they've airbrushed the poor woman!!'

Another added: 'This is good because there are a lot of insecure women who see Photoshopped pictures of models and strive to look like them, but it is virtually impossible to look that perfect.

A number of social media users also spotted that the retailer has previously used edited photos of the same model and also debated if she should've been used to advertise plus size clothes

Some users questioned whether the model will be celebrated for her natural beauty going forward, or if Boohoo would return to using edited images of the woman (as seen above)

'You cannot Photoshop reality in person, which is probably more draining. So to see the more natural looks on these sites is brilliant, and may just make people realise that they don't have to look perfect.'

A third wrote: 'She looks insane! If only I was this confident in my own body'.

A spokesperson for the brand told FEMAIL: 'At boohoo we celebrate the beauty of women regardless of their shape, size and so called 'imperfections'.

'As such, a few years ago we introduced a policy not to retouch 'imperfections' such as stretch marks, scars etc. I believe the shots used for comparison were from some years ago before the policy was introduced.

'In house professional studio lighting can minimize the look of stretch marks which you won't get on 'at home' shoots as they are all shot in natural light. We love the how our models look at home and are delighted with the positive response this is getting from our followers.'

The retailer has previously faced criticism over its choice of plus-size models.

In February the fashion giant was accused of advertising 'plus-size' clothing and lingerie on a model several sizes smaller.

London-based model Anna Fritzdorf, 26, refers to herself as a size 12 , but her image has been used to market Boohoo's plus-size range, which starts at a size 16.

After spotting an image of the slender model - who is two sizes below the national average of size 16 - wearing the plus size range, Cardiff University student Talia shared her dismay on Twitter.
Israels government approved work permits for 700 Jordanians to enter the country and work at hotels in the southern city of Eilat on June 21. An additional 800 Jordanian workers are expected to be approved in the coming days.

Newly appointed Tourism Minister Asaf Zamir explained, "The ban on workers from entering Eilat prevents the reopening of hotels in the city, because it is Jordanian workers who do most of the cleaning and maintenance positions in the hotels." Zamir added that the workers wont be able to commute back and forth between the countries and that the employers will be responsible for providing the workers with adequate housing. Upon their arrival, the Jordanians will have to spend 14 days in quarantine to ensure they are not carrying the novel coronavirus.

During March and April, most of the hotels in Israel were closed. For the tourism-dependent Red Sea coastal city of Eilat, the closure dealt an especially harsh blow. Unemployment rose to 43% and local business owners were warning of an imminent collapse of hotels, restaurants and other tourist attractions. When the government lifted the ban at the end of May, the various hotels tried to recruit local workers for cleaning, maintenance and dishwashing, but Israelis were reluctant to take the jobs.

Three job fairs destined to resolve the problem yielded little response from Israelis, so the hotels pressured the government to facilitate the entry of Jordanian workers. With reports of coronavirus cases decreasing in Jordan, the government acquiesced to the demand for 700 workers. The approval of additional 800 permits will depend on unemployment rates in Eilat as well as the number of coronavirus cases in the neighboring Hashemite kingdom.

Prior to the pandemic, close to 2,000 Jordanians worked in different hotels in the Eilat area. In March 2019, Israel agreed to increase the number of Jordanian day workers at hotels in Eilat by by 33%, from 1,500 to 2,000. With the spread of the coronavirus, the border crossing was closed and hotels shut down. Hotel owners are now saying that while the permits will help, they wont not entirely resolve the problem. Some hotels will stay closed for lack of personnel. With the summer vacation season just a few days away, they fear that Eilat's tourism industry will continue to suffer.

While tensions between Jerusalem and Amman are high over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus annexation plan, the Jordan authorities do not seem to be standing in the way of Jordanians interested in working in Israel.
Thanks to their exceptional planting skills, Chinese people will soon see one of its four major deserts, the Mu Us Desert in Yulin, northwest China's Shaanxi province, be fully covered by trees and plants, WeChat account of China Central Television (CCTV) reported.

Last April, Shaanxi forestry bureau announced that 93.2 percent of the desertified land in Yulin had been put under control, signaling that the Mu Us Desert, which covers an area of 42,200 square kilometers, will be the first desert to disappear on earth.

Planting trees is the key to China's success in desertification prevention and control.

In May 1974, 54 young militiawomen, who were only 18 years old in Yulin, actively responded to the country's call for afforestation and formed a desertification control company.

Since the conditions were so harsh, the company stipulated that members should leave once they get married.

Xi Yongcui, one of the first-generation members of the company who spent eight years on the team, put off her wedding three times in an effort to work longer for the undertaking.

Xi Cai'e, the 14th commander of the desertification control company and grandniece of Xi Yongcui, demanded to join the company because of the frequent sandy weather in her hometown.

Over the past few decades, these militiawomen have collectively put over 933 hectares of the desert area under control.

Forty years ago, Guo Chengwang, a villager who is nearly 100 years old in Jingbian county, Yulin, obtained the land-use right of 3,000 hectares of uncultivated desert land by contract.

Thanks to the joint efforts of Guo's entire family, the desert of his hometown is now fully covered by green plants.

Because of people like the desertification control company and Guo's family, villages near the Mu Us Desert now not only fear high winds and sandy weather no more, but have also become well-known vegetable bases.

As the area of the Mu Us Desert reduces by 1.6 percent every year, the forest coverage rate of the desert has increased from 0.9 percent in 1949 to 34.8 percent today.

The trees planted in the desert can circle the equator of the earth 54 times if they are spaced a meter apart.

China has not only achieved remarkable results in combating desertification in the Mu Us Desert, but in other areas of the country as well, with the average vegetation coverage rate of Hunshandake Sandland, and the sandlands in Khorchin grassland and Hulunbuir in north China's Inner Mongolia reaching 42.7 percent, 38.2 percent, and 68.3 percent respectively.

Along with turning boundless deserts into an oasis, Chinese people, who have always been good at planting, have planted trees and vegetables literally everywhere they go.

The Chinese peace-keeping force has grown watermelon in Africa's Djibouti, a country that has long been troubled by deserts and droughts.

In China's Antarctica research station, scientific researchers cultivated vegetables with soilless culture methods.

The country has even brought its enthusiasm for and capability to grow plants on the moon.

To promote the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, which is marked on every June 17 worldwide, China made efforts to raise public awareness of combating desertification under the theme jointly prevent desertification and safeguard lucid waters and lush mountains this year.
Thousands protest against COVID-19 passports in Sweden

Chinese automaker Geely in talks to buy Meizu

Kaunas officially becomes European Capital of Culture 2022

Turkish journalist who insulted Erdogan on live TV arrested

Ipsos poll predicts Macron's landslide victory in French presidential election

Germany elects new CDU leader

Media: US on Monday will begin evacuation of families of diplomats in Ukraine

UN expresses concern over disappearance of 2 activists in Afghanistan

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro postponed due to omicron strain

More than 9,300 Afghans claiming protection were taken to Germany

Scientists suggest that under surface of one of Saturn moons lies ocean

Russian Foreign Ministry: US and NATO launched toxi campaign against Moscow

Sergey Nersesyan dismissed from post of Yerevan Deputy Mayor

British Foreign Secretary to visit Moscow in February for talks with Lavrov

48-year-old man dies of frostbite in Yerevan

1,822 criminal cases launched in Kazakhstan after January riots

Tatoyan: Expired drugs found in mental health centers in Armenia

6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes off coast of Alaska

Putin and Pashinyan discuss by phone prospects for further cooperation within CSTO

First batch of military aid to Ukraine from US arrived in Kyiv

6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes off Philippine coast

Armenia confirms 940 new coronavirus cases, no deaths

Armenian rescuers pull out 50 stuck cars and provide necessary aid to 80 citizens

Papua New Guinea parliament repeals death penalty law

TikTok starts testing paid subscriptions

Israeli fighter jets, refueling planes hold massive drills aimed at Tehran

France announces gradual lifting of coronavirus restrictions

Fountains in Athens' central square illuminated with Armenian tricolor

Austria approves Europe's first mandatory COVID-19 vaccination mandate

World War II aircraft crashed in India found after 77 years

Armenian Parliament Deputy Speaker meets EU delegation

Deputy Speaker of Armenian parliament meets Russian Ambassador to Armenia

Germany won't pay compensation if Nord Stream 2 doesn't comply with German, EU laws

NEWS.am digest: EU special rep. is in Armenia, Roma's Mkhitaryan turns 33 today

Child injured in Artsakh car accident taken to Yerevan by Russian peacekeepers' helicopter

Taiwanese woman faces death penalty for setting island's deadliest fire

Turkey passes law to exempt converted lira deposits from corporate tax

Blinken says he discussed Iran nuclear deal with Lavrov

Erdogan says Turkey has peaceful relations with Russia like never before

New German government wants to attract 400,000 skilled workers from abroad every year

Israeli Attorney General orders to investigate police allegations of spyware

Blinken: Any Russian invasion of Ukraine will be met with swift response

Candidate: Ombudsmans institution is one of few established institutions in Armenia

Lavrov summarizes the results of talks with Blinken

UN agrees on definition of Holocaust denial

Lavrov and Blinken talks kick off in Geneva

Australian FM says issue of sending direct military aid to Ukraine is not considered

Armenia PM receives EU delegation, need for full operation of Karabakh peace process is stressed

Armenia National Assembly debating on new ombudspersons candidacy

Katherine Tai: The world can't go back to the 2019 trading system

Dollar gains value in Armenia

Armenia legislature told hold secret ballot to elect TV and radio commission new members

NATO intends to hold largest military exercises beyond Arctic Circle in early March

7 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

'Zangezur corridor' will unite Turkic world, says Azerbaijan presidential office official

Armenia FM highlights need for full resumption of Karabakh peace talks

Armenia ex-defense minister: In our time it was shame to immediately turn to CSTO in case of Azerbaijan provocations

UN General Assembly head calls for peace during Beijing Olympics

Armenia Tourism Committee has new chairperson

Russian MFA: Priority today is to start Azerbaijan-Armenia border delimitation, demarcation process

Parliament passes, in first reading, bill restricting gambling advertising in Armenia

UK considering sending hundreds of additional troops to Ukraine's neighbors

Warships of Russia, Iran and China work out counteraction to maritime piracy

Armenia first deputy minister of justice dismissed

Israeli defense minister tests positive for COVID-19

Karabakh conflict resumption likelihood is moderate, its impact on US interests is low, report says

Antonio Guterres thinks Russia will not invade Ukraine

Azerbaijan ambassador to Russia hastens to sweeten the sediment of statement by US embassy in Baku

IS fighters attack army barracks in mountainous area north of Baghdad, killing 11 soldiers

Thomas de Waal: Will Armenia and Turkey be able to normalize relations after 3rd attempt?

Armenia Security Council secretary, visiting EU delegation discuss situation on border with Azerbaijan

Foreign ministers of Israel and Turkey have talk for 1st time in 13 years

Fly Arna shareholders appoint companys Board of Directors

628 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

CSTO chief: Necessary to work on Armenia-Azerbaijan border delimitation, demarcation

FBI search congressman's home in connection with Azerbaijan probe

Newspaper: Armenia PM again goes way of black and white

Newspaper: Scenario devised after war to be implemented in Artsakh

EU Special Representative for South Caucasus arrives in Armenia

Quake hits Armenia: 28 km northwest of Jermuk

Crete island lighthouse illuminated with colors of Armenian tricolor

Aurora Humanitarian Initiative to allocate $500,000 to projects in Artsakh

Sajid Javid: Britain must learn to live with COVID-19, it could be with us forever

Erdogan suggests Putin and Zelensky meet face to face

EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus meets Aliyev

US imposes sanctions on Ukrainians related to 'Russian harmful foreign activities'

Sabah: Ankara refuses to hold next Armenian-Turkish meeting in a third country

US general discusses regional security and bilateral cooperation in Armenia

Secret graves of alleged protesters discovered in Almaty

Armenian side members to Armenian-American Intergovernmental Commission confirmed

WHO advises countries to lift or ease international travel restrictions

US sanctions against Vladimir Putin, Ruben Vardanian and members of the Russian government

Armenian Foreign Ministry discusses Mirzoyan's participation in Turkey forum

Thailand to resume non-quarantine travel scheme from February 1

Instagram introduces paid subscription feature

NEWS.am daily digest: 20.01.22

Europe considers new strategy to combat COVID-19

Norwegian prosecutors refuse release Anders Breivik, 2011 mass murderer

Erdogan urges Turks to sell foreign currency for liras

Azerbaijan not yet returned about 300 sheep of Armenia villager
LONDON - Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being asked to answer one of the most devilish questions of the pandemic: What's the difference between two meters and one meter of social distancing, for public health and for saving the economy?

Or, asked another way, how much does it matter if restaurant diners or pub crawlers are required to be separated by six feet versus three feet, more or less, with 1 meter being equal to 3.28084 feet?

Since Johnson ordered the United Kingdom into lockdown in March, Brits have been instructed - over and over - to please keep two meters of social distance between themselves, to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 42,632 people here so far, the highest death toll in Europe.

But Johnson earlier this month ordered a government review of the distancing rules and is widely expected this week to endorse a new "one meter plus" fudge.

A policy shift is possible now, Johnson's ministers say, because virus transmission is under control in Britain, with infections, hospitalizations and deaths falling. The prime minister appears prepared to signal an end to the national lockdown and announce that hotels, restaurants and pubs in England can reopen - with precautions - in early July. Leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are considering a similar relaxation of restrictions.

The overhaul of the distancing rule is also happening under intense political pressure and amid deep economic fear, from the board rooms to the factory floors.

The two-meter rule, say its many critics, is a job-destroyer based not on solid science but on averages and estimates of how far a cough, a sneeze or a laugh might launch droplets containing the virus, and how infectious those plumes may be.

In its embrace of a tough two-meter standard, Britain has been something of an outlier, alongside Spain and Canada.

Johnson's government has been condemned for going into lockdown late, for failing to provide protective gear to front-line medical workers, and allowing the virus to sweep through its nursing homes. But on social distancing rules, the United Kingdom has been more cautious than most.

The World Health Organization recommends a distance of "at least one meter." China, France, Denmark and Hong Kong went with one meter. South Korea opted for 1.4 meters; Germany, Italy and Australia for 1.5 meters.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended "at least six feet," or 1.8 meters, "about two arms length" separation between people - though different states endorsed different measures at different times.

In Britain, the push to shorten the distance rule is coming in part from businesses, who are begging for relief after three months of lockdown.

Two meters distance is not sustainable for many pubs, where customers may traditionally jostle shoulder to shoulder to get their orders in.

UK Hospitality, a trade body, warned that the sector's revenue would be reduced by more than two thirds if restaurants and pubs were forced to follow the current two-meter rule when they resume business in July.

The British Beer and Pub Association, a trade group, estimates that if distancing remains at two meters, only a third of pubs would be able to reopen. Cut the distance to one meter, and three-quarters of pubs might survive.

Michael Belben, owner of The Eagle gastropub in London, told The Washington Post he furloughed 19 bartenders and chefs in March as the government ordered workers home to wait out the pandemic.

"What they don't understand is the difference between one meter and two meters. It comes down to how many people can be inside," Belben said. "I can't afford to lose money hand over fist."

Richard Caring, a high-end restaurateur who runs the Annabel's Club and The Ivy chain, told the Mail on Sunday that the government's two-meter rule was "killing the country."

It's not just publicans and posh club owners calling for the halving the social distance regulations. Top Tories in Johnson's own Conservative Party have been pushing him to close the space gap - as have economists who are watching millions of jobs lost, as Britain falls into its deepest recession since the Great Frost of 1709.

Conservative lawmaker John Redwood said in Parliament last week, "Given that the scientific advice is mixed and muddled, and given that the economic and business advice is overwhelming and clear, why don't ministers today announce the halving of the distance, ask business to put in other measures, including protective clothing and screens where appropriate?"

The science over the right number of meters is far from settled.

An ambitious review published earlier this month in the British medical journal The Lancet, of 172 observational studies across 16 countries and six continents, concluded, "transmission of viruses was lower with physical distancing of one meter or more."

The British government's scientific advisers have offered their own pros and cons, stressing that risks are relative - that overall, yes, two meters was probably safer, but how much safer and at what cost?

Shaun Fitzgerald, an engineering expert at Cambridge University, who helped inform the original two-meter rule, told the London Times, "The thing which is missing from a simple two-meter rule is consideration of other factors, such as time, duration and orientation."

He said, "It's all three that are important. I would not want to be one meter apart from somebody for an extended period because that's much, much higher risk than two meters."

Calum Semple, a professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool and a member of the government's scientific advisory group, told BBC Radio, "The reason that I change my mind now, and whereas I was of a very different opinion three weeks ago, is that now we are in a position where there are low levels and sustained low levels of transmission throughout the country."

"I'm still saying two meters is safer than one, but, in my opinion, it is now a reasonable political decision to relax these rules, perhaps accelerate school opening and start opening up other parts of the economy," Semple said.

Scientific advisers, in a series of technical memos for the government, suggest that if the two-meter rule is changed, Britons should be wearing face coverings in public and spending less time in close indoor spaces with strangers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Johnson and his top science advisers discounted the need for wearing masks. This month, they started requiring them on public transportation. They appear ready to once again adjust their positions.

- - -

The Washington Post's Christine Spolar contributed to this report.
The popular Oba Market in Benin City, the Edo State capital, has been razed.

The fire, which burnt almost all the massive market, according to witnesses, started around 12:05 am and raged till 6am before it was put out by a team of fire fighters.

It was learnt there was no public electricity supply when the fire started, thereby ruling out the possibility of electrical spark while the actual cause of the fire had not been ascertained.

Many of the traders were crying uncontrollably over the loss of their valuable goods, estimated to be hundreds of millions.



The ever-busy dualised road in front of the burnt market, near Ring Road, was cordoned off by policemen with traffic diverted to adjoining roads and streets.

The Assistant Controller, Federal Fire Servce in Asaba, Delta state, Samson Karibo, who was in Benin with his men, on special assignment, greatly assisted to put out the fire.

Karibo disclosed that the Chief Security Officer (CSO) to Obaseki called to inform him, shortly after the fire started, thereby making him to quickly move to the scene with his men.

Karibo assured the inferno would be thorough investigated to know the cause to prevent similar incident in the future.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
If youre an HBO (or HBO Max) subscriber, you may have noticed that Ford v Ferrari is now playing on the service. The 2019 movie starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale won two Academy Awards earlier this year and was nominated for Best Picture.

(If you havent seen Ford v Ferrari yet, treat yourself. Its a very good film.)

But James Mangolds movie focused almost entirely on car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles building a Ford car that could beat Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race.

Could another movie show the Ferrari side of the story? Well, maybe.

Director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral) is moving forward with an Enzo Ferrari biopic that hes been developing for nearly 20 years, as first reported by Deadline. Hugh Jackman (Logan, The Greatest Showman) is reportedly set to play the legendary driver and entrepreneur. And what Mann has in mind is a story with a much broader view of its subject.

Deadlines Mike Fleming Jr. compares it to The Godfather in terms of scope. That would certainly be ambitious. The first Godfather film covered a 10-year span, while The Godfather Part II went back decades to the very beginning of the Corleone story while also covering the present, serving as both a prequel and sequel.

According to Fleming, the primary focus of Manns film would be the 1957 Mille Miglia race, an event that takes place over 1,000 miles across Italy. Ten spectators were killed and another 20 were injured as a result of accidents during the race, prompting the Italian government to ban all future events.

But the epic length of the Mille Miglia would provide plenty of opportunities for the story to look back at the events in Ferraris life that led up to the 1957 competition, including the process of building his company with wife Laura, their marriage, and the death of the couples son Dino. Ferrari essentially based the future of his company on his teams performance in the race.

In Ford v Ferrari, not much is seen of Enzo Ferrari (played by Remo Girone), except for a key scene in which Ferrari rejects Henry Fords offer to buy the Italian automaker.

Ferrari is otherwise seen in quick glimpses later in the film showing pride from the owners box at Le Mans when his car is winning, followed by frustration when Fords team wins the race.

Interestingly, Bale was originally attached to star in Manns Ferrari film. But the actor dropped out over concerns that he would have to put on weight so soon after thinning down for his role as Michael Burry in The Big Short.

Mann turned out to be an executive producer on Ford v Ferrari when his project stalled because of the recasting and rewriting of the script. (Original screenwriter Troy Kennedy-Martin passed away in 2009.) The movie will be based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari  The Man And The Machine by Brock Yates.

[The Playlist]
As coronavirus infections have continued to soar and COVID-19 patients have flooded local hospitals in numbers higher than ever before, the vast majority of San Antonians appear to be heeding new local orders that mandate businesses to require customers to wear masks.

Effective Monday, all businesses in Bexar County must require customers and employees to wear masks under orders handed down last week by County Judge Nelson Wolff and Mayor Ron Nirenberg. If businesses dont comply, they face fines of up to $1,000.

The orders took effect the day after the county saw a record number of new cases of COVID-19  538 reported on Sunday alone.

Because the virus can be spread by people who dont have symptoms, scientists generally agree that face coverings can help prevent those people from infecting others. In April, the mayor and county enacted a similar rule that required everyone 10 years or older to don a face covering in public places where it was difficult to stay 6 feet away from others.

Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer

But an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott issued shortly after that banned local governments from imposing fines or criminal penalties on Texans who failed to do so.

As COVID-19 infections spiked across San Antonio, the county judge last week issued a new order, this time only mandating that local businesses require their employees and customers to wear masks  not the public as a whole. The governor said he wouldnt take issue with that.

Several major retailers, including H-E-B, Walmart and Target, appeared to be complying with the orders Monday. And many customers seemed to be fine with wearing face coverings.

At a Walmart Supercenter at 1430 Austin Highway, an employee manning an entrance Monday morning said he turned away a customer who wasnt wearing a face covering. The customer returned moments later wearing a mask.

Inside, shoppers wore masks and bandannas as they pushed shopping carts and waited in checkout lines. Several small children even had masks on.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Rafael Kwame, a 29-year-old health care worker, said he felt safer shopping knowing that everyone else around him is wearing masks  a requirement hes gotten used to in his line of work.

Sometimes it is frustrating knowing that COVID is still out there, that you might not know who has it, who does not have it, Kwame said.

On ExpressNews.com: Despite COVID surge, Wolff does not see second lockdown

It was a similar scene at the H-E-B at 999 E. Basse Road.

Before the order came down, H-E-B officials had said they were not going to require customers to wear masks because the lack of a local law made doing so difficult. That prompted at least 27,000 people to sign an online petition asking the retailer to require them.

Ben Mandel, 55, said that before the recent order, about 1 in every 5 shoppers he saw wasnt wearing a mask. He called the governors refusal to require residents to wear masks ridiculous.

They did what needed to be done to protect the people in their community, Mandel said of Wolff and Nirenberg. I think the governor has not done that. Im very disappointed in his lack of wisdom.

By noon Monday, employees hadnt had any confrontations with customers over the mask requirement, H-E-B spokeswoman Dya Campos said. She noted that H-E-B stores plan to give out free masks to those who show up without one.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

Later Monday afternoon at the Home Depot on Fair Avenue, hand-drawn signs set up in front of the entrances in both English and Spanish read, Due to local ordinance, all individuals are required to wear masks or face coverings while in public.

But the warnings didnt stop a few customers from entering the store without them. Just before 3 p.m., two men with bare faces chatted with an employee in the lumber aisle, while another man without a face covering waited in a checkout line. All the other customers wore masks.

We have not required stores to police local mandates because it can be dangerous to put our associates in that position, said Margaret Smith, a spokeswoman for the company.

Smith said the company policy had been in effect for the majority of the pandemic and that it was not enacted because of a specific incident. She declined to say whether a customer would be turned away if they werent wearing a mask.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said Monday that deputies were helping business owners and managers comply with the order by giving them copies of the required notice to post at their front doors. Deputies were not issuing citations, the sheriff said.

Were not going to be complicating their lives any more than this illness already has for everybody, Salazar said. We want a safer community. And we know that a vast majority of our business community does too.

The county judge, however, said he already has met resistance from a couple of business owners, including one who planned to defy the order because, the judge said, she didnt care about what some officeholder would say about the effectiveness of face coverings in containing the spread of COVID-19.

Well be going out there today to visit that business owner, Wolff said Monday. We hope never to impose a fine. There will be warnings.

If the new rule provokes an argument between an employee and a customer, or if someone refuses to wear a covering, it will be up to business managers on-site to decide whether to call law enforcement.

But we dont want them to get into a fight, Wolff said.

Less than a half mile east of the Home Depot on the South Side, employees at EZPAWN at Fair and South New Braunfels stopped anyone who entered the building without their noses and mouths covered.

In the afternoon, two men walked into the pawnshop  one who pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose to shield his face and another without any sort of covering.

You have to wear a mask, please, a cashier quickly told him. The man stepped outside the store and a few moments later re-emerged with his face covered.

I dont blame them, said Cristian Lopez, one of the cashiers who stood behind the counter.

There are times where I actually have to go to the back and breathe, he added, gesturing toward his own hand-sewn mask. Lopez said there were only two people Monday whom he had to remind to cover their faces before coming in the store.

Of course, now and then we come across someone who says, I just want to come in and see, he said. And we have to say, No, you dont have your mask on.

Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. To read more from Scott, become a subscriber. shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
Samsung will be unveiling the successor to the flagship Galaxy Tab S6 Android tablet in the coming months. However, the company is rumored to launch a Plus monicker alongside the standard Galaxy Tab S7. Now, the Galaxy Tab S7+ reportedly spotted on TUV Rheinland and Safety Korea certification websites revealing its battery capacity.

As per the latest leaks, the Galaxy Tab S7+ will come equipped with a massive 10,090mAh battery. However, the rated capacity of the battery on the Plus-sized tablet will be only 9,800mAh. This huge battery should make the tablet last for a longer period of continuous usage.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ to launch with 10,090mAh battery

The current-gen Galaxy Tab S6 features a 7,040mAh battery and is rated to last for a full 15 hours of video playback.

Advertisement

As seen with the Galaxy Tab S6, the Galaxy Tab S7+ could also support charging through the POGO Charging Dock apart from the USB Type-C port.

In comparison, the Galaxy Tab S7 might sport a 7,760mAh battery. While the Galaxy Tab S6 came with a 15W Adaptive fast charger, the upcoming Galaxy Tab S7 lineup will likely come bundled with a 25W fast charger.

While the latest certifications only revealed the battery capacity of the Galaxy Tab S7+, the earlier leaks disclosed even more details. The rumored 12.4-inch display on the Plus variant will be supporting a 120Hz high refresh rate.

Advertisement

Even with so much real estate, these new tablets wont be able to accommodate the 3.5mm audio jack. It will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform. The cellular variant of the tablet will also support 5G connectivity.

Samsung might launch these new tablets on August 5th

The Geekbench listing also revealed the tablet to come with a minimum of 6GB of RAM. Just like the upcoming Galaxy Note 20 series, the Galaxy Tab S7 tablets will also run on Android 10-based OneUI 2.5 out of the box.

Also, the leaked renders have revealed the design, which looks very much similar to its predecessor.

Advertisement

On the rear, we can spot the dual-camera setup along with a magnetic groove for holding the S-Pen.

With the Galaxy Tab S7+, Samsung is looking to compete with the larger Apple iPad Pro. If you werent aware, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro packs a 9,720mAh battery.

The Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7+ are expected to be launched alongside the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Z Flip 5G on August 5th.
NEW DELHI:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday thanked Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day parade next year and said his visit will give a very strong boost to bilateral ties.

Thank you for very kindly agreeing to grace the 2017 Republic Day celebrations as the Chief Guest, he tweeted.

Mohamed bin Zayed replied to his tweet, saying: I am pleased to join in your Republic Day celebrations, wishing your friendly country more progress and prosperity.

Modi, in another tweet, said that the visit of the Crown Prince will give a very strong boost to the vibrant India-UAE ties.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
By IANS

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested one terror suspect, Salman Khurshid from the Ramban area of Jammu in a joint operation with the Jammu and Kashmir Police force.

The arrest was made on Sunday evening.

The Uttar Pradesh ATS took Salman Khurshid into custody and he would be brought to the state on a transit remand for interrogation.

According to ATS sources, during an initial interrogation, it has been found that Salman Khurshid, 25, was in contact with Inamul Haq through an app.

Inamul Haq had been arrested by the UP ATS on June 18 from Bareilly for inciting youth to join Jihad and pick arms for terrorist organisations.

The ATS will now confront both simultaneously to know about other youth recruited by them so far.

Inamul and Salman Khurshid were connected on Telegram and they had a group on the app.

Inamul has so far radicalised several youths across the country.

The UP ATS is searching for all those who have been radicalised by Inamul to fight in the name of jihad.

Both were using Telegram with different and multiple identities. Inamul's identity on Telegram was Abu Mohammad Al Hind.

On June 18, at the time of arrest of Inamul, banned literature of the global terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, was found in his mobile phone.

It was Inamul who gave information about Salman Khurshid, the second recruiter of the 'jihad' operations from Jammu and Kashmir.

Inamul has also confessed in an interrogation that he was deeply influenced by the jihadi ideology and was working on radicalising other youths also.
Shoulder to shoulder, step by step, NASCAR lined up behind Bubba Wallace, lined up against the past, lined up for a future long overdue to arrive.

A day after NASCAR reported a noose was found in Wallaces garage stall at Talladega International Speedway, the sports drivers and crew took it upon themselves prior to Mondays race to push the circuits only African American driver, and his car, down pit road. They then stood behind him during the playing of the national anthem.

When Wallace climbed out of the vehicle, he was overcome with emotion, crying as each driver took a turn to hug him.

Together, Wallace later wrote on Twitter under a photo of the image. Indeed, together is the only way forward.

This is the kind of unified message that is as powerful as it is overdue. For too long, this sport trafficked on the fringes of society, not stepping up and not speaking out as racism and racists found a home.

Those people were the minority. Most race fans are great people who just want to watch the race but the outliers held an outsized influence on the place. They were excused, if not embraced. Shrugs and silence were the easiest response. And so it all flourished.

Its not enough to find who among the NASCAR family had access to that garage to hang the noose. Its about looking into the culture of tolerating intolerance that someone would even feel comfortable trying it.

As a sad, sick example, on Monday, the Associated Press quoted a man named Luke Johnson who was one of just 5,000 fans allowed in to watch the race. He called for NASCAR to reverse its recent (Wallace-inspired) ban of the Confederate flag and said he thought the noose incident was nothing more than a joke.

I thought it was funny myself, Johnson told the Associated Press.

Story continues

Funny? Unreal.

Bubba Wallace, driver of the No. 43 Victory Junction Chevrolet, and team owner Richard Petty look on after NASCAR drivers pushed Wallace to the front of the grid as a sign of solidarity with the driver prior to the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

This is where the sport is. This is the reality ... the Luke Johnsons of the world ruining it for everyone else. Or some hidden, coward on a race crew causing pain and division before scurrying back to the darkness.

NASCAR is trying now. Give it that. Its trying to make this how NASCAR was, not is.

It officially banned the flying of the Confederate flag at events after Wallace called on them to do it. It cut public service announcements calling for solidarity and seeking better understanding of issues. It changed paint schemes. It spoke up and vowed to listen and learn.

When a member of Wallaces crew reported the noose on Sunday, NASCAR launched an immediate investigation. It even publicly announced the discovery, an important level of transparency. By Monday, the FBI was involved.

Unequivocally, they will be banned from this sport for life, NASCAR president Steve Phelps promised if the perpetrator is found. There is no room for this at all. We wont tolerate it. They wont be here. I dont care who they are. They will not be here.

Monday the hashtag #IStandWithBubbaWallace was painted on the infield grass for the race that was delayed a day due to weather. Then came the march.

The visual was important. It has to be maintained. Every driver needs to be vocal in stating that any fan who feels that way should find someone else  or some other sport  to support.

The news really has disturbed us all, seven-time Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson said on the Fox broadcast. Of course we want justice in a sense, we want to understand who and why and all of those things, but until those [questions] are answered, we want to stand with our friend, we want to stand with Bubba.

NASCAR itself can ban whatever it wants or act as strictly as it wants, but nothing changes until attitudes and perspectives do.

Drivers, crew chiefs and car owners have for decades either said little to nothing as these kinds of conflicts sparked up. Some probably werent even bothered by it. Each little failure piled on the next. The climate was created.

Consider back in 2004, when Toyota became the first Japanese auto company to enter the truck series. Those sons of bitches bombed Pearl Harbor, dont forget, driver Jimmy Spencer said. It was excused as Jimmy being Jimmy. He wasnt shunned. He went on to become a broadcaster.

Thats the kind of history that made Monday so important. The report of the noose was taken as a threat not just to Wallace, but to everyone. All the drivers. All the crew.

To the sport itself even.

Whats right is right and clinging to old ways and old thinking and old fans such as Luke Johnson come with a price, one that NASCAR is beginning to pay.

This wont be easy. It isnt supposed to be. Change is always fought against.

But it can be done, just as that visual of a parade marching down pit row in unison trying to make it clear that its a new day for this old sport.

More from Yahoo Sports:
The federal government's push to train more scientists and engineers will create a "perverse financial incentive" for some universities to instead enrol more high-fee paying humanities students to raise revenue, the UNSW vice-chancellor says.

New analysis shows the government's proposal will cost universities almost $300 million a year in core funding. The sector fears such an outcome may force it to increase already-high staff-student ratios or even cut departments to absorb the blow.

Professor Ian Jacobs, vice-chancellor at UNSW. Credit:Louie Douvis

Last week Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan announced student fees for subjects such as science, maths and engineering will be cut to attract applicants. At the same time it was increasing fees for the humanities, law and creative arts.

The federal government, however, also will decrease its own funding contribution for some of the STEM subjects, reducing total per-student funding by more than $3500.
A man who faces several battery charges stemming from a protest in Albuquerque earlier this month has been released on his own recognizance.

Second Judicial District Judge Charles Brown released Steven Ray Baca, 31, Monday morning. Brown said he believed Baca posed a danger to the community, but also said that there were conditions of release that could keep the community safe. Baca is required to report to Pretrial Services, cannot possess firearms and cannot go to any protests while the charges are pending.

Im going to find that the defendant may be a danger to the community, Brown said. However, the state completely fails on the second prong of the analysis as to whether or not there are any conditions which would reasonably protect the community.

Baca is charged with one count of aggravated battery, a felony, for reportedly grabbing a woman and throwing her to the ground at a protest June 15 during which there was an effort to remove a statue of Juan de Onate from outside the Albuquerque Museum. The woman has still not been identified. He also faces two counts of misdemeanor battery and one misdemeanor count of unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon.

Originally, Baca was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for allegedly shooting 39-year-old Scott Williams, but the charge was dropped because District Attorney Raul Torrez had concerns with the way the Albuquerque Police Department handled the investigation. Torrez said Baca could still be charged in the shooting.

Today Judge Charles Brown released Steven Baca back into the community despite the fact that his unlawful possession of a loaded firearm and his violent assaults on three women were all captured on video, District Attorneys Office spokesman Adolfo Mendez said in a written statement. Despite ruling that Baca was a danger to the community, Judge Brown nevertheless ruled that he could be supervised in the community. We continue to believe that Baca is a threat to public safety and reserve the right to revisit the possibility of his detention as new witnesses and evidence become available in this ongoing investigation.

Bacas attorney, Jason Bowles, has maintained that Baca acted in self defense after protesters attacked him with skateboards and knives. He also said Monday that there is no evidence that Baca committed felony battery.

Judge Brown is a very experienced judge and widely known to be as fair as the day is long, and known for closely following the law, Bowles said in an email. Under the bail reform laws in New Mexico, it was absolutely the right decision to release Mr. Baca on conditions imposed by the Court. We look forward to the District Attorneys Offices full and fair investigation, and believe strongly that the facts will show that this is a case of self defense.

Laura Schauer Ives, an attorney representing Williams, said in a statement that it is inexcusable that the district attorney has not yet charged Mr. Baca with shooting Mr. Williams, adding that the DA has all the evidence he needs to do so. She called Baca dangerous and said he should not be out of custody.

Deputy District Attorney John Duran and Bowles appeared in court via a teleconference system. Both men were hard to hear from the courtroom gallery.

Duran played a video that was compiled from several videos of the protest that were posted on social media. Brown watched the video from the bench, but it could not be seen by people sitting in the gallery.

We do believe that his intention in going to this protest was purposely to start trouble, Duran said.

Brown said he had to ignore the final seconds of the video that capture the shooting because that charge isnt pending.

It doesnt actually show the defendant doing anything, Brown said of the video.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22) - House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano slammed the Department of Social Welfare and Development over the delays in the financial assistance, citing the complicated process before beneficiaries can receive their cash aid.

Cayetano described DSWDs implementation of the social amelioration program as bureaucratic.

Assuming everyone cooperated, less than one week, longest two weeks, so ang tingin namin diyan (what we expect), two to three days yung (the) initial house-to-house, then another three to four days to distribute, he said during the chamber's inquiry on the government's financial assistance program.

Pero pagkatapos namin ipasa yung batas, bigla ito ang ipapakita niyo sa amin. Yan ang proseso na ginawa niyo, 30 steps.

[Translation: But after we passed the law, this is what you will show us. The process you applied took 30-steps.]

The Speaker said that lawmakers should not have rushed on the passage of the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act if the financial assistance will not be delivered immediately to the beneficiaries amid the pandemic.

Kailan niyo naibigay yung social amelioration? End of May. Nag-uusap tayo niyan March and start of April. Tapos hindi kayo nagtataka kung bakit galit ang tao? lamented Cayetano.

[Translation: When did you give the social amelioration? End of May. We discussed to distribute them between March and start of April. Then you are clueless why people are mad?]

He added, Eh di sana hindi namin niratsada ang batas. Sana one week namin ginawa ang batas. Nilagay na namin sa batas ang procedure.

[Translation: If thats the case, we should have not rushed its passage. We should have worked on it for a week. We already stated the procedure in the law.]

READ: 1.3 million beneficiaries receive second tranche of SAP  DSWD

In response, DSWD Undersecretary Danilo Pamonag said some local government units had stringent validation process in determining the eligible beneficiaries causing the delay.

He added the agency is working to simplify the tedious process of cash aid distribution through digital payment come the second wave of SAP.

Faultless

Meanwhile, House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability chair Jonathan Sy-Alvarado did not invite DSWD chief Rolando Bautista over the inquiry, as he does not find any fault on the latter regarding the delays in the cash aid distribution.

Hindi ko binigyan ng pormal na imbitasyon si Secretary Bautista bagkus ang inimbentahan natin ay ang kanyang mga undersecretary.

Dahil maliwanag naman na sa lebel ni Secretary Bautista wala naman tayong nagiging problema, said Alvarado.

[Translation: I did not send a formal invitation to Secretary Bautista and I invited instead the undersecretaries. Because its clear that there is no problem at the level of Secretary Bautista.]

However, House Committee on Public Accounts chair Rep. Mike Defensor said that the presence of Bautista would be appreciated despite the problems being rooted in the local level.

Pero gusto ko rin i-remind na meron itong command responsibility, while we are looking in the problems in the region. Sana makita ni Secretary Bautista ang mga problema na ito, he said.

[Translation: But I just want to remind that this also entails command responsibility, while we are looking at the problems in the region. I hope that Secretary Bautista can take a look at these problems.

READ: 'There will be an accounting,' Cayetano says, citing problems in implementation of Bayanihan Act
A Libyan asylum seeker currently in custody in relation to the knife rampage in a British park that killed three people was known to the MI5 intelligence service, UK media reports said on Monday.

Khairi Saadallah, 25, has been arrested under the UKs Terrorism Act after the deadly incident in a busy park in the southern English city of Reading on Saturday evening was declared a terrorist attack by counter-terror officials.

It has now emerged that the refugee, who arrived in Britain from war-torn Libya in 2012, had been on the radar of security spies as they monitored him for suspected extremist activities.

Security sources told the BBC that the suspect came to the attention of the security services in 2019 after they received information he had aspirations to travel abroad  potentially for terrorism.

When the information was further investigated, as the first stage of looking into a potential lead, no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified. No case file was opened which would have made him a target for further investigation, the sources were quoted as saying.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has held discussions with security officials following the attack, said that if there are lessons that we need to learn about how we handle such cases, how we handle the events leading up to such cases then we will learn those lessons.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has said that "people are united in their grief" following the attack, and that he wants to speak to the prime minister to discuss how to "learn from this".

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel is expected to update MPs in relation to the terror attack in the House of Commons later on Monday.

Two of the three victims of the terror attack have been identified as 36-year-old school teacher James Furlong and 39-year-old Joe Ritchie-Bennett, an American citizen living in the UK.

"I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those killed. To our great sorrow, this includes an American citizen. Our thoughts are with all those affected," US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson said in a statement.

James Furlong taught history, government and politics at The Holt School in Wokingham, eight miles from where he was stabbed in Reading, Berkshire.

"He was the best son, brother, uncle and partner you could wish for. We are thankful for the memories he gave us all. We will never forget him and he will live in our hearts forever," Furlongs parents said in a statement.

A minutes silence was observed in Reading in memory of those killed in the attack on Monday morning. Former pupils and current students of secondary school teacher Furlong are also planning to light candles and lay flowers at a church near the school later.

Saadallah is from Reading and was arrested initially on suspicion of murder before being re-arrested on Sunday under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Under the Act, police have the power to detain him without charge for up to 14 days.
The Armenia Wine Company has been staying close to consumers for 10 years already shaping together with them new realities of wine drinking, maturing the centuries-old Armenian winemaking culture and creating new values.

21st Century Model Wineyardsand Modern WinemakingTechnology

The Armenia Wine Company began back in 2006, when it planted its first own vineyards in the Armavir province. Just 4 yearslater - in 2010- the company presented its products to the Armenian consumers.

As a company prioritizing the health of consumers and its employees, as well as environment protection, Armenia Wine began to develop organic agriculture in the country. Having planted first organic vineyards in 2017, in 2020 the company has enlarged their total area to 82 hectares.

Armenia Wine's wines are produced from Armenian and European grape varieties purchased in four regions of the country, while grape varieties grown in its own vineyards arebeingexpandedfromyeartoyear.

The winery is one of the first in Armenia, which, in order to ensure the high quality of its products, has introduced the most advanced wine and cognac production technologies in the world, which is key to producing quality wine and cognacs.

Wins and partners at the international market

Armenia Wine's products have a worthy place among the most demanding customers in more than 26 countries that testifies to the high quality of the winery's products. Evidenceofthisare victories at numerous international wine and spirit competitions.

In the second year of production, the company began to present its wines at international competitions. The first of these was the famous Muscat Du Monde competition, where Armenia Muscat wine was awarded a silver medal, and two years later, also gold medals.

Continuing its triumphal march, over the 10 years of its activity, the Armenia Wine Company has been awarded 26 gold, 38 silver and 31 bronze medals at various international competitions bringing the attention of international wine lovers to high-quality Armenian wines.

For any consumer

Over the past 10 years, Armenia Wine Company has managed to become the most famous and beloved wine brand in Armenia, presenting more than 40 types of products to wine lovers in about 7,000 sales and service stores in Armenia and Artsakh.

Therangeofwines - Tariri, Takar, Yerevan, NazaniandArmeniaofthewineryarecreatedforanyconsumer. Wine lovers with the most varied preferences in taste and aroma can find the ideal option for themselves among Armenia Wine wines.
U.S. President Donald Trump's first re-election rally in Tulsa before the country's stay-at-home restrictions had a lower than expected crowd.

According to the President's explanation in Al Jazeera, the reboot gathering drew fewer supporters with radical protesters and the media to be held accountable for the small turnout.

But be that as it may, the President announced that the government is on the right track in their fight against the coronavirus pandemic as they have saved "hundreds of thousands" of lives.

"The silent majority is stronger than ever before," Trump declared loudly during his campaign reset.

He also mentioned in the article that those protesters and their ilk were trying to vandalize America's history through sacrilegious activities like toppling down Confederate monuments.

This also included the latest wave of the woke mob's "struggle session" of cancelling out those who don't conform or affirm their beliefs.

According to CNN, Trump's "slowing down" coronavirus testing rhetoric will be a possible fuel that will fan the flame for the Democratic Party's campaign ad until November.

Nevertheless, the White House claimed that the President was only saying this as a mocking remark.

What Happened To The Over a Million Ticket Requests

Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) Center has a capacity limit for 19,200 attendees.

In anticipation of the day of the campaign, it was announced that there were hundreds of thousands of attendees.

The increasing numbers prompted the organizers to consider closing off the neighboring streets to accommodate two stages, according to News on 6.

However, as the crowd made their way for the evening last Saturday, it was decided that the turnout made it possible for just one stage, and there will be no need for a second speech.

Trump-Pence 2020 head honcho Tim Murtaugh also mentioned that they know about how risky it is to attend a campaign rally during these times.

For this reason, temperature checks were done for every attendee and that masks and hand sanitizers were also distributed in the course of the rally.

An Immense Yet Diminishing Support

Before the Tulsa Saturday night rally, Trump supporters had already made their way to the BOK Center, according to NBC News.

The hopeful attendees pitched their tents around the perimeter of the property with Trump 2020 flags waving despite the threat of COVID-19 and pouring rain on a Friday night.

Despite these concerns from top health officials, both the state's governor and the city's mayor are embracing the event with open arms.

Republican Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum stressed that he was "not positive that everything was safe" but he understood if some attendees will not follow the right protocols.

Another Outpour of Support

Despite this recent debacle, the Republican Jewish Coalition recently released an 8-minute video ad campaign that supported the current administration.

The ad buy, which was said to be worth $50,000, mentions that "Trump is the most pro-Israel President in American history."



Do you want to read more?
WASHINGTON - Protesters attempted to topple a bronze statue of former president Andrew Jackson in a park next to the White House on Monday night but were thwarted when police intervened.

With chants of "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Andrew Jackson's got to go," protesters threw ropes around the statue of the seventh president, depicted atop a horse in Lafayette Square, and tried to pull it down before police officers removed them from the area. Hundreds of protesters had locked arms around the statue.

In a chaotic scene, a helicopter flew low over the park as 150 to 200 U.S. Park and District of Columbia police used a chemical irritant to disperse protesters and sweep them back to a nearby street. Protesters did manage to smash the wooden wheels of four replica cannons at the base of the Jackson statue.

Protesters threw things at police, and officers shoved protesters in the melee. One woman hurled a folding chair, striking an officer, who staggered away from a police line.

Jackson was a former general in the U.S. Army and a populist politician sometimes compared with President Donald Trump in style. Known for his harsh treatment of Native Americans as president, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the relocations of thousands of Native Americans and the deaths of thousands more. Jackson was also an enslaver.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted his dismay at the attempt to destroy the statue just minutes after the action.

3 1 of 3 Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken Show More Show Less 3 of 3





"It's about time DC police showed up to stop the mob," he tweeted. "If Muriel Bowser won't allow the police to do their job, @realdonaldtrump should deploy federal law enforcement."

Trump on Friday night used Twitter to criticize D.C. police for not intervening as protesters in D.C. toppled a statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike near Judiciary Square.

Shortly after 9 p.m. Monday, protesters and police, who were in helmets and carrying batons and pepper spray, stood face-to-face in a relatively calm standoff after the action. Some people were singing, and others were telling officers to quit their jobs and join what they called the right side of history.

The move Monday capped a day of skirmishes between demonstrators protesting police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. On Monday afternoon, police and protesters briefly clashed as city officials attempted to clear out tents erected on a street near the White House.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said city officials had become concerned with the tents going up a street near the newly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. On Monday afternoon, police, along with other city agencies, moved in to remove the tents.

"They were creating a potential safety hazard," Newsham said.

During the operation, Newsham said, some demonstrators resisted and two officers were assaulted. He said police arrested two people and used pepper spray to move back the crowd.

D.C. Deputy Mayor Wayne Turnage said in a statement that the city was worried about campers' exposure to traffic.

"We are always concerned when we have people staying in tents outside - it is not safe," Turnage said in the statement. "It is also a serious concern if they are staying in tents in the middle of the road. Therefore, today, we deployed our interagency team to talk with the people staying on H Street and, eventually, to remove the tents."

A city official said the team had approached the campers several times to explain the dangers of pitching tents in an open street but that campers rebuffed requests to move.

The moments of tension followed weeks of mostly peaceful protests. The carnival-like atmosphere in recent days stood in contrast to looting and clashes between protesters and police that marked the opening days of the protests that followed the death of Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis police custody.

Frederick Brown, 24, said a D.C. police supervisor shot him with pepper spray as he and other protesters tried to prevent the officers from clearing the encampment.

About seven small tents had been set up in the street near St. John's Episcopal Church. Many of the protesters in the tents were helping with Earl's Grill, which has been offering food for the asking since early on.

"We put the tents in the street so that cars wouldn't be able to come through, so people could protest," Brown said. "They came up here agitating because they want this street open."

Brown, who said he has been at Lafayette Square since the protests began, said that sometime before 2 p.m. an official from the office of Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, gave the protesters a warning to leave, saying it was illegal to block the street.

But the protesters defied the order, and police began moving them out of the street. Brown said one protester was arrested after he grabbed water bottles from police bicycles and began dumping them. Brown acknowledged that he intervened to prevent police from arresting another demonstrator when he was hit with pepper spray.

"We have been out here every day feeding people for free," Brown said. "We have been peaceful overall."

Jim Hensel, a tourist from Chicago, said he watched police talking to people for over an hour, telling them they needed to get their tents out of the street. Hensel said that when police began pushing people back things got more tense, with one protester soaking an officer with a fire extinguisher. Hensel got out of the way quickly.

By Monday evening, tents had been pushed off the street but some remained on the sidewalk. Protesters had pushed construction barriers and sections of metal fence into the street in the area to create roadblocks. Someone had posted a sign spray-painted on plywood: "BHAZ: Black House Autonomous Zone."

The sign appeared to be a play on the area that protesters have cordoned off in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood dubbed the "CHAZ."

- - -

The Washington Post's Peter Hermann and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report.
Its exhausting to be contradicted and argued with and devalued and demoralized all the time, and I think thats what youre seeing around the country, Anselmo said. Weve seen from the top down the federal government is pitting public health against freedom, and to set up that false dichotomy is really a disservice to the men and women who have dedicated their lives . . . to helping people.
The Irish Health Minister has welcomed the latest zero Covid-19 death announcement in the Republic.

There were no new deaths announced on either side of the border yesterday. Simon Harris said it was cause for hope and would re-energise people to stick with the coronavirus guidelines.

It is the third time since March that no deaths have been reported in a 24-hour period.

The death toll in the Republic remains at 1,715.

There were six new confirmed cases of the virus yesterday, taking to 25,379 the total since the outbreak began in the Republic.

Thanking medics and the public for their sacrifices, Mr Harris tweeted: "Today we have had no new deaths of #Covid19 reported. Days like this are a cause for hope & re-energise us all to keep going & to follow closely public health advice."

Meanwhile, the government has asked the NPHET to review the guidance on number limitations for church services when they resume on June 29.
The Maharashtra government has put on hold three major agreements signed with Chinese companies at the recently concluded Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 investor meet, officials said.

The proposed projects entail investments of around Rs 5,000 crore in the state.

"We have taken this decision in consultation with the Central government. These agreements were signed prior to the development on the Indo-China border and killing of 20 Indian soldiers," Industry Minister Subhash Desai said.

He added that the Ministry of External Affairs has advised the state government against signing any further agreements with Chinese companies.

It may be recalled that at the online Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 meet, the state government signed agreements worth over Rs 16,000 crore with global companies including Chinese groups.

They include a Rs 3,770-crore MoU with the Great Wall Motors to set up an automobile manufacturing unit in Pune' Talegaon and a Rs 1,000-crore in partnership with Foton (China) and PMI Electro Mobility.

Besides, Henglu Engineering made a commitment of Rs 250-crore for the expansion plans at its unit Phase II in Pune.

Apart from China, the state signed around nine other MoUs with companies from the US, South Korea, Singapore and various domestic entities, with huge employment generation potential.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump backtracked Monday from remarks that had opened the door to a possible meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration brands a rapacious dictator and the illegitimate ruler of his country.

The economic collapse of Venezuela and erosion of democracy under two elected Socialist leaders is a 2020 election talking point for Republicans, especially in Florida, home to thousands of wealthy Venezuelan expatriates who detest the Cuban-backed Maduro. Cuban American who have long been a power center for Republicans in Florida, a swing state Trump badly needs to win.

Trump and his allies have tried to portray Democrats as interested in advancing a Socialist agenda similar to what Maduro's government has implemented.

After a backlash from Democrats and some Republicans, Trump tweeted Monday that he would meet with Maduro, who has clung to power since a disputed 2018 election, only to discuss "a peaceful exit."

"Unlike the radical left, I will ALWAYS stand against socialism and with the people of Venezuela," Trump wrote. "My Admin has always stood on the side of FREEDOM and LIBERTY and against the oppressive Maduro regime! I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!"

That reversed comments Trump made over the weekend, in which he said he would consider a meeting even though the United States led the world last year in renouncing Maduro and declaring his political rival to be the legitimate leader of what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere.

Maduro has sought a meeting with Trump despite heavy U.S. sanctions, a prospect with rough parallels to Trump's outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump allies including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., gently took issue with the president and reiterated support for opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

"I don't have any doubts about what the policy is but . . . I sort of, you know, understood what they were getting at," Rubio said in an interview. "It's been the policy of the U.S. to facilitate a transition if it's peaceful and possible. What's not on the table never has been and - I'm pretty confident, as long as Donald Trump is president, will not be - is a negotiation on Madur. . . . his regime staying in power."

In a tweet, Rubio said granting Maduro a meeting would be a mistake.

A spokesman for Scott was more blunt.

"No, Senator Scott does not believe President Trump should meet with Maduro - a ruthless thug and dictator who is committing genocide against his people," Chris Hartline said.

In an interview with Axios published Sunday, Trump suggested that not only might he take Maduro up on that idea but that he has had second thoughts about his decision to recognize Guaido.

"I would maybe think about that," Trump said during the interview conducted Friday.

Trump noted Maduro's interest in meeting with him and added, "And I'm never opposed to meetings - you know, rarely opposed to meetings. I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I've turned them down."

Trump had also expressed limited enthusiasm for following the advice of former national security adviser John Bolton to recognize Guaido as the leader of Venezuela, a policy also enthusiastically pursued by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Asked whether he regretted his decision to follow Bolton's advice, Trump initially said "not particularly," Axios reported. But then went on to say: "I could have lived with it or without it, but I was very firmly against what's going on in Venezuela."

Of his decision, Trump said, "some people liked it, some people didn't."

"I was OK with it," he added. "I don't think it was - you know, I don't think it was very meaningful one way or the other."

Guaido declared himself president of the country after the 2018 election, which was widely seen as tainted, but he has not been able to take control of the government from Maduro despite support from the United States and dozens of other countries.

Several Florida Republican lawmakers and their aides reached out to the White House after Trump's interview with Axios, expressing their concerns about his openness to meeting with Maduro, according to two GOP officials familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

The Florida Republicans pressed the White House to clarify his message, noting that Trump's favorable stance toward Maduro did not match the administration's position on Venezuela, the officials said.

One Republican official in Florida had a succinct evaluation of the potential political impact of Trump appearing to welcome engagement with Maduro.

"Bad," said the official. "He's built up a lot of goodwill. That would have all been gone. And it would hurt him with both Venezuelan and Cuban voters."

On Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany underscored that Trump remains committed to Guaido and the U.S. policy.

"Nothing has changed," she said during a news briefing. "He continues to recognize Juan Guaido as the leader of Venezuela."

McEnany also said Trump denies that he once said it would be "cool" to invade Venezuela, as described by Bolton in a new memoir.

Former Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, however, said both Trump's interest in Maduro and in invasion have the ring of truth.

"Not surprising," Curbelo tweeted Monday alongside a photo of him with Trump aboard Air Force One. "@POTUS has an admiration for "strongmen" who are able to hold on to power. He expressed this to me on the AF1 flight documented here. On that same flight he expressed a strong interest in the military option for #Venezuela."

In his book, Bolton portrays Trump as unenthusiastic about Guaido from the outset.

Trump described Guaido as "weak" and Maduro as "strong," according to Bolton.

"By spring, Trump was calling Guaido the 'Beto O'Rourke of Venezuela,' hardly the sort of compliment an ally of the United States should expect," Bolton wrote, referring to the former Texas congressman whose Democratic presidential campaign never gained traction despite initial hype.

Guaido was a surprise guest at the State of the Union address this year, though Trump had appeared reluctant to be seen along side Guaido or help him during a risky visit the Venezuelan leader made to South Florida just the week before. Trump declined to travel the short distance from his Mar-a-Lago home to the site of a Guaido rally meant to urge Florida Latinos to keep the faith despite the fact that Maduro remained firmly in power.

A Fox News poll of Florida registered voters in mid-April found that likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden led Trump by 53% to 35% among Hispanic voters in the state.

Trump's approval rating was 45% among Florida Latinos while 51% disapproved. Biden was seen mostly favorably - 59% favorable, 37% unfavorable.

"Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro," Biden said on Twitter in response to Trump's comments in the interview. "As President, I will stand with the Venezuelan people and for democracy."

Rep. Donna Shalala, D-Fla., offered a similar critique in a tweet, calling Trump's comments "a sad day for the Venezuelan people, democracy, and American leadership" and reaffirming that she stands with "Juan Guaido and the people of Venezuela."

In March, the Justice Department charged Maduro and 13 other Venezuelan officials with narcoterrorism. In the department's news release, Maduro was described as the "Former President of Venezuela."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:30:34|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

File photo shows veterans prepare a rhino for the process of ear notching and DNA sampling at Khama Rhino Sanctuary in Serowe, Botswana, Dec. 3, 2014. (Xinhua/Koone Boikaego)

Botswana dehorned at least 100 wild rhinoceroses between March and May this year in order to save them from the marauding poachers in the northwestern part of the southern African country.

GABORONE, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Botswana dehorned at least 100 wild rhinoceroses between March and May this year in order to save them from the marauding poachers in the northwestern part of the southern African country, an official said Sunday.

Cyril Taolo, the acting director in Botswana's department of wildlife and national parks, made this revelation during a virtual media briefing held via a live broadcast through the national television, Botswana Television.

"Over the past three months, as the department of wildlife and national parks, we undertook an operation to dehorn our rhinoceroses in the Okavango Delta situated in the northwestern part of the country," said Taolo.

Taolo said this operation was necessitated by the poaching that Botswana is experiencing in its northern parts over the past eighteen months to two years where most of the wildlife is concentrated.

At the beginning of this month, Taolo said Botswana found 58 carcasses of both white and black rhinos in the Okavango Delta and subsequent investigations establish that it was the result of poaching incidents.

"It was necessary for us to carry out this operation as a matter of urgency to protect our black and white rhino population as well as ensuring that we maintain the integrity and reputation of Botswana has built over the years as a safe haven for wildlife," he said.

Between 2007 and 2017, only six rhinos were killed for their horns, but in the past two years the poaching of both black and white rhinos surged, further reducing the numbers from a population of approximately 300.

According to Rhino Review, a non-profit organization established to stimulate passion about rhinos, rhino horns sell for 43,307 U.S. dollars a kilogram on the black market in Asia, where they are used as status symbols and in medicinal remedies. 
Egypt accused Ethiopia of "warmongering" on Sunday in an escalating dispute over Ethiopia's plan to start filling a massive newly-built hydroelectric dam on the River Nile. In an interview with the Associated Press, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry accused Ethiopian officials of stoking antagonism between the two countries.

He was responding to comments from his Ethiopian counterpart Gedu Andargachew who said - in an AP interview on Friday - that Ethiopia would begin filling the dam next month, whether or not Egypt agrees.

Egypt, which relies on the Nile for more than 90% of its water supplies, sees the issue as a potentially existential threat.

Cairo wants the UN security council to intervene, after the failure of negotiations to agree a deal on how the dam should be operated.

Hanging over the dispute has been the fear it could escalate into military conflict.

In Friday's interview, Andargachew said what the Egyptians were doing was disproportionate, "even for the sake of propaganda, let alone for going to war and conflict".

Shoukry countered that Egypt had never threatened military action.

"Unlike my Ethiopian colleague, Egypt has never, never over the past six years even made an indirect reference to such possibilities," he said.

"We find it strange that in his recent comments with the Associated Press he might speak about desire for war or warmongering, which I believe is inappropriate and is not the right tone to use," Shoukry added.
[June 22, 2020] Basilea receives CHF 5 million milestone payment related to marketing authorization of antifungal Cresemba in Russia

Basel, Switzerland, June 22, 2020 Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that it has received a CHF 5 million milestone payment from its license partner Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE, Pfizer). The milestone was triggered by the granting of the marketing authorization for the antifungal Cresemba (isavuconazole) in the Russian Federation. David Veitch, Chief Executive Officer, said: We are very pleased that physicians in Russia will soon be able to prescribe Cresemba for their patients with invasive mold infections. This approval is an important milestone in the global commercial roll-out of the brand, as Russia is one of the commercially most important markets outside of China, the EU and the U.S. In Russia, oral Cresemba is approved in adults for the treatment of invasive aspergillosis and the treatment of mucormycosis in adult patients for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.1 The intravenous formulation is currently being reviewed under a separate marketing authorization application. In June 2017, Basilea entered into a licensing agreement with Pfizer for isavuconazole in Europe (excluding the Nordics), Russia, Turkey and Israel. The agreement was extended in November 2017 to China, including Hong Kong and Macao, and sixteen countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Under the agreement with Pfizer, Basilea is still eligible for regulatory and sales milestone payments of approximately USD 630 million, in addition to receiving mid-teen royalties on in-market sales of Cresemba. Cresemba is currently marketed in more than 40 countries, including the United States, most EU member states and several additional countries inside and outside of Europe. For the full-year 2019, total "in-market" sales of Cresemba amounted to approximately 200 million U.S. dollars, which is a more than 30 percent growth year-on-year.2 About Cresemba (isavuconazole) Isavuconazole is an intravenous (i.v.) and oral azole antifungal, commercialized under the trade name Cresemba. In the 27 European Union member states, as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and the U.K., isavuconazole is approved for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.3 This is also the approved indication for Cresemba in Russia. Cresemba is also approved in the United States and several additional countries in Europe and beyond.4 It has orphan drug designation in the U.S., Europe and Australia for its approved indications. Basilea has entered into several license and distribution agreements for isavuconazole covering the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa region, Canada, Russia, Turkey and Israel. About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, focused on the development of products that address the medical challenges in the therapeutic areas of oncology and infectious iseases. With two commercialized drugs, the company is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com.



Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements, such as "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business, including with respect to the progress, timing and completion of research, development and clinical studies for product candidates. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD



Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Phone +41 61 606 1102 E-mail [email protected]

[email protected] This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. References Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, June 2020 IQVIA, December 2019. In-market sales reported as moving annual total (MAT) in U.S. Dollar corrected for currency fluctuations. European Public Assessment Report (EPAR) Cresemba: http://www.ema.europa.eu [Accessed: June 21, 2020] The registration status and approved indications may vary from country to country. Attachment Press release (PDF)

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A 34-year-old motorcyclist was killed in a southwest Birmingham crash when he was fleeing from police, authorities said.

The Jefferson County Coroners Office on Monday identified the victim as James Arness Bell Jr. He lived in Fultondale.

The crash happened at 9:24 p.m. Saturday at Dennison Avenue S.W. and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Authorities said Bell was the lone rider of a motorcycle and was attempting to elude police who were in pursuit of him.

Bell was traveling eastbound on Dennison Avenue when, authorities say, he ran a red light and struck another vehicle. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 9:38 p.m.

The crash remains under investigation by Birmingham police.
The coronavirus pandemic might have hit the city's economy hard, but it also brought to the fore "the Hong Kong spirit", with businesses quickly adapting to meet a new normal, according to an executive at Bank of East Asia (BEA).

Half of the loans at the 101-year-old family-run bank recently approved were borrowed by corporate clients looking to change their business models, with the pandemic disrupting how people work, dine and travel.

About 1,800 of its customers have applied for a total of HK$1.3 billion (US$167.7 million) in government guaranteed loans since the scheme started in April. The government is offering between 80 per cent and 100 per cent guarantees for loans made to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

"We found that many of our customers were very positive minded. While the pandemic has hurt their business, it is also a game-changer, letting these companies rethink their business models to meet the new way in which people work, shop and dine," said Thomas Tsui Chun-man, the general manager and head of corporate banking at BEA.

"This is the real Hong Kong spirit " our businessmen are quick to make a change to meet the new environment."

The pandemic and resulting containment measures have had a huge impact on retailers, restaurants and tourism globally. Hong Kong's economy shrank 8.9 per cent in the first quarter this year for its worst slump since records began in 1974. The city's unemployment rate rose 5.9 per cent in the March to May period, with 230,400 people unemployed, its worst decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Thomas Tsui Chun-man, the general manager and head of corporate banking at Bank of East Asia. Photo: Jonathan Wong alt=Thomas Tsui Chun-man, the general manager and head of corporate banking at Bank of East Asia. Photo: Jonathan Wong

The loans guaranteed by the government are aimed at helping local companies " small listed companies as well as 340,000 SMEs " cope with the economic fallout of the pandemic. Many of them, however, are not short of cash.

Story continues

"About half of our borrowers wanted to use the money to move forward, to change their business models to prepare for post-pandemic demand," Tsui said.

A bank customer that makes clothes has turned to making masks, while another clothes manufacturer decided to make underwear after it found people were more focused on these garments during the pandemic.

A restaurant operator took out a loan to expand its takeaway and delivery services. A machines manufacturer borrowed HK$4.5 million to produce robots that will deliver meals to patients in hospitals. A food retailer took a loan to expand its frozen foods section, while others used the money to upgrade their online shopping services.

Peter Shiu Ka-fai, a lawmaker representing the wholesale and retail sector, said the loans as well as the HK$10,000 government payout to all 7 million of Hong Kong's permanent residents from July 8 will prove to be helpful. During the Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2003, there were very few bad debts arising from government guaranteed loans. "The relief measures and the cash payout will encourage people to spend to help retailers and restaurants recover," he said.

Besides the new loans, the bank has also given 1,600 existing customers a six-month repayment holiday for a combined HK$20 billion worth of loans, Tsui 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.
Trump Tells Iran Negotiating After US Elections Means Paying 'A Much Higher Price'

Radio Farda June 21, 2020

President Donald Trump told the Islamic Republic during his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma June 20 that if they wait to make a deal with the United States after he gets reelected, they will "pay a much higher price".

Trump who was speaking about his ability to make important deals with other countries, criticized his predecessor for giving Iran "$150 billion for nothing".

He was referring to the 2015 nuclear deal when the U.S. and Western countries agreed to lift many sanctions they had imposed on Iran for its pursuit of an ambitious nuclear program. Although the $150 billion amount has been often mentioned in the past, it is not clear if the nuclear deal brought such a big cash reward for Iran.

Trump also criticized the Obama administration for sending cash money to Iran in 2016 in what appeared to be payment for the release of four hostages. "And almost more incredible, he gave [them] 1.8 billion in green cash. Beautiful cash", Trump retorted.

Although Trump did not directly mention his policy of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic Republic to force concessions, he seemed to be taking credit for the economic crisis gripping Iran. "And now they're not doing so well, are they? They are not doing so well. Someday, we're going to get credit for this, someday, but they are waiting."

The president claimed Iran "badly" wants to make a deal but is advised by "Kerry" and others to wait until the U.S. elections when Trump might lose. He was referring to former Secretary of State John Kerry, who some have accused of maintaining contact with Iranian officials. Kerry has denied the allegations.

The president at this point made a reference to the Logan Act, a 1799 law that criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.

Trump alleged that Kerry and others tell Iran, "Wait, because if Trump loses, you'll own America, you're going to own it". The president then repeated a message to Iran that the U.S. "can wait, but when I win, you're going to pay a much higher price than if you made a deal" now.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/trump-tells-iran- negotiating-after-us-elections-means-paying -a-much-higher-price-/30682379.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






What happens to a college town when the students disappear? Ithaca, a small upstate New York city nearby gorges and vineyards, is finding out.

Most of the 24,000 students at Cornell University and 6,200 more from Ithaca College effectively vanished in March when the coronavirus pandemic struck, leaving behind struggling restaurants and shops. Locals still reeling from the outbreak and resulting exodus are wondering when  or if  things will get back to normal.

Its going to be hard. I mean, normally we have about seven months that the colleges are here, said Gregar Brous, who runs the local Collegetown Bagels shops, other restaurants and a catering operation. He has brought back just over 100 of the 330 employees he laid off, but the long-term fate of college-dependent businesses remain cloudy.

One of the biggest challenges right now is so many unknowns, Brous said.

8 Amid coronavirus pandemic, only a few beachgoers head to Puffer's Pond in Amherst on hottest day of the year yet

Ithaca College intends to bring students back this fall, but weeks later than normal on Oct. 5. Cornell  the Ivy League school that dominates this city of 31,000  is offering its summer courses online and expected to release its plans for the fall semester soon.

Even if Cornell opts for a return to in-class instruction as locals expect, they're concerned about returning students holing up on campus more, or an autumn surge in COVID-19 cases sparking another sudden exit. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick said possible international travel restrictions could affect Cornell, where almost a quarter of the students come from other countries.

Related: Hampshire College sets Aug. 25 start of classes

If people dont feel comfortable sending their children across the country or across the world back to our campuses, then well start to shed jobs, said Myrick.

Cornell students spend an estimated $225 million annually, helping fuel a healthy retail economy highlighted by blocks of funky shops and restaurants on the Ithaca Commons, a pedestrian strip downhill from the sprawling Cornell campus.

If youre a line cook or a server in Ithaca before the pandemic  it was so easy to get a job. You couldnt avoid it, they were everywhere, said Matt Stupak, a laid-off line cook now working a part-time delivery job with partial unemployment.

David Foote was laid off from his job at Ithacas Planned Parenthood the same day his wife found out her hours at a not-for-profit were being reduced. The couple had savings and deferred expenses. But even with his wife back to full-time hours recently, hes still looking for work and waiting on unemployment benefits.

Related: University of Massachusetts Amherst to modify fall semester, send students home before Thanksgiving

At this point, things are starting to look a little stretched so Im hoping that things start to shape up, he said, but also recognizing theres still a lot of dangers in a lot of people being in the same place or not taking the proper precautions.

Ithaca is still doing well, relatively. The regional April unemployment rate zoomed up to 10%, but was the lowest for metropolitan areas in the state. With more than 10,000 workers, Cornell is the countys largest employer and has yet to announce job cuts. The university has even taken steps to help locally, such as contributing $100,000 to a fund supporting businesses hurt by the pandemic.

Still, area hotels, restaurants and shops are recovering from a big hit. The number of leisure and hospitality jobs alone in surrounding Tompkins County was down by 2,000 from March to May, according to preliminary federal data.

Cities all over bled jobs this year, but the effects were more concentrated in some smaller college towns, where businesses depend heavily on students.

Our entire economy left, said Gabrielle Gould, executive director of Amherst Business Improvement District.

The quaint Massachusetts college town had to deal with the sudden loss of some 35,000 students from UMass Amherst and four other colleges in the area. By May, Amherst had a 32.6% unemployment rate, tied for second highest in the state, according to an analysis provided by the Pioneer Institute.

The 47 restaurants in Amhersts business district were allowed to add outdoor seating this month, though Gould said the struggles continue.

Ithacas economic picture is brightening as pandemic restrictions are slowly eased, with area restaurants recently allowed to open at half capacity. Ithaca is also a summer tourist destination, with people passing through after sipping rieslings at local vineyards or exploring local gorges.

Myrick appreciates the business bump from April, but said it looks more like a slump when compared to last year. With local residents still hurting, the city council this month approved a novel resolution allowing the city to ask for state permission to forgive rents due between April and June.

Beyond concerns over fall sales tax revenues, Ithaca residents are wary of long-term trends in higher education. Colleges all over are dealing with pandemic-related budget problems as they reckon with uncertain futures. Some students are deferring enrollment and long-term business models are being re-accessed.

Ithaca College has already furloughed 167 workers. Cornell, which has a $7.3 billion endowment, is expected to weather any storm. But Cornell President Martha Pollack in April wrote that the schools plan to navigate the crisis will almost certainly include painful steps such as furloughs or layoffs.

How worried am for Ithaca if the future of higher ed changes? Myrick said. I am worried. I am extremely worried.

Related Content:
Opinion banner

Business Insider

McDonalds coronavirus employee mask

Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images

A growing body of research suggests that face masks prevent coronavirus transmission.

But public-health officials have had difficulty enforcing mask requirements since the policy has become politically charged.

The decision should be simple: Wear a mask; save lives.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Last month, two hairstylists at the Great Clips salon in Springfield, Missouri, tested positive for COVID-19. Between them, they'd seen 140 customers since the salon reopened. They could have been contagious the whole time. But instead of local public-health officials detecting a cluster of new cases, they arrived at a surprising finding: Of the 46 salongoers tested for the virus, not one was positive.

The most likely reason: All salon employees and patrons had worn masks.

"Which mask worked, the hairdresser's or the client's? I think the answer is yes. They both worked," Robin Trotman, an infectious-disease specialist in Springfield, told The Washington Post. "The system worked. Universal masking worked."

Indeed, a growing body of research shows masks can prevent coronavirus transmission.

A recent study from UK researchers showed that requiring people to wear face masks all the time could be enough to contain an outbreak  no lockdown necessary. The more people wore masks, the researchers found, the closer a community could get to containing its outbreak.

"These results are striking in that the benefits accrue to the face mask wearer as well as to the population as a whole," the researchers wrote. "There is, therefore, a clear incentive for people to adopt face mask wearing."

But in recent months, groups of "anti-maskers" have protested against policies that require face coverings. Some say that it impinges on their freedom, while others question the science behind it.

As US coronavirus cases jump up, and evidence continues to mount in support of mask wearing, there is no more room for this debate. Americans across the country must wear masks within 6 feet of one another  or risk endangering more lives.

Story continues

Yes, masks prevent transmission

A recent analysis of coronavirus outbreaks in 42 countries found that countries where mask wearing was common, like China and Japan, saw more modest outbreaks compared with nations that weren't accustomed to the practice.

"We believe broader mask use is key to control the pandemic," the researchers wrote.

They added: "Is it not better to adopt a possibly imperfect protective measure, rather than waiting for more evidence at the expense of human lives?"

But even now, the evidence in favor of mask wearing is robust.

A model from the University of Washington predicted that the US could prevent about 33,000 coronavirus deaths by October if 95% of the population wore face masks in public.

Even if people wore masks that are only 50% effective at trapping infectious particles when they breathe, universal adoption of masks would still stop an outbreak, the UK study showed.

That research aligns with findings from Arizona State University, which showed that "broad adoption of even relatively ineffective face masks may meaningfully reduce community transmission of COVID-19."

The university's models in April determined that if nearly everyone in New York state wore a mask, up to 45% of projected deaths over two months could be prevented  even if the masks were only 50% effective. In Washington state, the model showed, face masks that are only 20% effective but worn by most of the population could still reduce mortality by up to 65%.

This information shouldn't be remarkable. We know respiratory droplets are the primary method by which people pass the coronavirus to others. A mask that covers our noses and mouths blocks those particles.

"It does have some protection for the wearer," Dr. Ramzi Asfour, an infectious-disease physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, told Business Insider. "If you think about somebody sneezing on you, there's a lot of these droplets that come out. Well, a lot of those droplets are big, and they'll easily be stopped by the mask."

Indeed, Indian researchers recently determined that a simple cloth mask "substantially decreases" the spread of virus particles when an infected person coughs or sneezes. According to their study, infectious droplets traveled about three times farther (up to 16 feet) when a person wasn't wearing a mask, compared with just 5 feet when particles leaked out the sides of a face mask.

An April study in the journal Nature also showed that surgical masks reduced the transmission of multiple human coronaviruses (not including this new one, SARS-CoV-2) through both respiratory droplets and aerosol particles.

Contradictory guidelines sowed confusion among Americans

It's understandable that people are confused about whether masks help, since all this evidence wasn't available at the start of the year. Unfortunately, that's when public-health officials had to make quick calls about whether people should be required to wear masks in public. Authorities also had to stockpile enough personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, which meant masks were in short supply.

At the start of the pandemic, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not recommend the use of face masks for the general public. Other public-health experts, including those cited by Business Insider in February, also advised that the practice was unnecessary outside China.

The recommendations were delivered at a time when the risk of infection in the US seemed low. Now the country has the worst outbreak, with more than 2.4 million cases and 122,000 deaths.

In February, scientists also hadn't learned about asymptomatic or presymptomatic cases, which are now understood to make up about 35% of coronavirus infections.

"I have anger that we didn't know in March that we should all wear masks," a physician and coronavirus patient in Westchester County, New York, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly as a patient, told Business Insider. "If in March  or, even better, in February  somebody told us to wear masks and social distance, then I may not have gotten the disease."

In response to new data, the CDC on April 3 began recommending face coverings in settings where maintaining social distancing is difficult.

But the World Health Organization sowed more confusion a few days later when the group said there was no need for healthy people to wear face masks. WHO then reversed its decision and began recommending face coverings on June 5.

A woman on April 2.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Some public-health experts continue to disagree about whether masks should be a requirement for the general public. When Business Insider recently asked the question to 15 leading public-health experts, 11 said masks should be worn, three were uncertain, and one said no. Robert Beardall, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said his answer stemmed from worries that homemade masks would provide a false sense of protection and lead people to get too close to one another.

But research now suggests that wearing masks improperly or sporadically could still reduce transmission  and homemade masks are better than none.

Masks have become politically divisive

On May 14, a group of 100 medical and scientific experts wrote an open letter asking governors to require cloth masks in public places, including stores, transportation systems, and public buildings. The requirement, they wrote, "could be amongst the most powerful tools to stop the community spread of COVID-19."

But many local leaders haven't enforced this mandate  and those who did faced opposition from residents.

Dr. Nichole Quick, the chief health officer of Orange County, California, resigned earlier this month after receiving threats over a mandate she issued that required residents wear face masks in public. On May 1, a security guard in Flint, Michigan, was shot and killed after asking a dollar-store customer to wear a face mask. A few weeks later, a man in Portland, Oregon, was filmed yelling at a grocery-store employee who had asked him to wear a mask inside.

Across the country, protesters have rallied against mask requirements. On May 1, the day San Diego instituted its mask rule, hundreds of protesters gathered outside a local courthouse without face coverings. Some of them held signs saying "Science is fake news" and "Trump 2020." At an April rally in Austin, Texas, protesters also called for an end to the city's mask requirement.

A protester holds a sign in opposition to face masks at the Texas State Capitol building on April 18 in Austin.

Sergio Flores/Getty Images

Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week that he believed some Americans wear face masks to show their disapproval of him. Trump has repeatedly been photographed without a mask at public events.

Mask requirements are inconsistent across the country

Cheyenne Beyer, a 27-year-old coronavirus patient who lives in Austin, said she was worried that people who ignore mask requirements may wind up infected like her.

"My boyfriend has gone to the grocery store and the convenience store a couple of times in the past few weeks, and that even worries me because even though he wears a mask, so many people here aren't," Beyer told Business Insider. "At my infectious-disease doctor appointment today, there was a guy in the waiting room who wasn't wearing a mask at all. And then the other people in the waiting room were wearing masks, but they had their noses exposed."

Mask guidelines aren't consistent across states or counties. At least 38 states have instituted some sort of mask requirement. In California, Massachusetts, New York, Utah, Delaware, Maine, and Michigan, the mandate applies to all residents who go outdoors. Other states, like Oregon and Ohio, require masks for employees at local businesses. In North Carolina, masks are recommended for the general public, but certain cities like Raleigh and Durham require them to be worn outside.

Austin's mask requirement is still in place, though residents can't be penalized for forgoing a face covering, since the policy isn't mandatory in Texas. The city's mayor, Steve Adler, has said the penalty for not wearing a mask is simply that "more people are going to die."

States with mask requirements also offer exemptions for residents with medical conditions, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, though people don't need to provide documentation of these illnesses because of patient-privacy laws.

The problem with this piecemeal approach, however, is that the absence of a unified national policy has turned masks into a political statement instead of what they are: an effective public-health tool.

"It's how others take responsibility for protecting you," Asfour said. "By not wearing a mask, I'm not doing my duty to protect others."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Oil prices have already reached an interim stage of recovery. The 40-dollar mark is the level around which they will fluctuate for a while, but huge deviations are not likely.

Further gains or 45-50 dollars would not be justified at this stage despite the supply curtailments as there are still valid concerns on the demand side.

The pandemic has not disappeared, its tiring for many to refer to Covid-19 again and again, but the reality demands it. Infections are rising in key markets around the world and there are valid concerns that the world is in for a prolonged period of dealing with its consequences.

If infections and hospitalizations rise even more and a second wave becomes a reality, the market will get depressed again with demand declining. Not as much as in the first half of the year though, as the extent of lockdowns that we have experienced was too painful to bear for many countries.

Prices today do not have a clear common direction and largely fluctuate around their last weeks closing levels.

The risk of an upsurge in coronavirus cases is omnipresent, with the WHO reporting the largest single-day increase in cases to-date, at more than 183,000 in the latest 24 hours.

The Saudi Oil Minister and Russias energy minister are both talking up the market rebalancing and the current recovery in oil consumption, but that will entirely depend upon avoiding a second round of serious lockdowns.

Meanwhile, today is D-day for Iraq, one of the sub-compliers in the OPEC+ agreement. Today, Iraq must present its plan to get production down in line with the target cuts of 1,061,000 bpd in July, and present a plan to compensate for the lack of compliance in May and June for the next three months.

That could even mean producing below the target for those months in OPECs compensation clause from the latest communique.

The reason this is important is not that the extra 500,000 bpd or so of production cuts from Iraq would make a huge difference for prices, but the OPEC+ agreement in itself is on the line here. Patience by Riyadh and Moscow is running thin, and the market will be watching the reactions to Iraqs plans in the coming days. Related: The Oil & Gas Sector Could Already Be In Terminal Decline

If OPEC+ sees that it cannot trust the members of the alliance, it cannot be taken for granted that the deal will be maintained. What if it get scrapped?

The production cut levels we have now are unprecedented and the possibility of them being removed immediately and the market being once again flooded with oil could send prices tumbling again.

Compliance is the keyword this week, and most eyes will be on the plans put forward by the OPEC+ countries that are currently falling short.

If demand remains stable and the compliance plans that are put on the table are trustworthy and commitments are kept, we can expect prices to move between 40 and 45 before the next OPEC+ meeting, which will be another benchmark event.

By Rystad Energy

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Multiple programmable speed limit signs are placed every 1,000 feet near the corridors entrance and can shift between 75 mph to 35 mph depending on the situation. Additional signs are placed 2 miles apart.

There will be a speed feedback sign to inform drivers of their actual speeds.

Drivers will likely spot the weather radar system on a 20-foot tower at I-10 and Arizona 87. This provides 40 miles of coverage to help the National Weather Service keep track of whats happening in the area.

Behind the scenes, 13 sensors mounted on posts along I-10 use light beams to determine the density of dust particles in the air. The system activates the message boards and the variable speed limit signs once visibility drops to certain levels, ADOT said.

ADOTs Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix is the central monitoring location using closed-circuit cameras to identify conditions along the roadway and potentially more storms in the distance.

With the cameras, ADOT staff can also monitor the conditions related to the speed and flow of traffic .

This will help as state officials anticipate more motorists using the freeway between Phoenix and Tucson in the future.
Donald Trump's top spokeswoman insisted Monday that the president has not ordered anyone in his administration to slow coronavirus testing despite saying he did just that during a Saturday evening campaign rally.

"No, he has not," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters. "Any suggestion that testing has been slowed is not rooted in fact."

Mr Trump was "joking" and criticising the media for not reporting that the United States leads the world in testing, she added. (That is a false statement, however.)

Ms McEnany, like other Trump spokespersons before her on some of his most controversial statements or tweets, stood at the White House briefing room lectern and insisted the president was merely speaking in "jest."

But it was not clear as he spoke in Tulsa that he was joking, and she denied that he was making light of a virus that has killed at least 120,000 people in America.

"Then, I closed it down to Europe early, closed it down because I saw what was happening. And by the way, most people said, don't do it, don't do it. We saved hundreds of thousands of lives and all we do is get hit on like we're terrible. And what we've done with the ventilators and with the medical equipment and with testing  you know, testing is a double edged sword," Mr Trump said. "We've tested now 25 million people. It's probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany's done a lot, South Korea's done a lot. They call me, they say the job you're doing  here's the bad part, when you test of  when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases.

"So, I said to my people slow the testing down, please. They test and they test," Mr Trump said.

The president and his top aides, as Ms McEnany did again on Monday, have contended that more testing means local officials find more Covid-19 cases. That is true but they have yet to acknowledge that those people are still sick with a disease Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, say the Trump administration was slow to respond to.

But some top Democratic governors in states that have seen sharp declines in Covid-19 cases and deaths, like New Jersey, say testing was a big key in dealing with the virus in their areas. That state's governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, told CNN on Monday morning that it was testing as much as any other state that help his administration be able to open nail salons and other similar shops on Monday.
Hundreds of workers at Tyson Foods poultry plant in Arkansas have tested positive for coronavirus, though most of the workers who tested positive are asymptomatic.

Out of 3,748 Tyson employees tested in Benton and Washington Counties, 481 were found to have coronavirus, with 455 of those patients reporting no symptoms. The outbreak was centered at Tysons poultry plant in the town of Springdale.

China has reportedly ceased importing poultry from the facility upon learning of the outbreak. Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson told the Associated Press that global and U.S. health organizations including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have said there is no evidence of coronavirus transmission via food.

At Tyson, were confident our products are safe and were hopeful consultations between the U.S. and Chinese governments will resolve this matter, Mickelson said. Our top priority is the health and safety of our team members, and we work closely with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Food Safety and Inspection Service to ensure that we produce all of our food in full compliance with government safety requirements.

China resumed importing U.S. poultry in November 2019 after a five-year ban following an outbreak of avian flu. The ban closed off a market worth $500 million to U.S. exporters.

Meatpacking facilities have seen some of the most serious localized outbreaks of coronavirus, along with prisons and nursing homes. Tyson plants in Nebraska, N.C., and Iowa have reported outbreaks, while meat processor Smithfield has also seen outbreaks at various facilities.

Those outbreaks led the meatpacking industry to warn of a meat shortage in the U.S., and meat prices have risen at markets across the country. However, meat exports to China have also risen during the coronavirus pandemic.

More from National Review
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 Less than two months after he was sworn in for the second time as the Chancellor of Austria in a remarkable political comeback, Sebastian Kurz took a telephone call in early March that sent a shiver up his youthful spine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the phone to relay an urgent warning. The pair first hit it off in 2013 when Kurz became Austria's foreign minister aged just 27, and speak regularly. This call, though, was different. Netanyahu was watching coronavirus seep out of northern Italy and into continental Europe with rising alarm and felt compelled to offer some blunt advice. "You are underestimating this in Europe. Wake up and take action," Netanyahu boomed down the line from Jerusalem. Kurz describes the warning as a "wake-up call" that galvanised the 33-year-old Chancellor into action. Prime Minister Scott Morrison would soon be sharing phone calls with Kurz and Netanyahu as the crisis unfolded. Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz during a meeting of the First Movers group. Credit:PMO Austria was one of the first countries in Europe to close its land borders and impose a nationwide lockdown. Nearly 700 people have died from the pandemic in the Alpine republic - a remarkable outcome given its 400-kilometre border with hard-hit Italy. On a per capita basis, the disease has caused 76 deaths per million in Austria compared to 646 in Spain, 625 in Britain, 571 in adjoining Italy, 500 in Sweden, 454 in France and 106 in much-lauded Germany. "It was good that we acted early, it was good that we reacted tough just as Australia and New Zealand did," Kurz tells The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in an interview from Vienna. "That was the reason it was possible to save lives in Austria and also the reason why we have been able to reopen our economy much faster than others." Kurz - a rising star of centre-right politics in Europe who is the world's youngest leader - studied which other countries had also avoided a full-blown outbreak and sensed an opportunity to band together and share information, particularly about the best ways to ease economy-wrecking lockdowns without allowing the disease to explode.

Advertisement

The result is the so-called First Movers, an eclectic group of nations that ordinarily would have zero geographic, political or economic need to talk. The alliance comprises five European countries: Austria, Denmark, Norway, Greece and the Czech Republic, as well as Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Leaders privately believe the group has been hugely valuable at a time when bigger multilateral institutions like the United Nations, World Health Organisation and European Union have struggled to respond swiftly and practically to the crisis. There are also few lessons to learn from traditional powers like the United States and United Kingdom  other than perhaps not what to do. Loading "I think it's not a competition with international organisations," Kurz says. "But besides these big and necessary structures, it is good to have more direct contact with different countries like Australia where you can have a very open exchange of views and where you can learn from each other." The group has met three times online. Morrison has beamed in from his Parliament House suite with a particular interest in discussing how students can return to school as soon as possible but also used the gathering to build global support for an independent investigation into the origins of the virus. Kurz instructed his staff to contact Australia's ambassador to Austria, Richard Sadleir, to float the idea of Morrison joining the meetings. Sadleir embraced the idea and quickly cabled his thoughts to Canberra. Morrison enthusiastically embraced the invitation to talk to Europeans who had managed to defy the surge of the virus across the continent. "He loves this group," said one person close to the Prime Minister. "They are practical people and have practical answers. No huge egos, just people who want to learn from each other."

Advertisement

The leaders have also talked about strategies to reopen their economies, shared details of their respective testing and tracking regimes, and how to roll out a possible COVID-19 vaccine. Kurz says a vaccine would not be compulsory in his country: "We think that's not the question at the moment. The question is will we find a vaccine and will there be enough capacity for all countries in the EU? That's the question we have at the moment and where we have to deliver." Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who also holds the title of world's youngest leader - is on the rise in Europe. Credit:Bloomberg Kurz has only just returned to office in January after his first stint as Chancellor in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party collapsed after the junior partner was hit by a corruption scandal, prompting fresh elections in September 2019. The Kurz-led People's Party won even more seats than before but now governs in an unlikely coalition with the Greens. The Chancellor's strong response to the pandemic has seen his popularity spike, and his Health Minister Rudolf Anschober  a Green  has also been widely praised. But Austria's response has not been without controversy. It failed to detect a major outbreak in its hugely busy Ischgl ski resort and its border measures drew some initial criticism, including from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who claimed closures threatened to interrupt the flow of goods throughout the bloc.

Advertisement
Missing soldier's body found: Skeletal remains found in Texas have been identified as those of a soldier from Oklahoma who was missing from Fort Hood, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command in Quantico, Va., said Sunday. The body of Pvt. Gregory S. Morales, 24, of Sapulpa, Okla., was found Friday in a field in Killeen, after officials at nearby Fort Hood received a tip, Killeen police said. Foul play is suspected, and an autopsy is being performed, according to a release from Army CID public affairs chief Chris Grey. There is no indication that Morales's death is connected to the disappearance in April of Pfc. Vanessa Guillen from Fort Hood. She remains missing.
Speculations have been going around about the coronavirus "escaping" from a lab in Wuhan. Some even say that the virus was genetically manipulated by man and has gotten out of control.

However, Mark Kortepeter, the former deputy director of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, argues that the virus most likely spread through natural channels rather than from a "hot zone" lab.

He shares his opinion with the Washington Times, saying that humans either got it from direct exposure to bats or through some other animal host, as also theorized by some experts. He adds that this type of deluge has occurred in the past, which makes it more likely to be the same case with the coronavirus.

He says it is also possible that lab personnel got exposed to the virus found in nature, and transmitted the virus to someone else in the lab. He adds that the speed of COVID-19's spread or its lethality provides clues as to whether it broke free from a laboratory environment.

Just because the virus spreads efficiently through the population doesn't mean it has been weaponized, Kortepeter contests. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community is currently investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to find answers to address the mysteries surrounding the disease.

Read Also: China Study Claiming Coronavirus Came From Wuhan Labs Allegedly Removed From the Internet

Why the Coronavirus Didn't Start in a Wuhan Lab

An important point Kortepeter makes is that the Wuhan Institute previously released their published work on a scientific process in which a virus is made more effective. Although this might cause some suspicion, he says that if malintent were behind it, it would highly be unlikely for them to publish their work about it.

He also argues that the Wuhan Institute has "Biosafety Level 4" labs. In level four labs, scientists wear hazmat suits and deal with the world's most lethal pathogens. Given the exceptional level of caution correlated with work in a Biosafety Level 4 unit, it is much more likely that if the virus jumped into humans from a lab, it did so from a Level 2 or Level 3 laboratory facility.

Kortepeter considers two possible scenarios in the lab. He says either someone got exposed to a natural origin such as an animal, or an exposure to a manipulated virus. His theory is that it started from exposure in the natural environment. However, considering being a biodefense and Army official, he says he does not shut out the possibility of someone trying to do things for vicious intents.

No Coordination and Spread of Misinformation Hurting the Economy

The United State's national response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been cramped by intermittent waves of misinformation and lack of organization, says Kortepeter. An article published in the clinical journal The Lancet has recently been retracted after the researchers took back their claim of hydroxychloroquine being harmful to coronavirus patients.

Kortepeter says that instances like this just add "fuel to the fire," and the media just ounces on it, making things worse. Moving forward, he says a more focused response is a better approach to cope with disease outbreaks, rather than ordering shutdowns around the world.

He observes that unity still isn't a priority when dealing with this type of situation, which "hurts" us even more. Furthermore, he explains that viruses that reproduce and mutate frantically make them more resistant to treatment and vaccines. Kortepeter says humanity's best hope is that the virus remains stable, making it easier for scientists to develop lifetime vaccines.

Also Read: Wuhan Wet Market NOT the Source of Coronavirus But a Hotspot for a 'Superspreader' New Study Shows
At least 63 doctors, paramedics and others affiliated with healthcare sectors in Pakistan have died of coronavirus while battling on the frontline against the deadly disease, a media report said on Monday.

According to figures compiled by the medical community so far, 30 doctors, three nurses, a paramedic and an operation theatre assistant have lost their lives to COVID-19 in Punjab and 11 doctors and one nurse in Sindh, the Express Tribune newspaper reported.

It said six doctors, two nurses and one paramedic died due to COVID-19 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; four doctors and three paramedics in Balochistan; an operation theatre technician in Islamabad; and one doctor in Gilgit-Baltistan.

A Sikh doctor, Dr Phag Chand Singh, was among the casualties in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Pakistan's coronavirus cases jumped to 1,81,088 on Monday after 4,471 new cases were reported during the last 24 hours, while 89 people died of the disease, taking the number of fatalities in the country to 3,590, the health ministry said.
A new automated pleated face mask machine, capable of producing 100 units per minute, arrived at Vidalia Mills' 1.2 million-square-foot Concordia Parish plant on Wednesday.

Company officials expect to take about 10 days to work with technicians to set up and train staff to operate the fully automated machine. They anticipate the machine, designed to run 24 hours a day, will be in production by the end of the month.

Two more machines will arrive in the next few weeks to make even higher-grade face masks and further expand the plants capacity to produce PPE. The company has already been contacted by several hospitals, federal and state governments.

We are pleased to bring another resource to the state of Louisiana and the U.S. as a whole, Vidalia Mills CEO Dan Feibus said. The new machine will add jobs, economic activity and more security to the critical PPE supply chain.

A team of technicians will travel from Henderson Sewing Company in Alabama to install the machine and train local workers. The three PPE facemasks machines will require about 4,000 square feet in the Vidalia Mills complex.

The Vidalia Mills PPE initiative is a joint venture with The Omniverse Group based in Los Angeles.
Florida, Texas, Arizona and other states seeing major spikes in new coronavirus cases are heading into a "pivotal week" that might determine whether "they're tipping over into exponential growth or not," former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday. A number of states, mostly across the American South and West, have seen a dramatic rise in cases over the past couple of weeks as more people move about in increasingly reopened areas and the virus spreads to new communities. "I think this week's going to really be a pivotal week for us to get a picture of where things are heading in states like Florida and Arizona and Texas, whether or not they're tipping over into exponential growth or not," Gottlieb said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "The problem is with exponential growth everything looks sort of OK until all of a sudden it doesn't." Officials in some states, including Florida, initially pointed to increased testing as a driver of the spike in new confirmed cases. However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledged that the share of people who test positive is accelerating faster than the number of tests being run. The percentage of people testing positive for the virus in Florida has risen from about 4.2% on June 7 to more than 8% on June 14, the most recent data available, according to the Florida Department of Health.

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

The positivity rate has similarly risen in Arizona, which has been reporting more than 2,000 new cases per day for about a week. The statistics to watch this week will be the doubling rate of the outbreaks in such states, Gottlieb said. "That's going to be a curve that's starting to look like exponential growth, the doubling time coming down to something about a week or less," he said. "Right now, the doubling time is about 10 days in some of these places, so it's been coming down." The number of deaths due to Covid-19 does not appear to be rising along with the number of confirmed cases, Gottlieb said. However, that could be due to the lag in time it takes for infected people to fall ill, become hospitalized and then die. Gottlieb said he doesn't think the death rate will rise drastically, as doctors have become better at treating patients and more people who get infected are younger and not as vulnerable as the elderly or those with underlying health conditions. Nonetheless, if such states fail to bring down the rate of spread and contain the virus, Gottlieb said, it will find its way to at-risk communities. The longer officials in these states allow the virus to spread, he said, the more difficult it will be to bring it under control. "They're having major outbreaks underway. There's no question about it," he said. "They might be past the point that they can control this just with simple interventions like trying to get more people to wear masks and people being mindful of their social interactions."

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

States with the worst outbreaks might have to start closing businesses down again, Gottlieb said, adding that it would be best if officials could target establishments where they know people are congregating and getting infected. DeSantis of Florida and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have both attributed part of the rise in cases to young people disregarding precautions, especially at bars. "They're guessing it's the bars because a lot of young people are getting the illness, but I don't think they've really traced it back to those locations effectively," Gottlieb said, "because they don't have the tracking and tracing in place that other states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, had as they reopened." Tracing occurs when health officials contact infected people to try to understand how they might have become infected and who they might have exposed to the virus before they were diagnosed. It's an age-old, proven public health strategy that's used to combat infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis. Establishing strong contact tracing infrastructure was part of the White House's reopening guidelines, though it was not required nationally in order to ease restrictions and reopen businesses. And rather than taking a leadership role, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has instead sought largely to support local health departments as they try to ramp up tracing systems. "They might have to start closing some establishments where people are congregating indoors and they know the virus is spreading," Gottlieb said of cities with major spikes. "The problem is they don't know what those establishments are."

Northeast exception
KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Glenmark's study will be out in 2-3 weeks after which the company will rollout the drug

Launch on Saturday was based on trial data with 150 Indian patients and ongoing global studies

While treatment with Fabiflu costs Rs 3,500, Remdesivir may cost Rs 15,000 to Rs 36,000

Other drugmakers look forward to rollout the medicine but they lack Glenmark's production scale

Drug major Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, the first Indian company to commercially launch antiviral drug Favipiravir with brand name FabiFlu, is conducting a large study involving 1,000 patients to prove the drug's efficacy in coronavirus treatment.

"We are not in a hurry to rollout and want to doubly ensure its safety and efficacy before big launch. We are conducting a 1,000 patient study across India and the results will be available in the next two--three weeks. Trial batch production was started last week and big rollout will happen depending on the results," a top level Glenmark executive told Business Today on condition of anonymity.

The company is also hopeful of supplying the drug globally after the survey. The executive said the company has created adequate end to end domestic manufacturing capacity from raw materials to finished formulations. Capacity will not be a constraint to supplying the drug globally, according to the executive.

Currently, the US-based Gilead Life Sciences' Remedesivir is the only other drug allowed as emergency drug in many countries for coronavirus treatment. Glenmark is planning to take on Remdesivir with FabiFlu. While Glenmark has priced FabiFlu at Rs 3,500 for a pack of 34 tablets (Rs 103 per tablet), Glilead's injection is likely to be priced in the range of Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 per dose by licensed Indian manufacturers like Cipla and Hetero Drugs. The patient requires 5 to 6 doses. So the total treatment could cost anywhere between Rs 15,000 to Rs 36,000 in India with Remdesivir, say sources.

On Saturday, Glenmark announced the launch of the drug in India at Rs 103 a tablet, following the approval from Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) through a fast track approval process. The approval was based on a 150 patient clinical trial in India and 18 global clinical trials involving 3,000 subjects in India, US, Canada, Italy, China, France, UK and other countries.

Favipiravir, sold under the brand name Avigan by Fujifilm Toyama Chemical, has been used in Japan since 2014 for influenza treatment. It is already commercially used in therapeutic management of coronavirus in Bangladesh and UAE. Russia launched it on Saturday and Japan is awaiting a large trial data result. A Russian study on 390 patients found 80 percent plus success rate, while a trial among 2,141 patients in Japan saw 88 percent success rate. The trials so far claim the drug has a success rate of 80 to 88 percent.

Meanwhile, patent experts say Favipiravir main compound has no patent protection in India and Indian companies are free to make it. Favipiravir 200 mg patent in India (IN/PCT/2001/144/KOL) and its use as antiviral for the main compound expired on 18 August 2019. Another patent application for Favipiravir tablet or granulated powder compositions in India (IN6955/DELNP/2011) was filed in 2011 and the application was rejected later by the Indian patent office. "Its patent is not enforceable in India and the company Fujifilm Toyama Chemical is not a full fledged drug maker to aggressively pursue even if it had the rights," said Gopakumar G Nair, founder and CEO of Patent Gurukul and Gopakumar Nair Associates.

Companies like Strides Pharma, Mangalam Drugs, Brinton Pharmaceuticals, Lasa Supergenerics and Optimus Pharma are among the companies preparing for launch in India. "While Glenmark and Strides have both manufacturing and marketing scale to make and distribute the drug globally, rest of the companies are either API makers or lack marketing network to take the formulations globally", say sources.

Also read: Piramal to acquire US-based G&W Laboratories' manufacturing facility in US
Countries that could form quarantine-free 'air corridors' with Britain are set to be revealed within days, Matt Hancock said tonight.

The Health Secretary provided a welcome boost to stressed Britons as he said a list would be published in 'good time' ahead of a June 29 review of the 14-self-isolation forced upon all arrivals into the UK.

It came as Spain today appealed for British tourists to visit saying their holidays will not be 'radically' affected by temperature checks and health forms.

Minister Manuel Muniz insisted Spain is now a 'particularly safe place' with coronavirus rates that are 'among the lowest in the world'.

Tourists and travel firms at risk of going bust will be hoping that other popular holiday destinations are also cleared to allow travel without spending 14 days in quarantine.

The Health Secretary provided a welcome boost to stressed Britons as he said a list would be published in 'good time' ahead of a June 29 review of the 14-self-isolation forced upon all arrivals into the UK

Tourists and travel firms at risk of going bust will be hoping that popular holiday destinations are cleared to allow travel without spending 14 days in quarantine. Pictured is Pefkochori on Halkidiki Peninsula, Greece

Matt Hancock said the Government would set out where travel corridors might be established before the June 29 deadline for reviewing the quarantine arrangements.

The Health Secretary told the Downing Street press conference: 'A lot of work is being done on travel corridors, I've been working on it over the weekend.

'And we have a formal review date of the quarantine policy at the end of this month on June 29, and we'll make sure that in good time for that we publish what we plan to do next in terms of where we think - based on the epidemiological advice - we're able to formalise travel corridors.

'I know that people are really looking forward to getting this information, but we've got to make sure that we get it right and that work is going on right now.'

The first Britons started arriving in Spain yesterday after Madrid lifted its ban on foreign tourists and opened its beaches in glorious 100 degree-plus heat.

Travel firms have slashed the price of a one-week holiday to 300 after Downing Street signalled 'travel corridors' could be introduced to 10 countries from July 4, with no 14-day quarantine on return to the UK.

A small Ryanair fleet is shuttling people to the south of Spain this week.

Seven-night package deals are down 34 percent for Prague, 26 percent fo Zante, 16 percent for Venice, 15 percent for Marrakech, 14 percent for Canary Islands, 13 percent for New York, 12 percent for the Balearic Islands and 10 percent for Turkish resorts.
India-born renowned Pakistani Shia scholar and author Talib Jauhari passed away here after a prolonged illness. He was 80.

Jauhari, who was born on August 27, 1939 in Patna, is survived by his three sons, Dawn News reported on Monday.

He migrated to Pakistan along with his father in 1949, two years after the Partition.

After obtaining early education from his father, he went to Iraq where he studied religion for 10 years under the renowned Shia scholars of that time.

Jauhari, who was on a ventilator in the intensive care unit of a private hospital for the past 15 days, breathed his last on Sunday night.

His son Riaz Jauhari confirmed his death and said that the body has been shifted to Ancholi Imambargah for the funeral prayers, The Express Tribune newspaper quoted his son as saying.

Jauhari was respected among his sect as he was a class fellow of the widely revered scholar Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani.

He was also a poet, historian and philosopher and authored many books.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has condoled Jauhari's death.
Danbury Fire Department

SOUTHBURY  Two people were hospitalized after police say an intoxicated motorist crashed into their motorcycle Friday night.

The crash happened at the intersection of Main Street South and South Britain Road.
Some swing voters in Erie, Pa., tell us they're gravitating to Joe Biden  less as a change agent than as a path back to stability, and to restoring the national respect they feel has been lost under President Trump.

The big picture: This was the first time in 16 of our monthly Engagious/Schlesinger swing-voter focus groups that more participants opposed Trump than supported him.

Why it matters: Most participants in the latest installment of the focus group say they don't think the country is better off than it was four years ago, and they've grown to lament the "chaos" that has come to define the Trump presidency.

Participants described feeling "annoyed," "irritated," and "frustrated" to see the president out and about and not wearing a mask amid the coronavirus.

They called his approach to the pandemic "arrogant" and "offensive" in the face of deaths, and lamented his Bible photo-op at St. John's Church in D.C. as "phony" catering to the base that "was in poor taste."

By contrast, participants described Biden as a "role model" for wearing a mask, calling him "informed," "educated," and "responsible." Several said Biden would bring "respect" back to the presidency and the country.

Between the lines: This group's sentiments reflect a more dramatic turning away from the president than national surveys.

An Axios/SurveyMonkey poll last week found that nine in 10 Trump 2016 voters plan to stick with him and most Trump backers disapprove of the protests, the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to redistribute police funding.

While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about the 2020 election in crucial counties.

Details: The nine-voter focus group was conducted virtually last Tuesday. Six of its participants voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and flipped to Trump in 2016; three voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 but Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Four of the Obama/Trump voters and all three Romney/Clinton voters said they plan to support Biden in November.

Most said they haven't heard much from Biden  and couldn't think of anything specific that he's said or done lately  suggesting they see the election less as a measure of affirmative support for Biden than as a referendum on the incumbent.

What they're saying: Some said they're so sick of Trump's handling of national crises, including the pandemic and George Floyd's killing, that they're willing to vote for Biden even if they're not passionate about him.
A handful of Michigan hairstylists claim the state of Michigan is coming after their cosmetology licenses for their role in a protest of Gov. Gretchen Whitmers executive orders that closed many businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Angela Rigas said her way of earning a livelihood is under attack because she stood up for her First Amendment rights and offered free haircuts during Operation Haircut, a May 20 rally in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.

Shes making an example out of us of what happens when you dont comply with her unlawful orders, Rigas said Monday, June 22, during a press conference on the Capitol lawn.

She cant take my license. She can try, but were going to fight it.

Attorney David Kallman is representing six of the seven women who were issued $500 citations by Michigan State Police troopers during the May 20 protest. A spokesperson for MSP said warnings were given first before the citations were handed out for disorderly conduct.

Kallman said his clients have all received a notice from the states Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) that it is taking steps toward revoking their licenses.

He found it odd that the state would attempt to give the stylists criminal records and take away their livelihood for cutting hair, which businesses have been allowed to do again statewide since June 15. He said state law allows hairstylists to cut hair during special events, such as the May 20 protest.

A spokesperson for LARA did not return calls from MLive, but sent a text message that said, LARA doesnt target any individuals or professions. We look at any violation of state law or rules on a case by case basis.

Kallman said his clients criminal cases are in the early stages of the legal process. He plans to file motions to dismiss, and said he expects a hearing in early July.

As for the licensing battle, he said he plans to submit a response to the state by Wednesday.

The attorney organized Mondays press conference outside the Capitol to provide an update on his clients cases. He was joined by Rigas, as well as fellow stylists Brenda Root of Linden and Suzanne Dodoro, a retired stylist from Holly.

Karl Manke, a 77-year-old Owosso barber who previously battled with the state over his choice to reopen his business on May 4, also spoke Monday. He called the states actions toward the stylists a means of heavy-handed enforcement and said Gov. Whitmer is playing a Simon Says-type game in which she decides what is and isnt allowed during the pandemic.

Related: State drops lawsuit aimed at shutting down defiant Owosso barber

Last week, the states Bureau of Professional Licensing filed a motion to dissolve the summary suspension of Mankes license, with the assertion that an imminent threat to the public health, safety and welfare does not currently exist, per an order by Administrative Law Judge Stephen B. Goldstein.

Rigas called Mankes fight with the state inspirational. She said the governor was treating workers like children incapable of protecting themselves by ordering businesses stay closed for so long.

Gov. Whitmer first ordered all non-essential businesses to close March 22 as Michigan entered the third week of its state of emergency declaration with COVID-19 cases and deaths on the rise.

Personal-care businesses including barbershops and salons were allowed to reopen June 10 in Northern Michigan, and June 15 across the rest of the state.

Businesses however have to follow safety precautions to limit the spread of the coronavirus. They must provide COVID-19 training to employees, develop a COVID-19 response plan, develop a self-screening protocol for employees, and keep employees 6 feet apart when possible or require them to wear masks when they cant.

Mankes license was the only one in the state to have been suspended as of June 11, according to Orlene Hawks, director of LARA. At the time, Hawks said 60 complaints filed with the Bureau of Professional Licensing remained open and pending.

As of Sunday, June 21, Michigans Department of Health and Human Services has reported 61,230 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5,846 deaths linked to the infectious respiratory virus.

Organizers of Operation Haircut vowed to cover the barbers fines through a GoFundMe fundraiser. The Operation Haircut Defense Fund, organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, has raised $13,813 to date.

Rosanne Ponkowski, president of the coalition, said the fund is being used to help unemployed stylists pay their legal fees and potential fines. She said people have been generous but more donations are needed as the fight continues.

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 on MLive:

New coronavirus cases fall below 200 for first time in five days

Coronavirus, racial protest response could undermine Trumps outreach to Black voters in Michigan

Were ready, for Jacksons YMCA to open after coronavirus shut down, staff says

Sunday, June 21: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan
Falun Gong practitioners commemorate the deaths adherents who were persecuted to death by the Chinese regime, during a march down Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. on June 20, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Leaked Documents Reveal 610 Office Intensified Persecution of Spiritual Group in Recent Years

The Chinese regimes persecution of Falun Gong has continued for 21 years. Since July 1999, adherents of the spiritual group have been rounded up and detained inside prisons, jails, labor camps, and brainwashing centers where psychological torture is deployed to coerce them into giving up their faith.

The regime established an extralegal secret police force, called the 610 Office, on June 10, 1999, to carry out the suppression campaign across the country. It extended to every level of government: the provincial, city, and district.

Recently, The Epoch Times obtained internal documents on the restructuring of the 610 Office in Dalian city, located in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

The documents revealed that since the end of 2017, the persecution of Falun Gong has escalated in Dalian. Recently, a high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official claimed that the 610 Office was disbanded. But the documents showed otherwise.

Dalian 610 Office Restructured

The Epoch Times obtained a document issued by the Chinese Communist Partys Organizing Committee of the United Front Work Department in Dalian on Dec. 27, 2017. The document showed the committee ordered Dalians 610 Office to restructure in order to strengthen efforts to suppress Falun Gong.

The document required Dalian to enhance intelligence work on heretical religionsto carry out the transformation of local Falun Gong practitioners and put them under high pressure. Transformation refers to coercion efforts that pressure adherents into giving up their faith.

It also proposed various ways to involve overseas Falun Gong practitioners, such as coercing overseas relatives to pressure them into giving up the practice.

The Chinese regime initially publicized its persecution efforts through state media propaganda. But as Falun Gong adherents around the world raised awareness about Chinas persecution campaign, since 2004, the regime has kept its tactics secret.

The document notes that the Party will now adopt a more aggressive propaganda effort, instead of the previous policy of only do, but dont talk about it.

Anti-heretical religion propaganda should now be increased on media platforms, the document said.

Another document, dated May 18, 2018, was also obtained by The Epoch Times. It was an internal document from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) of the Dalian Municipal Party Committee regarding how security departments work would be assessed. The PLAC is a Party agency that oversees the countrys security apparatus, including police, courts, and jails.

According to one of the assessments, the direct persecution of Falun Gong counted for 18 points out of the departments total grade of 92nearly 20 percent.

High-Ranking Officials Comment on 610 Office Exposed

In a May 31 report by Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that publishes first-hand information about the persecution of Falun Gong in China, Zhao Leji, one of the Partys top officials belonging to the Politburo standing committee, recently made a comment about the 610 Office during a work meeting, according to an inside source.

On March 21, 2018, the CCP announced that the 610 Office and its functions would be subsumed under the PLAC and the Ministry of Public Security. The 610 Office appears to have been renamed, with no references to its official or informal names appearing after 2019.

According to the insider, Zhao said to the attendees, The 610 Office is disbanded, merged, and no longer exists independently. Thats for show for the anti-China Western forces, because they always argue about human rights and freedom. How can you believe that [its really disbanded]?

He continued, Look, Falun Gong still exists, the issue is still there. It must be done quickly, and must be done well.

The 2020 Plenary Session Reported on the Persecution of Falun Gong

Chinas highest prosecutor office reported about the persecution of Falun Gong during a plenary session held on May 25, as part of an annual political meeting when Party elite typically discuss future personnel changes and policies. This is the first time in five years that the CCP publicized its persecution of Falun Gong during this meeting.

New President of China Law Society Deploys Persecution of Falun Gong

On the morning of March 20, 2019, Wang Chen, a member of the powerful Politburo and vice chairman of the standing committee that oversees the Partys rubber-stamp legislature, was elected president of the China Law Society. This is the official organization for Chinas legal studies profession.

Many internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times showed that after taking office, Wang intensively held various special training courses to deploy the persecution of Falun Gong.
By Deepak Chopra, MD and Anoop Kumar, MD

When people seek personal change in their lives, they often dont get very far. Even in this day when online advice is bewilderingly abundant and self-improvement books are at our fingertips, change eludes us. One way to remedy this is to start from the ground up. Normally, we feel compelled to start where we are right now, and thats a tremendous problem.

No matter how different people are, each of us woke up this morning to the same situation. We are constantly involved in thinking, feeling, and doing. No one starts this activity afresh. Instead, we are heavily invested in habits, beliefs, opinions, hopes, dreams, and fears collected from the past. So our thinking, feeling, and doing is entangled with the past even when we want something new, better, fresh, and different.

You cant always use will power or desire to cut the ties that bind you to the past, but you can do something that will lessen the influence of the past: You can start to see yourself clearly. With that one intention, you are starting from the ground up, because seeing yourself clearly happens here and now. You detach yourself from your story, which is the accumulation of your past. You take a fresh look at what is generating all this thinking, feeling, and doing. The process has to have an origin, a source, a wellspring that sets the active mind going every minute of the day.

Normally, if we try to see ourselves clearly, we are actually looking through a lens. We filter and arrange our experiences. Some experiences we reject, ignore, judge against, or censor. Other experiences we encourage, value, appreciate, and allow to enter our minds. The lens you choose is critical, yet people often dont realize they have a choice. It doesnt strike them in the first place that they see themselvesand everything around themthrough a lens.

The lens you see through can also be called your mindset, worldview, or simply your state of awareness. Your perspective, on life, family, relationships, work stem from it. Things become confusing because we are caught up in the conflicting stories, explanations, and belief systems that everyone gets exposed to. This confusion can be sorted out once you start to see yourself clearly. Cutting through all the clutter, you discover that you actually know whats going on. Deep inside, you are fully aware already.

There are three lenses you can view life through, configured as Mind 1, 2, or 3 at this moment.

Mind 1: You view life as a separate individual. The leading indicator of Mind 1 is the sense of localization within the body. As a result of being limited by the body, Mind 1 can only detect a world of localized things. As we see ourselves, so we see the world. You localize yourself in your body, and as a result you see a world of separate things. Other people live inside their own bodies, which gives them their own sense of separation. In Mind 1 you provide fertile ground for the ego. I, me, and mine become all-important. This makes perfect sense, because your agenda as a separate person is all about the experiences of pleasure and pain that emanate from the body. Even a mental state like anxiety is rooted in the body, because what you fear comes down to a painful feeling in here. In every respect Mind 1 is dominated by yes and no to the experiences that come your way. To achieve peace, you must successfully compete in the arena of separate people and things, experiences and events.

Mind 1 seems totally right and natural in the modern secular world. Mind 1 is reflected in sciences total focus on physical things, from microbes and subatomic particles, from the Big Bang to the multiverse. A bestselling book from 1970, Our Bodies, Ourselves, applies to all of us in Mind 1.

Mind 2: Mind 2 is centered in the unity of mind and body. It isnt necessary to see yourself confined to the physical package of a body. In fact, this mindset can be turned on its head. In place of isolation there is connection; in place of things there is process; in place of hard facts, there is an easy continuous flow. You relax into the flow of experience rather than slicing life into bits that must be judged, analyzed, accepted or rejected. Mind 2 lets you see yourself more clearly, because in reality the mind-body connection is a single continuity. Every thought and feeling creates an effect in every cell. You can consciously create change in the whole system through a switch in awareness. Mind 2 is subtler than Mind 1you have moved deeper inside who you really are, and those aspects and abilities that were filtered out by Mind 1 begin to come into view. You are the one who experiences, observes, and knows.

For most people Mind 2 begins to dawn when they meditate or do Yoga, finding access to the quiet mind that lies beneath the surface of the restless active mind. With this discovery comes a way to see beyond the separate egos fruitless search for perfect pleasure, power, or success. As a deeper vision of self and life soaks through all experience, Mind 2 is established.

Mind 3: Mind 3 expands awareness beyond all particulars. It is a radical redefining of what we mean when we use the indicator I. It places you in an infinite field of pure awareness, where all things exist as possibilities. This is not only a clear view, it is clarity itself, because there is no thing or process to obstruct your vision. Boundaries dont exist. There is no past or future. Even the idea of a present vanishes. the clearest view you can possibly have, because there are no boundaries to limit your vision. You are awake, you see things without any filter, your past no longer holds you captive, and therefore you are free, which is why Mind 3 has been known for centuries as liberation. There are no more mind-forged manacles, as the poet William Blake memorably called our self-imposed limitations.

Mind 3 is open to everyone, but there is a large obstacle that must be overcome, which is this: We are convinced by the lens we see things through already. Each mindset feels real and complete. You identify with physical things in Mind 1, the most important thing being your body. In Mind 2 you identify with your field of awareness as it brings experiences and sensations that rise and fall. Because it takes an inner journey to reach, Mind 2 isnt where the mass of humankind is, yet without a doubt anyone can go there. Mind 2 is a more natural fit than Mind 1, in fact, because if you see yourself clearly, you cannot doubt that thinking, feeling, and doing is constantly on the move, ever-changing, ever renewing itself.

But Mind 2 has its own peculiar limitation. I lingers and holds its own by experiencing my thinking, feeling, and doing. There is no need for this. Everyone alive, with the fewest exceptions, has been indoctrinated into Mind 1. In Mind 2 you escape this crude, second-hand, socially approved indoctrination. But there is a subtle indoctrination that replaces it, which sees the spiritual life as higher, better, and more valuable than ordinary life. This leads to a subtle clinging, a desire to keep the spiritual goodies coming your way and a self-image superior to those people who have not yet seen the light.

The subtle tendency to possess any idea, however fine that idea is, keeps the ego going. Letting it go entirely feels threatening. Who will I be if there is no I anymore? But if you stand back, this fearful worry only exists because the ego is asking it. Of course I will never agree to its own demotion. I is about self-preservation. The shift into Mind 3 occurs when you see that there are countless moments when you did without your ego.

Every experience of joy, love, compassion, beauty, peace, and service sets the ego aside. You go beyond I in a simple, natural glimpse of who you really are. You are the field of awareness itself, unbounded and free. Every possible experience originates here, before the whole interference of ego, society, family, school, and painful memories even begins.

Thats why Mind 3 has been dubbed the first and last freedom. It is the freedom you attain when you realize that you had it all along. Clear away the clutter, and it is simply there. Mind 1 and Mind 2 are creations, while Mind 3 is uncreated. It is the womb of creation, and when we arrive there, the inevitable feeling is that weve returned home at last. NOTE: For a visual journey through these Three Minds, visit anoopkumar.com/mind.

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.

Anoop Kumar, MD, MMgt is a Mind-Body Strategist who is Board-Certified in Emergency Medicine and holds a Masters degree in Management with a focus in Health Leadership. He is a keynote speaker and author who enjoys bringing clarity to the intersection of consciousness and everything else. Anoop is the author of numerous articles as well as two booksMichelangelo's Medicine and Is This a Dream? In addition to speaking and writing services, he offers consultations with individuals, teams, and organizations interested in deepening their understanding and experience of human potential, mind-body systems, and consciousness. Visit Anoop at anoopkumar.com and @dranoopkumar.
Chelsea Tabart was an associate of Dyson Heydon in 2012. "In respect of the confidential inquiry and its subsequent confidential report, any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law is categorically denied by our client," the statement said. "Our client says that if any conduct of his has caused offence, that result was inadvertent and unintended, and he apologises for any offence caused. "We have asked the High Court to convey that directly to the associate complainants. ''The inquiry was an internal administrative inquiry and was conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member. It was conducted without having statutory powers of investigation and of administering affirmations or oaths.''

One of his former associates, Rachael Patterson Collins, told the Herald that Mr Heydons actions had real and terrible consequences which led her to abandon her plans to become a barrister. Chelsea Tabart, another former associate, said she too left the law because the culture was broken from the top down. She felt she would not be safe from powerful men like Mr Heydon even if I reported them. Dyson Heydon was one of the most powerful men in the country, said Josh Bornstein, the womens lawyer and a principal with law firm Maurice Blackburn in Melbourne. As the independent investigation makes clear, he is also a sex pest. At the same time he was dispensing justice in the highest court in Australias legal system, he was [engaged in] sexual harassment. Vivienne Thom, the former Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, interviewed a dozen witnesses, including five former associates. Dr Thoms report found that the evidence demonstrates a tendency by Mr Heydon to engage in a pattern of conduct of sexual harassment which included unwelcome touching, attempting to kiss the women and taking them into his bedroom. A Herald investigation can reveal that Mr Heydons predatory behaviour was an open secret in legal and judicial circles. Not only did he prey on his young associates during his decade on the High Court until his mandatory retirement at 70 in 2013, other females in the profession suffered at his hands.

Mr Heydon, via his lawyers, denied "emphatically any allegation of sexual harassment or

any offence". A current judge told the Herald that Mr Heydon slid his hand between her thighs at a professional law dinner not long after he joined the High Court bench. Former ACT Law Society President Noor Blumer. Credit:Gary Schafer He indecently assaulted me. I have no doubt it was a crime and he knew I was not consenting, said the judge. Indecent assault, which involves the unwanted touching of another person in a sexual manner without that persons consent, can attract a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.

Despite telling him to Get your f--king hands off me the judge, a barrister at the time, said Justice Heydon was too powerful to complain about. The power imbalance is such that he is so senior  He was a giant of the profession. She said any such complaint could have killed the career of a female practitioner. He was also notoriously unkind about people  If you fell foul of him you know he wouldn't think twice about telling other people how dreadful you were. Mr Heydon is also alleged to have indecently assaulted the then president of the ACT Law Society, Noor Blumer, at the University of Canberra Law Ball in April, 2013. According to a statement from the university, Mr Heydon was "removed from the event and returned to his accommodation", following a complaint of "inappropriate behaviour" from a student the same night. Ms Blumer said while she sat next to Mr Heydon at the dinner, he started feeling up the side of my leg. Then, on the pretext of discussing adoption law with her, he took her to an empty room where he attempted to forcibly kiss her.

Ms Blumer, who is the director of a Canberra law firm, was upset and disgusted. She left the ball immediately. The next day she made a lengthy contemporaneous file note of the evening, which the Herald has seen, and also notified the university. In a statement to the Herald, Professor Murray Raff from the University of Canberra confirmed that Ms Blumer complained to him the next day of inappropriate and unwelcome behaviour towards her at the Ball, by the retired Justice of the High Court of Australia, Dyson Heydon. A female student, who also attended the ball, also reported an unpleasant encounter with the judge when he commented on her breasts, she said. Justice Dyson Heydon in his Sydney chambers in 2002. Credit:Renee Nowyarger Another lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described an incident following a private dinner she had with Mr Heydon when he was a High Court judge.

She said the judge had put his hands down my pants and kissed me on the mouth when she was in a car with him following the dinner. A leading female member of the NSW Bar said that when the 2017 stories about the #MeToo movement broke, her first thought was, Boy, Dyson Heydon should be really worried. The senior counsel recounted Mr Heydon inviting her to his chambers after she appeared before him during a special leave application to the High Court. The woman described being greeted at the door by the judge who was padding around in his socks. All the available seats had books on them leaving only a love seat  a little old-fashioned two seater empty. Champagne on ice and two glasses were laid out. She was acutely aware of what he had in mind. After she politely listened to him spilling the dirt on everyone, judges and barristers alike, she made good her escape. The top silk wasnt so lucky at a later encounter. Mr Heydon, who had retired from the bench and returned to the Sydney bar, invited her to his chambers to discuss a legal matter. This time he blocked her from leaving. He was very intimidating. He is a very big guy. He was in his early 70s but he was still a very imposing person.

The barrister said Mr Heydon planted himself in the doorway and then kissed her. Subsequently, the judge called her repeatedly. I thought his behaviour was bordering on stalking, she recounted. He only stopped after the barrister had a letter hand-delivered to him in which she asked Mr Heydon not to contact her. The predatory behaviour of Mr Heydon, a pre-eminent black-letter-law jurist and a Companion of the Order of Australia, has led to complaints from women as far afield as Oxford University. A 2015 complaint by a student that the judge had groped her in the library, brought to an end his Visiting Professorship at the prestigious UK university, where he had originally studied as a Rhodes Scholar in 1964. In 2012, 22 year-old Chelsea Tabart was a brilliant student with a first class honours degree in Law from Sydney University, thrilled to have won a prized associateship with Justice Heydon.

An associate is a personal assistant to the judge who conducts legal research and helps review judgments. High Court associateships are granted to the most illustrious of graduates and are considered the gateway to a brilliant legal career. On her very first day, after the office staff went out for dinner, the judge offered her a lift home, Ms Tabart told the Herald. He suggested they stop for a drink. Ms Tabart said she was expecting they would go to a bar but instead the judge took her to his room at The Commonwealth Club, the prestigious private club in Yarralumla where the judge stayed while court was in session. Ms Tabarts 68-year-old boss poured them a glass of wine and sat down next to her on the couch. She told Dr Thom that when the judge asked her about a deformity of her finger, he responded by stroking her hand and saying: I dont think its weird, I think its beautiful. Mr Heydon then dropped her hand, moved closer to her on the couch and put his right hand on her left thigh.

Ms Tabart attempted to excuse herself and said she would get a cab home, at which point Justice Heydon offered to go with her. You dont know what kind of creeps are out there, he said. She immediately called her boyfriend and then her father, she said. She also noticed she had missed a phone call from her predecessor, Alex Eggerking, who had also been at the dinner that night. The next day Ms Eggerking was upset with herself. She hadnt thought she would need to warn her so quickly that the judge had a history of harassing his female associates. She had been intending to advise Ms Tabart not to be alone with him, but she was concerned it would be too overwhelming to caution her on her first day. When contacted by the investigators, Ms Eggerking disclosed that she too had been sexually harassed by Justice Heydon.

Rachael Patterson Collins started as an associate with the judge in 2005, when she was 26. Ms Collins told Dr Thom that as a working class, conservative Catholic, she felt lonely and isolated in Canberra, excluded from the clique of the other judges associates. The investigation found her to be an honest and credible witness with a clear recollection of events. Some time around May 2005, she confided in the judge that she was suffering from depression. That same evening there was a chambers dinner during which the judge typically drank heavily, she told the investigation. After dinner, Ms Collins drove Justice Heydon home. She confided in him that she was being bullied by some of the other associates and was having a difficult time in Canberra. He reached over and began caressing her hand, she said.

Ms Collins felt alarmed and confused by Justice Heydons conduct, which she saw as a sexual advance, Dr Thom reported. Instead of helping me, he tried to take advantage of my vulnerability and I had to leave my position early, Ms Collins told the Herald. It was considered unthinkable and possibly damaging to your career to quit an associateship, but Ms Collins did just that having been offered a full scholarship at an American university. She refused Mr Heydons persistent invitations to have dinner with him alone to mark her departure but finally agreed to have a drink in his chambers. He had the champagne ready, she took it and moved to the other side of his room. After commenting on her hair colour, he asked her to stand up. Justice Heydon then stood close to her and, looking down at her, said: Can I kiss you? the report states.

Ms Collins rebuffed him. Maybe just on the cheek then? he pleaded. She replied: No! Youre married, youre my boss. I am a practising Catholic. No. Justice Michael McHughs associate Sharona Coutts was still in the office. Ms Collins was crying as she told her what happened. Later, when the court was sitting in Adelaide, Ms Collins told the judge she wanted to speak to him about his conduct. He said he was giving a talk and to meet him at the hotel afterwards. Instead of going to a bar, he took her to his room. Ms Collins said how disappointed she was in his behaviour as he was a married man, a judge, a Christian and a conservative. Asked why he did this, he replied, Because youre beautiful. Ms Collins told him he couldnt keep doing this. Do you have any idea how upset your wife and kids would be if they found out? She warned him that if he kept doing it, it would eventually leak to the press and that he would look like a hypocrite.
New York Police Department has suspended an officer for slamming a black man to the ground on Sunday and putting him in a chokehold - eight days after Governor Andrew Cuomo banned the tactic.

The man, who gave his name to officers as Ricky Bellevue, was standing with two white men on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach at 8.45am.

The two white men were filming the officers, jeering at them and encircling them.

When Bellevue, 35 - who is black - gets close to the officer bodycamera footage shows him being flung to the floor.

In his left hand he held a white plastic bag, but a policeman said he grabbed something, perhaps with his right hand, and approached the officers. The footage is unclear.

Bellevue then tells a cop: 'You scared, you scared?'

As he approaches the officer, one of the white men turns to Bellevue and says: 'Yo, n***** what the f***?'

One of the belligerent men tries to hold Bellevue back, but the officer lunges forward and grabs him, taking him down. A scuffle then ensues.

The man, who gave his name as Ricky Bellevue, 35, from Rockaway, was held in a chokehold

Bellevue was thrown to the floor after confronting officers on Rockaway Beach in New York

Photos from the scene appear to show Bellevue being held in a chokehold.

As four uniformed officers restrained the man  who was face-down on the ground  a bystander yelled: 'Yo, he's choking 'em, let 'em go!'

Dermot Shea, commissioner of NYPD, said the officer involved had been suspended.

'Accountability in policing is essential,' he said.

'After a swift investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau, a police officer involved in a disturbing apparent chokehold incident in Queens has been suspended without pay.

'While a full investigation is still underway, there is no question in my mind that this immediate action is necessary.

'We are committed to transparency as this process continues.'

The NYPD Commissioner swiftly suspended the officer and said an investigation is underway

The New York Daily News named the suspended officer as David Afanador.

Bellevue, who lives with his twin brother in Rockaway, is overheard telling the officers he is bipolar and asthmatic.

'This is what you do to a black man on Father's Day?' he says after he is led to an ambulance.

'This is what you do in America? I'm born in America.

'You're not here to help us. You're here to kill us. I always get beat up by the police.'

Standing by an EMT vehicle, he complains about his neck.

'Sir, there is no pressure on your neck,' one officer is overheard saying.

Bellevue keeps on repeating that he is asthmatic.

A person says: 'Sir, I am EMS, do you mind if I take a look at your lungs?'

He replies: 'Get the f*** away from me. You put me on my head. You smacked me, n*****.'

The officer tells him he needs to stop spitting.

'I'm going to sue y'all,' he says. 'I want all your badges.'

Two white men are seen in bodycam footage jeering at the police as Green looks on

Bellevue then comes close up to the officers - who claim he was threatening them

A tussle ensues and Bellevue is wrestled to the floor and handcuffed

At least five officers are on the scene at Rockaway Beach

Bellevue is then helped to his feet and, in handcuffs, led towards an awaiting ambulance

While he is being looked at by the EMT, a woman yells: 'Do you not see that they are mentally ill, as well as he is? This is foolish.'

An officer approaches him and says: 'Ma'am. They were all acting crazy, right.'

She replies: 'So how are they not all being detained?'

He says: 'Let me finish. They are all obviously intoxicated. We know he has a mental history, past. We know he's bipolar. They were all talking all types of crazy stuff to us, we did nothing, I don't care - anybody can say whatever they want to us.

'What changed everything is when he grabbed something and squared up and was going to hit my officer, who's standing over there. That's when everything changed.

'The minute I saw him flex on him, that's when he goes down. Because we don't get hurt and we're not going to leave somebody violent out here who might do that to one of you, or another innocent person.

'And that's why he's in cuffs, and why he's going to the hospital, because we know he's ill.

'The other two were being loud, aggressive, and we don't like the way they are acting. But they are not acting like they were going to hurt anybody.

She suggests that he was arrested for calling the officers 'a white piece of s***.'

He continues: 'If we arrested every person who called me a white piece of s*** I'd have to lock up half the beach.

'Somebody who is not being violent, we'll allow you to have your First Amendment rights and go home.

'Somebody who acts differently towards us or the public, that's it and we'll have to take you into custody.'

The NYPD swiftly released bodycamera footage from Sunday's incident

Bellevue's lawyer, Lori Zeno of the Queens Defenders, said he is still recovering at Jamaica Hospital.

'I want the officer who put him in a chokehold to be in the cell next to him,' she said.

'This guy should be charged criminally, and fired.'

Mayor de Blasio on Sunday called the video 'very concerning.'

'We're glad the NYPD is immediately launching an investigation to get to the bottom of what happened,' the mayor said.

Letitia James, the New York attorney general, said individuals who use chokeholds could be found guilty of a C felony.

'It is a very troubling video,' she said.

She said people had gathered in front of the 100th Precinct to 'demand justice and accountability'.
When Mohamed Ali Pasha rose to power in Egypt in 1805, he saw that the previous ruling Mameluke factions were the biggest obstacle to his authority and that they could undermine his plans. They still controlled much of the country and resisted much of his authority through their baronial rights.



Therefore, he ruthlessly crushed them after inviting them to a banquet in the Cairo Citadel in honour of his son Tosoun as a step towards building a new relationship. In March 1811, 500 Mameluke chiefs under the leadership of Shahin Bey marched in a military procession to a huge banquet set up in the Citadels southern enclosure. The Bab Al-Azab gate was firmly locked behind them as the last guest walked in.



Once seated, the unarmed Mameluke lords realised that they were trapped and the high walls of the gate and Citadel prevented them from fleeing. They were faced with a battalion of Mohamed Alis loyal Albanian soldiers, who killed them all, thus ending the Mamelukes and their dominion in Egypt.

The Bab Al-Azab is the great lower gate of the Cairo Citadel that looks out over the Sultan Hassan and Al-Refaai Mosques. The commander of the Mameluke Al-Azab Corps, the emir Radwan Katkhuda Al-Galfi, built the gate in 1754 to replace an older one built by a predecessor. It is in the same architectural style as the Citadels two other gates, but is considered the larger and more beautiful.It has two rectangular towers that contain the structures from which hot oil was once poured on attackers, and it long served as the main entrance to the southern enclosure of the Citadel. When the khedive Abbas Helmi I extended neighbouring Remeila Square in the late 19th century, he restored and embellished the gates Gothic elements and external double stairs.Osama Talaat, head of the Islamic, Coptic and Jewish Antiquities Sector at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, said that the Bab Al-Azab had been named many years before its construction. In 1517, when the invading Ottomans arrived in Egypt, they began referring to the Citadels lower enclosure as Al-Azab after the stables built by the Mameluke Sultan Al-Nasser Mohamed Ibn Qalawun in 1311 to house the 4,800 horses in his possession.The area started being used as a dormitory for an Ottoman regiment known as Al-Azab  in Arabic it literally means the bachelors  since its members were not allowed to marry until they retired.The French Expedition to Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte at the end of the 18th century changed these rules, and the members of the Al-Azab Corps were allowed to marry and even given permission to build houses within the fortress walls. By the mid-19th century the Citadel had been turned into a kind of residential district with shops, public baths, and commercial enterprises as a result. It lost part of its military functions, and a labyrinth of small streets was created.Today, Abdel-Aziz continued, the gate area is home to six major archaeological sites, including the Mosque and Palace of Katkhuda, the Tower of Al-Ashraf Khalil Ibn Qalawoun, and a string of warehouses and one-storey buildings once used as soldiers dormitories and stables.In 1989, the Italian government offered to develop the Bab Al-Azab area, but the plan came under fire when former culture minister Farouk Hosni intended to lease the land to a private company to build a hotel and shopping complex.The plan won the approval of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Permanent Committee for Islamic and Coptic Monuments in 1993. But as arguments raged between its opponents and supporters the project was put on hold and the Bab Al-Azab fell into disrepair.NEW DEVELOPMENTS: Last week, the SCA and the Sovereign Fund of Egypt (SFE) signed a contract to develop and manage the provision of services to visitors to the Bab al-Azab area.The SCA will solely manage the historic site, while the SFE will manage the operations and services in the Bab Al-Azab area, reflecting the collaboration between the parties to revive the area and increase its historic and economic value.The SFE aims to boost sustainable economic development in Egypt through attracting private investments to develop state assets, in accordance with best international practices, optimising their returns and maximising their long-term value for future generations.The contract between the SCA and the SFE for the development of the Bab Al-Azab area was signed by Mustafa Waziri, secretary-general of the SCA, and Ayman Suleiman, CEO of the SFE, in the presence of Hala Al-Said, minister of planning and economic development and chair of the board of the SFE, and Khaled El-Enany, minister of tourism and antiquities.This contract is part of Historic Cairos rehabilitation efforts, reflecting the governments focus on improving the quality of services to visitors to the Citadel, one of the most important historic sites in Egypt.It is the first investment project for the SFE in the tourism and antiquities sector, in cooperation with the SCA, and it will include the complete development of the Bab Al-Azab area. Opening this unutilised area of the Citadel to the public after reviving it will place it on Egypts list of historic and cultural tourist attractions and provide cultural services to the area, in addition to establishing and operating traditional markets and handicraft shops and cultural events.Al-Said said the agreement reflected the SFEs role in increasing returns on state-owned assets through value-accretive investments to better utilise Egypts resources for future generations. It is important for the SFE to contribute to developing historic areas to introduce new generations to Egypts history and generate positive returns on state assets through creative projects, she said.She added that the objective of the SFE was to attract investors to contribute technically and financially to such projects in order to increase state revenues and create employment opportunities in sectors with high potential.El-Enany said the collaboration directed more investments to touristic development and provided a model for investment projects to operate attractive and efficient services for visitors to major touristic destinations in Egypt.It also confirms the success of the ministrys vision in developing and operating services in historic sites, enhancing their cultural value and diversifying Egyptian touristic products while adding new cultural tourism destinations, he added.

Waziri said the SCA was seeking to re-utilise, preserve, and develop Egypts historic areas in a sustainable manner, as well as to provide services to the visitors of these areas to enrich their cultural experience. He said the rehabilitation of historic buildings after their restoration was one of the most important methods of preserving them, and it worked to raise their cultural and economic value, promoting such areas as new touristic and cultural destinations.Suleiman said the SFE would team up with private investors to develop the Bab Al-Azab site. The buildings in the area would then offer visitors a rich cultural experience that accentuated the Citadels historic value and highlighted the pivotal events it had witnessed and its role in Egypts modern history, he said. It was essential that the private sector played an integral role in adding economic and cultural value to the historical tourism sector, he added.The Bab Al-Azab development project would include a museum with interactive technologies, a market for spices, traditional crafts and foods, a design school, a theatre for traditional and cultural arts, as well as a historical library, Suleiman said.The importance of the project was that we are utilising an undeveloped, closed part of the Citadel that will positively impact the entire area of Historic Cairo, creating jobs and value in the tourism sector with private partners and adding new investment products in the Egyptian economy, he said.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 18 June, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Microsoft on Monday said it's acquiring CyberX, a cybersecurity start-up focused on internet-connected industrial equipment. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, although a May report from Israeli news outlet Globes said Microsoft was in talks to pay $165 million for the startup.

Microsoft offers security products across several categories, including antivirus software and a service for securing the use of cloud applications. In recent years the company has become more interested in managing systems in the so-called internet of things, or IoT; last year it bought Express Logic, a company that makes an operating system for connected devices.

With the acquisition of CyberX, Microsoft will gain additional technology for monitoring corporate hardware like alarms, cameras, phones and industrial control systems for security vulnerabilities.

"CyberX will complement the existing Azure IoT security capabilities, and extends to existing devices including those used in industrial IoT, operational technology and infrastructure scenarios," Microsoft corporate vice presidents Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk and Sam George wrote in a blog post.

"With CyberX, customers can discover their existing IoT assets, and both manage and improve the security posture of those devices. With CyberX, customers can see a digital map of thousands of devices across a factory floor or within a building and gather information about their asset profile and vulnerabilities."

Microsoft expects to integrate CyberX with existing technology, including the cloud-based Azure Sentinel service the company introduced last year for battling security threats, Braverman-Blumenstyk and George wrote.

CyberX was founded in 2013 and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, with more than 150 employees, according to LinkedIn data. The start-up has raised $47 million, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Qualcomm Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. Customers listed on the start-up's website include Deutsche Telekom, SGN and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

In 2018 Microsoft announced a commitment to spend $5 billion on the internet of things over four years.

WATCH: Microsoft president on handling increased demand during coronavirus
A satanist has been accused of burning down a spectacular church in Russia.

Archangel Michaels Orthodox chapel, located deep in the mountains of Siberia, is the countrys highest-altitude church at a height of 6,900ft.

The church, close to the Akken Glavier, was razed to the ground after what was at first believed an accident with candles.

Video footage shows flames burning on 14,783ft-tall Belukha, the highest peak in the Altai Mountains.



However, according to local media reports, officials now fear the famous cedar chapel was destroyed in an arson attack.

The timber church was originally built in 2006, with funds raised by relatives of climbers lost in the mountains.

V Gornom, a Russian outlet, reports that police have now identified self-confessed satanist Sergey Tuzovsky, 40, as their main suspect.

It comes after several witnesses claim the bearded shaman was seen on the lower slopes of Belukha.

One said: We have turned to the police with a statement about intentional arson. The check has started.

Climber Anatoly Minichkin, 67, from Moscow, who was one of the last to visit the chapel on Friday, says no candles were alight at the time.

On June 5, Tuzovsky, posted a video with a jar of blood online, declaring he was taking it to the altar of the Mother in connection with the birth of the force of Lucifer.

Originally from Novosibirsk, local sources say he is now wanted by law enforcement.

Tuzovsky also faces separate charges of using excess force in self-defence, resulting in the death of a man in his house.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Commenting on negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky said there are some answers that are better to hear tete-a-tete.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he had no time to choose to trust or not to trust Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I have not the time to choose to trust or not to trust Vladimir Putin," he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, a Canadian media outlet. "Maybe [the prisoner swap] is not that big a victory, but such small victories make a big victory possible  and for us the big victory is the return of all our stolen lands. That's what I believe in strongly, and that's what I have time for."

Putin has recently said Zelensky's words about World War II will affect the relations between Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian leader said the USSR bears the same responsibility for the outbreak of World War II as Nazi Germany.

Read alsoVisa lib would be "important step" in strengthening Canada-Ukraine relations, Zelensky says

Putin himself said he would like to improve relations with Ukraine. However, the Russian authorities have accused Kyiv of disrupting the Normandy summit due to the alleged failure to fulfill the communique.

Commenting on negotiations with Putin, Zelensky said there are some answers that are better to hear tete-a-tete.

The Ukrainian leader also said Putin had a year to put an end to the war in Donbas.
Every day before his afternoon infirmary appointment at a Houston immigrant dentention center, Juan Carlos Hernandez anticipated that his blood glucose test was going to be more than twice as high as medically safe.

He said he cannot keep his diabetes in check with the food served at the Houston Contract Detention Facility, meals oversaturated with sugars and starches. As a diabetic, he is among the populations with health issues that make him vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. More than 100 immigrants at the facility, about one-third of the detainees there, and two employees have tested positive.

I am afraid.  I feel I am going to die here, said Hernandez, his voice breaking up over the phone in a recent interview.

As COVID-19 cases continue to grow across the state and the nation, most of the attention about how the virus has impacted the incarcerated has focused on outbreaks in local jails and state prisons. Federal lockups under Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsibility, such as the Houston facility, have come under scrutiny by the courts, as well as lawmakers who have criticized how the agency is dealing with the pandemic.

The contract center has reported the highest number of infections among the four detention centers that fall within ICEs jurisdiction in the Houston area. It is also one of more than a dozen facilities in the country a federal judge in California ordered in April to identify and track all detainees with risk factors and consider their release. A group of immigrants sued ICE and the government for what Judge Jesus Bernal characterized as the agencys callous indifference in handling health concerns.

ICE cases spike

At the Houston facility, for example, the judge noted that detainees were required to mop and sweep without gloves or protective equipment. Social distancing was impossible in dorms holding 40 detainees sleeping in bunk beds 4 feet apart.

The suit also named the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, documenting reports of crowded barracks and people sick with flu-like symptoms not receiving medical care. ICE has reported 42 COVID cases there, and officers said it has 272 detainees.

At the Montgomery Detention Center, cases have more than doubled in a week, spiking from 55 on June 9 to 115 on June 16, among a total population of 445 detainees. At IAH Polk Adult Detention Facility in Livingston, 16 cases were reported this week among its 143 immigrants.

ICE officers said the agency has tested about 450 detainees in the four facilities. The detention centers account for just under 40 percent of all cases confirmed in Texas from about a dozen ICE facilities.

As confirmed cases grow, lawyers and advocates for the immigrants say ICE is denying or delaying requests for compassionate release for those with health issues. They also said families fear their loved ones with compromised health will be infected.

Releases are not happening unless you request a review of a case, and even then, they are rarely granted, said Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz, an attorney with the immigration law firm Monty and Ramirez in Houston. She also said ICE is taking an undue amount of time to process cases.

Sofia Casini, director of visitation strategies at Freedom for Immigrants, an advocacy and research nonprofit, said her organizations hotline has been receiving numerous calls from detainees. She said unsanitary conditions in detention facilities are prone to contagion.

It is impossible to control a virus or social distance in those conditions, she said.

ICE announced earlier this year that the agency released about 900 detainees deemed to be at risk of coronavirus complications. The agency said it continues reviewing the detainee population for potential releases, taking into account factors such as immigration history and criminal record.

Allegations that ICE is rejecting or delaying requests for humanitarian release without adequate justification are false, the agency responded in a written comment.

I suffocate

At Unit B-15 in the Houston contract center, immigrants who spoke with the Chronicle said the 40 men there have to share three toilets and three showers. They eat next to each other and, while ICE has provided fabric masks, their use is not enforced.

Hernandez, a native Honduran, requested humanitarian release because of his health and said he has written letters to immigration authorities.

Nobody listens to me  please help me, begged the 36-year-old man, who was initially detained in California, where his wife and three children live. He has been held for 10 months, and was transferred to Houston in March while appealing his request for asylum.

Eric Solorzano, a Salvadoran detained at the Houston facility, is also diabetic and fears infection.

I am distraught. I feel that my health is going to get worse, and Im scared, Solorzano said in a video chat. I cry, I feel very lonely here. I am a good person, I am not a bad person. He has been in ICE custody for eight months while appealing his request for asylum.

Solorzano is skeptical about getting any help to be released. He thinks he is a good candidate for release but said he hasnt seen any signal of interest in his case and doesnt know how to get a lawyer.

Rolando Galdamez held up a sign that read SOS COVID-19. The 36-year-old Salvadoran is detained while he tries to advance a court process to prove he is a legal resident. He said he learned that a request made by his American parents 20 years ago was granted but got lost in bureaucratic limbo.

After more than half a year in confinement, Galdamez, said his mental health is deteriorating.

I feel like I cant breathe, he said, that everything is darkening and that the entire ceiling and the walls fall on me. I suffocate.

Many in federal detention facilities are held while waiting for their hearings before immigration courts, sometimes for years. Others are in the process of being deported. Of those with criminal records, many are the result of soaring increases of criminal arrests and convictions for immigration offenses during the Trump administration. They more than doubled in his first year, data from the Pew Research Center shows.

Their concerns and pleas for help are leading to protests at facilities around the nation.

Detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center in the Rio Grande Valley went on a hunger strike this month, and similar actions have happened in other facilities in the country.

Life is difficult

Advocates recognize that detention centers are now less crowded.

The population in ICE custody has dropped from 38,500 to 28,870 over a two-month period that began in early March. Officers said the decline is mostly the result of temporary suspension of raids and other operations, and a dramatic drop in illegal border crossing during the pandemic.

Still, for immigrants such as Wilson Marquez-Lopez, the only counts that matter are coronavirus infections and the risk to become the virus next victim at the Houston contract center.

Seated in a wheelchair during a video chat, the 27-year-old Salvadoran man said that he was kidnapped for ransom by gang members in Mexico on his way to the U.S. Unable to pay, he said he was thrown under a train known as La Bestia and lost his legs.

I hope I will win my appeal for asylum, Marquez-Lopez said, knowing the process can take months or years.

Hernandez, on the other hand, might be the lucky one among his peers. He said that, over a week ago, a lawyer told him that he may be released.

Hernandezs daughter, Lourdes, 14, said her dad cries whenever he hears her and their family on the phone from detention.

I really miss my dad. All our lives we have been together, the girl said. Life is difficult with him locked up.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

twitter.com/oliviaptallet
,



We're sorry, this article is not currently available
(Newser)  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the NYPD for its swift action after it suspended an officer hours after he was seen putting his arm around a man's neck. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the man was put in an "apparent chokehold," which was recorded on video by passersby on a beach boardwalk in Queens on Sunday, CBS reports. In the video, a witness can be heard yelling "Stop choking him, bro!" The officer with his arm around the man's neck relaxed his grip after another officer tapped him on the back, a move that de Blasio said was "exactly the right thing." "I commend him. That is what we need to see from all our officers," the mayor tweeted.

story continues below

The NYPD banned chokeholds in 1993 and they were recently criminalized by both the city and the state, reports the Washington Post. It's not clear whether the officer in Sunday's incident will be charged. "Accountability in policing is essential. After a swift investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau, a police officer involved in a disturbing apparent chokehold incident in Queens has been suspended without pay," Shea said in a statement Sunday. Police also released body camera footage of the incident. "Today was the fastest I have EVER seen the NYPD act to discipline an officer," the mayor tweeted. "Within hours: Immediate suspension. Body camera footage released. Discipline process initiated. This is how it needs to be." (Read more chokehold stories.)
'China can't stop any company from relocating to India.'

IMAGE: A protest against Chinese goods and Xi Jinping, chairmsn of China's Central Military Commission. Photograph: PTI Photo

"Nobody trusts China," Swadeshi Jagran Manch Co-Convenor Dr Ashwani Mahajan tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com in the concluding segment of the interview:

Part 1 of the interview: 'Business and war cannot go side by side'

Is China irritated with India because of what is happening on the business front?

See, you can't stop companies from relocating. It is a company's business decision. If they see that it is good for their business if they relocate to India, you can't do anything about it.

On the other hand, Apple doesn't want to relocate as they see good business opportunities in China. It is a business decision of each company. And companies will make decisions, whether to come to India or whether to stay in China, based on their business interests.

China can't stop any company from relocating to India. 1,000-odd companies have already applied to shift base to India.

Here I want to make a cautionary note. These multinational companies take away huge royalty amounts from India.

As per the information provided to me by the commerce ministry, around $20 billion go out of the country every year under the name, royalty.

Many people were surprised when I said we had no problem with multinational companies relocating to India.

Then I said, we had three conditions. And these conditions are nothing new, they are there in other countries too.

The conditions are: They should not look for the local market, instead should produce in India for exports.

You know, 55% of the exports from China come from foreign companies, and not Chinese companies.

Second condition, they must use domestic content.

Like in the case of automobile production, all components should be sourced from India.

We should have the same condition for companies relocating from China. This will help improve the ecosystem in India.

Our small scale and medium scale industries can prosper by producing the components for them.

Third is, we should put a cap on royalty.

In fact, the government is already thinking about it, and very soon you will hear about a cap on royalty.

The cap was removed in 2009 and from then on, the royalty going out of India is going up in leaps and bounds.

I will give you an example. When you purchase a Rs 10 lakh Maruti car, Rs 54,000 go to Japan as royalty.

The Swadeshi Jagran Manch has asked actors, celebrities and sportspersons not to endorse Chinese products.

Nothing is above the nation. Like I said earlier, business and war cannot go together.

See, you are a celebrity not on your own. A person is a celebrity because people like him. So, you should not make use of your celebrity status to promote your enemy's products.

Is it a request? Or, if they do not obey, will they be targeted?

Wherever I have said this, I have said, with folded hands, I am requesting you...

So, there is no pressure on them...

It is a request, but I know that all Indians are patriotic. These people will understand the implications of what they are doing. Obviously, that will help.

If even one person purchases a mobile phone influenced by a celebrity, it will be the nation's loss.

I am sure celebrities will rise to the occasion.

Is it not scary that India is surrounded by unfriendly neighbours and China wields a lot of influence on all of them?

On one side, China is doing it deliberately by instigating Nepal which has a Communist regime now. Pakistan has always been unfriendly with us.

Now, Sri Lanka has understood the way China has grabbed their port, and they are annoyed with China.

The Nepalese people are not only our friends, but they are part of India.

Part of India?

When I say part of India, I mean we never had any borders with Nepal. They come and go without any passport and there is not even an exchange of any documents. That shows Nepal is like a part of India.

What is happening right now is because of the influence of China on the present Communist regime.

I know the people of Nepal are not with the present government.

We should not forget that China is instigating all our neighbours when it has border disputes with all its neighbouring countries. All of them fear about China grabbing their land.

China is a bigger problem, and nobody trusts China.
Salutes healthcare workers in the fight against COVID-19 with up to 40% off at Ascotts participating properties worldwide



(TRAVPR.COM) Singapore, 22 June 2020  CapitaLands wholly owned lodging business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott) has launched a new points purchase feature for its Ascott Star Rewards (ASR) loyalty programme. The feature provides ASR members with greater flexibility to buy points in advance or gift the points to family and friends as travel gradually resumes across the world. ASR points can be fully redeemed for room nights with no blackout period restriction.

ASR has remained a resilient channel to drive direct online booking revenue during the COVID-19 outbreak. In appreciation of its ASR members, Ascott is launching a 1-for-1 bonus promotion for its new points purchase feature. ASR members will receive 100% free bonus points if they purchase at least S$500 worth of points before 31 August 2020. Members will be able to redeem for more room nights with these free bonus points at no extra cost.

Since the launch of ASR in 2019, the number of direct online bookings from ASR members have quadrupled. ASR membership has also tripled. Currently, 90% of bookings through Ascotts websites are made by ASR members and majority of ASR members are from China, Australia, Singapore, France, Philippines and Malaysia.

Ms Tan Bee Leng, Managing Director, Brand & Marketing, The Ascott Limited, said: Ascott is very grateful for the loyalty of our ASR members, especially during this challenging COVID-19 period. The increase in ASR members and strong direct sales through our website show the trust our guests have in Ascott. From ensuring our properties are future-ready, safe and clean, to enhancing our digital and web-booking capabilities, we continue to offer our guests greater convenience and value with Ascott. We have stood by our guests during these difficult months, including giving bonus ASR points for cancellation refunds and extending ASR membership tiers for an additional year. We want to thank and reward our ASR members for their support and give them a leg-up in their future travels. When our ASR members are ready to rediscover the world with Ascott, their upsized points will provide greater flexibility and value to go further and travel better than before.

As many parts of the world cautiously step out of COVID-19s shadow, we recognise it would not be possible without the bravery and efforts of our frontline healthcare workers all over the world who have done their part in keeping COVID-19 at bay. Their contributions in making our shared communities a safer place is invaluable. We are therefore offering a special ASR benefit to healthcare workers as they can continue to count on Ascott to provide them with a safe home away from home, added Ms Tan.

Up to 100% Free Bonus Points for Advance Purchases by ASR Members

To enable ASR members to charge up their points as they prepare to rediscover travel, members can start receiving free bonus points ranging from 25% when they purchase S$100 worth of points; to 100% when they purchase at least S$500 worth of points. The promotion starts now until 31 August 2020. Members can enjoy greater freedom to redeem the points anytime within the next two years at any ASR participating serviced residences and hotels in over 80 cities and more than 30 countries. The purchase of points will further contribute to the upgrade of their membership tier. For more information on Ascott Points Purchase, please visit: https://www.the-ascott.com/en/member/buy-points.html.

ASR is the first loyalty programme in the serviced residence industry to offer full flexibility to earn and redeem points. There is no cap to points earned, no minimum points redemption and no blackout dates.

To further reward members, Ascott is also giving away a total of S$1,500 worth of ASR points to three lucky winners through the #ReadyToRediscover giveaway on Ascotts Facebook page. The giveaway takes place from now till 12 July 2020.

In April 2020, ASRs global benefits were also extended to corporate travellers, providing them with the flexibility of booking online directly with Ascott and earning ASR points.

Up to 40% off at Ascott for healthcare workers

Ascott is supporting workers from the healthcare industry involved in the global fight against COVID-19. They can receive up to 40% off at participating Ascott properties worldwide from 1 July to 31 December 2020 when they sign up as an ASR member for free and book online. Upon check-in, they will be required to present a valid staff identity card or any official documents to verify that they belong in the healthcare industry. To book, please visit: https://www.the-ascott.com/en/offers/exclusively-for-healthcare-heroes.html.

The gesture extends Ascotts support for healthcare workers and Ascotts contribution in the fight against COVID-19. Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak across the world, many of Ascotts serviced residences remained operational to provide a haven for its guests, including healthcare workers, returning nationals, and those affected by border closures.

To continue providing a safe home away from home for its guests, and a safe working environment for its staff, Ascott launched Ascott Cares to deliver stringent hygiene and cleanliness standards as well as safe distancing. Ascott Cares is in compliance with the World Health Organization standards and local regulations. It is being rolled out progressively to its properties globally from June 2020. For more information on Ascott Cares, please visit: www.the-ascott.com/ascottcares.

About The Ascott Limited

The Ascott Limited is a Singapore company that has grown to be one of the leading international lodging owner-operators. Ascott's portfolio spans more than 180 cities across over 30 countries in Asia Pacific, Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the USA.

Ascott has about 70,000 operating units and over 48,000 units under development, making a total of about 118,000 units in over 700 properties.

The companys serviced residence and hotel brands include Ascott The Residence, The Crest Collection, Somerset, Quest, Citadines, lyf, Preference, Vertu, Harris, Citadines Connect, Fox, Yello and POP!.

Ascott, a wholly owned subsidiary of CapitaLand Limited, pioneered Asia Pacifics first international-class serviced residence with the opening of The Ascott Singapore in 1984. Today, the company boasts over 30 years of industry track record and award-winning brands that enjoy recognition worldwide.

Ascotts achievements have been recognised internationally. Recent awards include DestinAsian Readers' Choice Awards 2020 for 'Best Serviced Residence Brand'; World Travel Awards 2019 for Leading Serviced Apartment Brand in Asia, Europe and the Middle East; Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Awards 2019 for 'Best Serviced Residence Brand'; Business Traveller China Awards 2019 for 'Best Luxury Serviced Residence Brand'; and TTG China Travel Awards 2019 for Best Serviced Residence Operator in China. For a full list of awards, please visit https://www.the-ascott.com/ascottlimited/awards.html.

About CapitaLand Limited

CapitaLand Limited (CapitaLand) is one of Asias largest diversified real estate groups. Headquartered and listed in Singapore, it owns and manages a global portfolio worth S$131.9 billion as at 31 December 2019. CapitaLands portfolio spans across diversified real estate classes which includes commercial, retail; business park, industrial and logistics; integrated development, urban development; as well as lodging and residential. With a presence across more than 200 cities in over 30 countries, the Group focuses on Singapore and China as its core markets, while it continues to expand in markets such as India, Vietnam, Australia, Europe and the USA.

CapitaLand has one of the largest real estate investment management businesses globally. It manages seven listed real estate investment trusts (REITs) and business trusts as well as over 20 private funds. Since it pioneered REITs in Singapore with the listing of CapitaLand Mall Trust in 2002, CapitaLands REITs and business trusts have expanded to include Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust, CapitaLand Commercial Trust, Ascott Residence Trust, CapitaLand Retail China Trust, Ascendas India Trust and CapitaLand Malaysia Mall Trust.

Visit www.capitaland.com for more information.

Issued by: The Ascott Limited Website: www.the-ascott.com

168 Robinson Road, #30-01 Capital Tower, Singapore 068912

For more information, please contact:

Joan Tan, Vice President, Group Communications

Tel: (65) 6713 2864 Mobile: (65) 9743 9503 Email: joan.tanzm@capitaland.com

Ngeow Shang Lin, Manager, Group Communications

Tel: (65) 6713 2860 Mobile: (65) 9877 6305 Email: ngeow.shanglin@capitaland.com

Kim Quek, Manager, Group Communications

Tel: (65) 6713 3097 Mobile: (65) 9339 4231 Email: kim.quek@capitaland.com

###
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex made a huge decision with their plan to exit the royal family, but will they ever return to their former duties? While some have speculated that they could find their way back to the royal life, theres one big clue that they have cut ties entirely.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Pool/Samir Hussein/WireImage

Prince Harry and Meghan left their royal duties

The Sussexes made their bombshell announcement in January, revealing their plan to take a step back from their royal duties in an effort to escape the constant media scrutiny. Queen Elizabeth finalized the details of their exit, with Prince Harry and Meghan agreeing to give up their HRH titles and any public funding.

At the time, the queen issued a statement in support of their decision. Following many months of conversations and more recent discussions, I am pleased that together we have found a constructive and supportive way forward for my grandson and his family, the statement read. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved members of my family. I recognise the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life.

The statement continued, I want to thank them for all their dedicated work across this country, the Commonwealth and beyond, and am particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family. It is my whole familys hope that todays agreement allows them to start building a happy and peaceful new life.

It seemed unlikely they would return

After the Sussexes made their way first to Canada and then to Los Angeles, many watched and wondered if a return to the royal family would be inevitable after they completed the queens one-year trial agreement.

Royal expert Marlene Koenig shared with Express that she believes the Sussexes wont return, noting, Absolutely not, not going to happen. They have made their decision and the queen has accepted it.

They will keep in touch with their charities and the system will be reviewed after a year, Koenig added. By that time I think theyll be on a financial foothold for themselves, and they will have made more decisions on where they are going to live and what their new non-profit will be.

Koenig was firm in her assessment of any potential return, sharing, I think theyve made their decision and I dont think theres any going back.

RELATED: Prince Harry and Meghan Markles Exit Is Sad for the Queen and a Letdown for the British People, Says Expert

One clue indicates they wont return

There is one small indication that Prince Harry and Meghan likely wont return to the royal family  theyve stopped using the queens lawyers, the London-based law firm Harbottle & Lewis.

This move comes as the couple filed documents for their new charity organization Archewell, which will be represented by the law firm Fieldfisher.

It would appear to demonstrate that they have no intention of coming back, a royal source told the Daily Mail. The choice of lawyers is of great importance to the royal household and Gerrard [Tyrell, the firms senior partner] was a useful neutral link man between the Sussexes and the palace.

Additionally, a source close to the couple shared that the Sussexes wanted to instruct their own lawyers, not those also used by the royal family. They are on an independent path.
Sudans irrigation and water resources minister calls for negotiations on Nile dam among Khartoum, Cairo, Addis Ababa.

Sudan has warned against escalation and urged further negotiations with Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of a controversial dam on the Blue Nile river by Addis Ababa.

Tensions are running high between the three countries after recent talks failed to produce a deal on the filling and operation of the $4.6bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

We do not want escalation. Negotiations are the only solution, Sudans Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasser Abbas told reporters on Sunday.

Signing an agreement is a prerequisite for us before filling the dam. Sudan has the right to demand it, he said.

Ethiopia has declared plans to start filling the dam next month, regardless of whether a deal has been reached. The dam is more than 70 percent complete and promises to generate much-needed electricity for the country.

Egypt, which views the massive hydroelectric barrage as an existential threat, on Friday urged the United Nations Security Council to intervene in the dispute, citing Ethiopias non-positive stances.

200620034331540

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said in a televised address that his country had remained committed to a political solution.

When we resorted to the Security Council  it stemmed from our keenness to take the diplomatic and political path until the end, he said.

At Egypts request, the Arab League is due to discuss the issue at a virtual meeting of foreign ministers on Tuesday, a diplomat at the league told AFP on Monday.

Cairo fears the dam could severely reduce its water supply from the Nile, which provides nearly 97 percent of Egypts freshwater needs.

Addis Ababa says the dam is indispensable for its development and insists Egypts water share will not be affected.

The Nile is a lifeline supplying water and electricity to the 10 countries it traverses.

Egypt says the dam threatens the Niles flow, most of which originates in the Blue Nile, with damaging implications for its food supply and economy.
By Cayla Harris | Times Union, Albany

Albany, N.Y.  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is seriously considering a quarantine for out-of-state travelers visiting New York, he said in a series of cable television interviews Monday.

The governor doubled down on the suggestion he first brought up last week, contemplating an isolation period for visitors coming from states where coronavirus cases are on the rise, including Florida and Texas. Cuomo touted New Yorks turnaround from the state with the worst infection rate to one of the best in the country and worried aloud that an influx of travelers from other states could harm New Yorks progress.

He said he is in talks with Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Ned Lamont of Connecticut  where coronavirus cases have also fallen in recent weeks  about possible coordinated rules for out-of-state travelers.

"It's more effective if we act as a regional collaboration, and I'm talking to them about putting in guidelines so we don't have people coming from these other states," Cuomo said in an interview on MSNBC.

In a CNN interview minutes later, Cuomo clarified that he would not target specific states, but possibly a general group of those areas "with the highest transmission rate." The governor had previously criticized other states, including Florida and Rhode Island, that sought to quarantine New Yorkers when the infection rate in New York was at its highest levels.

In March, Florida began requiring New Yorkers to self-isolate for 14 days after arriving in the Sunshine State. The same month, Rhode Island also issued a 14-day quarantine order for New York travelers, enforced as authorities stopped cars to question drivers with New York license plates and authorities knocked on doors in search of visitors.

The latter order had caused a massive clash with Cuomo's office, as the governor threatened to sue Rhode Island for singling out New York. It was later walked back.

"What they were talking about back then was Rhode Island targeting just New Yorkers," Cuomo said on CNN Monday. "They pull you over by your license plate, which I thought was absurd. Florida did put in a quarantine, which I think was more political than anything else, but now we have a very real problem."

New Yorks coronavirus cases have continued to decline, with just 10 deaths on Sunday  the lowest one-day total since March 21, Cuomos office said in a Monday release. Less than 1% of diagnostic tests returned positive.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Coronavirus in NY: Deaths fall to new low since peak, hospitalizations down

Some CNY gym owners appear willing to break coronavirus rules so you can break a sweat

Restarting NY: CNY could enter phase four soon, but thats not the end

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com
By Trend

Iran's COVID-19 situations isn't getting any better, as the amount of infection cases has increased, the head of emergency at the Tehran Sina Hospital Hossein Kermanpour told Trend.

"The spread of the coronavirus has reduced significantly in the past 15 days, due to implementation of health protocols. The main hospital for treating COVID-19 were eventually oriented towards treating coronavirus patients only. But due to rise in number of infections, most hospitals were forced to resume working as spots for COVID-19 patients, similar to how it was in February," he said.

The doctor went on to add that t he number of testing kits in the country has increased, adding that most people are misunderstanding how COVID-19 testing works.

"The current coronavirus situation is definitely not like it was in the first days. Back then people were more cautious, paid attention to their health and followed health protocols, while our health workers were strongly motivated," he said.

"Currently, many of our health care staff members are infected themselves, and we keep receiving new cases," said Kermanpour.

"So far since March 20, about 110 health care workers have lost their lives. It includes general doctors and specialists, significant number of nurses," he said.

The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease.

The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19.

The outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan - which is an international transport hub - began at a fish market in late December 2019.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday ordered fresh demarcation of containment zones in Delhi to improve the Covid situation. The completion of demarcation of containment zones by June 26 and the vigorous listing of households even outside containment zones were among the decisions announced by Shah after his meeting with top officials of the central government, Delhi government and Lieutenant General Anil Baijal.

The review meeting also discussed the report submitted by Dr VK Paul, chairperson of the high-level committee constituted by Shah. The Union home minister advised the Delhi government to implement the recommendations of the panel.

The Delhi government also has to finalise by June 22 a plan to quarantine and conduct contact tracing of all infected persons in Delhi, listing and monitoring of each and every household even outside containment zone. Shah also directed the Delhi government to constitute district-level teams by June 23 to assist in demarcating the new containment zones teams.

It was also decided that a survey of the new containment zones will have to be done by June 30 and a comprehensive survey of entire Delhi by July 6. On June 14, Shah had issued directions to the Delhi government to complete a comprehensive health survey of people living in containment zones. This survey was completed on June 19.

Officials said it was decided that the serological survey would be done in all of Delhi from June 27 to July 10, in which 20,000 peoples samples will be tested. The officials added that the Delhi government would also assess how many days before death the person was brought to hospital and from where. The central government shall also be informed of the number of people kept in home isolation, the ministry added.

Price capping pinches private hospitals



With the AAP government fixing the cost of a Covid bed in any private hospital in Delhi between `8,000 and `10,000 and an ICU bed with a ventilator at Rs 15,000-RS 18,000 per day, private hospitals say the decision may not be financially sustainable for them.

CCTVs at hospitals irk stressed health workers



As Union Home Minister Amit Shah last week had asked for CCTV cameras in Covid wards, many in the medical fraternity, feel that the decision questions the dedication of healthcare workers. It is demoralising as medical staff are slogging day and night, they contend.
The world saw the largest daily increases yet in coronavirus cases over the weekend while infections slowed in China and South Korea, suggesting progress in stemming their newest outbreaks.

Despite clear progress in containing the virus in some regions, especially those that saw early outbreaks, globally the number of new virus cases has soared in recent days. In Brazil, Iraq, India and the United States, hospitals are scrambling to cope.

Nearly nine million people have been infected and more than 468,000 people have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Experts say the actual numbers are much higher, given limits to testing and the presumed large share of asymptomatic cases.

(PA Graphics)

In a grim reminder of the pandemics ubiquitous reach, Philippine officials said on Monday that Saudi Arabias king had asked that the remains of 282 Filipino workers who perished in recent months in the oil-rich kingdom be repatriated within three days. They died of varied causes but virus restrictions have delayed the repatriations.

Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the Philippine government asked that a deadline be extended and that the bodies of about 50 Filipinos who died of Covid-19 be buried in Saudi Arabia.

The Philippines has reported more than 30,000 infections and 1,169 deaths, among the highest in south-east Asia, and is struggling to help bring home tens of thousands of Filipinos who have lost their work worldwide due to coronavirus lockdowns and economic downturns.

In Iraq, masked workers were setting up makeshift coronavirus wards in Baghdads vast exhibition grounds as a long-dreaded spike in infections strained its overstretched hospitals, battered by years of conflict and poor infrastructure.

On Sunday, the World Health Organisation reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours. Brazil tallied 54,771 and the US was next at 36,617, the UN health agency said. India reported more than 15,400.

Story continues

Experts say rising case counts reflect multiple factors including more testing and spreading infections. More than two-thirds of the new deaths were reported in the Americas.

Still, in east Asia there were signs of progress as South Korea reported 17 new cases, the first time its daily increase fell to under 20 in nearly a month.

The country has been reporting 40 to 50 new cases per day in the past few weeks, amid increased public activity, eased attitudes on social distancing and an uptick in imported cases.

Elsewhere in Asia, Beijings increase was in single digits for the first time in eight days. It reported nine cases.

Even in New Zealand, which earlier said it had eliminated local transmissions of the virus, two new cases were reported on Monday among infected people arriving from India and Pakistan. The country of five million people now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month.
T oday, June 22, marks Windrush Day, which honours the Commonwealth migrants who came to the UK in the decades after WWII, rebuilding a depleted workforce.

After years of campaigning for the date to be declared an official anniversary, it was formalised in 2018 amid a scandal over the Government's treatment of the so-called "Windrush generation".

In April that year, the Guardian reported on a growing number of cases of Windrush descendants, who were being denied their rights, detained and even deported on the false basis they were illegal immigrants.

With many still struggling to prove their Britishness and crippled by the costs of legal support, what have we learned from the Windrush scandal?

The "Windrush Generation" are named after SS Empire Windrush, one of the first ships harbouring West Indian arrivals that docked in 1948 (Daily Herald Archive/SSPL via Getty Images) / Daily Herald Archive/SSPL via Getty Images

What happened to the people affected?

Some 12,000 formerly undocumented people have now been given identity papers, said Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian journalist who first uncovered the scandal. Thats 12,000 people no longer fearing the knock of immigration enforcers on their door.

But Diane Abbott, former Shadow Home Secretary and the child of two Windrush arrivals, said the majority of those who applied for financial compensation have been denied it. In her view, this is the most urgent lesson the government has not learned.

With victims shouldering the debt of legal costs, constant travel to and from the Home Office, and - in some cases - medical treatments they were denied on the NHS, compensation is far more than an issue of moral symbolism, Ms Gentleman added.

Amelia Gentleman's groundbreaking coverage is relayed in her book, The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment

What about the wider issues?

Immigration

The Windrush Scandal occurred in the context of a hostile environment immigration policy, so-called in 2012 by then Home Secretary, Theresa May. But Ms Gentleman said it reflected a long-held, cross-party belief that it is politically expedient to act tough on immigration".

The hostile environment legislation simultaneously made documentation more essential, as well as harder and more expensive to acquire. It is widely seen as a Conservative party attempt to meet their manifesto pledge of reducing net immigration to 100,000 per year.

In response to the scandal, Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned, the net migration target was scrapped, and hostile environment was rebranded compliant environment by incoming Home Secretary, Sajid Javid.

But none of the legislation that made up the hostile environment has actually been repealed, pointed out Ms Gentleman.

Lofty fees continue to disenfranchise immigrants and their children (some of whom were born here) who cannot afford the 1,330 cost of naturalisation.

A British passport comes at a price / PA Wire/PA Images

Criminalisation of undocumented migrants affects people seeking asylum who have little recourse to safe passage, as well as people whose status has been compromised by the breakdown of a relationship (even an abusive one) with the person their visa depends on, for example. It is a rigid system.

Following the Brexit referendum campaign, which was dominated by rhetoric of taking back control of borders, racially and religiously-motivated hate crime increased by 112 per cent. Amid the outpouring of national gratitude for the NHS and other front line services during the coronavirus outbreak, some commentators have noted that, had Britain's post-Brexit points-based immigration system already been implemented, thousands of migrant key workers would have been unable to move to the UK.

Yet does this mean no lessons have been learnt? As Ms Gentleman points out, the Windrush Scandal caused immense and immediate public outrage upon publication. One of the things that became obvious was that there was no great enthusiasm amongst the British population for the way that the Home Office was treating all of those affected.

This has encouraged politicians to consider an alternative narrative, one that highlights immigration as a positive economic force, looking at the contribution made to Britain by immigrants over the decades, and particularly recently, the contributions made to the NHS .

Race

Black Lives Matter campaigners in the UK often cite the Windrush Scandal as evidence of a colonial hangover in Britain / AFP via Getty Images

There is of course another story behind Windrush, Ms Abbot underlined: race. It was almost as if, because your skin colour was black, you had to prove that you were entitled to be here.

Over the past two years, an independent review led by Wendy Williams investigated the Windrush Scandal. Its findings - published in March - gave a scathing review of ignorance and thoughtlessness towards race and colonial history within the government.

This is topical, pointed out Ms Abbott, as statues of slave traders are torn from their plinths and decolonising our cityscapes has become a local policy priority: but that lesson has been implemented from the floor up, not the top-down, she added.

One thing has certainly changed, insisted Ms Gentleman. Shed been shocked by the refusal of both government and media to listen to the stories of the people affected by Windrush; Caribbean leaders had been attempted to flag the issue from as early as 2013. "That probably does say something about race in this country, and about who manages to get their stories listened to."

Today's Black Lives Matter campaign is calling out everyday racism / PA

But Black Lives Matter is now a media mainstream, and public figures are tearfully apologising for past racist performances, uncomfortably aware their victims will no longer go unheard.

Nevertheless, the governments response to the UK movement of calling another inquiry into institutional racism, is frustrating to many of the Windrush descendants, said Ms Gentleman. They have just seen an in-depth, two-year inquiry produce suggestions that are yet to be committed to.

In the interests of history not being too repetitive, perhaps the question isnt the lessons learned, but the lessons learned and actually implemented.

The Home Office declined to be interview for this article.

Amelia Gentleman's expose can be purchased online or downloaded as an audiobook. More Windrush voices - as featured in the video - are revealed in an exhibition at the Museum of London.
Hulk has been very busy with household chores in the lockdown! A fun series by photographer Guru Charan shows the superhero chopping onions and washing clothes! If the guy that can leap across continents can take these responsibilities, so can you!

The toy photographer says, I travelled from Bengaluru to my village Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh for a function and got stuck here when the lockdown was announced. My 7-months old toy sets came to my rescue and I started shooting these incredible heroes with my kids clothes.

Some days back, the toymaker Mattel had also launched #ThankYouHeroes collection which included 16 action figures - four each of doctors, nurses, EMTs and delivery drivers in varying genders and skin tones.

The world has been honouring healthcare heroes but this tribute is a tad different as it has Hulk. Guru says,This is my small tribute to all people who are working at home and ensuring that everything works smoothly. While shooting these heroes, I realised Hulk was the most sturdy toy among all the other toys. So I thought of shooting him with my uncles lungi as well.

The 33-year old says, After much introspection, I came to a realisation that with the lockdown, even the superheroes at home would be doing the same household chores which all of us have been doing. Life for all has become about sweeping the floor, washing and ironing the clothes, cooking and entertaining kids. For Hulk, it is also about staying at home and staying safe.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.

0108263 License for publishing multimedia online



Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349
Trinity is very excited about the additional resources and capabilities the VE team brings and our continued growth in Australia. VE is a team of technical experts that are leaders in the field of water quality monitoring and assessment serving the marine ecology needs of their clients.

Trinity Consultants, Inc. (Trinity), an international EHS, engineering, and science consulting firm, announces the acquisition of Vision Environment Australia (VE), an environmental consulting firm located in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia.

VE specializes in environmental monitoring related to water quality and marine ecology. Founded in 2008, VE serves clients involved in commercial dredging and industrial organizations that potentially impact marine environments across Australia and New Zealand.

VE is led by Leonie Andersen and Felicity Melville, who founded the company to assess the potential environmental impacts of industrial operations on marine habitats. Since its founding, VE has assembled a team of highly qualified research staff, dedicated laboratory facilities, specialized field equipment, and commercial vessels which are used to collect real time water quality data. VEs expertise includes the design and implementation of water quality and receiving environment monitoring plans, which includes the use of telemetry, dredge monitoring and assessment, ecological health assessment of various marine species, assessment of marine pest incursions, ecological mapping, toxicity testing of effluents, and impact monitoring of acute environmental events. VEs collection, management, and analysis of high-volume environmental data is of particular importance to the success of client projects and protection of water quality.

Trinity Director Brian Burdorf who provides oversight for the firms operations in Australia commented on the transaction, noting, Trinity is very excited about the additional resources and capabilities the VE team brings and our continued growth in Australia. Leonie and Felicity have developed a team of technical experts that are leaders in the field of water quality monitoring and assessment serving the marine ecology needs of their clients. We look forward to helping them further grow the business throughout Australia, New Zealand, and beyond.

Dr. Andersen and Dr. Melville will continue to manage the business while partnering with Trinity to pursue expansion opportunities. Regarding the transaction, Dr. Andersen commented, We are thrilled about joining Trinity. We believe Trinitys broad span of physical locations and technical expertise will result in opportunities for expanded services for our clients and technical knowledge-sharing. We look forward to teaming with Trinitys Australian operations.

Background on Trinity Consultants

Founded in 1974 in Dallas, Texas, Trinity operates in locations across the U.S. and in Canada, the U.K., China, and Australia. Trinity assists organizations with compliance obligations related to EHS, process engineering, and facility design through a combination of consulting, technology, training, and staffing support.
(Alliance News) - Carnival PLC on Monday said Carnival Cruise Line has extended its operational pause in North America until the end of September.

In March, the cruise line voluntarily paused its global operations in response to the "unpredictable circumstances" evolving from the spread of Covid-19 virus. While the temporary cancellation of operations was initially meant to last until May 11, Carnival has extended the pause three times as a result of public health challenges associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.

"During this unprecedented pause in our business, we have continued to assess the operating environment and confer with public health, government and industry officials. We have watched with great interest as commerce, travel and personal activities have begun to start back up, and once we do resume service, we will take all necessary steps to ensure the health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we bring our ships to in order to maintain public confidence in our business," said Carnival Cruise Line president, Christine Duff.

Florida-based Carnival said it is currently completing the repatriation of nearly 29,000 crew members to more than 100 nations who serve its fleet of 27 ships.

The stock was trading 6.7% lower at 1,163.50 pence on Monday afternoon in London, and the shares are down 68% in the year-to-date.

By Ife Taiwo; ifetaiwo@alliancenews.com.

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The Snapdragon 875, Qualcomms next-generation flagship smartphone SoC, has now entered mass production and will be announced soon. Thats according to reports based out of China, indicating that the company will announce the chips before 2020 ends.

The chipset has already been widely leaked in detail but the news has now surfaced that they are now being produced. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is responsible for the 5nm process chips. And the company is coupling the chip with a Qualcomms Snapdragon X60 5G hardware as well.

In terms of production, capacity for the 5nm chips at TSMCs Nanke 18 factory has been increased by 10 percent to nearly 60,000 units over the last month. Industry estimates place the investment from Qualcomm, between 6,000 to 10,000 5nm wafers per month. So TSMCs increase and the reports do seem to line up nicely.

Advertisement

Mass production aside, what new with the Snapdragon 875?

Rumors and leaks surrounding the Snapdragon 875, purportedly codenamed SM8350, have been rampant in the last couple of months. Whether or not those are accurate remains to be seen but the chipset will undoubtedly be more powerful than its predecessor. For clarity, thats the Snapdragon 865.

The Snapdragon 865, for instance, was built on a 1+3+4 configuration. That means it splits processing tasks between three sets of cores. The first and most powerful is the 2.84GHz Cortex-A77 core. Thats backed up by three 2.4GHz Cortex-A77 cores and a further four 1.8HGz Cortex-A55 cores.

A similar structure is expected to be followed by the Snapdragon 875. If rumors have been accurate, that would be led by a single Cortex-X1 super core.

Advertisement

The ARM Cortex-X1 delivers up to 30-percent higher peak performance over the previous top chip in the Snapdragon flagship SoC  the Cortex-A77. And the power is further bolstered by the use of three Cortex-A78 cores. That chip is expected to provide a 20-percent performance boost over the Cortex-A77. And of course, four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores would remain behind that for less intensive processing.

In terms of computing power elsewhere, the Adreno 660 GPU is expected as part of that bundle. Qualcomm is expected to back that up with the Adreno 665 VPU and Adreno 1,095 DPU. The Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit (SPU250) will also be included if leaks have been accurate. So will the companys Spectra 580 image-processing engine.

For networking, the chip will include a 3G/4G/5G modem. As noted above, the X60 5G appears to be taking care of that end of the spectrum, with support for mmWave and sub-6 GHz bands.

Advertisement

On audio, Qualcomm will purportedly offer up a low-power audio subsystem. And that will be combined with Aqstic Audio Technologies WCD9380, and WCD9385 audio codec.

When will this arrive under-the-hood for smartphones?

Now, smartphone packing a Snapdragon 875 chipset backed by the X60 5G hardware wont necessarily arrive this year, even if mass production has started and the chipset will be revealed this year. Current predictions place the announcement of the chip in September. That would  unless Samsung starts giving the chips to OEMs fairly early  leave very little time for smartphones to use the chips in 2020. Just four months, in fact.

So smartphones bearing the new generation of Qualcomm powerhouses wont likely arrive until early 2021.
Some of Brisbane's richest suburbs have become the most reliant on JobKeeper wage subsidies during the coronavirus pandemic.

Neighbourhoods within the top 10 highest taxable income postcodes in the state, including Bulimba, Belmont, Bardon, Paddington and Clayfield, are among the most dependent on the payments, a new JobKeeper reliance index shows.

Residents in wealthy Brisbane suburbs among the most reliant on the governments JobKeeper wage subsidy. Credit:Darren England/AAP

The index, developed by data analytics consultancy Taylor Fry, has combined JobKeeper take-up data with the most recent census to rate every suburb according to how many of its residents are likely to be receiving JobKeeper.

Taylor Fry principal Alan Greenfield said the data revealed two main trends.
A top multinational NGO, with presence in several developed and developing countries, has taken strong exception to the World Bank part-funding Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project in six Indian states  Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha  for its emphasis on information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled approaches for teacher development, student assessment and digital platform for early childhood education.



While recognising that the use of technology offers scope for strengthening system capacity, an Oxfam India

Noting that the emphasis on online and distance education has come about amidst Covid-19 crisis, the report says, any use of ICT at this juncture would be unrealistic, insignificant and ineffective, especially for lesson transaction, adding, instead, there is a need to prioritize offline modes (such as print materials) without compromising on physical distancing requirements.

Oxfam India is a member of an international confederation of 20 organizations, all of them named cafter Oxfam. It claims to be a rights-based organizations, which fights poverty and injustice by linking grassroots interventions to local, national, and global policy developments. The report has been written by Anjela Taneja of Oxfam India with the support of several experts, including Prachi Srivastava (University of Western Ontario, Canada), Martin Haus (Education Policy Institute of Bihar), Katie Malouf Bous (Oxfam International), Geetha B Nambissan (Jawaharlal Nehu University), and Archana Mehendale (Tata Institute of Social Sciences).

Claiming that the emphasis on privatising education would exacerbate inequalities, the report cites the World Banks Living Standards Measurement Study in Uttar Pradesh to show that the gender gap in enrolment in private schools has increased, even when the government schools are closing down.

Insisting that girls are less likely than boys to be enrolled in private schools, the study says, Private schools, by definition, enrol children from families that can afford to pay. Sending a child to a private school in India is approximately nine times as much as the cost of a government school, including all indirect costs associated with schooling, such as buying books, and transport.

Warning that involving private players would mean STARS project risking significant diversion of Indian taxpayers funds to an array of private actors, with its impact across India, thus changing the framing for the private sectors engagement with education, the report regrets, this is proposed to be done under the pretext of private schools better performance.

The report believes, reliance on the private sector for delivering education would fundamentally alter the character of an education system  from a universal good to which everyone has free access by right to a private good which parents must buy. It adds, The project appears to be grounded in the assumption that declining enrolment in government schools is principally due to migration to schools run by non-state providers and that government aided schools decline is the result of regulatory issues.

Girls are less likely than boys to be enrolled in private schools, which by definition enrol children from families that can afford to pay The projects total worth is 3.346 billion USD, or just over a quarter of a trillion INR, of which 500 million USD is financed by a loan from the World Bank. About 85% of the project amount would be funded by the Government of India and the six state governments, where is it proposed to be implemented. Apart from emphasis on ICT, the project project seeks to promote partnership with private sector as a tool to reform education, including the expansion of government funding for private provision of schooling.While recognising that the use of technology offers scope for strengthening system capacity, an Oxfam India policy brief quotes Government of India data to says that 35.6% of the countrys elementary schools lacked electricity connection, only 36.8% secondary schools had a functional computer, 85% of rural households lacked access to internet, and 45% of rural India lacked TV penetration.Noting that the emphasis on online and distance education has come about amidst Covid-19 crisis, the report says, any use of ICT at this juncture would be unrealistic, insignificant and ineffective, especially for lesson transaction, adding, instead, there is a need to prioritize offline modes (such as print materials) without compromising on physical distancing requirements.Oxfam India is a member of an international confederation of 20 organizations, all of them named cafter Oxfam. It claims to be a rights-based organizations, which fights poverty and injustice by linking grassroots interventions to local, national, and global policy developments. The report has been written by Anjela Taneja of Oxfam India with the support of several experts, including Prachi Srivastava (University of Western Ontario, Canada), Martin Haus (Education Policy Institute of Bihar), Katie Malouf Bous (Oxfam International), Geetha B Nambissan (Jawaharlal Nehu University), and Archana Mehendale (Tata Institute of Social Sciences).Claiming that the emphasis on privatising education would exacerbate inequalities, the report cites the World Banks Living Standards Measurement Study in Uttar Pradesh to show that the gender gap in enrolment in private schools has increased, even when the government schools are closing down.Insisting that girls are less likely than boys to be enrolled in private schools, the study says, Private schools, by definition, enrol children from families that can afford to pay. Sending a child to a private school in India is approximately nine times as much as the cost of a government school, including all indirect costs associated with schooling, such as buying books, and transport.Warning that involving private players would mean STARS project risking significant diversion of Indian taxpayers funds to an array of private actors, with its impact across India, thus changing the framing for the private sectors engagement with education, the report regrets, this is proposed to be done under the pretext of private schools better performance.The report believes, reliance on the private sector for delivering education would fundamentally alter the character of an education system  from a universal good to which everyone has free access by right to a private good which parents must buy. It adds, The project appears to be grounded in the assumption that declining enrolment in government schools is principally due to migration to schools run by non-state providers and that government aided schools decline is the result of regulatory issues.

According to the report, similar large scale experiments in other countries, such as the Partnership School for Liberia (PSL) and the Public Private Partnership administered by the Punjab Education Foundation in Pakistan, found that the private schools enrolled students largely pulled from existing schools.

It adds, Only 1.3% of enrolled students had actually been out of school prior to the commencement of the programme... The Liberia School Pilot was found to have failed to significantly improve learning outcomes, increased dropouts and failed to reduce sexual abuse of students.

Similarly, in India, the Rajasthan Education Initiatives review admits that such an approach failed against many of the stated objectives, while in Mumbai, the School Excellence Programme implemented by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation was shut down as learning outcomes failed to improve, indicating the volatility of such approaches and the need for evaluation of such partnerships which involve spending public money on private providers.

The report further says that the project fails to spell out any clear pro-equity measures to address intergenerational, social and economic barriers to the education of Dalits, Adivasis, religious minorities; the specific challenges faced by girls in the Indian context... It does not address discrimination or correct educational inequalities between the rich and the poor in these states.

It underlines, the fails to prioritize on universal, free secondary completion; address dropout and child labour (particularly of girls); staff and adequately resource schools and teacher training institutes; mainstream mother tongue based multi-lingual education; strengthen social accountability and grievance redress mechanisms thus strengthening citizen voice; and address the needs of migrant families.

The states chosen for the project

Also taking exception to the choice of states, divided them into high and low achievers (it calls them Lighthouse and Learning states), the report says, all the six are largely middle of the road performing states. Irrespective of whether one examines the extent of Right to Education (RTE) compliance of schools in a given state or their Performance Grading Index (PGI) performance, the states selected are not the ones most in need of financial and technical support.

It further says, while the project flags five of six states have designated Schedule V areas, It is not clear how the projects governance would take into consideration and protect the existing legal rights of the indigenous populations in these locations. No specific provisions for engagement with the Gram Sabha or differentiation in the processes of planning in Schedule areas which would have been expected according to the provisions of the Panchayat (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act, 1996.

The report takes exception to the project supporting the administration of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in India, the report suggests, it lacks addressing concomitant factors responsible for poor learning such as reliance on non-mother tongue based instruction, addressing the discriminatory hidden classroom curriculum (including caste-based discrimination and teachers holding low expectations from children from marginalized communities), absence of home support from neo-literate parents, classroom hunger and other factors.
CityJet pilots will picket the airlines headquarters in Dublin tomorrow morning as they protest a plan by the company to close its base there.

The union claims CityJet will use pilots from outside the country to operate contracts it has with Scandinavian carrier SAS.

Trade union Forsa said this afternoon that the move will effectively result in the offshoring of work that had previously been undertaken by pilots based in Ireland.

The airline plans to axe most of the 57 pilots it has based in Dublin, said Forsa.

CityJet is currently in examinership. Its headquarters are in Swords, not far from Dublin Airport. Its owned by Falko.

CityJet, whose executive chairman is Pat Byrne, rejected the offshoring claims last month, saying they were inaccurate.

Whilst CityJet continues to operate services in Scandinavia, the future requirement will be less than previous years, it said this afternoon.

CityJet had 21 aircraft operating in Scandinavia in 2019, it is expected that this will reduce to just 15 aircraft required from March, 2021, it added. CityJet has employed crews in Scandinavia since 2015 - and aircraft operating in Copenhagen are staffed by approximately 200 locally-based crews on local labour contracts and Danish taxation structures.

It said that five aircraft in Scandinavia returned to flying in June, with no definite timeline for the return of additional jets to flying.

The Copenhagen-based positions on offer to Dublin crews will be as part of this return of aircraft in Scandinavia, it added.

The Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA), which is a branch of Forsa, has made a number of proposals designed to retain at least some of the Dublin pilot jobs.

They include 50pc pay cuts up to April next year, and the termination of all terms and conditions to facilitate flexibility. It would also see a continuing 15pc pay cut from April next year, as well as an IALPA-designed training plan to move CityJet pilots from one aircraft to another. The pilots argue that that move would be cheaper than redundancy for the airline.

CityJet intends to exit the examinership process flying 15 aircraft for SAS as part of the business plan, as it did prior to Covid-19, said Forsa official Ian McDonnell.

However, these flights will resume without the Irish-based pilots flying the aircraft. Dublin-based pilots had been doing this work until the examinership process commenced in April, he added.

Its believed that about 23 of the Dublin-based CityJet pilots were typically involved in operating the SAS services. CityJet no longer flies under its own brand, but instead sells its services to other airlines.

We were informed last week that the majority of the 57 pilots will no longer be employed by CityJet, said Mr McDonnell.

A small number of them will have the option to relocate outside of Ireland if and when required, he said. Otherwise they face redundancy along with their other pilot and cabin crew colleagues, and this is despite some progress where a number of jobs were committed to remain in Dublin last week.

Following the closure of the Dublin base, CityJet will have a shortage of pilots and will be required to commence hiring pilots immediately, Mr McDonnell claimed.

Weve been informed that these new pilot jobs will be located outside the State, he said.

CityJet is using this examinership process to reduce its debt with the help of the Irish courts, while at the same time off-shoring Irish jobs, claimed Mr McDonnell.

This is why pilots are protesting at the airlines offices, he said. They have done all they can to maintain a base and jobs here, but the company have abandoned them.

CityJet said that Dublin-based crews previously operated services in to supplement locally-employed crews for a number of CityJets customer airlines in Scandinavia, Belgium and France in addition to flights from Dublin.

With the loss of all contracts except Scandinavia, the requirement for Dublin crews to supplement locally-based crews is reduced, it said.

The use of Dublin-based crews qualified on the CRJ900 aircraft on a fulltime basis to operate services in Scandinavia would require flying the crews to Scandinavia each week to work and is neither economic nor feasible on a long term basis, it added.




New York

President Donald Trump's return to the campaign trail was designed to show strength and enthusiasm heading into the critical final months before an election that will decide whether he remains in the White House.

Instead, his weekend rally in Oklahoma highlighted growing vulnerabilities and crystallized a divisive re-election message that largely ignores broad swaths of voters  independents, suburban women and people of color  who could play a crucial role in choosing Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The lower-than-expected turnout at the comeback rally, in particular, left Trump fuming.

"There's really only one strategy left for him, and that is to propel that rage and anger and try to split the society and see if he can have a tribal leadership win here," former Trump adviser-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

The president did not offer even a token reference to national unity in remarks that spanned more than an hour and 40 minutes at his self-described campaign relaunch as the nation grappled with surging coronavirus infections, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and sweeping civil unrest.

Nor did Trump mention George Floyd, the African-American man whose death while in the custody of Minnesota police late last month sparked a national uprising over police brutality. But he did add new fuel to the nation's culture wars, defending Confederate statues while making racist references to the coronavirus, which originated in China and which he called "kung flu." He also said Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, "would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came, Somalia."

Trump won the presidency in 2016 with a similar red-meat message aimed largely at energizing conservatives and white working-class men. But less than four months before early voting begins in some states, there are signs that independents and educated voters  particularly suburban women  have turned against him. Republican strategists increasingly believe that only a dramatic turnaround in the economy can revive his re-election aspirations.

"It's bad," said Republican operative Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic. "There's literally nothing to run on. The only thing he can say is that Biden is worse."

But the day after Trump's Tulsa rally, the president's message was almost an afterthought as aides tried to explain away a smaller-than-expected crowd that left the president outraged.

The campaign had been betting big on Tulsa.

Trump's political team spent days proclaiming that more than 1 million people had requested tickets. They also ignored health warnings from the White House coronavirus task force and Oklahoma officials, eager to host an event that would help him move past the civil rights protests and the coronavirus itself.

His first rally in 110 days was meant to be a defiant display of political force to help energize Trump's spirits, try out some attacks on Biden and serve as a powerful symbol of American's reopening.

Instead, the city fire marshal's office reported a crowd of just fewer than 6,200 in the 19,000-seat BOK Center, and at least six staff members who helped set up the event tested positive for the coronavirus. The vast majority of the attendees, including Trump, did not wear face masks as recommended by the Trump administration's health experts.

After the rally, the president berated aides over the turnout. He fumed that he had been led to believe he would see huge crowds in deep-red Oklahoma, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

There was no sign of an imminent staff shakeup, but members of Trump's inner circle angrily questioned how campaign manager Brad Parscale and other senior aides could so wildly overpromise and underdeliver, according to the officials.

Nominate your favorite people and places now Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Nominate your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

Publicly, Trump's team scrambled to blame the crowd size on media coverage and protesters outside the venue, but the small crowds of pre-rally demonstrators were largely peaceful. Tulsa police reported just one arrest Saturday afternoon.

It's unclear when Trump will hold his next rally.

Before Oklahoma, the campaign had planned to finalize and announce its next rally this week. Trump is already scheduled to make appearances Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Wisconsin. Both are major general election battlegrounds.

At least one swing state governor, meanwhile, says Trump would not be welcome to host a rally in her state amid the pandemic.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said she "would think very seriously about" trying to block Trump from hosting a rally there if he wanted to.

"We know that congregating without masks, especially at an indoor facility, is the worst thing to do in the midst of a global pandemic," Whitmer said in an interview before the Oklahoma event, conceding that she wasn't aware of the specific legal tools she had available to block a prospective Trump rally. "I just know we have limitations on the number of people that can gather and that we're taking this seriously."

Biden's campaign, meanwhile, seized on a fresh opportunity to poke at the incumbent president, suggesting that Trump "was already in a tailspin" because of his mismanagement of the pandemic and civil rights protests.

"Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him," Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said.
Express News Service

BENGALURU: Clouds and COVID-19 did not deter science enthusiasts from soaking in some eclipsed sun and viewing the phenomenon from terrace tops or even by the swimming pool. Many stepped out to take pictures as the sun was obscured partially by the moon which was at farthest from the earth, allowing only a certain percentage of eclipse.

The first solar eclipse of this year coincided with the summer solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere has the longest day. Rationalists and science enthusiasts in the State caught glimpses of the partial solar eclipse that took place between 10.12 am and 1.31pm, which peaked at 11.47 am with a 40 per cent obscuration by the moon.

About 200 members of the Breakthrough Science Society (BSS) Karnataka, those from Rajajinagar, Srirampura, Malleswaram, Horamavu in Bengaluru, and other districts, including Dharwad, Kalaburagi and Davangere viewed the astronomical phenomenon using sun filters and self-constructed pinhole cameras.

"The viewing was organised to spread awareness among people about the eclipse being yet another astronomical event and has nothing to do with superstition," Dipti B, Joint Secretary, BSS Karnataka, told TNIE. Members of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations too kept to their routine of viewing every eclipse, to also break the taboos associated with it.

"While the streets of Mangaluru were empty with people staying indoors and even temples being closed, we always keep ourselves exposed to the sun as much as possible, particularly during eclipses," said Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations president Narendra Nayak.

In 2019 too, members exposed themselves to the eclipsed sun. This year though, due to COVID-19 restrictions, they had to give that up and instead just gathered near the swimming pool at 10 am.

A few families decided to have the usual events in a closed manner, maintaining the social distancing norms. The cloudy weather did not deter them as they managed to have a glimpse of the eclipsed sun using the special viewers and also made a point of eating under the eclipsed sun.

"We have been doing this since decades to dispel the superstition that eating during an eclipse causes all sorts of diseases," said Nayak. Meanwhile, many temples stayed closed during the eclipse and authorities performed cleaning rituals after the phenomenon.

Chasing spectacle across Karnataka

Seeking to dispel superstitious beliefs surrounding eclipses, Murugha Mutt seer Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru witnessed the spectacle in Chitradurga on Sunday. He said that there is nothing wrong in watching eclipses

In Mysuru, the eclipse brought the feel of the recent pandemic Janata Curfew as a majority of roads and streets in the city wore a deserted look, with people choosing to stay indoors

Elaborate rituals were held at Sri Krishna Mutt and other temples in Udupi on account of solar eclipse

Temples of Gokarna, Idagunji and Murudeshwar remained closed during the eclipse

Across the state, hundreds of people, especially students and children, observed the spectacle that was streamed online, or using x-ray films or filter glasses, or through telescopes in science centres
TORTOLA, BVI / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / TraceSafe Inc. ("Tracesafe") (CSE:TSF) announced today that Boustead Projects E&C Pte Ltd (Singapore), one of the largest construction firms in Singapore, entered into an arrangement with a local Tracesafe nominee to provide contact tracing solutions to help meet the COVID-Safe Restart Criteria published by the Singapore Building and Construction Authority. This represents the first Enterprise Contact Tracing deployment of the product suite called "AllSafe".

TraceSafe's wearable devices and cloud management software will be deployed at a Boustead construction site to facilitate contact-tracing in the event of positive confirmed cases of COVID-19. Workers who may be exposed can be readily identified by contact tracing records based on proximity of the devices worn by all workers. Social-distancing encroachments are detected and recorded, as well as alarm warnings generated in real-time for site supervisors to take immediate action. Worker assignments and team separations are also facilitated. The first deployment is expected at a select project site, and once the relevant government authority approvals and support are obtained, both parties will work toward expanding the deployment across all project sites.

The arrangement is an example of major enterprise employing TraceSafe contact tracing solutions to help reopen safely using technology to provide a safer work environment. TraceSafe continues to work to win the trust of large, respected companies and governments as part of a broader, long term safety initiative - a social distancing solution for a post-Covid reopening world.

Executive Quote

"We are thrilled that Boustead has agreed to deploy our technology at its worksite for their workers as they reopen. Singapore is one of the most rapidly industrializing countries in the world. We believe that TraceSafe solutions are well suited for this application. We could not be more excited working with Boustead." said Dennis Kwan, CEO of TraceSafe Technologies, Inc. Mr. Kwan added: "A successful proof-of-concept will position TraceSafe as a solution for construction sites and other large-scale enterprises looking to reopen safely."

Pursuant to the arrangement with Boustead, Tracesafe will provide contact tracing and social distancing wearable safety technology to Boustead construction site personnel, provide and install gateway devices at certain entrance/exit and other points around the site and provide cloud services for retrieval of contact tracing data from the tags. On proof-of-concept, the parties agreed to negotiate a definitive agreement for the deployment of Tracesafe's products in all Boustead managed worksites.

About TraceSafe

TraceSafe is a full suite of real-time location management services and contact tracing solutions enabled through advanced low power bluetooth beacons and enterprise cloud management. TraceSafe's leading cloud management solution ensures both user privacy and comprehensive administrative control. TraceSafe's patented contact tracing bracelet has already been deployed in mission critical quarantine applications around the world in partnership with leading governments. In addition to their government work, TraceSafe is developing leading edge solutions for Enterprise, Healthcare, and large-scale venue management.

For further information, please contact:

Wayne Lloyd, CEO

+1 604 629-9975

wayne@tracesafe.io Alan Tam, CFO

+1 604 377-7575

alantamca@gmail.com John Costigan

+1 604 620-8589

jcostigan@ecmbcapital.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange has in no way approved or disapproved the contents of this news release.

Statements in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on Tracesafe's expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates, including with respect to expectations regarding the TRACEsafe assets, future business plans and relationships, future developments in respect of COVID-19 and solutions adopted in response to the virus, the deployment of the Tracesafe technology at additional Boustead sites and the execution of a definitive agreement . Although Tracesafe believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict, including the suitability of our products to help businesses and governments reopen, competition, the spread or containment of COVID-19 and government responses thereto and general economic and market conditions . Therefore, outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and Tracesafe undertakes no obligation to update them publicly to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances unless otherwise required to do so by law.

SOURCE: TraceSafe Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/594695/Major-Singapore-Construction-Firm-Boustead-to-Utilize-Tracesafe-Products
President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday held a closed-door meeting with Governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the Aso Rock Vi...

President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday held a closed-door meeting with Governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.





According to reports, the meeting is believed to be connected with the recent crisis rocking the political party.





Those at the meeting are the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) and Governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu; Chairman of Northern Governors Forum, Simon Lalong and Governor of Jigawa State, Abubakar Badaru.





Earlier, President Buhari and the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan met on Sunday over the same issue. Lawan hinted that the president would lead a push for the settlement of the crisis within the next few days.









Details shortly
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police Monday urged the Delhi High Court to grant them a day's more time for seeking instructions on a plea by Jamia student Safoora Zargar, who was pregnant and arrested under the anti-terror law --UAPA--, seeking bail in a case related to communal violence in northeast Delhi during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in February.

Justice Rajiv Shakdher, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, allowed the request after Zargar's counsel said she has no objection to it and listed the matter for Tuesday.

Zargar, M Phil student of Jamia Millia Islamia University, is more than four months pregnant.

During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Delhi Police, sought a day's time to take instructions on the issue and said it will be in larger interest if he is given indulgence.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aman Lekhi also joined Mehta and said they are ready with the arguments on merits of the case but they do not intend to proceed on merits at this stage.

Advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan, appearing for Zargar, said the woman is in a delicate state and is in a fairly advanced stage pregnancy and if the police need time to respond to the plea, she be granted interim bail for the time being.

The high court asked Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta to come back with instructions on Tuesday. The police has also filed a status report in response to the bail plea.

Jamia Coordination Committee member Zargar, who was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi Police on April 10, has challenged in the high court the June 4 order of the trial court denying her bail in the case.

The hearing in the high court also witnessed exchange of words between Mehta, Lekhi on one side and Delhi government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra who objected the appearance of the two senior law officers on behalf of Delhi Police in the case.

Mehra contended that unlike another North East Delhi violence matter in which requisite approval was sought by the Delhi Police to be represented by a team of lawyers led by the Solicitor General, no such procedure was followed in this case.

"They know that my view in such cases will be more humanitarian and not as per their whims and fancies. I am not supposed to be the mouth piece of the Delhi Police, I am an officer of the court," he said.

Lekhi shot back "a client chooses the lawyer and a lawyer cannot impose himself on the client. He said this controversy would deviate the court from the issue in hand and Mehra's objection can be kept aside in this case.

The high court concluded the hearing, asking the counsel for Delhi Police to sort out their battles by tomorrow.

The trial court, in its order, had said when you choose to play with embers, you cannot blame the wind to have carried the spark a bit too far and spread the fire.

 It had said that during the course of investigation a larger conspiracy was discernible and if there was prima facie evidence of conspiracy, acts and statements made by any one of the conspirators, it is admissible against all.

The trial court had said that even if there was no direct act of violence attributable to the accused (Zargar), she cannot shy away from her liability under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

However, the trial court had asked the concerned jail superintendent to provide adequate medical aid and the assistance to Zargar.

The police had earlier claimed that Zargar allegedly blocked a road near Jaffrabad metro station during the anti-CAA protests and instigated people that led to the riots in the area.

It further claimed that she was allegedly part of the premediated conspiracy to incite communal riots in northeast Delhi in February.

Communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi on February 24 after violence between citizenship law supporters and protesters spiralled out of control leaving at least 53 people dead and scores injured.
NORTHAMPTON  The VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System in Leeds is increasing in-person appointments as the rate of new COVID-19 cases continues to decline in the state.

We are committed to providing safe and accessible healthcare to our veterans, said Dr. Seth Kupferschmid, the systems chief of staff, in a news release.

It is paramount, as always, that we do so as safely as possible  relying on state and federal guidelines for safely operating.

In late March, as the number of coronavirus cases was on the rise, some U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinics were closed and face-to-face appointments were canceled. Services were centralized to larger clinics and care in general transitioned to video and telephone visits to help reduce the spread of the respiratory disease, which known to transmit easily in confined spaces.

VA patients are asked to call in advance for a face-to-face appointment to determine the need. The systems main phone line is 413-584-4040.

Any patient electing to go to an emergency room in the community is advised to call a new number at the VA for that option, 413-724-7842.

Related Content:
I think what the superintendent said when he had this ambitious goal of 300, he called it a moonshot, Lightfoot said. And the idea was, not so much the number, but making sure that we rallied all the resources, both within the Police Department, but also with our various partners, to really focus on what each of us could to do more around public safety.
Weeks after cutting India's sovereign rating, Moody's on Monday said that India's gross domestic product (GDP) will contract 3.1 per cent in 2020 due to the coronavirus-led nationwide lockdown. The global rating agency, however, added that economic growth may bounce back to 6.9 per cent in 2021 as gradual recovery is expected to start from the second half of this year.

According to Moody's global macro outlook report for June, the global economy has started showing signs of life, but the "recovery will be long and bumpy". The effects of lockdowns will be larger than previously estimated, the agency said.

The agency warned that second quarter of the current fiscal will go down in history as the worst quarter for global economy since World War 2.

Moody's sees G20 economies to contract by 4.6 per cent in 2020 and grow by 5.2 per cent in 2021. Among the G20 nations, China is the only country which is expected to post growth in 2020. Asia's largest economy is projected to grow 1 per cent in 2020 and 7.1 per cent in 2021.

The report also took into account ongoing border tensions between India and China, saying that Asian countries are particularly vulnerable to changes in geopolitical dynamic.

"The Asian countries are particularly vulnerable to changes in geopolitical dynamics, finds the report highlighting that China's clashes with countries bordering the South China Sea, India suggest geopolitical risks rising for the entire region," the report said.

The report also highlighted that the COVID-19 crisis has escalated tensions on trade and technology between the US and China which is likely to persist after US presidential election in November. The Phase 1 trade deal between the two nations remains at risk, while progress on Phase 2 remains uncertain at best, it added.

Also Read: Moody's cuts India's sovereign rating to Baa3, maintains negative outlook

On June 1, Moody's had downgraded India's foreign currency and local currency long term issuer ratings to Baa3 from Baa2 with a negative outlook, citing that economic disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak would amplify vulnerabilities in India's credit profile that were already under stress before pandemic.

Earlier today, Fitch Ratings has said that the recent tensions between New Delhi and Beijing arising out of the border issue may not have immediate effect on India's credit profile, distracting the government from executing the announced policy reforms and impact medium term outlook. The agency has projected India's economic activity to contract by 5 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 2021 (FY21) due to the strict lockdown measures imposed by the government to contain the spread of coronavirus. It expects growth to rebound to 9.5 per cent next year, mainly due to low base.

Also Read: Tensions with China may impact India's medium term outlook: Fitch Ratings

The tension between India-China has escalated in last one week after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in pre-meditated and planned attack by Chinese soldiers at Galwan Valley in Ladakh on Monday night. This was the biggest military confrontation in over five decades that has significantly escalated the already volatile border standoff between the two countries.

The tension between India-China has escalated in last one week after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in pre-meditated and planned attack by Chinese soldiers at Galwan Valley in Ladakh on Monday night. This was the biggest military confrontation in over five decades that has significantly escalated the already volatile border standoff between the two countries.

By Chitranjan Kumar


That is why I have suggested the need to learn all, allopathy, ayurved, and homeopathy, even unani at undergraduate level by all students and do specialization in any of them at post-graduate level. Today majority of the allopathic doctors do not recognize other branches as even scientific. Monetary interests play a major role in spreading this myth. This is in spite of the

Right now ayurvedic and homeopathy students are given basic knowledge of allopathy. Majority of them work in allopathic private nursing homes in the initial years. (There, the private allopathy doctors dont mind using them as they have to pay less but on every other platform they dont recognize them.)

Today the patient who has no knowledge of any branch decides where to go as trial and error method or out of economic compulsion and availability. Instead, if all doctors have basic knowledge of all the pathies, they can guide the patient as per the requirement. The way yoga and acupuncture are being adopted by physiotherapists, other branches of medicine should be given equal status.

But still let us be very clear, charity came in existence because the government abdicated its duty to provide healthcare to all, remote areas included. Some of them might be running very good but I have worked for three months in a very old charity hospital in the heart of the city where primary instruments for a gynaecological inspection were not there in OPD and the table also not suited to gynaecological examination.

Because I was young at that time, some thought that because I am inexperienced I need more instruments! Many charity hospitals feel funds crunch. And if they are not part of the robust healthcare system, how to monitor the standard there, is an issue. Poor patients going there would not understand this.

Also the way even poor feel empowered and understand their right in a government hospital, they would not demand in a charity hospital. Those who want to do charity can provide services in the government hospital, with their name on the board there.

Drugs bill, payment of staff, anything they want to, after such ill-managed hospitals because of fund crunch are taken over by government. But a uniform high standard treatment for all is the goal, and not different standard for poor and rich.

Demilitarization? Yes. These days I am putting on all social media platforms whenever I get a chance: 'People of China and India should pressurize their governments to stop all fighting. We want peace. All ice laden ecofragile region, full of glaciers be declared as No Wo/mans Land. Let us remember poet Atal Behari Vajpayees poem, Hum Jung Na Hone Denge. Because the war or war- like situation is the ground for arms purchase and commission.'

I agree nationalization in Cuba came with revolution but even under the pressure of socialist countries nationalization was done in many capitalist countries and was running fine till 1990. After that, during liberalization, this weakening of government institution started. But they are still much better.

BJP is having doctors cell. It works to fulfill their demand. Majority of private doctors are BJP members in Gujarat. Will they advise to strengthen the public sector? Existing small private practitioners of indigenous medicines can be provided separate out-patient department (OPD) at all levels of government hospitals, sub-centres in villages, primary health centres (PHC) to District level hospitals.That is why I have suggested the need to learn all, allopathy, ayurved, and homeopathy, even unani at undergraduate level by all students and do specialization in any of them at post-graduate level. Today majority of the allopathic doctors do not recognize other branches as even scientific. Monetary interests play a major role in spreading this myth. This is in spite of the Aayush department.Right now ayurvedic and homeopathy students are given basic knowledge of allopathy. Majority of them work in allopathic private nursing homes in the initial years. (There, the private allopathy doctors dont mind using them as they have to pay less but on every other platform they dont recognize them.)Today the patient who has no knowledge of any branch decides where to go as trial and error method or out of economic compulsion and availability. Instead, if all doctors have basic knowledge of all the pathies, they can guide the patient as per the requirement. The way yoga and acupuncture are being adopted by physiotherapists, other branches of medicine should be given equal status.But still let us be very clear, charity came in existence because the government abdicated its duty to provide healthcare to all, remote areas included. Some of them might be running very good but I have worked for three months in a very old charity hospital in the heart of the city where primary instruments for a gynaecological inspection were not there in OPD and the table also not suited to gynaecological examination.Because I was young at that time, some thought that because I am inexperienced I need more instruments! Many charity hospitals feel funds crunch. And if they are not part of the robust healthcare system, how to monitor the standard there, is an issue. Poor patients going there would not understand this.Also the way even poor feel empowered and understand their right in a government hospital, they would not demand in a charity hospital. Those who want to do charity can provide services in the government hospital, with their name on the board there.Drugs bill, payment of staff, anything they want to, after such ill-managed hospitals because of fund crunch are taken over by government. But a uniform high standard treatment for all is the goal, and not different standard for poor and rich.Demilitarization? Yes. These days I am putting on all social media platforms whenever I get a chance: 'People of China and India should pressurize their governments to stop all fighting. We want peace. All ice laden ecofragile region, full of glaciers be declared as No Wo/mans Land. Let us remember poet Atal Behari Vajpayees poem, Hum Jung Na Hone Denge. Because the war or war- like situation is the ground for arms purchase and commission.'I agree nationalization in Cuba came with revolution but even under the pressure of socialist countries nationalization was done in many capitalist countries and was running fine till 1990. After that, during liberalization, this weakening of government institution started. But they are still much better.

I would like to have revolution today but we dont have an organization strong enough and thereby people ready to bring revolution. Our immediate demands should be such that it explains the need for revolution in long term. So if demand does not include the need to use private resource it will not educate people further.

Politics and healthcare are not two different entities. Not only the fact that politics is economics by other means, but BJP is having their doctors cell. The way womens cell is to fulfill womens demands, this works to fulfill their demand. Majority of private doctors are BJP members in Gujarat. Will they advise to strengthen the public sector? Other parties I dont know.

After Independence, like all other sectors, it was the government which was running hospitals in India, and we already have a prescribed structure of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare structure. The best equipment and best brains were supposed to be in government hospitals at that time.

But like in every other field with the rise of private sector, the public sector is neglected, big private sharks would not let the public institutions survive. All debates are managed with the intention to decrease government spending.

It works at many levels. Apart from policy levels, drugs meant for government hospitals being diverted to private hands (stolen), because private avenue to sell is available, a big anesthisia trolley being stolen from a hospital attached to a medical college. Who can use it?

Now comes compassion. There is a book named Spirit Level, the authors have done 40 years study of mainly developed countries (because of reliable data available) and concluded that empathy, trust towards fellow citizens is more where inequality is less. Many other things were studied crime rates to teen pregnancy to death penalty.

I just recently met a doctor who has studied her medicine in China. Among other things I specifically asked about the behaviour of doctors and other staff towards patients, and she described it to be polite, human, full of empathy.



I have particularly described in the

I totally agree about health, environment and economics. I have mentioned even to include environmental science in medical education and beware of the corona and other pathogens have their origin in climate change, deforestation.

Let me tell one last thing that with this primary

A person in Mumbai just after reading it on site has offered to translate in Marathi. Its not just the middle class. The staff here in a housekeeping contract is from UP, Bihar, Bengal and they all read it and say, Sahi Aavaz Uthai Hai. I tell them to send the same to their native. WhatsApp has changed the world. My contacts from slum work have gone back to their native. I started sending to them from yesterday and awaiting response.

Two offers for arranging webinars one from Indore and one from Pune are in the pipeline. Local webinars in Gujarat are on. So people are ready. Some who were pucca bhakts, so far have responded positively.

Publication of the draft in So nationalized does not mean bad. They were crowded but neat and clean, patients being guided well and so on. She has finished her studies in 2013. Once the attraction of vulgar money earning is gone more people with service orientation would come to medicine. Also there will be supervision.I have particularly described in the draft how it would not be bureaucracy but peoples democratic local control along with medical staff that will govern the hospital. When we create a strong public opinion and then a movement, people will be well aware to do that.I totally agree about health, environment and economics. I have mentioned even to include environmental science in medical education and beware of the corona and other pathogens have their origin in climate change, deforestation.Let me tell one last thing that with this primary draft I am getting huge positive response on WhatsApp, Twitter and emails. Facebook just started. May add Instagram. The group here has people from different states and Hindi translation is already done. Gujarati and Tamil are about to get finished.A person in Mumbai just after reading it on site has offered to translate in Marathi. Its not just the middle class. The staff here in a housekeeping contract is from UP, Bihar, Bengal and they all read it and say, Sahi Aavaz Uthai Hai. I tell them to send the same to their native. WhatsApp has changed the world. My contacts from slum work have gone back to their native. I started sending to them from yesterday and awaiting response.Two offers for arranging webinars one from Indore and one from Pune are in the pipeline. Local webinars in Gujarat are on. So people are ready. Some who were pucca bhakts, so far have responded positively.Publication of the draft in Counterview has definitely helped.

Let us understand each issue point by point. First of all I must thank you for initiating this mind churning discussion. Its your response that has started discussion.Let me make it clear right in the beginning that what is being proposed right now is that the huge resources of our country, material and human in private hands, specially in allopathy, to be taken to serve the public interest, because that resource is built by public money in the form of loans and used for many unnecessary investigations, drugs and surgeries. What to do with good charity hospitals should be left to the people of that area. If people are happy with them, let them be. And whenever required they should be given more help and funds. They are a minuscule of the whole healthcare apparatus.Big ayurvedic and homeopathy hospitals would come in the category of specialty or super-specialty hospitals, I am not sure how many but quite a lot of them would be government run even today. For that, basic doctors should know and understand these practices as scientific.---
Labor will campaign for a royal commission into the government's controversial robo-debt scheme, which unlawfully recovered tens of millions of dollars from welfare recipients including students and pensioners.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese will on Tuesday announce his party will initiate a public inquiry into the scheme if it wins the next election so a "disaster like this never happens to the Australian people again".

Anthony Albanese said a royal commission would shed light on what due diligence was done and what advice was obtained into the system prior to its implementation. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Prime Minister Scott Morrison earlier this month apologised for any "hurt or harm" people suffered as a result of the government's scheme after it announced it would refund every alleged overpayment it had collected under the discredited system of income averaging.

"Up to three-quarters of a million Australians were targeted for four long years by this government in a bid to artificially boost the budget bottom line," Mr Albanese said.
American Airlines has removed a black man from his flight to Phoenix on May 31 after he requested to switch a seat.

The black man and four other individuals had filed a joint discrimination lawsuit against the American Airlines.

Elgin Banks, the black passenger, was on his scheduled flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix when he was asked by the flight attendant to leave the American Airlines.

Banks, who is from Arizona, asked if he could sit closer to the front, according to the lawsuit he filed.

However, the flight attendant rudely replied and asked him to step back.

Additionally, the Black man also stated in his lawsuit that he was approached by a security personnel, who told him to leave and get off the plane.

Meanwhile, four other American Airlines passengers on that day were also escorted and removed from their flights after they witnessed and defended the Black man.

All of them were later on banned from traveling through the American Airlines, MSN News reports.

American Airlines Denies the Allegation

American Airlines has denied the allegations thrown against them.

The airline said that Banks requested to be transferred to the first-class cabin.

However, he was not eligible and was told to stay in his assigned seat.

In a statement released by the American Airlines through its spokesperson, the company said Banks attempted to relocate to the first-class cabin during the boarding process and before leaving the gate.

However, the seat was already assigned to another passenger.

Moreover, American Airlines also denied that they banned Banks and the other passengers.

The airline asserted that they are not allowing any forms of discrimination and it is not aligned with the core values of the airlines.

They also added that they are now conducting an investigation about the alleged racial discrimination.

American Airlines' History of Discrimination

This was not the first time that the American Airlines got involved on discrimination issues.

In fact, they have been accused of discriminating some individuals in the past based on their skin color or racial or ethnic origin.

In 2019, two Muslim men were racially profiled and were forced to leave the airline because one of them used the bathroom twice before the scheduled take-off.

The two Muslim men from Dallas were suspected of doing something else, according to a published report in NBC News.

American Airlines said they reviewed the incident and had reached out to the two Muslim men to explain their side.

In 2018, Black rapper Wale tweeted that two flight attendants from the American Airlines threatened him that they will call the police because they thought that he did not belong in the first class cabin.

Later, American Airlines asked an apology.

Meanwhile, the incident that happened to the black man and other passengers of American Airlines caught the attention of the rapper and actor Ice Cube, who has more than 5 million followers on social media.

In his post, he tweeted that black people are having more and more problems with American Airlines, and he won't fly with the airlines "until they "fix their attitude."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, on the other hand, issued a travel advisory and gave a warning to the African-American community to be cautious when traveling via American Airlines because of its pattern of racial discrimination.

Check these out!
(Newser)  Two decades after Elian Gonzalez was forcibly removed from his Miami relatives' home and returned to his father in Cuba, the now 26-year-old is becoming a father himself. "Soon I will begin to understand what it means to be a father," Gonzalez wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday, Father's Day. "But what I know up until now is my father and I hope to do it as half as well as he did with me." Gonzalez has said in the past that he agreed with his father's choice to fight for him after his mother died trying to get to the US with the then 5-year-old. He tells CNN he and his fiancee are expecting a baby girl this summer. (Read more Elian Gonzalez stories.)
By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump suspended the entry into the United States of certain foreign workers on Monday, a move the White House said would help the coronavirus-battered economy, but which business groups strongly oppose.

Trump issued a presidential proclamation that temporarily blocks foreign workers entering on H-1B https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION/WORKERS/xklvyzkdxpg/h1b.jpg visas for skilled employees, and L visas, for managers and specialized workers being transferred within a company.

He also blocked those entering on H-2B seasonal worker visas, used by landscapers and other industries.

The visa suspension, which takes effect on Wednesday until the end of the year, will open up 525,000 jobs for U.S. workers, a senior administration official said on a call with reporters.

The official, who did not explain how the administration arrived at that figure, said the move was geared at "getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible."

But businesses including major tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the visa suspension would stifle the economic recovery after the damage done by the pandemic.

Critics of the measure say Trump is using the pandemic to achieve his longstanding goal to limit immigration. The proclamation's immediate effects are likely to be limited, as U.S. consulates around the world remain closed for most routine visa processing.

The proclamation exempts those already in the United States, as well as valid visa holders abroad, but they must have an official travel document that permits entry into the United States.

Immigration attorneys were working on Monday to determine what the order might mean for clients now out of the country.

The measure also exempts food supply chain workers and people whose entry is deemed in the national interest. The suspension will include work-authorized J visas for cultural exchange opportunities, including camp counselors and au pairs, as well as visas for the spouses of H-1B workers.

Story continues

Republican Trump is running for re-election on Nov. 3 and has made his tough immigration stance a central pitch to voters, although the coronavirus, faltering economy and nationwide protests over police brutality have overshadowed that issue.

The president has faced pressure to restrict work visas from groups that seek lower levels of immigration, as well as some Republican lawmakers.

In a statement, BSA, the Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft and Slack, urged the administration to "refrain from restricting employment of highly-skilled foreign professionals," adding, "These restrictions will negatively impact the U.S. economy," and decrease job opportunities for Americans.

Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless, a pro-migrant group that helps families navigate the U.S. immigration system, said the fact that H-2A visas used to bring in foreign farmworkers were exempt signals that "big agriculture interests are the only stakeholder with any sway over immigration policy in this administration."

H-2B visas, which were included in the suspension, have been used by Trump owned- or Trump-branded businesses, including his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Many business groups were lobbying against a temporary visa ban before it was announced.

Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, estimated that the new ruling would block 219,000 foreign workers through the rest of the year.

"This is introducing more chaos into an already chaotic situation for a lot of U.S. companies," she said.

"The administration is making the assumption that these companies did not already look at the U.S. labor market, which most of them do before they get involved in a complicated process of trying to bring in foreign workers."

Mitch Wexler, a managing partner at law firm Fragomen, said the order would hurt his social media and wireless communications clients and other tech companies.

Employers "wouldn't pay a lot of money to file these applications and hire lawyers like me if they could hire an American for these positions," he said.

Trump also renewed an April proclamation that blocks some foreigners from permanent residence in the United States, extending that measure until the end of the year.

The senior administration official said that proclamation freed up roughly 50,000 jobs for Americans, but did not provide details.

The visa suspension issued on Monday narrows an exemption for medical workers in Trump's April ruling to include only people working on coronavirus research and care.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said there were 15,269 petitions for H-1B visas in healthcare-related jobs across the United States in fiscal year 2019.

The Trump administration will make several other moves to tighten rules around temporary work visas.

The administration plans to rework the H-1B visa program so that the 85,000 visas available each year go to the highest-paid applicants, instead of the current lottery system, the senior administration official said.

It also plans to issue rules making it harder for companies to use the H-1B visa program to train foreign workers to perform the same job in another country, the official said.

Both moves would likely require regulatory changes.

The Trump administration is also taking steps to limit work permits for asylum-seekers, finalizing a regulation on Monday to remove a requirement to process such permits within 30 days.

A separate asylum measure set to be finalized on Friday would greatly limit asylum seekers' access to work permits.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Steve Holland in Washington; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter and Nandita Bose in Washington, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Paresh Dave in Oakland; Editing by Grant McCool and Rosalba O'Brien)
Another two shootings have been reported inside Seattle's 'cop free' autonomous zone, just a day after a 19-year-old man was killed and another was critically injured inside the protest area before angry crowds blocked police from getting in to help them.

One person was taken to the hospital with injuries after the shooting on Sunday night and the Seattle Police Department said it had received unconfirmed reports that a second shooting had taken place.

It came within hours of a double shooting on Saturday that left one person critically injured and killed 19-year-old rapper, Lorenzo Anderson.

The shooter in both incidents is yet to be identified and no one has been taken into custody.

There are mixed reports that the Saturday shooting was the result of a personal dispute between the gunman and the victim.

Some, however, like socialist local politician Kshama Sawant who has urged the autonomous zone on since the beginning, claim it was a 'right wing attack'.

The shootings have presented a test for those inside and for the authorities being kept out of it.

Police on Saturday said they tried to get to the victims but were met with a crowd of angry protesters who screamed at them.

The fire department also says it was unable to gain access to put the victims in ambulances because EMTs are not trained to extract patients from hostile crowds.

Scroll down for video

Nineteen-year-old rapper Lorenzo Anderson was shot and killed on Saturday inside the autonomous zone in Seattle. His killer is yet to be arrested and there are mixed reports over their motive; some say it was a personal dispute, others are calling it a right wing attack

Police entered the zone on Saturday after the shooting and said they were trying to get help to the victims but they were met with angry crowds

The crowds screamed at police officers as they made their way through the zone

On Saturday, EMTs said they were initially unable to go inside to retrieve patients because they were not trained in extracting people from hostile situations.

Those on the inside say they are not hostile and that it was merely another example of police and fire departments not responding quickly enough to the death of a young black man.

Sawant has not explained why she thinks Anderson's death was a 'right wing attack'.

She said in a statement: 'Though we await confirmation of the details of the killing, there are indications that this may have been a right-wing attack.

'It is no accident that right-wing hate and violence has grown dramatically with Donald Trump in the White House.

'If this killing turns out to be a right-wing attack, President Trump bears direct responsibility, since he has fomented reactionary hatred specifically against the peaceful Capitol Hill occupation, and even threatened to intervene with federal troops.'

An unverified video posted on Live Leak shows someone from inside the zone begging EMTs in an ambulance to go inside to 'save' an injured person.

It is unclear when the video was filmed - if it was after Saturday or Sunday's shooting - or who filmed it.

In the footage, an EMT is heard on his radio saying they had not been cleared for entry.

The man who filmed it pleaded with him that he had been cleared and begged him to drive in.

The first shooting was reported to police at 2.30am on Saturday.

They went to the park where it happened but say they were met 'with a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims.'

EMTs were yelled at in one video by a man who begged them to go into the free zone to save the people who had been shot. The fire department said the EMTs were not trained to go into hostile situations to extract patients

The cops say they then later found out that the two victims had been taken to the hospital. It's unclear how they got there.

Video released by the Seattle Police Department shows officers trying to make their way through the crowds, telling them they wanted to get aide to the victims, but being met by angry, yelling protesters.

Some screamed profanities at them whereas others stood quietly with their hands up in surrender.

Others inside screamed at the officers that the victim 'had gone'.

It's unclear if they meant that the victim had died or had been taken to the hospital. The protesters then started chanting 'black lives matter'.

The Seattle Fire Department said its EMTs could not safely get access.

The 'free zone' was set up several weeks ago after days of protests in the area.

The crowds overran the police precinct there, sending cops who were inside fleeing.

It was at first peaceful and saw people watching movies in the street and ordering vegan pizza.

As time has worn on, some say the message of the protest has gotten lost. Two members of the African American Community Advisory Council were booed when they tried to tell protesters that the message had been 'hijacked'.

Among causes that are now being pushed inside is higher tax for Amazon.

The autonomous zone on June 20, the day Lorenzo was shot and killed and one other was injured

James Madison, left, carries a rifle as he walks with Javi Cordero, inside the free zone

Friends of Lorenzo Anderson gather at a tribute to him on June 20

Protesters inside the autonomous zone carry a religious preacher out

Over the weekend, protesters tackled a street preacher who was part of a group of religious demonstrators
Hong Kong no longer foreigners' bridgehead to harm national security: Leader Lam

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 5:24 PM

Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam has reiterated her full support for the enactment of China's proposed national security law, stressing that the semi-autonomous city will no longer be used as "a bridgehead" by foreign forces to endanger national security.

Lam made the remarks in a post on her social media account on Saturday night after China's top legislature reviewed a draft law on safeguarding national security in Hong Kong earlier in the day, which was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) for deliberation.

Lam pledged that the government in Hong Kong will fully cooperate with Beijing to effectively implement the national security law in the Asian financial hub.

She also noted that the local government will work to stamp out all illegal acts of advocating "Hong Kong independence", as well as all unlawful collusion with external forces with the aim of undermining national security.

Last month, Beijing introduced a new national security law that is expected to criminalize sedition, secession, and subversion against the mainland. The law will also pave the way for Chinese national security institutions to operate in the city for the first time since 1997, when Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule.

Protests erupted in Hong Kong after the law was proposed on May 22.

Critics view such a measure as a blow to the semi-autonomous region's autonomy and civil liberties.

Proponents, however, believe the proposed legislation will return stability and leave political freedoms intact, and that Hong Kong's local legislature has failed to pass its own national security laws over the years.

Lam further expressed full confidence in Hong Kong police's ability to deter the rioters' attempt to undermine public security in the city.

She also said the opposition forces' attempts to smear the efforts of Beijing and Hong Kong to safeguard national security in the semi-autonomous city are doomed to failure, adding that Hong Kongers will be expecting the return of public order in the city.

Hong Kong was rocked by violent protests over another bill that would have reformed its extradition law last year. Rioters vandalized the city, destroying public and private property and attacking anyone deemed to be pro-government. Hong Kong dropped that bill, but the acts of violence continued.

The Chinese government says the United States and Britain fanned the flames of unrest in Hong Kong by supporting the protesters.

Hong Kong has been governed under the "one-country, two-system" model since the city  a former British colony  was returned to China in 1997.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Several questions are being raised over the governments recent clearance of anti-viral drug Favipiravir for restricted emergency use to treat mild-to-moderate Covid-19 patients. Many experts said the drug was not only expensive but it was still under trial in most countries and its efficacy was yet to be proven.

They said the drug was in the clinical trial stage for the treatment of Covid-19 not only in Japan, where the drug is approved for treating influenza but also in the US and Europe. While Japan has commenced phase 3 clinical trials, in the United States a phase 2 trial will start.

Its still under trial and has not been approved in the US or Europe so it is a little difficult to understand why India has already approved it, a member of the Indian Council of Medical Researchs national Covid-19 task force said.

A hype has been created around this drug in India, he added, pointing out that the drugs trial even in Japan for Covid-19 patients did not show any efficacy.

Others said the evidence cited for emergency use authorization by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation was rather weak. They said only an observational trial, not a clinical trial, had been conducted with 160 patients in 10 hospitals without any comparison with a placebo arm.

A day after the CDSCO gave EUA to the drug, pharmaceutical major Glenmark on Saturday announced it has launched the medicine under the brand name FabiFlu at a price of about Rs 103 per tablet of 200 mg.

ALSO READ : COVID-19: Centre approves emergency use of anti-viral drug 'Favipiravir'

The drug manufacturer said it is a prescription-based medication for Covid-19 patients with the recommended dose being 1,800 mg twice daily on the first day followed by 800 mg twice daily up to day 14.

It means patients will need to consume 18 pills on the first day after which they will need eight tablets every day for the next 13 days. This means they will need to spend Rs 12, 566 for a course of two weeks.

Drug Controller General of India V G Somani did not respond to calls or messages but Dr. R R Gangakhedkar, the chief epidemiologist of the ICMR, said the national task force would review the medicine once the data of the trial conducted by Glenmark is available.

Until then the EUA granted by the CDSCO with its preconditions can be used by the physicians for its use, he told this newspaper.

But physicians, researchers, and bioethicists questioned the clearance to Favipiravir. Now that anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has been proved to be a dead horse in the context of Covid-19, a dangerous hype is being created around this medicine, which has no scientific backing, said Dr. S P Kalantri, a researcher and medical superintendent of the MGIMS in Wardha.

Dr. Amar Jesani, researcher and editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, called the development baffling. He not only disapproved of the clearance for emergency use but said the CDSCO should have ensured safeguards before its use.

Reached for comment, Glenmark said the CDSCO had granted accelerated approval of the drug taking into account Covid-19s severity, rarity, and lack of alternative treatment.

Another key requirement is for the drug to be backed by clinical evidence of safety and efficacy and all of these conditions hold true in the case of FabiFlu, a company spokesperson said, adding that the interim clinical trial findings in India were in line with several clinical studies elsewhere.

On the cost of the drug, the firm said the price incurred would work out to about Rs 1,000 a day. However, most patients may not require a full 14-day course as many recover within seven days or so, it said.
Concerned over rapid rise of new COVID-19 cases in India: Harvard Global Health Institute Director

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: India crossed another grim milestone of 4 lakh novel coronavirus cases on Sunday recording the addition of one more lakh in just eight days including the latest biggest single-day spike of 15,413 cases amid renewed concerns over the rapid rise in new infections in the country.

The spike in cases has been marked by new peaks in daily numbers (over 12,500) for four consecutive days to take the country's tally to 4,10,461 while the death toll rose to 13,254 with 306 new fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

India's COVID-19 tally crosses 4.25 lakh mark; Goa reports first death

However, there has been a steady improvement in the recovery rate with around 55.48 per cent of the Covid-10 patients being declared virus-free. The number of recoveries stood at 2,27,755 while there were 1,69,451 active cases, the data showed. One patient has migrated.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

India took 64 days to cross the 1-lakh mark from 100 Covid-19 cases, another fortnight to reach two lakh cases and then in another ten days it went past the 3-lakh mark. Also, it took 18 days for the cases to double to the current tally from 2,07,615 that was registered on June 3.

The country witnessed a surge of 2,19,926 coronavirus infections from June 1 till 21 with Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh being the top five states that accounted for the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, an analysis of the official data showed.

Tamil Nadu,(2,532), Kerala(133) and Odisha (304) were among the states which reported a record single-day spike of fresh cases on Sunday. The first case in India was recorded in Kerala on January 30.

Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr Ashish Jha has expressed concern over how quickly the new coronavirus cases are rising in India, and said when populous states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh get hit hard, the country could see a "large increase" in virus infections and deaths.

"Right now I'm concerned by how quickly the number of new cases are rising. India's density may be contributing to this and we've seen high rates of spread in some of the larger metro areas like Mumbai, Delhi and also Chennai," Jha told PTI in New York in an email interview.

"But what concerns me most is major population areas --such as in Bihar and UP-- that have not yet gotten hit very hard. When they do get hit we will likely see a large increase in the number of cases and deaths, which we need to prepare for."

Loss of smell, taste symptoms can help quarantining potential COVID-19 patients: Study

"Given the lag between infection, onset of symptoms and death, I expect numbers to continue to rise in the coming weeks and months," he said, as he stressed that the "trajectory" of cases is "very concerning" in India.

The renowned health expert noted that the number of cases in India may be higher than what the data suggests because while testing has been improving, it has not been rolled out in a way that will capture all low-symptomatic patients.

According to the health ministry, the number of samples being tested every day continues to grow. In the last 24 hours, 1,90,730 samples were tested, while the total number analysed so far is 68,07,226, it said in a statement.

Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other senior officials, a day after the national capital saw a record single-day spike of 3,630 coronavirus cases. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan was also present.

Delhi, which recorded 3,000 cases on Sunday to take the total to nearly 60,000, inched closer to another hotspot Mumbai which accounted for 65,265 infections.

As several Indian companies work on testing of potential drug candidates on Covid-19 patients, drug firm Hetero said it has received approval from regulator DCGI to launch investigational antiviral drug Remdesivir for the treatment of the infection.

Domestic pharma firm Glenmark Pharmaceuticals had on Saturday launched antiviral drug Favipiravir, under the brand name FabiFlu, for the treatment of patients with mild to moderate Covid-19 at a price of about Rs 103 per tablet.

Hetero's generic version of Remdesivir will be marketed under the brand name 'Covifor' in India.

The drug will be available in 100 mg vial (injectable) which has to be administered intravenously in a hospital setting under the supervision of a healthcare practitioner, it said.

Asked about the price of the drug, Hetero Group of Companies MD Vamsi Krishna Bandi told PTI it will be in the range of Rs 5,000-6,000 per dose.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a reference to Covid-19 when he said the world is feeling the need for yoga more than ever due to the pandemic and that the ancient Indian practice is helping a large number of patients across the globe in defeating the disease.

The coronavirus specifically attacks the respiratory system and 'pranayama' or breathing exercise helps in strengthening the respiratory system the most, Modi said in his message on the sixth International Day of Yoga.

"If our immunity is strong, it is of great help in defeating this disease. For boosting immunity, there are several methods in yoga, various 'asanas' are there. These asanas are such that they increase the strength of the body and also strengthen our metabolism," he said.

The first "Sunday shutdown" during the 'Unlock' phase with an exception only for hospitals and allied health services brought Chennai and suburbs to a standstill while the city's civic body said its fever camps to help detect coronavirus cases have evoked tremendous response from the people.

It was a virtual curfew with deserted roads, bridges and intersections totally blocked by police using barricades and with the exception of police, sanitary workers and health personnel of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) most others stayed indoors.

Maharashtra has reported the maximum number of cases at 1,28,205, followed by Tamil Nadu at 56,845, Delhi at 56,746, Gujarat at 26,680, Uttar Pradesh at 16,594, Rajasthan at 14,536 and West Bengal at 13,531, according to the Health ministry's data.

The other states with over 10,000 cases were Madhya Pradesh(11,724) and Haryana(10,223).

Of the total 13,254 deaths, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 5,984 followed by (number of deaths in brackets) Delhi (2,112), Gujarat (1,638), Tamil Nadu (704), West Bengal (540), Madhya Pradesh (501), Uttar Pradesh (507), Rajasthan (337) and Telangana (203). Other states accounted for the remaining fatalities.
Veterans such as Lewistown native Thomas W. "Tom" Safford returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Safford will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Ready to Serve

Safford was born in 1920 to Mr. and Mrs. G.M. Safford in Lewistown. From the time he was 10 years old, Safford worked as a farmhand, making a game out of trying to outwork fully grown farmhands. He graduated from Missoula County High school in 1938.

Safford enlisted in the Army Air Corps in June 1941. He served in the South Pacific as a bombsight mechanic. His unit was dispatched to Australia as part of the Allies' unsuccessful 1941-42 campaign to defend the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) against Japanese occupation. Safford also supervised the conversion of "The Swoose" B-17D Flying Fortress bomber. Its first combat mission of the war was a high-speed transport plane for Lt. Gen. George Brett, commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific. Safford was awarded the American Defense Services Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Medal (one Battle Star).

In October 1945, Safford was discharged. He attended and graduated from Montana State University with a fine arts degree. He did his graduate work at Washington State College. During the ensuing years, he studied engineering, math and statistics at Oregon State, UCLA, Penn State and Texas Tech, garnering the equivalent of a Masters of Engineering degree with more than 230 hours of college credit.

U-Haul Tenure

Safford joined U-Haul in 1952 to run the advertising department, which consisted of a desk, a chair and a Graflex Speed Graphic camera. Over the next 39 years, he served in many capacities, including assistant to the president, safety director, vice president, and director of product planning and development. His ingenuity and mechanical skills were legendary, spanning the full range of U-Haul equipment and operations.

There is a distinguished list of achievements attributed to Safford. He built the first U-Haul headquarters in Portland, Ore., by moving and converting a WWII Army barracks. He built and then opened the first U-Haul-owned and -operated moving center. He is also credited with redesigning the running "Sammy U" logo, named for the Company's co-founder, in 1952.

Safford semi-retired in 1985 due to health reasons, and passed away in September 1991. He is survived by a granddaughter, Ember Shapiro, and two great granddaughters, Kaitlyn and Brittney Shapiro.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Safford is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Tom.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany jumped to 2.88 on Sunday, up from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term. A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany jumped to 2.88 on Sunday, up from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term.

A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected. A rate of less than one is needed to gradually contain the disease.

The number, a sharp increase from 1.06 on Friday, is based on RKI's 4-day average.

On a 7-day average, the reproduction rate jumped to 2.03, RKI Statistics from Sunday showed.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by Nick Macfie)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
We deny the motion because the board has not shown that it would be irreparably harmed by injunctive relief that it initially agreed to and because staying the preliminary injunction at this late date would result in clear harm to the plaintiffs who have relied on its terms, the appellate panel said.
TCN News

New Delhi-based Rights and Risks Analysis Group has released a report on media crackdown by the government during the COVID-19 lockdown detailing harassment of journalists and reporters working under critical circumstances.

Support TwoCircles



The report titled India: Medias Crackdown During COVID-19 Lockdown discusses that immediately after the announcement of nationwide lockdown on March 24, the society as a whole was moved by miseries and difficulties of migrant labourers. As the situation dwindled, the crisis and challenges to cover their struggles became even difficult for journalists. The duration of the past three months, the report notes, in absence of food, shelter, transport and opportunity to work coupled with layoffs affected media persons as it made bringing news in itself a challenge.

Simultaneously, governments across the spectrum started hounding media for speaking about the plight of thousands of stranded workers on highways and roadways. Additionally, writ petitions that were filed in the public interest for redressal of grievances of migrant labourers in different parts of the country during the period, the BJP Government prayed to suppress the freedom of opinion and expression relating to COVID-19 under the garb of deliberate or inaccurate reporting by the media. Particularly web portals suffered the brunt of political parties and leaders who accused news websites as channels making attempts of serious and inevitable potential panic in the larger section of the society.

Speaking about the role of higher authorities, the Risk Analysis report has alleged that the judgment of the Supreme Court did not stop various State governments to clamp down on the journalists. It said that at such the time of a global pandemic it was the media who was actively covering ground reports and acted as messengers by risking their lives to convey the vital news of various mismanagement, deficiencies, corruption, the hunger of the migrant workers and the lack of adequate PPE for doctors at hospitals. While on duty, as of May 4, nearly 100 journalists in India were infected with the Coronavirus.

The analysis then indicates an unprecedented rise in harassment of journalists all over the country with Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh going on a spree to register First Information Reports against journalists. In West Bengal, they were warned to behave properly and even threatened with action under the Disaster Management Act. Reporters of prominent news organizations like The Hindu, The Indian Express and The Wire were targeted to suppress the truth and some were even accused of publishing one-sided stories during the coronavirus outbreak.

Only in March, the total number of journalists to have faced arrest, registration of FIRs, summons or show cause notices, physical assaults, alleged destruction of properties and threats for reportage on COVID-19 was 55. It mentioned that the Editors Guild of India expressed concern over a growing pattern of misuse of criminal laws to intimidate journalists in different parts of the country which came soon after Mumbai Police had imposed Section 144 to obstruct ground reporting to cover the states handling of increasing COVID-19 infection cases.

The report then reveals that the highest number of attacks in journalists was reported from Uttar Pradesh (11 journalists), followed by Jammu & Kashmir (6 journalists) and Himachal Pradesh (5). Other states who followed suit were Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Nagaland, Telangana and Kerala. Even Andaman & Nicobar Islands marked assaults on media persons during the period. Some were tortured in detention while many have been slapped with offences under Sections 124A (sedition); 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony); 182 (false information); 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life); 500 (defamation); 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory); and Sections 66 (computer-related offences). Several other examples of brutal beating, custodial abuse and death threats against journalists have been recorded in the risk analysis report, accusing that the government is responsible to create necessary conditions for press freedom but here, the Government of India seeks to silence the media.

The report has noted that the Centre and State governments have acted at various levels of administration under the garb of curbing fake news to take action against journalists and now it cannot claim to be promoting the freedom of opinion and expression. In addition, it has also stated that the police have been too compliant to register FIRs filed by the ruling parties. Commenting on the fragile atmosphere under which the media is operating in India, the report has drawn attention to the inadequacy of the Press Council of India (PCI) in taking a stand against such suppression of freedom. The analysis urged PCI to do more as it is the statutory body empowered to protect the rights of journalists, but has intervened suo moto in only four cases during the period. The report concluded that if PCI and regulatory bodies continue to remain silent in the gag of press freedom, then media remains at serious risks in India.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 15:16:47|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BRUSSELS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- As the Chinese and European Union (EU) leaders are set to hold a virtual annual meeting on Monday, the outlook for the bilateral relationship after the COVID-19 pandemic has come under the spotlight.

International observers and think tanks are eager to look into the insights of the leaders' meeting as the two sides are managing to recover from the pandemic.

The Center for European Studies under China's Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) joined forces with its European partners last week in holding a virtual round table focusing on China-EU relations.

Chinese and European experts attending the webinar expressed their belief that China-EU relations will be more mature and reality-oriented in the future.

Lin Goethals, a program director with the European Institute of Asian Studies, believed an important issue of the meeting could be to make sure that the investment agreement between the two sides, which is now under negotiation, is mutually beneficial.

In response to some European analysts' concerns such as the extent of China's opening-up, Xu Mingqi, director of the SASS Center for European Studies, said the European perspective is understandable, but a notable reality is that China is "in the deep water of reform and opening(-up)" and its "domestic obstacles exist."

Admitting that there have been some competitive factors and even frictions in recent years, Xu stressed that they cannot overshadow the strong complementarity between the Chinese and European economies.

Due to the nature of new threats confronting the world, such as the current health crisis and terror attacks, which know no borders, it is necessary to cooperate based on multilateralism and solidarity, said Istvan Ujhelyi, a member of the European Parliament and vice chair of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, at the event.

"Understanding each other's culture and history is the key to building long-term relationships and developing healthy and balanced societies," he said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will hold the leaders' meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. On that occasion, Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Michel and von der Leyen via video.

The meeting will be the first of its kind after the inauguration of the new EU leaders last year, and the highest-level bilateral meeting since the coronavirus outbreak.

During another webinar gathering Chinese and Western scholars earlier this month, Philippe Le Corre, research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, highlighted the importance of solidarity in hard times.

Noting the notion of "rivalry" in EU-China relations the EU introduced last year, he said "this pandemic is a game-changer globally. Globalization will no longer be the same. In troubled times we should not be fighting each other, but should be sitting around the table."

The upcoming meeting is expected to further boost bilateral strategic trust and mutually beneficial cooperation, as well as point out the direction for the development of bilateral relations in the post-COVID-19 era, said Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

As the world is faced with rising unilateralism, it is of utmost importance to strengthen the global response to the health crisis and improve public health governance on the basis of multilateralism, Zhang said. Enditem
"That was certainly me as an arts graduate 35 years ago, and my parents, and yet I am eternally grateful to have done that arts degree, as humble as mine was  with nary a high distinction, distinction or even a credit to my credit, and yet still only one fail, which was in religious studies so it doesn't really count.

Loading

"No matter! An arts degree is the most polyvalent of all degrees, the one that allows far and away the greatest latitude in where to steer to from here in your careers, gives you the best understanding of the world at large, how it all fits together, where we have come from, where we are going to, what is important in this world. There is tendency, true, for graduates such as yourself to say 'Just an arts degrees', when asked what did you graduate in, but please don't. A better answer is, 'An arts degree! From Sydney Uni!'

For there really is much to be proud of when it comes to assessing the contribution to society made by arts graduates, a contribution that the federal government does down at its peril.

It was put very well by no less than the great Professor Manning Clark, in one of his last lectures, delivered to a group of Modern History students at ANU three decades ago. One of them recorded it and passed it on to me.
People hope for good luck in times of prosperity and are amazed by good luck in times of adversity.

In todays digital and information society, people are more connected to each other than ever before. When a pandemic suddenly strikes, these connections allow us to quickly learn about what we are experiencing. With countless people sharing their own strengths to contribute to the common good, no one is left isolated:

When the outbreak began in China, Si Xiang, a doctor at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, went straight to the frontlines in Wuhan. There he fought the pandemic as a member of the Guangdong Medical Aid Team.

On the frontline, he had to face large numbers of seriously ill patients every day, as well as uncertain danger. He found himself in a race against time, actively working to save patients lives. He and his fellow team members worked four six-hour shifts a day. After working constantly for several days, their biological clocks all went out of sync.

The hospital was overcrowded. You had no idea if or when you would be infected.

Hu Ziqi is head teacher of the ninth grade and Chinese language teacher at Shenzhen Fuyong Middle School. The pandemic led to holidays being extended indefinitely, and many students were unable to leave their hometowns and return to school. As time passed, the senior high school entrance examination drew closer and closer. During this unprecedented time, teachers and students came together like never before to prepare for the vital examination.

This is the longest break Ive had as a teacher. With the high school entrance exam approaching, many students are still stuck in their hometowns.

Mr. Li, a courier in Shenzhen, was used to the usual hustle and bustle throughout the city. However, many restrictions prevented people from going outside amid the pandemic. As he traveled across the city, he was worried about his safety but felt a sense of responsibility.

I was not allowed to take packages to the door, and many customers were worried that their packages would be lost. These were all vital deliveries such as food and protective equipment.

Overcoming challenges together

To Si Xiang, the best feeling in the world is when his patients are discharged. The high cure rate would be impossible without weekly telemedicine consultations with experts from Guangzhou. These consultations allow experts from various departments to gather together, giving Dr. Si strong support from the back end.

We had videoconferences with back-end medical workers every week that were hugely beneficial. They helped us better understand our patients, which boosted our confidence during treatment and bolstered out efforts in defeating COVID-19.

During the pandemic, Ms. Hu Ziqis students would go online for their classes. Children who had been anxious and frustrated at home due to the pandemic regained their confidence as they returned to school, and some even volunteered to take extra lessons.

Although my students come from across the country, everyone is online when a class begins. Sometimes this really touches me. COVID-19 may have shut schools down, but it cant stop students from learning.

5G-enabled unmanned vehicles were utilized in many hospitals and communities across the country during the pandemic. The contactless services provided by these unmanned vehicles made the patients and residents feel safe. What Mr. Li has noticed the most is that more and more customers have shown care for him during the pandemic, which touches his heart.

My customers told me to take my time and take care. I was truly touched by these words.

During the outbreak, Huawei supported the stable operations of more than 300 operator networks in over 170 countries and regions around the world. ICT infrastructure has become a strategic cornerstone and driving force to overcome the outbreak. ICT infrastructure is vital to the health and well-being of every industry, family, and individual.

To learn more, please click here
The Madras high court acquitted on Monday a man found guilty of the daylight killing of his son-in-law, a Dalit, and commuted the death sentence handed to five others in connection with the gruesome crime that sparked public outrage in Tamil Nadu over four years ago.

A division bench of justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar acquitted B Chinnaswamy, the father of Kausalya and a member of the dominant Thevar caste, and relieved him of all charges, including criminal conspiracy. The court sentenced five others to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without right to remission.

Kausalyas husband, Shankar, 22, was hacked to death in front of her in Tirupur districts Udumlapet on March 13, 2016, a chilling crime that was captured on a closed circuit television camera (CCTV). Kausalya, then 19, suffered serious injuries in the attack.

The couple fell in love while studying in a private engineering college in Pollachi, and married against the wishes of Kausalyas family in 2015.

In December 2017, the Tirupur district sessions court sentenced six people, including Chinnaswamy, who was accused of being the mastermind, to death. Of the 11 accused in the case, three people  Kausalyas mother, maternal uncle and an underage person  were cleared of all charges. Two others got lesser sentences.

Chinnaswamy and the others convicted petitioned the high court against the verdict. A counter-appeal was moved against the acquittal of Kausalyas mother and the others. The high court upheld their acquittal.

The five sentenced to 25 years in jail on Monday were the men who were hired to kill Shankar, according to a report on The News Minute.

Chinnaswamys lawyer, ARL Sundaresan, told the website that the prosecution was not able to prove any conspiracy between Chinnaswamy and the gang. The video recording from a shop was relied on by the prosecution, but it was recovered after four days and it could have been morphed, Sundaresan said.

The defences case was that after the marriage, Kausalyas family accepted the wedding and had no intention of killing Shankar, Sundaresan told The News Minute.

In a statement released on social media, Kausalya condemned the verdict and said she will continue to fight for justice. I will fight until my Shankar gets justice, she said.
It's become common practice for NGOs and environmental development agencies to use 'influencers' for the roll out of environmentally sustainable farming practices, but this isn't always the most effective method, say social network analysts from the University of Sydney.

Published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, their research examined the role of social network brokers - well-connected individuals within a community - in the adoption of innovative farming practices in Battambang Province in North-Western Cambodia. The authors, Dr Petr Matous, Junjian Zhang and Associate Professor Daniel Tan found that less popular farmers were better influencers, compared to their more popular peers.

"Similar to marketers on social media, the international development industry and environment conservation organisations have become enamoured with the idea of leveraging local 'influencers' to deliver programs ranging from behavioural interventions, to the promotion of new technologies," said Faculty of Engineering academic and environmental and humanitarian engineer, Dr Petr Matous.

"External organisations often don't have the capacity to support every single farmer in a village and show them how a new technology works. Instead, they often select several 'model farmers', who they choose based on whether they are community leaders or regularly offer advice," he said.

"They then give these 'popular' and seemingly influential farmers new technologies in the hope they will adopt them and disseminate the knowledge or technology around the village using their social networks.

The researchers found that providing less popular farmers with new information and technologies was more likely to result in a wider community adoption of sustainable farming practices.

"Farmers who move between diverse sub-communities and were more open-minded were the most receptive to the early adoption of the recommended farming practices such as crop rotation or drip irrigation and they are not the same group as the most 'popular' farmers," said Dr Matous.

"This might be the case because popular farmers may be reluctant or tired of being repeatedly used by external agencies. Whether in Cambodia or anywhere else, the fact that someone is locally prominent does not necessarily mean that they are interested in new environmental or resource-conserving practices.

"The findings suggest that we should not excessively rely only on the handful of prominent farmers in the hope that new technologies will magically trickle down from them to others, who are often their competitors. To tackle environmental degradation and looming food insecurity, we need to better engage larger sections of the communities."

Implementing sustainable practices

Rice farming is Battambang's main agricultural activity, although many farmers apply practices that deteriorate soil health and water resources, often leading to insufficient yields. Coupled with environmental degradation and the current COVID-19 pandemic, the region's food security has deteriorated.

To combat this, since 2017, University of Sydney researchers have been working with Battambang farmers to diversify their crops and adopt practices that will better sustain their livelihoods and the local environment.

"One practice we have worked to implement is crop rotation: alternately planting different crops on the same land in between rice growing seasons, for example, mungbean, watermelon, rice and cucumber," said Associate Professor Daniel Tan from Sydney Institute of Agriculture and the Faculty of Science.

"This practice ensures that organic matter in the soil is preserved, which improves soil structure and nutrient content, and prevents soil erosion. It also allows the producers to gain additional income in between rice harvest when their fields would be otherwise unused," said PhD student and the study's lead author, Junjian Zhang.

"Another practice that we studied and promoted was drip irrigation: a low-cost system of small perforated hoses laid between crops that bring water to the root zone, with minimal loss by evaporation and surface run off," he said.

###

HOW THE ANALYSIS WORKED:

As a part of a long-term engagement in North-Western Cambodia, the study's lead researchers conducted a social network analysis in the village of Battambang, using interviews and a detailed questionnaire that asked farmers to provide details about their social network, including questions such as, "who do you go to for farming advice?". The quantitative part of the data was analysed with network science tools and graph theory.

Junjian Zhang led the social network survey in the field and collected data from over 120 farmers while studying at the University of Sydney. He has successfully completed his degree in Sydney and is now studying Engineering for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge.

DISCLOSURE:

There are no conflicts of interest to declare. The research was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
New Delhi: Indian Army Chief General MM Naravane will visit Leh and Kashmir to take stock of the ground situation this week. He is expected to visit the regions on Tuesday.

The Army Chief will review the force preparedness as well the deployment across the Line of Actual Control with China and Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. He is likely to visit on Tuesday.

General Naravane's visit to Leh comes amid the heightened threat in eastern Ladakh region where over thousands of Indian Army men have been deployed a few metres away from the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following the bloody clash with the Chinese People`s Liberation Army (PLA) a week ago.

Earlier in the day (June 22), Naravane discussed the security situation with the top Army commanders in Delhi. According to Army officials, all commanders are in the national capital for the second phase of the commanders' conference. Army Commanders Conference is being held on June 22-23 to review the operational situation on both the northern and western fronts.

On the other hand, corps commanders of the two countries' military met at Moldo-Chushul Valley on the Chinese side to resolve the border issues and ease the tension in eastern Ladakh. This was the second such meeting after the first one took place on June 6 to defuse the tensions.

The ground situation is volatile in Ladakh, and Pangong Tso can be another flashpoint after the Galwan Valley patrolling point 14 where a barbaric attack was carried on Indian troops by the Chinese army on the night of June 15.

At Pangong Tso, there is an attempt of the PLA to alter the Line of Actual Control unilaterally. The prolonged camping and a heavy presence of Chinese troops around the Pangong Lake, at a point which has been under Indian control, has emerged to be the biggest roadblock for a possible resolution to the ongoing tussle between India and China at the LAC.

The Chinese have built defences in several parts between Finger 4 and Finger 8, which have been grey zones in the past. The Chinese action in Pangong Lake is seen as an attempt to change the status quo.

The Indian Army has also enhanced deployment in the Hot Springs, Demchok , Koyul, Fukche, Depsang, Murgo and Galwan.

In the midst of the growing tensions, India is exploring all possible military options as a response, if the Chinese aggression continues. India has also ramped up preparations on its side along the 826-km front of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
Shocking footage shows a teenage girl screaming as her head is stamped on during a traumatising school attack.

The 13-year-old victim has been left too scared to return after the horrifying incident, which happened at a school in Melbourne, Australia.

A clip of the violence, showing the girl being punched, kicked and pushed to the floor, has been widely shared on social media.

Now the teens dad says she is too scared to return to St Francis Xavier College in Melbourne, Australia, for fear she will be targeted again.



Teachers were seen trying to break up the fracas in the harrowing video.

The girls dad wrote in a heartbreaking Facebook post: These girls are at school and my daughter is at home scared to go to school, she is getting calls to be beaten again.

And he told the Cranbourne Leader: My daughter is too scared to go back to school now and she has been getting threats from the girls that they will go after her again.

A lot of her hair was pulled out, she had severe bruising, a concussion and shes just not coping.

Police are investigating, but no arrests have been made, Daily Mail Australia reports. Police are investigating, but no arrests have been made, Daily Mail Australia reports.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Temperature checks, face masks, and social distancing are just a few of the safety precautions hair salons and barbershops are taking as they reopened on Monday as part of New York Citys reopening in Phase 2.

Franco Catalano, who owns the barbershop Frank and Gerry Family Barbershop in Westerleigh for 40 years says the new safety procedures are a change but he felt good about reopening on Monday. He said he and his barbers are doing the best we can.

Im booked the whole week for appointments, he said on Monday while cutting a clients hair.

Under state guidelines, waiting rooms at hair salons and barbershops must be closed, and any lines should be limited as much as possible. The state encourages salons to have an appointment-only policy to limit walk-in customers. Walk-ins can be accepted if a salon chooses to do so, but if there is no space available, they should be provided with a time to return.

Both employees and customers should wear an appropriate face mask or covering at all times, under the state guidelines. Hand hygiene stations and hand sanitizer should also be placed throughout barbershops and salons.

Catalano said wearing the mask is different for him, his employees and customers -- but its all for safety. In addition, he is disinfecting every chair and surface that his clients come into contact with and is taking temperatures at the front door.

While getting his haircut, loyal customer Eugene Timmins said there is nothing like getting your hair cut at a barbershop. He hasnt cut his hair -- not even at home -- since quarantine began in mid-March.

I only come here because these guys are the best. You do your hair at home and its not good. You get your hair cut, you feel better, he said.

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

Co-owners of Hair Inspiration in Port Richmond, Claribel Vargas and Florentina Morena Suero prepared their hair salon for days before they reopened on Monday.

[Were] getting all the supplies, calling people ahead, said Vargas. The phone started ringing as soon as we got in here. Were just taking phone numbers down to call them back and make appointments.

And the vibe at the hair salon will definitely feel different, Vargas explained. There wont be as much talking or shouting, or customers hanging out at the salon for the majority of the day.

Now its a quick thing, she said.

Only Vargas and Suero were working at the salon on Monday with just three customers -- all to maintain social distancing. Do-it-yourself physical barriers were created by the pair made of PVC pipes and clear shower curtains.

We did the best we could, she said. We got a lot of ideas from other places.

Josefs Barber Shop in Grant City had three salon chairs for customers and was sold out for appointments on Monday. Owner Josef Katanov was managing phone calls and cutting hair as customers waited outside in the parking lot for their names to be called.

At Untouchable Cutz in Dongan Hills, owner James Scianna said the first day of reopening is running smoothly, with a good flow of customers coming in and out of the shop. He has been preparing for the last two weeks to return to the barber shop to see his employees and customers again.

Its definitely different, he said. Its going good though. We did all the guidelines, we met them all. All six feet apart, wearing masks, gloves.

Schedules have been reorganized to make sure all 10 barbers are able to still work with a reduced amount of chairs in the shop to follow social distancing. In addition to intense sanitization, air humidifiers, and overnight UV sterilizer, Scianna said all employees and customers are subject to temperature checks.

[We want] to make everybody feel as safe as possible, he said. To have some sort of normalcy when you get back in the shop.

When asked about how it felt to wear the masks and gloves, Scianna said he and his workers have been used to it -- as face coverings and masks have been a requirement when going out in public in New York State over the last few months.

Ive been having a lot of Zoom meetings [with staff] and it was just great for all us to see each other, he said.

He added that the shop isnt able to do beards or eyebrow threading or waxing under state guidelines, but he expects that will return as New York City moves through its phased reopenings.

Kim Barbagallo was making preparations on Monday at her Willowbrook salon, Fringe: The Art of Hair, which is slated to open on Tuesday afternoon.

She previously told the Advance/SILive.com that she has made safety procedures in place for her clients and employees: All stylists will wear masks, chairs will be 6-feet apart, there will be no sitting in the waiting area, and clients will be given a mask and a disposable cape. In addition, there is hand sanitizer and alcohol in every hair station, which will be disinfected between clients.

Clients and stylists will also be temperature checked upon entry. Barbagallo said that clients will fill out a health questionnaire before their appointment for the safety of both the salon and customers.

I definitely think its going to feel different for a lot of reasons, Barbagallo said, about how the salon will feel with customer and stylists wearing masks and social distancing. One, were going to be using only one chair per client so only one client at a time so it will be less crowded in here. The second part to that is its hard to talk with the masks. They have masks, we have masks, its going to feel a little less personable. Although, we are so anxious to do our craft and to be able to mingle with them that it will still feel good.

Instruments, combs, hairdryers, and other tools will all be cleaned and sanitized after each client. There are 15-minute increments between appointments, Barbagallo said, to allow for proper and thorough sanitization.

And she said the salon is already booked up for the next two weeks.

Im just excited for just so many reasons. Im excited to get back to normal even though its not normal. Im just excited to be able to -- we love to do what we do. Were creative people. We just want to work and Im excited to say theyre like our family, our extended family. Our clients are our friends.

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.
The Karnataka government on Monday decided to enforce complete and full lockdown in four major areas of the state capital, following a sharp rise in the coronavirus cases.

At a cabinet meeting called today to take stock of the situation, Yediyurappa decided to enforce complete shutdown in KR Market, Chamarajapete, Kalasipalya and Chickpete.

Briefing reporters after the review meeting, minister for revenue and municipal administration R Ashoka said that some of the quarantined are leaving their phones behind and roaming around, thus evading strict government regulations. He warned that police would register a criminal case against those breaking quarantine rules. The government has also promised to notify tariff rates for treatment in private hospitals shortly.

In the recent past, the government has been an active votary for opening up the state for more activities. The same willingness to open the economy was conveyed by chief minister BS Yediyurappa in the chief ministers video conference with PM Modi.

The development follows after the state saw its biggest single-day jump in Covid-19 cases with 453 new virus cases being registered on Sunday. Out of them 196 were from Bengaluru.

On Monday, the state capital at 126 new cases accounted for half of the Covid-19 cases registered today - 249. Bengaluru (urban and rural) with 958 cases account for nearly a third of all active cases in the state.

Incidentally unlike in the past where spikes were due to an influx of people coming back from different states, contact history of the new patients indicates that it has been locally transmitted.

Till date Karnataka has reported 9,399 Covid-19 positive cases with 152 deaths and 3,523 active cases.
The real estate company Rudin Management Company said that it reached a collective 5.2 percent of capacity across its 14 office buildings in New York that reopened on Monday.

Workers across the city returning found significantly different spaces awaiting them.

Mike Chapman, 54, a technology consultant, said he was happy to return to his office after three months of working in a small apartment with his fiancee. But he was the only one of seven employees to go back.

Its not going to feel normal to be in the office, said Ciara Lakhani, the chief people officer of Dashlane, a software company with about 100 employees in New York. You cant socialize the same way. You cant really attend meetings in person.

More than 100 cases of Covid-19 are still being reported each day in New York, according to city data. A contact-tracing program that is supposed to help track the spread of the virus as the city reopens has gotten off to a slow start.

Worried about a surge of cases in states that moved more quickly to reopen, New York officials are requiring that strict social-distancing guidelines remain. Landlords of commercial buildings said they had been preparing to reopen by implementing new safety and cleaning protocols.

Husein Sonara, the chief operating officer at the Sapir Organization, which manages two properties in Midtown, said his company had put markers on sidewalks outside its buildings, in the hallways inside and in elevators so workers can maintain social distancing.
The international community should prevent Russia from returning to the G7 until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored, President Volodymyr Zelensky says in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Justin Trudeau said that there is no chance for Russia to return to the G7 until the full restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and we are grateful for that support  and I should say that there will be no resolution if the world doesnt keep the pressure on Russia in that regard, he noted.

Speaking in the interview, Zelensky said that while he was committed to seeking peace with Vladimir Putins Russia  an effort he called most tricky and difficult  Ukraine needed its international allies to hold firm during those negotiations.

Russia was expelled from the G7 (formerly the G8) over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as well as Moscows support for separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump, the host of the next G7 meeting in September, said last month that he will invite Russia, as well as India, South Korea and Australia, to a gathering focused on the question of how to deal with China.

While welcoming other countries to attend the September meeting is Mr. Trumps prerogative as host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have both said Russia wont be allowed to rejoin the G7 before Ukraine gets its land back.

ish
Thousands protest against COVID-19 passports in Sweden

Chinese automaker Geely in talks to buy Meizu

Kaunas officially becomes European Capital of Culture 2022

Turkish journalist who insulted Erdogan on live TV arrested

Tata Steel Masters: Magnus Carlsen is sole leader

Ipsos poll predicts Macron's landslide victory in French presidential election

Germany elects new CDU leader

Manchester United beat West Ham

Hoffenheim lose to Borussia

Media: US on Monday will begin evacuation of families of diplomats in Ukraine

UN expresses concern over disappearance of 2 activists in Afghanistan

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro postponed due to omicron strain

More than 9,300 Afghans claiming protection were taken to Germany

Scientists suggest that under surface of one of Saturn moons lies ocean

Russian Foreign Ministry: US and NATO launched toxi campaign against Moscow

Sergey Nersesyan dismissed from post of Yerevan Deputy Mayor

Arsenal intend to extend deal of Mikel Arteta

Johnny Depp returns to cinema after high-profile scandal with his ex-wife

British Foreign Secretary to visit Moscow in February for talks with Lavrov

48-year-old man dies of frostbite in Yerevan

1,822 criminal cases launched in Kazakhstan after January riots

Why is Kanye West threatening Netflix?

Tatoyan: Expired drugs found in mental health centers in Armenia

6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes off coast of Alaska

Putin and Pashinyan discuss by phone prospects for further cooperation within CSTO

Vaccination against COVID-19 is mandatory for footballers in Brazil

First batch of military aid to Ukraine from US arrived in Kyiv

6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes off Philippine coast

Armenia confirms 940 new coronavirus cases, no deaths

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas become parents

Arnold Schwarzenegger faces accident (PHOTOS)

AusOpen: Simona Halep came out in the fourth round

Comedian Louis Anderson dies aged 68

Armenian rescuers pull out 50 stuck cars and provide necessary aid to 80 citizens

Papua New Guinea parliament repeals death penalty law

TikTok starts testing paid subscriptions

Israeli fighter jets, refueling planes hold massive drills aimed at Tehran

Barcelona want to sign Juventus defender

Ansu Fati may miss 2 months because of injury

France announces gradual lifting of coronavirus restrictions

Fountains in Athens' central square illuminated with Armenian tricolor

Austria approves Europe's first mandatory COVID-19 vaccination mandate

World War II aircraft crashed in India found after 77 years

Armenian Parliament Deputy Speaker meets EU delegation

Deputy Speaker of Armenian parliament meets Russian Ambassador to Armenia

Cristiano Ronaldo may miss home match against West Ham

Germany won't pay compensation if Nord Stream 2 doesn't comply with German, EU laws

Antonio Rudiger demands annual salary of 55 million euros from Chelsea

NEWS.am digest: EU special rep. is in Armenia, Roma's Mkhitaryan turns 33 today

Child injured in Artsakh car accident taken to Yerevan by Russian peacekeepers' helicopter

Taiwanese woman faces death penalty for setting island's deadliest fire

Aston Villa sign new contract with Emiliano Martinez

Turkey passes law to exempt converted lira deposits from corporate tax

Blinken says he discussed Iran nuclear deal with Lavrov

Erdogan says Turkey has peaceful relations with Russia like never before

New German government wants to attract 400,000 skilled workers from abroad every year

Israeli Attorney General orders to investigate police allegations of spyware

Blinken: Any Russian invasion of Ukraine will be met with swift response

Candidate: Ombudsmans institution is one of few established institutions in Armenia

Main signs of stroke

Lavrov summarizes the results of talks with Blinken

Netflix announces creation of entire universe based on The Squid Game series

AusOpen Rafael Nadal defeats Karen Khachanov

UN agrees on definition of Holocaust denial

Lavrov and Blinken talks kick off in Geneva

Juventus make offer to Dusan Vlahovic

Australian FM says issue of sending direct military aid to Ukraine is not considered

Armenia PM receives EU delegation, need for full operation of Karabakh peace process is stressed

Armenia National Assembly debating on new ombudspersons candidacy

Katherine Tai: The world can't go back to the 2019 trading system

Dollar gains value in Armenia

Armenia legislature told hold secret ballot to elect TV and radio commission new members

Why is Omicron strain so dangerous for children?

NATO intends to hold largest military exercises beyond Arctic Circle in early March

7 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

'Zangezur corridor' will unite Turkic world, says Azerbaijan presidential office official

First film studio in space to be set up for Tom Cruise movie

Armenia FM highlights need for full resumption of Karabakh peace talks

Singer Robbie Williams to sell three of Banksy's works

Armenia ex-defense minister: In our time it was shame to immediately turn to CSTO in case of Azerbaijan provocations

UN General Assembly head calls for peace during Beijing Olympics

Tottenham extend contract with Hugo Lloris

Armenia Tourism Committee has new chairperson

AusOpen Zverev moves into 4th round

Russian MFA: Priority today is to start Azerbaijan-Armenia border delimitation, demarcation process

Parliament passes, in first reading, bill restricting gambling advertising in Armenia

UK considering sending hundreds of additional troops to Ukraine's neighbors

American cult actor and rock musician Meat Loaf dies aged 75

Warships of Russia, Iran and China work out counteraction to maritime piracy

Armenia first deputy minister of justice dismissed

Roma congratulate Mkhitaryan

Israeli defense minister tests positive for COVID-19

Karabakh conflict resumption likelihood is moderate, its impact on US interests is low, report says

Liverpool set new record

Antonio Guterres thinks Russia will not invade Ukraine

Azerbaijan ambassador to Russia hastens to sweeten the sediment of statement by US embassy in Baku

Virgil Abloh's latest collection for Louis Vuitton presented in Paris (VIDEO)

IS fighters attack army barracks in mountainous area north of Baghdad, killing 11 soldiers

Sputnik V more effective against Omicron strain than Pfizer

Mourinho says he has no intention to move to Everton
The Madras HC sentenced the five other accused to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without any right to remission.

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Monday acquitted the prime accused and modified the death sentence awarded to five others to life imprisonment in 2016 honour killing of a 22-year old man in full public view in Tirupur district in Tamil Nadu.

Passing orders on appeals, a division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar acquitted B Chinnaswamy, father of Kausalya, whose husband Shankar was hacked to death in front of her in Udumlapet town and relieved him from all charges including that of criminal conspiracy.

The bench sentenced the five other accused to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without any right to remission.

Chinnaswamy and the others had been sentenced to death by a lower court in connection with the horrific daylight killing which was caught on camera and evoked public outrage.

The High Court also confirmed the acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others. The court also ordered release of all those acquitted who are presently under incarceration if their custody is not required in connection with any other case.

Sankar, a Dalit and native of Kumaralingam near Udumalpet, fell in love with non-dalit Kausalya, while they were studying in a private engineering college in Pollachi. They got married against the wishes of her parents following which the family allegedly hatched a conspiracy to eliminate them.

On March 13, 2016, a three-member gang hacked Sankar to death. Kausalya also suffered injuries in the attack.

On December 12, 2017 the Tirupur district sessions court sentenced six people, including Chinnaswamy to death for the murder. Of the 11 accused, six were sentenced to death. Three others, including her mother, maternal uncle and a 16-year old relative were acquitted of all charges while two others got lesser sentences.

Challenging the death sentence awarded to them, Kausalya's father Chinnasamy and the other moved the appeal. Similarly, the investigation officer also moved appeal against acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others by the trial court.
Much of the country has begun to open back up after a protracted lockdown period. As a result, many businesses are already ramping operations back up, including the hiring process. Quite a few companies need to hire people quickly to meet demand.

Yet with the current health crisis posing an ongoing threat, how can you safely onboard new employees in a risk-aware way, without putting the health and well-being of current or new employees at risk?

Related: 7 Ways to Recover From Too Many Online Meetings During the Day

The overarching answer is to update or adopt a set of tools and policies, including hiring and onboarding procedures that marry the strategic use of technology with the experience and skills of existing staff. Use the following tips as a framework, but make sure you adapt that framework to your companys unique set of needs and objectives.

1. Stay flexible

Once youve selected a candidate for the job, youll still need to provide adequate training for the new hire and ensure all the requisite paperwork is filled out and filed properly. Youll also probably want to arrange some sort of mentor relationship to help your new employee get acclimated to the companys culture and environment.

Your normal timelines for onboarding new employees will almost certainly be extended now, thanks to the practical realities of life. Thats why its important to recognize the added challenges youll face in this process and build in extra time to accommodate those challenges.

Take the opportunity now to examine your processes for onboarding, which can be a complex and daunting prospect for new hires even in the best of times. If a specific activity yields little value either to the new hire or the company, toss it. Focus instead of those tasks that help new hires feel more at home and get acquainted with their new colleagues and corporate culture.

2. Make good use of technology

The good news is that you can use the same technology that makes remote work feasible to welcome your new employees and help them get started. Use the first day or two to help your new hire install and use the requisite software.

Related: 10 Must-Follow Company-Onboarding Techniques

A simple use of technology in the onboarding context is to scan in all required paperwork and send it via email. You can also utilize PDF formatting to create a digital employee handbook that can be shared either through email or via secure file-sharing apps. Integrate digital tools like DocuSign to help employees simplify executing legal documentation and save paper.

One of the most important ways you can take advantage of that technology in onboarding is by scheduling early and regular face-to-face meetings via video conference calls. For example, you can schedule a meeting with key personnel from your human resources department to go over paperwork that the new hire must fill out. A video call from the new employees mentor or peer guide to make introductions and allow each participant to get to know each other a bit is another great use of video conferencing technology.

3. Use an LMS for initial training

An LMS  or learning management system  is a digital application designed to manage the administration, delivery and analysis of training or educational programs and classes. You can find many open-source LMS platforms, such as Moodle and Chamilo, or you can utilize one of the many cloud-based LMS providers. Look for a security-conscious provider that offers around-the-clock client support and excellent independent user reviews.

SCORM compliance is also important. It stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and is a collection of guidelines for the various parts of an LMS. Compliance with SCORM means that your LMS is well-crafted and coded, secure and efficient.

Youll need to create the content for your training course, then upload it to the user platform and assign privileges to specific users, such as new hires. Its also a good idea to test out the course content and flow by letting experienced current employees go through the sequence and analyze the results.

Related: Is Your Onboarding Process Broken? Here's How to Fix It.

4. Stay personal and social

In the normal course of onboarding events, your company will likely give new employees the opportunity to meet and socialize with company leadership and the members of their own team away from work. Set up online video meetings and small-group social hours to let your new hire begin the process of adjusting to their new work family.

These kinds of low-expectation, fun activities can help new team members feel more at home and lower the natural anxiety any newcomer is likely to feel during the first days on the job. They also serve another vital purpose: transparency. Introducing new workers to the companys leaders early in the onboarding process provides clarity and guidance on your objectives and general direction. This helps new workers find their place in the larger machine of company operations. It also reinforces the concept of the chain of command for the company, empowering workers to know who to report to for emergency situations.

Related: How to Poach Talent Politely

Related:



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Representative image

After several real estate builders announced that they would provide unoccupied housing units to the municipal authorities as quarantine facilities for COVID-19 patients, homebuyers of a delayed Unitech project in Gurugram, who have been waiting for possession of their homes for over eight years, have offered their unfinished residential units in their projects to the state government to be utilised for the purpose.

While the intent is noble, legal experts say that there may be some challenges because, legally, most of these projects may not have an occupancy or completion certificate. What this means is that, while the projects may have water and power supply, they may not necessarily have documents to prove that the buildings are safe for habitation.

A few days ago, Unitech homebuyers offered their 95 percent complete flats to be utilised as a quarantine facility for COVID patients. They hope it would propel the government to complete the remaining 5 percent work and handover the incomplete units that have been stuck for almost eight years now. The project is located at Shankar Chowk in Gurgaon.

We would like to contribute to your efforts in combating the Novel Corona Virus. We are offering 156 flats in G Block of Unitech The Residences, Sector 33 Gurugram. These flats can be used to quarantine and treat COVID-19 patients.

The Haryana Government will be able to treat over 11,000 patients over the next few months in this facility. The towers are 95 percent complete in all respect, it is equipped with lifts, and plumbing has been completed, the homebuyers said in a letter to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.

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 Government of Haryana and these 156 families can together provide a facility which can treat over 11,000 COVID patients over the next few months in 2020 and 2021, it said.

The units require water, sewerage and electricity connection and completion of bathrooms, which can be completed and made operational in a matter of few weeks using the existing material and infrastructure available at the site, the letter said.

The project is only 5 km away from the Civil, Fortis and Medanta hospitals. Doctors, nurses and medical staff can come from these hospitals to the site to treat the patients, the letter by Suraj Singh of Unitech Uniworld Resorts said.

Stranded migrant labour in Gurugram city can be deployed in the towers to make it Quarantine Ready for COVID-19 patients. By doing this, they will also be able to earn their livelihood with dignity. We would like your Government to take the lead and come forward to start economic activity in the state, the letter said.

In Delhis Rohini area, an eight-bed isolation centre has been set up by the residents of Antariksh Apartment in sector 14. The isolation centre has been set up using four rooms of a guest house of Antariksh Apartment.

A few weeks ago, Naredco UP had offered 500-bed space to the district administration to fight against COVID-19. While Supertech had offered a 400-bed space, Antriksh group had offered a 100-bed space for quarantine facilities.

Supertech had offered 400-bed space at Upcountry project located along the Yamuna Expressway and reserved one exclusive tower for the purpose, said RK Arora, Naredco UP president and chairman of Supertech Group.

The response is awaited, he told Moneycontrol.

This dedicated block has a separate entry and exit. Other blocks in the area are currently under construction. All facilities including water, power and the lift are currently available. The completion process is on and we are trying to meet the requirements of the district administration. They will first check if it is fit for the purpose. Also, there may be a possibility that the project is granted a temporary occupation certificate for the project to be used as a quarantine facility, he said.

In Gujarat, Savvy Group has offered 250 units in one of its vacant projects to the local administration to be utilised as an isolation or a quarantine centre for COVID-19 patients.

We have offered 250 units in one of our vacant projects in Ahmedabad to the local authority to be utilised as a quarantine centre for COVID-19 patients. These are 1 BHK units that can be used to accommodate around 500 beds. They are in the process of getting completed. We may get a temporary completion certificate for the project, Jaxay Shah, chairman Credai and managing director of Savvy Group told Moneycontrol.

In Mumbai too, realty developer Shreeji Sharan Developers has handed over a newly constructed, 19-storey ready-to-move-in building in Malad to the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) city's municipal body to be used as a quarantine centre for COVID-19 patients.

Will turning housing units into quarantine centres impact valuation?

The building on SV Road has 130 apartments, for which the developer has already received an occupation certificate (OC) from the authorities and was ready to be handed over to the flat owners, a media report said.

Even though the quarantine centre would be a temporary facility, some developers may also have to deal with the problem of project perception and may find it difficult to liquidate inventory later as buyers may desist from purchasing a property that has been used as an isolation facility during the pandemic, say some experts.

Others said that this may not have any impact on the prices as these facilities are only temporary in nature. Once the patients have recovered and move out of the facility or for that matter once the pandemic is over, the authorities would sanitise the entire place before returning the units to the concerned developers, they said.

It is unlikely to impact sales or the value of the units. At present, there may be a reluctance to buy property in that project and it may impact sale of units in the short term. However, it is unlikely to impact pricing of these units in the long term. It is highly unlikely that these units would remain unsold or would be sold at a lower rate, said Ritesh Mehta, senior director and head - West India, Residential, Jones Lang Lasalle India.

Medical experts that Moneycontrol spoke to said that as long as these quarantine centres are located away from habitation and have a separate entry and exit, they cannot pose a threat.

We have tried creating a quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients in Jhajjar. The facility has been fenced and has a separate entrance. The important thing for the facility is to have a dedicated entrance  there cannot be a common entrance for COVID patients and other residents, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director - AIIMS, told Moneycontrol.

He recommends that ideally such facilities should be managed by a health/medical service provider. The developer may provide the physical infrastructure but the quarantine facility should be run by a health service group, he said.

Legal experts explain that as per the provisions under most legislations, both at the central and state levels, no individual shall be allowed to occupy any building or an apartment sans receiving a completion certificate and occupancy certificate from the competent authority.

If one were to strictly go by what the law lays down, there may be a compliance issue and safety risks subject to the grant of completion certificate with regard to these vacant, under-construction projects being converted into quarantine centres, says Rahul Arora, Partner - Trilegal.
Iranian security forces on Sunday arrested Sharmin Meymandinejad, founder and director of the biggest anti-poverty NGO in the country and shut down its head office.

No official announcement has yet been made but it appears that the Revolutionary Guard has targeted the charity, Imam Ali Society, and its founder with serious security-related allegations.

The Society of Students Against Poverty -- also known as Imam Ali's Popular Students Relief Society and usually referred to as Imam Ali Society -- was founded in 1999 as the first non-political student NGO at Tehran's Sharif Industrial University. It now has a large network of thousands of volunteers even in the remotest areas of the country. The Society's volunteers are also usually among the first responders at times of natural disasters such as earthquakes.

The Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Tasnim News Agency on Monday quoted "an informed source" about Meymandinejad's arrest who claimed he had been "creating networks for infiltration at various levels of the society under the guise of public work". Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei very frequently refers to "infiltration" when he talks about western influences. It is one of the charges brought against individuals when the regime wants to accuse a person or entity of espionage or collaboration with "enemies".

Security forces often make unofficial announcements about the arrests they make and the charges they want to bring against the detainees through news agencies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, namely, Tasnim and Fars.

Using the characteristic style of security forces and prosecutors in high-profile political cases, the "informed source" also claimed that Meymandinejad and "his agents distorted sacred [Islamic] principles" to promote Western ideas. The source also accused Meymandinejad of using the charity to conduct "extensive actions against Iranian society" as well as "insults against sanctities", "promotion of deviant religious ideas" and "working with hostile foreign-based [Persian-language] media".

Authorities have always treated independent, non-religious NGOs, irrespective of their field of activity with a high degree of suspicion. They called them "agents of the enemies" and put their leaders and activists behind bars. The Imam Ali Society, however, was quite well tolerated for many years.

The Society always insisted that it was non-partisan and very often chose religious themes related to Imam Ali, the first of the 12 Shiite Imams, for its campaigns. Many alleged that it was well-tolerated because it was working behind the scenes with the establishment to prevent secular anti-poverty and children's charities from growing big.

However, in the past few years and as its influence and networks grew among students and the general population, and despite its marked religious nature, authorities began seeing the Imam Ali Society as a threat. Suspicions arose because it expanded its activities and campaigns from alms-giving to more serious areas such as campaigning against execution of minors and child marriage. During the November 2019 protests in the country, the Society also criticized the government for "calling the poverty-stricken demonstrators rioters and agents of the enemy".

Social media users and journalists have strongly reacted to the news of Meymandinejad's arrest and speculated about the reasons behind it.

Neda Sanji, journalist, has pointed out in a tweet that the regime does not tolerate reporting on the misery of child and street workers and considers it "presenting a gloomy image" of the situation in the country.

Emad Bahavar, a political activist, in a tweet on Monday has said that the Society was under surveillance for several years for a good pretext to be shut down. Bahavar points out that the regime does not tolerate any large network that wants to be independent and is successful in their work.

Mohammad-Javad Akbarin, Iranian theologian and writer, in a tweet on Sunday said the reason for the arrests and shutting down the NGO is to help an alternative society, the Imam Reza Society which is controlled by an associate of the hardliner Chief Justice Ebrahim Raeesi to replace it.
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

For the last 15 years of her short life, Lynika Strozier dedicated herself with increasing fervor to a career in science, much of it as a researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, where she delicately extracted DNA from early land plants.

The plants we deal with are often old and fragile; some are as small as an eyelash, Matt von Konrat, the museums head of botanical collections, said in a phone interview. Others threw up their hands and gave up on these experiments. But Lynika persevered.

He added, She had golden hands.

During her time at the museum, Ms. Strozier discovered another passion  mentoring young people  and in January left to teach ecology and evolution at Malcolm X College in Chicago.
Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
Learn about the origins of the first fictional intelligence agency in the new trailer for The King's Man, starring Ralph Fiennes.

The film is a prequel to 201'4s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017's Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

This story is set in the early 1900s, charting the inception of The King's Man intelligence agency that was featured in Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

Trailer: Learn about the origins of the first fictional intelligence agency in the new trailer for The King's Man, starring Ralph Fiennes

The trailer begins with a meeting in a solitary house on a cliff, where a number of intelligence leaders are meeting.

A mysterious, unseen figure with a gold pinky ring tells his 'flock' that 'this will not be a war of heroes, nations will slaughter while we get rich.'

Seemingly the same unseen man, or one of his cohorts, is seen behind the periscope of a submarine, firing a torpedo into a massive ship, sinking it, adding, 'This is going to be fun.'

Meeting: The trailer begins with a meeting in a solitary house on a cliff, where a number of intelligence leaders are meeting

Ring: A mysterious, unseen figure with a gold pinky ring tells his 'flock' that 'this will not be a war of heroes, nations will slaughter while we get richn

Fun: Seemingly the same unseen man, or one of his cohorts, is seen behind the periscope of a submarine, firing a torpedo into a massive ship, sinking it, adding, 'This is going to be fun'

The trailer cuts to the magnificent manor where the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) lives, as his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) tells him, 'You cannot keep me locked away as the world burns.'

The Duke tells his son that the truth is, 'the world is ruled by corruption and greed,' and when Conrad says they must do something, the Duke activates a secret room behind a bookcase.

There are then quick shots of Polly (Gemma Arterton) and Shola (Djimon Hounsou) before the Duke shows his son the Kingsman tailor shop in London.

Locked away: The trailer cuts to the magnificent manor where the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) lives, as his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) tells him, 'You cannot keep me locked away as the world burns.

Secret room: The Duke tells his son that the truth is, 'the world is ruled by corruption and greed,' and when Conrad says they must do something, the Duke activates a secret room behind a bookcase

Shop: There are then quick shots of Polly (Gemma Arterton) and Shola (Djimon Hounsou) before the Duke shows his son the Kingsman tailor shop in London

He tells Conrad that, 'we are the first independent intelligence agency, refined but brutal, civilized but merciless.'

There are also scenes of Shola training Conrad in hand-to-hand combat, with the Duke himself getting in on the action.

'Welcome to the club,' Polly tells Conrad, who admits this whole scheme is 'very clever.'

Brutal: He tells Conrad that, 'we are the first independent intelligence agency, refined but brutal, civilized but merciless'

Polly: 'Welcome to the club,' Polly tells Conrad, who admits this whole scheme is 'very clever'

The mystery unseen villain tells his cohorts that, 'it's time to pour fuel on the fire of revolution, while the Duke meets the nefarious Rasputin (Rhys Ifans).

'Rasputin, your reputation precedes you,' the Duke says to Rasputin, who just snarls at the Duke.

The trailer winds down with a number of action-packed shots showing the gadgetry on display in the film.

The trailer ends with the unseen villain saying they should 'end this as gentlemen, after all, manners maketh man,' mirroring the catch phrase used by Harry Hart/Galahad (Colin Firth) in the first Kingsman movie.

The King's Man, directed by Matthew Vaughn which also stars Matthew Goode, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Stanley Tucci, hits theaters September 18.

Rasputin: The mystery unseen villain tells his cohorts that, 'it's time to pour fuel on the fire of revolution, while the Duke meets the nefarious Rasputin (Rhys Ifans)
When integrated into third-party ultrasound carts, PACS systems, and proprietary cloud platforms, these modules will enable a new set of innovative capabilities in a wide range of domains, such as urology, OBGYN, general imaging, cardiac procedures, and more.

These new building blocks will enable new applications, including:

Biopsy guidance  The modules allow for real-time, AI-guided needle biopsy procedures, while providing an improved understanding of the lesion or mass. They utilize automated tissue segmentation capabilities, clearly separate the abnormal tissue from the healthy one, and provide the surgeon with all the necessary data required to get to the desired area quickly and precisely.

Automated measurements and function evaluation in Cardiac Ultrasound - These AI modules perform fully automated segmentation of the heart chambers from different ultrasound views, which automates the most important measurements, such as Ejection Fraction, CO, EDA, and EDA. It also evaluates the performance of main heart functions, such as motion of the valves and walls, and detects and classifies abnormalities.

3D Reconstruction - In many cases, the sonographer will be able to demonstrate only a few slices of the organ at focus. The reconstruction function can build the complete organ from sparse information and help the interventional surgeon navigate accurately for biopsy or ablation procedures.

Patient Screening - Integrated into cloud-based settings, these AI capabilities can perform automated analysis of ongoing ultrasound studies, provide triage and second-opinion analysis, detect irregularities and potential errors, prioritize workflow, and boost population healthcare management capabilities.

"Ultrasound is extremely user dependent and can be challenging to interpret. These innovative AI modules help medical teams make quick and accurate clinical decisions and lower the dependence on teams' experience," says Dr. Rabeeh Fares, Radiologist; Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel.

The usage of ultrasound imaging plays a crucial role in the diagnosis and treatment of many pathologies. Its wide availability and relatively low cost, with no radiation considerations, makes it the preferred imaging modality across a number of clinical fields. It can immediately detect pathologies and injuries across the entire healthcare pathway and is useful in a variety of settings, from ER triage and intensive care units, to point-of-care settings and outpatient clinics.

About RSIP Vision

RSIP Vision is a global leader in artificial intelligence and computer vision technology. The company draws on a depth of knowledge and experience to provide customized development services, such as sophisticated algorithms and deep learning technology, to healthcare companies.

RSIP Vision develops practical AI modules that ensure precision, reduce time to market, cut costs, and allow core R&D teams to focus on other endeavors, saving significant time and money and giving businesses a real edge over the competition.

RSIP Vision has a diverse in-house team of algorithm experts, computer science engineers, mathematicians, physicists, biomedical engineers, internal medical annotation teams, and radiologists, all providing innovative and efficient solutions, from research to customized algorithm development.

RSIP Vision is headquartered in Jerusalem, and has a U.S. office in San Jose, CA.

More information is available on the company website: www.rsipvision.com.

SOURCE RSIP Vision

Related Links

www.rsipvision.com


Wockhardt Hospital, which was declared a containment zone in April after 82 members of its medical staff contracted Covid-19, has received approval from the Central government to conduct a controlled trial of convalescent plasma therapy.

In April, Wockhardt Hospital was declared a containment zone after 82 members of its medical staff contracted Covid-19. More than 50 nurses were accidentally exposed to an asymptomatic Covid-positive patient. The hospitals non-emergency services were closed till end-April. Earlier this month, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the hospitals request for the trial of convalescent plasma therapy on 20 patients of Covid-19.

Convalescent plasma therapy involves transfusion of plasma from the blood of recovered patients into those who are moderately or critically-ill. The plasma of the recovered patient contains antibodies that fight the infection. At present, 123 patients of Covid-19 are undergoing treatment at Wockhardt Hospital. Of these, 30 are in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Convalescent plasma therapy has been previously used in treating various infectious diseases such as Ebola virus outbreaks based on which we decided to initiate the trial, said Dr Behram Pardiwala, principal investigator of the plasma trial at the hospital. We havent selected a patient for the trial yet, but we will start the process soon.

Wockhardt Hospital has tied up with a blood bank where donors can donate their plasma. We collect around 500ml plasma per donor and the dosing will be given by our clinicians asper our approved protocol. Moreover, a person can donate plasma once a month, said Dr Parag Rindani of Wockhardt Hospital. So far, two doctors of the 82 recovered medical staffers from the hospital have donated their blood for plasma therapy.

Nurse Clera Menezes, who was diagnosed with Covid-19 through cross transmission at the hospital on April 16, resumed work on May 28 and donated blood on June 16. (HT )

HT spoke to nurse Clera Menezes, 43, who was diagnosed with Covid-19 through cross transmission at the hospital on April 16. She resumed work on May 28 and on June 16, donated her blood. Menezes, who was asymptomatic, isolated herself at the hospital for almost 10 days and then returned to her home in Mira Road, where she again isolated herself. Menezes has two children, aged five and 12.

Every time I opened the door to keep my dishes outside, my children would come running to see me. My husband had placed the washing machine on the passage to my room as a boundary. It was so challenging to stop myself from hugging them, she said. When she heard about the hospital conducting the plasma trial, she agreed to donate her blood. I know the feeling of staying alone in an isolation ward. I decided to donate my blood for patients so that they can go home early to their families. I request other recovered patients come forward and donate their blood, she said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 07:30 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608ae3e 1 Editorial Pancasila,editorial,ideology,authoritarian Free

For one thing, the controversy surrounding the Pancasila Ideology Guidelines (HIP) bill shows yet again the tendency of our politicians to devise national policies without public consultation. But more than that, the bill is a grim reminder of the authoritarian past, when the state dictated what was right or wrong.

The government has called for the postponement of the deliberation of the bill, citing widespread opposition. Demands for the withdrawal of the bill from the legislative agenda have mounted, with moderate and hardline Muslim groups as well as retired military generals arguing the bill is a stepping stone for the reemergence of communist ideology in the country.

Not only the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which has sponsored the bill, but all factions in the House of Representatives should be held responsible for fueling the polemics, which could undermine the countrys focus on its COVID-19 response.

The House unanimously approved the bill as an initiative draft law and listed it as a priority bill during a plenary session on May 12, having gone through at least seven meetings of the House Legislation Body (Baleg), two of them behind closed doors, where all factions were represented.

The Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and National Mandate Party, however, objected to the original draft as it failed to refer to a 1966 Provisional Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPRS) decree that bans communism as a legal foundation.

Read also: Communist phobia sinks Pancasila bill at House

During its deliberation, Baleg invited a number of experts, including former Constitutional Court chief Jimly Asshidiqqie, to share their views regarding the draft. But clearly a wider audience was not involved in the formulation of the bill. Beyond the fact that all the Baleg meetings were held during the pandemic, the entire process leading up to the House asking the President to permit the starts of deliberations has lacked transparency.

The bill aims to regulate the values of the Pancasila ideology and the functions of the Agency for Pancasila Ideology Education (BPIP). The PDI-Ps chairwoman and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri serves as the steering committee head.

BPIP was founded based on a presidential decree, which is why some believe the PDI-P is asking for a law as a stronger legal umbrella that will keep the agency intact and continue its roles when President Joko Jokowi Widodo, who is a PDI-P cadre, is no longer in power post-2024.

In opposing the bill, Muslim organizations, such as Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah and the Indonesian Ulema Council, and retired military generals have said the bill could offer new interpretations of Pancasila. They fear the bill will open Pandoras box, allowing communist and Islamic state aspirations alike to reemerge.

Such phobia is reminiscent of the New Orders demonization of the extreme left and extreme right, but what makes the bill frightening is that it grants the state a mandate to singlehandedly define how Pancasila should be manifested in social, political and economic development.

There was a time when citizens loyalty to the state was measured in their capability to memorize the 45 points of Pancasila implementation. We cannot let this happen again.

Topics : Pancasila editorial ideology authoritarian
Audrey Strauss takes over one of the most high-profile prosecutor jobs in America with a lot on her plate.

The 72-year-old former deputy to Geoffrey Berman is taking the reins as acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York after an unusual shuffle -- her boss refused to leave his role until Attorney General William Barr respected "the normal operation of law" and put her in charge. Strauss has been Berman's second-in-command since April 2019, but her history in the Manhattan office stretches back more than four decades.

The position is the most important federal law-enforcement role outside of Washington. With a territory that encompasses lower Manhattan, it can strike at the heart of the financial industry with headline-grabbing cases. Previous officeholders have included Preet Bharara, Rudy Giuliani, James Comey, Mary Jo White and Robert Morgenthau.

A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia Law School, Strauss first became a Southern District federal prosecutor in 1976. She served in the office until 1983 and then worked in Washington as a staff lawyer in the independent counsel investigation into the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair.

"She is a prosecutor who was raised in the tradition of SDNY independence," said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the office who's running on the Democratic ticket for district attorney in New York's Westchester County. "She has total integrity. She will not tolerate inappropriate interference."

Before rejoining the Southern District in 2018, Strauss had a long career in the private sector, including stints as a partner at New York law firm Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and as chief legal and compliance officer at Alcoa Corp., where she oversaw the aluminum producer's $384 million settlement in 2014 of federal probes into whether it paid bribes to members of Bahrain's royal family and officials at a state-owned company.

Antonia Apps, a another former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who oversaw several big insider-trading cases and worked with Strauss at Fried Frank, described her as a faithful public servant who's able to bring non-partisan leadership to the office. She said Strauss rose from line prosecutor to the chief of what is now called the Securities and Commodities Task Force -- the first woman to hold that post.

"Having worked closely with her when she was a lawyer in private practice, I know first-hand that she is a brilliant lawyer with an iron will and is committed to do justice," said Apps, now a partner at the law firm Milbank in New York. "Geoff Berman would not have stepped down on Saturday but for AG Barr's commitment that Audrey Strauss would remain at the helm of the office and continue with ongoing investigations 'without fear or favor.'"

"Strauss has been Berman's deputy for more than a year and we expect she won't change the direction of ongoing probes and cases, though her appointment as head of that office may be temporary," Elliott Stein, senior analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note Monday.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday asked the Department of Justice's inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Berman's removal, saying the move had left the impression that Trump was interfering with criminal probes of the president and his associates. Barr has said that all criminal cases would be handled "in the normal course."

Among the cases Strauss will now oversee are some of keen interest to the Trump administration. Some of these investigations have moved forward, while others have seemingly gone dormant for years.

They include:

- An ongoing probe into Giuliani, Trump's lawyer and political ally, examining his efforts to secure political dirt in Ukraine on Joe Biden. The office has already brought charges against two of Giuliani's associates.

- A long-running investigation with the Justice Department into whether Deutsche Bank AG -- Trump's biggest lender -- violated money-laundering laws.

- The office is currently prosecuting Turkey's state-owned Halkbank for allegedly helping Iran evade sanctions on billions of dollars in oil funds. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton writes in his upcoming book that Trump promised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the Halkbank "problem" would be "fixed" once "his people" controlled the Southern District.

- Probes into how donations to Trump's inaugural committee were spent and whether Trump's companies were involved in facilitating hush-money payments to alleged Trump mistresses.

- Berman's staff also reviewed whether American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, violated the terms of its cooperation agreement in the Michael Cohen prosecution by publishing the expose of Jeff Bezos's extramarital affair. The Enquirer is run by longtime Trump associate David Pecker and has often provided friendly coverage to Trump. The status of the review, which began in early 2019, remains unclear, but no charges have been filed.
Bengaluru, June 22 : With more than 9,000 coronavirus cases and recording an increase with each passing day, Karnataka is projected to have up to 25,000 positive cases by August 15, a senior official said on Monday.

"If the daily growth rate of cases is 3 per cent, then the active cases will reach 17,000. If the daily growth rate is 4 per cent, then it will be 20,000-25,000 over the next 50-60 days," said Karnataka State Covid War Room Director Munish Moudgil in a statement here.

With 453 new cases reported on Sunday, the southern state's total tally had shot up to 9,150, including 3,391 active cases. As many as 225 patients were discharged, taking the total cured patients to 5,618.

Admitting that it was difficult to project the number of positive cases accurately beyond 15-20 days, Moudgil said the scenario depended on the behaviour of individual citizens, post-opening up and actions the state government took in the coming days.

Though Moudgil earlier projected about 10,000 cases by July-end, the state has already crossed the 9,000-mark on June 21.

"Effort to reduce the growth rate will exponentially reduce the number of cases. Conversely, any slip-up makes us pay heavily," asserted Moudgil.

In this context, the senior IAS officer said citizens could make a major difference by wearing masks, wash hands, and observe social distancing.

"We need to trace all contacts of every patient within 24 hours and quarantine them; quarantine for 14 days every inter-state arrival and test more in quantity and quality of vulnerable and infectious groups," Moudgil added.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, June 22 : The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP, held a crucial meeting in Delhi over the recent India-China border tension where the government's response and public stand was discussed at length.

The meeting that took place in the national capital saw the RSS throw its weight behind the government and decide to spearhead a campaign to boycott Chinese products.

The meeting was attended by top RSS leaders including Bhaiya ji Joshi, Dattatreya Hosabole, Krishna Gopal, Suresh Sonia, Ramesh Pappa, Ram Lal, Arun Kumar, Sunil Ambekar and Narendra Kumar, among others. However, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat could not attend the meeting. The 3-day long meeting ended late on Monday.

The meeting decided that the RSS will actively spearhead a nationwide campaign to boycott China products. So far, only its affiliates like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch who have been vocal about the issue. In the coming days, top RSS leaders are expected to articulate similar views.

This comes in the wake of reports that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) may put a ban on procuring telecom supplies from Chinese companies, when it comes to state-run telecom companies like the BSNL and the MTNL.A The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has also revised its foreign investment policy, making Chinese inflow of FDI a bit tougher.

The RSS also paid homage to the 20 Indian bravehearts who were martyred in Ladakh's Galwan Valley due to Chinese aggression. During the meeting, the RSS unanimously praised the role played by the Indian Army.

In a significant development, the RSS discussed and considered reopening sakhas, in accordance with Centre's COVID-19 guidelines. However, no final decision was taken. The RSS also reviewed the various welfare measures run by it and its affiliates across the country during the lockdown.
Advertisement

By Representative Richard Heath

Jun. 20, 2020 | MAYFIELD

By Representative Richard Heath Jun. 20, 2020 | 11:19 PM | MAYFIELD

Most of the time, helping the people of our community navigate state government is one of my favorite parts of being a legislator.



While the Kentucky Constitution does not grant legislators any direct authority over an executive branch program, I am often able to help cut the red tape and get a constituent to the right person or program. In my time in the legislature, Ive been honored to connect folks from this community with administrators in just about all of the cabinets. Not everyone gets what they want, but at least we are able to get an answer.



However, over the past three months, constituent services has weighed heavily on my heart. I have received hundreds of phone calls, emails, messages, and texts from constituents sharing how our states unemployment insurance (UI) program has failed them. And, they are not alone as more than 50,000 Kentuckians have been waiting as long as three months for some kind of communication about their claims. To put it into perspective, thats equal to the population of Franklin County, where our capital city is located. Many tell me that I am the only real person they have talked to, and they are frustrated and feel forgotten. This is a widespread problem affecting people in every corner of the state.



I joined my colleagues in the General Assembly in supporting our Governor in his early handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, I also have an obligation to call into question why our unemployment insurance program is failing the very people it exists to serve. I understand that the system in place when the state shut down in March was designed to help the historically few people who were unemployed. But, if you knowingly shut down the states economy you must do everything in your power to ensure that your unemployment insurance program is prepared. We know that changes can be made quickly, just look at how successful the testing clinics have been as they have offered drive through testing in regions throughout the state.



Like you, I was raised to not criticize unless it was constructive, so I want to be clear that help has been offered multiple times. Most recently, more than a hundred staffers that work for the legislature volunteered to help with claims. These people are more than capable, some work with constituents every day and all understand how important resolving this problem is.



This week, people gathered at the Capitol to protest the fact that they still had not received unemployment benefits. The day of the protest an unpublicized, quickly planned pop up office was opened onsite to help process UI claims. When word of this got out, people began arriving to get in a line that eventually stretched around the back of the Capitol and into a residential neighborhood. Many were helped in as little as 10 minutes, most after waiting months. Some were turned away when the office closed at the end of the day. The next day, people began arriving at 3:00 am and the line grew even longer. This continued through the end of the week, with people traveling to Frankfort from across the state, driving as much as three and four hours. Many were forced to bring their children, and stood for hours.



I am thankful that some of my colleagues were in Frankfort and able to hand out waters, and grateful to the local restaurants and individuals that provided free pizza and drinks, feeding people who would otherwise have waited without food.



By opening this popup office, the administration demonstrated that they could do the right thing. But, they cant stop. They have the power and ability to resolve problems, but for some reason, they dont until they are forced to. Late last week, the Governor told reporters that he is considering opening additional regional offices similar to the Frankfort pop up, and that more information will be coming out in the next few days. I hope they do, and I also believe they can improve on how those pop ups operate. Until then, we will continue to work on these claims, trying to find a way to help people get the money they deserve to pay for things they need.



If you are waiting for unemployment benefits, please continue reaching out to me, and I will do my best to get you in touch with someone who can help. Even though we are not in session at this time, I still want to hear from you regarding concerns about unemployment or other issues. I can be reached through the toll-free message line at 1-800-372-7181 or here at home. You can also contact me via e-mail at Richard.Heath@lrc.ky.gov.





Views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, positions or strategies of West Kentucky Star.com, Bristol Broadcasting or any employee thereof. Bristol Broadcasting makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use.
House Democrats Resist Corruption Hearings as UAW Convictions Pile Up

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) has asked House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) three times to schedule a hearing on union corruption but has yet to get a response. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has finalized a new rule meant to close a loophole used to the advantage of union officials.

Its clear union leaders feel almost no accountability to the workers whose dues fund their organizations and salaries, Foxx, the ranking Republican on the panel, recently told The Epoch Times. That is why I formally requested three different times that the committee hold a hearing to investigate union corruption, all of which have been ignored by the Democrat majority, the same Democrat majority that passed legislation earlier this year that would make unions more powerful but less accountable.

A Scott spokesman didnt immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment on Foxxs requests or for a statement on how the panels chairman views the issue of union corruption.

The union corruption issue has been prominent in recent news headlines as a parade of present and former senior United Auto Workers (UAW) officials have pleaded guilty in a continuing Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.

As The Epoch Times reported earlier this month, the most recent pleading came from former UAW President Gary Jones, who confessed to conspiring with other top officials of the storied labor organization to embezzle more than $1 million in member dues in an attempt to further racketeering and tax evasion activities.

Jones, 63, pled guilty to one count of conspiring to embezzle UAW dues money and conspiring to use a facility of interstate commerce to aid racketeering crimes between 2010 and September 2019, the DOJ announced June 3.

He also pled guilty to a separate count of conspiring to defraud the United States by evading the payment of taxes on embezzled funds and causing the UAW to file false tax returns during the same period of time, the DOJ said.

Jones is among 14 UAW officials convicted in the DOJ probe; four more are awaiting sentencing.

But the UAW isnt alone among the biggest names in Americas major unions in both the private and public sectors in facing widespread allegations of internal corruption as well as multiple convictions in federal courts in recent years.

Since 2010, according to a Department of Labor (DOL) official who requested anonymity, the United Steelworkers Union (USW) has seen 112 former officials convicted of a multitude of crimes, including embezzlement, wire fraud, tax evasion, and failure to file mandatory financial disclosures or filing fraudulent reports.

The most recent of the USW convictions was announced by the DOL on June 9, as Brian Arnold, a former New York local financial secretary, pleaded guilty to embezzlement.

The second-most convictions since 2010 are the 91 guilty verdicts against officials of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is the largest labor organization in the federal workforce.

The day before Arnolds conviction was announced, the DOJ announced the guilty plea entered by Tony Liesenfeld, former president and secretary-treasurer of a Pennsylvania AFGE local, for wire fraud.

Other unions with significant numbers of convictions since 2010 include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) with 37, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) with 36 and the UAWs 34.

At least half of the enforcement actions against union officials in 2020 have involved allegations of embezzlement and related crimes such as wire fraud and filing false reports, according to the DOL official.

The problem, according to National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC) President Mark Mix is compulsory unionism.

Government-authorized monopoly bargaining, which makes employees almost completely dependent on union officials for their job security and pay increases, and forced union dues are the main sources of union corruption, Mix told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

Largely because of the NRTWCs efforts since 1955, 27 of the nations 50 states have right-to-work laws that guarantee an employees right to keep a job without having to pay compulsory union dues.

The DOL under President Donald Trump has attacked the problem from another angle, that of trusts organized and funded by unions but not required to file financial disclosures.

As of April 6, the DOL finalized a new reporting regulation that requires unions to file a Form T-1 Trusts Annual Report with the departments Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). The report requires itemized disclosure of all expenses incurred by the trust.

The new report closes a legal loophole that permitted union officials to hide millions of dollars collected in membership dues in unaccountable trust accounts that could then be used as slush funds, according to a congressional aide who asked not to be named.

The T-1 was first introduced in 2002 by then-DOL Secretary Elaine Chao, but it was dropped in 2010 by President Barack Obamas administration. The report covers all unions with at least $250,000 of annual income.

Historically, this information has largely gone unreported despite the significant impact such trusts have on a labor organizations financial operations and their members interests, DOL said in a statement on finalizing the rule.

Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
MINISTER Patrick ODonovan has announced that there are no changes to the Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) for rural roads in 2020.

He said Limerick City and County Council has caused an awful lot of undue stress and anxiety and worry to people who have been waiting for years and accused some councillors of jumping to their usual hysteria.

The LIS is a scheme whereby landowners and farmers can contribute up to 15% to the value of the reconstruction and drainage of a private road used for public access to agricultural holdings.

Last Month, Farm Leader saw information sent out by Limerick council regarding LIS.

It read: This years scheme clarifies two existing requirements, The road must be open to the public'. In this regard the department has clarified that any road with a gate cannot be classified as open to the public.

Persons engaged in agricultural activities... in this regard applicants are required to submit herd numbers and maps associated with the Basic Payment Scheme provided by the Department of Agriculture.

It continued: These are not new requirements but the current scheme outlines what documents need to be submitted to satisfy the requirements. As the council has not historically requested herd numbers etc each applicant has now been requested to submit these details.

Minister O'Donovan then contacted Minister Michael Ring and the Department of Rural and Community Development for clarification on LIS.

Minister Ring said there is, No new policy and herd numbers are not required. I am very annoyed that the council allowed that misrepresentation of what the government is trying to do. I think the council needs to reflect on the reply I have gotten from Minister Ring - adjust their application process accordingly and clarify that the process they introduced was not appropriate.

"I think they owe councillors and the public an explanation because the government position was misrepresented to the tune that they were suggesting a new policy was being introduced and it wasn't, said Minister ODonovan.

The Fine Gael TD said the council has caused an awful lot of undue stress, and anxiety and worry to people who have been waiting for years.

He added that this is not the first time - in relation to rural roads - that the council in recent times has tried to walk away from established policy in reference to tertiary minor roads.

Minister ODonovan said he has contacted the council to inform them that the department has not issued any new policy over LIS.

The council was saying you needed a herd number. If you are farming ducks or growing spuds you are still a farmer, you are still in agriculture. Ducks dont have ear tags, you dont get a herd number with spuds, said an exasperated Minister ODonovan.

He also let fly at some councillors.

I know that some councillors jumped to their usual hysteria in relation to this and it is not their first time. Rather than actually seeking clarification from the department they jumped to their conclusions trying to appeal to a base which is unfortunate.

These would be the very same councillors advising people, and rightly so, to avail of the LIS. I am glad as well that the department in their clarification has said that the scheme is not just available to agricultural land holdings as we typically know it. It is also available to people who harvest turf for commercial purposes. It is available to community groups and church organisations, said Minister ODonovan.

He said LIS was brought back by the Fine Gael government in difficult economic circumstances.

We have invested heavily in them because we believe they are a very important piece of infrastructure in rural areas.

The merging of the city and county council isn't all about the city and this is important for the people I represent. These sorts of issues are going to rise to the surface more and more as we approach a mayoral election

There is this growing view that national and regional roads are the important ones. Most of the people I represent travel on local roads and minor roads and they are every bit as entitled to have their roads maintained as the people on national and regional roads, concluded Minister ODonovan.

There was no reply to a media query sent to Limerick council about the ministers comments.

Cllr Stephen Keary has welcomed the clarification from Minister Ring and that it is business as normal with LIS. He said common sense was a bit scarce from the local authority.

I contacted the council and spoke to applicants that were affected to find a common sense solution. The interpretation by the council was the problem - whats a farmer and whats not a farmer. The council unfortunately were sticking to the herd number which is not as per the guidelines.

Something else I was annoyed over was they were not looking after those who had been waiting the longest. They were going back to those people who had assumed validation and qualification four, five, six years ago and now were finding some of the applications were invalid, said the former mayor.
Row upon row of empty blue seats: that's what confronted US President Donald Trump at his return rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While he boasted on Twitter of a million people registering to attend, local officials put the final tally at 6200, barely a third of the stadium's capacity. It was a humiliating comeback for a president whose dominance of US politics is fortified by his loyal supporter base, and it has also been a striking shift in fortunes.

Go back several months and Mr Trump was riding the wave of a booming economy and emboldened by his acquittal at the Senate's impeachment trial. As the Democrats struggled to coalesce around a presidential candidate, finally falling in behind the ageing Joe Biden, a second-term Trump presidency sounded plausible.

Donald Trump speaks during his weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Credit:Bloomberg

Rarely has the ground shifted so swiftly and so exposed the shortcomings of a president. There has been a dramatic fall in support following the Trump administrations failures in responding to the pandemic and the President's stoking of racial tensions as the streets were engulfed by nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd.

The numbers tell the story. Even Fox News, Mr Trump's mainstream-media cheer squad, has published a poll showing Mr Biden ahead of him by a 50-38 per cent margin. Most alarming for Mr Trump is that the 12-point advantage is a sharp increase of 4 points for Mr Biden from only a month ago. What is unexpectedly contributing to the Trump slump is the broad support the Black Lives Matter uprising is garnering, as the President deals out his usual race-card rhetoric.
San Francisco officials are seeking state approval to accelerate the city's reopening of some businesses such as bars, barbershops and nail salons as soon as next week, Mayor London Breed announced Monday.

The city has sent a request to the state to move into its next phase of reopening on June 29, rather than mid-July as was previously scheduled, Breed said. She added that if the state approves the request, that will allow zoos, outdoor swimming pools, outdoor bars, hair salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, nail salons and museums to reopen next week.

Key health indicators that track the city's progress in combating the virus such as the number of hospitalizations and new cases must remain stable for the city to follow through with the plan, Breed said.

"Thanks to San Franciscans' efforts to follow health requirements, wear face coverings, and practice social distancing, our COVID-19 health indicators are in a good place and we can continue reopening our city," Breed said in a statement. "We know a lot of businesses and residents are struggling financially, and this next step will help get more San Franciscans back to work while still balancing safety."

Breed's office said the decision to allow more businesses to reopen is driven by the city's success in hitting health indicators. The five health indicators are: local hospital capacity, the number of daily new cases, testing capacity, ability to conduct contact tracing and the supply of personal protective equipment.

As far as the hospital system goes, San Francisco saw a 5% decline in Covid-19 hospitalizations, according to the city and county, and the necessary amount of ICU beds remain available. San Francisco has seen 2.5 new cases per 100,000 residents every day on average over the past seven days, which puts officials on "low alert." The city is meeting its target for testing capacity and 87% of infections have been reached for contact tracing over the past two weeks.

The announcement comes as overall statewide cases in California are on the rise. The state has reported more than 178,000 confirmed cases, according to the California Department of Public Health, but nearly half of those cases are concentrated in Los Angeles County. San Francisco has reported just 3,000 confirmed cases, according to the state.
After nearly three months, Pakistan has partially resumed international flights to repatriate its citizens stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 lockdown, according to a media report. On March 21, Pakistan suspended all international flight operations to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

The government has now reopened 25 per cent of the country's airspace so that the citizens stuck abroad could return, the Express Tribune reported. Speaking to a private TV channel, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari said the initiative to partially reopen the airspace was taken as the government was concerned about the large number of Pakistani labourers stuck abroad, particularly in the Gulf countries, the report said.

We have resumed partial international flight operations to bring back the maximum number of expatriates stranded in foreign countries, he added. The federal government had unveiled a new policy on Wednesday under which it announced its decision to reopen 25 per cent of its airspace after June 20.

Under the policy, around 40,000 to 45,000 Pakistanis will return to the country every week and all stranded citizens will be home in a month. Only symptomatic passengers will be tested and if found positive, they will be quarantined at the facilities provided by the government.

However, it will be mandatory for every passenger to quarantine themselves for 14 days at home and they will have to submit this in writing at the airport. Around 70 per cent of the flights have been dedicated for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Malaysia where Pakistani labourers were stranded, the report said.

Speaking about the policy, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security and Strategic Policy Dr Moeed Yusuf clarified that the flight operation was only for repatriation of stranded Pakistanis and the government had not decided to resume pre-coronavirus pandemic flight operations.

"Only 3% Pakistanis brought the virus to the country whereas the remaining 97% cases are locally transmitte," he said. Bukhari also said that 80,000 stranded Pakistanis have been repatriated to the country, of which 40,000 were workers who had been laid off by their employers abroad.

The number of coronavirus infections in Pakistan reached 181,088 on Monday after 4,471 new cases surfaced during the last 24 hours. Eighty-nine more patients succumbed to the COVID-19 during the same period, taking the number of the total deaths in the country to 3,590.

Also read: Donald Trump says he held off Xinjiang sanctions due to trade talks
In the era of APIs, distribution is king. This is clearly the way the insurance industry is moving, and this integration helps further position us to take advantage of the potential of emerging technology. -Ray Wise, SVP of Sales at EMPLOYERS

Briza is a commercial insurance API (application programming interface) that connects insurers underwriting systems to insurance agencies and consumer apps. These deep connections enable quick insurance delivery by allowing consumers to get small business insurance quotes, pay, and have a policy issued to them in a matter of minutes online. This saves insurance agents hours of busywork, freeing up time that is typically spent duplicating paperwork, sending forms, and logging into multiple carrier websites to get quotes.

One of Briza's agency customers based in Austin, Texas, had this to say: As an independent agent, I'm always looking for ways to grow the commercial side of my book, but I'm always frustrated with how long it takes to write these small business policies. With Briza, I can help clients get quotes, pay online, and have coverage bound in minutes. It's a huge game-changer."

The integration allows any of Briza's customers, which are independent insurance agencies across two dozen U.S. states and growing, to sell EMPLOYERS workers compensation products online through agency-branded portals. In future versions of the Briza software, the integration will also enable small business owners to purchase workers compensation through financial services apps such as banking, bookkeeping, payroll, and tax preparation that upsell existing complementary services.

This development is exciting based on our greater reliance on technology in todays world. In 2020, consumers expect buying products online to be instant, said Ben Munro, CEO of Briza. Small business insurers that adapt to changing agent expectations will gain a competitive advantage. EMPLOYERS is a great example of a company that is committed to innovating and making it easier for their customers by building these systems on the carrier side. We are excited to work with them.

EMPLOYERS feels similarly about the new relationship with Briza. In the era of APIs, distribution is king, said Ray Wise, Senior Vice President of Sales at EMPLOYERS. This is clearly the way the insurance industry is moving, and this integration helps further position us to take advantage of the potential of emerging technology. It gets our products in front of more small business owners and the agents they turn to for expert advice and service.

About EMPLOYERS

Employers Holdings, Inc. is a holding company with subsidiaries that are specialty providers of workers' compensation insurance and services focused on select, small businesses engaged in low-to-medium hazard industries. The Company operates throughout the United States, with the exception of four states that are served exclusively by their state funds. Insurance is offered through Employers Insurance Company of Nevada, Employers Compensation Insurance Company, Employers Preferred Insurance Company, Employers Assurance Company and Cerity Insurance Company, all rated A- (Excellent) by the A.M. Best Company. Not all companies do business in all jurisdictions. See http://www.employers.com and http://www.cerity.com for coverage availability. EMPLOYERS and Americas small business insurance specialist are registered trademarks of EIG Services, Inc.

About Briza

Briza was founded in 2016, and is currently led by CEO Ben Munro, CTO Rishi Sharma, and COO Dominic Bortolussi. The software company also has distribution partnerships with other A-rated carriers including Crum & Forster (a Fairfax company), Hiscox, Markel, and Coalition. The company recently announced a round of venture funding, with institutional investors 500 Startups and Leaders Fund, alongside a number of angel investors including Munro and CEO of FreshBooks Mike McDerment.
P olice have issued more CCTV footage after two women including a NHS doctor were randomly targeted and assaulted in London.

A 51-year-old woman was on her way to work on a Route 149 bus in the Edmonton Green when she was approached from behind and punched in the side of the head at around 6am on April 11.

The woman did not suffer any lasting injuries but police said she was shaken by the incident and is now feeling anxious when using public transport.

Detectives have released images and CCTV footage of the suspect they believe is involved in both the April 11 assault and another attack that took place on April 17.

The suspect assaulted a woman on the Route 149 bus / Met Police

A 37-year-old NHS doctor was on her way home from work at Shadwell DLR Station when she noticed a man she did not know on the platform appeared to be following her.

She became increasingly concerned and after boarding the train she got off at Canning Town before quickly re-boarding in a bid to try and lose the man.

When she got off the train at Royal Victoria DLR Station the suspect was still following her. The doctor asked for assistance from two men who kindly walked part of the way home with her.

After the men and woman went their separate ways, the 37-year-old doctor decided to call the police as she walked along Butchers Road.

But while she was on the phone to the 999 operator the suspect approached her from behind and pushed her.

Police released CCTV images of the suspect at Shadwell DLR Station / Met Police

The victim was taken to hospital with cuts, bruising and injuries to her mouth, which included a broken tooth.

The suspect is described as a black man, aged around 20 years old. At the time of both attacks he was wearing grey jogging bottoms, a grey hooded top under a dark jacket and a dark cap.

Detective Constable Alister Kim, from North East CID, said: I am particularly keen to speak with the two men who kindly walked for a time with the victim when she was being followed by the suspect.

"They may, unknowingly have information that could assist my investigation and I urge them to get in touch.

No arrests have been made and police investigation is ongoing.

DC Kim, added: Having studied the evidence from both incidents I believe that both victims were attacked by the same suspect.

There is nothing to suggest any motive or reason for the victims being targeted. Both women were simply going about their daily business.

The random nature of both assaults makes it imperative that the man in the images is identified without delay. If you know who he is please contact police immediately.

Anyone who might have information that could assist police is asked to call 101 reference CAD 6121/17 Apr, Tweet @MetCC or remain 100% anonymous by calling the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.


Google employees are signing an internal petition, calling on the company to stop selling technology to police departments.

The letter, with the headline "No Police Contracts," began circulating last week and has been signed by more than 1,100 employees, who identify themselves as part of "Googlers Against Racism." The document, which CNBC viewed, asks CEO Sundar Pichai to "take real steps to dismantle racism," and alleges that Google is "profiting" off racism with business contracts.

"We as a society have moved past the point where saying Black Lives Matter is not enough, we need to show it in our thinking, in our words and in our actions that Black lives do matter to us," the petition says. "The past weeks have seen a renewed energy and momentum fighting racism. They have also shown us that addressing racism is not merely an issue of words, but of actions taken to dismantle the actual structures that perpetuate it. While we as individuals hold difficult but necessary conversations with our family, friends and peers, we are also incredibly disappointed by our company's response."

Last week, Pichai said the company will commit $175 million towards supporting black businesses in response to the killing of George Floyd by a police officer and the worldwide protests that followed. The company also said it plans to increase "underrepresented" people in its leadership and end peer-based badge checking, deferring to security teams.

Signers of the petition want the company to go farther. They say they're disappointed that the company's artificial intelligence technology is being used by law enforcement to "track down immigrants with drone surveillance footage" and claim that the company's political action committee, funded by money from employees, donates "to racist politicians and white supremacists."

It's not the first time Google employees have objected to government work. In 2018, the company said it would not renew a satellite image-based defense contract called Project Maven after it was set to expire in March 2019. The announcement came after thousands of Google employees signed a letter urging their CEO to pull out of the contract, and about a dozen staffers resigned in protest.

In this case, employees say they want the company to stop selling technology to agencies that, they say, are using it for harm. The letter criticizes Google for citing the New York-based Clarkstown Police Department as a featured user of Google Cloud, the same agency that "has been sued multiple times for illegal surveillance of Black Lives Matter."

The signers say they want to be proud of their employer and are thus compelled to speak out.

"The protest movement that began with George Floyd's murder has expanded across the US and around the world, developing into a rebellion against racism and police terror," the petition says. "Why help the institutions responsible for the knee on George Floyd's neck to be more effective organizationally?"

The internal dissent comes after Amazon and Microsoft recently said they wouldn't be selling their facial recognition technology to police agencies. While Google told CNBC it doesn't make facial recognition technology commercially available and prohibits the sale for surveillance, a spokesperson said the company would continue to offering its other cloud technologies to government bodies, including police departments.

Google Cloud spokesperson Cynthia Horiguchi said in an email that employees have recently made over 500 product suggestions that are being reviewed by the company. Here's the full statement:

"We're committed to work that makes a meaningful difference to combat systemic racism, and our employees have made over 500 product suggestions in recent weeks, which we are reviewing. On this one, we were the first major company to decide, years ago, to not make facial recognition commercially available and we have very clear AI Principles that prohibit its use or sale for surveillance. We have longstanding terms of use for generally available computing platforms like Gmail, GSuite and Google Cloud Platform, and these products will remain available for Governments and local authorities, including police departments, to use."

WATCH: Trump's approval ratings are 'hurting' amid Black Lives Matter protests
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




The delayed Victory Day parade in Red Square is set to go ahead amid persistent concerns about the coronavirus, and President Vladimir Putin drops a hint about his thinking on the 2024 question ahead of a vote expected to hand him the option of running for two more six-year terms. Moscow correspondent Matthew Luxmoore joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.
Men make more Covid-19 antibodies than women and are better plasma donors, a study has revealed today.

Coronavirus survivors are being urged to donate blood as part of a major NHS trial assessing whether it could help some of the sickest patients.

NHS statistics show around 43 per cent of male donors had blood rich enough in antibodies to be included in the research.

The rate was just 29 per cent among women, who studies have shown often escape being struck down with a severe bout of Covid-19.

Simon Callon, 51, of St Helens, Merseyside, survived Covid-19 but lost his father Noel to the disease. He said: 'To me, donating plasma was a no-brainer'

Dr Wassim Shamsuddin, a consultant anaesthetist at Milton Keynes University Hospital, donated convalescent plasma at Oxford Donor Centre after recovering from Covid-19

Health chiefs are now calling for more men to come forward and donate their blood 'to save lives' from the coronavirus.

Department of Health data shows nearly 43,000 Brits have died after testing positive for the disease since the crisis began.

But other government statistics suggest the true Covid-19 death toll could be in the region of 50,000, when all suspected fatalities are taken into account.

No cure for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has yet been found, and tens of thousands of patients worldwide are involved in trials of promising drugs.

Convalescent plasma therapy is one Covid-19 treatment being tested in Britain, with 3,500 hospitalised patients expected to receive donor blood.

The treatment  first used in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and also given to treat SARS  works using the liquid part of the blood, known as convalescent plasma.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock donated his blood after recovering from coronavirus in March

The treatment works using the liquid part of the blood, known as convalescent plasma (pictured, at the Amulfo Arias Madrid Hospital in Panama City)

WHAT IS CONVALESCENT PLASMA AND WHERE HAS IT BEEN USED? Convalescent plasma has been used to treat infections for at least a century, dating back to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. It was also trialed during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2012 MERS epidemic. Convalescent plasma was used as a last resort to improve the survival rate of patients with SARS whose condition continued to deteriorate. It has been proven 'effective and life-saving' against other infections, such as rabies and diphtheria, said Dr Mike Ryan, of the World Health Organization. 'It is a very important area to pursue,' Dr Ryan said. Although promising, convalescent plasma has not been shown to be effective in every disease studied, the FDA say. Is it already being used for COVID-19 patients? Before it can be routinely given to patients with COVID-19, it is important to determine whether it is safe and effective through clinical trials. The FDA said it was 'facilitating access' for the treatment to be used on patients with serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 infections'. It came after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that plasma would be tested there to treat the sickest of the state's coronavirus patients. COVID-19 patients in Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai are being treated with this method, authorities report. Lu Hongzhou, professor and co-director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, said in February the hospital had set up a special clinic to administer plasma therapy and was selecting patients who were willing to donate. 'We are positive that this method can be very effective in our patients,' he said. Meanwhile, the head of a Wuhan hospital said plasma infusions from recovered patients had shown some encouraging preliminary results. The MHRA has approved the use of the therapy in the UK, but it has not been revealed which hospitals have already tried it. How does it work? Blood banks take plasma donations much like they take donations of whole blood; regular plasma is used in hospitals and emergency rooms every day. If someone's donating only plasma, their blood is drawn through a tube, the plasma is separated and the rest infused back into the donor's body. Then that plasma is tested and purified to be sure it doesn't harbor any blood-borne viruses and is safe to use. For COVID-19 research, people who have recovered from the coronavirus would be donating. Scientists would measure how many antibodies are in a unit of donated plasma - tests just now being developed that aren't available to the general public - as they figure out what's a good dose, and how often a survivor could donate. There is also the possibility that asymptomatic patients - those who never showed symptoms or became unwell - would be able to donate. But these 'silent carriers' would need to be found via testing first. Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda is working on a drug that contains recovered patients antibodies in a pill form, Stat News reported. Advertisement

This antibody-rich plasma is injected into Covid-19 patients struggling to make their own antibodies, with hopes it can help clear the virus.

Antibodies are substances produced by the immune system which store memories of how to fight off a specific virus, such as SARS-CoV-2.

It is currently unclear how long Covid-19 antibodies last for, providing some form of protection, in people who have had the virus.

But if the trials are successful, being given convalescent plasma could become a widespread practice in hospitals.

NHS Blood and Transplant is now appealing for more Brits to come forward, saying 'more plasma donors are needed'.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock donated his blood after recovering from coronavirus in March.

The health service 'wants to hear from anybody who tested positive for the disease' or suffered the tell-tale symptoms, including a cough or fever.

But Professor David Roberts, associate director of NHSBT, said: 'We would especially want to hear from men.

'We test every plasma donation and men have higher antibody levels, which means we're more likely to be able to use their plasma to save lives.'

Professor Roberts explained severely-ill Covid-19 patients produce more antibodies that neutralise or kill the virus.

He added: 'Our studies and many others around the world show men with Covid-19 are more likely to become seriously ill than women.'

And Professor Roberts claimed 'this makes them better plasma donors once they have recovered'.

The NHS data comes from an analysis of the 592 donations made between April 21 and May 14  of which 75 per cent were from men.

Donating takes around 45 minutes and medics filter the blood through a machine to remove the plasma, in a process known as plasmapheresis.

Rachel Johnson, NHSBT statistics lead, said: 'It is important to identify donors most likely to have high antibody titres (high blood levels).'

She added that the results of the small study were statistically significant, meaning they are 'pretty confident' men are more likely to be able to be donors.

A key advantage to the blood therapy is that it's available immediately and relies only drawing blood from a former patient.

It is also significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions to take through trials and regulation before mass production.

Last week it was announced that anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 through the national testing programme will be asked to join a blood plasma trial.

NHSBT said people confirmed with the virus through the 'pillar two' national testing programme will receive a text prompt 21 days after their result.

The texts will now be sent on a weekly basis to anyone who tests positive through the national testing programme.

It can take several weeks for the immune system to make enough antibodies to be spotted in the blood.

It comes after a scientific review last week claimed injecting Covid-19 patients with the blood of survivors speeds up their recovery and reduces their symptoms.

Researchers found convalescent plasma therapy cleared the disease in less than a week in adults under the age of 60.

But the antibody-rich plasma took between 10 to 30 days to fend off the disease in elderly patients, who are prone to severe illness from Covid-19.

Scientists in Sweden and Finland, behind the study, said global research indicated the unproven therapy 'is safe and effective'.

But none of the studies included in the review compared patients receiving plasma to a control group  considered the gold standard of scientific research.

CHILDREN TO BE TESTED FOR COVID-19 ANTIBODIES Scientists are to examine the level of antibodies for Covid-19 in children. Researchers said at present it is 'unclear' what proportion of British children have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. Antibody testing determines whether a person has had Covid-19 in the past. Experts from Queens University in Belfast are leading the UK-wide trial, which will assess the proportion of children who have antibodies. After their initial assessment the children taking part will be tested again in two months' time and then half a year later. Over 1,000 healthy children are being enrolled to the study. Advertisement

Early results from the first randomised control study in China actually suggested the treatment makes no difference.

It comes as scientists announced today they will examine the level of antibodies for Covid-19 in children.

Researchers said at present it is 'unclear' what proportion of British children have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.

Antibody testing determines whether a person has had Covid-19 in the past.

Experts from Queens University in Belfast are leading the UK-wide trial, which will assess the proportion of children who have antibodies.

After their initial assessment the children taking part will be tested again in two months' time and then half a year later.

Over 1,000 healthy children are being enrolled to the study.

Researcher Dr Tom Waterfield said: 'It is unclear what proportion of UK children have been exposed to Covid-19 and how many, if any, have the necessary antibodies to prevent future re-infection.

'This important research may help with planning for the reopening of schools and other vital children's services.'

TWO PLASMA DONORS SAY THE DECISION TO DONATE WAS A 'NO-BRAINER' Two plasma donors have described their decision to donate as a 'no-brainer'. Simon Callon, 51, of St Helens, Merseyside, survived Covid-19 but lost his father Noel to the disease. He said: 'I don't want anybody going through what happened to my dad. 'He died on a hospital ward with no family or friends, with a nurse holding his hand. Only 10 people were allowed at his funeral. 'He'd had a fall at home but the paramedics found his oxygen levels were low and he had a high temperature so they took him in. 'He had been with my mum for more than 60 years. He was ex-RAF and a long distance lorry driver but also an amateur painter who taught classes. His students formed a socially-distanced guard of honour with their paintbrushes. 'To me, donating plasma was a no-brainer. If you can save somebody or help somebody, you would do it. 'The donation was easy, no pain. The staff were brilliant. I hope I can help someone.' Dr Wassim Shamsuddin, a consultant anaesthetist at Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust, donated convalescent plasma at Oxford Donor Centre after recovering from Covid-19. The 40-year-old, from Bicester, said: 'I have seen the effects of the virus first-hand and how it has taken the lives of many people, both old and young. 'When the opportunity came to donate plasma and hopefully antibodies to help others in the fight against Covid-19, it was a no-brainer for me. 'I have seen how the virus has disproportionately affected the BAME group, within the healthcare professionals and in the community. 'If plasma turns out to be one of the treatments shown to be of benefit to individuals then I would have played my part.' Anyone who has had coronavirus or the symptoms and is able to travel to a donor centre can offer to donate by calling 0300 123 2323 or visiting www.nhsbt.nhs.uk. Advertisement

NHS volunteer army left idle

Fewer than half of the 750,000 Britons who volunteered to help the NHS have been deployed in the pandemic, MPs were told yesterday.

The pledges of support were made in March as part of the biggest volunteer drive since the Second World War.

But the head of the NHS told the public accounts committee that fewer than 300,000 tasks, like delivering medicine or food, have been completed since then.

Sir Simon Stevens added that the response to an initial target of 250,000 had been 'overwhelming' and the helpers had been 'useful'.

He added: 'People shielding have also relied on volunteers.'

The low level of demand for assistance is likely to be because vulnerable residents have been able to rely on neighbours, friends and family instead.
The State Commission on Environmental Safety, Manmade Disaster and Emergency Response has permitted to hold an external independent assessment from June 25 to July 17.

"Today the State Commission on Environmental Safety, Manmade Disaster and Emergency Response took a decision: the epidemiological situation allows to hold the external independent assessment the scheduled terms: from June 25 to July 17. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Ukrainian and regional centers for assessing the quality of education, testing points are ready to conduct the external independent assesment-2020 in safe conditions in accordance with the recommendations of the chief state sanitary doctor of Ukraine," reads a report of the press service of the Education Ministry.

Thus, during the external independent assessment admission to testing will take place according to the recommendations of the chief sanitary doctor (body temperature not higher than 37.2 degrees, no signs of respiratory diseases, the presence of a mask or respirator), the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection will control the requirements for testing points (distance between participants 1.2 m, mask mode, availability of antiseptics, disinfection of premises, organized disposal of used masks), measures will be taken to avoid crowds of people (more time to enter, time intervals for entry of various participants, proper organization of queues with distance), there will be support from medics and the National Police, instructors from non-risk groups will be involved.

It is noted that thanks to the partners  Naftogaz Group, UNICEF in Ukraine and the Swiss Embassy in Ukraine  the centers of the external independent assessment will be provided with medical masks for participants, instructors and doctors, non-contact thermometers (pyrometers), hand sanitizers, surface disinfectants, insulating medical gowns and protective shields for physicians.
[June 22, 2020] Rightware Collaborates With LG Electronics to Power Graphics for Industry-First Curved OLED Display on 2021 Cadillac Escalade

Rightware, the leading provider of automotive user interface software, today announced it collaborated with LG Electronics (News - Alert) to develop the industry's first curved OLED display for the 2021 Cadillac Escalade. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005133/en/ Rightware collaborated with LG Electronics to power graphics for the auto industry's first curved, 38-inch OLED display, the centerpiece of the 2021 Cadillac Escalade that hits dealerships in late 2020. Rightware's Kanzi software suite enabled designers to take full advantage of real-time graphics to create the ultimate digital user experience for the all-new SUV. (Photo credit: General Motors (News - Alert)) LG Electronics P-OLED technology is the centerpiece of the all-new SUV's interior. The seamless OLED screen features a 38-inch-wide display that includes: the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, a control panel on the driver's left, and the infotainment on the right. The screen's wide viewing angle and driver-centric curvature combine with hi-resolution bold graphics and the largest color range in the industry to create an impeccably integrated human-machine interface (HMI) experience.



"We were honored to work with LG Electronics to develop cutting-edge 3D graphics for this luxury SUV," said Ville Ilves, CEO at Rightware. "The advanced HMI enhances the in-vehicle experience, and the new Escalade is the epitome of how an automaker and its suppliers can collaborate to achieve the ultimate digital user experience." The Escalade's HMI integrates augmented reality, driver information, and infotainment all-in-one system. Unique to the HMI is a rich graphical control application for the advanced-comfort front seats, which feature 18-way adjustments with heating, ventilation, and massage functions.

Created with Kanzi, the seat application takes full advantage of real-time graphics, employing 3D morphing to visualize seat movement as the driver adjusts seat settings via the IVI touch screen or a multi-function controller on the vehicle's center console. The UI seamlessly incorporates 2D controls with rich 3D graphics for a natural and intuitive user experience. "Working with Kanzi allowed us to deliver an innovative user experience with fast time-to-market," said WonYong Hwang, Vice President of Smart Product Development Engineering & Product Planning Division at LG Electronics. "A great example is the 3D seat visualization, which took less than two months from the start of development to finalization." Consumers can now reserve their all-new 2021 Cadillac Escalade, which is expected to reach dealerships in North America in late 2020, with availability in other regions to follow. About Kanzi The Kanzi product family of software is used by designers to manage the entire UX process from HMI development to integrating content across multiple operating systems within the vehicle. The platform affords automakers and Tier 1 suppliers faster HMI development using smaller design teams with greater creative freedom in a multi-display, connected cockpit. About Rightware Rightware provides tools and services for development of advanced digital user interfaces. The Kanzi philosophy is based on designer empowerment, prioritizing ease of use, rapid prototyping, workflow efficiency, high performance, and cross-platform support. Our passion is to unleash creativity and to enable fantastic user experiences. As a ThunderSoft company, our combined skills and assets allow us to deliver fully integrated HMI solutions, engineering support, and design services for automotive customers across the globe. Rightware is headquartered in Finland with a presence in the United States, Germany, Italy, China, South Korea, and Japan. Trusted by over 50 car brands, we are on track to powering the user experience in over 40 million cars by 2024. www.rightware.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005133/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Philippines govt asking China anew to compensate crewmen of rammed fishing boat

by Christia Marie Ramos

Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Monday said he would bring to the attention of the Chinese government anew the issue on the unpaid compensation of the 22 Gem-Ver fishing boat crewmen a year after the ramming incident off Recto Bank.



In an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel, Locsin was asked regarding the compensation for the 22 Mindoro fishermen, whose fishing boat sank after it was rammed by a Chinese trawler inside Philippine territory.



China has responded, they have said that it is the fault of the Chinese vessel and the question is the damages. And now that you mentioned it, okay, Ill bring it up again, Locsin said but noted that it is not the Chinese government that committed the damage.



Locsin pointed out that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine the compensation for the fishermen.



The foreign affairs chief, however, said the DOJ has yet to do so.



The compensation turns out is going to be determined by our Department of Justice. In the meantime, a private association of Chinese gave them [a] boat, but thats not the compensation that is required, Locsin said.



But it (DOJ) will [determine the compensation]. I have tremendous confidence in the Secretary. It is a private vessel so, Im sure theyll come up with it very soon, he added.



In June last year, a Chinese trawler rammed the fishing boat GemVer with 22 Filipino fishermen on board at Recto Bank, which is within the Philippines 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea.



A Vietnamese fishing boat rescued the Filipino fishermen.



In August of the same year, the Guangdong Fishery Mutual Insurance Association apologized on behalf of the Chinese ship owner, calling it an accident and asked the Philippines to file a claim for compensation.

 1997-2020 INQUIRER.net | All Rights Reserved

Theme(s): Others.
Smile Initiative, a Bahrain Future Society for Youth programme which provides psychosocial support to children with cancer and their parents in Bahrain, has launched its new visual identity.

This identity includes a comprehensive development of the initiative's logo, publications and its account on social media sites, to keep pace with the significant qualitative shift in the initiative's work

after moving to its new fully equipped headquarters in Umm Al-Hassam.

Future Society for Youth Chairman Sabah Abdul Rahman Al Zayani said the new visual identity of the initiative reflects many developments that have taken place in its work since its launch nearly 12 years ago. It brings the society closer to the children with cancer and their families, and conveys a sense of fun to the new headquarters of the initiative.

"Smile initiative presented along with the new visual identity a new slogan which says We all look better when we smile. Our aim throughout this slogan is that all partners, shareholders, and supporters, as well as various members of society, recognise the beauty that we all have when we contribute to providing support and planting hope to the child with cancer," Al Zayani said.

He stressed that the new visual identity of the initiative is also reflected inside the new headquarters, where every hall and place is named after a symbol of joy, hope, childhood, and courage. The new headquarters on its ground floor includes a wide reception desk for the society's secretariat, in addition to a fully equipped activity hall, and another hall devoted to recreational programs offered by the initiative for children with cancer, such as cooking and drawing, and others.

The second floor includes an office to provide psychological support for children, a classroom, and two game halls for children according to their age group, in addition to administrative offices. The external courtyard includes an open courtyard designated for children's play as well, and they all come in various colors and designs inspired by the initiative's new visual identity.

"Smile initiative has worked simultaneously to enhance its professional presence on social networks, through distinctive designs and films within the framework of a deliberate publishing plan, to create the largest possible interaction not only with sick children and their families but also with other institutions and segments inside and outside Bahrain," Al Zayani added.

"To implement the new strategy of Smile initiative, we have developed an integrated outreach and communication plan, which will serve to strengthen our partnership with various governmental and private entities and extend bridges of cooperation with our counterparts in the region and the world. We are confident that our presence is professional and effective with the public opinion in a way that reflects the importance of the Smile initiative and its accomplishments over the past 12 years as one of the unique voluntary initiatives in the Kingdom of Bahrain,"Al Zayani added. TradeArabia News Service
India insisted on 'complete disengagement' in all its talks with China on eastern Ladakh row: Govt

We will continue to deal with Chinese PLA in firm, resolute manner: Army chief

Major General level talks between India-China underway at Ladakh

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: Major General level talks between India and China are underway at Ladakh.

It may be recalled that three rounds of talks had taken place last week following the violent brawl at Galwan Valley on June 15. Meanwhile there would be diplomatic level talks at the Joint Secretary level too this week.

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar will take part in the foreign minister level trilateral RIC (Russia-India-China) meeting on June 23.

No escalation at India-China border, but heavy military build up has made situation very tense

Jaishankar will interact with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi through video conferencing, New Delhi has confirmed.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

The meet would be a crucial one as it comes in the wake of the tensions between the two nations along the Line of Actual Control. The meeting is an important one and comes in the wake of talks being held at the military level as well.

All eyes would be on this meet. Sources tell OneIndia, that the issue pertaining to the border tensions is likely to be raised by India. Talks are on at the military level and the diplomatic channels have already been opened up. Jaishankar is likely to raise the issue relating to the prevailing situation, the source also said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Norman Harsono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 12:28 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660a4421 1 Business Vale,Vale-Indonesia-INCO,MIND-ID,Inalum,nickel,mining,divestment,acquisition,Brazil Free

State-owned mining holding company MIND ID plans to buy a 20 percent stake of one of the countrys top nickel miners, PT Vale Indonesia (INCO), by year-end in a move that is expected to further strengthen Indonesias grip on domestic mineral resources.

MIND ID signed on Thursday a deal to pay Rp 5.52 trillion (US$392 million) INCOs shareholders, Brazil-based Vale and Japan-based Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd, to acquire the stake. Vale will receive Rp 4.13 trillion and Sumitomo Rp 1.39 trillion.

Read also: MIND.ID unlikely to issue new bonds until Freeport pays dividends

The deal brings an end to year-long negotiations between the three companies.

The acquisition has been pushed back for the second time this year due to pandemic-related complications. INCO's shareholders initially scheduled the acquisition for March but postponed it to May amid market uncertainty

This transaction demonstrates the confidence of global mining companies in MIND ID and Indonesia as a whole, said MIND ID president director Orias Petrus Moedak on Saturday.

The deal, which values INCOs shares at Rp 2,780 each, also grants Vale continued financial and operational control of INCO, the Brazil-based company wrote on Friday.

This transaction represents an important development in PT Vale's long presence in Indonesia and reinforces its commitment to keep investing in the region, Vale added.

With the latest deal, INCO will divest a total 41 percent of its shares. The nickel miner previously divested a 21 percent stake through the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

Vale, meanwhile, will retain a 44 percent share of INCO. The remaining 15 percent will be held by Sumitomo.

The Brazil-based company is divesting INCO in exchange for being able to continue its mining operations beyond 2025, which is when INCOs existing contract will expire. Vales Indonesian arm operates one of the worlds largest nickel mining operations in mineral-rich Sulawesi.

Such a divestment, mandated by Government Regulation No. 77/2014, is part of Indonesias campaign to tighten control over its mineral wealth and thus, boost state revenue.

Read also: Mining giant Vale Indonesia divestment pushed again to June

The Southeast Asian country is among the worlds top producers of nickel, tin and coal.

MIND ID, officially PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum), previously raised $1.5 billion in global bonds to acquire INCO and to pay off its subsidiaries debts.

Before INCO, the holding company acquired the local arm of United States-based metal miner PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), which operates the worlds largest gold mine in Indonesias most impoverished province, Papua.

Stocks of INCO, traded at the IDX, dropped 1.04 percent as of 11:18 a.m. Jakarta time on Monday as the main gauge, the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI), slipped 0.03 percent.
More than humans are benefitting from a solar field in Carlisle.

A pollinator-friendly meadow at The Giant Companys corporate headquarters at 1149 Harrisburg Pike is supporting bees, birds and small wildlife. Wildflowers including Milkweed, Mountain Mint and Golden Alexander are sprouting up at the companys 7-acre solar field.

From almonds to zucchini and countless fruits, vegetables and nuts in between, nearly one-third of our food supply depends on pollinators, making bees an essential part of our food supply chain and ecosystem, said Nicholas Bertram, president, The Giant Company in a press statement.

Honeybee populations have been in steep decline over the past decades. Beekeepers estimate losses of 40.7 percent of colonies between April 2018 and April 2019, according to the University of Maryland-led nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership.

READ MORE: Murder hornet in Pennsylvania? If you see one do this

Giant says its initiative is the first of its kind for a grocery retailer. Starting in 2018, the company implemented its solar program in phases, starting with a 625-kilowatt rooftop solar array followed by the ground-mounted solar array field.

Both arrays are expected to save 4.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide in the environment and generate enough power for the entire building.

Giant is also the first grocery retailer and first Pennsylvania participant to take part in the National Renewable Energy Laboratorys InSPIRE study, where scientists measure and track the performance of the pollinator-friendly ground cover for applications to future solar energy projects.

Giant donated $50,000 to the Planet Bee Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on driving awareness for pollinators while creating environmental stewards. The foundation set up and is maintaining several beehives on the property.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Civic chief IS Chahal on Monday launched Mission Zero, as part of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) rapid action plan to curb rising Covid-19 cases in the suburbs. He also inaugurated 50 ambulances given to BMC as part of a public-private partnership.

Mission Zero is a 35-day action plan to increase surveillance in six suburban wards corresponding to areas of Mulund, Bhandup, Dahisar, Borivli, Kandivli, Malad and Dindoshi. It aims to reduce the growth rate of Covid-19 cases in these areas to around 1%- 1.7%, from the current 3%-3.7%.

With the onset of the monsoon, BMC anticipates the number of cases will go up. Corona cases are likely to rise in the monsoon. We are anticipating that and are prepared to handle it in terms of our bed capacity, Chahal said.

On the other hand, Chahal also said a large number of cases will be brought under control by July-end, through the rapid action plan.

Speaking at the inauguration of the ambulances given by a collaboration of Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, CREDAI-MCHI, and Desh Apanayen, Chahal said, Over 60% of Mumbais cases come from these six-seven wards. The remaining 40% cases come from the other 18 wards. It will not be beneficial for us in the long run if we do not curb the rise in these areas. Cases from these suburbs will eventually travel to south Mumbai.

Chahal said BMC has instructions from chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to pay more attention to these areas. He attributed the rise to Thanes proximity to Bhandup and Mulund, and Mira Bhayanders proximity to Dahisar and Borivli, especially since easing of restrictions has increased contact and travel.

The ambulances will be operated in the suburbs by three organisations  Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, CREDAI-MCHI and Desh Apanayen. They will act as mobile dispensaries, carrying out door-to-door screening of all residents in the suburbs for early detection of cases, and their separation from the community.

Each ambulance will have a doctor and a laboratory technician. Screening will be done with an oximeter and a thermal gun. Swabs of any suspected patient will be taken immediately, and will be reported to BMC. At least 30,000 to 40,000 patients will be screened every week.

For every positive patient, we will trace up to 20 contacts. In the rest of Mumbais hotspots, contact tracing has been in the ratio of 1:15, Chahal said.

Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana is a Pune based non-government organisation working in the area of natural disaster response. It is headed by Shantilal Muttha. In Pune, and in rural Maharashtra, mobile dispensaries were started on April 1, and have so far screened 14 lakh citizens in 288 dispensaries. Eighteen mobile dispensaries are specially deployed for Dharavi alone.

Chahal said, Mr Muttha has promised to reduce growth rate in suburbs exactly like Dharavi and in other hotspots, and bring it to around 1.7% to 1.8%. If we contain the virus in these six to seven wards, then I think the battle is won. And our target is by June 30, it should be contained. We will have to be vigilant for four to six months for life to come back to normal.
A comedian and businessman from Northern Ireland has paid a touching tribute to his "hero" father after he passed away in a care home last week.

Pure Derry and Ulster Fry writer Ciaran Murray shared a childhood picture on Father's Day of Patrick 'Pat' Murray.

Mr Murray had been a resident of Greenhaw Lodge Care Home and had been living with dementia before passing away last Monday.

Posting on the Pure Derry page, his son said his "infamous sense of humour" had inspired his comedy career.

"We had been unable to see him the past few months as he was in a care home," he said.

"He was a brilliant, warm hearted, upbeat man, who had time for everyone, not least his wains."

He added: "It sounds cliched, but my da really was my hero. If this makes ye sad, please know I'm also having a class Father's Day of my own with my wee girl. As heartbreaking as the loss of a parent is, the joy/job of being one is never clearer."

In an earlier post, he said as a master floor layer, his dad "was as strong as a bull yet could sing like an angel".

"He could hold a conversation with anyone, on any topic, and his sharp sense of humour and wordplay were infamous. He could also write, sketch, paint, cook, sew, iron, help with your homework, solve equations and invent new gadgets on demand. He was the kindest, most talented and smartest man I've ever known - and he was a dauntingly impressive role model (and a great father).

"I'm absolutely heartbroken I won't get to see him again, yet incredibly relieved we will no longer have to watch him suffer. Dementia is a cruel illness that robs people of all their special gifts, and (over time) their loved ones of them."

He thanked the "incredible" care home staff for their dedication during his illness.

With social distancing measures in place, he added that the family held a private gathering after his funeral "at which no-one could get a word in edgeways. I think we did him proud".
On Sunday, a group of classmates, all in their mid-forties clicked a link to enter a certain Zoom meeting. With teary eyes, dry throats and blank expressions, they entered the meeting. There was a sense of emptiness, a void, which simply could not be filled. A void that their dear classmate Sachy had created a few days ago when he succumbed to cardiac arrest on June 18. The pandemic is not contained, the lockdown is in place and all of them live in different parts of the world  this was the only possible way for his old friends to pay him a tribute.



Filmmaker K R Sachidanandan, popularly known as Sachy, the man behind blockbusters like Ayyappanum Koshiyum and Anarkali was a pre-degree student at SNM College, Malliankara, from 1987 to 1989. Fresh out of school, he was barely 16, when he walked into the college campus, to meet these friends of his for the first time. Sachy was probably introduced to activism and the communist ideology there, a campus that boasted of activists like academic Sunil P Ilayidom.

The college is located in Ernakulam district in Kerala



"He was an introvert with a rebel's face. He was petite, came to college dressed in a single-layered Mundu and shirt and a book hung between his upper arm and torso," recalls Abdul Wahid, his batchmate. Sachy studied Commerce, while Wahid studied Science, but the two believed in the ideologies of the same organisation, SFI.



However, Sachy was someone who stood firm by his views and did not fear speaking up, even when his views contrasted with the ones that the other comrades believed in. Wahid recalls an incident where Sachy raised his voice against the SFI once. "Sunil P Ilayidom was a member of the SFI-led Students' Union then. He was once beaten up by a political rival. The SFI condemned the move but did not take a solid stand against the attacker. Sachy was quite unhappy and led a rebellion against the organisation," he says. This was when the college saw the rise of a firebrand, who broke the shell of introversion. He was fearless, fierce even, they say.

Sachy during his college days

Sachy wrote a lot of poems back in college. Some of them even made it to the college magazine. "However, he never bothered to take part in a competition," says Rashmi K M, another batchmate of his. Both Rashmi and Sachy later went on to study law, but in different colleges. "Even though we were of the same age, I always thought of Sachy as a little brother. I was good friends with his sister, who was also part of the SFI. I got introduced to him through her," she says.

Going three decades back in time, Rashmi laughs, when she tells us that Sachy was the reason for the college to not give her a conduct certificate on time. She tells us the reason. "We had both joined college after studying in a Malayalam-medium school and had a tough time grasping the English lessons. I used to go for tuitions and would write down the meanings of complicated words in Malayalam in the book. Once Sachy had to skip classes and had to catch up on the lessons. So, his sister asked me if I could help him out. I obliged," she says. Now, this was in the 80s and society wasn't quite progressive. "Our college often made a big deal out of boys and girls talking to each other. So, one day, I was explaining the lesson to Sachy, sitting on the steps, when the teachers raised their voice. We immediately told them that we were only studying. However, I had to apologise to them, to get my conduct certificate. Today, it is something that makes me laugh," she adds.



A poem called Unniyude Katha (Translates to Unni's Story) penned by Sachi for the college magazine, during the first year of his pre-degree

Years later, when these friends met each other and decided to stay in touch through a WhatsApp group, Sachy was added too. He remained silent for a long time and left the group abruptly one day. "He would have been too busy," says Jeevaraj, who studied with Sachy in school and college. "However, we always discussed his movies in that group, including the latest Ayyappanum Koshiyum," he says.



Jeevaraj tells us how he could spot a few conversations that he had with Sachy, reproduced in the film. Wahid, on the other hand, could see a lot of resemblance between Sachy and the film's protagonist Ayyappan Nair, a firm and serious police officer, portrayed by Biju Menon. "Sachy and I were both part of a play called Aham Brahmasmi, where he played the part of a young Namboodiri and I acted as a film director. He was crazy about theatre even then," recalls Jeevaraj.

Sachi with Biju Menon, who portrayed Ayyappan Nair, in the sets of Ayyappanum Koshiyum

"He never constantly kept in touch. He was quite aloof. After college, we got in touch in 2015, when I worked as the manager of the Grand Hotel in Ernakulam. He would come there often and we spoke for hours. Around that time, we also had a reunion in school, where we helped build a few new blocks and paid tributes to teachers. But later, I moved to work in another hotel on the outskirts of the city. That's when I lost him again," he says.



And thereby hangs a tale. Of a man lost too soon and a firebrand artist whose work will forever enthrall audiences in posterity.
(Comparing countries' responses to the pandemic is a complicated task. Check out the caveats in the methodology at the bottom of the story.)

When New Zealand had only eight confirmed cases of COVID-19 in mid-March, the country banned gatherings of 100 people or more. A few days later, it shut its borders. The island nation had one of the strictest and earliest responses to the pandemic and it was able to drive new infections to zero within about 80 days.

Sweden and Japan, on the other hand, took a more lenient approach, enacting few restrictions, yet were nonetheless able to keep flat curves (although Sweden reported more deaths per capita than its Scandinavian neighbours).

Yet other countries, such as India and Argentina, announced strict measures early on but weren't able to contain the virus.

What gives? Why were some countries better able than others to control their outbreaks despite having similar measures?

To get an idea, CBC News compared countries' daily COVID-19 numbers with how strict their containment policies were, as measured by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, which rates countries on a host of factors such as workplace closures, travel controls, restrictions on gatherings, and testing regiments.

With the help of experts, CBC News found that successful countries were not only swift to respond, but also applied the three Ts of disease control: testing, tracing and trust.

CBC News grouped countries into six categories based on how they responded and how well they managed the pandemic and visualized them in the charts below. Darker blues mean fewer restrictions, darker reds mean stricter lockdowns.

The first hard-hit countries

CBC News

These were the countries that were first slammed by the novel coronavirus. They didn't see it coming. In the case of China and Iran, much has been written about their slowness to respond and doubts about the honesty of their tallies of reported cases.

In Italy's case, the population's lack of trust in government, the third T, which tends to be lower than in neighbouring countries, made containing the outbreak more difficult, said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.

Story continues

Trust, he says, affects how much the public complies with confinement orders, especially at a time when the severity of the virus was still a bit of a mystery.

"Italy tried being stringent, but the population ignored it," Furness said. "Italians are cynical about the government. The army had to be called in, and by then it was too late."

Italy and China also have many large, multigenerational households that likely helped exacerbate their outbreaks, he said.

"The young people went out to party, got a mild case of COVID, then went home and infected their elderly parents and grandparents, many of whom developed severe or fatal illness," he said.

Italy recorded 570 deaths per million people, one of the highest rates in the world. At its worst, the pandemic was so brutal that some hospitals in Italy had to impose wartime triage, prioritizing care for patients with a better chance of survival.

The quick responders

CBC News

The most successful places in dealing with the pandemic were in East Asia, where public health systems are robust and proficient in the three Ts, said Saverio Stranges, an epidemiologist at Western University in London, Ont., who has researched the response in Asia.

Thanks to the 2003 SARS outbreak, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea had plans and staff in place to do massive testing and contact tracing.

"The centrally planned public health infrastructure is well trained," Stranges said.

With the exception of Singapore, each was able to drive new daily cases to the single digits and lift some restrictions (and as the charts show, they later reported a surge in new cases).

Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

But some non-Asian countries were equally effective. New Zealand is held up as a model for its swift response to the pandemic, but also for the way its prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, addressed the country.

"New Zealand was strategic in getting people to conform by appealing to a sense of community," said Jeffrey Hopkins, a cultural geographer at Western University.

This is precisely the kind of messaging that motivates people to trust and comply, said Simon Bacon, a behavioural scientist at Concordia University in Montreal who is leading iCARE, an international survey of attitudes toward the pandemic.

"It's about appealing to an altruistic sense of taking care of others," Bacon said.

The results of the survey, answered by 50,000 people in 150 countries, were clear: most people aren't motivated by guilt, threats or penalties.

"When the messaging is 'Don't do this or people will die,' it doesn't resonate. It's a negative consequence. What people are looking for is that by complying with lockdowns, lives are being saved. We see this across the board."

However, Hopkins noted that New Zealand also had a measure of luck, which it shares with Iceland.

"Because it's an island, it was easier to contain it," he said.

Edgar Su/Reuters

Singapore was a case study in good policy with a blind spot. The city-state won praise from epidemiologists for its targeted quarantines and contact tracing system, allowing it to keep school and workplaces open, and apply mild restrictions on internal movements.

But overcrowded living conditions among migrant workers created a hot spot for infection, forcing officials to drastically clamp down.

Still, Singapore reported only 25 deaths attributed to COVID-19, a lower per-capita rate than most countries.

The lenient ones

CBC News

Sweden gambled on a less stringent approach, letting the disease run relatively free. Health officials did minimal testing, but they did isolate the elderly and vulnerable and asked the public to practise physical distancing.

The country paid a steep price in terms of deaths per capita compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, and its daily cases have not decreased, casting some doubt on the strategy.

Sweden was able to bet on this approach because most of its people trust their government and follow public directives, according to Furness. There are also few multigenerational households, with many young adults living alone.

"The Swedish people were asked to take personal responsibility, and they did. It's a compliant population," Furness said.

Johan Nilsson/ TT via The Associated Press

The same could be said of Japan, which also happens to have a tradition of wearing masks, bowing instead of shaking hands, and meticulous hand-washing  factors also attributed to its success against the virus.

Taiwan received widespread praise for its response, which applied the three Ts and isolated suspected cases, skills gained during the SARS outbreak in 2003. It was able to avoid severe lockdowns, closing only schools and preventing travel from certain regions.

The Western laggards

CBC News

Wealthy European and North American countries had plenty of time to prepare for the pandemic, but many failed, Stranges said.

Country leaders, such as France's Emmanuel Macron, went on trips after the first confirmed cases, taking strolls in crowded areas and shaking hands in defiance of public health directives.

The U.K., whose politicians were distracted by Brexit, is now a case study on how a delayed response can be catastrophic even if a country has a good health system and an informed population, Furness said.

"In the U.K. people trust the government enough, they're compliant enough. But the government was absolutely asleep at the switch," he said.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The freedom of movement between mainland European states didn't help either.

"Open borders should have made their pandemic management much harder, or the need greater for far more intense restrictions," Furness said.

But Western countries had another shortcoming: their health systems are hospital-centred, and many had gutted public health programs.

"The hospital-centred approach is good for chronic disease, but it's not equipped to deal with a new virus," Stranges said. "The approach in Western countries wasn't co-ordinated. The three Ts wasn't implemented."

Even between neighbouring countries, cultural differences can account for some of the variations, Hopkins said.

"In some countries, people buy groceries once a week. But in France they go out to buy their food every day. It gets difficult to distil these cultural differences down to a formula," he said.

Alex Brandon/The Associated Press

Canada and the U.S. are large decentralized federations with autonomous subnational governments, and each responded differently. There was no nationwide agreement on the severity of the crisis and the containment strategy.

When there are different subnational policies, such as provincial shutdowns, the Oxford index assigns the strictest one to the whole country. For Canada, this was Quebec, where bad timing and an outbreak in long-term care homes drove most infections and deaths.

"Quebec was really unlucky. March break was earlier and travellers returned with the virus before the lockdown," Furness said.

Experts interviewed by CBC News say despite some delays at first, and the devastating death toll in long-term care homes, Canadians have largely complied with government directives.

"There's an old joke. How do you get 10 Canadians out of the pool? Say, 'Everybody out of the pool.' We tend to respect authority, generally. It seems to be boding well for us so far," Hopkins said.

But unlike Germany, Quebec and Ontario have sent confusing messages during the deconfinement phase. For example, Quebec changed the dates for reopening schools several times.

"If you open society a bit, then try to shut it down, you'll get people frustrated," Bacon said. "You gave them a bit of freedom, then you take it away again."

Americans, on the other hand, are famously defiant of government, and President Donald Trump's public disagreement with some governors' statewide lockdowns aggravated the situation, Bacon said.

"In the U.S. and Brazil, people were told by health authorities they should do something, and by the leader something else, or the leader didn't follow the directives. If there's an inconsistency, people will do whatever fits more with their values," he said.

Overall, the U.S. was also slow to get comprehensive testing up and running.

Hopkins believes the high number of religious Americans may also be a factor.

"Many in the U.S. are rejecting science and government, and putting trust in faith. This is reflected in Trump's desire to reopen churches," he said.

Churches are high-risk places for infection, as they are large, closed spaces where people gather together to sing and talk.

The effective managers

CBC News

Not all Western countries fumbled the response. Despite the high number of cases in Germany, there was widespread testing and targeted quarantines, and it's had one of the lowest mortality rates in Europe.

It is also a model for clear planning and communication by the government, Bacon said. The country has a precise roadmap for opening and closing the country, with specific numbers of cases that will decide the government's response.

"So, if there's a problem, if cases go back up, people know there will be an intervention and they know what to do," he said.

Australia gambled with a selective travel restriction, barring only nationals from Iran, South Korea and Italy before enacting a full lockdown. In hindsight, this was seen as one of its mistakes, causing a rise in cases.

However, the country did create a national cabinet to enact consistent policies for the entire country early on, such as a ban on large gatherings. And, being an island, it was also easier to test and contact-trace returning travellers.

The developing hot spots

CBC News

The pandemic hit many developing countries especially hard, and they presently report the fastest-growing infection numbers in the world.

These countries tend to have limited resources for enforcing containment measures and fragile health systems, said Umar Ruhi, associate professor of business analytics and information systems at the University of Ottawa.

Ruhi has argued that understanding a country's culture is essential for crafting an effective response to a pandemic. In countries with collectivist cultures, where commitments to families and relationships outweigh adherence to government rules, the same strategies that were successful elsewhere may not work.

"In the case of COVID-19, social distancing would have been quite a challenge for these countries," Ruhi said.

In Russia, governments applied several measures when there were 100 or so confirmed cases, such as restrictions on public gatherings and stay-at home orders. Despite this, many Russians went about their daily lives. A CBC report described bars in St. Petersburg at full capacity, with owners saying that there's no financial incentive from Moscow to justify closing.

Alexey Sergeev/CBC

The Russian search engine Yandex publishes a "self-isolation index" that measures how many people are in the streets. Its numbers for Moscow have been falling since mid-April, suggesting Muscovites are leaving their homes more often.

Russia now has the third highest number of total confirmed cases, behind only the U.S. and Brazil.

Brazil, now the world's epicentre in terms of daily coronavirus case growth, had two major challenges: a delayed response from a vocally anti-science president, and a massive number of citizens living in poverty, many in crowded slums, who can't work from home.

The religiosity of a country could also be a contributing factor, which may explain why cases are rising in some South Asian countries, Ruhi said.

"In Pakistan, the higher legal courts issued decisions that opposed government public health advisories, allowing businesses to remain open and shopping to continue over the religious holiday of Ramadan and Eid," Ruhi said. "This was the cause of a major spike in cases in that country over the past weeks."

Finally, it's important to note that in some of these countries, the strictness of a policy doesn't necessarily mean it is enforced, Bacon said.

"Was it a policy or was it more of a guideline?"

A note on the methodology: Comparing countries is challenging, as many factors can affect a successful public health response. The range of factors can include demographics, family structures, internal politics, a population's trust in authority, the amount of time a country had to prepare before the virus arrived, and even sheer luck. Also, some countries had large localized outbreaks, such as the region of Lombardy in northern Italy and New York in the U. S., while other regions were less impacted

Measuring a country's epidemic using daily case numbers also has potential pitfalls. Confirmed cases depend entirely on testing and how new cases are defined, which vary by country. Actual infections are likely undercounted.

Another way of assessing a country's performance is through COVID-19-related deaths per million people, which you can do using the interactive graphic below.
By Ayya Lmahamad

The Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company (ASCO) provided support to four Azerbaijani sailors who faced difficulties in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania due to the closure of borders amid COVID-19, the companys press service reported on June 21.

In connection with the coronavirus pandemic, ASCO employees, including representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, State Committee for Work with Diaspora, State Maritime Agency, kept in touch with the citizens in Mauritania and took relevant measures to address their problems.

The hotel expenses accumulated in connection with the stay of our compatriots in Mauritania and the corresponding sum required for their return to the country have been transferred to the account of one of these citizens.

On June 21, the sailors arrived to Turkey by charter flight. They were met at the airport of Istanbul by the employees of ASCO Turkey and accommodated at the hotel.

The sailors are expected to return to Azerbaijan by charter flight in the coming days.

It should be noted that four Azerbaijani sailors - Captain Rovshan Abdullayev, chief mechanic Mikail Mikailov, Captains assistants Arif Asgerov and Faraj Aliyev were hired to work in Turkey and were later relocated to Mauritania.

Sailors expressed their gratitude to the Azerbaijani government for the help in solving their problems.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Challenges: Fewer than two in three schools reported that their students had devices fit for digital learning. Stock photo: Andrey Kuzmin, Depositphoto

More than one in three schools don't have a policy around digital teaching and learning, according to research that exposes gaps in the education system that caused major challenges during the lockdown.

While the introduction of information and communications technology (ICT) into schools has been official policy for more than 20 years, the study highlights deficiencies in practices that exist.

Half of schools only integrated digital platforms after the Covid-19 pandemic forced teaching and learning to switch from the classroom to the home.

Fewer than two in three schools reported that their students had devices fit for digital learning.

Two in three teachers said they had no experience of online teaching, while just over half said they were not comfortable with digital learning technology.

Read More

Meanwhile, two in three (62pc) of parents described their children's digital learning experience during lockdown as being difficult.

Principals, deputy principals and teachers in 371 schools were surveyed by the online learning company Wriggle, which also commissioned Amarach Research to elicit views of 2,118 parents of primary and post-primary pupils nationwide, between March and May.

Key findings from schools include:

:: 57pc said that students have devices fit for digital learning;

:: 54pc only started using digital learning platforms for creating and sharing resources and lessons since March;

:: 35pc don't have or never created a policy around digital learning or teaching;

:: 62pc had no previous experience of online teaching and 55pc of teaching staff said they were not comfortable with digital learning technology.

However, where schools had good digital learning integration, they saw increased staff engagement and collaboration.

Wriggle, which has a presence in 500 schools around the country and upskilled more than 9,000 educators in the past three months, said lessons must be learned from the Covid-19 experiences.

The company's teacher engagement manager, Sean Glynn, said the pandemic disrupted the traditional education model, but now an opportunity existed to improve it and to prepare for the future.

He said there was a need for a shift towards a system that integrated technology into the classroom with structures, training and supports in place for teachers, students and parents.

The latest research mirrors previous studies tracking the use of ICT in classrooms, which point to patchy broadband connectivity, a shortage of devices in classrooms, lack of technical support, teacher training and teaching practices as contributory factors.

A report last year by educational researcher Dr Eemer Eivers showed how the percentage of primary pupils saying they regularly used computers in schools halved between 2011 and 2016, from 46pc to 23pc.
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
China's General Administration of Customs issued a suspension on the imports of some of Tyson Foods' (NYSE:TSN) chicken products, according to The Wall Street Journal. A Tyson spokesperson was quoted as saying, "At Tyson, we're confident our products are safe and we're hopeful consultations between the U.S. and Chinese governments will resolve this matter."

Though the suspension order did not include the specific volume of chicken products involved, it included products that have already arrived in China, as well as products that are in transit, according to the Journal report.

The move comes after Tyson on Friday reported results of facility-wide testing at its operations in Springdale, Arkansas. The company said that 481 employees, or 13% of those tested, had positive COVID-19 results. It said that 95% of the positive tests involved asymptomatic cases. This is in addition to 212 employee cases that were found through tests outside the company. Tyson is headquartered in Springdale and has several facilities in the area. It employees 24,500 people in the state of Arkansas.

The order from China comes after a recent outbreak in Beijing led to flight cancellations and renewed restrictions and health checks to contain the spread. Last week, imports from a German pork producer were suspended after a COVID-19 case was identified at the company.

Organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the World Health Organization have said that there is no evidence COVID-19 is contracted through food ingestion and that it is unlikely to spread on packaging.
TechAccel LLC, the private technology and equity development company in agriculture and animal health, announced that its subsidiary RNAissance Ag LLC has completed an asset acquisition of RNAgri Inc., a Saint Louis-based ag biotech startup.

Terms of the asset acquisition were not disclosed.

RNAgri, formerly doing business as APSE Inc., has developed a platform for the cost-effective production of RNA for use in topical RNA-interference (RNAi) products, including biopesticides. RNAi is a technology that regulates gene expression without genetic modification.

With the asset acquisition, two of RNAgris associates have joined the RNAissance Ag team effective immediately. Anil Kumar, Ph.D., is a molecular biologist with expertise in genetics and plant breeding. Bert Berla, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer with expertise in microbial improvement.

Founded in 2011, the company was and was one of 33 startups to receive a $50,000 grant from the Missouri Technology Corporations Innovation, Development and Entrepreneurship Advantage (IDEA) program. It was also supported by the St. Louis Biogenerator i6 Project, which was its first and largest investor. Other investors include The Yield Lab, the Helix fund, private investors and Allen Angel Capital Education Program (the student-managed angel fund of the University of Missouri at Columbia).

RNAissance Ag develops sprayable RNA pesticides, including against pests such as the Diamondback Moth. The RNAgri platform will add manufacturing capacity to the pesticide design and development efforts. RNAissance Ag will conduct multiple field trials this summer and fall on the Diamondback Moth and Fall Armyworm.

RNAissance Ag has also completed additional investments in the RNAgri technology production infrastructure, and plans to expand facilities and staffing of the operation in St. Louis as additional projects are added.

FinSMEs

22/06/2020
Although Better Call Saul initially focused on Jimmy McGills transformation into Saul Goodman, viewers became more interested in his wife, Kim Wexler, as shes not in Breaking Bad. By the end of Season 5, the attorney suggested they ruin another lawyer; something viewers thought was out of character for Kim. Actor Bob Odenkirk spoke about how the show turned from Sauls mystery to Kim, whos become an enigma.

Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk | David Crotty/Patrick McMullan

Jimmy McGill turns into Saul Goodman

Born James Morgan McGill in Illinois, he later moved to Albuquerque with his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean), after getting into serious legal trouble. To curb Slippin Jimmys con artist tendencies, Chuck insisted his younger brother work in the mailroom at his top law firm, Hamlin, Hamlin, and McGill.

The two-time divorcee met employee Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) while working there, and the two developed a relationship. She went on to graduate from law school, with a loan from the company, and become a top associate at the firm, inspiring Jimmy to get a law degree as well.

However, Chuck refused to hire him, so he started his solo practice, taking whatever clients he could get. After Chuck secretly recorded Jimmy confessing to a crime, the younger brother broke into his house and destroyed the tape.

Blanket by Chuck. pic.twitter.com/iPcwVvLXuf  Better Call Saul (@BetterCallSaul) May 15, 2020

RELATED: Better Call Saul: Bob Odenkirk Says Its Harder to Play Jimmy McGill Than Saul Goodman

His actions resulted in a year suspension, so he made money by running a television ad production company, under the alias Saul Goodman, a play on its all good, man, and built up a criminal customer base by reselling prepaid cell phones.

After his reinstatement, the attorney realized he would only be Chucks younger brother, especially after his siblings death, so he obtained a DBA application to practice law under Saul Goodman.

Jimmy McGill seemingly turned Kim Wexler

When viewers are first introduced to the bright lawyer, she seems very serious about work but cares for Jimmy and entertained by his cons. Using the aliases Giselle and Viktor, the two have pulled off a few harmless scams, starting with tricking a financial investor into buying them an expensive tequila bottle.

Because they finished the bottle, the waiter gave them the cork, which Kim held on to throughout the series. Additionally, the two ran another con to fake support for Jimmys bodyguard from his Louisiana hometown when the prosecuting attorney refused to give him a deal.

They teamed up again so Kim could replace approved plans for a Mesa Verda branch without wasting time and money by repeating the approval process.

THE VERDICT IS IN.

Here's the "best" moment of Season 5. (According to you all.) pic.twitter.com/o5kqNEKamV  Better Call Saul (@BetterCallSaul) June 19, 2020

RELATED: Better Call Saul: Rhea Seehorn Explains How She Knew Kim Had an Alcoholic Parent From the First Episode

She then asked Jimmy to become Mr. Ackers (Barry Corbin) lawyer, a homeowner involved in a land dispute with Mesa Verda, as she wanted to make her client and the tenant happy. However, Jimmy went too far and made Kim look like a sucker, so she contemplated breaking up with him. Instead, she proposed.

By the end of Season 5, Kim suggested they run one last epic con on Howard Hamlin to settle the Sandpiper case, even if it means ruining the HHM lawyers career in the process.

Bob Odenkirk speaks about the show turning into a mystery about Kim

In the virtual Deadline Contenders Television event, Bob Odenkirk spoke about the show as a fan watching. He explained that the series began centered around Saul Goodman and how Jimmy McGill turned into the lawyer viewers he met in Breaking Bad.

During Better Call Saul, Odenkirk noted that weve met his character and have gotten to know many sides of him as well as watched his evolution. He then pointed out that viewers watched him commit to the Saul Goodman persona as he changed his name and see the stakes of that choice through his interactions with the cartel.

Odenkirk continued and explained Jimmy is more than well on his road to completing the change into Saul. Therefore, viewers understand the initial mystery of the prequel series, although theres still a lot of fun to watch when it comes to his character.

Calling all #BetterCallSaul fans.

What was the best moment of Season 5?

 or add your own. (A thread). #BestOfBCS pic.twitter.com/cxOwEB2Du2  Better Call Saul (@BetterCallSaul) June 15, 2020

RELATED: Better Call Saul: The Origin of Jimmy McGills Pinky Ring Points to Him Fully Becoming Saul Goodman

However, he noted the show has turned into a mystery about Kim as we thought we knew her but have noticed glimpses of another side that contradicts viewers original perception of the lawyer.

For example, the seemingly straight-laced lawyer only seemed interested in small and harmless cons. Therefore, her transformation by the end of Season 5 has viewers, and Odenkirk as a fan, questioning if they ever truly knew Kim.
Telecommunications equipment manufactured at VNPT Technology. The foreign direct investment into electronics should aim to promote local companies

and enable them to engage in the global value chain. (Photo: nhandan.com.vn)

Truong Thi Chi Binh, Deputy President of the Vietnam Association of Supporting Industries, said the FDI wave into Vietnam had brought significant opportunities for domestic producers to participate in FDI companies supply chains.

However, the fact was that most domestic companies were of small scale and poor capacity and few could meet the requirements of big corporations, Binh said. The production cost of electronic components of Vietnam was often higher than in China and Thailand.

Binh said a large number of FDI investors came to Vietnam to enjoy preferential policies in investment attraction and from free trade agreements, adding that the supporting industry in general and the electronics industry in particular struggled to take advantage of opportunities from FDI inflow.

Do Thi Thuy Huong from the Vietnam Electronic Industries Association said electronic industry development required a huge investment in technology and high-quality labour.

Huong said training programmes at schools and universities were not suitable and remained more theoretical than practical and used mostly outdated machines.

Luu Hai Minh, chairman of Nhat Hai New Technology Joint Stock Company, said firms were still facing difficulties in accessing support policies from the Government. He said companies needed capital to invest in developing new technologies.

The electronic industry of Vietnam is heavily dependent on FDI.

With an average annual growth rate of 50 percent in 2010-18, the electronic industrys exports reached 84 billion USD in 2018, making Vietnam the 12th biggest exporters of electronic products in the worth and 3rd in ASEAN. However, the FDI sector accounted for some 95 percent of the countrys export revenue.

Nguyen Dinh Hung, chairman of EDX Corporation Group, said technology transfer and environmental protection should be important factors in attracting FDI.

According to Binh, the Government should have a new approach in negotiating supply with multinational companies. Detailed plans to develop supporting industries should also be built with incentive policies for investments in technologies, she said.

For the long term, Binh said FDI inflow must promote the development of local producers and enable them to engage in global value chains.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has founded a working group in charge of attracting foreign investment in the context of the global production shift away from China spurred by the trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic.The group will work with multinational and hi-tech corporations and those who lead the value chains for investment co-operation.

However, Vietnam will be selective in attracting FDI with a focus on big multinational corporations and those with modern and environmentally-friendly technology.

According to the Vietnam Foreign Investment Agency, FDI in the first five months of this year totalled 13.9 billion USD, down 17 percent against the same period last year due to the impact of the pandemic. Disbursed capital also fell by 8.2 percent to 6.7 billion USD.

The country has so far attracted 376.6 billion USD in FDI with a disbursement rate of 58 percent. The processing and manufacturing industry attracted more than 58 percent of the total FDI into the country./.
A top civil servant has denied the discharge of 25,000 of hospital patients to care homes without testing for coronavirus was high risk and wrong.

Up to 20,000 people are believed to have died from infections in care homes in the months since  but Sir Chris Wormald denied the department of health and social care had blundered.

We believe that we took the right decision based on the right clinical evidence at the time, he told a committee of MPs.

There were clearly risks in whatever we did in these circumstances, Sir Chris said, adding there was no no-risk option.

But, under fierce questioning after the policy  which freed up hospital beds as the pandemic struck  was not changed until 15 April, he told MPs: Thats not the same as saying we would do the same thing again.

Civil servants also denied that funding for care homes was ever linked to their willingness to take Covid-19 patients from hospitals, under questioning from a Conservative MP.

The discharge policy has been widely-criticised as disastrous, anger growing after Matt Hancock, the health secretary, claimed a protective ring had been thrown round care homes  despite so many deaths.

Jeremy Hunt, his predecessor, said it was extraordinary that no one appeared to consider the clinical risk to care homes despite widespread knowledge that the virus could be carried asymptomatically.

At the Commons public accounts committee meeting, Nick Smith, a Labour MP, pointed out that guidance from as late as April 2 said care homes could admit patients with Covid-19.

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

Given what we knew at the time about what was happening in places like Italy, in care homes, do you know accept that was high risk and wrong guidance? he asked Sir Chris.

The permanent secretary replied that his department was reflective on what we have done, telling MPs: Im not going to say that every single piece of our guidance was correct. We are in a process of learning as we go along.

But, on the discharge policy, he repeated: Im confident that, based on the information we had at the time, our guidance was correct.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Conservative, branded the policy absolutely reckless, arguing care homes had been the forgotten cousin of the crisis.

He demanded to know why detailed advice for the NHS had gone out on 17 March, but similar help for the social care sector had not followed until 15 April.

The committee was also told that 300,000 tasks had been carried out by the army of volunteers signed up by the government at the start of the pandemic.

This is only half the total of 600,000 volunteers who stepped forward, after some protested that they had been given nothing to do.
Credit: CIAT/NeilPalmer, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Nigerian maize and poultry farmers and traders' activities contribute to climate change, but only 14 percent of them realize it, a study has found.

Farming communities in Africa should be targeted in climate change education campaigns to develop their understanding of the role agriculture plays, according to scientists.

Researchers surveyed maize and poultry farmers in Nigeria to identify perceptions about the impact of their industries on climate change, which is threatening food production in the country.

The United Nations Environment Program projects that no continent will be struck as severely by the impacts of climate change as Africa, with between 75 and 250 million people being exposed to increased water stress in 2020 and countries' yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent.

According to the study published in the Journal of Environmental Management this week (15 June), researchers surveyed more than 2,500 respondents including maize farmers, maize traders, poultry farmers, poultry feed millers and poultry retailers from 2019 to 2020 in the Nigerian states of Kaduna and Oyo.

"If people don't even see the negative effects of their activities, then they are likely not going to adopt practices or technologies that are offered as a way to [fight climate change]," says Saweda Onipede Liverpool-Tasie, the study's lead author and an associate professor at Michigan State University in the United States.

"It was interesting for us to see that  while many felt that [climate change] affected their economic activities (63 percent and 71 percent of maize farmers in Oyo and Kaduna respectively), very few of them (three percent and 14 percent) actually felt that their activities contribute to climate change."

Liverpool-Tasie adds that the livestock production, biomass burning and transportation produce greenhouse gasses.

Co-author Justice A. Tambo, a socio-economist at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI, the parent organization of SciDev.Net), say that technologies and practices to reduce climate change, such as using drought-tolerant seeds to increase productivity, are less likely to be adopted if farmers do not believe that their activities contribute to climate change.

He tells SciDev.Net that given that many farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa mainly depend on advisors known as extension agents for advice, there is a need to build the capacity of extension agents to sensitize farmers on climate change.

"Using multiple communication channels including radio, video, demonstrations and field days will help to intensify the education on climate change," Tambo recommends.

Robert Asiedu, research for development director at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in West Africa, says that the findings of the study should be helpful to agricultural extension systems and policymakers in Nigeria and countries with similar socioeconomic circumstances.

The findings are helpful as they give information to those promoting or supporting climate-aware agricultural technologies that it is wrong to assume that target users appreciate the role they have to play in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

"It is not surprising that the farmers do not perceive that their farming activities have impact on climate change," he tells SciDev.Net.

"They have had limited exposure to discussion and explanation of this potential impact in the future. This gap in information delivery should be corrected in programs on climate change targeting farming communities."

Explore further Climate-smart agricultural practices increase maize yield in Malawi

More information: Lenis S.O. Liverpool-Tasie et al. Perceptions and exposure to climate events along agricultural value chains: Evidence from Nigeria, Journal of Environmental Management (2020). Journal information: Journal of Environmental Management Lenis S.O. Liverpool-Tasie et al. Perceptions and exposure to climate events along agricultural value chains: Evidence from Nigeria,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110430

Provided by SciDev.Net
The prize-winning press works were announced and honoured during a ceremony held by the Awards Council at the Hanoi Opera House on June 21, on the occasion of the 95th Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day.

The event saw the presence of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc; former Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh; former Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Sinh Hung; Politburo member and permanent member of the Party Central Committee (PCC) Secretariat Tran Quoc Vuong; Politburo member and head of the PCCs Commission for Communication and Education Vo Van Thuong; Politburo member and Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan; and Editor-in-chief of Nhan Dan (People) newspaper, deputy head of the PCCs Commission for Communication and Education, Chairman of the Vietnam Journalists Association (VJA), and President of the National Press Awards 2019 Council Thuan Huu.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and permanent member of the Party Central Committee (PCC) Secretariat Tran Quoc Vuong present A prizes to reporters of Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper. (Photo: NDO/Tran Hai)



In addition to the aforementioned first prize, Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper claimed another top prize that went to journalist Tran Huu Viet for a series of Literary Chat articles.

Speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc congratulated and appreciated generations of journalists nationwide for their contributions to the development of the revolutionary press.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the ceremony. (Photo: NDO/Tran Hai)



He voiced his belief that with solid political stance and professionalism, journalists will further continue to contribute to the revolutionary cause, deserving of the trust, passion and expectations of the Party, State and people.

In his remarks, VJA Chairman cum Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper Editor-in-chief Thuan Huu said that the 2019 National Press Awards attracted more than 1,700 entries from across the country, a high number of submissions throughout its 14 editions.

The work of acquiring works and examining the preliminary and final rounds was conducted in a strict, objective, impartial and professional manner in accordance with the awards regulations, he said.

VJA Chairman cum Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper Editor-in-chief Thuan Huu speaks at the event. (Photo: NDO/Tran Hai)



Among the 140 exemplary press works selected in the preliminary round, the Council decided to present nine A prizes, 21 B prizes, 41 C prizes and 32 consolation prizes in 11 categories for printed newspaper, radio and television programmes, online newspapers, and press photos, VJA Chairman Thuan Huu stated.

Alongside the two A prizes, journalists from Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper received one B prize and three C prizes.
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New Mountain Vantage Advisers, L.L.C. ("NMV"), which manages funds that hold a collective economic ownership interest in Virtusa Corporation ("Virtusa" or the "Company") equivalent to approximately 11% of the Company's outstanding common stock, today issued the following statement confirming that it has nominated three highly qualified candidates for election to Virtusa's Board of Directors (the "Board") at the upcoming 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Concurrent with the delivery of the nomination notice, NMV also sent a detailed letter to the Board, which is reproduced below the initial statement.

The NMV statement follows:

"New Mountain Vantage began investing in Virtusa in the Fall of 2019 based on our conviction that the stock was significantly undervalued given the Company's strong and underappreciated digital transformation capabilities and substantial future earnings growth potential. Unfortunately, however, poor execution resulting from a lack of accountability has led to sub-par performance and has held Virtusa back from reaching its full potential.

Virtusa's underperformance and failed commitments to shareholders include:

Worst in class margins that are currently ~50% below the relevant IT Services peer group 1 average and ~50% below the "mid-teens or higher" targets management has discussed for more than seven years;

that are currently ~50% below the relevant IT Services peer group average and ~50% below the "mid-teens or higher" targets management has discussed for more than seven years; Significant earnings volatility resulting from client and industry revenue concentration which Virtusa has failed to address despite repeated promises over many years;

resulting from which Virtusa has failed to address despite repeated promises over many years; Weak EPS growth despite repeated commitments of "Profitable Revenue Growth," with Virtusa's revenues having grown seven times faster than its Adjusted EPS from FY2015 to FY2020 (22% Revenue CAGR versus 3% Adj. EPS CAGR);

despite repeated commitments of "Profitable Revenue Growth," with Virtusa's revenues having grown seven times faster than its Adjusted EPS from FY2015 to FY2020 (22% Revenue CAGR versus 3% Adj. EPS CAGR); A flawed management compensation structure which has rewarded unprofitable revenue growth, with CEO compensation growing by 122% from FY2015 to FY2019 versus total Adj. EPS growth of only 15% over the same period;

which has rewarded unprofitable revenue growth, with CEO compensation growing by 122% from FY2015 to FY2019 versus total Adj. EPS growth of only 15% over the same period; Poor capital allocation as evidenced by value destruction and subsequent degradation in return on invested capital from the Polaris transaction; and

as evidenced by value destruction and subsequent degradation in return on invested capital from the Polaris transaction; and Material corporate governance deficiencies including a staggered board, no separation of chairman and CEO roles, lack of diversity on the Board and the inability for shareholders to call special meetings or act by written consent.

All of which have resulted in:

Poor Returns for Virtusa shareholders who have seen Virtusa's stock price decline by ~34% over the last five years while its relevant Russell 3000 peer group has delivered a median total shareholder return of ~77% in this same period, resulting in Virtusa ranking in the bottom tenth percentile versus peer group performance.2

The Company's rushed announcement this past Friday regarding the appointment of a new director, and its intention to embark on a Board refreshment process while engaging in discussions with its largest active investor surrounding these exact topics, is troubling, to say the least. When taken at face value, the addition of a new director appears to be a step in the right direction. However, we unfortunately believe that this is evidence of an entrenched management and Board that would prefer to add another director that will simply accept the status quo, as opposed to a representative nominated by an 11% economic holder that has constructively advocated for change to benefit all shareholders.

We have strong conviction that there is a tremendous value creation opportunity at Virtusa, but we believe that this will only be achieved through increased shareholder participation on the Board to ensure better operating performance, appropriate accountability, better alignment between management compensation and shareholder returns, and improved corporate governance. In our view, Virtusa's clear objective is to continue to refresh the Board with directors that are favored by the Company and management, with no true accountability to shareholders. It has been this dynamic that has led to significant share price underperformance over the last five years.

While we were hopeful that Virtusa would welcome Board-level participation by its largest active investor with a track record of operational excellence, the Company's announcement Friday confirms our long-standing corporate governance concerns and requires that we take our value-creating platform directly to shareholders.

The NMV nominees to the Board are:

Michael Baresich : Michael is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of New York Tech Advisors, L.L.C., which provides specialized advisory services to technology-focused companies. Michael has previously held significant information technology executive positions at leading financial institutions, having served as Chief Information Officer at Ally Financial, CIT Group and Citigroup Asset Management.

: Michael is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of New York Tech Advisors, L.L.C., which provides specialized advisory services to technology-focused companies. Michael has previously held significant information technology executive positions at leading financial institutions, having served as Chief Information Officer at Ally Financial, CIT Group and Citigroup Asset Management. Ramakrishna Prasad Chintamaneni : Prasad is a seasoned IT services executive and investor. He currently serves as a Managing Director at New Mountain Capital, L.L.C., leading the firm's investment initiatives in digital transformation. Prior to joining New Mountain, Prasad was the President, Global Industries and Consulting for Cognizant, and led Cognizant's vertical commercial organization, which included all industry verticals and the global consulting business. Prasad previously served as Cognizant's Global Head of Banking and Financial Services practice. Prasad joined Cognizant in 1999 and began his career there by establishing key relationships with many of Cognizant's largest banking and financial services clients. Prior to joining Cognizant, Prasad was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch where he was a member of Merrill's Business Strategy Committee in India .

: Prasad is a seasoned IT services executive and investor. He currently serves as a Managing Director at New Mountain Capital, L.L.C., leading the firm's investment initiatives in digital transformation. Prior to joining New Mountain, Prasad was the President, Global Industries and Consulting for Cognizant, and led Cognizant's vertical commercial organization, which included all industry verticals and the global consulting business. Prasad previously served as Cognizant's Global Head of Banking and Financial Services practice. Prasad joined Cognizant in 1999 and began his career there by establishing key relationships with many of Cognizant's largest banking and financial services clients. Prior to joining Cognizant, Prasad was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch where he was a member of Business Strategy Committee in . Patricia "Patty" Morrison : Patty is a highly accomplished information technology executive with significant public company board experience. Patty previously served as Executive Vice President Customer Support Services and Chief Information Officer at Cardinal Health, Inc., Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Motorola, Inc., and Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Office Depot, Inc. Patty presently serves as a Board Director for Splunk, Inc. and Baxter Healthcare.

As the largest active investor in Virtusa, we remain hopeful that we can avoid a protracted, expensive and distracting proxy contest. As we have expressed to the Board on several occasions, we remain willing to immediately withdraw our nomination notice so long as the Company:

Immediately embraces our request to add an NMV representative to the Board;

Agrees to work collaboratively with NMV on further Board refreshment that the Company has now claimed to have commenced, including by appointing at least one of our independent director nominees to the Board; and

Publicly announces its commitment to develop a concrete margin improvement and revenue diversification strategy, including clear goals and a timeframe so that shareholders can hold management and the Board accountable for the achievement of the articulated objectives."

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP is acting as legal counsel to NMV and Harkins Kovler, LLC is acting as proxy solicitor.

Below is the text of the letter that NMV delivered to Virtusa's Board on June 17, 2020:

It Is Time for Virtusa to Unlock Its Full Potential

New Mountain Vantage Has Petitioned the Board for Several Changes to Create Substantial Shareholder Value

This Will Usher in an Era of Accountability to the Virtusa Boardroom

June 17th, 2020

Dear Virtusa Board of Directors,

Thank you very much for taking the time over the past month and a half to discuss Virtusa Corporation ("Virtusa" or the "Company") with us. As you are aware, New Mountain Vantage ("NMV" or "we") is one of the largest stakeholders of Virtusa. We own an economic interest in the Company equivalent to approximately 11% of the outstanding common stock, comprised of a 4.94% common stock position and an additional 5.83% of economic exposure. We would also like to remind you that we initiated our position in the fall, well before the Covid-19 crisis, and despite what management has been telling investors in recent days, we were in no way being opportunistic and trying to take advantage of a crisis to invest in Virtusa.

We invested in Virtusa because we believe the stock is significantly undervalued given the Company's strong digital transformation capabilities and earnings growth potential. The Company's depressed valuation, including relative to its peers, is driven by Virtusa's bottom tier margins and its client and industry revenue concentration issues, both of which the Company has been trying to address (unsuccessfully) for years. The Company's inability to achieve its publicly stated objectives, particularly with respect to margin improvement and revenue diversification, when coupled with its poor corporate governance and management compensation arrangements, has led us to conclude that increased shareholder participation on the Board of Directors (the "Board") is critical to ensuring appropriate accountability and the long-term success of the Company. While we have gone to great lengths to keep these discussions cordial and private, in the absence of meaningful settlement discussions over the next several days that include electing one NMV individual to the Board, we will be forced to appeal directly to shareholders.

We hope you understand that our interest is to work collaboratively with the Board and management team to better position the Company for long-term success and unlock value for all shareholders. We first reached out to Messrs. Canekeratne, Kalia, and Holler in late April, at which time we delivered an in-depth presentation on why we believe the market undervalues Virtusa and its potential to create long-term shareholder value. Our presentation included a specific path forward and we made a formal request for Board representation, among other initiatives, for Prasad Chintamaneni and Chad Fauser, New Mountain employees whose extensive career experience would bring exactly what is needed in Virtusa's Boardroom today: more IT Services / capital allocation experience and more accountability. We patiently waited for your response to our April 29th requests until May 18th. In the interim, the Company conveniently used its earnings call to adopt some of our suggestions for change, such as an industry-standard definition of digital revenue, increased disclosure around healthcare revenue, and a formal rebranding of the long-standing promises of the Company into the newly coined "Three Pillars" strategy. While we support the initiatives articulated on the earnings call, we fear it is just more of the same  public promises that go unfulfilled.

Our dialogue continued over the next three weeks with various members of the Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee. This included the atypical step of a formal written response to nine extensive questions we had addressed in our prior written materials, as well as conversations with Mr. Moriarty and Mr. Pandit. As an aside, we look forward to reviewing any written responses other recent director candidates were required to complete, as we are assuming they were held to the same standards you applied in considering our Board representation request.

This is all why on June 12th, when we received the first formal feedback from Mr. Canekeratne since our initial engagement 7 weeks prior, we were extremely disappointed to learn that the Board determined to ignore our request for increased shareholder representation on the Board but instead sourced an additional "independent" Board candidate with IT services experience. While we will more thoroughly assess this individual's credentials once we are provided with his or her name, the addition of one outside Board member will not change the fundamental issues plaguing Virtusa  an overall lack of accountability. To the contrary, we assume this Board candidate will be viewed as less threatening to Mr. Canekeratne, versus an ~11% economic holder willing to roll up its sleeves and truly address the issues that Virtusa has failed to remedy for years. Let us be extremely clear, the issue at hand is accountability, both to targets laid out over the past decade and to shareholders, who have been forced to endure returns in the lowest quartile of the relevant peer group as defined by Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. ("ISS") over the past 5 years. Please be reminded that the core tenets to the "3 Pillars" strategy Virtusa put forth on its May 13th earnings call have been pursued by this management team extensively for the past 5+ years, with effectively no progress being made.

While we appreciate the time dedicated to us by Messrs. Moriarty, Pandit, and Canekeratne over the past few weeks, we are at an impasse as to the best path forward for all shareholders. You have mentioned repeatedly that the mandate of the Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee of the Board is to identify and recruit the best possible talent for the Board. When pressed further as to the criteria that entails, you responded saying you consider things such as skill set, Board fit, and general gravitas. You also detailed for us your systematic process of identifying and selecting directors for Virtusa. However, when the stock price and fundamental performance of a company has been as poor over the past 5+ years as Virtusa's, it is time to admit that the process must, to some degree, be reevaluated. Bolder change is needed, and a shareholder led Board transformation is the correct path forward.

At its heart, the mandate of a Board of Directors is to set corporate strategy, hold management accountable to stated targets, and compensate them accordingly on behalf of all shareholders. Rather than embracing the single largest active investor with a track record of operational excellence, this Board appears to prefer to bring on another "independent" director with little to no skin in the game.

To recap, Virtusa's management team has delivered to shareholders:

1) Margins that are roughly ~50% below the relevant IT Services peer average, despite 7+ years of repeated, failed promises that margins will eventually reach "the mid-to-high teens"



















Cum.



FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 FY2020

Change Non-GAAP Operating Margin

14.3% 13.3% 6.5% 8.5% 9.9% 8.7%

(5.6%) Change in Basis Points



(102) (676) 204 134 (120)





2) Sector diversification that is effectively unchanged from FY2015, despite repeated, failed promises to gradually reduce reliance on Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance ("BFSI")



















Cum.



FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 FY2020

Change Banking, Fin. Serv., Insurance

57.8% 54.3% 63.5% 66.9% 62.4% 57.5%

(0.3%) Comm. & Technology

34.3% 35.5% 26.0% 23.7% 28.9% 34.3%

0.0% Media & Information

8.0% 10.3% 10.5% 9.4% 8.7% 8.3%

0.3%

3) Unprofitable revenue growth given revenue has increased at 7x the rate of Adjusted EPS in the last 5 years. What happened to "earnings growing faster than revenues"?





FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 FY2020

CAGR Revenue

$479 $600 $859 $1,021 $1,248 $1,312

22% % Growth



25% 43% 19% 22% 5%























Adj. Earnings per Share

$1.84 $2.06 $1.25 $1.63 $2.12 $2.14

3% % Growth



12% (40%) 31% 30% 1%





4) Poor capital allocation, as evidenced by value destruction and subsequent degradation in return on invested capital from the Polaris deal



















Cum.



FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 FY2020

Change Return on Invested Capital 1

19.2% 7.2% 4.2% 6.9% 10.0% 9.8%

(9.4%) Change in Basis Points



(1,205) (291) 269 303 (16)







1 Return on Invested Capital defined as NOPAT / Invested Capital, where NOPAT = Non-GAAP Operating Income - share-based compensation and Invested Capital = Net Debt + Book Value of Equity

To expand on the poor capital allocation point above, the biggest source of frustration cited by long term shareholders we have spoken with is Virtusa's acquisition of Polaris and the resulting degradation of Virtusa's earnings growth trajectory, key performance indicators and earnings multiple. Margins are down significantly, adjusted EPS has barely moved higher in 4 years, revenue concentration issues have been exacerbated and ROIC is down materially. The more painful analysis is projecting out what Virtusa could have looked like today had it not pursued the Polaris deal. Before Polaris, Virtusa had strong digital engineering capabilities, lower BFSI exposure and was positioned well for the world's increased focus on digital transformation. Based on our analysis, we believe Virtusa could be worth up to $500mm - $1bn more today if it had stayed focused on organic growth and smaller tuck-in acquisitions versus a bet-the-company deal to buy Polaris in the quest for additional scale, regardless of profitability. It is easy to understand how this transpired as management has historically been compensated through revenue growth and adjusted operating income metrics (not tied together in any way) and Polaris held the promise for significant revenue synergies. In the end, the only financial metrics that went materially higher post the Polaris deal were Virtusa's revenues and management's compensation. Interestingly, five of Virtusa's directors on the Board today were also on the Board at the time of the Polaris deal which we have heard was such a difficult asset to sell that they had to fire the first two investment banks before Credit Suisse was finally able to sell it to Virtusa.

As a result, shareholders have endured a stock that has depreciated from ~$50 a share 5 years ago to ~$33 as of yesterday's market close, a total return of 34%. At the same time, companies with similar digital IT capabilities have outperformed the broader market. For example, in the past five years, EPAM Systems and Globant SA stocks have appreciated over 220% and 360%, respectively, while the broader Russell 3000 index has appreciated over 35%.



1Y 3Y 5Y VRTU (27%) 6% (35%) EPAM 36% 186% 228% GLOB 42% 242% 360% ACN 10% 65% 126% Russell 3000 GICS peers (1%) 37% 77%



Graph has been converted and altered from original version for formatting and accuracy purposes.

This underperformance, however, has not negatively impacted management's compensation or led to any increased level of oversight or accountability of management by the Board. For example, Mr. Canekeratne's FY2019 pay was over 2.2x of that in FY2015, and he has earned roughly $30mm in cumulative compensation from FY2015 to FY2019. All of this occurred while Virtusa has created essentially no value for shareholders. Messrs. Kalia and Holler have similarly seen their pay increase significantly despite no corresponding increase in value to shareholders. To provide some context, Mr. Canekeratne is currently paid more than the CEO of EPAM Systems, a significantly larger and faster growing enterprise in the IT services space. Furthermore, EPAM Systems' CEO has made roughly half of what Mr. Canekeratne made cumulatively from the period of CY2014 to CY2019 while creating over ~$9bn of value for shareholders. When you start to digest those compensation numbers it becomes clear why Mr. Canekeratne is working so hard to keep a significant shareholder out of the Boardroom.

Virtusa: FY2015 FY2016 FY2017 FY2018 FY2019 FY2020 Market Capitalization $1,200 $1,103 $904 $1,434 $1,611 $856 Revenue 479 600 859 1,021 1,248 1,312 Adj. EPS $1.84 $2.06 $1.25 $1.63 $2.12 $2.14 % Change over FY16 Peak



(40%) (21%) 3% 4% CEO Compensation 2 3,588,724 4,417,200 4,695,310 8,772,997 7,979,479 TBD % Change over FY16 (EPS Peak)



6% 99% 81%





2 As per Virtusa Proxy Materials

We struggle to see how the status quo is sufficient for unlocking the true value inherent in Virtusa. While a fresh, skilled, and hopefully independent director selected by the Company may bring much needed IT services experience, he or she will not bring the same level of accountability to the Boardroom as an ~11% shareholder with significant IT Services capabilities. What Virtusa needs is Board-level support from a credible firm like NMV, that is fully aligned with all shareholders and has the resources, time and energy to work tirelessly to help Virtusa reach its full potential.

We would like to remind the Board that, according to ISS Voting Guidelines, ISS should recommend their institutional clients to withhold support for the current slate of directors in an uncontested election this year, given Virtusa's 1-, 3-, and 5- year bottom half total shareholder returns vs. their relevant GICS code peers in the Russell 3000 and its litany of corporate governance deficiencies as defined by ISS (including a staggered Board, the inability for shareholders to call a special meeting or act by written consent). We only bring this up because it makes it crystal clear how ISS correctly concludes that the combination of poor performance and a challenging corporate governance profile is often the result of lack of accountability.3



1Y 3Y 5Y VRTU (27%) 6% (35%) S&P 500 Total Return 8% 34% 62% Nasdaq Composite Total Return 25% 63% 103% Russell 3K Software & Services (1%) 37% 77%







Percentile vs. Russell 3K S&S 16% 26% 10%

We recognize that we are in the middle of a dialogue with the Board regarding our requests. However, given the most recent communications with the Company and that the advanced notice deadline is fast approaching, we have decided to file the enclosed Nomination Notice today. We are still willing and hopeful of finding a mutually amicable solution to resolve our impasse and believe there is still a chance to avoid a messy, public debate about Virtusa's weak performance and poor governance. We continue to believe it is not in the best interest of shareholders for Virtusa to pursue an expensive, time consuming, public fight with its largest active shareholder, which only wants to help Virtusa reach its full potential and exercise its shareholder rights.

As we highlighted earlier, our initial request was for Virtusa to add both Prasad and Chad to its Board. In an effort to compromise, we have since suggested we are willing to accept only one NMV director and have proposed the following construct:

Board representation for either Chad Fauser or Prasad Chintamaneni at Virtusa's choice;

or at Virtusa's choice; the addition of 2 mutually agreed upon independent directors, one of which can be sourced by Virtusa and one by NMV;

formation of a business optimization committee or task force of the Board or the expansion of the scope of the existing Finance Committee to include developing a detailed margin improvement and revenue diversification plan; and

a commitment to articulate to the market a concrete margin improvement plan and revenue diversification strategy, together with improved communication to investors, analysts and other market participants.

To summarize, we believe Virtusa is an amazing company with great potential and we plan to be significant investors for a long time. It is clear, however, that there has been significant underperformance, accompanied by a lack of accountability and flawed governance. NMV is the perfect partner to help Virtusa reach its full potential and we only seek to look out for the long-term interests of all stockholders. We again reiterate our desire to work constructively with the Board and come to mutually agreeable terms as to a path forward from here. If that is your wish as well, we are available at your convenience to discuss our position further.

Sincerely,

Chad Fauser, Prasad Chintamaneni, Dan Riley, and Tyler Saitta

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

New Mountain Vantage LO, L.P., New Mountain Vantage Focus, L.P. and New Mountain Vantage Co-Invest II, L.P., together with the other participants named herein (collectively, "NMV"), intend to file a preliminary proxy statement and accompanying proxy card with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") to be used to solicit votes for the election of its slate of highly qualified director nominees at the 2020 annual meeting of the stockholders of Virtusa Corporation, a Delaware corporation (the "Company").

NMV STRONGLY ADVISES ALL STOCKHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND OTHER PROXY MATERIALS AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. SUCH PROXY MATERIALS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT NO CHARGE ON THE SEC'S WEB SITE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV. IN ADDITION, THE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS PROXY SOLICITATION WILL PROVIDE COPIES OF THE PROXY STATEMENT WITHOUT CHARGE, WHEN AVAILABLE, UPON REQUEST.

The "participants" in the proxy solicitation are New Mountain Vantage LO, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership ("NMVLO"), New Mountain Vantage Focus, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership ("NMVF"), New Mountain Vantage Co-Invest II, L.P., a Cayman Islands exempt limited partnership ("NMVCII"), New Mountain Vantage GP, L.L.C., a Delaware limited liability company ("Vantage GP"), New Mountain Vantage Advisers, L.L.C., a Delaware limited liability company ("NMV Advisers"), Michael J. Baresich, Ramakrishna Prasad Chintamaneni, Patricia B. Morrison, Chad Fauser, Nadia Shouraboura, New Mountain Vantage (California) II, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership ("NMVCaII") and New Mountain Vantage, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership ("NMV").

As of the date hereof, NMVLO, NMVF, NMVCII and their affiliates are, or may be, deemed to beneficially own 1,489,392 shares of common stock, $0.01 par value per share, of the Company (the "Common Stock"), representing approximately 4.94% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock. As of the date hereof, NMVLO beneficially owns 28,517 shares of Common Stock, representing approximately 0.09% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock, NMVF beneficially owns 144,256 shares of Common Stock, representing approximately 0.48% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock, and NMVCII beneficially owns 1,316,619 shares of Common Stock, representing approximately 4.37% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock. Vantage GP, as the general partner of NMVLO, NMVF and NMVCII, is, or may be, deemed to beneficially own the 1,489,392 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned by NMVLO, NMVF and NMVCII, representing approximately 4.94% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock. NMV Advisers, as the investment adviser and manager of NMVLO, NMVF and NMVCII, is, or may be, deemed to beneficially own the 1,489,392 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned by NMVLO, NMVF and NMVCII, representing approximately 4.94% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock.

As of the date hereof, none of Mr. Baresich, Mr. Chintamaneni, Ms. Morrison, Mr. Fauser or Ms. Shouraboura beneficially owns any shares of Common Stock.

Vantage GP is also the general partner, and NMV Advisers is also the investment adviser and manager, of NMVCaII and NMV. NMVCII, NMVCaII and NMV have entered into notional principal amount derivative agreements in the form of cash settled swaps (the "Cash Derivative Agreements") with respect to 1,757,423 shares of Common Stock, representing economic exposure in the Company comparable to approximately 5.83% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock. The Cash Derivative Agreements provide the holders with economic results that are comparable to the economic results of ownership of shares of Common Stock but do not provide them with the power to vote or direct the voting or dispose of or direct the disposition of the shares of Common Stock that are referenced in the Cash Derivative Agreements.

About New Mountain Vantage

New Mountain Vantage manages concentrated public equity portfolios, both long-only and long/short. Vantage began investing in 2006 with a focus on corporate governance and selective engagement since inception.

Dan Riley is the Portfolio Manager of New Mountain Vantage and began his career at NMC in 2002. Chad Fauser is Head of Engagement for Vantage and joined in 2018 and was previously a Partner at Trian Partners.

1 Peer group includes Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, Endava PLC, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, Globant SA, Accenture PLC, EPAM Systems Inc., Perficient Inc., and Capgemini SE.

2 Software & Services (4510 GICS) companies within the Russell 3000 index. Relevant five-year period is June 15, 2015 through June 15, 2020.

3 Total return from 6/15/15 to 6/15/20

SOURCE New Mountain Vantage Advisers, L.L.C.
Ta Hien street in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

The Hanoi Old Quarter, locating in the downtown in Hoan Kiem district, is the most popular destination in the capital city. Tourists come here to explore ancient streets, craft products, local food or experience lives there. In the evening, streets become more crowded and lively with Hang Dao  Dong Xuan nigh fair and outdoor music performances.

Since 2016, Hanoi has allowed Hoan Kiem district to pilot the extension of opening hour of bars and restaurants to 2am. As a result, their revenues increased by about 30 percent.

Following the pilot, tourist arrivals in 2016 neared 1.4 million, up 22.8 percent from a year earlier. The figure went up to 1.95 million in 2017, nearly 2.2 million in 2018 and 2.5 million in 2019.

The number of business households switching to hospitality services increased 594.

Chairman of the Hoan Kiem district Peoples Committee Nguyen Anh Quan said the district will pilot the development of night-time economy in the near future, with both indoor and outdoor models.

According to him, Tay Ho district is also developing night-time economy with a space of arts and street food at Trinh Cong Son street.
London: One in three patients who recover from COVID-19 could be harmed for life, with long-term damage to their lungs, as well as chronic fatigue and psychological disturbances, research suggests.

Experts said there was growing evidence that the virus could cause persistent or even permanent trauma, including impairment to the brain and an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Guidance from the British National Health Service (NHS) seen by the London Telegraph suggests that around 30 per cent of patients who recover from COVID-19 may be left with damaged and scarred lung tissue, if it follows patterns of similar diseases.

In an interview with the newspaper, the head of the new NHS centre for COVID-19 recovery said she was worried about how little was known about how long the consequences could last.
Subscriber content preview

Heres what to know about these benefits so you dont miss out.



By MELISSA LAMBARENA

NerdWallet

iStock image A cards extended warranty protection may prolong an original manufacturers warranty, sometimes a year or longer, depending on the terms.





A few days after buying a sweater at Macys, Erin Chisman returned to get the same one in a different color, only to realize it was 50% off. Upon seeing the new price tag, the Wisconsin-based business owner was determined to save.





. . .
Wallace, a 26-year-old Alabama native, had found support among fellow drivers for his stance on the flag and he noted that in his tweet after the noose announcement. "Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate," he said. Earlier in the day, a plane flew over the track pulling a Confederate flag with the words "Defund NASCAR". Loading The Confederate flags that once flew openly around the infield and stands are still for sale across the street. NASCAR hasn't disclosed how it will handle fans flying flags.

With the most fans allowed into a race during the coronavirus pandemic it put the spotlight on the Confederate flag ban. There weren't any immediate reports of how many, if any, flags were confiscated or taken down at the venue. The noose was discovered on the same day NASCAR's fledgling flag ban faced its biggest challenge. The ban took effect before last week's race near Miami, but there were only about 1000 military members admitted into that race. At Talladega, in the heart of the South, as many as 5000 fans were allowed in, even though rain postponed the race until Monday afternoon, US time. The ban drew informal protests Saturday and Sunday alike, with cars and utes trucks driving along nearby roads flying the flag and parading past the entrance to the superspeedway, along with the plane. Loading NASCAR did not acknowledge the plane or its banner, though executive Steve O'Donnell Tweeted a picture of black and white hands shaking: "You won't see a photo of a jackass flying a flag over the track here... but you will see this... Hope EVERYONE enjoys the race today."

Rapper Ice Cube even tweeted about the plane saying, "[Expletive] him NASCAR, you got new fans in this household." The race has pushed back because of heavy rain and lightning. But before the rain came, the scene was a dramatic departure from the Talladega norm. "It's weird. It's eerie," said David Radvansky, 32, from suburban Atlanta, who brought his wife and boys, 3 and 6. Loading Radvansky, who started coming to Talladega in the 1990s when his father parked cars at races, applauded NASCAR's decision to ban the Confederate flags.

"I don't think there's a place for it in NASCAR, to be honest with you," the 32-year-old said. "That doesn't sit well with all the good ole boys but it is what it is." Fans had to go through screening and wear masks to get in for the race, though a few were walking around inside without theirs on. But lines seemed to flow quickly and the sun was shining until about an hour before the race, when rain and lightning started. Bathrooms had arrows directing patrons which way to enter or exit, and attendants lined the way holding signs urging them to "please wear your masks." Directly across from the track, Ed Sugg's merchandise tent flew Confederate flags prominently in a display alongside Trump for 2020 banners and an American flag. "They're doing very well," said the Helena, Alabama resident, who has been selling an array of wares at NASCAR races for 21 years. "People are disappointed that NASCAR has taken that stance. It's been around for as long as all of us have been. I don't think anybody really connects it to any kind of racism or anything. It's just a Southern thing. It's transparent. It's just a heritage thing."

Long-time racing fan Faron Elam, meanwhile, wasn't thrilled by the fan restrictions and more minimal atmosphere. "This ain't racing," said Elam, a 50-year-old from Cottondale, Alabama. "This is nothing like it used to be. You used to come up here and have fun, go to all the souvenir trucks, everything. "You've got two out front now. That's all you've got and if you don't like who's in it, then you don't get anything." Then again, it was to provide the key element for the fan of everything from dirt track to drag racing. "Just anything with speed," Elam said.
About 400 people gathered on the north side of the city when someone in the crowd was struck during a hit-and-run accident, Smith said. Police responding to the scene heard shots being fired. Police believe more than one person fired weapons because videos recorded sounds from guns of different calibers. Authorities recovered about 100 casings from the scene.
Iranian officials are seeking answers from Romanian authorities after former Iranian judge Gholamreza Mansouri, who was facing corruption charges in Iran, fell out of an upper window Friday at the Duke Hotel in Bucharest, Romania.

Mansouri, a former member of Irans Supreme Court, was facing extradition to Iran on charges that he allegedly took about 500,000 euros in bribes. He had been staying at the Duke Hotel for 10 days before his death. According to Romanian media, Mansouri was on his way back to his room after paying his hotel bill at the front desk. Romanian police are currently reviewing camera footage.

General Prosecutor of Iran Mohammad Jaffar Montazeri called Mansouris death suspicious" and said Iran would not be able to make specific comments until more is made clear about his death. Montazeri said the judiciary has written a letter to Romanian officials, which will be delivered through Irans Foreign Ministry. Iran also invited the Romanian Ambassador Adrian Kozjacski to answer questions about Mansouris death.

Mansouri had cancer and claimed he traveled to Germany to seek treatment but was unable to fly back to Iran after having traveled to Romania to face charges due to the coronavirus shutdown. According to Iranian media, Mansouri had spoken to his lawyer and family members before he died and was in good spirits. An Iranian judiciary official said that he was not facing a heavy sentence, suggesting that it could be a maximum of three years, adding more to speculation as to why he would take his own life if facing such a small prison sentence.

Mansouri was caught up in the current corruption probe against the previous judiciary leadership of Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani, who has been replaced by Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi. Larijani was replaced at the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after his tenure, and Raisi was given the green light to pursue corruption charges against officials both big and small. Mansouris case is related to the corruption case of Akbar Tabari, former director-general of finance and executive deputy of the judiciary of the Islamic Republic. Mansouri was considered to be among the low-level tiers in the charges, with Tabari being in the first tier.

Complicating the matter is that a number of human rights organizations defending the rights of journalists have sought charges against Mansouri for human rights abuses. The German chapter of Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint with federal prosecutors in Germany for Mansouri ordering the arrest of reporters in 2013. Mansouri had traveled to Romania before German authorities could take action. According to some human rights activists, there was enough evidence to show that Mansouri was responsible for human rights abuses, but such cases would typically have to be on a large scale to be prosecuted in Europe for crimes committed in other countries for the cases to be successful.
Marriage is hard. Plenty of institutions attest to that: couples therapy, couples retreats, and, of course, divorce. But a good marriage isnt just difficult to sustain; it can be difficult to get off the ground. For many who want to tie the knot, finding a mate is the least of problems amid more daunting financial or cultural headwinds.

Societies have tried to jump-start marriages over the centuries with the vehicle of the mass wedding. Collective wedding ceremonies date back at least to the fourth century B.C., when Alexander the Great and roughly 80 of his officers married Persian women to cement their rule over the region. But the practice really took off in the later 20th century. Sensational instances like Moonie marriages and city hall LGBT ceremonies have tended to grab headlines. Far more common, however, are mass weddings put on by churches, mission groups, nonprofits, and even national governments such as those of India and Syria. These rites are meant to nudge couples past cold feet and sticker shock and toward the benefits that come with mutual commitment and legal recognition of a marriage union.

One of CTs most popular articles online last year was an interview with Dallas pastor Bryan Carter about his churchs tradition of the Grand Wedding. More than 80 couples have been married so far in collective ceremonies at Concord Church, part of a program to get lovers to stop living together and make some real vows. The church seeks to remove as many excuses for non-commitment as possible. It covers all wedding costs, provides more than a year of marriage counseling and mentorship, and even pays a month of rent for cohabitating couples who choose to live apart instead.

For the most ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Darwin propagated the idea that humans are like other animals fighting for survival, but distinguished supposedly by our intellect. This logic makes it possible for some human lives to be seen as more valuable than others, says Professor of literature Michael Lundblad.

When it became apparent in early 2020 just how serious the COVID-19-pandemic was, prioritization among corona patients became an acute issue.

Who should get a ventilator first? Almost everyone will say that they should be given to younger and healthier patients. But why should the lives of the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions be seen as less worthy and therefore lower on the priority list? The coronavirus helps to reveal these hierarchies of value." Michael Lundblad, Professor, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo

Should we think of the sick as less valuable?

For Lundblad, the COVID-19 outbreak illustrates what he and his research colleagues Jan Grue, Sara Orning and Tom Bradstreet (links) in the project BIODIAL (link) have been working on for several years.

By studying representations of illness and disability, they explore ideas about what it means to be human, and how some lives come to be valued more than others.

"What happens if you lose your memory and other cognitive functions at the end of life? Alzheimer's might make some people seem to be less human, if intellect is most important. But why should that be the primary way of defining a life worth living?"

Movies and literature are important sources for illustrating and producing cultural attitudes toward illness. In the critically acclaimed feature film Still Alice, Julianne Moore plays a 50-year-old language professor who begins to forget words.

It turns out that she has Alzheimer's. Lundblad highlights the scene in which she plans to take her own life.

"She decides ahead of time that if she were to lose so much mental capacity that she couldn't remember the names of her children, or even the fact that she has children, she wouldn't want to live any longer. For this character, memory and cognitive capacity are essential for defining a good human life."

Alice does not want to become a burden on her family if she were to lose the traits that define her.

"Life with Alzheimer's can certainly be tough, but it does not necessarily need to be seen as less valuable."

Not enough to make life meaningless

Lundblad finds parallels in stories of people who have physical disabilities.

"In the film Me before you, the logic is that if you break your back and end up in a wheelchair, life must no longer be worth living. But millions of people use wheelchairs every day without having a horrible life."

"There is no reason to assume that disability must always be associated with unhappiness, or even pain and suffering."

He thinks that studying films and texts about illness and disability can reveal problematic ways of thinking about human life.

"If you lose what is supposed to give life value, or if you're born without it, your life can be constructed as more disposable, whether through assisted suicide, euthanasia, or abortion. Illness and disability are part of human diversity, not enough alone to make life meaningless."

Animal metaphors in illness

When we talk about the human body and disease, metaphors from the animal kingdom often crop up. Like the wild animal fighting for survival, the diseased body fights against cancer or the coronavirus. Lundblad reveals how thoughts about animality in humans are deeply embedded in our culture.

"From Charles Darwin at the end of the 19th century, we get the idea that humans are just another animal species. From Sigmund Freud at the turn of the century, we get the idea that humans have animal instincts embedded in our psyches."

Lundblad points out that this way of describing humanity superseded the dominant Christian view that humans were not like other species but had instead a special relationship with God.

"With the concept of survival of the fittest, we started thinking that humans are hard-wired for competition, like all other animals, trying to propagate the world with our own offspring."

This way of thinking, which is part of what Lundblad calls jungle discourse, exploded in the early 1900s.

"The jungle as a place and as a discourse was constructed through a wide range of colonial texts, including novels such as The Jungle Book and Tarzan.

"These books describe the jungle as a place where wild animals live, but also where white men are supposedly superior to both black people and animals, even if they all have animal instincts."

"The jungle therefore naturalizes violence, but also constructs civilization as grounded upon the ability to control animal instincts, as opposed to living solely like an animal, or, in racist terms, like so-called primitive people."

Animality in humans

Lundblad has pioneered what he calls animality studies, within the larger field of literary and cultural studies. He explores notions of animality in different historical and cultural contexts, particularly when the way we think about animals impacts the way we think about what it means to be human.

Empirical evidence over time has revealed that we cannot maintain a simple opposition between humans and rationality on the one hand, and animals and instinct on the other, or that the behavior of animals in the jungle can explain human behavior.

"But still we hang on to the notion that men are more violent than women because it is natural for males to look after their flock, or to be heterosexual."

"We try to justify our social rules of conduct based upon 'laws' from the jungle," he says.

Lundblad has found that understandings of the animal behaviors have changed significantly over time.

"If you look at Darwin and Freud, or all the way back to Aristotle, you will find the basic idea that what makes us human is that we are 'rational beasts' - that we have the ability to reason. With Descartes in the 17th century we get the idea that animals can't think, that they have no reason."

More recent research into animal behavior has revealed a more complex picture.

"While researchers in the early 20th century often explained animal behavior in relation to 'survival of the fittest', subsequent research has shown, among other things, that wild animals work together to achieve goals, that they take care of their elderly, that they also have homosexual relationships, and that their languages are much more complicated than we might have thought."

"Understandings of animality can change, along with how we therefore think about humanity."

Talking together about animals and humans

To consider someone as more or less human, and to attribute value and meaning based upon that, is a cultural process that helps legitimize exploitation and oppression.

To explore that history, Lundblad believes it is useful to link insights from academic fields that conduct research not only on animality, but also in areas such as disability, which is what the BIODIAL project foregrounds.

"Most people know that people with disabilities have been treated very badly throughout history, but they might not want to think about some parallels with the way certain animals have been treated."

"We can find parallel structures of thought that naturalize oppression and suffering in both cases, even though we need to be careful not to simply equate disability with animality," he says.

The Covid-19 outbreak illustrates ways that animal and human issues can be linked, Lundblad believes. One example is that the virus is zoonotic, an infectious disease transmitted from animals to humans.

"Zoonosis can occur when a natural habitat is threatened by humans, or when animals in captivity or in markets transmit disease to humans."

Lives at the bottom of the pecking order are interconnected

The major outbreaks of the virus among workers at meat processing plants in the United States illustrate that the lives of those at the bottom of the pecking order are interconnected.

"There are structural inequalities in industrial agriculture and factory farming, in which workers are treated 'like animals'. They are exploited and considered disposable, not given protective equipment, and so on. At the same time, they lose their jobs if they don't come to work."

When President Trump declares it to be a national priority for Americans to be able to get meat, to keep the meat industry open, the lives of immigrant workers and the working poor are sacrificed, along with the animals themselves.

"Hierarchies are clearly revealed in these prioritizations, not only between humans and animals, but also among humans, when some lives are seen as less human than others."
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Coffee as a beverage has been surging in popularity since time immemorial. Whether consumed during breakfast or in between meal times as a casual drink, coffee consumption has registered an uptick amongst people of all age groups. This has led to an overall increment in coffee production. With increased coffee production also comes greater amount of residue and waste generation. Coffee wastes are generally in the form of coffee grounds, which are typically obtained as a by-product of roasted coffee beans. Due to its organic nature, coffee grounds have found widespread acceptance amongst a host of applications.

The global coffee grounds market is slated to register moderate growth throughout its forecast period from 2020 to 2030, driven by extensive applications across agriculture, cosmetics & personal care, manufacturing of insecticides & pesticides and food & beverages. The coronavirus pandemic, unfortunately, has led the coffee grounds market into doldrums, impacting all end-use industries due to supply crunches. Coffee shops have shuttered due to falling demand for ready-to-drink coffee due to social distancing measures. Leading manufacturers have factored in this slump and are making efforts to mitigate the adverse impacts of the pandemic to keep the market afloat.

"Coffee grounds have acquired immense popularity due to the multifarious environmental benefits it offers, notably, enhanced soil quality and water conservation. Furthermore, dawning of understanding amongst farmers about the role of coffee grounds in promoting plant-based microbiological activities shall increase their adoption in the future," infers an FMI analyst.

Coffee Grounds Market- Important Takeaways

Agriculture sectors shall dominate the coffee grounds due to the extremely high nutritional value possessed by them. Additionally, its organic nature prevents soil degradation.

Insecticides & Pesticide manufactures shall extensively use coffee grounds as a raw ingredient as the high caffeine content proves toxic for insects and pests, protecting crops from damage.

North America dominates the coffee ground market in terms of region due to the high proportion of coffee consumption and is expected to retain this dominance throughout the forecast period.

Asia-Pacific is poised to emerge as a lucrative market, owing to rising coffee consumption across emerging economies such as China & India.

A modest CAGR of 5.5% is pegged for the coffee grounds market from 2020-2030.

Coffee Grounds Market- Prominent Drivers

Increasing preference for organic cosmetics due to their safety while applying on the skin shall bode well for the coffee grounds market in the cosmetics industry.

Coffee grounds also possess the ability to neutralize foul odors. Therefore, their usage as deodorizing agents shall impel the overall market growth.

Market players are focusing on product innovations in order to remain afloat in the coffee grounds market, indirectly contributing to the flourishing of the market.

Coffee Grounds Market- Key Constraints

Falling coffee consumption amongst consumers due to concerns over high caffeine content shall restrain the coffee grounds market as coffee cultivation is reducing.

Logistical difficulties encountered as a result of the lockdowns imposed due to coronavirus is leading to accumulation of coffee produce which can rot over a period of time, leading to significant losses.

Anticipated Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak

Since the pandemic's outbreak, coffee shipments worldwide have registered impediments attributed to the curbs imposed on trade following government directives to impose total lockdowns on the movement of people and goods across borders in order to contain the spread of the virus. While coffee consumption has not wavered, transportation curbs have led to an accumulation of coffee ground stocks which have a tendency to rot while in storage. This is leading to immense losses to coffee manufacturers as well as end-use industries. As a consequence, a demand-supply gap has been generated which will take a long time to recover from.

Shortages in availability of coffee grounds have led to a steep increase in their prices, rendering them unaffordable by end-users. Moreover, coffee farmers are facing immense problems selling their produce in the market due to the unavailability of potential buyers, causing them to forgo their revenue. Moreover, on the demand side, a dip in discretionary spending during the pandemic has reduced consumption of several products, including coffee and coffee ground-based foods, cosmetics and fertilizers, particularly in developing countries. However, the market is expected to remain afloat with demand being sustained from developed economies as consumers resort to online shopping.

Competition Landscape

Prominent market players in the coffee grounds market include, but are not limited to: Starbucks, Red Thread, Jo Coffee, The Kraft Heinz Company, Royal Kona, UCC, Hills Bros Coffee, Folgers Coffee and Death Wish Coffee Company among others. Enhancement of research and development capabilities to pave way for new product launches, expansion through collaborations and extensive digital marketing through social media platforms are providing the abovementioned market players with a competitive edge. The companies are also collaborating with coffee ground manufacturers to develop products such as coffee flour which can be used in the manufacturing of bakery & confectionary, snack bars and pasta & pizzas.

Get Valuable Insights into Coffee Grounds Market

Future Market Insights, in its new report, presents an unbiased analysis of the global coffee grounds market, covering historical demand data and forecast figures for the period between 2019 and 2029. The study divulges compelling insights into growth witnessed in the market. On the basis of applications, the market is segmented into agriculture, cosmetics, insecticides and pesticides. Regionally, the market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania and MEA.

Press Release Source: https://www.accesswire.com/593889/From-Cosmetics-to-Garden-Fertilizers-Coffee-Grounds-finds-Widespread-Acceptance-Market-to-Surge-Modestly-in-the-Forecast-Period-Future-Market-Insights
ISG Provider Lens report finds U.K. companies partnering with outsourcing providers to modernize their F&A operations

LONDON, June 22, 2020)), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Finance & Accounting Digital Outsourcing Services report for the U.K. finds the nation's enterprises embracing the use of providers for finance and accounting (F&A) functions, reversing their more conservative stance toward outsourcing critical functions. U.K. companies traditionally have been slow to adopt transformation projects, the report said.

"Although it is slightly conservative, the U.K. is one of the leading outsourcers of finance and accounting functions," said Jan Erik Aase, director and global leader of ISG Provider Lens Research. "As the F&A industry matures, the U.K. is seeing a shift in enterprise buying patterns. Traditionally, the U.K. has been a slow mover in transformation; now a growing number of enterprises are showing an inclination to fast track their transformation journey."

While the U.K.'s exit from the European Union has created uncertainty in the technology space, F&A outsourcing providers have not seen major impacts due to Brexit, the report says. The U.K. may see a skills shortage due to potential Brexit-related immigration limits, and U.K. companies now are more likely to turn to outsourcing providers to help them with their F&A operations.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.K. is likely to lead to sluggish growth in 2020, causing many companies to turn to outsourcing providers for their offshoring and automation capabilities as they look to get work done at lower cost, the report says. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is forcing providers to enhance their data security and privacy measures, to minimize calls for greater localization and keep offshoring a viable business strategy.

The report finds the changing role of company CFOs is driving the move toward transformational F&A projects, and thus greater demand for consulting services. Digital-native companies born in the cloud are especially quick to embrace transformation and look for more strategic relationships.

As part of their transformations, more U.K. companies are moving to automate their F&A functions, turning to outsourcing providers to help them implement robotic process automation within their F&A systems, the report says.

According to ISG Research, 83 percent of enterprises have reached their highest level of automation maturity within their F&A operations, the highest percentage of any corporate function. The report also finds nearly 95 percent of enterprises are experimenting with or have deployed machine learning technologies in their F&A processes.

Many U.K. enterprises are also using artificial intelligence-powered analytics for greater insights into their finances, and to enable more proactive decision-making, the report says.

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Finance & Accounting Digital Outsourcing Services report for the U.K. evaluates the capabilities of 25 providers across three quadrants: Consulting Services, Transactional F&A Services and Strategic F&A Services.

The report names Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, EXL, Genpact, IBM, Infosys, TCS and WNS as leaders in all three quadrants. HCL and Wipro are named leaders in two quadrants.

A customized version of the report is available from Infosys.

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Finance & Accounting Digital Outsourcing Services report for the U.K. is available to subscribers or for one-time purchase on this webpage.

About ISG Provider Lens Research

The ISG Provider Lens Quadrant research series is the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG's global advisory team. Enterprises will find a wealth of detailed data and market analysis to help guide their selection of appropriate sourcing partners, while ISG advisors use the reports to validate their own market knowledge and make recommendations to ISG's enterprise clients. The research currently covers providers offering their services globally, across Europe and Latin America, as well as in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., France, the Nordics, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand, with additional markets to be added in the future. For more information about ISG Provider Lens research, please visit this webpage.

The series is a complement to the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, which offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types.

Starting this year, each ISG Provider Lens study will include a Global Summary to help enterprise subscribers better understand provider capabilities across all geographic markets covered by that study. All ISG Provider Lens reports also will now include an Enterprise Context feature to help executives quickly identify key insights related to their roles and responsibilities.

About ISG

ISG) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of the world's top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries-a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry's most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit www.isg-one.com.

# # #
As Florida and South Carolina broke the record for most new daily coronavirus infections for third consecutive days, officials across the south have raised concerns over more young people testing positive for COVID-19. According to international media reports, the shift in demographics has been recorded in regions in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas among other states in the United States. While some officials including the US President Donald Trump have credited the increase in the number of coronavirus cases to the widespread testing of the disease, others think the COVID-19 cases are at an upswing because Americans are failing to maintain social distance.

According to reports, one health official in Mississippi has even said that the violation of social distancing rule by the people in recent weeks has been overwhelmingly disappointing. Moreover, Texas Governor Greg Abbot had said last week that the people who are below the age of 30 are testing positive for COVID-19. According to him, the reason for young people being in majority among the new coronavirus infections is the heightened visits to bars, restaurants and even parties for Memorial Day.

Read - TikTok Users & K-pop Fans Claim Credit For 'low Turnout' At Trump Rally; Trump Denies

Even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had said on June 19 that the average age of people contracting the novel coronavirus in the state is 37. Moreover, in the week of June 7, DeSantis said that 62 per cent of the new cases were among people below the age of 45. This was also a significant change in the age of COVID-19 patients as compared to that in the month of March and April when most people testing positive for coronavirus were older or had pre-existing medical conditions.

Read - Donald Trump Says He Held Off Sanctions On China Over Uighur Muslims Due To Trade Talks

Black people have a higher risk of hospitalisation

Apart from more younger people testing positive for COVID-19, the disease is also spreading unevenly among minorities. A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that in Atlanta, black patients of COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalised than white patients. According to the study released on June 18, CDC has said among 79 per cent people admitted to the hospital due to coronavirus infections were black and only 13 per cent were white. The study took place across six hospitals in Atlanta, Georgia, between March and April of this year. Overall summary of the research has concluded the most COVID-19 patients that are hospitalised are older, male, of black race and some have pre-existing medical conditions.

Data analyses of Atlanta #COVID19 patients found people who are older, Black, or have underlying conditions, such as diabetes, had higher risk for hospitalization. Take preventive measures to protect higher risk groups. @CDCMMWR: https://t.co/BHqCzO5GFW. pic.twitter.com/hb5MC45oE8  CDC (@CDCgov) June 17, 2020

Read - COVID-19: Trump Brags About US' Testing Capability As Cases Continue To Skyrocket

Read - Trump Says He Would Consider Meeting Venezuela's Maduro After Failing To Oust Him

Image: AP
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order suspending new visas for skilled and seasonal workers, including H-1Bs, the skilled-worker visas many Silicon Valley companies rely on. The tech industry said the ban is shortsighted and will stifle innovation.

The temporary ban, which takes effect Wednesday, lasts until the end of the year. It also applies to H-2B visas for seasonal workers, often in landscaping and hospitality; L visas for executives who are transferred within a company; and J visas for au pairs and work-study summer students, as well as H-4 visas that allow spouses of H-1B holders to work.

The ban exempts workers involved with health care or research related to the coronavirus, and those who work in the food-supply chain, such as those in agriculture or seafood.

Immigrants already in the U.S. on work visas would not be affected.

While Trump had originally planned to clamp down also on Optional Practical Training, which allows international students to work in the U.S. for up to three years after graduation, that program was not mentioned in the executive order.

The administration, which has long sought to limit immigration, is positioning the ban as a way to make more jobs available for Americans at a time of record unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders, but immigration advocates said that the move ultimately could hurt the economy.

The reality, said Peter Leroe-Munoz, senior vice president of technology and innovation policy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, is that the U.S. does not produce enough highly skilled workers, which is why companies turn to H-1B visas.

There is a fundamental gap between the workers we have available here in the U.S. and the overwhelming number of tech jobs that need to be filled, he said. If the administration is serious about filling tech roles with American workers, it needs to invest more in STEM education. Because we dont have that domestic pipeline, companies rely on global talent from around the world to fill those jobs today.

Leroe-Munoz said the ban will cost companies time and money as they seek to recruit from a much smaller pool of talent. Startups will be hit particularly hard because this cuts them off from a significant source of labor talent, he said.

Other industry trade groups had similar takes.

Todays executive order only hinders the ability of businesses to make decisions on how best to deploy their existing workforce and hire new employees, TechNet CEO Linda Moore said in a statement Monday. This will slow innovation and undermine the work the technology industry is doing to help our country recover from unprecedented events, such as in food delivery, tele-health, collaborative business solutions, and ways for people to stay connected.

Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman noted in a statement that more than half of the U.S. startups that have become worth a billion dollars or more, including Uber, Tesla and Slack, have at least one immigrant founder. Those firms, he added, have created an average of 1,200 jobs per company and have tallied a collective value of $248 billion.

Trump wants to significantly revamp the H-1B program when it resumes. Currently the annual 85,000 slots are allocated by lottery, which had 225,000 applicants this year.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Instead, Trump wants to select the people with the highest salary offers. This would ensure that the visa holders are truly the highest skilled, the White House said in a press release.

It is simplistic to assume that wage is the only criterion for determining which employees are highly skilled, Leroe-Munoz said. Some highly skilled workers may have a personal passion for a specific industry, or they may have a close relationship with a particular employer. Or perhaps they may choose to work for a small startup that offers higher equity.

Reining in the H-1B program both makes our companies less competitive and increases the likelihood that if the right skills cant be found locally their jobs will move to countries such as Canada that actively welcome educated immigrants, Wunderman said.

A senior administration official said the move would result in about 500,000 more jobs for unemployed U.S. citizens, calling it an America-first recovery, according to a transcript of a press call on Monday.

That official said the new ban, plus one implemented in April on green-card applicants from outside the country, would block about 525,000 immigrants from entering the U.S. this year.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Indian agricultural scientists have been successful in tackling the spread of crop-devastating locusts with tight measures and by arming Iran to cut invasions towards India, helping protect 114,026 hectares of crops in six most at-risk states as on June 22, according to official data.

The most threatened states where locust attacks have been curbed are Rajasthan, Punjab, MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra and UP, as the country robustly heads into its summer-sown kharif crop season.

To be sure, India is still among five nations which cannot lower their guard for the next four weeks, the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said in its latest alert on June 21.

Desert locusts can fly up to 150km daily and a one square-km swarm can eat as much food as 35,000 people in terms of weight in a single day, according to the FAO Desert Locust Information Service manual. The voracious pests, which originate in the Horn of Africa, can flatten farms overnight if not checked. Locust attacks are known to cause considerable drops in food output, roiling farm economies.

Since May, India has ramped up containment, in area terms, by 42% (from about 49,000 hectares to nearly 114,026 hectares). One hectare is roughly 2.4 acres.

The pests appeared earlier than expected this year. Adult populations set off in thick swarms from Africa, descending and breeding in several countries before entering India via Iran and Pakistan through the so-called Scheduled Desert Areas abutting the countrys western borders.

Since April, locusts have appeared in large districts such as Sriganganagar, Hanumangarh and Bikaner in Rajasthan, Moriana in Madhya Pradesh and Nashik and Nagpur regions in Maharashtra.

Among several measures taken to counter the threat, India shipped early this month nearly 20,000 litre of malathion, the main pesticide to control locusts, to Iran under a collaboration to implement strategies control strategies. Containing locusts in Iran help India because the country lies on the invasion route.

The pesticide, malathion, at 96% concentration, effectively kill locusts, according to the FAO manual. Authorities maintain stocks of minimum 5,000 litres at this concentration at location control stations across states where pesticide can be mobilised for immediate requirement, according Indias national manual for locust control.

A surge in locust attacks since last year is being attributed to favourable breeding weather caused by a large number of cyclones in East Africa since last year according to the FAO.

According to Anurag Srivastava, spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs, India has developed a regional cooperation mechanism involving South Asians nation to fight the pestilence. Pakistan, however, skipped a technical-level meeting with India on June 19.

There have been no significant findings of crop damage in the locust affected states of Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharastra and UP to new kharif crops, where containment measures and constant surveillance continue, the official cited in the first instance said on condition of anonymity.

Millions of farmers plant a range of summer crops that account for half of India annual food output, driven by good rains. These include rice, pulses, oilseeds and millets, apart from horticulture and sugar plantations. In the last week of May, before kharif plantings, surveillance field units reported between 5% and 10% of crop damage in 1000 hectares in Sriganganagar, Hanumangarh and Bikaner of Rajasthan and 5-10% of 400 hectares in Moraina district of Madhya Pradesh.

India has a good experience of fighting the pest from two previous outbreaks, in 1950 and 1993. This has come in handy, said JN Thakur, a former chief of locust monitoring at the agriculture ministry.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Zia Haq Zia Haq reports on public policy, economy and agriculture. Particularly interested in development economics and growth theories. ...view detail
A spate of seagull attacks is being recorded as people return to quiet buildings and seaside towns invaded by the five-and-a-half-foot wingspan birds during lockdown.

The birds are dive-bombing people returning to previously shuttered offices, swooping on unsuspecting walkers enjoying seafront strolls and terrorising small children.

One nursery in West Sussex even had to let children and teachers dash inside, despite social distancing measures, as the angry birds nosedived on the playground.

Pest management company Integrum Services says it has seen a 400 per cent spike in demand for technology to repel the birds, usually reserved for airports, from schools, universities and local councils dealing with the menace.

The company sells speakers that squawk gull alarm calls whenever the birds are close, sending them flapping for shelter.

The kit, which also comes with an inflatable human - dubbed 'Scary Dave' who pops up whenever the birds are close, can even be set up without breaking social distancing rules.

There has been a spike in seagull attacks as people return to seaside towns invaded by the three-pound birds during lockdown. Many have nested on formerly quiet buildings

The gulls are also thought to be becoming more aggressive as many have gone hungry during lockdown, as shops remain closed. Experts said many have been seen killing pigeons, such as this bird in Leicester Square, London

Director of Integrum Services Peter Bowers-Davis, Integrum's director, revealed they're expecting heightened demand until after the national closure due to the 'seagull invasion'.

'The seagulls have loved the peace and quiet of lockdown and taken the opportunity to nest on empty buildings,' he said.

'The seagulls hatched their chicks on the roofs of buildings and now people are returning to those buildings and so they're reacting aggressively because they want to protect their chicks.

'There's a nursery in West Sussex where the kids of key workers were attending and they were using the outside space a lot to try and keep to social distancing rules.

'The birds were swooping down and attacking the children and the nursery staff so they were forced to hide inside from the seagulls but we've now installed the technology so they can play outside again.'

He added: 'There's less food available for them with people not visiting the beaches and we have seen quite a few killing pigeons and eating them.'

Pest management company Integrum Services said it has seen a 400 per cent spike in demand for its gull control devices following lockdown from schools, universities and councils

The device uses speakers, right, that emit gull alarm calls when the birds are close. They can also install an inflatable - dubbed 'Scary Dave' - which pops up whenever the birds are near

Local authorities were also left unable to deploy normal seagull removal services at the start of lockdown, due to social distancing, which has worsened the problem.

Seagulls are protected by law, meaning their nests and eggs can only be removed by licensed companies.

The mayor of Looe, Cornwall, who receives 40 to 50 complaints about seagulls a year, wrote to residents in April to apologise for the lack of action.

Integrum's gull-deterrent technology works by listening to the birds' calls, before identifying and recording their distress call.

Birds living in different areas have their own unique distress calls, which they squawk when they are being attacked to warn of danger, meaning the technology must pick up the right sound first.

If the birds become wise to the alarm, Integrum Services can also deploy a human shaped inflatable to scare off the invaders.

The company installed 18 anti-gull system in May, far higher than the average two to four which is normal for the time of year.

Seagulls have had to rely more heavily on other sources of food, such as the sea, during lockdown as humans have not been leaving out rubbish in the same quantities

Mr Bowers-Davis added: 'When we've activated the system, it's quite something, like an entire cloud of seagulls swarming above to get away from the noise.

'It alerts every seagull within a 200 metre distance, and the seagulls imitate the call to spread the warning so the distress call reaches even further.

'On Brighton seafront, there can be 200 to 300 seagulls flying off in a massive flock, it's very impressive.'

There are around 140,000 pairs of herring gulls, the species commonly seen on seafronts, in the UK during the summer, and 740,000 individual birds in winter.
Highlights Months after working on a contact tracing app NHS, the UK dropped the idea.

It said it would work with Apple-Google to work on an exposure Notification-like app.

Apple has said it is not aware of any such app.

Days after the UK abandoned its organic contact-tracing app by the National Health Service (NHS) and announced that it would work with tech giants Apple and Google to work on a hybrid app, Apple has said it is completely unaware of any such app.

In the backdrop of COVID 19 with contact-tracing apps becoming a part of the new normal, Apple and Google have been working on its Exposure Notification app which is to be rolled out soon. Exposure Notification app goes big on privacy and is open-sourced.

Matt Hancock, the UK's Secretary of State for Health and Social Care had announced that the UK government would be working with Apple and Google to create a hybrid version of its contact-tracing app. He said that the hybrid app would use its homegrown distance measuring technology with companies' exposure notification technology.

"We've agreed to join forces with Google and Apple, to bring the best bits of both systems together," the BBC quoted Hancock as saying.

However, Apple expressed surprise at this and said it was not aware of any such hybrid model. "We don't know what they mean by this hybrid model. They haven't spoken to us about it," Apple told the BBC. Apple has said that it was not sure about the claims by the UK government as there was no communication from their side. "It is difficult to understand what these claims are as they haven't spoken to us," The Times quoted Apple.

Although, a report by The Guardian quoted Google saying: "We welcome the announcement from the UK government today. We have developed an Exposure Notification API with Apple based on consultation with public health experts around the world, including in the UK, to ensure that our efforts are useful to authorities as they build their own apps to limit the spread of Covid-19 while ensuring privacy and security are central to the design."

The report stated that three contracts worth 4.8m were awarded to the developer VMWare Pivotal Labs for work on the NHS app.

The idea behind the NHS app was that it would trace anybody who showed coronavirus symptoms by using Bluetooth connectivity and notify them to self-isolate. The version of the contact tracing app was not supported by Apple and Google.

The NHS app only recognised 4 per cent of Apple phones and 75 per cent of Google Android devices during testing on the Isle of Wight, the report stated.
Jayme Grime, Sofia Gebru and two of their other cousins laughed over food and drinks at Stellas Cafe on Sherbrook Street Sunday afternoon as part of their renewed weekly tradition  girls night followed by a group brunch

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jayme Grime, Sofia Gebru and two of their other cousins laughed over food and drinks at Stellas Cafe on Sherbrook Street Sunday afternoon as part of their renewed weekly tradition  girls night followed by a group brunch

"We wanted to all go out as a family... we wanted to go out and enjoy a meal together  its very beautiful outside," Grime said, grinning.

The cafe around them bustled with activity Sunday; patrons huddled around every other table inside the restaurant as families and friends took advantage of the nice weather and reopened dining room to celebrate Fathers Day or share a meal between friends.

Buy To Empower making Black and Indigenous businesses easy to find As more and more businesses open their doors, Winnipegger Bathelemy Bolivar has developed a website to make supporting Black and Indigenous-owned businesses easier than ever. click to read more As more and more businesses open their doors, Winnipegger Bathelemy Bolivar has developed a website to make supporting Black and Indigenous-owned businesses easier than ever. Buy to Empower allows companies for register for free through their online platform, and helps customers source businesses "involved in the fight for social justice and racial equality," according to a Saturday press release. "The context of the struggle for social justice and racial equity calls for organized actions to build capacity among minority groups who are more prone to suffer the consequences of racial and / or ethnic discrimination," the release read. The site was launched in Winnipeg, though businesses worldwide can be added to the listings at buytoempower.org. Those looking for somewhere to eat or shop can browse an interactive map to find profiles of each business and leave feedback after they visit. Black Owned Manitoba is another service also directing shoppers to locally owned enterprises. Close

For the restaurant, Sunday marked a new checkpoint in the gradual return to normalcy as the province entered the third phase of its reopening plan, further easing back pandemic restrictions. Under the new guidelines, restaurants are allowed to operate at full capacity, though tables must stay either two-metres apart from each other or separated by barriers.

Every other table at Stellas was marked as reserved, leaving enough room for physical distancing between groups, though no barriers were up in the space.

For patrons, the cleaning regimen and distanced tables were enough for the space to feel safe for a sit down meal. Grime and Gebru had been frequenting patios for their weekend get togethers, but were happy to start dining-in again, noting that the tables had been wiped right before their arrival and they felt comfortable with the spacing of the seating.

"I think weve been so suppressed for so long that at some point you do need to go out and get some fresh air," Gebru said.

Still, for some restaurants the change in rules wont make much of a difference in day-to-day operations. Several restaurants  which were slammed with Fathers Day brunch crowds  told the Free Press Sunday that they hadnt been able to buy dividers for the Phase 3 kickoff, and some added they werent planning on spending the extra cash to get them.

At Falafel Place in Corydon, reaching full capacity is impossible while still following physical distancing rules, said manager Jarrett Bargen.

"For a little restaurant like us, nothing will change because we have only seven tables set up and theyre two metres apart or more, but we cant just logistically fit any more tables in here with that amount of space," Bargen said Sunday.

Bargen said business was steady Sunday  as is tradition for the restaurant on Fathers Day  but some groups werent able to be accommodated during peak times thanks to the table-spacing requirements, meaning a slight hit in the days total income.

"Were very thankful to the customers for being so loyal but it definitely hurts people sitting in," Bargen said.

"There was a couple groups that were waiting for maybe 10 minutes and they just had to leave today because with only seven tables there was a little bit of a line. Its hard to seat everybody without them turning away if they dont want to wait."

Installing plexiglass dividers to set up more booths isnt something Bargen has considered yet, due in part to the cost and in part to the quick turnaround between the provinces announcement and the start of phase three.

"For some restaurants maybe, the bigger ones with more overhead capital, but for us that doesnt seem like its going to be a thing," Bargen said of the dividers feasibility.

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.

Restaurants arent the only businesses getting closer to normal this week; non-smoking bingo halls and video lottery terminal lounges can also open for the first time in months, at 50 per cent capacity. Daycare centres and retail stores can return to normal capacity, and people arriving in Manitoba from the other western provinces, northern territories and northwestern Ontario no longer have to self-isolate for 14 days.

Larger public gatherings are also allowed. Instead of a cap of 25 people indoors and 50 people outdoors, people can fill up to 30 per cent of the capacity of any venue as long as they can be split into groups of 50 indoors or 100 outdoors. Each group must be able to enter and exit separately.

Manitoba health officials reported that no new cases of COVID-19 had been reported as of Sunday morning, keeping the number of cases in Manitoba at 313. Last week, 10 cases of COVID-19 were detected in the province.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

with files from Laurie Bailey
Speculation is rife that a major retailer is getting ready to occupy the vacant former Lidl supermarket building in Kildare town.

The former foodstore and car park on Hospital Street became empty late last year when the German discount chain moved to a larger of 2,192 square metre premises across the road in the old Magee Barracks site.

The building and grounds were being refurbished in recent weeks after construction workers could return to sites after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.

Locals have speculated that a retailer such as discount chain Dealz may set up an outlet there.

The retailer already has stores in Newbridge, Naas and Athy. A spokesperson for Dealz has not yet responded to a press query on the issue.

Local politicians had urged Kildare County Council to rent the former Lidl building for community use.

The German discount foodstore leased the building and its car park from a landlord.

Mayor of Kildare, Cllr Suzanne Doyle previously said the site may suit a youth centre or a bowling alley.
By May Masangkay, KYODO NEWS - Jun 22, 2020 - 10:20 | Feature, All, Japan, Coronavirus

At this time of year Kohei Ogatsu would normally be spending his days busily preparing for the fireworks festivals that are a summer staple in Japan.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed all that.

Around 80 percent of the displays due to have taken place during the peak season for pyrotechnics have been canceled, and that spells trouble for people like Ogatsu, the 38-year-old director of the Tokyo-based Marutamaya Ogatsu Fireworks Co.

"We are facing tough times," he said. "Basically, unless we launch fireworks, we have no revenues."

Ogatsu, whose family business dates back to 1864 and who participates in the popular Sumida river fireworks display in Tokyo as well as overseas shows, is not alone.

According to the Japan Pyrotechnics Association, about half of its 320 members have suspended their operations.

Haruyuki Kono, the association's senior executive director, said the industry finds itself in "an extremely difficult situation." He cites not only the cancellation of so many summer events--a number that could yet rise further--but also suggests the outlook is not good for the fireworks displays that were rescheduled for the fall to make way for the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics originally planned for this summer.

In the face of these difficulties, Ogatsu and 10 other colleagues from the industry recently decided to organize a surprise event that briefly lit up the skies around Japan.

On June 1, they set off fireworks simultaneously in Tokyo and other locations for five minutes, but with little prior notice so as to avoid drawing crowds of spectators.

Designed to raise spirits as the nation struggled with the coronavirus pandemic, the idea recalled Japan's first-ever fireworks event, which was held in 1733 following an outbreak of cholera to pray for the souls of those who died and for an end to the disease.

Ogatsu will be joining a similar project later this summer organized by a group based in the Akita Prefecture city of Daisen, home to the annual Omagari fireworks contest, one of the industry's major crowd-pullers.

Shinji Togashi of organizer Hanabi Support Project said the initiative has several purposes -- to cheer up and inspire the public amid the pandemic, give a boost to the struggling fireworks or "hanabi" industry, and preserve the art and culture of Japanese fireworks.

This event will see fireworks launched simultaneously at locations around the country for a 10-minute period on a given day in August, but with the date, time and venues kept secret.

The project has turned to crowdfunding to help pay for the displays and support the pyrotechnics industry reeling from the impact of the virus. Those who contribute will receive edited footage of the event, among other rewards.

As of mid June, 81 fireworks makers and other businesses from 29 of Japan's 47 prefectures have said they will participate in the event.

"Fireworks give us comfort, hope and strength, as well as the will to carry on for tomorrow," Togashi, 55, said.

"It is now our turn to encourage the fireworks businesses," he added.

Related coverage:

Japan skies lit up with fireworks to brighten mood amid coronavirus

Japan firework displays, other summer events canceled due to coronavirus

Summer festival virus cancellations deal blow to local Japan areas
Vladimir Putin has defended his decision to reset constitutional term limits, claiming that the alternative would undermine the normal rhythm of government.

People would begin prowling for possible successors, the Russian president said on Sunday. We need to work, not look for successors.

Speaking in an extended interview on Russian state television, Mr Putin said he had not made any decision about his future and did not exclude the prospect of running for election for the fifth time: We will see, things will be clearer later.

This week sees the start of nationwide voting on constitutional amendments, technically already passed, that would enable Russias long-time leader to rule until 2036. The vote had been scheduled for April 22, but was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Opponents of the changes accuse the Kremlin of orchestrating a constitutional coup and removing the possibility of a transfer of power.

The Kremlin on its part appears to be uncharacteristically nervous about the way the vote is heading.

Most official literature concerning the vote has played down the main amendment  the resetting of term limits  and has concentrated instead on populist changes about faith in God and marriage as the union of man and woman.

Posters advertising the vote urge voters to say yes to the future  and depict happy, young, heterosexual families.

At one point, the official voting website even omitted any mention of the crucial resetting clause. Mr Putins spokesperson later attributed the oversight to a technical error.

Even before the appearance of the coronavirus, Mr Putins poll ratings were at historical lows. Since then, the presidents faltering crisis management  and the absence of any real financial assistance  has added to perceptions of him being cut off from his ordinary Russians.

Levada Centre, an independent polling organisation, now suggests that only 59 per cent of Russians retain trust in the president. That number falls to 29 per cent when people are offered the chance to name other politicians in an open question designed to imitate a free process.

A new poll published last week on attitudes to the presidents rescheduled Second World War parade also indicated that Mr Putins electoral base, the so-called Putin majority, is cracking. Overall, an overwhelming majority (more than 70 per cent) disagreed with the premise of continuing with a military parade in the middle of the pandemic. The number was highest (89 per cent) in Mr Putins traditionally most loyal group of those aged 75 and over.

Given the stakes at play, few believe that the upcoming contest will be entirely fair.

Already there are reports of voter fraud. Last week, a journalist at the liberal Dozhd television station exposed a scheme to register elderly Muscovites for electronic voting without their knowledge. Organisers were reportedly ready to pay 75 roubles (87p) per account registered, and 50 roubles per vote cast, the journalist revealed.

Russian authorities responded to the vote-buying claims by sending anti-extremism officers to the stations Moscow studios late on Wednesday night.

Russias opposition is split between those calling for a boycott of the vote  and those agitating to vote against.

Those choosing the latter can face hostile receptions. On Sunday, two activists were assaulted in St Petersburg as they put up posters arguing against the constitutional changes. Their unidentified assailants apparently explained their behaviour by claiming they were for Putin and against traitors.

One of the activists came away with several serious injuries, including bleeding within the skull.
BJP numbers in Rajya Sabha: NDA is now comfortably placed

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: The NDA is now comfortably placed in the Rajya Sabha after the biennial election as the BJP's strong numbers in the assemblies and defection from the Opposition resulted in the saffron party having 86 seats in the House and the Congress merely 41.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) now has nearly 100 members in the 245-member House. If the support of friendly parties like the AIADMK (9), BJD (9), YSR Congress Party (6), and several allied nominated members and smaller parties is counted, then the Modi government is unlikely to face any serious numerical challenge there.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

Gujarat Rajya Sabha Polls: BJP bags 3 out of 4 seats

The Election Commission had announced biennial polls to 61 seats, including 55 in March, but the process was delayed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

With 42 members elected unopposed earlier, the Bharatiya Janata Party won eight, Congress and the YSR Congress four each and others three of the 19 seats that went to polls on Friday.

The BJP won a couple of more seats than it could have on the strength of its numbers because of defection from several Congress legislators in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

In total, the BJP won 17, Congress nine, BJP ally JDU three, BJD and the TMC four each, AIADMK and DMK three each, NCP, RJD and the TRS two each, and others rest, official sources said.

The crumbling strength of the Opposition, whose key pillars include the Congress, TMC and the Left, has been evident since last year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the BJP to its biggest ever victory as it bagged 303 seats in Lok Sabha election.

It prompted a host of defections from the Opposition, including Rajya Sabha members of the Congress, TDP and the Samajwadi Party, to the BJP, and many non-NDA regional parties chose to back the government in Parliament on crucial issues.

The Congress has accused the BJP of horse-trading, alleging that it had engineered defections from its ranks for political gains.

The government managed big support in Parliament to its resolution to nullify Article 370 and key bills like the bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into Union territories and criminal prosecution for instant divorce by Muslim men.

The contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was also passed in both the Houses.

Out of the 61 new members, 43 are first-timers, which include BJP's Jyotiraditya Scindia and Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress. Both have been members of Lok Sabha, but lost in elections in 2019.

Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and former Lok Sabha deputy speaker M Thambi Durai have also been elected to Rajya Sabha.

The legislative agenda of the Modi government in its first term was often hampered in Parliament due to the Opposition's numerical superiority in the Upper House, and the Congress had more numbers than the BJP in first few years.

BJP bags 11 of 24 in RS polls: NDA breaches 100 mark in Upper House

However, the BJP's impressive gains in the assembly elections, coupled with the Congress losing power in several states, resulted in slow but steady rise in the government's numbers in the House.

Though the below-par show of the BJP in state selections since 2018 has also meant that its goal of gaining a majority on its own in the Rajya Sabha remains far from being achieved.
As Mumbai battles increasing coronavirus cases, the city is faced with a new problem. According to scanty rainfall, lakes and dams that provide drinking water to the city are left with limited stock for few days. However, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has said that they are expecting a good monsoon season and urged citizens not to panic.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, the water stock of the city is only 10.68 per cent of the total stock. And, in all seven lakes, the drinking water stock was at 1.54 lakh litres, while the total storage capacity is 14.47 lakh litres. However, the civic body has assured that there would be no water cuts. BMC supplies 3,750 million litres of water daily against the city's demand for 4,200 million litres.

As per BMC's report on Sunday, Modak Sagar has 25 per cent of water stock available, Tansa has 11.37 per cent, Middle Vaitarna 14.23 per cent, Bhatsa 9.72 per cent, Vihar 22.27 per cent and Tulsi has 30.64 per cent of useful water level. Upper Vaitarna has no useful water stock left.

It must be noted that Bhatsa makes up for 50 per cent of the water supply to the city. Middle Vaitarna, Upper Vaitarna, and Modak Sagar make up for 37 per cent of the water supply, and Tansa 10 per cent, Vihar 2 per cent and Tulsi makes up 1 per centof the total water supply. All these lakes are located in Thane and Palghar districts while their catchment areas are in Nashik, Thane and Palghar districts.

Last year, the seven lakes - Upper Vaitarna, Middle Vaitarna, Modak Sagar, Tansa, Bhatsa, Vihar, and Tulsi - collectively had 82,829 litres of water (5.72 per cent). However, this year's stock is less than 13.09 per cent recorded in 2018 at the same time.
French conservationists have warned masks and gloves are ending up in the Mediterranean Sea in growing numbers amid widespread usage of protective gear due to coronavirus pandemic.

Non-profit organisation Operation Mer Propre said its scuba divers had found increased evidence of discarded protective equipment during sea-cleaning operations recent months.

The organisation retrieved dozens of masks in total but said the discoveries pointed to a worrying wider trend if using disposable plastics and other items which are detrimental to the environment to tackle the pandemic.

The group has posted photographs of its dives and the rubbish it found in the hope of highlighting the potential for further damage to the natural world.

Laurent Lombard, a member of Operation Mer Propre, pointed to the fact the French government had ordered more than 2 billion masks.

Writing on Facebook he said: Knowing that more than 2 billion disposable masks have been ordered, soon there will be more masks than jellyfish in the waters of the Mediterranean!

He added: It is the responsibility of everyone to avoid this new pollution but also our elected officials, MPs and public authorities.

It might be time to unite all the right initiatives to solve this new pollution as quickly and firmly.

The health crisis has allowed us to see the best and worst in us, if we do nothing its the worst that will happen when its simply a matter of common sense to avoid all of this.

Joffrey Peltier who is also a member of the organisation told The Guardian: Its the promise of pollution to come if nothing is done.

With all the alternatives, plastic isnt the solution to protect us from Covid. Thats the message.

French politicians have also voiced concern over the waste resulting from dealing with the pandemic.

Eric Pauget, who represents the department of Alpes-Maritimes, which includes the Cote dAzur, wrote last month to French president Emmanuel Macron, warning masks often contain plastics such as polypropylene.

The presence of a potentially contaminating virus on the surface of these masks thrown on the ground, represents a serious health threat for public cleaners and children who could accidentally touch them, he wrote.

In addition, the friable polypropylene nanoparticles making up these masks which protect humans, risk lastingly affecting our ecosystems and their biodiversity.

He added: It is the extent of this environmental pollution which must alert us, because these masks passing from sidewalks in streams, will inevitably end up in nature or in the sea. Besides, with a lifespan 450 years, this equipment constitutes a veritable ecological time bomb given their lasting environmental consequences for our planet.
Advertisement

Incredible photographs have captured the moment a sea lion gave a surfer a helping hand in catching a wave.

Nick Thake, from Perth, Australia, took the images showing a sea lion nudging a surfer with its flipper as it jumped out of the water and tried to get involved.

The 37-year-old visited North Beach last week hoping to get an image of the surf when he accidentally snapped the mischievous sea lion that breached the water during one of the shots.

Photographer Nick Thake, from Perth, Australia, took the images showing a sea lion nudging a surfer with its flipper as he tries to catch the wave

The seal successfully taps the surfer, pushing him forward and the sea lion swims off in the other direction. The pictured were taken at a beach in Perth, Australia

Nick, who also works as a marine scientist, couldn't believe his luck when he reviewed his images to find the sneaky sea lion making its hilarious appearance.

He said: 'That day I went down to the beach to get out of the house, and as always I had a camera in hand knowing I might capture a surf shot with the swell forecasted.

'The image set shows the surfers catching waves, and on one set they had an unexpected visitor being an Australian sea lion. Due to the angle of the shot, I have a feeling the surfers were oblivious to the sea lion even when it was mid air!

Nick had headed out with his camera to capture some surf shots because there had been a swell forecasted, but he was shocked to find out he had captured the incredible moment

Photographer Nick Thake, 37, from Perth, Australia, shooting above the ocean in a helicopter. Nick also works as a marine scientist

'The best thing about these sea lion images is that I didn't know I had them until I was reviewing them at home and nearly fell off my chair when editing!

'An encounter with a sea lion is often an amazing experience, especially when diving.

'Sea lions are curious creatures and will not hesitate coming in for a closer look.

'On the other hand a breach from the water like this has the potential to reflect a defensive swimming manoeuvre to avoid larger predators being sharks.

'But after checking the shark alerts for that area and time, there were no sightings that day so we can put this down to playful nature!'
A college professor has been placed on administrative leave after he requested a student anglicise her name because it sounded like an insult in English.

Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, was attending her second day of classes as a freshman at Laney College in Oakland, California, when she received an email from her trigonometry professor, Matthew Hubbard.

In the email, Hubbard asked that Nguyen anglicise her name to something more English-sounding.

According to Nguyen, the term was one shed never heard before, so she first had to Google it before she could respond.

I never heard that before. At that moment I was surprised, so I Googled the meaning  I didnt know what it meant so I called my best friend to ask him what does that mean? Nguyen told ABC7 News KGO, adding that she has experienced many people ask her how to pronounce her name after struggling with it.

Recommended School board member criticised for shopping during Robert E Lee debate

Hubbard, she said, was being an ignorant person and not trying to learn my name.

Rather than change her name, the college freshman told her professor that his request was discriminatory and that she would file a complaint with the Title IX Office if he would not call her by her birth name  prompting him to send another email in which he again requested that she change her name on the basis that it is an offensive sound in my language.

Your name in English sounds like f*** boy, Hubbard responded, according to a screenshot of his email shared with KGO. The professor also said that if the situation were reversed, he would change his name to avoid embarrassment both on my part and on the part of the people who had to say it.

I understand you are offended, but you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language, he continued. I repeat my request.

Following the exchange, Laney College issued a statement in which it said it was aware of allegations of racist and xenophobic messages from a faculty member and that the faculty member had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

On the surface this incident is obviously disturbing and comes after decades of discussing and working to combat structural racism, xenophobia, and violence in both the Black and Asian Pacific Islander community, the statement, also posted on the colleges website, continued. While our mission has been bold and unrelenting, we also recognise that our college and its community is a reflection of broader society and we must actively fight ignorance with education. We do not tolerate racism, discrimination or oppression of any kind.

According to KGO, Hubbard issued an apology for his behaviour on Twitter, before later removing his account.

His apology reportedly read: I apologise for my insensitive actions which caused pain and anger to my student, and which have now caused pain and anger to an untold number of people who read my two inappropriate emails on the internet.

The Independent has contacted Laney College for comment.
RABAT, Morocco - Amnesty International said Monday that sophisticated telephone surveillance software appears to have been used to spy on a journalist-activist in Morocco, in a continuing crackdown on dissent in the North African kingdom.

The global rights watchdog said the intrusion continued despite a pledge by the Israeli company behind the malware to abide by a set of human rights principles.

In a report, Amnesty said forensic analysis it carried out on the cellphone of Omar Radi indicated that his communications were monitored from January 2019 using technology developed by Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group.

Radi gained prominence last year after he was arrested for a tweet that defended anti-government protesters.

Radi was subsequently put on trial in March this year, accused of insulting a judge with his tweet that slammed prison sentences handed down to protest leaders. Radi was handed a four-month suspended jail sentence and a $50 fine.

Radi was also part of Arab Spring demonstrations in Morocco in 2011 that protested corruption, abuse of power and limits on free speech, and he has since continued to defend human rights.

Amnesty said the surveillance methods it believes were used to spy on Radis phone require either physical proximity to the targets or leverage over mobile operators in the country which only a government could authorize.

Because of this, and the continued targeting of Moroccan human rights defenders, we believe Moroccan authorities to be responsible, Amnesty said.

A government spokesman and the governments centre that monitors IT attacks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

NSO has come under fire for selling its surveillance software to repressive governments that use it against dissidents. It doesnt disclose clients, but they are believed to include Middle Eastern and Latin American states. A Saudi dissident has accused NSO of involvement in Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggis killing in 2018. The company says it sells its technology to Israeli-approved governments to help them stop militants and criminals.

The company is also embroiled in legal battles over the spyware. In Israel, Amnesty is asking a court to revoke the companys export license, preventing it from selling its contentious product abroad, particularly to regimes that could use it for malicious purposes. Last year, Facebook sued the company in U.S. federal court for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service WhatsApp with highly sophisticated spyware.

Amid the backlash, the company said in September that it would institute a series of oversight measures to ensure adherence and would henceforth evaluate potential clients past human rights performance.

But Amnesty said Radis phone had been targeted just three days after NSO made its human rights commitment and continued into this year.

NSO Groups flagship malware, called Pegasus, allows spies to effectively take control of phones remotely. Most notably, its spyware was implicated in the gruesome 2018 killing of Khashoggi.

Amnestys report said NSO Group tools are being used in support of Moroccan governments efforts to persecute people for free expression and clamp down on dissent.

NSO responded with a statement that said we take any claim of misuse seriously.

We shall immediately review the information provided and initiate an investigation if warranted, it said.

___

AP journalists John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem, contributed to this report.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rennova Health, Inc. (OTC: RNVA), (OTC: RNVAW) (Rennova or the Company), a vertically integrated provider of industry-leading diagnostics and supportive software solutions to healthcare providers that has transitioned its core business from diagnostics to rural hospital ownership over the past three years, announces that on June 22 it has opened Knoxville TN based offices for its wholly owned subsidiary Rennova Community Health, Inc. to oversee and manage all hospital and physician office operations in Tennessee and Kentucky.



The Company has appointed Michael Alexander, FACHE as COO of hospital operations in Rennova Community Health, Inc. Mr. Alexander is a highly accomplished and experienced Operations Executive specialized in hospital administration and healthcare operations. Prior to joining Rennova Health Mr. Alexander spent 10 years as Hospital Administrator with Tanner Health Systems in Georgia, where he managed overall operations of a 25-bed joint commission-accredited Critical Access Hospital with over $98 million in revenue and over 22,000 ED visits per year. Mr. Alexander has a B.S. in Psychology from Troy University, Troy, Alabama, and an M.S. in Community Counseling from Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia.

We believe the opening of an office in Knoxville, local to our operations will make it easier to attract the management team and employees we require to centralize a number of services like financial management, revenue cycle management and purchasing that can be centralized and shared by our various locations said Seamus Lagan, CEO of Rennova Health, Inc. Centralizing these management services is a key component of our business strategy to own and operate a cluster of rural hospitals.

I look forward to implementing the efficiencies and oversight that are required to ensure our operations are sustainable and grow said Michael Alexander, COO of Rennova Community Health, Inc. I also look forward to us reopening our Jamestown hospital and believe the decision to open a Knoxville based office demonstrates the commitment from Rennova to be a long term provider of health care services in the eastern Tennessee area.

About Rennova Health, Inc.

Rennova operates three rural hospitals and a physicians office in Tennessee and a physicians office in Kentucky and provides industry-leading diagnostics and supportive software solutions to healthcare providers. Through an ever-expanding group of strategic brands that work in unison to empower customers, we are creating the next generation of healthcare. For more information, please visit www.rennovahealth.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from expectations and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Words such as expect, estimate, project, budget, forecast, anticipate, intend, plan, may, will, could, should, believes, predicts, potential, continue, and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors are contained in the Companys most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company does not undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in their expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.

Contacts:

Rennova Health

Sebastien Sainsbury, 561-666-9818

ssainsbury@rennovahealth.com







# # #
A fresh general election cannot be ruled out if the proposed three-way coalition pact is rejected this week, Tanaiste Simon Coveney has warned.

The Fine Gael deputy leader also confirmed the annual 7% greenhouse gas emissions reduction, as agreed in the pact, is unlikely to be reached every year.

Instead, Mr Coveney set out how long term carbon emission cuts in different sectors would lay the ground for that yearly 7% target to be met by 2030.

The remarks come as thousands of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Green members vote by postal ballot this week ahead of a significant result on Friday. The Greens face the biggest challenge, with the potential minority coalition party needing some two thirds to pass the deal.

Mr Coveney addressed claims that there will be a political crisis if any of the parties do not ratify the deal on Friday.

Certainly there is going to be huge political uncertainty.

He told RTE there are also a number of independents TDs who he thought would support the three parties.

Nonetheless, proposed meetings with independents have been put on hold, after a number said there was no point meeting ahead of the coalition pact vote. Others are still awaiting contact from party negotiators.

However, when pressed about whether there could be a snap election if the deal falls, Mr Coveney said: We can't rule out anything.

He also confirmed he told Fine Gael at the weekend that the coalition annual 7% greenhouse gas emission target is not likely to be met every year.

What's in this programme for government is clearly to set a trajectory to lay the foundations for that kind of change over the first five years, which will significantly increase the reduction of carbon from where it is today.

"But it is unlikely in my view in the first few years to reach the 7% but it will lay the foundation to make sure we will go beyond the 7% in the second five years so that we deliver what we committed to which is an average 7% over the next ten years.

That doesn't mean 7% every year. It sometimes means more, sometimes less.

It would take years to increase offshore wind, he said, to plant more forestry, to wet bogs and to have thousands of more electric vehicles on Irish roads.

Meanwhile, outgoing Climate Minister Richard Bruton said a policy statement about the use of fracked gas will be made by the next government, something he does not want to pre-empt.
The United States and Russia on June 22 opened two days of talks on their last remaining nuclear arms control, the New START treaty, which caps the number of deployed long-range nuclear warheads each can have.



The top U.S. arms control negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov headed the delegations in Vienna, with little prospect of an imminent agreement on New START, which expires in February 2021.



Russia has called for an extension of the accord limiting Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals to 1,550 deployed long-range nuclear warheads each.



However, Washington has said that its bilateral arms control agreements with Moscow are outdated and that it wants Beijing to be included in any future agreements on nuclear weapons.



China has repeatedly rejected attempts to get it to join the talks. While the country has been expanding its nuclear arsenal, it is still far smaller than the U.S. and Russian programs.



Russia's UN envoy in the Austrian capital, Mikhail Ulyanov, tweeted just before 7 p.m. local time that the meeting in Vienna had ended, adding: "Official comments will follow."

Both Billingslea and Ryabkov were guarded in their statements as they arrived for the discussions.



"We'll see," the U.S. envoy said when asked what he expected to come of the talks. He declined to elaborate on their content.



Ryabkov was equally cautious, telling reporters, "Let's see, let's see. We are always very hopeful."



Ahead of the talks, Billingslea posted on Twitter a photo of Chinese flags at empty chairs at the Vienna negotiating table.



"China is a no-show. Beijing still hiding behind 'Great Wall of Secrecy' on its crash nuclear build-up, and so many other things. We will proceed with Russia, notwithstanding," he wrote.

On June 20, Ryabkov told Interfax that Russia has run out of arguments for extending the pact but will still raise the idea.

"We have repeatedly explained to the Americans why we think a decision in favor of an extension is right," he said at the time. "We won't find any more arguments for what we have already told them many times. Of course, we will use the opportunity to remind of our position."

While Russia would consider it "right and logical" to extend New START, "by and large this treaty is not everything," Ryabkov told Interfax.



Moscow, however, has repeatedly warned of the danger of a new arms race if the treaty is not renewed.

Ultimately, it will be up to what U.S. President Donald Trump's government decides, he added.

Trump has pulled out of or let expire a number of international agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Iran nuclear deal. But his administration has voiced a general interest in preserving New START.

Russia, whose nuclear arsenal is a key element of power while it is vastly outspent on defense by the United States, says it wants to ensure parity with Washington.

It also wants a broader discussion with Washington on arms control, including on U.S. threats to resume nuclear tests after a suspension of nearly three decades.

Last month, Billingslea accused Moscow of modernizing thousands of "nonstrategic" nuclear weapons that fall outside of the New START treaty.

"They have adopted a highly provocative nuclear doctrine that embraces early escalation and use of nuclear weapons," he said, calling for any successor treaty to put more Russian arms under monitoring.

With reporting by AFP, Interfax, and dpa




By Jung Min-ho







The government will strengthen visa and entry restrictions for visitors from Pakistan and Bangladesh after reporting a surge in new COVID-19 cases imported from the two Asian countries.





Under the precautionary measures, set to come into force Tuesday, authorities will not issue new visas to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis except for diplomatic and urgent business purposes. Authorities will also suspend flights from the countries.





Health Minister Park Neung-hoo made the announcement Sunday, two days after 31 people were confirmed here to have contracted the coronavirus overseas. Pakistan accounts for 16 cases, followed by Bangladesh (7).





"A rise in imported cases increases the burden on quarantine and treatment capacities here," Park told reporters. "We will continue to keep an eye on the situations in other countries to control the spread of the virus effectively."





The government will also thoroughly check whether E-9 visa holders have places for a 14-day mandatory self-quarantine here before arrival. Those who fail to meet the requirement may not be allowed in.





According to the government, the daily number of foreign arrivals increased to around 1,300 in recent days, up from 1,000 in April.




When you need to warm up, what's your favorite winter comfort food?
PORTLAND, OR - Black patients are better represented in taxpayer-funded clinical trials testing new cancer treatments compared to trials run by pharmaceutical companies - although black patients are not fully represented in cancer clinical trials, regardless of sponsor.

These are results of a study conducted by SWOG Cancer Research Network, a member of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN), the oldest and largest publicly-funded cancer trial network in the United States. For more than 60 years, SWOG and other NCTN groups have run thousands of trials that enroll about 20,000 patients each year. The results are published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum, and will be presented as a poster in the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting II held June 22-24.

Formerly known as the NCI Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, the NCTN is comprised of more than 2,200 cancer centers, academic medical centers, and community hospitals across the U.S. and around the world. The network plays an integral role in establishing the standard of care for cancer patients by testing new treatments, from chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical interventions to the new wave of immunotherapies and personalized drugs based on patients' unique genetic profiles. A companion network, the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP), runs prevention and cancer care delivery trials, and includes community and rural hospitals in its network, including sites with significant minority and underserved patient populations. About 25 percent of all NCORP trial volunteers are racial and ethnic minorities. Both NCTN and NCORP trials are designed by doctors, paid for with public funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the NCI, and powered by patient volunteers.

Joseph Unger, PhD, a SWOG biostatistician and health services researcher based at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, specializes in cancer disparities research with a focus on the impacts of insurance status, race and ethnicity, and income on health outcomes. For this study, Unger compared black enrollment in NCI-sponsored trials and industry-sponsored trials.

"It's a critical question," Unger said. "Trials are an important way - sometimes the only way - for cancer patients to receive potentially breakthrough drugs. Everyone can get cancer, so everyone should have the same access to investigational cancer treatments. In addition, it's very important from a scientific standpoint to evaluate new treatments in patients who reflect the demographics of the general cancer population."

To conduct the study, Unger and his team used three databases. One was the SWOG trials database, used as a proxy to estimate the rate of participation among NCI trials. In addition, Unger's colleagues - led by Kanwal P.S. Raghav, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center and Jonathan M. Loree, MD of BC Cancer - created a database of pharmaceutical company sponsored trials that supported new drug applications and included data on trial participation by race. Finally, the team used data from the NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program, as well as data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, to estimate the expected rate of black participation in the cancers they studied.

Unger and his team analyzed data from a total of 358 trials - 85 industry trials and 273 SWOG trials - that enrolled 93,825 patients being treated for 15 different cancer types. Enrollments spanned the years 2003-2018. The findings: In those 15 cancers, the rate of black enrollment in industry trials was 3 percent, compared to 9 percent in SWOG trials and 12 percent in the corresponding U.S. cancer population, according to the team's estimates.

"This study confirmed that black cancer patients are severely underrepresented in pharmaceutical company sponsored trials, with fewer than one in four of the expected number enrolled," Unger said. "Black representation in industry trials was also far below that of NCTN trials, with only one black patient enrolled for every three enrolled in NCTN trials."

These results can inform policy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in partnership with AACR, is examining ways to improve representation of black patients in FDA registration trials. Registration trials are specially designed studies conducted with the expectation that the data they produce will be used to apply to the FDA for new drug approval, or to expand the uses of a currently approved cancer drug. Unger serves on this FDA and AACR task force.

"NCI sponsored trials have a broader mandate," Unger said. "They reach beyond just the major cancer centers to serve patients in a more diverse community-based clinical setting. This could serve as a model for pharma trials aiming to increase representativeness of all patients."

Unger's study was funded by the National Institutes of Health through National Cancer Institute grant award CA189974 and CA189873 and in part by The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research and the Michael Smith Health Professional Investigator program.

Unger's research team included Dawn Hershman, MD, of Columbia University; Raymond U. Osarogiagbon MD, of Baptist Cancer Center; Anirudh Gothwal, of Baylor University; Seerat Anand MBBS, of MD Anderson Cancer Center; Arvind Dasari MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center; Michael Overman MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center; Jonathan M. Loree MD, of BC Cancer; and Kanwal Raghav, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

SWOG Cancer Research Network is part of the National Cancer Institute's National Clinical Trials Network and the NCI Community Oncology Research Program, and is part of the oldest and largest publicly-funded cancer research network in the nation. SWOG has nearly 12,000 members in 47 states and six foreign countries who design and conduct clinical trials to improve the lives of people with cancer. SWOG trials have led to the approval of 14 cancer drugs, changed more than 100 standards of cancer care, and saved more than 3 million years of human life. Learn more at swog.org.

###
Listen each weekday for chances to enter our drawing for a total of $2,500 in fuel: $500 each from Holiday Station Store, Ezzie's Midtown Conoco, Ag-land Co-op in Glasgow, Ezzie's Westend Conoco, and Fort Peck Marina.

You must be a licensed driver to be eligible and you may only enter the drawing once. Everyone who gets in also wins a liter of Pepsi!

Well draw for the five $500 certificates for fuel on Friday, July 30th
By mid-March, coronavirus response efforts were underway worldwide. President Donald Trump had declared a national emergency. France was in lockdown. And Japanese public schools were closed.

But schools on American military bases in Japan planned to remain open, much to the dismay of nervous parents. Then the news appeared in Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-subsidized but editorially independent newspaper that covers the U.S. armed forces at home and abroad. "School is such an easy place for viruses and germs to spread," one Navy spouse fretted to the publication, "and it seems like too much of a risk." A day later, closures were announced.

Stars and Stripes has been chronicling the military angle of the covid-19 crisis for months now: sailors infected on Navy ships, face masks purchased for the Department of Defense workforce, stimulus checks cut for veterans. But in the midst of the pandemic, the newspaper faces an unprecedented threat all its own: In February, the Trump administration proposed eliminating all of the publication's federal support in 2021. That's more than $15 million a year, about half its budget. "I can't think of a graver threat to its independence," the paper's ombudsman, Ernie Gates, told me recently. "That's a fatal cut."

Defense Secretary Mark Esper justifies the cut by saying the publication's money should be spent on "higher-priority issues," including space and nuclear programs. But considering that Stars and Stripes represents a minuscule fraction of the department's $705 billion budget - "decimal dust," as editorial director Terry Leonard puts it - critics see the proposal as consistent with the president's broader war on journalism. "It's another obnoxious assault by the Trump administration on freedom of the press," says Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a Marine veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, who blasts the defunding plan as "un-American."

Now Moulton's committee - and ultimately the rest of Congress - must decide whether to support the appropriation by the fall, preserving a news organization with a unique civic role. This deliberation comes as the coronavirus economic crisis exacerbates the news industry's financial woes, adding to what The Washington Post recently described as a "tsunami of layoffs, cutbacks, furloughs and closures" washing over American newsrooms.

Stars and Stripes, which dates back to the Civil War, has published continuously since World War II. In 2010, the paper won a prestigious George Polk Award for revealing the Defense Department's use of a public relations firm that profiled reporters and steered them toward favorable coverage of the war in Afghanistan. In 2015, the publication broke the news that NBC anchor Brian Williams had exaggerated a story about his reporting in Iraq. Much of the day-to-day coverage is news of direct concern to service members and their families: pay and benefits, life on base and in the field, the real people behind the global geopolitics.

The paper is a modern multimedia operation with a website, a social media presence and a couple of podcasts, and the print edition reaches troops in parts of the world where internet access is absent. "I remember being in al-Anbar and Haditha and picking up Stars and Stripes in the middle of a war zone," says Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., one of Moulton's committee colleagues and a fellow Marine veteran. "I didn't have a cellphone. Access to the internet was very limited. But with every mail delivery there came a Stars and Stripes, and I was able to keep connected to the world."

"Stars and Stripes kept our spirits up and kept us informed at some of the most difficult times," says Moulton, who served four tours of duty in Iraq. "Just knowing they were out there doing their job - looking out for us by doggedly pursuing the truth - gave us more faith in our work and reinforced the values we were literally putting our lives on the line for."

The paper's publisher, Max Lederer says, "You can give a service member the best gun in the world, but if his mind is elsewhere - if he's worried about things at home - then he's not going to be as good a soldier, and part of our role is to provide that information to give him a sense of comfort."

Though the Trump administration is the first to propose defunding the paper, there has always been a natural tension between Stars and Stripes and the Pentagon. The paper's editorial staffers are Department of Defense employees, but their charge is different from - and sometimes at odds with - that of the military's public affairs team. Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon's acting comptroller, told reporters in February, "that newspaper is probably not the best way that we communicate any longer." But that misrepresents what the paper is meant to communicate. "We're not there to provide the command message," Lederer said. "We're there to analyze the command message and to provide information necessary for the military community."

Another impediment to providing that information, Lederer said, is a Pentagon that restricts journalistic access more than under previous administrations. Fewer reporters are allowed to travel with military officials. Asking questions in informal "gaggles" is no longer routine, and formal briefings were discontinued until Esper revived them. In general, information is harder to come by, inhibiting reporters from playing their watchdog role.

But Stars and Stripes has always garnered strong bipartisan support from another Pentagon watchdog: Congress. And that looks likely to continue this year. "We have the numbers," Gallego said. "I think we have the votes."

Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, likewise opposes cutting the funding, despite asserting that "Secretary Esper is right to look for efficiencies."

"This service cannot be duplicated in the private sector and should be maintained," Thornberry said in a statement to The Post. "Ultimately, 'Stripes' should be preserved, but the business model will have to change so that the program can be maintained without taxing DOD resources." But Thornberry concedes the fundamental point: "Stars and Stripes performs a useful function for men and women in uniform, particularly those who are forward deployed with limited access to news."

As Gates puts it, "Nobody else covers the Defense Department schools in Japan."
NEW DELHI : Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar spoke to his Saudi counterpart Faisal bin Farhan on Monday, on a day the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) "upon the request of Pakistan" was to hold an emergency foreign ministers meeting on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

A warm conversation wth #Saudi FM HH Prince @FaisalbinFarhan. Gratified tht our supply chains&trade commitmnts hve been maintaind evn during #COVID period.Ensurng health needs reflcts the strngth of our ties.Appreciate the gestures mde by Saudi authorities to the Indian community," Jaishankar said in a Twitter post.

According to news reports, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Niger, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia besides Turkey were to participate in the online OIC meeting where Pakistan was hoping to bring up alleged human rights violations by the Indian government in Kashmir. Islamabad has been making many attempts to focus attention on the matter since India revoked article 370 of its constitution and integrated the region more closely with the rest of the country. The region was also bifurcated into two  Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. New Delhi had also detained many political leaders and snapped internet and other communication links in a bid to ensure Pakistan does not trigger violence. Many of the restrictions have been lifted and many of the political leaders freed.

The OIC has steadfastly supported the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their legitimate struggle for the realization of their inalienable right to self-determination. In addition to the meetings of the Contact Group, the OIC and its human rights body, IPHRC, have consistently pronounced themselves on the issue  condemning and rejecting Indias illegal and unilateral actions while reiterating support to the beleaguered people of IOJ&K (Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir)," a statement from the Pakistan foreign office on Monday said.

Since coming to office in 2014, prime minister Narendra Modi has reached out to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others in the wider Gulf region in a bid to shore up Indias economic interests  investments, diaspora as well as energy  as well as to blunt Pakistans influence in groups like the OIC. Last year, then Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was invited by the UAE to attend the foreign ministers meet of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) States  the first such invite in five decades.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!!

Topics
By Matthew Lynch, Regent College Vancouver

The U.S. Justice Department announced [last] Monday that it will resume federal executions after a hiatus of nearly two decades. The timing of this announcement in the middle of a nation-wide cry for police reform raises questions about the motives for resuming this practice.

But for many Christians, the death penalty is a biblical mandate. Many Evangelicals appeal to the Bibles supposedly clear teaching on the death penalty to defend its ongoing place in the American justice system. Genesis 9 is key here, since it seems to teach that God requires humans to take the life of a murderer in exchange for their deed (9:5-6).[2]

Before his death in 2012, Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, the nations largest Christian prison-focused non-profit, declared that he backed the death penalty on biblical grounds. Colson writes,

The Noahic covenant (Gen 9) antedates Israel and the Mosaic code; it transcends Old Testament law per se and mirrors ethical legislation binding for all cultures and eras. The sanctity of human life is rooted in the universal creation ethic and thus retains its force in society.[3]

For Colson, Genesis 9 mandates the practice of capital punishment. It is a non-negotiable standard of biblical justice, and a moral society depends on it.

But Christians have good reason to leave Colson in the cold on this one. The case rests on shaky biblical foundations.

But Christians have good reason to leave Colson in the cold on this one. The case rests on shaky biblical foundations. First, Genesis 9:5-6 does not grant humanity power to exercise life-for-life punishment. Instead, it retains that right for God alone. Unfortunately, our translations often lead us astray. Heres the NIVs:

And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

First, the thrice-repeated phrase I will  demand an accounting refers exclusively in the Old Testament to the action taken by the one dispensing justice, and not by some delegated party. It describes the action of an avengeror justice enactoragainst a perpetrator on behalf of a victim.[4] Here the avenger is God himself. Its as if God is saying, I myself will hold a murderer accountable. God doesnt outsource the dispensing of justice to other humans. This is consistent with Gods role in Genesis 4, where he acts as avenger for Cain. But in this case, his justice is proportionate, and not seven-fold (Gen 4:15).

Further, the NIVs suggestion that some other human needs to uphold the death penalty is faulty. It suggests that the murderer will have their blood shed by some other human (Gen 9:6a): by humans shall their blood be shed. But if God himself holds the murderer accountable according to the previous verse, how can this be? Permit me a technical moment. The Hebrew preposition translated for is in this case a preposition of exchange, and should be rendered in exchange for.[5] The symmetric (i.e., chiastic) arrangement of v. 6amost likely a proverb and not law [6]helps us see the nature of this exchange:

A Whoever sheds (*shafak)

B the blood (dam)

>C of the human (haadam)

>C in exchange for the human (baadam)

B his blood (dam)

A will be shed (*shafak)

The clear antecedent for the second human, mentioned in C, is the human whose life was just taken. C isnt referring to a police officer, a prison guard, or the State. Nothing in the verse suggests that God universally grants other humans the power to take the life of the perpetrator. That right lies solely in Gods hands. Genesis 9:6a is better translated: Whoever sheds the blood of a human, in exchange for that human shall his blood be shed.[7] By whom shall his blood be shed? By God. In short, Genesis 9 addresses Gods right to redress the wrongs of bloodshed in a post-flood worlda right he often refuses to exercise. It doesnt hand humans or the State power over life and death.[8] While that power is later given, for a time, to Israel, nothing in Genesis 9 suggests that this is so.

If the pre-Mosaic context of this chapter carries universal wisdom, we would be better situating Genesis 9 within the broader biblical vengeance-is-mine-not-yours tradition, since God is the sole actor here. Power over life and death belongs in Gods hands (Lev 19:18; 1 Sam 26:9-11; Rom 12:19), and were not to take it. In fact, in the same breath that Lev 19:18 prohibits revenge, it commends love for neighbor, a point that Jesus clearly recognizes. This tradition seeks to limit the human propensity to take excess vengeance, to foster neighborliness and protection for the vulnerable,[9] and to leave the avenging of murder in Gods hands.

Any teaching on the death penalty that doesnt factor in Jesus teachings (rooted in the Old Testament) should at least give us pause. In another symmetrically arranged proverb that seems to draw from Genesis 9:6a, Jesus challenges us to consider what would happen if humans did take the divine prerogatives of Genesis 9 for themselves:

A For all

B Who take a sword

B By a sword

A Will die

(Matt 26:52)

Second, the intimate ties between racial injustice and the death penalty are grounds for abandoning the practice. Recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd should force us to examine such practices. In the United States, convicted murderers are far more likely to receive the death penalty if black, and far more again if the victim is white.[10]

Location also matters. Of the nearly 1,400 individuals executed since 1976, about 1,000 occurred in southern states, where capital punishment picked up the baton of Jim Crow terror. Numerous studies have also demonstrated that the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent, is costly to the state, is arbitrarily applied, and that racial animus is a strong predictor of support for the death penalty.[11]

Whites disproportionately favor the death penalty by 34 percentage points compared to African Americans, and this number has stayed relatively similar for the past 30 years.[12] Furthermore, one in nine of those sentenced to death since 1976 have been wrongly convicted and exonerated.[13] And those are just the demonstrated cases.

Sadly, 54% of Americans still favor the death penalty (though the number has steadily declined since the 1990s). White Evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly support the death penalty, at 79%. Yet, as David Gushee notes, [N]o political community appears capable of creating a system that can adjudicate murder cases with consistency and impartial justice. Entrusting states with the routine power to kill their own people repeatedly has proven disastrous, spilling far beyond our own 140 [now 165+] errors in thirty-five years to systemic regimes of state killing.[14]

The injustice of capital punishment as a practice should be enough to abandon the practice, in addition to the deeply problematic reading of Genesis 9. While Genesis 9 is not the only plank in the biblical case for capital punishment, its a big one.[15] For Christians who affirm that Black Lives Matter, and that thinking biblically matters, that plank needs to come out.[16]

Thanks to Dru Johnson and Iain Provan for feedback on this article.

[2] See discussion in Norman L Geisler, Christian Ethics: Contemporary Issues and Options (Baker Academic, 2010), 202, 215.

[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-i-support-capital-punishment/. Accessed 06/10/2020.

[4] Whenever "blood" is "sought" (with Heb. *drsh or *bqsh), it describes the action of a deliverer who pursues the victim's blood by means of taking the perpetrator's life. In plain terms, it describes the action of an avenger toward a perpetrator on behalf of a victim. The phrase from the hand of (miyyad) expresses the source (from X) of the victims blood in the hand of the perpetrator. The last use of the Heb. Phrase miyyad + dam (by the hand of + blood) occurred in Gen 4:11, to describe the earth receiving blood from a murderer, namely, Cains hand. The ground opened its mouth to receive Abels blood from you (miyadeka), or from your hand. In Gen 9:5, God is requiring blood from (miyyad) any beast (not by means of any beast!) and from (miyyad) the human, from the man (for) his brother. In 2 Sam 4:11 David demands the blood of Ishbaal from the hands of Baanah and Recab (Shall I (David) not require his (Ishbaals) blood from your hand?). So in 9:5, it is the blood of the victim that is upon the hands (so to speak) of the perpetrator that God requires back to himself. Nothing in the verse suggests that God outsources responsibility for this to humans. This aligns perfectly with 9:4, where blood is prohibited. It belongs to God (cf. Lev 3:17).

[5] Just as Yhwh had promised to avenge Cains blood should any kill him (4:15), now God would require the life of anyone who murdered his brother (note the emphasis on brother in 9:5). The difference here is that vengeance is like-for-like, instead of seven-fold violence. Not surprisingly, the beth pretii (beth preposition of exchange) also appears Dt 19:21, when the human-mediated lex talionis law appears: Show no pity: life in exchange for life, eye in exchange for eye, tooth in exchange for tooth, hand in exchange for hand, foot in exchange for foot. In that case, human mediation is in view, a point of significant difference with Gen 9:5-6.

[6] See Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (IVP, 2003), 222-223.

[7] Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 705.

[8] There are other reasons to question the use of Gen 9 in support of capital punishment. See Michael L. Westmoreland-White and Glen H. Stassen, "Biblical Perpsectives on the Death Penalty" in David Novak ed., Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning (Eerdmans, 2004), 123-138.

[9] See Dru Johnsons forthcoming Biblical Philosophy (Cambridge).

[10] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/aclu_dp_factsheet4.pdf. Accessed 06/07/2020.

[11] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.914.8227&rep=rep1&type=pdf, according to a 2000 National Election Survey. Accessed 06/08/2020.

[12] James D. Unnever, Shaun L. Gabbidon, A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime (Routledge, 20), 33.

[13] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence. Accessed 06/09/2020. Bryan Stevenson details these sad realities in his inspiring book Just Mercy. This book is recommended reading, and the film adaptation is free during June across many platforms.

[14] David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision is Key to the Worlds Future (Eerdmans, 2013), chap 10 section 4.

[15] Another key plank in the argument is the eye for an eye law in Exod 21:23-25 and Deut 19:21. I address this law elsewhere - http://theologicalmisc.net/2015/10/jesus-and-old-testament-vengeance/. Dale S. Recinella, addresses the use of retributive law in application to the death penalty in his, The Biblical True about America's Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2015).

[16] For a more developed case against capital punishment, see Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life, chap 10 section 4.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday that India is fighting two wars with China at the same time -- one at the border and one against coronavirus. During a press conference on Monday, the CM said that India must remain united to fight against both.

The Chief Minister said that there has been a three-fold increase in testing. "Earlier it was 5,000 tests per day, now it is around 18,000 per day. Now people will not face any issues in getting tested," said CM Kejriwal.

He added that pulse oximeters will also be provided for patients under home-isolation. "All those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure oxygen levels every few hours. Once they are well, they can return it to the government," he said during the press conference.

"Our country is fighting two wars against China -- one at the border and another against virus from China. We have to remain united to fight both, none of these should be politicised. Our brave soldiers didn't back down, even we won't retreat until we win," said the CM.

The press conference comes on the heels of the Delhi government's meeting with the Home Ministry. The ministry and the Delhi government discussed a host of measures for containment zones. Penalising violators, remapping containment zones, vigorous contact tracing are some of the measures aimed by the government.

Delhi has reported 59,746 cases including 24,558 active cases, 33,013 discharges and 2,175 deaths.

Also read: Coronavirus: Glenmark conducts Fabiflu trial on 1,000 patients; to compete with Gilead's Remdesivir
New York

The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down.

The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism.

For many, the "Equestrian" statue at the museum's Central Park West entrance had come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

"Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd," the museum's president, Ellen V. Futter, said in an interview. "We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism."

Futter made clear that the museum's decision was based on the statue itself  namely its "hierarchical composition" and not on Roosevelt himself, whom the museum continues to honor as "a pioneering conservationist."

"Simply put," she added, "the time has come to move it."

The museum took action amid a heated national debate over the appropriateness of statues or monuments that first focused on Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee and has now moved on to a wider arc of figures, from Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill.

Last week alone, a crowd set fire to a statue of George Washington in Portland, Oregon, before pulling it to the ground. Gunfire broke out during a protest in Albuquerque to demand the removal of a statue of Juan de Onate, the despotic conquistador of New Mexico. And New York City Council members demanded that a statue of Thomas Jefferson be removed from City Hall.

In many of those cases, the calls for removal were made by protesters who say the images are too offensive to stand as monuments to American history. The decision about the Roosevelt statue is different, made by a museum that, like others, had previously defended  and preserved  such portraits as relics of their time that, however objectionable, could perhaps serve to educate. It was then seconded by the city, which had the final say.

"The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. "The City supports the Museum's request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue."

When the monument will be taken down, where it will go and what, if anything, will replace it, remain undetermined, officials said.

A Roosevelt family member released a statement approving the removal.

"The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice," said Theodore Roosevelt IV, 77, a great-grandson of the 26th president and a museum trustee. "The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward."

In a compensatory gesture, the museum is naming its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt "in recognition of his conservation legacy," Futter said.

Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the president's father, was a founding member of the institution; its charter was signed in his home. Roosevelt's childhood excavations were among the museum's first artifacts. New York's state Legislature in 1920 chose the museum as the site to memorialize the former president.

The museum already has several spaces named after Roosevelt, including Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and Theodore Roosevelt Park outside.

"It's very important to note that our request is based on the statue, that is the hierarchical composition that's depicted in it," Futter said. "It is not about Theodore Roosevelt, who served as governor of New York before becoming the 26th president of the United States, and was a pioneering conservationist."

Critics, though, have pointed to Roosevelt's opinions about racial hierarchy, his support of eugenics theories and his pivotal role in the Spanish-American War. Some see Roosevelt as an imperialist whose role leading troops fighting in the Caribbean ultimately resulted in American expansion into colonies there and in the Pacific, including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines.

A nationalist, Roosevelt in his later years became overtly racist, historians say, endorsing sterilization of the poor and the intellectually disabled.

The statue  created by an American sculptor, James Earle Fraser  was one of four memorials in New York that a city commission reconsidered in 2017, ultimately deciding after a split decision to leave the statue in place and to add context.

The museum tried to add that context with an exhibition last year, "Addressing the Statue," which explored its design and installation, the inclusion of the figures walking beside Roosevelt and Roosevelt's racism. The museum also examined its own potential complicity, in particular its exhibitions on eugenics in the early 20th century.

"I'm glad to see it go," said Mabel O. Wilson, a Columbia University professor who served on the city commission to reconsider the statue and was consulted on the exhibition.

"The depiction of the Indigenous and the African trailing behind Roosevelt, who is strong and virile," she added, "was clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination."

The exhibition was partly a response to the defacing of the statue by protesters, who in 2017 splashed red liquid representing blood over the statue's base. The protesters, who identified themselves as members of the Monument Removal Brigade, later published a statement on the internet calling for its removal as an emblem of "patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism."

"Now the statue is bleeding," the statement said. "We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation."

The group also said the museum should "rethink its cultural halls regarding the colonial mentality behind them."

At the time, the museum said complaints should be channeled through de Blasio's commission to review city monuments and that the museum was planning to update its exhibits. The institution has since undertaken a renovation of its North West Coast Hall in consultation with native nations from the North West Coast of Canada and Alaska.

In January, the museum also moved the Northwest Coast Great Canoe from its 77th Street entrance into that hall, to better contextualize it. The museum's Old New York diorama, which includes a stereotypical depiction of Lenape leaders, now has captions explaining why the display is offensive.

De Blasio has made a point of rethinking public monuments to honor more women and people of color  an undertaking led largely by his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the She Built NYC commission. But these efforts have also been controversial, given complaints about the transparency of the process and the public figures who have been excluded, namely Mother Cabrini, a patron saint of immigrants who had drawn the most nominations in a survey of New Yorkers.

On Friday, the mayor announced that McCray would lead a Racial Justice and Reconciliation Commission whose brief would include reviewing the city's potentially racist monuments.

Though the debates over many of these statues have been marked by rancor, the Natural History Museum seems unconflicted about removing the Roosevelt monument that has greeted its visitors for so long.

"We believe that moving the statue can be a symbol of progress in our commitment to build and sustain an inclusive and equitable society," Futter said. "Our view has been evolving. This moment crystallized our thinking and galvanized us to action."
WHITE CLOUD  Michigans Dragon at Hardy Dam, otherwise known as the Dragon Trail, recently launched its new website detailing trail openings and construction progress on the 47-mile natural surface hiking and mountain biking trail in Mecosta and Newaygo counties.

The Dragon is unlike any other recreational trail in the Midwest. The website gives our community the tools to not only enjoy the trail, but also discover how they can be part of making the Dragon a prime tourist destination, Nick Smith, Parks and Recreation Director of the County of Newaygo, said.

According to a news release, the new website, thedragon.us, is the "go-to resource" for updated information on the Dragon Trail.

This includes the comprehensive trail plan, sustainability measures, trail features, and opportunities to support the trail through financial gifts and volunteering.

Future fundraising opportunities will also be shared on the site in an effort to raise the final $2.6 million of the $3.7 million campaign.

A handful of segments of the trail will soon be open to West Michigan residents and tourists for hiking and mountain biking. There will be a total of 11 segments, with more construction occurring yet this year and more in seasons to come.

Featuring 23 bridges, 13 scenic overlooks, and surrounding 4,000 acres of water, the Dragon Trail is anticipated to draw more than 100,000 annual visitors and generate $4.15 million in annual economic activity with at least 70 new jobs, according to a Michigan State University Center for Economic Analysis study.

The final trail system will be jointly managed by the Newaygo and Mecosta County Park Commissions. West Michigan Mountain Biking Alliance (WMMBA) signed a volunteer maintenance agreement with the Park Commissions to assist with routine maintenance of the trail system.

The Dragon will be a world-class trail and a significant asset to the mountain biking community, Martin Hall, of the West Michigan Mountain Biking Alliance, said. Since 2019, WMMBA volunteers have given over 1,100 hours to help build the trail, and were not done yet.

To learn more about the Dragon Trail, including how to help build, maintain or make a gift, visit thedragon.us.

Michigans Dragon at Hardy Dam is a 47-mile non-motorized, multi-use trail system located between Hardy and Rodgers Dams in West Michigan. The Dragon is managed by Newaygo County Parks, Mecosta County Parks Commission, and the West Michigan Mountain Biking.
A brutal attack yesterday morning has left a young man from Co Down in a serious condition in hospital following a stabbing during a house party.

The incident happened during the early hours of yesterday at a property on Osborne Drive in the village of Shrigley outside Killyleagh.

The victim, who is understood to be 17 or 18 years old and from Killyleagh, suffered wounds to his leg and was transferred to Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital by air ambulance.

It is not believed that the attack had any sectarian motive.

An 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of offences including grievous bodily harm with intent. He remained in custody yesterday.

Down DUP councillor William Walker, who knows the victim's family, condemned the attack and wished the victim a "speedy recovery".

"My heart goes out to the young lad's family. I am told he is in a serious condition but we are all praying he pulls through," he said.

"I would totally condemn this incident.

"I thought the days of carrying knives was long gone. There is no need for young people to carry knives.

"This incident is a shock. Shrigley is a quiet area where people live side by side. It is just blatant thuggery. We don't want it in our area."

Mr Walker pleaded with young people not to carry weapons and emphasised the risks of any repeat of a similar incident.

"You might think it is cool and gives a sense of protection for yourself but I would encourage anybody not to be carrying knives or any illegal weapons," he added.

"We could have had a fatality on our hands here.

"By no means is the young lad out of the woods yet."

In a statement, Detective Inspector Darren Handley said yesterday: "Police received a report of an assault in Killyleagh this morning where it was reported a male had been wounded at an address in the Osborne Drive area. Police and NIAS attended the scene."

The detective added: "A male was conveyed to hospital for treatment of puncture wounds to his leg," the detective added.
[June 22, 2020] Industry Digital Inkjet Leader Scott Schinlever Returns to EFI as Inkjet Chief Operating Officer

FREMONT, Calif., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Industry digital inkjet leader Scott Schinlever has re-joined Electronics For Imaging , Inc. in a new role as chief operating officer for EFIs global inkjet business. Schinlever, who starts in his new position today, has been charged with further expanding EFIs market-leading industrial inkjet portfolio, while facilitating the analog-to-digital transformation throughout the industry for EFIs current and future customers. Schinlever will be responsible for all equipment, ink, and service solutions throughout the vast EFI portfolio in Display Graphics, Textiles, Packaging and Building Materials.

Schinlever, who most recently was president and COO of Automation Solutions for Tolland, Connecticut-based Gerber Technology, had a long career managing the marketing, growth and development of EFI VUTEk  printers and other EFI inkjet technologies. He joined the digital print industry in the late 1990s, working with the Xerox Office Systems Group. In 2001, he took on a marketing position at the pioneering superwide-format printer manufacturer VUTEk, a company EFI acquired in 2005. Schinlever continued to rise through the ranks at EFI following that acquisition, becoming senior vice president and general manager for EFI Inkjet Solutions  the companys largest business unit  before joining Gerber Technology in 2018. We are thrilled to have Scott back in the EFI family, said EFI Chairman and CEO Jeff Jacobson. Our industry is at a critical inflection point. I joined EFI one year ago because I clearly understood that EFI is the best positioned company in the industry to drive the analog-to-digital transformation in the industrial inkjet space. Under Scotts leadership of the Inkjet Business, I am convinced that EFI will attain that leadership position across the diverse segments of display graphics, packaging, textiles and building materials. Scott has an innate understanding of and expertise in the portfolio and solution set that will enable our customers to excel as the industry quickly migrates to industrial inkjet, Jacobson added. We are confident he will lead our global industrial inkjet operations to the next level in his new Inkjet COO role. Driving growth in digital print

During Schinlevers previous time with the company, EFIs inkjet business grew significantly through organic growth and strategic acquisitions of innovative digital printer and ink companies. He expanded EFIs successful move into ink manufacturing, leveraging EFIs 2006 acquisition of digital ink and printer technologies from Flint Ink. That purchase set the stage for EFIs breakthrough position in high-quality, production-class UV LED inkjet superwide-format printers and ink  technology that provides sperior versatility and energy cost savings for a broad range of applications. The business was further strengthened with the acquisition of Matan, bringing strong systems technology to EFI. Overall, EFIs revenues for its superwide-format inkjet products more than doubled under Schinlever, with increased profitability.



Schinlever not only expanded the companys strengths and presence in superwide-format display graphics printing, he also helped manage the companys strategic industrial project to develop the packaging markets leading single-pass inkjet corrugated board printer  the EFI Nozomi C18000 . He also helped spearhead acquisitions of EFI Reggiani, a leading developer of industrial textile printers, and EFI Cretaprint   a digital ceramic tile printer market share leader with a strong position in the ceramics industrys most competitive geographies, including India and China. It feels great to be back at EFI, Schinlever stated. In the two years that I have been away, much has changed, but the spirit of innovation and the strong desire to make our customers successful has remained strong and is increasing every day. I look forward to digging in, getting caught up, and working to take our inkjet businesses to a new and even more successful future.

Schinlever, who works from EFIs Londonderry, N.H., facility, has an MBA from Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business and a bachelors degree in managerial economics from the University of California, Davis. About EFI

EFI is a global technology company, based in Silicon Valley, and is leading the worldwide transformation from analog to digital imaging. We are passionate about fueling customer success with products that increase competitiveness and boost productivity. To do that, we develop breakthrough technologies for the manufacturing of signage, packaging, textiles, ceramic tiles, and personalized documents, with a wide range of printers, inks, digital front ends, and a comprehensive business and production workflow suite that transforms and streamlines the entire production process. ( www.efi.com ) Follow EFI online: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EFIPrint

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/efiprint

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/EFIPrint

View us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/EFIDigitalPrintTech NOTE TO EDITORS: The EFI logo, VUTEk and Cretaprint are registered trademarks of Electronics For Imaging, Inc. in the U.S. and/or certain other countries. EFI is a trademark of Electronics For Imaging, Inc. in the U.S. and/or certain other countries. Xerox is a registered trademark of Xerox Corp. All other terms and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners, and are hereby acknowledged. Nothing herein should be construed as a warranty in addition to the express warranty statements provided with EFI products and services. Contact:

David Lindsay, EFI

+1 404 931 7760

[email protected]

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The second Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) Conference opened online on June 21. As the most important global event in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the conference is expected to attract as many as 30,000 people, including five Turing Award winners.

Scientists and industry professionals from China and overseas will conduct in-depth exchanges around topics related to AI including its mathematical foundations, intelligent system architecture and chips, cognitive neural foundation, and the ethics of AI, while also attempting to map out "the next decade of AI."

Li Meng, vice minister of China's Ministry of Science and Technology, said that since the COVID-19 outbreak, AI has played an important role in epidemiological investigations, medical diagnosis, and community prevention and control. The epidemic has also spawned a series of new AI application scenarios. Li believes that Beijing's edge in AI will allow it to take the lead nationally and achieve more breakthroughs.

Beijing launched its new-generation national AI innovative development pilot zone on Feb. 18, 2019  the first of its kind in the country. At present, the city has nearly 40,000 AI-related talents, accounting for about 60% of the national total, and more than 1,000 companies in the field of AI, which is more than 30% of those in the country. In order to build the capital into a smart city, Beijing plans to build seven new-generation AI open innovative platforms, with the major programs and projects also being open for AI technologies and applications.

Huang Tiejun, president of the BAAI, said that the institute has currently selected a total of 85 AI talents to focus on innovative research and core technologies related to AI. This year, another 100 talents will be selected, and the institute will work to match them with suitable colleges and enterprises in Beijing so as to give full play to their abilities.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 04:13:42|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

AMMAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Jordan and the Netherlands on Monday reaffirmed their rejection to Israel's plan to annex the Palestinian territories, according to the Jordanian foreign ministry.

The remarks were made during a phone call between Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and his Dutch counterpart Stef Blok.

They examined the latest developments of the Palestinian cause, mainly Israeli threats to the regional peace about annexing Palestinian lands.

During the call, Safadi underlined the launch of immediate and effective international efforts against the Israeli annexation plan.

He also called for resuming direct negotiations to realize peace based on the two-state solution and relevant international resolutions.

The minister commended the Netherlands and the EU for rejecting the Israeli annexation plan and adhering to the two-state solution as the only means to achieve peace.

The two sides also discussed efforts to secure the financial support necessary for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to continue its role in aiding the refugees. Enditem
NORWALK  A hunger to help is having a big impact on food distribution for residents in need.

On Monday morning, a pop-up food giveaway was held at the Department of Public Works, spearhead by the Cornerstone Community Church. Various groups and individuals came together to distribute more than 1,000 food boxes to Norwalk families.

This is our fifth run, said Pastor Elizabeth Abel, who said they began distribution in April in response to the coronavirus pandemic and, by the end of Monday, will have given away around 120,000 pounds of food.

Palette upon palette of food boxes containing everything from milk to produce, as well as packaged goods, were arranged for pick up at the DPW on South Smith Street, owing to the citys cooperation, Abel said.

Fairfield Countys Community Foundation was one of the first supporters, she said, overseeing transport of the 30-pound food boxes, which were picked up by volunteers from various community organizations, including Unidad Latina en Accion.

Theres a lot of people in need, said John Guarin, a ULA volunteer who saw his SUV filled with food boxes that could then be distributed individually.

He commended the effort, as well as its ease in access.

The only thing we need to do is come and pick up the boxes and deliver them, he said.

The Alliance for Community Empowerment was the first group to donate to the cause and is now serving as a key partner, Abel said. The overarching distribution program itself, known as Hands of Hope, was created by Blessings of Hope, an organization in Lancaster, Pa.

Were doing real service to the community, said volunteer Andy Gayton, a Norwalk resident who helped load boxes with his daughter, Ramona.

I really enjoy it, he said, noting it was a chance to bring his church practice into the community.

Norwalk High School students also joined the effort.

I saw the opportunity to help, so I thought Id come out, said Trever Anderson, 18, an Eagle Scout who joined some friends from school to help load the food.

Especially now in these times, there arent as many people who are as fortunate, said his friend, Tristan Hong, 17.

This is a way to help those people who need it, he said.

Abel said they hope to continue and expand their mission work, and invited anyone wishing to help to reach out to the church at office@come2cornerstone.org.
China may be forced to abandon Australian beef entirely in favour of American suppliers if the trade war with Beijing continues, a major company has warned.

Xiamen Xiangyu, which is owned by the Chinese government, buys 20,000 tonnes of beef from Australia every month.

But it warned that it may have to switch to US beef if Chinese bans on four of Australia's biggest abattoirs aren't lifted.

It threatens the future of Australian farmers' $3.81 billion beef business with China, which accounts for 25 per cent of all exports of the meat.

Beijing announced a ban on meat imports from four large red meat abattoirs in May, citing problems with health certification and labelling.

Australian beef is seen on sale in a Beijing supermarket along with produce from America and Canada (pictured) amid threats that Aussie products could disappear from Chinese shelves

Cattle are seen on a farm in Inverell, New South Wales (pictured). Selling beef to China is worth $3.81 billion every year

It added fuel to concerns that Australia was being punished for Prime Minister Scott Morrison's push for a coronavirus inquiry.

China also slapped an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley, adding further woes to drought-ridden farmers.

Xiamen Xiangyu, with contracts worth millions of dollars, has since switched to other abattoirs in Australia, but warned the bans have increased costs and complicated trading.

'If these four plants are not relisted as early as possible we will have to switch to US beef,' Eric Huang, director of frozen food for the company, told the Australian Financial Review.

'We have time to purchase more, to make up our supply to our end-users.

The coronavirus crisis has brought Australian and Chinese trade relations to an all-time low, despite China equating to 33 per cent of all exports (pictured, a shipping lane at Botany Bay)

Australia is known for its Wagyu beef (pictured) but many soon find itself shut out of the lucrative Chinese market

Australia's export markets in 2019 1. China: $135 billion (33% of total Australian exports) 2. Japan: $36 billion (9%) 3. South Korea: $21 billion (5%) 4. United Kingdom: $16 billion (3.8%) 5. United States: $15 billion (3.7%) Source: Worldstopexports.com Advertisement

'But if this lasts for six months it is going to be hard because moving from one plant to other plants not only increases costs but we also have to educate our end-users.'

His company is one of the biggest buyers of Australian beef in China, and will wait three months before switching to American stock, he explained.

Mr Huang also warned that there are 'rumours' of more Australian companies that could be delisted, as well as reports that the four plants could be relisted.

Six abattoirs were delisted in 2017, but then given the green light by China three months later.

On May 11, the Australian government was notified that four companies, two Queensland abattoirs owned by Australia's largest meat processor, JBS, as well as Kilcoy Pastoral Company near Brisbane and Northern Co-operative Meat Company at Casino had been suspended from trading with China.

China cites labelling and health certificate requirements.

Mr Huang also warned that Australian beef was no longer very competitive, as tariffs on American beef said to come down.

His company has already abandoned Australian barley since the 80 per cent tariff was introduced, switching to France and Canada.

The barley tariffs were supposedly the result of an anti-dumping investigation.

As the row has rumbled on, China has accused of Australia of being a 'frustrating' and 'un-friendly' trading partner.

The COVID-19 outbreak is thought to have begun at a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan (pictured, a similar market reopened in Guangzhou on May 4)

A farmer is seen grappling with cattle at an Australian farm (pictured) but similar businesses could soon struggle if China stops buying Australian beef

The Global Times, a mouthpiece for the communist government, accused Australia of 'exploiting' China and presenting itself 'as a victim'.

Australia sends between half and two-thirds of all its barley to China, making the tariff decision a massive blow to the $600 million a year industry.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham revealed the government was given no advanced notice of China's decision and called it 'deeply disappointing'.

In April, Mr Morrison demanded an independent probe into the deadly respiratory virus and the World Health Organisation's handling of the crisis.

In response, Chinese state media and leaders warned of trade retribution that could wipe $135 billion from the Australian economy.

A barley farmer is seen in central NSW (pictured) with the industry hit by drought and now by China' crippling tariff

China claimed Australia was dumping barley and subsidising farmers, insisting the tariffs are nothing to do with coronavirus.

The tariff, to remain in place for five years, is set to cripple Australia's drought-affected grain farmers.

Australia is the biggest barley supplier to China, exporting between $1.5 billion and $2 billion worth a year, which is more than half its exports.

China has also threatened to stop sending students to Australian universities, warning of an increase in racist attacks towards Asian people.
You wouldn't typically get your computer tips and IT advice from the Prime Minister. So you'd have to assume something a bit different is going on when your national leader holds a press conference to announce a cyber attack. And refers everyone to technical advice on how to patch your system.

So what's going on? There are two main components to the attack. One is the assailant.

Morrison declined to name the attacker but gave a couple of clues. It was a sophisticated "state-based actor with very, very significant capabilities", he said, and "there aren't too many state-based actors who have those capabilities".

Scott Morrison held a press conference on Friday to reveal a state-based cyber attack had targeted Australian government and business. Credit:AAP

Speculation immediately centred on China. The speculation, according to informed sources, is correct. The cyber attack is one of several elements to the Chinese Communist Party's pressure campaign against Australia. The campaign is not new, and neither is the cyber attack. It's been going on for many months.
Scientists unraveled part of the mystery surrounding the complex geological structures of the southern Tibetan Plateau Credit: Earth Science Frontiers

Earth's geographical surfaces formed over millions of years, and various theories aim to explain their formation. The most popular theory, called plate tectonics, states that Earth's outermost layer is a dynamic system consisting of slowly moving plates, also known as tectonic plates. As theses plates move, they come close to each other and collide, or drift away from or slide past each other, causing tension or rupture along their boundaries. During the enormous compression force along the rupture line of two plates, a slab of the earth can uplift. The uplifted piece of land gives rise to geographical structures such as mountains or plateaus on the landscape of the earth.

The Tibetan Plateau, the highest plateau in the world, is believed to have been formed through one such tectonic process, when the Indian and Eurasian continental plates collided with each other. The landscape of this enigmatic plateau consists of unusual geological structures that have baffled geologists globally. For example, many independent geological units of different structures and ages are placed next to each other in a way that cannot be explained by a single tectonic event as per the existing theory. Intrigued by this, a group of scientists at the China University of Geosciences, led by Dr. Liu Demin, investigated in detail the geological structures of the southern Tibetan Plateau.

Dr. Demin says, "The southern Tibetan Plateau has a complicated geological structure that cannot be explained by the existing plate tectonics theory. Our study uses a new idea to explain some unusual tectonic structures that are part of the southern Tibetan Plateau."

The results of the study are published in Earth Science Frontiers.

To begin with, the scientists analyzed ancient tectonic ruptures in the form of boundaries between the distinct geological regions. The South Tibet Detachment System (STDS) is one such boundary that runs parallel to the Himalayan range for more than 2,000 km.

The researchers analyzed the geological data of STDS and other structures in the region, such as the Rongbu Temple normal fault and the Main Central Thrust (MCT), to trace the possible chain of events related to the evolution of these boundaries. They speculated that instead of a single collision-compression process (as per the existing theory), these boundaries were created in different periods altogether, through a series of tectonic events that date back to the early Cenozoic era (a geological era that extends from 66 million years ago to the present day) and occurred in multiple stages.

The tectonic evolutionary pattern of the southern Tibetan Plateau, as explained by the "opening-closing" view. Credit: Liu Demin et al.

According to this model, called the opening-closing theory, the upper layer or crust of a prehistoric ocean called the Neo-Tethys ocean expanded or opened, and a part of the oceanic crust moved under the other, resembling a closing movement. The continental plates also followed a similar process of opening and closing as they moved toward and away from each other. This chain of events gave rise to the structures of the Tibetan Plateau.

Using this model, the scientists were able to deduce that the Rongbu Temple normal fault and the MCT were formed earlier than the STDS was. Further, they revealed that two tectonic units in the Chomolungma region, klippes and windows, were actually the result of gravitational gliding (as opposed to compression, as previously believed) and thus should be characterized as extensions and slips, respectively.

Dr. Demin says, "Thermal energy and gravitational potential energy in the deep Earth played a key role during this opening-closing evolutionary process."

The geology of Earth's surfaces has changed over millions of years through continuous evolutionary processes. In this study, the scientists have unraveled part of the mystery surrounding the complex geological structures of the southern Tibetan Plateau. "A deeper understanding of the opening-closing process requires us to focus more on the detailed geological record for evidence of continuous rather than temporal processes," says Dr. Demin.

The research team now plans to study the differences between the opening-closing view and the plate tectonic theory in detail to shed further light on the genesis of the Tibetan plateau.

Explore further A (much) earlier birth date for tectonic plates

More information: Discussion on the Cenozoic tectonic evolution and dynamics of southern Tibet, Earth Science Frontiers, 2020.

Provided by China University of Geosciences
Harry and Meghan did not use their duke and duchess titles in the letter. (Getty Images)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have signed off as simply Harry and Meghan in a new letter sent to one of their charities in the UK.

In the letter, sent to sport charity StreetGames, the couple signed off with their first names only, dropping their duke and duchess titles which they can still use despite stepping back as senior royals.

It could be seen as a signal that they will reduce how often they go by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The couple, who now live in Los Angeles, agreed not to use their HRH stylings, but are still entitled to be called a duke and duchess, and Harry is also still a prince.

In February, Harry, 35, indicated he preferred a relaxed approach when he told attendees at a conference in Edinburgh just call me Harry.

The letter thanked StreetGames, who Harry sent a video message to back in May, praising their work delivering food to vulnerable people during lockdown.

Wow! Thank you so much Harry and Meghan for your kind words and your continued support for StreetGames and the brilliant local organisations working to support their communities in these challenging times pic.twitter.com/4h9bMGTuTR  StreetGames (@StreetGames) June 21, 2020

Read more: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archewell trademark application is too vague

StreetGames has since linked up with another of the couples charities, as they supported Hubb Community Kitchen based in west London.

Meghan, 38, worked with Hubb Community Kitchen, which formed after the Grenfell Tower fire, and wrote the forward for a cookbook with their recipes.

She also had a video call with the members during lockdown, to offer her support to them as they switched to food delivery.

Harry and Meghan wrote: To know that North Paddington Youth Club, Solidarity Sports, and St Matthews Project distributed hundreds of freshly prepared meals across their networks of young people over the last few months is fantastic.

Story continues

The impact of COVID-19 has been a scary and testing time for so many people from all walks of life, all over the world. However it is in difficult times like these that goodwill to others and community spirit prevails.

The couple praised the volunteers for their compassion and leadership of young people and signed off with their thanks.

Harry and Meghan are no longer working royals. (WireImage)

Read more: Harry and Meghan's Canadian security bill cost 32,000 in overtime, travel and food

In letters to charities, there are different ways royals sign their names. The Duchess of Cambridge often signs off with her full name Catherine, while Prince William signs off as William.

But on social media both couples tended to be more formal, using their duke and duchess titles frequently.

Harry and Meghan signed off their last post on SussexRoyal with just their first names, but have since used their duke and duchess titles in letters to charities.

The couple are reportedly delaying the launch of their new project, Archewell, and ran into early problems with their trademark last week when the application was deemed too vague.

A source said the response was not a rejection but part of the usual back and forth with new applications.

The couple failed to sign one part of the application and also did not pay enough of the fees related to the form.
The programs so far are likely to allow for only a small number of jobs, in some cases just a handful. But local officials say they are hopeful the idea can persuade other areas to try similar efforts and, more important, elicit additional funding from Congress to support local job creation.

The effort is aimed at helping communities deal with an unemployment crisis more severe than what the nation faced at the worst moment of the Great Depression. Tens of million of workers have lost their jobs since mid-March, when the pandemic forced consumers into their homes and shut down most businesses. New unemployment claims have topped one million for 13 straight weeks.

So far, lawmakers and governors have mostly pushed for policies that will ensure Americans can go back to the jobs they held before the pandemic. The federal government allocated $660 billion for forgivable loans to businesses that agreed to keep workers on the payroll. Republican lawmakers have said they are interested in providing bonuses to people who return to work in lieu of extending expanded unemployment benefits, which are set to expire on July 31. And states have pushed to quickly reopen workplaces so that employees can regain a paycheck.

But overall unemployment remains high, and experts estimate that a large percentage of layoffs caused by the virus-related lockdowns could become permanent the longer the pandemic persists, as businesses fail to attract the number of consumers they did before or shut down entirely.

In some states and cities, one emerging answer to the growing jobless problem is simple: Hire those workers directly, sometimes using federal funds.
FILE PHOTO: The sun is seen behind a crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County

By Mohammed Ghobari

ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) - Yemen aims to raise its crude oil production by 25% to 75,000 barrels per day in the coming months, the energy minister of the country's internationally-recognised government said.

Saudi-backed Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government controls the eastern and southern areas where Yemen's oil-and-gas fields are located, while the Iranian-aligned Houthi group controls the capital Sanaa and the oil terminal of Ras Issa on the Red Sea.

"The oil ministry has put forward a plan to re-export crude oil from all oil fields in Marib and Shabwa ... and we have succeeded in rehabilitating al-Nashama oil port on the Arabian Sea," Hadi's government energy minister Aws Abdullah al-Awd told Reuters in an interview.

The civil war has choked its energy output, shuttered its Aden refinery and damaged its infrastructure, Awd said, raising questions about Yemen's ability to increase its crude production and rehabilitate the sector anytime soon.

Yemen's oil output has collapsed since 2015 when the Saudi-led military coalition intervened in a war to try to restore Hadi's government to power after it was ousted by the Houthis.

Yemen produced around 127,000 bpd before the conflict and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it has proven oil reserves of around 3 billion barrels. It has two primary crude oil streams, with light and sweet Marib and medium-gravity and more sulphur-rich Masila.

It is also working to build more pipelines and raise the limited storage capacity at Nashima port, which stands at 600,000 barrels compared to 3 million barrels in Houthi- controlled Ras Issa port, Awd said.

The minister also said he hoped that Yemen would resume production and exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Balhaf facility by next year, assuming improved security and a speedy recovery of global energy markets.

The plant, which was operated by France's Total, declared force majeure in 2015 due to worsening security.

(Writing by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Rania El Gamal and Alexander Smith)
T he Government did almost everything right when it came to getting rough sleepers off the streets amid the pandemic  its no mean feat to help 90 per cent find shelter over a long weekend, and they should be congratulated.

Now, amid rumours that the Everyone In initiative is being wound down, we need an exit strategy that matches the initial deployment.

Sadly, early indications suggest the Government has no intention of developing one.

That would be a disaster for the homeless young people who were rescued at the start of lockdown and have seized this opportunity to turn their lives around.

A particular concern is that the 643 million, announced in the Budget to help rough sleepers into permanent accommodation, is too small for all but the most basic support post-lockdown.

None of it may find its way to hostel providers who give beds to 11,000 people aged 18 to 25 in the UK.

Hostels are instrumental in helping rough sleepers escape the streets, but we seem to be off the radar.

Costs are mounting, particularly due to hiring expensive agency staff to cover sickness, and purchasing PPE in the first few weeks of the pandemic.

The financial outlook was poor before Covid. Over the last decade, annual government spending on homelessness has halved from 1.5 billion to 750 million.

At Centrepoint, maintaining the quality of our services has only been possible because of the publics generous donations. These provide 60 per cent of our resources.

But coronavirus has brought traditional fundraising activity to a halt, leaving us vulnerable to the Governments funding whims.

It is important that charities like us take the initiative: we are working with leading employers to offer apprenticeship schemes, and investing in modular homes that young people can afford as part of our Independent Living Programme.

With charities, central and local government, and businesses working together, we can get young people off the street, out of hostels and into their own homes and jobs.

Without a cohesive exit strategy from government that affords former rough sleepers the chance to work towards sustaining a tenancy, theres a real risk that our vulnerable young people will simply fall out of the system and back into sleeping rough.

Centrepoint is championing a coherent, properly funded exit strategy so that were not left with another case study in what happens when government simply absolves itself of responsibility.

Seyi Obakin is CEO of Centrepoint
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 01:33:41|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HONG KONG, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Major officials in relevant departments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government on Sunday voiced support for a draft law on safeguarding national security in the HKSAR deliberated by China's top legislature.

Chief Secretary for Administration Matthew Cheung stressed in a blog article that it is extremely necessary and urgent for the National People's Congress to decide to establish and improve at the state level the HKSAR's legal system and enforcement mechanisms to safeguard national security.

Hong Kong was ranked fifth globally last year in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2020 recently published by the Switzerland-based International Institute for Management Development, down from the second.

"This highlights the importance of social stability and security to Hong Kong's competitiveness and long-term economic development," Cheung said, adding that Hong Kong's hard-earned stability and economic success will be difficult to sustain if those advocating "Hong Kong independence" and violence continue to undermine social stability.

"The legislation will not affect Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy under 'one country, two systems' and will respect and safeguard the rights and freedoms applicable to Hong Kong in accordance with the HKSAR Basic Law and relevant international conventions," he said, urging Hong Kong residents to support the legislation so as to safeguard "one country, two systems" and restore stability in Hong Kong.

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng said in a statement that the decision adopted by the National People's Congress (NPC) on the national security legislation for Hong Kong only aims to prevent, curb and sanction an extremely small minority of criminals who threaten national security, so as to safeguard the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and the implementation of "one country, two systems".

Hong Kong has experienced social unrest with frequent violence over the past year, and there is even advocacy of "Hong Kong independence", Cheng noted, adding that in view of the increasingly serious situation the HKSAR is facing in relation to national security and the difficulty of the executive and legislative authorities of the HKSAR to complete on their own legislation for safeguarding national security in the foreseeable future, there is the need and emergency for the NPC to take steps at the national level to improve the legal system and enforcement mechanisms for the HKSAR to safeguard national security.

The draft law was submitted for deliberation at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th NPC from Thursday to Saturday. An official of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee made an explanatory statement on the draft law at the session.

The explanatory statement clearly points out that the HKSAR, in safeguarding national security, should respect and protect human rights and freedoms which are applicable in Hong Kong under the Basic Law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Cheng noted.

"I will lead the Department of Justice to provide full support to the legislative work for safeguarding national security in the HKSAR," she said.

Secretary for Security John Lee and heads of the HKSAR government's six disciplined services departments said in a statement that they fully support the legislation, and the secretary for security will lead the disciplinary forces to discharge their duties, ensuring the effective implementation of the relevant law in Hong Kong for safeguarding national security.

The legislation aims to prevent, curb and sanction criminal acts of secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces which endanger national security. It will only target an extremely small minority of criminals who endanger national security, while the safety and basic rights of the vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong residents will be protected, the statement said.

The draft law requires the protection of the rights of suspects, as well as the legitimate rights enjoyed by members of the public, legal persons or organizations in accordance with the Basic Law, the statement noted, stressing that the relevant legislation will not affect the various rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents under the law.

"Each country has its national security laws and specific enforcement agencies. It is the duty of every responsible government to have such laws," Lee said.

"Safeguarding national security and the rule of law in Hong Kong is the cornerstone to maintain 'one country, two systems', ensuring the long-term stability and safety of Hong Kong," he said. Enditem
Parish priest of the Santa Maria Assunta church in Pontoglio, Don Giovanni Cominardi (C), is escorted by Pontoglio mayor Alessandro Seghezzi (L), during a Via Crucis procession (Way of the Cross) as part of Good Friday celebrations in Pontoglio, Italy, on April 10, 2020. (Miguel Medina /AFP via Getty Images)

Italy Reports Lowest CCP Virus Death Increase Since Early March

Italian authorities reported the lowest COVID-19 death increase since early March.

Italys Civil Protection Agency said on Sunday that 24 new deaths occurred in the previous 24 hours, the lowest number since March 2.

The overall death toll stands at about 34,000, while the total number of cases is about 21,000, according to figures from CNN.

The number of people in intensive care dropped from 152 on Saturday to 148 on Sunday, officials told Reuters. About 182,000 have recovered from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged last year in China.

In June, Italy became the first European country to reopen its borders as well as ending mandatory 14-day quarantines for people entering its borders.

Last week, Italian health officials warned of renewed CCP virus transmission, especially after new outbreaks of cases in Rome.

Prime minister Giuseppe Conte wears a face mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as he arrives to address parliament on the next European Council meeting, in Rome, Italy, on June 17, 2020. (Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)

In some regions, a high number of new cases of COVID-19 infection continues to be reported, the Higher Institute of Health (ISS) said, according to The Local.

Health officials confirmed that contact tracing is currently underway.

This should encourage caution because it indicates that in certain parts of the country, the circulation of the virus is still significant, the ISS report said.

Italy underwent a nationwide quarantine in mid-March, leading to a significant budget deficit.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Sunday that the countrys deficit is likely to expand further as the country tries to prop up its economy.

A further increase in the budget deficit is likely, Conte said in a news conference.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 16:47 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b4e4e 1 Business innovation,Research-and-Development,industry-ministry,import,Import-substitution-industrialization,export,COVID-19,super-deduction-tax Free

The government is calling on companies to boost their research and development to produce import substitutes to help reduce Indonesias reliance on foreign goods.

The Industry Ministry has expressed hope such products could help it meet the target of slashing Indonesias raw material imports by up to 35 percent to US$82 billion in 2022, said Gatot Sudariyono, an expert staff member at the ministry.



The goal is to increase the share of local components used by businesses, called TKDN, to 53 percent by 2022.



Going forward, as we do not know when a COVID-19 vaccine will be available, we are nudging local industries to produce import substitutes, Gatot said during an online talk on Friday.

Read also: Trade data point to severe economic contraction in Q2: Economists

Indonesias raw and intermediary goods imports declined last year and during this years January to May period, signaling a cooling of manufacturing activity and household demand. Last year, imports totaled $125.9 billion, down more than 11 percent from 2018, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data show.

As of May this year, the decline continued, with imports dropping 15.28 percent year-on-year (yoy) to $45.16 billion.

Lockdowns and physical distancing measures implemented in countries around the world to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have sapped global commerce by disrupting supply chains and forcing factories and stores to shut down.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) projects global trade to shrink by between 13 and 32 percent as the scale of the economic impact of the health crisis remains uncertain.

Indonesia has not been immune to the pandemic-induced worldwide slump in trade, with its total imports down 42.20 percent year-on-year to $8.44 billion in May. Its exports also fell 28.95 percent to $10.53 billion over the same period.

Despite declining imports, the government remains wary of industries that rely heavily on raw materials or intermediate goods made overseas, said Gatot. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, sources 90 percent of its inputs from other countries.

Read also: Indonesia faces trade remedies from partners, risks $1.9b losses

The government is trying to accelerate innovation through its Industry 4.0 program in select industries, namely pharmaceuticals, health care, automotive, fashion, electronics, chemicals and food and beverages, by focusing on the use of digital technology.



The Finance Ministry is currently developing a super deduction tax scheme to provide businesses with incentives to conduct research and development in the hopes of spurring innovation, according to Finance Ministry Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF) head Febrio Kacaribu.



Febrio said Friday that businesses might also benefit from the planned incentives by developing research and development related to COVID-19 response.



The fiscal incentives for research and development have been prepared since the start of the year, but the program has been hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Febrio. We are currently finalizing it to make sure it is launched soon.

Bawono Aji, a partner at DDTC Fiscal Research, which provides tax consultancy services, said Friday the government could also spur innovation by lowering taxes on innovative products, such as electric vehicles (EV).

Read also: SMEs switch to producing PPE to survive COVID-19 economic fallout

EVs are currently subject to a luxury tax (PPnBM). However, as EVs are less harmful to the environment than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, Bawono said the government should provide an incentive to manufacturers and buyers of EVs to encourage innovation.

There are plenty of products that also have fewer negative externalities and we need to think about their innovation, said Bawono.

The Jokowi administration wants the EV industry to begin production by 2021 or 2022, with output targets of 400,000 electric cars and 200,000 electric motorbikes by 2025. Some regional administrations have offered to lower the vehicle tax on electric cars, including the West Java administration, which has proposed dropping the tax rate to 2.5 percent  five times lower than the rate for ICE cars.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said no to Yes Banks request for payment of interest due as on June 29 for Upper Tier II bonds on account of inadequate capital levels, the bank said in an exchange filing on June 20.

Therefore, the bank would be unable to pay Interest/coupon of 10.25 percent on the Upper Tier II Bonds due for payment on June 29, Yes Bank said.

In terms of Information Memorandum dated June 25, 2012 under which the aforesaid Upper Tier II Bonds are issued, the Interest amount due and remaining unpaid shall be accumulated and be paid by the Bank later, subject to Bank complying with the stipulated regulatory requirement, the bank said.

The bank earlier requested RBI, in a communication dated May 27, an approval for payment of Interest due as on June 29, for the Upper Tier II Bonds.

In continuation, we would like to inform that Reserve Bank of India has expressed its inability to accede to Banks request for payment of Interest due as on June 29, 2020, since the Bank does not meet the minimum capital requirements currently. The bank said.

Yes Bank is currently in the process of raising upto Rs 10,000 crore through a follow on share sale to augment its capital base. The banks board is likely to take up the proposal soon and has already hired six investment banks for this process.

These are SBI Capital Markets, Kotak Mahindra Capital, Axis Securities (investment bank arms of Yes Bank shareholders State Bank of India (SBI), Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank), Bank of America, Citi Bank and HSBC, The Economic Times reported on June 3.

The bank was bailed out by a clutch of banks headed by SBI early in 2020 after the lenders financials worsened and bad loans shot up. This was facilitated by the RBI, which came up with a reconstruction scheme and the government which engaged with banks to aid the process.
DELTA COUNTY, MI  A bright, pink kayak was an essential factor in the U.S. Coast Guard locating a missing woman in Northern Michigan.

Air Station Traverse City posted details about the rescue on its Facebook page on Monday, noting that the incident details the importance of having bright, reflective objects near you while in the wilderness or on the water.

Onyx, beloved U.S. Coast Guard morale dog, dies in Upper Peninsula

This case is a great illustration that any time you go out on the water, you should always prepare for the worst-case scenario, in this case remaining overnight exposed to the elements and passing thunderstorms, the post reads. This individuals bright pink kayak made locating her much easier for our aircrew. Reflective material and bright colors can literally save your life.

Crews were launched to assist local authorities near Big Bay De Noc at approximately 5:30 a.m. on Monday to help look for the woman who had been missing since Sunday.

The woman was last seen in a kayak and had gotten lost, according to the Coast Guard. She had called local authorities, but shortly afterwards her cell phone battery died.

Coast Guard crews searched the area around the Sturgeon River from the air and spotted the pink kayak. They quickly directed ground crews, some of which had been searching through the night, to the location where the woman was found.
File image

Actor and politician Kamal Haasan has launched a strongly-worded attack on the Central government about its handling of the Galwan valley issue. He asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop trying to "emotionally manipulate people" over the violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh, NDTV has reported.

India lost 20 of its army personnel, including a colonel, in the violent face-off on the night of June 15-16 in Ladakh's Galwan Valley. It was the biggest confrontation between the militaries of India and China after their 1967 clashes in NathuLa when India lost around 80 soldiers while the death toll on the Chinese side was over 300.

Following the face-off, PM Modi asserted that nobody had intruded into the Indian Territory or taken over any post. As the comment faced criticism, the prime minister's office said, "Attempts are being made in some quarters to give a mischievous interpretation to remarks by the prime minister at the all-party meeting on Friday."

Reacting to the statement, Makkal Needhi Maiam chief Haasan asked the prime minister to stay away from emotionally manipulating people, said the report.

In a statement, Haasan pointed out that the "mischief lied in continuing to emotionally manipulate people with such statements". He requested the prime minister and his supporters to stop doing that.

Haasan further said, Questions cannot be treated as anti-national. Right to ask questions is the base of democracy and we will continue asking till we hear the truth."

He also pointed out that the PMs statement during the all-party meet had "contradicted statements of the Army and Ministry of External Affairs".

In his statement, Haasan said that certain information could be classified. But, the government can "manage communication better than by just saying, 'don't doubt the army' and 'don't be an anti-national'. We are beyond all that now. Let us have some transparency and accountability for a change."

Haasan also questioned the success of the meeting that PM Modi had with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2019. Haasan said, if the death of soldiers was the "result of the government's diplomacy, either their strategy had failed miserably or they had failed to read the intentions of the Chinese correctly".

He also demanded to know how Indian soldiers' lives were being guarded and what was being done to "control China's belligerence".
Shellfish could be wiped out as the Arctic Ocean acidifies due to climate change, scientists have warned.

Researchers say the Arctic Ocean will absorb more carbon dioxide than expected in the next 80 years, increasing the acidity of the water.

This could wipe out organisms such as shellfish, urchins and sea butterflies as the acid can dissolve their calcified skeletons and shells.

Researchers say the Arctic Ocean will absorb more carbon dioxide than expected in the next 80 years, increasing the acidity of the water

The Arctic Ocean will absorb more CO2 as it has conditions favourable for the formation of so-called deep water.

This occurs when the air temperature drops and the ocean's surface waters are extra salty. This makes the water denser, causing it to sink and increasing the transport of CO2 to the ocean's depths.

Lead researcher Dr Jens Terhaar of the University of Bern in Switzerland said the results, published in the journal Nature, showed the Arctic Ocean will 'take up 20 per cent more CO2 over the 21st century than previously expected'.

Acidification would particularly hit waters in the 200 to 1,000m depth range  an 'important refuge area for many marine organisms'.

Increasing acidity of the water could wipe out organisms such as shellfish, urchins and sea butterflies as it can dissolve their calcified skeletons and shells

The researchers compared the sea-surface information and simulations of deep-water formations used in current climate models.

They found there was a 'large divergence' when it came to predicting the Arctic Ocean's Carbon intake over the next eighty years.

The team then used sea-surface water density measurements to correct the models' bias and reduce uncertainty around future levels of acidification.

Co-author Dr Lester Kwiatkowski, at the Ecole normale superieure in Paris, said: 'Our results suggest that it will be more difficult for Arctic organisms to adapt to ocean acidification than previously expected.

'A loss of these organisms is likely to impact the entire Arctic food chain up to fish and marine mammals.'
A 21-year-old man has died after being stabbed outside a hotel in Melbourne's CBD, as his attackers remain on the run.

Police were called to The Oaks on Market Street just after 5am following reports the man had been stabbed in the arm.

He was rushed to Royal Melbourne Hospital with serious upper body injuries and later died.

Officers were called to The Oaks on Market Street just after 5am following reports the man in his 20s had been stabbed

A pair of scissors is seen at a crime scene on Market Street in Melbourne's CBD on Monday morning

The offenders fled the scene before police arrived but a pair of scissors remained on the footpath on Monday morning.

A spokesperson from Oaks Hotels, Resorts and Suites told Daily Mail Australia the stabbing incident happened outside the hotel on Market Street.

But they said the victim had not been a guest of the hotel.

'The individual was not a guest of the hotel, nor was he on the premises at any stage,' the spokesperson said.

'The team at Oaks Melbourne on Market Hotel is assisting authorities with their enquiries in every way possible.'

'Oaks remains committed to ensuring the safety and protection of all its guests and has a zero-tolerance policy to any criminal activity or violence taking place on its premises.'

Police questioned friends of the victim following the attack and it is not yet known how many people were involved.

The Homicide squad is now leading the investigation with detectives looking into whether those involved are known to each other.

A witness, who had been staying at the hotel, told the Herald Sun he noticed commotion from a group of men as he was smoking outside.

A man is suffering life-threatening injuries after he was stabbed in Melbourne 's CBD

Victoria Police officers speak to someone at the crime scene outside the hotel in Melbourne

'They were boisterous, asking around for cigarettes,' the witness said.

He said an argument then broke out among the group and described it as 'freaky'.

'They were out of order. Young, stupid, and acting out of order,' he said.

Market Street was closed on Monday morning as police remain on the scene to piece together the events that lead to the stabbing.

Police are appealing for anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Ashley Dopson painted a picture of Rayshard Brooks in the parking lot of the Wendy's in Atlanta where Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, was shot and killed by Atlanta police. Read more

ATLANTA  A public viewing for Rayshard Brooks, who was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer, is scheduled for Monday.

The viewing is to be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s congregation. The church is also set to host Brooks' funeral Tuesday.

Officer Garrett Rolfe fatally shot Brooks in the back after Brooks fired a Taser in his direction while running away after a struggle with officers outside a Wendy's fast food restaurant on June 12. Rolfe, 27, is white. Brooks, 27, was Black.

The shooting happened against the backdrop of nationwide unrest following the death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into his neck. Demonstrations have called for a rethinking of policing and an examination of racism in the United States.

Officers responding to complaints of a car blocking the drive-thru lane found Brooks asleep in the car. Police body-camera video showed Brooks and officers having a calm and respectful conversation for more than 40 minutes thereafter.

After conducting field sobriety tests, Rolfe told Brooks he'd had too much to drink to be driving." Brooks resisted being handcuffed, and he and the two officers wrestled on the ground. Brooks grabbed one of their Tasers and fired it in their direction as he ran away.

An autopsy found he was shot twice in the back.

Rolfe was fired and another officer, 26-year-old Devin Brosnan, was placed on desk duty following the shooting. Police Chief Erika Shields stepped down less than 24 hours after Brooks died.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced 11 charges against Rolfe, including felony murder. Brosnan, who the prosecutor said stood on Brooks shoulder as he struggled for his life, is charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath.

Lawyers for both men said their clients' actions were justified.

Interim police Chief Rodney Bryant has said he was surprised Howard brought charges so quickly, before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had finished looking into the shooting. The GBI said in a tweet after Howard announced the charges that the agency was not consulted on the charges.

Both Rolfe and Brosnan turned themselves in Thursday. Brosnan was released on bond. A magistrate judge on Friday denied bond for Rolfe, citing the nature of the charges, after the former officer waived his initial court appearance. A bond hearing in superior court is scheduled for Tuesday.

Brooks eulogy Tuesday is to be delivered by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist and a Democrat running for U.S. Senate.

A preview quote from the eulogy was released Monday: Rayshard Brooks wasnt just running from the police. He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people. A system that doesnt give ordinary people whove made mistakes a second chance, a real shot at redemption.
T he world recorded its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases over the weekend, in a grim reminder that the pandemic is far from over.

Although some regions are showing clear progress in containing the disease  with infections slowing in China and South Korea  the number of new Covid-19 cases has soared globally in recent days.

In Brazil, Iraq, India and the United States, hospitals are struggling to cope.

Nearly nine million people have been infected and more than 468,000 people have died so far, according to figures compiled by John Hopkins University.

Experts say the actual numbers are much higher, in light of testing limits and asymptomatic cases which can be almost impossible to trace.

On Sunday, the World Health Organisation reported the largest single-day increase in cases, with more than 183,000 confirmed in 24 hours.

The World on Coronavirus lockdown 1 /60 The World on Coronavirus lockdown Getty Images A UK government public health campaign is displayed in Piccadilly Circus Reuters Chinese paramilitary police and security officers wear face masks to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus as they stand guard outside an entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing AP A usually busy 42nd Street is seen nearly empty in New York AFP via Getty Images Bondi Beach, Australia Getty Images Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images View of the illuminated statue of Christ the Redeemer that reads "Thank you" as Archbishop of the city of Rio de Janeiro Dom Orani Tempesta performs a mass in honor of Act of Consecration of Brazil and tribute to medical workers amidst the Coronavirus (COVID - 19) pandemic Getty Images Rome AFP via Getty Images An Indian man paddles his bicycle in front of a mural depicting the globe covered in a mask, as India remains under an unprecedented lockdown over the highly contagious coronavirus Getty Images Aerial view of the empty 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires in Argentina AFP via Getty Images A view of an empty Grand Canal Reuters Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain Getty Images Aerial view of the empty Central cemetery in Bogota, Columbia AFP via Getty Images The facade of the Palacio de Lopez (seat of the government palace) AFP via Getty Images Miami, Florida AFP via Getty Images Aerial view of the empty Simon Bolivar park in Bogota AFP via Getty Images An LAPD patrol car drives through Venice Beach Boardwalk AP Venice Beach, California Getty Images Los Angeles, California Getty Images Surfers Paradise is seen empty in Australia Getty Images Many shops stand shuttered on the Venice Beach boardwalk Getty Images Empty escalators are seen at a deserted train station during morning rush hour after New South Wales began shutting down non-essential businesses Reuters A nearly empty Times Square in New York AFP via Getty Images Caracas AFP via Getty Images Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador AFP via Getty Images A general view of an unusually quiet Midland Park in Wellington, New Zealand Getty Images A general view of an unusually quiet Civic Square at lunchtimein Wellington, New Zealand Getty Images A policeman rides his motorcycle wearing a face mask in front of a closed shopping mall in Buenos Aires, Argentina AFP via Getty Images Florida Keys AP The historic Channel 2 Bridge closed to fishermen, bikers and pedestrians in Florida Keys AP The Beach on Scenic Gulf Drive near Seascape Resort in south Walton County, Florida sits empty of tourists AP Surfers Paradise is seen empty in Australia Getty Images A deserted Rajpath leading to India Gate in New Delhi AFP via Getty Images A general view is seen of a closed Luna Park in Sydney, Australia Getty Images A general view is seen of a closed Luna Park in Sydney, Australia Getty Images Empty roads are pictured following the lockdown by the government amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Kathmandu, Nepal Reuters An empty New York Subway car i AFP via Getty Images The empty pedestrian zone is seen in the city of Cologne, western Germany, AFP via Getty Images Place de la Comedie in the city of Montpellier , southern France AFP via Getty Images An empty street in Kuwait city AFP via Getty Images A building is covered by the Portuguese message: "Coronavirus: take precaution" over empty streets in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, AP A general view shows an empty street after a curfew was imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters Parliament of Canada is pictured with empty street during morning rush hour AFP via Getty Images A near empty beach on Southend seafront in England PA Near empty Keswick town centre in Cumbria, England PA

Brazil, at 54,771, saw the most new infections, followed by the US at 36,617, while India reported 15,400, the health agency said.

Even New Zealand, which earlier said it had eliminated local transmissions of the virus, reported two new cases on Monday among people arriving from India and Pakistan.

The country of five million people now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month.

Experts say rising case counts reflect multiple factors including more testing and spreading infections.

More than two-thirds of the new deaths were reported in North and South America.

However, in east Asia there were signs of optimism as South Korea confirmed just 17 new cases  the first time its daily rise dropped below 20 in almost a month.

Elsewhere in Asia, Beijings increase was in single digits for the first time in eight days  with just nine new cases confirmed in the Chinese capital.
India knows 'it can't have a war with China'

Global Times

By Yang Sheng and Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 21:48:40

New Delhi would be 'more humiliated than 1962' if it launches a new conflict

After the border clash in the Galwan Valley, nationalism and hostility against China within India are rising sharply, while Chinese analysts and some reasonable voices inside India warned that New Delhi should cool down the nationalism at home.

India will be more humiliated than after the 1962 border conflict with China if it cannot control anti-China sentiment at home and has a new military conflict with its biggest neighbor, analysts said on Sunday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday that his government has given the armed forces full freedom to take any necessary action, and he also appeared to downplay the clash that killed 20 Indian soldiers and injured more than 70 on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control in the Galwan Valley on Monday.

"Nobody has intruded into our border, neither is anybody there now, nor have our posts been captured," Modi said, referring to Ladakh's Galwan Valley, Reuters reported.

Chinese observers said Modi is trying to respond to the nationalists and hardliners with tough talk, but he understands his country cannot have further conflict with China so he is also making an effort to cool tensions.

Lin Minwang, a professor at Fudan University's Center for South Asian Studies in Shanghai, told the Global Times on Sunday that Modi's remarks will be very helpful to ease the tensions, because as the prime minister of India, he has removed the moral basis for hardliners to further accuse China.

Beijing-based military expert Wei Dongxu told the Global Times on Sunday that Modi's assertion that Indian forces can take all necessary steps is a show of strength for domestic audiences to appease the Indian masses and boost the Indian troops' morale.

Modi is playing with words in order to avoid an escalation as he does not want to really unleash his army by encouraging them to actively start another clash. China's capability not only in terms of the military, but also overall and international influence, is superior to India's, Wei said.

"It is normal to see heated nationalism in India, but we don't need to worry whether nationalism will hijack the policymaking of India to further provoke China. When India is in conflict with Pakistan or other neighbors, nationalism might drive New Delhi to take actual operations, but when it comes to China, it is a different story," Lin said.

Indian government and military leaders understand how powerful China is, while Indian nationalists are ignorant and arrogant, Lin said. "So they might say some harsh words, but they dare not take the first shot against us."

"If 20 were martyred on our [Indian] side, then there would have been at least double the casualties on their [China] side," V.K.Singh, India's minister for roads and transport, told TV News24 in an interview broadcast late on Saturday.

Chinese experts said the official wants to placate the nationalists by making speculations to satisfy the hardliners. They do not want to put more pressure on the government to further provoke China, and the reason why China did not release the number is that China also wants to avoid an escalation, because if China's casualties number less than 20, the Indian government would again come under pressure.

For now, India should focus on its own epidemic and economic problems, Wei said, noting that having frictions with neighbors will do India no good, as the accumulation of negative factors will damage India even more.

China is being very restrained in its efforts to avoid conflict, but this does not mean China is afraid of provocation or aggression from any country, especially India. Chinese military observers said that an escalated, large-scale military conflict involving main Chinese troops, if that were to happen, would mean a rout just like the war in 1962, with very disproportionate casualty figures unfavorable to India.

Because the Chinese military has an informationized combat system that integrates all troops, weapons and equipment together, while also having very disciplined troops and officers with advanced tactical awareness, they noted.

China's priority for using military force is never in the West against India but in the East, such as reunification with Taiwan, so China's deployment in the border region is less than the Indian side, Lin said.

However, if conflict breaks out, China's overwhelming advantages on transportation and military industry will help the People's Liberation Army to acquire an absolute strategic and tactical advantage against the India on the frontline.

"This is why India hasn't dared to launch a full attack against the PLA in decades but keeps creating low-level tensions occasionally," he noted.

Indian forces use weapons bought from different countries which many not coordinate with each other well, not to mention their undisciplined troops who can blow up their own submarine in a dockyard and shoot down a friendly helicopter, observers noted.

Rational voices within India are also calling Modi not to repeat former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's mistakes on the China front.

Indian economist Swaminathan Aiyar said in a Saturday report by Indian media outlet the Economic Times that the gap between China and India militarily and economically is five times bigger than it was in 1962. Attempting military adventures in that area is asking to be thrashed again and humiliated on a scale five times bigger than in 1962.

In a potential self-defense counterattack, China will secure its own territory and not likely claim Indian territory after emerging victorious, but the battle will deeply hurt India so much that global position and economy would go backwards to decades ago, Chinese analysts said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The government decided on Sunday to send a letter to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee seeking to revoke the heritage status of Japanese industrial facilities where Korean slave labor was used.

The move comes after Japan opened an exhibition center in Tokyo earlier this month about the industrial facilities that completely glosses over that thousands of Koreans were forced to labor there in the colonial period. Japan had submitted a written pledge to UNESCO to reveal their entire checkered history.

Culture Minister Park Yang-woo last week told lawmakers he intends to lodge a "strong protest" with UNESCO in a letter separate from a message already sent by the Foreign Ministry.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Calling upon the government to ensure justice for 20 Indian soldiers killed in India-China face-off in Ladakh, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday called out the government that anything less would be a historic betrayal of the peoples faith.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement at the All-party meeting, Singh said he must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nations security as also strategic and territorial interests

"We remind the government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements," he said.

"We call upon the Prime Minister and the government to rise to the occasion, to ensure justice for Col. B. Santosh Babu and our jawans who have made the ultimate sacrifice and resolutely defended our territorial integrity. To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the peoples faith," the former PM said in a statement.

This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat: Press Statement by Former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh pic.twitter.com/qP3hN3Od9D  Congress (@INCIndia) June 22, 2020

He said that the nation lost twenty brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh on June 15th-16th, 2020.

"They laid down their lives in the ultimate act of sacrifice, valour, and duty to our country. Our brave hearts defended their motherland till their last breath and for that, we owe them and their families, our eternal gratitude. However, their sacrifice cannot be allowed to be in vain," he said.



ALSO READ | Neither has anyone intruded into Indian territory nor taken over any post: PM Modi on clash with China

Singh further said that at this moment, India stands at historic crossroads and that the governments decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us.

"Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty and in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister. China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date," he said.

Emphasising that India cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity, he said the Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further.

"This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat," he added.

ALSO WATCH:
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Psychologists at Northumbria University, Newcastle, have provided the first scientific evidence of the link between violent behavior towards the telecommunications sector and 5G COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs.

Telecommunications companies, police officials, and media outlets worldwide have suggested that 5G coronavirus conspiracies have sparked a flurry of attacks on telecoms workers and infrastructure since the start of the pandemic.

Arson attacks and cases of criminal damage to masts, cabling and other telecoms equipment have been reported in over a dozen countries across the globe, from various places in Europe, to Canada, America, and New Zealand.

In April, the BBC's Newsbeat reported on accounts of harassment and violence, even murder threats, towards telecoms engineers in the UK, due to false theories suggesting that the emergence of the virus is connected to 5G.

Previous research has shown that conspiracy theories may be linked with violent intentions. To date, however, there have been no studies about why and when conspiracy beliefs may justifyand igniteviolence.

Now, new research from the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University has addressed these gaps. The paper has been published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, online today.

Investigating the psychological links

Dr. Daniel Jolley and Dr. Jenny Paterson explored the association between beliefs in 5G COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the justification and willingness to use violence in response to the alleged link between 5G and COVID-19.

The researchers assessed 601 UK participants' levels of 5G COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, 'state anger'  which is temporary, short-lasting outbursts of anger, and levels of paranoia. Here, paranoia refers to participants' belief that there is hostile intent towards them personallyas opposed to the conspiratorial belief that powerful organizations are harming society at large.

Additionally, participants were asked questions about whether they thought violence was a justified response to the alleged link between 5G mobile technology and COVID-19. Participants similarly stated how likely they would be to engage in such behaviors.

The findings revealed that belief in 5G COVID-19 conspiracy theories was positively correlated with state anger. In turn, this state anger was associated with a greater justification of violence in response to a supposed connection between 5G mobile technology and COVID-19.

Alongside this, the results highlighted a greater intent to engage in similar behaviors in the future in those who subscribed to conspiratorial beliefs.

All of these associations were strongest for those who reported higher levels of paranoia.

The psychologists' research also indicates that these patterns are not specific to 5G conspiratorial beliefs: general conspiracy theorizing was linked to justification and willingness to engage in violent behavior more generally because such theorizing was associated with increased state anger. Furthermore, the link between this conspiratorial induced anger was most strongly associated with the justification of violence for participants who were most paranoid.

Dr. Daniel Jolley, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, said: "Disconcertingly, the consequences of conspiracy theories are significant and wide-ranging. Our novel findings extend our understanding and provide the first empirical link between 5G COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and violent reactions, alongside uncovering why (anger) and when (paranoia) conspiracy beliefs may justify the use of violence."

Dr. Jenny Paterson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, said, "These findings are notable because of their possible practical implications. As conspiracy beliefs can be resistant to change, our research suggests that targeting the link between anger and violence may be an effective initial approach to mitigate the relationships between conspiracy beliefs, anger and violence."

Explore further Conspiracy beliefs reduce the following of government coronavirus guidance

More information: Daniel Jolley et al. Pylons ablaze: Examining the role of 5G COVID19 conspiracy beliefs and support for violence, British Journal of Social Psychology (2020). Journal information: British Journal of Social Psychology Daniel Jolley et al. Pylons ablaze: Examining the role of 5G COVID19 conspiracy beliefs and support for violence,(2020). DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12394
NEW YORK  The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down.

The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism.

For many, the Equestrian statue at the museums Central Park West entrance had come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd, the museums president, Ellen V. Futter, said in an interview. We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.

Simply put, she added, the time has come to move it.

The museum took action amid a heated national debate over the appropriateness of statues or monuments that first focused on Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee and has now moved on to a wider arc of figures, from Christopher Columbus to Thomas Jefferson.

Last week alone, a crowd set fire to a statue of George Washington in Portland, Oregon, before pulling it to the ground. Gunfire broke out during a protest in Albuquerque to demand the removal of a statue of Juan de Onate, the despotic conquistador of New Mexico. And New York City Council members demanded that a statue of Thomas Jefferson be removed from City Hall.

In many of those cases, the calls for removal were made by protesters who say the images are too offensive to stand as monuments to American history. The decision about the Roosevelt statue is different, made by a museum that, like others, had previously defended  and preserved  such portraits as relics of their time and that however objectionable, could perhaps serve to educate. It was then seconded by the city, which had the final say.

The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. The City supports the Museums request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.

When the monument will be taken down, where it will go and what, if anything, will replace it, remain undetermined, officials said.

A Roosevelt family member, who is a trustee of the museum, released a statement approving of the removal.

The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice, said Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the 26th president. The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelts legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.

To be sure, the Roosevelt family did get something in return; the museum is naming its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt in recognition of his conservation legacy, Futter said.

Futter also made a point of saying that the museum was only taking issue with the statue itself, not with Roosevelt overall, with whom the institution has a long history.

His father was a founding member of the institution; its charter was signed in his home. Roosevelts childhood excavations were among the museums first artifacts. The museum was chosen by New Yorks state Legislature for Roosevelts memorial in 1920.

The museum already has several spaces named after Roosevelt, including Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and Theodore Roosevelt Park outside.

Its very important to note that our request is based on the statue, that is the hierarchical composition thats depicted in it, Futter said. It is not about Theodore Roosevelt who served as Governor of New York before becoming the 26th president of the United States and was a pioneering conservationist.

Critics, though, have pointed to Roosevelts opinions about racial hierarchy and eugenics and his pivotal role in the Spanish-American War.

The statue  created by James Earle Fraser  was one of four memorials in New York that a city commission reconsidered in 2017, ultimately deciding after a split decision to leave the statue in place and to add context.

The museum tried to add that context with an exhibition last year, Addressing the Statue, which explored its design and installation, the inclusion of the figures walking beside Roosevelt and Roosevelts racism. The museum also examined its own potential complicity, in particular its exhibitions on eugenics in the early 20th century.

The exhibition was partly a response to the defacing of the statue by protesters, who in 2017 splashed red liquid representing blood over the statues base. The protesters, who identified themselves as members of the Monument Removal Brigade, later published a statement on the internet calling for its removal as an emblem of patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.

Now the statue is bleeding, the statement said. We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation.

The group also said the museum should rethink its cultural halls regarding the colonial mentality behind them.

At the time, the museum said complaints should be channeled through de Blasios commission to review city monuments and that the museum was planning to update its exhibits. The institution has since undertaken a renovation of its North West Coast Hall in consultation with native nations from the North West Coast of Canada and Alaska.

In January, the museum also moved the Northwest Coast Great Canoe from its 77th Street entrance into that hall, to better contextualize it. The museums Old New York diorama, which includes a stereotypical depiction of Lenape leaders, now has captions explaining why the display is offensive.

De Blasio has made a point of rethinking public monuments to honor more women and people of color  an undertaking led largely by his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the She Built NYC commission. But these efforts have also been controversial, given complaints about the transparency of the process and the public figures who have been excluded, namely Mother Cabrini, a patron saint of immigrants who had drawn the most nominations in a survey of New Yorkers.

On Friday, the mayor announced that McCray would lead a Racial Justice and Reconciliation Commission whose brief would include reviewing the citys potentially racist monuments.

Though the debates over many of these statues have been marked by rancor, the Natural History Museum seems unconflicted about removing the Roosevelt monument that has greeted its visitors for so long.

We believe that moving the statue can be a symbol of progress in our commitment to build and sustain an inclusive and equitable society, Futter said. Our view has been evolving. This moment crystallized our thinking and galvanized us to action.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VR Resources Ltd. (TSX.V: VRR, FSE: 5VR; OTCBB: VRRCF), the "Company", or VR, is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Reveille silver property located approximately 75 kms to the southeast along trend from the Companys Big Ten epithermal gold project in west-central Nevada.

As shown on Figure 1, the Reveille property is located in the southern part of the Walker Lane mineral belt in Nevada, host to numerous Tertiary-aged epithermal gold and silver deposits with production spanning some 160 years, from the days of the Comstock lode at Virginia City in 1860 to the Round Mountain deposit today. Road access to Reveille is from Highway 6 leading east from Tonopah, with local roads and trails around and within the property.

The broad terms of the proposed acquisition of the Reveille silver property include:

Agreement to acquire a 100% interest in the Reveille property (the Acquisition) from a private vendor (the Vendor), pursuant to a binding acquisition agreement dated June 22, 2020;

An initial payment of US$20,000 and the issuance of 100,000 common shares in the capital of VR to the Vendor on closing of the Acquisition (the Closing);

An additional payment of US$50,000 and issuance of 100,000 common shares in the capital of VR to the Vendors upon commencement by VR of a diamond drill program on the property;

The Vendor will be granted a Net Smelter Returns royalty of 3% on Closing, and;

Closing is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Reveille property occurs in a setting of nested Tertiary volcanic centers in the Walker Lane. It is on the western margin of the Goblin Knobs Tertiary volcanic center where it is disrupted by the resurgent growth of the Kawich caldera. Silver occurs in veins, mantos and breccia bodies within completely altered Paleozoic limestone which occurs in the outer ring complex of the Goblin Knobs caldera. There is artisanal production of silver dating back to 1870, but there has been no modern, systematic exploration of the district, and no diamond drilling of the various surface showings of silver.

Commenting on the news today, VRs CEO Dr. Michael Gunning stated: While the Company continues to work towards a full Plan of Operations permit for a drill program planned for later this summer at our Amsel gold target, we are excited about using the time to explore Reveille on the ground this summer. We have been evaluating this opportunity for more than a year now, and our work in the Big Ten caldera and epithermal system during the past three years provides an expertise and momentum for Reveille, and we intend to commence exploration immediately. Although the various silver showings all have stand-alone merit for exploration, and several have been the focus of production potential in the past, the opportunity for VR is to be the first to apply modern CRD (carbonate mineral deposit) models and exploration technology to the entire mineral system at Reveille, and be the first to drill test any number of vein, manto and breccia-pipe silver occurrences within the framework of a district-scale, integrated exploration model. We thank the vendor for his persistence over the past decade in consolidating this land package for the first time in its history, for it is that consolidation that gives VR the real opportunity for an exploration strategy with scale. The purpose of this news release is simply to provide the agreed-upon terms for the acquisition. We will illustrate our conviction on the potential of this target shortly, in a follow-up news release once requisite approvals are obtained and the Agreement is Closed. We believe that the untested potential of this complex for a large-scale CRD silver system is significant, and we look forward to providing further updates as our work proceeds.

The Reveille property is located approximately 90 kms east of Tonopah, Nevada. It consists of 57 mineral claims in one contiguous block covering 1,157 acres (468 hectares) over an area of approximately 2 x 2 kms. The properties are on federal land administered by the BLM, and are outside of the BLMs broadly defined area of sage grouse protection. There are no underlying annual lease payments on the property, nor are there any joint venture or carried interests on the property.

Technical information for this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101. Justin Daley, P.Geo., Principal Geologist at VR and a non-independent Qualified Person oversees and/or participates in all aspects of the Companys mineral exploration projects, and the content of this news release has been reviewed on behalf of the Company by the CEO, Dr. Michael Gunning, P.Geo., a non-independent Qualified Person.

About VR Resources

VR is an emerging junior exploration company focused on greenfields opportunities in copper and gold (TSX.V: VRR; Frankfurt: 5VR; OTCBB: VRRCF). VR is the continuance of 4 years of active exploration in Nevada by a Vancouver-based private company. The diverse experience and proven track record of its Board in early-stage exploration, discovery and M&A is the foundation of VR. The Company focuses on underexplored, large-footprint mineral systems in the western United States and Canada, and is well financed for its exploration strategies and corporate obligations. VR owns its properties outright, and evaluates new opportunities on an ongoing basis, whether by staking or acquisition.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

Michael H. Gunning

_____________________________

Dr. Michael H. Gunning, PhD, PGeo

President & CEO

For general information please use the following:

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, and similar expressions or are those which, by their nature, refer to future events. Forward looking statements in this release include but are not limited to: if VR completes a diamond drill program on the Claims, and; assumption that TSX Venture Exchange approval will be received.

Although the Company believes that the use of such statements are reasonable, 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. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. All of the Companys public disclosure filings are available at www.sedar.com ; readers are urged to review these materials.

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.

Figure 1 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7e6474db-14cf-4764-949e-208ce365b811




Within this environment, businesses must continue to be vigilant in training their employees about clicking on suspicious links and maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture. After all, according to Tokio Marine HCCs 2020 Cyber Digest Analysis of 2019 Cyber Claims Data, employee negligence is now the third-ranked cause of cyber loss for non-healthcare policyholders and continues to be the leading cause of cyber loss for healthcare insureds.

There is always going to be a human element, and it is impossible to get to 100% compliance with various rules, regulations and best practices, said Mike Palotay, chief underwriting officer at Tokio Marine HCC.

He pointed to the healthcare industry, which has a serious employee negligence risk because there are many people with access to private information that is being sent to different recipients.

We get a lot of claims where someone faxed medical records to the wrong number, or released the medical records to a family member when they werent supposed to, said Palotay, adding that these risks are inherent to the industry because of what healthcare staff must do every day.

Across all industries, phishing attacks also play a role in preying on the human element to expose businesses to cyber threats.

Phishing attacks are a function of employee negligence. For the most part, it is relatively straightforward to make sure that you do not fall for a phishing email, but the statistics show that approximately 20% of these campaigns are successful, noted Palotay.

As a result, business leaders need to keep in mind key risk mitigation steps to limit their exposure to these threats, especially since the risk of employee negligence can be exacerbated in networks at other remote locations, away from established networks.

You can try to bring that number down with education and by doing a lot of training, phishing simulations, and other things to get people much more in tune with the risks, said Palotay.

Read more: Tokio Marine HCC taps industry veteran for cyber group

In addition to training, the Tokio Marine HCC report states that another important risk mitigation tool that businesses should implement is multi-factor authentication, which involves users being prompted to verify their identity with a second device when logging into a system. For example, when someone is trying to log into their bank account on their computer, they will receive a message containing a code on their phone for entry into that website.

Another critical piece of the cyber risk mitigation puzzle is the backing up of data, and, specifically, an offline backup data solution so that if a businesss system gets infected with ransomware, they can wipe that system clean and not rely on the cybercriminal to decrypt the files.

Email filtering is likewise an important risk management tool that businesses can use to defend against cyber threats. While many companies might already have sophisticated email systems in place, email filtering uses artificial intelligence to identify dangerous emails that may be coming in, which is oftentimes where malware gets its hooks into a network.

Finally, next generation antivirus software can also help keep businesses protected from cyberattacks. These tools today are behavior-based, so they learn how individuals use their computers and see what software is coming through to identify potential viruses.

There is positive news in all of this, which is that many businesses are already implementing cybersecurity measures to reduce their risk of getting hacked.

As noted in the Tokio Marine HCC report, While the cybercriminals continue to increase the frequency and sophistication of their attacks, business owners are also becoming more knowledgeable and prepared to defend themselves and their organizations.
Newly-revealed documents show this wasn't the first accident at the nuclear plant, while previous ones had been totally hushed down.

The SBU Security Service archive and the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance presented the second book of the "KGB Chornobyl Dossier. From Construction to Accident" series.

A total of 229 declassified documents, most of which are being published for the first time, cover the period from the early 1970s to November 1986, that is, until the commissioning of the Shelter (Sarcophagus) following the blast, the SBU press service reports.

Archival files show that more accidents took place at the Chornobyl NPP prior to the catastrophic disaster of 1986, although authorities managed to completely hush them down.

"Among the documents included in the new book are reports of accidents that occurred before 1986, a transcript of telephone communications at the Chornobyl NPP on the night of April 26, a copy of the first accident report, information about the investigation and construction of the Sarcophagus," said Andriy Kohut, chief of the SBU Archive.

Read alsoUkraine commemorates 34th anniversary of Chornobyl disaster

Anton Drobovych, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, added that these materials allow readers to better understand the tragedy: the preconditions of the catastrophe, reports and materials that testify to "smaller" accidents that occurred at the Chornobyl NPP earlier and were hidden. "This will allow mankind to expand access to the truth about the crimes of the totalitarian system and learn the right lessons," he said.

According to Maksym Shevchuk, Deputy Head of the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management, the book removes some of the discussions about how the station was constructed, how it worked, and how the accident took place.

"Although more than 30 years have passed, such a large-scale tragedy cannot be forgotten," said Valery Seida, First Deputy General Director of the Chornobyl NPP.

The documents in the book are published in the original language, in chronological order.
Indian army soldier

S Dinny

Only the best of friends or the worst of enemies return to us is an old saying one often hears in Ladakh. The sheer difficulty for people from the plains to survive, due to the extreme terrain and climatic conditions in Ladakh, is epitomised in this adage.

The 15,000-feet-plus high altitudes are unforgiving. The Indian Army soldier guards the eastern front in Ladakh overcoming inhuman challenges  challenges so extreme that many cannot even fathom it.

A small mistake in violation against the laid down standard operating procedures at these dizzying heights can result in serious health-related issues  and even can cause fatal casualties.

The lack of oxygen in the air can lead to blood clots in the vein and drastically reduces human efficiency. Added to this is the weather with sub-zero temperatures at night  this during winters could go as low as minus 30 degree Celsius. Its at times like this that Ladakh reminds us why its called a cold desert.

It is in these conditions that the Indian Army soldiers are expected to carry out their duty. It involves patrolling inhospitable terrain, sometimes at heights above 17,000 feet so as to dominate the Line of Actual Control (LAC). While patrolling, they carry their personal weapons and other necessary loads too. It was during one such night on June 15/16 that a group of our soldiers were attacked by the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) at Galwan Valley.

As an officer who served in this area not so long ago, I have experienced the challenges our forces face to guard our eastern frontiers. The extreme elements demand that one be not only physical fit, but it also tests ones mental resilience.

A soldier has to not just be strong to face the harsh elementsbut also a hostile enemy on the other side of the divide. Difference in perceptions has meant that the LAC between India and China is disputed at some parts, and Indian soldiers guarding these points come in regular contact with their Chinese counterparts. These meetings at times lead to conflicts.

No soldier in any other part of the world has to defend his or her territory with so much of ambiguities. To many it is almost unbelievable that the borders between the two most-populous, nuclear-armed countries with large standing armies is yet to be settled. Both the sides have not agreed to a line on the map that delineates one side from the other.

Both the sides are trying to protect the integrity of their respective land, based on their perceptions of the border. In this grey zone conflicts are a natural consequence. The ordinary soldier at the front of the line has the unique task of being both a soldier and a diplomat, to maintain peace and tranquillity.

Another aspect which makes the India-China border unique is that though the soldiers carry weapons they are not to use it in honour of an agreement signed between the two nations to avoid escalation of border disputes.

Another aspect that makes it difficult here is the unpredictability of the Chinese PLA. As mentioned earlier, while patrolling troops from both the sides meet  at times it would be a friendly PLA patrol, and at times it would be a hostile one. It is almost impossible to know if the patrolling party on the other side is a friend or foe!

In addition to these psychological tests are the standoffs which are physically demanding. During long standoffs with the Chinese PLA, the Indian soldier is expected to brave the treacherous climate and stand facing his PLA counterpart for hours together. If this escalates into a prolonged one and both sides dig in their heels, the soldier is then expected to remain in the same place with bare minimum camping arrangements and resist all attempts made by the Chinese to advance any further. Finally, he has to be prepared at all times to thwart any physical violence unleashed upon him.

At times, when the standoffs get violent, as has happened in Galwan Valley, the soldier has to overcome the pain due to injuries sustained, and overcome anger and sorrow of losing fellow soldiers, and continue to defend the country.

In the midst of all these challenges there is the constant thought of ones loved ones back home, where there are ailing parents, lonely spouses and growing children.

The life of a soldier deployed at the frontline of any operationally active area is never easy  but, here in the cold deserts of Eastern Ladakh the soldier is pushed to the limits of physical and mental endurance.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Elnur Baghishov  Trend:

The goods worth $49 million were exported through the customs and border markets of Irans south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province to Pakistan from March 20 through May 20, Mahmoud Reza Rahmatian, head of the Industry, Mine and Trade Organization of the province said, Trend reports referring to the companys website.

About 21 percent of the export of goods in terms of value accounted for Pakistan, head of the organization added. The goods worth $12.2 million were exported through the customs of the province while the goods worth $37 million through the border markets.

The building materials (cement), gas, sulfur, dates and ceramics were mainly exported to Pakistan over the past two months, Rahmatian added.

The goods worth $235 million were exported through the customs and border markets of Sistan-Baluchestan province to other countries from March 20 through May 20 of this Iranian year.
CHARLOTTE, N.C.  Three people were killed and six others were wounded early Monday when multiple people fired into a crowd at an impromptu celebration in North Carolina, police said. Five others were hit by vehicles.

The shooting happened at an impromptu block party in Charlotte that was a continuation of Juneteenth celebrations, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Gerald Smith said at a media briefing Monday.

About 400 people gathered on the north side of the city when someone in the crowd was struck during a hit-and-run accident, Smith said. Police responding to the scene heard shots being fired. Police believe more than one person fired weapons because videos recorded sounds from guns of different calibers. Authorities recovered around 100 casings from the scene.

Maliyah Cook, a witness and relative of one of the victims, said the mood of the crowd leading up to the shooting had been calm. Suddenly, she heard gunshots.

I really feel like it was a good party. I dont know what happened, Cook told The Associated Press. It came out the blue.

As Cook was running, she said she looked down to see her cousin, 29-year-old Kelly Miller, fatally wounded in the middle of the street. Police have said Miller was pronounced dead at the scene while 28-year-old Christopher Antonio Gleaton was pronounced dead after being transported to the hospital.

On Monday afternoon, police said a third victim had been pronounced dead, 39-year-old Jamaa Keon Cassell.

Matthew Torres, a Charlotte radio personality who goes by the name Chewy, said that with fewer police and organized activities than previous nights, the atmosphere was tense preceding the fatal shootings. Police say gatherings Friday and Saturday in the area ended without injuries and that the crowds dispersed in a mostly peaceful fashion.

But on Sunday, Torres said some in the crowd seemed angry and that he had a hunch something was going to go on.

You could see they were angry for whatever reason, not knowing what they were angry for, Torres said in a phone interview.

Late Sunday night, cars were doing tricks in the street including one that performed a donut and blew a tire, he said. Soon after, an ambulance arrived and then gunshots rang out. He said it sounded like multiple people in the crowd were firing at once.

You had one gun sound and then maybe like a half a second later you heard two and then half a second later after that, thats when anybody and everybody who had a gun was letting it go, Torres said, adding: We were looking at bodies in the street.

Smith said no motive was clear for the shooting.

Near the scene hours later, Myra Stewart said she was saddened by the shooting.

Weve been protesting, and weve been saying that Black lives matter. But not only do they have to matter to white people, they have to matter to us, too, said Stewart, an African American resident of Charlotte.

Betty Oates, another Charlotte resident, noted the deaths heighten the sense of crisis during the coronavirus pandemic and a nationwide movement by protesters to highlight racial injustice in the wake of deaths of Black men in police custody.

We are already in a crisis, she said. God, here we are in another crisis on top of another crisis.

On Monday afternoon, a group gathered to lay flowers near the scene of the shooting after police cleared it.

Its also a reality check that we have to do more than create catchy hashtags and cool signs. We need to get out there and stand up for our people, Katrina Cherry said.

Smith said the situation grew so chaotic after the arrival of authorities early Monday that a rescue team had to be sent into the crowd to pull people off the backs of our firefighters who were treating people hurt at the scene.

Smith also acknowledged that some officers had weapons drawn as they sought to gain control of the scene.

They were doing the best that they can to make sense out of something that is chaotic, a mass casualty scene, he said.

Smith said that no witnesses have come forward to describe how or why the shooting started and urged the public to help with the investigation.

No one was in custody by midafternoon.

Of the other seven who were shot, three had life-threatening injuries, Smith said.

The five people hit by vehicles are believed to have suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, police said in a news release. Police say four of them appear to have been struck by vehicles fleeing the scene.

Juneteenth, for which celebrations started Friday, commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 years ago.

___

Tulp reported from Leawood, Kansas. Associated Press writer Jonathan Drew contributed to this report from Durham, North Carolina.
A Southern California restaurant owner who was among five injured when an underground transformer exploded during an Oktoberfest celebration last year is suing Southern California Edison.

Flames shot into the sky from the blasts that blew a vault door off its hinges and knocked people to the ground at Old World Village in Huntington Beach.

Bernie Bischof, the owner of Old World restaurant, suffered serious burns and brain damage, according to a negligence lawsuit filed this week. The court filing accuses Edison of failing to properly maintain the transformers, creating a death trap that nearly killed him when the explosions erupted.

Bischof had evacuated a patio area before the initial blast after noticing an odd smell from the vaults.

Our thoughts go out to Mr. Bischof and his family. While Southern California Edison is aware of the lawsuit filed by Mr. Bischof in relation to the incident that took place in October 2019 in Huntington Beach, SCE cannot discuss the specifics of pending litigation, the utility said in a statement.

Bischof, 60, suffered burns over nearly half of his body and required multiple skin graft procedures to repair damaged tissue, according to the filings.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Lufthansa faces one of the most momentous weeks in a near 70-year history, with a clash between its biggest investor and the German government threatening to scupper a 9 billion euro ($15 billion) bailout and push Europe's biggest airline toward collapse.

With Lufthansa fighting for survival after the coronavirus outbreak punctured a decades-long global travel boom, billionaire Heinz-Hermann Thiele is threatening to block the rescue plan, which would dilute his holding and influence, at a virtual shareholder meeting on Thursday (European time).

Germany's third-richest man Heinz Hermann Thiele has expressed dissatisfaction with the rescue. Credit:Bloomberg

Thiele is set to make his case to Lufthansa chief executive officer Carsten Spohr and the two German ministers who brokered the bailout in an online meeting on Monday, according to people familiar with the situation. If there's no breakthrough, the airline will go into the investor vote with its future on the line as cash reserves run low and the threat of insolvency looms.

"We face a fateful week for our Lufthansa," Spohr said in a letter to employees seen by Bloomberg, warning that it's not at all certain the bailout package will gain approval at the extraordinary general meeting.
Czech Senate President Announces Plan to Visit Taiwan

Honest News Straight to Your Home. Try the Epoch Times yourself, and get a free gift.

Despite pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the President of the Czech Senate, Milos Vystrcil, officially announced on June 9 that he will be visiting Taiwan for a week. There he will carry forward the will of the former Czech Senator, Jaroslav Kubera, a long-time supporter of Taiwan who died of a heart attack in January. Vystrcil criticized the Czech government for its over-reliance on the CCP and believes that Taiwan has created more investment and employment opportunities in the Czech Republic than the CCP has provided.

The Taiwan visit will take place between Aug. 30 to Sept. 5. Vystrcil will be accompanied by other political leaders and representatives from the business and scientific communities.
From Settlement to University

There are many stories of unsuccessful Roma children; this one from Slovakia is about how they can be helped effectively. From Dennik N.

by Veronika Folentova

Nikola sits in the corner of the classroom. Its her first day at a new school after a recent family move to the Slovak town of Levoca. The rest of the class are all Roma. They can all speak Slovak, but among themselves they speak Romani, and Nikola doesnt understand. Shes Roma herself, and not ashamed of it, but her family doesnt speak Romani at home. She cant understand her classmates and they dont understand why a Roma girl isnt able to speak their language.

Nikola is a quiet child and tries her best, at just 10 years of age, to understand why one class contains all the Roma children and a different one has the others. She experienced nothing like this at her last school, in Velky Krtis. There, her friends and classmates all had different skin colors. When shes older shell understand that what shes experiencing has a name: segregation.

When her parents ask how her first day at the new school was, she tells them she was put in the Roma class. The next day her mother goes to the school to sort things out and from that point on, Nikola is in the same class as white children. There, too, she sits quietly in the corner. She can now understand what the children are talking about, but she isnt accepted in this class either: she is seen as different.

Nikola had mixed experiences in Slovak schools: she was bullied, made fun of, had a learning disability misdiagnosed, and changed primary school twice; she even spent six months in the Northern Ireland education system. But today Nikola Pompova, 21 years old, is into her second year of Romani studies at Charles University in Prague.

She has been helped in her studies by stipends from the Roma Education Fund. Thanks to the fund she is now part of a community trying to get as many Roma children as possible into the highest levels of the Slovak education system.

Nikolas story shows that it is possible to help smart children who would otherwise be crushed by the Slovak school system. She is an example of why it makes sense to intervene, and a model for how to do it.

As well as granting money, the Roma Education Fund (REF) also offers students supplementary teaching and mentoring. Mentors advise students which areas of their education they need to work on, introduce them to role models, and talk to them about relationships at school and at home; all with the aim of getting them to achieve the best results they can.

Nikola. Photo by Vladimir Simicek/Dennik N.

The REFs programs begin in early childhood and so also cover children who havent yet started kindergarten. The aim is for children from Roma communities to go on to high school, and preferably to take final exams. The funds work with students also involves building a community of educated Roma people to address the lack of role models for Roma children. The idea of establishing the REF in Slovakia came from the Open Society Institute; the World Bank provided both funding and practical help to set up the program.

Children of parents who didnt even complete their primary education can start to fall behind their peers at school simply because no one at home can help with their homework. Sometimes the problem comes down to what might seem a trivial issue: simply giving children the belief that they can go to high school, pass their exams, and get to university. This is where the mentors come in.

The REF stipends only go to students who improve their grades and have no unexplained absences from school. When a Roma child from a ghetto or from one of the Roma settlements looks at how their parents live, and see that they dont have an education, they often lose their motivation to go to school and achieve anything themselves, even when they have what it takes. They absorb what they see at home into their own lives, because even outside the home environment they dont see examples of Roma people who have achieved anything, Nikola says.

The fund seeks out children who have the potential to pass their high-school exams and perhaps later to get to university. The fund has been operating for 10 years, in which time, across the whole of Europe, more than 7,000 Roma people have completed a university course.

Told She Wasnt Smart Enough

Nikola may soon join the ranks of Slovak Roma who have a university qualification. She began her schooling in Velky Krtis, where she was in a mixed class, did well and got top marks in all her exams. When she was 10 years old her family moved to Levoca; they were the first Roma family to move onto an estate inhabited by the majority Slovak community.

She joined the fourth year at the Francisci Street primary school in Levoca. I had problems fitting in because the non-Roma children didnt want to be friends with me. And even the Roma children didnt want to be friends with me, because I couldnt speak Romani and my skin was lighter.

This was Nikolas first experience of segregation: she didnt know where she belonged.

I knew I was a Roma, and we have never been ashamed of that. But we had lived our whole lives on mixed estates and I had lots of non-Roma friends, she says.

Today Nikola speaks authoritatively about prejudice, having experienced it herself.

When children are separated into different classes, the non-Roma children tell themselves its because the Roma are dirty and bad. Their parents often say the same at home. On the other hand, Roma children often envy the non-Roma children  how they live, how they dress. They dont make friends or get to know each other because they are in separate classes, she says.

Nikola cried at home a lot during her school days in Levoca: she wanted to go back to Velky Krtis, but her mother didnt want to. The Roma children started to bully her.

First they called me names, then it got worse. Once Nikola came home with the contents of her lunch box rubbed into her hair.

The situation didnt improve and her parents sent her to a new school. She got good marks and was accepted into a state gymnazium  a school for academically gifted students  where she was the schools first Roma girl. Even on registration day she sensed people were pointing at her and talking about her behind her back. It took her fellow students a while to get used to her. They could see that I could speak Slovak, and that I wore clean clothes; eventually everything worked out fine and Im still in contact with some of them today, she says.

She made friends, but then started having problems with math. She couldnt work out simple arithmetic without using her fingers or a pen and paper. Her teacher sent her for psychological testing, which concluded that she didnt have the ability to study at gymnazium level.

A New School, Dyscalculia and Graduation

At the end of the school year the family moved to Belfast in Northern Ireland, where Nikolas father was working long-term as a plasterer. She was 12 years old and was able to experience a school environment where she suffered no discrimination. She wanted to stay, but her mother couldnt settle. They returned to Slovakia and Nikola entered a different gymnazium in Levoca. This time she wasnt the schools only Roma girl, and the classes were mixed.

She went for more tests to find out why she was having trouble with math. The results showed she has a learning disability known as dyscalculia, which prevents the sufferer from doing arithmetic. She is unable to imagine numbers in the abstract. The condition also means I have spatial awareness issues: I get my left and right mixed up and find it difficult to read maps, Nikola says.

But she had no problems with school and for that reason was recommended for what turned out to be the first of several REF stipends. She used the money to buy study materials, and also paid for her school leaving party with it.

She was awarded the stipend even though her mother was receiving maternity pay and her father held a job. This is because REF stipends are awarded not as welfare payments, but on the basis of educational merit; the children of working parents are also eligible to receive them. Despite having work, parents often cannot afford to buy their children books and study materials or to cover their transport costs.

Because stipends are awarded purely on educational merit, and only children achieving the best school results receive them, the REF does not provide help for children with average or below-average grades. So the fund is not a universal solution to improve the performance of all children from marginalized environments. It only helps those getting good marks  the ones that have a higher chance of getting the grades to go on to study at university.

Nikola did well at school. She passed high school exams in civics, Slovak, English, and biology and wanted to study medicine, but was rejected by medical schools in Bratislava and Kosice. Two years later she received offers for Roma studies in Prague and English in Kosice. She chose Prague. She is one of eight students, half of whom are Roma.

Im enjoying it at the moment, though I dont know what Im going to do when Ive completed my studies. We are learning about the history of the Roma and about the different ethnic groups. And Ive learned to speak Romani.

These days, aside from her studies, Nikola also gets involved in the other activities the Roma Education Fund carries out in addition to awarding stipends. This involves trying to create a community of educated Roma people to help younger students. Among other things, Nikola has co-founded a reading club and led reading sessions with younger pupils.

A Mentor Who Teaches Parents Too

Jozef Demeter is another beneficiary of the REFs stipends and for the last five years has acted as a mentor for the fund, helping young female pupils to prepare for and study at secondary school and university. Jozef is a specialist in pedagogy and has been teaching for 17 years. He originally studied to be a cook and a waiter. He comes from a Roma settlement and still lives there today. Im not ashamed. Im proud to be Roma, he says.

Jozef Demeter on his graduation day

I used to cycle to the bus station and then catch a bus to school every day. I told myself that maybe one day I would teach at that school, he says about his childhood dreams. Since then he has graduated from high school, gone to university, undertaken various training courses and today is continuing his studies at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, specializing in the education of children from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds.

Jozef is 38 years old and says segregation has increased markedly since he was a pupil himself, in a mixed class. We may have had to sit at the back, but it wasnt like it is today, he says. He excelled at primary school, loved his studies and never went out to play until he had done all his homework. I enjoyed school, he says. Today he works in a primary school in Slovenske Nove Mesto, as the tutor for a special needs class.

When I ask children what they want to be in life, those from the majority ethnic group have dreams: they want to be doctors, car mechanics, firefighters; but the Roma children often dont know where they want to work. It took a long time for the children to realize that they didnt have to limit themselves to community service work, he says.

The reason for this is that they often have no role models at home, and the only adults they see around them are unemployed and often under-educated. Jozef says this is where the Roma Education Fund stipends come in.

Demeters role as a mentor also involves working with parents. For the children to get good results, they have to have support at home, he says. The parents of students from marginalized communities often didnt complete secondary school themselves, Jozef says, and cant envisage their children being able to go beyond primary school.

They havent understood that higher levels of education open doors to other kinds of work and bring experience and higher levels of pay.

And here lies one of the funds limitations: the parents of children from the poorest backgrounds are often without work and see no prospects in education. They cant act as educational role models for their children, and role models are also often lacking in their wider circle.

When Jozef began working with Vanesa, her parents were unemployed and her mother was doing community service work. I had to motivate the parents more than I did the student, he says. They gradually discovered that when they worked, they had a lot more money. Over the four years that Demeter has worked with them, both parents have found work, repaired their house, and bought a car. Vanessas father did a welding course and now earns twice as much as I do, he laughs.

Jozef says often just talking things through with the parents and explaining why education is important for their children is enough to have an impact. When I speak to them, I talk to them at their level; I dont puff myself up, I dont make a show of having a higher level of education. Thats important, he says. Sometimes just chatting for a couple of minutes changes the parents attitude.

Jozef changes the attitudes not only of his students parents, but also of his own siblings. He has eight of them, and all are in work and continuing their education. Theyre not getting any younger,but theyre still learning: finishing off their secondary education, preparing for exams. My sister wants to go into social work, he says about how his family has changed the way it looks at education under his influence.

Demeter himself receives a stipend from the fund and is constantly learning. So far his mentoring has seen him work with three girls  one is now at university in Levoca and the other two are finishing off their studies at the private Deutsch-Slowakische Akademien (DSA) secondary school in Trebisov. Theyre preparing to go to university, and choosing their clothes for the high school leaving party, to which theyve invited their mentor. They are all studying teaching.

Jozef Demeter and Vanesa. Photo courtesy of Demeter.

Outside his work for the fund Jozef has also mentored two boys who are now car mechanics. Another of his students graduated from high school and is preparing to do a course to work in the private security sector. Jozef has also been helping parents to further their education, and five of them are now coming to the end of part-time courses in catering.

Few Settlement Children Finish High School

They all come from marginalized Roma communities, where only a very few children make it to secondary school or university. Im very happy for them, Demeter says.

He gives as an example one of his students, Melinda, whom he has known since she was in the first year of his school. She was so small  even her bag was bigger than her. I had to give her money for the bus so she wouldnt have to carry it home, he says. Today Melinda is in her second year atuniversity in Levoca, studying nursery school teaching with the support of a REF stipend.

Jozef is in touch with his students at least twice a week; they talk not just about their studies, but about what else is happening in school, whether they are in a relationship, how things are going with boys. When I sense that a student is lacking motivation and things are getting them down, I offer them support. I tell them they can manage it, that they have to have a goal that they can gradually work towards. And then, when they regain motivation, we can go through specific subjects that are causing them problems, he says. He tries to help them achieve those goals: with his help they have started to work on getting driving licenses, for example. This is not common among Roma girls, he says: its often only the boys who drive.

Demeter encountered an additional problem with the girls he mentors: they didnt believe in themselves. They left primary school with the notion that they didnt have what it takes to finish secondary school or to go to university. At secondary school they were a hairs breadth away from dropping out in the first year, he says.

Melinda was told at primary school that she should become a pastry cook because she would come to nothing.

When she finished high school I called the teacher to tell her she had graduated from the private DSA school in Trebisov and had got a place at university. She was speechless for a minute and then congratulated the student, Demeter says.

When another two of Jozefs students found they were constantly being told to repeat their homework, a telephone call came to their rescue. Jozef called the teacher and asked what the problem was. He explained he was from the Roma Education Fund  something that often changes the attitude of the teachers, he says, because they realize that someone is looking out for the students, and also because the fund has a good reputation. Demeter says the teachers approach to the pupils then changed.

Jozef gives pupils extra classes himself at home, in his kitchen. My wife laughs at me, she says I have one school at school and another school at home. We have often still been up studying when my wife and child are already asleep in the room next door.

Motivation to Stay in School

What does Jozef think are the main problems in the Slovak school system? One is attendance levels; many students dont have support at home and so dont go to school. He would like to see a stricter approach to attendance, because if children dont go to school regularly, they cant get what they need to get on in life.

But Jozef was young himself once, and knows that at that age children will get up to mischief. And he also knows that some students stop going to school because they are being subjected to humiliating treatment, because they are made to feel bad, or because they are being hurt by others.

Students who want a stipend from the Roma Education Fund have to keep their attendance levels up. Demeter says this is a great motivator. Indeed, the question of attendance is another factor limiting the funds reach, because children who have missed a lot of classes cannot receive a stipend and so dont have access to a mentor.

To get support from the fund, students must have no more than 15 unauthorized absences from class in a school year. The fund also asks questions when a students record shows lots of authorized absences. Its happened to me many times that a girl has dropped out of school and I worried whether she would come back. But I kept at them for long enough that they didnt give up, Demeter says.

Viktor Teru and Slovak President Zuzana Caputova. Photo courtesy of Teru.

At the age of most of Jozefs charges, theyre experiencing their first loves and relationships. Roma girls have a completely different view of these things. I tell them its natural that they should have a boyfriend, but they dont have to get married straight away. They need to have boundaries and to finish their schooling.

A second problem is that Roma pupils can sometimes complete the compulsory number of years of education even before they finish primary school  often as early as the seventh grade. This can happen because children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds often have to repeat a school year, frequently as early as the first year of primary school, but also in later years.

If mentors were the norm in schools, the Roma community would make progress, he says. Mentors shouldnt just be looking after Roma children, but any child who is having problems and needs motivation or help, he says.

Jozef says the mentoring system should be extended to all schools, but the problem may be finding the money: the state doesnt have the means even to pay for teaching assistants for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. He says mentors should be employed as specialist staff members in schools, linking parents, students, teachers and specialist practitioners such as psychologists and speech therapists; whatever problem a pupil has, there should be a specialist there to help.

According to data from the Slovak Center for Scientific and Technical Information, the highest incidence of pupils dropping out of primary school is in the Banska Bystrica, Presov and Kosice regions  and it is precisely these areas that have the most segregated Roma settlements. The dropout rate in the older age groups is lower, probably because there are fewer children from the settlements in those classes.

Take the Trebisov district in eastern Slovakias Kosice region as an example: on the edge of the town is the countrys second biggest Roma settlement, according to the Atlas of Roma Communities. It has a population of 6,685, just less than in the well-known Lunik IX Roma estate in Kosice. Trebisovs Roma settlement makes up a quarter of its population.

In the last school year in Trebisov, a total of 213 pupils dropped out during their first year  18 percent of the total number of students. Three students even had to repeat the pre-primary zero year designed to bring them up to a sufficient level to start school. Among all students from that level to the fourth year, one in 10 had to repeat a year.

There are no accurate data on how many Roma students are studying in secondary schools and universities, a fact acknowledged by the Ministry of Education itself. This is because data are not collected by ethnicity. The only relevant data, cited by several experts, are from the EU Agency for Basic Rights, covering 2016. They indicate that 58 percent of children from marginalized Roma communities between the ages of 15 and 18 made it to secondary school. These figures are confirmed by the Slovak Government Representative for Roma Communities, Abel Ravasz. It is not clear how many of these children pass their final high school exams. Six percent go on to study for qualifications beyond high school; Ravasz says this is the same proportion as in Hungary, better than the figure in Romania, but worse than in the Czech Republic.

The number of children that leave the Slovak education system early, without even obtaining a certificate of education, is growing, and the overwhelming majority of them are from marginalized communities, says Viera Kalmarova, head of the National Schools Inspectorate. This is based on research on the success rates of students who go through the pre-primary zero year. No less than 92 percent of students in the zero year are from marginalized Roma communities. The zero year is supposed to enable children from a socially weaker background to catch up with their peers. Often, however, it leads to segregated Roma classes.

Research from the 2017-2018 school year has shown that less than half of students who went through the zero year successfully completed the first stage of primary school (the first four years), and only 19 percent successfully completed the ninth year of primary school without having to repeat a year.

Viktor Teru went to university thanks to the Roma Education Fund and today is an advisor to Slovak President Zuzana Caputova. We had one student who was the only Rom at his gymnazium and it was a great help to him when he got to know other Roma in other schools. He immediately realized that he was not alone, Teru says. Viktor and others have created a network of stipend recipients past and present. The university network has 200 members and the secondary school network over 1,000.

It is these students, who are currently studying or have finished university or gymnazium, who should be the model for younger students. One program aiming to support role models awards stipends to female students attending secondary-level schools that train future teachers. At the moment the program supports 45 students, some of whom may go on to become nursery school teachers.

Students start receiving support in the ninth year of primary school. To give one example, we had a student in Slovenske Nove Mesto, a town on the border with Hungary. She joined our program and completed secondary teacher training college and then went to the pedagogical faculty in Levoca. They speak very well of her at the university and her marks are among the highest there, Teru says.

Slovakia needs Roma teachers, he says. Wider society, including the Roma community, thinks that Roma teachers should only be for Roma children. Thats one way of seeing things. But our idea is that non-Roma children should also be exposed to Roma teachers, Teru explains. But this just wont happen without role models among the Roma, he says.

The stipend program isnt about someone getting money just because they are Roma. They get the money so they increase their motivation and are not afraid to study, Teru says. The money often helps students pay the costs of travel to school, or to buy books, or to pay for dormitories. Even when students have working parents, their income is often so low that they cant afford to send their child to secondary school if its located in a different town, for instance.

The fund organizes summer camps, training sessions, and workshops to reinforce the idea of a healthy identity. Teru explains that they want the students to be proud of the fact they are Roma and to show other Roma that they too can get an education.

One feature of the program is that older students help younger ones; students that want to receive a university stipend have to get involved in activities in the Roma community. In this way Roma students receiving support at university, like Jozef Demeter, can provide training to younger students who receive support from the Fund.

What Can Change

Support for students doesnt end after high school or university. The fund also offers internships and has contacts with employers. I worked as a field officer and as a trainer in the continuing education sector and what we observe  and this is not just true for Roma students  is that a secondary education provides the theory, but students still lack practical skills, how to write a CV or to fill in a simple questionnaire, for instance, Teru says. This is why the fund wants the students it supports at university to provide extra training and to act as mentors and tutors to those in secondary schools.

In a project covering the period from 2018 to 2021, the fund has received European funding for 60 mentors, each of whom is responsible for three students. They are already seeing results: the students with a mentor have improved their grades and reduced the number of missed classes.

But the reach of the fund is limited. In the current Slovak education system, it isnt realistic to expand the reach of the program to all schools, not just those with Roma pupils, given the financial restraints. Not only can many schools not afford teaching assistants for disadvantaged children, they often also lack professional practitioners such as psychologists or education specialists.

The work of the Roma Education Fund is necessary and valuable, says Miroslava Hapalova, an analyst at To da rozum, an educational foundation. Students from socially weaker backgrounds and marginalized areas need help to overcome the barriers they face due to a lack of money, she says.

Even though there is a system of state-funded stipends in secondary schools, the family income ceiling is set too low and the amount of the stipend depends on the grades being achieved, without taking account of the general standard in the school or the difficulty of the subjects being studied.

This means that many students from poorer families, and particularly those in subjects leading to a final exam, drop out for want of financial support. Our research shows that in both secondary and university education there is a priority need for other forms of support to students, not just financial. The [Roma Education] Fund helps dozens of students every year, but the figure simply isnt high enough, she says.

The model of stipends and support is replicable, she believes. So why doesnt the state take up the idea and apply the system universally? Hapalova says its not so much a question of money as one of legislation and the way support services are structured. University students with specific needs do have a statutory right to support, if they have a disability, an illness, or a learning disability. These students also benefit from a coordinator to help them in their studies.

But the state doesnt extend this provision to students from socially weaker backgrounds or from marginalized areas. We are often talking about the first generation of students at university and they dont have anyone from their social background to get advice from when they come up against a problem or face obstacles in their studies. They cant fall back on help or experience from the family; they dont have the necessary social capital, Hapalova says.

Other countries have the same problem, but in contrast to Slovakia, in many countries students from socially excluded groups receive comprehensive forms of support. The money could be found for this, Hapalova says. An average of 15 million euros is allocated each year for social stipends in universities and 3 million euros for secondary schools, she says.

To make this funding more effective  and create a better return  it would help for it to be provided in parallel with other support services, such as tutoring and mentoring, to help pupils and students overcome obstacles other than merely financial ones, Hapalova believes.

Aside from the REF, other organizations have also demonstrated the success of mentoring. The system of providing additional teaching for children in the domestic environment is something that works, Hapalova says. An example is Jarna Street School in Zilina, which received help from the Center for Research in Ethnicity and Culture in the form of individual teaching and tutoring.

The Roma Education Fund was created to try out these and other models. It then tries to extend those that work to the whole of society. Last year the fund joined an expert team for the education of Roma at the office of the Government Representative for the Roma Community. Stipends and mentoring and extra tuition have become part of the governments strategy to include Roma communities. The fund is currently working on a handbook on how to prepare calls for expression of interest in the stipend program.

The fund itself, however, cannot expand the stipend model into all schools. So far it has supported children in 147 secondary schools, but there are almost 800 in Slovakia.

Despite his work with the government representative, Viktor Teru sees the limitations, particularly in how the education system operates. He says the state is a passive actor and this threatens the sustainability of the activities and stipends that the fund carries out. If the state does not implement examples of good practice, there is a risk that in a few years these activities will be no more than a memory.

Veronika Folentova is a Slovak journalist who primarily covers health care and education.

This article originally appeared in the Slovak newspaper Dennik N. Research was supported by MEMO 98, Transitions, and the Solutions Journalism Network.

Translated by Paul Kaye.
Myriam Borzee/iStockBy MEREDITH DELISO and ARIELLE MITROPOULOS, ABC News



(NEW YORK) -- A dozen states have seen record highs of new COVID-19 cases since Friday, an ABC News analysis has found.



The states that saw the increase were Florida, Texas, Utah, South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Arizona, California, Tennessee and Oklahoma, according to the analysis of state-released data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project.



Florida's three-day streak of record-breaking numbers ended on Saturday, with 4,049 new cases of COVID-19.



On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis attributed the rise in the state's positive cases to an increase in testing. During a news briefing, he said that the state was in a "much better position today than we were at the beginning of April," pointing to an increase in hospital beds and a decreasing mortality rate.



Amid the rising numbers, more Florida counties are now requiring facial coverings. Orange County, home to Orlando, started a new order requiring the use of masks in public on Saturday. And in Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, masks are now required in restaurants and other businesses. Palm Beach County is set to vote on the use of masks on Tuesday.



South Carolina, Nevada and Utah saw their second day in a row of record daily new cases on Saturday, and Missouri had its second straight day of record cases on Sunday.



On Sunday, the same day Oklahoma set a record number of daily new COVID-19 cases, the state health department was urging anyone who had attended "large-scale gatherings in recent weeks" to get tested for COVID-19. Tulsa notably hosted thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump at an indoor rally on Saturday.



"As expected, Oklahoma's urban areas as well as a few communities around the state are experiencing a rise in active COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to increased social activity and mobility," Interim Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye said in a statement. "[We] need Oklahomans to get tested, even those without symptoms, so we can identify active cases and work together to minimize community spread."



The ABC News analysis also found that hospitalizations for COVID-19 are increasing in 17 states across the country. Those states are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.



Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said on CBS' Face the Nation Sunday that the White House task force is "on top of all of these outbreaks," including states like Arizona, Texas and Florida that are "having those upticks."



He also told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that the White House coronavirus task force has been working with governors to make sure the United States "can open up this economy in a safe and reasonable way."

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Rules Changes

Who is Liable?

(TNS)  Employers had to scramble when the pandemic took hold in mid-March, emptying out workplaces and sending workers home to do their jobs for what was expected to be at most two or three months.But the coronavirus outbreak has persisted, productivity hasnt taken a big hit, and a large percentage of workers actually prefer skipping the commute. More employers are extending remote work assignments, and in some cases, planning to make them permanent.Some of my clients are thinking about more permanent remote work situations. I have one client who is giving up all leases and letting everyone work remotely, said Elizabeth Wylie, a partner at Snell & Wilmer in Denver, Colo., specializing in employment law.But that will require revamping a host of rules and procedures that werent always dealt with, like tracking time worked, using paid time-off, worker safety, cybersecurity, inclusivity and maintaining workplace culture. Going fully remote remains the exception. A spokeswoman for the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce said the group wasnt aware of any members doing that. But the list of companies considering shifting toward more permanent remote work is growing.Google, Zillow and Mercedes Benz plan to maintain work-at-home policies until next year. Mastercard said it will keep them in place until concerns about the virus subside, according to a crowdsourced list of remote work policies.And as restrictions lift and more office locations reopen, tech companies Twitter, Facebook and Square have said their workers will have a choice on coming back.Our best estimate is that 25-30 percent of the workforce will be working from home multiple days a week by the end of 2021, Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, said in recent comments on how the COVID-19 outbreak is changing remote work.Thats up significantly from the 3.6 percent of workers the U.S. Census Bureau estimates were telecommuting before the crisis. Gallup in a mid-April poll found that just over half of U.S. workers were working remotely full-time, 18 percent were working remotely some days and 31 percent had not worked remotely.Given a taste of remote work, what did workers think? About half said if it were up to them, they would prefer to continue working at home even after exposure concerns faded. A quarter said they wanted to go back to the workplace ASAP, while another quarter said they would go back once concerns about the coronavirus subsided, according to Gallup.While some of these workers may reluctantly head back to their workplace, others may decide to look for new jobs that allow them to maintain the remote work lifestyle theyve grown accustomed to, the Gallup report said.And if the outbreak flared up again, it appears most workers would be fine staying home.Because the switch happened so quickly, many employers didnt always think through procedures and policies. They are going back and trying to fill in the blanks.Now that people are getting more of a routine around virtual work, the next step is how do they sustain that, said Laurie Cure, CEO for Innovative Connections, a consulting firm based in Fort Collins.Being in a crisis mode created its own energy and pushed things forward. On the whole, employers found that productivity didnt suffer, a fear some had, Cure said. The question now is how to sustain remote work arrangements on a large scale for longer periods of time.Managers need to be less controlling and more empowering, Cure said, but they cant be absentee leaders either. Many will need to shift from a focus on activities to results.She also notes that signs of exhaustion are starting to emerge and more attention needs to be paid to burnout, which might be harder to detect in a remote setting.For example, studies have found that attending a video meeting is more mentally draining than attending an in-person meeting, Cure said. People lack the nonverbal cues they use to judge what people are communicating beyond their words.Wylie said one issue that has come up involves time management, noting that attendance policies werent always enforced during the transition.Expectations were not well defined. Lets just get through this period and well get back to the office and well resume life, Wylie said. Employers are now thinking about how to make this remote work situation tenable for a longer period of time, through the fall or even into the winter.A worker who disappeared for a couple of hours from the office would probably get noticed, but not so much now that they are working at home.It isnt necessarily that workers were slacking. Some burned the midnight oil, so they could handle other tasks, such as looking after kids doing their schooling at home. One question employers will need to ask is do they want workers back on a regular schedule or are they more interested that the work getting done, whenever that happens.Looser attendance rules have also meant workers have been taking less paid time off, a bottom-line issue in that the unused time accumulates as a liability. Someone might slip out for a dentists appointment and work an extra two hours rather than use their time off.Wylie said it is also a fairness issue if some employees are adhering to the rules and booking personal time, while others arent.Another concern is inclusivity, said Wylie. Video meetings raise issues of who is getting screen time and being seen and heard.One reason the transition to remote work was possible is that employees had already formed bonds they could draw on, said Marianne Wanamaker, an associate professor of economics at the University of Tennessee during a webinar hosted by ThinkWhy on Tuesday.Her graduating seniors are dreading the idea of entering a workplace where they are known only by a square on a videoconferencing application, she said.This is not their idea of fun. They will have a hard time building the connections they will need to be successful new workers remotely, she said.Cure agrees that one of the biggest challenges involves bringing on new workers remotely and integrating them into the company culture. But she also said the shift is forcing a rethinking of that culture and whether it needs to change.What elements of our culture do we want to make different going forward, is a question many companies are asking right now.One of the issues that more extended work-at-home arrangement raises is that of liability.A lot of injuries that occur for people working remotely at their house will be compensable. Your home is now your workplace, said Robert Fitz-Patrick, an attorney at Hall Estill, a Tulsa law firm with an office in Denver.While employers can address safety issues in the workplace, they dont have the same sway when it comes to an employees home. They cant order the kids to pick up their toys so mom and dad dont trip while going down the stairs or require the family dog to stay in the garage until the shift is over.As remote work arrangements become more extended, expect more concrete rules in that area. Enforcement, however, is a whole other issue.Employers can develop work-at-home policies, which dictate among other things that the employee create a dedicated safe workspace for work-related tasks. Work-at-home job descriptions can also help define the scope of the at-home employment, Fitz-Patrick said.Pinnacol, Colorados largest provider of workers compensation coverage, said claims overall are down since the coronavirus hit, largely because fewer people are working and fewer workers are driving, meaning fewer accidents.Weve seen just a few claims that appear to be for remote workers and prior to coronavirus, these were quite rare, although it can be hard to get an exact count, said spokeswoman Liz Johnson.On the whole, homes can be one of the safest work environments available, with one notable exception: ergonomics. Employees who might have enjoyed that precisely tuned Herman Miller Aeron chair in the office are making due for hours on dining room table chairs hunched over a laptop.Home office ergonomics were a lower priority during the rush to get everyone out. But they will increasingly need to be addressed.Pinnacol is educating Colorados employers about typical home-based hazards like poor ergonomics. Our occupational safety consultants have been offering free virtual safety consultations to all businesses in Colorado, not just customers, that have new hazards to manage, said Johnson.The company will investigate and evaluate claims because of at-home injuries and illnesses just as it would if they originated in the workplace, she said.Fitz-Patrick said someone who trips over the dog while grabbing a file would be covered, a case tested in the courts years ago. Same if they were injured going to get a glass of water or grab lunch under what is known as the personal comfort provision.And what if they throw out their back between Zoom meetings while taking a load of clothes out of the dryer? That is a gray area. One big difference is that there are likely to be fewer witnesses at home than in the workplace.Another issue is overlapping coverages on insurance policies. Health insurance coverage usually takes care of injuries that happen while at home, but not if they are work-related. Likewise, homeowners insurance wont cover personal injuries, but they will cover injuries to visitors, unless they are there for commercial purposes.If someone else is injured on your property and it can be proven the cause was directly work-related, your companys liability insurance would likely be responsible and your homeowners insurance would either not cover it or would be a secondary coverage, said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association.Business owners who have moved their business operations into their homes have another consideration to weigh, one they should talk to an insurance professional about, Walker said. They will need a Business Owners Policy to make sure they are protected for any liability or losses that occur tied to their commercial operations. And while they are at it, they should make sure they arent violating rules that the Homeowners Association might have in place.
Lawyers for David McBride, the former army officer being prosecuted for disclosing alleged unlawful killings of civilians by Australian troops in Afghanistan, have said they were allowed just two hours to examine thousands of government documents about his case.

Former independent senator Nick Xenophon, now a lawyer representing Mr McBride, said his law partner had two hours to inspect the documents, which the government is keeping secret on national security grounds, at the office of the government's lawyer.

David McBride outside court in the ACT, where he will be tried. Credit:AAP

"Only two hours for thousands of pages," Mr Xenophon said. "Then he has to hand those notes back, he can't take them with him."

Mr McBride has not yet seen the evidence, he said. "This is what an authoritarian state does," he said.
New Delhi, June 22 : The national capital has seen 58 new deaths due to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the death count to 2,233, while 2,909 fresh cases were reported, an official statement said on Monday.

Delhi, which has been struggling with a rising Covid tally, has seen a total of 62,655 corona positive cases so far. However, 36,602 have been cured or discharged till Monday. In the last 24 hours alone, 3,589 patients have either recovered or discharged or have migrated.

The government said on Monday that there are 5,909 dedicated Covid care centres and 344 dedicated health care centres apart from the hospitals which are treating patients. However, according to a circular dated June 20, 108 hospitals are providing less than 60 per cent of the total bed capacity for treatment, while seven are providing from 80 to 110 per cent of the capacity.

Meanwhile, as much as 12,922 are under home isolation.

While the national capital has ben ramping up its testing capacity, it announced that 14,682 tests have been conducted on Monday itself. So far, more than 3,84,000 tests have been conducted in Delhi.

As of Monday, there are 262 containment zones spread across the capital.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said that the country is fighting a twin battle against China. "Our country is fighting a twin battle against China. First, our doctors are fighting against Chinese virus and second, India's brave soldiers are fighting China on the border."

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A man handed himself in to French police after killing a 79-year-old woman in France. He reportedly went for a walk in Luxembourg between the time of the killing and his confession.

According to the Reims public prosecutor's office, a 25-year-old was jailed on Sunday after confessing to the killing of a 79-year-old woman whom he had intended to rob in her home in Chalons-en-Champagne.

The young man personally knew the victim before the violent incident as he had carried out "various painting jobs" for the 79-year-old in the past. The prosecutor's office said in a statement that the defendant repeatedly expressed remorse when he confessed to the crime last Sunday.

The 25-year-old told police and the examining magistrate that he had quit his job in February and faced mounting debts since. He reportedly decided to burglar the elderly victim to pay his debts.

He pretended to still be an employee of the company that had previously carried out various jobs at the victim's home to gain access to her apartment last Tuesday. He then "without using violence, managed to lead her into a room [...] hoping to be able to rob the other rooms," he explained.

According to the defendant, she then fell and he hit her in the head with his elbow. The public prosector's office explained in its statement that he then strangled her with an electric wire after seeing her convulsing on the ground. He reportedly continued to search the apartment after her death but eventually took off without stealing any items.

The young man spent the next day in Luxembourg with his mother and his girlfriend. He later confessed to the crime to his mother and his brother before turning himself in.
After climbing more than 40% from the March lows, the S&P 500 remained range bound in the past two weeks, not gaining much from early June. Still-high unemployment benefit claims amid the COVID-19 crisis, rising coronavirus cases with easing lockdowns and the Feds cautious outlook for the economy dampened investors sentiments. The market is often reacting to negative economic headlines.

The United States reported more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases on Jun 19, the highest number of daily infections recorded since May 1, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University. The data has instigated fears of a second wave of coronavirus. Cases are soaring in states in the South and West and Midwest. Arizona, Florida, California, Nevada and South Carolina reported record-high, single-day increases on Jun 19.

The Fed now expects the U.S. unemployment rate to hit 9.3% this year, dropping to 6.5% in 2021 and declining further to 5.5% in 2022. The unemployment rate in May dropped to 13.3% from 14.7% in April. Before the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate was hovering near the 50-year lows of around 3.6%. The Fed sees American GDP falling by 6.5% in 2020 before rising by 5.0% in 2021 and 3.5% in 2022. The projections and Fed comments hint that the coronavirus-led economic crisis is far from over.

Rolling Ws Recovery in the Cards?

There is a disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street, per analysts. Although the stock market was suggesting a V-shaped recovery, the more likely scenario is rolling Ws, per Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, as quoted on CNBC.

A similar market pattern was noticed during the financial crisis, pointed out by Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research. After the stocks rallied nearly 40% from the 2009 bottom, the market moved sideways for about seven weeks so that fundamentals could match the market value.

Story continues

Why You Should Focus on Value Stocks

With rising uncertainty and a global recessionary environment, investors may consider parking their money in value stocks. Numerous academic studies have shown that value stocks delivered higher returns with lower volatility compared with growth stocks, over the long term, in almost all the markets studied. Therefore, they should be part of any core portfolio.

CFRAs Sam Stovall recently said the market has been highly overbought. Stovall said stocks could decline 5% to 10% from the Jun 8 peak. Having said this, we would like to note that we do not expect any severe crash in the market thanks to the unprecedented Fed and government stimulus. So, investors may consider investing in these value stocks to fight the impending volatility in Wall Street.

5 Value Stocks to Buy

Below we highlight a few stocks that have a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy), a Value Score of A and one-week price change is higher than 10%.

United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI)

United Natural Foods is the leading distributor of natural, organic and specialty food and non-food products in the U.S. and Canada. The Zacks Rank #1 stock comes from a favorable Zacks industry (placed at the top 22% of total 250+ industries in the Zacks universe).

Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc (LL)

The Zacks Rank #2 company operates in its niche market in hardwood flooring. It hails from a favorable Zacks industry (top 12%).

Molina Healthcare Inc (MOH)

The Zacks Rank #2 company is a multi-state managed care organization participating exclusively in government-sponsored healthcare programs such as the Medicaid program and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, catering to low-income persons.

Lowes Companies Inc. (LOW)

The Zacks Rank #2 companyis one of the worlds leading home improvement retailer, offering services to homeowners, renters and commercial business customers. It comes from a favorable Zacks industry (top 12%).

OneWater Marine Inc. (ONEW)

The Zacks Rank #2 company isa premium recreational boat retailer principally in the United States. It hails from a favorable Zacks industry (top 9%).

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.



Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



Lowes Companies, Inc. (LOW) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Molina Healthcare, Inc (MOH) : Free Stock Analysis Report



United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Lumber Liquidators Holdings, Inc (LL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



OneWater Marine Inc. (ONEW) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow are reminiscing about their time on Friends.

The pair - who played Rachel Green and Phoebe Buffay on the hit show respectively - took part in Variety's Actors on Actors issue, filming an interview together for a special that was released on Monday.

Jennifer, 51, and Lisa, 56, kicked off the video as they joked about remembering which scenes they were in together from the iconic sitcom, which is now available on new streaming service HBO Max, with a special one-off reunion episode still in the pipeline.

Friends reunited! Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow laugh as they struggle to recall classic Friends episodes... and admit they don't know any details of reunion special

'One of the questions that was suggested that I asked is, "If you can remember any episode of Friends that we did together" Lisa cackled, adding: 'and we were in every episode together...'

Jen jokingly replied: 'That's a great question. I don't know, I don't think we ever appeared in the same screenshot.'

The star then tried to recall the classic Phoebe moment when the character couldn't get her fire alarm to shut off, which Lisa struggled to remember.

Excited: Jen, 51, revealed she is looking forward to the reunion special but admitted they do not know all the details as yet

Revelations: Elsewhere in the interview Lisa, 56, admitted she filmed the Netflix comedy Space Force in just five days

Chewing the fat: The former co-stars got on famously as they took part in the virtual chat

'If you said, 'The One With The...' I would go 'Yeah, yeah, that episode,' ...The One With The Fire Alarm... sounds made up!' she laughed.

But Jen explained: 'It wasn't the title of it,' and explained the episode further, triggering Lisa finally remember it, as she joked that the much-anticipated HBO reunion special 'will be fine' despite them struggling to recall specific scenes.

Speaking in more detail about the reunion, which was put on pause due to coronavirus, Jen said: 'I cannot wait. It's also strange to think it would have been shot and already aired and it would be a little speck in our memory.'

Memory: Jen could recall what everyone was wearing for their first table read, but not for herself

However, the pair admitted that they still don't know much about the details of what will happen, when they get back together with their co-stars Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc.

'We don't know everything about it,' Lisa claimed. 'Oh, we don't know anything about it,' Jen responded. 'What we do know, we can't say,' Lisa explained. 'I think we're meant to be surprised by some things.'

However, while the pair agreed the special will not be scripted, Jen said adorably: 'I will not be Rachel, although I kind of am. Well, were all sort of little fragments of them. Not really. But yeah.'

Jen also admitted to 'stumbling' over a few episodes of Friends while in quarantine, and confessed that one time recently she and Courteney Cox spent time re-watching old bloopers on the Internet.

Good times: The pair recalled their inability to hold it together when filming some of the funniest episodes from the show

In the dark: Jen said they don't know 'anything' about the planned Friends reunion

Laughter: Lisa admitted she was one of the worst out of the cast for not being able to withhold her fits of laughter on set

'There's bloopers online  and we sat there at the computer like two nerds watching these bloopers laughing at ourselves,' she said. Lisa agreed, adding: 'I've done it too. I've done that, hours watching bloopers.'

Lisa also revealed that she once asked 'permission' from Matthew Perry to deliver a line in the show, the way that his character would say it.

She explained: 'When were at Ross' and were seeing Monica and Chandler start undressing each other in front of the window. And then, [I'm like], "My eyes! My eyes!" Thats how Matthew Perry said things.'

'I actually asked his permission before we shot it. I was like, "I don't know if youve seen the rehearsals, but I'm saying 'My eyes! My eyes!' the way you do. So I just need to know that that's OK with you. If not, I'll say it a different way." And he was like, 'Yeah, go for it."'

Praise: Jen was congratulated by Lisa in the video for her work in the Apple TV drama The Morning Show

Jen immediately agreed saying: 'I feel like Matthew required us to ask permission when we borrowed Chandlers cadence. We were like, "But its flattering." I think it's going to be really fun also when we, if we ever get out of quarantine, get to do our reunion show.'

The pair initially made a light-hearted joke about coronavirus at the beginning of their chat, as Lisa said 'I need a test' when she was heard talking with a quiet voice, with Jen asking her, 'Can you smell me?'

'Yes! I can't hear you that well, but I can smell you, that's great technology' Lisa replied, laughing.

Not a fan: Lisa admitted that she doesn't re-watch any episodes of Friends, but is one day hoping that they all re-watch them together

Later, when Lisa apologised for coughing, Jen said: 'No, you're OK, Lis. Want me to check your temperature? You're totally healthy. Everybody now, if you have a tickle in your throat, you almost feel bad to even make any kind of sound of a cough or just sneeze. God forbid, the allergies. You're screwed.'

Elsewhere in the interview, both actors heaped praise on one another both for Jen's work in the Apple TV drama The Morning Show, and Lisa's most recent comic turn in the Netflix comedy Space Force, which she revealed she shot in just five days.

The Friends reunion special on HBO is due to be filmed later this year, with co-creator Marta Kauffman saying recently that it could be done as soon as August.
Dr. Clifford Braimah, Ghana Water CEO

22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO ) of Ghana Water Company Limited has donated some money to the New Patriotic Party in the Savannah Region to assist the party in its preparations ahead of the compilation of a new voters register yesterday.

Dr. Clifford Braimah who was adjourned Ghana's Most Respected CEO in 2018 during the Ghana Industry CEO Awards was on a two-day tour of the Savannah region together with the regional party chairman Iddrisu Sulemana and some regional and constituency executives.

During the tour, Dr Clifford gave each constituency Five Thousand Ghana (Ghs 5000.00 ), for preparation towards the compilation of the new voters register by the Electoral Commission of Ghana slated for June 30.

The team visited all the constituencies in the region as part of the acclamation of the Savannah regional minister and MP for Salaga South Constituency Hon Salisu Braimah where the CEO also shared his experience on how the party could capture power again in the December polls.

On their part, the regional and constituency executives thanked him for the support and promised to work hard to retain the party in power.

This was made known by the Savannah Regional NPP Director Issah Mohammed.
Sorry!

This content is not available in your region
(Newser)  A tell-all book by President Trump's niece is set to debut at the end of July, but it sounds as if the president may be gearing up for a legal fight. Last week, the Daily Beast reported that, per a source, Trump "appeared irked" at the prospect of Mary L. Trump's Too Much and Never Enough making its way to bookshelves, and he's now speaking out about it to Axios. Trump tells the outlet that his niece, the daughter of his late brother, Fred Trump Jr., is "not allowed to write a book," as she'd long ago signed a nondisclosure agreement, which he adds is a "very powerful one [that] covers everything." The Daily Beast notes the NDA was signed in 2001, when a settlement was reached over Fred Trump's estate. Per the NDA, Mary Trump is barred from publishing anything about the settlement litigation, or about her relationship with President Trump or two of his siblings, Maryanne Trump Barry and Robert Trump.

story continues below

"She's obviously not honoring [the NDA] if she writes a book," Trump says. "It's too bad." He notes that he gets along fine with Mary Trump's brother, Robert Trump, whom he calls "a very good guy" who's "angry" about his sister's book. One allegation in particular in the book that's said to have the president especially miffed: that when his father, Fred Trump Sr., started really feeling the effects of Alzheimer's, Trump "dismissed and derided" him. "Totally false," Trump tells Axios. "Actually, the opposite. I always had a great relationship. I didn't know that she said that. That's a disgraceful thing to say." White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that Trump hadn't read his niece's book, per CNN. It's not clear what, if any, legal steps the president will take. (Read more Mary Trump stories.)
Israeli warplanes fly low over Beirut despite Lebanon's complaint to UN Security Council

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 4:10 PM

Israeli fighter jets have once against violated Lebanon's airspace and flew at low altitudes over the capital Beirut, irrespective of a recent complaint by Lebanese authorities to the United Nations Security Council about the Tel Aviv regime's infringement on the Arab country's sovereignty.

The state-run National News Agency reported that the aircraft circled over several neighborhoods of Beirut on Sunday, causing many Beirut residents to take to social media platforms to voice their irritation.

Beirut residents say the Israeli overflights were much louder and longer in duration this time compared to previous ones.

"Just another Sunday afternoon in Beirut enjoying the sound of Israeli fighter jets," one user wrote on Twitter.

Israeli warplanes also flew over the towns and cities of Tyre, Sidon, Hasbaya, Arkoub, Mount Hermon, the occupied Shebaa Farms and Golan Heights at low altitudes.

The jets carried out mock raids over Nabatieh city and Iqlim al-Tuffah region in southern Lebanon.

Late on June 4, Israeli jets used Lebanese airspace to conduct an attack on a military facility on the outskirts of Masyaf, located about 45 kilometers (27 miles) west of the central Syrian city of Hama.

Syria's official news agency SANA reported back then that the country's air defenses had intercepted and shot down a number of Israeli missiles before they reached their targets.

SANA, citing an unnamed military source, added the airstrikes caused material damage in the targeted area but left no casualties.

The development took place just a day after Prime Minister Hassan Diab declared that there had been over 1,000 Israeli violations of Lebanon's sovereignty within the past five months alone.

Earlier this month, Lebanese President Michel Aoun condemned Israel's increasing incursions into Lebanese airspace during a meeting with the UN's top official in Lebanon, Jan Kubis.

Aoun denounced the overflights as a clear violation of UN Resolution 1701.

Back on April 2, Lebanon lodged a complaint to the United Nation against the Tel Aviv regime for violating the country's airspace after Israeli military aircraft carried out airstrikes on multiple targets in Syria's central province of Homs.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants has filed a complaint before the UN Security Council in New York over the dangerous Israeli violation of Lebanese sovereignty, after three Israeli aircraft bombed Syrian sites from the Lebanese airspace, which represented a threat to Lebanese civilians," the ministry said in a statement at the time.

The Lebanese foreign ministry then urged the Security Council to "put a permanent end to the Israeli violations," noting that "Israel violates the Lebanese aerial, maritime and territorial sovereignty on a daily basis."

Israel violates Lebanon's airspace on an almost daily basis, claiming the flights serve surveillance purposes.

Lebanon's government, the Hezbollah resistance movement and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have repeatedly condemned the overflights, saying they are in clear violation of UN Resolution 1701 and the country's sovereignty.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Tel Aviv to respect Beirut's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In 2009, Lebanon filed a complaint with the UN, presenting over 7,000 documents pertaining to Israeli violations of Lebanese territory.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






It has been found out that Nearby Share could come to Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS in addition to Android.

Googles answer to Apples AirDrop feature, called Nearby Share, has already been hinted at in Android 11, indicating its arrival to several smartphones in the coming months. But it looks like this feature is supposed to work on other platforms as well as per a new report by 9to5Google. As the name suggests, Nearby Share lets you share photos, links and other files to other devices, working in a similar way as Apple iOS AirDrop feature.

However, now, it has been found out that Nearby Share could come to Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS in addition to Android. The feature was first unearthed inside the ChromeOS Settings app by the Chromestory website. And like many other work-in-progress Chrome features, this also needs to be enabled with a flag in chrome://flags. The description states Enables Nearby Sharing for sharing content between devices.  Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, which is self explanatory.

Also read: Nearby Share: This is how Googles AirDrop alternative for Android phones works

Unfortunately, when we enable both the flag and the toggle in the Settings app, the feature doesnt seem to do anything for now. This also indicates that Googles Nearby Share is yet to reach the last stages and is still being worked upon.

It is not for sure in which Chrome version will this feature be enabled though.

Googles Nearby Share was spotted in Android 11s one of the developer versions back in March. When sharing files with Fast Share between two Pixel 4 devices, the operation completes successfully, but the UI on the device which receives the file states that it did not receive the file," read the Android 11 release notes at that time. Google will most likely release this feature first for its Pixel 4 series going by the release notes.
Ireland has further accelerated its plan for gradually reopening the economy over the coming weeks, speeding the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

These are the measures planned in each of the remaining phases of the plan.

Phase 3: From June 29

- All domestic travel restrictions lifted

- Cafes and restaurants can open with social distancing and strict cleaning in operation. Bars can operate as restaurants where possible

- Places of worship, hairdressers, gyms, hotels and cinemas to reopen. All sporting activities can resume

- Gatherings of up to 50 people indoors and up to 200 people outdoors are allowed

Phase 4: From July 20

- All remaining businesses should be able to open, including bars and nightclubs

- Gatherings of up to 100 people indoors and up to 500 people outdoors are allowed (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
House of Cheer Pvt. Ltd., founded by former Viacom18 COO and prominent media personality Raj Nayak, announced the launch of their new division, Happyness.me, a proprietary tool that measures the happiness quotient of Corporates and its people.

Commenting on Happyness.me, House of Cheer Managing Partner Namrata Tata said, With over three decades of experience working in business and industry, we have learned that emotion drives us. Emotions motivate us, they inspire, and they energize us to be productive and to take control of our professional lives. We believe that happiness is the primary emotion that can maximize potential and that has not yet been truly leveraged in the Indian workspace.

Using behavioural psychology, neuroscience, and data-analytics, with inputs from experts in the field, combined with our teams extensive experience leading large-scale operations, we have developed a unique proprietary service to measure the happiness quotient within an organization and to provide customized solutions that empower leaders and inspire teams. Having partnered with one of the worlds leading human insights companys, The Happiness Index, for our technology platform, we are hoping to usher in a new era in Indian business, focusing first and foremost on the backbone of any organization, its people. Ours is a two- year program with regular, happiness audits that will help the CEO and the leadership team to prioritize on the mental and emotional well-being of their people. Our goal is to help organizations create a happiness journey and enable them with the happiness.me tool to visualize their company culture and implement strategies to create a happy flourishing working environment.

We would also like to thank the UK Government in India for helping us identify the right partner from the United Kingdom in our Happiness Journey project.

Her Majestys Trade Commission for South Asia, Alan Gemmell said:

Im delighted that Raj Nayak, House of Cheer and The Happiness Index UK are launching Happyness.me, a critical solution for businesses and Corporate leaders to explore engaging ways to connect with their employees in the new world. India and the UK are tech powerhouses. This perfect partnership reflects the continuing global attraction of the UKs creative and tech sectors, bringing together innovative tech with commercial expertise and creative brilliance.

Tony Latter, Co-founder & Head of Innovations at The Happiness Index UK comments:

The future of work will look very different in terms of when, where and how people are working. Whether it is more employees working remotely, flexibly or in a globally distributed model, the challenges of effectively engaging and communicating with your people are increasing and mean that leaders require a new set of emotional skills and insight.

We are tremendously excited to partner with the House of Cheer and the team at Happyness.me. At the Happiness Index, we gather feedback from over 80 countries in 23 different languages and have built our own neuroscience based platform using the best artificial intelligence and machine learning... We all know that happy people create happy organizations and we are incredibly proud of the model built by happyness.me that will allow corporates in India to visualize their company culture. Organizations who understand the happiness of their people will thrive. With thriving comes growth and its this growth of a companys people, culture and performance that makes happiness such a powerful force.
Three Americans rescued after engine failure leaves them adrift

Isla Mujeres, Q.R.  The Secretary of the Navy has reported a three-person rescue from an American vessel after the boat reported engine failure.

The rescue was made 66 nautical miles (approximately 122 kilometres) northeast of Isla Mujeres when elements of the Mexican navy set out in search of Dragon Fly, who had sailed from Honduras with three crew.

The emergency help request was made after the boat began drifting when its engines failed. The two woman, one man crew made the call for assistance that lead to their rescue and the towing of the vessel to Isla Mujeres.

Once arriving, the three Americans were health verified before being received by the Captaincy of Puerto de Isla Mujeres and the National Institute of Migration. No injuries were reported.
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Due to public health concerns surrounding COVID-19, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will not hold its annual fireworks demonstrations press conference on the National Mall this year. However, CPSC remains committed to helping to prevent deaths and injuries from fireworks incidents while families and friends gather to celebrate the Fourth of July.

CPSC will release its new Fireworks Annual Report, with the latest data on fireworks-related deaths, emergency department-treated injuries, and enforcement activities during 2019. CPSC will also share its popular fireworks safety demonstrations with the media via video news release (VNR).

Here is what media can expect and when:

When: Thursday, June 25, 2020 What: New CPSC Fireworks Annual Report

CPSC fireworks demonstrations via Video News Release (VNR) and Spanish soundbites

CPSC Commissioner Dana Baiocco is available for interviews





Please contact CPSC for more information about one-on-one interviews. Interviews are also available in Spanish with Carla Coolman, CPSC Spanish-language spokesperson.

For more information, contact CPSC's Office of Communications at (301) 504-7908.

About the U.S. CPSC

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products has contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years.

Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission.

For lifesaving information:

- Visit CPSC.gov.

- Sign up to receive our e-mail alerts.

- Follow us on Facebook, Instagram @USCPSC and Twitter @USCPSC.

- Report a dangerous product or a product-related injury on www.SaferProducts.gov.

- Call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054).

- Contact a media specialist.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/695177/US_Consumer_Product_Safety_Commission_Logo.jpg

CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908

SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

Related Links

http://www.cpsc.gov


Time for India to be self-reliant without being xenophobic: Amar Bhushan

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: With a heavy troop build up on both sides, the question is will India and China go to war.

The possibility of a war is remote former officer with the Research and Analysis Wing, Amar Bhushan tells OneIndia.

We need to talk simultaneously as well. There will be no full fledged war that would take place between the two countries. However we must also bear in mind that close to Ladakh, there is Tibet. The Chinese may have humbled the Tibetans, but they have not wiped out the resentment. Then there is Xinjiang and it is boiling. If the Chinese at all get beaten in some area, it will give them an impetus to rise. Hence they will not go in for any misadventure, Bhushan also says.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

No escalation at India-China border, but heavy military build up has made situation very tense

We need to keep building up. Our sad policy has always been that we never invested in defence, Once a situation was over, we did not use those years of peace to build our defence infrastructure, the former R&AW officer points out. We need to use peace times to build our capabilities. Let us not be in a situation where we have to depend on others, Bhushan also says.

The big lesson from all this is we need to be self-reliant, without being xenophobic. In the days to come China will for turning Nepal into a client state. They will give them infrastructure. We must ensure that we never relax our defence, Amar Bhushan further adds.

Amar Bhushan says that India must prepare as best as possible. We need to strengthen the build up on our side. Build our economy and take a long term view of making India self-reliant Bhushan also says.
The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.

The bronze statue that has stood at the museum's Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse.

'The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,' de Blasio said in a written statement.

'The City supports the Museum's request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.'

The American Museum of Natural History in New York is removing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt, flanked by a Native American man and African American man

The statue will come down after the museum's proposal to remove it was approved by the city

The statue was brought to life by Robin Williams who portrayed Roosevelt in the popular film series, Night at the Musem. In the film, he stars alongside Ben Stiller - who plays a security guard - who explores the events taking place at the museum at night

After news of the removal went public, Donald Trump tweeted: 'Ridiculous, don't do it!'

Theodore Roosevelt and his bronze statue Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. The Republican, whose face is depicted on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, is credited with laying the groundwork for the modern Democratic party. His progressive policies levelled the playing field between rich and poor, and this mantle would be carried forward in the modern liberalism of his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. Teddy Roosevelt called himself a 'new nationalist,' and believed strongly in egalitarianism. The equestrian statue of the 33rd governor of New York outside the American Museum of Natural History was erected in 1939. Roosevelt had developed a 'cowboy' image and that of a brave, masculine warrior during his presidency. He was a great conservationist, setting up America's first National Parks, and also a foreign policy interventionist who proudly built up the US Navy with the Great White Fleet. It is through this context that we can see Roosevelt depicted as the bold colonialist explorer, guided through the wilderness by one figure representing Native America and the other, Africa. Museum president Ellen V. Futter calls this a 'hierarchical composition.' Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president and museum trustee, claims: 'The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.' Advertisement

The museum's president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times that the museum's 'community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.'

'We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism,' Futter told the Times. 'Simply put, the time has come to move it.'

Officials said it hasn't been determined when the Roosevelt statue will be removed and where it will go.

After news of the removal went public, Donald Trump criticized the decision, tweeting: 'Ridiculous, don't do it!'

It was also met with alarm by some social media users, who were quick to point out that the statue was brought to life by Robin Williams in Night at the Museum. One wrote: 'Seriously be best thing that came from teddy roosevelt was robin williams performance in night at the museum'.

Others were concerned that the removal of the statue went to far. One user wrote: Better remove 'Night at the Museuem' from streaming now too, then. My goodness me. We are in big trouble'.

The planned removal comes after statues around the country have been toppled by protesters or removed by city officials after complaints the racism of the era is glorified.

Recently police have been seen guarding the statue created by James Earle Fraser. But it isn't the first time people have objected to it. In 2017 they decided it should stay after a city review ended with a 50/50 split decision.

The same year protesters splashed red liquid on the statue's base to represent blood and published a statement calling for its removal as an emblem of 'patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.'

The museum even created an exhibition to explain its decision to keep the statue that the public has 'long found disturbing', despite what it called 'Roosevelt's troubling views on race'.

In the exhibition last year, the museum acknowledged its 'imperfect history'.

Futter said the museum objects to the statue but not to Roosevelt, a pioneering conservationist whose father was a founding member of the institution and who served as New York's governor before becoming the 26th president.

Twitter users were quick to point out that the statue was brought to life by Robin Williams in Night at the Museum. One wrote: 'Seriously be best thing that came from teddy roosevelt was robin williams performance in night at the museum'

Others were concerned that the removal of the statue went to far. One user wrote: Better remove 'Night at the Museuem' from streaming now too, then. My goodness me. We are in big trouble'

Theodore Roosevelt (left) and Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, who said: 'The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward'

The museum is home to a rotunda and park named after Roosevelt. It also contains his memorial hall.

She said the museum is now naming its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt 'in recognition of his conservation legacy.'

Futter added in her statement: 'We believe that moving the statue can be a symbol of progress in our commitment to build and sustain an inclusive and equitable society. Our view has been evolving. This moment crystallized our thinking and galvanized us to action.'

'The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,' Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, said in a statement to the Times.

'The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.'

Theodore Roosevelt IV is a trustee of the museum.
It seems like a very long time since there was much good news to celebrate. The pandemic brought America to a screeching halt, which is where its stayed and, from the newly rising cases, will likely stay for some time to come due to Trumps incredibly bungled response. Protests are once again sweeping the nation, still struggling to deal with police brutality and racial injustice. But then, like a brilliant sun rising into Montanas cerulean sky, comes the decision to halt the oil and gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area, the sacred center of the Blackfeet tribe, bringing hope in a very dark time.

As the Missoulians Rob Chaney reported last week, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overruled a judge's 2018 decision that had allowed a Louisiana company to keep its lease within the Badger Two-Medicine area of Lewis and Clark National Forest.

The Badger-Two Medicine area is bounded by the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, the Blackfeet Nation and Glacier National Park. But since it sits outside the reservation boundary, it was available for oil and gas leases, 6,247 acres of which were issued in 1982 for a whopping $1 an acre. The Department of Interior, however, failed to perform the environmental and cultural analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act and the leases were cancelled by Interior in 2016 after numerous court challenges and losses.

The Courts Order, written by Judge Millett, beautifully describes the enormous historic, cultural, and religious significance of the area to the Blackfeet. The Tribes oral history describes how its people began to suffer and die shortly after the worlds creation. Seeing that suffering, the Creator returned to the Blackfeet and took them into the countryside and mountains of what would become the traditional Blackfeet territory, including the Two Medicine Area. There, the Creator introduced the Blackfeet to healing trees, bushes, and plants, and taught them how to seek the Creator and other spirits. Seeking those spirits, which is a central and inseparable part of [the Tribes] religion and lifeway, requires the Blackfeet to be in the proper geographical location and to undertake special preparations for religious ceremonies in the area.

On the environment, the Order notes: The Two Medicine Area functions as a habitat for a number of species, including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, grizzly bears, elk, wolves, lynx, and wolverines, and it serves as a critical wildlife movement corridor. In recognition of its critical environmental status and to preserve the region, the United States Forest Service in 2009 banned motorized vehicles from all trails and prohibited snowmobiling.

Given that there is now a billion barrel surplus of oil -- and no indication that will vanish due to ubiquitous fracking -- it makes no sense whatsoever to pursue yet more drilling, roadbuilding and development in this area than it would to drill in the Sistine Chapel, Mecca, or any holiest of holies on the planet. Unfortunately, it is all too evident that Trumps administration has exactly zero regard for the environment, national monuments, tribal religious rights, or future generations.

Yet, even as the widespread damage from Trumps presidency continues to mount daily we have something to celebrate. The Court has ruled that the destruction shall not happen to the Badger-Two Medicine. And now, in Trumps darkness of arrogance and ignorance, a bright light shines forth, bringing hope for a better, saner, and more respectful future not just for the Blackfeet, but for all of us.

George Ochenski writes from Helena. His column appears each Monday on the Missoulian's Opinion page. He can be reached by email at oped@missoulian.com.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 5 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Will Smith got candid on his early days of parenthood while speaking with wife Jada Pinkett Smith Sunday on her Facebook show Red Table Talk.

The 51-year-old actor is father to three children: Trey, 27, with his ex-wife Sheree Zampino, 52, and Jaden, 21, and Willow, 19, with Jada, 48. She asked him: 'So Will Smith becomes a father at 24  what was that like? Trey being your first born, youre bringing him home from the hospital.'

The Philadelphia-born entertainer said he was very emotional as 'the real weight of parenting' sunk in as he laid his eyes on his newborn son.

Emotional: Will Smith got candid on his early days of parenthood while speaking with wife Jada Pinkett Smith Sunday on her Facebook show Red Table Talk

'I brought him home, and I remember we put him in the bassinet  and it was like stark terror ... Im totally responsible for this life,' said Smith, who headlined the $419 million hit Bad Boys For Life earlier this year. 'I couldnt stop going and checking.'

The actor said that he 'just cried so hard' in absorbing the lifelong responsibility, adding he was getting 'teary right now' on the stroll down memory lane.

Jada asked him, 'You cried from what? What was the feeling like?'

He replied, 'I cant do it. Im not the guy. Oh man, I just knew I didnt know nothing. Its on me now. It hit me how fragile parenting is. In that moment, I could see all the spectacular lessons my father had instilled in me, and I was like, theres no way, Im not that good.'

Heavy: The actor said that he 'just cried so hard' in absorbing the lifelong responsibility

Emotional: The A-list couple embraced amid the serious discussion

Queen of talk: Jada delivered another memorable celebrity chat with her husband on the Father's Day edition of the show

The emotional actor said he needed to 'get [himself] together,' needed a tissue and was 'going to have to walk this one off' amid the heavy discussion.

He added: 'See I thought the red couch wouldnt get me like this: The red table always gets you like this.'

The Hollywood veteran also opened up about the 'really difficult time' when he and Zampino parted ways in 1995 when Trey was two-years-old

'Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life,' he said. 'Divorce was the ultimate failure for me. Ive been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I dont think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my two-year-old sons mother.

Happy family: Jada, Will, Willow, Jaden and Trey posed in NYC in 2016

'Sheree and I ran into that - if a mans not a great husband, then he loses his parental rights. Im a way better father than I am a husband. In that process, you start fighting for your rights, and the kid is in the middle.'

Smith referenced painful memories from his past referencing his late father Willard Carroll Smith Sr. in explaining why he 'wanted to create enough distance' between himself and Zampino so that Trey wouldn't be exposed to seeing his parents 'cursing' and 'fighting' each other in the wake of their split.

'Because of my own experience of seeing Daddy-O punch my mother, I knew my kids would never see me do anything violent toward their mother,' Smith said. 'But in the first couple years of Treys life, because Sheree and I were divorced, I think my desire to never have my son see me in that way made me more absent as a father. I wanted to create enough distance. We not gonna be cursing, fighting.'

Smith said his father eventually advised him to make things right with Zampino because 'youll never win if you fight a kids mother.'

Smith was in the middle of making King Richard - playing Richard Williams, the father of at the Venus and Serena Williams - at the time the COVID-19 pandemic led Hollywood to shut down all productions.
Former Amazon worker Jana Jumpp recently spoke to the International Amazon Workers Voice about the statistics she has been gathering and distributing on social media regarding infections and deaths from the coronavirus among Amazon workers. To date, she has counted 1,573 reported COVID-19 cases at Amazon, and she has been able to specifically confirm 1,400 of those.

The cases she has tracked are spread out across 244 locations worldwide, including 236 in the US. She has tracked at least nine Amazon worker deaths in Ohio, California, Missouri, New York, Texas, Illinois, and Indiana. But she says, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The statistics she has gathered show alarming numbers of infections at many workplaces, including 70 at EWR9 (Carteret, New Jersey), 48 at EWR8 (Teterboro, New Jersey), 48 at LGA9 (Edison, New Jersey), 90 at JFK8 (Staten Island, New York), 74 at AVP1 (Hazleton, Pennsylvania), 29 at HOU2 (Houston, Texas), 10 at PHX6 (Phoenix, Arizona), 18 at RIC2 (Chester, Virginia), 23 at BDL2 (Windsor, Connecticut), 35 at BDL2 (North Haven, Connecticut) and 10 at DMI3 (Miami, Florida). She also counted 16 at MDW2 (Joliet, Illinois), 14 at MDW7 (Monee, Illinois), 20 at IND1 (Whitestown, Indiana), 14 at CVG2 (Hebron, Kentucky), 12 at DCA1 (Sparrows Point, Maryland), 11 at BOS5 (Stoughton, Massachusetts), 19 at DTW1 (Romulus, Michigan), and 14 at SDF8 (Jeffersonville, Indiana where Jana worked) among hundreds of other workplaces.

Texas is blowing up right now, she said. Some warehouses are hotspots.

Her spreadsheets and statistics, while not a scientific study, are the only serious effort to date to make a comprehensive tally of the numbers of Amazon workers who have fallen ill or who have died from the virus during the pandemic.

Amazon refuses to report these statistics, despite growing popular demands for this information to be made public. The $1.3 trillion international conglomerate, which profited enormously from the beginning of the pandemic on account of increased demand for online shopping, is seeking to keep workers and the public in the dark about the deadly risks involved with working during the pandemic.

With Amazon refusing to disclose these numbers, Janas statistics have been widely reported in the US and around the world, including in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, the Seattle Times, the Intercept, and others, as well as on CNBC, CBS News, and National Public Radio.

Jana, 58, worked for Amazon for four and a half years at the SDF8 facility in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She also works as a dental assistant and a massage therapist.

When this all started, I was getting shocked, she said. The only thing they offered me was to stay home without pay.

Around the end of March, we started having multiple cases, she continued. We started having cases in the facility, confirmed cases.

She became involved in social media groups online, one of which she later found out was run by United for Respect, which in turn is backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) union. Through this connection, she was asked to speak at a press conference, she said. Along with some Wal Mart employees, I wrote a statement and said what I really thought. She recalled hearing part of her statement later played on National Public Radio.

It was around this time she decided to begin gathering statistics. I had the time to do it, and I knew this would be important data, she said. Amazon was not going to be forthcoming with their data. Somebody needed to track it.

However, as time went on, she said, It started getting harder. At first, she was just doing it on notepad and paper. She was later contacted by a student journalist from Berkeley. He got me set up with my current spreadsheet.

For each report of infections among Amazon workers, Jana tracks the name of the Amazon facility involved, the city and state, the source of the information, the number of reported infections, and the number of reported deaths, among other information.

It is Amazons practice to send out text or voice messages to workers at particular warehouses after a coronavirus infection is confirmed. Jana gathers and saves these messages, forwarded from workers, which she uses to confirm each and every reported case. In her spreadsheets, the word confirmed means, I have a text or a voicemail from the facility confirming it. She also takes pains to ensure that there are no duplicate entries on her lists.

Active on social media, including in the Facebook group Amazon Facilities COV19 Reporting Page, she has become a central hub to which workers are gathering and sending information. Jana works to separate fact from rumor and suspicion and to independently verify each report. She may receive a report, for example, that a worker has died, but the fallen workers co-workers do not know why. She usually receives 10 to 15 reports per day, many from workers who request to remain anonymous out of fear of management retaliation.

During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, beginning in 2003, the US military refused to provide body counts of Iraqi victims. In the early years of the war there were independent efforts to gather statistics based on media reports and accounts of individual atrocities. These studies arrived at sums in the tens of thousands of people, but they were eventually dwarfed by a Johns Hopkins study applying epidemiological methods that estimated 650,000 Iraqi war dead as of 2007.

Likewise, Jana freely concedes that the true numbers of Amazon casualties are likely much higher than the numbers her study has been able to compile. Amazon, for example, does not report infections and deaths among employees of third-party contractors, such as security or technicians. All of the robotics facilities have technicians that are not Amazon employees.

Indeed, Amazon workers in contact with the International Amazon Workers Voice reported higher numbers of suspected cases at their own facilities than the figures confirmed on Janas spreadsheets.

Asked about United for Respect, Jana said she was not aware of the connection to the UFCW. But thus far, she says, she has resisted efforts to bring her project under the wing of the unions or other organizations in the orbit of the Democratic Party. She said, I consider myself a freelancer. I dont want anyone telling me what to do.

As the numbers of infections and deaths mount at Amazon, the company is cracking down on dissent within the workforce. Workers are being told that they will be terminated for speaking publicly about the company, including on social media.

Amazon has hired as many as 175,000 new workers during the pandemic to meet high demand and to replace workers who fell ill or who could not work during the lockdown on account of childcare and other responsibilities.

While doing little to nothing to actually protect workers from the spread of the deadly disease, Amazon is aggressively using its social distancing policies to isolate workers and prevent any discussions in the workplace. According to Wired magazine, the company has recently unveiled an artificial intelligence system that analyzes images from security cameras in Amazon facilities and alerts management of potential social distancing violations.

This dystopian system is called Proxemics. According to the report in Wired, one feature of Proxemics alerts managers in a building immediately if a camera sees 15 or more people at the same time and a reviewer confirms it.

Workers in the US are also being told that they cannot have information about the total number of infections and deaths because that would violate the privacy of the sick workers and HIPAA (the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). This is false.

Amazons disclosure of the total number workers infected and killed at its warehouses would not involve disclosing any of the personal health information of individual workers, such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, medical record numbers, or other information protected by HIPAA. In addition, the HIPAA laws and regulations acknowledge that its provisions can be relaxed or waived during a pandemic, for example, as necessary to avert or mitigate a serious and imminent threat to the health and safety of other individuals.

Indeed, last month, the attorneys general of 13 US states formally demanded that Amazon and Whole Foods provide detailed statistics on the number of workers who have been infected and killed. But Amazon blew off this request, correctly predicting that nothing would come of it. Indeed, instead of taking legal action against Amazon executives for recklessly endangering lives in the pursuit of profit, the state authorities have taken no meaningful measures in response to the companys flagrant refusal to cooperate with public health authorities.

On Friday, it was reported that the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) was investigating complaints at Amazon warehouses in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where at least 60 workers have fallen ill. I get one text nearly every day from that facility, Jana said. At least one. Every day.

Amazon will not be deterred by the belated interventions from OSHA, a toothless institution decimated by decades of budget cuts. Joining the Trump administrations drive to reopen the economy last month, Amazon eliminated the $2 pay increase it implemented in the early stages of the pandemic and also terminated its policy of allowing unpaid time off.

Confronted with incompetence, inaction, and willful neglect on the part of the entire political establishment from top to bottom, the International Amazon Workers Voice is assisting Amazon workers in forming workplace committees to put forward their own demands and interests. The formation of these committees is a basic question of workers collective self-defense.

Workers have every right to demand detailed, accurate, and prompt information about infections and deaths in their facility and worldwide. Managements refusal to disclose such information is completely unacceptable and should not be tolerated under any pretext.

Jana took pride in her work at Amazon before the pandemic, she said, although she did experience the physical toil and psychological stress. It was annoying. Physically annoying. But after this. . ., she said, leaving the sentence unfinished.

They are endangering people. They are bringing it home to their families. To their roommates, fiancees, spouses, she said.

As for her statistics, she reiterated, I truly believe this is just the tip of the iceberg.
She is instantly recognisable for not just her musical skills, but her unique name.

And Lettice Rowbotham has revealed that she wanted to pass this down to her daughter, opting for an equally quirky moniker.

In an interview with HELLO! magazine, the violinist announced she has named her baby girl, Peaches Rose, admitting she had always planned to name her child after food.

New mum: Britain's Got Talent star Lettice Rowbotham has revealed she named her baby girl, Peaches Rose, admitting she had always planned to name her child after food

Lettice, 30, told the magazine: 'I've always said from a young age that I wanted to call my children after fruit and vegetables - so Peaches it is.

'When you think of a Peach, it's very positive and yummy and she's got very peachy skin.

'She's wonderful, she's getting nice and fat - she just wants cuddles and milk and to sleep all the time, in that order.'

Throwback: Lettice found fame on series eight of Britain's Got Talent back in 2014, when she was dubbed 'the show's poshest ever contestant'

The Britain's Got Talent star revealed last month that she had welcomed a baby girl, with a Instagram post that read: 'she's a little piece of magic'.

It is the first child for the musician and her partner, who found fame on BGT six years ago.

Alongside the post, Lettice penned: 'We're all so in love  & we cherish her so much, my beautiful baby girl.

'Our new adventure in life, parenting has just begun & I am the happiest & luckiest girl in the world to be her mummy & start this adventure with her daddy, who has looked after me so so so well!'

Sweet: The Britain's Got Talent star revealed last month that she had welcomed a baby girl, with a Instagram post that read: 'she's a little piece of magic'

Revealing that she had wasted no time working on her craft, the violinist continued: 'We're all doing so great and now I'm feeling extra inspired with my music.

'Have already written two songs since she was born (must be mummy super powers!) and I can't wait to start sharing more music with you all on here again soon.

'Thanks so much to everyone for being so supportive during my pregnancy & sending in so many wonderful messages. I feel so loved & supported by you all. Thank you.

'Lots of love  from my brand new family '.

Cute couple: It is the first child for the 30-year-old musician and her partner, who found fame on BGT six years ago

Lettice found fame on series eight of Britain's Got Talent back in 2014, when she was dubbed 'the show's poshest ever contestant'.

She reached the final with her incredible violin playing skills, but ultimately lost out to opera group, Collabro.

Prior to appearing on Britain's Got Talent, the Royal College of Music graduate has performed for Russian premier Vladimir Putin and Prince Charles.
Silicon Valley giant Google has been one of the leading beneficiaries of the H1-B visa system that President Donald Trump is putting on hold

US President Donald Trump will prolong a ban on US employment permits to year-end and broaden it to include H-1B visas used widely in the tech industry, the White House said Monday.

A senior administration official told journalists the move would affect 525,000 jobs in the US, which is currently reeling from a high unemployment rate caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump had repeatedly touted a strong economy, but now finds himself desperate for a political boost ahead of the November election.

The executive order, signed Monday afternoon, will extend and widen the 60-day freeze Trump placed on new work permits for non-US citizens two months ago.

The administration official said the new order would extend to the end of 2020 and include H-1B visas provided to 85,000 workers each year with special skills, many of them joining the US technology industry.

It will also cover most J visas, common for academics and researchers, and L visas used by companies to shift workers based overseas to their US offices.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai -- whose company has been a leading beneficiary of the H1-B visa system -- said he was "disappointed" by the announcement.

"Immigration has contributed immensely to America's economic success, making it a global leader in tech," he wrote on Twitter.

The move comes as Trump feuds with Silicon Valley after tech titans Twitter and Snapchat censored or hid posts by the president they claimed incited violence or were misleading.

Last month Trump signed an order seeking to strip social media giants of legal immunity for content on their platforms in a move slammed by his critics as a legally dubious act of political revenge.

- 'Prioritize' valuable workers -

The official said the order was necessary to respond to soaring unemployment that resulted from the COVID-19 shutdown.

The official also stressed the H-1B visa freeze was temporary while the program is restructured, shifting from an annual lottery that feeds coders and other specialists to Silicon Valley to a system that gives priority to those foreign workers with the most value.

Trump "is going to prioritize those workers who are offered the highest wages," as an indicator that they can add more value to the US economy, the official said.

"It will eliminate competition with Americans... in these industries at the entry level, and will do more to get the best and the brightest."

Hundreds of unemployed people wait outside the Kentucky Career Center in Frankfort, Kentucky for help with their unemployment claims

The move also freezes most H-2B visas -- used each year for about 66,000 short-term, low-skilled jobs in landscaping, food and hospitality industries -- and H-4 visas, which allow spouses of other visa holders to work.

Exemptions will apply to seafood processing plants and to au pairs, who offer families household help like childcare.

In addition, the official said the government is issuing new regulations that will make it much harder for tens of thousands of asylum seekers waiting for their court hearings to work legally in the meanwhile.

With often a two-year wait for a case to be reviewed, the administration sees many people apply for asylum mainly to be able to acquire work permits.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, normally a firm Trump supporter, criticized the decision and tweeted: "Those who believe legal immigration, particularly work visas, are harmful to the American worker do not understand the American economy."

He added that he feared the president's decision "will create a drag on our economic recovery".

Layoffs caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the US passed 45.7 million last week, and although many jobs will come back as the country reopens, there are worries that some have been irrevocably lost by the heavy financial impact on businesses and local governments.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned earlier this month that unemployment could still be 9.3 percent nationwide at the end of the year, an improvement from the current 13.3 percent but still devastatingly high.
Rathin Roy, director of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, steps down from position in August, after a seven-year stint.

In this interaction with Arup Roychoudhury, Roy speaks on his reasons for resigning and his future plans. Roy, who has also been a former advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also says that India will have to make a plan to produce at a lower cost if it hopes to compete with China, instead of a childish pique of boycotting products, and that any decision to monetize the deficit should be accompanied by a clear plan on what the outcome of ...
Since 2015, Russia has provided military, diplomatic, and financial support to Libyas eastern-based government in Tobruk and the LNA in its war against the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Since 2017, Russian support has centered on training, equipping, and advising the LNA and its commander, General Khalifa Haftar, for its push into central and western Libya, alongside Haftars other backers, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. At the vanguard of Russian military efforts has been the Wagner Group, which by 2018 had deployed several hundred mercenaries to multiple training sites, airfields, forward bases, and key energy and infrastructure sites, thus supporting the LNA as well as securing Russian interests. Russian PMC activity surged in the summer of 2019 to bolster Haftars flagging western Libya campaign and enable an LNA offensive against Tripoli. By early 2020, up to 1,200 Wagner mercenaries were on the ground in Libya, to then be supported from the air with the arrival of Russian combat aircraft
SANTA FE  The controversial obelisk in the center of the historic Santa Fe Plaza was heavily damaged early Monday, with vandals spray-painting it and using tools to chip away at the facade.

Santa Fe police officers at the scene said the damage occurred in the early morning, although exactly when remains unclear.

The entire Plaza was closed to pedestrian traffic with yellow crime scene tape for several hours Monday as city workers attempted to clean up the damaged monument.

Im very disappointed and saddened by that, Mayor Alan Webber said of the vandalism. I think its unfortunate that weve seen people vandalize any monument or statue, and were going to try to move forward to try to protect that object and others.

The obelisk, known as the Soldiers Monument and Civil War Monument, but listed on one city document as the American Indian War Memorial, has been divisive since its construction in 1868.

It was originally dedicated to Union soldiers who fought in Civil War battles in New Mexico. But on one side is inscribed, To the heroes who have fallen in various battles with savage Indians in the Territory of New Mexico. The word savage was chiseled off by a man in 1974.

However, that message  which critics say is racist against indigenous New Mexicans  was largely destroyed early Monday, as big chunks of the marble were smashed out of the side of the monument, leaving a gaping hole in the middle. Graffiti also covered the 152-year-old monument, with statements such as racist and end the genocide strewn about the stone.

City work crews used pressure washers to clean off the paint, and some people watching the cleanup were visibly upset by the vandalism.

I believe its just disrespectful, said Cruz Moya, a Santa Fe resident. Its defacing the culture of New Mexico.

Elena Ortiz, an Ohkay Owingeh tribal member and chair of the Santa Fe-Red Nation Freedom Council, said she neither condones nor condemns the damage to the obelisk, but was upset with the publics reaction to the vandalism.

I think its appalling that people are more upset about this than they would be upset over women and children being sold into slavery and people having their foot cut off by conquistadors, Ortiz said.

The obelisk is one of multiple monuments in Santa Fe that Webber said he supports removing. So far, only the statue of Don Diego de Vargas, a 17th century conquistador criticized for his brutal treatment of Native Americans, was removed from Cathedral Park last Thursday morning. The statue was moved to an undisclosed location until a commission appointed by the mayor makes a recommendation about its future.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Tori Otten (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Mon, June 22, 2020 07:10 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608a4d7 2 World George-Floyd,Asian-Americans,Racism,racial-discrimination,racial-incidents,racial-issues,racial-tension,racial-violence,racial-divide Free

As anti-racism protests broke out across the United States, Viet Hoai Tran knew exactly what he wanted to write on his poster -- "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power."

"If we are talking about fighting for justice, for liberation, for change... all of us have to be part of this," said the 27-year-old, who was born in Vietnam, but grew up in the US.

The death of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody sparked nationwide protests -- and a sense of reckoning in the Asian American community, which has historically fraught, even violent, ties with African Americans.

In particular, the revelation that one of the officers charged over Floyd's death, Tou Thao, is Hmong has caused many Asian Americans to grapple with their community's complicity.

"Yellow peril" is a racial slur articulating the centuries-old Western fear of an East Asian takeover that has been repurposed by Asian Americans in a show of solidarity with the black community.

"There's a lot of anti-blackness in the AAPI community,' said Tran, referring to the Asian Americans and the US diaspora of Pacific Islanders.

One of the worst examples was during the 1992 protests in Los Angeles over the police killing of Rodney King, a black man. Massive rioting broke out during the demonstrations, most of which occurred in the Koreatown neighborhood.

Ethnic Korean store owners, feeling abandoned by the Los Angeles police, shot at black protesters from the rooftops to protect their businesses.

"We, Asian Americans, have remained complicit in perpetuating anti-blackness and benefitting from white supremacy," Kevin Quach, who works on policy at the Asian American advocacy group OCA National, told AFP.

'Wedge community'

Quach noted the internalization of the model minority myth -- the stereotype that Asians are the "best" minority, thus implying that other minority groups are somehow lesser -- and colorism, or prejudice against darker skin tones, within the Asian community, among other examples.

Even using slogans like "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" or "Asian Americans for Black Lives Matter," Quach said, "ignores and minimizes the harm that the AAPI community has inflicted on the black community within the last 50 years," even if unintentionally.

For instance, the "yellow peril" slogan was first used in 1969 by Japanese-American activist Richard Aoki at a protest in support of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton.

Aoki was revealed in 2012 to have been an FBI informant on the Black Panthers.

Asian Americans have been used "as a wedge community between black community demands and our system," said Bo Thao-Urabe, a co-founder of the Minnesota-based Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL).

It's important to ensure "our communities are not used against each other," she added.

Groups like CAAL and OCA National, which were already working with black and Latino communities, have made specific pushes to support the current protests.

CAAL has provided support for Asian Americans in Minnesota who joined the demonstrations, and OCA has launched several programs explicitly about Asian-black relations, including a workshop on the model minority myth and a virtual summit on Afro-Asian solidarity.

Asians 4 Black Lives has supported protests in the San Francisco Bay Area while Equality Labs, a South Asian rights group, has forums and other resources promoting South Asian-black solidarity.

Deconstruct the fear

Many younger Asian Americans have taken the conversation online, sharing articles on social media about combating anti-blackness.

Others have posted lists of key phrases and talking points, translated into languages such as Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, for "talking to Asian parents about institutional and internalized racism."

"Anti-blackness is not just something that you can name and it disappears," said Jenny Tam, a 21-year-old student at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities who is of Chinese-Vietnamese heritage.

"It's a fear, and fear needs to be deconstructed."

After Floyd's death, Tam created a Facebook group called "Asian America for Black Power" to connect Asian Minnesotans who wanted to go to protests together.

The group quickly morphed into a platform, now with nearly 3,000 members, for sharing resources on where to donate, what to read, where to protest and how to talk with their families about racism.

Tam also noted that the coronavirus pandemic had served as a kind of wake-up call for Asian Americans, as it sparked an outpouring of anti-Asian racism, with many blaming China for the virus.

Racism "may oppress us differently, but there's a common enemy. We're fighting the same thing," said Tam, whose parents came to Minnesota after the Vietnam War.

"We are not white, and so we cannot protect a system that supports white and is harming our black community."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:40:02|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

JAKARTA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian police have arrested four people believed to be poachers of critically endangered Sumatran tigers.

The police have also been hunting another man who, along with the four arrested, is part of a wildlife trafficking ring in Aceh province situated in the northern tip of Sumatra Island, the Provincial Police's Spokesman Senior Commissioner Margiyanta said on Monday.

"The four suspected poachers ensnared the tiger in a trap and the animal was left to die," he told a press briefing.

During the press conference the police displayed a tiger hide, teeth and bones seized from the alleged poachers.

In addition to the tiger's body parts, teeth and a bone of a sun bear were also confiscated from the four men, Margiyanta said,

The four men were captured on Wednesday in Pante Bidadari sub-district in Aceh Timur district, the spokesman was quoted by local media as saying.

According to TRAFFIC, a global wildlife trade monitoring network, around 80 percent of the Sumatran tiger deaths were caused by poaching.

The tiger subspecies was classified as critically endangered in 2008 as its population was forecast at 441 to 679 individuals.

Indonesia, a vast archipelagic nation, is known as one of the most species-rich countries as its large area of rainforests is home to numerous species spreading over 17,500 islands. Enditem
Systemic Neglect of Kansas City's East Side This blog and those attached to it have never been big fans of Kansas City government, but we believe they have hit a new low. This letter was sent, by a friend, to the mayor, council members, and department directors. It not only states the problem, including pictures of disparity, but offers solutions.

Here's one view of this town divided that offers an alternative to allegations of racism but instead seems to point blame at our local political system and the players entrenched in the process that often seems rigged to outsiders and the working-class.Read more:
Over 50 people marched to the secretariat of Nigerias ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja, to demand the sack of all members of the partys National Working Committee (NWC).

The protesters, who PREMIUM TIMES observed are mostly youth, expressed their concerns on the crisis rocking the party and the role of the NWC in it.

The protesters said they are members of the party dissatisfied with how it is being managed.

Okpokwu Ogenyi, one of the groups leaders, in his address to journalists at the secretariat, gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the party leaders to resolve the crisis or witness more of such protests across the country.

At the time of the protest, President Muhammadu Buhari was in a closed-door meeting with governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The meeting, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, is believed to be a move to resolve the multiple challenges threatening to tear the party apart.

Some of the APC governors at the meeting are those of Kebbi (Atiku Bagudu) Jigawa (Abubakar Badaru) and Plateau (Simon Lalong).

The meeting held less than 24 hours after a separate meeting between Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Mr Buhari.

Protesters who stormed the entrance of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Protesters who stormed the entrance of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mr Lawan said at the end of the Sunday meeting that the APC crisis was one of the two items he discussed with the president.

The APC crisis worsened last week with the suspension of the partys national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole. Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State and Deputy Governor Agboola Ajayi of Ondo State also defected from the APC to the Peoples Democratic Party.
[June 22, 2020] How to open a successful and reliable forex business in the new (post-pandemic) reality

Irvine, CA, June 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- How to open a successful and reliable forex business in the new (post-pandemic) reality Even if the forex industry does not experience drastic changes associated with a decrease in revenues, the new reality forces a change in approach to business. After a few months of lockdown, what counts is the speed of return to normalcy to start making up for a lost time as soon as possible. Many people who planned to open a Forex business had to postpone this decision, or at least rethink the current plan. The pandemic strongly influenced investors behaviour, especially in regions where the traditional model of establishing cooperation based on personal relationships is still dominating. Brokers whose clients were accustomed to traditional offline deposits also experienced major changes. Although the industry was bypassed by the crisis, some changes are necessary to allow brokers to adapt to the new reality. "What we have noticed among our clients is the increased interest in additional services. Many customers had to re-evaluate their business plans. They have come to understand that a website, which they had previously treated as an unnecessary addition, is now becoming the basic element of attracting investors. And I do not mean a generic template but a professional website prepared by experts who understand the specifics of the industry. Another issue is time. Startup brokers who want to take advantage of the natural increase in investors activity that comes after a period of downtime - they must act quickly"- said Michael Karczewski, COO at Match-Trade Technologies. There are many solutions on the market that offer a quick setup of the trading platform. The proverbial week seems to be standard. However, there are many features that cannot be missed, such as a payment system that guarantees convenient deposits or providing liquidity for transactions made by clients on your trading platform. Because without that you can't run a successful forex business. And to integrate payment solutions or to find a liqidity provider on your own takes time and increases costs, which can be a big barrier for entrepreneurs investing in new business.



"Here, at Match-Trade Technologies, we haven't changed our offer. What has changed was our approach to the services we already offer, we have adapted to the new requirements of our clients. We've created a service package that we called Instant Broker Solution because thats what it really is - an instant solution. You buy a ready-made broker business in a box and it's a completely new level of turnkey"- explained Sargis Manukyan, Head of Broker Solutions This "box offer" was based on the modern Match-Trader trading platform developed in-house by Match-Trade experts. Still, many customers looking for a platform do not yet have a registered company, and even though the process is quite simple, it may take a long time for an inexperienced person. Therefore, to speed up the entire procedure, the technology provider also takes on all the formalities related to incorporation. The offer also includes the Client Office app, which fulfils the CRM function for the broker to speed up onboarding and improve overall management. Already integrated Payment Gateways provide effective payments via cryptocurrencies, cards or wire transfers and guarantee instant deposits to trading accounts. The offer has been additionally completed with a professional website including registration forms integrated with Client Office CRM to maximize the conversion from visits to open accounts. Lastly, a broker who chooses Match-Trader Instant Broker Solution can also take advantage of preferential liquidity conditions like no minimum monthly fee or very attractive spreads and leverage.

"Although the offer itself is relatively new, it already enjoys great interest. Collecting our products and services in one package gives our clients not only the convenience of reducing formalities to signing one contract with Match-Trade Technologies, but also noticeable savings. We offer ready-to-run, modern Forex Broker business for the price of a basic White Label from other providers"- added S.Manukyan Whats included in the Instant Broker package:  Company registration support

 Match-Trader - branded trading platform (web / mobile / desktop)

 Client Office / Trader Room - forex CRM system with multi-level IB Module

 PAMM solution integrated with the trading platform

 Payment Gateways - guaranteeing instant deposits

 A professional website

 Forex and crypto liquidity from a trusted partner

What to look for when considering starting your own Forex Broker? There is a variety of different, turnkey solutions - what's worth focusing on is business efficiency. Experience in the industry and comprehensive service can save a lot of time and will result in a solution thanks to which business will be able to develop for many years. The best solutions are smart solutions.

Match-Trade Technologies LLC Address: 2372 Morse Ave, Irvine, CA 92614 United States Phone: +1 949 407 7046 Email: [email protected] Skype: match-trade Whatsapp: wa.me/48530540091 Telegram: MatchTrade WeChat: Match-Trade

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
NARBONNE, France - An article has been published in Frontiers in Medicine: Regulatory Science section, which proposes a new set of recommendations for addressing the various regulatory and technical challenges when assessing the safety of Live Biotherapeutic Products (LBPs). The publication represents the result of several face-to-face discussion sessions organized by the Pharmabiotic Research Institute (PRI).

Increased understanding of the relationship between the microbiota and its host highlighted the therapeutic potential of selected microorganisms to prevent or treat disease. However, while the pharmaceutical regulatory framework is harmonized at the EU level, obtaining a marketing authorization for LBPs remains very challenging. The safety assessment itself poses particular problems because of the potential sensitivity of the target population, the live nature and the complicated mode of action of LBPs.

While pharmaceutical guidelines for other biological products can be taken into account to design the relevant (non-)clinical development programmes, adapted guidelines on the safety assessment for LBPs are scattered and diverse. The authors of this article have made a concerted effort to establish a risk assessment roadmap for LBPs and propose appropriate solutions for non-clinical programmes and First in Human clinical safety trials.

As developers have struggled when designing their LBP pre-clinical programmes, the industry can benefit from this very practical road map which takes into account the new concepts of quality and development-by-design, usually applied to other biological medicinal products, says Dr. Magali Cordaillat-Simmons, corresponding author on the paper and Executive Director of the PRI.

Pr. Bruno Pot, Science Director for Yakult Europe and President of the PRI underlines, The current paper is thought to respond to a real need in the field. Product developers, medical doctors, pharmacists, and patients might all benefit from clear procedures for the development of LBPs. The article could also help in the development of future regulatory pathways that will guarantee safety of LBPs for vulnerable populations, possibly helping groups of patients with high unmet medical needs.

The resulting document provides recommendations on regulatory approaches that will meet the drug authorities expectations, weighing the existing guidelines for other biological drugs, but also focusing on strain characterization, involving history of use, antibiotic resistance and virulence testing, translocation potential, particular metabolic activities and potential drug-drug interactions. The paper reviews some newly developed research tools that could be considered, although often not yet validated. The approach proposed is largely supported by academic and industry representatives and will support future LBP safety assessment studies in Europe and the US.

###

Research article published in Frontiers in Medicine: Live Biotherapeutic Products, a road map for safety assessment https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.00237/full

About the PRI (https://www.pharmabiotic.org)

The Pharmabiotic Research Institute (PRI) is a neutral and financially independent non-profit association (according to French law: Association loi 1901), who believes that the microbiome is the future of human medicine. The PRI applies a unique collaborative approach to improve market access and provide technical and regulatory intelligence for its members in the microbiome & human health space. Understanding the microbiome and its role in human health, however, represents a paradigm shift in how medicines will be developed, as innovation and industry often outpace regulation. The PRI was founded to make Microbiotic Medicinal Products (MMPs) a therapeutic reality in Europe. Our mission is to facilitate the conversation between European regulators and MMP developers and their partners. By being the main representative organization interrogated by the competent authorities regarding the future regulatory framework for MMPs, the PRI has become the first network for the European microbiome pharmaceutical supply chain, federating fundamental actors from the industry, such as stakeholders involved in the development, investment, production and commercialization of MMPs.

Contact: Joseph Simmons - M. +33 (0)6 61 24 57 17 - joseph@pharmabiotic.org
Perry Village government has issued its official position on the annual sidewalk sale in the community that will take place this year in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Discussion occurred at the last two regular Village Council meetings about how the Aug. 1 sidewalk sale will be conducted this year, who sponsors it and exactly what role the village plays in the event.

The conversation at the June 11 meeting wrapped up with council members and administrators agreeing to post a statement on the Perry Village website regarding the sidewalk sale. The event, which happens each year on the first Saturday in August, also is sometimes referred to as the street sale.

Wording for the statement was recommended by village Solicitor James Loiacono.

Many of our residents have inquired as to the details of the Annual Street Sale, the statement reads. Please be advised that the village does not participate in or sponsor the sale. However, we would hope that those sponsoring and/or participating in the sale would follow the COVID-19 orders and guidelines issued by the Governors office.

Meanwhile, council members also couldnt pinpoint any formal sponsors of the event.

Theres no organization to it, Councilman Phil Cassella said. Its just that a day is announced.

If any information on the sale has been posted online by a sponsor, it couldnt be found easily on June 19 by doing Google searches for phrases such as Perry Village street sale or Perry Village sidewalk sale.

Councilman Rick Walker independently conducted a Facebook poll on the Perry Ohio Community Page about the sidewalk sale. Walkers survey posed the question, Should we have the annual village sidewalk sale the first Saturday in August as usual?

As of the afternoon of June 19, 327 people voted yes and 8 voted no, while 21 other people checked the box saying that the sale should require self distancing.

Walker mentioned a Facebook comment left by one woman who responded to the poll. She said she hoped that masks would be mandatory for customers and sellers at the sale.

Regarding that idea, Loiacono reminded village government leaders that the Ohio Health Department and Lake County General Health District are responsible for enforcement issues related to COVID-19.

(The village) should stay out of it, Loiacono said.

The question also arose about the possibility of a lawsuit against the village if a resident selling goods outside his or her house or a customer claimed they contracted COVID-19 at the event.

Loiacono said there is a lot going on now around the country with litigation involving COVID-19. However, he reiterated that the village does not participate in or sponsor the sale.

Its not our area of concern, he said.

But Cassella said he thought that the village still needed to take a stance regarding the sidewalk sale.

I think something has to be put out, just for clarification, under the circumstances of what were dealing with right now, he said.

The statement that now appears on the villages website also was posted on the Perry Ohio Community Facebook Page by Walker, in the comment section of the poll he created.
Syracuse, N.Y.  A small nonprofit organization that issued a last-minute OK for a gathering Saturday night that erupted into a mass shooting is having an emergency board meeting this morning to figure out what went wrong in the approval process.

At 1:30 p.m. Saturday, the operations director for the Near West Side Initiative emailed tenants in the apartment complex near Performance Park, a square and theater near Wyoming and Marcellus streets.

The director apologized for the short notice and informed tenants of a BLM (Black Lives Matter) festival occurring between 4 and 9 p.m., according to an email obtained by syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.

The event was not a Black Lives Matter rally. Instead, it was Rye Day, an annual birthday party that was kicked out of its previous home for the last decade on Syracuse Housing Authority property because of traffic and safety issues, according to the authoritys executive director. The five-hour event featured music, a cookout and other festivities.

As the event wrapped up around 9 p.m., dozens of gunshots rang out, likely from more than one shooter, officials have said. Nine people were injured, including a 17-year-old boy who is in critical condition. A motive has not been established yet, and no one has been arrested.

The Near West Side Initiative, a nonprofit organization, oversees use of the Performance Park lot and theater.

The Near West Side groups board never reviewed the proposal for a party there, according to Board President Sheena Solomon. And its still unclear how the event ended up being described to tenants as a rally for the Black Lives Matter movement, which are occurring daily here and around the country, she said.

Normally, the director would contact the board and say this is the event that was going on, Solomon said. This was a last-minute decision.

Thats not to say that the board wouldnt have approved a birthday party, she said. It regularly allows baby showers, parties and other joyful gatherings there. Thats the point of the space, and it would have been impossible to predict that a shooting like this would occur there, she said.

Gregorio Jimenez, the director, did not answer a Sunday night phone call seeking comment. He attended the gathering and had to take cover from gunfire, according to Solomon.

Joe Cecile, the Syracuse Police Departments deputy chief, sits on the initiatives board. Had the board considered the party proposal, Solomon said, she would have consulted with the deputy chief on whether moving the gathering was wise, especially in light of recent violence in Syracuse.

I would have consulted Chief Cecile, because he knows more about the different areas. Does this make sense? Should we take extra precautions? she said. We have him as a resource on purpose.

The organization has brought nearly $100 million into one of the citys poorest neighborhoods, transforming old factories into workspaces, apartments and other amenities, including Performance Park, which has a theater and an outdoor square.

The departure of former Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor in 2017 coincided with a severing of ties between the initiative and the university, which helped the organization with staff, funding, insurance and other logistics. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic has cut the organizations full-time staff to two, Solomon said.

City and police officials have said they did not have prior notice about the party.

The board meeting will also look into whether party organizers misled staff into thinking the event was something that it wasnt.

Annetta Peterson, the mother of Ryedell Davis, did not respond to a call Sunday about how initiative staff might have thought the event was a Black Lives Matter festival instead of a birthday party.

Peterson previously said that the event was always peaceful and never drew this kind of violence until it moved to the Near West Side. She said she was packing up DJ equipment when the shots rang out, and she hid under her car until the scene was secure.

Bill Simmons, director of the Syracuse Housing Authority, said the authority prohibited Rye Day from occurring near South State Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard this weekend because of the congestion, traffic and safety concerns. It was never a sanctioned party and neighbors continually complained, he said.

Organizers of the event never told Simmons the proposed gathering at the housing authority was a Black Lives Matter rally, he said.

Solomon said shed like to know if there was a miscommunication about the nature of the event. In addition to music and food, organizers also had a voter registration table, she said.

I know that they were registering people to vote and all types of stuff like that as well, she said. So was it a mixture (of a party and a rally)? Im trying to find those details.

The meeting is at 8:30 a.m. today. It is not open to the public.

Contact reporter Patrick Lohmann at (315)766-6670 or via email at PLohmann@Syracuse.com.

Syracuse.com reporter Chris Libonati contributed to this report.
Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakars father, cook and a domestic help tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday. His father, Keshava Reddy, 82, is a former Chikkaballapur Zilla Panchayat president.

In a tweet the minister said, My fathers Covid-19 test has come out positive. Anxiously waiting for reports of other family members. Praying for speedy recovery of my father. In an earlier tweet, the minister had mentioned, My 82-year-old father has been admitted in hospital with complaints of fever and cough.

His father is said to have contracted the virus after coming in contact with their domestic help who was working in their Sadashivanagar house.

The cook is 40 years old and the domestic help is 26 years old. Eight people, including the security personnel and the family members, have been home quarantined. While his father is in a private hospital, the two staffers are in Victoria Hospital.

The ministers team members said that he, his wife and two children have been home quarantined. Dr Sudhakar has no home office, they said.

Asked if the ministers team members were tested for Covid, they said, We are tested every 15 days because of Sudhakars work as medical education minister and as Covid incharge minister. We have been tested five times till now and have tested negative.

This is the first time for a Karnataka politician to have been exposed to the virus at such close quarters.

Earlier, the cameraperson of a Kannada news channel tested positive for the virus and had come in contact with three ministers: Sudhakar, Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan and Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai. They had quarantined themselves at home for 14 days and had tested negative.
"Finding cheaper car insurance premiums might look challenging for many drivers, but with the help of a few tips, anyone can find the right plan at the right price.", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Compare-autoinsurance.org (https://compare-autoinsurance.org/) has launched a new blog post that presents the most common and easiest methods drivers can follow to get affordable car insurance rates.

For more info and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/how-you-can-save-money-on-auto-insurance/

Nowadays, getting cheap car insurance that offers a lot of coverage is essential. Luckily, even in these tough times, there are many ways to get cheap car insurance. By doing proper research, drivers can find an auto insurance policy that is at the right price.

To find cheaper car insurance policies, drivers can follow the next steps:



Compare multiple quotes. It's crucial to compare car insurance quotes from multiple companies. Comparison shopping can help drivers uncover cheap car insurance companies and auto insurance discounts. Drivers may discover a new company that has emerged or dropped its prices in this competitive market. Drivers should compare quotes at least once per year or if they experience a major life event such as marriage, divorce, getting a new car, or moving to a new place.

Bundle policies. To save money on insurance, drivers can bundle their car insurance with other insurance policies such as homeowner's insurance, renter's insurance, boat insurance, life insurance, or health insurance. In some cases, policyholders can save as much as 30% of the total insurance costs. Also, if they own two or more vehicles, they can get a 25% multi-car policy discount.

Raise the deductible. By simply raising the deductible, drivers can lower the collision and comprehensive portion of their premiums. However, a higher deductible means more money out of the pocket in the event of a claim.

Find all the discounts that are available. To make insurance policies more affordable, car insurance companies are offering all sorts of discounts. Insurers offer discounts such as good student discounts, loyalty discounts, good driver and safe driver discounts, pay in advance discounts, or safety-feature discounts.

Purchase the right vehicle. Cars that cost less to repair or replace generally receive lower premiums. Family cars or minivans are usually the cheapest cars to insure.

Be a good driver. Insures will always check the driving record to see if a policyholder presents a high level of risk. Speeding tickets, accidents, drunk driving citations - all can make the costs of insurance to be higher. However, drivers who manage to keep a clean driving record for at least three years can get a good driver discount that can save as much as 25% of their premiums.

Drop unnecessary coverage. Drivers who own older vehicles that have low value should consider dropping comprehensive and collision coverage. Also, drivers can drop personal injury protection coverage or medical payment coverage (if their states don't require to carry these coverages) if they already have an excellent health insurance plan.

Buy only the state-required minimum insurance. To save money on insurance, drivers can purchase only the liability insurance at the lowest legal limits required by the state to legally drive a car.

Drive less. Drivers who are driving fewer miles than a specified number of miles each year, usually 7,500 to 10,000 miles, can get a reduction in their base rates. Usually, the insurers require that the drivers will install a small device in their vehicles that transmit the mileage data to the company.

Check for group insurance discounts. Some providers offer reductions to drivers who get insurance through a group plan from their employers, professional, business, and alumni groups, other associations, or schools.

For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.
The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture

Widely considered to better prepared for climate change than arabica coffee, a new study from Southeast Asia shows robusta coffee production decreases 14% with each 1C of increase above a lower-than-once-thought optimal temperature range

Even the toughest coffee trees may be no match for climate change. A new study of the plant that produces robusta coffee suggests its heat tolerance has been consistently overestimated. Worse yet, when temperatures just slightly cross this point, yields plummet. The findings suggest the multibillion-dollar coffee industry could be facing a much tougher future on even a slightly warmer planet.

The study, published in Global Change Biology, was built on 10 years of yield observations on almost 800 farms across Southeast Asia. The analysis suggests that the optimal temperature range for robusta is 20.5 degrees C, which is markedly lower than the temperatures currently considered optimal. For every 1-degree increase over this new optimal range, yields decrease by 14 percent.

"Our results suggest that robusta coffee is far more sensitive to temperature than previously thought," said the authors. "Its production potential could decline considerably as temperatures increase under climate change, jeopardizing a multibillion-dollar coffee industry and the livelihoods of millions of farmers."

Scientists from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and ECOM Agroindustrial, a global commodity merchant and sustainable supply chain management company, conducted the research on farms in Vietnam and Indonesia, which supply about half the world's robusta beans.

The study's findings contrast with current estimates, based on historical botanical explorations in Central Africa, that had suggested robusta had a higher temperature tolerance.

"This should make us reassess the viability of some of our current options, like switching from arabica to robusta coffee as the climate warms to adapt production to climate change," said Jarrod Kath, the study's lead author from USQ.

Arabica coffee, which is preferred by coffee connoisseurs for its superb taste, is even more sensitive to temperature change. Coffee farmers at lower altitudes around the tropics have been switching out their arabica trees for robusta trees, while arabica farmers have been searching for higher altitudes and lower temperatures to maintain production.

"These findings provide baseline information for coffee farmers, private sector investors and governments to adapt their coffee production plans under climate change," said Alessandro Craparo, a co-author with the Alliance.

"Precipitation changes have long been a concern of the coffee industry," said co-author Laurent Bossolasco of ECOM. "Now it's clear that we need more in-depth analysis of temperature variations in the robusta region."

The research adds a new dimension to how the researchers and industry understand coffee, said Kath.

It highlights the importance of testing assumptions about agricultural production sensitivity to climate variability with large field-based datasets.

"Theory is only as good as the data used to test it," said Craparo.

###
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed back against accusations that his nursing home coronavirus policies resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths, instead blaming the federal government for not relaying information about the pandemic soon enough.

Lets look at the facts, right? Rather than the political rhetoric. Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else because we had more people die, Cuomo said Monday on MSNBC. Because the federal government missed the boat and never told us that this virus was coming from Europe and not from China.

The federal government and the CDC and all of them failed to handle this pandemic and warn this nation, the Democratic governor continued. So New York had more cases and more deaths and more deaths in nursing homes because thats who the virus affects. It affects senior citizens. We know that. You look at any state, and they had a tremendous number of deaths in nursing homes.

Cuomo has faced criticism for his policies aimed at fighting the virus in nursing homes, in particular his state regulation requiring nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus patients and the prohibition against nursing homes testing returning patients for coronavirus. The state was also criticized for the lack of personal protective equipment for caretakers working in nursing homes.

In early May, New York announced 1,700 previously undisclosed suspected coronavirus deaths that occurred at nursing homes and adult care facilities. The report came after critics expressed skepticism about the official death tallies from coronavirus at nursing homes compared to rising death rates among elderly residents.

During January, February, and March  before the Trump administration temporarily banned travel from Europe over coronavirus fears  three million people brought the virus to New York from Europe unbeknownst to the federal government, Cuomo said, an apparent reference to his earlier statement that three million travelers from Europe passed through New Yorks airports between December and March.

Story continues

The Europe travel ban was implemented on March 13. Research later indicated that the coronavirus was seeded in New York and other East Coast states by travelers from Europe rather than from China, where the outbreak originated.

Its all a political charade, and its an ugly one, frankly, to talk about a number of deaths and suggest there was politics added, Cuomo said of criticism about his nursing home policies, blaming Republicans for playing politics.

He touted New Yorks coronavirus testing rates as well the states declining rate of hospitalizations and deaths. New York performed 57,000 tests on Sunday with less than one percent coming back positive.

Meanwhile, the state saw 10 deaths from the infection on Sunday, down from a high of 800 deaths in one day at the peak of the outbreak. Currently, the state has 100 hospitalizations for coronavirus, the lowest level since the pandemics height.

Cuomo also said he may release guidelines to handle a potential influx of visitors to New York from states with higher infection rates.

More from National Review
A shake-up in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is expected to take shape Monday within the Republican Caucus.

By the end of the day, at least two people from central Pennsylvania could move into top leadership positions.
A worker cleans the statue of former prime minister Winston Churchill that was spray-painted with graffiti during a Black Lives Matter protest in Parliament Square, London, on June 8, 2020. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Erasing Historical Statues a Monumental Mistake

Commentary

Historical monuments have been lightning rods of protest in the wake of George Floyds death.

The demand to remove statues from public spaces has greatly intensified, particularly in the United States, where statues of Christopher Columbus and even Thomas Jefferson have been torn down. In the United Kingdom, monuments honoring Winston Churchill have been vandalized, while in Canada, there are renewed calls for ousting statues of first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald.

But destroying national heritage by placing absolute value judgments on historical figures, in an attempt to discredit their significance is a dangerously inaccurate way of assessing the past.

Arbitrarily removing monuments in a symbolic gesture to address the complex history of racism and colonialism can have damaging unintended consequences that are irreversible if taken too far. What may start with the removal of Confederate generals will, in the end, swallow the culture whole, leaving a void readily filled by even less noble traditions.

Marxist Tactic

Destroying national heritage is a fundamental communist tactic used to indoctrinate societies with Marxist ideology as a prelude to revolution. One of Marxisms primary aims is to sever a populations link to the past; the longer and richer the history, the more resistant a nation is to the influence of foreign ideologies.

In China, communists realized early on that political, cultural, and philosophical traditions gave people a measuring stick to assess the Marxist ideology they were promoting. It proved to be a significant stumbling block for the communists, who found the populace harder to control with their culture intact. To mitigate that problem, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution to purge society of its traditions and impose Maoism as the dominant ideology.

This 10-year period was characterized by violent class struggle, purges, exile, and persecution of anyone or anything with ties to Chinas past. The Marxists maligned ancient customs as backward and irrelevant, merely obstructions to their new world order. The vast majority of Chinas historical monuments, artifacts, and archives were destroyed in a fever of anarchistic rage, fueled by Maos cult of personality.

After 10 years of brutality and destruction, China was rendered wholly disconnected from its 5,000-year history. The goal was achieved: The fear-ridden populace was readily assimilated to Marxist ideology.

As a result, present-day Chinese are unable to understand the value of their past, the richness of their culture, or articulate a vision for a future removed from authoritarianism. In place of the sages Confucius and Lao Tzu and their age-old wisdom, China is replete with monuments glorifying Chairman Mao, a man responsible for the death of 80 million Chinese citizens.

Mob Rule

Within the ranks of todays activists are Marxists eager to capitalize on chaos for their own ends and erode the foundations of Western society. Their methods of disruption have been well-practiced through a century of revolutionary struggles across the world. At present, democratic countries are proving increasingly susceptible to their influence, having warmed considerably to the ideals of socialism while failing to prevent the proliferation of Marxist revolutionary groups such as Antifa.

These groups are the progenitors of violence and the mob mentality often on display in mass protests.

Society is rarely homogenized, but we must be wary of cultural and political movements that have destruction as their primary motivation. To be part of the national conversation, proponents of change need to articulate a well-thought-out vision for the future, before serious consideration can be given to their ideas. Destruction alone creates a vacuum, one that seems increasingly likely to be filled with rage and loathing.

Desecrating monuments and toppling statues out of hatred and rage, as we have seen in the United States will do little to promote racial equality and will instead only stoke more division in an already-polarized climate. The well-intentioned should separate themselves from those with destruction as their primary aims, or else their message will get lost in the swarm.

Importance of Material Culture

To reconcile the past with truth and not whitewash the sins of our forefathers, its right and necessary that their accomplishments be tarnished with their crimes, and a full reckoning of their deeds be part of the historical record. However, the current trend to wholly discredit these individuals without considering their merits and contributions is an attempt to airbrush and rewrite history.

Before renaming streets or removing statues that have stood for hundreds of years, there needs to be debate and public consultation. If there is sufficient rationale for changing a historical landmark, that case should be made on its merits rather than because the mob demands it. Public debate would clarify both sides of the argument and result in a necessary free exchange of ideas. The consequences of failing to protect this cornerstone of democratic discourse are too great to be casually cast aside because of political pressure.

A symbolic erasing of these representatives of history as a reckoning of their misdeeds doesnt facilitate the necessary debate around their place in history. One could readily make the argument that the dichotomy of these monuments is the most compelling reason to keep them intact, to serve as sobering reminders of the imperfect nature of our humanityneither wholly good nor wholly bad but nonetheless capable of remarkable feats.

All of history is stained with blood and sin, a fact we should keep in mind when weighing the virtue of our own ideas.

Moral and material development dont progress in a linear fashion, and developed nations are not above regressing into tyranny. Without the material culture of our historical roots to keep our moral compass intact, we fail to not only honor mankinds progress of ideas but cast aside the traditions of our shared humanity.

Ryan Moffatt is a journalist based in Vancouver, Canada.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The general office of the Central Military Commission has issued a set of regulations on the economic responsibility audit of senior military officials, which will take effect on July 1.

The regulations lay out an overall plan on the work on economic responsibility audit, and will restructure the current system of economic responsibility audit.

The regulations will be significant to governing the military with strict discipline in every respect, improving the systems for conducting checks and oversight over the exercise of power, and enhancing the officials' loyalty, integrity and sense of responsibility, according to the office.

The document highlights the audit in senior military officials' implementation of decisions, major decision-making, task-performing and problem-solving in military economic activities.

Encouraging innovation and the sense of responsibility, the regulations read that the audit results should be important criteria in officials' performance evaluation, appointments and dismissals, as well as rewards and punishment.
(Bloomberg) -- Wirecard AG was left fighting for survival after acknowledging that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) that it had reported as assets probably dont exist, deepening an accounting scandal that has rattled Germanys financial industry.

The payments processor said its in discussions with creditors and considering a full-scale restructuring after pulling its financial results for fiscal 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. Previous descriptions of its business with third parties, which process transactions on Wirecards behalf, were not correct.

Even before the early Monday statement, the unfolding scandal had seen Wirecards shares and bonds collapse, its chief executive depart, and left the company renegotiating debt terms with its lenders. In less than a week, the fintech once hyped as the future of German finance has lost almost 90% of its market value, with the shares slumping for a third trading day on Monday.

Its a complete disaster were looking at, said Felix Hufeld, head of BaFin, Germanys top financial regulator, at a panel discussion Monday. Its a shame that something like that happened.

Wirecard said it was in constructive discussions with its lending banks, including the extension of lines coming due at the end of June. It is working with investment bank Houlihan Lokey on a sustainable financing strategy. Also under consideration are cost reductions, a restructuring, and disposal or termination of business units and product segments, according to the statement.

There is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion euros do not exist, Wirecard said. The firm had repeatedly delayed announcing its financial statements, and last week warned that loans of as much as 2 billion euros could be terminated if its audited annual report wasnt published by June 19.

Cracks are already appearing among Wirecards lenders. Bank of China Ltd. may write off most of the 80 million euros ($90 million) its owed and not extend its credit line, according to people familiar with the situation.

Story continues

Moodys Investors Service decided on Monday to withdraw Wirecards credit ratings because it believes it has insufficient or otherwise inadequate information to support the maintenance of the ratings. It had already cut the ratings six levels on Friday, putting it one step from the lowest tier of junk.

Read more on how Wirecard became an embarrassment for Germany

Wirecard fell as much as 50% and traded 38% lower at 12:35 p.m. in Frankfurt. The stock has lost 85% since Wednesday, the day before it revealed that the funds were missing.

Wirecards lenders are demanding more clarity from the company in return for the extension of almost $2 billion in financing after it breached terms on the loan, people familiar with the matter said earlier. At least 15 commercial lenders, including Commerzbank AG and ABN Amro, are in hectic negotiations about the steps to take, they said.

The missing cash could trigger an event of default and allow creditors to withdraw lines of credit, said Justin Tang, head of Asian research at United First Partners in Singapore.

Wirecard has an outstanding revolving credit facility of 1.75 billion euros, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. About 90% of the RCF has been drawn by the company, according to people familiar with the matter and a list detailing the facilitys participation that was seen by Bloomberg:

Its unclear how the latest admissions will affect discussions with the banks. Most are leaning toward an extension of the repayment obligation in order to better assess the potential impact of a default on their balance sheets, one of the people said. However, a prolonged extension could be seen as delaying an insolvency, which is illegal under German law.

The scandal has prompted the resignation of Markus Braun after almost two decades as CEO. He was replaced on an interim basis by James Freis. Braun is unwinding a large portion of the shares he owns in the company, a stake he financed by borrowing against the stocks value, Bloomberg has reported.

Read more on how Braun has to unwind pledged shares

The deepening mystery over the lost money centered on two Philippine lenders, after Wirecard said a couple of unnamed Asian banks had been unable to find accounts with the cash.

Both the Bank of the Philippine Islands and BDO Unibank Inc. said Wirecard wasnt a client and they hadnt seen the money. None of the missing cash entered the Philippine financial system, according to the nations central bank, which is conducting its own investigation.

A document purporting to show a link between Wirecard and BPI was bogus and may be part of an attempted fraud, the banks President Cezar Consing said Friday. BDO Unibank CEO Nestor Tan said it was a matter of document fraud which was subsequently clarified by the bank as spurious.

Wirecard is continuing to investigate the matter and cant rule out potential effects on the financial accounts of previous years, it said in Mondays statement.

(Updated with ninth paragraph, new table.)

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
The meeting looked into the situation in Haiti and the report of the UN Secretary General on the operation of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH).

Both Vietnam and Indonesia expressed their concern over difficulties and uncertainties regarding the situation in Haiti, especially the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They said they back the electoral process and the intensification of womens participation.

The two countries also lauded the BINUH for its measures in support of Haiti over the recent past, and urged the office and the UN working group to identify concrete measures to help Haiti deal with pressing issues.

Other UNSC member countries praised the offices supporting role in the political transformation and stressed the need for Haiti to step up political dialogues and constitutional reform.

They voiced their concern over activities of armed criminal gangs, and appealed to the international community and other countries to continue their support to Haiti in handling these challenges.
We are met on a great battle-field of war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

These were some of the words by Abraham Lincoln quoted today by Tauranga Deputy Mayor Tina Salisbury during her speech at the Battle of Te Ranga commemoration in Pyes Pa.

On June 21, 1864, the little known battle from Taurangas history has probably done more to shape the destiny of this city than any other engagement of the New Zealand Wars.

A large crowd of people turned up in the long grass and rain at dawn today to commemorate the battle that took place in what is now a paddock near the corner of Joyce Rd and Pyes Pa Rd.

It was very good, probably the biggest crowd weve had since the 2014 commemoration, says Buddy Mikaere from Ngai Tamarawaho. The 150-year commemoration was held in 2014.

There were well over 100 people here today. The interesting thing was that there were more Pakeha people here than Maori people which shows how much interest there is.

Tina who has lived in the United States for a number of years, her daughters learning about American history in school, reflected on how the battles at Te Ranga and Pukehinahina  Gate Pa  took place soon after the American Civil war had drawn to a close.

Tauranga Deputy Mayor Tina Salisbury speaking at the Battle of Te Ranga commemoration

At the Gettysburg battle site, which our family visited, where thousands died, President Abraham Lincoln gave a powerful speech that has echoed down through time, says Salisbury.

It was a respectful tribute to those who had died in that place, but at the same time made the point, that from such events, we can draw inspiration and turn the great hurts of war into a plea, that the sacrifice of the dead should not be in vain.

I believe those words are so fitting for us this morning, as we stand on this battle ground.

The Te Ranga commemoration began with an introductory welcome by Buddy, with Bill Nepia from Ngai Tamarawaho opening with a karakia and mihi.

The hymn Whakaaria Mai was sung, later followed by Abide with Me which was also the hymn sung by British officers with Rev. Brown at the Mission House the night before the Battle of Gate pa.

Peri Kohu played guitar while his granddaughter Waiari sang Amazing Grace.

That was lovely and moving, says Cam Scott, speaking of Waiaris singing. It seemed to me there was an air of deeper reconciliation this time in spite of the fact there has always been much hurt and anger as arising from the tragic events at Te Ranga.

Western Bay Mayor Garry Webber also found it encouraging to see the number of people who attended.

All ages, says Webber. A very diverse group of people and quite a moving day.

The weather wasnt the most ideal, but we had a really good turnout because I think there is a genuine interest in the history of our area."

This is a regionally significant commemorative place in the history of our district, and I know the trust that looks after the property has plans for improving it, says Webber. I think thats appropriate given its history to our region.

We should make this site as prestigious as we can but make sure its simple and elegant while reflecting the magnitude of the event that took place.

The battle that occurred has been described as among the bloodiest of the New Zealand campaigns. In desperate hand-to-hand fighting, British troops exacted terrible vengeance for Gate Pa.

The Maori garrison was unable to hold the incomplete defences and slowly withdrew. When Puhirake, the hero of Gate Pa himself was killed, the retreat became a rout. British cavalry gave chase, but could not penetrate the nearby bush.

More than 100 Maori, including the chivalrous Henare Taratoa, were killed or mortally wounded at Te Ranga, as were 13 British troops. The visiting iwi also suffered heavy casualties, which contributed to their subsequent enthusiasm for the Pai Marire insurgency.

Twenty-seven severely wounded Maori were taken to hospital at Te Papa camp. Fourteen did not long survive the battle and were buried at Mission Cemetery. Among the mortally wounded was Te Tera of Ngai Te Rangi, the only one to be identified in official reports.

About 70 Maori defenders including Puhirake were buried in the trenches at Te Ranga, which is now the large grass paddock.

Its like the Elms cemetery - incredibly sacred land, says Webber. I think its right to lift the profile of Te Ranga, in keeping with its original character. It was a battle field.

Mia Thomas, the Aquinas College student who won the Te Ranga Aquinas College poetry competition read her poem titled He Mate Kohuru  A Treacherous Murder from the perspective of Hori Ngatai. The poignant words reflect the despair as the Maori garrison realised they were being ambushed by numbers too great, but continue to fight on.

Trevel Gardner-Hano and Nic Scott, also students from Aquinas College read Mo te Hunga - For the Fallen.

Pastor Leanne Rolleston reflected on Romans 12:13 which encourages people to share what they have with people in need and to show hospitality.

During the wreath laying at the base of the monument, Andrew Graham played a lament on his bagpipes - Flowers of the Forest.

I was very pleased all around with today, says Buddy, and its so good to have the local school taking a bigger role in what happens and in the management of the reserve.

In discussion with a lot of people, theyre saying the reserve deserves an upgrade and wed like to see something more fitting with what happened here."

Students from Aquinas College laying a wreath. Photo: Fiona Sullivan

Buddy adds that the Pukehinahina Charitable Trust have had a landscaping plan set aside for the battle field area.

I think its time to dust that off and do something with it.

Buddy says that this year is a real milestone going forward, a feeling that was also conveyed in Garry Webbers reflection on the day.

The significance of today - when you looks at whats happening in the United States right now - its a time of coming together, says Webber, who noted that Aquinas College has incorporated more of the local history into their curriculum and were pleased to be involved in the event.

And the more we bring it to peoples attention by promoting the Te Ranga commemoration day, then the better understanding for what were wanting to achieve, support diversity and bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots to make sure it is a better place for all.

He contrasted the kiwi way with Mr Trumps way.

Our way of building a community is far better than what Mr Trump is intending to do right now.

Weve just come through Covid, where this wider community and in fact the whole of New Zealand came together to look after those in need regardless of what their background was.

"Today was another example of how we can work together for the betterment of all and how we can make this place better for everyone, says Webber.

Tina Salisburys words resonated with many who stood in silent respectful contemplation during the prayers and speeches.

I commend Lincolns words to you on this day and in this place. And this is my hope, that as we stand here this morning, on the site where many died, and some still remain, that we too would remember, and honour what they gave their lives for; that we would continue to seek a shared way forward that begins with this foundation, may we now continue to walk this journey towards kotahitanga.

Willy Pearson closed the gathering with a karakia, following which a morning tea was hosted by Aquinas College, rather than at Western Bay District Council as originally planned.

Aquinas want to host that every year now, says Webber, who is delighted with the increased interest in, and recognition of, the significance of Te Ranga by the college.

With the increasing demand in Pyes Pa for housing, the more recent streets have some interesting names: Te Ranga Memorial Drive, Puhirake Crescent, Penetaka Heights, Materawaho Way, and others. The choice of these names reflects the determination to commemorate some of Taurangas most important  and tragic  history., and acknowledges tangata whenua.

Tina Salisburys quotes from Abraham Lincoln:

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."

It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Whakaaria mai

Whakaaria mai

Tou ripeka ki au

Tiaho mai

Ra roto i te po

Hei kona au

Titiro atu ai

Ora mate

Hei au koe noho ai

Mo te Hunga  For the Fallen (by Laurence Binyon)

E kore ratou e kaumatuatia

Penei i a tatou kua mahue nei

E kore hoki ratou e ngoikore

Ahakoa pehea inga ahuatanga o te wai te hekenga atu o te ra

Tae noa kia te aranga mai i te ata

Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou

Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou (Matou katoa  muted)



They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them

We will remember them (Matou katoa  muted)

Abide with me

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide

The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide

When other helpers fail and comforts flee

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day

Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away

Change and decay in all around I see

O Thou who changest not, abide with me

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless

Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness

Where is death's sting?

Where, grave, thy victory?

I triumph still, if Thou abide with me

He Mate Kohuru  A Treacherous Murder from the perspective of Hori Ngatai, a poem by Mia Thomas.

They tell me to dig,

I dig without spirit,

This is not where the Pa should be

Kari, Kari, Kari

I hear the enemy

Theyve come early,

Our defences are woefully lacking

Kari, Kari, Kari

Their numbers are too great

We are not prepared

We must wait for the others

Kari, Kari, Kari

This is an ambush

We lay down our tools and reach for our weapons.

Enough! We fight

Patu, Patu, Patu

The enemy advance

Their weapons are mighty

They are ready

We are not

Pako, Pako, Pako

We fight with honour

We fight with mana

We fight with hope

Kakari, Kakari, Kakari

Our brothers are falling

Our comrades are late

Victory is impossible

Taui, Taui, Taui

Puhirake lays lifeless

Taratoa has passed on

Kua hinga nga totara haemata

Taui, Taui, Taui

We must retreat if we are to survive

Too much loss

Too much suffering

Kua parekura te hoariri e tatou

He Mate Kohuru  A treacherous murder.
HCM City's Centre for Disease Control warned hospitals and health centres, including small clinics, private clinics, and the community to be alert to those illegally entering the city for medical treatment.

It said if detecting illegal entries, residents and health workers should immediately notify the police and local authorities.

HCM City has detected 14 people who illegally entered the country via the South-West border for medical treatment since early May, the centre reported on Thursday.

Among them, six cases were detected in residential areas and the others were detected when they came to local hospitals for check-ups.

These people usually travelled through trails or forests along the border, then took public buses or private cars to the city's hospitals.

Through medical declarations made by patients at the hospitals, medical workers detected these illegal entries.

Recently, the city's Children's Hospital No1 discovered four foreigners, including a couple, their two-month-old child and an interpreter, who illegally entered the country for medical treatment.

Doctors took blood samples of the four people for testing and took three adults to the quarantine area in Cu Chi District.

Customs officer check passengers at Vi Thanh bus station in Hau Giang Province. HCM City warns medical centres and the community to be alert to detect illegal entry cases into the city for medical treatment.

The baby was transferred to HCM City Children's Hospital for treatment and quarantine.

Test results showed that all four cases were negative for COVID-19.

The centre warned those with relatives living abroad and wanting to return to Vietnam for medical examination and treatment should comply with the entry-and-exit regulations, protective measures and quarantine to avoid the risk of COVID-19 infection.

It also called on the centres for disease control of the border provinces to coordinate with the border guard forces to prevent illegal entry.

On May 27, the citys Department of Health sent a dispatch to all hospitals, medical centres and clinics, particularly centres hosting foreigners and immigrants, informing them in cases in which the immigrant has completed quarantine, they could be examined and treated as prescribed.

"Although all cases of illegal entry for medical treatment have been negative for COVID-19, this is one of the risks, we need to be vigilant to prevent it," said a centre official. VNS

HCM City improves quality of health care with 20 doctors per 10,000 people Ho Chi Minh City has reached its goal to have 20 doctors per 10,000 people after implementation of a five-year programme on improving the quality of health care services for local residents.
The Defence Minister is on a three-day visit to Russia to meet top Russian leadership. Requested equipment was to reach India through sea route, stuck for months due to Covid-19.

Amid heightened tensions with China over boundary issue, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will request Russia to urgently supply spares and associated equipment to India for its fighter planes, submarines and battle tanks through air route instead of sea route using ships.

Singh has left for Russia on a three-day visit where he would be meeting the top Russian political leadership and is expected to update them about the present situation on the Ladakh front where the Chinese Army has done a massive built upon Indian borders.

During the visit, the Defence Minister will take up the issue of urgent supply of equipment and spares needed for the Russian-origin fighter aircraft including the Su-30MKIs and MiG-29s of the Air Force and the MiG29Ks of the Indian Navy, the T-90 battle ranks for the Army and the Kilo-class submarines of the Navy along with other warships, government sources told ANI.

Also read: SC allows Rath Yatra on certain conditions, CM Naveen Patnaik calls for preparatory meeting

Also read: NITI Aayog lists ten practices to combat Covid-19, recovery rate now at 55.7%

The sources said the equipment was earlier supposed to be supplied to India through the sea route in ships but was stuck there for several months due to the COVID-19 situation.

Now based on our old relations and ties with the Russians, the Defence Minister will request them to send these items to us through the air route so that we can get it urgently in the present situation, they said.

During the talks with the Russian leaders, the Defence Minister will also ask them to expedite the delivery of the S-400 air defence systems which are supposed to be delivered by the end of next year. The Russians had postponed the delivery schedule by several months due to delay in payments over certain issues.

Before the Defence Minister left for Moscow, he was given an extensive briefing on the topics to be touched by him during the visit.

After the MiG-series plane started getting phased out, the Su-30 MKI has become the mainstay of the Indian Air Force.

Also read: Maharashtra puts agreements worth Rs 5000 crore with Chinese companies on hold

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Indian congress party supporters leave Chinese goods on a flag displaying the country of China, along with an inscription reading 'Boycott Made in China,' during an anti-China demonstration in Kolkata, India on June 18, 2020. (DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Following Deadly India-China Border Clash, Indian Officials and Locals Call for Boycotting Chinese Goods

Indian politicians and civilians have initiated efforts to boycott made-in-China products after 20 Indian soldiers died during clashes with Chinese counterparts at a disputed border region.

Indias cabinet minister of consumer affairs, food, and public distribution Ram Vilas Paswan appealed to the Indian people not to buy any products from China and directed officials in his ministry to stop purchasing made in China stationery and other administrative items.

I want to appeal to everyone that the way China is behaving, we boycott all Chinese products, Paswan said at a press conference on June 18. We have to give them a strong reply for their barbaric attack.

Indias cabinet minister of social justice and empowerment Ramdas Bandu Athawale also called for boycotting Chinese products.

China is a country that deceits. India should boycott all products from China. Chinese food and restaurants should be closed in India, Athawale posted on Twitter on June 17.

Government Level

The Indian government also took action to ban Chinese tech products.

Local media NDTV reported on June 19 that the Indian telecom department has asked state-owned telecom carriers Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) to shun Chinese telecom equipment in their 4G network upgrading.

India does not yet have a 5G network. Computerworld quoted equipment suppliers on April 29 who said India may have its first 5G network in late 2021.

Its unclear how much BSNL and MTNL rely on telecom equipment from Chinese suppliers.

But Chinas largest telecom firms Huawei and ZTE have made significant inroads in the Indian market.

Huawei has over 4,000 employees in India, according to the companys Linkedin profile. It also received a permit from the Indian government in December 2019 to team up with private telecom operators Airtel and Vodafone Idea for commercial 5G trials.

On June 18, Indian media, quoting officials, reported that New Delhi authorities plan to raise import tariffs on around 300 Chinese products in retaliation for the fatal clashes that occurred in the Ladakh region.

According to Chinas Ministry of Commerce, China exported $68.37 billion-valued goods to India in 2019, while India exported $17.13 billion-valued goods to China, meaning the trade deficit reached $51.24 billion.

Civilian Level

On June 16, a political and cultural organization affiliated with the Indian left-wing party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) urged the central government to bar Chinese companies from participating in government contracts.

The organization, called Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, also asked the Indian public to stop using Chinese products.

Locals soon responded to such appeals. Since June 17, people have gathered on the streets to burn Chinese flags and photos of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Some brought their TV sets and computers that were made in China and smashed them.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), an organization that comprises 60 million merchants across 40,000 affiliates in the country, embarked on a new campaign, Indian GoodsOur Pride on June 17.

The organization is encouraging more domestic production in India to reduce the countrys reliance on Chinese imports.

CAIT told local media that the organization has listed about 3,000 types of products in 500 categories, as a focus for shifting to Indian manufacturing by December 2021.

These products include toys, fabrics, handbags, luggage, kitchen items, furniture, hardware, electronics, cosmetics, watches, jewelry, stationery, paper, auto parts, and so on. India annually imports about $13 billion in value of those goods from China.

Casualties Dignity

On June 18, India organized funerals for the dead soldiers in their hometowns.

Reuters reported that the Indian army used a military truck decked out with flowers to transport the body of Colonel B. Santosh Babu to his hometown of Suryapet in southern India. When the body arrived, local people shouted Victory to Mother India to show their respect.

Similar scenarios happened in other cities where funerals for the soldiers were held.

But the Chinese regime has so far refused to release their number of casualties in the clashes. State-run media has confirmed there were deaths on the Chinese side.

Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post quoted an anonymous source close to the Chinese army on June 17 who said numbers of military casualties had to be approved by leader Xi Jinping before being released.
Lusaka, Zambia (PANA)  Police in Eastern Province of Zambia have burnt a small coffin which was dumped at Chipata Central Police station by an unknown person with a message demanding that their son be released from police custody
On top of war and the coronavirus pandemic, Yemen faces looming economic disaster as a crisis gripping its main benefactor Saudi Arabia dents remittances and leaves state coffers running dry. Saudi Arabia, leading a five-year military intervention against Iran-linked Huthi rebels, has poured in tens of billions of dollars to prop up the Arab world's poorest country in the form of humanitarian aid, fuel subsidies and cash to its ailing central bank. But as the double whammy of low oil prices and virus shutdowns triggers deep austerity measures at home, observers say Saudi Arabia no longer appears willing -- or able -- to offer Yemen the same level of support even as the kingdom's military spending remains robust. Saudi Arabia may also be reassessing its role as what observers call a "regional ATM" after its expensive intervention in Yemen produced few tangible gains, while a bitter power struggle between its anti-Huthi allies complicates its efforts to exit the conflict. "The Saudis are no more (inclined) to pour unlimited millions and billions into Yemen," a Western official tracking the kingdom's engagement in Yemen told AFP. Riyadh is the top donor to Yemen -- and the paring back of its support will have the biggest impact, observers say. Analysts anticipate the Yemeni rial will weaken substantially this year as a $2 billion central bank deposit from Saudi Arabia in 2018 is nearly exhausted, a scenario that will diminish purchasing power and leave millions unable to afford basic food staples. Less than $200 million of that amount remained in May, according to ACAPS, a non-profit project of charities including the Norwegian Refugee Council. "Yemen is looking increasingly economically vulnerable," ACAPS said in a report, warning that a cessation of Saudi monetary support will lead to a "sharp devaluation" of the local currency. - Donors hold back - A donor conference in Riyadh earlier this month secured little over half its target of $2.4 billion, as the United Nations warned funding shortages could shutter relief programmes just as coronavirus cases spike. Yemen is already gripped by what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed and an estimated four million people displaced by war. The World Bank says three-quarters of the population lives in poverty and last year the UN estimated 80 percent of Yemenis were at risk of hunger and disease. At the heart of the economic dysfunction is the country's central bank, split into two rival branches controlled by Yemen's main warring parties. Compounding the crisis is a "war within a war" that pits southern separatists against the Yemeni government -- both allied against the Huthis. The separatists, who have declared self-rule in the de facto capital Aden, recently seized a central bank convoy carrying nearly $80 million, multiple sources said. A spokesman for the separatist Southern Transitional Council justified the seizure, telling AFP it was meant to protect the currency from sliding further. The government-controlled central bank now faces the stark prospect of operating with almost no cash. The feud "has created circumstances that will discourage Saudi Arabia from replenishing its foreign reserve support," said the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. "Yemen's northern neighbour is also in the midst of its own massive budget cuts and no other international donor appears eager to step forward and take Riyadh's place," it wrote in a recent report. - Remittances plunge - Charities including Oxfam are also warning of an "unprecedented decline" in remittances to Yemen -- a vital lifeline for millions as the cash-strapped government struggles to pay wages. Oxfam said cash transfer providers in six of Yemen's governorates had seen remittances plunge by up to 80 percent between January and April. There are an estimated 1.6 million Yemenis in Saudi Arabia, where expat workers face sweeping job losses and salary cuts amid the worst economic crisis in decades. "With millions of Yemenis reliant on remittances from Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, any economic disruption there has huge consequences in Yemen," Abdulwasea Mohammed, Oxfam's policy adviser in Yemen, told AFP. "Without family members sending money for basics like food and rent, more families will be forced into debt or will have to skip meals to make ends meet." Saudi authorities did not respond to AFP's request for comment. Despite the financial pressure, the kingdom is unlikely to curtail its military spending in Yemen -- estimated to be around $200 million a day -- as it views the Iran-linked Huthis as an existential threat. Just days after Riyadh unveiled austerity measures in May, US officials said Boeing was awarded contracts worth $2.6 billion to supply the kingdom over 1,000 surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles. A Yemeni youth carries a portion of food aid in Yemen's capital Sanaa on May 17 Yemeni medical workers disinfect their hazmat suits outside a quarantine centre for COVID-19 patients in Yemen's third city of Taez on June 21 Smoke billows following an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, on June 16, 2020
[June 22, 2020] Drone Sales Surge for Red Cat Holdings

ORLANDO, Fla., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Red Cat Holdings, Inc., a Nevada corporation (the "Company" or "Red Cat") (OTC Pink: RCAT), a provider of products and solutions to the drone industry, announced today that its Rotor Riot eCommerce store has experienced high growth since Red Cat's acquisition of Rotor Riot, LLC ("Rotor Riot") several months ago. Specifically, the Company recognized a 68% revenue increase on sales of drones and drone parts in April, compared to March. Rotor Riot is a hobby-based drone company focused on sales of high-performance drone parts and creation of original YouTube content. On January 23, 2020, Rotor Riot merged with Red Cat, a public company investing in the future of drones. Since January 2020, Rotor Riot has seen a 32% increase in total sales; a 28% increase in online store sessions; a 51% returning customer rate; and a 70% increase in average order value. This underscores the value of eCommerce, even in a difficult economic climate. Jeff Thompson, CEO of Red Cat said: "It is great to see Rotor Riot continue to develop in such a unique way. Since taking over their own fulfillment in September, Rotor Riot has been able to apply more focus to its vision of providing complete performance drones. This new autonomy has led to the best sales month in company history. We believe the Rotor Riot and Red Cat partnership will continue to rapidly grow." As it stands, Rotor Riot and Red Cat are working on a troubleshooting platform intended to help drone pilots fix and enhance the performance of their drones. Rotor Riot's team of specialists and Red Cat's DroneBox software are being pooled together for the project. Red Cat is also currently working on a secure blockchain-centered distributed storage, analytics, and software package for the service drone industry. With the drone market poised to be among the fastest growing tech markets, more and more people of all ages are buying drones and drone accessories. Drones are growing in popularity in uses ranging from aerial photography to content creation. Rotor Riot and Red Cat are both thrilled about the spike in online sales and look forward to seeing where 2020 takes the combined company. With new projects already underwy, 2020 is shaping up to be an exciting year for both Rotor Riot and Red Cat.



About Red Cat Holdings, Inc. Red Cat is a leading provider of secure blockchain-based distributed storage, analytics and SaaS for the drone industry. Through its innovative products and leadership, Red Cat provides solutions for regulators to track and review flight data, insurance companies to insure drones, and pilots to become compliant with regulations. Red Cat's success is driven by a commitment to deliver unrivaled innovation that makes drones trackable and accountable, and the sky a safer place. Red Cat is headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico. For more information, visit www.redcatpropware.com.

About Rotor Riot Rotor Riot is a hobby-based drone company offering high performance drone parts with an emphasis on creating premium YouTube content. Rotor Riot is a wholly owned subsidiary of Red Cat, a public company. More information can be found at https://rotorriot.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable federal securities laws, including, without limitation, anything relating or referring to future financial results and plans for future business development activities, and are thus prospective. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties some of which cannot be predicted or quantified based on current expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties set forth from time to time in reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Consequently, future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying the forward the forward-looking statements contained herein. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release statements made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. Contact Rotor Riot

Phone: 833-205-1941

E-mail: [email protected]

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotorriot/

Instagram: rotor_riot

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/rotorriot

Website: https://rotorriot.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drone-sales-surge-for-red-cat-holdings-301081014.html SOURCE Red Cat Holdings, Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
FORT WORTH, Texas, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP (NYSE: KRP) ("Kimbell"), a leading owner of oil and natural gas mineral and royalty interests in more than 96,000 gross wells across 28 states, today announced it will release its second quarter 2020 financial results on Thursday, August 6, 2020, before the market opens. In conjunction with the release, Kimbell has scheduled a conference call, which will be broadcast live over the Internet the same day at 10:00 a.m. Central (11:00 a.m. Eastern).

By Phone: Dial 201-389-0869 at least 10 minutes before the call. A replay will be available through August 13, 2020, by dialing 201-612-7415 and using the conference ID: 13704472#.



By Webcast: Connect to the webcast via the Events and Presentations page of Kimbell's Investor Relations website at http://kimbellrp.investorroom.com/. Please log in at least 10 minutes in advance to register and download any necessary software. A replay will be available shortly after the call.

About Kimbell Royalty Partners

Kimbell (NYSE: KRP) is a leading oil and natural gas mineral and royalty company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Kimbell owns mineral and royalty interests in approximately 13 million gross acres in 28 states and in every major onshore basin in the continental United States, including ownership in more than 96,000 gross wells with over 40,000 wells in the Permian Basin. To learn more, visit http://www.kimbellrp.com.

Contact:

Rick Black

Dennard Lascar Investor Relations

[email protected]

(713) 529-6600

SOURCE Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP

Related Links

http://www.kimbellrp.com


Lusaka, Zambia (PANA)  The caucus for women parliamentarians in Zambia has disclosed that it will sponsor a private member's motion in Parliament that will address the cyber bullying which it says is on the increase in Zambia
RTHK: Trump says he put trade deal ahead of Uighur action

President Donald Trump held off on imposing tougher sanctions on Chinese officials blamed for a crackdown on Uighur Muslims because of concern such measures would have interfered with trade negotiations with Beijing, he said in an interview published on Sunday.

"Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal. And I made a great deal, US$250 billion potentially worth of purchases, Trump was quoted as telling Axios on Friday when asked why he had not enacted Treasury sanctions against Communist Party officials linked to repression in the Xinjiang region.

The United Nations estimates that more than a million Muslims have been detained in camps there. The US State Department has accused China of subjecting Muslims to torture and abuse.

China has denied mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training and help fight extremism.

US officials previously said that since late 2018 they had weighed sanctions against Chinese officials over Xinjiang but refrained because of trade and diplomatic considerations.

Under a Phase 1 trade deal negotiated in 2019 that took effect in February, China agreed to buy at least US$200 billion in additional US goods and services over two years.

Former national security adviser John Bolton alleges in a new book that Trump sought President Xi Jinping's help to win re-election during a 2019 meeting by making agricultural purchases, and Trump also encouraged Xi to go ahead with building camps in Xinjiang.

Trump has denied the accusations. The United States since last year has placed import restrictions on some Chinese companies and visa bans on unnamed Chinese officials linked to Xinjiang but has not imposed harsher Treasury sanctions.

Trump signed legislation last Wednesday calling for sanctions over Xinjiang, drawing threats of retaliation from China. He insisted, however, he had discretion to decide any application of the measures. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The Ontario police memorial at Queens Park was vandalized Saturday evening, the OPP says.

Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told the Star on Monday morning that police continue to seek the publics assistance in locating a person of interest, pictured in a photo wearing a checkered dress, white shoes, a green mask and sunglasses.

According to Schmidt, the memorial was tagged with BLM, although the picture the OPP shared on social media was blurred to cover the graffiti.

Anyone with information regarding the individual is asked to call OPP at 1-888-310-1122.
During the trial, the prosecution called Katrina Jones, who alleged a Telecom driver in a van offered her a lift on Stirling Highway late at night in 1995.

A photo taken by Mr Hyde in April 1997 showing the amount of lighting on Stirling Highway, Claremont around the same time of night that Ciara vanished from the area.

Her evidence, given on December 5, is available here at the 10.32am blog post.

The state decided not to rely on Ms Jones' evidence, saying the driver could have been Mr Edwards, or it could have been someone else - conceding the evidence was neutral.

Mr Yovich said the driver of the car was described as "21 years old, with fair short hair" and was not Mr Edwards.

"It helps point towards another perpetrator, not the accused," he said.

He has now moved on to two other Telstra living witnesses whose evidence the state did not rely on, but were called at the request of the defence.

The first is the evidence of Rebecca Keamy who said in 1995 she accepted a lift home from a man in a station wagon, but then jumped out when he began to make advances.

Her evidence, given on April 29, is available here in the 2.37pm post.

Mr Yovich said the incident provides no evidence of a Telstra vehicle being involved.

The next incident involved Sahra Miller who was around 19 years old in January 1996 when she claims she was chased by a man in a new model, white station wagon as she walked home from a night at Club Bay View.

She said the car drove past her twice and then turned into a driveway and began following her.

Her evidence, given on May 4, is available here in the 12.40pm blog post.

Mr Yovich said the event is not linked to a Telstra vehicle, and is different in its nature to other alleged events.

"That description is of a very concerning incident, certainly more concerning than the four Telstra living witness incidents the state relies on," he said.

"It involves a pursuit in a car rather than parking a car and lying in wait."

Mr Yovich said the incidents prove that predatory behaviour in the western suburbs in the mid-90s was "sadly not unknown behaviour".

"The incidents show not merely that there were people other than the accused picking up women or seeking to," he said.

"Behaviour of this kind happens and in our submissions the effect this evidence in total has is no more than to say that it's not behaviour uniquely attributed to a single person.

"Obviously murders are not common, but women being harassed by men as they walk home is significantly more common and things can escalate."
An Alabama man died late Thursday night of injuries he received when struck by a hit-and-run driver, according to the Custer County, Colo. Sheriffs Office.

Sheriff's deputies received a call about the accident at 10:04 p.m. Thursday and were at the scene two minutes later.

There they found an injured man, later identified as Jacob Ross of Deatsville, who told them he couldnt breathe, that he had been hit by a vehicle but could not provide a description.

Emergency medical personnel responded to the scene.

Within a few minutes, Ross began to lose consciousness and CPR was started. However, those efforts were not successful and Ross died at the scene.

The Colorado State Patrol responded to the scene to assist with the investigation, and is aiding in the investigation in partnership with the Custer County Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office.



2020 The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo, Colo.)

Visit The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo, Colo.) at www.chieftain.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Two weeks after an initial report on the compliance of some churches and mosques to the governments coronavirus protocols, The Finder returned to ascertain the current compliance levels of those religious groups.



Mallam Central Mosque  Mallam-Gbawe



The Mallam Central Mosque opened on Friday with many members in attendance. Unfortunately, all couldnt enter the main mosque, so they decided to pray on the corridors, amongst other convenient places, following the social distancing protocols.



This paper observed that most of them came along with their personal mats and wore nose masks as directed by the authorities in the mosque.



It was also observed that there was one Veronica bucket at the front of the mosque, where worshippers washed their hands at before entering.



Speaking to a leader in the mosque, Issaka Ali, he noted that the mosque is currently not facing any challenges, and added that they have put a lot of measures in place to cater for the needs of their congregants.



He added, Looking at the rate at which the virus is spreading in Ghana, the mosque has decided to put away all their buta (kettles) to avoid the spread of the disease.



He explained that anyone could come from elsewhere to pray here since this is a central mosque.



This paper also noted that most of the children were seated outside the mosque offering their own prayers.



Jesus Glory Ministries  Darkuman Kokompe



After two weeks of service, Nesta Bruce-Nanakaein, the Assistant Secretary of the Church, stated that the duration allocated to each service per the governments directive on May 31, 2020 was not sufficient, hence it would be much better if it was extended.



An extension in the duration of service would enable us have enough time for both worship and hear the Word of God. Unfortunately, in our case, worship is greatly affected as limited time is allocated to it, he said.



He mentioned that the number of congregants could also be extended. However, it shouldnt exceed the number that a particular church could take whilst adhering to the distancing protocols.



He also indicated that one main challenge being faced by the church now is poor attendance by members. He attributed this to the fact that the confirmed cases in Ghana keep rising, which, in his view, is causing fear among members, hence their unwillingness to attend church service.



This paper observed that the social distancing protocols were well carried out, as well as the checking of the temperature with the temperature gauge.



The church had two Veronica buckets at its entrance, as well as ushers taking the details of all congregants.



Abossey-Okai Central Mosque



At the arrival of The Finder reporters, the Abossey-Okai Central Mosque was still closed as directed by the National Chief Imam, Osman Nuhu Sharubutu.



Christ Apostolic Church International (Praise Temple, Abossey-Okai)



At the time of arrival at the Christ Apostolic Church International at Abossey-Okai yesterday, the sermon was being heard.



It was observed that there were three protocol officers at the entrance of the church - two males and one female, one of whom was holding a temperature gun which was being used to check the body temperatures of all members prior to entering. The protocol officers were not in any Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); rather, they were clad in their Sunday apparel. The contact details of members were also being taken.



It was observed that the chairs were sparsely arranged. About 80 chairs were arranged, with some unoccupied. Essentially, social distancing was adhered to.



Abossey-Okai Worship Centre (AOWC)/Church of Pentecost (CoP)



At the time of arrival at AOWC, a Veronica bucket had been placed at the entrance, where members were required to wash their hands before entering. There were protocol officers on hand to take peoples contact details and temperature and also ensure that hand sanitizer was used before entry.



This being the first time the Church of Pentecost was reopening across the country since the President directed that religious gatherings could be observed with a maximum of 100 people, the attendance wasn't minimal by normal standards.



Speaking to some members, they said the low attendance was expected because it was the first time they were meeting since the directive by the President. They added optimistically that attendance will pick up with time.



The Finder reporters observed that all protocols were heeded to. Members were sparsely seated, with both entry and exit points clearly defined.



It would be recalled that the Church of Pentecost postponed its reopening date after the President's directive. Explaining the rationale behind its decision, the church, in a statement signed by its chairman, Apostle Eric Nyamekye, indicated that it wanted to ensure that it was fully prepared before reopening.



Part of its statement read, "In the light of the above, the Executive Council directs that under the supervision of area heads, district pastors and the respective presbyteries, the various Assemblies use the next two weeks to take practical steps to meet the full requirements or protocols for the partial opening of assemblies for church services. Thus, the Assemblies may be opened on or after June 19, 2020, and that services in church buildings should start in assemblies only when adequate preparation has been made to satisfy the required protocols."



Asofan Central Mosque



At the Asofan Central Mosque, the situation was not much better than it was at the Finders last visit. Though there were now posters stating that no mask, no service; no mask, no entry, there was nothing markedly different from what pertained two weeks ago.



There were Veronica buckets placed at the entrance for worshippers to wash their hands and apply sanitizers, but this was about it.



Inside the mosque itself, there was no social distancing witnessed by the reporters, either at the male side or the female side, though the female worshippers all had masks on. Worshippers stood or sat less than a metre apart. There were already mats lined up for worship at the start of service, and these were shared by worshippers. Indeed, only two people were seen to have bought their own mats from home.



The rule for compulsory wearing of masks was not being observed as a few worshippers went in to pray without face masks.



Most worshippers performed their ablutions before leaving home, so they did not have to use the public buta lined up in front of the mosques. Those few who hadnt, however, were noted to have unwittingly shared buta.



When interviewed on the compliance of the mosque to the COVID-19 directives, one of the executives of Asofan Central Mosque, Yusuf Lamptey seemed clueless about some of the requirements.



Specifically on the wearing of masks, he explained that, When I entered I saw some people without it and that did not sit well with me. As you have seen, I have also seen that people are not using them, so well have to enforce the rule. Today, we had a guest Imam so he did not enforce the rule, but Ill have some discussions with our sitting Imam so we enforce the rule.



Notably absent were the thermometer gun and the registry for keeping a record of worshippers. Mr Lamptey explained this saying, We dont write our names. We were thinking that as government says we should not exceed 100 people and we dont even have 30 people today, it is unnecessary to write down names.



He disclosed also that on the three occasions that they have congregated, no names have been taken. He, however, promised to remedy the situation going forward.



Assemblies of God  Asofan Assembly

One visible change upon entering the Assemblies of God Church at Asofan is the display of written instructions on some required COVID-19 protocols for worshippers to follow.



As was the case at the last time of visiting, chairs were spaced one metre apart, with all windows and louvres open to allow for ventilation while some of the fans were on. There was a Veronica bucket as was the case previously. Also present was a thermometer gun and a notebook for the taking of names of all visitors to the church.



An additional protocol which was sighted was the use of hand sanitizers on the microphones upon each use. However, music ministers were seen to have their masks lowered. Other than this, the rest of the congregation was fully masked.



The pastor in charge of the Assemblies of God  Asofan Assembly, Rev Charles Kotey, spent the first five minutes of his sermon admonishing his congregation to follow the laid down protocols and not underestimate the virus.



He spoke to The Finder after the service and said, Last time the only problem we had was the display of some instructions, but concerning fumigation, we have done that; providing Veronica buckets, weve done that; the sanitizer, the water, the soap, in fact all the protocols. We even have face masks in reserve for those who will come without them. So the only problem was the displaying of the notices.



He also told this paper that they created a room for the elderly members of the congregation so they may be isolated from the rest of the congregation.



As far as he is concerned, they are as compliant as can be. He also disclosed that there are two services held for the congregation, which he ministers. He, however, said that from the first Sunday of July, the services will be done on language basis English and Twi  where his assistants will take charge of one or the other.



Our checks revealed that in none of the three services held since the beginning of the month, the church reached the 100 persons threshold as given by government.



Christ Deliverance Power Ministry International



The most notable difference at the Christ Deliverance Power Ministry International from the first post-restriction service was the availability of a thermometer gun and the COVID-19 education materials on display at the church premises.



As was the case a fortnight ago, visitors were required to wash their hands and apply hand sanitizer upon entering the church. There was also a strict no mask, no entry requirement being enforced.



In the auditorium itself, chairs were spaced a metre apart, with all fans on and all windows opened to allow for ventilation.



Almost all the congregants had their masks on during the service. There wasnt anything different from what pertained at The Finders last visit. However, we noted that this time the service exceeded the allocated 1 hour duration by 21 minutes.



When questioned about this particular issue, associate pastor of the church, Rev Charles Agyenim-Boateng explained that the undue extension had been as a result of a naming ceremony which had taken place in the course of the service, which, in his own words, shouldnt have been so.



Here also, our checks revealed that none of the three Sunday services had recorded 100 people in attendance since restrictions were lifted.

Source: The Finder









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
Three out of 10 female students surveyed say they were forced or threatened into having sex, or that they were too incapacitated to consent, as a national survey reveals high levels of sexual violence in higher education.

One in 10 male students, and 28% of non- binary students, also reported experiencing non-consensual penetration, either through force or threat of force or while incapacitated and unable to give consent.

A significant number of these students did not tell anyone about the incident, with many saying that they did not disclose details because they thought it was not serious enough. More than 70% of the students who experienced sexual misconduct said they dont understand what happens when a student reports an incident to their college.

Just 16% of the students who experienced sexual misconduct said they received information on where to get help from their college, and under 10% said they knew how to report an incident.

The findings are included in the first national survey to be carried out here in the last eight years addressing students sexual experiences at university. More than 6,000 students from 21 institutions were asked about their experiences in the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES), carried out by NUI Galways Active Consent Programme together with the Union of Students in Ireland (USI).

In the survey, students were asked about non-consensual sexual activity, and the terms 'rape' or 'sexual assault' were not used. According to the report, when the terms 'rape' or 'sexual assault' are excluded, more incidents of a non-consensual nature are reported.

Although their experience corresponds with the legal definition of rape or sexual assault, the person answering the question might not class what happened to them as rape or assault.

More than 1,000 of the students who took part described incidents that correspond to the definition of rape, according to Padraig MacNeela, senior lecturer at NUI Galway and Active Consent programme leader.

The full report can be read here.

While a lot of work has been done raising awareness of issues around consent on college campuses, the research shows a gap in knowledge around how to report and what happens and should happen when a student makes a disclosure or report. That's according to Roisin ODonovan USI vice president for welfare.

She said:

In the survey, just over 70% of respondents who experienced sexual misconduct said they dont understand what happens when a student reports an incident to their college, while only 16% again who had an experience, said they had received information on where to get help from their institution and only just under 10% said they knew how to report an incident.

"These are areas that can be addressed very quickly by Higher Institutions and that needs to be one of the on-campus actions taken as a result of these survey findings.

The Sexual Experiences Survey found:

Just over half of first years students experienced sexual harassment since beginning college. This increased to 62% for second-year students, and 66% for students in third-year or higher

More than half of students with a disability reported an experience of sexual misconduct, compared with 42% of other students

Sexist hostility was the most common form of harassment experienced by students from all ethnicities.

The findings are a stark depiction of many students experiences, according to Padraig MacNeela, senior lecturer at NUI Galway and Active Consent programme leader.

Over 1,000 of the female students who took part in the survey described incidents that correspond to rape, while one quarter of male students said they had been subject to sexual misconduct during their time in college. Bisexual, non-binary, and queer students described particularly high levels of sexual harassment.

The survey highlights some positives, he said, like how the majority of students agreed their peers would be supportive if they disclosed their experiences, and trusted their college to be fair in dealing with sexual violence. These are positives, but students who had experienced sexual misconduct tended to be less trusting of the college or to expect their peers to be supportive.

The survey shows there is a gap that colleges need to address, said the reports co-author Lorraine Burke.

Fortunately, the Department of Education and Skills supports the Consent Framework launched in 2019, which is one of the most progressive policies that there is internationally.

This article was edited on June 23 date to clarify the use of the term 'non-consensual sex' in the NUI Galway study.
Eight corrections officers of color at the county jail where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is being held say they were prohibited from guarding Chauvin and told they were a potential liability around him because of their race.

The Ramsey County corrections officers have filed racial discrimination charges with Minnesotas Department of Human Rights over what they called a segregation order, the Star Tribune reported.

Chauvin, who is white, was booked in the Ramsey County Jail on $1 million bond after he was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the May 25 death of George Floyd, who died in police custody after Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, even as Floyd pleaded for air before passing out.

I understood that the decision to segregate us had been made because we could not be trusted to carry out our work responsibilities professionally around the high-profile inmate  solely because of the color of our skin, one acting sergeant, who is black, wrote . I am not aware of a similar situation where white officers were segregated from an inmate.

The jails superintendent, Steve Lydon, who was later demoted, said he made the decision to separate the officers of color from Chauvin out of concern for the officers and in a time crunch when he heard Chauvin was on his way.

Out of care and concern, and without the comfort of time, I made a decision to limit exposure to employees of color to a murder suspect who could potentially aggravate those feelings, Lydon reportedly said in a statement during an internal investigation.

After the officers of color were ordered to a separate floor when Chauvin arrived, they met later that day to comfort one another over the decision, some reportedly in tears and considering quitting their positions.

I think they deserve to have employment decisions made based on performance and behavior, said the officers attorney, Bonnie Smith. Their main goal is to make sure this never happens again.

Story continues

The discrimination charges are expected to result in a state investigation. The state is already probing the Minneapolis Police Department over Floyds death.

More from National Review
Passengers wearing masks and wheeling suitcases arrived at Madrid`s main airport and French people crossed the border to buy bargain alcohol and tobacco on Sunday as Spain opened its borders to most European countries and ended a state of emergency imposed to contain COVID-19.

Spain`s borders are now open to all European Union countries except Portugal, as well as Schengen area members outside the bloc and Britain in a much-needed boost to the country`s tourism industry which accounts for more than 12% of the economy.

British tourists will be allowed in without having to quarantine, Spain said on Saturday, even though they will still be subject to 14 days isolation upon their return..

Spaniards were also allowed to move freely around the country from Sunday and many were expected to visit friends, relatives and second homes in other regions. Since March 14, people have had to remain in their own provinces.

People will still have to wear masks in public when social distancing measures cannot be observed.

At Madrid`s international Adolfo Suarez-Barajas airport there was a sense of relief for passengers, many of whom were travelling to see loved ones after months apart.

"My situation is a little complicated because my wife lives in Italy and I live in Spain so we haven`t seen each other for four months," said Alberto Bos, who was flying to Milan.

All arriving passengers will have their temperature taken, submit information about where they have come from, and provide their whereabouts in Spain in case they need to be traced.

Spain`s border with neighbouring Portugal will reopen on July 1 at Lisbon`s request.

Stickers on the floor of the arrivals hall made sure those waiting for passengers complied with social distancing measures.

BACK TO NORMAL

People with suitcases borded trains at Madrid`s Atocha station heading for coastal Valencia, after months confined to Madrid, over 300 kms (186.4 miles) from the seaside.

Meanwhile, French people crossed the border to queue for relatively cheaper tobacco and alcohol in the northern city of Irun.

"Today it`s all getting a bit back to normal. It`s good for the shops, for the economy, for everything," said shop owner Luis Mancho.

Some 1,500 German tourists touched down in Mallorca early last week as part of a pilot scheme to establish a travel corridor between the two areas, ahead of the lifting of restrictions on Sunday.

"We will allow British visitors to enter Spain just like the rest of the European Union or Schengen area from 21 June freely and without the need for the quarantine," foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told BBC News on Saturday.

But Britain`s own quarantine measures, requiring a two-week period of self-isolation for most people entering the country, could put off potential travellers. Britain is due to review its quarantine rule on June 29, three weeks after it was introduced.

Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said Spain was ready to welcome tourists in an interview with newspaper ABC on Sunday, but added the country has to work to get that message out.

"We have to build trust," she said. "Translate to travellers, Spaniards and foreigners, that the country is a safe destination."

Spain, which has recorded more than 245,000 coronavirus cases and over 28,000 deaths, has been easing its lockdown restrictions in recent weeks.
At the conference of German tourism industry representatives in Playa de Palma on Sunday, the CEO of Condor, Ralf Teckentrup, said that the airline had been preparing to start operations with Majorca for some weeks, adding that daily schedules will not be as they have been previously. "It will be impossible to think that there may be nine daily connections from some German airports with Son Sant Joan."

Teckentrup observed that it will be easier to schedule short-haul than long-haul flights and that flights to the Caribbean, for example, were unlikely to be scheduled until October. For Majorca, there would normally be over 2,000 flights in August; Condor expects that the number will be around half of these (flights in and out of Son Sant Joan). Germans, he added, are looking forward to a vacation.

The Condor CEO believed that the crisis for tourism caused by the pandemic will last for at least two years, but he was not of the view that very cheap flights are the way for airlines to confront this crisis. "The policy of cutting prices could destroy companies. It's not going to be possible to sell flights for 20 euros."

Norbert Fiebig, president of the DRV travel association, felt that it will take two years for tourist numbers to return to 2019 levels. The crisis will leave its mark on families who are experiencing financial difficulties and will therefore affect their holidays. He hoped that there will be a vaccine that will solve the problem more quickly.

Svensk Schikarsky of DER Touristik agreed that it was essential that destinations take health security very seriously, adding that it also essential to appeal to people's emotions. Images of turquoise seas in Majorca are not ones that can be seen in Germany.

He observed that scheduling holidays for Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey will be very difficult before September, and on offers, he noted that some hotel companies will be doing this, but identified Condor and Iberostar as two which will not be. They are focusing on quality rather than on lowering prices. Finn Ackermann, Iberostar's global commercial director, stressed that the company's policy will not be one of offering bargains but of making customers feel safe and of their enjoying the quality of the hotels. "You have to make offers to stimulate the market, but our premise must always be quality."

Ackermann explained that five of the fifteen Iberostar hotels will open. They will have 70% capacity in order to guarantee distancing, so "the profitability will be lower, but we all want the machinery to start". Iberostar has been working with a World Health Organization adviser in setting its protocols. If there are any suspicious cases, the entire hotel will not be quarantined but these guests and their families will be isolated in specific rooms. Iberostar will assume the cost of doing this.

The CEO of Lufthansa City Center, Markus Orth, was convinced that Majorca has "done its homework". This was why, despite people being hesitant about taking holidays, Majorca is number one in terms of holidaymaker preferences.
B T has been a terrible investment for stockpickers this year  myself included, Im afraid to say.

Not only this year, either.

Having leaped in 2015 on heady optimism that former boss Gavin Patterson would to turn it into some super-shiny media content giant, its been racing downhill faster than new boss Philip Jansen on his beloved Austrian ski slopes.

Shares that would have cost you nearly a fiver back then are today just 120p today.

So, why is the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund interested in snapping them up?

It emerged at the weekend that the oil state has been steadily buying slugs of stock in previous weeks and is edging close to the 5% level at which it has to disclose an interest.

Reason one is almost certainly that it likes the price. Assets bought in dangerous times like these often turn out to be the most profitable.

BT shares are so bombed out you could argue the only way is up.

But theres more to it than that. Bankers tell me Saudi officials first contacted BT to learn more about the business earlier this year, before the covid-19 rout in the stock price.

BT is changing radically as an investment prospect.

From being a decent dividend payer with solid earnings growth potential, it now has to invest 12 billion laying a fibre network to reach more than 20 million homes.

That means not paying a divi for this year and slashing next years.

All that infrastructure will doubtless pay off in the coming decades, but for conventional fund managers seeking income growth every quarter, thats a yawn.

Only those with far longer time horizons will be interested.

Hence, the likes of the Saudis, with their decades-long, strategic investment plans.

No doubt Canadian pension plans and wealthy family offices with future generations in mind have also been sniffing around as BT tries to move itself into a dull but safe infrastructure play.

Whether that will have an impact on the share price is another matter. Sadly, I fear the doldrums are likely to last for a long time yet.
Last week, a former Tampa-area mortgage broker was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to making false statements to financial institutions on mortgage applications. Jonathan Marmol and real estate developer Mordechai Boaziz cooperated in a scam that saw Marmols lending partners lose more than $5 million.

The scheme dates back to before the 2007 financial meltdown, when most U.S. housing markets were being fuelled by a combination of shady lending and oversight which, in hindsight, was so weak that it bordered on the absurd. It was the perfect environment for Boaziz and Marmol to try and pull one over on the banks.

In 2006, the pair were working on a condo conversion project for which Marmol was hired to market the units. The marketing strategy was effective enough  buyers were told they would not have to make their down payments  except it was completely illegal. Marmol told lenders that the down payments came from the buyers themselves.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted on CNN Sunday that President Donald Trump used tongue-in-cheek humor when he said he ordered officials to slow coronavirus testing to suppress the number of reported COVID-19 cases.

When you do testing to that extent, youre going to find ... more cases, Trump said at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saturday. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please.

CNN host Jake Tapper played the clip for Navarro on State of the Union and asked him about it.

Navarro laughed. Cmon now, Jake, you know that was tongue in cheek, he said, adding, Thats news for ya, tongue in cheek.

Tapper responded: I dont know that it was tongue in cheek. Hes said similar things for months.

Navarro called it a light moment for Donald Trump at his rally.

Tapper pressed on. Im not sure that a deadly pandemic where almost 120,000 Americans [lost their lives] are really a good subject for a light moment.

Trump and his aides have frequently walked back embarrassing Trump statements by calling them attempts at humor.

Navarro tried to steer the interview to jobs and the effects of what he called the China Wuhan virus, a racist term administration officials have used for the COVID-19 virus. Navarro also tried to discuss former national security adviser John Boltons new book.

Navarro argued without evidence that COVID-19 was a product of the Chinese Communist Party. They sent over hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens here to spread that around and around the world, he added, again without substantiation. Whether they did that on purpose, thats an open question.

But, he added, theyre guilty until proven innocent.

There is no evidence that the novel coronavirus was engineered by the Chinese government; rather, there is ample evidence that the virus emerged naturally.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted...

Continue reading on HuffPost
Local Fine Gael TD, Fergus ODowd, has said the 5.6m in Border funding announced today by his colleague the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphries TD, for four successful Louth border projects shows the governments firm commitment to County Louth and the North East.

Fergus ODowd was speaking following the announcement of the successful applicants of the Border Enterprise Development Fund 2020 at the new Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk, Co Louth which has been approved for 4.5m funding through the Border Enterprise Development Fund today.

The Mill Enterprise Hub, Creative Spark, DKIT, and the LMETB will benefit from a combined 5.6m to deliver stream 1 & 2 collaborative and innovative projects across the county and region.

ODowd said The North East will face significant uncertainty and economic challenges as we see the stark effects of the UKs withdrawal from EU at first-hand. The monies announced today will certainly help our local SMEs to become more resilient and face the many challenges that Covid and Brexit have presented including strengthening our Advanced Manufacturing skills which will be vital in the years ahead.

I would like to congratulate all of the successful projects and look forward to seeing the plans advance over the coming months.

Fine Gael Louth Senator, John McGahon, congratulated the successful recipients.

Senator McGahon said, I am delighted that four project groups based in County Louth were the successful recipients of over 5.6 million in funding under the Border Enterprise Development Fund, which was launched in January and is administered by Enterprise Ireland.

The fund provides support for collaborative, enterprise capability building projects, to advance entrepreneurship, productivity and innovation in the Border Region. The announcement is even more pertinent as the fund aims to improve competitiveness in the area not only in response to Brexit, but now in response to the challenges posed by Covid-19.

Along with Minister Humphreys, I was pleased to attend todays announcement at the proposed facility for a new Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk, which will receive 4.5 million in funding through the through the Border Enterprise Development Fund.

Other winning projects in the county include Dundalk Institute of Technology, which will receive over 250,000 for its ATHENA STEM Project. The aim of this project is to increase the number of female STEM Entrepreneur role models and female senior managers and intrapreneurs in STEM related sectors in the North East.

The Creative Spark Downtown project will receive over 269,000 as it seeks to enhance the start-up and business support ecosystem in the region by creating a town centre co-working space in Dundalk, equidistant from Dublin and Belfast and aligned with the M1 Corridor.

Louth County Council was another successful recipient of funding for its project, titled Drogheda Digital Innovation Hub (DDIH). Its goal is to encourage high-potential future oriented tech projects seeking to start and grow, to locate in the greater Drogheda/ North East region.

Announcing details of the Border Enterprise Development Fund 2020, Minister Humphreys said, This fund is part of a 28m economic stimulus package, which I announced for the Border Region earlier this year. Its designed to foster collaboration while helping to make businesses more resilient, more innovative and more competitive.

All of the research shows that the Border region is most exposed to the impact of Brexit, and obviously the situation is even more difficult now with the COVID-19 challenge. Thats why I want to ensure that businesses in the region are supported by Government in responding to the challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead.

This is the first time that my Department has provided targeted, ringfenced funding to a specific region, which represents a strong statement of our commitment to the Border area. Through this Fund, I want to make businesses in the border region more resilient, more innovative and more competitive so that we can stimulate enhanced economic activity in the region.
As most of you know, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra offers 100x Space Zoom with its periscope camera. Well, that same capability wont be available on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, as the phone will be able to zoom in 50x, no more.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra will offer 50x zoom, and probably lose Space Zoom branding

This information comes from Ice Universe, a well-known tipster. It also goes hand-in-hand with the information that surfaced not so long ago, which claimed that Space Zoom is going away. That rumor came from the same source, by the way.

100x zoom on the Galaxy S20 Ultra was quite gimmicky either way, so not many people will miss it. The quality of the image at 100x was not good at all, which explains this change.

Advertisement

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra may be the only Galaxy Note 20-branded phone to offer a periscope camera. The Galaxy S20 and S20+ did not offer it, only the Ultra model, so the same may happen with the Note 20 series.

Were still not sure if the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra will offer the same periscope camera as its sibling, but regardless, it will be capped at 50x zoom.

Samsung is planning to launch three Galaxy Note 20-branded phones in August. Samsung did not officially confirm the date of the launch, but August 5 has been mentioned in reports.

Advertisement

In any case, Samsung is actually expected to launch five flagship phones during that Unpacked event. The Galaxy Note 20 series will be accompanied by the Galaxy Fold 2 and Galaxy Z Flip 5G.

A 108-megapixel main camera will be included on the back of the device

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra will almost certainly feature a 108-megapixel main camera on the back. That camera is expected to be improved compared to the Galaxy S20 Ultras.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra will probably look like a cross between the Galaxy Note 10+ and S20 Ultra in terms of the design. The phone will feature extremely thin bezels, a centered display camera hole, and sharp edges.

Advertisement

The device will include a curved display, though it will be less curved than the Galaxy Note 10+s, probably. We cannot know for sure at this point.

The phone is expected to include an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner from Qualcomm. It will also sport multiple camera sensors on the back.

The Snapdragon 865+ is rumored to fuel this phone in the US and China. The Exynos 990 / 992 will fuel it in Europe and India, on the other hand. The phone will pack in plenty of RAM and storage, along with Android 10 and Samsungs custom UI.
Wunderman Thompson today announces the appointment of Mateusz Mroszczak to Chief Creative Officer, Singapore.

Mats excellence in creative delivery makes him the best person to lead the agency to deliver the very best work to clients. Mat is a globally proven and awarded creative leader, who brings a modern approach to developing compelling and innovative work that connects brands and people to drive business results for clients.

His extensive experience covers global brands and multiple categories including Land Rover, Campbells Unilever, VISA, Colgate, AIA, Pepsi and more. Prior to joining Wunderman Thompson, Mat was ECD at BBDO Singapore and before this, he has been working in agencies such as Y&R, BBDO and Happiness around the world including Brussels, New York and Ho Chi Minh City.

His work has been recognized more than 200 times in both national and international awards shows including Golds at Cannes Lions, Eurobest, London International Awards, Clios and CCB. Most notably, his Coins of Hope campaign for Child Focus was awarded 5 Cannes Lions at the 2017 Festival.

He is the 3rd generation of Mroszczak AdMen; both his father and grandfather worked in the industry.

His appointment is effective immediately.

Read More
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Tamilla Mammadova  Trend:

Georgia exported 18,212 tons of ferroalloys totaling $17.7 million to Turkey from January through May 2020, Trend reports referring to National Statistics Office (Geostat).

On an annualized basis, Georgia increased the export of ferroalloys to Turkey by 9,685 tons.

Over the same period last year, 8,527 tons of ferroalloys were exported by Georgia to Turkey for a total amount of $9.2 million.

During the reporting period, Georgia exported 13,860 tons of semi-finished products of iron or non-alloy steel totaling $5.1 million to Turkey, which is a decrease of 30,991 tons compared to the same period in 2019.

Over the same period last year, 44,851 tons of semi-finished products of iron or non-alloy steel were exported by Georgia to Turkey for a total amount of $17.2 million.

Turkey ranked first in Georgias commodity circulation in the reporting period.

From January through May 2020, total imports from Turkey to Georgia amounted to $478.8 million. In turn, Georgia exported goods worth $81.7 million to Turkey.

The foreign trade turnover of Georgia with Turkey in the reporting period exceeded $560.5 million, which is 13.3 percent of Georgia's total trade turnover.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
An earthquake of 5.3 magnitude hit Mizoram in the early hours of Monday, causing damage to houses and cracks on roads at several places, an official said. No casualties have been reported, the official of the state Geology and Mineral Resource Department said.

Quoting the National Centre for Seismology, he said the earthquake occurred at 4.10 am and the epicentre was at Zokhawthar in Champhai district on the India-Myanmar border. The tremors were felt in several parts of the state, including state capital Aizawl, he said. Several houses and buildings in Champhai district, ...
Theres no room for a trolley down either aisle of this Boeing 767 wide-bodied passenger airliner.

Indeed, its such a squeeze that, at some points, the cabin crew have to walk sideways.

Not that there would be any takers for a drink anyway, let alone a little something from the duty-free catalogue. Because the owners have stripped out all the seats and the only passengers are boxes of top quality surgical face masks  a head-spinning FOUR million of them in total.

For this is a sight to behold: by far the largest Mail Force airlift to date.

Robert Hardman with the first box to be unloaded from the plane which arrived at Bournemouth Airport from China

The new charity  set up by this newspaper and our partners with the simple aim of delivering personal protective equipment to those fighting the war against coronavirus  has had so many memorable moments during a short and busy existence in support of our frontline heroes. Even so, weve never seen anything quite like this.

I am watching the doors ping open on a chartered jet completely stuffed in both cabin and hold with 25 tons of crucial personal protective equipment worth upwards of 1.5million. Or, put another way, there are enough masks squeezed inside this plane to equip every single doctor and nurse in the entire National Health Service many times over. And it is entirely thanks to the tens of thousands of people who have contributed to Mail Force.

This is a campaign that has no intention whatsoever of easing off the throttle. Dont, for one minute, assume that we are now out of the danger zone. It is only this sort of crucial kit which stands between Britain and a second wave of the coronavirus (like the one now taking root in Germany).

As we reported at the weekend, donations to this new charity have now smashed through the 10million mark. And it has all happened in less than two months.

Baggage handlers Shell Gillingham (front) and Emily Wood carry some of the first boxes of masks to unload

There could be no finer illustration of the impact of the Mail Force campaign than the sight of Flight ZF5002 from Shenzhen touching down on British soil yesterday afternoon.

I am standing next to the runway at Bournemouth International Airport, now one of the UKs major hubs for medical supplies. Nearby stands another PPE airliner  bearing the NHS logo  waiting to take off for another round trip to the Far East.

But the big delivery today is the Mail Force airlift  a specially-chartered airliner which has flown for nearly 14 hours direct from China. A fleet of Mail Force trucks lines up on the perimeter, waiting to get our cargo straight to medical and care teams all over Britain. And there is an upbeat mood among the ground staff as they wait to unload. Everyone wants to muck in and help at a time like this, says cargo handler Shell Gillingham, 31, who has been working here at Bournemouth for 15 years.

Its a particularly special day for her colleague, Emily Wood, 20. Having been furloughed in recent weeks, this is Emilys first day back at work and she cant wait to get cracking on the Mail Force cargo.

Its a slick operation here. No sooner has Azur Air Flight ZF5002 taxied to a halt than the Border Force team are up the steps to do the paperwork pronto so that the cargo can get on its way.

A fleet of Mail Force trucks lines up on the perimeter, waiting to get our cargo straight to medical and care teams all over Britain

I follow suit with Shell, Emily and the other cargo handlers. The Russian crew are both welcoming and very impressed. You have both ladies and men to unload your planes. In Russia, it is only men! says flight attendant Max Chernenko. In the highly competitive Covid-19 era of international freight, a charity operation like Mail Force must seek the best deals going and Azur Air  which normally flies Eastern European holidaymakers to places like Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria and Thailand  offered us the best price.

Captain Ilya Lobastov and his crew have not set foot on the ground for nearly three days (they had to remain on board while loading in China) but are pleased to be part of the global effort to combat the virus. This plane wont be putting the seats back in until after Covid, he explains.

It is a big day for both Mail Force and for the charitys suppliers, the Lancashire-based Issa Group, which has now helped us to procure seven million masks from one of Chinas most trusted medical manufacturers (a factory which usually sees most of its output diverted directly to the Chinese health service).

The baggage handlers load the boxes of face masks on to the Mail Force lorry

It was back in late April that Mail Force flew its first plane-load of PPE  including 100,000 masks  into Londons Heathrow Airport. On a rainy night at Heathrow, we saw 20 tons of the stuff worth 1million touch down during some of the darkest days of this pandemic. Since then, the operation has just grown bigger and bigger thanks to the generosity of Mail readers, public figures, businesses and philanthropists.

Three weeks back, we saw our first mega-delivery of a million masks emerge from a plane at Stansted. We have also brought a convoy carrying badly-needed medical coveralls right across Europe from Turkey to the NHS depot near Milton Keynes.

But yesterdays monster consignment puts all the others in the shade.

PPE comes in many forms aprons, gloves, gowns and visors  and Mail Force is exploring different ways of sourcing it all. Wherever possible, we try to buy British but home-grown production of some products is minimal. Ask anyone in the NHS, the care sector or the charity world what they need above all else and the answer is invariably the same: Type IIR masks, essential tools in most clinical settings (the R stands for fluid-resistant).

The Azure Air flight lands at Bournemouth Airport. The owners have stripped out all the seats and the only passengers are boxes of top quality surgical face masks

Right now, if you want a lot of these, you have to go shopping in China. You also have to be extremely careful that you are buying products with all the correct certificates, test results and filtration rates. That is why Mail Force has gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that our masks have passed muster with the Department of Health and the UK medical inspectorates.

At the same time, our trustees are looking at where all this PPE can deliver optimum results  be it within the NHS or elsewhere. Right now, many of our best-known charities are facing a desperate struggle to find new funding for PPE just as donations are drying up. And there is nothing optional about it. Without PPE, these charities simply cannot function. So Mail Force is determined to offer assistance where it can.

Meanwhile, Bournemouth International Airport can expect to see many more of these airlifts, too. Back in its days as RAF Hurn, this vast and verdant airfield played a key role as a base for the RAF as well as the Royal Canadian and US Air Forces. Both fighters and bombers were based here while umpteen airlifts for the troops in Normandy and Arnhem took off in 1944 from this broad swathe of Dorset flatland. In modern times, it has become a popular holiday airport, though it has learned to adapt pretty fast.

One area of the airport has become a giant car park for dozens of idle British Airways jets waiting for normality to resume. Another is now busier than ever with PPE. From this morning, the main terminal will start to see fresh signs of life as Ryanair resumes some flights to Spain.

Our staff here are very proud of our history, says managing director Steve Gill.

Looking at four million masks being unloaded at double speed, Id say theyre still making it.
Commuters on London Bridge. (Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP)

Most UK office workers do not want to return to normal workplaces and hours as the reopening of the economy gathers pace, according to a survey.

A poll shared exclusively by Yahoo Finance UK suggests many staff who can work remotely are comfortable doing so, and are worried about virus risks on public transport.

The survey of 2,000 staff by Theta Financial Reporting, a chartered accountancy and consultancy firm, explored how the pandemic has hit employers hard and overhauled working practices.

Almost two-thirds of UK workers in the nationally representative poll agreed with the statement: I do not feel comfortable commuting to work via public transport anymore, and think it will be one of the most stressful parts of my day.

A majority, 57% of those surveyed, said they did not want to go back to the normal way of working in an office environment with normal office hours.

But UK office workers appear divided on their desire to get back to the pre-virus normal. Around a third agreed that going back to traditional office environments would have a negative impact on their mental health and productivity, but another third disagreed.

READ MORE: UK workers suffer steepest drop in pay in decades

The survey also showed how employers had changed significantly in the wake of the crisis. 45% of business leaders among those surveyed said they see the working environment changing for the better.

46% of those surveyed said their employer had explored flexible working options to help them and colleagues return to work. Only 24% said their employer had not done so. A third of workers said only a smaller team would return to the office, handling more varied responsibilities.

But the survey also pointed to the scale of job losses caused by the crisis, echoing official figures showing 3.2 million universal credit benefit claims between early March and early June.

Around three in 10 business leaders said they had streamlined their team permanently because of the COVID-19 crisis as they discovered some roles were surplus to requirements.

Story continues

Chris Biggs, founder and managing director of Theta Financial Reporting, said the research suggested some business leaders wanted to reopen workplaces regardless of safety and their own employees wants and needs.

READ MORE: UK employers have slashed 600,000 jobs since March

He said the UK government and large employers should consult workforces on their views about returning to workplaces and how traditional environments could change.

Many businesses have adapted to working away from the office and with so many people caring for vulnerable relatives, friends and children, it seems people do not want to return in July, despite the easing of lockdown restrictions, he said.

Biggs, whose firm specialises in freelance working options for the UK private sector, added that millions of workers may have discovered the benefits in recent months of flexible working, from no commutes to better productivity.
Since Megan Fox broke out onto the scene in 2007 with her role in Transformers, the actress has been in the spotlight. And while she has made few public appearances showing off her fierce outfits in recent years, Fox is back making her rounds as a red carpet regular.

Last year, Fox made her red carpet debut as a couple with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly at the 2020 American Music Awards. For the occasion, she wore green asymmetrical top with an A-line skirt by Azzi and Osta. The actress paired the look with diamonds, a black clutch and black heeled sandals by Giambattista Valli. This was just the beginning of a series of statement style from the couple.

More from Footwear News

Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly at the 2020 AMAS. - Credit: Courtesy of ABC

Courtesy of ABC

Since then, Fox has begun working with stylist Maeve Reilley to create edgy looks together, including Foxs red lace-up Peter Dundas gown she wore to the 2021 Met Gala.

Megan Fox attends The Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the In America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibition on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021, in New York. - Credit: AP

AP

This year, Fox became known for her daring fashion. In September, in one of her most headline-making ensembles to date, the actress attended MTVs awards show in a custom, completely sheer Mugler midi dress with subtle glitter embroidery throughout, paired with an embellished thong underneath.

Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly at the 2021 VMAs. - Credit: Courtesy of MTV

Courtesy of MTV

In years past, Fox was a front-row staple during fashion month. The star was seen at the Armani fashion show in Paris in 2009 and again in 2010 in Milan, for instance. At the time, Fox was the face of Armani Beauty, and she appeared in the spring 2011 Emporio Armani Underwear and Emporio Armani Jeans ad campaigns.

Megan Fox at the 2011 Golden Globes in Armani Prive. - Credit: Shutterstock

Shutterstock

In addition to Armani, Fox had been spotted at other shows throughout the years, including Versace in 2008. Most recently, she was seen taking her turn on the catwalk at the Liverpool Insurgentes department stores Fashion Fest fashion show in Mexico City in 2017.

Story continues

Though Fox is known for her movie roles, shes stayed in sync with the fashion industry as a Fredericks of Hollywood brand ambassador and stakeholder since 2016. Her lingerie collection hit Forever 21 stores in 2018.

Now, shes expanding her fashion footprint with a new collection for Boohoo. This month, she launched her first-ever collaborative capsule with the company, filled with everything you could need to elevate your fall style. Curated in part by Reilly, the collection includes edgy dresses, red hot statement suits and all the layering pieces to complete your closet.

Plus, her shoe collection has always been on point. The Jennifers Body star could often be seen in designer heels such as Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo and Casadei. In the early 2010s, Fox was also a fan of towering stilettos and platform styles.

Megan Fox spotted wearing Christian Louboutin platform pumps in Los Angeles in 2011. - Credit: Shutterstock

Shutterstock

Now, her go-to brands for shoes include Amina Muaddi, Jimmy Choo, Balenciaga and Femme L.A.

When it comes to street style, Fox is a fan of leather looks as well as denim. This summer, for instance, she was spotted side-by-side with MGK, wearing a beige Alexander Wang bralette with distressed blue Ksubi jeans. She completed the look with an Acne Studios trench coat and bejeweled Amina Muaddi platform sandals.

Megan Fox heads to dinner in Santa Monica with Machine Gun Kelly in August 2021. - Credit: Splash

Splash

Megan Fox in Mexico City in 2017, wearing an all-black ensemble with block-heeled sandals for the Liverpool Fashion Fest Otono photocall. - Credit: Liliana Ampudia Mendez/Shutterst

Liliana Ampudia Mendez/Shutterst

Fox doesnt shy away from bold and revealing fashion and her sex appeal continues to be a point of conversation. The mom of three has been in the news last June after an old Jimmy Kimmel clip resurfaced. In a 2009 interview, Fox described having to dance for Transformers director Michael Bay in a bikini at age 15 when she was an extra in Bad Boys II, which Kimmel and the audience laughed off. This prompted fans to take to Twitter arguing that this was just one example of the mistreatment Fox has endured over her career from Hollywood and the general public as she was often sexualized in film and in the media. Twitter started trending with #MeganFox talking about her much-needed comeback.

Most recently, Fox can be seen starring in Machine Gun Kellys music video, Bloody Valentine, and the film Till Death. Next up, she will be featured in Big Gold Brick and Good Mourning with a U, slated for 2022.

To see more Megan Foxs statement style through the years, click through the gallery.

Launch Gallery: Megan Fox's Fierce Style On & Off the Red Carpet

Best of Footwear News

Sign up for FN's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Budapest, Hungary  Mon, June 22, 2020 09:50 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066096561 2 World Hungary,Viktor-Orban,press-freedom,news,media-company,media-industry Free

The editor of Hungary's most popular news website warned Sunday that a planned overhaul would jeopardize its freedom to publish stories critical of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government.

"Index.hu, Hungary's largest news site and one of the few remaining independent voices, is in grave danger," said editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull in a statement posted on the site.

Dull said that a "proposed organizational overhaul" put Index "under such external pressure that could spell out the end of our editorial staff as we know it".

"We want a news site where politicians and messengers of the government or economic actors have no power to pull a story," he said without elaborating.

"The next couple of days will determine the fate of Index," he added in his statement, to which several dozen of its most prominent journalists added their signatures.

Another news site, 24.hu, on Sunday reported details of the plan that included outsourcing much of Index's content creation, with current staff possibly in the firing line.

According to 24.hu sources, Index management blame the planned changes on a slump in advertising revenue caused by the coronavirus crisis.

The development follows the purchase in March of a 50 percent stake of Index's advertising agency by a powerful pro-Orban businessman Miklos Vaszily.

Vaszily told local media then that he hoped Index would stay influential and independent, but some staff and analysts saw the purchase as a threat to the site's autonomy.

Since coming into power in 2010, the nationalist Orban has transformed Hungary's public media into government propaganda organs while allies have steadily bought up swathes of the private media sector.

In recent years outlets like Index that covered political scandals have either gone out of business or been bought by government allies and rapidly adopted pro-Orban editorial lines, while receiving lucrative flows of state advertising.

The lopsided media landscape and "restricted" access to information in Hungary was cited by election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as part of an "adverse climate" that helped Orban win a third consecutive term as premier in 2018.
Two people were shot dead and seven others injured by gunfire early Monday during a gathering in Charlotte, N.C., the authorities said.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a statement that about five other people were injured by vehicles at the scene.

Officers were responding to a call for one of those injuries when the gunfire began.

The gunfire broke out at what appeared to be a multi-day block party connected to Juneteenth  the holiday, celebrated on Friday, that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
The Telangana government on Monday blamed the Centres Narendra Modi government for the increasing number of Covid-19 cases and the low incidence of testing in the state as it witnessed the highest single-day spike in infections.

The state reported 872 new Covid-19 positive cases, the most in a single day so far, taking its total count to 8,674. Seven deaths were also reported during the day.

Areas falling under the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Area (GHMC) accounted for 713 of all cases reported on Monday.

Criticising the central government, state health minister Eatala Rajender said in a statement that the Modi government had done nothing for the state to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. It washed off its hands by giving calls to the people to clap their hands and light the lamps, he said.

Rajender alleged that the Centre had even diverted the Covid-19 testing machines ordered by Telangana to other states. He said that the Telangana government had placed an order with Roche Diagnostics Private Ltd in Mumbai in the first week of June for importing three Cobas 8800 Automated Molecular Systems, each having a capacity of testing 3,500 to 4,000 tests for Covid-19, from Frankfurt, Germany.

The first consignment of the instrument was to be imported by the company on June 8. In the meantime, Indian Council of Medical Research had written to Roche Diagnostics last week, instructing that the instrument be diverted to National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Kolkata immediately, on the pretext of national emergency and pandemic scenario, the minister alleged.

However, the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has blamed the KCR government for failure to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the state. Several BJP leaders including Telangana unit president Bandi Sanjay were put under house arrest on Monday as they were planning to hold dharna t in front of the Gandhi hospital in Hyderabad.

Accusing the BJP leaders of resorting to cheap and dirty politics on Covid-19 pandemic, Rajender said nobody could ever question the integrity and commitment of the K Chandrasekhar Rao government in fighting the virus.

The Centre had washed off its hands by giving just Rs 214 crore to fight the Covid-19 and asking the people to clap and light lamps. The BJP leaders have no moral right to accuse the state government of conducting less number of tests, while the Centre diverted the testing machines being imported by the Centre, he said.

He said the state-run labs at present have the capacity of conducting 2,290 tests per day and it would be increased to another 4,310 tests by next week.

According to the health bulletin, 3,189 samples were tested on Monday of which 872 turned out to be positive. Hyderabad accounted for 713 cases, followed by 107 infections from Ranga Reddy and 16 cases from Medchal districts.

While 12 cases were reported from Sangareddy, there were six from Warangal Rural, five from Mancherial, three each from Kamareddy and Medak, two each from Jangaon, Karimnagar and Mahabubabad and one case from Warangal Urban.

With a cumulative testing of 60,243 samples so far, Telangana has reported 8,674 Covid-19 positive cases that included 217 deaths while 51,569 samples came negative.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON


President Donald Trump is set to hold his second campaign event at an indoor venue since the coronavirus hit Tuesday  this one at a Phoenix megachurch whose pastor has touted an air filtration system that kills '99.9 per cent' of the coronavirus.

Trump jets to Yuma, Arizona Tuesday to visit a section of border wall, then heads to Phoenix, where he will attend a 'Students for Trump' event at the Dream City Church in north Phoenix.

Arizona Central reports as many as 3,000 people are expected  although early estimates for Trump's Tulsa event were wildly off, with rows of empty blue seats after Trump and his campaign touted 1 million RSVPs.

President Donald Trump is traveling to Arizona Tuesday, where he will address an estimated 3,000 students at an campaign event at a north Phoenix megachurch. It comes after President Trump's Tulsa rally featured rows of empty seats. The senior pastor of the church has touted an ionization air filter that killds '99.9 per cent' of coronavirus

The Phoenix City Council has imposed a mask mandate, and many attendees will be young people, who have been shown to have a lower risk of death to the virus.

The church has five different locations in Arizona and two out of state.

Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Brendon Zastrow claim on video the church has an air purification system that relies on ionization to kill the virus  although the Centers for Disease control do not list it among recommendations for treating the coronavirus.

'We've installed Clean Air EXP,' said Zastrow in a video the two cut, TMZ reported, touting the uncorroborated claim.

'It kills 99.9 per cent of COVID within 10 minutes, says Zastrow, who says two church members work at the company.

'Ionization, is that what it is?' Barnett asks in the video.

The Dream City Church, Phoenix campus. President Trump will hold a campaign event with students at one of the church's Arizona locations

Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Brendon Zastrow claim on video the church has an air purification system that relies on ionization to kill the virus '99.9 per cent of the time'

Pastor Luke Barnett preaches at the Dream City Church, which hosts President Trump Tuesday for another indoor campaign event, where 3,000 people are expected to attend

'Ioniation of the air and it takes particulates out and COVID cannot live in that environment,' Barnett responds.

'So when you come into our auditorium, 99 per cent of COVID is gone, killed, if it was there in the first place,' says Barnett. 'So you can know when you can come here you'll be safe and protected. '

'Thank God for great technology and thank God for being proactive,' he concludes.

The company they cite, Clean Air EXP, on its website touts a 'whole-home air purification solution that silently works with your homes heater or air conditioner'

It has a censor that measures particulates and tracks 'temperature, humidity, methane, carbon dioxide, and other toxic gases and volatile organic compounds,' according to the site.

Online testimonials say it provided 'better sleep,' reduced asthma, helped migraines 'vanish,' and that it protected children and pets from 'harmful odors.'

The website does not say it eliminates the coronavirus, and an online warranty states it states that outside of manufacture and installation there is no implied warranty of 'fitness for a particular purpose.'

The church and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Arizona visit also gives Trump the chance to pivot to a favorite issue of his 2016 campaign Tuesday when he visits a sector of the border in Arizona just days after speaking to rows of empty seats at a campaign rally in Tulsa.

The president is scheduled to visit Yuma on Tuesday to mark the completion of the 200th mile of the border wall system between the U.S. and Mexico.

It's a symbolic achievement he hopes to trumpet amid other grim numbers of recent months  including more than 120,000 deaths to the coronavirus.

Sections of newly completed border wall is pictured behind the previously used Normandy fencing on February 13, 2020 in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. President Trump is scheduled to visit a section of border wall in Yuma, Ariz. to celebrate the construction of 200 miles of barrier  although just 16 miles of new wall have been completed

Junior Hernandez, a migrant from Guatemala, runs next to the border fence where he and members of the Coalicion Pro Defensa del Migrante (Pro Defense of the Migrant Coalition) painted a graph showing statistics of dead migrants, on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on November 2, 2019

Trump has pledged to have 'substantially more than 500 miles completed' by February of 2021. But according to a detailed Washington Post analysis updated at the end of May, of the 200 miles that have been reinforced with new fencing, there are just 16 miles of border with completely new barrier.

Arizona is now a coronavirus hotspot, which will further complicate White House messaging for the event. Reporters and staff traveling with the president will continue to be tested for COVID-19 and have their temperatures checked, although the White House on Monday scaled back temperature checks for those visiting the White House complex.

Trump pledged to build the wall during his 2016 campaign and have Mexico pay for it. Here a member of Border Angels hangs a banner against US President Donald Trump on the US-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on February 2, 2020

White House officials told the Yuma Sun that the president will receive a briefing on the border wall construction, then participate in a roundtable discussion with local community and elected leaders on border security.

After the roundtable, Trump will tour the border wall and thank U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement for their efforts and then fly to Phoenix to speak at a Students for Trump convention at Dream City Church.

Trump is expected to address up to 3,000 people at an event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, where 'Students for Trump' members will attend, AZ Central reported.

It is a state where polls between Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden are tight, and Sen. Martha McSally faces a tough fight for reelection after embracing Trump.

It is yet another trip that will get Trump outside of Washington, where he has been raging about mail-in ballots, blasting congressional Democrats and rival Joe Biden, and sidelining overseers by firing inspectors general and signing off on a weekend plan to axe the top prosecutor in Manhattan.

Expected to join Trump in Yuma are Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan.

Trumps last appearance in Yuma was in 2017 when he visited with U.S. Marines and Customs and Border Protection agents.
Subscriber content preview

SALEM, Ore. (AP)  A second lawsuit has been filed against an Oregon ranch accused of causing millions of dollars in damages by negligently igniting a 2018 wildfire.

The federal government filed a complaint claiming that J-Spear Ranch of Paisley, Oregon, started the Watson Creek Fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, The Capital Press reported.





. . .
BEIRUT  Every year, Saudi Arabia welcomes millions of Muslims from around the world for the hajj pilgrimage, a sacred rite that pumps cash into the economy and enhances the prestige of the monarch.

But not this year.

The kingdom announced on Monday that the 2020 hajj, scheduled to take place next month, would welcome very limited numbers of pilgrims in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The dramatic shrinkage of the largest annual rite in Islam could hit Saudi Arabia particularly hard, with a reduced pilgrimage delivering a further financial blow to a kingdom already grappling with low oil prices and an economic slowdown caused by the lockdowns aimed at preventing contagion.

It could also disappoint Muslims from around the world who have saved for years to have a once-in-a-lifetime religious experience.
EU politics will be a key market focus over the next few weeks with conditions far from normal during the summer holiday season.

German Chancellor Merkel is likely to have a key influence with Germany taking over Presidency of the EU council on July 1st. This is likely to be Merkels swansong at the highest level, increasing determination to get results on multiple fronts. Success or failure in securing agreements will have an important impact on both the Euro and Sterling.

Coronavirus management crucial as European lockdown relaxation continues

EU countries will continue their progress towards an easing of lockdown restrictions and gradual economic recovery.

During this phase, the management of fresh coronavirus outbreaks and local spikes will be a key influence on market sentiment.

In this context, the immediate focus will be on Germany where there has been a significant spike in the state of North Rhine Westphalia.

The number of positive tests linked to the Tonnies processing plant in north-west Germany has risen to 1,331. The authorities in the Gutersloh area told 6,500 employees and their families to go into quarantine earlier this week.

Image: Latest Germany coronavirus cases

The German response to outbreaks at the state and Federal level will be key factors in determining the EU developments and Euro sentiment.

Morgan Stanley points to relative EU success in containing the coronavirus outbreak; The region has been relatively successful in containing the spread of COVID-19, with case counts in sharp decline. EU 27, which has a total population of about 445 million people, has been seeing daily fatalities from this terrible disease in the low 300s. In the United States, which has a lower population of about 330 million, daily fatalities are roughly three times as high.

Merkel will push aggressively for EU recovery fund

The EU recovery fund will also be a key focus over the next few weeks. At last weeks summit, there was no agreement on the proposed EUR750bn fund amid further opposition to composition of the fund from the so called frugal four Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and Austria.

ING summarised the situation; German Chancellor Merkel concluded after the meeting that the leaders were now at the point where negotiations can properly start, which means that the coming weeks will bring yet another hot European summer full of debate about a possibly historic fund that will boost growth in the recovery phase.

Although there is a long list of areas where there is disagreement, ING considers that perhaps the most important factor is what issues now appear not to be controversial .

The fact that the details of the fund are discussed means that there seems to be general consensus about the fact that the eurozone economy is best served by a Recovery Fund to begin with and that the pan-Eurozone fiscal response needs to be strengthened.

This discussion suggests that the focus now is on the details and not the principal of additional support.

Diplomatic sources from the four countries commented; If we as an EU are going to borrow money, we dont want to say yes first and only then work out what we spend it on, how we spend it and who gets what.

The four budget hardliners are all net payers to the EU budget and Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden received rebates totalling more than 1 billion euros on their contributions under the EUs previous spending plan.

Those rebates wouldnt necessarily carry over into the next budget and the Danish have said explicitly that they care more about maintaining their rebate than winning changes to the structure of the recovery program.

Sources have indicated that French President Macron could live with these rebates if that was necessary to get a deal done.

Despite significant hurdles, ING expects that the recovery fund will be agreed with Merkel playing a crucial role.

It will probably be Angela Merkels final stint at the European level. She and her government seem to be determined to push for more integration and solidarity.

EU/UK trade talks also enter crucial phase

EU Council President Michel and Commission President von der Leyen briefed the 27 national leaders on Friday on the latest talks with Britain.

According to von der Leyen; We jointly stressed our willingness to undertake all possible efforts to come to an agreement. For this we have to bridge wide divergences, which remain to be solved.

Countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands have been pushing for support from the recovery fund in case there is no trade deal with the UK.

Merkel said after the EU discussions that a deal with Britain must materialise this autumn to leave enough time for ratification before 2021.

We recognized that the negotiations must be accelerated  as in the autumn there must be an agreement as this agreement must still be ratified by both sides.

Merkel will inevitably play a key role in bridging the gaps between individual states and providing any updated guidance for the EU negotiators.

Image: EUR/USD exchange rate chart
Cape Coast, An Associate Professor of Fisheries Science of the University of Ghana Prof. Francis K. E. Nunoo has said that one impact of coronavirus on fishing and the cost of fish on the market is the hike in price.

He explained that those who are involved in the sale of fishing inputs most of which are imported are unable to get enough stock to buy. "This is due to Covid-19 which has affected importation and the subsequent increase in the cost of those fishing inputs". He further added that "this together with the dwindling fish stock in the sea has affected the cost of fish sold on the open market" he added.

He was having a telephone conversation to Ben Nartey of GBC Radio Central looking at the "Impact of Covid-19 On The Fishing Industry In Ghana" on the Central Morning Show today Monday 22nd June, 2020.

When asked how Covid-19 has impacted on the fishing industry in Ghana, the Fisheries Biology, Ecology & Management expert outlined three main reasons:

First, Prof. Nunoo said there are two main types of fishing in Ghana; Artisanal and Industrial fishing. He continued that these two groups have realised that the fish stock in our seas had declined considerably and something needed to be done about it". "With this we all agreed that from 2018 onwards there was the need to institute the close season policy." This was to help the fish to replenish itself and the policy was expected to have been implemented for three to five consecutive years in order to reap significant positive impacts"

He further added that artisans who used canoes were banned from fishing for a month in 2019. "When this was done we realised that the fish stock increased marginally and we were expecting that policy to continue in 2020, 2021, 2022 with the view of helping the fish stock in our oceans to increase but, with Covid-19 the nation couldn't organise stakeholders meetings with the fishermen and as such this year the close season was not done".

In explaining further, he said during Covid-19 fishermen are allowed to go fishing but those who are in the upstream sector who deal in fishing net, lead, cork and other inputs have problems with importation and that has affected cost. "This is so because most of the fishing inputs are imported from outside and with Covid-19 such items are scarce and there is competition for the available few". This has affected cost" he posited. He continued that with this phenomenon coupled with the minimal catch from fishing; that has affected the cost of same on the market". "The cost of fish per kilo has gone up due to these reasons" he added.

Prof. Nunoo said the second factor is that those who are dealing in cold stores who sell fish to supplement fish consumption in Ghana have also had "their prices increased because demand is higher than supply and business isn't improving as expected".

Thirdly, he added that fish farmers and those in aquaculture business are also affected because of Covid-19. "We recently went round visiting fish farmers but most them complained that because of the closure of restaurants and other eating joints, demand for tilapia and other fish being produced are low and they have lost about 30 percent of their business" Prof. Nunoo revealed. "Fish farming business is down because people aren't buying, employment in the fishing industry is affected and some have even laid off their workers. They are feeding the fish but people are not buying" he added.

He took the opportunity to advise fishermen and those of the community to beware of Covid-19. He cautioned that, "they should not assume that swimming in the sea or using sea water can prevent them from getting infected from Covid-19". "It is erroneously a common thinking among members of the fishing community" but that should be discouraged because there is no scientific evidence to that effect.

Seeking his view on the building of landing beaches across the coastal areas of Ghana, the Marine biologist said "such initiative would help modernise our fishing industry. It demands that we use modern equipment which would lesson the manual energy that fishermen have to exert in their business". "This would also help fishermen to observe the physical distance rule as part of the coronavirus protocols". "Machines would be applied instead of manual labour".

When his view was sought as to whether our methods of fishing are good or not, Prof. Nunoo said we have to modernise our fishing, implement all laws concerning fishing and also fishermen must declare their catch so government and the people themselves would eventually rake in some revenue. He further explained that, the practice where we dump refuse into the sea must be discouraged. "Fishing contributes less than 1.5 percent to our GDP but if proper policies are implemented, we ought to see an increase" he claimed.

He ended the discussion by saying that, if all the necessary things are done regarding fishing, the people and the government would benefit from the fishing industry.
ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Authorities in Ivory Coast have arrested the suspected head of a jihadist group and several other militants believed to have carried out an attack in the north two weeks ago that killed at least 10 soldiers, the defence minister said on Monday.

The attack on the night of June 10 on a military outpost in Kafolo was the deadliest since gunmen from al Qaeda's North African branch stormed the beach resort of Grand Bassam in March 2016, killing 19 people.

"The head of the commando unit that carried out the attack was arrested yesterday," Minister Hamed Bakayoko said at a military ceremony in Abidjan to honour the fallen soldiers.

"Many of the people who committed the criminal and terrorist act have been arrested," he added, without giving details.

On Thursday, the army said it had carried out cleanup operations in the Comoe National Park, close to the border with Burkina Faso. The Kafolo military post is located in the area.

The army said 27 people were arrested, a militant logistics base was destroyed, and communication equipment were seized.

Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso launched a joint military operation last month called Operation Comoe to tackle the expanding threat from Islamist jihadists linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State in the Sahel region.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have been worst hit by the militant attacks but there are concerns that the attacks could spread to coastal nations if left unchecked.

(Reporting by Ange Aboa; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
The three victims stabbed to death in a terror attack in a park in Reading on Saturday included a popular teacher and an American citizen, it emerged on Monday, as thousands of people held a minutes silence in the town near London.

Two of the three deceased have been named: James Furlong, 36, a popular teacher in Wokingham, and US citizen Joe-Ritchie Bennett, 39, an employee of a pharmaceutical company in Reading.

As Furlongs school and former students paid tributes, his parents Gary and Janet said in statement: James was a wonderful man. He was beautiful, intelligent, honest and fun. He was the best son, brother, uncle and partner you could wish for. We are thankful for the memories he gave us all. We will never forget him and he will live in our hearts forever.

US ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, said: I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those killed in the attack on June 20. To our great sorrow, this includes an American citizen. Our thoughts are with all those affected. We condemn the attack absolutely and have offered our assistance to British law enforcement.

Khairi Saadallah, 25, of Libyan origin, who was arrested under terrorism laws, was on the radar of British intelligence services in mid-2019, but the case was dropped since no immediate threat was identified.

Saadallah was reportedly granted asylum in the UK and was under investigation as a person who may travel abroad for extremist reasons, but no immediate threat was identified. Some reports said he may have mental health issues.

The UKs terrorism threat level was lowered in November 2019 from severe to substantial, which means an attack is likely. Security minister James Brokenshire said it was unlikely to be changed after the Reading attack.

He said: What I would say is that the police and security services obviously deal with thousands of leads, that they have difficult challenges that they have in terms of prioritisation of resource, but I can assure that if there are lessons to be learned, there are policies that needs to be changed, if we need to do things differently, absolutely that is what we will do.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Since Ghana recorded its first coronavirus case on March 12, 2020, the Akufo-Addo-led government in collaboration with the Ministry of Information and the Ghana Health Service, have ensured to update Ghanaians on the pandemics rate of infections, recoveries, and deaths.



President Akufo-Addo started a live telecast in an address to the nation series about the pandemic, dubbed: Update on measures to contain coronavirus. The telecast, which has been aired 12 times as of June 22, 2020, has gained the attention of many Ghanaians.



However, there has been a visible trend in how he uses the platform as an avenue for political campaigns towards the 2020 general elections. Here are a number of times the president did not miss the chance to campaign as he addressed the nation.



'Akufo-Addo graduates



During his 12th address to the nation yesterday, June 21, 2020, he announced that his government will absorb the examination fees for SHS graduates sitting for the WASSCE exams this year. The cost of the fees for the students is a total sum of GH75.4 million. He mentioned that the students are being referred to as Akufo-Addo graduates.



These SHS 3 students, also referred to by some as the Akufo-Addo graduates, are the first group of beneficiaries of governments Free Senior High School policy to sit the WASSCE exams. 1.2 million Children, the highest such enrolment in our nations history, because of this policy, are currently in Senior High Schools, he said.



Distribution of food to the less privileged



On April 19, 2020, as part of the efforts to mitigate the effects of Coronavirus, President Akufo-Addo provided food for the less privileged.



Government, through the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture  has provided over 2.5 million cooked food packs to vulnerable persons in the affected districts of Accra and Kumasi. Dry food packs have also been distributed to 470,000 families in the same areas, as against the original target of 400, 000, he stated in his 7th address to the nation.



This act according to some political experts will increase his popularity within local communities, thereby serving as a major campaign tool for the NPP towards the 2020 general elections.



Utilities subsidies and tax reliefs



During his 10th address to the nation on May 31, 2020, Akufo-Addo announced tax reliefs and subsidies on utilities for Ghanaian homes and businesses.



In view of the obvious economic difficulties that the tough measures brought, I also announced far-reaching reliefs to ease the economic and social burden on households and businesses. These included subsidies on utilities for all, tax reliefs, and financial packages for businesses, he stated.



The announcement of this relief generated huge conversation on social media, with the many heaping praises on the president. Others also used that as an opportunity to troll former president John Dramani Mahama.



Bringing financial relief to citizens could serve as a campaign tool and increase his chances of retaining his seat.



Setting up coronavirus treatment centres



During Akufo-Addos 7th address to the nation, he highlighted the setup of coronavirus treatment centres and the improved conditions in some hospitals across the country. These developments could help in his campaign towards the 2020 general elections.



We have expanded and added to our network of COVID-19 treatment centres, with the Ga East and Bank of Ghana Hospitals being 100% dedicated to the fight. In addition, we have set aside separate COVID-19 treatment centres at the University of Ghana Medical School Hospital, the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi South Hospital , he said.



Economy revival plans



During his 9th address, president Akufo-Addo stated that his government is working out plans that will revive the economy. With his positioning as a fixer of the economy, he is likely to win more votes during the elections.



I chaired a 3-day cabinet retreat to examine in detail measures aimed at reviving and strengthening our economy. I am happy to reiterate that Government is putting in place a Resilience and Recovery Plan, with the overarching aim of finding more resources to strengthen the productive sectors of the economy to ensure sustained economic activity, he said.





Silent jab to his opponents



During his 9th address, he stressed his resolve to fight the pandemic in spite of the lack of support from other political parties and institutions.



We are fighting a common enemy, and it is imperative that we do not allow religious, ethnic or political differences to get in the way of certain victory. So, we cannot allow a few persons, who wish to use these differences to scuttle our collective fight, to succeed, he said.



His statement according to some political experts will decrease the popularity of his opponents, thereby increasing his chances of winning.

Source: Ghanaweb









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
The CBI has started investigation into alleged embezzlement of Rs 5 crore in Karnataka State Handicrafts Development Corporation (KSHDC) in connivance with an official of the State Bank of India, officials said Monday.

The CBI has registered the FIR on a complaint from the chief manager of SBI alleging that an assistant manager had opened a current account number -- 7828879815 -- of KSHDC, on its application, at Hesarghatta Road Branch.

The complaint alleged that Sateesh V Vambhashe, the then assistant manager at the bank, fraudulently opened one more account in the name of KSHDC 37830657832 under the same Customer Information File without any authorisation from the KSHDC to facilitate illegal transfer of funds.

On July 26, 2018, an inward remittance of Rs 5.01 crore came to the authentic KSHDC account from Canara Bank which was fraudulently transferred to the similar account created by Vambhashe, it alleged.

An amount of Rs 25 lakh was further transferred into a fixed deposit while balance was transferred in 12 transactions over a period of two months to accounts of Velohar Infra Pvt Ltd and Venture Cottage Industrial Trade Company based on purported cheques issued by KSHDC signed by their Assistant (Finance), it alleged.

The manager fraudulently issued a letter to KSHDC that fixed deposit receipt was verified and genuine and maturity amount of over Rs 5.37 crore would be paid back to them whereas in the core banking system of the bank the FD was issued for only Rs 25 lakh.

"Sateesh Vambhashe has allegedly committed falsification of accounts and colluded with KSHDC officials to unauthorisedly divert funds to the tune of Rs 4.76 crore by transferring through RTGS to different suspicious accounts," the FIR alleged.

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
Colorado Politics senior political reporter

Joey Bunch is the senior correspondent and deputy managing editor of Colorado Politics. His 32-year career includes the last 16 in Colorado. He was part of the Denver Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 and he is a two-time finalist.
TCN News

Muzaffarnagar: A Muslim resident of Hamza Masjid Kidwai Nagar in Muzaffarnagar has accused the police of attacking and beating him.

Support TwoCircles



Shahzad, who is a muezzin (person who calls for prayer at a mosque), in his application filed at a local police station in district Muzaffarnagar said that he was heading towards the mosque at 3:45 am on 17 June to recite Azaan (Muslim call to prayer) when he was stopped Noor masjid, Kidwai Nagar by two policemen.

When I told the two policemen that I am a Muezzin, I was beaten up with a baton and forced to leave the spot, Shahzad claimed in his application.

The two policemen came riding on a motorcycle and started shouting religious slurs like O Mulley and then started beating him, he said.

Shahzad has said that he hopes for justice and urged the authorities for proper investigation and seeks punishment for the two policemen.

According to the Muzaffarnagar Polices Twitter handle, the matter is being looked into by Thana Kotwali and investigation is going on.

When TwoCircles.net reached Thana Kotwali the inspector in charge claimed that Shahzad has given in writing that he was not beaten.
Apples Mac chips are expected to be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the partner Apple uses to build similar components it designs for iPhones and iPads  an arrangement much like Apples use of Foxconn to assemble iPhones.

Losing Apple as a customer is a symbolic hit, as well as a financial one. Intel sells to Apple about $3.4 billion in chips for Macs each year, or less than 5 percent of Intels annual sales, according to C.J. Muse, an Evercore analyst.

Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing, the company said in a statement. Intel-powered computers give users the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers.

With the full transition to take two years, Mr. Cook said Apple still had several Intel-based Macs in its product pipeline.

Apples Worldwide Developers Conference is the companys annual get-together with the entrepreneurs and programmers who make the apps and services that run on iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple uses the weeklong event to tell developers about its new software, teach them new tools and further cultivate them as Apple loyalists.

With this years conference fully virtual for the first time, Apple already had a challenge. But then last week, the hot topic in tech circles became Apples control over its App Store and the fees and rules it enforces on app developers.

The European Union announced an antitrust investigation into how Apple wields its control over the App Store, responding to a complaint from Spotify. The music-streaming service has protested Apples strict rules on Spotifys iPhone app, including that Apple collects 30 percent of the revenue from many Spotify subscribers.
Chennai, June 22 : Tamil Nadu Police are investigating the source and destination of the methamphetamine seized along the coastline of Mamallapuram and Cuddalore districts, an official said on Monday.

"Something really is fishy as the packets labelled as tea with Chinese letters were found floating along the shores," a Cuddalore police official told IANS.

The Cuddalore police have registered a case on Sunday after it seized four packets containing some white granular substance.

"We will be sending the material for analysis. But it seems some sort of narcotic drug as similar packets were seized along the Mamallapuram coast a couple of days back," the official said.

Last Friday, the police seized a big drum with some boxes containing packets labelled as tea with Chinese letters on the shorelines near Mamallapuram.

It later turned out to be methamphetamine in crystal form, packed like tea packs and also branded as tea.

According to police, each one of the 78 seized packets weighed one kg. The value of the seized material will run into several crore of rupees.
President Donald Trumps attempt to reignite his faltering reelection campaign with a mass rally in a conservative city turned into a political debacle Saturday night. Despite claims by his campaign that one million people had registered and that more than 100,000 would turn out for the event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, making it necessary to combine indoor and outdoor rallies, the turnout was poor and the outdoor portion was cancelled.

All the Trump supporters who came to Tulsa were able to fit easily inside the BOK Arena, with thousands of seats, including nearly the entire upper deck, showing empty on television camera sweeps. The Tulsa Fire Marshal estimated that only 6,200 people were seated inside the facility, which holds 19,200, although some press accounts suggested that the arena was roughly half full.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale and other top officials were apparently deceived by an anti-Trump campaign waged over social media by thousands of youth, many responding to a video appeal from an Iowa grandmother that went viral last week, urging people to register for the Tulsa rally and then not attend it, as a sign of opposition to the Trump administration.

Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 20, 2020 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Trump campaign admitted that false accounts accounted for hundreds of thousands of the registrations for the rally, and they were reduced to touting the audience for the livestreaming of the rally as a sign of political support.

The rally was the first held by the Republican campaign in 110 days, which have been marked by the coronavirus pandemic and the mass protests against police violence triggered by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, both of which have dramatically undermined Trumps political standing. He has fallen well behind his presumptive Democratic Party opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in both national surveys and polls in key states in the Midwest and South that are likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College if the presidential election is close.

The mounting threat to his reelection clearly preoccupied Trump in the course of his 107-minute address in Tulsa, which meandered even more than usual. He was clearly far more concerned with his own political survival than with the survival of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose lives are threatened by the worst epidemic in a century. He made no mention of the human toll of the pandemic, which should have led local authorities to ban the rally on public health grounds, while remarking that he had told his aides to slow down the rate of coronavirus testing. White House officials later claimed this was a joke.

Trump began the speech with a declaration that the silent majority is stronger than ever, reviving a Nixonian turn of phrase without apparently considering Nixons eventual fate as the only president to be forced to resign. Then followed the usual praise of the performance of Wall Street (the strongest 50 days in the history of the stock market), always the central focus of the White House.

The Republican president howled that the Democratic Partythe other half of the right-wing two-party system controlled by the US financial aristocracywas in the grip of left-wing radicals. While conceding that Biden was no radical, he claimed that his opponent was a willing Trojan horse for socialists and had surrendered to the left-wing mob. He continued this fascistic rant against liberals like representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.

Perhaps most significantly, Trump made not the slightest overture to the protesters who have filled the streets over the past month denouncing police brutality and racism. He made no mention of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, or Rayshard Brooks, all victims of racist murders by white policemen or vigilantes linked to the police.

Instead, he declared, As president, I will always support the incredible men and women of the law enforcement. He gloated about his mobilization of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. against the protesters there. And he denounced efforts to remove the statues of Confederate generals, which he described as an effort to desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments, and as a cruel campaign of censorship.

Trump had earlier threatened protesters planning to go to Oklahoma, Please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene! In the course of his speech, he suggested shooting at the hundreds demonstrating outside the BOK Arena, saying, When you see those lunatics all over the streets, its damn nice to have arms.

Some Trump supporters displayed military-style rifles, but there were no clashes with counterdemonstrators, who were walled off from the Trump venue by Tulsa police and hundreds of National Guard troops, some of them carrying weapons.

One Catholic school art teacher who entered the arena with a ticket to the event was arrested at the orders of the Trump campaign because she was wearing a T-shirt bearing the statement, I cant breathe, the last words of George Floyd as a Minneapolis cop ground his knee into Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes. The fear of such an innocuous opponent only demonstrates the extremely beleaguered character of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party as a whole.

Trump has suffered a recent series of political setbacks in the courts that suggest that important sections of the ruling elite have turned sharply against him. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court issued surprise rulings that shocked the Trump White House, both for their content and because of the judicial line-up revealed.

On June 16, a 6-3 majority ruled that on-the-job discrimination against gays and lesbians was illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trumps first nominee to the high court. This was a direct rebuke to Trumps Christian fundamentalist supporters who have made anti-gay bigotry a key political issue. Chief Justice John Roberts also joined the majority and assigned the opinion to Gorsuch.

On June 19, a 5-4 majority ruled against the Trump administrations rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the 2012 Obama executive order that granted limited protection against deportation to more than one million people brought as children to the United States by their undocumented parents. While the ruling was on procedural grounds rather than substantive, and Trump can remedy the technical errors and renew the attack on DACA recipients, the ruling pushes back any such mass deportation until after the November election.

On June 21, a federal judge declined to order the suppression of the insider account of the Trump White House written by former National Security advisor John Bolton, which is to go on sale at bookstores on Tuesday. The Room Where It Happened depicts Trump as an ignorant, bullying and completely feckless commander-in-chief, preoccupied with his own personal and financial interests.

Finally, there was the 24-hour defiance by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, whose resignation was announced June 20 by Attorney General William Barr. Berman then declared that he had not resigned and would not leave office unless dismissed directly by the president, which he eventually did the next day. Berman became a target by aggressively prosecuting pro-Trump Republican Congressman Chris Collins for securities fraud, forcing his resignation, and for investigating the business affairs of Trumps close adviser, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Bermans firing has created something of a political crisis for the White House, since Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said that he would observe the traditional Senate rule that any nominee to replace Berman would have to be acceptable to the two senators from the state in questionin this case, Democratic senators Charles Schumer, the minority leader, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality announced June 21 that it would allow cohabiting couples to register their union in a declaration at the city hall. Thus, these couples would enjoy the same municipal rights as married couples. This would mean that same-sex couples and other couples who cannot wed under Israels religious authorities could now be eligible for housing tax discounts and could enroll more easily their children in public day care centers, schools and activities at community centers.

In a post that turned viral, Mayor Ron Huldai wrote, In honor of Pride Week, we decided to challenge the government and allow couples to declare their union." Huldai added, "We hope the government will also enter the 21st century and uphold the rights of the LGBT community in law  the right to marry, have equal parental responsibilities, be protected from hate crime along with workplace bullying, and more."

According to Israeli law, marriages in Israel can be solemnized only by religious authorities. Thus, Jews can be wed only by a rabbi recognized by the Chief Rabbinate. Similarly, Muslims, Christians and Druze all marry through their own state-sanctioned religious legal systems. Civil marriages of interfaith and same-sex couples are technically not illegal, but there are no legal institutions authorized to carry them out.

Same-sex couples enjoy some state benefits, but not all. For instance, the Foreign Ministry has recognized already several years ago the right of a spouse, even if not married, to join his/her diplomat partner on a mission abroad. After proof of living together, the ministry would pay the travel costs of the gay spouse to join the diplomat partner, the same way it pays the flight tickets for married couples. On the other hand, male gay couples do not enjoy public health system financial support for fathering children. Newly appointed Welfare Minister Itzik Shmuli is now pushing forward legislation for the state to participate in costs of surrogacy processes outside of Israel.

The announcement of Huldai created much commotion, offering even further visibility to Pride events celebrated in Tel Aviv this week. With the recent spike of coronavirus cases in Israel, the Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and Beersheba municipalities were obliged to postpone their traditional Pride parade until the end of the summer. Instead of the parade, the four municipalities decided to sponsor a whole week of Pride events. Some events will take place in the virtual space, others in the streets, but in open locations where large crowds could be avoided.

Static and Ben-El band, together with Israeli-Arab singer Nasreen Qadri, will post June 23 on Facebook a clip of the official Pride song, which will kick off all of this years events. On June 25, Tel Aviv would feature the "Drag in Tel Aviv" event series, with drag queens performing and dancing in public spots and on roof tops. On the same day, tourist guides will offer free tours of "Gay Jaffa," discovering the stories of mythological figures of the LGBTQ community, and meeting gay artists and musicians who perform in the city.

On June 28, the four municipalities will hold at the exact same time rallies under the title, "The revolution is not over yet." In a post published by the Beersheba Pride House, the group called on residents to join them at the rally. "Right after the rally, in front of the Beersheba municipal hall, we will continue together to a nearby pub, where we will watch together the Beersheba virtual Pride parade.  Representatives of the Community and Mayor Ruvik Danilovich will make speeches, followed by local artists and singers who will perform online."

Thousands of Israelis and tourists participate each year at Pride parades. A record number of 250,000 people participated in June 2019 at the parade held in Tel Aviv  the biggest event of its kind ever to take place in the Middle East. Over the years, the parades have become not only major tourist attractions, but also important socio-political stages. Several coalition and opposition Knesset members and ministers participated at the 2019 Tel Aviv parade, including Meretz Chairwoman Tamar Zandberg, Shelly Yachimovich of the Labor Party, Blue and White parliamentarians Idan Roll and Eitan Ginzburg, and Likud Minister Amir Ohana.

In 2019, Newsweek magazine rated the Tel Aviv Hilton Beach as No. 1 on its list of the 10 Best Gay Beaches in the World. "In mid-June, Tel Aviv Pride, the only sanctioned Pride parade in the Middle East, sees more than a hundred thousand revelers marching down to the beach for live music, dancing, drinks and more. Sponsored by the local government, the event is completely free of corporate sponsors and anyone can join the parade when the spirit strikes them," Newsweek wrote.

Despite the spike in the coronavirus, the Tel Aviv municipality is adamant to preserve its reputation. It is now hoping to get the parade back on track by the end of the summer, letting tourists know that virus or no virus, Tel Aviv continues to be "the city that never stops."
From Jab We Met to Surging Ahead

This Indian-origin entrepreneur couple definitely created magic 'Jab they met' and the Medsurge they started a little more than a decade ago, employs 40 people in Australia and over 300 people in Bangalore today.

In the year 2002, an Indian migrant couple, Kam and Reet Phulwani landed in Melbourne. Today, the Phulwanis are the owners of one of the fastest-growing family-owned pharmaceutical companies Down Under. They join the ranks of the many members of the Indian Diaspora who have found success, despite battling several odds, in foreign countries.

Photo Courtesy: Medsurge

The Phulwanis established their company Medsurge Healthcare in Australia in 2007 and in New Zealand in 2011, with Medicianz Healthcare being the latest addition to their business. The couple share more about their journey @work with Connected to India

Life Saving Medicine Supply

Based out of Melbourne, Australia, the entrepreneurial couple source and supply a comprehensive range of pharmaceutical products and specialised life-saving medicines to healthcare professionals at hospitals as well as at retail pharmacies.

Our current product range provides upwards of 700 refrigerated and non-refrigerated medicines to around 1000 hospital pharmacies and 6500 retail pharmacies, Reet told Connected to India.

Medsurge Healthcare recently purchased its own pharmaceutical manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Bangalore, India - a facility spread across a 5-acre plot with a 5,000 sq ft injectable R&D unit, with an integrated ampoule and glass vial line.

Kam is the founder and Reet, the director of the Australian company as well as the Indian manufacturing plant.

The beginning of the sojourn Down Under

Kam and Reet came to Melbourne in 2002, him with an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and her in IT. The ambitious couple was looking for new opportunities and Reet was keen on pursuing a Masters.

Though the decision to leave India was not taken lightly, as it meant that we would leave our family and friends, there has been no looking back say Reet and Kam of Medsurge Healthcare. Photo Courtesy: Reet

There were a number of reasons that my wife Reet and I chose to come to Australia, said Kam, The prime reason being that Monash University was the first to offer Reet a place in its Masters of IT program.

Though the decision to leave India was not taken lightly, as it meant that we would leave our family and friends, there has been no looking back.

It was the first time either of us had ever been outside India. Looking back, all we had was two small suitcases, $1000 in cash, which I had raised by selling my business, and a lot of hopes and dreams. Reet was 21 and I was 24, reminisced Kam.

There were many hardships, the greatest of which was financial with Kam working to support both as well as to pay Reets tuition fees whilst she studied full time.

To meet our commitments, I worked from 6 am to midnight seven days a week for the first two years, says Kam, who worked more than four odd jobs during that period.

The last job being the one that provided Kam with crucial knowledge and the pathway that led me to where I am today.

Among other hardships they dealt with were those faced by most diaspora in a foreign land - the lack of family support or fall-back plans.

The couple however did not have any dependents, parents or children, to support and could focus totally on themselves and Reet soon graduated with excellent results.

Incorporating Medsurge Healthcare

By 2007 Medsurge Healthcare was incorporated and post two years of business development, the company started trading in 2009.

The couple found their niche in the supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals that were not available to Australian hospitals and retail pharmacies. Photo Courtesy: Medsurge

The couple found their niche in the supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals that were not available to Australian hospitals and retail pharmacies.

To the best of my knowledge, we were the first in Australia to do this, said Kam. Before the advent of Medsurge, hospital pharmacies endeavoured to import these medicines themselves, which usually took many weeks before delivery, he added. Medsurge has made delivery of orders into customers hands in 48-96 hours, a routine occurrence. With stock guaranteed delivery for niche pharmaceuticals by 10 am the next day anywhere in Australia  or faster if needed, said Kam.

WE VALUE LIFE - their trademark motto

As new business owners, the Phulwanis main challenges were the lack of start-up capital and resources; meeting compliance and regulation requirements; sourcing reliable suppliers and third party warehousing.

Working together, Reet and I dealt with all these challenges slowly, establishing the business and fulfilling what has become our Company motto We Value Life, Kam told Connected to India.

The company recently started its own brand under the name Medicianz Healthcare Australia and opened branches in New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and India with plans for further international expansion.

Medsurge is committed to making a positive impact on the world which our future generations will inherit. We are passionate about working with partners who, like us, believe that operational sustainability and improving the quality of life for all is at the heart of everything we do, said Reet.

Photo Courtesy: Medsurge

Medsurge has picked up many accolades along the way including Kam being a finalist in the 2017 Business Leader of the Year award at the India Australia Business & Community Awards and the company being named one of Westpacs Top 200 Businesses of Tomorrow in 2019.

Future Vision

Our future vision is to make Medsurge Healthcare a globally recognised and respected Australian pharmaceutical Company, said Kam. Financially becoming one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world.

The couple aims to continue to strive towards saving and preserving the lives of fellow Australians and adapting to evolving needs, whilst contributing to the overall health and wellness of the world.

I inherited a philanthropic approach to healthcare from my father who was a GP in India, said Kam.

I have a passionate and unshakeable belief that this is what I was born to do and that I can and do make a difference in this country of ours for the better, he added.

The couple finds it deeply satisfying that through their company they have the ability to provide the lifesaving medications needed for survival and celebrate the lives thus saved.

My wife and I arrived in Australia with nothing, we are intensely grateful that our adopted country has rewarded our hard work in fulfilling our ambitions beyond our earliest dreams and aspirations, said Kam.
R Madhavan and Dia Mirza's 2001 film Rehnaa Hai Tere Dil Mein, which is still popular after 19 years might be getting a sequel, if reports are to be believed. According to latest reports, the makers were eyeing a sequel for a while now, and have found a script to their liking.

A source told Mid-day, The makers toyed with some concepts, on and off, over the years. Only now have they found a script that has appealed to everyone and seems a natural progression to the lives of Maddy and Reena (the characters played by Madhavan and Mirza respectively). The script is in the final stage of development.

Directed by Gautham Menon, film also starred Saif Ali Khan and Anupam Kher in pivotal roles. It has garnered the status of a cult-classic over the years.

Recently, Dia hosted a live Instagram session with Madhavan during the lockdown, which marked their first on-screen reunion in 19 years. The duo talked about a possible sequel, and Dia said, We are doing our best to make it happen, but we will only work together when we can give our best.

On the work front, Madhavan will be next seen in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, the biopic of Nambi Narayanan, the Indian scientist and aerospace engineer from ISRO who was accused of being a spy and imprisoned for 50 days, which was later ruled out to be false.

Dia, on the other hand, was last seen in Anubhav Sinha's Thappad.

Follow @News18Movies for more
Aihik Sur By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: For Telanganas electronic and manufacturing industry to effectively boycott Chinese goods in the wake of ongoing hostility between India and China, it is necessary that there is a proper alternative in its place  which as of now is not available in the country, according to the industry experts. The States electronic hardware and manufacturing industry, which includes pharmaceuticals, is heavily dependent on Chinese imports. While the size of electronic hardware sector in Telanganas industry pie chart may be small, pharma sector has a prominent space.

Srinivas Garimella, Industrial Committee chairman in Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FTCCI), said that 30 per cent of bulk drugs in the State are sourced from China. We do not have any alternative to China when it comes to the price point. More importantly, it wont make a difference to China even if we boycott their goods. While Chinas exports to India are just two per cent of its total exports, Indias 16 per cent of imports are from that country, he said, adding that this present situation should be used as a catalyst to boost indigenous production and easing reliance on China.

Recently, T-Works, the State governments prototyping facility, showed how the Chinese products were more popular in the country than those made in India. Simran Wasu, a protoype engineer at T-Works, dismantled two mosquito repellent rackets  one made in China and the other in India, and compared the prices of various parts. In the plastics section, cost of the handle enclosure shell was found to be `102.80 in India as against `37.20 in China. In fact, a majority of the plastic components  like spacer, flashlight cup, cover and retractable plug  were cheaper in China.

Wasu concluded that if the racket was made in India, its manufacturing cost would be `306.72, instead of the present price of `194.30. Speaking to Express, T-Works CEO Sujai Karampuri, said: It is impractical to call for a boycott of Chinese products. We are heavily dependent on China. We should use this situation as a learning curve and work towards easing our dependence on products from that country.

ALSO READ | Boycott Chinese products? OnePlus 8 Pro sees record sales in minutes of its online debut

Karampuri further said that not just the government, private players should also look towards investing in indigenous companies and products. Echoing similar views, Telangana Industrialists Federation chief K Sudhir Reddy pointed out that while it would be possible to effectively shift reliance on China when it came to products, it would not be possible in the case of parts and accessories.

Manufacturing industries are heavily reliant on China for accessories. These accessories are integrated into making the final product, Reddy said. As of now an alternative for such products does not exist in the country and the government should formulate a policy to give entrepreneurs working in this area a boost in the positive direction, he added.
(Monrovia, Liberia - Monday, June 22, 2020) The Rural and Renewable Energy Agency of Liberia through its World Bank-funded Liberia Renewable Energy Access Project has on behalf of the President H.E. Dr. George Manneh Weah, donated solar products to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. According to the RREA's Executive Director - Joseph Tye Williams, the purpose of the donation is to increase access to electricity and to foster the use of renewable energy sources.

The donated items include: 33 Units of D20 solar lights, 82 Units of S300 solar lights, 153 Units of S300B solar lights, 62 Units of multi 100 plus solar lights, 29 Units of solar rooftop solar lights, 10 Units of multi 300 XL solar lights, 52 Units of S2 solar lights, 36 Units of Barefoot power solar lights, 13 Units of scandle 200 solar lights and 13 Units of PSHS 7000 solar lights.

Receiving the solar lights, Deputy Minister for Gender Madam Alice Johnson Howard extended the Ministry's gratitude to H.E. Dr. George Manneh Weah and the Rural and Renewable Energy Agency for such timely donation.

"This donation is so handy and timely especially during this Covid -19 pandemic where movement of people are stalled", Madam Howard expressed.

The Deputy Gender Minister assured the donor that the Ministry will immediately begin the distribution of the solar products to the most needy of identifiable rural women, elderly, clinics, schools, and safe homes across the Country.

"On behalf of my Boss - Minister Williametta E. Saydee-Tarr, let me again appreciate President Weah and Rural and Renewable Energy Agency for the donation, I can assure you that all donated items will be used for the purpose intended", Madam Johnson Howard concluded.
Public Services Company Serco Middle East has appointed Wallace Weatherill as its new Managing Director, a role in which he will spearhead the operations of the largest automated transport system in the region the Dubai Metro as well as the Dubai Tram in collaboration with the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

Serco Middle East operates and maintains the Dubai Metro and operates the Dubai Tram on behalf of the RTA, said a statement.

Wallace has worked in the Middle East rail industry for over 6 years, first mobilising the North-South high-speed passenger railway in Saudi Arabia.

Wallace re-joins the public services company having previously served as Sercos Director for Rail in Saudi Arabia. With almost 20 years' experience in the operations of critical rail systems in both the UK and the Middle East, Wallace brings with him the knowledge and expertise required to successfully continue the award-winning Dubai Metro operations both Serco and the RTA are known for, said the statement.

Prior to his overseas appointments, Wallace led passenger railway businesses in the UK such as Southeastern, London Commuter Railway and London Midland. Wallace also brings his infrastructure management experience gained with the UK infrastructure operator Network Rail from 1999-2006.

Speaking about his appointment and vision for Sercos future partnership with the RTA, Wallace said: My vision is to build on the success that has already been achieved by the RTA and Serco on the operations of the iconic RTA rail transit systems in Dubai. We must also integrate the new Red Line Extension in a seamless way, unlocking new journey opportunities and building the resilience required to welcome the increase of passengers. Sercos aim to empower nationals within our business will continue; our people are our assets and at Serco, we are all proud to be delivering essential services to the UAE.

Phil Malem, CEO of Serco Middle East, added: I am delighted to see Wallace return to Serco Middle East at a globally challenging time. He has a strong level of expertise that will help navigate our business in the rail sector and continue to provide a high standard of service to our clients as well as the citizens and residents of the UAE. I am confident that Wallace will be an asset to our team and will continue Sercos award-winning delivery of service across the RTA transport systems. - TradeArabia News Service
YEREVAN.  [Former justice minister] Davit Harutyunyan stated that the Venice Commission has served the right for the political goals of the current halls of power, and the situation is presented only from the point of view of the government. What do you think? Could be the basis for this figure's accusation against the Venice Commission? Alen Simonyan, National Assembly Vice President and member of the majority My Step faction in Armenias parliament, asked this Monday at the NA special sitting, addressing Minister of Justice Rustam Badasyan.

In response, the minister said as follows, in particular: "I regret such a statement because it [the Venice Commissions opinion on a proposal for constitutional amendments in Armenia] is quite a balanced opinion; moreover, it is based on the shared principles of law; that is, such an authoritative body as the Venice Commission cannot put aside its standing and, in general, the principles of law, in any way and in any case, and provide a convenient option for any country, any halls of power; this is unequivocal. Therefore, this contradiction in their words, accusing the Venice Commission of being politicized, is unacceptable.
Recently, there has been a fair amount of attention given to the fact-checking responsibilities of social media: Facebook has resisted calls to be an arbiter of fact when it comes to President Trumps frequent lies (even in the face of protests by its own employees), but Snap has stopped promoting Trumps Snapchat account because it incite[s] racial violence and injustice. Twitter made waves when it appended a label to (but otherwise left up) a Trump tweet that referenced shooting looters but took no action against another Trump tweet which baselessly suggested a 75-year-old demonstrator injured by police could be an ANTIFA provocateur because, it said, that particular kind of falsehood did not fall within its narrow authenticity rules.

As those stories show, The New York Times has been vigorously covering the debate over the duty of technology companies to prevent the spread of untruths. Gone is any examination of the Timess own policies on accuracy. Since I joined CJRs Public Editor project, Times readers have frequently asked me about its policy on corrections. At the root of these frustrations isnt a belief that the Times doesnt care about getting the facts right. Its puzzlement over why, when presented with what outsiders think are glaring errors, the Times can be so slow to issue certain corrections.

THE MEDIA TODAY: Crowd size is not a moral metric

The Times, like any reputable news organization, regularly admits its errors. The Timess Corrections column is a parade of punctiliousness. He is Damian Lewis, not Damien. She is Alyona Getmanchuk, not Gemantchuk. It is the Kissimmee River, not Kissimee. They were crab apples, not cranberries. The overall impression created by these daily self-rebukes is that the Times is an institution whose dedication to accuracy knows no bounds. And, as Times standards editor Philip B. Corbett (thats one L, two Ts) tells me, thats exactly the point. Pretty much across the board, we say if we get something factually wrong, we should do a correction. And as you probably know from reading a lot of our corrections, a lot of times it is, I dont want to call them small things, but very specific details, he says.

But I will say that we hear from readers that they sweat the small things and that if we get a small detail wrong, it risks undercutting how much readers trust the rest of the story and the rest of our work. He adds, The simple statement of the policy is if its an error of fact we should fix it and do a correction.

What about when the error of fact is more complicated than a misspelled word? It is in those more difficult cases, often involving questions of news judgment and fairness, that the Times can be slower to grapple with its errors. Corbett acknowledges that these casesnot calling somebody for a response, for instance, or leaving readers with the wrong impressionare hard to fit into the corrections rubric. Thats the kind of thing that we might typically handle with an editors note, he says.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

But unlike corrections, it can often take days or even months for an editors note to appear. It was an editors note, for example, that was used to explain why the Times came to believe two days after it printed an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton that the piece fell short of our standards and should not have been published. (I wrote about that controversy in my previous column.) It was also an editors note that New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein used to explain, in March, the publications response to historians who objected to elements of Nikole Hannah-Jones introductory essay for the 1619 Project, published seven months earlier. An editors note also explained why an unfounded rumor of a young doctor dying of COVID-19 was removed from a first-person essay by an ER doctor six weeks after it ran in the magazine in April.

For outsiders, the distinctions between corrections and editors notes are not obvious, and there are plenty of signs that they are misunderstood.

Even as fact-checking came to greater prominence following the 2016 election, the Timess handling of its own mistakes still causes frustration, including from other journalistic truth squads. Take, for instance, an error uncovered by Glenn Kessler, the head of the Washington Posts Fact Checker unit. On October 2, Kessler published a column about a widely repeated falsehood about Joe Biden and Ukraine that had appeared on the front page of the Times on May 1: One of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraines leaders did not dismiss the countrys top prosecutor.

This story about Bidens trip to Ukraine, which has been pushed by Trump and other Republicans and was central to the Presidents impeachment, is based on a boast Biden made in 2018. As the quote, used since in numerous online attack ads, goes: I said, Im telling you, youre not getting the billion dollars.  I looked at them and said: Im leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, youre not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.

But, as Kessler wrote, Biden himself was not giving a factual account of the events: linking the loan guarantees to anti-corruption reforms was part of a broader, months-long diplomatic push by the US, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, not an on-the-fly ultimatum from Biden; when Biden did convey the collective efforts message that the loan guarantees were contingent on removing the prosecutor during a trip to Kyiv, the prosecutor was not removed until months after Biden had returned to Washington; and that Biden visit to Kyiv was in December 2015, not March 2016.

Kessler concluded in his piece: Weve corrected our mistake, and we urge other news organizations to do so as well. The day the story went up, Kessler tweeted, The first paragraph of the May 1 @nytimes article that started the Biden-Ukraine story contained a significant factual error, later picked up by many other reporters. Countdown on how soon its corrected.

No one from the Times seems to have noticed. (In fairness, neither did I, even though I was at the time working on a column about the same Times story.) Over a month after his column, on November 11, Kessler tweeted again, this time including Ken Vogel, the lead reporter on the story: Its been more than a month but the @nytimes and @kenvogel have still not corrected the error in the first paragraph of this May 1 article about when Biden issued the threat on the loan.

Five days later, Vogel was profiled by the Post and quoted as saying, Not a single fact in either story has been successfully challenged. Kessler took issue with that and posted a tweet thread with more pointed criticism of the Times. The NYT has refused to correct this significant mistake, so other news organizations keep repeating it, Kessler wrote. Surely a newspaper of record should want to acknowledge this error, given the high stakes of the impeachment inquiry. Its a mystery why a correction has not been made.

Unlike Kesslers previous tweets, his November 16 tweetstorm went viral. Seven hours later, a narrow correction was issued  changing the date in the lead from March 2016 to December 2015, and noting that the mistake had been brought to the attention of The Times by a tweet from Glenn Kessler.

Asked about the incident and the six-week delay between Kesslers initial column and his viral tweetstorm, a spokesperson for the Times tells me, We corrected the May 1 story within hours of learning about Glenn Kesslers [November 16] tweet, publicized the correction, and acknowledged that Glenn had pointed out the error earlier. As far as we know, no one here knew that Glenn had raised the issue earlier.

It was not the first time Kessler had to wait for a correction from the Times. In December 2015, he debunked a false narrative from US Senator Marco Rubio, who was pushing a story in his presidential campaign ads and speeches about how he was personally responsible for a piece of legislation meant to hamper Obamacare when, in fact, it had been other Republican senators who had pushed the provision through. A front-page Times story on December 9 had led with Rubios version of events; Kessler published his fact-check on December 23; and three weeks later, on January 14, the Times issued a correction.

Obviously its easier to determine we said Wednesday when we shouldve said Tuesday, or we said ten when we should have said fifteen.

IF KESSLER, WHO HAS A COLUMN in a national newspaper as well as a Twitter account with more than 127,000 followers, is having trouble getting notice from the Times, what about people with smaller social-media footprints?

One such example is an October 30 story by Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorist groups including ISIS and Al Qaeda and hosted the Timess popular Caliphate podcast, offered the first explanation for how American Special Forces were able to locate and kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi while he was hiding in Syria. According to Callimachis story, it was because he was paying protection money to a rival group of jihadists to hide him, based on what Callimachi reported were ISIS receipts that showed that the group paid at least $67,000 to members of Hurras al Din, an unofficial affiliate of Al Qaeda and an enemy of the Islamic State.

The day after the story was published, researchers who specialize in tracking jihadist groups voiced skepticism about her reporting. They pointed to intricacies of rivalries and alliances between various jihadist factions which would make such an arrangement extremely unlikely. But questions were also raised about the authenticity of the receipts. In a series of tweets expressing his doubts over Callimachis story, Charles Lister, the director of the Countering Terrorism & Extremism program at the Middle East Institute, noted that some predated February 2018, when Hurras al Din was founded, and added, thats a **massive** red flag in terms of their unreliability. Hassan Hassan, director of the Non-State Actors Program at the Center for Global Policy, tweeted a lengthy thread noting problems with the report and concluded, The story is not credible and doesnt stand scrutiny.

The day after the story appeared, Callimachi posted a thread acknowledging criticism and an error: (Correction  thanks @Charles_Lister and @ajaltamimi) Hurras is publicly announced in Feb 2018, not 2017. But no correction was issued by the Times, which still reads, The book contains eight receipts dated from early 2017 to mid-2018 showing payments by ISIS to members of Hurras al Din.

Callimachi had received the documents from Asaad Almohammad, a researcher affiliated with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, which also maintains the ISIS Files, a collection of documents that Callimachi collected in Iraq and used as the basis of her reporting which was recognized as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019. Almohammad had received the documents from his own sources, so Callimachi asked another researcher, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, to assess whether they were authentic. And her story originally reported, He agreed to review the eight receipts and concluded that they did not appear to have been forged.

But after it was published, and after questions were raised about the documents, al-Tamimi posted on his own blog that he had not reviewed eight receipts; he said he was given one set of four documents, which he concluded were forgeries, and another set of four receipts which superficially showed no obvious problems. Once he learned that there were four other receipts, including some with dates that predated the founding of Hurras al Din, he wrote, it raises a problem regarding authenticity. A week and a half later, he updated his post to say he had since reviewed all eight receipts and I have come to the conclusion they are not authentic.

Several days later, on November 14, the Times published a new story by Callimachi, which summarized al-Tamimis conclusions but quoted Almohammad as standing by the documents under the headline Experts Divided on Authenticity of Islamic State Receipts. On the original October 30 story, an editors note was added to the top: After this article was published, questions were raised about the authenticity of the documents upon which it was based. On the story itself, only one correction was made: An earlier version of this article said that Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an independent Syria researcher, had reviewed eight receipts purporting to be from the Islamic State. He was provided with, and reviewed, only four receipts, not eight. And while the new story said al-Tamimi believes they are forgeries, to this day, the original story still includes the (as corrected) line He agreed to review four of the receipts and concluded that they did not appear to have been forged.

I asked why the Times decided to run a new story rather than recast the original to reflect the criticism and skepticism it faced from ISIS experts. A spokesperson for the Times told me, Given the complexity of the questions that arose after publication, editors decided the clearest and best way to explain would be to put an Editors Note at the top of the original story alerting readers that questions had been raised and directing them to the new story, which walked through the dispute in detail. We think this gave readers the fullest account possible.

After the correction was added to the story, I asked al-Tamimi what he thought of it. It seems to me more like the paper wanted to save face, he said. He emphasized that he would not have concluded that the receipts were authentic if he had originally seen all eight. Asked if he thought the storys description of his views was now correct, he said, On the day before they published it, it was. Not subsequently. He added, In retrospect, I dont think the story should have been published.

I asked Corbett if he felt that the Times was quicker to correct small errors than bigger matters. Obviously its easier to determine, he tells me, we said Wednesday when we shouldve said Tuesday, or we said ten when we should have said fifteen. Those kinds of errors are usually pretty easy to figure out and do a correction. If its something much more complicated than that, it might require more thought, but also it may be that youre getting into areas that arent really about errors of fact. Sometimes we hear from readers saying, You should correct this story, its all wrong. And you sort of think, Well, all wrong? What, you dont like the story? You think its a stupid premise? What specifically do you have in mind?

And he was clear on another matter: the best way to alert the Times to an error that requires a fix, whether a correction or editors note, is to email [email protected], which Corbett and Rogene Jacquette, the Timess correction editor, personally check. Thats the best and quickest avenue for people to report errors and all the emails that come in through that email address are monitored. He adds, If a thoughtful reader raises a legitimate concern about the premise of the story, the whole approach of a story, whether a story is fair or properly framed, thats certainly something we would take seriously.

ICYMI: Honestly, everything is not burning.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Gabriel Snyder is a contributing editor to CJR.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:12:21|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

LUANDA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The defense forces and security services of Angola have arrested 918 citizens for disobedience to the prevailing State of Calamity from June 13 to 20, the country's Home Affairs Minister Eugenio Laborinho said Monday.

The minister, who was speaking at the 41st anniversary of the Home Affairs Ministry marked on Monday, said that in the same period a total of 1,814 vehicles were seized for overcrowding and for illegally performing motorcycle taxi activity.

A total of 175 cases of violation were registered, of which 135 illegal entry and 35 illegal exit were foiled, resulting in the arrest and return of 927 foreigners, 767 from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 99 Namibians.

The minister disclosed that during the State of Emergency, 15,658 Angolan citizens had been arrested, 10,429 vehicles seized, 20,445 motorcycles as well as 184 firearms of various calibers.

"The forces will continue their tactical-operational actions focused on compliance with the measures of the Presidential Decree on the State of Calamity and the fight against crime throughout the country," stressed the Minister of Interior.

Angola records 183 COVID-19 cases, nine related deaths and 77 recoveries. Enditem
Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!

Your notification has been saved.

There was a problem saving your notification.

{{description}}

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
What happened

Shares of Virgin Galactic Holdings (NYSE:SPCE) jumped more than 15% on Monday after the aerospace company said it would train people to become astronauts and travel to the International Space Station (ISS).

So what

Virgin Galactic will work with NASA's Johnson Space Center to develop a program that identifies people interested in purchasing trips to the ISS; trains them for the rigors of the voyage; and helps them obtain the necessary supplies. Virgin Galactic said these voyages "could range from private citizen expeditions to government-enabled scientific research missions."

Virgin Galactic will provide its customers with private astronaut training at its Spaceport America base in New Mexico. The company said its existing space experiences could also be used to train people for orbital travel, by allowing them to become more familiar with space-like environments.

"We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight program, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said in a press release. "Based on the unsurpassed levels of spaceflight customer commitments we have secured to date, we are proud to share that insight in helping to grow another market for the new space economy."

Now what

Virgin Galactic is helping to create an entirely new industry centered on space tourism. The high-speed space travel market will grow to more than $20 billion by 2030, with space tourism accounting for $3 billion, according to analysts at UBS.

"We want to bring the planetary perspective to many thousands of people," Whitesides said.
Canada Homes is pleased to announce the launch of its Academic Scholarship Campaign to help support students in need of financial aid.

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / Canada Homes is proud to announce its Academic Scholarship Campaign in support of students who are currently attending an accredited Canadian college.

Due to the current economic climate, many individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain financial aid. As a result, Canada Homes will be awarding one scholarship worth $7,000 CAD to help cover the cost of a full years tuition.

With the average student debt in Canada being overwhelmed with post-secondary debt, many individuals entering the workforce are struggling to find employment and pay down their student debt.

"We want to help minimize the financial burden that many students unfortunately have to face" states the Founder of Canada Homes, Lorne Leibel, "Although formal education is often vital to specific professional success, it is also a significant source of anxiety and stress for those regular payments to be made."

Leibel encourages all students currently attending, or currently enrolled for September 2020 in a Canadian college to apply. Applicants are required to submit a 750-word essay expressing their need for financial aid while outlining their long-term career objectives.

Applicants will have until November 15, 2020, to submit the online application form and provide all the necessary documentation. Individuals are also required to submit proof of enrollment to their current program of study.

For more information on the Canada Homes Scholarship Program and to apply, please visit the official site here.

About Canada Homes

Canada Homes was established in 1975, and over the past forty-five years the company has served the neighbourhoods of the greater Toronto area, and parts of the United States. With more than 30,000 homes built since its inception, Canada Homes strives to provide the best priced homes to the new-home-buying public.

Contact Information:

Lorne Leibel

Email: apply@CanadaHomesScholarships.com

Phone:(416) 798-7220 ext. 107

SOURCE: Lorne Leibel

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/594789/Canada-Homes-Supports-Post-Secondary-College-Students-By-Establishing-an-Academic-Scholarship-Campaign
Donald Trump put his re-election ahead of U.S. national security, John Bolton said in an interview with ABC News, calling the president disinterested in intelligence briefings and ignorant of global affairs and the impact of his decisions.

"My experience was he very rarely read much," Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, told ABC's Martha Raddatz in advance of the publication of his book, "The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir."

"Intelligence briefings took place perhaps once or twice a week," Bolton said. "They should take place every day."

Trump's "attention span was infinite" for his re-election, Bolton said. "It's just too bad there wasn't more of that when it came to national security."

Bolton, 71, is on a media blitz to promote his book, one of the most damaging accounts yet of Trump's White House. He is the highest-ranking administration official to publish a book after departing. He told ABC that the 2020 election was the last "guardrail" to protect the country from Trump.

The Trump administration sought to block the publication of Bolton's book, arguing that it contained sensitive information related to national security. At the same time, the president has said the book's allegations about him are "lies."

On Saturday, a judge rejected a last-ditch effort by the Justice Department to block publication. The book is scheduled to go on sale Tuesday - one of a string of developments to complicate the president's re-election effort amid slumping poll numbers, the virus-ravaged economy and a renewed national debate over policing and racism.

Trump has attacked Bolton personally, calling him a "wacko" and "washed up." Trump also said Bolton would have "bombs dropped on him" for proceeding with the publication of the book.

ABC earlier released excerpts of the interview in which Bolton said he didn't think Trump was fit for office. "I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job," Bolton told ABC of Trump. "There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern, other than what's good for Donald Trump's re-election."

He said he wouldn't vote for either Trump or his presumptive Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, in November. "I'm gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in," he said.

Bolton called Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, the most powerful person in the White House after the president. But he declined to say whether he believed Kushner was qualified to oversee a broad portfolio that includes Trump's re-election campaign and Middle East peace, saying "the focus ought to be on the president."

In the interview, he was severely critical of Trump's diplomacy with North Korea. He called it "folly" for Trump to cancel U.S. war games with South Korea as a concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He described Trump as obsessed with the number of reporters who would attend a news conference concluding his first summit with Kim in Singapore.

"That's what he was focused on," Bolton said. "That he had had this enormous photo opportunity - first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea."

Bolton said that he considered the summit a "strategic mistake" and that the U.S. "got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot."

In another advance clip released last week, Bolton said Russian President Vladimir Putin can play Trump "like a fiddle." The Kremlin on Friday rejected that characterization.

"I think Putin is smart, tough," Bolton says. "I think he sees that he's not faced with a serious adversary here. I don't think he's worried about Donald Trump"

Bolton said he was appalled at Trump's news conference with Putin after a Helsinki summit in July 2018, when the U.S. president sided with the Russian leader in challenging American intelligence agencies' conclusion that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election.

"I thought I wouldn't get up. I didn't know what to do" after the news conference, Bolton said. "I thought Dan Coats, then the director of national intelligence, was close to resignation."

- - -

Bolton defended his decision to publish a book instead of testifying in the House impeachment inquiry of Trump's Ukraine scandal. He said he "didn't think the Democrats had the wit or the political understanding or the reach to change what, for them, was an exercise in arousing their own base, so that they could say, 'We impeached Donald Trump.' "

"This was a partisan play," he said. "It was not a constitutional process. I judge that to be almost as irregular as what they were accusing Trump of doing."

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth faulted Bolton for going ahead with the book before the pre-publication review process could be completed, writing that Bolton "has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability."

Lamberth also signaled that Bolton could lose in the next phase of the breach of contract lawsuit and may have to turn over to the government a $2 million book advance and any royalties he receives from book sales.

Bolton's book paints an unflattering portrait of the White House, describing Trump as ignorant of basic foreign policy facts and motivated largely by political self-interest. In one passage widely reported passage, Bolton wrote that Trump urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy agricultural products from the U.S. because it would help the Trump campaign build political support in rural states.

Bolton's account joins recent critical portraits of Trump's character and fitness for office from other prominent national security officials, including former defense secretary James Mattis, who gave a statement to The Atlantic alleging that three years under Trump have eroded the foundations of American democracy.

"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people - does not even pretend to try," Mattis wrote. "Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

And in October, Admiral William McRaven, the former commander of America's special operations forces, penned an opinion article for The New York Times alleging that Trump was a threat to the republic and that it was time for new leadership in the Oval Office.
Within the past few months, the British royal family lost three senior royals. However, only Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were stripped off of their HRH titles.

They are still considered the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but the Queen's second son Prince Andrew -- who has decided to withdraw from public duties following his connection with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein -- has retained his HRH title and his dukedom.

However, according to Express U.K., Prince Andrew is bound to lose his dukedome in the future. In fact, none of his daughters will be able to inherit the title.

Based on age-old rules of noble titles, Princess Beatrice won't be able to acquire her father's dukedom because of her gender.

This means the coveted title will be passed on Prince William and Kate Middleton's youngest son, Prince Louis.

"The York dukedom is a great honor to receive and was initially granted in the 14th century in the Peerage of England," the publication noted. "Since the 15th century, it has, when granted, usually been given to the second son of monarchs in England and Britain. That means the title is likely to go to his grand-nephew Prince Louis."

The 2-year-old prince is currently the fifth in the line of succession to the British throne, behind his grandfather Prince Charles, his father the Duke of Cambridge, and older siblings Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

However, the young Cambridge cannot inherit the title as long as the 60-year-old royal is still alive.

"As Louis is unlikely to ever take over the throne as fifth in line to the throne behind his siblings George and Charlotte, he will only receive a dukedom on his wedding day. If the dukedom of York is available at this point, it's likely it will go to Prince Louis."

Prince Louis will be like his uncle Prince Harry, who was officially named as the Duke of Sussex right after marrying former "Suits" star Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018. Their marriage took place at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The 38-year-old actress was bestwoed the title Her Royal Highness Duchess of Sussex.

"The Queen has today been pleased to confer a Dukedom on Prince Henry of Wales. His titles will be Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton, and Baron Kilkeel," a statement from Buckingham Palace read at the time.

Furthermore, aside from the dukedom if it still belongs to Prince Andrew when the young prince marries in the future, Louis could be given an Earl title.

This scenario happened to Queen Elizabeth II"s youngest son Prince Edward, who was made as the Earl of Wessex hours before his royal wedding with Sophie Rhys-Jones in June 1999 at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.

In addition, Her Majesty the Queen decided to grant an additional title of Earl of Forfar to the 56-year-old royal.

READ MORE: Will Smith CRIES, Remembers Ultimate Failure In His Life
This is the emotional moment five retiring sniffer dogs refusing to leave their trainers after working side by side with the firefighters for nearly a decade in China.

Touching footage shows one of the loyal hounds eagerly reaching for its handler while being held back by the leash. Another dog is seen holding onto a fireman's hand, unwilling to move.

Tens of thousands of Chinese web users were moved by the video and the 'true friendship' between the firefighters and their four-legged partners.

This is the emotional moment five retiring sniffer dogs 'refusing to leave' their trainers during a retirement ceremony in China after the firefighter buddies worked alongside for a decade

The picture shows a screenshot of the touching footage released by the fire brigade as one of the loyal hounds is seen eagerly reaching for its trainer while being held back by its leash

The five detection dogs were arranged to retire after tirelessly working for almost 10 years, according to a social media post from the Lhasa Fire Brigade in the Tibet Autonomous Region of western China.

The sniffer dogs had participated in a wide range of rescue missions, including searching for citizens after earthquakes.

The four-legged rescuers are said to have reached the retirement age of eight to ten years old, which is equivalent to 80-year-old humans.

But the loyal animals appeared to be refusing to leave their handlers as they bid a farewell at the ceremony on Wednesday.

The five loyal canines were arranged to retire after tirelessly working for nearly 10 years, according to a social media post from the Lhasa Fire Brigade in the Tibet Autonomous Region

The four-legged firefighters are said to have reached the retirement age of eight to ten years old, which is equivalent to 80-year-old humans. The picture shows one of the sniffer dog holding onto its handler who is trying to hold back his tears at the Lhasa Fire Brigade on June 17

The emotional footage released recently has touched tens of thousands of Chinese social media users who praised the 'true friendship' between the firefighters and their sniffer dogs

One of the detection dogs is seen standing up and holding onto its trainer's hands while others repeatedly running back to their handlers after being pulled away.

The emotional footage has touched tens of thousands of Chinese social media users who praised the 'true friendship' between the firefighters and their sniffer dogs.

One wrote: 'I'm brought to tears. They are comrades, friends and family.'

Another one said: 'Sigh. They've devoted most of their lives to human society. Hope the dogs can spend the rest of their lives happily.'

A third comment read: 'This is so cruel for the dogs. Even though the work is finished, they still think the firefighters are their owners and friends. It would be really hard for them to accept reality.'

The retired canines will be looked after by local government, the fire brigade said.
Lightfoot told the Tribune she still wants chokeholds banned in their entirety but did not say when that would be. She has directed a task force to review the departments use of force following the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer placed a knee on his neck for about eight minutes. In the meantime, new Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said he wanted officers to undergo mandatory training on positional asphyxiation, which raised the question of just what the current training regimen is and what it should be.
Britain is set to bask in Mediterranean temperatures in the coming days, with London predicted to be hotter than Ibiza.

Sky News' weather presenter Nazaneen Ghaffar said this week could be the hottest week of the summer so far, predicting temperatures in the South to reach 34C (93F) by Thursday.

Following Monday's mild start, the capital will reach around 30C (86F) mid-week - two degrees hotter than the forecast for Ibiza.

It could also set a new record for the year.

The hottest day of 2020 so far was on 20 May when temperatures hit 28.2C (82.8F) at Santon Downham in Suffolk, beating the record set from the day before when St James's Park in London recorded a high of 26.2C (79.2F).

The Met Office has forecast a north-south split from Monday, with temperatures reaching the mid-20s in the South of England and mid-teens in Scotland.

Daytime showers are also forecast for northern Scotland and Ireland until Monday evening.

Met Office chief meteorologist Dan Suri said: "Northern Ireland and Scotland will be under a band of cloud and rain on Monday and Tuesday; however, it'll be dry elsewhere with plenty of warm sunshine and temperatures reaching 28C (82.4F) or 29C (84.2F) in a few spots on Tuesday.

"Temperatures will continue to climb through the week with a hot spell developing across much of England and Wales.

"From Wednesday temperatures will widely reach into the high twenties Celsius and it'll be hot across much of the UK, especially central and southern England where we could see highs of 30C (86F) to 34C (93.2F).

"This hot weather is expected to last until at least Friday and so heatwave conditions are likely to develop for some areas this week."

Mr Suri said that Britain should also expect some warm nights this week as temperatures overnight will remain in the mid-high teens across England and Wales.

The hot weather is due to high pressure to the east of the UK, bringing a clockwise direction of air across the country and therefore winds coming from the Atlantic, Sky's Nazaneen Ghaffar said.

Story continues

She added: "Initially the warm weather will be across the majority of England and Wales where it'll be largely dry and sunny.

"Further north and west across Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and perhaps the far northwest of Wales and England it'll be cooler and cloudier with spells of rain at times for the first few days of this week.

"By Thursday, the north and west of the UK and Ireland will also see warm sunny weather, but it won't be as warm as the southern parts."

With the anticipated hot weather and the government's COVID-19 alert level lowered to three, emergency services are urging people to continue to respect social distancing measures.

:: Listen to the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

Meteorologists are unsure how long the heatwave will last, however, and there could be a change later in the week with the potential for thunderstorms on Friday.

"We may see a breakdown of the heat with thunderstorms breaking out quite widely," Ghaffar said.

"The thunderstorms may have origins from a Spanish plume. The showers could bring torrential downpours, hail, frequent lightning and strong winds. Later in the day there also looks to be thicker cloud and rain spreading in from the west, ushering in cooler conditions."

She added: "The rest of the week looks to remain unsettled, with further showers or longer spells of rain and temperatures returning to normal again."
Pacific Palisades, California--(Newsfile Corp. - June 22, 2020) - Green Stream Holdings Inc. (OTC Pink: GSFI) ("Green Stream", "GSFI", or the "Company"), an emerging leader in the democratization of solar energy through innovative solar energy generation facilities and designs, is excited to announce that the Company has secured a new Community Solar Project agreement (the "Agreement") with CubeSmart Self Storage of Hackensack, NJ ("CubeSmart"). The project is anticipated to produce over $3.9 million in revenues for over a period of 25 years.





Green Stream Holdings Logo

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://media.zenfs.com/en-us/newsfile_64/939171795c7cfeb1371e615c991b2368

The Agreement provides for the rooftop installation of a solar energy collection system at the CubeSmart facility. Design and Permitting is anticipated to be concluded next month, and the system is expected to be fully installed by November 2020.

"We are excited about this new project and anticipate a smooth installation and launch at CubeSmart," stated Madeline Cammarata, President of Green Stream Holdings. "The community solar model is a proven path to private sector implementation of renewable energy infrastructure. Energy from the Sun will hit the CubeSmart facility whether we install the means to collect it or not. We believe this installation will represent an effective demonstration of how our model can make better use of that resource, and we look forward to ongoing and future discussions with proprietors of many similar facilities over the near term as Green Stream continues to expand our Community Solar footprint."

The Agreement provides for the installation of 1,099 Q-Cell 415 photovoltaic solar panels driven by 11 SolarEdge 33.3 480v inverters creating a 456 KW Solar Photovoltaic rooftop system. Installation designs will be provided by the Company's partner, Morali Architects, the leading architecture firm run by renowned architect, Antony Morali.

Story continues

The installation is anticipated to produce over $3.9 million in solar energy revenues over a period of 25 years. The Company will pay monthly lease fees to CubeSmart as compensation for the use of its site as host for system installation and collection of solar energy.

The Company has contracted Green Hybrid Energy Solutions, Inc, a top regional solar energy solutions company certified by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP), to handle construction and installation of the Solar Photovoltaic rooftop system. Construction and installation costs will be heavily subsidized by federal, state, and local solar energy subsidies.

About Green Stream Finance, Inc.:

Green Stream Finance, Inc., a Wyoming-based corporation with satellite offices in Malibu, CA and New York, NY, is focused on exploiting currently unmet markets in the solar energy space, and is currently licensed in California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii, and Canada. The Company's next-generation solar greenhouses, constructed and managed by Green Rain Solar, LLC, a Nevada-based division, utilize proprietary greenhouse technology and trademarked design developed by world-renowned architect Mr. Antony Morali. The Company is currently targeting high-growth solar market segments for its advanced solar greenhouse and advanced solar battery products. The Company has a growing footprint in the significantly underserved solar market in New York City where it is targeting 50,000 to 100,000 square feet of rooftop space for the installation of its solar panels. Green Stream is looking to forge key partnership with major investment groups in order to capitalize on a variety of unique investment opportunities in the commercial solar energy markets. The Company is dedicated to becoming a major player in this critical space. Through its innovative solar product offerings and industry partnerships, the Company is well-positioned to become a significant player in the solar space.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. That includes the possibility that the business outlined in this press release cannot be concluded for some reason. That could be as a result of technical, installation, permitting or other problems that were not anticipated. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Green Stream Finance, Inc. to be materially different from the statements made herein. Except for any obligation under the U.S. federal securities laws, Green Stream Finance, Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Company Contact/Address

Green Stream Finance Inc. & Green Rain Solar, LLC

16620 Marquez Avenue

Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

Phone: 310-230-0240

For All Inquiries Contact:

info@greenstreamfinance.com

SOURCE: Green Stream Finance, Inc.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/58262
Camden, N.Y.  One man has died and another was airlifted to a hospital with life-threatening injuries after three motorcycles collided Sunday evening in Oneida County.

Oneida County sheriffs deputies said the crash happened around 6:53 p.m. on River Road in the town of Camden.

Ronald Secor, 65, of Rome, was riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle north on River Road when he collided with another Harley motorcycle, operated by Steven Mahana, 55, of Clay, who was headed south on River Road, deputies said.

Mahana was riding his motorcycle alongside a third Harley motorcycle, operated by Mary Akshar, 57, of Fayetteville.

Secor was pronounced dead at the scene. Mahana was airlifted from the scene to a Syracuse hospital with injuries deputies described as life-threatening, deputies said.

Akshar was treated on the scene for her injuries.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation. No traffic citations have been issued.

Along with the sheriffs office, the Camden Fire Department, Camden Ambulance, Mercy Flight and the New York State Police responded to the scene.
land-based Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense (BMD) system (file photo)

By Chen Hongbin

On June 16, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated that Japan has decided to suspend the plan to deploy the land-based Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in the western prefecture of Yamaguchi and northeastern prefecture of Akita. The news, like a blockbuster, has aroused widespread concern both in Japan and abroad.

As early as December 2017, the Abe government decided to introduce two sets of land-based Aegis Ashore units from the US on the grounds that "Japan's national security is under threat", and planned to deploy them in Akita and Yamaguchi Prefectures, respectively. During the past two years, the Abe government has advanced the deployment plan at almost any cost. Abe himself once also emphasized: this is essential to protect the lives of Japanese citizens! However, it now suddenly announces that it would abandon the deployment after making tremendous efforts, and the underlying reason is thought-provoking.

In response, Taro Kono, Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, said recently that out of technical and cost considerations, Japan finally decided to suspend the deployment of the land-based Aegis Ashore BMD system.

It's hard for Japan to support the deployment due to its high cost. The US has continuously raised the price, leading to the ever-increasing deployment costs of the two units, and the ever-growing opposition within Japan. At first, a land-based Aegis Ashore BMD system was about 80 billion yen asked by the US, and the two units would be estimated to be a total of 150 billion yen. However, since the Japanese side has decided to introduce the system, the US has constantly been raising the price under various excuses. According to Kyodo News, the leading news agency in Japan, Japan has so far spent 180 billion yen to deploy the system.

The government faces huge resistance due to the immature technology of the introduced system. It cannot be guaranteed that the booster will fall in the targeted exercise field of Japan's Self-Defense Force when the interceptor missile is launched, and local residents in Akita and Yamaguchi Prefectures have always been anxious about the possibility of objects falling near their houses or courtyards. Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces Araya training area in Akita City is only 700 meters away from the residential area. In response to this problem, Japan's Defense Ministry has conducted consultations with the US, hoping to solve the problem by modifying the software that controls the missile. But they eventually found that the hardware also needs to be modified. Obviously, the system developed by the US is not mature enough in technology, and the US side needs to take a long time for improvement. Japan simply cannot afford to wait for such a protracted period.

In addition to the cost and technical factors proposed domestically, bargaining with the US is also another important consideration for the Abe governments emergency suspension of the deployment. Right now, the negotiation for the military cost-sharing agreement for the US forces stationed in Japan is imminent. The sudden suspension of deployment by the Japanese side is a signal sent by Japan: the US cannot blindly advance its own interests and gain benefits from its allies. The Trump administration previously expressed the hope that Japan would substantially increase its proportion of defense cost-sharing.

Following the urgent suspension of the deployment plan, the Japanese government emphasized that the security environment facing Japan would not change as a result. Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono said that Japan will rely on the Aegis-equipped destroyers to maintain the missile defense capability, and will also hold a national security conference to study missile defense strategies in the future.

The Japanese move may affect the Japan-US relations. For the Trump administration, high-value military acquisitions, including the land-based Aegis Ashore BMD system, have become one of its effective diplomatic tools. Earlier, when US President Donald Trump visited Japan, he made it clear that Japan would increase its arms' acquisition from the US as a symbol for strengthening the Japan-US alliance, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had echoed it on the spot.

Nowadays, the deployment of the land-based Aegis Ashore BMD system has been suspended in the announcement. How Japan explains to the White House and whether the Trump government would accept it are still in question. However, when Trump is "walled in by his own worries" because of the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US and nationwide protests and demonstrations, Trump is surely not to be kind to Abe with such a move.
Movebank data worldmap. Credit: MPIAB/ MaxCine

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution today, the leaders of a new global initiative explain how research during this devastating health crisis can inspire innovative strategies for sharing space on this increasingly crowded planet, with benefits for both wildlife and humans.

Many countries around the world went into lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19. Brought about by the most tragic circumstances, this period of unusually reduced human mobility, which the article's authors coined 'anthropause,' can provide invaluable insights into human-wildlife interactions.

There have been countless posts on social media over the past few months reporting unusual wildlife encounters. Anecdotal observations, especially from metropolitan areas, suggest that nature has responded to lockdown. There not only seem to be more animals than usual, but there are also some surprising visitors: pumas have been spotted prowling the streets of downtown Santiago, Chile, and dolphins recently showed up in untypically calm waters in the harbor of Trieste, Italy.

For other species, the pandemic may have created new challenges. For example, some urban-dwelling animals, like gulls, rats or monkeys, may struggle to make ends meet without access to human food. In more remote areas, reduced human presence may potentially put endangered species, such as rhinos or raptors, at increased risk of poaching or persecution.

The authors emphasize that society's priority must be to tackle the immense human tragedy and hardship caused by COVID-19. But, they argue that we cannot afford to miss the opportunity to chart, for the first time on a truly global scale, the extent to which modern human mobility affects wildlife.

To address this challenge, researchers recently formed the "COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative." This international consortium will investigate animals' movements, behavior and stress levels, before, during and after COVID-19 lockdown, using data collected with nifty animal-attached electronic devices called 'bio-loggers.'

The article's lead author, Professor Christian Rutz, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, and President of the International Bio-Logging Society, explains: "All over the world, field biologists have fitted animals with miniature tracking devices. These bio-loggers provide a goldmine of information on animal movement and behavior, which we can now tap to improve our understanding of human-wildlife interactions, with benefits for all."

The team will integrate results from a wide variety of animals, including fish, birds and mammals, in an attempt to build a global picture of lockdown effects.

Dr. Francesca Cagnacci, Senior Researcher at the Edmund Mach Foundation in Trento, Italy, and Principal Investigator of the Euromammals research network, says: "The international research community responded quickly to our recent call for collaboration, offering over 200 datasets for analysis. We are very grateful for this support."

So, what do the scientists hope to learn? Dr. Matthias-Claudio Loretto, a Marie Skodowska-Curie Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, Germany, explains that it will be possible to address previously intractable questions: "We will be able to investigate if the movements of animals in modern landscapes are predominantly affected by built structures, or by the presence of humans. That is a big deal."

These insights will in turn inspire innovative proposals for improving human-wildlife coexistence, according to Professor Martin Wikelski, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, Germany. "Nobody is asking for humans to stay in permanent lockdown. But we may discover that relatively minor changes to our lifestyles and transport networks can potentially have significant benefits for both ecosystems and humans."

Coordinated global wildlife research during this period of crisis will provide unforeseen opportunities for humans to forge a mutually beneficial coexistence with other species, and to rediscover how important a healthy environment is for our own well-being.

Explore further Poaching could increase under virus lockdowns: watchdog

More information: Rutz, C. et al. COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife. Nat Ecol Evol (2020). Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution Rutz, C. et al. COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife.(2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1237-z
Although models predict dust from a large plume moving closer to the United States will not reach as far as Illinois, the region could still see vibrant sunrises and sunsets from it this week.

The unusually large cloud of tiny sand and mineral particles had reached the eastern Caribbean on Sunday and was expected to arrive in the Gulf of Mexico by mid- to late-week.
The global natural gas market will remain oversupplied for the next two years but low prices will not hinder China from stepping up domestic output and reducing its reliance on imports, according to a senior executive of one of Chinas largest natural gas distributors.

This year, the coronavirus pandemic has rendered the global gas market in clear oversupply situation, Zhang Yuying, president of ENN Energy, said in an interview. As more gas production and processing capacity comes on stream, I expect the excess supply to be sustained well into 2022.

In China, however, gas demand is expected to hold up in 2020 at close to last years level, and production will be sustained at recent years high level since producers have been incentivised to develop projects as planned, given the state gas pipelines reform, said Zhang, whose firm is based in the northern Hebei province.

Zhang Yuying, president of ENN Energy Holdings, one of China's largest natural gas distributors. Photo: Handout

ENN served 20.9 million residential customers in 2019, according to its annual report. Most of ENNs 149,000 commercial and industrial customers have seen consumption recovered to pre-pandemic levels, Zhang said, as the firm aims to increase its gas volume by 12 to 15 per cent this year, he said.

An industry reform last year has seen China forming the National Petroleum and Natural Gas Pipe Network Group to manage the nations oil and gas pipelines to help secure its long-term energy supply.

Zhang said the Pipeline Group is expected to start commercial operation by September, by which time the pipelines  previously owned by individual companies predominantly to serve their own needs  will be open to all gas producers. It will help lower gas transmission cost, speed up pipelines investment and boost demand, he added.

The Pipeline Group is in talks to acquire the major oil and gas pipelines from state-owned oil and gas firms China National Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec Group and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

Story continues

Chinas natural gas demand grew 8.1 per cent year-on-year in the years first five months, after increasing 9.4 per cent in all of 2019, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. Production grew 11.5 per cent last year, the fastest in a decade, while import grew 6.5 per cent, the slowest since 2015.

Beijing has ordered the state energy giants to increase domestic oil and gas production to cut its dependence on imports. Oil imports made up 71 per cent of its domestic consumption last year, while foreign gas accounted for 43 per cent.

Zhang said ENN will take advantage of low overseas gas prices to cut procurement cost and boost sales.

The average price of imported LNG arriving at Chinese ports has plunged by as much as one-third this year to 2,060 yuan a tonne on June 10, according to an index compiled by the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange. It has rebounded to 2,650 yuan last week.

ENN may use cheaper spot market LNG to lower its overall gas cost so as to deliver better-than-peers [profit] margin, said Nomura analyst Jamie Wang in a note last week.

He expected ENN to import 1.1 million tonnes of LNG via long term contracts this year, and at least 500,000 tonnes via the spot market, at an average 44 per cent discount to contract prices.

China resumed importing LNG from the US in April after a year-long hiatus as Beijing exempted a 25 per cent import tariff to allow it to meet purchase targets under phase one of the US-China trade deal cobbled in January.

ENN is currently not importing US gas. Our procurement decisions take into account a basket of factors including prices, reliability and flexibility, Zhang said, adding most of its import comes from Qatar and Australia.

Sign up now for a 50% early bird discount on the 100+ page China Internet Report 2020 Pro Edition, which includes deep-dive analysis, trends, and case studies on the 10 most important internet sectors. Now in its 3rd year, this go-to source for understanding China tech also comes with exclusive access to 6 webinars with C-level executives. Offer valid until 30 June 2020.

This article China to boost natural gas production and trim imports, despite glut and pandemic-induced price slump, top distributor says first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
The European Union and China sparred over geopolitics and economics on Monday when the heads of the bloc's main institutions held video conferences with the Chinese premier and president.

EU criticism of a Chinese plan to curb Hong Kong's autonomy, allegations that China has spread disinformation about the coronavirus and frustration over Beijing's curbs on foreign investors featured prominently in the talks, according to European officials in Brussels.

Charles Michel, the chair of gatherings of EU national leaders, and Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, spoke with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and then with President Xi Jinping. The meetings were the first between the Chinese side and the EU institutions' new leaders, who took office in December.

"Our discussions today were open and substantive," Michel told reporters afterward. "We discussed many topics -- topics we agree on but, of course, we discussed also topics we disagree on."

The atmosphere has become gloomier since the last EU-China summit in April 2019, when both sides pledged unity in the fight to uphold the multilateral order being challenged by U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda and the Europeans claimed progress in prodding the Chinese government to pursue fairer economic policies.

While that meeting 14 months ago produced a much-hailed EU-China statement, no joint declaration emerged from Monday's deliberations. Also, unlike last year, the Chinese side on Monday opted against a joint press conference with the EU.

A controversial new Chinese national-security measure for Hong Kong has so far prompted only finger-wagging in Europe. Michel said the EU had "grave concerns" about the move, while von der Leyen urged Beijing to reconsider its plan.

EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell, who joined Michel and von der Leyen for the talks, has dismissed the notion of European penalties against Beijing. Borrell said on May 26: "I don't think sanctions against China is going to be the solution to our problems with China, which are more political and related with strategic issues."

The view partly reflects China's status as the EU's biggest trading partner after the U.S.
Register with JOC.com and receive 5 free pieces of content for the first thirty days. After thirty days, you will receive 3 pieces of content and after sixty days you will receive 1 piece of content. To receive full access, Subscribe Today . You can also subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Register
Trump claims without evidence that foreign countries will rig the election by printing millions of mail-in ballots.

Still smarting from the lacklustre turnout for his first post-pandemic rally on Saturday, President Donald Trump on Monday renewed his assaults on a familiar bugbear that has been on his mind for months  the prospect of widespread mail-in voting in Novembers general election.

Without offering any evidence, the president asserted that the election will be the most RIGGED in our nations history if many states move forward, as planned, with allowing citizens to vote by mail if they are still worried about the coronavirus pandemic when November 3 rolls around.

RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020

The consensus among many political scientists and election lawyers in the US is that Trump, in questioning the electoral process before it even begins, is setting the stage for widespread legal challenges to the outcome of the vote if he ends up losing the election.

Trump is trying to establish the basis for challenging votes that dont go his way, said Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law at Amherst College who has written a book titled Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020.

He hasnt simply hinted. He has telegraphed that he will not accept an electoral defeat as anything other than as a sign of a fraudulent election. That is an incredibly dangerous situation, Douglas told Al Jazeera.

The sentiment was echoed by New Yorks Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

I think this a setup, I think theyre going to lose the election, I think they are going to claim fraud and theyre going to go back to these states with mail-in voting and theyre going to use that as an argument, Cuomo said in an appearance on CNN on Monday.

I just hope they dont do that, he added. We need a definitive result in November. We cannot have a situation where one side says Well, I didnt really lose, and I think this is a setup for that.

If you think that a foreign power could simply mail in millions of ballots to influence the election, I regret to inform you that our voting system is a bit more complex than when you voted for class president in fifth grade. https://t.co/nYkaBYi4V8  Philip Bump (@pbump) June 22, 2020

Expanded mail-in voting

California, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia are among a number of US states already taking steps to expand voting by mail. At the national level, Democrats are pushing for federal funding to help states buy machines and train volunteers needed to count significant numbers of mailed ballots.

We are in the middle of a pandemic and voters need to have access to the ballot box in the way that is safest and healthiest for them to do so, said Myrna Perez, director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

It is indisputable that for many Americans vote-by-mail is the most sensible option for them, Perez told Al Jazeera.

Trump has been railing against the prospects of mail-in ballots for weeks. A May 26 Twitter tirade on the topic led Twitter to take the unusual step of labelling the accusations potentially misleading and adding a link to a topics page debunking his tweets.

There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone..  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

In response, Trump accused the social media platform of meddling in the US election and stifling free speech.

The fact-check links posted by Twitter led to media reports citing voting experts who insist there is little, if any, evidence of widespread fraud using mail-in ballots in recent US elections.

Voter fraud in the United States tends to be quite rare, said Richard Hasen, a political science professor and election law expert at the University of California  Irvine.

Because of methods like signature matching and ballot tracking, most of the kinds of fraud people try, tends to get caught, Hasen told Al Jazeera.

Trump is trying to delegitimise the election or he tends to believe in conspiracy theories, Hasen said.

Mounting legal challenges

Trumps cohorts in the Republican Party have already begun lodging legal complaints over mail-in ballots. In California, the largest US state, Republican Party lawyers sued the governor for a plan to send mail-in ballots for all 20 million California voters.

Judicial Watch filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to bar the enforcement of CA Gov. Newsoms exec order mandating that unrequested/unneeded mail-in ballots be sent to all of the states registered voters for the 11/3/2020, election. Read: https://t.co/5AQjNwebeC  Judicial Watch  (@JudicialWatch) June 21, 2020

The suit accuses California Governor Gavin Newsom of a brazen power grab that would violate eligible citizens right to vote.

Make no mistake, Democrats are trying to use this pandemic to redesign our entire election system for political gain, and we will not let their brazen attempts go unchallenged, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Twitter.

The RNC argues that broad distribution of mail-in ballots results in ballots being sent to inactive voters and exposes the system to ballot harvesting, a practice in which activists collect ballots from groups of people before mailing them.

Democrats reject the claims. Expanding vote-by-mail during a pandemic is not a partisan issue  its a moral imperative to protect voting rights and public safety, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said on Twitter in response to the lawsuit.

California, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia are among a number of US states already taking steps to expand voting by mail [File: Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo]

Test case

More states are following California, the first in the nation to temporarily switch to all-mail balloting because of the virus. The Republican suit in federal court may become the key test case for the presidents bid to prevent a nationwide rollout of voting by mail.

Last month, Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from Michigan and Nevada, two battleground states that could turn the election, if they move ahead with plans to let voters cast ballots by mail.





Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the state official responsible for managing the voting process, sent mail-in ballot applications to the all of the states voters.

This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down the Voter Fraud path! Trump said in a tweet.

Benson immediately pushed back on Trumps claims.

Trump can call me a Rogue Secretary of State but I wont let lies slide, Benson wrote in an Op-Ed in Newsweek magazine.

These efforts  foreign, domestic, partisan or simply malicious  are designed to foster mistrust in our elections process, depress turnout and erode confidence in the election results and the sanctity of our democracy, Benson wrote.
Are Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban heading towards a divorce? After they denied all the rumors about them having marriage troubles, are they true after all?

According to the June 29, 2020 issue of Woman's Day Australia, Keith Urban, 52, and Nicole Kidman, 53 are starting to give up on their marriage.

The A-list couple has surpassed so many things in the past, which made them of the richest and most adored couples in Hollywood. However, their alleged struggles are starting to get too much.

According to the sources of this news outlet, the pressures and anxieties brought about by the strict lockdown have highlighted how much they could no longer get along. Whatever their fans are seeing on social media - sources claim these are all lies. Even if they put out a brave face on these platforms, the truth is that they are starting to get into each other's nerves.

One source explained that, "they're not used to spending this much time together." This can be true, since it happens to almost all people these days, who found themselves anxious and more irritated with people they spend so much time with at one residence. Nicole KIdman and Keith Urban have been holed up together in Nashville 24/7, the source said.

Instead of enjoying each other's company because they did not get to much of this in the past, the two cannot stop fighting. The source said that in the past, they would be working individually a lot and therefore spending periods apart from each other. This worked out so well for them so the sudden time together for months have them going a bit crazy.

Tension reportedly has built up and the two cannot stop bickering almost the whole day. They usually fight about the small things but naturally these pile up. They fought about the laundry and even the kids' toys! They also touched on each other's old insecurities. Some of these fights get so big that Keith Urban would rather sleep in a spare room, away from Nicole Kidman.

Of course, all these could just be rumors or made-up stories, despite the existence of said sources. After all, the same rumors circulated in the past.

Nicole Kidman just celebrated her 53th birthday and even though the pandemic just made celebration like in the past quite impossible, this does not mean she did not get well-wishers. She did, and one of them was actually her husband, Keith Urban.

The message was so sweet, too!

"WHAT A GIFT JANELLE AND ANTONY KIDMAN BROUGHT INTO THE WORLD ON THIS DAY !!! Happy Birthday Babygirl  Xxx," Urban, 52, wrote on Instagram. This was accompanying a truly cute phot of the actress hiding behind several pastel-colored balloons.

Does not seem like the two fought a lot but who knows right?

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman had been married since 2006. In Hollywood terms, that is already "forever." Moreover, they share two daughters, Sunday Rose at 11 and Faith Margaret at 9.

Kidman was previously married to Tom Cruise, and had two kids - Isabella, 27 and Connor, 25.

READ MORE: Goodbye, USA? Tom Cruise Ditching America Because Of THIS!
The UN Human Rights Council has adopted by consensus a Resolution on Prevention of Genocide, sponsored by Armenia, as reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia.

The press release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia particularly states the following: This resolution is one of the major commitments of the Government of Armenia on the international agenda. The Resolution was co-sponsored by 58 countries from all five regions involved, including all EU member states, other European countries, Asia, Africa, Central and Latin Americas, Australia and Canada. Such large-scale support attests to the importance that the international community attaches to the genocide prevention agenda. Once again, the Resolution calls on focusing on massive human rights violations since it is an accepted fact that those massive violations that have ethnic, religious and other components can lead to genocides in the future.

This year, there have been several innovations in the Resolution, and one of them is that the major role of civil society in the genocide prevention agenda is stressed. There is also special emphasis on the role of prevention of violence against women and ladies as a major part for genocide prevention. Another innovation is the importance of preservation of monuments and conservation of monuments and memorial sites as a major objective to prevent genocides and transmit the memory of genocides.

One of the key descriptors of the Resolution is the need to guide genocide prevention through special practical steps which further strengthens the efforts of the international community to never allow the horrible crime ever again. I would like to give special thanks to all the countries supporting our efforts. I would also like to thank the team at the Ministry of Foreiogn Affairs which helped make the adoption of this Resolution a success. I would also like to give special thanks to Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations Office at Geneva Andranik Hovhannisyan and the whole staff of the Embassy.

This Resolution serves as yet another new and qualitative step and introduces several new components to reinforce the genocide prevention agenda.
Vice President Mike Pence, with members of the White House coronavirus task force, speaks at the White House in March. (Associated Press)

Nearly 2.3 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and about 120,000 of them have died. With stay-at-home orders beginning to ease, the number of new cases confirmed each day is rising in some of the nations most populous states, including California, Texas and Florida.

Yet the vice president of the United States thinks the country is doing a great job managing the pandemic.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this month, Mike Pence wrote that America was winning the fight against the virus, thanks to the leadership of President Trump.

Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, made an array of claims to bolster his case: The national public health system is stronger now than when the outbreak began, he said, more tests are being given than ever before, and we're on track to have a vaccine this fall.

The L.A. Times asked Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn., and Julie Swann , an expert in healthcare systems at North Carolina State University, to assess Pences statements and put them in context. Heres what they said.

"There isn't a coronavirus second wave."

Swann agreed with Pence's contention that we're not facing a second wave of the coronavirus  but thats because most states are still in the midst of their first wave of the outbreak, she said.

I expect many more cases and deaths in the weeks and months to come, Swann said.

Places that have have already weathered significant outbreaks are certainly vulnerable to a second wave of infections, "just as Beijing is currently experiencing, she added.

"Our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago."

No, its not, Benjamin said.

While were working hard to address COVID-19, we are nowhere near where we need to be in terms of contact tracing and testing capacity, he said. We still have shortages of PPE [personal protective equipment], we still have supply lines that dont work, and when the next disaster hits on top of this one  most likely severe storms  we are going to be up the creek.

Story continues

He added that COVID-19 was not the only health crisis the country was facing. Sexually transmitted diseases continue to plague Americans, as do opioids, obesity and gun violence. Maternal mortality is up, as are deaths from cardiovascular disease.

"We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy."

The mortality and morbidity numbers show otherwise, Benjamin said.

Swann agreed, saying the nation's death toll would likely rise by many thousands more in the coming months. She noted, however, that many governors, universities and companies took swift action that led to greater physical distancing and ultimately slowed the coronavirus' spread in the U.S.

We have not conquered SARS-CoV-2," she said, "but I hope the distancing measures have given our health systems the time to prepare for the many challenges yet to come.

"More than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable."

This is correct, according to the most recent data. That may change, however, as the country continues to open up, Swann said.

For the most part, states that opened early  like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas  are already starting to see a rapid increase in cases," she said, "which are likely to grow over the coming weeks."

"Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%."

As of Friday, there were four states  Arizona, Alabama, Washington and South Carolina  where more than 10% of diagnostic tests came back positive, according to data collected by researchers at Johns Hopkins University .

But the experts agree thats nitpicking. Benjamin says he's more concerned about whether positive test rates will remain that low as businesses continue to open up.

"In the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings  prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities  and contain them."

Testing has helped health officials spot outbreaks like these, Benjamin said, but he is not yet convinced that the U.S. has been able to contain those outbreaks.

And the real problem, he said, was that the outbreaks were not prevented in the first place.

"Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000  down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May."

This may have been true when Pence wrote the piece, Benjamin said, but we are now seeing the number of cases going up.

Besides, he added, the figures Pence cited were averages that  because they hide peaks and valleys in regional areas  could be deceiving.

We know we are now getting new hotspots around the country," he said, "which will impact that number, and some of those hotspots are in places that have pretty dense populations.

'In the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago.'

This also could have been true at the time of Pences writing, Benjamin said, but deaths are a lagging indicator of how the virus is spreading in a population.

If you have a dramatic increase of cases like we're seeing," he said, "we would expect that two weeks later we would start seeing a rise in deaths."

'Today less than 6% of Americans tested each week are found to have the virus.'

Benjamin and Swann say this is likely true.

Swann noted, however, that although just 6% of the population might be infected at any given moment, over time we can expect 50% to 80% of the population to get sick from the virus unless there is a vaccine.

We are not anywhere close to that now, she said.

"We are performing roughly 500,000 tests a day, and more than 23 million tests have been performed in total."

Those figures may be accurate, but they're not as impressive as they might seem, Benjamin said.

Half a million tests per day "is nowhere near the number the Rockefeller Foundation had estimated that we need to manage this virus," he said. "We need to be at 1 to 2 million, maybe even 3 million a day."

"The Strategic National Stockpile hadn't been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009."

Pence was correct that the Strategic National Stockpile hadn't been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak, Benjamin said. Still, he said, it was the federal government's responsibility to restock it, and they didn't.

That means that, when the pandemic hit, healthcare providers were getting equipment that was out of date and dysfunctional.

"No American who required a ventilator was ever denied one."

Swann and Benjamin say that, as far as they know, this statement is correct.

Benjamin said, however, the reason no American was denied a ventilator was that healthcare workers jury-rigged DIY ventilators when they needed them.

Swann added that the decision of some governors to issue shelter-in-place directives helped limit the need for ventilators in the first place.

"We are well on our way to having a viable vaccine by the fall."

This statement is off by about four or five months, Benjamin said.

"We are more on our way to having viable vaccine by early winter, maybe late winter," he said. "But we are well on our way to having a vaccine. He is correct about that."

"We've slowed the spread, we've cared for the most vulnerable, we've saved lives, and we've created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future."

Pence attributed these successes to the Trump administration's "whole-of-America approach" to getting the outbreak under control. Benjamin challenged the notion that Washington, D.C., deserved the credit.

"Theyve had the most dysfunctional inter-government process Ive ever seen in my life," he said.

"The federal government," he said, "has not slowed the spread of the disease  the governors have slowed the spread of the disease."

He added that "the federal government certainly saved lives, but they could have saved more."
Three teenagers were killed in a Baldwin County car crash Sunday night, according to local law enforcement.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said in a press release Monday morning that the crash happened on the Baldwin County 39 at around 8:10 p.m. The three juveniles were driving in a 2014 Infinity Q50 when the vehicle left the roadway and struck a tree. Its not known why the vehicle left the road.

The driver and both passengers were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. Nothing further is available as Troopers continue to investigate, said the release.

Bay Minette Police Department also confirmed on Facebook Monday morning that the three teens had been killed while driving in the Crossroads community near Highway 39 but did not disclose names or ages.

Last night three area families were rocked by a tragic vehicle accident that claimed the lives of three young men, said the post. We ask our community to wrap their arms around these families and their many friends as they deal with this unimaginable accident. We here at the Bay Minette Police Department are deeply saddened by the loss of members of our community.

This is a breaking news and will be updated as new details become available.
For Lauri Jones, the trouble began in early May. The director of a small public health department in western Washington State was working with a family under quarantine because of coronavirus exposure. When she heard one family member had been out in the community, Jones decided to check in.

The routine phone call launched a nightmare.

"Someone posted on social media that we had violated their civil liberties [and] named me by name," Jones recalled. "They said, 'Let's post her address . . . Let's start shooting.' "

People from across the country began calling her personal phone with similar threats.

"We've been doing the same thing in public health on a daily basis forever. But we are now the villains," said Jones, 64, who called the police and set up surveillance cameras at her home.

Public health workers, already underfunded and understaffed, are confronting waves of protest at their homes and offices in addition to pressure from politicians who favor a faster reopening. Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said more than 20 health officials have been fired, resigned or have retired in recent weeks "due to conditions related to having to enforce and stand up for strong public health tactics during this pandemic."

Although shutdown measures are broadly popular, a vocal minority opposes them vociferously. There have been attacks on officials' race, gender, sexual orientation and appearance. Freeman said some of the criticisms "seem to be harsher for women."

Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said attacks on health officials have been particularly awful in California, Colorado, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This month in California, Nichole Quick, Orange County's chief health officer, stepped down after she faced threats and protests at her home for requiring face coverings in many businesses as cases rose. The mandate, issued May 23, was softened to a recommendation a week later.

Andrew Noymer, a professor of public health at the University of California at Irvine who is part of a county task force, said it was not the first time Quick had been undermined.

On March 17, Quick issued a strict lockdown order; a day later it was amended to add exceptions.

"It was couched as a clarification, but it was a walk back," Noymer said, because of pressure from business leaders.

Quick's departure is part of an exodus of public health officials across the country who have been blamed by both citizens and politicians for the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

"I don't think I've ever seen anybody resign for the kinds of reasons we've seen recently," Plescia said. "We are very concerned that if it continues to get worse it's going to have major implications for who will be willing to have these jobs."

Ohio's public health director, Amy Acton, shifted to an advisory role after enduring months of anger against the state's preventive measures, including armed protesters at her home bearing messages including anti-Semitic and sexist slurs. One Republican lawmaker linked Acton, who is Jewish, to Nazi Germany; another called her a dictator.

Georgia's public health director said last month that she receives threats daily and now has an armed escort.

Pennsylvania's secretary of health, who is transgender, has come under fire for the state's handling of the pandemic, including from a county official who resigned after saying at a recent meeting that he was "tired of listening to a guy dressed up as a woman."

Four public health officials in Colorado have left their jobs recently.

A day after telling political leaders in Weld County, Colo. that their insistence on a speedy reopening despite a high case rate and widespread transmission was giving him "serious heartburn," Public Health Director Mark Wallace got a 7:30 p.m. email: He had until 9 a.m., it said, to weigh in on guidelines for reopening businesses - "churches, salons, restaurants, etc."They would go public an hour later.

Wallace, who declined to comment for this article, retired soon after.

Theresa Anselmo, executive director of the Colorado Association of Local Public Health Officials, said 80 percent of members had reported being threatened and more than that were at risk of termination or lost funding.

"It's exhausting to be contradicted and argued with and devalued and demoralized all the time, and I think that's what you're seeing around the country," Anselmo said. "We've seen from the top down the federal government is pitting public health against freedom, and to set up that false dichotomy is really a disservice to the men and women who have dedicated their lives . . . to helping people."

Not everyone has left willingly. In Colorado's Rio Grande County, Emily Brown was fired, she says, after advocating a more cautious response to the virus.

"I think I just finally pushed too hard," she said. "There was resistance to taking steps as quickly as I felt they needed to be taken or move in directions I thought we needed to."

She had been in her position for six years and valued being part of a close-knit rural community. But during the pandemic, she said, she began getting threatening messages online from people she considered neighbors, including one Facebook post that referenced hanging. She became worried about who she might run into at the grocery store.

"I've been surprised at who professes that vitriol so vocally on platforms like social media," she said.

Derrick Neal, who runs the public health department in Round Rock, Texas, and is past president of the state public health workers' association, said given the virus's impact on daily life, public health was inevitably tied up in politics. "But a community has to be healthy in order to be economically solvent," he said. "That's been lost in the politics of all this."

Public health workers in California have also been battered publicly by business groups, ordinary citizens and elected officials. Several have resigned.

"Half a dozen county health leaders are leaving their positions in the coming weeks. All of them have served with distinction and in the interest of public health," California Medical Association president Peter Bretan Jr. said in a statement. "We are deeply concerned that politics may be trumping public interest."

After Los Angeles County health official Barbara Ferrer held a news conference on May 13 saying some stay-at-home restrictions may remain in place for three more months, a doctored photo of her with dark circles under her eyes made its way across social media. One tweet, liked or retweeted more than 100,000 times, called her "the most unhealthy looking person I have ever seen."

In a full-page ad in the local newspaper, a business council accused Santa Clara County's public health officer, Sara Cody, of "cratering our economy" for being the first in the nation to impose a shelter-in-place order. The local sheriff is now investigating threats against her.

People in the field worry that many of these vacant positions will be difficult to fill.

"This is the beginning of a wave of people leaving," Anselmo said. "Who would want to go work as a director in a public health department when you have a target on your back?"
MCLEAN, Va., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Eddy Perez, Property Manager at KETTLER, received recognition on the 30 Under 30 List for the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM). Eddy oversees KETTLER's first Multifamily Community in the state of Florida, a lease-up called Town Trelago.

With 8 years of Multifamily Industry experience, Eddy is an ambitious property manager whose dreams of growing within the industry are quickly becoming a reality. Although he joined KETTLER this year, his passion for property management thrives. When asked what this award means to him, Eddy shared that he is "all about making a difference," and leading by example.

"Eddy's 30 Under 30 Recognition from IREM came as no surprise to our team as he has been instrumental in the lease-up of our Florida Apartment Community, Town Trelago," says Michelle Priesner, Vice President of Operations at KETTLER. "With unprecedented challenges like the Coronavirus Pandemic, Eddy fearlessly committed to achieving his lease-up goals, and has done so with a 'can-do,' inspiring attitude that has been felt throughout the company in such a short period of time."

Eddy serves as Chair for the IREM Young Professionals Committee, has completed his ARM designation, and will be working on his CPM Candidacy in 2020. In 2019, he was nominated for Property Manager of the Year from the Apartment Association of Greater Orlando (AAGO), and currently serves on the AAGO Legislation Committee, demonstrating his commitment to improving the property management industry in the Florida region. For more information about KETTLER, visit www.kettler.com.

About the Award:

The IREM 30 Under 30 program recognizes 30 exceptional professionals under the age of 30 who are the next generation of leaders who have already made a significant impact on the industry and in their communities. Their various contributions to the profession are demonstrated through career success, professional leadership, and community involvement.

About KETTLER

KETTLER is an award-winning, multifamily developer, real estate investment, and property management company. Founded in 1977, the company has developed over 25,000 multifamily units, 5 million square feet of commercial space, more than 71,000 homes in 25 master-planned communities, and many of the D.C. Region's premier mixed-use communities. Headquartered in McLean, Va., the company manages approximately 20,000 apartments in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast regions. For more information, visit www.kettler.com.

MEDIA CONTACT: Melissa Fasano, 703-852-5774, [email protected]

SOURCE KETTLER

Related Links

http://www.kettler.com


Traffic Stop Leads To Recovery Of Stolen Vehicle And Narcotics

On Wednesday May 27, 2020 at approximately 12:18am, a routine check on a vehicles license plate was conducted, which in return came back as a Hit conformation for a stolen vehicle out of Dumas, Texas.



A traffic stop was administered on the vehicle with a final stopping point in the Lowes parking lot.



The driver, after further investigation was identified as Rosendo Perez.



Subject Perez was arrested for Fail to Identify, Fugitive from Justice, Driving While License Invalid 2nd and Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle.



The passenger, after further investigation was identified as Daniel Amador.



Subject Amador was arrested for Fail to Identify, Fugitive from Justice, False Information and Possession of Controlled Substance  Methamphetamine  4grams or more but less than 200 grams (41.96 grams or 1.48oz).



The Spearman Police Department is committed to keeping Spearman a safe place to live, work and raise of family.



Thank you,

Chief Lance A. Swan




Cons

WordPress gives you a wide range of quality themes that you can use to advance the design of your site.These themes are available at a very friendly cost. You can even get a specialized theme with as little as $20.There are more than 55, 000 plugins in WordPress to help you improve functionalities in your site. Some come at zero cost and others are paid.Most people use their mobile phones to browse, research about products, and even shop online. With this mind, WordPress developers ensure that websites are accessible to phone users.Thus, themes and designs on WordPress sites are very responsive to mobile phones.Speaking of optimization, WordPress sites are the best. WordPress has a variety of plugins that are simple and easy to use. This helps you to know what phrases or words are top to ensure that more people find your content.It's very easy to operate WordPress sites with less technical skills. You just need the basic skills to edit pages and update your site with ease.Some many informational sites and mediums document best practices regularly. Therefore, you wont have problems while developing your website as you have all the information you need.WordPress is great for building business sites since it attracts more traffic.In modern days, many people are searching and buying things online. This has led to rapid growth in online marketing as well as the amplification of internet use.Hence, entrepreneurs and company owners have no choice but to build business websites for advertisements to attract more clients.The following are the downsides of WordPress that you should know before using it to build your website;Website owners are left with the responsibility of their site's development and security.WordPress platform is openly accessible to the public, and this means that WordPress sites are susceptible to tech gurus and hackers.If you want to alleviate this risk, the best WordPress developer in Sydney helps you to learn how to secure your site.WordPress is continuously trying to make improvements to its structure. Therefore, frequent updates occur in WordPress sites.These updates could sometimes interfere with the sites performance.To mitigate this, we advise WordPress site owners to save a site back up before updating.Despite being a free platform, the efficiency of WordPress sites relies on customization themes and plugins. In most cases, these features come with a price, and failure to use them may hinder the functionality of your site.If you want to build an effective business website or whatsoever, consult with WordPress experts to ensure that you get the most out of it.
Ausenco to conduct an upgrading study on the Kidd concentrator in connection with the Wasamac gold project

Study constitutes Phase 1 of MOU between Monarch and Glencore Canada (see press release dated May 14, 2020 )

) Study results expected by October 2020

MONTREAL, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - MONARCH GOLD CORPORATION ("Monarch" or the "Corporation") (TSX: MQR) (OTCMKTS: MRQRF) (FRANKFURT: MR7) is pleased to announce that it has retained Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc. ("Ausenco") to conduct an upgrading study on the Kidd concentrator in connection with the potential use of the concentrator to treat the ore mined from the Wasamac gold project. The study constitutes Phase 1 of the memorandum of understanding ("MOU") recently signed with Glencore Canada.

As indicated in the May 14 press release, under Phase 1 of the MOU, Monarch is to launch a study on upgrading all or part of the Kidd concentrator and related infrastructure with a view to shipping the ore from the Wasamac property to the concentrator by railway for processing and transformation into dore bars. The upgrading study is expected to be completed by October 2020.

The study mandate calls for Ausenco to execute the study in two distinct phases. Phase I will focus on developing high-level costs and financials for two practical project options, whole ore leach and flotation leach, and Phase II will develop the preferred option to a pre-feasibility study level.

"We are excited to be working with an engineering firm like Ausenco, which has produced numerous solid studies and developed successful large mining projects around the globe, including recent and relevant benchmark projects such as Moose River Gold (Nova Scotia)," said Jean-Marc Lacoste, President and Chief Executive Officer of Monarch. "Ausenco has a strong track record of delivering project studies that go the extra step in optimizing the project economics."

"Ausenco has a project development ethos centred on cost-effective process and rail design coupled with efficient delivery, driving strong project economics and return on shareholder investment. We intend to apply that ethos to provide a differentiated approach for the Wasamac project, one that extracts the maximum value for Monarch and sets the stage to move from the upgrading study into project execution and commercial production," said Garry Warren, President North America Project Delivery of Ausenco.

Quality control and qualified person

The technical and scientific content of this press release has been reviewed and approved by Marc-Andre Lavergne, P.Eng., the Corporation's qualified person under National Instrument 43101.

Disclaimer

For confidentiality reasons, Monarch reserves the right to not disclose the results of the study on the Kidd concentrator.

ABOUT AUSENCO

Ausenco is a global company redefining what's possible. Our team is based across 26 offices in 14 countries, with projects in over 80 locations worldwide. Combining our deep technical expertise with a 30-year track record, we provide innovative, value-add consulting and engineering studies and project delivery, asset operations and maintenance solutions to the mining & metals, oil & gas and industrial sectors.

ABOUT MONARCH GOLD CORPORATION

Monarch Gold Corporation (TSX: MQR) is an emerging gold mining company focused on becoming a 100,000 to 200,000 ounce per year gold producer through its large portfolio of high-quality projects in the Abitibi mining camp in Quebec, Canada. The Corporation currently owns over 315 km of gold properties (see map), including the Wasamac deposit (measured and indicated resource of 2.6 million ounces of gold, which includes proven and probable reserves of 1.8 million ounces of gold), the Beaufor, Croinor Gold (see video), and McKenzie Break advanced projects, the Camflo and Swanson exploration projects, and the Camflo and Beacon mills. It also offers custom milling services out of its 1,600 tonne-per-day Camflo mill.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements in this press release involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Monarch's actual results, performance and achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied therein. Neither TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

www.monarquesgold.com

SOURCE Monarch Gold Corporation

Related Links

http://www.monarquesgold.com/en/


Maine Forest Service

Landowner Resolves Water Quality Violations with Maine Forest Service

June 22, 2020

AUGUSTA - The Maine Forest Service (MFS) entered into an administrative settlement agreement with GR Timber Holdings LLC (GRTH). GRTH, based in Van Buren, agreed to pay a $20,000 civil penalty and to institute training and oversight measures to reduce the risk of future violations. The settlement resolves GRTH's violation of Maine's rules governing timber harvesting activities in the town of Woodland, in Aroostook County.

During a 2018 timber harvest, GRTH constructed a land management road on the property and installed a crossing on the Caribou Stream to access the northern half of the property, without obtaining necessary MFS permitting. In the process, GRTH installed two culverts that did not meet the minimum opening size requirements. Because the culverts were undersized, the fifty-foot stream crossing failed and washed out during the annual spring high water event, causing a large amount of sediment discharged into the Caribou Stream. In addition to the crossing failure, non-terminating ditches associated with the crossing consisting of exposed soil also delivered large sediment discharges to Caribou Stream during rain events from January through August 2018. GRTH removed the remaining culverts and stabilized its approaches to Caribou Stream, at the direction of MFS.

"Our goal is to improve the management of Maine's forests," said Patty Cormier, MFS Director. "We focus on educating and informing landowners to reduce the possibility of such violations. When violations do occur, however, we have a responsibility to uphold the law. We take this and our other responsibilities very seriously."

"GRTH was cooperative and took full responsibility for the violation," commented Dave Rochester, MFS Regional Enforcement Coordinator. "These violations resulted from inadequate harvest planning and a failure to review the forestry rules before the operations began," Rochester continued.

Regional Enforcement Coordinator Dave Rochester conducted the investigation and settlement negotiations with the assistance of MFS staff. Rochester is available for comment at (207) 441-3817.

About MFS Since 1891, the mission of MFS is to protect and enhance forest resources through fire prevention, technical assistance, education, outreach to a wide variety of audiences; and enforcement of forest protection laws. MFS offices are found throughout Maine and provide its citizens with a wide range of forest-related services. For more information about the Maine Forest Service and its programs, visit our website at www.maineforestservice.gov.

#

Maine Forest Service Lifts Brush Burning Restrictions

June 30, 2020

OLD TOWN - Due to increased rainfall, the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry's Maine Forest Service (MFS), aligned with local fire departments and town forest fire wardens, today lifted the statewide brush burning restriction.

The online brush and debris burning permit restriction recently went into effect due to extreme fire danger, with the initial notification stating it would remain in effect until the state sees adequate levels of precipitation. Though lifted, depending on precipitation levels in the coming weeks, the brush and debris fire permit restriction may be restarted.

Access the online burn permit system @ www.maineburnpermit.com.

Fireworks Safety Tips

The following recommendations are offered to use fireworks safely by the Office of State Fire Marshal and the MFS

A person may use consumer fireworks only on that person's property or on the property of a person who has consented to that use of fireworks on that property.

Consumer fireworks may be used between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. except on the following dates when they may be used between 9:00 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. the following day: July 4th December 31st, and The weekends immediately before and after July 4th and December 31st

Users and those in possession of consumer fireworks must be 21 years of age.

Set off fireworks outdoors in a clear area, away from houses, dry leaves, or grass and other flammable materials.

Keep a bucket of water nearby for emergencies. Do not handle fireworks that fail to go off. Use a long-handled shovel to scoop up the firework and immerse it in the bucket of water.

Do not try to relight or handle malfunctioning fireworks. Soak them with water and throw them away.

Be sure other people and children are out of range before lighting fireworks.

Never light fireworks in a container, especially a glass or metal container.

Keep unused fireworks away from firing areas.

Always use fireworks according to the 'manufacturer's directions and guidelines.

Always use eye, ear, and hand personal protective equipment.

Observe all local laws and ordinances.

Never have any portion of your body directly over a firework while lighting.

When the use of fireworks is done, continue to watch the area of use to be sure that all fireworks debris is out and not smoldering or hot.

Search any forested area adjacent to and downwind of the ignition site looking for hot or smoldering debris. Scan the forest canopy, as well as the ground. If a wildfire occurs as a result of negligence, then you may be responsible for fire suppression costs.

In case of emergency, dial 911.

Campfire Safety Tips

Before considering burning, check www.mainefireweather.org for local fire conditions.

Keep the fire small, not tall. That way, if you have to leave suddenly, it is easy to extinguish.

The campfire should be at least 50 feet away from any structures and on level ground.

Do not use accelerants to start your fire.

Always have plenty of water on hand and tools available to put out the fire.

When you are done, check the fire several times to ensure it is out.

Supervise children and pets near the fire and never leave your fire unattended.

About MFS

Since 1891, the mission of the MFS is to protect and enhance forest resources through fire prevention, technical assistance, education, outreach to a wide variety of audiences; and enforcement of forest protection laws. MFS offices are found throughout Maine and provide its citizens with a wide range of forest-related services. For more information about the MFS and its programs, visit http://www.maineforestservice.gov

Landowner Resolves Water Quality Violations with Maine Forest Service

July 15, 2020

Contact: Adam Cates, (207) 441-4139

AUGUSTA - The Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry's Maine Forest Service (MFS) has entered into an administrative settlement agreement with Wagner Forest Management, Ltd. (Wagner). Based in Lyme, NH, Wagner agreed to pay a $6,000 civil penalty and institute staff training to reduce the risk of future violations. The settlement resolves Wagner's violation of Maine's rules governing timber harvesting activities on property owned by Bayroot, LLC, in Parkertown Twp. (T5 R3 WBKP), in Oxford County, ME.

During a 2019 timber harvest, Wagner failed to adequately stabilize exposed soil on skid trails, harvest landings, and land management road ditches. Also, Wagner failed to utilize water control structures and provide required vegetated filter strips between exposed soil and protected water resources. As a result of a heavy rain event in October 2019, a significant amount of sediment was deposited into several small streams and Lincoln Pond Brook, a major tributary to Aziscohos Lake. Wagner stabilized exposed soil in road ditches and installed water control structures at the direction of MFS.

"Our goal is to improve the management of Maine's forests," said Patty Cormier, MFS Director. "We focus on educating and informing landowners to reduce the possibility of such violations. When violations do occur, however, we have a responsibility to uphold the law. We take this and our other responsibilities very seriously."

"Wagner was cooperative and took full responsibility for the violation," said Adam Cates, MFS Regional Enforcement Coordinator. "These violations resulted from inadequate harvest planning and a failure to review the forestry rules before the operations began."

MFS strongly recommends checking with the town or municipality about any local ordinances and being familiar with all rules that apply before beginning harvest operations. MFS rules and regulations for timber harvesting and related activities are found on maineforestservice.gov.

Regional Enforcement Coordinator Adam Cates conducted the investigation and settlement negotiations with the assistance of MFS staff. Cates is available for comment at (207) 441-4139.

About MFS

Since 1891, the MFS mission is to protect and enhance forest resources through fire prevention, technical assistance, education, and outreach to a wide variety of audiences and enforcement of forest protection laws. MFS offices are found throughout Maine and provide its citizens with a wide range of forest-related services. For more information about the MFS and its programs, visit the MFS website at maineforestservice.gov.

#

Economic Recovery Grant Program Established

August 20, 2020

Maine small businesses and nonprofits should apply for a newly established Economic Recovery Grant. The program will provide financial relief for businesses and nonprofit organizations that incurred business disruptions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Refer to this document (PDF) for eligibility criteria, distribution criteria, and the grant calculation formula.

Register for an Informational Webinar

Join the Department of Economic and Community Development's Commissioner Heather Johnson and Business Development Manager Jonathan Poole for an informational webinar on the Economic Recovery Grant Program.

This informational session will provide you with the information required to apply for this grant program and will give you an opportunity to ask questions.

Register for Friday, August 21 at 10:00 AM

Register for Tuesday, August 25 at 11:00 AM

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Economic Recovery Grant Program Frequently Asked Questions

Learn more on https://www.maine.gov/decd/economic-recovery-grants

Note to Maine agricultural producers: USDA extended CFAP application period to September 11, 2020. Producers should inquire about eligibility and apply through the Farm Service Agency at their local USDA Service Center.

National Invasive Species Awareness Week, February 22-26

February 19, 2021

Ten Ways to Slow or Prevent the Spread of Invasive Species in Maine

AUGUSTA - "Together, we can do more" is the theme under which the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry (DACF) is rolling out its 2021 National Invasive Species Awareness Week (NISAW) campaign. NISAW, February 22-26, is the annual program designed to raise consumer awareness of invasive species, the threats they pose, and what can be done to slow or prevent their spread.

DACF, with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, invites everyone to join in NISAW by using this opportunity to learn more about invasive species harming Maine's natural resources, including their economic impacts, and get involved.

Ten Ways to Slow or Prevent the Spread of Invasive Species in Maine

#

Photos are free to use (courtesy Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry)

Together We Can Do More to Monitor Emerald Ash Borer

February 23, 2021

Colleen Teerling girdling an ash tree (Image -DACF).

"It's too soon for me to start monitoring for emerald ash borer."

"My property is too far away from any emerald ash borer in Maine for us to find it here."

Ive heard statements like this often. But the truth is, there is no area in Maine that is "too far away" from a known emerald ash borer (EAB) infestation to start monitoring for EAB. Girdled trap trees are one of our most powerful monitoring tools to find new EAB infestations as well as to track the inevitable spread of EAB that is already established here.

Every year since we first found EAB in Maine, most of the new detections of EAB farthest away from known infestations have been found due to girdled trap trees. Because this method is so sensitive, we have often found EAB at least a year (and sometimes more) before we start to see more obvious signs of infestation. This gives landowners and towns time to plan harvests and ash management before trees start to show symptoms and it becomes less safe to work in the brittle, declining trees.

A girdled ash trap tree (Image - Blue Hill Heritage Trust)

An additional benefit to both the landowner and the long-term outlook for ash trees in the state is that many of the positive trap trees have become the center of new biocontrol release sites. Maine Forest Service together with USDA APHIS is releasing three types of parasitoids (insect enemies of EAB) for long-term control of EAB, and many of our release sites have been located using girdled trap trees. Releasing these natural enemies early on in an infestation, as is often found by a trap tree, increases their chance of success.

Woodlot owners with ash on their landscape have been at the heart of Maines Girdled Trap Tree Network since its start a decade ago. Any landowner with ash on their property is welcome to be part of this effort. Participants have included municipalities, land trusts, state parks, private landowners and many others.

What we ask is that landowner girdle a tree in the spring. Peeling back the bark all the way around the tree stresses it and draws in any EAB that might be in the immediate area. This cannot draw EAB in from more than a few hundred feet away so you will not attract them to your property if they are not already there. The tree is then felled in the autumn and segments of the tree brought to regional peeling workshops where the bark is carefully removed to look for signs of EAB.

If you think you might be interested in participating in Maines girdled ash tree network, please contact foresthealth@maine.gov or (207) 287-2431. Detailed information on how to choose a good tree and additional instructions will be provided in the spring, at which time you can decide if you wish to participate. If you are interested in participating but are not sure you have the means to set up and remove a trap tree yourself, please sign up, since in some cases MFS can assist with those tasks.

Although EAB cannot be eradicated from Maine, monitoring is a crucial part of slowing the spread of this pest, lowering our costs, and increasing the success of keeping ash on the landscape.

Peeling a girdled trap tree (Image -- Acadia National Park)

- Colleen Teerling, Maine Forest Service Forest Entomologist

Learn more about emerald ash borer and other forest pests

Maine Forest Service staff will provide an overview of some of the invasive insect and pathogens that are currently causing problems for the health of Maines Forests and the emerging threats on Maines doorstep.

Speakers:

Aaron Bergdahl, Forest pathologist

Colleen Teerling, Forest entomologist

Mike Parisio, Forest entomologist

Tom Schmeelk, Forest entomologist

This remote presentation will be held on February 24, 2021 from 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM. The presentation is free and open to the public. If interested please register. CEUs are available.

Maine Slows Spread of Emerald Ash Borer with Continued Ash Movement Restrictions

February 24, 2021

Public comments are sought regarding proposed rules to continue regulating the movement of products containing ash, hardwood firewood, and rooted ash trees.

AUGUSTA - The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry's (DACF) Plant Health Program (PHP) and Maine Forest Service (MFS) announced today that Maine is taking the next step to continue regulating the movement of ash wood material. Moving ash infested with Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) can spread this invasive insect to new areas. This decision follows USDA's January 14, 2021 announcement of removing federal domestic EAB quarantine regulations. DACF continues to see opportunities to slow EAB's spread; an estimated 90% of Maine's ash trees are outside of Maine's currently regulated areas. Ash is an important cultural resource for the Wabanaki, an important street tree, and a valuable timber species, accounting for around four percent of Maine's hardwood forest inventory.

Maine's proposed EAB quarantine rules would maintain the prohibition on moving potentially EAB-infested materials into Maine's non-regulated areas from other states or Canadian provinces.

The proposed rules also include three options for expanding the areas regulated within Maine.

Maines amended quarantine proposal, which remains functionally the same as before federal de-regulation, includes three options for expanding the regulated area in Aroostook County. Each option addresses a specific concern. The Department needs to receive comments on all three. Any of the options could be adopted.

Option one adds three towns to provide a buffer around the latest EAB find in Van Buren. (see maps)

Option two includes all the towns in option one plus three towns west of Fort Kent. These towns are proposed to help facilitate firewood movement for home heating from dealers in the regulated area to St. John Plt., St. Francis, and Allagash. (see maps)

Option three includes all the towns in options one and two and adds a large block of towns south of the existing regulated area. This area is proposed to allow firewood movement from major dealers inside the current quarantine area south to Easton and west to T11 R7 WELS. This option will deregulate the flow of firewood and ash materials into the larger towns of Presque Isle, Caribou, and Fort Fairfield and to mills within the area. (see maps)

The new proposal would also ease the restrictions on the movement of hardwood and ash wood chips.

In the proposed rule, the restrictions on the movement of composted or uncomposted chips of the genus Fraxinus are removed. After years of EAB regulation across the country, the risk of chipped ash material has not appeared to be as high as previously thought. Removing this restriction should not significantly increase the potential for EAB spread.

A virtual public hearing is scheduled for March 16, 2021, from 10:00 to 11:00 AM. Anyone interested in making public comment may join the meeting using MS-Teams or by telephone at (207) 209-4724 - confirmation code: 390 166 010#.

Written comments may be submitted until 5 PM April 2, 2021, to gary.fish@maine.gov or Gary Fish, Maine DACF Horticulture, 28 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0028.

Despite a potential expansion of the regulated area, MFS and the PHP encourage land managers to follow Best Management Practices to reduce the spread of EAB within the regulated areas.

EAB threatens all ash tree species (excluding mountain-ash) and will have significant ecological and economic impacts on the state. There are no practical means to control EAB in forested areas, though pesticide treatments can protect individual trees.

More information on EAB can be found on the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry's EAB website.

Questions about the proposed rule can be directed to gary.fish@maine.gov or by telephone at 207-287-7545.

DACF Commissioner Amanda Beal Presents Maine Forest Ranger With Nation's Highest Award for Wildfire Prevention

April 13, 2021

Governor Mills proclaims April 18-24 Wildfire Awareness Week

AUGUSTA - At a Blaine House Ceremony today, Maine Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Commissioner Amanda Beal presented Maine Forest Service Ranger Specialist Kent Nelson with the Silver Smokey Bear Award, the highest national honor one can receive for outstanding work and significant program impact in wildfire prevention. Ranger Nelson is one of two people to earn this national recognition in 2021.

"Maine is the most heavily forested state in the country, which means that wildfire prevention is something that we must take very seriously," said Governor Mills. "It is why Maine Forest Service Rangers, like Ranger Specialist Kent Nelson, are so important. Their efforts, along with those of fire departments across Maine, are critical to keeping our state safe. I am honored to congratulate Specialist Nelson on this well-deserved recognition and thank him for his efforts to safeguard our forests and protect Maine people."

"Creating awareness of ways to reduce human-caused wildfires ignition is a critical role for Maine Forest Service, and Ranger Specialist Kent Nelson is a gifted and talented ambassador to this cause who has repeatedly demonstrated creativity and innovation in crafting and disseminating engaging and effective messaging to educate the public," added DACF Commissioner Amanda Beal.

Smokey Bear awards have been bestowed on well-deserving groups and individuals annually since 1957. The Silver Smokey Bear Award specifically recognizes organizations or individuals for outstanding wildfire prevention service that is regional (multistate) in scope over at least a two-year period. The National Association of State Foresters, the USDA Forest Service, and The Ad Council sponsor the Awards, and nominations are considered and voted upon by members of the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Committee.

Maine Forest Service Director and State Forester Patty Cormier and Chief Forest Ranger Bill Hamilton joined Governor Mills and DACF Commissioner Beal to present Ranger Nelson with the award today.

Ranger Nelson has worked in the Maine Forest Service for two decades, serving as Maine's wildfire prevention specialist a role in which he administers Maines wildfire prevention and FireWise programs and raises public awareness on how to prevent wildfires. In 2019, with Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact colleagues, Ranger Nelson implemented a year-long campaign dedicated to preventing wildfires by celebrating Smokey Bear's 75th birthday.

At today's Silver Smokey Bear Award event, the Governor proclaimed April 18-24 as Wildfire Awareness Week in Maine.

Maine has already seen over 100 wildfires in 2021, and 2020 was a record-breaking year. During Wildfire Awareness Week, the MFS Forest Protection Division and municipal fire departments need everyone's support to prevent wildfires. Maine averages over 550 wildfires annually, over ninety percent of which are caused by people, destroy valuable natural resources, property, and threaten human life.

Wildfire safety starts with knowing and obeying local laws and regulations. Everyone is asked to check with their town hall, local fire service, or the Maine Forest Service before burning. Other critical steps to preventing wildfires include mindfulness of weather conditions, particularly wind, and using only easily controlled locations for burning. Most importantly, never use flammable gas-propellants.

Maine Wildfire Prevention Resources:
Both Hitchcock/Grace Kelly collaborations from 1954 are entertaining, but this unbearably tense gem is a better movie than "Dial M for Murder." Jimmy Stewart plays a photographer, laid up with a broken leg, who thinks he sees evidence a neighbor across the courtyard has murdered his wife. In the pivotal scene, he watches as his girlfriend (Kelly) almost becomes a victim, too, while snooping for evidence in the killer's apartment. All movies turn us into voyeurs, but this sadistic masterpiece taunts us with the knowledge that  like Stewart  we're powerless to do anything about what's happening on screen, even if we want to.
The Kaduna State Government on Monday said military patrol did not find bandits on Zangang Hill contrary to speculations by some residents of the state.

Some groups in Kaura Local Government had some days ago alleged, in a widely publicised press statement, that over 600 armed bandits were hiding at Zangang Hills.

The Kaduna State Government said following the alarm, it immediately reached out to security agencies for immediate action on the matter.

Operation Safe Haven (OPSH), the military units deployed by Defence Headquarters in response to the security challenges in Plateau, Bauchi and parts of Kaduna State, and a detachment of the Special Forces of the Nigerian Army carried out extensive fighting patrols to the said Zangang Hill on 21st June 2020, Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna commissioner for internal security and home affairs, said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES.

The fighting patrol stretched up to the Kagoro Hills and other suspected hideouts. Troops did not encounter any group of armed bandits throughout the extensive fighting patrols.

Furthermore, not a single bandit camp was found in the area and there is also no evidence of human activity in and around the hills as the reader will glean in the pictures attached to this press statement.

Mr Aruwan added, The Kaduna State Government commends the Commander of OPSH, Major General CC. Okonkwo and his team in Sector 7 (Southern Kaduna) under the leadership of Col. GU. Akpan, officers and men for a job well done.

The Kaduna Government wishes to reiterates its appeal to aggrieved communities, individuals and groups to always have recourse to the law so as to avoid killings and counter killings that deepen the vicious cycles of reprisals.

READ ALSO:

Contrary to the misreading of the security challenges, what stands out as a major impediment to peace has been the resort to self help and jungle justice, rather than complying with the rule of law.

Citizens with credible information on any criminal activity, including banditry, are encouraged to confide their suspicions to security agencies and government for prompt action.

The Security Operations Room, a 24-hour security information centre is available to be receiving details discreetly on 09034000060, 08170189999 and Internal.Security@kdsg.gov.ng for immediate action.

SEE PHOTOS BELLOW

Some of the military operatives on Zangang Hill
China on Monday again blamed India for initiating the violent clash in Ladakhs Galwan Valley last week that left 20 Indian and an unspecified number of Chinese troops dead even as it said the two countries were in touch to resolve the issue through diplomatic and military channels.

The Chinese [side] has repeatedly stated that the rights and wrongs of this incident are very clear and initiated by the Indian side, and the responsibility does not rest with China, Chinese foreign ministry spokespersons office said in a written statement in Mandarin to HT.

China always strictly abides by the agreements signed between the two countries and carries out patrols and duties on the Chinese side of the line of actual control (LAC).

The statement added Beijing hopes that the two sides will earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, step up communication and coordination on properly handling the border situation and jointly safeguard peace and tranquillity of the border area.

China on Friday released a so-called step-by-step account of the clash. It claimed Galwan Valley is located on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control in the west section of the China-India boundary and blamed India for the clash.

India rejected the claims of Chinas sovereignty over the Valley, calling them exaggerated and untenable.

At a regular briefing on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry also refused to share any details of the ongoing military-to-military talks in the region. It stalled a query on the number of casualties that the Peoples Liberation Army suffered in the hand-to-hand fighting on June 15 in Galwan Valley.

China and India are in communication with each other to resolve the situation on the ground through diplomatic and military channels. I have no information to release on that, the ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian said.

Zhaos comment was in response to a query on Indian minister V K Singhs statement on Sunday in which he said China could have lost double the number of soldiers India lost in the clash.

The Chinese government has refused to reveal its casualty figures though state-controlled media has said both sides suffered casualties.

INDIAN RESPONSE, INDEPENDENT COMMENT

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said at a press conference on Monday that he is concerned the coronavirus is spreading at an "unacceptable rate" following the state's reopening, but that he would only support a second shutdown as a last resort.

Why it matters: Texas is well into its "phase 3" of reopening, allowing businesses to host up to 50% capacity. But the state outbreak is one of several that has seen a surge in infections in recent weeks, averaging more than 3,500 daily new cases and a positivity rate higher than 9%.

Abbott did not announce any new executive actions to stem the spread of the virus, but said that "wearing a mask will help us to keep Texas open because not taking action to slow the spread will cause COVID to spread even worse."

"Closing down Texas again will always be the last option," he added.

Abbott allowed the state's original stay-at-home order to expire on April 30.

By the numbers: As of Monday afternoon, Texas has reported over 113,200 coronavirus cases in total, with over 2,100 deaths.

The big picture: Texas is one of a dozen states that has seen record highs in new coronavirus cases since Friday, according to ABC News. Some increases are attributable to a growth in testing.

The other states are Florida, Utah, South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Arizona, California, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Go deeper: U.S. coronavirus cases are increasing, but deaths aren't  yet
WASHINGTON  Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., is calling for an independent investigation after the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York left his post Saturday amid a public battle with Attorney General William Barr, who sought to remove him.

The removal of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman has raised concerns among Democrats that it was done to protect President Donald Trump, whose associates Berman has investigated, including Rudolph Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer and a former New York City mayor.

U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told ABC's "The Week" that House Democrats have invited Berman to testify before the Judiciary Committee and expect that he will do so soon. On Wednesday, two Department of Justice whistleblowers are scheduled to testify before the committee.

Fired US attorney refused to sign letter critical of NYC

But Schumer wrote to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Jeffrey Ragsdale Monday asking them to immediately conduct a joint investigation into Berman's departure.

"As the attorney general was not truthful when he initially represented that U.S. Attorney Berman was 'stepping down,' this corrupt firing cannot be explained by cause and gives the impression that the president interfered in ongoing criminal investigations into himself and his associates," Schumer wrote. "To help restore confidence in and prevent further abuses to the administration of justice, the American people deserve to know the truth."

Several Senate Republicans said Monday Barr and Trump were in the rights to replace Berman.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he didn't see anything "wrong" or "fishy" about it. But he did say he would not move forward with confirming Trump's new nominee for the position, Jay Clayton, without a "blue slip" of support from Clayton's home state senators, Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Schumer and Gillibrand have called on Clayton to withdraw his name from consideration.

"I will not be complicit in helping President Trump and Attorney General Barr fire a U.S. attorney who is reportedly investigating corruption in this administration," Gillibrand said. "Jay Clayton should withdraw his name from consideration immediately and remove himself from this sham. President Trump cannot be allowed to desecrate our nominations process further.

On Friday, Barr announced in a press release that Berman was "stepping down" from his post after two and a half years. Berman said in his own subsequent press release that he had not resigned, had no intention of resigning and had only learned he was "stepping down" in Barr's press announcement.

Nominate your favorite people and places now Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Nominate your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

"I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate," Berman said. "Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption. I cherish every day that I work with the men and women of this office to pursue justice without fear or favor  and intend to ensure that this offices important cases continue unimpeded.

Barr sent Berman a letter Saturday announcing that Trump was removing him from office because Berman would not leave the position in an "amicable" way. Barr announced that deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, would fill the post until a permanent successor is confirmed by the Senate.

"I wanted the opportunity to choose a distinguished New York lawyer, Jay Clayton, to nominate as United States Attorney and was hoping for your cooperation to facilitate a smooth transition," Barr wrote to Berman. "When the Department of Justice advised the public of the president's intent to nominate your successor, I had understood that we were in ongoing discussions concerning the possibility of your remaining in the department or administration in one of the other senior positions we discussed, including assistant attorney general for the Civil Division and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Clayton is the current chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Barr said his experience with financial regulations gave him the "ideal background" for the Manhattan-based U.S. attorney's position.

Berman was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1990 to 1994 and then worked in private practice until he was tapped for the top job in that office in 2018.
PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Turkeys attitude in Libya is unacceptable as France sees Ankara as an obstacle to securing a cease-fire in the conflict-torn country.

Macron spoke at an evening news conference with Tunisian President Kais Saied in Paris.

Macron urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to end his countrys actions in Libya.

I consider today that Turkey plays in Libya a dangerous game and is in breach of all its commitments, he said.

Macron said he discussed the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call earlier on Monday.

The White House said the two leaders agreed on the urgent need for a cease-fire in Libya and for the rapid resumption of negotiations by the Libyan parties. Trump and Macron reiterated that military escalation on all sides must stop immediately to prevent the Libyan conflict from becoming even more dangerous and intractable.

Tensions between France and Turkey escalated following a June 10 incident between Turkish warships and a French naval vessel in the Mediterranean, which France considers a hostile act under NATOs rules of engagement. Turkey has denied harassing the French frigate.

France accused Ankara of repeated violations of the U.N. arms embargo on conflict-torn Libya.

Libya has been in turmoil since 2011 when a NATO-backed uprising toppled leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed.

The country has since been split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by armed groups and different foreign governments.

On his first trip to Europe since he was elected in October last year, Saied is also the first head of state to visit France since the lockdown of the country amid the pandemic. Virus restrictions enforced in France in mid-March have almost all been lifted in recent weeks.

Tunisia has strong political and economic ties with France, its former colonial power.

Mondays meeting in Paris, followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace, also comes less than two weeks after Tunisias parliament rejected a motion calling on France to apologize for crimes permitted during the colonial era and pay reparations.

Opponents argued that such a move would spell economic disaster, given that France is Tunisias top trading partner and No. 1 foreign investor. Its also home to 1 million Tunisians.

But proponents of the motion said an apology is necessary to turn the page on this dark period in the history of the two countries and put their relations on a more equal footing.

The debate came amid renewed anger in some European countries about colonialisms crimes, stemming from protests in the U.S. over racial injustice and police violence after the death of George Floyd.

France occupied Tunisia as a protectorate for 75 years, from 1881 until 1956. French soldiers only left Tunisian territory in 1963.

___

AP writer Nancy Benac in Washington contributed to the story.
Dubai Economy is inviting Huawei users to benefit from its smart and innovative Dubai Consumer app available on the Huawei AppGallery as part of enhancing consumer rights awareness and protection.



The Dubai Consumer, the official app of Dubai Economy promoting consumer rights awareness and protection in Dubai, was launched on the Huawei AppGallery last year and become one of the top UAE essential applications.



Mohammed Ali Rashed Lootah, CEO, Commercial Compliance & Consumer Protection (CCCP) sector, Dubai Economy, said: We are very pleased with our cooperation with Huawei in making the Dubai Consumer app available to its users. Dubai Economy is committed to the smart transformation of Dubai, and we are seeing an increasing number of consumers who want to use the app to communicate with us and improve their awareness of their rights.



The application being available on the Huawei AppGallery has supported our efforts to ensure that consumers are still able to continue to access Dubai Government services from the safety and convenience of their own homes, through Huawei devices, despite the restrictions mandated by COVID-19.



The app provides an official channel for consumers to conveniently raise their queries and complaints to Dubai Economy while traders can register and track the issues brought forth, safe and easy.



The Dubai Consumer app has been included in Huaweis TOP UAE Apps listing, a selection of the essential and popular apps available for the UAE residents and visitors, which highlights local content and services. The Huawei AppGallery has nine years of experience in aggregating apps from leading local organisations and developers, along with popular international apps, to give users the best possible choice of applications.



The IP Gateway app of CCCP, which allows traders to open files and submit complaints relating to intellectual property (IP) infringement in Dubai from anywhere, anytime has also been added to the Huawei AppGallery. Brand owners, representatives and patent holders can use the app to file complaints and also track the investigation, monitoring and confiscation processes of Dubai Economy, as well as obtain data and reports on the action. The app is aligned to the leaderships directive on a manual-to-smart transformation of processes that protect IP rights.



The Huawei AppGallery features innovative apps that have been specifically developed to unlock advanced software and hardware capabilities of Huawei smart devices. All apps in the Huawei AppGallery have been created with a security first approach, and are thoroughly tested before launch, which ensures that apps have the highest standards of data protection and security. These measures ensure that users get the best possible experience from apps running on their Huawei smart devices.



Huawei is proud to be able to support Dubai Economy in extending its smart services to Huawei users via the Huawei AppGallery, said Keith Li, UAE Country Manager Consumer Business Group Huawei.



The Huawei AppGallery is focused on quality, innovation and security, and the high standard of our apps is what attracts over 400 million active users per month to the platform worldwide. By having Dubai Consumer in our portfolio, we are providing another great experience to UAE users, while helping them to observe physical distancing measures and protect their consumer rights at the same time.



The AppGallery is available in more than 170 countries and regions with 400 million monthly active users globally. These cover mainstream apps and services in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and more.  TradeArabia News Service
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazil passed the bleak milestone of one million coronavirus cases Friday, reporting a new one-day record number of infections as the pandemic continues to surge in Latin America's largest country.

The health ministry said it had recorded 54,771 new infections, a jump it said was largely due to "instability" in its reporting system, which meant some states were reporting figures from multiple days.

That brought the total number of infections in Brazil to 1,032,913, with 48,954 deaths -- second only to the United States worldwide.

Experts say under-testing means the real numbers are probably much higher.

Despite the grim figures, the infection curve in Brazil is finally showing signs of flattening.

But the country of 212 million people is one of the most worrying hotspots in the pandemic.

Since the start of June, it has registered the most new infections and deaths of any country in the world, according to an AFP count based on official figures -- more than 518,000 and 19,000, respectively.

It has recorded daily death tolls of more than 1,000 on each of the past four days.

Brazil has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who has famously compared the virus to a "little flu," has clashed with state and local authorities over their use of stay-at-home measures and business closures to contain it.

The far-right leader argues the economic impact of such measures risks being worse than the virus itself, and has instead pushed his health ministry to recommend chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments, despite uncertainty about the anti-malaria drugs' effectiveness against COVID-19.

Bolsonaro threatened this month to quit the World Health Organization, accusing it of "ideological bias" against the drugs, and has ditched two health ministers since the start of the pandemic after clashing over policy differences.

The health minister he fired in April, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, told AFP Brazilians have suffered because of mixed messages from the government.

Story continues

"The health ministry and state governors are telling people to stay home and practice social distancing, and the president is saying and doing the opposite," he said.

A year and a half into his term, Bolsonaro has been weakened by the pandemic, as well as a series of investigations targeting him and his inner circle and spiraling clashes with Congress and the Supreme Court.

The World Bank meanwhile forecasts Latin America's biggest economy will shrink by a record eight percent this year.
NEW YORKNew York Police Department cops used an apparent chokehold while roughly arresting a man on a Queens boardwalk Sunday, shocking video shows.

The disturbing scene unfolded at 8:45 a.m. in the NYPDs 100th Precinct. The officer who used the apparent chokehold, David Afanador, was suspended without pay later Sunday.

While a full investigation is still underway, there is no question in my mind that this immediate action is necessary, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said. We are committed to transparency as this process continues.

Police also released footage from Afanadors body-worn camera that shows three men taunting and insulting the officers for about 10 minutes before one of them approached one of the officers, and was taken down.

This matter is taken extremely seriously, the NYPD said in an official statement.

As four uniformed officers restrained the man  who was face-down on the ground  a bystander yelled: Yo, hes choking em, let em go!

One of the officers had an arm wrapped around the mans neck, the video shows.

Yo, hes out, hes out, hes out! another man says as the officer pulled the arm away from his neck.

One of the cops at the scene, identifiable by his shield number as Afanador, tells the man recording with his phone, Back up.

The man recording responds, Yeah, f you, f  you, Alfredo.

The man who was arrested was led away from the scene by officers moments later, an NYPD spokesperson said.

Police declined to say Sunday why the man was being arrested or what charges hell face. A source said cops were responding to a call for an emotionally-disturbed person.

His lawyer, Lori Zeno of the Queens Defenders, identified him as Ricky Bellevue, and said hes still recovering at Jamaica Hospital.

I want the officer who put him in a chokehold to be in the cell next to him, she said. This guy should be charged criminally, and fired.

She said he faces disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest charges.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday called the video very concerning, and later praised the swift police action in the case.

Today was the fastest I have EVER seen the NYPD act to discipline an officer, de Blasio tweeted. Within hours: Immediate suspension; Body-camera footage released; Discipline process initiated. This is how it needs to be.

The officers bodycam video shows Bellevue and two others taunting a group of officers on the boardwalk for 10 minutes while the cops appear to laugh it off.

One man, whos not wearing a shirt, says to an officer, Confederate-flag-wearing motherf er son, whats your name? ... Go ahead, say something stupid. Say something stupid.

The scene takes a turn when Bellevue appears to grab something, then tells a cop, You scared, you scared?

One of the belligerent men tries to hold Bellevue back, but Afanador lunges forward and grabs him, taking him down.

Later, with the bodycam still recording, Afanador tried to explain what he did to a woman on the scene.

They were all talking all types of crazy stuff to us. We did nothing. I dont care. Anybody can say whatever they want to us, he told the woman. What changed everything is when he grabbed something and squared off, and was gonna hit my officer whos standing over there.

He continued, Thats when everything changed. The minute I saw him flex on him, thats when he goes down, cause we dont get hurt and were not gonna leave somebody violent out here who might do that to one of you or another innocent person.

Bellevues twin brother, Ashley, became visibly distraught as he viewed the videos.

Those cops could have really hurt my brother. He couldnt breathe. They couldve killed him, he said. In the video I dont see that he did anything? The cops just jumped into action. He wasnt a threat, he didnt have a weapon. What are they (cops) practising, what are they being taught? They couldve treated him a little more fairly.

After his arrest, Bellevue told police he is bipolar. His brother said he was in an outpatient program  he didnt specify what kind  that got shut down because of the coronavirus.

Hes a good man, and he doesnt bother anyone and this couldve all been avoided. Some things just have to change, Ashley Bellevue said.

Afanador was caught on video with another officer, Tyrane Isaac, beating and pistol-whipping a 16-year-old suspect in August 2014 so severely the teen suspects teeth were cracked.

In that incident, the officers  both assigned to the 77th Precincts anti-crime unit  were chasing the suspect after he was seen throwing away several plastic bags allegedly containing pot.

Video shows the teen slowing down to face the officers with his hands up before they beat him, prosecutors alleged. Afanador was accused of using his service weapon to crack the suspects bottom teeth, as Isaac punched him while trying to handcuff him.

Afanador testified at his trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court in 2016 that he didnt mean to cause injuries, and the teen was caught in lies on the stand.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun found Afanador and Isaac not guilty.

He, like so many others, are an absolute disgrace to the police department. Theyre criminals themselves, said Amy Rameau, the lawyer who represented the youth in that case, as well as several plaintiffs in another lawsuit against the two cops. David Afanador is a thug.

I cant say Im shocked, Rameau said.

The city paid the youths family $83,250 (U.S.) in 2019 to settle a civil lawsuit, public records show.

The use of chokeholds like the one the Queens cops apparently used Sunday has become a flashpoint in recent years, especially in New York City.

Activists started pushing to ban the tactic after Eric Garner was killed on July 17, 2014, after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold and wrestled him to a Staten Island sidewalk.

Garner, who was Black, pleaded I cant breathe at least 11 times as he struggled to stay alive.

The three-word phrase became an instant slogan for racial justice campaigners but Pantaleo was cleared of criminal charges in the Garner killing. He was eventually fired from the NYPD after a tortuous disciplinary process.

Despite the outrage over Garners death, NYPD officers continue to use chokeholds at an alarming rate.

A report from the New York State Assembly said 996 New Yorkers were placed in chokeholds by the NYPD in the nearly six years since Garners death.

It took another police killing more than 1,000 miles away to finally get New York State to ban chokeholds.

George Floyd was choked to death on May 25 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who held his knee against the unarmed mans neck for an excruciating eight minutes and 46 seconds.

The killing of Floyd ignited a nationwide protest movement demanding police reform and racial justice. After years of inaction, lawmakers in Albany quickly passed the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act this month.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it as part of a package of police reform measures.

The bill makes it a class-C felony for a police officer to injure or kill somebody through the use of a chokehold or similar restraint. The crime is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The glowing Korean actress Son Ye Jin reveals her beauty secret, her most used products, and the device that she says gives her results equivalent to having a two-hour facial. Yes, yes! Please do take all our money!

If ever you stumble upon actress Son Ye Jin's presence on TV, you can't help but be mesmerized by both her beauty and her acting. She is now in her 30s, and she has starred in plenty of dramas and films. Because of her amazing acting skills, Son Ye Jin has won many awards, namely the Best Leading Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards 2017 and the Best Actress award at the Busan Film Critics Awards 2016.

Skin Inc, a skin products company, tagged actress Son Ye Jin as their brand ambassador. They had an interview with the actress where she revealed her secret to her skincare regime since the actress really has a poreless complexion, even up close!

When she was asked how she takes good care of her skin, Son Ye Jin revealed that she makes sure that her skin is at its best condition before she starts filming. So, before her taping, she would usually apply her face masks or even schedule her facials. After her work, when she's at home, she would apply her usual skincare with Skin Inc's Optimiser Voyage.

With this product, she discovered that the result is equivalent to having a two-hour facial but with a much lesser time (10 minutes). This product is very easy to use and is so effective.

The actress was also asked about her travel must-haves. Son Ye Jin shared that some of the beauty essentials that she always carries wherever she travels are the Skin Inc. hydrating face mist and her Skin Inc Daily Dose Serum that's been designed to focus on the calming and soothing of her dry and sensitive skin.

Lastly, So Ye Jin was asked, "What does beauty mean to you on a personal level?"

The actress expressed that she has been interested in beauty for quite some time since she's an actress and she's always in front of cameras being filmed for her movies and dramas. So, she makes sure that her skin is in tip-top condition at all times.
Lufthansa will seek to avoid a grounding and insolvency, Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said on Sunday, before a showdown between the airline's biggest shareholder and the German government over the terms of a 9-billion-euro bailout.

Lufthansa has been hard hit by what is expected to be a protracted travel slump because of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing it to seek a bailout.

Billionaire shareholder Heinz Hermann Thiele will meet the economics minister on Monday to discuss his objections to the state-backed bailout, a source close to the matter told Reuters.

As an alternative to the government taking a direct stake in Lufthansa, Thiele has proposed an indirect participation through state-owned German development bank KfW.

In a letter to employees, Spohr said the airline was in intense talks with the government and large shareholders which had "the clear goal of finding a satisfactory solution for our company and all participants before Thursday," when an extraordinary shareholder meeting will be held.

Expressing his desire to avoid a grounding or insolvency, he said: "I am sure this is an objective which unites all parties."

Lufthansa warned last week that a failure to secure shareholder approval for the bailout could force it to apply for protection from creditors under German insolvency law.

The bailout requires the support of more than two thirds of shareholders.

Thiele, who has 15.5% of Lufthansa's shares, objects to the German state taking a 20% stake and seats on its supervisory board.

Spohr said shareholders representing 38% of the company's capital had registered for the shareholder vote, handing Thiele an effective veto if he does not endorse the proposed deal.

Lufthansa will pay June salaries on Monday, Spohr said in the letter.

Lufthansa and Germany's finance ministry declined to comment on the meeting.

Thiele could not be reached for comment.
Santee Cooper extended the employment agreements for its chief executive officer and deputy CEO on Monday as the state-run utility continues to face serious legal and political challenges.

The board of directors voted to lengthen the contracts for both Mark Bonsall and Charles Duckworth, who have led the public water and power provider over the past year.

Bonsall, the CEO, will continue to be paid $1.1 million annually, and Duckworth will make $560,000 per year as the utility's deputy CEO. That was the compensation included in their initial contracts last year.

The extensions entail potential bonuses for the executives based on their performance. Bonsall could receive up to $250,000, and Duckworth is eligible for up to $165,000.

Those bonuses were included in the executives' original contracts, but neither of them have received that additional money to this point.

As part of the new contracts, both executives agreed to serve until at least July of next year  a six month extension.

That means they will remain at the helm of Santee Cooper as it seeks to make amends with the South Carolina Legislature and navigate several lawsuits filed by its electric customers.

The Moncks Corner-based utility has been under fire for the past three years since it voted to cancel construction on two unfinished nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer station in Fairfield County.

That project cost more than $9 billion before it was cancelled. Santee Cooper owned 45 percent of the abandoned reactors.

Bonsall and Duckworth were hired last year to help Santee Cooper navigate an uncertain time. Both executives previously worked at the Salt River Project, another public utility in Arizona.

To this point, Bonsall and Duckworth have helped prevent South Carolina lawmakers from selling Santee Cooper to an investor-owned utility.

They've negotiated a potential settlement with Santee Cooper's electric ratepayers who were charged for the abandoned nuclear reactors. And they've created a long-term forecast for where Santee Cooper will get its power in the coming decades, including plans to shut down one of the utility's coal-fired power plants.

Several of Santee Cooper's board members said hiring Bonsall and Duckworth was the best decision that was made during their tenure at Santee Cooper.

"We need you for at least another 12 months," Dan Ray, Santee Cooper's acting chairman, told Bonsall before the vote.

The 86-year-old utility continues to face serious threats. Century Aluminum, one of Santee Cooper's largest industrial customers, is suing the utility in an attempt to buy its electricity from another power provider.

If Santee Cooper were to lose that legal fight, it could significantly cut the revenue the utility collects.

Santee Cooper is also seeing a general decline in electricity usage among its customers in South Carolina. Part of that is being driven by the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The utility's biggest issue, however, is likely its acrimonious relationship with the Legislature.

Ray emphasized the divide that continues to exist between Santee Cooper's leadership and lawmakers, particularly the leadership in the House. He called it a "challenging legislative environment."

By extending the employment contracts, Ray said Bonsall and Duckworth could finish the work they have started.
TDT| Manama

Skywatchers all over Bahrain were treated to a partial solar eclipse yesterday as the moon drifted across the face of the sun in a rare occurrence on the longest day of the year. The eclipse was seen from a little after 7am and it lasted until around 10am, according to witnesses. The peak of the eclipse happened at roughly 8.30am, they added.

In support of nation-wide efforts to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), there were no large or formal gatherings organised to monitor the eclipse, although many observed from public places while taking into account COVID-19 precautionary measures.

A number of front-liners at a local quarantine centre were even able to relish the experience, having been provided with special glasses by the Northern Governorate to watch the eclipse, it was revealed on social media. Others enjoyed the phenomenon from the safety of their homes or from building rooftops, while some followed it live online.

Ive been taking photos of eclipses and supermoons here in Bahrain for almost five years now and it is a soulful pleasure for my eyes to witness the amazing wonders of such phenomenon, Bahrain resident Kharisma Privado told TDT. It has been my hobby to note down all these once-in-alifetime events and make sure I wouldnt miss them. I cant wait to see another astronomical spectacle soon.

Solar eclipses on the summer solstice are rare. The last one was in June 2001. Bahrain was one of a number of locations across the Middle East from where the partial eclipse could be seen. In other locations across parts of the eastern hemisphere, including East Asia, South Asia and Africa, the true ring of firea shimmering ring of lightflashed into view.

A ring of fire eclipse that falls exactly in midsummer, whether in the northern or southern hemisphere, is even more uncommon. There have been none in at least 100 years, according to Reuters calculations based on NASA data. The next one is in 2039, and then in 2392.

Unlike in a total eclipse, the moon in an annular, or ring-like, eclipse is unable to completely cover the sun, leaving a thin halo of light at its maximum phase. Such an eclipse happens when the moon is farther away in its elliptical orbit around the Earth, appearing smaller as a result.

Elsewhere in the continent, hundreds gathered in an open space in Chiayi in southern Taiwan, one of the locations in Asia where the annular eclipse was visible, according to Reuters. Im more than 50 years old, so its great that I could see this, said retiree Zhuang Yuhui, who travelled to Chiayi from nearby Taichung city.

Im beyond excited. In Taipei, groups of people gathered to view the eclipse through tinted glasses and their phones as the sky turned eerily darker. Its an astronomical miracle, said Elisa Chen.
Bella Ayayee Ahu, President of the Ghana Tourism Federation (GHATOF)

22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Ghana Tourism Federation (GHATOF) is calling on government to turn its attention to the deteriorating tourism sector and commit enough resources to boost infrastructure for better outcomes.

The Federation in a statement signed by the President, Bella Ayayee Ahu, noted that it has been working tirelessly to improve on service quality of the industry to ensure growth and development.

According to the Federation, state of physical and soft infrastructure of the sector, inadequate investment in the tourism sector, Ghana as a high cost destination, poor tourism support services at our sites, lack of professionalism and service quality are factors that continue to hamper the growth of the sector.

Read full statement below:

The Ghana Tourism Federation (GHATOF) is the umbrella body of all the private tourism and hospitality associations such as Ghana Hotels Association, Tourism Society of Ghana, Car Rentals, Tour Guides Association, Tour Operators Union of Ghana, Ghana Progressive Union of Ghana, Women in Business and Tourism and several other associations which have been working tirelessly to improve on service quality of the industry to ensure growth and development.

The federation has observed with keen interest the deplorable nature of some of our tourism infrastructure spread across the country. Based on this, the federation embarked on a series of stakeholder engagements to understand the dynamics of the situation.

With sponsorship from the B usiness Sector Advocacy Challenge (B USAC ) Fund and its D evelopment P artners DANIDA and USAID , several engagements were carried out across the country. The federation by this PRESS RELEASE would like to draw governments attention to some key challenges confronting the sector.

State of physical and soft infrastructure of the sector Inadequate investment in the tourism sector Ghana as a high cost destination Poor tourism support services at our sites Lack of professionalism and service quality

Based on the above critical issues the federation is calling on the government and all stakeholders to ensure tourism is well developed to contribute significantly to the growth of the industry and contribute to the economy.

Signed

Bella Ayayee Ahu

President (GHATOF)
He's a dad of five, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was showered with love for Father's Day on Sunday,

The star, 72, posed for family snaps with four of his five kids as well as his ex wife Maria Shriver, 64, as the group celebrated at Maria's California home.

Beaming with pride, Arnold was surrounded by his eldest daughter Katherine, 30, who is expecting her first child with husband Chris Pratt as well as Christina, 29, Patrick, 26 and Christopher, 22.

Sweet: He's a dad of five, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was showered with love for Father's Day on Sunday, posing for family snaps with four of his five kids and ex wife Maria Shriver

Dressed in a blue t-shirt and camo shorts and sporting a beard, Arnie smiled broadly for the camera while putting his arms around his kids. The star is also dad to Joseph Baena, 21.

Katherine, who showed off her bump in a flowing black dress, shared the snap on Instagram along with another shot showing her dad cuddling up to his pet dog and a throwback from her childhood.

'Happy Fathers Day to my dear daddy! I love you so much,' she wrote alongside the photos.

Patrick meanwhile shared a photo of himself as a toddler cuddling his dad on a Father's Day from his childhood. 'Love you big guy @schwarzenegger,' he wrote.

'Dear daddy': Arnold's oldest child Katherine, 30, shared the snap on Instagram along with another shot from her childhood, writing: 'Happy Fathers Day to my dear daddy!'

Keeping active: Arnold enjoyed a bike ride with his son Joseph (left) last week

Maria added her own sweet tribute to her ex husband, sharing another photo from Sunday of Arnold with the children as she wrote: 'Happy Fathers Day to all the dads here on earth who father day in day out, and to you, Arnold. We all wish you the happiest Fathers Day! #happyfathersday.'

There was much to celebrate on Sunday as Katherine also used the day to pay tribute to her husband Chris Pratt as they prepare to welcome their first child together.

Chris, who was also celebrating his 41st birthday on Sunday, has 7-year-old son Jack with his ex-wife Anna Faris, but is expecting baby number two with his new with Katherine.

Doting dad: The movie star's son Patrick shared a photo of himself as a toddler cuddling his dad on a Father's Day from his childhood. 'Love you big guy @schwarzenegger,' he wrote

Katherine wrote on Sunday: 'Happy birthday and Father's Day to my wonderful, loving, exceptional husband.'

She added: 'I thank God every day for you. Blessed to live life with you, watch you grow, and one of the greatest gifts has been watching you be the most loving and fun father.'

Katherine recently has showered praise on her 'wonderful husband' as they expect their first baby together.

Family fun: Patrick also shared a photo of him and his sister Christina embracing a cigar-smoking Arnie on Sunday

Family first: Maria added her own sweet tribute to her ex husband, sharing another photo from Sunday of Arnold with the children as she wrote: 'We all wish you the happiest Fathers Day'

Part of the family too: Arnie couldn't resist cuddling up to one of the family pooches in another sweet shot shared by daughter Katherine

Katherine chatted about her pregnancy while going Live on Instagram with Dr. Zelana Montminy this week.

She shared that she has been doing 'really, really well actually' as she experiences pregnancy in self-isolation amid the coronavirus pandemic.

'I mean Im really lucky to be living in like very close proximity to my family, which has been very helpful,' she explained.

'And then obviously I have a wonderful husband whos very  its been amazing having him home and also like very understanding about my need to like sanitize everything, have everyone wear masks all the time. So thats been helpful.'
Dr. Ekow Spio Garbrah, former Minister of Trade and Industry under Former President Mahama regime on Monday 22nd June 2020 paid a working visit to Afro Arab Group, Chairman Alhaji Salamu Amadu at its Headquarters at Kokomlemle, Accra.

Dr. Spio Garbrah commended the Group Chairman for such a great vision of building such a thriving conglomerate and contributing to various sectors of the economy of Ghana. As a former Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr. Spio also mentioned that indigenous business such as the Afro Arab Group holds the key to transforming the economics of the country

"Keep on pushing the vision because you are the face for Zongo youth, you have changed the narrative and I like your ideologies, mission, and vision, and we as diplomats and politicians owe it to support such indigenous enterprises' '. Dr. Spio Garbrah added.

Alhaji Salamu Amadu took the opportunity to take Dr. Spio Garbrah around the various subsidiaries of the groups such as the microfinance, the properties, pure paints, Afro Arab Company and the Yaasalam Opportunity Center, which is the Corporate Social Responsibility Arm

Alhaji Salamu Amadu expressed appreciation to Dr. Spio Garbrah for the Visit.' I will like to thank you for this special visit and encouragement. We remain focused and our doors are open''

The Chairman also commended Dr. Spio Garbrah as former Minister of Education for his effort and vision for the creation and establishment of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), which currently mobilizes some $50 million each year from the VAT for educational sector infrastructure and student assistance programs
Concerns teachers have lost contact with some students since classes were suspended  despite efforts to stay in touch  have prompted the province to collect information about absentees.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Concerns teachers have lost contact with some students since classes were suspended  despite efforts to stay in touch  have prompted the province to collect information about absentees.

Manitoba Education recently contacted divisions to request they collaborate with schools to ensure all students are "safe and accounted for" during the distance-learning period as part of an initiative in partnership with the Families Department.

"There is already a process in place to report child-protection concerns that should continue to be followed, but this additional request will help Manitoba Education and divisions better understand the number of students who may not have been reached so they can continue to try to reach out, locate them, provide any supports needed and ensure their safety," a provincial spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

During the pandemic, teachers have been keeping in touch with students via email, phone and video call and with in-person visits.

After school administrators sent out requests for distance-learning absentees earlier this month, educators started to raise concerns in a closed Facebook group about how the information would be used, and if it was for checks by social workers.

Under the Manitoba Teachers Societys professional practice code, teachers are bound to respect the confidential nature of student information unless they have concerns about students welfare, in which case they must report information to authorized personnel or an agency.

When pressed about specifics, the province said information collected about the students would only be shared with the Families Department, "if it was determined to be in the best interests of the child."

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs family advocate, Cora Morgan, said there are numerous reasons why a student might not have been able to learn at home or share proof of learning. Those include the inability to access a smartphone or other device with reliable internet or having parents who do shift work and cant support home learning during traditional school hours.

"When you are looking at families that are single moms living in the margins of society, (distance-learning) expectations werent necessarily realistic for them. Their children shouldnt be put at risk because of that," she said, adding theres distrust among Indigenous families when things are done "in the best interest."

In Manitoba, close to 90 per cent of child-welfare apprehensions involve Indigenous children.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Morgan said the best way to check on students well-being is for educators to visit in-person in a "mindful" manner. If CFS is called as a last resort, she said families should have access to an advocate or support person.

In a generic statement that emphasized the importance of student safety, MTS president James Bedford said teachers will contact students who havent been actively doing remote learning. Limited in-person instruction resumed in schools earlier this month.

With fall plans uncertain, Daphne Penrose, Manitobas childrens advocate, said there needs to be more consideration about how to help families manage the stresses of distance learning.

"Were in an unpredictable time and it has been difficult for kids.... The need for mental health support and mental wellness support is increasing," Penrose said, adding mental wellness needs to become a standard part of learning, similar to social studies, health, phys-ed, math and reading.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Seek repentance: Clergy group calls on Mississippi to remove Confederate symbol from state flag

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

An interfaith coalition of clergy has called upon Mississippi to remove the Confederate battle banner from the official state flag, renewing a years-long debate.

Earlier this month, clergy representing Christianity, Islam, and Judaism held a press conference at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in support of changing the flag.

In a statement published by Working Together Mississippi, the clergy group referenced the recent killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests against racism and police brutality.

There has never been a more fitting and necessary time to make this change. We ask that our state leaders and the legislature proceed immediately to do so. To delay doing this will only further exacerbate the deep racial divisions that have existed for 401 years, read the statement.

The immediate removal of the Battle Flag from the Mississippi state flag will be an important public symbol of our willingness as a state to seek repentance and racial reconciliation. We call on our elected leaders to act now.

Episcopal Bishop Brian Seage of the Diocese of Mississippi told Episcopal News Services that he believes the flag belongs in museums and in archives and in history books.

When we see the Confederate battle flag, yes, it represents history, but it also represents a painful period for folks  a really painful period for many of our African American brothers and sisters, of injustice and an intention to not really see their full humanity," said Seage.

The Rev. Jason Coker of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Mississippi expressed his support for removing the Confederate symbol from the state flag at the press conference.

Jesus said love God and love your neighbor, stated Coker, as reported by local media outlet WLBT. And I think we can do this if its an act of love to neighbor.

In recent weeks, longstanding debates over Confederate imagery like statues and flags on public property have ignited several protests and sometimes violent actions like vandalism.

In Richmond, Virginia, former capital of the Confederacy, protests have been held at the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue, with many being sprayed with graffiti or torn down.

Past efforts to remove the Confederate imagery from the Mississippi state flag have failed, including a 2001 referendum in which 64% of state voters rejected a proposal for change.

For many in the South, images like the Confederate battle flag represent heritage rather than racism, serving as a tribute to their ancestors, most of whom did not own slaves.

In 2016, the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution encouraging members to not publicly fly the Confederate battle flag.

Cross Pointe Church Pastor James Merritt, a descendant of two Confederate veterans, explained at the time that he supported the resolution for the sake of the Gospel.

"This is not a matter of political correctness. It is a matter of spiritual conviction and biblical compassion," said Merritt in 2016. "Southern Baptists are not a people of any flag. We march under the banner of the Cross of Jesus and the Grace of God.

"This flag is a stumbling block to many African-American souls to our witness. And I rise to say that all the Confederate flags in the world are not worth one soul of any race."
A skateboarder who suffered a catastrophic brain injury has found a new calling after his family handed him his a paint brush to help with his recovery.

Lawson Smith from Bunbury, Western Australia, fell from his board without a helmet and suffered a serious head injury, leaving him in a wheelchair and unable to speak.

His family was told keeping him in an aged care home was the best option for long-term care, but his mother Sara Davies brought him back home after a year.

After suffering a catastrophic brain injury in 2012 Bunbury man Lawson Smith (pictured) has required at home care but when his family handed him a paint brush Mr Smith found a new lease on life

Mr Smith (pictured) suffered brain damage after falling from a skateboard without a helmet, he was in an aged care home for one year before his family took him out to give him a better life

Ms Davies said after giving him paint brushes they saw 'subtle but incredible' improvements in Mr Smith's rehabilitation.

They treated the painting as part of his rehabilitation each week and family said they could see him making progress.

Ms Davies said it is evident how much her son enjoys painting and she felt he wouldn't have got the opportunity if he stayed in a care home.

Mr Smith always had a deep love of the ocean and was studying marine biology and conservation at the time of his accident.

His family noticed the former skater was using his artwork to express his long held love of the ocean.

'It became really obvious that it was about the ocean. As a poor student on Youth Allowance, he was donating to Sea Shepherd and Australian Marine Conservation,' she told Yahoo News.

She said painting had given her son a chance to contribute to the world around him and 'added another dimension' to his life.

'He came home not being able to move at all, and now he's able to choose colours and print paint onto canvas, and create these uplifting and colourful designs,' Ms Davies said.

'His personality is and always was very upbeat and joyful, and I think that comes across in his work. He's the one that will laugh first, he loves everyone and he's so good natured.'

Wanting to share Mr Smith's art with the world his family set up the Lawson Smith Art page to display and sell prints.
TULSA, Okla. - The omens started early Saturday morning, before the gates to the "Great American Comeback" rally were opened. I got downtown later than I'd wanted to, making a detour to buy a poncho, after weather forecasts suggested a chance of rain. Shortly after 9 a.m., I started looking for parking, and two Tulsans who were charging $30 for a space politely said I might want to drive around before paying.

"I thought we'd be full by now," one of the sellers said, "based on the news."

One minute later, I found free street parking and began walking to the BOK Center. Eight hours later, President Donald Trump's campaign was dramatically downscaling its first rally since March, striking a stage at an overflow section as a few dozen supporters mingled in a space designed for thousands. The rain never came. Neither did the expected audience.

Saturday's rally in Tulsa was, on the campaign's own terms, a debacle - a meticulously organized and well-protected event that left thousands of seats unfilled in an arena once sold out by Nickelback. The president himself had predicted a "record-setting crowd," tweeting as the number of online ticket requests surged to Coachella proportions - 300,000, 600,000, 1 million.

"We've never had an empty seat, and we certainly won't in Oklahoma," Trump had said.

That hubris overshadowed what might have been landmark event, the first campaign rally of any kind since March and the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The audience was still larger than any Joe Biden had drawn before securing the Democratic nomination. And the hours of programming clarified how Trump would run against Biden - a message that partly relied on massive rallies.

"Would anybody sleep on the ground overnight waiting to see Joe Biden?" asked Lara Trump, a presidential daughter-in-law and key campaign surrogate, as thousands of supporters laughed and cheered.

There was plenty to learn and see on the ground. Here's what mattered.

- - -

Covid-19 wasn't a joke

The first speculation about how this rally might go centered on the risk of coronavirus infections and the wisdom of gathering thousands of people inside when nearly every large indoor gathering in the country had been canceled. (The BOK Center has no other events planned until July 30.) Would the president's most ardent supporters follow his lead and dismiss the threat of spreading the coronavirus?

The answer was mixed. The campaign itself took some precautions, though it did not enforce mask-wearing inside the arena. Entering the rally, attendees were offered face masks if they did not already have them and given quick temperature checks by staffers in blue protective ponchos. In Oklahoma, where restaurants and other businesses do not require masks, it was a substantial safety investment.

Rallygoers were also divided on how seriously to take the virus. A few of them made jokes about it, but plenty of them said that the threat of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was real and that they would take precautions. This shouldn't have been a surprise: A Fox News poll released before the rally found that 68% of Republicans, and 61% of Trump supporters specifically, approved of wearing face masks. The president's all-is-well rhetoric had shaped opinions among his most loyal supporters, but many of them appreciated the sentiment without embracing it.

David Edmundson, 61, came to the rally from Dallas to distribute 41,000 plastic face shields - to Trump supporters or anyone who wanted them. He'd given some to Black Lives Matter protesters, he said, but for fans of the president, he needed to hone his pitch.

"It'll keep the Democrats' b.s. away from you!" Edmundson joked as he stood near the main entrance. "You have a lot of people who think the press is just trying to hype the virus up. So you've got to have a shtick to entice them."

- - -

Security was overwhelming, and part of the show

Every presidential rally requires intense police protection, but the scene in Tulsa went far beyond that - a display of force that blanketed much of the city's downtown. Hundreds of National Guard members, and many more police officers, stood by concrete barriers to guide supporters, guests and reporters to far-apart rally entrances.

They were welcomed as heroes. Trump supporters cheered and took photos with the security teams, sometimes offering them water or food, even as the security zone (which expanded during the day) forced them to circumnavigate long city blocks. In interviews, some attendees said they wanted to defend the police from the abuse they saw from protesters, while some went further, saying police were protecting them from the sporadic clashes and property destruction they had heard about in other cities.

"There's going to be more and more incidents of violence, when Black Lives Matter comes out," said Don Carrillo, 62, who said Trump supporters would be ready if protesters picked a fight. "I don't think these antifa or Black Lives Matter want to mess with a retired Marine. It's going to end badly for them." While there were moments of real tension, there was no violence on the streets of Tulsa; a Black Lives Matter march ended, without incident, with a party in the historically black Greenwood neighborhood.

The rhetoric about protesters was often contradictory, as Trump supporters whose merchandise mocked "snowflakes" and "safe spaces" fretted about Black Lives Matter protests kept away from them by barricades and armored vehicles. Some said they would leave before dark, citing reports of protests and looting they'd seen in other cities. After a protester was told to leave and then arrested inside the gates of the rally, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said he did not know the details but that violence (which had not occurred) would be handled by security.

"If there's starting to be something where they are going to be damaging to other people's property, that's where our law enforcement is going to draw the line," Stitt said. "We've had peaceful protest for the last two weeks in Oklahoma, and we haven't seen what you're seeing on television in other states."

As it became clear that the turnout would miss expectations, the president and the Trump campaign blamed protesters. "We had some very bad people outside," Trump said on the BOK Center's stage. "They were doing some bad things." Protesters had blocked only one of three gates for a short period of time, and it's possible that inflating of the threat from protesters persuaded some supporters to stay home.

- - -

The base is being reined in, at least on television. When they approached the main gate of the rally, Trump supporters saw a billboard laying out the rules. Campaign buttons were prohibited, as were any signs; "Make America Great Again" signs would be provided, inside, by the campaign. Clothing with "expletive messages" was verboten.

That applied to a good deal of the merchandise outside. Several T-shirts on sale portrayed the president giving the middle finger with both hands, above vulgar text, the mildest of which was "suck it up, buttercup." One T-shirt, sold away from the main entrance, made a crude sexual joke about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on the front, with a different crude slogan on the back. (The shirt was lazily interpolated from an anti-Clinton design used for the 2016 campaign.)

The campaign enforced its no-expletives rule, turning attendees away unless they covered up the curse words or put on new shirts. It went further than that: People wearing QAnon iconography, associating themselves with a complicated conspiracy theory, said they were turned away, too. QAnon merchandise was hard to miss outside the rally, but nothing obvious it made it inside; an Instagram post by Eric Trump, sharing a QAnon logo, was deleted before the presidential scion took the stage.

At times, the proceedings resembled a national party convention, with the campaign promoting mainstream projects such as Women for Trump, and local candidates stopping by to meet voters. Miles Rahimi, a candidate in the 5th Congressional District 90 miles away, handed out brochures; campaigners for Rep. Roger Marshall, a Senate candidate in neighboring Kansas, brought merchandise to promote him. And Trump supporters were happy to oblige.

"They told us: Your shirt is hilarious, but you can't have it here," said Therenda Reynolds, 41. She'd shown up with a homemade shirt reading "grab her by the . . ." followed by a slang term for female genitalia. Frustrated at the gate, she found tape to cover the offending word, returned and watched the president's speech.

- - -

Joe Biden isn't scaring the president's base

Saturday's rally was the first, by any candidate, since the president learned whom he'd be facing in November. While covid-19 overwhelmed traditional campaigning, Republicans have had three months to define Biden and drive up his negatives and to get supporters excited about keeping the 77-year-old Democrat out of the White House.

Saturday's events demonstrated how hard that's been. In dozens of interviews, not a single supporter of Trump, who is 74, expressed worry that Biden might win the election. Vendors sold almost no merchandise that mentioned Biden specifically; the exceptions were the aforementioned crude shirt and another that portrayed a shocked woman with the slogan "Hidin' from Biden: Free hugs and smells." That was sold by Cindy McGowing, 63, and Bret Kuchar, 59, who said anti-Biden merchandise was not flying off the table.

"He doesn't stand out as a strong candidate," McGowing said.

"I think that's because people know he doesn't have a chance," Kuchar said.

Polling has found Biden with a consistent lead, one that's grown since the start of this month. But the Trump campaign's difficulty in defining Biden emerged again and again in rally programming, which included hours of live panels from a stage in the overflow space. (As they walked into the arena, Trump supporters could hear and see the programming, too.) Biden became, alternately, "Basement Biden," "Sleepy Joe," "Jim Crow Joe," and in the words of Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson, "Jim Crow Confused Joe."

Biden was accused of wanting to "fundamentally change America" while also "taking us back" to the pre-Trump era; Biden was excoriated for passing the 1994 crime bill while being accused of wanting to "defund the police." (Biden opposes defunding the police and has proposed a boost in community policing funds.)

There was a theme connecting the disparate attacks: Biden's age. Trump supporters and surrogates alike suggested that Biden was mentally checked out, with Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating Donald Trump Jr. and chairing a fundraising arm of the Trump campaign, suggesting his family was cruel to let him run when he wasn't up for it. If elected, Trump supporters said, Biden would be manipulated by the far-left forces he had defeated in the Democratic primary, negating any of his campaign trail promises.

"He's a puppet," said Daniel Pearl, 46, whose rally shirt portrayed Bill and Hillary Clinton as mobsters. "Do you honestly think that if he won, he'd be running things?"

Democrats have also mocked the president over some of his behavior; the president spent 12 minutes Saturday defending himself from the idea that he had shown weakness by walking slowly down a ramp at West Point's commencement.

During the outdoor programming and the rally, Trump campaign surrogates repeatedly pointed to a turning point for Biden: the televised debates. When forced to face the president, they said, Biden would be revealed as unfocused and unready for the presidency. Left unsaid: that supporters of Bernie Sanders had said the same thing before Biden's only one-on-one debate with him.

"It's going to be an absolute bloodbath," Eric Trump said from the BOK Center stage. "Sleepy Joe doesn't stand a chance."

At that moment, the overflow stage where the president had been expected to speak was being dismantled, a symbol of what can happen when expectations fall short of reality.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is pausing the state's reopening, keeping the current Phase 2 rules in place for an additional 28 days in an effort to get a handle on spikes in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations that have alarmed health officials.

The move will keep the current level of restrictions in place until at least July 24, limiting occupancy at most establishments  like retailers, casinos, barber shops, restaurants, bars with food service and others  to 50%. Bars without food are limited to 25% capacity and a handful of businesses, like amusement parks and carnivals, are still closed.

After seeing cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in some areas in recent days, health officials consulted by Edwards recommended he halt the reopening to try to tamp down the caseload, and the Democratic governor agreed. He said the state would also step up enforcement of social distancing rules at businesses after taking a hands-off approach through the first month of reopening.

There are a lot of people out there saying theyre done with the virus, Edwards said. Well, the virus isnt done with us.

Edwards is expected to issue a renewed proclamation Thursday ahead of the Phase 2 order expiring. The order will largely mirror what is currently in place.

Outbreaks tied to Tigerland bars near LSU and graduation parties in the New Orleans area have emerged in recent days amid the rising coronavirus numbers, and officials specifically called on young people to do a better job adhering to precautions. While many young people experience no symptoms or mild symptoms, state officials said some do, and more importantly, young people can easily spread the virus to parents, grandparents and others who are more susceptible.

After pleading with people and businesses to do better adhering to restrictions in recent weeks, Edwards said Monday the state will turn to more enforcement. The state has not shuttered any establishments for breaking the rules so far, he said, but that could change.

+5 These 2 graphics show how much Louisiana has regressed in its fight against coronavirus In a Monday announcement that Louisiana will not move to Phase 3 of coronavirus reopening, top state officials illustrated how Louisiana's tra

Instead of waiting until the state receives complaints, Edwards said workers will go on proactive trips to businesses. If they dont fix whatever problems the state finds, Edwards said revoking permits certainly would be an option for us.

The governor said he had no immediate plans to reverse the reopening and institute more restrictions. But he said that is on the table if the state starts to approach levels of hospitalizations that could overwhelm hospitals.

That is something that could happen if we don't get back on top of this and reverse the most recent trends were seeing, he said, adding, we are going to be more active now.

The decision comes as the state experiences rising cases and hospitalizations, in some regions at levels that have alarmed state officials.

The Louisiana Department of Health has presented the results of gating criteria based on White House guidance for reopening before each reopening decision. The presentation made Monday showed rising cases statewide along with plateauing numbers of COVID-19-like illnesses and hospitalizations. The White House suggests states experience 14 days of declines in all three categories to reopen.

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

+2 Sharon Weston Broome answers questions in our virtual town hall on coronavirus, St. George East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome will join Advocate editor Peter Kovacs for a live virtual town hall at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

In recent weeks, the state has seen cases rise as total testing has dipped slightly. While the greater New Orleans Region has fared better than others, it is still seeing rising cases and COVID-19-like illnesses. Baton Rouge is seeing rising cases and plateauing COVID-like illnesses. Acadiana is among those seeing a dramatic surge in new cases, and is increasing in all three categories.

The spikes are outpacing increased testing levels, officials said, after previously using testing to explain a rising caseload.

Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary for the states Office of Public Health, said the agencys strong recommendation to the governor was to remain in Phase 2.

Billioux also said the state has not yet conclusively answered the question of what share of the population has been exposed to the virus and therefore may have immunity. In order for herd immunity  where infection levels are high enough to stamp out the viruss spread  at least 60% of the population needs to develop antibodies.

Some serology surveys will soon be released in Louisiana, Billioux said, and he indicated the results will show what similar studies across the world have shown--rates of infections are below 10%, nowhere near the levels needed for herd immunity. That means the vast majority of us are susceptible to the virus.

Louisiana began its phased reopening May 15, the date Edwards ended the stay-at-home order that had been in place since late March. The state experienced one of the fastest rises in cases in March and April, sparking concerns that hospitals would run out of beds and ventilators for patients.

After seeing a dramatic rise and almost equally dramatic fall in new cases and other metrics, the first phase of reopening allowed a limited number of businesses operate at 25% capacity. Phase 2, which began June 5, opened more businesses and told businesses that remain closed they can submit plans to state regulators to possibly open in phase two or three.

Edwards has not yet revealed what phase three would entail. White House guidance for reopening--which Louisiana has largely followed--calls for "unrestricted staffing" of worksites, resuming visits to senior facilities and hospitals, opening of large venues like sit-down dining and movie theaters to "limited physical distancing protocols" and increased standing room occupancy at bars, among other things.

Currently, bars are prohibited under the rules from allowing standing room occupancy, and instead are supposed to have customers seated at tables, like restaurants.

But its clear not all bars are adhering to those rules, and several around the LSU area have shut down on their own after outbreaks.

The governor suggested people may be going into bars having every intention of practicing social distancing.

But one of the things that alcohol does is it impairs your judgement over time, Edwards said, and so if they stay there long enough and have enough to drink, theres a chance that they dont end up following the mitigation measures as well as theyd planned to.
UPDATED 6 p.m.:

Major League Baseball players voted against the owners 60-game plan in a video conference call Monday, according to ESPNs Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers.

The 33-5 vote means that Commissioner Rob Manfred must make a decision. Will the owners continue to talk with the players? Or will Manfred and the owners impose a season length of their choosing, which would be expected to be around 54 or 60 games.

"In a statement, the players union said it anticipates finalizing a comprehensive set of health and safety protocols with Major League Baseball in the coming days.

BEST BETTING APPS IN NJ

It added that it waiting for the league to set the schedule, which is has the power to do under the sides March 26 agreement.

While we had hoped to reach a revised back to work agreement with the league, the Players remain fully committed to proceeding under our current agreement and getting back on the field for the fans, for the game and for each other.

***

Set your clocks.

MLB players are expected to vote at 5 p.m. on whether to accept the owners proposal of a 60-game season  and all the bells and whistles that come with it, according to various reports.

The vote  player reps from each of the 30 teams and the unions eight-player subcommittee  could trigger a 2020 regular season. More likely, however, players will reject the leagues plan and put Commissioner Rob Manfred in a position he doesnt want.

Its reportedly long been Manfreds preference to strike a deal with the players union in this battle that has raged for months rather than set the length of the schedule himself. An agreement between the players and the owners on March 26 allows Manfred to set the schedule, as long as players are paid full prorated salaries.

Some other key parts of the deal, from the players perspective: Owners wont guarantee paying players if games arent played due to the coronavirus; players would get to share $25 million from a playoff revenue pool for the 2020 season; the agreement on a universal DH and expanded playoffs for 2021 get yanked if less than 50 regular season games are played this year; no additional salary advances.

Last week, Manfred and Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark met in person for two days in Arizona  and came away with drastic interpretations of what happened. While Manfred said he believed the sides had agreed to a framework of a deal, the union said otherwise.

Players want to play as many regular season games as possible so that they can make as much of their salaries as possible. They have proposed a 70-game schedule. Owners, so far, wont budge off their 60-game offer.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
In a small but significant step toward justice, federal prosecutors in Germany arrested a doctor accused of carrying out torture in one of the Syrian regimes notorious detention centers.

Alaa M., as he is identified under Germanys privacy laws, was arrested on Friday night in the central German state of Hesse on suspicion of crimes against humanity and grievous bodily harm.

Prosecutors allege that Alaa M. worked at a prison in the Syrian city of Homs during the first year of the uprising against the country's President Bashar al-Assad. The charges say that one day in October 2011, Alaa M. was notified that a detainee had suffered a torture-induced epileptic seizure. Rather than administer care, Alaa M. beat the detainee with a plastic tube when he arrived at the scene, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor's office.

By the next day, the detainees health [had] deteriorated significantly. Prosecutors allege Alaa M. and another doctor then beat the man a second time, causing him to lose consciousness. Prison guards carried the prisoner away on a blanket, and he later died in custody.

In 2015, Alaa M. turned up in Germany as a refugee and has continued to work as a doctor.

Human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni and his Berlin-based nonprofit organization, the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research, compiled testimony that was key to bringing charges against Alaa M. The most damning evidence came from two former detainees who say they witnessed him torture other men inside the prison, al-Bunni said.

That a doctor in Syria's vast network of secret prisons and military hospitals would harm those he was trained to care for would not have been uncommon, he said.

We have many stories of how the doctors and nurses beat and killed the detainees when they sent them to the hospitals, al-Bunni said. Sometimes they gave them medicine just to kill them.

In the early days of the civil war, the government used its hospitals as instruments of repression to crush the opposition, Amnesty International said in 2011. The organization reported that medical staff in at least four government-run hospitals subjected injured protesters to torture and other ill treatment.

Rights organizations have continued to document the widespread abuse of prisoners, more than 130,000 of whom remain missing nine years after Syria's brutal war began.

While this doctor may not be the highest level perpetrator within the Syrian regime, pursuit of this case is still significant, said Mai El-Sadany, the managing director and legal and judicial director at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. It means something to those who he is believed to have tortured, to others who have similarly been victims of doctors and to survivors of this regime waiting for their day in court.

The arrest of Alaa M. is the latest in Germanys campaign to hold Syrian war criminals to account under its sweeping universal jurisdiction law, which allows for the prosecution of grave crimes committed in another country.

The concept is being put to the test in the ongoing trial of two suspected members of Assads intelligence services. In the German city of Koblenz, Anwar Raslan and Eyad Gharib stand accused of crimes against humanity, including the brutal and systematic torture of anti-government activists.

Germany and France have also issued an international arrest warrant for Jamil Hassan, the chief of Syria's Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Hassan is among nine high-ranking officials accused of crimes against humanity in a recent criminal complaint filed with the German federal prosecutor by a group of men and women who say they experienced rape and other sexual abuse in Syrias prisons.

Al-Bunni, the Berlin rights lawyer, said these cases should serve as a warning not just to the Syrian regime but also to members of the Islamic State and other armed groups living comfortably in Europe.

We are trying to send a message through these cases to all the criminals who have arrived already or are still in Syria, said al-Bunni. You will not find any safe place to hide.
Analyst Ming-chi Kuo has predicted that Apple will introduce its ARM-based Macs in the form of a new iMac and a MacBook Pro. Apple is also expected to unveil a new Intel-based iMac with a 24-inch display.

Apples annual WWDC event kicks off tonight and it looks like predictions are coming in as to what the Cupertino giant is going to show off at the event. According to analyst Ming-chi Kuo, we could get our first look at the ARM-based Macs that have been doing the rounds of the rumour mills.

Speaking about the ARM MacBook Pro, Kuo says, The new models form factor design will be similar to that of the existing Intel 13.3-inch MacBook Pro. Apple will discontinue the Intel 13.3-inch MacBook Pro production after launching the ARM 13.3-inch MacBook Pro. As for the iMac, he says, ARM iMac will be equipped with the all-new form factor design and a 24- inch display. Apple will launch the refresh of existing Intel iMac in 3Q20 before launching the  ARM iMac.

Kuo also goes on to highlight that starting in 2021, all new Macs will sport Apple processors. It will take 12 to 18 months for Apple to transition to an all-ARM lineup. How this will affect the apps support and performance of the machines is yet to be seen. Apple is also expected to use Mini LED displays in the new ARM Macs which could greatly improve the experience on the machines.

Another thing to note is how this will affect the cost of the machines. While Apples iMac and MacBook Pro are premium priced machines, could the ARM processors help reduce the price?

Stay tuned as we will bring you all the announcements from WWDC as the event kicks off tonight 10:30 PM India time.

In other Apple news, it looks like the company is looking to move production of some of the 2020 iPhone SE from China to India. Apple has been assembling the iPhone XR and the original SE in India for some time now. You can read more about Apple making phones in India here.
A spate of at least 15 killings committed by police while enforcing a coronavirus curfew, according to a police oversight agency, has gained a bit more attention amid the impassioned global pushback against police brutality. Six officers have been charged with murder and assault in curfew-related incidents since March. Three more were arrested June 10 after a video of them whipping and dragging a woman behind a motorcycle circulated widely. But out of more than 10,000 alleged cases of brutality since a police oversight agency was launched in 2012, only 26 officers have ever been charged, and six convicted.
The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump's bombshell firing of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman was not related to investigations of associates of Trump by prosecutors in Berman's office. Instead, Trump fired Berman because he refused to transfer willingly to another post in order to allow for the appointment of current Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to Berman's post, said White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany. "Mr. Clayton wanted to go back to New York City and we wanted to keep him in government," McEnany said at a White House press briefing.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman enters the courthouse ahead of a bail hearing in U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking case in New York City, July 15, 2019. Brendan McDermid | Reuters

She said Clayton is "highly regarded" by the president. Asked directly whether Berman was fired from his post, which handles criminal cases involving federal crimes, because he oversaw cases and investigations of Trump's associates, McEnany said: "No, he was not." "No investigation will be affected by this" change in leadership at the SDNY U.S. Attorney's office, she said. McEnany's statement came as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Berman's firing "corrupt," and that it "gives the impression that the President interfered in ongoing criminal investigations into himself and his associates." Schumer sent a letter to the Justice Department's internal watchdog, Inspector General Michel Horowitz, and its Office of Professional Responsibility director, Jeffrey Ragsdale, asking that they conduct a joint investigation of Berman's firing. Another New York Democrat, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, said Sunday he is "sure" that Berman will testify to that committee about the events leading up to his termination. At the press conference Monday, McEnany also said that Attorney General William Barr "was taking the lead on this matter" to fire Berman, and that Trump had signed off on that highly controversial termination of Berman. "Mr. Clayton now will in time get to that position," she said. But Clayton's nomination could well be doomed. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said he will respect a Senate tradition that gives effective veto power over the nomination of U.S. attorneys to the senators from the states that contain the prosecutors' offices. New York's other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, is also a Democrat and expected to block Clayton's appointment, along with Schumer. McEnany's explanation for Berman's firing echoed claims made by unidentified senior administration officials to reporters Friday and Saturday after the bombshell news broke that Barr wanted to oust Berman from the SDNY office. That office has and is continuing to investigate associates of Trump, most notably his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and himself the former U.S. attorney for Manhattan. Berman's office previously obtained convictions of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for multiple financial crimes, is currently prosecuting two associates of Giuliani who helped him with efforts to convince Ukraine officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Jay Clayton, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In this episode of MarketFoolery, Chris Hill and Motley Fool senior analyst Abi Malin go through the latest headlines from Wall Street. They start their discussion with the record retail sales figures for May and then take stock of the fitness industry. They end the show by taking some listeners' questions.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on June 16, 2020.

Chris Hill: It's Tuesday, June 16. Welcome to MarketFoolery. I'm Chris Hill. With me today it's Abi Malin. Good to see you.

Abi Malin: Thanks for having me.

Hill: We're going to talk about the business of exercise. We're going to dip into The Fool mailbag, but we're going to start with retail. Because retail sales for the month of May came in nearly 18% higher than the previous months. That is a record. Even if you bake out auto sales, that's also a record. Although, every once in a while, [laughs] we talk about businesses that, you know, maybe like a struggling retailer, and they had a good quarter and we talk about their same-store sales growth. And we say, yeah, it was off of a low base. This is great to see, but this is in comparison to the retail sales we saw in April, which were quite low.

Malin: Right. I do think we should make that caveat. So, it is still below COVID or pre-COVID levels. So, spend was about $486 billion in May, and spend in February, so pre-COVID, pre-shutdown, the spend was about $527 billion. So, we are low on a historical looking back perspective, but it is marginally better. [laughs]

Hill: Marginally better, although, you know, there are a couple of categories that, even if you go back pre-pandemic, you compare them to what we saw in January and February, they're up solidly. You know, it's not a big list, but not surprisingly, e-commerce just continues to be incredibly strong, again, not just compared to April, but even compared to pre-pandemic months.

Malin: That is true. Online sales were up almost 78% in May, according to Adobe Analytics. And I think that number makes sense, and I think it's something that we're going to continue to see even as stores open up and retail footprints reopen, I think we're going to continue to see a fair amount of online sales.

Hill: We've talked about this before with the major retailers, like Target and Walmart, but I'm curious if you think -- you know, both of those businesses have done such a great job with pickup, with basically just enabling, sort of, syncing what they're doing with online, with the physical stores. I have to say, I've been impressed, particularly with Target, just as a customer what I've seen with their ability to -- you know, there have been times, over the past couple of months, where I've gone online, I'm looking for something. And they're like, "Well, it's not at the location closest to you, but it's at this one a little bit ... " you know, and they are great, they've really done a great job.

I'm curious if you think we're going to be seeing that across the board, if that is now table stakes for all retailers, like, it's not just you have to have e-commerce, you have to have it synced with your physical stores so that you can enable pickup.

Malin: Right. I think you're getting to even a bigger problem here, which is really your customer service management. And so traditionally with retail brick-and-mortar stores, you find someone in the store, right? But as things shift more online, we've seen a lot of retailers speak out about that challenge. So, it's Macy's, Wayfair, Best Buy, IKEA, Lululemon, they've all said that they've had pretty significant issues in terms of customer service and customer relationship management. And so, Salesforce, who is one of the largest sellers of customer relationship management software, said their weekly customer service chatbot sessions for retail and consumer goods clients have increased 4X since the end of February.

So, I mean, again, right, the number is staggering, right? [laughs] So, it's crazy.

Hill: [laughs] I knew you were going to go with a big number, I didn't think it was going to be a 4X number.

Malin: Right. I think the way consumers have shopped is going to change, I also think the more that we shop online, there is statistics, and I think we're going to get better about this as a community or as a country or whatever, however you may want to phrase it. But as people shop online, traditionally what we've seen is higher rates of return, particularly, in apparel. So, you try something, you don't really like it, you send it back, whatever.

For brick-and-mortar stores and traditional retail plays, that poses a lot of issues with inventory management, just logistically it's a problem. So, I think you're right. I think Target is on the forefront of being, sort of, logistically better, but I think all retail stores still have a pretty long way to go before we can say that we're safely in the woods.

But I guess I would add, I think the bottom-line of this report, and the thing that people are anchoring to, the thing to get excited about here is that any increase in consumer spending reflects an increase in consumer confidence. And so, this data would suggest that people are less worried about losing jobs and less concerned about saving more than they have in the past. And that's probably encouraged by the recent job report, but generally speaking, we're starting to see a little bit of economic recovery. It might be early, it might not last, but it is encouraging data.

Hill: Let's move on to the business of exercise. 24 Hour Fitness is one of the largest chain of fitness centers in the U.S. They've got more than 400 locations across America. And that is about to change in a big way, because 24 Hour Fitness is closing 130 locations and filing for bankruptcy.

This is a privately owned company, Abi, but when I saw the story, I immediately thought of Planet Fitness. And I was surprised to see that shares of Planet Fitness are only down 5% year-to-date, that seems like a massive -- how is that -- as we've seen the rise of Peloton, both, as a business and as a stock, are you surprised that Planet Fitness is only down 5% year-to-date?

Malin: It's a fair question. I mean, in that filing for 24 Hour Fitness, they did write, if not for COVID-19 and the devastating effects, the company would not have had to file. So, certainly this is a result of this pandemic and of these gyms being shut down.

And I think it is a valid question for Planet Fitness. So, certainly, as things are opening up again, we just talked about it, it's positive, but I don't think consumer confidence to spend money is necessarily equivalent to consumer confidence being feeling great about getting back to a gym. So, even if they are able to reopen their doors, if I were a shareholder, I would be watching to see their churn rates.

I think the one thing that Planet Fitness does have going for it that I think is encouraging, they did put all of their memberships on hold while their clubs are closed, which I think is really positive. And you know, their memberships are pretty inexpensive. So, about $10 a month, they have more than 14 million members. And they target the 80% of the U.S. population who is over 14 and are not avid gym goers or avid fitness people. So, it's sort of a low-cost approach in an industry with a lot of options. And I think, because they're so low-cost, there might be some ability to remain, kind of, sticky even if people don't actually show up, they might pay that membership fee versus something, you know, if the fee was much higher, I would be a little bit more concerned that people would be ready to cut the payment quicker.

So, I think there's a little bit of leeway with Planet Fitness, but I think, certainly, if people are comfortable going back to the gym for, you know, six months or a year, I think it's a valid question, right?

Hill: You know, it's interesting, because until you just said what you said, I hadn't really thought about, sort of, the offerings at Planet Fitness, because certainly there are fitness centers and gyms that offer a lot of classes, some of those classes involve, sort of, like circuit training, where it's like, you know, you got 15 people and you're going to 15 stations. Like, I don't see how those types of classes continue. I do think that maybe a Planet Fitness is in better shape, no pun intended, just because it's much more straightforward, it's much more, you're going to use this machine, you're going to use this one treadmill, you're going to wipe it down or we're going to have a staff member wipe it down before and after. And there's not as much sharing. You know, they're not as dependent on, no, this is a spin cycle class and we need to fill it with [laughs] as many bikes as possible. So, they're going to be spin classes, they're just going to be a lot fewer people in them.

Malin: Right. I think that is a good point. And I think also, you know, they have rolled out an app, they do have virtual workouts for their members. They're doing everything right. I just think the future outlook of fitness is certainly questionable, and I mean, you mentioned circuit training, that's what I do actually, I go to something called F45 and so you rotate through all of these stations.

And my gym is so close, but they are making a bunch of adjustments when we reopen. And one of the things is, in a class that normally has 30 people, they're limiting it to 10. And we're no longer rotating through, you just use your weights and your equipment in your spot for the entire session. But I have to think, you know, that pressures margins, right? In a class where you normally have 30 people, if you can only fit 10, that's challenging, especially in a high-traffic area, like D.C., where everyone is trying to get in their workout. I go at 6 a.m., so. And those classes fill up within maybe two hours of being posted online. So, I don't know how you serve the same amount of people when you need exponentially more space.

Hill: Well, and that's the thing, that from a customer standpoint, it's like, if you're still able to get in a class, ideally you want it at the time you want, but if you're able to get in a class, you make the adjustment and there are fewer people in there. So, if it works out timing-wise, it's better for the customer. As you say, far worse [laughs] from a business standpoint for the gym.

Malin: Right.

Hill: Our email address is MarketFoolery@Fool.com. Question from Luke Frandrup in Minnesota. Luke writes, "I'm a longtime Fool reader, subscriber and podcast fan. My question is, is there a metric which incorporates TAM, Total Addressable Market, to provide some sense in how far a stock/company could run? This would be especially useful for smaller companies to get a better feel for risk/reward and the potential long-term upside. If there isn't, do you have an equation that would provide some of the same insights? Thanks for all that you do." And he signs it, "A Packers fan in Minnesota."

Oh, boy! That's like being a Yankee fan in the middle of Boston. But great question. And you know, Abi, you and I were chatting this morning, total addressable market is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot by analysts and by companies. And I know I've seen situations where a company will come out and say, "Yeah, our total addressable market is ... " and they throw out some enormous number. And I just, sort of, like, do a double take and think, "Wait, is it really?" Like, how should people think about what actually is a total addressable market?

Malin: Yeah. I think it's a great question. And to some degree you are right, sometimes companies will disclose it, but I always try to take those with a grain of salt. And so, unfortunately for this listener, the answer is, generally there is not a metric that you can reliably find across all industries, all companies, you have to do the legwork here. And so, I think this is really where we talk about equity research. And specifically, with valuation, sometimes it's more of an art than a science. And so, this is one of those places where, certainly it's a future, so it's unknown, and there are ways to estimate. And we can be as precise as we want, but you're never going to be fully right.

But generally speaking, the way I tend to think about this is, like I mentioned, companies will usually give you an estimation. So, check the S-1 filing, maybe in their 10-K. A lot of times it's in their investor presentation. You can also look at competitors, sometimes competitors will break it down more clearly. But you're looking for maybe what the company defines as that, right? And then I would compare it to your own, sort of, gut check. So, what I like to do is think about, start by taking the total addressable market and then define it as specifically as possible.

So, a company that I like to do this with, because I -- [laughs] when you talk about companies that file, and your like, what is that figure? Uber filed that their total addressable market was the entire world. I'm not joking, that was literally in the filing. And to me, that's not helpful, right? Because it's too big and it doesn't make any sense. So, you have to think about, you know, if you ran this product, right? So, what they do is provide more or less short-term trips. So, the majority of their trips are three miles or less. And so, if you think about the people who take three mile or less trips, the people who don't have cars, the places within accessibility, within what region or what geographic ranges; you also have to think about who is using this, so at what price point, what socioeconomic status levels you're looking at. So, the more specifically you can define it, the better. And then to get those figures, you want to consult outside sources.

So, make sure that you're double checking, and don't just take populations within metro regions with incomes above X, don't just find it from one source and take that, gut-check that across as many sources as you can find. And so, once you have that total addressable market as a whole, what you want to think about is a reasonable estimate to how much of the market you think one company can grab.

So, 100% is almost assuredly impossible, I can't think of a company that has 100% of any market, economics don't support that. If a market is really big and really profitable, other people are going to flood the market. So, don't ever assume 100%. But the amount that you assume can vary by industry. So, what you're looking at is fragmentation within a market. And so, you want to look at the largest incumbent players to see how fragmented that is.

And so, one that I know off the top of my head, apparel is a highly fragmented market; and that's a surprise to no one. And our largest apparel retailer in the U.S. is Walmart and they have about 7% market share. So, anytime you're looking at the apparel market within the U.S., don't ever assume that someone is going to get more than 7%, because Walmart is so large geographically, their footprint is so big, they are so well-known, etc., etc. So, always scale it appropriately to that.

So, once you figure out how big the market is and what percentage you want them to capture, your third step is to estimate how quickly you believe the company can grow to achieve that level. So, again, you're not ever going to be right, you just want to be reasonable and defensible.

So, again, I mentioned, you know, it's more of an art than a science, [laughs] but that is really the process and how I think about it.

Hill: The only two things I'll add are, you want to be particularly careful when it's, and you referenced [laughs] this Uber, I didn't know that about Uber, that's a gutsy move, [laughs] you know, in your initial filing to just be like, yeah, it's the whole planet; yeah, that's our market. But I think you want to be particularly careful when companies are filing to go public, because they want to make those numbers look as good as possible.

And the other thing is, you know, to Abi's point about checking other sources, this is another situation where I feel like trade media publications can be particularly helpful. So, it's not just, you know, the Bloomberg or The Wall Street Journals of the world, it's the niche media, whether it's apparel, whether its restaurants, retail, whatever, that those can be good sources of information to, sort of, balance off of.

Malin: Definitely.

Hill: I appreciate you being here. Thanks.

Malin: Yeah, thanks for having me, this was fun.

Hill: As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you do -- based solely on what you hear, or what you do. Really, just do your research. You know what I'm talking about. Ugh! I haven't had enough coffee.

That's going to do it for this edition of MarketFoolery. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
Abita Springs property owners will see slightly lower local millage rates on their 2020 tax bill, thanks to millage reductions by the town of Abita Springs and St. Tammany Parish Fire District 8, which serves the town and the surrounding area.

At the Abita Springs Town Councils June 16 meeting, council members voted to accept the St. Tammany Parish Assessors Office rollback of two of the towns three millages as a result of its 2020 property reassessments.

The towns general alimony millage for town operations was reduced from 7.86 to 7.42 mills, while the millage for parks, playgrounds and street lighting was reduced from 3.00 to 2.83 mills. The towns water, sewer and street bond tax rate was not subject to rollback and remained at 5.00 mills, bringing the total millage to 15.25 for 2020 compared to 15.86 for 2019.

According to Assessors Office figures, rolling the millages back up to the 15.86 rate would have generated almost $11,000 in additional revenue to the town, but Mayor Dan Curtis and the council members decided that the additional income was not needed.

During the same meeting, fire district board Chairman Jay Hawkins announced that the district was rolling its rate back from 34.18 to 32.25 mills. Hawkins said the rollback was possible because of cost-saving measures put in place by the districts board and its new chief, Brandon Stein.

Elsewhere on the agenda, the council received an audit report on its 2019 financial operations from Jim Tonglet, of the Ericksen Krentel accounting firm. The town received a clean audit that did not find any material deficiencies in its accounting methods or compliance with governmental regulations.

Overall, Tonglet said, the town is in good financial shape and had about $1.8 million in its general fund balance at the end of 2019. He pointed out, though, that sales taxes, which generate a large portion of the towns general fund revenues, might be reduced by the coronavirus pandemic, and any reduction would negatively affect the towns 2020 finances.

The potential impact is there, Tonglet said.
My Favorite Quotes Recent Quotes

Portfolio Summary Your most recently viewed tickers will automatically show up here if you type a ticker in the Get Quotes box on the top of the page.
The significantly improved understanding of client needs that AI-powered tools can provide to a broker should not be underestimated, according to Kevin Deveau, FICO Canada managing director.

With the COVID-19 pandemic putting a hard stop on face-to-face activity, brokerages that are planning to invest in artificial intelligence systems will have a distinct advantage in building a 360-degree view of each customers unique situation.

By incorporating predictive analytics and machine learning, [brokers] could be much more reactive and more customer-service oriented, Deveau told Canadian Underwriter. The broker could be more fine-tuned to when [a significant] event happens to the end customer. I see you just bought a house. Do you have mortgage insurance?
A jail superintendent claims he 'erred in judgement' after he kept minority officers at a Minnesota detention center away from ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin after his arrest for the slaying of George Floyd.

Eight officers of color at the Ramsey County Jail in St. Paul filed a discrimination suit with the state Department of Human Rights saying that they were barred from guarding or making contact with Chauvin, the white former police officer charged with murdering Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, on Memorial Day, because of their race.

Jail superintendent Steve Lydon claims he worried members of the staff might suffer 'racialized trauma' after Chauvin was brought in, but said he later recognized that his decision to bar all employees of color from interacting with the former-cop was a mistake and apologized.

Ramsey County Jail Superintendent Steve Lydon claims he 'erred in judgement' after he kept minority officers at the Minnesota detention center away from ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin after his arrest for the slaying of George Floyd

Lydon claims he worried members of the staff might suffer 'racialized trauma' after Chauvin was brought in, but said he later recognized that his decision to bar all employees of color at the jai (pictured) from interacting with the former-cop was a mistake and apologized

According to a spokesperson, the officers who filed complaints are African-American, Hispanic and Pacific-Islander-American, reports KARE11.

Floyd's passing in a police-related slaying on Memorial Day in Minneapolis sparked protests across the nation calling for an end to police brutality and systematic racism.

Floyd was alleged to have passed a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes when Chauvin pressed down on Floyd's neck with his knee for almost 9 minutes as he struggled saying 'I can't breathe,' causing his death.

Video of the incident taken by a bystander went viral and emboldened the Black Lives Matter movement in a national call for reforms.

Dereak Chauvin (pictured in mugshot left and right) was a former Minneapolis Police Department Officer who now faces murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd

Chauvin, 44, was booked at the Ramsey County Jail the same day he was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in Floyd's death.

Those charges would later be upgraded to second-degree murder.

The Star Tribune reports that as Chauvin arrived, all officers of color were ordered to a separate floor and told by a supervisor that, because of their race, they would be a possible 'liability' around Chauvin.

'I understood that the decision to segregate us had been made because we could not be trusted to carry out our work responsibilities professionally around the high-profile inmate  solely because of the color of our skin,' one active sergeant wrote.

'I am not aware of a similar situation where white officers were segregated from an inmate.'

Attorney Bonnie Smith, who is representing the eight officers, said the move has left a lasting and damaging impact on worker morale.

Cell phone footage showed Chauvin (pictured) kneeling on George Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes while the African-American father pleaded 'I can't breathe!'

George Floyd (pictured) died at a local Minneapolis hospital after his disturbing interaction with Chauvin and three other officers on Memorial Day

'I think they deserve to have employment decisions made based on performance and behavior,' said Smith.

'Their main goal is to make sure this never happens again.'

Lydon reportedly told his superiors that the decision was made in haste after he was informed Chauvin would arrive in 10 minutes.

The move was made 'to protect and support' minority employees by keeping them away from Chauvin.

'Out of care and concern, and without the comfort of time, I made a decision to limit exposure to employees of color to a murder suspect who could potentially aggravate those feelings,' Lydon reportedly said in a statement amid an internal investigation and provided to KARE11.

'Shortly after making the decision, Corrections staff expressed concern with the change and within 45 minutes I realized my error and reversed the order,' Lydon told investigators.

'I then met with the individuals that were working at the time and explained to them what my thought process was at the time and assured them that the decision was made out of concern for them and was in no way related to a concern regarding their professionalism or Chauvins safety' he explains.

Lydon's decision to segregate officers of color away from Chauvin was 'to protect and support' minority employees inside the jail (pictured)

'I realized that I had erred in judgement and issued an apology to the affected employees.'

The formal charges filed Friday are expected to automatically launch a state investigation into the matter - making it the second Department of Human Rights racism investigation into police in recent weeks.

The first was triggered by the death of George Floyd and examined the Minneapolis Police Department, which has been since been abolished in a vote by the city council.

The probe will analyze Minneapolis Police Department policies and procedures over the last 10 years to determine if the department, currently under the direction of Chief Medaria Arradondo, engaged in discrimination.

The incident in the discrimination charges began on May 29, four days after Floyd was killed and public outrage spawned protests across the country.

A Black sergeant who usually oversees the transport of high-profile inmates began a routine pat-down of Chauvin, but was soon ordered to stop. He was replaced by a white officer, according to charges.

A colleague reportedly told him that Lydon had instructed all minority employees from the fifth floor, where Chuavin was housed, and banned any interaction with the ex-cop.

In each instance, minority officers were reportedly swapped out for white officers to perform standard duties.

The group of minority officers later gathered on the third floor to discuss the unusual change and console each other over what they deemed a 'segregation order.'

Protests have erupted across the United States and the world after video of George Floyd's death went viral on social media

The Minneapolis Police Department (pictured) is to be disbanded and replaced with a community-led public safety system

Some officers cried, while others wondered if they should quit their jobs, according to charges obtained by The Star Tribune.

Those who had complaints were told to talk to Lydon.

Written statements show all eight officers scheduling time to speak with Lydon, where he reportedly admitted to banning the officers from the fifth floor but was adamant that it wasn't racism.

Lydon defended his decision, charges said, but reversed his decision within 45 minutes.

A complaint to top officials by a union steward sparked an internal investigation.

By then, at least on officer's work schedule had changed for the weekend.

Police fire tear gas and less-lethal rounds at protesters during a demonstration at the intersection of East Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota (pictured)

The next day, several officers reported seeing surveillance footage that showed a white lieutenant, who was given special access to Chauvin's jail cell, sitting on his bunk bed and allowing him to use her cell phone.

Such actions are considered a significant policy violation and caused officials to move Chauvin to the Hennepin County jail before finally being placed in the Oak Park Heights maximum security prison.

After the incident, dozens of jail staffers reportedly met with Sheriff Bob Fletcher and had an acting sergeant read a two-page letter on behalf of minority employees.

The letter addressed the orders from Lydon, the surprise he felt at being labeled a 'liability' around Chuavin and the instruction to notify other officers of color of floor reassignments.

The letter read: 'I immediately left feeling sick to my stomach. The hurt and anger these officers displayed was evident not only in their body language, but in their voice.'

The sergeant alleged that the order had caused tension among staff and cast doubt on the professionalism of officers.

He did not call for Lydon's resignation, but acknowledged that his judgement 'caused us officers to lose faith in his ability to run this facility.'

Fletcher promised to reassign Lydon from the jail and send an e-mail about how the agency could move past the incident, The Star Tribune reports. Staffers said he never did.

As of Saturday, a sheriff's office spokesperson said Lydon had been removed from his position as a jail superintendent and will report to Undersheriff Bill Finney, who is leading the Detention Division in the interim.

Pictured (left to right): Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane

The recent discrimination charges will spark a second Department of Human Rights racism investigation into police in recent weeks after the first was triggered by the death of George Floyd (pictured)

Fletcher is reportedly 'reviewing the matter to determine if any additional action is necessary,' the spokesperson said.

However, the department's recent admission to reassigning officers of color directly goes against its initial narrative pushed to the media.

When Reuters questioned the segregation orders, the spokesperson initially said there was 'no truth to the report' and that Chuavin 'was treated according to procedure.'

The blatant denial of any wrongdoing was salt on the wound for officers of color.

'They were calling us all liars,' one acting sergeant told The Star Tribune. He asked to be anonymous over fears of retaliation.

'I can't go to work and hold my head up knowing that they can just brush this under the rug.'

The sergeant said he was so disheartened by the segregation order that he left work in tears. He also turned down a promotion and the additional pay with it.

The spokesperson said he responded that way because 'When I asked, that's what I was told.'

All eight employees deemed the order the 'most overtly discriminatory act' they've experience while working for the Ramsey County Jail.

Pictured: Protesters gather at the scene where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was pinned down by a police officer kneeling on his neck before later dying in hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota

One officer noted that when a man is booked for domestic assault charges against a women, female officers are not ordered to avoid them despite how they may feel.

'My fellow officers of color and I were, and continue to be, deeply humiliated, distressed, and negatively impacted by the segregation order,' the charges said.

The Ramsey County Jail was characterized as a 'hostile work environment' over the reported failure to address the incident.

'The damage had been done.' said Bonnie Smith, the lawyer representing the officers. 'These jobs are super sensitive, highly dangerous at times and involve an immense amount of trust.'

'They struggle walking into a building where the superintendent is still affiliated.'

In addition to Chauvin's arrest, officers Thomas Lane, 37, J. Alexander Kueng, 26, and Tou Thao, 34, have all be charged.

They were hit with aiding and abetting to second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

The three officers were taken into custody in early June and held on a $1million bail.

Lane and Kueng have since been released from jail on bond. Thao remains in police custody.

As demonstrations continue to grip the nation, one man was killed and 11 others injured in Minneapolis after suspected gunmen fired several rounds on Saturday night.

Photographs posted to social media showed windows at the Landmark's Uptown Theatre and another storefront shot out. One man is dead and 11 people suffered non-life-threatening wounds in a shooting in Minneapolis, police said early Sunday

The area of the gunfire is reportedly three miles from a neighborhood that was overcome by rioting amid protests.

Police had not yet released details on what led to the shooting which is reported to have involved people firing 'around 80 rounds' at each other. No one was in custody in connection with the shooting as of 4 a.m.

A preliminary investigation indicated that 'individuals on foot' started shooting around 12:30 a.m. and later fled the scene. The victims have not been identified.

Photographs posted to social media show windows at the Landmark's Uptown Theatre and another storefront shot out. Screams were audible on a live video posted to Facebook that showed the aftermath at the scene.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga of all possible support from the Centre after an earthquake of 5.3 magnitude hit the northeastern state on Monday damaging houses and roads.

"Spoke to the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Shri Zoramthanga Ji, on the situation in the wake of the earthquake there. Assured all possible support from the Centre," the prime minister tweeted.

The earthquake happened at 4.10 am and the epicentre was at Zokhawthar in Champhai district on the India-Myanmar border.

The tremors were felt in several parts of the state, including state capital Aizawl, a state official said.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah also spoke to the chief minister to take stock of the situation and assured him of all possible support from the Centre.

I have spoken to Shri @ZoramthangaCM ji, Chief Minister of Mizoram, to review the situation after the earthquake tremors in the state. I assured him all possible support from the central government. Praying for everyones safety and well-being. Amit Shah (@AmitShah) June 22, 2020

No casualties have been reported, the official of the state Geology and Mineral Resource Department said.

Several houses and buildings in Champhai district have been partly damaged due to the quake.

The quake also caused cracks on highways and roads at several places, he added.

The full extent of the damage is yet to be ascertained, the official said.

The depth of the quake was 20 km while the coordinates of the epicentre are 23.22 (latitude) and 93.24 (longitude), it said.

An earthquake of 5.1 magnitude also hit the state on Sunday around 4.10 pm, and another of 4.6 magnitude on June 18.
New York: US President Donald Trump said on Monday he opposed removing the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City`s American Museum of Natural History. The move was announced by the museum on Sunday and comes amid anti-racism protests across the United States and the world after the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody on May 25 in the United States.

The statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side. It stands prominently on a plinth outside the museum`s main entrance, overlooking Central Park.

Roosevelt, a Republican like Trump, was US president from 1901-1909. Known for his exuberant and daring manner, he carried out antitrust, conservationist and "Square Deal" reforms, and, critics said, took an interventionist approach to foreign policy, including projecting US naval power around the world.

Many critics have said the Roosevelt statue symbolizes racial discrimination and colonial expansion. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city was in favor of the request from the museum to remove the statue because it "depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior." "Ridiculous, don`t do it," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.

In the ongoing anti-racism demonstrations, protesters across the United States and around the world have demanded that authorities take down monuments honoring pro-slavery Confederate figures and the architects of Europe`s colonies.

"Simply put, the time has come to move it," the museum`s president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times.

She said the museum`s decision was based on the statue itself, along with its "hierarchical composition", and not on Roosevelt. Futter said the museum continues to honor Roosevelt as "a pioneering conservationist".

Roosevelt`s face is also one of the four presidents - along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln - whose faces are cast in 60-foot-high granite sculptures at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. Trump has blasted the anti-racism protests, saying demonstrators have behaved badly.

"The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments - our beautiful monuments - tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We`re not conforming", the US President told supporters at a rally last week.
Photo: Unsplash

Worcester's tech industry is experiencing strong job growth. Local employers posted 36 new jobs over the past week and 82 in the last month, ranking second among local industries, according to ZipRecruiter, a leading online employment marketplace.

The tech industry also came in second in terms of local employers adding new jobs. In the past month, 21 companies listed open jobs for Worcester-based workers in that area.

Top companies hiring locally in information technology include U.S. Army/Army Reserves, Staffigo Technical Services LLC and Machado Consulting Inc.

Jobs posted by Staffigo Technical Services LLC in the past month in Worcester included project managers and software engineers, while Machado Consulting Inc. sought technicians and systems engineers.

This story was created automatically using local jobs data, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
[June 22, 2020] COVID-19's Impact on the Wearable Technology Sector

DUBLIN, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ResearchAndMarkets.com published a new article on the wearables industry, "Wearables Contributing to Early Detection of COVID-19" Wearable technology has made an important contribution to fighting COVID-19. Many wearables manufacturers began adapting their products to assist with detecting early signs of COVID-19. Some have also developed algorithms to measure coughing and general respiratory activity. This can provide useful data for healthcare professionals about changes in a patient's condition and allows less severely affected patients to be monitored remotely which reduces the pressure on hospitals.



Researchers at the University f California San Francisco are using the Oura ring to determine if physiological data collected by the device can be used to predict onset, progression and recovery in new cases of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Fiitbit has launched an in app study of device owners who had a confirmed case of COVID-19 or experienced symptoms consistent with the virus. Fitbit hopes that collecting vitals data and symptom history at scale will help to build a profile of COVID-19 cases. This could help individuals with a potential infection to seek care or self isolate earlier.





To see the full article and a list of related reports on the market, visit "Wearables Contributing to Early Detection of COVID-19"

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]



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



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/covid-19s-impact-on-the-wearable-technology-sector-301081114.html SOURCE Research and Markets

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Kolkata: In one of the shocking incidents, a man after killing his wife in Bengaluru flew to Kolkata and shot dead his mother-in-law on Monday (June 22) and later committed suicide by shooting himself.

Reportedly, Amit Agarwal aged 42 who is a son-in-law of Subhas and Lalita Dhandhania came to his in-law's flat at RK Samadhi Road in Kolkata around 5:30 PM on Monday and started arguing with them.

Amit's mother-in-law tried to quell his anger, whose relationship with her wife Shilpi had soured from the past 2 years and a divorce suit was also pending.

He then shot his mother-in-law during the argument.

His father-in-law survived as he somehow locked the room and sought help from the Phoolbagan Police Station.

Police rushed to the place and entered the flat where Amit was found dead in a pool of blood and a firearm was also recovered from the spot.

A suicide note was found where it was mentioned that he had killed his wife in Bengaluru before coming to Kolkata.

Kolkata Police immediately contacted the DCP of Whitefield in Bengaluru who hurried to the mentioned spot and found the dead body of Amit's wife.

DCP of Whitefield said, "One Amit Agarwal s/o Muralidhar Agarwal has killed his mother-in-law and thereafter committed suicide in Kolkata today. Based on information received from the Kolkata Police, the Mahadevpura Police personnel went to the apartment occupied by Mrs Shilpi Agarwal wife of Amit Agarwal. When she did not open the door, the lock was broken open. The dead body of the Shilpi Agarwal was found lying on the floor of the kitchen next to a cupboard."

"Prima facie it looks like she has been murdered but is subject to official confirmation by post mortem. A note allegedly written by Amit Agarwal has been found in the apartment. A case of murder has been taken up at Mahadevpura PS and investigation has started," added DCP.
An Afghanistan Sikh was abducted from the Paktia province in Eastern Afghanistan four days ago, confirmed the Afghan Sikh community living in the United States.

The man identified as Nidhan Singh, hails from Tsamkani district in the Paktia province and was employed as a Gurusewak (helper) at the local Gurudwara.

Post Singhs abduction, the Afghan Sikh community living in the United States has again urged the Government of India to help in the resettlement of the Sikhs living in Afghanistan .

They have appealed to India to make special arrangements under Vande Bharat Mission to provide a safe haven of over 600 Sikhs. I have spoken to Sikh Member of Parliament Narinder Singh and he confirmed that officials in the Afghan Government have promised to help and find Nidhan, Paramjit Singh Bedi, Chairman of the Afghan Sikh community in New Jersey told ANI.

Also read: Demonstration held outside UN office in Geneva to protest Paks treatment of Christians

Also read: Top ISI officer succumbs to Covid-19 in Balochistan

Narinder Singh has also reached out to the Taliban leaders and has been assured that all efforts will be made to ensure his release, Bedi further said.

Bedi and other community members will send written appeals to former diplomat and Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the Indian envoy to the United States Taranjit Singh Sandhu.

Worried for the lives of the Sikh minorities living in Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni, the Sikh community, has been constantly seeking support from India.

Encouraged by the steps taken in the past by the Indian government, leaders of the Afghan Sikh community leaders have made several appeals to India to accommodate the Sikhs and Hindus from Afghanistan and grant them legal entry with long term residency multiple entry visa.

The community leaders living in the United States said it is imperative to alleviate the dire situation of religious minorities in Afghanistan who look to India as the only safe haven in the region.

In May this year, expressing concerns over the safety and security of religious minorities in Afghanistan, twenty-six US Congressmen urged Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to take all available steps to facilitate the safe and expeditious relocation of members of the Sikh and Hindu communities trapped in the war-hit country.

In the letter dated May 4, Congressman John Garamendi, co-chair of Sikh Caucus, and twenty-five others stated that the Sikh community continues to be under grave threat from Islamic State terrorist attacks directed at Sikhs.Once a thriving community of nearly 250,000 people, the Sikh and Hindu community in Afghanistan has endured years of discrimination and violence from extremists, and the community is now estimated to comprise fewer than 100 families across the country, the letter said.

Also read: Trump slams China over coronavirus, says saved lives by shutting Chinese from coming to US

For all the latest World News, download NewsX App
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Elnur Baghishov - Trend:

As many as 2,573 people have been infected with the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the past 24 hours in Iran, said Sima Sadat Lari, spokesperson for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Trend reports citing the ministry.

According to Sadat Lari, 119 more people have died from the coronavirus over the past day.

The official added that the condition of 2,898 people is critical.

Sadat Lari said that the situation is more dangerous in Iran's, Khuzestan, Hormozgan, East Azerbaijan, and Kermanshah provinces.

The spokesperson stressed that no deaths were reported in eight provinces of Iran, and only four deaths were registered in four provinces (one per each province).

So far, more than 1.44 million tests have been conducted in Iran for the diagnosis of coronavirus.

Iran continues to monitor the coronavirus situation in the country. According to the recent reports of the Iranian officials, over 207,500 people have been infected, and 9,742 people have already died. Meanwhile, over 166,400 have reportedly recovered from the disease.

The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the infection's further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease.

The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19.
Serbia's president led his party to a landslide victory in general elections boycotted by the opposition, securing a crushing majority in a country that's at the center of a struggle for influence among global powers.

Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 63.4% of Sunday's vote, according to partial official results with 2.3% of polling stations counted.

Boosted by the boycott from opposition leaders and turnout marred by fear of coronavirus, the result is enough for his party to change any law uncontested. It also eclipses the majorities held by ruling parties across Europe save those of Russia and Belarus.

"This is a historic moment," Vucic said after declaring victory. "Tonight we got enormous confidence from the people, the most ever in Serbia."

The win will allow him to tighten his political dominance over the former Yugoslav republic that began when he transformed himself from nationalist firebrand to a pro-European Union prime minister in 2014.

It also renews the government's mandate to tackle thorny issues ranging from trying to lead the economy into a post-virus recovery to mending ties with Kosovo and navigating the uncertain path toward EU membership.

In second place behind the Progressives was the Socialist Party of Vucic's foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, with 10.7%.

According to a parallel tally of election officials' partial vote count, independent monitors at the CeSID think tank said only one other party made it in to parliament and turnout was about 48%. More complete results are expected Monday.

- - -

Buoyed by state media coverage of his government's efforts to quash Serbia's covid-19 outbreak and engagements with leaders in the U.S., China and Russia, Vucic overcame weeks of protests against his government by tens of thousands of Serbs who took to their balconies during the virus lockdown.

His victory exceeds the most votes won by the late wartime strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a former boss to Vucic in the 1990s. The biggest opposition parties refused to field candidates, saying the Progressives denied them access to media and undermined conditions for a free and fair vote.

"This result is an election tsunami," said Slobodan Zecevic, an analyst at the Institute of European Studies. "I don't know anyone in Europe capable of such an election result."

Since switching to the job of president in 2017, Vucic has transformed the role from a largely ceremonial post into Serbia's main executive position.

During that time he has reined in public finances, attracted foreign investment, and raised wages. Still, living standards have languished virtually unchanged at about two-fifths of the EU average for the last decade, and Freedom House, a largely U.S.-government funded think tank that monitors democracy, ranks Serbia as "partly free."

- - -

Vucic's biggest struggle has arguably been his effort to lead the country of 7 million into the EU. The main hurdle to that is Kosovo, which declared independence a decade after the two nations fought a war that ended when a NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serb troops out.

While Brussels has demanded that Serbia mend ties with its neighbor as a condition for entry, Vucic has spent years preventing Kosovo from gaining international recognition, a position backed by a majority of Serbs.

He has vowed to never consider it a separate and independent entity, a position backed by Russia and China. Those nations have pressed to increase their influence in Serbia via investment and support in the United Nations on Kosovo, taking advantage of lax engagement from the EU during a decade of repeated economic and political crises.

But pressure is building for a deal. President Donald Trump's envoy to the bloc, Richard Grenell, has persuaded Vucic to head to the White House on Saturday to meet his Kosovo counterpart to discuss economic cooperation.

Before that, he'll meet the EU's envoy to the Balkans who's trying to restart EU-led talks that stalled in 2018, then he'll head to Russia to meet his ally Vladimir Putin.

With a new mandate, Vucic and his next government - whose prime minister he hasn't yet named - will have to sort things out with Pristina if it wants to make good on a pledge to join the bloc sometime this decade.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Stuttgart, Germany  Mon, June 22, 2020 08:20 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608fbe1 2 World Germany,riot,Rampage,unrest Free

German authorities expressed shock Sunday over a rampage of an "unprecedented scale" overnight in the city center of Stuttgart, where hundreds of party-goers ran riot, attacking police and plundering stores after smashing shop windows.

Two dozen people, half of them German nationals, were arrested provisionally, as police reported 19 colleagues hurt.

"They were unbelievable scenes that have left me speechless. In my 46 years of police service, I have never experienced this," said Stuttgart police chief Frank Lutz.

Tensions built up shortly after midnight when officers carried out checks on a 17-year-old German man suspected of using drugs, said Stuttgart deputy police chief Thomas Berger.

Crowds who were milling around at the city's biggest square, the Schlossplatz, immediately rallied around the young man and began flinging stones and bottles at police.

The groups of mostly men also used sticks or poles to smash windows of police vehicles parked in the area.

"I sharply condemn this brutal outbreak of violence, these acts against people and things are criminal action that must be forcefully prosecuted and condemned," Baden-Wuerttemberg state premier Winfried Kretschmann said in a statement.

At the height of the clashes, some 400 to 500 people joined in the battle against police officers and rescue workers.

As officers pushed back against the crowd, they broke up into small groups, carrying on their rampage around the city center, smashing shop windows and looting stores along nearby Koenigstrasse, a major shopping street.

'Party scene'

Videos posted on Twitter showed people breaking shop windows, leaving goods strewn on the streets.

A jewelry store was completely emptied and a mobile phone shop wrecked, according to regional broadcaster SWR.

In all, nine shops were looted while 14 others suffered damage such as broken windows.

As smaller scale clashes had already broken out downtown last week between police and groups of young people, officers had already bulked up their deployment overnight with an extra 100-strong team.

But the scale of the violence overwhelmed the officers, forcing them to call in reinforcements from other parts of the state.

Only four and a half hours later were they able to quell the violence that has been described as "civil war-like scenes" by Social Democrat regional MP Sascha Binder.

Police on Sunday ruled out any political motives for the rampage, describing the perpetrators as people from the "party scene or events scene".

An unusually large number of people were in the city center to enjoy the summer's night because discos and clubs are still shut over he coronavirus pandemic, said Stuttgart mayor Fritz Kuhn.

Some of the rioters were charged up by alcohol, he said, adding that others may have been driven by "the addiction of putting a little film on social media."

Asked about the nationalities of the 12 non-Germans who were detailed, Berger said they stemmed from a range of countries from Croatia and Portugal to Afghanistan and Somalia.

Calling the riots of "an unprecedented nature," interior minister for the region Thomas Strobl vowed to "use all available means available under the rule of law to go after the rioters."

Topics : Germany riot Rampage unrest
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government has decided to set up four new testing laboratories for COVID-19, with priority appointment of the 131 essential staff needed for these labs.

It also sanctioned 300 ad-hoc posts in the Medical Education Department, 100 in each in the three government run Medial Colleges, to handle the critical patients.

The state cabinet gave the go-ahead to set up the new labs in Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Mohali and help scale up testing capacity from the current 9,000 a day, in the three Government Medical Colleges at Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot, to 13,000 daily.

The new laboratories will be established in Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana; Punjab State Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Mohali; Northern Regional Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory, Jalandhar; and Punjab Biotechnology Incubator, Mohali.

All the appointments will be made through outsourcing from Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkod.

These appointments could be subject to their clearance of exams later.

Meanwhile, the cabinet has also given the nod to re-employment of the medical, ayurvedic and dental faculty at the Government Medical Colleges and the Government Dental Colleges in Patiala and Amritsar, as well as the Government Ayurvedic College, Patiala, after their retirement at 62 years.

While re-employment will be up to the age of 70, for Medical and Ayurvedic teachers, for Dental faculty, it will be till the age of 65.

In order to ease the process of approval and clearances for setting-up of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) the state cabinet today also approved the Punjab Right to Business Rules, 2020 thus paving a way for setting up of these units on fast track basis.

Under the new rules, a District Level Nodal Agency headed by Deputy Commissioner will give sanctions and approvals pertaining to building plan, completion certificate, trade license registration, land use change, Fire Department NOC, factory building plan approval (except for industries involving hazardous

process), as well as registration of shops or establishments.

For units being set up in approved Industrial Park, the certificate of in-principle approval would be issued within three working days after the submission of declaration of intent by the applicant.

For areas outside the Industrial Park, such certificate would be issued within 15working days.

The said certificate would be valid for a period of three and half years, and the concerned unit shall apply for regular approvals not later than three years on the Invest Punjab Business First portal from the date of issuance of certificate of in-principle approval.
Ukip today unveiled a tax consultant who lists 'Nazi Germany' among his hobbies as its new leader.

Freddy Vachha, 61, warned Westminster politicians to 'watch out' as he gave his first speech in front of the statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament.

The former London regional organiser is the party's sixth leader in just four years and he admitted the party which won a slew of European and local council seats under Nigel Farage had 'gone astray'.

In an online CV posted last summer, Mr Vachha listed an extensive list of hobbies which included computer programming, 'Nazi Germany', growing 'ultra-hot' chillies, travelling int he Himalayas and the 'Belgian Congo holocaust'.

Mr Vachha told the BBC this afternoon that it was time for the party to 'get back to business'.

'We know what ails this country. For many years, alas, we too have gone astray, focusing on things which were not really important, and some of the things we focused on were just plum wrong,' he said.

The former London regional organiser is the party's sixth leader in just four years and he admitted the party which won a slew of European and local council seats under Nigel Farage had 'gone astray'

He warned Westminster politicians to 'watch out' as he gave his first speech in front of the statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament

'We return to our libertarian, freedom-loving principles and under my leadership, that is what we shall get.

Those blaggards in Westminster need to watch out, because I take no prisoners. They have sinned for too long.'

The previous Ukip leader Dick Braine quit in October last year after less than three months in charge. His predecessor, Gerard Batten, lasted just 14 months.

The party had found itself relegated to the fringes of politics since Mr Farage launched the Brexit Party last year, and took a swathe of European Parliament seats before the UK quit the block in December.

Speaking on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Brexit referendum result, Mr Vachha said it was 'ridiculous' that negotiations with Brussels were still going on.

'We are still enmeshed in the EU, still haggling and arguing with them while we should have just left,' he told those outside Parliament.

In an online CV posted last summer, Mr Vachha listed an extensive list of hobbies which included computer programming, 'Nazi Germany', growing 'ultra-hot' chillies, travelling int he Himalayas and the 'Belgian Congo holocaust'

Mr Farage's former party was the winner in the 2014 election but struggled in last year's.

After winning 27.5 per cent of the vote six years ago they only collected around three per cent last May.

Mr Batten, who had announced he was standing down as party chief, lost his seat in London.

His leadership had been controversial as he maintained close links with Tommy Robinson - real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - the co-creator of the hard right English Defence League.
Dutch producer Gin 1689 has appointed specialist firm GinBuilders to distribute the brand in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Drinks industry veterans Daan de Kroon and Ron de la Fuente set up GinBuilders after working for Diageo and Heineken in the region. It is dedicated to managing gin, genever and tonic brands in the Americas.

GinBuilders believes that the ginaissance has only just started in the Americas and that Gin 1689 has the brand credentials, story, liquid profile and outstanding packaging to successfully conquer The Americas with our support.

Gin 1689 is based on a 351-year-old gin recipe dating back to the time when William of Orange the Third introduced gin to the British population, kicking off the initial gin craze.

Owner Alexander Janssens said: We are excited about our partnership and cant wait to introduce our award-winning gin to the Americas together with the GinBuilders team.
The COVID-19 pandemics considerable impact on hedge fund redemptions continued in April as the industry experienced $38.1 billion in outflows. While a sizable sum, the net redemption total was less than half of Marchs $85.6 billion redemption total.

Aprils redemptions represented 1.3% of industry assets, according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator published by BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop Solutions.

A positive note was a $101.2 billion monthly trading profit fueled by an April stock market rally, bringing total hedge fund industry assets to more than $2.99 trillion as April ended, up from $2.86 trillion at the end of March.

Data from 6,000 funds (excluding CTAs) in the BarclayHedge database showed the greatest volume of April redemptions coming from hedge funds in the U.S. and its offshore islands where investors pulled out $21.7 billion during the month. Investors redeemed nearly $13.1 billion from funds in the U.K. and its offshore islands during the month, while funds in Continental Europe experienced nearly $2.6 billion in outflows.

The total amount of hedge fund redemptions may have declined in April, but its significant volume showed that the COVID-19 pandemics influence on investor sentiment remains a powerful force, said Sol Waksman, president of BarclayHedge. Stock market volatility, troubling economic indicators on all sides and continued high unemployment led many investors to decide that the safest place for now is on the sidelines.

Over the 12-month period through April the hedge fund industry experienced $187.9 billion in redemptions. Aprils $101.2 billion trading profit reduced the industrys 12-month trading loss to $75.2 billion from $142.8 billion at the end of March, leaving total industry assets at $2.99 trillion at the end of April, up from $2.86 trillion at the end of March but down from nearly $3.10 trillion a year earlier.

Four hedge fund sectors posted 12-month inflows through April. Event driven funds added $23.0 billion, 15.9% of assets, Sector Specific funds brought in $7.5 billion, 4.3% of assets, Convertible Arbitrage funds experienced $2.5 billion in inflows, 12.8% of assets, and Emerging Markets  Latin America funds added $1.6 billion, 13.8% of assets.

Among sectors booking 12-month redemptions, most notable were Fixed Income funds with $47.8 billion in redemptions, 7.6% of assets, Equity Long/Short funds with $42.0 billion in outflows, 20.1% of assets, and Equity Long Bias funds which shed $20.6 billion, 6.2% of assets.

The managed futures industry fared better than hedge funds in April, with the industry experiencing $1.5 billion in inflows, a considerable improvement on Marchs $19.0 billion in redemptions. A $2.1 billion trading profit in April helped bring industry assets to $280.8 billion as the month ended, up from $278.0 billion at the end of March.

CTAs in the U.K. and its offshore islands drove the industry inflow trend in April adding $2.7 billion during the month, 4.4% of assets. Funds in China and Hong Kong also experienced inflows taking in $25.0 million, 3.2% of assets. Regions experiencing net redemptions were led by CTA funds in the U.S. and its offshore islands which saw $833.4 million in outflows in April, 0.5% of assets.

Over the 12-month period through April, CTAs experienced $30.4 billion in redemptions, 9.2% of assets. An $8.3 billion trading loss over the period contributed to the industrys $280.8 billion in assets at the end of April, a drop from $330.9 billion a year earlier.

About Backstop Solutions

Backstops mission is to help the institutional investment industry use time to its fullest potential. We develop technology to simplify and streamline otherwise time-consuming tasks and processes, enabling our clients to quickly and easily access, share and manage the knowledge thats critical to their day-to-day business success. Backstop provides its industry-leading cloud-based productivity suite to investment consultants, pensions, funds of funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, private equity, hedge funds and real estate investment firms.

BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop, currently maintains data on more than 7,100 hedge funds, funds of funds and CTAs. Institutional investors, brokerage firms and private banks worldwide utilize BarclayHedge indices as performance benchmarks for the hedge fund and managed futures industries.
12th in a series of stories in 2020 about inspirational Iowa women in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment allowing women to vote.

Rowena Edson Stevens, born near Columbus, Wis., in 1852, graduated from Iowa State College in its second class. She taught school in Iowa and Nebraska. In 1876, she married John Stevens, a graduate of Iowa State Colleges first class. The family lived in Ames and later in Boone.

Stevens became socially and politically active, founding and supporting charitable organizations, as well as playing a prominent role in the struggle for woman suffrage. She organized the Political Equality Club in Ames, serving as its president.

She also served as president of the Boone Equality Club and organized chapters in other cities. Stevens was president of the Benevolent Society in Ames for 12 years, Worthy Matron of the Order of Eastern Star in Ames, state Regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and on the board of the first hospital in Boone.

She held various offices in the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association, including president in 1894, in which capacity she addressed the Iowa Legislature on behalf of the suffragist movement. As president of the Boone Equality Club, Stevens organized the first woman suffrage parade in the United States for the annual convention of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association in Boone in 1908.

Stevens was honored by the League of Women Voters in 1931 as one of the 24 women in Iowa whose courageous work opened the opportunities of complete citizenship to all women in the state. Stevens died in 1918. Stevens was inducted into the Iowa Womens Hall of Fame in 1995.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter @JosephVMicallef.

The United States entered World War II as a result of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other American military bases on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The next day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, known as FDR, addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Declaring the attack "a day that will live in infamy," he asked lawmakers "for a declaration of war against the empire of Japan." That same day, the Senate voted unanimously to declare war against Japan. The House of Representatives concurred. There was only one dissenting vote, Rep. Jeanette Rankin, a Republican from Montana.

Three days later, Italy and Germany declared war on the United States. Benito Mussolini was first. Appearing on the balcony overlooking Piazza Venezia in the center of Rome, he declared that Italy would stand fast "with the powers of the Pact of Steel." A few hours later, Adolf Hitler, addressing the Reichstag, declared that, despite his efforts to avoid war with the U.S., under the Tripartite Agreement of Sept. 27, 1940, Germany "was obligated" to join its Italian ally to support Japan. In reality, the Pact of Steel required only a declaration of war in the event one of the parties was attacked. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler was obligated to declare war on the U.S.

The next day, Dec. 11, Congress responded by formally declaring war against Germany and Italy. The resolution passed without debate. Once again, Rankin voted against the resolution. In the meantime, the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties announced that they would "adjourn politics" for the duration of the conflict. That same day, Congress ratified a law allowing U.S. armed forces to be deployed anywhere in the world.

Ten days later, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington, D.C., for a series of meetings with FDR. The meetings, dubbed the Arcadia Conference, had several significant outcomes. First, the U.S. and Great Britain agreed they would pool their military resources. This was a significant change from World War I. During that conflict, the U.S. never formally joined the Allies but rather "associated itself" with the Anglo-French alliance and maintained its own, separate command structure and supply lines.

In addition, they finalized the United Nations Declaration and agreed to prioritize the war against Germany over all other theaters. Dubbed the "Germany First" policy, it committed the U.S. to the European theater, even though it was already under attack by Japanese military forces in the Western Pacific.

Back in London, the Germany First declaration was seen as a significant triumph for Churchill. That policy, however, had little to do with his efforts. As early as 1940, long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration had already decided to prioritize the defeat of Nazi Germany, even if Japan attacked the U.S.

Why Germany First?

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Joint Planning Committee of the Army and Navy Board, the predecessor of what would become the Joint Chiefs of Staff, developed a series of color-coded war plans. Each outlined a hypothetical conflict between the U.S. and an adversary. Potential opponents were not typically named, but their identity was obvious.

War Plan Orange, for example, envisioned a military conflict with a militaristic, East Asian island nation. The plan, first drafted in 1919 and revised in 1924, called for "an economic blockade of the island nation," including unrestricted submarine warfare and the interning of any U.S. residents, including those who were American citizens, of the same ethnicity.

A potential war with Germany was code-named War Plan Black. Green denoted a hypothetical war with Mexico. Some of the war plans seem rather bizarre today. A hypothetical war against Great Britain was code-named Red. Wars against individual British possessions/Commonwealth countries were coded with colors that were shades of red: Canada (Crimson), India (Ruby), Australia (Scarlet) and New Zealand (Garnet). A hypothetical Anglo-Japanese alliance against the U.S. was code-named Red-Orange.

In 1939, as Europe moved inexorably toward war, the War Department recognized the likelihood that the U.S. would find itself in a multi-front war. The result was a new series of five war plans dubbed Rainbow. These plans combined the individual "color plans" into multi-theater wars with multiple opponents. What the Rainbow plans implicitly recognized was that the European and Asian theaters were already tied together and what happened in one theater, especially in Europe, would affect the other.

The first suggestion of a Germany First policy came in the McCollum Memo of Oct. 7, 1940. Lt. Cmdr. Arthur McCollum was director of the Far East Section of the Office of Naval Intelligence and charged with briefing the White House on Japanese matters.

McCollum's eight-point memo argued, among other things, that America should increase its military forces in East Asia and the Western Pacific, while also obtaining basing rights for the U.S. Navy in Singapore and other British possessions in Asia. He also proposed a joint Anglo-American embargo on trade with Japan. Japan's perception of British weakness, he argued, could trigger a Japanese assault on British, Dutch and French colonial possessions in Asia. Hence, it was in America's interest to ensure that Great Britain survived.

McCollum shared his memo with U.S. Navy Capt. Dudley Knox, a prominent naval historian and director of the Navy's Historical Office. Knox added an addendum to the memo, noting: "If England remains stable, Japan will be cautious in the Orient. Hence our assistance to England in the Atlantic is also protection to her and to us in the Orient."

A month later, on Nov. 12, 1940, Adm. Harold Stark, the chief of naval operations, sent a memorandum to FDR outlining five possible roles for the U.S. in World War II. The scenarios were numbered A to E. The first three (A to C) envisioned possible scenarios for a conflict between the U.S. and Japan. In these scenarios, Japan would either fight alone or would be supported by Italy and Germany, while the U.S. would either fight alone or be supported by Great Britain.

Option D envisioned a full-scale war with Germany and Italy, but not initially Japan, which would see the U.S. fully support Great Britain and commit substantial troops to the European and African theaters. Option E was to continue U.S. neutrality and focus on building up American military forces and the defense of the Western hemisphere from German encroachment. At the time, the U.S. was particularly concerned that Germany would obtain military bases in the Caribbean colonies of the occupied nations.

Stark recommended option D. At the time, the designation for D in the military phonetic alphabet was "Dog." The memo came to be referred to as the Dog Memo and its proposed actions as Plan D. At the time, U.S. naval power was concentrated in the Pacific, so Plan D represented a significant buildup of the American naval presence in the Atlantic.

The proposal was widely supported within the Roosevelt administration and was endorsed by U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. Officially, FDR never approved Plan D but nonetheless moved quickly to implement it. In December 1940, FDR announced he would seek congressional authorization for the Lend Lease Program. British-American military staff talks began on Jan. 29, 1941, in Washington. They continued to March 29, 1941. Termed ABC-1 (American British Conversations), it was the first of 22 such meetings during the war.

On March 11, 1941, FDR signed the Lend-Lease bill into law. Over the course of the war, $50.1 billion in aid, the equivalent of more than $700 billion today, was distributed to American allies. In July, following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt dispatched Harry Hopkins to confer with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. By October, Lend-Lease aid was flowing to the USSR.

Following the surrender of Denmark on April 9, 1940, Churchill moved quickly to take control of Danish possessions in the North Atlantic. On April 11, British forces landed in the Faroe Islands and established a garrison there. The British built an air base on Vagar, now the main airport for the islands, and fortified the Skansin fortress in Torshavn.

A month later, on May 10, 1940, British forces, and later Canadian forces, landed in Iceland and proceeded to occupy the island. Technically, Iceland was an independent kingdom in union with Denmark. Danish King Christian X was the head of state of both Denmark and Iceland. He was Iceland's first and last king. Since Christian X had been captured by German forces, there was concern in London that Germany might be able to use his authority to secure bases in Iceland.

The invasion was not actively opposed, but neither was it welcomed. Iceland had longstanding ties to Germany, and many Icelanders were sympathetic to Germany, although not Nazism. On July 7, 1941, Great Britain turned over responsibility for Iceland to U.S. military forces. The initial occupation was by the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade under Maj. Gen. John Marston. The U.S. was responsible for building a total of five airstrips in Iceland, including what is now Reykjavik airport, and the international airport at Keflavik. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was still five months away.

Great Britain and Canada also made plans to occupy the Danish colony of Greenland. There had been a longstanding dispute between Denmark and Norway over control of Greenland. Greenland had originally been settled by Norwegian Vikings in the 13th century, and it had been part of the Kingdom of Norway from 1261 through 1814; when it was ceded to Denmark in the Treaty of Kiel. The Norwegians had maintained a colony in East Greenland during the 1930s and had extended a claim to the region.

The population of Greenland was only about 18,000 people at the time, of which about 500 were Danes. There were thousands of Norwegians who had escaped from Norway after the German invasion and had settled in either Great Britain or Canada. The Greenlanders were concerned that, if these Norwegians settled in Greenland, they could tip any future plebiscite in favor of Norway. FDR blocked the Anglo-Canadian plans, and instead had the War Department develop a plan for the U.S. occupation of Greenland.

On April 9, 1941, in response to a request from the Greenland territorial government for protection, the U.S. and the Danish envoy in Washington signed an agreement making Greenland a de facto U.S. protectorate. The legal status of that agreement, however, was very much in question.

Unlike other occupied nations, Germany had initially made Denmark a protectorate. The Danish government was not dissolved until Germany declared martial law on Aug. 29, 1943. Until then, the Danish government and parliament remained in power. The military, including the navy, and police forces, although substantially reduced, stayed under the control of Copenhagen. In fact, on March 23, 1943, Denmark had free elections, the only country in occupied Europe to do so, for the Danish parliament.

Denmark did not have a government in exile with whom the U.S. could negotiate. Technically, the Danish envoy in Washington was still operating under the jurisdiction of the Danish government in Copenhagen. He had no instructions or authority to allow the U.S. to take control of Greenland; neither, for that matter, did the Greenland territorial government.

Once the agreement was signed, the U.S. moved quickly to build Bluie West (Narsarsuaq Air Base) and Bluie East (Ikateq Air Base). An adjoining third air base, Bluie East Two, was established in the summer of 1942. The U.S. also established a naval base close to Ivigtut, the location of a cryolite mine. Cryolite was a rare mineral essential in the production of aluminum. The air bases served as a transit stop for lend-lease aircraft and, especially Bluie East Two, housed ASW patrols over the North Atlantic. The Coast Guard was given responsibility for patrolling Greenland's coasts and for ensuring that Germany did not establish weather-monitoring stations on Greenland's east coast.

In the meantime, the U.S. Navy was steadily expanding its activity in the North Atlantic. Even before writing the "Dog Memo," Stark had ordered "neutrality patrols" in the Caribbean and in waters 200 miles off the coast of both North and South America. The U.S. had also declared a neutrality zone extending 200 miles off the coast of North America, where belligerent navies would not be allowed to enter.

During 1940, the U.S. Navy conducted "battleship sweeps" in the Western Atlantic to deter German commerce raiders and submarines from entering the Neutrality Zone. In 1941, the number of ships assigned to these sweeps doubled, and the patrol zone was extended all the way to Iceland. In 1941, the U.S. Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Navy began sharing escort duties on merchantman convoys.

The Royal Canadian Navy escorted convoys to a point off Newfoundland. The U.S. Navy would take over from there, escorting the convoys to Icelandic waters where they would be handed over to the Royal Navy. Officially, the U.S. Navy was escorting freighters carrying supplies to American troops stationed in Iceland. Merchant ships of other nations were free to join the American convoys so, the White House argued, U.S. actions did not violate American neutrality.

The convoy duty was criticized by supporters of American neutrality, like the America First Committee, as being deliberately provocative to Germany. At first, the Kriegsmarine was under strict orders not to engage U.S. Navy ships and to seek instructions from Berlin when American ships were sighted. Starting in September 1941, however, German submarines began to fire upon American destroyers accompanying the convoys.

On Sept. 4, 1941, a German submarine attacked the destroyer USS Greer as she accompanied an Iceland-bound convoy. The Greer evaded two torpedoes and counterattacked with depth charges. In response to the attack, FDR instructed the U.S. Navy to attack any German and Italian naval forces found in any portion of the Atlantic, "which is necessary for American defense."

Several weeks later, on Oct. 17, 1941, another German submarine attacked the USS Kearny as she escorted a 50-ship convoy. The Kearny survived the attack, but 11 sailors were killed and 22 more were injured. In a third attack, on Oct. 31, 1941, the German submarine U-562 torpedoed and sank the U.S. destroyer Reuben James while it was on escort duty near Iceland. The Reuben James was the first U.S. Navy ship sunk by the German Navy in WWII. Within two months, the service would be fully engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States has often been criticized by military historians as a mistake that drew the U.S. into the European war. That criticism is misplaced. The Roosevelt administration had long realized that the Asian and European theaters were bound together and that defeating Germany took priority over defeating Japan.

Washington had steadily raised the ante in its confrontation with Germany. It had spent 1940 and 1941 aggressively expanding its reach in the North Atlantic, building military bases in Greenland and Iceland, and steadily widening the scope of U.S. naval operations, in anticipation of a confrontation with Germany. What began as a cold war in September 1939 had, by the summer of 1941, become increasingly hot. The decision to make "Germany First" had been decided and acted upon long before Churchill's arrival in Washington, D.C., in December 1941.

-- 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.
Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in Nigeria, Yusuf Buba Yakub has said the demolition of an uncompleted structure near its High Commission in Osu in the Greater Accra region by unknown persons constitutes a serious breach of the Vienna Convention and has the capacity to cause a diplomatic row and escalate tension between Ghana and Nigeria.



In a statement, Mr Yakub said Nigeria vehemently condemn in totality that act of trespass committed against the Nigeria Mission premises in Accra. We view it for what it is, an invasion of the territory of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in foreign jurisdictions.



Buba Yakub warned of severe consequences against Ghana for "its action and, indeed, inaction" in the incident.



"....we may be inclined to ask whether there exist any outstanding commitments, upon which settlement the mission has reneged when, in fact, by virtue of Article 34 of the Convention that binds our embassies to every receiving State of the world, the buildings, as well as the mission staff, pay no taxes, dues, development levies etc.to either region or municipality of any receiving country. The relevance of this subsisting Article makes that case unlikely. So, we are, therefore, left to rise to truly investigate what happened in Accra, Ghana and sanction that country appropriately however we can. At our own level as an integral part of the Parliament, the Committee reiterates that we shall continue our search until we receive a satisfying answer on this issue. For, to allow this issue pass, like other acts of undue and unsolicited aggressions against Nigerians and their properties in foreign jurisdictions, may as well spell greater doom for us in the future. Ghana must face, anyhow, the consequences of its action and, indeed, inaction," portion of the statement read.







Read below the statement from Nigeria & the statement from Osu stool



OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND MEMBER REPRESENTING GOMBI/ HONG FEDERAL CONSTITUENCY OF ADAMAWA STATE.



CONDEMNATION OF THE ILLEGAL INVASION AND DEMOLITION OF THE DIPLOMATIC PREMISES OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA IN GHANA AND A CALL FOR IMMEDIATE SANCTION AGAINST PERPETRATORS OF THE ACT.



1.The Committee on Foreign Affairs of Nigeria's House of Representatives yesterday, Saturday, June 2020, received a clarion call for intervention in an ugly and condemnable incident unheard of in any diplomatic circles across the civilised world: A high- capacity bulldozer was deployed by some unnamed Ghanaian nationals to invade the Diplomatic Premises of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Accra, Ghana. From eye- witness accounts, the heavy-duty bulldozer had arrived the Diplomatic Premises at very late hours of the night and had broken through the gate of the premises, where it proceeded on a demolition spree of a set of 4 units of nearly- completed 4-bedroom block of flats, which are said to be awaiting the occupation of some members of the Nigeria Diplomatic Mission in Accra who are seeking to join their colleagues and the Nigeria High Commissioner to Ghana in the mission premises.



2. From the callousness of that action against our mission premises in Ghana, the first reaction of our Committee was to consider that a classical case of external aggression against the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a gross violation of all known Conventions and Treaties on Diplomatic Relations and Friendship between two countries. Our Committee further gathered that, while the demolition exercise lasted, several frantic efforts were said to have been made by members of the Nigeria Mission to report what was ongoing to both the Ghana Police Service and their Foreign Affairs Ministry; but, in spite of those efforts, no reprieve, we were told, came the way of the Nigerian diplomats. We further learnt that, even when the police had finally arrived the scene of the incident over an hour later, all they had merely come to do was to shake hands with those they had been called upon to rein-in the audacity with which they were violating the rights of members of a diplomatic mission in their country!



3. After due consultations among members of our Committee and with various stakeholders in the diplomatic arena, our Committee reliably gathered that the present Nigeria Mission in Accra , Ghana, constitutes a 4-hectare piece of land that was officially allocated to Nigeria as part of the agreement to situate the mission of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Ghana during the 60s in furtherance of the charter of the United Nations that then sought to promote global cooperation and friendship among peoples through the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a global treaty that was ratified by both Ghana and Nigeria. Further inquiries also revealed that the Nigerian Mission possesses all necessary legal titles and certifications, including Site Plans, Payment Receipts and Allocation Papers, from the Ghanaian authorities in respect of the land.



4. Consequent upon the above gross violations of the articles and spirit of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by the infamous Ghanaian nationals, who we also gather represent a corporate entity in their country, alongside their colluding allies among the authorities, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs wishes to, therefore, state as follows:



a. That we, vehemently, and without let condemn in totality that act of trespass committed against the Nigeria Mission premises in Accra. We view it for what it is, an invasion of the territory of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in foreign jurisdictions;



b. That, we also make bold to equivocally add that, that gross violation by the Ghanaian nationals and their colluding authorities constitutes a serious breach of the Vienna Convention that, sadly, bears the capacity to cause a diplomatic row and escalate tension between our country and Ghana.



c. That, by their action and, indeed, inaction, which makes the authorities complicit in the act, the Ghanaian people violated many an article in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1949 and, therefore, must be sanctioned. For instance, Article 1(i) of that Convention, specifically, recognises, among other facts, that the Nigerian High Commission in Accra, Ghana, is the premises of the Nigerian State. The article goes on to lend itself to that fact as is captured below :



"The premises of the mission are the buildings or parts of the building and the land ancillary, thereto, irrespective of ownership, used for the purposes of the mission, including the residence of the head of the mission ( in this case, the High Commissioner)".



Again, Article 22(1) of the same Convention seems to firmly corroborate the above and accentuates its importance when it further declares:" The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State ( in this case Ghana) may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission ( in this case, Nigeria' s High Commissioner to Ghana)".



d. That, as a Parliament, we stand resolute to do everything within our powers to review, reappraise and re- examine the relationship of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Republic of Ghana. We shall, also, employ and deploy all legislative means within our disposal, including exploring and invoking all necessary rules, regulations and instruments that guide our common membership in other Parliaments, to compel the Republic of Ghana to answer for this act of gross violation and abuse of the immunities of the Nigeria mission and its staff.



5. It is against the backdrop of the above that our Committee calls on all peoples and nations of goodwill across the globe to equally, condemn that act of aggression by the Republic of Ghana against the Federal Republic of Nigeria on its soil and to stand with us in every campaign we choose to undertake to make Ghana account for its violation of the international code of friendship against Nigeria. Instead of rising as a bulwark of protection for us , as, in fact, is required by Article 22( 2) of that same Convention, where it states: "The receiving State ( that is Ghana) is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity"; Ghana did rather the opposite and the unthinkable against our nation in Accra in a place where Nigeria's head of mission also resides within an earshot! It did not even matter to anyone in authority in that country that, in line with Article 30 of that aforementioned Convention, the private residence of a diplomatic agent shall( read, must, please) enjoy the same inviolability and protection as the premises of the mission.



6. Now, we have asked ourselves the golden question for the umpteenth time: What offence did our High Commission in Ghana commit to warrant the flagrant display of sheer brutal force against a helpless mission seeking to bring its staff within the same precinct? Nobody is saying anything in Ghana. There seems to be at present a sustained conspiracy of silence that is being deployed to wear us out. But we cannot let this one pass silently in the name of diplomacy from a big- brother nation as in the past. Our High Commissioner must be made to return home by the Executive for consultation. We also call on the Executive to invite the Ghana High Commissioner to Nigeria to provide answers to questions in our minds. It is time we stopped other countries of the world from making us the butt of their frustration and national strife.



9. Finally, since we know that the land upon which our mission sits in Ghana was officially allocated to us by the necessary Ghanaian authorities, the Land Commission, after we had fulfilled all prerequisites in the bid for acquisition of same and that there are no known litigations or counterclaims to legal titles in possession of the Nigeria mission in Accra, we may be inclined to ask whether there exist any outstanding commitments, upon which settlement the mission has reneged when, in fact, by virtue of Article 34 of the Convention that binds our embassies to every receiving State of the world, the buildings, as well as the mission staff, pay no taxes, dues, development levies etc.to either region or municipality of any receiving country. The relevance of this subsisting Article makes that case unlikely. So, we are, therefore, left to rise to truly investigate what happened in Accra, Ghana and sanction that country appropriately however we can. At our own level as an integral part of the Parliament, the Committee reiterates that we shall continue our search until we receive a satisfying answer on this issue. For, to allow this issue pass, like other acts of undue and unsolicited aggressions against Nigerians and their properties in foreign jurisdictions, may as well spell greater doom for us in the future. Ghana must face, anyhow, the consequences of its action and, indeed, inaction.



Signed.





Rt. Hon. Yusuf Buba Yakub, MHR



Chairman.

Source: Peacefmonline/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
Kolkata, June 22 : Thousands of villagers staged protests in various cyclone Amphan-devastated districts of West Bengal on Monday demanding aid from the state government to rebuild their ravaged shelters.

The incidents took place in South 24-Parganas Sagar Island, North 24-Parganas Deganga and Kolkata's twin Howrah district as villagers staged protests outside government offices and vandalised local panchayat buildings as well.

According to police sources, irate villagers went on a rampage at Sumatinagar at Sagar Island protesting misappropriation of Amphan relief funds of the state government. They claimed that the local panchayat office had sent a flawed list of cyclone-affected families depriving the real ones who actually suffered a huge loss during the cyclone.

Similarly, villagers also staged protests at Deganga area blocking the Taki main road. Protests also took place at Howrah's Makardah locality.
"Mark's deal with Trump is highly utilitarian," he said. "It's basically about getting free rein and protection from regulation. Trump needs Facebook's thumb on the scale to win this election." Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a new nonprofit group pushing Facebook to tighten controls on its platform, suggested that the two men have a tacit nonaggression pact. "Trump can rage at Big Tech and Mark can say he's disgusted by Trump's posts, but at the end of the day the status quo serves both of their interests," Lehrich said. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have a better relationship with the Trump White House than his Silicon Valley contemporaries. Credit:Bloomberg Officials at Facebook and in the administration scoff at the notion that there is some kind of secret pact. And it's hard to imagine that anyone  certainly not Zuckerberg  would be dumb enough to make a secret deal with a president known for keeping neither secrets nor deals. Trump and Zuckerberg had met just once before the dinner, an Oval Office encounter last September. Afterward, the president boasted about his giant following on the platform. But October was a hot political month at Facebook: Zuckerberg was in an open battle with a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was threatening to break up Facebook and whom he called "an existential threat" to the company. The morning of their dinner, a top British official demanded answers on why Facebook would tolerate false political advertising.

Zuckerberg, a Facebook executive said, seems to view Trump as a peer. By contrast, he told amused top aides at one of his regular Monday meetings in March that Kushner was calling him so often about help with the administration's coronavirus response that he couldn't keep up, two people familiar with the meeting said. ("Mark does not think of himself as a peer to this president or any president," a Facebook spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said, adding that Zuckerberg had initiated the conversation with Kushner about the coronavirus response.) Zuckerberg has played the high-stakes and unpredictable politics of the Trump years as well as any other corporate executive. And a week before the dinner last October, he made clear in a speech that his interests and the president's aligned: Zuckerberg would reject a growing movement to limit the false or inflammatory statements of the American president. Mark's deal with Trump is highly utilitarian. It's basically about getting free rein and protection from regulation. Trump needs Facebook's thumb on the scale to win this election. Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee "I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy," he said in the address at Georgetown University on October 17. "We don't do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying." Trump, for his part, has been notably softer on Facebook than on Amazon, Google, Twitter or Netflix at a moment when his regulatory apparatus often focuses on the political enemies he identifies in tweets.

Still Facebook, like other tech giants, finds itself in a political bind: Democrats hate and distrust them because they spread right-wing misinformation and helped elect Donald Trump; Republicans hate and distrust them because they're run by California liberals and delete some right-wing speech. But Facebook has avoided that trap deftly over the last three and a half years, by moving faster and more earnestly than its competitors to mollify conservatives. Facebook has always had a keener ear to the right side of Washington than much of Silicon Valley, directed in part by Joel Kaplan, a Zuckerberg friend and former Bush administration official who is Facebook's vice president of global public policy. But it began focusing intently on winning over the conservative media in the spring of 2016, when Gizmodo alleged that the content moderation on the short-lived Trending Topics product on Facebook "suppressed conservative news." A right-wing apparatus that had spent decades claiming bias in the media turned its sights on the tech giant. And Zuckerberg gave them the response they'd always hoped for  he shut down the product, welcomed his critics to meetings and signalled that he shared their concerns. The next year, Trump continued to push the norms of truth and civility, and the social media platforms began reckoning with their broader misinformation and harassment problem. That set him on an inevitable  and to his supporters, welcome  collision course with the new gatekeepers. Trump's dependence on Facebook as an advertising vehicle  he spent $US44 million on the platform in 2016, and is expected to far exceed that this year  means that he needs the company as much as it needs him. And, as Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and Cecilia Kang reported in May, Zuckerberg increasingly embodies his company. So Zuckerberg's warm relationship with the president and his family is a victory for the company's internal policy team led by Kaplan. But the company, people involved in its political strategy say, has been having an internal debate over balancing the reality of Republican control of regulatory agencies with the fact that Democrats are far more likely, in the long run, to actually push through new oversight or try to break up the company by forcing the sale of Instagram or WhatsApp. The balance, in the Trump years, has shifted right. Sheryl Sandberg, a leading Democrat and Zuckerberg's powerful deputy, has seen her connections with Democrats fray as the company defies them and her power in the company fades as well. Trump's administration has reciprocated. The Justice Department is currently conducting antitrust investigations of the tech giants. But while Google and Amazon face "mature investigations," the Facebook inquiry is "not real at all," a person who has been briefed on the investigation said. And Facebook has acted like a company with no worries in Washington. It has continued to acquire companies, as Isaac reported last week, and moved to allow users to send messages between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram  a merging of the services that could further fuel monopoly concerns. (Facebook's view is that it's far less dominant in any market than the other big tech companies and has less to worry about than Google or Amazon.)

The summer of 2020 is one of those moments when corporate Washington starts to panic. What had looked like deft Trump-era politics now looks like exposure and risk. Top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi  who was infuriated when a distorted video of her went viral  have singled out Facebook as a bad actor. Trump is, at the moment, viewed by Washington's insider class as likely to lose in November, though Biden poses less of a threat to Facebook than Warren would have. While executives across Facebook insist that Zuckerberg's position on free speech on the platform is a matter of long-term planning and principle, not political expediency, his political team also recognises that they are badly out of position for a Democratic administration. And in recent days, Facebook has been eager to show its independence from the White House. The company has been unhesitatingly enforcing existing policy against Trump's posts, and has been quick to point it out to the media, as it did last week, when a Trump ad used a symbol associated with Nazi Germany. Zuckerberg has not budged, however, on his core insistence that Trump should be able to say what he wants on the platform, and most of what he wants in ads  including false statements, as long as they aren't misleading on specific, narrow topics, like the census. But he did reportedly tell Trump that he objected, personally, to Trump's warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." And he and Chan wrote to scientists funded by their nonprofit organisation that they were "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric." Those gestures may have appeased Facebook's workforce, but they've gone largely unnoticed in Washington.
President Akufo-Addo has stated that some 24 persons are severely sick from coronavirus in Ghana.

According to him, some six persons are critically ill from the virus.

He added that four persons are on ventilators as a result of the virus.

Mr Akufo-Addo made these known in his address to the nation on Sunday night, June 21.

Delivering his 12th update to the nation, the President appealed to Ghanaians to stop stigmatizing persons who suffer Covid-19.

Daily Guide
Police in Kitengela, Kajiado County, Kenya have launched a hunt for a middle-aged man accused of killing his girlfriend.

It is alleged the suspect strangled his lover on Friday night and hailed a boda boda at 5am Saturday with instructions that he be taken to a forest in Changombe area to dump some unwanted house item. The incident happened at the victims house in Kitengela.

The suspect is said to have wrapped his girlfriends body in a bedsheet, put it in a polythene bag, which he, thereafter, stashed in a gunny sack.

When the boda boda he had hailed arrived, he loaded the gunny sack on the pillion and sat while positioning his luggage strategically not to fall off.



On being asked by the boda boda operator where he was headed, the suspect said he wanted the rider to take him to a forest to dump the unwanted house item.

A few meters from the pick-up point  the deceaseds house  the rider, became suspicious of the passengers luggage, leading to a disagreement between the two.

It was at that point that the suspect hopped off the motorbike and fled, leaving his girlfriends body on the passengers seat.

On looking at what the passenger had carried in the sack, the rider was shocked to discover it was a human beings body. Immediately, he raised the alarm, attracting neighbours attention.

The transporter and the neighbours, thereafter, filed a report at Kitengela Police Station.

The deceased, who was in her early 20s, and her boyfriend are said to have lived in the neighbourhood for two weeks now.

When authorities went to the couples rented house, they found it empty.

Isinya Sub-County Police Commander Kinyua Mugambi said a manhunt for the suspect has been launched, and investigations into the womans murder have begun.

The deceased was taken to Nairobis City Mortuary upon her familys request.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Covid-19 testing has more than tripled in the national capital and people should not face any difficulties now, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said in an address on the prevailing coronavirus situation in the national capital on Monday.

Kejriwal said that all those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure oxygen levels every few hours.

Once you are well, you can return it to the government, the Delhi CM said adding that the Covid-19 situation, as of now, seems to be stabilizing.

Kejriwal said that on June 12, 5,300 beds across national capital were occupied by Covid-19 and the figure rose 6,200 as of today.

Also read: Pulse oximeter for home quarantined Covid-19 patients in Delhi - CM Kejriwal

All those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure your oxygen levels every few hours. Once you are well, you can return it to the govt: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/fz0qv563qo  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

In the past 10 days, only 900 beds have been occupied while the number of patients has increased by nearly 23,000. This indicates that there are fewer severe cases and most get better by getting treated in home-isolation, the situation seems to be stabilizing, he said.

The chief minister added that at present, 7,000 beds are still unoccupied and ready for Covid-19 patients.

The chief minister thanked the Central government for its help in battling the Covid-19 fight in Delhi and said that the two governments are working closely to fight the crisis.

This is no time to harp on differences or indulge in politics, he said.

Also read: Fighting 2 wars against China, will win them both - Arvind Kejriwal on Covid-19 fight

Here are the highlights from Kejriwals address:

 We are trying to control coronavirus from spreading in the national capital at the same time trying to arrange facilities for those who contract the virus.

 Our administration is constantly in touch with those who are getting treated for Covid-19 at home, guiding them on what to do next.

 The administration of oxygen is very critical in Covid-19 patients when their oxygen levels drop or when they feel breathless. If patients receive oxygen in time, many patients can be saved. For this purpose, we will provide pulse oximeters to measure oxygen levels every few hours.

 Patients in home-isolation can monitor their oxygen level and in case of drop, they can call on a number that we will provide and our team will immediately visit and administer oxygen to the patient. The patient will be rushed to the hospital if there is a requirement.

 At present, Delhi has nearly 25,000 active cases of coronavirus while around 33,000 people have recovered from the contagion.

 Around 6,000 people are currently in hospitals getting treated for coronavirus while nearly 12,000 are under home quarantine and getting treated for Covid-19.

Just a week back, Delhi had 24,000 active cases of coronavirus which means that fresh 1,000 cases have been reported. It indicates that while new cases are coming up, people are also getting cured from the disease. Seems like the situation is stabilizing.

 We have more than tripled the rate of our Covid-19 testing in the past days. From around 5,000 tests per day, the figure has gone up to 18,000 tests.

 We have taken strict action against unscrupulous labs who were showing incorrect test results. They have directed to work in a fair manner and in full capacity.

 With the help of the Central government, rapid tests have also started in the national capital. I feel people should not feel any problems in getting tested for Covid-19 now.

Coronavirus cases in Delhi now inch toward the 60,000-mark. The national capital has 59,746 positive cases with 33,013 recovered patients and 2,175 fatalities. With this, it has overtaken Tamil Nadu as the second worst-hit state.
ERNAKULAM : Ahead of crucial local body polls in October and assembly polls next year, Keralas politics is heating up as ruling and Opposition parties face off in the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Opposition Congress raised a stink over a health data contract given to an American company, forcing the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government to amend the contract. The Congress was also able to raise the issue of steep electricity bills issued for the lockdown period, prompting the reversal of 200 crore additional charges. Protests by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to drop the demand for covid-negative certificates for expatriates to return also forced the government to postpone the decision.

However, the Congress ended up with egg on its face when its state unit president Mullappally Ramachandran taunted health minister K.K. Shylaja as a Nipah princess aspiring to be a covid queen. (The reference is to the ministers successful handling of the Nipah epidemic of 2018, and her ongoing battle to push back the covid-19 in Kerala) He also said a UK publication referred to the minister as a rock dancer, confusing the actual reference of a rock star.

Congress leader and parliamentarian Benny Behanan condemned the remark. Such personal remarks should have been avoided," said K.P.A. Majeed, state secretary of Indian Union Muslim League, a Congress ally.

The ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) pounced. He is everything a responsible politician should not be," said Vijayan, the face of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM which leads the LDF. Vijayan called it a witch-hunt against Shylaja for being a woman and a competent health minister.

The Congress is bent on eroding the support for the LDF. Since everybody is looking upon the government for the virus mitigation, they have at their disposal large visibility and resources that could affect the prospect of polls. So, we have decided in an earlier state committee meeting to stem their support by all means possible," said a senior Congress leader, requesting anonymity.

The person said Congress leader Chennithala and other young, tech-savvy leaders are working in tandem with professional agencies to embrace social media to raise issues. The CPM has followed the same strategy, hiring another public relations firm, and has started creating regular vlogs by its leaders on its narrative on the mitigation, the person said.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!!
Muhammad Ali Jr., the only biological son of the late boxer, said that his father would have been against the Black Lives Matter movement, according to an interview with the New York Post.

In the interview, which was conducted on the fourth anniversary of his fathers death, Muhammad Ali Jr. said that he believed his father would have called the movement racist and referred to the protestors in the movement as devils.

Muhammad Ali Jr. further stated that though his father stood up against racism, he would have been disappointed to see people resort to violence and looting following the death George Floyd, NY Post reported.

According to Muhammad Ali Jr., it is fine to protest peacefully, but it isnt right to use violence and destroy property.

As indicated by the news outlet, Muhammad Ali Jr., who following in his fathers footsteps is a Muslim, said that he thought the movement was racist.

Its not just black lives matter, white lives matter, Chinese lives matter. All lives matter. Everyones life matters. God loves everyonehe never singled anyone out. Killing is wrong no matter who it is, Muhammad Ali Jr. said.

Muhammad Ali Jr. also said during the interview with NY Post that the movement stood to cause a rift between black people and everyone else, saying, its putting black people against everyone else. It starts racial things to happen; I hate that.

He also said that the actions of these violent protestors were no different than Islamist terrorists, and should be seen and labelled as such.

Theyre terroriststheyre terrorizing the community. I agree with the peaceful protests  Black Lives Matter is not a peaceful protest. Antifa never wanted it to be peaceful. I would take them all out, Muhammad Ali Jr. said in the interview.

The son of the late boxer said that he believed the police officer, who was charged with murder over George Floyds death, didnt go about dealing with the incident in the right way, but defended the law enforcement officers in general, saying that they were only doing their jobs.

The officer was wrong with killing that person, but people dont realize that there was more footage than what they showed. That guy resisted arrest, the officer was doing his job, but he used the wrong tactic, Muhammad Ali Jr. said during the interview.

Furthermore, Muhammad Ali Jr. said he doesnt believe law enforcement police officers wake up every morning thinking that they are going on the job to kill someone.

Theyre just trying to make it back to home to their family in one piece, Muhammad Ali Jr. said.

However, after defending law enforcement officers in general, he did acknowledge the existence of officers within law enforcement who might not be as honourable as the rest.

Not all the police are bad, theres just a few. Theres a handful of police that are crooked, they should be locked up, Muhammad Ali Jr. said.

He went further to say that he had never had a bad experience with police officersthis despite being locked up and released twice by TSA officers who had questioned him under the new travel ban rules on Muslim-majority nations.

Muhammad Ali Jr. was released both times, and said that he had been treated nicely and had always felt that the officers were just doing their jobs to protect him.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jun. 22

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

Russia's Ulyanovsk region is planning to increase grain export to Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkey, Trend reports with reference to the regional governments press office.

The report said that within the framework of regional agriculture sector development, the work on creation of a new mass of goods, construction and reconstruction of elevators, development of a transport and logistics system, elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers at the target markets, and promotion of locally produced products abroad is underway.

Within these activities, a project on deep processing of grain is underway in the Staraya Mayna urban locality. The corresponding projects implementation will be completed before the end of this year.

The project will allow increasing grain export abroad. The grain is to be exported to Turkey, Iran and Kazakhstan.

A roadmap on the project has been developed. In addition, the initiator of the program is preparing a package of documents for obtaining the status of a particularly significant investment project, the report said.

The regional Export of Agricultural Products of the Ulyanovsk Region project is included in the Russias national International Cooperation and Export project, which is being implemented upon an initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

---

Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
Attorney General Bill Barr said on Sunday that the Justice Department's investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation will likely yield 'developments' before the fall.

Barr was asked about the progress of the probe being led by John Durham, the US Attorney from Connecticut.

Durham is believed to be looking into whether top Justice Department officials broke the law by engaging in surveillance and other information-gathering techniques against Trump campaign officials in 2016 and early 2017.

The nation's top prosecutor told Fox News that he was surprised by the lack of media interest in Durham's investigation, particularly after a Justice Department watchdog revealed errors and omissions in the FISA application process that led to the surveillance of a Trump campaign official.

'So that has been surprising to me, that people aren't concerned about civil liberties and the integrity of our governmental process in terms of the future of Durham's investigation,' Barr said.

Attorney General Bill Barr (above) said on Sunday that he expected a Justice Department investigation into the origins of the Russia probe to yield 'developments' before the end of the summer

'You know, he's pressing ahead as hard as he can.

'And I expect that, you know, we will have some developments hopefully before the end of the summer.'

Barr said that the coronavirus pandemic has somewhat hampered Durham's work, which is expected to continue after the presidential election in November.

The attorney general added that 'what happens after the election may depend on who wins the election.'

Barr did not give specifics, but he did say that the probe is focusing on the transition period after Trump's election victory in 2016.

That was when the Justice Department under then-President Barack Obama became aware that Michael Flynn, the incoming national security adviser, was in contact with Russia's ambassador to the United States.

Flynn's name came up in intercepts of the ambassador's phone calls through a process known as 'unmasking.'

During his interview with Fox News on Sunday, Barr hinted that the Obama administration was up to wrongdoing.

'I would say it's unusual for an outgoing administration, high level officials, to be unmasking very, you know, very much in the days they're preparing to leave office,' Barr said.

'Makes you wonder what they were doing.'

Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham (above) to investigate the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, and see whether it was executed on solid legal footing

The Justice Department last month moved to dismiss its case against Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of Robert Mueller's investigation to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period.

In January, Flynn filed court papers to withdraw his guilty plea, saying federal prosecutors had acted in 'bad faith' and broken their end of the bargain when they sought prison time for him.

Initially, prosecutors said Flynn was entitled to avoid prison time because he had cooperated extensively with the government, but the relationship with the retired Army lieutenant general grew increasingly contentious in the months before he withdrew his plea, particularly after he hired a new set of lawyers who raised misconduct allegations against the government.

Justice Department officials say they've concluded that Flynn's interactions with the diplomat, in which the men discussed sanctions imposed on Russia for election interference, were appropriate and that there was insufficient basis for the FBI to interview him.

The officials say Flynn's statements to the FBI were not material to the broader counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.

But the judge presiding over the case may not grant the department's wish to dismiss the case.

Instead, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed a retired jurist to evaluate whether Flynn should be held in criminal contempt.

The judge's order is the second signal registering his resistance to swiftly accepting the Justice Department's motion to dismiss all charges against Flynn.

In his order, Sullivan appointed former federal judge John Gleeson as an amicus curiae  or friend-of-the-court  and asked him to explore whether Sullivan should hold Flynn in 'criminal contempt for perjury.'

A retired judge this month urged a federal court not allow the Justice Department to dismiss its criminal case against President Donald Trump's former adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts

Gleeson said in a filing earlier this month that the move to dismiss the case amounted to an abuse of power.

He urged Sullivan to deny the motion and argued that Flynn had committed perjury.

Barr said on Sunday that Sullivan has failed in his role, which is to be impartial in the case.

'Well, as I've said, you know, we disagree with what he's doing,' the attorney general said.

'We think the law is clear that it is within the discretion of the executive, the executive branch's function and the attorney general's function to make charging decisions and determine whether to continue on a case.

'And the judge is supposed to be a neutral judge on the case, not...exercise the prosecutor's function.

'So we're hopeful that the case will be dismissed. We think that's what the law requires.'

Durham is a veteran federal prosecutor with decades of Justice Department experience.

He's investigated FBI corruption related to the handling of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger and later the CIA's harsh overseas interrogations of terror suspects.

He was named last year by Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.

Durham's investigation is one of multiple inquiries the department has undertaken in connection with the FBI's probe into potential coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Those include an internal review of the Justice Department's handling of the Flynn investigation, and an inspector general report that was issued last December.

Earlier this month, Barr has said that Durham's probe into the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation is looking at 'some' individuals who will be familiar to the American public.

Barr said that the Durham team 'has been working very aggressively to move forward,' and that there 'will be public disclosure' of his findings.

Barr would not say for certain that criminal charges would be filed as a result of Durham's investigation.
I would not consider either version of potato-meets-bread the high point of local cuisine, but the combination is undeniably satisfying. Perhaps more sophisticated, if I am allowed a little more judgment, are Italian flatbreads  focaccia or schiacciata  topped with rosemary, coarse salt and thin potato slices, evenly spread over olive oil-scented bread, locking in moisture and adding texture and their own subtle flavor.

Another example that I love is Tunisian fricassee, a sandwich made with bread rolls cooked in oil, just like doughnuts, and stuffed with tuna, cooked potato, black olives, boiled egg and a spoonful of spicy harissa. It isnt very difficult to imagine how delicious these are.

Satisfying Flynns starchy needs also made me think of maaqouda, another North African staple. These are little fried mashed potato cakes or fritters, often sold on the street, either on their own or stuffed into bread with harissa or tomato sauce. I had the sandwich version a few times in Tunisia and Morocco and never felt a carb overload. Just like a good potato focaccia or a fricassee, the secret lies in a fine balance of textures  a little doughy, not at all dry, with a tiny bit of crunch  and a clear underlying flavor that holds everything together, from the rosemary or the harissa.
A fourth defendant is waiting for his day in court after he was arrested for allegedly being part of a kidnapping conspiracy that took part in 2016.

David Saldana Jr. along with Jose Orlando Saldana, Ruben Valdez and Jose Alfredo Saldana are accused of using a vehicle to transport two individuals to a residence located in Nuevo Laredo, according to the indictment.

Saldana Jr.s case was unsealed in January. He is currently in custody at the Webb County Jail under quarantine, according to online court records.

On September 2017, Orlando Saldana was sentenced to 36 months, or three years, in prison with three years of supervised release for attempting to bring undocumented aliens into the United States for financial gain.

On Aug. 9, 2016, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended two undocumented aliens in the brush near south Laredo. The two undocumented aliens were identified as Nelson Arturo Portillo-Antonio and Idalia Yaneth Portillo-Salgado.

Both Portillo nor Salgado were undocumented aliens with no legal authorization to be present in the United States, court documents state. Both claimed to have been held hostage in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico while waiting to be smuggled into the United States.

Court documents state that Orlando Saldana confessed to the offense for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

On October 2017, both Valdez and Alfredo Saldana were each sentenced to two years in prison with three years of supervised release.

Valdez pleaded guilty to one count of bringing or attempting to bring undocumented aliens into the United States for financial gain.

Similar to Orlando Saldana, Valdez pleaded guilty to the claims of Portillo-Antonio and Portillo-Salgado.

Portillo claims that three weeks prior to being apprehended by United States Border Patrol, he and Salgado were taken to Nuevo Laredo and left with two human smugglers, later identified as Jose Orlando Saldana and Ruben Valdez, court documents state.

Documents add, Orlando and Valdez took Portillo and Salgado to a stash house in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Jose Alfredo Saldana lived next door to the home.

Portillo-Antonio claims he and Portillo Salgado were held at the home for 25 days by Valdez, Orlando Saldana and Alfredo Saldana, court documents state.

Portillo claims that he and Salgado were not allowed to leave the stash house until $4,000 was sent by his sister in exchange for his and Salgados release, the plea agreement states. During their 25 days at the house, Orlando, Valdez and Alfredo all participated in the smuggling venture by guarding the home and ensuring Portillo and Salgado would not leave the home until the payment was received.

Alfredo Saldana pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to kidnap. He was sentenced to two years in prison with three years of supervised release.

According to his plea agreement, Alfredo Saldana was interviewed and admitted to investigators that he knew Orlando Saldana was involved in alien smuggling.

He also stated that around July 20, 2017 he saw aliens being harbored at a home by Orlando, court documents state. He stated that around July 23, 2017, he gave Valdez and the unnamed subject a ride to the international bridge so that they could travel to Laredo in order to pick up fees for smuggling. He also admitted to scouting for law enforcement the same week while Orlando harbored aliens.

Saldana Jr.s case was reset for a final pretrial conference on July 6 before U.S. District Court Judge Diana Saldana.
Sino-India ties will deteriorate further: Ex-envoy to China on Galwan faceoff

20 Indian soldiers were martyred in the Galwan valley in clashes with the chinese Army on 15 June. The clashes erupted after China unilaterally tried to change the status-quo in the area. Speaking exclusively to Hindustan Times' senior editor Aditi Prasad, former Indian Ambassador to China Gautam Bambawale says that the relationship between the two countries will deteriorate further. He however added that all channels of negotiations must remain open. Watch the full interview for more. ...read more
Scott Disick has recently found himself back on the market after his split with girlfriend Sofia Richie.

And the reality TV star might be mending things with ex Kourtney Kardashian, as they've reportedly been enjoying some family time.

He posted an adorable photo Sunday to Instagram with daughter Penelope, who snuggled up to her dad as they celebrated Father's Day, writing: 'My day is complete.'

Daddy's girl: Scott Disick posted an adorable photo Sunday to Instagram with daughter Penelope, who snuggled up to her dad as they celebrated Father's Day, writing: 'My day is complete'

Reunited: He might be mending things with ex Kourtney Kardashian, as they've reportedly been enjoying some family time (pictured in April, 2019)

The 37-year-old also received a Father's Day post from Kourtney, who took to Instagram with a photo of them and their three kids.

She wrote in the caption: 'Happy Fathers Day, thankful for you and these three special ones.'

A source recently told In Touch that the exes might be getting back together: 'The feelings between them are still very much there.'

The insider added: 'Neither of them wants to jump into a relationship right now, so theyre seeing how things go.'

Happy family: The 37-year-old received a Father's Day post from Kourtney, who took to Instagram with a photo of them and their three kids

Romantic feelings: A source recently told In Touch that the exes might be getting back together: 'The feelings between them are still very much there'

Boyfriend shirt: Eagle-eyed fans also spotted Kourtney wearing what appeared to be one of Scott's flannels in a recent Instagram post

Eagle-eyed fans also spotted Kourtney wearing what appeared to be one of Scott's flannels in a recent Instagram post.

Scott and Kourtney, 41, dated off and on from 2006 to 2015, and they share daughter Penelope, seven, and sons Mason, 10, and Reign, five.

He called it quits in late May with girlfriend of three years Sofia Richie, 21, and it might be for good this time.

The end: He called it quits in late May with girlfriend of three years Sofia Richie, 21, and it might be for good this time

No looking back: A source told E! News: 'Things seem different this time. Sofia is very happy doing what she's doing with her friends. She's doing well on her own and not really looking back'

A source told E! News: 'Things seem different this time. Sofia is very happy doing what she's doing with her friends. She's doing well on her own and not really looking back.'

They said the split was so 'he can focus on himself. She is only looking out for him and his best interest and it was primarily her decision for them to split.'

It comes after the Flip It Like Disick star spent some time last month in a rehab facility in Colorado.
- Ghana has not been named as the second-best in COVID-19 management

- Ghanas Covid-19 caseload has shot up to 14,154

- The West African nation has recorded 85 deaths so far from the pandemic

- Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Claims that the World Health Organization (WHO) has named Ghana as the second-best country in the management of COVID-19 have been proven to be untrue.

The claims went viral on social media after two groups related to the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) shared them on Facebook.

One of the posts claimed that the WHO named Ghana as the second-best country in the world after Germany in terms of efficiency in the management of COVID-19 cases.

READ ALSO: 66% of Ghanaians say Mahama is better at keeping campaign promises than Nana Addo

However, the claims have been disproved by Fact-check Ghana, a private organisation responsible for ensuring credible reportage.

A publication on their website said there are high tendencies of some government officials clinging to false information in a bid to project the government in a good light.

There was, therefore, a check on the WHOs website to ascertain the authenticity of the claims, however, nothing of that sort was found there.

On the WHOs COVID-19 update portal, we found nothing of the sort. We went further to run a simple Google search to find the possible source of the information.

Further checks also indicated that the claims were started by the Member of Parliament for Assin South Constituency in the Central Region, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour. The NPP legislator made the statement during an interview with Citi TV and it, unfortunately, was taken as fact by some Ghanaians.

When it comes to Germany, Germany currently has 138,000 cases and 8,500 deaths but the Chancellor has ensured that restrictions have been eased. As we speak, they are even playing the Bundesliga under very strict guidelines, the MP said during that interview.

The Germans have been absolutely efficient with this. When you mention Germany, the next probable country that comes into mind in terms of efficiency in managing COVID-19 in Ghana and that is the fact that we must acknowledge. We must not be pessimistic about the efforts. 

However, it has been confirmed that these were his personal opinions, rather than facts.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Ghanas caseload now 14,154 with 85 deaths

It is also worthy to note that the WHO currently has no ranking of countries performances on COVID-19.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that a new Executive Instrument (E.I 164) in Ghana has made it compulsory for everyone to wear a face mask in public or risk a maximum of 10-year jail term.

The law, which has been signed by President Akufo-Addo came into force on June 15, 2020.

Those without face mask risk being incarcerated between four and 10 years or will pay a fine of GH12,000 to GH60,000, or both.

The E.I was passed as part of measures to minimise the spread of the COVID-19.

Traders at the Madina Market share their thoughts on the mandatory wearing of masks | #Yencomgh

Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
As thousands of Connecticut businesses opened their doors for the first time in months, local and state health officials devoted to contact tracing quietly made preparations last week for a surge of coronavirus cases.

Despite limited resources, many local health districts have been hustling to keep up with a steady trickle of new cases, reaching out to people who test positive and their close contacts. State leaders are depending on those efforts to curb the spread of the virus as people venture out of their homes.

But with large-scale venues like zoos, movie theaters and amusement parks reopening, health officials worry theyll need more help. They are recruiting additional volunteers and training more staff to prepare for a possible influx of infections.

Were definitely concerned that the numbers will spike again, said Mary Day, a nurse practitioner who is helping to coordinate tracing efforts for the Ledge Light Health District in southeastern Connecticut. We can only be so effective, and that largely is dependent on people knowing who theyve been in close contact with. If youre in a public space, youre not necessarily going to know who is next to you or have any way to get in touch with them.

Complicating an already-difficult process are new problems with the states tracing software. Contact tracers begin with a phone call, then allow residents to choose whether they want calls, texts or emails as a follow-up mode of communication. But text and email prompts are available only in English, hampering outreach to non-English speakers.

Its one of the latest issues with states tracing program. Municipal health workers had reported other difficulties early on, including bugs in the system and a lack of training. They are pressing the state to come up with a swift solution to the language problem.

The issue of the languages is critical - its an equity issue, said Jennifer Kertanis, director of the Farmington Valley Health District. If we are saying that the majority of our cases and the hardest hit communities are our large cities - where a significant portion of the residents speak Spanish or another language - we need to rapidly make the investment in a tool that can work for those populations.

While the state works through its technology issues, it also is training 118 students to join the hundreds of workers and volunteers already embedded in the tracing effort. The students, who come from undergraduate and graduate health programs at Connecticut colleges, will assist in what is expected to be a more hectic pace of tracing.

With bigger gatherings where people dont know everybody, that makes contact tracing not only challenging, but sometimes impossible, Dr. Lynn Sosa, deputy state epidemiologist, said. The goal here is to focus on the person, making sure theyre staying home and asking them to provide the context that they know.

Efforts speeding up

In May, as Connecticut headed toward its first stage of reopening - allowing some retail and tourist attractions to serve customers, primarily outdoors - state leaders said aggressive testing and tracing were critical to containing the spread of COVID-19.

Those strategies became even more important in the run-up to the second stage of reopening, which began last Wednesday and includes more indoor options, such as movie theaters, gyms and bowling alleys.

The state has fallen short of its testing goal - nearly 50,000 tests were completed over the last week, half the amount it had hoped to run on a weekly basis. Gov. Ned Lamonts administration has since backed away from its ambitious benchmark of 100,000 tests per week, citing evolving guidance from federal agencies.

After a slow start on contact tracing, Connecticut has managed to successfully connect with 46 percent of new COVID-19 cases, said Josh Geballe, the states chief operating officer. Those do not include people in long-term care settings like nursing homes. State officials said nursing homes and other congregate facilities are responsible for their own contact tracing.

The state had aimed to reach 50 percent of new cases by the second stage of reopening, but Geballe said he was happy with the progress. A few weeks ago, tracers had only connected with about 10 percent.

Based on that kind of trend line, were optimistic that well continue upwards, he said.

Fifty-one of the 65 municipal and regional health departments have begun using the states new tracing software - double the number from just two weeks ago, Geballe said.

The local departments make up the bulk of the tracing workforce - each has some staff dedicated to the effort and many have recruited volunteers. Some have trained additional employees and volunteers ahead of the second reopening stage.

Its a substantial undertaking for the departments, which have been battered by years of funding cuts.

The state promises $1.85 per capita in public health funding to every community of more than 50,000 people or to regional health districts with at least three communities. With funding cuts, the actual per-capita payment in the current fiscal year was $1.18, according to the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health.

Nationwide, its been a difficult decade for local public health agencies. A national group estimates the loss of 50,000 local positions, or nearly 25 percent of the workforce, since the Great Recession of 2008.

Local health officials interviewed by the CT Mirror said they are doing the best they can with limited resources. Several reported being able to keep up with the flow of cases, but they acknowledged that infections are growing at a much slower pace than earlier in the pandemic.

The agencies are prepared to ask the state for help if the latest stage of reopening spurs a flood of new cases.

At the beginning when everything was locked down, it was a lot easier to identify those close contacts, said Charles K. Brown Jr., director of the Central Connecticut Health District. Now, as were starting to emerge from that isolation, were seeing it be a bit more difficult. Peoples interactions are becoming a lot more varied.

Preparing for a surge

Brown, whose district covers Berlin, Newington, Rocky Hill and Wethersfield, is training volunteers in anticipation of a surge. Thirty-five nurses who typically staff flu clinics in the area have agreed to help. Theyll be instructed on interview techniques and guided through the states new software.

Brown estimated that about half of his 11-member staff has been working on contact tracing. After a rocky start with the computer system, things are getting easier.

Wed go into the system, even when it was in active production, and overnight they would be instituting changes to it, Brown said. It was similar to building an airplane while you were flying it.

As the state reopens, Brown is leery about large groups of people congregating in businesses and public spaces. Hes already had to shut down a local day care center twice after people tested positive.

With just one big room, everybodys in there for a full day and there is no way to guarantee they havent been exposed, he said. We had to quarantine the entire day care, shut them down and then wait the two weeks to ensure more people didnt contract it.

Day, the nurse practitioner whose district includes New London, Waterford, Stonington, and six other southeastern communities, said she is training 10 additional volunteers to help. They will join the two workers and 16 volunteers who already are devoted to the effort. Four other staff members have also been trained in case of a surge.

We figured as things started to reopen, we would need to have more resources in order to reach out to close contacts, she said. And we figured people would probably have more close contacts.

Agencies define close contact as being six feet or closer to someone for more than 10 minutes. Some departments use more than 15 minutes as a guideline.

People who test positive are expected to isolate themselves for 10 days. Those exposed to someone who tests positive must isolate for 14 days, since it can take longer for symptoms to present. The state also recommends that people who are exposed get tested.

Everyone who tests positive is entered into the states system, and their names and contact information are funneled to local health districts.

The tracers initiate contact with a phone call. They interview residents and fill out a questionnaire in the computer system, then arrange for follow-up communication. Residents can choose to receive calls, text messages or emails for the duration of their quarantine.

During the follow-up contact, tracers are checking on how a person is feeling, the progression of their symptoms, whether they are running a temperature and whether they need medical care. State officials say the information is kept private.

Residents participation and adherence to state guidelines is voluntary.

With these larger gatherings, its really making sure people are practicing best behaviors - social distancing if possible, wearing a mask, hand washing, Sosa, the deputy state epidemiologist, said.

Problems persist

Even as workers and volunteers get the swing of the new system, glaring problems remain.

Members of several local health districts have raised concerns about the language issue. If a resident elects to receive follow-up communication via text or email, its only available in English.

You need different languages, said Patrice Sulik, director of the North Central District Health Department, which serves Enfield, East Windsor and six other communities. We were told something like, Well, we wanted to see what language groups you needed. But Spanish didnt occur to you? Theres pretty robust data about the languages people in Connecticut speak.

Sulik said she doesnt fault the states health department because the new system came along in the middle of a pandemic, when everyone was scrambling. Still, she hopes the problem is corrected soon.

A priority in Connecticut is looking at everything through a health equity lens, Sulik pointed out.

The language limitation also puts more of a burden on the local health departments. Follow-up phone calls require manpower; texts and emails are automated.

Local officials also mentioned that while conducting an initial survey, only two symptoms for COVID-19 appear in the states system - cough and shortness of breath. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists 11 symptoms associated with coronavirus.

Health workers said most are savvy enough to ask about the full range of symptoms, even though they are not included in the system. But they worry new volunteers might overlook them.

State officials said they are working to resolve both issues.

They are also setting up a program so that CT COVID Trace appears on peoples caller IDs when a contact tracer reaches out. Residents sometimes avoid the calls because they dont recognize the number.

We know how prevalent and pervasive telemarketing has gotten, said Av Harris, a spokesman for the states health department. This will at least give people some indication of why theyre getting that phone call.
Authorities on Monday remained at the scene where human remains, believed to be those of Allyson Watterson, were found Saturday afternoon near North Plains.

Sgt. Danny DiPietro, a Washington County Sheriffs Office spokesman, said authorities are searching on their hands and knees, combing the area where the remains were found for any kind of evidence that could be related to the case.

Once they have gathered all the evidence, theyll turn it over to the Washington County Medical Examiners Office for official identification.

DiPietro said all indications lead authorities to believe the remains are those of Watterson, who was 20 when she was reported missing in December.

A property owner in an unincorporated area near North Plains, where Watterson was originally reporting missing, discovered the remains while clearing brush, according to the sheriffs office.

The area in which the remains were found is sprawling farmland with large pieces of property. The body was found several hundred yards off the main road.

The initial investigation into Wattersons disappearance was fraught with a changing timeline and inconsistent reports. Officials say there was 30-hour delay between the time Watterson was last seen and the time she was reported missing in December.

Her boyfriends father told deputies that his son, Benjamin Garland, and Watterson had been on a hike together before losing each other. Wattersons mom, Misty Watterson, told reporters that her daughter and Garland had been in North Plains to visit a friend when their car broke down.

The sheriffs office said at the time it had no evidence to support either claim.

Deputies arrested Garland on charges unrelated to Wattersons disappearance the day after she was reported missing. Garland was sentenced to three years in prison in April.

DiPietro, the sheriffs office spokesman, declined to comment Monday on whether authorities suspect foul play in the case.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Celina Tebor of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Almost 2,500 years ago, Greek historian, Thucydides, wrote of the devastating Peloponnesian War, What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta. There have been other such conflicts in history between established powers and rising ones, not all of which resulted in war. The same theme is playing out today, in the tensions between the United States (US) and China, and China and India.

In his provocative 2017 book, Destined For War: Can America & China Escape Thucydidess Trap?,Harvard University professor Graham Allison was not optimistic. He wrote, When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result, citing 16 such conflicts in history, of which only four navigated the transition without war.

Nevertheless, war is not inevitable. Among successful examples cited by Allison, the following two are instructive. First, when a century ago, the US overtook the United Kingdom (UK) as the worlds pre-eminent superpower. It took accommodation by the established power, the UK, as well as statesmanship and negotiating skills on both sides.

A second approach involved a different strategy, where the established power, the US and the contender, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were continually attempting to contain each other for decades, but did not go to war. The Cold War, in that sense, was one of the great successes of the modern era in avoiding all-out war. That was a good thing, considering that nuclear weapons were part of the equation for the first time in superpower conflicts. The US approach to the rise of China had essentially been like that first approach the UK vs the US for decades, but has recently been decidedly shifting towards the second strategy, that of the US vs the USSR. Chinas approach towards India has always been like the latter.

The US accommodation of China began with the Richard Nixon administration in the early 1970s, at the height of its rivalry with the USSR, when China was an impoverished developing nation. It stemmed from self-interest, of course, not least to counter the USSR, but also to develop a big new market for American products and a source of cheap imports. Earlier American administrations tried the same with India, but failed to crack Indias Nehruvian disdain for free markets and post-colonial suspicion of the West.

There was also a belief in the West, now belied, that as China prospered, it would also become less autocratic and a more open society. While the relationship was mutually beneficial for decades, in recent years, it has soured considerably. As China became the third largest and then the second-largest economy after the US, it progressively stopped playing by the rules from which it had itself benefited, and, in fact, started flexing both economic and military muscles. Nixon himself, long after ceasing to be president, said of China, We may have created a Frankensteins monster.

Chinas approach towards India was always about containment. Right from the 1940s, as both emerged into a new, post-colonial, post-World War II era, it has viewed India as a long-term competitor that must be checked. Thus, its relentless focus on keeping India under pressure, and slowing down its resurgence, from every possible angle, using every possible tool at hand.

Chinas India-containment strategy was clear since its early patronage of Pakistan from the 1950s. It has continued to exploit that benighted nation as a client-state, primarily to act as a brake on India. Then, while establishing a detente on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India for nearly half-a-century, China began leveraging its fast-growing economy to implement the string of pearls strategy to encircle India from south-east Asia to Africa. This has recently seen sharp acceleration, with the Belt and Road Initiative projects such as Hambantota and Gwadar ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor running right through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Most significantly, China has feverishly stepped up its attempts to cultivate Pakistan-like client states among Indias immediate neighbours, as recent developments in Nepal have shown. Furthermore, as covered in the previous edition of this column, in recent years China has also begun asserting itself globally, raising the hackles of nations near and far.

India has also been changing. It had earlier wasted decades of LAC detente (when no bullet was fired in anger, no life was lost) by being laggardly about fortifying its border defences, unlike the Chinese. That has changed dramatically since 2014, with huge increases in infrastructure expenditure in border states, both civilian and defence. As many commentators have noted, the recent rapid scaling up of infrastructure on Indias side of the LAC was one of the key triggers for the current clash, with China wanting to intimidate India from trying to achieve parity. The Modi government has also taken similar steps abroad, for instance, by finally commissioning Chabahar port in Iran after decades of delay.

This time, China has badly overplayed its hand, and been shocked by Indias determined resistance. The Modi doctrine is clearly rooted in Kautilyan principles. Unlike his predecessors, he will not be complacent with defences because of opponents words of peace. He will seek peace like them, but maintain it from a patient, gradually-built position of strength.

Baijayant Jay Panda is the national vice-president, BJP

The views expressed are personal

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
United Future Party floor leader Rep. Joo Ho-young, right, walks with interim party chief Kim Chong-in, left, during their meeting at Beopju Temple on Mount Songni, North Chungcheong Province, Saturday, in this photo released by Rep. Kim Sung-won, second from left, Sunday. / Yonhap



By Kim Rahn



The main opposition United Future Party (UFP) is leaning toward giving up the head positions of all 18 National Assembly standing committees, because the party has no specific means to prevent the ruling bloc's unilateral push to form the committees on its own.

Concluding that holding the chairperson's positions on other committees was meaningless when the Legislation and Judiciary Committee post has already been taken by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), the UFP leadership believes it will be better to let the DPK take charge of all the committees and take full responsibility for state affairs.

According to UFP officials, Monday, the party is likely to end its boycott of Assembly sessions this week along with the return of its floor leader Rep. Joo Ho-young, who has been visiting temples across the country for about a week after stopping negotiations with the ruling bloc.

The UFP's boycott and Joo's withdrawal came after the DPK, which has a super majority of 176 seats in the 300-strong Assembly, pushed ahead with holding a plenary session and electing the heads of six committees on its own June 15. The six included the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, a key committee conducting oversight on major policies which traditionally is chaired by a main opposition party member to maintain balance.

Upon taking the legislative committee post, the DPK suggested the UFP instead get chief chairpersonships of seven other major committees  an offer the opposition party rejected.

According to party officials, Joo and the party's interim chief of the emergency committee Kim Chong-in have agreed that the party will not take any committee head posts, which they believe would be insufficient in keeping the super majority of the ruling bloc in check.

"They believe, rather than becoming a sidekick of the ruling party, it is better for the DPK to head all of the committees, because the DPK will now have to take full responsibility for legislation of state affairs," a party official said.

First-term UFP lawmakers also contacted Joo and suggested that the party stop boycotting the Assembly, saying it would be more advantageous for it to play the role of main opposition party properly than wrangling over committee head positions.

Ruling Democratic Party of Korea floor leader Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon, second from right, speaks at a party meeting in the National Assembly, Seoul, Monday, to urge the main opposition United Future Party to stop boycotting Assembly sessions. / Yonhap



The DPK has urged the UFP to halt the boycott and return to the Assembly as soon as possible, saying the committee chief selection needed to be finished within this week to pass bills on some urgent issues, including the third extra budget and inter-Korean relations.

If the UFP gives up all the committee head positions, the ruling party will face increased criticism for taking advantage of its superior position to operate the Assembly as it pleases.

"There is no reason to hesitate in normalizing the Assembly as we have a pile of issues to address," DPK floor leader Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon said at a party meeting, Monday. "We urge the UFP to cooperate to operate the Assembly normally for reviews of the extra budget bill and emergency responses to the inter-Korean situation."
What made the process easier for her was how pro-active her doctors were in the testing stage, allowing her to get an MRI mammogram, which was what caught her cancer in its early stage. It was eye-opening. I still was thinking that I had 12 years before I had to worry about it, she said, adding that it was the persistence of local doctors that led this life-saving discovery  something that would not have been picked up or found by herself or her regular mammogram, despite the large mass.

While she understands that it may not be an easy choice for every woman, Watson personally does not regret her double mastectomy and says that it has given her peace of mind for the past year. She also keeps up on her regular appointments, seeing her surgeon every six months.

When looking back at her experience, she considers having a strong medical and local support team, knowing her risks as well as her family history, and being diligent when it comes to early detection being her two greatest assets, and hopes that sharing her experience can help convince others to stay local and use local providers when it comes to fighting their own cancer.
Indian stock markets are not enough for young traders who are scouting for opportunities in international stock exchanges. During the lockdown, which has seen the economy come to a grinding halt, there has been a jump in new traders and many of them are opening trading accounts outside India as well. Several tech-backed discount brokers are getting ready to cash-in on the rush.

Bengaluru-based Stockal, which offers the service through multiple large brokerage houses, claims a spike in inquiries for investing in global stocks. It has seen at least a four-time jump in trading volumes as well.

Mumbai-based brokerage startup Upstox is in the process of launching this facility for its traders. We are currently in the beta-testing stage but we believe there is a market opportunity where consumers will be keen on buying shares of large technology companies, Upstox chief executive officer Ravi Kumar told Moneycontrol.

The startup would offer Indian investors the opportunity to trade on 60 exchanges across 25 countries through a single platform, Kumar said.

Upstox has almost 7.3 lakh active traders, National Stock Exchange data shows. The Tiger Global-backed profitable startup is aiming to expand the trading market beyond metro cities and gets around 60 percent of its new traders from tier two, three and beyond cities.

Bengaluru-based Zerodha, the countrys largest broking platform, is trying to do the same. The bootstrapped unicorn has already identified a broker in the United States to start global investing but is still a few days from going live.

There is a segment of the population in the age group of 20 to 30 years, they make good money and could be looking at opportunities in this space. Further, with small savings rates falling, they would need to park their money elsewhere, Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath said.

He draws an interesting parallel. If Indians were consuming Netflix, using an Apple device or spending a large chunk of time on Google, Facebook and Twitter, then they might want to own a piece of that company as well, he said.

How does it work?

While Upstox and Zerodha are still testing, startups like Vested or Stockal are already offering this service.

Stockal, which is based in Bengaluru, works with multiple large stockbrokers to offer investment opportunities in the United States.

The Reserve Bank of Indias Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) allows Indians to send $250,000 abroad in a financial year and the route can be used to invest money in overseas stock markets.

We have a partner entity in the US, Drivewealth, through whom Indians can create a trading account in the US and then wire money from India into the account for investments there, Stockal executive chairman Vinay Bharathwaj said.

For the KYC requirements, investors need to submit their address and identity proofs and all transactions have to be done through a bank account.

Bharathwaj said Stockal data trends showed that most of the traders were aged between 30 and 45 years and primarily hail from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. In many cases, techies, who might have returned from the US and did not have a brokerage account there, could be using this route to invest in American companies.

The interest of Indians is driven by the fact that most of the technology companies Indians relate to are listed in the US and that is where we see maximum buying and selling, stocks like Tesla, Google, Microsoft, Shopify and others, said Bharathwaj.

Stockal is looking at the lockdown period as a bumper business opportunity as its new account opening volumes shot up 150 percent. Trading volumes, which used to be at Rs 2.5 crore per day, grew to Rs 10 to 12 crore per day, said Bharathwaj.

We have seen a fall of the average amount parked in the broking account to Rs 3.5 lakh during the last few months, which shows that retail participation is going up, this number was Rs 7 lakh in the past, he said.

Its complicated

While trading in American and other global exchanges is an attractive proposition, getting it done is not easy. The biggest hurdle is remittances.

Industry insiders say sending money through LRS requires paper documentation, which is done through bank branches and the physical leg of the system makes it cost-ineffective.

We are trying to address the remittance problem. We have spoken with the Reserve Bank of India and commercial banks as well if they can at least permit online fund transfer till maybe $5,000, even then this market could become sizeable, said Kamath of Zerodha.

Further, the 5 percent tax at source imposed in the last years budget has been a dampener, he added. In the Finance Bill 2020, the finance ministry said any person sending money outside India will have to pay a 5 percent tax at the origin itself.

Stockal is trying to address the physical leg of the process by offering a pickup and drop service. Through Stockal, consumers get a pre-filled LRS form that they would need to put their signature on and keep for a pick-up, Bharathwaj said.

At the backend, Stockal connects the investor with the bank branch that deals in forex and organises a pickup and drop at the branch.

After that our operations team follows up with the bank to ensure that the money gets wired to the US quickly, he said. Stockal has a partnership with seven banks, including HDFC Bank, RBL Bank and State Bank of Mauritius.

Another major challenge is the small size of the population that trades in stocks. While the growth numbers may look impressive, given the small base, the actual number of traders is minuscule. Even for a country like the US, large brokers are not interested in Indian traders because of small volume and their limited ability to invest.

There could be around five to seven crore potential traders in India, out of that less than a crore are actually trading in the Indian stock exchanges, even within that, a tiny minuscule can trade in foreign exchanges, Kamath said.

And then there is the price factor--most of the blue-chip technology giants are extremely expensive. For instance, Amazon is trading at more than $2,600 (around Rs 1,97,724) and Alphabet, the holding company of Google, at more than $1,400 (Rs 1,06,467).

For Indian traders to buy a substantial chunk of these companies is not easy. Hence Stockal offers a fraction of a share on its platform. Even Upstox is working on allowing fractional investments. This shows that not a lot of retail traders will be able to acquire large shares in these companies.

This, however, hasnt stopped companies from betting on international markets because most of the new-generation tech giants are getting listed on the American bourses.

For instance, Chinese majors like Tencent and Baidu are listed in the US. Brokers feel that millennial Indians will naturally be attracted to these tech companies. If more Indian startups were to get listed at home, perhaps a similar explosion in young retail traders could be seen here but that seems a long way off. Until then, brokers are trying to do business by connecting young Indians to global exchanges.
A Naas-based high tech firm is moving to a new address and will create new jobs.

Classic Technology is an accredited calibration laboratory based at the M7 business park in Newhall and it is planning a move to new premises at Millennium Park, Naas.

Read more County Kildare news

It was founded by Naas man Bill Kinsella in 1997.

The enterprise specialises in the supply and calibration of pressure, temperature, electrical, mass and humidity instrumentation.

Classic Technology predominantly interacts with the regulated industries in Ireland such as pharma, medical device, aerospace and food & beverage.

Patrick Kinsella of Classic Technology, who has worked there since 2006 and was previously an instrument engineer in the pharmaceutical industry, says CT is looking forward to the move.

We have been in the M7 business park since 2011 but have simply outgrown the unit. We were previously located in Johnstown where we started our laboratory but quickly outgrew that premises also, he said.

He added: The new proposed facility will give us the room required to expand into new parameters and to further our product offerings.

The company currently employs 17 people but its expected that this will be increased with the recruitment of seven engineers to work in Millennium Park.
What Does the City Think of the Mayor? New York wheat-pasted portraits of de Blasio around the city, and photographer Marcus Russell Price traveled to each location to document New Yorkers responses. Here, a boarded-up Flatbush Avenue storefront. Photo: Marcus Russell Price

This article was featured in One Great Story, New Yorks reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

The protesters lined up, hundreds deep, hoping to rally on the steps of City Hall and raise a ruckus loud enough for the mayor to hear from his corner office. They hoisted signs that read BDB: WHAT HAPPENED TO BEING THE FAIREST CITY? and STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE and NO RACIST POLICE. They chanted about how they wanted justice, chanted about when they wanted it and about what they would do if they didnt get it now: Shut! It! Down!

Unlike most of the tens of thousands of protesters who have poured onto city streets over the past several weeks, the members of this group could probably have just told the mayor himself, or at least sent an email. They were his former and current administration employees, people who worked in either City Hall or one of the dozens of municipal agencies that make up city government, and they were boiling mad. This made the protest pretty much unprecedented in the history of New York civil unrest.

It was the second Monday in June, a postcard-perfect afternoon, and after three long months of lockdown, the city was at last scheduled to begin the slow process of reopening. And so the protesters were screaming at an empty building. The mayor was on the other side of the East River, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, hailing the progress New York had made against COVID-19, announcing new protected bus lanes and an extension of the alternate-side-parking suspension. Its a day to celebrate, he said.

Meanwhile, back at City Hall, Ifeoma Ike, who had been deputy executive director of the citys Young Mens Initiative until 2017, was accusing the mayor of presiding over a racist administration.

I am standing here on the backs of so many people that have been pushed out of this administration for raising the reality of what they have to endure when they go home, she told the crowd. Do you know how crazy it is to work for this city and then explain to your community why you work for a man who pimps out his family? Because thats what the fuck it is! You use your family to then have us vote for you. And then you expand the police!

You may think you are a lame duck, but everybody who is behind us is going to make sure that you are accountable to the promises that you claimed you believed in! she continued into a bullhorn, while the bureaucrats, government-affairs specialists, and political operatives behind her roared their approval. You claimed you believed in a Tale of Two Cities. But that is not a story about rich and poor; it is a story about the police and the rest of us!

It was an extraordinary moment, capping off a period unlike any New York has ever undergone, in which a video of a brutal police killing 1,000 miles away ricocheted into a city where nearly a million people had lost their jobs, millions more had been living in home confinement for months, and a video of a white woman falsely accusing a Black man of threatening her in Central Park had racked up 40 million views in 24 hours.

And the mayor, who stormed into office in 2014 promising to make the city more equitable and fair and who was buoyed by dissatisfaction with the liberal status quo, seemed exposed and out of touch. It began even before this recent spate of protests, as the police began enforcing social-distancing guidelines and 90 percent of those arrested were Black or Latino. Social media was awash in images of crowded parks in white neighborhoods of Manhattan, where friendly police officers handed out masks to those who didnt have them, while a young Black mother was pinned to the ground in a Brooklyn subway station after cops attempted to get her to cover her face and, on the Lower East Side, an officer was videotaped with his knee on the neck of an African-American man for the crime of failing to keep six feet apart.

We cant afford for someone to put a video of their Black son on a campaign ad, then just turn around and betray the Black community.

The mayor denounced the handling of these incidents but initially defended the enforcement of social distancing and bristled at critics who compared it to the police practices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. What happened with stop and frisk was a systematic, oppressive, unconstitutional strategy that created a new problem much bigger than anything it purported to solve, de Blasio said on May 7. This is the farthest thing from that. This is addressing a pandemic.

Then the protests got under way. The mayor defended police officers who drove their cars through a crowd of protesters surrounding them, saying, Im not going to blame officers who are trying to deal with an absolutely impossible situation. As mayors around the country marched or took a knee, de Blasio didnt. During a period when activists surrounded Gracie Mansion for a silent vigil, he mostly stayed inside, favoring virtual press conferences with a socially distant press corps that had long grown tired of him.

And on this day in June, when hundreds gathered downtown, the mood was raw and urgent as workers spoke of their frustration. They called for the mayor to live up to his promises on policing and be the kind of reformer they believed him to be when they joined his government. The group ranged from some who had worked only on his first campaign to others who had spent the past six years working on his behalf. The protest grew so big that senior managers said they felt obligated to go just to show support for their staff.

We cant afford for someone to put a video of their Black son on a campaign ad and then talk about how they are going to stop police brutality and reform criminal justice and then just turn around and betray the Black community and betray New Yorkers, Michael Cox, a former senior policy adviser in the office of the mayor, told me. At some point, it has to stop.

The mayors comments have been hurtful and tone-deaf to the cry of the people that voted for him and worked for him, shouted Jeremiah Cedeno, who works in Census outreach for the city, as hundreds behind him cheered. We as a city are done!

The group marched over to One Police Plaza, where members of the NYPD looked on as everyone took a knee, raised a fist and then continued over the Brooklyn Bridge to Cadman Plaza. Bill de Blasio is a mayor who sees himself as a revolutionary. Early in his tenure, he fought with the police unions and tried to reform the NYPD, but he seemed to back off as the unions indicated they would show no mercy in this battle and the department itself proved unmovable. Now there was a real uprising happening in the streets, one that caught City Hall unawares and was coming right to, and out of, its front door.

My concern is not for my job. My concern is for the future of this city, said Manvir Singh as he leaned against the Municipal Building across the street from City Hall. Working for the mayor had been his first job out of college, and he was now in intergovernmental affairs, working closely with City Hall. I didnt know what change could look like until I worked here, but I also didnt know what systemic racism could look like until I worked here.

Catherine Almonte worked as close to the mayor as possible; as his body person, she was with him all day. She worked for his campaign and went on to the citys Census outreach bureau. She had been in small meetings the mayor had with police brass. The NYPD just creates a fog around the mayor, and they keep him from seeing clearly, she told me as the march made its way over the bridge. Im hoping this is the way to pull him out of that and actually create change.

Photo: Marcus Russell Price

Union Square (left) and Elmhurst. Photo: Marcus Russell Price. Union Square (left) and Elmhurst. Photo: Marcus Russell Price.

It may be hard to believe, but de Blasio was elected mayor at a time of relative peacefulness, with the citys crime rates plummeting. The trend continued through his first term, even as the NYPD went to war with him over rhetorical slights and modest efforts at further reform. But, like the cops, he sees the city as still shadowed by the 1980s. He got his start working for the David Dinkins campaign in 1989. He then went to work for the Dinkins administration in City Hall, where he met Chirlane McCray, the future first lady.

Twice during de Blasios four years under Dinkins, the city erupted. The first time, in Crown Heights, a neighborhood seething with racial tensions, a car in the motorcade carrying the leader the leader of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement struck two Guyanese-American children playing on the sidewalk. As one of the kids lay pinned underneath a car, police and private Orthodox EMTs whisked the driver safely away. Ethnic battles broke out on the streets. A crowd of Black youths surrounded Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic doctoral student, and stabbed him to death. The neighborhood shook for three days. The press reported that the police were told to stand down, and they later retreated in the face of overwhelming numbers of rioters. There were reports of cries like Hitler didnt finish the job, and Jewish residents said what was happening was a pogrom.

Former colleagues recall de Blasio, the kid from Boston who went to NYU and then volunteered in Nicaragua, walking through the neighborhood afterward in shock. He is carrying that lesson into this moment, says one. He is looking at what was happening over these last few weeks and saying, Im going to have my own Yankel Rosenbaum. That is going to be the story of my mayoralty. There is going to be another pogrom. Then, they didnt let the police strike back, and now, he figures he has to trust his own cops.

The second eruption happened little more than a year later. This time, the police themselves revolted. Ten thousand of them swarmed downtown Manhattan to protest what they saw as unfair treatment by Dinkins and his call for civilian oversight of the police. Cops knocked over police barricades and stormed the steps of City Hall, spilling onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Led by the soon-to-be Republican mayoral nominee Rudy Giuliani, they held signs that read DUMP THE WASHROOM ATTENDANT and MAYOR, HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR DEALER TODAY? A pair of police officers stopped Una Clarke, the first Caribbean-born woman elected to the City Council, and one, cupping a beer in his hand, said to the other, This n- - - - - says shes a member of the City Council.

Bill was completely freaked out by it, recalls his former colleague. He saw police officers as blue-collar, working-class folks, people who should be in solidarity with us. The rest of us kind of shrugged and were like, Its just a bunch of racist fucking cops, but it totally spooked him.

It was something he used to talk about all the time, just the feeling of powerlessness of it, says another. He learned the lesson and used to say that it was not going to happen to him.

When de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013, he was a criminal-justice reformer, but his approach fell squarely in the middle of the overall Democratic push toward undoing some of the harshest measures of the 1990s. He took his then-teenage son, Dante, everywhere with him, his bouffant Afro proof that, as de Blasio told an associate at the time, I am running as a Black candidate, and I am going to govern as a Black mayor.

After he won the primary, his Republican opponent showed footage of a biker gangs attack on the West Side Highway, interspersed with riots, robberies, subway graffiti, even bodies lying on the sidewalk from the citys grim past, and ominously warned, We are one bad mayor from unsafe streets, failing schools, and fiscal chaos. De Blasio won in a landslide. If his Tale of Two Cities campaign theme turned off the citys elites, he swept the emerging majorities, winning among communities of color and the citys young white liberals. Once he was in office, the latter group deserted him, and his poll numbers have since remained in the 40 to 50 percent range, even as he won reelection against mostly token opposition.

Early on, former aides say, de Blasio calculated that all the other progressive stuff he wanted to do  from raising taxes on the wealthy, to instituting universal prekindergarten and after-school programs, to closing the yawning gap between rich and poor  would be impossible without keeping crime down. So he rehired William Bratton, who had previously instituted his hard-line broken windows policing strategy as Giulianis police commissioner, and showered the cops with whatever they asked for: more police, iPhones for every officer, computer tablets, gear.

As issues of race and policing grew central to the Democratic Party, especially during the rise of Donald Trump, de Blasio found himself in the uncomfortable position of urging reformers to go slow. He initially resisted calls to close Rikers Island and opposed increased police-transparency measures put forward by the City Council. But he also instituted the community policing he had campaigned on and called for the cops to stop arresting people for possessing small amounts of marijuana. The city saw over 180,000 fewer arrests, and the jail population recently dropped to its lowest level since 1946, so de Blasio touted the overall decrease in crime and seemed content to let the police force function mostly on its own.

Then Eric Garner was killed. The 43-year-old died after being put in a chokehold by police on a Staten Island street. This is profoundly personal for me, the mayor said after a grand jury decided not to indict the officer who had strangled Garner. De Blasio spoke of raising his own son, calling Dante a good young man, law-abiding young man, who never would think to do anything wrong. Yet because of a history still that hangs over us, the dangers he may face, weve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.

De Blasios comments infuriated the police unions, who went to war. Cops turned their backs on the mayor at funerals of slain officers. Patrolmens Benevolent Association head Pat Lynch told an interviewer that the cops had been thrown under the bus by the mayor (the group was renamed the Police Benevolent Association last year). We have to teach our children, our sons and our daughters, no matter what they look like, to respect New York City police officers, teach them to comply with New York City police officers, Lynch said, while Sergeants Benevolent Association head Ed Mullins called de Blasios comments moronic.

Mullins continued, If this individual whos in charge of running this city doesnt have faith in his own son being protected by the NYPD, he may want to think about moving out of New York City completely. He just doesnt belong here.

The criticism and the back-turning shocked the mayor, former aides recall. The following week was the one time when de Blasio didnt yell at any of his staff, when he seemed subdued and quiet and lingered in his city-issued SUV a beat or two longer to sit by himself before stops. (A de Blasio spokesperson disputes this account.) Police had largely ceased working, engaging in a slowdown that saw traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses drop 94 percent. It was an audacious move, the cops now turning their backs on de Blasio and on the city they were sworn to protect, and for a moment, his entire mayoralty was at risk.

He tried to respond in this human, fatherly way, recalls a former aide, and they just battered him for it. I dont think I had ever seen him so rattled.

Most de Blasio advisers view Lynch and Mullins as men from another era. Two steps behind the old Confederacy, as Peter Ragone, a former senior mayoral adviser, puts it. De Blasios team reached out to other city and state officials, looking for backup or at least a public statement of condemnation for the unions having politicized the slain officers funerals, but no one else in the citys political class was willing to help. De Blasio seemed to let it lie still instead and quietly negotiated generous new contracts for the police unions in the following years.

The dispute got mixed up in the mayors ongoing feud with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who this month rebuked de Blasio for voicing support for the police and mused aloud about his constitutional prerogative to remove the mayor from office. Back in 2014, however, Cuomo refused to criticize Lynch for essentially calling the mayor a murderer and hailed the police, accepting a Man of the Year award from the PBA the following fall.

You saved the city, Cuomo told 200 uniformed officers that day. The economic success of the city is predicated on what youve done and where youve brought the city. You did it by remembering the simple, irrefutable rule, which is the law is the law.

The unions largely stayed out of the mayors reelection campaign, as de Blasio positioned himself as an ally of the police and touted the citys falling crime numbers. But the detente was short-lived. The unions badgered the mayor for his gym habits, greeting him upon arrival at the Park Slope Y after his 11-mile drive from Gracie Mansion, and they bird-dogged his brief presidential bid, not only chanting Liar! outside his Good Morning America stop but also having police retirees protest him on the campaign trail, a living reminder to voters that all was not well back home.

We are out on a mission given to us by someone else, says a police source. And there is a feeling that, if we try to carry out the mission, that we are not going to be supported. The mayor asks us to enforce social distancing. Well, when the inevitable backlash comes, what is going to happen to the officer on the street? We could care less about all the new toys. Tell us you have our backs. We work for you.

If the police can seem like a city agency unaccountable to anyone, to the officers, de Blasio is a mayor unaccountable to his own police department. This stance surprises not just de Blasio but Bratton.

He treated the department very generously and fought the City Council to secure us extra funds, says Bratton, who now works for a security consulting firm. He describes the situation early in the mayors first term, when the City Council proposed increasing the departments head count by a thousand. The mayor said no, did a review of what was needed, and ended up adding 300 new officers on top of what the council had proposed.

He has taken on his own base to support the police, Bratton says. He supported a very limited stop-and-frisk policy but didnt do away with it. He supported the concept of quality-of-life enforcement. As far as I am concerned, he gets a bum rap, both from the police and from the people who supported him in office.

Bushwick (left) and Union Square. Photo: Marcus Russell Price. Bushwick (left) and Union Square. Photo: Marcus Russell Price.

Harlem (left) and midtown. Photo: Marcus Russell Price. Harlem (left) and midtown. Photo: Marcus Russell Price.

De Blasio isnt the first New York City mayor to tangle with the police and their unions. It comes with the job. In the 1960s, Mayor John Lindsay presided over riots in Harlem and an NYPD sickout and tried to impose civilian oversight on the police, while the PBA head at the time, Edward J. Kiernan, told reporters, Its open season on cops in this city. I refuse to stand by and permit my men to be gunned down while the Lindsay administration does nothing to protect them. When Mayor Abe Beame was forced to lay off police officers as part of the effort to stave off municipal bankruptcy, police unions fought back by distributing leaflets titled Welcome to Fear City to tourists and warning them not to go out after dark or ride the subway. After Beame, mayors Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Bloomberg decided it was better to play nice with the unions than to risk war, and even as they held the line on generous raises, they rhetorically stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and women in uniform.

But none of de Blasios predecessors dealt with anything like 2020, which has brought one crisis after another  a plague out of the Middle Ages, an economic collapse reminiscent of the Great Depression, a city on the precipice of a long-term fiscal crisis like its the 1970s, and now protests over policing like something out of the 1960s.

These are strange days at City Hall. The place has been almost empty thanks to the coronavirus, with many of the mayors staffers working from home. The Room 9 press corps and the City Council are deserted. Friends and aides say the mayor is exhausted.

The core group of staffers who were with him as he rose through the City Council to public advocate and who powered his mayoral campaign have largely abandoned him, and many of them have taken to sniping at their former boss on Twitter. The mayor is seldom out among everyday New Yorkers. He kept up his routine at the Park Slope Y in the face of widespread mockery all these years because he said it connected him to his previous, pre-mayoral self, but while there, he rarely talked with his fellow gymgoers. Eagle-eyed Brooklynites have snapped pictures of the mayor walking in Prospect Park, catching him and McCray huddled against each other and glowering at anyone who bothers to interrupt their tete-a-tete.

Part of the problem, longtime friends and aides say, is that de Blasio is one of the few people in New York not really on social media. Until a few years ago, he still used a flip phone. The images that bounce around the internet dont always reach the mayor, especially now that hes not surrounded by his usual coterie of aides. Even as some of his own staffers, there to observe the demonstrations, were kettled in with protesters and unable to escape, de Blasio defended the NYPD and the strategy.

He doesnt see the footage you and I are seeing on Twitter. He doesnt see the cops pepper-spraying protesters in the face or running over people, says one former adviser. He is counting on the PD or some staffer to tell him what is going on, and he doesnt get that the world is watching this play out on their phones as it is happening.

And part of it is that he just doesnt seem to care. After winning reelection in 2017 despite a daily swirl of negative stories on alleged corruption around his administration, de Blasio grew convinced, aides say, that whatever the media and the elite are obsessed with doesnt matter much to most New Yorkers. He doesnt think he gets credit for the reforms that he pushed through, says a former adviser. That is hard for him to accept, and it makes him really angry.

He dismisses his former advisers who criticize him as people who live in the world of public relations. I dont live in that world. That attitude, though, has long since curdled into an almost sneering contempt for a broad swath of New Yorkers who he thinks hold him in equal disdain.

I think the big mistake on his part was that he never sought to go north of 59th Street, figuratively speaking at least, says Bratton. This is a city that celebrates its culture so much  thats what brings outsiders here  and ignoring that is his fatal mistake. They accuse Trump of just reaching out to the 40 percent that makes up his base and nobody else, and the mayor makes the same mistake. He has a lot of credibility with the minority community, but he doesnt engage much or seek the support of the power brokers of the city, and I think that is a mistake.

Advisers say that being a parent has made this moment harder. His kids were highlighted often in his early political campaigns, and his son worked on his ill-fated presidential run, but they have mostly been absent recently. His 25-year-old daughter, Chiara, who had been quarantining at Gracie Mansion, got arrested during the protests, then had her name tweeted out by one of the police unions. De Blasio seethed privately and to the press, accusing the police of willfully violating her privacy. It showed that the unions saw nothing as off limits when it came to the mayor or his family.

On Friday, May 29, four days after George Floyds death, de Blasio was supposed to hold a regularly scheduled meeting with his top security officials to go over the plan for the summer. This year would be different, of course, because kids wouldnt be in school buildings and New Yorkers would just be emerging from lockdown. The night before, they had heard about a few protests over the Floyd video, which was just starting to make the rounds, but they knew who was leading them. During the Friday meeting, reworked to be about the protests, the mayors office sent staff over to observe a nearby rally; they reported that it was peaceful. That night, the animated, sometimes chaotic protests spread to every corner of the city, with police striking back.

On May 31, the mayor went to Bedford-Stuyvesant. His team posted photos on social media of de Blasio meeting with elected officials and locals. When asked why the mayor had come, one of those elected officials, City Councilmember Robert Cornegy, told me, Because I insisted.

Cornegy added, I wanted him to come out because I wanted him to hear from a community perspective of how the police were behaving. We have been peaceful out here, but when the police are heavy-handed, it ends up inciting people more than anything else. (A spokesperson for the mayor disputes this characterization and says de Blasio called Cornegy because his district had been the site of some more tense encounters.)

Cornegy thought the mayor got it, but he was shocked a few hours later when de Blasio announced the first curfew in the city since 1945. It seems like they are just trying to poke the bear, Cornegy said, and indeed anyone following along on social media saw peaceful protesters face a police department given license to run roughshod over them.

On Monday, June 1, President Trump, in a conference call with the nations governors, told them they needed to dominate the unrest in their cities. Governor Cuomo had already sent state troopers to Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester and put the National Guard on standby. He called de Blasio and said he was very concerned that what was happening in the city wasnt enough, that he had to double the police presence to maintain order. Cuomo said, according to one de Blasio aide, Trump is going to send the Army to New York City. He said the National Guard was available if the city needed it. (A spokesperson for Cuomo says the governor did not invoke Trump on the call.)

The mayor and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea decided they needed to do something to keep Trump and the governor at bay, so they agreed with Cuomo to institute an 11 p.m. curfew and to double the on-the-ground police force. As de Blasios and Cuomos teams were working on a joint statement, the governor went on an upstate radio station and announced the curfew for New York City, blowing up the communications plan, according to de Blasios office. (We worked with the city on every part of this announcement, says a Cuomo spokesperson.) As aides scrambled, they watched on CNN as Trump gave a press conference and then the U.S. Park Police cleared out Lafayette Square Park in D.C. with tear gas.

Back in New York, there were tens of thousands of peaceful marchers but also looting down Fifth Avenue; a policeman was run over by a car in a hit-and-run. So City Hall clamped down further, moving the curfew to eight. The mayor went up to Fordham Road in the Bronx, where some of the worst looting had occurred. Aides say he couldnt believe what he saw: Here were mom-and-pop businesses that had been in the community for generations, gutted. He heard of children from the neighborhood helping to clear the wreckage  not part of any organization, just there to help.

These were the mayors people, as he saw it: the citys Black working class and small-time entrepreneurs, whod had their livelihoods devastated first by a pandemic and then by a riot.

If the mayors responses during this time were all over the place, it is because the mayor was too. He thought he was a movement guy, part of civil-rights and police-reform crusades. He also believed that the protesters had been mixed in with a bunch of outside agitators determined to cause damage, as well as the stories of small-business owners left to sweep up the glass. A mayor from another era might have figured New Yorkers would be aghast to see police vehicles ablaze, as 13 of them were, by the NYPDs count, on the first few nights of the protests. But in 2020, a mayor might have figured that, in fact, New Yorkers were aghast to see peaceful marchers being kettled on the side of the road by NYPD officers in riot gear and pepper-sprayed in their faces as the public advocate turned mayor implemented a curfew and effectively shuttered Manhattan to outsiders.

Yet some in the de Blasio administration still see New York City as a success story. The Army stayed away, and so did the National Guard. There was no tear gas, no use of paramilitary police weapons, no deaths on either side, and limited injuries. Other mayors gave beautiful speeches or took a knee with protesters, but their cities burned.

Did the mayor have some missteps? Yes, says one aide. And people that hate him are going to be fixated on it. But all this stuff about the PBA or about the Dinkins administration is bullshit. He wanted to keep New Yorkers safe. Let people take their shots at him if it makes them feel better. It has been like that the entire time he has been here. But this city is going to come out of this okay, and you cant say that about a lot of cities.

Current and former de Blasio administration staffers protest on June 8. Photo: Theodore Parisienne

Police officers turn their backs as the mayor speaks at the funeral for Wenjian Liu in 2015. Photo: DAMON WINTER/The New York Times/Redux

Although those protesters on the bridge  the ones whose paychecks the mayor signs and who, even if they left their jobs, might seek him out as a reference  were ostensibly there to protest the NYPD, they were also very much there to protest the way the mayor runs his office. Many described a workplace hostile to dissident voices, especially ones coming from Black and Latino staffers.

Discrimination in his administration had been the dominant mode since the fucking thing started, says Cristina Gonzalez, who worked in the Mayors Office of Appointments until 2017. Its in hiring, its how people are paid, its in microaggressions, its everything. (According to a de Blasio spokesperson, 53 percent of top administration officials are white, down from 79 percent under Bloomberg.)

Many described a workplace where white people were promoted faster and their ideas listened to more. According to Gonzalez, a higher-up in the administration told his staff that straightened hair on women was more professional than natural hair.

We have bitten our lips one too many times, said Catherine Almonte, shouting into a bullhorn that had a STAND WITH BLACK WOMEN sticker affixed to its side.

What the public sees in the mayors policing is what these protesters say happens behind the scenes. Why in six years has de Blasio had three Irish-American police chiefs, passing over Black deputies? Why the harsh curfew and crackdown if he could see the reality of Black lives?

I feel like I am working in the Giuliani administration, says one longtime staffer. He doesnt listen to a lot of people. There are a lot of different types of mayors: Bloomberg let his agency heads decide everything; this one has decided that he knows best, he knows more than everybody else, and we are going to do what he says.

Even de Blasios supporters and friends say this quality was evident when the coronavirus first struck, when the mayor was slow to move and ignored the advice of his own Health Department until mass resignations were threatened. Or you could trace it back earlier, to when, against the advice of all counsel, the mayor decided to run for president, a disastrous display that saw him stall at one percent in the polls.

The problem he has, says a former adviser, is that nobody trusts his judgment anymore  not in City Hall, not in the city. And I dont know how you get that trust back. In his remaining time in office, the mayor seems determined to get in front of the tumult. He met with civil-rights activists at Gracie Mansion and, at their suggestion, agreed to have a Black Lives Matter mural painted on one street of every borough. He held a conference call with staff in which he told them that hed heard their concerns, that he was determined to do better, and that their cause was his.

I have never heard him so contrite, says one person who was on the call. Much of the mayors political focus appears to be on getting McCray elected as Brooklyn borough president next year. She is in charge of the coronavirus racial-equity task force and has been appearing at his side as the administration has attempted to quell the unrest. De Blasio is a political junkie, and keeping one hand in elective office is oxygen. But the calculus of that race has changed dramatically as his reputation sinks.

His response may be to at last go on the offensive with the police unions. When they released his daughters arrest information, he called it unconscionable. When police unions falsely accused Shake Shack employees of poisoning NYPD officers milkshakes, he blasted the union leadership, which has engaged in racist activities so many times, I cant even count. Ive been fighting with these unions from day one, he said. These police-union leaders, not all of them, but too many of them, stand in the way of progress.

His circle of advisers has shrunk to McCray and a few others, such as Ragone and longtime chief of staff Emma Wolfe. The phone calls with allies have begun to taper off. The City Council looks set to drive the agenda on police reform, calling for $1 billion in cuts to the NYPD budget, which will be hard for the mayor to turn down. The election to replace de Blasio is about to begin in earnest, and it appears to be a contest of who can criticize the mayor the most. He faces a growing rebellion at City Hall, upheaval in the streets, a pandemic, and police unions that are more irate than ever. He has lost the confidence of his own staff, his own law enforcement, and by all accounts his own city, and he still has 18 months to go.

*This article has been updated to clarify the events that precipitated the Crown Heights riot.

*This article appears in the June 22, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!


During the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.6 billion people were under a mandate to stay at home. According to psychologist Elke Van Hoof of Free University of Brussels-VUB, [the lockdown] "is arguably the largest psychological experiment ever conducted." What impact will COVID-19 have on the planet's mental health? The scientific study of psychological resilience is not a new field. But COVID-19 is fairly unique in the range of stressors it triggers, from the death of loved ones to isolation, devastating financial loss, and uncertainty about what comes next. Meanwhile, we actually aren't all "in the same boat." In Scientific American, Lydia Denworth surveys the real-time research on what we can learn from all this about resilience and how to increase it for the next time. From Scientific American:



Individual resilience is further complicated by the fact that this pandemic has not affected each person in the same way. For all that is sharedthe coronavirus has struck every level of society and left few lives unchangedthere has been tremendous variation in the disruption and devastation experienced. Consider Brooklyn, just one borough in hard-hit New York City. Residents who started the year living or working within a few miles of one another have very different stories of illness, loss and navigating the challenges of social distancing. How quickly and how well individuals, businesses and organizations recover will depend on the jobs, insurance and health they had when this started, on whether they have endured hassle or heartbreak, and on whether they can tap financial resources and social support.





The pandemic has laid bare the inequities in the American health care system and economic safety net. Black and Latino Americans are dying at much higher rates than white Americans. "When we talk about preexisting conditions, it isn't just if I'm obese, it's our society's preexisting condition," says medical anthropologist Carol Worthman of Emory University, an expert in global mental health. The scientific study of psychological resilience is not a new field. But COVID-19 is fairly unique in that it's triggering a wide range of stressors, from the death of loved ones, isolation, and massive financial loss to uncertainty about what happens next.



Fortunately, the unprecedented pandemic is leading to unprecedented science not just in virology but on mental health and resilience. Behavioral scientists are measuring the psychological toll in real time and striving to identify what helps people cope. Unlike, say, the September 11 terrorist attacks or Hurricane Katrina, which occurred over a finite period even though their effects were drawn out, the open-ended time frame for COVID-19 allows for new kinds of longitudinal studies and research directions. The sudden mass switch to virtual forms of working and socializing is expected to jump-start more nuanced investigations into what makes social interaction satisfyingor stultifying. If researchers meet the challenge of COVID-19, says psychiatrist Dennis Charney of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, "there will be a whole new science of resilience. We could learn how to help people become more resilient before these things happen."










Speakers:

Wang Bin, supervisor of the Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control of the National Health Commission (NHC)

Song Yueqian, deputy director of the Department of Health Quarantine of the General Administration of Customs

Shi Xiaoming, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC)

Feng Luzhao, researcher with China CDC

Chairperson:

Hu Qiangqiang, spokesperson and deputy director of the Department of Publicity of the NHC

Date:

June 19, 2020

Hu Qiangqiang:

Friends from the media, good afternoon! Welcome to this press conference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council.

To ensure effective regular prevention and control of COVID-19, and to offer guidance to key locations, major organizations and priority population groups, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council has updated Technical Guidelines on Prevention and Control of COVID-19 for Key Locations, Organizations and Population Groups, and developed Guidelines on Regular Prevention and Control of COVID-19 for Key Locations, Organizations and Population Groups at Low-risk Regions in Summer (Revised Edition). During this press conference, we will introduce this topic to you.

We have with us today Ms. Wang Bin, supervisor of the Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control of the National Health Commission (NHC); Mr. Song Yueqian, deputy director of the Department of Health Quarantine of the General Administration of Customs; Mr. Shi Xiaoming, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC); and Mr. Feng Luzhao, researcher with China CDC. They will take your questions concerning the newly-revised guidelines.

I'm Hu Qiangqiang, spokesperson and deputy director of the Department of Publicity of the NHC.

First, I'll report on the COVID-19 situation in China.

On June 18, 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 32 new cases of confirmed infections (four inbound cases and 28 domestic ones), two new suspected cases (domestic), but no deaths. Four patients were discharged from hospital after recovering, and 227 people who had been in close contact with infected persons were deemed no longer to need medical observation. The number of serious cases increased by four.

A total of 91 inbound cases were being treated, none of whom were in a severe condition. There remained no suspected cases from abroad. As of June 18, the Chinese mainland reported a total of 1,864 inbound cases and no deaths. In all, 1,773 patients had already been discharged from hospitals after recovery.

According to the figures reported by 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, as of midnight on June 18, a total of 293 patients were still being treated, including 13 deemed to be in a serious condition. In all, 78,398 patients have been discharged [since the start of the outbreak] after recovery, and 4,634 people had died of the disease. The overall confirmed cases on the mainland reached 83,325, and seven people were still under observation as potential infections. So far, 755,832 people have been identified as having had close contact with infected patients, and 5,856 continue to be under medical observation.

On June 18, 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, reported five new asymptomatic cases. Two of these became confirmed cases, four were relieved from further medical observation. As of midnight on June 18, a total of 110 asymptomatic cases were still under medical observation.

As of June 18, a total of 1,615 confirmed cases had been reported in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Macao SAR and Taiwan, 1,124 in Hong Kong, 45 in Macao, and 446 in Taiwan.

As of June 18, two provincial-level regions had reported new confirmed domestic cases for five consecutive days. The number of serious cases being treated also increased for five days running. A fast rise was also seen in the number of people who had been in close contact with infected patients and thus needing to be placed under medical observation. Challenges still remain during medical treatment and epidemiological investigation. Unremitting efforts must be continued on various fronts to consolidate achievements in epidemic prevention and control, and effectively contain the spread of the virus. Such is the current state of the epidemic.

Now, we will move on to questions. Please raise questions that are based on the theme of today's press conference, and firstly identify your news outlet.
Webster Area uses hot-shooting performance to roll past Roncalli

Webster Area used a strong offensive performance, shooting better than 50% from the field to down Aberdeen Roncalli 68-39 on Friday night in Aberdeen.
NEW YORK - Joel Schumacher, the eclectic and brazen filmmaker who dressed New York department store windows before shepherding the Brat Pack to the big screen in St. Elmo's Fire and steering the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, has died. He was 80.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW YORK - Joel Schumacher, the eclectic and brazen filmmaker who dressed New York department store windows before shepherding the Brat Pack to the big screen in St. Elmo's Fire and steering the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, has died. He was 80.

A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died Monday in New York after a yearlong battle with cancer.

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2011 file photo, director Joel Schumacher participates in a news conference for the film "Trespass" during the Toronto International Film Festival. A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died Monday, June 22, 2020, in New York after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 80. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

A native New Yorker, Schumacher was first a sensation in the fashion world after attending Parsons School of Design and decorating Henri Bendel's windows. His entry to film came first as a costume designer. Schumacher dressed a pair of Woody Allen movies in the 1970s: Interiors and Sleeper. He also penned the screenplays to a pair of musicals: The Wiz" and Sparkle."

As a director, he established himself as a filmmaker of great flair, if not often good reviews, in a string of mainstream films in the 80s and 90s. To the frequent frustration of critics but the delight of audiences, Schumacher favoured entertainment over tastefulness  including those infamous sensual Batman and Robin suits with visible nipples  and he did so proudly.

A movie that's in a movie theatre that runs at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 and there's no one in the audience when that movie runs  what's the point?" Schumacher once told Charlie Rose.

The success of his first hit, St. Elmo's Fire," with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy not only helped make a name for the Brat Pack but made Schumacher in-demand in Hollywood. He followed it up with 1987's The Lost Boys," with Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland and Corey Feldman. A vampire horror comedy, it gave a darker, contemporary view of the perpetual adolescence of Peter Pan.

Schumacher was sometimes regretful that he played a role in hoisting fame on his young stars and the two Coreys. Before dying in 2010, Haim struggled with drug addiction and said he was sexually assaulted in the film industry. Feldman on Monday recounted on Twitter trying cocaine during The Lost Boys as a 16-year-old. When Schumacher found out, Feldman said, Schumacher temporarily fired him.

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2011 file photo, director Joel Schumacher waves during a photo call for Cinema and Advertising: Joel Schumacher directs Campari, at the Rome International Film Festival. A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died Monday, June 22, 2020, in New York after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 80. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito, File)

He tried to prevent my descent, said Feldman, who continued to struggle with drugs.

Schumacher then made Flatliners, about morbidly obsessed medical students, and a pair of John Grisham adaptations in The Client and A Time to Kill. Falling Down, with Michael Douglas as a Los Angeles man whose anger from minute every-day interactions steadily builds in violence, was maybe his most critically acclaimed film, though its depictions of minorities  particularly a Korean grocer  were from the start hotly debated.

On its 25th anniversary, April Wolfe of LA Weekly wrote that it remains one of Hollywoods most overt yet morally complex depictions of the modern white-victimization narrative, one both adored and reviled by the extreme right."

The slickness of those productions helped Schumacher inherit the DC universe from Tim Burton. In Schumacher's hands, Batman received a garish overhaul that resulted in two of the the franchise's most cartoonish movies in 1995's Batman Forever and 1997's Batman & Robin. The first was a box-office smash but the second fizzled and remains most often remembered for its infamous suits.

It was like I had murdered a baby, Schumacher told Vice of the response to Batman & Robin." Yet it, too, has developed a small cult following for those who prefer the antithesis of Christopher Nolan's more grim Batman movies.

He saw deeper things in me than most and he lived a wonderfully creative and heroic life, said Jim Carrey, who played the Riddler in Batman Forever. "I am grateful to have had him as a friend."

Schumacher, born on Aug. 29, 1939, to Francis and Marian Schumacher, was raised in Queens by his mother after his father died when he was four-years-old. As a youngster, he quickly became enmeshed in the city's nightlife.

The street was my education, Schumacher told Vulture earlier this year. You could ride your bike over the 59th Street Bridge then. So I rode my bike everywhere. I was in Manhattan all the time and all over Queens. If youre a kid on a bike, anything can happen, and predators come out of the woodwork, my God. I looked very innocent, but I wasnt.

Schumacher would often say he was fortunate to have survived the 60s at all. He made habits of liquid Methadrine, acid and sex. Out long before many in Hollywood, Schumacher pegged his lovers in the double-digit thousands. He was a warm and gossipy raconteur though Schumacher said he never kissed and told about anybody who gives me the favour of sharing a bed with me.

I dont not like talking about it, I just dont believe it matters," Schumacher said of his sexuality in a 2000 interview with the Guardian. Ive lived my life very openly. I started drinking at nine. I started doing drugs in my early teens. I started smoking at 10 and I started sex at 11. So Im not hiding anything. But I am totally and completely against labels.

After Batman and Robin," Schumacher turned to lower-budget thrillers: 8mm, with Nicolas Cage; Flawless, with Robert De Niro; Phone Booth, with Colin Farrell. Schumacher, behind the beginnings of so many careers, gave Farrell his first led role in 2000's Tigerland. In 2004, he took on Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera," a late, gaudy flourish that combined Schumacher with perhaps his Broadway equivalent in the spectacle-making Webber. Most recently, he directed two episodes of Netflixs House of Cards in 2013.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

In his last interview, with Vulture, Schumacher reflected on a show at London's National Gallery of the now highly regarded works of James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.

They did a brilliant thing. Right next to them on the wall, framed right next to the paintings, were all their horrible reviews, said Schumacher. Who remembers these reviews?

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nicolas Cage and Andrew Lloyd Webbers names.
The Prequel Will Reveal The Origin Story

The King's Man is the third film in Matthew Vaughn's series after the release of 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017 release Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

The Series Is Based On The Secret Service

The King's Man is loosely based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. The story of the film is written by Matthew Vaughn and the screenplay is done by Matthew Vaughn & Karl Gajdusek.

The Release Date Is Yet To Be Announced

The trailer does not share the release date of the film and instead, at the end, it reads, 'Coming To Cinemas'. Hollywood is slowing gearing up to release films in theatres, as big studios including Disney, Warner Bros. and Paramount have shared the revised release dates of their upcoming films. Tenet has been moved ahead by two weeks and will now release on July 31, while Mulan is based on a similar timeline and will release on July 24, 2020.
Washington, June 22 : Several US states have witnessed a surged in the number of COVID-19 cases as businesses continue to resume operations across the nation, casting a shadow over the current path to reopening economies.

Florida, for example, reported 4,049 new cases on Saturday, setting a single-day record for the third day in a row, Xinhua news agency quoted data from the state's Department of Health as saying on Sunday.

In California, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased to 173,324 as it recorded its highest single-day spike on Sunday.

According to the data from the California Department of Public Health, 4,515 new virus diagnoses were identified statewide in the last 24 hours, beating the previous record of 4,317 new cases reported on Friday.

South Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Montana also hit records on the day, according to a report from The New York Times, which noted that Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon hit records earlier in the week.

More than 30,000 new infections were reported across the nation on both Friday and Saturday, indicating a nationwide uptick in COVID-19 cases, despite a downward trend in over 10 states including New York and New Jersey.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News on Sunday.

Gottlieb said Texas, Arizona and Florida could be overwhelmed as cases continue to surge.

Noting that it is a mistake that many Americans are not wearing masks, Gottlieb urged the pubic to wear masks to protect others and themselves and help reopen the economy safely.

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory", Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior UN advisor.

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing, or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, US states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

An influential COVID-19 model produced by the University of Washington raised its projections on June 18, forecasting more than 200,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by October 1, an increase of 30,000 deaths from its projections in the prior week.

With 2,279,306 cases and 119,967 deaths, the US on Monday morning continued with the world's highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
NEW YORK - When Attorney General William Barr announced Friday night that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman would step down and the post would be filled on an interim basis by the sitting chief prosecutor in neighboring New Jersey, Justice Department veterans and legal observers were baffled.

Why would Barr not promote Berman's second-in-command, Audrey Strauss, as is customary while a president's new nominee awaits Senate confirmation?

The answer soon became evident: Berman's departure was neither planned nor voluntary but driven, critics surmise, by long simmering frustrations over his office's pursuit of investigations targeting President Donald Trump's interests and members of his inner circle.

Berman's refusal to leave quietly - he indicated a desire to ensure that "important cases continue unimpeded" - forced Barr's hand. On Saturday the attorney general announced that plans had changed and that Strauss would take charge instead while the nomination of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton is pending.

The reversal brought an immediate and collective sigh of relief, said Samidh Guha, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the office, "as we know continuity will be ensured and none of the office's work will be compromised."

Strauss, friends and former colleagues say, has never sought the spotlight but possesses the experience and acumen to guide the office through such an extraordinarily chaotic moment while upholding its long-standing tradition of independence in important public corruption matters. Berman, in his statement Saturday agreeing not to prolong the fight with Barr, made clear his belief that the office of more than 200 attorneys could be "in no better hands" than those of his handpicked deputy.

Those who know Strauss said they believe that the changeover will be relatively seamless and that she'll continue to fight against political misconduct.

Over the past two years, Strauss was part of several politically sensitive cases infiltrating Trump's orbit, including the tax fraud and campaign finance case brought against the president's former lawyer Michael Cohen. An investigation of a current Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, remains a source of aggravation for the president.

Joon Kim, who preceded Berman as an interim U.S. attorney and formerly held the same deputy position from which Strauss was just promoted, said she would be devoted to the most touchy of cases because she would have been "actively" involved in those matter since becoming deputy in February 2018. "I would expect that she was very much involved in all of the important cases in the office," Kim said.

Paul Shechtman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who worked with Strauss, predicted that she would not "wilt" if faced with pressure to abandon cases viewed unfavorably by the president or the attorney general.

"She grew up in that office," Shechtman said of the Southern District of New York, where he and Strauss were contemporaries in the 1980s. "The traditions of that office are embedded in her, and one of those traditions is a fierce sense of independence and a sense that one follows the evidence, doesn't rush to judgment, but isn't afraid to make judgments even if they might be politically inconvenient."

Barr's critics have suggested his attempt to bring in Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, was motivated by a desire to curtail the New York office's independent streak. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond Sunday to questions seeking clarity as to why the attorney general initially passed over Strauss.

It's unclear how long Strauss will remain in the role; Clayton's nomination to take over the job may already be in trouble. On Saturday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, signaled that he would honor the so-called "blue slip" veto system granting home-state senators a say in whose nomination proceeds. The move likely seals Clayton's fate, as neither Democratic senator from New York is expected to acquiesce.

While Graham may come under pressure from corners of the Republican Party to reverse his decision, it is unlikely Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would take steps to force the issue. Extraordinary measures to circumvent the committee are an even unlikelier option, as it would take 60 votes - meaning all Republicans plus seven Democrats - to pull a nominee out of the committee's jurisdiction and straight to a floor vote, and Democrats are all but universally opposed to Clayton's confirmation.

Graham, one of Trump's closest allies, issued a statement Saturday expressing that he, too, had confidence in Strauss, saying he believed she would run the office "in a professional and ethical manner."

Danya Perry was a senior trial attorney and deputy chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan during her tenure there from 2002 to 2013. She knows Strauss socially and through professional networks and believes she will "doggedly pursue" existing investigations, no matter how delicate. Strauss, Perry said, is "uniformly viewed as following the cases, doing the right things for the right reasons."

- - -

The Washington Post's Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.
By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. prosecutor on Monday urged a judge to keep a former Green Beret and his son locked up as Japan prepares to formally seek their extradition on charges that they helped former Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> boss Carlos Ghosn flee the East Asian country.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Hassink argued during a virtual hearing that Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, have a "clear and present reason to flee" after being accused of helping Ghosn, who faces financial misconduct charges in Japan.

"They're actually some of the best defendants that Im sure this court has seen positioned to actually succeed in that flight," Hassink said.

He argued the men, who have been held without bail since being arrested in Massachusetts last month, helped smuggle Ghosn out of Japan in a box on Dec. 29, 2019. Ghosn then allegedly fled to Lebanon, his childhood home, which has no extradition treaty with Japan.

Ghosn, Nissan's former chief executive, was charged with engaging in financial wrongdoing by understating his compensation in Nissan's financial statements. He denies wrongdoing.

The Taylors' lawyers countered that had they wished to avoid prosecution they could have remained in Lebanon, where they were when Japan in January said it would seek their arrest, rather than return to Massachusetts.

"If he's an expert of escape, he would not have returned to the United States," Robert Sheketoff, a lawyer for Michael Taylor, argued.

He and other defense lawyers argued the case against their clients was flawed and that Michael Taylor, a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran and private security specialist, is at heightened risk of complications from COVID-19, which could spread in the jail.

The hearing itself was held through a Zoom videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell said he hoped to rule "as quickly as I can."

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
Nearly seven months ago, Gov. Charlie Baker sat on a table in a Boston high school auditorium signing a bill that legislative leaders proclaimed would close the opportunity gap in Massachusetts classrooms. Karen Spilka said it was the Legislatures greatest responsibility.

Whether the state will start meeting its responsibility in fiscal 2021 remains unclear. In what should be the first year phasing in the Student Opportunity Act, the landmark $1.5 billion education law remains in limbo as state officials contemplate holding aid flat for the year while schools cut their staff amid significant revenue shortfalls in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. Charlie Baker signed an education funding bill at The English High School in Boston on Nov. 26, 2019. (Shira Schoenberg / The Republican)

For the first time in recent history, state legislators are approaching July 1 without any budget proposals filed for the new fiscal year. Lawmakers dont know whether a federal stimulus bill is on the horizon and could help with education funding increases, as the federal government did during the Great Recession. Nor do they know how soon or how much the federal government will reimburse the billions of state spending in its COVID-19 response and how much of a tax revenue shortfall the state faces  one projection puts the gap at $6 billion  as the state is waiting on tax payments now due on July 15, the extended tax deadline.

State budget writers dont have the luxury of taking a wait-and-see approach. Unlike the federal government, Massachusetts legally cannot enter the new fiscal year running a deficit. While state leaders often rely on interim budgets to cover their expenses in July as they settle last-minute negotiations, longer delays on drafting full-year budgets mean municipalities wait longer for answers on funding for schools, local road and bridge repairs and other key services that rely on state aid.

In the short term, state officials plan to keep education funding flat. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue published a bulletin on Monday stating funding for Chapter 70 and local aid will remain level for July and August. State officials still have to draft the roadmap for the rest of the fiscal year.

The state has a $3.5 billion rainy day fund, but state officials and economists caution against relying on it. Depleting the stabilization fund quickly may send the wrong message to credit rating agencies; Standard & Poors dropped Massachusetts rating from AA+ to AA three years ago, warning the states rainy day fund was too low. Another reason to save stabilization funds is because lawmakers wont know whether they need to dip into it next year.

That is money that can be tapped, but thats like using all the water In the bucket for the fire, said Greg Sullivan, research director at the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank. When thats gone, you really have nowhere to turn.

If we do not get that block grant from the feds, we are going to have to make some brutal decisions of layoffs, terminating programs, cutting local aid across the board, Sullivan added. There will be devastation in our budget.

In the worst-case scenario, that devastation could translate to deferred education investments. Gov. Charlie Bakers budget proposal in January included a $303 million increase toward Chapter 70 school aid, a 6% increase that would bring the total pool to $5.38 billion. Now lawmakers are considering holding Chapter 70 funding harmless, or leaving it flat, if they do not receive enough relief from the federal government. Such a move would run contrary to the provisions of the Student Opportunity Act.

The conversation now is we need to protect education funding, and the plan is to insulate and hold harmless Chapter 70 funding, said Sen. Adam Hinds, a Pittsfield Democrat who serves on the Senate Ways and Means Committee. How we get there is a different matter.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker delivers COVID-19 updates at the State House.Chris Van Buskirk/State House News Service

The missing pieces

Massachusetts elected officials are waiting to answer several unanswered questions that will help the states financial picture come into a clearer focus.

An official from the Executive Office of Administration and Finance official said the Baker administration is coordinating with the Legislature on spending plans for the next year, but declined to elaborate on the timeline for passing a fiscal 2021 budget or what areas could face cuts.

Asked about whether the state would fully fund the Student Opportunity Acts first year, Gov. Charlie Baker said legislators and his administration must resolve some more immediate funding issues before they can determine how much money they have to spend on big picture priorities such as the education funding law, echoing concerns from economists.

Bakers top priority is passing a $1 billion supplemental budget, saying all the funding covers personal protective equipment, incentive pay and services reimbursable by the federal government because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The sooner legislators pass his supplemental budget, the sooner he can submit a formal request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and learn how much the state will get back to cover its spending gaps, Baker said during a recent news conference.

Those funds are available until theyre gone. That doesnt mean you dont get reimbursed at some point down the road, but if youre not one of the people who gets in line relatively early with all your incurred expenses that are currently federally reimbursable, it may be a while before you get the money, he said. Its very important to us with all these moving parts between us and the feds and local communities that a lot of stuff get buttoned up and done.

There are so many moving pieces associated with our fiscal position that its very hard to answer really big questions, he also said, and I know thats a bit of a dodge, and I apologize.

The House advanced the supplemental budget on Monday and plans to take it up on Wednesday, according to the State House News Service.

Rep. Aaron Michlewitz and Sen. Michael Rodrigues, the Legislatures budget chiefs, said in a joint statement the supplemental budget will help get COVID-19 expenses reimbursed by the federal government and free up money for state and local resources.

The priorities included within this supplemental budget  funding for personal protective equipment, emergency child care, health care supports for community health centers and behavioral health services, housing and homelessness supports, and food security reflect the advocacy of the members of both chambers to urgently address the challenges facing our Commonwealth during this difficult time, said Michlewitz, a Boston Democrat, and Roderigues, a Westport Democrat, in the statement.

Lawmakers are also waiting on what money comes in on July 15, this years Tax Day.

The state Department of Revenue has collected $2.25 billion less than it expected to in tax revenues, in large part due to revenue collections falling short in April. The preliminary revenue collections for April alone fell short $2.1 billion of the states benchmark and was 54% less than what the state collected in April 2019.

DOR attributed the lower collections total in part to the tax deadline extensions and in part to the non-essential business closures that shut down restaurants and shops. Those delayed penalty waivers for late filing and corporate excise tax payments and certain sales and meals tax payments until June 20, in addition to the well as the income tax payment and filing deadline until July 15.

We dont really know what the actual tax revenue for the month of April, which is the biggest month on the calendar in the fiscal year is going to look like until people actually pay their taxes in July, Baker said at a recent news conference.

In May, the state collected $1.7 billion in tax revenues, 15% less than the state expected and 13% less than the state collected in May 2019.

And its not just sales and income tax revenues. Andrew Bagley, vice president of policy and research at the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the state has to take stock of lost gas tax revenues, lottery fees and casino revenue.

What does that mean for MassDOT if youre down in gas tax revenues, if registry fees are down? People arent getting their cars inspected, he said.

MTF projected before the pandemic hit that the state faced a revenue shortfall of up to $800 million this fiscal year. Even then, the Beacon Hill watchdog group suggested putting off the phase-in of the Student Opportunity Act or hold off spending in other parts of the budget.

Since the pandemic began, those predictions have only grown darker. MTF now projects the state is up to $6 billion short and that the economy could take years to recover  casting doubt on predictions of a V-shaped recovery.

A complete and accurate picture of the states budgetary challenges may elude us for some time, a May 28 report states. Ongoing adjustments will be necessary as we follow the trajectory of the virus, the timing of a vaccine, the ability of the economy to regain traction and consumers to regain confidence through inevitable fits and starts, and the willingness of Congress and the administration to keep state and local governments functioning.

The states financial picture remains murky as the new fiscal year approaches.

Were in the same position as the House, Senate and the administration. We have nowhere near enough information to decide how much in the FY2021 budget for us to start making any recommendations, he said. Like Sullivan of Pioneer Institute, Bagley cautioned against relying too much on the rainy day fund at this point. How big a problem does 2020 create for 2021. If you have to dip into the rainy day fund for 2020, thats not good, he added.

Perhaps the biggest unknown is the one lawmakers and state officials can control the least.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $3 trillion coronavirus bill that would deliver almost $1 trillion for state and local governments in April, but the prospect of the legislation landing on the presidents desk and being ratified has dwindled.

During the Great Recession, Massachusetts received more than $16 billion in federal aid through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. More than half of the money was used to fill spending gaps in the state budget and for some municipalities, Commonwealth Magazine reported in 2012. One-quarter of the money went to special education, student aid, school employee health insurance and other education spending. The rest went to safety net programs, shovel-ready construction, road repairs, wind turbines and other programs and initiatives.

The economic decline from COVID-19 has been sharper, yet debates over whether to assist states and municipalities has fallen along partisan lines. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, made headlines in April suggesting states should file for bankruptcy rather than rely on a federal bailout. Since then, McConnell has suggested the U.S. Senate wont revisit a COVID-19 relief bill until late July, weeks into the new fiscal year in Massachusetts.

State legislators have held several meetings with the Massachusetts congressional delegation, urging them to bring federal relief money to Massachusetts. Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, a Springfield Democrat who leads the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, said members raised concerns about the state budget, as well as policies to address racial inequities, in meetings with U.S. Rep. Richard Neal and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, both Democrats.

I think the federal response has been too late, Gonzalez said. We hoped that they would address our state budgets a lot quicker and really be able to help move the economy by help moving our states economy.

Education in the age of coronavirus

The Student Opportunity Act was the culmination of years of advocacy for education reform. A 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission report found that a formula under a 1993 education law ended up underfunding school districts by $1 billion to $2 billion a year.

Five years later, Baker sat at a table in the English High Schools gym and signed an education reform that overhauled the states Chapter 70 formula to better account for pockets of poverty in school districts, English language learners, special education and rising employee health care costs.

School districts expected to see funding increases from the state, especially school districts with higher concentrations of poor students who say they werent receiving as much money as their suburban, more affluent counterparts.

Since the pandemic, school districts in Chicopee, Worcester, Brookline and other communities have announced plans to reduce their staff. Chicopee Schools sent 100 layoff notices to its employees.

Under the Student Opportunity Act, the state is supposed to increase funding over seven years until it provides $1.5 billion more in funding annually. School districts with higher numbers of poor students are supposed to receive the most money, followed by those with large ELL populations.

But the states ability to start increasing its Chapter 70 funding is unclear.

Its hard to comment on something like how the big pieces of the budget are going to play out until we know something like that, Baker said at a recent news conference.

Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, whose education bill laid the framework for the Student Opportunity Act, said she wants to see as much of an increase as possible to start phasing in education reform.

It will depend on what the federal govt does or doesnt do in the coming weeks, but ... we cannot just sort of wait for the fed govt to ride in like a white knight here, the Boston Democrat said. Thats not a strategy.

In the meantime, lawmakers are revisiting new taxes they previously proposed. Baker again proposed in his budget accelerating sales tax payments, which would bring a one-time revenue increase. House members sought to eliminate a tax break for rental agencies that buy new car fleets, among other taxes and fees, to fund transportation improvements.

Others have discussed taxing businesses that have seen a windfall during the pandemic. A report by The Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University suggested a one-time surtax on corporate profits resulting from COVID-19, ranging from grocery stores to e-commerce platforms, food delivery services and other electronic services.

If youre a corporation thats experiencing a drastic spike in profits that is likely caused by the pandemic  Zoom, for example  thats an entity that should be giving something, said Chang-Diaz, a Boston Democrat.

Proponents of a windfall tax say its not meant to be punitive, but rather a way for thriving businesses to contribute to the economy as other businesses struggle to recoup their losses.

Sen. Jo Comerford, a Northampton Democrat, suggests taxing multinational companies offshore earnings, often known as the global intangible low-taxed income. A GILTI tax, she said, could help plug some budget holes and prevent cuts to education, local aid and environmentally focused infrastructure projects.

It just feels like in order to get out of this pandemic and the associated economic crisis, public investment is needed, she said.

Hinds said he doesnt know what the worst-case scenario looks like for the Student Opportunity Act, except that the education reform law has to play a role in the states budget discussions to follow through on correcting funding levels for low-income areas.

Theres an important conversation to be had for identifying ways that we protect education. On the governors side, theres accelerating the sales tax, Hinds said. The relevant piece we were talking about is the need for additional sources of revenue before this, and now the urgency is accelerated.

Related Content:
Right-Wing Member Of Serbian Parliament Leads Protest Ahead Of National Elections

By RFE/RL's Balkan Service June 21, 2020

BELGRADE -- Several hundred people demonstrated in front of Serbia's parliament building in Belgrade on June 20 in an action led by the right-wing independent member of parliament Srdjan Nogo a day before national elections.

Nogo said the elections were not legal and called on citizens to elect members of the 250-seat parliament who would change the constitution among other demands, including that the government call off the elections.

The demonstrators also say they will not disperse until they can enter the National Assembly.

Nogo and some of the demonstrators tried to enter the National Assembly building, but police stopped them. Nogo, however, was allowed to enter alone and soon exited.

The people who were gathered outside held banners that read "Kosovo -- no surrender" and shouted, "Send migrants home," and "Kosovo is the heart of Serbia." They also sang nationalist songs.

Nogo also sent a message to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic that, if anyone gets hurt during the demonstration, he will be blamed.

Police are monitoring the situation and have not taken any actions other than to stop the crowd entering the building.

Participants are not respecting physical-distancing measures or wearing masks, precautions that are recommended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

On May 9, the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Nogo led a march in which groups of people shouted "We don't want migrants," and protested against the 5G Internet network and vaccinations.

Vucic's ruling conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is poised to maintain its majority in Serbia's parliament amid an opposition boycott in the election. Vucic's coalition partner, the Socialist Party (SPS), is tapped to come in second at around 10 percent. Several right-wing and liberal parties may make it over a 3 percent threshold.

With reporting by Tatjana Bogdanov

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/serbian-nogo--leads- protests-parliament-national-election-vucic/30682323.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






New Delhi:

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday convened a high level security meeting with Army, Air Force and Navy chiefs to discuss the security situation after the suicide attack on BSF and 46 Rashtriya Rifle camp in Baramulla district in Kashmir late on Sunday night. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said on Monday that the National Security Advisors of both India and Pakistan have spoken over phone and are all set to reduce tensions on the Line of Control (LOC). Here are the top five stories of the hour:



1. Watch: Baramulla army camp attacked; Defence Minister meets with Army, Air Force and Navy Chiefs

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday convened a high level security meeting with Army Chief Dalbir Singh, Air Force Chief Arup Raha and Navy Chief Sunil Lanba to discuss the security situation after the suicide attack on BSF and 46 Rashtriya Rifle camp in Baramulla district in Kashmir late on Sunday night.



2. Sartaj Aziz: India and Pakistan's National Security Advisors looking for peaceful solutions along LOC

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said on Monday that the National Security Advisors of both India and Pakistan have spoken over phone and are all set to reduce tensions on the Line of Control (LOC). The statement comes in the aftermath of India's successful surgical strikes which had heightened tensions amidst the nations.



3. Nitish Katara murder case: Supreme Court sentences Vikas and Vishal Yadav to 25 years in prison

Supreme Court sentenced Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav to 25 years in prison each on Monday regarding the sensational 2002 Nitish Katara murder case. Furthermore, their associate Sukhdev Pehalwan has been convicted to 20 years in prison. The 2002 Nitish Katara murder case had shook the nation due to the sheer brutality attached to it.

4. Pakistan violates ceasefire again in Kashmirs Poonch district

Violating the ceasefire again, Pakistani troops on Monday opened fire on forward areas along the LoC in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir. This is the third ceasefire violation in the past 16 hours and the 8th ceasefire violation since surgical strikes. Pakistan had on Sunday resorted to firing and shelling along the LoC in forward areas in Pallanwala belt of Jammu district.



5. Bring Back Sepoy Chandu Babulal Chavan Safe: Indian DGMO speaks to his Pak counterpart for soldier's safe return

Indian Director General Military Operations (DGMO), Ranbir Singh on Monday talked to his Pakistani counterpart again for the return of Sepoy Chandu Babulal Chavan, the soldier who had inadvertently crossed the Line of Control hours after Indian Armys surgical attack in Pakistan occupied Kashmir on Thursday.











For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The Berejiklian government will rely on Victorians to follow health advice and avoid all interstate travel to NSW but Deputy Premier John Barilaro says enforced bans could still be necessary.

As Victoria recorded 16 new coronavirus cases on Monday, including six with no known sources, Mr Barilaro said borders should not be closed to business or trade.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Sydney on Monday. Credit:Rhett Wyman

But the NSW Nationals leader said he feared allowing Victorians to travel into NSW during the upcoming school holidays could cause an outbreak in the state.

"It will be a watch-and-see for now but I am pretty worried about the snowfields because you will have people from Victoria mixing with people from NSW," he said.
The Supreme Court is hearing a bunch of petitions seeking modification in its order in which it had stayed Lord Jagannaths famous Rath Yatra in Odisha.

The Centre told the top court that annual Rath Yatra can be held without public participation keeping in view the Covid-19 pandemic.

At least a dozen applicants, including one by Janardhan Pattajoshi Mohapatra, who is the hereditary chief servitor of Lord Jagannatha of the Jagannatha Temple, had approached the apex court seeking modification of its June 18 order.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sambit Patra has also filed a similar plea before the Supreme Court. He prayed that the Rath Yatra should be allowed to be held without public participation. Patra submitted that the Rath Yatra can be conducted by employing the services of Lord Jagannaths 800 sevayats, who are persons who perform the ritual services of Lord Jagannath and other deities at the Puri Jagannath temple.

Patra was hospitalised after he showed coronavirus symptoms and later discharged.

The court had last Thursday stayed the annual event and associated activities at the Jagannath Temple in Odishas Puri in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. The yatra is scheduled to commence from June 23.

The court order came on a petition filed by an NGO which had pointed out the health risk involved if the Rath Yatra is allowed at a time when Covid-19 is spreading rapidly across the country.

The NGO referred to the Tablighi Jamaat incident which was Muslim religious congregation held in mid-March at Nizamuddin area in Delhi resulting in a spurt in Covid-19 cases across the country after people from various parts of India and even foreign countries attended the event.

The Rath Yatra festival lasts for 10 to 12 days and involves a procession of chariots containing the deities Lord Jagannatha, his brother Lord Balabhadra and sister Devi Subhadra. The crowd pulling the chariots is very close to each other, which violates the social distancing norms during the times of Covid-19.
Actor Vijay Deverakondas new look with long hair and a goatee has gone viral after he shared some latest pictures on Fathers Day on instagram. It is still yet unknown if the new look is for his upcoming Telugu-Hindi bilingual film with Puri Jagannadh or hes just trying something new as he quarantines at home.

In Puris film Fighter, Vijay plays a man with a stutter. He underwent mixed martial arts classes in Thailand in preparation for his character. Karan Johar has come on board to release the film in Hindi.

The film will be shot simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi, and will be dubbed into other regional languages as well. Besides Telugu, I am planning to dub my lines in Hindi as well, Vijay had said.

Vijay is expected to sport six-pack abs for this project, which is eyeing a 2020 release. Karan Johar and Apoorva Mehta will distribute the film in Hindi. Apparently, the script of Fighter was originally pitched to Jr. NTR a few years. For reasons unknown, the project never took off and both of them got busy with their respective commitments.

Vijay also has a yet-untitled Telugu project with filmmaker Indraganti Mohan Krishna in the pipeline. The film, which will take off after the release of Fighter, will be produced by Dil Raju. Meanwhile, recent reports suggest that Vijay is all set to produce content for streaming platforms.

As per recent report by Telugu 360, Vijay has plans to bankroll a few digital shows for leading streaming platforms. Hes said to have already given his nod for a show which will be directed by KVR Mahendra, who launched Vijays brother Anand in Dorasaani.

Apparently, Vijay is mighty impressed with Mahendras script. The casting process will take a few months. If everything works out as planned, this show will be made for Aha, the new streaming platform from Geetha Arts.


By Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim





Very recently U.S. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation to block some Chinese graduate students and researchers from being given F or J visas to enter the U.S. if they were connected with organizations in China supporting that country's military-civil fusion strategy.



He believes that China's theft of American technology and intellectual property threatens the safety, security and economic power of the U.S.



The U.S. has intensified export laws and regulations restricting the use of, and access to, controlled information and technology for reasons of national security. The Federal regulations restricting the export of controlled goods and technology have been around since the 1940s.



Many Americans have realized that the free transfer of state-of-the-art technology from America to China has brought about a huge loss to the U.S. They suspect that Beijing has illegally acquired advanced technology by coercing American firms operating in China. To avoid the leak of such technology, the U.S. is highly recommending a re-shoring policy.



In earlier times, the transfer of technologies to China caused few problems because they were not very sophisticated. For example, one of the hot items then was old-line sewing machines. Now the situation has dramatically changed.



China has become one of the strongest countries in artificial intelligence. Huawei, the country's number one IT and electronics company is facing allegations from the U.S. and its allies that its wireless networking equipment could contain backdoors enabling surveillance by the Chinese government.



Beijing had required foreign companies to form joint ventures with local Chinese partners in return for market access. Bloomberg News reported in October 2019 that the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China found that 20 percent of companies surveyed in 2019 felt compelled to hand over know-how to retain market access, up from 10 percent in 2017.



The technologies that Beijing mainly targeted were those in the chemicals, petroleum, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and automobile sectors.



To help settle these disputes over alleged "technology theft," one needs to reconsider the flying-geese paradigm (FGP) of technology transfer. People often observe geese flying in a "V" formation. Scientists have agreed that the V-shaped formation that geese use when migrating serves two purposes.



One purpose is to conserve their energy so that the geese can fly for a long time before they must stop for rest. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of him, which reduces wind resistance. The other purpose was to keep track of every bird in the group. Fighter pilots often use this formation for the same reason.



The flying-geese model was introduced by Kaname Akamatsu, a Japanese economist, in 1962. He suggested that FGP be used as a model for regional cooperation in trade and finance. East Asian countries could minimize the cost of breaking the "competition" wind blowing from outside the region.



To promote regional cooperation, all the participating countries should share the benefits as well as the burdens. Akamatsu had in mind that the lead goose would be Japan itself, the second-tier of nations consisted of the newly industrializing economies such as South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.



After these two groups came the main ASEAN countries  Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Finally the least developed major nations in the region including China, Vietnam, and the Philippines made up the rear guard in the formation. China was a greatly backward economy at that time.



We may apply the FGP concept to regional cooperation in technology development. One can easily conceive the technology ladder Asian member countries can climb.



The ladder starts from basic and low technology producing light-industry products, to intermediate technology producing industrial products, and to high-level technology producing petro-chemical products and finally to super-high technology producing AI services.



Nevertheless, the flying-geese cooperation model is now facing a critical challenge. China seems to have taken the position as the lead goose in military and economic technology not only regionally but also globally.



China's dramatic advancement in commercial technology and military power is threatening the security and economic strength of the U.S. and its allies. If China gave up on global hegemony, the flying-geese technology transfer among members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) would surely yield much in mutual gain.





Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim (ickim@skku.ac.kr), former foreign investment ombudsman, is a professor emeritus at Sungkyunkwan University. He earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the American University, Washington, D.C.






New Delhi, June 22 : Defence Minister Rajnath Singh left for a three-day visit to Russia on Monday amid heightened tensions between India and China along the Line of Actual Control. The minister will discuss various defence deals with his counterparts which both countries have agreed upon.

Among the defence deals to be discussed, Singh is likely to bring up expediting the delivery of S-400 anti-missile system to India.

Defence deals between India and Russia are set to cross $16 billion. Moscow has stated that it is committed to the timely implementation of contracts, including the supply of S-400 air defence systems and production of Kalashnikov rifles and Kamov helicopters.

The two countries signed 14 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) during Defexpo 2020 in Lucknow in February this year that covered development and production of land, air and naval systems and hi-tech civilian products.

Russia's state-run Rosoboronexport inked deals with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for advanced pyrotechnic ignition systems, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for export of spares and services to friendly countries, and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) for land systems.

A separate MoU was signed by Russian Helicopters and Indo-Russian Helicopters Ltd for localisation of component to be used in Kamov Ka-226 helicopters. India has plans to buy 200 Ka-226 helicopters.

Indian Air Force (IAF) signed a Rs 1500 crore deal with Russia for buying R-27 air-to-air missiles. The missiles will be fitted on the IAF's multi-role Su-30MKI fighter jets. The missiles will further boost the air-to-air combat capability of the Indian Air Force.

After holding talks with top Russian military brass, Singh will attend a grand military parade in Moscow to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

On Wednesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will also attend the Russia-India-China meet. The Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministers will also be present.

The Defence Minister's visit to Russia comes as a standoff between India and China has escalated in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed by Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.

Before leaving for Moscow, Singh tweeted: "Leaving for Moscow on a three-day visit. The visit to Russia will give me an opportunity to hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. I shall also be attending the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow." A tri-service 75-member Indian military contingent has already reached Moscow and will participate in the parade alongside armed forces personnel from at least 11 countries.
Rising environmental concerns including greenhouse emissions have accelerated the use of renewable sources across the globe, algae being one of them

The rising influence of biodegradable plastics in the plastic industry and the growing influence of biofuels in road, marine, and aviation may act as growth churners for the algae market

Existing and Future Opportunities in Algae Market

ALBANY, New York, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The algae market is developing gradually as numerous algae production facilities await full commercialization. The growing investment interest of established entities such as Solazyme Inc and Algae Tec are emerging as good growth generators for the algae market. Algae-based biofuels may bring exponential growth for the algae market due to properties of algae such as growth at higher efficiency levels and expanded productive levels when compared to other biomasses.

The experts at Transparency Market Research (TMR) predict the global algae market to expand at 7.42% CAGR across the forecast period of 2019-2027. The global algae market was valued at US$ 717.1 mn in 2018 and is estimated to reach US$ 1365.8 mn by 2027.

According to a TMR analyst, the algae market is seeing a substantial rise over the years with the need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy being the prominent reason. Furthermore, analysts opine that the worrying increase in carbon footprints of industries is increasing the demand for biofuel.

Download PDF Brochure - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14804

Key Revelations of Algae Market Report

In context of technology related to algae cultivation, 80 percent of algal biomass is produced through open pond cultivation technology as they require low investment

North America led the global algae market, with the U.S. constituting more than 87 percent in 2018, and is anticipated to take the lead through the forecast period, thanks to the expansion of production facilities and efforts to eliminate the demand-supply gap

led the global algae market, with the U.S. constituting more than 87 percent in 2018, and is anticipated to take the lead through the forecast period, thanks to the expansion of production facilities and efforts to eliminate the demand-supply gap More than 50 percent of the algae produced via various cultivation technologies are used on a large scale in DHA production to manufacture chemical components for cosmetics, medicines, health foods, and food additives

Uncover 236 pages of intelligent research, current market scenario, and extensive geographical projections. Gain insights on Algae Market (Cultivation Technology: Open Ponds Cultivation Technology, Raceway Ponds Cultivation Technology, Closed Photo bioreactor Cultivation Technology, and Closed Fermenter Systems Cultivation Technology; Application: Marine Sector, Aviation Sector, Road Transport, DHA Production (Protein Sales), DHA Production (Pharmaceutical Applications), Bioplastics, and Others) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2019  2027 at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/algae-market.htm

Algae Market: Growth Generators and Promising Growth Aspects

The algae market has thumping growth opportunity in the form of the emerging closed photo bio-reactor technology. This technology encourages biological growth in a controlled environment.

The warning bells of rising environmental threat through carbon emissions and exhausting fossil fuel resources promotes the growth of algae-based biofuels, thus increasing the growth rate of the algae market

Stringent norms and extensive government policies on controlling emissions are further encouraging the use of biofuels

The escalating need for a ban on single-use plastics has generated great demand for biodegradable plastic production, eventually benefitting the algae market as it is one of the important components of biodegradable plastic production

View Detailed Table of Contents at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/14804

Algae Market: Assessment of Regional Landscape

Geographically, the algae market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Europe. North America is predicted to invite colossal growth for the algae market through the broadening of algae production facilities. More than 135 companies related to algae cultivation are operating in the region. Therefore, this factor has the potential of creating strides across the algae market during the forecast period.

Analyze Algae Market growth in 30+ countries including US, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Benelux, Nordic, China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Request a sample of the study

Asia Pacific is also focusing extensively on producing biofuels as it consists of five of the top 10 emitters in the worldmost notably from India, China, Japan, Indonesia, and Iran. Persistent efforts for total commercialization of biofuel production from algae are in full force, thus bringing hopes for the growth of the algae market in this region.

Purchase Premium Research Report on Global Algae Market @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=14804<ype=S

The Global Algae Market is segmented on the basis of following parameters:

By Cultivation Technology

Open Pond Cultivation Technology

Raceway Pond Cultivation Technology

Closed Photo Bioreactor Cultivation Technology

Closed Fermenter Systems Cultivation Technology

By Application

Marine Sector

Aviation Sector

Road Transport

DHA Production (Protein Sales)

DHA Production (Pharmaceutical Applications)

Bioplastics

Others

By Region

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

& Latin America

Explore Transparency Market Research's award-winning coverage of the global Chemicals and Materials Industry,

Algae Biofuel Market - Several attractive characteristics of algae biofuel account for the rapid evolution of the algae biofuel market. Promises of higher yield than several of the currently used crop-based biofuels, high energy content, rapid growth of the microorganism, and high biodegrability are the factors that make algae biofuel production viable.

Algaecides Market - Based on type, the algaecides market can be segmented into copper compounds, simazine compounds, other compounds containing sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate as its active component, and certain eco-friendly compounds such as hydrogen dioxide and peroxyacetic acid. Algaecides are used primarily to control algal growth in stagnant water as well as water bodies used for storage of large volumes of water such as lakes, reservoirs, ponds, stock tanks, and irrigation systems.

High Performance Ceramic Coatings Market - Rapid expansion in the automotive and aerospace industry is the key market driver of global high performance ceramic coatings market. These coatings are specifically designed to reduce heat loss from engine exhaust system components such as valves, pistons, cylinders, exhaust manifolds, turbocharger casings, exhaust headers, down pipes, and tail pipes.

PVC Foam Sheet Market - PVC foam sheets are used in a wide range of applications, such as transportation, wind energy, marine, and building & construction, due to these properties. In terms of demand, Asia Pacific accounted for a major share of the global PVC foam sheet market for structural composites in 2019. It was followed by Europe and North America. China held dominant share of the PVC foam sheet market for structural composites in the region in 2019.

Gain access to Market Ngage, an AI-powered, real-time business intelligence that goes beyond the archaic research solutions to solve the complex strategy challenges that organizations face today. With over 15,000+ global and country-wise reports across 50,000+ application areas, Market Ngage is your tool for research on-the-go. From tracking new investment avenues to keeping a track of your competitor's moves, Market Ngage provides you with all the essential information to up your strategic game. Power your business with Market Ngage's actionable insights and remove the guesswork in making colossal decisions.

About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.

Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.

Contact

Mr. Rohit Bhisey

Transparency Market Research

State Tower,

90 State Street,

Suite 700,

Albany NY - 12207

United States

USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com

Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1085206/Transparency_Market_Research_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Transparency Market Research
CARDSTON, ALTA.A four-year-old child who was reported missing in a provincial park in southern Alberta has been found dead.

RCMP say their officers responded to a report of the missing child in Woolford Provincial Park, southeast of Lethbridge, early Saturday evening.

Police say that they, along with a Lethbridge search-and-rescue team and volunteers, used search dogs and a helicopter to look for the child throughout the night.

They say at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, as a result from information from a local, RCMP boat operators located the child dead on a sand bar in the St. Mary River, a few kilometres downstream from the park.

Police say they are not releasing the childs name.

Tragedy also struck further down the St Mary River earlier this month when three teenage girls drowned while swimming and canoeing near Spring Coulee.

Read more about:
The frenetic search for the miracle that will rid the world of COVID-19 is branching out in a thousand directions, and a large part of the microbial treasure hunt is going on in the Bay Area, where major progress has been made in the 100 days since residents were ordered to shelter in place.

Scientists at universities, laboratories, biotechnology companies and drug manufacturers are combing through blood plasma taken from infected patients for secrets that will help them fight the disease.

The key is likely a super-strength antibody found in some patients. But researchers must first figure out how those antibodies work and how they can be harnessed and used to stop the many health problems associated with COVID-19, particularly acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, which has killed more people than any other complication connected to the disease.

Other developments showing promise include injections of mesenchymal stem cells, found in bone marrow and umbilical cords, that doctors are studying to battle inflammation caused by ARDS. And a steroid called dexamethasone reduced the number of deaths by halting the overreactive immune responses in seriously ill patients in the United Kingdom.

In all, more than 130 vaccines and 220 treatments are being tested worldwide.

What follows is a list of some of the most promising elixirs, medications and vaccines with ties to the Bay Area:

Antibodies and immunity

Monoclonal antibodies / Vir Biotechnology, San Francisco: Scientists at Vir and several institutions, including Stanford and UCSF, are studying monoclonal antibodies, which are clones of coronavirus-fighting antibodies produced by COVID-19 patients.

The idea is to utilize these neutralizing antibodies  which bind to the virus crown-like spikes  and prevent them from entering and hijacking human cells.

Only about 5% of coronavirus patients have these super-strength antibodies, and those people are believed to be immune to a second attack.

The trick for scientists at Vir is to identify these neutralizing antibodies, harvest, purify and clone them. If they succeed, the resulting monoclones could then be used to inoculate people and  it is hoped  give them long-term immunity against the coronavirus. The company recently signed a deal with Samsung Biologics, in South Korea, to scale up production of a temporary vaccine in the fall after clinical trials are complete.

Another monoclonal antibody, leronlimab, is being studied in coronavirus clinical trials by its Washington state drugmaker, CytoDyn. The companys chief medical officer is in San Francisco, and the company that does laboratory tests of leronlimab is in San Carlos.

Interferon-lambda / Stanford University: Doctors at Stanford are running a trial to see if interferon-lambda, which is administered by injection, helps patients in the early stages of COVID-19. Interferon-lambda is a manufactured version of a naturally occurring protein that has been used to treat hepatitis. Stanford doctors hope it will boost the immune system response to coronavirus infections.

Dr. Upinder Singh, a Stanford infectious-disease expert, said the trial has enrolled more than 50 patients and is halfway finished. We have noted that patients tolerate the drug very well, she said.

Mesenchymal stem cells / UCSF and UC Davis Medical Center: UCSF Dr. Michael Matthay is leading a study about whether a kind of stem cell found in bone marrow can help patients with ARDS. Matthay hopes that the stem cells can help reduce the inflammation associated with some of ARDS most dire respiratory symptoms, and help patients lungs to recover.

Matthay is aiming to enroll 120 patients in San Francisco, the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and hospitals in a handful of other states. He said the trial, which includes a small number ARDS patients who dont have COVID-19, should have results within a year. So far 17 patients are enrolled in the trial, most of them in San Francisco.

Antiviral drugs

Remdesivir / Gilead Sciences (Foster City): Remdesivir, once conceived as a potential treatment for ebola, was the first drug to show some promise in treating COVID-19 patients. The drug interferes with the process through which the virus replicates itself. A large study led by the federal government generated excitement in late April when officials said hospitalized patients who received remdesivir intravenously recovered faster than those who received a placebo.

A later study looking at dosage showed some benefit for moderately ill COVID-19 patients who received remdesivir for five days, but improvement among those who got it for 10 days was not statistically significant. Gilead, a drug company, recently announced that it will soon launch another clinical trial to see how remdesivir works on 50 pediatric patients, from newborns to teenagers, with moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms. More than 30 locations in the U.S. and Europe will be involved in the trial, the company said.

More Information Coronavirus crisis: 100 days Editor's note: It's been 100 days since the Bay Area sheltered in place, protecting itself from the coronavirus pandemic. What have we learned in that time? And what does the future hold for the region and its fight against COVID-19? The Chronicle explores the past 100 days and looks to the future in this exclusive report. See More Collapse

Favipiravir / Fujifilm Toyama Chemical (Stanford University): This antiviral drug, developed in 2014 by a subsidiary of the Japanese film company to treat influenza, is undergoing numerous clinical studies worldwide, including a Stanford University trial that began this month. Unlike remdesivir, it can be administered orally, so it can be used to treat patients early in the disease, before hospitalization is necessary.

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.

Stanford epidemiologists want to see if favipiravir, which has shown promising results in other trials, prevents the coronavirus from replicating in human cells, halts the shedding of the virus and reduces the severity of infection. The Stanford study, the only outpatient trial for this drug in the nation, is enrolling 120 people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 within the past 72 hours. Half of them will get a placebo. People can enroll by emailing treatcovid@stanford.edu.

Anti-inflammatory drugs

Colchicine / UCSF (San Francisco and New York): The anti-inflammatory drug commonly used to treat gout flare-ups is being studied in the U.S. by scientists at UCSF and New York University. The drug short-circuits inflammation by decreasing the bodys production of certain proteins, and researchers hope that it will reduce lung complications and prevent deaths from COVID-19. About 6,000 patients are receiving colchicine or a placebo during the clinical trial, dubbed Colcorona, which began in March and is expected to be completed in September.

Selinexor / Kaiser Permanente: Kaiser hospitals in San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento are studying selinexor, an anticancer drug that blocks a key protein in the cellular machinery for DNA processing, as a potential COVID-19 treatment. The drug has both antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, and its administered orally, according to Kaisers Dr. Jacek Skarbinski. The trial aims to enroll 250 patients with severe symptoms at Kaiser and other hospitals that are participating nationwide.

Vaccines

VXA-COV2-1 / Vaxart, South San Francisco: The biotechnology company Vaxart is testing this drug to see if it is as effective at controlling COVID-19 as trials have shown it to be against influenza. VXA-COV2-1, the only potential vaccine in pill form, uses the genetic code of the coronavirus to trigger a defensive response in mucous membranes. The hope is that the newly fortified membranes will prevent the virus from entering the body.

Its the only vaccine (candidate) that activates the first line of defense, which is the mucosa, said Andrei Floroiu, Vaxarts chief executive, noting that intravenous vaccines kill the virus after it is inside the body. Our vaccine may prevent you from getting infected at all.

The drug was effective against influenza and norovirus in trials and appears to work on laboratory animals, Floroiu said. He expects trials of VXA-COV2-1 on humans to begin later this summer.

VaxiPatch / Verndari (Napa and UC Davis Medical Center): Napa vaccine company Verndari makes a patented adhesive patch that can deliver a vaccine instead of a shot. Now, the company is trying to make a vaccine for COVID-19 that they can administer through that patch. At UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, Verndari researchers are developing a potential vaccine that relies on the coronavirus spike-shaped protein. When injected into a person, the substance would ideally train their body to recognize the virus and fight it off without becoming ill.

A spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the companys preclinical tests have shown early, positive data in developing an immune response. Verndari hopes to move into the next phase of testing in the coming weeks and start clinical trials in humans this year.

If the vaccine is proved effective and safe, patients could receive it through the mail, according to company CEO Dr. Daniel Henderson. The patch would leave a temporary mark on the skin that patients could photograph and send to their doctor as proof they have taken the vaccine, Henderson has said.

Peter Fimrite and J.D. Morris are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com, jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite, @thejdmorris
The romance between 'international model' Chad Hurst and former gymnast Sophie Budack is heating up in the Big Brother house.

During Monday's episode, footage aired of Sophie topless in bed as Chad climbed in with her just as she was waking up.

The 25-year-old showed off her toned figure as she accidentally toppled out of bed wearing just a pair of skimpy white underpants.

Scroll down for video

Oh no! Big Brother was forced to censor a racy scene involving Sophie Budack (L) falling out of bed TOPLESS - as her romance with model Chad Hurst heats up on Monday's episode

As the show has a PG rating, the moment was only aired for five seconds and was pixelated to conceal Sophie's breasts.

Attraction has bloomed between the pair ever since they entered the house at the same time as latecomers on episode two.

Oops! As the show has a PG rating, the moment was only aired for five seconds and was pixelated to conceal Sophie's breasts

Chad didn't appear shocked to see Sophie's bare breasts in the footage, as he piled on top of her for a cuddle in her single bed.

Sophie, however, was left shocked by the slip as she hurriedly attempted to get back into bed after the raunchy moment.

They have previously been filmed cuddling and kissing on the show, and they have a strong alliance when it comes to nominating housemates for eviction.

Accident: Sophie, however, was left shocked by the slip as she hurriedly attempted to get back into bed after the raunchy moment

Big Brother host Sonia Kruger has already revealed that a love story will blossom in the house between the housemates.

According to housemate Angela Clancy, there were strict rules banning after-dark activities in the shared bedrooms.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia last week, the 38-year-old mother of two explained: 'Once the lights went out, everyone had to be in their own bed.'

Getting close! Sophie and Chad have previously been filmed cuddling and kissing in bed together

'We weren't allowed to sleep together, apart from the sneaky here and there of Sophie and Chad,' Angela added.

'But they didn't sleep together. They were actually not allowed to sleep a whole night.'

Big Brother Australia continues Tuesday from 7:30pm on Channel Seven
India has deployed its specialised high altitude warfare forces along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) to repel any transgression by the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in either western, middle or eastern sectors.

Top government sources confirmed that Indian Army has been directed to safeguard the LAC from any cross-border aggression by the PLA, which is showing hostile intent by amassing troops in a bid to cow down the Narendra Modi government.

It is understood that specialised forces trained over the past decades for fighting on the northern front have been pushed up to the frontier to impose military costs if the red flag goes up. Unlike the PLA which moves in infantry combat vehicles and paved metalled roads to move, the Indian mountain troops are trained in guerrilla warfare and fighting in high altitude as shown by them in Kargil War.

Also Watch | Can India fight war on two fronts with China & Pakistan? Gen VP Malik answers

The art of mountain fighting is the toughest as the cost of human casualties is 10 to each troop of the adversary sitting on a height. The troops from Uttarakhand, Ladakh, Gorkha, Arunachal and Sikkim have adapted to the rarefied heights over centuries and hence their capability of fighting is close quarter combats is without match. The artillery and the missiles have to have pin-pointed accuracy or else they miss the mountain target by miles, said a former Indian Army chief.

The other thing that works for the army is that the Tibetan plateau is flat on the Chinese side while the Indian side starts from K2 peak in Karakoram, to Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand, to Kanchenjung in Sikkim and Namche Barwa across Arunachal Pradesh border. In mountains, it is not only difficult to capture territory but more difficult to hold it, a China expert with South Block said.

While India has noted with appreciation the voices coming out in its support from the Trump administration, including the President himself, the mood in Delhi is more like atmanirbhar (self-reliant) Bharat with no intent of asking anyone for military or diplomatic support. I have my battalions lined up with armoured personnel carriers and artillery. India will not instigate or precipitate any skirmish but will reply to any transgression. The days of LAC nibbling are over. This is a battle of nerves and India is prepared to wait, come snow come sunshine, said a senior minister.

The Modi government is very unhappy that the Chinese President Xi Jinping broke all the peace and tranquility promises by not reining his favourite PLA western theatre commander Gen Zhao Zongqi, who is insistent on imposing 1960 eastern Ladakh map based on exaggerated territorial claims on India. This map where China claims territory upto Kongka La was unveiled by then Chinese premier Chou En Lai.

Incidentally, Chou En Lai, the premier during 1962 conflict, had close links with President Xi Jinpings family and Foreign Minister Wang Yis wife is the daughter of secretary of the former premier. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar father K Subrahmanyam was involved in Indias war effort as an officer in the Defence Ministry.

It was only to set aside these historical baggage that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated the Wuhan and Chennai understandings so that the two leaders could promote the bilateral relations post-Doklam. It is quite evident that President Xi had no such plans and has used tensions in East Ladakh to divert global attention from failure of China to alert the world about coronavirus. In the same way, another paramount leader used the 1962 conflict to deflect attention from the famine, due to failure of Great Leap Forward movement, in which millions of Chinese died.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
South Africa on Monday said it had over 100,000 coronavirus cases, the highest in the continent, while the number of deaths inched towards 2,000. "As of today, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Africa has breached the 100 000 mark at 101,590," the health ministry said. Sixty-one deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of COVID-19 deaths to 1,991. Despite the grim death toll, data shows that the mortality rate in South Africa is at two percent, while 52.6 percent of virus patients have recovered. The worst-hit area is Western Cape, the coastal province accounting for 1,458 of the country's deaths and more than half of its infections. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the continents infections are in South Africa. Nigeria and Ghana are next on the list, having recorded over 20,000 and 14,000 cases respectively. South Africa has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic. Officials instituted a strict lockdown when the virus first hit in March but they backtracked as the rate of infections increased and opted to reopen most sectors of the economy. Despite an unprecedented $26 billion virus relief package and food parcels, many South Africans have struggled to get by. Under-fire President Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted difficulties in balancing public health with saving the nation's economy, which was already in tatters before the virus. "For a country such as ours, which was already facing an unemployment crisis and weak economic growth, difficult decisions and difficult days lie ahead," he said in his weekly letter to the public on Monday. "We would urge that the difficult decisions to be taken are taken with care and with due regard to balancing the sustainability of companies and the livelihoods of workers." The main opposition Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has threatened legal action if the government refuses to completely end the nationwide lockdown. However, leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters Julius Malema said the president had "completely divorced himself from logic" by even partially reopening the economy. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has warned that the gradual reopening does not mean the threat of COVID-19 has disappeared. "My fear is that by the time these pockets of society come to realise the severity of the virus, it will be far too late," he wrote in an opinion piece in Sunday's papers. The government is due to propose a supplementary budget on Wednesday in the face of the crisis.
After a decade of conflict, destruction, and severe economic contraction, Syrias civil war may be nearing an end. Syrian President Bashar al Assad, thanks to extensive military, economic, and diplomatic support from his Russian and Iranian partners, is as close to vanquishing his enemies as he has ever been. The anti-regime opposition is now boxed into a small, crowded corner of northwestern Syria -- a territory only kept out of Assads reach by neighboring Turkey, a country petrified of even more Syrian refugees spilling over the border.

Al Assad has all but won the civil war, but Syria is dangerously close to an economic collapse. While policymakers in Washington are coy, a U.S. policy geared toward regime change in Damascus is exacerbating the suffering and hindering Syrias post-war reconstruction.

Syria is at a tipping point. It will take decades before the nation is able to come back to pre-war levels of economic growth. The war has cost the Syrian economy as much as $530 billion between 2011 and 2019. The Syrian armys vicious, barbaric prosecution of the war, coupled with U.S. and EU sanctions on the Assad government, has handicapped everything from health care and public services to education. Syrias product exports have rapidly declined, from $12.2 billion in 2010 to $695 million in 2018. The value of its currency has decreased by 50% this year -- at the same time the price of food has risen by an average of 107% over the past 12 months.

Add an internal regime feud between Assad and his wealthy cousin, Rami Makhlouf, and Russias growing impatience with the Syrian governments inability to govern effectively, and Syria is facing a long-term period of deprivation. The imminent implementation of the Caesar Act, a U.S. law that will sanction any foreign entity transacting with the Syrian government across a wide variety of economic sectors, will further delay whatever small window of opportunity the countrys victims have to begin moving on from the conflict.

Washington is deliberately hindering Syrias economic and physical reconstruction as it pursues regime change in Damascus. Until Assad makes significant political compromises to his opponents, abides by U.N. Security Council Resolutions weighted against his own government, or agrees to resign -- demands he has shown no willingness to consider -- U.S. sanctions will remain intact and may even tighten. The 83% of Syrians already living in poverty are effectively being punished for the barbarity, corruption, and ineptitude of their government.

In addition to utilizing the power of the U.S. financial system, the Trump administration is also dipping into the U.S. military toolkit. Officially, the American people are told, U.S. troops stationed in Eastern Syria are performing counterterrorism operations against ISIS. The reality, however, is hundreds of American military personnel are being used to block Damascus and Moscow from accessing Syrias meager oil fields. The logic is fairly straightforward: If Assad is unable to access these fields and export oil again, the financial pressure eventually will force him to offer political concessions to his Syrian adversaries.

Assad has never been open to such an arrangement. Even during the height of the civil war, when Syrian troops were fleeing from the north and rebel groups were approaching the suburbs of the capital, Assad and his inner circle ruled out the prospect of stepping down -- understandably calculating that doing so would result in their death, imprisonment, or exile.

Despite Russian airpower turning the tide of the war in his favor, the Syrian strongman has repeatedly resisted Russias entreaties to cooperate diplomatically. If Assad were unwilling to negotiate with his back against the wall, it is naive to expect him to do so when hes winning on the ground.

This will result in something the American people have seen too often over the last two decades and are increasingly opposed to: the prospect of endless U.S. military deployments to a strategically unimportant country.

U.S. troops were deployed to Syria in 2014 for a very specific purpose: destroy ISISs physical caliphate, a pseudo-entity that stretched from the Baghdad suburbs to Raqqa, Syria, covering an area nearly the size of Great Britain. After more than four years of counterterrorism operations, the White House declared mission success when Kurdish-led forces retook ISISs last sliver of territory in the dusty Syrian town of Baghouz after a months-long siege. Yet 14 months later, hundreds of American servicemembers remain on Syrian soil, dodging an array of factions -- including regular Russian soldiers -- in pursuit of an objective that is at best open-ended and at worst unnecessary to U.S. national security interests.

The U.S. mission in Syria always had an anti-Assad component, and it has long since transformed completely from counterterrorism into a pressure campaign against a relatively weak and conflict-ridden foreign government. If this is not an example of mission creep, what is?

The strongest, most responsible policy in Syria is to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country, which will encourage all parties to find a tenable settlement. There is no good outcome possible, but every day withdrawal is delayed is one more day the lives of Americans in uniform are needlessly put at risk, and one more day the Syrian people suffer.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner. The views expressed are the author's own.
Jeus Joaquin helped New Zealand beat back the coronavirus as the nation's confirmed cases gradually fell to zero in May. During New Zealand's 49-day lockdown, the 34-year-old emergency department nurse treated covid-19 patients at Thames Hospital, on the country's North Island. Essential workers like him were lauded as heroes as New Zealand's international prestige soared. (New Zealand has since seen three new cases).

But the win against the virus came at a cost, and Joaquin is among those paying it.

His wife and two toddlers are stuck in Philippines, where the family is from. They are among an estimated 10,000 foreign workers and family members of citizens and permanent residents who blocked from returning to New Zealand when country closed its border. It's now extremely difficult for anyone but a New Zealand citizen - and a few select foreigners - to get into the country despite the government's pledges to assist families locked out.

"[Jeus] has lost lots of milestones with his son," said 35-year-old Kristine Joaquin, who is a nurse like her husband, by phone from Manila. She has a visa, but said New Zealand immigration services have nine times denied her applications for a travel exemption.

The border isn't impassable for all. The government has provided special exemptions to the crew working on the sequel to the sci-fi film "Avatar," along with their families, classified as "high-value workers" for "projects of national or regional significance" in the tourism-reliant county. The American and British America's Cup sailing teams have also been allowed in, as have their families, and in one case, a nanny - some 300 people in total.

"I feel like New Zealand now has an iron curtain," said Wendy Harnett, 54, a New Zealand citizen whose husband is from Japan and has been trying to enter the country since March when offshore visa processing was suspended.

"We did the lockdown. And, yes, we eliminated the virus. But no one thought about what next," Harnett told The Washington Post by phone. "Well, you eliminate the virus and then you have a whole other set of problems."

New Zealand's Immigration Ministry estimated there were around 10,000 foreign workers - ranging from employees on farms to employers in big businesses - on temporary visas and locked out. In the meantime, the country of 5 million people noted Thursday its largest quarterly economic contraction in 29 years as it entered its first recession in nearly a decade. (The Ministry of Immigration did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.)

Immigration restrictions and a struggling economy are not unique to New Zealand amid the pandemic. But the plight of those stranded highlight an often hidden cost of the nation's efforts to banish the virus. These experiences, said New Zealand immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont, show the flip side of policies that squashed the country's outbreak and earned it the attention of the world.

"This government is not a very popular government with the migrant community at all and this is really exacerbated that," said McClymont, who has worked in the field for 25 years. "The migrant communities don't really see our prime minister and government in the same way as the rest of the world does."

Among those impacted are several thousand migrant workers from India who were back home on holiday when New Zealand suddenly shut, according to McClymont. Many of his clients are now without income as expenses accumulate.

For anyone who does cross the border, New Zealand has mandated a 14-day quarantine at isolation centers with a daily capacity of 250 people. Initially, as the lockdown eased, immigration services said that partners of New Zealand citizens or permanent residents with certain visas could enter - but only if they were traveling with a New Zealand citizen. The government amended the rule the second week of June, allowing partners with relationship-based visas to enter on their own.

This change, however, didn't help most of the people polled in a Facebook group of more than 700 members set up by separated families, according to Harnett. That's because after months of offshore visa services being shut, most partners still remain unable to acquire a visa. New Zealand is processing some visas again, but immigration authorities are first going through the large backlog of applications from inside the country, while those from abroad largely remain deferred.

As of June 16, there have been over 16,500 requests for exemptions for foreigners to enter New Zealand and 2,600 approvals, the majority for humanitarian reasons, according to immigration services cited by local media. (Overall, 64,000 people have entered New Zealand since the borders closed, the vast majority Kiwi citizens or permanent residents.)

New Zealand has had around 1,500 confirmed coronavirus cases and 22 confirmed deaths related to covid-19. Experts say that's largely due to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's decisive and early action to eliminate, rather than simply contain, the virus. The country's had its blips: Earlier this week, two women recently arrived from the United Kingdom were allowed to leave quarantine and turned out to be infected with the virus, setting off a new round of infection worries.

Nominate your favorite people and places now Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Nominate your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

Families interviewed said they understood the need for the border restrictions, but felt they had been unfairly applied.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway told New Zealand's Public Broadcaster RNZ earlier this month that the government was working to assist divided families and to set travel criteria for residents on temporary work visas locked out. But, he cautioned, given New Zealand's post-coronavirus economic tribulations, jobs and future visas may not be guaranteed.

"The immigration system, particularly the temporary visas, are there to fill gaps in the New Zealand labor market, and the unfortunate truth is that there will be fewer gaps," Lees-Galloway said. "Some of our migrant workforce are going to have to seriously weigh up what the future holds and think about their options."

In response to criticism, he told RNZ that Avatar's filming would create over 1,000 jobs. The film's director put that figure closer to 400 local jobs, in addition to predicting the crew would spend $70 million while filming, Reuters reported.

For photographer and New Zealand citizen Ruth McDowall, who freelanced in West Africa for a decade, including for The Post, the last few of months of navigating immigration services have been a "heartbreaking experience." Currently in Auckland, she is raising a son on her own after authorities denied her long-term partner, who is Ghanaian, permission to enter the country on humanitarian grounds. His case "did not meet the high threshold required," immigration services determined, according to a statement to RNZ.

Now her partner follows their son as he grows up via a camera on a selfie-stick.

"It seems like they've graded everyone on economic importance, even New Zealanders' families," she said by phone. "It feels like we've been put in this box of low-value families."

Before the pandemic, she said her partner was "already disadvantaged trying to get a visa" as a Ghanaian citizen and had previously been denied one. These days, McDowell said, it feels like they are an even lower priority.

"If they were not letting anybody in then you just have to deal with it," she said. "But it's the fact that they are picking and choosing who they think are valuable people for this country, I think that's what makes it really painful."
YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. The next group of French doctors will arrive in Armenia on June 24 together with the representatives of the Armenian Diaspora, Head of the French medical team Alexandre Mignon said at an online briefing in Yerevan.

It was a great honor to be hosted in Armenia and be able to assist Armenia in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. We managed to assist as much as possible, help and share our knowledge, and to what extent it was appropriate, we are very satisfied for that. Moreover, in my delegation, which consisted of 10 people, no one was Armenian, but I think that all approached the issue in an Armenian way. The next mission will arrive in Yerevan on Wednesday. This time the mission will include representatives from the Diaspora who were very happy for coming to Armenia to provide support, the French doctor said.

The first group of French doctors arrived in Armenia via a special flight on June 15 to help the healthcare system to battle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The French doctors conduct their mission in the St. Gregory the Illuminator hospital, the Scientific Center for Traumatology and Orthopaedy and the infection department of the St. Mary medical center.

Reporting by Anna Grigoryan; Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
FELTON, California, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The global Flip Flops Market is estimated to touch USD 23.8 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Million Insights. The market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 4.2% over the forecast period. The growing trend of fashionable and comfortable footwear is propelling product demand.

These footwear products are light in weight and can easily be carried, thus, providing convenience to consumers. Further, the growing demand for eco-friendly products is compelling manufacturers to focus on the production of sustainable products. This factor is estimated to bode well for the growth of the flip flop market over the forecast period. For example, Allbirds introduced the new line of flip flop manufactured with sugarcane.

Further, companies are focusing on sustainability factor by donating money to support an environmental cause. For example, Havaianas introduced IPE collection with an announcement that the company will donate 7% of its revenue.

Please click here to get the sample pdf and find more details on "Flip Flop Market" Report 2025.

The online segment is expected to be the fastest-growing sector owing to the advent of multi retailing platforms coupled with the rise in the number of e-commerce websites. On the other hand, the offline segment held the largest market share in 2018, largely because of the rapidly growing chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets in emerging countries.

Key players operating in the market are Crocs, Adidas AG, Kappa, Tory Burch LLC, Fat Face, Deckers Brands, Nike, Inc., Clark International Ltd and Havaianas among others. These players are focusing on increasing their investment on the production of eco-friendly products to gain upper hand in the market.

Further key findings from the report suggest:

Among end-users, the female segment occupied the largest market share in 2018 and expected to maintain its dominance over the forecast duration.

By sales channel, online segment is likely to exhibit a CAGR of 5.1% over the forecast period.

Major players operating in the flip flops market are Skechers USA Inc., Crocs, Adidas AG, Kappa, Tory Burch LLC, Fat Face and Deckers Brands among others.

Browse 80 page research report with TOC on "Global Flip Flops Market" at: https://www.millioninsights.com/industry-reports/global-flip-flops-market

Million Insights has segmented the global flip flops market on the basis of end user, distribution channel, and region:

Flip Flops End User Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Female



Male

Flip Flops Distribution Channel Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Online



Offline

Flip Flops Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

North America



U.S.



Europe



Germany





U.K.



Asia Pacific



China





Japan



Central & South America



Brazil



Middle East & Africa

&

South Africa

Browse latest market research reports available with Million Insights:

About Million Insights:

Million Insights, is a distributor of market research reports, published by premium publishers only. We have a comprehensive market place, that will enable you to compare data points, before you make a purchase. Enabling informed buying, is our motto and we strive hard to ensure that our clients get to browse through multiple samples, prior to an investment. Service flexibility & the fastest response time are two pillars, on which our business model is founded. Our market research report store, includes in-depth reports, from across various industry verticals, such as healthcare, technology, chemicals, food & beverages, consumer goods, material science & automotive.

Contact:

Ryan Manuel

Research Support Specialist, USA

Million Insights

Phone: +1-408-610-2300

Toll Free: 1-866-831-4085

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.millioninsights.com/

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE Million Insights
Govt cuts hit women and children

Women and children are targeted in the Coalition governments early cancellation of free childcare for parents and JobKeeper for its workforce. Many low-income women will be denied access to early childhood education and care for their children.

Education Minister Dan Tehan announced on 8th June that the government would abolish free childcare as from 12th July, taking parents and the sector by surprise. He also signalled an end to JobKeeper from 20th July for employees of early childhood education and care centres.

Only days earlier, in response to a question from the media, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that [...] the six months provision of JobKeeper has been set out in legislation and people can count on that. Consideration of its future would be part of the review of packages in July, he said. So much for JobKeeper running until September!

In an about face, a few days later, Morrison said, That [cutting the support] was seen as a better way of supporting more jobs and supporting the management and meeting of demand in the childcare sector. But, where there is a better way to do things, we wont step aside.

It takes more than a stretch of the imagination to understand how denying families access to free services is a better way of doing things. It is hardly better for struggling centres, their staff, or for the children or the families who rely on them.

Centres will receive a temporary transition payment.

Vital

When the childcare relief package was first announced, Morrison described the services as vital. He was correct on that point.

The government introduced the scheme because many early childhood centres were on the brink of collapse as parents withdrew their children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents had lost their jobs, had their hours or wages cut, or kept their children at home for fear they might contract the virus at a centre.

This package will help support families during these difficult times, particularly those who have lost their job and are doing it tough, Education Minister Dan Tehan said when launching the program earlier in the year.

Well the difficult times are not over, but the package will be if the government is not forced to reverse its decision.

The removal of fees opened up access to families on lower incomes, including the under- and unemployed.

Successful

A review of the package found it had succeeded in its objective of keeping services open and viable, with ninety-nine per cent of around 13,400 services operational as of 27 May 2020, Tehan said.

But, one of the reasons that were seeing increased demand in the child care sector is because children are going back to school, people are going back to work, and the economy is being opened up, as restrictions are eased. So, we are seeing more economic activity, Tehan told the media.

Of course, by making early learning and care affordable, more families will use it and be able to go back to work as the economy opens up. Thats common sense.

Women and children hit hardest

As with so many of the Coalitions policies, it will be women, those on lower incomes, the vulnerable, and children who are hit hardest by this latest move. Women are overwhelmingly the principal carers and hence reliant on the centres to be able to participate in the paid workforce or study. Many will be forced to give up working or studies as they cannot afford the fees.

Ninety-seven per cent of the staff in early childhood education centres are female. The professional role that early childhood educators play  seen by many as womens work  is highly undervalued and underpaid, yet it carries with it considerable responsibilities for the care and education of under fives.

Educators in the sector are qualified with many having university degrees. Their incomes do not reflect this, with some paid as little as $22 an hour  barely above the minimum wage. The average wage for a shelf packer in a supermarket is $21.90. The nature of their work and the responsibilities they have are hardly comparable.

Child minding myth

The language used in the media and by some politicians suggests that the childcare industry provides a child-minding service  somewhere to dump their pre-schoolers while they are at work.

But nothing could be further from the truth. These centres are learning and care centres. The programs they run are pedagogically structured to meet the needs of early childhood development  the development of social, cognitive, and motor skills amongst others.

Research has repeatedly demonstrated how important these early years are in the development of a child in readiness for school. It is no accident that in the majority of developed countries early childhood education is free. In Australia, public education is free for later years. It should also be free for the earlier years.

Fees should not be reintroduced. They create inequalities that continue through the life of the children affected.

Pure economics

The early childhood education relief package is being shut down early for purely economic reasons. The government is obsessed with saving every dollar it can, regardless of the consequences, and creating a budget surplus as quickly as possible.

The wellbeing of the children, families or workers in the sector counts for nothing.

The aim of the package was to keep early learning and care centres open so that they would still be operating as the economy was turned around and people returned to work. They are vital to keeping the economy ticking.

As it does with most programs, the government describes cuts and programs as being targeted. Parents, and the children who stand to miss out on early childhood education, are the targets in the cuts to the early childhood education sector. They are being told to pay for the crisis. No worker should be made to pay for the crisis.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Social media postings are causing problems in the long-delayed trial of a leader of a paramilitary religious sect on charges of sexually assaulting a minor.

A former prosecutor in the case was reprimanded by District Judge Amanda Sanchez Villalobos for comments made on Facebook after she released the defendant, Peter Green, from jail despite the objections of state prosecutors.

Prosecutors have since asked Sanchez Villalobos to recuse herself from the case because of Facebook posts made by her husband, Victor Villalobos, about the case.

Victor Villalobos is also his wifes campaign chairman for her judicial campaign. He was critical of the job prosecutors had done and said there was a good chance for an acquittal if they didnt do better.

Sanchez Villalobos was appointed to the bench last year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. She was unopposed in the Democratic primary, and no Republicans ran for the seat in their primary.

Law enforcement officials identified Green in 2017 as a lieutenant colonel in the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, which was based near Fence Lake, southwest of Grants.

He is charged with four counts of criminal sexual penetration of a minor under age 13. Four other counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor under age 13 were dismissed earlier this year by Sanchez Villalobos.

That case was filed in 2017, and another case charging Green with sexual assault, kidnapping and other crimes was filed in 2019. The cases involve different children, and some of the allegations date to 2012 and earlier.

After a hearing in January, Sanchez Villalobos ordered Green released from jail and placed under house arrest in Albuquerque with an electronic tracking ankle bracelet.

Green had spent more than 2 years in jail awaiting trial in the 2017 case, which is scheduled to begin later this summer.

After the January hearing and Greens release, Assistant District Attorney Mandana Shoushtari had an exchange on her personal Facebook page with a friend regarding a Facebook posting by KOB-TV.

During that exchange, Shoushtari said, My strength comes from the two beautiful young ladies who became his survivors. I pray that I can once again by the grace of god be a means to get them justice.

She also mentioned that two other members of the sect had already been sentenced to prison.

Sanchez Villalobos ruled on a series of defense motions, finding some prosecutorial misconduct with regard to the Facebook posts.

She noted during a hearing that the court had been trying to keep the two cases separated, and while some of the information had been made public, she was disturbed by Shoushtaris Facebook posts.

Shoushtari left the 13th Judicial District Attorneys Office after the hearing to run in the Democratic Party primary for district attorney, which she lost.

Sanchez Villalobos ordered the new prosecutors in the case to submit affidavits saying that they had read the rules prohibiting attorneys from making false statements outside a courtroom or making statement creating a danger of prejudicing the proceedings in cases that may be tried before a jury.

Sanchez Villalobos also ordered that new prosecutors in the case were not to have contact with Shoushtari about the case unless it was approved by the court.

Prosecutors said they intend to appeal Sanchez Villalobos order prohibiting contact with Shoushtari.

The same prosecutors are now asking Sanchez Villalobos to remove herself from the Green case.

They argue in court filings that the judges husband and campaign manager Victor Villalobos Facebook posts may have put her under a cloud of the appearance of impropriety.

Victor Villalobos said in a Facebook post, If (the January 28, 2020) hearing is any indication of what the trial will look like, dont be surprised if he is found not guilty or acquitted because hear-say wont be admissible in court. Hopefully the state will present a better case but thats unlikely.

Victor Villalobos was defending his wife, according to the court filings, from other Facebook posts attacking her order releasing Green from jail.

Prosecutors said in their filing that his commentary may constitute an appearance of bias and improper influence on the part of the court.

Under the rules of professional conduct, judges are supposed to keep their campaign workers under a tight rein, and prosecutors argue that her campaign manager cant make statements that Sanchez Villalobos would be prohibited from making.

Greens attorney, Kari Morrissey, said in court filings that Sanchez Villalobos has ruled in the prosecutions favor 70% of the time and has not shown any bias against the District Attorneys Office.

She said any member of the public could have witnessed the hearing and reached the same conclusions Victor Villalobos did without having any conversation with the judge.

The states motion is an obvious attempt at retaliating against a Judge who entered a finding of prosecutorial misconduct, Morrissey said in asking Sanchez Villalobos to deny the motion for recusal.
T he BBC has given soap fans a first look at the line-up for EastEnders spin-off Secrets From The Square.

The new interview series will see Stacey Dooley grill past and present cast members about life on Albert Square and will plug the gap before the soap returns to TV screens.

On-screen husband and wife duo Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright will appear on the spin-offs first episode on Monday.

EastEnders stars Linda Henry and Luisa Bradshaw-White will feature in the soaps spin-off programme.

EastEnders 35th Anniversary Portraits 1 /8 EastEnders 35th Anniversary Portraits BBC BBC BBC BBC BBC BBC

The pair, who play on-screen sisters Shirley and Tina Carter respectively, will join Dooley to discuss life on Albert Square.

Shona McGarty will also appear on the programme to discuss her character Whitney Dean while Natalie Cassidy will look back at Sonia Fowlers history on the show.

BBC/Kieron McCarron

The broadcaster ran out of new EastEnders episodes for the first time in the soap's history after filming was paused in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The soap will return to filming by the end of the month, with new episodes running to just 20 minutes.

EastEnders will follow in the footsteps of ITV soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale as well as Neighbours in Australia.

Producers on the ITV series have revealed the stringent measures being used to enforce social distancing on set, including two metre poles and temperature checks.

EastEnders: Secrets From The Square airs weekly on Mondays at 8pm on BBC One.

With reporting by Press Association
Dear Amy: About 15 years ago my sister sold her house and started living in rented accommodations in the winter. She camps from May to October. This has resulted in her calling me up three to five times a year, asking if she could stay with us in the city while she went to appointments (such as dentist, doctor, car repair etc.).
Bedford / St. Martin's logo

New graduate students are selected annually to offer insight on the future of composition course materials

Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Learning imprint, today announced its 2020 Bedford New Scholars Advisory Board. The board of 10 graduate students is meeting virtually this week to offer the companys editorial team counsel regarding how course materials are being used and trends that will influence how composition courses are taught. Many Scholars have gone on to take leadership roles in writing programs in colleges and universities across the country.

During the weeks meetings and throughout the year, the Bedford New Scholars will offer their perspectives on topics ranging from challenges in the classroom, to diversity and inclusion to pedagogy. The Advisory Board began in 2008 as an additional way for Bedford/St. Martins to understand teaching challenges and new research and practice in the field from promising graduate students. The Scholars do this in a variety of ways, including participating in market research and focus groups that inform product development.

The Scholars offer the Bedford team tremendous insight into how our resources can best support student writers in their composition courses, which have long been acknowledged as a stepping stone to overall student success both in college and after graduation, said Leasa Burton, Vice President of Humanities at Macmillan Learning. They are thoughtful, creative problem-solvers, and often were able to incorporate their suggestions into future product development and new editions.

Throughout the program, the Scholars also gain insight into the publishing process and provide feedback on the direction of new materials and projects (both print and digital) in Bedford/St. Martins pipeline. They also foster lasting professional connections with other rising scholars and teachers in writing studies, including guest scholars who lead workshops during this weeks board meetings. The many former Bedford New Scholars continue to contribute to the discipline through research, and to the teaching community by creating assignments that engage students in writing and address teaching challenges for Composition instructors.

Bedford/St. Martins has long been connected to the Composition community with its widely used A Writer's Reference and The Bedford Reader. The company continues to invest in composition materials and will launch its new digital learning platform with writing tools, Achieve, this fall. Bedford/St. Martins also recently published several new titles including The Writers Loop and The Hub in addition to maintaining support for instructor and student favorites like The St. Martins Guide to Writing and Everything's an Argument.

This years Bedford New Scholars:

Sidney Blaylock is pursuing his PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University. He teaches Expository Writing and Research and Argumentation. His research interests include multimodality, rhetorical analysis, new media, cultural rhetorics, digital rhetorics, film, and afrofuturism.

Allison Dziuba is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Irvine. She teaches courses in the lower-division writing sequence and the Summer Bridge writing lab, a pre-college course for incoming UCI first-years. She is currently the Campus Writing & Communication Fellow at UCI and has served as the editorial assistant for College Composition and Communication and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Allison's research interests include college students' self-sponsored literacy practices and extracurricular rhetorical education, and intersectional feminist approaches to rhetorical studies.

Michael S. Garcia is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Florida International University. At FIU, he has taught Writing and Rhetoric, Writing in Action, Essay Writing, and Creative Writing: Forms and Practices. He has also taught 11th and 12th grade English at a Title I high school. Michael has published short stories, essays, web articles, and poetry.

Sarah Heidebrink-Bruno is pursuing her PhD in English, with a concentration in literature and social justice pedagogies, at Lehigh University. She teaches a range of composition and rhetoric courses in addition to interdisciplinary courses in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies. She previously taught online courses in English and WGSS, with a focus on pop culture themes, including modern relationships. Her research interests include restorative justice practices, women's literature of the 1960s-present, feminist theory and praxis, and writing center tutors' instruction.

L. Corinne Jones is completing her PhD in Texts and Technology with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Central Florida. She currently teaches Composition II (Writing about Writing and Research Writing); in Fall 2020, she anticipates teaching Business and Technical Communication. She also works as a legal writing adjunct at Barry University (Law School). Her research interests include digital rhetoric; circulation studies; digital, qualitative, mixed methods and methodologies; and feminist and queer studies.

Sierra Mendez is pursuing her PhD in Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She currently teaches a custom course entitled "Rhetoric of Texas" and serves as Assistant Director for the D.R.W.'s Digital Writing and Research Lab. Her research interests concern border, material, visual, and memory rhetorics: specifically, the historical and ongoing constitution of Mexicanx bodies via narratives held both tenuously and powerfully across San Antonios urban space.

Christopher Peace is pursuing a PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Kansas. He currently teaches Composition 102 and plans to teach a 203 course on Digital Storytelling in Fall 2020. His research interests include rhetorical genre studies, (African-derived) religious rhetorics, writing ecologies, spatial rhetorics, digital storytelling / mythmaking, and ecocomposition. He also serves as a professional tutor for the KU Gear Up program and is an affiliate of the Project on the History of Black Writing.

Kalyn Prince is pursuing her PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She serves as the Senior Assistant Director of First-Year Composition, teaches first-year writing, and has also co-taught a composition theory survey course for graduate students in the OU English Department. Her research interests include public argumentation, nostalgia as ethos, and rhetorical analysis.

Joshua Scheidler is pursuing his MA in English with an emphasis on Medieval Language and Literature at Western Michigan University. He teaches WMU's first-year writing course, Thought and Writing, as a graduate teaching assistant. His research interests include ethics and politics in medieval literature, first-year writing pedagogy, rhetorical analysis, and new materialist environmental rhetoric.

Benesemon Simmons is pursuing a PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University. She teaches WRT 105 and WRT 205 and serves as a writing consultant. Her research interests include Black Feminist Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Activist Rhetoric.

About Macmillan Learning

Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or join our Macmillan Community.
London: Lawyers for one of the men on trial over the downing of flight MH17 have likened a major investigation into the disaster to the flawed "weapons of mass destruction" dossier used to invade Iraq, in a strategy that threatens to drag the case out for years.

The Malaysia Airlines plane was flying over eastern Ukraine in 2014 when it was shot down by what prosecutors say was a high-powered missile launcher smuggled into the country from Russia.

All 298 passengers and crew died, including 38 Australian citizens and residents.

A woman looks at the debris from flight MH17 at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Oleg Pulatov, a former member of the Russian military intelligence service, is one of four men on trial in the Netherlands over the incident. They are accused of playing key roles in acquiring the deadly Buk-TELAR launcher during a long-running conflict between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Moscow separatists.
Most incumbent Democrats worry about primary challenges from the political left, but a few of the most prominent progressives in the state Legislature are facing threats from the center in the June 23 primary election.

Former sanitation official Ignazio Terranova argues that state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris should get thrown out of office over his role in blocking the Amazon deal. Andy Marte, a former aide to the controversial Brooklyn party boss Vito Lopez, says state Sen. Julia Salazar has missed one too many community board meetings. And businesswoman Grace Lee says she launched her campaign because Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou had not done enough to address toxic contamination at a former thermometer factory in lower Manhattan.

Perhaps the most formidable challenger among them is Lee. She boasts a telegenic family, an Ivy League education, activism experience and support from a few local Democratic leaders and political clubs, but money is what is really giving her a shot. What makes it competitive is that Grace Lee has raised more money than typical challengers, said Democratic consultant Evan Stavisky. If you're running against an incumbent, you need resources, you need an operation, but you also need to get voters a reason to fire the incumbent. Lee has raised mored than than $400,000, a significant amount of it self-funded, which puts her at an advantage over Niou, who has raised more than $250,000 for the race, according to campaign filings.

In the absence of substantial policy differences with the incumbent, Lees campaign has drawn a contrast more about political style than substance, while emphasizing local issues in Assembly District 65, which includes parts of Chinatown, the Lower East Side and the Financial District in lower Manhattan.

A race pitting a practical-minded challenger like Lee against a progressive incumbent like Niou may be relatively rare, but it cuts to the heart of the evolving character of the Democratic Party. Progressives are rapidly becoming the establishment, Democratic consultant Hank Seinkopf said. They will then be set upon by others who may not be progressive or may be progressive, depending upon the definition.

What makes someone like Lee a moderate candidate compared to Niou is also evolving. Both candidates say they want to defund the police, raises taxes on the wealthy and create a single-payer health care system at the state level. What makes them different are the approaches they would bring to working with Democratic leaders. Niou has built a reputation over two terms in office for bucking legislative leadership when she thought it was not progressive enough. Niou has criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo at times. After Niou and other female lawmakers criticized a gubernatorial fundraiser held with state Budget Director Robert Mujica in the middle of budget season, one top Cuomo staffer insulted them with a profanity.

When you have a relationship with the administration that is cantankerous at best, you dont help your district, Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Lee, told City & State early in the campaign. In recent months, Niou has taken steps that her rival criticized as going too far in prioritizing progressive ideals. The incumbent voted in May against a $100 million rental voucher program. Niou voted against the state budget in early April. Then there was the vote she made against $40 million in emergency funding in the first days of the pandemic. She was voting against her constituents, Lee said in a recent interview. If we wanted to address the crisis, we needed to act quickly and her vote was a vote against doing that.

There is more nuance to these votes than Lee lets on. Progressives have criticized the voucher program, for example, as an insufficient measure that undermined efforts to cancel rent completely. Niou was hardly the only lawmaker to vote against a budget bill that included changes to bail reform and less spending on education and social programs than many lawmakers wanted. We were actually only one vote away from actually voting it down, Niou said of the budget vote during a recent debate with Lee. I don't think that it was necessarily something that was symbolic. It was actually purposeful. The $40 million in emergency funding was coupled with a vast expansion in the emergency powers that the governor strong-armed through the state Legislature with only a few hours notice. Every single editorial that came out after that vote to give the governor extraordinary powers, agree with me, Niou added at the debate. That claim is not completely true, but Niou was hardly alone in criticizing Cuomo at the time.

These episodes highlight how a challenger like Lee has become the candidate of an old guard Democratic establishment that might be secretly rooting for her to beat Niou, who has not received any financial backing from the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, even as it has provided aid to other embattled incumbents. Politico reported that an additional clue of Lees appeal to Assembly leaders came through a retweet by Assembly spokesman Mike Whyland. We cant afford to have political posturing instead of immediate relief, Lee had tweeted, attacking Niou over her no vote on the rent voucher program. Whyland, whose retweet appears to have been undone later, later told Politico, The speaker supports all incumbent Democrats.

This all makes for an interesting contrast with the support that Niou is getting from the ascendant progressive political establishment. U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are backing Nious campaign, as are New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and members of the City Council such as Brad Lander and Mark Levine. A long endorsement list on her campaign website includes influential unions, advocacy groups and local tenant leaders. She is also enormously popular with the young progressive activists these politicians court. Videos of her floor speeches on important votes have also given her the type of social media stardom that has elud ed Lee throughout the race.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has made it much harder for primary challengers of all stripes to get their message out, especially because of social distancing restrictions that made door-to-door campaigning impractical and politically questionable. But money has helped Lee even the playing field. Facebook Ad Library shows that her campaign has spent at least $16,000 on ads. The bulk of the money raised for the campaign appears to pay for political consultants, robo-calls and text messaging services, according to campaign filings with the state. She has also spent thousands of dollars on PPE to give out to voters after recovering from suspected COVID-19 in mid-March. She would not step out of the house for another month. Though she would do some volunteering in the community in subsequent weeks, she only resumed in-person campaigning in early June.

Injecting $250,000 of her own money into the campaign is a mixed blessing for Lee, who said that using her personal wealth has allowed her to focus on the campaign rather than pursue donors during a pandemic that has spurred economic turmoil. This ended the flow of four-figure checks into her campaign coffers, but it has hardly quieted the criticism about her connections to the financial industry and big business. This includes her marriage to Hanben Lee, the chief financial officer of the Bermuda-based insurance company Global Atlantic. The company was the subject of a 2018 consent decree with the state Department of Financial Services over alleged double billing of customers, and Hanben Lees name even appears in the Panama Papers, a massive data dump of financial records that highlighted the complicated ways that companies and individuals have moved their money through countries like Bermuda.

Hanben Lee has never been personally accused of wrongdoing, but his personal wealth appears to play a role in keeping his wifes campaign afloat. Campaign filings show that the nearly $2 million that he earns in salary for Global Atlantic has been the familys main source of income. Lee does not mention that fact, instead touting her experience as the founder of company that has a line of all-natural maternity products. Grace is currently a board member of Nine Naturals, Lupe-Medina said in an email when asked about Lees level of involvement with the company. She sold her majority stake in the company before the birth of her third child (who is now two years old). Nine Naturals continues to be successful. The $250,000 that Grace Lee has lent to her campaign came from savings, Lupe-Medina added. To insinuate that her success is the result of her husband is inaccurate and insulting.

Niou argues that Hanben Lees role in the insurance industry creates a huge conflict of interest for his wife. I serve on the consumer protection committee, Niou said in an interview. I also serve on the banks committee, and I find it all very interesting because she wouldn't be able to serve on any of these committees due to the possibility that she would be enriching herself. Her opponent counters that Niou has her own ties to the real estate industry and political action committees over the years. Commercial real estate management firm Platinum Maintenance gave $4,400 in 2016. Political action committees that have given to her Assembly campaigns include a $1,000 contribution from the consulting firm Brown Weinraub in 2017 and $250 from the law firm Cozen OConnor in 2018.

Niou and Lee are just a few years apart in age. They are both the daughters of immigrant parents (Nious from Taiwan, Lees from South Korea) and both candidates grew up out of state before moving to New York City as adults. The Ohio-born Lee has lived in lower Manhattan for a decade longer than the Washington state-raised Niou  but both candidates only moved to Assembly District 65 shortly before they decided to seek the seat. Unlike other state legislative primaries, voters in the Assembly District 65 race are not going to be choosing one candidate over the other because of their race, age and gender. Niou, like Lee, has also lent money to her own campaign  $50,000, according to campaign filings. Given the relatively even playing field between the two candidates in the money game, the biggest difference between the two candidates from an ideological standpoint appears to be the different ways that they define the term progressive.

Niou channels the idealist and confrontational tendencies of young firebrands like Ocasio-Cortez  even if that can risk, for example, delaying $40 million in emergency state funding. Lee advocates a more practical approach that emphasizes cooperation with the powers that be to get things done for constituents, a style of politics that evokes Cuomos own approach to progressivism.

Similar arguments are being waged against other progressive incumbents. Terranova is going after Gianaris over his role in thwarting a proposed deal to set up Amazons HQ2 campus in Western Queens that would have purportedly brought 25,000 new jobs to the city. For Terranova, Gianaris position on a hot issue like bail reform is beside the point. Likewise with Marte, who is arguing less with Salazars professed democratic socialism and more about how she is supposedly is not available enough to local community board leaders. But neither of these challengers appear likely to win. Gianaris' opponent and Salazar's opponents are not getting any traction, Sheinkopf said. The money has a lot to do with it. That is not the case with Lee, although the contingencies of a global pandemic, early voting and a vast expansion of voting by mail make it hard to predict which candidate will win the race for Assembly District 65.

There are many reasons to believe that Niou has an easy path to reelection, but Lee cannot be counted out considering the ongoing uncertainty and the untested appeal of a candidate touting how she would be a more cooperative member of the legislative rank and file. That means Lee is challenging Niou from the political center  though that is very much a relative term in a Democratic Party that is moving ever leftwards with time. I don't know if there's ever room in the middle of Democratic primaries, said political consultant Darren Lopez Rigger, who is also a local district leader in Westchester County aligned with the more moderate wing of the party. Whoever is the most far left seems to win.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Monday some coronavirus restrictions would be reimposed in the capital Lisbon to help control outbreaks from the pandemic.

Costa said measures to be introduced from Tuesday included a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 people and orders for cafes and shops to close at 8pm in the capital.

"Certain measures will be applied to the capital region," the premier said a press conference after meeting with mayors of several municipalities.

According to official data compiled by local media, between May 21 and June 21, Portugal recorded 9,221 new cases of COVID-19 with most cases detected in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley regions.

About half of the new cases have been reported in the municipalities of Lisbon, Sintra, Odivelas, Loures and Amadora.

"These are fires and as with all fires, they must be responded to with the necessary means to prevent their spread," State Secretary of Health Antonio Lacerda Sales said.

Portugal took restrictive measures fairly early in the pandemic and has a total of 1,534 deaths and 39,392 cases.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2020 AFP
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 17:08:36|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

JINAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Back in the day, Shizikou village in east China's Shandong Province, harbored "nothing but a pile of rocks," and many villagers moved to other places in search of better livelihood.

However, much has changed over the course of 20 years, as these same rocks now shine like "diamonds."

Shizikou is a village in the city of Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong. It is situated in the foothills of the Great Wall of Qi built during ancient China's Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.).

Sprawling mountains and countless clusters of rocks surround Shizikou. Almost everything in this village, ranging from rocky trails to rock houses, bear a connection with rocks. Some of the rock houses were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

"Two decades ago, the village had more than 20 hectares of farmland, but it was hard to grow crops, and people could not make enough money to upgrade their rock houses," says village Party chief Wang Huawei. "Nobody cared for the rock houses, and many left the village for cities to seek lucrative jobs."

Many of the rock houses in the village were left to decay and some even collapsed, Wang adds.

KTVS, CAFES AND TAICHI

However, the rock village's destiny took a different turn after it jumped on the bandwagon of rural tourism.

In the summer of 2017, Sun Tongshan, an entrepreneur who had always wanted to develop rural tourism, turned his attention to Shizikou.

"The village has wonderful natural beauty, unique rock culture and it is close to the Great Wall of Qi, which is perfect for rural tourism," Sun said. "The rock houses had maintained their original style, and could meet the demands of urbanites."

With the support of local governments, infrastructure was improved and houses were consolidated.

To attract visitors, Sun came up with an innovative idea -- he turned three rock caves in the village into a karaoke bar, a cafe and a taichi room, respectively. The idea turned out to be a huge success.

These days, visitors throng the village and are eager to savor the unique rock culture.

Last year, Shizikou received 60,000 tourists, generating tourism revenue of more than 200,000 yuan (28,286 U.S. dollars), official data showed.

"In the past, a rock house was priced 3,000 yuan but nobody wanted to buy," said Wang Huawei, the village Party chief. "Now people are willing to offer 260,000 yuan to buy one, yet no one would sell it. Visitors have to make an online booking if they want to stay overnight in one of the revamped rock houses."

CHANCE TO TALK

The booming rural tourism industry has helped local villagers make some extra money.

Bi Yuying, 82, has five apricot trees in her residence premises. These days, she often takes a basket of apricots to sell in the village.

"The apricots are ripe, but we can't eat them all," she said. "In the past, they were left to rot. Since there are more tourists now, I might as well sell them the fruits."

Each kg of apricots costs 2 yuan, and Bi said that this is not just for money, but for the opportunity to talk to people.

"The girls in the village dig wild vegetables, grow pepper, and then sell the harvest with me. When we sit together, we just talk, talk and talk," she said. "It's girls' time and it's fun!"

Local official Wang Feng said that the rock village which once waned because of the rock is now rising because of the same rock.

"Each village is different, and we need to develop them in accordance with their specific conditions," Wang said. Enditem
The Iranian side blamed the pandemic for the delay in delivering the flight recorders to Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine will seek justice in international courts if Iran does not fulfill its promises in relation to issues related to the downing of Ukraine International Airlines' flight PS752.

"I hope that we will be able, eventually, to be able to count on a result-oriented policy from the Iranian government," he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, a Canadian media outlet. "Because it is not only that they don't give us back the black boxes. It is also about their [other] promises. They have to give an official apology. They have to pay adequate compensations. They have to do what they have promised. Otherwise, we will have no other choice  and they know our position  but to resort to the international courts."

Read alsoReuters: Iran to send black boxes from downed Ukrainian airliner to Ukraine

According to Zelensky, the Iranian side blamed the pandemic for the delay in delivering the flight recorders to Kyiv, but "this problem cannot wait indefinitely because we have been waiting for quite a long time now."

UNIAN memo. Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport in the early hours of January 8. It was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members on board. Two passengers and the crew members were Ukrainians. There were also 82 citizens of Iran, 63 citizens of Canada, 10 citizens of Sweden, four citizens of Afghanistan, three citizens of Germany and the United Kingdom each. There were no survivors.

On January 11, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani officially admitted that the Ukrainian airliner had been shot down by accident as a result of a "human error" and that those responsible would be held accountable.

Member countries of the International Coordination and Response Group for Flight PS752 Victims have repeatedly demanded that Iran hand over "black boxes" of the plane to the group.

On June 7, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Enin said that Iran had still not responded to Ukraine's note on settling all issues related to the UIA flight PS752 case.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:30:47|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ADDIS ABABA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) on Monday said the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has posed serious impacts on the African continent's health, security, and socio-economic conditions.

"The present COVID-19 pandemic has serious health, security, and economic impact for the continent," the AU said in a statement issued on Monday, as it emphasized that vaccines are a potent public health tools and Africa "needs to actively engage in the development, evaluation and access to potential COVID-19 vaccine development, clinical trial, and define issues related to access."

Amid the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the African continent and beyond, the AU also on Monday stressed that "an effective vaccine will help save lives and economies and ensure that we return gradually to normalcy both in Africa and globally."

"Continental collaboration and coordination will be critical for the development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19," an AU statement read.

On February 22, 2020, Africa developed a COVID-19 Joint Continental Strategy with three major pillars that are limiting the COVID-19 transmission, prevent deaths, and limit harm.

According to the AU, the strategy is underpinned by the need to coordinate, cooperate, collaborate and communicate.

The AU also stressed that Africa's leadership role "will complement global investment in the enormous task and ensure that there will be access and equity to available vaccines," as such a continental framework is needed for large-scale manufacturing, clinical trials, and access to potential COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.

The need for Africa to develop a framework for the continent to actively engage in the development and access to potential effective COVID-19 vaccines was endorsed at the Bureau of the Assembly of the AU Heads of State and Government and chairperson of the AU regional economic communities during a high-level virtual meeting held last week.

As part of implementing Africa's Joint Continental Strategy to combat COVID-19, the AU Commission and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) will also on June 24 host a virtual conference to discuss Africa's leadership role in enabling the development, access and equity to a COVID-19 vaccine.

The conference, among other things, is expected to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and the development and equitable access to vaccines as part of the COVID-19 Joint Continental Strategy to limit transmission, reduce deaths and limit harm.

The expected outcome of the conference is also said to be a framework for Africa's leadership in the development and access of COVID-19 vaccines, which will help complement the WHO's ACT Accelerator initiative.

According to the latest figures from the Africa CDC, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across the African continent reached 306,567 as of Monday afternoon as the death toll from the pandemic also rose to 8,115.

The Africa CDC, which noted that the virus had spread into 54 African countries, said that some 146,212 people who were infected with COVID-19 had recovered across the continent as of the stated period. Enditem
COLUMBUS, Ohio  In the aftermath of another round of vandalism at the Statehouse last week, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is leaning into framing the actions of some taking part in the ongoing demonstrations in downtown Columbus as a threat to public property.

Householder, a Perry County Republican, has posted about the subject on social media repeatedly in recent days, criticizing Democratic Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for not doing more to keep state property secure.

Hes threatened Columbus share of state funding to cover the costs of repairing state buildings, and called on state troopers to take a more aggressive stance toward the demonstrations outside the Statehouse and the nearby intersection of Broad and High Street.

On Facebook, Householder posted a picture showing a fire set in the intersection, and, in another, referenced a report from the Central Ohio post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol that someone fired shots at a crowd that included state troopers over the weekend. A patrol spokesman said Monday he didnt have any additional details about the incident and a Columbus police spokesman didnt immediately return a message.

These are not protesters, these are insurgents...If Columbus Police wont do something than THESE ARE STATE ROUTES, THE STATE PATROL HAS JURISDICTION ON STATE ROUTES !!!! There are federal, state, county and city buildings in Columbus ... ONLY STATE BUILDINGS HAVE BEEN TORN UP .... there is a reason for no protection !!! The legislature will find the answer. Householder wrote in a Sunday Facebook post.

Last week cars blocked off the intersection of BROAD & HIGH, later a BONFIRE was set ablaze at the intersection. There... Posted by Larry Householder on Sunday, June 21, 2020

Householder, who chairs the state agency that oversees the Statehouse and the surrounding grounds, wrote he differentiates between peaceful protests and those who have caused property damage.

He told cleveland.com he posted the photos after someone shared them with him.

Part of my responsibility is to make certain the taxpayers and the states property is protected, he said.

By find the answer Householder said he meant: if we must subpoena people to find out who made the decision not to protect the taxpayers property, we will.

Householders comments come as Democratic state lawmakers, also drawing from the protest movement, have grown angry that Householder and other Republicans that dominate the state legislature havent done more to address systemic racism. Some Democratic lawmakers has been more sympathetic to the protesters, who have accused Columbus police of using excessive force. And in a Twitter post, the Ohio Young Democrats wrote to Householder: Mr. Speaker, you seem to care more about the damage and abuse inflicted on a building than you do about the damage and abuse inflicted on Black Ohioans are facing everyday from law enforcement and COVID-19.

Householders comments meanwhile illustrate an increasing view among some on the political right that the national protests have grown lawless. And they show how Householder, despite being from the same political party as DeWine, has taken an increasingly adversarial approach toward the governor, particularly since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Householders posts from the weekend were shared hundreds of times and drew dozens of comments. Most of them were positive, including a few that urged Householder to run for governor.

Also among those who weighed in is Geauga County state Rep. Diane Grendell, a Republican who wrote Saturday that DeWine is embarrassing his fellow Republicans.

Zach Klein, a Democrat who is the elected city attorney of Columbus, responded to a Facebook post Householder made that accused Columbus officials of not aggressively policing and prosecuting protesters who break the law. In the comments, Klein called the post lies and BS.

We need real changes to break down racial and class-based barriers to give everyone a real, fair opportunity to succeed. Peddling this crap to stoke fear and score political points doesnt get us anywhere, and it certainly doesnt help those who need and deserve our help, Klein wrote.

Householders posts began after demonstrators on Thursday put red-paint handprints on the building and the grounds outside it, and painted the phrase Hands up, Dont Shoot on one of the buildings marble columns.

State workers spent Friday trying to clean the paint, although the director of the Capitol Square Review Advisory Board said state workers were having trouble removing some of it.

Gov. Mike DeWine said Friday he has shared his disgust and anger over the vandalism with state patrol leaders, and said a criminal investigation is underway.

Read recent coverage from cleveland.com:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine angry over Statehouse vandalism

Like the country, Ohios legislature has been roiled by racial, partisan divides

State officials assessing damage to Ohio Statehouse after Thursday protests escalate

Speaker Larry Householder has been a consistent critic of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine during coronavirus response
During his first campaign speech in months, President Donald Trump riled up the crowd in Oklahoma by talking about leftist radicals in Portland tearing down a statue of George Washington.

Two days ago leftist radicals ripped down a statue of George Washington, Trump told the Tulsa crowd to a chorus of boos, and wrapped it in an American flag and set the American flag on fire.

Protesters took down a Washington statue at Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 57th Avenue on Thursday night. Social media posts showed a flag burning on the statue before it was taken down and after.

Trump used the story to advocate for making burning the American flag punishable by a year of jail time.

The right to burn the American flag is protected by the First Amendment in a case that was decided 31 years ago by the Supreme Court.

During his speech, Trump said, You know they talk about freedom of speech and Im a big believer in freedom of speech but thats desecration.

We used to have things, Trump said, we dont have them anymore, because we want to be so open, so everything, and look what happens.

We should have legislation that if somebody wants to burn the American flag and stomp on it or just burn it, he continued, they go to jail for one year.

The Trump campaign boasted before the Tulsa event of a massive turnout but there were many empty seats during Trumps speech and an overflow event was canceled.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
As someone who has spent his entire career in open source, Ive been closely following how open source is being used to fight the COVID-19 global pandemic.

I recently moderated a panel discussion on how open source is being used with regards to the coronavirus crisis. Our panel included Jim Webber (chief scientist at Neo4j), Ali Ghodsi (CEO at Databricks), Dan Eiref (senior director of product management at Markforged) and Debbie Theobold (CEO at Vecna Robotics). Below are some of the key takeaways from our discussion. They show how open source is a force for good in these uncertain times.

Open source enables knowledge sharing

Providing accurate information related to COVID-19 is an essential public service. Neo4J worked with data scientists and researchers to create CovidGraph. It is an open source graph database that brings together information on COVID-19 from different sources.

Jim Webber from Neo4j explained, The power of graph data [distributed via an open source management system] is that it can pull together disparate datasets from medical practitioners, public health officials and other scientific publications into one central view. People can then make connections between all facts. This is useful when looking for future long-term solutions. CovidGraph helped institutions like the Canadian government integrate data from multiple departments and facilities.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi also spoke to his companys efforts to democratize data and artificial intelligence. Their mission is to help data teams solve the worlds toughest problems. Databricks created Glow, an open source toolkit built on Apache Spark that enables large-scale genomic analysis. Glow helps scientists understand the development and spread of the COVID-19 virus. Databricks made their datasets available for free. Using Glows machine learning tools, scientists are creating predictive models that track the spread of COVID-19.

Amid the positive progress were seeing from this open approach to data, some considerations were raised about governments responsibilities with the data they collect. Maintaining public trust is always a huge concern. Still, as Ghodsi said, The need for data is paramount. This isnt a matter of using data to sell ads; its a matter of using data to save lives.

Open source makes resources accessible on a global scale

Its been amazing to watch how open source propels innovation in times of great need. Dan Eiref from 3D printer company Markforged spoke to how his company responded to the call to assist in the pandemic. Markforged open sourced the design for face masks and nasal swabs. They also partnered with doctors to create a protective face shield and distributed personal protective equipment (PPE) to more than 500 hospitals.

Almost immediately we got demand from more than 10,000 users to replicate this design in their own communities, as well as requests to duplicate the mask on non-Markforged printers, said Eiref. We decided to open source the print files so anyone could have access to these protections.

The advantage of open source is that it can quickly produce and distribute solutions to people who need it the most. Debbie Theobold, CEO of Vecna Robotics, shared how her company helped tackle the shortage of ventilators. Since COVID-19 began, medical manufacturers have struggled to provide enough ventilators, which can cost upwards of $40,000. Venca Robotics partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop an open source ventilator design called Ventiv, a low-cost alternative for emergency ventilation. The rapid response from people to come together and offer solutions demonstrates the altruistic pull of the open source model to make a difference, said Theobald.

Of course, there are still challenges for open source in the medical field. In the United States, all equipment requires FDA certification. The FDA isnt used to open source, and open source isnt used to dealing with FDA certification either. Fortunately, the FDA has adjusted its process to help make these designs available more quickly.

Open source accelerates digital transformations

A major question on everyones mind was how technology will affect our society post-pandemic. Its already clear that long-term trends like online commerce, video conferencing, streaming services, cloud adoption, and even open source are all being accelerated as a result of COVID-19. Many organizations need to innovate faster in order to survive. Responding to long-term trends by slowly adjusting traditional offerings is often too little, too late.

For example, Debbie Theobold of Vecna Robotics brought up how healthcare organizations can see greater success by embracing websites and mobile applications. These efforts for better, patient-managed experiences that were going to happen eventually are happening right now, Theobold said. Weve launched our mobile app and embraced things like online pre-registration. Companies that were relying on in-person interactions are now struggling to catch up. Weve seen that technology-driven interactions are a necessity to keeping patient relationships.

At Acquia, weve known for years that offering great digital experiences is a requirement for organizations looking to stay ahead.

In every crisis, open source software has empowered organizations to do more with less. Its great to see this play out again. Open source teams have rallied to help and come up with some pretty incredible solutions when times are tough.
Joint Forces returned fire to each enemy attack.

Russia's hybrid military forces on June 21 mounted 10 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with one member of the Joint Forces reported as wounded in action.

"The Russian Federation's armed formations violated the ceasefire 10 times in the past day," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation Headquarters said on Facebook in an update as of 07:00 Kyiv time on June 22. "As a result, a Joint Forces serviceman was wounded in enemy shelling."

Read alsoBooby trap blast injures important witness to Russian crimes in Donbas

Russian-led forces fired proscribed 120mm and 82mm mortars, guns installed on infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers of various types, anti-tank missile systems, heavy machine guns, and small arms.

Under attack came Ukrainian positions near the town of Avdiyivka and the villages of Krymske, Zalizne, Shumy, Novotoshkivske, Starohnativka, and Berdianske.

Joint Forces returned fire to each enemy attack. Enemy losses are being verified.

"Since Monday midnight, Russia-led forces have attacked Ukrainian positions seven times near the town of Popasna, and the villages of Khutir Vilny, Novotoshkivske, Orikhove, and Holubivske, using 120mm and 82mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and rifles. One Ukrainian soldier was wounded," the update said.
Our record speaks for itself

Panic has gripped PM Morrison fearing large demonstrations would inevitably put the spotlight firmly on Australias scandalous treatment of our first Australian nations peoples. Our record of human rights protection of Aboriginal people speaks for itself. Persecution, land grabs, pushing aside whole cultural groupings, taking children and so much more harm done to Aboriginal people in the establishment of Western civilisation.

Repulsive record

Australia has a higher level of jail prejudice against its Aboriginal people than the US has. The US is populated by fewer than fourteen per cent African Americans. Their jails are populated by about thirty-four per cent African Americans.

Our Aboriginal peoples comprise less than four per cent of our population. Our jails comprise about twenty-seven per cent Aboriginal peoples. These figures speak for themselves.

Despite the Royal Commission into deaths in custody and the torture of Aboriginal youths at Don Dale prison in the Northern Territory uncovered in July 2016, no substantial improvements have been made to end black deaths in custody or for detention of Aboriginal youths  only trifling cosmetic adjustments made for public consumption.

Mistreatment

Australias human rights record is backsliding with the revelations of the torture of Aboriginal youth inmates at Don Dale youth prison in the NT. The torture included: strapping youths to chairs while hooded, left for hours in solitary confinement, stripped, and tear gassed. This institutionalised brutality had been practiced for years before it was publicly uncovered by the mass media, but not disclosed by the government. The High Court has pronounced that tear gassing of the youths in detention is unlawful. Fancy in Australia, the government has to be taken to court to decide if tear gassing is torture or not.

Marx and Engels wrote:

The history of society in the past is the history of class struggles.

The oppressors and oppressed have always stood in direct opposition to each other.

The struggle between them has sometimes been open, sometimes concealed, but always continuous. A never ending struggle.

We have much to do for our First Nations Peoples in many areas.

The working class has no option but to demonstrate against racism, discrimination in all of its forms, to end the wasteful expenditure on armaments for war, attacks on wages and working conditions. All workers must unite and resist to exist in this declining Capitalist system.
The Deputy Governor of Ondo State, Agboola Ajayi, who resigned his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has told PREMIUM TIMES why he would not resign from the administration of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.

He made this known through his Chief Press Secretary, Tope Okeowo, in a telephone interview with our correspondent.

PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday reported that Mr Ajayi immediately joined the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at Ward 2, Apoi in Ese-Odo Local Government Area of Ondo State after he left his former party.

He has been at loggerheads for months with his party over the coming governorship election in the state.

On Saturday, he was prevented from leaving the government house in Akure in an official vehicle by the states commissioner of police, Bolaji Salami.

Mr Salami said he recently discovered Mr Ajayis plan to defect from the APC to PDP, an action he said should render him unqualified for certain benefits such as police security.

In response, Mr Ajayi argued that he ought to enjoy the perks of office as an incumbent deputy governor. He said he used his personal funds to buy the Toyota Hilux truck from which he was denied access.

Mr Akeredolu in a statement signed by his spokesperson, Segun Ajiboye, earlier on Sunday, said reports linking him to the incident were false.

He said he did not ask the commissioner of police to restrain his deputy from leaving the Government House.

I wont resign

Speaking on his principals next move on Sunday evening, Mr Okeowo said his boss was elected deputy governor on a joint ticket and would love to serve his people.

There is freedom of association and this is not the first time the deputy will leave his boss. They came on joint ticket.

It happened during Obasanjo and Atikus time. The court ruled that there is freedom of association. It is a joint ticket and that was why the deputy governor irregularities affected the APC candidate in Bayelsa. So, resigning from government is not in the radar, he said.

PREMIUM TIMES asked if Mr Ajayi will pick the governorship form under the banner of PDP.

He responded thus: that cannot be ruled out but what matters is that first thing has been done which is defection. Every other thing will follow.

He ignored an enquiry on what led to the conflict between Mr Ajayi and his boss or party.

Mr Akeredolu is yet to officially react to the defection of his deputy. His spokesperson, Segun Ajiboye, did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES calls at the time of this report.
If you look up the definition of "Aibo" in a Japanese dictionary, you'll be touched to know it means 'partner' or 'pal'. And what better way to show your love for someone than buying him or her a robotic dog?

For those who have almost $3,000 to spare, this mechanical dog is the next pet you're looking for should you have any allergies to real-life ones.

AIBO (or the Artificial Intelligence Robot), is a series of robotic dogs designed and manufactured by Sony. The first consumer model was introduced on 11 May 1999. New models were released every year until 2006.

The design has taken inspiration from other animals such as lion-cubs, huskies, bull terriers and space explorers over the years.

The Aibo robot is a great success in Japanese territory, especially among the veteran public, since many see it as a replacement for real domestic animals according to Inceptive Mind, a website that celebrates technological innovations.

Check out how the owner's day went with his adorable mechanical dog in the video below.

Read Also: [Video] Embodied's Moxie Is A New Interactive Robot That Understands Emotion and Speech: Would You Buy it for $1,499?

What Can Your Pal Do

Thanks to modern technology, your mechanical partner continues to learn new tricks and skills to better interact with the owners.

And now, you'll finally be able to see Aibo's warm expression as he greets you on the front door after a tiring day at work thanks to its ability to predict when we come home. How intuitive.

Before Aibo greets you automatically, you have to first teach it where by assigning a certain place in the house then telling the robot "this is where you should go."

Aibo then sniffs the ground in order to memorize the position. If successful, a door icon will appear on the map located within the companion app and you can be sure that Aibo never fails to greet you.

Last November, they released an interesting update that trained the robotic animal to go to the bathroom and also to feed it virtually with cookies, along with the possibility of custom programming.

Aibo may be a robotic dog, but that doesn't mean it can't show love or needs your love. In its home page, Aibo is capable of growth and change as it constantly updates its data in the cloud. Over time, your approach to nurturing your aibo will gradually shape its personality.

It can even learn and recognize faces and eventually fosters a familairity with people over time. When it sees someone who's always nice and friendly, aibo will get close and comfortable.

And yes, it can also conduct patrols. When patrol time rolls around, aibo will play the "Puppy Patrol" melody, head to the target destination, find a "Person of Interest," and show off some adorable moves. Just note that Aibo cannot be used for security purposes.

Aibo is active for only 2 hours before recharging him for 3 hours.

Read Also: NASA Picks Lunar Lander Makers Bezo's Blue Origin, Musk's SpaceX, and Dynetics For Future Moon Landing
Challengers from the left have tapped into the wounded progressive movements desire for transformational change.

United States Congressional candidates Amy McGrath and Eliot Engel live hundreds of miles apart in states with dramatically different politics.

Yet they are the preferred candidates of the Democratic Partys Washington establishment as voters in Kentucky and New York decide their congressional primary elections on Tuesday.

And both may be in trouble.





On the eve of their elections, Engel, a 16-term House incumbent who represents parts of the Bronx and New York Citys wealthy suburbs, and McGrath, a former military officer and fundraising juggernaut running in her first Kentucky Senate campaign, are facing strong challenges from lower-profile Black candidates. The challengers have tapped into the wounded progressive movements desire for transformational change suddenly animated by sweeping civil rights protests across America.

Engels challenger, 45-year-old former public school principal Jamaal Bowman, and McGraths opponent, 35-year-old state Representative Charles Booker, speak openly about their personal experience with police brutality and racism as they promote progressive plans to transform the nations healthcare system and economy. And both accuse their white opponents of being absent from the front lines of the civil rights debate.

Bowman and Booker have also won the endorsement of Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator failed to win the Democratic Partys presidential nomination, but he continues to shape congressional primaries  even if it puts him at odds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whos backing Engel, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who helped recruit McGrath.

Only a movement can beat Mitch McConnell. We are the people he has ignored for decades. Black, Brown, and White Kentuckians, from the hood to the holler, we are rising up. We were so invisible to him, he never saw us coming. VOTE this Tues., June 23rd. https://t.co/xVEB9WABf1 pic.twitter.com/bu5ZEJQUED  Charles Booker (@Booker4KY) June 20, 2020

The story of Bowman and Bookers rise extends well beyond the years-long tug-of-war between the progressive and pragmatic wings of the Democratic Party. They did not gain traction until after George Floyds death last month triggered nationwide outrage about racial inequality.

In New York, the progressive pushback against Engels re-election was somewhat surprising given his status as one of the Democratic Partys most liberal members. He has also drawn overwhelming support from African Americans in Congress and establishment leaders such as Hillary Clinton.

Lost touch

Engel noted in an interview with the Associated Press news agency that he was a founding member of the House Medicare for All Caucus, an original cosponsor of the Green New Deal and the endorsed candidate of the congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses.

Ive always believed that Black lives matter. I didnt have to see a tragedy to know that, said Engel, 73. All I can do for people is say, Heres my record. I cant control outside events.

Bowman has seized on the perception that Engel has lost touch with the entirety of his diverse district, which features Westchester Countys multimillion-dollar homes and the Bronxs housing projects. In both communities, Bowman said, there is a growing sense of unity around racial justice.

Progressive @JamaalBowmanNY has all the momentum in his primary for Congress! Join @BernieSanders, @ewarren, @AOC, @MoveOn & more in supporting Jamaal Bowman for Congress. New Yorkers in the Bronx & Westchester can vote for Jamaal Bowman through June 23.https://t.co/FgiO21FM1D pic.twitter.com/64q1wQ1Eq4  MoveOn (Text WEGOTUS to 668366) (@MoveOn) June 17, 2020

Were seeing protests and uprisings in communities that are white and wealthy and stereotypically dont care about racial justice, Bowman said. Thats inspiring and its helpful to us because everyone knows we were talking about police brutality. I was sharing my personal story, and we were going after institutional racism from the very beginning of our campaign.

The winner of the New York House primary Tuesday is expected to win the general election easily given the districts strong Democratic tilt. Kentuckys Senate primary will determine which Democrat runs against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is unpopular but a proven political force in a deep-red state.

Washington Democrats helped recruit McGrath, thinking her military history and centrist approach would play well, even in a state that backed Trump by 30 percentage points four years ago. The former Marine fighter pilot reported an eye-popping $19m in the bank at the beginning of the month. Booker reported just $285,000 then, although his campaign said he raised at least $2.4 million more this month.

New poll shows Charles Booker surging past Amy McGrath in Kentucky's U.S. Senate primary https://t.co/NqgaGyzVSi via @courierjournal  Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) June 18, 2020

Bookers recent fundraising surge coincides with the protests, although it is unclear whether the focus on racial inequality will resonate to the same degree in a state where just eight percent of residents are Black and three out of four do not have a bachelors degree, according to the US Census Bureau.

It is real, Booker said of racism in his state. Ive had ancestors lynched in Kentucky.

Just this month, he says he was tear-gassed by police in the Louisville district he represents while attending a peaceful rally.

Im there to make sure people are safe, make sure nothing goes wrong and that peoples voices are heard. And we look up and three canisters are thrown within 10 feet of me, Booker told the AP. Everyone starts running. And I just stood there in disbelief  that even though I have done all this work across Kentucky, even though Im an elected official, they still saw me as a young Black man, and they still felt like it was justified to throw tear gas at me. It hurt.

Major General Charles Bolden Jr. served as one of my commanding generals and mentor in the Marinesand Im honored to have his support. pic.twitter.com/PjzzvjoDYi  Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) June 18, 2020

McGraths critics say she has been a less visible presence at protests, though she has attended some. She also has drawn criticism from her partys far left wing for resisting policy proposals such as Medicare for All. And shes not willing to call Trump a racist, even if she thinks his words and actions have been.

Still, McGrath has not shied away from questions about race. In an interview, she called on white people to do more to fight systemic racism.

We need to stand up for whats right and talk to other white people and call it out when we see it, she said. Whatever the solution is, we want to be part of it.
As Covid-19 cases continue to rise steadily in Kerala, the government has decided to discourage travel of aged people and children below 10 years and enforce reverse quarantine vigorously.

On Monday, the state reported 138 fresh cases taking the tally 3,310, said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayans office.

In the last three days, the state has reported more than 100 Covid-19 cases daily. The government is worried because a large number of expatriates from Persian Gulf countries are expected in the coming days. More than 80 per cent of recent Covid-19 cases in the state were expatriates or people who came from other states.

Out of the tally of 3,310 total cases, 1,540 people are in hospitals while 22 have died so far.

There is no room for any complacency now. As more people return to the state numbers will go up. We have to contain secondary infection effectively. So we have to be more careful now, said state health minister K K Shailaja.

She also said that in some areas social distancing was affected after lockdown norms were relaxed.

Click here for full coverage of Covid-19.

The government has also decided to restrict the number of people to 10 in all rallies and protests after the state capital witnessed some protest rallies and dharnas in which many people participated. Police have been told to discourage travel of aged people and children below ten years. Shops and business establishments have been instructed to adhere to social distancing norms strictly, a senior health ministry official said.

Meanwhile, agriculture minister V S Sunil Kumar has gone into quarantine after a senior health worker who participated in a function with him in Thrissur later tested positive. The minister said he opted for self-quarantine as a precautionary measure.

To arrest the spurt in new cases, the government has decided to enforce reverse quarantine strictly.

Reserve quarantine is a system of detaching vulnerable people, aged or people with comorbidity conditions, from the rest and monitors their health condition closely. The government wants to be prepared that in case of a community spread it can isolate its large number of gray population and check their mortality rate effectively.
As the new school year rapidly approaches, local families and teachers are wondering: What will the return to class look like as coronavirus cases rise across Louisiana?

Although Gov. John Bel Edwards on Monday said it was his "expectation" that school campuses would reopen with contingencies in place in August, district officials in New Orleans aren't expected to provide details about local plans until next week. But a new survey released Friday gives insight about what some parents and school staff want as they prepare to go back in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than half of the Orleans Parish schools district's families, school staff and community members surveyed want distance learning as an option even if public school buildings open, according to the results, which NOLA Public Schools officials say they're using in planning for the 2020-21 school year.

Parents also overwhelmingly said that if schedules were altered to have fewer students on campuses at the same time, they want kids in school on staggered days, rather than for fewer school hours every day.

About 64% of parents said they prefer that their children go to school on alternating days, while half said they could manage split morning and afternoon schedules. Only 37% were open to an alternating week schedule while 20% said they didn't want school schedules to be any different from last year.

"Parents are uncertain about sending students to school in August and many, along with educators, want to ensure that there are options for how students remain engaged and learn," school district officials said. "Given the uncertainty and health risks COVID-19 poses to the school community, schools must provide flexible options."

In a statement, Superintendent Henderson Lewis, Jr. called the community's feedback "vital" as his team makes plans for August. "Our priority continues to be the physical and mental health of our students and staff," Lewis said.

His administration has already shared protocols schools might have to follow as leaders plan for various guidelines.

The scenarios, which will be based upon the state and city's social distancing requirements, include a possible virtual first day of school and a modified school schedule.

Other considerations include reduced class sizes; constant cleaning and hand-washing; and lunch service served in classrooms.

Students and staff may also be required to wear masks; enforce social distancing on school buses; enter and exit school at controlled points and undergo regular wellness checks.

District officials said they were in the process of hiring a medical and public health advisor to oversee re-entry planning. That person would be available to all schools next year.

Last week, Jefferson Parish school leaders said they were also preparing three potential scenarios: a traditional setting; a blended on-campus/distance-learning approach; or one that is fully virtual. Archdiocese of New Orleans Catholic schools officials are exploring options and more information is expected in coming weeks, a spokeswoman said.

Around the state, education leaders said last week they were still finalizing guidelines for reopening of schools and trying to answer thorny questions about how much precaution to take and restrictions to impose.

Cade Brumley, the state's new superintendent of education, said last week plans will be contingent on what reopening phase Gov. John Bel Edwards sets for the state. Meanwhile, Larry Carter, the president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, said a coordinated reopening would be "very, very tricky."

On Monday, Edwards said his "expectation," was to have public K-12 schools open on time in August, but told residents to prepare for social distancing, restrictions and canceled large events. He said schools also have to be wary of vulnerable students and staff, including those with pre-existing conditions.

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

"At the end of the day I think we are going to be able to open and do so safely," Edwards said. "It wont look like school that were accustomed to."

The governor's comments came as he announced the state would stay in phase 2 of reopening for another 28 days because of an uptick in COVID-19 cases, meaning most establishments are limited to 50% capacity and a handful of businesses, like amusement parks and carnivals, are still closed. He has not yet said what phase 3 would look like.

Some schools resume classes as early as Aug. 6.

On Friday, NOLA Public Schools said 7,227 people completed the district's survey, which they opened earlier this summer to get feedback on what to do in their district.

Of the respondents, about 66% were parents or guardians of children who attend a New Orleans public school. Twenty one percent were Orleans Parish educators, 8% were Orleans Parish students and about 5% were other community members.

Of the parents who responded, 65% have children in Pre-K through 4th grade, 45% have children in 5th through 8th grade, 33% have children in high school and 2.5% have children in post-secondary school.

All New Orleans zip codes were represented, officials said.

The respondents were asked to choose three of nine statements they consider to be most important in returning to school. Overwhelmingly, all groups said "minimizing health risks for families and staff" remained the top priority.

Having reliable child care was least prioritized, officials said.

More than 40% of parents said they wanted the flexibility to choose between distance and in-person learning, while more than 40% of educators said they want more support for teaching remotely, should they be asked to do so.

District officials also surveyed parents and educators about how well they thought distance learning went at the end of the 2019-20 school year.

Nearly three out of four said they felt supported by schools, while 86% of parents said their child had reliable internet access.

However, parents were clear about wanting more academic support in advance of the upcoming school year, particularly if they were going to be asked to continue homeschooling.

About 88% of parents said they want officials to summarize goals kids need to achieve in order to be track for the next grade, while 87% want more guidance on which assignments to prioritize each day.

The survey showed 85% of parents say they need someone to be available to provide them support when they have questions about assignments.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:53:04|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ISLAMABAD, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan received the first export from Afghanistan on Monday via three major border points after nearly three months since bilateral border closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior diplomat said here.

Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Atif Mashal confirmed to Xinhua that trucks carrying fresh fruit and vegetables entered Pakistan via the Torkham and Chaman crossings with Afghanistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces as well as Ghulam Khan crossing in North Waziristan tribal district.

"The first convoy of Afghan trucks entered Pakistan via Torkham around 10:30 a.m. (local time), which marks the formal resumption of exports to Pakistan," Mashal said.

A Pakistani border official in North Waziristan Ghani-ur-Rehman told reporters in the area that proper standard operating procedures (SOPs) were adopted during the cross-border trade in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said trade will be in operation for six days a week and Saturdays will be reserved for pedestrian movement on these border crossing terminals. These steps are being taken after implementing all necessary protocols related to COVID-19 pandemic.

A foreign ministry statement said last week that Pakistan had earlier opened its two border terminals at Torkham and Chaman for transit trade and exports to Afghanistan on the request of Afghanistan and humanitarian consideration for sustenance of the fraternal people of Afghanistan.

"Now, keeping in view of both countries' desires to further increase mutual trade, in view of strong fraternal ties and due to renewed Afghan government's request, it has been decided that with effect from 22 June 2020, the third border terminal at Ghulam Khan will be opened for bilateral trade and to allow transit trade and import from Afghanistan through Torkham and Chaman border terminals as well," the statement said.

It said the opening of Ghulam Khan border crossing terminal and allowing imports from Afghanistan reflects Pakistan's resolve to help Afghanistan and facilitate its trade.

Pakistan is a major trading partner of Afghanistan and the largest market for Afghan exports, the statement said, adding the opening of Gwadar port in southwest Balochistan province for Afghanistan's export and import has further strengthened trade linkages between the two countries.

Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan had signed a transit trade agreement in 1965 and the agreement was revised in 2010. Afghan traders have also been allowed to import goods via the Gwadar port besides using ports in Karachi, the commercial hub of Pakistan. Enditem
Subscribe to the Wake Up, cleveland.coms free morning newsletter, delivered to your inbox weekdays at 5:30 a.m.

Weather

Highs will stay in the low 80s today but it will be muggy, and there are chances of showers and thunderstorms, particularly later in the morning and early afternoon. Showers and thunderstorms remain possible overnight with lows in the upper 60s. Read more.

The headlines

Ohio plateau: Ohios aggressive, early response to coronavirus and its measured reopening helped Ohio avoid a spike in cases seen in other Republican states like Texas, Florida and Arizona, reports Mary Kilpatrick. While Ohio used data to drive decisions, some states shut down later and opened up sooner, maybe even before they peaked.

Race relations: Amid the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide protests and the presidential election, relationships in the Ohio statehouse have cratered between the majority, nearly all-white Republicans and black Democratic lawmakers. House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes said she doesnt think toxic is too strong of a word. Andrew Tobias breaks down what happened.

Subtext: Cleveland.com has started a new, free Subtext account to send coronavirus updates. Every day, the team covering the coronavirus will send three to four updates about the progress of the virus -- confirmed cases of the virus, major cancellations, the latest medical advice, relevant scientific information and more. You can even text us back. Go to https://joinsubtext.com/ohiocoronavirus and enter your phone number. Or send a text to 216-279-7784. Did we mention its free?

New numbers: The Ohio Department of Health reported Sunday that 44,808 Ohioans have confirmed infections of the novel coronavirus and 2,700 have died, Jane Morice reports. This includes 3,230 probable infections and 237 probable deaths. The department reported 2,697 deaths and 44,262 infections on Saturday.

Cleveland numbers: Twenty-one new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed by the City of Cleveland, Jane Morice reports. The total number of cases among Cleveland residents has now reached 1,936, with 75 total deaths. No new fatalities were reported Sunday.

Coronavirus spread: The number of vehicles on roads in Northeast Ohio was down 20% for the week of June 7-13, compared to the second week June last year, thanks to the pandemic. Laura Hancock reports that may bode well for the regions chances of a spike in coronavirus infections, since Gov. Mike DeWine showed vehicle traffic volumes for Montgomery County had gone up  even higher than mobility numbers before the coronavirus began -- in the coronavirus hot spot.

Public safety: Mayor Frank Jackson has appointed Karrie Howard, the citys former chief assistant prosecutor, to replace Michael McGrath as director of public safety, Robert Higgs reports. After his swearing in, Howard said he will look to build unity between the community and the citys safety forces, invoking the names of social action groups like Black Lives Matter.

Jail cases: The Cuyahoga County Jail on Friday had no known positive cases of the coronavirus among inmates for the first time since early April, Cory Shaffer reports. The virus infected as many as 61 prisoners in mid-May, but jail staff used a combination of expanded testing, contact tracing and isolation to prevent the type of widespread outbreak that has plagued some other jails.

MOCA Director Jill Snyder is stepping down her from post.The Plain Dealer

MOCA: Jill Snyder, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland since 1996, is stepping down amid a controversy over the museums cancellation of an exhibit of artworks dealing with police violence against black people. Steven Litt reports that Snyder said her voluntary resignation is motivated by reasons beyond New York artist Shaun Leonardo accusing the museum of censorship for canceling his exhibit.

WHO: President Donald Trump may want to secede from the World Health Organization in light of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but extricating the United States cant be done solely on his say-so, Sabrina Eaton reports. And doing so may not be the fine idea Trump believes it is.

Police union: The head of the union that represents rank-and-file Cleveland officers is pushing back on the idea of defunding the citys police department, saying previous budget cuts have hampered an agency already undergoing reform through its consent decree. Evan MacDonald talked to union president Jeff Folmer about the law enforcement proposals Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Attorney General Dave Yost laid out.

Statewide standards: Almost half of Ohios 862 law-enforcement agencies, including Cleveland, have not yet officially agreed to abide by statewide standards regarding issues such as use of force, bias-free policing, and hiring minorities. Jeremy Pelzer reports on why the departments havent signed up, including that departments have their own standards or they didnt think it was worth the effort.

Republican censure: The Ohio Republican Party central committee on Friday voted to censure former Chairman Matt Borges for a number of actions they deemed detrimental to the party, including his recent founding of a super PAC supporting former Democratic Vice President Joe Bidens presidential campaign. Seth Richardson reports the resolution passed without opposition, demonstrating how the party apparatus once dominated by Borges and other allies of Republican Gov. John Kasich now is firmly in support of the president.

Unemployment denials: Ohio has started to deny unemployment benefits to people who refuse to return to work because of the coronavirus, unless they meet one of a number of exceptions. Jeremy Pelzer reports that until now, Ohio has relaxed its usual restrictions and allowed workers who have stayed home even after their employers reopen to still collect weekly unemployment benefits.

Unemployment numbers: Ohios unprecedented unemployment crisis eased somewhat in May, with the state gaining more than 127,000 jobs since April, Rich Exner reports. But while the states unemployment rate fell from a record 17.6% in April to 13.7% in May, thats still near the states previous high of 14% unemployment in December 1982 and January 1983.

School cuts: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday signed a schools religious freedom bill that also partially restores recent state funding cuts for dozens of K-12 districts across the state. Jeremy Pelzer reports that new law caps school cuts at 6%.

Marine funeral: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has ordered that flags fly at half-staff for U.S. Marine Sgt. Wolfgang Kyle Wolf Weninger, a Kenston High School graduate who died Tuesday in a training jump mishap. Jane Morice reports that all U.S. and Ohio flags will fly half-staff at public buildings in Geauga County - where Weninger grew up - as well as at the Ohio Statehouse, Vern Riffe Center, and Rhodes Tower in Columbus, until sunset on the day of Weningers funeral.

The Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus.

Statehouse vandalism: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Friday the Ohio State Highway Patrol is conducting a criminal investigation over recent vandalism of the Ohio Statehouse and the surrounding grounds. Andrew Tobias reports DeWine said he has shared his disgust and anger with state patrol leaders.

Federal aid: Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday signed legislation to provide $350 million in federal coronavirus aid to local governments and reapprove $1.2 billion in state construction project spending, reports Jeremy Pelzer. The governor also signed three other bills, including measures to extend Medicaid coverage for pregnant women and anti-smoking efforts, require childcare providers to notify parents about violations that put their children at risk, and limit budget cuts to schools.

Juneteeth: Dozens of children and parents marched for Black Lives Matter at Euclid Creek Reservation on Juneteenth Friday. John Kuntz has photos.

Freedom Walk: The Cleveland chapter of the NAACP participated in the Buckeye neighborhoods Freedom Walk Saturday from Benedictine High School through the Buckeye neighborhood to celebrate Juneteenth and protest continued inequalities with Black citizens. John Kuntz has photos of the peaceful walk escorted by Cleveland.

Police chase: A short pursuit early Sunday on Clevelands West Side ended in a fiery crash that critically injured two people, Jane Morice reports. Just before midnight on Interstate 90, a trooper spotted a black Jeep Cherokee weaving between lanes and attempted a traffic stop near the Lorain Road exit. The Jeeps driver sped away, and the trooper initiated a pursuit until the West 98 th Street. The Jeep did not stop at the red light at the bottom of the exit ramp and slammed into a Ford EcoSport SUV.

MetroHealth mixed-use: The Cleveland City Planning Commission has approved the designs for a mixed-use building that will include housing for lower-income residents near MetroHealths main campus on the citys West Side. Eric Heisig reports the $15 million, four-story building set for West 25th Street and Sackett Avenue in the citys Clark-Fulton neighborhood will have up to 72 living units, as well as a 5,000-square-foot job opportunity center on its first floor, part of a $1 billion plan to overhaul the hospitals aging main campus and spur more development around it.

Voices of CLE: A new initiative by Downtown Cleveland Alliance seeks artists to brighten windows and storefronts boarded up in the wake of downtown protests.

Julie Washington reports the #VoicesofCLE public art project is a collaboration between local businesses and artists, meant to uplift various voices in the community, especially those of people of color.

Dreamer: When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration couldnt dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protecting undocumented immigrants, 21-year-old Fatima Rahman felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Mary Kilpatrick talked to the Case Western Reserve University senior, who has been protected by DACA since she was 15.

ACT/SAT: A handful of Ohio universities have permanently made ACT and SAT tests optional policies, reports Emily Bamforth. Though Ohio schools are increasingly waiving SAT or ACT scores for the fall because of the pandemic, few have announced a permanent switch.

Tri-C: When the Cuyahoga Community College campus reopens this fall, the majority of classes will still be online, reports Emily Bamforth. Up to 40% of classes will be in-person, and online classes will vary, with and without set meeting times or use of lab facilities.

Courthouse wedding: The Cleveland Municipal Court is encouraging couples to get married through the Zoom app, but couples can request an in-person wedding at the courthouse on Fridays, with two witnesses, Kaylee Remington reports.

Life sentence: A Cleveland man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a man in a gas station parking lot in 2019 and then throwing hot coffee on a detective during a police interrogation received a life sentence, Cory Shaffer reports.

Denzel Ward: Paul Ward Jr. buried his father on his sixth birthday. Since then, he cherished every hour and day with his sons, Browns cornerback Denzel Ward, and his older brother, PJ. Columnist Doug Lesmerises writes about the gift he passed down: to make the world know their name.

Road trip essentials: Summer is here. And if youre planning a summer road trip, Yadi Rodriguez is here to help, with 16 things must-haves.

Rock exhibit: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has plans to open an exhibit dedicated to social justice. Troy Smith reports Its Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope, and Empowerment will highlight artists and moments that changed the world on a social conscience level.

Rage Against the Machine: Rage Against the Machine was made for these harsh times. Tom Morello, de la Rocha, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk plan to hit the road in 2021. Until then, Troy Smith ranked every song Rage has ever released, including two soundtrack cuts and the original demos from the bands iconic debut album.

City officials and Holy Rosary announced Friday that the annual Feast of the Assumption four-day street festival is canceled this year due to the coronavirus. (David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com file photo)

Feast: The annual Feast of the Assumption four-day street festival is canceled this year due to the coronavirus, Kaylee Remington reports. Father Joseph Previte, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Councilman Blaine Griffin announced in a statement that the cancellation of the festival in the Little Italy neighborhood is a difficult but necessary decision.

Trauma surgeon: Los Angeles-based trauma surgeon Annie Onishi documents 10 weeks of her life working inside a hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic for cleveland.coms sister site, WIRED.

House of the Week: A 1913 brick craftsman in Cleveland Heights is an architecturally beautiful home with a bit of history, for sale for $1.05 million. Joey Morona details the mansion in the House of the Week.

Other headlines

Feast of the Assumption canceled: Coronavirus reopenings and cancellations for Monday, June 22, 2020 Read more

East Cleveland police investigating after 8-year-old girl reportedly shot Read more

Six men hurt in six separate shootings in 24 hours, Cleveland police say Read more

Someone threw gas on a man and tried to set him on fire, Cleveland police say Read more

Cleveland gets its own Black Lives Matter street mural; local BLM organizers demands city do more Read more

Amtrak will reduce long-distance service to three-times weekly, including trains through Cleveland Read more

Strongsville switches to four-day workweek, furloughs some employees, due to decline in income tax collections Read more

Springfield Township police, Summit County deputies sued by father of man in mental distress who died after altercation with officers Read more
[June 22, 2020] SierraConstellation Partners Launches Senior Advisor Council to Provide C-Level Industry Expertise to Clients

SierraConstellation Partners, LLC (SCP), a national interim management and advisory firm to middle-market companies in transition, today announced the formation of a Senior Advisor Council to the firm. The Council will consist of experienced senior executives who have held C-level positions at firms in specific industries that have gone through restructurings, bankruptcies, and performance turnarounds. Each advisor will offer their unique expertise in a consulting capacity on SCP assignments in their respective industries. SCP has announced that the first two members of its Senior Advisor Council are: Chris Tedford, who brings over 20 years of finance and accounting experience in the retail, manufacturing and consumer goods industries, including the cannabis category. He recently served as the CFO of KushCo Holdings, an ancillary provider of products and services to the legal cannabis industry, where he helped raise over $100 million in capital for the company while extending its line of credit and stabilizing its overall liquidity position. Tedford previously served as the CFO and in other senior financial roles at Pacific Sunwear (PacSun), where he led an effective Chapter 11 restructuring process. Jon D. Pedersen, Sr., who has held multiple senior positions in financial operations and management across the media industry. Pedersen recently served as te Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for iHeartMedia Markets Group, and has transformed the business during an unprecedented shift in the media/advertising landscape and has led the back office through a pre-packaged bankruptcy. Prior to joining iHeartMedia, Pedersen led transformational projects in previous roles at SNAP Interactive, Warner Music Group, and Goldman Sachs.



SCP continues to grow across the country. Since the start of 2020, the firm has also announced the opening of a new office in New York, N.Y., as well as the addition of David Bitterman as a Managing Director in New York and Bill Partridge as a Managing Director in the Bay Area.

About SierraConstellation Partners, LLC SierraConstellation Partners (SCP) is a national interim management and advisory firm headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Houston, Boston and New York and professionals in Dallas and Seattle. SCP serves middle-market companies and their partners and investors that are navigating their way through difficult business challenges. Our team's real-world experience, operational mindset and hands-on approach enable us to deliver effective operational improvements and financial solutions to help companies restore value, regain creditor confidence, and capitalize on opportunities. As former CEOs, COOs, CFOs, private equity investors and investment bankers, our team of senior professionals has decades of experience operating and advising companies. For more information, please visit www.sierraconstellation.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005356/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
An unparalleled set of Maya wall paintings, most probably from the 17th to 18th centuries CE, discovered in a local house in the Guatemalan city of San Gaspar Chajul (further referred to as Chajul) blends pre-Columbian with imported European elements, making them a unique example of Colonial art from Latin America.

Central America is home to Maya populations speaking a variety of related languages. Despite the Spanish conquest of the 16th century CE, these populations have persisted, maintaining many traditions and their sense of cultural identity.

Today, the total Maya population is estimated at 8 million, most of whom (around 6.2 million) live in Guatemala.

One of the Maya groups of south-central Guatemala are the Ixils. Today, the three largest Ixil cities are Chajul, Santa Maria Nebaj and San Juan Cotzal.

In 2003, renovation of one of the local houses in Chajul revealed a set of Maya wall paintings.

The murals were then studied by Jagiellonian University researcher Jarosaw Zraka and his colleagues from Poland, Germany, Spain and Guatemala.

The paintings decorate the north, east and west walls of the main, central room. They probably also once covered the south wall, but this has been demolished and rebuilt, they said.

One of the best-preserved and most interesting scenes, over 2 m in length, is on the western wall.

The 4.3-m-long panel on the northern wall seems to be a continuation of the scenes depicted on the western wall.

The eastern wall is adorned with two panels, one at either end. If there were any paintings between these two panels, they have not survived.

The murals were probably made by indigenous artists using traditional colors and painting techniques.

According to local inhabitants of Chajul, they represent scenes from either the Baile de la Conquista (Dance of the Conquest) or the Baile de los Moros y Cristianos (Dance of the Moors and Christians).

Our research to date, including interviews with Chajul inhabitants about local history and tradition, suggests that houses with murals were originally owned by important members of the local community, possibly members of the cofradias, the scientists said.

These individuals were involved in the organization of religious events, both those connected with Catholicism and those linked with costumbre (or Maya spirituality, related to the cult of the Maya pre-Columbian calendar and to agrarian rituals).

The discovery of a Chajul wall painting tradition adds significant new information to the history of Colonial-period Mesoamerican art, and contributes to our understanding of local, indigenous expressions of art and ritual in the context of foreign influences, they concluded.

The teams paper was published in the journal Antiquity.

_____

Jarosaw Zraka et al. 2020. The Maya wall paintings from Chajul, Guatemala. Antiquity 94 (375): 760-779; doi: 10.15184/aqy.2020.87
Adelaidas commitment to her clients and her passion for building inclusivity in the legal profession are an inspiration, and speak volumes about her vision and leadership. I look forward to watching her continue to grow as a leader and lawyer in the coming years, said Mary-Olga Lovett

Adelaida V. Mihu, a shareholder in the Houston office of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP was recognized as a 2020 American Bar Associations On the Rise  Top 40 Young Lawyers.

Presented annually, the award recognizes 40 exceptional ABA young lawyer members who exemplify high achievement, innovation, vision, leadership and legal and community service.

Its an absolute honor to be listed among such talented attorneys, Mihu said. It has been a lot of hard work and I continue to grow in my legal practice, but I am grateful for the opportunities to do so while still giving back to the Latino community within the firm and outside of the firm.

Adelaidas commitment to her clients and her passion for building inclusivity in the legal profession are an inspiration, and speak volumes about her vision and leadership. I look forward to watching her continue to grow as a leader and lawyer in the coming years, said Mary-Olga Lovett, Senior Vice President and Co-Regional Operating Shareholder of the firms Texas offices.

Mihu focuses her practice on international compliance matters and counsels companies doing business in international markets. She advises on a host of compliance and transactional due diligence issues arising out of various government regulations, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In addition to analyzing corruption risks in corporate transactions, Mihu assists clients in designing and building anti-corruption programs, assesses existing anti-corruption programs, and advises on post-acquisition integration of anti-corruption programs. Adelaida also serves as a co-chair of the firms Latino Affinity Group.

A full list of Greenberg Traurig honoree can be found at 3 Greenberg Traurig Attorneys Honored as On The Rise  Top 40 Young Lawyers by the ABA.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP  Texas: Texas is important to Greenberg Traurig, LLP and part of its history. With more than 130 Texas lawyers in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, Greenberg Traurig, LLP has deep roots in the Texas business, legal, and governmental communities. Greenberg Traurig Texas works with clients to address their interdisciplinary legal needs across the state utilizing the firms global platform. The Texas attorneys are experienced in industries key to the states future, including: aviation, chemicals, construction, education, energy and natural resources, financial institutions, health care, hedge funds, hospitality, infrastructure, insurance, media, medical devices, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, real estate, retail, sports, technology and software, telecommunications, transportation, and video games and esports.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has 2200 lawyers in 41 locations in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, diversity, and innovation, and is consistently among the largest firms in the U.S. on the Law360 400 and among the Top 20 on the Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.


Mr Yang joined Mr Andrews' office as his multicultural adviser while he was in opposition and is widely regarded as having driven the Victorian Premier's introduction to Beijing. The former court translator left after the 2014 election and before the Belt and Road deal was signed in 2018 against the advice of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mr Yang, who has long held an interest in translation services, signed the iFlytek deal through his property development company Modun. Sources close to the deal said it had yet to start commercial operations in Australia and it was signed before the Victorian parties were made aware of the company's links to suppressing Uighurs in Xinjiang or concerns from the US state department. Invest Victoria, the Victorian government's foreign investment arm, also had a meeting with iFlytek at their premises on their visit to Australia last year in May. iFlytek signed an agreement with Mike Yang's [centre left] company Modun last year. Credit: The Premier's office did not provide comment on Parliament hosting the company, but Invest Victoria said it is standard practice to give international businesses meeting spaces when they are in Melbourne but do not have office space. A spokesman for Invest Victoria said it "regularly meets with international businesses in its role of driving investment and jobs to Victoria".

iFlytek is part owned by state telecommunications firm China Mobile and works with China's Ministry of Public Security to voice track criminals. The company, the highest valued software business on the Shenzhen stock exchange, was placed on the US trade blacklist in October last year. In its filing the US Department of Commerce accused iFlytek and seven other companies of being implicated in human rights violations in the implementation of China's "campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups". The US action restricts its access to hi-tech components like semiconductors and software as the company looks to expand into image and voice recognition systems that allow voice control of cars and teachers to broadcast in multiple languages simultaneously. The same technology is being used to compile a voice database of Chinese citizens. The database is legal according to Chinese regulations, where surveillance and security are widely accepted in the community. iFlytek did not respond to requests for comment. On June 12 it established a smart community police station in Huaibei City to build a "community security prevention and control network" with artificial intelligence technology. The network will see 55 high-definition infrared cameras and face recognition systems and vehicle licence plate recognition installed in the city north-west of Shanghai.

Mr Liu, the iFlytek founder, said in 2018 the number of Chinese citizens the technology was able to capture was to the company's advantage and would allow artificial intelligence in China to grow at a faster rate than its competitors in the US and Europe. Loading He pushed back against US-China trade tensions in 2018. "Without cooperation between China and the US and other countries, it is impossible to build a beautiful world together," he said. Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Australian governments and companies should be wary of promoting iFlytek considering its role in suppressing Uighurs in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. The technology has been used to control and monitor the movements of the Muslim-minority, which the Chinese government has blamed for terrorist attacks and attempted to assimilate into the broader population through "vocational education camps". She said there was also a serious risk the data it was collecting in Australia would be misused and handed over to the Chinese government.

"These AI companies are required to share information with the Chinese government by law," she said. Danielle Cave, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre, said given the national security, censorship and human rights concerns, it was "concerning to see a company like iFlytek recently enter the Australian market". Loading "Thanks to human rights organisations, research institutes and media there is plenty of information out there to inform government, businesses and universities as they make decisions about which groups to partner with," she said. "This also means excuses are increasingly falling on deaf ears when Australian organisations are forced to explain how they ended up problematic partnerships with, for example, companies accused of censoring speech or of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
The new advertisement was written with heavy input by current C.I.A. officers. While it leaves aside the drudgery that is part of any job, former officials said the ad feels accurate in capturing some of the most exciting moments of spy craft.

There is an officer sitting at a desk and they say, I think I found something. That gave me goose bumps, said Lisa Maddox, a former C.I.A. analyst. Because I had those moments, and almost everyone I know had them. When you feel you found that needle in a haystack, you are so excited. It is a cool moment.

Ms. Maddox said that recruiting midcareer employees is also critical for the agency, but those prospects can be hard to reach. The new ad may be a way to interest them in the agency.

The stereotype of a C.I.A. officer of a white man recruited from Yale University contains a germ of truth  you can find plenty of Yale graduates among current and former agency personnel  though even as far back as the agencys founding in 1947, it recruited from 70 colleges and universities. By the 1980s, William Casey, then the C.I.A. director, made a priority of improving relations with the nations colleges as the agency began a push to diversify its ranks.

The general supply always exceeds the demand, said Nicholas Dujmovic, a former C.I.A. historian who is now a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington. But there are skills they are always looking for, so getting those specific individuals may be tough.

The new advertisement, which uses actors, not C.I.A. officers, puts a clear emphasis on diversity. It portrays a black senior official addressing a class of new recruits and an African-American case officer doing a secret brush pass to hand off a thumb drive. Officers of East Asian and South Asian descent are also featured, as well as white employees.

A 2015 report commissioned by the C.I.A. suggested that over the previous two decades, the agency had become less diverse, with fewer senior black officers in the agency.
(CNN)  Father's Day is just another reason for former first lady Michelle Obama to shower her husband with some extra love.

She posted to Instagram a photograph of former President Barack Obama and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, along with a heartwarming note.

"Thank you for the way you love our girlsand all the young people in this country, no matter who they are or where they come from," she captioned the post. "We feel your warmth and generosity today and everyday. Happy Father's Day, Barack!

The former President remains outspoken on issues plaguing the country, including the death of George Floyd in police custody, saying it "shouldn't be 'normal' in 2020 America."

"It can't be 'normal.' If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better," Barack Obama said in a statement as protests erupted across the country.

He said it will mainly fall on officials in Minnesota to ensure Floyd's death is fully investigated "and that justice is ultimately done."

"But it falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station  including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day  to work together to create a 'new normal' in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts," Barack Obama wrote.

Michelle Obama also issued a statement on Floyd's death and the subsequent protests.

"Like so many of you, I'm pained by these recent tragedies," she wrote. "And I'm exhausted by a heartbreak that never seems to stop."

In her statement, she mentioned Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, as well as Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and Michael Brown.

"It just goes on, and on, and on. Race and racism is a reality that so many of us grow up learning to just deal with. But if we ever hope to move past it, it can't just be on people of color to deal with it," she wrote. "It's up to all of usBlack, white, everyoneno matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out."

This story was first published on CNN.com 'Michelle Obama posts a sweet tribute to her husband for Father's Day'
HONG KONG, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Medakit Ltd, a leading biotech company specialized in the production of antibody diagnosis tests for COVID-19, received on June 10th a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration outlining their concern regarding the terminology utilized in Medakit website allegedly suggesting the use of Medakit test for "home-use" settings. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration notified Medakit that some of its products were found to be distributed in the United States despite the company not having premarket approval to market its tests in the country.

Medakit Box of 40 Medakit Covid-19 IgM/IgG Rapid Test Kit

These allegations were promptly responded to on June 12th, and Medakit presented a series of immediate measures taken to correct any misunderstanding and to ensure none of its products mistakenly reach the United States.

Medakit does not have any authorized distributors in the United States nor has the intention, at the moment, to market COVID-19 diagnosis tests in the United States. Any and all sales in the country are prohibited by Medakit, evidenced by its Terms of Service contained in the company's website. Despite that, Medakit has immediately responded in good faith to the requests of the regulators outlining a set of corrective steps to address the issues found by the FDA. These steps include the review and alteration of labelling, marketing, advertisement and marketing material to confirm that the product is only intended to be used by professionals. In addition, a clear disclaimer stating that Medakit products are not intended for the United States' market has been added to the website and technical procedures were instituted to prevent any direct online purchase to reach the United States.

Additionally, Medakit has been informed that some organizations are fraudulently using Medakit's name, logo and reputation to illegally promote and distribute counterfeit COVID-19 tests. Medakit implemented a tracking code on every COVID-19 test kit to ensure the authenticity and history of any device.

The company continues to focus its efforts in Asia, Europe and South America by assisting governments, armies, health agencies and professionals providing them a leading point-of-care antibody COVID-19 test that has been independently verified by world-renowned Institut Pasteur in Paris, France.

A study led by the Institut Pasteur confirmed an extremely high accuracy, reaching 100% of IgM & IgG sensitivity between 14 and 19 days after the first symptoms and a specificity of 100%. Medakit is one of the only diagnosis companies to have ever reached that level of accuracy. "We are extremely proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time. Until we find a vaccine, we all need access to testing. Medakit's mission is to make ultra-accurate testing accessible and scalable to the regions that need it the most. We have a production capacity of 800,000 tests per day, which is enough to supply testing for a whole country within 24 hours." Said Mike Touzard, Medakit's CEO.

Medakit welcomes any official request for analyzing its Covid-19 antibody tests, in order to confirm the given data.

Finally, Medakit remains committed to the highest level of compliance with regulatory requests by any authority and is available for further requests by any of these bodies.

Media Contact:

Steven Wu

+447488863555

[email protected]

SOURCE Medakit Ltd
Even as Mumbai breathes a sigh of relief over the slowdown of the coronavirus outbreak in slum clusters, high-rises are emerging as the new areas of concern.

As Mumbai breathes a sigh of relief over the slowdown of the coronavirus outbreak in slum clusters, high-rises are emerging as new areas of concern. An indication of this is a sharp rise in the number of sealed buildings  from 4,071 on 9 June to 5,205 on 17 June  according to data from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations daily reports.

As per media reports, there have been an increasing number of cases in residential complexes in various areas of the city, including D ward (Grant Road) and T ward (Mulund). In D ward, 379 new COVID-19 cases have been reported since the Unlock 1.0 phase began on 1 June. Of these, 320 cases were from high-rises, according to a report in India Today.

In this context, enforcement of sealing of buildings in which coronavirus cases have been reported assumes greater significance. Speaking to Firstpost, Daksha Shah, deputy executive health officer in the BMC said, The BMC has issued a detailed circular on how the sealing of buildings is to be enforced. However, once a building or a floor in a building is sealed, the onus is on the housing society to make sure that there is no movement in and out of that particular area.

On 18 May, the BMC had issued a revised protocol for sealing of buildings, according to which, in certain cases, the entire building does not need to be sealed, and only the floor on which a COVID-19 positive case was found can be sealed. However, depending on the situation, the entire building can also be sealed and the decision regarding this is to be taken based on the local situation.

Tanaji Kamble, deputy public relations officer (PRO) in the BMC, stated that the figure of 5,205 sealed buildings from the civic bodys recent report includes both entire buildings and individual floors.

According to the protocol mentioned above, housing societies are supposed to ensure that containment measures are strictly followed. The protocol also advises housing societies to tie up with local vendors and medical stores to ensure the supply of essentials to people living in the area that has been sealed.

With enforcement of containment measures such as these having been partially left to housing societies, there are differences in the extent to which restrictions are being imposed. Two residential complexes in Bandra (E) that were sealed recently (referred to in the rest of the article as A and B to protect patients' identities) show the variations in how sealing was put into practice.

In building A, two people from the same family tested positive for coronavirus on 30 April.

The next day, the floor and flat were fumigated and sanitised by BMC officials, said a member of the building committees COVID-19 team.

The wing in which the patients, a senior citizen and his domestic helper, lived was then sealed and movement was restricted for 14 days.

The specific instruction from the BMC was only that we must not leave our houses as far as possible. Since the cases were detected in the second phase of the lockdown, the discretion of coming and going was left to the building committee and the residents, he said.

He added that the committee decided to continue with its rules from the first phase, which stipulated that one member from each flat could step out for essentials once a day.

The cases in building A were detected through the contact-tracing conducted by the BMC after a staff member of a hospital in the neighbourhood tested positive.

A staff member of the Gurunanak Hospital underwent a COVID-19 test after the civic body took over the hospital in the last week of April.

The BMC acquired the hospital as an exclusive treatment centre for its own employees and front line police personnel who tested positive for COVID-19.

Recalling the norms that were in place during the sealing of the building, a housing society member said, All the residents, even those not living in the affected wing, had to fill out a symptom tracker every day and the information was submitted to the ward health officer. This had to be done for 15 days.

The family whose member tested COVID-19 positive described the entire process of getting tested, receiving the results and starting treatment for the patient as being really traumatic. The rest of the family also underwent tests.

In addition to the official protocol, the stigma associated with a COVID-19 patient was a big cause of stress for us, said one member, who did not wish to be named.

While one member of each family was allowed to step out in building A, the norms of sealing were followed more strictly in building B. In the latter apartment complex, initially, two cases were detected in the same family and only one wing was sealed. However, within a week, there was a second case in another wing. Hence, the building committee decided to seal the whole building for two weeks.

A resident of the building recalled, We couldnt step out at all. Whether it was groceries or other essential items, a group of volunteers had arranged to have it delivered inside the building premises.

She added that every family had to provide details such as the number of family members, the number of senior citizens in each family, prior health conditions, and symptom tracking to the ward health official for 21 days after the latest case was detected.

My father is a paediatrician and needed to make emergency visits to his patients. He was initially stopped by the guards, but was allowed to go after explaining the situation, she said.

For groceries (fruits and vegetables), sellers were called to the premises every alternate day, and each wing of the building was given a time slot of about an hour and a half when residents could come to the lobby and buy items, she added.

We also had a tie-up with a local grocery store. Everyone placed orders on a Google sheet, and the items would then be delivered to the building. Volunteers would call people to come and pick up their parcels. It was all very methodical, the resident noted.

Now, with protocols no longer mandating the sealing of an entire building, it has become relatively easier for residents to access essential supplies. An instance of this is an apartment complex in the northwestern suburb of Kandivli (E), where one floor has been sealed on 20 June after a COVID-19 case was reported.

A resident of the floor which has been sealed, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Firstpost, The sealing of the floor due to a coronavirus case is a matter of concern for us. However, people from our building have promised to provide us whatever help we need. Although we cannot go out at all, essential items such as milk and vegetables are being delivered at our doorstep. We are not facing any problems as of now. However, the sealing was put into place just recently, so we will know what happens in the days to come.
DUBLIN, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ResearchAndMarkets.com has published a new article on the fertility market "Steady Growth of US Fertility Clinics Halted by COVID-19"

The $6 billion fertility clinics/infertility services industry in the United States had been booming through 2019, thanks to growing demand from American couples that have delayed childbearing, more widespread acceptance of fertility treatment and usage by gay couples, improved success rates, a strong economy, and significant demand from medical tourists from Europe and China.



However, demand has declined as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. 50% of fertility clinics closed for two months beginning in mid-March while those that have continued to operate have been affected by new state regulations and lower patient volumes. There has also been a sharp decrease in medical tourism from China and Europe which is expected to continue into 2021.



Find out more about the effects COVID-19 is having on the US fertility clinic industry by visiting "Steady Growth of US Fertility Clinics Halted by COVID-19"





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]



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



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


LOS ANGELES, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas), Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), and Opus 12 today announced they have demonstrated further advancement of a new electrochemical technology that converts the carbon dioxide content in raw biogas to pipeline-quality renewable natural gas, a critical improvement in the science of upgrading waste emissions to renewable gas. The single-step process is designed to use renewable electricity, and thus also provides a way for long-term storage of excess wind and solar power. The twelve-month research and development effort was funded by SoCalGas and PG&E and builds on the success of an initial feasibility study in 2018.

Raw biogas is produced from the anaerobic breakdown of waste from sources like landfills, sewage, and dairy farms. It contains roughly 60 percent methane (the main component of natural gas), and 40 percent carbon dioxide. While current biogas upgrading technology removes the carbon dioxide from biogas, this new technology captures the carbon dioxide and converts it into additional renewable fuel.

The new demonstration shows that improved catalyst activity could speed reactions by five times and nearly double conversion efficiency, making the technology commercially competitive with other new biogas upgrading methods. The core technology was scaled up and tested using commercially available electrolyzer hardware. The next step will be to test this technology for longer periods at an existing biogas facility.

"This cutting-edge method of using renewable electricity to convert carbon dioxide in biogas to renewable natural gas in a single-step process is significant to SoCalGas," said Yuri Freedman, SoCalGas' senior director of business development. "As we work to meet California's ambitious climate goals, emissions-reducing innovations like these will help us protect the environment by providing a reliable carbon-neutral fuel."

"PG&E is deeply committed to meeting California's bold vision for a sustainable energy future in a reliable and cost-effective manner for customers. We continue to work toward advancing innovation that provides new possibilities in our quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and find alternative sources of carbon-neutral fuel. We are very proud to be part of this collaboration with Opus 12 and SoCalGas," said PG&E's Manager of Innovation and Research and Development, Francois Rongere.

"We achieved significant advances in reaction rate and demonstrated the scalability of our approach by moving from lab scale to commercial-grade components," said Dr. Etosha Cave, Opus 12 co-founder and chief science officer. "We look forward to continuing to work with our partners at SoCalGas and PG&E toward a field demonstration of this technology."

"Our vision for deploying this technology in California is to recycle CO 2 emissions from industry and agriculture before they reach the air, and create valuable products such as renewable natural gas and feedstocks for everyday materials, chemicals, and even liquid fuels. They are compatible with existing infrastructure, and when produced with renewable electricity, these products will have significantly lower lifecycle emissions than conventional products."

Opus 12, a clean-energy startup with its origins at Stanford University and the prestigious Cyclotron Road program at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has created a new proprietary Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer that uses electricity to convert water and carbon dioxide into renewable natural gas in one step. The technology differs from those that use microorganisms.

The research is part of SoCalGas' and PG&E's respective development of cutting-edge technologies for storing excess renewable energy. Because gases can be easily stored for long periods of time using existing infrastructure, these technologies have distinct advantages over storing renewable electricity in batteries.

About SoCalGas

Headquartered in Los Angeles, SoCalGas is the largest gas distribution utility in the United States. SoCalGas delivers affordable, reliable, clean and increasingly renewable gas service to 21.8 million customers across 24,000 square miles of Central and Southern California, where more than 90 percent of residents use natural gas for heating, hot water, cooking, drying clothes or other uses. Gas delivered through the company's pipelines also plays a key role in providing electricity to Californians about 45 percent of electric power generated in the state comes from gas-fired power plants.

SoCalGas' vision is to be the cleanest gas utility in North America, delivering affordable and increasingly renewable energy to its customers. In support of that vision, SoCalGas is committed to replacing 20 percent of its traditional natural gas supply with renewable natural gas (RNG) by 2030. Renewable natural gas is made from waste created by dairy farms, landfills and wastewater treatment plants. SoCalGas is also committed to investing in its gas delivery infrastructure while keeping bills affordable for our customers. From 2014 through 2018, the company invested nearly $6.5 billion to upgrade and modernize its pipeline system to enhance safety and reliability. SoCalGas is a subsidiary of Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), an energy services holding company based in San Diego. For more information visit socalgas.com/newsroom or connect with SoCalGas on Twitter (@SoCalGas), Instagram (@SoCalGas) and Facebook.

About PG&E

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 23,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation's cleanest energy to 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com and www.pge.com/news.

About Opus 12

Opus 12, headquartered in Berkeley, CA, has developed a device that recycles CO 2 into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels. The company's technology bolts onto any source of CO 2 emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO 2 into some of the world's most critical chemical and energy products.

Founded at Stanford in 2016, Opus 12 launched during the prestigious Cyclotron Road fellowship program at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The company's founders were featured in Rolling Stone's 25 People Shaping the Next 50 Years, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy, MIT Technology Review's TR35 Innovators, and the New York Times' Climate Visionaries, and the company was recently featured in Bill Gates's 2019 Netflix documentary, Inside Bill's Brain.

For more information visit opus-12.com and follow Opus 12 on Twitter (@Opus12CO2).

SOURCE Southern California Gas Company

Related Links

http://www.socalgas.com


Hyundai India has signed a MoU with ICICI Bank. The Korean automobile manufacturer will offer customised online auto retail financing solutions to customers in the country. The service will be offered via the companys Click to Buy platform.

Speaking on the occasion, W S Oh, Executive Director, Corporate Planning, Hyundai Motor India, said, Hyundai has been bringing customer delight through its products and solutions. With Click to Buy, Hyundai has offered customers the first-ever end-to-end online car buying portal that is a one-stop solution to customer needs. Through our partnership with ICICI Bank, we will fortify customer purchase journey from any remote location and enable real-time transactions with the most productive finance deals.

Under the partnership, ICICI Bank has integrated its finance solutions online with Hyundais Click to Buy platform. Through the partnership, Hyundai will enable customers to avail online solutions for car buying along with the required funding to purchase the vehicle. With this initiative, pre-approved customers of ICICI Bank can directly apply for a car loan through the platform and procure an instant loan sanction without having to physically visit the branch. In addition to these services, ICICI Bank will also offer up to 100% on-road funding.

Hyundai Aura  6.00 Lakh Onwards

Hyundai | Aura | Hyundai Aura
An animal rights activist who invaded a turkey farm in a town devastated by bushfires has vowed to continue terrorising farmers with her group The Lost Earthlings.

Charlize Reynierse, 22, donned a balaclava and commando boots to take part in a raid at a property in fire-ravaged Bargo, in Sydney's south west, in January.

Outside Campbelltown Local Court on Monday, the University of Sydney Honours student showed no remorse and said invading the farm was 'the right thing to do'.

'Time and time again throughout history there have been groups of people who have broken laws to do what is right,' she said.

'These industries need to be exposed one way or another, and unfortunately they won't expose themselves.'

Charlize Reynierse (right), 22, raided the farm in fire-ravaged Bargo, in Sydney's south west, in January

Last year Reynierse and eight others activists raided an abattoir in Goublurn, where they chained themselves to a conveyor belt

Magistrate Brett Thomas said while Reynierse is entitled to peacefully protest, she can't take the law into her own hands, The Daily Telegraph reported.

'You have the right to protest whatever views you have. However, it has to be done within the law, simple as that. By breaching the law, it becomes mayhem,' he said.

Reynierse was on Monday convicted of unlawfully enter agricultural lands to interfere with business and possess means to disguise to commit an offence.

She was also re-sentenced for breaching a conditional release order after taking part in a separate protest at a Goulburn abattoir last year.

A group of nine activists raided a Southern Meats Goulburn and chained themselves to a conveyor belt used to kill animals.

Reynierse was also convicted, fined $1000 and order to pay $670 in compensation to Southern Meats Goulburn and Goulburn police.

Reynierse's friend Isabel Sleiman, 20, who also took part in the Bargo invasion, has not entered a plea for her charges which include unlawfully enter agricultural lands to interfere with business.

Bizarre animal rights activists gained momentum in early 2019, with a number of invasions and raids taking place around the country.

In March 2019, about 150 activists stormed Queensland Millmerran Lemontree Feedlot as a distressed farmer looked on.

The protesters were wearing white overalls covered in black shirts that read 'Meat the Victims'.

The following month, 20 animal activists allegedly chained themselves at the Yangan abattoir in Queensland.
Check out news you should not miss today:

Politics

-- The 36th ASEAN Summit will be held online on Friday, the Vietnamese foreign ministry announced on Sunday, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Society

-- Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Sunday was awarded three third and one consolation prizes at the 14th National Press Awards Ceremony on the occasion of the Vietnam Revolutionary Press Days 95th anniversary at the Hanoi Opera House.

-- A 13-year-old girl was found dead on Sunday in the central province of Phu Yens Tuy An District, three days after she went missing. A man has been detained after he pleaded guilty to killing the young girl.

Business

-- The Youth Employment Services (YES) Center and the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City will hold a recruitment festival on Friday, expecting to attract 80 domestic and foreign enterprises as well as 4,000 students, according to the Vietnam News Agency. The event is meant to offer jobs in a wide range of fields including information technology, mechanical engineering, automobiles, electronics, environment, construction, economy-finance, and hospitality, among others.

Lifestyle

-- Nearly 3,000 athletes from local and international federations, societies, and clubs on Sunday participated in the 6th International Yoga Day, which took place in the northern city of Ha Long, Quang Ninh Province.

-- Those living in the lakeside neighborhood of an emerging Instagrammable spot on Tu Hoa Street in Hanois Tay Ho District have recently complained about young people flocking to their area for photos and causing immense noise before leaving nothing but trash behind.

Education

-- Tuoi Tre in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs General Department of Vocational Education on Sunday held three enrollment and job orientation counseling events for high school students in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and Da Nang.

World News

-- The novel coronavirus has infected more than nine million people and killed over 470,000 around the world, according to the Ministry of Health's latest figures. More than 4.8 million patients have been cleared of the virus.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Are Ohio and the Cuyahoga County Jail national models for how to beat the coronavirus?

This Week in the CLE is back, talking about why the state hasnt seen a surge and how the jail stamped out the virus.

Listen online here.

After a week hiatus, editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour coronavirus news podcast, with help from editors Jane Kahoun, Kris Wernowsky and me. We answer many of the questions youve sent through our text message platform.

Youve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom account, in which he shares once or twice a day what were thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

And youve been offering all sorts of great perspective in our coronavirus alert account, which has 13,000-plus subscribers. You can sign up for free by texting 216-279-7784.

Here are the questions were answering today:

1. How has Ohio avoided a coronavirus spike while other states surge? Ohios aggressive, early response to coronavirus and its measured reopening helped Ohio avoid a spike in cases seen in other Republican states like Texas, Florida and Arizona, which shut down later and opened up sooner, maybe even before they peaked.

2. Has the one-promising relationship deteriorated between mostly white Republicans in the Ohio statehouse and black lawmakers? Yes, amid the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide protests and the presidential election, relationships in the Ohio statehouse have cratered. The word toxic has been used to describe the feelings between the majority, nearly all-white Republicans and black Democratic lawmakers.

3. How is the Cuyahoga County jail handling the coronavirus? The jail on Friday had no known positive cases of the coronavirus among inmates for the first time since early April, down from a high of 61 in May.

4. How far has former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges fallen out of favor with the party faithful? The central committee on Friday voted to censure Borges for a number of actions they deemed detrimental to the party, including his recent founding of a super PAC supporting former Democratic Vice President Joe Bidens presidential campaign.

5. Is Ohio denying unemployment claims filed by people who refuse to return to work because they fear the coronavirus? Ohio is starting to, unless people meet one of a number of exceptions.

6. What are the biggest stories from the past week, when This Week in the CLE was on hiatus? See what we say.

Thats it for Monday. Until Tuesday, find all our past episodes here.

Do you get your podcasts on Spotify. Find us here.

If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.

And on PlayerFM, we are here.
HALIFAXA small Halifax-area company that has transitioned to making face shields during the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a novel approach that doesnt involve a production line.

Dartmouth, N.S.-based Spring Loaded Technology, which also manufactures knee braces, has devised a system that allows its workers to assemble its reusable shields in the safety of their own homes.

Company CEO Chris Cowper-Smith said the idea was created to maximize physical distancing, given that production staff working on the knee braces were the only ones allowed to be in the office. Other employees were asked to work from home.

When we wanted to start adding shields, we didnt want to just add a bunch more people into our space after we asked others to work from home, said Cowper-Smith.

He said once the decision was made to manufacture the shields in May, the company doubled the size of its workforce, adding another 25 temporary and full-time workers.

Each person on the shield production team has been equipped with a work station they are using at home, and they are regularly brought the materials needed to assemble the shields by technicians who also pick up the finished products.

Cowper-Smith said each worker is given enough material to make anywhere from 100 to 130 shields a day. Theyve also been trained to keep their work areas clean to cut down on contaminants during the assembly process.

The shield design is a collaboration between Spring Loaded and another Dartmouth-based company, Ring Rescue.

Dalhousie University medical student Ella Vermeir is one of the production team members working from home.

Vermeir said she decided to spend her summer building shields after her clinical elective in family medicine was cancelled.

Its been a really smooth process for someone like myself who hasnt done a lot of assembling or manual labour kind of tasks before, said Vermeir.

She said she can usually make about 100 shields over the course of her work day  a task that took her about seven hours to complete when she first started the job.

Now it takes about five or six hours working at my top speed, because obviously I want to do a good job, she said. Theres a sense of responsibility knowing who is getting them. All of the assemblers feel like we really want to do a good job and give them something thats going to protect them.

The company has sold its face shields to a number of hospitals in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, as well as to food producers, the seafood industry and dentists, and it recently completed a contract to equip the Victorian Order of Nurses.

Cowper-Smith said Spring Loaded has made about 40,000 face shields so far and expects to make about 200,000 more in the coming months.

He said work on the shields would continue for at least the rest of this year, and his company would assess how the need for personal protective equipment develops over time.

The model is rapidly scaleable, Cowper-Smith said. If the demand for them dies down, we can reduce our output and if it increases we can quite quickly add people and start producing more shields.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had an incorrect spelling of Ella Vermeirs surname.

Read more about:
File picture

Stepping up the offensive against the government on the Ladakh standoff, the Congress on Sunday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had "endorsed the Chinese position" by saying there was no intrusion into Indian territory.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a swipe at the prime minister, saying "Narendra Modi is actually Surender Modi". His comments came a day after he accused the prime minister of having "surrendered" Indian territory to Chinese aggression.

Gandhi also tagged an article in a Japanese publication titled -- "India's appeasement policy toward China unravels".

Congress leader and former Union minister Kapil Sibal said the government should not remain in denial. It should not back down till the Chinese retreat and status quo ante is restored at the Line of Actual Control, the de-facto border between India and China, he added.

At an all-party meeting on Friday to discuss the situation along the India-China border, Modi had said: "Na wahan koi hamari seema mein ghusa hua hai, na hi hamari koi post kisi dusre ke kabze mein hain (Neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our post captured)."

The prime minister's remarks triggered massive criticism, with the Congress accusing him of surrendering Indian territory to China. It asked where the 20 Indian soldiers were killed if the Chinese military did not come to the Indian side of the LAC.

"When China violated the LAC and staked claim on the Galwan Valley and you (PM Modi) said no one intruded into Indian territory, you are yourself saying what China is," Sibal said at a virtual press conference.

"Has not the PM in a way endorsed the Chinese position that they never intruded into our territories. The PM must explain," he said.

"Let no one in the central government remain in denial. Until the Chinese retreat and status quo ante is restored, our government should not let up or appear to cede any part of these territories to the Chinese," he added.

Sibal asked if the PM's statement wasn't an affront to the valour and supreme sacrifice of the soldiers who sought to evict the Chinese from Indian territory in Galwan Valley.

Gandhi, in another tweet, said even though the prime minister says no one has taken over Indian territory, satellite images show that the Chinese have "captured" Indian territory near Pangong Tso in Ladakh.

"The prime minister said - no one entered the country, nor did anyone take over our land. But satellite images clearly show that China has captured Mother India's sacred land near Pangong Lake," he said in the tweet in Hindi.

Gandhi also posted a television news clip with his tweet, showing Indian territories under Chinese occupation with the help of satellite imagery.

Posing questions to the government, Sibal asked, "Does the government mean that their sacrifice was in vain. Is it not correct that China has never claimed Galwan Valley as its territory? Is it also not correct that China has now committed brazen transgressions into Galwan Valley?"

Sibal said the prime minister's remarks contradict statements made by the defence minister, the external affairs minister and the Army chief.

He asked, "Why is the PM refuting the statement of defence minister on 'Chinese presence in large numbers' and EAM's statement that we seek to restore 'status quo ante'? Didn't the Army chief clearly state that 'disengagement' is underway?"

The Congress leader, however, said the entire country stands behind the government in every step they will take to defend India's territorial integrity.

"India's armed forces and the people of India will protect our territorial integrity with all our might. We will never compromise on issues of national security," Sibal said.

"China's brazen transgressions into India's territory in the Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso Lake area and Hot Springs cannot be accepted. Our territorial integrity will not be compromised under any circumstances," he said.

After Modi's statement triggered a political firestorm, the Prime Minister's Office issued a statement on Saturday clarifying that his "observations that there was no Chinese presence on our side of the LAC pertained to the situation as a consequence of the bravery of our armed forces, who foiled an attempt by Chinese troops to transgress into the Galwan Valley".

Attempts are being made to give a "mischievous interpretation" to the prime minister's remarks, it said.

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in the violent face-off with Chinese troops on the night of June 15/16 in Galwan Valley. This was the biggest confrontation between the militaries of India and China after their 1967 clashes in Nathu La when India lost around 80 soldiers while the death toll on the Chinese side was over 300. PTI SKCABH .
(Newser)  The smallest state in the US is not Rhode Island. Technically, the state's full, formal name is "The State of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations." The little-known latter part has been under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks amid the George Floyd protests because of its evocation of the slavery era, and on Monday, Gov. Gina Raimondo will take a tangible step to fix that in the form of an executive order. From now on, state documents and websites will read "Rhode Island" and lose the part about plantations, reports NECN.

story continues below

Our work to dismantle systemic racism in Rhode Island did not start today and it will not end today, but we can rise together and make meaningful progress toward racial equity now, Raimondo said in a statement. The change also applies to checks issued by the state treasurer, whose last line in a statement reads, "Besides, everyone calls us just 'Rhode Island' anyway." To make the move permanent would require the approval of the state legislature, followed by a voter referendum, and a state lawmaker already has gotten things moving on that front, per Patch.com. The Boston Globe notes that when the question came up at the polls in 2010, 78% of voters took the "no" stance on dropping those words, but proponents say the times have changed. (Read more Rhode Island stories.)
Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has assured that Government will investigate the demolition of a building under construction on the Nigerian High Commission premises on Saturday.

She said the matter had been referred to the security agencies for investigation, adding that government was determined to get to the bottom of the matter.

Ms Botchway said this during a visit to the Nigerian High Commission in Accra to ascertain the extent of damage and assured the High Commissioner and all Nigerians in Ghana of their safety.

She said government was committed to their safety and would ensure that they had a peaceful stay.

The police, the national security and the Lands Commission are dealing with the matter.

She said Ghana was committed to the Geneva Convention on International Diplomacy and would, therefore, not do anything to jeopardise the safety of diplomats in the country.

Mrs Esther Arewa, Charge D'Affairs and Acting Commissioner, expressed gratitude to the Minister for the visit and assured the Government of Ghana of their cooperation.

She said they believed in the Government and the Ghana Police Service to conduct a thorough investigations into the matter.

Mr Albert Kan Dapaah, National Security Minister, and Mr James Oppong Boanuh, Inspector General of Police, also visited the scene.

---GNA
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Monday said it will offer free technical and vocational education from the second cycle to tertiary level to build the human resource base of the country.

The Party said a strong and robust technical and vocational education was critical to addressing the growing youth unemployment and therefore the need to prioritise that sector for rapid industrialisation and development.

Mr Sammy Gyamfi, the NDC National Communication Officer, said this at a press briefing in Accra.

He gave the assurance that the Party would pay all customers of the collapsed financial institutions whose monies had been locked-up and would restore indigenous Ghanaian participation in the financial sector.

Mr Gyamfi said the NDC was committed to reducing the size of government by at least 40 ministers to bring down government expenditure and channel more resources into the productive sectors of the economy.

The Party will institute a National Apprenticeship Programme in line with the vision of rapid industrialisation and job creation for the country.

The Party will also scrap the 50 per cent increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data. This will reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the country, he said.

On the health sector, the NDC National Communication Officer said when elected into power, the Party would construct a regional hospital for each of the six newly-created regions and the Western Region.

It would also ensure improvement in access to quality and efficient health care delivery and provide districts without hospitals with fully-equipped modern health facilities.

In addition, we will take healthcare to the doorsteps of the people by building a first of its kind Onipa Nua Hospital Ship and deploy it to provide medical services to the inaccessible riverine and fishing communities on the inland Volta water ways, Mr Gyamfi said.

We will rehabilitate the Onuador mobile vans that have been abandoned by the current government and procure more, to provide medical outreach services in underserved and hard to reach areas in all the 16 regions of the country.

Mr Gyamfi said the Party was known for its infrastructural development and as such would construct two new international-standard Infectious Diseases Centres and two additional international research centres.

On education, he said the NDC would abolish the double-track system of secondary education through an emergency and massive infrastructure drive.

This will ensure a conducive environment and one-track qualitative learning experience for the Senior High School students.

The NDC Communication Officer said the Party would abolish the mandatory national service and the licensure exams for teacher trainees and restore their automatic employment.

No teacher trainee graduate would be denied posting or employment under the next government of President John Dramani Mahama, who would prioritize the promotion and welfare of teachers.

We will establish university campuses in each of the six newly-created regions, restore the automatic employment of nursing trainee graduates and ensure that no nursing trainee graduate is denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government.

Among other interventions the Party pledged to execute the distribution of free cocoa fertilizer and chemicals to cocoa farmers to boost yield and improve their welfare.

It would also complete the Eastern Corridor roads, dualize the Aflao, Cape Coast and Kumasi roads, punish corruption and end nepotism.

---GNA
[June 22, 2020] Wrike Welcomes Chad Bennett as Chief Human Resources Officer and Carol Lee as Chief Financial Officer

Wrike, the most versatile collaborative work management platform, today announced that Chad Bennett has joined the company as Chief Human Resources Officer. In this role, Bennett will lead the company across all global human resources functions, including talent acquisition and development to support the further expansion of the business. His focus will be on employee experience to ensure engagement and secure Wrike as a leading global employer. Additionally, Wrike today announced that Carol Lee is joining the company as Chief Financial Officer. Lee will oversee accounting, financial planning & analysis, and legal and is chartered to help the company achieve hypergrowth. "Chad and Carol's appointments are key for Wrike, and we're delighted that they've already hit the ground running," said Wrike Founder and CEO Andrew Filev. "As we continue to scale and grow, both Chad and Carol's experience and strategic acumen will serve this company well." Bennett is joining Wrike from Alteryx, where he was the SVP of Global Human Resources. During his time there, Bennett scaled the company from 200 to 1,500 employees in 13 countries and helped the company achieve "Best Places to Work" for the past four years. Lee is joining Wrike from GoodData, a global leader in embedded analytics and intelligence. During her time there, Lee helped the SaaS (News - Alert) company achieve sustainable profitability while continuing to drive customer happiness and product innovations. Wrike has expanded its seven global offices, and Wrike's office in Prague, Czech Republic, in particular, has grown by nearly 700%. Across the business, Wrike provides opportunities to work with the latest technologies, including multi-data-center SaaS, data encryption and enterprise security, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics.



"It's really exciting to join a market leader and well-established company," said Bennett. "If we look at the current business landscape, Wrike is perfectly positioned to help all businesses as they continue transitioning to remote work. With the further globalization of work in general, Wrike is the foundation that allows employees to stay connected and get work done." "I've always had a fascination with collaborative platforms, so it was a natural fit for me to join Wrike," said Lee. "Wrike has demonstrated very impressive growth over the past few years, and I am very excited to further build on that momentum by driving scalability and efficiency."

Follow Wrike via: Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/wrike

YouTube (News - Alert): https://www.youtube.com/user/WrikeTeam

Facebook (News - Alert): https://www.facebook.com/Wrike/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wrike

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wriketeam/ About Wrike Wrike is the most versatile work management platform for the enterprise. It can be easily configured for any team and any use case to transform how work gets done. Wrike's feature-rich platform puts teams in control of their digital workflows, enabling them to focus on the most important work, maximize potential, and accelerate business growth. More than 20,000 customers, including Hootsuite, Tiffany & Co., and Ogilvy, and 2M+ users across 140 countries depend on Wrike to help teams plan, manage, and complete work at scale. Wrike is headquartered in San Jose, CA (News - Alert). For more information, visit: https://www.wrike.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005040/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Washington  The White House offered a new explanation Monday for the late-night ouster of Geoffrey Berman from his post as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, saying President Trump was working to find a new role in his administration for the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who planned to return to New York.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday rejected the notion that Berman's exit  in which he at first denied he had resigned, only to be subsequently fired  was mired in confusion, telling reporters Mr. Trump and Attorney General William Barr were "very much in sync" over his removal.

"The president held Mr. Clayton in very high regard, wanted to nominate him to this position at [Southern District of New York] to keep him in the government as he returns to New York," McEnany said of Jay Clayton, the current commissioner of the SEC. "Barr was working on a smooth transition, and when Berman chose to respond in the way that he did, he came to the president, and the president agreed and fired this individual, Mr. Berman, as Mr. Clayton now will in time get to that position."

Barr announced Friday night that Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, would be "stepping down" and that Mr. Trump would be nominating Clayton to replace him. But Berman refuted his departure, saying in a separate statement Friday night he was not resigning. By Saturday, Barr informed Berman he asked Mr. Trump to remove him from his post, and said that the president had done so. But Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday that it was Barr who decided to fire Berman, saying he was "not involved."

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Briefs White House Press

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a briefing at the White House on June 22, 2020. Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Berman then said he would be leaving his role effective immediately. Leading the U.S. attorney's office in an acting capacity is Audrey Strauss, Berman's deputy.

Story continues

The dramatic 24 hours that followed Barr's announcement Friday raised questions as to the reason behind Berman's removal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, called for an investigation into the events, and Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said Sunday on "Face the Nation" that Berman's firing was "totally inappropriate."

But McEnany told reporters Berman's removal was driven by Clayton's desire to return to New York, as the Trump administration "wanted to keep him in government, and therefore he was given the position" in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, the most high-profile and prestigious jurisdiction for federal prosecutors and one which prides itself on its independence from Washington.

McEnany said Barr was "taking the lead" on Berman's removal but went to Mr. Trump after Berman said he was not resigning.

"At that point is when the president agreed with the decision of the attorney general to fire Mr. Berman and to promote Mr. Clayton," she said. "He was involved in a sign-off capacity. [Attorney General] Barr was leading the way."

Berman's office oversaw investigations into several people with ties to Mr. Trump, including his former personal attorney Michael Cohen and two associates of Rudy Giuliani, the president's current personal attorney. His removal led some Democrats to question whether the move was driven by the desire to protect Mr. Trump and those close to him.

But McEnany said that none of the investigations underway in Berman's office will be affected by his departure.

"The administration has very clearly outlined the reason that he is leaving, and it is because Mr. Clayton will be moved into that role," she said.

United States attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate, and the future of Clayton's nomination is unclear. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said in a statement Saturday that he was not contacted by the Trump administration about Clayton's nomination and stressed the panel's policy is to receive two "blue slips"  blue pieces of paper on which a home-state senator notes their support for a nominee  before moving to the nomination.

The two-home state senators who would have to sign-off on Clayton's nomination for it to proceed before the Senate Judiciary Committee are Schumer and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, both of New York.

Schumer on Sunday called for Clayton to withdraw his name from consideration.

Yusuf revisits the songs of Cat Stevens

Back on campaign trail, Trump dismisses COVID testing

"He was in a panic - I was in a panic," man confesses to the murder of his best friend
The demand for choline chloride is rapidly increasing across the world due to rapidly shifting inclination of market players towards high performance ingredients in order to capitalize on evolving trends in the market. Fast product penetration in pharmaceutical industry as well as rising demand for high-performance and easily absorbable medicines having no cumulative effect will further increase the choline chloride market share.

Request for Sample Report: https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/3788

In terms of grade, 50% choline chloride market will grow with a CAGR of over 5.5%. This growth is attributable to the growing demand for high performance as well as easily digestible additives in the animal feed industry.

Key reasons for choline chloride market growth:

Increasing adoption in the oil & gas industry.

Growing product demand across the Asia-Pacific .

. Increasing adoption across personal care applications.

2026 forecasts anticipate the 'human nutrition' application segment showing appreciative growth:

The human nutrition application segment will surpass $18 million over the projected time period due to a growing demand for high quality ingredients in manufacturing supplements. The product is extensively used in manufacturing top-quality solutions because of its easily digestible as well as metabolism properties. Consuming choline chloride on a daily basis promotes cumulative effect and habit, and also does not trigger ache and rashes. Market players are also investing in new product development to gain brand recognition in this competitive choline chloride market outlook.

Asia-Pacific & Europe choline chloride industry to witness appreciative growth:

Asia Pacific is likely to exceed $240 million by the end of the analysis period due to rising prevalence of pet adoption and increasing pet food expenditure. Choline chloride is used to produce food solutions which are appropriate for aquarium fishes, cats, and dogs. Quick acceptance by market players and growing marketing initiatives in competitive market will boost market share. Furthermore, choline chloride is flexible enough to be compatible with solid as well as liquid delivery forms, making it possible to design drop solutions. Increasing demand for top-quality pet food solutions will increase the choline chloride market share.

Europe will grow with a CAGR of over 5.5% through the analysis period. This growth is attributed to the rapid consumer shift towards cosmetic and personal care formulations with top-quality ingredients.

Request for customization of this report: https://www.gminsights.com/roc/3788

Leading market players:

The key market players analyzed in the choline chloride industry report include SDA Products, Sigma Aldrich, BASF, Balchem, Kemin Industries, GWH International, and Nuproxa Switzerland. They have incorporated several strategies including partnership, expansion, collaboration, joint ventures, and others to heighten their stand in the industry.

Related Reports:

Polyethylene Glycol Market Future Business Strategies and Revenue Impact Analysis - 2026

Flat Steel Market Business Strategies and Competitive Analysis - 2026

Cellulose Fiber Market Future Business Strategies and Competitive Analysis - 2024

About Global Market Insights, Inc.

Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider. Offering syndicated and custom research reports, growth consulting and business intelligence services, Global Market Insights, Inc. aims to help clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data that aid in strategic decision making.

Contact Us:

Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights, Inc.

Phone: +1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.gminsights.com

SOURCE Global Market Insights, Inc.
Its through E.B. that Perry lands the case that kick-starts the episode, in gruesome fashion. In a sequence directed with sinister verve by the HBO mainstay Tim Van Patten (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, you name it), the parents of baby Charlie Dodson race to rescue their son from kidnappers whove placed him on the Angels Flight railway, promising to free him in exchange for an exorbitant ransom. When his mom and dad retrieve him, they discover, to their horror, that he is already dead, and that his eyes have been sewn open. (Yeah, were a long way from Raymond Burr.)

Perry and company come to the case by way of the wealthy lumber magnate Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), a member of the parents church, led by a charismatic figure called Sister Alice. As he investigates, Mason runs afoul of the Los Angeles Police Department detectives assigned to the case.

I dont trust the Los Angeles Police Department to do the job thats needed, Baggerly says. In todays climate, that line packs a punch  even before we see one of those detectives execute the cabal of kidnappers, with whom its clear he was in cahoots, in cold blood.

Corruption, torture, murder, full-frontal nudity, foul mouths, a dead baby: Perry Mason boasts the full complement of HBOs genre-revisionist techniques. But Rhys is the glue holding it all together. I cant recall the last time I saw a lead performance this embodied, for lack of a better word; Rhyss every glance, expression and gesture seems made of weariness the way Abraham Lincolns cabin was made out of logs. Credit must also go to the costume department, led by Emma Potter, who dress him exclusively in clothes that look as if they were pulled out of the hamper into which they were tossed three days earlier. When we discover that Mason bribes the mortician in order to steal clothes worn by people who have died in them, Yeah, that sounds about right is the only appropriate response.

And Rhyss performance as Perry isnt just empty, woe-is-me sad-sackery. Perhaps its his alluded-to experiences in the Great War bleeding through, but he comes across like a man who is the way he is because the awfulness of the world really, really gets to him. (Worst thing youve ever seen, the mortician tells him about the dead baby. What do you know what Ive seen? comes the reply.) When Perry examines the babys mutilated corpse, delicately extracting a thread used to stitch the infants eyes open, the camera lingers on his face as he chokes back horror and sorrow. A slight tremor of the lower lip is the only physical catharsis his body allows him.
Americans have never been more ready to get out of the house and bask in the sun. Warm-weather beach destinations are the most popular vacation searches, with Florida  particularly Key West  Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and San Diego among the top considerations.

According to Tripadvisor, 50% of travelers look to book a one- to five-day trip this month, suggesting massive pent-up demand for sand and surf. But the craving for a beach getaway coincides with recent spikes in coronavirus cases in nearly half the states, including beach havens like Florida, Texas and the Carolinas.

The good news for beachgoers is that 83% of beaches are now open  up from only 56% two weeks ago, according to the National Recreation and Park Association. Experts agree that outdoor activities are relatively low risk because the air helps disperse virus particles, as long as you follow basic precautions.

It is not going to be your typical summer at the shore. Most beaches are going to have restrictions around physical distancing, said Allison Colman, director of health for the National Recreation and Park Association.

Common changes include parking restrictions to control crowds, limits on leisure activities like sunbathing, and nixing coolers, chairs, umbrellas and other gear. Beach rules vary widely by city and county, and visitors should check their destinations regulations before heading out.

In New York City and its suburbs, state beaches are fully open with swimming, though some picnic areas remain off limits, and parking areas on the busiest days may close early to reduce crowds. Beaches run by the city itself are also open, but swimming is barred.

State beaches are open for swimming and sunbathing in Connecticut, where officials have urged people to keep 15 feet between blankets, and many parking lots are at reduced capacity. New Jerseys public beaches also reopened at reduced capacity and some are not selling daily badges.

In California, most beaches, including popular ones in Los Angeles County, are now allowing sunbathing and swimming. Some are maintaining bans on staying in one place, but allow exercise or crossing the sand to reach the water.

Beaches also reopened in Miami this month banning groups of more than 10 people, requiring social distancing of 10 feet or more and forbidding canopies. Masks must be worn when social distancing might be difficult.

In many areas, beach ambassadors are strolling the sand to enforce social distancing. Nearly 50% of agencies are using park rangers, law enforcement or other staff to disperse crowds, Colman said.

If youre downwind from groups of people, even if youre more than 6 feet apart, respiratory droplets can be blown, putting you at greater risk, said Dr. Shawn Nasseri, a Beverly Hills, California, ear, nose and throat specialist.

If its not crowded, it might be safe to enjoy a beach day without a mask with a small group, and ideally bring your own towels, toys, chairs and food. If you need to rent equipment, just make sure to use a disinfectant wipe.

The caveat is that people cannot be packed like sardines on the beach. They cant be sitting on top of each other, Nasseri said.

If the parking lot is full or the beach looks packed, experts advise picking another beach or coming back at off-peak hours like weekday mornings and evenings.

Trickiest to navigate are high-traffic areas like parking lots and narrow ramps to and from the water. Wearing a mask is advised.

People have that quarantine fatigue in LA and other coastal cities, and literally theyre saying, forget it ... thats when were seeing bumps, Nasseri said.

Nivek Divincci, 20, has been to Miami Beach a half dozen times since it reopened more than two weeks ago and calls it a natural stress reliever.

The breeze, the ocean, the sound of the waves, the sand  everything about it makes it feel like youre in a better place, said the real estate agent.

On most visits, hes gone with his roommate or a few other people, practiced social distancing and felt safe, except once.

It was crowded and people were breaking the guidelines ... no masks, he said, adding that the groups starting getting larger. They were touching each other 24/7 and they were even sharing drinks at one point.

Nasseri says a car-ride getaway is safe as long as vacationers follow social distancing at fuel stops, stay at hotels following CDC guidelines for sanitation, and stick to takeout meals to avoid crowds.
by Peter Tran

The diocese, which stretches along the border with China, has "the smallest number of faithful" in Vietnams Catholic Church, but has "huge" potential. Preaching the Gospel is not limited to the diocese, but can be done in association with the dioceses in nearby China.

Hanoi (AsiaNews)  The Diocese of Lang Son-Cao Bang covers 18,359 sq kms in the provinces of Lang Son and Cao Bang as well as the districts east of the Lo River in Ha Giang province, 800 km along the Vietnam-China border with Mgr Giuse (Joseph) Chau Ngoc Tri (pictured) as its bishop.

In 2017, its population of 1,769,385 included several ethnic groups. Ethnic Nung and Tay represent 85 per cent, with Kinh (Vietnamese), Sao, Chinese, San Chay, H'Mong making up the remaining 15 per cent.

Currently, the diocese has more than 6,000 members, around 0.33 per cent of the areas population. Most pf them are ethnic Kinh from lowland dioceses like Thai Binh, Bui Chu, Phat Diem, Hai Phong, Hanoi and Bac Ninh, who, over time, came to the diocese to work or on business, involved mostly in farming, livestock, trade and crafts. There is little manufacturing and tourism is undeveloped.

Religious work has had to adapt to this new land to reach locals. This is one of the essential elements for evangelisation.

Most diocesan churches are in cities and with Catholics scattered across the provinces. So it is very difficult for parishes to organise pastoral activities for their members. As a result, mission centres are a way of providing pastoral care to the laity.

Years ago, there were few priests. Pastoral activities were very limited. Parishes faced many difficulties and scarce resources to teach catechism. Today, catechesis and outreach are centred on building the faith and on Sunday liturgy. Catholic groups and associations are becoming increasingly popular in parishes and mission centres.

Before 1990 there were very few vocations in Lang Son-Cao Bang. Most priests and religious came from other dioceses. Since the summer of 2017, the diocese has called for and organised the selection of candidates for the future diocesan clergy from other dioceses across the country. Consequently, pastoral activities have been diversified and given greater attention.

Parishes celebrate Mass daily. Mission centres often have Masses on Sundays. Hence, the sacramental life of the People of God is well cared for. Due to the small number of faithful, priests live very close and regularly visit their parishioners.

For their part, in addition to the parish pastoral council, parishioners are involved with six Catholic groups and associations providing pastoral activities, namely Legio Maria, Caritas, Parent groups, Hien Mau (Gentle mother) groups, ong Tam groups and active facilitators.

Parish-level liturgy boards include choir and traditional musical bands. There are only 20 catechists.

After the October 2017 mission conference, the Bishop's Office redrew parish boundaries to cover the entire territory. Now, everywhere a pastor takes care of believers. Since the renewal began, pastors and the People of God have been motivated to "go out" towards others to bring them the Good News.

Sister Mai, a member of the diocesan Caritas, told AsiaNews that "diocesan Caritas offers various activities. Its members pay particular attention to poor families, disabled children and people with HIV/AIDS.

This diocese, she noted, is also starting a programme to build houses for the poor, provide equipment for clean water, and organise playgrounds for teenagers and young people, etc. However, charity work is still limited because of poor and harsh conditions.

Currently, the Diocese of Lang Son-Cao Bang has "the smallest number of faithful" in the Vietnamese Church. However, evangelisation has huge potential and is very much needed.

What is more, preaching the Gospel is not limited to the diocese, but can be done in association with the dioceses across the border in China. Therefore, whilst the missionary vision in the diocese must be very locally focused and unique, there is also great need for new missionaries for this "mountain diocese".

Since the diocese is huge with few priests, Bishop Giuse Chau Ngoc Tri needs many priests to serve the faithful in parishes and in missionary work. For this reason, he has invited everyone to continue working with their local Church to build an ever more important diocese.
The European Union told China on Monday to make good on a promise to open up its economy and warned of "very negative consequences" if Beijing goes ahead with a new security law on Hong Kong that the West says will curtail basic rights. Speaking after video calls with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping, the EU's chief executive and chairman said they had repeated accusations that Beijing has spread disinformation about the coronavirus. "The relationship between the EU and China is simultaneously one of the most strategically important and one of ...
Market

Shubham Agarwal

Looked like a spiraling week, but we ended with a positive twist as the one day up, one day down sequence was broken on the last trading day of the week giving stocks and indices much needed break from circling around 10,000. The daily trading range for Nifty was fairly bigger than the moves posted as daily returns for the index.

Nifty ended the week with little less than 3% gains. Bank Nifty, too, was no different as on the down days Bank Nifty nearly touched previous weeks low, which was apparently the lowest point of the month of June. However, along with the rest of the market Banking also ended with a positive surprise. Bank Nifty ended up outperforming Nifty by 60 bps with a gain of over 3% for the week.

Open Interest activity for both Nifty and Bank Nifty has been diverse for many weeks now and this week was no different. Nifty futures entered the week a little more burdened with previously created longs early on June expiry. Monday drop was scary enough to push many of those longs out. The see-sawing index kept up with tiny increment and decrement and despite weekend longs for the week Nifty lost around 5% of OI.

Bank Nifty, on the other hand, had no such baggage. One of the reasons why the index did better. Despite a tiny wave of short and short covering Bank Nifty shut shop with net longs for the week thanks to long interest carry forward on Friday.

Aggregate stock futures Open Interest (OI) activity was not too discouraging either. Around 60% of stocks ended up with positive gains this week. More importantly, 40% of the participating stocks added long interest this week. This was followed by short covering OI activity. Shorts and Long unwinding remained limited this week.

Dicing the stock futures OI sector wise, most of the sectors remain heavily loaded with longs. Heavy OI activity in Hero MotoCorp and Escorts kept the OI additions in Auto high, while shorts in L&T overshadowed the longs in rest of the Capital Goods. Zee led Media in longs, while most of the Pvt. Banks except Indusind Bank added longs. Reliance led the Oil sector into longs, while short covering in SBI overshadowed longs in the rest of the PSU Banking stocks.

Coming down to sentiments, the nervousness early on did set the mean reversion momentum on for the risk index India VIX after closing close to 33, India VIX ended the week with a point loss compared to a week before thanks to the last two sessions.

On the option composition front, OIPCR seems to have made a habit of dropping down once before settling down with minor gain or loss. Similar was this weeks move as the ratio pushed to around 1.2 early this week and then regained confidence to come back and add almost 10 points to previous weeks close.

Finally, Long carry forward in Bank Nifty for the week could augur well for the index. The options composition is also positively biased with most improvement in the sentiments indicated by OIPCR in the last few weeks.

Monthly expiry being in the coming week could take a toll on the agile recent longs added in the banking sector. Hence, considering monthly expiry in the coming week longs in futures could be best followed with Modified Call Butterfly.

Modified Call Butterfly is a four-legged strategy where one lot of Call close to current underlying level is brought against that two lots of higher strike calls are sold and one more lot of Call is bought but closer to the call sold strike. This keeps the lower but constant profits in case of upward breakout. This is a fairly risk averse and a universal strategy.

(The author is CEO & Head of Research at Quantsapp Private Limited.)

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/22/2020 -- Products which are obtained from different blends and components of eggs and are ready for human consumption are known as egg products. Egg products can partly be complemented by additives or some other food products. They can be found in different forms such as concentrated, crystallized, deep-frozen, liquid, solid, and frozen with a shelf life of three weeks.



About 70% of the eggs are mainly produce in the economies of China, India, U.S., Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and France. In which 36% of the eggs are produce in China and about 11% in Latin America. There are different types of eggs products available in the market which includes pasteurized liquid egg, pasteurized liquid yolk, pasteurized liquid white, dehydrated white, dehydrated egg, hardboiled egg, dehydrated yolk, and ready-cooked meals with egg as their main ingredient.



To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-217



As egg and egg products offers a source of protein to the consumers with the slightest environment impact is the major factor driving the growth of the market. Technology changes, government regulations are some of the factors contributing to the growth of the market. As the industry is continuously changing due to rising demand, increasing consumption and production of egg and egg products and technology advancement the market has huge growth opportunities in future. But, the insignificant growth in the international trade with some exceptions can act as a restraint for the market.



Some of the key players of the market are Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., Land O'Lakes, Inc., Noble Foods Ltd, Tyson Foods, Inc., and Ningbo Jiangbei Dexi Foods Co. Ltd.



This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product type and distribution channels.



The report covers exhaustive analysis on:



- Market Segments

- Market Dynamics

- Market Size

- Supply & Demand

- Current Trends/Issues/Challenges

- Competition & Companies involved

- Technology

- Value Chain



Regional analysis includes



- North America

- Latin America

- Western Europe

- Eastern Europe

- Asia Pacific

- Japan

- Middle East and Africa



Download Methodology of this Report @https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-217



The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.



Report Highlights:



- Detailed overview of parent market

- Changing market dynamics of the industry

- In-depth market segmentation

- Historical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and value

- Recent industry trends and developments

- Competitive landscape

- Strategies of key players and product offerings

- Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growth

- A neutral perspective towards market performance

- Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprint
IAEA Director General Grossi addresses the media after a board of governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna

The board of the UN atomic watchdog agency has issued a condemnation of Iran for stonewalling its nuclear inspectors.

By Nathan Morley

The United Nations atomic agency is continuing to put pressure on Iran.

In a new resolution, the international body has insisted Iran provide access to two sites where nuclear activity may have taken place in the last two-decades.

The resolution, which was put forward by France, Germany, and Britain with support by the United States, was passed by 25 votes in favour.

China and Russia voted against while seven other countries abstained

The UN is calling on the Iranians to satisfy the Agency's requests without any further delay. It wants access to two sites in order to clarify whether undeclared nuclear activity took place there in the past.

However, Iran has been blocking access to the sites since early 2020, a move which has fuelled a diplomatic dispute. It is reported that the sites in question are not directly relevant to Iran's current nuclear programme.

Speaking after the vote, Kazem Gharib Abadi, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, said he strongly rejected the resolution and would respond appropriately in due course.

For its part, the IAEA said it still has the access it needs to inspect Iran's declared nuclear facilities according to its mandate under the nuclear deal reached in 2015.
Hong Kong: Senior Hong Kong lawyers have expressed alarm at plans for the city's leader to select judges for national security cases, calling it the most serious challenge to the territory's vaunted judicial independence since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

The move was among a blueprint for a new national security law for Hong Kong released by the official Xinhua news agency on Saturday legislation that is expected to be passed soon by the standing committee of China's parliament, the National People's Congress.

As well as heading a new local national security council supervised by Beijing officials, the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam will also have the power to appoint judges to hear cases under the law.

Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam with Xi Jinping. Lam will have the power to pick judges in national security cases. Credit:AP

Hong Kong Bar Association chairman Philip Dykes described as "extraordinary" any move to have Lam allocate judges, saying it cut to the core of the independence of the judiciary that is protected by the Basic Law, the city's mini-constitution.
The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV.
By Ayya Lmahamad

The Center for Agrarian Science and Innovation has launched a new mobile application Agropolis, that provides consulting services for farmers, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Agricultures press service reported on June 19.

The announcement was made by project manager Anar Nazarov at the meeting held at the Institute for Agricultural Research of the Center for Agrarian Science and Innovation, in a bid to establish relations with the institute of Agricultural research in order to create a new value in providing agricultural consulting services.

The application provides farmers with detailed information about agro-consulting services, as well as easy and fast access to these services.

Any agricultural consulting company, research institutes and individual specialists can offer their services for farmers using this application.

The test version of the application has already been launched, where farmers can get to know the agricultural specialists and the services they offer online, as well as to use these services if needed.

Moreover, it was stated that in the new version of application, the opportunity will be given to farmers to order agricultural consulting services online.

Nazarov stated that with the launch of application, agricultural specialists and consulting companies will be able to offer their services to more and more farmers, and farmers will have the opportunity to get acquainted with additional services in the application and to identify the most appropriate services for themselves and to receive them immediately.

We are interested in creating conditions for the institute to offer its services to farmers and establish cooperation with the institute, given that the Institute of Agricultural Research offers farmers various agricultural consulting and other services," he said.

Furthermore, institute director Faig Khudayev gave detailed information on research priorities, areas of activity and regionalized varieties of the institute.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Damage: Looted goods lie on the street after one of the gangs attacks in Stuttgart. Photo: Simon Adomat/dpa via AP

More than 200 police were deployed to quell a riot in the German city of Stuttgart after gangs of thugs went on a looting and vandalism rampage triggered by street checks for illegal drugs.

Twenty-four people were arrested and 19 police officers injured after one check for drugs sparked attacks on officers and vehicles, followed by widespread vandalism

Several hundred people were involved in the disturbance, which started after officers stopped a 17-year-old on suspicion of drug possession as people partied outside about 11.30pm on Saturday

Bystanders threw stones and bottles, and smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to officers.

Police said 40 businesses were vandalised and nine of them looted, while 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers numbering more than 200 brought the situation under control at around 4am.

One of the injured officers was hurt seriously enough to be considered unable to work.

The violence had no apparent political motivation, police officials believe.

They said the teenage suspect initially stopped was a white German citizen, and that of the two dozen people arrested, half held German passports and half were citizens of other countries.

Stuttgart mayor Fritz Kuhn, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, called the attacks on police "unacceptable".

He said that more people were on the street on Saturday night because many clubs and discos remained closed due to the coronavirus outbreak and that the party scene in a central park had drawn people from the surrounding area.

"One cause was likely alcohol, another the addiction to social media film clips," Mr Kuhn said.

Video taken on mobile phones purporting to be of events circulated widely on social media, with police asking witnesses to upload footage that could assist their investigation.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:58:02|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Monday said both sides of the Taiwan Strait should jointly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, as they both belong to one and the same China.

Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks in response to a new bill passed by Japan's Ishigaki municipal assembly.

Zhu reiterated that the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islets have been an inherent part of China's territory since ancient times, and China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands. Enditem
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying two astronauts launches at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 30, 2020. (SpaceX via Getty Images)

Federal Aviation Administration Slow-Walks Proposed Georgia Spaceport

Commentary

The recent successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that propelled two astronauts aboard the Endeavour capsule into orbit, where it docked with the International Space Station, opened a new chapter in U.S. space exploration.

Unlike the Apollo era of a half-century ago, when NASA called the shots and private companies served as mere contractors, today, its increasingly the private sector that is leading the way in all aspects of space innovation. From reusable rockets to plans to install a satellite-based internet, nimble private companies are already showing that they will be the vanguard of Americas space future.

The role of private companies will be crucial in Americas bourgeoning space rivalry with China and Russia.

Not only will the likes of SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and other firms be vying for position in the new space race, but Cape Canaverals storied launching pads will have to share the honors with other locations eager to host the next blastoff.

One of those locations is in Camden County, Georgia, about 140 miles north of Cape Canaveral. Sparsely populated Camden is Georgias southern-most coastal county. Once in operation, Spaceport Camden, a partnership between the county and commercial space companies, will be the only exclusively vertical, nonfederal range on the East Coast and the site of an aerospace industrial park. Situated on the I-95 corridor next to the Atlantic Ocean, and surrounded by a large undeveloped buffer zone, the site provides a nearly unrestricted range for the launch of spacecraft in a wide array of orbits.

Spaceport Camdens southerly 31-degree north latitude and favorable southeast azimuths enable launches with satellites to maximize the velocity boost from the rotation of the Earth allowing more mass to reach orbit versus higher latitude launch sites. As a commercial property, Spaceport Camden eliminates the need for space companies to sequence their launches alongside government-directed payloads or be saddled with certain legacy systems, processes, and concomitant friction costs.

FAA Red Tape

However, the spaceports promise of spearheading the regions post-COVID-19 recovery by bringing high-paying aerospace jobs to the Savannah-Jacksonville corridor is being thwarted in the bowels of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Camden officials have been waiting five years for the FAA to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. While the FAA published a draft version of the EIS for Spaceport Camden in March 2018, that report identified no environmental issues, from air and water pollution to noise and visual effects, that couldnt be mitigated in some way, for medium-large launchers similar in size to a Falcon 9 or Atlas V launcher that places school-bus-sized satellites into orbit.

In December 2019, county officials asked the FAA to pause its application for a spaceport Launch Site Operators License so it could narrow the scope of the project to small launchers about one-tenth the size of medium-large launchers; the projects directors want to focus exclusively on smaller rockets that will ferry satellites into orbit.

Even though Spaceport Camden has already cleared critical safety and launch-site location reviews and environmental assessment for medium-large launchers, the FAA in May announced that it would require a new environmental review for the scaled-down project.

This would be like the FAA requiring a new EIS for the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport because a new commercial carrier wanted to fly small Cessna aircraft, and not Boeing 747s. The FAA projects that completion of the revised EIS will take until October 2021, adding nearly 18 months to a process that has already gone on for five years.

The FAAs insistence that the project undergo a completely new EIS to account for the downsized rockets has pleased environmental groups who have opposed the project from the start.

When Camden County changed its application to small rockets, that action effectively hit restart in the environmental review process, Brian Gist, lead attorney for the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center, told GeorgiaRecorder.com. Small rockets fail at much higher rates than medium to large rockets, so the FAA must now consider the environmental impacts of these risky, unproven vehicles. Given the enormous risks Spaceport Camden poses to public health, private property, and Cumberland Island, this is not the time for shortcuts and half measures.

But Maj. Gen. Robert S. Dickman, USAF (ret.) and a Camden County resident, dismisses the notion that the proposed spaceport poses a threat to public safety. Having overseen the Eastern Range for the United States Air Force and been involved in commercial space for the past decade, I can attest to the growing launch demand in the commercial space sector, he said. Spaceport Camden is an ideal location for the safe launch of the small satellites and rockets that are rapidly becoming the most important segment of this new market.

Initially, officials at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay 10 miles to the south asked if the spaceports launches would interfere with military training and vessel movements within the Navys designated sea and air space.

Recent talks between the county and officials at the Pentagon and Kings Bay have largely allayed those concerns.

Commercial Partnerships

The global commercial space industry is estimated at more than $350 billion, with much attention focused on low-Earth orbit, the area spanning 100 to 1,240 miles above the planets surface. And the Georgia site continues to attract interest. Opifex Global, a provider of aerospace training services, recently announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Camden County to explore commercial astronaut training facilities near the proposed spaceport.

Whats more, Alaska Aerospace Corp., owner and operator of FAA-licensed Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska (PSCA), has entered into an MOU with the county to support launch vehicle operator needs. The partnership takes advantage of each locations geographical position. PSCA, based in Kodiak, Alaska, is ideal for polar and sun-synchronous orbits, while Camden is well suited for lower-inclination and equatorial orbits.

Possible White House Intervention

Breaking the logjam at FAA may require intervention by the White House. One way to get at the FAAs insistence on a revised EIS is through President Donald Trumps June 4 Executive Order. It instructed federal agencies to expedite the permitting process for construction and energy projects as a means to confront the economic emergency brought on by COVID-19-related lockdowns.

Separately, the Trump administration in January proposed new regulations speeding up the notoriously slow EIS-approval process. The White House might be persuaded that FAAs mandating another lengthy EIS for a launcher class that is 8090 percent smaller than the original evaluated and acceptable launcher class would further unnecessarily delay the spaceport and undermine southeast Georgias economic recovery.

Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, where he concentrates on energy, natural resources, and international relations.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:47:20|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ABUJA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Sunday said it has so far intervened in the fight against COVID-19 with funds up to the tune of 58 million U.S. dollars, as the country continues to see a surge in the number of cases.

The total number of cases in the most populous African country stood at 20,244, as the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed 436 new cases late Sunday.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva told reporters in the southeastern state of Imo that a whopping sum of 58 million U.S. dollars had been committed by the government in the fight against the pandemic.

Some 23 percent of that amount was earmarked for the construction of new medical infrastructure across the six geo-political zones of the country.

Sylva said more actions will be taken to ensure national healthcare delivery as the fight against the pandemic gets tougher.

The government will also continue to strengthen the national resolve to combating the dreadful impact of the pandemic, he said further.

"We discovered key kinetic areas - provision of medical consumables, employment of logistics and in-patient support system, and delivery of medical infrastructure," the minister said.

The government is not just committing funds to the fight against the pandemic. It has also introduced a number of measures to control the spread.

Despite demonstrating a good fight against the pandemic, however, the Nigerian government has continued to express worry by the recent spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.

Although the testing rate in the country has almost tripled with over 113,000 samples tested, compared to less than 42,000 samples tested one month before, the number of new COVID-19 cases has also increased by more than 200 percent within the same period - between May 21 and June 21, the country has moved from 7,016 to more than 20,000 COVID-19 infections, according to local media.

This recent upward surge recorded in the country was expected considering the relaxation of the mandatory lockdowns and other measures put in place to curb the spread of the pandemic, Chikwe Ihekweazu, the head of the NCDC said recently.

Going by the prevailing situation, the country has continued to increase testing capacities and curbing the spread with a raft of measures.

On June 18, ahead of the reopening of the local airports, the Nigerian senate said the plan remained "unrealistic" for now as issues about curbing the spread of the pandemic continue to worry the government.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told an Africa-China summit held via video link on June 17 that the country would support and join any collective action plan at regional and global levels to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout.

"The fight against a global pandemic, which continues to take so many lives, threaten livelihoods and challenge the very fabric of societies, requires enhanced cooperation and worldwide solidarity," Buhari said.
Closing Australias border had an immediate impact on the demand for properties to rent from international students and the likes of Airbnb from international travellers.



As a result, there has been a significant impact on rental vacancies and asking rents in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane - particularly in the inner CBD high rise towers .

SQMs monthly estimates of Sydneys vacancy rate rose from around 3% before the pandemic to 4% in May, weighing on rents

Its been a similar trend in Melbourne though vacancy rates started from lower levels, a percentage point lower according to SQM.



It was a similar picture in Brisbane initially through the lockdown, but rentals and vacancies have more recently stabilised.



The picture in Adelaide, Perth, and Hobart is less clear, though asking rents for houses in Hobart may have softened, perhaps from less interstate migration that had picked up in recent years.

But it looks like things are improving

At Metropole Property Management we're noticing an increased demand from tenants for well located houses, townhouses and established apartments in the middle ring suburbs of Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane.

RealEstate.com.au tracks high-intent renter activity on their portal by examining how users are behaving when they interact with live rental listings.

Their latest Weekly Rental Demand Report data shows that the number of highly-engaged rental listing interactions have increased by 2.7 per cent last week.

That means that serious renter activity has now increased for 10 of the past 11 weeks (falling the previous week) and is up 102.9 per cent from its low in March.

One of the likely drivers of such high volumes of serious renter activity is the fact that the number of new rental properties becoming available is shrinking.

With less stock, those serious about renting are required to narrow their focus and are more likely to be highly-engaged with whats available online.

RealEstate.com.au say nationally, serious renter activity is up 70.5 per cent higher on last year.

While a lot of people are showing high-intent in their rental searches it remains to be seen whether they will actually move, especially considering there is a rental moratorium in place and it may not be until later in the year when we actually see them moving into new rental accommodation.

........................................................................................................

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.
22.06.2020 LISTEN

President Akufo-Addo on Sunday applauded Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation, for offering his 70-bed Medical Centre at Toase, in the Ashanti Region, for use as a COVID-19 treatment centre.

The President thanked the Minister for what he called his admirable, civic gesture of making available his facility in Toase in the Ashanti Region as isolation centre in the fight against COVID-19.

Addressing the nation yesterday for the 12th time in the period of the Coronavirus disease, His Excellency said Professor Frimpong Boateng deserves the sincere appreciation of the entire nation.

.Such institutions deserve the sincere appreciation of the entire nation, as does the gesture of the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, who has offered his 70-bed hospital in Toase, in the Ashanti Region, as a COVID-19 treatment centre, the President said.

He noted that this has been a timely offer, which would ensure that the nations overall healthcare systems would not unduly burdened and overrun.

President Nana Addo said in line with their policy of providing optimal care for the sick, and reducing COVID-19 related deaths, government continues to mobilize holding-bay, quarantine, isolation, and treatment centers across the country.
We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message.
In light of the recent protests across the country, many individuals around Connecticut are demanding that statues of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus be taken down. Columbus, who purportedly discovered the Americas in 1492, has been marred by his history of slavery and genocide against Native Americans.

Connecticut cities and towns have already begun to take action against the statues, and in some cases, have had the statues removed permanently.
Three professionals from a small town in West Cork have taken to working in the car park of St Patrick's Church in Bandon during lockdown, because of frustrations surrounding unreliable internet coverage.

Around 100 houses in nearby Gaggin have average download speeds of 0.2mbps and an upload speed of 0.01mbps. The town is on a list of villages and towns around Ireland due to get high speed internet hubs whilst residents await the arrival of the National Broadband Plan.

Tony Cullinane from Gaggin normally works from home and travels for his sales job. However, with lockdown he is working from home all the time. In an interview with Cork's 96FM he says he is "driven to distraction" by the poor broadband.

"The broadband at home is really poor. To do team calls or any downloading of big files I have to come in to the church yard. I could be in here for an hour or I could be here for four hours depending on what is happening each day. It is painful. You are sitting in the one place for a really long period of time. It is uncomfortable on hot days. We had some fantastic weather which is great but when you are sitting in a car and its really hot weather it is difficult.

We had training at work a few weeks ago. I had to leave the (online) training then because my battery went in the car. I had to go home and charge the laptop and get back in the car again.

I would understand if we were twenty or thirty miles from a town but we are only a few kilometres from Bandon. We are not up the side of a mountain. In this day and age it is unacceptable."

Maeve O'Sullivan Kennedy usually works full time at a financial services office in Cork. She was advised to work from home from the 7th of March and will remain out of the office until September 1st.

"I have been in the middle of a client call with work (at home) and the internet just goes. It is horrible. You don't have space (in the car). You don't have a place to charge in my car. There are no toilet facilities in my car obviously. It's really draining. On the hot days my phone has switched off in the car because of the over heating. It is not good. It is not sustainable. We are under a constant state of stress. We need to get this sorted. In this day and age internet is a basic need."

James O'Regan, who is an IT consultant, says working from the car has been a nightmare for the trio from Gaggin.

"The internet was never great (in Gaggin).

"Earlier in the morning is better. When it comes to nine or ten o clock forget about it. When you do come to the car there is a relief that you can do a day's work. But overall it is demoralising. Politicians need to take a serious look at this. It is all going to be remote working and online for schooling. That is the future."

A spokesperson for the Department of Communications said: Cork County Council is working to facilitate the residents of Gaggin as soon as possible.

The Department continues to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the roll out and will continue to do so over the coming months.

The National Broadband Plan does not propose a 4G solution, it is a fibre connection to the home.
Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, is planning more exposure to technology after the recent $1.2 billion stake in Indias Reliance Industries' Jio Platforms, said a Bloomberg Television report.

Speaking to Manus Cranny, Bloomberg Television during a virtual Bloomberg Invest Global conference, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at Mubadala Investment Company, said: We need to be much more exposed to technology in all its facets. Were on the right track.

Mubadala Investment Company is preparing to double down on its exposure to the technology sector, setting its sights on Asia, after the Abu Dhabi fund took a $1.2 billion stake in Indias Jio Platforms. Technology, in particular the venture space, medical technology, life sciences and artificial intelligence, is the place to go, Al Mubarak said. Thats the arena for us to build experiences and expertise in and to deploy significant capital.

The $232-billion fund is looking at India, China and Southeast Asia for potential investments. We are, from a relative perspective, under-invested in Asia, he said. So youll see us grow our portfolio in Asia and expect us to do more in the med-tech space, artificial intelligence, life sciences, agribusiness. These are spaces we like. - TradeArabia News Service
Town of Lee, N.Y.  A person was airlifted to the hospital after an ultralight aircraft crashed into a building in an air park in the town of Lee, according to media reports.

The crash occurred just after 8:30 a.m. today at the E. Centro International Air Park, a small airfield northwest of Rome. The pilot was trapped inside and had to be extricated, according to news reports.

It appears the pilot was attempting to land. The person was taken by helicopter to the hospital.

The Oneida County Sheriffs Office responded, along with New York State Police and the Lee Center Fire Department. The sheriffs office said state police is the lead agency investigating.

The air park is at 4931 Lee Valley Road.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.
George Floyd is becoming the Emmett Till of the 21st century.

The ongoing, passionate, widespread, and no longer violent demonstrations that have come in the wake of his brutal death have given us an opportunity like that of Tills horrible death for the civil rights movement 70 years earlier.

If we seize it in the correct spirit, it will be an opportunity not only to reopen and significantly advance the conversation around race in America, but to bring us through this time of crisis to a place where we can actually see our distant goal  a world without hate, racism and injustice.

I can see several ways this can happen, based on my lifelong dedication to, and study of, nonviolence.

When the Indian National Congress moved a resolution calling for a complete boycott of British goods in 1919, Gandhi was actually against it. Look at yourself, he urged his fellow Congress leaders; not one of you isnt wearing at least one item of British cloth. To boycott it all at once would be hopelessly unrealistic.

First lets make our own cloth, he sensibly argued, then boycott British goods; and he doggedly set about making that famous constructive programme happen. Lets apply this logic to, for example, the cry to defund the police. How could we realistically go about it?

The first step, and the biggest, would be to address the high level of crime in our society. Generally speaking, we have that problem because of two things: the degree of economic inequality that has worsened to obscene proportions, and the acceptance if not glorification of violence in our culture, primarily conveyed by the mass media.

Economic inequality, gross as it is, can be rectified. Right now, and most immediately relevant, would be the scheme recommended by journalist David Brooks, to do reparations not by doling out cash to individuals, but by making generous investments in rebuilding of neglected neighborhoods.

But we want longer term changes to the economy as a whole. Part of that job would be political, of course: electing people who resist lobbyists and vote in reasonable tax structures, etc.

Part, though, would be more up to us: expanding the new economic experiments like cooperatives, worker ownership, benefit corporations, barter systems and local currency. Another part would be reducing our own consumerism, to the great benefit of the planet and our own mental and physical health.

Media literacy, in the full sense of the term, would begin with giving students  and all of us, really  enough self-knowledge that we feel for ourselves that underneath whatever excitement we get from watching violence is a disturbing feeling of disconnectedness, of alienation. The most profound way to do this, I think, would be to appropriate, in our own terms, the perennial wisdom embedded in almost all human traditions that teaches that we are really all parts of one another. Modern science fully supports this vision, and its doubly unfortunate to withhold the wisdom or the science from students and the general public.

When weve taken these long-term changes in hand  and we dont need to wait for their impact to be felt very widely  there are simple enough things we can address right now. The most important areas seem to me to be these three:

* Greatly expand the groups around the country that use nonviolent methods to defuse conflict  neighborhood efforts like the Violence Interrupters in Chicago and nationwide organizations like the Shanti Sena (Peace Army) Network.

* Greatly expand restorative justice in schools and throughout the criminal justice system. The prevailing approach of retributive justice has been called by forensic psychiatrist James Gilligan the most powerful stimulant of violence yet discovered. Restorative justice, by contrast, uplifts and reconciles.

* Begin to transition the police force to a nonviolent peacekeeping mechanism, which I daresay most police officers would welcome.

All three of these steps, especially the first two, involve practices that are already going on and that can boast terrific track records, even though the chances are youre unfamiliar with them. Taken together, and added to others that could certainly be mentioned, they will harness the rage and the pain that were rightly feeling right now to build together the world we really want.

Michael Nagler writes for PeaceVoice and is the author of The Nonviolence Handbook and The Search for a Nonviolent Future.
The Delhi Police on Monday asked the Delhi High Court for a day to seek instructions on a bail plea by Jamia student Safoora Zargar, charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for her alleged role in the northeast Delhi riots.

Justice Rajiv Shakdher, hearing the case through a video conference, allowed this after Zargars counsel said she has no objection to it.

Before this, the police claimed in the Delhi high court on Monday that Zargar is not entitled to bail on the grounds of pregnancy as the law does not make any distinction in this regard.

Police told the court that Delhis jails have had many pregnant inmates. They said that in the past 10 years, 39 deliveries have taken place inside the prison.

...there is no exception carved out for pregnant inmate, who is accused of such heinous crime, to be released on bail merely because of their pregnancy. The law provides for adequate safeguards and medical attention during their custody in jail, police said.

Zargar, an MPhil student of Jamia Millia Islamia, approached the court seeking bail on the ground that she is pregnant and has severe medical complications.

In the course of the hearing, the police claimed that Zargar was part of a conspiracy to use any means to cause death and injury to people. It also claimed that she was one of the main conspirators in the commission of the serious offence of causing large-scale disruption and riots, not only in Delhi but also in other parts of the country.

 The severity of the offence is in no manner mitigated by the factum of pregnancy., it added.

Zargar was arrested on April 10 for allegedly conspiring with other persons to instigate and start riots in northeast Delhi. At least 53 people died and 400 others were injured in the riots in February. She is seeking bail on the grounds that she has medical complications in her pregnancy.

In a status report, Delhi Police said that based on an investigation, a case is clearly made out from the statements of witnesses.

Many student groups across Delhi have held protests seeking Zargars release. Students bodies and activists have accused Delhi Police of launching a witch hunt against student activists, especially those who took part in protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Zargar earlier told the court she was only part of the protests and has denied the police allegations.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aman Lekhi represented Delhi Police. During the hearing, advocate Rahul Mehra, the standing counsel of the Delhi government (criminal), told the court that the SG and the ASG ought to have taken permission from the city government to appear in the matter. The court did not weigh in on this.

On June 4, a city court dismissed Zargars bail plea, stating that right of speech and expression and for that matter protest or demonstration, is not an absolute right and subject to reasonable restrictions under the Indian Constitution.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, says he has no nightmares over the number of his Owo kinsmen contesting against him both in the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party. Over 10 aspirants who have purchased nomination and expression of interest forms in the APC and the PDP are from Owo, hometown of Governor Akeredolu.

Advertisement

The immediate past governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose says President Muhammadu Buhari can not run the affairs of his immediate family not to talk of managing Nigeria.

The former governor said this while reacting to the crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC that led to the disqualification and exit of the Edo state governor, Godwin Obaseki.

Rotimi Akeredolu, governor of Ondo state, says he has no hand in the saga between his deputy, Agboola Ajayi, and the police.

Agboola had been restricted from leaving his official quarters at the government house on Saturday night by police officers led by Bolaji Salami, commissioner of police. The deputy governor alongside some of
UNHCR Considers Over 3.5 Million Venezuelan Migrants Refugees

By VOA News June 21, 2020

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says the more than 3.5 million Venezuelans who have left the country in the past five years are officially considered refugees.

The UNHCR announcement that coincided with World Refugee Day on Saturday, said the Venezuelans were being added to the total number of refugees worldwide.

"Well, this decision comes after a very wide discussion in the organization on how to categorize the Venezuelans that have been displaced abroad," said Luis Fernando Godinho, UNHCR spokesperson in Brazil. Since last year, he said, the UNHCR has said that these people need international protection and thus should be recognized as refugees.

The agency's classification also includes thousands of people from Central America who crossed into Mexico last year, hoping for a better life in the United States after escaping credible life-threatening situations prompted by criminal organized groups in their own countries.

The refugee agency said fleeing violence in the country of origin was sufficient reason for a migrant to be classified as a refugee.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has asked host governments to give refugees and asylum seekers the same benefits as their own citizens.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






It seems like Prince Harry is developing some remorse after he made the abrupt decision to leave the royal family.

Nearly three months since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle officially left the monarchy, most royal family news about them highlighted the struggles they continue to face after they relocated to Los Angeles.

Compared to Meghan, the Duke of Sussex is said to be suffering more since he does not have friends in the state, nor he is familiar with the places around it.

Because of the said issues and multiple conflicts, a source revealed that Harry is somehow having regrets since Los Angeles is not what he expected it to be. It didn't help that the Prince had "unrealistic expectations" about LA and life in Hollywood.

"Moving to a completely different country is never easy for anyone, including Harry. And he wasn't expecting to be faced with so many obstacles," the insider told Us Weekly. "[He] saw L.A. through rose-colored glasses."

The royal couple reportedly considered moving elsewhere though, but they are staying in California for now due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Since California and England are two completely different places, a lot of people expected the royal prince to experience a culture shock as soon as he relocated to the U.S. with Meghan.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph reported previously that Harry told his friends he cannot believe how his life "has been turned upside down" after he lost the military connections and the service titles he used to have.

"Harry has told friends he is really missing the army as well as his military appointments," a source told the media outlet. "He misses the camaraderie of being in the forces."

The source went on and revealed how happy the Duke was when he was serving the army, as well as when he met the Duchess of Sussex. However, he never predicted that things would turn out the way they did after Megxit.

Prince William, Royal Family Helping Harry

Although Prince Harry had a big feud with his older brother, Prince William was still the first person Harry turned to.

Ever since the family of three settled down in Los Angeles, the Duke of Cambridge became aware of his brother's struggles -- including the safety and security challenges that the Sussexes are facing right now.

"William's advised Harry to return to London or move elsewhere, somewhere safer," the insider said. "He's concerned about his brother's well-being and safety."

Prince William is also said to be helping Harry adjust to his new life by making himself available whenever his little brother needs someone to talk to.

Aside from the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry has also been in contact with Queen Elizabeth II in the past few weeks. According to source, Her Majesty has "been reaching out to Harry to see if he's OK and has offered to help out if needed" even though she is currently isolating herself at Windsor Castle.

For now, only time will tell whether Prince Harry will return to the royal family with his wife Meghan Markle.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle Torture: Duchess Of Sussex In Pain Throughout Time With Royal Family?
GENESEE TWP, MI -- A 21-year-old woman is recovering in the hospital after being injured during a drive-by shooting in Genesee Township.

Officers with the Genesee Township Police Department responded shortly after 1:30 a.m. Sunday, June 21 to Roma Banquet Center, 5226 Saginaw St., for a shooting.

It was discovered by police that the woman, whose name has not been released, was seated in a parked vehicle outside the business when an unknown person drove by and shot at the vehicle.

Witnesses informed police that the shots originated from an unknown vehicle traveling on Saginaw Street in front of the business.

The woman was hit by gunfire and transported to Hurley Medical Center in Flint.

She is listed in stable condition, police said.

No suspects are in custody.

Anyone with information about the shooting incident is asked to call Genesee Township Police Detective Paul Colliver at 810-640-2000 or Crime Stoppers of Flint & Genesee County at 1-800-422-JAIL (5245) to provide an anonymous tip.
A zero-dong supermarket was opened on Saturday to support 1,500 workers of the Thang Long Industrial Zone in Hanoi who have been financially affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Workers of the Thang Long industrial zone in Hanoi at the zero-dong supermarket.  Photo courtesy of New Zealand embassy in Vietnam

The shop, lasting for two days over the weekend, is a joint-initiative between the New Zealand Embassy in Vietnam, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) and the International Labour Organisation in Vietnam (ILO).

Each customer who visits the zero-dong supermarket, operated by the Trade Union of Thang Long Industrial Zone, is allowed to choose a package of groceries worth around VND200,000 for free. Items on the shelf included essential goods such as rice, eggs, cereals, vegetables, noodles, and protective products like face masks, and hand sanitiser.

This initiative, funded by the New Zealand embassy, aims to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 among 1,500 workers in the Dong Anh area of Hanoi, whose jobs and incomes have been adversely impacted by COVID-19.

This project demonstrates the strong partnership between New Zealand and Vietnam, said Ambassador Wendy Matthews at the opening ceremony.

This project is a practical initiative to help ease the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Thang Long workers and their families."

New Zealand and Vietnam celebrate 45 years of diplomatic relations this year. Over that time New Zealand has worked closely with Vietnam to develop shared prosperity and stability, drawing on the best of New Zealands knowledge and skills. VNS

First zero cost supermarket opens in HCM City The first Zero Cost Happy Supermarket has opened in HCM City to support the poor amid difficulties caused by Covid-19 pandemic.
The European Union (EU) is hoping to revive investment talks with China on Monday, as it hosts calls with the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

The two sides started negotiations for an investment agreement back in 2014, which Europe hoped would ultimately grant easier access to the Chinese market for European investors.

The EU has argued that European companies working in China don't enjoy similar levels of transparency and fair competition as those given to Chinese firms in the European Union. However, negotiators have not made significant progress and there are questions if they will reach a deal by the end of year, as had been planned.

The EU wants "to give a new political impetus" to its relationship with China, an EU official, who didn't want to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks, told CNBC Sunday.

Ensuring a level-playing field is a key aim for the European Union. To this end, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, opened a process last week that could restrict Chinese government-backed firms from operating in the EU.

"We need the right tools to ensure that foreign subsidies do not distort our market, just as we do with national subsidies," Margrethe Vestager, the vice president for the European Commission, said last week.

The institution already oversees state aid granted by European governments to corporates, but it wants the same tool to oversee foreign state subsidies too. This could be a problem for many Chinese giants such as Huawei, given its links to the Chinese government.

Tweet 1

The EU also wants to take stock of the Covid-19 pandemic, discuss China's climate goals, security policy and human rights. The European Commission said in May that it has "grave concerns" about Chinese plans for a national security law in Hong Kong.

The meeting takes place at a time of heightened tensions in international politics and a health emergency that has translated into an economic crisis too.

The same EU official told CNBC that there won't be a written statement between China and the EU on Monday, suggesting there won't be any concrete measures taken.

The EU-China summit is the first for the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, who both started in their new roles last December.
The first full day of summer kicked off with a bang on Sunday as portions of the nation's midsection, from Texas to Wisconsin, were rocked by severe thunderstorms.

A line of severe storms fired up across the Upper Midwest on Sunday afternoon, leading to dozens of damaging wind reports and hail across portions of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Another line of severe storms roared to life across Kansas later Sunday afternoon and prompted at least six reports of land-spout tornadoes in the northwestern portion of the state, according to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC).

@NWSGoodland about 10 minutes ago. 1 mile east and 4-5 miles north of Hoxie pic.twitter.com/Hbv9bNppS1  Adam Heim (@AdamHeim5) June 21, 2020

This line of storms pushed through much of western and central Kansas, before diving into Oklahoma, as the sun set on Father's Day. These storms left a barrage of damaging wind and hail reports in their wake, including several 80-mph wind gusts, as well as at least one report of 3.25-inch-diameter hail in Lorraine, Kansas.

Tumultuous weather will continue into Monday night as a storm moving through the nation's midsection prompts stormy weather across much of the central and eastern portions of the United States.

The most widespread threat of severe thunderstorms through Monday night will exist across portions of the southern Plains and the middle Mississippi Valley. Residents in these areas will need to keep their eye to the sky if spending any time outdoors.

Storms that develop through Monday night will likely be able to produce torrential downpours, hail and damaging wind gusts with an AccuWeather Local StormMax of 70 mph.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

A few cities forecast to be in the direct path of these bulky storms include Lubbock, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee, as well as St. Louis and Chicago.

Story continues

"The majority of the severe thunderstorms that rattle the mid-Mississippi Valley should wane in severity after Monday evening," according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski. "However, the storms emerging from the Texas Panhandle can remain potent with damaging winds and flooding rain across northern Texas overnight."

The risk of heavy and locally severe thunderstorms will continue to press southward across eastern Texas and the lower Mississippi Valley on Tuesday.

"Rounds of showers and thunderstorms will be capable of producing rain heavy enough to cause flooding," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Carl Babinski.

Low-lying and poor drainage areas will be most at risk for flooding issues.

After locally strong storms rumbled over the mid-Atlantic on Monday, another round of storms is set to unfold on Tuesday over a larger area.

The same cold front responsible for Monday's severe threat in the Midwest will dig east on Tuesday. Areas most at risk on Tuesday extend from the Ohio Valley to the far southern portion of the Canadian Province of Quebec.

Storms will fire up from southern Indiana to far eastern Michigan early Tuesday before becoming more potent and expanding across Ohio and much of Ontario, Canada, Tuesday afternoon. Residents of western Pennsylvania and New York can expect to encounter these strong storms by early Tuesday evening.

Hail, flooding downpours and damaging wind gusts up to an AccuWeather Local StormMax of 65 mph are likely in the strongest storms.

A few locales in the path of Tuesday's storms include Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, along with Toronto and Ottawa, Canada.

Those outdoors can utilize AccuWeather's exclusive MinuteCast for their location to determine exactly when stormy weather will arrive.

"Whether storms become violent or not, all storms can pose lightning dangers for those with outdoor plans," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski said.

The threat of severe weather is forecast to decrease on Wednesday, with no widespread areas of severe weather anticipated across the country.

However, rounds of showers and a few feisty thunderstorms will impact much of the Southeast both Tuesday and Wednesday. Repeated rounds of storms can lead to localized flash flooding and travel disruptions for the area.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 is set to bring back the rotating bezel after the Active models swapped it out for a capacitive version. We saw that in photos for the certification process, now new photos have surfaced and they a powered-on watch.

As you can see the UI hasnt changed much and it is still heavily reliant on the rotating bezel to scroll through the menus, the list of recent apps and other portions of the UI. The watch is expected to come out with the new Tizen 5.5 OS, which is currently on its second public milestone

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 will come in two sizes  41 mm and 45 mm, aka SM-R840 and SM-R850. These will have 1.2 and 1.4 screens, respectively, and will be both IP68 and MIL-STD-810G rated. The watch will pack 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB storage (which chipset will be used is unknown). The two sizes will also have LTE versions (R845 and R855).

We expect Samsung to announce the new smartwatch along with the Buds Live TWS (the beans) next month.

Source | Via
Thousands of people marched in Paris and across France on Saturday in a string of protests against racism, alleged police violence and other social injustices, including undocumented migrants.

Hundreds turned out in the capital to remember black men who died following encounters with French police or under suspicious circumstances. They made their way to the former home of Lamine Dieng, a 25-year-old French-Senegalese man arrested in 2007 who died in a police van.

They also marched in support of Adama Traore, a young black man who died in police custody in 2016. His sister, Assa Traore, has become a figurehead of the racial justice movement, and has protested for the past four weekends.

Thousands of other protesters marched in Paris and cities around France in support of undocumented migrants.

I hope, that this is not just a moment of brief awareness," Dieng's sister Ramata Dieng told The Associated Press. We have dreamed for a long time of seeing this many people mobilising on this issue.

This can't stop at indignation. It's fine to be indignant but we must move to the next step and the next step is to put implement the tools, have laws voted on so that police are no longer above the law, she said.

The French government agreed earlier this month to pay 145,000 euros ($162,000) to Dieng's relatives in a settlement via the European Court of Human Rights, after the family tried for more than a decade to hold police accountable for his death.

Many at Saturday's protest linked it with the case of of George Floyd, an African American man whose death on May 25 in the U.S. city of Minneapolis galvanised protesters around the globe to rally against racism and police brutality.

George Floyd was the hair that broke the camel's back in the United States, but it's not just George Floyd, demonstrator Lylia Boukerrouche.

In France, though it's different, it's a similar situation. It was a colonial state, and we see that today police violence occurs against back and Arabs, the descendants of immigrants, Boukerrouche added.

Some demonstrators carried placards bearing the words Justice For Ibo, a reference to Ibrahima Bah, 22, who died in an October motorbike crash in the Paris suburbs of Villiers-le-Bel wile allegedly trying to escape a police check. Bah's family blames the police for his death.

The protests Saturday in Paris for Dieng and undocumented migrants were authorised by French authorities, who have been exercising caution over protests in recent weeks as the country emerges from coronavirus restrictions.

Other protests on Saturday in the French capital were banned, including an anti-racism demonstration near the U.S. Embassy by the Black African Defense League, and another protest linked to recent violence involving Chechens in the French city of Dijon. Activists gathered anyway.

Separately, a small group of activists staged a flash protest Saturday outside the French Health Ministry in support of state medical workers, who are demanding higher pay and more hospital staff after France's once-renowned health care system struggled to cope with the virus crisis following years of cost cuts.

The protesters sprayed red paint on the ministry building, symbolising blood, and on a mock medal.

(with AP)


(Photo: 3 Ways to Get a U.S. Green Card)

Immigration has been and will continue to be a central issue in the United States. But for people that want to make this their country, there is no controversy. The United States is for them the place where they can improve the quality of their lives, where they can come to escape from prosecution, where they can fulfill their professional dreams, where they can encounter higher incomes and greater work opportunities. The reasons are as endless as the number of individuals wanting to call this their home.

How many immigrants live in the United States?

The Migration Policy Institute has estimated that in 2018 there were close to 45 million immigrants living in this country. Although historically the number of immigrants per year has had a tendency to rise, in recent years it has been growing far slower than before.

What are the most common ways to get a U. S. Green Card?

The Green Card is the most coveted document that all immigrants would like to have. Although there are a number of visas that allow people to legally reside in the United States, the Green Card has a higher degree of permanence, and can actually lead to citizenship. Based on your eligibility category, here are the three most common ways to get one:

Green Card Through Family Sponsorship

This is by far the most common way to obtain a Green Card. However, to qualify, you must be a close relative to an American citizen or Green Card holder. A close relative is a spouse, parents, or any unmarried children that are under the age of 21. Through Forms I-130 and I-485, the U. S. citizen would petition for their relative. If the close relatives are not yet in the United States, they will go through their consulates and be approved by the Department of State. If the person doing the petition is a Green Card holder and not a citizen, the process will take a lot more time.

Green Card Through an Employer

If you have been fortunate enough to receive a job offer in the United States, your employer can help you on your way to getting a Green Card. To begin with, your employer must get a labor certification for you with the Department of State, using Form I-140. For more details, ask an immigration attorney how this process would work.

Green Card to Refugees or Asylum Seekers

If you entered the United States as a refugee or seeking asylum you are eligible to apply for a Green Card one year after your arrival. Immediate family members of asylees can also apply. Both asylees and refugees generally do not need to file a petition if they meet the requirements to adjust their status and get a Green card.

Filing Your Petition

The number of visas available varies depending on the qualifying category through which you are applying. Close relatives, for example, do not have to worry because there is an unlimited number of visas for them. To make sure you are on the right pathway to getting your Green Card, an immigration attorney is your best ally. Green Card lawyer Saman Movassaghi Gonzalez has the expertise and knowledge you need to navigate through this complicated process and get the desired results.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, right, shakes hands with Hyundai Motor Group Executive Vice Chairman Chung Euisun at LG Chem's Ochang plant in North Chungcheong Province, Monday. / Courtesy of LG Corp.



Chairman Koo meets Hyundai EVC Chung at LG Chem's local battery plant for first time ever



By Baek Byung-yeul



LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo has gone all-out to expand the group's presence in the battery cell business, meeting with Hyundai Motor Group's Executive Vice Chairman Chung Euisun, a move interpreted by many as aiming to diversify his company's battery sales channels.



The two leaders met for the first time ever at LG Chem's battery-manufacturing plant in Ochang, 120 kilometers south of Seoul, Monday morning, and toured the plant's electric vehicle (EV) battery production line. "Koo and Chung shared views relevant to the growth of the EV battery business and how their expanded partnership will be beneficial to both firms," LG said in a statement.



The high-profile meeting came on the second anniversary of Koo becoming head of the conglomerate. Since he took the top seat, the young group leader has been searching for new business models beyond LG's conventional growth engines of consumer electronics, displays and chemicals. More precisely, Koo has been trying to break down barriers between group affiliates to achieve synergy in an era of web-based connectivity and convergence.






Kim Kardashian West posted a new photo of her family on social media, and fans cant get over how grown-up North West looks in the snapshot. Though the post was intended to pay tribute to Kanye West in honor of Fathers Day, fans couldnt look away from the couples eldest daughter, who they claim stole the show as she posed alongside her famous family.

Kim Kardashian West and daughter, North West | Rich Fury/Forum Photos via Getty Images

Kim Kardashian West posted a new photo honoring Kanye West for Fathers Day

Kardashian West paid tribute to Kayne West in the best way possible by sharing a photo of their adorable family on Instagram in honor of Fathers Day.

On June 21, the SKIMS founder called her husband of six-years the best dad as she shared two photos of herself, West, their four kids, and the rappers dad, Ray, relaxing at their Wyoming ranch on her Instagram. The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star captioned the post, Happy Fathers Day to the best dad!!!! Thank you for making life so much fun! You give our kids the most awesome life! I love you so much!!!

RELATED: Kim Kardashian and Kanye Wests Daughter North West Just Turned 7 but Her Net Worth Is Insane

The post comes a couple of days after the Kardashian-Jenners flew out to The Cowboy State to celebrate North Wests 7th birthday. In typical Kar-Jenner fashion, the family shared a ton of photos and videos of their Wyoming adventure on social media.

Not only did Kim and Kourtney post photos of Norths big firework display in honor of her birthday, but the Poosh founder also commemorated her nieces special day by posting snapshots of the now 7-year-old and her own daughter Penelope Disick enjoying the 6,713-acre mountain ranch.

The mom of three and younger sister Kylie Jenner also shared additional photos of themselves on the property, making the most out of their family time on the open plains.

Fans cant get over how grown up North looks

While many couldnt help but gush over how sweet Kardashian Wests Fathers Day post was, others couldnt get over how much older North suddenly looked in the photo.

After Kardashian West shared her post, fans took to the comments, writing things like, North looks so grown up, and Why does North look SO grown up all of a sudden!!

One follower even pointed out how much North is starting to look like Kardashian West, claiming that the little girl is her moms twin. North tho! Thats Kims twin all the way down to her vibe. Kim you touched that baby DEEPLY! Love it! North about to pull up with a serious take over when you retire. The saga continues.

RELATED: Kim Kardashian Fans Are Calling North West the Kim K of Her Friend Group

Because the 7-year-olds grown-up appearance caught many peoples attention, some thought she stole the show in the photo, even though the post was meant to celebrate Ye.

Its Fathers Day, but North stole the show yet again[shes] so pretty, a commenter penned.

But despite the photo winning many people over, some followers had a problem with the way North looks, claiming that she shouldnt be dressing the way she does at her age.

The caption was so dry I need water. & also North needs to not be dressed like an adult. She has lots of time for that.. i love alll you guys but lil short for a child, someone commented, referencing Norths cow dress.

Of course, fans were quick to come to Noris defense, saying that there was nothing wrong with her cowgirl inspired outfit.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Dubai, United Arab Emirates  Mon, June 22, 2020 14:02 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660a95d4 2 News United-Arab-Emirates,Dubai,Tourist,tourism,travel,coronavirus,COVID-19 Free

Dubai announced on Sunday it would allow tourists back in the Gulf city state from July 7 after a closure of more than three months to contain the coronavirus.

"Dubai to welcome tourists from July 7," the emirate's media center said, quoting the Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management.

It also gave a list of protocols for travelers entering the Gulf emirate.

"Travelers must stringently comply with preventive measures and safety procedures put in place by Dubai and destination countries," the report said.

Tourists are "required to present recent COVID-19 negative certificate or undergo testing at Dubai airports" it said, with those testing positive to observe a 14-day isolation.

Read also: Porsches, popcorn and social distancing at Dubai drive-in cinema

A test for coronavirus is mandatory and should done 96 hours before travelling to Dubai, the report said.

Visitors are also required to have international health insurance and download a special phone application that lists their details, as well as fill a special "health declaration form", it added.

Dubai also announced that citizens and residents would be allowed to travel abroad from Tuesday.

Dubai is one of the seven sheikdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates.

The UAE has recorded nearly 45,000 cases of coronavirus, including 302 deaths.
The collection of trip-data from shared e-scooters in Los Angeles is being challenged in federal court.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed a case in Federal District Court in California, on behalf of plaintiffs Justin Sanchez and Eric Alejo, claiming the Los Angeles Department of Transportation ought not collect detailed trip data for shared micro-mobility devices like bikes and scooters. The lawsuit, filed on June 8, 2020, seeks to halt the collection of this data by LADOT.Trip data, which includes real-time locations and routes, could  without a significant amount of effort  be fleshed out to reveal the individual identities of riders, the lawsuit states.Knowing that a particular trip began at an office building and ended in front of a home, for example, makes the difficulty of identifying the rider as simple as knowing their home and work addresses, the lawsuit reads The collection of this data is facilitated by a software tool known as Mobility Data Specification (MDS), developed by LADOT and a private-sector consultant, and released in 2018. The tool establishes a common language to standardize the sharing of mobility data, particularly, trip data. Providing this trip-data is a condition for deploying scooters in the city.LADOT contends the trip-data is needed to better understand how mobility devices are being used, the infrastructure needed to support them, ensure the equitable distribution of the devices and other transportation policy goals.Officials with LADOT did not comment directly on the lawsuit, but pointed to a February 2020 commentary piece inmagazine, by Seleta Reynolds , general manager of LADOT. In that piece, Reynolds defended the collection of trip data and the use of MDS, calling it a straight forward tool, and a key aid in the citys aim to effectively manage the vast proliferation of micro-mobility devices.MDS is largely viewed as a platform to facilitate the management of mobility devices by the city, she explained in during a panel discussion at the CoMotion L.A. conference in November 2019, titled Can Cities and Their Disruptors be Friends?This is bold new stuff for cities to do, Reynolds admitted.We started to play around with a bunch of bold ideas, and scooters showed up, Reynolds told the conference dedicated to urban transportation innovation.Achieving transportation management goals can  and should  be done without the collection of user data, said Hannah Zhao, a staff attorney with EFF.First, its a false choice to say that if we want good transportation regulation, we must give up our privacy interests, said Zhao, in an email. The government has not always demonstrated an ability to convert data into good policies. Second, there are alternatives to MDS that the city should pursue first in furtherance of transportation planning regarding micro-mobility vehicles.Bringing in different data sets for analysis, which can lead to data-driven decision-making, is often a central goal of cities as they explore innovation and solve large urban problems like traffic congestion, said Lilian Coral, director of national strategy and technology innovation at the Knight Foundation.In some ways, you kind of have to get your hands on the data to see what it really tells you, to ask it a lot of questions, to be able to then see patterns and trends, and then figure out, Oh, this is letting me know about this, or that, said Coral.Cities need data about where vehicles are parked and ideally where people are riding them to plan for safer streets for all road users, but especially vulnerable ones like bikes, scooters and pedestrians, said Regina Clewlow, CEO and founder of Populus, which functions as a third-party aggregator of mobility data, providing de-identified movement information to cities from private mobility companies.Still, the public collection of movement data could put cities in uncharted legal waters when considering concerns around privacy and ethics, say experts.They almost have to start by creating some of these guardrails before they even get their hands on the information, to even know what to do with it, said Coral, a former chief data officer for the city of Los Angeles.Some of those "guardrails" have been outlined in the LADOT's Data Protection Principles , where mobility data received from MDS is classified as "confidential," among other safety protocols, according to documents submitted to the Los Angeles City Council on June 14, 2020.The case in Los Angeles may be further complicated by the recently passed California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as the California Electronic Communication Privacy Act (CalECPA ), which set up some of the most stringent regulations in the country related to electronic consumer data.Successful city planning has never relied on such granular data and such a significant intrusion upon its citizens before, said Zhao, the EFF attorney. Additionally, its important to remember that the data from MDS lacks the type of protection and security measures that easily de-anonymized data should have, which is incredibly concerning.And indeed, the California Legislative Counsel Bureau offered its opinion in an Aug. 1, 2019 letter to state Sen. Jacqui Irwin saying, "...CalECPA restricts a department of a city or county from requiring a business that rents dockless bikes, scooters, or other shared mobility devices to the public to provide the department with real-time location data from its dockless shared mobility devices as a condition of granting a permit to operate in the departments jurisdiction.Earlier this year, JUMP Bikes, a division of Uber, challenged the collection of mobility data by LADOT, arguing that the California Electronic Communication Privacy Act (CalECPA) prohibits the city from demanding the ride-hailing company hand over its trip data. The legal dispute is ongoing in federal court. Its unclear how Ubers divestment of JUMP will affect how this case moves forward.Even though private companies like Uber, Lyft and other scooter operators collect detailed user data, the chances of it being used for policing is minimal, said Zhao.We have qualms about the collection of data by companies as well, but there are key differences between the government and private entities, Zhao pointed out. The latter cant put you in jail, and, importantly for the cases were filing, they cant violate the Fourth Amendment or CalECPA.In many respects, MDS represents one of the first wide-ranging attempts to capture usage data related to micro-mobility devices. That information can help cities better understand how these new mobility systems  and the others that will follow  will help solve any number of transportation needs, but also help to close equity gaps and open up transportation opportunities, some observers argue.MDS was really a first attempt to do that, said Coral. And in some ways it was an immediate reaction to the challenge that [Seleta Reynolds] saw with the micro-mobility."Government TechnologyGoverning
By IANS

NEW DELHI: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the interest of the country, should accept the advice of former Prime Minister Manomhan Singh who said disinformation on the Chinese transgression will be a betrayal to the sacrifice made by the Indian soldiers.

Rahul Gandhi on Monday also paid glowing tributes to all the 20 Indian soldiers who died in Ladakh's Galwan valley on June 15, saying India will never forget their sacrifices.

"Tribute to our brothers. You gave up everything for us. We will never forget these sacrifices," Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet attaching a video of all the Indian soldiers killed in Ladakh's Galwan valley.

Rahul Gandhi in another tweet also criticised the government over the handling of the situation in Ladakh and said he hoped that the government would accept the advice of Manmohan Singh for in the interest of the country.

ALSO READ | Modi must be mindful of implications of his words: Former PM Manmohan Singh on Galwan Valley clash

"Important advice by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. For the betterment of India, I hope the Prime Minister will accept it politely," he said in another tweet.

The remark by the former Congress chief came after Singh launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying "disinformation" on the Chinese transgression will be a "betrayal" to the sacrifice made by the Indian soldiers at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and it was neither a "substitute for diplomacy" nor "decisive leadership".

Singh was criticising Modi's statement at the all-party meeting on Friday and later clarification by the Prime Minister's Office on the June 15 night's violent face-off between the Indian and Chinese sides at Galwan Valley that led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, including a commanding officer.

"The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further," said the former Prime Minister.

Singh in a statement said: "We remind the Government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements."

Manmohan Singh said the Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our Nation's security as also strategic and territorial interests. The former Prime Minister said China is "brazenly and illegally" seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date.

"The Nation, lost twenty brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh on June 15-16, 2020. They laid down their lives in the ultimate act of sacrifice, valour and duty to our country. Our bravehearts defended the motherland till their last breath and for that we owe them, and their families, our eternal gratitude," he said in the statement.
A woman claims she woke up to find that her brother had allegedly placed his p.e.n.i.s into her mouth.

The woman, who lives in north-east Queensland, Australia, says that she had invited her brother to her home to mow her lawn on Friday afternoon.

She has alleged that after falling asleep she woke up to find her brother had put his p.e.n.i.s in her mouth, reports Townsville Bulletin.

The woman then claims that after the alleged s.e.xual assault he then walked back outside to mow her lawn.



Emergency services were called at 2:20pm and police officers soon arrived to find the man mowing the lawn.

Officers questioned the man over the incident and police have launched an investigation.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Machine Gun Kelly enjoyed Father's Day with his daughter Casie on Sunday as he pair got some fresh air at a Los Angeles park.

The 30-year-old rapper/actor, who is romantically linked with actress Megan Fox, wore a white net tank top with olive green patterned pants and white sneakers.

The Houston native's fluffy blond locks were parted to the side while he donned sunglasses and a necklace on the summer outing with his child.

Doting dad: Machine Gun Kelly, 30, enjoyed Father's Day with his daughter Casie, 11, on Sunday as he pair got some fresh air at a Los Angeles park

Casie, 11, donned a long-sleeved black shirt with a graphic, grey sweatpants and black sandals with matching socks. She had her hair braided back and looked delighted to be with her dad on the day.

The recording artist has past penned songs inspired by his daughter (who he shares with ex Emma Cannon), including one last year after the untimely death of his fellow rapper and friend Juice WRLD from a drug overdose in December. He said on social media, I 'wrote her a song so i wont have any regrets if my time ever comes.'

The rapper, whose real name is Colson Baker, developed a relationship with Fox when they worked on the film Midnight in the Switchgrass last fall, US reported. Prior to Fox, MGK was romantically linked to fitness influencer Sommer Ray, Amber Rose, Halsey and Noah Cyrus, according to the publication.

An insider told the publication that the costars 'began spending more and more time together because of their work schedules and filming together,' and a romance sprouted out of it.

Fun in the sun: The rap star toted a Frisbee as his daughter walked alongside him

Out and about: MGK and his friend Mod Sun were seen at a Black Lives Matter protest in LA earlier this month

'They started off as friends and their relationship grew from there,' the source said. Megan thinks MGK is a really cool guy and their relationship turned more romantic.'

Kelly made headlines earlier this week when he took to Twitter quoted a lyric from his song Bloody Valentine (which featured Fox, 34, in the music video) writing, 'im calling you girlfriend, what the f***.' life imitated art on that one.'

He was seemingly alluding to their newfound romance, which comes in the wake of her split with Brian Austin Green.

Green, 46, addressed Fox's relationships with him and Kelly on his 'With Brian Austin Green' podcast, as he confirmed the end of his decade-long marriage with the Transformers actress after they agreed to 'separate for a little bit' when she expressed her restlessness in the marriage.

'She met this guy, Colson, on set,' said the actor, who played the role of David Silver on the Aaron Spelling 90s hit Beverly Hills 90210. 'I've never met him. Megan and I have talked about him. They're just friends at this point.

Beauty: The rapper/actor quoted a lyric from his song Bloody Valentine, which featured Fox in the music video

Real-life love: The music video behind the song featured Fox and Kelly in romantic scenarios

'I trust her judgment, she's always had really good judgment. I don't want people to think her or he are villains or that I was a victim in any way.'

Green and Fox share three children: and seven-year-old Noah, six-year-old son Bodhi and three-year-old Journey. (He's also father to son 18-year-old Kassius with ex Vanessa Marcil.

He said on his podcast that the relationship with Fox hit the skids when she told him she felt more like herself when they werent together.

'She said, "You know, I realized while I was out of the country working alone that I feel more like myself, and I liked myself better during that experience, and I think that may be something worth trying for me."'

It's over: Brian Austin Green got emotional while revealing wife Megan Fox dumped him after spell of long distance, putting an end to their decade-long marriage. They were snapped late last year in LA

Green continued: 'I was shocked and I was upset about it, but I can't be upset at her, and I wasn't upset at her because that's, she didn't ask to feel that way, it wasn't a choice she made, that's the way she honestly felt.'

Green, who wed Fox in June of 2010 after six years of intermittent dating, said they mutually agreed to 'separate for a little bit' and try and use the space and time to 'see whatever it is we find.'

Green has recently been linked to model Courtney Stodden, 25, while he continues to co-parent with Fox, as they were spotted out earlier this month going out to eat, TMZ was first to report.

An insider told People that Green 'is doing well' as summer commences, and is 'getting along' with Fox.

'When he doesn't see the kids, he is slowly dating,' the source said. 'He recently started hanging out with Courtney. They seem more like friends though.'
Kerala's Kumbalangi to be first synthetic pad-free village in India

How Kerala Police CCSE under Cyberdome is fighting crimes against children

Kerala actress assault case: Dileep gets interim relief, told to appear for interrogation

Priest found dead in well of Kerala Church

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Kottayam, June 22: A 51-year old Catholic priest was found dead in a well in the premises of his church in Kottayam district on Monday, police said here.

Fr George Ettuparayil, serving as vicar of St Thomas Church, Punnathura near here, was found dead in the well during an investigation launched by the police on the basis of a missing complaint on Sunday night.

Police sought the assistance of the Fire department to fish out the body from the well.

According to police, the priest belonging to the Changanassery archdiocese of the Syro Malabar Church, had been staying in a presbytery adjacent to the church.

Arvind Kejriwal: We are fighting Chinese Army and virus, we will win against both | Oneindia News

He had gone missing since Sunday from the presbytery and the parishioners conducted a search before lodging the missing complaint with the police, police said.

Police have recovered the CCTV visuals of the priest walking around the church premises till 10.50 am yesterday.

But no activities of the priest were found beyond 10.

50 am in the CCTV as the camera was switched off, police said.
President Donald Trump is furious at the underwhelming crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday evening, a major disappointment for what had been expected to be a raucous return to the campaign trail after three months off because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to multiple people close to the White House.

While the Trump re-election effort boasted that it would fill BOK Center, which seats more than 19,000 people, only 6,200 supporters ultimately occupied the general admission sections, the Tulsa fire marshal said.

Much of the blame is falling on campaign manager Brad Parscale, who in the days leading up the event aggressively touted the number of registrations, but those close to him stress that his job is safe, for now. (NBC News)

Featured stories

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on Saturday in Tulsa, Okla. (Evan Vucci, Associated Press)AP

With kung flu, thugs, and our heritage, Trump leans on racial grievance as he reaches for a campaign reset (Washington Post)

Trump draws criticism for suggesting a slowdown in coronavirus testing (CBS News)

Bolton says he hopes Trump is one-term president, warns country imperiled by his re-election (ABC News)

WHO reports largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases (NBC News)

12 states have set record highs in new COVID-19 cases since Friday (ABC News)

National news

5 Multiple people shot at Rye Day party on Syracuses Near West Side

Jail only allowed white staff to guard ex-officer charged with killing George Floyd (New York Times)

NYPD officer suspended without pay following disturbing apparent chokehold incident (CNN)

Another shooting in Seattle protest zone leaves 1 wounded (Associated Press)

American Museum of Natural History to remove Teddy Roosevelt statue (The Guardian)

DA: Evidence points to multiple shooters who injured 9 people at party in Syracuse (syracuse.com)

Tragic and senseless late-night gunfire in Uptown kills 1, wounds 11 (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Here are the top three ways this weeks Saharan dust plume will affect you (CNN)

Army confirms body found near Fort Hood is missing soldier Gregory Morales (USA Today)

Tennessean apologizes, launches investigation after horrific ad runs in print editions (The Tennessean)

World news

Trump says he held off Xinjiang sanctions due to trade talks: Axios interview (Reuters)

China revealed some details of Hong Kongs national security law and its as bad as critics feared (CNN)

Hottest Arctic temperature record probably set with 100-degree reading in Siberia (Washington Post)

Germany riot: Gangs smash shops and attack police in Stuttgart (BBC)

Spain reopens its borders as state of emergency comes to an end (Reuters)

UK to unveil lockdown easing plans this week, health minister says (Reuters)

Afghan healthcare personnel were deliberately attacked during pandemic, U.N. says (NBC News)
The U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Bravo Pak Inc. for failing to abate hazards at its Pennsauken, N.J., facility. The company owes $259,760 in penalties.

In June 2019, OSHA cited the shipping supplies manufacturer after an attempt to clear a jammed machine resulted in an amputation of a workers fingers. Investigators found Bravo Pak Inc. failed to develop and implement a lockout/tagout program to address the unexpected start-up of a machine during servicing and failed to ensure proper machine guarding.

The company agreed to correct the hazards. When Bravo Pak Inc. failed to provide OSHA with verification of the hazards corrections, the agency initiated a follow-up inspection on Sept. 30, 2019.

This employers failure to follow required safety standards continues to put workers at risk for serious injuries, said OSHA Marlton Area Office Director Paula Dixon-Roderick in a U.S. Department of Labor press release.

The company had 15 business days from receipt of the citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs Area Director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Bravo Pak did not contest or otherwise respond to the citations and penalties, which by law becomes a final order. The company has failed to pay any of the associated penalties, which the department may refer for debt collection.

Employers are legally responsible for ensuring that workers are provided necessary workplace safety and health protections, said Loren Sweatt, principal deputy assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health, in the release.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor

Topics Workers' Compensation USA New Jersey Manufacturing
Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) said Monday it will restart service between Seattle and Shanghai on June 25, becoming the first U.S. airline to resume flights to China following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Airlines dramatically reduced their flying schedules in the spring due to the pandemic, but as markets begin to reopen, carriers are slowly rebuilding schedules and adding service to routes where passenger or cargo demand justify the flights.

Both Delta and United Airlines Holdings have said they intend to resume flights to China, but those plans were put on hold briefly due to a conflict between the U.S. and Chinese authorities over landing rights.

Delta will serve Shanghai via Seoul twice per week. In July, it will add once-weekly flights between Detroit and Shanghai, also through Seoul. The airline said it will sanitize all aircraft before departure, adjust boarding processes to reduce passenger crowding, and use filtered air circulation systems. Delta is also capping seating at 75% for first class, and 60% for the rest of the plane.

"We are excited to resume our services between the U.S. and China, as economic and social activities start to recover," Wong Hong, Delta's president for Greater China and Singapore, said in a statement. "With a mission to connect the world, Delta is committed to getting our customers to their destinations safely and confidently, especially at this critical time."

International service is expected to remain limited for the foreseeable future, but Delta and other airlines are restoring routes that can justify the added expense related to long-haul international flying with added cargo. Though oil prices continue to creep up from their pandemic lows, Delta has committed to restore service to its key international hubs including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, and Paris as well as niche service to destinations including Shanghai, Tel Aviv, and Lagos where demand is sufficient to make the flying viable.
Spain reopened its borders to European tourists yesterday in a bid to kickstart its economy while Brazil and South Africa struggled with rising coronavirus infections.

The head of the World Health Organisation has warned that the global spread of the virus is accelerating after a daily high of 150,000 new cases was reported last week.

The new coronavirus has infected more than 8.8 million people and killed more than 464,000, according to figures compiled by the US-based Johns Hopkins University. The true number is thought to be much higher because many cases go untested.

Spain yesterday ended a national state of emergency after three months of lockdown, allowing its 47 million residents to freely travel around the country for the first time since March 14. Spain also dropped a 14-day quarantine for visitors from Ireland, Britain and other European countries to boost its vital tourism sector.

But there was only a trickle of travellers at Madrid-Barajas Airport, which on a normal June day would be bustling.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged people to exercise maximum public health precautions, saying that even though Europe is stabilising, the virus is running rampant on other continents.

Germany's disease control agency says new cases of coronavirus need to be "closely monitored" after the rate of reproduction rose sharply over the weekend. Both the measurements Germany's Robert Koch Institute uses to assess the progress of the coronavirus rose over the value of two yesterday, well above the critical value of one.

The institute explained that a small number of local outbreaks had skewed the results. The most severe outbreak hit Gutersloh, where more than 1,000 workers at a slaughterhouse tested positive.

The number of confirmed virus cases is still growing rapidly in Brazil, South Africa, the US and other countries, especially in Latin America.

Brazil's health ministry said the total number of cases had risen by more than 50,000 in a day. President Jair Bolsonaro has been downplaying virus risks even as his country has seen nearly 50,000 fatalities in three months, the second-highest death toll in the world.

South Africa reported a one-day high of 4,966 new cases on Saturday and 46 deaths. Despite the increase, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a further loosening of one of the world's strictest lockdowns. Casinos, beauty salons and sit-down restaurant service will reopen.
Anti-graft senior investigator Novel Baswedan, who lost his eye in a 2017 acid attack, gestures while talking at the Corruption Eradication Commission headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, Dec. 6, 2019.

Human rights groups on Monday called for an independent probe and denounced as a farce the trial of two low-ranking Indonesian policemen charged in an acid attack that left a senior corruption investigator nearly blind three years ago.

Novel Baswedan, who works for Indonesias Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), was investigating cases that implicated senior officials and police officers when two unidentified men on a motorcycle attacked him in April 2017. Baswedan has questioned whether the pair were responsible for the attack, in which he lost his left eye after the assailants threw acid in his face.

The court is running some kind of a farce and formality to create the impression that justice is being served, Arif Maulana, director of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), told BenarNews on Monday. The trial was designed to fail from the start.

The criticism by the legal aid group is the latest since prosecutors announced their sentencing recommendation for the defendants, active police officers Rahmat Kadir Mahulette and Ronny Bugis, if they are convicted. Earlier this month, the prosecution sought a one-year sentence for the two, arguing that even though the attack was premeditated, the defendants did not intend to throw the acid on Baswedans face.

YLBHI and others have questioned the prosecutors argument that the defendants did not intend to throw acid on Baswedans face, but on his body. The indictment had said the motive for the attack was personal and not related to Baswedans work as a corruption investigator.

Also on Monday, Amnesty International (AI) Indonesia posted a video on YouTube showing a witness who was not called to testify expressing doubts that the defendants were the real attackers, saying they did not fit the description of the suspects.

Actually I had hoped that I would be called to testify so that I could see whether the people I saw on the day of the attack are the same as the two defendants, said the man whose face was blurred during his interview.

AI Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid called for a new independent investigation into the attack that should include the key witness.

The trial should be cancelled and there should be a new investigation that is more effective, open and impartial, Usman told BenarNews.

Baswedan: Just release the defendants

In an interview with local media Tribune News published Friday, Baswedan said the trial, which began in March, was full of oddities. The suspects were arrested in December 2019, about 2 years after the attack and following a major investigation.

Even though there were many irregularities from the beginning, I was still surprised when the prosecutors sought only a one-year sentence for the two defendants, Baswedan said.

Im not sure either of the two people was the culprit. When I asked witnesses who saw the attackers, they said they were not them. Just release them rather than making things up, he said in a tweet posted to his Twitter account.

Last year, police formed a joint fact-finding team with the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), consisting of 65 members including 53 police.

The team found that the attack occurred when Baswedan was investigating six high profile corruption cases, including a mega-graft case surrounding an electronic ID card project. He was the lead investigator in the embezzlement scandal that saw more than 2.3 trillion rupiah (U.S. $163 million) disappear from a national project to issue new biometric identity cards.

The scandal led to the political downfall of then-parliament Speaker Setya Novanto, who lost the position prior to being sentenced to 15 years for his role in taking kickbacks.
Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: After a lull of three days, an important meeting at the highest military level is being held in Moldo on the Chinese side of the LAC, opposite Chushul in Eastern Ladakh.

Army confirmed that Lt General Harinder Singh, head of Leh-based 14 Corps, is holding another round of talks with Major General Liu, commander of the Peoples Liberation Army in South Xinjiang region.

Sources also informed that Army Chief General MM Naravane's visit to Leh is planned this week.

The first such rare meeting was held on June 6. Otherwise, on the issues of borders, the highest level used to be that of the Division Commanders from both sides.

This meeting is important as the tensions have peaked after the 20 Indian soldiers were killed in an attack on June 15 after they went to verify the compliance of agreement to retreat beyond the agreed position at the standoff points. In the clash, both sides suffered casualties.

The standoffs began on the intervening night of June 5 and 6 when the Chinese Army troops clashed with the Indian Army troops at Finger 4 area at the Northern Flank of the Pangong Tso Lake in the Eastern Ladakh.

Immediately after the incident, Chinese entered into two areas in Galwan Valley, Patrolling Point 14 and 15, Gogra Post (Patrolling Point 17A) in Hot Spring Sector and at Finger 4.




Black megachurch pastor denies he agreed to participate in Republican National Convention

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Bishop Vaughn McLaughin, founder and senior pastor of the Potter's House International Ministries who was the only religious leader announced as part Jacksonville, Floridas 32-member host committee for the Republican National Convention, said he did not agree to be a part of the team.

Listen, this is funny. I was driving down the street and I get this beep on my phone and I joined into this conversation with folk talking about how disappointed they are with me being on a Republican National Convention welcome committee. Everybody that knows me knew that I said I would not be on that committee. I did not consent to being on that welcoming committee, McLaughlin said in a Facebook Live video on Friday.

Just over a week ago, Republicans moved their national convention, set to take place Aug. 2427, from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville after President Donald Trump reportedly told North Carolina officials he did not want to use social distancing measures aimed at stemming the spread of the new coronavirus. Trump is expected to accept the Republican nomination for president during the convention.

On Thursday, the Jacksonville host committee highlighted McLaughin as a part of their 32-member team.

"Community and business leaders from here in Jacksonville and across the Sunshine State are sharing their time, talent and experience to ensure Jacksonville is able to host a successful convention for our visitors on this expedited timeframe," Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, who is also one of two co-chairs of the committee, said. "We are thrilled to host the Republican National Convention this August and look forward to sharing with the rest of the country the things that make Jacksonville, and our people, so special."

The host committee told First Coast News that McLaughlin had committed to be on the committee but said they would remove him from the list if he is not interested in the role.

McLaughin insisted that he never at any time committed to being a part of the committee because he is not a Trump supporter nor is he a supporter of the RNC. He suggested, however, that there may have been some confusion due to his commitment to work with the JAX Chamber of Commerce to ensure appropriate representation for the black community.

The mayor asked me and I said no. Wanna get me lynched in my own city? And some kind of way through our conversation of working with the Chamber of Commerce to try to make sure that black folk get some money and that black folk be represented properly. Thats the only thing I said I would do and Id work with Daniel Davis but not to be on the welcoming committee, he said.

I was shocked as many of you also that saw my name. Im not a Trump supporter. Im not a RNC supporter. And everybody that knows me knows that. So I dont feel like I need to go into details any further but well deal with my name being on there. I just need yall to pray for me thats all. Dont jump to conclusions. Dont do that. Always make the call. Dont let the enemy divide us.

McLaughin, whose church has more than 5,000 members, said some people had begun sharing negative comments about him when the announcement was made but he has forgiven them.

Those of you that had some negative things to say and just couldnt believe, I forgive you. Absolutely no problem. But please dont operate in hate and fear. And if Im not concerned about it dont you be concerned about it. People that know me, they know me, McLaughlin said.
In North Korea, Kim Jong Un's sister 'Kim Yo Jong', is called the 'Twister Sister'. In recent days, she has been dubbed as the 'Terminator' because her demeanor these days has been exceedingly fierce, according to New York Post.

Recent events like the demolition of the border office earned her the title 'Terminator'. Kim Yo Jong was even reported calling south Koreans and defectors 'mongrels' over leaflets that have displeased her.

Negotiations between two Koreas stalled

She decided to blow the joint liaison office for both North and South Korea to smithereens, after leaflets from North Korean activists and 'mongrel defectors' spread from South Korea.

By demolishing the border office, the act shut down the negotiations between the two nations. It also drew attention to the US, who is an ally of North Korea.

She also stoked the flames even more by criticizing the South Korean leader. Kim's sister called the speech by South's leader, Moon Jae-in as sickening to the ears. She also threatened to use military action. This could be independent action that might not be approved by the supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

With all the attention Kim Yo Jong is getting, many watchers are intent to know what her intentions are. In News, the American founding co-chair of Free North Korea Radio Suzanne Scholte described Kim's sister as cold, ruthless, and haughty.

Sources say that the aggressiveness is part of the bid to hold power and not show weakness. In the line of succession, she has stood up and filled in when something happens to her brother. With no other kin in line, Kim Yo Jong will inherit the power and become the supreme leader.

She was not anything significant in the past, as she mostly acts as her brother's assistant. Despite this, she still showed decisiveness that was proven by the demolition. In Pyongyang, that makes her almost all-powerful in a fortnight.

Also read: Tension Builds Up as North Korea Blows up Border Liaison Office, Will South Korea Retaliate?\

Kim Yo Jong may be acting alone

One retired US Army Special Forces colonel and North Korea expert, David Maxwell, revealed that Kim Yo Jong acts as the second in command in North Korea. She must have been allowed to act this way. She's allowed to take action even though options are available for Kim Jong Un, according to Knowledia.

Sean King, an Asian specialist at Park Strategies claimed that her gender is not important and she's proven to be a force not to be reckoned with in North Korea.

He adds that it is not men who control the North Korean black markets but women, as patriarchy is not always practiced. One major factor is the mystical Mount Paektu bloodline.

She studied at Swiss schools like her brother, living in a lux and high-security compound in Pyongyang.

She stays there with her husband, Choe Song. Rumors have it that she has a 5-year-old, but this is yet to be confirmed. Kim Jong Un has a place in the capital but prefers his Wonsan resort.

She attended the 2018 winter Olympic in South Korea and most of the relevant summits like the Hanoi Summit in 2019.

Related article: Kim Jong-Un Ramping Tensions With South Korea to Distract Trump Into Negotiations

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Will Bondurant decided to get tested for COVID-19 after attending three racial justice demonstrations over a five-day period in San Francisco, where he lives.

The first, on June 3, "was the scariest and most risky from the point of view of COVID infection," said Bondurant, 31. Although most wore masks, participants were jammed in, unable at times to maintain the recommended 6-foot distance, he said.

Bondurant did not have any COVID symptoms but went for the test because he had a meeting scheduled the following weekend with a friend in his late 70s.

As protests continue to ripple across the country nearly a month after Minneapolis resident George Floyd died under a policeman's knee, political leaders and public health experts warn that mass gatherings  including the indoor Tulsa, Oklahoma, campaign rally President Donald Trump held Saturday  will further fuel new coronavirus cases.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told members of Congress earlier this month that those who have participated in the protests should "highly consider" getting a diagnostic test for COVID-19. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was their "civic duty" to do so.

The challenge is to get tested in a way that will yield useful information.

If you have symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever, cough, sore throat or difficulty breathing, you should seek testing immediately, health care professionals say. If you have no symptoms, here are guideposts for testing:

Timing

Experts disagree on how long to wait post-exposure before being tested: Some say at least three or four days, others say at least seven. The longer you wait, the greater the chance a test will detect any virus. But you need to weigh that against the risk of exposing others if you are infected.

Keep in mind that a test is relevant only for the day you take it. If you plan to attend more protests, you may need to be tested again  and again. And if you're tested too early in the course of infection, the test might not detect it.

That could give false reassurance since the virus can take up to 14 days to incubate, said Dr. Ravi Kavasery, a medical director at AltaMed Health Services, a large chain of community clinics in California.

Bradley Pollock, associate dean for public health sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine, belongs to a group of University of California health experts that had initially recommended protesters get a test three to seven days after a protest, but he now suggests waiting at least seven days.

It can take up to three days to receive test results.

How great was your risk?

"Any large gathering creates risk for transmission," said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. "It's just common sense that when you have events where people are shouting or singing or chanting and in close proximity to each other, that is the perfect storm."

Indoor gatherings are generally considered far riskier than outdoor ones. To assess the seriousness of your exposure risk, Dr. William Miller, a professor of epidemiology at Ohio State University, suggests you consider:

Was it difficult to maintain social distancing?

Were people near you not wearing a mask, or coughing, shouting, or singing? Many people, or just one?

Do you live in an area with a large number of new COVID-19 cases every day, or where the daily number is increasing?

"If your answers to those questions are yes, the risk is greater  and so is the benefit of being tested," Miller said.

Public health experts say the risk is even higher if you were in a crowd where police sprayed tear gas, which makes people cough and rub their eyes  both potentially perilous in the era of COVID-19.

Greater test availability

If you decide to get tested, the availability of test sites varies widely by region. Most community health centers now offer testing, as do large urgent care centers and a growing number of CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. Google will show a list of testing sites in your area if you type in "COVID tests near me." Remember that you want a COVID virus test  not an antibody test, which is designed to detect past infection.

Some sites may require a prescription for the test, or restrict testing to people with symptoms and workers deemed essential. In some jurisdictions, including California's Los Angeles, Riverside and Santa Clara counties, testing is available free to all residents, symptomatic or not.

Several U.S. cities, including Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, have offered free COVID-19 tests to people who say they participated in the protests.

Federal law requires all insurers to cover the entire cost of testing for the virus, regardless of symptoms and when or where a possible infection may have been acquired. However, some health plans require that the test be ordered by a doctor.

There is also the option of using one of several FDA-authorized home tests, including ones from LabCorp, EverlyWell Inc. and Phosphorus Diagnostics. They cost from $75 to $150, and results are typically posted online within three days.

Medicare covers their cost, as do private insurers, although, again, the private health plans may require a referral from a health provider.

People who are uninsured can get cost-free COVID testing through Medicaid in 21 states, and a separate federal program reimburses medical providers for the cost of testing the uninsured.

Accuracy has improved

FDA-validated home tests have accuracy percentage rates "in the high 90s," said Mark Cameron, an immunologist and an associate professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. But since the tests are new and were approved on an emergency basis, take any result with a grain of salt, he suggested.

The "nasopharyngeal" test, in which a medical professional slides a long swab to the back of your nasal cavity, is considered by many public health experts to be the gold standard. Less invasive options include oral swabs, shallower nasal swabs and, more recently, a saliva test.

"Oral swabs are probably not as good as nasopharyngeal swabs, but they may be good enough," said Pollock.

Several factors can cause a test to inaccurately miss an infection, including human error in collecting the sample and a low viral load in the swabbed area.

The most important factor might be the timing of the test.

Bondurant, the San Francisco resident, struggled with that calculation, because he needed the result before he visited his elder friend.

He decided to take the test on June 9, six days after the first protest he attended. The result came back the very next day  negative, he said.

But UCLA's Rimoin counsels caution on interpreting a test that shows no infection. "A negative test a week after being exposed certainly reduces the likelihood that somebody is infected, but it certainly does not eliminate that possibility completely," she said.

That's why many public health experts recommend that, regardless of testing, you limit interactions with others for 14 days after potential exposure to the virus.

"Any opportunity for spread in uninfected populations, this virus will take it," Rimoin said. "The thing people need to remember is that we may be really tired of this virus, but this virus is nowhere near tired of us."

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Heartwarming footage has emerged of a police officer thanking a Good Samaritan after an accident at a busy intersection.

In the video posted to social media a van appears to have broken down on the intersection at the M4 off-ramp at Homebush Bay, western Sydney, on Sunday.

A police car is seen slowly pulling up behind the broken down van as the officers get out and start to put on their hi-vis vests.

A small gesture of thanks between a police officer and a Good Samaritan after a van broke down at a busy intersection (pictured) was captured on the dash cam of passing motorist

But as the police pulled in behind the broken down van another man in a Toyota 4WD backed up in front of the van, stopping to help the other motorist.

One of the police officers then walked up to the other motorist and gave him an 'elbow bump' of thanks, in place of a fist bump during social distancing.

A Reddit user posted the video clip in an attempt to share something 'wholesome', but it also generated some negative comments from other users.

'I'd like to know the story here', one user wrote.

'Is the bar really that low for cops that we're giving them kudos for doing a normal thing that normal people do every day?' another responded.
Sam Faiers headed out wearing all white on Monday as she took part in a fashion shoot in South London.

The 29-year-old wore a white vest top and loose fitting jersey trousers with a matching long cardigan.

She wore 720 Chanel trainers and a 750 YSL belt bag around her waist. Sam arrived solo and wore a big smile on her face as she headed out.

Doing her thing: Sam Faiers wore an all-white ensemble as she headed out in the sunshine to film a secret fashion shoot in South London on Monday

Despite the salons being closed, she appeared perfectly groomed as she stepped out into the sunshine.

Sam shared moments from the shoot on Instagram Stories that morning, but on this occasion she was behind the camera and not in front of it.

It was not clear if this was for her All Bits London website or a new project as she wrote: 'Soo excited. Coming soon.'

Sam has got lots to be happy about at the moment because she moved into new luxury accommodation just before the start of lockdown.

She has transformed her 7,000-a-month Surrey home with a lavish makeover as she self-isolates with partner Paul Knightley and children Paul Jr, four, and Rosie, two.

The family moved out of their Hertfordshire abode and into the 2.25million five-bedroom house (with five en-suite bathrooms) in March.

Sam's two children Paul Jr and Rosie have been spoilt rotten with their new bedrooms, which have their own en-suite bathrooms.

Paul Jr has two beds to choose from with one having a special treehouse-inspired designed frame with its own slide and ladder for him to play on.

All change: Sam has got lots to be happy about at the moment because she moved into new luxury accommodation just before the start of lockdown

Luxury! Sam has transformed her 7,000-a-month Surrey home with a lavish makeover as she self-isolates with partner Paul Knightley and children Paul Jr, four, and Rosie, two

Mother-of-two Sam is renting the lavish home for 7,000 per month following the success of her ITVBe show The Mummy Diaries which also stars her sister Billie, 30.

After moving in late March, Sam said on Instagram: 'We moved a few days ago before the lockdown. Goodbye Hertfordshire, onto our next adventure and a new chapter in our lives ...

'We have no service, internet or Sky TV lol but we're all good. It's actually really refreshing to having a digital detox. As soon as we get it sorted I can't wait to share our move with you.'
Right-wing President Jair Bolsanaros handling of the pandemic has raised questions about his leadership.

Brazil, the country worst hit by coronavirus after the United States, officially passed 50,000 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, a blow for a country already grappling with more than one million cases, rising political instability and a crippled economy.

Brazil now has a total of 1,085,038 confirmed cases and 50,617 deaths, compared with 49,976 on Saturday, the Health Ministry said. Experts say the true numbers are a lot higher because of a lack of widespread testing. Latin Americas largest country has typically recorded more than 1,000 deaths a day, but usually registers fewer at the weekend.

Brazil confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus on February 26 and passed one million cases on Friday. Since first arriving in the country, the virus rapid spread has eroded support for right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and raised fears of economic collapse after years of sluggish growth.

A protest against racism, the policies of President Jair Bolsonaros government, and in defence of democracy amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Brasilia on Sunday [Andre Borges/AP Photo]

Bolsonaro, sometimes called the Tropical Trump, has been widely criticised for his handling of the crisis. The country still has no permanent health minister after losing two since April, after coming into conflict with the president.

Bolsonaro has shunned social distancing, calling it a job-killing measure more dangerous than the virus itself. He has also promoted two anti-malarial drugs as remedies, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, despite little evidence they work.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro said the military serves the will of the people and its mission is to defend democracy, adding fuel to a raging debate about the armed forces role amid rumbling fears of political fragility.

Supporters of the Brazilian president attend a demonstration at Copacabana beach on Sunday. The Brazilian president is facing a political crisis over his management of the pandemic [Antonio Lacerda/EPA]

His comments came on the same day his supporters and detractors gathered in cities across the country, in a stark symbol of the polarisation in Latin Americas largest country.
American credit rating agency Fitch on Monday revised the outlook of nine Indian banks to "negative" from "stable" owing to the COVID-19 pandemic impact on Indian economy.

It affirmed ratings on Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs), Support Ratings (SR) and Support Rating Floors (SRF).

The ratings have been reviewed on the Long-Term IDRs following India's long-term outlook to negative from stable on June 18.

IDRs take into account an entity's relative vulnerability to default on financial obligations.

Also Read: Indian economy to grow at 9.5% in next fiscal: Fitch Ratings

The nine Indian banks whose ratings have been revised covers- Axis Bank, Bank of India (BOI), Bank of Baroda (BOB), BOB's subsidiary in New Zealand, Canara Bank, Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM), ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB), State Bank of India (SBI).

"The negative outlook on India's sovereign rating reflects an increasing strain on the state's ability to provide extraordinary support, due to the sovereign's limited fiscal space and the significant deterioration in fiscal metrics due to the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic," Fitch Ratings said in a press statement.

The IDRs for Indian banks were assessed at BB+ based on an evaluation of high to moderate likelihood of extraordinary state support for these banks.

Also Read: Fitch Ratings revises India's outlook to negative from stable; retains sovereign rating 'BBB-'

"The IDRs for Indian banks are support-driven and anchored to their respective SRFs. They are based on an assessment of a high to moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks. This takes into account our assessment of the sovereign's ability and propensity to provide extraordinary support," the ratings agency said.

Fitch noted that the rating it gave SBI reflects the likely extraordinary state support the bank will get, if required, because of its very high systemic importance.

SBI is India's largest bank with around 25% market share in deposits and system assets. It is 57.9% state-owned and has a more comprehensive policy role than its counterparts.

Fitch also confirmed IDBI Bank's IDR at BB+ while maintaining the outlook at negative.
Chron.com is following the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area.

Harris County's mask order went into effect Monday morning. All businesses in the county must now require employees and customers older than 10 to wear a mask or face covering.
MOSCOW -- The Kremlin has denied it has any territorial claims on former Soviet republics after President Vladimir Putin appeared to question the redrawn borders of Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.



"No, Russia does not have territorial claims against its neighbors," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on June 22.



Peskov was responding to a question about Putin's statement during the documentary "Russia. Kremlin. Putin." that some republics were able to leave the Soviet Union with gifts during the country's disintegration in 1991.



In the documentary, which aired on June 21, Putin did not say exactly which of 14 republics other than the Russian Federation "took" what he called "Russia's traditionally historic territories," stressing that "when the Soviet Union was created, the right to quit the Union was written in the agreement, but the procedure was not outlined."



Putin also said that Moscows illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014 was "a democratic choice of the peninsula's population."



"Crimea has always been ours. Even from the judicial point of view," Putin said.



Russias takeover of Crimea in February-March 2014 and subsequent support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict that has killed some 13,200 people have strained Moscow-Kyiv relations, sparking concerns among other former Soviet republics, especially Belarus and Kazakhstan, which have long borders with Russia and a significant ethnic-Russian population residing in the areas close to the borders.



"[Putin] talked about previous systemic mistakes in the constitution that failed to envision a whole number of situations, developments which could have negative consequences for our state," Peskov said, though he refused to comment on Putin's use of the phrase "gifts."
YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. From the first days of the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) Armenia has used Dexamethasone drug, but now it is planning to further expand the use of this drug for COVID-19 patients treatment, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at an online briefing, in addition to the statement of the French medical team head Alexandre Mignon, who are currently in Armenia.

The French doctor said in particular: There is news, Dexamethasone maybe will already be used in Armenia as it is in Armenia and helps to treat this disease. But this disease has a history of long months, and this drug will not immediately help and get us free from this disease.

Pashinyan in turn informed that this drug has been used in Armenia from the first days of the virus, and there is no shortage of this drug in Armenia. Moreover, it is quite an affordable medicine. The PM, however, stated that this drug can be used only if prescribed by a doctor.

The French doctor said he has been impressed with all the doctors he met in Armenia. They are very tired, but nevertheless work day and night, within the solidarity context, he said.

According to the latest data, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Armenia has reached 20,588, out of which 9,131 have already recovered. At the moment the number of active cases is 10,980. The death toll has reached 360.

Reporting by Anna Grigoryan; Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
By Express News Service

GUWAHATI: There will be an architectural change in Manipurs coalition government as the BJP seeks to patch up with the National Peoples Party (NPP).

 Basically, the architecture will be a bit different but more or less, we are continuing with the spirit of NEDA (North-East Democratic Alliance) and NDA. All (issues) will be addressed in the next two to three days, Assam Minister and convenor of NEDA Himanta Biswa Sarma told journalists in Guwahati on Monday replying to a query on the political crisis in Manipur.

He, however, did not explain the architectural change. He also parried a query if there could be a change of leadership. Chief Minister N Biren Singh of the BJP is currently heading the three-year-old government.

The NPP is miffed with his autocratic style of functioning. The party feels it will be a loss of face for it if it returns to N Biren Singhs government again.

The NEDA is a non-Congress conglomerate of political parties where the NPP, headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, is a constituent. The Manipur government was reduced to a minority after three BJP MLAs resigned from the party as well as the Assembly and six others  four from NPP, one from All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and an independent MLA  withdrew their support.

Sarma, who will visit Manipur for the second time in three days on Tuesday, claimed the situation was more or less under control.

We are consulting all our MLAs. Things will be resolved nicely. There is nothing to be worried about. All discussions are (going on) in a positive way. I think you will see a good result in the next two to three days, the Assam Minister told journalists.

He said things would be resolved with the principle of friendship and the spirit of NEDA and NDA.

The BJPs go-to man and troubleshooter in the Northeast also said that there would be no revocation of the disqualification of three Congress MLAs and the AITC MLA stating that orders passed by a Speaker are always irrevocable.
Children enter a kindergarten in Daegu, Monday, maintaining social distancing after the facility reopened following a 122-day shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. / Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye



Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said Monday that strict social distancing  enforced nationwide between March 22 and May 5  may be re-imposed in the capital if the average daily number of confirmed COVID-19 infections exceeds 30 over the next three days.



The comment came amid growing concern about a second wave of infections following a steady rise in infection clusters in the densely populated greater Seoul area that includes the city of Incheon and Gyeonggi Province.



"We will have no choice but to return to the previous high-level of physical distancing if the average daily number of new coronavirus cases in Seoul for the next three days exceeds 30, or the occupation rate of hospital beds reaches 70 percent," Park said during a media briefing.



Park cited a warning from health experts that the number of new daily COVID-19 cases in the country could reach 800 soon.



"The second wave will be harder for the nation's medical system to handle, and in the end, it and other preventive measures could collapse," he said, vowing to closely consult with the mayor of Incheon and the governor of Gyeonggi Province.






Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic waits in line to cast his ballot at a polling station in Belgrade on June 21, 2020. (Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images)

Serbians Head to Polls in Europes First Post-Lockdown Election

BELGRADE, SerbiaSerbians went to the polls on June 21 to elect a new parliament, in Europes first national election since CCP virus lockdowns took effect three months ago, with the ruling conservatives expected to win a comfortable majority.

Polling stations were equipped with face masks and hand sanitizer for use by the countrys electorate of almost 6.6 million, many of whom were expected to skip votingpartly because of fears of infection.

At 2 p.m. local time, turnout was about 27 percent compared with the almost 30 percent at the same stage of voting four years ago, figures released by the state election commission showed.

Turnout could also be hit by a boycott by some opposition parties, who say the vote wont be free or fair, owing to President Aleksandar Vucics grip over the media.

Voters largely back efforts by Vucics ruling coalition to push for Serbian membership in the European Union while maintaining strong ties with Russia and China. But the future government will face increasing EU and U.S. pressure to recognize the independence of Serbias former province of Kosovo, a move seen as key for regional stability.

I hope for a good result. I expect success, Vucic said after casting his ballot. I expect a good turnout.

According to the latest opinion polls, Vucics conservative Serbian Peoples Party (SNS) is set to win about 50 percent of the vote, boosted by widespread approval over the governments handling of the pandemic. Vucics coalition partner, the Socialist Party, is expected to finish second, with about 10 percent.

The opposition center-right Serbian Patriotic Alliance (SPAS) led by Aleksandar Sapic, the mayor of Novi Beograd, Belgrades most populous municipality, is tipped for third.

Mladjan Knezevic, a pensioner from Novi Beograd, said he voted for the status quo: I am for things to stay as they were.

Vucic himself isnt up for reelection, but opposition parties that are boycotting the vote accuse him of using his position as president to promote his party.

Serbia, which has a population of 7.2 million, has reported 12,894 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 261 deaths. It was among the first European countries to start opening its borders on May 22 and all lockdown curbs have since been lifted.

Health concerns will keep some voters at home, especially among higher-risk groups, analysts and pollsters say. About 1.2 million people on the electoral list have lived abroad for years and are unlikely to vote.

At a polling station in a school in Belgrades Zemun municipality, voters and election officials in face masks said they were working briskly to minimize exposure to the virus.

Yes, I am concerned about the coronavirus but had to vote  I want to see SPAS in parliament, Milica, a 26-year-old social worker, said through a blue surgical mask.

By Aleksandar Vasovic
US president signed bill last week allowing him to impose sanctions over repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.

United States President Donald Trump held off on imposing tougher sanctions on Chinese officials blamed for a crackdown on Chinas Uighur Muslim minority because of concern such measures would have interfered with trade negotiations with Beijing, he said in an interview published on Sunday.

Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal. And I made a great deal, $250bn potentially worth of purchases, Trump was quoted as telling Axios on Friday when asked why he had not enacted Treasury sanctions against Communist Party officials linked to repression in the Xinjiang region.

The United Nations estimates that more than one million Muslims have been detained in camps there. The State Department has accused China of subjecting Muslims to torture and abuse.

China has denied mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training and help fight extremism.

US officials previously told Reuters that, since late 2018, they had weighed sanctions against Chinese officials over Xinjiang but refrained because of trade and diplomatic considerations.

Under a Phase One trade deal negotiated in 2019 that took effect in February, China agreed to buy at least $200bn in additional US goods and services over two years.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton alleges in a new book that Trump sought Chinese President Xi Jinpings help to win re-election during a 2019 meeting by making agricultural purchases, and Trump also encouraged Xi to go ahead with building camps in Xinjiang.

Trump has denied the accusations. The US, since last year, has placed import restrictions on some Chinese companies and visa bans on unnamed Chinese officials linked to Xinjiang but has not imposed harsher Treasury sanctions.

Trump signed legislation last Wednesday calling for sanctions over Xinjiang, drawing threats of retaliation from China. He insisted, however, he had discretion to decide any application of the measures.
New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Monday (June 22) said that conditions are becoming favorable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and some parts of Uttarakhand around 23rd June.

The monsoon will cover the entire Western Himalayan Region, Haryana, Chandigarh, and Delhi, most parts of Punjab, remaining parts of the Arabian Sea, Gujarat state, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and some parts of Rajasthan during 24th & 25th June, according to the Ministry of Earth Science.

"Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall very likely to continue over northeast India during the next 5 days and over East and adjoining central India during next 2-3 days," the statement said.

"Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall activity with isolated heavy to very heavy falls also very likely over Western Himalayan Region, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and East Rajasthan from 23rd June onwards," it added.

The Northern Limit of Monsoon (NLM) continues to pass through Kandla, Ahmedabad, Indore, Raisen, Khajuraho, Fatehpur, and Bahraich, it said, adding that a cyclonic circulation extending upto mid-tropospheric level lies over north interior Odisha and neighborhood.

A trough runs from north Punjab to northwest Bay of Bengal in the lower tropospheric levels and it is likely to shift southwards during the next 3 days. As a result, strengthening of easterly wind and high moisture feeding form the Bay of Bengal is very likely over north India during the same period, the IMD added.
The social media app Parler is seeing an uptick in users including many Conservative MPs

The platform, which was launched in August 2018, markets itself as an alternative to Twitter.

It describes itself as an a non-biased free speech driven entity.

Recently, Twitter has been criticised for its policy towards the tweets of tweets of president Donald Trump, which has included hiding his inflammatory content behind a warning label or fact-checking them.

However, Parler hosts many far-right figureheads who have been removed from other platforms.

What is Parler?

Parler is used similarly to Twitter. Users post Parleys that can be commented on, echoed (like retweets) and voted on.

It is available on the web, as well as on the App Store for Apple users and the Google Play Store for Android users.

In May 2019, founder John Matze said the site had approximately 100,000 users in total. In June, 200,000 Saudi Arabian users joined the site to protest claimed censorship from Twitter.

Twitter had approximately 326 million users at the time.

How is Parler different from Twitter?

The most prominent difference between the social media sites, apart from their size, is their attitudes towards content on their platforms.

Parler is more tolerant of speech that other platforms would deem offensive.

In its guidelines, it references the FCCs definition of obscene content which asks if the work is sexual in nature, if it  is offensive, and Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Parler advises users not to use language/visuals which is sexual in nature and not to use language/visuals that are offensive and offer no literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

Twitter, by comparison, has been repeatedly criticised for not doing enough to curb racism, sexism, homophobia, and other issues on its platform.

It has also made exceptions for content from prominent users, such as Mr Trump, that would otherwise breach its terms and conditions and be taken down were it tweeted by another user.

Who is on Parler?

Katie Hopkins recently joined the platform after being removed from Twitter.

Twitter removed Hopkins profile for violations of [its] Hateful Conduct policy.

Keeping Twitter safe is a top priority for us  abuse and hateful conduct have no place on our service and we will continue to take action when our rules are broken it said in a statement.

Other prominent users include Donald Trumps son Eric Trump, far-right activist Laura Loomer who chained herself to Twitters headquarters, Mr Trumps campaign manager Brad Parscale, and far-right activist Candace Owens who infamously said that If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine.

Since then, some Conservative MPs have joined Parler. These include the MP for Mansfield Ben Bradley, MP for Guildford Angela Richardson, and MP for Wycombe Steve Baker.

Accounts have been made for other MPs including MP for Crawley Harry Smith and Daily Mail columnist and wife of Michael Gove Sarah Vine, although it is currently unclear if these are legitimate.

What do people post on Parler?

Jewish News website Forward has said that the app is full of fury, fear and conspiracy theories with notable antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The belief that Jews are running the world, encouraging immigrants to flood Americas borders, controlling the media and generally working behind the scenes as master puppeteers are easy to find on Parler it continues.

Antisemitic conspiracy theories about Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros are also commonplace.

Many users are also vocal supporters of Mr Trump, and have developed far-right communities on the platform.

Upon signing up to the website, Parler recommended trends that were popular right now included #trumptweetsmatter, #kukluxklan, #georgesoros and #covidiots.

There were also a number of tweets related to Christianity, with hashtags including #2NDCOMING and #godislove

Under the #kukluxklan were six posts. Two of which were about the recently deceased Senator Robert Byrd, a member of the Klan who came to embrace civil rights and desegregation in the 1970s.

Another was a tweet quoting American news commentator Van Jones from 29 May.

Two more were from October 2019, related to Clifford the Big Red Dog memes that reference the Ku Klux Klan.

The final two were about antiwhiteracism and the Klans founding, respectively.

It is unclear why Parlers algorithm surfaced this recommendation to a new account. The Independent has reached out to the app for comment.

In May 2019, CBS News reported that Parler would not suspend accounts, no matter what was posted.

Are there other apps like Parler?

Recommended Inside the social network used by alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter

Other social networks with free speech ideologies include Gab, another platform where far right-wing individuals take advantage of its leniency to spread hateful messages.

Before killing 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue, Robert Bowers allegedly posted on Gab: I cant sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, Im going in.

Bowers had also used the account to post numerous racist and antisemitic memes.

Parler and Gab also exist as part of an assortment of apps designed to provide solutions to those who have been deplatformed, such as Bitchute, an alternative to YouTube. Other alternative social platforms include Minds and MeWe, and while these do not necessarily have the same approaches to content they have had to deal with similar issues because of users posting offensive content.

"Unlike Parler, Gab, and others, MeWe does not have an 'anything goes' policy. MeWe's Terms of Service is strict and clear: lawbreakers, haters, bullies, violence inciters, etc. are prohibited, and our Trust and Safety Team works hard every day to remove them" a MeWe spokesperson said.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan has denied the reports spread about the detention of a number of officials of the Abshreon District Executive Power, its press service said on June 22.

The agency however acknowledge that search operations have been carried out at the Absheron District Executive Powers, adding that Prosecutor General's Office will provide detailed information to the public on the results of search operations.

"In order to prevent the dissemination of information that could cause confusion in society, we ask that such information is verified with the Press Service of the Prosecutor General's Office", the press service concluded.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Kendall Jenner paid a Father's Day tribute to Caitlyn Jenner on Sunday on her social media, as she shared a collection of throwback shots.

The 24-year-old supermodel captioned a post, 'love you' in which she and Caitlyn - who was known as Bruce prior to her gender transition - were seen bonding in a number of scenarios. The eldest daughter of Caitlyn and Kris Jenner posted shots of Caitlyn drenched in silly string with the kids and holding the Olympic torch.

Caitlyn responded, 'My Angel. I love you so much. You made today so special for me.'

Momentous: Kendall Jenner, 24, paid a Father's Day tribute to Caitlyn Jenner, 70, on Sunday on her social media, as she shared a collection of throwback shots and a recent one with sister Kylie, 22

Kendall earlier this month told Harpers Bazaar that her relationship with Caitlyn grew after she publicly came out as transgender more than five years ago.

'She could finally be honest with me,' the Calabasas, California native told the publication. 'We could talk about deep emotions she was feeling through that time. Growing up my dad was not usually one to talk about her feelings so that was a big step for us.'

Kendall, calling herself a 'daddys girl [her] whole life,' said she often gets nostalgic about Caitlyn's achievements as a decathlete in the 1976 Olympics and beyond.

'I used to watch old Olympic videos of my dad and wish I could be a part of those spectacular moments with her,' she said. 'There are so many stories she tells about her life and I love to just sit there and listen.

Awww! Caitlyn responded calling Kendall an 'angel' and making clear her posts meant something to her

Change for the better: Kendall earlier this month told Harpers Bazaar that her relationship with Caitlyn grew after she publicly came out as transgender more than five years ago

Parenthood: The daughter of Caitlyn and Kris Jenner posted shots of Caitlyn drenched in silly string with the kids

'She has lived so many amazing lives in one lifetime. My favorite thing to learn from my dad is about my dad. Inspiring then and inspiring now.'

Kendall, who boasts more than 132 million Instagram followers, also shared a more recent shot of herself, Caitlyn and sister Kylie celebrating, coming in the wake of their recent collaboration for Kylie Cosmetics.

The 5ft10 stunner wasn't the only KarJenner to hail the Olympic hero and transgender activist on the momentous occasion, as Kim and Khloe Kardashian also chimed in with posts honoring Caitlyn on the holiday. Caitlyn also shared a shot featuring their late father Robert Kardashian.

Strong bond: Kendall called herself a 'daddys girl [her] whole life'

Keeping up with the Kardashians: Kim posted a shot of herself and Caitlyn on the day

Caitlyn, 70, on Friday told InTouch that amid the fast-paced lives of the first family of reality TV, she remains 'very close' with her six children and four stepchildren.

'Im like any parent who raises their children to be independent, go out there and work,' the gold medalist told the outlet. 'Im like, "Wait remember me," like any parent does. But, to put it lightly, Im so proud of all of the kids, between everybody its 10 children and every one of them has done extraordinary well.'

The I Am Cait star said she also relishes the next generation of Jenners and Kardashians.

'Im up to 18 grandchildren and Im still part of their lives,' she said. 'I dont see them and talk to them like I did before, but Im very close to them all.'

Caitlyn said that her relationships have improved with her relatives after she publicly announced she was transitioning in 2015.

Loved and missed: Caitlyn also shared a shot featuring the late Robert Kardashian

Friendly: Khloe posted a kind message to Caitlyn on the summer day

'Were a lot closer because Im not dealing with all the other issues I was dealing with before and Im just kind of being me and they accept me for being me,' she said. 'Im an old chick, but Im looking good still and still have a lot of energy, but life is good.'

She added: 'Its funny because all of the identity issues I had my entire life, all of those things have gone.'

Caitlyn said that her 'life is very, very good' and she has 'no complaints whatsoever.'
The administrators of the Victorian Labor Party need someone to take on one of the most difficult jobs in politics after a succession plan hatched by disgraced factional warlord Adem Somyurek came unstuck.

Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks and retired MP Jenny Macklin, the ALP elders entrusted by the national executive to clean up the party in the wake of the Somyurek branch stacking scandal, have begun searching for a new state secretary.

Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks is looking for a new ALP state secretary. Credit:Joe Armao

Once appointed, the state secretary will answer directly to Mr Bracks and Ms Macklin and become a key figure in overhauling the culture and flawed internal processes which allowed Mr Somyurek, a state MP since 2003, to assume immense power and influence across the party.

The current state secretary, Clare Burns, has been living in Canberra since March for personal reasons and is due to begin maternity leave. She has indicated to party bosses that she wont return to work for a year.
When Bryan Cutler got elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2006, those familiar with him believe that he likely never came into the office with his sights set on becoming the most powerful member of the General Assembly.

That is now exactly the position he holds.

Cutler, 45, was unanimously elected on Monday to serve as the states 141st Speaker of the House. He becomes only the third Lancaster Countian to hold that position of presiding over the 203-member chamber and the first in nearly a century.

He fills a post vacated last week by Mike Turzai, who resigned his House seat with five months remaining in his term to take a position as general counsel for Peoples, a Pittsburgh-based gas utility.

In accepting the speakership, Cutler offered a four-minute speech that reminded members that they are in their positions to make a difference and asked them to pledge to him what he pledged to them: to treat each other, other elected leaders, and constituents with respect; to not ask others to do something they themselves would be unwilling to do; and finally, to leave things better than they found them and to work together.

That is the most important point of all, Cutler said. And if that is the voice that you have chosen, then with God as my guide and my family by my side, with the support of my friends and on behalf of all the people of this everlasting commonwealth, I will humbly serve in the role as speaker of the House of Representatives.

Rep. David Hickernell, R-Lancaster County, dean of that countys legislative delegation, nominated Cutler for the speakership. It was seconded by Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Armstrong County, who described Cutler as pragmatic and an optimist.

He does not judge people but rather assesses ideas, which is exactly what this body needs, Pyle said. Brian Cutler will provide this and facilitate this vision. The Cutler House will allow us to develop great ideas without yelling.

Rep. Pam DeLissio, D-Philadelphia, said she also was honored to be asked by Cutler to second his nomination. She saw it as a recognition of his willingness to work in a bipartisan manner to find a path forward.

The best policies for the greater good of the citizens of this commonwealth and to ensure that although we come from different political ideologies that in fact we do not at the end of the day let those political ideologies drive us solely, said DeLissio, who worked with Cutler in 2011 on a health care bill that they were able to get enacted.

Washington County Judge Brandon Neuman, a former Democratic House member, administered the oath of office to Cutler. Cutlers wife Jennifer and three children, Cheyanne, Drew, and Caleb were among those invited to witness the swearing-in in the august House chambers.

Cutler is well regarded for his knowledge of issues affecting the health care arena, an interest that had its roots in caring for his parents who were diagnosed with ALS when he was in high school.

It led him to pursue training to become an X-ray technician and then to go on to earn a degree from Lebanon Valley College in healthcare administration. He eventually went on to earn a law degree, focused on health care law, from Widener University School of Law.

Beyond his interest in health care policy initiatives, Cutler has worked on reforms to the welfare system to root out fraud and abuse. Among his legislative successes in other areas was the enactment of a law to modernize the states lobbyist disclosure law.

He has supported bipartisan reforms including when he broke from the Lancaster County delegation to support the 2017 gambling expansion law because it included a provision he fought for to allow municipalities to opt out of hosting a mini-casino, an option all Lancaster County municipalities chose to exercise.

He also was one of just 21 members of the House who voted against the 2018 statute of limitations reform bill that opened a two-year retroactive window for child sexual abuse victims to file civil claims after being timed out of the legal system. Cutler considered that window to be unconstitutional.

This year, as leader, Cutler has taken on Gov. Tom Wolfs COVID-19 business closure order with zeal, arguing strenuously to reopen various segments of the economy sooner than Wolfs reopening plan allowed.

His hard work and thoroughness paid off in 2014 when Cutler was elected majority whip. He served in that leadership role until 2018, when he was elected majority leader, in the fastest rise to that post in over half a century.

Current and former House members expressed a high level of confidence in his ability to take over as the chambers presiding officer.

In his parting remarks, Turzai  who was among the former speakers along with Republican Dennis OBrien and Democrat Bill DeWeese, in attendance for Mondays speaker election  referred to Cutler as one of the most principled, thoughtful, inclusive, passionate and intelligent, intellectual leaders.

Former House Speaker Sam Smith, who served in that post from 2011 to 2015, said in an earlier interview he thinks Cutler will do an excellent job as speaker.

Hes just a really bright guy. Hes sensitive to your point of view. Hes always willing to hear it out and listen to it, Smith said. Hell be able to transition from being caucus leader to being that House leader where you have to expand that compassionate listening mindset to the most liberal member of the House to the most conservative.

As majority leader during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic turbulence, Cutler was put in a position of leading the Republican Caucus through some very uncertain times with no path forward, said Rep. Seth Grove, R-York County. He kept a very diverse group of people from diverse regions and issues together and moving forward. Hes just really good at his job. Bryan is an exceptional leader.

Former Cumberland County GOP state Rep. Steve Bloom said of Cutler, he is a true gentleman dedicated to his work and his constituents. Hes extremely well informed and able to build consensus not only within his caucus but across the aisle and with leaders in the Senate, all of which is crucial to moving forward with a strong positive leadership agenda.

Cutlers rapid rise up the leadership ladder came as no surprise to Rep. Russ Diamond, R-Lebanon County. He said he spotted that potential when he interviewed him during Cutler first campaign for the state House in 2006.

Diamond was involved at that time with a group of government-reform minded activists hoping to make a clean sweep of incumbent lawmakers who voted themselves or who accepted a controversial pay raise in 2005, as was the case with Cutlers predecessor. Diamond recalls how Cutler stood out among the crowd.

Of those who we thought could do things, on top of that heap was Bryan Cutler who was a young man. I think he might have been 29 years old when I first met him. He impressed me so much and I knew he was going to go places, Diamond said.

Lancaster County Republican Party Chairman Dave Dumeyer said the fact that Cutler was able to successfully beat out two-term GOP incumbent Gib Armstrong signaled to him that Cutler had the potential to be a rising star.

I have to say I was always impressed with Bryan. Hes very bright, very articulate. Hes very thorough, Dumeyer said. Hes able to sit down and talk with people from all aspects both Republicans and Democrats. I dont think I know too many people who dont like him. That right there carries a great deal of weight. Im happy for him.

Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster County, who has known Cutler since elementary school, credited Cutlers character, integrity, and trustworthiness for his elevation to the speakership.

From a personal and professional standpoint, Im thrilled. Hes the nicest guy I know, said Aument, who managed Cutlers first campaign for the state House. Hes a hard worker. Hes fair. I think hes well regarded by the Senate. Hes well regarded by the House, the Republican and the Democratic caucuses. I couldnt be more pleased.

Aument said he bets no one who knew Cutler in school would have guessed that he would someday become House speaker.

Cutlers former Drumore Elementary School principal Kenneth Zieber admits that is the case with him although he saw a potential in his former student.

It has been 35 years since I had the pleasure of serving as the principal of his school. Memory has a way of fading over time but I truly do remember Bryan, Zieber said. He was a wonderful young boy and grew up to be a wonderful young man. I would not have been able to predict what he would accomplish in his life when he was an elementary student but I knew for sure he would do well in whatever career he chose.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Taliban kidnap dozens of civilians in Afghanistan amid peace efforts

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 5:45 PM

Taliban militants have kidnapped about 60 civilians, including women and children, in central Afghanistan over the past week, amid efforts made to get peace talks started in the country.

Local officials said Sunday that the Taliban took the hostages in the central province of Daikundi after a woman escaped a Taliban-controlled village in a neighboring province.

Mohammad Ali Uruzgani, the provincial deputy governor said that more than half were still being held. Some 26 had been released and tribal elders were mediating to free the remaining civilians, he added

A Taliban spokesman denied the kidnapping.

Underscoring the tension, Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the Afghanistan national security council said the Taliban had killed more than 40 civilians around the country in the past week.

"The Taliban have failed to deliver on promises of reducing violence against the Afghan people and working for peace," he said on Twitter.

The United Nations has recently warned of an alarming rise in violence against civilians and a "striking deterioration" in upholding international humanitarian law in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the UN mission in Afghanistan released a report raising concerns about 15 attacks on health workers and health care facilities during the coronavirus pandemic.

The surging violence comes despite a deal between the Taliban and the United States. Official data shows Taliban bombings and other assaults have increased 70 percent since the militant group signed the deal with the United States in February.

Under the agreement, the US will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, and the Taliban will refrain from attacking the US-led international occupation forces. The militants, however, have made no pledge to avoid attacking Afghan forces and civilians.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. While the invasion ended the Taliban's rule in the country, it failed to eliminate the group.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The International Criminal Court's prosecutor will try Monday to overturn last year's shock acquittal of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo on charges of crimes against humanity. Gbagbo and his right-hand man Charles Ble Goude were in January 2019 cleared of allegations of post-electoral violence in the restive west African nation in 2010-11 in which around 3,000 people died. The one-time Ivorian strongman, the first former head of state to be tried by the ICC, had spent eight years behind bars in The Hague before his surprise acquittal by the court. Appeals judges will this week listen to arguments by the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who says the court erred in letting Gbagbo and Ble Goude go. The two-day hearing will be "partially virtual" due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ICC said, and it was unclear whether Gbagbo and Ble Goude would physically be in court or follow hearings remotely. The ICC last month allowed Gbagbo, 75, to leave Belgium where he was being hosted under strict conditions since his release from the court, but said he must return for the prosecution's appeal. The ICC said it "will make its judgment on this appeal at a later stage". - 'Justice was not served' - Bensouda in October last year appealed the trial judges' decision, saying they "committed legal and procedural errors" -- including that the majority of the judges only issued their written verdict some six months after an oral acquittal. Judges had also cleared the pair "without properly articulating and consistently applying a clearly defined standard of proof", Bensouda added. "In sum, justice was not served in this case. The acquittals of Mr Gbagbo and Mr Ble Goude should be reversed and a mistrial declared," Bensouda said in her submission. Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) has called on Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara for "dialogue" over his return to the country. But an association for victims of the violence expressed "energetic opposition" against Gbagbo coming home as the country braces for tense elections scheduled for October. Gbagbo technically faces being jailed on his return after being sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term by an Ivorian court last November for the "looting" of the local branch of the Central Bank of the West African States (BCEAO) during the post-election crisis. Monday's hearing comes as Bensouda and her under-fire office fight a string of acquittals and failed cases including that of Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba, acquitted in 2018 of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It also comes at a time when the ICC, set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes, is under assault from the Trump administration because of the tribunal's probe into crimes committed by US forces during the war in Afghanistan. Appeals judges will hear arguments by the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, pictured here in July 2019
Dangote highlights pan-African job creation; confirms dividend at AGM

22 June 2020

President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, told the companys 11th Annual General Meeting in Lagos on 17 June that Dangote Cement was able to sustain 54,000 jobs in four African countries, where the company has its operations.

According to our 2019 socioeconomic impact assessment study specifically on our operations in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal and South Africa, we sustained 54,005 jobs (direct, indirect, induced) in these four markets in the year under review,  he said.

Dangote Group is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria, outside the Federal Government, and when the upcoming oil refinery project is completed, the company will have more than 100,000 Nigerians under its employment, according to local industry commentators.

Briefing shareholders at the company AGM last week, Dangote told the shareholders that the year 2019 was a strong year given the tough business environment across most of its operating geographies, disclosing that the Group recorded cement sales volumes of 23.7Mt and revenues of NGN891.7bn (US$2303m).

He said; We recorded a strong EBITDA margin of 44.3 per cent. As a result of this performance, the Board has recommended for your approval a dividend of NGN16.00 per ordinary 50 kobo share.

Speaking on the local Nigerian operations, he said, Nigerias cement market grew slightly in 2019. We estimate that total market consumption was up between 2-3 per cent on the 20.7Mt estimated in 2018.

The modest performance was achieved in spite of the negative impact from disruptions in 2019 related to election cycles, heavy rains and the loss in land export volumes due to border closures.

Dangote Cements Nigerian operations remained at 14.1Mt in 2019, including export sales of 0.45Mt. Domestic sales in Nigeria were nearly 13.7Mt, compared to 13.4Mt in 2019. This implies a two per cent growth mirroring the estimated GDP growth for the year. However, land exports reduced to 0.45Mt from 0.7Mt for the full year, owing to the border closure in the last few months of 2019.

Dangote noted that pan-African operations sold 9.44Mt of cement in 2019, up 0.8 per cent on the 9.37Mt sold in 2018. Including clinker, pan-Africa volume was 9.6Mt. The total pan-African volume represents 40.1 per cent of Group volumes. Pan-African revenues of NGN282.7bn were 0.2 per cent lower than FY18 and represented 31.7 per cent of total Group revenues.

"The regions EBITDA contribution of NGN47.9bn (before central costs and eliminations), represented 12.1 per cent of Group EBITDA, at a regional margin of 16.9 per cent, compared to a margin of 17.3 per cent in 2018.

The future strategy will see Dangote cement export its surplus output across the continent. Looking ahead, we expect to further deploy our clinker and cement export strategy across West and Central Africa," he explained, adding: "The completion of our 1.5Mta grinding plant in Cote dIvoire is expected by the end of 2020.

Published under
To assist preclinical exploratory testings with discovery and development of druggable formulations

Hyderabad based Transcell Oncologics introduces Transtoxbio, a unique portfolio for COVID-19 Vaccines and Drug candidates (Pharma assets pipeline).

Transtoxbio offers a comprehensive collection of human derived ethically immune configured progenitor cell/tissue platforms as human surrogate systems to support the growing community of pharma and preclinical research industry.

Their state of the art capacities takes pride in sourcing, isolating, and preserving the authenticity of all configured cell/tissue based systems with predictive powers needed to assist preclinical exploratory testings with discovery and development of druggable formulations.

It is the only portfolio with specialized capabilities to test Bio/therapeutics (vaccine/drug candidates) induced species specific hematotoxicity, relevant transcriptomics, cytokine involved inflammatory pathways, Pulmonotoxicity on human surrogate in vitro models to predict their prognosis in clinical trials.

Advantages with opting Transtoxbio in preclinical research and testing:
[June 22, 2020] Ohio State's Daniel Walker, Ph.D., MPH, to Edit Annual Health IT Issue of The American Journal of Managed Care

Daniel Walker, Ph.D., MPH, will serve as the special guest editor of the 10th annual health information technology (IT) issue of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), which will be published in January. Walker is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, as well as in The Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research (CATALYST). Walker studies efforts to use health IT to improve communication, interorganizational coordination and patient engagement. He also seeks to address equity issues related to the digital divide. Walker has served as a principal investigator and coinvestigator on federal, state and privately funded projects, and his work has been published in a range of outlets, including AJMC, Health Affairs, Health Services Research and Medical Care. "I am thrilled to work with AJMC on the 10th installment of the special health IT issue. Innovation and growth of technology continue to advance and contribute to ongoing transformation of the U.S. health care system," Walker said. "I look forward t reviewing submissions highlighting evidence about both successes and missed opportunities for health IT to align with new models of care delivery, particularly in the areas of data exchange, analytics and consumer use of digital health tools."



For more information about how to submit a manuscript click, here. About The American Journal of Managed Care

The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) is a multimedia, peer-reviewed, MEDLINE-indexed journal that keeps industry leaders on the forefront of health policy by sharing digital research relevant to industry decision-makers. Other brands in the AJMC family include The American Journal of Accountable Care, Evidence-Based Oncology and Evidence-Based Diabetes Management. These comprehensive multimedia brands bring together stakeholder views from payers, providers, policymakers and other industry leaders in managed care. AJMC is a brand of MJH Life Sciences, the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America, dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005071/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Extreme partisanship fueled by social media -- along with the rise of populism in an age of growing economic inequality -- has rekindled racism in U.S. politics.

Thats one train of thought. Another is that it never really went away.
Sensex and Nifty closed on a bullish note on Monday in line with the overseas trend amid foreign fund inflows. Amid buying rally in drug stocks, Sensex closed 179 points higher to 34,911 and Nifty ended 66 points higher to 10,311.

Reliance Industries, Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Auto, IndusInd Bank and ICICI Bank were among the top Sensex gainers. On the contrary, TCS, ONGC, M&M and Infosys were among the top laggards.

As per industry experts, markets today focused on regulatory approvals to domestic pharma companies to manufacture Covid-19 treatment drugs. With this, the pharma index was among the major sectoral gainers today, along with PSU banks, metal and media stocks.

Expressing views on market movement today, S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP Securities said,"Market closed well above the mark as the Bajaj Trio led the rally today and was well supported by the Banking & Pharmaceutical stocks. The Covid-19 drug had a feel-good factor across a wide section of the broader market led primarily by Glenmark as we did see profit-taking in late afternoon trade."

Overseas, Asian indices traded mixed as investors remained focused on the suspected second wave of Covid-19 cases in US and China. Wall Street closed slightly lower after WHO said coronavirus has entered a "new and dangerous phase" and Apple Inc said on Friday it would temporarily shut 11 US stores.

European markets rose on Monday as investors focused on economic data and the EU's proposed fiscal stimulus.

Meanwhile, companies set to announce their earnings are GTL, Info Edge, Aegis Logistics, Apollo Hospitals, Sudarshan Chemicals, Morepen Labs, GE Power, NDTV, On mobile Global and Skipper among others.

On Nifty's near term outlook, Ruchit Jain (Senior Analyst - Technical and Derivatives, Angel Broking said,"On the daily chart, the index has been trading within a 'Rising Wedge' formation and the higher end of the pattern is in the range of 10500-10600. The intraday supports for the index are placed around 10260 and 10210 whereas resistances are seen around 10440 and 10500."

On the currency front, Rupee, the local unit ended at 76.03 per dollar against its previous close of 76.18 per dollar.

Share Market Highlights: Sensex ends 179 points higher, Nifty at 10,311; Bajaj twins, Cipla top performers

Alembic Pharma share hits all-time high on USFDA nod for Rivaroxaban tablets

Gold price today: Yellow metal scales 48K mark amid positive global cues
Beijing sees achievements in virus prevention with rapid, efficient measures

Global Times

Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 17:33:40

In the past 10 days, Beijing has tested millions of residents for COVID-19 and conducted a series of measures to avoid its spread after a new wave broke out from the largest wholesale food market in the city, infecting more than 200 people. The capital city's disease control efforts have seen achievements in confronting the epidemic, and medical authorities said the outbreak is under control.

From June 11 to 20, more than 200 people were confirmed to have COVID-19 in Beijing. Every day, new cases were announced, with the majority related to Xinfadi market in Beijing's Fengtai district. The outbreak also affected other provinces and regions in China.

In less than two weeks, more than 2 million people in the city have taken nucleic acid tests. Many were asked to be quarantined at home.

The Biguiyuan community in Fangshan had all its residents tested on Sunday. According to the community's work schedule, residents of 14 residential buildings took the tests in batches between 8am and 10pm.

"I am not in panic this time," a resident of Biguiyuan, told the Global Times. "We have enough masks at home and know how to protect ourselves. The community is also experienced in administration during the epidemic. After the test I will walk to the supermarket in community to buy some food."

Beijing raised the emergency response to Level II on June 16.

The city government went back to "wartime mode," just like it had several months ago when the epidemic first hit China. "It's never too strict (to prevent the virus)," said Xu Hejian, spokesperson of the Beijing government.

On Saturday, a team of 70 medical staff dispatched by Hubei Province arrived in Beijing by high-speed trains. The team will aid the capital city in its current outbreak.

In the first weekend after the Level II emergency response, fewer people visited public places and more people wore face masks when outside. Many restaurants were empty.

The Palace Museum is now open to only 2,000 visitors each day. On Friday, only several hundreds reserved entries online.

Schools were suspended, and employees in some workplaces have been told to work from home.

High-tech facilities have also been put into use in Beijing. In western Beijing's Haidian district, every day from 11am to 6pm, throat swab samples are delivered to the newly established nucleic acid test lab in Haidian Hospital where clinicians examine them in a multiple-level protected environment.

This new integrated nucleic acid test lab will be used to collect and test swab samples from citizens.

Beijing has set up 98 medical institutions that provide COVID-19 nucleic acid testing services to groups and individuals, with a maximum daily testing capacity of more than 90,000 people.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has moved an application to once again obtain the custody of civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha who was arrested in the Elgar Parishad case after he surrendered at the agencys Delhi office on April 14.

The application was moved before the special NIA court through special public prosecutor Prakash Shetty claiming that the chief investigating officer in the case had not questioned him when he was in NIAs custody and that he needs to question him over the statement given by witnesses.

We have made an application before the special court to question Navlakha for his alleged role in the Elgar Parishad case. Navlakha was earlier interrogated in Delhi, but the investigating officer (IO) was not there due to lockdown. He was brought to Mumbai last month, and now a fresh application has been made for his custody so that he can be questioned in Mumbai, said an NIA officer, requesting anonymity.

Navlakha, along with other activists, has been accused of having links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and for his alleged involvement in the Elgar Parishad gathering that happened on December 31, 2017, which allegedly triggered caste-based violence at Bhima Koregaon in Pune, the next day.

Navlakha has been booked under various sections of the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), which allows an investigating agency to have custody of the accused of a period of 30 days, and gives the agency 180 days to file a charge sheet with prior permission from the court, and under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Navlakha was first arrested by the Pune police on August 28, 2018, but the Delhi High court had quashed his arrest on October 1, 2018. The prosecution had alleged that till August-2018 he was a member of CPI (Maoist).

While arresting Navlakha, Pune police had cited several letters, recovered from the computer of one of the accused exchanged between the accused booked in the case. It was alleged that Navlakha and some of the other activists who are also arrested in the case, had direct access and communication with central committee members and senior leaders of CPI (Maoist). Pune police had also alleged that Navlakha was part of the conspiracy and the police were probing if there was a larger conspiracy of seizing the political power, armed revolution by mobilizing masses.

Since his release in October 2018, Navlakha had approached courts for anticipatory bail fearing that he would be arrested again by the police. In the meanwhile, the probe of the case was transferred from Maharashtra police to NIA in January this year, while the order on the anticipatory bail plea was still pending before the Bombay High court. The plea was rejected, and later Apex Court too refused to grant him any protection and had directed him to surrender before the agency.

Following the order of the Apex court, Navlakha had surrendered on April 14 at Delhi. He was later remanded to NIA custody. The NIA questioned him over the allegations of his links with the banned organizations and his involvement into the incident of Elgar Parishad. Navlakha was under NIA custody for fourteen days after his arrest before he was remanded to judicial custody. He was lodged in Tihar jail since he was remanded to judicial custody.

Even as an interim bail plea citing the spread of COVID-19 was pending in the Delhi High Court, NIA on May 26 transferred Navlakha from Tihar jail, with the permission of a court, and brought him to Mumbai by train. Navlakha since then has been lodged at Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai.

Meanwhile, Navlakha has sought bail as the agency has failed to file a charge sheet within 90 days. We have moved a bail plea for Navlakha as the investigating agency has failed to file charge sheet against him within a stipulated time of 90 of his total custody, said Navlakhas lawyer, Yug Mohit Chaudhry.

Both the applications are scheduled for hearing on June 26 before the special NIA court. Interestingly, the developments come at a time when Navlakha, who is in judicial custody till July 3, spoke to his partner Sehba Hussain alleged that the conditions where prisoners are kept under quarantine in the jail were overcrowded and unhygienic

We are very worried about the conditions under which Navlakha is kept. We are requesting the government to put him under the proper facility. If there was no place and proper arrangement in prisons and quarantine centres of Mumbai, why was he shifted to Mumbai from Delhi? We will be urging courts to consider the conditions, Husain said.

Interestingly, Navlakha before he surrendered had in an open letter written, I can now begin to face the actual legal process, which accompanies cases where provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act are invoked. Such Acts turn the normal jurisprudence upside down. No longer is it the axiom that a person is innocent unless proven guilty. In fact, under such Acts, an accused is guilty unless proven innocent.

Draconian provisions of UAPA are not accompanied by stricter procedures regarding evidence, especially electronic, considering the stringent punishment provided for under the Act; the procedures, which otherwise provide tighter rules regarding evidence, are instead made elastic. Under this double whammy, jail becomes the norm, and bail an exception. In this Kafkaesque domain, the process itself becomes punishment, he had further gone on to write.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Greece reduces funding for migrant housing program NGOs and rights groups criticize budget cuts

(ANSAmed) - ROMA, 22 GIU - Several NGOs and human rights groups have spoken out to criticise the Greek government's decision to cut spending on a housing program for asylum seekers by up to 30%, saying that it means less safe places to live for vulnerable groups.



ATHENS - The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), several NGOs and human rights groups have spoken out to criticise the Greek government's decision to cut spending on a housing program for asylum seekers by up to 30%, saying that it means less safe places to live for vulnerable groups. On Wednesday the government announced the official budget for the ESTIA II program, which follows the original ESTIA scheme that has proven a Godsend for asylum seekers in Greece in providing safe housing. The budget for ESTIA II amounts to 20,852,887.81 euros, which is 30% down on the original scheme. The program, as it was in force until these days, concerns not only the provision of housing for asylum seekers, but also support services such as legal assistance, social workers, interpreters and administrative staff. The Greek arm of the UNHCR said in a media statement: "This represents a significant reduction in funding which may have an impact on both the quality of services provided and the ability of partners to respond to the prescribed requirements." Already there have been shameful scenes in Athens this week with refugees sleeping rough on several city squares as the government proceeded with closing 60 of the current 93 hospitality facilities created in hotels for asylum seekers on the mainland. The closures started on June 1, with residents supposedly to be transferred to other facilities or will be included in the UN Refugee Agency's original ESTIA integration program. The decision affects approximately 11,000 people who have secured asylum but are still living in the reception-style facilities and subsidized hotels in the Athens and Thessaloniki areas. General manager of NGO SolidarityNow, Antigoni Lymperaki, said that the new reduction in the ESTIA II is a big blow. "When so many months have passed with rumors that NGOs are taking some funds or do not know how to manage the money, it is logical that such a decision should be made," Lymperaki told reporters. She added: "There is an ideological campaign to discredit the work of organizations since there is no certification mechanism for them" NGOs in the spotlight The subject of NGOs in Greece and how they are operating has been a major point on the political agenda for the past few weeks. On Wednesday, the Migration and Asylum Ministry announced that only 18 NGOs were reserved the right to enter reception and identification centers (RICs) as well as accommodation facilities for migrants and refugees in Greece. That is less than half of the number of NGOs currently operating. Earlier this year, Greek lawmakers approved the establishment of a special registry for all NGOs, staff and partners in a bid to monitor and track their operations. However, only 18 of a total 40 organizations had submitted the necessary documents for their inclusion in the new registry by the June 14 deadline. The names of the NGOs have not been made public.



An odyssey without end Greece's Migration Ministry has also come under fire from leftist media observers for its handling of the ESTIA facility closures, which combined with its attempts of transferring migrants from camps at Lesvos to the mainland facilities, has resulted in chaotic scenes with large groups of people - many of them families with young children and babies - being forced to sleep rough on the streets in the Greek capital. On Wednesday morning, about 100 refugees and asylum seekers were reportedly evacuated from Victoria Square to the Eleonas migrant camp. In total, more than 310 refugees have been transferred to Eleonas in recent days from Lesvos. However, there is not enough space there either, and so two large awnings were erected. Among the refugees, who have come mainly from the notorious Moria camp, many are unaccompanied minors, infants, mothers, pregnant women, as well as sick and elderly. The ministry has said that all refugees leaving state facilities have the right to apply to the Helios program, which is run by the Greek arm of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), for subsidized rent and help with job-seeking.



(Refugees have found temporary shelter in the makeshift refugee camp in the port of Piraeus, Greece. Photo:EPA/ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU) (ANSA).




Lisa Wilkinson has revealed her devastating heartbreak after her family were forced to bid farewell to her son Louis' long-time British partner, Kia Rosina.

Sharing an emotional post to her Instagram last week, Lisa, 60, explained that COVID-19 destroyed Kia's sponsorship with her employer.

'Last night, with breaking hearts, and because that rotten COVID got in the way, we had to say goodbye as she headed back to her other home,' Lisa began.

Goodbye: Lisa Wilkinson has revealed her devastating heartbreak after her family were forced to bid farewell to her son Louis' British partner Kia Rosina (second from right). Pictured with the Wilkinson-FitzSimons family last week

'Travel safe and thank you for all youve taught us about the simple joys, finding the light, acceptance, and squeezing the last drop out of every day.'

And it appears the feelings were reciprocal for Kia, who met Louis, 24, during the Wilkinson-FitzSimons' family trip to the United Kingdom in 2017.

Sharing a loved-up photo with Louis to her own Instagram page, Kia said she was 'devastated' about having to leave her 'adopted' family.

Sad: Sharing an emotional post to her Instagram last week, Lisa, 60, explained that COVID-19 destroyed Kia's sponsorship with her employer

'Last night, with breaking hearts, and because that rotten COVID got in the way, we had to say goodbye as she headed back to her other home,' Lisa began. Pictured: Lisa and Louis

'Absolutely heartbroken about having to leave because it wasn't just leaving the country behind, but amazing friends, and my second family,' she wrote.

She went on to say that she enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle she wouldn't have ever imagined back home.

Since relocating to Australia in January 2018, Kia worked at the Boathouse Balmoral before landing a job at leading PR firm Tailor Maid Communications.

'It wasn't just leaving the country behind': And it appears the feelings were reciprocal for Kia, who met Louis, 24, during the Wilkinson-FitzSimons' family trip to the United Kingdom in 2017. Pictured together

Remember this? Louis made his television debut after he briefly appeared on Australian Ninja Warrior back in 2018

Louis made his television debut after he briefly appeared on Australian Ninja Warrior back in 2018.

He is one of Lisa and Peter's three children. They also have oldest son Jake, 25, and daughter Billi, 22.

Meanwhile, Lisa was stranded in Los Angeles in March where she was interviewing a 'major celeb' for The Project.

But after US President Donald Trump announced further travels bans in the country, Lisa acknowledged time was running out to return home.

'America feels like it's shutting down, and I don't know how much longer these borders are going to be open. Australia, here I come...'
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the government will equip every district with oxygen concentrators so that Covid-19 patients are immediately administered oxygen in their homes if the need arises.

The chief minister also said that every Covid-19 patient under home isolation will be given a pulse-oximeter device so they can frequently check their oxygen levels and alert the district officials, in case of an emergency.

Addressing a digital press conference, Kejriwal said in Covid cases, the biggest concern is that the oxygen levels of the patient drop suddenly and often drastically. To ensure there is no delay in administering oxygen to such patients, every district administration will now keep a certain number of oxygen concentrators at their disposal so that oxygen is provided to the Covid-19 patient in their homes on an immediate basis. Our teams will reach your home immediately to provide oxygen. If needed, the patient will be shifted to a hospital, he said adding that phone numbers will be made public in every district for people to avail this service.

Kejriwal said the decision was taken after the government observed that on some occasions the lag created in providing treatment to a Covid-19 patient by transporting him/her from their homes to the hospital can result in the worsening of the patients condition.

The moves comes at a time where there has been confusion over protocols that are to be followed for cases in home isolation, which began after Delhis lieutenant governor Anil Baijal, the administrative head of the city, issued an order on Friday that virtually did away with the practice -- before walking back on it on Saturday after it triggered concerns and anger among people.

On Sunday, the Union home ministry asked the Delhi government to provide the details of each and every Covid death in the city to assess whether the deaths were because the patients were not taken to a hospital on time or there had been a delay in treating them.

According to Delhis health bulletin on Monday,there were 12,922 people in home isolation from among the 23,820 active cases.

Kejriwal on Monday also said that the government will give pulse-oximeters to every Covid patient under home isolation so they can check their oxygen levels from time to time. Once the patients condition improves, you can return it to us in 10 days or so, he said.

Dr Neeraj Gupta, professor in the department of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at the Safdarjung hospital in Delhi said the initiative has been much-needed, especially since the Capital has been recording over 3,000 new cases every day.

This is a time when the number of cases is increasing so rapidly because of which hospital beds need to be optimised. The idea of the Delhi government is to maintain the oxygen level of the patent above 90%, until they recover on their own. Keeping oxygen concentrators handy in every district will help the family of the patient to buy time to search for beds and get admission in an hospital, if the patient is serious or moderately serious, said Gupta.

He said the Delhi governments decision on pulse-oximeters is in tandem with the central governments recent scheme through which people can buy these devices at a cost of Rs 1,200.

The chief minister, for the first time, directly attacked China for sending the virus and causing troubles at the border.

Today, the entire world is waging two wars against China. One is against the virus they sent and another is at the border. Against the virus we have our doctors, nurses battling it out. At the borders, there are the armed forces. Our 20 soldiers did not step back, we will also not step back in both these wars, Kejriwal said.

Appreciating the support extended by the Central government in Delhis fight against Covid-19, Kejriwal reiterated that this is not the time to do politics or fight among each other. If we do not units, Corona will win, he said.

The chief minister also said that testing in Delhi has now been increased by over three times and that people should now face no problem in getting themselves tested for Covid. Earlier around 5,000 tests were being done per day, now 18,000 tests are being conducted per day. All labs have been asked to ramp up and use their resources to full capacity. Antigen tests have also started in Delhi and mild or asymptomatic patients are being treated at home only. Our team calls them to keep a tab on them, he said.

Kejriwal said on June 12, 5,300 beds were occupied and as on Monday, 6,200 beds were filled. In 10 days, we have seen 23,000 fresh cases, but only 900 beds in hospital have been filled. As many as 7,000 beds were vacant as on Monday afternoon.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
New Delhi: At least five officials of the Indian Embassy in Pakistan, including the two who were reportedly abducted and tortured by Pakistan security agencies, returned to India via the Attari-Wagah border in Punjab's Amritsar, said ANI.

According to them, those who returned are Air Adviser Group Capt Manu Midha, Second Secretary S Shiv Kumar and staff members Pankaj, Selvadhas Paul and Dwimu Brahma.

On June 15, two staff members of the Indian mission, who are working as drivers in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, were detained for over 12 hours. Reports said that they were picked up by around 15 to 16 armed persons who had come in 5-6 cars at around 8:30-45 hours from a petrol station close to the mission. They were blindfolded with a rucksack thrown over their heads and handcuffed and were then taken to an unknown destination.

According to reports, the Indian staff members were repeatedly thrashed, punched, beaten with rods and wooden sticks and were made to drink filthy water as they abductors forced them to confess under duress about their involvement in a hit-and-run case.

Armed men also forced the Indian staffers to confess that alleged Intelligence officials in the High Commission compel them to bring people from outside in their cars for meetings inside the High Commission. Reports said they were interrogated regarding the specific role and function of all High Commission officials down to the lowest staff.

During the interrogation, they were repeatedly threatened that this is how the other members of the High Commission would be treated as well in future. Following the investigation, the drivers were then taken for a medical checkup where they were also injected with what was claimed to be a tetanus shot.

They were handed back to the Indian High Commission on the same day at 9 pm, and although they were able to walk, they carried extensive injury marks to their neck, face, thighs and rear, indicating extensive manhandling.
The New York City police officer who was suspended after he was caught on video putting a man in an illegal chokehold once faced criminal charges for pistol-whipping a teenager and knocking out two of his teeth.

Officer David Afanador was suspended without pay following Sunday's arrest on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach in Queens at 8.45am.

Video footage showed four officers pinning a black man to the ground with one officer - Afanador - using a chokehold on him after the man and two friends appeared to be intoxicated and jeered at the officers.

The incident took place just eight days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo placed a statewide ban from officers from putting suspects into dangerous chokeholds. The legislation he signed stipulates that an officer would be charged with a misdemeanor regardless if an injury was sustained or not.

This is at least the second time Afanador has been suspended from the force.

He was arrested in 2014 after he was caught on surveillance video using his gun to hit 16-year-old Kaheem Tribble during a marijuana bust on August 29.

NYPD Officer David Afanador, who was suspended without pay for illegal chokehold arrest on Sunday, faced prior criminal charges for pistol-whipping a teenage drug suspect in 2014. A view of Sunday's illegal chokehold arrest at Rockaway Beach in Queens pictured above with Afanador's arm seen around the suspect's neck

He was arrested in 2014 after he was caught on surveillance video using his gun to hit a 16-year-old boy during a marijuana bust along with another officer Tyrane Isaac. Afanador, left, pictured with Isaac, right, leaving state court following their arraignment in November 2014

Officer David Afanador pictured right in a blue shirt arriving tot he district attorney's office following a brutality case in November 2014

He and another officer Tyrane Isaac were seen in the harrowing footage beating the suspect until he dropped to the ground and was handcuffed. That altercation, which came six weeks after the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, also made news headlines.

Tribble said his two bottom teeth broke when Afanador allegedly pushed his gun into his mouth, as per the New York Post.

However, Afanador returned to duty after a judge acquitted him and his partner of all charges in 2016.

Afanador was involved in eight incidents that were the subject of complaints to the city's police watchdog agency since joining the police department in 2005, according to records obtained Monday under a new state law making disciplinary files public.

They ranged from using discourteous language to use of physical force and refusing to seek medical treatment.

All of the allegations to the city's Civilian Complaint Review were either unsubstantiated or led to exoneration except for the ones stemming from the altercation that led to his arrest.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea suspended Afanador hours after video of the arrest emerged on social media on Sunday.

2014 incident: In August 2014 officers David Afanador and Tyrane Isaac were caught on surveillance video beating a 16-year-old drug suspect. Isaac pictured above preparing to punch the suspect Kaheem Tribble

Afanador is pictured behind Issac running towards Tribble with a pistol in his hand

Tribble said his two bottom teeth broke when Afanador allegedly pushed his gun into his mouth. However, Afanador returned to duty after a judge acquitted him and his partner of all charges in 2016

He said Monday he moved swiftly to suspend Officer Afanador as a sign of 'unprecedented times'.

'I think we have an obligation to act swiftly but we also have to get it right and to inform the public about what's going on,' Shea said to TV station NY1.

In the Sunday incident the officers responded to the boardwalk after three men were allegedly harassing people and throwing objects at them.

Cops arrived to the scene and found a black man, identified as Ricky Bellevue, standing with two white men at the beach boardwalk. They began to encircle the officers and sneer at them.

When Bellevue, 35, got close to one of the officers, the cop flung him to the floor.

The two engage in a scuffle, though the details of what unfolded are unclear in the footage.

According to NBC, one of the men approached the officers with 'a small bag' that officers thought he would throw, prompting the arrest. Bellevue held a white plastic bag in his left hand in the video.

In the Sunday incident the officers responded to the boardwalk after three men were allegedly harassing people and throwing objects at them

Cops arrived to the scene and found a black man, who gave his name to officers as Ricky Bellevue, standing with two white men at the beach boardwalk. They began to encircle the officers and sneer at them

The cops allegedly believed that Bellevue was going to throw a plastic bag he was holding at them so they pinned him to the ground. At least four officers were seen on him

Bellevue was thrown to the floor after confronting officers on Rockaway Beach in New York

In the body camera footage Bellevue is heard telling a cop: 'You scared, you scared?'

As he approaches the officer, one of the white men turns to Bellevue and says: 'Yo, n***** what the f***?'

One of the belligerent men tries to hold Bellevue back, but the officer lunges forward and grabs him, taking him down.

Four officers are seen over Bellevue trying to press him to the ground. Afanador is seeing putting his arm around his neck as he lays face down on the boardwalk.

A bystander is heard saying: 'Yo, hes choking em, let em go!'

Lori Zeno of Queens Defenders is Bellevues lawyer and says hes still recovering at Jamaica Hospital.

'I want the officer who put him in a chokehold to be in the cell next to him. This guy should be charged criminally, and fired,' she said to the New York Daily News.

The NYPD Commissioner swiftly suspended the officer and said an investigation is underway

Body camera footage released later by police showed that for at least 11 minutes before the arrest, three men were shouting insults at the police while the officers implored them to walk away.

'I put out the body camera footage yesterday and I think it tells a very different story than the initial video,' Shea said. 'But ultimately, you know, the hand around the neck is the hand around the neck and I dealt with that swiftly.'

Chokeholds have banned by the NYPD since the 1990's and their use has been especially fraught since Garner died in 2014 after an officer put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed a statewide ban on police chokeholds.

The speed with which the NYPD suspended Afanador stood in sharp contrast to the drawn-out police disciplinary process of years past.

His speedy actions come after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that the Police Commissioner would have 48 hours to turn around decisions on whether to suspend or modify cops from office in incidents resulting in substantial injury.

Shea said he does not believe there is systemic racism in the NYPD. He is scheduled to testify Monday at the state attorney general's hearing on police officers' rough treatment of protesters.

His testimony comes days after Attorney General Letitia James publicly rebuked the police department and Mayor Bill de Blasio for ignoring invitations to participate.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday launched a furious attack on Turkey's conduct in Libya, accusing the key NATO member of playing a "dangerous game" that can no longer be tolerated. In fierce comments likely to rile his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Macron described Turkey's behaviour as a telling example of his controversial belief the military alliance was in the throes of brain death. Ankara supports the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the conflict against rebel strongman Khalifa Haftar. France is suspected by analysts of backing Haftar alongside Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, but insists it is neutral in the conflict. "I believe today that Turkey is playing a dangerous game in Libya and is contravening all the engagements that it made at the Berlin conference" earlier this year on finding peace, Macron said after meeting Tunisian President Kais Saied in Paris. Ankara's role, said Macron, threatened the interests of Libya, its neighbours, the entire region and also Europe. Macron's comments came as a pro-government Turkish newspaper reported Turkey has arrested four of its nationals on suspicion of spying on conservative and religious groups for France. "We will not tolerate today the role that Turkey plays in Libya," added Macron. In a sign of convergence between Paris and Cairo on the issue, Macron said he could understand the "legitimate concern" of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has warned advances by Turkey-backed forces could prompt an intervention by Egypt. "I don't want in six months, or one year or two, to see that Libya is in the situation that Syria is in today," said Macron. - Rising tensions - Libya has been torn by violence, drawing in tribal militias, jihadists and mercenaries since the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a Western-backed uprising. The oil-rich country is split between rival administrations in the east and west, with the conflict recently attracting increasing foreign involvement. Haftar, a former Kadhafi army commander, has been battling to take the capital Tripoli since last year. Tensions have risen over the last year between Macron and Erdogan, notably when the French leader said the lack of NATO response to a unilateral Turkish operation in northern Syria showed the alliance was undergoing "brain death". The Ankara-Paris strains soared further last week when France denounced an "extremely aggressive" intervention by Turkish ships against a French navy vessel participating in a NATO mission in the Mediterranean, a claim Ankara dismissed as "groundless". Macron described this of fine proof of his concern for NATO. "I refer you to my statements at the end of last year, on the brain death of NATO, I consider this to be one of the best demonstrations (of this)... when we have two NATO members" in a standoff, he said. Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Saturday accused France of "supporting an illegitimate warlord and jeopardising NATO security." Turkey has sent Syrian fighters, military advisors and drones in support of the GNA, in a deployment which has changed the course of the conflict, with Haftar's forces enduring a string of defeats. Macron said he and Saied were urging the belligerent parties to down arms and honour their commitment under the UN to resume peace talks aimed at achieving "security of all, the reunification of Libyan institutions and reconstruction for the benefit of all Libyans." "It is a difficult path that requires everyone to show proof of responsibility, stop the foreign interference and unilateral actions of those who claim to win new positions in the war," said the French president.
A few hours from when you read this, Apples online-only WWDC will be kicking off. The keynote should cover everything the company has planned for the next few years  or at least what its willing to reveal at this point.

That means a glimpse at the newest takes on iOS, watchOS and macOS, and were also expecting to see official news of the shift from Intel chips to ARM chips on Apples PCs  a huge change for all involved.

The event does, however, come off the back of renewed calls from devs for a better deal from Apples App Store. The company takes a 30-percent commission on paid apps and any in-app purchases. If a developer wants to offer a subscription, Apple will take a 30 percent commission in the first year and a 15 percent cut after that. Its a lot. The European Commission is taking a look at the situation, and bigger companies (alongside long-time critic Spotify) are starting to get vocal about that cut.

Lets be realistic, though. Its unlikely Apple will address this in its WWDC keynote, but it may shape how they cheerlead their app stats this year. The big event kicks off at 1PM ET / 10AM PDT / 6PM BST. Ill be liveblogging alongside Chris Velazco  and might try to get a disco nap ahead of all the news. Join us then.

 Mat

Samsung Blu-ray players are trapped in a startup loop

The company appears to be working on a solution.

Samsung

Samsung Blu-ray players (including multiple Home Cinema models like the HT-J4500) have apparently been stuck in boot loops, effectively rendering the devices useless. The issue is present in players worldwide, and factory resets dont appear to help.

Its not certain whats causing the loops, although theres speculation an automatic firmware update might be to blame. Support representatives have told users the company is investigating the problem, but for now, its back to the streaming services. Continue reading.

Fortnite loses its police cars

Epic says its trying to be sensitive to current events.

Epic removed all police cars from Fortnite in the shooters latest update, and The Wall Street Journal understands it was in response to Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. The developer wasnt trying to make a political statement, according to a WSJ source  rather, it was trying to be sensitive about the issues players are dealing with. Continue reading.

Review: Dells XPS 15 is the ideal 15-inch laptop for creatives

We review the 2020 model.

Engadget

Dells premium 15-inch notebook finally has a design refresh to match the excellent XPS 13. Its fast, sleek and has one of the best screens weve seen in a workhorse PC. The only downside is that it loses legacy ports. It does, however, still have an SD card reader. It's tough to find an ultraportable 15-inch this polished from top to bottom. If youre a photo or video editor or just someone who demands a bit more power than you get from smaller ultraportables, youll find a lot to love with the XPS 15s glorious big screen. Continue reading.

TikTok users and K-pop fans say they wrecked Trump's Tulsa rally

Internet-savvy teens are a force to be reckoned with.

Getty

President Trumps Tulsa rally on June 20th had attendance far short of his campaigns expectations, but that might have been due in part to... teens. As The New York Times and Vulture have reported, TikTok users and K-pop fans say they registered massive amounts of free tickets in the run-up to the rally to artificially pump up attendance expectations and create an inevitable disappointment. Many were careful to delete social posts to prevent Trumps campaign from catching wind of the ploy, and at least some used internet phone numbers to feed the campaign junk data.

The K-pop crowd also recently flooded racist Twitter hashtags with fan footage of celebrities at the height of Black Lives Matter protests, effectively drowning out hateful messages. This, however, is on another level. If early evidence holds true, some of the social media worlds youngest audience may have skewed Trumps campaign (or rendered its attendance guidance useless) without leaving home. Continue reading.

But wait, theres more...

Almost a fifth of Earth's ocean floor has been mapped

The North Face pulls Facebook ads over hate and misinformation policies

Recommended Reading: Why is Apple breaking up with Intel?
The government has granted the three services emergency financial powers of up to Rs 500 crore per procurement project to buy ammunition and weapons in view of the escalating border standoff with China, government sources said on Sunday.

The special financial powers have been given to the forces to procure weapons and military hardware at short notice to enhance their operational preparedness along the Line of Actual Control, they said.

The government has also relaxed certain rules to cut delays in military purchase like allowing the three services to procure required weapons and equipment from a single vendor, the sources said.

Twenty Indian Army soldiers were killed in a violent clash in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15, triggering a massive escalation in tension between the two countries.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has already directed the army, the Indian navy and the Indian air force to enhance their operational readiness along the LAC, the 3,500 km de-facto border between India and China, amid fears of fresh confrontation.

Military sources said the army is going to use the emergency financial powers to expand its stock of ammunition as there is little possibility of any resolution of the standoff soon.

"The three services have been given emergency financial powers of up to Rs 500 crore per procurement project," said a source.

The clash in Galwan Valley was the worst cross border confrontation between the two sides in 45 years.

China's People's Liberation Army has not yet talked about the number of casualties it suffered.

The Chinese soldiers used stones, nail-studded sticks, iron rods and clubs in carrying out brutal attacks on Indian soldiers after they protested the erection of a surveillance post by China on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in Galwan.

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on May 5 and 6. The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

Prior to the clashes, both sides had been asserting that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, it was necessary to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.
Actor Sushmita Sen held an ask me anything session on Twitter on Sunday, where she answered questions about her life and career choices, and her latest web series, Aarya. The fans asked her about her inspirations, fears and also her take on the currently raging conversation around nepotism in Bollywood.

A fan asked her, How you survived Nepotism in Bollywood ?? Sushmita replied, By focusing on my Audience...YOU GUYS!!! I will continue to work as an actor as long as YOU want to see me!! #simpleenough #AskAarya

By focusing on my Audience...YOU GUYS!!! I will continue to work as an actor as long as YOU want to see me!! #simpleenough #AskAarya https://t.co/or0a3Myz8c  sushmita sen (@thesushmitasen) June 21, 2020

The debate around nepotism and star kids was rekindled after the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. His fans believe he was isolated by the Bollywood privilege club and have called out powerful filmmakers, studio monopoly and star kid favouritism. The police are investigating the death of the actor and statements of at least 15 people have been recorded.

Sushmita was crowned Miss India and then Miss Universe in 1994. She made her Bollywood debut with Dastak in 1996. She went on to work in films such as Main Hoon Na, Maine Pyar Kyu Kia and Biwi No. 1. She was seen in her last Hindi film in 2010, No Problem and then did Bengali film Nirbaak in 2015; she has returned with a web series, Aarya.

During the AMA, Sushmita was also asked about her character and the series. In Real and Reel life... The way u say Bacha and Baba is so Amazing... !! Your acts were so Natural and Realistic. What are the challenges you find after shooting this after long time? and how do you see OTT platform, asked one fan. I do speak many terms of endearment..that is very Sush!!! I am not a method Actor, so I better be good at being natural..otherwise serious trouble #TeamAarya & my Directors made this journey memorable! I LOVE OTT, she replied.

Also read | Sona Mohapatra on Salman Khans request to fans: Large hearted PR move from poster boy of toxic masculinity

Another asked, While watching #Aarya there is scene where, She isnt able to trust anyone esp. her close ones?? Has it ever happened with you, that youve had problems with your own relatives in real life? How did you/ do you deal with such problems? @thesushmitasen #AskAarya. Sushmita replied, We all have our trust broken by a loved one at some point in our lives...I choose the mistakes I am willing to make...and can live with!!!

Aarya release on Disney+ Hotstar on Friday. The Hindustan Times review of the show read, Co-directed by Ram Madhvani of Neerja fame, Sandeep Modi and Vinod Rawat, the series rarely indulges in empty flourishes. There are a dozen characters to keep a tab on, and almost all get to be more than furniture pieces in the story that stays faithful to the protagonist. However, there is a big room for improvement and still a long road to perfection.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The supercomputer Fugaku, which is being developed jointly by RIKEN and Fujitsu Limited based on Arm technology, has taken the top spot on the Top500 list, a ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers. It also swept the other rankings of supercomputer performance, taking first place on the HPCG, a ranking of supercomputers running real-world applications, HPL-AI, which ranks supercomputers based on their performance capabilities for tasks typically used in artificial intelligence applications, and Graph 500, which ranks systems based on data-intensive loads. This is the first time in history that the same supercomputer has become No.1 on Top500, HPCG, and Graph500 simultaneously. The awards were announced on June 22 at the ISC High Performance 2020 Digital, an international high-performance computing conference.

On the Top500, it achieved a LINPACK score of 415.53 petaflops, a much higher score than the 148.6 petaflops of its nearest competitor, Summit in the United States, using 152,064 of its eventual 158,976 nodes. This marks the first time a Japanese system has taken the top ranking since June 2011, when the K computer--Fugaku's predecessor--took first place. On HPCG, it scored 13,400 teraflops using 138,240 nodes, and on HPL-AI it gained a score of 1.421 exaflops--the first time a computer has even earned an exascale rating on any list--using 126,720 nodes.

The top ranking on Graph 500 was won by a collaboration involving RIKEN, Kyushu University, Fixstars Corporation, and Fujitsu Limited. Using 92,160 nodes, it solved a breadth-first search of an enormous graph with 1.1 trillion nodes and 17.6 trillion edges in approximately 0.25 seconds, earning it a score of 70,980 gigaTEPS, more than doubling the score of 31,303 gigaTEPS the K computer and far surpassing China's Sunway TaihuLight, which is currently second on the list, with 23,756 gigaTEPS.

Fugaku, which is currently installed at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Kobe, Japan, is being developed under a national plan to design Japan's next generation flagship supercomputer and to carry out a wide range of applications that will address high-priority social and scientific issues. It will be put to use in applications aimed at achieving the Society 5.0 plan, by running applications in areas such as drug discovery; personalized and preventive medicine; simulations of natural disasters; weather and climate forecasting; energy creation, storage, and use; development of clean energy; new material development; new design and production processes; and--as a purely scientific endeavor--elucidation of the fundamental laws and evolution of the universe. In addition, Fugaku is currently being used on an experimental basis for research on COVID-19, including on diagnostics, therapeutics, and simulations of the spread of the virus. The new supercomputer is scheduled to begin full operation in fiscal 2021 (which starts in April 2021).

According to Satoshi Matsuoka, director of RIKEN R-CCS, "Ten years after the initial concept was proposed, and six years after the official start of the project, Fugaku is now near completion. Fugaku was developed based on the idea of achieving high performance on a variety of applications of great public interest, such as the achievement of Society 5.0, and we are very happy that it has shown itself to be outstanding on all the major supercomputer benchmarks. In addition to its use as a supercomputer, I hope that the leading-edge IT developed for it will contribute to major advances on difficult social challenges such as COVID-19."

According to Naoki Shinjo, Corporate Executive Officer of Fujitsu Limited, "I believe that our decision to use a co-design process for Fugaku, which involved working with RIKEN and other parties to create the system, was a key to our winning the top position on a number of rankings. I am particularly proud that we were able to do this just one month after the delivery of the system was finished, even during the COVID-19 crisis. I would like to express our sincere gratitude to RIKEN and all the other parties for their generous cooperation and support. I very much hope that Fugaku will show itself to be highly effective in real-world applications and will help to realize Society 5.0."

"The supercomputer Fugaku illustrates a dramatic shift in the type of compute that has been traditionally used in these powerful machines, and it is proof of the innovation that can happen with flexible computing solutions driven by a strong ecosystem," said Rene Haas, President, IPG, Arm. "For Arm, this achievement showcases the power efficiency, performance and scalability of our compute platform, which spans from smartphones to the world's fastest supercomputer. We congratulate RIKEN and Fujitsu Limited for challenging the status quo and showing the world what is possible in Arm-based high-performance computing."

###
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.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:23:32|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview that he would consider meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. media reported on Sunday.

In a Friday interview with Axios, Trump suggested that he is open to a meeting with Maduro. "Maduro would like to meet. And I'm never opposed to meeting," he said.

"I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I've turned them down," he added.

Trump also indicated a lack of confidence in Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has gained supports from the United States and some other western countries since early 2019.

The United States has been pursuing a policy of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation against the Maduro government in support of Guaido. Enditem
Jordan stressed on Sunday its support to Egypt in face of any threat to its security and stability along its borders with neighboring Libya, a statement by the Egyptian foreign ministry read.

According to the statement, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry received a phone call from Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi, where they exchanged viewpoints over several regional issues of common interest, including the Libyan crisis and the Palestinian cause.

On Libya, Safadi said Egypts security is of Jordans security as a pillar for security and stability in the region, the statement read, adding that the two ministers agreed on the importance of supporting all efforts for a political reconciliation in Libya at the earliest opportunity.

Such a settlement would preserve Libyas unity and territorial integrity and paves the way for the return of security and stability under the outcomes of Berlin Conference and Cairo Declaration, the statement added.

The two ministers stressed the necessity of a ceasefire and undertaking necessary measures to avert the worsening of the crisis, making Libya a field for regional and international conflicts.

Both ministers also affirmed their unwavering stance on rejecting any unilateral measures on the annexation of parts in occupied Palestinian lands due to its violation of international law andbecause it undermines chances of accomplishing fair and aspired peace.

They stressed on their stance in retrieving legitimate Palestinian rights based upon international law decisions and the Arab Peace Initiative.

The phone call also tackled faltering Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) negotiations, where Shoukry presented developments on the crisis and the latest move to the UN Security Council due amid the collapse of talks due to Addis Ababas intransigent positions.

The Jordanian minister stressed on the importance of Ethiopia not taking any unilateral measures on the filling of the dam and the necessity of reached an agreement that preserves Egypts rights in the Nile and other parties rights under the international law.



Search Keywords:

Short link:


Bubba Wallace stands for the national anthem before a NASCAR Cup Series auto race in Homestead, Fla., on June 14, 2020. (Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo)

NASCAR, US Attorney Investigating Noose Found in Black Racers Garage

NASCAR and a U.S. attorney are investigating who placed a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace, the companys lone black driver in its Cup Series.

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Jay Town said Monday that his office, the FBI, and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division are reviewing the situation surrounding the noose that was found in Bubba Wallaces garage to determine whether there are violations of federal law.

Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society, he added.

The statement came after NASCAR officials described themselves as angry and outraged and said they were investigating with the aim of identifying the person or persons responsible to eliminate them from the sport.

Wallace and other drivers were preparing for a race Sunday at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama when the noose was found.

The race was postponed to Monday because of inclement weather.

Wallace in a statement called what happened a despicable act of racism and hatred that left him incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism.

Wallace said hes received overwhelming support from drivers and NASCAR fans in recent weeks and praised those within the sport for committing to a number of changes.

A view of storms rolling through the area prior to the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Ala., on June 21, 2020. (Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images)

Darrell Bubba Wallace, driver of the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Chevrolet, stands next to his car painted with #Black Lives Matter prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Va., on June 10, 2020 (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate, he added.

As my mother told me today, They are just trying to scare you. This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.

The Talladega County Sheriffs Office didnt pick up the phone when called Monday for information on the incident.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said Monday she was shocked and appalled to hear about the noose, adding: Racism and threats of this nature will not be condoned nor tolerated, and I commit to assisting in any way possible to ensure that the person responsible for this is caught and punished.

Michael McDowell, another NASCAR driver, shared NASCARs statement on social media, saying: God help us. The level of evil it takes to do something like this is disgusting. This is enraging and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on Twitter he hopes Wallace wins the race.

The semi-retired driver said he is confident NASCARs leadership will find the culprit but that he worries about Wallace.

I do worry about Bubba. I hope Bubba is feeling loved and supported, he wrote. Keep sending him that love and support. He needs it now more than ever.
A post-mortem examination is to be held after a woman was found dead in her Dublin home.

The woman, named locally as 57-year-old Jean Eagers, died in her home at Willow Wood in the Hartstown area of Blanchardstown on Sunday morning.

A 60-year-old man remains in custody after being arrested in connection with the death of Ms Eagers.

The suspect has been detained at Blanchardstown garda station.

Gardai attended the property at around 11.30am and found the woman with serious injuries.

It is understood that a number of weapons, including a samurai sword and a meat cleaver, were recovered from the scene and are being examined by gardai.

Emergency services treated her, but she was declared dead at the scene.

The womans body was taken to the City Morgue where a post-mortem examination is being carried out by the Deputy State Pathologist Dr Kathleen Han.

The scene was examined by members of the Garda Technical Bureau.

Gardai have appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Green party councillor Daniel Whooley said people living in the area have been left shocked by the incident.

He said: This is not something we would ever expect to happen in this area. Everyone is shocked by her death and the manner in which she died.

The community cannot believe that the woman died in her home like that. My thoughts are with her family at this moment.
North Korea has threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. in case of war.

The North Korean Embassy in Moscow issued a statement on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War saying Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons and the U.S. will meet its own end in case of war, according to official TASS news agency Saturday.

"This year, the U.S. military has been carrying out various kinds of military maneuvers in South Korea and its vicinity with the purpose of striking North Korea quickly," the statement says. "A new round of the Korean War will add a particularly sensational event to the history of mankind, which will put an end to another empire, whose name is the United States," it adds.

Meanwhile the regime boasted of its friendship with China. The official Rodong Sinmun daily the same day supported Beijing's enactment of a new national security law for Hong Kong, and added China "is aggressively supporting [North Korea's] vigorous struggle to build a powerful socialist country amid pressure from hostile forces."


New Delhi: Actor Sonakshi Sinha says she didn't think twice before deactivating her Twitter profile and she is "better off" without the negativity on the social media platform.

Last week, the "Dabangg 3" star announced that she was steering clear of the microblogging site and also disabled the comments section of her Instagram account.

Sonakshi elaborated on her decision to deactivate Twitter, on which she had amassed around 16 million followers since joining the platform, on late Sunday night.

"Your negativity has never served me or my life, which is why it literally took a snap of a finger to get rid of a following of 16 million people which I've garnered over the last ten years. Just like that. And I'm better off for it.

"I wish all those haters and trolls lots of love and healing, or you can continue with the hate but please know it'll never reach me," she captioned the video.

The 33-year-old actor said she realised staying away from Twitter is beneficial for her.

"Some people are celebrating like they won something. I'm happy for you. You are feeling it, good for you, no one cares. But let's face it, I've cut the direct source of insult and abuse in my life.

"I've taken away your power to be able to say whatever it is that you want to me, my family and my friends. I've taken away that access you had to me, that I had given you so trustingly. So there's only one winner here. Me."

The actor said it is the support of people who love her that has kept her going.

"I request you all to keep spreading that love and light wherever you go and to as many people as you can. Because love is the answer. Always," she wrote. On Sunday, actor Sonam Kapoor also opened up about the social media abuse she has been receiving amid the 'outsider versus insider' debate in the wake of Sushant Singh Rajput's death.
[June 22, 2020] ASEAN and The Asia Foundation, with support from Google.org collaborate to equip 200,000 micro and small enterprises with digital skills and tools amidst the COVID-19 crisis

SINGAPORE, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (ACCMSME) and The Asia Foundation have come together, to launch the Go Digital ASEAN initiative. Supported by a USD3.3 million grant from Google.org, the initiative is designed to equip micro and small enterprises as well as underemployed youth, particularly those in rural and isolated areas, with crucial digital skills and tools; expand economic opportunity across ASEAN Member States (AMS); and minimize the negative impact from the COVID-19 crisis. The Go Digital ASEAN initiative focuses on closing the digital gap across ASEAN, in support of the vision set out by the ACCMSME's Action Agenda on Digitalisation of ASEAN Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through Capacity Building. Implemented by The Asia Foundation with support from Google.org-Google's philanthropic arm, the initiative will train up to 200,000 people from rural regions and underserved communitiesincluding entrepreneurs, underemployed youth, and women. Working with local partners in AMS, the USD3.3 million grant will broaden participation in the digital economy to include groups that have the most to gain from digital literacy skills and online safety awareness. Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, this initiative will also be a mechanism for helping MSMEs to learn about programs or assistance that can help them continue to operate during the COVID-19 crisis. Mr. Bountheung Douangsavanh, the Chair of ACCMSME and Director General of the Department of SME Promotion, Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Lao PDR remarked, "We very much welcome this collaboration with The Asia Foundation and appreciate the support by Google.org in our mission to enable more MSMEs to participate and take advantage of the growing digital economy in ASEAN. This Go Digital ASEAN initiative demonstrates ACCMSME's resolve to partner the private sector and non-governmental bodies in the implementation of the ASEAN Action Agenda on Digitalisation of ASEAN MSMEs through Capacity Building. It is a platform that welcomes and facilitates collaborations with private sector technology companies to increase awareness and readiness of MSMEs by providing access to information, training, mentoring and networking opportunities. The Action Agenda contributes to the overall ASEAN Digital Integration Framework announced at the 50th ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting in August 2018." David D. Arnold, President of The Asia Foundation said, "We are pleased to activate this first-of-its-kind collaborationpooling expertise and approaches from government, business, and NGO sectorsto help bridge the digital gap. In villages and secondary cities across the region, The Asia Foundation's local country offices will lead a community network of trainers and volunteers to help integrate MSME owners and underemployed youth workers into the digital economy." Ms. Stephanie Davis, Managing Director at Google Southeast Asia, shared, "Small businesses are at the heart of every country's economy and community. The current difficult circumstances have reinforced the urgency of supporting their digitisation. The Asia Foundation and ACCMSME share our passion to help local businesses succeed, grow and create opportunity for local economies. This grant builds upon our initiatives that focus on skills training in the region and reflect our commitment and investment in the region." When the World Health Organisation announced the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic, countries across the world imposed lockdowns, community quarantines, and movement restrictions to contain the spread of the virus, resulting in disruptions to economic activities and severely impacting MSMEs. Initial studies have highlighted key challenges faced by MSMEs in the face of this global health crisis, which include depletion of operational cash flow, drop in demand for products and services, supply disruptions, reduction of opportunities to interact with customers, and issues with a changing business environment to offer alternative products and services. Even as the containment measures are slowly lifted, continued social distancing may push more businesses online. MSMEs must re-examine and adjust the way they do business. Digital technology could potentially address the myriad challenges and provide an opportunity for businesses to survive and sustain through the pandemic and beyond. Through the Go Digital ASEAN initiative, participants will learn how to better utilise the internet and relevant digital tools to grow their businesses and reduce vulnerability against cyber threats. Training will be customised to local conditions and will cover modules such as digital marketing, business development, and online safety components to enable participants to access the most relevant tools and skills to help them improve their livelihoods in the digital economy. Information on relief programmes and measures provided by AMS will also help MSMEs continue to operate amidst the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more about the initiative here . About ACCMSME The ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (ACCMSME) is the ASEAN body responsible for strengthening MSMEs' participation in ASEAN integration and in deepening and broadening their contribution to ASEAN's economic growth. Comprising the ASEAN Member States' Heads and representatives of MSME agencies, and supported by the ASEAN Secretariat, the ACCMSME facilitates the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of ASEAN Strategic Action Plan for SME Development 2016-2025 (SAP SMED 2025), with the mission to create globally competitive, resilient and innovative MSMEs that are seamlessly integrated to the ASEAN community and to achieve inclusive development in the region. About The Asia Foundation The Asia Foundation is a nonprofit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. Informed by six decades of experience and deep local expertise, our work across the region addresses five overarching goalsstrengthen governance, empower women, expand economic opportunity, increase environmental resilience, and promote international cooperation. Headquartered in San Francisco, The Asia Foundation works through a network of offices in 18 Asian countries and in Washington, DC. Learn more at asiafoundation.org About Google.org (google.org) Google.org, Google's philanthropy, supports nonprofits that address humanitarian issues and apply scalable, data-driven innovation to solving the world's biggest challenges. We accelerate their progress by connecting them with a unique blend of support that includes funding, products, and technical expertise from Googlers. We engage with these believers-turned-doers who make a significant impact on the communities they represent, and whose work has the potential to produce meaningful change. We want a world that works for everyoneand we believe technology and innovation can move the needle. APPENDIX THE ASIA FOUNDATION IN-COUNTRY PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS







Country Partners Goals 200,000 Individuals Brunei The Young Entrepreneurs Association Brunei (YEAB) BigBWN Young Entrepreneurs Association Brunei (YEAB)'s mission is to provide access to a network of entrepreneurial experience, nurture an enterprising culture and encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship as Brunei endeavors to facilitate the attainment of Wawasan 2035. YEAB is targeting 1,500 MSME-owners and employees to increase their digital literacy skills and adopt the digitalization of businesses in Brunei. Big BWN Project's mission is to empower, encourage and support local youth, women and entrepreneurs, in order to become self-sustainable and to create a diverse community of entrepreneurs from different fields who support each other to grow their businesses and ideas, accompany them through delivering their initiatives to communities and addressing the key challenges affecting the growth of business initiatives. BigBWN is targeting to train 2,000 youths in Brunei to be more digitally literate to access better job opportunities and gain access to employment. 4,000 Cambodia InSTEDD iLab STAR Kampuchea Development Innovations InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia's mission is to improve global health, safety and sustainable development through collaborating with end users, co-creating tools, ensuring impact, and building capacity. InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia is developing training content and curriculum as well providing Training of Trainer training to volunteer trainers. STAR Kampuchea's mission is to improve the capacities of civil society organizations and communities to deliver high quality advocacy assistance on priority issues of vulnerable and disadvantaged people. STAR Kampuchea is mobilizing volunteer trainers to deliver training to rural micro and SME entrepreneurs in seven targeted locations. Development Innovations was a six-year USAID-funded project that helped civil society organizations, technology companies, social enterprises and young innovators to design and use information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and employ innovative processes to tackle Cambodia's development challenges. Development Innovations advised on curriculum development and implementation planning prior to the conclusion of their program in 2019. 15,000 Indonesia Pusat Pengembangan Sumberdaya Wanita (or Center for Women's Resource Development) PPSW's mission is to empower women especially those in the lowest socioeconomic strata in communities that are concentrated in urban slums, and rural areas. They use the focus issues faced by the community, such as economic, health and education issues as an entry point in community organizing, especially women's groups. Through this program, PPSW will extend their community work through introducing digital literacy to help their community get better access to digital economy 20,000 Laos Stella STELLA is a unique platform for Lao youth to learn soft skills, share experience, and collaborate on projects to create positive change to their own communities. STELLA will support The Asia Foundation to develop, deliver and promote innovative and responsive training solutions for digital literacy targeting MSMEs in cooperation with participating Lao Government higher education institutions. 8,000 Malaysia International Youth Center Startup Malaysia The International Youth Center (IYC) is a youth development centre for the internationalization of youth equipped with 21st-century skills under the purview of the Ministry of Youth & Sports. IYC as the main project partner will deliver the GoDigital ASEAN project in partnership with Startup Malaysia, a social enterprise set up in 2011 that fosters entrepreneurial skills in individuals to enable them to build their career, contribute to society and lead a fulfilling life. IYC together with Startup Malaysia aims to assist youth and MSME owners to gain the skills on digital literacy to access the marketplace of online prospects, craft their own digital marketing campaigns and provide them with tools to monitor and adapt marketing campaigns. 15,000 Myanmar Myanmar Library Association (MLA) Myanmar Library Association is a non-governmental organization with a mission to help the country in every capacity to motivate reading, improve access to and use of new technology and in the area of information literacy development in the country. MLA members will serve as master TOT trainers to provide digital literacy training to university and college students; students from technical and vocational education and training schools; and those who finished high school and are looking for job opportunities in Kayin State, Yangon Region and Mandalay Region. 8,000 Philippines Pailig Development Foundation Clevergrit Web Services Pailig Development Foundation, Inc. is an Iligan City-based non-government organization that firmly believes in the democratic principles and has more than 21 years of empowering total human development for sustainable development through technical assistance and life skills capacity building; community organizing, empowerment and development; livelihood and income generation; and advocacy on transparent and accountable governance. As the implementing partner in the Philippines, Pailig helps bring the program to beneficiaries of Go Digital ASEAN across Mindanao. Clevergrit's advocacy is to support startups, particularly MSMEs in the countryside, and has more than 10 years of experience in helping businesses build their presence and expand their marketing success by identifying gaps and opportunities to provide comprehensive project plans with timelines and cost analyses. Clevergrit will serve as Master Trainers and provide its expertise to equip trainers and refine the program curriculum in the Philippines. 25,000 Singapore Engineering Good (EG) Engineering Good is a Singapore-based non-profit organisation that empowers disadvantaged communities by improving their quality of life through sustainable engineering solutions. EG will be hosting a Hackathon for underemployed youth and underemployed youth with disabilities. 100 Thailand Thai Fund Foundation (TFF) Inter Mountain Peoples' Education and Culture in Thailand Association (IMPECT) Thai Fund Foundation aims to distribute knowledge and innovation to communities especially in remote areas and to provide opportunity for people participating in development activities. Inter Mountain Peoples' Education and Culture in Thailand Association supports community organizations and networks of local indigenous people on culture, rights, and liberty to define the ways of life of indigenous people. Together TFF and IMPECT will work with lead coordinators in 20 provinces in the Northeastern (TFF) and Northern (IMPECT) regions of Thailand, connecting 2,000 local volunteer trainers to distribute knowledge to 40,000 individuals. 40,000 Vietnam Tinh Thuong Microfinance Institution (TYM) Vietnet ICT Tinh Thuong Microfinance Institution (TYM) is a microfinance service provider belonging to the Vietnam Women's Union, mandated to empower low-income women and their families through provision of financial and non-financial services to facilitate their participation in socio-economic activities and improve their quality of life. TYM is the project's key implementing partner, using its existing service delivery network to outreach and deliver the digital literacy training to nearly 65,000 household businesses and underemployed youth in 13 provinces in the northern delta, highland and central parts of Vietnam. Vietnet Information Technology and Communication Center (Vietnet-ICT) is a local NGO mandated to support disadvantaged communities and groups to get access and benefit from information technology and communication services via promoting partnership and capacity building. Vietnet-ICT will technically lead training curriculum development specifically designed for the project's target beneficiaries and training of the lead trainers and field mentors who are service delivery staff of TYM. 65,000

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200622/2836783-1 SOURCE Google

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
At the request of Member States, the European Commission has clarified the procedure for applying EU economic sanctions using the example of a package of restrictive measures against Russia in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

This is stated in a press release published on the website of the European Commission.

"As part of its role to ensure the effective and uniform implementation of EU restrictive measures (sanctions), the European Commission today issued an Opinion that clarifies how existing financial sanctions should be interpreted in particular as regards the freezing of assets The Opinion concerns the sanctions imposed by means of Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. It was requested by EU national competent authorities, which are responsible for implementing EU sanctions," reads the statement.

In particular, asset freezing refers to the blocking of bank accounts and other assets of persons listed under EU sanctions. The Opinion should provide clarity to Member States' competent authorities as regards the implementation of restrictive measures imposed by the EU in this field.

"This Opinion will contribute to ensuring that Member States and their operators act consistently and effectively when they implement EU sanctions. It will clarify the scope of the asset freeze imposed on sanctioned individuals or entities. We have no doubt that it will contribute to a clearer and stronger application of sanctions across the EU, said Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission.

Similarly to other sanctions regulations, Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 imposes the freezing of all assets belonging to, owned, held or controlled by the listed natural and legal persons, and a prohibition to make funds and economic resources available to them. In this regard, the Commission clarified that the assets of an entity controlled by a listed person must be frozen, even if the entity as such is not listed. However, the controlled entity may obtain the lifting of the freeze on some or all of its assets if it provides evidence that they are in fact not controlled by the listed person.

The text further clarified that funds and economic resources cannot be made available to entities controlled by listed persons, except in specific cases foreseen as derogations in the sanctions regime. It also specified that the provision of labour or services to entities controlled by listed persons can amount to making economic resources indirectly available to the listed persons, insofar as it enables the latter to ultimately obtain an economic benefit.

As reported, since March 2014, the EU has progressively imposed restrictive measures against Russia. The measures were adopted in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and the deliberate destabilisation of Ukraine.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Alya Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22 2020

The Jakarta administration has opted for a virtual celebration to commemorate the capital citys 493rd anniversary, which will fall on June 22 amid the unceasing COVID-19 pandemic.

It will be the first virtual celebration for the city, which annually celebrates its anniversary with various shows and big events.

The Jakarta administration has suspended the annual Jakarta Fair to limit crowds and curb the spread of the coronavirus. However, it has also prepared a number of virtual activities to jazz up the jubilee including the Jakarta Great Online Sale, virtual tours across the citys tourist destinations and cultural streaming programs.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Research shows virus undetectable on five highly circulated library materials after three days Findings are part of REALM Project to produce science-based information to help mitigate exposure to virus





DUBLIN, Ohio, 22 June 2020In the first phase of a project to develop and disseminate science-based information about how materials can be handled to mitigate exposure to staff and visitors, scientists have found that the virus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 is not detectable on five common library materials after three days.

The findings are part of the Reopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums (REALM) Project designed to generate scientific information to support the handling of core museum, library, and archival materials as these institutions begin to resume operations and reopen to the public. The first phase of the research is focusing on commonly found and frequently handled materials, especially in U.S. public libraries.

Over the past few weeks, scientists at Battelle tested the virus on a variety of surfaces, in environments with standard temperature and relative humidity conditions typically found in air-conditioned office space. Materials tested in phase one included the cover of hardcover books (buckram cloth), the cover of softback books, plain paper pages inside a closed book, mylar protective book cover jackets, and plastic DVD cases. Battelle tests found the virus undetectable after one day on the covers of hardback and softback books as well as the DVD case. The virus was undetectable on the paper inside of a book and mylar book jackets after three days. "It's below the limit of detection on our viability assay," said Battelle Principal Research Scientist Will Richter.

Lab testing of physical items followed literature reviews conducted by Battelle to help define the scope of the project's research and the information needs of libraries, archives, and museums. Last week, the REALM Project released "Systematic Literature Review of SARS-CoV-2: Spread, Environmental Attenuation, Prevention, and Decontamination," prepared by Battelle. This is an in-depth review of published literature on virus transmission, attenuation, and decontamination methods that can inform discussion and decisions about operations in archives, libraries, and museums.

"Scientific research is essential to answer questions about the spread of the coronavirus on materials that are ever-present in our nation's libraries, archives, and museums," said IMLS Director Crosby Kemper. "We recognized the need to test specific items and surfaces as these organizations are now reopening, asking: How can we mitigate risk to staff? How should patrons and visitors handle books, touchable exhibits, or DVD cases? Our aim was to equip America's libraries, archives, and museums with information to help them do what they do best: continue serving their communities. I am so pleased and hopeful that this critical work will be reaching the people who need it."

"Results from this ongoing research project will help libraries, archives, and museums plan with greater confidence at a difficult time," said Skip Prichard, OCLC President and CEO. "Although there are various sources of general information about handling materials in the time of COVID-19, this project is designed specifically to test materials and provide useful science-based information to these institutions. Equipped with this critical information, they will be better able to determine measures they can take to mitigate exposure to staff and the communities they serve."

"Any library worker would agree that people make good decisions when their decisions are based on facts and evidence," said Nate Hill, Executive Director, Metropolitan New York Library Council and member of the REALM Project Steering Committee. "The output of the REALM Project, both the systematic literature review and the lab test results, give library workers the information they need to make practical, informed decisions as they reopen their spaces and resume their services."

Battelle will be initiating lab testing on an additional five materials this month, with results expected by the end of July. Examples of public library reopening plans are being collected, curated, and shared to the website this week. The research reports will inform development of toolkit resources, content, and programming that will help translate the findings for real-world applications in museums, libraries, and archives.

"As museums across the country draft their reopening plans, we know that our exhibitions and galleries contain a vast variety of materials that are not addressed in state and federal public health guidelines," said Carole Charnow, President and Chief Executive Officer, Boston Children's Museum and member of the REALM Operations Working Group. "Therefore, we need up to date, science-based information specific to museums. For those of us that are hands-on, interactive institutions, this is especially critical. The REALM Project is providing the invaluable evidence-based information museum professionals need in order to ensure the highest possible standards of safety for our staff and visitors."

The REALM Project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the primary source of federal funding for museums and libraries; and OCLC, a nonprofit library technology and research organization; in partnership with Battelle, a not-for-profit global scientific research and development organization.

Project updates are posted at oc.lc/realm-project as they become available. Those interested can also sign up through the project website to receive timely email updates when new information is released.
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website  when visited by a user  asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies  which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting  for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
LONDON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hakluyt is delighted to announce a new collaboration with American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Hakluyt will be advising ABT on a range of issues, including its response to the global coronavirus pandemic, its international education programmes, and its future touring plans.

This is the latest development in the company's longstanding support for cultural institutions, including the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Opera House.

Varun Chandra, Hakluyt's managing partner, said: "Now, more than ever, the world needs strong cultural institutions that will sustain and enrich communities around the world. Hakluyt is committed to supporting the valuable work of organisations such as American Ballet Theatre, and we look forward to working with their team as they strive to create, present, preserve, and extend the influence of classical dance."

Keith Lieberthal, an executive in Hakluyt's New York office, has become a founding member of the ABT Global Council. He will serve as one of a number of leaders in business, philanthropy and the arts who have been asked to help shape the future of America's National Ballet Company.

Kara Medoff Barnett, the executive director of ABT, commented: "ABT has performed in 45 countries and in all 50 US states since the company's founding in 1940. As we celebrate eight decades of excellence, we are very grateful for Hakluyt's support as we chart our future course, and we look forward to a strong and enduring partnership with the company in the years to come."

Notes to editors

Hakluyt is a strategic advisory firm that works with corporate leaders and investors around the world on their most important commercial issues.

Keith Lieberthal joined Hakluyt in 2019. Before then, he led global engagement at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He was previously director of strategy for the Wall Street research firm, Guidepoint, general counsel at Tommy Hilfiger, an associate at Covington & Burling LLP, and at Bain & Co. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

For more information on Hakluyt, please visit www.hakluytandco.com .

For more information on American Ballet Theatre, please visit www.abt.org .

SOURCE Hakluyt & Co.

Related Links

http://www.hakluytandco.com


Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia parties boycotted Monday's special sitting of parliament.

The National Assembly (NA) of Armenia has kicked off its special sitting on the agenda of which there is only one issue: to make amendments in the Constitution.

According to the respective bill submitted by 54 MPs of the majority My Step faction in parliament, it is proposed to make amendments in Article 213 of the Constitution.

Accordingly, the powers of the Constitutional Court (CC) judges who have been in office for over 12 years shall be terminated. The remaining judges shall continue to serve until they complete their 12 years in this capacity.

Besides, it is proposed that the term of office of the serving president of the Constitutional Court shall cease, after which the next president of the Constitutional Court shall be elected in accordance with Article 166 of the Constitution.
Mumbai, June 22 : Aditi Rao Hydari's Malayalam movie "Sufiyum Sujatayum", which is going straight to streaming platform instead of a theatrical release, will release on July 3.

The musical love story stars the southern superstar Jayasurya alongside Aditi. With this film, Aditi is returning to the Malayalam Film industry after a span of 14 years.

The film is shot by cinematographer Anu Moothedath and edited by Deepu Joseph. The music in the film is composed by M. Jayachandran with lyrics penned by Hari Narayan and songs sung by Sudeep Palanad. It premieres on Amazon Prime Video.

"Sufiyum Sujatayum" is among several Bollywood and regional films acquired by Amazon Prime Video for a direct-to-digital release, including the Hindi film "Gulabo Sitabo" starring Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana, the Tamil-Telugu bilingual "Penguin" starring Keerthy Suresh, and the Tamil film "Pongmagal Vandhal" with actor Jyothika in lead role.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
In a move to retaliate the moves of defectors who set leaflets and balloons defaming the Kim-regime through the inter-Korean border, North Korea is revealed that they are currently preparing to drown South Korea with a massive pile of propaganda leaflets. The leaflets would contain information that denounces the South's government and defectors of the Hermit Kingdom.

According to NBC News, North Korean state news agency KCNA reported that most of the leaflets will be printouts of the Southe's President Moon Jae-in's face smeared and vandalized with cigarette buss which would insinuate that he is trash. The news agency added that the said leaflets are being prepared by the North's university students.

Despite the fact that North Korea has a history of sending propaganda leaflets across the border, this action is usually taken by defectors from North Korea who have moved in the South. The said defectors usually use balloons to send the leaflets and even use bottles that have flyers, money, and rice across the river.

On top of this, the news outlet reported that people in the Hermit Kingdom are enraged of the steps taken by the South and are ready to make their own move by flooding the South with "leaflets of punishment," which would be distributed in a massive-scale.

It was also added that this is the North's answer to the previous actions of the South so that they would know how offending it felt for the authorities when the propaganda leaflets reached the North.

Read also: Kim Jong-Un Ramping Tensions With South Korea to Distract Trump Into Negotiations

Inter-Korean Tensions Rising.

According to The Guardian, the rogue nation's move to send the so-called "leaflets of punishment" to the South comes as the tension between the two Korean nations continues to rise.

Just last week, Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo Jong said that they would leave the decisions on how to retaliate to the military. In addition, a few days ago the inter-Korean liaison office was demolished.

Moreover, earlier this month, the Hermit Kingdom announced that it would cut all communication lines with South Korea. Based on analysts, the move initially aimed to create a crisis that would force South Korea to make concessions.

On top of this, the rogue nation also previously announced that it would be cutting its relationship with the Us noting that their ties have not been improved ever since the summit in Singapore two years ago where Trump and dictator Kim Jong-un shook hands.

According to the unification Ministry of the south, it is very regrettable that the North needed to take such actions to disseminate propaganda leaflets amid the growing tensions between the two. They also called the North to immediately stop the plan as it will break the terms stated in the inter-Korean agreements.

Seoul has previously already stated that they would take care of the people and organizations that are responsible for sending anti-regime propaganda leaflets through the border.

Related article: Tension Builds Up as North Korea Blows up Border Liaison Office, Will South Korea Retaliate?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For some time now, telecommunications dashing out the data of subscribers has been a discussion from all nooks and crannies in Ghana.

It has come to the attention of STRANEK-Africa that the National Communications Authority (NCA) has indicated that all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) i.e. MTN, Glo, Vodafone, and AirtelTigo complied with the request for information which was subsequently processed and forwarded to the Ghana Health Service for contact tracing purposes. Thus, there was no objection by any party in respect of COVID-19 contact tracing data request until an application for injunction order was filed.

We wish to ask NCA 5 questions.

Why has NCA refused to file a defence in the Francis Kwarteng Arthur case? In what format did the telecommunications supply the personal data  hashed or unhashed? In respect of which services did the telecommunications supply the personal information- does it include mobile money transactions or not? In which period did the telecommunications supply the personal information- from before or after COVID-19? What was the objection of MTN about and did NCA respond to that objection?

STRANEK-Africa has credible information that some telecommunication started sharing subscribers information with government before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Ghana. Therefore, the NCA and government cannot hide behind contact tracing to violate the privacy rights of subscribers.

What is more disappointing is that, the NCA as a regulator is required to protect consumers. By its conduct, the NCA is rather aiding and abetting the violation of the rights of subscribers. No wonder telecommunication services remain poor in Ghana due to poor regulation.

For the sake of subscribers, we at STRANEK-Africa wish that these questions will be answered expeditiously to clear the notion about the private data of subscribers of mobile phone companies being dashed out.

We are all involved in building our motherland Ghana.

Signed

Nii Tettey Tetteh

Executive Director

+233 559 042 914

Emmanuel Osei

Director of Policy and Political Affairs

+47 412 45 303
The group is run by Rinaldo Nazzaro who is living in an upmarket apartment in Russia.

Secret efforts to groom and recruit teenagers by a neo-Nazi militant group have been exposed by covert recordings.

They capture senior members of The Base interviewing young applicants and discussing how to radicalize them, the BBC reports.

The FBI has described the group as seeking to unite white supremacists around the world and incite a race war.

The recordings were passed to US civil rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, before some were shared with BBC One's Panorama.

Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of The Base, is a 47-year-old American. Earlier this year the BBC revealed he was directing the organization from his upmarket apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The interviews, which took place via conference call on an encrypted app, followed a pattern - prospective members were asked by Nazzaro about their personal history, ethnicity, radicalization journey and experience with weapons, before a panel of senior members posed their own questions.

The would-be recruits were quizzed on what books they had read, including Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, and were encouraged to familiarize themselves with the group's white supremacist ideology, which predicts and seeks to accelerate racial warfare, requiring followers to prepare for conflict and social breakdown.

Read alsoSBU exposes neo-Nazi group run by Russian man

During the calls, Nazzaro can be heard welcoming members of other extremist groups.

The young applicants, who hide behind aliases and display varying degrees of ideological awareness, describe their radicalization by online videos and propaganda.

When interviewees left the calls, senior members discussed their potential before arranging to vet them in person at a later date.

The recordings make clear that The Base sought to recruit soldiers from western militaries to draw on their training with tactics and firearms.

Nazzaro informed one British teenager that the idea of societal collapse was a "guiding philosophy". A European teenager was told that such a collapse would be desirable, even at a local level, if it offered a "power vacuum that we can take advantage of".

One boy was told "we have a goal of initially creating two to three man cells in as many areas as possible" and that the "UK is a place that we think there is a lot of potential".

During a post-interview discussion about a 17-year-old from Europe, one older man spoke of "shaping" his belief system, with Nazzaro saying he needed a "little work ideologically" but was "definitely headed in the right direction".

Dr Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, describes the recordings as a "highly unusual glimpse" into this extreme world, showing there was "no singular pathway to radicalization".

She says those applying to The Base came from a variety of backgrounds: "I think it's really best to think of them as a reflection of a society that is so deeply politically polarized".

In the American State of Georgia, three members of The Base are currently facing conspiracy charges for allegedly plotting to murder an anti-fascist couple.

The Base is the latest underground organization to emerge from an international neo-Nazi network originally generated by a now-defunct web forum called Iron March.
Tiny dense forests are emerging around Europe as part of a campaign aimed at preserving biodiversity and combating the climate crisis. The miniature versions of the dense forests are being planted by using the technique of Japans most famous botanist Miyawaki.

The whole concept behind the movement is to plant densely-packed clusters of seedlings from indigenous plants to create a small functional ecosystem that can restore soil, protect resources like water and improve air quality. The dense forest also acts as a biodiversity hotspot that can have a measurable effect on both the local and regional environment, as per a report.

READ | What is World Rainforest Day and why is it celebrated? Here's all you need to know

READ | West Bengal Forest dept to add 2 more Malinois dog to its canine squad

Miyawaki method adapted in Europe

The Miyawaki method is perfect for organizations like Urban Forests in France and Belgium, and the Tiny Forest initiative in Holland, as it grows 10 times faster, and possesses up to 20 times more biodiversity potential than contemporary forests. The dense forests also hold a strong capability to prevent the worst of climate change.

In March, the Urban Forests completed planting 22-species. The plantations are made in a very dense way, in order to favor the cooperation between the species, a volunteer of Urban Forests explained. Further 1,200 trees were planted on 400 square meters in Miyawaki forest in Toulouse, France. This is the first dense forest in the capital. Overall, Miyawaki forests across Belgium and France consists of 21,000 trees over 7,000 square meters in total.

Tiny Forest initiative originated in 2015 in the Dutch city of Zaandam by the Institute for Nature Education and Sustainability. It has produced 100 Miyawaki forests across the country and had proposed an additional 30 for the first three months of 2020.

READ | Chhattisgarh tusker deaths: 9 forest officials transferred

About Akira Miyawaki

Botanist Akira Miyawaki in 1970 learned that trees around Japans Shinto and Buddhist shrines tended to be indigenous species, well-adapted to the soil and climate of the islands of Japan. He founded a method of restoring indigenous forests on degraded or deforested land which had been lacking in humus and this came to be known as the Miyawaki method. Using this method he created over 1,700 forests throughout Asia.

READ | Forest and environment ministry policies outdated, hinder growth: Gadkari

(Image Credit Instagram/urbanforestsbelgium)
Kolkata, June 22 : A man shot dead his mother-in-law and then killed himself at a high rise apartment in Kolkata's Kankurgachi locality on Monday, the police said.

Police said Amit Agarwal, 42, son in-law of Subhas Dhandhania, 70, came to his in-law's flat at 2B, Rameswaram Building, at Kankurgachi at about 5.30 p.m. and started arguing with them.

The incident took place when Lalita Dhandhania, the mother-in-law, tried to pacify Amit during a heated argument. During the conversation he got agitated and took out a firearm and shot his mother-in-law from a very close range. Later, Amit, who used to work with a private company, also shot himself dead.

Subhas Dhandhania got scared and hurriedly came out of the room and closed the door from outside. He went out of the flat and took shelter at one of his neighbours' houses.

The residents of the apartment informed the local Phoolbagan police station. The police entered the flat and saw Amit lying in a pool of blood on the bed. The firearm was also seen on the floor.

"We have started an investigation into the case," a police official said.

Sources said the relationship between Amit and his wife Shilpi was going through a lot of ups and downs for the past two years and the divorce suit was pending. Shilpi stays with her son in Bangalore.
Scott County authorities have arrested one of two people whom police say robbed a person at gunpoint of two dogs on May 5.

Demarquez Donnta Dothard-Hanes, 23, of 1909 W. 70th St., Davenport, is charged with one count of first-degree robbery.

The charge is a Class B felony under Iowa law that carries an automatic prison sentence of 25 years, 70% of which, or 17  years, must be served before parole can be granted.

Still at large is Desmend Qwauntrill Williams, 27, who also is facing a charge of first-degree robbery.

According to Dothard-Hanes arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Detective Gregory Lalla, at 3:43 p.m. on May 5 officers were sent to the Country Inn and Suites at 140 E. 55th St., for a report of a robbery.

Dothard-Hanes and Williams had arranged to meet with the victim in the parking lot of the Country Inn and Suites. Dothard-Hanes and Williams were looking to buy two dogs from the victim.

The victim gave the dogs to one of the men while the other filled out paperwork. When the victim asked about being paid, the person filling out the paperwork wielded a handgun and pointed it at the victim.
Donald Trump is reportedly furious over the low turnout at his much-hyped rally in Tulsa on Saturday while his campaign blasted claims that teens on TikTok and K-pop fans trolled the president by ordering tickets to the event without ever intending to actually be there.

In a statement, the Trump campaign blamed the 'fake news media' for 'warning people away from the rally' over COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice around the country.

'Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what they're talking about or how our rallies work,' Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote.

'Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans - without contacting the campaign for comment - behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.'

Donald Trump is reportedly furious over the low turnout at his much-hyped rally in Tulsa on Saturday

The President tees off at the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, yesterday

President Trump's campaign denies claims that teens on social media and K-pop fans reserved the bulk of tickets for the rally in Tulsa on Saturday. The upper section of the BOK Center is partially empty during the event (above)

President Trump (left) was reportedly 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd size in Tulsa on Saturday, though it appears that campaign manager Brad Parscale's (right) job is safe for now

The president on Sunday was seen returning to the White House after playing golf at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia earlier in the day

Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump campaign, tweeted on Sunday: 'Trolls thinking they hacked rally tix don't know how this works.

'Lame trick tried many times. We weed out bogus RSVPs with fake phone#s. All rallies are general admission. Real factor was media-stoked fear. Most media didn't bother to ask us anyway.'

On Sunday, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign was grilled on Fox News by host Chris Wallace, who said 'you guys look silly' by 'denying the reality of what happened' in Tulsa.

'[Trump] talks about how he can fill an arena, and he didn't fill an arena last night,' the Fox News Sunday host told Schlapp.

'You guys were so far off that you had planned an outdoor rally and there wasn't an overflow crowd. Protesters did not stop people from coming to that rally. The fact is, people did not show up.'

The President cruises along the course in a golf buggy as he spends Father's Day playing his favourite sport

Wearing one of his Make America Great Again baseball caps the day after his first election rally since lockdown, Trump talks to friends on the golf course yesterday

Trump on the putting green at his Virginia golf club the day after the rally, where his campaign team blamed the 'fake news media' for 'warning people away'

In response, Schlapp tried to change the subject to Trump's opponent in November, Democrat Joe Biden.

'Joe Biden has been a failed politician that has done nothing but support failed institutions,' Schlapp said.

'This is in contrast with President Trump who has a strong record and is rebuilding this economy.'

Wallace then told Schlapp that she was 'shifting to a campaign speech' to avoid answering the question.

'Mercedes, please don't filibuster,' Wallace said in the on-air exchange.

Fox News host Chris Wallace grilled Mercedes Schlapp (above), an adviser to the Trump campaign, over claims that protesters prevented people from reaching the rally in Tulsa on Saturday

'Frankly, it makes you guys look silly when you deny the reality of what happened.'

Schlapp maintained, however, that the combination of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter protesters deterred people from the rally.

'When it comes to understanding how the rallies work, it's a first-come, first-served basis,' Schlapp said.

She said it was 'important to understand - and I had this with my own personal family who lives not far away from Tulsa, that they were concerned.

'There were factors involved, like they were concerned about the protesters who were coming in.'

Trump looked fatigued as he returned to the White House early Sunday following the rally.

The president claimed 'thugs' blocked his supporters from filling the noticeably vacant seats at his speech.

Trump was seen stepping off Marine One onto the South Lawn of the White House early in the morning with his red tie undone - a rare sight for the president - and a red 'Make America Great Again' cap clutched in his hand.

In his Saturday night speech Trump praised the supporters who showed up saying, 'Thank you warriors. Thank you.'

The president (pictured on the course yesterday) claimed 'thugs' blocked his supporters from filling the noticeably vacant seats at his speech

Trump walks across the putting green at one of the holes at his Potomac Falls course during a match in the dun

The presidents' daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also a top White House aide, are reportedly 'p****d' at Parscale for the low turnout, CNN is reporting.

The network quoted a campaign official as saying that Trump's family is unhappy with Parscale for overestimating the number of people that were going to attend the rally.

'Jared and Ivanka are p****d at Brad over promising on crowd size,' the source said.

A top aide to Kushner, Avi Berkowitz, denied the story.

'This is false,' Berkowitz tweeted.

Saturday night marked Trump's first rally since campaigning was sidelined by the coronavirus crisis and since Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Polls show Biden leading Trump in their match up as voters give the president low marks for his handling of the pandemic and for his response to race relations after the death of George Floyd.

The rally in Tulsa was painted as the event that would reset the Trump campaign, bring the president back up in the polls, and let Trump enjoy the cheers of supporters - the kind of energy he craves and thrives off of.

But the BOK Center was marked by row after row of empty seats and a scheduled stop for the president for the outside overflow area had to be canceled after the expected crowds didn't appear.

Dressed in black trousers, a white polo and a MAGA cap, Trump carries his golf club to the next hole

The Trump campaign's chief spokesperson blamed 'media-stoked fear' for the poor attendance at the rally

'There's still space!' the campaign texted supporters before Trump took the stage. After the rally was over the campaign argued that four million people watched it online, calling it an audience Biden 'can only dream of.'

The president and his team had a variety of reasons for the lack of a crowd, including media reports on the rising number of coronavirus cases in Oklahoma and protesters outside of arena, claiming they blocked the security lines so people could not get inside.

'I have been watching the fake news for weeks now. And everything is negative,' Trump said in his remarks.

'We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things. But I really do appreciate it,' he told those who showed up.

'You saw these thugs that came along,' Trump complained of the peaceful demonstrators outside the BOK Center, many of whom wore 'Black Lives Matters' t-shirts.

In his speech that lasted one hour and 41 minutes, Trump railed against his rival 'Sleepy Joe' and claimed he was controlled by the 'radical left.' His speech painted a fearful picture of life in America under a President Joe Biden, where people wouldn't be able to own a gun or go to church, and where mob rule would be a way of life.

His speech also contained the kind of political red meat his supporters like to hear: his support for a strong military, his criticism of protesters tearing down statues of Confederate Army officers, his demand that other nations stop 'ripping off' the United States, and his call for people who burn the American flag to serve one year in jail.

Parscale was ridiculed on social media on Saturday as Trump critics delighted in pointing out that at least one-third of the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa was empty.

Earlier this week, Parscale tweeted that more than a million people requested tickets for the rally through Trump's campaign website.

Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the city fire marshal's office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the arena.

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa, but that never materialized.

The president and vice president both canceled planned speeches that they were expecting to give to a large overflow crowd just outside of the arena.

After it became apparent that just a few dozen people had showed up, campaign organizers folded up the stage which was already outfitted with protective glass that Trump was supposed to have stood behind while giving his address.

The president's daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, were said to have been 'p****d' at Parscale for 'over promising on crowd size'

A top aide to Kushner, however, denied the report, saying it was false

Meanwhile, several news reports indicate that Trump and his top aides are angry over the sparsely attended rally.

In late April it was reported that Trump threatened to sue Parscale during a furious phone call in the wake of his poll numbers plummeting and re-election chances diminishing.

CNN and The New York Times reported on the back-and-forth on April 29, noting that Parscale and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel had told the president to quit it with his daily coronavirus press briefings, as they were hurting him with swing-state voters.

On the call - one of a series of such calls with aides - Trump tore into Parscale for the cratering polls, shouting 'I'm not f***ing losing to Joe Biden,' during a conversation peppered with profanity, the Associated Press reported.

The campaign chief shot back, 'I love you, too,' according to The Times. Jared Kushner was also present for the expletive-filled confrontations.

The president himself was also 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd in Tulsa, where a large turnout was expected for the first campaign event in three months, according to NBC News.

Even before the rally on Saturday, Trump was reportedly venting to his top aides about news that six members of his staff, among them at least two Secret Service agents, had tested positive for COVID-19.

The president was said to be upset that the information leaked to the press. He reportedly was angry that news stories about the positive cases were making headlines and marring coverage of the rally.

According to NBC News, while many blame Parscale for the low turnout at the rally, his job is safe for now.

Nonetheless, associates of the president were not impressed.

'This was a major failure,' an outside adviser to Trump told NBC News.

AOC joins hundreds of Twitter users claiming teens on TikTok and K-pop fans sabotaged Trump's Tulsa rally and left seats empty by reserving thousands of tickets with no intention of showing up

TikTok users and K-pop fans claim they reserved hundreds of tickets for Trump's Tulsa rally on Saturday night with no intention of attending.

Political strategist Steve Schmidt, an outspoken critic of Trump, tweeted on Saturday night: 'My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America's teens.

'@realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team.'

He then added: 'This is what happened tonight. I'm dead serious when I say this. The teens of America have struck a savage blow against @realDonaldTrump. All across America teens ordered tickets to this event. The fools on the campaign bragged about a million tickets. lol.'

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised the Zoomers and K-pop allies involved in reserving tickets.

The Oklahoma rally was intended to be the largest indoor gathering in the world during the coronavirus pandemic that has killed almost 120,000 Americans, put 40 million more out of work and upended Trump's reelection bid.

The arena is seen just seven minutes before the doors were scheduled to close on Saturday

There were many empty seats at Saturday's rally. Trump's campaign declared that it had received over a million ticket requests.

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center

Political strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted on Saturday night: 'My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America's teens'

Brad Parscale, campaign manager for Trump's 2020 campaign tweeted that 'radical protestors... interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally'. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, responded: 'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID Shout out to Zoomers. Y'all make me so proud'

The prank by TikTok users and K-pop fans came after the Trump campaign tweeted to ask the President's supporters to register for the free tickets earlier this month.

The plan to sabotage the rally quickly went viral and videos telling viewers to reserve tickets and then not show up to began racking up millions of views.

Many of the videos were then deleted in an attempt to keep the plan a secret, although in one which is still live, a TikTok user says sarcastically: 'Oh no, I signed up for a Trump rally and I can't go, I'm sick.'

The plan then spread across multiple social media platforms.

Parscale tweeted on Saturday night: 'Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.

'They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering. Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!'

Ocasio-Cortez responded: 'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID Shout out to Zoomers. Y'all make me so proud.'

She added: 'KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too.'

Zoomer is a nickname for a member of Generation Z.

Roberto Quinlan tweeted on Saturday night: 'So my teen daughter, who has Snapchat and TikTok accounts, walked in and said to me 'So did it work? Did the teens get all the tickets to the Trump rally?' She's known about this ALL WEEK and I just learned this an hour ago...'

He added: 'There's an element to this that is terrifying. I consume A LOT of political twitter and I had zero inkling that this was coming down the pipeline. '

MsDee replied to Schmidt: 'My 18 yr old granddaughter and everyone she knows did the same :)'

PennyMoxie added: 'My 15-year old and her friends in Denver also purchased an obscene amount of tickets. I knew teens were smarter than Trump, but I had no idea they could outwit his campaign staff.'

Political scientist Alyssa R. Williams wrote: 'My 17 yr old daughter & friends did the same. I thought she was kidding me on how many teens were on board. Amazing!'

Teresa Moore replied: 'It wasn't just teenagers. I'm 60 and I've got 300 tickets. And I'm an Oklahoma Democrat.'

On Saturday, Trump tried to explain away the crowd size, blaming it on the media for declaring 'don't go, don't come, don't do anything' while insisting there were protesters outside 'doing bad things,' though the small crowds of pre-rally demonstrators were largely peaceful.

'We begin our campaign,' Trump thundered. 'The silent majority is stronger than ever before.'

But huge swaths of empty seats remained in the downtown arena before Trump was to take the stage. And that came on the heels of the campaign revealing that six staff members who were helping set up for the event had tested positive for the virus.

Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said that 'quarantine procedures were immediately implemented,' and that neither the affected staffers nor anyone who was in immediate contact with them would attend the event.

News of the infections came just a short time before Trump departed for Oklahoma, and the president raged to aides that it was made public, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

In the minutes before the president arrived at the downtown arena, Trump supporters who signed up for tickets received a text urging them to show up, declaring, 'Theres still space!'

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa.

Earlier this month, fans of K-pop flooded right-wing hashtags with posts about Korean pop music.

Hashtags for MAGA and Blue Lives Matter on Twitter and Instagram were co-opted by the music fans.

As a result of the effort, hashtags designed to promote conservative and sometimes outright racist content were almost entirely populated with memes and 'fancams' that depict K-pop groups and their members singing and performing.

The tactic showed similar success when K-pop fans, also known as K-pop stans, swarmed an app being pushed by the Dallas police that was designed to collect people's videos of 'llegal activity from the protests.'

Instead, the app was inundated with K-pop videos and was eventually taken down as a result.
TSX: WPM

NYSE: WPM

VANCOUVER, BC, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. ("Wheaton" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Wheaton Precious Metals International Ltd. ("Wheaton International") has signed a non-binding term sheet with Caldas Gold Corp. ( "Caldas Gold") (TSX-V: CGC) to enter into a Precious Metals Purchase Agreement (the "Precious Metals Stream") for the Marmato Project located in Colombia. The Marmato Project comprises an operating Upper Mine and the Marmato Deeps Zone ("MDZ") development, both of which are covered by the Precious Metals Stream.

"Wheaton is excited to partner with Caldas Gold in developing the Marmato Project. The strength and potential upside of this project was especially apparent during our onsite due diligence trip, prior to travel restrictions being put into place," said Randy Smallwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Wheaton Precious Metals. "We remain unwavering in our focus on delivering the highest quality portfolio of precious metals production to our shareholders through our top tier asset base, strong organic growth profile and acquisition of accretive growth opportunities such as Marmato. As can be seen, Wheaton continues to be very active on the corporate development front despite limitations resulting from the current global COVID-19 pandemic."

Upon entering into the Precious Metals Stream, Wheaton International will purchase 6.5% of the gold production and 100% of the silver production until 190,000 ounces of gold and 2.15 million ounces of silver have been delivered, after which the stream drops to 3.25% of the gold production and 50% of the silver production for the life of mine. Under the proposed Precious Metals Stream, Wheaton International will pay a total cash consideration of $110 million1, $38 million of which is payable upon closing and the remaining portion of which is payable during the construction of the MDZ project, subject to receipt of required permits and licenses, sufficient financing having been obtained to cover total expected capital expenditures, and other customary conditions. In addition, Wheaton International will make ongoing payments equal to 18% of the spot gold and silver price until the uncredited portion of the upfront payment is reduced to zero, and 22% of the spot gold and silver price thereafter. The entering into of the Precious Metals Stream is subject to, among other matters, the negotiation and completion of definitive documentation.2

As part of the Precious Metals Stream, Caldas Gold has agreed to provide funding to support the local communities around the Marmato Project.

About the Marmato Project

Caldas Gold's Marmato Project comprises the existing producing underground gold and silver mine in the Upper Zone, the existing 1,200 tonnes per day ("tpd") processing plant and the area encompassing the MDZ. The current mine has been in operation since 1991. The Marmato Project has excellent infrastructure as it is located by the Pan American Highway with access to Medellin to the north and Manizales to the south, and has access to the national electricity grid, which runs near the property.

The Preliminary Economic Assessment completed in 2019 charts a path for expansion of mining operations at the Marmato Project, ultimately comprised of two distinct operations, the existing Upper Mine operation and the MDZ project, which sits directly below the Upper Zone vein system. In 2019, the Upper Mine produced 25,750 ounces of gold and 39,560 ounces of silver. Implementation of a mine optimization program in the Upper Mine is expected to increase gold production starting in 2020 and reduce total cash costs per ounce. A Prefeasibility Study, currently in process and expected to be completed mid-2020, is focused on the development of mining operations in the MDZ, including construction of an additional 4,000 tpd plant and new dry stack tailings storage facilities. Mechanized mining, using an underground longhole stoping method, in the MDZ is expected to further increase production commencing by 2023.

About Wheaton Precious Metals Corp.

Wheaton is the world's premier precious metals streaming company with the highest-quality portfolio of long-life, low-cost assets. Its business model offers investors commodity price leverage and exploration upside but with a much lower risk profile than a traditional mining company. Wheaton delivers amongst the highest cash operating margins in the mining industry, allowing it to pay a competitive dividend and continue to grow through accretive acquisitions. As a result, Wheaton has consistently outperformed gold and silver, as well as other mining investments. Wheaton creates sustainable value through streaming.

End Notes

1 All figures are presented in United States dollars unless otherwise noted.

2 There can be no assurance that the Precious Metals Stream will be completed on the terms set out in the non-binding term sheet, or at all.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING-STATEMENTS

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance of Wheaton and, in some instances, the business, mining operations and performance of Wheaton's precious metals purchase agreement ("PMPA") counterparties. Forward-looking statements, which are all statements other than statements of historical fact, include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the successful negotiation and entering into of a definitive documentation by Wheaton International with Caldas, payment by Wheaton International of US$110 million to Caldas and the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the Precious Metals Stream agreement, the receipt by Wheaton International of silver and gold production in respect of the Marmato Project, the future price of commodities, the estimation of future production from mineral stream interests owned by Wheaton (the "Mining Operations") (including in the estimation of production, mill throughput, grades, recoveries and exploration potential), the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources (including the estimation of reserve conversion rates) and the realization of such estimations, the commencement, timing and achievement of construction, expansion or improvement projects by Wheaton's PMPA counterparties at Mining Operations, the ability of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties to comply with the terms of a PMPA (including as a result of the business, mining operations and performance of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties) and the potential impacts of such on Wheaton, the costs of future production, the estimation of produced but not yet delivered ounces, any statements as to future dividends, the ability to fund outstanding commitments and the ability to continue to acquire accretive PMPAs, future payments by the Company in accordance with PMPAs, including any acceleration of payments, projected increases to Wheaton's production and cash flow profile, projected changes to Wheaton's production mix, the ability of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties to comply with the terms of any other obligations under agreements with the Company, the ability to sell precious metals and cobalt production, confidence in the Company's business structure, the Company's assessment of taxes payable and the impact of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010, possible audits for taxation years subsequent to 2015, the Company's intention to file future tax returns in a manner consistent with the CRA Settlement, and assessments of the impact and resolution of various legal and tax matters, including but not limited to outstanding class actions and audits. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "projects", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", "potential", 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". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Wheaton to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to risks associated with any specific risks relating to the completion of documentation and diligence for the Precious Metals Stream agreement, the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the terms of the Precious Metals Stream agreement, fluctuations in the price of commodities (including Wheaton's ability to sell its precious metals or cobalt production at acceptable prices or at all), the Mining Operations (including fluctuations in the price of the primary or other commodities mined at such operations, regulatory, political and other risks of the jurisdictions in which the Mining Operations are located, actual results of mining, risks associated with the exploration, development, operating, expansion and improvement of the Mining Operations, environmental and economic risks of the Mining Operations, and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined), the absence of control over the Mining Operations and relying on the accuracy of the public disclosure and other information Wheaton receives from the Mining Operations, uncertainty in the estimation of production from Mining Operations, uncertainty in the accuracy of mineral reserve and mineral resource estimation, the ability of each party to satisfy their obligations in accordance with the terms of the PMPAs, the estimation of future production from Mining Operations, Wheaton's interpretation of, compliance with or application of, tax laws and regulations or accounting policies and rules being found to be incorrect, any challenge or reassessment by the CRA of the Company's tax filings being successful and the potential negative impact to the Company's previous and future tax filings, assessing the impact of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010 (including whether there will be any material change in the Company's facts or change in law or jurisprudence), credit and liquidity, indebtedness and guarantees, mine operator concentration, hedging, competition, claims and legal proceedings against Wheaton or the Mining Operations, security over underlying assets, governmental regulations, international operations of Wheaton and the Mining Operations, exploration, development, operations, expansions and improvements at the Mining Operations, environmental regulations and climate change, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to obtain and maintain necessary licenses, permits, approvals and rulings, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to comply with applicable laws, regulations and permitting requirements, lack of suitable infrastructure and employees to support the Mining Operations, inability to replace and expand mineral reserves, including anticipated timing of the commencement of production by certain Mining Operations (including increases in production, estimated grades and recoveries), uncertainties of title and indigenous rights with respect to the Mining Operations, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to obtain adequate financing, the Mining Operations ability to complete permitting, construction, development and expansion, global financial conditions, and other risks discussed in the section entitled "Description of the Business  Risk Factors" in Wheaton's Annual Information Form available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com , and in Wheaton's Form 40-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 and Form 6-K filed March 11, 2020 both on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. (the "Disclosure"). Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management currently believes to be reasonable, including (without limitation): the completion of documentation and diligence in respect of the Precious Metals Stream agreement, the payment of US$110 million to Caldas and the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the terms of the Precious Metals Stream agreement, that there will be no material adverse change in the market price of commodities, that the Mining Operations will continue to operate and the mining projects will be completed in accordance with public statements and achieve their stated production estimates, that the mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates from Mining Operations (including reserve conversion rates) are accurate, that each party will satisfy their obligations in accordance with the PMPAs, that Wheaton will continue to be able to fund or obtain funding for outstanding commitments, that Wheaton will be able to source and obtain accretive PMPAs, that expectations regarding the resolution of legal and tax matters will be achieved (including ongoing class action litigation and CRA audits involving the Company), that Wheaton has properly considered the interpretation and application of Canadian tax law to its structure and operations, that Wheaton has filed its tax returns and paid applicable taxes in compliance with Canadian tax law, that Wheaton's application of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010 is accurate (including the Company's assessment that there will be no material change in the Company's facts or change in law or jurisprudence for years subsequent to 2010), and such other assumptions and factors as set out in the Disclosure. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and even if events or results described in the forward-looking statements are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Wheaton. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are cautioned that actual outcomes may vary. The forward-looking statements included herein are for the purpose of providing readers with information to assist them in understanding Wheaton's expected financial and operational performance and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Any forward looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made, reflects Wheaton's management's current beliefs based on current information and will not be updated except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Although Wheaton has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in forwardlooking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, level of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended.

SOURCE Wheaton Precious Metals Corp.

Related Links

http://www.silverwheaton.com/


A tabaccheria, or tabacchi for short, is a small quasi-convenience store that can simultaneously be a cafe, tourist trinket-shop, mini post office, and more--or none of the above.

First time visitors in Italy will immediately notice hole-in-the-wall shops and corner stores marked by big, blue or black T signs. It stand for Tabaccheria (Tabacco shop).

To tourists, tabaccherie are a mysterious phenomenon. For Americans, they seem like gas stations without the gas. For Scandinavians, a compact corner of a 7-11 sans the sandwich bar. As any Italian knows, tabacchi shops are an essential part of life for the numerous purposes they serve. So, what can someone do at a tabacchi?

Buy cigarettes and tobacco products

The word tabaccheria literally translates to tobacco shop. No trick here, nicotine-addicts will not be disappointed by the array of tobacco products inside of a tabacchi., Italians rely on tabacchi shops for their tobacco products. This is no coincidence.

The role of a tabacchi is to sell government-regulated products, such as tobacco, and assist in government-regulated services, such as paying utility bills. For this reason, the contents of a tabacchi can seem like a mismatch of random items including cigarettes, bus tickets, stamps, and lottery tickets. But confusing as they may seem, tabaccherie are a one-stop shop for official business.

Pay bills

Recharge mobile phones

At a tabacchi, this aforementioned official business takes place at the counter. Here, among other services, bills can be paid. These include electricity, gas, water, and other utility bills, phone bills, traffic tickets, and more.Also at the counter, customers can purchaseRecharge cards are used to add calling minutes, texts, and cellular data to ones cellular plan.

Recharge cards are produced by phone carriers, and can cost 5-euro, 10-euro, 15-euro, or 20-euro, depending on what the customer needs. Some tabacchi shops have 24-hour machines outside of their storefronts that can be used for mobile recharges and buying tobacco products.

Buy public transport tickets

A tabacchi is the best place to buy public transportation tickets. Many buses and trams in Italy do not sell tickets onboard, so tickets must be purchased ahead of time. At a tabacchi, a customer can purchase as many tickets as they need.

This is especially convenient for tourists and visitors spending time in one city or town for an extended period of time, as public transport tickets work for all types of public transportation within a municipality. For example, a ticket purchased in Rome can be used for a bus, metro, or tram in the city.

It is important to note that most tabacchi shops close in the evening, so its best to purchase return tickets ahead of time if you plan on returning late.

Buy postage stamps

If you want to send a, request a francobollo ( postage stamp ) from the counter of a tabacchi. Before you purchase your stamp, specify the destination, especially if your postcard is traveling internationally. Stamp prices vary based on their destinations.

Some tabacchi are equipped with outdoor post boxes. These are red, and marked with two drop-boxes for international and domestic mail. After you purchase your stamp, drop your letter or postcard into this box and finito. No trip to the post office necessary.

In addition to normal postage stamps, some tabacchi shops print marche da bollo, the special stamps needed for official government authorized transactions. An expat must purchase a marca da bollo before renewing their permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay). Not all tabacchi shops offer this service--the best way to determine if they do is to ask inside.

Buy stationery and packaging materials

Tabacchi shops are often decorated by colorful stacks of stationary , including notebooks, pens, markers, and cards. This section of a tabacchi is great for back-to-school shopping and grabbing supplies before a trip to the post office. Ask at the counter for envelopes.

Tabbachi shops usually offer an array of envelope sizes, and some even sell cardboard boxes for shipping parcels. Additionally, other shipping materials such as tape and postage labels can be found in a tabacchi.

Play the lottery

Tabacchi shops are a hotspot for, another government regulated practice. Though gambling carries a negative stigma in some countries, legal gambling is perfectly acceptable in Italy.

In fact, its commonplace. While youre in a tabacchi, youll almost definitely see someone buy a lottery ticket. Some tabacchi shops have special counters for buying lottery tickets and gambling machines to play. Fortunately for eager tourists, some lotteries, such as the Superenalotto, do not require an Italian ID to play.

Buy trinkets

Products and services vary from tabacchi to tabacchi. Some have fully-stocked cafes, while others are tiny, with barely enough room for one person to buy a pack of cigarettes. Regardless of the size, there are some non-government regulated items that you can count on being in a tabacchi: packs of gum, cough drops, small chocolates, and pieces of candy.

Outside of that range of reliable items, you might find magazines, toiletries, childrens toys, handmade purses, tourist trinkets, and more. Many tabacchi shops, especially large ones, have a shelf of random items that might just include exactly the thing youre looking for.

Ph: Cineberg / Shutterstock.com
KYIV. June 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) - The initial bribe to close the case against Burisma was $50 million, not $6 million, former senior prosecutor of the Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) Kostiantyn Kulyk said on Monday at a press conference at Interfax Ukraine.

Kulyk said Burisma officials were recently detained while transferring a $6 million bribe to an agent of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to close the Burisma case.

"The initial amount of the bribe was not $6 million. The size of the bribe was $50 million," he said, showing the relevant documents.

Kulyk said Burisma lawyer Andriy Kich was detained during the bribe attempt.

"Burisma representatives in 2019 delegated this task to Kich, according to the PGO. I have in my hands a report from the prosecutor from my group that investigated the Burisma case. As follows from the report, Burisma and the Deputy Prosecutor General Yenin tried to influence the closure of the case," Kulyk said.

Member of Parliament Andriy Derkach said of Yenin: "Poroshenko arranged for Yenin to become Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under (President Volodymyr) Zelensky to control topics sensitive to Poroshenko, (former U.S. Vice President Joe) Biden and American (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs since September 4, 2018) George Kent."

"Yenin continues to this day to communicate with George Kent, reporting weekly over the telephone about the situation," Derkach said.

In August 2019, Kulyk said, he received information that Zlochevsky allocated $ 50 million to close criminal cases related to the activities of Burisma. The main requirements are to close criminal cases involving Burisma."

"I prepared a corresponding report and reported to the prosecutor general about the need to document an attempt to give a bribe. Here is this report," Kulyk said, showing a copy of the document.

The key question, according to Kulyk, is how such a large amount of funds could be transferred.

"You can imagine the volume of notes in the amount of $50 million. It is clear that such a bribe was impossible to give in cash. Therefore, we turned to Ukraine's SBU State Security Service for help in creating a legendary enterprise, which should have been credited. But PGO leadership changed. (Ruslan) Riaboshapka replaced (Yuriy) Lutsenko (as Prosecutor General). Talk about a $50-million bribe stopped after that, and Riaboshapka said that there was no case involving Burisma," Kulyk said.

"One of the episodes of official suspicion of Zlochevsky, case No. 1590, which supposedly was supposed to be closed for $6 million, includes facts of Zlochevsky's complicity in money laundering using Burisma, as well as Rosemont Seneca Boa of Devon Archer from the Biden family's orbit. It was $50 million to close not only Zlochevsky's case, but also against a company close to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden When Burisma representatives were detained giving a $6 million bribe, Rosemont Seneca Boa, and, accordingly, payments to Biden in the case already did not appear. Sytnyk personally confirmed this at his recent press conference," Kulyk said.

Derkach claimed "the Bidens were suspicious, but disappeared along the way, together with another $44 million dollars, which was the main part of the bribe."

"Everyone made good money. Even stranger is the absence of Biden's name in the case in which he definitely appears, according to NABU Director (Artem) Sytnyk, who does not want to interfere in international political processes. The cynicism of the proposal is astounding. It was namely Sytnyk who interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election using fakes from the so-called 'black ledger' incriminating Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort," Derkach said.

As reported, on June 12, a former official, with the assistance of a State Fiscal Service (SFS) official attempted to transfer $6 million of undue profit to Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office Head Nazar Kholodnytsky and top NABU officials. Mykola Illiashenko, First Deputy Head of Kyiv's Tax Service and Burisma's lawyer Andriy Kich were caught red-handed and arrested.
Maruti Suzuki S-Presso | 10,612 | The S-Presso may not be an SUV in the traditional sense, but Maruti Suzuki calls it that and it posted sales of 10,612 units. This also makes it the cheapest SUV on this list at Rs 3.70 lakh.

live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Monday said it has launched BS VI compliant S-CNG variant of S-Presso, priced between Rs 4.84 lakh and Rs 5.13 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The introduction of the S-CNG variant is in line with the company's commitment to expand its green vehicle portfolio in the country, MSI said in a statement.

The new trim comes with one litre engine delivering a mileage of 31.2 km/kg, it added.

"With the launch of the new trim, we are strengthening our efforts towards sustainable green mobility," MSI Executive Director (Marketing & Sales) Shashank Srivastava said.

Having already sold one million green vehicles, including CNG, smart hybrid vehicles, the company under its 'Mission Green Million', aims to sell the next 1 million green vehicles in the next couple of years.

The company sold 1,06,443 factory-fitted CNG vehicles across the country during 2019-20.
The federal government framed its sweeping changes to university funding as a reprioritisation from arts to sciences to support the "jobs of the future". But the details tell a very different story. While the package punishes arts students, it also deprives universities of the resources they need to teach STEM  science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The government has been rightly criticised for undervaluing the contribution of humanities and social sciences (HASS) to the modern workforce. This HASS v STEM debate played into the Coalition governments hands because it meant the wider impact of the changes was missed.

It is not about HASS v STEM. There are in fact few winners in the governments package. The plan only makes sense as an attempt to shift the overall cost of university education from governments to students.

A closer look at the numbers may suggest an unhappier equation for STEM students.

Most university students will either pay more, or the universities they study at will receive less money for teaching them. The biggest fee hikes will be felt by HASS students. However, despite the rhetoric from federal Education Minister Dan Tehan, per-student revenue for universities in key STEM disciplines will actually decrease.
1200 Year-Old Assyrian Church Cross Found in Pakistan

The Gilgit-Baltistan administrative region of northern Pakistan borders Afghanistan, Xinjiang in China and Jammu and Kashmir in India. In the heart of the Himalayas, where five of the highest peaks in the world culminate, this area crossed by the Indus River is home to 1.3 million people forming a mosaic of predominantly Muslim mountain peoples.

It is there, in the Karakoram mountain range, that three researchers from the University of Baltistan, in Skardu, accompanied by villagers and mountain guides, discovered a marble cross, measuring almost 2.1 m by 1.8 m and weighing between three and four tonnes. They found it two kilometers from the base camp, high up near the village of Kavardo, as they testified at a press conference on June 14.

The three researchers who visited the site are the vice-chancellor of the university, Muhammad Naeem Khan, the director of studies, Zakir Hussain Zakir, and the head of external relations of the university, Ishtiaq Hussain Maqpoon.

According to their first estimates, the "Kavardo Cross", as it is now called, is between 1,000 and 1,200 years old. But the University of Baltistan, which wants to continue research, plans to partner with European and North American institutes on the one hand, and local historians on the other, to determine the exact age of the cross, which is already "among one of the largest on the Indian subcontinent", according to Wajid Bhatti, another researcher from the University of Baltistan.

"Big news" for the Christian minority

This dating, if confirmed, would attest to the ancient presence of Christianity in the Himalayan region, which can only delight the Christian minority in Pakistan, so often discriminated against and abused. "This is really big news for all of us," said Caritas Pakistan general manager Mansha Noor. This shows that Christianity already existed in the region at that time, and that there must have been a church and Christian homes. Currently, no Christian family lives there, but this was clearly the case at the time. "

For his part, a Catholic banker from Karachi, Norman Gill, insisted that "Christians here can go to the site to see the cross, once all the formalities are completed". The vice-chancellor of the University of Baltistan, Muhammad Khan, in announcing the discovery of the cross, mentioned it as if it had "come down from the sky directly on the Karakoram".

The small town of Skardu is on the axis which today links Pakistan to China, and was once on the Silk Road. It is therefore possible, according to BAatrice Caseau, a teacher of Byzantine history at Sorbonne University, that "Christianity was brought to this mountainous region by Christian merchants from the Middle East".

"Even if we lack the sources to know with certainty where they passed, we know that Christians from the Persian world, using the Syriac language, came to the Indus region between the 5th and 8th centuries, until the arrival of Islam, continues BAatrice Caseau. Traces of "Nestorian" Christians have been found in China since the 7th century, and there were bound to be exchanges throughout the region, including on the religious level. "
A medic (R) takes sample from a citizen at the sample collecting post at Haidian Hospital in Beijing, capital of China, June 20, 2020.(Xinhua/Ren Chao)

BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The daily nucleic acid testing capacity of Beijing had surged from 100,000 to more than 230,000 as of Saturday amid efforts to contain the resurgence of domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases.

The number of designated institutions for nucleic acid testing in the city had increased from 98 to 124 over the past week, Gao Xiaojun, a spokesman for the municipal health commission, told a press conference Sunday.

Among the institutions are 20 disease control centers, 73 hospitals and 31 medical laboratories, said Gao.

Since June 13, people working in the wholesale market of Xinfadi, which was related to most newly reported cases, residents in nearby communities, and people who visited the market have been organized to take nucleic acid tests.

The city has also prioritized the testing for employees of restaurants, grocery stores, wholesale markets as well as courier and food delivery firms, according to the municipal government.

Beijing has reported over 200 domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases since June 11.
By PTI

SHILLONG: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma is observing home quarantine on return from a visit to Manipur, officials said on Monday.

The National Peoples Party (NPP) supremo had made a trip to Manipur capital Imphal on Sunday to meet party MLAs, who switched allegiance from supporting the BJP to the Congress last week.

"The chief minister is observing home quarantine since his return yesterday. His swab samples were collected today by a team of health officials," Health Services director Aman War told PTI.

He said, depending on the outcome of the RT-PCR test of the samples, the CM will have to follow guidelines accordingly.

According to the health services director, Conrad can resume work after three days if his samples tested negative or else, if positive, the health authorities shall take a call.

The state protocol for novel coronavirus says that anyone moving in and out of the state within a day can resume work if their RT-PCR tests come out negative, War said.

Meghalaya has recorded 44 cases of COVID-19 till date, of which 37 of them, have recovered and one had died.

Six persons who tested positive for COVID-19 are observing quarantine protocols.

Sangma had air-dashed to Manipur capital with Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to iron out differences between legislators of his party and the BJP.

The two had returned the same day.

The Congress leaders had raised questions that while their leaders, Ajay Maken and Gaurav Gogoi, were straightway placed under quarantine on arrival in Imphal Friday evening, the same protocols were not applied on Sangma and Sarma who freely mingled with people during their stay.

Four NPP ministers, including Deputy Chief Minister Y Joykumar, had resigned from the BJP-led coalition in the neighbouring state of Manipur on Wednesday.

Besides, them five other legislators had quit the Biren Singh government plunging it into trouble.

After walking out of the ruling coalition, the NPP legislators were seen in the company of Congress leaders in Manipur.
Bruce Rodrigues, a veteran educator who ran Torontos Catholic schools and was a Deputy Minister of Education, is now at the helm of the troubled Peel public school board.

The board, which continues to struggle to address racism and dysfunction despite being ordered to do so by Education Minister Stephen Lecce, last week took the unprecedented step of asking the province to step in and take over.

On Monday morning, Lecce announced that Rodrigues, who also ran the provincial standardized testing body EQAO, would start immediately.

From day one, I said that if the (Peel board) does not act swiftly and completely to counter racism and positively change the culture within our schools, then the government will act. For a generation, students have felt ignored, powerless and disrespected, Lecce said in a statement.

This ends starting today.

Rodrigues will help the board address long-standing anti-Black racism and Islamophobia, as well as dysfunction among trustees and senior leaders as identified in two recent, scathing reports by independent investigators.

Mississauga Trustee Nokha Dakroub said she was very happy to learn about the appointment of the supervisor for (the board). I welcome the appointment of Mr. Rodrigues with open arms. It is absolutely the necessary step in the right direction to bring about necessary change for our students, staff and community.

While the Peel board had asked for a supervisor, Lecce had previously warned he was giving the board one final chance to make changes after years of ignoring incidents of discrimination, in particular anti-Black racism.

Lecce said Rodrigues has an outstanding track record in Ontarios publicly funded education system with commitment and passion to drive change, confront discrimination and advance equity, inclusion and opportunity for all students. He has put students of all abilities at the heart of his work and public service.

Rodrigues was also a member of a review committee at St. Michaels College School that looked at the private schools traditions and culture after videos of hazing involving the sexual assault and abuse of students surfaced.

The board asked for the help of a supervisor until the end of the year, at least.

Meanwhile, a number of groups have called for director Peter Joshua to resign, along with the chair and vice-chair.

Reports on the Peel board found painful accounts of traumatic experiences in schools and school communities and noted that Black students are suspended at higher rates, sometimes for things such as wearing a hoodie, and discouraged from taking academic courses or going to university.

The reports also found numerous examples of Islamophobia that senior leaders failed to deal with and said white supremacists had attended board meetings.

The board said it welcomes Rodriques and hopes his help will ensure all Black students and staff, and others we have marginalized and underserved, face a new and better reality when schools reopen in the new school year.

The statement from the chair, Brad MacDonald, and Joshua, said we must create a more harmonious, productive and effective school district, and we are fully aware that we need help to guide our next steps.

Toronto Catholic Trustee Maria Rizzo, who was on the hiring committee when Rodrigues was brought on as director there, said where he came from made him who he is.

Rodrigues encouraged senior staff to be in schools and mentor at least one student in their area of responsibility, Rizzo recalled, and said he also insisted on putting the best staff in schools in vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Hes got the background, said Rizzo. He knows where he came from, growing up in the Jane-Finch community and getting to the level hes at is no easy feat.

Lecce has also asked the Peel board to abandon its court case against community members on social media.

The board said it began litigation after a number of racialized and other (Peel board) personnel lodged complaints that they were being anonymously attacked on Twitter as a result of their work with the board.
In 1978, a Global Positioning System (GPS) was invented by a black sharecroppers daughter from Virginia and today Nav is the most requested option on a new car. President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that made home-brewed beer legal, the Yankees won the World Series, Dallas won the Super Bowl, and a spectacular three-year-old, Affirmed, sent thoroughbred racing a-gaga winning the Kentucky Derby. The Bee Gees ruled the airways, the three Gibb brothers masterful at harmony, be it with Stayin Alive or Night Fever, and in the hit movie National Lampoons Animal House, John Vernon quite famously told John Belushi, playing as John "Bluto" Blutarsky, Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

Turning right on red was made legal for drivers across the United States, and on a smaller but hardly an insignificant moment, Jeffery Wilkerson, was hired as a fledgling Registered Nurse at Chattanoogas Erlanger Hospital.

On Friday, after a figurative lifetime of 41 years, 9 months, and 24 days of loyalty to The Baroness, Jeffery was absolutely sickened when Erlanger included him in the hospitals 93-person layoff on Friday. He had carefully planned to retire in 2021 but, Sorry, your job has been eliminated. I am totally shocked.  what are they going to say to me  thanks for your service? he asked incredulously.

* * *

FROM A NEWLY UNEMPLOYED NURSE EDUCATOR

I have been an employee of Erlanger for many years. I have always supported and defended Erlanger anytime anyone said anything against them. We are so underfunded how can an organization keep up? That was my argument. Your previous articles about Erlangers downfall stung, as I knew there was truth to the stories, but still I defended.

However, on Friday my eyes were opened. I am one of the 93 employees whose positions were eliminated on 6/19. You see, I had a non-clinical job as a nurse educator. Let me briefly describe what a nurse educator does. We bring on new employees and make sure they are trained properly for the specialty they have been hired for. We make sure our nurses stay up to date on the latest and maintain their education throughout the year.

We are the go-to person for clinical care questions on a daily (and nightly) basis. Many of us also serve on quality improvement committees to improve patient care, experience, and processes. Side note: my non-clinical job consisted of a good portion of my hours being on the floor in patient care, doing direct clinical nursing care.

How can an organization claim to care for their patients when they get rid of nurse educators? How can they claim their nurses are valued when the organization clearly doesnt value the nurse educators who train the front lines? How are these nurses going to stay up to date on the latest evidence-based care? Shame on you Erlanger!

When nurses are not trained properly three things happen: quality care goes down, mistakes are made, and patients die.

Mr. Exum, I ask you, is executive leadership trying to drive my beloved Erlanger into the ground?

* * *

THE COVID FLOOR IS MUCH DIFFERENT

Saddling Erlanger nurses with dangerous 8-1 patient-nurse ratios that is considered by some veteran nursing pros as nigh impossible, but COVID-19 nursing is altogether a different thing. I am told that at least three times last week there were two nurses assigned to a 12-hour shift for 14 extremely sick patients on the specialized coronavirus floor. On Thursday at noon, there were four circulating, thank goodness. A patient on a respirator, as you may easily guess, requires constant attention but, far worse, between every visit a nurse must remove one set of highly protective clothing and replace it with a completely new set. Start to finish, were talking 10 minutes per change. Times seven patients on her side of the room, thats over an hour, and thats if not one in whats half of a day needs assistance to use the bathroom, or wants a meal, or requires meds, or asks you hold the cell phone to see his wife and to tell her he loves her. How big a hero you imagine it takes for one of our nurses to handle that? And, yes, thats day after day  after day.

* * *

THIS WILL WORK AGAINGST YOU  THIS NOTE MEANS NOTHING  

Roy  My daughter is an employee of Erlanger and she is pregnant and due any day. She went to her ob/gyn, he suggested due to the nature of her job to take the rest of her time off. He even put it in writing, they told her it would still count against her and that his note means nothing... This is why they are getting all the negative press they are getting. In a world of uncertainty, they respond by firing and threatening the people they brought in to protect and care for their patients. They are sacrificing the health and well-being of their employees to make a buck...this is disgusting.

* * *

SON DRIVES SICK MOM TO ERLANGERS ER; THEN THEY WAIT 8 HOURS

I have been reading your articles regarding Erlanger in The Chattanoogan and want to thank you for them! Your observations are right on target and are in line with my experiences taking my elderly mother from her assisted living facility to the emergency room at 9 p.m., trying to avoid the $1,200 ambulance fee.

It became painfully obvious (my Mom was very ill yet not near death), as we waited for 8 hours through the night in the waiting room, that many citizens were using the emergency rooms at Erlanger and Memorial, as a doctor's office. They know that they can't afford, or will not pay, for a doctor appointment, so they crowd into the emergency room as they know they will be seen and they can just refuse to pay, or pay as they can.

Congress has, to my knowledge, made it illegal to turn people away from a public hospital. That night there was such a crowd in line that some of them announced that they were leaving for "the other hospital," only to return a couple of hours later, stating that the lines there were longer. We have, and have had for some time, a disaster in Tennessee regarding health care. That night I learned that ambulance riders got taken in ahead of waiting patients. I'm not sure how that arrangement was made, yet it made me reassess the decision to try and save the money.

I conclude, as you have, that the system is broken. We need a new structure and new support mechanisms. We can talk about it in terms of conservative/liberal, yet it will not solve the problems. One of my sons lives in Brooklyn, NY. along with 3 million other people. Across the river in Manhattan there are 6 million more.

Perhaps the great state of Tennessee could learn from them. How do they do it? And what can be learned? I think these are interesting questions!

* * *

WHEN MEDICAL CARE IS FREE, IT HAS NO VALUE

Thank you for working so hard to help Erlanger. We know you're being criticized and challenged because of your true words.

My husband and his co-workers are dealing with lots of verbal abuse from patients as they call to schedule appointments, reschedule appointments, or remind them of appointments. They try to emphasize that these appointment slots are valuable as they're so far behind after this shutdown and they ask politely that they call if they're not going to make it, but they still have daily no-shows and very late patients.

When people say we need free healthcare for all, they have no idea what this means. If it costs nothing, then it's not valuable to the receiver. When we lived in Africa working with a mission hospital that provided valuable care, the patients were expected to pay for their care. It was a very small amount, but they gladly and thankfully paid it. Everyone knew that saying about giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish. This indigent care debate will continue, but it's destroying Erlanger as you know! My husband is afraid he'll be the next to lose his job since he's over 60.

* * *

A SMALL VOICE THAT IS HEARD LOUD

Mr. Exum, As to whether I should speak to you, well, my bosses do not like me. Also, I should say that too many people now days refuse to act or speak out because of their own welfare. That is a natural response, I suppose, but it is also selfish. As a Christian I refuse to say nothing to save a few hairs. If I lose my job, then God will find me another one  I have no doubt. Not only that, if the hospital plans on getting rid of me, I suppose it really will not make much difference. The hospital has a great many problems and so does our department. I will speak to you about many of the problems we have dealt with. and the hospital has refused to deal with them.

I currently work at Erlanger Health System as a maintenance technician in the Engineering Department. I have only been at Erlanger for a relatively short time, but I have seen more than enough to irritate my conscience and instigate action, so here are the facts.

As a department we deal with Erlanger North, Erlanger East, the Baroness Campus, as well as many doctors offices and other facilities in the Tri-State area. Even during good times, we are stretched so thin we almost are never able to catch all our calls or fix all the problems.

For maintenance technicians, that will exclude the plumbers, electricians, as well as our office staff. We have around 20 people that I can count right now. With the others included we have around 30. We have one shift for Erlanger North which is first, we have three shifts for Baroness and East, and we have only first shift for the outlier buildings. Of those people, two of them work at Erlanger North on first, the other about 2/3s work at Baroness, and the rest work at East, both of which has three shifts.

We also at the current time have two apprentices, but do not let the title fool you. Not only do they get paid less but even during normal conditions they are still required to cover the same amount of area as the full technicians without sympathy. They make around twelve dollars an hour compared to most of the techs which start out at around twenty. Also, to add insult to injury, the hospital doesnt actually have a training program so unless they go back to school they almost never get raised up to a full position as a tech.

This does not even take into consideration that most people in the area that work in trades know all too well about Erlanger and refuse to come here. Occasionally, we will get someone that comes in unawares and is hired on for a full-time position, however, it usually never turns out well. Initially someone comes in for an interview and are told of all the wonderful things they will receive in benefits, as well as the workload and the position's duties.

Only later on they find out that the raise they were told they were going to receive isnt going to be given, and the duties they were told they were going to be doing were entirely different from what they applied for, and the workload is much larger than initially told. When they complain to management the bosses tell them that they will investigate it if possible, but if not, it might be best for them to go somewhere else.

Most of the time we are simply told that we should be thankful that we have a job. So, even in the best of times, it is dismal to say the least.

Our current situation is far worse if that can be imagined. Right now, we only have about three people on each shift at the Baroness campus, none at Erlanger North, and another one to two at Erlanger East. Not only that, but the three at the Baroness campus are required to maintain all the outbuildings as well as Erlanger North if they call.

In late April, our bosses told us that our hours would be changing to one week on and one week off. Apparently, this was for our benefit so that we could get unemployment. Now that our hours have changed, we still are having problems getting unemployment. When one of us spoke to the Department of Labor they told us that their system was not set up for such hours which means that the third week of filing, your claim will be kicked out of the system and you have to set up the whole claim again. When one of our employees spoke to a supervisor about the problem, he told them that it was not his problem.

Earlier when we were trying to apply for unemployment and were having these problems, we tried contacting one of the HR bosses about the problem but they told us that they did not have the time to help us so it was our problem, not theirs. We have dealt with one problem after another without any aid whatsoever. No matter what we do no one wants to take responsibility of the situation. (Our department leaders)

They knew that we would have problems, so they refuse to comment. On a side note, since we only have three to four workers at a time at the hospital it makes it out of the question to get all our calls. A major issue in our department is our leadership, or lack thereof.

I will also say that across the board the HR department is a waste of time. This is not just because of things that have happened to my department but because of what I have heard all over the hospital. If someone brings up a problem, it just gets swept under the rug, and the people responsible never get punished. Think about all those people that have been fired and the HR department never did a thing about it or questioned it.

I will finish this letter with a few little thoughts to ponder. Last year the whole hospital prior to Spegels removal was told that we had no money and financially falling short of the mark. Then miraculously when he had to defend himself it was made public by his own admission that he had saved the hospital $250 million that was currently in the bank. So what people must be telling me is that since that time nine months ago the hospital has not only lost the money the federal government gave them during COVID-19, but they have also lost all of that money.

How is it that every one of us in our department are losing our jobs and yet contractors are walking around the hospital in droves. Most of these contracts charge $60-$85 per hour per person and I only make a little more than $20. I may have never been able to finish my degree, but I can do basic math, and this just doesnt add up.

By the way, I have already applied for new jobs, and so have many of the people I work with.

As for my job, I am not worried at all. God has me in His hands.

- - -

Proverbs 3:27-29 New International Version (NIV): Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.

Do not say to your neighbor, Come back tomorrow and Ill give it to you when you already have it with you. Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you.

* * *

The Erlanger Board of Trustees will meet on Thursday at the hospital. If you have a comment and/or a question, that you would like to be included in the Hospitals public record, please address it to Linda Moss Mines, Chair, Erlanger Hospital Board of Trustees, ERLANGER MEDICAL CENTER, 975 East Third Street, Chattanooga, TN 37403. You must include your contact information, including your full name, mailing address, and a workable telephone number. You should state you are a citizen of Hamilton County, and request an answer to a well-presented question. Please abstain from any profanity, rude discourse, or threatening language.

royexum@aol.com
They were crowned the winners of this year's winter Love Island.

And Paige Turley and Finley Tapp's relationship appears to be going from strength to strength as the pair have decided to move in together.

The couple were staying at Paige's parents house in Scotland for the past three months but decided it was time to have their own flat in Manchester.

Home sweet home: Paige Turley and Finley Tapp's relationship appears to be going from strength to strength as the pair have decided to move in together

Paige, 22, told OK! Magazine she cried on moving day: 'I got quite teary. Finn came down in a van and I came down in the car,' she said.

'It was the first time I'd seen it and I got here first. I FaceTimed him and he got teary because I was teary.'

The three bedroom apartment boasts three bathrooms and a huge walk-in wardrobe.

Our home! The couple were staying at Paige's parents house in Scotland for the past three months, but decided it was time to have their own flat in Manchester

Meanwhile, Finn, 20, has revealed his plans for the pair to get engaged soon.

He said: 'I'm not going to wait  I want to propose soon. I don't want to say a timescale as it's going to be a surprise.'

The couple said they have only spent five days apart so far since falling in love on Love Island and the idea of moving to Manchester was sold to them by their fellow islanders; Callum Jones and Jamie Clayton, who live in the city.

They had initially planned to move in at the end of March but due to lockdown restrictions stayed at her parents house in West Lothian instead.

Big step: Saying she cried on moving day, Paige said: 'I got quite teary. Finn came down in a van and I came down in the car'

It comes after a PR expert predicted the stars of Love Island's inaugural winter series have lost 500,000 in 'missed opportunities' due to the pandemic.

Following January's show, which was filmed in South Africa, stars including Finn , Paige, Sophie Piper and Luke Trotman were looking to follow to in the success of former stars, with lucrative club promotions and signings.

Yet amid the coronavirus pandemic, Jack Cooper of EdHopkinsPR revealed to the Metro that stars have missed key moneymaking moments which have previously bagged stars up to millions of pounds.

While the show has made millionaires out of many of its contestants, including Olivia Buckland, Alex Bowen, Dani Dyer and Chris Hughes, PR expert Jack has predicted that this year's contestants will have such chances thwarted.

He said: 'With no events to attend, they are also missing out on a huge range of exposure in the media, having no stories for the press to write about...

'The Winter Love Island stars are set to lose huge amounts of money, some contestants up to 500,000. Brand deals at the moment are at an all-time low.

'Many of the participants have approached us to represent them during this tough time. Due to our books being full and also the lack of opportunities in the industry at this time, we have had to decline them.'

Despite this, he predicts couples who are still together stand a better chance, as he said: 'People are interested in keeping up to date with what they are doing, especially if they are isolating together. Being in a couple brings up their financial worth, and in some circumstances could secure them a deal of up to 10,000.'
On Tuesday, June 23, at 13.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency will host roundtable talk entitled "Will Ukrainians Feel Safe after Rada's Adoption of the so-called law 'On Thieves in Law'?" Participants include ex-head of the district police department in Kyiv Denys Yaroslavsky, director of the Argument law firm Bohdan Kushnir; MPs and the leadership of the National Police of Ukraine are expected participants of the event (8/5a Reitarska Street). The broadcast will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. Admission requires press accreditation on the spot.
Our Divisions

Copyright  2021-22 DB Corp ltd., All Rights Reserved

This website follows the DNPA Code of Ethics.
Niti Aayog member V K Saraswat on Monday said Indian companies manufacturing bullet-proof jackets for the army personnel should avoid importing raw materials from China because of "inconsistencies in the quality" of the shipments.

This assumes significance as the clamour for boycott of Chinese goods has been growing louder ever since the violent clash broke out between the Indian and Chinese armies in the Galwan Valley last week.

Saraswat, also a former Defence Research and Development Organisation(DRDO) chief, said these companies producing bullet-proof jackets for the army can get raw material from other sources that are the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) production agencies.

"Many times raw materials imported from China (to produce bullet-proof jackets) are not of good quality... We should avoid importing from Chinese sources because of inconsistencies of the raw material quality," he told PTI.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had asked Niti Aayog to prepare a road map for "incentivising" domestic manufacturing of lightweight body armours and protective gears. The Bureau of Indian Standards has also finalised quality norms for body armours to be used by Indian forces.

"Our committee made very clear recommendations, we should use indigenous material as much as possible and wherever indigenous materials are not available and import is required then we should avoid import from China because of inconsistent quality," the eminent scientist emphasised.

India lost 20 of its army personnel, including a colonel, in the violent face-off on the night of June 15/16 on the border, the biggest confrontation between the militaries of India and China after their 1967 clashes in Nathu La when India lost around 80 soldiers while the death toll on the Chinese side was over 300.

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

According to government projections, more than 3 lakh bullet-proof jackets will be required by Indian armed forces.

Indian companies were earlier procuring raw materials for bullet-proof jackets from the US and Europe. Now, most of them are being obtained from China due to lower prices. Indian companies like Kanpur-based MKU and Tata Advanced Materials export body armour to armed forces of many countries.

If the lightweight bullet-proof vests and helmets are produced in bulk quantity within the country, it will ensure low-cost supplies and end the endless wait for foreign vendors to supply the equipment.

Meanwhile, according to sources, the government has sought product-wise details of cheap imports, comparison with domestic prices and tax disadvantage, if any, from industry to curb low quality inbound shipments especially from China and boost domestic manufacturing.

They said a high-level meeting to discuss ways to promote 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India), including cut in import dependence from China, also took place recently in the Prime Minister's office.

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
She has been embraced by the local community in Bryon Bay since moving to the Australian coastal town six years ago.

And Elsa Pataky couldn't wipe the smile off her face as she enjoyed a gentle stroll around her neighbourhood on Friday.

The Spanish actress, who is married to Chris Hemsworth, was joined by two other women as they stepped out in trendy activewear.

Stepping out: Elsa Pataky, the actress wife of Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth, went for a stroll around Byron Bay with two friends on Friday

Elsa, 43, drew attention to her youthful complexion by going makeup free and pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

The Tidelands star kept things casual in a grey New Balance hoodie and black leggings, and accessorised with an array of silver rings.

She added a bohemian touch to her laid-back outfit by carrying a chic fringed bag.

Pals: Elsa's friends, who were possibly other mothers from her children's school, both looked stylish in gym clothes

Bare-faced beauty: Elsa, 43, drew attention to her youthful complexion by going makeup free and pulling her hair back into a ponytail

The girls: The trio were seen gossiping and laughing as they walked around the coastal town

Elsa's friends, who were possibly other mothers from her children's school, both looked stylish in gym clothes.

The trio were seen gossiping and laughing as they walked around the coastal town.

In December, Chris and Elsa moved into a $20million mega-mansion in Broken Head, near Byron Bay.

Laid-back look: The Tidelands star kept things casual in a grey New Balance hoodie and black leggings, and accessorised with an array of silver rings

Accessory: She added a bohemian touch to her laid-back outfit by carrying a chic fringed bag

The couple had spent two years renovating the property, which they had previously bought for $7million in 2014.

In January, Elsa spoke to Vogue Australia about their experience Down Under, saying their old life in Hollywood had been 'consuming'.

'I feel Hollywood consumes you in such a way that it feels like work all the time. I think when you're in it you don't even realise but when you get out, it changes everything,' Elsa said.

One of us! Elsa has been embraced by the local community in Bryon Bay since moving to the Australian coastal town six years ago

Dream home: In December, Chris and Elsa moved into a $20million mega-mansion in Broken Head, near Byron Bay. The couple are pictured on their balcony overlooking the ocean

She added that she had always dreamed of raising her children in nature, and relocating to the Australian coast allowed her to do that.

'I wanted to pick my kids up, I wanted to take them to school, I wanted to be part of the school and be involved in what they do,' she said.

Life in Byron Bay has also allowed Elsa to have a farm with horses, which she regularly rides with her daughter, India.

Better life: In January, Elsa spoke to Vogue Australia about her and Chris' decision to move Down Under, saying their old life in Hollywood had been 'consuming'

Perfect: She said she had always dreamed of raising her children in nature, and relocating to the Australian coast allowed her to do that

Outdoor living: Life in Byron Bay has also allowed Elsa to have a farm with horses, which she regularly rides with her daughter, India

She explained: 'When we were trying to find a property, I had to have a place where I could have horses and my kids could be with them and enjoy that, too.'

Having lived in the quiet community since 2014, Elsa now feels 'privileged' to enjoy such a beautiful life.

Chris and Elsa share three children together, daughter India Rose, eight, and twin sons Tristan and Sasha, six.

Blessed: Having lived in the quiet community since 2014, Elsa now feels 'privileged' to enjoy such a beautiful life
New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the country is fighting two wars against China--one against coronavirus that has come from the neighbouring country and the other on the border. He said there should be no politics by anyone in fighting these two wars. Kejriwal's remarks come amid criticism of the Centre by the Congress over the situation in eastern Ladakh.

Addressing an online media briefing, the Delhi chief minister said, "Twenty of our brave soldiers did not back down, we will also not retreat and win both wars against China."

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in a violent face-off with Chinese troops on June 15 in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley.

"Today, the country is fighting two wars against China - one against the virus that has come from China and the other on the border," Kejriwal said during the briefing.

On one hand, all doctors and nurses of the country are fighting COVID-19, and on the other hand, soldiers are fighting wars on the border, he said.

"The entire country is standing with doctors and soldiers. We all have to fight these two wars together and there should be no politics and groupism in this," the AAP supremo asserted.

Earlier in the day, senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, the former PM called upon Modi to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, the country recorded 14,821 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, pushing the infection tally to 4,25,282, while the death toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new fatalities, according to the Union health ministry data.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy on Thursday shot and killed an 18-year-old Latino teen for allegedly looking toward the police officers and producing a handgun.

Victim Andres Guardado, who was working as a security guard at the autobody shop, was shot and killed on Thursday by a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

His family is now seeking justice and questioned the circumstances of his death.

According to a CNN News report, Guardado looked toward two sheriff's deputies and "produced a handgun."

Captain Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau said law enforcers pursued Guardado and a deputy fired a shot - hitting the teen six times.

Steve Abarca, a cousin of Guardado, questioned the circumstances prior to the teen's death.

On Sunday, Guardado's family from El Salvador gathered outside the auto body shop, where the teen was working, and demanded justice.

Result of the Autopsy is Still Pending

While waiting for the result of the autopsy, Wegener said the Latino teen was hit in his upper torso and was already announced death at the crime scene.

He also added that the investigators recovered a .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol at the crime scene with no serial number.

It was also found that the firearm had an illegal extended magazine that was loaded with 13 live rounds.

However, Steve Abarca said that he had never seen or knew that his cousin owned any gun. This adds up to the speculation of the family.

Despite these circumstances, Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Capt. Wegener questioned why the Latino teen was armed when the law in California qualifies that only those who are age 21 are allowed to become an armed security guard in the state.

Authorities Collected Evidence

As part of the investigation procedure, police were able to produce search warrants that will allow them to have access to the CCTV that might capture the shooting and killing of the Latino teen.

However, Wegener said that when the incident happened, there was no footage of the event.

Meanwhile, detectives are still trying to figure out if there was a video footage during the shooting that will help resolve the case.

For his part, sheriff Alex Villanueva said this is why body-worn cameras are essential to the police.

He added that the County Sheriff's Department is now working to procure more body-worn cameras.

The death of the Guardado has added sparked to the racial issue between the police and people of color.

This could be another subject of racial injustice in the country following the death of George Floyd.

It can be remembered that U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that mandates reforms in law enforcement, especially in its standard police tactics.

The death of black people outraged thousands of people in the past weeks that led to different violent protests across the country.

Check these out!
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Private life insurer IndiaFirst Life Insurance, which is promoted by Bank of Baroda and Union Bank (after promoter bank Andhra Bank was merged with the latter) saw a 65.6 percent YoY decline in its new business premium in April and May 2020, to Rs 106 crore amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, IndiaFirst Life Insurance Deputy CEO Rushabh Gandhi said the bancassurance-model led companies have been badly impacted.

It has been a tough year for the life insurance industry. There has been a 35 percent degrowth for private sector in the new business annualised premium equivalent (APE). Bancassurance companies are affected more than agency-led firms because banks have only been doing core activities like withdrawals, deposit and basic loans, he added.

For the April 1-May 31, 2020 period, the individual regular premiums collection for IndiaFirst Life dropped by 58.2 percent year-on-year to Rs 30.42 crore. Single premium business (individual) dropped by 63 percent to Rs 1.10 crore.

Bancassurance or bank-led sales account for almost 55 percent business for the life insurance industry. Sales happen through bank branches where dedicated personnel sell insurance policies to the customers.

With the COVID-19 lockdown being announced from March 25, banks have been either operating at a reduced manpower strength or with reduced daily timings. Those located in containment zones have stayed shut. Customers have also chosen to transact online to avoid catching the infection at locations like banks.

Apart from IndiaFirst, in the April 1-May 31 period, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance (promoted by ICICI Bank) saw a 29.6 percent decline in new premium collection, IDBI Federal Life (promoted by IDBI Bank) saw a 55.8 percent decline in new premiums and Kotak Life Insurance (promoted by Kotak Bank) saw a 56.8 percent drop in first-year premiums.

Sources also told Moneycontrol that the government has asked banks to strictly adhere to rules and not engage in non-core activities like sale of insurance at the branches till the lockdown is completely lifted.

For IndiaFirst Life, business used to come in from Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank. But Andhra Bank has now become part of Union Bank of India after the PSU bank amalgamation concluded on April 1. Gandhi said insurance sales through Union Bank have not started yet and that the company is expecting it to begin soon.

From June 2020, Gandhi said that there has been a partial improvement in the number of customers walking in to the branches. The company is hoping for an improvement in numbers from H2 of FY21.

We are not a metro-centric insurer and the 9,500 odd Bank of Baroda branches are located across the country, especially in smaller towns where the impact of COVID-19 has been minimal, he added.

With respect to the product mix, Gandhi explained that there has been a rise in the number of term/protection plans being purchased. He added that 40 percent of the number of policies underwritten in April and May were protection plans compared to 2 percent in the year-ago period.

Because of the stock market volatility, customers are staying away from unit-linked insurance plans and opting for guaranteed plans. Hence, we are strengthening our product suite in the guaranteed plan segment, said Gandhi.
Until there are effective treatments or vaccines, the COVID-19 pandemic will remain a significant threat to public health and economies around the world. A major hurdle to developing and testing new anti-viral therapies and vaccines for COVID-19 is the lack of good, widely available animal models of the disease.

Researchers at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and Medical University, Guangzhou, in China, have developed a simple tool to overcome that bottleneck. The researchers have created a gene therapy approach that can convert any lab mouse into one that can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 and develops COVID-like lung disease. The international team, led by Paul McCray, MD, and Stanley Perlman, PhD, at the UI, and Jincun Zhao, PhD, at Medical University, Guangzhou, have made their gene therapy vector freely available to any researchers who want to use it.

"There is a pressing need to understand this disease and to develop preventions and treatments," says McCray, UI professor of pediatrics, and microbiology and immunology. "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for other researchers to have access to this technology, which allows any lab to be able to immediately start working in this area by using this trick."

The "trick" is the use of an adenovirus gene therapy vector that is inhaled by the mice to deliver the human ACE2 protein into mouse airway cells. This is the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. Once the mouse airway cells express the hACE2 protein, the mice become susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2 and they develop COVID-19-like lung symptoms. Although the disease is not fatal in the mice, the animals do get sick, losing weight and developing lung damage. Importantly, the vector is readily adaptable to any strain of mice (and other lab animals), which means research teams can rapidly convert mice with specific genetic traits into animals that are susceptible to SARS-Cov-2, allowing them to test whether those traits influence the disease.

Reporting in Cell, the researchers showed that mice treated with this gene therapy could be used to evaluate a vaccine and several potential COVID-19 therapies, including a preventative strategy known as poly I:C, which boosts the innate immune response, convalescent plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients, and the anti-viral drug remdesivir. In each case, the therapies prevented weight loss, reduced lung disease, and increased the speed of virus clearance in the mice. The team also showed mice are useful for studying important immune responses involved in clearing the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Mice are the most commonly used experimental animal for studying human disease in the lab because they are accessible, inexpensive, and easy to use. They are also one of the easier animal models to use in biosafety level three environments, which are needed for work on COVID-19. However, due to differences between the human and mouse ACE2 protein, wild-type mice are not susceptible to the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

The gene therapy vector is essentially an off-the-shelf tool that allows labs to create their own COVID-19 mouse model within a few days. McCray, Zhao, and Perlman developed this approach in 2014, when Zhao was a postdoctoral researcher in Perlman's UI lab, to create mouse models of MERS.

"You can create these mice very quickly. You don't have to breed the strain, which is very time consuming and expensive," McCray explains. "We think this technology will be useful for investigating COVID-19 lung disease and rapidly testing interventions that people think are promising for treating or preventing COVID-19."

McCray credits the UI's long-standing expertise in gene therapy vector development as a basis for this advance. The vector was made in the University of Iowa Vector Core, which is an outgrowth of the UI Center for Gene Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis funded by the National Institutes of Health. The vector is freely available through the BEI Resources Repository at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The research was supported by the grants from the NIH (AI060699 and AI129269 and DK-54759), and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Zhao and his team also received funding from several Chinese governmental organizations. McCray also is supported by the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust.
The 36th ASEAN Summit will be held online on June 26, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said on June 21.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc delivers a speech at the Special ASEAN Plus Three Summit on COVID-19.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will preside over the opening, plenary and special sessions on womens empowerment in digital age. He will also chair dialogues between ASEAN leaders and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), ASEAN youth representatives and ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC).

Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan will represent Vietnam to deliver a speech at the special session on womens empowerment in digital age, and NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong, head of the Vietnamese delegation to AIPA, will attend the dialogue between ASEAN leaders and AIPA.



Earlier, a series of preparatory meetings will take place from June 22-24.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh will chair the informal ASEAN foreign ministers meeting, 26th meeting of the ASEAN Coordinating Council and 21st meeting of the ASEAN Political-Security Community Council.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh will chair the ministerial meeting of participating countries in negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), while Minister of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung will chair the 23rd meeting of the ASEAN Cultural-Social Community Council./.VNA
A troubled Indian Health Service hospital serving South Dakotas Pine Ridge Reservation will once again be able to bill Medicare after earning the highest level of approval from a prestigious healthcare accrediting organization.

The Pine Ridge Hospital lost its ability to bill Medicare for services provided to its patients in November 2017 after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) placed the facility on immediate jeopardy status, a category used to indicate the likelihood of imminent injury, serious harm, death or impairment to patients. The decision also affected the hospitals Medicaid funding.

James Driving Hawk, IHS Great Plains Area director, said last Thursday that a CMS survey team conducted a survey of the hospital in December and found the hospital to be 100 percent compliant with federal healthcare standards. The Joint Commission, the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care, then conducted a survey in May and later granted the hospital its highest level of accreditation , its Gold Seal of Approval for Hospital Accreditation.

We have applied many lessons learned along the way, Driving Hawk said during a conference call with the media. We always said true and sustainable change takes time, and we are seeing the results. We saw it in December when the Rosebud IHS Hospital also achieved accreditation by the Joint Commission, and again today with this announcement.

A view of the old Indian Health Service hospital on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Photo: Rachel Harris

The 45-bed Pine Ridge Hospital isn't the only IHS facility on the reservation. But it is the largest, serving more than 17,000 patients, most of whom are citizens of the Oglala Sioux Tribe

Although the hospital remained open, the loss of certification represented a severe blow. The IHS, due to chronic under-funding, relies on revenue from Medicare and Medicaid to make up for shortfalls in its budget.

The Pine Ridge Hospitals loss of accreditation in 2017 further exacerbated problems facing the IHS Great Plains Area , a region that includes South Dakota and Nebraska. A 2010 investigation by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs warned that five facilities were in danger of losing access to Medicare and Medicaid funds.

The IHS announced today that the IHS Pine Ridge Hospital in South Dakota has received The Joint Commissions Gold Seal of Approval for Hospital Accreditation and achieved "deemed" accreditation status with the Medicare hospital program requirements. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/Un4tc7Nh0x  IndianHealthService (@IHSgov) June 18, 2020

The Pine Ridge hospital and another one on the Winnebago Reservation in neighboring Nebraska were later terminated by CMS, Two other facilities  one on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and Sioux San , both in South Dakota  were placed in jeopardy and saw reductions in services while the IHS worked to correct deficiencies.

The Winnebago hospital remains unable to bill Medicare for emergency services, though it plans to submit an application to CMS by October for recertification, said Danelle Smith, the executive director of the Winnebago Comprehensive Healthcare System.

The Winnebago facility -- now known as Twelve Clans Unity Hospital , a reflection of the tribe's culture and traditions -- continues to bill Medicare for services offered by its clinic, she said.

We had a very successful mock survey at the end of January and planned to submit the application by now, but then COVID came along and delayed the timeline, Smith, who is a Winnebago citizen, told Indianz.Com. The hospital serves both the Winnebago Tribe and the neighboring Omaha Tribe.

The emergency room at Sioux San was shut down completely, and a coalition of tribes later took over urgent care services from IHS at the Rapid City, South Dakota, hospital and renamed the new healthcare organization the Oyate Health Center . IHS still operates some healthcare services at Sioux San.

Emergency services at Rosebud were cut for seven months, which took a heavy toll on citizens of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe , and in 2016 the tribe sued the federal government arguing federal health care was promised to the tribe by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie . A federal judge agreed with the tribe , ruling the federal government was required to provide the tribe with competent physician-led health care.

"The United States does owe the Tribe some duty to provide health care to its members, even if the fiduciary duty judicially enforceable is just competent physician-led health care based on the construction of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie as explained above," Judge Roberto A. Lange wrote in the March 30 ruling, documents of which are available on Turtle Talk

The Trump administration is not accepting the decision, treaty rights notwithstanding. The case is now being taken to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals , with an opening brief due on July 7, according to a scheduling order

With respect to the Pine Ridge Hospital, Driving Hawk said IHS focused on three areas in working to improve services at the facility: hospital governance and oversight, quality leadership and healthcare, and increased collaboration and communication among all stakeholders. He said IHS also expanded oversight from the Great Plains Area Office to the hospital and increased staffing levels, requirements for medical staff credentialing and education of staff on quality standards.

In short, our expectations for ourselves have changed, he said. Were holding ourselves to a higher standard.

And we are not done. We will continue to improve through our substantial efforts through investments such as a planned renovation at the Pine Ridge emergency department.

He said the ability to bill Medicare for services will lead to increased revenue for the hospital, funds that IHS will use to pay for facility and program improvements, as well as increased staffing.

This is going to up open up more opportunities for expansion and improvement on the services that we have, he said.

Join the Conversation
Winona Ryder has accused Mel Gibson of making homophobic and anti-semitic comments at a party they both attended.

The actor recounted the alleged remarks during an interview with The Sunday Times, in which she was asked whether she has ever experienced anti-semitism.

We were at a crowded party with one of my good friends, and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and were all talking and he said to my friend, whos gay, Oh wait, am I gonna get Aids? Ryder told the newspaper.

And then something came up about Jews, and he said, Youre not an oven dodger, are you?

According to Ryder, Gibson tried to apologise later on. The Independent has contacted Gibsons representative for comment.

Gibson hurled anti-semitic statements during a 2006 arrest on suspicion of drunk driving, according to a sheriffs report shared at the time by TMZ. The actor apologised for the despicable remarks in a statement to The New York Times.

In her interview with The Sunday Times, Ryder spoke more generally about anti-semitism and the ways she has faced it throughout her life, telling the newspaper: There are times when people have said, Wait, youre Jewish? But youre so pretty!

There was a movie that I was up for a long time ago, it was a period piece, and the studio head, who was Jewish, said I looked too Jewish to be in a blue-blooded family.

Speaking about her Jewish heritage, Ryder described herself as not religious, but I do identify.

Its a hard thing for me to talk about because I had family who died in the camps, so Ive always been fascinated with that time, she said.

Ryder stars in The Plot Against America, the miniseries adaptation of Philip Roths novel of the same name, which presents an alternative history of the US under an anti-semitic regime.

The series, released on HBO between March and April 2020 in the US, is coming to Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK from 14 July.
JERUSALEM  When President Trumps Middle East team meets this week to hash out what to do about Israels planned annexation of territory in the West Bank, a fundamental question will hover overhead: Is the prospect of annexation a pressure tactic to get the Palestinians to engage with the administrations peace plan, or is the peace plan just a smokescreen for annexation?

American and Israeli officials are deeply divided on the question, an issue that could determine how and when any annexation proceeds.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the occupied West Bank  as mapped out in the Trump peace plan  as soon as July 1. And he is counting on the Trump administrations backing, since most of the world views existing Jewish settlements on the West Bank as illegal and would treat any unilateral annexation as a flagrant violation of international law.

But the administration has sent mixed signals, initially greenlighting annexation, then putting the brakes on, and now, apparently, reconsidering the move in White House meetings set to begin on Tuesday.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
He is famed for playing Lord Louis Mountbatten in The Crown and Lord Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones.

And Charles Dance claims he thinks he only gets 'posh' roles because of the way his 'face is put together' and not because of his family background.

The 73-year-old star of Game of Thrones and The Crown believes he is cast in aristocratic roles simply for his looks.

Genes: Charles Dance has claimed he only gets 'posh' roles because of the way his 'face is put together' and not because of his family background (pictured as Lord Mountbatten in The Crown)

Charles, the son of a cook and an engineer, told how he didn't go to drama school but instead worked as a labourer while two retired actors taught him in the evenings.

Talking to the Loose Ends podcast, he said: 'It's just the way my face is put together,' he said. 'But there's nothing posh about me.'

Dance described how he didn't go to drama school in the 1960s but was instead instructed by retired actors Leonard Bennett and Martin Burchardt.

High-profile looks: The 73-year-old star of Game of Thrones and The Crown believes he is cast in aristocratic roles simply for his looks but said he isn't actually posh at all

'I went to art school but half way through I though, no, I don't want to be a graphic designer, I want to be an actor,' he said.

'I knew of these two rather wonderful old men who lived down in deepest Devon and rang them up and asked if they would teach me.

'And I spent a couple of years with them and I worked as a builder's labourer and a plumber's mate and I would go and see them one or two evenings and they tried to teach me what I would have learnt if I'd gone to drama school.'

Working his way up: Charles, (pictured in The Crown) was the son of a cook and an engineer, and said worked as a labourer while two retired actors taught him in drama in the evenings

But after he found acting success, Dance says he upset them by revealing their sexuality during an interview, which up until they then had keep secret.

'I made the mistake of talking about them in a newspaper interview and was asked if they were gay and I said yes, indeed they were,' he said.

'Martin got in touch with me and was a bit upset about that because these two men were of that generation who lived in constant fear of a dawn raid.'
Australians and New Zealanders may be able to holiday in Fiji if they quarantine for 14 days before their flight and test negative to COVID-19 within 48 hours of departure.

The 'Bula Bubble' proposal was unveiled by Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama on Sunday to kick start the tourist industry after international borders were locked during the coronavirus pandemic.

While a start date has not been determined, Mr Bainimarama said he was working with Australia's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly to outline a safe travel strategy, the Australian Financial Review reported.

Under Bula Bubble guidelines, Aussies and Kiwis would be required to present a medical certificate proving they tested negative to the respiratory illness within 48 hours of departure to Fiji.

Australians and New Zealanders may be able to holiday in Fiji as coronavirus restrictions ease. Pictured: South Sea Island in Fiji - where tourists may be able to go under new rules

Holiday-makers who choose to isolate on the South Pacific island would then have to test negative to COVID-19 after the quarantine period. Pictured: a woman holidaying in Fiji

Tourists would also either be required to quarantine in their home country for 14 days before their flight, or quarantine at a designated hotel in Fiji - at the traveller's expense.

Holiday-makers who choose to isolate on the South Pacific island would then have to test negative to COVID-19 after the quarantine period before being allowed to leave the hotel and travel within restricted areas called VIP lanes.

The lanes would allow safe transport between Nadi Airport and approved hotels and resorts.

Fiji would enforce VIP lanes for tourists to allow transport between Nadi Airport and approved hotels and resorts. Pictured: A Fiji Airways flight departing Sydney Airport

There would also be safe 'blue lanes' for yachts sailing into the Pacific country.

Sailors at sea for less than 14 days would need to complete the remaining isolation period at the dock and test negative to the virus before being allowed into the country.

Frank Bainimarama said the rules were in place to ensure people can holiday in the picturesque nation safely

Mr Bainimarama said the rules were in place to ensure people can holiday in the picturesque nation safely.

'Working with Fiji Airways and Tourism Fiji, we'll be welcoming Aussies and Kiwis to holiday in Fiji in a manner that is carefully controlled and safely insulated,' he said.

'Everywhere they go will be wholly dedicated to others who match the same criteria, safely guided by what we're calling "VIP lanes", allowing them to vacation in paradise.'

He also said if Australia and New Zealand eradicate COVID-19 completely, the quarantine requirements and VIP lane restrictions would be lifted.

Fiji has not had a new coronvirus case in 64 days.

Nightclubs are closed, gatherings are restricted to 100 people and there are enforced curfews between 11pm and 4am.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced a fresh package of interventions that will help make life comfortable and safe for final-year senior high school (SHS) Three students and second-year Gold Track students who are returning to school today.



It includes for the first time, the absorption of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) fees of the 313,837 SHS Three students amounting to GH75.4 million.



In addition, the government is making available 350 buses and 840 pickup vehicles to SHSs that did not receive vehicles in 2016.



In his 12th address to the nation on Ghanas enhanced response to the COVID-19 pandemic yesterday, the President further indicated that through the National Food and Buffer Stock Company, enough food supplies had been distributed to all schools.



The President added that all 1,167 SHSs across the country had been fumigated and disinfected. Each student, teaching and non-teaching staff, invigilators and school administrators, numbering some 800,000, will be provided with three pieces of reusable face masks, i.e. two being provided tomorrow, and the third within a fortnight, he said.



In addition, he said 18,000 Veronica buckets, 800,000 pieces of 200 millilitre sanitisers, 36,000 rolls of tissue paper, 36,000 gallons of liquid soap, and 7,200 thermometer guns had been distributed.



President Akufo-Addo, nonetheless, encouraged parents to provide their children with at least one face covering on their way to school.



Protocols in schools



On the safety protocols, the President said a maximum of 25 students would be permitted in each class.



All day students in schools with boarding houses will be resident in the boarding houses, while day students in schools without boarding facilities would commute from home, and would be required to adhere to enhanced hygiene protocols, he said.



He repeated the directive that eating in dining halls would be in appropriate numbers, while no visitors would be allowed in the schools.



There would be no mass gatherings and sporting activities, but religious activities, under the new protocols, would be permitted, he said.



President Akufo-Addo reiterated that social distancing and the wearing of face masks were obligatory in our schools.



Each school will designate one dormitory block as an isolation centre to cater for students who may fall sick.



Again, each SHS has been mapped to a health facility, and care will be provided to the sick bay nurses assigned to these schools, the President stated.



Free SHS



President Akufo-Addo expressed gratitude that the Free SHS policy had put 1.2 million children in school, the highest such enrolment in the countrys history, and without which 400,000 students would not have entered SHS between 2017 and 2019.



These SHS Three students, also referred to by some as the Akufo-Addo graduates, are the first group of beneficiaries of governments Free Senior High School policy to sit the WASSCE exams, he added.



He said the Free SHS was introduced because the experiences of developed nations had shown that the most efficient way to empower the population, and, thereby, guarantee the future of the nation, was by investing in education and skills training of the youth.



Assurance



President Akufo-Addo reiterated his assurance to all parents and guardians that the government was determined to protect the lives of the 800,000 students, teachers and non-teaching staff, who would be returning to school from today.



I will be the last person to put the lives of the Akufo-Addo graduates at risk. It bears repeating that they must all adhere strictly to enhanced personal hygiene and social distancing protocols, regularly wash their hands with soap under running water, refrain from shaking hands, and wear masks to protect themselves and others. These rules apply to all of us, he stated.



Reviewed policy



President Akufo-Addo also explained why the country had reviewed its protocols with regard to managing the pandemic, stressing that it was informed by the evolving science and data, as well as the recommendations by the scientific and the World Health Organisation (WHO).



He said after three weeks of analysing and studying the updated guidelines of WHOs clinical management of COVID-19 Interim Guidance, of May 27, 2020, and situating it in the Ghanaian context, the patient discharge and recovery policy had been adopted by Ghana as some countries in the European Union, Singapore, India, Malaysia Hong Kong and in Dubai.



According to WHO, asymptomatic patients, i.e. those who have tested positive for the virus, but are not exhibiting any symptoms after 14 days, are not likely to be infectious, and, therefore, are unlikely to be able to transmit the virus to another person.



Under the reviewed protocol, all patients who after treatment test negative on the first post-treatment test, would be discharged and the sample for the second test would be taken from their homes.



Case count



President Akufo-Addo said that explained the numbers of discharged people recorded in the current case count in the country.



As of Saturday, June 20, the case count stood at 14,154 from 270,300 tests conducted. Under the revised policy, 5,925 persons have recovered and have been discharged, bringing to 10,473, the number of people discharged.



Twenty-four persons are severely ill, six persons in critical condition and four persons on ventilators.



The death toll has regrettably risen to 85.



More isolation, treatment centres



President Akufo-Addo emphasised that in line with the policy of providing optimal care for the sick and reducing COVID-19 related deaths, he had approved further investment for additional ICU bed facilities in the Greater Accra Region, a new treatment centre for Ashanti Region and additional laboratories to strengthen clinical care to allow for real time results.



Also, formal arrangements for a pool of specialist health professionals to complement the respective resident multi-disciplinary health teams at the various treatment centres.



Additionally, more medicines, consumables and equipment are to be procured to enhance delivery.



Isolation centres



The President said the government also continued to mobilise holding bay, quarantine, isolation and treatment centres across the country and expressed appreciation to the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Catholic Bishops Conference for making available their facilities to be used as isolation centres.



While GNAT has offered its hostel at Ejisu in the Ashanti Region, the Catholic Bishops Conference have offered its facilities across the country as isolation centres.



Also, President Akufo-Addo commended the gesture of the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, who has offered his 70-bed hospital in Toase, in the Ashanti Region, as a COVID-19 treatment centre.



Background



Today, final-year SHS Three students and second-year Gold Track students will return to school.



The President has held consultations with members of both the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) and the Association of Principals of Technical Institutes (APTI) to agree on the modalities for the return of the students.



The SHS Three students will be in school for six weeks, June 22 to July 31 for tuition and learning, before sitting for the WASSCE examinations from August 3 to September 4.



SHS two Gold Track students are also returning to complete their first semester like their Green Track mates. They will also be in school for six weeks, before going on vacation.

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.

Featured Video
TANZANIA, Tanzania - Venezuela is accusing the United States of blocking its ability to pay over $21 million in dues to the United Nations causing the loss of its voting rights in the General Assembly.

Venezuelas U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada asked U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a letter circulated Monday to redouble efforts to enable it to pay.

He said U.S. sanctions have prevented us from successfully transferring the required funds to United Nations bank accounts located not only in the United States but also in other countries.

Each and every time we have attempted to wire-transfer the resources, Moncada said, the transactions have been rejected or sent back to our bank accounts  in the best scenario  while in other instances they have been frozen or confiscated, pursuant to compliance with United States-imposed sanctions against Venezuela or threats from the United States government to those financial institutions.

The United States was first among more than 50 nations to back Juan Guaido, who as head of Venezuelas opposition-led congress claimed presidential powers in early 2019, arguing that President Nicolas Maduros re-election had been invalid.

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to walk back comments in a weekend interview that he would consider meeting Maduro, which cast doubt on his support for Guaido. In a tweet, Trump said: I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!

The United Nations recognizes the Maduro government as representing Venezuela, and Moncada accused the Trump administration of violating the U.S. agreement with the United Nations as its host nation by preventing the country from fully and efficiently discharging its responsibilities to the global organization.

Moncada asked secretary-general Guterres to engage personally to ensure that the U.S. doesnt abuse its role and abides by both the letter and spirit of the host country agreement __ and to ensure that countries dont lose voting rights for reasons well beyond their control that result from illegal sanctions that violate the U.N. Charter.

Under U.N. rules, countries that dont pay dues lose voting privileges in the 193-member General Assembly.

Moncada said in the letter dated June 15  two days before elections in the assembly for a new president, five members of the Security Council and 18 members of the Economic and Social Council  that it has tried since last year to both find and establish a financial route that would allow for the safe transfer of our resources for settling our dues with the organization.

He said the Maduro government has held bilateral talks with U.S. representatives but no feedback at all has been received thus far. He said Venezuela sought an exemption from the General Assembly Committee on Contributions from paying dues given the difficulties, but was advised informally that the United States and United Kingdom blocked the request which requires consensus.

The result was that Venezuela was the only country not to vote in the June 17 elections.

Moncada stressed that Venezuela is not requesting debt forgiveness, and has the over $21 million for the minimum payment to restore its voting rights.
This is an opinion column.

Symbols. They matter. A lot.

When words are not sufficient, they matter.

When language is a barrier, they matter.

Symbols matter because they endure. They connect. They evoke emotion.

Our flags are symbols.

Our Afros and natural hair (for those of us with hair) are symbols.

Our raised fist. Its a symbol.

They all endure. They connect. They move us.

Few symbols speak louder today than the now-ubiquitous phrase painted in big, bold, unapologetically yellow letters on prominent streets in cities across the nation: BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Time-lapse of Birmingham Black Lives Matter mural This week, volunteers and the city of Birmingham joined forces to paint a large "Black Lives Matter" mural near Railroad Park, on 1st Ave South. This time lapse shows how it came together. (thanks to Parkside Apartments Birmingham) Posted by al.com on Friday, June 19, 2020

Images of those words exploding from the paved streets citizens traverse each day will endure far beyond the paint used to create them.

They connect us. They evoke emotionone way or another.

Sixteenth Street North is a symbol. Birminghams most powerful symbol.

Mention it to almost anyone who aint from here and theyll respond: Sixteenth Street Baptist.

Theyll know of the four little girls who died there nearly 57 years ago  even if they dont know their names. Because Carol Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were not inscribed in their history books. Because no one then chanted: Say their names.

Sixteenth Street.

They might envision Bull Connors fire hoses and police dogs attacking boys and girls that marched from that church through Kelly Ingram Park across the street in the cause for equal treatment under the law. Even if they dont know that park sits on 16th Street North.

Birmingham City Council President William Parker committed, in his own words, a misstep last Friday when publicly announcing that on this Tuesday the council will be considering a resolution that would rename a portion of Sixteenth Street North to Black Lives Matter Boulevard.

A misstep because many council members were not aware they would be asked to consider such a resolution on Tuesday.

A misstep because renaming a street is an arduous process requiring notification of the United States Post Office, as well as citizens and businesses residing on the street. None of which happened.

It would have come through my committee, said Councilor Crystal Smitherman, a member of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Committee (Parker is chair). It didnt.

A misstep because Parker did not engage the many community influencers working in the trenches of change every day in Birminghamincluding leaders of the citys Black Lives Matter organization. On Sunday, they crafted an open letter to the council and office of Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin imploring them not to rename 16th Street North.

We are not against the renaming of a street Black Lives Matter, the letter reads, in part. Yet, if we are to rename one, it should be done in the spirit of the original resolution, which renamed the street leading up to the White House Black Lives Matter as a strong political statement to those in power. And in concert with those now on the front lines of the battle for social justice and equity.

To be clear16th Street North is already the home of Black Lives Matter.

It is already a symbol. One that endures, that connects and touches hearts around the world.

It should not, as the letter noted, be renamed.

Thankfully, the council will not consider such a resolution, Parker confirmed Sunday evening.

I embrace the community leaders and will be a partner with them, he told me. It was a misstep, but lets take it as an opportunity to further the goals of Black Lives Matter.

People are hurting. They need jobs, housing need to be improved. There are a lot of things we can do to partner with them. Lets think outside the box.

That is how we continue the movement. Were 150 percent on board.

On Monday, it will have been exactly 21 days since George Floyd tragically and wrenchingly died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin crushed his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Just three weeks.

In that short time, America has experienced an awakening that has produced countless symbolic, though wide appreciated changesbye-bye Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, and corporate leaders whose racial insensitivity (thats being nice) have heretofore gone unchallenged or penalized.

Now, that awakeningstarting with city councils, mayors, state legislators, and our invisible governormust begin producing seismic, substantive and sustainable change: Policies and practices that endure, that connect and that move us.

That improves lives. Not just name streets after them.

A voice for whats right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roys column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj
Egypt has received grants worth CHF 86 million ($90,561 million) under the Egypt-Switzerland cooperation strategy from 2017 to 2020, the Egyptian Ministry of International Cooperation said in a statement.

In talks held virtually on Monday, Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat discussed with Swiss Ambassador to Egypt Paul Garnier the new cooperation strategy between the two countries over the coming four years (2021-2024) that aims to deepen bilateral partnership.

The Swiss Cooperation Strategy in Egypt for the period 2017-2020 is implemented through activities in three domains: democratic processes and human rights, inclusive sustainable economic growth and employment, and Protection and migration, according to the Swiss Cooperation Office in Egypt.

Al-Mashat said that the 2021-2024 strategy comes in line with the international cooperation ministrys P&P&P strategy that concentrates on the international partnerships and their role in achieving Egypts sustainable development goals, with a special focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurship, digital transformation, education, technical training, health, agriculture, and renewable energy sectors.

Development partnership between the two countries, which records CHF 700 million ($736,8 million), has contributed to implementing 200 projects, while the ongoing cooperation portfolio reaches approximately 48 million in communications, urban planning, sanitation, textiles, health, and the environment.

Ambassador Garnier asserted Switzerlands support of Egypts economic reform process, adding that his country will focus on consistency in the international cooperations strategy over the coming four years, especially in SMEs and education.

Egypt is the largest market for Swiss exports in Africa, with a bilateral trade value of $1.3 billion in 2019, according to the Swiss Embassy in Cairo.

In 2019, over 60 Swiss companies were established across various sectors in the Egyptian market, according to the embassy.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Black content creators call on followers and social media platforms to acknowledge systematic racism. (Photo: Instagram/heybriajones/areed_1998)

The social media landscape has been transformed amid conversations regarding racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. While people from all backgrounds are participating in these discussions and using their platforms to provide information and resources for their followers, its Black content creators in particular who have seen a spike in their engagement and follower count on sites like Instagram and TikTok. And with social networks actively giving a boost to these creators posts, some feel this is the first time that theyre being both seen and heard by those who ordinarily wouldnt follow them.

My platform has blown up. I just hit 30,000 [31,700 as of publishing time] on Instagram, and last week I had, like, 24,000 [followers before]. And TikTok, I just hit 208,000, Bria Jones, a 26-year-old fashion and lifestyle content creator, tells Yahoo Life. It has been really pivotal for me, period. I didnt know that people listened to me like they do.

Since turning her social media presence into a business back in 2018, the Texas native has focused on creating a space for all lovers of fashion on Instagram and TikTok. During this time, however, she felt a need to be more authentic with her audience about her experience as a Black woman and sought to use her voice to communicate with non-Black followers who want to become allies. With the unprecedented support for Black creators put forward by the #BlackoutTuesday initiative  a day where people across multiple social networking platforms were encouraged to mute their own content to bring attention and awareness to Black creators, influencers and educators  Jones felt confident enough to break out of her comfort zone.

Ive had these conversations my entire life, but it wasnt until now, this boiling point for everyone, that I actually have been so vocal about it, she explains. I never really wanted to start the conversation because it was always intimidating. Ive always been, like, the only Black girl in the room or the classroom, so you can imagine trying to have that conversation with people that all think the same and have never had these experiences.

Story continues

Video: Halsey Is Helping Amplify Black Creators Art, Voice and Perspective

Those rooms where Jones has been in the minority mirror the online spaces where she again has felt overshadowed by white creators with larger followings and bigger opportunities. As a society, were so used to seeing white faces in everything and not used to seeing just as many Black faces. This correlates with the increase in engagement that various Black creators experienced on June 2, the day deemed #BlackoutTuesday, when white creators put their content on pause.

Kira West, a creator focused on making wellness inclusive, found that the universal call to action primed people on Instagram to seek out new perspectives and faces on their feeds.

The muting allowed for there to be content shared by people of color, and there arent that many in wellness, West says, making sense of her notable increase in followers interested in new fitness content. I think people were more apt maybe to receive my perspective. But I also think up until more recently, I wasnt really having the conversation as much.

West says her niche of fitness and wellness as a tool has enabled her to obtain a larger audience while so many people are making specific efforts to diversify their feeds. She specifically points to her collaboration with Lindsey Harrod, a white fitness instructor and influencer who paused her own Instagram Live workouts to focus on discussions and workouts alongside Black women who operate in the same space. This approach, West explains, seems most effective in attracting engaged followers.

I dont think people are trying to follow Black people just for being Black, she says. I think theyre interested in the content and they just might not have discovered you before.

Similar collaborations have helped amplify Black creators content, exposing them to new audiences. According to a June 15 announcement from Instagram, the company is now dedicated to being more proactive in connecting users with more diverse feeds by examining its distribution methods and updating its algorithms to keep bias out of these decisions. Instagram will also review its verification process, which validates influencers accounts with a check-mark badge, to ensure its as inclusive as possible.

Well review how content is filtered on Explore and Hashtag pages to understand where there may be vulnerability to bias. On top of that, we need to be clearer about how decisions are made when it comes to how peoples posts get distributed, the statement reads. Were looking into our current verification criteria and will make changes to ensure its as inclusive as possible. Verification is an area we constantly get questions on  what the guidelines are, and whether or not the criteria is favoring some groups more than others.

These efforts, along with others, which include Instagram CEO Adam Mosseris announcement on Friday of a $100 million investment in Black-owned businesses and creators, aim to foster stronger partnerships between Black creators and the platform, which will lead to further support and exposure.

Our latest actions for racial justice  This Week on Instagram pic.twitter.com/9odABwIKig  Adam Mosseri  (@mosseri) June 19, 2020

On TikTok, however, Jones points out that content is discovered and consumed in a very different way  which means that supporting Black content creators looks different as well. Atiya Mansfield, a 21-year-old student who joined TikTok in early 2018, tells Yahoo Life that content on the app is served to consumers primarily via recommendations on the platforms For You page. Mansfield asserts that for a while, hers was whitewashed.

I noticed everybody that was on my For You page were the people that the app deemed most popular, she explains. There wasnt a lot of people who looked like me.

She says that she continued to employ the app because it was easy and fun to use. But even when she decided to put more effort toward making quality content, I never really got anywhere.

Is my content bad? Am I doing something wrong? she recalls asking herself. And then the videos that come up on my For You page, someone sitting and smiling at the camera, the only difference is how we look.

Mansfield points to the ongoing issues that Black creators have faced to receive credit for their original video ideas and choreography, which often end up trending only after being appropriated by and ultimately credited to white users whose accounts have more views. This problem came into focus in February, when the apps popular Renegade dance was traced back to Jalaiah Harmon  a young Black creator whom most people hadnt heard of or seen before. The reason why the entirety of the app didnt know that that dance was created by a Black female teenager was because her videos werent being circulated, Mansfield says. And thats when it started to really get to me.

Mansfield says that she was stuck at 9,000 followers on TikTok for months, which is unusual for an app thats known for greater exposure and faster growth than competitors like Instagram. After posting a video on May 19  a day when TikTok creators participated in a social media blackout  of a rap that she wrote to address the lack of diversity on her feed, her page suddenly grew. As of this weekend, the Minneapolis native was approaching 50,000 followers.

The blackout day was so incredible because it kind of forced the app to switch how it was promoting things because there were so many people that came together, not just the Black creators on TikTok, but everybody who was a part of the movement came together and was like, You know what, were gonna use the algorithm against itself to see how that can change. And it did change. ... My For You page is the most diverse its ever been, and it doesnt seem out of place, it doesnt seem wrong. It seems more normal than it was before the algorithm switched.

Kudzi Chikumbu, director of creator community for TikTok U.S., tells Yahoo Life that the content being served on users For You pages is a reflection of what a particular user is interested in. It takes account of the users preferences on videos that they follow, videos that they engage with and like and comment and enjoy watching. That helps serve the most relevant content that resonates with them.

He also credits the noticeable change that people are seeing on that page with the nations focus on racial injustice. Given the current climate right now, Black Lives Matter is top of mind for a lot of people, and thats what people are watching and engaging with and people that theyre following, so you start to see a lot more of that content in the feed, he explains.

tiktok turning from lipsyncing into leading the revolution with protest DIYs from around the world is really not what i thought would happen on that platform but here we are  elijah daniel (@elijahdaniel) June 3, 2020

Still, it isnt lost on most creators that such a drastic change in the faces and perspectives served to users isnt just a coincidence or a result of community action. Instead, Alexis Williams, a computer science student and TikTok creator, says that its a result of the platform addressing algorithmic bias.

Written code carries the same belief system as the people writing it. A lot of people feel as though technology is the most unbiased level of logic we can reach, but this isnt true. Say a white person is building a networking platform, the way they measure success and social mobility will have a white lens as opposed to one inclusive of other racial identities. Thus its inherently harder for BIPOC [Black, indigenous and people of color] to attain success because they dont fit the mold of what white engineers have previously built, Williams explains to Yahoo Life. Shadowbanning is a great example of the inherent bias on TikTok. Shadowbanning is when a platform will prevent your content from being seen by others due to flags your videos raise. These flags can be a plethora of things that break community guidelines, but I also believe TikTok has admitted to shadowbanning content from Black creators, LGBTQ+ creators and more.

In a statement on June 1, TikTok even acknowledged and apologized for what it called a technical glitch that blocked videos uploaded with the tags #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd from appearing on peoples feeds on the May 19 blackout. This was a display issue only that widely affected hashtags at large, the statement read. Nevertheless, we understand that many assumed this bug to be an intentional act to suppress the experiences and invalidate the emotions felt by the Black community. And we know we have work to do to regain and repair that trust.

On June 18, the company again specifically addressed the bias built into its algorithm with a blog explaining how the For You page functions and how TikTok is actively working to fix it. One of the inherent challenges with recommendation engines is that they can inadvertently limit your experience  what is sometimes referred to as a filter bubble, the statement read. By optimizing for personalization and relevance, there is a risk of presenting an increasingly homogeneous stream of videos. This is a concern we take seriously as we maintain our recommendation system. It further pledged to work on interrupting repetitive patterns and diversifying recommendations.

Chikumbu explains that the apps Discover page is where this proactive action will primarily be seen with curated banners such as Black Lives Matter and Black Music Month that direct users to relevant content. It will also display a list of trending hashtags and topics that TikTok chooses to highlight as a reflection of larger cultural conversations.

Instagram similarly addressed its own algorithmic bias in Mosseris announcement. Some technologies risk repeating the patterns developed by our biased societies. While we do a lot of work to help prevent subconscious bias in our products, we need to take a harder look at the underlying systems weve built, and where we need to do more to keep bias out of these decisions, it read.

Other platforms, namely YouTube and Facebook, have yet to mention this underlying issue, which TikTok creator Williams says isnt a surprise because it opens the floodgates to a larger issue. Its still a bit of an underground topic. It also unveils possible problems within AI, machine learning and overall privacy that Im not sure many companies are comfortable or prepared to deal with, she explains. If a company admits that [its] programs are biased, they have to be ready for backlash. If they are truly committed to change and inclusivity, they will undergo an upheaval of their current system.

In the process of bettering their systems, some platforms have reached out to their Black communities to open up a dialogue in hopes of administering positive change. Jones explains that shes been in touch with representatives at TikTok after attending its first Black Creators Summit in February and is hopeful about the action that theyve promised to take. When YouTube sent a message to its own outreach list of Black creators, however, it received a negative response.

Got a message from @YouTube about some actions they want to take to support Black creators. Here's my response to that. @SusanWojcicki what's good? pic.twitter.com/DJSIzWBWdV  Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) June 3, 2020

inspired by @AkilahObviously adding the email i sent to @YouTube last year about their continued lack of action regarding white supremacists on the platform & how dismissive @SusanWojcicki was when i asked a question about harassment at the creators for change summit in 2016 https://t.co/3lHkehQgXQ pic.twitter.com/hOZBWgF9AF  Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) June 3, 2020

Akilah Hughes, writer, comedian and YouTuber, didnt respond to Yahoo Lifes request for comment. However, shes made multiple claims about YouTubes overwhelming inaction when it comes to racist and abusive content on its platform. On the flip side, a host of creators most recently spoke out about YouTubes removal of any and all videos made in an effort to fundraise for organizations fighting racial injustice. On Friday, it was announced that four Black female YouTube creators filed a class action lawsuit against the platforms parent company, Google, alleging that its algorithm discriminates against Black creators.

YouTube tells Yahoo Life that it ensures all policies are enforced in a consistent matter and the platforms automated systems arent made to identify the race, ethnicity or sexual orientation of creators or viewers. Any further action in regard to YouTubes fight against racial injustice was announced in a blog by CEO Susan Wojcicki on June 11, including a multiyear, $100 million fund dedicated to amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists and their stories.

We hear you. We must do more to protect and amplify Black voices, and to make YouTube a safer, more inclusive space. We are committed to doing better. For more, read our CEO Susan Wojcickis letter to the community  https://t.co/EZwxrI1smI pic.twitter.com/h3k37Ii2ou  YouTube (@YouTube) June 11, 2020

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced a monetary investment in Black communities and creators on Thursday, in addition to efforts being made to increase diversity and inclusion within the companys workforce.

Supporting Black and Diverse Communities https://t.co/0zpvgrunuh  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) June 18, 2020

This followed chief executive Mark Zuckerbergs Facebook post on June 1 in which he also addressed the companys commitment to put money toward groups working on racial justice. Not everything can be fixed by throwing money at it, one person commented on Zuckerbergs post. Another wrote, You need to commit to the ending of disinformation campaigns, but $10 million is a good start.

Twitter also made a statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, although Williams explains that the way that the platform works is vastly different from an app like TikTok and therefore doesnt have the same biases at play. TikTok is very different in the way that the content I consume would never be the exact same as a friend with different taste or views, for example. Alternatively, Twitter feels more like fast news that everyone consumes somewhat similarly, which is very helpful for the fast-moving pace of the [Black Lives Matter] movement, she says.

Still, Williams explains that any and all biases must be examined in order to move toward permanent and effective change. All social media platforms need to commit to constant and continuous efforts to make their networks [fairer], she says. These systems that carry out and perform implicit bias werent built in a day, and its going to take a while to detangle ourselves and our cultural devices from them.

In the meantime, creators like Jones, West and Mansfield will continue to come up with content that they love and integrate their authentic experiences into it, with the hope that platforms and people who use them will continue to consume it.

This allowed me to see my potential in how I can impact the world through more ways than just fashion, Jones says. Ive never felt this kind of support before.

Read more from Yahoo Life:

Want daily wellness, lifestyle and parenting news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Lifes newsletter.
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) rose 1.34% to Rs 909.70 after L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with KBR for refinery and petrochemical projects.

L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering (LTHE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T, has signed a MoU with KBR to build modular process plants for refinery and petrochemical projects. US-based KBR is an engineering, procurement, and construction company.

Under the terms of the agreement, KBR and LTHE will collaborate to develop business opportunities and LTHE will exclusively bid for KBR's solid acid alkylation technology (K -SAAT), solvent de-asphalting technology (ROSE) and catalytic olefins technology (K -COT) for global projects with special emphasis on India, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa.

LTHE delivers 'design to build' engineering and construction solutions across the hydrocarbon spectrum.

L&T's consolidated net profit fell 6.5% to Rs 3197.07 crore on 2.2% rise in net sales to Rs 44245.28 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

L&T is an Indian multinational engaged in technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and financial services.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo: (Photo : Screenshot from Facebook)

Glenda DeFabio is a student with special needs, and she felt crushed when she found out that her picture was exlcuded in the yearbook of her high school this year. According to Claudia, Glenda's sister, Glenda, is a "bubble of positivity," which is why their family is emotional about what happened.

Claudia shared the story of their sister being excluded from the yearbook in a Facebook post. The post quickly became viral after it was posted last Thursday. The school has since apologized to the family.

Glenda is a 20-year-old from New Jersey who has Down Syndrome. She is part of a program at Watchung Hills Regional High School. The program allows students with special needs to continue studying until the age of 21.

READ ALSO: 6 Amusing Facts About Sibling Relationships That Parents Should Know

The family's thoughts on the yearbook incident

In an interview with TODAY, Claudia shared how heartbroken their family was about what happened. Mainly, their mother, Jill DeFabio, had a hard time explaining to Glenda why she was excluded in the yearbook.

Claudia also said that as a family, they are advocating for Glenda to make the 20-year-old student feel she is a student, even if she has special needs. Claudia added, "We see her as our sister and not our sister with Down syndrome, and hope all people see it that way as well."

More than anything, the pain the DeFabio family feels the most is that Glenda does not fully understand why she is seen as different, and why she was excluded in the yearbook.

Claudia said, "Glenda is very active in the school and community, so from her perspective, it was tough for her to understand why she wasn't included."

In her Facebook post, Claudia said that she shared her sister's photo for the Internet to see since she was excluded from her high school's yearbook.

READ ALSO: School Closures During COVID-19 Crisis Can Affect Mental Health of Children

The high school apologizes and explains what happened.

In a statement from the superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School, Elizabeth Jewett said that they are working on rectifying the situation.

Jewett also said that what happened was not intentional, "The District would never exclude any student from any aspect of Watchung Hills due to a disability, race/ethnicity, or for any other reason."

Aside from Glenda's photo, other students' photos were not included, and the school is already investigating the omission.

According to Claudia, her mother has signed a media release for students with special needs. This release allows the school to share Glenda's student photos. However, it has come to the DeFabio family's attention that special needs students need to inform the school on what grade they consider Glenda so that she will be part of that level.

Jewett also explained that there are student privacy laws which they are revisiting so that they would avoid the same incident in the future.

The school has already reached out to the DeFabio family. Claudia said that it could have been avoided if there had been better communication.

Because of what happened, Claudia feels there has been a positive change, mainly because the school was responsive. They have been informed that a supplementary yearbook will be provided where Glenda's picture is going to be there.

READ ALSO: Deciding During The Pandemic: Is Going to College Worthwhile?
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 00:33:58|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

DAR ES SALAAM, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's National Irrigation Commission said on Sunday plans were afoot to build 384 new agricultural irrigation projects worth 986.8 billion Tanzanian shillings (about 426 million U.S. dollars) across the country in the next five years.

Daudi Kaali, the director general of the commission, said the new irrigation projects will be built in Dodoma, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Morogoro, Mtwara, Mwanza, Tabora and Katavi regions.

Funds for the construction of the new irrigation projects will be obtained under the implementation of the second phase of the Agricultural Sector Development Program, he told a news conference in the capital Dodoma.

Kaali said the new irrigation projects will enable the country to increase its food security in the next five years.

During the 2019-2020 farming season, said Kaali, 40 irrigation projects were damaged by heavy rains that hit most parts of the country.

The commission was assessing to establish rehabilitation costs for the damaged irrigation projects, said the official. Enditem
East Stroudsburg University is removing its temporary field hospital used to treat patients during the coronavirus pandemic, university officials announced Monday.

The university is working with the National Guard to remove the hospital set up in the 46,000-square-foot Koehler Fieldhouse. It was stationed at the fieldhouse in mid-April as a precautionary measure in case of a medical surge caused by the pandemic but never used.

At the start of the pandemic in March, Monroe County was becoming a coronavirus hot zone with more than half of admissions to the St. Lukes University Health Networks Monroe campus then being treated for COVID-19. Lehigh Valley Health Network spokesman Brian Downs then said the network was seeing a similar percentage of admitted patients being treated for COVID-19 at its Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono location in East Stroudsburg, Monroe County.

During March and April combined, health officials reported more than 1,000 coronavirus cases in the Lehigh Valley and Poconos.

Marcia G. Welsh, university president, said it was the universitys civic duty to support the community during trying times. The field hospital was set up to house coronavirus patients who no longer need emergency care, but who have not yet recovered enough to return home. A great deal is owed to healthcare workers at both Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono and St. Lukes Monroe campus because the field hospital wasnt put into use, Welsh said.

Monroe County moved on June 19 to the green phase of Gov. Tom Wolfs color-coded reopening plan. The plans eases up on many of the restrictions set forth in the red and yellow phases.

Now that Monroe County is in the green phase ... PEMA (Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency), in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, no longer sees the need for the use of ESUs facility, a good sign that things in the region are getting better, Welsh said in a statement.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the states Department of Health said the field hospital was a way to reduce the amount of patients at area hospitals during the March-April uptick in COVID-19 cases. On April 14, the Army Corps. of Engineers delivered more than 150 cots to ESUs Koehler Fieldhouse along with privacy screens and other medical equipment, health officials said.

The air conditioning system and generator at Koehler Fieldhouse, however, are planned to remain throughout the summer. Ken Long, the universitys vice president for administration and finance, said the units will stay at the fieldhouse in the event of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in coming weeks.

While the removal of the field hospital is being looked at as a positive initiative, Welsh stressed the coronavirus pandemic is far from over.

Every individual at ESU, within the Pocono Region and beyond, must remain vigilant about following CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, she said.

Welsh said as employees return to campus and prepare for the fall semester, the universitys leadership team remains committed in providing guidelines and preventative measures to promote safety. This includes requiring all employees to wear masks while in public places, practice social distancing, and keeping high-touch surfaces sanitized.

Every day we hear about a resurgence of COVID-19 somewhere in the U.S. Here in Monroe County, we have all the right elements to remain healthy and we need to follow best practices to stay safe, Welsh said.

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.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com.
The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra in Puri can be allowed to be held this year without public participation in view of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the 'tradition of centuries may not be stopped'

New Delhi: The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra in Puri can be allowed to be held this year without public participation in view of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the "tradition of centuries may not be stopped".

The Odisha government also supported the Centre's stand in the apex court, which is likely to hear the plea seeking modification of its 18 June order staying this year's Puri Rath Yatra due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It is a matter of faith for crores. If Lord Jagannath will not come out tomorrow, he cannot come out for 12 years as per traditions," Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, said.

Mehta said that besides maintaining precautions, the state government can impose a curfew for a day.

"All 'sebayats' and 'pandas' who have tested negative (for COVID-19) can participate in rituals as may be decided by HH Shri Shankaracharya. People may not congregate and seek blessings on TV during a live telecast. Raja of Puri and the temple committee may supervise arrangements of these rituals," Mehta told the bench.

The Puri Rath Yatra, which is attended by lakhs of people from across the world, is scheduled from 23 June.

The apex court had on 18 June said that in the interest of public health and safety of citizens, this year's Puri Rath Yatra cannot be allowed and that "Lord Jagannath won't forgive us if we allow" it.

A day after the order was passed, some applications were filed in the top court seeking recall and modification of its order. The modification applications filed earlier are already listed today before a single-judge bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat.

These applications, including the one filed by 'Jagannath Sanskruti Jana Jagarana Manch', have urged the court to allow the Rath Yatra.

While the Rath Yatra festival, held over 10-12 days with lakhs of people participating, was scheduled for June 23, the 'Bahuda Jatra' (return car festival) was fixed for 1 July.

Three heavily-built wooden chariots of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra are traditionally pulled by thousands of devotees over a distance of three kilometres twice during the nine-day festival of the Trinity at Puri.

The application filed by 'Jagannath Sanskruti Jana Jagarana Manch' has sought modification of the 18 June order, saying the festival is deeply associated with the religious beliefs of millions of devotees of Lord Jagannath and it is "not impossible and impracticable" for the state and district administration to conduct the yatra by maintaining social distancing and following the Centre's guidelines.

Besides this, a separate application seeking modification of the 18 June order has been filed by one Aftab Hossen, who has said that "as per the ritual of Lord Jagannath, the Rath Yatra is performed every year and if one year it is not performed, same cannot be performed for the next 12 years".

Hossen, while urging the apex court to modify its order and allow the Rath Yatra, has said in his application that restraining the Rath Yatra this year would practically mean restraining it for the next 12 years and this could create "great repercussion and chaos" in the Lord Jagannath culture and rituals.

In its separate application, the 'Jagannath Sanskruti Jana Jagarana Manch' has said that as per the earlier direction of the Orissa High Court as well as decision of the state government, 372 people were engaged in the construction of three raths/chariots for more than one-and-half months and all were isolated, tested and found COVID-19 negative.

The top court's 18 June order had come on a PIL filed by an Odisha-based NGO seeking cancellation or postponement of this year's yatra. Two pleas were filed in the apex court seeking cancellation or postponement of the historic yatra.

Besides the PIL filed by NGO 'Odisha Vikas Parishad', seeking stay on holding of the annual festival, an appeal has been filed by one Surendra Panigrahi of 'Bhartiya Bikash Parishad' against the Orissa High Court order of June 9, which had asked the state government to decide on holding the yatra in line with the COVID-19 guidelines.
In this article IRSA3-AR

Getty Images

For those who desperately need tax refunds, it can feel like ages before they get the money. For an unlucky few, the wait has taken months. "We filed a client's return, and it was accepted on April 14," said Nayo Carter-Gray, an enrolled agent at 1st Step Accounting in Towson, Maryland. "He finally received a notice that the refund is scheduled to hit on June 17," she said. Big money is at play. The IRS distributed an average refund check of $2,767 as of June 12. In comparison, the agency delivered stimulus checks of up to $1,200 per individual, plus $500 for each qualifying child.

"Some clients haven't received refunds yet, but they did receive stimulus payments," said Carter-Gray. "In the midst of the IRS shutting down and teleworking, there's kind of a gap there." Most returns are e-filed, with nearly 124 million individual returns coming in electronically as of June 12, according to the IRS. However, returns that were submitted on paper or those that require additional verification with the taxman, can take longer to digest, even in good times. Processing those returns became even more complicated amid the coronavirus pandemic, which led to IRS employees staying home. "Something on the return or in taxpayer accounts tripped manual review with no eyes available to process," said Ann E. Kummer, CPA and partner at Kirshon & Co. in Poughkeepsie, New York. Two of her clients are still awaiting refunds. One filed in March and the other in early May.

What's the hold-up?

10'000 Hours

Paper returns must be manually entered into a computer, which makes them labor-intensive. When the IRS sent its workforce home amid the coronavirus pandemic, there were fewer individuals on hand to pick through the documents. Meanwhile, taxpayers can also get caught up in the process of verifying details of their returns with the agency. In that case, ID verification can involve mail correspondence  wherein a filer might submit supporting documents  and talking with a human operator at the IRS, said Kathy Morgan, an enrolled agent with Puzzled By Taxes in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Even before coronavirus became a problem, returns that would set off fraud flags would take longer to process. Indeed, last year a new fraud filter caught up about 1.1 million tax returns from Jan. 1 through Sept. 26, according to a report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an IRS watchdog. These taxpayers claimed the earned income tax credit or the additional tax credit, or were missing information from Form W-2 , the document employers provide, which has details on salary paid and taxes withheld for the prior year. About a quarter of these were held for 40 days or longer, according to the agency. Under normal circumstances, it takes up to three weeks to process a return that's been e-filed and deliver a tax refund, according to the IRS.

A slow return to normal

The Internal Revenue Service's offices in Washington, D.C. Adam Jeffery | CNBC
The president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association equated an officer's use of the N-word to Mayor Ron Nirenberg using the word "goddamn."

On Friday, the Express-News examined several cases in which officers fired for serious misconduct were returned to the force by third-party arbitrators.

One of the officers, Tim Garcia, had been fired after he was heard on a body camera in 2018 repeatedly calling a handcuffed prisoner the N-word. An arbitrator reduced Garcias punishment to a 10-month suspension and he is now back on patrol.

On ExpressNews.com: Arbitrators excuse allegations of racism in police

Mike Helle, president of the police union, told the newspaper that the attempted firing was a "case in point" of Chief William McManus trying to "rule as if hes a monarch."

Garcia said, "'Look, I shouldnt have said it, it was a lapse in my moment,'" Helle said. "And if anybody knows a lapse in a moment when they lose their composure, our mayor (Ron Nirenberg) said the exact same offensivelike cuss word when he used the word G-D (goddamn) when he was on TV in front of the entire crowd and audience, right?"

In early June, Nirenberg told a crowd in San Antonio protesting police violence to hold him accountable, saying, "I'm the mayor of this goddamn city and we're going to make change together."

The Express-News asked Helle whether he really believes the word used by Nirenberg is as offensive as the N-word,

"For me, yes, it is," Helle said. "Why dont you go ask one of our pastors or anybody that thats their faith?"

Click here to read the full Express-News investigation into arbitrators excusing allegations of racism in police.
Ville-sur-Lumes (France) (AFP) - French forensics experts began a grim search Monday for the remains of a nine-year-old girl who disappeared 17 years ago, after a serial killer recently confessed to her murder.

Experts sealed off a former home of killer Michel Fourniret, dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes", in northern France -- more than 200 kilometres from the town east of Paris where Estelle Mouzin disappeared on her way home from school in January 2003.

Fourniret was jailed for life in May 2008 for the murder of seven girls and young women, and charged over Mouzin's disappearance last November after his ex-wife contradicted his alibi.

Detectives first considered Fourniret a suspect in the girl's disappearance in 2006, after they found a photo of Mouzin on his computer.

A white van resembling the one he drove had been spotted in the area where she vanished, in the town of Guermantes, east of Paris.

But no DNA evidence was ever found to link him to the case, and Fourniret maintained for years that he was at home in southern Belgium, near the French border, on the day Mouzin disappeared.

Then in November last year, Fourniret's former wife Monique Olivier told investigators that a phone call he claimed to have made from his home the day the girl vanished, was actually made by her at his request.

- Focus on the cellar -

And in March, Fourniret confessed Mouzin's murder to investigating magistrates, without revealing the location of the body.

Ex-wife Olivier is also serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 28 years for her role in some of the abductions and killings.

On Monday, investigators descended on Fourniret's former house in the Ardennes in northeast France.

There were about 50 police officers as well as forensics experts, an archeologist and army engineers, preparing for excavation of the property that has never been searched until now.

Investigators are particularly interested in the cellar, covered with concrete by Fourniret, and came armed with radar equipment to scan the ground before they start any digging.

Story continues

They were joined at the scene by advocates for the missing girl's family.

Police also cordoned off another former home of Fourniret, in nearby Chateau de Sautou, where the remains of a 12-year-old girl and a 22-year-old woman were found in 2004.

Fourniret was found guilty of seven killings committed between 1987 and 2001. He confessed to the kidnapping, rape and murder of his victims and his life sentence carries no possibility of parole.

He was also convicted of attacks on three girls who managed to escape.

eva-edy-zl-chd-lv-jpa/mlr/sjw/ach
Police are appealing for a bearded man to come forward after a female bartender was allegedly attacked during a pub rampage.

Officers were called to the venue on Hay Street, Haymarket, in Sydney's CBD, following reports of an assault at about 9.30pm on Saturday.

Police were told a man had attacked a female bartender and another male staff member after being refused further service.

NSW police have released pictures of a man (pictured) who they believe can help with their inquiries into an alleged assault on two staff members at a Sydney pub on Saturday night

It's alleged a man had been drinking at the pub for most of the afternoon and evening before he was cut off.

After being told he was too intoxicated for more service it's alleged the man allegedly became aggressive and punched the 35-year-old woman in the back of the head.

She was punched with such force it's alleged she fell backwards and hit her head on a sink.

It is further alleged a 31-year-old male staff member attempted to intervene before he was assaulted with a flurry of punches as the man stood on the woman's leg.

It's at this point the unknown man then left the venue.

NSW Ambulance paramedics treated the woman for swelling and bruising to her head and an ankle injury.

She was taken to St Vincents Hospital for treatment and has since been discharged.

Police have released CCTV vision of a man who might be able to assist with the investigation.

The man is described as being of Caucasian appearance, aged in his late 40s, 180cm-185cm tall, of a solid build, with greying hair and a beard.

He was seen wearing a blue jumper, dark pants and black shoes, and walking with the aid of a walking stick.
MALTA  As the federal government is pushing a $25 billion plan to build up the domestic computer chip industry to withstand an increasingly powerful Asian supply chain, GlobalFoundries is preparing for a potential future expansion at its Fab 8 manufacturing campus in Malta that could help the cause.

GlobalFoundries announced Monday that it was exercising an option to purchase 66 acres along the main road entrance into Fab 8 from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, known as NYSERDA. The purchase price would be set by an independent appraiser. The town values a large 260-acre site owned by NYSERDA that is already developed at $14 million. The proposed parcel GlobalFoundries would acquire is much smaller and undeveloped.

Amid growing consensus in our nation's capital for investment in semiconductor manufacturing, it's more important than ever that we are ready to fast track our growth plans at GlobalFoundries' most advanced manufacturing facility in the U.S.," said Ron Sampson, general manager of GlobalFoundries' U.S. operations. With this agreement option, we now have additional flexibility to expand our footprint and position Fab 8 for future growth in Saratoga County and New York state, while strengthening U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing."

GlobalFoundries has been pushing to get "Trusted Foundry" status from the federal government for Fab 8 that would allow it to make sensitive chips for military clients. The company's Fab 9 factory in Vermont and its Fab 10 factory in Dutchess County already have Trusted Foundry status.

GlobalFoundries has its headquarters in Silicon Valley although the operation is ultimately owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, a U.S. government ally.

GlobalFoundries has been working hard to achieve Trusted Foundry status for Fab 8. That would bring in more revenue for the factory, which employs 3,000 people and has cost $13 billion to build and expand over the past decade.

GlobalFoundries' Fab 9 and Fab 10 used to be owned by IBM, which had previously received Trusted Foundry status for the two facilities. GlobalFoundries is a so-called foundry factory that makes chips for other companies. The arrangement is beneficial since the client doesn't need to operate an expensive factory, while GlobalFoundries can benefit from dozens of clients keeping its factories busy around the clock.

Last week, GlobalFoundries announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with a Minnesota company called SkyWater Technology, which operates a Trusted Foundry, to help the company make specialty chips for the Department of Defense.

GlobalFoundries' support of defense programs is long and distinguished and were excited to begin a new chapter of cooperation to enhance our support for this important community, said Brad Ferguson, chief technology officer at SkyWater Technology. This MOU shows proactive industry cooperation that can complement developing government policy focused on restoring American leadership for semiconductor manufacturing.

Last month, GlobalFoundries also announced it is implementing new export security controls at Fab 8 that will bring the facility into compliance with U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations standards and the Export Administration Regulations, which the Defense Department will appreciate as it seeks Trusted Foundry status.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22) Allowing some patients to go on home quarantine, as well as a relaxed lockdown behavior, may have contributed to the rise in COVID-19 cases in Cebu City, a special adviser to the COVID-19 task force said Monday.

The only reason I can think is the behavior of people, and then we discovered the home quarantine policy wherein they were sent home. That could have contributed to the increase, Dr. Ted Herbosa told CNN Philippines The Source.

Citing findings from a recent trip to Cebu, Herbosa said some patients were released from facilities and allowed to go on home quarantine. But he did not elaborate on the severity of their infection.

Aside from the mentioned factors, Herbosa noted population density as well as increased testing capacity may have also played a part in the spike in coronavirus infections.

So for us, I think the most important is to reverse that, and to reverse that, the city was put back on ECQ (enhanced community quarantine), Herbosa added.

Cebu City earlier appealed to the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force for a more relaxed quarantine classification, arguing that the city has a low percentage in COVID-related deaths and a high recovery rate.

But Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano, in a separate interview with CNN Philippines, justified the decision, saying theres enough basis to place the city under stricter quarantine measures.

RELATED: Ano insists 'alarming' spike in Cebu City COVID-19 cases requires ECQ

National government data showed that as of Monday, the city has logged 3,546 cases of the infectious disease.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said there will be a one-week evaluation of the COVID-19 ground-level response in the area, with the national task force set to designate a deputy implementer for Region 7 and the entire Visayas.

Meanwhile, stranded individuals have also been banned from entering the cities of Cebu and Talisay in Cebu province, in efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.
In a scathing counter-attack on Manmohan Singh, BJP president J P Nadda said on Monday that he as prime minister "abjectly surrendered" hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China and presided over 600 incursions made by the neighbouring country between 2010 and 2013.

In a series of tweets after Singh took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his handling of the ongoing stand-off with China, Nadda said the senior Congress leader and his party should stop "insulting" our forces repeatedly and questioning their valour.

They did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes, the BJP president said, asking the Congress to understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.

"Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese! During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our forces.

"One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!" Nadda tweeted.

In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, the former prime minister said Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

Hitting back, Nadda said Singh's statement is mere "wordplay". Sadly, the conduct and actions of top leaders of the Congress party will not make any Indian believe such statements, he added.

Remember, this is the same Congress that always questions and demoralises our armed forces, he said. "India fully trusts and supports PM Narendra Modi. 130 crore Indians have seen his administrative experience in some of the most testing times, particularly how he has always put the well-being of the nation over and above everything else," he said.

Nadda said Singh rightly calls for unity. He then added that these strong words on paper fall flat when people see exactly who is vitiating the atmosphere of unity. 'Hope Dr. Singh is able to prevail on his own party at least," he said.
On this episode of Extra Spicy, co-host Soleil Ho talks to writer and television personality Padma Lakshmi about her new show, "Taste the Nation." Lakshmi, an award-winning author who previously hosted Top Chef, talks about using "Taste the Nation" to broaden the definition of American food  as an antidote to xenophobia and ahistorical notions of who Americans are.

Ho and co-host Justin Phillips consider the current moment, when the Black Lives Matter movement has grown more prominent, and how this show seems to have come at just the right time.

Listen to the episode by clicking the on the player above or on the badge for your favorite app below, and scroll down to read a transcript of Ho's full conversation with Lakshmi.

Here is a full transcript of Soleil Ho's interview with Padma Lakshmi, which has been lightly edited for clarity. The interview was conducted on June 3, 2020.

Soleil Ho: So, thank you so much for talking with me for this. And I'm really happy that you're eating through this, too, because this feels really authentic to me. But I've been watching your show, and I really have been so happy to be able to do that. It's been a pleasure, really.



Padma Lakshmi: Thank you. What episode did you watch?



Soleil Ho: I've watched you see the first four, and I skipped around a bit. And I watched the one where you went to Phoenix and talked to Indigenous folks. I watched the poke one in Hawaii. Yeah, like six or seven of the episodes so far.

So I wanted to start off by just having you say, just for the sake of having this on tape, your name and however you'd like to state your occupation and your pronouns, if that's all right.



Padma Lakshmi: Sure. My name is Padma Lakshmi. I'm a writer and the host and producer of two shows on TV. One is Top Chef on Bravo and the other is Taste the Nation, premiering on June 19th on Hulu. And I can be called ... she/her/your highness/madam, the one who shall not shut up? I dont know, whatever. (laughs).



Soleil Ho: Thanks. I was really fascinated when I saw your trailer drop actually a few weeks ago. Samin Nosrat is one of my friends, and I really loved Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Of course, there's been so many really interesting food travel shows that have popped up in recent years. And so I wanted to ask you, why did you decide to do this, make another food travel show in, I guess what might be like a really interesting moment where everyone gets compared to, like Anthony Bourdain, for instance. What was behind that?

Padma Lakshmi: Well, I'm not really worried about that because once you see the show, I think you understand that while it is about food and there is a lot of traveling, I'm not Tony  nor do I want to be. And this is a decidedly female perspective and it's also subjective. In the case of Samin, she's really looking at the principles of food and taking you on this wonderful journey to do that  to all different places around the world. In the case of Tony, he is chronicling the most interesting things in a certain destination, right? So it's more canvassing  what's cool is about where he's going.

In my case, it's really a show about people and using the food that they eat in order to get to know their life experience in their daily lives better. So for me, it's really not like a travel show  although, of course, we travel. It's more of an anthropological show about people. It also looks at it through the lens of immigration. And it's a very subjective editorial look  I will concede  because I'm looking at it through the lens of my own immigration and family story. I also am not a neutral tour guide. I have a political agenda, and it is a very political show. Its why it's called Taste the Nation.



Soleil Ho: Right. So the question of the show, which you set out to answer and you articulated in the opening too: What is American food? How did you settle on that question? Why America?



Padma Lakshmi: Because I wanted to know. I was hearing so much rhetoric out of Washington that vilified immigrants. And I was hearing a lot of people pontificate about who was a real American, and who wasnt. And who needed to go home if they didn't like it, and who could stay.

And also, what is American food? What is new American cuisine? What does that mean? And who contributes to that?



You know, we know who publishes the cookbooks  the glossy, big coffee table books and stuff  but who actually gets to contribute to that ever-evolving pantheon that is American cuisine? I guess I just wanted to give ownership of that to more people who lived in America. You know?



I wanted to actually show rather than tell who we are as Americans in great specificity. You know, it's not like: Wheres the most amount of Mexican Americans in America? They're in L.A.  thats where were going.

No. We're going to the border because that's what the issues are right now. We're going to El Paso. We're looking at the Twin Cities and Juarez and El Paso  and how they're so interconnected, and how they didn't even cross the border. In some cases, the border crossed them. And so, you know, the communities we picked in the places we picked were picked for very specific reasons. And it wasn't just a generalized survey of immigrants in this country.



So each episode has a community located in a city, but it also has a dish that is very emblematic of a theme that we are trying to explore with each community. That is different for different communities because the specifics of their lives are different.

Soleil Ho: Right. Like, it makes sense that instead of having an episode all about Black soul food, for instance, you went to the Gullah Geechee people and talked to them about their very specific way, their flavors  all of that.



Padma Lakshmi: Yeah, because in this country  especially with social media and stuff  we have a very short memory and we have a short attention span. So we just tend to paint everything with a really big brush and decide that African American food is soul food, or it's Southern food. But what does that mean?



Does an African American person eat the same things in Louisiana as he does in South Carolina? And did they always? And why? So I wanted to look at that. I wanted it to be really specific because, of course, African Americans did not come here through immigration, per say, but they came here through forced migration. And they do have an ancestry just as rich and deep as a Chinese American or a German American  we just don't know about it. So let's give credit where it's due.



Let's look at how red rice is really similar to jollof rice. Let's understand that those enslaved people weren't just rounded up and brought here. They had specialized knowledge that the colonialists needed to be able to eke out a living on this very unforgiving land that only the West African enslaved people were able to till and subdue into a rice plantation.



Or, you know, we feature red rice, so we're looking at food, right? We're not looking at tobacco or cotton. But those kinds of culturally historical ties to food have always interested me. Because you can tell a lot about a community by the way they eat and what they eat.



Soleil Ho: You know, there's this really common chestnut that I think you've certainly heard. I've heard it a lot in food media and food writing  especially after 2016  about how food brings us together, and breaking bread will bring us all together and solve many of our interpersonal problems and societal problems. And as you demonstrate on the show, food can also be one way for oppression to manifest, right? Through food shortages, the lack of food sovereignty. Can you help unpack? How did you want to be engaged with that sort of sentiment with the show and with your work?

Hulu

Padma Lakshmi: I think a big thing for me is also that Americans love Mexican food and Thai food and Chinese food. But sometimes as a culture, we don't take the time to get to know the people behind that food. The hand that is actually making your takeout, and riding a bicycle and bringing it to your house  all at a very affordable price. I wanted to look at those people because it seems to me there was a measure of hypocrisy  especially in Washington  about how you could see Ted Cruz loves tacos because he always goes to a Mexican place. But, you know, his voting record is not that great on immigration.

And I also became convinced that if I could introduce these people, these everyday citizens or immigrants  you know, green carders ... whatever you want to call it  to the larger American public and show them that their lives are just as complicated and interesting as anyone else's lives, that that would somehow demystify immigrant communities and would make it possible to dismantle the fact that immigrants are a threat to our economy. They're not. They're the opposite.



Soleil Ho: Is that reason why so many of your episodes end in meals? Conversations are really casual that you take with people that you've talked to in the course of the episode.



Padma Lakshmi: I think that was a function of, I don't like to waste food, also. We always try to eat the food that we make. I at least give it to my crew. But it's nice to see people just sitting down and eating. Not at a fancy restaurant, but as they would at home in a backyard or whatever.

That's one reason. But another reason is because it's a way to break the ice with a lot of these guests, because, you know, I'm coming there and I'm trying to embed myself in their communities and in their lives through the course of three or four days or whatever.



And sometimes that's easier to do over the making of a dish or eating of it. You know, it's a thing that we do as a society, anyway. Whenever we want to celebrate anything, what do we do? We eat together. Whenever there's a funeral, what do we do? We bring food. When there's a wedding, what's the thing that takes the longest? Planning the wedding menu  like the wedding dinner menu.

So all of our rituals as a culture have been always done over food dates: Dinner dates, business lunches, power breakfasts, whatever. So it became a natural function of what we needed to do in the show because we were highlighting the food, and also I wanted to get to know the people who made the food.

Soleil Ho: One thing I really appreciate about the show, too, is that it's not just pleasurable. It's not just gorgeous shots of ingredients and grilling, which there are many of. But I think this is the food series that probably has the most concentration camp footage I've ever seen.

Hulu

Padma Lakshmi: What? Really?!

Soleil Ho: Yeah. And I don't say that as a joke, really, right?

Padma Lakshmi: Right, right. No, I get it.

Soleil Ho: I mean, I say this with admiration. That this is something that isn't, you know, glided over or cast in some sort of like nostalgic luster or whatever  or minimized. It really looks you in the face. And it's a show that I could imagine being on MSNBC, as well as Hulu.



Can you talk a little bit about that framing and that method of using stock footage in ways that feel very distinctly political?

Padma Lakshmi: It is a political show. It's obviously a political show. It wasn't an effort on my part when I created the show to brand it in that way. The thing that I was focused most on as a filmmaker is telling the story truthfully and as thoroughly as I could with the resources that I had. It wasn't like, I want this to be in your face.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

But I did want to look the truth in the eye. I wanted to say that sometimes the story behind the apple you were biting into is not so pleasant. And you can still enjoy that apple, but you should know the history of what's in your hand, and what is sustaining you physically and giving you nourishment. That's important. Information to me is important. It grounds our everyday habits.

If you know where things come from and the reasons behind stuff, it hopefully gives your actions more depth and meaning.



Soleil Ho: Can you talk a little bit about how  and expand that political idea  behind the conception of the show: The people who work on the show, the people you brought on to be on and in front of the camera?



Padma Lakshmi: It really came about as a direct result of my work on immigration issues with the ACLU, which I had been doing since the election. And I wanted to illustrate a few points I wanted to make about American society, using not just the personal detail of my own immigrant experience, which got old pretty quick, but I wanted to illustrate what my point was using other people's stories who did not necessarily always have a microphone like I did. And I wanted to give them the microphone so that I could prove my point.

First, this started out as a book project, and I was going to do another program on immigration in general. And then separately from that, I was going to do a cookbook, because that's really what interested me.

If you look at these Easy Exotic or Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet or even the, you know, Encyclopedia of Spices, they all chronicle food from all different backgrounds and ethnicities. None of them are single-subject books. That's what interested me in my life because that's how I eat. I don't think people eat all one food all the time, regardless of who they are, where they come from. And then my producing partner, David Smith of Part Two Pictures, took a look at the research documents that I prepared for the book proposal, and he said, You know, we have to merge these two ideas because there's so much good stuff and research here. And I had been working on that for like four or five months. And so that's what we did. It was just an idea in my head. And then it became a document and then it was like a project of David's and mine. And it all came together.

In the next decade of my life ... you know, I already have Top Chef and it's great. I'm really proud of that show, and I have my publishing stuff. And so if I was going to take time, serious time, to be away from my child, it had better be worth it. It had better be something meaningful and gratifying  and this certainly was. It's the most gratifying thing I've done professionally to date. I mean, Top Chef is, too. It's just a different part of my brain.

I like David. I met a couple of producers and a couple of production companies, and I liked David. I liked some of the work that he did. He did a series for Oprah called Belief, which was wonderful. And I really love that. I don't think a lot of people saw it for weird reasons. I think Oprah commissioned it and she loved it, but then it didn't fit with the brand of her TV station. I don't know  anyway. But it was brilliant and I really liked it. And so I knew I wanted to work with him.

And we just got along. I found him to be really interesting and really thoughtful and really had a vast amount of general knowledge that I appreciated. He also has a very peripatetic life in that he's lived in China and things. We both have biracial children. His wife is French. So we wanted to work on something together and I really wanted to say my piece.



I think a lot of shows on television, including mine  that is Top Chef  focus on the analysis of food, the expository nature of food, the demonstration of how to make food well. And the breaking down of how you know, how it is and exists in the world. But, you know, so much of food is emotional and cultural. And I don't see a lot of programs looking at that really deeply  like looking at the emotional aspects of food. Yes, there are a lot of travel and food shows, a lot of them that I enjoy, like Samin [Nosrat], for example. I knew Tony for 20 years, and that show is so  so him, that nobody else can do that show. And I'm also not interested in swashbuckling around the world, you know. That's not my M.O.



I'm more interested in having a cup of tea with someone who's gonna read me the poetry of their mom in Iran. You know, it's just a different sensibility. What was the most interesting part of American food is the immigrant component.



I think the most exciting corners of American food today are happening in immigrant communities. And that's why all of the sudden, everyone's in love with turmeric or sumac or miso paste or kimchi. Right. In food, it's not the case that it trickles down. In food, things actually trickle up to the fine dining places because theyll have some commis in the kitchen who will cook a family meal for them and whip out some spice that they need to make the food taste like how they want, and they'll use it in the stew. And suddenly, you know, the head chef will say, Oh, that's delicious. What is that? Well, it's grains of paradise, because you know when I went to Africa to visit my family  Or whatever  I'm making this stuff up, but you know what I'm saying.



And I think that's interesting to me. I want to place food in its rightful context. A bowl of food is great and delicious and looks beautiful and is a sensorial, hedonistic experience, but I want to know where it came from. I want to know the hands that made it.



Soleil Ho: Right on. Since we're running out of time, my last question for you: This show, as you said, has been extremely gratifying to work on. And you clearly are. You get your mind blown in every episode or you talk to people who teach you so much. What about the show and that experience  has it given you hope? To be clear we are talking in a time when there is a lot of really awful shit happening. And I think the show will be debuting and this shit will continue to happen.



Padma Lakshmi: I mean, who knows now? Just when we thought it couldn't get worse, it got really worse.



Soleil Ho: Right. And the people you highlight in this show are uniquely victimized in this time and uniquely are going through a lot of this awfulness right now.



Padma Lakshmi: Yeah, they're hit the hardest, whether it's mom-and-pop restaurants or people who don't have adequate health care or people of color.



Soleil Ho: Yes. And how do you want the show to hit now? You know, in this context that we are living through.



Padma Lakshmi: I want it to hit hard, far and wide. I want as many people to watch it as possible, just to get out of their own skin for half an hour. Just to walk in someone else's shoes and understand what they went through. Because if we don't have empathy for other people who live among us  and have a right to live among us  we will never overcome the very serious existential problems that this country is going through, either in health care, or in race relations, or the environment, or in governmental policy.

All of those things are interconnected. And if we don't understand very quickly that we have to take care of all of us, somewhere, somehow, and very soon, I believe, we will be hit  I hope not  but we will be hit with a third crisis. These things always come in three.



Soleil Ho: I think that's a wonderful note to leave off on. Ominous. But I think very prescient. But, you know, I think your show has given me so much hope  and in a time when that is scarce and slippery  so thank you.



Padma Lakshmi: Thank you. Thanks so much for featuring the show.

Soleil Ho: Such a pleasure to talk.

Padma Lakshmi: Bye, nice to meet you.

Soleil Ho: Likewise.
The Department of Health has today lifted restrictions that were placed on the work of the RQIA because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The RQIA  Northern Irelands health and social care regulator  was directed by the Department in March to reduce the frequency of its statutory inspection activity and cease its non-statutory inspection activity and review programme.

This temporary measure was introduced to minimise the risk of health and social care professionals and other visitors spreading infection within care homes.

Similar restrictions were introduced in GB and the Republic of Ireland.

With community transmission of Covid-19 now significantly reduced, the Department has been able to rescind the March direction.

With the rebuilding of health and social care services under way following the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the RQIA will be able to increase its activity across all areas of work.

It is important that this increased activity remains as safe and as flexible as possible. Returning to pre-pandemic inspection levels will not be immediately possible.

Whilst RQIAs planned inspection programme was temporarily paused, RQIAs inspectors  including registered nurses, social workers and pharmacists  continued to regulate services and respond to risks and concerns.

It reports that since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it conducted around 40 on-site inspections at care homes and domiciliary care services. It has also taken enforcement action against five services during this time.

In recognition of the threat from Coronavirus to older and vulnerable people, the Department of Health also repurposed RQIA from March to provide enhanced support to care homes and domiciliary care services.

In response, the regulator established a Service Support Team. This has involved RQIA inspectors and senior staff providing detailed advice and direction to care homes and domiciliary care services in managing their services during the pandemic period.
Her co-star Madelaine Petsch defended her Riverdale co-stars Cole Sprouse, Lili Reinhart, Vanessa Morgan and KJ Apa after they were accused of sexual misconduct by anonymous Twitter accounts.

And on Monday, Camila Mendes also spoke out against the allegations in support of her co-stars.

The actress, 25, said that it was 'sickening' and 'incredibly destructive to falsely accuse people of sexual assault.'

Support: Camila Mendes also spoke out against the allegations in support of her co-stars on Monday morning

Camila's statement in full said: ''It's incredibly destructive to falsely accuse people of sexual assault. Whatever point this person was trying to make about how quickly people believe what they read, it was not worth damaging the integrity of the me too movement.'

She continued: 'It's sickening and doesn't prove anything except that there are twisted people in this world who have no concern for the consequences of their harmful actions.'

Camila concluded: 'Sending love to my castmates who had to deal with this nonsense. love you guys.'

On Sunday, Cole and Lili denied sexual assault allegations made against them and their Riverdale co-stars Vanessa Morgan and KJ Apa by several anonymous Twitter users on Sunday.

Candid: The actress, 25, said that it was 'sickening' and 'incredibly destructive to falsely accuse people of sexual assault;' pictured July 21, 2019 at Comic-Con in San Diego

Her thoughts: Camila's statement in full said: ''It's incredibly destructive to falsely accuse people of sexual assault. Whatever point this person was trying to make about how quickly people believe what they read, it was not worth damaging the integrity of the me too movement; pictured: Cole Sprouse, Lili Reinhart, Luke Perry, Camilla Mendes, KJ Apa, Madelaine Petsch and Ashleigh Murray in 2016

Cole spoke out about the allegations in a series of Tweets hours soon after the accusations were made, with him and Lili looking into legal action.

The actor, 27, wrote: 'Earlier today myself and three other cast mates were falsely accused of sexual offense by anonymous accounts on twitter. I take these accusations very seriously, and will be working with the right teams to get to the root of it.'

Cole continued: 'False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Furthermore, I would never silence anybody. I encourage that people look into the accusations themselves, as the events detailed were factually untrue.'

His third and final tweet said: 'This seems to be the latest claim in a series of incidents seeking to baselessly cancel cast mates and me.'

Statement: Cole and Lili denied sexual assault allegations made against them and their Riverdale co-stars Vanessa Morgan and KJ Apa by several anonymous Twitter users on Sunday

Allegations: Vanessa KJ were accused on other anonymous Twitter accounts

His statement: Cole took to Twitter Sunday to deny accusations

Lili, who was accused on another anonymous account, quotes his tweet minutes later and added her statement: 'I have always taken sexual assault allegations seriously. But it was proven that this account was specifically to create false stories about me and my cast.

Lili said: 'I can't think of something more twisted than lying about sexual assault. It invalidates the men and women who are brave enough to come forward with the truth. This kind of lie can ruin lives and careers - and I can call it a lie because the person who made the allegations already admitted that the stories were fabricated.'

Speaking out: Cole continued: 'False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Futhermore, I would never silence anybody. I encourage that people look into the accusations themselves, as the events detailed were factually untrue;' KJ, Camila, Cole, Lili and Vanessa pictured on Riverdale

She wrote: 'We are looking into taking legal action. This kind of sick behavior only harms true survivors. This was incredibly triggering for me and scary because I've always supported survivors and believed them.'

Lili, 23, concluded: 'I hope and pray that this does not discourage real survivors from speaking out about their experiences.'

The accusations against Cole came from an anonymous account with the handle @Victori6680029; the user alleged sexual misconduct by Cole at a party in 2013 at New York University.

Her statement: Lili quotes his tweet minutes later and added her statement

Accusations against Lili, Vanessa and KJ arose from other anonymous Twitter accounts, with one of those accounts later tweeting: 'Do you see how easy it is to lie and you guys believe it? Vanessa Morgan and Kj Apa didn't do jacks**t. You will believe anything,' via Us Weekly.

Madelaine Petsch came to the defense of her Riverdale co-stars as well.

The actress, 25, took to her Instagram stories on Sunday to slam the accusers after multiple outlets reported that one of the accounts later tweeted that they lied about accusations regarding Vanessa and KJ.

Come to their defense: Madelaine Petsch came to the defense of her Riverdale co-stars as well

Madelaine, who spoke via her Instagram stories, said: 'Hi everyone, I've been really focusing on my social media platforms on posting about the BLM movement and how to support that and voting and making sure we get that f***head out of office.'

'But today, it has brought to my attention that four of my castmates were falsely accused of sexual assault,' she said.

The star continued: 'And I'm really unsure as to why anyone would think that's OK to do its so f****n nuts and hard to go through. And as someone who has been sexually assaulted, I have no words.'

'This is the reason why I was scared to come forward and talk about my experiences because I was afraid that someone would tell me that I was lying or that it didn't actually happen.'

Speaking out: The actress, 25, took to her Instagram stories on Sunday to slam the accusers after multiple outlets reported that one of the accounts later tweeted that they lied about accusations about Vanessa and KJ

Madelaine added: 'And for someone to go online and falsely accuse somebody of that, only to come forward a couple of hours later and say that they were lying about four different people, is such a serious thing to do.'

The actress, who plays Cheryl Blossom on Riverdale, said: 'Like honestly how dare you? Because this is the reason why victims are afraid to come forward in the first place. This is the reason why people don't believe sexual assault victims and yet you're out here doing this online. I am so taken aback right now, my heart is really hurting for my friends and castmates who went through this today.'

She said: 'And I hope that everyone knows how serious it is to accuse somebody of that and I hope they understand the severity of what that does to people who have actually been through that. It takes away the power from the victims who have gone through this, takes away the voices of people who want to come forward and talk about their experiences.'

Madelaine concluded: 'Because it just validates the whole narrative that people lie about this stuff.'

She also tweeted: 'As someone who has been sexually assaulted, I am deeply disturbed that anyone thinks that it is okay to falsely accuse someone of sexual assault. This is why real assault allegations can sometimes not be taken seriously, you should be ashamed. This is disgusting.'

Her voice: Riverdale co-star Madelaine came to their defense

Vanessa retweeted Madelaine's tweet as well as Cole's; KJ has not tweeted about it yet.

The allegations come after Justin Bieber denied sexual assault allegations made about him over the weekend; the pop star offered evidence and said about the allegations: 'There is no truth to this story.'

Ansel Elgort also denied claims he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl and said they had a 'brief, legal and entirely consensual relationship; when he was 20.

The show: KJ, Cole and Lili pictured with co-star Camila Mendes
Monday, June 22, 2020

Monthly call volumes in the automotive industry increased a staggering 104% in May, according to Australias leading call tracking and analytics company WildJar

SYDNEY, NSW, AUSTRALIA, June 22, 2020 / EINPresswire.com / -- Monthly call volumes in the automotive industry increased a staggering 104% in May, according to Australias leading call tracking and analytics company, WildJar . Based on call volumes on over 600 dealers, WildJar experienced the largest monthly call volume ever recorded across its automotive clients. On a year-on-year comparison, call volumes increased 156%.

In todays age of digital marketing, the car buying journey of customers has evolved. Dealers have come to accept that customers are no longer coming into the showroom to start their purchasing journey. Instead, customers are doing most of their research (and decision-making) online, long before they enter a dealership.

The increase in call volumes reflects this transition with customers and dealers moving to e-commerce based solutions and with the onset of COVID-19, this transition has been fast-tracked with dealers websites and their ability to handle customer calls being more important than ever. says WildJar CEO, James ONeill. The focus should be on enhancing the customers online and call experience, and giving the customer the tools they need to seamlessly make a decision and ultimately purchase a vehicle," continued ONeill.

We have always championed data around the customers buying journey, where consumers do all their research online and then they purchase offline. There is definitely a paradigm shift in the acceptance to purchase online, continued ONeill.

Through its call tracking analytics, WildJar has discovered a large blind spot for dealers when a customer transacts with them on their websites.

For dealers that are already tracking their inbound phone calls, we are seeing a large number of customers abandoning the cart at purchase or deposit point and calling the dealership to complete the purchase over the phone, stated ONeill.

WildJars technology provides the ability for dealers to attribute offline phone calls to the customers online journey and help improve (and further prove) the strength of the e-commerce model, by showing that the offline phone transaction started on the dealers website e-commerce channel.

Similar trends can also be seen in other digital platforms, with automotive classifieds and dealer websites also recording all-time-high audiences in May. These sizeable increases in research and online activity comes at a time when social distancing measures have been eased and many buyers are re-evaluating their transport preferences.

Local search enquiry call volume is also a major contributor to volume increases, with 67% of volume being generated by local search listings and Google My Business.

This confirms and reinforces our data that there is a genuine intent to purchase, with consumers working from home and spending more time online researching, says ONeill.

We are only recording around 2 percent of consumers calling multiple dealerships for sales related enquiry, continues ONeill. Giving each customer a fantastic and memorable first impression over the phone is now more important than ever, as these consumers who are calling you are ready to buy.

About WildJar

WildJar helps businesses become wildly successful by providing cutting edge voice and SMS solutions. Founded in 2016, WildJar has helped more than 4,000 companies drive revenue and connect their customers journey online to their purchasing behaviour offline. Finally, businesses and marketers have complete attribution and analytics to measure call outcomes and ROI. With WildJars Voice Platform, businesses get granular campaign attribution to understand why customers are calling, real-time intelligence about whos calling and analyse whats being said during conversations to improve outcomes.
Nine has expressed regret over a live interview on the Today show in which a 14 year old schoolgirl was questioned about witnessing a stabbing in Melbourne, earlier this month.

Last week Allison Langdon interviewed 14-year-old Aki Faiva, who witnessed the alleged murder of 15-year-old Solomone Taufeulungaki by a group of boys.

Langdon asked Can you describe to us what was happening before the fight broke out? and Do you have any idea what the fight was about? but the girls struggle was evident even to her.

Are you OK, sweetheart? Its pretty tough, isnt it? she asked.

Last night Media Watch raised questions about the ethics of a raw and live interview with a 14 year old.

Nine News boss Darren Wick told ABC in a letter:
Saudi-led coalition says both sides meeting in Riyadh to push implementation of 2019 deal that ended earlier fighting.

Yemens government and southern separatist forces have agreed to a ceasefire and will begin talks on implementing an earlier peace agreement, according to a Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthi rebels.

The former coalition allies on Monday agreed to a ceasefire in Abyan province  a major hotspot of clashes  and the de-escalation of tensions in other regions.

The self-styled Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi also agreed to hold a meeting on implementing a 2019 Riyadh agreement involving committees from both sides, coalition Spokesman Turki al-Malki said in a statement carried by official Saudi Press Agency.

Tensions between the two former allies in Yemens long-running war have grown since April, when the United Arab Emirates-backed STC unilaterally announced self-rule in areas under its control in Yemen.

The STC fighters were the on-the-ground allies of the UAE, once Saudi Arabias main coalition partner in its military campaign against the Houthis, who control vast swaths of territory in Yemens north.





Friction escalated on Saturday after forces loyal to the STC assumed control of the strategically located island of Socotra.

The STC, which raises the flag of the former communist state in the south and has pushed to again split the war-torn country in two, seized several state buildings in the islands capital, Habidouh, including the governors headquarters.

The internationally recognised government accused the STC of staging a full-fledged coup in Socotra, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The coalition regrets the latest developments in a number of southern provinces and calls on the parties to prioritize Yemens national interest  and to stop bloodletting, the coalitions al-Malki said in Mondays statement.

Elisabeth Kendall, a senior fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford University, described the ceasefire announcement as a very good start to avoid de-escalation after a very active weekend that saw the STC flexing its muscles with the Socotra takeover and by organising rallies elsewhere.

There might be a new dynamic developing. It certainty looks like there are signs that Saudi Arabia is tiring of the war in Yemen, she told Al Jazeera from London.

[The war] hasnt been working for five years. Its very expensive and a virus is spreading so it could be that it is now recognising the STC as a genuine military as well as administrative presence on the ground in the south and is therefore stepping over the head of the Hadi government in order to broker some kind of deal which allows it to step back a little.





The STC turned on Hadi in August last year and took control of Aden, the internationally-recognised governments temporary seat. The fighting stopped when the two groups in November 2019 reached the Riyadh deal with the objective of forming a unity government, but clashes continued in the ensuing months.

Yemens south was an independent state until the 1990 unification with the north.

The countrys latest conflict broke out in late 2014 when the Houthis seized much of the country and removed Hadis government from the capital, Sanaa.

Fighting escalated in March 2015 when the Saudi-UAE-led military alliance launched a fierce air campaign against the rebels in a bid to restore Hadis government.

Since then, the war has killed more than an estimated 100,000 people and displaced millions, pushing the impoverished country to the verge of famine and gutting its infrastructure.
CHENNAI: In the highest-ever one-day spike of persons testing positive for Covid-19, novel coronavirus, Tamil Nadu added 2,532 positive cases on Sunday, taking the total number of confirmed positive patients in the state till date to 59,377. Of the new cases today, Chennai alone added 1,493, even as 53 deaths took the total death toll due to the virus to 757.

The galloping numbers both in the districts and in Chennai is beginning to put pressure on the government to look at indigneous complementary modes of treatment which are efficacious, at least to dispel the mood of dismay among the people at large as the cold statistics mount every day.

This was partly reflected in the State Health Minister, Dr C Vijayabaskar's tweet on Sunday coinciding with the 'World Yoga Day'. He said in his message, "Yoga refreshes the body and the mind. Let's adapt natural immunity boosting measures, during #Covid-19; Practice # Yoga and stay healthy."

In fact, at the 'fever clinics' that have been increased in greater Chennai, visitors are regularly given 'Kabasura Kudineer', the herbal drink as an immunity boost measure, but something more is needed to boost the confidence of the people at large, a source closely tracking the trends says.

CIVIC BODY GETS MORE PROACTIVE

While Chennai as a whole continues to blaze ahead in the upswing in Covid-19 positive cases, one significant zonal variation in the spread of the infection was seen today, as per the figures released by the Chennai Corporation. For example, the Thiru.Vi.Ka. Nagar zone, one of the hot-spots on the top of the list for a month now, today slipped to the sixth position among the 15 zones, reporting 3,440 positive cases.

Royapuram zone continues to rule high with 6,148 cases followed by Tondairpet 4,963 cases, Teynampet-4,785, Kodambakkam-4,329 and Annanagar-4,142.

A Chennai Corporation official said one of the reasons for a significant drop in the new Covid-19 positive cases in Thiru.Vi.Ka.Nagar was that the patients were isolated and quarantined without any emotional stress. A What'sApp group was formed as a communicative interface to reach essential articles to the affected people whenever they needed provisions or medicines, besides a call centre for urgent responses. The civic body plans to extend this patient management model to other zones, he said.

BUZZ ABOUT 2 MINISTERS

Even as there was buzz about the State Law Minister, Mr.C.Ve. Shanmugam falling ill, the minister's office said he has got himself admitted to a private hospital in Chennai for routine medical check-up. He had taken a Covid-19 test which however, turned out to be negative, the source said.

Another Tamil Nadu minister has volunteered home quarantine after his official car driver had tested positive for coronavirus, sources said. An official in the Thasildhar's office in Poonamallee tested positive, forcing the authorities to close the office temporarily and disinfect the whole place.

Among the districts, Chengalpattu continues to be on an upward curve reporting 121 positive coronavirus cases today, followed by Thiruvallur-120, Cuddalore-90, Vellore-87, Tiruvannamalai-76, Madurai-68, Kancheepuram-64, Thanjavur-44, Trichy-36, Ramnad-30, Tiruvarur and Dindigul districts 26 each, Tirunelveli-25 and Villupuram-22.

The number of deaths confirmed by the Health department on Sunday was again at an all-time high of 53 persons losing their lives to coronavirus. Only three of them died due to direct Covid pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome, while 50 others who succumbed in both private and government hospitals suffered from comorbidities.
O IL watchers were keeping a close eye on Gulf Keystone Petroleum today after a lively annual general meeting last Friday, the fallout from which some in the market feel has not been entirely digested.

A recap: Operational news was disappointing with production levels lower than hopped and there is ongoing concern about a missing payment from the government of Kurdistan over oil delivered earlier this year.

GKP is a sometime darling of the stock market, one of those shares favoured by London cabbies who like a punt (thats both a recommendation and a wealth warning).

The stock was steady today at 97p which values the company at 204 million. For context, the shares are down from more than 4000p five years ago, but then oil discovery is a tricky business.

At the AGM, results from which were released late on Friday, investors expressed concern about the pay of the board given recent poor performance. There was a 29% protest vote against both CEO Jon Ferrier and chairman Jaap Huijskes.

Developing, as they say

Elsewhere today, the FTSE 100 was wobbling after the World Health Organisation reported a record daily increase in new coronavirus infections, sparking fears of another round of lockdowns.

Shares fell across Europe. In London, the FTSE 100 was down 14 points at 6278. Glencore was the biggest loser, down 4p at 168p after revealing that the Attorney Generals office in Switzerland has opened an investigation into alleged corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

HSBC was also struggling, down 9p at 382p amid a general feeling of gloom for banks  the assumption being that many of them are losing money hand over fist at the moment.

There was better news for Barclays, boosted by an upbeat note from Jefferies.

It put a bullish 212p a share price tag on the shares, helping them to rise 3p to 118p.

Barclays should benefit from having a more diversified business model than rivals such as Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, which are a pure play on the state of the UK economy.

Jefferies told clients: As recent as early February, a common investor query in a discussion on BARC was: "why doesn't Barclays just shut down its investment bank and keep the high performing UK retail and cards business"? Come this September, might investors ask the opposite question?
Sensex, Nifty Updates: Sensex and Nifty closed on a bullish note on Monday, in line with the trend overseas amid foreign fund inflows. Sensex closed 179 points higher to 34,911 and Nifty ended 66 points higher to 10,311. On Friday, Sensex ended 523 points higher at 34,731 and Nifty ended 152 points higher to 10,244. Meanwhile, companies set to announce their earnings are Dhanlaxmi Bank, GTL, Kirloskar Industries, Info Edge, Aegis Logistics, Apollo Hospitals, Sudarshan Chemicals, Morepen Labs, GE Power, NDTV, Onmobile Global and Skipper among others.

Here's a look at the updates of the market action on BSE and NSE today

3.55 PM: Closing bell

Sensex and Nifty closed on a bullish note on Monday, in line with the trend overseas amid foreign fund inflows. Sensex closed 179 points higher to 34,911 and Nifty ended 66 points higher to 10,311.

3.30 PM: Nifty outlook

Commenting on Nifty's outlook, Ajit Mishra, VP - Research, Religare Broking said,"In the coming week, the developments on geopolitical tension between India and China will remain on participants' radar. Besides, the scheduled expiry of the June month derivatives contract would further add to the volatility.

Markets may continue to trend higher but the intermediate volatility would be tough to handle. On the index front, Nifty may face immediate resistance at 10,350 and a strong hurdle around 10,550. In case of a decline, 9,950-10,050 would be crucial. By and large, almost all the sectors are contributing to the recovery so traders should focus more on stock selection."

3. 18 PM: Biocon share price gains over 2%

Biocon share price touched an intraday high of Rs 391.4, gaining 2.6% on BSE today. Biocon Pharma and DKSH plan to collaborate to commercialize seven generic formulations in South East Asia markets.

2.40 PM: LIC Housing Finance share price falls over 6% post results

LIC Housing Finance share price touched an intraday low of Rs 266.05, falling 6.57% on BSE, after reporting results.

Company reported a 40% decline in its net profit to Rs 421.43 crore for the quarter ended March 2020 as against Rs 693.58 crore in the year-ago period. Company's revenue came at Rs 4,920.2 crore in FY 20 as against Rs 4,657.92 crore YoY.

2. 36 PM: Dalmia Bharat Sugar share price gains over 9% post results

Dalmia Bharat Sugar share price opened with a gain of 8.29% and later touched an intraday high of Rs 124, rising 9.88% on BSE, after reporting results.

Company's profit stood at Rs 61.95 crore in March quarter as compared to Rs 43.3 crore in a year ago period. Company's revenue came in at Rs 550 crore in FY20 as against Rs 568.94 crore in FY19 YoY.

2. 27 PM: ICICI Bank share price rises over 3%

ICICI Bank touched an intraday high of Rs 375.25, rising 3.12% n BSE. The lender has today divested 21,500,000 equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited, representing 1.50% of its equity share capital. Company's shareholding now stands at 51.4%

2. 10 PM: Rupee closes higher

Rupee, the local unit ended at 76.03 per dollar, as against its previous closing of 76.18 per dollar.

2.00 PM: Alembic Pharma share price gains 4%

Alembic Pharma share price touched a new 52 week and all time high of Rs 984 today, rising 4.02% on BSE after the company announced that has received US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) tentative approval for Rivaroxaban Tablets, 10 mg, 15 mg, and 20 mg.

Alembic Pharma share hits all-time high on USFDA nod for Rivaroxaban tablets

1. 43 PM: LT Foods drops over 8%

LT Foods share price touched an intraday low of Rs 39.2, falling 8.73% on BSE. the compaby launched DAAWAT Cuppa Rice that provides tasty and healthy food instantly. The product would be available in India as well as International market. DAAWAT Cuppa Rice, priced at Rs. 70 to the consumer will give a full plate (240-300 grams) of rice meal. In the coming month, this product will be available in stores and on online channels in India. A small quantity would also be exported to Middle East for the Indian diaspora there.

1. 32 PM: Dhanlaxmi Bank share price rises 15% post results

Dhanlaxmi Bank share price gained over 15% to the high of Rs 17.93 on BSE after posting results. The lender reported 90% drop in its net profit on a yearly basis to Rs 2.6 crore as compared to profit of Rs 27.6 crore. Company's net interest margin dropped 1.7%. Its Gross NPA came in at 5.90% versus 7.13% and net NPA at 1.55% Vs 1.62% on a sequential basis.

1. 22 PM: Market update

Sensex was rising 320 points higher to 35,051 and Nifty climbed 105 points higher to 10,350.

1.10 PM: Global cues

Asian markets are trading mixed as investors remained focused on the suspected second wave of covid-19 cases in U.S. and China.

Wall Street closed slightly lower after WHO said that coronavirus has entered a "new and dangerous phase" and as Apple moved to re-close some of its stores.

European markets closed higher on Friday as investors focused on economic data and EU's proposed fiscal stimulus.

12.53 PM: Gold rises Rs 350 per 10 gm

Gold prices in domestic commodity markets rallied above 48K on Monday, tracking bullish cues from international market amid concerns of the global economy recovery due to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Significant rise in coronavirus cases after weeks of lockdown also kept demand for the risk-averse asset high in domestic market.

On Multi Commodity Exchange, gold futures for the August month traded Rs 352 higher at 48,289 per 10 gm, also its day's high as against the earlier close of 47,937. The metal hit an intraday low of 48,000, also its opening price today.

Gold price today: Yellow metal scales 48K mark amid positive global cues

12. 40 PM: Coronavirus tally

India's tally has now reached 4,25,282 including 1,74,387 active cases, 2,37,195 discharges and 13,699 deaths, according to data by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. In the last 24 hours, India has reported a spike of 14,821 new cases. There have been 445 new deaths in the same period.

Coronavirus update: India reports 14,821 new cases, 445 deaths in 24 hours; total tally over 4.25 lakh

12.23 PM: Market outlook by Centrum Strategy

Centrum Strategy in its daily market update said," We continue to maintain our defensive stance with capital preservation as the motto. However, we recommend to being fully invested taking advantage of the global liquidity. We continue to remain overweight in defensive sectors such as IT, FMCG, Pharma & telecom. To play the economic resurgence we recommend to play it through sectors with high operating leverage than financial leverage, as we believe banks/NBFC's will suffer due to extended moratorium. Accordingly, we have further reduced weight in financials & increased weights in cement & autos."

12.05 PM: Oil prices today

Oil price moved on Friday but gave up gains towards the end of the day as fear of second wave of covid-19 rose which could stall the economic recovery. Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, rose 0.19 per cent to USD 42.27 per barrel.

Coronavirus impact: India's May crude oil imports post biggest decline since at least 2005

11. 39 AM: Nifty outlook

On Nifty outlook, Geojit Financial in its report said, "Dips to 10148 may prompt a feeble attempt to clear 10270-10300. If unsuccessful, expect Nifty to slip into the 10148-10014 region, with lower chances of a directional move."

11.20 AM: Rupee rises today

Rupee, the local currency appreciated 5 paise to 76.15 per US dollar on Monday amid gains in the domestic equity market and sustained foreign fund inflows.

Where weak US dollar against major currencies overseas helped the domestic unit, rising crude prices and a fresh spike in coronavirus cases restricted the gains.

The rupee opened strong at 76.16 per dollar and later rose to 76.15 against the US dollar, rising 5 paise over its previous close of 76.20 on Friday.

Rupee rises 5 paise to 76.15 amid weak dollar, gains in equity market and foreign fund inflow

11.00 AM: Top gainers and losers today

Reliance Industries, Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Auto, IndusInd Bank and ICICI Bank were among the top gaines on Sensex pack. On the contrary, TCS, ONGC, M&M and Infosys were among the top laggards.

10. 51 AM: Expert outlook on Nifty

Expressing views on Nifty's outlook, Angel Broking in its note said, "As far as supports are concerned, 10100 followed by 10000 would be seen as immediate support zone. Now, the base seems to have shifted higher from 9700 to 10000 and here a breach of 10000 would again apply brakes on the optimism."

10. 39 AM: Glenmark Pharmaceuticals gains 15%

Shares of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals rose 15% on Monday after the Indian drugmaker said it has launched an antiviral drug Favipiravir for the treatment of mild to moderate covid-19 patients. Drug major Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has become the first Indian company to commercially launch an antiviral drug - Favipiravir with brand name FabiFlu - for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals share price opened 10% higher at Rs 450 against previous close of 409.10 on BSE. Later, due to huge bidding for the share, the upper circuit of the stock was revised to 15%. At 10: 00 am, the midcap stock was stuck in upper circuit of 15% at Rs 470.45 on BSE.

Glenmark Pharma share hits upper circuit of 15% post launch of first Indian Covid-19 drug

10. 28 AM: Reliance Industries share price gains 2.5%

Reliance Industries share price continued to move higher, hitting a fresh record high of Rs 1804.1, rising 2.53% on BSE. The stock of the oil conglomerate has also hit a market cap of $150 billion, becoming 1st Indian company ever do so.

Mukesh Ambani becomes 9th richest person after RIL share hits fresh high

10. 14 AM: Cipla top gainer on NSE

Cipla shares were trading as the top gainer on NSE Nifty, rising over 9% on Monday's opening session after the drug company along with Hetero received an emergency marketing approval for Remdesivir for the treatment of severe Covid-19 patients from the drug controller of India.

Cipla shares opened with a gain of 9.25% today and hit a new 52 week high of Rs 696 toda.

Cipla share price hits 52-week high on DCGI's nod to produce Remdesivir

10.06 AM: Nifty outlook

On Friday, the index has given breakout from its long-term moving average (100-day SMA) and regained 10,200 mark. Its key technical indicators are also positively poised. This could lead the index towards 10,500 and 10,800 levels. On the lower side, its medium-term moving average (50-day EMA) will act as a key reversal point for the index, which is placed at 9,706 mark.

As for the day, support is placed at around 10,090 and then at 10,000 levels, while resistance is observed at 10,330 and then at 10,470 level

9. 55 AM: Global cues

U.S. stock futures, Asian stocks erased losses and held flat on Monday, trying to shake off worries that rising coronavirus cases in the United States. The pandemic is accelerating globally with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday.

Wall Street closed lower yesterday after Apple Inc said on Friday it would temporarily shut 11 U.S. stores as coronavirus cases rise in some states, triggering selling in stocks.

US stock futures, Asian equities try to shake off second wave virus fears

9.34 AM: Stocks to watch today on June 22

Glenmark Pharma, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Cipla, Bajaj Electricals, Cadila and Dhanlaxmi Bank among others are the top stocks to watch out for in Monday's trading session.

Stocks in the news: Glenmark Pharma, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Cipla, Bajaj Electricals, Cadila and Dhanlaxmi Bank

9.20 AM: Opening bell

Sensex and Nifty opened majorly higher on Monday's opening bell, bucking the general weak trend overseas. Sensex was rising 411 points higher to 35,143 and Nifty climbed 122 points higher to 10,366.

9.10 AM: Pre open session

Sensex and Nifty pre-opened majorly higher on Monday's opening bell, bucking the general weak trend overseas. Sensex was rising 160 points higher to 34,892 and Nifty climbed 96 points higher to 10,322.

8.55 AM: Earnings today

Companies set to announce their earnings are Dhanlaxmi Bank, GTL, Kirloskar Industries, Info Edge, Aegis Logistics, Apollo Hospitals, Sudarshan Chemicals, Morepen Labs, GE Power, NDTV, Onmobile Global and Skipper among others.

8.50 : FII/ DII action

On a net basis, FIIs bought Rs 1,237 crore while DIIs sold Rs 880.66 cr ore worth in equities on Friday

8.40 AM: Rupee closing

On the currency front, Rupee, the local currency, ended 6 paise lower at 76.20 per US dollar on Friday as against the last closing of 76.14 per dollar.

8.30 AM: Closing on Friday

On Friday, Sensex ended 523 points higher at 34,731 and Nifty ended 152 points higher to 10,244.
APU GOMES/AFP via Getty

During South Africas transition from apartheid to democracy, I was directly involved in the transformation of the police force to a police service. Today, as the United States is confronted with the need for changes in police culture and behavior, perhaps some of the lessons learned in those tumultuous times may prove useful.

After Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in prison in 1990, the lid was lifted off the centuries-old subjugation of Blacks in South Africa. It is not surprising that the injury and pain spilled over into violence, which threatened to destroy the dream of the New South Africa. The old system of apartheid had broken down, a new system had not yet been born, and the country was trying to navigate the vacuum in between.

I served on the executive committee of Cape Towns Regional Peace Committee. Our job was to mediate, intervene in crises, facilitate talks between government officials and Black communities, and facilitate new policies. I often stood between lines of heavily armed police and large crowds of angry demonstrators, with tear gas and bullets flying. Once, I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet.

My colleagues and I knew that South Africa needed policethe right kind of police. We realized that the language and the reality of policing had to shift. We needed a police servicenot a police force.

In 1992, an extraordinary document, the National Peace Accord, was signed by the African National Congress (ANC), the apartheid government, other political parties, security forces, business, labor, and religious leaders, and the police themselves. It included a Code of Conduct for the police, which every officer in the country had to choose to signor resign. It also required all police officers to wear a nameplate, which, for the first time, held individual officers to account.

The key was political will. The pressure for change pushed from the bottom up and pressed down from the top.

Police officers from New York City and Scotland Yard in the U,K. exchanged information and visits with the police leadership and the African National Congress. The decision was made to adopt the doctrine of Community Policing. It would be difficult. Apartheid-style policing was based on force and aggression, whereas community policing is based on service and cooperation.

Story continues

To reinforce their commitment, the police established a Community Relations Division, which enshrined Liaison Forums, later known as Community Policing Forums. This meant that all station commanders would hold regular structured meetings with the community they policed.

A pilot program in Cape Town tried out a forum in a Black area. In the beginning, the police attempted to control the process, and the community resisted. With persistence on both sides, the police and community found common ground and formed a joint secretariat. Police and community representatives alternately hosted and chaired meetings and trainings that included education on the National Peace Accord, legal, economic and judicial reforms, violence against women and the prevention of family violence. A network of health and social workers, psychologists, and chaplains was on call to respond appropriately.

The police needed to be committed to the safety and security of the entire population, and to make these new ways stick. In 1993, national police headquarters published a strategic plan to ensure the safety of all people in the country through community involvement and the rendering of professional service. They allocated massive resources, re-ordered police structures, and designated the Community Relations Division the new elite, complete with new criteria for promotion that focused on effectiveness within communities. Cape Town police HQ developed a manual with a self-reflective preamble: The SA Police has been responsible for the enforcing discriminatory legislation in the past  a subculture of brutality and bias actually developed.

By the end of the four-year transition period, the police were demilitarized and reconstituted as a police service, under civilian control. To better fit the new reality, a new ministry was established to supervise the policethe Ministry of Safety and Security. This was much more than a semantic shift. It described a whole new way of thinking about policing.

Later, as is so often the case, the gains of one administration are squandered by another. In 2009, during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, the ministry was renamed the Ministry of Police. In 2010, the police responded to caustic criticism of a sharp rise in crime by resuming the previous militarized structure, it seems as a show of strength that is still apparent in policing today. The Community Policing Forums are still in place, though now more dependent on the willingness of individual station commanders. The name police service also still stands, and the lessons of the past, once learned, can be shelved, but never erased. The achievements of 1994 illustrate what political will can do.

If this kind of profound change in policing could happen within a system as brutal as apartheid South Africa, then it can certainly happen within a democratic America.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!

Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Herzing University, an accredited, private nonprofit institution, today announced the launch of an online Master of Science in Nursing  Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (MSN-PMHNP) program. The new PMHNP concentration prepares students to apply for board certification as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner through the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

The standard program, which typically takes about 24 months to complete, is available to registered nurses who hold a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. The program is also offered as a pathway called "RN to MSN-PMHNP" for registered nurses who hold an associate degree. Enrollment is open now in 38 states and students can begin classes as early as Sept. 8.

"The need for more mental healthcare providers has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, severe examples of racism, and an economic recession," said Herzing University President Renee Herzing. "These situations will have lasting effects and continue to put pressure on our healthcare systems. This program addresses this critical workforce need and, by being offered online and including telemedicine, it will serve to fill coverage gaps and access issues across the country during this pandemic and beyond."

According to the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, more than 75% of all U.S. counties have a shortage of mental health workers while 20% of adults experience a mental health condition in any given year. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from April found that nearly half of adults in the country reported their mental health had been negatively affected by the pandemic.

Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners provide care to people with mental health conditions and/or substance use disorders, while promoting mental health awareness and education to help the healthcare industry improve the quality of patient care.

Telemedicine is threaded throughout the program curriculum to ensure that students understand the benefits and functionality of remote care services, as well as the opportunity to improve access to care by using this delivery method.

"The best preparation for an advanced practice role is real, prescriptive learning through everyday experience, and we believe that every experience counts," said Dr. Tricia Wagner, department chair at Herzing University. "Our PMHNP program includes an extensive clinical component that provides students with diverse and flexible training opportunities. Students can tailor their clinicals to fit their professional emphasis and earn clinical hours through unique nursing experiences, including direct patient care in their community, through their employer and through virtual care opportunities."

Coursework for Herzing's MSN-PMHNP program is completed online, excluding the required clinicals. The clinical component includes opportunities working with pediatric, adult and geriatric populations, as well as a 16-week immersion experience to prepare students for their first job as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. Herzing has a team of advisors dedicated to helping students secure their clinical as part of the school's Clinical Placement Pledge.

The master's degree program in nursing at Herzing University-Madison is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (http://www.ccneaccreditation.org). Herzing University is approved to offer programs in an online learning modality through association with its campus in Madison, Wisconsin.

Herzing is a transfer-friendly university with year-round study offering nursing, healthcare, technology, business and public safety degree programs.

About Herzing University

Herzing University is an accredited, private nonprofit institution with nine campuses across seven states and an online division. Founded in Milwaukee in 1965, more than 40,000 students have graduated from the University's career-focused and flexible master's, bachelor's, associate degree and diploma programs. Fields of study span nursing, healthcare, technology, business and public safety. From 2013 through 2020, U.S. News & World Report has continually recognized Herzing University as having some of the best online programs nationally. Herzing University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission; www.hlcommission.org or (800) 621-7440. More information about Herzing University is available at www.herzing.edu.

Contact:

Candice Hudson

312-661-1050

[email protected]

SOURCE Herzing University

Related Links

https://www.herzing.edu


For a better experience on our website and avoid any trouble, we strongly recommand to activate Javascript ( click here ).

Hello and welcome to Journal des Palaces

You are a communication or the PR manager?

Click here

You are an applicant?

Check out our questions and answers here !
After ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin became viral for subduing George Floyd by holding his knee on Floyd's neck, he was charged with second-degree murder. The charges also came after protests for justice on Floyd's death erupted across the whole nation.

But despite if Chauvin will be found guilty, according to attorneys that are experts in a legal doctrine known as "qualified immunity," they shared that it would still be an uphill battle for the family of Floyd to successfully sue for restitution, snopes.com reported.

That is because of qualified immunity, though obscure, it is still a significant legal hurdle especially for civilians who are trying to sue authorities specifically police officers for claims of violations according to the constitution, such as the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure, especially when a police officer kills or injures someone.

American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, D.C.'s legal director, Scott Michelman emphasized that this doctrine encourages police to act with impunity knowing that there will be consequences of nothing.

On June 19, 2020, the Colorado state headed by their governor Jared Polis signed a bill to become a law ending qualified immunity to be used as a defense for police violence.

Read also: Family of Malcolm Harsch Accepts That He Died by Suicide, No Other Conclusion

What is Qualified Immunity?

It is the immunity that allows government officials like police officers to legally protect from financial liability specifically in civil cases. The birth of the immunity is aided by the United States Supreme Court and for them, it represents "judicial policymaking," Vice president of criminal justice for the Cato Institute who is also a libertarian, Clark Neily shared that it is unconstitutional for the judicial branch to make public policy.

Neily also added that people who are elected and standing for reelection are the ones that should make the policy and not those who have lifetime appointments and serving in a government branch that does not have any policy-making power.

He also emphasized that the constitution does not give them that authority.

Amir Ali and Emily Clark, writers for the legal website The Appeal, and also the deputy director MacArthur Justice Center and appellate research specialist at the Center of the Supreme Court and the appellate program shared that the qualified immunity can be traced to 1967, and based on the previous interpretation of qualified immunity it favored the police.

Why are people challenging Qualified Immunity?

Neily shared that qualified immunity has an effect of closing all aspects of redress for citizens who are accusing officers of violating their rights given as stated by the constitution.

Based on research, it is important because it is a rare scenario for the police on duty to be convicted of a crime.

Washington Post maintained database since 2015 has logged a close to a thousand fatal police shootings annually since then, Philip Stinson, criminologist, determined that between 2005 and 2019, only 36 out of 104 state and local law enforcement officers have been arrested for murder or manslaughter because of fatal on-duty shootings.

Neily also shared that the only time a police officer will be prosecuted is when the evidence was caught on video and gets picked up by the media as the prosecutors have a massive conflict of interest with the suspects because they work together, prosecutors depend on officers for bringing them cases aside from testifying on the court.

Related article: 19-Year-Old Dies in Shooting Incident at 'Cop-Free' Zone in Seattle

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 15:54:56|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Photo taken on June 21, 2020 shows the border between Spain and France on a highway seen from La Jonquera, Spain. The State of Alarm which was imposed on Spain on March 14 to halt the spread of the coronavirus expired at midnight between Saturday and Sunday, allowing the country to progress into what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the "new normality." Spaniards are now able to move freely around the country for the first time since March 14. Spain has also reopened its borders to travelers from the European Union and Schengen travel regions, and the first flights from abroad arrived on Sunday morning. (Photo by Ismael Peracaula/Xinhua)
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fluoride Action Network (FAN) in a just-concluded trial (June 8 -17) on the neurotoxic risks posed by water fluoridation, was encouraged by a statement made by Judge Edward Chen after both sides had given their summations. According to FAN director Paul Connett, PhD, "He has not yet made a ruling, but he said it was undeniable that fluoride posed a neurotoxic hazard and that EPA was basing their defense on an overly restrictive standard with respect to what constituted an "unreasonable risk".

The trial in federal court in San Francisco was brought under provisions in the Toxic Substances Control Act. This allows citizens to petition EPA to regulate specific uses of chemicals to prevent "unreasonable risk" of harm to the general population or vulnerable subsets.

The trial, Food & Water Watch, et al. v EPA, was conducted on Zoom. FAN was the original petitioner and a lead plaintiff in the case. Plaintiffs' experts presented their research that revealed fluoride is a neurotoxic hazard to the fetus and the bottle-fed infant in fluoridated communities.

Plaintiff's lawyer Michael Connett in his summation pointed out that with water fluoridation "you have millions of susceptible people being exposed on a daily basis, including 2 million pregnant mothers and over 400,000 exclusively formula-fed babies." He noted that the EPA, at least on this particular issue, "has failed to responsibly carry out its duties to protect this nation from harm."

Judge Edward M. Chen gave the plaintiffs a major boost, declaring that fluoride was undeniably neurotoxic at some level and that the EPA had applied a wrong standard in judging the rigorous science that FAN had presented.

Plaintiff's attorney Connett showed how two Exponent firm scientists hired by EPA had a history of consistently finding, on behalf of industry, there was "insufficient evidence of harm" from many toxic chemicals. In contrast, Connett continued, "We brought before your honor, world class experts that the EPA has consistently depended on for assessments."

The judge asked both parties to discuss a way forward, but that if they could not agree, he was prepared to issue a decision. The implication was that it would behoove EPA to find a way to reduce the risk without being forced to do so by the court.

SOURCE Fluoride Action Network

Related Links

fluorideaction.net


clifflin3 wrote:

I am looking to switch into the tech industry post-MBA, and I intend to work in Canada. I know that McGill has a stronger school brand but the program doesn't seem to rank as good as IESE. I have been told that IESE better prepares you for your career. Thanks everyone in advance.

JaSs Signature Read More
TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music took partial credit for inflating attendance expectations at a less-than-full arena at President Donald Trumps first political rally in months, held in Tulsa

Tulsa: TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music took partial credit for inflating attendance expectations at a less-than-full arena at President Donald Trumps first political rally in months, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday.

Social media users on platforms including the popular video-sharing app have said they completed the free online registration for the rally with no intention of going.

Prior to the event, Trumps campaign manager Brad Parscale said there had been more than one million requests to attend. However, the 19,000-seat BOK Center arena had many empty seats on Saturday evening and Trump and Vice President Mike Pence canceled speeches to an expected overflow area outside.

The Tulsa Fire Department tallied the crowd at about 6,200 people.

Trumps campaign advisers had seen the rally as a way to rejuvenate his base and demonstrate support when opinion polls have shown him trailing his Democratic rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

Oklahoma has reported a surge in new coronavirus cases, and the states department of health had warned those planning on attending the event that they faced an increased risk of catching the virus.

The Trump campaign said entry was on a first-come-first-served basis and no one was issued an actual ticket.

Leftists always fool themselves into thinking theyre being clever. Registering for a rally only means youve RSVPed with a cellphone number, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement. But we thank them for their contact information.

Parscale said in a statement the campaign weeds out bogus phone numbers and did this with tens of thousands at the Tulsa event in calculating possible attendance.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, responded with derision to a Twitter post by Parscale that blamed the media for discouraging attendees and cited bad behavior by demonstrators outside.

Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID, she tweeted on Saturday. KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too, she added.

Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID Shout out to Zoomers. Yall make me so proud.  https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

CNN had reported Tuesday that a TikTok video posted by Mary Jo Laupp, who uses the hashtag #TikTokGrandma, was helping lead the charge. The video now has more than 700,000 likes.

Two K-pop fans who spoke to Reuters in Skype and phone interviews on Sunday said they had each registered for two spots, not using their real names and numbers.

Raq, a 22-year-old student and Democratic voter in Minnesota who only wanted to be identified by her nickname, said a key reason she took part was that the rally was in Tulsa, the site of the countrys bloodiest outbreaks of racist violence against Black Americans some 100 years ago.

I heard it first from just BTS fans and then once I saw that it got to TikTok, I was like, oh yeah, this is going to blow up, she said, referring to a popular South Korean boy-band.

Em, a 17-year-old student in Kansas who only wanted to be identified by her username, said she had first heard about the effort on TikTok. She said many of the original tweets sharing information about the rally had been deleted.

I think it was partially the TikTokers and the K-pop fans but also people are not as interested in Trump as he thinks they are, she said.

Fans of K-pop have rallied around the Black Lives Matter movement on social media in recent weeks, taking over hashtags that opposed the movement and spamming a Dallas police department app that asked for evidence of illegal activity during the protests.

On Saturday, there were some shouting matches and scuffles outside the event between around 30 Black Lives Matter demonstrators and some Trump supporters waiting to enter.

A Reuters reporter said police did temporarily close the access gates after protesters arrived at the rally perimeter, but state troopers helped clear the area and the gates were reopened some three hours before the rally began.

The Biden campaign denied having any role in the social media registration effort. Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him, said a campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.
For the first time in months, Washingtonians on Monday could eat indoors in a restaurant, browse shelves inside retail stores, play on city playgrounds or party with up to 50 friends.

The city has entered its second phase of reopening, joining the rest of the region in relaxing restrictions that have been in place since March to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

On Monday, the District, Maryland and Virginia reported 19 coronavirus-related deaths and 806 new infections, continuing a decline in cases the region has seen since mid-May.

But D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, a Democrat, cautioned on the first day of Phase 2 that this major step toward reopening, which will send many workers back to their jobs and allow residents to mingle at large social gatherings as the summer gets underway, poses risks.

"I will say this, with my nonmedical or epidemiologically trained opinion," she said. "We're adding a lot of activity now."

"The virus is still circulating," she continued, adding that the city has seen a lot more activity in recent weeks, including "unforeseen mass gatherings." "You can encounter the virus any place. So you have to be very careful."

The large protests against police brutality that Bowser alluded to have not at this point been linked to a large number of cases of the virus, health director LaQuandra Nesbitt said on Monday. The riskiest places continue to be nursing homes and other congregate settings, but Nesbitt said she would make a public announcement if contact tracers do find significant spread of the virus occurred at the protests.

A person might not show symptoms for many days after contracting the virus, so health officials do not yet know whether the protests have changed the city's caseload.

The city had set multiple criteria for entering the second phase of reopening. Some it clearly achieved, according to city data, including hospitals staying below 80% capacity for two weeks and fewer than 15% of those tested receiving a positive result for at least one week.

But it was less clear whether the city reached its other goals.

The health department had set a target of contacting 90% of patients who test positive within 24 hours, and 90% of their close contacts within two days. According to the city's data, contact tracers are reaching out to 78% of new patients and 70% of their contacts on average within those time frames.

But Bowser said on Monday that contact tracers had achieved the 90% goals over the previous four days, meaning she felt the city was ready to reopen.

Another metric was a 14-day decrease in "community spread" of the virus, a measure that leaves out cases in nursing homes, the D.C. jail and other settings where health officials believe residents are less likely to spread the virus beyond their walls.

By the city's count, the District reached that 14-day tally on Friday - but community spread then spiked again in data reported on Saturday.

Nevertheless, Bowser said the city had already "clinched" that metric and could move forward with Monday's reopening plan she had announced on Friday.

"We achieved the 14 days, and that's the metric," she said. "It's my decision that it wouldn't be worth it to wait a day after we have announced the start date."

Activities newly allowed during Phase 2 in the District include visiting gyms and swimming pools (although public pools are closed until mid-July), with social distancing requirements; summer camps, with groups limited to up to 10 at a time; and religious services for up to 100 people. Maryland and Virginia, which entered their second phase of reopening before the District, allow similar activities with different rules.

Gregory Campbell, a 52-year-old teacher, said that the gym has been what he has missed most. On Monday, he returned to Vida Fitness, got his temperature checked at the door, and resumed his workout regimen.

Working out at home these past months, he said, he's been "making enough noise to kill the neighbors downstairs."

As he worked out, members of the gym's cleaning staff sprayed machine after machine with disinfectant.

For Stephanie Durham, 24, and David Cuntapay, 25, reopening meant a chance to reunite.

The pair became a long-distance couple thanks to the pandemic. The loosening restrictions helped convince them that it was time to get together again. On Monday, they sat indoors at Tryst, a coffeehouse, to enjoy a date that wasn't over FaceTime.

Many restaurants chose not to resume indoor dining.

Three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, the phone was ringing again and again inside a tiny, 300-square foot sushi restaurant.

"Unfortunately, right now, we're only open for delivery and carryout," Sushi Capitol owner Can Yurdajul said through his disposable blue mask, delivering the bad news to the third consecutive customer in the 20 minutes since he opened for the day.

Before the pandemic, Yurdajul could squeeze 12 people in the dining room, and perhaps eight more shoulder-to-shoulder at the sushi bar.

"Luckily, in our culture, sushi is acceptable as takeout," he said.

Large gatherings, such as concerts, indoor movie screenings, or weddings or funerals with more than 50 attendees, are still prohibited in the District.

The White House, however, has announced that it will host a Fourth of July celebration and will hold the traditional fireworks show over the Mall, which typically draws tens of thousands of spectators.

On Monday, Bowser said that she was concerned about crowds for the fireworks and that she had spoken about it with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. But the District has little say over what happens on the Mall.

"It's a federal event and it will be on federal property," she said.

The mayor's chief of staff, John Falcicchio, said the city would not attempt to block people from walking to the Mall for the holiday.

In the District, where more than 10,000 residents have tested positive for the disease, there were 38 new cases and two deaths on Monday.

Maryland reported 297 cases and eight deaths. The number of patients hospitalized in Maryland with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, continued to decline on Monday, dropping to 602 from 745 the week before.

Virginia added 471 new cases, along with nine deaths. The number of patients hospitalized in Virginia declined to 848 on Monday from 902 the week before.

In general, all three jurisdictions have reported somewhat lower numbers on Mondays, and slightly higher totals later in the week. But the overall trendlines also are far below the levels of April and early May.

- - -

The Washington Post's Erin Cox contributed to this report.
Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, presides over the first plenary meeting of the 19th session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China,on Thursday. Photo: Xinhua

China's lawmakers on Saturday approved the decision to join the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at a legislative session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, running from Thursday to Saturday.

The ATT is a multilateral treaty which attempts to regulate the trade of conventional weapons and crack down on illegal arms transfers. The treaty stipulates that arms cannot be sold to those who might facilitate terrorist attacks, gender-based violence, or violent and organized crimes.

China's decision to join the treaty demonstrates its commitments to multilateralism and embodies its stance as a responsible major power.

China's participation can help better maintain safer standard of the global arms trade and international arms control. It is beneficial for every country across the world to have certain rules and regulations in the arms trade. Legal and normal arms trade can enhance national defense capabilities, boost regional and world peace and security. Suppressing illegal arms transfer will mitigate risks of weapons from falling into the hands of rampant terrorists and criminals.

China sets an example to countries that haven't signed the treaty. The trade of weapons should be regulated and China's move to join the ATT displays its efforts to make contributions to world peace.

On one hand, the Trump administration announced in April 2019 it would withdraw from the ATT signed by the US under the tenure of Barack Obama in 2013. On the other, the Trump administration is increasingly set on trying to bring Beijing into the nuclear arms negotiations between Washington and Moscow. What are its considerations?

When it comes to international organizations or international treaties, the primary concern of the US is whether they benefit or constrain US interests. The US disregards the well-being of people all around the world, which is in sharp contrast to China. This explains why the US has pulled itself out of a string of international organizations and treaties such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, and so on.

The US wants to include China into the US-Russian nuclear disarmament talks. This is not because the US hopes to make greater peace with China. In fact, it aims to monitor and limit China's nuclear weapons' development by demanding China to be more transparent in its nuclear programs. It also wants to make sure that development of China's nuclear arms will be always far less than that of the US.

The decision of China to join the ATT is out of benign intention to safeguard the world's peace and stability. Unlike China, the US hasn't acted in line with what a responsible big power is supposed to do. Major power competition, geopolitics and hegemony are top priorities of the US.

Pulling the US out of the ATT means the country is likely to act unscrupulously when it comes to arms deals. Weapons of mass destruction may fall into the hands of terrorists or criminal groups. This will bring greater threats to regional and world peace and harm the development and ultimately survival of people across the globe.
The Prince of Wales has spoken of the debt of gratitude Britain owes the Windrush generation. (Matt Dunham/PA)

The Prince of Wales has spoken of the debt of gratitude Britain owes the Windrush generation.

In a video message marking Windrush Day, Charles said: Today offers an opportunity to express the debt of gratitude we owe to that first Windrush generation for accepting the invitation to come to Britain and, above all, to recognise the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren, have made to so many aspects of our public life, to our culture and to every sector of our economy.

The day marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bearing around 500 people from Jamaica.

Read More

He added: Now I hesitate to single out any area of this activity but, as coronavirus lockdown begins to ease, I did just want to say a particular word about our National Health Service, of which people of African and Caribbean descent have been an indispensable part since its very beginning.

He paid tribute to the doctors, nurses and others working on the front line.

He said: At the same time, I know that the black community has been hit particularly hard by this pernicious virus.

To those who have lost their loved ones in such heartbreaking circumstances, when it has been impossible for them to comfort their relatives in hospital, I can only convey my most profound sympathy; and to everyone on the front line who has been put under such intense pressure over the last three months and risen heroically to the unprecedented challenge, I want to say on behalf of all of us how inordinately proud we are of them and the way they carry out their onerous duties.

Charles described Britains diversity as its greatest strength.

Today, as we honour the legacy of the Windrush generation, and the invaluable contribution of black people in Britain, I dearly hope that we can continue to listen to each others stories and to learn from one another, he said.

The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.
Both Ms Mikakos and Professor Sutton have called on residents in the named local government areas to reduce their movements in the coming weeks to "see if that makes a difference". Areas affected

According to population data, the combined population of Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin local government areas is over 1.1 million people. At the last census, Victoria's population was near 6.3 million - meaning roughly about one in six Victorians are living in areas named as hotspots for infection. The suburbs with a high number of cases

Loading So far, the state government has mainly released COVID-19 data based on local government areas, although it some times provides suburb-specific case data for notable outbreaks in its daily press conferences. For example, we know there are sizeable outbreaks in Keilor Downs in Brimbank and Coburg in Moreland. Some mayors, such as Cardinia shire mayor Jeff Springfield, have criticised this approach saying the public needs suburb specific information. Ms Mikakos said on Monday that the government has an "action plan" to ramp up testing in specific suburbs.

Testing Starting Monday, widespread testing will be conducted at Keilor Downs Secondary College, the epicentre of a major cluster in Melbourne's west, and Albanvale Primary School which has reported positive cases in recent days. "Students will be tested regardless of whether they have symptoms," Ms Mikakos said. An additional pop-up clinic has opened in Keilor Downs and the the Deer Park drive-through testing site is now also open on weekends. A new pop-up testing clinic will be established in Dandenong and "roving testing squads" in mobile testing vans will be set up in Cardinia and Brimbank, as well as a pop-up clinic in Sunshine, Ms Mikakos said.

A team of 50 health officials will begin doorknocking in the hotspot areas starting with Brimbank and Cardinia municipalities on Monday. Loading "They will be clearly identifiable as public health officials who will be able to provide the community in those hotspot locations with more information and advice about symptoms, about testing locations and about the financial support that is available to people if they are identifying as a close contact and need to be quarantined," Ms Mikakos said. Work and school

Ms Mikakos said there was no plans at this stage to prevent anyone from travelling to and from hotspot areas for school or work, but said the matters were under "active consideration" in the coming weeks.

"So those individuals who live in the hotspot locations, they can continue to go to work if they need to go to work in person," she said. "Similarly, they can continue to take their children to school." Outgoing federal Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said on Radio National on Monday morning that people should also reconsider non-essential group gatherings in those six areas. "We're not saying people from those areas shouldn't go to work," he said. "It's more about coming in for gatherings and things like that".

Holidays According to the Victorian Chief Health Officer, Victorians who live in the designated hotspot areas are still able at this stage to travel within the state or to regional areas for holidays. Professor Sutton gave cautious permission - even though the national recommendations advise against it. Loading "People can go to the regions," he said. "[But] we are very clear on the fact that people who are unwell shouldn't be anywhere other than going to a testing site, staying home until they've gotten those results". "But yes, people can travel - they should really consider about how they mix in those spaces, they should follow all the advice we have around keeping that 1.5 metre distance, not going into crowded spaces and certainly not going out when unwell".

For those wanting to visit the hotspot areas, the messaging is slightly more forceful. Professor Sutton said people should consider the nature of any travel plans for these areas. Loading "Obviously some people have made commitments, they will have made payments, they might just be going to a location with their family and not meeting other family members, other strangers or other groups of people gathering together in accommodation. That is a different story," he said. "But if there are plans to meet with significant numbers of other people, that is really worthy of reconsideration because we don't want seeding into areas outside of the current areas."

Professor Sutton's comments put him at odds with Dr Murphy, who spoke more forcefully on the recommendations for travel in and out of hotspots on Monday. "What we don't want is people to come from those areas to other parts of Victoria or interstate - so school holidays are coming up - so if you live in one of those areas where there's transmission we don't want you to fly to visit your family in Sydney or to go to country Victoria and potentially spread the virus," he said. "Similarly, if you're coming from interstate and you have family in one of those areas, we would prefer people to not visit and potentially bring that virus back," he said. "The biggest risk is interstate travel and regional areas where there is absolutely no virus at the moment".

This morning NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian urged residents in her state to reconsider visiting Melbourne. Loading Police enforcement Victoria Police announced over the weekend it would ramp up patrols of coronavirus hotspots and more strictly enforce restrictions that come into force today, including a smaller number of people allowed in family homes and a cap on numbers allowed to enter businesses. Ms Mikakos said on Monday there would be "additional door-to-door engagement with people who are close contacts to make sure people understand their obligations", with those not complying liable to be stung with a $1600 fine.

Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton and Professor Sutton on Sunday morning said there were plans for doorknocking by police and other agencies in affected areas, while Commissioner Patton asked the public to "dob in" coronavirus breaches to police. Ms Mikakos said she hoped people would adhere to guidelines and there would be no need for neighbours to call police on one another. Shopping centres

There has been no indication from the Victorian Government that shopping centres in the affected hotspots will be closed down, although the Health Minister has urged residents to cut back on how often they go to the shops. "You do not need to be going to the shops everyday," Ms Mikakos said.

Masks

Professor Brett Sutton said on Monday that Australia's top medical officials agreed in their Sunday meeting that there "is a place for face masks where there is community transmission where physical distancing can't occur". Professor Sutton said he would like to "work up really clear advice about the circumstances to wear masks and how to do it and which masks to wear" before he speaks further on the issue and that a mask strategy was underway. Public Transport At this stage there is no change to public transport services or timetables in the affected areas. The public are still urged to not take public transport if they feel unwell and to maintain social distancing.
A COUNTY Limerick face mask manufacturer is producing four million masks a week and has seen its workforce rise from 48 in January to 140 at present.

Irema Ireland in Kilmallock is continuing to ramp up production to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.

It has increased production capacity to a 24/7 operation with further recruitment currently underway due to demand for its product. Job numbers at the facility will rise to 160 within weeks.

The company is jointly owned by John Rice from Killarney and Tipperary woman, Geraldine Ryan.

Its face masks carry the brand name Facemate, and the floor area at the plant has had to be increased to cater for new machines installed in recent weeks.

At the start of the year our medical grade face masks were mainly for the HSE and clients in Europe. In January we were turning out 1.3 million masks a week and now we are doing four million and this figure is growing all the time, Kieran O'Brien, the companys marketing manager told the Irish Examiner.

Mr OBrien said most of the workforce are drawn from County Limerick and north Cork.

In operation in Kilmallock since 1985, Irema has plenty of experience of global health scares having been to the forefront of providing increased global mask supply during the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009 among others.

The Covid-19 coronavirus is surpassing both of these in terms of global demand.

We have been receiving a number of enquiries from the general public into purchasing masks but Irema Ireland is not a retailer and is therefore unfortunately not in a position to provide masks to the general public, Mr OBrien explained.

These are very challenging times for the entire economy and it is good that a rural-based manufacturing company like ours can give good employment in Kilmallock and its rural hinterland. Our workforce is a mix of male and female and we have taken on a number of college graduates who are out of work at present.

We had five manufacturing machines and four new ones have been added in recent weeks to help us cope with demand.
In light of the recent protests across the country, many individuals around Connecticut are demanding that statues of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus be taken down. Columbus, who sailed to the Americas in 1492, "enslaved many native inhabitants of the West Indies and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality," according to a History.com article.

Connecticut cities and towns have already begun to take action against the statues, and in some cases, have had the statues removed permanently.

Scroll through to see the status of various Columbus statues in Connecticut. This article will be updated as more news is available regarding the statues.
(Bloomberg) -- Wirecard shares tumbled as much as 50% in early trading, extending last weeks plunge, after the company said the missing 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) from its balance sheet probably doesnt exist and withdrew its latest set of financial results.

While the number of analysts still covering the stock is dwindling, Bank of America cautioned that the shares will remain volatile and will be influenced by newsflow from stakeholders, noting that Wirecard could be ejected from Germanys blue-chip DAX Index.

The company is unlikely to be a takeover target for a publicly listed buyer given the lack of visibility on its financials, Citi said. The crisis of confidence in the shares means that Wirecard may need to change its name and hire well-respected industry figures, they added.

Heres a summary of what analysts are saying:

Bank of America, Adithya Metuku

(Underperform rated, PT EU14)

Unlikely that clarity on Wirecards underlying business will arise for a notable period of time.Shares to be volatile depending on news flow from various stakeholders such as lenders and shareholders; short covering, possible DAX exclusion will be closely watched.Risk of lenders calling in financing will remain an overhang even if they initially grant a reprieve.

Citi, Robert Lamb

(Neutral rated, no PT)

The KPMG/E&Y audits and todays announcement provide such uncertainty over the companys financials that there is no way to quantify the true nature of the business with conviction.If the company is able to navigate through the current crisis it will be hard to restore confidence in Wirecard itself.Company may need to change its name or hire well-respected industry figures.Unlikely that a listed buyer will emerge in the near term given the questions over financials.Worldline could benefit modestly from one less competitor when chasing outsourcing deals with banks.Wirecard is least preferred stock in Citis coverage.

Bryan Garnier, David Vignon

Story continues

(Sell rated, fair value under review)

The missing EU1.9b raises doubts about the veracity of Wirecards accounts in previous years.Wirecards situation is unlikely to benefit Adyen or Wordline/Ingenico.

Story Link: Heres What Analysts Are Saying as Wirecard Scandal Deepens

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Before long, Canada will return to record lows in unemployment and immigration will again be key to supporting the country's economic health.

The case for and against immigration after coronavirus

The case for and against immigration after coronavirus Before long, Canada will return to record lows in unemployment and immigration will again be key to supporting the country's economic health.

The case for and against immigration after coronavirus Before long, Canada will return to record lows in unemployment and immigration will again be key to supporting the country's economic health.

The case for and against immigration after coronavirus Before long, Canada will return to record lows in unemployment and immigration will again be key to supporting the country's economic health. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

A

In late February and early March of this year, Canadas immigration minister Marco Mendicino made several public announcements in which he declared the country will need to continue to increase its immigration levels to support its economic prosperity.

Little did anyone know at the time of Mendicinos remarks what devastation the coronavirus would cause in Canada and around the world.

Back then, COVID-19 was an afterthought for many of us but the pandemic has since impacted every single Canadian in one form or another.

Canadas economy has been battered due to the country making the right decision to put public safety above all.

Canada is a well-governed and wealthy country, so its economy will eventually recover.

However, you cannot recover human life which is why we are doing everything we can to protect each and every individual in this country.

Once the pandemic is behind us, the public focus will shift to how we can get the Canadian economy back on its feet, and immigration will likely be a key topic of discussion.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

COVID-19 doesnt change Canadas demographics

Despite the economic impact of the coronavirus, Canada still has a rapidly aging population and low birth rate.

Canada has one of the worlds oldest populations and one of the worlds lowest birth rates. Our birth rate is so low that it is not enough to maintain the size of the population.

Promoting a higher birth rate has been tried across the western world including in Quebec but has not proven to be very effective since families nowadays simply prefer to have fewer children.

The combination of an aging population and low birth rate will make it more difficult for Canada to grow its economy and support social spending at a time when social costs will rise.

For example, it will become more expensive to deliver health care to Canadas seniors. Seniors also spend less which means they do not drive as much economic activity as younger people.

Many Canadians will be leaving the work force in the coming years. In fact, all of Canadas 9 million baby boomers will reach retirement age by 2030.

With fewer workers, Canada will have fewer people to produce goods and services, drive economic activity by consuming goods and services, and fewer tax payers.

Here is where immigrants will pay such a pivotal role post-coronavirus.

How to grow Canadas economy after the pandemic

Adding more workers to the labour force and using workers more productively are the two ways that Canada can grow its economy.

Canada needs to tap into under-utilized talent sources such as women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, seniors, and disengaged workers including youth. This is both an economic and moral imperative, however it still will not be enough to fully compensate for all of the 9 million baby boomers who will soon reach retirement age.

Hence, immigration will play a major role in driving Canadas labour force growth in the years and decades to come.

By November 1st, minister Mendicino will need to announce Canadas immigration levels plan. Canada is currently targeting at least 341,000 immigrants per year.

Arguments can be made for, and against, maintaining this level.

The case against immigration

One can legitimately argue it is best to scale back immigration until the economy recovers. We need to get Canadians back to work and we do not want to welcome immigrants at a time when it will be more difficult for them to find employment.

Moreover, the Canadian public may not be as supportive of welcoming high levels of immigration during a period of high unemployment. Public attitudes on immigration have not been researched since the start of the pandemic but with the economic well-being of Canadians currently under threat, Canadas immigration policies may face increased scrutiny.

The case for immigration

Conversely, one can legitimately argue that getting Canadians back to work and welcoming immigrants is not mutually exclusive, and can in fact be complementary.

Maintaining high levels of immigration will support economic activity since immigrants will arrive with savings and will need to spend money on the likes of housing, transportation, telecommunications, clothing, leisure, and other things that support Canadian jobs.

Immigrants will also create jobs as entrepreneurs.

Its also important to remember that the primary concern among those who are apprehensive about immigration tends to be that newcomers threaten the social and cultural fabric of western societies. This concern, which has nothing to do with the current pandemic, often prevails above economic concerns.

In other words, we may be mistaken by the assumption that the weaker state of the economy will have a major impact on public sentiment. Those who are sold on the benefits of immigration may remain in their corner, while the skeptics are entrenched in their corner.

Canadas economy was just firing on all cylinders

We should not forget that Canadas economy was firing on all cylinders just a few months ago, prior to the pandemic.

Canadas unemployment rate had reached record lows.

This tells us that once this public health crisis has been addressed (i.e., a vaccine has been developed), Canadas economic recovery will accelerate, and many workers will be back to earning an honest living.

Before long, Canada will return to record lows in unemployment and immigration will again be key to its economic health.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved
Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh, has paid a working visit to traditional leaders of Tinga in the Savannah Region.

Mr. Asomah-cheremeh is in the area to launch the Community Mining Scheme.

And as tradition demands, he paid a courtesy call on the traditional leaders on Monday, June 22, 2020, to inform them about his mission in the town.

He was accompanied by officials from the Lands Ministry and Minerals Commission.

Briefing his hosts about his mission in the town, the Minister revealed that he and his entourage were in town to conduct governments business, noting that We have been sent specifically by Nana Akufo-Addo. We are here for and on behalf of Government.

Touching on the community mining program, he says it was the Akufo-Addos Government intention to ensure that mining activities are conducted in accordance with the law.

The mineral resources in the area were for the people of Ghana entrusted in the President.

And this is what Government has brought up the Community Mining so that the chiefs and people of this Community can take proper care of the minerals, according to him.

He says the Community Mining Scheme seeks to ensure mining activities are done in accordance with the law and to provide jobs for residence.

He stated that revenues generated from mining activities are used for the development of the country, including Tinga, hence the need to protect the nations mineral resources at all times.

The Minister reiterated that the Community Mining Scheme was a 2016 manifesto promise of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Receiving the Minister and his entourage was the Kpan Kpansire Wura, Adama Abutu.

---Daily Guide
UNODC Partners with Eastern Africa Police Chiefs to Support Regional Counter-Terrorism Centre of Excellence

 UNODC



Nairobi (Kenya), 22 June 2020 The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will be supporting the Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO) Regional Counter-Terrorism Centre of Excellence (CTCoE) through a comprehensive new project funded by Germany.

The regional project seeks to fully operationalise the Centre by strengthening its research and analysis capacity and output, and by supporting it to provide bilateral and regional capacity building to EAPCCO Member States.

Terrorism continues to pose a major threat to peace, security and development in Eastern Africa while undermining human rights of people across the region. Al-Qaida affiliate, Harakat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahidin (Al-Shabaab), the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) in Somalia, Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) and Ansar Al Suuna in Mozambique, threaten Member States and people across the region and beyond any single country.

In response to these threats and needs identified by Member States in Eastern Africa, the EAPCCO Council of Police Chiefs in 2018 established the CTCoE with a mandate to ensure timely sharing of knowledge and information, coordinated planning and capacity building, and recommending best practices to Member States in countering terrorism and violent extremism in Eastern Africa.

UNODC has since been supporting the CTCoE in formulating its business plan, developing and commencing with a comprehensive regional training needs assessment for its Member States, and providing legal and technical advice on the operationalisation of the CTCoE.

The pronouncement by the Chiefs of Police creating the EAPCCO Counter Terrorism Centre of Excellence came as no surprise, said Sospether Munyi, Director of the CTCoE. The number of attacks in the Eastern Africa region by groups associating themselves with al-Qaeda and ISIL were on the rise and the threat levels were equally worrying.

According to Director Munyi, the Centre would act as a think tank on counter-terrorism issues and would help to fight terrorism through timely sharing of actionable information, coordinated planning, capacity building and conduct research on topical issues to help inform policy regarding terrorism and violent extremism: In this regard, Germany and the UNODC Regional Office for Eastern Africa, is providing much needed support since 2019 to help fully operationalize the Centre.

The project will be implemented with three primary objectives: First, to assist the CTCoE to become a credible knowledge hub on violent extremism and terrorism in Eastern Africa through research initiatives, publications and a dedicated website to publish its material. Secondly, to enhance the knowledge and skills of individual police officers seconded to the CTCoE through mentoring and leaning opportunities. Finally, the project will support the CTCoE in providing advice and delivering capacity building activities to its Member States on countering violent extremism and terrorism in Eastern Africa.

According to Johan Kruger, Head of Transnational Organized Crime, Illicit Trafficking and Terrorism Programmes at the UNODC Regional Office for Eastern Africa, UNODCs support to the CTCoE is based on a longstanding partnership and cooperation with EAPCCO in countering transnational organised crime and terrorism in Eastern Africa: Regional entities have a critical role to play in preventing and countering terrorism. As such, UNODC commends EAPPCO for this commitment to jointly counter terrorism in the region. We gladly support this regional initiative not only because it is founded on strong regional ownership, but also as the project is designed around actual needs identified by Member States.

Further information

UNODC Eastern Africa

UNODC Terrorism Prevention
Britain's Business Secretary Alok Sharma arrives in Downing Street. Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP via Getty Images

The UK government wants to up the scrutiny of foreign takeovers of businesses that are directly involved in the COVID-19 response via changes to the Enterprise Act 2002, which will be presented to parliament on Monday (22 June).

This comes amid concerns regarding China buying high-tech companies in the country.

The proposal is to ensure these takeovers do not threaten the UKs ability to combat a public health emergency such as coronavirus the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said in a statement.

The statement noted that some businesses are more susceptible to takeovers, either from outwardly hostile approaches, or financially distressed companies being sold to malicious parties.

The government wants to protect companies that, for instance, are working on vaccine research or manufacturing personal protective equipment.

The plan also applies to three sectors of the economy that the government believes are central to national security: artificial intelligence, cryptographic authentication technology and advanced materials

Secretary of State for Business, Alok Sharma said: To better protect the countrys resilience to COVID-19 we are taking steps now to mitigate against public health emergencies.

These powers will send an important signal to those seeking to take advantage of those struggling as a result of the pandemic that the UK government is prepared to act where necessary to protect our national security.

READ MORE: Huawei expected to get approval for UK R&D centre

Currently, the business secretary can intervene only if the targeted business has a UK turnover of more than 1m ($1.23m). This figure was cut down from 70m in 2018.

The concern about China comes in part from the purchase of Imagination Technologies, a Hertfordshire-based semi-conductor company by Canyon Bridge Partners, in 2017.

BBC reported that 99% of the funds for the deal came from China Reform, which is backed by the Chinese government.

"This is just part of an incremental process where technology is being moved out of the UK, and out of the West, and towards China," the report quoted Tom Tugendhat MP, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, as saying.
Just over a year after the final report from a national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls was released, a Hamilton organization is revisiting the calls for justice that came out of it.

The Sisters in Spirit Committee of Hamilton and Legal Aid Ontarios Aboriginal Justice Strategy have partnered to launch 21 days of calls for justice starting on June 21.

We, as Indigenous women, have been screaming for these calls for justice, said Beverly Jacobs, who was recently appointed as the dean of the University of Windsor faculty of law, in a live YouTube video Sunday. Theyve been in existence for a really long time.

Sisters in Spirit, which strives to educate the public on injustices against Indigenous women, will release a new set of calls for justice from the 231 outlined in the MMIWG report on its Facebook page daily.

The campaign comes after Crown-Indigenous relations minister Carolyn Bennett announced the government would not be able to deliver a plan to address violence against Indigenous women, girls and LGBTQ people as promised in June due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its just an excuse, in my opinion, said Jacobs, who lives at Six Nations of the Grand River. The call for a national action plan isnt a new one.

A spokesperson for the organization said they hope the campaign gets the governments attention.

This cannot be on the back-burner, said Sheri Gilmour, an Indigenous trauma informed worker at the Ontario Native Womens Association, who sits on the committee. We all understand there's so much chaos going on in the world right now  the pandemic and the riots  but they've had over a year now.

Gilmour said they also hope the campaign encourages all Canadians to listen, learn and take action.

People can implement (the calls) in their everyday life. People can educate other people, she said. We all have responsibility in recognizing it and erasing the stigma.

The campaign was intentionally launched on National Indigenous Peoples Day.

It's an important day for us, being Indigenous Day, said Gilmour, who is Anishinaabe from Manitoulin Island.

June 21, which we now know as National Indigenous Peoples Day, was first recognized in 1996  the same year the last residential school in Canada was closed.

That's what Indigenous Day represents for us, Gilmour said. Being recognized.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 17:09 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b5dc6 1 National island-for-sale,Malamber,West-Sulawesi Free

Two residents of Malamber Island, West Sulawesi, have allegedly sold the island to an East Kalimantan regent for Rp 2 billion (US$140,800).

Malamber Island is a sparsely populated turtle conservation center and is part of the Balabalakang island cluster in Mamuju regency, West Sulawesi.

Balabalakang district head Juara said the East Kalimantan regent had given down payment of Rp 200 million to a person named Rajab, one of the two residents who reportedly sold the island.

I just learned the information from the [Mamuju] regent. I was surprised because they had not notified district officials of the sale, Juara told kompas.com recently, adding that Mamuju Regent Habsi Wahid had reprimanded him for the oversight.

Mamuju Police criminal investigation unit head Adj. Comr. Syamsuriansyah said he had requested information from local officials and the National Land Agency (BPN) office in Mamuju to clarify the rights to and ownership of Malamber Island.

However, Syamsuriansyah said, local officials and the BPN had not been able to provide a statement on the first call. They had promised to visit the Mamuju Police headquarters at a later time to provide the information.

If, later, we find a criminal element, we will decide whether the case meets the requirements to be upgraded to a higher level [of investigation], he said.

The police have also requested information from the two residents who allegedly sold the island. They have said that the transaction was with North Penajam Paser Regent Abdul Gafur Masud.

We have the down payment receipt of Rp 200 million, the nominal value of Rp 2 billion, and the transaction was carried out in Balikpapan, Syamsuriansyah said, adding that it remained unclear whether the transaction was for the whole island or part of it.

Regent Gafur dismissed the issue. He acknowledged that he had visited the island recently but said his visit was to monitor its condition in his capacity as the chairman of the Indonesian Archipelago and Coastal Government Association (Aspeksindo).

I dont know much about the issue, but I was indeed recently in West Sulawesi. I used my own [boat] to go to the islands of Sabakatang, Salisingan, Kepongonan and then Malamber, where I went diving as well, he said.

The regent noted that East Kalimantan and West Sulawesi had had a history of territorial disputes. Maybe the officials in West Sulawesi are worried because I am the regent of East Kalimantan, said Gafur.

Muhammad Ridwan Alimuddin, a maritime researcher at Hasanuddin University in Makassar, South Sulawesi, said that Malamber Island had been home to 12 families, but some had moved out because of a dispute, leaving only four families.

Ridwan, who had recently researched the island cluster, said that Malamber was a promising investment site and had the potential to be developed into a tourist area because the island was close to the countrys future capital.

But the island has been designated a turtle conservation center by the governor, he said.

National Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono was not available to comment when contacted by The Jakarta Post on Monday. (syk)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Yangon, Myanmar  Mon, June 22, 2020 07:20 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608ad49 2 SE Asia Myanmar,Rakhine-state,internet-blackout,Rohingya,Rohingya-people,Rohingya-Muslims Free

The internet shutdown in Myanmar's conflict-ridden northwest, described by rights groups as the world's longest, entered a second year Sunday with locals and campaigners appealing for an end to the blackout as coronavirus fears grip the region.

The Myanmar military has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since January 2019 against the Arakan Army (AA), an insurgent group fighting for more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The government shut down mobile data in several townships across Rakhine state and neighboring Chin state on June 21 last year, causing panic among residents desperate for information about the unrest.

Human Rights Watch had called on Friday for an immediate end to "the world's longest government-enforced internet shutdown".

"It's critical for civilians to get the information needed to stay safe" during a global pandemic, said HRW's Linda Lakhdhir.

The country has so far recorded 287 coronavirus cases including six deaths, but experts fear the low numbers are due to a lack of testing.

A government official said earlier this month the internet shutdown would continue until at least August 1 in eight townships.

Telecom companies said the government ordered the blackout to prevent "illegal activities".

The conflict has displaced tens of thousands of civilians and seen hundreds injured and scores killed, with both the military and the AA trading allegations of abuses.

Few in Myanmar have personal computers, with the majority relying on mobile phones to access the internet for communications and information -- making those under the blackout especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Rights groups have also condemned the blocking of several local media websites and are urging telecom firms to push back against the government's orders.

Rakhine state is also home to the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that faced a brutal crackdown by the military in 2017.

Some 750,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in violence that has led to charges of genocide against Myanmar at the UN's top court.

The 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Rakhine live in what Amnesty International has branded "apartheid conditions", with little freedom of movement.

"We want to know more information regarding COVID-19, what's happening to the displaced people in Sittwe [Rakhine's capital] and what's happening in Bangladesh," Abdullah, a Rohingya resident from Mrauk U township, told AFP by phone.

They now struggle to contact relatives, send them money or even check the weather forecast, he added.

Schoolteacher Aung Win in Buthidaung township said he was unable to access lessons from the education department before the new academic year begins in July.

"We just want the internet back as soon as possible," he said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) New Delhi, India  Mon, June 22, 2020 07:50 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608c07b 2 Health India,International-Day-of-Yoga,yoga,health,celebration Free

India marked International Yoga Day with low-key events Sunday as the nation battles coronavirus, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the crisis had made the ancient practice even more relevant.

The annual event -- proposed by Modi and adopted by the United Nations in 2014 -- is observed mostly in India, but also worldwide on the Northern Hemisphere's longest day.

As the virus crisis forced practitioners to celebrate the occasion indoors, or with small outdoor sessions, Modi -- an avid yogi himself -- called on people to draw strength from the practice's physical and mental benefits.

"Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the world is realizing the need of yoga now more than ever," Modi said in Hindi in a video speech shared on social media Sunday.

"COVID-19 virus attacks our respiratory system. Pranayam [breathing exercises] helps the most in making our respiratory systems strong."

Since taking office in 2014, the Indian leader has spearheaded an initiative to reclaim the practice as a historic part of Indian culture.

Indian scholars believe yoga dates back 5,000 years, based on archaeological evidence of poses found inscribed on stones, and references to Yogic teachings in the ancient Hindu scriptures of the Vedas.

The event came as the South Asia nation of 1.3 billion people reported a record single-day spike of 15,413 new coronavirus infections on Sunday.

It took the nationwide total to over 410,000 cases, including more than 13,250 deaths.
iStock/ChiccoDodiFCBy: IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News

(NEW YORK) -- A New York police officer who was previously charged with misconduct was suspended without pay and is under investigation for an incident where he was filmed using a chokehold on a suspect over the weekend, the NYPD said.



A pedestrian posted video online of the encounter in Rockaway Beach Queens Sunday where a number of officers are seen on top of a Black man with one officer putting his arm around the man's neck. The officer who held the suspect's neck was identified as David Afanador, according to police sources.



One pedestrian who was watching the arrest is heard shouting at the cops, "Stop chocking him bro," before the officer took his arm off the man's neck, according to the video.



The unnamed suspect, who police say was causing a disturbance on the beach and threw something from a trash bin at the officers, appeared to be unconscious in the video. He later woke up and suffered bruises, his attorney told WABC-TV.



Hours after the video was posted on social media, the NYPD announced Afanador's suspension and an internal affairs investigation. They also released body camera footage of the entire incident.



Earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that banned chokeholds throughout the state.



A spokeswoman for the Queens District Attorney's Office told ABC News it will not be prosecuting the suspect in the video and will investigate the incident.



"There must be zero tolerance for police misconduct," the spokeswoman said in a statement.



Afanador was suspended from the force in 2014 while he was under criminal investigation for allegedly pistol-whipping a teenage suspect during an arrest. He returned to the force two years later after a judge acquitted him and his partner for the charges.



Shea told NY1 Monday that investigators are still gathering all of the details about the incident, but based on what they saw, immediate action was needed.



Ultimately the hand around the neck is the hand around the neck, he told NY1.



The Police Benevolent Association declined to comment about Afanador's suspension and investigation.



New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio commended the commissioner and internal affairs for acting swiftly and being transparent with the public.



"The public needs to see that when something is done wrong, there are consequences and they are swift, and that's what happened here," he said during a Monday news conference.



ABC News' Christina Carrega and Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Sahaya Novinston Lobo By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: The Chennai police are leaving no stones unturned to make sure that the intense lockdown turns literally intense. Many people who sneaked out for a casual drive on empty streets felt the heat after their vehicles were seized. Finding no other means to return home, some had to walk all the way back through the same roads through which they had freely steered a while ago.

ALSO READ| COVID-19: Lack of space blamed for poor enforcement of social distancing in Chennai

On Sunday alone, a whopping 3,577 cases were registered in the city while the cumulative figure for the last three days is 10,604. The government has set aside the two Sundays (June 21 and 28) for total shutdown except milk supply and medical services.

City traffic police seized 948 vehicles on Sunday till 4pm. The figure was likely to increase as the police "expected" more people to sneak out in the evening. Ever since intense lockdown came into effect, the sleuths have seized 10,665 vehicles.

The data by the police also revealed that the need for wearing a mask and adhering to social distance is yet to be felt by many people. On Sunday, 1,395 cases were registered in this regard while the total figure for last three days stood at 3,517. In Tondiarpet, Royapuram and Vyasarpadi police have booked a minimum of 1,500 cases in the past two days for violation of norms.

ALSO READ| Chennai's auto anna to the rescue of stray animals

City police commissioner AK Viswanathan says...

In the last two days there has been some incidents when some media persons and government staff had heated arguments with police when they were stopped for entering the city without valid pass. We request them to understand that this is for the greater good
Food delivery firm Deliveroo is one of Checkout.com's high-volume customers. (David Cliff/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Checkout.com said on Monday that it had raised an additional $150m (121m) in funding, almost tripling the valuation of the London-based payments startup to $5.5bn.

The startup, which processes payments for behemoths like Adidas, Virgin Active, Deliveroo, and EasyGroup, said that the investment will bring the cash on its balance sheet to over $300m.

The round of funding was led by New York technology-focused hedge fund Coatue. Existing investors Insight Partners, DST Global, Blossom Capital, and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund also participated.

Despite being eight years old, this is only the second time the company has sought investment from outside backers. Checkout.com previously raised a record-breaking $230m in April 2019, when it was valued at $2bn.

READ MORE: Payments startup Checkout.com to triple size of London base

Unlike most fintech firms, Checkout.com is profitable, and has experienced blockbuster revenue growth every year since it was founded by CEO Guillaume Pousaz in 2012  two factors that allows it to command its huge valuation.

The company said on Monday that it had added fintech startups Revolut, Robinhood, and Klarna to its list of clients in the past 12 months, and that online transaction numbers have surged by 250% in the same period.

Checkout.coms European business made a profit of $2.4m in 2018 on sales of nearly $75m  a near 60% increase on the firms 2017 revenue in the region.

While the company does not disclose figures for its business outside Europe, Checkout.com says its revenue growth elsewhere is similar.

Checkout.com is often mentioned in the same breath as Stripe, the $35bn San Francisco-based payments firm that was founded by two Irish brothers.

While Stripe markets itself as the solution for web developers and startups, Checkout.com has instead built an offering for much larger customers with huge trading volumes.

But Checkout.com has closer competitors, such as Adyen (ADYEN.AS), an Amsterdam-based firm valued at almost $40bn.

Story continues

READ MORE: Wirecard falls another 40% as it says missing 1.9bn doesn't exist

Both firms proclaim to offer one-stop-shop payments systems that allow major merchants to accept debit and credit card payments using the same set-up in any country.

CEO and founder Guillaume Pousaz said that he was thrilled to receive investment from Coatue.

As meaningful investors in late-stage tech companies such as Instacart, DoorDash, Bytedance and Chime they bring a wealth of experience in building world-class businesses driven by operational excellence, he said.

The company said it will use some of the funding to develop innovative products, such as a planned advanced payouts solution.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan has asked service chiefs to sit up to avoid being shown the way out. Speaking with reporters after me...





Senate President Ahmad Lawan has asked service chiefs to sit up to avoid being shown the way out.





Speaking with reporters after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, Lawan lamented over the high level of insecurity the country.





He said the national assembly has been pushing for more resources for the security agencies, asking them to improve their service to the nation.





The country is facing very deep and serious security challenges and I have come to discuss with Mr. President what we discussed previously that we should do whatever it takes to improve the security situation in the country, he said.





And we believe that the senate and indeed the National Assembly is positively disposed to receiving even supplementary budget purposely to address the fundamental needs of the security agencies of our country. So that we are able to empower them, enable them to fight the Boko Haram in the north-east, banditry and other security challenges across the country.





Secondly, in the senate, we believe we need to provide more resources for recruitment by the security yet agencies army, the navy, air force, police, immigration, the paramilitary generally. We need to have more manpower or personnel and this is not something you get on platter of gold. Whoever wants to make an omelette will break an egg.





Section 14 subsection 2b of the constitution of the Federal Republic Nigeria is very categorical and crystal clear, that the purpose of government shall be to provide for security and welfare of the people. Therefore, we must, we have no luxury of any option other than to address the security challenges more than any other thing.





I think we must tell ourselves the truth, that the security situation in the country especially in the northern part of the country, requires that we give much more resources to the security agencies. And those who are heading these agencies especially the service chiefs, must sit up, in fact we must have milestones and timelines on how we are going to deal with this, we cant just go on without any time frame for dealing with these issues.





If after we provide some support and someone is found short of expectations, he should be shown the way out if he refuses to go. Because the lives of Nigerians are so precious and therefore must be more important than any other considerations or sentiments. I believe that today, the most essential thing in government is to address the security challenges.





APC CRISIS MUST NOR DEGENERATE FURTHER





Lawan said he also discussed the crisis in the All Progressive Congress (APC) with Buhari.





He said the president would reach out to the aggrieved individuals so that the issues tearing the ruling party would be resolved.





I also had the opportunity to talk to my president and my leader about the challenges in the APC. I believe that we have to deal with these challenges, this is the ruling party of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, with the president, with the control of the national assembly, with more governors than any other political party, the situation should not, must not be allowed to degenerate further than it has, he said.





And I believe that we must go into the constitution of our party and see how we are to address this but we must not allow this to continue as it is today. Because, the stability of APC is the stability of Nigeria, this is the party that is running the affairs of this country. So, I believe that we have to sort this out and that will make our work in national assembly even better and easier when we have a stable party.





Because, the party is supposed to be part of the apparatus of running government. We are supposed to run or operate or implement or execute the manifesto of the party. And therefore the party is so key, so central, so essential to ensuring that government whether on the executive or legislative side continues to face those issues in the manifesto and of course the manifesto will be to make Nigeria better.





So, I had the opportunity to discuss that with the president who is the leader of the party in Nigeria and by the grace of God, in the next few days we will see certain actions which will be taken and we are praying that all our leaders in the party across the country will make every possible effort to get the party reconciled.
Susanna Reid and Judge Rinder are pairing up to join Celebrity Gogglebox - with Sadie Frost and her sons also joining the show.

A new series of the celeb version of the reality show - which sees people in their homes watching TV and commenting on it - is currently airing on Channel 4, and has added some last-minute new recruits.

Of Susanna and Judge Rinder - real name Robert - a source told The Sun: 'Gogglebox doesn't just find real-life TV couples, like Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, but likes to find interesting pairings.

New recruits: Susanna Reid and Judge Rinder are pairing up to join Celebrity Gogglebox

'They also liked the mischief of splitting up one of telly's best- known presenting duos, and putting Susanna with someone she is guaranteed to have a rapport with.'

Susanna and Rob are old friends, with the latter saying: 'I am very grateful to Celebrity Gogglebox for ensuring Piers Morgan will only be the second most important man in my dear friend Susanna's TV life from now on.'

Meanwhile Sadie will appear with sons Rafferty, 23, and Rudy, 17 - whom she shares with ex Jude Law.

'I absolutely love Gogglebox and couldn't be more thrilled to be on the show, especially with Raff and Rudy,' she commented to The Mirror. 'It's definitely safe to say we have very different TV tastes but we're looking forward to seeing what comes our way.'

Additions: Sadie Frost will also appear with her sons, Rafferty and Rudy

Out with dad: Rafferty, 23, and Rudy, 17 are pictured with Jude Law in 2016

Ex: Sadie and Jude were an item in the 1990s [pictured in 1997]

The show left fans in hysterics on Friday night, as Ruth Langsford and Denise Van Outen enjoyed some very raunchy conversations with their loved ones.

The TV presenter, 60, amused viewers after she made a candid remark to husband Eamonn Holmes, also 60, while watching a documentary about sex in lockdown that detailed how couples would use everyday items in the bedroom.

Discussing her youth, Ruth admitted: 'My gran had the old style spin dryer that moved round quite quickly, you had to sit on it to keep it still and it was quite fun.'

Hilarious: Celebrity Gogglebox viewers went wild as Ruth Langsford made a very raunchy remark about sitting on a tumble dryer to husband Eamonn Holmes during Friday's show

Eamonn looked shocked as he turned to his wife, asking if her grandmother had told her she'd used the dryer in the raunchy way she was hinting at.

'We sat on it together,' Ruth said as she smiled at Eamonn who simply said 'Oh God.'

Denise, meanwhile, was sat by her boyfriend Eddie Boxshall when she ate popcorn from a bowl in his lap and joked: 'It makes a change to pick something up from that area that'll fill me up.'

Unable to contain their giggles after her innuendo, Eddie claimed she should reach down into the bottom of the bowl before she later told him to 'lick his own balls' if he wanted to act like a dog.

Viewers went wild for the pair's remarks, and took to Twitter to share how funny they found their raunchy conversations were.

One fan wrote: 'Ruth!!! Omg I screamed!!!! Get your dryer life [sic]'

While another joked: 'Absolutely love #Celebritygogglebox @Eamonnholmes and Ruth are brilliant....I'll never look at her the same way after her spin washer story.'

Talking about Denise's comments, another said: 'Ohhh Denise and her other half having a little sexy chat flirt there [sic]'

Another viewer claimed Denise had 'the best lines' during the episode as they declared the reality show the 'best on telly.'

In hysterics: Viewers went wild for the pair's remarks, and took to Twitter to share how funny they found their raunchy conversations were

It wasn't just Ruth and Denise who made some rather raunchy comments during the show, as Martin Kemp complemented Queen Elizabeth II to the shock of son Roman.

Watching a news reel about the Queen's recent birthday, which showed her in her youth, Martin said: 'When she was younger she was fit, she looked a lot like my mum.'

Roman was quick to point out how that sounded, as he joked: 'you've made it weird now, think about what you said.'

Taking a second to think about his comment, Martin then laughed as he admitted it had been 'a bit weird'.
Detail from a poster for Inception. (Warner Bros.)

Warner Bros. has confirmed it plans to re-release Christopher Nolans 2010 sci-fi film Inception into UK cinemas to mark the films tenth anniversary.

The dream-exploring, city-bending thriller  first released on 16 July, 2010  is set to return to cinemas on 17 July, 2020. UK cinemas are expected to begin reopening next month after they were closed by the coronavirus outbreak in March.

Inception  starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy and more  takes the release date previously held by Nolans next film Tenet. That film, starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, was recently pushed back to 31 July.

Read more: The best sci-fi films of the 21st century

Reports in the US suggest Warner Bros. may also use the re-release to preview some of its forthcoming titles. According to a recent story on /Film, screenings of Inception will feature the first look at Denis Villeneuves adaptation of Frank Herberts Dune as well as possible sneak peeks at Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984 and Godzilla vs King Kong.

(L-r) JOSEPH GORDON LEVITT as Arthur and LEONARDO DiCAPRIO as Cobb in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Legendary Pictures; sci-fi action film Inception a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Yahoo has contacted Warner Bros. for confirmation.

There has been speculation in the past about whether Tenet may be a secret sequel to Inception. John David Washington was grilled on a connection between the two films by Esquire recently, to which he replied: Id say [Tenet] is an in-law to Inception. Theyre related by marriage. They get together for Thanksgivings, family barbecues, like that kind of thing. Other than that, one lives in Europe, the other one lives in Compton.

Other films confirmed to be releasing on 17 July include new road rage thriller Unhinged starring Russell Crowe and Caren Pistorious.
A fire at the base of the 'Tree of Life' was started last month

Gardai have launched an investigation after the wanton vandalism of one of the most iconic sculptures on Dublins northside.

Called The Tree of Life in Raheny beside the start of the Bull Island causeway, the intricate carving out of a dying Monterey cypress tree took sculptor Tommy Cragg nearly three years to complete.

But in a shocking act of destruction being compared to the repeated attack on the Luke Kelly statue, vandals ignited a fire at the base of the tree in the early hours of Monday morning.

An accelerant was used in the incident, leaving part of the sculpture seriously charred, much to the dismay of local residents.

Gardai confirmed they are aware of an incident of criminal damage which occurred at St Annes Park in the early hours of Monday morning. They said that inquiries are ongoing.

RTEs Joe Duffy, who lives not far from the sculptor, described it as terrible vandalism.

Councillor Christy Burke said that he was outraged when he saw the level of damage caused to such a beautiful piece of art and said he hoped that it could be restored.

This structure is seen as a jewel. Families and visitors go visit it every day, he said.

Dublin Lord Mayor Tom Brabazon also condemned the attack and spoke of his sadness at what happened.

This is a beautiful sculpture enjoyed by adults and children alike, and I want to condemn this wanton act of vandalism in the strongest possible terms, he told Independent.ie.

Its so sad to see something like this happen. I would appeal to anyone with any information to contact the Gardai.

Durham-based Tree sculptor Tommy Craggs was commissioned to create the ten-metre high landmark by Dublin City Council (DCC) after the tree was found to be dying back in 2014.

Its understood to be at least 200 years old and was dying but rather than remove it, DCC decided to hire Craggs to create a unique piece of art out of it.

He used a chainsaw to painstakingly eke out the shapes of various wildlife and marine animals like Brent Geese and swans in a nod to the biodiversity that exists in the nearby Bull Island.

The artist is aware of the attack and posted on his Facebook page how it had been sadly vandalised last night.

He told RTEs Liveline how its not as bad as I thought it was going to be and said that it can be repaired by re-sanding it down.

The artist said he completed the project in three different stages and it was all his own design. Several coats of oil had been applied to preserve it, which would have acted as a further accelerant during the attack.

He welcomed the suggestion of installing CCTV footage nearby in a bid to to deter future acts of vandalism.
Bengaluru:

In a step that will ensure release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, the Karnataka legislature on Monday adopted a unanimous resolution empowering the government to take an appropriate decision to provide water for irrigation to meet the state farmers demand.



The decision by both the Houses of the legislature at the second such special session in 10 days came on the day when the Supreme Court asked Karnataka government to apprise it by tomorrow afternoon whether it has released water to Tamil Nadu as directed by it on September 30.



Moved by the government, the resolution makes no mention about release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu or the Supreme Court orders, but it modified the September 23 resolution to draw water from the four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin only for drinking purpose, to allow its use for irrigation also.



On September 30, the apex court had directed Karnataka to discharge 6,000 cusecs water from October 1-6, warning that no one would know when the wrath of the law would fall on it.

ALSO READ | Cauvery Water row - Political parties slam Centre for 'betraying' Tamil Nadu



In his reply in the Assembly, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah gave strong indications of complying with the order of the Supreme Court to release water to Tamil Nadu, while assuring the people that government would make all efforts to meet drinking water needs and to save standing crops.



Siddaramaiah said the state had never defied the court orders and noted that we are in a federal set up.



Farmers in the Cauvery basin had been demanding release of water as otherwise the crops would wither, he said, adding, once it is released for them, some quantum would flow naturally to Tamil Nadu, where it would be recorded in the Biligundlu gauging station.

ALSO READ | Supreme Court seeks report from Karnataka government regarding Cauvery water release



The Supreme Court has said we have to release 6000 cusecs of water. We have to respect the court order. We are also expecting some quantum of water (rainfall), he said without directly making any reference about release to Tamil Nadu, which is at loggerheads with the state on the issue.



He said in the last 10 days, there was inflow of an average of 7,000 cusecs per day into Cauvery basin reservoirs and if water is released into canals in the state,3,000 cusecs would flow naturally and be recorded at Biligundlu, besides seepage water. About 1,200 to 1,300 cusecs would also flow even if the crest gates are closed.



Official sources said once water is released for farmers in Cauvery basin for irrigation, it would naturally flow to Tamil Nadu.



The resolution also noted that the water storage levels in Hemavathy, Harangi, Kabini and Krishnaraja Sagar had increased to 34.13 TMC ft as of today from 27.60 TMC ft on September 23, when the legislature passed resolution to use it only to meet drinking water needs.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Neighbours begged police to stop an illegal lockdown rave before two men were shot dead - but officers said it was 'unsafe' to disperse the crowd.

Hundreds of people packed into a residential courtyard in Moss Side, Manchester for the gathering on Sunday, before shots were heard at 12.55am leaving two victims, 36 and 21, fatally injured.

Police received phone calls from concerned members of the public between 10pm and midnight, but decided any attempt to disperse the gathering would have risked 'public disorder'.

Revellers gather at the lockdown street party in Moss Side, Manchester on Sunday were two people were shot and killed

The unplanned gathering was hosted by a DJ after an earlier Black Lives Matter event in Moss Side - monitored by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) - passed off without incident.

People are not allowed to gather in groups of more than six, meaning the gathering was illegal under laws to reduce new coronavirus infections.

GMP today defended its decision not to break up the event.

Superintendent Mark Dexter said: 'A decision taken last night in respect of the event that was unplanned was that it would be unachievable to safely disperse given the nature of the event and the people that were present and the numbers.

'We have to consider the risk of public disorder and confrontation with people at that time of night.'

He added that police received no intelligence that a serious incident could happen.

A primary school teacher, who lives a couple of streets away, said he heard loud music from about 10pm and that it continued past midnight as he and his wife went to bed.

The man, who did not wish to be named, said: 'It's a really normal neighbourhood with an occasional spike in violence.

'I had a walk out to see what was happening and I would say there were hundreds of people around but I did see police patrols. Later, we heard an helicopter overhead.'

The resident said he did not feel a need to call 999 because the police were already there, but others did and were reportedly told that officers were unable to break the party up because it was too large.

One resident told The Manchester Evening News: 'I walked past at about 9pm and there must have been more than a thousand people there. I thought it was carnival, it was so busy.'

Meanwhile another resident, Sinead Parkes, described hearing the 'pop-pop' of gunshots at around 12.30am.

She said: 'I heard a pop-pop and thought it was a car driving over a bottle or something at first. But then everyone came running into the streets outside. It was just mass panic.'

Elsewhere another resident said: 'There were only a few at the party first and the police just let them carry on. But hundreds more people arrived later on and then it got really noisy. '

Another neighbour said they saw a DJ in the courtyard with music equipment.

The lockdown party took place on Sunday in a residential courtyard (where police are pictured today)

GMP set up a dedicated operation this weekend to tackle the problem of illegal raves in the area.

Last weekend a 20-year-old man died of a suspected drug overdose, an 18-year-old woman was raped and three men were stabbed at events in Trafford and Oldham attended by more than 6,000 people.

Announcing the operation Assistant Chief Constable Nick Bailey conceded there could be occasions in which senior officers decide it is too dangerous to close down a rave due to its scale and factors such as terrain and darkness but he vowed action would be taken to gather enough evidence to secure convictions.

While Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, added that such events may happen again but said 'there is no question of us turning a blind eye or adopting a permissive approach'

Roads in Collyhurst, Manchester, were temporarily closed on Saturday into the early hours of Sunday after reports of an illegal rave but no party took place.

No arrests have been made in connection with the Moss Side shootings.

A cordon is in place surrounding the courtyard between Caythorpe Street, Broadfield Road and Bowes Street.

A forensic tent partially covered a Skoda car, with litter strewn across the ground including bottles of alcohol and canisters of laughing gas, also known as 'hippy crack'.

Police received phone calls from concerned members of the public between 10pm and midnight, but decided any attempt to disperse the gathering would have risked 'public disorder' (pictured is the scene today)

A primary school teacher, who lives a couple of streets away, said he heard loud music from about 10pm and that it continued past midnight as he and his wife went to bed.

The man, who did not wish to be named, said: 'It's a really normal neighbourhood with an occasional spike in violence.

'I had a walk out to see what was happening and I would say there were hundreds of people around but I did see police patrols. Later, we heard a helicopter overhead.'

He said he did not feel a need to call 999 because the police were already there, but others did and were told that officers were unable to break the party up because it was too large.

Moss Side ward councillor Mahadi Sharif Mahamed said: 'I want to make it clear the incident that led to the tragic event had no connection to the community event.

'Once you have an open event where people can come and take part, you will always get people from outside the area.

'The Black Lives Matter event was organised and peaceful. We need to look at ways we can control future events and see what we can do to make sure when planned events finish these events that pop up afterwards do not happen in the future.'
US Supreme Court bans discrimination on the job against LGBTQ people

Civil rights groups, gay rights groups, the AFL-CIO and other unions hailed the US Supreme Courts 15th June ruling outlawing job discrimination against lesbian-gay-transgender-bisexual-queer (LGBTQ) people. And a top legal counsel for the nations largest union, the National Education Association (NEA), predicted it would extend to other areas of life, too.

This is a very big case. We really cannot overstate how much is at stake, Eric Harrington of the NEA Office of General Counsel, said in a prior Q&A.

The unusually direct and plain English language in the 6-3 ruling, written by Donald Trump-named Justice Neil Gorsuch, made clear the law  the 1964 Civil Rights Acts Title VII and its ban on sexual discrimination  is the law, and that since then the definition of sex has expanded legislatively and in the courts to cover LGBTQ people, too.

We must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids, said Gorsuch, joined by the High Courts four progressive justices and Chief Justice John Roberts, another GOP appointee.

The three other GOP-named conservatives said no. As might be expected, ultra-right anti-equality lobbies, notably the so-called Family Research Council, screamed, too.

In its court arguments, the GOP Trump administration opposed protecting LGBTQ people from job discrimination, and that attitude continues. Three days before the courts ruling, Trumps Health and Human Services Department banned equal Affordable Care Act coverage for LGBTQ people  and pro-gay groups promptly vowed to challenge that anti-gay regulation in court.

Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result, Gorsuch laconically continued. Likely, they werent thinking about many of the acts consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees.

But the limits of the drafters imagination supply no reason to ignore the laws demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, its no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who has a law degree, said the court majority affirmed organised labours long-held conviction, in both union contracts and activism, that no one should be fired because of who they are.

This is a momentous step forward for equality in an otherwise dark time, as America suffers from a public health pandemic, an economic free fall, and the poison of structural racism. The LGBTQ community is now freer under the protection of a law fought for and won by the Black civil rights movement a generation ago, another reminder that we are all in this together. Lets use this moment not to rest, but to push forward so every single worker in America can live and work under the banner of liberty and justice for all, he declared.

Several advocates, including Jerame Davis, executive director of Pride@Work, the AFL-CIOs constituency group for LGBTQ people, and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., lauded the court and declared the Senate should take the ultimate step of writing the anti-discrimination-against-gays language into federal law.

That means passing the Equality Act, with its bans on all discrimination against LGBTQ people. Catering to the Religious Right, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refuses to even allow hearings on the House-passed measure.

Twenty-two years ago, I got started in LGBTQ activism after being fired from my job for being gay, said Davis, a native of Indiana, whose former GOP governor, Mike Pence, tried to impose anti-gay mandates on the state. Business pressure, including convention cancellations, and a national uproar forced Pence, now Trumps VP, to back down.

Davis landed on his employment feet. But too many LGBTQ people in too many states still get fired for being gay, he said  until this High Court ruling. After today, itll be a lot harder for LGBTQ people to lose their job because of who they are.

The court recognised discrimination based on someones sexual orientation or gender identity is rooted in sex discrimination. The approximately 11.5 million LGB people and 1.5 million transgender people in the United States are now protected from discrimination in workplaces across the country. While many lower courts recognised that, we now have clarity from the highest court in the land.

Not every working person has the benefit of an inclusive union contract to protect them from discrimination on the job. Until today, half of LGBTQ people lived in a state that had no law to protect them from discrimination. Economic justice for marginalised communities is at the core of the labour movements work.

We are not done. LGBTQ discrimination has not been eradicated  We are in the midst of a global pandemic that disproportionately impacted our community economically and medically. LGBTQ folk, especially Black and brown people, face harassment and violence in their daily lives.

NEA President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia, a primary grades teacher from deep red Utah, also hailed the courts ruling. But it was her unions counsel, Harrington, who spelled out in a prior Q&A how the ruling could extend beyond the workplace. NEA and the AFL-CIO filed friend-of-the-court briefs on the LGBTQ side.

What the US Supreme Court said today is that anywhere sex discrimination is prohibited in federal law or the Constitution, LGBTQ discrimination is prohibited. The message is plain and simple: Our LGBTQ educators and students matter. Full stop, Eskelsen-Garcia said.

This means educators can no longer be fired at work for who they love or who they are. And since LGBTQ discrimination is sex discrimination under employment discrimination law, it also follows that federal laws proscribing sex discrimination in education and health care also prohibit LGBTQ discrimination. This means our LGBTQ students will also be protected under federal law from discrimination at school.

LGBTQ educators have long faced employment discrimination, typically based on enforcement of gender norms, and largely based on fears that they will convert students or tell them how they should express their own gender. This has led to many cases of illegal discipline or firing based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Protections under Title VII have provided educators with legal tools and remedies to combat and overturn such discipline and keep their jobs, Harrington elaborated.

If the Supreme Court concludes that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are forms of sex discrimination, NEAs LGBTQ members will continue to be protected under federal civil rights law, Harrington said. And students will benefit, too, he added.

That is because courts, including the Supreme Court, construe and interpret the prohibition on sex discrimination in education enacted in 1972 the same way they construe Title VIIs sex discrimination provisions. In other words, if LGBTQ employees are protected  LGBTQ students are protected  But if LGBTQ employees arent protected by federal law, then students wont be either.

Let us rejoice, for a moment, in this important victory for every gay and transgender person who can now get up and go to work every day without the cloak of fear that their employer can fire them simply for being themselves, said AFT President Randi Weingarten, one of three openly gay union presidents.

This is an historic moment for gay and transgender rights in America, when the highest court in the land rules, 6-3, that the words of Title VII mean what it says  that LGBTQ workers are protected against discrimination in the workplace, she continued.

In plain English, sexual orientation and gender identity are not fire-able offences. This is a vital step, particularly as the Trump administration works to dismantle rights and freedoms from LGBTQ people in so many other ways.

Peoples World
Veteran DJ Tim Westwood has vehemently denied sensational allegations on social media that he has behaved inappropriately with student fans.

Allegations against the 62-year-old who is considered a major figure in the hip hop and rap scene appeared on Twitter.

One woman detailed her experience on Twitter with the heading #survivingTimWestwood.

Tim Westwood said allegations made against him on Twittter are 'false and without any foundation'

In a statement to MailOnline Westwood hit out at the 'fabricated allegations' and said they were false and without any foundation.

He said: 'I can categorically say that I have never had an inappropriate relationship with anyone under the age of 18.

'I am aware of attempts by anonymous sources to make fabricated allegations online. I can confirm that such allegations are false and without any foundation.'

The DJ has worked for several stations including BBC Radio 1 and is currently on Capital Extra

Westwood's name and the allegations began trending on Twitter after an unnamed woman posted messages describing a four year relationship.

Using the Twitter name @survivingtimwestwood she admitted she was in love with the DJ and had not gone to police with any of her allegations.

Others responding to the twitter messages called on bosses at Global Radio, where Westwood works for Capital Extra, to investigate his behaviour towards young black women.

A petition #mutetimwestwood on the Change.org site called for an investigation to be launched into his behaviour and had attracted over 150 signatures.

The person who launched the petition said Westwood had a reputation among black female students, writing: 'He has forged for himself as a hip-hop icon and proponent of Black British culture - with all the privilege that his whiteness allows him.

'The 62 year-old's DJ persona as a middle-class, middle-aged white man who acts like he's young, black and straight outta the 'hood' has landed him countless awards, accolades and opportunities - and power.'

The allegations made on Twitter are all unproved with the complainant refusing to identify herself.

A spokesman for Capital Extra addressed the blocking of Twitter users who commented on the allegations during Westwood's Saturday show.

The spokesman said: 'It's important to clarify a member of Tim's team blocked a twitter account so the offensive allegations wouldn't disturb the show, this was not approved, and was an error of judgment by this individual and nothing to do with anyone at Capital XTRA.'

Westwood, son of the former Bishop of Peterborough, is a well known figure on the hip hop scene.

He began his career with local radio before joining Capital Radio in London and was later given his own show by BBC Radio 1.

Westwood is considered among the most influential rap and hip hop DJ in Europe and is a winner of numerous radio industry awards, including best radio DJ in the Music of Black Origin ceremony.

Westwood is considered among the most influential rap DJs in Europe

But his connection with music often associated with gangs led to David Cameron, then leader of the Conversative Party, accusing Westwood's show of encouraging gun and knife crime.

The DJ, who is single, rejected the allegation.

In 1999 he was the victim of a drive by shooting in south London after leaving a concert.

Two men on a motorbike pulled up alongside his Range Rover and fired several shots. Westwood suffered an arm injury and later said the attack was part of an extortion attempt by a gang.

Last week he was present at a lockdown party in Essex where after he left three men were shot, with 50-year-old Robert Powell dying from his wounds.

Westwood had been filming a cameo appearance for a drill rap video at the party and had left two hours before a gunman opened fire on a group of people standing outside a house in Harlow, Essex.
File image

The government could redirect the source-markets for electronic goods away from China -- the single largest supply market now -- to others like Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the US, if it wants to really contain imports from the northern neighbour, says the WTC. More than 90 percent of the electronic goods imports from China are of integrated circuits, and television sets, according to the data collated by the World Trade Centre Mumbai on Monday.

China is the largest supplier market for the country contributing 14 percent of total non-oil merchandise imports.

The assessment comes after a violent border confrontation the two nations had on June 15-16 and the resultant political and popular call to boycott Chinese products on one hand and also reduce imports of raw material from that country.

The violent clash, the first such instance in decades, left 20 of Indian soldiers losing their lives.

In the electronics sector, the country is heavily dependent on Chinese suppliers. Electronic goods account for 32 percent of our overall imports from China which meets 40 percent of our total imports of electronic goods, which includes consumer electronics, industrial electronics, computer and IT hardware, mobile phones, strategic electronics, light emitting diodes etc, show the data collated by the WTC.

"Between April 2019 and February 2020, total imports of electronic goods stood at Rs 3.59 lakh crore. Out of this, imports from China stood at Rs 1.42 lakh crore or 40 percent of total imports of such goods," WTC said on Monday.

"We imported 98 percent of parts used in electronic integrated circuits and micro assemblies from China. Similarly, our reliance on China was 93 percent in colour TV sets and 90 percent when it comes to imports of the subscriber-end equipment in the telecom industry," it said.

Although the overall mobile phone imports declined sharply in FY20, the share of China increased in total imports. Cell phone imports almost halved to Rs 6,313 crore in April-February of FY2019-20 from Rs 11,304 crore in the full year of FY2018-19 primarily because of the increase in domestic manufacturing and the hike in import duty on handsets.

Imports from China also declined from Rs 6,265 crore in FY2018-19 to Rs 4,717 crore in April-February of FY2019-20. However, the share of China in overall imports grew from 55 to 75 percent.

On rerouting the supplier base, the report says we should diversify our imports basket until such time our indigenous production of electronic goods picks up.

Between 2014 and 2020, local production of electronic goods has grown at an impressive CAGR of 20.6 percent and this can grow at much faster pace given the market. Local production of electronic goods grew to Rs 5.33 lakh crore in FY2019-20 from Rs 1.73 lakh crore in FY2013-14.

These electronic goods include consumer electronics, industrial electronics, computer hardware, mobile phones, strategic electronics, electronic components and light emitting diodes.

In recent years, government has introduced various incentive schemes for local production such as electronic manufacturing clusters, scheme for promotion of manufacturing of electronic components and semiconductors and a scheme to promote indigenous manufacturing of electronic goods.

"Until the domestic production increases, we can diversify the import baskets for electronic goods away from China by sourcing integrated circuits and colour TV sets from Singapore, the US, Malaysia and Japan; telecom equipment from Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, Israel and Japan; and non-automatic voltage regulators and stabilizers from Singapore, the US, Italy and Denmark," the WTC said.
A couple from Missouri allegedly left their 12-year-old son who has cerebral palsy alone in their home before moving to a new home. The couple then monitored their son's condition using an in-home video system.

Home alone

According to Crime Online, authorities have charged the parents, 30-year-old Janine Allen and 29-year-old Brendon Luke, with felony abuse or neglect of a child after they allegedly abandoned their son, only identified as TLM in court records at their previous house on May 10 before moving two miles away into a bigger home.

Police discovered a video from the home, which shows the boy telling his mother that he wanted out and that he did not like the arrangement they have made.

Blue Springs police officers stated they initially conducted their investigation when neighbors from the first home reported on June 1 that the young boy who was in a wheelchair was all alone for weeks.

One police officer spoke with the mother through a doorbell camera, where she stated their son was doing well, and they were able to monitor him properly through the camera. This alerted them of any suspicious movements or noises from inside the house.

Allen reportedly told officers their son was capable of calling 911 or their number if there was an emergency. The mother revealed that TLM and his biological father had previous violent outbursts, causing them to decide on having split homes to keep their families safe, which included two younger children on her side.

Also Read: Mother of Two Dies After Being Beaten, Crushed and Set on Fire When She Called Off Engagement

One social worker who had ties with the family since October of last year confirmed the statements that the boy had violent tendencies that have since escalated.

The worker advised the parents that their son needed residential placement, which Allen had not completed the required documents.

The friend also stated she was unaware that the parents were moving into a new home until the police investigation started.

Suspicious relationship

The Children's Mercy Clinic told detectives that the young boy had a complex medical condition and was not supposed to be left alone. It also stated TLM was brought into the clinic in September after a suspicious-looking broken arm after a fight with his mother.

A school resource officer said that the boy also needed assistance going to the bathroom, eating food, and moving around.

According to KSDK, authorities found scattered feces inside TLM's home and described it smelled of urine. They also discovered that the telephone had no dial tone.

Officials discovered footage, which shows the boy trying to pick the lock on his bedroom door using a small wire, which his mother had later searched for. Another recording showed Allen throwing food onto TLM's bedroom floor and, within six minutes, was making her way out of the house.

Allen could also be seen telling her son to reassure investigators that he could move by himself, including using the bathroom alone. "Because someone called them and said I wasn't taking care of you and wasn't feeding you, but I'm doing those things, aren't I?" she added.

Fox59 reports that the parents have been arrested on June 11 and that TLM had been taken into protective custody. They are also being held on a bond of $250,000 each.

Related Article: Man Confesses to Kidnapping and Killing Two Female Black Lives Matter Protesters

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Presided over 600 incursions: BJP chief hits back at Manmohan Singh for Ladakh face-off remarks

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Jun 22: In a scathing counter-attack on Manmohan Singh, BJP president J P Nadda said on Monday that he as prime minister "abjectly surrendered" hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China and presided over 600 incursions made by the neighbouring country between 2010 and 2013.

In a series of tweets after Singh took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his handling of the ongoing stand-off with China, Nadda said the senior Congress leader and his party should stop "insulting" our forces repeatedly and questioning their valour. They did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes, the BJP president said, asking the Congress to understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.

Arvind Kejriwal: We are fighting Chinese Army and virus, we will win against both | Oneindia News

PM must rise to the occasion and ensure justice for martyred soldiers: Manmohan Singh

"Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese! During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our forces. "One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!" Nadda tweeted.

In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, the former prime minister said Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position. Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity. Hitting back, Nadda said Singh's statement is mere "wordplay".

Sadly, the conduct and actions of top leaders of the Congress party will not make any Indian believe such statements, he added. Remember, this is the same Congress that always questions and demoralises our armed forces, he said. "India fully trusts and supports PM Narendra Modi. 130 crore Indians have seen his administrative experience in some of the most testing times, particularly how he has always put the well-being of the nation over and above everything else," he said.

Nadda said Singh rightly calls for unity. He then added that these strong words on paper fall flat when people see exactly who is vitiating the atmosphere of unity. 'Hope Dr. Singh is able to prevail on his own party at least," he said.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, June 22, 2020, 14:06 [IST]
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 01:27:46|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

A medical worker waits next to an ambulance at a parking lot in Moulay Bousselham, Morocco, on June 22, 2020. A total of 195 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Morocco on Monday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 10,172. (Photo by Chadi/Xinhua)

RABAT, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A total of 195 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Morocco on Monday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 10,172.

The number of the patients cured increased to 8,366 with 82 new recoveries, said Hind Ezzine, head of the Department of Epidemic Diseases of the Ministry of Health, at a regular press briefing.

Ezzine said that the country's COVID-19 death toll stood at 214, as no new fatality was recorded in the last 24 hours.

In addition, 5,596 people who had contact with the patients are still under medical surveillance.

The COVID-19 death rate in Morocco stabilizes at 2.1 percent, with the recovery rate at 82.8 percent, the official noted.

Morocco has announced that it will relax travel restrictions inside the country and allow cafes and restaurants to reopen starting from June 25.

Public transport between cities and domestic flights will also resume on June 25, according to specific conditions, it added.

China has helped Morocco in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

A batch of medical supplies donated by the government of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was transported on June 8 to Casablanca-Settat in Morocco.

On May 14, China Development Bank sent a batch of donation, including respirators and medical protective masks, to Morocco to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

China's Guizhou Province has also donated 15,000 surgical gloves, 20,000 medical masks and 2,000 protective suits to help Moroccan medical workers fight the pandemic.
An on-duty Houston police officer was arrested Sunday night on a drunken driving charge after a citizen reported that he smelled of alcohol and was acting strangely, according to court records.

The officer, Chad R. Hogue, was arrested just before midnight in the 13000 block of Galveston Road. Records show he had been driving a marked Houston Police Department vehicle.

Hogue has since been relieved from duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Houston police spokesman John Cannon said. Hogue joined HPD in 2010 and worked as a homicide investigator until May 2019. He was most recently assigned to the Clear Lake division.

Chief Art Acevedo later called Hogues actions disappointing in that he endangered members of the community and HPD through his actions.

The scene Hogue responded to around 8 p.m. was in the 9200 block of Nathaniel Road, records show. There, a civilian told Hogues fellow officers that he may have been recently drinking.

Around 11:30 p.m., Hogue was asked to meet a sergeant at a Clear Lake-area gas station along Galveston Road, where he told the officer that he drank about seven glasses of Jameson whiskey with beer at home between 5 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 a.m. that morning. He ate some cinnamon rolls at home and started his shift around 10 a.m., he said.

The sergeant said Hogue appeared to have glassy eyes, slightly slurred speech and alcohol on his breath. When asked about recent medication, Hogue said he had been taking antibiotics for a recent cut to his head from an injury that also gave him a concussion.

Hogue was unable to maintain his balance during a sobriety test and later failed a breath test, according to court records.

After Hogue was taken to the Joint-Processing Center, authorities looked through his duty bag and found a cold can of Miller Lite with about an ounce left. The can was attached to a plastic ring that holds a six-pack of beer.

Sean Teare, the vehicular crimes chief of the Harris County District Attorneys Office, said he believes Hogue was likely drinking on duty.

At the end of the day, its good that the other officers identified it as a problem and didnt try to cover it up, Teare said. They did what they would have done with any other civilian. They treated it the same and arrested him.

Hogue has since posted a $100 general order bond.

nicole.hensley@chron.com
Several mid-2000s comedy shows, including Little Britain, Come Fly with Me and Bo' Selecta, have been criticised lately due to their problematic themes.

And while popular Australian sitcom Kath & Kim hasn't faced the same level of scrutiny, its portrayal of suburban life hasn't been without criticism.

Jane Turner, who played matriarch Kath Day-Knight and co-wrote the series with Gina Riley, addressed claims this week the show was classist and 'mocked Westies'.

PC problems: Jane Turner (left, as Kath Day-Knight) has addressed problematic aspects of Kath & Kim after it was claimed the popular sitcom 'mocked Westies'. Pictured with Gina Riley

'A newspaper critic had criticised us for mocking Westies, which I don't think we did,' the 59-year old actress and comedian said.

'We [the characters] were more middle-class than that. We weren't bogans who wore moccasins and were scungy.'

In Australian and New Zealand slang, 'Westies' refers to the less affluent residents of the western suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne or Auckland.

Speaking out: Jane told TV Week that she disagreed with the argument Kath & Kim was classist

Jane told TV Week that many 'Westies' were in fact huge fans of the show.

'A lot of people wrote to the paper saying, "Well, we're from the western suburbs and we love it."'

Kath & Kim followed the misadventures of Kath and her daughter Kim (Gina Riley) in the fictional Melbourne outer suburb of Fountain Lake.

Defending herself: 'A newspaper critic had criticised us for mocking Westies, which I don't think we did,' the 59-year old actress and comedian said

The iconic series, which also aired in Britain on BBC2, spawned several famous catchphrases, including 'look at moi' and 'noice'.

Running from 2002 to 2007, it was the highest-rating comedy series of its time and produced two spin-off movies, Da Kath & Kim Code and Kath & Kimderella.

In addition to Jane and Gina, the primary cast included Magda Szubanski, Glenn Robbins and Peter Rowsthorn.
Ana Amelia Zuniga passed away, with her children at her side, on Friday, June 12, 2020 in San Antonio, Texas, after a long battle with Alzheimers Disease. A daughter of Laredos founding families, she was born in Laredo to Luis Perez-Garcia, Sr. and Amelia Ramon Villareal. Ana graduated from Ursuline Academy in 1951 and Incarnate Word College in 1955 - valedictorian on both occasions. She began her career in Laredo as a high school math teacher at Christian Junior High School where she was sometimes confused for a student due to her petite frame. On July 14, 1956, she married her childhood sweetheart, Chuy. They immediately left for St. Louis, Missouri and started their nascent careers and family. In 1961, new opportunities took them to San Antonio, Texas where she continued her teaching career at Garner Middle School. In 1966, Chuy and Ana returned to their hometown Laredo, where she taught high school geometry for 13 years at J.W. Nixon High School. Anas deep commitment to her students and her love of teaching touched many, many, lives and she was always so proud to hear of her former students achievements. Ana was honored to serve as a member and President of the Society of Martha Washington and proud to be selected by the Society to portray Martha Washington in 1987, a 123-year tradition that celebrates George Washingtons Birthday in Laredo. She was one of three founding members of High Hope Volunteers, a Laredo womens group dedicated to providing charitable care for children with developmental disabilities. In 1984, her husband was diagnosed with cancer and she returned to teaching during his convalescence. Upon Chuys recovery, they left for new opportunities in San Diego, California leaving her home, her friends, and her grandchildren. Her family admired her deeply for the strength and dignity she demonstrated as she coped with these changes. Never one to look back, Ana and Chuy enjoyed many enriching experiences and friendships in San Diego where they lived for 10 years. They returned to San Antonio in 1997 to be near their children. During this time, they were fortunate to travel the globe and enjoy retirement together. Ana is often remembered for a wicked sense of humor, for remarkable stories of an adventurous childhood, and for her uncanny ability to calculate complex equations on command. Her energy was boundless, exhausting her own grandchildren well into her 65th year as she out-jumped a number of them in a bounce house. Ultimately, she will be remembered especially for her devotion and dedication to her lifelong companion, Chuy, and to her family. Ana is survived by her children Gloria (Francisco) Canseco, Leticia (Roger) Bresnahan and Luis (Kelly) Zuniga; her grandchildren Anna (Tyler) Drinkwine, Francisco Canseco Jr. (Nancy Beale), Carlos Canseco, Kevin Bresnahan, Genevieve Bresnahan, Gabriela Bresnahan, Jesus Luis Zuniga IV, Anastasia Zuniga; and two great-granddaughters Amelia and Cecilia Drinkwine. She is also survived by Ernesto and Molly Zuniga, Olga Zuniga Hovel, and Olga Perez-Garcia. Her husband, Jesus Luis II, her son, Jesus Luis III, her parents, Luis and Amelia, and siblings Luis, Eva, and Felipe precede her in death. The family is eternally grateful to her committed and loving caretakers: Candelaria and Arnulfo Elizondo, Griselda Ceniceros, and Miguel Reyna. We are also grateful to her physician, Dr. Cesar Garcia, and her hospice nurse, Ashley Bukhari, for their exceptional care, to Heartis Memory Care and to Guiding Light Hospice staff, who provided peace and comfort in her last days.

A Memorial Mass for friends and family offered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church is planned for July 27th at 10:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to San Antonio Christian Dental Clinic (sachristiandental.org), North East Educational Foundation (foundation@neisd.net), or National Shrine of St. Jude (shrineofstjude.org).
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Eisya A. Eloksari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 16:04 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b18ee 1 Business companies,cybersecurity,work-from-home,ibm Free

IBM Indonesia, a wholly owned subsidiary of American technology giant IBM, has called for companies to step up cybersecurity measures and to communicate digital safety to employees in light of the increase in cyberattacks during the "remote working era" of the pandemic.

IBM Security, the multinational's global cybersecurity division, reported an increase of more than 6,000 percent in coronavirus-related spam, including virus-themed malware, malicious domains and phishing scams in March-May.

Companies might still be reluctant to increase their cybersecurity budget for the duration of the work from home (WFH) period, as it would not directly affect their revenue albeit its importance, IBM Indonesia president director Tan Wijaya said.

If you ask me when should companies invest in security, I would say yesterday. Investing in security is like investing in insurance. Sometimes people realize that they need one [only] when there has been an attack. This is the mindset that needs to change," Tan said at a virtual press conference on June 18.

He said that businesses with a high number of users or data traffic were more susceptible to cyber threats, regardless of the industry.

Indonesia started relaxing the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) for certain regions in early June, allowing offices to reopen at 50 percent capacity as a health precaution after nearly three months of closure to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the National Cyber and Encryption Agency (BSSN) said that Indonesia had recorded more than 88 million cyberattacks during the first four months of the year, with March seeing the highest average of daily attacks. More than half of the cyberattacks were Trojan horses, or malware designed to look legitimate, followed by phishing scams and web application attacks.

In May, three Indonesian e-commerce platforms reportedly experienced data breaches that stole their customers' details, which were then sold on the dark web.

Tan said that IBM Indonesia had received more requests from the countrys financial services industry for its security solutions, including cloud adoption, signalling a high awareness of cyber threats in the sector.

Meanwhile, a 2018 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey shows that Indonesian banks have considered cybersecurity threats as the biggest risk to the industry since 2018, and that it would be the major risk to digital banking for the next two to three years.

Going into the post-pandemic era, artificial intelligence, data technology and multi-cloud [applications] will grow bigger as an ecosystem. It will be important for businesses in every industry to create an efficient digital environment, said Tan, adding that IBM saw global cloud adoption grow 34 percent year-on-year in the first quarter.

Besides installing the necessary infrastructure, Tan suggested that companies educate their employees on basic digital safety, such as avoiding emails, website links or downloads from unknown sources.

Similarly, associate partner Aman Dhingra of McKinsey & Company Singapore said that communicating with employees was a crucial step in maintaining information security while working remotely.

Building a human firewall will help ensure that employees play a part in keeping the enterprise secure, he said in a written statement.

Dhingra added that companies should assess security controls at their third-party partners and adopt technologies such as virtual private networks (VPNs), cloud computing interface and multifactor authentication.

Meanwhile, Nurul, a 26-year-old employee at an online booking agency, said that the company where she worked had been disseminating information on digital security even before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.

The company required its employees to use a particular VPN service when accessing its booking portal and to set up a unique password of more than 10 characters, she told The Jakarta Post by text message on June 19.

I have not personally experienced any cyber threats, but there was an instance when one of our executives email [address] was used to send spam to an internal group, Nurul said. She said that the company immediately followed up with a memo to ignore the spam email.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry discussed the latest developments in the East Mediterranean region in a telephone call on Sunday June 21,2020.

The top diplomats also talked about the situation in Libya and Turkish moves that fomented tension in the Arab country and destabilized the whole region, the Cypriot Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

They agreed on the need of an immediate ceasefire and a return to the political process based on the outcome of the Berlin Conference and relevant UN Security Council resolutions, including No. 2510.

Christodoulides reiterated Nicosias full support for Cairos initiative that takes into consideration those resolutions.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


PHILIPSBURG:---Parliament invites the public to send in nominations for the Annual President of Parliament Award.

The application documents are on the Parliaments website. Persons have until August 14, 2020 to submit their nominations.

The website address is: www.sxmparliament.org and can be found under the public section of the site. Select the President of Parliament Award and you will be able to download the application form.

The purpose of the award is to honour young persons on Sint Maarten that are a great example to the youth and who have contributed positively to the community and the country.

Nominations can be submitted by any citizen of Sint Maarten who believes that the individual that he/she is nominating meets the criteria.

The eligibility criteria are: the candidate must have the Dutch nationality and/or has been legally residing in Sint Maarten for 10-years or more consecutively, and has been registered in the Civil Registry for that period of time; must be between the ages of 15-24 years; has made a worthwhile contribution to the development of the community and the country; these contributions/achievements must have taken place within the last three years; contributions/achievements must have been made while the individual was acting as a private citizen, not as an appointed or elected government official; and must have demonstrated capacity for leadership and ability to motivate.

An award committee will be established each year consisting of three members of Parliament. Members of the committee will review the nomination documents prior to the selection meeting and select three nominees.

During the selection meeting, the President of Parliament selects the recipient of the award based on the recommendations of the award committee.

The award will be presented yearly to the recipient during the reception ceremony at the Opening of the Parliamentary Year.

Nominations for the Annual President of Parliament may be submitted to The Parliament of Sint Maarten, attention, Annual President of Parliament Award Committee, Wilhelminastraat 1, Philipsburg or via e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Russian police detained dozens of activists outside a St. Petersburg courthouse where a trial was under way for two defendants accused of belonging to a terrorist organization. Opposition figures and rights defenders have said the charges against members of the group called Network are politically motivated and meant to silence activists.
Ancelotti accused of tax evasion in Spain

Monday, 22 June, 2020







Updated

The charge concerns revenue from image rights during his time in La Liga as manager of Real Madrid in 2014-15.

According to the BBC, the Madrid Community Prosecutor's office claims Ancelotti concealed revenues "intending to avoid his tax duties towards the public treasury with no justification".

The 61-year-old Italian didn't initially respond to the charge publicly but was asked about it on 23 June during his press conference ahead of Everton's match at Norwich.

"It's an ongoing dispute with the Spanish authorities, he said. A lot of players and managers had the same problem in Spain. I leave it in my lawyers' hands. They are experts and I'm not so worried about this."

Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer

About these ads
 Son of imam assassinated in Kashgars 2014 mosque attack speaks out

2020-06-22 20:20
Kerala: Dull export market proves to be a choppy sea for mechanised trawlers

June 22,2020 | Source: The Hindu

The Fisheries Department has made arrangements, in adherence to safety protocols to prevent spread of COVID19 virus, for sale of catches netted by mechanised trawlers from Monday after the ban period ends at the harbours in the coastal districts of delta region, but there are indications that only less number of boats will venture into the sea due to unfavourable conditions.



Operators of mechanised trawlers are not convinced about the possibility for reasonable returns for the catches as the export market for the marine products remains dull due to COVID19 lockdown conditions worldwide. According to officials, the bulk of the catches in the coastal districts gets transported to the processing plants in Kerala from where products like shrimps and squids get exported to other countries. European countries have scaled down and some have even cancelled their earlier orders, leaving exporters in the lurch. Another reason why fish merchants are wary about procuring the catches in large quantities is the struggle being faced by processing units in Kerala due to sudden decline in manpower after exodus of the North Indian labour force to their respective States.



Though the lockdown restrictions have been stepped up in Coimbatore district through which the fish loads have to pass, transport will not be a problem since the marine products have also been categorised under essential commodities. Though the export market is dull, the requirement for marine products will still be on the higher side in Kerala, since there is a requirement for internal consumption what with the 45-day fishing ban period starting in the State from June 15, Joint Director of Fisheries in Nagapattinam district Amal Raj Xavier said.



According to a senior official of MPEDA (Marine Products Exports Development Authority), China was the only country where the marine products were exported so far. The current military stand-off between India and China has raised fears among exporters about further decline in overseas market, the official said.
Guy Fieri, the flamboyant Food Network host, might be getting closer to making a reality out of the oft-repeated claim that he's the "mayor of Flavortown."

A petition gathering thousands of signatures is seeking to put the imaginary city on the map, by renaming Columbus, Ohio, in his honor. Statues and other iconography around the country of Christopher Columbus - including one in the state capital that bears his name - have been targeted amid a nationwide anti-racist protest movement.

"Columbus is an amazing city, but one whose name is tarnished by the very name itself," the petition posted by Tyler Woodbridge on Change.org reads. "Its namesake, Christopher Columbus, is in The Bad Place because of all his raping, slave trading, and genocide. That's not exactly a proud legacy."

He nominated Fieri to replace the controversial historical figure, he wrote, because the celebrity chef - who has been praised widely for his work and donations to restaurant workers laid off during the covid-19 crisis - was born there. Also, he wrote, "it honors Central Ohio's proud heritage as a culinary crossroads and one of the nation's largest test markets for the food industry."

More than 28,000 people had signed on as of Monday morning, citing both affection for the spiky-haired TV personality and a rejection of the explorer whose name has become synonymous with colonization and violence toward indigenous people. In recent years, a handful of states have renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Bud Light boosted the effort, tweeting, "Bud Light Seltzer for all of Flavortown if this happens."

But Woodbridge suggested that the effort wasn't so much about honoring Fieri as it was removing the name Columbus. He told CNN he would also support renaming the city after an indigenous person, as many others have proposed.
Jibe at China? They are not the bats, they are the Batman says Army

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: Taking a dig at China, the Indian Army has said that they are not the bats. They are the Batman.

In a 1.57-minute video clip, the Northern Command says, 'friends, Indians countrymen, lend me your years.' It then takes you back to the Kargil conflict and illustrates how the Bihar Regiment has etched its name on every major milestone.

"Born to fight. They do what they do. They are not the bats. They are the Batman." The video however does not make any reference to the Galwan Valley, where 20 soldiers of the Bihar regiment were martyred. Just before the Bihar Regiment's war cry, 'Bajrang Bali ki jai," the Batman reference is made.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

On Saturday afternoon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lauded the soldiers from the Bihar Regiment as being among the bravest in the armed forces. Our country is always proud of our armed forces. But, when I am taking today to the people of Bihar, I wanly to proudly mention the valour of the Bihar Regiment. Every Bihari is proud of it, the PM also said during the launch of the Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyan.
COLORADO SPRINGS, May 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Gold Resource Corporation (NYSE American: GORO) (the Company) today announced it has received written government approval to restart its Oaxaca Mining Unit (OMU) operations in Mexico. After nearly eight weeks of government mandated shutdown, the Company has begun to restart its operations for the gradual ramp up of production while focusing on workforce, contractor and community safety as the global pandemic continues. Gold Resource Corporation is a gold and silver producer, developer and explorer with operations in Oaxaca, Mexico and Nevada, USA. The Company has returned $114 million to its shareholders in consecutive monthly dividends since July 2010 and offers its shareholders the option to convert their cash dividends into physical gold and silver and take delivery.



The Company originally suspended OMU operations on April 1, 2020 after the Mexican Ministry of Health proclaimed a national health emergency closing all non-essential public and private sector businesses to mitigate the spread and transmission of the COVID-19 virus. In mid-May, the Mexican government designated mining as an essential activity and offered the potential for mining companies to restart operations prior to June 1, 2020 if companies submitted an acceptable restart safety protocol. After reviewing Gold Resource Corporations safety protocol documentation, the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMMS) approved in writing the restart of the Companys OMU operations on May 25, 2020.

The Company is not currently aware of any COVID-19 cases at its operations and will continue to train, promote, and utilize protective measures for workers and neighboring communities, including screening, physical distancing, deep cleaning, and avoiding exposure for at-risk individuals. The operational restart has begun in a secure, orderly and efficient manner, with the primary focus on safety. The Company is pleased to be back at work providing a strong economic impact and benefit to the local communities, the state of Oaxaca and the country of Mexico. The ability to be back at work will help counter the economic devastation caused by the pandemic and associated wide-spread business suspensions imposed by the Mexican Government.

About GRC:

Gold Resource Corporation is a gold and silver producer, developer and explorer with operations in Oaxaca, Mexico and Nevada, USA. The Company targets low capital expenditure projects with potential for generating high returns on capital. The Company has returned $114 million back to its shareholders in consecutive monthly dividends since July 2010 and offers its shareholders the option to convert their cash dividends into physical gold and silver and take delivery. For more information, please visit GRCs website, located at www.goldresourcecorp.com and read the Companys 10-K for an understanding of the risk factors involved.

Cautionary Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. When used in this press release, the words plan, target, "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the statements regarding Gold Resource Corporations strategy, future plans for production, future expenses and costs, future liquidity and capital resources, and estimates of mineralized material. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon information available to Gold Resource Corporation on the date of this press release, and the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those discussed in this press release. In particular, the scope, duration, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mining operations, Company employees, and supply chains as well as the scope, duration and impact of government action aimed at mitigating the pandemic may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Also, there can be no assurance that production will continue at any specific rate. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the Companys 10-K filed with the SEC.

Contacts:

Corporate Development

Greg Patterson

303-320-7708

www.goldresourcecorp.com
Srinagar: A major tragedy averted in Jammu and Kashmir after a grenade hurled by terrorists at a Central Reserve Police Force camp in Pulwama district on Monday (June 22) night missed its target.

PTI quoted officials as saying that the grenade exploded near the camp

"Terrorists hurled a grenade at the CRPF camp at Batagund in Tral area at around 8.30 pm," police officials said.

The CRPF personnel fired a few rounds in the air following the blast. No loss of life or injury to anyone was reported in the incident, they said.
The COVID-19 lockdown provides the best trigger as well as opportunity for the workers to switch to online transactions with employers.

Many kinds of labour remain unrecognised or are even taken for granted by society, until one undertakes to do such work by his or her own hand. Thats something each of us has experienced over the last three months of the lockdown, as we have had to do all the household work in the absence of our domestic workers.

Having washed utensils at least thrice a day, swept floors every day, washed clothes and cleaned toilets, perhaps we will now be goaded into some serious thinking about what we can do for the people who silently perform these chores, almost unnoticed, and help us to go about our professional and personal lives without having to worry about any of it.

For my productivity obsessive peers, domestic workers comprise the largest informal working force who step in to perform the largely gendered roles of women within a household, paving the way for these women to step out and participate in productive labour.

Interestingly, the chores comprising household work, even though performed by domestic workers, remains largely female-centric: of more than 4.2 million domestic helpers, according to the National Domestic Workers Movement, 90 percent are women. We are clearly a long way, even after a century of feminisms first wave, from breaking down gendered roles.

However, the question that many are voicing now is whether, in the post-COVID world, these workers will be able to secure for themselves fairer and more formalised work contracts. In this context, my research with a small group of domestic workers in Delhi (conducted for about three months with strong and helpful assistance of the field coordinators of Nirmana  a Delhi based NGO which works for labour rights of construction and domestic workers) has some useful pointers.

Social security: A battle for standardising expectations

Delhi, the capital city, is just like any other big city  a host to numerous identities, workers and migrants. The vast slum dwellings in the North of Delhi, mainly Haiderpur and Shakurpur, were the places where I conducted my research.

Haiderpur is predominantly the residence of migrant workers from Bihar, the female members among them employed as domestic workers in neighbouring upper-class areas such as Rohini, Pitampura, etc.

Shakurpur, on the other hand, has a few lanes occupied by South Indian migrant workers mainly from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, along with a significant settlement of Bihari migrants.

Over the one month of my research interactions with these people, I got a clearer idea of the issues faced by domestic workers in their occupational spaces. These included low wages, no income/salary cuts for days off, segregation (separate utensils; specifically assigned spaces to sit on, mainly floors; etc), no medical assistance, verbal abuse, no access to a toilet during working hours, no social security benefits etc.

Even though I was aware of all this and much more through the literature I had studied prior to the field work, learning about each of it through a first-hand source was a jolting experience altogether.

Domestic workers have been struggling for their rights for more than three decades now, both politically and economically. The fight has seen active participation of domestic workers and external players like organisations, lawyers, activists, etc. However, strangely, I saw that in all deliberations or movements, one of the most critical stakeholders was missing: the employers.

Every battle won, I felt, would be in vain if we failed to have the employers on board towards the betterment of the working conditions of domestic workers. In view of this, a pilot intervention was planned through a model that would ensure social security.

This model aimed at securing old-age pension for the workers here through the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Man Dhan Yojana, and have employers contribute to it regularly. The plan was to guide the workers to have their bank accounts linked with the mentioned scheme, and then convince the employers to pay their contribution.

The proposal proved far more difficult to execute than frame, and sadly, the intervention undertaken in two months ended with not much success. However, I wouldnt term it a failure either. We reached out to 90 domestic workers, spoke to over 15 RWAs (Resident Welfare Associations) to seek permission for visiting individual employer households, and made over 30 such household visits. In the process, we got several important and insightful pointers from the responses of both the stakeholders.

Most domestic workers were reluctant to take me to any one of the multiple employers they worked for. In some cases this was due to a preconceived notion that none of them would be interested in participating; in others, they appeared uneasy with the very idea of having their liquid cash earnings transferred to their bank accounts. There was a sense of nervousness or fear over the fact that they would have to visit the banks every month to access their earnings.

On the other hand, employers primarily cited the unwillingness of the workers to receive online payments; in the absence of that crucial first step, the issue of contribution to the pension scheme was mostly left hanging in the air.

The perspectives of the domestic workers and the employers rarely matched, but there were clear indications of the scope of, and need for, more robust dialogue, counselling and guidance to shape the movement right.

The right time to rethink

The intervention proposed above  to bring employers to contribute to old-age pension scheme for domestic workers  is not an end in itself. It is just one important step towards formalisation of the employee-employer relationship in this occupation of domestic work. But maybe this period of lockdown amidst COVID-19 is the right time to rethink.

On the one hand, this is the best time for the employers to rethink the adequacy of wages for these workers. Have our domestic workers been able to see through this period of crisis, or have low savings due to low wages made sustenance itself a big challenge?

In saying this, I am not ignoring the fact that a lot of employers have been making efforts to still pay their workers partial or full salaries despite the lockdown. And here is when that first step towards progress  of crediting their salaries directly into their bank accounts  could be achieved.

The lockdown provides the best trigger as well as opportunity for the workers to switch to online transactions with employers. It would do away with the necessity of visiting multiple households in these vulnerable times, and more importantly, would signify a huge step forward in the long struggle to wards formalisation of employment.

Online payments would imply registered transactions, making it easy to keep formal track of wages paid to workers, violations and lapses. With this as a beginning, we may slowly move towards action that will ensure long term social security for this indispensable workforce.

This article was first published in Citizen Matters, a civic media website and is republished here with permission. (c) Oorvani Foundation/Open Media Initiative.
A new special report released by the UNAMA on Sunday presented the findings of its monitoring of all incidents of the armed conflict affecting healthcare from March 11, the date on which the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, to May 23, the start of a three-day ceasefire between the Taliban and the Afghan government, reports Xinhua news agency.

Kabul, June 22 (IANS) The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has expressed concerns over the recent attacks on healthcare personnel and facilities, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"At a time when an urgent humanitarian response was required to protect every life in Afghanistan, both the Taliban and Afghan national security forces carried out deliberate acts of violence that undermined healthcare operations," Deborah Lyons, special UN envoy and head of UN mission, was quoted in a UNAMA statement as saying.

"There is no excuse for such actions; the safety and well-being of the civilian population must be a priority," Lyons said.

The report documented 15 incidents affecting healthcare provision during the period of time, where 12 were deliberate attacks and the remaining incidents involved incidental harm.

"Most of these healthcare-related incidents - eight of the targeted attacks and two of the incidents with incidental harm - were attributed to the Taliban," the statement said.

The report emphasized that deliberate acts of violence against healthcare facilities, including hospitals and related personnel, are prohibited under international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.

The UN condemns all deliberate attacks, threats, abductions and other intentional acts against healthcare facilities and personnel, as outlined in the report, the statement added.

Sunday's report comes after the global medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on June 15 that it was withdrawing from a maternity hospital in Kabul that came under a brutal attack in May in which 25 people were killed.

Three gunmen detonated a bomb and opened fire near the MSF-supported maternity facility located in Kabul's Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, mainly inhabited by the Hazaras, a minority Shia Muslim community.

With almost 16,000 deliveries in 2019, the Dasht-e-Barchi maternity wing was one of MSF's biggest such projects worldwide.

More than 70 MSF staff and patients in MSF healthcare programs have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 16 years.

--IANS

ksk/
B Anbuselvan By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: With the Chennai police tightening restrictions during the complete lockdown, workers from Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu districts engaged in essential services in the city are facing an ordeal in reaching their workplaces. Owing to this, essential services are likely to get disrupted in a few parts of the city.

The police allegedly refused to allow LPG delivery persons, milk agents, petrol pump staff and employees of Tangedco without e-passes. While companies alone are permitted to apply for transit passes for their employees, the police are insisting on e-passes for all workers coming on two-wheelers from neighbouring districts.

These workers said they are undergoing a lot of hardships owing to the lack of coordination among government departments. The workers have been asked to report to the office regularly but the police are demanding transit passes issued after June 19.

A petrol pump employee from Tiruvallur who works in Ambattur said he was twice denied permission into the city at Thirumazhisai and Sevvapettai checkposts. Fuel outlets have not issued e-passes to employees as we work on a rotational basis. With no train and bus services, I travel by a two wheeler, but we are treated like criminals at the police check posts, he said.

Similarly, even a few Tangedco staff also faced similar issues while travelling from Chengalpattu to Tambaram.

Motorists are allowed into the city according to the whims and fancies of police personnel manning the check posts. In spite of showing an identity card, the police at Paranur check post wanted me to get an e-pass to enter the city. They don't seem to be aware that employees cannot get e-passes on their own, charged a Tangedco employee from Chengalpattu.

LPG delivery persons, milk agents and Aavin employees also faced similar issues while reaching their workplaces.

Official sources from the police denied the charges and said clear instructions had been given to all government departments to apply for e-passes for their employees. "We have been advised not to dilute the lockdown norms up to June 30. The workers from essential sectors should get e-passes with the support of their employers," said a police officer.
The Majority Leader and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Mr. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has stated that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) was poised for a resounding victory in the December General Election.



Victory is on the way coming, because, the Nana Akufo-Addo-led Administration has so far met expectations of the people in terms of the delivery of life-transforming policies, he emphasized.



The Majority Leader said most sectors of the economy had witnessed tremendous changes, citing the implementation of the Planting for Food and Jobs, One District, One Factory and Free Senior High School programmes.



NPP has initiated many vibrant programmes to uplift the living standards of the ordinary Ghanaian, Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview, citing the abolishment of Valued Added Tax on financial services, selected imported medicines and real estate sales.



This was on the sidelines of a meeting he had with NPP delegates at Abusua Kruwa in the Suame Constituency.



The Majority Leader, who went unopposed in the Partys recent parliamentary primaries, reminded the executives of the critical role they need to play in ensuring victory for the party.



For us as leaders, we have no other duty than to galvanize grassroots support in reinforcing a second term win for the NPP, he affirmed, stressing that the longer the NPP was kept in power the better it would be for the citizenry.



A track record of the performance of the Party, especially under the Fourth Republican Constitution, he said, had proven that: It is a party that could be trusted when given the mandate.



Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu pointed out that good development policies ought to be sustained for a considerable number of years to deliver the intended positive results.



Therefore, Ghanaians should vote massively for the Party in the upcoming General Election, to provide infrastructure to poor and deprived communities in every constituency, while continuing with other pro-poor programmes.

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
Fresh threats from the North towards the South bereft of even elementary morality " and "a slap" against the Seoul authorities. The Unification Ministry asked for the "immediate" withdrawal of the project.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - North Koreans are "angry and are printing "large-scale" anti-Seoul leaflets to launch them on the heads of "those in South Korea who are bereft of even elementary morality, reports North Koreas official KCNA news agency.

The agency announced the leaflet invasion plan this morning, to respond with a similar measure to those - especially refugees from the North - who from Seoul drop leaflets against Pyongyang from balloons.

In particular, the leaflets of the North have the task of ""indiscriminately slapped on the south Korean authorities who have played on the hope and expectations of all the compatriots placed on the inter-Korean agreement with wicked puns over the past two years."

The Unification ministry, which handles relations with the North, has asked for the "immediate" withdrawal of the project, expressing its displeasure at Pyongyangs decision.

In a further expression of this anger KCNA published photos of North Korean workers intent on printing piles of flyers and some photos of President Moon Jae-in thrown into a plastic bag along with cigarette butts.

The threatened rain of leaflets is the latest move by the North against the campaign of leaflets launched from the territory of the South. These flyers have provoked the North to end all relations and dialogue with the South and on June 16 last it even bombed the office for inter-Korean relations in Kaesong, also threatening a military invasion.

In reality, Pyongyang is pressing on the South to express its dissatisfaction with the United States. In 2018 and 2019, Northern leader Kim Jong-un met with US President Donald Trump, but he failed to obtain the hoped for benefits, especially the lifting or suspension of international sanctions for the regimes nuclear and missile programs. As a precondition for this, Washington demands North Korean disarmament.

Pyongyang's threats weaken Moon Jae-in's position. He has aimed aims to establish "irreversible peace" on the Korean peninsula, a re-edition of the Sunshine Policy inaugurated 20 years ago by his liberal predecessors.
The new book of former national security advisory John Bolton is slated for release on Tuesday, following a win in a legal battle against the Trump administration that sought to stop its distribution.

However, a PDF version of Bolton's memoir "The Room Where It Happened" has appeared and circulated online over the weekend, giving the public a free view of the book.

Simon & Schuster spokesperson Adam Rothberg on Sunday said the publishing company is "working assiduously to take down" the pirated copies of the book, the Associated Press reported.

It has yet to be determined whether the unauthorized release of Bolton's memoir will affect its sales. The book is now number 1 on Amazon's U.S. charts.

Piracy has long been a concern among publishers.

Last Saturday, a federal judge has denied the request of the Justice Department to halt the release and sale of Bolton's tell-all memoir that painted U.S. President Donald Trump as a "stunningly uninformed and mendacious" chief executive.

According to U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, thousands of copies of the book have already been printed and shipped out to distributors.

Thus, enforcing the government's appeal would be "impossible."

Striking a Deal

Bolton's book will give readers a peek on what went wrong between the country's relationship with Iran and North Korea.

Bolton was hired to be the President's national security adviser in the spring of 2018, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on both countries.

It was no secret that Bolton has spoke out of wanting to attack nuclear facilities in North Korea and Iran, which he believed could be driven over the brink by extreme sanctions.

But in his book, Bolton said Trump rejected the use of force and instead, set his priorities in making a deal that could garner huge success, even if it had flaws.

Bolton also alleged they they had to deter Trump from meeting the Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, over fears that the American-educated minister would outwit the President.

Pompeo: U.S. Secretary of State

In his memoir, the former national security adviser also mentioned of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called him an "ally" that privately criticized the President, The Hill reported.

Bolton also recounted a scenario, wherein Pompeo voiced his thoughts on resigning from his position in December 2018, when Trump agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping's plan of building concentration camps for Uighur Muslims.

The state secretary allegedly feared a possible rollback on restrictions imposed on Chinese telecommunications firms.

In one chapter of the book, Bolton cited Pompeo's role in firing the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last year.

He claimed the secretary tried to delay and prevent the ambassador's ousting, citing an instance where the top official dismissed accusations made by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer.

Nevertheless, the ambassador was fired six months ahead of her expected departure.

This revelation came at a time when Pompeo was criticized for firing State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who launched a probe against Pompeo and his wife's alleged misuse of the State Department resources as well as authorizing a multimillion-dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Related articles:
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Agence France-Presse)  Mon, June 22, 2020 16:07 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b2399 2 Art & Culture David-Zwirner,Jeff-Koons,artist,arts,sculpture,united-states Free

Jeff Koons unveiled a new sculpture of the Roman goddess Venus, entitled "Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red)", in the newly-launched online exhibition "Studio: Jeff Koons" hosted in David Zwirner's Online Viewing Room.

The thematic presentation offers an unprecedented look at the artistic practice of Koons, who notably became the world's most expensive living artist following the $91 million sale of "Rabbit" in May 2019.

"Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red)" is a large-scale balloon interpretation of the Paleolithic statuette Venus of Lespugue, which Koons completed earlier this year as part of his ongoing "Antiquity" series.

On public view for the first time in David Zwirner's digital showroom, "Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red)" reportedly sold for $8 million, marking the highest sale price for any single artwork sold online by the mega-gallery.

Koons' new sculpture may have also fetched a record price for any online viewing room sale to date, although several rival galleries have announced six- and seven-figure sales through their own digital showrooms in recent years.

Read also: Jeff Koons' controversial 'Bouquet of Tulips' unveiled in Paris

Gagosian announced in May that Cecily Brown's "Figures in a Landscape 1" realized $5.5 million through its online viewing platform, making it at the time the second-highest price ever paid publicly for a work by the contemporary British artist.

Hauser & Wirth reported earlier this June that Mark Bradford's mixed-media-on-canvas work "The Press of Democracy" sold for $5 million to a "highly respected collection" at the virtual Art Basel fair, which runs through Friday, June 26.

Meanwhile, David Zwirner has announced that it sold 10 of its 15 Basel offerings, which have collectively been estimated to bring in $28 million.

Among them are Kerry James Marshall's "Untitled (Blot)", which went to an unspecified American museum for $3 million; as well as Joan Mitchell's "Pastel" and Josef Albers's "City", which were both purchased for $1 million.

Additionally, David Zwirner had also launched "Basel Online: 15 Rooms" on its own digital platform, giving art collectors an in-depth look at each of the works on offer at Art Basel, and how they relate to each artist's practice.
For Dr. Evan Adams, the chief medical officer of British Columbias First Nations Health Authority, the COVID-19 virus isnt the primary issue facing Indigenous peoples.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

For Dr. Evan Adams, the chief medical officer of British Columbias First Nations Health Authority, the COVID-19 virus isnt the primary issue facing Indigenous peoples.

"In the past three months in Indigenous communities," Adams explains, "more people have died from overdoses than the COVID-19 virus because of the mental effects of the pandemic."

Adams, a member of the Tlaamin First Nation, was a part of a conference on the effect of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities. It was hosted by a coalition of researchers and political leaders working with the Association of Canadian Studies. It has been publishing weekly research on the pandemic since March. On June 16, the association partnered with research firm Leger to poll more 1,500 Canadians about their mental health since the pandemic started.

Researchers found that nearly one in five people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan said their mental health is worse due to the pandemic.

The poll also found that 35 per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan feel "stressed" and "worried" when they are out in public (compared with 50 per cent of Canadians) and 38 per cent are "personally afraid of contracting COVID-19." Nationally, the figure is at 52 per cent.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is that 40 per cent of people polled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan fear "the worst is yet to come"  the highest in the country  and 37 per cent believe "life will never return to normal."

Meanwhile, 51 per cent of Canadians think the worst is "now" or "behind us."

So, while the worst of this wave of COVID-19 is behind us, anxiety is the new pandemic.

Everyone has undoubtedly experienced stress during the last few months but  like every other consequence of COVID-19  Indigenous peoples experience deeper and more lasting effects.

Suicide and substance abuse in Indigenous communities are well-documented, but their relationships to the lack of mental health services and the ongoing effects of residential schools, the Indian Act, and a culture that demeans Indigenous peoples is less known. All contribute to higher rates of depression, trauma and abuse than anywhere in Canada.

Experts from the Association of Canadian Studies are calling the impact of COVID-19 a "syndemic" on Indigenous communities. Thats when a vulnerable population is faced with a sickness that threatens their health (such as a pandemic) and the two intersect to devastate that community.

A syndemic emerged, for example, when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed thousands of soldiers fighting on the battlefield in the First World War.

So, like then, Indigenous communities are fighting a war over mental health.

I spent this past week interviewing Indigenous peoples on the front lines of this battle.

One community member said she was scared to come south to Winnipeg even though there was no fresh food in her community.

Another said his Indigenous seniors residence ended virtually all services and supports and reduced staff when the pandemic started, leading to residents experiencing harassment and "hiding in their rooms."

An Indigenous youth said she has no summer job prospects and will have to couch-surf because she doesnt want to stay in a shelter or return to her abusive relationship.

One residential school survivor said she felt re-traumatized because her movement was restricted, she was cut off from her friends and family, and "I was constantly under threat, just like having the priest nearby."

The result, almost unilaterally among everyone I spoke to, was an urge to escape. Some told me they thought about drinking or using drugs (some for the first time in decades). A few did. All felt shame, depression and hopelessness.

Over the past three months Ive written a half-dozen of columns about the rise in poverty, conflicts with the police, and needle use during the pandemic in Indigenous communities in downtown Winnipeg  but now maybe you can understand why.

Stress, of course, isnt only being felt by Indigenous peoples but, due to past and present trauma and racism, we do experience it worse.

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.

To address this, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has partnered with the First Peoples Wellness Circle in northwestern Ontario to help people cope, by producing leaflets on the importance of family and culture.

Manitoba Health has a service for Indigenous clients called First Nations and Inuit Hope For Wellness which offers phone counselling in Cree, Ojibwa and Inuktitut.

Some First Nations have instituted their own crisis services, including Opaskwayak Cree Nation near The Pas.

This week, online talks have been offered on mental health in Ride Dont Hide and Spirit Week Manitoba, sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association. There are special talks by Indigenous poets such as Katherena Vermette and Duncan Mercredi. I am speaking at 8 p.m. Saturday.

The pandemic curve may be flat, but the syndemic curve is just beginning.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Fifty seven girls living at a government-run shelter in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur have tested positive for novel coronavirus. Among those tested positive for coronavirus, five girls, including two minors are pregnant. The two pregnant minors include an HIV positive girl. They are being treated in several hospitals in the district.

Kanpur DM Brahmdev Tiwari said, "57 girls have tested positive for COVID-19, which includes five girls found to be pregnant. This includes two minors and one HIV positive patient. They were sent by the Child Welfare Committees from Agra, Etah, Kannauj, Firozabad, Kanpur and were pregnant before they came to the shelter home," according to an India Today report. Tiwari further stated that these cases are under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act.

The girls are likely to have contracted coronavirus after the shelter home staff visited a Kanpur hospital with two girls where they came in contact with COVID patients.

This, however, is not the first time that a coronavirus cluster has been reported from this shelter home in Kanpur as a woman tested positive for coronavirus a week ago. A few more tests were conducted after this. On June 18, the test results found 33 more girls positive for the virus. Over the next two days, 28 more girls in the shelter home tested positive.

Kanpur Commissioner Sudhir Mahadev told India Today that an investigation will be carried out to ascertain if any officer or employee is found guilty in the matter.

Meanwhile, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has launched an attack on the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government over the matter. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra alleged that the facts are suppressed in the name of investigations at such government-run facilities.

Also read: India 'pharmacy of the world' during coronavirus pandemic: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
The warnings issued during the last bushfire season were confusing at times and in one case caused widespread panic and stress when a message was misinterpreted, councils have told a royal commission.

As the NSW mid-north coast battled bushfires in November, a number of people in Kempsey Shire thought they were being told to urgently evacuate over a large area when they were not at risk.

The Kempsey Shire Council said the bulk text message and phone warning, sent on a day of catastrophic fire danger across parts of the state, caused significant panic and stress as a large number of people evacuated to the Kempsey Showground.

Pictured: Residents defend a property near Taree north of from a bushfire at Hillsville, 120km south of Kempsey, NSW, on November 12, 2019. A state of emergency was declared the day before and residents were warned of 'catastrophic' fire danger

A nursing home that was also not at risk was about to evacuate its residents before that was stopped, the council told the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements.

'Whilst the intent of the message was appropriate, and it is noted that the message was not an evacuation order, unfortunately due to misinterpretation by those that received the message this resulted in widespread panic and stress, which for a large part of the area of distribution was not required,' its submission said.

The confusing nature of the national bushfire warning system was the area of greatest concern to local government out of the Black Summer bushfires, the Local Government Association of Queensland said.

LGAQ manager Mike Lollback said councils reported messages were sent out in an inconsistent way and were confusing at times.

'(One) council basically said that 'watch and act' and 'leave now' were almost being simultaneously broadcast on different radios, which made it particularly difficult,' he said on Monday.

Pictured: examples of NSW RFS emergency bush fire warning texts. Councils have raised concerns that the community sometimes misunderstood bulk text messages, and did not understand bushfire alert levels, particularly the 'watch and act' message.

Other councils also raised concerns that the community in general did not understand the bushfire alert levels and messaging, particularly over 'watch and act'.

'Council switchboards were being inundated with questions being asked about 'what are we supposed to do - do we watch, do we act, do we leave, do we stay, do we defend',' Mr Lollback said.

'It created that confusion about exactly what people should be doing.'

Chair Mark Binskin said the commission was concerned about the time it was taking to get a consistent national message and wording for warnings.

Pictured: smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland, Victoria in January this year. With catastrophic fires all over Australia during the months-long bushfire emergency, people were stressed. Councils say they were inundated with calls to explain a 'watch and act'

Pictured: a volunteer firefighter in Sydney's Blue Mountains fighting the catastrophic Gospers Mountain fire in November 2019

'It's taking us at our count at the moment at least four or five years to try and align just the wording for the community to have an understanding of what's meant in preparing to, leaving, watch and act and what that all means,' Mr Binskin said.

A number of councils faced significant issues during the bushfires because of telecommunications outages and the loss of power, while many experienced lengthy road closures.

Eurobodalla Shire Council's Warren Sharpe described the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the NSW south coast in January as a 'Herculean effort' amid the challenges of no fuel, power, telecommunications or highway access to the north, west and south.

The Wollondilly Shire Council in NSW said an evacuation alert on December 19 caused a 15-kilometre traffic jam as thousands of people tried to leave at once with cars at a standstill and running out of petrol.

The gridlock cleared 'just in time' before the fires went through.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 15:55:12|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Chairman of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan Iskhak Masaliev receives an interview with Xinhua in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, June 19, 2020.(Photo by Roman/Xinhua)

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The signing of a so-called human rights act related to China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region by the United States has interfered in China's internal affairs, experts have said.

"Intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states is one of the most dangerous actions of our generation," Tursunali Kuziev, a professor at Uzbekistan State University of World Languages, warned.

Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, ethnicity or religion at all, but about combating violent terrorism and separatism, which jeopardized the safety of the people there, Kuziev said.

According to the Uzbek expert, terrorism and extremism are common enemies of human society. Under this situation, China has the right to take all measures to maintain national stability and security.

Similarly, Chairman of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan Iskhak Masaliev said the U.S. bill is a gross interference in the internal affairs of China.

Masaliev said that he has often visited China and noticed the fundamental changes that are taking place in Xinjiang. The quality of life has been improved for the ethnic groups in Xinjiang, he added.

Since China is a sovereign state with its own vision of development, all actions are the internal affairs of China, the Kyrgyz statesman stressed, adding that the bill on Xinjiang is another evidence of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

Also, Afghan expert Shamsul Haq Arianfar, the author of multiple books, said no country has the right to interfere in other's internal affairs.

"It is a breach of international law to interfere in other country's internal affairs and the United States can't be exempted," Arianfar said.

Any country, big or small, has the right to introduce reforms within its territory to safeguard its sovereignty, to choose the path for its development and to make decisions for ensuring its national interests, the expert said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday said the so-called "Uygur Human Rights Act of 2020" deliberately denigrates the human rights conditions in China's Xinjiang, viciously attacks the Chinese government's Xinjiang policy, blatantly violates international law and basic norms in international relations, and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. Enditem
People collect trash that had washed up after storm Matmo made landfall in Binh Dinh Province, next to Phu Yen, November 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Huu Khoa.

Phu Yen has become Vietnams second locality to partner with the World Wild Fund for Nature for reducing non-biodegradable waste.

The south-central province's participation in the Urban Plastic Reduction Program was made official on Thursday.

A draft of an action plan to reduce non-biodegradable waste by 30 percent by 2025, which entails "smart solutions" tailored for each locality in the province has been drawn up, the WWF said in a statement.

Nguyen Chi Hien, Vice Chairman of the province People's Committee, said the plan has five main components, including communication campaigns directed at locals and education programs for children to raise awareness of the problem and trial programs to collect, sort and transport plastic waste to designated disposal sites.

A monitoring body for plastic pollution, a management system for plastic waste and increasing research capacity would also be focuses of the plan, he said.

Ta Dinh Thi, general director of the General Department of Sea and Islands, said pollution cannot be resolved without strong policies and laws.

"Vietnam has a relatively adequate legal framework for waste management in general. But supervision, inspection and control are difficult and ineffective."

His department would coordinate with other agencies to support Phu Yens plan to combat the plastic issue.

The province, like many coastal regions in Vietnam, faces a dire situation due to its poor management of plastic waste.

Socio-economic development has increased its demand for goods, raw materials and energy, and it has seen solid waste increase annually by 10-16 percent, according to a study by the Center for Northern Environmental Monitoring in 2018.

A WWF survey conducted in the province's capital Tuy Hoa last year found plastic waste accounting for almost 20 percent of domestic solid waste, 60 percent being plastic bags, cups and straws. Notably, 80 percent of the plastic items were of low-quality, not recyclable and difficult to decompose.

The dominance of plastic in domestic waste in Tuy Hoa was rising, the survey found.

Van Ngoc Thinh, country director of WWF-Vietnam, said: "We hope there will be more localities participating in the Urban Plastic Reduction Program in the near future to create a global movement to encourage the entire society to deal with plastic pollution and reduce plastic emissions into the environment."

Last year Phu Quoc, Vietnams largest island, became the first locality in the country and the third in the region after Patong city in Thailand and Donsol city in the Philippines to join the program.

WWF helps mobilize funds and provides technical support to help the program participants get rid of plastic, according to Ta Tuan Anh, communications manager at WWF-Vietnam.

It is currently in talks with six other cities and provinces including Da Nang and protected marine areas Con Dao and Cu Lao Cham islands.

The program targets signing up 25 urban areas around the world and helping them turn plastic-free by 2025, and increasing the number to 1,000 by 2030.

Each Vietnamese person consumed only 3.8 kg of plastic in 1990, but 28 years later this had risen to 41.3 kg, according to a report released last year by Ipsos Business Consulting, a French growth strategy consulting firm.

Phu Yen is not the only locality drowning in waste in Vietnam.

Urban areas, home to a third of Vietnams 95 million population, discard 38,000 tons of domestic waste every day, or more than half of the country's total.

The sheer volume has begun to overwhelm landfills in the country, with cities running out of space for trash and people living in the vicinity of landfills complaining bitterly about the odor and health impacts.

By 2050 there would be more plastic than fish by weight in the seas, according to a 2016 report by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Another 2016 study by them along with McKinsey Company found that every minute one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our ocean.
The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin has said it was unfair to have a one size fits all rule in relation to the number of people who can attend church.

Some churches in the diocese of Dublin are so small that they would not 50 people while others could fit 1,500, he told RTE radios Morning Ireland.

We've worked very hard to prepare churches - to put signage, to arrange stewarding, to ensure there is very little interaction and if you've got a church 1,500 people and only 50 people are allowed to enter, it is surprising.

We have to find a way in which you have some relationship between the size of the church and the number of people who will come. Now, I'm not advocating huge numbers, I believe, particularly in the early period, the next three weeks, we should allow this time to settle in so that we can be comfortable with these are managed.

But I do believe that compared to other situations and what you see, for example, retail outlets brimming with people, that this is unfair also to the extraordinary effort that has been put in by priests and people in preparing churches.

All I can see is we need to find some sort of way there can be some proportion to the size of the church - I would be against very large gatherings.

Believers have been very, very patient over the last few months. People have a right to be able to attend worship. The archbishop said he thought there was room to be flexible especially with very large churches.

David Pierrepoint, Church of Ireland archdeacon of Dublin agreed with archbishop Martin pointing out with some large churches like Christchurch Cathedral it would be unfair to make someone at the door with a clicker machine telling people they could not enter once the figure of 50 had been reached.

One size did not fit all, he said.
(TNS)  When a Toledo police officer shot and killed Lamar Richardson in July 2018, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz and Police Chief George Kral called a 10 p.m. news conference and released dashboard camera footage of the incident the same day it happened.Tensions between citizens and police werent as high nationwide two summers ago as they are now, but the police killing of Mr. Richardson, a 25-year-old black Toledoan, brought several hundred people to the streets in North Toledo. There were rumors swirling about what happened, and the crowd was demanding answers.The unedited dashboard camera footage showed Mr. Richardson, who police were pursuing as a suspect in a series of convenience store robberies, was holding a gun when he was shot. Although the gun wasn't pointed at officers, Chief Kral said at the time "that gun could be raised at an instant," and officers have only seconds to respond.Toledo City Councilman Larry Sykes said the standoff between upset residents and Toledo police officers was growing heated by the minute that night, and the citys decision to release the footage settled the community because they could see for themselves exactly what transpired.Mr. Kapszukiewicz said he thinks back to that night a lot.I believe that our decision that night to release this information immediately, within four or five hours of the event, I think it played an important role in preventing a riot and preventing the worst violence that we are seeing now across the country, he said. I think what Toledo did that night could be an example to other police departments in how to proceed in events like this.Nearly two years later, the mayor is facing mounting pressure to release body camera footage from May 30, when Toledo police officers clashed with demonstrators protesting police misconduct in the wake of George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Officers used tear gas, rubber bullets, and wooden bullets to disperse crowds.The department is investigating two officers for their conduct on that day  one of whom can be seen in cellphone video hitting a protester with his helmet  and the mayor said body camera footage will not be released until that process is complete. He believes the investigation will be done by the end of July.If someone is making the connection, You gave that video in five hours, its because in this case we are knee deep in an investigation of potential wrongdoing that simply didnt exist in 2018, Mr. Kapszukiewicz said. At the end of the process, all the information will be released. But unfortunately doing it any sooner will jeopardize the investigation that is occurring today.While dashboard cameras have been in use for nearly 20 years, body-worn cameras have become increasingly common at law enforcement agencies as taxpayers and lawmakers demand more accountability from their public safety forces. The Toledo Police Department purchased its first set of body cameras in 2015 and has expanded their use since.But many want to see more officers wearing them, and more of their recordings made public. Local activists and some elected officials are pushing for all officers to be equipped with the cameras.The use of body cameras needs to be emphasized, said Zakiya Hatten with Toledo Together, a social justice advocacy group created by University of Toledo students. It will hold them more accountable.Mr. Sykes on Tuesday will introduce legislation that, if passed by city council, would mandate all Toledo police officers wear and turn on body cameras, unless doing so would jeopardize their safety or the safety of others.The SWAT team doesn't wear cameras, nor does the gang squad. They should wear cameras, Mr. Sykes said.He said the cameras protect the officers, protect the citizens, and protect taxpayer dollars that might otherwise be spent on lawsuits he believes could be avoided by making department video public.Governor Mike DeWine also called for all police officers and state troopers to have body cameras.Its an effort both Chief Kral and Mayor Kapszukiewicz say they support.Body cams protect police and they protect the citizens, and they produce an accountability that we all should demand. I want every single one of our officers to have body cameras as soon as possible, the mayor said. They are a crucial part of the trust were trying to build.But the technology is only as good as the policies behind it, said Karhlton Moore, executive director of Ohios Office of Criminal Justice Services, which helps staff the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board.The board developed standards it recommends law enforcement agencies follow when implementing a policy for body cameras. The key takeaway, Mr. Moore said, is that the agency should have a clear policy, communicate that policy to the public, and then be consistent with it.So if its up to an individual officer as to when they turn their camera on, thats not going to have the impact that you want. If footage is never released or never available, that's not going to have the impact you want, he said. So the policy determines whether it creates or improves trust in the community.And that policy is up to each agency to set.There have been several instances in the last month of use of force by police in the Toledo area, and both the press and the public have called for the release of department video that shows what happened. Each agency has handled those requests differently. Toledo officials say body camera footage from the May 30 protests is part of an internal investigation and wont be released until that is complete. The Ottawa County prosecutor released body camera footage from two incidents involving Put-in-Bay police officers , one on June 6 and one over Memorial Day weekend. Both videos are nearly 30 minutes long. The Sylvania Township Police Department directed all requests for body or dashboard camera footage from a June 8 officer-involved shooting to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is reviewing the incident. The bureau has not yet released the footage. Michigan State Police on June 16 released surveillance video from a nearby business that shows an officer-involved shooting June 15. The video is one minute and 15 seconds. The Oregon Police Department on June 18 released two videos, each about five minutes, that captured an officer-involved shooting June 13.UT student Jayla Few, a member of Toledo Together, said the policies that govern body and dashboard camera footage need to be part of the local conversation about police reform, along with the push to have more officers use them.She believes the court system is inclined to believe a police officers word over the word of a suspect, and having official footage can validate what took place during a traffic stop or an officers response to a 911 call.Ms. Few said officers who misuse their cameras or intentionally block them should face discipline. She also wants police departments to release full videos when footage is requested, not just short clips.The recorder should be on all the time. It shouldnt stop, she said.William Balling, chief of police in Sidney, Ohio, is president of the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police and a proponent of body cameras. They promote accountability and transparency and cut down on citizen complaints, he said.But both he and Mr. Moore said citizen privacy and the expense of the technology must be part of the conversation.The cameras themselves are the least expensive part of the operation, Chief Balling said. The ones TPD use cost about $650 each. The larger cost is the storage space, and the personnel costs to review videos before releasing them to the public.The true cost of the system is the back end. If officers are on the scene of a situation, the call lasts for an hour, and theres four officers on the scene, then you have four hours of high-definition video that you have to store, and that takes up a lot of space, Chief Balling said. I know a lot of people say they should be on from start to finish of a shift. That takes an immense amount of data storage space, and the expense is immense.He said he knows more departments in Ohio would like to expand their use of body cameras, but they simply dont have the budget. In Toledo, citizen groups and some council members are calling for a reassessment of how the police department spends its money.Privacy and accuracy is also a concern, Chief Balling said. Almost every aspect of a body camera video is public record, but he worries about releasing footage that would re-victimize someone whose traumatic experience was captured when officers respond to a call for help.State public record laws do allow departments to redact footage that would identify an alleged victim of sex offenses, stalking, or domestic violence.Chief Balling also cautioned that the cameras can only capture one vantage point of what may be a complicated situation.Im very much an advocate for the body cameras. I like what has happened with our department with them, he said. Its a very good thing, but its been very expensive and very time consuming.
The University of Pennsylvania is offering a free, four-week virtual summer academy to public high school seniors in Philadelphia. It will include career and college preparation and academic enrichment. Read more

This spring was tough on high school students, particularly those beginning their college searches. Campus tours went virtual. SAT testing was largely shut down.

And there was the transition to virtual learning, something that proved especially challenging for Philadelphia public school students, some of whom lacked internet access and computers.

At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators wanted to do something to help rising seniors in Philadelphias public high schools close any gap that may have been opened by the coronavirus pandemic.

Penn is offering a free, four-week virtual summer academy  including college and career preparation and academic enrichment  for up to 2,500 seniors in the citys district and charter high schools. (On Wednesday, the university announced it would open the program to rising seniors in the citys parochial schools, too.) For students unable to commit to the three hours a day of instruction, Penn also is offering a free How to Apply to College course that students can take on their own time and at their own pace during the summer. That is open to all 14,000 public school seniors in Philadelphia. (This program also is open to parochial school seniors.)

About 600 seniors have registered for the four-week program  which runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with breaks, from July 6 to 31  and 400 for the self-paced course. But many of those who have registered come from the citys competitive magnet high schools. Penn officials said they want to broaden their reach and draw students from every high school in the city.

 READ MORE: We wouldnt shut down: How the Class of 2020 is grappling with what was lost due to coronavirus

Every single student in the city has talents that we know it will be our privilege to nurture, said Valarie E. Swain-Cade McCoullum, Penns vice provost for student engagement.

Students dont need to meet any test score or GPA requirements. McCoullum said the $1.15 million cost of the program is being covered by Penn.

McCoullum said there have not been any applicants from some neighborhood high schools, including Sayre and Strawberry Mansion. She has seen only two from West Philadelphia, she said.

The issue is especially important to McCoullum, a graduate of Philadelphias Girls High who taught English in the School District before moving into higher education.

 READ MORE: Why many Philly students arent logging on for school, and what that could mean for September

These are my kids, said McCoullum, who has been at Penn since 1977. I am them.

Penn provost Wendell Pritchett, with whom McCoullum worked to develop the academy, also has a strong connection to the School District. He is the son of two now-retired Philadelphia teachers and once served on the School Reform Commission, the districts former governing body.

Eight of Penns 12 graduate and professional schools, including law, medicine, and dental, are developing career content, McCoullum said. Wharton, Penns business school, has created an applied economics and finance course. Penn faculty, staff, graduate and professional students will teach the courses.

Students who complete the academy will get a credit on their high school transcript and a Penn certificate. They will also leave with a draft personal statement they can use on their college applications and a professional resume, McCoullum said.

Both School District and university officials said such a large-scale and comprehensive effort done in partnership with a university  one of the most highly selective institutions in the nation  is unprecedented for Philadelphia.

Thats definitely a new thing, and were excited to partner with them, said Ali Robinson-Rogers, the districts executive director for post-secondary readiness.

She said the program may not have drawn applicants from some schools because students have other opportunities. There are eight other summer programs in the district, and students can also participate in a summer youth employment program for which they earn a stipend. (Students in the four-week Penn program can apply for stipends through the employment program.) Internet access could be a barrier for some students, too, she said.

Robinson-Rogers said the district will continue to make students, parents, and guidance counselors aware of the opportunity. Were going to do everything we can to support this program, she said.
South Korea has confirmed a second wave of coronavirus as the health minister warns of a 'grave situation' in the country.

The Minister of Health and Welfare Park Neung-hoo said a total of 90 imported cases were identified over the past week, showing a sharp rise from the previous week's 48.

'The government faces a grave situation as health officials need not only to contain locally transmitted infections, but also manage imported cases,' Park said in a government meeting on COVID-19 responses.

In a separate briefing, Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged that the country was now going through a second wave of the virus, following a surge in late February and March centered around the southeastern city of Daegu.

People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the new coronavirus pray during a service at the Chogyesa temple in South Korea today

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), reported 17 new infections - 11 local and 6 imported - in the last 24 hours, which raised the nation's total to 12,438. The death toll remained unchanged at 280.

It comes as the mayor of South Korea's capital fears the country is losing control over a virus resurgence and said Seoul will reimpose stronger social distancing measures if the daily jump in infections doesn't come below an average of 30 over the next three days.

'If Seoul gets penetrated (by the virus), the entire Republic of Korea gets penetrated,' Park Won-soon said Monday in a televised briefing, referring to South Korea by its formal name.

A notice on precautions against the new coronavirus is displayed at a subway station in South Korea today

He also lamented what he described as complacency of citizens in social distancing, citing an increase in public transportation usage that he says has been approaching last year's levels in recent weeks.

Citing research by health experts, Park said the country could be possibly reporting as much as 800 new cases a day a month from now if it fails to stem current trends in transmissions.

He said the basic reproduction number of virus carriers, which measures the number of infections caused by an individual, has reached nearly 1.8 for the period between April 30 and June 11. Any number above 1 indicates a growing epidemic.

The country has been reporting around 40 to 50 new cases per day since late May, mostly from the Seoul metropolitan area, where about half of South Korea's 51 million people live.

South Korea was reporting around 500 new cases per day in early March but managed to control the outbreak with an active testing and contact tracing campaign.

Today the city of Daejeon, south of the capital, announced it would ban gatherings in public spaces such as museums and libraries after a number of small virus clusters were discovered.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:19:48|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

YAOUNDE, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon police said on Monday they have seized a "huge quantity" of fake anti-malaria medication chloroquine and nivaquine in Douala, the commercial capital.

Police commissioner, Richard Djonwe told reporters the operation was successfully carried out thanks to a tip-off from locals.

He said, thousands of the fake tablets were smuggled into the city from neighbouring Nigeria. Those suspects caught with the drugs have been remanded in custody.

Officials said Cameroon has seen a rise in the production and proliferation of fake chloroquine, as people rush to obtain the anti-malaria drug in the unproven belief it can prevent the infection of COVID-19.

Last week, police seized 41 cartons of fake paracetamol in the city, according to the police.

In April, health authorities in the country shut down six pharmaceutical companies that were producing and selling counterfeit drugs. Enditem
LOS ANGELES, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The United States political system is ever changing and in Marcelo Brazzis newly released book, The Liberal Record: How Liberals Changed the World, he dives deep into the historical past and present of Americas politics by thoroughly examining the political party history and current division. Brazzis enlightening book is backed by years of research, illustrative graphs and educational data which demonstrates to readers how liberals demanded change and were successful in multiple avenues of politics while shining a light on the political divide that has been prevalent throughout American history.



Brazzis debut book has already received numerous glowing reviews from reviewers; Maria Beltran from Readers Favorite Review advocates, A must-read for everyone. A highly interesting and informative book. and a reviewer from HUGEOrange Publication Review praises the book, A powerful read. I devoured this book. It was hard for me to put it down. Extensively researched.



The Liberal Record illustrates the true accomplishments and policies liberals have made and compares them to the conservative agenda. The book not only examines government issues, but it also extends to related topics such as the role of conservatives in the crashes of NASA spaceships, how DNA mutations played a role in changing the American society and how the free market in Medicare drug sales was prohibited among other quintessential matters.



Grady Harp from Hall of Fame Top 100 Reviewers expresses his admiration by calling The Liberal Record, A brilliant book, very highly recommended. Brazzis book also received positive remarks from former Detroit Free Press anchor John Kelly who acclaimed, This book is essential reading.



My book is about the philosophies between liberals and conservatives, said Brazzi. It illustrates the true definition of who liberals and conservatives are through public records and facts.



The Liberal Record will educate readers by setting the record straight with actual data, events, facts and accounts and those who enjoy learning will be fascinated by the research presented throughout Brazzis text. To learn more, please visit https://www.theliberalrecord.com/.



The Liberal Record: How Liberals Changed the World

By Marcelo Brazzi

ISBN: 9781796035148 (softcover); 9781796035155 (hardcover); 9781796035131 (eBook)

Available at the Xlibris Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble



About the author

Marcelo Brazzi was a Spacecraft Engineer on NASAs Apollo program and a Computer Science instructor at California State University. Brazzi also spent his time ascending Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest and photographing total solar eclipses around the world. Brazzi decided to write his first book, The Liberal Record, to educate readers on the misinformation and twisted history that has been the narrative for the past few decades. His book provides comprehensive content and is packed with tables, graphs and charts that will teach the US electorate in an accurate and fully informed way regarding the record of liberals and conservatives. Brazzi resides in Southern California and manages real estate investments, writing and spending time with his children and grandchildren.



Xlibris Publishing, an Author Solutions, LLC imprint, is a self-publishing services provider created in 1997 by authors, for authors. By focusing on the needs of creative writers and artists and adopting the latest print-on-demand publishing technology and strategies, we provide expert publishing services with direct and personal access to quality publication in hardcover, trade paperback, custom leather-bound and full-color formats. To date, Xlibris has helped to publish more than 60,000 titles. For more information, visit xlibris.com or call 1-888-795-4274 to receive a free publishing guide.

###

Attachment
SHS says the book 'will be of major importance for specialists in Egyptian history and Islamic culture more widely,' and 'any reader would learn a lot from it'

Egyptian historian Khaled Fahmy, professor of Modern Arabic Studies at Cambridge University, has won the Social History Society (SHS) Book Prize for his book In the Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt, which was released by California University Press in 2018.

The announcement took place at the annual conference of the SHS, which was held online due to the measures put in place by the British government to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In a phone call from London, Fahmy expressed to Ahram Online his delight at winning the award, especially since it is a prize given to books on general social history, and not only books specialised in Arab and Islamic social history.

This is an important prize because it is given for any book on social history written in English, he said.

The book is being translated into Arabic, and is expected to be published later this year, according to Fahmy.

In its reasoning for awarding the book, the SHS said "This is a highly original work, based upon extensive and thorough research which sheds new light on the development of the modern Egyptian state in the 19th century and the accompanying cultural and social changes, especially concerning health and the law. It focuses on the place of forensic medicine, and specifically autopsy, in the modernisation of Egypt. Convincingly, it challenges beliefs that the change was due to European influence and British colonialism, rooting it rather in Egyptian culture, in rulers desire for independent power within the Ottoman Empire, and in the branch of Islamic law in use in Egypt. The social history content focuses particularly on the ways in which ordinary Egyptians used their rights to these practices to insist on justice, for example in cases of murder, when they believed autopsy would be helpful. The primary source base is extensive and impressive. Engaging case-study vignettes illustrate the myriad ways in which 'non-elite Egyptians' sought to appropriate or resist state impositions."

The SHS concluded that this book "will be of major importance for specialists in Egyptian history and Islamic culture more widely, and accessible to others. The committee agreed that any reader would learn a lot from."

The Social History Society's Book Prize recognises innovative scholarship in the fields of social and cultural history. The prize is awarded by a panel of judges, who look for the best original work of historical research published in the preceding calendar year. The only stipulations are that the book must be written in English by a scholar normally resident in the UK, and must be at least the authors second history book. This years prize recognises books published in 2017.

Fahmy says the idea for the book started with his first book, All the Pasha's Men, which followed the history of the Egyptian Army in the first half of the 19th century.

Fahmy said that "the book touched on political history, but it was intended to be mainly a social history of the army, and the idea was whether it was possible to write a history of the army from the perspective of its soldiers.

Fahmy said that the official history of the army is known, but what he wanted was to get into the experience of the soldiers when they were conscripted, when they were trained, and also their actual experience on the battlefield.

But the chapter that he liked most in his work was the one that covered events after the battle, which was a chapter that relied heavily on medical sources and aimed to understand not the soldiers indoctrinations or ideology, but their actual corporal experience and that of their wives.

"I got interested in this material through these sources and got absorbed in it."

At this point, Fahmy started to believe that "medicine can actually allow us to write a history of Egyptian modernisation in the 19th century, which is a big topic that is usually approached from an intellectual and political point of view. Typically we get the stories of great reformers, with Europe looming very large and educational missions to France and other parts of Europe coming back to spread the word and enlighten the masses, enlighten reformers, rulers and their families."

Although Fahmy says he appreciates all this material, he wanted to understand how these reforms were perceived by people, and believed that medicine can allow me to do this more than other fields, because medicine is quintessentially a modern science that by its very nature touches people, literally. Daily life changed in Cairo as much as it did in London and Paris, with hygiene reforms, vaccinations against smallpox, census-taking, and new hospitals, which were measures that could not be avoided by the average average people.

"We have the official narrative, the narrative of the doctors -- most of them European and some Egyptian -- and the patrons who financed these hospitals. We have their accounts of how people perceived these new measures. The people usually come across in these narratives as either ignorant or backwards, mired in their superstitions, or ungrateful recipients of these wonderful medical techniques."

In order to write such a book, Fahmy had to go through very rich archival material, which he was able to find in the National Archives in Cairo during his sabbatical years between Oxford and the US.

He explains that he was very fortunate in his quest, as he stumbled across a rich trove of documents that included medical reports written by army doctors.

He tracked the paper trail and wanted to know what happened to these doctors.

"I was keen to find out the experience of average people and I asked around about where one could find such information. I was given very valuable advice: to seek out police records, which document the process of investigating serious crimes and include forensic medical records, so I searched for them. The archives in Egypt are huge and are not indexed. There are checklists but no indexes, which makes the process more difficult but more fun, as you keep discovering things. It is a constant quest. "

Fahmy said that the narration in police records is fascinating. "There were lengthy police reports from Cairo and the countryside. I found a huge collection, which indicates that the state was getting bigger and the police were getting their act together and keeping records with forensic medical reports. I was stunned by how professional they looked and how accurate they were.

Some of the records were very detailed. For example, the case record for a murder locates the place of the wounds between ribs. I was curious who these doctors were, where they were trained, and how they ended up writing these reports," Fahmy explains.

This led Fahmy to the connection between medicine and law. He started asking questions about the nature of the legal system, what is this legal system because this isnt Sharia court records, these are police reports being forwarded to legal bodies, called councils so I wanted to understand that legal system and the relation of it with the Sharia court.

Fahmy's quest to understand the nature of the legal system ended up with him concluding that is not a secular one and it is pretty much still a Sharia law courts but a modern Islamic/legal system.

At this point came the question that he was most interested in, which is how the people understood this system and to his surprise he found that the people utilized these new measure in their benefit.

"Many of these medical investigations and medical examinations were not on behest of the state but upon a request from the people to answer and prove a case that they otherwise couldnt prove in the absence of witness.

So, Fahmy attempts to answer big questions about Islam and modernity from the street level as opposed to the top-down view of most academics.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Poco might not launch its flagship model Poco F2 Pro in India anytime soon. Earlier in June, the company teased the arrival of a new phone on Twitter but that doesn't seem to be happening now. Poco General Manager C Manmohan has revealed in an interview that the Poco F2 Pro will not be launched in India.

In an interview with PhoneRadar, Manmohan revealed that a new device will be exclusively launched for Indian customers but that would not be the Poco F2 Pro. The device was launched in European markets last month.

Although Manmohan didn't specify the name of the model it is planning to launch in India, the speculations are rife that the company could launch the Poco M2 Pro in the country. It is also being speculated that the M2 Pro would be the rebranded version of the Redmi Note 9 Pro.

Earlier, the Poco M2 Pro was listed on India's BIS certification website. It was first spotted by MySmartPrice, which claimed that the name of the device was not mentioned on the list but the model number M2003J6CI suggested that it could be M2 Pro. Poco is also planning to launch the Poco Pop Buds along with the upcoming smartphone. This would be the first audio device by the company.

Coming back to the Poco F2 Pro which was rumored to make its way to the Indian smartphone, the device was launched in Europe for EUR 499 ( approximately Rs. 41,500. The Poco F2 Pro features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a Full HD+ resolution. It has very thin bezels with absolutely no cutouts for punch hole cameras as it comes with a pop-up selfie camera.

The Poco F2 Pro is powered by Snapdragon 865 chipset paired to UFS 3.1 type storage and LPDDR5 RAM. The smartphone also arrives with a liquid cooling system for improved performance. In terms of optics, the Poco F2 Pro features a quad-camera setup on the rear which comprises of a 64-megapixel Sony IMX686 sensor primary camera which is placed next to 13-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 5-megapixel macro camera and a depth sensor. It features a 20-megapixel pop-up camera on the front.

The Poco F2 Pro runs on MIUI based on Android 10 out of the box. The device also comes with support for Wifi6 and Super Bluetooth.
Shares of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals rose 35% on Monday after the Indian drugmaker said it has launched an antiviral drug Favipiravir for the treatment of mild to moderate covid-19 patients. Drug major Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has become the first Indian company to commercially launch an antiviral drug - Favipiravir with brand name FabiFlu - for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals share price opened 10% higher at Rs 450 against previous close of 409.10 on BSE. Later, due to huge bidding for the share, the upper circuit of the stock was revised to 35%. At 11;36 am, the midcap stock was stuck in upper circuit of 35% at a price of Rs 552 on BSE.

Glenmark's FabiFlu approved for COVID-19 treatment in India; priced at Rs 103 a tablet

Glenmark Pharma share is trading higher than its 5 day, 20 day, 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages. The mid cap stock has lost 6% in last one year and fallen 35.38% since the beginning of this year.

However, it has gained 33.73% in last one month. The stock has been gained 19.63% in the last 4 days. Market cap of the firm rose to Rs 13,274 crore on BSE. Total 0.20 lakh shares changed hands amounting to turnover of Rs 90.75 lakh. The stock hit its 52-week high of Rs 517.70 on June 21, 2019 and 52 week low of Rs 168 on March 13, 2020.

The company received marketing and manufacturing approval from the Indian drug regulator, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and launched the product in the Indian market on June 20.

Hetero, Cipla get DCGI nod to manufacture remdesivir to treat COVID-19 patients in India
The 50-person limit for churches is likely to be revisited by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) when it meets on Thursday.

The Government asked NPHET to give further consideration to the maximum number of people who can attend church and religious services.

The maximum attendance in any indoor space will be 50 from next Monday  increasing to 100 three weeks later.

There is a concern as the virus is known to spread when people are at close quarters in an enclosed space for a prolonged period.

Large churches, however, can accommodate many more than 50 or 100 people, even with strict social distancing. Services last less than 90 minutes, said a government spokesperson.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin described the 50-person limit for churches as strange and disappointing.

The Dublin archbishop said people have been looking forward to being able to join fully in congregational worship: This is something that is very important for their spiritual life and personal wellbeing and is indeed effectively their right.

It is obviously disappointing that with the reopening for public worship there is a blanket restriction to the participation of a maximum of 50 in these first weeks.

He said it seems strange that a church with a capacity of 1,500 people can only have 50 people when there are large retail outlets brimming with people.

He added: I hope that it will be possible to come to a more reasonable and responsible situation in which numbers permitted to attend Mass could be proportionate to the size of each church.

He is also concerned that in a parish of more than 10,000 members, just 50 might be able to attend Mass.

Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Dublin, David Pierpoint, said churches may have to turn people away when they reach the limit.

The archbishop said a huge effort had been made to make churches safe and that should be included in the considerations.

Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Dublin, David Pierpoint, agreed with the Catholic's archbishops views on the 50-person limit for churches when speaking on RTE radio.

He said there appears to be some sort of anomaly with the Government's plan to reopen society and business, with churches restricted to 50 people, no matter what their size.

He said he does not doubt that people will have to be turned away from Christ Church Cathedral and St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin if the 50-person rule remains.

It would be very sad to have to have somebody at the door with a clicking machine and saying: 'Sorry, we've had our 50 people, you cannot come in'.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda on Monday criticised former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress party and said they should stop repeatedly insulting the security forces and questioning their valour.

In a message posted on Twitter, Nadda said, Please stop insulting of forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes. Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.Its never too late to improve.

Dear Dr. Singh and Congress Party,



Please stop insulting our forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes.



Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.



Its never too late to improve.  Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) June 22, 2020

The tweet was a reaction to a statement by Singh about the violent face-off between Indian and the Chinese troops in Ladakh on June 15 in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed.

Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should always be mindful of the implications of his words, a reference to the controversy stocked by Modis comments at a meeting of all political parties on Friday.

The former prime minister also said the government must rise to the occasion to ensure justice for Col B Santhosh Babu and the 19 other soldiers killed in action.

The BJP reacted by accusing the Congress of politicising the issue.

One only wishes that Dr Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrender hundred square kilometres of Indias land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013! Nadda said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
By John Burton





The theatrical destruction by North Korea of the inter-Korean liaison office in Gaeseong last week carries a clear message: Pyongyang is frustrated about its apparent inability to get the international sanctions regime against it eased.



The crisis has been building for some time. To understand why, it is useful to briefly review the history of the sanctions policy. Although the U.S. has been applying unilateral sanctions against North Korea for decades, it was only in 2006 that the United Nations began applying international sanctions in response to North Korea's first nuclear test.



The U.N. sanctions initially applied to technology and materials that could be used to support the North's nuclear program. But as Pyongyang continued to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, new U.N. sanctions were added. By 2016, these expanded sanctions were aimed at not only the North's military sector, but also the civilian economy.



A key turning point came in 2017 during the height of tensions caused by an accelerated series of nuclear and missile tests by the North. The U.N. approved measures proposed by the U.S. to severely limit imports by North Korea of crude oil and refined petroleum products as well as many types of machinery.



The new sanctions threatened to devastate the North's already fragile agricultural sector since the banned energy products were needed to produce necessary products such as fertilizers. This increased the prospects of growing hunger when the North already could not feed about a third of its 25 million people.



The pressure tactics, however, appeared to work. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered an olive branch at the start of 2018 that led to summits with President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump that year.



Kim was clearly hoping that the meetings would result in reduced sanctions. But things fell apart after Trump adopted a hardline stance at the suggestion of his then National Security Adviser John Bolton at his second summit with Kim in Hanoi in February 2019.



Kim then warned that he would pursue a "new direction" if no progress on sanctions relief was made by the end of 2019. Kim maintained this stance on the matter and North Korea this year stepped up short-range missile tests, launched hostile propaganda attacks against South Korea and severed inter-Korean communication links before demolishing the liaison office.



The ostensible reason for the destruction of the liaison office was that it was in response to the launch of propaganda balloons into the North by anti-regime refugees. But the real reason was to press President Moon to intervene with the Trump administration to adopt a more conciliatory policy toward Pyongyang by easing sanctions.



Kim is clearly upset that Moon's actions have not lived up to his promises of detente. He might be hoping that increased pressure might force South Korea to break ranks with its U.S. ally by unilaterally pursuing inter-Korean economic projects that are now banned by the U.N. sanctions.



The North Korean leader may also believe that ratcheting up tensions to win sanctions relief is necessary when his country's economy is in dire straits due to Pyongyang's stringent measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from China.



Kim's gamble may not pay off. President Trump appears to have lost interest in the North Korea issue as he struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and public protests over racial injustice as his chances of reelection this year diminish. Bolton claims in his new memoir that Trump only wanted to have a summit with Kim in 2018 because he saw it as "an exercise in publicity" and showed little interest in the details of North Korea's denuclearization. Moreover, President Moon is under domestic pressure to adopt a more hardline position toward the North.



Is there any way to de-escalate the crisis? It is noteworthy that Kim has not directly challenged the U.S. but instead has used South Korea as a scapegoat. This indicates that Kim is still open to doing a deal with the U.S. The North, for example, has not yet taken more provocative steps such as resuming its nuclear and long-range tests, which would enrage Washington.



Would Trump be interested in re-engaging with Pyongyang? Possibly yes, if it holds the promise of a much-needed diplomatic victory before the November presidential election. Trump has already blamed Bolton for "setting us back" with North Korea at the Hanoi summit.



One possible compromise solution has been proposed by former CIA director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who in a new book suggests that the U.S. should accept the fact that North Korea will remain a nuclear power. He says that Washington should allow the North to keep a limited number of nuclear weapons as long as Pyongyang accepts on-site inspections of its arsenal.





John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.






SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, today announced the departure of chief financial officer (CFO) Kathy Bonanno, who is leaving the company after more than six years to become business finance officer of Google's Cloud division.

Bonanno joined Palo Alto Networks in 2014, becoming executive vice president and CFO in 2017.

"Kathy has presided over our financial team during Palo Alto Networks' tremendous expansion into a multi-platform security company," said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO, Palo Alto Networks. "She has chosen a close partner of ours for her next career step - one I know very well, and that has equally amazing people. I would like to thank Kathy for her many contributions to our company, and wish her the very best and continued success in her new role."

Bonanno will continue in her role through the end of the fiscal year to ensure a smooth transition of responsibilities to her successor. Palo Alto Networks expects to name a new CFO later this week.

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, is shaping the cloud-centric future with technology that is transforming the way people and organizations operate. Our mission is to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. We help address the world's greatest security challenges with continuous innovation that seizes the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation, and orchestration. By delivering an integrated platform and empowering a growing ecosystem of partners, we are at the forefront of protecting tens of thousands of organizations across clouds, networks, and mobile devices. Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com


HAMEL  A pregnant woman has been airlifted to a St. Louis hospital after Hamel emergency crews responded to a two-vehicle crash involving a minivan and a flatbed truck at Illinois Route 140 and Staunton Road Monday afternoon.

The initial call came in around 12:30 p.m., Hamel Police Sgt. Brent Stewart said. Two women and two children were traveling eastbound on Route 140 in a Hyundai Entourage when a man driving an Isuzu flatbed truck, which had been southbound on Staunton Road, attempted to cross 140.

At approximately 1 p.m., an Air Evac Lifeteam helicopter landed at nearby Hamel Elementary School to transport the pregnant woman, the front-seat passenger of the minivan, to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for precautionary measures.

Stewart said Edwardsville Ambulance transported two children with non-life-threatening conditions to Childrens Hospital in St. Louis while Staunton Area Ambulance transported the minivan driver, whose condition was not life-threatening, to Anderson Hospital in Maryville. The truck driver suffered some minor abrasions but Stewart said he refused treatment at the scene.

Stewart said according to the Isuzu driver and to witnesses, he looked both ways, looked again, didnt see any oncoming traffic so he started to cross Route 140. Just before impact, he saw the minivan but it was too late to avoid a crash. Stewart said the truck driver is at fault.

The truck appears to be the property of S.M. Lawn and Landscaping Inc., an Edwardsville-based landscaping business. The trucks cab was loaded with lawn care equipment, including at least one riding lawnmower. Stewart said the minivans front end was severely damaged and the van struck the Isuzu on the passenger side, causing at least moderate damage.

The Hamel Volunteer Fire Department and Hamel Police responded to the incident.

Stewart said he had no further information to provide about the accident. He said the crash is still under investigation.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 10:45:18|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SHIJIAZHUANG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- North China's Hebei Province reported two new confirmed domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the provincial health commission said Monday.

All of the two new cases were close contacts with previously confirmed infections in Hebei that were related to cases in Beijing.

Hebei reported no new asymptomatic cases on Sunday, the commission said.

By Sunday, 770 people who had close contact with confirmed cases were under medical observation in the province. There were also 10 asymptomatic cases under medical observation, among which five were imported cases.

By Sunday, Hebei had registered a total of 336 confirmed domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases and 10 imported cases. Enditem
HOUSTON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Flotek Industries, Inc. ("Flotek" or the "Company") (NYSE: FTK) is pleased to announce TengBeng Koid will be joining the Company as President, Global Business. In this role, he will oversee the Company's domestic and international business development strategy for both divisions of Flotek  Energy Chemistry Technologies and its newly established Analysis & Data division, through the recent acquisition of JP3. He will report directly to John W. Gibson, Jr., Flotek's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer.

Koid is an experienced executive in the oil and gas industry with more than 30 years' experience. Most recently, he served as President of Energy Solutions at Emerson Automation Solutions. He assumed this role in 2015 after Emerson acquired Energy Solutions International (ESI), where he served as its Chief Executive Officer. ESI is the global leader in software applications for the midstream oil and gas industry.

Prior to joining Energy Solutions International, Koid served as president, international, for Seismic Micro Technology (SMT), Inc., the market leader in Windows-based geoscience software. When the company was sold to IHS, Inc., he became a vice president at IHS, the leading provider of information in the global market and economy. Before joining SMT, Koid served as the executive vice president and chief operating officer at ION Geophysical Corporation. Prior to ION, Koid worked for Landmark Graphics Corporation, a software and services subsidiary of Halliburton Company, in various roles including vice president/general manager of Asia Pacific Operations, vice president for Global Business Development and vice president for Asset Performance Consulting. Koid later moved to Halliburton where he was vice president with accountabilities over national oil companies. Before Landmark, Koid was a senior manager at IBM specializing in the oil and gas industry. Koid has an executive MBA from Bath University and graduated with honors from the University Science Malaysia with a bachelor's degree in computer science.

Koid currently serves on the board of irth Solutions, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions that help energy and utilities companies manage and reduce risk, decreases costs, increase revenue opportunities and ensure regulatory compliance.

"I'm incredibly excited to welcome Koid to Flotek to help build our next chapter of growth as we seek to accelerate adoption of our data and analytics platform, through our recent acquisition of JP3. He is deeply experienced in building enterprise-wide software solutions for energy companies across the full hydrocarbon stream," said Gibson. "I have known Koid for more than 20 years and have the highest regard for his leadership and work ethic, as well as his track-record of taking a 'no-excuses', results-driven approach to revenue growth. I value his strong integrity and his objectivity, with his proven ability to excel through both strong and challenging markets. In every organization he has served, he has been a transformative leader, who has accelerated growth by building and implementing business strategies and teams that deliver significant impacts to customers."

"JP3 has experienced significant growth of 58 percent over the past four years, and now as a part of the Flotek, our goal is to build upon this growth at an even faster pace. Koid has a strong history of driving rapid and profitable growth, building upon his broad network of global executive-level relationships. He is an impressive leader who is both technically and financially savvy. In my four decades of investment experience, he is one of the greatest revenue drivers I have ever seen," said Flotek Lead Director David Nierenberg.

"This is an exciting time for Flotek as it expands its business into data and analytics with the recent acquisition of JP3. I look forward to leveraging my experiences in digital transformation of the upstream and midstream oil and gas businesses to help drive Flotek's growth," said Koid.

As an inducement to join the Company and to closely align interests with the Company's shareholders, Koid has been granted 200,000 restricted stock awards (RSAs) that will vest over three years and performance-based options representing 300,000 shares of the Company. A portion of these performance-based shares will vest based upon the Company's Total Shareholder Return, relative to its Peer Group, as defined by the 2020 Performance Unit Plan of the Company; and the other portion will vest based upon the closing stock price for the Company's common stock for a 20 consecutive trading-day period, with full vesting at closing prices at or above $7.00 per share for a 20 consecutive trading-day period. The options have an exercise price equal to the closing price of the Company's shares on the date of grant.

About Flotek

Flotek empowers the energy industry to maximize the value of their hydrocarbon streams and improve return on invested capital through data-driven platforms and chemistry technologies. Flotek serves downstream, midstream and upstream customers, both domestic and international. Flotek is a publicly traded company headquartered in Houston, Texas, and its common shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "FTK." For additional information, please visit Flotek's web site at www.flotekind.com .

About JP3

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, JP3 Measurement was founded in 2005 and provides the industry's only field deployable, real time, in-line optical analyzer for both liquid and natural gas measurement. With analysis points in every major basin across North America, JP3 is focused on improving the quality of hydrocarbon measurement and process control for the oil & gas industry. For more information, please visit JP3's website at http://www.jp3.com/ .

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements set forth in this press release constitute 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) regarding Flotek Industries, Inc.'s business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Words such as will, continue, expects, anticipates, intends, plans, believes, seeks, estimates and similar expressions or variations of such words are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying forward-looking statements in this press release. Although forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the good faith judgment of management, such statements can only be based on facts and factors currently known to management. Consequently, forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results and outcomes may differ materially from the results and outcomes discussed in the forward-looking statements. Further information about the risks and uncertainties that may impact the Company are set forth in the Company's most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 10-K (including, without limitation, in the "Risk Factors" section thereof), and in the Company's other SEC filings and publicly available documents. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this press release.

SOURCE Flotek Industries, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.flotekind.com


Mumbai, June 22 : Maharashtra on Monday notched 3,721 Covid-19 cases - down by 153 from the peak of 3,874 on June 20 while there were 62 deaths, the lowest this month till date, health officials said.

The fatalities came down by 39 from Sunday's 101 - and a sharp fall of 116 from the previous peak of 178 fatalities recorded on June 15.

With this, the state death toll climbed to 6,232, (though the state government pegged it at 6,283) and total cases shot up to 135,796 till date, both being the highest in the country.

Monday's figures work out to roughly one death every 23 minutes, and a whopping 155 new cases notched every hour in the state.

After several days, the recovery rate dropped from 50.04 to 49.86 per cent, and the mortality rate stood at 4.63 per cent.

For most days in June, the state has been recording three-digit highs of deaths and over 3,000 plus figures of new patients.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases till date, 61,793 are active cases - and this number is lower than the number of patients cured, indicating a positive sign.

Out of Monday's fatalities, Mumbai alone notched 20 deaths -- taking the city's death toll up to 3,737 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here went up by 1,098 cases to touch 67,586 now.

There were also 15 deaths in Thane (Kalyan-Dombivali, Ulhasnagar, Mira-Bhayander), 11 in Pune, eight in Nashik, four in Aurangabad, two in Akola, and one each in Palghar and Latur.

On the positive side, a total of 1,962 fully cured patients returned home, taking the number of those discharged to 67,706 now.

Meanwhile, BMC Commissioner I.S. Chahal launched 'Mission Zero' involving a Rapid Action Plan with 50 mobile dispensaries, doctors and all other facilities for the northern suburbs of Mumbai.

The dispensaries-on-wheels will move around the north-east suburbs of Bhandup and Mulund and north-west suburbs of Dahisar, Borivali, Kandivali, and Malad to identify and treat patients for two-three weeks.

These areas have become a matter of concern with a lower than average doubling period, after Dharavi recorded a remarkable turnaround which earned the BMC and Maha Vikas Aghadi state government unexpected praise from the Centre, senior officials said with pride.

The RAP will include local doctors and is supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, top realtors bodies CREDAI-MCHI, NGOs like the Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana and Desh Apnayen.

These organisations would provide mobile vans, medicos and medicines, while the civic teams would carry out the swab testing, quarantine facilities, etc., said Chahal.

The MMR (Thane Division) remains a problem area with a total of 4,655 Covid-19 deaths, and the number of positive cases touched 99,229.

Thane - with 25,390 cases and 732 fatalities - has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district has dropped to the third position with 16,474 patients and 612 deaths till now. But Pune Division ranks second (after MMR) with 19,626 patients and 822 deaths.

The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 405 deaths and 6,221 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 194 fatalities and 4,275 cases, and finally Akola Division with 103 deaths and 2,184 cases.

Latur Division has 33 deaths and 789 cases, Kolhapur Division notched 36 deaths and 1,709 patients, and finally Nagpur Division with 15 deaths and 1,647 cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine increased to 601,182 now, while those in institutional quarantine increased to 26,910.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Barr Concerned About Tech Giants Censorship of User Content

Attorney General William Barr said it was necessary for the Trump administration to become tough on internet companies who censor certain user viewpoints on their platforms because it was important to preserve a wide diversity of voices.

Theres something very disturbing about whats going on, Barr said during an interview on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures on Sunday while expressing his concern over the business practices of some influential companies. To some extent, there was a bait and switch over the past couple of decades.

Barr explained that at the beginning these companies acted like bulletin boards attracting people from diverse viewpoints to join their platforms. This allowed them to build a large membership and a strong market share. But more recently, some of these companies switched.

These companies held themselves out as open to all comers. Thats how they built up all their membership and their networks, saying, you know, we have a wide variety of views. People can come in and post their views and their positions and their statements, he said. Then they have switched. Now theyre being more selective, and theyre starting to censor different viewpoints.

His comments come after the Justice Department (DOJ) pushed Congress to adopt a series of proposed changes to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that would curtail broad legal protections for online platforms in an effort to push tech companies to address illicit material while moderating content responsibly.

Section 230 largely exempts online platforms from liability for content posted by their users, although they can be held liable for content that violates anti-sex trafficking or intellectual property laws.

The law allows companies to block or screen content in good faith if they consider it obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable. The protections, however, werent intended to apply to services that act more like publishers than online platforms, Barr said in a speech in May.

Unfortunately, they started taking down viewpoints and started really being selective and, based on whether they agreed with a viewpoint or not, taking it down, Barr said. And that should make them a publisher.

However, these companies were coming back claiming immunity under section 230. That was one of the problems that was arising under Section 230, he said.

This is a fundamental problem, Barr said, because the republic was founded on the idea and the whole rationale was that there would be a lot of diversity of voices. This would make it hard for individuals to galvanize a big faction in the United States that could dominate politically and oppress a minority.

And yet now we have, with the Internet and with these big concentrations of power, the ability to do just that, to quickly galvanize peoples views, because theyre only presenting one viewpoint, and they can push the public in a particular direction very quickly, he said. And our whole Constitution and system was based on not having that, and having a wide diversity of voices.

The move to roll back legal protections for internet companies was the latest in an ongoing clash between the Trump administration with big tech companies such as Twitter and Facebook. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 28 directing federal agencies to develop regulations that protect users from unfair or deceptive content restriction practices employed by online platforms.

The DOJ said its legislative proposals would update the outdated immunity for online platforms under section 230. The department wants online platforms to be tough on illicit material while policing user content fairly.

The department encouraged lawmakers to consider four areas for reform including incentivizing online platforms to address illicit content, promoting open discourse and greater transparency, clarifying federal government enforcement capability, and promoting competition.

Some of the departments recommendations include denying section 230 immunity to truly bad actors, which it describes as an online platform that purposefully facilities or solicits third-party content or activity that would violate federal criminal law.

The department also suggested carving out exemptions to immunity protection for platforms who are willfully blind to egregious content, including child exploitation and sexual abuse, terrorism, and cyber-stalking.

The reforms will also seek to encourage platforms to be more transparent and accountable to their users by clarifying the text and reviving the original purpose of the law.

Barrs comments come against the backdrop of incidents where conservative voices have been stifled by internet companies. Last week, NBC News claimed that Google had demonetized two conservative-leaning news outlets, The Federalist and ZeroHedge, having blocked them from making money from Google ads.

Following the claim, Google pushed back in a statement saying that The Federalist was never demonetized. Google said the issue wasnt with any of the articles The Federalist published, but rather users comments on its website.

As the comment section has now been removed, we consider this matter resolved and no action will be taken, Google said in the statement.

The incident prompted lawmakers to demand answers from Google over its censorship. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Googles conduct had raised serious concerns that Google is abusing its monopoly power in an effort to censor political speech with which it disagrees. (pdf)

Bowen Xiao and Petr Svab contributed to this report.
Representative Image

The last few weeks have been busy along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. For the first time since 1975, India and China lost soldiers in a conflict. While many brave Indian soldiers lost lives in the clashes, social media was abuzz with a Boycott China campaign, and WhatsApp messages with the list of companies with Chinese investments and mobile phone companies with roots in China were busy being forwarded.

The government was quick to cancel a few contracts that some Chinese companies had won. As the government contemplates additional measures on trade and commerce, will it also spill over to aviation?

The Chinese and Americans have been sparring over flights for quite some time, with both sides even banning flights for a while. Could that happen between India and China as well? Well, if it does, the Chinese carriers could have a lot more to lose than our carriers.

Air traffic services between the two countries are governed by Air Services Agreement (ASA), popularly known as bilateral rights. The current ASA between India and China allows for 42 frequencies, translating into six daily flights. China was one of the most ignored countries by airlines in India, until recently.

While the Chinese side utilised 41 out of the 42 frequencies, the Indian side was being represented only by Air India, with five weekly flights to Shanghai from New Delhi. And then, IndiGo jumped in. IndiGo launched operations last year to China, with flights from New Delhi to Chengdu and Kolkata to Guangzhou. The airline had announced flights to Chengdu from Mumbai but even the maiden flight did not take off as COVID-19 crippled the world.

India has a separate ASA with Hong Kong  a Special Administrative Region, which is also in the middle of a conflict with China for the last few months. Indias ASA with Hong Kong allows for 45 weekly frequencies.

Possible loss of connectivity

Going by the winter schedule, Air China operated six weekly services to Beijing from New Delhi and four weekly flights from Mumbai. China Eastern operated a daily flight to Beijing from New Delhi and eight weekly flights to Kunming from Kolkata. China Southern had daily operations to Sanya and Guangzhou from New Delhi. Shandong Airlines had approval to fly to Jinan twice a week from New Delhi.

Between Air India and IndiGo, there is connectivity to Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shanghai. Interestingly, RwandAir operates thrice a week between Mumbai and Guangzhou, in an extension of its Kigali-Mumbai service. The ASA between India and Rwanda allows for such an operation with full rights for the airline to carry passengers between Mumbai and Guangzhou.

How has the traffic been?

Indian carriers have not had much luck on routes to China in the past. However, IndiGo has been buoyant! Traffic has grown in the last few years and the airline was getting good traction  on both the passenger and cargo fronts -- on the route. In the past, Jet Airways and SpiceJet had failed to taste success on Chinese routes.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) declares quarter-wise data for international routes and countries. While the data for 2020 isnt declared yet, the one for 2019, split across four quarters, shows the traffic to mainland China being much lesser as compared to Hong Kong -- from and to India.

In the last few years, Chinese carriers were known to offer cheap tickets to North America via Chinese hubs. It led to the airlines getting into a price war. The market between India and the West Coast of USA is attractive. Air India operates flights to San Francisco and United joined the route recently. JAL, ANA, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, and Korean Air are some of the other airlines which have been wanting a slice of the pie.

One argument about flights to China has been around cargo. With an increase in trade  especially import to India of critical items like pharmaceutical APIs as well as other cheaper goods -- there has been demand from traders to fly to China and high-value goods coming in as air cargo instead of ships.

However, the cargo numbers are even more skewed in favour of Hong Kong. While Hong Kong is not a benchmark to compare cargo traffic with China, the close proximity in terms of geography and allowed frequency makes it an interesting mix.

Tail Note

While all efforts are being made to contain the current conflict and look for peaceful ways to disengage, there remains a possibility of things going out of control  either militarily and economically or just on the economic front. Either way, if the aviation industry is hit, there wont be much impact on Indian carriers. Both Air India and IndiGo have very low dependence on Chinas markets as far as their total international operations are concerned. In fact, the China pie on their total operations is miniscule!

With passenger traffic expected to see a slower rebound, there could still be an opportunity for the airlines to fly cargo services to China  which again depends on the trade barriers that may come up between the two countries. Cargo has been the attractive bet in all these months and SpiceJet, which does not have scheduled cargo or passenger services to China, operated a few cargo flights to cities in China during the lockdown period!

Ameya Joshi runs the aviation analysis website Network Thoughts.
Castello di Serralunga DAlba

People of the Langhe have come together to show their true colors in support of a brighter future. The historic Castello di Serralunga dAlba, a 14th century military fortress located in the heart of one of Italys most prized winegrowing regions, beams with the nations colors as a sign of the countrys dedication to reemerging with strength as the national lockdown ends. A local taskforce, comprised of over forty regional supporters, including wineries, restaurants, hotels, and local tourism boards, has united with the mayor of Serralunga dAlba, Sergio Moscone, to spearhead the initiative. Viticulture is part of the foundation of Italys identity and the Langhe, the birthplace of Italian wine history, stands as a symbol for a promising future.

Langhe is the beating heart of Italy, a symbol of the winemaking culture in our county, states Mayor Sergio Moscone, The Covid-19 pandemic created a sense of uncertainty for us all, but we have come together to share our resistance and strength, and commitment to the future of winemaking, hospitality and tourism in our region. The castle shines bright in memory of the past and acts as a light that guides us towards more fortunate days ahead.

A nationwide lockdown put Italian residents in extreme quarantine conditions as authorities worked diligently to slow the outbreak of Covid-19. Italy has been one of the worst-hit countries in the world and only now, months later, are they beginning to regain their freedom again. Fortunately, wineries were authorized to remain operational during this time, and production efforts proceeded following social distancing regulations. As Italys recovery begins to gain momentum, winemakers and other regional artisans and business owners are planning their next steps.

The illuminated Castello di Serralunga dAlba, a majestic monument surrounded by vineyards, will light up the land of Serralunga from 8:30pm-1:30am each night, a beacon of hope and encouragement for the next phase in Italy. As wine rooms and restaurants reopen, and hotels, national parks and monuments slowly begin to welcome travelers from near, and eventually far, the Langhe remains a place of fortitude; waiting for visitors with open arms and full glasses of Barolo.

For aerial views of the grandiose castle, see this video. Italian residents and those who visit Serralunga can enjoy the lights through the beginning of summer.

About Colangelo & Partners

Colangelo & Partners specializes in premium food, wine and spirits brands, and has long established relationships with the key press that drive these business categories and help determine the industry leaders. Agency principals have years of experience in retail and distribution as well as communications, a rare combination that gives Colangelo & Partners invaluable insights into consumer purchasing behavior. The agency focuses on 'closing the loop' between creative communications programs, distribution, promotion, publicity and the consumer in order to maximize the efficiency of its communications programs and deliver measurable results. Founded in 2006, Colangelo & Partners was honored as one of the years top integrated communications firms at the 2013 Agency Elite Awards and for one of the best digital marketing campaigns at the 2014 Digital PR Awards. http://www.colangelopr.com/
Organised by music impresario Michael Gudinski and Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes  with his son, David Campbell, hitting the right notes as a co-host  it took audiences into the homes of Australia's leading artists, for a series of stripped-down and often sombre performances. This encore screening marks the release of the night via Gudinski's Mushroom Group as an album, with all proceeds going to the invaluable music charity Support Act. Mark Seymour and James Reyne during their performance in April's Music From The Home Front. Credit:AAP You can take your pick of highlights (and home decor), from Mark Seymour and James Reyne doing Throw Your Arms Around Me and Reckless in a garage to G Flip's invigorating About You. It's already a moment in time that's passed, but the music endures, as does the notion that we really need an ongoing showcase of live Australian music on our television screens. TUESDAY Where Are You Really From?

SBS, 9.30pm

To open the third season of this lively social history series, host Michael Hing literally emerges from the sea and strides ashore, only to transform into his hosting persona. It's a madcap anti-Clark Kent sequence  and not the only stylistic flourish in this episode  but it's indicative of a show that uses a light touch to examine the sometimes seismic change in Australia's multicultural identity.

Here Hing is visiting Inala in the south west suburbs of Brisbane, which is home to a thriving Vietnamese community that's taken shape over the past 40 or so years. With a local guide offering tips and introductions, he interviews those who fled Vietnam after the end of the war in 1975 led to a humanitarian crisis, as well as the second and third generation descendants of those refugees who've grown up here. Hing, who is 5th generation Chinese-Australian himself, teases out joyous anecdotes and proud beliefs. It's a cheerfully optimistic reminder that each wave of migration to this country brings a welcome shot of industriousness, excellent culinary options (as the show itself emphasises), and an enduring measure of gratitude. Those who come here from other countries, especially as refugees, tend to actually see us in the best light. As one Inala local tells Hing: "You can't really go wrong in Australia." Desert Collectors

7Mate, 9.30pm

Kalgoorlie memorabilia store owner and trader Nigel Quick swaps the dusty roads of Western Australia's backblocks for the slightly less dusty roads of rural Victoria in this episode of his reality show. Every time a shed door opens in this series there's a new surprise, and that's certainly the case here as the host meets a motoring enthusiast who has built a replica of the V8 police interceptor from George Miller's classic automotive action film Mad Max. "Have a look at this," marvels Quick, who brings a genuine level of bloke-next-door wonder to his travels, and it works to get the various collectors he visits to open up. There's some minutiae revealed to what are specialised areas such as vintage garage display cases and engine oil packaging, as well as considerable pride. American versions of this genre place a premium on the monetary side  value, bidding, cutting deals. Quick's Australian variant is thankfully more collegial and less overtly produced.

WEDNESDAY America's Got Talent

Seven, 7.30pm

The cracks in Seven's programming roster mean that the American edition of this reality format staple is back in Australian prime-time. Endurance, if anything, has given this modern-day talent show a triumphal tone  just making it on-stage can change lives we're told, and intercut preparation scenes suggest an audience looms with a minor deity as opposed to some celebrity judges. The panel itself features Simon Cowell  his acidic commentary parked to one side  with Sofia Vergara, Heidi Klum, and Howie Mandel, while Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Terry Crews serves as the jocular host. There's a back story for every highlighted hopeful, as well as some hype work for new judges Vergara and Klum. Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Terry Crews, Sofia Vergara and Simon Cowell on America's Got Talent. Credit:Trae Patton/NBC THURSDAY ABBA: Secrets of Their Greatest Hits

9Now

There's a decent mix of analysis, appreciation, and archival material to this music documentary, which looks into three classic songs from ABBA's iconic songbook: Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen, and The Winner Takes It All. Outside voices guide the narrative, with biographers and now ageing session musicians chipping in, as the circumstances of early 1970s Sweden and pop music's changing landscape shaped the quartet's savvy songwriting and interlocked relationships. It's all a reminder that a classic pop song is a masterful act of distillation.

FRIDAY America In Colour

SBS, 7.30pm

As Paul Simon sang, everything looks worse in black and white. The obvious corollary of which is that, clearly, everything looks better in colour and so it is with this series, which presents momentous events from the history of America in the early 20th century in vivid colour rather than the monochrome in which we're so used to viewing such footage. America In Colour: a treat for the eyes. Credit:SBS This episode deals with the Wild West: that mythic period of US history that was coming to an end in the face of remorseless progress at the dawn of the 1900s. The conflict between the old and the new makes for compelling doco subject matter. America emerges into a new century on the brink of something big, an embryonic superpower set to ascend in a century in which both human ingenuity and atrocity would reach new heights. Whether the liberal-Hollywood narration is your cup of tea depends very much on your perspective, but it's undoubtedly a treat for the eyes.

SATURDAY Love Island UK

9Now

What can you say about a show like Love Island UK? That it's a modern-day morality tale? That it's a cautionary fable about late capitalism and the fate of societies that invest an excess of civilisational capital in cults of celebrity? All of this and more is true of Love Island, a social experiment designed to test humans' tolerance for nothingness. If you enjoy looking at attractive people wearing very little, you may get a kick out of this paragon of hollowness. If you enjoy shows with literally anything to offer apart from attractive people wearing very little, you may find it a bit lacking. But for fans of the grotesquely depressing, it's tailor-made. Loading SUNDAY Operation Buffalo

ABC, 8.30pm

Nothing shines a light on historical wrongdoing like a beautifully mounted series that combines hard, brutal truth with a healthy dose of making stuff up. Operation Buffalo is a high-class production, well-written, superbly shot and supplying juicy roles for some of the best acting talent from here (the always-impeccable Ewen Leslie) and abroad (James Cromwell in a role quite a way removed from Farmer Hoggett).
Hoy firmamos el Acuerdo G2G para brindar asistencia tecnica en las obras de reconstruccion. Gracias al pres. Vizcarra y al PM @BorisJohnson por iniciar este nuevo capitulo entre ???? y ????. Nos comprometemos a trabajar con transparencia, eficacia y sostenibilidad. Manos a la obra! pic.twitter.com/xwHX0fJvpV
GOTEBORG, Sweden, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Following up on Stena Bulk's successful biofuel trial in April, the company is now introducing low-carbon shipping options for its customers.

Biofuel has the potential of putting shipping on the trajectory towards IMO's greenhouse gas reduction targets, without having to wait for new technology and zero-carbon fuels to emerge as commercially viable options. Our recent trial, where a cross-Atlantic voyage was conducted with 100% waste-based biofuel, proved the technical and operational feasibility of using biofuels in regular tanker operations, and Stena Bulk is now taking it one step further by introducing a set of low-carbon shipping options for its customers. The options will range from 20% to 100% biofuels and will be based on an offsetting program where the biofuel is used within the Stena Bulk fleet. This allows customers to make use of low-carbon shipping options regardless of fuel availability on the specific route. It also guarantees that operation is performed without any disturbance to the shipment.



"Performing according to our customers' expectations is our highest priority, and this setup allows us to continue to do that while also offering a service," says Erik Hanell, President and CEO for Stena Bulk. "It will be one way to take actions in meeting future requirements. This type of fuel is one step in many combined sustainable solutions that needs to be considered and can be used today."

Offering low-carbon shipping options is initially an ambitious initiative, but is reflective of Stena Bulk's ambition to reduce the environmental footprint of tanker operations through innovation. New fuels and new technology like Stena Bulk's recently presented IMOFlexMAX vessel design will also be important in that we can test and learn through challenges and thus take further steps in developments for the future. Collaboration within the industry will also be a key element, and the company will continue to develop new solutions together with customers, partners and suppliers.



"We need to come together as an industry to find solutions that comply with future legislation," says Erik Hanell. "By working together, sharing experiences, risks and inspiring each other, we are convinced that we will meet the targets and ensure that shipping remains the most efficient and sustainable mode of transportation."



Stena Bulk MR vessel Stena Immortal ran on 100% biofuel during a 10-day sea trial.

https://youtu.be/r5ARF2aEDdg



About Stena Bulk



With offices in seven countries, Stena Bulk is one of the world's leading tanker shipping companies. The company controls a combined fleet of around 115 tankers. Stena Bulk is part of the Stena Sphere, which has more than 20,000 employees and annual sales of USD 8 billion. www.stenabulk.com

For more information, please contact:

Erik Hanell

President & CEO

Mobile +46-704-855-002

[email protected]



This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/stena-bulk/r/stena-bulk-to-introduce-low-carbon-shipping-options,c3138991

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/2249/3138991/1267775.pdf Release https://news.cision.com/stena-bulk/i/stena-immortal-biofuel-bunkering--,c2798779 Stena Immortal biofuel bunkering. https://news.cision.com/stena-bulk/i/stena-immortal-bunkering-biofuel--,c2798780 Stena Immortal bunkering biofuel.

Captions for above Photos:

1. Stena Immortal biofuel bunkering

2. Stena Immortal bunkering biofuel

SOURCE Stena Bulk
A husband and wife from Lower Macungie Township are the pair who died Sunday afternoon after a truck crossed into the path of an oncoming motorcycle in North Whitehall Township, authorities say.

Robert J. ORourke, 55, and Mary ORourke, 54, were pronounced dead within minutes of each other at the scene of the 3:01 p.m. crash on Route 145 north of Clearview Road, Pennsylvania State Police said.

Both died of multiple blunt force injuries, and their deaths were ruled accidents, the Lehigh County Coroners Office said.

Robert ORourke was at the controls of a 2009 Kawasaki Vulcan 1700 as they rode north on Route 145, police said. Devon M. Lindeman, 22, of Freemansburg, was driving a 2020 FexEx Freightliner truck south on the same road when, going around a left turn, he went off onto the west shoulder for more than 30 feet before returning to his lane, police said. But Lindeman overcorrected and crossed into oncoming traffic, hitting the motorcycle head-on, police said.

The ORoukes were thrown from the bike as the truck continued on, hitting a guardrail and heading down an embankment. Robert ORourke ended up under the truck and his wife was about 10 feet away, police said.

Lindeman, who was wearing a seat belt, was taken by Northampton Regional EMS for treatment at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, police said.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting lehighvalleylive.com with a voluntary subscription.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com.
The Ministry of Constructions proposal to allow foreigners to buy tourism property developments in Viet Nam needs careful consideration, experts have said.

The Ministry of Construction recently proposed amending the laws on housing and real estate business, allowing foreign individuals and institutions to buy tourism property developments to aid the declining market.  Photo reatimes.vn

The construction ministry recently proposed amending laws on housing and real estate business, allowing foreign individuals and institutions to buy tourism property developments to aid the declining market. The ministry also proposed foreigners should be allowed to buy more apartments in a building than the current cap of 30 per cent.

Under the Law on Housing, foreigners can only own apartments for residential purposes, according to the ministrys Housing and Real Estate Market Development Department. The department said that recent years had seen increasing demand from foreigners to buy apartments for business purposes, such as tourism property.

According to Viet Nam Real Estate Association (VNREA), allowing foreigners to own non-residential apartments would help attract a significant sum of investment into the real estate market. Still, the association said it was necessary to manage by regulations conditions for foreigners to be eligible for buying non-residential houses in Viet Nam.

VNREAs deputy general secretary Nguyen Van Dinh said allowing foreigners to own tourism property developments would promote the development of the real estate market, especially in the context that the tourism property market was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The VNREA said that this would also be a long-term solution for Viet Nam to become a destination for vacation, retirement and investment into real estate from foreigners.

According to Su Ngoc Khuong, senior director of Savills Vietnam, selling houses to foreigners should be seen as a form of export to draw foreign investment into Viet Nams real estate market. Khuong added it was necessary to raise favourable conditions for foreigners to own houses to attract foreign investment inflow.

The inflow of foreign investment into tourism property market would push the real estate market development, improve liquidity as well as attract more tourists and accelerate the tourism industry, Khuong said. He added that it would also promote diversification of tourism property products and improvements in product quality.

The cap of 30 per cent, more or less, was not really important, he said. Khuong added that it was more important to regulate which property products foreigners were not allowed to own to ensure national defence and social security.

Huynh Tan Vinh, general director of Furama Resort in Da Nang City, said many countries allow foreigners to buy tourism property developments to attract investment into this segment, adding that there would be increasing interest from foreign investors in Viet Nams tourism property market if the proposal was approved.

Tran Xuan Tay, office chief of Khanh Hoa Province Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said opening doors for foreigners into the tourism property market was necessary but regulations on eligibility must be clarified. Tay also added that foreigners could be considered to own non-residential property for a certain amount of time, such as 50, 70 or even 90 years.

Nguyen Duc Lap, Director of the Da Nang Real Estate Research and Training Institute, said the Government should clarify areas and projects in which foreigners were allowed to buy apartments.

Detailed instructions about granting ownership certificates for foreigners should also be issued, experts said.  VNS

Foreigners allowed to own homes in 22 Hanoi commercial housing projects The Hanoi Department of Construction has listed 22 commercial housing projects, some complete and some under construction, where foreigners can own homes.
South Africa: DPE to oppose SAA liquidation application

The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has expressed its intention to oppose an SA Airlink application, which seeks to place South African Airways (SAA) under provisional liquidation.

In a statement on Monday, the department said it was notified of a court application by SA Airlink aimed at interdicting the Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) from convening a creditors meeting to vote on a business rescue plan for SAA.

The DPE has not been cited as a respondent in the SA Airlink application.

The department is also aware of plans by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the South African Airways Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) to interdict the creditors meeting through the courts, the department said.

It said SA Airlink contends that there is no reasonable prospect of rescuing SAA.

As we approach the final week to either endorse or reject the business rescue plan by the BRPs, it is disturbing that a competitor of SAA, which is 100% privately owned, as well as two labour unions, who should be acting in the best interest of their members, are seeking to destroy SAA by forcing a liquidation through the courts. The question is, why? Is this really in the interest of SAA workers or the fiscus? the department questioned.

The BRPs have scheduled a creditors meeting for 25 June 2020 to vote on the business rescue plan. Should NUMSA and SACCA launch an application to stop the creditors meeting, DPE will oppose the application.

Government, as the sole shareholder of SAA, supports the business rescue plan where it results in a viable, sustainable and competitive airline that provides integrated domestic, regional and international flight services.

It further supports the provisions of the Companies Act, which prescribes that the primary function of a business rescue process is to develop and implement a rescue plan, with the view of fundamentally restructuring the business affairs and other liabilities of a company in distress, in a manner which maximises the likelihood for it to continue to exist on a solvent basis.

For this reason, said the department, government has made funds available to the BRPs to the tune of R5.5 billion to augment the revenue of SAA, so as to develop a detailed business rescue plan, to consult with creditors, other affected stakeholders like employees, the shareholder and the board and management of the company under business rescue.

Government is committed to supporting a competitive, viable and sustainable national airline and wishes to engage constructively towards the national interest objective of such an airline in a constrained fiscal environment, taking into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this situation, DPE said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 04:54:21|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Video: A total of 2,289,168 cases were reported in the country with the fatalities reaching 120,044 as of 12:04 p.m. (1604 GMT) on Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

"Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible," says World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.



WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 120,000 on Monday with nearly 2.3 million infections, while new cases continue to increase across the country over three months into the pandemic.

A total of 2,289,168 cases were reported in the country with the fatalities reaching 120,044 as of 12:04 p.m. (1604 GMT) on Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

New York state reported 388,488 cases with 31,125 deaths. Other states with over 5,000 COVID-19 deaths include New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and California, showed the JHU data.

Worldwide, COVID-19 cases topped surpassed 9 million and the death toll from the virus was 469,122.

People spend their afternoon by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., the United States, June 21, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

In the United States, the virus spread has trended downward in some of the hard-hit places including New York City, once the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.

The Big Apple entered phase two of reopening on Monday, during which hair salons, real estate sales, vehicle sales and rentals, some in-store retails are allowed to reopen. Restaurants can serve customers in outdoor space, according to New York state's phased reopening strategy.

However, several U.S. states in the South and Southwest are seeing upticks in their coronavirus case counts.

As of Sunday, the nation's seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases increased more than 24 percent compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of JHU data. Cases were growing by 5 percent or more in 25 states across the United States, including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma.

Wearing face masks, protesters take part in a demonstration in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the United States, on June 20, 2020. U.S. President Donald Trump held his first rally in more than three months in Tulsa on Saturday evening, amid COVID-19 concerns and a national reckoning over racism. (Photo by Alan Chin/Xinhua)

According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project, hospitalizations from COVID-19 were growing in 14 states as of Sunday.

In Texas, there were 2,913 people hospitalized with COVID-19 based on a seven-day moving average, a 37 percent increase compared to a week ago. Arizona reported 1,702 people hospitalized on a seven-day average, a near 29 percent increase compared to a week ago.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory," Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, recently told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior United Nations advisor.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of Columbia University's Earth Institute, speaks during a press conference on the Deep Decarbonization Pathway Project (DDPP) interim report , at the UN headquarters in New York, on July 8, 2014. (Xinhua/Niu Xiaolei)

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, U.S. states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

An influential model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington recently revised its projections, forecasting nearly 170,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by Oct. 1.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks at the 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA), held virtually, in Geneva, Switzerland, May 19, 2020. (WHO/Handout via Xinhua)

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday warned that the world has moved into a "new and dangerous phase" of the global coronavirus pandemic as countries have lifted lockdowns and other measures intended to curb the virus' spread, and several have seen their rates of newly reported cases of the virus accelerate.

"Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible," he said. 
The latest allegations of improper restraints against Chicago police came on the weekend of widespread looting after Floyds death. Mia Wright said she and her friends had pulled up to the Brickyard Mall on the Northwest Side on May 31, not knowing it had been closed because of vandalism. Wright said police officers suddenly surrounded the car, broke the windows, and searched her and her cousin Tnika Tate. Wright said she was thrown to the pavement and a knee was placed on her neck.
E ight children drowned in a Chinese river after one fell in and the others tried to save their friend.

State media said that the primary school-aged group had gone to play at a beach on the Fu River in south-west China on Sunday.

Their bodies were recovered by Monday morning.

The children came from Mixin, a town near Sichuan province on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing.

No further details were immediately available.
MARQUETTE COUNTY, MI  A youngster inadvertently earned his parents a citation when he told a Michigan DNR officer there were no lifejackets on their fishing boat.

The unlucky encounter occurred over Memorial Day weekend when Josh Boudreaux, a conservation officer in DNR District 1, was patrolling the Dead River Basin and saw a child excitedly reel in a small walleye.

After congratulating the kid on his catch and explaining what a conservation officer was, the kid excitedly exclaimed, Mommy and daddy dont have life jackets.

CO Boudreaux laughed off the comment, assuming the child was referring to the fact that adults were not wearing them, unlike the kids. However, upon further inspection of their safety equipment, it was found that neither parent had a personal floatation device (PFD) for themselves.

A citation was issued for failing to maintain/carry safety equipment on their vessel, according to the report.

DNR District 1 is in the Upper Peninsula and includes Baraga, Dickinson, Gogebic, Houghton, Iron, Keweenaw, Marquette, Menominee and Ontonagon counties.
Two terrorist group members convicted in St. Petersburg

 RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov

12:19 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  Two members of a St. Petersburg cell of a group known as Set, meaning Network, banned in Russia as terrorist, on Monday were found guilty of participation in a terrorist group and keeping of explosives, the United press service of St. Petersburg courts reports.

Kazakhstan national Victor Filinkov was sentenced to 7 years in custody; Russian citizen Yuly Boyarshinov received 5.5 years behind bars.

The case was heard by the Second West District Military Court in a courtroom of the First West District Military Court in St. Petersburg.

Prosecutors on June 17 demanded 9 and 6 years in jail for the defendants respectively.

According to investigators, the terrorist group members were plotting to overthrow the government and commit terrorist attacks.

Earlier, eight other defendants were sentenced in Russias Penza to prison terms ranging from 6 to 18 years.

Three others were arrested in St. Petersburg. Filinkov pleaded not guilty. Boyarshinov admitted guilt noting that he entered the organization as antifascist and attempted to escape from it when she read the organizations rules and principles calling to create militant cells to insurrect and commit terrorist attacks. The third one, Igor Shishkin also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail.
Indian Gold August Futures rose on June 22 tracking positive trend seen in the international spot prices which rose to a one-month high as rising coronavirus infections intensified concerns over a delay in global economic recovery and fuelled investors to seek the safe-haven metal.

The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period, said a Reuters report. Gold is used as a safe investment during times of political and financial uncertainty.

On the Multi-Commodity Exchange (MCX), August gold contracts were trading higher by 0.66 percent at Rs 48,253 per 10 gram at 09:30 hours. July futures for silver were trading 1.1 percent higher at Rs 49,172 per kg.

Gold and silver prices rebound last week in the international as well as domestic market. International Gold closed above $1,750 per troy ounce and silver also breached crucial resistance of $17.84 per troy ounce.

Even in the domestic market, Gold gave a fresh breakout and settled with gains of 1.27 percent on a weekly basis per 10 gram. Silver prices also settled with 1.98 percent weekly gains and settled at Rs 48,636 per kilogram.

Gold & Silver Rates Gold Rate in Mumbai 10g of 24K gold in Mumbai 

10g of 22K gold in Mumbai  View more Silver Rate in Mumbai 10g silver in Mumbai 

1kg silver in Mumbai  View more Show

Experts feel that the precious metal is likely to remain volatile, but as long as it holds above Rs 47,800, traders could deploy buy on dips strategy for a target of Rs 48,300-48,600.

We expect both the precious metals remain volatile this week but trade with positive bias. If gold prices sustain above $1,755 per troy ounce in the international market could extend the gains towards $1,788-1,800 per troy ounce. Buy on dip strategy will work in both the precious metals, Manoj Jain, Director (Head - Commodity & Currency Research) at Prithvi Finmart Pvt Ltd told Moneycontrol.

At MCX, if Gold prices sustain above 47,800, the rally could extend towards 48,330-48,620 levels, 47100 act as major support this week, he said.

Track live gold price here

Trading Strategy

Expert: Sriram Iyer, Senior Research Analyst at Reliance Securities

International bullion prices have started higher this Monday morning in Asian trade amid safe-haven demand for metals as rising fresh cases of COVID-19 cases globally put a dent in the recovery of the global economy.

Technically, LBMA Gold Spot gave a breakout above $1,740 levels with an increase in volume activity indicating a northward rally up to $1,748-$1,762 levels. Support holds at $1,735-$1,726 levels.

MCX gold August contract is heading towards an all-time high level which is 48,190 levels after giving a sharp rally above 47,700 levels with good volume activity indicating a strong bullish trend in the counter. Support is placed at 47,700-47,300 levels Resistance is at 48,250-48,670 levels.

Expert: Ravindra Rao, VP- Head Commodity Research at Kotak Securities

COMEX gold has risen more than 1% to trade above $1770/oz supported by safe-haven buying amid increasing virus cases, US-China tensions, and geopolitical issues. Sharp ETF inflows also show renewed buying over $1750/oz level.

Gold has been trading in a broad range of $1680-1750/oz for the last few weeks however a break and closes above $1750/oz has led to extended gains. Gold may continue to trade with a positive bias as market players reassess the possibility of fresh restrictions in light of increasing virus cases

: The views and investment tips expressed by experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
US President Donald Trump had personally shut down a fierce debate among his aides in April 2019 on additional exemptions for countries like India from US sanctions on Iran oil purchases and ordered wavering officials to go to zero, former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his upcoming book.

Bolton writes that Trump had pointedly not been sympathetic to Indias case as made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

These deliberations took place around April 18, and on April 21, the United States announced the end of waivers from secondary sanctions for countries that continued to buy Iranian crude, forcing India, a net importer of crude, and others impacted to look for new suppliers.

Also read: Covid-19 pandemic - WHO reports largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases

It had not been an easy decision, according to Bolton, who gives a first peek at behind-the-scene discussions that had preceded, even though its tainted by his known hawkish stand on Iran.

Trump had been vibrating increasingly on the end-the-waivers side of the scale, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was wobbly, writes Bolton, and the state department officials were afflicted by clientitis - a phrase he uses to imply they were loyal to countries in their assignment portfolios and not the US.

But India is so important, he writes, citing state department officials. Or, Japan is so important. Bolton says he could understand Indias case that it will not easily find an alternative supplier at the same low price Iran was charging. But its position was inconsistent with Americas, he argued.

Also read: In a blow to Indians, Donald Trump says H-1B suspension coming any day now

Trump ended the discussions on April 18. Go to zero, Bolton writes quoting the president, and goes on to add that in a phone call with Pompeo, Trump had not been sympathetic to Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, Hell be okay.

Iran was the second-largest supplier of crude for India at the time and the sanctions significantly disrupted Indias oil supplies. But they left untouched Indian investments in Chabahar port in Iran, which provides India crucial trade routes into Afghanistan and up north Central Asian countries. India was indeed okay with the Trump administrations decision, thus, and has since found other sellers, including the United States.

India and a bunch of other countries, including US allies Japan and South Korea, were granted waivers from the first round of sanctions that went into effect in November 2018 following President Trumps decision announced earlier in the year to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed in 2015 by the US, UK, France, Russia, China and the EU with Iran. It had ended UN-led sanctions, bolstered by US add-ons, in return for Iran mothballing its nuclear weapons programme.

The former NSA has been surprisingly dismissive of the February-March 2019 crisis between India and Pakistan stemming from the capture of an Indian Air Force pilot by Pakistan, which the United States had waded into to prevent an escalation between two countries with nuclear arms.

After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one, Bolton writes nonchalantly of the crisis and the outcome negotiated by the US in the middle of Trumps high-profile second summit with North Koreas Kim Jong-Un. Trump had opened his post-summit news conference in Hanoi on March 2 saying he had some decent news that would end India-Pakistan tensions. The captured pilot crossed over at the Wagah border hours later.

But when two nuclear powers spin up their military capabilities, it is best not to ignore it, he adds in the book, but essentially to reprise his well-known reservations about Trumps outreach to Kim.

On the other sanctions issue, stemming from the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) that targets Russia and seeks to punish it by scaring away its major defence purchases with the threat of secondary sanctions, Bolton says the president had asked him to look into an article that said India was buying Russian S-400 missile defence system because it finds them better than the American Patriots.

The US has offered Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems (THAAD) and Patriot Advanced Capability missile defence system as an alternative to the S-400. But India is sticking with the Russian deal for now.

The book also confirms Trump had been dismissive of the $3 billion Indian assistance in Afghanistan. India builds a library and advertises it all over, Bolton writes, quoting Trump. India has built and repaired many structures as part of its reconstruction efforts, but a library is not among them. The president might have been referring to the Afghan parliament India has constructed on the outskirts of Kabul.

Boltons book, The Room Where It Happened, is based on his 16 months as Trumps third National Security Adviser. The print edition is slated for release Tuesday, but pirated editions were available online over the weekend.

The book has already generated a fair amount of interest and controversy, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier, with Bolton claiming President Trump pleaded with President Xi Jinping of China to help him win a second term and backed his repressive measures in Hong Kong and the concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims.

Bolton also writes that Trumps closest and loyal aides mocked him behind his back, such as Pompeo, who, the ex-NSA writes, passed him a note during a meeting with Kim, saying Trump is full of s. Pompeo has denied it and called Bolton a traitor.

Bolton has also been criticized by Trump critics for not coming out to testify during the presidents impeachment trial and that he sat it out for the sake of his lucrative book deal.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 19, 2020, the Board of Directors of the New Development Bank (NDB) approved a COVID-19 Emergency Program Loan of USD 1 billion to the Government of the Republic of South Africa.

"The COVID-19 Emergency Program Loan to South Africa will be provided in response to the urgent request and immediate financing needs of the South African Government. NDB's assistance will address urgent health needs in South Africa to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and help mitigate socio-economic impacts on the most vulnerable populations," said Mr. Xian Zhu, NDB Vice President and Chief Operations Officer. "Such focus of the Bank's financing is in line with the emergency loans provided by the NDB to China and India earlier this year."

The Loan will assist the South African Government in rolling out its healthcare response to the Novel Coronavirus Disease-19 and in providing a social safety net to alleviate the economic impact of the disease containment measures on vulnerable individuals. The Program envisages preventing, detecting and responding to the health threat posed by COVID-19, and providing social grants to vulnerable groups affected by measures implemented to prevent and contain the disease.

In its Statement on Response to COVID-19 Outbreak, the NDB Board of Governors welcomed the NDB contribution to the ongoing efforts of BRICS countries to address the health and economic consequences of the outbreak and stressed that BRICS would unite to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. The NDB established an Emergency Assistance Facility to meet the emergency needs of its member countries. COVID-19 Emergency Program Loan to South Africa is the third loan approved by the NDB Board of Directors in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Background information

On June 16, 2020, the New Development Bank priced its inaugural benchmark USD 1.5 billion 3-year COVID Response Bond in the international capital markets. The net proceeds from the Bond issue will be used to finance sustainable development activities in the NDB's member countries, including emergency assistance loans to the Bank's member countries.

The NDB was established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries, complementing the existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development. The NDB received AA+ long-term issuer credit ratings from S&P and Fitch and AAA foreign currency long-term issuer rating from Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR).

SOURCE NDB
The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville is investigating how it came to print a full-page advertisement Sunday by a fringe biblical prophecy group that claimed 'Islam' is set to detonate a nuclear bomb in the city.

The ad, which featured pictures of Donald Trump, Pope Francis, and burning US flags, was credited to the Ministry of Future of America - a group that claims its mission is to 'proclaim the final warning message' from the Bible.

Titled 'Dear Citizen of Nashville', the lengthy 'prophecy' features several paragraphs of anti-Muslim rhetoric claiming that the Bible predicts Islams role is to bring 'all men on planet earth together to combat them.'

It also stated that Trump would be the 'last president of the US', warned there would be 'another civil war', and said that 'Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device' in Nashville on July 18.

The bizarre prolix also made mention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Democratic Party and the 2001 September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

The paid advertisement that appeared in Sunday's editions of The Tennessean from the group Future For America claims Donald Trump 'is the final president of the USA' and features a photo of Trump and Pope Francis. It begins by claiming that a nuclear device would be detonated in Nashville and that the attack would be carried out by unspecific interests of 'Islam'

In a story on its website Sunday afternoon, The Tennessean said the ad violated the newspapers long-established standards banning hate speech.

'Clearly there was a breakdown in the normal processes, which call for careful scrutiny of our advertising content,' Vice President and Editor Michael A. Anastasi said, adding that the paper's news and sales departments operate independently.

'The ad is horrific and is utterly indefensible in all circumstances. It is wrong, period, and should have never been published.

'Clearly there was a breakdown in the normal processes, which call for careful scrutiny of our advertising content,' Vice President and Editor Michael A. Anastasi said, adding that the paper's news and sales departments operate independently

'It has hurt members of our community and our own employees and that saddens me beyond belief. It is inconsistent with everything The Tennessean as an institution stands and has stood for.'

The Tennessean reported that Sundays ad 'was immediately ordered to be pulled from future editions by sales executives and the investigation launched.'

The group also ran a full-page ad in Wednesday's editions of the newspaper, which didn't mention Islam but did feature 'end-times prophecy'.

On that occasion Future of America said its intention was to warn Nashville residents about next month's event 'so that they may be able to make a decision intelligently.'

Tennessean reporters including state government reporter Natalie Allison, investigative reporter Adam Tamburin, health care reporter Brett Kelman and Titans reporter Erik Bacharach, among others, criticized the ad on Twitter.

'It also ran on A20 of Wednesdays paper,' Bacharach tweeted. 'This is so severely irresponsible. Ive got no idea how something like this gets approved  I have no inkling into the advertising process  but its absolutely unacceptable. My colleagues and I are seeking answers.'

The ad said that Trump would be the 'last president of the US', warned there would be 'another civil war', and said that 'Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device' in Nashville

Future of America is a 501c3 non-profit based in Arkansas, that describes its purpose on its website as 'evangelism'. According to tax returns observed by the Tennessee Lookout, the group brought in $727,520 last year, and has a cash flow of over $1 million.

Its fundraising sources are not itemized on the most recent disclosure, the outlet reported.

According to its website, the group's ministry warns of so-called end-of-the-world Bible prophecies whose fulfillment 'is no longer future - for it is taking place before our eyes.'

Speaking to the New York Times, Jeff Pippenger, who identified himself as the speaker of the Ministry of Future for America, said the paper owed him a full refund. He declined to specify how much the ad cost.

'I stand by all the content in the ad and the content in the website,' he said. 'It seems to me the criticism is more aimed at the editorial staff at the newspaper, and the criticism about my religious convictions is simply what happens when you let your religious convictions out into the public arena.'

Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish-American population in the country and last year elected its first Muslim public official, Metro Council member Zulfat Suara.

Council on Islamic-American Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called the ad 'unfortunate' but said it was 'symptomatic of the overall rise of Islamophobia, racism and white supremacy' in the US, in a statement Sunday.

Cooper said the ad was 'Islamophobic' and added that though the ad was pulled and an investigation has begun, 'we would urge the Tennessean to also implement updated policies and staff training to ensure that this type of hate incident does not occur in the future. CAIR is willing to offer that training.'

Jeff Pippenger, who identified himself as the speaker of the Ministry of Future for America, said the paper owed him a full refund. He declined to specify how much the ad cost

According to its website, the group's ministry warns of so-called end-of-the-world Bible prophecies whose fulfillment 'is no longer future - for it is taking place before our eyes'

The Tennessean newspaper (headquarters pictured) has launched an investigation into the matter to learn how the ad make it to print

While the bizarre nature of the ad will likely to be interpreted as such by readers, Hooper said a minority of people could believe the false claims about Muslims.

Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the Tennessee-based American Muslim Advisory Council, agreed, citing the ad to be a major setback for the Muslim community and voiced fears it may incite violence against Muslims in the state.

'Obviously this is very dangerous against our community,' Mohyuddin said to the Lookout. 'It makes you think that if you want to write an editorial and they wont publish it, then you can pay to have it published with an ad. If this was a white nationalist organization, the KKK, or making racist remarks, or anti-Semitic remarks, would the Tennessean publish it? They wouldnt have, thats the truth.'

Mohyuddin added that the Muslim community already suffers from bullying in schools, discrimination in the workplace and threats to places of worship.

'So when things like this come out we live in greater fear. Youre talking about a nuclear attack,' she said. 'You can apologize. You can pull the ad, but once this idea is in peoples minds and it falls further into their stereotypes, this just confirms their stereotypes.'

Terry Heaton, who is an author and retired television news executive, including the former executive producer of 'The 700 Club,' said the advertisements claim is not supported in the Bible.

'This idea has been debated in church circles forever, and there have been plenty of historical accounts of those who shouted that "the end is near,"' Heaton said. 'Obviously, nobody has been accurate, so I think it's safe to say this is nonsense.'
SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Supreme Court ruled this week that the city of Chicago may not destroy records of police misconduct that are more than five years old, despite a contract with citys police union that requires city officials to do so.

In a 6-1 ruling Wednesday, the high court said that a state law requiring public records to be maintained supersedes a provision in the citys contract with the union.

The decision comes at a time when police departments throughout the country, including the Chicago Police Department, have been the target of protests and civil unrest in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died when a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The provision in the contract with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 requiring the city to destroy records of investigations and discipline arising from police misconduct has been the subject of litigation and arbitration for nearly thirty years.

The provision dates back to 1981 and has remained largely unchanged since. The current language states that, All disciplinary investigation files, disciplinary history card entries, Independent Police Review Authority and Internal Affairs Division disciplinary records, and any other disciplinary record or summary of such record other than records related to Police Board cases, will be destroyed five (5) years after the date of the incident or the date upon which the violation is discovered, whichever is longer.

Beginning in 1991, however, federal courts began intervening to block the destruction of those documents, especially those that were the subject of federal investigations into a pattern or practice of police misconduct.

In 2011 and 2012, the court noted, the FOP filed grievances against Chicago for failing to comply with terms of the contract.

While those grievances were pending, both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times filed requests under the states Freedom of Information Act for records in the citys possession dating back to 1967.

After city officials notified the union that it intended to comply with the requests, a Cook County Circuit Court judge issued a series of preliminary inunctions effectively preventing the city from releasing any records that were more than four years old or that were the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

In January 2016, an arbitrator in the FOPs grievances sided with the union and ordered the two sides to reach an agreement on how to proceed with the destruction of the records. In response, the U.S. Attorneys office sent a letter to the city ordering it to preserve documents relevant to its investigation.

In 2017, both the Justice Department and a task force appointed by the city issued reports specifically citing the contract language as an impediment to oversight and reform of the Police Department.

Finally, in October of that year, a circuit court judge issued an order overturning the arbitrators decision to enforce the contract, finding that the language violated a well-defined and dominant public policy to preserve government records.

At issue was Illinois Local Records Act, which requires local governments and school districts to preserve public records without first seeking permission from a Local Records Commission and demonstrating that the records do not have sufficient administrative, legal or fiscal value to warrant their further preservation. Violation of that act is a Level 4 felony.

The union argued in court that another statute, the Public Labor Relations Act. It states that whenever there is a conflict between that act, or any collective bargaining agreement negotiated under it, and any other state law, the labor law prevails.

In its ruling Wednesday, however, the court said there is a longstanding exception to that principle whenever the contract provision is repugnant to established norms of public policy.

In the case of the police contract, the court found that laws requiring retention of public records are a clear statement of public policy. Or, stated more specifically in the State Records Act, that government records are a form of property whose ownership lies with the citizens and with the State of Illinois.

While parties are generally free to make their own contracts, this court has long held that when a conflict exists between a contract provision and state law, as it clearly does in this case, state law prevails, Justice Lloyd Karmeier wrote for the majority.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas Kilbride argued that the original arbitration award did not order the destruction of documents. It only ordered the two sides to negotiate, which he said was not a violation of the Local Records Act.

He also argued that there is an equally well-established public policy in Illinois to enforce collective bargaining agreements.

To repeat, the issue of police misconduct is a serious issue that must be confronted by society, Kilbride wrote. This court was asked, however, to consider a fundamental principle of labor law, namely, the validity and enforcement of arbitration awards.
Photo: (Photo : Photo by Kate Trifo from Pexels)

In the United States, there are more than 2.2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, and more than 119,000 have died.

Experts believe that with the growing number of new cases, the coronavirus pandemic will not slow down this summer or fall.

In an interview with NBC, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Michael Osterholm, described the coronavirus pandemic as a forest fire.

Osterholm said, "Wherever there's wood to burn, this fire is going to burn, and right now, we have a lot of susceptible people."

The statistics on the coronavirus pandemic

Last Saturday, more than 33,000 new cases of coronavirus were recorded in the U.S. This number is the highest total since the 1st of May.

Compared to the U.S., the European Union only records 4,000 new confirmed cases per day. In the U.S., about 24,000 new cases are recorded per day. The population of the European Union is at 446 million, while the U.S. has 328 million.

The number of confirmed cases may be attributed to the increase in testing in the country. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. around 26 million tests have been conducted all over the country.

READ ALSO: During and After Quarantine, Parents Choose Between Career and Children

Expert: The Influenza Model Does Not Apply To The U.S.

The past four influenza pandemic outbreaks in the United States have one prominent characteristic. All of them have multiple waves of infections. Although the mechanisms of these waves are still uncertain, some experts say that this may help health authorities in developing strategies in curbing the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Osterholm believes that the multiple waves model of the influenza pandemic does not apply to the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. He thinks that we will not see one, two, or three waves, but rather just one big wave. He added that the first wave has yet to slow down, so there is no second wave.

Osterholm said, "I think we're just going to see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases."

READ ALSO: WHO Clarifies Confusion about Asymptomatic Spread of the Coronavirus

Despite the increase in coronavirus cases, people want to have get-togethers.

Some states have been easing measures for the coronavirus pandemic. A lot of people are looking for ways to have get-togethers and make summer fun while ensuring everyone is safe.

As proof, the search term "social distancing get together ideas" increased to 600% in popularity last week.

According to experts, it is human nature to connect with other people, thus the get-togethers. The self-esteem and sense of meaning and purpose are boosted when one person keeps contact with others.

Theresa DiDonato, an associate professor of psychology at Loyola University, humans are always driven to connect. She also said, "We have a fundamental motivation to belong."

To be able to address this, a lot of families are becoming creative in terms of their get-togethers. They do all activities while keeping some social distance and wearing masks.

READ ALSO: Are Divorce and Separation Emerging Trends After the Pandemic Quarantines?
22.06.2020 LISTEN

A Senior Lecturer at the Kumasi campus of the University of Education, Winneba, Dr.Yarhands Dissou Arthur, has blamed President Akufo-Addo, for what appears to be a manifestation of increased political violence in the body politic of Ghana.

According to him, failure by President Akufo-Addo to decisively and ruthlessly punish perpetrators of the recent Ayawso-West Wuogon violence has become the catalyst for the tomfoolery.

Reacting to violent attacks on some NPP members during and after the party's parliamentary primaries over the weekend, the University lecturer lamented the lack of political will by Ghana's leader to punish such hooligans who always foment trouble.

The NPP over the weekend held its parliamentary primaries to elect candidates from constituencies the party occupies as it prepares for the 2020 polls. There were some pockets of violence in some among opposing parties which led to injuries and destruction of property.

On the AWW report, Dr.Yarhands Arthur, who was speaking to a section of the media in Kumasi has predicted doom in the upcoming general elections should President Akufo-Addo remain adamant on the recommendations of the Short Commission to punish wrongdoers.

"In the Commission's report, some persons claiming to be National Security Officers were found to have misbehaved. They were recommended for punishment but nothing has happened, I smell danger in December polls," Dr.Arthur lamented.

Dr. Arthur has urged the moral society to as a matter of urgency insist on the Akufo-Addo government to nib these acts of thuggery and tomfoolery in the bud or brace itself for a worsened insecurity come December 2020.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday that Egypt has participated in negotiations over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in good faith over the past decade, and stressed that Egypt will always be willing to engage in negotiation to reach an agreement that meets the interests of all sides.

Shoukry's statement was in response to the claim by the Ethiopian foreign minister that Egypts recent request that the United Nation Security Council intervene in the dam issue was tantamount to an escape from negotiations.

Last week, Egypt lodged a formal complaint with the Security Council just hours after the Ethiopian foreign minister said his country would commence with the filling of the dams reservoir regardless of whether it reaches a deal in the tripartite negotiations with Egypt and Sudan.

Egypt, which is almost entirely reliant on the Nile for agriculture and drinking water, fears the filling process will significantly reduce the flow of Nile water, while Ethiopia has dismissed Egypts concerns and says the project is key to its own development efforts.

Minister Shoukry said that Egypt is willing to resume the talks immediately if Ethiopia declares that it will comply with its international obligations that it will not unilaterally fill the dams reservoir.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia has maintained its intransigent position concerning the controversial dam as Foreign Minister, Gedu Andargachew said on Monday that his country would not accept any agreement that could deny its future development rights on Nile River.

Ethiopia's state news agency ENA quoted Andargachew as saying that "any negotiations which could deny Ethiopia`s right on fair utilisation of Nile or any future plans to construct other projects is totally unacceptable."

He pointed out "there are no internal or external forces will stop Ethiopia from realising the Dam."

The standoff between Egypt and Ethiopia came to a head after the breakdown of after the recent Sudan-brokered negotiations, held from 9 to 17 June, where Ethiopia refused to enter into a legally binding agreement over the controversial project.

Negotiations over Ethiopias giant $4.8 billion hydropower project started in 2011 between Egypt, Ethiopian, Sudan.

In February, prior to the Sudan-brokered talks, Ethiopia skipped the last round of negotiations mediated by the US and accused Washington of siding with Egypt.

Last month, Sudan asked the UN Security Council to encourage all parties to refrain from taking any unilateral actions, and Egypt urged the bloc to call on Ethiopia to not act unilaterally by filling the reservoir.

In response, Addis Ababa told the UN body that it does not have a legal obligation to seek the approval of Egypt to fill the dam.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The initial bribe to close the case against Burisma was $50 million, not $6 million, former senior prosecutor of the Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) Kostiantyn Kulyk said on Monday at a press conference at Interfax Ukraine.

Kulyk said Burisma officials were recently detained while transferring a $6 million bribe to an agent of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to close the Burisma case.

"The initial amount of the bribe was not $6 million. The size of the bribe was $50 million," he said, showing the relevant documents.

Kulyk said Burisma lawyer Andriy Kich was detained during the bribe attempt.

"Burisma representatives in 2019 delegated this task to Kich, according to the PGO. I have in my hands a report from the prosecutor from my group that investigated the Burisma case. As follows from the report, Burisma and the Deputy Prosecutor General Yenin tried to influence the closure of the case," Kulyk said.

Member of Parliament Andriy Derkach said of Yenin: "Poroshenko arranged for Yenin to become Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under (President Volodymyr) Zelensky to control topics sensitive to Poroshenko, (former U.S. Vice President Joe) Biden and American (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs since September 4, 2018) George Kent."

"Yenin continues to this day to communicate with George Kent, reporting weekly over the telephone about the situation," Derkach said.

In August 2019, Kulyk said, he received information that Zlochevsky allocated $ 50 million to close criminal cases related to the activities of Burisma. The main requirements are to close criminal cases involving Burisma."

"I prepared a corresponding report and reported to the prosecutor general about the need to document an attempt to give a bribe. Here is this report," Kulyk said, showing a copy of the document.

The key question, according to Kulyk, is how such a large amount of funds could be transferred.

"You can imagine the volume of notes in the amount of $50 million. It is clear that such a bribe was impossible to give in cash. Therefore, we turned to Ukraine's SBU State Security Service for help in creating a legendary enterprise, which should have been credited. But PGO leadership changed. (Ruslan) Riaboshapka replaced (Yuriy) Lutsenko (as Prosecutor General). Talk about a $50-million bribe stopped after that, and Riaboshapka said that there was no case involving Burisma," Kulyk said.

"One of the episodes of official suspicion of Zlochevsky, case No. 1590, which supposedly was supposed to be closed for $6 million, includes facts of Zlochevsky's complicity in money laundering using Burisma, as well as Rosemont Seneca Boa of Devon Archer from the Biden family's orbit. It was $50 million to close not only Zlochevsky's case, but also against a company close to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden When Burisma representatives were detained giving a $6 million bribe, Rosemont Seneca Boa, and, accordingly, payments to Biden in the case already did not appear. Sytnyk personally confirmed this at his recent press conference," Kulyk said.

Derkach claimed "the Bidens were suspicious, but disappeared along the way, together with another $44 million dollars, which was the main part of the bribe."

"Everyone made good money. Even stranger is the absence of Biden's name in the case in which he definitely appears, according to NABU Director (Artem) Sytnyk, who does not want to interfere in international political processes. The cynicism of the proposal is astounding. It was namely Sytnyk who interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election using fakes from the so-called 'black ledger' incriminating Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort," Derkach said.

As reported, on June 12, a former official, with the assistance of a State Fiscal Service (SFS) official attempted to transfer $6 million of undue profit to Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office Head Nazar Kholodnytsky and top NABU officials. Mykola Illiashenko, First Deputy Head of Kyiv's Tax Service and Burisma's lawyer Andriy Kich were caught red-handed and arrested.
New Delhi, June 22 : The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response from the owner of Rajdhani School owner Faisal Farooqui over a petition filed by the Delhi police challenging the bail granted to him in a case relating to the Delhi riots.

The Crime Branch of the Delhi Police which is probing the cases relating to the Delhi riots in its charge-sheet in connection with the riots that broke out near Rajdhani School in Shiv Vihar area of northeast Delhi had claimed that its owner Farooque visited "Deoband" and had links with "Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz" A single judge bench of the high court issued a notice to Farooqui seeking his response over the plea filed by the Delhi police seeking cancellation of bail granted to him. The court also directed that "till further order, if (Farooq) is still in custody, he shall not be released." "Till further order, if the respondent/accused, pursuant to order dated 20.06.2020 is still in custody, he shall not be released, the court said while posting the matter for further hearing on June 23 (Tuesday).

A Delhi court had on June 20 granted bail to Farooqui while observing that despite police allegations, the chargesheet did not provide any evidence of terror funding or his alleged links with Pinjra Tod group, the Popular Front of India and Muslim clerics.

The court also said the prima facie evidence suggested that he was not present at the spot at the time of incident.

In its charge sheet, the Delhi police has categorically mentioned that Farooque visited Deoband on Feb 23, just one day before the riots began in the Shiv Vihar and its neighboring areas too.

"His (Faisal) call detail analysis and links with prominent members of Popular Front of India, Pinjratod group, Jamia Coordination Committee, Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz and some other fundamental muslim clerics including Deoband also show the depth of the conspiracy," the police had said in its charge sheet filed before Metropolitian Magistrate Richa Parihar.

The case relates to riots that broke that broke out on Feb 24 outside Shiv Vihar's Rajdhani School where another school named DRP Convent and an adjacent sweet shop was burnt and a man trapped inside the shop died. 18 people including Farooque were arrested by the police in this regard.

"The rioters had camped inside and fired bullets from the terrace of Rajdhani School. They also threw petrol bombs, acid, bricks, stones and other missiles using an improvised large iron catapult, specially installed for the purpose, from the terrace of Rajdhani School," the police said.

The chargesheet states that Farooque had hatched a conspiracy to precipitate and aggravate riots, in and around Rajdhani School. On his instructions, the adjacent and rival DRP Convent School, 2 parking lots run by the other party and the building of Anil Sweets was systematically destroyed by the mob.A
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 05:48:02|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Monday called for a ceasefire and resumption of negotiations over Libyan conflict.

In a phone conversation on Monday, the two leaders agreed on the urgent need for a ceasefire in Libya and the rapid resumption of negotiations by the Libyan parties, the White House said in a statement.

"President Trump and President Macron reiterated that military escalation on all sides must stop immediately to prevent the Libyan conflict from becoming even more dangerous and intractable," the statement added.

The phone conversation came as the situation in Libya faced a risk of further escalation. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi Saturday announced availability for the Egyptian army to intervene and help Libya against terrorists and armed groups.

Libya's UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), which supported by Turkey and Qatar, responded on Sunday that Sisi's remarks were a "declaration of war."

Libya has been locked in a civil war since the ouster and killing of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The situation escalated in 2014, splitting power between two rival governments with warring forces: the UN-backed GNA based in the capital Tripoli and a government in the northeastern city of Tobruk allied with the Khalifa Haftar-led Libyan National Army (LNA).

Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Russia support Haftar's LNA, while the GNA is backed by Turkey and Qatar as well as Italy. Enditem
Ideas and agendas By Robert T. Smith

It is beyond reason at this point that any person would assert the main-stream media is not the communication arm of the Democrat party. Marching in lock-step and even leading the Democrat agenda, the main-stream media daily reports the news, and these reports are formed in a manner to support the Democrat position. As an add-on to the bias, the main-stream media doesnt report on those news items that would factually not support the Democrat position. Arguably, this has been so for many decades nationally and even with many local media outlets. President Trumps statement that the media are the enemy of the people is well founded, regardless of how butt-hurt that makes the main-stream media feel, and even some who are associated with the alleged but not proven opposition media, such as the liberal Chris Wallace of FOX. Appearing on The View on June 9, perhaps where he belongs, Mr. Wallace lamented: I think its awful,  he said when co-host Joy Behar asked him about Trumps labeling of the news media as the enemy of the people. I think this president is involved in the most concerted campaign against the media in history. Mr. Wallaces lack of (self-) awareness is beyond parody. The Democrat/liberal media attack on the President began before he was elected. The goal was not just to stop his election, but to destroy him and his family, even put them in jail. Every organ of the big government Democrat machine, in concert with the liberal mainstream media was set to this task. What we have learned already, and will further learn from Attorney-General Bill Barr and the Durham investigation will be demonstrably instructive in regard to the long-standing Democrat/liberal media agenda. Consistent with the television media controlling the minds of the public, we have the liberal Twitter organization. The controlling twits at Twitter have seen fit to chime in with their benefactors in the Democrat party, by applying their opinion in the form of truth checking the Presidents tweets. The Democrat/liberal media Hollywood connection is well established and continues unabated as well. There is no end to the denunciations and pejoratives daily hurled at the President and his supporters. So imbued with the Democrat agenda, now even a show that depicts the difficulties of policing in our country must be stopped, so that the agenda can be realized. Cops - the long-running reality series showing the difficulties and dangers police officers face on a daily basis across the country has been cancelled after a more than 30-year run as the Democrat/liberal media anti-police sentiment is propagated across the country, as a result of last months death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. The control the media and control the minds of the public poster child was former President Obama. Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama consistently complained about the existence of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, whose existence he attributed to causing division among Americans and making his job of dispensing his truth difficult. In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in October 2016, President Obama floated the notion of a media test: There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard because they just dont have any basis in anything thats actually happening in the world. Mr. Obamas desire appeared to be a government-established group to apply the truthiness to the medias reporting. Obviously, nothing could go wrong with that, as surely the former Soviet Union communist leader would agree: The press is our chief ideological weapon - Nikita Khrushchev The recent chaos caused by the leftist groups Antifa and Black Lives Matter further the notion that those who control the media control the minds of the public. Unreported by the liberal media was the anarchy displayed by the Democrat-associated domestic terrorists during the riots and protests. As an example reported by a person subject to these anarchists: The protesters were blocking the 405 [freeway], she said. They wouldnt let me through unless I shouted black lives matter, so I did that and then they wanted me to make a sign that said black lives matter, and I had some poster board and a magic marker in my front seat so I made one, and they applauded, and let me through. She cried a lot more and added, And then I tore it up and I threw up. The Antifa and BLM approach to forced acceptance of their cause and ideas is shared with others. Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas? - Joseph Stalin Compare and contrast the medias coverage of George Floyds funeral versus retired St. Louis Captain David Dorn, who was murdered by a looter in St. Louis. Mr. Floyds life was unfortunately spent as a criminal. A long criminal record of drugs, armed robbery, theft. At the time of his death the autopsy reported he was suffering from the use of illegal drugs, fentanyl intoxication and had recently used methamphetamines. Three days of continuous coverage of his services and funeral, and the mystifying usual Democrat/liberal media bashing of President Trump who had no hand in Mr. Floyds demise in the many decades long Democrat controlled city of Minneapolis and State of Minnesota. Juxtapose the lack of coverage for the retired St. Louis police Captain David Dorn. Mr. Dorn was a community leader, who was recognized for his caring approach to policing. He was father of five and grandfather of 10. He was reported to have been passionate about helping young people, in particular black youth. Unfortunately, Mr. Dorn did not fit the liberal mainstream media/Democrat agenda and so was a footnote to the funerals of the day. As most eloquently stated by Mark Steyn, We live in a media age where the deaths in Democrat cities are just more statistics. He noted that 18 (black) people were fatally shot in Chicago on May 31, 2020, and they are simply weekend statistics. Steyn observed that the gun deaths in Chicago are unreported because they dont fit the narrative. He said everything would be different if black lives matter was a sincere slogan, but its not. In the Democrat controlled City of Chicago as in many other long-controlled Democrat cities around the country, it is an apparent fact that all black lives do not matter if they dont fit the Democrat/liberal media agenda. He who controls the media controls the minds of the public - Noam Chomsky Robert T. Smith is an environmental scientist who spends his days enjoying life and the pursuit of happiness with his family. He confesses to cling to his liberty, guns and religion, with antipathy toward the arrogant ruling elites throughout the country. Home
The coronavirus pandemic was the last straw for Tucson restaurateur Andreas Delfakis.

After 27 years of serving authentic Greek seafood alongside dolmathes and moussaka at his once-popular Athens on 4th Ave. restaurant, Delfakis called it quits over the weekend.

He announced on Facebook Sunday that he was closing the restaurant for good. Athens on 4th served its last meals on Saturday, June 20.

All things have a beginning and an ending, he said philosophically. Nothing is forever. There are many reasons.

But the reality came down to a simple truth, he said:

When you dont have business and you dont have money to pay the rent, you close, said Delfakis, who said he has not been able to pay rent on the building since March; his lease expired in May.

The closing comes after years of roadblocks, he said Monday. Athens on 4th Ave. survived the 2008 financial crisis and seemingly endless construction along North Fourth Avenue, he said, including 18 months of road diversions and closures when the city installed the rail for the Sun Link streetcar beginning in late 2012.

He even held out hope as cranes moved in and construction fences went up across the street where a high-rise apartment complex began to take shape early this year.

And then the coronavirus pandemic struck and Gov. Doug Ducey ordered life as we knew it  going to restaurants, shopping, the theater, bars  to pause in mid-March.
Republican Senators do not have plans to act for new coronavirus aid until next month despite the increasing unemployment rate in the country.

The United States is now experiencing its most significant recession due to the global pandemic. Millions have filed for their unemployment claims hoping that they will receive stimulus that will aid their financial needs every day.

According to a published article in The Guardian, the number of unemployment claims as of June 6 has already reached 20.5 million. This means that the unemployment rate in the country is already 14.1 percent.

However, instead of acting today for the new coronavirus aid that will help millions of people in the country, the Republican senators said that their plan for the new relief aid is still next month.

There are speculations that the new coronavirus aid is planned to be given next month to make it timely for the upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential elections, according to a report published in The Hill.

When Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was questioned about the timing of the new coronavirus aid, he declined to answer.

Republicans Still Hope for the Party's Success in the Upcoming Election

The chance of Pres. To have the Presidential sit again, Donald Trump is getting thinner following the low turn out of participants on his latest rally in Tulsa.

However, there are many factors seen. One of these is the effect of COVID-19, where many might want to avoid overcrowded places like a rally to prevent getting infected by the infectious and deadly virus.

The plan to have the new relief aid next month could change voters' minds and increase the chance of Pres. Trump and the majority of the Republican Party to win in the upcoming election.

Sen. John Cornyn, who is running for re-election in Texas, said that the country is experiencing its tough times, but as long as people see hope because of the government's action, he believed that there is still a big chance for the party.

He also added that the country's recovery progresses through its states' reopening, and everything is running good in the country today.

Sen. John Thune also said that most of the citizens in the country have more members from the Republican Party who can make the country great again. He also stressed out that people believed that Republicans are doing more policies.

A TV Ad Comparing Trump and Biden

Two names are now on the top choices of the citizens in the country. These are the incumbent President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden.

While Biden made headlines in the past few weeks due to his racist rhetoric when he said that "You ain't Black if you support Trump," this was taken advantage of by Trump's supporters by making videos of it, and it went viral online.

Meanwhile, a recent television ad went up on Friday that described Biden as someone who would crush the economy. In contrast, Donald Trump as someone who led the country to the most robust economy in history, and he will do it again.

In an exclusive interview with Pres. Donald Trump from Fox News, he said: "We have done a great job. If you look back a few months to an economy that was the greatest of all time. ...And now you look at what we're doing; I'm doing it all over again."

He also added the country's economy would be incredible next year and the third quarter will bring some good news in the country.

As the election is more than four months from now, there are still many possibilities that might happen and will increase the chance of the Presidential candidates to win.

Check these out!
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pretium Resources Inc. (TSX/NYSE: PVG) (Pretivm or the Company) announces that it has accepted the resignation of David Prins, Vice President, Operations, who will be departing the Company on August 31, 2020 or such other date as may be mutually agreed. The Company is initiating a search for a new leader for its operations and Mr. Prins will continue to assist in his current role until his departure in order to ensure an orderly transition.



Mr. Prins was appointed Vice President, Operations in 2018. He joined Pretivm in 2016 as Project Director responsible for completing the construction of the Brucejack Mine and transmission line.

Daves leadership has been instrumental in the success of the Brucejack Mine, and the Company in general, said Jacques Perron, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pretivm. We thank Dave for leading the teams that successfully and safely built and ramped up Brucejacks operations. We wish him all the success in his future endeavours.

About Pretivm

Pretivm is an intermediate gold producer with the high-grade gold underground Brucejack Mine.

For further information contact:

Troy Shultz

Manager, Investor Relations &

Corporate Communications

Pretium Resources Inc.

Suite 2300, Four Bentall Centre, 1055 Dunsmuir Street

PO Box 49334 Vancouver, BC V7X 1L4

(604) 558-1784

invest@pretivm.com

(SEDAR filings: Pretium Resources Inc.)

Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information and forward looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation (collectively herein referred to as forward-looking information), including the safe harbour provisions of Canadian provincial securities legislation and the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Wherever possible, words such as plans, expects, guidance, projects, assumes, budget, strategy, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, anticipates, believes, intends, modeled, targets and similar expressions or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative forms of any of these terms and similar expressions, have been used to identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to: the Companys leadership transition plans; production and financial guidance, and our expectations around achieving such guidance; our future operational and financial results, including estimated cash flows (including free cash flow forecasts) and the timing thereof; expectations around grade of gold and silver production; Brucejack Mine production rate and gold recovery rate; capital modifications and upgrades, underground development and anticipated benefits thereof, and estimated expenditures and timelines in connection therewith, including with respect to maintaining a steady state production rate of 3,800 tonnes per day; payment of debt, operating and other obligations and commitments including timing and source of funds; our mining (including mining methods), expansion, exploration and development activities, including longitudinal longhole stoping initiatives, the reverse circulation drill program, our infill, expansion and underground exploration drill programs and our grassroots exploration program, and the results, costs and timing thereof; our operational grade control program, including plans with respect to our infill drill program and our local grade control model; grade reconciliation, updated geological interpretation and mining initiatives with respect to the Brucejack Mine; our management, operational plans and strategy; capital, sustaining and operating cost estimates and timing thereof; the future price of gold and silver; our liquidity and the adequacy of our financial resources (including capital resources); our intentions with respect to our capital resources; capital allocation plans; our financing activities, including plans for the use of proceeds thereof; the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources including any updates thereto; parameters and assumptions used to estimate mineral reserves and mineral resources; realization of mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates; our estimated life of mine and life of mine plan for the Brucejack Mine; production and processing estimates and estimated rates; estimated economic results of the Brucejack Mine, including net cash flow and net present value; predicted metallurgical recoveries for gold and silver; geological and mineralization interpretations; development of our Brucejack Mine and timing thereof; results, analyses and interpretations of exploration and drilling programs; timelines and similar statements relating to the economic viability of the Brucejack Mine, including mine life, total tonnes mined and processed and mining operations; updates to our mineral reserves and mineral resources and life of mine plan for the Brucejack Mine, and the anticipated effects and timing thereof; timing, receipt, and anticipated effects of, and anticipated capital costs in connection with, approvals, consents and permits under applicable legislation; our executive compensation policy, approach and practice; our relationship with community stakeholders; litigation matters; environmental matters; payment of taxes, our effective tax rate and the recognition of our previously unrecognized income tax attributes; new accounting standards applicable to the Company, including methods of adoption and the effects of adoption of such standards; statements regarding U.S. dollar cash flows, currency fluctuations and the recurrence of foreign currency translation adjustments; management and board of directors succession plans; the impact of financial instruments on our earnings; and the effects of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak as a global pandemic, including anticipated operational and financial impacts, and our response and contingency plans. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, actions, events, conditions, performance or achievements to materially differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information including, without limitation, the ability of the Company to successfully close a financing pursuant to the base shelf prospectus or shelf registration statement, when final or effective, and those risks identified in our final short form base shelf prospectus and the documents incorporated, or deemed to be incorporated, by reference. Our forward-looking information is based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made, including, without limitation, those set out in our Annual Information Form and Form 40-F, each dated February 21, 2020, for the year ended December 31, 2019, our MD&A and our other disclosure documents as filed in Canada on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and in the United States through EDGAR at the Security and Exchange Commissions (the SEC) website at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Forward-looking information involves statements about the future and is inherently uncertain, and our actual achievements or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking information due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors. For the reasons set forth above, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. We do not assume any obligation to update forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Neither the TSX nor the NYSE has approved or disapproved of the information contained herein.
The cortege makes its way through Charlestown on the way to church pictured this afternoon at the funeral of Detective Garda Colm Horkan, at St. Jamses' Church, Charlestown, Co. Mayo. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Detective Garda Colm Horkan was remembered by his family as a "rock" and the "glue that held it all together".

Hundreds of gardai from Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon divisions gathered in Charlestown, Co Mayo, to pay their respects to the detective, who was shot dead on Wednesday night in Castlerea, Co Ros- common.

His funeral took place in St James' Church, where he was baptised and made his First Communion and Confirmation.

In an emotional tribute, his brother, Brendan, said the officer was cut down in the prime of life doing the job he loved.

"He was a rock in our family, the glue that held it all together. Colm was a gem, a son and brother like no other," he said.

He described him as "kind, considerate, selfless and, above all, loyal to the core".

Expand Close Tragedy: Detective Colm Horkan in the GAA gear of his local club Charlestown / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Tragedy: Detective Colm Horkan in the GAA gear of his local club Charlestown

Mr Horkan said the journey home from the post-mortem "tugged at heartstrings" as communities lined the roads and streets.

"Mine and my family's emotions are in turmoil at this time. He was a man who made our lives so much better," he said.

"Today is such a horrible and nonsensical event. Reality hit us square in the face."

Giant

Det Gda Horkan was "a man of sheer class", which must mean "a seat for him at the top table".

"Our loss is heaven's gain. Today we say goodbye to a giant who brought joy and happiness for 49 fantastic years," he added.

Det Gda Horkan's coffin was carried up Chapel Street by his four brothers and was then taken over by members of An Garda Siochana.

Castlerea Garda Station Superintendent Goretti Sheridan announced a nationwide minute's silence from the altar at noon and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar paid his respects at Garda Headquarters in Dublin.

President Michael D Higg-ins held a vigil at Aras an Uachtarain.

Chief celebrant of the mass and parish priest Monsignor Tommy Johnston describe Det Gda Horkan as "one of nature's gentlemen".

"Colm Horkan was a good man, one of nature's gentlemen, that and more," he said.

"One of the good things that have emerged from Covid-19 is that it has helped us to recognise the importance of our frontline workers, and up there, very much to the fore, are our guards helping to keep the nation safe."

Fr Johnston included a tribute written by an unnamed friend in his homily.

"Colm was a cherished member of our community, a brother to everyone, young and old," the tribute said.

"We grew up together, played together and performed in school plays together."

Fr Johnston said the community was in deep mourning.

"We are heartbrok- en for Colm's family, coll- eagues and many, many friends," he said.

"It will take a long, long time for our community to come to terms with this senseless act of violence against our brother Colm."

The mass began with Fr Johnston saying Det Gda Horkan was "a man of goodness".

His brother Dermot spoke tearfully at the altar as gifts were brought up.

A garda notebook symbolised his service, as well as a Charlestown jersey in green and white and his car keys - he had a "great passion for cars".

A CD was brought up as the detective loved music and concerts and was "always in the queue for tickets at Ticketmaster", as well as his family photo to symbolise the "strong bond".

His "love for fashion" was symbolised by a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and his Liverpool FC tie pin, with "You'll Never Walk Alone", "summed up Colm perfectly".

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, as well as Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, attended the funeral.

In accordance with government guidelines, 25 family members and relatives were inside the church, which included the minister and the commissioner.

Mr Harris said Det Gda Horkan "epitomised what all of us as members of An Garda Siochana should strive to be".

Legacy

"His policing service was characterised by hard work and diligence," he added.

While he said his death was a heavy blow to the force, the Roscommon and Mayo communities had come out in support.

"The outpouring of condolences and support in response to Colm's death and the shocking manner of his death has supported all of us in An Garda Siochana," he said.

"Those of us who continue to serve can honour Colm's legacy. May he rest in peace."

As he concluded, there was a round of applause from gardai standing outside the church.

A private burial took place after the mass.
Visa liberalization with Canada would be an important step for Ukraine in strengthening relations between the two countries, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

"Our people need to feel equally free, simple, open - both Canadians in Ukraine and Ukrainians in Canada. That is why we are talking about liberalization. It seems to me that Justin (Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau - ed.) supports this direction, and I want to bring this moment closer step by step," the President said, the press service of the Head of State reports.

Volodymyr Zelensky stressed in the interview that economic relations between Ukraine and Canada developed in real steps, not in words. In particular, this concerns the solution of problems of the Canadian company Black Iron, which wanted to invest in a mining and processing plant in Kryvyi Rih city.

"I know this very well, because I am from Kryvyi Rih and this is the investment in my hometown. This problem has been "hanging" for 10 years, but it is such a big investor. The size of the investment is 1.1 billion US dollars. They could not enter Ukraine," the President said.

According to the Head of State, now this issue is almost resolved.

"It will be a very big cooperation. After all, this is more than a billion of investment in Ukraine, it is very important for Canada, for Black Iron, and it is important for us," Volodymyr Zelensky stressed.

The President also noted that Ukraine and Canada were united by a great tragedy - the downing of the Ukraine International Airlines plane in Tehran, which took place in January 2020.

"Different things in life unite. Unfortunately, tragedies as well. At the time, we were working with Justin (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau - ed.). We had a lot of communication, and we were able together with American partners to make Iran admit that they are guilty of this tragedy. Now the investigation continues. At that time, the Prime Minister (of Canada - ed.) and I talked several times, at some point it was several times a week, and we solved really important problems, the President said.

Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that Ukrainians and Canadians were united by ancient historical relations. He thanked the representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada who collected humanitarian aid for Ukraine at the beginning of the war in 2014.

"I think that it is in such difficult times that this closeness, which is at the genetic level between countries and nations, is manifested," the President said.

As reported, Ukraine abolished visas for Canadians back in 2005, but Canada has not yet cancelled mutual visa requirements. Ukraine's inclusion in the Canadian trusted traveler program was announced during President Zelensky's visit to Canada in July this year. However, the Canadian side has not yet revealed details of this program for Ukraine.

ol
Student asked to change her name to make it sound English says she hopes experience can empower people

A college professor has been placed on administrative leave following a racist incident in which he refused to call a student by her given name and instructed hertwiceto Anglicize her name.

Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese American freshman college student at Laney College in Oakland, California, was on her second day of classes and was looking forward to using her legal name after years of being called May when she received an abrupt email request from her trigonometry professor, Matthew Hubbard.

The request? Anglicize her name.

I didn't know what it meant," Nguyen told ABC News , " I had to call my friend and ask, I even Googled it."

MORE: College recruiter fired for lining students up by skin color, 'nappiest hair'

Hubbard even allegedly referred to her as "P-Nguyen" later on during a Zoom class.

"When I first read it, I was like really shocked, I cant believe this is happening to me," said Nguyen. When she was growing up, people always had trouble pronouncing her name, she added, but the most they would do is ask her for the proper pronunciation.

"I felt angry and disappointed; he disrespected my culture and identity," she added.

Nguyen informed him via email that she felt his request was discriminatory and insisted that he refer to her by her birth name.

MORE: 3-year-old boy gets lost and left behind by class, teachers on preschool field trip

PHOTO: Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen (right) and her sister, Quynh Diem Bui Nguyen (left) at internship for Girls Who Code, San Francisco, Calif. (Courtesy Nguyen family)

MORE: School with numerous violations permanently closes after 5-year-old dies under their care

Hubbard responded to her request saying that she should change [her name] to avoid embarrassment both on my part and on the part of the people who had to say it  I understand you are offended, but you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language. He also included a couple of expletives in the email message, further explaining his reasoning, which has been shared on social media by one of Nguyens sisters, Quynh.

Story continues

Laney College issued a statement not long after the exchange between Hubbard and Nguyen that acknowledges allegations of "racist and xenophobic messages from a faculty member" who is now on "administrative leave," but did not name Hubbard specifically.

MORE: Library security guard killed after being stabbed repeatedly without provocation

On the surface this incident is obviously disturbing and comes after decades of discussing and working to combat structural racism, xenophobia, and violence in both the Black and Asian Pacific Islander community, said Dr. Tammeil Gilkerson, president of Laney College, in a statement posted on the colleges website. While our mission has been bold and unrelenting, we also recognize that our college and its community is a reflection of broader society and we must actively fight ignorance with education. We do not tolerate racism, discrimination or oppression of any kind. . . . We take these allegations seriously and immediately placed the faculty member on administrative leave pending an investigation.

The uproar sparked Hubbard to post an apology on Twitter but, as of Sunday morning, he has taken his Twitter page down completely. Nguyen told ABC News that Hubbard also sent her an email apologizing for his behavior but she felt the apology was "vague and insincere."

MORE: Students find cop's gun in bathroom in middle of school day

When ABC News contacted Hubbard for a comment, he referred to the statement he made to The New York Times on June 21, in which he called his first email a mistake. But its a big difference with someone doing it voluntarily and asking someone to do it. The second email is very offensive, and if I had waited eight hours, I wouldve written something very different," Hubbard said in his interview with the Times.

Nguyen said she spent time on Friday speaking with the vice president of Laney College and feels satisfied with the schools response in spite of the ignorant person not trying to learn her name. She still plans to use her legal name going forward, which includes her mother's last name and in Vietnamese means happiness blessing, she added.

Nguyen told ABC News she hoped her experience can empower people to honor their heritage. "People should be proud of their names and culture; they shouldn't change it because of someone else."

Student asked to change her name to make it sound English says she hopes experience can empower people originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
By Associated Press

NEW YORK: President Donald Trump's return to the campaign trail was designed to show strength and enthusiasm heading into the critical final months before an election that will decide whether he remains in the White House.

Instead, his weekend rally in Oklahoma highlighted growing vulnerabilities and crystallized a divisive reelection message that largely ignores broad swaths of voters  independents, suburban women and people of color  who could play a crucial role in choosing Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The lower-than-expected turnout at the comeback rally, in particular, left Trump fuming.

Theres really only one strategy left for him, and that is to propel that rage and anger and try to split the society and see if he can have a tribal leadership win here, former Trump adviser-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN's Reliable Sources.

The president did not offer even a token reference to national unity in remarks that spanned more than an hour and 40 minutes at his self-described campaign relaunch as the nation grappled with surging coronavirus infections, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and sweeping civil unrest.

Nor did Trump mention George Floyd, the African American man whose death at the hands of Minnesota police late last month sparked a national uprising over police brutality. But he did add new fuel to the nation's culture wars, defending Confederate statues while making racist references to the coronavirus, which originated in China and which he called kung flu. He also said Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came, Somalia.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 with a similar red-meat message aimed largely at energizing conservatives and white working-class men. But less than four months before early voting begins in some states, there are signs that independents and educated voters  particularly suburban women  have turned against him. Republican strategists increasingly believe that only a dramatic turnaround in the economy can revive his reelection aspirations.

Its bad, said Republican operative Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic. Theres literally nothing to run on. The only thing he can say is that Biden is worse.

But the day after Trump's Tulsa rally, the president's message was almost an afterthought as aides tried to explain away a smaller-than-expected crowd that left the president outraged.

The campaign had been betting big on Tulsa.

Trumps political team spent days proclaiming that more than 1 million people had requested tickets. They also ignored health warnings from the White House coronavirus task force and Oklahoma officials, eager to host an event that would help him move past the civil rights protests and the coronavirus itself.

His first rally in 110 days was meant to be a defiant display of political force to help energize Trumps spirits, try out some attacks on Biden and serve as a powerful symbol of Americans re-opening.

Instead, the city fire marshals office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the 19,000-seat BOK Center, and at least six staff members who helped set up the event tested positive for the coronavirus. The vast majority of the attendees, including Trump, did not wear face masks as recommended by the Trump administration's health experts.

After the rally, the president berated aides over the turnout. He fumed that he had been led to believe he would see huge crowds in deep-red Oklahoma, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

There was no sign of an imminent staff shakeup, but members of Trumps inner circle angrily questioned how campaign manager Brad Parscale and other senior aides could so wildly overpromise and underdeliver, according to the officials.

Publicly, Trump's team scrambled to blame the crowd size on media coverage and protesters outside the venue, but the small crowds of pre-rally demonstrators were largely peaceful. Tulsa police reported just one arrest Saturday afternoon.

It's unclear when Trump will hold his next rally.

Before Oklahoma, the campaign had planned to finalize and announce its next rally this week. Trump is already scheduled to make appearances Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Wisconsin. Both are major general election battlegrounds.

At least one swing state governor, meanwhile, says Trump would not be welcome to host a rally in her state amid the pandemic.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said she would think very seriously about" trying to block Trump from hosting a rally there if he wanted to.

We know that congregating without masks, especially at an indoor facility, is the worst thing to do in the midst of a global pandemic, Whitmer said in an interview before the Oklahoma event, conceding that she wasn't aware of the specific legal tools she had available to block a prospective Trump rally. "I just know we have limitations on the number of people that can gather and that were taking this seriously.

Biden's campaign, meanwhile, seized on a fresh opportunity to poke at the incumbent president, suggesting that Trump was already in a tailspin because of his mismanagement of the pandemic and civil rights protests.

Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him, Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said.
A heavily pregnant woman has cried out for help after she was trafficked to Lebanon and abandoned to her fate.



Rasheedat Taiwo Saka, an eight-month pregnant Nigerian woman told SaharaReporters on Monday, June 22, that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, she has had no access to food or medical care and was currently locked up in her traffickers' office alongside other victims.



Recalling how she found herself in that situation, she said she left Nigeria after her husband died in November 2018 and things became difficult financially.



She said three agents in Nigeria, including a Mr John and a Mr Victor, approached her and presented her the opportunity of working in Lebanon.



"Before I left for Lebanon, they bought our passport and ticket and said two months of our salary will be theirs' when we got there.



"I didn't know I was pregnant when I left Nigeria. When I got to Lebanon, the agency and my employer took me to the hospital, they found out I was pregnant but still forced me to work.



"Despite my condition, I was forced to work for six months from house to house until the house where I worked last. I had started showing very well, the woman returned me to the agency.



"I have not been paid. I reached out to the agent, Mr John, and narrated my ordeal to him saying I wanted to come home because the agency in Lebanon claimed I owed them. He dismissed me, saying my trouble was too much and asked me to contact my family to settle the Lebanese traffickers even when he knew I have no family. He has also been disturbing me, asking me to pay him, claiming I still owed him after collecting my salary from the agency in Lebanon," she said.



Saka said she is currently locked up in the trafficking agency called Damaj Services in Lebanon.



"I, alongside other women, some from Nigeria and others from Ghana, are currently locked up in an office building. The bed we are sleeping on is children's size and I am eight months pregnant. Throughout yesterday I could not sleep because I am in severe pain.



"I am hungry too. In fact, so hungry that I had to beg one of the staff in the building to buy food for me yesterday to eat, he bought bread and gave me. Then we were given five pieces of potatoes to eat; we are more than six in number," she lamented.



Adekola Damilola, an activist with Rescue Africans In Slavery (projectferry), a project working to draw attention to the plight of trafficked Nigerians in Lebanon and Oman, spoke to the publication about the plight of trafficked women. Damilola said the biggest challenge they encounter is the unwillingness on the part of the Nigerian Government to rescue women and girls in danger abroad.



"There is unwillingness on the part of government. They can do more by sending a flight, like an amnesty and asking all women and girls who are trafficked and want to return to come back home from Lebanon, Oman and Saudi Arabia.



"Immigration officials are also part of the problem. They collect money from these agents who are traffickers and allow them.



"If staff from agencies like NAPTIP are positioned in airports, they're trained to know who is being trafficked and can intervene even before the women leave Nigeria. They should also be positioned in embassies abroad because I have heard of many cases where embassy staff just take names and complaints and send the women back to their traffickers without any action."





Source: LIB









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
Finland's Nokia Oyj plans to cut 1,233 jobs at its French subsidiary Alcatel-Lucent International, equivalent to a third of the local workforce, two union officials said on Monday.

The maker of telecoms equipment informed French unions about the planned job cuts ahead of a works council in the morning.

The CFE-CGC union published the job loss figure on its website. It was confirmed by Frederic Aussedat of the CFE-CGC union and Pascal GuihAneuf of the CFDT union.

A spokeswoman for Nokia France declined to comment.
A man has been fatally stabbed in a fight involving up to 12 people in the CBD early on Monday.

Machar Kot, 21, was taken to hospital after being stabbed outside The Oaks hotel in Market Street about 5am.

Machar Kot, 21, was fatally stabbed outside The Oaks on Market hotel in Melbournes CBD.

His attackers fled the scene before officers arrived in what is the city's second fatal stabbing in less than a week.

Witness Steven told Nine News a fight broke out between a group of up to 12 men, with some participants seen wielding knives.
US President Donald Trump has once again blamed China for the global spread of the deadly coronavirus which has killed over 450,000 people and infected more than 8.5 million others, terming the disease as Kung flu.

Trump has repeatedly blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year and accused Beijing of suppressing the details of the contagion.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

The Trump administration officials have described it as Wuhan virus due to its origin.

Trump, addressing his first election rally on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the US early this year, said that the Covid-19 is a disease and has many names than any disease in history.

I can name  Kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names. Many calls it a virus, which it is. Many calls it a flu. What difference. I think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name, Trump said.

Kung fu refers to the Chinese martial arts in which people use only their bare hands and feet to fight.

According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the contagion has infected over 8.5 million people and killed more than 450,000 across the world.

The US is the worst affected country with over 2.2 million cases and more than 1,19,000 deaths.

The Covid-19, which originated in Chinas Wuhan city in December last year, has also battered the world economy with the International Monetary Fund saying that the global economy is bound to suffer a severe recession.

Scientists are racing against time to find a vaccine or medicine for its treatment.

Trump, 74, is seeking re-election in the November presidential elections against former vice president Joe Biden, 77, who is the Democratic Partys candidate.
US President Donald Trump said that he would consider meeting Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro after his maximum pressure campaign to oust him. In an interview with online news site Axios, Trump said that Maduro would like to meet and he may consider it since hes never opposed to meetings.

Trump administration has been trying to unseat Maduro through sanctions and diplomacy and recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as the countrys legitimate leader. However, the latest comment of US President is being considered as signal to a change in stance after failing to unseat the socialist President.

Guaido has emerged as a challenger for the Maduro regime after he took the oath of office in January 2019, declaring himself interim president of the South American nation. He promised to end to the usurpation Maduro, called for the creation of a transitional government and free elections. He received support from the United States and many Latin countries like Brazil and Colombia.

Read: Venezuela: Opposition Raid To Remove Maduro Foiled, US Democrats Question Trump

Allegations of planning a coup

Maduro has repeatedly accused Guaido of planning a coup with the help of the US and European countries, especially after authorities arrested ex-Green Beret for an alleged failed attack to overthrow the incumbent President. The Venezuelan President had said that the authorities seized US passports from the arrested people which belonged to Airan Berry, 41, and Luke Denman, 34.

Trump denied the governments involvement in what Venezuela called a failed armed incursion and captured two American mercenaries. The US State Department lashed out at Maduro for allegedly cooking up a melodrama to distract people from problems inside crisis-hit Venezuela.

A State Department spokesperson reportedly said that there is a major disinformation campaign underway in Venezuela which is making it difficult to separate facts from propaganda. Referring to alleged falsehoods and manipulation by the Maduro regime, the State Department denied any involvement and asked not to take it at face value. It accused Maduro of highly questionable representation of the details and distortion of facts.

Read: Iranian Ship En Route To Venezuela Signals Ongoing Alliance
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said most of the first-term New Patriotic Party (NPP) Members of Parliament were defeated in the partys parliamentary primaries as a result of the governments abysmal performance.

Speaking at the NDC's Weekly Press Briefing on Monday, the NDC's National Communication Officer, Sammy Gyamfi said even members of the governing party are disappointed in their own partys performance.

He insisted that the Akufo-Addo government failed to undertake developmental projects in constituencies represented by the partys first term MPs hence their defeat over the weekend.

Our checks have revealed that many first-time MPs lost their seats because no developmental projects have been undertaken in their constituencies in the last three and half years. This is a clear indication that even NPP supporters are generally unhappy with the abysmal performance of their own government, and have invited the rest of Ghanaians to reject this nonperforming, nepotistic and corrupt Akufo-Addo government.

It is pretty obvious, even to the uninitiated, that but for the undemocratic imposition of some 65 incumbent Members of Parliament by the powers that be in the NPP, the situation would have been worse, Sammy Gyamfi said.

The NPP held primaries on Saturday, June 20, 2020, for constituencies it has sitting Members of Parliament.

The primaries saw 40 sitting NPP MPs losing their re-election bids.

In all, over 40 incumbent MPs, including eleven (11) Parliamentary Select Committee Chairmen, four (4) Parliamentary Select Committee Vice-Chairmen, two (2) Regional Ministers, one (1) Minister of State and three (3) Deputy Ministers of State, lost their seats. The defeat of so many incumbents, especially those in Parliamentary leadership, shows that the NPP delegates voted for change and passed an overwhelming vote of no confidence in their own government, Sammy Gyamfi insisted.

Recently, the NDC rated NPP 14 percent in the delivery of promises it made prior to the 2016 general elections.

Per its thorough analysis, the NDC held that the government had delivered 86 out of its apparent 631 promises.

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa , the North Tongu legislator, who led the presentation said the fulfilment of the NPP's promises was woeful despite the NDC's leniency. NPP broke COVID-19 protocols during its primaries

NDC also accused the NPP of violating COVID-19 safety protocols during the exercise.

Mr. Sammy Gyamfi said these actions have rendered the COVID-19 restriction laws counterproductive.

The alarming level of vote-buying and opulence we saw in the NPP this time around is unprecedented. We have never seen this level of ostentation in our body politics before and that should give every democracy-loving Ghanaian, genuine cause of concern. Even more bizarre were reports of how social distancing, wearing of face masks, and other critical COVID-19 preventive protocols we denied and thrown to the dogs as delegates congregated in their numbers, mingled and interacted, including wild jubilation in the full glare of the police who are supposed to enforce the law.

 citinewsroom
On Sunday, June 21, 2020, the Member of Parliament for Weija Gbawe Constituency Hon. Tina Mensah and myself had a hearty chat hence I did congratulate her for a successful acclamation as the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary Candidate for our August party and Constituency.

Winner in this whole scheme is our great party the NPP and it's teeming members and supporters in Ghana and the Diaspora and in the process also deepened our image and identity as beacons of Ghana's democratic tenets as well as forebears of democracy globally.

The peaceful nature of the entire exercise means calls for praise for the Party and its teeming supporters and Executives from the National, Regional, and Constituencies for ensuring that the primaries were generally peaceful, except for a few disturbances that were recorded in some constituencies.

After all, there are no victors and losers in this regard since its the NPP which is the winner.

In that vein, I call on all party members and my teeming supporters within the Weija Gbawe Constituency to bury our differences and support wholeheartedly Hon. Tina Mensah our Parliamentary Candidate as well as the Constituency Executives and Polling Station Executives (Delegates) to campaign vigorously for our great party to chalk massive victory in the upcoming December 7, 2020, Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

Because, just like any contest, political party internal elections and wranglings are no exceptions from high expectations to low keys and moreso, its not a "Do or Die" affair.

I believe heeding to this call by all and sundry will go a long way to boost the electoral fortunes of the NPP in Weija Gbawe Constituency so that we can continue to maintain the seat and even win with higher margins than we did in previous years.

Let us also remind ourselves that as we move to foster peace, unity and maintain the power we have by working as a unit to win this December 7, 2020 elections we must adhere to all strict preventive measures and protocols against the spread of the deadly COVID-19 Pandemic.

Let us keep to the strict social distancing rules, wash our hands and sanitize our hands frequently, and lets all stay safe.

Once again congratulations to the NPP, Hon. Tina Mensah and Weija Gbawe Constituency delegates for showing patriotism in this regard.

Kukrudu, Eeeeshi Rado! Rado!! Rado!!!

May God bless us all!!

Signed:

Hon. Patrick Baidoo

a.k.a (BLUEBOY)

Former Presiding Member, Weija Gbawe / Ga South Municipal Assemblies
 Flash

Artificial intelligence (AI), one of the most promising technologies for changing the world, is playing a key supporting role in curbing the spread of COVID-19.

From improving contact tracing to analyzing disease vectors and identifying drug candidates, AI has been used in varied ways to combat the pandemic.

However, there are also increasing concerns about potential risks the technology poses to privacy, data security and even human existence.

At a panel discussion during the World Peace Forum (WPF) Special Video Conference on June 16, experts from China and the United States discussed how to tackle the challenges and ensure AI develops for the good of humanity.

According to Xue Lan, dean of Schwarzman College of Tsinghua University, context was important for the use of AI. Many applications would not have been possible in some countries if not for the perceived good it offered in containing the virus, he stressed.

"In some extreme cases, for example, in the fight against COVID-19, we want the technology to be used in many ways," Xue said. "However, at the same time, allowing people to use some sensitive data does not mean we should write them a blank check."

Caution and care were still vital to minimize the use of sensitive data and protect people's privacy, he added.

Stuart Russell, Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering at University of California, Berkeley, called for the international community to agree on a treaty restricting or banning lethal autonomous weapons.

"The principal reason for a ban is that lethal autonomous weapons, by removing human supervision of individual attacks, will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction," Russell said. "They will be cheaper, more effective, more selective, and easier to proliferate than nuclear weapons."

Russell also urged countries to avoid an arms race in creating super intelligent AI, as an essential component in preventing long-term risk, noting there was broad agreement on the likelihood that, within this century, AI systems would exceed human capabilities in general intelligence.

He said that in order to preempt the threat of AI, the technology community needed to pursue a completely different way of designing AI systems to ensure they were beneficial to humans.

"If we succeed in creating safe and beneficial general-purpose AI, it will, in effect, be a source of essentially unlimited goods and services for all," Russell said. "At that point, arguing about who has more of what, and going to war over it, will make no more sense than arguing over who has more copies of a digital newspaper."

An arms race is self-defeating, as it risks losing everything, if it leads to cutting corners on safety and losing control over AI, he concluded.

Zhang Yaqin, dean of Institute for AI Industry Research at Tsinghua University, said the role AI was playing was useful and valuable, but this was more of a supportive role. "I think it can play a more important and transformative role."

However, basic rules had to be defined to ensure AI technologies were used for appropriate purposes.

Wendell Wallach, an expert from the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale University, said the Beijing AI Principles were welcome in emphasizing that AI must be developed for the good of all of humanity.

In May, 2019, a group of Chinese leading institutes and companies published a set of ethical standards for AI research, and called for international cooperation amid vigorous development of the industry.

According to the 15-point principles, the purpose of AI was defined as promoting the progress of society and human civilization and advancing the sustainable development of nature and society.

Max Tegmark, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said AI would become the most powerful technology ever, while posing large-scale unconventional challenges no country could address alone.

"It's not a zero-sum game," Tegmark said. "The fundamental driver of collaboration is a shared positive vision. Everybody realizes that if they work together, they'll be all better off than otherwise."

He said China could make a unique contribution in steering AI towards a globally positive future, as it was a leader in the technology and has a unique tradition of long-term thinking.

The WPF is a high-level non-governmental global forum on international security organized by China's prestigious Tsinghua University. Since its inception in 2012, the forum has been held eight times, usually in June or July. Due to the impact of COVID-19, this year's event was held online.




The prospector, known as Bill M, found the 50g nugget on a private property

A gold prospector has found a gold nugget worth $4,000 buried two feet underground.

The prospector, known as Bill M, found the 50g nugget on a private property in the Ballarat area, south-west Victoria, last week. The exact location remains a secret.

He shared a photo of the nugget to Australian Facebook group Detecting Downunder.

'Gold prospector "Bill M" found this gorgeous 50 gram nugget on private property in the Ballarat area,' the post read.

The prospector, known as Bill M, found the 50g nugget (pictured) on a private property in the Ballarat area, south-west Victoria

'This is straight from a main gold reef and Bill looks like he's onto something special. It was found about two feet (60cm) down.'

A gold reef is where a large amount of gold is found encased underground in the rock it was formed in.

The community of treasure hunters weighed in on the find.

'Just wondering what a nugget of that size is worth? one user asked.

The group administrator answered: 'At the current gold price of $82 per gram, it's worth around $4k. Not a bad pay day.'

'Damn it I thought I buried deep enough!' another user joked.

'Wow what a find,' someone else said.

It comes a year after a prospector found a two-kilogram nugget (pictured) - also in the Ballarat region

It comes a year after a prospector found a two-kilogram nugget - also in the Ballarat region.

Mark Day, a prospecting gear supplier from Gold Ballarat, said it was the biggest nugget he'd heard of in decades.

'I've been in this business for 25 years and this is the biggest find we have seen by one of our customers - that they've told me about anyway,' he said.

Mr Day said he was shocked to hear of the size of the nugget, insisting the man, who was a regular customer of his, bring it in for him to see.

'When he showed me the nugget here in the store he was shaking like a leaf. He didn't know what to do with it. He hadn't slept in three days.'

Buyers reportedly offered the man $160,000 for the nugget.
As part of the 2020 strategic plan, an NPP group called Patriotic Gents has launched its We Are One campaign.



The campaign is scheduled to begin on Monday, 22nd, June 2020.



According to the groups Communications Director, Kwabena Berma Pobi, the campaign is aimed at fostering unity and collaboration of efforts in the NPP following the partys just-ended Primaries.



We Are One Campaign!! is also launched to help solve some of the other party people who are aggrieved to help eradicate breeding apathy within the party prior to the 2020 election so to work together in Unity towards Victory 2020.



This campaign is designed with various activities to give proof of Unity and solidarity amongst all sides and within all levels of the party whiles taking advantage to also attract and invite others to join for victory 2020. The We Are One Campaign will be coordinated at Regional Levels by the Patriotic Gents Regional Executives in collaboration with the Constituencies Executives. Patriotic Gents is also open to any group of party members who wish to be part of this Campaign as a shared vision as we prepare the grounds for victory 2020. PG, We say Action Now!!!, he further explained.





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.

Featured Video
June 22, 2020





The ongoing concern that artificial intelligence is taking our jobs is not lost on programmers and UI/UX designers. In fact, some developers are outspokenly against this and downright worried. However, other developers are less frightened by the rise of machine learning. Eric Strand is one UX designer who sees the possibility of a sustainable, synergistic relationship between AI and manual UX design. His views mimic sentiments and research expressed in a Harvard Business Review article a few years ago on this very topic.







Its these human capabilities that will become more and more prized over the next decade. Skills like persuasion, social understanding, and empathy are going to become differentiators as artificial intelligence and machine learning take over our other tasks. (The Rise of AI Makes Emotional Intelligence More Important, HBR)

According to Marshfield, Massachusettss Eric Strand, breaking down the day-to-day tasks that are necessary to provide the best user experience online will further illustrate how artificial and human intelligence greatly enhance one another.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Digital Landscape

While industry experts frequently use the terms interchangeably, AI and machine learning are technically two different things.

Artificial intelligence replicates redundant tasks. In the web development and marketing world, professionals often refer to AI as automation platforms. It streamlines repetitive tasks and creates margin for those projects that require greater care and customization.

But AI makes machine learning possible. After automating certain tasks, commands, and formulas, programs can anticipate outcomes and learn improved responses over time. Developers create code that trains these programs to self-develop not too far removed from animal and human behavior. As a result, AI has revolutionized productivity, analytics, healthcare, and manufacturing. Much of the job loss has actually been a job shift, as the tech world continues to experience acute, intermittent labor shortages of skilled workers.

How AI Targets Repetitive Tasks in Web Development

When it comes to UX design, Eric Strand and his peers must manage a sizable load of busy work. Despite their unique touch, the tedium is necessary to optimize websites and cloud services for end users.

Thats why AI  with tools like Adobe Sensei and Uizard  is so handy among UX designers. Experts can hand over time-consuming, repetitive tasks and focus on creating higher levels of intuitive user experiences.

Eric Strand on the Durable Synergy (News - Alert) Between Human UX Design and AI

Truth be told, AI and machine learning force human beings to up their game. As AI makes more impressive machine learning possible, it still cannot achieve the nuanced agility of the human mind.

As the web development industry grows, it is likely that AI and human intelligence grow more dependent on the other for not just better deliverables, but also for emotionally satisfying project management.

Eric Strand is a senior user experience (UX) designer with E3DStudios. After studying music at the Berklee College of Music, Eric found that his artistic and coding skills in music easily translated into software programming and web development. Over the course of his UI/UX career, Mr. Strands client base has included leading brands, such as Adobe, AT&T, Berklee Music, ClimaCell, and IBM (News - Alert).
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has extended a soul-touching birthday message to Former President Jerry John Rawlings as he celebrates his 73rd birthday today, June 22.



In a Twitter post, the Vice President prayed for blessings and long life for him.



I wish the former President of the Republic, H.E Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings a happy 73rd birthday. May Allah preserve him and grant him good health to continue to help in nation-building, he wrote.



Dr. Bawumia is one out of many officials who have paid tribute to the former military leader. The United States (US) embassy in Ghana also had some kind words for the ex-President on his birthday.



Rawlings was Ghanas first President in the Fourth Republic, serving from the year 1993 to 2001.









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
WHO warns pandemic accelerating as it reports record daily global case rise while outbreak surges in Brazil, India.

The novel coronavirus pandemic is still accelerating, and its effects will be felt for decades, the World Health Organizations (WHO) director-general said.

The WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases as the total rose by 183,020 in a 24-hour period. The biggest increase was from the Americas, with more than 116,000 new cases.

Brazil officially passed the 50,000 mark, with 50,617 coronavirus deaths as of Sunday. It has recorded 1,085,038 cases to date, according to the countrys health ministry.

Worldwide, more than 9 million people have been confirmed to have the coronavirus, At least 4.4 million have recovered, while more than 469,000 people have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Here are the latest updates:

Monday, June 22

20:27 GMT  Saudi Arabia to hold very limited Hajj

Saudi Arabia announced it would hold a very limited Hajj this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, with people already living in the kingdom allowed to take part in the pilgrimage that begins in late July.

It was decided to hold the pilgrimage this year with very limited numbers  with different nationalities in the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Monday, citing the Hajj ministry.

Read more here.

19:21 GMT  NYC gradually reopening

New York City, once the global epicentre of the pandemic, is gradually reopening with restaurants opening for the first time in three months, although only at outdoor tables.

Retail stores in New York also reopened with a number of restrictions and the city estimates 150,000 to 300,000 additional workers could return to their jobs.

18:49 GMT  Global number of coronavirus cases surpasses 9 million

The total number of infections worldwide has reached 9,008,757. At least 469,220 people have died, while some 4,465,425 have recovered from the virus.

17:20 GMT  White House scales back practice of taking temperatures of visitors

The White House cut back on temperature checks for visitors amid the pandemic but said anyone in close proximity with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence would still be checked for the virus.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said the decision was prompted by the city of Washington entering the second phase of its reopening, which allows for more activity.

In conjunction with Washington, D.C. entering Phase Two today, the White House is scaling back complex-wide temperature checks, Deere said.

In addition to social distancing, hand sanitizer, regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, and voluntary facial coverings, every staff member and guest in close proximity to the president and vice president is still being temperature checked, asked symptom histories, and tested for COVID-19, Deere said.

President Donald Trump arrives for the daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington [File: Tom Brenner/Reuters]

16:28 GMT  Golden Globe awards postponed to February 2021

The annual Golden Globe awards ceremony for film and television has been postponed to February 2021, organisers said.

The Golden Globes ceremony, which kicks off Hollywoods awards season, will now take place on February 28 instead of its usual slot on the first Sunday in January. The decision follows the postponement by two months of the Oscars to April 25 because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the entertainment industry.

15:59 GMT  WHO says it will issue guidance on air travel in coming days

The World Health Organization will issue further guidance on air travel in coming days as countries open up from their coronavirus lockdowns, the WHOs Mike Ryan said.

Its not an easy dilemma  There is no zero-risk, he told an online briefing.

A trial has shown that an anti-inflammatory drug called dexamethasone could save critically ill #coronavirus patients. @DrAmirKhanGP explains what dexamethasone is. #AJDoctorsNote Read more: https://t.co/uFB4BSaQqb pic.twitter.com/Djjt6outrm  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 21, 2020

15:55 GMT  Religious events helping to spread coronavirus, WHO says

Many countries that have been successful in tackling the novel coronavirus are seeing an increase in cases due to religious events and other vulnerable settings like expatriate gatherings, the World Health Organizations Maria Van Kerkhove said.

Any opportunity that the virus has to take hold, it will. It is really important that countries are in a position to rapidly detect these cases, she told an online briefing.

The WHOs Mike Ryan said that there seemed to be new clusters in South Korea linked to clubs, shelters and amusement parks and that waste water findings in northern Italy showed there was a chance the virus was circulating there before anyone had realised.

15:32 GMT  Portugal PM reimposes some virus curbs in capital Lisbon

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa said some coronavirus restrictions would be reimposed in the capital Lisbon to help control outbreaks from the pandemic.

He said measures to be introduced from Tuesday included a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 people and orders for cafes and shops to close at 8pm.

Portugal has had just over 1,500 COVID-19 deaths and more 38,850 cases.

14:39 GMT  Netherlands records no virus deaths, first time since March

Dutch health authorities reported no new deaths overnight resulting from the pandemic for the first time since the beginning of March.

Officially the Netherlands has reported 49,658 cases of infection, with 69 people testing positive over the last 24 hours. In all 6,090 people have died.

There has been no report of any deaths, the National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said on its website.

The RIVM warned however that there is a delay between the day a patient was admitted to hospital or died and when it was actually reported, meaning deaths over the weekend may not yet have been flagged up.

Models and family members are seen dining at a restaurant where they test servers providing drinks and food to models pretending to be clients in a safe quarantine greenhouses in which guests can dine in Amsterdam [File: Eva Plevier/Reuters]

14:14 GMT  France, Germany want European Recovery Fund aid to be paid out until 2022

Germany and France both agree that the European Recovery Fund should pay out its proposed 500bn euros of coronavirus aid from 2020 until 2022, not until 2024 as suggested by some member states, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Le Maire also said that it was now up to the United States to explain why Washington is the only country not supporting a joint proposal by the OECD on how to tax large digital companies.

13:48 GMT  UK reports 15 deaths, the lowest daily death toll since mid-March

The number of people in Britain who have died after being confirmed to have COVID-19 has risen by 15 to 42,647, health officials said.

That makes it the lowest daily COVID-19 toll since mid-March. Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced the lockdown on March 23.

13:35 GMT  Disneyland Paris says gradual reopening to start July 15

Disneyland Paris said it would begin a phased reopening of the theme park starting July 15, with visitor numbers limited via a new online reservation system to ensure social distancing.

Visitors aged 11 and older will have to wear face masks, and many shows and events will remain suspended due to the padnemic, the resort said.

Visitors aged 11 and older will have to wear face masks, and many shows and events will remain suspended due to the padnemic [File: Anadolu]

13:25 GMT  Gilead to test inhaled version of remdesivir on patients in August

Gilead Sciences Inc said that it plans to begin clinical trials of an inhaled version of its antiviral treatment remdesivir for COVID-19 patients in August.

The drug is currently used intravenously and an inhaled formulation would be given through a nebulizer, which could potentially allow for easier administration outside hospitals, the company said in a statement.

13:23 GMT  No second wave of coronavirus, says US White House adviser

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said there is no second wave of the pandemic, even though there are some flare-ups in states such as Florida, and it is unlikely there will be widespread shutdowns across the country.

There are some hotspots. Were on it, Kudlow said in an interview with CNBC. We know how to deal with this stuff now. Its come a long way since last winter and there is no second wave coming.

Hello, this is Farah Najjar taking over from my colleague Linah Alsaafin.

12:55 GMT  South Korea says it is battling second wave of coronavirus

Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time on Monday it is in the midst of a second wave of novel coronavirus infections around Seoul, driven by small but persistent outbreaks stemming from a holiday in May.

In the metropolitan area, we believe that the first wave was from March to April as well as February to March, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said at a regular briefing. Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on.

We originally predicted that the second wave would emerge in fall or winter, he added. Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people have close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue.

12:40 GMT  Coronavirus pandemic still accelerating: WHO chief

The novel coronavirus pandemic is still accelerating and its effects will be felt for decades, the World Health Organizations director-general told an online conference on Monday.

The pandemic is still accelerating, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the virtual health forum organised by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic crisis, a social crisis and in many countries a political crisis. Its effects will be felt for decades to come.

10:45 GMT  Bulgarians in face masks again as cases rise

Bulgaria has ordered residents to wear face masks again in indoor public places after its highest weekly rise in coronavirus cases.

The order by Health Minister Kiril Ananiev came 10 days after he made masks indoors highly recommended but not mandatory, apart from on public transport, in pharmacies and medical establishments.

Bulgaria, which has registered 3,905 cases and 199 deaths from the coronavirus, recorded 606 new COVID-19 cases last week, the countrys highest weekly rise.

10:30 GMT  Kazakhstan city lockdowns over weekend as cases jump

A woman wearing a face mask and gloves at a mobile coronavirus testing station in Almaty, Kazakhstan [File: Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters]

Kazakhstan will impose a two-day lockdown in the northern city of Kostanay and four nearby towns next weekend after a jump in fresh COVID-19 cases, local newspaper Kostanayskiye Novosti reported.

Residents of Kostanay and the four towns, including Rudny and Lisakovsk, will be barred from leaving their houses except for work or urgent necessities on June 27-28, the newspaper reported, citing local authorities.

Kazakhstan has favoured weekend restrictions as the number of cases more than quintupled to about 28,000 since lifting a nationwide lockdown in mid-May. It temporarily closed shopping malls, markets, parks and public transit in major cities last weekend.

10:15 GMT  Coronavirus cases in the Balkans region

North Macedonias Institute of Public Health announced 101 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. Five people died, and the number of active cases is 2,942.

In Serbia, 91 people tested positive for COVID-19, with one death reported, bringing the death toll to 261.

Three new cases were registered in Montenegro, bringing the total number of active cases to 38.

10:00 GMT  Pakistan among countries hardest hit by COVID-19

Pakistan continues in the top 10 countries for daily coronavirus case increases, 4,471 new cases on Sunday taking its tally to 181,088, according to government data. At least 89 people died of coronavirus on Sunday, taking its death toll to 3,661.

On June 20, Pakistan resumed limited commercial international flights into and out of the country, a first since March 21. Domestic commercial flights resumed on May 16.

Testing in Pakistan continues at around 30,000 tests a day, well below the 50,000 recommended by the WHO. The government enforces smart lockdown on infection hotspots, rather than entire cities. However, local newspaper Dawn quoted officials in the northern city of Rawalpindi saying they did not have enough police personnel to enforce lockdowns in identified hotspots, raising fears the new approach may not work.

09:45 GMT  Indonesias death toll reaches 2,500, with over 46,000 infections

Indonesia reported 954 new coronavirus infections, taking its total number of cases to 46,845.

Health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said 35 more deaths were reported, with total fatalities now at 2,500, the highest coronavirus death toll in East Asia outside of China.

09:00 GMT  Spain to decide this week which non-European tourists can visit

The pandemic is waning across Europe with many countries easing restrictions [Nacho Doce/Reuters]

Spain may decide this week on allowing visitors from non-European countries, as it welcomes back European travellers in an effort to revive its tourism industry, a minister said.

Health Minister Salvador Illa told Cadena SER radio station that Madrid would discuss with EU partners whether to also let in travellers coming from outside the continent.

One of the worst-hit nations, Spain has registered 246,272 cases and 28,323 deaths from COVID-19.

08:45 GMT  Serbian champions Red Star say five players positive for coronavirus

Red Star Belgrade footballers pose for a team photo before the Serbian SuperLiga soccer match against Partizan in Belgrade, Serbia last year [File: Anadolu Agency]

Serbian football champions Red Star Belgrade said five of their players have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Marko Gobeljic, Njegos Petrovic, Dusan Jovancic, Marko Konatar and all felt unwell ahead of the final Serbian Superleague round against Proleter on Saturday and did not appear. Branko Jovicic showed no symptoms but returned a positive test, Red Star said on its website. The remaining players and the management were tested, and none were positive, it added.

Red Star celebrated the third consecutive championship after the win against Proleter at home. About 18,000 fans, many packed closely together, attended the match and celebration afterwards.

08:30 GMT  No-swab coronavirus saliva test piloted in UK

A weekly coronavirus testing regime using a no-swab saliva test is being trialled in Southampton, England, and could offer a simpler and quicker way to detect outbreaks, the UK government said.

More than 14,000 doctors and health workers, other essential workers, university staff, and their households will participate in the trial, which uses an Optigene test.

Rather than taking a swab, which some find uncomfortable, participants will deposit a saliva sample and receive test results within 48 hours, the government said.

08:00 GMT  Russia reports 7,600 new coronavirus infections

Moscow accounts for about half of Russias coronavirus cases, a deluge that strains the citys hospitals [File: Pavel Golovkin/Reuters]

Russia has reported 7,600 new cases of the coronavirus, pushing its nationwide case total to 592,280, the worlds third-largest tally.

The coronavirus task force said 95 people died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,206.

07:45 GMT  Dimitrov gets coronavirus after reckless tennis charity event

Bulgarias Grigor Dimitrov in action during his match against Croatias Borna Coric [File: Antonio Bronic/Reuters]

Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov has tested positive for the coronavirus after taking part in a charity event organised by mens top-ranked player Novak Djokovic.

Dimitrov pulled out of the regional exhibition tournament  which had sparked criticism for its lack of safety precautions  in Croatia on Saturday following his opening singles match, after feeling unwell.

Read more here.

07:30 GMT  Beijing COVID-19 cases to see cliff-like drop this week, says expert

Beijing will see a cliff-like drop in new coronavirus cases by the end of this week as efforts to control the spread of infections in the Chinese capital continue, said an expert at the national health authority. Beijing reported nine new cases for June 21, sharply down from 22 a day earlier.

The city reported its first case in the latest wave  linked to a wholesale food market  on June 11. So far, 236 people have been infected in the worst outbreak in Beijing since COVID-19 was identified in Wuhan late last year.

Wu Hao, a disease control expert from the National Health Commission, told state television in on Sunday that Beijing would have targeted lockdowns, unlike in Wuhan when little was known about the virus.

07:15 GMT  Fears of South Korea losing control over second wave

Infections were reported in large cities such as Busan, Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju, where hundreds of schools have been shut and social restrictions elevated [Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

The mayor of South Koreas capital fears the country is losing control over a virus resurgence and says Seoul will reimpose stronger measures if the daily jump in infections does not drop below 30 over the next three days.

Park Won-soon spoke in a televised briefing, lamenting what he described as the complacency of citizens on physical distancing, with an increase in public transportation usage approaching last years levels in recent weeks.

Citing research, Park said the country could see as many as 800 new cases a day by mid-July if it fails to stem current transmission trends, which show the basic reproduction number  the number of infections caused by an infected individual  reaching nearly 1.8 for between April 30 and June 11. Any number above 1 indicates a growing epidemic.

07:00 GMT  Abu Dhabi eases movement restrictions within emirate

A man waits at a coronavirus drive-through screening centre in Abu Dhabi [Filre: Francois Nel/Getty Images]

Abu Dhabi has eased restrictions to allow movement between its cities for all residents starting Tuesday, but extended restrictions on entry by non-residents who do not have a permit for another week, its media office said.

Residents can exit the emirate freely.

06:45 GMT  Virus surges, but Pakistan says there is no choice but to open

Pakistan has one of the worlds highest infection rates, and overwhelmed hospitals are turning patients away. But the government is pushing to open the country, trying to salvage a near-collapsed economy where millions have already slid into poverty from pandemic restrictions.

Prime Minister Imran Khan said avoiding a complete lockdown had saved the country from economic collapse. In televised speeches, he has taken to pleading with Pakistanis to wear masks, ignore conspiracy theories and take the virus seriously.

As cases spiralled, the government last week shut down some districts in Islamabad and other cities where new outbreaks have been identified, but otherwise, it has continued lifting restrictions, which were imposed in mid-March and started being lifted gradually within weeks.

06:20 GMT  Brazils death toll tops 50,000

Aerial view showing graves in the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus on June 21, 2020 [Michael Dantas/AFP]

Brazil reported 641 more deaths from coronavirus over the past day, and now trails only the US in the death toll.

The countrys health ministry said overall fatalities have mounted to 50,617, according to public news agency Agencia Brasil.

Meanwhile, 17,000 new infections were reported, taking the nationwide case-count to more than 1.08 million.

05:52 GMT  Indias infections soar in rural areas

A woman watches as healthcare workers wearing personal protective equipment check the temperature of residents of a slum during a check-up camp for coronavirus in Mumbai, India [File: Francis Mascarenhas/ Reuters]

Indias coronavirus caseload has risen to 425,282 as infections soar in rural areas where migrant workers fleeing major cities have returned in recent weeks.

Indias health ministry on Monday reported 14,821 new cases and about 300 new deaths, bringing the fatalities to more than 13,000. The coastal state of Goa reported its first COVID-19 death.

Indias government planning body Niti Aayog says infections have emerged in 98 of 112 of the countrys poorest districts, although about 60 percent of Indias cases have been reported in the states of Delhi, which includes the national capital New Delhi; Maharashtra, home to Indias financial capital Mumbai; and Tamil Nadu, where manufacturing hub Chennai is located.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Hello, this is Linah Alsaafin taking over the blog from my colleague Ted Regencia.

05:12 GMT  New Zealand to extend ban on cruise ship arrivals

New Zealand has announced that it is extending a ban on cruise ships arriving in the country to safeguard borders as new cases emerge of infected people arriving in the country.

We are extending the current cruise ship ban which was due to expire on the 30th of June, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a news conference.

Cargo vessels will still be allowed to load and unload, fishing vessels to unload and resupply, and vessels can come to New Zealand to undertake repairs and refitting, Ardern said, although some quarantine rules would be tightened.

05:00 GMT  Thailand reports three new imported cases

Thailand on Monday reported three new coronavirus cases, all imported, marking 28 days without local transmission, Reuters news agency reported, quoting a senior official.

The three new cases were Thai nationals returning from India and were detected in state quarantine, said spokesman for the governments Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Visanuyothin.

Thailand has so far recorded 58 deaths related to COVID-19 among 3,151 infections, of which 3,022 patients have recovered.

Daily life in Bangkok resumes to normal as the Thai government continues to ease restrictions on business and activities that were imposed weeks ago to combat the spread of the coronavirus [Sakchai Lalit/AP]

04:48 GMT  Greece reports 10 new cases

Authorities say Greece had 10 new COVID-19 cases and no virus-related deaths between Saturday and Sunday, according to the Associated Press.

The daily update brought the countrys total confirmed cases to 3,266, including 190 deaths.

Greek authorities say the median age of the infected people who died is 76 and all of those under age 70 had suffered from serious conditions unrelated to the virus.

04:20 GMT  Two coronavirus cases reported in New Zealand

New Zealand has reported two new cases of the coronavirus as a trickle of infected people continue to arrive at the border, according to the Associated Press.

The country now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month. Health officials maintain that those cases involve people who have recently arrived and are in quarantine, and there is no evidence of community transmission.

Still, many are anxious community transmission could return, especially after health officials admitted allowing two women who had arrived from London to leave quarantine before they had been tested because a parent was dying. The women later tested positive and have since isolated themselves.

04:00 GMT  Germanys cases rise to 190,359

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 537 to 190,359, Reuters news agency reported on Monday, quoting the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases.

The reported death toll rose by 3 to 8,885, the tally showed.

03:47 GMT  Barber offers hope in Peruvian barrios devastated by virus

Amid the coronavirus lockdown in Peru, barber Josue Yacahuanca is offering some hope to residents of some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the capital, Lima.

Once a week, Yacahuanca seeks out clients devastated by the pandemic and the nearly 100 days of lockdown, giving haircuts for free.

I want them to look in the mirror and see a bit of hope, Yacahuanca told the Associated Press news agency. Twenty-one years old, he is already a veteran barber, having started cutting hair at 13.

Barber Josue Yacahuanca fastens a haircutting apron emblazoned with an image of salsa singer Hector Lavoe on a resident on the top of a hill in the San Juan de Lurigancho neighbourhood of Lima, Peru on Friday [Martin Mejia/AP]

03:25 GMT  150 cannery workers forced into quarantine without pay in Los Angeles

About 150 seasonal workers hired by a salmon cannery in Alaska are in forced quarantine without pay at a Los Angeles hotel since June 10 after three of them tested positive for coronavirus, AP reported.

The workers, most of them from Mexico and Southern California, were hired on June 2 by North Pacific Seafoods to work at its Red Salmon Cannery in Alaska through August, according to the lawsuit filed on Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Leauri Moore, vice president of human resources for North Pacific Seafoods, told the newspaper in an email that she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

02:45 GMT  Mongolians cite Genghis Khan for success dealing with pandemic

All 206 coronavirus cases reported in Mongolia were imported, with zero deaths [Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/EPA]

Fresh air, a diet of free-range milk and meat, and Genghis Khans fighting spirit are among reasons cited by Mongolians for why they managed to fight off the coronavirus pandemic, according to a South China Morning Post report.

In a series of interviews, a historian, a shaman, a monk and a doctor all referenced Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolian Empire during the 12th and 13th centuries, saying they learned to live simply like him, avoiding the stress and consumerism people from other countries suffered.

As of Monday, Mongolia has at least 206 coronavirus cases, all imported, and zero deaths.

02:31 GMT  Report: Malaysians complain of weight gain during lockdown

More and more Malaysians are complaining about weight gain during the coronavirus lockdown that started in mid-March, the Kuala Lumpur-based Star newspaper reported.

Obesity was already a health concern in Malaysia. According to the World Population Review 2019, Malaysia has the highest prevalence of obesity among adults in Southeast Asia at 15.6 percent.

The National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019 findings, meanwhile, showed that 50.1 percent of adults in Malaysia were either overweight or obese.

02:04 GMT  China reports 25 new cases

People wearing face masks take photos of a partial solar eclipse near the Forbidden City in Beijing on Sunday [Mark Schiefelbein/AP]

China reported 18 new coronavirus cases for June 21, nine of which were in the capital Beijing, Reuters reported on Monday quoting the National Health Commission. Another seven cases are asymptomatic.

This compared with 26 confirmed cases a day earlier, 22 in Beijing. Local authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.

01:40 GMT  South Korea cases dip to nearly one-month low

New coronavirus cases in South Korea dipped to a nearly one-month low on Monday due mainly to less testing over the weekend, Yonhap news agency reported, quoting health officials.

The country added 17 new cases, including 11 local infections, raising the total to 12,438, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were also six additional imported cases.

This marks a sharp drop from 67 cases on Saturday and 48 cases on Sunday, KCDC added. There were no additional deaths, keeping the total death toll to 280.

01:19 GMT  New York City coronavirus tracing off to a bumpy start: Report

Musicians from New Yorks Ditmas Park neighbourhood perform during a fundraising drive on Sunday for businesses that have been shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic [Kathy Willens/AP]

New York Citys effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus through contact tracing has been hampered by the reluctance of many infected people to provide information, according to a report in The New York Times.

The Times said just 35 percent of the 5,347 city residents who tested positive or were presumed positive in the first two weeks of the contact-tracing programme gave information about their contacts.

Perry N Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University, called the 35-percent rate very bad, adding that it should be closer to 75 percent. Dr Ted Long, head of New York Citys new Test and Trace Corps, defended the programme, saying 69 percent of the people who complete an interview provide contacts.

00:51 GMT  Report: 40 US baseball players, staff positive for COVID-19

As delays to a vote by Major League Baseball players on whether to accept the owners latest proposal for the 2020 season continue, a USA Today report said a rash of positive COVID-19 tests is the reason for the delay.

Citing two sources close to the situation, USA Todays Bob Nightengale reported that 40 MLB players and staff members tested positive for COVID-19 in the last week.

According to Nightengale, the recent uptick in infections will push the start of the season back to July 26 at the earliest, spring training resuming no earlier than June 29, a delay of about a week.

00:32 GMT  Mexico reports 5,343 new coronavirus infections, 1,044 deaths

Mexico has reported 5,343 new infections and 1,044 additional deaths from COVID-19, the health ministry said, bringing the totals for the country to 180,545 cases and 21,825 deaths.

The government has said the actual number of infected people is likely significantly higher, Reuters said.

Mexicos President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attended a coronavirus simulation at a new medical facility in Cuernavaca on Friday [Mexicos Presidency/Handout via Reuters]

00:01 GMT  Mexico to resume sending farm workers to Canada after safety deal

Mexico will resume sending temporary farm workers to Canada after the two countries reached a deal on improved safety protections for labourers on Canadian farms during the pandemic, Reuters reported.

Mexicos foreign ministry said in a statement that the Temporary Agricultural Workers Program (PTAT) had resumed after a temporary pause.

Mexico last Tuesday paused sending workers to farms with coronavirus infections after at least two of its nationals died from COVID-19 after outbreaks on 17 Canadian farms.

___________________________________________________________________

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Ted Regencia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

You can find all the key developments from yesterday, June 21, here.
With businesses needed to pick up due to the economy, COVID-19 new cases have continued to create a rising tide in the "Sun Belt" states, which includes a part of California.

However, the Latino demographic in Los Angeles has spiked-up its cases with about 80,000 cases last Friday.

In fact, as of June 5, there were about 60,000 reported COVID-19 positive cases, according to a report from the NBC News.

On the same day also, there was a reported 90 positive cases with one death in Clinica Romero.

Los Angeles County has overseen almost 870,000 tests for SARS-CoV-2.

Clinica Romero's Dr. Don Garcia explained that they have already finished with 286 trials, which registered a positive rate case of 40 percent.

Why The Latino Community Is Being Hit Hard

The reopening of workplaces means planned health and precautionary safety measures.

Being that, most members of this vulnerable workgroup are coming from the Latino and Black communities.

One has to take into consideration that those from Clinica Romero's database belongs to individuals who do blue-collar work and don't have the necessary documents for staying in the country.

Besides having employment that exposes them to the virus daily (e.g., using public transportation), some of these individuals are most likely living in a multigenerational housing that will not allow them to isolate themselves once a cough or a flue strikes.





According to Yahoo! News, the Latino community has a triple threat of factors that have spiked up the cases.

The first is having plenty of exposure time to the virus, the second is they have underlying health conditions, and the third is ineligibility to access the proper health care systems such as for Medi-cal.

The article also mentioned that racial disparities' access to coronavirus testing might depend on the community in which you live.

Recent data indicates that in California, the counties that have predominantly white populations have a higher percentage of tests done.

The California Department of Public Health has pointed out there are nine counties with an "elevated risk transmission."

What's alarming is that these areas here are predominantly Hispanics, namely:

Fresno

Imperial

Kern

Kings

Riverside

Stanislaus

Tulare

San Joaquin

Los Angeles

According to Politico, the risk of acquiring COVID-19 is also unusually high for Hispanics who are between 35 and 44.

They have a higher mortality rate of 8 times higher than for people of European descent.

For black people in the same age level, they have nine times greater than those without color.

Once more, this tackles a young individual's employment background that includes inadequate protection in the workplace area.

Do you want to read more?
The British Health Secretary on Sunday commented on new lockdown easing measures being announced later this week, suggesting that "the plan is working, the number of new cases is coming down". Matt Hancock said that the government was looking at other countries were a second spike of coronavirus is taking place, adding that "controls at the border" were important in preventing a similar event in the UK.

Hancock also said that a stabbing rampage in Reading during the weekend was being treated as murder rather than a terror incident - those comments were made earlier in the day before British police said that the stabbings are being considered a terrorist attack.

Police also said Sunday that a 25-year-old believed to be the lone attacker was in custody.

The attack killed three people as they sat in a park on a summer evening in Reading, a town of 200,000 residents 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of London, as eased coronavirus lockdown restrictions allowed more people to socialize.
Final year Senior High School (SHS) students in the Builsa North District of the Upper East Region are yet to report to school to prepare for their West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his 10th and 11th COVID-19 addresses to the nation, eased restrictions on education for final year students in tertiary and second cycle institutions to prepare for their exit examinations.



When the Ghana News Agency (GNA) visited second cycle schools in the Builsa North District, as at 0900hours on Monday morning, no student was seen on the campuses.



At the Sandema SHS, teachers and non-teaching staff were seen in their face masks chatting among themselves with handwashing facilities positioned at the entrance to the Administration block.

The situation was not different at the Sandema Senior High Technical School (SANSECTEC) campus, as teachers were seated under trees chatting about COVID-19 among themselves.



Dormitories and classrooms of both schools were deserted as no student was spotted around or inside the structures.



The GNA speaking with Madam Victoria Mahama Aganalie, the Builsa North District Director of Education, at the Sandema SHS, confirmed that the final year students across the District had not reported even though staff had reported and were ready to work.

This is the second school I have visited this morning, and from what I have observed, the teachers are all prepared to receive the students. Teachers and non-teaching staff are in face masks, but no student has reported yet.



Madam Aganalie, who also oversees the Builsa South District, said Zoomlion Ghana Limited had undertaken fumigation exercises in all the SHSs across the two Districts.



The Director said Headteachers across the District were encouraged to ensure 25 students per class to observe the social and physical distancing, adding that, More classrooms are created to ensure that we observe the social distancing protocol.

Madam Aganalie said even though the two Districts were yet to receive their share of governments Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), enough measures were in place to ensure the safety of both staff and students across the Builsa North and South Districts and assured parents that their children would be safe.



We shall enforce the wearing of face masks and insist on handwashing with soap under running water when the students report so that they dont get infected. We have been assured of the PPE but as of now, they are not yet in. I am sure we will receive them soon, she added.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 22, 2020) - Roscan Gold Corporation (TSXV: ROS) (FSE: 2OJ) (OTC Pink: RCGCF) ("Roscan" or the "Company") is pleased to announce positive diamond drill results (Figure 1) from an additional 10 holes totaling 1,855 metres (m) at its Mankouke South Target. Drill hole DDMan-20-41 (Figure 4) intersected a high-grade interval in fresh rock of 14m @ 1.79gpt gold (Figure 2).

The regional upside potential of the Kandiole Project, outside Mankouke South, is considerable with 7 key targets. Initial drilling at Kandiole prospect (Figure 7), provides strong impetus for testing near surface and deep mineralization during the next few months. Exciting results at Kandiole included drill hole ACKAN20-39 which intersected 4m @ 11.3gpt gold.

Drilling Highlights:

Southern Mankouke

5.16 gpt gold over 65.0m from drill hole DDMan-20-34 from 93.2m ; Including 12.6 gpt gold over 7.0m from 103.2m Including 15.1 gpt gold over 5.0m from 138.2m

4.03 gpt gold over 28.5m from drill hole DDMan-20-34 from 23.7m

3.73 gpt gold over 36.0m from drill hole DDMan-20-41 from 148.0m; Including 14.7 gpt gold over 4.5m from 155.5m



2.28 gpt gold over 23.0m from drill hole DDMan-20-32 from 130.2m;

1.74gpt gold over 40.0m from drill hole DDMan-20-40 from 41.0m.

Regional AC Drilling

5.51gpt gold over 2.0m from drill hole ACKAO-20-82 from 10.0m;

11.3 gpt gold over 4.0m from drill hole ACKAN-20-39 from 14.0m;

4.57 gpt gold over 2.0m from drill hole ACKAN-20-60 from 2.0m.

Notes: 1: True width yet to be determined, 2: Table 1&2 - Assay Highlights, 3: 0.5gpt used as cut-off with 4m internal dilution for drill holes at Mankouke South and 2m internal dilution for regional drill holes, 4: No top-cut and 5. Holes have a dip of -50 and azimuth of 270 except for holes DDMAN20-32 and DDMAN20-40 drilled with an azimuth of 090

Nana Sangmuah, President and CEO, stated, "These first high-grade gold results in fresh rock are very encouraging and point to a deeper feed source for the mineralization at Southern Mankouke. While still early days this often is a trademark of the larger deposits in the district. One of our highest gram meter intersected to date is Drillhole DDMan-20-34 (Figure 3) which highlights the high-grade potential at Mankouke South where we currently have 2 drill rigs. In addition, we have extended the vertical depth at Southern Mankouke to 165m in drillhole DDMan-20-41. (Note: This is not the true width of the mineralized intersection.)

Story continues

On the regional front, our near-surface drilling continues to extend the lateral footprint of mineralization at the Kandiole Target. These latest results definitely warrant follow up and we will commence a high resolution Airborne Survey which would give indications of any major structural controls. We intend to systematically explore approximately 20km of Siribaya Mankouke Seko (SMC) Corridor after consolidating the corridor post the Komet acquisition."







Figure 1: Plan View delineating Strike Length and High Grades at Mankouke South

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_001full.jpg







Figure 2: Longitudinal View of Mankouke South - Depicting Depth Continuity (165m) and Intersection of Fresh Rock

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_002full.jpg







Figure 3: Cross Section depicting Depth and High Grade Continuity - DDMan-20-34

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_003full.jpg







Figure 4: Cross Section depicting the intersection in Fresh Rock - DDMan-20-41

To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_004full.jpg

Drill hole DDMan-20-34 intersected one the highest gram meter thus far of 5.14gpt over 65m at Southern Mankouke. This drill hole when coupled with previously high grade drill holes shows the persistent high grade nature of the deposit.

Drill hole DDMan-20-41 intersected a high grade interval of 14m @ 1.79gpt in fresh rock at Mankouke South which shows the gold mineralization extends at depth in the fresh rock.

The gold mineralization at Mankouke South is associated with quartz veining (Figure 5 & Figure 6) and/or disseminated and stringer pyrite hosted in brecciated, silicified and locally sheared greywackes and mudstones underlain by interbedded limestones and mudstones of the Kofi Formation. Mankouke South is located approximately 25km east of the Fekola mine (B2Gold Corp.).







Figure 5: Drill Core Photo DDMan-20-41 showing high grade sections in Fresh Rock. Showing hydrothermal breccia with locally preserved greywacke and argillite clasts, intermittent albite alteration, strong silicification, quartz stockwork and 5% disseminated pyrite (minor stringer pyrite)



To view an enhanced version of Figure 5, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_fig5.jpg







Figure 6: Drill Core Photo DDMan-20-34 showing broadly high grade sections.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 6, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_008full.jpg

Regional Exploration Update:

With the Komet Acquisition, Roscan will consolidated a land package comprising of ~20km strike length on the Siribaya-Mankouke-Seko Corridor, a major structural trend that is approximately 5km wide in certain areas. Exploration of this corridor has confirmed the occurrence of mineralization in Mankouke South, Central Mankouke, Kandiole, Kabaya, Disse and Walia. Kabaya already has a historical estimate that warrants following up with incremental drilling.

The initial drilling at Kandiole (Figure 7) has proven our hypothesis of gold mineralization and will be following up on some of the high grades after the Airborne Survey. Table 2 below shows some of the encouraging intercepts and hence our immediate attention to follow-up with detailed assessment.

This Airborne Survey will be detailed, high resolution, helicopter borne, time domain electromagnetic, magnetic and radiometric survey over the entire property. The helicopter survey will utilize a low survey altitude of 40m and close line spacing every 100m. The high resolution survey will be undertaken at the end of the rainy season. The survey is designed to provide a geological and structural framework to our existing gold targets, identify new ones, and gold bearing structural corridors. Following completion of the survey, which will be done by Nrg's xcite Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) system, a more comprehensive target generation exercise will be undertaken and will involve integration of the new geophysical data with all existing geology and grade information for further detailed and refined drill testing.







Figure 7: Plan View of Kandiole Exploration Targets with gold grades

To view an enhanced version of Figure 7, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4821/58243_254da77714118bfa_009full.jpg

The regional exploration upside of Roscan's overall land package is compelling and early results included 4m @ 11.3gpt confirm the prospectively and the need for more drilling near surface and at deeper intervals in coming months.

At Kandiole, many of the termite anomalies tested are related to gold in oxides including a potential corridor of high interest that includes an intersection grading 11.7gpt gold over 4m. Also, gold in transported laterite, with the exception of an anomalous trend in the central part of the permit, will be followed-up with the Airborne Survey to better define these anomalies.

Drilling Contract and Analytical Protocol

The drilling contract was awarded to Target Drilling SARL, who employ KL900-1 multi-purpose (AC/RC/DD) rig at Mankouke South. The AC drilling contract was awarded to Geodrill and is currently drilling exploration targets.

All drill samples are sent for preparation to Bureau Veritas Mineral Laboratories in Bamako, Mali and transported by Bureau Veritas to their analytical facility in Abidjan, Ivory Coast for fire assay with atomic absorption finish and by gravimetric finish for grades above 10gpt Au. Roscan applied industry-standard QA/QC procedures to the program. Certified reference materials, blanks and field duplicates are inserted at appropriate intervals.

Hold ID Section Line

From To Interval (m) gpt Au DDMAN20-32 1375750

105.2 113.2 8.0 0.92





130.2 153.2 23.0 2.28



including 137.2 138.2 1.0 12.0













DDMAN20-33 1375900

71.2 72.2 1.0 0.68













DDMAN20-34 1375950

14.2 17.2 3.0 4.71





23.7 52.2 28.5 4.03



including 25.2 26.7 1.5 11.8



and 42.2 46.2 4.0 17.3





57.2 61.2 4.0 2.71





73.2 88.2 15.0 1.14





93.2 158.2 65.0 5.16



including 103.2 110.2 7.0 12.6



and 138.2 143.2 5.0 15.1













DDMAN20-35 1376100

29.2 32.2 3.0 0.81





38.2 48.2 10.0 1.01





53.2 58.2 5.0 0.64













DDMAN20-36 1376100







NSR DDMAN20-37 1376100







NSR DDMAN20-38 1376150

29.2 30.2 1.0 0.58 DDMAN20-39 1376150







NSR













DDMAN20-40 1375750

2.0 12.0 10.0 0.66





19.0 28.0 9.0 1.17





41.0 81.0 40.0 1.74













DDMAN20-41 1375750

5.0 13.0 8.0 1.12





28.0 32.0 4.0 1.33





37.0 58.0 21.0 1.23





67.0 87.0 20.0 0.97





95.0 115.0 20.0 0.89





133.0 136.0 3.0 3.88





148.0 184.0 36.0 3.73



including 155.5 160.0 4.5 14.7



INCLUDING 170.0 184.0 14.0 1.79

Table 1: Drillhole Highlights at Mankouke South (June 22nd, 2020)

Hold ID Section Line From To Interval (m) gpt Au











ACKAO20-82 1386000 10 12 2 5.51 ACKAO20-84 1386000 46 48 2 0.59











ACKAN-19-06 1383700 2 4 2 0.68 ACKAN-19-06 1383700 8 10 2 1.05 ACKAN-19-06 1383700 16 18 2 0.71 ACKAN-19-06 1383700 30 32 2 0.72 ACKAN20-33 1383700 56 58 2 0.55 ACKAN20-38 1383700 42 44 2 0.69 ACKAN20-39 1383700 14 18 4 11.3 ACKAN20-39 1383700 48 50 2 1.07 ACKAN20-39 1383700 54 56 2 0.91 ACKAN20-60 1383500 2 4 2 4.57 ACKAN20-61 1383500 22 24 2 0.54 ACKAN20-61 1383500 30 32 2 0.90 ACKAN20-78 1385700 8 10 2 0.64 ACKAN20-82 1385900 48 52 4 3.31 ACKAN20-83 1385900 42 54 12 0.51 ACKAN20-84 1385900 6 8 2 1.46 ACKAN20-90 1385800 36 38 2 1.97 ACKAN20-94 1386300 12 14 2 0.69 ACKAN20-96 1386300 0 2 2 0.78 ACKAN20-96 1386300 44 46 2 1.14 ACKAN20-103 1386500 40 42 2 0.72 ACKAN20-105 1386500 12 16 4 0.67 ACKAN20-105 1386500 20 22 2 0.57 ACKAN20-105 1386500 26 28 2 0.50 ACKAN20-128 1386800 52 54 2 0.66 ACKAN20-129 1386800 0 2 2 0.65 ACKAN20-129 1386800 14 18 4 1.23 ACKAN20-130 1386300 4 6 2 2.46 ACKAN20-247 1386500 4 6 2 2.64 ACKAN20-310 1385700 4 6 2 0.90

Table 2: Drillhole Highlights at Kandiole (June 22nd, 2020)

Qualified Person (QP) and NI43-101 Disclosure

Greg Isenor, P. Geo., Executive Vice-Chairman for the Company, is the designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and verified that the technical information contained herein is accurate and approves of the written disclosure of same.

About Roscan

Roscan Gold Corporation is a Canadian gold exploration company focused on the exploration and acquisition of gold properties in West Africa. The Company has assembled a significant land position of 100%-owned permits in an area of producing gold mines (including B2 Gold's Fekola Mine which lies in a contiguous property to the west of Kandiole), and major gold deposits, located both north and south of its Kandiole Project in West Mali.

For further information, please contact:

Andrew J. Ramcharan, P.Eng

Executive Vice President - Corporate Development and Investor Relations

Tel: (416) 572-2295

Email: aramcharan@Roscan.ca

Greg Isenor, P.Geo

Executive Vice-Chairman

Tel: (902) 902-221-2329

Email: gpisenor@Roscan.ca

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information is characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, changes in the state of equity and debt markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in obtaining required regulatory or governmental approvals, and other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, including those risks set out in the Company's management's discussion and analysis as filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including that all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals will be received as and when expected. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/58243
MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd June, 2020) The Sputnik news agency's Estonia office has been persecuted for four years by the government of the aspiring democracy in a bid to silence alternative opinions, its editor-in-chief told the OSCE media and rights watchdogs on Monday.

"Because of this unprecedented persecution, Sputnik Estonia has been operating in a state of emergency, while its employees lost jobs," Elena Chernysheva said during the Human Dimension Meeting on Freedom of Expression, Media and Information.

The journalist said told the virtual meeting, organized by the OSCE representative on freedom of media and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, that the news agency had been targeted since its launch in Estonia in 2016 when it staff became personae non gratae with local officials.

"The official Tallinn mounted a sustained and systematic witch-hunt against the undesirable media," she said, naming "an economic blockade, administrative pressure, political censorship" as some of the examples.

Estonian divisions of international banks froze transactions from Sputnik's parent company Rossiya Segodnya to its employees in Estonia as well as its rent and tax payments, forcing it to default on its obligations.

Eventually, the country's police told Sputnik employees to quit their jobs or face criminal charges allegedly for violating EU's 2014 sanctions on Rossiya Segodnya Director-General Dmitry Kiselev, which do not cover either media outlet.

"While Sputnik journalists were under criminal investigation, Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas called Estonia a model democracy! I guess he thinks that police threatening journalists is democratic and that an outright crackdown on undesirable media equals freedom of expression," Chernysheva said.

She vowed to keep fighting for Sputnik's right to do its job and restore access to alternative information for people in Estonia. She added that other Baltic nations were too pushing political censorship in order to "create an ideological monopoly."
(HealthDay)A ruptured appendix is one medical emergency that a general surgeon colleague of Dr. Jacqueline Fincher hadn't treated for more than 15 years in their small town of Thomson, Ga.

That's because the signs and symptoms of appendicitis are so well-known that nearly everyone gets to the hospital well before an inflamed appendix has a chance to burst.

But then came COVID-19.

"In the month of March he had two," said Fincher, president of the American College of Physicians. "It's because people were afraid to go to the doctor or go to the emergency room. They sat at home and got really, really sick, and ended up going to the emergency room and having a much more difficult course."

Even though the United States is emerging from lockdown, Americans worry that many folks remain too fearful of contracting COVID-19 to get the medical care they need to prevent a serious illness from becoming a medical emergency.

More than half the participants in a recent poll (54%) said they are concerned that their health or the health of a loved one is at risk because they've delayed treatment for medical problems, researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey found.

Further, more than a quarter (27%) said they will not go to a doctor's office except for emergencies, until either a vaccine or a treatment for COVID-19 is available.

"If individuals are not seeking medical care when they should, it may mean that they're missing vaccinations. It means that perhaps they have a condition that's going untreated, or perhaps they need an adjustment to their medications," said Julie Kalabalik-Hoganson, chair of pharmacy practice with Fairleigh Dickinson's School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Florham Park, N.J. "It has a lot of implications that we're worried about."

There's no doubt the pandemic caused a serious financial hit to doctors' offices.

In April, use of health care services declined by 68%, with a 48% reduction in revenue compared to the same time the previous year, according to a new report from FAIR Health, a nonprofit group that examines health sector economics.

For many doctors, telehealth provided a much-needed financial lifeline, the FAIR Health report says.

Fincher agreed, noting the pandemic response caused a loosening of regulatory restrictions around telemedicine and prompted many insurers to pay the same rates for a telehealth visit as they would for a regular office visit.

"It was an absolute lifesaver," Fincher said. "Wow, it opened up. Everybody was on telehealth really fast."

About a quarter of people in the Fairleigh Dickinson poll said they'd used online video conferencing to see a doctor or health professional since the pandemic began, and nearly three-quarters said the experience was the same or better than an in-person medical visit.

Telehealth likely helped the wellness of many locked-down people dealing with chronic medical conditions like high blood pressure, emphysema and diabetes, Fincher said.

Doctors have kept tabs on people's health by having them regularly check their own markers, using home versions of the devices used by medical experts, Fincher said.

Folks these days use glucometers to check their blood sugar, thermometers, pulse oximeters to measure the oxygen in their body and other devices on a regular basis at home, then transmit their numbers to their doc.

"A blood pressure monitor and a scale go a long way in helping us to monitor your health and follow you outside of the office," Fincher said. "Those devices are very helpful for us as physicians to monitor key things that keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the emergency room. We can delay to some degree your chronic medical visit during this strange time of pandemic."

However, it's hard for telemedicine to capture everything a doctor can observe in person, said Dr. Gary LeRoy, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

"I start my examination and my assessment of my patients from the moment I see them walk into my office," watching how they move, how they sit, how they're dressed and how alert they appear to be, said LeRoy, a family physician in Dayton, Ohio. "Sometimes that's my first tip that something just isn't right with their situation."

The reopening of America has led to a bit of a rush to the doctor's office, he said.

"Our patients are anxiously wanting to come back in person versus on a video screen or by telephone," LeRoy said. "My personal practice has totally flipped, in the sense that the overwhelming majority of my patient visits now are in person."

But there remain many who are simply too fearful of COVID-19 to go have their health concerns addressed. The new poll jibes with a Kaiser Family Foundation health poll from May, in which about half of adults said either they or a family member had postponed or skipped medical care due to the pandemic.

Doctors need to keep promoting the precautions they've taken to prevent COVID-19 transmission in their offices, Fincher said.

For example, Fincher's practice holds an acute respiratory illness clinic every afternoon, out of a tent behind the office. People with COVID-19 symptoms can be treated without setting foot inside the office.

"We do all the history-taking over the phone with them while they're sitting in our parking lot, then we bring them out under the tent and examine them," Fincher said.

Masks are required in offices, and every exam room is thoroughly cleaned between patients.

Some patients are reluctant. "I'll ask them, 'Well, are you going to the grocery store?'" Fincher said. "Most of the time they say yes and I tell them, 'Well, I can promise you my office is way safer than the grocery store.'"

More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19

Copyright  2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Mayank Singh and Pushkar Banakar By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: While giving Army commanders along the Line of Actual Control the freedom to improvise depending on Chinese aggression, India on Sunday summoned Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong to lodge a strong protest against the June 15 violent face-off. It also emerged that the US is talking to both sides to try and defuse the border crisis.



It is a very tough situation. We are talking to India. We are talking to China. They have got a big problem there. They have come to blows, and we will see what happens. We will try and help them out, US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held an hour-long meeting with Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and the three service chiefs to assess the LAC situation. Taking independent decisions to deal with the belligerence of the Chinese troops was discussed and re-emphasised, sources said. The surprise Chinese attack on June 15 on Indian soldiers in Galwans Patrolling Point 14 with rods and bamboo sticks studded with nails came as a rude shock to the soldiers bound by protocols.

Indian Armys discipline and commitment towards the protocols was misused by the Chinese troops who ambushed them in a planned manner, which led to the loss of 20 lives. Now the commanders are free to improvise their reactions befitting the Chinese actions and to reply them in their own language. a senior officer said. An important indication came from Finger 4, which has been the most complicated stand-off point. We have been asked to not hold ourselves but to show strength at Finger 4 after the Galwan incident, a source said.

The Defence Ministers meeting with the CDS and the services chiefs assumes significance as the meetings between Indian and Chinese military officers in the Eastern Ladakh halted after three days. Thursday was the last meeting when the 10 Indian soldiers were released by the Chinese side. The stand-off between the two armies continues at two points in Galwan Valley, Patrolling Point 14 and Patrolling Point 15, at Gogra Post (Patrolling Point 17A) in the Hot Spring Sector and Finger 4 on the Northern Flank of the Pangong Tso Lake.

Soldiers in equal numbers from both countries are positioned on both sides of Patrolling Point 14, sources said. The stand-off remains at other points also, confirmed the sources. As for Trump, the US president had earlier offered to mediate but his offer was rejected by both India and China which said they were engaged in peaceful military and diplomatic discussions. The Trump administration has stood by India and blamed China for escalation of tensions.

Very tough situation



It is a very tough situation. We are talking to India. We are talking to China. They have got a big problem there, US President Donald Trump said regarding the situation persisting between the two neighbours
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:43:19|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Medical experts to Italy pose for a group photo before departure in Fuzhou, southeast China's Fujian Province, March 25, 2020. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan)

- An important issue of the meeting could be to make sure that the investment agreement between the two sides, which is now under negotiation, is mutually beneficial

- Although there have been some competitive factors and even frictions in recent years, they cannot overshadow the strong complementarity between the Chinese and European economies

- Due to the nature of new threats confronting the world, it is necessary to cooperate based on multilateralism and solidarity

BRUSSELS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- As the Chinese and European Union (EU) leaders are set to hold a virtual annual meeting on Monday, the outlook for the bilateral relationship after the COVID-19 pandemic has come under the spotlight.

International observers and think tanks are eager to look into the insights of the leaders' meeting as the two sides are managing to recover from the pandemic.

The Center for European Studies under China's Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) joined forces with its European partners last week in holding a virtual round table focusing on China-EU relations.

Chinese and European experts attending the webinar expressed their belief that China-EU relations will be more mature and reality-oriented in the future.

A China-Europe freight train bound for Madrid of Spain, which carries two containers of medical supplies as well as other goods, departs the city of Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 21, 2020. (Photo by Gong Xianming/Xinhua)

Lin Goethals, a program director with the European Institute of Asian Studies, believed an important issue of the meeting could be to make sure that the investment agreement between the two sides, which is now under negotiation, is mutually beneficial.

In response to some European analysts' concerns such as the extent of China's opening-up, Xu Mingqi, director of the SASS Center for European Studies, said the European perspective is understandable, but a notable reality is that China is "in the deep water of reform and opening(-up)" and its "domestic obstacles exist."

Admitting that there have been some competitive factors and even frictions in recent years, Xu stressed that they cannot overshadow the strong complementarity between the Chinese and European economies.

Visitors walk past the France pavilion during the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 5, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

Due to the nature of new threats confronting the world, such as the current health crisis and terror attacks, which know no borders, it is necessary to cooperate based on multilateralism and solidarity, said Istvan Ujhelyi, a member of the European Parliament and vice chair of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, at the event.

"Understanding each other's culture and history is the key to building long-term relationships and developing healthy and balanced societies," he said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will hold the leaders' meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. On that occasion, Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Michel and von der Leyen via video.

The meeting will be the first of its kind after the inauguration of the new EU leaders last year, and the highest-level bilateral meeting since the coronavirus outbreak.

Photo taken on April 24, 2020 shows a handover ceremony of medical equipment donated by China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) Zhuzhou Locomotive Co. Ltd. in Berlin, Germany. (CRRC ZELC/Handout via Xinhua)

During another webinar gathering Chinese and Western scholars earlier this month, Philippe Le Corre, research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, highlighted the importance of solidarity in hard times.

Noting the notion of "rivalry" in EU-China relations the EU introduced last year, he said "this pandemic is a game-changer globally. Globalization will no longer be the same. In troubled times we should not be fighting each other, but should be sitting around the table."

The upcoming meeting is expected to further boost bilateral strategic trust and mutually beneficial cooperation, as well as point out the direction for the development of bilateral relations in the post-COVID-19 era, said Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

As the world is faced with rising unilateralism, it is of utmost importance to strengthen the global response to the health crisis and improve public health governance on the basis of multilateralism, Zhang said. 
Iran is drawing up plans to offer discounts to some foreign airlines using its airspace, state news agency IRNA quoted a senior aviation official as saying on Saturday, after a slump in flights due to the coronavirus pandemic and regional tensions.

Nasser Aghaei, director of the state-run Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company, said the discounts would go to the top eight airlines providing transit income as well as airlines boosting their flights by 20%.

However, no general cut in fees are planned, IRNA said. Iran is one of many countries to charge so-called overflight fees, which are generally used to fund services such as air traffic control, weather data and aeronautical information.

The planned discounts still have to be approved by the government, Aghaei said.

Before the pandemic, major airlines in January rerouted or cancelled flights to avoid airspace over Iraq and Iran following an Iranian missile strike on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

Also Watch:

On Jan 8, all 176 people aboard a Ukrainian airliner flight were killed when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff en route from Tehran to Kiev.

Iran acknowledged shooting the plane down but said it had done so by mistake while under high alert, hours after it had fired at U.S. targets in retaliation for a U.S. strike that killed an Iranian general.

In June, some global airlines re-routed flights to avoid Iran-controlled airspace over parts of the Gulf, after the U.S. aviation regulator barred its carriers from the area following the downing of a U.S. drone by Iran.
[June 22, 2020] Media Alert: Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions Hosts Webinar on Lien Portfolio Management in a Post-COVID World

Wolters Kluwer's Lien Solutions business is hosting an informational webinar, "Managing your Lien Portfolio in a Post-COVID World," to share insights with lenders on navigating the COVID-19 pandemic given its impacts on lien portfolio practices. This event will focus on how lenders can mitigate risks and find growth in the new environment. It takes place at noon EDT on Wednesday, June 24. The events of the first half of 2020 have given commercial lenders the enormous responsibility of being a catalyst for helping to create greater economic stability. With the release of urgent stimulus programs, lenders must be nimble enough to make financing available to businesses that need it to keep their heads above water, while handling the COVID-19 "pause" to the national economy. But at the same time, it is crucial for lenders to carefully mitigate risks and maintain strong lending practices to protect their organization so that they can continue to lend in a more uncertain world. Lien Solutions' webinar will discuss how commercial lenders can become nimbler in the face of sudden shifts in the lending landscape while maintaining solid practices that protect the lender, borrowers and other key stakeholders. Panelists will also explore how lenders can improve their ability to mitigate worsening fraud trends by way of best practices in vetting potential borrowers, identifying underlying risks to their lien portfolios, and adjusting borrowers' liens to safeguard their interests. For lenders facing vehicle titling issues stemming from closed motor vehicle departments, this approach includes helping ensure that vehicles are titled and liens on those assets are established. Other topics up for discussion include strategies for strengthening defenses against the economic downturn by initiating better ways to assess the borrower's situation over time and the hanging risk for the lender, pivoting to create new policies and procedures to manage existing and new loans.



Webinar panelists include Suzanne Konstance, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions; Boaz Salik, CEO, FischerJordan LLC; and David O'Connell, Senior Analyst, Aite Group. The event is free for members of SFNet, webinar sponsor, and $95 for non-SFNet members. Registration ends at 10 a.m. EDT on June 24, the webinar event date, and can be completed by contacting Nora Wallis, [email protected]. Lien Solutions, which is part of Wolters Kluwer's Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) division, provides award-winning solutions for lenders, including its flagship iLien offering, which gives lenders the ability to conduct public record searches, retrieve and view Uniform Commercial Code and corporate records, create filings, and manage their entire lending portfolio. iLien offers comprehensive analytics, reporting, monitoring and auto-continuation capabilities, improving lenders' ability to holistically view lien portfolios, help them mitigate risk, and improve the quality and efficiency of their operations.

Lien Solutions' Business Entity Search for CARES Act solution, which conducts bulk/batch corporate identity searches to verify the business status of potential borrowers, is one of several expert solutions launched by the company's GRC division in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Its Paycheck Protection Program Supported by TSoftPlus, offered by Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions, has helped lenders assist Main Street small businesses access critical PPP funding to support their business and, in the process, helped retain approximately one million U.S. jobs under the CARES Act. 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, 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 (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/20200622005427/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Fitriani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 08:31 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066090da4 3 Opinion CSIS,data-privacy,authoritarianism,democracy-in-Indonesia,COVID-19,contact-tracing-tool Free

In everyday life, modern people use various software programs and apps, from online shopping to ride-hailing, but the introduction of COVID-19 tracking apps has sparked concerns about privacy.

The reason behind this is the increasing number of governments around the world that endorse and even, in specific circumstances, oblige citizens to install a COVID-19 tracking app.

At least 20 countries/territories are rolling out electronic tracking measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, including Australia, China, Norway, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The concerns over these apps are twofold. In the short run, there are fears of mass surveillance and data storage security. In the long run, there are worries about misuse of the information collected, especially if the government subcontracts the creation of the app and data storage to a third party without sufficient legislation in place.

Efforts to contain the spread of the virus can of course be done manually by tracking the interaction of people who test positive, asking with whom they have interacted in the past 14 days or more. But the results will greatly depend on the extent of peoples memory. Moreover, getting the phone numbers of people interacting with COVID-19 patients and calling them one by one to suggest self-quarantine would be tedious and time-consuming.

For efficiency, therefore, tracking technology is used to collect data and prompt alerts. Using mobile technology to track COVID-19 is cheaper and scalable, provided most of the population already has access to the internet and smartphones. Good data collection and utilization can help health scientists lower disease transmissions and support officials to create better policies, as well as allocate resources like ventilators and test kits.

Contract tracing apps for COVID-19 commonly use Bluetooth and a global positioning system (GPS), which have been popular among digital natives born post-1990 after the internet was invented. They number 360 million across the world and about 40 million in Indonesia.

The tracking apps usually record the identity of devices and/or phone numbers to detect their movement and interaction with other devices. Bluetooth tracking records phone models and, therefore, this identity needs to be randomized if possible. Understanding that COVID-19 tracking apps record users identities, it is important to be mindful of the privacy risks posed.

Most people do not mind having their data tracked as their information is already in the cloud, but for some, especially certain government officials, military personnel or minority groups, it could be life-threatening. Conversely, COVID-19 tracking apps can be life-saving to contain the virus spread.

There are two actions that governments can take in designing COVID-19 tracking to respect users privacy and data. First, identities collected by the app can be anonymized or randomized, and there should be a choice to opt out anytime even after the information is keyed in by users. Second, the data storage location should be carefully considered; whether it is centralized in a server or distributed in users phones, whether ministries or agencies can have the right to access the data and whether old tracing data recorded (usually more than 14 days) can be autodeleted.

Indonesias COVID-19 tracking app PeduliLindungi was jointly developed by the Communications and Information Ministry and the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry. The app collects usernames, mobile phone numbers, phone models, geolocations and timestamps. It alerts users whenever they enter a red zone, or an area with close proximity to positive COVID-19 cases.

During the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise (GFCE) meeting on COVID-19 tracking technology in mid-May, which I attended, it was obvious that countries were still assessing the effectiveness of their COVID-19 tracking apps as the download and usage numbers were a fraction of the population.

Challenges remain in obtaining the trust and even accessibility for the wider public to use the apps, not only the tech-literate. It is worth noting that with many countries producing COVID-19 apps, the two biggest global companies providing operating systems and app stores, namely Google and Apple, have agreed to create an interoperable platform for government health authorities.

The two companies planned to jointly build Bluetooth-based contact tracing functionality and integrate it into their platforms to reach the wider population. However, the concern would be whether the tech giants will monetize the acquired health data in the future.

The usage of tracking apps comes with the cost of increasing privacy and security risks of individuals and communities. There is already stigma toward people who have tested positive for COVID-19. If the data collected by location tracking apps is leaked, it may also increase the risk of persecution, especially for minority groups.

However, applying technology is arguably useful to obtain large-scale data in an efficient and timely manner, which can save lives. It is also worth remembering that having a COVID-19 tracking app is not a panacea; there are other technologies that can offer solutions to COVID-19-related matters.

Tracking apps are produced to collect data that can be indispensable for formulating policies in times of public health emergencies. Without data, policy is often misguided and/or based on impulsive decision-making that may not be effective and less thorough.

However, it is understandable that people are worried about the possibility that their private data could be leaked and obtained by foreign entities. The challenge lies between health and privacy  which one should be prioritized in specific settings  and whether the government can ensure the public their data is safe and will not be used against them.

***

Researcher at Department of International Relations, CSIS Indonesia. The original article was published by CSIS Commentaries.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
The more one wants to appreciate Mr Rahul Gandhi, the more one ends up rejecting him. Either he does not understand the sentiments of the people of his country, or he is too much in awe of his media friends who assure him that they would be able to create optics of an anti-NDA, anti-BJP and anti-Modi narrative which he can encash.

No one with a balanced mind would blame the Indian establishment or the Prime Minister for the present stand-off with China. The whole world knows that China has been an aggressor and is trying to create problems for India to assert its expansionism and proclaimed superiority. It knows that India is not the initiator and at best can be accused of safeguarding its borders more vigorously than ever before.

Twenty soldiers have sacrificed their lives to maintain the integrity of the borders. They fought bravely, men to men in close combat and, as reported by ANI, killed 43 of the aggressors. Rahul Gandhi has problems why the government is not naming China. Simply foolish. Who are these aggressors? Whom did the Indian army kill?

Our soldiers deserve all praise. They had their firearms but did not use them as per the international agreement with China for border patrolling. Such bravery and such discipline needs to be saluted. Their martyrdom should make us proud and should not be the reason for petty politicking. Rather than explaining to the people why such an agreement was signed that binds our soldiers, Mr Gandhi is asking questions as to why our soldiers were killed. He should ask the Chinese why they did not stick to the agreed border norms and used lethal weapons.

The soldiers decided to implement the understanding reached among corps commanders of both sides  India and China  of going back to the pre-determined positions on the respective sides of the LAC. They could have easily looked the other way.

Close to 600 soldiers including young officers sacrificed their lives during Operation Vijay in Kargil in 1999. But we were able to inflict heavy casualties on the other side (Pakistan), got the captured territories vacated and won a war that looked impossible for most world military experts. It is only through such a gallant display of soldiering and sacrifice that the nation rises in its self-esteem and worth. We do not bewail the sacrifice of soldiers but salute their martyrdom.

Issues such as why they violated the international agreement on borders should be asked to the aggressor and not to the one defending the same. Our abilities should be seen in the context of our determination to flush them out, should the adversary make such an attempt.

If our adversary is not dependable and uses chicanery and deceit as medium these should not become the reason to praise them. Every Indian is proud that the aggressor is dealt with firmly and professionally.

Now some embarrassing questions for Mr Rahul Gandhi. Pakistan has been in illegal and forcible occupation of approximately 78,000 sq km of Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir. China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq km in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, under the so-called `Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5180 sq. kms of Indian territory in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to China. This was stated in Parliament by MoS External Affairs, Mr E Ahamed, in November 2012.

Will Mr Gandhi explain to the people of this country why the Congress remains silent on these issues? He should explain how the Congress leaders built personal rapport with the leaders of these countries despite them being an aggressor? He must explain why the Congress signed an MoU with Chinese Communist Party for cooperation and better understanding We have numerous examples where Congress leaders have demonstrated their dubious design to befriend Pakistani establishment with a desire to throw the Modi government out.

The Government of India has compulsions of protocol to entertain leaders of foreign countries even if the country is hostile. But a political party in the country has no such compulsions. The MoU signed between the Congress and the Chinese smacks of some hidden agenda. How can Mr Gandhi claim that he is not doing the bidding of the Chinese?

Why would he ask such questions to the government without any basis? The armys statement should be the last statement. The Prime Ministers statement should be considered final. What is Mr Rahul Gandhi trying to do?

Mr Gandhi should introspect why he has got increasingly isolated in the polity of the country. The same all-party meeting where Prime Minister Narendra Modi briefed leaders of leading political parties, had leaders of the allies of the Congress too. These leaders lauded the briefing by the Prime Minister and expressed confidence in him. Does Mr Rahul Gandhi have a different agenda hidden from everyone? Calling the Prime Minister names or trying to show him in bad light only demonstrates the frustrations of Mr Gandhi for his inability to increase his political stocks in India.

So far as the Modi government is concerned, it is determined to secure its borders and make the country strong. The UPA government decided to build border roads but it failed to accomplish the task. Mr Narendra Modi has brought operational efficiency by giving faster environmental clearance, by giving more financial independence to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and by increasing the pace of infrastructure development in the border areas. Now the task of building motorable roads that can carry heavy armoured vehicles is almost complete.

China obviously does not want this since this would increase Indian army manoeuvrability and lead to better border patrolling. This would neutralise the advantage the Chinese have. India is not ready to back down. China after constructing border roads and war infrastructure along the borders cannot object to the same being built by India. Has Mr Rahul Gandhi spoken on this?

We have a Prime Minister who can manage optics of being very friendly when it comes to hosting the Chinese, but he is equally determined to equip the forces with the latest weapons and technology to deal with any crisis. Unlike Jawaharlal Nehru he is not going to be duped into over-confidence due to the call of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai . He knows that India has to become strong to get respect on the borders even if we are not the aggressor. Mocking the Prime Minister for the first and not recognising him for the second is childish or rather naive.

When Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted in Parliament about the need to get PoK vacated and also that Akshai Chin is an integral part of India, he demonstrated the strong will of the Indian state not to compromise with the land captured by China through illegal means. Mr Gandhi has not spoken a word against Pakistan for allowing China to construct CPEC through PoK. How can Pakistan give away territory that does not belong to it?

Mr Rahul Gandhis statements have also intended to demoralise our defence forces. Or, maybe, he is himself scared since the UPA government did not have a good record of facing Chinese eyeball to eyeball. For the benefit of Mr Rahul Gandhi it is necessary to know that Indian army is one of the most professional armies in the world. They are a battle-baked ferocious force and not like the conscripts that man the army of the adversary. Brave soldiers of the Bihar regiment have shown their mettle to the Chinese during the recent Galwan valley stand-off. The same was shown by our soldiers even in the Doklam standoff in 2017.

At a time when our soldiers are standing on the borders to ward off the evil, it is sad that Mr Gandhi will ask questions from the government based on motivated narratives. Those who wonder how Indian moles helped foreign invaders in the past have to just analyse present developments with an open mind. But nothing to worry: India would win despite these Mir Jafars and Jaichands. We are more guarded and there is no room for complacency.

(The author is national panel spokesperson of BJP and an author. Views expressed are personal.)
London: She is known the world over for her campaign for girls' education. Now Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has finished her degree at Oxford University and, like all students, is just looking forward to some sleep and some movies.

With universities in Britain temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Yousafzai posted pictures on social media which showed her celebrating with a cake and balloons, and covered in foam, paint and confetti as per tradition for Oxford students on the last day of their final exams.

"Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford. I dont know whats ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading and sleep," she said on her Twitter and Instagram feeds.

Congratulations poured in on social media, including from aid charity Oxfam, which said: "Congratulations, you are an inspiration!". Hollywood and Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra Jonas, who has 54 million Instagram followers, said: "Congratulations Malala!! Thats amazing."
BELGRADE, Serbia  Serbias president on Monday called for swift resumption of European Union-mediated talks on Kosovo after bolstering his hold on power at home in an overwhelming election victory for his governing right-wing party.

A preliminary official vote count of Sundays parliamentary election in Serbia showed that President Aleksandar Vucics Serbian Progressive Party won around 61% of the vote, followed by his ally, the Socialists, with around 10%. Election officials said turnout was 50.32%.

A partial boycott of the vote, by the main opposition parties who said Vucic unfairly dominated the state-run media, helped pave the way for Vucics Progressives to control about 190 seats in the 250-member assembly. Vucic declared the partys victory as historic.

International observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights said in a statement that the election was characterized by intense political polarization, amidst a boycott by a considerable section of the opposition.

The Serbian authorities organized the elections efficiently in difficult circumstances, but voters were left under-informed and frustrated by the oppositions lack of access to the media, said Urszula Gacek, head of ODIHRs special election assessment mission. The dominance of the ruling party risks the neutrality of the countrys democratic institutions, and dialogue is needed to bridge the deep political divisions and protect pluralism.

The autocratic Serbian president had called on supporters to vote in large numbers to give him a strong mandate for internationally mediated peace negotiations on the future of Serbias former province of Kosovo. Serbia has rejected Kosovos declaration of independence in 2008.

Vucic met with European Unions envoy for Kosovo, Miroslav Lajcak, on Monday, pledging support for the EU-mediated effort to reach an agreement in the long-standing dispute. The president travels next to Moscow for talks with key ally Russian President Vladimir Putin, while a U.S.-brokered Serbia-Kosovo meeting is set for June 27 in Washington.

We expect to continue with the dialogue as soon as possible, perhaps already in July, said Vucic.

Lajcak, who is a former Slovak foreign minister, congratulated Vucic on his partys election victory and said the EU wants to help resolve all disputed issues between Serbia and Kosovo through a comprehensive agreement. Lajcak also said resumption of dialogue is expected next month, but offered no immediate date.

Among the first to congratulate Vucic on Monday was a close populist ally, the prime minister of neighboring Hungary, Viktor Orban, who said in a message that under Vucics leadership, Serbia is ready, alongside other central European nations to be a winner of the decade ahead of us.

I am convinced that your successful governance has laid the groundwork for Serbia to become a full member of the European Union by the end of the four-year parliamentary cycle, Orban said.

Sundays vote in Serbia was the first national election in Europe since the coronavirus lockdowns began. The voting  initially planned for April but postponed because of the pandemic  was held as Serbia still is reporting dozens of new cases daily.

Despite the partial boycott, some smaller parties still took part in the vote, but could not make it over the 3% threshold to get into parliament. Full official results are expected by Thursday.

Some opposition leaders alleged that the vote was marred by irregularities and intimidation of voters. An opposition mayor of the western town of Sabac said he will demand a repeat of the balloting, while one of the leaders of the pro-boycott bloc insisted the turnout was lower than officially stated.

The boycott succeeded, the government will have no legitimicy, Dragan Djilas said in a statement.

A former extreme nationalist, Vucic briefly served as information minister in the government of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic during the bloody 1990s wars in the Balkans that killed more than 100,000 people and drove millions from their homes.

While Vucic now says he seeks EU membership for Serbia, critics warn that democratic freedoms have been sharply eroded since his party came to power in 2012.

_____

Associated Press writer Pablo Gorondi contributed to this report from Budapest, Hungary.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that COVID-19 was spreading at an unacceptable rate in the state as the number of cases and hospitalizations spike.

The governor noted that the number of COVID-positive patients in Texas hospitals has doubled, from about 1,600 patients in late May to 3,409 patients on Sunday.

While emphasizing that "closing down Texas again will always be the last option," Abbott said he may have to implement new measures if the spike continues.

On ExpressNews.com: Bexar County reports 538 new COVID cases, one new death, as surge continues

Tom Reel /Staff photographer

"The way that hospitalizations are spiking, the way that daily new cases are spiking  surely the public can understand that if those spikes continue, additional measures are going to be necessary to make sure that we maintain the health and safety of the people in the state of Texas," he said.

Abbott said that he knows some people believe wearing a mask is "inconvenient or an infringement on freedom," he also knows wearing a mask will "help us keep Texas open."

"Not taking action to slow the spread will cause COVID to spread even worse, risking peoples lives and ultimately leading to the closure of more businesses," the governor said.

Bexar County officials reported 538 new coronavirus cases Sunday  the largest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic  and one new death.

A total of 406 COVID-positive patients were in area hospitals Sunday evening. That was 70 more than on Saturday and more than four times as many as on June 1, when hospitals were treating just 93 coronavirus patients.

Starting Monday, Bexar County businesses must require their customers and employees to wear face masks or risk fines. Abbott did not object to the mandate issued by County Judge Nelson Wolff.

Replay the news conference above.
Three militants believed to be the cadres of Jammu and Kashmir chapter of the Islamic State (ISJK) were killed in a gunfight with security forces here on Sunday.

The police officials said that one of the slain militants was involved in the sneak attack carried out by motorbike-borne gunmen in Ahmed Nagar, Pandach area on the peripheries of Srinagar on May 20, leaving two Border Security Force (BSF) jawans Rana Mandal and Zia ul-Haq dead. They said that the SLR rifle snatched from one of the slain BSF men was recovered from the encounter site on Sunday.

The house in Pozwalpora locality of Srinagars Zonimar area in which the militant trio was holed up was damaged in the security forces final assault.

Before the combat started early Sunday, the police officials made an appeal to the militants to lay down their arms through public address system. When they ignored it, the owner of the house was asked to make one last attempt to persuade the militants to surrender.

In a video clip, the man (name withheld) can be heard pleading before the militants trapped in his house, Please, have mercy on me and my family. Ive a large family to look after. My daughters wedding is scheduled for next month. My brothers, for Gods sake...have mercy on me and my family. Please, surrender. I had told you last night (about possibility of the security forces tracking them down) but you didnt listen to me. They (security forces) conceded my request to give you one more opportunity to surrender. If you dont do that they will torch my home. I have no money to rebuild it. Please, come out and surrender to save my home.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range), Vijay Kumar, said that repeated attempts were made to persuade the militants to surrender, but they rejected the offer. Yet the J&K Police and security forces showed patience and exercised utmost restraint, thereby ensuring a clean operation with no collateral damage in an otherwise highly congested and densely populated area of Srinagar City, he said.

The police identified the slain militants as Shakoor Farooq Langoo, a resident of Srinagars Bharthana area, and Shahid Ahmad Bhat of Semthan village of Bijbehara area in southern Anantnag district. The identification of the other killed terrorist is yet to be ascertained. All the killed terrorists were affiliated with proscribed terror outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and ISJK, a statement issued by the police here said. Local sources said that the third slain militant could be Mohsin Aslam Khanwan, also a local militants and resident of Srinagars Anchar, Soura area.

The officials said that a cordon-and-search operation was launched by the J&K polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group and the Central Reserve Police Force in Zonimar area at dawn on Sunday on specific input generated by local police regarding the presence of militants in the area. During the search operation, the hiding terrorists were repeatedly appealed to surrender through their families and the community members of the area but instead they started firing indiscriminately upon search party, which was retaliated leading to an encounter, the police said.

Mobile internet services were snapped in entire Srinagar district soon after the security forces launched the search operation in Zonimar area.

On Saturday evening, one militant identified by the police as Pakistani national Tayab Waleed alias Imran Bhai alias Gazi Baba, and reportedly affiliated with Jaish-e-Muhammad was killed in a gunfight in apple orchards in southern Kulgam district.

The police sources here said the fighting broke out between gunmen and the security forces in orchards outside Lokhdipora village in Nehama area of Kulgam after the latter laid siege to these on learning about the presence of militants.

This was the 9th encounter between the militants and security forces in South Kashmir in past three weeks. As many as 28 militants were gunned down in these clashes.

The Army had on Friday claimed that it sees a palpable change on ground after each operation carried out against separatist militants in J&K and said the endeavour made together with local police and other security forces to bring peace is revealing glaring feats.

With every operation that is being concluded we are moving on the path of peace. I can feel it on ground theres a palpable difference that at the end of every operation the next operation is taking place under much cleaner circumstances, the commander of Srinagar-based 15 Corps Lt. Gen. Baggavalli Somashekhar Raju told reporters here after eight militants were killed in two separate fire fights with security forces in south Kashmirs twin districts of Shopian and Pulwama Thursday through Friday.
We recently issued an updated report on Alaska Air Group, Inc. ALK.

Like many other transportation companies, Alaska Air is hit by uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alaska Air witnessed significant fall in air travel demand in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Consequently, the carrier incurred an adjusted pre-tax loss of $102 million in the first quarter due to a 14% decline in passenger revenues. The company anticipates second-quarter loss to be much wider. The airline reduced its April and May capacity by 78% and 79%, respectively. In June, capacity is expected to be 70-75% below the year-ago quarters levels. Despite modest week-over-week improvement in demand lately due to easing travel restrictions, demand is likely to remain significantly low for upcoming several months. Escalating operating expenses are worrisome due to low passenger revenues. Notably, operating expenses rose 6% year over year in the first quarter with costs on wages and benefits increasing 10%.

Moreover, Alaska Air received $992 million via the payroll support program under the CARES Act. While $725 million of the above amount will be through grants (it doesnt have to be paid back), $267 million will be via loans. The company has applied for $1.1 billion in federal loan funding through a separate program under the CARES Act. This is likely to worsen its debt profile.

Alaska Air Group, Inc. Price

Alaska Air Group, Inc. Price

Alaska Air Group, Inc. price | Alaska Air Group, Inc. Quote

Nevertheless, declining fuel costs are a positive amid this global crisis. Notably, fuel prices declined 9.4% year over year in the first quarter. The savings on fuel costs should drive the bottom line.

In sync with consistent cost-reduction strategies, the company has reduced its monthly cash burn rate to $260 million in May from $400 million in April. By June it aims to lower the rate further to $200 million and hopes to reach breakeven by the year-end. Additionally, the carrier reduced discretionary and overhead spending by approximately $50 million per month.

Story continues

Zacks Ranks & Key Picks

Alaska Air currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

A few better-ranked stocks in the Zacks Transportation sector are Air Lease Corporation AL, Herc Holdings Inc. HRI and Teekay Tankers Ltd. TNK. All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Long-term earnings (three to five years) growth rate for Air Lease, Herc Holdings and Teekay Tankers is estimated at 3.1%, 1.4% and 3%, respectively.

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.



Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>





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



Air Lease Corporation (AL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Teekay Tankers Ltd. (TNK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Herc Holdings Inc. (HRI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
22.06.2020 LISTEN

President Akufo-Addo has explained why Ghanas COVID-19 recoveries more than doubled overnight by over 5,000 on Saturday, June 20.

In his 12th address to the nation on Sunday, 21 June 2020, Mr Akufo-Addo said: Our approach to dealing with the virus, as I have always said, will be informed by the evolving science and data.

At the outset of the pandemic, the scientific community and the World Health Organisation (WHO), on 12 January 2020, recommended two main criteria for declaring someone who has tested positive as having recovered from the disease. The first is that you no longer have symptoms, and the second is that you are no longer capable of infecting others, he noted.

Initially, the President continued, the scientific thinking was that, as long you continue to test positive, you are capable of infecting others. Hence, the requirement for the two consecutive negative tests before you are declared as having recovered.

This was the science that informed the guidelines that Ghana has, so far, followed. However, there is now new evidence which states that, after ten (10) to fourteen (14) days, a person, with no symptoms, is unlikely to transmit the virus to others, even if the person continues to test positive, the President said.

It is on this basis that WHO has updated its guidelines, as published per its Clinical Management of COVID-19 Interim Guidance, of 27 May 2020, as part of the clinical care pathway of a COVID-19 patient. According to WHO, asymptomatic patients, i.e. those who have tested positive for the virus but are not exhibiting any symptoms after fourteen (14) days, are not likely to be infectious, and, therefore, are unlikely to be able to transmit the virus to another person.

After three (3) weeks of analysing and studying this update and recommendation, and situating it in the Ghanaian context, in line with the admonition by WHO to Member States, this new patient discharge/recovery policy has now been adopted by Ghana, as have some countries in the European Union, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and in Dubai, he told Ghanaians.

The President said as of Saturday, 20 June 2020, the total number of positives, cumulatively, stands at 14,154, out of the 270,300 tests conducted.

Under the revised policy, 5,925 persons have recovered and been discharged, he pointed out, adding: This brings the total number of recoveries to 10,473.

The number of active cases is, thus, 3,596.

He said: In our hospitals and isolation centres, we currently have 24 persons severely ill, 6 persons critically ill, with 4 persons on ventilators while 85 persons have, regrettably, died.

The President said: This increased number of persons being discharged from our isolation and treatment centres brings in its wake yet another issue that we have to deal with  stigmatisation.

It is obvious that stigmatisation is adding further dimensions to the already-difficult problem of the pandemic. Part of the reason for the spread of the virus is the reluctance of some persons to admit they have tested positive, and go into quarantine for fear of being stigmatised, and, in the process, continue to be agents of the spread of the virus.

Persons, who test positive for the virus, once they recover, do not pose any danger whatsoever to anyone, because the scientists tell us that they can no longer spread the virus. As I have said before, there is nothing shameful about contracting the virus, and, consequently, we do not have to lose our sense of community because of this pandemic.

---classfmonline
Story Highlights 45% have a living will, up from 40% 15 years ago

74% favor ending terminal patients' lives by painless means

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty-five percent of Americans say they have a living will, a slight increase from 40% in 2005, when Gallup last asked this question. The increase has come among those of higher socioeconomic status, with double-digit increases among college graduates and upper- and middle-income adults.

More in U.S. Now Have a Living Will Do you, personally, have a living will, or not? May 2005 May 2020 Change % % pct. pts. U.S. adults 40 45 +5 Education Graduated from college 44 55 +11 Did not graduate from college 38 39 +1 Annual household income Lower-income 36 28 -8 Middle-income 36 48 +12 Upper-income 47 59 +12 Figures are the percentages who have a living will. Lower-, middle- and upper-income respondents assigned into rough thirds of the sample based on the income distribution. Gallup

These results are based on Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll conducted May 1-13 amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans, the vast majority of whom are elderly.

Living wills are legal documents that allow people to state their wishes for end-of-life medical care in case they are unable to communicate those wishes.

Gallup first asked about living wills in 2005, in response to a highly publicized right-to-die legal case involving Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman whose husband sought to remove life support for her despite opposition from her parents, and ultimately, some state and federal elected officials.

Since that time, the gap between college graduates and nongraduates, and between lower-income and upper- and middle-income Americans, has increased. Majorities of college graduates and upper-income Americans now say they have a living will, compared with about four in 10 nongraduates and barely more than a quarter of lower-income Americans. While people are not required to hire a lawyer to prepare a living will, many do. The resulting fees make such a document more feasible for people of greater means.

As might be expected, older Americans are far more likely than younger Americans to have a living will. Seventy-two percent of adults aged 65 and older have a living will, as do a slim majority of those aged 50 to 64. A little more than a third of 30- to 49-year-olds have a living will, and only 15% of young adults do.

The increases since 2005 by age group are similar, apart from a slight decline among young adults.

Changes in Percentages Who Have a Living Will, by Age 2005 2020 Change % % pct. pts. 18 to 29 19 15 -4 30 to 49 32 36 +4 50 to 64 46 52 +6 65+ 67 72 +5 Gallup

One in Four Have Had to Decide on Life Support for a Family Member

Asked about their own experience with end-of-life issues, 25% of U.S. adults say they have been in a situation in which they had to make a decision about whether to remove life support for a family member. In 2005, 22% said they had been in such a situation.

As might be expected, older Americans are among the groups most likely to say they have had to decide about ending life support, with 35% saying so.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans who have had to decide about removing life support for a family member have a living will, compared with 40% who have not had to make such a decision. In all income groups, those who decided on end-of-life care for a family member are significantly more likely to have a living will than those who have not had to decide.

Public Still Broadly Supports Euthanasia

The poll also included Gallup's annual update on Americans' views of euthanasia. Seventy-four percent of U.S. adults say doctors should be allowed to end the life of a patient with an incurable disease "by some painless means" if the patient and the patient's family requests it.

This puts current support for euthanasia at the higher end of the historical range, just below the all-time high of 75% recorded twice previously -- in 1996 and 2005.

When Gallup first asked about euthanasia in 1947, Americans were more likely to oppose it (54%) than favor it (37%). A 1950 poll found similar results -- but by 1973, the majority of U.S. adults (53%) were in favor. Since then, no fewer than 64% have supported the practice.

Americans are less supportive of doctor-assisted suicide for patients living in severe pain with an incurable disease -- 61% say doctors should be allowed to assist such patients in committing suicide if they request it, while 37% are opposed.

A majority have consistently favored doctor-assisted suicide since Gallup first asked about it in 1996, though the percentage has varied from a low of 51% in 2013 to a high of 68% in 2001 and 2015.

Line graph. Consistent majorities have supported euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide since 1996. However, support for euthanasia has always been higher, including 74% to 61% currently.

Although 61% of Americans believe doctors should be allowed to help patients commit suicide, fewer, 51%, think the practice is "morally acceptable," according to the results of a separate question in the survey. Just 18% of U.S. adults say suicide more generally is morally acceptable.

All key subgroups are more likely to support euthanasia than doctor-assisted suicide. Regular churchgoers and ideologically conservative adults are among the subgroups least supportive of each. Less than half of those groups think doctors should be allowed to help patients commit suicide.

Support for Euthanasia and Doctor-Assisted Suicide, by Subgroup Euthanasia Doctor-assisted suicide % Favor % Favor U.S. adults 74 61 Men 75 60 Women 73 63 Whites 77 63 Nonwhites 65 60 18 to 54 78 67 55+ 68 52 Graduated from college 79 69 Did not graduate from college 71 57 Republicans/Republican leaners 70 51 Democrats/Democratic leaners 81 71 Conservatives 57 43 Moderates 80 68 Liberals 87 73 Attend church weekly 55 39 Attend church monthly 76 62 Seldom/Never attend church 82 72 Euthanasia wording: When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it? Doctor-assisted suicide wording: When a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide if the patient requests it? Gallup, May 1-13, 2020

Implications

Americans largely favor allowing doctors to end the lives of terminally ill patients at those patients' request, or to assist such patients in doing it themselves.

A living will ensures patients' end-of-life wishes are carried out if they are unable to speak for themselves, but a majority of Americans do not have such a document. Although slightly more have one now than did 15 years ago, most of the increase has been among Americans of higher socioeconomic status. The gap between those of higher and lower socioeconomic status has widened as a result, showing another example of inequities in the U.S. healthcare and legal systems.

The gap may also reflect greater awareness of living wills among individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Those who have had to decide on end-of-life care, regardless of their income level, are significantly more likely to have a living will.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Wilkes-Barre, PA (18701)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 15F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 15F. Winds light and variable.
In this article SPCE

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft outside Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin Galactic

Shares of Virgin Galactic shares jumped Monday after it signed an agreement with NASA that will allow the space tourism venture to train astronauts for trips to the International Space Station. The company  which is publicly traded but largely owned by founder Richard Branson and chairman Chamath Palihapitiya  announced on Monday that it signed a "Space Act Agreement" with NASA's Johnson Space Center, which leads the agency's astronaut program in Houston. Shares of Virgin Galactic rose 15.9% in trading to close at $17.39 a share.

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity comes into land during a glide test flight on May 1, 2020. Virgin Galactic

Under the agreement, Virgin Galactic said it will develop a "private orbital astronaut readiness program," similar to the one it has to prepare tourists for its own flights. The company also said it will seek to buy seats on flights to the space station, currently offered by SpaceX with its Crew Dragon spacecraft. Virgin Galactic said the missions "could range from private citizen expeditions to government-enabled scientific research." "We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight program, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said in a statement.
A teenager excited to celebrate his 18th birthday with his mates has been kicked out of bar because of his mullet hairstyle.

Cooper Allin headed out to the beach-side bar El Grotto, in Perth, last Friday after having a beer with his mother to celebrate his coming of age.

Dressed in thongs, a Bush Chook tee shirt and shorts he joined the queue but was soon stopped by a bouncer.

Cooper Allin headed out to the beach-side bar of El Grotto, in Perth, last Friday after having a beer with his mother Sonia Allin to celebrate his coming of age with his mates

'He came and had a chat to me, he said he wasn't fussed about my pluggers, which was what I was worried about, but it was the mullet that did it for him,' he told 7 News.

'He just said it was the owners' rules so he wouldn't let me in.'

Mr Allin also said he thought the decision to ban mullets was hypocritical as one of the bars's owners, Kane Hipper, was photographed in 2018 sporting his very own mullet.

Mr Allin said his night was ruined by the experience and he was shocked to be discriminated against in the usually welcoming suburb of Scarborough.

'I reckon it's a bit silly, it's a mullet, I mean heaps of people have mullets,' he said.

'To have one beer [at a different pub] and get told, "no, you can't come in because of your hair" was a bit devastating.'

Mr Allin also said the decision to ban mullets from the venue was 'contradictory' after a photo surfaced of one of the pub's owners, Kane Hipper, in 2018 sporting his very own mullet

The teenager who grew the mullet to look 'fierce on the field' during weekend footy games said he has not had a problem with venues other than El Grotto.

And Mr Allin said there is no chance he will be cutting off his beloved mullet.

'Not a chance, I wasn't there to have a haircut I was there to sink frothies,' he said.

But according to the Australian Hotels Association WA it is perfectly legal for pub owners to enforce their own dress codes, which can include haircuts.

'There are venues that are mullet friendly so it is just a question of finding the right bar or pub that likes mullets,' said CEO Bradley Woods.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted El Grotto for comment.
Alluneedisfaith N ($4.60) patiently rode along in the pocket before pouncing at head-stretch and dueling down Love Me Some Lou for a 1:50.2 victory in the opening day (Sunday, June 21) feature at Harrah's Philadelphia, a $14,400 top-level conditioned pace.

The six-year-old Art Major gelding and driver George Napolitano Jr. strode clear from post 3 and controlled a :27.3 opening quarter before ceding command to Love Me Some Lou (David Miller), who brushed from third off the first turn. Alluneedisfaith N was content to draft behind Love Me Some Lou through middle splits of :56 and 1:23.2 before emerging off the home turn to reengage Love Me Some Lou, who refused to back down. Alluneedisfaith N dug in to prevail by three-quarters of a length, while Love Me Some Lou remained a clear runner-up, 1-3/4 lengths better than the chasing Ana Afreet N (Tony Morgan).

Ross Croghan trains 16-time winner Alluneedisfaith N for the Robert Cooper Stables LLC. The featured win was one of four on the day for Napolitano, whose driving grand slam was matched by Jordan Stratton.

Racing returns to Harrah's Philadelphia on Wednesday (June 24), with a 14-race card slated for a 12:25 p.m. first post.

(Harrah's Philadelphia)
Princess Eugenie has come under fire after sharing a throwback picture of Prince Andrew on Father's Day.

The royal, 30, took to Instagram on Sunday to pay tribute to the Duke of York, 60, by sharing a childhood picture, which showed her father with Beatrice as a toddler.

She wrote: 'Happy Father's Day to my father and father-in-law and to all fathers celebrating today and everyday'.

And while the picture racked up 45,000 likes and hundreds of positive comments, some followers urged Eugenie to persuade Andrew to cooperate with authorities following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Princess Eugenie has come under fire after sharing a throwback picture of Prince Andrew on Father's Day with Beatrice. The royal, 30, took to Instagram on Sunday to pay tribute to the Duke of York, 60, writing: 'Happy Father's Day to my father and father-in-law and to all fathers celebrating today and everyday.'

Dozens of accounts mentioned the name of alleged victim Virginia Roberts, with one writing: 'Courage to wish your father .. but aren't you angry with him for what he did?'.

Another pleaded: 'Please urge your Father to cooperate - those girls deserve justice, and as much as you may love your father it doesn't excuse his deplorable, disgusting and selfish behavior'.

Elsewhere one wrote: 'The comments praising and defending this man are terrible and horrific. Shame on all of you.'

But others sent messages of support, with many writing: 'Lovely photo of father and daughter'.

And while the picture racked up 45,000 likes and hundreds of positive comments, some followers urged Eugenie to persuade Andrew to cooperate with authorities following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal (both seen in May 2018)

One fan pleaded: 'Please urge your Father to cooperate - those girls deserve justice, and as much as you may love your father it doesn't excuse his deplorable, disgusting and selfish behavior'

Andrew has come under increasing fire after US authorities wrote to the Home Office earlier this month to ask formally to interview him about his relationship with Epstein.

In a sensational rebuttal, the Duke accused US prosecutors of breaking confidentiality rules and issuing 'complete lies' and refused to co-operate with them further until they extended an 'olive branch'.

A source close the Duke has since laid bare Andrew's alleged attempts to co-operate and help the investigation into Epstein.

Earlier this week, Virginia Roberts Giuffre branded Prince Andrew a 'toad' after the disgraced royal finally admitted that his failure to express sympathy on his car crash Newsnight interview was a 'source of regret'.

Dozens of accounts mentioned the name of alleged victim Virginia Roberts, with one writing: 'Courage to wish your father .. but aren't you angry with him for what he did?'

Elsewhere one wrote: 'The comments praising and defending this man are terrible and horrific. Shame on all of you.'

A photo that shows Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Prince Andrew and Maxwell in Ghislaine's apartment taken in 2001 has been widely circulated - even though the royal denies meeting her

Sharing her frustration, the victim of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein said: 'Oh the gull of this toad - he regrets the BBC interview but not his 'friendship' with Epstein because it gave him 'great contacts' and much more'.

In the devastating interview aired in November last year the Queen's favourite son failed to express any sympathy for Epstein's victims, who were trafficked from as young as 14 years old.

Roberts is one of several women who have accused billionaire Epstein of sexual abuse when they were underage, and has spoken publicly about being his 'sex slave.'

She has also claimed she had sex with Prince Andrew at the behest of his friend Epstein three times: once at Epstein's New York apartment, once in the Caribbean, and once at the London home of Ghislane Maxwell, the American financier's alleged madam, in March 2001.

Prince Andrew has denied all allegations against him.

Speaking about her first alleged encounter with Prince Andrew in London, Roberts said she was taken to Tramp Nightclub where she recalls dancing with the 'sweating' prince when she was 17.

A photo that shows Giuffre, Prince Andrew and Maxwell in Ghislaine's apartment taken in 2001 has been widely circulated.

Prince Andrew has strenuously denied all of Roberts' allegations and said he doesn't even remember meeting her.
With the 12th list, AAP announces candidates from all 117 seats

People of Dhuri have always showered immense love upon me: Bhagwant Mann
ENFIELD, CT  Management at a home merchandise store in the Brookside Plaza paid tribute Monday morning to four employees who recently completed their high school careers, with a small graduation ceremony, gifts and the surprise presence of their parents.

"These girls have lost out on so much this year," Bed Bath & Beyond store manager Dawn Smolenski said, acknowledging the cancellation of proms, spring sports, the class picnic and a traditional graduation ceremony in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

To register for free Enfield news alerts and more, click here.



Enfield High School graduates Janelle Bonilla, Samantha Ceniglio and Mia Jensen were joined by fellow associate Katie Steele, a recent graduate of Sabis International Charter School in Springfield, Mass. Fellow BB&B employee Luke Barnes played "Pomp & Circumstance" on a clarinet, and three of the girls donned their caps and gowns brought by their parents.

Smolenski spoke a few words about each graduate, and the girls were presented gift bags, custom-made cupcakes and other goodies. A poster collage of each girl was situated behind their respective family members.

"I had four graduates who actually came back, and I thought it would be nice to honor them, and let them know how much we appreciate them and how we're going to miss them when they go off to school," Smolenski said.

Bonilla (criminal justice) and Jensen (physical therapy) will both be attending Springfield College in the fall. Ceniglio is headed to Central Connecticut State University to study nursing, while Steele will be majoring in psychology at Westfield State University.



"They all have their different strengths - my district manager said these girls are fantastic with customers, and he was surprised they were only high school students," Smolenski said. "They go above and beyond every day, no pun intended, and they are great leaders."



Story continues

Photos: Tim Jensen/Patch

This article originally appeared on the Enfield Patch
The human resource development ministry (MHRD) is likely to announce a final decision on holding the examinations for the remaining papers of CBSE Class XII, as well as competitive tests like NEET and JEE (Main), in the next three days. While these examinations were to be held in July 2020, the worsening of the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation in India has forced the MHRD to take a re-look.

Similarly, the Council for Indian School Certification Examinations (CISCE) is likely to announce a final decision on the internal marking system for the ICSE, ISC exams. Here, students have been given an option - either write the examinations for missed subjects in July 2020 or be given a grade, based on their pre-board performance in those subjects.

Industry experts told Moneycontrol that this is the best possible solution considering that the coronavirus situation in India could continue for the next few months. If examinations are delayed any longer, it will take longer to declare results impacting the higher education prospects of students.

What is the examination schedule?

As far as ISC Class XII is concerned, papers like Biology Theory, Business Studies, Geography, Psychology, Sociology, Home Science Theory, Elective English and Craft were the ones pending. These are scheduled between July 1 and 14.

For ICSE Class X, subjects like Geography, Applied Art, Electives like fashion design, music, yoga, etc., Hindi, Biology and Economics Elective had pending examinations scheduled between July 2 and July 12.

However, students can now choose whether to appear for the remaining examinations or opt for grading based on past assessments. Considering that only a few subjects are pending, parents and students are of the view that cancellation is the safest option, especially given the COVID-19 curve is yet to flatten in India.

Vanitha Subburaman, parent of Mumbai-based Class X student Ananya, said that considering safety issues, it is best for the schools to cancel the exams.

Ananyas school has given guardians the option to choose and we chose to opt out. However, some schools are forcing students to mandatory say 'yes' to physical exams which could be risky, she added.

Similarly, Delhi-based school teacher Surabhi Chawla is of the view that each student would have only missed one or two papers and hence internal assessments can be used.

Meanwhile, states like Maharashtra are yet to give their view on whether students will be permitted to write physical examinations for the pending subjects. Maharashtra has 1,32,075 confirmed COVID-19 cases of which 60,161 are active cases.

The Maharashtra government has cancelled the remaining state board examinations as well as the regular final term college examinations. However, since education is on the concurrent list, the state government's permission to conduct examinations locally is necessary for CBSE and ISC/ICSE boards.

An active campaign on social media has been running since May 2020 primarily by parents asking schools to cancel the remaining paper examinations. A public interest litigation was also filed at the Bombay High Court by an advocate and father of a Class X student. The PIL wanted exams to be cancelled and also sought that internal assessment marks should be used for grading students by CISCE.

When it comes to CBSE, the exams for Class XII were rescheduled to be held between July 1 and July 15. These included subjects like Home Science, Hindi, Computer Science, Sociology, Geography among others.

A separate list for North-East Delhi students was also released. These students could not sit for their examinations in February 2020 due to the violence.

Javed Usmaan, a Class XII student from Tamil Nadu, told Moneycontrol that his aunt passed away due to coronavirus and that his family is apprehensive about him going to an exam centre.

I am planning to pursue a course in engineering and for that my Class XII marksheet will be essential for the JEE Advanced exam. But considering the pandemic, will the government give any assurance about safety, he asked.

What will be the impact on students?

The board examination results are essential for applying for competitive examinations like JEE. To be eligible for JEE Advanced, a student must have either scored at least 75 percent in the Class XII examination or be in the top 20 percentile of successful candidates in the board examination.

If there is a further delay in the CBSE/ISC examinations, students stand to suffer. Without having the relevant marksheet scores, students will not be able to pursue regular undergraduate courses in arts, commerce or science as well as specialised ones like medicine or engineering.

For instance, Delhi University which had begun its online admission process for all its courses on June 20 has allowed students to update their CBSE marks once the results are declared. If the Class XII exams are postponed to a further date in August or September, for instance, students will lose out.

Pune-based Class XII student Danielle Lobo is of the view that candidates from state boards stand to benefit.

Results of most of the state board final examinations have been declared. It is only us, CBSE and ISC students, who will be at a disadvantage if the exams keep getting postponed, he added. Lobo plans to apply to Delhi University for a political science course.

A DU official told Moneycontrol that while some considerations would be given to students considering the pandemic, candidates would need to present their marksheet at least before the final cut-off is announced.

The same goes for students who have written their Class X examinations. Students are worried that schools and colleges (Class XI and XII are considered junior college in states like Maharashtra) may not be willing to extend admission dates.

The Class X marks are used as a cut-off for offering admission to Class XI. Those failing to present their marksheet may not get extensions in case board examinations get deferred.

For students planning to apply abroad, there is still time till November/December to submit their final marksheets. This extension is being offered by most of the leading international educational institutes in the US, Europe and Asia in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Till the student submits the marksheet, he or she is given a provisional admission. However, in case they are not able to submit even after the final extension the admission would be cancelled.

There is a small group of students who want to give examinations to have a better grade or because he/she has missed past assessments.

For example, two students have sent a petition to a Kolkata-based school to allow them to have online internal assessments since these candidates missed out on a few pre-board tests last year due to family emergencies.

The board officials also need to make it clear as to what happens if a student was sick and missed the pre-board tests. On what basis will the final assessment will then be made and is there also a chance of a student being failed because of that? asked Mumbai-based education consultant Prateek Salunkhe.

Given the current circumstances, both educational institutes and students concur that a further delay is something that will be detrimental to candidates academic future. The MHRDs decision providing parity for all board examinations is awaited.
Videos

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.
VAN NUYS, Calif., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Here To Serve Holding Corp. (OTC: HTSC) announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, ICF Industries Inc., ("ICF") has formed a new division, known as Greenhouse Industries, to serve the wholesale hemp flower distribution market.

ICF's President, Cesar Herrera, said, "ICF has been traveling up and down the west coast to visit farms, buy product and ship samples. We have developed strong relationships with mass-producing farms that have offered us significant wholesale discounts that we believe will allow us to compete on a global scale. We are especially excited about entering the wholesale CBG hemp flower market. We plan to expeditiously ramp up our market penetration with the help of customers such as CBD of Denver (OTC:CBDD), particularly in reference to CBG hemp flower. The opportunities are so numerous, we have established the Greenhouse Industries division to manage our CBG activities. We also plan to take advantage of the relationships we have developed to wholesale distribute other cannabis products such as CBD, isolate powders, biomass, full and broad spectrum concentrates and distillates."

CBG and CBD are both nonintoxicating cannabinoids. CBG works to fight inflammation, pain, nausea and is frequently credited with slowing the proliferation of cancer cells. Research has shown it also significantly reduces intraocular eye pressure caused by glaucoma and is used in treating conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn's disease.

CBG (cannabigerol) is a non-acidic cannabinoid produced when heat is applied to the CBGA (cannabigerolic acid) molecule. CBG is found mainly in hemp products, and strains bred for high THC usually contain very low amounts of CBG (less than 1%). High CBD strains contain much higher concentrations of the CBG cannabinoid.

CBG is not listed on the schedules set out in the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and does not appear to be controlled by any other international treaty. Therefore, countries are not required to control CBG. CBG appears to be legal under international law and potentially ripe for international shipping, opening global opportunities not found with other types of cannabis.

About Here to Serve Holding Corp.

Here to Serve Holding Corp. (OTC:HTSC) operates as four entities: Novus Ordo Industries Inc. ("Novus"), ICF Industries Inc. ("ICF"), Executive Industries, which operates as a division of ICF and Greenhouse Industries which operates as a division of ICF.

Novus is a California-based licensed construction company. Working with strategic partners, Novus provides its clients with architectural, engineering, and construction services for the custom building of residential homes, commercial properties, hotels and cannabis facilities using insulated concrete forms.

ICF is a distribution, consulting and sales corporation designed to supply construction material throughout North America. ICF has contracts to distribute a diverse array of industrial products such as stuccoes, plasters, environmental remediation and medical supplies from strategically designated vendors.

Executive Industries offers corporate advisory, consulting and marketing services to both public and privately-owned companies. Executive Industries helps entities with corporate strategy, negotiation, corporate structure, marketing and executive management decisions.

Greenhouse Industries is a wholesale distributor of low THC level cannabis products which include CBG, CBD, isolate powders, biomass, full and broad spectrum concentrates and distillates. Working with top quality farmers, it has attained access to high-quality CBG and CBD hemp flower. Greenhouse Industries intends to rapidly increase market share of the burgeoning CBG hemp flower market.

Please be advised that information contained herein includes forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond our control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

SOURCE Here To Serve Holding Corp.
The Covid19 pandemic has resulted in tectonic changes in the way we live especially the way we socialize. Every demographic segment is adjusting to this new way of living with social-distancing, but the senior citizens have been bearing the brunt of it much more than others. The Times of India, the leading newspaper brand in the country, draws attention to the need for empowering our senior citizens to live happy and safe in this new-normal. Elderly people are at a higher risk of Covid19 infection due to their decreased immunity and multiple associated co-morbidities; thus, resulting in reduced mobility outside their home premises. Adding to these restrictions, majority of our older generation are not very fluent in manoeuvring through the digital devices and services. On the other hand, the youngsters are naturally driven to master the digitally enabled world. Contextualizing to the Happy Fathers Day, TOI calls for a role reversal and shows how the younger generation could be parenting the older generation by teaching them the baby steps to ease into the new-normal.

Reinterpreting the child and parent equation through the idea of #ReverseParenting, the campaign touches upon the changing codes of socialization, connections and celebrations in the era of social distancing. There is a definitive need to address the healthcare concerns for the elders. It is also extremely critical that the senior citizens continue to stay connected with their family and friends, and have a channel to indulge in their passions and interests. Social distancing should not put a pause on friendship, celebrations and festivities. Built on this insight and contextualized to Fathers Day, TOI narrates a heartfelt story of a father and son living through the pandemic restrictions. In these testing times, the film serves as a timely reminder to the audience to care for those whove made us what we are today. The film touches upon the confinement struggles of the older generation and ends with the son introducing his father to the new norms of socializing enabled through technology. Amplifying the campaign through print and digital media, TOI is also doing a series of content under Unlocking Diaries that chronicles how different sectors are opening up post the lockdown.

Speaking about the campaign, Sanjeev Bhargava, Director, Brand, TOI, commented, As the world comes to terms with the new-normal, the older generations will find it increasingly alien and the younger ones will find ways to adapt. In this scenario, it become incumbent upon the younger generations to help their elders acclimatize to the new reality. This Father's Day, TOI recognizes this shift and helps create awareness for this new dynamic in old parent-child relationship.

Talking about the video, Joy Chauhan, Senior Vice President & Managing Partner, Wunderman Thompson, Gurgaon, said, Curating such a thought-driven and purpose-led campaign for an iconic brand like TOI reaffirms the faith that we have in them towards making a difference to society. Our long-standing association with them has seen us contribute our creativity towards the cause in creating a host of impactful and compelling initiatives. Coupled with a sense of urgency in these testing times, the concept of #ReverseParenting film was one that needed to reach out to the audience at the very earliest. It drives forward the message and reiterates the fact that it is now time for the children to help their father ease into the new normal. Having made such a telling campaign, we look to make more of the same for them in the near future.
Before a recent spike in COVID-19 infections, local public health experts, when they had a moment to think about it, were struck by one slightly amazing statistic.

Bexar County, with 2 million residents and a legacy of generational poverty, obesity, diabetes and overall health inequality, has consistently had the lowest rates of COVID-19 deaths among Americas most populous counties.

After three months, the pandemic had caused 97 deaths in Bexar County as of Sunday. Similar-sized counties had way more, such as those surrounding Fort Worth, with 198 deaths; Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with 348; Las Vegas, with 380; and Detroit, with 2,675.

In Bexar, the nations 15th-most populous county, COVID deaths and case numbers have gone up dramatically in the past two weeks. But as of Wednesday, it still had a lower death rate per 100,000 people than 23 of the nations 25 most populous counties, including Texas largest  Harris, Dallas and Tarrant.

READ ALSO: Bexar County reports 538 new COVID cases, one new death, as surge continues

Only Sacramento County in California had a lower death rate than Bexars 4.62 deaths per 100,000.

Officials cautioned at first that it was too early in the pandemic to claim even momentary victories. They were also mindful that self-congratulatory pronouncements in a time of civic tragedy would seem callous.

But as cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle erupted with cases, their mortality rates climbing as high as 40 times San Antonios, the Alamo City crossed its fingers.

I personally think its worth celebrating, said Dr. David Gude, chief operating officer of Texas MedClinic, a chain of 19 facilities in South-Central Texas that administer about 1,000 COVID-19 tests each day. I would not have thought this possible, especially with our rate of diabetes.

More than 14 percent of Bexar County adults have diabetes. The average in Texas is 10 percent. People with diabetes who get COVID-19 have higher rates of serious complications and death and more so in combination with other underlying conditions.

Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

Bexar Countys qualified success also seems unlikely given its high rates of heart disease, obesity, hypertension and asthma, which can compromise a persons immune system, making them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. San Antonio has a huge uninsured and elderly population that doesnt get regular medical attention.

Privately, health professionals said they would barely have noticed if communities such as Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City or Portland, Ore.  low density, well-educated, heavily Anglo, health conscious  had posted low rates of COVID deaths.

But San Antonio? In 2018, the city had the highest poverty rate among the nations 25 largest metropolitan areas, according to the Census Bureaus American Community Survey.

Experts and observers interviewed for this story, after praising the civic teamwork and dedicated medical workers, admitted that they, too, initially shared much lower expectations about San Antonios ability to control the spread of COVID-19.

RELATED: Heres what San Antonio doctors have learned about treating COVID-19

Even Mayor Ron Nirenberg admitted first thinking, Were in trouble, days after the first planeload of American evacuees from Wuhan, China, arrived at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland on Feb. 7. He wondered if the city had the medical capacity  the hospital beds, the ventilators, the N95 masks  to handle a pandemic.

But Nirenberg and others now think that the arrival of that first plane  two others followed weeks later  helped alert and educate Bexar County to the coming crisis. In February, he had Adm. Brett Giroir of the U.S. Public Health Service in his office, discussing how to prepare for the community spread of the virus, he said.

It gave our people weeks of advance warning before the rest of the country was prepared for the scope of the disease, Nirenberg said.

Then came another alarm. On Feb. 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed one of the 91 evacuees quarantined at Lackland, who had twice tested negative for the virus, to be released. She went to a hotel and to North Star Mall before officials realized she had tested weakly positive on a third test and quickly returned her to a medical facility.

RELATED: Weeks later, Wuhan evacuee hasnt infected anyone in S.A.

Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff were incensed and held the CDC publicly accountable, airing other differences between the agency and the local medical community.

That community is headed by San Antonio Metropolitan Health District Director Dawn Emerick, who, though she had only arrived on the job Jan. 27 from Corvallis, Ore., knew when the first evacuees arrived that it was game on. Here we go.

An emergency campaign, assisted by the San Antonio Fire Department, the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, or STRAC, which handles trauma and emergency health care for 22 counties, and dozens of other agencies and hospitals, cobbled together time-tested protocols and spur-of-the-moment innovation  as simple and local as going door to door and as complex and far-reaching as summoning business leaders with Chinese contacts to see who could deliver masks and protective clothing.

Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Some of their best lifesaving ideas were routine medicine and public education, but others came from hunches and coincidence.

Emerick and others said the episode with the evacuee in North Star Mall made hundreds of thousands of locals take COVID-19 seriously.

On ExpressNews.com: Metro Health director came to San Antonio just ahead of the coronavirus

Fear will make you stand up and pay attention, Emerick said. While it was nothing to be afraid of, people in public health know that a heightened alert is the best time to do education.

At the time, the education was about washing hands  we werent even thinking yet about social transmission, she said.

Staffing was a concern. Metro Health has about 450 employees, and 70 percent of them were taken off their normal duties  restaurant inspections, immunizations  and delegated to Anita Kurian, head of the communicable disease division.

Anita has yet to take a day off during this whole thing, Emerick noted, which Kurian confirmed with a laugh.

Best practices saved lives, observers agreed. But so did certain characteristics of the county  relatively low use of mass transit and low-density housing, some said.

Among many factors, they think these made a difference:

Daily briefings by Nirenberg and Wolff. (Calm science and daily infection/death totals kept peoples attention.)

Daily briefings by Nirenberg and Wolff. (Calm science and daily infection/death totals kept peoples attention.) Constant monitoring of Bexar County Jail, with prompt segregation of prisoners, quarantines and color-coding of infected areas.

Constant monitoring of Bexar County Jail, with prompt segregation of prisoners, quarantines and color-coding of infected areas. Initially keeping COVID-19 patients from the Lackland quarantine out of some hospitals.

Initially keeping COVID-19 patients from the Lackland quarantine out of some hospitals. Separating positive nursing home patients for quarantine.

Separating positive nursing home patients for quarantine. Community trust in medical leaders, so education worked.

Community trust in medical leaders, so education worked. Pop-up testing sites, though demand remains low.

Pop-up testing sites, though demand remains low. Earlier and tougher mask and stay-at-home rules than other cities.

Emerick and Kurian, who are not Hispanic, have given considerable thought to how Latino culture may have slowed or accelerated the spread of COVID-19. Kurian said 67 percent of the county COVID-19 cases were Hispanic people. Researchers attribute some of that to socializing and multigenerational living.

But the deep family ties might have prompted thousands of residents to convince older relatives to stay home while younger adults did the shopping. And research by online polling company Lucid showed mask compliance at 82 percent for Asian-Americans, 74 percent for African-Americans, 71 percent for Latinos and only 66 percent for whites, the Washington Post reported.

I think the culture of San Antonio must have had something to do with the lower death rates, said Dr. Ruth Berggren, an infectious disease specialist with UT Health San Antonio. There are values here in San Antonio. Caring about your family makes you more diligent and sends messaging throughout the community.

She said community outreach was always more effective when her staff told people they not only cared about physical health, but also about lost jobs, evictions and hopelessness.

On ExpressNews.com: 18 hours inside a COVID-19 intensive care unit

Berggren and her UT Health colleague Dr. Barbara Taylor influenced several COVID-19 protocols locally  none more important, Berggren said, than what the countys emergency team initiated with nursing homes and the jail.

To prevent what Berggren feared could be a disastrous outbreak at the jail, which houses about 3,500 people daily, jail supervisors and UT Health staff decided to test every prisoner. The vast majority of positives, she said, didnt show symptoms. They were moved out of the general jail population, along with those who had pre-existing chronic health conditions.

Slowly but surely, we tested all areas of the jail and color-coded them, Berggren said. It was tough.  We had to segregate gang members. We found bunk beds (bolted to the floor) were too close to each other.

Five hundred employees come in and out every day. Another 75 to 100 people are being booked in every day.

As of the second week of June, 460 inmates had tested positive, while one staff member, age 54, and a prisoner with a pre-existing health condition had died.

Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Even more challenging were the nursing homes.

The Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, at 4302 E. Southcross, had 19 coronavirus deaths in April, including a worker. An additional 75 residents and 29 workers have tested positive. A wrongful death lawsuit accused the facility of gross negligence, alleging that Southeast systematically understaffed in March 2020 in an effort to maximize profits.

The nursing home and its owner, Arlington-based Advanced Healthcare Solutions, have not yet responded to the lawsuit and did not return calls for comment.

Kurian, Emerick and Berggren say the death totals for nursing homes could have been worse without the work of a group of paramedics from the San Antonio Fire Department known as Mobile Integrated Healthcare, or MIH.

Formed in 2014, the 11-member group normally handles cases involving opiate addiction, health problems among the homeless and mentally ill, and chronic users of 911 for real or perceived health crises. Six weeks before the cases multiplied at the Southeast nursing home, MIH director Andrew Estrada said, his crews had already begun to inventory every nursing home in the county and seek their cooperation in testing for the virus.

We would just make cold calls on them, Estrada said. We carried ultrasound equipment to look at their lungs. We could test anyone who said they werent feeling well. At first, there was a lot of resistance, especially from elected officials. No one wanted to be the first to let us in.

The MIH crews found that most of the nursing homes were low on masks and protective gear and were not properly disinfecting the gear they did have.

The teams also found nursing home staffs often worked at several facilities and might go from place to place in one day, spreading the virus. The mayor soon stopped that practice. Eventually, nursing home infections were stabilized only when all the positive patients were quarantined at a separate facility, River City Care Center, at 921 Nolan on the East Side.

Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

Kurian and Emerick said they were amazed by how much the Fire Department could aid their efforts.

Anita and I are both still outsiders to this community, but Ive prepared for hurricanes in Florida and wildfires in Oregon, Emerick said. And Ive never seen the cooperation between public health and the fire department that we have here.

Bexar County had a slow start in testing, but its public and private facilities now are testing at capacity, about 6,000 people a day, Emerick has said.

Listing the measures that made the most difference in keeping Bexar Countys COVID-19 death rate so low amounts to educated guesswork.

More difficult, of course, is assessing the role San Antonians themselves played, from macho construction crews that never wore masks to the church ladies who sewed them for parish elders.

Trinity University anthropology professor Alfred Montoya shares the astonishment of many that the most impoverished large city in the United States, a poster child for income segregation, low insurance coverage and delayed health care, could be among the lowest for COVID deaths.

He cautioned against crediting culture, though, and suggested the citys horizon of detached single-family homes might have helped.

He said he was moved by the behavior of his West Side neighbors and how residents reached out to front-line workers, first responders and each other.

If San Antonio maintains its edge over other cities  still an if  Montoya thinks it will be the block by block, household by household acts of community solidarity that ultimately made the difference.

News Researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report. Bruce Selcraig is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Bruce, become a subscriber. BSelcraig@express-news.net
According to John Bolton's book out Tuesday, it's fair to say that President Donald Trump's former national security adviser agreed with Democrats that Trump politicized foreign policy for his own gain. Bolton claims Trump did so on multiple occasions.

Bolton writes that Democrats committed "impeachment malpractice" for not investigating beyond Ukraine and says Trump asked China's president for help, too. But at the time, he refused to testify willingly or even with a subpoena.

Now Democrats have to decide again whether to have Bolton testify on what he knows. It could risk looking like overkill after they already impeached Trump for his Ukraine work. But if they don't have Bolton testify, they could come across as if they are looking the other way on allegations that are arguably more serious than what they impeached Trump for.

There's a lot of history that could inform their decision. So let's look back at why Bolton didn't testify in Trump's impeachment trial in the first place.

- Why Bolton said he didn't testify

Bolton says he thought Democrats were being partisan and he didn't want to participate in that.

Partisanship probably framed Bolton's view on this, too. Bolton would have been the highest-profile person to testify, and his testimony would have been significant. He had already left the Trump administration at the time of the impeachment investigation in the House, but he was involved in a number of meetings and conversations around Trump's dealings with Ukraine. Bolton could have been the linchpin in Democrats' investigation.

And that would have made him the protagonist in Democrats' impeachment inquiry. That didn't seem like a partisan picket line that Bolton, who has dedicated his career to conservative foreign policy, was willing to cross.

- What actually happened when House Democrats called Bolton to testify

In the fall of 2019, House impeachment investigators were already talking to several current and former top staffers on Bolton's national security team, one of whom testified that Bolton called the Ukraine scheme "a drug deal" and said he wanted no part in it.

In November, Democrats asked Bolton to testify voluntarily and set a date. Even top Republicans said they wanted to hear from Bolton. He didn't show. Then his lawyer sent a letter to House Democrats saying that Bolton would sue them if they tried to subpoena him.

Ignoring a congressional subpoena is normally a crime that can be punishable by a fine or jail time. But Bolton's former No. 2 at the National Security Council had just been subpoenaed and told by the White House not to comply (even though he didn't work there anymore). So Charles Kupperman filed a lawsuit, asking a federal judge which branch of government has the upper hand on whether he should testify: the executive branch or the legislative.

Democrats said Kupperman was trying to drag out a difficult decision well past the impeachment inquiry (since the courts tend to move more slowly than Congress). Kupperman denied that.

Whatever the intention, going to the courts rather than complying with a subpoena from Congress was a move that Bolton decided to follow. His lawyer never filed that lawsuit against House Democrats, but he indicated that Bolton would follow whatever came of Kupperman's case.

Around the same time, Democrats were trying to talk to then-acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. He indicated he would join Kupperman's lawsuit, too.

Democrats argued that the court fight to get all these high-level witnesses would be a waste of time. They said they needed to move forward with Trump's impeachment now, because it dealt with foreign interference in the presidential election, and another election was less than a year away.

They withdrew the subpoena for Kupperman and never subpoenaed Bolton. And they spent a significant amount of time and energy defending that decision.

"'Why don't you let him cheat in one more election?'" House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-N.Y., said at the time of Republicans who argued that Democrats should wait for the lawsuits to play out before moving on with impeachment. "That is what that argument amounts to."

Democrats impeached Trump without Bolton's testimony on Dec. 18. The Kupperman case still had not received a ruling from a judge. On Dec. 30, a federal judge tossed out the lawsuit on whether Bolton's top aide should testify, calling it moot. But the potential for Bolton's testimony would continue to shadow the impeachment process.

- What happened when the Republican-controlled Senate started its impeachment trial

The trial in the Senate offered a new opportunity for Democrats to try to get Bolton to testify. But Republicans controlled the votes for that and seemed intent on not letting any witnesses testify, least of all Bolton. Publicly, they argued it was the House's job to do the investigating, and privately they seemed unwilling to dig into evidence that could be damaging to Trump.

Bolton complicated their public-facing argument by saying in a statement about a week before the trial started that he would be willing to testify if the Senate voted to call him: "Accordingly, since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify," he said.

Bolton could safely assume it was unlikely that Republicans in the Senate would vote to call him. But as the trial got going, the New York Times got an excerpt of Bolton's book and reported that he tied Trump to holding up Ukraine's military aid until the government in Kyiv would do him a political favor. (He does indeed write that.)

Democrats ramped up their pressure on Republicans to vote to allow Bolton to testify. "The Senate trial must seek the full truth, and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide," House impeachment managers said. Schiff offered Bolton the chance to provide written testimony, which he said Bolton declined to do.

The effort to call witnesses to testify in the Senate fell short by two votes. The trial ended a few days after that, with the Republican-controlled Senate acquitting Trump on the House's two charges.

- What happens next

Bolton now says he doesn't think his testimony would have made any difference. I've argued he's right: Partisan loyalty being what it is, it's hard to see how 20 Republicans would have agreed to kick Trump out of office. Plus some Republican senators said at the time that they were convinced Trump did what he was accused of. (They just didn't think it amounted to impeachment.)

Still, Bolton has put Democrats in another tough position by sharing what he knows too late to be used in their impeachment inquiry.

Now they are forced to consider whether they want to try to call Bolton to the witness table to re-litigate this. And there's no guarantee Bolton would be any more willing to talk to them.
Staff of the China Railway Guangzhou Engineering Group (CRECGZ) pose for a group photo at the entrance to the Ban Nakok Tunnel in northern Laos' Oudomxay Province, on June 21, 2020. China Railway Guangzhou Engineering Group (CRECGZ) drilled through the Ban Nakok Tunnel, the second longest tunnel along the China-Laos railway, on Sunday. (CRECGZ/Handout via Xinhua)

VIENTIANE, June 21 (Xinhua) -- China Railway Guangzhou Engineering Group (CRECGZ) drilled through the Ban Nakok Tunnel, the second longest tunnel along the China-Laos railway, on Sunday.

The 9,296-meter Ban Nakok Tunnel, in northern Laos' Oudomxay Province, some 400 km north of the Lao capital Vientiane, went through harsh geological conditions which made its construction a key bottleneck of the railway.

The Ban Nakok Tunnel past through four fault zones and complex geological situation which brought huge difficulties to the construction and the safety control.

Since the start of its construction in May 2017, the CRECGZ project department has actively carried out scientific and technological innovations to overcome the difficulties, and bore scientific research results such as "key technologies for soft rock tunnel construction in Southeast Asia's rainforest" to effectively accelerate construction.

Since the beginning of this year, to overcome the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project department simultaneously carried out epidemic precaution and construction, especially making full use of the advantages of localization, purchasing large quantities of local construction materials such as sand, gravel and cement and recruiting more local workers to promote cooperation with localities.

The China-Laos Railway is a strategic docking project between the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Laos' strategy to convert itself from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub.

The 414-km railway will run from Boten border gate in northern Laos, bordering China, to Vientiane with an operating speed of 160 km per hour.

The electrified passenger and cargo railway is built with the full application of Chinese management and technical standards.

The project started in December 2016 and is scheduled to be completed and open to traffic in December 2021.
He also praised Vietnams position and the achievements the country has recorded over the recent past, and asked Thoa to convey his greetings to Party General Secretary and State President Nguyen Phu Trong.

The host leader urged the ambassador to make practical contributions to promoting the fruitful comprehensive partnership between the two countries.

For her part, Hoa said Vietnam always attaches importance to the multifaceted cooperation with Brazil across spheres.

The ambassador rejoiced at the tightened relationship between Vietnam and Brazil after the two countries set up diplomatic ties more than three decades ago, especially since 2007 when they established a comprehensive partnership.

Despite the complex developments of COVID-19, two-way trade still reached US$1.6 billion in the first five months of this year, she stressed, adding that Vietnam ranks second among Asian nations that have set up trade ties with Brazil.

Hoa expressed her hope that Vietnam and Brazil will share experience and cooperate in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the ASEAN Chair and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Vietnam will work as a bridge between Brazil and Southeast Asia, she said.

The diplomat suggested the two countries continue their close coordination and mutual support at multilateral and regional forums, enhance delegation exchanges and step up collaboration in all areas, saying she hopes that the bilateral relationship will develop more intensively and extensively.
Muzaffarpur

With the monsoon picking up and Nepal creating hurdles in the anti-erosion work on its side, an alarmed Bihar government has written to the Centre to take up the matter with the Nepalese authorities for special permission to complete the remaining flood protection work on the Gandak barrage and the embankment along Lal Bakeya river, which originates from the neighbouring country and cuts through parts of north Bihar.

During peak monsoon season, rivers flowing from Nepal into downstream Bihar have been a bane for the state, as it happened last year and also during the Kosi disaster of 2008, when the Kosi river breached its embankment in Nepal.

As preventive measures, Bihar has been repairing embankments on such rivers in Nepal itself every year.

This year, however, Nepalese authorities have refused to allow flood prevention work.

Bihars water resources minister Sanjay Kumar Jha on Monday wrote to minister for external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat to intervene at their level and talk with the Nepalese counterparts to resolve the issue.

The work on the Gandak barrage is crucial. It has 18 gates on the Indian side and 18 on the Nepal side. For decades, Bihars water resources department has been carrying out restoration work on both sides. There has never been any issue. But this time, Nepal has put up barriers to prevent anti-erosion work on their side, Jha said.

Jha said that even on Saturday, there was discharge of 1.50 lakh cusecs of water from the barrage and in case of heavy rain, heavy pressure could lead to breach. For plugging the breach and monitoring the situation, WRD officials and engineers have been going there every year with equipment and material, but this is the first time Nepal side has objected to it, he has said in the letter.

Similarly, the minister said, on the ride side embankment on the Lal Bakeya river, work has been stopped for about 500 metres connecting India with Nepal. Nepalese authorities are claiming it to be no-mans land, while there have never been any issue here in the last 30 years, he said.

In April, the Nepal government had given its nod to the Centre for carrying out anti-erosion work on its side in the midst of lockdown. The Bihar government had taken up the matter with the Centre after there were hurdles created in carrying out routine anti-erosion work at vulnerable points on the Kosi river before monsoon.

Meanwhile, Indias Sashashtra Seema Bal (SSB), which guards the Indo-Nepal border, has denied permission to Nepalese for repairing the left flank of the embankment on Lal Bakeya river near Tikulia village under Bairgania block in Sitamarhi district.

The left flank of the embankment was breached for nearly 150 metres by floods in 2019. It has to be repaired by the end of May this year. We tried to repair it so that it does not damage harm human lives or standing crops. But our efforts have gone in vain as SSB officials has stopped us, said Ajay Kumar Gupta, mayor of Gaur Nagarpalika of Rautahat district in Nepal.

Pramod Rai, a resident of Tikulia village in Indian territory, said Indians would benefit more if the embankment is repaired. Once the embankment will be repaired, the standing crop in nearly 10,000 hectares would be saved from floods. We have already informed the district administration as well officials from water resource department (WRD), which is responsible for its maintenance since its inception. But they are silent, said Rai.

When contacted, Suresh Kumar Ram, sub-divisional officer of the WRD at Bairgania, said he could do nothing until ordered by his superiors. I have informed our superiors and waiting for their response, he said.

Sitamarhis district magistrate Abhilasha Kumari Sharma could not be contacted despite several attempts.

Division commissioner Pankaj Kumar said he was not aware of the matter. I will seek information from the DM and officials concerned from the WRD, he said.

Indias ties with Nepal have, of late, turned for the worse after the Himalayan neighbour staked claim on Indian territories.

Earlier this month, an Indian was killed by the Nepalese guards at the border in Sitamarhi border, a first such incident in the area.

State at the receiving end

During peak monsoon, rivers flowing from Nepal into Bihar have been a bane for the state

As preventive measures, Bihar has been repairing embankments on such rivers in Nepal itself every year

This year, however, Nepalese authorities have refused to allow flood prevention work

Earlier this month, an Indian was killed by the Nepalese guards at the border in Sitamarhi border

Bihar shares over 700-km-long boundary with Nepal
When Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson finished work on 'Normal People' with "just moments to spare" before the global Covid-19 lockdown, he knew in his gut they had made something special.

But he has been completely unprepared for the "mind-blowing" reaction to the 12-part series made by the BBC and Hulu that has become a global sensation.

He is also amused that the humble O'Neills GAA shorts that Kildare actor Paul Mescal was snapped wearing while jogging topless in London have inspired Gucci to bring out their own version.

"Well he wouldn't want to turn up to Maynooth GAA wearing those 550 silk shorts, that may not go down too well there - but he does wear them well," he quipped to the Irish Independent.

"And no, I wasn't expecting the reaction it's got. I don't know what idea you'd have to have of yourself to expect that reaction, it's just been so massive.

"People loved the book and we knew Daisy (Edgar-Wood) and Paul were amazing and we felt like we were doing something that was really good. You could feel it when you were working."

For many lockdown viewers, Sally Rooney's tale became appointment television on Tuesday night as they devoured the often-melancholy series which centred around a human connection - something so many people were missing at the time.

"It's quite low-key and it's not glossy and fast and sensationalistic at all, certainly not in the beginning. So I thought that people who were used to watching fast and very high-content television would just go, 'Oh maybe, maybe not' after watching five minutes of episode one," said Abrahamson.

"So I thought we would have a critical reaction and a strong reaction from people who loved the book. But none of us could have expected the scale of the reaction that came.

"I think it was a perfect time for it. It's about things like intimacy and connection and all these things that became more important in situations like this and which a lot of people were missing because they were isolating away from people they loved.

Video of the Day

"Also, the quiet voice that the show is made with, it kind of captures you in some way that's more effective than the most bombastic and louder stuff and it just seemed to be what people wanted at the time."

And the director believes that suddenly finding himself propelled into the global spotlight has not affected Mescal. "He's such a well-grounded person. He's someone that the phrase 'a credit to his parents' was invented for.

"He's really thoughtful, really kind and I think it's a bit unreal because everybody's still more or less stuck in.

"All of the things that would have been happening under normal circumstances like travelling to festivals and all the things that we would have been doing to promote this, would have made things much noisier and given them a chance to get used to things.

"It's all still virtual so I think when we're really through this lockdown... it may hit him and Daisy again how well known they are. The show has had such a strong reaction and to him in particular."

Abrahamson was speaking at the launch of a new report endorsed by the Arts Council calling for sustained support of the industry.

For more culture and entertainment news, reviews, and features directly into your inbox sign up for our weekly newsletter HERE.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett has signed on to legislation taking on the drug industry  two bills aimed at preventing price gouging for coronavirus drugs, many of which benefited from taxpayer-funded research and development.

The Taxpayer Research and Coronavirus Knowledge Act would require establishing a single database of federal biomedical investment information related to COVID-19 treatments.

The second bill titled, Make Medications Affordable by Preventing Pandemic Price-gouging Act, proposes new protections that would prohibit companies from exclusive licensing of drugs used to treat or prevent COVID-19.

The bill would require the federal government to mandate the reasonable, affordable pricing of drugs that have received publicly-funded research and development grants.

Drug makers also would need to disclose a detailed accounting of its expenditures for the COVID-19 drug, said Democrat Lloyd Doggett, who serves as chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and represents a district that includes San Antonio and Austin.

On ExpressNews.com: Bexar County reports 538 new COVID cases, one new death, as surge continues

Transparency and accountability are always vital tonics to keep democracy healthy, he said during a conference call with reporters Monday. Crafting a new, strong oversight tool, the TRACK Act reveals to taxpayers how billions of public funds are being used  information any private investor would demand.

The National Institutes of Health spent at least $700 million on coronavirus research prior to the pandemic, he said, including Gilead Sciences treatment Remdesivir and biotech company Modernas vaccine candidate.

Doggett and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut wrote letters to Alex Azar, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in April and May criticizing the distribution of Remdesivir and called for transparency of how the drug will be procured in the future.

Doggetts staff said HHS hasnt responded.

Remdesivir is the only drug found so far to work against COVID-19, and the federal supply runs out next week. The drugs Foster City, Calif.-based manufacturer Gilead, donated 1.5 million doses.

In an open letter posted Monday, Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel ODay said the company expects to manufacture more than 2 million Remdesivir treatment courses by the end of the year.

The intravenous antiviral medication was granted an Emergency Use Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May.

Remdesivir was originally studied to treat Ebola and has been shown to reduce the average hospital stay for COVID-19 patients from 15 to 11 days. Gilead has initiated phase 3 studies to further study the drug.

ODay said Gilead has signed licensing agreements with nine generic-drug manufacturers to ensure that Remdesivir is accessible and affordable to governments around the world.

Texas Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox

But Doggett says its going to take federal legislation to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from charging sky-high prices during the public health crisis.

Without congressional action, we cannot know how much public resources pandemic profiteers are obtaining, nor prevent the taxpayers, who are the angel investors contributing billions, from being price gouged for the very pharmaceuticals they paid to develop, he said in a statement.

More than 120,000 people in the nation have died from COVID-19.

On Sunday, local public health officials reported the largest, one-day increase  538 cases  since the pandemic started in March. San Antonio currently has more than 400 people hospitalized with the disease.

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
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 21:53:54|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BERLIN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The price level of private consumer spending in Germany in 2019 had been 6.8 percent above the average of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU), the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Monday.

However, overall prices of goods and services in most of Germany's immediate neighboring countries were even higher than in Germany, Destatis noted. In Austria and France, for example, the price level was 13 to 14 percent above EU average.

"In retail, the price level in Germany is relatively low compared to most neighboring countries because the intensity of competition in the retail sector is comparatively high, which puts pressure on margins," Klaus-Juergen Gern from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) told Xinhua on Monday.

In addition, excise duties such as value-added tax, mineral oil tax, tobacco tax were "often lower" in Germany, added Gern. The same would apply for rents which were comparatively moderate in Germany, with the exception of a few metropolitan regions.

According to Destatis, only in two of Germany's neighbors -- Poland and the Czech Republic -- had cost of living, which includes private expenditure on food, housing and energy, that were "markedly lower."

The "most expensive" country within the EU was Denmark, where the price level was 41.3 percent above EU level, according to Destatis based on preliminary results on purchasing power parities and comparative price levels published by the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat).

As in previous years, Bulgaria remained the cheapest country in the EU as consumers had to pay around half as much as the EU average. The price level in Romania was also 45.1 percent below the EU average, Destatis noted. Enditem
In response to the mass protests against police violence across the US and internationally in the wake of police murder of George Floyd, various local teacher union leaders and other pseudo-left advocates of defunding the police have pressured school districts to take up the issue of policing in public schools. Although some districts, including Minneapolis, have voted to end their contracts with local police or disband their school police forces, absent a struggle for genuine socialism the measures will do nothing to end the militarization of schools or repressive violence aimed at students.

One of the most prominent of these actions was the June 2 vote by the Minneapolis Board of Education to end the districts contract with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), whose officers were responsible for Floyds murder. The Minneapolis school district has been paying $1.1 million per year for these services, and many school districts have similar financial arrangements that effectively subsidize the police with school funds.

Despite the seemingly radical move, MPD deputy chief Erick Fors assured CNN that police would continue to work in cooperation with the Minneapolis Public Schools regarding safety and security issues.

Superintendent Ed Graff is required to present a new school safety and security plan for the district by August 8, and all indications are that the police will simply be replaced by alternative security guards. Even Eric Moore, the districts chief of accountability, research and equity, noted, You've eliminated the SRO position, but you still have to have [security positions] at the schools.

In other words, aside from an accounting change, very little will actually change in the schools. Police will still regularly enter schools to arrest students. Instead of walking down the hall, they will simply be called in by the districts own security force, who may well be armed themselves.

Another example of the fraudulent and almost meaningless nature of these reforms can be seen in Denver, where the school board voted unanimously on June 11 to end its $720,000 contract with local police. Under the plan, 17 officers assigned to schools would be phased out over 18 months. Four will be gone by the end of the year, with the rest eliminated by mid-2021. However, the districts own much larger force of 100 armed and unarmed security guards will be left in place.

In Seattle, which intends to merely suspend the on-campus presence of police for one year, Seattle Police Department officers will not be present on our campuses except in emergencies, according to school superintendent Denise Juneau. Since nearly all violent encounters between police and students on campus would likely qualify as emergencies, its clear that the resolution is all but meaningless.

The school board in Oakland, California is set to vote June 24 on a resolution that would eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department, officially part of the school district itself. Already supported by a majority of the board, the measure would cut 10 officers and police administrators and redirect the $2.5 million spent on police toward student support services and restorative justice coordinators, vastly less than what is required to provide adequate services for students in the district.

Like other districts contemplating these kinds of plans, Oakland schools will present an alternative safety plan by December 31. According to board member Roseann Torres, the plan could include increased use of security cameras and locks on doors.

Other districts around the country are also seeing school board members and local politicians propose similar resolutions. One proposal for Los Angeles would eliminate the school police department over four years. Like Oakland, Los Angeles schools have their own police force of 344 armed and 95 unarmed officers.

In Chicago, a city council ordinance calling for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to cut ties with the Chicago police was defeated, despite being backed by 13 aldermen and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Mayor Lori Lightfoots most recent budget touted that the city was paid $33 million from the CPS budget for CPD officers.

Using a parliamentary maneuver, alderman Chris Taliaferro, a former policeman, was able to delay any consideration of the ordinance until at least September. For her part, Lightfoot has opposed the proposal, saying, Yeah were not gonna do that, and Unfortunately, we need security in our schools.

In the United States, practically every school system has some kind of relationship or another with local police forces, with cops assigned to schools often designated as school resource officers (SROs). According to a 2016 report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a government agency, 42.9 percent of all public schools have police officers that are routinely armed. This jumps dramatically to 70.9 percent in the case of public secondary schools, although even 30 percent of public primary schools have armed police officers.

While police officers are broadly distributed throughout public schools, they are especially prominent in working class neighborhoods with lower incomes. According to the NCES report, 49 percent of schools with 50-75 percent of students receiving free or reduced priced lunch, a proxy for poverty and low income, have armed officers, compared with 42.5 percent of schools with the lowest percentage of low-income students.

Coinciding with the militarization of schools, resources for students have been largely cut or eliminated. According to a 2019 ACLU report, over 90 percent of schools do not meet the 1:250 counselor-to-student ratio recommended by professional standards and the US Public Health Service. The report went on to note there are 1.7 million students in the US who attend schools where there are police on campus but no counselors at all. There are 6 million students attending schools where police are present but not a single school psychologist is employed, and 10 million students who have police in their schools but not a single social worker.

As in the rest of society more broadly, the increase in the presence of police on school campuses, along with security cameras, metal detectors and other police state measures, have corresponded both with the drastic increase in social inequality and the eruption of American imperialism over the past three decades.

While the anger at police violence and the militarization of schools is widely popular and wholly justified, the claims by the pseudo-left that these measures to disband or defund the police represent victories against racism or the carceral state is a complete fantasy. On the contrary, it is clear these proposals are largely meant to defuse social anger at police violence, while allowing cities and school boards to posture as sympathetic with these popular moods. The vast repressive apparatus of the state is kept largely intact, albeit with a few additional positions for restorative justice coordinators.

Meagan Days piece in Jacobin, Teachers Unions Are Demanding Police-Free Schools, is emblematic of this approach. An extended endorsement of the social movement unionism, practiced by such unions as the CTU and United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), Days hagiographic account of the teacher unions successes in hiring social justice coordinators and other minor measures leaves out entirely how the unions have used these measures to cover for mass layoffs, school closures and other cuts.

Contra Day and others in the pseudo-left, the only way police can be abolished is through the abolition of the capitalist state, which is an instrument for the suppression of the entire working class. The key question is turning students and educators to the broader working class in a struggle for socialism, to fully fund public education and all the social needs of workers. Only through such a program can the police be abolished in every school and every city.
Being stuck in a foreign country during the COVID-19 pandemic could be terrifying for many, but not for one couple recently stranded in Greece.

Dylise Dai, 32, who is now a week into 14-day hotel quarantine at Marina Bay Sands after returning to Singapore, had intended for her romantic Greek getaway with her boyfriend to last for a month before they both hopped to other parts of Europe to live and work abroad.

But when COVID-19 struck, those plans changed, and the couple ended up stranded in Greece for 95 days before returning to Singapore, mostly living in Athens and then venturing Santorini and Milos, where they found themselves the only tourists around.

Our original plan was to come back [to Singapore] every 90 days for a month or two and then go back to Europe. Definitely the plan was not to be in Greece for three months, the finance account manager told Coconuts Singapore by phone.

Dai and boyfriend Lawrence Lim, 39, were reluctant to cancel the trip they had been planning since last year as they had given up their lease and were able to work remotely abroad. Greece seemed like a safe choice for the couple, given its relatively low number of infections at the time and precautions being taken.

We didnt cancel our trip because Greece was very quick to do the lockdown, taking precautions the moment the numbers in Spain and Italy were rising. The moment Italy became quite bad, Greece immediately took swift actions to impose social distancing and close the borders, Dai said.

They landed in Athens on March 13, the same day Greece announced the closure of tourist attractions like museums as well as cafes, bars, malls, and restaurants. Nine days later, Greece ordered a nationwide lockdown.

Singapore had reported 200 cases by March 13 while Greece was only behind by a few with 190 known infections at the time. COVID-19 had hit Singapore a month before Greece, in late January. Singapore also saw a spike in imported cases in March, including individuals who had traveled to Europe.

Story continues

Dai stressed that the couple had taken extra precautions and were not in close physical contact with strangers most of the time. The couple had also considered staying in Greece until they recovered if they were to become infected.

We definitely took everything into consideration and every point of time we are considering the health of ours and others, she said.

In Greece, It was also compulsory to wear face masks in confined spaces and people had to carry passports or IDs, with written permission to buy essentials such as groceries and medicine.

One reason the animal-friendly country allowed people outside for was to feed stray animals.

At that time we had also booked our first Airbnb for a month, so we told ourselves to make the best of the situation, stay at least for a month and see how things go. If it gets better we stay, and worst case scenario fly back to Singapore, she said. Every day I just put down the reason, feeding stray cats and exercise!

Only tourists around

As travel to domestic islands was restricted, the couple spent the first two months in Athens exploring the citys historical sites and supermarkets by foot, and recreating local dishes in their Airbnb where they also worked from.

We didnt take any public transport, so we walked a lot, went on hikes, explored the neighborhood, sometimes up to three hours a day just to explore Greece and make the most out of it, she said.

When all movement restrictions across the country were lifted, they explored outside of Athens on wheels, visiting places like Meteora, Lefkada, Thessaloniki, and Ktistades.

The couple adjourned to Santorini and Milos for eight days after Greece lifted travel restrictions to domestic islands. Due to the lack of tourists, the islands seemed deserted.

Its actually very different when its a dead town. Paradise is not paradise without the people and the holidaymakers and the ambiance that contributes to the atmosphere, she said.

When I went there, the one good thing is that I could take a lot of really nice pictures without people in the background but on the other hand it was eerily silent, she added, describing the tourist towns as dead empty.

Even the Greeks joked to the couple that they had the islands all to themselves, they said. Throughout their trip, they felt like they were at the center of attention as curious locals questioned how they ended up there.

After island-hopping, the couple decided to return to Singapore for fear of contracting the virus in Greece without medical insurance.

Greek authorities had also decided not to mandate COVID-19 testing for people entering the country, which made the couple feel less safe.

We read that Greece was not going to mandate testing at the customs which we felt that it wasnt going to be safe anymore, she said. All the Greeks will be covered [by insurance] but we wont. We felt that it wasnt going to be safe anymore so we thought we were left with no choice but to come back to Singapore.

She later added: We were running to and from the police because our 90 days visa was running out and our flights back home to Singapore kept getting canceled.

Looking back, Dai had no regrets making the most out of the trip. Now back home, the couple is safely in quarantine at Marina Bay Sands.

On one hand, Im in a good place. They put me in MBS, Ive been told that some of my friends got tiny hotels, she said, referring to friends with children who were put up at hotels with not enough room.

Editors Note: After this story was published, Dai reached out to say that she was referring to stories she had heard about people being put up in small hotels, not her actual friends. Additionally, the story has been updated to add information about her difficulties traveling back to Singapore.

Other stories you should check out:

Singapore bar boss relives DJ days by packing people into Zoom house parties

Pamper your papa with these feasts for Fathers Day

Singaporeans eat out again as second phase of COVID-19 reopening starts

I think its just bad form to attack me: Alfian Saat

This article, Greek getaway turns into 3-month pandemic odyssey for Singaporean woman, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters!
They've been inseparable since revealing their romance to the world earlier this year.

And Ben Affleck, 47, and girlfriend Ana de Armas, 32, looked smitten as they strolled arm-in-arm, gazing into each other's eyes, in her Venice Beach neighborhood on Monday.

The Cuban-Spanish beauty looked stylish in a black T-shirt and wide leg khaki green pants as she walked her cute pooch Elvis.

Happy together: Ben Affleck and girlfriend Ana de Armas looked loved up during a stroll in Venice Beach on Monday

She added some gold pendants and a pair of stylish sunglasses to complete her outfit.

Meanwhile, the Gone Girl star teamed grey jeans with a grey graphic print T-shirt.

Their outing came after they spent last week together with Ben's mother and his kids, Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, eight, in Georgia.

'Everyone gets along great,' a source told People earlier in the week.

'They are spending a few days in Georgia with Ben's kids. It's a low-key vacation.'

Loved up: The couple walked arm in arm as they walked Ana's cute dog Elvis

Pals of the Ben say Ana has been a great influence on the actor.

The Knives Out actress has had a positive impact on his life and the couple have loved their time together and getting to spend quality time with Ben's kids 'safely' during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ben's pal told PEOPLE: 'They are enjoying their time together. He makes her laugh and she's a great influence.

'They safely visit with his family and he works to make sure he is healthy and present for his family.

'His priority will always be his children and making that work.'

The couple regularly go for walks together. Here they are on Saturday together walking in Brentwood, LA

Earlier this month, a source claimed that Ana has been wowed by Ben and ex-wife Jennifer Garner's co-parenting skills.

The actress - who met Ben on the set of the thriller film Deep Water in 2019 - is impressed by how the celebrity duo have managed to balance their acting careers with raising their three children.

The insider explained: '[Ana] thinks Ben is such a sweet and nice guy. [She] admires how he juggles so much between work, his kids and co-parenting with Jen.'

Ben and Jennifer divorced in 2018, after more than a decade of marriage - but he's subsequently tried to ensure he makes enough time for his kids and his new girlfriend. However, the Hollywood actor 'always makes sure he has time for [Ana] and that she is number one'.
Elias is waiting for a German official to evaluate his Christianity.

He converted from Islam in Iran secretly. He was afraid because he knew that other converts had been arrested and beaten, some even killed. He had also heard of converts finding asylum in Germany. He dreamed of going there and being baptized in public. He could worship in the open, start a new life, and join a church, free from the fear of reprisals for his newfound faith.

And so he fled to Germany. When he got there, he applied for asylum. Now, Elias (a pseudonym) waits for the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) to rule on his case. He is far from alone.

Between 20,000 and 40,000 refugees are seeking asylum in Germany on the grounds of religious persecution because of their conversion to Christianity, according to a 2019 Open Doors report. Amid sharp national debates about anti-refugee sentiment, religious literacy, and religious freedom, a number of evangelical leaders have called for changes to the process of officially evaluating refugee conversion.

Currently, the BAMF judges the sincerity of conversion and the severity of potential threats to asylum seekers lives. There is, however, a lack of explicit standards, clear criteria, or legal precedent for these examinations, and the BAMF grants asylum at significantly different rates in different parts of the country.

Its like a lottery, said Gottfried Martens, pastor of a Lutheran church associated with the Missouri Synod in the Steglitz neighborhood of Berlin. Martens cares for more than 1,000 baptized Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani Christians in his church and is currently instructing hundreds more in preparation for baptism.

If youre in Potsdam, you stand a better chance than in Berlin, he said. In Berlin, you stand a better chance than in Dusseldorf. In Hessen, youre almost guaranteed protection. It just depends on which person you get.

Martens wants the process to be more consistent. He joins the German Evangelical Alliance and Open Doors in calling for a standardization of the examination procedure and more cooperation between the government and religious authorities. The Christian groups are part of a diverse coalition calling for change, including conservative and liberal politicians, the Bahai community, the International Society for Human Rights, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and Ahmadi Muslims (who have been persecuted in Pakistan).

Other countries have also had issues with converts seeking asylum. In the United Kingdom, there were multiple reports in 2016 of asylum seekers being interrogated on Bible trivia  as part of the application process. More recently, the European Court of Justice condemned Hungarys treatment of asylum seekers. Some migrants have been kept in prisonlike conditions in camps on the border since they were denied religious or political refugee status in 2018. Hungary now has to reconsider those migrants applications for asylum.

The issue is of great importance to Germany, said Volker Kauder, a leader of the Christian Democratic Union and an evangelical who was once known as Chancellor Angela Merkels right-hand man. Freedom of religion is the litmus test for human rights.

Some evangelicals want pastors to have more of a say in assessing conversions. Markus Rode, head of Open Doors Germany, argues judges may not have the religious literacy necessary to evaluate spiritual transformation.

The change of belief towards Jesus Christ is a spiritual process. And as such, it can only be assessed by people who have themselves accepted Jesus Christ in faith, Rode said.

Article continues below

Reinhardt Schink, general secretary of the German Evangelical Alliance, said judges should, at the very least, call pastors as expert witnesses.

People who often are not believers think they can judge the beliefs of someone else within half an hour, he said. Its absolutely ridiculous.

Skeptics say conversion can be an easy route to asylum. But Martenswho has hands-on experience with thousands of refugee convertsdisagrees. The process is intimate and thorough. While he admits that there may be people who try to cheat the system, Martens puts every convert through an intensive examination before baptism.

Thirty percent of them fail, Martens said. We dont just baptize them and proclaim Hallelujah! We really check them out.

According to the BAMF, however, officials already recognize baptism as sufficient proof of conversion. Spokesman Christoph Dieter said the question is about the seriousness of the commitment to the new faith and the potential of persecution because of a change of belief in the home country.

Frequently, the BAMF comes to the conclusion that persecution is not a real concern. An Open Doors study found that about 25 percent of converts have their asylum applications rejected. Converts to charismatic churches were significantly more likely to be rejected, with 48 percent turned down.

Kauder, who has served in parliament since 1990, said BAMF officials are making the issue seem more complicated than it really is. Once someone has renounced Islam, regardless of whether or not he authentically converted to Christianity, he can be prosecuted for apostasy, he said. When it comes to political persecution, those who persecute do not care about the authenticity of a conversion.

Apostasy is a capital offense in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In a few other countries, including Iran and Jordan, it is not formally illegal to reject Islam, but religious laws can be used to prosecute people for apostasy.

There are only a handful of cases where apostasy resulted in a state-

sanctioned execution. But Mohammad Fadel, law professor at the University of Toronto, said formal legal systems are less important than social law in this matter. In many countries, punishments are meted out haphazardly.

Apostasy is considered a serious offenselegally or sociallybecause converts are understood to be renouncing the bonds upholding the entire Muslim community, Fadel said. Many Muslims also feel that Islam needs to be protected from Christianity, he explained, which is identified with colonial Europe and Western military power. Because of this, if someone renounces Islam, life would be made unpleasant for that person in one way or another.

Human rights advocate Farahnaz Ispahani, who served in Pakistans parliament from 2008 to 2012, agreed. Christian converts face mob violence and death in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan, where deeply ingrained prejudice teaches people to fear Christians.

Whether these countries have formal laws against apostasy or not, vigilante justice is common, Ispahani said. It becomes very difficult to distinguish why the verbal or physical violence is being perpetrated. The mere allegation is enough to destroy a persons life.

This is Eliass situation. And its what he plans to tell the BAMF when he goes before the government official.

My family will not accept me anymore, he said. Not my friends, my country. No one.

Article continues below

His only hope, he believes, is asylum in Germany.

But as Elias prepares for his interview, where he will be questioned about his religion, his conversion, and his decision to flee, he is afraid he wont be trusted. Germany has seen widespread opposition to asylum seekers, growing anti-refugee sentiment, and fear that Muslims will ruin German culture.

I am more afraid of my government back home, but this government makes me nervous, too, Elias said. I am an enemy at home, but I am also seen as an enemy here.

Hes right to be concerned. A 2018 report from the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic, and Social Research found that increasingly, asylum seekers are seen as economic free riders and/or existential threats,  according to the report.

They think theyre claiming Christianity just to get asylum here and then they will go back to being Muslim, Martens said.

According to Open Doors, the situation is getting worse. Until July 2017, conversion was generally accepted as sufficient grounds for asylum. The rates varied by state, but about 75 percent of converts received asylum. Now, the rate has dropped to about 30 percent, both in places that have a lot of refugee converts, like Baden-Wurttemberg, and places that only have a few, like Bremen and Hamburg.

More and more Christian converts are denied the authenticity of their change of belief, Rode said, and declared liars and fraudsters.

Those rejected can appeal their claims, however. In the first half of 2019, German courts overturned about 40 percent of deportation orders, lending support to the chorus of religious and humanitarian voices calling for change. It is not clear, though, whether German evangelicals have the political clout to make it happen.

In the meantime, Elias waits.

I have no idea how my situation will be decided, he said. But I trust in Jesus. In his kingdom, there is no question of my protection. He is with me always, to the very end.

Ken Chitwood is a writer and scholar of global religion living in Germany.





You can now read or share this article in



You can also now follow CT (in English) on Editors note: Have something to add? See something we missed? Share your feedback here You can now read or share this article in German , as part of 150+ CT Global translations You can also now follow CT (in English) on WhatsApp and Telegram

[ This article is also available in Deutsch. ]

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) walks through Statuary Hall to the House Chamber for President Donald Trumps State of the Union address in the Capitol in Washington on Feb. 4, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Schiff Withdraws Endorsement of Los Angeles DA in Wake of Black Lives Matter Protests

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) abruptly pulled his endorsement of Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, a fellow Democrat running for reelection.

This is a rare time in our nations history. We have a responsibility to make profound changes to end systemic racism & reform criminal justice, Schiff wrote on Twitter on June 20.

Schiff in 2019 endorsed Lacey, who has been in office for two terms.

Both the federal lawmaker and Laura Friedman, a state assemblywoman, no longer feel our endorsement of Jackie Lacey a year ago has the same meaning, Schiff wrote. We have decided to withdraw it.

Friedman, a Democrat, issued a similar statement.

Another Democrat, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, said last week that it may be time for a new district attorney.

Lacey defended herself after the endorsements were withdrawn.

As the first African American woman to hold the LA County D.A.s office, I am proud of my record of taking on systemic racism and reforming criminal justicefrom bail reform, to reducing juvenile cases by nearly 50%, to increasing our offices focus on mental health treatment instead of incarceration, she said in a statement sent to news outlets.

I am singularly focused on doing the work of the people of L.A. County during this time of crisis.

Los Angeles County district attorney Jackie Lacey speaks at an event in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 29, 2015. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images for GUESS)

Then-San Francisco district attorney George Gasc o n speaks during a press conference in San Francisco, Calif., on Dec. 9, 2014. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Lacey has faced criticism over her refusal to charge police officers with misconduct for on-duty shootings. Dozens of protesters gathered outside her house over the weekend to call for charges against the officers who shot Alex Flores in 2019 and Daniel Hernandez this year.

Everybody is utterly shocked when they think about the number of people who have been killed by police or while in custody since Lacey took office, Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matters Los Angeles chapter, told The Associated Press at the protest.

Former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon is challenging Lacey. The Cuban American is a former police commander.

Gascons platform includes delaying the prosecution of nonviolent cases amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an end to cash bail, and opposition to the death penalty.

Gascon states on his website that he supports law enforcement but wants to change policies to bring about fair and just policing. Examples include pushing for a standard that allows lethal force only as a last resort and creating an independent agency that would probe all officer-involved shootings.

Laceys campaign says she supports the banning of private prisons, is working to replace the cash bail system, and wants to enhance neighborhood safety.

Hours after Schiff pulled his endorsement of Lacey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed Gascon, calling him a national leader in criminal justice reform and a powerful advocate for rethinking our approach to public safety and ending mass incarceration.
Blowing up a building meant to symbolize friendship may have been North Koreas forceful way of demanding help for an economy straining under international sanctions and borders shut by the coronavirus.

The destruction of the $15 million facility paid for by South Korea in the North Korean border city of Kaesong was one of the biggest provocations Kim Jong Uns regime has made against its neighbour in years.

Kim Jong Un destroys joint Korea office in rebuke to Seoul

South Korean President Moon Jae-ins government has warned Kim against reckless provocations, but the destroying of the building so far hasnt derailed plans in parliament to revive inter-Korean cooperation or attempts to persuade the Trump administration to loosen its stance on Pyongyang.

As analysts struggle to reach a consensus on the logic behind the explosive move, the immediate result has been to inject urgency into talks between the US and South Korea over Pyongyang.

Moon sent his nuclear envoy to Washington after the building came crashing down to speak with US officials about ways to deal with the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, the Foreign Ministry said last week. Lee Do-hoon returned home over the weekend but shared few details about the discussions with reporters at the airport, Yonhap News agency reported.

The US and UN sanctions are aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Any loosening of the restrictions on trade and transactions would bode well for North Korea because its economy now risks shrinking 6% this year, according to Fitch Solutions. That would be its worst contraction since 1997, when the country was stricken by famine.

The heightened economic malaise compounds troubles faced by Kim after his nearly three-week absence from public events in April led to speculation about his health and questions about his grip on power.

Trade with China, North Koreas biggest economic partner, had already slowed to a trickle under the sanctions as President Xi Jinping also sought to rein in Kims nuclear ambitions.

But the flow of goods hit a wall after Pyongyang sealed the countrys borders earlier this year to halt Covid-19. In both March and April, North Koreas exports to China fell more than 90% from a year ago, Chinas Customs General Administration reported.

The larger economic context certainly shows Pyongyang getting backed into a corner, said Kyle Ferrier, director of academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America. Sanctions were clearly impacting the North Korean economy prior to Covid-19, but the closure of the border with China to curb the spread of the coronavirus has done much more to stymie the North Korean economy.

While the contraction may not seem large in a world where the virus has sent economies plummeting, North Korea is one of the planets poorest countries and can ill afford a turn for the worse.

Money from South Korea would help. Due to the sanctions, trade between the neighbors has slowed to just $3.5 million through May of this year from $2.7 billion in 2015.

Humanitarian assistance has also dried up under Trumps maximum pressure sanctions campaign. South Korea has sent about $3 billion of aid since 1995, but only a total of $30 million came between 2017 and 2019, according to the latest government data.

The liaison office was located near a joint factory park where South Korean firms once used cheap North Korean labor to manufacture goods. The intended model of economic cooperation earned North Korea an estimated $100 million a year.

North Korea sent in troops to occupy the facility in 2016, during a previous snarling of tensions, and it remains shut under the sanctions.

Sanctions busting

Before the pandemic, North Korea had been getting better at poking holes in the sanctions regime through trading of contraband and restricted commodities on the high seas, UN Security Council reports have shown.

It had also turned to cyber crime, taking in about $2 billion in 2019 through the worldwide theft of resources from the financial sector, according to testimony to a US House committee in June.

But it also participated in negotiations aimed at easing sanctions through talks with long time friends China and Russia and foes including the US and South Korea.

Following three summits with Trump since 2018 that produced no sanctions relief, North Korea earlier this month accused the US of breaking promises and said it saw no benefit in engaging with Washington.

The rapprochement efforts over the past years have not yielded much in terms of economic relief for North Korea, said Anwita Basu, a Fitch analyst. They have chosen an adversarial route arguably in hopes that South Korea might get bullied into helping them, but as always, such tactics could backfire.

Kims frustration shows in a recent series of threats against Moon, with the leader of North Koreas sister, Kim Yo Jong, personally launching verbal attacks against a man she once hobnobbed with during her visit to Seoul in 2018.

Because North Koreas economic downturn is fueling its aggression, and is worsened by sanctions, there are no near-term off-ramps here, said Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official now teaching at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

The reasoning that led North Korea to destroy the liaison office will lead them to engage in even more provocative behavior over the next year.
At least 170 police officers in Peru have died after contracting the coronavirus while enforcing the South American nation's pandemic lockdown, the interior minister said Thursday. Almost 10,000 officers have been infected with the disease as they enforced social distancing measures during Peru's 12 weeks of stay-at-home orders. "We have 9,900 infected personnel and 170 deceased personnel. That is the figure that we currently have despite the efforts being made," Interior Minister General Gaston Rodriguez told reporters. A further 4,000 police personnel, deemed vulnerable for reasons of age and health, were complying with mandatory quarantine, he said. Among those infected, at least 1,000 were asymptomatic, police said. According to the interior ministry, some 80,000 police officers are providing security in the country to enforce the country's mandatory confinement measures. Peru is the second worst-hit country in Latin America after Brazil, with more than 208,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. Most of the police cases occurred in the capital Lima, which is home to more than half the country's infections. The vast majority of police infections occurred when officers patrolled markets and streets to ensure people were observing social distancing measures to avoid spreading the virus. Relatives carry the coffin of a suspected COVID-19 victim at the Nueva Esperanza cemetery, one of the largest in Latin America, in the southern outskirts of Lima -- Peru has lost at least 170 police officers to the disease Police officers stand guard at the Caqueta market in the north of Lima -- it is believed many of those with coronavirus were infected during such patrols
New York, June 22 : Nine people were shot and injured in a shooting incident at a large gathering Saturday night in Syracuse in New York state, local authorities said.

Local police officers received a call just before 9 p.m. about a stolen vehicle at a parking lot near downtown. Upon arrival, they saw hundreds of people from a prior gathering running and yelling about a shooting a moment ago, according to the Syracuse Police Department's post on Facebook, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Nine people were injured and were taken to the hospital. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the head and in critical condition by Sunday morning, while other victims were expected to survive, said the department.

The gathering seemed like some kind of celebration, said the police. The nature of the celebration is not yet clear.

At a press conference early Sunday, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said he believed no city permits were granted to the gathering.

Large gatherings are currently banned across New York state due to COVID-19.

No one was immediately taken into custody and police do not have any suspect information, said Syracuse Police Chief Kenton Buckner.
New Delhi:

The website of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has been hacked by unknown hackers. The website greentribunal.gov.in has a message which says "Website Stamped by D4RK 4NG31". Objectionable texts, gesture and abusive language have been used.

A picture of child has been posted on the website along with a title that says, "We are Unbeatable." A music also plays in the background.

The message posted on the website also talks about Kashmir, ceasefire violation, border and Surgical Strikes, The message seems to be an apparent reference to India, which recently carried out surgical strikes across the LoC.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A police sergeant is being investigated for allegedly sharing an altered image of the arrest of George Floyd on a WhatsApp group.

It is alleged that the Devon and Cornwall Police officer posted the inappropriate image on May 30, five days after Mr Floyd's death in Minneapolis.

The sergeant has been suspended and is being investigated for gross misconduct in relation to the image, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) confirmed.

In a statement, the watchdog said that the WhatsApp group in which the image was allegedly posted included a number of police officers and staff.

Mr Floyd died in police custody after a white police officer held him down by pressing his knee into his neck for almost nine minutes on May 25.

George Floyd Hyde Park Protest - In pictures 1 /106 George Floyd Hyde Park Protest - In pictures People climb on the Winston Churchill statue during a Black Lives Matter protest march in London Jeremy Selwyn People march holding banners during a "Black Lives Matter" protest following the death of George Floyd AP Protesters kneel as they stop briefly in Parliament Square AP Protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest march in London Jeremy Selwyn Protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest in London Nigel Howard Protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Nigel Howard Protesters are accompanied by police officers as they march during a demonstration AP Protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest march in London Jeremy Selwyn People march holding banners during a "Black Lives Matter" protest following the death of George Floyd AP Protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest march in London Jeremy Selwyn Protesters shout during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images People climb on the Winston Churchill statue during a Black Lives Matter protest march in London Jeremy Selwyn Black Lives Matter protest march Jeremy Selwyn People march holding banners during a "Black Lives Matter" protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters Protestors march during an anti-racism demonstration in London AFP via Getty Images Black Lives Matter protest Nigel Howard Black Lives Matter protest Nigel Howard Black Lives Matter protest Nigel Howard Black Lives Matter protest Nigel Howard Black Lives Matter protest march Jeremy Selwyn People wearing face masks march with banners in Park Lane during a Black Lives Matter protest Reuters Aerial of Black Lives Matter protest march to Parliament Square Protestors march during an anti-racism demonstration AFP via Getty Images Protestors march during an anti-racism demonstration AFP via Getty Images Protestors march during an anti-racism demonstration in London AFP via Getty Images Protesters march as they take part in a London demonstration AP People wearing face masks march with banners in Park Lane during a "Black Lives Matter" protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters Protesters wearing face masks hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protestors wearing face masks as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, march during an anti-racism demonstration in London AFP via Getty Images Protestors, some wearing PPE (personal protective equipment) including face masks as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, hold placards during an anti-racism demonstration in London AFP via Getty Images John Boyega speaks during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Aerial view of protest at Hyde Park Sky News A man and a woman hold hands aloft in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter" protest REUTERS People hold banners in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters A woman reacts in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park, London Nigel Howard People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park, London PA REUTERS Protesters adjust a face mask ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn People hold banners in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd who died in police custody in Minneapolis Reuters Aerial view of protest at Hyde Park Sky News Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park PA Protesters wearing face masks hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images A person shouts into a megaphone in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest Reuters Protesters wearing face masks hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park PA People observe social distancing as they participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park PA People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park, London PA Protesters wearing face masks hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park PA Protesters hold up placards AP People hold banners in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Nigel Howard People gather ahead of the Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park, London, in memory of George Floyd PA Stewards direct people as they begin to gather ahead of the Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park, London PA Protesters wear face masks as they hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protesters wear face masks and observe social distancing during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Radhika Aligh Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd John Dunne People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Hyde Park PA A protester wears a face mask displaying the words "I can't breathe" during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images People wearing face masks hold banners in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest Reuters Protesters gather AP Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Radhika Aligh Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn People wearing face masks and holding banners march in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd Reuters A protester wearing a face mask holds a sign saying 'I can't breathe' during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protesters take part in a demonstration at Hyde Park AP People wearing a face mask hold banners in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest Reuters Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Radhika Aligh Protesters hold up placards as people gather AP A woman wearing a face mask with a "Justice For Belly Mujinga" message is seen in Hyde Park during a Black Lives Matter protest Reuter Protesters hold up signs during a Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park Getty Images Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Jeremy Selwyn Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Radhika Aligh Protestors at Hyde Park protest for George Floyd Radhika Aligh

Some other members of the group are also being investigated for their alleged response to the image, or their apparent failure to report the matter.

The IOPC investigation follows a mandatory referral from Devon and Cornwall Police after one of the WhatsApp group members reported the image to their force manager.

Catrin Evans, regional director for the IOPC, said: It will be of considerable public concern that such an image was apparently shared among colleagues by a serving police officer.

We are criminally investigating the sergeant who allegedly shared the image, and examining the conduct of some others involved in the group.

Our investigators will be considering whether the sharing of this image was motivated by racial discrimination.

Devon and Cornwall Police has rightly promptly referred it to the IOPC, and I would like to assure people we are conducting a thorough and independent investigation.

The IOPC said the serving of any misconduct notices to those also in the group would be kept under review.

Devon and Cornwall Police said the sergeant under investigation had been suspended as an interim measure.

Assistant Chief Constable Jim Nye said the matter was quickly brought to light internally by a member of staff, with a referral made to the IOPC at the earliest opportunity.

He said the force would co-operate fully with the independent IOPC investigation.

Devon and Cornwall Police wholly appreciate the concern our communities will have regarding an investigation of this kind. I would reassure them that I, and the Chief Constable, will do everything possible to ensure the matter is dealt with effectively and in a timely manner, Mr Nye said.

It would be inappropriate to make any judgment or further comment at this stage, but is only right that we show openness and transparency with our communities on this matter, so will continue to work closely with the IOPC during the coming days and weeks.
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
Environment Minister Richard Bruton has published legislation to put the 500 million euro (452 million) climate action fund on a statutory footing.

Mr Bruton said the aim of the fund is to help kickstart climate-related projects that can reduce Irelands greenhouse gas emissions and assist in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The new legislation allows for the climate fund to be used to support projects to help communities such as Bord Na Mona workers in the midlands  who are disadvantaged by the move away from fossil fuel.

The fund was first announced in 2018 and the first round of funding was announced in November 2018.

The aim of the Climate Action Fund is to kick start innovative projects in the enormous transition which we have to make. That transition presents opportunities to be seized as well as patterns to be changed. This demands that we be both agile and fair as we manage the challenges  Richard Bruton (@RichardbrutonTD) June 22, 2020

The main source of funding for the climate action fund is through the repurposing of part of the existing petroleum products levy collected by the National Oil Reserves Agency, which means there will be no additional cost to the Exchequer.

Under the new law, the climate action fund will be used to support projects that seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, projects that seek to increase the production, or use, of renewable energy and to improve energy efficiency

Mr Bruton said: The aim of the fund is to kickstart innovative or pioneering projects in the enormous transition which we have to make.

That transition presents opportunities to be seized as well as patterns to be changed. This demands that we be both agile and fair as we manage the challenges.

Work is already under way on a number of projects, in areas such as district heating and an electric vehicle charging network, which secured funding under the first round of the scheme.

He said his department was working to develop a second call under the climate action fund and he hoped that this could be published shortly.
How much further can Bill Barr push it? Having repurposed the august Department of Justice to serve as Donald Trumps personal sanitation staff and all-out vengeance machine, the attorney general has fallen so low that his single overriding purpose now seems to be to protect the presidents friends and persecute his enemies. He has yet to face any consequences for his actions, though they are more appalling by the day. Rep. Jerry Nadler on Sunday dismissed impeachment of Barr as a waste of time. But there are at least tentative signs that the disgrace that Barr has brought upon himself and his Justice Department is starting to wear on the one institution that can hold him to account: the U.S. Supreme Court, or more precisely, on Chief Justice John Roberts, whose fifth vote is essential to most of Barrs dreams.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Subscribe to the Slatest Newsletter A daily email update of the stories you need to read right now. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.

Barrs quick descent from Washington insider to authoritarian bag man has been ably chronicled by my colleague Jeremy Stahl. It began when he lied extravagantly about the contents of the Mueller report, over Robert Muellers own objections, and had seemingly bottomed out with his interference in both the Roger Stone sentencing this winter and the abrupt dropping of the case against Michael Flynn. In both instances, career lawyers at the Justice Department walked off the job, and both actions aroused massive internal dissension that took the form of a letter by hundreds of former DOJ attorneys seeking his resignation. Barrs involvement to assume battlefield control in the decision to gas and attack peaceful protesters outside the White House earlier this month so that President Donald Trump could walk to a church for a photo-op resulted in another open letter from former DOJ officials, this time seeking to have the departments Inspector General investigate him. But for most Americans, the erosion of norms at DOJ is like horticulture studies on distant planets. Its abstract and esoteric and fails to command attention within the news hurricane.

Advertisement

Advertisement

But Barr is consolidating his prosecutorial power and its profoundly dangerous. Barrs removal of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, this winter allowed Barr and his loyalists to seize control of the D.C. U.S. attorneys office that is still cleaning up the indictments and charges against Trumps associates launched by the Mueller probe. That was followed this past weekend with the sudden removal of Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The removal itself was achieved by a lie from Barr, who announced Friday night that Berman had resigned, when he had not, and was followed by a second lie on Saturday, after Berman refused to step down, when Barr sent Berman a letter telling him that hed asked Trump to fire him. Trump later said that he was not involved in the Berman firing.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Berman is a registered Republican who donated to the Trump campaign. But Trump has been affronted by the SDNYs prosecution of his former lawyer Michael Cohen and Trumps inaugural committee, by the decision to bring indictments against two close associates of Rudy Giuliani, and by an alleged ongoing investigation into Giuliani himself for his work trying to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Barr announced Friday night that Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, would be nominated to replace Berman, although Clayton has never been a litigator or a prosecutor and has no connection to SDNY. Berman ultimately stepped aside on Saturday night after Barr agreed to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting U.S. Attorney, instead of Barrs handpicked temporary replacement, Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, who would have taken over until Clayton won Senate confirmation.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The disgust Bill Barr has amassed is widespread and bipartisan.

Barrs falsehoods over the Berman firing were highlighted over the weekend as excerpts from former national security adviser John Boltons book were released. Bolton recounts an exchange between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the Southern District in 2018, in which Erdogan insisted that a Turkish bank under investigation by SDNY was innocent, to which Trump replied that he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people. The Wall Street Journal further reported this weekend that Berman had recently refused to sign a letter from the Justice Department that had criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for the citys enforcement of social distancing rules to block religious gatherings but not for recent street protests over racialized policing.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

In other words, its certainly possible, although the DOJ spokesman denies it, that yet again Barr has gotten crossways with his own department over religious liberty. But while this particular Friday Night Massacre appears to have backfired, that doesnt get us any closer to a Barr resignation or a Barr impeachment. And as Barr himself has made plain, anything short of his departure as the nations top lawyer means he wins, day after gruesome day.

Still, the disgust Bill Barr has amassed is widespread and bipartisan. Lindsey Graham expressed dismay at the way the Berman firing was handled. This Tuesday, over 80 percent of the George Washington University law faculty signed a letter condemning Barr, a GWU alum and member of the law schools Board of Advisors, for a long series of lawless actions, from distorting the Mueller findings to the clearing of Lafayette Square. Since 2019 Attorney General Barr has made the Department of Justice unrecognizable to those of us who prize its independence from politics and its commitment to the highest standards of the legal profession, these signatories note in the letter. We cannot remain silent in the wake of the damage he has done to the integrity of the Department, the rule of law, and the constitutional order. This letter, on top of the previous letters from DOJ alums, reveals the extent to which the famously reserved legal profession has recoiled in horror at Barrs complete contempt for the legal and institutional values that the department traditionally privileged above partisanship.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The Supreme Court may also be paying attention to the legal professions rejection of the attorney general. After all, the signatories to the letters are educators and lawyers with handprints all over the federal court system. The Berman firing and ensuing GWU letter come just as Barrs DOJ is reeling from one of its worst weeks at the U.S. Supreme Court. Landmark defeats in both the Title VII and DACA rescission cases were not merely body blows for Donald Trump, and on his signature issues of religious freedom to discriminate and immigration enforcement, but also blows for the Justice Department, even if they originated under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The DOJ has been relentless in seeking that the Supreme Court clean up its spills, running cases directly to John Roberts door. The court has gone along with these demands in many cases, frequently lifting lower court stays to allow Trump administration policies to go into effect even as they are challenged in court. But the charms of doing Trumps biddingparticularly in cases with sloppy lawyering and quitting DOJ attorneysmay be wearing thin. Last weeks losses, plus the refusal of the court to take up the Justice Departments attack on Californias sanctuary city laws, may signal that Barr, as much as Trump himself, has worn out his welcome at the Supreme Court.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

In short, one has to begin to wonder whether Barr, a textbook zealot who cares not at all for preserving the appearance of propriety or independence, may have finally met his match in Chief Justice John Roberts, who prizes those things even above partisan outcomes. As Preet Bharara pointed out this past weekend, the slow decay of the integrity of the DOJ is not something that can be checked by laws, statutes, or rules. The Justice Department and its prized independence are the result of decadeslong norms and a post-Watergate battle for public trust. Bill Barr doesnt give a damn about norms or public trust, but John Roberts cares about them a great deal, and he may prove to be the one man that could make a difference in their restoration.

Advertisement

The endless end of term will reveal the extent of Roberts disdain for a DOJ that wants the court to do the unpopular work of allowing LGBTQ discrimination, gutting DACA, and punishing sanctuary cities, all as DOJ lawyers turn in shoddy work and indefensible analysis. Roberts was already bored of such conduct in last years census cases. It remains to be seen whether he will sign off on the extreme work product behind the presidents financial records claims.

For those who were sorely disappointed by Roberts refusal to use the Senate impeachment trial to slap back at Trump and Trumpism, that ask was, at least in my view, always too public and too dramatic of a man who doesnt want to be in the limelight any more than necessary. John Roberts was never one to go mano a mano against the president. But just as Barr seems to be happy to dismantle the rule of law brick by brick, in the dark of night, over years, the chief justice may be prepared to thwart him, case by case, brick by brick, in narrow opinions that draw little attention in the moment but land a body blow in the aggregate. Right now, Barr appears to be unstoppable simply because he is determined to use the power and prestige of the Justice Department to fight Trumps most trivial and demeaning personal battles. But as lawyers inside the DOJ and throughout the country give voice to their concerns, they may have an ally on the inside who hates the corrosion of justice and law as much as they do. Its easy to characterize Barr as unstoppable simply because no amount of public outrage seems to stop him. But at some point, Barr will possibly go too far for John Roberts, and that may be the beginning of the endand it may have already begun.

For more of Slates news coverage, subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts or listen below.
But what caused an ocean to form in the first place? The researchers believe that not only was Pluto hot, but it formed quickly.

"As Pluto was forming, material was repeatedly coming in and impacting the surface," Bierson said. "Each of those impacts is like an explosion that will warm the surface where it hit. If Pluto formed slowly the surface can cool off before the next impact. However if Pluto formed quickly you have impact on top of impact, repeatedly warming the surface until you get warm enough that an ocean can form. We calculate that Pluto would have had to form in less than about 30,000 years for this to form an ocean."

Regardless of how Pluto formed, today its ocean is maintained by the heat of radioactive decay at the dwarf planet's rocky core and the thick ice shell insulates the ocean beneath, Bierson said.

These findings also suggest that other large dwarf planets in the icy Kuiper Belt formed in a similar fashion and also had subsurface oceans in the beginning  some of which could still exist on dwarf planets Eris and Makemake. This means that those subsurface oceans could have interacted with rocky materials and could even hint at past potential habitability or unique ocean chemistry in their history  but there are no findings to support that yet.
Reach key decision makers with sales-ready leads that shorten your sales process. Move the needle by delivering funnel qualified leads to your sales team. Learn more

A browser that has received plaudits for privacy protection has been exposed for redirecting Web searches to make money.

Brave, a browser with some 15 million monthly users, has been redirecting searches for cryptocurrency companies to links that produce revenue for the browsers owners through advertising affiliate programs.

Twitter user Yannick Eckl, aka cryptonator 1337, on Saturday revealed that when he searched for Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, he was redirected to an affiliate version of the URL that profited Brave.

The controversy grew when Larry Cermak, director of research at The Block, a research, analysis and news brand in the digital asset space, began digging into Braves code on GitHub. He uncovered more redirects to another cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, and two cryptocurrency wallet sites, Ledger and Trezor.

Braves autocompletion of a URL to include a referrer link may be a bit dodgy.

This is ethically questionable because its altering the address that the user thought they were typing to one that advantages Brave  apparently in the hope that the user will just hit enter and go to Braves version, said David Gerard, UK-based author of Attack of the 50-Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts.

This is whats called a dark pattern in interface design  one that tries to trick the user into doing things purely for the advantage of the vendor, he told TechNewsWorld.

Braves failure to warn users that it was doing affiliate marketing appears to violate FTC rules in the United States and CAP rules in the United Kingdom, Gerard said.

Not fully informing users is deceptive marketing, and so that part is clearly unethical too, he observed.

Sorry for the Mistake

In a series of tweets, Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, acknowledged that the company had made a mistake and would correct it.

Brave was trying to build a business that puts users first by aligning the companys interests and those of its users with private ads that pay users, he explained.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

But we seek skin-in-game affiliate revenue, too. This includes bringing new users to Binance & other exchanges via opt-in trading widgets/other UX that preserves privacy prior to opt-in, he wrote.

It includes search revenue deals, as all major browsers do, Eich continued. When we do this well, its a win for all parties. Our users want Brave to live.

The autocomplete default was inspired by search query clientid attribution that all browsers do, but unlike keyword queries, a typed-in URL should go to the domain named, without any additions, he explained.

Sorry for this mistake  we are clearly not perfect, but we correct course quickly, Eich wrote.

He denied that Brave was rewriting links clicked on Web pages as well as those typed into the address bar, tweeting We have never & will not do any such thing.

The autocomplete function could be turned off in the browsers settings. Now that setting is turned on by default, but in the future, the default setting will be off, Eich said.

Tone Deaf Response

Reaction of Brave users to the mistake was a mixed bag.

Damage done. Ill stop using #brave, tweeted a user with the handle BitcornRick.

TBH having this as an option is weird by itself, tweeted Sriram Karra. Who among your target segment would you think will *want* to turn that ON?

To which Matthew Wallace replied, Well, users that still like the browser and want them to stay solvent so it doesnt disappear?

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Glad to see you are correcting the mistake. You should be more careful if you want to earn peoples trust, admonished Aki Rodic.

Toth Zoltan tweeted some encouragment to Eich. Brendan, you guys have made a rocking browser, I really like it, he wrote. Your honesty is a plus. No one should be against you making money. Till you stay transparent.

Overall, though, Braves responses on Twitter were tone deaf, observed Gerard.

I see Brendan Eich and [Senior Developer Relations Specialist ] Jonathan Sampson have been responding to many, many upset users, but theydont seem to understand what the issue is, he said.

And they really dont understand that theyve broken users trust, Gerard continued. Eich and Sampson seem to think that careful argumentation and using special definitions of words will explain everything and itll be fine, but theyre not showing any understanding of what they did to break users trust.

No Free Lunch

While many Brave users wont be too upset with the browsers autocomplete-for-cash feature, there is a specific segment who will see the misstep as a betrayal, observed Liz Miller, principal analyst at Constellation Research, a technology research and advisory firm in Cupertino, California.

Theres a group of technorati that purposefully and thoughtfully went to Brave, not because the technology was going to be different, but the mindset and the promise of the company were going to be different, she told TechNewsWorld.

Thats whats really broken here, Miller continued.

Braves leaders dont understand how theyve undermined their users trust in them, she said.

Theyre saying their problem was they used this different tag, when the real problem was they didnt see what they were doing was going to be seen as advertising, which users should be compensated for and made aware of, Miller explained.

This is more about transparency than privacy, she added.

I think this came out of the blue and shocked Brave. It had been in a luxurious place of being one of the good guys. You want ad blockers? Weve got them. You want something that puts your privacy first? Were going to give it to you, Miller noted.

After being in that rarified air, this is probably the first time theyve been called to the mat for something, she pointed out.

There can be substantial backlash toward a company that makes a product that says its providing privacy but is mining information, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm in Bend, Oregon.

Its disingenuous, and people can lose trust in the product and the brand, he told TechNewsWorld.

One of the big problems with the ad model is that to make money, you have to do things that the people using your product would rather you not do, but thats whats paying for the product, Enderle said. Theres no free lunch.
Mango  name it and the king of fruits brings memories of one of the most-loved festivals of Delhi, that is, Mango Festival. For those who have been to this annual affair, at Dilli Haat INA or Janak Puri, know that for more than three decades it has been a crowd-puller. But this time around, due to Covid-19 pandemic, the organisers have decided to take the fun-filled celebrations online.

While people will miss the thrill and sheer joy of the mango eating competition, Sau hai daam, jitne khao aam, we have decided to prioritise the safety of the visitors and mango growers; who have brought hundreds of varieties from across the nation, says Manoj Kumar, manager, PR & Publicity, Delhi Tourism, adding that the festival is going virtual in its 32nd edition.

It was a common sight to see almost 500 varieties of mangoes at this event every year. Devyn Kumar, a budding chef, says, Sharing mangoes at the dinner table has been a vivid part of my childhood nostalgia. The event has been something we shared as a family for the last six years. My father was looking forward to the festival this time, and the quirky names that sellers give to their mangoes. But well make do with the virtual event.

So those of you who want to stay safe indoors and yet relish the vast variety of mangoes, check out the social media handles of Delhi Tourism. Manoj Kumar adds, The mango eating contest has been a staple favourite for years. This year, people can cherish mangoes from the safety of their homes via our social media handles from June 24 to July 15. We have plans to share trivia on different varieties of mangoes with our social media users. Alongside, mango lovers can also indulge in fun contests and recipes that we will run online.

Its sad that the event has been called off this year. However, in the current scenario it is only logical to avoid crowded gatherings.

 Purnima Verma, student

Mango lovers, who would earlier make a beeline for the cultural event, are tad disappointed with the festival going virtual. Take for instance a Noida-based student Purnima Verma, who loved participating in the various contests at the festival. I come from a family of mango lovers! I remember memorising trivia for the contest where my friends and I would participate and try to outdo each other. We used to make a day out of it, taste as many varieties of mangoes as we could gorge on. Its sad that the event has been called off this year. However, in the current scenario it is only logical to avoid crowded gatherings, says Verma.

So until next year, keep an eye for mangoes such as Modi aam or Virat aam, which had not just unique names  in the previous years of the festival  but even delicious taste to leave you wanting for more!

Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 13:35:14|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SYDNEY, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A new antiviral drug has been proved effective in blocking COVID-19 in computer modelling.

Researchers from Monash University conducted extensive modelling of alpha-ketoamide 13b on a supercomputer, and found it has the ability to stop the replication of COVID-19 virus.

Monash University senior research fellow Tom Karagiannis told Xinhua that alpha-ketoamide 13b bound tightly to the active site of the viral main protease, which is responsible for cleaving viral proteins inside cells.

"By blocking the active site of the protease with alpha-ketoamide 13b you can inhibit viral replication," Karagiannis explained.

"The modelling showed that the binding was stable for prolonged simulation times."

Alpha-ketoamide 13b is a new and improved compound based on ketoamide compounds investigated by Professor Rolf Hilgenfeld's team in Germany following the SARS outbreak in 2003.

"This particular compound has improved qualities for administration to humans," Karagiannis said.

The research paper has been published in the Computational Biology Chemistry Journal.

Karagiannis said German researchers have already shown alpha-ketoamide works in cell culture and there is hope that it may be effective by inhalation.

Meanwhile, Karagiannis and his team will keep on verifying promising new drugs.

"We are focused on the computational modelling aspects at the moment, and we plan to continue confirming and hopefully, identifying compounds with potential antiviral effects," he said.

"We have a comprehensive database of compounds that we can model against various antiviral targets." Enditem
New Delhi:

Goddess Chandraghanta is worshipped on the third day of Navratri, but due to the star condition this year, the Navratras will be celebrated for 10 days instead of nine, hence Goddess Chandraghanta is being worshipped on fourth day this year. These Navratras are considered very auspicious.

She is the married form the Goddess Parvati. After getting married to Lord Shiva Goddess Mahagauri started adorning her forehead with half Chandra and due to which Goddess Parvati was known as Goddess Chandraghanta.

This form of Goddess Parvati is peaceful and for welfare of her devotees. In this form Goddess Chandraghanta is ready for the war with all her weapons. It is believed that the sound of the moon-bell on her forehead expel all type of spirits away from her devotees.

Goddess Chandraghanta mounts on the tigress. She wears the semi-circular moon (Chandra) on her forehead. The half-moon on her forehead looks like the bell (Ghanta) and because of that she is known as Chandra-Ghanta.

She is depicted with ten hands and carries Trishul, Gada, Sword and Kamandal in her four left hands and keeps the fifth left hand in Varada Mudra. Devotees offer milk or Kheer on the third day of Navratra

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Airlines reminded of legal duty for refunds for cancelled, rescheduled flights

PHUKET: The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) has issued two distinct notices to all airlines reminding them of their obligations to passengers affected by cancelled or rescheduled flights, including the conditions for refunding airfares, and to provide food and drinks, and access to free communications services for flights delayed for hours.

tourismtransportCOVID-19economics

By The Phuket News

Monday 22 June 2020, 06:14PM

Passengers arrive at Phuket International Airport as a staffer cleans the chairs as part of the new normal requirements. Photo: AoT Phuket

A first notice issued on Friday (June 19) reminded all air service operators of the Announcement of the Ministry of Transport on Protection of Passenger Rights Using Thai air carriers Services for Domestic Scheduled Air Aervices 2010 (B.E. 2553), issued 10 years ago by Sopol Saram, the Minister of Transport at the time.

A notice issued late this afternoon (June 22) specifically singled out all charter flight operators.

Any flights cancelled with less than one days notice entitles passengers a full refund or a refund to part of the journey not yet completed, or to have the passengers travel on another flight at no extra cost.

Food and beverages appropriate for the duration of the inconvenience must be provided, as well as free access to communications services such as telephone, fax and email, the notice explained.

If passengers are forced to stay overnight due to a cancellation, the airlines must provide accommodation with transportation between the airport and accommodation, it added.

However, if the cancellation is the result of force majeure, such as the result of political instability or the weather, the passenger will pay the required expenses, the notice read.

Regardless, for airlines to issue travel vouchers instead of providing a full refund, the airline must obtain the passengers permission beforehand, explained the notice issued on Friday.

To see the full conditions of the airlines duty of responsibility as required by law in Thailand, see the full CAAT notice in English here.

Phuket International Airport General Manager Thanee Chuangchoo today confirmed that the notices were in effect and all airlines by law had to comply with the requirements.

However, he was unavailable to comment further as to why the notices were issued and how they involved any passengers travelling via Phuket airport, as he was tasked with leading an inspection tour for Deputy Public Health Minister Satit Pitutecha, who arrived to tour Phukets key tourism and transport portal today.

However, the CAAT notices issued Friday and today encouraged any persons who believe they have a right to file a formal complaint to do so at:

Department of Civil Aviation

71 Soi Ngarmduplee, Rama IV Road,

Thung-mahamek,Sathorn District,

Bangkok 10120, Thailand.



Telephone: 02 287 3373

Email: airtravelcomplaint@aviation.go.th



Further information can be obtained via direct line 1111 or 02 286 3775 during official hours (8:30am-4:30pm), the notices both added.
THE Supreme Court will today begin hearing a legal challenge by climate activists to the State's failure to adequately address the climate crisis.

Seven judges are gathering for the two-day hearing which is taking place in Kings Inns law school in Dublin as the chamber where the court normally sits can not accommodate social distancing.

The case is an appeal against a decision of the High Court to reject the arguments of Friend of the Irish Environment (FIE) that the 2017 National Mitigation Plan drawn up to tackle carbon emissions, lacked adequate targets or actions to achieve those aims.

The National Mitigation Plan remains the only statutory plan for carbon reduction although it has been largely overtaken by the 2019 Climate Action Plan, which also has been criticised for lacking sufficient ambition.

FIE argues that the lack of an appropriate plan breaches the responsibilities that fall to the government under the Climate Act 2015 and, by failing to protect the population and environment from climate breakdown, also breaches domestic and international human rights law.

In rejecting the challenge last year, the High Court ruled that while the science was agreed by both sides, the court could not dictate government policy.

Almost 20,000 people have signed their support for the legal challenge and the original High Court hearing was packed with supporters last year, with many standing or sitting on the floor for the duration.

The case is one of many similar challenges being taken by environmental groups around the world.

Ireland has failed to meet carbon reduction targets and emissions have been growing in recent years. FIE argue the National Mitigation Plan allowed for further increases.

The Climate Action Plan aims for reductions of around 3.5pc per year but scientists say global carbon emissions must fall by at least 7pc-8pc per year with immediate effect if the world is to avoid the worst consequences of temperature rise and climate breakdown.
The way brands interact with audiences on social media is distinctly different from other platforms, including digital. While promotional offers, contests and product marketing are still the mainstay of e-commerce, consumer electronics, and apparel brands, the services as opposed to product categories like OTT, food delivery, ride sharing, and hospitality and travel, have taken a more conversational approach. Often, pharma, auto, FMCG, accessory categories hijack viral moments to resonate with the pulse of a younger audience.

Digital marketers have a range of tools to engage in conversation digital natives. In this edition of #TwitterChat, Adgully was joined by digital marketers from Indias leading digital agencies to understand why this approach to marketing has become eponymous with brand building exercise. Joining us in the discussion were:

Rajni Daswani, Director, Brand Experience & Employee Engagement, SoCheers (@R_Diaries)

Ashish Manchanda, VP - Client Strategy, RepIndia (@AshiManchanda27)

Karthik Hariharan, Business Head - South, FoxyMoron (@Karthikhh)

Carol Goyal, Executive Director, Mogae Media (@carolgoyal1)

Ritoban Ghosh, General Manager, Digi Osmosis (@iRitoban)

Sapna Bakshi, Account Director Maven- Client Servicing, Windchimes Communications (@SapnaBakshi1).

There was no consensus amongst digital marketers to the rise in adoption of conversation content. Wind Chimes Sapna Bakshi opined that such an approach added personalisation to the customer experience and helped brands convert leads. Ashish Manchanda from RepIndia seconded that sentiment, saying that it helped consumer interactions be perceived as less transactional.

He noted that brand conversation creates a virtuous feedback loop, where brands dont just rely on brand facts/ information, quotes, memes, and topical days. Conversational content opens new avenues and you end up receiving honest opinion/ feedback and disclosures from your audience.

According to Digi Osmosis Ritoban Ghosh, Using conversational content, digital marketers are able to get a higher rate of response from their customers and get a better understanding of what the customer is looking out for. He further added that brands like Zomato and Amazon Prime Video have leveraged these consumer insights to delight their customers and convert them to loyal customers and brand advocates.

FoxyMorons Karthik Hariharan stated that it helped strengthen a brands positioning in the minds of the consumer, while Mogae Medias Carol Goyal said it was simply a way for brands to show they care.

As the conversation progressed, the digital marketers agreed that creating an engaging brand personality is not easy. Brands segment their audiences based on gender, age, location and economic ability. A digital audience is a poor representation of our countrys demographic diversity. Goyal remarked, It is easy to be chatty and carefree with millennials. Much tougher with older age cohorts.

While the panellists agreed that these conversations go a long way in creating affinity and loyalty towards a brand, Rajni Daswani said that comparatively, it is more favourable for digital brands to have an engaging brand personality online since conversation and transaction is happening on the same platform. She added that certain non-digital categories like malls could benefit as well to create top of mind recall amongst customers.

Hariharan believes, All brands have a personality, knowingly or unknowingly, that are either engineered or attributed at some level via CX. The consumer in the online world can interact and engage directly with a brand, so it makes absolute sense to have personality. But not all brands invest in that. The goal is to understand what works best in the category and for the brand. Archetypes are a great place to start.

Ghosh emphasised that creating a distinct personality was not limited to attracting younger users. According to him, While most brands use digital to engage with the younger generations, those who have a better knowledge of digital utilise the platforms and build their brand personality according to the target group (TG) they want to appeal.

However, an unrestrained hijacking of social media conversations can be a double-edged sword. Imagine a Fair & Lovely in India trying to piggyback on the racism debate that is raging in the US. In the past, a brand taking a stance on a social or political issue was reserved for beloved bands like Amul, but now brand purpose is a marketing buzzword that is seeping into the conscious of mainstream marketing. Case in point, when Gillette changed their iconic the best a man can get into the best men can be. The move sparked furious debate.

Bakshi states that identifying brand purpose is a long-term strategic plan to create a positive image in the minds of customers and content that supports your brand-building efforts. Thats why its crucial to ensure that brand purpose and content are in sync to build a better reputation and drive growth.

While this trend is fashionable, it has its consequences. Pepsi got a rap on their knuckles when they tried too hard to be woke with their Kendall Jenner ad during Black Lives Matter protests. Goyal observes that most times brand purpose is overhyped and is inventing purpose just to give the brand a halo If the brand purpose is not deeply entrenched in the value system of the entire organisation, then the veneer tends to fall off.

She questions the attempt of brands in India to appear woke. As Indians, we are still coming to term with woke-ness and according to her, the backlash from consumers who dont resonate with your message can be vicious.

Ghosh feels that, Brands need to identify topics that resonate with their audience, but it should not look like they are hijacking the conversation for their benefit. Brands like NFL, Bandaid, Quaker Oats arent shying away from touching sensitive trends either as long as it goes with their brand and their consumers are accepting it.

Manchanda concurs, Determining brand relevancy is a must before you decide to leverage social media trends. I have seen brands trying to capitalise on the RIP trend and urging their agency to leverage it for higher reach. Think long term and dont succumb to the engagement or reach bait!

No matter what the CSR budgets may be, brands are not activists and should not attempt to engage in communication that is perceived as such. Digital marketers agree that clients have more humble expectations from their social media strategy.

Ghosh notes that in todays environment the most important thing is to stand out from the clutter and clients mainly want to increase their share of voice and distribution scalability on social platforms. He cites the example of Dunzo having achieved this successfully.

How they achieve this is dictated by the category, platform and clients own expectations. Daswani shares, Different clients have different requirements. Some want to go the extra mile and engage with their customers while others want to be present. It all depends on the brands overall positioning and in what capacity they want to be present on digital.

Hariharan adds here, The purpose of a platform in the users life is varied. Add to this the category and the brand mix and what we have isnt a one-size-fits-all expectation.

He shares an example, f you are a B2C brand a product range, you would showcase a product range, but if you are a single product brand, you may choose to showcase testimonials and CX to build brand love. However, a B2B brand would use it to showcase organisational culture and attract talent.

No matter how compelling your content may be, virality of content is not a guarantee. Fact is, a lot of factors that determine organic engagement is out of the creators hands and in the hands of the platform. Hariharan says, As much as we can engineer, going viral isnt formulaic, its magic.

Digital marketers strive hard to create that magic for clients. Here are few excerpts from the discussion as to how this can be achieved:

Rajni Daswani and Ritoban Ghosh say agencies and brands should understand what their community likes and relates with and match their needs/ wants.

Ashish Manchanda and Carol Goyal recommend authentic communication. Manchanda suggests, Create your own personality and stick to what you stand for. Dont take shortcuts for higher reach and engagement and focus on generating meaningful conversations.

Sapna Bakshi recommends diversifying into a number of community outreach activities.

Hariharan recommends using digital tools to mine consumer interactions for insights.

Read More
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:58:30|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TIRANA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- International maritime passenger transport in Albania, which resumes from Monday, will restart with 70 percent of capacity, head of the General Maritime Directorate Paulin Ndreu told Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA) in an interview.

Ndreu declared that all port authorities and maritime agencies must strictly implement the transport operation protocol for COVID-19 approved by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy on June 5.

Passenger ferries and ships, according to the protocol, are allowed to carry up to 70 percent of their capacity as defined by current legislation.

Ndreu noted that the protocol aims to help maintain and protect the health of terminal employees, port operators, crew and passengers, as well as to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 in open ports in Albania.

According to Ndreu, the categories of people that will be allowed to travel by ferry transport during the first phase include: all foreign nationals who are in Albania or come to Albania for work or business, all Albanian citizens residing in European Union (EU) countries with documents from EU countries or other non-EU countries, as well as Albanian and foreign diplomats.

"The Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy and the General Maritime Directorate are working and awaiting the EU decision on the final opening, which we hope will be July 1, 2020," Ndreu told ATA.

Some of the health protocols imposed to prevent the spread of infection among passengers and crew members include the maintenance of physical distance of 1.5 meters, wearing a mask which is mandatory, as well as one passenger per cabin, except when passengers belong to the same family.

The ministry announced that as of Monday Albania will resume all international passenger flights and maritime transport after a three-month interruption.

On Monday, the health authorities reported 33 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, raising the total confirmed COVID-19 cases to 1,995, with 1,159 recoveries and 45 fatalities. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:58:02|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson Monday slammed Su Tseng-chang, chief of Taiwan's executive body, for his malicious verbal attacks on the mainland.

In response to a media question, Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said Su's remarks following the release of a U.S. report on Chinese military have once again laid bare his nature of seeking "Taiwan independence."

Zhu said the mainland will work with the greatest sincerity and exert utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification, but does not renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures.

"This is to guard against external interference and a tiny number of separatists and their separatist activities for 'Taiwan independence.' It does in no way target our compatriots in Taiwan," said Zhu.

Noting that "Taiwan independence" is the common enemy of compatriots across the Taiwan Strait, Zhu said she believes Taiwan compatriots will never let "Taiwan independence" separatists succeed in their schemes. Enditem
US President Donald Trump has kicked off his re-election campaign with a rally in Oklahoma where he launched a frontal attack on his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, describing him as a helpless puppet of the radical left.

Trump, 74, is pitted against former vice president and Democratic Partys presidential nominee Biden, 77, in the November 3 presidential election.

As per the latest opinion polls, he is trailing behind Biden on an average by eight percentage points.

Trump, in his address to the thousands of his supporters at an indoor stadium in Oklahomas Tulsa city on Saturday, said: Biden is a helpless puppet of the radical left. And hes not radical left. I dont think he knows what he is any more. But hes controlled by the radical left.

Addressing his first election rally after the coronavirus pandemic hit the country early this year, killing more than 119,000 Americans in a matter of few months and bringing the economy to a standstill, Trump alleged that the Biden campaign staff even donated a lot of money to bail out rioters, looters and arsonists who ravaged Minneapolis.

Minneapolis erupted into violence following the brutal custodial death of African-American George Floyd on May 25. The protests spread nationwide and turned violent in many places including Washington DC, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The president has accused radical left for the violence.

The left is trying to do everything they can to stop us every hour of every day including violence, mayhem, look what happened tonight. But we will never submit to their threats and we will never let them destroy our nation, Trump said.

In his speech that lasted for more than 100 minutes, Trump talked a lot on his favorite themes: fake news, energy dominance, appointing judges, supporting police and condemning protesters.

The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalise our history, desecrating beautiful monuments, tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control, were not conforming.

Thats why were here actually. This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans. They want to demolish our heritage so that they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place. They want to defund and dissolve our police departments. Think of that, said the president.

Addressing the rally comprising thousands of his supporters, a majority of whom did not wear face masks or maintain social distancing, Trump called for a legislation that would punish burning American flags with one-year imprisonment.

We ought to do it. We talk about freedom of speech but thats desecration, he said.

His political opponents accused him of risking peoples health by holding such a big rally. Many said that parts of the arena were empty. As a precautionary measure, local police officials and campaign staff measured the temperature of everyone entering the arena. Six members of the campaign staff tested positive with COVID-19 before the rally.

There was brief interruption during his speech when he paused and called for doctors, as security guards went to the aid of a young man who appeared to have fainted. He was helped out by a security guard on either side.

Thank you. These people, I mean some of the people are waiting for five days, especially at this location, right? You take your time, Trump said.

Around 15 per cent of the citys 400,000 residents are black, according to the US media report.

Outside the arena, a 62-year-old peaceful protester was arrested and dragged by security personnel while wearing a shirt that read I cant breathe. Tulsa Police Department said that the protestor was removed at the request of the Trump campaign staff.
By Express News Service

LUCKNOW: PM Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a meeting through video conferencing to review various development projects being undertaken in Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency.

Focusing on the progress of his dream project - Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, the PM reviewed the effective management of COVID-19 in Varanasi where the tally of number of coronavirus-positive cases to over 300. While reviewing the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project, the PM was shown the progress made so far by using a drone video of the layout.

The PM interacted with the five BJP MLAs and two MLCs and senior administrative officials including Varanasi Divisional Commissioner Deepak Agarwal, District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma and Varanasi Municipal Commissioner Gaurang Rathi.

While focusing on Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, the PM directed the officials concerned to preserve that all the old temples unearthed during the development course of the complex. He laid stress on seeking experts help in protecting the historical and architectural legacy of the city. He also favoured carbon

dating of those ancient temples so that their importance and age could be highlighted to the tourist and the pilgrims, who visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple.

The PM was told during the interaction that over 100 major projects within the financial outflow of around Rs.8000 crore were currently being undertaken in Varanasi.

The PM's main emphasis was on the completion of projects within stipulated time maintaining the highest standards of quality. He also suggested the authorities concerned to expedite works of cruise tourism, light and sound show, rejuvenation of Khidkiya and Dashaswamedh Ghats, display of Ganga Aarti through audio-visual screens in order to increase tourism and travel footprint in Kashi.

All efforts should be made to promote and propagate the role of Kashi as one of the key repositories of world heritage, said the PM, while directing the officials to organise week-long festivals of countries like Japan, Thailand, etc. where Buddhism is practised to celebrate their art and cultural heritage.

The PM also pressed for ensuring the highest levels of sanitation and cleanliness. All efforts should be made to achieve desired levels of ODF plus, use of mechanised sweeping and cleaning, ensuring 100% door-to-door waste collection and making the entire environment very positive and healthy.

The preparation for tackling the ongoing COVID pandemic was also reviewed in detail. The Prime Minister highlighted extensive and effective utilisation of the Aarogya Setu App. Efforts made by the district administration for providing food, shelter and quarantine services were also discussed.

The PM directed the officials to give priority to provide gainful employment to the migrants on the basis of their skill sets. Feedback was also taken about the positive impact of PM Garib Kalyan Yojana and State Government-led COVID relief schemes.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar assured shareholders that the likely job cuts and salary reductions in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic will leave 'relatively low level' of stress on the bank as the proportion of business from government and quasi-government sector is high.

In a letter to the bank's shareholders, Kumar exuded confidence that despite economic headwinds, the robust performance achieved by the country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) in 2019-20 will continue in the current financial year.

"Despite the economic headwinds, the Bank is well prepared to adjust to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am more than hopeful that the robust performance achieved in FY20 will continue in FY21 as well," the SBI chairman said.

Observing that the full impact of COVID-19 outbreak will be felt in the current financial year, Kumar said from the bank's point of view, the true impact of COVID pandemic must also consider the behavioral impact on bank's customers, and composition of portfolio, among others.

"For instance, likely job cuts and salary reductions will have relatively low level of stress on account of higher proportion of Govt/ Quasi Govt. sector customers," he said in the letter, as per SBI's annual report.

"As of now, only 21.8 per cent of the customers have availed the benefit of moratorium. Furthermore, the Bank was able to achieve 98 per cent branch operability as well as 91 per cent alternate channel operability during the period of lockdown," Kumar added.

Nevertheless, an elaborate Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is in place to manage disruptions, he said.

SBI has traditionally been the banker of choice to the Government of India (GOI) and is an accredited banker to major Central Government Ministries and Departments, the annual report said.

It said SBI is contributing significantly towards e-governance initiatives taken by the GOI, and is instrumental in the development of e-solutions for both Central and state governments.

"This has facilitated their transition to the online mode, providing greater efficiency and transparency, resulting in ease of doing business and relaxation of living for the citizens," it said.

SBI's total government business turnover was Rs 52,62,643 crore during fiscal 2019-20. The bank registered its highest ever yearly net profit in 2019-20 at Rs 14,488 crore.

The net profit was Rs 862 crore during 2018-19. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the outlook of the global economy has become very uncertain and world is likely to experience a deep rooted recession next year, Kumar said. The RBI expects contraction in the Indian economy during the current financial year.

Kumar also said that the pandemic has changed the preference of customers and it is a big opportunity for the bank as there is now more acceptability to adopt digital channels for doing banking transactions.

He said the bank will further scale up YONO (all-encompassing digital platform) and has set a target of doubling user registrations in the next six months, and further strengthen platform through new product offerings like end-to-end home loans, pre-approved car loan and personal gold loans.
Joon Kim, who preceded Berman as an interim U.S. attorney and formerly held the same deputy position from which Strauss was just promoted, said she would be devoted to the most touchy of cases because she would have been actively involved in those matters since becoming deputy in February 2018. I would expect that she was very much involved in all of the important cases in the office, Kim said.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Traders' body CAIT on Monday burnt Chinese goods in Delhi's main market Karol Bagh to demonstrate their resentment and anger against the killing of 20 Indian soldiers in clashes with the Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley last week.

The protesting traders led by Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal were briefly detained by the police and taken to the Karol Bagh Police Station.

The trader's body claimed that Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has accepted its demand to cancel three MoUs signed by the Maharashtra government with Chinese companies recently.

While complimenting Thackeray, Khandelwal said, "This step is in line with the sentiments of the people of the country and will be a lesson to China".

The traders' body recently launched a national campaign titled 'Bhartiya Samaan-Hamara Abhimaan' to boycott Chinese goods.

"This demonstration is a reflection of the boiling anger in the hearts and minds of Indian traders and citizens against China's continued antagonism towards India. Due to the prevailing state of COVID-19 pandemic, this demonstration was done by adopting all measures of social distancing and safety precautions," the CAIT said.

Khandelwal said that traders and consumers across the country have shown great enthusiasm and tremendous support for boycott of Chinese goods.

The first highlight of this campaign will be seen on the festival of Rakhi in the month of August when Indian women will tie purely Indian made rakhis to their brothers and boycott China-made rakhis, he added.

The CAIT has urged traders from all over the country to refrain from selling or buying Chinese goods in view of the upcoming festivals.
Workers in protective suits take the temperatures of people at a COVID-19 testing site for those who were potentially exposed to the coronavirus outbreak at a wholesale food market in Beijing. (AP Photo)

BANGKOK: The world saw the largest daily increases yet in coronavirus cases over the weekend, while infections slowed in China and South Korea, suggesting progress in stemming their newest outbreaks.

Despite clear progress in containing the virus in some regions, especially those that saw early outbreaks, globally the number of new virus cases has soared in recent days. In Brazil, Iraq, India and the United States, hospitals are scrambling to cope.

Nearly 9 million people have been infected and more than 468,000 people have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the actual numbers are much higher, given limits to testing and the presumed large share of asymptomatic cases.

Late Sunday, the World Health Organization reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours. Brazil tallied 54,771 and the U.S. was next at 36,617, the UN health agency said. India reported more than 15,400.

Experts say rising case counts reflect multiple factors including more testing and spreading infections. More than two-thirds of the new deaths were reported in the Americas.

Still, in East Asia there were signs of progress, as South Korea reported 17 new cases, the first time its daily increase fell to under 20 in nearly a month.

The country has been reporting 40 to 50 new cases per day in the past few weeks, amid increased public activity, eased attitudes on social distancing and an uptick in imported cases.

A rise in the number of such cases arriving from South Asia prompted a halt to new visas for travelers from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Elsewhere in Asia, Beijings increase was in single digits for the first time in eight days. It reported nine cases.

Even in New Zealand, which earlier said it had eliminated local transmissions of the virus, two new cases were reported Monday among infected people arriving from India and Pakistan. The country of 5 million people now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month.

Many remain anxious that community transmission could resume, especially after health officials admitted having mistakenly let two women who arrived from London leave quarantine before they were tested to visit a dying parent. The women later tested positive and have since isolated themselves.

In the United States, experts say the resurgence in infections there is not a so-called second wave but a continuation of the first wave of outbreaks as the number of cases plateaus.
The makers of Vijays Master released a special poster from their film on the occasion of actor Vijays birthday on Monday. The new poster was unveiled at midnight to ring in Vijays birthday and it went viral in seconds on social media.

Every year, Vijays fans celebrate his birthday in a big way. From organizing re-release shows of his films to carrying out several social activities, his birthday has called for a big celebration among his fans. However, this year it will all be all quiet.

As per India Today report, Vijay has personally requested his fan clubs in every district to not indulge in any kind of celebrations amid Covid-19 scare. N Anand, head of Vijay Fan Club Association in Tamil Nadu, has conveyed the same to the actors fans across the country.

On the career front, Vijay is looking forward to the release of Master next. Directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, the film stars Vijay in the role of a college professor. Vijay Sethupathi will be seen playing the antagonist. Malavika Mohanan, who made her Tamil debut via Rajinikanths Petta, plays the leading lady. The film also stars Andrea Jeremiah in a key role.

Vijay was last seen on screen in Atlee-directed Bigil in dual roles. He was seen playing father and son roles and both the characters were well received by the audiences.

Bigil, which also starred Jackie Shroff and Nayanthara, went on to mint around 290 crore at the box-office. It emerged as the highest grossing Tamil film of 2019.

Also read: Sonam Kapoor shares hateful messages shes got after Sushant Singh Rajputs death, explains viral Koffee With Karan video

Meanwhile, Vijay will soon team up with AR Murugadoss or with filmmaker Sudha Kongara for his next Tamil yet-untitled project. Talks have already been initiated. Interestingly, if the project materializes, itll be Vijays maiden collaboration with a female director.

Sun Pictures will be bankrolling the project. An official announcement regarding the project is expected to be made this month. It is learnt from reliable sources that Sun Pictures has already paid an advance of 50 crore to Vijay as remuneration for this project.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
New Delhi: Amid India-China faceoff in the Eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Zee Media has come to know that Nepal's recent aggressive posture in raising border dispute with India is simply to divert public attention from China's occupation of many areas of the Himalayan nation.

The documents available with Zee Media revealed that China has annexed many parts of Nepal, and there is tremendous pressure on Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli's government, the reason, the border dispute with India was raised to divert the people's attention in Nepal.

According to the exclusive documents available with Zee Media, China has occupied about 11 areas adjacent to Nepal, but the Oli government has maintained a silence over it. The occupation of the Chinese government is being opposed in Nepal's Rui village while the incumbent government has raised the border row with India, thereby, souring the centuries-old ties between the two neighbours.

An official related to Nepal affairs told Zee News that China is investing heavily in Nepal while capturing the areas adjoining Tibet, taking advantage of changes in river water flow in the region. China has also asserted its claims on several areas of Nepal, but it has been vehemently opposed in the Himalayan nation.

The government of Nepal has identified as many as 11 such places that China has so far occupied. The areas occupied by China in Nepal are:

1. China occupies 6 hectares of Bhagdare Khola in Humla district of Nepal

2. China occupies 4 hectares of Karnali river in Humla district of Nepal

3. China occupies 2 hectares of Sinjen Khola in Rasuwa district of Nepal

4. China occupies one hectare of Bhurjuk Khola in Rasuwa district of Nepal

5. China captures land of Lamde Khola in Rasuwa district of Nepal

6. China captures 3 hectares of Jambu Khola in Rasuwa district of Nepal

7. China occupies 7 hectares of land in Kharane Khola of Nepal's Sandhu Pal Chok district

8. China occupies 4 hectares of Bhote Koshi of Sandhu Pal Chok district in Nepal

9. China occupies 3 hectares of Samjung Khola in Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal

10. China occupies 2 hectares of Kam Khola in Nepal's Sankhuwasabha district

11- China also occupies 4 hectares of land from Arun riverbed in Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal

According to sources, China has already occupied Rui village adjacent to Tibet for a long time and this is being opposed by the residents of that village. In a bid to divert the people's attention from Rui village, the Oli government has raised the issue of the border dispute with India. China has made incursions into the Rui village comprising 72 houses, but the village is still included in the map of Nepal.

Notably, the Nepal government's new map has claimed some parts of India. The Nepali FM stations have also started propaganda in those areas which are adjacent to India, by airing anti-India sentiments as part of a larger conspiracy, according to security agency reports.

Like FM stations are engaged in spewing venom against India, videos are also being made viral on social media to create a wedge among people of both countries. Most of these videos propagate Nepal's claim in many areas, including Kalapani and Lipulekh, through songs and music.

According to security agencies, China's Ambassador Hou Yanqi in Kathmandu has played a key role in inciting Nepal against India. Barring the Nepal Prime Minister of Nepal, Yanqi has also met several other top leaders encouraging them to make rhetoric against India. Prior to becoming an ambassador in Nepal, Yanqi was posted at the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan.

According to security agencies, Pakistan and China are planning to open another front against India by instigating Nepal to increase India's difficulties.
Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane will visit Leh and Kashmir to take stock of the ground situation this week.

General Naravane's visit comes amid the heightened threat in eastern Ladakh region where over thousands of Indian Army men have been deployed a few metres away from the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following the bloody clash with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) a week ago.

The Army Chief will review the force preparedness as well the deployment across the Line of Actual Control with China and Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. He is likely to visit on Tuesday.

On Monday, corps commanders of the two countries' military met at Moldo to resolve the border issues and ease the tension in eastern Ladakh.

This is the second such meeting after the first one took place on June 6 to defuse the tensions.

The meeting between 14 Corps commander Lieutenant General Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District chief Major General Liu Lin is happening on the lines of the one they held at the Chushul-Moldo border personnel meeting (BPM) point in eastern Ladakh on June 6.

The ground situation is volatile in Ladakh, and Pangong Tso can be another flashpoint after the Galwan Valley patrolling point 14 where a barbaric attack was carried on Indian troops by the Chinese army on the night of June 15.

At Pangong Tso, there is an attempt of the PLA to alter the Line of Actual Control unilaterally. The prolonged camping and a heavy presence of Chinese troops around the Pangong Lake, at a point which has been under Indian control, has emerged to be the biggest roadblock for a possible resolution to the ongoing tussle between India and China at the LAC.

The Chinese have built defences in several parts between Finger 4 and Finger 8, which have been grey zones in the past. The Chinese action in Pangong Lake is seen as an attempt to change the status quo.

The Indian Army has also enhanced deployment in the Hot Springs, Demchok , Koyul, Fukche, Depsang, Murgo and Galwan.

After the June 15 violent clash, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and the Chinese troops also suffered casualties, nothing has changed and things continue to be tense in the Galwan and Pangong Tso regions.

In the midst of the growing tensions, India is exploring all possible military options as a response, if the Chinese aggression continues.

India has also ramped up preparations on its side along the 826-km front of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
Two area families have the chance to start again after the May 19 flooding, thanks to the efforts of Orthodox Presbyterian Church disaster response teams. Tom and Linda Kennedy, of Sanford, and Glenn and Michelle Moots, of Edenville, suffered significant damage to their homes but expect to finish restorations by the end of the year.

Established in 2010, the OPC disaster response assists churches in finding volunteers to assist with short-term projects and respond to disasters. Immediately following the flooding in Gladwin and Midland counties, OPC disaster response reached out to Pastor Dave Sarafolean, of Christ Covenant Church in Midland, to see what assistance was needed from congregation members.

"At first, it was so overwhelming with all the phone calls. I was still waiting to hear from people," Sarafolean said. "Within four days, we had a few people come up from different churches to lay out how the disaster relief works."

Christ Covenant Church became a hub for volunteers and supplies including fans and dehumidifiers. It reported back to the church's national headquarters in Philadelphia about two families in the congregation who had suffered greatly.

A special feature of OPC disaster response is that it works with families until the job is done or funds run out, according to Glenn.

"The cost of the labor will be a lot less because it's being done by volunteer tradesmen," Sarafolean stated. "We're really thankful for our denomination and their willingness to help. It would be too much for our families."

The Kennedys built their house on Sanford Lake 15 years ago. Since the floor of their lower level is four feet above the top of Sanford Dam, they believed there was no danger of flooding. When the rains came and the dams failed, they ended up with five feet of water in their lower level, completely destroying it.

"We basically lost everything in that level, including our furniture and flooring," Tom said.

Volunteers came rushing to help just a day after the flood.

"People from our church began arriving to help with whatever they could do. We've never seen such an outpouring of compassion from neighbors and people we've never met before," Tom said.

Once the lower level was mucked out and dried, it was time to start rebuilding. Skilled workers from OPC and Reformed Mission Services arrived on the evening of Tuesday, June 16. The next day, they began installing drywall.

Eventually, the Kennedys can look forward to painting, installing flooring and trim work and finding new furniture.

Tom feels fortunate that no one was injured in the flooding and that he and Linda are able to stay in their home since the water never reached their main level. He also appreciates the generosity shown by the volunteers and his church. Thanks to them, he expects to have the lower level restored in six months.

"It's fantastic. It's a true blessing. It makes us realize how fortunate we are," he said.

The Moots family has lived in Edenville since 2001. The flooding was so severe in their house that only the structure was salvageable. Among the items lost were furniture from Glenn's grandparents and a whole library consisting of books published by academic publishing houses; Glenn is a professor and department chair of political science and philosophy. The weekend after the flood, Glenn and Michelle met with representatives from OPC to survey the damage and talk of steps forward.

"It was such a great surprise and blessing for us," Glenn said. "The ability to move forward with the insight of skilled trades people is huge."

Among the workers at the Moots' home are a builder from Illinois, team members from Grand Rapids, and a site coordinator who happens to be a retired engineer. Like the Kennedys, Glenn expects his family will be able to return home in six months' time.

"Without it, we couldn't get back into our house. It's the difference between walking away and staying with the house," Glenn said.

Glenn is thankful for the generosity displayed by the OPC disaster relief team and the chance it has given his family to start over, and he understands they are one of the lucky ones. Other families in the area will have to wait months to restore or rebuild their homes. He encourages the public to continue to administer to needs in the community and not let the momentum be lost. Christ Covenant Church is currently working with Calvary Baptist Church and is on the lookout for more opportunities to help those in need.

"It makes a hug difference. It's not the work that (volunteers) do. It's just the idea that the person that's doing it isn't doing it by themselves," Glenn said.
June 22nd marks the first anniversary of the disappearance of 31-year-old Romanian woman, Dana Leonte, whose case has remained a mystery since she went missing from her home in Arenas.

Although DNA tests have linked bones located in land around the Axarquia town between September 2019 and March to the mother-of-one, police have been unable to find answers to her death.

On 25 September 2019 a femur bone was found on land some six kilometres from the house Leonte shared with her partner, Sergio Ruiz and their baby daughter. DNA checks proved it to belong to the victim. Other bones including vertebrae, fingers and toes have also been linked to Leonte. However, the search had to be called off at the start of the coronavirus lockdown in mid March.

Police are still hoping to find the woman's skull as they say it should provide vital clues as to how died.

Ruiz is currently the only suspect in the case and remains in Albolote prison in Granada as his family have been unable to raise the 17,000 euro bail money needed for his release. He has maintained that he is innocent since he was first arrested last September.

The woman's brother, Florin Leonte, is fighting for custody of the couple's daughter, who is currently in the care of Ruiz's brother, Estanislao.
Chime Solutions Expands Call Center Workforce in Charlotte, North Carolina

As Americans grapple with the global COVID-19 pandemic, theyve made changes to their life and health insurance policies. Call centers that support these industries are always critical operations, but during challenging times, customers are reevaluating their coverage and reaching out to the companies that insure them, making call center operations more important than ever.

Call center services provider Chime Solutions recently announced the addition of 250 more jobs at its call center in University City, North Carolina. The open positions are for life and health insurance agents. Chime Solutions is headquartered in Morrow, Georgia.

According to WSOTV News, Chime was awarded a grant by the North Carolina Community College System to provide training for the open positions in partnership with Central Piedmont Community College. CPCC will train and upskill job candidates by providing pre-licensing training to new employees seeking the positions. Chime will cover the costs for testing to attain licenses.

This partnership and the jobs that were bringing to Charlotte fit perfectly with the citys upward mobility goals and it also gives us access to a very talented workforce. We are excited to be here and I look forward to a great future in Charlotte," Chime CEO Mark Wilson said in a press conference last week.

The City of Charlotte provided grants for Chime Solutions expansion, including the citys first Opportunity Hiring Grant.

These new jobs, along with the upskilling that will be provided to employees is a testament of our commitment to supporting the diverse workforce that were proud to have here in Charlotte," said Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles. "This will be an excellent use of Opportunity Hiring Grant program and were looking forward to helping our friends at Chimes Solutions fill these jobs quickly with deserving and talented people.

Since 2019, Chime Solutions leases approximately 75,000 square feet at 7201 University Oaks Drive, which is part of Innovation Park in University City. Outside of Charlotte and its Georgia headquarters, Chime also has an office in Dallas.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
Demonstrators take part in a "Black Lives Matter" protest commemorating Juneteenth in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, on Friday. New Yorkers on Friday marked Juneteenth, the day commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, with marches and protests as the country is having a new moment of reckoning about racial injustice. Photo: Xinhua

The US, the self-proclaimed human rights defender in the world, cannot be more hypocritical with regard to this issue. However, human rights, a much-applauded idea by the US, have become a tool with which the US uses to seek political gains.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that a UN Human Rights Council vote that condemned the raging racism and discriminatory and violent policing in the US after the death of George Floyd marks "a new low" which amounted to hypocrisy. While the international human rights body ordered a report on "systemic racism" against people of African descent, Pompeo said the council should focus on systemic racial disparities in countries such as Cuba and China.

What marks a new low is the US politicization of human rights issues in ignorance of international norms and its moral obligations as the world's superpower. The US has long viewed itself as the center of the world as if it stands on a superior and mighty ground. Only those that meet US standards and serve US interests are righteous. Even freedom of speech, a fundamental human right boasted by the US, has its own boundary in the US, which is US national interests and ideology. With such a hegemonic mind-set, the US is strict with other countries but lenient toward itself and the US' politicization of human rights issues has been fully exposed.

"You see it as the US's right to bomb, drone, and starve any country it wants for alleged human rights violations, but gets angry if another country even suggests talking about human rights violations here. This insane hypocrisy only ensures further loss of standing in the world," wrote one Twitter user under Pompeo's post.

The US has been using the human rights issues to attack its strategic adversaries, including China, Russia and Iran. Such attacks are based on a political stand rather than real concerns for the well-being of people in these countries. When Pompeo criticized China's human rights record, he should check the numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths on US soil and look in the mirror. In today's US, there are still 550,000 homeless people, those with no medical insurance simply expose themselves to the deadly coronavirus, and hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets to fight for equality.

What the US boasts of is exactly what it lacks. When the light of the beacon of freedom touches the US itself, where are the "deep concerns" from the US? Why don't US politicians call on "all parties" to engage in "dialogue" to resolve the social woes raging in their own country?

Australia was reportedly "a party" at the forefront of convincing African countries to drop demands at the UN's top rights body for a resolution calling for an inquiry into police brutality and racism in the US, a role that experts said of a "US proxy."

Being the US henchman, Australia learns about only political manipulation rather than justice and morality and has criticized China's "domestic human rights abuses," which, however, only jeopardized relations with China and sacrificed its diplomatic independence.
The total number of coronavirus cases across the world has crossed the 10-million mark and the death toll has gone past 500,000. There currently are over 100 vaccines at various stages of development worldwide, including in India, Britain, China, the US, Russia and Israel.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at WHO, said nearly 2 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would be ready by the end of next year. But who would be the first to get a Covid-19 vaccine? Probably people in the country where the first effective vaccine is developed. Thus, there's pressure from ...
Burma Myanmar Heads of State, Ministers Acquire Land in Capital

President U Win Myint and State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at Parliament in Naypyitaw. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYITAWGovernment spokesman U Zaw Htay confirmed reports on social media that the president, the State Counselor and ministers have acquired land plots in Naypyitaw but denied that the plots are large.

Reports spread recently on social media that State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has acquired four acres of land and that President U Win Myint, former President U Htin Kyaw, Vice-President Henry Van Thio, Union Government Office Minister U Min Thu and State Counselor Office Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe have all acquired plots measuring 700 by 500 feet (32,516 square meters).

When asked by The Irrawaddy at a press conference in Naypyitaw on Friday, U Zaw Htay confirmed the list of cabinet members who have acquired land, but said the sizes of the plots they have acquired are actually much smaller than rumored.

The president and the State Counselor have each acquired 400 square feet, while Union ministers have 300 square feet and deputy ministers have 250 square feet, he said. He added that the rumored size of 700 by 500 feet, claimed on social media, is equivalent to around eight acres.

It must be a disinformation campaign as the 2020 election approaches. There will be more such campaigns. We think there is a political motive behind it, said U Zaw Htay.

The land plots were prepared for use by the Naypyitaw Development Committee in Ottarathiri Township and sold to Union-level ministers and those in higher positions at fixed prices following their land purchase applications, the government spokesman said.

[Land plots] are sold at prices set by the Naypyitaw Development Committee. The president, our State Counselor, U Kyaw Tint Swe and so on. The list of people spread on social media is correct, but the measurements of their lands are exaggerated, he said.

He refused to say how much the land sold for and requested that reporters ask the Naypyitaw Development Committee. The Irrawaddy has not been able to contact the officials on the committee.

The spokesperson of the former ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Dr. Nanda Hla Myint, said the acquisition of lands by government officials in Naypyitaw is not a problem because during military rule, generals acquired land permits and car import permits. He added that ministers, deputy ministers and directors-general were given land plots under the USDP government.

The problem is that they talked big. They said the generals and the USDP did this, but that they wouldnt when they assumed office. They said they wouldnt accept these [perks] and take advantage, and that they would only serve the interests of the country. But then they are not as good as their words. They follow in the tradition of their predecessors, said Dr. Nanda Hla Myint.

In 2018, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi bought more than 90 acres of land in the capitals Ottarathiri Township for 700 million kyats (US$444,000) for her Daw Khin Kyi Foundation to open a vocational training school and establish a forest.

The land itself cost 5 million kyats per acre and the land permit cost another 40 kyats per square foot.

The site sits near Raja Thingaha Housing 2 and the Ocean Supercenter shopping complex. Raja Thingaha Housing 1 and 2 were developed by the USDP government for its ministers, deputy ministers, Union-level officials and directors-general.

The new land plots acquired by officials in the current National League for Democracy government are adjacent to the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation site and are worth hundreds of millions of kyats, according to market prices.

In the neighborhood in question, 100 square feet of land usually sells for between 80 million and 100 million kyats (US$57,400 to $71,750) and 150 square feet of land is worth over 200 million kyats, plus another 50 million kyats for a house, according to U Nanda Kyaw, director of the Naypyitaw-based Zayyar real estate agency.

However, any non-governmental organization (NGO) can apply to buy land for 5 million kyats (US$3,588) per acre in Naypyitaw. So far 24 NGOs, including Daw Khin Kyi Foundation and the USDP, have purchased plots in five Naypyitaw townships.

The NGOs that have purchased land include the Yangon City Development Committee, Mandalay City Development Committee, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), Myanmar Fisheries Federation, the Myanmar Red Cross Society and the Myanmar Livestock Federation.

Lands were also sold for the USDP Headquarters and the Myanmar War Veterans Organization, at 5 million kyats per acre, said U Zaw Htay.

He added that more plots are now being reclaimed to sell to ministers who have not yet acquired land.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

You may also like these stories:

All NLD Members of Mandalay Cabinet to Run in Myanmars General Election: Minister

Election Authorities Prepare for Voting in Myanmars Roughest War Zone
Just 1.5% of senior leadership roles and filled by Black employees, according to new figures. (Getty)

Under 2% of top management roles in the UK are held by Black members of staff, according to new figures.

Just 1.5% of senior leadership roles and filled by Black employees, an increase of just 0.1% since 2014 the updated figures from Business in the Communitys 2014 report Race at the Top found.

There is also extremely low representation in public leadership roles as just 1% of journalists, senior civil servants, judges, academics and the police force are black, the figure remaining static since 2014.

The report also found that 62% of charity boards are all-White.

There has been little success in addressing the lack of diverse representation in senior leadership roles over the past decade, the report said.

There has been some improvement in diversity in politics, according to the report, as the number of Black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) MPs has risen to 65, from 27 in 2010. However, there are no Black Cabinet ministers.

READ MORE: 'Bias in recruitment is not just about out-and-out racism or misogyny'

Sandra Kerr CBE, race director at Business in the Community, said: 25 years on from the Business in the Communitys Race Equality campaign being launched, it is clear that Black people continue to be under-represented at a senior level.

This lack of diverse leadership has a direct impact on decision-making. This is more crucial than ever when the evidence shows that BAME people continue to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Black livelihoods matter and employers need to take urgent action to ensure that their organisation is inclusive and a place where people of any ethnic background can thrive and succeed.

The figures come as the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May has sparked protests around the world, bringing renewed focus to the wider inequalities facing BAME people across the globe.

Elevating, celebrating, and amplifying the visibility and voices of people of colour from across the globe is more important than ever.

Story continues

The 2020 EMpower ethnic minority executives ranking celebrates senior people of colour who are leading by example and removing barriers on the pathway to success for ethnic minority employees around the world.

READ MORE: Black and ethnic minority workers hit hardest by coronavirus job losses

The list is topped by Mauro Gregorio who leads one of the most diversified business units at science company Dow (DOW) and is active in education programmes for students of colour and diverse ethnic backgrounds, ranging from engaging with African American universities to providing scholarship and fundraising for community colleges.

At number two on the list is Kanya King, founder of the MOBO awards, followed by Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte Global and the first Indian-born CEO to lead a Big Four accounting firm.




Haiti - FLASH : The Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine partially destroyed by fire





The Dean's Office of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (FAMV) of the State University of Haiti (UEH) informs that on the night from June 20 to 21, 2020 at around 1:00 am a fire of unknown origin ravaged part of the Faculty's premises.



According to Jocelyn Louissaint, Dean of the FAMV, the part ravaged by flames housed the offices of professors and department directors, the photocopy service, the IT unit, the transport service, the Frantz Pierre-Louis auditorium and the Erick National Herbarium Leonard Ekmann.



The firefighters of Tabarre fought the flames until 9:00 am to limit the spread and control the incident.



The Dean's Office emphasizes that the damage are very significant and, for the moment, it is impossible to provide an exact assessment of the losses. More than thirty offices of professors and department heads, computers and other equipment, filing cabinets containing administrative files and others were totally destroyed



The firefighters of Tabarre were on the site until 9 am to limit the damage which are still enormous. One are not yet able to provide an accurate estimate of the losses.



The cause of the fire remains unknown at the moment, the Dean rules out the cause of a short circuit. The Faculty was without electricity before the incident.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















The coronavirus pandemic has claimed several lives and infected lakhs across the globe. People are battling with the unseen virus on a daily basis, however, the trail of destruction left behind by Covid outbreak is bound to become a thing of past as soon as it is cured completely.

To ensure that the future generations have an access to details on Covid, a teacher-cum-librarian Rajesh Kumar Singh has been on a demanding task of collecting Covid-related local and global news articles, photographs, information on the changes in human lives, society, religious practices and so on.

Kumar, a teacher at Government High School in Ekma town of Saran, started the work on his collection in February this year with an objective to prepare the chronology and preserve various aspects of the disease, geographically and sector-wise. So far, he has collected around 250 articles and photographs from different newspapers.

I started collecting any significant article, rare pictures that I come across to prepare ready made study material for my students in future. We dont know when will coronavirus become a part of textbook. Till then, the corona album will be a repository, said Kumar.

Flipping through the pages of his still incomplete album, one can see medical staff wearing PPE kit, origin of new words, reopening of classroom in China, fogging of public places and historic closure of religious places among other things.

This is not Kumars first attempt of preserving present for future.

Kumar is involved in this task since 1995 and possess more than 100 albums on 60 different subjects. Some of the prominent ones are Bihar floods, Sonepur cattle fair, 15-year working period of chief minister Nitish Kumar and Olympics.

Kumar, also has a collection of more than hundred old coins. After pursing course in Numismatics (study or collection of coins, banknotes, and medals) , he started recognising rarity of the coins.

I have a 5 coin issued in 1995 to commemorate Tamil philosopher and poet St. Thiruvalluvar. Another rare coin is a 2 coin inscribed All life is Yoga issued in 1998 to commemorate great philosopher Aurobindo Ghosh, he said.

Now, he wishes to digitalise his work. Kumar said, As we have studied the history preserved by our ancestors. We should also pass on our history, art and culture to the younger generations. I have done my part. If my work can be digitalised, my efforts will be paid off.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The country had closed its airspace for international flights on March 21 for two weeks and then extended the suspension several times as the COVID-19 situation grew worse in the country, reports The Express Tribune.

Islamabad, June 22 (IANS) Pakistan has partially resumed international flights y to bring back more citizens stranded in other countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, over three months after they were suspended as part of the countrys efforts to stem the spread of the virus.

On Sunday, the government has reopened 25 per cent of the country's airspace so that the citizens stuck abroad could return.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has vowed that the government would take every possible measure to facilitate the citizens returning to the country after losing their overseas employment because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Overseas workers have suffered the most in this pandemic but have shown great courage and made us proud," he tweetd on Sunday.

Speaking to a private TV channel, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari said the initiative to partially reopen the airspace was taken on the instructions of Khan as the government was concerned about the large number of Pakistani labourers stuck abroad, particularly in Gulf countries.

The federal government had unveiled a new policy on June 16 under which it announced its decision to reopen 25 per cent of its airspace after June 20.

Under the policy, around 40,000 to 45,000 Pakistanis will return to the country every week and all stranded citizens will be home in a month, said The Express Tribune report.

Only symptomatic passengers will be tested and if found they positive, they will be quarantined at the facilities provided by the government.

However, it will be mandatory for every passenger to quarantine themselves for 14 days at home and they will have to submit this in writing at the airport.

Around 70 per cent of the flights have been dedicated for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Malaysia where Pakistani labourers were stranded.

--IANS

ksk/
Boney M might have focused on his credentials as a 'love machine', but the new trailer for The King's Man is focusing instead on Grigori Rasputin's homicidal tendencies.

A new clip for the Kingsman prequel has dropped, in which the origins of the independent intelligence agency will be explored, pitting the gentlemen spies against the Russian puppet-master.

Rhys Ifans' growling chaos-monger is front and centre, performing some impressive dance-based fighting moves, as he locks horns with Ralph Fiennes Duke of Oxford, founding member of the secret society.

Rhys Ifans in The King's Man (Credit: 20th Century Studios)

And for an actor better known for his more nuanced and cerebral performances, Fiennes has been transformed into a paid-up action hero by director Matthew Vaughn, also helmsman of the previous two Kingsman movies.

Per the movie's official synopsis: As a collection of history's worst tyrants and criminal masterminds gather to plot a war to wipe out millions, one man and his protege must race against time to stop them.

Read more: Jon Favreau updates on The Mandalorian season two

Harris Dickinson plays the protege Conrad, alongside a sturdy cast including Gemma Arterton, Djimon Hounsou, Tom Hollander, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Stanley Tucci and Daniel Bruhl.

A new poster for The King's Man. (20th Century Studios)

Bruhl plays Felix Yusupov, incidentally, the Russian prince who assassinated Rasputin, so there's a possible insight into the plot here too.

Read more: Bride of Frankenstein will be a #MeToo era reboot

The movie is set to land on 16 September in the UK.
Advertisement

She trained as a ballet dancer when she was a child and has continued to use the discipline as a work-out tool for her own fitness regime.

And on Sunday, Sarah Jessica Parker showed off her incredible physique as she enjoyed a beach day at the Hamptons in New York, with her husband of 23-years, Matthew Broderick, 58.

The 55-year-old actress looked simply stunning in a black swimsuit, displaying her enviably toned legs and tanned body as she walked along the sand, sporting her own range of sunglasses, SJP x Sunglass Hut Eyewear.

Sex and the fittie: Sarah Jessica Parker, 55, showed off her incredible physique as she enjoyed a beach day with husband Matthew Broderick on Sunday at The Hamptons

The Sex and the City star - who has previously spoken about her love of doing yoga - looked sensational with a white shirt tied around her trim waist, as she laid down to enjoy reading a book.

Sarah Jessica and husband Matthew appeared to be in high spirits as she laid out on a towel while he relaxed in a deck chair.

The Ferris Bueller's Day Off actor opted for a beige T-shirt and floral swim shorts for the day out on Father's Day.

Happy days: Sarah Jessica beamed with a smile as she enjoyed a relaxing day off

Tanned and toned: The Sex and the City star looked like a bronzed Goddess as she enjoyed her beach day out

Beautiful: The 55-year-old actress stunned in a black swimsuit, displaying her enviably toned legs as she walked along the sand

Crunch: At one stage, it looked as though the SATC star was engaging in a sit-up as she read her book on the beach

Strong: The actress trained as a ballet dancer when she was a child and has long been an advocate for the discipline

Ballet: The Divorce star trained as a ballet dancer as a child and is said to still use the discipline as part of her fitness regime

The couple share children James, 17, and 11-year-old twins Tabitha and Marion.

During the beach day, the actress the actress was reading The Margot Affair, the gripping debut novel from Sanae Lemoine.

The popular book depicts a story of a secret daughter of a French politician, and how a famous actress drops the startling revelation that shatters her family.

Intriguing: The actress was reading The Margot Affair, the gripping debut novel from Sanae Lemoine

Beach life: SJP was seen holding her book as she walked along the sand in the Hamptons

The actress is known for her lifelong passion for reading which lead her to being an honorary chair of the American Library Association.

She also has her own imprint at publishing house Hogarth, which she launched with the release of Fatima Farheen Mirzas debut novel.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jessica, who has enjoyed success recently with her HBO show success, has previously played down her fitness regime in interviews.

She said previously: 'I work out for a sum total of 22 minutes, because that's all I can bear.'

Incredible scenes: Sarah Jessica wowed in a black swimsuit on Sunday in New York

Matthew Broderick's Day Off: The actor appeared to be in high spirits on Father's Day

23 years strong: The married couple appeared to be sharing a few laughs together

In another interview, SJP is quoted as saying: 'I walk a lot. I think walking is great,' and admitted that she uses a Fitbit.

The actress has said that achieves her daily 10,000 steps goal by walking her kids to school, running errands and hoofing it to meetings. 'I also live in a house with four flights of stairs,' she said.

Meanwhile, the actress and entrepreneur recently added a new rose wine to her wine collection that she has in partnership with with Invivo & Co.

Released in time for summer, her new premium rose is titled Invivo X, SJP and comes from the South of France.

Off duty: The duo appeared to be without their three children for the day trip out
Defence minister says very large number of people held over June11 raid that killed at least 10 troops.

Ivory Coast says it has arrested the leader of an armed group that last week carried out a deadly attack on a military post near the border with Burkina Faso.

The commander of the team who led the action was taken yesterday, Minister of Defence Hamed Bakayoko said on Monday at a military camp in the main city of Abidjan.

We will go further as the investigation progresses. We will know who he was in contact with, who is behind it, said Bakayoko without identifying the individual or giving further details about the capture.

His comments came during a speech honouring the victims of the pre-dawn June 11 attack, when at least 10 soldiers were killed and six others wounded after dozens of fighters assaulted the post at Kafolo, on the northeastern border with Burkina Faso.

Other sources put the death toll at 12, comprising 11 soldiers and a gendarme, and described the raid as a reprisal for a crackdown on armed groups.

Bakayoko said the authorities had carried out a very large (number) of arrests of people directly involved in the attack, adding that these arrests came thanks to photos retrieved from mobile phones.





The assault was the deadliest carried out in the country since gunmen from al-Qaedas North African branch stormed the beach resort of Grand Bassam in March 2016, killing at least 19 people.

On June 18, the Ivorian army said it had carried out a sweep in the Kafolo area and in the neighbouring Comoe National Park.

Troops picked up 27 people, destroyed logistical materiel and seized communications equipment, it said.

Ivory Coast shares a 550km (340 miles) border with Burkina Faso, one of the countries that have been severely affected by a worsening security situation in the Sahel

A 2012 separatist movement in Mali sparked a multilayered conflict that has spilled across the borders of Niger and Burkina Faso in recent years. The escalating violence involves an amorphous array of al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated groups and ethnic armed groups, as well as state, regional and international forces.

Security analysts have long worried the violence would also spread into the coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea, with fighters using Burkina Faso as a launching point to attack neighbours Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo and Ghana.
Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

As COVID-19 continues to spread unabated through Texas, many nearby county officials are implementing mask requirements for employees and shoppers in retail stores. The mandates, however, have been met with both praise and outrage.

Fort Bend County Judge KP George is currently soliciting input from county residents through a new online survey to gauge whether or not residents support mask requirements.
The Indian Army has tweeted a video paying tributes to the soldiers of the Bihar Regiment and appeared to take a dig at China after last weeks violent skirmish at Galwan Valley in Ladakh.

The tweet along with a video on Saturday came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi saluted the 20 soldiers of the Bihar Regiment who were killed by Chinese troops in Galwan Valley last Monday.

Also read: The Galwan Valley face-off explained through 17 news reports

The Saga of #DhruvaWarriors and The Lions of #BiharRegiment. Born to fight. They are not the bats. They are the Batman. After every #Monday, there will be a #Tuesday. Bajrang Bali Ki Jai, the Northern Command tweeted.

Monday seems like a reference to the day the 20 soldiers of Bihar Regiment were killed by Chinas Peoples Liberation Army and Jai Bajrang Bali or Victory to Bajrang Bali is its war cry.

The nearly two-minute video talks about the difficult missions taken by the infantry regiment from 1857 to 1999, when Bihar Regiments 1st battalion captured a strategic point in Kargil from the Pakistani army.

It was the same month, 21 years ago. Bihar Regiment gave a bloody nose to the Kargil intruders. They were on heights too and were they prepared. They went with guts and came back with glory, Major Akhil Pratap is heard saying in the video.

Its not the size of the dog in the fight. Its the size of the fight in the dog. Fine, some days, you get the bear and other days the bear gets you. But its Monday buddy, there will be a Tuesday, he says.

The video also pays tribute to Colonel Santosh Babu, the commanding officer of 16 Bihar Regiment, who was among the 20 soldiers killed in the hours-long brutal hand-to-hand combat late on June 15.

The Bihar Regiment, which was formed by the British in 1941, has been a part of all the major wars fought by the Indian Army after Independence.
The owner-operators of McDonalds locations across North Alabama are looking to hire about 750 employees this summer, according to the company.

The fast-food giant says that new employees are now being trained on 50 new safety procedures to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

To get started with the application process locally, visit the website. McDonalds says it has introduced a contact-free application process in which potential hires interact with personal job assistants online, with the option to text specific restaurants to get applications started.

The fast-food chain does not specify which restaurants are hiring.

Overall, McDonalds looks to hire 4,000 employees across the multi-state Tennessee Valley region, and an estimated 260,000 nationally, this summer.

Employees can also participate in the Archways to Opportunity program, which provides eligible restaurant employees a chance to earn a high school diploma, receive upfront college tuition assistance, access free education advising services and learn English as a second language. Full-time restaurant managers and crew members can receive up to $3,000 in college tuition assistance while part-time staff can receive up to $2,500. Just last year, 111 employees across locally-owned North Alabama restaurants were awarded over $243,000 in college tuition.
Quavo, a Wilmington, Delaware-based provider of a software platform that resolves fraud and disputes in financial transactions, received a multi-million-dollar investment from revenue-based financing firm Decathlon Capital.

The company will use the funding to enhance its software as a service platforms and expand its sales and marketing capacity.

Founded in 2016 and led by CEO Richard Jefferson and CFO Dan Penne, Quavo is a technology-enabled services company focused on financial services. It offers managed solutions for payment disputes and Pega implementation services for customer services, onboarding and case management. The company directly addresses the estimated 150 billion card transactions that occur each year in the U.S., of which approximately 110 million are disputed. That number of card transactions continues to climb as recurring payments, ecommerce and digital transactions surge.

FinSMEs

23/06/2020
Three quarters of Britons want Boris Johnson and senior ministers to take a pay cut in solidarity with millions of workers hammered by coronavirus lockdown.

A poll for MailOnline found some 75 per cent say the PM should follow the example of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has voluntarily slashed his salary by 10 per cent - around 15,000 a year.

Just 13 per cent said the move was not necessary, according to the survey by Redfield and Wilton Strategies.

Fears are growing about the impact of lockdown on the economy, with the UK facing he worst recession in 300 years and millions of jobs set to go.

Official figures show public debt is bigger than GDP for the first time in 57 years, after the government borrowed an eye-watering 55billion in May.

Three quarters of Britons want Boris Johnson and senior ministers to take a pay cut in solidarity with millions of workers hammered by coronavirus lockdown

Mr Khan declared last week that he is trimming his 152,000 salary by 10 per cent in recognition of the 500million hole in London's finances caused by coronavirus.

The mayor's 15 direct political appointments will also have pay freezes.

The step emulates politicians in New Zealand, who have also taken a temporary cut.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak dodged questions last month over whether ministers should take a temporary pay reduction in solidarity with millions of workers on furlough, many of whose jobs might never return.

Downing Street has also ducked when asked whether the PM intends to give up some of his pay. David Cameron reduced ministerial salaries by 5 per cent and froze them when he came to power in the wake of the credit crunch in 2010.

Mr Khan has been heavily criticised for slow progress in getting transport services in the capital to full levels, with images of workers packed in to carriages.

He has threatened cuts to police, fire services and the Tube unless the government bails the capital out.

The government has already offered a 1.6billion injection to shore up Transport for London, while slamming the 'pre-existing poor condition' of its finances.

But Mr Khan said the GLA, in common with other authorities across the country, faces a 493million budget shortfall over the next two years, due to loss of business rates and council tax income from coronavirus.

There have also been costs to 'support Londoners during the pandemic', he insisted.

A poll for MailOnline found some 75 per cent said the PM (pictured on a visit to a school in Hemel Hempstead yesterday) should follow the example of London Mayor
Ramallah, June 22 : Palestinian officials warned of the consequences of Israel's annexation plans on the chances of peace in the Middle East.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday that "Israel's plans to annex parts of the West Bank will not be allowed to pass", Xinhua news agency reported.

He stressed that the Palestinian leadership would never accept an alternative to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, stressing that the Palestinian position and upcoming steps will be based on international laws and legitimacy resolutions.

Fatah party's Central Committee Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub said that Palestinians are ready to "move to another step of resistance if necessary." "The Palestinian people will not suffer alone, nor die alone if Israel goes ahead with the unilateral annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank," said Rajoub.

He noted that Fatah movement has called on Palestinians to participate in a popular demonstration on Monday in Jericho, a West Bank city at risk of annexation by Israel.

Rajoub told reporters that representatives of the international community, including United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, will attend the activity on Monday and address the masses.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously set July 1 as the date to begin the annexation plan and apply Israeli civil law on Israeli settlements built in the West Bank. However, Netanyahu has yet to announce details for the move.

The annexation plan is part of US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan, so-called "Deal of the Century" that was revealed earlier this year.

A joint US-Israeli team is working on the maps that will determine the demarcation of areas to be annexed by Israel, a move that has been strongly criticized by the international community.

Israel captured the West Bank territories during the 1967 Middle East war. According to UN resolutions, Israeli settlement activity is considered illegal.
Advertisement

Hundreds of mourners lined up for hours to pay their respects to Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer, during a public viewing at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church on Monday.

Pallbearers carried Brooks' gold-colored coffin into the church, which was the Rev Martin Luther King Jr's congregation, about an hour before the viewing began at 3pm.

Minutes later Brooks' widow, Tomika Miller, arrived surrounded by loved ones who escorted her in as she appeared to wipe away a tear.

Emblazoned on Miller's customized white dress was a photo of her with Brooks. Inside the church, Brooks' body was put on display wearing a pristine white tuxedo with gold accents.

Miller was among the first to approach the casket, placing a hand on Brooks' chest as she gazed down at him.

Tomika Miller, the widow of Rayshard Brooks, places her hand on his chest during a public viewing at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday afternoon

Brooks, who was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer, is seen on display during the public viewing

Miller arrived surrounded by loved ones who escorted her into the church

Emblazoned on Miller's white dress was a photo of her with Brooks surrounded by a gold frame

The viewing is being held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was the Rev Martin Luther King Jr's congregation. Pallbearers are seen bringing Brooks' body into the sanctuary in a gold casket

A long line of people is seen outside Ebenezer ahead of the public viewing on Monday

The hearse had a placard with a picture of Brooks and next to his name was written: 'KILLED in Atlanta, Georgia 2020'

Officer Garrett Rolfe fatally shot Brooks in the back after Brooks fired a Taser in his direction while running away after a struggle with officers outside a Wendy's fast food restaurant on June 12. Rolfe, 27, is white. Brooks, 27, was Black.

The shooting caught on video happened against the backdrop of nationwide unrest following the death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into his neck.

Demonstrations have called for a rethinking of policing and an examination of racism in the United States.

Brooks' body arrived at the viewing in a black hearse with a placard on the side bearing a photo of him and the words: 'KILLED in Atlanta, Georgia 2020.'

The casket was carried into the church by six pallbearers as crowds gathered outside looked on.

Latoia Spikes, who was the first in a line that started forming before noon, told Reuters she wanted to be in attendance to show respect for Brooks, who she believed was unfairly gunned down in his encounter with Atlanta police.

'It's important to me because this is history,' she said, while using a hand fan to fend off the heat on a hot summer day.

'I want to honor him and show respect for him and his family.'

A private funeral, paid for by filmmaker Tyler Perry, will be held for Brooks at Ebenezer on Tuesday.

Ebenezer's Senior Pastor Rev Raphael G Warnock said: 'Rayshard was not a member of our church but he, and his loved ones, are a part of our family.

'We seek to embrace them, comfort them and walk beside them in the days ahead.'

Miller donned an all-white ensemble complete with a large hat for Monday's viewing, where she was surrounded by family

The Rev Raphael G Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer, embraces Miller during the viewing. 'Rayshard was not a member of our church but he, and his loved ones, are a part of our family,' Warnock said

Miller is consoled by a family member after stopping by Brooks' open casket at the start of the viewing

A family with a young girl pay their respects during the public viewing

Just under an hour before the viewing began at 3pm, a gold-colored coffin carrying Brooks' body arrived at the church

Men wearing protective face masks carry Brooks' body into the sanctuary

Mourners began lining up outside the church on Monday morning, many wearing masks due to coronavirus concerns

Metal barricades were set up outside Ebenezer Baptist Church in anticipation of large crowds

A mourner wears a mask with a quote from the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, who presided over Ebenezer

Demonstrators gathered outside the viewing with signs demanding justice

Brooks was the latest in a long line of African Americans whose fatal encounters with law enforcement have been documented on video.

Officers responding to complaints of a car blocking the Wendy's drive-thru lane found Brooks asleep in the car. Police body-camera video showed Brooks and officers having a calm and respectful conversation for more than 40 minutes thereafter.

After conducting field sobriety tests, Rolfe told Brooks he'd had 'too much to drink to be driving'. Brooks resisted being handcuffed, and he and the two officers wrestled on the ground. Brooks grabbed one of their Tasers and fired it in their direction as he ran away.

An autopsy found he was shot twice in the back.

Rolfe was fired and another officer, 26-year-old Devin Brosnan, was placed on desk duty following the shooting. Police Chief Erika Shields stepped down less than 24 hours after Brooks died.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced 11 charges against Rolfe, including felony murder. Brosnan, who the prosecutor said stood on Brooks' shoulder as he struggled for his life, is charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath.

Lawyers for both men said their clients' actions were justified.

Officer Garrett Rolfe fatally shot Brooks in the back after Brooks fired a Taser in his direction while running away after a struggle with officers outside a Wendy's fast food restaurant on June 12. Brooks (right) is seen speaking to Rolfe (left) moments before the fatal confrontation on body camera footage

Renault Verona cleans up the site of the Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta after it was burned in response to Brooks' death

Atlanta Police officers Garrett Rolfe (left) and Devin Brosnan (right) are seen in their mugshots. Rolfe, who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks in the back after the fleeing man pointed a stun gun in his direction, was charged with felony murder and 10 other charges. Rolfe was fired after the shooting. Authorities have charged Brosnan with four counts, including aggravated assault in the shooting death of Brooks

Interim police Chief Rodney Bryant has said he was surprised Howard brought charges so quickly, before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had finished looking into the shooting. The GBI said in a tweet after Howard announced the charges that the agency was not consulted on the charges.

Both Rolfe and Brosnan turned themselves in Thursday. Brosnan was released on bond. A magistrate judge on Friday denied bond for Rolfe, citing the nature of the charges, after the former officer waived his initial court appearance. A bond hearing in superior court is scheduled for Tuesday.

Brooks' eulogy Tuesday is to be delivered by the Rev Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist and a Democrat running for US Senate.

A preview quote from the eulogy was released Monday: 'Rayshard Brooks wasn't just running from the police. He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people. A system that doesn't give ordinary people who've made mistakes a second chance, a real shot at redemption.'
Boris Johnson is set to announce 'expansion of social bubbles' on Tuesday allowing families to reunite

Advertisement

Millions of grandparents may get to squeeze their grandchildren again soon as Boris Johnson is set to announce the expansion of household bubbles on Tuesday.

Current guidelines allow for groups of up to six to meet in the open air, while staying over two meters apart. Only those living together, or who have chosen to expand their 'support bubble' to include one other nominated person from another household, can touch or be closer than two meters.

This has caused tough choices for parents forced to decide which grandparent their children can visit. However this could soon be alleviated if an eased policy is approved, such as an unlimited merging of two households within a bubble.

A senior government source told The Telegraph: 'There will be an expansion of social bubbles, but the details are still being finalised.'

Another possibility could be to allow households to merge with a limited number of people from more than two different households, to ensure families are not forced to choose which set of grandparents get their hugs.

Another government source told The Telegraph: 'The question with bubbles has always been how you help families reunite to the maximum possible extent without too much risk. The scientists' main concern has always been infections spreading from one household to another, which is why this is one of the more difficult decisions we have to take.'

Millions of grandparents may get to squeeze their grandchildren tight again soon as Boris Johnson is set to announce the expansion of household bubbles on Tuesday

Tuesday's announcement is expected to be another step towards the eventual easing of lockdown, with pubs and restaurants also expected to reopen by July 4.

Speaking yesterday Boris Johnson insisted coronavirus is 'increasingly under control' as he prepares to unveil a new 'one metre plus' rule within days and give Britons the green light for holidays and haircuts.

The PM said there is 'not much more to wait now' for movement on lockdown as he looks certain to halve the social distance in a crunch speech on Tuesday - with the caveat that other precautions such as face masks must play a bigger role.

He stressed he is 'sticking like glue' to the roadmap that from July 4 will permit hairdressers in England to roll up the shutters.

The UK holiday season is also expected to start within a fortnight when Mr Johnson gives permission for hotels and vacation parks to reopen.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing another huge package of tax cuts and spending to revive UK plc after lockdown. VAT is set to be slashed as part of efforts to prop up struggling businesses and stave off mass unemployment.

Another 43 victims of the coronavirus were confirmed across the UK on Sunday, taking the total number of people to have died so far to 42,632

Sun-seekers gathered outside the Ship Inn in Folkestone, Kent on Sunday as England prepares for lockdown rules to be eased

Speaking in No10 on Sunday, Mr Johnson said: 'The disease is increasingly under control and I just want people to reflect on that important fact.

'It's going down, we are getting it down. 'So, of course, as we make that progress it will be possible to open up more and you will be hearing more about what we want to do with not just non-essential retail but with the hospitality sector from July 4 and we're sticking absolutely like glue to the road map to the plan that I set out on May 10.

'But it's very important we don't lose our vice-like grip on the disease; we've got to keep it on the floor where we've got it.

'On the progress on social distancing, watch this space and you won't have much more to wait now. You'll certainly be hearing more this week.'

In other coronavirus developments:

Another 43 victims of the coronavirus were confirmed across the UK on Sunday, taking the total number of people to have died so far to 42,632.

The daily addition is higher than last Sunday - when the 36 recorded fatalities were the fewest since the Sunday before lockdown, March 22.

But Britain's downward trend is continuing and there have now been five days in June on which fewer than 100 deaths have been counted, after none in April or May.

Scotland has recorded no new deaths from the disease for the fifth day this month - although figures are typically lower at weekends due to delays in reporting;

Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested that drinkers will need to register to go to pubs and order using an app when they reopen from July 4;

Mr Hancock has renewed his attack on Apple for blocking the failed NHS version of the contact tracing app, and refused to give a date for when the new 'hybrid' software will be up and running;

Unions have warned the employment market is on 'red alert' and the UK could be facing a 1930s-style wave of joblessness;

The Government is planning new laws to protect British companies hit by the pandemic from takeovers by foreign companies;

A Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered the chaos within the Government's 'test and trace' programme;

It has emerged that two rival vaccines being developed by British universities could be used together to provide lasting immunity to coronavirus.

Large groups gather in Liverpool city centre to drink takeaway alcohol on Sunday afternoon, sitting on the pavements

People were enjoying themselves on the promenade in Folkestone in Kent yesterday while the restrictions are still place

Thirsty Britons queue for takeaway drinks at the Ship Inn in Folksestone on another sunny Sunday afternoon

People were also out drinking in Liverpool City centre on Sunday as the summer weather continued to brighten spirits

Speaking in No10 on Sunday, Boris Johnson said: 'The disease is increasingly under control and I just want people to reflect on that important fact.'

Bournemouth beach was busy on Sunday ahead of lockdown easing as people took advantage of the warm weather

People meet up in King's Cross, London, yesterday, where a number of bars have already opened offering continental-style outdoor seating

This next phase of lockdown loosening will also permit hairdressers to roll up the shutters on July 4  subject to the wearing of face masks - in a boost for thousands of barbers and millions of shaggy-haired Britons in need of a trim. Pictured: Gatsby and Miller salon in Amersham demonstrates how it will operates when clear to reopen

Boris Johnson practices COVID-19 social distancing with schoolchildren on a visit to Bovingdon Primary Academy in Hemel Hempstead, on Friday

The reproduction rate - the average number of people each Covid-19 patient infects - is still between 0.7 and 0.9 across the UK, meaning the virus is firmly in retreat. Separate data released for the first time also claimed the UK's current growth rate - how the number of new daily cases is changing day-by-day - could be as low as minus 4 per cent. If the rate becomes greater than zero, the disease could once again spiral out of control

How could the 'one metre plus' rule work? An announcement of the two-metre social distancing rule is expected to be relaxed this week. UK Hospitality has suggested that halving the minimum gap could double the capacity of businesses to operate, while a loosening will also be welcomed by aviation and the tourism industry. But the government has made clear that other precautions will be needed, with inside spaces required to be well ventilated and thoroughly cleaned. Although few hard details are known, here is how the new arrangements could work in difference settings. PUBS Drinkers would be expected to give their contact details in a register, so that they can be traced if it emerges later that someone infected was in the venue. Customers could be advised to order using an app, stand as far apart as possible, face away from each other where they can, and prefer outside spaces. RESTAURANTS Tables could be closer together than two metres as long as people can face away from each other, and there may be advice for 'side-sitting' when people are dining together. Rules could be slacker for those who dine outside. Disposable cutlery might be needed in many restaurants, and there will be thorough cleaning in between guests. Booking is likely to be compulsory in formal settings. TRAINS AND PLANES Face coverings have already been made compulsory on public transport, with passengers who break the rules risking fines. Reducing the minimum distance will increase the potential for trains, Tube and buses to run at higher capacity - allowing more people to go back to work. Airlines will also benefit from lowering the spacing requirement, which they had warned could make it economically impossible to run flights. Face coverings will again be relied on to help reduce the risk of transmission, along with temperature checks. There is the possibility that some seating could be reconfigured to limit how many people face each other, and screens could also be deployed. SHOPS Perspex screens, face coverings and 'quarantine' for goods handled by customers are already being used to reduce the potential for spread. But cutting the social distancing will benefit smaller shops in particular, and help boost footfall. More people will be allowed in shops at once. It is also possible that browsing could be time limited to curb the length of exposure - which along with distance is a key component in spreading the virus. Advertisement

As the rate of infection continues to wane, scientists have rubber-stamped the reopening salons as safe, in a change of tack cheered by the nation's 30,000 hairdressers.

'There'll be a big rush to get an appointment when this is formally announced,' a Whitehall source told the Sun, while cautioning that it will not herald a return to 'normal' as face coverings will be mandatory.

The move comes after Britain reported 128 new coronavirus death on Saturday, the lowest Saturday figure since lockdown was imposed in March, bringing the total to 42,589.

The UK's threat level was downgraded on Friday after scientists confirmed that the epidemic is shrinking by four per cent every day, and the reproduction R rate remained below one. Britain can also now test everyone showing symptoms.

As ministers' attention turns from wrestling down the virus to rescuing the economy, they are poised to revise the two-metre rule down to 'one-metre-plus'.

The halving permits people to keep just one metre apart as long as they take precautions such as meeting outside and with a face covering, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Johnson's relaxation of the draconian restrictions will provide a lifeline to the beleaguered holiday industry, which will open for business also on July 4 - America's Independence Day.

But it is understood that while hotels and bed and breakfasts will be allowed to open then, tourist sites with shared facilities, such as campsites, will have to wait longer before being given the green light.

The encouraging signs have fed a growing clamour from the tourism industry for a clear date from which it can start accepting bookings again  and clear guidance about how it will have to operate.

Millions of families are desperately waiting to find out whether they will be able to enjoy a summer holiday after spending three months in lockdown, while holiday bosses say that the limbo has cost them billions of pounds in lost revenue.

Ministers are also negotiating 'air bridges' with up ten countries, including France and Spain, to allow Britons to go abroad without being subject to the Government's controversial 14-day quarantine when they return.

A scheme to test arrivals at airports for the virus is also being piloted, which could also help end blanket restrictions.

Mr Hancock insisted that the government is 'on plan' to get more sectors of the economy up and running on July 4.

But he made clear that there is little chance of bars and restaurants getting back to business as usual any time soon.

Asked on Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme whether drinkers will need to register before going to the pub, and order using an app, Mr Hancock said: 'That is the sort of thing that we are looking at for how do you make it safe to open things... I wouldn't rule it out.'

The step - previously taken in countries such as New Zealand - would allow for easier tracing of customers if someone who went to the venue is found to have been infected.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said Labour would support the end of the two-metre rule if other safety measures are put in place.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'Yes, under certain circumstances.

'But we also need to see a greater use of face masks, I would've thought.

'As I've said, certain staff, workers who are very public-facing in their day-to-day action, perhaps greater use of face shielding, let's get testing and tracing up and running.'

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, warned the UK could be facing a situation 'as bad as the 1930s if we don't get our act together' over the continuing coronavirus threat.

She told Sky News's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'This is not the time to take the foot off the pedal... What we've got to do is make sure that we avoid the cost of long- term unemployment.

'Perhaps we shouldn't just be looking at the 1980s as a situation that we want to avoid, and need to invest in to avoid, but this could be as bad as the 1930s if we don't get our act together and come together.

'We want to see the Government setting up national councils. This should be a national effort for recovery and reconstruction of this country to build back better, fairer, greener economy that delivers good jobs for people.'

Too many firms, 'big high-profile names', have not published their risk assessments she said, adding: 'That test, trace, isolate scheme where is it? We need it up and running, that's absolutely critical to the infrastructure to ensure that people are safe.'

She said teaching and education unions had been arguing for catch-up schemes over the summer, adding: 'It would be great to see the Government pay attention to some of those practical ideas... It's common sense that we should be putting kids first and I know that education unions are committed to that.'

Crowds of people drank outside a bar in Battersea, London, as pubs and bars across the country served takeaway pints to eager revellers

VAT 'set to be slashed' to kickstart the economy Rishi Sunak looks increasingly certain to slash VAT in a bid to kickstart the economy amid coronavirus meltdown. Amid fears many businesses face going bust due to the fallout from lockdown, the Chancellor has ordered officials to draw up options for cutting the sales tax in the coming months. The move could be a boost to shops, which were forced to close for months as part of the draconian restrictions to combat the pandemic. Although there was a surge when non-essential retailers were allowed to reopen last Monday, trade is still running at just 40 per cent of normal levels, according to the Sunday Times. The country is facing the worst recession for 300 years with 1980s levels of unemployment. VAT was reduced in the aftermath of the Credit Crunch, and there are growing signs that the headline rate could be lowered from the current 20 per cent to 17 per cent or even 15 per cent. That would cost the Treasury billions and drive up public debt even further, but give businesses more headroom to offer discounts and shore up their finances. Advertisement

The move towards opening up tourism comes as Mr Sunak draws up a package of measures to boost the wider economy, potentially including a cut to VAT, changes to National Insurance and tax perks for developers to encourage a house-building boom.

He said yesterday that Ministers would announce within days the results of a review into the two-metre rule, which would 'make an enormous difference' to businesses 'keen to see a change'.

Many Tory backbenchers are urging Downing Street to move swiftly to open up the British tourist industry.

Former Environment Minister Owen Paterson told this newspaper: 'To have any hope of saving this summer season for our tourist industry, the Government must announce this week what the arrangements will be for reopening on July 4.

'The tourism industry makes its money in the summer to get through the winter and we're nearly halfway through that summer season already.

'Ministers can't leave our holiday parks, hotels and pubs in the dark any longer.

'The Government must say this week that there will be a reduction in the social distancing guidance to one metre. Everything depends on that.

People might need to register for pubs People might need to register before going to the pub and order drinks using an app, Matt Hancock said Sunday. The Health Secretary confirmed the options are being considered as ways to make it 'safe' to reopen the hospitality industry. Mr Hancock insisted that the government is 'on plan' to get more sectors of the economy up and running on July 4. Boris Johnson is expected to announce this week that the two-metre social distancing rule is being halved. But he made clear that there is little chance of bars and restaurants getting back to business as usual any time soon. Asked on Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme whether drinkers will need to register before going to the pub, and order using an app, Mr Hancock said: 'That is the sort of thing that we are looking at for how do you make it safe to open things... I wouldn't rule it out.' The step - previously taken in countries such as New Zealand - would allow for easier tracing of customers if someone who went to the venue is found to have been infected. Advertisement

'People are not going to go to restaurants, pubs and holiday parks in our beautiful tourist areas unless we cut the rule to one metre.

'If we don't, large numbers of hospitality businesses just will not survive. The Government must also say that the quarantine arrangements will end on July 4, too.'

Cornish MP Scott Mann, vice-chairman of Westminster's all-party group on hospitality and tourism, said: 'It is vital that we give tourism-based businesses as much time as possible to plan for reopening. I want to give those businesses the best possible opportunity to get some revenue in.'

Patricia Yates, chief executive of Visit Britain, said: 'We need to know what the plan is. The lack of Government guidelines and that uncertainty around the date is causing a great deal of consternation within the industry.'

She said that reopening in July was 'crucial' but warned businesses in some of Britain's best-loved tourism destinations will still struggle even then.

Visit Britain estimates that the tourism industry, which supports three-million jobs, will suffer a 42 billion loss of income this year because of the pandemic.

British holidaymakers spent 8.3 billion on overnight stays in the UK between July and September last year.

A Downing Street spokesman said that a final decision on restarting domestic tourism had not yet been made.

Holiday resorts on a knife edge: UK tourist bosses say government 'dithering' over social distancing rules has left staycations in limbo and left them racing to prepare for reopening in two weeks

Furious holiday industry bosses are warning that they may not be ready to reopen on July 4 because of the Government's 'dithering' about what safety measures they will have to put in place.

Millions of families are waiting desperately to find out whether they will be able to head to holiday parks, B&Bs and hotels this summer.

But Ministers were coming under fire last night for failing to tell tourism businesses what rules they will have to follow if lockdown rules are relaxed in 13 days' time, such as whether they will have to maintain two-metre distancing.

Malcolm Bell, chief executive of Visit Cornwall, said: 'The Government could by now have issued guidelines. We're frustrated at being treated like children. It's like we can't be trusted.'

The confusion comes as the head of Britain's 130 billion-a-year tourism industry warned that the pandemic had left seaside resorts 'on a knife edge', and one of Britain's largest holiday park operators said it was now 'make or break' time for the sector.

FAMILY FUN: Visitors splash around at Center Parcs' resort in Normandy, which has been open for weeks and operates under distancing guidelines

But firms are still in the dark over crucial considerations, such as whether guests who fall ill will have to be quarantined for 14 days in their holiday properties, or whether hotel rooms would have to be kept unoccupied for 72 hours between bookings to prevent spreading the disease between guests. Patricia Yates, chief executive of Visit Britain, told The Mail on Sunday that the lack of Government guidelines was causing 'consternation within the industry.'

'Businesses take four weeks to open up and many are gearing up and hoping they are doing the right thing,' she said. 'The industry is hoping they see the guidance this week  businesses need some time to understand it and implement it.'

The UK tourism sector, which supports three million jobs, made 90 million a day from staycations last summer.

Ms Yates said that it was 'crucial' for the holiday firms to reopen next month but warned businesses may struggle after a survey found that 28 per cent of Britons are not confident that they will take a holiday this summer.

She said: 'There is a lot of enthusiasm to open but it's going to be challenging to make a success of it. It's going to be tough. Seaside resorts are on a knife edge.'

Unlike their parks in the UK, Center Parcs has been able to welcome visitors back to its resort in Normandy

DESERTED: Traffic cones block the entrance to the Center Parcs holiday site in Thetford, Norfolk, which will not open to guests for at least three more weeks

The Prime Minister is reportedly set to halve the two-metre distancing rule next week, which would be good news for the hospitality industry because they will be able to serve more customers. However, a No 10 spokesman insisted that no decisions had been finalised.

Ros Pritchard of the British Holiday & Home Parks Association, said: 'I don't know what is going on in Westminster. They have had months to get this in place. The Government has got to publish the guidance now to give people reassurance about how they can reopen, and restore consumer confidence which has taken a huge knock. I don't know what's delaying them.'

Visit Britain estimates that the tourism industry, which supports three million jobs, will suffer a 42 billion loss of income this year because of the pandemic.

Parkdean Resorts, which runs 67 holiday parks, said: 'We urgently need clarity from the Government to confirm that the hospitality sector can open on July 4, what facilities we can offer, and what the social distancing requirements will be. This is make or break time for our sector.'

Becki Osborne, who runs the Polmanter campsite in St Ives, Cornwall, said: 'We are trying to blindly prepare for reopening. It was months ago that July 4 was mentioned as a possible date. That's now just two weeks away and we still don't know what we are supposed to be doing.

'We're fully booked. What if we're suddenly told only 70 per cent of pitches can be used? How and who do we cancel? Guests are asking us if they're having a holiday this summer and we can't tell them.'

Alistair Handyside, chair of the Professional Association of Self-Caterers, said it was 'ludicrous' that people 'can crowd into Primark, and flock to busy beaches' but not stay in caravans or holiday homes.

In Northern Ireland, self-catering accommodation, including caravans, will be allowed to reopen from Friday. Hotels are due to reopen on July 3 but spas and leisure facilities will remain closed.

The Welsh Assembly said holidays in 'self-contained' properties will be allowed from July 13 unless there is a spike in cases. The Scottish Government, which has released detailed guidance, said it hopes to welcome tourists from July 15.

However, not everyone is keen to resume tourism. Authorities in Cornwall fear an influx of visitors may overwhelm the local NHS as the population of 560,000 doubles each summer because of tourists.
Just after a week of announcing Machu Picchus reopening, officials have now said that the famous tourist spot would not open in July due to coronavirus concerns. Machu Picchu, a world heritage site and the main attraction in Peru, is a 15th-century Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains. The site, however, was shut down in March after Peruvian authorities imposed a lockdown due to the pandemic.

According to reports, the sites management group made the decision after evaluating reports from authorities in the Cusco region, which houses the citadel. Speaking to international media reports Darwin Baca, the Machu Picchu district mayor said that it has been decided that the ancient citadel would not open on July 1 as per the previous schedule. In addendum, he also revealed that there were a series of health measures, like testing, still pending in the area.

No reopening date fixed

Meanwhile, unions in the region have had regular protests against the reopening. According to them, the exposure and vulnerability to coronavirus would rise, if the site is made open to tourists. As of now, no particular date has been fixed for its reopening. This comes as he coronavirus infection has now infected 251338 people and killed 7861 making Peru one of the worst affected nations in the world, the latest tally by John Hopkins University stated.

Read: Barber Offers Hope In Peruvian Barrios Devastated By Virus

Last week, authorities had announced that the reopening of Machu Pichu with 675 visitors allowed each day, that too with proper social distancing and precautionary measures. In addition to that, the guides were also instructed to take the tour of seven people at once with mandatory use of masks. According to reports, the site saw an average of 2000 to 3000 visitors per day, with the peak hitting 5000 visitors every day.

Read: Perumal Murugan's Debut Novel To Be Published In English

Last month, the countrys government tried to revive tourism by announcing a plan to offer free tickets natural resources and archaeological sites to children, public sector employees and the elderly. However, there is no announcement of reopening of borders yet. Peru, the second-worst COVID-19 hit nation in Latin America has seen a decline in the tourism industry which employs nearly 10,000 people. Speaking to international media reporters, Prime Minister Vicente Zeballos reportedly said that the tourism industry has suffered losses totalling $3.3 billion this year.

Read: Peru: Machu Picchu To Allow Limited Number Of Visitors After Reopening In July

Read: Peruvians Organise Community Kitchens To Stop Hunger

Image credits: Youtube
The AIM market has been called many things over its 25 years, but rarely risk averse.

The junior market's caricature frontier capitalism has been particularly prevalent among the oil exploration stocks.

While there are notably fewer truly 'transformational' exploration stories than in the past, some do still exist and few opportunities presently seem as underappreciated as Cluff Natural Resources  soon to be renamed Deltic Energy.

Cluff is presently priced at a big discount to its cash holdings and an even bigger discount to its net asset value. Meanwhile, the funding position is secure and sufficient to cover current needs.

Cluff Natural Resources is a small cap explorer focussed on the North Sea, where it is targeting gas resources in the vicinity of existing infrastructure

It is a small cap explorer focussed on the North Sea, where it is targeting gas resources in the vicinity of existing infrastructure.

The company has a partnership with one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, and, this partner, Royal Dutch Shell, is committed to drill at least two high impact wells in the coming years.

Success in either well will be an instant game-changer for the company. In the meantime, there is an immediate value gap, 13million cash in the bank versus a 9.7million value (at a share price of 0.68p) in the market.

'One of the key challenges is the relative value that is attributed to the company,' says chief executive Graham Swindells.

'We've got the best part of 13million of cash and we're trading at a fairly significant discount to both cash and the best part of an 80 per cent discount to net asset value.

'Hopefully when people look at that it represents a compelling value proposition.'

'We have some pretty major catalysts there, success in any one of those wells would represent a transformation of the company and its value.

'So, the key message is, fundamentally we are significantly undervalued. Particularly given the portfolio that has a number of different potential catalysts.'

Those catalysts include the partnership with Royal Dutch Shell, where the company is advancing the Pensacola and Selene prospects, which are slated for drilling in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

The company is also shoring up its exploration portfolio with a separate farm-out process for the Dewar prospect, along with the Cupertino and Cortez prospects which are still being advancing technically and could potentially be brought into the upcoming farm-out.

There may soon also be a boost in the UK government's pending licensing round awards, results of which are anticipated during the summer.

The company has applied for multiple licences in the 32nd round and, if new acreage is secured, the company will aim to replicate what it achieved to date with its existing North Sea licences.

Coronavirus has, among other market-specific factors, sparked huge volatility throughout the oil industry and the dramatic swings in crude prices have led to massive trauma for oil producers.

Capital budgets have been cut to the bone practically everywhere and dividends, which stood sacrosanct for decades, suddenly have been slashed.

The company has a partnership with Royal Dutch Shell, which is committed to drill at least two high impact wells in the coming years

Plainly, a lot of investors are in 'risk off' mode and as such small cap exploration is likely low on many lists of priority.

Nonetheless, this North Sea company is presently de-risked in ways that other explorers are perhaps not.

Firstly, the company's funding position is solid and secure. It had some 13million at the end of December, by the end of the first half most of that remained intact.

Quality partnering is always another important facet for small cap explorers, and, few come with the resources and expertise as Shell - especially in the North Sea where the Anglo-Dutch major is increasingly one of the few remaining tier one operators.

Shell's presence is naturally an important validator and endorsement for the company's business strategy.

The fact that the team instigated the venture and then brought in such a high calibre partner should bode well.

Moreover, it positions the company ideally for a strategy which emphasises project origination and exploration rather than being just another junior with field development aspirations.

All of which marks the company as one of only a handful of standout oil and gas opportunities presently on the radar in what is otherwise a challenging and scarce market for investors.

This is one to watch more closely over the coming months.
The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh, has launched a Community Mining Scheme at Tinga in the Bole District of the Savannah Region.



The launch of the scheme now paves way for illegal miners to formalize their operations on a small scale basis.



Speaking at the launching ceremony on Monday, June 22, Mr Asomah-Cheremeh said the Community Mining Scheme is a novel model being introduced by the NPP Government to address some of the underlying causes of illegal mining (galamsey) within the mining communities.



According to the Minister, the Scheme is an adaptation of small scale mining as provided for under (sections 81-99) of the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703).



It is yet another innovative policy initiated under the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration which is aimed at providing members of mining communities the opportunity to engage in lawful and meaningful mining ventures and ensure sustainable livelihoods for the beneficiaries of the Scheme.



He warned that the Scheme is reserved for only Ghanaian citizens and with emphasis on host mining communities.



Simply put, the scheme is of the people, by the people, for the people of the community, he said.



The Minister noted that the scheme has the capacity to create employment for residents in the rural and host communities across the mining areas.



According to him, Government estimated that 16,000 jobs will be created by the Scheme and its multiplier effect could be phenomenal. This aligns with Governments agenda of job creation.



He added that the Scheme will stimulate wealth creation and improve the local economy through the value generated staying within local communities in Ghana and not leaving the shores of the country.



The Scheme will create horizontal, vertical as well as other linkages with the other sectors of the economy, he noted.



Measures



To ensure a successful implementation of the , the Minister noted that key strategies have been infused into the Community Mining Scheme.



Among the strategies, he said, were the formation of a Community Mining Oversight Committee, adoption of the Small-scale miners code of practice; and provision of support services to the community miners.



The Savannah Regional Minister, Adam Salifu Briamah, said the Scheme will bring about a system of controlled mining, and go a long to prevent the destruction of the environment through galamsey.



He assured that with the Scheme, galamsey will be a thing of the past.

Source: Daily Guide









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
The rating agency revised the outlook for EXIM, SBI, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Baroda (New Zealand), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank while affirming their ratings.

At the same time, Fitch has affirmed IDBI Bank Ltd's (IDBI) rating, while maintaining the outlook at negative.

Fitch Ratings on Monday said it has revised the outlook to negative from stable of nine Indian banks, including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, following lowering of India's sovereign rating outlook due to impact of coronavirus pandemic on the economy.

The rating agency revised the outlook for Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM), SBI, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Baroda (New Zealand), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank while affirming their ratings.

At the same time, Fitch has affirmed IDBI Bank Ltd's (IDBI) rating, while maintaining the outlook at negative.

"The rating actions follow Fitch's revision of the outlook on the 'BBB-' rating on India to negative from stable on June 18, 2020 due to the impact of the escalating coronavirus pandemic on India's economy," it said in a statement.

Fitch said the ratings of all the nine Indian banks are support-driven and anchored to their respective sovereign country rating.

"They are based on Fitch's assessment of high to moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, which takes into account our assessment of the sovereign's ability and propensity to provide extraordinary support."

The negative outlook on India's sovereign rating, it said, reflects an increasing strain on the state's ability to provide extraordinary support, due to the sovereign's limited fiscal space and the significant deterioration in fiscal metrics due to challenges from COVID-19 pandemic.

"The rating action does not affect the banks' Viability Ratings (VRs)," it said.

"EXIM does not have a VR as its role as a policy bank makes an assessment of its standalone credit profile less meaningful."

While EXIM is of high strategic and systemic importance due to its unique policy role, SBI is the largest Indian bank with nearly 25 per cent market share in system assets and deposits.

SBI is 57.9 per cent state-owned and has a much broader policy role than peers.

"SBI is highly likely to receive extraordinary state support, if required, due to its very high systemic importance," it said.

For ICICI and AXIS Bank, Fitch said it expects a moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, due to their systemic importance, market position and private ownership.

"The probability of extraordinary state support for the two large private banks will be lower than for large state banks, which are likely to have priority due to the sovereign's constrained finances," the agency said.

The other banks whose outlook was lowered too have "high systemic importance" stemming from their significant market share, majority government ownership and role in policy lending.

On keeping outlook unchanged for IDBI, it said this reflects expectation that the state's propensity to provide extraordinary support to IDBI may diminish following the government's proposal to sell its stake in the bank and dispose of part of its stake in the lender's majority shareholder, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).

Photograph: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters
The United Nations on June 21 charged that the Taliban and Afghan security forces had carried out "deliberate" attacks against healthcare workers and facilities at a time when Afghanistan is grappling with the deadly coronavirus epidemic.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it had registered 12 such acts of violence between March 11 and May 23 against healthcare facilities and workers.

Eight of the attacks were attributed to the Taliban, while Afghan forces were responsible for three.

One attack, the horrifying assault on a Kabul-based maternity hospital on May 12, still remained unclaimed.

"At a time when an urgent humanitarian response was required to protect every life in Afghanistan, both the Taliban and Afghan national security forces carried out deliberate acts of violence that undermined healthcare operations," UNAMA head Deborah Lyons said in a statement.

The assault on the maternity ward of Dasht e-Barchi hospital in Kabul left 25 people dead, including 16 mothers, according to international charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The group announced last week that it was pulling out of the facility fearing similar attacks in the future.

The UN mission said Afghan forces had carried out an airstrike outside a clinic in the northern province of Kunduz in May targeting a vehicle carrying wounded Taliban fighters.

The airstrike killed several Taliban fighters but also two civilians, it said.

In another incident the UN mission said Afghan soldiers had threatened to shoot doctors at a public hospital in eastern Nangarhar Province when they refused to wash the body of a dead soldier.

In the third incident, the UN mission accused troops of looting medical supplies from trucks that were aimed for a clinic in Balkh Province.

The report comes as Afghanistan grapples with surging cases of the coronavirus. It has so far reported 28,833 confirmed cases, with 581 deaths.

"Perpetrating targeted attacks on healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when health resources are already stretched and of critical importance to the civilian population, is particularly reprehensible," said Fiona Frazer, UNAMA Chief of Human Rights.

Overall violence across the country had dropped after the Taliban offered a three-day cease-fire on May 24, but officials now claim that insurgent attacks have increased in recent weeks.

On June 21, officials said 42 civilians were killed and 105 wounded in the past week in Taliban attacks.
It was a sunny morning in the neighbourhood as I set out for my COVID-19 test. I didnt think it was necessary but as my doctor had said on the phone, were still early in the process of learning about symptoms and their significance.

My symptoms were lung congestion to the point that they felt like pontoons, hard and tough to inflate. I felt it was simply an allergy that had meanly chosen the pandemic for its appearance. But I know that much of the news I read is American rather than Canadian and elsewhere.

That means reading about a country where face masks are for feebs, the pandemic is a deep state plot, and a COVID-19 test is a big deal. If you line up for one in your car, they can turn you away with a sneer and say you dont deserve to be tested. Then they shoot you if you dont drive away fast enough. Or they just shoot you.

In the same way, I wrote an anodyne column about the great outdoors and a reader Ill call Birdie excoriated me in that who do you think you are? Canadian way for wearing a N95 and latex gloves. It wasnt just unnecessary, I was stealing masks from doctors! I dont know if Birdie was female or male, so this was either mansplaining or karening.

Ive been wearing the same N95 since February and I doubt any doctor would want it now. And yes, wear gloves when you use an ATM  they throb and glow with coronavirus, I imagine  and then do that neat glove-unpeeling trick and throw them in a public garbage bin.

But I am Canadian and feel guilty about things I havent even done. The people at the COVID-19 test centre, built of plywood just north of the doors of Mount Sinai Hospital on University Ave., dismissed this. They were friendly, even happy to see me, and the fine woman at the plastic door gave me a fresh face mask and called me love. She called everyone love. She became my love too.

You sit in a plastic and plywood corridor, distanced from other silent, masked people, and wait to be called. The women who took down my information were kindness itself. Since I rarely talk to actual humans now, I am chatty and they, talking to actual humans each and every morning, were also chatty. The circle of love grew larger.

I also love the nurse who stabbed my brain with a nasal swab because she did it very fast and didnt laugh when I made peculiar honking noises after to cope with the shock, which was electric.

The phone call came early next morning, negative as expected. I loved the young man who told me so kindly and cheerfully  he must dread his job, regularly making people cry  and so the circle of love is complete.

On the subway home, there were 10 people in the car, all masked except for four men. We were distanced. One man stood in the middle of the car for the whole trip, unmoving. I see now that he was emphatically not sitting on a seat possibly soaked in COVID-19 or touching a pole greasy with the wily virus.

But he was not wearing a mask. I considered offering him one but in the American news, people are always being punched in the face for insulting a manly mans rugged individualism so perhaps not. Or perhaps he was covered in Jesuss blood, like that unfortunate hyper-religious Ohio woman who felt herself fully exempt from COVID.

Wear a mask.

If there is one thing for which I fault three levels of government in Canada, its the failure to make masking mandatory. We are seeing good evidence from other countries that when everyone is told to wear a mask, there is a huge drop in infections.

I never thought I had the coronavirus in me but the knowledge that I surely dont has given me new energy. Masked, I shall wander about the city looking for Lysol wipes, happy in the knowledge that for a day or two, I was covered in the blood of Jesus, which is, one assumes, COVID-free.
Pennsylvania election officials recently found out what their counterparts in New Jersey will likely discover: Tallying an unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots is no small task. Spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, the two states and many others are promoting or expanding the vote-by-mail option. The goal is not to eliminate in-person voting, but to enable people who want to avoid lines and crowds at polling places to mark their ballots and have them count.

Sadly, several thousand voters who used the option in Pennsylvanias June 2 primary ended up disenfranchised for reasons that included missing the return deadline for completed ballots. The July 7 primary will be New Jerseys first statewide election conducted mostly by mail, although school board, municipal, and special elections in May were solely by mail due to the shutdown and stay-at-home orders. Nearly 10% of all ballots in those contests were rejected because of difficulties with signature verification or other issues.

The job of protecting the rights of voters and the integrity of elections is overseen by the states and administered mostly by county or local election officials and personnel. New Jersey reached an agreement Tuesday with the League of Women Voters and the NAACP to offer primary voters whose signatures on mailed-in ballots are challenged by their local election boards the opportunity to remedy discrepancies. And in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf supports a proposed legislative fix that would enable counties to begin processing early mailed-in ballots weeks before election day.

Five states, including Oregon, Utah, and Colorado, conduct elections almost exclusively by mail and have done so for years. But in this presidential election  and pandemic  year, a lot is being asked of election officials and voters in states that, until recently, have not much utilized the option. The shift from polling places to mailboxes or ballot drop boxes is an institutional and cultural change that risks alienating some voters and could depress turnout.

So voter education is key. The Wolf administration promoted voting by mail through its digital platforms, including social media, radio, and TV, using about $1 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act money. It plans to expand the campaign in advance of the November election. This week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy appeared in a video for his YouTube channel to demonstrate the relative ease of voting by mail; his Vote. Sign. Seal. Return campaign also will include social media platforms and radio spots. Officials in both states say additional federal help is needed so their counties can better prepare for the high turnouts expected in November.

Public confidence in elections has been battered in recent decades, and President Donald Trumps baseless characterization of voting by mail (which he has done) as a partisan ploy that fosters fraud hasnt helped. Primary day debacles in Wisconsin, and most recently, in Georgia, havent helped either.

But most voters see casting a ballot  in person or by mail  as a cherished right, a duty that requires serious thought and preparation. Amid the public health fears and ferocious politics of this election year, states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey must be prepared to do their duty as well.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Some 1,154 tourists from Azerbaijan visited Turkey in May 2020, which is 98.01 percent less compared to the same period in 2019, Trend reports on June 22 referring to Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The share of Azerbaijani citizens in the total number of foreigners visiting Turkey in May 2020 amounted to 3.87 percent.

From January through May 2020, 124,569 tourists from Azerbaijan visited Turkey, which is 54.12 percent less compared to the same period in 2019.

The share of Azerbaijani citizens in the total number of foreigners visiting Turkey in the reporting period amounted to 2.9 percent.

According to the ministry, in May 2020, 29,829 tourists visited Turkey, which is 99.26 percent less compared to May 2019.

In the first five months of this year, over 4.2 million tourists visited Turkey, which is 66.35 percent less than in the same period of 2019.

Some 901,723 citizens of Azerbaijan visited Turkey in 2019, which is 5.03 percent more compared to 2018.

The share of Azerbaijani citizens in the total number of foreigners visiting Turkey in 2019 amounted to 2 percent.

---

Follow the author on twitter: @rhafizoglu
UPDATE: On Tuesday afternoon, federal authorities and NASCAR revealed the rope found near Bubba Wallaces garage stall was a garage door pull, not a noose. No federal crime was committed.

This is an opinion column.

I was running for class co-president and feeling pretty good about my chances.

This was back in high school, so long ago nowthe early 1970ssome details are a bit fuzzy.

The school is called Holland Hall. Its a small, private school with an Episcopalian affiliation nestled in the hills of what was then the southern-most end of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The city was starkly segregated. I lived in North Tulsa, which was (and largely remains today) predominantly Black. My commute to and from school each day was at least 30 minutes.

Holland Hall was (and remains) an excellent school. I was one of only African Americans in my class of fewer than 60 students, one of barely a handful of Blacks in the entire high school.

The schools culture was so trusting the pristine wooden lockers had no locks. It was near the end of the school year; final exams were looming so few students roamed the hallways.

On this day, I opened my locker and found a note, which wasnt altogether unusual in that era. The lined sheet was ripped from someones loose-leaf notebook and folded over. I grabbed it, opened it.

Drawn on the page, probably with No. 2 pencil, was a noose. A hangmans noose, unmistakably.

Beneath the drawing were these words (some details remain today as clear as the morning sky):

We dont want no nigger as class president.

I was taken aback; while I endured an expected share of racial slights since enrolling in the school as a seventh-grader, thisthis overt act wielding one of the most evil symbols of racismwas a first. Still, as I stared at the note and re-read it a couple of times, the image and words evoked as much curiosity as rage.

I took it to my English teacher, the more-than-a-tad eccentric Ted Sloan. He smoked with a long-stemmed cigarette holder. After staring at the paper for a few moments and discussing how it should be handled with school authorities, he took a long puff and raised an eyebrow.

I have an idea, he said with a sly smile.

On Sunday, a noosea real one, made of ropewas discovered outside the garage stall of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace at Talladega. When I heard, I was actually less surprised than when I found the noose note nearly half a century ago.

Wallace, an Alabamian from Mobile, is the only full-time Black driver on the top circuit of a sport whose roots were nurtured in the deepest of the Deep South. A sport with a sparse history of Black drivers; Wendell Scott was the first to win a top-level race, in 1963. A sport whose efforts to diversify its culture and operations have earned modest, yet sporadic success.

A sport that two weeks ago, swept up perhaps in the unprecedented surge against racial intolerance sweeping the nation in the wake of the death of George Floyd, finally did what it should have done decades ago: banned the Confederate flag at races. Partly at Wallaces bold, public urging.

Of course, no one should be surprised that Confederate flags were selling well at a merchandise tent outside the raceway. Or that pickup trucks bearing the flag circled the raceways perimeter. Or even that someone flew a plane over the track with a Confederate flag banner.

We shouldnt even be surprised at the noose.

There have been and will always be cowards. Cowards who hide under hoods or sneak beneath the cloak of darkness spewing and spreading hate.

Nooses, like the Ku Klux Klans burning cross, are meant to frighten and intimidate.

They dont. Not anymore. Not now.

Now, they remind us of the more than 4,400 lynchings that occurred in this nation between 1877 and 1950just a couple of decades before I discovered that note. They remind us of lost liveswomen, men, and, yes childrensolemnly remembered name-by-name at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.

Now, they deepen our resolve to, in this time, gut racism from our core.

They will not break me, Wallace shared in a tweet. I will not give in, nor will I back down.'

NASCAR must find who planted the noose. Especially now. As it seeks, seemingly with long-overdue sincerity, to finally drag itself from the mud of its racist roots. Especially now. When a young, popular Black driver from Alabama is the emerging face, and conscious, of the sport.

If the perpetrator proves to be involved in the sporta strong likelihood since access to garages areas, typically open to fans, was limited to NASCAR personnel due to COVID-19they should be banned forever. And possibly prosecuted for a hate crime.

Sloans idea? Use the noose note as part of the final exam, with my and the schools approval. As part of the test Sloan typically displayed an image on a screen and charged students to write an essay about it. When the image appeared, some gaspedthen lifted their No. 2 pencils and began to write.

Years later, Sloan told me he believed he was able to discern from the essays who left the note. I didnt ask their name. Or if I did, maybe that detail, too, went fuzzy. Not worth remembering.

Besides, I had a race to win. And did.

A voice for whats right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roys column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj
Amid rising prices of petrol and diesel, Madhya Pradesh BJP faces a challenge ahead of the bypolls to 24 assembly seats in the state as the Opposition is trying to cash in on the negative sentiments against the ruling party.

Amid a corona-hit economy, the prices of petrol and diesel rose for the 16th consecutive day on Monday. With a hike of 35 paise, the price of petrol soared to Rs 87.19 a litre while with a 56 paise rise the prices of diesel per litre reached Rs 78.35 in Bhopal.

Demanding tax rate cut in petrol and diesel prices, the Congress party has announced state-wide protests over the issue on June 24.

With the constant hike, the petrol-diesel prices have surged by almost Rs 10 in the last fortnight in Bhopal as elsewhere. On June 6, the petrol was selling at Rs 77.56 a litre and diesel at Rs 68.27 in Bhopal.

The fuel prices werent revised during the lockdown but have witnessed an continuous rise following the announcement Unlock 1.0.

With the increasing fuel burden, the resentment has also been passed on to the public and Opposition Congress is not in mood to let go of this opportunity to corner the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

PCC media cell in-charge Jitu Patwari initiated the onslaught on the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government over rising prices with his stinging tweet on Monday.

Posted in Hindi, the tweet roughly translated to this, "Buy petrol and diesel every night and sell it in the morning to earn Rs 60 paisa per litre profit and become atma-nirbhar (self-reliant)."

Former Chief Minister Kamal Nath also took a dig at his successor in a series of tweets. "Those who protested while riding a cycle against fuel price hike in the past are absent these days." Instead of offering relief, the state government is burdening the public, he said.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal claimed that the prices are rising as petroleum companies are revising rates according to their calculation daily. He accused the Congress of maintaining double-standards saying the party which had promised fuel rate cut ahead of coming to power had levied VAT on fuel after coming to power and is now accusing BJP of hiking rates.

Madhya Pradesh is among those states which impose maximum cess and taxes on petrol and diesel. As revenue collection has dwindled amid coronavirus scare in Madhya Pradesh, the Shivraj government had levied Re 1 each cess on petrol and diesel recently.

Prior to this, the petrol had cess of Rs 3.50 per litre and diesel Rs 2 a litre.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urging the Centre to extend the provision of free food grains for a period of three months more up till September 2020, as unemployment is on the rise across India, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown imposed to curb its spread.

Nearly three months since the country went into a strict lockdown and millions of Indians are at risk of slipping into poverty. The provision of 5 kg free food grains per person per month under the National Food Security Act in addition to regular entitlements.the government must consider extending the provision for a further period of three months from July to September, 2020, the Congress chief wrote in her letter to the Prime Minister.

She also added that several states had requested for the same and suggested that temporary ration cards be issued for all households that were excluded from the Public Distribution System.

ALSO READ| PM must be mindful of implications of his words: Manmohan Singh on Ladakh face-off

Senior Congress leaders too have been taking a swipe at the government over the rising prices of petroleum products recently.

At the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Tuesday, party leaders are likely to discuss border tensions with China and the Union governments response to the situation. The Congress is also slated to discuss the challenges posed by Covid-19. The hike in the price of petroleum products is also likely to figure in the meeting.

The CWC meeting will begin at 11 am tomorrow.

ALSO READ | Ensure justice for 20 Indian soldiers killed by Chinese: Manmohan Singh to PM Modi

On Monday, a day before the meeting, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a statement saying that China is brazenly and illegally trying to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date.

The former PM said the Centres actions will have serious bearings on how future generations perceive us.

Singh also said that Prime Minister Modi must be careful of the implications of his words and declarations on national security and also territorial interests.
Despite promises made by the regime, protesters who were arrested are being transferred to Damascus, where they will face trial reports Neda-Sy.

The Assad regime has decided to transfer most of the young men it had detained for participating in the recent anti-government protests in Suweida to Damascus.

The regime announced a decision to transfer nine of the 12 detainees to Damascus. The Suweida 24 Network reported they could be transferred to the terrorism court through the administration of the Criminal Security branch in Damascus.

According to the news site, the three remaining men were supposed to have their files transferred to an investigations judge on Sunday, but the investigation was postponed because the judge was busy.

The Assad regime did not heed promises that it had made previously to Suweida notables, to transfer the detainees to a special court in Suweida, the news site reported.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the regimes arrest of 10 activists in Suweida city, while Suweida 24 reported the arrest of 12 people since Jun. 7, 2020  10 of them for their participation in the protests and another two arbitrarily.

It was expected that the detainees would all be released on Sunday, according to promises made by the Assad regime to sheikhs in the city, but those promises were not fulfilled.

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.
 Flash

The 36th ASEAN Summit will be held via video conference on June 26, Vietnam News Agency cited the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as reporting on Sunday.

As the ASEAN's chair in 2020, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will chair the opening session, plenary session and special sessions on woman empowerment in digital era as well as dialogue between leaders of ASEAN countries and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC), among others, according to the report.

Preparatory meetings will be held from June 22 to June 24, including informal ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the 26th ASEAN Coordinating Council which will be under the chair of Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, said the news agency.

Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh will chair the ministerial meeting on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The 36th ASEAN Summit, which had been scheduled to be held in April, has been postponed until the end of June in the context of wide spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the region and the world.
For weeks, the circle in Jefferson Square has become the center of protests in downtown Louisville, and home to a growing memorial of signs and flowers for Breonna Taylor.

Now there are efforts to honor Taylor with a permanent memorial there.

Community activist Christopher 2X is leading an effort to rename the area Breonna Taylor Fountain Circle. He said in initial conversations, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer supported the idea of a healing space recognizing Taylor, with the location still to be worked out and the timeline dependent on the investigations from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and the FBI.

2X, who has worked with families affected by violence for years, envisions the space as an area that people can gather and reflect with vigils and balloon releases, as a tribute to Taylor's time working as an EMT and in emergency rooms.

"We want to do something as a permanent marker for Breonna. Where she can act as that presence for healing," 2X said.

Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith is partnering with 2X on the efforts, and said in a statement: "Together we passed Breonna's Law and together we shall honor her life and legacy. This is a pivotal moment in time, and oftentimes you will find one woman who leaves its mark on that moment in history. Breonna was a game changer, and I am grateful for our young leaders who are working to create a place in District 4 where everyone is welcome to visit, reflect, dream, and say her name  Breonna Taylor."

Other support for the idea has come from out of town. Saturday afternoon, hundreds of motorcycles rolled down Jefferson Street together and parked in front of the the circle. A group of riders started in Nashville, and were joined by others from surrounding states along the way.

"We started looking back at the things that happened with Breonna," said Vincent Harris, president of one of the motorcycle clubs taking part in the ride. "We wanted to bring something positive and create this movement on behalf of the Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina areas of this movement. We want to be part of this."

The group raised more than $1,800 through their journey for Taylor's mother Tamika Palmer.

"It's beautiful. Like I said, in the beginning it was lonely," Palmer said. "A lot of people didn't know the story or what was going on. Just to have all these people from all over and all type of people to support the same cause it's a blessing."
BERLIN  President Aleksandar Vucics nearly complete control over the Serbian state was bolstered on Sunday after his party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections boycotted by most of the opposition in protest at his autocratic policies.

Mr. Vucic was not personally up for re-election, but his political coalition, the nationalist Serbian Progressive Party, was projected to win more than 60 percent of seats in Parliament, according to initial results.

This puts the party on the threshold of a supermajority, which, if secured, would allow its lawmakers to change the constitution without the support of any other political faction.

The result could also give Mr. Vucic greater leeway to forge a peace agreement with Kosovo, the former Serbian province that broke from Belgrade in 1999, helped by an American-led bombing campaign, but whose sovereignty Serbia has never officially recognized.
Carthage Cement begins exporting cement to Italy

22 June 2020

Tunisias Carthage Cement launched its first export shipment of 4100t of EC-certified Portland cement to Italy last Friday.

The dispatch is reportedly part of a larger contract to supply 250,000t of cement and clinker to Europe.

"Our company has got a certification of the products in compliance with the requirements of the European standards, which has helped us be the first to enter the European market and we intend to remain there," indicated Brahim Sanaa, CEO, Carthage Cement.

Published under
Police in Pennsylvania are crediting the quick action of a bystander for helping to save one of their officer's following a fiery crash.

"Daylan actually said, 'I'm not going to let him die,'" said Uniontown Police Lieutenant Thomas Kolencik. "There's just no words to describe, you know."

There's a lot of gratitude coming from the Uniontown Police Department on Sunday following an intense crash involving one of their own.

"We are so thankful that Daylan was in the area at the time," said Lt. Kolencik. "It could have been a lot worse."

Lieutenant Thomas Kolencik is referring to Daylan McLee.

"We felt it in the house and my sister came screaming that two cars hit each other and one was a cop," said McLee.

McLee said he ran outside and saw Uniontown Police Officer Jay Hanley trapped in his cruiser. The crash happened in front of his home along East Fayette Street.

"He was asking not to be moved. Not to be moved. His leg," he said. "Then we started to see the flames start to come inside of the car from the bottom and I knew we had to get him out. Another officer tried to assist me and I just ripped the door open and we started dragging him across the street before the car ignited or anything serious like that."

McLee and Uniontown Police Captain David Rutter pulled Officer Hanley to safety, while another officer put out the fire. Hanley was flown to a Morgantown hospital with a leg injury and underwent surgery. Uniontown police say the driver of the other vehicle was able to walk to the ambulance and told paramedics he was OK.

Lt. Kolencik said he's beyond grateful for what McLee did for one of this officers.

"A lot of crazy things are going on in the world, and I haven't had the best ends in life, but I know the value of human life. You can't replace it," McLee said. "It's Father's Day. I'm not sure if he has children, but I know he has family, and I'm pretty sure they're glad to have him there, and I'm glad he's home, or going to be home."

Uniontown police say Officer Hanley was responding to assist two officers on another call when the crash happened. As for how it happened, Pennsylvania State Police are investigating.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Kyrgyzstan reported a significant rise in coronavirus cases on Monday, less than a month after the Central Asian nation's government lifted restrictions in key cities.

The country is one of several ex-Soviet nations that have seen a rise in cases in recent days, including neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyzstan's government reported a daily record of 205 new cases on Monday.

The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 3,356 in Kyrgyzstan, of whom 2,021 patients have recovered, while 40 have diedup from 16 at the beginning of the month.

First Deputy Prime Minister Almazbek Baatyrbekov said Monday that the premises of a former US military base that has already been used to quarantine arrivals in the country could be used to house coronavirus patients as numbers increase.

Baatyrbekov also said the government was selecting a location for a "tent camp, which will be used in case of mass infections," in quotes reported by the Kyrgyz government press service.

Aziz Surakmatov, the mayor of the capital Bishkek, is among the officials that have reported contracting the coronavirus in recent weeks.

Some Kyrgyz on social media have complained of being unable to submit tests despite having coronavirus symptoms.

Maksat Damir uulu wrote on Twitter Monday that his wife had run a temperature for three straight days and that both of them had lost their sense of smellanother commonly reported symptom of the illness.

"The mobile (health) team refuses to come to us and take tests, because our symptoms are not enough. That is how it is," Damir uulu wrote.

Neighbouring Kazakhstan has reported 80 deaths from the coronavirus since the beginning of Junedouble the number recorded between the announcement of its first cases in mid-March and the end of May.

Kazakhstan had recorded a total of 17,732 coronavirus cases as of Monday, not including 9,809 asymptomatic cases which authorities treat as a separate category.

The oil-rich country announced a significant lifting of lockdown restrictions on May 18, a week before Kyrgyzstan followed suit on May 25.

Other countries in the former Soviet region to record sharp rises in cases in recent weeks include Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2020 AFP
A prominent Iranian NGO that fights poverty says its founder and two other members have been detained.

Imam Alis Popular Students Relief Society said on June 21 that security forces had arrested the group's founder, Sharmin Meymandinejad, at his home.

It added that the charitys media-relations director, Morteza Keymanesh, and senior inspector, Katayoun Afrazeh, were arrested, too.

The reason for the arrests and charges against them are not clear and the authorities have not publicly confirmed their arrests.

The hard-line Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), accused Meymandinejad, whom it identified only by his initials, of contacts with anti-Iran centers outside the country under the cover of a charity group.

The IRGC has in recent months arrested dual nationals, environmentalists, and others on charges of espionage that have been widely dismissed by critics and civil rights activists as baseless.

Hard-liners have in recent years criticized the charity and accused it of misusing the organization for political purposes and hurting the Islamic republic by highlighting problems, as well as working with foreign countries and international bodies.

The charity organizes university students and other volunteers to help the poor and others in times of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

In May, judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi warned about alleged plans by Iran's enemies to fund charities for hostile purposes.

Iran's President Hassan Rohani recently said charities and nongovernmental groups should not allow dishonest individuals to assume positions in them.

The charity said last year that several of its members had been threatened over the phone and told to cut their ties with the NGO.

The group had also said that some of its members had come under cyberattack.

With reporting by AP
Washington, June 22 : Secret efforts to groom and recruit teenagers by a neo-Nazi militant group, founded by an American, have been exposed by covert recordings, a media report said on Monday.

They capture senior members of The Base interviewing young applicants and discussing how to radicalise them, according to the BBC report.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has described the group as seeking to unite white supremacists around the world and incite a race war.

Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of The Base, is a 47-year-old American, who reportedly used to work as an analyst for the FBI and as a contractor for the Pentagon.

Earlier this year the BBC revealed he was directing the organisation from his upmarket flat in St. Petersburg, Russia.

During the interviews, which took place via conference call on an encrypted app, prospective members were asked by Nazzaro about their personal history, ethnicity, radicalisation journey and experience with weapons, before a panel of senior members posed their own questions.

The would-be recruits were quizzed on what books they had read, including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", and were encouraged to familiarise themselves with the group's white supremacist ideology.

During the calls, Nazzaro can be heard welcoming members of other extremist groups.

The young applicants, who hide behind aliases and display varying degrees of ideological awareness, describe their radicalisation by online videos and propaganda.

When interviewees left the calls, senior members discussed their potential before arranging to vet them in person at a later date, according to the BBC.

In the US state of Georgia, three members of The Base are currently facing conspiracy charges for allegedly plotting to murder an anti-fascist couple.

The Base is the latest underground organisation to emerge from an international neo-Nazi network originally generated by a now-defunct web forum called Iron March.

Other organisations include the banned British groups National Action and the Sonnenkrieg Division, as well as the Atomwaffen Division in the USA, which has been dismantled by a nationwide FBI investigation.
Cellphone Pings From Lori Vallows Late Brother Led Investigators to the Bodies of Her Children

Authorities used the pings from the cellphone of the brother of Lori Vallow when determining where to search for the remains of her missing children, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by CNN affiliate East Idaho News.

Earlier this month, law enforcement officials found the remains of Tylee Ryan, 17, and JJ Vallow, 7, on the rural property of Chad Daybell in Fremont County.

Daybell was married to Lori Vallow for less than a year.

He and Vallow are both in the custody of Idaho officials as their cases move through the courts. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the disappearances.

Daybell was charged with concealing evidence and Vallow is accused of desertion and nonsupport of children.

Authorities have not said how the children died.

According to the affidavit, Vallows brother, Alex Cox, went to Daybells property four times in September, and two of those visits came the days after each of the children were last seen.

Cox, who died in December, went to Yellowstone National Park on Sept. 8 with Vallow and the two children. It was the last time Tylee was seen.

Police say that tracking the phones location puts Cox in Vallows apartment three times immediately after the trip to Yellowstone, with the final visit beginning at 2:42 a.m. on Sept. 9.

At some point the phone was back in Coxs apartmentin the same complexthen shows up in Daybells backyard at 9:21 a.m. The phone registers being there for more than two hours, except for a time it pings in a city five minutes away, the court document says.

About 14 minutes after Coxs phone last registers being in the backyard, Daybell texts his then-wife Tammy Daybell to tell her he shot a raccoon that morning and buried it in their pet cemetery.

Well, Ive had an interesting morning, he writes.

The investigator, recalling that raccoons are usually nocturnal, notes his suspicion in the affidavit, and says the pet cemetery is where Coxs phone had been.

In the days before JJ is last seen, a friend and her boyfriend come to stay with Vallow. The friend recounts for authorities that Vallow said JJ was a zombie.

Zombies have dark spirits and a person is in limbo until the body dies, the friend says Vallow told her, according to the affidavit. The friend also tells police that Vallow said she and Daybell are in a church that was to lead the 144,000 mentioned in the Bibles Book of Revelation.

They also stated their mission was to rid the world of zombies, the document records.

Vallow had also called Tylee a zombie last year, the friend says, according to the affidavit.

JJ was last seen the night of Sept. 22, and on Sept. 23, Coxs phone once again pings from Daybells backyard in a location where human remains are later found.

On the day of the property search, Daybell was in his SUV watching authorities from his driveway and on property belonging to his daughter, across the road.

About the time remains were found, he drove away and police followed and arrested him, the document says.

Authorities conducted a welfare check on JJ near the end of September at the request of his relatives, who hadnt heard from him in months. When they arrived, Vallow informed them he was not at the family home because he was staying with a family friend.

Police returned the next day to serve a search warrant after discovering that was not true, but Vallow and Daybell were gone.

They were later found in Hawaii, and despite requests from police did not cooperate and did not present the children.

Shortly before Tylee, JJ, and their mother moved from Arizona to Idaho, Vallows estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed during a fight with Cox, CNN affiliate KIFI/KIDK reported. Cox was not charged in the case, and he died in December, the affiliate reported.

Tammy Daybell died on Oct. 19, and a few weeks later, Chad Daybell and Vallow were married. Authorities initially believed Tammy Daybell died of natural causes, but Rexburg police later said her death was suspicious and exhumed her body.

The-CNN-Wire

 &  2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
Something really odd has recently happened on the GoFundMe platform that allows people to donate and support different causes and different movements by other people all around the world. One of the most recent interesting accounts is a certain account by a particular Alex Crow that says in bold letters "ELON MUSK."

Alex Crow's ELON MUSK

The post starts with the line "I THINK WE CAN COLONIZE MARS." Which, if you are a fan of Musk, is something that the SpaceX CEO is very passionate about. The description then follows up by saying the whole process is easy and simple.

The post argues that it can be done by transporting cargo all the way to 0 gravity and that it would be possible to "DO YOUR CONSTRUCTION" in the presence of zero gravity.

The post even claims that the person behind the account is capable of building an elevator tube that can reach up to 10 miles high in a particular Horry County in South Carolina. The description then rambles on about a certain Matt Maddox who is allegedly a CEO of the Wynn Casino and also a "COLLEGE PLEDGE BROTHER" that the description says would build 10 different Casinos in Myrtle Beach.

The description goes on to say that the person behind the account has the ability to get the land needed and that the person even has the land itself. The description ends by saying that everything is "10 PERCENT" to the person behind the account and that it is possible to use the "US SPACE FORCE TO CONSTRUCT IT.

Not surprisingly, the fundraiser is asking for $1 billion USD but has not been fully funded. The Billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly worth $42.5 billion USD. The post uses the picture of a certain person but it has not been clarified if the person is Alex Crow or just another random person.

Read Also: More Tesla Model Y Buyers Reportedly Refuse Deliveries Amid Serious Issues [Here are the Most Alarming Problems]

Elon Musk's popularity

Elon Musk has become very popular in different dimensions of the world and even out of this world as the recent success of his SpaceX was able to bring astronauts to the International Space Station. Aside from this, the CEO has also been advancing his Tesla company which focuses on electric cars.

The previous PayPal founder's Tesla has been growing in popularity as the UK has already announced that it will phase out petrol and diesel cars by the year 2035 in hopes of saving the environment.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has also recently had a child with Canadian popstar Grimes and due to the name of their baby, there has been quite the conversation on social media.

The Tesla Model 3 has also gained popularity in California and has finally been announced the top-selling car in the area not just against electric cars but in general.

Read Also: Tesla Saved My Life: Model 3 Owner Shares How a Car Accident Could Have Ended up in Serious Damage
Police said Mason admitted to being in the back of a white Honda Crosstour, which police say was used in the shooting, but identified the driver as the gunman. Police said Mason told them that the driver fired through the passenger-side window. But, police said, had that been the case, bullet casings would have flown in the back; instead, police said, they found four .40-caliber shell casings on the street, indicating the shooter stuck the gun out a window and fired.
On veteran actor Amrish Puris 88th birth anniversary, his grandson and actor Vardhan Puri spoke about his legendary grandfather. He gave insights into the simple life of one of the most talented actors of the Hindi film industry.

Speaking to BollywoodLife, Vardhan said how given his grandfathers fondness for home-cooked simple Punjabi food, the latter would often be teased by the likes of Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. He was quoted as saying, He never liked outside food. Even he was leaving in the morning at 6 am for a shoot, he used to make sure he took his dabba with him because he loved his Punjabi food and his simple dal, roti, salad and soup.

Salman Khan saab, Bachchan saab (Amitabh Bachchan), Shah Rukh Khan saab all used to make fun of him because I still remember that big dabbas of biryani, ghost and kebabs would come from Salman Khan saabs home and they used to all say, Arey, Amrishji why are you eating this ghaas-phoos (vegetarian food), please eat with us. And daadu would just take a bite so that no one would feel bad, and then would say, Arey, Im happy with my simple food. He never ate outside food because he would always say that his voice is too important for him and he couldnt abuse it.

Also read: Sonam Kapoor shares hateful messages shes got after Sushant Singh Rajputs death, explains viral Koffee With Karan video

He also mentioned how his grandfather had a child-like enthusiasm for cinema till the end. He would often show Vardhan his costumes for a role or his lines from the film. I used to see him coming him at 3 at night, and then Id see him awake, fresh, excited, whistling and singing away in his bathroom while shaving at 6 in the morning and excited about the day and telling me, See, Im playing this character today and this is my wig these are my clothes, these are my lines, Im going to narrate them once, just check them.

Vardhan also took to Instagram stories to post a picture of Amrish Puri in one of his many cinematic avatars.

Vardhan made his Bollywood debut last year with Yeh Saali Aashiqui. In 2014, he had appeared in a short film called Bumbhaiyya. Amrish Puri died on January 12, 2005.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The result was that Mr. Barr looked as though he had acted without the full backing of the president. He also ended up agreeing to install Mr. Bermans deputy, Audrey Strauss, as the acting U.S. attorney instead of his preferred pick, Craig Carpenito, now the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey.

As attempted power plays go, this was an abject failure and served only to further undermine the credibility of both the attorney general and the president, said Greg Brower, a former federal prosecutor who once headed the F.B.I.s congressional affairs office.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.

Even when a judge made favorable statements about the possibility of a legal victory for Mr. Trump this month, it was eclipsed by the Berman debacle. A federal judge ruled that the former national security adviser John R. Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance or even be prosecuted for failing to scrub classified information out of his new book, as Justice Department lawyers had argued that he was legally required to do.

But the judge refused to order copies of the political memoir seized, noting that more than 200,000 of them were already in the hands of booksellers by the time the department acted. The reasons the department filed so long after the books had been distributed to booksellers are not clear, but days before the judge ruled, the departments division that was handling the case suddenly found itself rudderless.

Joseph H. Hunt, the chief of the civil division, suddenly resigned without even informing Mr. Barr, who had sometimes bypassed him to deal directly with his deputies. Mr. Barrs penchant for closely managing his staff and impatience with what he sees as too much deliberation have grown in recent weeks, according to department employees who have sat in on meetings with him.

Mr. Hunts departure also seemed to emphasize the risks of handling cases involving Mr. Trumps associates in Mr. Barrs Justice Department. Other federal prosecutors have either resigned or withdrawn from criminal prosecutions of Mr. Trumps former aides after Mr. Barr intervened to drop charges or seek lighter punishment.
The Prince of Wales has spoken of the 'debt of gratitude' the nation owes the Windrush generation.

Speaking from his home office in a video message marking Windrush Day, Charles paid tribute to the 'invaluable contribution of black people in Britain'.

The royal also thanked all the frontline workers from Afro-Caribbean communities for their contribution during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Windrush generation was named after the ship that brought over one of the first groups of West Indian migrants invited to the UK in 1948 to help rebuild post-war Britain.

Over the next 25 years thousands followed, taking jobs to fill shortages, particularly in the nascent NHS.

The day marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bearing around 500 people from Jamaica.

The Prince of Wales has spoken of the 'debt of gratitude' the nation owes the Windrush generation

Sharing the video to their Twitter account, Clarence House tweeted: 'The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.' To mark #WindrushDay2020, The Prince of Wales has sent a message of thanks to Britain's Caribbean community for their contribution to life in the UK.'

Putting on a smart appearance in a navy suit and blue shirt, Charles said: 'Today offers an opportunity to express the debt of gratitude we owe to that first Windrush generation for accepting the invitation to come to Britain and, above all, to recognise the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren, have made to so many aspects of our public life, to our culture and to every sector of our economy.'

Charles went on to describe Britain's diversity as its 'greatest strength'.

Speaking from his home office in a video message marking Windrush Day, Charles paid tribute to the 'invaluable contribution of black people in Britain'

He said: 'Today, as we honour the legacy of the Windrush generation, and the invaluable contribution of black people in Britain, I dearly hope that we can continue to listen to each other's stories and to learn from one another,' he said.

'The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.'

He added: 'We can only understand who we are as a Nation, where we have come from, and what future path we should take, if we are able to look at the past, present and future from each other's perspectives.'

Charles said: 'Now I hesitate to single out any area of this activity but, as coronavirus lockdown begins to ease, I did just want to say a particular word about our National Health Service, of which people of African and Caribbean descent have been an indispensable part since its very beginning.

'At the same time, I know that the black community has been hit particularly hard by this pernicious virus.

Charles and Camilla seen welcoming French president Emmanuel Macron, left, to Clarence House in London on Thursday in their first post-pandemic engagement

'To those who have lost their loved ones in such heartbreaking circumstances, when it has been impossible for them to comfort their relatives in hospital, I can only convey my most profound sympathy; and to everyone on the front line who has been put under such intense pressure over the last three months and risen heroically to the unprecedented challenge, I want to say on behalf of all of us how inordinately proud we are of them and the way they carry out their onerous duties.'

Charles also quoted the work of the Jamaican poet James Berry, who sailed to the UK in 1949 inspired by the Windrush pioneers, highlighting that he 'never avoided the difficult issues of injustice'.

The royal recited lines from his poem Benedict, which read: 'Thanks to the ear, that someone may hear. Thanks to seeing, that someone may see. Thanks to feeling, that someone may feel. Thanks to touch that one may be touched'.
(Natural News) As the Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising wages war on the rule of law nationwide, certain psychologists are suggesting America has a racism pandemic that must be combated with Draconian emergency measures similar to COVID-19.

(Article by Shane Trejo republished from BigLeaguePolitics.com)

Dr. Patricia Bailey, a left-wing psychologist from West Virginia, is trying to sell the public about this social justice pandemic she has invented.

That incident, in it of itself, is devastating on so many levels. It was outrageous to say the least. It really is an alarm. It makes us stop and want to say what do we need to do as a community, as a society? Bailey said about the death of serial felon drug addict George Floyd, which has been used by the media to inflame race riots.

The racism that is most prominently displayed throughout society and supported by institutions these days is anti-white racism.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has exposed the anti-white propaganda that is being peddled to children nationwide by left-wing activists in the public school system:

Last Friday, Tucker Carlson reported on a new program called Deep Equity which seeks to indoctrinate school children with victimhood propaganda. This curriculum, which is gaining traction across the nation. argues that America is a deeply racist nation with a hierarchy of various oppressions. When broken down, this program is the embodiment of political correctness culture. It works to demonize whites, while commanding teachers to shut down any dissent from parents who disagree with this political propaganda. This curriculum was created by for-profit education company Corwin, which is under the ownership of SAGE Publishing. Deep Equity represents the latest example of how the Left has abandoned education in favor of naked political propaganda, in Carlsons view. Corwin describes its curriculum as a teacher training program that is aimed at producing real school improvement for equity and social justice. Carlson believes that Corwin will achieve its goal by attacking the students on the basis of their skin color. According to deep equity, America is based on a hierarchy of various oppressions: Men oppress women, Christianity oppresses Islam, English oppresses Spanish, white people oppress everyone, the conservative commentator added. Tucker continued, And, by the way, if you have a problem with this explanation, you are yourself entrenching oppression; youre part of the problem. According to a teacher who spoke with Carlson, the curriculum compels educators to become racial activists. This program is just another iteration of the cultural Marxist, anti-white agenda that seeks to shame and ultimately displace historic majorities in the West. By entering public schools, these radical activists have the opportunity to indoctrinate children into accepting their PC talking points on a massive scale.

The anti-white racism has been pervasive throughout society for many years, but with BLM exerting their authority throughout the country with mob violence, it is now heating up to genocidal levels.

Read more at: BigLeaguePolitics.com
Solidarity with calls for First Nations justice for deaths in custody

The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) stands in solidarity with the First Nations people of Australia and their organisations in demanding an end to the systemic racism. The Central Committee extends its sympathy to the families of First Nation adults and children who have unnecessarily died in custody.

We condemn the senseless loss of life and the heartache inflicted on First Nations families and communities.

Continuing our longstanding support for the struggle of First Nations people for their rights and against oppression, the CPA participated in mass rallies across Australia calling for justice and accountability for deaths in custody.

Despite the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Aboriginal deaths in custody have risen steeply. There have been no convictions for any officers and leaders responsible for these deaths, and no one has been held to account.

Governments complicit in a culture of racist police violence

The ongoing police violence against First Nations people across Australia is condoned by governments who are intent on continuing the suppression of First Nation peoples, their way of life and their struggle for land and cultural rights. The collusion of law enforcement, the state, and capitalism culminate in a system where First Nations lives do not matter.

First Nations people and their communal way of life disrupt the pursuit of private property and private profits. Capitalism fragments Indigenous societies and rights to land in the interests of mining and pastoral corporations, and multinationals. The recent destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site in Western Australia, by Rio Tinto, was excused by the Australian Government at the same time as they were voicing objections to the Black Lives Matter protest movement in Australia.

Capitalism uses racism as a tool to divide people and it profits from this division. Racism also deflects criticism away from the capitalist class in times of crisis. This is evident in the United States where the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown laws have had disproportionate impacts on the lives of Afro-American and Latino people.

Racial divisions create disunity in the community and, among workers, it weakens the struggle of the working class against capitalism. These divisions are promoted between migrant communities as well as within First Nation communities. This disunity means the bosses can intensify their exploitation of workers, reducing wages to feed their ever increasing profits. This is most blatant with the historical theft of Aboriginal workers wages over decades by State and Federal governments in Australia.

Colonial dispossession of First Nations land, killing communities, the banning of language and culture which began 232 years ago attempted to eliminate and assimilate First Nation communities so capitalists can destroy the collective nature of First Nations society and the communal ownership of land in Australia. This attack continues today with the Intervention in the Northern Territory where wages, control over their lives and responsibility are stolen from the community. A key action has been the theft and dispossession of land that can only benefit mining corporations.

The CPA calls for:

The immediate implementation of all the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody by federal, state and territory governments across Australia Australian government coordination with the states and territories to instigate criminal investigations in all First Nations deaths in custody cases. This should be done in coordination with First Nations families and organisations who must be funded and supported to oversee and inform these investigations. Australian government to prosecute all law enforcement officers responsible for First Nation Deaths in Custody. Aboriginal Land Rights and support for the communal ownership of the land by the traditional owners.

The CPA recognises that systemic racism and racist violence are indelibly linked to a capitalist system that thrives on racism. It acknowledges that the capitalist way of life is antithetical to First Nations communal societies. It is only with socialism that First Nations societies, lives and relationships with land can be safeguarded and honoured.

Central Committee 14th June 2020
By Md Mustafa

Recently, National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) released its most awaited ranking of top universities in India. According to its website, its framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country since 2016, when its first-ever rankings of institutions were released. Since then it releases a ranking of top universities in India annually.

Support TwoCircles



Jamia Millia Islamia University has improved its ranking by two places in the same category of NIRF ranking in the last year and has secured 10th position in the university category and this year, the list was topped by Indian Institute of Science.

Why is this years ranking special for Jamia Millia Islamia University?

This year, the improvement in the ranking of Jamia Millia Islamia is very important for students, teachers, staff and of course for the Vice-Chancellor for two reasons.

One reason is that this year Jamia is celebrating its 100 years of glorious past of its foundation (i.e. 1920). It was established in the direct response to Non-Cooperation Movement to inculcate nationalism among Muslim youth besides providing modern education. The movement was launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 with the aim of self-governance by boycotting British services and goods.

Since its inception, it is contributing to nation-building by providing education at a reasonable cost as well as promoting scientific temperament among youths as envisaged by our constitution in article 51-A.

The second reason is that it has been the epicentre of one of the biggest protests in the country against Citizenship Amendment Act after police entered into the campus and used excessive force against peacefully protesting students, what they believed it to be textually and contextually discriminatory and violative of the fundamental right of equality and principle of secularism laid down in Indian constitution.

Since 13 December, the campus has seen regular disruptions and remained volatile throughout November and December. It started with protests against CAA followed by a police crackdown and finally the lockdown. All these circumstances forced the University authorities to prepone winter vacation and the spread of coronavirus resulted in preponement of summer vacations. Thus, we saw fewer classes and students lost at least one semester.

Despite all hurdles, what we have achieved is something that makes all of us proud with the stellar performance of the university in NIRF ranking.

The result we have got is not due to one day of hard work but due to continuous planning, exemplary leadership of V.C, the indomitable spirit of students and teachers in one direction. That was how we all contributed to improving the ranking of this prestigious university, which has been shaped by the national movement of India.

The commitment and hard work of all stakeholders that ultimately bore fruit resulted in the improvement of ranking in the university category.

Way forward

Our performance has already been acknowledged by finding a place in the top ten universities. However, growing unemployment in youth could be arrested by opening more and more vocational courses in the campuses of the universities across the country, which in turn will provide a skilful workforce to industries that lead to the achievement of 5 trillion USD GDP targets by 2024 especially given the slowdown of Chinas GDP growth in the year 2019, which was the slowest since 1990.

MD Mustafa is pursuing MA(Social Exclusion Inclusive Policy) at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency reported that on Monday, two Turkish charities had sent six trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwest Syria.

Truckloads of supplies including flour, clothing and dry food [donated] by the Adana Dosteller and Eskisehir Gunisigi charities entered Idlib through the Yayladagi border crossing in Turkeys southern Hatay province. The aid will be distributed among families living in tents in Idlib, Anadolu reported.

Turkeys generosity to millions of displaced Syrians inside Syria and Turkey alike has been well documented. But critics of Ankaras Syria policy charge that it's giving with one hand and stealing with the other.

A report released today by Syrians for Truth and Justice, a non-partisan nonprofit documenting human rights violations in Syria, lays out in exhaustive detail how the Turkish government has facilitated commerce conducted by its Syrian National Army allies in looting grain. The grain is from eight silos that were confiscated in October during Turkeys Operation Peace Spring, which resulted in Turkeys occupation of a large swath of territory between the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain formerly controlled by the United States Syrian Kurdish allies.

Based on interviews with a range of actors including National Army commanders as well as employees at the grain silos, Syrians for Truth and Justice unveiled a network of grain dealings conducted by a Turkish government company  the Turkish Grain Board, known as TMO for short  and armed groups commanders who personally seized amounts of the grain storage and then sold them to either local or Turkish merchants and kept the proceeds for themselves. The theft is documented by satellite imagery showing transportation trucks taking the grain away from the silos.

The allegations will further blot Turkey and the National Armys image in northeast Syria. Ankara is accused of overseeing or directly participating in a panoply of abuses, including summary executions, abductions, looting, crop burning and weaponizing water against the Kurds.

The Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria told the authors of the report that it had left behind about 730,000 tons of wheat, barley, fertilizers, cotton and seed as it withdrew in the face of advancing Turkish forces. This stock is the strategic reserve for the next three years and constitutes 11% of the total stock of Raqqa and Hasakah provinces, said Salman Baroudo, the co-chair of the commerce committee of the autonomous administration.

A ton of wheat produces around 850 kilograms of flour, and a ton of flour produces 1.2 tons of bread, explained an autonomous administration official to illustrate the scale of the loss.

The Syrian National Army denied that it was engaged in any looting from grain silos but officials from the Istanbul-based Syrian Interim Government and employees of the local councils claimed the opposite.

Syrians for Truth and Justice executive director Bassam al-Ahmad told Al-Monitor in a telephone interview that the looting fits a broader pattern of abuses as were perpetrated in Turkish-occupied Afrin. Turkey is buying looted wheat. Afrin is the Kurdish-majority enclave that was occupied by Turkey in 2018. Crimes committed by Turkeys Sunni rebel allies have been well documented. They include rape, arbitrary detentions and industrial-scale extortion of local olive farmers, with much of their oil finding its way to Turkey and exported to foreign markets under Turkish labels, Germany's Deutsche Welle reported.

The TMO insists that it only imports surplus barley but no wheat from Syria. But the trade is driving up prices, noted Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Syria expert and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. She told Al-Monitor, It's absolutely true that wheat and grain is being looted. I've confirmed it with the factions. They are stealing the wheat and barley that is cultivated in large swaths of land between Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad and selling it to Turkey."

Tsurkov added that Turkey was offering more money for the commodities than any other actor in Syria is offering to farmers. Therefore there is a clear incentive to sell to Turkey."

But even as Turkey engages in such transactions, it continues to prevent any flow of humanitarian aid from its borders to the Kurdish-held areas. The COVID-19 pandemic has not softened Turkeys stance while the collapse of the Syrian currency has compounded peoples misery across the country.

Protests erupted today in Tell Abyad and the town of Suluk, also under Turkish control, over deteriorating living conditions and rising food prices, especially that of bread.

In Suluk, a crowed gathered outside the local Turkish-appointed council and called for its removal, reported the Violation Documentation Centre in North Syria in a tweet. It said in a separate call for action yesterday that Turkish soldiers were targeting farmers on the Turkish-Syrian border. Syrian Kurdish farmer Muhayuddin Abdurazak died after allegedly being shot by a Turkish border guard on May 17.

Thomas McClure, a researcher at the Rojava Information Center, which publishes reports on the Kurdish-controlled region for international audiences, told Al-Monitor that the area affected by Operation Peace Spring encompasses 440,000 hectares of arable land producing up to 763,000 tons of wheat. Turkeys instillation of proxy militias n this once productive region has severely impacted the remainder of northeast Syria and those civilians who have remained in the zone of occupation. The loss of vital arable land places further pressure on the remainder of the northeast, where per UN figures 1.94 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, he noted.

McClure backed up Syrians for Truth and Justice, saying, Grain silos were rapidly looted, with tens of thousands of tons of wheat transferred to Turkey for sale or sold to local merchants at extortionate prices. Bread, the local staple, doubled in price in the months following the invasion, while other local essentials like cooking gas are now five times as expensive as elsewhere in northeast Syria."

The governor of Turkeys Sanliurfa province, where the occupation is administered from, told Anadolu last week that Turkey would be opening a new gate between Ras al-Ain and the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar. Abdullah Erin said the gate would be for both Ras al-Ain and Ceylanpinar, much as the opening of a gate from Turkeys nearby border town of Akcakale had been for Tell Abyad. The pro-government Daily Sabah reported, Citizens frequently voice that daily life is getting better as a result of the reconstruction of infrastructure in Tell Abyad and in Ras al-Ain. Todays protest paints a different picture.
The wholesale market for cheddar is typically a mild one. But the vagaries of supply and demand during the pandemic have caused sharp swings in cheese prices, which rose to record highs this month  just weeks after plummeting to nearly 20-year lows.

Consumers are buying way more cheese, even as the usually huge demand from restaurants and schools has fallen off. Dairy farmers and prepared-food companies, which supply ingredients to cheesemakers or buy their products, have seen disruptions in their businesses. Together, these countervailing forces have fuelled the up-and-down trading in the market.

Like the price of oil, silver and hogs, cheese prices are set, in part, by traders in commodities markets. Each trading day at 11 a.m. Chicago time, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange operates a 10-minute session in which buyers and sellers  typically large dairy food co-operatives, cheese producers or other companies active in the industry  electronically trade roughly 40,000-pound truckloads of young, mild cheddar.

Cheese prices soared to a record high on June 8, when a 40-pound block of cheddar  the bench mark for cheese, akin to a barrel of West Texas Intermediate in oil markets  touched $2.585 (U.S.) a pound on the CME.

That was a 160 per cent turnaround from mid-April, when the same block of cheese would have cost only $1 a pound.

Its the most volatility that weve seen in the cheese market ever, said Phil Plourd, president of Blimling and Associates, a dairy commodity consulting firm in Madison, Wis. If there was a cheese VIX index, it would have been spiking, he added, referring to the volatility index often described as the stock markets fear gauge.

Bulk prices for everything from mozzarella to Parmesan are quoted at a premium or a discount to the CMEs block cheddar price. And these wholesale prices filter through to the price consumers pay at groceries and restaurants.

And much like higher-profile markets, cheese prices have been whipsawed by the uncertainty facing the U.S. economy and bolstered by government actions.

A lot of the dynamics that weve come to trust with regard to food service and retail demand have been thrown out the window, said Dave Kurzawski, a dairy broker in Chicago with brokerage firm INTL FCStone.

During the peak of pandemic-related fears in March and April, consumers rushed to grocery stores to stockpile cheese for their coming quarantines. Retail sales surged more than 70 per cent from a year earlier.

But that wasnt enough to offset the drop in demand from shuttered restaurants and educational institutions, which together account for at least half of the sales of bulk commodity cheese, according to industry estimates. The fall-off in cheese demand spilled over into the dairy market, contributing to a plunge in milk prices.

From the restaurant industry, 80 per cent of the volume went away, said Jeff Schwager, president of Sartori Cheese.

Sartori Cheese operates two plants in Wisconsin, where 600 employees produce and age hard cheeses such as Parmesan, Asiago and fontina. For a while, retail demand and orders from prepared-food makers  which use Sartori cheese in frozen pizza, salad dressings and other products  helped offset the loss from restaurant closings. Then in May, outbreaks of the coronavirus in the meat-packing industry halted production of many prepared foods.

Similar situations were playing out elsewhere. Beginning in late March, as demand disappeared, cheese stockpiles began to grow. Storage space became scarce. In the following weeks, some producers began to dump their cheese on the Chicago spot market at steep discounts. Prices plummeted.

We got swamped with cheddar for a time, said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association.

The glut didnt last long. In April, with cheddar at $1 a pound  a level last seen in 2003  cheese made in the U.S. was suddenly priced far below foreign competitors. By the middle of that month, exports began to pick up, according to cheese traders, providing domestic makers with a new source of demand, and helping to stabilize prices.

We were the most competitive price in the world, and everyone was coming to the U.S. to buy, said Brian Fletcher, vice-president of commercial services at Rice Dairy, a brokerage consulting firm in Chicago.

Also helping to steady the market: the government.

Not long after the price of cheese bottomed out in April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to spend $3 billion to buy food from farmers, including $100 million a month on a variety of dairy products. The announcement helped put a floor under prices, analysts said.

This month, as restaurants around America slowly reopened, companies that supply cheese began to stock up to ensure an adequate supply. So much so, some cheese factories have struggled to meet demand, as dairy farmers who cut production during the worst of the downturn were unable to supply them with enough milk.

Shoppers continue to buy 20 per cent to 30 per cent more cheese at stores than they did last year, according to data from IRI, a market research firm in Chicago. The return of demand has again pushed cheese prices higher, where they hover roughly three per cent below record levels.

The orders fell off literally in days, and they came back literally in days, Umhoefer said. It was all at once, very much a roller coaster.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:22:24|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

LAGOS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 23 vigilantes were killed as gunmen suspected to be bandits attacked a northwestern Nigerian village, local police said on Monday.

The local vigilante members were killed during the attack carried out by gunmen between Saturday and Sunday at Ruwan-Tofa community in Maru area of Zamfara state, said Mohammed Shehu, the state police spokesperson.

The spokesman said trouble started when the bandits stormed the village on Saturday and rustled several cows belonging to the villagers.

Local vigilante members were immediately mobilized in the area and went after the bandits but were caught up in an ambush by the criminals, Shehu told reporters.

He added that the bandits opened fire on the vigilante members, killing 10 people on the spot while many others were injured in the process.

According to Shehu, while 10 bodies were recovered after the attack, 13 others died from severe gunshot injuries while undergoing treatment at local hospitals.

He said that the troops on Sunday rescued six persons who were abducted and taken into the forest by the bandits.

The northern part of Nigeria has witnessed a series of attacks by armed groups in recent months. There have also been recurring incidents of livestock rustling and armed banditry in the region. Enditem
Celebrations for this year's National Day were cancelled or considerably modified due to the ongoing pandemic. Luxembourg's Military Band nevertheless came up with a inegnious idea to keep the musical aspect of National Day alive.

Rather than playing the Wilhelmus (the grand ducal anthem) and Ons Heemecht (the national anthem) in a concert hall, Luxembourg's Military Band decided to play parts of the iconic songs in various locations across the country. The individual parts were then put together in a video montage that viewers can enjoy from the safe confines of their homes.

Lieutenant colonel and Military Band conductor Jean-Claude Braun came up with the ingenious idea of playing the national and grand ducal anthems in 15 locations that symbolically represent an important cultural or historical aspect of Luxembourg's national identity.

The Military Band consequently recorded parts of the Wilhelmus and Ons Heemecht at Vianden Castle, in the scenic Mullerthal and in front of the Grand Ducal Palace to name but a few of the locations. Sergeant Ben Seil took care of the montage of the separate sections of film into a composite whole.

You will be able to see the result on the RTL websites:

Monday 5pm: The Wilhelmus

Tuesday 8am: Ons Heemecht

The Military Band will also host an official ceremony at the Kanounenhiwwel in Luxembourg City on Tuesday morning at 11am.
Washington, D.C., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On June 18, the District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency (DCHFA) issued $41.7 million in tax exempt bonds and underwrote $25.3 million in four percent low income housing tax credit (LIHTC) equity for the acquisition and rehabilitation of Park Southern Apartments in Washington Highlands (Ward 8). At DCHFA we take pride in fulfilling our mission of financing affordable rental housing options. At Park Southern the Agencys investments help to ensure that the current and future residents will have modern homes and facilities at rates conducive to their incomes, stated Christopher E. Donald, DCHFA Interim Executive Director.

The Park Southern Residents Council Inc. exercised their rights under the Districts Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) to purchase Park Southern Apartments and selected Vesta Corporation as the developer of the $88.6 million major rehabilitation. The mixed income development consists of apartments ranging in sizes from efficiency to three bedrooms with all but 22 units reserved for tenants earning 30 to 80 percent of area median income. Vesta Corporation will manage and cover the costs of on-site relocation of current Park Southern residents while their units are rehabilitated. In addition to all apartments being renovated, a new fitness and learning centers will be constructed, laundry rooms renovated and HVAC systems upgraded.

The DC Department of Behavioral Health will provide supportive services to the 10 permanent supportive housing tenants at Park Southern. Additionally, a part-time resident services coordinator will aid residents with goal setting and achievement in the areas of education, vocation and accessing community-based services and training. Additional financing for this community will be provided through a $19.7 million loan from the DC Department of Housing and Community Developments Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF).

Story continues

Through its Multifamily Lending and Neighborhood Investment and Capital Markets divisions, DCHFA issues tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds to lower the developers costs of acquiring, constructing and rehabilitating rental housing. The Agency offers private for-profit and non-profit developers low cost predevelopment, construction and permanent financing that supports the new construction, acquisition, and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing in the District.

The District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency is an S&P A+ rated issuer, serving Washington, D.C.s residents for 40 years. The Agencys mission is to advance the District of Columbias housing priorities; the Agency invests in affordable housing and neighborhood development, which provides pathways for D.C. residents to transform their lives. We accomplish our mission by delivering the most efficient and effective sources of capital available in the market to finance rental housing and to create homeownership opportunities.

Attachment

Yolanda McCutchen

DC Housing Finance Agency

202-777-1650

ymccutchen@dchfa.org


Yemen's Southern Transitional Council Claims Full Control Over Socotra Island in Indian Ocean

Sputnik News

15:55 GMT 21.06.2020(updated 15:59 GMT 21.06.2020)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Yemen's Southern Transitional Council (STC) announced on Sunday that they had established complete control over the distant Socotra Island located off the Horn of Africa.

According to a statement issued by the STC, Socotra Island was "completely released." The head of the STC in Socotra, Ali Ibrahim al-Sakli, said that the council approved the introduction of self-government on the island.

In response, the Yemeni government slammed the island's seizure as "a full-blown coup that undermined the state's institutions" in the province of Hadiboh, the country's SABA news agency reported citing a source in the government.

The Yemeni government has repeatedly accused the separatists of trying to claim Socotra. On Friday, Al-Jazeera broadcaster reported citing sources that the Saudi troops supporting the Yemeni army left on Thursday strongholds in the vicinity of the provincial capital of Hadiboh and placed them under the control of the STC.

Yemen has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the government forces, led by Saudi-allied President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi, and the rebel Houthi movement for several years now. The situation has been complicated by the STC, which seeks to secede from Yemen.

In November 2019, the internationally recognised government of Yemen, led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, and the separatists signed a peace treaty in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. Despite the agreement, confrontations between the two sides persist.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Sara Hegazi, the Egyptian activist who inspired people around the world by defying her country's strict anti-gay establishment, was remembered as a hero during her funeral in Toronto on Monday.

"She had such a kind heart," recalled Ziva Gorani.

She described her late friend as "a fighter, a dreamer," and "someone who would make sure everyone around her is happy, even when she's not."

Hegazi was among a group of people arrested in the summer of 2017 after she waved a rainbow flag during an outdoor concert in Cairo, an act that ignited a weeks-long anti-gay crackdown.

She endured three months of torture at the hands of Egyptian authorities before her release. Fearing further prosecution by a government that routinely targets gay citizens, she fled to Canada in 2018.

During her funeral, mourners took turns laying flowers atop her casket, which was marked by the same rainbow colours as the flag she once proudly waved.

Some held up their fists while paying their tributes. One woman fell to the floor in anguish.

Amr Magdi/Twitter

Hegazi found protection from persecution during her brief life in Canada, but little relief from the trauma caused by her arrest and torture.

"I want to get over it and I want to forget," she said during a 2018 interview with CBC News. "But no, I'm still stuck in prison."

Hegazi was found dead in her Toronto apartment on Saturday, June 13 of an apparent suicide. She was 30.

Valerie Lannon, another of Hegazi's Canadian friends, remembered her as a voracious reader and a lover of the arts.

Lannon recalled memories of strolling through the Art Gallery of Ontario and attending classical music performances during her brief friendship with Hegazi.

She will most remember Hegazi's wide-ranging political interests and fierce activism.

"That's the legacy: to never stop fighting," Lannon said.

Evan Mitsui/CBC

Hegazi had hoped to capitalize on her own fame and attention for the sake of others suffering injustice.

Story continues

"I don't want to focus only on my case, I want to focus on the hundreds of thousands of people that are in jail because they either have a different political standing or sexual orientation," Hegazi said.

She also dreamed of returning to her homeland, to reunite with her younger siblings and continue her political work.

Friends said they will not soon forget her determination and kind heart.

"I really want to believe in an after-life, because it would mean so much to get reunited with her," Gorani added.
It has been hailed as a potential model of police reform, a crime-ridden city in southern New Jersey that disbanded its force and rebuilt it from the ground up.

The Camden Police Department underwent the unprecedented overhaul in 2013, leading to sharp reductions in crime and a focus on improved community relations. Seven years later, with the nation grappling over police reform after the killing of George Floyd, attention has turned to Camden for lessons on the path forward.

The reality, residents and advocates say, is complicated. Camden no doubt feels safer than it was a decade ago, they acknowledge, but the process was rocky, and problems persist.

In its early days, the new force ramped up summonses for such offenses as riding a bicycle without a bell, sparking a backlash from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. The department ultimately reversed course and implemented sweeping policy changes, but some long-term residents said the current stable of officers, nearly half of whom are white and many of whom live far from town, still have much work to do in building trust and confidence within the community.

"They are not jumping out dunking people on their head no more," said Anthony Ways, who runs a community youth center. "But they are sitting there  2, 3 in the morning  with the lights flashing being an intimidating presence."

Ways spent 13 years in prison on a murder charge before he was exonerated in 2005.

"Somewhere in the middle," he said, "they have to find that sweet spot where they can police but, at the same time, take account of the citizens and their concerns."

Image: Anthony Ways, a Camden resident who runs a local community center. (Kenzi Abou-Sabe / NBC News)

Camden, a city of roughly 74,000 just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, was a thriving manufacturing hub in the early 1900s. But by the turn of the century, the city was in steep decline, and suffering from a population exodus.

Camden faced a crisis beginning in 2010, when the state slashed aid funding as part of spending cuts that Chris Christie, then the governor, imposed in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Story continues

Roughly half of Camden's 360 police officers were laid off. Arrests plummeted. Violent crime spiked.

In 2012, Camden recorded 67 homicides and 172 shooting victims. It was ranked the most dangerous city in America, with a murder rate more than 18 times the national average, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

With the city in dire straits, Christie and state Democratic lawmakers pushed to regionalize its police force. Politicians in Camden, including Dana Redd, then the mayor, lent their support to breaking up the city's all-union police department and replacing it with a larger but lower-paid force.

Despite stiff pressure from the union and an outspoken group of residents, the Camden Police Department was formally disbanded in 2013.

The new force was led by the existing Camden police chief, Scott Thomson. He moved to remake the ethos of the department.

"We were going to have all of our officers have the identity of guardians and not warriors," Thomson said in an interview.

Image: Scott Thomson, former police chief who led the transformation of Camden's police department. (NBC News)

Thomson said all new recruits were told on their first day that their jobs would more closely resemble those of Peace Corps members than Special Forces operatives. "There were a handful of people that did an about-face and left," Thomson said. "And as far as I was concerned, that was addition by subtraction."

Officers flooded the streets and held cookouts and other events to improve community relations. The crime rate soon began to drop.

The new approach was on vivid display in 2015 when police surveillance video captured an extraordinary encounter with a man brandishing a knife. A group of officers responded to an eatery after the man walked in and menaced customers.

The officers encountered the man on the sidewalk outside. Instead of shooting him or trying to disarm him, they walked with him for several minutes. "Drop the knife. Sir, drop the knife," one of the officers said repeatedly.

They tried to disable him with a stun gun, but that failed. Still, the officers managed to tackle the man to the ground and disarm him, apparently without causing serious injury.

"There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that six months prior to that, we would have shot and killed that man," said Thomson, who retired last year. "That was a watershed moment for our organization. And that was a moment in time that really signaled to me that the cops got it right."

But Camden's new force also courted controversy. Summonses skyrocketed for petty offenses, such as failing to maintain car lights, having tinted windows and riding bicycle without bells or lights. Advocate groups complained. Critical newspaper articles were published.

Amid the backlash, Thomson took rapid steps to transform the department's approach to low-level offenses, said Alex Shalom, a senior attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey.

"Under Chief Thomson, what they said is: 'Look, we're trying to police a poor community here where tickets can have a life-changing impact on people's very being, and so we want to be really circumspect about when we're issuing them,'" Shalom said. "That was a remarkable change in policy, and an important one."

With the help of the New York University Policing Project, the Camden force went on to develop a body camera policy. And three years later, it adopted one of the nation's most comprehensive use-of-force policies, an 18-page document seen as a model for other departments. The policy was drafted with the help of the NYU Policing Project and vetted by the ACLU of New Jersey and the Fraternal Order of Police.

By 2019, the number of homicides had dropped to 25, a decline of nearly 63 percent from 2012.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Camden County police Lt. Zack James stood on the corner of North Fifth and State streets, where several families could be seen sitting on their stoops.

"Ten years ago, we had drug dealers on every corner," James said. "You wouldn't see any children, because they were scared to come out of the house."

Image: Camden County Metro Police Lt. Zack James and Officer Mayah Bailey speak to a resident. (Kenzi Abou-Sabe / NBC News)

"This was a rough place," he added. "If the police came to make an arrest, we'd get bricks and bottles thrown at us. It's dramatically changed."

The change was on display in the days after the death of Floyd when the current police chief, Joseph Wysocki, joined with demonstrators marching against police brutality. Protests turned violent in several cities, including Philadelphia, but Camden remained calm.

Corinne Bradley-Powers, who runs an acclaimed soul food restaurant, said she was heartened by the sight of the police chief marching side by side with protesters.

But she lamented that cops are rarely seen on the streets around her restaurant, Corinne's Place. Bradley-Powers also said the department's racial makeup doesn't match that of the predominantly Black city. And in the early days of the transition to the new force, she was concerned because of the white officers' lack of exposure to Black people.

Image: Corinne Bradley-Powers, owner of Corinne's Place, a well-known soul food restaurant in Camden. (NBC News)

"It's a little better now. We have a rapport," Bradley-Powers said. "Some came in the other day, and I gave them a thumbs up and told them I was proud of them for marching."

Shalom, of the ACLU-NJ, said the focus on Camden after Floyd's death speaks to the lack of successful police reforms in the U.S.

"Since there have been so few examples of reforms that make a meaningful impact on the lives of people in the cities where 'reform' happens, people are looking to Camden," Shalom said.

"Perhaps the absence of good models suggests a need to reimagine policing and police reforms rather than trying to chase imperfect examples of reform."
A federal appeals court reinstated a San Francisco mans murder conviction Monday for a fatal stabbing at a homeless shelter, a conviction that a judge had overturned because a juror concealed his own criminal record.

The juror at Rickey Lee Scotts trial also failed to disclose that he had been represented by the San Francisco public defenders office, which also represented Scott, and that he still had hard feelings about how the lawyer had handled his case. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Scotts current lawyers had not shown that the juror was actually biased or that Scott had been denied a fair trial.

Scott was convicted of murdering Abdul Smith at the St. Vincent de Paul Center at Fifth and Bryant streets. Scott checked into the center in February 2012 carrying two knives in his bag, despite the centers no-weapons policy, according to a state court ruling. The court said Smith checked in about two hours later, visibly drunk, and went to the same room, which had a television set and vending machines.

Shortly afterward, someone shouted Fight! and Smith staggered out bleeding from a wound in his chest. Scott ran outside and was caught by police at a nearby homeless camp.

No one described seeing the stabbing, but witnesses said they heard what sounded like an argument about stealing money. Scott testified that Smith had attacked him in the past and that when he saw Smith in the shelter, he took out his knife for protection and that Smith ran into it. But a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in 2013 and, with two previous felony convictions, he was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ross to 86 years to life in prison.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar overturned the conviction in August 2018 and granted Scott a new trial based on juror misconduct. The foreman of Scotts jury had denied, during jury selection, that he had a criminal record or that he had any personal feelings about the prosecution or defense lawyers in the case. In fact, the foreman had been convicted of a misdemeanor in 2009, and sentenced to five days in jail, for threatening a parking officer who was writing him a ticket.

Questioned after Scotts trial, the juror said he had not disclosed his conviction because he was trying to forget about it, and did not believe his negative feelings about his own representation influenced his view of Scott, who was represented by Public Defender Jeff Adachi before Adachis death in February 2019.

Ross, the trial judge, found no evidence of bias and refused to overturn Scotts conviction, a decision upheld by state courts. Tigar said in his ruling that Scott had been denied a fair trial because the juror would have been disqualified if he had answered honestly. But the appeals court said Monday that the jurors misconduct was not enough to show actual bias.

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.

It is not clear how the fact of prior representation might have influenced the prospective jurors attitude towards Scotts case, Michael Melloy, a judge from the federal appeals court in St. Louis temporarily assigned to the San Francisco court, said in the 3-0 ruling. He said neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the appellate courts had ruled that concealment of a jurors criminal record, without evidence of actual bias, violated a defendants right to an impartial jury.

Steven Hirsch, a lawyer for Scott, declined to comment on the ruling.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:35:49|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 (Xinhua) -- China Construction Bank (CCB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the One Belt One Road Association Malaysia on Monday for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to participate in the 127th China Import and Export Fair being held virtually for the first time.

In his opening remarks, the association's president and former Malaysian ambassador to China Iskandar Sarudin said that the MoU built upon the close relationship that has grown between the business communities of both countries.

"I am also confident that through our effort and commitment, we will be able to achieve more and to foster closer bond, even stronger relationships and friendship which (is) beneficial mutually between the peoples of Malaysia and China," he said.

As part of the MoU, CCB programs would be promoted to members of the association through cloud conferences and exhibitions related to trade and economics among business communities in Malaysia, China and other countries participating in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

CCB will share financial information analysis related to financial markets, economics, investment, as well as utilization of finTech platforms with the association, Iskandar said.

For his part, CCB Malaysia chief executive officer Feng Qi said the import and export Canton Fair 2020 uses cloud technology to feature goods on its website and mobile app, allowing over 600,000 merchants from over 100 participating countries to experience the new online trade and network.

He added that CCB would use the Canton Fair to promote Malaysian SMEs and introduce Chinese businesses while helping to enhance trade between Malaysia and China, between China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"We have innovated new payment methods based on blockchain technology, which will significantly reduce the time to complete cross-border payments in seconds compared with one to days previously," said Feng.

He added that the payment method is offered free for all Malaysian SMEs in the effort to push Malaysia to become the hub for the ASEAN market.

The 127th China Import and Export Fair, popularly known as Canton Fair, kicked off online last week, a first for the decades-old trade fair, in south China's Guangdong Province.

This year's online fair, which will last for 10 days, has attracted around 25,000 enterprises in 16 categories with 1.8 million products.

Founded in 1957, the Canton Fair is seen as an important barometer of China's foreign trade. Enditem
Japanese automaker Toyota's local wing has forged another agreement to further support medical frontliners as the government gradually eases the lockdown.

Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) entered in a partnership by way of Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the Department of Health (DOH) to address the mobility needs of healthcare workers at this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on the agreement, TMP will donate a total of 30 Vios units to various public hospitals in Metro Manila and Laguna.

Vios DoH

The turnover ceremony was done at the DOH Central Office in Sta. Cruz, Manila with Secretary Francisco Duque III.

Showing support to the government, Toyota officials Chairman Alfred Ty, Vice Chairman David Go, and President Atsuhiro Okamoto, graced the event, together with Japan Ambassador to the Philippines Koji Haneda.

In his short message during the simple ceremony, TMP president Okamoto commended healthcare workers for their sacrifice and hard work.

Vios DoH

Toyota salutes all healthcare workers in the countrythe brave heroes who continue to work relentlessly to care for the sick and preserve life Please accept Toyotas humble contribution of providing mobility services through our proudly Philippine-made and ever dependable Toyota Vios," Okamoto said.

The simple event showed the actual turnover of one Vios unit each to Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center, San Lazaro Hospital, and San Lorenzo Ruiz Womens Hospital.

The full turnover of units shall be completed by next month.

Doh vios

Toyota strongly believes that providing mobility to healthcare frontliners will help in the countrys current battle with the pandemic.

For his part, the TMP Chair echoed Okamoto's message of gratitude.

I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the Philippine government for its strong leadership during this difficult time. And, of course, I send our utmost appreciation to all our front liners for their outstanding dedication and selflessness, " Ty said.

Story continues

Further, Ty assured Toyotas role in assisting the country at this time.

As a strong partner for nation building, we are committed to heed the call of Filipinos as they begin to rebuild their lives. We need to help them get back to work every day. We have to make sure that we can take them to the hospital when they need care. We must ensure that essential workers can transport themselves to their work places to care for our loved ones. When we can once again move freely, we will be there to bring families and friends together.

On top of the vehicle donation, TMP, in partnership with Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF), has 10 shuttles to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) health workers.

tmp shuttle

The said shuttles are in compliance to the new normal guidelines to ensure that healthcare workers are well-protected.

Earlier, the TMP Foundation handed over some 900 meal packs to frontliners from the Department of Transportation (DOTr).

During the early part of the community quarantine imposed by the government, Okamoto ordered for the lendout of some Toyota vehicles.

Photos from Toyota Motor Philippines

Also read:

Toyota restarts dealership operations in GCQ areas

Toyota PH Brings More Help to Flatten the Curve

Toyota PH Welcomes New President
by Wang Zhicheng

Mgr Li was already coadjutor bishop, recognised by the Holy See in 2017. Mgr Lucas Li Jingfeng had already prepared the "peaceful" transition from underground to official status. Provincial authorities are set to guarantee freedom. The Church is united in the diocese and across Shaanxi.

Fengxiang (AsiaNews)  Mgr Peter Li Huiyuan, unofficial bishop of Fengxiang (Shaanxi) since 2017, but recognised by the Holy See since 2015 as coadjutor bishop, became the official bishop, recognised by the government, in a ceremony in St Joseph cathedral.

Many bishops from Shaanxi attended the ceremony: Joseph Tong Changping of Weinan, Joseph Wu Qinjing of Zhouzhi, Joseph Han Yingjin of Sanyuan, Anthony Dang Mingyan of Xian, Stephen Xu Hongwei from Hanzhong, and John Baptist Yang Xiaoting of Yanan (pictured).

Due to regulations related to the pandemic, still active in Beijing and Xian, only 300 people were able to attend the service in the cathedral, along with several civil authorities.

The diocese of Fengxiang has about 20,000 members, 50 priests and 200 nuns. "Everything went very calmly and solemnly," one of the faithful present said to AsiaNews.

Mgr Peter Li Huiyuan, 55, was coadjutor bishop of Mgr Lucas Li Jingfeng, who passed away in 2017. The latter never accepted to belong to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

With the official installation of the bishop, the diocese shifts from the underground Church to the official Church.

Contrary to what is taking place in the dioceses in Fujian, Zhejiang, Henan, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, where government authorities are very harsh with unofficial communities, the authorities in Shaanxi have long sought some harmony with the Church.

According to some local priests, the transition from "underground" to official status was undertaken with "serenity" thanks to a number of factors:

1. The process had already begun under Mgr Li Jingfeng, who was prepared to accept government recognition only on the condition that he not be required to break his bond with the Pope and that his communities be guaranteed religious freedom.

2. Shaanxi authorities, eager to settle the problem, gave these guarantees to Mgr Lucas Li and then to Mgr Peter Li.

Not long ago there was the problem of the demolition of a church in Qianyang. The authorities eventually apologised because they had to follow the new regulations on religious activities.

These provide for stringent safety standards for religious buildings, which the Qianyang church did not meet, and require that churches be built in places that are hidden or barely visible. The Qianyang church was built in a central location.

As a form of apology for the demolition, the authorities promised new land to build a new church, but in a more peripheral location.

3. Already back in the days of Mgr Lucas Li, all the priests of Fengxiang agreed not to be divided. There is also great unity with all the other dioceses of Shaanxi, which facilitates relations with provincial authorities.

The new bishop is a man of faith, honest, sincere. He is a bit shy, but he is highly respected by everyone.

To go from underground to official status, it was necessary to follow the "democratic" method imposed on the official Chinese Church, namely that a candidate be elected in a vote by a diocesan committee: Mgr Peter Li received a unanimous vote.
Eight people were injured, two seriously when two groups clashed at Rosport's Sauerpark on Sunday evening. Police are looking for witnesses.

A group of 20-30 people armed with clubs and iron rods were involved in a fight near rue du Barrage in Rosport on Sunday evening towards 6.30pm. Several police units immediately arrived at the scene, describing it the situation as "chaotic".

Pepper spray was used to disperse the two groups, and police back-up was called. Crowds forming around the park hoping to catch a glimpse of the fight made it difficult for officers to pass through. No clubs or iron rods were found at the scene following the incident.

According to reports, police had already intervened earlier in the day after a verbal dispute between the two groups.

Eight people were injured, two severely. They have all been taken to hospital.

Police are asking for witnesses to step forward and contact Echternach police on (+352) 244 721000 or via E-Mail at police.echternach@police.etat.lu.
A second One UI 2.1 update is now rolling out for the Samsung Galaxy A51. The new update brings some of the One UI 2.1 features that were missing in the initial release that rolled out last month.

The latest update comes with the firmware version A515FXXU3BTF4. According to the changelog, it brings several new camera features such as Single take, My filters, and Night hyperlapse to Samsungs bestselling smartphone. These One UI 2.1-exclusive camera features were not included in the initial release.

Single Take is a feature that lets you capture the perfect shot using Samsungs integrated AI technology.

Advertisement

When you tap the shutter button, it captures a mix of photos, GIFs, and videos in a 3-10 second window and recommends the best shot for you.

My filters, on the other hand, lets users create their own image filters which they can save for later reuse as well. They can use colors and styles from an existing photo as an inspiration for their custom filter. Night Hyperlapse, as the name suggests, lets you shoot time-lapse videos even during low-light conditions.

The new One UI 2.1 update for the Samsung Galaxy A51 is currently rolling out for users in Malaysia, according to Tizen Help. The over-the-air (OTA) update has a file size of over 336MB. This update also bundles the June 2020 Android security patch.

Advertisement

Samsung Galaxy A51 receives a second One UI 2.1 update

Samsung started rolling out the One UI 2.1 for the Galaxy A51 in the first week of May 2020. The update packed improved AR Emoji, improved Samsung Keyboard, and an update Gallery app, as well as Music Share, and Quick Share features.

However, the initial release surprisingly excluded the One UI 2.1-exclusive camera features.

While some of them have now been added with the latest update, features like Pro Mode video and Selfie Tone are still missing though, at least thats what the changelog suggests.

Advertisement

The initial update also lacked features like AR Zone and Live Caption. Its unclear whether these features have made it into the Galaxy A51 with the new update. The changelog only mentions of general stability and security improvements.

Samsung had also included a built-in screen recorder to the Galaxy A51 with the last update. A Screen recorder button was added to the quick settings panel. However, the feature didnt work. Although it let users customize the recorders settings, tapping on the button would do nothing.

The button even went missing after a few days for some users. Hopefully, Samsung has fixed that with the latest update, and the screen recording feature will work on the Galaxy A51 as intended.
Dr. Rothblatt (Founder, CEO, and Chairwoman of United Therapeutics ) wanted to show appreciation to UT's employees for their efforts in continuing their crucial work during this uncertain time. She gifted CrazyCap bottles to all ~900 employees! "I'm a #1 Fan of CrazyCap! Thanks again for making a great product, and for getting it out to all of us," said Dr. Rothblatt about CrazyCap. The CrazyCap bottle gives each person access to clean water without the need to buy plastic water bottles, as well as a way to sterilize devices and surfaces that may have come in contact with the coronavirus or other contaminants. This generous gesture demonstrates that taking care of the team at United Therapeutics is a crucial priority for Dr. Rothblatt.

About CrazyCap

CrazyCap is a technology start-up that changes the entire life cycle of water. Our product is a rechargeable screw-on cap that is embedded with a Deep UV LED light that destroys microorganisms, pathogens, and viruses including the Coronavirus, turning virtually any water source into drinkable/potable water!

CrazyCap was created to address a global issue; you shouldn't need harsh chemicals or heavy replaceable filters to drink clean water! Our goal is to reduce the use of plastic water bottles and cut down on the use of disposable filters while still providing water that is safe to drink. #setwaterfree

For more information on CrazyCap, please visit www.thecrazycap.com and @crazycapbottle on Instagram.

SOURCE CrazyCap

Related Links

https://thecrazycap.com


By IANS

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government has put on hold three major agreements signed with Chinese companies at the recently concluded Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 investor meet, officials said.

The proposed projects entail investments of around Rs 5,000 crore in the state.

"We have taken this decision in consultation with the Central government. These agreements were signed prior to the development on the Indo-China border and killing of 20 Indian soldiers," Industry Minister Subhash Desai said.

He added that the Ministry of External Affairs has advised the state government against signing any further agreements with Chinese companies.



ALSO READ | Government seeks product-wise details from industry to curb imports from China: Sources

It may be recalled that at the online Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 meet, the state government signed agreements worth over Rs 16,000 crore with global companies including Chinese groups.

They include a Rs 3,770-crore MoU with the Great Wall Motors to set up an automobile manufacturing unit in Pune' Talegaon and a Rs 1,000-crore in partnership with Foton (China) and PMI Electro Mobility.

Besides, Henglu Engineering made a commitment of Rs 250-crore for the expansion plans at its unit Phase II in Pune.

Apart from China, the state signed around nine other MoUs with companies from the US, South Korea, Singapore and various domestic entities, with huge employment generation potential.

ALSO WATCH:
A New Jersey State Police trooper was hurt in a collision with a dump truck on the New Jersey Turnpike on Monday morning.

The crash occurred on the southbound side near milepost 70.7 in Cranbury, State Police said.

An ambulance brought the trooper to an area hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening.

Overhead video from abc7ny.com shows the troopers vehicle severely damaged along the side of the road. The truck overturned.

Our Trooper involved in this mornings terrible Turnpike crash is currently alert and conscious. He is at a local hospital and having tests done now. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers!! pic.twitter.com/oxldi2Kw4J  State Troopers Fraternal Association of NJ (STFA) (@STFA_NJ) June 22, 2020

Southbound traffic is still backed up for several miles as of 8:45 a.m.

State Police didnt immediately provide additional information.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The state government plans to use Jio TV and Sahyadri channel to impart online lectures to students from Class 1 to 12 amid the pandemic. The online teaching will begin in all state schools, aided as well as unaided, from the first week of July, using television channels, radio and other online platforms, including Google Meet, the state education department said in a meeting chaired by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday.

Thackeray reviewed the status of online teaching and asked the department to begin these modules soon and ensure hassle-free connectivity. He was given a presentation on classes conducted using Google Meet. He has directed to take all the stakeholders into confidence before rolling out online education. This would be in addition to opening of the schools from July 1 for Classes 9, 10 and 12 in remote areas where the spread of Covid-19 is less. CM Thackeray directed the department to check the compatibility of online teaching on all electronic platforms. The platforms should be technically foolproof with capability to resolve technical glitches immediately, he said.

We will finalise the telecast of recorded lectures through these channels in the next four-five days. Sahyadri is charging us 5,000 an hour with an offer of free hours equal to the number of paid ones. Jio has dedicated two separate channels for Class 10 and 12 and has a provision of five separate channels for students from Class 1 to 12. Similarly, radio channels, too, are being engaged for online lectures, besides the use of Google Meet platform, where 250 students can join at a time, said an official from the school education department.

Shakuntala Kale, chairman, Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, said the HSC and SSC results will be announced by mid-July and end of July, respectively.

At least 54% of Maharashtra households have smart phones required to conduct online classes, while 80% have television sets and 10% have radio sets. We are covering almost all households with one or medium or the other, covering all 1.08 lakh schools in the state. The schools that are opening from July 1 are mostly private schools, including aided ones. Most of the areas with low Internet connectivity or no television are areas with minimum spread of the virus and the schools can open there, the official said.

The department told the CM that the Maharashtra State Council of Education Training and Research has started training teachers to conduct the classes online, at its Pune studios.
Susanna Reid leaves the BBC Broadcasting House in central London after appearing on The Andrew Marr Show on 14 July, 2019 in London, England. (Photo credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Celebrity Gogglebox will be getting some brand new additions to the line-up as Susanna Reid and Judge Rinder are set to appear on the programme later in the series.

Judge Rinder confirmed the news on Twitter as he explained their debut would be on 3 July.

"Delighted to say my dear friend Susanna Reid and I will be joining the esteemed Gogglebox sofa dwellers later this series.

Read more: Viewers anger as Celebrity Gogglebox appears to break social distancing rules

Robert Rinder attends the National Television Awards 2020 at The O2 Arena on January 28, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

"Susanna, my flatulent dog and I can be caught passing judgement from Friday 3rd July."

The pair have been pals for a number of years after Rinder, 42, appeared on Good Morning Britain back in 2014 and regularly holiday together in the summer.

Delighted to say my dear friend @susannareid100 and I will be joining the esteemed @c4gogglebox sofa dwellers later this series. Susanna, my flatulent dog and I can be caught passing judgement from Friday 3rd July on @channel4 #celebritygogglebox  Robert Rinder (@RobbieRinder) June 22, 2020

Sadie Frost will also be making an appearance on the series and will be joined by the two sons she shares with ex Jude Law, Rafferty, 23, and Rudy, 17.

The second series of Celebrity Gogglebox began earlier in the month with stars including Bez, Shaun Ryder, Harry Redknapp, and Stacey Solomon.

The show was caught up in a controversy early on after Eamonn Holmes, who appears on the programme with wife Ruth Langsford, criticised the way the show had been edited to omit a clip of him discussing the death of his father.

Instead of the comments about his father, a humorous anecdote of him describing taking Langsford to hospital was used instead.

Gogglebox later apologised and said the episode would be edited for future broadcast and for viewing on All 4.
NASHOTAH, Wis., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Techniplas (the "Company"), a provider of highly engineered technical solutions to the automotive, transportation, and industrial markets, today announced that, following a sale process through Chapter 11, the Company's business is now under new ownership with an improved balance sheet and will continue operating under the Techniplas name.

As outlined in the sale order, which was approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on June 12, 2020, Techniplas, LLC executed a sale of its core assets to certain of its existing investors. The Company's owners include marquee investors Bayside Capital, Amzak Capital Management, and The Jordan Company, who have contributed over $50 million in fresh capital in order to provide the Company a strong balance sheet. The Company will now have significantly less debt and more liquidity to invest in sustainable future growth to the benefit of its customers.

Ali El-Haj, who will continue as Techniplas's Chief Executive Officer under its new ownership, said, "I am excited to lead Techniplas into our next chapter, strengthened with a right-sized balance sheet and backed by our investors, who have proven experience in supporting companies like ours through the next phase of growth. We enter this new phase with renewed energy and enthusiasm to meet the needs of our strategic customers."

El-Haj continued, "I would like to offer special thanks to all of our customers, suppliers, and dedicated employees for their support throughout this expedited process. Techniplas has continued to support and serve essential businesses throughout this process and the COVID-19 pandemic, and now with all of our facilities resuming operations, we are even better positioned to continue serving our customers with our high-quality solutions and service."

The acquisition of Techniplas's core assets closed June 19, 2020. Further information about the Chapter 11 cases can be found at https://dm.epiq11.com/Techniplas.

Techniplas, LLC was represented in this matter by White & Case LLP, FTI Consulting, and Miller Buckfire. The ad hoc group of investors was represented by Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP and Houlihan Lokey.

About Techniplas

Techniplas (www.techniplas.com) is a global provider of highly engineered plastic components, primarily for the automotive sector as well as industrial, consumer, medical, and other markets. The Company's products align with industry trends, including vehicle lightweighting and electrification and an increasing focus on comfort and safety. Techniplas serves global customers and platforms with a focus on technology expertise and design and engineering collaboration with customers. Techniplas maintains long-term relationships with many of the world's leading automotive OEMs.

SOURCE Techniplas

Related Links

https://www.techniplas.com


About

In September 2019, only one of Forbes one hundred innovative leaders was a woman (Americas Most Innovative Leaders). Throughout history, women have been breaking boundaries in technology, but recognition has been few and far between. Lack of recognition has left young girls and aspiring women without role models, thus contributing to the gender gap in technical fields. Wall of Wonder celebrates Cornell University alumnae who have made significant impacts on society through science, technology, and engineering. These women are leaders in medicine, academia, government, and industry. In addition to showcasing the breadth of opportunities a technical education can offer, these women share stories of resilience, leadership, and ardor for all ages.

As graduating seniors of Cornell Universitys College of Engineering, we set out to commemorate Cornell alumnae who inspire us during our transition to impactful careers in technology. We are confident that these stories will continue to inspire us throughout our lives and, moreover, inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

All net proceeds support the Cornell Society of Women Engineers' K-12 outreach initiatives to advance STEM education and inspire future leaders.
BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- China's national observatory on Sunday issued a yellow alert for rainstorms as heavy rain is expected to lash parts of the country's southern regions.

Heavy rain or storms will batter parts of Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces as well as Chongqing and Shanghai from Sunday to Monday, according to the National Meteorological Center.

Some regions in Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei and Anhui provinces could receive up to 280 mm of rainfall in 24 hours, the center said.

According to forecast, a strong downpour will hit Guizhou and Chongqing, as well as some areas along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the following five days, with rainfall likely to reach 70 mm per hour in some regions.

The national observatory warned local authorities to take precautions against flooding and possible geological disasters.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red being the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue. Enditem




A half-dozen senior advisers to President Donald Trump have repeatedly voted by mail, according to election records obtained by The Associated Press, undercutting the presidents argument that the practice will lead to widespread fraud this November.

The aides include Betsy DeVos, the education secretary who has permanent absentee voting status in her home state of Michigan. Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, voted absentee in Texas in 2018 and didn't vote in the general election two years earlier when Trump's name was on the ballot.

Vice President Mike Pence voted absentee using a three-year-old Indiana address

Two other senior Trump campaign officials - chief operating officer Michael Glassner and deputy campaign manager Bill Stepien - have repeatedly voted by mail in New Jersey. And Nick Ayers, a senior campaign adviser who was previously chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, has voted by mail in Georgia since 2014.

Pence and his wife Karen voted by mail in April in advance of the June Indiana primary, Business Insider reported.

In most election years, voting by mail is an unremarkable event. But this year is different because Trump has railed against state efforts to expand access to mail-in voting as an alternative to waiting in lines at polling places during a pandemic. He has argued without evidence that mail-in voting will lead to fraud and warned Monday that foreign countries could print ballots.

AG Bill Barr voted absentee, and warned mail voting would 'open the floodgates' to fraud

President Trump claimed foreign countries would print millions of mail-in ballots. He voted by mail for the Florida primary

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany voted by mail 11 times over a decade

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos voted absentee in her home state of Michigan

That, some experts say, is a double standard that amounts to voter suppression.

'These are people who are taking advantage of - which is perfectly legal - their right to vote absentee,' said Trevor Potter, the president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, who previously served as a general counsel on both of John McCain's Republican presidential campaigns. 'But they dont want other people to do the same thing.'

In this Oct. 10, 2019, file photo, Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Target Center in Minneapolis

Trump himself voted by mail in the Florida primary earlier this year. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has a lengthy history of voting by mail, which has been detailed in recent news stories. And Attorney General William Barr, who has also raised concern about the practice, voted absentee in Virginia in 2012 and 2019, The Washington Post previously reported.

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign's communications director, defended the Trump aides who have voted by mail. In a statement, he said there's a 'vast difference between voting absentee by mail when you can't get to the polls on Election Day versus mailing every registered voter a ballot, even those who didn't request one.'

Amid the pandemic, some states - governed by both Democrats and Republicans - send applications for absentee ballots to voters, but not ballots themselves. Six states will send ballots in November. Others are taking less dramatic steps.

'The media thinks theyre playing `gotcha by purposefully ignoring that difference,' Murtaugh continued. 'Voter rolls are notorious for having bad addresses or even listing dead people as active voters.'

The campaign declined to make the Trump advisers who vote by mail available for interviews.

The coronavirus has upended primaries across the U.S. this year, leading to postponed elections, shortages of poll workers, the shuttering of some polling locations and hours-long lines at some that have remained open. Thats raised Democratic fears that similar complications in November could alter the outcome of the contest between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

What Trump administration members said about mail-in voting President Trump: 'MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES.' Voting history: voted by mail in Florida in March AG Bill Barr Attorney General Bill Barr: 'The thing we have going for us especially when there is intense division in the country is that we have peaceful transfers of power and our way of resolving it is to have an election. But when state governments start adopting these practices like mail in ballots that open the floodgates of potential fraud then peoples confidence in the outcome of the elections is going to be undermined.' Voting history: voted absentee in Virginia in 2012 and 2019 White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: 'Get the facts about mail-in ballots! Will the media, and @Twitter, acknowledge these real concerns with mass mail-in voting?' Kayleigh McEnany Voting history: Voted 11 times by mail-in ballots over a decade. Vice President Mike Pence: Co-chaired commission on voter fraud Voting history: Voted by mail along with his wife, Karen Pence, for the June primary using an Indiana address. Also voted by mail in 2018. Advertisement

Justin Clark, the Trump campaign's top attorney, told Republicans during a meeting in Wisconsin last year that the GOP relies on voter suppression to be competitive in swing states, while calling for the party to 'start playing offense a little bit,' according to a recording that was previously obtained by the AP.

While instances of voter fraud are rare, Trump's campaign seized on recent news stories detailing how a Philadelphia election judge recently pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes in exchange for bribes between 2014 and 2016.

In Texas, where Parscale voted by mail in 2018, there are stiff absentee ballot laws, requiring a person to be over 65, disabled, or out of the county where they are registered during early voting, as well as on Election Day.

Parscale was in Houston for a Trump rally on Oct. 22, 2018, the day early voting began in San Antonio, where he lived at the time, according to records and several tweets he sent. The day after, he signed a statement of residence that was submitted to county election officials to clarify his address. Yet its unclear if he traveled to San Antonio, where his presence would have disqualified him from voting absentee.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that fear of contracting the coronavirus does not make voters eligible to cast their ballot by mail.

Parscale acknowledged the difficulty he faced casting an absentee ballot in 2016, when wasn't able to vote.

'I was in New York working to elect Donald Trump and encountered a series of problems receiving my absentee ballot from Texas and missed the deadline,' Parscale said in a statement to CBS News, which first reported that he didn't vote that year. 'Just further proof that vote-by-mail is not the flawless solution Democrats and the media pretend it is.'

DeVos, the education secretary, has voted absentee in all but three Michigan elections over the past decade, according to records. Trump threatened last month to withhold federal funding after Michigan's Democratic secretary of state mailed out absentee ballot applications to registered voters.

DeVos' family has donated millions of dollars to Republican causes, including groups that are now part of a fierce court fight to limit the expansion of vote-by-mail.

Glassner and Stepien have both voted repeatedly by mail in New Jersey, where Glassner has voted absentee four times since 2016. That includes a general election ballot that rejected by election officials in 2019. Stepien has voted seven times by mail since 2006, the records show.

Some Republicans question the wisdom of Trump's anti-vote-by-mail strategy.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican, said it is 'counterproductive.'

'Youre the incumbent president of the United States. You have a bully pulpit, youve got this massive war chest, and youve got a huge electronic following,' he said. 'Why would you not encourage them to vote, number one, and say, well if you cant get to the polls for whatever reason, make sure you fill out that absentee ballot and vote for me?'

___

Associated Press writer Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report from Washington.

FILE - In this March 27, 2020, file photo, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room in Washington. A half-dozen senior advisers to President Donald Trump have repeatedly voted by mail, according to election records obtained by The Associated Press, undercutting the president's argument that the practice will lead to widespread fraud this November. The aides include DeVos, who has permanent absentee voting status in her home state of Michigan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 20, 2018, file photo, then-Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Nick Ayers, center, arrives for an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington. A half-dozen senior advisers to President Donald Trump have repeatedly voted by mail, according to election records obtained by The Associated Press, undercutting the president's argument that the practice will lead to widespread fraud this November. Ayers, a senior campaign adviser, has voted by mail in Georgia since 2014. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
LOS ANGELES  The 2021 Golden Globes will take place on Feb. 28, a date that the Oscars abandoned last week in an effort to salvage its 93rd installment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the small group of journalists that hands out the Globes, had not previously announced a date for the 78th ceremony. The Globes have taken place in January since 1973, in part because the press association likes to set the pace for the Academy Awards race  or at least try. The February slot will allow the Globes to maintain that position. The Oscars were rescheduled for April 25, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences emphasizing that it selected that date by consulting with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

The press association, which collaborates with Dick Clark Productions and NBC to put on the televised Globes ceremony, gave no explanation for its selection. It also did not say how the February date would affect film and television series eligibility, which normally adheres to the calendar year. The window for best picture consideration at the coming Academy Awards was extended to Feb. 28 from Dec. 31 to make up for the closing of theaters between March and June because of the pandemic.

As previously announced, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will host the 2021 Globes, which the press association said on Monday would continue to be Hollywoods party of the year. It will take place as usual at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler last hosted the freewheeling show in 2015.
The Assam Board Class 12 examination 2020 was conducted from 12 February to 14 March across 772 centres.

The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) will declare the Assam Board Class 12th, examination 2020 results on Thursday, 25 June.

According to a report by The Hindustan Times, Assam Higher Secondary Exam Controller Pankaj Borthakur confirmed that the result of Assam HSSLC (higher secondary school leaving certification) exam 2020 will be declared on 25 June.

Once declared, students can check their results online at ahsec.nic.in and resultsassam.nic.in.

The Assam Board Class 12 examination 2020 was conducted from 12 February to 14 March across 772 centres. Around 2.35 lakh students have taken the exam in science, commerce, humanities, and vocational studies streams, the report said.

The announcement of Assam HSSLC result 2020 has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, it was announced on 25 May.

Assam HS exam 2020 result: Steps to check online

Step 1: Go to the website - ahsec.nic.in or resultsassam.nic.in.

Step 2: On the homepage, look for a link that reads Assam HS Result 2020 or Assam Class 12 Results 2020

Step 3: Key in your Assam Board Class 12 exam 2020 roll number and other details to login

Step 4: A new page will open that will mention your name, score/grade in each subject.

A report by Jagran Josh mentions that after the declaration of the Assam Board Class 12 result 2020, the AHSEC would also notify the rechecking and re-evaluation procedure.

The council is also expected to formally notify the Assam 12th toppers list 2020 and the key statistical highlights of the results soon after.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader and former petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily on Monday slammed the Centre over the repeated fuel price hikes in the last few days, saying it is "sadistic" on the Modi government's part to "fleece" people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

His attack came on a day petrol price was hiked by 33 paise per litre and diesel by 58 paise to take retail rates to record high as the oil companies increased prices for the 16th day in a row.

"Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which is creeping day by day and the deflation in the economy, the government is fleecing the people of the country and making them shed tears," Moily said in a statement.

"It is sadistic on the part of the Modi government to increase the prices of petrol and diesel despite the slump in crude prices at the cost of the sufferings of the people of India," the former petroleum minister said.

READ| Fuel tax hikes feed Centre's kitty, extra revenue likely over Rs 15,950 crore so far

The fuel prices are now at a four-and-a-half month high in India even as crude oil rates have slumped below the USD 40 a barrel mark, he said.

"In 16 days, petrol price has been hiked by Rs 8.3 per litre and diesel by Rs 9.46, a record increase in rates of the fuel in any fortnight since pricing was deregulated," Moily said.

Petrol price in Delhi was hiked to Rs 79.56 per litre from Rs 79.23 while diesel rates were increased to Rs 78.55 a litre from Rs 78.27, according to a price notification of state oil marketing companies.

Rates have been increased across the country and vary from state to state depending on the incidence of local sales tax or value-added tax (VAT).

On reports that US President Donald Trump has taken a decision to order new curbs on H1B visas, Moily said this is "the biggest blow" to the employment prospects of Indians in the United States and the most detrimental and reactionary decision taken by the Trump administration.

He hit out at the Modi government, saying it had failed to deal with the issue.

"The action amounts to total diplomatic failure on the part of the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is surprising how India is losing steeply in its influence with US administration despite the pomp and grandeur displayed during the 'Howdy Modi' show in Houston and replicated at the 'Namaste Trump' event at Ahmedabad," Moily said.

It is puzzling how India is losing its diplomatic supremacy with all its neighbouring countries, be it China, Pakistan, Nepal, and now with the US, he said.

India always enjoyed the high diplomatic status during the regime of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh who had put the country on the "highest pedestal" in the eyes of powerful nations, he added.
SAINT PETERSBURG, Fla., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently acquired American Fibertek had been based out of New Jersey for over 30 years, but recently moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. The move allows the leading American-manufactured electronics company to utilize and be a part of the ever strong and continually growing electronics manufacturing scene in St. Petersburg and the surrounding areas.

American Fibertek American Fibertek products are manufactured in America

"One of Pinellas County's greatest strengths is electronics manufacturing," says Scott Talcott, business development manager, Pinellas County Economic Development. "Electronic component circuit board assembly, switches, power supplies and other digital network hardware are advanced tech. Our workforce that produces and assembles these components is very strong."



The industry support in the area is of the highest caliber. From component distributors like Sensible Micro Corporation right next door in Tampa to an "experienced workforce in electronic assembly. We even have a certified electronics training company in Clearwater to assist if needed," said Talcott.



St. Petersburg is forward thinking and very proactive in developing strong and diverse local commerce. "Companies like American Fibertek are exactly the type of employer that the Grow Smarter initiative in St. Pete seeks to build," said J.P. DuBuque, President and CEO of the Greater St. Petersburg Area Economic Development Corp.

DuBuque is spot on: American Fibertek takes great pride in its deliberate diversity. As a woman-owned small business, the company chose to relocate to 745 43rd Street South in St. Petersburg, which is in a HUBZone (Historically Underutilized Business area). Additionally, all of these attributes (woman-owned, small business, HUBZone) contribute as benefits for Federal partners.



American Fibertek plans to utilize all of the resources St. Petersburg and surrounding areas have to offer, ultimately making the company better, faster and stronger.

Media Contact:

Matt Poulos

[email protected]

727-200-4734

SOURCE American Fibertek
Beijing is contemplating what countermeasures it can take if Vietnam takes it to international court over territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, insiders say.

One option would be to actually take part in the legal proceedings, which it did not do when facing a similar arbitration case brought by the Philippines four years ago, which China lost.

I think preparations are under way, said Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, the capital of Chinas island province, Hainan.

Its unlikely were turning a blind eye while Vietnam is moving into [legal action].

Beijing could countersue Vietnam over the sovereignty of disputed parts of the Spratly Islands, Wu said.

It could also declare lines around the Spratlys to consolidate its claims and restart its oil and gas explorations there, which were suspended in 1994 after strong opposition from Hanoi, he said.

Beijing often cites a diplomatic note in 1958 signed by Pham Van Dong, then North Vietnams prime minister, as key evidence that Vietnam recognised Chinas sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

But Vietnam has argued that the note was invalid, contending that territorial disputes over the South China Sea involved South Vietnam while Pham represented North Vietnam at that time.

Wus assessment is part of discussions in China in recent weeks on how Beijing would react if Vietnam pursues China through an international court of arbitration over their South China Sea disputes. Despite an ideological bond between the ruling communist parties of the two neighbours, Vietnam is the most vocal critic of Chinas claims in the strategic waterway.

Wu Shicun says it is unlikely Beijing is turning a blind eye while Vietnam is considering legal action. Photo: Handout

Last week, Zheng Zhihua, an associate professor with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, wrote an article on the website of think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative saying that Beijing might learn a lesson from its arbitration with the Philippines and take a different approach.

Story continues

For example, Zheng suggested, China might name its members for the arbitration tribunal and take part in the initial proceeding before determining whether to accept the case, similar to the tactic the US used in 1986 when Nicaragua filed a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Months after China seized the disputed Scarborough Shoal in 2012, the Philippines filed an arbitration case based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), challenging the legality of Chinas claims to waters based on the nine-dash line that appears on official Chinese maps and encircles much of the South China Sea.

At that time, Beijing declared it would not participate in the arbitration. Later it said it would not accept or comply with any court decisions  known as three nos strategy  when the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled unanimously in favour of the Philippines.

Beijing claims 80 per cent of the South China Sea, through which US$5 trillion worth of goods are transported annually  portions of which are claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Vietnam and China have repeatedly pledged to resolve their conflicts over the waters peacefully, but tensions between them flare from time to time.

Last year a Chinese survey vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, began making passes through an oil block deployed by Vietnam near Vanguard Bank, leading to a months-long stand-off between the coastguards of both nations until the Chinese ships left in November.

A reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Photo: AFP

Carl Thayer, an emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia, said that Vietnams consideration of legal action against China dated back to 2014, when China stationed an oil rig in waters near the disputed Paracel Islands.

That move prompted a stand-off and triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-China protest in Vietnam.

This has taken the form of wide consultations with experts in international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in particular, Thayer said.

Hanoi could take the sovereignty dispute to the UN Security Council, but China has the right of veto there. Thus, seeking an arbitral tribunal under the UNCLOS appears to be a preferred option even though it contains no enforcement mechanism.

If Vietnam took legal action and won, this outcome would be a severe blow to Chinas prestige and international standing, particularly if China participated in proceedings, Thayer said.

Vietnam could then apply political and diplomatic pressure on China by insisting that the award be complied with  unlike the Philippines, whose president set it aside.

Also, Vietnams actions would provide a foundation for other members of the international community, particularly maritime powers, to weigh in, he said.

In May, Hanoi nominated four arbitrators and four conciliators, signalling that it could follow the Philippines path and seek an arbitral tribunal.

Even so, Thayer said, there was no sign Hanoi would make the move soon  mostly because there was no critical incident has taken place that has crystalised a dispute between China and Vietnam that compels legal action at this time.

Observers said that any legal action taken by Hanoi could be viewed as incendiary by Beijing, especially as China is locked in a fierce rivalry with the US on multiple fronts, with the South China Sea the most likely flashpoint.

Relations between Hanoi and Washington have significantly improved over the years, largely because of the shared concerns over China. The USS Theodore Roosevelt made a port call to Da Nang, the second time in three years a US aircraft carrier has done so, and the US has given two coastguard cutters to Vietnam to improve Hanois ability to patrol the South China Sea amid tensions with China.

If Vietnam is getting too close to the US and brings a lawsuit, it means it is picking the side with the US to confront China over the South China Sea issue, Wu said.

That is something Vietnam has to evaluate.

China was furious when Manila filed its suit in 2012, and has since stepped up its construction of artificial islands and its military build-up in the Spratly Islands as part of a response to the Philippines, Zheng said.

Observers said that a suit brought by Vietnam would also damage party-to-party solidarity.

If China takes a weak position and makes concessions to Vietnam [over the South China Sea disputes], it would be hard for the government to explain to its people, Wu said.

It will be a miscalculation to believe China would show mercy just because of [shared ideology].

Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank, said China would also need to assess the cost, especially as it was facing a global backlash over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Chinas external environment is bad enough [because of the Covid-19 pandemic] and it doesnt need more enemies, especially a country in its neighbourhood and at an important location. Further escalation will only push Vietnam further away, Sun said.

I have no doubt that China will seek punishment of Vietnam on the side, but that is not going to help Chinas image and public diplomacy efforts and will only confirm what many countries are suspecting and worried about  that China does believe might is right and it is a coercive hegemony when other countries dont go its way, she said.

Id like to think that is a much bigger damage.

Sign up now for a 50% early bird discount on the 100+ page China Internet Report 2020 Pro Edition, which includes deep-dive analysis, trends, and case studies on the 10 most important internet sectors. Now in its 3rd year, this go-to source for understanding China tech also comes with exclusive access to 6 webinars with C-level executives. Offer valid until 30 June 2020.

More from South China Morning Post:

This article South China Sea: if Vietnam files suit, China may take part in legal proceedings first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
Gutkha baron Kishore Wadhwani, who was arrested in connection with the alleged GST evasion to the tune of Rs 300 crore, was on Monday remanded in judicial custody till June 30 by a court. Wadhwani is the prime accused in the case.

Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) has submitted that they have detected GST evasion to the tune of Rs 300 crore through illegal trade of pan masala and tobacco products, and that the figure might go up.

A Pakistani national and three locals were already arrested in the case.

After hearing the submissions, Judicial Magistrate First Class Brijesh Singh remanded Wadhwani in judicial custody till June 30.

DGGI special public prosecutor Chandan Airen said Wadhwani might try to scuttle the probe and escape to Dubai if not sent to jail, as he also possesses a resident visa for UAE.

Wadhwani was arrested from a hotel in Mumbai last week by DGGI under "Operation Cancer", and brought on a transit remand.

The racket busted by the DGGI, after conducting raids in Indore and Ujjain, was involved in illegal manufacture and sale of paan masala and tobacco products.
The UN on Monday urged Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to "work together" to resolve differences over Addis Ababa's Nile River mega-dam which has been a long-running source of regional tension. At Egypt's request, the Security Council was scheduled to hold an informal videoconference Monday afternoon to address the dispute. Recent talks failed to produce a deal on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will be the largest hydropower plant in Africa. "We urge Egypt, we urge Ethiopia and Sudan to work together to intensify efforts to peacefully resolve outstanding differences," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said during his daily press conference. Dujarric recalled "the importance of the 2015 Declaration of Principles on the dam" that stressed the need for cooperation based on good faith, international law and mutual benefit. According to a diplomatic source, the Security Council session was not anticipated to produce a resolution, as Council members were expected to refer only to letters sent by the three nations to the UN explaining their concerns. Sudan, where the White and Blue Niles converge, on Sunday had warned against escalation and urged further negotiations over the dam after the previous ones failed. Ethiopia has declared plans to start filling the dam next month, regardless of whether a deal has been reached. Egypt, which views the hydro-electric barrage as an existential threat, on Friday urged the Security Council to intervene, citing Ethiopia's "non-positive stances." The Arab League is also due to discuss the issue, at Egypt's request, in a virtual meeting of foreign ministers on Tuesday. Both Khartoum and Cairo fear the 145-metre-high (480-foot-high) dam will threaten essential water supplies once the reservoir starts being filled. Egypt gets about 97 percent of its freshwater needs from the Nile. But Addis Ababa says the dam is indispensable for its development and insists Egypt's water share will not be affected. The Nile is a lifeline supplying both water and electricity to the 10 countries it traverses. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, pictured under construction in December 2019, will be Africa's largest hydropower plant
SPRINGFIELD, Mo., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In a victory for 12 Missouri hospitals, a federal judge has remanded a case against opioid drug makers, distributors and retailers back to state court. The group of hospitals filed the civil suit in April seeking compensation from the defendants for two decades of financial harm from the opioid epidemic.

Last month, the defendants attempted to move the case to the U.S District Court for the Western District of Missouri Southern Division, but on June 15, U.S District Judge Roseann A. Ketchmark ruled the move was without merit and decided in favor of the hospitals' motion to keep the case in Missouri state court. Judge Ketchmark remanded the case back to Greene County Circuit Court where it was originally filed. In her ruling, Judge Ketchmark wrote that due to the particular state-law claims made by the plaintiffs, the federal court lacks jurisdiction.

"We're extremely gratified Judge Ketchmark agreed with our motion to keep this important case in our state," said Greg Aleshire, attorney with Aleshire Robb & Rapp, in Springfield, which represents the hospitals. "As the COVID-19 pandemic puts additional pressure on hospital finances, receiving compensation for their financial losses due to the opioid epidemic is more critical than ever."

Opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers contributed to the weakened financial state of hospitals as the nation entered the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced many to close and pushed hundreds of others to the brink of closure.

"This decision will allow the case to move more expeditiously through the courts and hopefully secure desperately needed funding to struggling rural and community hospitals in this time of unprecedented crisis," said Don Barrett, of Barrett Law Group, who serves as additional counsel for plaintiffs both in Missouri and in state-based cases across the country.

The Missouri hospitals join more than 650 hospitals across the United States to file state-based lawsuits against the manufacturers, distributors and retailers responsible for the opioid crisis. Learn more about the devastating effects of the opioid epidemic on America's hospitals at https://hospitalopioidcrisis.com/

The original case number is 2031-CC00459 in the Circuit Court of Greene County, Missouri.

Judge Ketchmark's order is 6:20-03152-CV-RK in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri Southern Division.

Media Contact: Philip Betbeze, [email protected], 615-750-9035

SOURCE Aleshire Robb PC
Planning red tape is stopping farmers from diversifying at a 'vital time' when businesses needed to explore diversification options, a rural expert says.

This is according to Paul Madeley, from Madeleys Chartered Surveyors, who believes the planning process is putting off farming and rural businesses.

He said many farmers who were considering their future post-coronavirus and post-Brexit directions were not working on new projects due to red tape.

It comes as housing secretary Robert Jenrick backed a report from think tank Policy Exchange calling for reform in the planning system and what he called an overly bureaucratic planning process.

His comments follow ongoing promises to radically reform the planning system, with extensions to permitted development rights and new zoning-style permission in principle, which could significantly reduce councils influence on the process.

I would be in support of some change to the planning process, said Mr Madeley, adding that some of the decisions being made around the UK were 'extremely frustrating'.

"It seems that as soon as there is any objection from a consultee, then it is likely an application would get refused.

Im not saying it should be a free-for-all, of course, there has to be protection of our habitat and environment, but there also has to be some common sense.

He said it was 'vital' that rural businesses were not 'hamstrung' if they wanted to diversify land or buildings in order to keep a sustainable business for the future post-EU subsidies.

You just get the feeling that the system is looking for grounds to refuse, rather than the other way around, Mr Madeley added.

If you are converting old farm buildings into residential, then surely that has to be better than developing whole new homes on untouched land?

"These buildings are already there, they just need the work to be given the nod. So many farmers are giving up on this kind of thing because they get so frustrated by delays and red tape in the planning process.
[June 22, 2020] Wolters Kluwer launches TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module to support U.S. Paycheck Protection Program participants

With the U.S. CARES Act's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) now entering the loan forgiveness phase, Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions has launched its eagerly awaited TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module to help local lenders and their small business client recipients of PPP funding facilitate both online and in-person loan forgiveness applications. The comprehensive, end-to-end solution facilitates and automates the application process for the forgiveness of loans to small businesses that received PPP emergency funding, providing seamless technology benefits to local lenders and PPP borrowers. The TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module builds on the success of Wolters Kluwer's widely used solution, Paycheck Protection Program Supported by TSoftPlus, which, since early April, has helped local lenders assist small businesses nationwide with payroll funding. The TSoftPlus technology has interfaced seamlessly with the Small Business Administration's (SBA) E-TRAN platform, helping those businesses retain approximately one million U.S. jobs and thereby providing critical economic relief during the COVID-19 crisis. "We're a small bank and hadn't processed an SBA small business loan in probably 20 years," said Marji Wolfe (News - Alert), Loan Officer with Glasford State Bank in Glasford, Illinois. The bank helped several local businesses obtain PPP funding including two restaurants, a print supply firm, a construction company, area farmers, realtors and churches. "One customer said they didn't think they'd stay in business without this lifeline. Wolters Kluwer's technology was easy to navigate and allowed us to process 17 PPP loan applications. We are now looking forward to using the TSoftPlus software again for the loan forgiveness stage." The product's online functionality expedites the loan forgiveness process for remote, electronic application processing. It features an online form pre-populated with required, existing PPP borrower loan information from the loan approval phase or, for loans outside of TSoftPlus, with data from other systems uploaded through Wolters Kluwer's application programming interfaces. This approach speeds and automates delivery of forgiveness documentation, thereby enhancing overall application accuracy and improved document management, while reducing the occurrence of incomplete applications. Its E-Sign functionality enables electronic signatures on forgiveness applications, helping promote a convenient distance banking option for borrowers and lenders alike.



"This phase is about having a well-documented process in place to treat all PPP borrowers in a fair manner and this module allows borrowers to start the forgiveness application using an intuitive customer journey experience. Notably, lenders need not have used the TSoftPlus technology during the loan's origination phase to take advantage of the module's efficient data import option," said Steve Meirink, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions. "There is also the added benefit that enables lenders to request additional documents after the initial forgiveness application questionnaire is submitted. The module provides tremendous flexibility and clarity for lenders as they work through the loan forgiveness process with their borrowers." Lenders can also brand the forgiveness module with their organization's name and, as Glasford's Wolfe adds, the ease of successfully processing PPP loans with this technology can provide another customer benefit.

"Interacting with many of our existing customers has allowed us to work with them to ascertain what other banking products may be beneficial for them. The PPP loans have helped our close-knit community in a time of difficulty and, during this process, we have worked with a number of these PPP customers to identify other needs that we can support them with moving forward. All in all, this process has provided a real positive for the community." Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions is a market leader and trusted provider of risk management and regulatory compliance solutions and services to U.S. banks and credit unions, insurers and securities firms. The business, which sits within Wolters Kluwer's Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division, helps these financial institutions efficiently manage compliance obligations tied to loan and deposit origination transactions and workflows, manage risk and other regulatory compliance obligations, and gain the insights needed to focus on better serving their customers and growing their business. The TSoftPlus PPP Forgiveness Module is one of several expert solutions launched by Wolters Kluwer's GRC division in response to the COVID-19 crisis, including the Business Entity Search for CARES Act solution, offered by Wolters Kluwer's Lien Solutions business, which conducts bulk/batch corporate identity searches to verify the business status of potential borrowers. COVID-19 Noteworthy Developments Bulletins, meanwhile, aggregates COVID-19 related global regulatory changes, orders, notices and other informational updates for the financial services industry. The division has also launched a COVID-19 resource center to provide businesses and law firms with international, federal and state legislative updates. 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, 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 (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/20200622005373/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Before heading off to my first job after college, my father made it abundantly clear that the Bank of Dad was closed.

First, he found the biggest scissors in the house and cut up the credit card he had given me my freshman year. From now on, I would need to apply for plastic under my name.

Second, he handed me a half dozen stamped envelopes and the contact information for the organization I was to send loan repayments to each month, like clockwork.

Clearly, my life was about to get more complicated when it came to money.

If you have a young 20-something who is moving on to a new chapter in life, theres a lot to know, financially speaking.

Of course, this is such a hard time for young people joining the workforce, especially if they have never worked before or were counting on jobs with companies that have been in a hiring freezes since the coronavirus outbreak in March.

Still, money issues will arise, so heres a financial action plan to get your young person started.

Start budgeting.

Get a handle on what life costs, said Jamie Bosse, a Kansas City-area certified financial planner with Aspyre Wealth Partners. Many college grads dont see the full picture, she said, because mom and dad have taken care of the cellphone, rent, groceries and car insurance.

Sit down with your parents and figure out what your lifestyle actually costs and when all those bills are due, Bosse said.

There are plenty of good budgeting apps, like Mint, to help you track your inflow and outflow  and to make adjustments in your standard of living.

Sign up for a couple sessions with a financial planner.

This is one exception to taking your son or daughter off the family payroll. Springing for a few hours with a planner could help your young adult figure out savings goals and to take advantage of any company benefits from the get-go such as a 401(k) retirement plan.

Know what you owe.

Make sure you understand how much you owe in student loans, when you have to start paying them back and how you are going to do that, said Bosse. If you just graduated, you typically have about a six-month grace period in which you arent required to make payments. However, loans from banks and other private lenders may not offer a grace period.

Avoid taking on new credit-card debt.

Do you really need more than one card? Take stock of your plastic, especially if you are having problems paying the bill in full each month. If you are unable to make the next monthly payment due to the pandemic, contact your card issuer and ask about options, such as payment deferral.

Create or add to any emergency fund.

Saving money by living at home with your parents? Dont just spend that money from a job or paid internship, said Bosse. Instead, sock it away for an emergency fund or for a down payment on an apartment, she said.

Monitor your accounts.

Get into the habit of checking your accounts and validating your charges. Not only does this help you stay within budget, it also ensures you catch any bogus charges and can address them quickly, said Kat Hnatyshyn, a financial manager with CommunityAmerica Credit Union in the Kansas City area.
The winner of Masterchef Australia has reportedly been leaked ahead of time.

But Poh Ling Yeow didn't appear phased about viewers possibly knowing her fate on the competitive cooking show, as she enjoyed some time at her Jamface stall at Adelaide Central Market on Sunday.

Proving to be in high spirits, the 47-year-old chef couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she happily posed for selfies with delighted fans.

Loving life: Poh Ling Yeow, 47, looked in high spirits as she enjoyed some time at her Jamface stall at Adelaide Central Market on Sunday

Poh cut a cute figure as she styled her denim Jamface apron over her chunky baby pink knit.

The TV star tamed her short raven tresses in place with a knitted beanie and accessorised with a pair of hoop earrings.

Poh looked like she was in her element as she chatted away to fans while selling yummy bites at her stall.

Her sighting comes after fears that the Masterchef Australia winner has been leaked by a production insider weeks before the finale.

Strike a pose! The chef couldn't wipe the smile from her face as she happily posed for selfies with delighted fans

Looking good: Poh cut a cute figure as she styled her denim Jamface apron over her chunky baby pink knit

Every major bookmaker is tipping Emelia Jackson to take the Masterchef crown, which suggests some degree of insider knowledge.

MasterChef is filmed in advance and there are plenty of people - including the cast, crew and publicists - who know the outcome.

According to SportsBet, Emilia is the clear favourite with odds of $1.38. Laura Sharrad is tipped for runner-up ($3.50) and Reynold Poernomo is expected to place third ($5).

Oh no! Poh's sighting comes after fears that the Masterchef Australia winner has been leaked by a production insider weeks before the finale

Can she do it? It's possible one of these insiders leaked the result, causing a surge in online bets that resulted in Emelia's odds being slashed significantly

TAB odds differ slightly: Emilia is the front-runner at $1.25, but 'dessert king' Reynold is tipped for second place ($4.50) and Laura third ($6).

Interestingly, the bookies aren't tipping season one runner-up Poh to win, despite her being the primary focus of the series so far.

MasterChef continues Monday at 7:30pm on Channel 10.
As a renowned foodie there aren't many dishes that could faze him.

So Gordon Ramsay didn't think twice as he tucked into a swamp rat stew whilst filming his National Geographic series, Uncharted.

The potty-mouthed chef, 53, helped catch and kill a semiaquatic rodent known as a coypu or nutria whilst in the Southern American state of Louisiana.

Yum: Gordon Ramsay didn't think twice as he tucked into a swamp rat stew whilst filming his National Geographic series, Uncharted

Nutria are native to South America but are considered a nuisance as their presence has disrupted the native ecosystem.

Gordon was joined by Eric, who explained the locals had begun eating the rodents to help keep their population down, before the pair headed off on a hunt.

Gordon mused: 'You can call this thing nutria, water rabbit, but trust me, every bite, you're still eating a rat.'

However, as he spooned in mouthfuls of the stew, he conceded, 'See, now that is delicious.

'That's like a rabbit... there's no fat in there; there's no fat in my mouth.'

Dinner: The potty-mouthed chef, 53, helped catch and kill a semiaquatic rodent known as a coypu or nutria whilst in the Southern American state of Louisiana

Despite Gordon's glowing review, his fans weren't so easily convinced, taking to Twitter to voice their unease.

Discussing whether they would be tempted to try it out, they penned: 'Not unless Id die in the wilderness without it. Still might think twice. Ugh.'

'Lol, this is crazy.'; 'Eeeeeee wat you eating....'; 'Very trusting lol'; 'You are one brave man @GordonRamsay'; 'i felt like throwing up :(, gordon, youre too brave!!! [sic]'.

Kill it, cook it, eat it: Nutria are native to South America but are considered a nuisance as their presence has disrupted the native ecosystem

Unsure: Despite Gordon's glowing review, his fans weren't so easily convinced, taking to Twitter to voice their unease

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted sees the star journey around the world where he meets people from different countries, tries exotic regional cuisines and learns about their food and culture.

A recent episode showed the star leaping from a helicopter into the sea below after the pilot informed him that he's unable to land at a nearby beach.

In showstopping images, Gordon was seen edging towards the open door of the helicopter as he looked down below.

One to watch: Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted sees the star journey around the world where he meets people from different countries and tries exotic regional cuisines

After emerging unscathed, Gordon said: 'Jumping out of a helicopter into a ferocious sea, laced with sharks, to get to the beach.

'Trust me, after that jump, I hope those mussels are worth it, because I'm here to learn.'

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted airs in America on Sundays at at 10/9c on National Geographic. It is not yet known if the series will be shown in the UK.
Quebec Solidaire (QS) has lent its full support to the Canadian ruling elite in its disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in more than 100,000 infections and 8,400 deaths nationwide.

Although the World Health Organization sounded the alarm as early as January, it was only on March 10 that the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau even asked the provinces to take stock of their medical supplies and inform it of any shortages. As for Quebec Premier Francois Legault, he ordered the closure of schools and some sectors of the economy only 24 to 48 hours before other provinces, well after the virus had taken holdallowing Quebec to become the epicentre of the countrys COVID-19 pandemic. Although Quebec represents less than a quarter of the countrys population, it has recorded more than half of Canadas total cases and deaths.

Behind its vague left posturing, Quebec Solidaire has not raised any criticism of the Canadian authorities' belated and criminal response to the pandemic. It fully accepts the official line that the thousands of human lives lost to COVID-19 were inevitable, because such a pandemic was unforeseeable.

In fact, not only was a pandemic foreseen by epidemiologists around the world, but Canadian health authorities issued repeated, highly-detailed warnings about the need to prepare for a global pandemic in the years following the 2002-3 outbreak of SARSa related virus that hit Canada hard, making it the most affected country outside East Asia. But the modest preventive measures that were then taken were soon set aside due to continued and intensified capitalist austerity. Equipment became outdated and useless. Despite warnings about the need to build surge capacity, Canadas hospitals were operating at near- or even full-capacity before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even today, four months on, there is a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline medical staff.

Ignoring these well-known facts, QS co-leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois told a May 26 press briefing that his party could accept, for the first wave, the explanations of the [Legault] government that it was taken by surprise.

Quebec Solidaire has also endorsed the campaignthat has been led by Legault and other hard-right provincial premiers such as Doug Ford in Ontario; greenlighted by the federal Trudeau government; and supported by Canada and Quebecs major labour federationfor a premature and reckless reopening of non-essential businesses under the pretext of reviving the economy.

From the viewpoint of the ruling class, the limited lockdown measures had to be lifted as soon as possible in order to revive and intensify the exploitation of the working class. This is seen as urgently necessary to make workers pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars funnelled by the Trudeau government into the financial markets and the coffers of big business to guarantee the wealth and investments of the rich and super-rich. By contrast, the millions of workers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic have been placed on meager temporary rations, in the form of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

Under persistent questioning by a journalist who wanted to know whether the end of lockdown measures was disorganized or too fast, Quebec Solidaires other leading spokesperson, Manon Masse, gave an evasive answer: There are still a lot of ... fears, we have not managed ... to reassure Quebecers.

The aim of capitalist governmentswhether Legaults right-wing CAQ regime, the Trudeau government in Ottawa, the ultra-reactionary Trump in the United States, the fascistic Bolsonaro in Brazil or those of the European Unionis not to reassure the population, much less to protect it. Rather, it is to force millions of workers, under threat of being fired, to go back to their workplaces without any real protective measures. They are to face the risk of being infected or infecting their loved ones with the potentially deadly coronavirus in order to extract profit as quickly as possible for the financial markets and wealthy investors.

Quebec Solidaire fully supports this criminal objective, which puts capitalist profit before human lives. In reply to a suggestion that lockdown measures should remain in place, Masse said, I am not a public health official, I can't tell. This sums up the political cynicism and cowardice of her party.

Masse, who also heads Quebec Solidaires delegation in the Quebec parliament as the second opposition party, went so far as to praise Legault. "So I invite the Premier, she said, "to return to the fine habit of transparency he displayed at the beginning of the pandemic.

This is a signal to the ruling class that the upper middle class-based Quebec Solidaire is eager to integrate itself still further into the political establishment and provide a left cover for their anti-worker policies.

It is also a lie. Far from being transparent, Premier Legault has sought from the very beginning of the crisis to manipulate public opinion in order to achieve his goal of a premature reopening of the economy, so that his big business friends and partners can continue to enrich themselves. After Legaults open promotion of the criminal policy of herd immunitythe deliberate contamination of a majority of the population under the pretext of immunizing it against COVID-19 at the cost of thousands of livesprovoked a backlash, he stopped talking about it. But he and his government have continued to pursue the same policy in practice. During the month of May, Quebecs premier repeatedly announced the reopening of primary schools in the coronavirus-ravaged Greater Montreal area, before having to backtrack in the face of immense public opposition.

Quebec Solidaire seeks to conceal its collaboration with the Legault government and to preserve its tarnished left-wing image by focusing all of its attention on a few token policy proposals.

Those most threatened by COVID-19 must be able to stay at home without fear of being fired, thundered Nadeau-Dubois. When asked to elaborate, he pointed out that this only applied to workers over 60 or those with a weak immune system. On its website, QS explained that since a similar measure is already being applied by the government for teachers, Quebec Solidaire is asking that it be extended to all employers. However, QS promptly dropped even this modest proposal after Legault, in another flip-flop, declared that teachers over 60 years of age were actually not at riskonly those over 70 were.

QS then put forward a pandemic tax that would raise the basic tax rate for large corporations from 11.6 percent to 17.4 percent. At a press briefing, QS legislator and economic critic Vincent Marissal did everything to reassure his audience of mainstream media journalists that QS is not anti-business, insisting, This (taxation) rate resembles that of 2007, before it was reduced by the various governments.

Another harmless measure advocated by QS concerns tax havens. Every year, Marissal lamented, Quebec is deprived of $800 million, which goes directly to tax havens.

However, on the fundamental issue of bailing out big business by plundering the public treasury, QS agrees with the Trudeau and Legault governments. In these times of economic and health crisis, said Nadeau-Dubois, the government has a responsibility to send a lifeline to all citizens and businesses that need it.

QS is troubled by the $800 million sheltered in tax havens. But it has no problem with the $650 billion that, under the cover of the coronavirus crisis, was transferred virtually overnight to the largest corporations and banks by the Trudeau governmentand much more by the Trump administration and the European Union.

Quebec Solidaire has not warned workers that they will have to pay for these massive bailouts with an intensified assault on their jobs, working conditions and public services. Instead, alongside the trade unions and the social democrats of the New Democratic Party (NDP), it has aided and abetted the looting of public funds for the benefit of big business.

Quebec Solidaire's response to the immense health and socioeconomic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was to cover up the responsibility of the ruling capitalist class, to help it impose a premature and dangerous return to work, and to conceal the massive transfer of public funds to big business and the financial aristocracy.

It even boasted about this record. In a balance sheet of the parliamentary session published on June 12, QS recalled its mid-March promise ... to work with the Legault government in fighting the coronavirus pandemic; then declared with satisfaction, We helped Mr. Legault cover his blind spots.
First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill during the daily media broadcast in the Long Gallery at Parliament Buildings, Stormont on Monday. Credit: Pacemaker

Around 80,000 people in Northern Ireland who have been "shielding" during the lockdown have been told they will be able to "pause" the measure from July 31.

The variation of the restriction for those who are self-isolating who have underlying health conditions was announced on Monday at the Stormont Covid-19 briefing.

The development came as the Executive quickened the pace of the lockdown easing after meeting earlier on Monday.

Up to six people - not from the same household - will be able to meet indoors while using social distancing from Tuesday.

The announcement came after one new case of Covid-19 was recorded by Stormont's Department of Health since Sunday and no further deaths were reported.

First Minister Arlene Foster said updated letters will be sent out to those shielding, advising them they can now "pause" the measure from July 31.

She said the step had been taken "given the current low levels of virus transmission".

In the meantime, Mrs Foster added, from July 6 vulnerable people who are shielding will be able to meet up to six people outside the home, as long as social distancing is strictly observed.

Addressing the lifting of restrictions in relation from Tuesday, she stressed that effective hygiene steps - such a hand-washing - must be maintained.

From July 6, vulnerable people who are shielding will be able to meet up to six people outside the home, as long as social distancing is strictly observed, the health department said.

People who are shielding and living alone will be able to form a support bubble from July 6 with one other household.

Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said scientific evidence seen by the Northern Ireland Executive on Monday allowed it to make the decision to allow six people to meet indoors.

Transmission of Covid-19 within the community was now very low, she explained.

"This arrangement provides a balance between enabling much-needed social contact, enhancing support networks and allowing informal childcare arrangements to resume," she said.

"This is a crucial development in alleviating some of the childcare pressures being felt by parents at present."

Mrs Foster praised the people of Northern Ireland for adhering to the restrictions, saying she was "proud", but also cautioned that the virus has not yet gone away, and warned against complacency.

"Covid-19 still has the capacity to wreak havoc again as unfortunately we're seeing in Beijing in recent days where they have discovered a dramatic rise in infections at hotspots and also in Germany and as we look at north Wales as well to see the clusters that have developed there," she said.

"Complacency is a luxury that we cannot afford."

She added: "We've had to deal with a novel coronavirus whose behaviours are still not fully understood, and whose symptoms can vary among those who are unlucky enough to contact it. Some people have been fortunate to have little or no symptoms. For others the consequences have been severe."
Dallas, Texas, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Industrial Wax Market by Type (Fossil based, Synthetic based, Bio based), Application (Candles, Packaging, Coatings & Polishes, Hot-melt Adhesives, Tires & Rubber, Cosmetics & Personal Care, Food), Region and Forecast to 2025 study provides an elaborative view of historic, present and forecasted market estimates.

The global industrial wax market research report published by Adroit Market Research is a detailed and in-depth analysis of the market providing information from 2015 to 2025. The report includes market drivers, opportunities, restraints, and challenges. The report also gives a holistic view of futuristic approaches regarding the strategic developments of the dominant players in the industrial was market. The report also includes Porters five forces analysis along with PESTEL analysis.

Request a pdf sample at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/1559

The global industrial wax market was valued at approximately USD 12.30 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 5.3% by 2025. The increasing use of industrial wax was in the candle making industry followed by cosmetics and personal care products. These applications are some of the significant factors that have favored the rapid market grow in the recent years.

Waxes have been used in many different ways since the early days of the human race. The most significant use of waxes is for candles. Candles are currently the fastest-growing application segment of the industrial wax industry. Candles that burn well and do not soot are high-quality products. Candle manufacturers make sourcing decisions based on the purity of the wax. The Sulzer wax deoiling method has been developed as the leading technology for the development of high-purity paraffin waxes. In addition to their use in candles, there are many other uses for high-purity waxes.

Browse the full report with Table of Contents and List of Figures at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/industry-reports/industrial-wax-market

The fossil-based waxes segment generated a revenue of 5.2 billion in 2019, and around 42% of the market share was captured by fossil-based waxes. On the other hand, synthetic-based waxes are anticipated to be the fastest-growing industrial wax type. Mineral wax and oil wax which is used in large measure in the covering of commercial items are included in fossil waxes. Mineral wax in many cosmetic products is commonly used as a fundamental ingredient; it is thus a key element in cosmetics. This is expected to have skin care properties and can also serve as a quality source of active ingredients. The demand in cosmetics is boosting the growth of the industrial wax industry because of rising awareness of toilet and the increased e-commerce.

In the year 2019, North America captured the largest market share of approximately 30% in terms of revenue. The demand for industrial wax in North America is significant. The country currently accounts for the world's largest industrial wax market. The growth of demand for the North American industrial wax market will be driven by higher demand in various applications such as candles, cosmetics & personal care, tire & rubbers and hot melt adhesives.

Direct purchase the report at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/researchreport/purchase/1559

Major points from Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Research Methodology

3. Market Outlook

4. Industrial wax Market by Type

5. Industrial wax Market by application

6. Industrial wax Market by Region

7. Competitive Landscape

8. Company Profiles

9. Appendix

Access research repository of Upcoming Reports @ https://adroitmarketresearch.com/upcoming.html

About Us:

Adroit Market Research is a global business analytics and consulting company incorporated in 2018. Our target audience is a wide range of corporations, manufacturing companies, product/technology development institutions and industry associations that require understanding of a markets size, key trends, participants and future outlook of an industry. We intend to become our clients knowledge partner and provide them with valuable market insights to help create opportunities that increase their revenues. We follow a code Explore, Learn and Transform. At our core, we are curious people who love to identify and understand industry patterns, create an insightful study around our findings and churn out money-making roadmaps.
Since American states began allowing restaurants to open in the past few weeks, many have seen massive spikes in the number of new coronavirus cases reported.

This was entirely predictable. America had not even got over the first wave of the coronavirus before it started "reopening," with experts warning that it would continue to spread rapidly if people congregated at restaurants and shopping centers. Now that exactly what the experts warned would happen is happening, Vice President Mike Pence is trying to deny and deflect from the reality.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journalon June 16, Pence praised the "leadership of President Trump" and said "panic" about the increase in cases is "overblown."

"[I]n the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settingsprisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilitiesand contain them," he wrote.

That passage itself includes quite a startling admission: There are six states with more than 1,000 new cases per day. In all of China, a country of 1.4 billion people, there are fewer than 50 cases per day. Germany, a country of 83 million, recorded 580 new cases on June 17. California is the most populous state in the United States; its population is 39 million.

Arizona, which has a population of just 7 million, recorded not 1,000, but 2,300 new cases on June 16. These are not just resurgences; these are new records in the affected states.

So, there are multiple states with more new cases in a day than entire countries have. And yet, China reacts much more aggressively to a small increase in cases, while the U.S. puts its workers in harm's way with many more cases.

Pence is trying to do a few misleading things in that one sentence. First, he's suggesting that the outbreaks are only occurring within "outgroups" that live in certain locations and that "ordinary Americans" are not impacted. Meatpacking employees, for example, are disproportionately Hispanic, and some are undocumented, while President Trump's base is overwhelmingly white.

Second, he is suggesting that the increase in cases is because of increased testing.

Both assertions are false. There have been a significant amount of cases detected at shops and bars frequented by the general publicso many that restaurants that had reopened are having to shut down again after their workers were exposed.

As for testing, there has been an increase in the rate of positive tests in several key states, including America's three most populous. In California, this rate at the end of May was 4%. Now it is 6%. In Texas, the rate rose from 4.6% to 6.9%. Florida saw its rate double.

It is true that testing has increased across the country, but an increase in testing should mean a decrease in test positivity rates if the number of total cases is staying stable or declining. That would mean that a larger share of the population is being tested, including people with no symptoms and no virus. That the opposite is happeningtest positivity rate is increasing as testing is increasingmakes it clear that the number of real cases is going up.

Moreover, the number of hospitalizations in many states is rising. In Texas, the number of daily hospital beds filled increased by 1,000 in the first half of June, to a new record. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas, among other states, there is also a rising trend. You cannot fake hospitalizations. Those whose symptoms are bad enough will be tested first and hospitalized.

Overall, the increase in new cases nationally has stalled and plateaued at about 20,000 a day after a few weeks of steady decline. This is not the time a country or locality should decide to encourage its people to go out into the public in large numbers. Until the number of new cases is close to zero, there will continue to be significant community spread. By the time someone realizes they have symptoms, it is already too latethey might have spread the virus without having displayed symptoms.

Mike Pence's overriding goal is to get his man reelected. He is pursuing that goal even at the expense of the health of American voters. He thinks he and Trump will be able to prevent any backlash by denying the problem. It didn't work in February, when Trump called the coronavirus a "hoax," and it won't work now.

Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm

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.
Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in a clash with militants in the restive northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, the military said on June 21.

The incident took place at the boundary of turbulent North and South Waziristan districts, where several military operations have been launched in recent years against homegrown and foreign militants.

The soldiers came under attack during a routine patrol, an army statement said.

"A terrorist was also killed," it added.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for over a decade, with thousands of civilians and security personnel killed in extremist attacks.

Violence in Pakistan has declined following army offensives in the region, but militant groups are still able to carry out isolated attacks.
Tourists in line to see the Liberty Bell in 2018. Read more

Independence National Historical Park, one of Philadelphias most visited tourist sites, hasnt had money for basic improvements and maintenance for years, and sometimes it shows.

That could change under the Great American Outdoors Act, a conservation program the U.S. Senate passed last week that would appropriate billions to fully  and permanently  fund parks and historical sites across the country.

More money could also flow to Valley Forge, and even the New Jersey Pinelands.

For decades, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has been diverted to other uses, resulting in a huge backlog of billions of dollars in deferred maintenance and projects at some of the most prominent national parks and forests.

Fully funding the conservation fund has become a bipartisan issue, with support from hunters, anglers, environmentalists, and even the oil and gas industry. Each year, 315 million people visit national parks and the money would boost economic support for gateway communities, and bring in more hunting, fishing, and other recreation.

In an era of rollbacks and cutbacks, the legislation is poised to be a rare bipartisan win, say environmentalists, conservationists, and businesses that depend on tourism dollars. It was sponsored by Sens. Cory Gardner (R, Colo.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.).

The bill, which calls for $900 million in financing, will go to the House, where it also enjoys bipartisan support, then to President Donald Trump, who voiced support as far back as March. It would also provide $1.9 billion per year for five years to make repairs at national parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges.

Treasured public lands such as Nockamixon State Park, Tyler State Park, and cherished community venues such as Hatfield Community Park are all just a few of the examples of the beneficiaries of this valuable fund, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican whose district includes Bucks County and part of Montgomery County, said in a statement. He is one of 86 members co-sponsoring the bill in House.

Its not often that lawmakers can say they helped pass legislation that will have an impact decades into the future, but todays vote on the Great American Outdoors Act is one they can tell their grandchildren about, said Marcia Argust, project director of the Pew Charitable Trusts Restore Americas Parks campaign.

The bill to fully finance the Land and Water Conservation Fund was long sought by environmentalists. The national parks backlog of needs is estimated at more than $12 billion, according to the LWCF Coalition, an umbrella group of businesses, land owners, and conservation organizations.

The legislation has the support of hundreds of recreation groups, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which noted the projects have potential to put thousands back to work as the economy recovers from a recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

We know LWCF is incredibly important to hunters and anglers as one of the most enduring and vital funds for securing access to our public lands at no cost to the taxpayer, said Chris Wood, president and CEO at Trout Unlimited.

Jessica Loya, of GreenLatinos, called the bill a remarkable step in the right direction for Latinx communities, bringing them one step closer to having equitable access to parks and outdoor spaces in their neighborhoods.

The conservation fund is 55 years old, but was permanently authorized by Congress in 2019. However, that did not guarantee that the $900 million that goes into the fund every year would go toward its intended use. Billions of dollars over the years have been used for non-conservation purposes. In the most recent fiscal year, 2020, only $495 million was appropriated to the fund, the highest amount in 15 years.

The conservation fund is financed through royalties from offshore oil and gas production. The money is given out through grants and supports completing trail networks, providing playgrounds and ballfields, improving campgrounds, expanding wildlife habitat, and preventing forests from being developed.

Park tourism contributes $40 billion to the U.S. economy, generating 330,000 jobs, according to the National Park Service, which estimates the legislation could lead to an additional 100,000 jobs.

Its not clear how funding would be spent at local national parks and lands.

Some money currently goes toward conserving places of historical significance, such as Independence National Historical Park, which draws 4.6 million visitors a year, and includes Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The park has suffered from years of deferred maintenance, leading to complaints about shabby grounds.

 READ MORE: (From 2018) Independence Parks Rose Garden loses its bloom as weeds take over

Conditions have improved somewhat, primarily because a local landscaping company, Brightview Landscapes, donated $300,000 worth of landscaping and plantings last year.

But the First Bank of the United States, part of the park, is still shuttered to the public because of its condition.

Independence National Historical Park also administers Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, Gloria Dei National Historic Site, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial.

Leslie Obleschuk, a spokesperson for Independence park, said the estimated total for deferred maintenance for all four sites is about $54 million.

Philadelphia has received almost $15 million for 80 projects from the conservation fund. For example, FDR park has received $783,000, according to the Wilderness Society, which has an interactive map of current projects on its site.

In Pennsylvania, $332 million of the fund over its history has gone to Brandywine Battlefield, the Delaware Water Gap, Gettysburg, John Heinz Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, and Valley Forge, and other forests and conservation projects, according to the LWCF Coalition.

In New Jersey, $347 million has gone to Cape May National Wildlife Refuge, the Edwin Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Brigantine, and other locations. Money has also gone to the Pinelands National Reserve, 1.1 million acres of pine barrens which is under a partnership between the federal government and New Jersey.

In Delaware, $64 million has gone to Bombay Hook and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuges, and other locations, according to the coalition.
California Department of Education

News Release

California Department of Education

News Release

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces 21st Century California School Leadership Academy Grant Award Winners

SACRAMENTOState Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond today announced seven awardees for the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy (21 CSLA) grant competition. These academies will receive federal funds to provide high-quality professional learning for administrators and other school leaders, free of charge, to local educational agencies that receive federal Title II funds on a statewide basis. Among these winners (the full list is at the bottom of this news release), the University of California, Berkeley Principal Leadership Institute will serve as the 21 CSLA Center, overseeing the statewide work of seven regional academies.

Congratulations to the 21 CSLA awardees, who will provide professional learning that will have a positive impact on Californias six million students, said Thurmond. One of the keys of student success, next to classroom teachers, are effective principals who commit to high standards and a schoolwide vision that helps all students.

The original California School Leadership Academy was established by Senate Bill (SB) 813 in 1983 and administered by the California Department of Education (CDE) until 2003. SB 75 (Statutes of 2019) directed the CDE and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence to establish a process to organize and offer professional learning opportunities and to select providers of high-quality professional learning for administrators and other school leaders.

The seven 21 CSLA Regional Academies are:

University of California, Berkeley Principal Leadership Institute

Los Angeles County Office of Education

Sacramento County Office of Education

Los Angeles Education Partnership

Chico State Enterprises

Madera County Superintendent of Schools

Sonoma County Office of Education

The grant awards are for a three-year period with an opportunity for an extension. For more information, please visit the CDE 21 CSLA web page.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond  State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Last Reviewed: Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Monday, June 22, 2020 at 8:09AM

Epic Games seems to be responding to current events. Gamers are reporting that Epic has taken on police cars from Fortnite. The removal is believed to be a response to the Black Lives Matter protests against police violence. A Wall Street Journal source says the developer isn't making a "political statement." Instead, it's trying to be "sensitive about the issues" players are dealing with. Epic hasn't commented yet about the matter.

While some major game industry players have endorsed the Black Lives Matter cause, Epic seems to take a softer stance. As Engadget points out, it acknowledges the outrage, but it isn't explicitly advocating a cause. Epic has been previously quoted as saying it will not ban players for political speech. This milder approach isn't surprising as these companies are hesitant to take up a cause without alienating buyers with opposing views.

Source: Engadget
According to a shocking data from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), more than 1,000 Covid-positive cases in the city are untraceable, since the beginning of the lockdown.

Tracking patients and their close contacts are critical to curbing the spread of Covid-19.

These patients arent dead or admitted to hospitals or Covid-19 care centres. We arent aware of their whereabouts.

Ward-wise, we have around 1,000 such missing patients, said a senior BMC official.

Now the corporation has sought help from Mumbai Police to trace these cases and their contacts.
Bengaluru:

Unrelenting in its position despite the fresh Supreme Court order to release 6,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka government will convene a legislature session on Monday, the second recently, to take a call on the apex court directive.



Refusing to budge from its stand a day after the Supreme Court gave the last opportunity to comply with its order, the state questioned the constitution of the Cauvery Water Management Board and decided to file a review petition in this regard on Monday.



Chief Minister Siddaramaiah spelt out the states stand to reporters after an all-party meeting convened by him told the government not to release at any cost 6,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu as directed by the Supreme Court, and to oppose the formation of the Board.



All-party meeting has told us not to release the water. We have to go back to the legislature, Siddaramaiah said, adding as far as release of water (is concerned), we will go back to the Assembly on Monday.



He emphasised that a special session of both the Houses of the state legislature had on September 23 mandated through a resolution that water should be used only for drinking purpose, and not be spared for any other use.



Siddaramaiah said the state would also question the formation of the water management board, for which the Supreme Court had set 4 PM of Saturday as the deadline for the riparian states to give the names of their representatives. That we are questioning. That is why we are filing the review petition on Monday.



Taking Karnataka to task for its repeated defiance by flouting its orders on release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu and giving it a last chance, the Supreme Court had on Friday asked it to discharge 6,000 cusecs from October 1 to 6, warning no one would know when the wrath of the law would fall on it.



The court had also directed the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Water Management Board by October 4.



We have not defied the orders of the Supreme Court... There is no wilful disobedience or deliberate disobedience, Siddaramaiah said, adding the legislature session was binding on the government.





For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
While the landlocked country of Nepal has been at loggerheads with India over the supposed encroachment of regions such as Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura, China has reportedly occupied the Rui village in Gorkha district of Nepal. As such, the village has now been annexed to Tibet, an autonomous region of China. As reported by Nepal-based newspaper, Khabarhub, the aggressive stance of Nepals Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli towards India has been an eyewash to suppress the events in its own territory.

Even though Rui is still included in the map of Nepal, China has removed the boundary pillars to legitimise its occupation, the report says. The village which consists of about 72 houses, has reportedly been under siege, owing to the negligence and apathy of the Nepalese government and its officials. According to the Land Revenue Office (Gorkha), it has a record of revenue collected from the residents of the village of Rui. Khabarhub reported that the records are still secured in file number one in the Land Revenue Office.

As per historian Ramesh Dhungal, both the villages of Rui and Teigha which are located in the northern part of Gorkha district have been lost due to the negligence of the Nepalese authorities in fixing the boundary pillars. He added that Rui was neither lost by Nepal in war nor was it the subject of any special agreement with Tibet. He said, Indias border is accessible. People walk around it. Therefore, border issues with India are visible to all, but the situation of Nepal at the northern border with Tibet is extremely bad.

Rui villagers still pay land revenue to Nepal

The President of Chumubari Rural Municipality ward number 1, Bir Bahadur Lama, conceded that even though the people of Rui had deposited their share of land revenue to the Nepal government, yet they had become Tibetans following the encroachment by China. Khabarhub reported that pillar number 35 was demarcated as the border between Samdo and Rui village. However, during the restoration work of the pillar no. 35, owing to negligence, the village came under Chinese occupation, Dhungal was quoted by News 24.

Agitated residents fled to adjoining villages

While the language, culture, and places of worship of the people of Sama, Samdo, and Rui villages are the similar, ward President Lama informed that his elders had told him that the agitated residents of Rui returned back to their farms in Samdo and established a new settlement there. Several people did not want to join Tibet and instead fled to Samdo. They had come historical and cultural documents that were 1000-1200 years old. They built their places of worship here. The sacred site still has historical evidence of Aditya Malla and Punya Malla, the two historical deities of the Malla kings.
Advertisement

The 2019 presidential election may have come and gone but the remnants from the dust raised during the campaign have yet to completely settle. This is as new information reaching 247ureports.com from a consortium of competent sources knowledgeable of the activities of the group, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra [IPOB]  indicates the leadership of the group may have succumbed to the allure of financial inducement through the then presidential flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP].

As a caveat, the IPOB group through its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had proclaimed that the peoples of the former Eastern Region who were formerly known as the people of Biafra long before the creation of Nigeria by the would-be colonial masters  no longer wants to be referred to as Nigerians. They want to be referred to as Biafrans. A return to their original identity of Biafra. A sovereign identity.

Through this end, the leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu devised a strategy to regain the sovereignty of Biafra through peaceful agitation. One of his strategies was to call for a referendum on Biafra. He sought to force the federal government of Nigeria into conducting the referendum by calling on the followers and sympathizers of the IPOB struggle to refrain from participating in the electoral process  until a referendum is called by the federal government.

Advertisement

With Nnamdi Kanus release from prison after an 18months stay in detention, the leader of the IPOB turned his eyes on the Anambra gubernatorial election of 2017  of which Governor Willie Obiano was gunning for re-election under the APGA against the candidates from PDP and APC. Mazi Kanu who was the man of the hour  pulling unprecedented crowds in the millions and causing shockwaves across the regions of the country  declared to his followers to refrain from participating in the election process.

Mazi Kanu was clearly a force. Many within the South East geopolitical block showered him with praises, secret admirations and gifts. The entire South East governors made large financial contributions to IPOB. Governor Willie Obiano contributed two Prado Jeeps and $50,000 through his close aide and man-Friday, Primus Odili. The Abia State governor, Ikpeazu provided security and unspecified cash contribution. Orji Uzor Kalu was a frequent visitor to Mazi Kanus resident to hold private discussions and to negotiate terms and conditions of pending bribes/gifts.

By the time the presidential election of 2019 rolled around, the leader of IPOB had been chased out of Nigeria, and the IPOB had been declared an illegal group in Nigeria. Mazi Kanu who was thought to be dead, made a surprising appearance in Israel  from where he began firing his gospel of Biafra Restoration. With it, he continued his call for referendum. No Referendum no election.

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu shortly after his resurfacing in Israel

From political standpoint, the continued gospel did not favor the Abubakar Atiku/Peter Obi presidential campaign ticket under PDP banner  particularly against a Mohammadu Buhari/Yemi Osibanjo candidacy. The Atiku presidential ticket were hopeful of a large support from the South East and South South geopolitical block  the same block that Mazi Kanu draws followership from.

To succeed in having a large percentage of the votes coming out of the South East & South South block, Atiku believed he needed Nnamdi Kanu to soft pedal on his no referendum no election gospel.

According to a high level source in the then Atiku campaign, a line of communication was established between the Atiku team and the leadership of IPOB. The communication quickly developed into a negotiation between the two teams. The negotiations did not start off smoothly. According to our source, the negotiations halted due to demands put forth by Mazi Kanu. He wanted Atiku himself to put in writing that he [Atiku] would call for a referendum 6 months into his presidency. The Atiku team laughed at the demand, and the negotiation stalled. But the negotiators returned to the table when Nnamdi Kanu timely declared that Abubakar Atiku was not a citizen of Nigeria and therefore should not be eligible for the same elections. Do you know that Atiku Abubakar is from Cameroon? His area of Adamawa was in Cameroon, Nnamdi Kanu said in a live broadcast on Radio Biafra broadcast of Saturday February 2, 2019.

Shortly after the broadcast, the negotiators finalized on the terms and conditions. Mazi Kanu, in an about face, lifted the ban on no referendum no election, indicating that Atiku had fulfilled all the conditions giving to him by IPOB that he would call for a referendum. He even urged his supporters to vote for the duo of Atiku and Peter Obi.

The exact amount disbursed to Mazi Kanu is not known to 247ureports.com but it is certain monies were remitted in return for the lift on the ban. This is according to a source who participated in the negotiation process.
Officials who were enforcing a lockdown order which led to an assault on a woman at the Ifo local government office in Ogun state have b...

Officials who were enforcing a lockdown order which led to an assault on a woman at the Ifo local government office in Ogun state have been suspended.





A Twitter user, @TeeBaibie, had posted a video of the local government officials trying to deflate her tyres on Saturday at Ojodu Abiodun area.





She said she had explained that they were not aware that they had crossed into Ogun state, but the officials refused to listen.





The geographical setting of Lagos and Ogun is such that both states share very close borders that are sometimes not clearly marked.

While Lagos has relaxed total lockdown for all days of the week, Ogun state still enforces lockdown on Saturdays and Sundays.





According to the woman, she had gone out with her husband to get some items for her daughters forthcoming birthday when she was stopped by the officers.





However, things escalated when the lady recording tried to ask the exact location of the local government office from a man, who was later identified by her as Mr Peter.





In a matter of seconds as she followed him, all the while recording, the said Mr. Peter turned sharply and raised his hands and legs in what appeared to be repeated slaps and a kick directed towards the person behind the camera.





The Ogun state government had responded to the video on Saturday, with a promise to investigate the unpleasant development and sanction anyone that is culpable.





In a statement issued on Sunday, Fola Salami, the transition chairman, Ifo local government, said the officer who assaulted the woman has been arrested, while other officers involved in the incident have been suspended until further notice.





The attention of the Office of the Transition Chairman, Ifo Local Government, Ogun State has been called to a viral video that suggests a case of assault on a lady at Ojodu Abiodun Area of the Local Government, it read.





It came as a rude shock to me, when I saw the video of one of our officials enforcing the lockdown order with gross inhumane attitude. His attitude does not portray the humane nature popularly preached by Ifo local Government.





On this note, I am suspending all officials involved without pay, until further notice.





Rest assured, the public should be aware that all hands are on deck on this issue and whoever is found guilty will be dealt with decisively.




Samsung has now announced that its Galaxy A51 mid-range handset is available in two new colors and with Premium Care protection. The new colors, Prism Crush Blue and Prism Crush White stack atop the already available Prism Crush Black. But the bigger news here is likely the addition of the device to the Samsung Premium Care program.

With Premium Care now available for the Samsung Galaxy A51, owners of the device have a bit more protection for their phone. The program offers personalized customer support too. That starts at purchase with enrollment at just $3.99 per month. Samsung does seem to indicate that current owners can now enroll in Samsung Premium Care too, though.

Summing up the available benefits, users gain access to a personal set-up session. And, they receive support 24-hours a day, 7-days a week from Samsung experts if anything goes wrong. Or if they just need some help using their device. Premium protection means that users can get replacement devices and coverage for accidental or mechanical problems.

Advertisement

Of course, thats going to be free in some cases, for a set number of repairs per year. And, in other cases, the cost is reduced. Since the repairs and replacements come directly from Samsung, users can be sure theyre getting the best available service. At the very least, thats with authentic Samsung parts rather than needing to trust a seller on eBay or similar sites.

Two new Galaxy A51 colors are available just in time for the expansion of Premium Care

Now, as noted above, there are two new colors now for the Samsung Galaxy A51 available direct and unlocked from Samsung. Those are Prism Crush White and Prism Crush Blue  pictured above. Like the already-available Prism Crush Black, the colors arent a solid or gradient hue. Theyre also dramatically less vibrant than the new purple tone Samsung has used for its BTS-edition Samsung Galaxy S20+.

Instead, the colors are more subdued and hinge around a variety of hues that stem from the designated color family, closely matching in the exact tone. But rather than utilizing a gradient, Samsung instead sets those colors at sharp angles to one another. The result is a somewhat geometric pattern that resembles a prism.

Advertisement

The white variant of that is fairly self-explanatory. Various shades of white follow the pattern. For blue, Samsung has opted for a light-shaded, almost robins egg blue tone. Thats as opposed to the much deeper, darker, ocean-inspired blue tones found on Samsung flagships. The color shifts in a more teal or sky blue color direction across the various sharp-edged shapes.

This phone is still going to be a great value

The Samsung Galaxy A51 is a mid-range smartphone running at around $399. Samsung packed the 6.5-inch FHD+ device with support for all major US carriers. And its driven by an Exynos 9611 chipset backed by 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. The included 4,000mAh battery driving Android 10 and Samsungs One UI flagship experience isnt the largest but is a respectable capacity.

The gadget also features a quad-camera array led by a powerful 48-megapixel sensor, for photography buffs.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returns to Rideau Cottage following a news conference in Ottawa on June 22, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)

Beijing Continues Trend of Scolding Canada, as Official Tells Trudeau to Stop Irresponsible Remarks on Spy Case

News Analysis

Beijings scolding of Ottawa in relation to charges laid against two Canadians detained in China since December 2018 is part of a trend where the communist regime has chastised Canada when comments are made not to its liking.

A spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 22 to stop making irresponsible remarks after Trudeau said Beijings decision to charge Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig with spying was linked to Canadas arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Meng was arrested in Vancouver on U.S. charges connected to possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran. Shortly after, Kovrig and Spavor were detained in China in what is widely seen as retribution for Mengs arrest. Trudeau has often described the detention of the two men, who were recently charged with espionage, as arbitrary.

The case of Meng Wanzhou is a very serious political issue  and Canada is playing the role of an accomplice to the U.S., Zhao Lijian said at a press conference in Beijing on June 21. There is no such thing as arbitrary detention.

On June 19 in Chelsea, Que., Trudeau told reporters he was disappointed with the decision and the next step taken by the Chinese in the case of the two Michaels, referring to the spying charges. He said Chinese authorities themselves directly linked the case of Kovrig and Spavor with Meng, and called on Beijing to end their arbitrary detention.

Although the spying charges against the two men were formally announced shortly after midnight eastern time on June 19, Trudeau didnt mention them in his prepared briefing remarks in Chelsea until asked about it by reporters, according to CBC.

Trudeau told reporters in his daily briefing outside Rideau Cottage on June 22, It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government, and we deplore it, and have from the very beginning.

Within the very first few days of the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Chinese officials were highlighting a link between the detention a week before of Meng and the arrest of the two Michaels.

The same day, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the charges against Kovrig and Spavor politically motivated and completely groundless.

The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada, he said in a statement.

Scolding and Threats

There has been a pattern of increasingly forceful words levelled at Canada by Chinese ambassadors in recent years, and while some have said diplomats making such statements should be expelled, the ambassadors have gone unchallenged by Canadas leaders.

Nothing is more egregious than the Chinese ambassador threatening the Canadian government, Sen. Leo Housakos, one of the senators behind a pending motion to sanction Chinese officials for rights violations, said in a previous interview.

Housakos and fellow Conservative Sen. Thanh Hai Ngo tabled a motion in December 2019 calling for Ottawa to use the Magnitsky law to sanction Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses in Hong Kong and mainland China.

In response to the proposed motion, Chinas ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu said that Beijing would firmly oppose this type of behaviour and that it would cause serious damage to relations between the two countries.

Well make very firm countermeasures to this, Cong said. It is not in the interest of the Canada side, so we do hope that we stop this kind of dangerous activity.

Cong also warned Ottawa not to follow U.S. lawmakers lead in creating legislation to sanction Chinese officials over the Hong Kong crackdown. He added that Canada should denounce the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

In January 2019, Congs predecessor, Lu Shaye, called Canada and its Western allies white supremacists for demanding the release of Kovrig and Spavor.

The reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy, Lu wrote in a Hill Times op-ed.

When Meng was first arrested, Beijing warned Ottawa that there would be serious consequences if she was not released immediately.

In June 2016, Chinas foreign minister Wang Yi snapped at a reporter who asked a question about Chinas human rights record and the jailing of Canadian Kevin Garratt in China during a news conference in Ottawa with then-Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion.

Wang appeared visibly angry as he scolded the reporter, saying his question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance.  This is totally unacceptable.

Weak Response

After Hong Kong police arrested 15 high-profile pro-democracy activists on April 18 on charges of illegal assembly during the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne said in a statement that Canada is concerned by the arrests of political figures, and that there is a need for close scrutiny on these extraordinary measures.

Conservative MP and shadow minister for Canada-China relations Garnett Genuis said in a Facebook post that the Chinese regime is using the pandemic as a cover for abuses in Hong Kong. He added that the federal governments response to the arrests is weak.

Instead of condemning the arrests, it calls for close scrutiny and restraint on all sides. Canada should take a strong stand for democracy and against injustice, he said.

Housakos criticized Ottawas performance on China, saying the government has been slapped around but has not taken appropriate action in response.

They seem to be appeasing and kowtowing to Chinas brutal behaviour, he said.

With files from Associated Press and The Canadian Press.

With reporting by Omid Ghoreishi
ATLANTA - Scores of mourners Tuesday paid their final respects to Rayshard Brooks at the Atlanta church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach, taking part in a funeral filled with historical echoes and a tragic sense that Black America has been through this all too many times before.

Rayshard Brooks is the latest high-profile casualty in the struggle for justice and a battle for the soul of America. This is about him, but it is so much bigger than him, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, told the crowd, less than two weeks after the Black man was shot twice in the back by a white Atlanta police officer following a struggle in a fast-food parking lot.

Warnock recited a long list of names of Black people who died at the hands of police in recent years, including Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile and George Floyd, lamenting: Sadly weve gotten too much practice at this.

Brooks widow, Tomika Miller, dressed in white, sat surrounded by family and friends. Former state lawmaker Stacey Abrams and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, both of whom have been mentioned as potential running mates for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, were among the mourners.

Most people dressed all in white, while some wore T-shirts with Brooks picture. Nearly everyone wore masks to protect against the coronavirus.

Brooks killing June 12 came amid weeks of turbulent and sometimes violent protests across the U.S. over Floyds death under a white Minneapolis officers knee on May 25. In the aftermath of Brooks death, the Atlanta police chief resigned, and protesters burned the Wendys restaurant.

As the funeral was underway, authorities announced the arrest of a suspect in the fire, 29-year-old Natalie White  according to her lawyer, the same woman Brooks described to police on the night he was shot as his girlfriend.

The lawyer, Drew Findling, said White was distraught over Brooks death but was absolutely not responsible for the fire, saying the blaze was already underway when she was seen on video approaching the restaurant.

White has been charged with first-degree arson, according to online jail records.

The deaths of Floyd and Brooks have led to a groundswell of protests against racial inequality, a movement to take down Confederate statues and other symbols, and demands for the dismantling of police departments or the shifting of their funding toward social services.

We are here because individuals continue to hide behind badges and trainings and policies and procedures rather than regarding the humanity of others in general and Black lives specifically, the Rev. Bernice King, the civil rights leaders daughter, told the crowd at the funeral.

She noted ruefully that the killing took place in Atlanta, the Black mecca and the city that is supposed to be too busy to hate.

King, who was a child when her father was assassinated in 1968, told the mourners she was at the church for what feels like an all-too-familiar moment. She noted that Brooks death took place on the same date that NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi in 1963 and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in South Africa in 1964.

But in a powerful echo of her fathers I Have a Dream speech, she declared: Rayshard Brooks death will not be in vain because justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Police body-camera video showed Brooks, 27, and officers having a calm and co-operative conversation for more than 40 minutes. A struggle erupted when police tried to handcuff Brooks for being intoxicated behind the wheel of his car at a Wendys drive-thru. Brooks grabbed one of the officers Tasers and fired it in their direction as he ran away.

Officer Garrett Rolfe, 27, was charged with murder and jailed without bail. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, 26, was charged with aggravated assault, accused of stepping on Brooks shoulder as he lay dying on the pavement. Lawyers for both men said their clients actions were justified.

Rolfe was fired, and Brosnan was placed on desk duty.

An afternoon bail hearing for Rolfe that would have conflicted with the funeral was cancelled by a judge. Under the law, crime victims and their families are entitled to be heard at such proceedings.

Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry offered financial help for the service, Warnock said.

Outside the church, a large screen broadcast the service. Tyrone Harvey was among the few dozen who listened.

First of all we have to vote. We have to vote. We cant just rest on our laurels and say, OK, we got Obama in there. And Obamas gone. Weve got to do better than that, he said. Weve got to make some drastic changes.

He added: Its vital. Its important now.

Warnock, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, urged people to keep marching and raising their voices to challenge racism and fight for change.

I came here today to announce another march. I dont want you to miss it. Make sure you show up for this march. It is happening on Nov. 3, 2020, at a voting booth near you, he said to applause. Its a contradiction to march in the streets and not march on the voting booth.

Meanwhile, a new poll that says nearly all Americans favour at least some change to the nations criminal justice system, and they overwhelmingly want to see clear standards on when police officers may use force and consequences for those who cross the line.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said 29% think the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul, 40% say it needs major changes, and 25% say it needs minor changes. Just 5% believe no changes are necessary.
Can former ministers have a career in the private sector without restrictions? Luxembourg's ethics committee addressed this question to Prime Minister Xavier Bettel in April.

The question of whether or not a former minister of senior civil servant can start a career without restrictions in the private sector more recently resurfaced after former minister of the economy Etienne Schneider was appointed to the administrative board of steel giant ArcelorMittal two weeks ago. It is also likely that Schneider will be made "independent director" of the sprawling Russian conglomerate company Sistema next Saturday.

According to Luxembourg's ethics committee, a number of articles of the code of ethics are virtually impossible to apply to former members of the government as potential conflicts of interest could not be avoided. The committee for instance proposed the introduction of a 2-year period of restriction during which former ministers or senior servants cannot start a career in the private sector in order to strengthen transparency and integrity.

The state council reportedly adapted the code of ethics accordingly. Prime Minister Xavier Bettel explained in his reply to a parliamentary question that The updated version was sent to the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). The new version is still awaiting approval.

GRECO will analyse the updated text and issue a compliance report in autumn. This report can then be used to modify individual points of the original code of ethics.
GIDDINGS, Texas - Police fatally shot a man suspected of stabbing four people in a Central Texas city early Monday, authorities said.

KBTX-TV reported that the stabbings took place before 9 a.m. in Giddings, about 55 miles (90 kilometres) east of Austin. Authorities were investigating three separate crime scenes but have not released any other information about the circumstances of the attacks.

Giddings police fatally shot the suspect, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Deon Cockrell. The Texas Rangers are investigating the shooting.

Cockrell confirmed that four people were hurt but referred other questions about the stabbings and a motive to Giddings police. A spokesperson for the police department did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Authorities have not released any information on the conditions or identities of the stabbing victims.
President Muhammadu Buhari is currently in a closed-door meeting with governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The meeting, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, is believed to be a move to resolve the multiple challenges threatening to tear the party apart.

Some of the APC governors at the meeting are those of Kebbi (Atiku Bagudu) Jigawa (Abubakar Badaru) and Plateau (Simon Lalong).

The meeting is holding less than 24 hours after a separate meeting between Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Mr Buhari.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mr Lawan said at the end of the Sunday meeting that the APC crisis was one of the two items he discussed with the president.

The APC crisis worsened last week with the suspension of the partys national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole. Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State and Deputy Governor Agboola Ajayi also defected from the APC to the Peoples Democratic Party.
On Sunday, June 21, Bexar County officials reported the largest one-day increase of positive COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic in March.

The county confirmed 538 new cases and one death due to the virus, bringing the total of COVID-19 cases in the San Antonio area to 6,882 with 97 deaths.

ON EXPRESSNEWS.COM: Bexar County reports 538 new COVID cases, one new death, as surge continues

The county has seen large daily increases consistently in the last week since the start of the pandemic. The second largest spike was on June 16 with 436 new cases in one day, followed by 412 cases on Friday and 408 cases on Thursday.

Individuals between the ages of 20 and 29 make up the largest age group of infected persons with more than a quarter of the total cases.

Dont use the states reopening plan as an excuse to throw house parties or hold extensive gatherings, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a tweet. We have yet to discover a COVID-19 cure or vaccine. Wearing a mask seems so simple, but it can save lives.

Here are five numbers that detail Bexar County's rise in coronavirus cases:

2,700: Almost half of the positive cases  nearly 2,700  have been attributed to close contact as of Sunday night, Metropolitan Health reported.

406: The number of patients with COVID-19 in area hospitals as Sunday evening, according to Metro Health. That is more than four times as many as on June 1, when hospitals were treating 93 coronavirus patients.

Officials at UT Health San Antonio said their computer models suggest that the number of coronavirus patients in the hospitals could nearly double in the next two weeks and continue to increase until August.

64: The number of patients on ventilators, compared with 49 on Saturday. On June 1, there were 20.

1,000: Early in the pandemic, it took more than a month for Bexar County to break 1,000 cases. Earlier this month  from June 12 to 17  it took only five days.

133: The number of patients in intensive care as of June 21 was 133, up from 39 at the beginning of the month.

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:
Oil workers will embark on a three-day nationwide warning strike from Wednesday, the joint National Executive Committee of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) announced on Sunday.

The General Secretary of PENGASSAN, Lumumba Okugbawa, and his NUPENG counterpart, Olawale Afolabi, said the strike, expected to last till Friday, is to protest the forceful enrolment into the defective payment platform (the lntegrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (lPPlS)

During the period of the warning strike, the oil workers said all oil installations as well as associated operations, including oil production and exports would be shut down across the country.

The workers associations say the strike action was pursuant to the demand concerning their members working in federal government agencies, whose salaries were withheld since May, over alleged non-compliance with the federal governments directive by all its agencies to enroll on the IPPIS payment platform.

PENGASSAN writes Finance Minister

On June 8, PENGASSAN wrote to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to protest the decision by the government not to pay the workers allegedly at the instance of the finance ministry.

In the letter, the association identified the affected agencies to include the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Petroleum Equalization Fund (PEF), Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF), the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA) and Petroleum Training Institute (PTI).

The affiliate group of the association representing the affected agencies, the Regulators Forum, told PREMIUM TIMES its executive resolved at the end of its meeting to withdraw its members services nationwide if the federal government refused to rescind its action and address their grievances within one week. The one-week ultimatum expired on Saturday.

NUPENGASSAN-PENGASSAN write Petroleum Minister

In another letter to the Minister State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, the two unions insisted they would not guarantee industrial peace in the oil and gas sector if the implementation of the IPPIS was carried out unilaterally, or the matter resolved without their input.

In the letter, dated June 19, a copy of which was sent to PREMIUM TIMES, the unions made reference to a directive from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation directing federal ministries, departments and agencies to register their staff on the IPPIS platform on or before June 18, 2020.

The unions said the accountant generals office threatened to further reduce the personnel cost of the affected agencies if the directive to enroll on the IPPIS was ignored.

They said the apprehension of their members about enrolment on the IPPIS platform was that the system discountenances the peculiarities of the oil and gas industry with regards to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and approved pay structure between the Unions and the Federal Government through the Salaries, Wages and Income Commission.

Besides, the unions expressed surprise that the accountant generals office was insisting on the enrollment of the affected agencies on IPPIS despite the fact that the federal government revived the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) where the affected agencies were currently enrolled.

Describing the IPPIS platform as very defective and problematic, the unions said a committee constituted by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment has been meeting with the managers of the platform to consider the peculiarities of the affected agencies enrolling on the platform, rather than a blanket implementation.

The union told the minister in their letter that the talks have not yet been concluded before the decision by the government to withhold the funding to the affected agencies for the payment of their workers salaries.

They called on the government to resume the talks in order for the issues to be resolved before proceeding with the decision to withhold funding to the defaulting agencies

About IPPIS

The Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is an information Communications Technology (ICT) project initiated by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of payroll administration for its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

IPPIS Secretariat is a Department under the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation responsible for payment of salaries and wages directly to government employees bank account with appropriate deductions and remittances of 3rd party payments such as tax, health insurance, housing, pension and so on.

In October 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari, during the presentation of the 2020 budget proposal to the joint session of the National Assembly in Abuja, said all federal government workers not captured on the IPPIS platform by October 31, 2019 would not be paid their monthly salaries.

The president said this was part of efforts to manage the high personnel costs in line with his administrations commitment to fighting corruption.

He directed the stoppage of the salary of any federal government staff not captured on the IPPIS platform by the end of October 2019.

Advertisements



However, following difficulties encountered in the system as they affected some agencies, the enforcement of the presidential directive dragged beyond the initial deadline of October 2019.

No response from government

Both the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, and his counterpart in the Ministry of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, did not respond to calls by PREMIUM TIMES to seek their reactions on Monday.

Both ministers also did not respond to text messages sent to them on the issue.
It began with a dry cough, weakness and back pain. For Reagan Taban Augustino, part of South Sudans small corps of health workers trained in treating Covid-19 patients, there was little doubt what he had.

Days later, hardly able to breathe, the 33-year-old doctor discovered just how poorly equipped his country is for the coronavirus pandemic: None of the public facilities he tried in the capital, Juba, had oxygen supplies available until he reached South Sudans only permanent infectious disease unit, which has fewer than 100 beds for a country of 12 million people.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

It took more than an hour to admit him. I was almost dying at the gate, he told The Associated Press from the unit last week.

The pandemic is now accelerating in Africa, the World Health Organization says. While the continent had more time than Europe and the United States to prepare before its first case was confirmed on Feb. 14, experts feared many of its health systems would eventually become overwhelmed.

South Sudan, a nation with more military generals than doctors, never had a fighting chance. Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system, and today nongovernmental organizations provide the majority of care. Nearly half of the population was hungry before the pandemic. Deadly insecurity continues, and a locust outbreak arrived just weeks before the virus.

When world leaders talk about the pandemic not being over until its over everywhere, they are talking about places like South Sudan.

The United Nations says the countrys outbreak is growing rapidly, with nearly 1,900 cases, including more than 50 health workers infected, more than 30 deaths and no way to know the true number of infections. At one point several members of the Covid-19 task force tested positive, including Vice President Riek Machar.

It can be out of control at any time, said David Gai Zakayo, a doctor with the aid group Action Against Hunger.

The groups we are treating are malnourished, Zakayo said. My big worry is if the virus begins spreading to those groups we are treating, it will be a disaster.

At South Sudans only laboratory that tests for the virus, supervisor Simon Deng Nyichar said the team of 16 works up to 16-hour days slogging through a backlog of more than 5,000 tests. Around 9,000 samples have been tested since early April, when the country became one of the last in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case.

With materials in short supply, testing is largely limited to people with symptoms of Covid-19. It can take weeks to receive results, creating mistrust in communities and resentment toward contact tracers, the Health Ministry said last week.

Three lab workers have been infected and recovered, Nyichar told the AP. This is the nature of our work. We are not scared of the disease.

With the long hours, they work in pairs to stay sharp. Its a must for everybody to have a buddy as a helper to monitor all the steps on the dos and donts, otherwise we would have infected all of us, he said.

While theyre aware of the dangers, South Sudans population at large still takes convincing.

The governments loosening of lockdown measures last month was perceived as an indication that the disease is not in South Sudan, the Health Ministry said. Bars, restaurants and shops are open after people said they feared hunger more than the disease.

Some people have died waiting for rapid-response teams to arrive, the ministry said. And this month it stopped issuing Covid-19 negativity certificates, citing the peddling of fake ones  especially around Juba International Airport.

Meanwhile the virus has spread into more rural areas, including one of the United Nations-run camps upcountry where more than 150,000 civilians still shelter after South Sudans civil war ended in 2018.

Theres been an increase in deaths related to respiratory tract infections at that camp in Bentiu, WHO official Wamala Joseph told reporters last week, though its not clear whether they were from the virus. Testing is difficult as all samples must be flown to the capital. This is a very vulnerable population, he said.

Three of the six camps have no virus screening at the gate, according to a U.N. migration agency document dated this month. One camp has no facility to isolate the sick, and another will only have one when a generator is installed. Listed under preventative measures for the two camps in Juba, home to 30,000 people: Face masks to be distributed in coming weeks.

Meanwhile our hospitals are full, Wolde-Gabriel Saugeron, who leads the International Committee of the Red Cross team in Bor, wrote last week. Covid-19 means that we need to create more space between our hospital beds, which has reduced the number of people we can accommodate in our wards by 30%.

The pandemic is also worsening what was already a major problem in South Sudan: hunger.

Most border crossings are closed, and food prices in the markets have shot up. Now the rainy season has started, making transport and storage more difficult.

More than 1.5 million people in South Sudan are newly vulnerable, including the urban poor who had not been receiving aid before, the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week.

I cannot be saying famine, but I can say Covid-19 will worsen the situation, said Kawa Tong, health and nutrition manager for the aid group CARE.

She knows the country already faced a long and winding path to emerge from multiple crises, starting with progress on the peace agreement that ended the civil war. Security would need to improve, people would find the confidence to return to their homes and begin cultivating their crops, and hunger would fall.

But now, of course, theres the pandemic, and Tong has no idea when or how it will end.

People are overwhelmed, she said. People are scared.
With two Mexican restaurants  La Mula Terca and Cafe y Chocolate  the entrepreneurial Arturo Lorenzo was looking to add a cantina to his group.

Meanwhile, Tim Lidiak and Adrienne Salvatore-Markey, who owned the Thirsty Soul, a bar across from Cafe y Chocolate at the corner of 16th Street and West Passyunk Avenue, were seeking a change in the concept.

As the coronavirus shutdown took hold, Lorenzo struck a deal, opening La Llorona just as outdoor dining relaunched in Philadelphia.

This is more of a city restaurant, said Lorenzo, who was born in San Mateo, Puebla, grew up in Mexico City, and opened Cafe y Chocolate in 2007. Before opening, Lorenzo was a landscaper.

La Llorona  named after the weeping woman in Mexican folklore  boasts a bar that includes some hard-to-find tequilas and agave spirits, as well as beers, whiskeys, gins, vodkas, rums, and brandies. (A locally brewed, Mexican-style lager is on the way.)

Chef Opal Broderick, recently of Thirsty Soul and co-owner of the Rookery Bar in Brooklyn, turns out a menu of traditional cantina food, such as tacos (from a tortilla machine), ceviche, and wings in mole, plus a few larger plates.

Lorenzo is bullish on the Newbold neighborhood, having moved Cafe y Chocolate onto Snyder Avenue last fall from its longtime home at 21st Street and Snyder Avenue. Lorenzo opened La Mula Terca across the street from Cafe y Chocolate in 2016.

La Llorona opens at 4 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday.
San Juan, Puerto Rico: A vast cloud of Sahara dust is blanketing the Caribbean as it heads to the US with a size and concentration that experts say hasn't been seen in half a century.

Air quality across most of the region fell to record "hazardous" levels and experts who nicknamed the event the "Godzilla dust cloud" warned people to stay indoors and use air filters if they have one.

This satellite photo shows a cloud of dust coming from the Sahara desert stretching across the Caribbean. Credit:NOAA

"This is the most significant event in the past 50 years," said Pablo Mendez Lazaro, an environmental health specialist with the University of Puerto Rico.

"Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands."
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Hyundai Motor India on Monday signed an agreement with private sector lender ICICI Bank for online retail financing of its vehicles. Hyundai Motor India Ltd ( HMIL) is the first original equipment maker to provide tailor-made online car financing options on a single platform, 'Click to Buy', the company said in a release.

Under the partnership, ICICI Bank has integrated its finance solutions online with the car maker's digital sales platform, it said, adding that through the tie-up, Hyundai will enable customers to avail an end-to-end composite online solution for car buying along with the required funding to purchase their car.

Hyundai's designated platform facilitates end-to-end retailing of its cars online, making a new car purchase contactless, safe, convenient and hassle free, the release said.

"With Click to Buy, Hyundai has offered customers the first ever end-to-end online car buying portal that is a one stop solution to customer needs. Through our partnership with ICICI Bank, we will fortify customer purchase journey from any remote location and enable real-time transaction with the most productive finance deals, said W S Oh, Executive Director for Corporate Planning at HMIL.

With this tie-up, pre-approved customers of ICICI Bank, can directly apply for a car loan through 'Click to Buy' website and procure an instant loan sanction without having to physically visit the branch, the company said.

In addition to these services, ICICI Bank also offers up to 100 per cent on-road funding as well.

"We are delighted to join hands with Hyundai Motor India to offer an array of online finance solutions for customers looking to buy new Hyundai cars," said Ravi Narayanan, Head - Secured Assets, ICICI Bank.

The online one-stop sales solution offers access to Hyundai's complete range of car models and covers all stages of customer purchase journey, it said.
The Delhi government on Sunday directed all district magistrates to ensure that the daily reported cases of coronavirus are verified within 24 hours and scale up their operations by constituting additional surveillance teams if needed. The Delhi government had on Saturday issued a revised order stating that coronavirus patients who do not have any comorbidities or require hospitalisation could opt for home isolation.

In a State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) meeting on Saturday, it was decided that the home quarantine system will continue. The decision came a day after LG Anil Baijal ordered mandatory five-day quarantine for all COVID-19 patients. "All individuals who are positive will be referred to the COVID care centres for assessment of clinical conditions, severity of illness and presence of co-morbidities," the Delhi government order said.

In the order issued on Sunday, the government said, "All District Magistrates are directed to implement the decision of the SDMA, in letter and spirit with immediate effect through CDMO's, District Surveillance officer and all other resources available at their disposal. District Magistrates are required to ensure that all daily reported positive cases are physically verified immediately but not later than 24 hours."

"They may scale up their operations by constituting additional surveillance teams, engaging additional manpower and requisitioning additional resources proper implementation and daily reporting," it stated.

Also read: Malls see 77% degrowth in first half of June; consumer sentiment low: Report
The Baudry Lab at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has identified 125 naturally occurring compounds that have a computational potential for efficacy against the COVID-19 virus from the first batch of 50,000 rapidly assessed by a supercomputer.

It's the first time a supercomputer has been used to assess the treatment efficacy of naturally occurring compounds against the proteins made by COVID-19.

Located in UAH's Shelby Center for Science and Technology, the lab is searching for potential precursors to drugs that will help combat the global pandemic using the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Cray Sentinel supercomputer.

The UAH team is led by molecular biophysicist Dr. Jerome Baudry (pronounced Bo-dre), the Mrs. Pei-Ling Chan Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences. Dr. Baudry is video blogging about his COVID-19 research journey using HPE's Cray Sentinel system.

His research is in collaboration with the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy and HPE.

"We have used supercomputers to predict natural products most likely to bind to three proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus," says Dr. Baudry. SARS-CoV-2 is the scientific name for COVID-19.

"Out of the 50,000 natural products that we have looked at using supercomputers, we find several hundred to be predicted to be potentially binding on the proteins of interest," he says.

We further found 125  but there may be more  that are particularly interesting because they bind right where we want to, they are not too big, not too small and they have the chemical profiles of pharmaceuticals." Dr. Jerome Baudry, Molecular Biophysicist, University of Alabama in Huntsville

There are many diverse natural sources for the chemicals of interest, Dr. Baudry says.

"Many are from relatively common medicinal plants that can be found in the U.S., and many are from more distant plants from Southeast Asia and South America, as well as from some ground and oceanic bacteria strains and fungi."

Promising compounds will undergo a computational technique called pharmacophore analysis to find what the chemicals have in common and flag chemical features important for future research.

The next phase for the compounds is in vitro testing by a partner laboratory that will use live virus and live cells.

Those chemical molecules found most efficacious will form the basis for future drug research and development processes that include testing for efficacy, tolerance and adverse effects in human trials. That process might also include chemical modifications to make the drug more efficient, better tolerated or both.

"Maybe we will need a cocktail of drugs, as is the case in many anti-AIDS treatments. But every drug that ends up surviving this long and winding road of development and testing starts as a hit that binds to a protein. It is this initial event that we are modeling here using supercomputers," Dr. Baudry says.

"Normally it would take a very long time and a lot of money to achieve that, but with the supercomputers we can perform this initial hit discovery step much faster and cheaper," he says.

"Everything is being accelerated for COVID-19, so the whole process that can take up to a decade may end up being shorter here."

More batches are being prepared for supercomputer testing, according to Baudry Lab researcher Dr. Kendall Byler, who is running the calculations on Sentinel. Dr. Byler is highly experienced in using computational approaches for natural product research.

"Actually, there are over 400,000 compounds we'd like to test," Dr. Byler says.

Blocking proteins

In the initial batch, naturally occurring compounds were found that seem likely to bind to two important proteins, COVID-19's papain-like protease, or PLpro, and the main protease, or Mpro.

The proteins are enzymes from the virus' genome that are responsible for processing all the virus' proteins in infected cells. Infected cells are forced to manufacture them so that the virus can replicate.

"If we can block these viral proteins from self-assembling and performing their functions inside the cell, we may not have been able to save that one infected cell, but we will prevent the virus from replicating and it will die with that cell," Dr. Baudry says.

"If we find a chemical that 'sticks' in these reactive regions of the proteins, the processing reactions will not be possible anymore and we will stop the infected cells from making and releasing more virus."

The third protein of interest is COVID-19's spike protein, which is how the virus attaches itself to a cell to initiate the infection process.

This spike protein is present on the surface of the virus and gives the virus its characteristic crown-like (corona in Latin) appearance. It binds to a protein called ACE2 on the cell surface to begin the infection process.

"We are trying to find chemicals that would bind on the surface of the virus' spike protein and prevent it from locking itself with the cell's ACE2," Dr. Baudry says.

In the initial batch modeled, scientists found the interactions of 24 compounds interesting in the spike protein, 41 molecules interesting in the main protein and 60 compounds interesting in the PL-pro protein.

"We can then have a good idea of what the natural products exhibit that makes them successful in these different proteins, and that is the starting point for screening larger databases of millions of chemicals much faster, helping chemists to synthesize novel molecules down the road, maybe more potent and more selective than the original natural products against these proteins," Dr. Baudry says.

AI and ancient knowledge

Located in a Microsoft Azure data center in Texas, the Sentinel supercomputer makes the work more rapid than ever before possible and an HPE team is helping facilitate it. Dr. Baudry's UAH team has access to Sentinel's powerful capabilities through the cloud with Microsoft Azure.

Sentinel, which features HPE's Cray XC50 end-to-end high-performance computing (HPC) system, is capable of computing 147 trillion floating point operations per second and can store 830,000 gigabytes of data.

Sentinel helps to cut compound testing time from months or even years to weeks, Dr. Baudry says. The supercomputer is as fast as the Earth's entire population doing 20,000 calculations every second and has storage capacity for more than 45 years of high definition video.

The fight to prevent COVID-19's sometimes devastating health consequences has created a new meeting of modern high-capacity artificial intelligence with humankind's most ancient healing knowledge, Dr. Baudry says.

"Even five years ago, this would not have been possible," he says. "It is fortunate for us that this kind of very advanced, very rapid computational power is available at this time when we need it so much."

At UAH, the Baudry Lab collaborates on machine learning and big data in drug discovery with the laboratory of Dr. Vineetha Menon, an assistant professor of computer science.

The lab also collaborates in a separate COVID-19 compound search led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and is working with the Alabama Supercomputer Center on COVID treatment compound research.
The Madras High Court on Monday ordered notice to the Tamil Nadu prison authorities on a plea by Rajiv Gandhi assassination life convict Nalini Sriharan's mother alleging that her daughter was not allowed to meet her husband Murugan for the past 3 months 'in violation' of rules.

Admitting the petition by S Padma, a division bench of Justices MM Sundresh and D Krishnakumar directed the state prison officials to file their response.

In her petition, Nalini's mother claimed though the prison manual allowed such meeting once in a fortnight, the authorities did not permit her daughter to meet her husband in the last three months.

She submitted that her son-in-law Murugan has resorted to "hunger strike" since June 1 over the issue and hence, his life was in 'danger'. The petitioner wanted the court to direct the prison authorities to permit Nailni to meet her husband Murugan regularly as per the rules.

Another plea moved by Padma seeking direction to the authorities to permit Nalini and Murugan to make video calls to her mother-in-law in Sri Lanka and sister-in-law in London is pending before the high court.

Besides the two, five others were sentenced to death in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi at nearby Sriperumbudur by an LTTE suicide bomber during an election rally in May, 1991. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment later.

Murugan is lodged in the Central Prison in Vellore while Nalini at the nearby special jail for women.
China-U.S. feud over coronavirus heats up

China on Sunday temporarily suspended poultry imports from a U.S. slaughterhouse where workers were infected with the coronavirus, a day after President Trump blamed China for recent U.S. economic troubles, saying the country had sent us the plague.

As China battles an outbreak in Beijing, the U.S. has seen the number of daily new cases rise in 18 states across the South, the West and the Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records on Saturday, and five others hit records last week. The country has seen more than 2.2 million infections, and more than 119,000 people have died  the most in the world on both counts.

Around the world, cases are rising rapidly. Reports of new cases began surpassing 100,000 a day in May, but surged past 176,000 over the weekend.

Here are our latest updates and maps on the outbreak.

In other developments:
Fraser Seitel

About 100 years ago, when I graduated journalism school, there was no more respected standard bearer for everything the journalistic profession stood for than the New York Times. Not only were Times reporters more accurate and informative than their competitors, they also demonstrated, more than any other journalists, that reportorial objectivity, impartiality and neutrality were, indeed, attainable.

No wonder the New York Times was the worlds undisputed paper of record. Every day, it demonstrated the construct of fairness that we learned about in J school wasnt just theoretical. It was, in fact, the way that really good journalists operated in their real world jobs. It was this qualityof reporting dispassionately, telling both sides and letting readers decide on the truththat distinguished the Times as the beacon of journalistic integrity. But alas, all good things must come to an end. And so, too, has the New York Times surrendered its role as journalisms standard bearer for objectivity.

Todays New York Times, in fact, makes no secret of its downright loathing of most things Republican and all things Donald Trump. This isnt only apparent in its editorial pageswhere op-ed writers run the gamut all the way from Trump haters like Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd to Trump hysterics like Michelle Goldberg and Charles Blowbut also in its news sections. (Full disclosure: I think Donald Trump is an insecure, ill-informed, downright dangerous President. But Joe Biden aint no bargain either.)

The fact is, todays New York Times in both news and editorial is 100 percent devoted to defeating Trump in November. Its clear bias no longer debatable, its dedication to objectivity no longer consequential.

The most blatant proof of this sad new reality is that the Times is the first news outlet to assign a fulltime reporter, Maggie Haberman, to the Beat Trump beat, her sole responsibility to help ensure the defeat of Trump in the 2020 election.

Ms. Haberman, a former tabloid reporter and daughter of longtime Times columnist Clyde Haberman, is tasked with reporting on every Trumpian negative utterance, malicious action, falsehood or personal defect to help convince voters to elect Biden President of the United States.

She dutifully fulfills that mission with every column she files, keeping the Trump personal and professional deficiencies constant and avoiding any reference whatsoever to any policy act that might be construed as a Trumpian success.

The Times, of course, would never admit that Ms. Habermans job is to sink the Donald, but heres a sample of her recent handiworkand the strategy behind itfrom which you might draw your own conclusions.

Trump is racist

In the wake of George Floyds death and subsequent protests, theres no more damning accusation today that one is a racist. Ms. Haberman not-so-subtly accuses the President of such bigotry with a withering fusillade of cherry-picked Trump quotes.

Typical was her June 11 news column highlighting Mr. Trumps long history of making insensitive and tone-deaf comments on race, including remarks widely seen as racist. She noted that Mr. Trump has harbored offensive attitudes on race for years, including his searing attacks on the Central Park Five and his idea, on The Apprentice, for an all-white team competing against an all-black team. She added that in the wake of the Floyd protests, the President was hunkered down at the White House, tweeting about injured protestors and describing demonstrators as THUGS.

Ms. Haberman failed to mention that Trumps comments also referred to his support of the rights of peaceful protesters, his denunciation of the way George Floyd was killed, his understanding of the hurt and pain of people who have been through a lot, and that the thugs he castigated were those who lit fires, looted stores and wantonly destroyed private property. Nor did she refer to the Presidents call to the Floyd family to express the nations sympathies.

Theres no question that Donald Trump often says and tweets stupid and hurtful things that his advisorsto whom he never listensnever want him to utter. But branding him a racist, without at least citing ample evidence to the contrary, is patently unfair.

Trump is secretly sick

Another recurring theme in the Haberman Beat Trump playbook is that the President is hiding health problems, which, if revealed, would jeopardize his reelection.

Most recently, after a mid-June speech to the graduating class at West Point, she wrote that Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp  and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech. She dismissed Trumps subsequent tweets about having to descend a long, steep, slippery ramp with no handrails as defensive, noting that the videos upon which she based her reporting showed clear skies and no evidence that the ramp was slippery.

Ms. Haberman went on to note that Trump, the oldest first-term President in U.S. history, never fully explained his abrupt visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November, saying at the time only that it was intended to get a jump on his annual physical. And for good measure, she added that while a White House doctor had released a June memo that the Presidents checkup indicated he was in good shape, it provided little information beyond blood pressure.

The inference, of course, was clear that Trump may be hiding a potentially serious physical impairment. After that Haberman column, numerous print and broadcast media followed the Times lead and dutifully reported on the Presidents suspect physical condition.

Trump is wounded and alone

As the Trump circus has rolled on and more associates have abandoned ship, a pervasive theme of Habermans news columns has been the Presidents Nixonian isolation in the White House.

Most recently, after John Boltons kiss and tell best seller was released, Ms. Haberman described the President as acting trapped and defensive  with destructive behavior so out of step for an incumbent in an election year.

She went on to reveal a man wallowing in self-pity about news coverage of him since the coronavirus pandemic  bristling at criticism that he hasnt sufficiently addressed the death of George Floyd and consumed, once again with leaks from the White House.

As to those leaks, one wonders who in the Trump White House would be willing to take the monumental risk of leaking anything to an arch Trump hater like Ms. Haberman. Wouldnt they worry that if found out, it could cost them their job? In fact, after all the bad things Haberman has written to bury Trump, one wonders how in the world she still maintains sources within the Trump White House. The real answer, on closer inspection, may well be that Haberman doesnt have any sources close to the President or even inside the White House, but rather, that her exposes about damning internal Trump interactions are fed to her by individuals far removed from the President, whose identity is never revealed and who, therefore, may or may not know what theyre talking about.

Typical was her nuanced disclaimer in the recent post-Bolton column: The New York Times interviewed more than a dozen people who speak or interact with the president frequently, including current and former White House aides, campaign advisers, friends and associates. Most spoke on condition of anonymity.

Indeed, among the only critical individuals quoted by name in the defamatory column was Anthony Scaramucci, the publicity-seeking missile who Trump threw out as press secretary after 11 excruciating days, and Sam Nunberg, the slightly, um, off center media hound who last worked for Trump in the 2015 campaign. Scaramucci and Nunberg arent exactly A-list Trump insiders. And if the two of them are typical of where Maggie Haberman gets her inside dirt, you have to wonder how authoritative Habermans reporting really is.

And thats really the point in considering todays New York Times Trump coverage. The fact is that any semblance of accuracy, fairness or objectivity has been sacrificed in favor of one simple rallying cry: Beat Trump! Somewhere, Walter Lippmann is crying his eyes out.

***

Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. Hes the author of the Pearson text The Practice of Public Relations, now in its 13th edition, and co-author of Rethinking Reputation" and "Idea Wise. He may be reached directly at yusake@aol.com.
The measure applies only to loans due in 2020. Beijing also postpones interest payments of 77 low-income countries. According to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Vatican COVID-19 Commission, developing nations cannot tackle the pandemic without the help of creditor countries. Beijing excludes full debt cancellation.

Beijing (AsiaNews)  China will write off all interest-free loans advanced to African countries due this year. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the announcement by videoconference during the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19.

With respect to commercial sovereign loans, the Chinese leader urged Chinese financial institutions like the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank to consult to come to some arrangements with African countries.

The two banks are underwriting the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinas global investment plan to become the hub of world trade.

Last week, Beijing said it would delay loan repayments for 77 low-income countries, including those in Africa, as part of the G20 programme.

For the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, several developing countries, especially in Africa, cannot face the COVID-19 pandemic without help from creditor states.

With loan repayment suspended this year, debtor countries can use the savings to buy food and medical equipment to fight the coronavirus.

The Vatican COVID-19 Commission addressed the problem last month by proposing certain actions to tackle the challenges created by the pandemic. Set up by Pope Francis, the commission has called on creditor countries to cancel the debt of the poorest countries or at least cancel the interest on loans for 2020.

The Chinese government has not provided any information about its foreign loans. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, BRI partners owe China US$ 135 billion. Some of these countries, 67 in total, are in dire economic straits.

One of them is Pakistan, a key partner in China's trade strategy, whose debt totals US$ 21 billion. Another is Djibouti, which hosts Chinas only overseas naval base; its foreign debt is equal to 80 per cent of its GDP.

Johns Hopkins University's China Africa Research Initiative has calculated that between 2000 and 2017, China lent a total of US$ 143 billion to 49 African states.

Analysts note that interest-free loans represent only a fraction of China's foreign loans. According to some press reports, Beijing has set restrictions on debt renegotiation with countries in difficulty.

For example, interest-free loans, such as those by EximBank and the China Development Bank, cannot be easily written off or renegotiated. Full debt cancellation is excluded, whilst interest payments suspension or loan restructuring are more likely to entail longer repayment times.
The most frequent issue family business consultants get called to facilitate is succession.

It is the most common request and, by far, the most complex and difficult to fulfill. By definition, family businesses are a collection of family members working together and they are generational. One would assume that when a family business is started, the clear objective is to build a successful business and pass it to the next generation  a simple goal.

At this years Parker Center for Family Business Summer Dinner, we will explore why this simple goal is anything but simple. Given COVID-19, the dinner will be a virtual presentation on June 25.

Over 30 years working with family businesses, I have learned a very basis, obvious rule  do not rush to fix anything before understanding the real problem at hand. For a family business struggling with success-ion, please assess whether the family business in front of you is, in fact, a family business.

This is the hidden secret and myth in our field. Are you in a family business or do you just work in your parents company? Are you in a family business or do you just let your kids work in your business? There are millions of well-run, individually owned businesses masquerading as family businesses. Often, its because they existed, and the kids needed a job and were hired. There was no intent, or emotional buy-in, to be a family business. Certainly, no plan or preparation for a successful succession was in the offering.

Parents assume it is their business under their control while the children assume it will be their business and they have a birthright to participate and lead.

The cause of such a dilemma is most often the love of ones children and wanting them to have a safe place to land. For the lower generation, the parents business can look like a safe haven when you havent decided who you are or what you want to become. For the parents, another cause is the lack of personal insight into ones ability to share ownership (emotional or literal), vision, power, control and identity with another.

This is where gender comes into focus for the upper generation, raised in the late 1930s to the mid 60s. Women were taught to nurture and share, and men were taught to produce and win. Female-run family businesses have much more successful transitions from one generation to another.

Succession, an opportunity for the next generation, can be a visceral experience of being erased.

Who doesnt like the idea of a loving family working together for a common goal? However, what it requires is the emotional maturity and health of all involved. A family business uniquely demands self-awareness. It demands business acumen and, honestly, much more importantly, it demands you can create and maintain healthy family relationships.

So, what to do? If your family business is in personal chaos, stop for a moment and make certain you want it to be a family business. There is no sin in keeping it solely yours or selling it and making it possible for everyone to go off and pursue what excites them.

Follow the basic tenets for a solid relationship and family  empathy, reciprocity, transparency, belief in benign intent of those around you. And, for goodness sake, learn to share without losing yourself.

Edward P. Monte, Ph.D. is the founding principal of Family Solutions Group  a family business  family office consulting firm recently relocated from Philadelphia to Santa Fe. He recently, with other Parker Center Board Directors, taught at the Anderson School of Management. The executives desk is a guest column providing advice or information about resources available to the business community in New Mexico. The Journal is a sponsor of the Summer Dinner event, as is Thompson Land & Cattle.

the executives desk

If you go

The Parker Center for Family Business Summer Dinner, which will include a talk on the topic The Myth of Family Business & Succession, will be held from 6 to 7 p.m. June 25 via Zoom. Tickets are $100 per person, and include a gift card for Mtuccis Restaurants. Participants are welcome to enjoy their meal during the conference. Registration is available at https://addmi.com/e/parker-center-for-family-business-virtual-summer-dinner-M8VxFMOeJG7Qta3LCYF.
[June 22, 2020] Think Tank Photo Announces the Appointment of Transcontinenta BV as New Distributor in Germany and Austria

Think Tank Photo announced that it has appointed Netherlands-based Transcontinenta BV and its subsidiary Cullman Germany GmbH as the exclusive distributors in Germany and Austria of Think Tank Photo camera and video bags. Transcontinenta is already the distributor of Think Tank Photo and MindShift Gear products in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, and the addition of the German and Austrian markets offers a significant expansion of Think Tank's distribution channels across Central Europe. "Think Tank Photo and Transcontinenta have created an important partnership over the last four years, working together in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg," said Think Tank Photo President, Andrew Hutchins. "Their experience and established relationships in the German and Austrian markets make them an ideal partner, and we look forward to growing our businesses together." "Transcontinenta is proud to expand our distribution and support of the Think Tank Photobrands in Germany and Austria," said Tiedo Boertien, Commercial Director. "Our long-established working relationship makes this a natural expansion into two very important markets in Europe."



The Think Tank Photo team would also like to express its thanks to Christian Dinkel, Peter Dolle and the team at Mamiya Cameravertrieb und Service GmbH for their valuable contributions to the company during their eleven years as the previous Think Tank Photo and MindShift Gear distributor. ABOUT THINK TANK PHOTO

Headquartered in Santa Rosa, California, Think Tank Photo is a group of expert product designers and professional photographers focused on studying how photographers work in order to develop inventive new carrying solutions that meet professional needs. Think Tank Photo

https://www.thinktankphoto.com/ Transcontinenta BV

https://www.transcontinenta.nl/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005130/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
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...
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Export of grain and legumes from Turkey to Turkmenistan significantly increased by 48.02 percent from January through May 2020 compared to the same period of 2019, having exceeded $12.9 million, Turkeys Ministry of Trade told Trend.

According to the ministry, Turkeys export of grain and legumes to Turkmenistan soared by 67.28 percent in May 2020 compared to the same month of 2019 and surpassed $3.6 million.

Turkeys export of grains and legumes to international markets from January through May 2020 increased by 0.1 percent compared to the same period of 2019, having made up $2.9 billion.

Meanwhile, Turkeys export of grains and legumes abroad accounted for 4.7 percent of the countrys total export.

In May this year, Turkey exported grains and legumes worth $500.2 million to world markets, which is 15.3 percent less compared to the same month of 2019. Thus, the countrys export of grain and legumes accounted for 5 percent of its total export.

From May 2019 through May 2020, Turkey exported the grain and legumes in the amount of nearly $6.8 billion to the foreign markets.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma was braced on Saturday for Donald Trumps first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic struck the US, claiming more than 118,000 lives, plunging the economy into recession and leading to widespread criticism of a botched response to a crisis that has seen the presidents approval ratings tank.

Related: On eve of Trump visit, Tulsa still haunted by memory of white supremacist massacre

The indoor rally, at Tulsas 19,000-capacity BOK Center, came as city and state experienced a surge in Covid-19 cases and local public health officials urged the campaign to reschedule the event, over fears close contact between attendees  who will not be forced to wear face masks  could lead to more deaths.

On Saturday, the Trump campaign confirmed that six staffers working on the rally had tested positive for Covid-19. The campaign said quarantine procedures were immediately implemented and no Covid-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact would be at the rally.

The day before, Trump promised a wild evening for his supporters and used Twitter to threaten protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes that they would not be treated in the same way they have in other parts of the country.

Trumps decision to hold a mass rally in Tulsa has drawn outrage from the local black community as well as others who have poured on to the streets in protest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

Counter-rallies are expected in the city and brief verbal disputes between protesters and Trump supporters, dozens of whom have been camped out for days to gain entry to the event, have occurred sporadically in recent days.

Large fences, road blocks and heavy police presence surrounded the arena on Friday evening. On Saturday, armed militia members and bikers gathered outside the venue.

William Dunbar, 33 and from Tulsa, carried an assault rifle and a handgun. He told the Guardian he was there to prevent any agitators looking to do property damage and cause bodily harm in our city and was co-ordinating with around 50 other armed patriots. He also said he was there to protect protesters and rally-goers alike.

Story continues

The rally was set to take place within a mile of the historic Greenwood district, the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the worst episodes of racist violence in modern American history which still haunts the city. It was also set for the day after Juneteenth, a national day of commemoration of the ending of slavery in the US.

The city celebrated Juneteenth with a large rally in Greenwood on Friday evening, with a few thousand attendees. The event was headlined by the veteran civil rights campaigner Reverend Al Sharpton.

Related: Trump claims 1m want tickets for Tulsa rally opposed by top health official

In an interview with the Guardian before he took to the stage, Sharpton, who was escorted by three police officers, said he had received death threats.

I wanted to be here, and no threat would stop me from speaking today, Sharpton said. He echoed local criticism that holding a rally a day after Juneteenth was racially insensitive.

He [Trump] believes that America was great when it was for white males, white women couldnt even vote. Blacks were enslaved. Latinos were not welcome. Yet he grew up in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty and I think that is a glaring contradiction that shows the lack of character of this man.

Trump was expected to talk about the wave of protest and national reckoning on race and police following the death of Floyd in late May during his speech.

On Thursday, amid fears of unrest, Tulsa mayor GT Bynum issued a curfew which was later rescinded after Trump intervened. Enjoy yourselves - thank you to Mayor Bynum! the president tweeted after the curfew was withdrawn.

Related: Republicans insist Trump Tulsa rally won't spread coronavirus  despite local concern

The move came shortly before the Oklahoma supreme court ruled against a lawsuit requesting that all rally attendees wear face masks and maintain social distancing. Although the campaign will supply masks and hand sanitiser, a number of attendees have indicated that they do not plan to use them.

Tulsas city health director, Dr Bruce Dart, has said publicly throughout the week that he wants the event to be postponed, noting the likelihood of coronavirus spread during the rally as cases in Oklahoma continue to drastically spike to new highs over the past few days.

The Trump campaign has made attendees sign waivers accepting they will not hold the president or the campaign responsible if they contract the virus.

Earlier in the week a senior campaign official, Marc Lotter, told the Guardian that at-risk individuals should stay away from the rally and watch it on television. Federal guidance states at-risk groups including those over 65, residents of care homes and those with underlying conditions.

Despite Lotters warnings, Trump has issued no such statement and the invite for the online campaign event makes no reference to at risk groups.

At the BOK Center on Saturday, Trump lawyer Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, told the Guardian: We hope that people are going to stay socially distanced, are going to wear a mask, [use] hand sanitiser and be respectful of each other.



Its not a legal requirement, its peoples own free choice. But we hope everyone will be peaceful and happy and have a great rally and social distance
Springfield, NJ, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As an inherently independent, strong-willed woman since childhood, Ana Klepova was more than ready to transition to life in a new country and thought she had left all her troubles behind in Macedonia when she immigrated to the United States. She was surprised to learn her nationality was an intrinsic obstacle, and many took poorly to her Macedonian roots. For the first time in her life, she felt alone and insecure. Suddenly, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Klepova found her strength to make her dream, the American Dream, her own and live by no ones rules. In her book, WINNING AWAY: Memoir by Ana Klepova she shares her story of triumph as she redefines what it means to live the American Dream.

Inspired by her drive to share the truth about those who hindered her success on her journey to becoming an American, Klepova wrote her story both to show those who made life difficult for her and those who aided in her journey that she not only made it- she is thriving.

I want to let people know it can be hard, but you can be successful. You can have a happy ending in America, Klepova said, adding, it might take a long time, but eventually something good will happen so long as you dont give up.

Klepova knows she is not alone in facing unnecessary hardship from friends, landlords, bosses, and others while gaining a footing in America. She hopes her story will touch those who have also started a new life in the U.S., give them hope, and show them at while the odds may be against them, some allies will always be willing to support them if they know where to look.

WINNING AWAY: Memoir by Ana Klepova

By Ana Klepova

ISBN: 9781796098877 (softcover); 9781796098884 (hardcover);

Available at the Xlibris Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Born in Strumica, Macedonia, in 1980, Ana Klepova knew she was destined to travel the world, fall in love with herself first and then someone else, and deeply enjoy even the smallest moments. When she faced immense hardship after immigrating to America, she had two choices: go home where things never changed, or tough it out and make life in the United States great on her terms. After deciding on the latter, she fell deeply in love and got married. She has settled in Springfield, New Jersey, and while she looks back on her life from time-to-time she never regrets the choice she made to move to America.

###

Attachment
Commenting on the Ladakh face-off, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said PM Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position

New Delhi: In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said PM Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

"To do any less would be a historic betrayal of people's faith," he said in a statement.

The Congress has been attacking the government on Prime Minister Modi's remarks at an all-party meeting that no one has entered Indian territory or captured any military post while referring to the eastern Ladakh standoff.

The government has, however, said that attempts are being made to give a "mischievous interpretation" to the prime minister's remarks.

Singh said this is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat.

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in the violent face-off with Chinese troops on the night of June 15/16 in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley.

Noting that the country is standing at the historic crossroads, Singh said the government's decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us.

"Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty. And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the prime minister," he said.

"The prime minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nation's security as also strategic and territorial interests," he said.

The Congress veteran said China is "brazenly and illegally" seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions from April 2020 till date.

"We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity.

"The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further," he said.

"We remind the Government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements," he said. Singh also said that the sacrifice of soldiers cannot be allowed to go in vain.
The New York Times

They are questions that have haunted scientists since the pandemic began: Does everyone infected with the virus produce antibodies? And if so, how long do they last?

Not very long, suggests a new study published Thursday in Nature Medicine. Antibodies  protective proteins made in response to an infection  may last only two to three months, especially in people who never showed symptoms while they were infected.

The conclusion does not necessarily mean that these people can be infected a second time, several experts cautioned. Even low levels of powerful neutralizing antibodies may still be protective, as are the immune systems T cells and B cells.

But the results offer a strong note of caution against the idea of immunity certificates for people who have recovered from the illness, the authors suggested.

Antibodies to other coronaviruses, including those that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome, are thought to last about a year. Scientists had hoped that antibodies to the new virus might last at least as long.

Several studies have now shown that most people who are visibly ill with COVID-19 develop antibodies to the virus, although it has been unclear how long those antibodies last. The new study is the first to characterize the immune response in asymptomatic people.

The researchers compared 37 asymptomatic people to an equal number who had symptoms in the Wanzhou District of China. The investigators found that asymptomatic people mount a weaker response to the virus than those who develop symptoms.

Antibody levels fell to undetectable levels in 40 percent of asymptomatic people, compared with just 13 percent of symptomatic people.

The sample size is small, however, and the researchers did not take into account protection offered by immune cells that may fight the virus on their own or make new antibodies when the virus invades. A few studies have shown that the coronavirus stimulates a robust and protective cellular immune response.

Most people are generally not aware of T cell immunity, and so much of the conversation has focused on antibody levels, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.

Apart from T cells, which can kill the virus on encounter, people who have been infected make so-called memory B cells, which can rapidly ramp up antibody production when needed.

If they find the virus again, they remember and start to make antibodies very, very quickly, said Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who has led several studies of antibodies to the coronavirus.

In the new study, antibodies to one viral protein dropped below detectable levels. But a second set of antibodies targeting the so-called spike protein of the coronavirus  needed to neutralize the virus and prevent reinfection  were still present.

In fact, these antibodies seemed to show a smaller decline in asymptomatic people than in symptomatic people.

The neutralizing antibody is what matters, and that tells a very different story, Krammer said.

A second paper, published Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that even low levels of antibodies might be enough to thwart the virus.

It does appear that even low levels of certain antibodies have potent neutralizing capability, said Rasmussen, the Columbia University virologist. Low antibody titers dont necessarily determine whether a patient will be protected from reinfection.

Between 20 percent and 50 percent of those infected may never show outward signs of the illness. The new study from China, which tracked people over time to confirm that they never developed symptoms, put that number at 20 percent.

About one-third of the asymptomatic people had the ground-glass opacities characteristic of COVID-19 and abnormalities in the lungs and in cell types, however.

The study also found that asymptomatic people shed virus when infected and did so for longer than those who had symptoms. That finding is interesting because it actually might suggest that these asymptomatic patients are indeed capable of transmitting virus, Rasmussen said.

But she and other experts noted that its unclear whether the virus shed by asymptomatic people is capable of infecting others.

It is important to know if they are shedding infectious virus or just remnants of the virus, said Akiko Iwasaki, a viral immunologist at Yale University.

Iwasaki was more concerned than the other experts about the two new studies.

These reports highlight the need to develop strong vaccines, because immunity that develops naturally during infection is suboptimal and short-lived in most people, she said. We cannot rely on natural infection to achieve herd immunity.

Apoorva Mandavilli. c.2020 The New York Times Company
Piramal Enterprises (PEL) rose 1.04% to Rs 1,176.05 after the company announced acquisition of solid oral dosage drug product facility in the US from G&W Laboratories Inc.

PEL's pharma solutions business has entered into a pact with G&W Laboratories Inc. to acquire its solid oral dosage drug product manufacturing facility located in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. PEL, through one of its affiliates, would acquire at closing a 100% stake in the entity that operates the facility and owns the related real estate.

"This acquisition broadens the offering of Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS) by adding solid oral dosage form capabilities (tablets and capsules) in North America," PEL said in a statement.

The Sellersville site can also produce liquids, creams, and ointments, further expanding the PPS portfolio. The site also can support product and process development for solid oral dosage and oral liquids, including immediate release, modified release, chewable & sublingual solid oral dosage forms, solutions and suspensions in liquids, the company said.

The Sellersville site covers 31.5 acres of land with over 221,000 square feet of manufacturing space, including 195,000 square feet of GMP area. The site has received certifications from the FDA and EMA.

Currently, PPS' capabilities in solid oral dosage forms are all located in the UK and India. The announcement was made on Saturday, 20 June 2020.

In a separate announcement, PEL said its administrative committee of the board of directors will meet on Tuesday, 23 June 2020, to consider issuing secured, rated, unlisted non-convertible debentures on private placement basis amounting up to Rs 2,700 crore.

On a consolidated basis, PEL reported net loss of Rs 1,702.59 crore in Q4 March 2020 as compared with a net profit of Rs 454.63 crore in Q4 March 2019. Net sales fell 2% to Rs 3,341 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

PEL is one of India's largest diversified companies, with a presence in financial services, pharmaceuticals and healthcare insights & analytics.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new commentary in the journal One Earth highlights not only climate-related risks to the global food system, such as drought and floods, but also exposes the coronavirus pandemic as a shock to the system that has led to food crises in many parts of the world. To address the challenges of a globally interconnected food system, a systems approach is required.

Global food production is incredibly efficient, and the world's farmers produce enough to feed the global population. Despite this abundance, a quarter of the global population do not have regular access to sufficient and nutritious food. A growing and more affluent population will further increase the global demand for food and create stresses on land, for example, through deforestation.

Additionally, climate change is a major threat to agriculture. Increased temperatures have contributed to land degradation and unpredictable rainy seasons can lead to crop failure. While climate extremes impact the ability to produce food, the guarantee of food is more than just agricultural productivity. Today's globalized food system consists of highly interconnected social, technical, financial, economic, and environmental subsystems. It is characterized by increasingly complex trade networks and an efficient supply chain, with market power located in the hands of few. A shock to the food system can lead to ripple effects in political and social systems. The 2010 droughts in wheat-producing countries such as China, Russia, and Ukraine, led to major crop failures, pushing up food prices on the global markets. This in turn was one of the factors that led to deep civil unrest in Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, as people were facing food shortages, which possibly contributed to the 2011 revolution spreading across the country.

Not all shocks to the global food system are directly linked to agricultural productivity or climatic conditions. The vulnerability of the interconnected food system has become painfully evident in recent months following the appearance of a different type of shock: a global pandemic. Although it started as a health crisis, COVID-19 quickly filtered through the political, social, economic, technological, and financial systems. Business interruptions resulted in a chain reaction that is projected to contribute to food crises in many parts of the world.

"Although harvests have been successful and food reserves are available, global food supply chain interruptions led to food shortages in some places because of lockdown measures," writes Franziska Gaupp, the author of the commentary, an IIASA researcher working jointly with the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) and Risk and Resilience (RISK) programs. "Products cannot be moved from farms to markets. Food is rotting in the fields as transport disruptions have made it impossible to move food from the farm to the consumer. At the same time, many people have lost their incomes and food has become unaffordable to them."

The World Food Program has warned that by the end of 2020, an additional 130 million people could face famine. In the fight against the global COVID-19 pandemic, borders have been closed and a lack of local production has led to soaring prices in some countries. In South Sudan, for example, wheat prices have increased 62% since February 2020. Difficult access to food, and related stress could then lead to food riots and collective violence.

According to Gaupp, a systems approach is needed to address the challenges of a globally interconnected, complex food system. Systemic risk and systemic opportunities need to be incorporated into food-related policies. It is important to highlight that the threat to food security is not just a result of potential disruptions of production, but also shocks to distribution as well as shortfalls of the consumers' income. COVID-19 has shown how interconnected our world is, and how a simultaneous shocksuch as a pandemicalso affects our food system. She further points out that the issues are supply chain imbalances. There is enough for everyone, however, some countries are panic buying, and some are banning exports: This is why the whole supply and demand system is experiencing challenges, leading to more difficult access to food, especially in poorer countries.

"There will likely be more shocks hitting our global food system in the future. We need global collaboration and transdisciplinary approaches to ensure that the food chains function even in moments of crises to prevent price spikes and to provide all people with safe access to food," concludes Gaupp.

Explore further Ensuring global food security during COVID-19

More information: Franziska Gaupp, Extreme Events in a Globalized Food System, One Earth (2020). Franziska Gaupp, Extreme Events in a Globalized Food System,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.06.001
In 2000, he was appointed to the NSW Court of Appeal and in 2003 Prime Minister John Howard appointed him to the High Court. Justice Dyson Heydon when he was appointed to head the Royal Commission into union corruption. Credit:Andrew Meares Mr Heydon, a particular expert in Evidence, Property and Trusts, wrote his judgments long-hand and famously did not read his own emails - instead having them printed out for him to read. He is a committed Christian who has spoken deridingly of the "modern elites" who "do not feel any gratitude to Almighty God for their entitlements and rights". In his later years on the High Court, Heydon had a high rate of dissent from his other judges.

Even when he agreed with his fellow judges, he would often write his own judgments. "They don't write grammatically as I understand Anglo-Australian grammar," he complained of his colleagues. "There are some forms of expression that I cannot bring myself knowingly to adopt." Mr Heydon's legal purism was just as strict. In a case involving a husband's rape of his wife in the 1960s, Heydon held a minority view that the man should not be prosecuted.

"No one in 1962 thought rape was a crime ... it's a fundamental principle that not even parliament should enact criminal laws which are retrospective," he said. Following his retirement in 2013 at the mandated age of 70, Mr Heydon contacted Oxford University to express his interest in a Visiting Professorship. Freedom of Information documents show the university was "delighted" to appoint him for a three-year post from 2013. But in 2014, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott appointed Mr Heydon head of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. Mr Heydon had known the Prime Minister as a student and was a member of the panel that awarded the young Mr Abbott his own Rhodes scholarship in 1980. In 1993 it was reported Mr Heydon, a monarchist, had been legal adviser to Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, headed by Mr Abbott.

Justice Dyson Heydon leaves the Royal Commission in 2015. Credit:Anna Kucera The Unions Royal Commission was dogged with accusations of political bias from its inception. That came to a head in April 2015, when it was revealed Mr Heydon had accepted an invitation to deliver the 6th Sir Garfield Barwick Address, a Liberal party fundraiser. He said he had "overlooked" the political aspect of the event and withdrew from the engagement. Several unions made applications in the Commission for Heydon to step down. As Commissioner, he heard the applications and dismissed them. He handed down his final report in late 2015. Mr Heydon returned to the Sydney bar, where he has chambers on Phillip Street, next to the Supreme Court.

In a 2017 speech to the Australian Catholic University he spoke of the "contrast between the painful environment of past ages and the gluttonous and sensual milieu of the present", arguing "indifference based on rising wealth is insidiously damaging to religion". "As the world we are in becomes more attractive, the less need is there for contemplating the possibility of some other more perfect world and the less adherence there is to a strict morality." In the same speech, he lamented a "massive change in courtesy, civility and mutual respect" over previous decades. Statement from Dyson Heydon's lawyers:

In respect of the confidential inquiry and its subsequent confidential report, any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law is categorically denied by our client. The inquiry was an internal administrative inquiry and was conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member. It was conducted without having statutory powers of investigation and of administering affirmations or oaths.
We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.
BAD AXE  Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said earlier this week that K-12 schools can reopen for in-person instruction as long as Michigan's successful containment of the coronavirus doesn't lapse, subject to safety rules she will announce June 30.

Though the details of the governors plan have yet to be announced, school administrators in the Upper Thumb have already begun informal discussions on what school may look like when classes resume and what steps they may have to take to meet or exceed guidelines set by the state of Michigan.

Bad Axe Public Schools Superintendent Greg Newland said hes already had a series of meetings with principals, as well as staff members from food service, maintenance and transportation, to discuss the possible issues they will need to address. But there is a limit to the amount of planning that can be done before the state releases its guidelines. He said they will be ready to adapt to any changes or new requirements that may be implemented.

Everybody wants to get back to as normal as possible, he said

Complicating matters is a likely cut in state funding. Newland said if social distancing rules limit the number of students in a classroom, it would be difficult if not impossible to take on additional staff that may be needed.

If there are things we are required to do by the guidelines, were obviously going to address those, he said. But theres also a practicality part of this that schools are dealing with.

Newland said another aspect of implementing safety policies is managing younger students to keep them safe. He said rules requiring students to wear masks to school would be easier to implement among older students, but elementary teachers will have their work cut out for them.

Teachers have their hands full already, he said. Now try to make a kindergartner wear a mask all day long. Its going to present a whole new set of challenges in the classroom.

Newland said they have also discussed the possibility of serving grab-and-go lunches if students are unable to congregate in the lunchroom, as well as new policies on temperature checks for students and staff and the purchase of new equipment for cleaning and disinfecting school facilities.

I hate to use the phrase the new norm, but weve all been using it quite frequently, he said.

Newland has been in touch with other school superintendents in the area. Huron County schools have set a tentative date of Aug. 17 for the first day of school, and superintendents have collaborated because they are all also facing the same kinds of challenges.

If we need to adjust that (date), we will, Newland said. Our schools are going to be fine. Tell us the parameters and we will be able to meet the academic needs of our students. Its just a waiting game at this point.

School typically starts in late August or early September. A previously issued order by Whitmer gives districts more flexibility to adopt a year-round calendar for the 2020-21 school year or start before Labor Day as a way to help students catch up.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A prototype of the self-contained disinfection unit. Credit: Peter Eng

A team of University of Chicago researchers has developed a better, faster way to decontaminate N95 masks using ultraviolet lightpotentially saving thousands of the sought-after masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The system is currently in use at the hospital at the University of Chicago, and the team is working with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to certify and scale it up for wider use.

Ultraviolet C, a wavelength of light with the ability to kill germs, has emerged as the preferred solution for disinfecting personal protective equipment. But even though it is easy to deploy and widely applicable, the method is not without its drawbacks; as with any light, UV systems can cast shadows, leaving parts of surfaces in the dark.

To address this issue, Peter Eng, an experimental physicist and research professor at UChicago, designed and fabricated an N95 respirator decontamination cabinet, which features a UV lamp arrangement that eliminates shadowing and optimizes the dose to all surfaces of the mask.

The current setup can fully disinfect 180 masks per hour, and the inventors estimate a scaled-up, automated version could process up to 1,440 masks per houror more than 34,000 per day.

A breakthrough after a restless night

Eng, who uses an ultraviolet curing system in his lab at the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources based at Argonne National Laboratory, came up with the idea for the decontamination cabinet in mid-March, during the first days of Chicago's shelter-in-place order.

Unable to sleep one night, he got out of bed and began researching different decontamination techniques. By morning, he had discovered a large body of published work that indicated UV irradiation was effective in rendering viruses inactive and began placing calls to various researchers. Based on this information, he made a few preliminary calculations and produced a 3-D Solidworks model and a list of components for a dedicated N95 mask disinfection device.

"Being a scientist working in the research worldspecifically in designing equipment that we use for doing experimentsI'm used to contacting authors and companies, so I just started reading papers and developing a database," said Eng.

The next day, Asst. Prof. Naoum Issa, head of epilepsy research at the University of Chicago Medicine, put Eng in contact with Jon Brickman, the hospital's executive director of perioperative and procedural service. Brickman, whose job includes preserving PPE, helped Eng define the requirements for a system that would meet the needs of the medical center. Issa also provided his clinical input on methods and needs for disinfection protocols.

"In talking with Jon, I discovered that he had an urgent need to start a disinfection process using existing high-powered UV disinfection units that the hospital already owned," Eng said.

Eng began looking into the details of these units and a way to temporarily repurpose the hospital's equipment to disinfect an array of masks, instead of the operating and patient care rooms for which the units were designed.

Brickman described Eng as the catalyst for moving from "we can do this with the units we have" to "we can do this better."

"Senior leadership recognized early on that a national shortage of N95 respirators would require us to act swiftly to preserve and extend our inventory," said Brickman. "Based on the literature at the time and access to readily available commercial UV disinfection units made ultraviolet germicidal irradiation an attractive option for our facility."

With copper piping and a blowtorch in hand, Eng spent the weekend working with his friend, artist and carpenter Steve Badgett, soldering a frame structure to hold the masks. A few days later, Eng and Badgett delivered five rolling frames to Brickman, along with a detailed room map that marked out the placement of the lamp towers around the N95 mask frame. Then they ran extensive tests to make sure the arrays were in fact thoroughly disinfecting the masks.

UChicago Medicine has been using the system to disinfect masks since the beginning of April. Over the course of the pandemic, reprocessing could save the academic health system thousands of the hard-to-come-by masks.

Even faster methods

Once the temporary hospital system was up and running, Eng turned his focus to developing a new system from scratch that could thoroughly decontaminate masks at a much higher rate.

A week after assembling his team, Eng built and tested the prototypea sort of cabinet. To disinfect masks, you simply load the masks in racks, a few at a time, and wait as a bath of light moves through.

"By optimizing the light array inside the box, you evenly illuminate all the surfaces and minimize the amount of time it has to be in there," said Engnoting that it also is vital that no one surface of the mask is subject to much more light than any other. This is important because a mask can only receive so much irradiation before it starts to break down and has to be discarded.

"It's not simply the number of times it goes through the system; it's the sum total of irradiation," Eng explained. "By homogenizing that pattern, it maximizes the number of disinfection cycles."

The hospital has begun using the cabinet system to disinfect more masks. A second version is also in the works, and Eng is actively working with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to talk with product design companies. Next steps include evaluating the design and completing any necessary changes in order to produce a set of drawings that could be used by a manufacturer. In the future, the system could benefit other industries as well.

"It's a process that I can easily imagine in a factory," said Eng, who used to work on a packaging line at a food supply company. Still, backed with published articles and measurements of the actual system, he said the numbers speak for themselves: "That makes me feel like I can sleep. It also lets people make their own decisionsI'm not giving you advice, I'm giving you the source of information."

The team for the decontamination cabinet also included Patrick La Riviere, an associate professor of radiology, and graduate student Talon Chandler, who provided computational modeling of UV illumination of the 3-D masks to prevent shadowing; Benjamin Stillwell a research engineer manager at the Fermi Institute; and Michael Proskey, a research engineer in Eng's group who helped design and fabricate the prototype.

Explore further Innovative decontamination process mitigates N95 mask shortage in hospitals
On June 21, Ryanair and Swiss resumed scheduled flights to Kyiv after a three-month break, by operating flights to the Boryspil International Airport.

"Ryanair carried the first passengers from Barcelona, and Swiss - from Zurich," avianews.com reports.

It is specified that the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair will serve three routes to Ukraine in June - from Barcelona, Madrid, and Berlin to Kyiv twice a week.

The report says that the launch of the Krakow-Kyiv flight was postponed due to the Polish authorities ban on flights from Ukraine and other countries until June 30.

"In July, Ryanair plans to resume only half of its previous Ukrainian routes until the end of the summer season but expects to launch flights from Italian cities to Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and Kharkiv. The relevant permission was issued to the airline by the Italian aviation authority ENAC," the statement reads.

It is noted that Swiss will initially operate Kyiv-Zurich flights once a week on Sundays, and from July the airline plans to increase the frequency to two flights a week.

The passengers are advised to take into account possible changes in flight schedule before buying tickets, as well as restrictions on the entry of foreigners to other countries that have already been introduced or may be extended or introduced in the future.

ol
22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Communication Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi says his party will release its election 2020 manifesto in August.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the NDC Communication Officer, said the manifesto, which is the partys vision for Ghana will highlight key programmes that will be better alternatives to the governance of Nana Akufo-Addo.

It is worth noting, that we shall be outdooring our manifesto for the 2020 general elections in August. But even before that, the flagbearer and leader of the NDC will in the coming days announce some big-ticket policies which are central to his transformational vision for this country, he said.

Sammy Gyamfi also indicated that the manifesto will include programmes that will ensure millions of permanent jobs are created for Ghanas teeming youth.

This will include a major and comprehensive job creation policy he intends to undertake, to create millions of permanent and dignifying jobs for the teeming unemployed youth when he assumes the reins of power in 2021, he added.

Ghana is six months away from holding its presidential and parliamentary polls.

The NDC which is seeking to return to power with its flagbearer, John Mahama, is yet to outdoor its manifesto just as the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and is also yet to announce who Mr. Mahamas running mate will be.

Meanwhile, Sammy Gyamfi has highlighted some actions John Mahama will take if elected in the December 2020 polls.

Amongst them are;

Pay all customers of the collapsed financial institutions whose monies are locked-up in full and restore indigenous Ghanaian participation in the financial sector.

Reduce the size of government by at least forty (40) ministers to reduce government expenditure and channel those resources into the productive sectors of the economy for the benefit of Ghanaians.

Provide free Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) from the second cycle to Tertiary level to build the human resource base of the nation for industrial development, entrepreneurship and job creation.

Institute a National Apprenticeship Program in line with his vision of rapid industrialization and job creation for the country.

Scrap the 50% increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data. This will reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the country.

Construct a regional hospital for each of the six (6) newly-created regions and the Western Region to improve access to quality and efficient health care delivery.

Provide districts without hospitals with fully-equipped modern health facilities.

Take healthcare to the doorsteps of the people by building a first of its kind OnipaNua Hospital Ship and deploy it to provide medical services to the inaccessible riverine and fishing communities on the inland Volta waterways. Additionally, the next Mahama government will rehabilitate the Onuador mobile vans that have been abandoned by the Akufo-Addo government and procure more, to provide medical outreach services in underserved and hard to reach areas in all the 16 regions of the country.

Construct two (2) new international-standard Infectious Diseases Centers and two (2) additional international research centres.

Abolish the dreaded double-track system of secondary education through an emergency and massive infrastructure drive. This will ensure a conducive environment and one-track qualitative learning experience for SHS students.

Establish University Campuses in each of the six (6) newly-created regions.

Abolish the mandatory national service and obnoxious licensure exams for teacher trainees and restore the automatic employment of teacher trainee graduates. Let me state unequivocally, that no teacher trainee graduate, will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government. Additionally, the promotion and welfare of teachers will be prioritized by the next Mahama government.

Restore the automatic employment of Nursing Trainee graduates. Again let me state unequivocally, that no nursing trainee graduate will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government.

Restore the distribution of free cocoa fertilizer and chemicals to cocoa farmers to boost cocoa yield and improve the welfare of cocoa farmers. Complete the Eastern Corridor roads, dualise the Aflao, Cape Coast and Kumasi roads among others. Complete all abandoned or uncompleted hospital and health projects, educational projects, road projects and other infrastructural projects in the country.

Punish corruption and end the practice of nepotism.
The police in Lagos have recovered the bodies of a couple at their residence in the Ilasan area of the state. The man was suspected to have killed himself and his partner.

The couple, identified as Olamide Alli, 25, and Chris Ndukwe, 39, were found dead in the mans residence at Road 5, House 16a, Victory Point Estate, Ilasan.

Bala Elkana, the Lagos police spokesperson, said in a statement that while the woman was found in the pool of her blood, the man had whitish substance foaming in his mouth.

The circumstances surrounding the murder and suicide are yet to be unraveled.

Ilasan Police Station received information that a couple identified as Olamide Alli f 25 years old and Chris Ndukwe m 39 years old were found dead in the mans residence at road 5, House 16a, Victory Point Estate, Ilasan.

A team of homicide detectives was deployed to the scene and the crime scene was preserved for forensic analysis. The woman was found laying in the pool of her blood with deep cuts on her head. The mans mouth was foaming with whitish substance.

It is alleged that the man stabbed the woman to death with kitchen knives and thereafter drank a poisonous substance suspected to be snipper insecticide.

Two blood-stained kitchen knives, two empty bottles of the poisonous substances, three empty cans of red bull energy drink and a plier were recovered from the scene, Mr Elkana said in the statement.

The deputy superintendent of police further said that information gathered from some family members revealed that the couple who were in a relationship for over seven years, though not married, have two boys, ages seven and three.

The relationship is described as complicated, as they were on and off over the years. While the man lives in Victory Point Estate Ilasan, the woman lives in Ogba, he said.

The woman is said to have visited the man alongside her 22 years old sister, a night before the incident, on his invitation. Her sister was the first to have noticed that the couples were dead and raised alarm. In her statement, she was woken up by a loud music from the room where the corpses were found, as herself and the kids slept in a different room, he said.

The police said it was not yet clear what might have triggered the murder, but the two corpses were removed and deposited in a public mortuary for autopsy.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Hakeem Odumosu, has ordered a thorough investigation into the case, investigation is ongoing, Mr Elkana said.
Defence and diplomatic officials from Russia and Turkey were scheduled to meet on 13 June to discuss the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Libya, in which both parties are involved. One day later, in a phone conversation, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu decided to postpone the talks.

An official explanation for this development can hardly be found, though it was reportedly due to the battle over Sirte in Libya. On 17 June, along with Iran, they again decided to meet via video conference to discuss Syria in August. Irans foreign minister Javad Zarif hopes the video conference will take place in August.

As put by Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey programme at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been on opposing sides of the ongoing proxy wars in Syria and Libya. But they have managed to maintain cordial relations and continue their cooperation in foreign and security policy.

Paradoxically, the clashes between the armed proxies of Russia and Turkey have a tendency to mutually strengthen the respective positions of both countries in Syrian and Libyan theatres of action, said Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian.

The politico-strategic relationship between Russia and Turkey is definitely a complicated one. For example, Turkey started receiving the Russian S-400 surface-to-air-missile system in 2019. This caused problems for the NATO member with the United States. Washington responded by stopping the training of Turkish pilots and mechanics in the US and suspended Turkey's role in the F-35 programme. But this was not a sufficient incentive for Turkey to change its position on the deal.

However, when it comes to the Middle East, Turkey and Russia continue to clash on Libya and Syria. Ironically, Lavrov said in February that his country will welcome any US endeavour for a truce in Libya. This came after a conversation between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump on Libya. Erdogan said then they agreed on some issues about Libya and asserted that a new era between Turkey and the US may start after our phone call.

Erdemir said that Turkey senses a unique opportunity to bolster its legitimacy as a potential counterweight to Russia as it sees Washingtons growing concerns about Moscows expanding footprint in the Middle East and North Africa... The rising isolationist sentiment in Washington and Trumps commitment to reducing the US military footprint in the region further provide opportunities for Erdogan to exploit as he offers Turkish troops and proxies as an alternative to fill the ensuing vacuum, he explained.

Ironically, the instability likely to be triggered by Erdogans growing confidence and maximalist ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean may force in the months ahead greater US involvement as Washington feels compelled to deal with the military and diplomatic fallout with a much greater footprint.

In Libya, Moscow  in addition to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates  is offering support for the east-based Libyan National Army (LNA) and its commander Khalifa Haftar, while Turkey is backing the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli with troops and thousands of Syrian mercenaries. According to a Reuters report, Turkey is now having talks with the GNA for a possible use of the Misrata naval base and the Al-Watiya air base. This is a sign of limited Turkish interest in ending its military involvement in Libya.

In Syria, Russia and Iran have been providing support for state troops, while Turkey backs armed groups. Mohamed Abdel-Kader, an expert on Turkish affairs at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said that Russian and Turkish officials regularly meet to avoid a direct clash between their troops in conflict-hit areas.

Abdel-Kader said that Turkey wants the conversation over Libya to be on the pre-Sirte basis. Haftar won Sirte, Misrata and then started his Tripoli operation. The Turks want Sirte because they want to be close to oilfields, which will allow the GNA to establish control over a huge coastal area. The most important thing for the Turks is oil. he stated.

This is, of course, not acceptable for either Haftar or Russia. But the revival of talks, especially in light of the results of previous talks in Berlin and Moscow, is certainly a possible scenario. It will not be the first time when Turkey and Russia sit and negotiate this issue, added Abdel-Kader.

On Syria, Abdel-Kader pointed out that Bashar Al-Assads troops now control about 70 percent of the territory, while the Turks also control large parts of the war-torn state. He noted that, so far, the Turkish-Russian cooperation is successful.

Perhaps the most important thing for the Russians is the issue of terrorist organisations, including Al-Nusra Front, and I believe there are no recent developments on this, he concluded.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:00:55|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ACCRA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has urged Ghanaians to comply more seriously with the measures adopted to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in the country.

In his latest nationwide televised address on the fight against the virus on Sunday evening, Akufo-Addo lamented the way some Ghanaians were flouting the measures put in place to fight the pandemic.

"The large majority of us continue to adhere to the protocols. Unfortunately, some do not; others have slackened, and an unacceptably significant number have refused to obey them all together," the president said.

"In such an atmosphere, if we do not take care, the virus will continue to spread, which will lead to intolerable pressure on our health facilities and caregivers. Each one of us must be part of the fight to stop the spread of the virus," he said.

He assured parents whose children would be returning to school on Monday for their final senior high school examinations that adequate measures had been put in place to prevent an outbreak of the virus among the students. Enditem
Scores of Nigerian nationals have massed up to protest at the site where a building belonging to the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana was demolished.

The protests seemed to focus on the closure of Nigerian-owned shops engaging in the retail business.

Some of the protesters were chanting we cant breathe, as they engaged the press.

We are surviving by friends and sometimes we give them goods and they give us money, one of them said to the press.

The shops where being closed in the enforcement of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act (865).

But Nigerian traders had argued that that the ECOWAS protocol, which allows the free movement of people, goods and services in West African countries also allows them to trade in Ghana.

The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) and particularly Nigerian traders in the country have been at odds because of this issue.

The diplomatic controversy began when armed men reportedly invaded the residence of the High Commission and pulled down parts of a building under construction on the compound with a bulldozer.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry has begun investigations into the incident.

The Ministry further assured that the government will not relent on its efforts to guarantee the safety of Members of the Diplomatic Corps in Ghana

The Osu Stool also accused the Nigeria High Commission of trespassing on a parcel of land belonging to it.

 citinewsroom
India-China standoff: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that the Prime Minister should not let the Chinese take advantage of his words. In a statement Singh said that China has been brazenly trying to claim parts of Indian territory and that Indians will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation. He further stated that disinformation is not a substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership.

"The Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nation's security and also strategic and territorial interests," he said in a statement on Monday. Singh added that the Prime Minister cannot allow the Chinese to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further.

The former PM further said that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. "The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statement," said Singh in his statement.

This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat: Press Statement by Former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh pic.twitter.com/qP3hN3Od9D a Congress (@INCIndia) June 22, 2020

Manmohan Singh added that the Chinese have been brazenly trying to claim parts of the Indian territory such as Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso lake through multiple incursions since April. "We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity," he stated.

He urged the government to ensure that justice is served for Colonel B Santosh Babu and the other 19 jawans who lost their lives defending the territorial integrity of India.

Manmohan Singh's response comes a few days after PM Modi stated that the military did not enter Indian territory leading to severe backlash. The PMO issued another statement stating that attempts were made to give a "mischievous interpretation" to the PM's remarks.

Also read: India-China standoff: Diplomatic talks for de-escalation to begin this week

Also read: India-China border row: Govt grants emergency funds to armed forces for war preparedness
YEREVAN.  168.am news website of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: The 88 MPs of the [majority] My Step faction [in the National Assembly (NA)]] will carry out a constitutional coup tomorrow, committing crimes under Article 300 (embezzlement of power) and Article 300.1 (overthrowing the constitutional order) of the RA Criminal Code.

So, in gross violation of the Constitution and without the consent of the Constitutional Court, the MPs of the National Assembly will adopt the draft Constitutional amendments in two readings tomorrow, terminating the powers of the judges of the Constitutional Court.

Let us recall that this is the same draft that was severely criticized last Friday by the Venice Commission.

Moreover, according to our information, the My Step faction has already reached an agreement [in this regard] with RA President Armen Sarkissian. According to that agreement, Armen Sarkissian will not dispute the constitutionality of the mentioned process, but, also, he will not sign the corresponding draft. After that, the corresponding amendment will be signed by NA President Ararat Mirzoyan.
The U.S. Government has donated ten 44 Mercedes Atego troop transport trucks to the Nigerien army, AfricanMilitaryBlog reports. It has also provided a logistics warehouse as part of the donation. The donation which was delivered on May 27 will be used under the G5 Sahel Joint Force, in combating terrorism in the region.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link



The U.S. Government has donated ten 44 Mercedes Atego troop transport trucks to the Nigerien army (Picture source: AfricanMilitaryBlog)

U.S. Ambassador Eric Whitaker attended the handing over ceremony which took place at the Direction Centrale du Materiel, in Niger. He mentioned that the ten trucks are worth up to $1 million. Issoufou Katambe, Nigers Minister of National Defense, and senior military officials were present during the handover. A logistics warehouse valued at $430 000 was also donated to safely store essential spare parts for Nigers combat vehicles.

The Mercedes-Benz Atego is a range of general-purpose rigid trucks introduced by Mercedes-Benz in 1998. A new model was introduced in 2004, followed by a facelift in 2010 and another new model in 2013. The latest version is available in gross vehicle weights of 6.5 to 16 metric tonnes and is powered by a straight 4- or 6-cylinder engine. Atego trucks can transport up to fifteen soldiers.

The second batch of vehicles donated by the USA - which comprised of 13 Mamba APCs - was also delivered on December 5, 2019, for a total value of $21 million. The United States had also previously donated a Command and Control (C2) center valued at $16.5 million. Since 2013, Niger has also received four Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft, with two configured for surveillance.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday took off for Russia on a three-day visit to Moscow where he will hold talks with the Putin administration over strengthening its bilateral defence partnership. The Defence Minister will also be attending the grand Victory Day parade at Red Square to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War.

The focus during this visit, however, is said to be on the S-400 missile system, a deal worth $5.4 billion. According to sources, the payment has been made by India, but the delivery by Russia has been delayed owing to the Coronavirus pandemic. The S-400 is a powerful anti-aircraft weapon system that can track up to 300 targets 600 km away. He is also likely to discuss the recent India-China clash at the LAC

Read: Forces Get Nod To Change Rules Of Engagement With China; Rajnath To Raise Clash In Russia

Leaving for Moscow on a three day visit. The visit to Russia will give me an opportunity to hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. I shall also be attending the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) June 22, 2020

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh leaves for Moscow on a 3-day visit. During his visit to Russia, he will hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. He will also attend the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/XWXooOBfio  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

Read: China Deploys Mouthpiece Stooge Again; Calls India Provoker, Claims 'reckless Patriotism'

Rajnath Singh's visit to Russia holds special significance as it occurs soon after the June 15 border clash between India and China during de-escalation talks which caused heavy casualties on both sides. Sources suggest that Rajnath Singh will speak to Russia regarding the ongoing dispute with China.

Apart from the pending S-400 deal, it is also revealed that India is likely to engage in talks with the country for the purchase of Sukhoi SU-30MKIs, MiG-29s and other fighter jets. Russia had previously stated that it was ready to deliver the jets to the Indian Air Force. It is said that the Indian Air Force (IAF) plans to order and induct 33 fighters - 12 Sukhoi Su-30 MKIs and 21 MiG-29s - from Russia to be armed and ready in the backdrop of the tensions at the LAC.

Read: Galwan Valley Face-off: 5 Reasons Why China Shouldn't Underestimate India's Strength

Read: PM Actually 'Surender Modi': Rahul Gandhi Launches New Attack Over India-China Clash
Ottawa should earmark at least $2.5 billion for child care out of $14 billion in federal funds announced this month to help provinces reopen safely in the wake of COVID-19, says a new report by a national advocacy organization.

The money, on top of about $550 million already allocated to the provinces for child care this year, would begin to set the stage for Canada to build a long-awaited national system of high quality, affordable child care for all parents who need it, says the report by Child Care Now, being released Monday.

It has taken a public health crisis for the essential role of child care to be widely recognized, and for the fragility of child care services in Canada to be laid bare, said the groups executive director Morna Ballantyne.

Women have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Their decisions about whether it makes economic sense to return to low wage jobs will likely rest on the cost and availability of child care, she in an interview.

There can be no recovery without a she-covery; and there can be no she-covery without child care, Ballantyne said, quoting economist Armine Yalnizyan.

Federal support is needed to help child-care programs reopen without losing capacity under new safety rules that require smaller group sizes, she said.

As restrictions on group size eventually ease, the extra space should be used to expand licensed child care, which before the pandemic only served one-quarter of Canadian children under age five, she added.

We need to recover. But we need to move really quickly to expand the number of spaces, Ballantyne said.

The advocacy groups report is similar to recommendations from a team of academics and political insiders who are calling on Ottawa to spend $2 billion to rescue a largely parent-funded child-care system teetering on collapse, and kick-start the creation of a robust, publicly funded system, they say is essential to economic recovery and future growth.

The priority is to make sure (federal) money for child care is used to ensure capacity returns to pre-COVID levels, said Andrew Bevan, a former Ontario and federal Liberal adviser.

If you do it right, you are going to build more spaces that become a platform to begin building out a public system, added Bevan, who co-authored the recommendations with Brock Universitys Kate Bezanson and Sheridan Colleges Monica Lysack. Their analysis was published June 18 by First Policy Response, a network of public policy experts aiming to guide government action on the pandemic.

Ballantyne, who became a grandmother of twin girls last week, said her son and his wife have just learned their three-year-old daughter Spencer will be able to return their local Ottawa child care centre when it reopens June 29.

But of her (preschool) group of 16 children, only eight will be allowed, Ballantyne said. And this is a scenario playing out across the country. We dont know how long child-care programs will be forced to ration spots due to new safety measures. So funding is needed immediately to expand the spaces to meet demand.

Child Care Nows report says provinces should be required to use the federal cash to stabilize programs at risk of shuttering permanently due to lack of parent fees during the pandemic and to boost wages for staff who may be reluctant to return to the chronically low-wage work.

By funding programs directly, parent fees would not have to rise and should ultimately become more affordable, Ballantyne said.

The Liberals proposed child-care secretariat should be established as soon as possible to advise Ottawa on child care funding policy, and to monitor and evaluate how well provinces use the new federal money, she added.

In the 2021 federal budget, Ottawa should commit to boosting federal child-care funding by $2 billion a year for the next seven years to begin transforming the current market-based service into a publicly managed system, she added.

And new federal child-care legislation  similar to the Canada Health Act  should be introduced to set out funding parameters for provinces.

By 2027, Ottawa should be spending about $12 billion annually on a high quality system that is accessible and affordable for all Canadian families, Ballantyne said. Currently, Ottawa is on track to spend just $870 million a year by that date.

What they are allocating on an annual basis now, is not enough ... to be able to sit down with the provinces and territories and really argue for system change, which is essential because it falls under provincial jurisdiction, Ballantyne said. What they are spending now is just not a big enough carrot.

Read more about:
WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT: A group of teenagers made a grisly discovery which led to a police investigation while they were out exploring a beach when filming a TikTok video.

Something traumatic happened that changed my life, US TikTok user @ughhenry wrote alongside the video.

The video starts off with one of the teens at the beach in West Seattle, Washington then pans to rocks near the edge of a waterway where a suitcase is lying.

Randonaut sent us to this part of the beach... and we found this black suitcase, the caption on the video says.

Two girls are then seen approaching the suitcase in the video.

We were joking that maybe the suitcase would have some money, the next caption reads, as one of the girls is seen climbing down to where the suitcase is, while the others stand on what appears to be a jetty.

A group of teenagers found a suitcase on a beach in West Seattle, which police confirmed contained human remains. Source: TikTok/ughhenry

Using a stick, the teenagers open the suitcase, remarking on the horrible stench.

Inside the suitcase, is a black plastic bag and the next caption explains the smell was overwhelming once they opened the suitcase.

One of the girls is seen calling the police, and the person filming the TikTok speculates about whether the contents are food, or a dead body.

By this point we were getting a little scared and nervous, the next caption on the video reads.

The video then shows police arriving at the crime scene and then a screenshot of the statement issued on the Seattle Governments website.

The statement, confirms the contents of the bag were in fact, human remains.

Detectives are currently investigating after several bags containing human remains were located near the water in the 1100 block of Alki Avenue SW this afternoon, the statement says.

Police responded after receiving a call of a suspicious bag on the beach. Another bag was located in the water.

Once the contents were determined to be remains, detectives responded to begin their investigation.

In addition to the police, the Harbour Patrol and the King County Medical Examiners Office are assisting with the investigation, which the statement says is active and on-going.

Story continues

Local news station, KOMO reported it was unclear if the suitcases were dumped on the beach, or if the tide had carried them to shore.

What is Randonauting?

In the comments, TikTok user @ughhenry said while they were laughing in the video, it was their way of dealing with the situation, saying they are now having trouble sleeping.

The TikTok references a randonaut sending the group to that location and people in the comments of the video were questioning why no one was talking about the fact randonaut led them here.

Randonauting is using a random number generator to produce specific coordinates within a set radius of your current location that you can travel to as a way of exploring the world around you, Wired explains.

The group of teenagers went to the beach after they presumably got the coordinates from 'Randonautica' app. Source: Google Maps

People gather these coordinates through a dedicated app, Randonautica, where they can further define what they want to encounter.

In the comments of the TikTok another person said they went randonauting a few days ago and they found a dog off its leash, they later claim they found out the dogs owner was dead.

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.
Facebook FB has acquired mapping technology provider Mapillary, per latters blog. The deal enables the social media giant to access the Swedish companys trove of street-view maps and imagery data.



Mapillary, similar to Apple AAPL and Alphabet GOOGL-division Google, provides maps that show road signs, addresses and other information around a locality.



However, instead of sending a fleet of camera and sensor-fitted vehicles like the aforementioned tech giants, Mapillary relies on crowdsourced (tens of thousands of contributors) images on its platform. The companys software extracts and analyzes data from the uploaded images.



Mapillarys maps are useful in Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) applications. They are also needed to improve navigational abilities of self-driving vehicles as well as support drones and robots for contactless delivery of goods.



Notably, the maps will power Facebook Marketplace that drives transactions for millions of small businesses. Moreover, the acquisition will support Facebooks endeavors to build AR glasses as well as VR headsets. The company offers VR products through its Oculus division.



Markedly, AR/VR is a space that is witnessing heightened competition with a number of initiatives from Alphabet, Microsoft MSFT, Apple and Snapchat-parent Snap SNAP.



Mapillary will be part of Facebooks broader open mapping initiative. Notably, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company offers a service called Map With AI, which with the support of AI, helps in road-mapping. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Facebook, Inc. Price and Consensus

Facebook, Inc. Price and Consensus

Facebook, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Facebook, Inc. Quote

Google Dominates Map Space



Facebooks Mapillary deal undoubtedly intensifies competition in the mapping space currently dominated by Google. Apple, Amazon AMZN and NVIDIA NVDA thanks to its partnership with HERE, are other notable players in the space.



Googles dominant position can be attributed to its expertise in infusing AI into maps. The company frequently updates its map application and offers eye-catching features. In February, Google released a new updated app that focused on five categories, Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribution and Updates.



Moreover, the company has put more emphasis on user-generated content and recommendations. Notably, Google came up with its crowdedness predictions feature last year. With this, it is easier for Google Map users to share information related to their transit lines. Notably, crowdedness predictions provide information about how crowded a bus, train or subway is likely to be.



Story continues

Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus

Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus

Alphabet Inc. price-consensus-chart | Alphabet Inc. Quote

This helps people in making decisions regarding whether to take the ride or wait for the next in order to avoid the crowd, an important feature amid the coronavirus outbreak.



In fact, Google-parent Alphabet, which also carries a Zacks Rank #3, has taken a number of initiatives to fight the spread of the virus. The company recently updated Google Maps with COVID-19 alerts and advanced features. Additionally, the recently-introduced insights like temperature, accessibility and security onboard have been made available globally.



These benefits are likely to deliver enhanced user experience, which in turn will bolster the adoption of Google Maps.



Apple Gets Boost From Maps Redesign



Early this year, Apple completed the rollout of its redesigned Apple Maps in the United States. The updated app doesnt require sign-in and is not connected to an Apple ID. Moreover, the redesigned app offers improved navigation and better road coverage.



Through the new Look Around feature, Apple offers interactive street-level imagery with high-resolution, 3D photography. The feature is much similar to Googles Street View.



Initially rolled out in the New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Oahu, Apple extended the Look Around feature to Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Philadelphia.



Apple Inc. Price and Consensus

Apple Inc. Price and Consensus

Apple Inc. price-consensus-chart | Apple Inc. Quote

Moreover, its Nearby feature, which helps an user search for a wide range of services close to his/her current location, has been extended to an additional 31 countries, including India.



Further, Apple has teamed up with Google to fight coronavirus through a contact-tracing app. The iPhone maker, which carries a Zacks Rank #3, announced a new set of tools that will allow mobile devices to trade information via Bluetooth connections to alert people when they are in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.



Moreover, Apple Maps are helping iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac users search for coronavirus testing centers. In April, Apple made its mobility trends data available, supported by Apple Maps in order to provide local authorities more insight that would help them prevent the spread of COVID-19.



Additionally, per 9TO5Mac report, Apple recently updated Apple Maps with real-time transit information now available for a number of U.S. cities and States, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, majority of the U.K. (excluding Northern Ireland) and selected cities





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.



Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report



NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Snap Inc. (SNAP) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
ST. PAUL, Minn.  Staff members working at the jail that held Derek Chauvin, the white officer charged with murder in the killing of George Floyd, say that only white employees were allowed to guard him when he was first brought to the facility last month.

Eight officers have filed complaints with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, saying that the superintendent of the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul kept them from bringing Chauvin to his cell  or even being on the same floor as him  last month, solely because of their race.

The officers, half of whom are black and all of whom are people of color, said the orders from the superintendent, Steve Lydon, who is white, amounted to segregation and indicated that he thought they could not be trusted to do their jobs because they are not white.

After initially denying that officers contact with Chauvin had been determined by race, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office acknowledged the move this weekend and said Lydon had been temporarily removed from the superintendent role as the sheriff investigates the officers claims.

Roy Magnuson, the spokesman, provided a statement that he said Lydon gave to investigators. In it, Lydon said he had segregated employees because he believed having people of color interact with Chauvin could have heightened ongoing trauma. He said he had only done so on short notice and for 45 minutes before realizing that he had made a mistake, after which he reversed the order and apologized. Officers said it had lasted longer  affecting one shift two days later  and that not enough had been done in response.

The discrimination complaints, which were first reported by The Star Tribune, were the latest instance in which correctional officials have been accused of giving preferential treatment to a white inmate. Some activists have for years argued that officers were too kind to Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, when they placed him in a bulletproof vest and bought him food from Burger King. Critics said that a black suspect in a similar crime would not have gotten the same treatment.

In this case, one of the officers said in his complaint that he had seen, on the jails cameras, a white lieutenant let Chauvin use her phone inside his cell, a violation of the facilitys policy. Magnuson said the Sheriffs Office was opening an internal investigation into that claim.

A black sergeant who filed a complaint said in an interview that he was in charge of booking on May 29, when Chauvin was brought to the jail, and that after he had patted Chauvin down, Lydon told him not to have more contact with Chauvin and asked him who could transport the fired officer instead. When the sergeant pointed to two white officers, Lydon seemed satisfied, said the sergeant, who is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and has worked at the jail for more than a decade. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation from other law enforcement officers.

The officers said in their complaints that employees quickly realized, after Chauvin arrived, that many of the jails nonwhite employees had been sent to the third floor. Some began to cry, they said, and the sergeant said some openly questioned whether they should quit and considered walking off the job. He said tensions were already high among employees because people had burned down a Minneapolis police precinct the night before in protest of the killing of Floyd, who was black.

The sergeant and other officers said that, about an hour after Chauvin was booked into the jail, they were again kept from doing their jobs when an uncooperative inmate needed to be taken to the fifth floor, where Chauvin was being held. The sergeant said the officers had to wait until there were enough white officers to bring the inmate to the fifth floor, a special housing unit where high-profile, uncooperative and suicidal people are held.

Bonnie M. Smith, a lawyer in Minneapolis who is representing the eight officers, said at a news conference in front of the jail on Sunday that Lydons claim that his order was meant to protect officers of color was absurd, and that it had made the jail less safe.

This order didnt help protect anyone, Smith said. It was a blatantly discriminatory order.

She said none of her clients had been interviewed as part of the internal investigation. They are asking the Sheriffs Office to permanently remove Lydon from overseeing the jail and increase bias training. They are also asking the county to pay them unspecified money for emotional distress and compensation for shifts that some officers said they had missed because they were upset by what had happened.

The Minnesota Department of Human Rights will investigate the claims. That office had launched a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department earlier this month. Chauvin was moved, last month, to the Oak Park Heights state prison just outside of St. Paul.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Alex Crane - Managing director Cushman & Wakefield Vietnam

Figures from Cushman & Wakefield show that in the first quarter, net absorption in office space in Ho Chi Minh City was modest at 3,300 square metres, equivalent to 15 per cent that of the first quarter of 2019 and largely occurring in a recently completed building, Lim Tower 3.

However, overall occupancy remained at a healthy 95 per cent, unchanged on-quarter. No new supply was recorded in this period.

Rents meanwhile continued to trend upwards, increasing by 3 per cent on-year due to higher rentals at existing buildings such as mPlaza and President Place, as well as new completions in 2019 such as Sonatus Building and Lim Tower 3.

In general rents remained unchanged on a quarterly basis, remaining at $39.4 per sq.m per month. In May alone, Cushman & Wakefield leased more than the first quarter amount in office relocations, hopefully signalling signs of robustness in the southern hub.

Entering a new normal, we have successfully completed an above-average number of transactions, which in total was more than the entire market absorption in the first quarter of this year.

We would not announce the specific names of transactions; however, the deals closed were of an interesting range of sectors and were all multinational occupiers.

Manufacturing fast-moving consumer goods and new headquarters for one of the worlds largest retailers were all completed, as were multiple lease renewals.

Meanwhile in Hanoi, two new grade B offices were completed in the first quarter of this year, raising overall stock by 2 per cent on-quarter and 9 per cent on-year.

Effective pre-leasing strategies resulted in high occupancy levels for new completions, with both registering occupancies at over 90 per cent. Overall occupancy remained at a healthy 92 per cent. Absorption in the first quarter of 2020 was only a fifth of that of the previous quarter, and about 41 per cent of the same period last year.

Average rent remained unchanged on-quarter but rose moderately by 1 per cent on-year, mainly due to higher rentals at existing buildings such as IPH, TNR Tower, and PVI Tower.

Caution and restraint

Cushman & Wakefield, which works with some of the largest global companies in over 60 countries, however, heeds caution and restraint.

There is no doubt that Vietnam has led the world in the fight against COVID-19, but some of our biggest trading partners in the United States and Europe are still struggling with containment. With many multinational companies headquartered in these areas, they are likely going to hesitate making big decisions when their home environments are still being hit hard.

While we hope the initial signals in the Ho Chi Minh office market are positive, there are some challenging times to come for landlords to incentivise global firms to make a move to their building. There will still be a competitive edge to the market and good deals on the table for tenants.

The outbreak moreover is expected to negatively impact market performance in the next few quarters, exerting downward pressure on asking rents in Hanoi.

Hanoi is about to receive significant supply in the second and third quarter of this year, so our belief is that rents will be harder hit by this than the pandemic. CapitalPlace, launching 90,000sq.m of office space, is going to take grade A vacancies from about 5 per cent to 20 per cent which will add significant pressure on rents.

Regarding the movement from companies to Vietnam, obviously before the pandemic, Vietnam had been an attractive destination for companies.

We believe this will accelerate in the post-coronavirus environment as enterprises will seek to diversify supply chains

With the highly effective containment of the pandemic, arguably the best in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is considered a leading destination for foreign investors to base their manufacturing operations.

Apple is shifting some of its AirPod production to Vietnam. At the same time, Samsung has also considered moving some of its high-end smartphone production lines to Vietnam. Japan also announced an initiative to set up a fund of $2.2 billion to encourage companies to move out of China, and Panasonic has shifted some production here from Thailand. Optimism, therefore, has prevailed with regard to office relocations to Vietnam.

New generation of space

Vietnam still has a limited number of offices which are up to international standards with modern and environmentally-friendly facilities; however, this number has been increasing almost daily.

The country still has some way to go until the market reaches the heights to match others in the region, but we are catching up at quite some speed as all eyes in the region are now firmly fixed on Vietnam.

As more investors look towards our market  and so long as supply reverts to trailing behind the demand as we saw pre-pandemic  we can look to expect to welcome more green buildings in the future.

However, for now, occupiers will just have to look to the next best options available that meet their business vision and requirements, but we are anticipating to see a brand new LEED-certified 15,000sq.m building, OfficeHaus, coming to the market very soon in the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City very near Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

We are excited to see how this very pragmatic, affordable, elegantly, and sensibly designed building will perform as it will be attractive to the IT, tech, logistics, and manufacturing industries, which we expect to be the most active in the office sector in the next 12 months.

The shortage of space for offices for lease in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City may look like a bit of a disadvantage on the surface, but it does not mean that there are no comparable options in the market. Occupiers should explore the market for alternative grade A options which are setting new benchmark standards for future grade A buildings and certified green buildings.

We have returned to the office market with a bang closing a number of transactions and with other occupier projects now given the go-ahead by regional and global levels to resume their business.

Decisions naturally showed during the brief semi-lockdown, but thanks to leadership taking clear and supportive decisions, we can now really see the benefits reaped as a result and this is reflected in the sentiment of investors and occupiers.

We see our market picking up speed as we go into the second half of the year and continue this momentum through to the end of the year. Our market was one of the first to reopen up in the world and we are seeing businesses given full attention to it while they are quickly re-evaluating their existing offices and operations.

Now is the perfect time to go out to the market and go shopping for a new building and office.

In the future taste of occupiers, we expect that grade A occupiers will want to remain headquartered in downtown business districts but will wish to have higher quality grade A options to be able to shortlist and select from. Companies will look towards overtime-friendly building options.

Most important will be the facilities, amenities, technology, and building management improvements to satisfy the worlds new normal which include new etiquette regarding social distancing, access control and cleanliness.
Amid the India-China face-off former Congress President Rahul Gandhi has again attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Chinese transgression, albeit on Chinese media praising the Prime Minister.

Citing news reports Rahul Gandhi, in a tweet said "China killed our soldiers. China took our land. Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict? "

China killed our soldiers.

China took our land.



Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict? pic.twitter.com/iNV8c1cmal  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 22, 2020

Rahul Gandhi cited reports from Chinese newspapers on Modi's statement at the all-party meeting.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a statement on Monday has also said "The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further."

However, the Prime Minister's Office had clarified on Saturday and countered the opposition's attack, saying "attempts are being made in some quarters to give a mischievous interpretation" to his remark at the All-Party Meeting held on Friday on Galwan stand-off."

The Prime Minister's Office said the PM had specifically emphasized that Indian forces now decisively counter any violations on the LAC (unhe rokte hain, unhe tokte hain) in contrast to the past neglect of such challenges.
[June 22, 2020] WGU Washington Awards Degree to Twenty Thousandth Graduate

WGU Washington recently surpassed the twenty thousandth graduate milestone. The online, nonprofit university has awarded more than 20,000 bachelor's and master's degrees to hard-working women and men across the state, opening new doors of opportunity for those individuals and strengthening Washington's workforce. To celebrate this milestone and commemorate the thousands of lives that have been transformed by the power of education, the university is offering up to $20,000 in scholarships for newly enrolled students. The WGU Washington 20,000 Graduates Scholarship, the university will select four students to receive up to $5,000 toward any of WGU Washington's more than 60 accredited degree programs in information technology, business, K-12 teacher education and health professions, including nursing. Learn more about he WGU Washington 20,000 Graduates Scholarship at washington.wgu.edu/20k and by following @WGUWashington on social media.



"We are so proud of all our graduates and the important impact they're making in their communities and statewide," said Dr. Tonya Drake, Chancellor of WGU Washington. "When WGU Washington was created in 2011, the vision was to give Washingtonians another option to earn a degree and gain in-demand knowledge and skills. Achieving 20,000 graduates validates that vision and demonstrates the important resource our university provides students and this state." Of all the ambitious, self-starting individuals to receive degrees from WGU Washington, the distinction of being the university's twenty thousandth graduate goes to Edward Pinto of Quincy. Pinto earned a master's in English Language Learning while working fulltime as a Spanish teacher at Wapato High School. He says his degree will help him follow his passion of helping students of color in central Washington graduate from high school.

"For me, education has been life changing and I hope my achievements inspire others as well," said Pinto. "I am a first-generation college student and a person of color. WGU Washington provided me a wonderful opportunity and I am honored to set a positive example for underrepresented groups in my community." A state-based subsidiary of nationally recognized, accredited, nonprofit Western Governors University, WGU Washington is open to all qualified Washington residents. It is designed to fit the busy lives-and often tight budgets-of working adult students. About WGU Washington WGU Washington is an online, competency-based university designed to expand access to higher education for Washington residents. In 2011, the Washington State Legislature created WGU Washington in partnership with nationally recognized Western Governors University. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005592/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday talked to Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the phone. The two sides agreed to fairly deal with the serious clashes between Chinese and Indian troops at the Galwan Valley, and adhere to the consensus reached by their military leaders to cool the situation down.

The latest clash at Galwan Valley is regrettable. How to avoid the repeated occurrence of such conflicts and prevent the situation from escalating has become the biggest test to China-India relations.

Wang pointed out it was the Indian side that intentionally provoked and started violent attack. He also expressed his opposition to the actions of the Indian side. It is hoped that India does not indulge in its sentiment, but understands the stance of the Chinese side.

We believe Indian society should wake up from its geopolitical fantasy, view China pragmatically and the two countries' border disputes. It will be significant for India to maintain a steady national strategy and also key to maintaining the stability of China-India border.

Indian society needs to realize that China is committed to friendship with India and respects India as a strong neighbor and a regional power. China's basic policy toward India is to keep China-India relations and the border areas stable. In the meantime, China resolutely defends its territorial sovereignty. The two countries have border disputes, but have also developed a mechanism that has resulted in general stability at the border for decades. Resorting to this mechanism and improving on it rather than destroying it is the only way out for the two to address frictions. The Indian side should never think about pushing China to make concessions, because China won't. Moreover, China's countermeasures will never be late no matter the cost.

Border disputes won't change Beijing's cooperation with New Delhi. And China won't budge in terms of the border issue no matter how India messes it up. A confident and capable China won't hesitate in its strategic decisions either.

We noticed that in recent years, favorable opinion toward China has rarely been heard from India, but voices that cater to the values-based alliance and the Indo-Pacific Strategy are becoming louder. Can these provide strong strategic support to India's desire to rise?

These concepts dominated by the US implicitly target China, and Washington needs a country like India to spearhead attacks on China.

If New Delhi is obsessed with playing such a role, it is giving up on itself rather than being strategically active. It will turn itself into a tool of the so-called value alliance, abandoning its ambition of being an independent big country.

China and India must be capable of properly handling the border disputes. No ties between India and other countries can take the place of India-China relations. New Delhi can never unilaterally resolve the border disputes with Beijing, and it will never realize the prosperity it desires if its 2,000-kilometer border with China is repeatedly marked by clashes.

The Indian people should not be intoxicated by the partiality of some forces in the US and other Western countries, whose public opinions are poisoning them. We notice that there are sober minds within India who promote developing healthy ties with China so that the two big powers can depend on rather than consume each other.

The phone call between the Chinese and Indian foreign ministers on Wednesday will help ease the situation. While they expressed their stance, they also set the tone for easing the situation, which will direct public opinion in their own countries.

The Indian side especially must fulfill its promise and implement the consensus reached between the two countries. The border issue is the most sensitive part of China-India relations. Only when it is eased can the two engage in cooperation in a composed manner.
Apologetic police have said sorry to families after they failed to stop nearly 1,000 people breaking lockdown for an all-night rave on a residential street.

Parents were furious after hundreds of revellers took over their street and kept them awake all night by blasting out loud music.

The huge crowd drank and danced the night away in front of a DJ playing dub music at the impromptu event in Stokes Croft, Bristol.

Video footage filmed by Best of Bristol showed the event in full swing on Saturday night as people packed tightly together in a massive crowd.

Resident Clare Bennett wrote online: 'This was right at the end of my road so none of us in the house could sleep last night.

'I feel very angry and genuinely upset that people can be so selfish.

'Having a club night outside, in a residential area is bad enough and something that seems to happen more often around here, even before lockdown. But to do it in the middle of a pandemic is just incredible. Selfish, selfish, selfish people.'

Another mum told ITV News 'it started at 3pm - a large marquee and sound system - it was selfish irresponsible and probably illegal - we are in the middle of a pandemic - I'm furious'.

On Sunday morning the street was filled with empty beer cans, canisters of laughing gas and bins overflowing.

Police said sorry to residents affected and claimed that by the time they were able to attend, the event was already too large to shut down.

A spokesman said officers focused on ensuring it didn't get any bigger due to the potential for 'serious disorder' after the organisers 'refused to engage'.

Police said organisers of the all-nighter would not engage with them when they attended

The police added it would be reviewing its procedures as a result.

But those living on the street took to social media to share their anger.

Jane Holehouse who lives on a neighbouring street added: 'I feel exactly the same! People were also relieving themselves literally anywhere! Disgusting.

'Went on for 12 hours, no idea why the police didn't shut it down. Let's watch Bristol's numbers spike now! Will they all be going to see their fathers today?? Pass it on??

The rave went on all night because police said that it was too big to stop by the time they arrived at the scene in Stokes Croft in Bristol

Avon and Somerset Police said: 'We would like to apologise to those affected by the noise and nuisance caused by a rave in Stokes Croft and a large party in St Werburgh's overnight Saturday 20 to Sunday 21 June.

'We are reviewing the appropriateness of our response to two calls received around 4pm regarding a possible party being organised at Sydenham Road, and whether this presents any opportunities to review our procedures.

'When we had complaints at about 5.30pm regarding noise nuisance in Sydenham Road and in Narroways Road, St Werburgh's, officers were unable to attend immediately due to the number of live incidents across Bristol, including assaults, collisions, domestic abuse, concern for welfare and missing people, in many cases with a significant risk of someone coming to physical harm.

'As further calls came in from 7.30pm there were already significant numbers at each location.

Avon and Somerset Police had warnings about the rave, but did not attend until three hours later

'Police did attend and speak with the organisers who refused to engage.

'For the safety of all involved, due to the potential for serious disorder, it was decided to focus on preventing further attendance at the events rather than attempting to seize the sound system.

'Over coming days officers will be carrying out regular patrols of potential rave sites and engaging with the owners of vacant properties and landowners to ensure they have appropriate security.

'Anyone with information about a potential rave site, or who sees sound equipment being taken into a disused property or plot of land should call us immediately on 101.'
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Researchers at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) in Aracatuba, Brazil, have developed a computational tool that acts like a "COVID-19 accelerometer," plotting in real time the rate at which growth is accelerating or decelerating in more than 200 countries and territories.

Available free of charge online, the application automatically loads the most recent notified case numbers from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), updated daily, and applies mathematical modeling techniques to diagnose the current stage of the pandemic in each country.

"The application democratizes access to information. Everyone can understand exactly what's happening in their city, state or country. It also helps public administrators and policymakers evaluate whether measures taken to mitigate transmission of the novel coronavirus are having the desired effect," Yuri Tani Utsunomiya told. Utsunomiya is a professor at UNESP's Aracatuba School of Veterinary Medicine (FMVA) and first author of an article published in Frontiers in Medicine showing how the mathematical modeling framework can be used to assess the effects of public health measures.

To explain how an epidemic progresses, Utsunomiya offered an analogy to a fast car. Initially, the disease spreads slowly, and daily cases grow slowly, just as a car takes some time to pick up speed. The rate of growth is called the 'incidence' and is measured by the number of new cases per day. Prevalence is the total number of cases since counting began and can be compared to the distance traveled by this imaginary car.

"Stepping on the throttle makes the number of cases rise rapidly, like a car accelerating and picking up speed. Exponential growth in the number of cases occurs in this second stage of the epidemic. What every country wants is to stop this acceleration and begin to slow transmission. These are two distinct operations," Utsunomiya explained. "The first consists of taking one's foot off the throttle so that the acceleration falls to zero. Incidence peaks as a result. The second operation entails exerting negative acceleration on the disease [stepping on the brake] so that the rate of growth falls to zero. Without velocity, the car stops. This is what we all want. We want COVID-19 to stop spreading."

The COVID-19 accelerometer shows almost in real time whether a country is accelerating or braking, with a degree of imprecision in countries with undernotification of cases.

However, Utsunomiya stressed that the four stages of growth in the epidemicflow (green), exponential (pink), deceleration (yellow) and stationary (blue) - may not unfold in that order. Even after a period of deceleration or stationary growth, the disease could again start spreading exponentially if control measures are abandoned. Hence, tools that help continuously monitor transmission are important.

"Our analysis of more than 200 countries and territories showed that effective control measures quickly affect the acceleration curve, well before the number of daily cases starts to fall. This behavior of the curve is highly relevant to any assessment of public policy to control the disease," Utsunomiya said.

Sinuous curves

Using official notification data, the application plots incidencethe growth curve everyone wants to flatten so that hospitals are not overwhelmedand acceleration in real time, and detects transitions between the four stages. This is made possible by two mathematical techniques: moving regression and a hidden Markov model.

"We developed a simple but highly robust method that takes data available from national and international databases to produce precise information on the progress and movement of the pandemic. Of course, the calculations are based on data that essentially depend on diagnosis [testing]," noted Jose Fernando Garcia, a professor at UNESP Jaboticabal and a coauthor of the article.

While the undernotification of cases is a limitation and may create scale distortions, the epidemiological curves produced by the model are sufficiently accurate, according to the researchers.

An analysis of the curves for Brazil at this time shows that no state has thus far succeeded in leaving behind the exponential growth stage, despite quarantine measures and lockdowns. China reached the stationary stage after only six weeks of well-organized social isolation. Australia, New Zealand, Austria and South Korea have now reached the stationary stage. Italy, Spain and Germany are in the deceleration stage, in which the number of new cases falls daily, thanks to the confinement measures taken.

Utsunomiya divides the measures designed to contain the spread of COVID-19 into two categories: suppression, meaning more intense and severe measures aimed at rapidly reversing the growth curve, e.g., lockdown, and mitigation measures aimed at lowering the growth rate, e.g., requiring face masks and discouraging crowds.

"Our study clearly points to the effectiveness of suppression in combating COVID-19," he said. "However, suppressive measures have been criticized for creating social problems and having a profoundly negative effect on the economy. Mitigation has less severe social and economic impacts, but it's also less efficient. There really isn't a silver bullet."

Sao Paulo Research FoundationFAPESP awarded Utsunomiya scholarships in the past to support his Ph.D. research and master's research.

According to Utsunomiya, Japan is one of the only countries that managed to decelerate the growth of new cases with mitigation measures alone. "Comparing strategies across countries requires caution," he said. "The effectiveness of mitigation depends on factors like healthcare infrastructure, the amount and frequency of testing, population density, and the extent to which people in general comply with the recommendations of the health authorities."

More information: Yuri Tani Utsunomiya et al, Growth Rate and Acceleration Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals the Effect of Public Health Measures in Real Time, Frontiers in Medicine (2020). Yuri Tani Utsunomiya et al, Growth Rate and Acceleration Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals the Effect of Public Health Measures in Real Time,(2020). DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2020.00247
Dublin City Council has brought proceedings against a receiver over an alleged failure to comply with court orders to vacate three properties described as "firetraps".

DCC's proceedings are against Mr Stephen Tennant of Grant Thornton who was appointed as receiver over properties located at 100, 101 and 104 Seville Place, Dublin 1 by AIB Mortgage Banks and AIB in October 2016.

Last October at the High Court Mr Justice Seamus Noonan granted DCC injunctions requiring the residents of the properties, which are each divided into several flats or bedsits, to immediately vacate the buildings.

The properties were to remain vacant until they are compliant with fire safety regulations.

The matter returned to court today. DCC, represented by Karen Denning Bl told Mr Justice Charles Meenan that a number of people, believed to be non-nationals, are living in the buildings.

As the receiver was in charge of the properties, which are currently occupied in breach of the court's orders, counsel said that DCC is seeking to bring a motion seeking the receiver's attachment and committal.

Requests to vacate were ignored, says receiver

Counsel said offers of alternative accommodation were made to those who had been in the building when the orders to vacate the three buildings were made last year.

Some of the residents had taken up those offers, counsel said, adding that some had not.

However the buildings remain occupied, and DCC said it has received complaints from residents living in the area about the occupants engaging in anti-social behaviour.

Counsel said that in correspondence to DCC the receiver said that those in the building were trespassers, and have no right to be there. The receiver said his requests to vacate the building were being ignored, the court also heard.

The receiver also suggested in its correspondence that a multi-disciplinary approach, which included DCC, the Gardai, the Fire Brigade and Dublin Homeless Network, was required to deal with the situation, counsel said.

However counsel said DCC did not agree to this, and wants to bring proceedings as it is the local authority's case that despite the court orders the receiver has continued to permit the buildings to be occupied for residential purposes.

Mr Justice Meenan, noting the seriousness of the situation, granted DCC permission to serve short notice of the proceedings on the receiver and adjourned the matter to later this week.

Last year the High Court heard that inspections carried out by DCC's senior fire safety officials revealed that the three properties were in very poor repair, and if a fire started in any of the buildings it would spread very quickly.

Judge 'could not allow a situation to develop where the residents could be burnt in their beds'

The risk to persons living in the what are four-storey 190-year-old buildings is so serious that their continued use for residential purposes should be prohibited until several serious fire safety deficiencies are addressed, DCC said.

DCC sought orders against the owners of the properties Vincent and Catherine (otherwise known as Kathleen) Donoghue.

They did not participate in the proceedings, and the court heard they have not had control over the properties since the receiver's appointment.

It had been estimated that up to 40 persons had been living in the properties when the court made orders requiring them to leave.

There were no objections to the orders from those living at 100 and 104 Seville Place.

However lawyers representing several residents at 101, who claimed they had valid tenancies for the property, argued that they should be allowed stay in their homes while works were done to remedy DCC's fire safety concerns.

In his ruling Mr Justice Noonan said he had "huge sympathy for" the residents.

Given the state of the buildings the Judge said he had no option other than grant the injunctions.

The Judge said he could not allow a situation to develop where the residents could be burnt in their beds in the middle of the night.
Trisha Goddard was left in tears as she spoke about covering her face in talculm powder to 'pretend to be white' as a child.

The presenter, 62, became emotional during her appearance on Monday's Good Morning Britain with Lorraine as she detailed the way systemic racism impacted her mental health when she was young.

Breaking down in tears, Trisha told Lorraine: 'When I was young I used to get talcum powder and mix it with water and put it on my face to pretend to be white.'

Emotional: Trisha Goddard broke down in tears as she revealed on Monday's Good Morning Britain that she would cover her face in talcum powder 'to pretend to be white' as a child

Trisha also spoke passionately about her mother Mary Agnes Fortune who came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation, and she reflected on the 2018 Windrush scandal, which has seen over 80 people wrongfully deported by the Home Office.

Getting emotional once again while speaking about current events and how the Windrush generation have been told they're not British, Trisha said: 'Ive heard that so many times, mum always worked double shifts, both my mum and my dad did.

'Both my parents worked two jobs to put me and my sisters through school. I miss her, just talking about her makes me very emotional.

'In some way Im glad that she isn't here to see whats going on and tell her the racial abuse Ive received.'

Tearful: On how racism impacted her mental health, Trisha told Lorraine: 'When I was young I used to get talcum powder and mix it with water and put it on my face to pretend to be white'

In tears: Trisha also said she was glad her mother Mary Agnes Fortune, who came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation, couldn't experience the 2018 Windrush scandal

Trisha called for a change in education so that children can be taught about the Windrush generation who were invited to move to the UK from from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971.

'They were actually asked to come to Britain after the Second World War and really it was the creme de la creme of the commonwealth,' Trisha explained. 'I think I have my mum's log when she came over and she was 26, you had such skilled people working in transport and nurses like my mum.'

She added: 'One of the problems I think, and theres been a lot of talk of systemic racism, I dont think we teach history in the way we should.

Heartbreaking: Of how the Windrush generation have been told they're not British, Trisha said: 'Ive heard that so many times'

Changes: Trisha called for a change in education so that children can be taught about the Windrush generation and how those from Caribbean countries were invited to move to the UK

'People from all over the commonwealth who came to the UK at the time it took 6 weeks to travel, she couldn't be there when her gran died, and she couldn't go back until I could get her a ticket when I was in my 20s.

'They gave up their lives for a new life to help Britain so this wind rush scandal is a real kick in the teeth.'

Trisha went on to add that her family 'worked their guts out' to support Trisha and her siblings, as she claimed: 'I have to work twice as good to be half as good as her.'

Gushing: Trisha went on to add that her family 'worked their guts out' to support Trisha and her siblings, as she claimed: 'I have to work twice as good to be half as good as her'

Difficult: Of the 2018 Windrush scandal, which saw over 80 people wrongfully deported from the UK by the Home Office, she added: 'This scandal would have broken their spirits'

Of the 2018 Windrush scandal, which saw over 80 people wrongfully deported from the UK by the Home Office, she added: 'In many ways seeing this scandal would have broken their spirits after years of sacrifice for this country.'

Trisha also spoke passionately about the Black Lives Matter movement, saying she hopes it will create real change 'slowly but surely' with education.

Becoming emotional once more, Trisha admitted: 'It is pretty tough at the moment Lorraine, my mum would be outraged "how dare you cry on television".'

Making a difference: Trisha also spoke passionately about the Black Lives Matter movement, saying she hopes it will create real change 'slowly but surely' with education
The competition is in disarray following Conor McKenna's positive test for COVID-19.

This week on the Real Footy podcast, Jimmy Bartel joins Michael Gleeson, Jake Niall and Caroline Wilson to discuss the fallout, from the fixture implications to the way McKenna and Essendon are being viewed by the public and the media.

The AFL was already dealing with a tricky fixture situation. WA border restrictions have been causing issues and West Coast have become more vocal in their objection to their situation. When will we know what will happen with the fixture going forward? How far ahead will the AFL plan? And was the league actually lucky in how the weekend played out?

We also hear why in a round of upsets, the Blues' win over Geelong was the biggest of all. Plus, the lacklustre Tigers and the problems plaguing the reigning premiers. Is it a mindset problem? Have teams worked out how to beat them?And will they be able to turn their poor form around?
(Natural News) A group of Catholic bishops in the United States is funding far-left, militant Marxist organizations, a new report has revealed.

According to a report by the conservative Catholic think tank Lepanto Institute for the Restoration of All Things in Christ, several bishops in the U.S., through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), are funding progressive organizations who are currently agitating against law and order by allegedly pushing ideas such as the defunding of the police force, the defunding of prisons, upholding labor rights and embracing anti-racist ideologies.

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the CCHD is the national anti-poverty program of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and is an organization guided by the belief that only those who are directly affected by unjust systems and structures have the best insight into knowing how to change them.

As noted in the USCB website, the CCHD, as an organization, works to break the cycle of poverty by helping low-income people participate directly in decisions that may affect their lives, their families and their communities.

CCHD offers a hand up, not a handout, the website read.

The Lepanto Institute, however, argues that the organization actually operates by following Marxist paradigms, an operation allegedly highlighted by its decision to fund radical and progressive organizations.

According to the Lepanto report, one of the Marxist groups the CCHD funneled funds to is the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ), which received USD 150,000 in funding from the bishops organization over the past three years.

Known as a grassroots membership organization of African American workers and families, the NOWCRJ, according to its website, is dedicated to winning inclusion, opportunity, and racial equity.

Lepanto, however, noted that the organization posted disturbing videos of a protest on its official Twitter account.

NOWCRJ posted a video on [T]witter of a protest they were participating in, chanting Death to the racist pigs, about police, the institutes report said.

Much like NOWCRJ, the Workers Center of Central New York also filed calls for the defunding of the police, Lepanto said in its report.

The group, which received some USD 200,000 from the CCHD over the past few years, also aired support for the ongoing protests and riots, with the group even posting on its official social media accounts that these activities are necessary tools.

These riots and lootings are taking back what the masses of working black and brown communities are owed. Riots and protests are necessary tools and we fully support, stated the group, which has worked with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Lepanto also identified Chicago-based The Peoples Lobby Education Institute, as one of the Marxist groups the CCHD funnels funds to. As per the Lepanto report, the CCHD gave USD 165,000 to the group within the last three years. (Related: Vatican caught up in money laundering scheme involving hospitals and charities.)

According to Lepanto, the group, which is described as a grassroots movement that works to fight against injustice and economic, racial and gender inequality, repeatedly called for the defunding of the police and prisons.

Another group identified by the Lepanto Institute in its report is the Workers Defense Project, which is a group that aims to empower low-income workers to achieve fair employment.

Lepanto noted that the Texas-based group accused Houston police of murdering PoC [people of color] with impunity, before calling for the defunding of the institution.

In addition, several other groups funded by the CCHD have signed a Solidarity Letter from the Immigrant Justice Movement, which called for the abolishment of the Police State.

Lepanto pointed to CCHD head Ralph McCloud, as the one currently steering the Catholic organization into supporting Left-wing radicalism.

The network of CCHD-funded groups pushing radical ideological agendas under the banner of justice clearly follows the Marxist paradigm and has since the founding of the CCHD. And Ralph McCloud is very much a part of that, Lepanto said in its report.

McCloud, who was previously awarded the MLK Keep the Dream Alive Award by Catholic Charities USA, recently took part in a panel set by Georgetown Universitys Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life called Racism in our Streets and Structures: A Test of Faith, A Crisis for Our Nation, where he, alongside other prominent Black leaders and community organizers, talked about the alleged injustices suffered by minority communities in the U.S. in light of the current situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing spate of riots across the country.

During the panel, McCloud noted that racism does not exist in a vacuum and that the injustices faced by minority communities are factors that have since led to them being disproportionately impacted by the Wuhan coronavirus as well as the health crisis and economic problems it left in its wake.

Theres a degree of stress and a degree of trauma associated with being African American in 2020, given all that weve experienced, McCloud said.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, however, the USCCB, which handles groups such as CCHD, has not answered any requests for comments.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

LepantoIn.org

TheBostonPilot.com
The Prince of Wales has spoken of the debt of gratitude the nation owes the Windrush generation as he heralded Britains diversity as its greatest strength.

In a video message marking Windrush Day, Charles urged people to listen to each others stories and to learn from one another as he paid tribute to the countrys Caribbean community for their contribution to life in the UK.

The heir to the throne said: Today, as we honour the legacy of the Windrush generation, and the invaluable contribution of black people in Britain, I dearly hope that we can continue to listen to each others stories and to learn from one another.

He added: The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.

Windrush Day marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bringing around 500 people from Jamaica, at the invitation of the British government, to help rebuild the UK in the aftermath of the Second World War.

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, thousands of men, women and children left the Caribbean for Britain.

But in the Windrush scandal, members of the Windrush generation and their children were wrongly detained and even deported  and others denied access to official documents, healthcare, work, housing benefits and pensions  despite living legally in the UK.

A report into the scandal, published in March, found it was foreseeable and avoidable, with victims let down by systemic operational failings at the Home Office.

The department demonstrated institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation, the review found.

Charless message comes amid the Black Lives Matter protests throughout the country and the world in recent weeks, following the death of George Floyd in the US.

The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.



To mark #WindrushDay2020, The Prince of Wales has sent a message of thanks to Britains Caribbean community for their contribution to life in the UK. pic.twitter.com/A4OTRWrhlC  The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) June 22, 2020

He said: Today offers an opportunity to express the debt of gratitude we owe to that first Windrush generation for accepting the invitation to come to Britain and, above all, to recognise the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren have made to so many aspects of our public life, to our culture and to every sector of our economy.

The prince also highlighted the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on the black community, and expressed his sympathy to those who had lost loved ones.

He paid tribute to the doctors, nurses and others working on the front line and said people of African and Caribbean descent have been an indispensable part of the NHS since its beginning.

Charles said: I know that the black community has been hit particularly hard by this pernicious virus.

To those who have lost their loved ones in such heartbreaking circumstances, when it has been impossible for them to comfort their relatives in hospital, I can only convey my most profound sympathy.

And to everyone on the front line who has been put under such intense pressure over the last three months and risen heroically to the unprecedented challenge, I want to say, on behalf of all of us, how inordinately proud we are of them and the way they carry out their onerous duties.

On this day in 1948, HMT Empire Windrush arrived at the Tilbury Docks in Essex, having carried hundreds of people from the Caribbean who were invited to help rebuild Britain in the wake of the Second World War. pic.twitter.com/VV0YV84Ulz  The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) June 22, 2020

The prince quoted the work of Jamaican British poet James Berry, who sailed to the UK in 1949 inspired by the Windrush pioneers.

Charles said: He never avoided the difficult issues of injustice in history, or in the present, but always sought for mutual understanding.

His poem Benediction stresses the need for us truly to hear one another, and truly to see, and through so doing to understand.

The prince talked of visiting the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton three years ago.

Recognising the rich diversity of cultures which make this country so special  and in many ways unique  lies at the heart of what we can be as a nation, he said.

We can only understand who we are as a nation, where we have come from, and what future path we should take, if we are able to look at the past, present and future from each others perspectives.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Olivier Monnier (Agence France-Presse) Toronto, Canada  Mon, June 22, 2020 15:08 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660acd92 2 Art & Culture Toronto,Canada,graffiti,George-Floyd,Racism,united-states,arts Free

Dozens of street artists have painted over parts of Toronto's "Graffiti Alley" in shades of black and gray in a message of solidarity with anti-racism protesters following the death in US police custody of George Floyd.

The new sober murals contrast with the brightly colored original paintings in this spot popular with tourists on the south side of Canada's largest city.

Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, a raised fist -- the artwork depicts heroes and symbols of the African-American community, as well as victims of police brutality.

A portrait of the 46-year-old Floyd is among them. The African American died in police custody after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25.

His death sparked two weeks of protests in cities across the United States and around the world.

Floyd's likeness in "Graffiti Alley" bears a black band across his mouth reading "I can't breathe" -- his last words as he pleaded with officers before he lost consciousness.

"But we can hear you," the artist added around Floyd's face.

Read also: Artists around the world pay tribute to George Floyd

'Powerful and beautiful'

The project is aimed at raising awareness about the anti-racism movement, and for artists to show their support, one of the organizers, Moises Frank, told AFP.

"I think using art as a tool of talking against oppression is a really powerful and beautiful way of protesting," the 25-year-old said.

"People are starting to realize that (racism) is an issue that we're not going to shy away from talking about anymore," he said.

"I hope it's only the beginning of the conversation."

One mural depicts a panther with yellow and orange eyes, a tribute to the activism of the Black Panthers.

Another shows a raised fist with the caption, "Still fighting 4 black lives."

Frank chose to paint Zianna Oliphant, a then-nine-year-old girl who gave a heart-wrenching speech to the Charlotte city council in North Carolina in 2016, in response to the police killing of a 43-year-old black man.

"There's a video of her circulating (in which) she breaks down in front of the camera about the things that she's experiencing and sees in her community and the injustice," Frank said.

"I thought that was a really courageous little girl speaking out against it," he said.

"I hope that in her lifetime, she can see changes happening."
Stranger Things 3 shocked everyone with an ending that included a presumably dead Sheriff Jim Hopper. None of us were quite sure if he was the American referred to in the credits scene until some fan photos and a teaser trailer confirmed it.

Since we know Hopper is alive and somewhere in Russia, people are trying to connect the dots for season 4. David Harbour recently offered some insight into what fans can expect.

Stranger Things David Harbour as Sheriff Hopper | Netflix

Stranger Things 3 cast Hopper in new light

We know its been a year since the last installment of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix, but Hopper established himself as one of the series fan favorites.

The gruff, sometimes combative sheriff became a nurturer. As a father figure to Eleven, viewers saw his overprotective, yet tender side come out. And as the love-struck romantic interest of Joyce, he stumbled but meant well.

Those qualities endeared him to fans even more, but also provided a contrast to the part of him that wants to be a risk-taking hero, and the forceful brute (remember how he treated Alexei). Those sweeter aspects made Hopper willing to sacrifice himself in the end.

RELATED: Why Stranger Things Stunt Coordinator Worried Hoppers Season Finale Fight Was Too Long

Stranger Things 4 will explore more of Hopper

Fortunately, Hopper wasnt turned to dust. David Harbour and Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers appeared on Deadlines Contenders panel, and Harbour assured everyone that Hoppers story arc will go to new realms. And that doesnt just mean Russia.

Harbour said:

To me, what happens in this seasonfirst of all its very epic and very big in a Stranger Things waytheres monsters, theres horror, theres scares. Theres also like great Indiana Jones-type action. But also, we get to see some of Hoppers really deep backstory that weve hinted at with the boxes in season 2. And Im really excited to let people see these really deep colors in him cause you know each season we see a different side of him. And last season, it was sort of wacky except for the end and except for these moments where he tempered that.

Harbour added that in season 4, his character will be painted in a darker palette and its exciting. Are you ready to dig deeper into Hoppers story?

How Stranger Things 3 set the stage for more terror in season 4

After surviving the Mind Flayer that consumed Billy and other townspeople, a Russian hitman, and the fire at Starcourt Mall, the kids suffered the loss of Hopper, and so did fans. On top of that, Elevens powers tanked out. While viewers are now in on the secret that hes alive, El and the rest of crew do not.

They will have to process that loss while navigating their new long-distance dynamic with each other. But we also know that the Upside Down is not finished. You can bet your Slurpee that something is amiss in Russia where Hopper will probably have to stage an escape.

Those scientists in Hawkins were tampering with the Key/portal and its obvious they have one or more monsters back at their headquarters in Russia. Once Hopper makes the connection, mark Harbours words, there will be horror and darkness.

RELATED: Stranger Things Season 4: Hoppers Teaser Trailer Wasnt Actually Filmed In Russia
In an effort to restart its economy, Spain ended its national state of emergency on Sunday after three months of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, BBC News reports. The country's 47 million residents can freely travel for the first time since mid-March and visitors from Britain and the 26 European countries that allow visa-free travel can visit Spain without going through a two-week quarantine.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that hygiene controls must be followed and had this warning: "The virus can return and it can hit us again in a second wave, and we have to do whatever we can to avoid that at all costs."

BBC News said Spain usually attracts some 80 million tourists a year, providing 12% of the country's GDP. The Associated Press reports there was only a trickle of travelers at Madrid-Barajas Airport as the travel restrictions were lifted, a stark contrast to a normal June day when it would be crowded.

Spain  coronavirus

People enjoy the beach in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday, June 21, 2020. Emilio Morenatti / AP

"It's very special, it's three and a half months since I've been here!" a Swiss woman told BBC News at the airport. She lives in Madrid and traveled home on a flight from Zurich.

BBC News also noted that several bars and restaurants in Spain have been open for some weeks. A number of them near the city's famous Plaza Mayor were busy Sunday afternoon.

Despite the loosening restrictions in Spain, other areas like Brazil and South Africa are facing rises in COVID-19 infections. The total number of worldwide cases has topped 8.8 million and the virus has killed more than 465,000 people, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Spain's death toll is more than 28,000, the third-highest in the European Union, per BBC.

Elsewhere, Brazil is grappling with 50,000 new cases in one day, according to health officials. President Jair Bolsonaro has been downplaying the risks there, even though it has the second-highest death toll in the world, behind the U.S.

Story continues

South Africa reported a one-day high of almost 5,000 new cases Saturday and 46 deaths, AP reports. But President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a further loosening of restrictions, even as the virus spreads.

In India, the rush to ease lockdowns may have helped its economy, but it's also resulted in more infections. New Delhi is converting train carriages into makeshift COVID-19 wards, offering beds and oxygen, but not much social distancing.

In the U.S., the virus seems to be spreading across the West and South. Arizona on Sunday reported 3,100 new infections, just shy of Friday's record-high, and 26 deaths. Nevada also reported a new high of 445 cases, according to AP. In New York, once the nation's epicenter, the virus has killed more than 17,500 people since the start of the pandemic, according to city data.

Florida on Saturday reported 4,049 new coronavirus cases, another consecutive single-day record increase in cases. The number of statewide infections has surged to at least 97,000 as of Sunday. There have been more than 3,160 deaths in Florida due to COVID-19. The state has tested nearly 1.6 million people, according to its health department. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hasn't indicated any rollback of the state's reopening, despite the surge in COVID-19 deaths.

Elizabeth Palmer and Sophie Lewis contributed to this report.

Yusuf revisits the songs of Cat Stevens

Back on campaign trail, Trump dismisses COVID testing

"He was in a panic - I was in a panic," man confesses to the murder of his best friend
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:25:59|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Fatima's husband Ali Mohammed Tahir (C) walks outside a tent in Midi District of Hajjah province, Yemen, June 14, 2020. In a camp for people displaced by war, in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah, a mother with cancer lies in bed in her tent, without treatment. The mother, Fatima, has fled airstrikes and shelling on her Red Sea coastal village to seek a safe life for herself and her 12-member family in the displaced camp in the southern edge of Midi district, but unexpected cancer shattered her hopes. (Photo by Mohammed Alwafi/Xinhua)

HAJJAH, Yemen, June 22 (Xinhua) -- In a camp for people displaced by war, in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah, a mother with cancer lies in bed in her tent, without treatment.

The mother, Fatima, has fled airstrikes and shelling on her Red Sea coastal village to seek a safe life for herself and her 12-member family in the displaced camp in the southern edge of Midi district, but unexpected cancer shattered her hopes.

The cancer has spread in the left side of her neck and she becomes unable to speak or move, her doctors in the Al-Jada Health Center in Al-Jada area in Midi district told Xinhua.

They said that there were 12 other cancer patients in the district of Midi and the nearby district of Hiran.

"We cannot provide treatment for them because there is no medicine, no medical equipment and no medical staff specializing in treating cancer diseases in the center," one of the doctors in Al-Jada Health Center told Xinhua.

Fatima's husband, Ali Mohammed Tahir, who suffers from diabetes and has his right leg amputated due to the disease, cannot afford to take her to the cancer hospital in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, about 123 km south of Hajjah.

"My wife has cancer in her neck since a year ago. Her suffering has increased and here we have no medicine for cancer," he told Xinhua in his tent.

"I have diabetes and my right leg was amputated. We do not find health care here and we do not find anything in this area," Tahir added.

In this barren area, hundreds of displaced families are suffering from hunger, a lack of access to health care and clean water supplies.

Many other displaced camps in Hajjah and other provinces also suffer from the same health crisis.

The fighting has been raging on in several active front lines in northern Hajjah since the country slid into civil war in late 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi group seized much of the country's north and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

The five-year-long war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 3 million and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

The war also led to the collapse of more than half of the country's health system, and caused what the United Nations calls the world's largest humanitarian crisis.

Millions of Yemenis have become vulnerable to deadly epidemics, which are rife across the country, including cholera, malaria, diphtheria and now the novel coronavirus.

The cancer patients have become the most affected by the war and health crisis.

The World Health Organization in February 2019 estimated that the number of cancer patients in Yemen reached approximately 35,000.

Most cancer patients in Yemen seek treatment at the National Oncology Centre in Sanaa, which is the country's main public hospital for cancer treatment.

The center in Sanaa admits around 600 new cancer patients each month, according to its recent reports.

The center said it completely dependent on international humanitarian aid after the country's economy and health sectors have collapsed due to the war.

The mother, Fatima, is still able to wave her hand in front of her children. She hopes that her children can one day enjoy a new life, away from war and cancer.
The combined company will be poised to transform care for cancer patients, accelerating adoption of genetics through the most comprehensive suite of products and services available. Integrating germline testing, tumor profiling and liquid biopsy technologies and services in a single platform will enable precision approaches from diagnostic testing to therapy optimization and monitoring, expanding access to best-in-class personalized oncology.

"From the beginning, Invitae's goal has been to aggregate the world's genetic tests into a single platform in service of our mission to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine. Today, we take another major step forward in that effort," said Sean George, Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Invitae.

"ArcherDX and Invitae share a foundational belief in the power of genomic information to impact care. We are thrilled to unite with Invitae to form the leading hub for precision oncology, diagnostics, therapy optimization and monitoring, with an opportunity to accelerate both patient care and shareholder value," said Jason Myers, Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of ArcherDX. "ArcherDX was founded to democratize precision oncology with best-in-class products that are personal, actionable and available in local care settings. We see STRATAFIDE DX  as a significant near-term value driver, currently under development for cancer therapy optimization, while PCM provides an exciting opportunity to transform cancer care through multiple monitoring applications. ArcherDX products, workflow and powerful bioinformatics solutions provide an opportunity to advance precision oncology into regional and community settings and address an estimated $45 billion market opportunity. Together with Invitae, we look forward to expanding our impact beyond oncology, driving significant value through shared expertise to inform healthcare throughout life, globally."

"Integrating all aspects of cancer genetics can transform care for patients and the flexibility that comes from both centralized and decentralized capabilities will uniquely position Invitae to meet the needs of customers worldwide," continued Dr. George. "By joining together, we will unite world-class capabilities in the hands of a talented team with complementary expertise and strong brands in service of a shared goal to improve healthcare for patients."

Accelerating access and adoption of genetics to improve cancer care

Broad adoption of precision oncology has been limited, particularly in regional and community settings where approximately 85 percent of patients receive care.1 Without precision oncology, late-stage cancer patients can suffer from poor prognosis and outcomes, while early-stage patients may receive an inaccurate prognosis that results in unnecessary treatment and delayed detection of recurrence.2,3

Uniting Invitae and ArcherDX will offer comprehensive support for precision oncology.

Invitae has quickly become a leader in diagnostic and hereditary risk testing and has strong relationships with clinicians caring for cancer patients, including cancer genetic counselors, oncologists and imaging centers.

ArcherDX's platform, with its proprietary Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP) chemistry at the core, has enabled it to develop industry-leading products and services under investigation to optimize therapy and enable cancer monitoring across liquid and tissue samples.

ArcherDX has developed and commercialized over 325 unique products, including research products and services in use by more than 300 laboratories worldwide and has collaborated with more than 50 biopharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations (CROs), providing services that enable biopharmaceutical companies, including partners such as AstraZeneca, BMS and Bayer, to cost-effectively accelerate drug development.

ArcherDX is also currently developing in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) products, including STRATAFIDE DX , for therapy optimization, an estimated $5 billion market opportunity with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submissions planned this year, and the broadly applicable Personalized Cancer Monitoring (PCM) in development for disease recurrence monitoring, therapy optimization including selection, response and modulation. Both STRATAFIDE DX and PCM have received Breakthrough Device designation from the FDA.

, for therapy optimization, an estimated market opportunity with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submissions planned this year, and the broadly applicable Personalized Cancer Monitoring (PCM) in development for disease recurrence monitoring, therapy optimization including selection, response and modulation. Both STRATAFIDE and PCM have received Breakthrough Device designation from the FDA. Together, the company will be ideally positioned to serve customers across the continuum, from individuals and community clinicians to biopharmaceutical partners, distribution partners, reference laboratories and academic centers. Invitae's central laboratory provides support for customers who prefer to send out and can benefit from a full suite of services including reporting, clinician consultation and genetic counseling for patients, while ArcherDX's decentralized model supports geographies and customers where local control of patient reporting is either desired or required.

With both centralized and local testing capabilities, the combined organization will offer breadth and flexibility in serving customers in more than 95 markets. Together, Invitae and ArcherDX will offer robust support for biopharmaceutical companies, from patient identification and screening, to biomarker identification and companion diagnostic development.

Transaction Terms

Under the terms of the agreement, Invitae will acquire ArcherDX for upfront consideration consisting of 30 million shares of Invitae common stock and $325 million in cash, plus up to an additional 27 million shares of Invitae common stock payable in connection with the achievement of certain milestones, for an overall transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion. The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, is expected to close in several months, subject to customary closing conditions including approval by the stockholders of Invitae and ArcherDX.

Financing Activities

In connection with the proposed combination, Invitae has arranged a strategic financing with over $400 million in financing commitments from a premier syndicate of life sciences investors, led by Perceptive Advisors. Invitae has entered into a definitive agreement to sell $275 million in common stock in a private placement at a price of $16.85 per share. The private placement is being supported by key existing investors in Invitae and Archer, including Casdin Capital, Deerfield Management, Driehaus Capital Management, Farallon, PBM Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Redmile Group, Rock Springs Capital, Soleus Capital, and one additional institutional investor. The placement is expected to close concurrently with the proposed combination, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Invitae has also entered into a fully committed credit facility for up to $200 million with Perceptive Credit Opportunities Funds, subject to certain customary closing conditions.

Since the filing of its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Invitae has sold under its ATM facility approximately 2.6 million shares of common stock for aggregate gross proceeds of $46 million at an average price of $17.59 per share.

Invitae's current expectations regarding its cash at transaction close would be approximately $425 million and its annualized near-term forward cash burn is expected to be approximately $130 million.

Advisors

Perella Weinberg Partners served as lead financial advisor to Invitae in connection with the business combination and Cowen served as co-financial advisor. Cowen served as lead-placement agent to Invitae for the private placement and Perella Weinberg Partners served as co-placement agent; Cowen served as exclusive financial advisor to Invitae in connection with the senior secured term loan facility. Evercore and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as financial advisors to Archer.

Webcast

Management will host a conference call and webcast today at 5:00 a.m. PT / 6:00 a.m. MT / 8:00 a.m. ET to discuss the transaction. The dial-in numbers for the conference call are (866) 324-3683 for domestic callers and (509) 844-0959 for international callers, and the reservation number for both is 7097864. Please note, after dialing in, you will be prompted to enter the Conference ID and then the pound "#" sign to enter the call. Following prepared remarks, management will respond to questions from analysts, subject to time limitations.

The live webcast of the call and slide deck may be accessed by visiting the investors section of the company's website at ir.invitae.com. A replay of the webcast and conference call will be available shortly after the conclusion of the call and will be archived on the company's website.

About Invitae

Invitae Corporation (NYSE: NVTA) is a leading medical genetics company, whose mission is to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare for billions of people. Invitae's goal is to aggregate the world's genetic tests into a single service with higher quality, faster turnaround time, and lower prices. For more information, visit the company's website at invitae.com.

About ArcherDX

ArcherDX is a leading genomic analysis company democratizing precision oncology through a suite of products and services that are highly accurate, personal, actionable and easy to use in local settings. Our ArcherDX platform, with our proprietary Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP) chemistry at the core, has enabled us to develop industry-leading products and services with the goal to optimize therapy and enable cancer monitoring across sample types. We develop and commercialize research products, are developing in vitro diagnostic (IVD) products, and offer services that meet the unique needs of our customers and their clinical applications. Our research product portfolio consists of VariantPlex, FusionPlex, LiquidPlex and Immunoverse, which we collectively refer to as ArcherPlex. IVD products currently in development for solid tumor biomarker identification and Personalized Cancer Monitoring (PCM) have both received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA. ArcherDX is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. Learn more at www.archerdx.com and follow @ArcherDXInc on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains statements, including statements regarding the proposed acquisition of ArcherDX, Inc. ("Archer") by Invitae Corporation ("Invitae") that are 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, that are intended to be covered by the "safe harbor" created by those sections. Forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe future plans, strategies, expectations and events, can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as "believe," "expect," "may," "will," "should," "would," "could," "seek," "intend," "plan," "goal," "project," "estimate," "anticipate" or other comparable terms. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this presentation regarding strategies, synergies, prospects, financial results, operations, costs, plans, objectives, and the proposed acquisition of Archer by Invitae are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expected future operating results, including cash at closing and annualized forward cash burn, drivers of future value, future products and services and customers served, regulatory submissions, anticipated results of product development efforts, potential addressable markets, the impact of Covid-19, the anticipated benefits of the proposed acquisition of Archer, including expected synergies, opportunities, product offerings, and financial and other impacts, the transaction structure and financing plans, and the expected timing of completion of the proposed transaction. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance or events. Instead, they are based only on current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding future business developments, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy and other future conditions. Forward-looking statements are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Actual results, conditions and events may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results, conditions and events to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: the ability to successfully and profitably market our products and services; the acceptance of our products and services by patients and healthcare providers; the ability to meet demand for our products and services; the availability and sufficiency of reimbursement; the amount and nature of competition; the effects of the adoption, modification or repeal of any law, rule, order, interpretation or policy relating to the healthcare system, including without limitation as a result of any judicial, executive or legislative action; the impact of Covid-19 on the business of Invitae and Archer; Invitae's ability to manage its growth effectively; the ability of Invitae and Archer to successfully develop new products and services; the ability to effectively utilize strategic partnerships and acquisitions; the ability of Invitae and Archer to obtain and maintain regulatory approvals and comply with applicable regulations; the ability of Invitae and Archer to obtain the required regulatory approvals for the proposed merger and the approval of Invitae's and Archer's stockholders, and to satisfy the other conditions to the closing of the acquisition and related financing transactions on a timely basis or at all; the occurrence of events that may give rise to a right of one or both of Invitae and Archer to terminate the merger agreement; negative effects of the announcement or the consummation of the acquisition on the market price of Invitae's common stock and/or on the companies' respective businesses, financial conditions, results of operations and financial performance; significant transaction costs and/or unknown liabilities; the possibility that the anticipated benefits from the proposed acquisition of Archer cannot be realized in full or at all or may take longer to realize than expected; risks associated with contracts containing consent and/or other provisions that may be triggered by the proposed acquisition of Archer; risks associated with transaction-related litigation; the possibility that costs or difficulties related to the integration of Archer's operations with those of Invitae will be greater than expected; the ability of companies individually and the combined company to retain and hire key personnel; Invitae's failure to manage growth effectively; Invitae's need to scale its infrastructure in advance of demand for its tests and to increase demand for its tests; Invitae's ability to use rapidly changing genetic data to interpret test results accurately and consistently; security breaches, loss of data and other disruptions; laws and regulations applicable to Invitae's business, and the risks and uncertainties set forth in Invitae's reports on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and other written statements made by Invitae from time to time. There can be no assurance that the proposed acquisition of Archer will in fact be consummated in the manner described or at all. Forward -looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and Invitae disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

NOTE: Invitae and the Invitae logo are trademarks of Invitae Corporation. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

In connection with the proposed transaction, Invitae will file with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4, which will include a document that serves as a proxy statement/prospectus of Invitae (the "proxy statement/prospectus"), and will file other documents regarding the proposed transaction with the SEC. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED WITH THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. A definitive proxy statement/prospectus will be sent to Invitae's stockholders when it becomes available. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain the registration statement and the proxy statement/prospectus free of charge from the SEC's website or from Invitae when it becomes available. The documents filed by Invitae with the SEC may be obtained free of charge at Invitae's website at www.invitae.com or at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. These documents may also be obtained free of charge from Invitae by requesting them by mail at Invitae Corporation, 1400 16th Street, San Francisco, California 94103, or by telephone at (415) 374-7782.

Participants in the Solicitation

Invitae and its directors and executive officers and other members of management and employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the proposed transaction. Information about Invitae's directors and executive officers is available in Invitae's proxy statement dated April 29, 2020 for its 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Other information regarding the participants in the proxy solicitation and a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be contained in the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials to be filed with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction when they become available. Stockholders, potential investors and other readers should read the proxy statement/prospectus carefully when it becomes available before making any voting or investment decisions. You may obtain free copies of these documents from Invitae as indicated above.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Cash burn is a non-GAAP measure, is not based on any standardized methodology prescribed by GAAP and is not necessarily comparable to similarly-titled measures presented by other companies. A limitation of using cash burn is that it does not represent the total change in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash for a period because it excludes cash provided by or used for other operating, investing or financing activities. Management accounts for this limitation by providing information about Invitae's historical operating, investing and financing activities in the statements of cash flows in the consolidated financial statements in its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and Annual Report on Form 10-K and by presenting net cash provided by (used in) operating, investing and financing activities as well as the net increase or decrease in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash in its reconciliation of cash burn with such financial statements.

Cash burn is calculated as net increase or decrease in cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash less (a) changes in marketable securities, (b) cash received from equity and debt financings, (c) cash received from exercises of warrants, (d) cash payments made for business acquisitions, and (e) changes in unrealized gains and losses on marketable securities. A reconciliation to GAAP has not been provided as the reconciliation could not reasonably be estimated.

Contact for Invitae:

Laura D'Angelo

[email protected]

(628) 213-3369

Contact for ArcherDX:

Andrea N. Flynn, Ph.D.

Investor Relations & Corporate Communications

[email protected]

1 El-Deiry, W., et al. The current state of molecular testing in the treatment of patients with solid tumors, 2019. Cancer J Clin. 2019;69(4): 305-343

2 Hyman DM, et al. Implementing Genome-Driven Oncology. Cell. 2017;168(4):584599

3 Benayed, R, et al. High yield of RNA sequencing for targetable kinase fusions in lung adenocarcinomas with no driver alteration detected by DNA sequencing and low tumor mutation burden. Clin Cancer Res. April 2019.

SOURCE Invitae Corporation

Related Links

www.invitae.com


There are only two other busts of Dr. Cigrand like this in the world, including one in Luxembourg and another in Waubeka, Wisconsin, where he was born, Church said. I was able to contact an associate of Mr. Calteux in Luxembourg and send the artist an email as we needed to get permission to copy the statue. I also found a woman living there who had been here in 2002 at the dedication and together, we were able to get the approval.
A Ghanaian identified as Suzanna Laar who visited Synagogue Church of All Nations in Ikotun has been declared missing.

The 54-year-old woman had visited the church, alongside her two sons, in search of healing over an ailment they claimed had defied medical treatment.

According to one of Laars children, John Wuni, they attended the church on Sunday, December 22, 2019 but couldnt stay for long because Laar became dizzy and slumped while waiting on a queue.

Wuni said, We arrived in Lagos on December 22, 2019 and checked into a hotel around Ikotun. My brother and I brought our mother to Synagogue for healing. That was the second time we would bring her to the church. The first time was in 2017 when she had spinal cord problem.



She fell sick again and it appeared to be spiritual. She could barely eat. We took her to different hospitals in Ghana but all the treatments given to her did not yield any positive results.

The same day we arrived, we went to the church. We were in a queued when my mother collapsed all of a sudden. Some church officials advised us to take her to our hotel room and we did.

We didnt take her to hospital because our efforts in the past had no positive impact. My brother stayed with her when we got to the hotel while I returned to the church for service.

Wuni, currently sheltered at Ghana Consulate in Lagos, explained that his brother went out to buy food but when he returned, his mother was nowhere to be found.

He said they looked for her around the neighbourhood to no avail, adding that the case was consequently reported at the Ikotun Police Station.

We later printed a poster and put my phone number on it. People called and told me they found her. They were asking for huge money to lead me to where she was. Someone told me he saw her around Victoria Island. I went there but didnt see her.

We reported the incident at the Ikotun Police Station but the police did not treat the case as I had expected, Wuni, 34, told Punch.

However, The Punch reported that the church (SCOAN) officials are yet to respond to calls regarding the matter.

But the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Bala Elkana, confirmed the development, noting that investigation had begun.

He said, We have commenced investigation into circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Meanwhile, we have declared her missing. Anyone with useful information on her whereabouts should contact the nearest police station please.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
FinishLine Tax Solutions Now is a very important time when it comes to tax filing, as the extended deadline of July 15 is drawing near, said Michael Avery, President of FinishLine Tax Solutions. We encourage all taxpayers who have yet to file their taxes to call our office immediately.

As the extended tax deadline of July 15 draws closer, Texas-based tax relief company FinishLine Tax Solutions has announced it is open for businesses to help taxpayers file their taxes by the deadline. Many taxpayers found relief when the IRS extended the filing deadline from April 15 to July 15, but FinishLine Tax Solutions understands that many taxpayers are in need of any potential tax refunds immediately. Therefore, FinishLine Tax Solutions is opening up its services to help those taxpayers in need.

Now is a very important time when it comes to tax filing, as the extended deadline of July 15 is drawing near, said Michael Avery, President of FinishLine Tax Solutions. We encourage all taxpayers who have yet to file their taxes to call our office immediately. We can help with tax preparation, tax filing and any tax relief options that may be necessary.

FinishLine Tax Solutions also offers free consultations for new customers. Their services include tax preparation for individuals and businesses. Additionally, they also specialize in state tax preparation and federal tax preparation. FinishLine Tax Solutions helps their clients file taxes they owe both to the federal government and the state.

While the tax filing deadline has already been pushed by the federal government from April 15, to July 15, a recent Fox News article published on June 12 notes that Representative Max Rose (D-N.Y.) is urging the IRS to extend the filing deadline to October 15. Rose cited the ongoing financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic on families and small businesses as the reason for requesting the tax filing deadline be pushed even further. The article goes on to note that Rose wrote the IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on June 12 requesting the updated July 15 tax deadline be extended to Oct. 15 without penalty because of limited revenues, lack of free tax preparation services and IRS backlogs.

The Fox News article notes that Rose said, [T]axpayers are distressed, and reasonably so.

The article went on to state that extending the deadline further would also allow the IRS to bring back more of their personnel, in a safe manner, to help process returns. While the IRS has not yet announced whether it will be moving its tax filing deadline to Oct. 15 per Roses request, FinishLine tax solutions urges taxpayers to file their taxes as soon as possible, and are therefore offering their services. FinishLine Tax Solution notes that as some taxpayers may be entitled to a refund, those funds could be used more now than ever.

For taxpayers who have filed their taxes but need help with tax relief services, the company also offers help with wage garnishment release, negotiating an Offer in Compromise deal, filing for an Installment Agreement, bank levy release, assistance with the IRS Fresh Start program, tax attorney help and more. FinishLine Tax Solutions is currently offering tax relief services and tax filing services to taxpayers across the country, with free consultations available for new clients. For more information, visit http://www.finishlinetaxsolutions.com, or call 855-950-2720.
'If the situation escalates, then mini-scale firing might happen.'

IMAGE: Indian Army trucks move along a highway leading to Ladakh at Gagangeer in Kashmir's Ganderbal district. Photograph: Imran Nissar/ANI Photo

"China is a suspect power and it cannot be trusted," Dr Jagannath P Panda -- research fellow and centre coordinator for East Asia at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses -- tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf in the concluding segment of a two-part interview.

Part 1: Why China wants the Galwan Valley

China asked India to punish those who started the Galwan clash from the Indian side.

The Chinese are in denial.

They are denying the truth to their public.

They are denying the truth to the South East Asian countries about the South China Sea and now here on the border issue too to India.

China is not a transparent country.

This comes through from the Chinese foreign ministry statement.

They are levelling accusations against India by stating that we are violating the ceasefire, but on the contrary the Chinese do not want to exchange maps of the LAC (Line of Actual Control) and they are putting the blame on India in order to maintain an upper edge politically or diplomatically.

Besides, they want to portray a picture to the Chinese people that how India is maintaining an aggressive posturing vis-a-vis China.

From Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, do all Chinese regimes consider India their enemy?

The Communist Party of China which rules China is non-transparent.

Xi Jinping may end corruption to some extent, but to finish off corruption in China is not easy because the entire framework, its leadership and rule is based on a corrupt framework, and based in an opaque manner.

They are non-transparent.

They are a suspect power and we have seen this in each president's time, whether it is Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao or Xi Jinping.

It continues to be a suspect power and will continue to be one.

When Xi came to power in 2013 everyone thought a new era would dawn, what with his ambitious One Belt One Road project etc. But now it looks like he is taking China back to Mao's era where China fought a war with India in 1962.

Xi Jinping wants to make a mark on the Chinese people that how strong China as a nation is (under him).

He is doing it because next year the CPC completes 100 years of formation.

He is doing it because he wants to show the people of China that the CPC is the ultimate party for China's future.

He is doing it because he is the chairman of the CPC, commander in chief of the PLA and the president of China.

Xi Jinping is no different from Mao Zedong.

In fact, Xi Jinping appears to be a weak leader.

The activities we see from the Chinese side in South China Sea and on the India-China border in recent years, these exhibit a sign of a weak leader who is failing to manage China's domestic governance issues effectively.

Why is India's road building at the LAC so worrisome for China?

Two things are bothering them.

One is the Bharatmala project of the Narendra Modi government.

We are building lots of roads and doing infrastructure work on the border.

Secondly, India is showing greater alignments with the USA and other democratic countries in Indo-Pacific.

A week back we upgraded our partnership with Australia to a 'comprehensive' one.

We signed the concerning militarily logistics agreement with Australia and the same have been done with the USA too earlier.

A military agreement, ACSA (the Acquisition and cross-servicing agreement), with Japan is pending.

These issues are bothering China.

Recently (US President Donald John) Trump invited India to be a part of the expanded G-7 network.

India is now taking on the chairman's post of the WHO.

India has also made it to the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member for the eighth time.

Then there is greater support from the Trump administration for India to take on a leadership role in the Indo-Pacific.

These issues are disturbing the Chinese government.

Does China want to send a message to the world that the Indian government is not as strong as it portrays itself to be?

They want to show it to the Chinese people, but they are making a mistake.

They are only pushing India to get closer to the US and its alliance framework.

Also, the Galwan incident may encourage to permanently give up any elements of non-alignment that existed in Indian foreign policy vis-a-vis China.

India have embedded a principle of strategic autonomy to multi-alignment in its foreign policy framework for long.

New Delhi would be revisiting these principles seriously post the Galwan incident.

Are we sending mixed signals to China by forming the QUAD (comprising the USA, Japan, Australia and India)?

As I said, China is a suspect power and it cannot be trusted.

They had shown their true colours in 1962 and many other smaller incidents to indicate that.

The Chinese are disturbed by the way India is rising as an Indo-Pacific power and building greater alignments with other democratic countries including the US.

The Chinese are unable to accept that the Indians have decided to align with the US and other countries in the Indo-Pacific configuration.

Won't Chinese business interests in India be affected by their actions on the border?

That is one aspect.

China is aware that India cannot ban Chinese goods completely because there are many ways to send Chinese goods to India through the third channels.

It is difficult for India to stop that.

They have figured that out and therefore they are acting in the way they are currently acting on the border.

There are illegal markets and illegal trading that happens on our north-eastern borders or third country channels for Chinese goods to come to India.

Both sides say their troops have disengaged at Galwan. Do you feel the Chinese will walk out of Indian territory, if at all they have occupied any?

As far as the current crisis is concerned the situation will calm down.

I don't think there will be a war-like situation.

But if the situation escalates, then mini-scale firing might happen.

A smaller version of a Kargil kind of incident might happen between India and China.

Eventually, the Chinese will come to terms and have a much more dialogue-oriented partnership with India as that will be best for their bilateral interests.
Sturgeon, a long-lived, bottom-dwelling fish, are often described as "living fossils," owing to the fact that their form has remained relatively constant, despite hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

In a new study in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers led by Jack Stack, a 2019 University of Pennsylvania graduate, and paleobiologist Lauren Sallan of Penn's School of Arts & Sciences, closely examine the ancient fish species Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri, which lived around 300 million years ago in an estuary environment in what is today New Mexico. Although they find the fish to be highly similar to sturgeons in its features, including its protruding snout, they show that these characteristics evolved in a distinct evolutionary path from those species that gave rise to modern sturgeons.

The find indicates that, although ancient, the features that enabled Tanyrhinichthys to thrive in its environment arose multiple times in different fish lineages, a burst of innovation that was not previously fully appreciated for fish in this time period.

"Sturgeon are considered a 'primitive' species, but what we're showing is that the sturgeon lifestyle is something that's been selected for in certain conditions and has evolved over and over again," says Sallan, senior author on the work.

"Fish are very good at finding solutions to ecological problems," says Stack, first author on the study, who worked on the research as a Penn undergraduate and is now a graduate student at Michigan State University. "This shows the degree of both innovation and convergence that's possible in fishes. Once their numbers got up large enough, they started producing brand new morphologies that we now see have evolved numerous times through the history of fishes, under similar ecological conditions. "

The first fossil of Tanyrhinichthys was found in 1984 in a fossil-rich area called the Kinney Brick Quarry, about a half hour east of Albuquerque. The first paleontologist to describe the species was Michael Gottfried, a Michigan State faculty member who now serves as Stack's advisor for his master's degree.

advertisement

"The specimen looks like someone found a fish and just pulled on the front of its skull," Stack says. Many modern fish species, from the swordfish to the sailfish, have protuberant snouts that extend out in front of them, often aiding in their ability to lunge at prey. But this characteristic is much rarer in ancient fishes. In the 1980s when Gottfried described the initial specimen, he posited that the fish resembled a pike, an ambush predator with a longer snout.

During the last decade, however, several more specimens of Tanyrhinichthys have been found in the same quarry. "Those finds were an impetus for this project, now that we had better information on this enigmatic and strange fish," Stack says.

At the time that Tanyrhinichthys roamed the waters, Earth's continents were joined in the massive supercontinent called Pangea, surrounded by a single large ocean. But it was an ice age as well, with ice at both poles. Just before this period, the fossil record showed that ray-finned fishes, which now dominate the oceans, were exploding in diversity. Yet 300 million years ago, "it was like someone hit the pause button," Sallan says. "There's an expectation that there would be more diversity, but not much has been found, likely owing to the fact that there just hasn't been enough work on this time period, especially in the United States, and particularly in the Western United States."

Aiming to fill in some of these gaps by further characterizing Tanyrhinichthys, Stack, Sallan, and colleagues closely examined the specimens in detail and studied other species that dated to this time period. "This sounds really simple, but it's obviously difficult in execution," Stack notes, as fossils are compressed flat when they are preserved. The researchers inferred a three-dimensional anatomy using the forms of modern fishes to guide them.

What they noticed cast doubt on the conception of Tanyrhinichthys as resembling a pike. While a pike has an elongated snout with its jaws at the end of it, allowing it to rush its prey head-on, Tanyrhinichthys has an elongated snout with its jaws at the bottom.

advertisement

"The whole form of this fish is similar to other bottom dwellers," Stack says. Sallan also noticed canal-like structures on its snout concentrated in the top of its head, suggestive of the locations where sensory organs would attach. "These would have detected vibrations to allow the fish to consume its prey," says Sallan.

The researchers noted that many of the species that dwelled in similar environments possessed longer snouts, which Sallan called "like an antenna for your face."

"This also makes sense because it was an estuary environment," Sallan says, "with large rivers feeding into it, churning up the water, and making it murky. Rather than using your eyesight, you have to use these other sensory organs to detect prey."

Despite this, other features of the different ancient fishes' morphology were so different from Tanyrhinichthys that they do not appear to have shared a lineage with one another, nor do modern sturgeon descend from Tanyrhinichthys. Instead the long snouts appear to be an example of convergent evolution, or many different lineages all arriving at the same innovation to adapt well to their environment.

"Our work, and paleontology in general, shows that the diversity of life forms that are apparent today has roots that extend back into the past," says Stack.
Four ISIS camps have been obliterated in a series of airstrikes which killed nine fugitive jihadists in Iraq.

Aircraft belonging to the US-led coalition took out a gang of terrorists in a rural part of Iraq which is a 'known hiding place' for ISIS supporters, the US military said.

Five terrorists died when three camps were destroyed in Wadi al-Shai on Friday while a second strike wiped out four extremists in a 'cave' in Ninewah, officials said.

ISIS lost its last patch of territory in March 2019 but some of its loyalists are still hiding in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Syria.

US Army spokesman Myles B. Caggins said ISIS followers were being left 'dazed and disillusioned' as their leaders were captured and killed.

Caggins said the ISIS hideout in Ninewah had been 'blasted' by coalition jets 'at the request' of the Iraqi military last Friday.

In Wadi al-Shai, three camps were destroyed after the jihadists were tracked down in 'densely-vegetated austere terrain'.

Terrorists have been pushed into the wilderness because Iraqi citizens refuse to harbour them in places recently liberated from ISIS control, the US military says.

Coalition airstrikes 'help destroy ISIS targets in terrain difficult to reach by standard vehicles,' Caggins said of the Wadi al-Shai strike.

'Blowing up ISIS hideouts in bucolic locations ultimately results in security in cities and villages,' he said.

Each airstrike 'is conducted at the request of the Government of Iraq to help achieve a permanent defeat of Daesh,' he said, using another name for ISIS.

Five ISIS terrorists died when three camps were destroyed by a coalition airstrike in Wadi al-Shai in rural Iraq on Friday (pictured)

Three camps were destroyed after the jihadists were tracked down in 'densely-vegetated austere terrain' (pictured), following the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2019

Caggins told military website Stars and Stripes that five ISIS militants were believed dead after the Wadi al-Shai strike while another four were killed in Nineveh.

An F-15E Eagle fighter jet carried out the strikes in Wadi al-Shai, he added.

The US military warned that more ISIS leaders and operatives were still hiding in the desert after their 'safe havens' were destroyed.

The coalition says it has also 'significantly disrupted and degraded ISIS propaganda operations, finance, and human trafficking networks'.

The terror group's supposed 'caliphate' crumbled to nothing when its last enclave of Baghouz fell to US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria last March.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi subsequently died during a US raid in Syria in October 2019.

Thousands of men, women and children linked to ISIS are being held in prisons and detention camps in northern Syria, sparking periodic fears of a breakout.

Former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured during his only public appearance in 2014) died during a US raid in Syria in October 2019

Many European countries have been reluctant to bring home citizens of theirs who left for the Middle East to join ISIS.

Europeans comprise a fifth of the roughly 10,000 ISIS fighters held captive in Syria by Kurdish militias, it is believed.

US officials warned earlier this year that ISIS was continuing low-level attacks and had not lost its 'freedom of movement or ability to hide and transport fighters and supplies in Iraq's desert and mountainous terrain.'

The continued US presence in Iraq came under pressure earlier this year amid tensions over the American air strike which killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Iraqs parliament voted in January for the departure of foreign troops from the country, and the US says it will 'continue reducing forces from Iraq'.

Western military trainers are expected to remain in Iraq to assist the fight against ISIS, but it is not clear how many.

The United States has had around 5,000 troops stationed in the country, and coalition allies another 2,500.
The seventh court hearing in the MH17 trial began with the speeches of Dutch lawyers representing one of the four suspects, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Oleg Pulatov.

As an Ukrinform own correspondent in The Hague reports, the first speaker was lawyer Boudewijn van Eijck from the Sjocrona Van Stigt law firm.

He questioned the results of the investigation. "Is this file reliable enough to make a decision?" the lawyer asked the court.

He also stressed that the investigation took a lot of effort and time, which cannot help but cause admiration, but expressed doubts about the proof of criminal guilt.

"However, the number of studies does not guarantee success. There were many obstacles. In particular, no studies were conducted at the crash site. Experts could not work there for almost four months. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that some evidence was lost or fabricated," the lawyer said.

According to him, the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) at its press conferences did not pay enough attention to other possible versions of the tragedy, except the one that MH17 was downed by a Buk missile.

"The prosecutor's office always wanted to follow this scenario. They showed nothing more to the media. They didn't turn to witnesses who might want to tell about other scenarios. The defense wants to hear many more witnesses," said lawyer Boudewijn van Eijck.

He also noted that the defense wanted more attention to be paid to the so-called "military aircraft scenario."

After a 15-minute break, Dutch lawyer Sabine Ten Doesschate took the floor. The defense believes that the "military aircraft scenario" was rejected too quickly, and showed Russia Todays news story in the courtroom. People, who call themselves witnesses and experts, claim in the news story that they saw a military plane.

"We want to hear all these witnesses, as well as the journalists who filmed them," the defense noted.

As reported, the seventh court hearing in the MH17 trial started at the Schiphol Judicial Complex in the Netherlands on June 22 at 10:00 local time.

In March this year, the District Court of The Hague began the consideration of the case of the downing of flight MH17 in the sky over Donbas.

On June 19, 2019, the international Joint Investigation Team named four suspects believed to be involved in the transportation and combat use of the Buk missile system, from which MH17 flight had been downed. Three of them are Russians: Igor Girkin (Strelkov), former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service and former so-called defense minister of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic"; Sergey Dubinskiy, general (at the time of downing  colonel) of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and head of the so-called "Main Intelligence Directorate of the Donetsk Peoples Republic"; Oleg Pulatov, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The fourth suspect is Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian civilian, who fought on the side of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic."

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over conflict-hit Donbas in July 2014. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All of them died. The JIT reported that the plane had been shot down from a Buk missile system that belongs to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces stationed in Kursk.

ol
MMA Ive never seen anywhere else you can get a series with all these thinkers putting forth their ideas or a community to discuss and debate, said Norman de Greve, CMO of CVS Health. Everyone who sees themselves as marketing strategists at companies of any size must participate.

MMA Global, the industry organization dedicated to driving modern marketing and shaping the future, has created the definitive opportunity to debate which growth strategy is best for each marketer. In a content series beginning this month that its calling The Great Marketing Growth Debate the MMA will give the opportunity for each architect of the four most highly regarded frameworks to share in a series of presentations and debates, their inherent opportunities and challenges for marketers. Any marketer, regardless of size, industry or goal, should participate in the series, since its vital each marketer understand these core principles.

Ive never seen anywhere else you can get a series with all these thinkers putting forth their ideas or a community to discuss and debate, said Norman de Greve, CMO of CVS Health. Everyone who sees themselves as marketing strategists at companies of any size must participate.

This comes at a time when marketing is needed more than ever to restart the growth engine that will get the U.S. and global economies roaring again. With CMO tenure at its shortest in modern history, this series of eight virtual meetings will dive deeply into four major marketing growth frameworks, each of which will be presented by their creators:

Dr. Peter Fader, PhD, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania



Professor of Marketing & Co-Director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative

Co-founder of predictive analytics firm Zodiac in 2015, which was acquired by Nike in 2018

Author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and Coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook

Named by Advertising Age in 2017 as one of its inaugural 25 Marketing Technology Trailblazers, and was the only academic included on the list.

Dr. Dominique Hanssens, PhD, UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management

Distinguished Research Professor of Marketing and Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he has also served as the Faculty Chair and Associate Dean as well as holding the position of Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Winner of multiple awards including the AMA Churchill Lifetime Achievement Award, AMA Mahajan Award for Career Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Buck Weaver Award.

Founding partner of MarketShare, a global marketing analytics firm, sold to Neustar for $450m

Author of Long-Term Impact of Marketing: A Compendium and several award winning research papers

Dr. Byron Sharp, PhD, University of South Australia

Professor of Marketing and Board member at the Wharton SEI Center's Future of Advertising project

Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the worlds largest center for research into marketing, leading a team of 50+ marketing scientists

Author of How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know voted one of the most influential marketing books of the past decade by WARC & marketing book of the year by AdAge. The book boasts a 4.5 star rating on Amazon

He has written over 100 papers and articles published in leading business and marketing journals.

Joel Rubinson, MBA, President Rubinson Partners, Inc

Faculty at NYU Stern School of Business

Former Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation and Marketing Attribution expert

Founder of Rubinson Partners, Inc. with clients including Viant, Coca-Cola, AOL, Unilever, General Mills and comScore.

Published author of numerous papers in professional journals and white papers regarding brand growth and marketing effectiveness

Three debates, featuring marketers, analytics experts, and finally, CMOs, to assess which framework offers the most effective path to sustainable growth and under what conditions, will follow the four framework presentations. These vital conversations aim to answer basic fundamental questions around the marketing discipline, including:

Should brands go broad to maximize consumer penetration, or focus on existing consumers and even high lifetime value consumers?

Does having a short-term focus really mortgage the future of a brand or can it build brands in a different way?

How should media plans balance investments across media channels? Should plans focus more on their effectiveness or their ability to deliver reach?

Is it better to target a smaller segment of heavier buyers or solve for reach against the entire market?

Are brand loyalty goals and loyalty programs a waste of time and money or a key part of a total marketing plan?

How do these answers apply to my business and under what conditions?

Leading tech, measurement and analytics firm Neustar, which helps marketers optimize and execute their strategies, is partnering with the MMA to provide its expertise as the marketing science advisor on The Great Marketing Growth Debate series.

Its shocking to me when I find marketers that are not intimately familiar with these benchmark theories on achieving marketing growth or that they havent proven which is best for their business, said Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA Global, and a longtime marketer himself. Lack of knowledge of these frameworks, sadly, contributes to the lack of respect that marketers suffer from too often in their companies and why CMO tenure is shorter than ever. The MMA Board is excited to provide forums for capturing a deeper understanding of these growth frameworks and to put them to use exactly when the global economy needs to spark back to life.

Already, some of marketings biggest names are throwing their support and participation into The Great Marketing Growth Debate series.

Effective marketers need to know these frameworks and apply them to their business and marketing strategy, added Lou Paskalis, Senior VP, Customer Engagement and Media Investment at Bank of America. Ironically, the discipline of marketing is often viewed as undisciplined and the Great Marketing Growth Debate series is one step in overcoming that.

The first webinar with Dr. Peter Fader will be moderated by Joanna OConnell, VP/Principal Analyst, Forrester. For more information or to register visit: http://www.mmaglobal.com/thegreatdebate2020.

This initiative was developed as a part of MMAs Marketing Attribution Think Tank (MATT), which includes analytics leads from over 80 major marketers and aligns to the MMAs mission of enabling marketers to drive enduring business value.

About the MMA:

Comprised of over 800-member companies globally and 14 regional offices, the MMA is the only marketing trade association that brings together the full ecosystem of marketers, tech providers and sellers working collaboratively to architect the future of marketing, while relentlessly delivering growth today. Anchoring the MMAs mission are four core pillars; to cultivate inspiration by driving innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for marketing organizations through fostering know-how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and to advocate for mobile marketers.

Members include: 1-800-Flowers.com, Adobe, Allstate, Ally Financial, American Eagle, American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, Calvin Klein, Campbells, Carbon, JPMorgan Chase, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chobani, Choice Hotels, Clear Channel Outdoor, Colgate Palmolive, Cuebiq, CVS Health, Dunkin Brands, eBay, E*TRADE, ESPN, Estee Lauder, Facebook, Ford, Foursquare, General Motors Company, Google, GSK, Hilton Worldwide, IBM Watson, Jumpshot, Kellogg Company, LinkedIn, LOreal, Marriott International, Match Group, Mastercard, McDonalds, MillerCoors, Monster, NBCU, Pandora, Pinterest, PlaceIQ, Salesforce, Samsung, Snap Inc., SUBWAY, Target Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, T- Mobile, Turner Broadcasting, Twitter, Uber, Unilever, Verizon Media Group, Verizon Connect, Vibes, Walmart, Waze and many more. The MMAs global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and Latin America (LATAM). For more information see http://www.mmaglobal.com.

Media Contacts:

Sheryl Daija

Chief Strategy Officer

917-287-6140

sheryl.daija@mmaglobal.com
An airman accused of murdering his infant son admitted during a 3.5-hour-long interview with Rapid City police officers to knowing it was wrong to hit the child after becoming angry, a prosecutor with the Ellsworth Air Force Base said Monday. The airman also allegedly said he was surprised that it didn't seem to cause more damage when he struck the child.

There is no lawful reason for a grown man to hit a five-month-old, Capt. Anna Sturges of the bases legal office said during an Article 32 preliminary and probable cause hearing at the base.

James Cunningham, 26, is charged with murdering his son under the Uniform Code of Military Justice after the baby died after he allegedly hit him in the head at their Rapid City home in March.

Cunningham, dressed in green military fatigues, appeared calm during the 45-minute hearing but looked down at the desk as Sturges went over the details of his confession.

A judge advocate will decide at a later date whether there is probable cause to refer the case to a court martial, or the formal trial phase.

Cunningham was arrested and charged March 3 by the Rapid City Police Department with aggravated child abuse for punching the baby in the head. The Pennington County States Attorney Office upgraded the charge to second-degree murder when the infant died nine days later after being airlifted for treatment at a hospital in Sioux Falls.

The Air Force can take jurisdiction over cases involving airmen even if the crime occurred off base, Roetzel said. The office consented to the transfer because it's already crunched for time due to coronavirus-related furloughs.

The Air Force works towards maximizing jurisdiction over our airmen, Lt. Joshua Sinclair, an Ellsworth spokesman, said when asked why the Air Force wanted the case.

Cunningham would have faced a mandatory punishment of life without parole if convicted of murder under South Dakota law. He now faces a maximum punishment of life in prison without parole, a dishonorable discharge, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and forfeiture of all pay.

The airman is being held at the Ellsworth jail and if convicted would serve time in a military prison.

The hearing

The hearing occurred in a hexagon-shaped courtroom at the bases legal office. It looked like the typical civilian courtroom except the Air Force flag flew across from the U.S. flag and the defendant, prosecutors and defense lawyers were all dressed in combat uniforms rather than suits. The victim's mother and a few other people sat in the audience area.

The proceeding was overseen by Lt. Col. Andrew Norton, a judge advocate who appeared on a video screen from the Air Force headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Norton began the hearing by explaining Cunninghams rights, which are similar to defendants rights in civilian courts: the right against self-incrimination, to remain silent and be provided a defense lawyer.

Cunningham sat between two court-appointed defense lawyers who are captains from Air Force bases in San Antonio, Texas, and Minot, North Dakota.

Sturges provided Norton with the infants March 3 medical records from Monument Health and his March 13 autopsy. She said the medical records say the baby suffered non-accidental trauma while the autopsy listed his death as a homicide.

The prosecutor also sent Norton a video of Cunninghams March 3 interview with the Rapid City Police Department and police and military reports that summarize key statements from the recording.

Sturges said the confession proves Cunningham intended to kill or inflict great bodily harm and/or engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to another and evinces a wanton disregard of human life  two of the four actions that can constitute murder under military law.

Cunningham told officers that he knew what he did was wrong and that he hit his child after a period of growing frustration and anger, Sturges said. She did not say if Cunningham explained what he was angry about.

Sturges said Cunningham also told officers that his baby smiled after being hit, he was surprised the infant didnt appear injured at first, and that the baby later had trouble moving and eating.

The fact that Cunningham was surprised the baby was initially OK shows he knew he hit him in a dangerous way, Sturges said.

The defense lawyers did not present any evidence and its unclear when the judge will make a decision on the probable cause.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the victim's mother attended the hearing.

 Contact Arielle Zionts at arielle.zionts@rapidcityjournal.com.

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Made Anthony Iswara (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 17:14 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b6c20 1 National #Indonesia,Indonesia,refugees,#refugees,UNHCR,#UNHCR Free

World Refugee Day, which occurred on June 20, has provided an opportunity for activists to urge the government to do more to uphold the human rights of refugees, most of whom arrive in Indonesia seeking resettlement in third countries.

Activists have pointed out that Indonesia is part of many international and regional human rights conventions to ensure the rights of refugees, even though the government did not sign the 1951 Refugee Convention, which obliges members to take in and take care of refugees.

Indonesia is party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and others rights agreements.

The government can and should do better, said Zico Pestalozzi of the Indonesian Civil Society Association for the Protection of Refugee Rights (SUAKA) on Monday.

And this is not only for the benefit of refugees but also the government itself. Seeing the refugee as the problem is the problem.

Zicos appeal echoed the desires of thousands of refugees who have long been struggling to obtain better access to basic rights in Indonesia as they wait to be resettled in other countries, usually after fleeing conflict or persecution in their home countries.

Indonesia was hosting 13,534 refugees as of May, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR).

We do not have the right to get a formal education, to do legal work or to travel to any place in Indonesia, said Afghanistan-born refugee Sikandar Ali during a recent virtual public discussion.

Read also: UNHCR works to ensure no refugees left behind in COVID-19 crisis in Indonesia

With no domestic law to regulate refugees, Indonesia issued a presidential regulation in 2016 to provide legal certainty and standards for government agencies to coordinate the handling of refugees. The government has also formed a refugee task force to mitigate refugee issues in Indonesia.

The 2016 regulation, however, requires international organizations, such as the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to be central in the provision of basic needs for refugees, such as clean water, food, clothing, health care and hygiene.

Civil society groups have said the regulation establishes bureaucratic processes rather than protections for refugee rights.

Roswita Kristy of the Indonesia Jesuit Refugee Service said refugees in the country had not been included in the governments COVID-19 response program. She said the government had provided refugees little access to information about the outbreak. Instead, they had to rely on nongovernmental organizations to translate information about the disease into their languages.

Globally, nearly 80 million people worldwide, or 1 percent of humanity, had been uprooted at the end of 2019 after fleeing wars or persecution, with fewer and fewer of those who fled able to return home, a UNHCR report released on Thursday found.

We need a fundamentally new and more accepting attitude towards all who flee, coupled with a much more determined drive to unlock conflicts that go on for years and that are at the root of such immense suffering, UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

Read also: Record 79.5 million displaced at year-end despite COVID slowing exodus: UN

Foreign Ministry director for human rights Achsanul Habib said Indonesia had gone the extra mile in handling refugees even though it had no international obligation to do so, citing efforts to provide shelters to Rohingya refugees as an example.

He said several signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention had begun gradually to neglect their responsibility to accommodate refugees. Therefore, he said, if Indonesia ratified the convention, it would have to bear the burden of those countries in addition to its own problems.

Are we ready to take on [such a responsibility]? Achsanul said.

Last year, the Medan Education Agency in North Sumatra worked with the IOM to allow refugee children to enroll in the state school system. A similar program has also been adopted in Pekanbaru, Riau.

Read also: Rohingya refugees rejected everywhere as countries grapple with COVID-19 concerns

Some refugees have taken the initiative themselves. For instance, refugees in Cisarua, West Java, have been running a learning center since 2014 to educate adults and children. The center is now holding workshops online because the COVID-19 pandemic has forced in-person sessions to stop.

Another refugee-led community center known as Sisterhood is offering online classes for female refugees. These include English, aerobics and knitting classes.

Somalian refugee Nimo Ali, who serves as Sisterhoods activity design manager, said the organization had distributed basic food supplies to refugees and their Indonesian neighbors. This, she said, had helped them earn mutual respect.

Nimo recalled that she was initially shocked when strangers called her names, such as orang luar negeri (outsider) or orang hitam (dark-skinned person).

Bad nicknames aside, they are nice people and have good hearts, she said. Now our nickname has changed to a sweet one. Now, I am hitam manis [sweet dark-skinned person].
Indian commanders today pushed for Chinese withdrawal at a tense summit over the disputed Himalayan border after the first deadly clash in 45 years.

The commanders met in Moldo, on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control, a line drawn through the barren mountains after India's crushing defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

Delhi said 20 of its soldiers were killed by Chinese troops wielding nail-studded clubs during a barbaric three-hour battle in the Galwan Valley last Monday.

The dispute led to calls for boycotts of Chinese goods and investment proposals from Chinese firms worth 530 million have been put on hold.

Scroll down for video.

An Indian fighter jet flies over a mountain range near Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh, close to the Himalayan border with China on Monday

Activists of Bharatiya Janta Party's (BJP) Youth Wing shout slogans as they burn a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping, with a garland of shoes put around it, during a protest against China, in Amritsar on Monday

This is the Galwan valley where the brawl between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place. The unofficial border between the two countries runs through the middle of the photo on the dotted red line. Chinese bulldozers appear to have been diverting the river on the right of the photo, on their side of the border

An Indian government source said today's meeting lasted several hours, with the Indian side pushing China to withdraw its troops back to where they were in April.

Activists of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spray black paint on a poster depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping during an anti-China protest in Amritsar on Monday

China, in previous rounds of talks, had asked India to stop all construction work in what it says is Chinese territory.

Soldiers fought with rocks, metal rods and wooden clubs during last week's vicious skirmish, the culmination of a month long standoff.

China has not disclosed how many casualties it suffered, though an Indian minister has said around 40 Chinese soldiers may have been killed.

Many died after being knocked unconscious and plunging into the frigid glacial waters of the Galwan River.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a briefing in Beijing on Monday that the two sides were in communication through diplomatic and military channels.

Many in India have called for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist government to show it will not be bullied, remembering their country's humiliation in a brief border war against China in 1962.

Members of an Indian traders' body made a bonfire of Chinese goods at a market in New Delhi, pushing for a nationwide boycott of products made in China.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which represents some 70 million traders, has asked federal and state governments to support a boycott of Chinese goods and cancel government contracts awarded to Chinese companies.

'The entire nation is filled with extreme anger and intensity to give a strong befitting response to China not only militarily but also economically,' CAIT National General Secretary Praveen Khandelwal wrote in a letter to chief ministers of some Indian states.

In prosperous Maharashtra, the government said it was putting three investment plans, including from Great Wall Motor Co, on hold.

'In the current environment we will wait for the federal government to announce a clear policy regarding these projects,' industries minister Subhash Desai said.

China is India's second-biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade worth $87 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2019, and a trade deficit of $53.57 billion in China's favour, the widest India has with any country.

Indian army convoy moves along the national Highway leading towards Ladakh, June 18

The brawl in part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier was the deadliest in 45 years

The editor-in-chief of China's Global Times newspaper warned that the 'nationalists of India need to cool down'.

'China's GDP is five times that of India, military spending is three times,' Global Times editor Hu Xijin said in a post on Twitter.

The Global Times is published by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party.
President Donald Trumps comments about coronavirus testing drew fire from some member of New Jerseys congressional delegation, who have been critical of the federal government for not doing enough to address the pandemic.

At a campaign rally in Oklahoma Saturday night, Trump said the there was a correlation between an increase in coronavirus cases and increased testing.

Testing is a double-edged sword, Trump said. Heres the bad part: When you test to that extent, youre going to find more people, youre going to find more cases. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please.

White House aide Peter Navarro on Sunday insisted Trump was joking, but members of N.J.s congressional delegation said the comments were telling.

The president has never taken the coronavirus seriously, said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-6th Dist. He keeps saying you dont have to close anything, you dont have to take a test. Its outrageous the way he treats this as if it was a big joke or some kind of scam.

You know that was tongue in cheek, Navarro said on CNNs State of the Union. Come on now. Come on now. That was tongue in cheek, please.

But Rep. Andy Kim, D-3rd Dist., said the comments explained a lot.

Back in March, after the first two government-run drive-in testing centers were overrun, Kim led a delegation request for a third site to be located in South Jersey as New Jersey was experiencing more cases than any other state but New York.

We were not testing at the level that we needed to, Kim said. We were surging in terms of the virus and we didnt know how bad it was. There was absolutely no way we were close to what we needed.

Three weeks later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said no. Kim said he was told that the White House nixed it. Now, he said, he believes he knows why.

When I hear the president say that, Kim said, it certainly sounds like theres a connection there.

When I requested FEMA to stand up a Coronavirus test site in South Jersey they told me the White House said no. Now we know why. https://t.co/dUm6SC1Nkc  RepAndyKim (@RepAndyKimNJ) June 21, 2020

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez said he will take Trump at his word.

I believe Donald Trump when he says he slowed the testing, said Menendez, D-NJ. Its the only way to explain this administrations level of incompetence  it had to be deliberate.

Trump has insisted that testing remains a state responsibility with federal help, and the federal government has failed to put together a comprehensive national system congressional Democrats have been clamoring for.

Our nations inability to test adequately is Trumps deliberate failure and Americans are dead and dying still because of it, said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The White House provided an additional 550,000 testing kits and 750,000 swabs to New Jersey in May after Gov. Phil Murphy met with Trump at the White House, allowing the state to expand its testing capacity as it began reopening.

Congress provided $25 billion for testing in April and required the Trump administration to develop a national plan, and House Democrats added $75 billion more in its latest $3 trillion stimulus bill.

Pallone said he is still waiting for the Trump administration to take the lead on testing.

We have tried repeatedly to have a national testing plan, a national supply chain, Pallone said. He wants to put all the responsibility for medical supplies, testing, everything on the states. That is absurd because the states cant do it on their own.

Menendez said extensive testing is crucial if the economy is ever going to recover.

We must have a national testing and contact tracing plan in place to contain the virus and give consumers the confidence they need that its safe to return to work, shop in our stores, dine in our restaurants and visit the town square, he said.

By deliberately slowing and sabotaging our nations pandemic response, this administration is costing American lives and further damaging our economy.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday again targetted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his statement that Chinese troops did not intrude into the Indian territory and asked 'why is China praising PM Modi during this conflict?

Sharing a newspaper article on Twitter which quotes Communist party-run Global Times, the Congress leader wrote: China killed our soldiers. China took our land. Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict?"

Earlier, on Sunday, Gandhi had called PM Modi 'Surender Modi'.

Sharing an international daily's article titled 'India's appeasement policy toward China unravels' on Twitter, the Congress leader wrote: "Narendra Modi Is actually Surender Modi".

The Congress leader's reaction seemingly comes in response to the Prime Minister's statement in the all-party meeting on Friday wherein he said that "neither is anyone inside our territory nor have any of our posts been captured".

The central government had on Sunday said that attempts are being made in to give mischievous interpretation to remarks of the Prime Minister at the all-party meeting, countering Rahul Gandhi`s claim that India "surrendered to the Chinese aggression".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, after an all-party meeting on Friday about the LAC row with China, said that Chinese troops did not intrude into the Indian territory.

The Central government, in a statement, said that the Prime Minister was clear that India would respond firmly to any attempts to transgress the Line of Actual Control (LAC).Twenty Indian soldiers lost their lives in the face-off in Galwan Valley on June 15-16.

It happened as a result of an attempt by the Chinese troops to unilaterally change the status quo during the de-escalation in eastern Ladakh.

Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured in the violent clash.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:17:09|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Two people were shot dead and 12 others injured at an impromptu block party early Monday in Charlotte, the largest city in southern U.S. state of North Carolina, local authorities said.

Among the 12 injured, seven were hurt in the party shooting, while five others were hit by vehicles afterwards, according to the police.

"Several shooters discharged dozens of shots into the crowd," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a statement. Enditem
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on Monday became the first Indian company to touch a market capitalisation of $150 billion buoyed by a steady rally in its share price. RIL's valuation zoomed Rs 28,248.97 crore to Rs 11,43,667 crore ($150 billion) on the BSE in the early trade. The scrip surged 2.53 per cent to an all time high of Rs 1,804.10 on the BSE. On the NSE, the shares jumped by 2.54 per cent to a record high of Rs 1,804.20. Shares of RIL were trading at Rs 1,762.00, or up 2.50 points, or 0.14 per cent on BSE at the time of reporting. So far this year, the company's stock has gained over 19 per cent. On Friday, RIL had become the first Indian company to cross the Rs 11 lakh crore market valuation mark.

RIL's market valuation crossed Rs 11 lakh crore in the previous session as its share price rallied over 6 per cent after chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani announced that his oil-to-telecom conglomerate had become net debt-free. Ambani announced that RIL had become net debt-free after raising a record Rs 1.69 lakh crore from global investors and a rights issue in under two months.

RIL raised Rs 1.15 lakh crore from global tech investors by selling a little less than a quarter of the firm's digital arm, Jio Platforms, and another Rs 53,124.20 crore through a rights issue in the past 58 days. Taken together with last year's sale of 49 per cent stake in fuel retailing venture to BP Plc of UK for Rs 7,000 crore, the total fund raised is in excess of Rs 1.75 lakh crore, the company said.

Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani today became the ninth richest person in the world after the share price of the company hit the Rs 1,800 mark for the first time. On the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the real-time net worth of Mukesh Ambani climbed to $64.5 billion, a rise of $4.18 billion compared to the previous day.

Ambani has now surpassed Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. and France's Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the wealthiest woman, making him the only Asian tycoon in the exclusive club of the world's top 10 richest people.

Also read: Mukesh Ambani becomes 9th richest person after RIL share hits fresh high

Also read: Petrol price nears Rs 80 in Delhi, diesel at all-time high
Juan Lopez Chaparro came to Canada from Mexico this spring, as he had every year for a decade, to provide for his family back home by working on a farm.

Chaparro, who was employed at Scotlynn Groups farm in Vittoria, died on Saturday at University Hospital in London after a battle with COVID-19, according to the Migrant Rights Network.

A worker from Scotlynn had been transferred from Norfolk to London earlier this month to receive what Norfolk General Hospital interim CEO Tom Thomson described as a higher level of care. At Fridays board of health meeting, Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, Haldimand-Norfolks chief medical officer of health, described this workers condition as desperately ill.

Chaparro, 55, is survived by his wife and four children. He is the third migrant farmworker from Mexico to die of COVID-19 in Ontario, following Bonifacio Eugenio Romero and Rogelio Santos Munoz, who worked on farms in the Windsor area.

Advocates are calling for more rights for migrant workers in light of what they describe as widespread problems on Canadian farms, including having workers living in cramped and unhygienic quarters that allow for illness to spread.

Migrant farm workers know that a single COVID-19 infection on a farm puts them all in immediate danger, but they cannot risk speaking out because they do not have permanent resident status, said Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The outbreak at Scotlynn started in late May and spread quickly among the farms six affected bunkhouses. The health unit says 199 of 216 migrant workers have tested positive, along with 18 other people connected to the farm.

Thirteen workers have been hospitalized, with at least three spending time in the intensive care unit, including Chaparro. One worker remains in the ICU while another has returned to the farm, Nesathurai said.

The Scotlynn outbreak is proof that physical distancing and infection control is not possible in bunkhouse situations, Dr. Ella Haley, a migrant worker advocate and Brant County farmer, told the board of health.

Haley called the outbreaks predictable and pushed for change.

We need to try harder to protect the health and lives of our neighbours and friends, the migrant farm workers, she said. These are your residents, and they are among the most vulnerable.

The Mexican government put a halt on its citizens going to Canada to work on farms in the wake of the deaths in Windsor and roughly 630 positive cases among migrant workers in Ontario. But on Sunday, Mexico said workers could resume travel after Ottawa agreed to conduct more surprise inspections of farms housing migrant workers and improve health and working conditions, including cracking down on non-compliant farms.

In Canada, anyone doing work, let alone essential work as part of our food chain, needs to feel protected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday.

Obviously in the case of these three tragic deaths, that wasnt the case, and we are ensuring changes are made and there will be consequences.

Norfolk Mayor Kristal Chopp, who chairs the board of health, has said that Scotlynn followed all the rules regarding quarantining migrant farm workers upon their arrival to Canada.

Chopp called Chaparros death an absolute tragedy.

J.P. Antonaccis reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows him to report on stories about the regions of Haldimand and Norfolk.

Read more about:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 09:48:20|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WINDHOEK, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The High Commission of India in Namibia staged an online yoga session on Sunday to mark the sixth International Day of Yoga under the theme "Yoga for Health-Yoga at Home".

High Commissioner Prashant Agrawal said that the global community is battling coronavirus, and Yoga is one way to overcome various challenges sparked by the pandemic.

"Not only does practising yoga boost our immunity to counter various illnesses, but it also gives us a sense of calm, peace and battle stresses," he said.

In the sitting room, Elli Matias and a friend from Namibia's capital Windhoek emulated yogic postures demonstrated in a Yoga session live-streamed on Facebook.

"I turned to Yoga for calm amid anxiety and fear of COVID-19. The session was easy yet profound. I feel more relaxed after participating, which is good for my mental health," said Matias.

Matias is one of the many locals in Namibia who turned to a virtual Yoga session to cope with the stress related to fear of COVID-19.

Nikhila Hiremath, a conductor of Indian Culture and Yoga at the Commission, said that the session mainly focused on the Common Yoga Protocol.

"Common Yoga Protocol is suitable for anybody as it entails a set of easy yogic postures. Yoga offers something for everyone," she said.

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in December 2014 declaring June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. Enditem
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday doubled the withdrawal limit for Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank's depositors to Rs 100,000 from Rs 50,000 earlier.

With this relaxation, the RBI said that more than 84 per cent of the depositors of the bank will be able to withdraw their entire account balance.

"On a review of the bank's liquidity position, its ability to pay the depositors and with a view to mitigating the difficulties of the depositors during the prevailing Covid-19 situation, it has also been decided to further enhance the limit for withdrawal to Rs 1,00,000 per depositor, inclusive of Rs 50,000 allowed earlier," the RBI said in a statement.

"... More than 84 per cent of the depositors of the bank will be able to withdraw their entire account balance."

As per the statement, the withdrawal limit under the directions was last enhanced to Rs 50,000 per depositor on November 5, 2019 and the Directions were last extended "vide Directive dated March 21, 2020 upto June 22, 2020".

Overall, this is the fifth time the central bank has increased the withdrawal limit after imposing the regulatory restrictions last year under the provisions of the Banking Regulation Act.

The RBI had initially allowed depositors to withdraw a paltry Rs 1,000, followed by Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000 and to Rs 50,000.

According to the statement, the Reserve Bank has been engaging with the stakeholders to explore the possibility of a resolution of the bank.

"However, the process has been affected due to the lockdown on account of Covid 19 and the continuing uncertainty around the pandemic. Further, the extent of the negative net worth of the bank, and the legal processes involved in recovery of bad debts also pose challenges or limitations in resolution of the bank," the statement said.

"Nevertheless, consultation with various stake-holders and authorities for resolution of the bank is continuing. It is, therefore, considered necessary to extend the aforesaid Directions for a further period of six months to take the process forward."

The PMC Bank scam broke after Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL), a single borrower which accounted for 73 per cent of PMC's loan book, went bankrupt.

HDIL, in collusion with PMC Bank executives, created thousands of fake customer accounts to re-route funds to itself.
Sydney, Australia, June 22, 2020 - (ABN Newswire) - PYX Resources Ltd (NSX:PYX - News) is pleased to advise that it is participating in the Mines and Money Asia Pacific Conference from 23 to 25 June 2020, and providing the Company Presentation.

The Mines and Money Conference showcases strategic mineral, coal, oil and gas opportunities, and provides the forum to match projects with global investment throughout the three day conference.

Mandiri Inferred Resource

The Mandiri mineral sands deposit hosts a 6 Mt Inferred JORC Resource of zircon. The Company originally announced this resource in its Prospectus released on NSX on 20 February 2020 and confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the information included in the Prospectus. All material assumptions and technical parameters disclosed in the Prospectus that underpin the estimates continue to apply and have not materially changed.

To view the Presentation, please visit:

https://abnnewswire.net/lnk/61D032GJ



About Pyx Resources Limited:

PYX Resources Limited (NSX:PYX - News) is a global producer of premium zircon listed on the National Stock Exchange of Australia. The Company's flagship asset is the Mandiri mineral sands deposit, located in the alluvium sediment rich region of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Boasting the world's 5th largest producing deposit of zircon, PYX is a large-scale, near-surface open pit operation in production since 2015 and with exploration to date validating the presence of additional Valuable Heavy Minerals such as rutile, ilmenite among others within its mineral sands.

Contact:

Oliver B. Hasler

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

E:info@pyxresources.com

Tel.: +61 2 8823 3132

Source:

Pyx Resources Limited

Copyright (C) 2020 ABN Newswire. All rights reserved.
A funeral for fighters, descended into a protests, with calls for the fall of the regime and for the expulsion of Iran reports Alsouria Net.

Mass protests broke out in rural eastern Daraa calling for the fall of the Assad regime and the expulsion of Iran from Syria. The demonstrations occurred during a funeral for Russian-backed Fifth Corps fighters who were killed in a bus explosion yesterday.

Thousands of residents of Busra al-Sham and surrounding cities and towns gathered on Sunday for the funeral of the Fifth Corps fighters, which morphed into a protest demanding the fall of Assad and expulsion of Iran.

Activists published video clips on social media of thousands of residents gathering at the funeral amid chants of Long live Syria, down with Bashar al-Assad and Syria is free, Iran leave and Round up your dogs Iran, Daraa is nobler than Tehran.

The Horan Free League said that, thousands of people went out in a mass protest in Busra al-Sham in eastern Daraa, mourning nine Fifth Corps fighters and demanding the fall of the Assad regime, chanting against Iranian militias and Hezbollah.

The protests were the largest of their kind since Assads forces, backed by Russia, seized southern Syria in 2018 following a resettlement deal with Free Syrian Army factions.

After the settlement in Daraa, the governorate was divided into two sectors. The first was under Russian hegemony, represented on the ground by the Fifth Corps, which is spread out in Busra al-Sham and some villages of rural eastern Daraa, and led by Ahmad al-Audeh.

The other sector is dominated by the regime security branches and military forces such as the Military Intelligence branch and the Fourth Corps, which is outside of Russias dealings, and which are centered on rural western and northern Daraa.

A military bus belonging to the Fifth Corps was hit by an explosive device on the Kuheil-Sahwa highway in rural eastern Daraa yesterday, killing nine fighters and wounding more than 25 others.

Activists blamed Iran and its allies in Daraa for being behind the explosion, with the aim of creating chaos after Russias attempt at expanding its authority in the area.

A military source in Daraa told Alsouria Net previously that Russia had begun recruiting more men into the Fifth Corps and was working to transport some of them to barracks in Homs city for training.

The source added that Russia is seeking to expand the control of the Fifth Corps to beyond Busra al-Sham.

Russia, opened the door again for the Fifth Corps in southern Syria, and is now working to increase its numbers in Daraa and expand its influence outside of Busra al-Sham, the source said.

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.
Saudi Arabia to organize 'very limited' hajj amid pandemic: Saudi Arabia said that this year's hajj will not be canceled but that only "very limited numbers" of people will be allowed to perform the annual Muslim pilgrimage because of the coronavirus. The kingdom said that only people of various nationalities already residing in Saudi Arabia would be allowed to perform the hajj. The government did not specify how many people would be permitted to take part. The pilgrimage is set to begin at the end of July. Saudi Arabia has never canceled the hajj in the about 90 years since the nation's establishment.
A northeastern Siberian town is likely to have set a record for the highest temperature documented in the Arctic Circle, with a reading of 100.4 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded Saturday in Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle and about 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Records at that location have been kept since 1885.

If verified, this would be the northernmost 100-degree reading ever observed, and the hottest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe.

On Sunday, the same location recorded a high temperature of 95.3 degrees (35.2 Celsius), showing the Saturday reading was not a fluke. The average June high temperature in Verkhoyansk is just 68 degrees (20 Celsius).

Verkhoyansk is located at 67.5 degrees north latitude, whereas the Arctic Circle begins at 66.5 degrees.

The town of about 1,300 is located farther north than Fairbanks, Alaska, and is known for having an unusually wide temperature range. During the winter, Verkhoyansk is one of the coldest spots in the world, with temperatures frequently dipping well below minus-50 degrees.

Temperatures in Chersky, about 700 miles to the northeast of Verkhoyansk, reached 86 degrees (30 Celsius) in the past week, which is also unusual and caused by the large area of high pressure, or heat dome, that remains parked over it.

In 2020, Siberia has stood out for its above-extreme temperatures, which has accelerated the melting of snow and ice; contributed to permafrost melt, which led to a major oil spill; and got the Siberian wildfire season off to an unusually early and severe start.

The oil spill in Norilsk - above the Arctic Circle in north-central Russia - leaked at least 20,000 tons of diesel fuel into the nearby Ambarnaya River and is thought to be the worst spill in the Russian Arctic's history.

While some questions remain about the accuracy of the Verkhoyansk temperature measurement, data from a Saturday weather balloon launch at that location supports the 100-degree reading. Temperatures in the lower atmosphere, at about 5,000 feet, also were unusually warm at 70 degrees (21 Celsius), a sign of extreme heat at the surface.

Such a reading makes the record high "even more legitimate," meteorologist Etienne Kapikian of Meteo France said on Twitter.

Randy Cerveny, the professor at Arizona State University who leads the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) weather and climate extremes team, said in an email that the U.N. agency is "preliminarily accepting the observation as a new extreme, pending further detailed review."

The preliminary finding, Cerveny said, is based in part on observations that bolster the surface temperature measurement.

The WMO verifies global temperature records, though it does not yet recognize the polar regions as a separate region for the WMO extremes archive.

During the spring, stubborn and sprawling areas of high pressure parked over the region resulted in parts of Siberia recording temperature departures from average that reached a staggering 18 degrees (10 degrees Celsius), according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is an initiative of the European Union.

In western Siberia in particular, it was "by far" the warmest May on record, a Copernicus special report states.

For example, on May 22, the town of Khatanga, Siberia, located well north of the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 78 degrees, about 46 degrees above normal. The typical maximum temperature for the day at that location is 32 degrees. The town obliterated its previous record high for the date of 54 by about 24 degrees and its monthly record of 68 by about 10 degrees.

According to the report on recent Siberian temperatures, the persistence of the warm anomalies stands out from the historical record.

The recent trends are likely to continue, too, with computer models showing continued extreme warmth in northern Siberia in the next 10 days, spilling over into parts of Canada, Scandinavia and, eventually, most of the Lower 48 states.

In addition to the May record, the average temperatures in the December-May period were the warmest recorded, dating to 1979.

By pairing the data with NASA's surface records going back to 1880, Copernicus scientists found that this most recent six-month period is probably unprecedented since at least 1880.

The Siberian Arctic, like the Arctic as a whole, is seeing rapidly increasing temperatures as a result of human-caused global warming. This is in part because of accelerating feedback loops between melting snow and ice and air and ground temperatures, as well as other features of the region's climate.

Large wildfires are proliferating from Siberia to Alaska and Scandinavia; permafrost is melting, which releases even more planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; and sea ice extent and thickness are plummeting, among other changes.

- - -

The Washington Post's Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow contributed to this report.
T he police watchdog has launched official investigation after a video of a black woman shouting I cant breathe while pinned to the ground by Metropolitan Police officers caused outrage on social media.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct today called for witnesses to the stop-and-search, which took place just after 11pm on May 9 on Lewisham High Street, to come forward.

A video of the incident appeared to show Kamyimsola Olatunjoye, 28, using the same words George Floyd uttered before he died in Minnesota as she was held down by six officers.

The footage also appeared to show one of the officers repeatedly striking Ms Olatunjoye, who has since lodged a formal complaint.

Passersby can be heard pleading with officers to stop as they restrain Ms Olatunjoye by the side of a black Ford Fiesta.

The Standard reported earlier this month that the Metropolitan Police had referred itself to the IOPC over the incident.

An official investigation into both the arrest and Ms Olatunjoyes treatment in custody was launched on May 30, and the watchdog announced that has already taken several witness statements, and has so far recovered CCTV footage, body worn video footage and the footage shared online.

The Met Police referred themselves to the IOPC over the incident / Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

IOPC Regional Director Sal Naseem said: This incident took place in public view late at night and was likely witnessed by passers-by and members of the public. The video was widely shared on social media platforms and used by local media outlets.

We would ask anybody who was in the area that evening and saw police activity to get in touch with us. We are aware of a number of people nearby who may have photographed or filmed the incident on their mobile phones and would ask that they come forward to assist with this investigation.

Ever since Mr Floyds death on May 25 mass anti-racism protests have convulsed cities in the US and across the world.

It was revealed on Monday that the Metropolitan Police has carried out the highest number of stop and searches in more than eight years during lockdown. Officers used stop and search 43,644 times in May, the highest number since January 2012, according to The Times.

Community activists have said that black and ethnic minority groups are being unfairly targeted by stop and searches in the capital - a claim Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has stringently denied.

Black Lives Matter protesters holding placards at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square on June 12 / AFP via Getty Images

Following the arrest Ms Olatunjoye was charged with obstructing a drugs search. The man in the car, Carlton Ireland, 46 was charged with drink-driving. Both were later released on bail.

Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a leading lawyer, political and womens rights activist, shared the video of the arrest on Twitter earlier this month.

Speaking at the time, she told the Standard: It has always happened here. It is just that now we are getting smart enough to film it. The evidence was not available on video before, but thank God for the creation of the camera phone.

We need to see visible accountability and transparent delivery of justice. Those in public office, like police officers, need to be held accountable.

As we see in the case of George Floyd, now there is video evidence, so the truth cannot be avoided anymore."

The IOPC is also currently investigating a second incident in Lewisham, which took place on May 21, where a black man was handcuffed during a drugs search. Nothing was found and the man was not arrested.

The Met has also referred itself this week to the IOPC over footage which appeared to show a black man being kneed in the face during a stop and search in Hackney.

Mr Naseem added: To uphold public confidence in the police complaints system, we will be investigating the use of stop and search tactics in this incident and whether the actions of those officers were appropriate and proportionate and followed approved police policies.

We will also investigate if racial profiling or discrimination played a part in the incident.

Katrina Ffrench, chief executive of StopWatch, which campaigns for accountability in policing, told The Times: "This isn't new for us. This ethnic disparity has been there for 30 or 40 years."

Anyone with information is asked to call 0800 029 4691 or LewishamHighStreet@policeconduct.gov.uk
Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency approves Phase 2b/3 study miR-AGE of ABX464 in COVID-19 patients

miR-AGE study has been approved by French and German regulators, and most recently by the British and Italian regulatory authorities

French government announced the selection of six COVID-19 projects to finance with a total of 78m EUR, with Abivax to receive 36m EUR

Final agreements for the 36m EUR funding have been signed with Bpifrance

Patient enrollment in ulcerative colitis Phase 2b trial post COVID-19 getting back on track, with 113 of 232 randomized to date

All resolutions presented during the general meeting were adopted

PARIS, FRANCE / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / Abivax SA (Euronext Paris: FR0012333284 - ABVX), a late stage clinical biotechnology company harnessing the immune system to develop novel treatments for inflammatory diseases, viral diseases and cancer, today provides an update on its most recent clinical and financial achievements and developments and announces the positive results of the annual ordinary and extraordinary general meeting held on June 19, 2020.

The Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA - Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria) approved the randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled miR-AGE trial in high-risk COVID-19 patients. The study, already approved in France and Germany, will now be expanded to Brazil, where the number of new infections is still increasing rapidly. Approval for the miR-AGE trial has also been granted by the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA), with approval in Spain expected shortly.

Prof. Hartmut J. Ehrlich, M.D., CEO of Abivax, said: "By expanding the miR-AGE study to Brazil, currently the pandemic's most active country, we hope to be able to provide an efficient therapeutic option for the treatment of high-risk COVID-19 patients. We are also advancing the approval process in additional Latin American countries that are heavily affected by the rapid expansion of the pandemic. In parallel, patient recruitment is progressing according to our expectations for our ongoing clinical trials with ABX464, i.e. the Phase 2b in ulcerative colitis and Phase 2a in rheumatoid arthritis, as well as the US Phase 1/2 trial with ABX196 to treat hepatocellular carcinoma."

Story continues

Prof. Jorge Kalil, M.D., Ph.D., Head of Immunology at the University Hospital in Sao Paulo and miR-AGE overall study coordinator in Brazil, added: "We are eager to start the miR-AGE trial in Brazil and to test this innovative and promising drug candidate for the benefit of all countries and patients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still globally present. We hope to see a positive effect from the early treatment with ABX464 in reducing the severity of the disease by inhibiting viral replication, preventing hyper-inflammation and thus the potential deadly acute respiratory distress syndrome and also by limiting potential long-term lung injury in patients."

Philippe Pouletty, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Abivax, said: "We are proud that Abivax's ABX464 was selected by the French government as a promising drug candidate for treatment of COVID-19. We wish to thank Bpifrance, the Secretariat General pour l'Investissement (SGPI) and the French government for their backing and support of Abivax. At the same time, while we are confident that ABX464 may have a positive impact by reducing the severity of COVID-19 sequelae, we remain prudent on expectations for the miR-AGE trial given the complexities surrounding treatment of COVID-19 disease. Progressing ABX464 development in chronic inflammatory diseases remains Abivax's corporate priority."

With regards to the financial situation of the Company, the final agreements with Bpifrance, the investment bank of the French state, have been signed following the French government's selection of six development projects for a potent COVID-19 treatment. These projects will be financed with a total of 78m EUR by the French state, of which Abivax will receive 36m EUR in non-dilutive funding for its 1,034-patient ABX464 Phase 2b/3 COVID-19 (miR-AGE) trial, manufacturing scale-up, as well as additional development costs related to other ABX464 studies and the potential filing of ABX464 Marketing Authorization Applications (MAA).

Abivax recently also announced a further 5m EUR non-dilutive financing from Societe Generale in the form of a loan guaranteed by the French state (PGE - Prets Garantis par l'Etat).

Didier Blondel, Chief Financial Officer of Abivax, said: "With the official signing of the final contracts with Bpifrance and the loan recently granted by Societe Generale, Abivax's cash resources will fully finance the corporate objectives and current development plans until early 2021. We currently plan to continue to focus on sourcing additional non-dilutive financing options for the longer term."

The Company also announces today that it held its annual ordinary and extraordinary general meetings on June 19, 2020 behind closed doors, under the chairmanship of Dr. Philippe Pouletty, Chairman of the Board of Directors and without the physical presence of its shareholders due to COVID-19 social distancing practices.

All resolutions presented by the Board of Directors were adopted, including the compensation policy applicable to the Chief Executive Officer and the directors. Details of the voting results on all resolutions will be available on the company website.

About Abivax

Abivax, a clinical stage biotechnology company, is mobilizing the body's natural immune machinery to treat patients with autoimmune diseases, viral infections, and cancer. Abivax is listed on Euronext compartment B (ISIN: FR0012333284 - Mnemo: ABVX). Based in Paris and Montpellier, Abivax has two drug candidates in clinical development, ABX464 to treat severe inflammatory diseases, and ABX196 to treat hepatocellular carcinoma.

More information on the company is available at www.abivax.com . Follow us on Twitter @ABIVAX_.

Contacts

Abivax

Communications

Regina Jehle

regina.jehle@abivax.com

+33 6 24 50 69 63 Investors

LifeSci Advisors

Chris Maggos

chris@lifesciadvisors.com

+41 79 367 6254 Press Relations & Investors Europe

MC Services AG

Anne Hennecke

anne.hennecke@mc-services.eu

+49 211 529 252 22 Public Relations France

Actifin

Ghislaine Gasparetto

ggasparetto@actifin.fr

+33 6 21 10 49 24 Public Relations France

DGM Conseil

Thomas Roborel de Climens

thomasdeclimens@dgm-conseil.fr

+33 6 14 50 15 84 Public Relations USA

Rooney Partners LLC

Marion Janic

mjanic@rooneyco.com

+1 212 223 4017

DISCLAIMER

This press release contains forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates (including patient recruitment) with respect to certain of the Company's programs. Although the Company believes that its forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that have been deemed reasonable, such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates. A description of these risks, contingencies and uncertainties can be found in the documents filed by the Company with the French Autorite des Marches Financiers pursuant to its legal obligations including its registration document (Document de Reference). Furthermore, these forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are only as of the date of this press release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Abivax disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, forecasts or estimates to reflect any subsequent changes that the Company becomes aware of, except as required by law.

This press release is for information purposes only, and the information contained herein does not constitute either an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe securities of the Company in any jurisdiction, in particular in France. Similarly, it does not give and should not be treated as giving investment advice. It has no connection with the investment objectives, financial situation or specific needs of any recipient. It should not be regarded by recipients as a substitute for exercise of their own judgement. All opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. The distribution of this document may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Persons into whose possession this document comes are required to inform themselves about and to observe any such restrictions.

SOURCE: ABIVAX





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/594757/Abivax-Provides-Business-Update-on-Most-Recent-Achievements-and-Announces-Positive-Results-of-Annual-Ordinary-and-Extraordinary-General-Meeting




Guwahati/Agartala, June 22 : Assam's Covid-19 management burden, including quarantine pressure, is likely to start falling from July's first week, while in terms of testing of samples and mortality rates, the state is now in a leading position in the country, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Monday.

With the return of over 2.42 lakh natives from different parts of the country, the Covid-19 surge in Assam continued, with cases climbing to 5,586 as on Monday night.

"We have kept quarantined over 2.42 lakh returnees besides other suspected people. This was a very big challenge. However, the pressure would gradually be reduced from this week end," the minister told the media.

Sarma said that so far three lakh samples were tested in the state and in overall testing per million, Assam is in sixth position in the country with 8,229 against 19,000 in Delhi, 12,000 in Andhra Pradesh, 11,000 in Tamil Nadu, 8,582 in Rajasthan and 8,475 in Himachal Pradesh.

The minister said that with the recovery rate improving to 63.03 per cent, the state secured the third position in the country in this count after Gujarat (70 per cent) and Punjab (66 per cent).

Of the 5,586 cases, 3,521 have so far recovered from the disease while ten people died so far. "Among the states with better health infrastructure, the recovery rate is 59.50 per cent in West Bengal, 55.26 per cent in Delhi, 55.16 per cent in Tamil Nadu, 52 per cent in Kerala and 49.78 per cent in Maharashtra," he said.

Meanwhile, the Assam Targeted Surveillance Programme (ATSP), aiming to conduct 50,000 random tests of samples in 11 days, continued for the sixth day on Monday.

The Health Minister said that if a sizable number of positive cases are found after testing 50,000 samples, several stringent measures, including total lockdown, would be re-imposed in Guwahati and at other vulnerable places.

"The new strategies are being considered to check the coronavirus spread in Assam," Sarma said, adding that a fresh lockdown to counter Covid-19 in the state may not be economically feasible at the moment.

Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Samir Kumar Sinha said that random testing under the ATSP would be conducted in four categories of people, including workers involved in truck parking, loading and unloading of goods, including railway goods and warehouses.

Similar random testing would be conducted on all frontline district officials, including health workers, police personnel, officials of the Transport Department and those associated with Covid-19 management, hotel staff and family members of people released from the institutional quarantine centres.

Meanwhile, a 40-year old man was on Monday found hanging from the ventilator window of his quarantine room in a lodge in western Assam's Dhubri town.

According to police, the man, a goldsmith by profession, was under home isolation in the lodge since June 19 after he had completed the mandatory seven-day institutional quarantine after his entry to Assam from neighbouring West Bengal.

In Agartala, Tripura Minister Ratan Lal Nath said that against the national recovery rate of 53 per cent, the state's recovery rate is 63.84 per cent. "In overall testing per million, Tripura tests 14,013 against the national average of 4,305," he told the media.
Riverdale star Cole Sprouse has denied allegations of sexually assaulting a woman when he was studying at New York University. His response came after an anonymous Twitter user claimed that he forced himself on her at a party in 2013.

I told him multiple times to stop, he wouldnt listen. By then Im in tears and gagging from the alcohol smell on his breath, the user claimed, adding that she remained silent all this while because she felt who would believe me over a rich Disney star.

Sprouse categorically denied the allegations in a series of tweets and said that it appeared to be an attempt to baselessly cancel him and his co-stars. Earlier today myself and three other cast mates were falsely accused of sexual offense by anonymous accounts on twitter. I take these accusations very seriously, and will be working with the right teams to get to the root of it, he wrote on Twitter.

False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Furthermore, I would never seek to silence anybody. I encourage that people look into the accusations themselves, as the events detailed were factually untrue, he added.

This seems to be the latest claim in a series of incidents seeking to baselessly cancel my cast mates and me, his final tweet read.

Also read | Sona Mohapatra on Salman Khans request to fans: Large hearted PR move from poster boy of toxic masculinity

Similar accusations of sexual assault have also been levelled against Sprouses Riverdale co-stars Vanessa Morgan, Lili Reinhart and KJ Apa. Reinhart also took to Twitter to deny the claims and said that they would take legal action.

I have always taken sexual assault allegations seriously. But it was proven that this account was created specifically to create false stories about me and my cast. I cant think of something more twisted than lying about sexual assault, she wrote, adding that the person making the claims admitted that the stories were fabricated.

We are looking into taking legal action. This kind of sick behavior only harms true survivors. This was incredibly triggering for me and scary because Ive always supported survivors and believed them, she added.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Page Content

On Friday, June 19, 2020 the Court of First Instance returned with a decision after reviewing a petition filed by 37 inmates and their attorneys against the Government of St. Maarten and the Minister of Justice. The court ruled that the claims are not admissible thereby ruling in the favor of the Government of Sint Maarten.





Although the outcome of the ruling being in the favor of Government and the monetary claims of the plaintiffs being dismissed, there is very little cause for celebration. The well-being of the inmates, staff and management are top priority for minister Richardson and she remains committed to improving the situation at the prison. This matter continues to have her full attention.





In response to the verdict, Minister Richardson said: I am grateful that the court ruled in favor of Government and was able to identify that there was no basis on which the claim could succeed. With just two months in office, my team and I are working diligently on projects and plans to ensure that the situation at our detention facilities are improved while simultaneously laying the ground work to construct a new facility. This new facility will include consistent positive development programs aimed at rehabilitating the minds and attitudes of the inmates. With this court case now behind us, the Ministry of Justice will continue to push forward in cooperation with the Ministry of VROMI, consulting with UNOPS and with the assistance of SOAB and other technical experts to finally make strides with this very pressing matter.





The Minister of Justice has further taken note that on Monday, June 22, 2020, the Kingdom Relations Memorandum will be held in the Dutch House of Representatives by the Kingdom Relations Committee, in the presence of State Secretary of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Knops, Minister of Justice and Security Grapperhaus and Minister for Legal Protection Dekker. During this meeting, reports from the Sint Maarten Progress Committee and the Law Enforcement Council are on the agenda. It is further understood that the Dutch Member of Parliament Chris van Dam of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) will put forward a motion during this consultation that involves the intervention of the Kingdom Council of Ministers in the prison system on Sint Maarten. Minister Richardson learned of this upcoming motion by way of an email sent to the Parliament of St. Maarten by the Dutch MP.





In his email Van Dam expressed the sentiments that many have long held, which is that the situation in the Point Blanche prison is deeply concerning. He acknowledges that this concern exists on both sides of the Atlantic. However, despite all of the good intentions, he notes that Sint Maarten has been unable to solve the situation on its own. As it relates to improving the human rights situation, Van Dam is of the opinion that this cannot be put off any longer and feels the responsibility to help find a solution.





Minister Richardson says that she is open to all support aimed at improving the situation in St. Maartens detention facilities. Any positive contribution towards overcoming challenges that the country is facing is an opportunity to continue to move the country forward. The Minister will be contacting her Dutch counterparts to discuss the Van Dam motion, their response to it and how the motion can complement the plans Minister Richardson has been working on since taking office.





The Minister has developed a phased approach to the prison and has consulted with different stakeholders involved. As it relates to pertinent phases in the process such as the current detention capacity, engineers within the Ministry of VROMI have drawn up preliminary plans for a temporary new





facility and steps are being undertaken to have these plans executed. SOAB is putting the finishing touches on the proposal that will serve to inform all parties that will be involved in assisting St. Maarten in building a new prison facility, of the countrys vision.





Having a state of the art facility without adequate daytime activities and proper programs for detainees, does not help the community and will be ineffective, as offenders do not have the opportunity to better themselves while serving their sentence. To avoid this pitfall, minister Richardson has sought input from various stakeholders such as the Foundation Judicial Institutes Sint Maarten (SJIB) to ensure that the construction of any new facility take all factors involved with the purpose of incarcerating a person into consideration. Minister Richardson believes that it is very important to continue to involve all the relevant partners in the construction of a new prison. This collaborative approach will help to ensure that appropriate and effective steps are taken throughout the entire process.




A West Australian mining lease Clive Palmers Mineraology was forced to give up has been split and sold in a deal that could pave the way for two Perth-based newcomers to loosen Rio Tintos stranglehold on the hugely profitable industrial salt market.

The sale of the land just south of Karratha not only proves a game-changer for a huge new project, but also movement on a long-stalled new Pilbara port.

Panoramic view of the Eramurra site.

Australia is the worlds largest exporter of industrial salt, sending 11 million tonnes a year mostly to a growing Asia-Pacific chemical market. It is the Pilbaras biggest bulk export commodity after iron ore.

The West Australian scene is monopolised by Rio Tintos Dampier Salt, which produces about 8 million tonnes a year across the Pilbara, but Perth-based companies Leichhardt Industrials and BCI Minerals are poised to disrupt Rios rule.
The ruling Nepal Communist Party 's (NCP) leader Bishnu Rijal on Monday (June 22) called the 'Roti Beti ka Rishta' with India old rhetoric and that it is 'not wise to talk about the Roti Beti relationship'.

The statement comes in context with Nepal mulling a new law under which the Indian women marrying Nepalese citizens will get citizenship after 7 years.

Speaking exclusively to a WION Correspondent, Bishnu Rijal said, "Our aspirations have changed, we should change. Roti Beti is old rhetoric."

He was asked whether the "roti beti ka rishta" will continue as the Nepal government has gone to the extent of saying that the COVID-19 crisis in Nepal is due to the people coming across the border, to which he said, "I don't see India and Nepal have a huge problem. We hope once they sit together, it will be resolved. This is not a new one and under discussion for a long time."

Rijal added, "I am not sure why India has chosen this time to inaugurate the road. Nepal has been claiming the territory for a long time. India has agreed that this issue will be resolve via FS mechanism."

"We should reset our relationship based on our mutual benefits. Nepal and India have changed. Our aspirations have changed, we should change. Roti Beti is old rhetoric. We should restart our friendly relationship and continue our glorious relationship. We should put forward some bold steps in our relationship," added Rijal.

On being asked about the ties between India and Nepal and how it has been impacted by the map row, Rijal said, "I don't think so, because we have a very diversified, deep-rooted, very old ties. We enjoy an excellent relationship from the very beginning. Being the close neighbour, we may face problem in day to day life. This time we have seen some problems related to our border. I am hopeful, we will resolve the problems by the means of talks."

He stated, "Nepal has continuously requested India to sit together for dialogue of Foreign Secretary to resolve the dispute. This is not a big deal between the 2 countries. We have a deep-rooted relationship and we want to save this relationship and take forward the relationship for our countries and our people."

Rijal also commented on whether the new map was unnecessary and said, "It is very natural, Nepal has reacted very naturally. It is Nepal's right. Before this law, Nepal had requested India, two times for foreign secretary meeting and Nepal has handed over two diplomatic notes to India. Kathmandu was insisting, so sit together and resolve the crisis."

"I don't know why India did not pay attention to close neighbours. So it is our compulsion and we are compelled to release a new map according to the 1860 Saugali Treaty and now we have adopted a new map and amended our new constitution."

He asserted that this will not hamper India-Nepal relations and dialogue.

"It is our internal thing. It is our national stance and all political parties are in the same line now and India should realise the sentiment of Nepali people and Nepali political parties."

On being asked that the Indian government sources have confirmed that request for talks had been sent ahead of the bill being presented to the parliament, Rijal answered, "No, it is not true. I would like to say, no Indian official has said it publically. Because India has not given any response to Nepal's request. Nepal had requested India, twice in writing but did not get any reply from India. That kind of things doesn't help in a relationship."

Rijal was also asked on his views on China being increasingly belligerent and aggressive with its neighbours, to which he said, "China is a bigger power now, while it was considered a sleeping dragon in the past. The dragon has woken up now. As per my information, China is not an aggressive country and has taken care of itself. It believes in silent diplomacy. Unfortunate what happened between India and China, 20 Indian soldiers lost lives and a lot of tensions. I hope it is resolved through dialogue. They should sit together and resolve the disputes."
Tehran, June 22 (IANS) Iran's parliament speaker ruled out the likelihood of any talks with the United States over the existing thorny issues.

"Smart and active resistance" against the United States is a strategic option for the Iranian nation, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told the parliament's open session on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.
International Criminal Court judges made fundamental and serious errors when they cleared former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo of crimes against humanity last year, prosecutors said as they launched an appeal on Monday.

Gbagbo and his right-hand man Charles Ble Goude were acquitted in January 2019 of charges over post-electoral violence in the restive West African nation in 2010-11 in which around 3,000 people died.

Prosecutors want the acquittal overturned and a retrial at the court in The Hague, which was set up in 2002 to deal with the worlds worst crimes.

Helen Brady, senior appeals counsel for the ICC prosecution, said the gravest mistake was that judges did not make a proper written judgment at the time, instead handing down the decision to acquit the Ivorian pair orally.

Brady said this was no harmless procedural irregularity.

It tarnished the very essence of the judicial adjudicative process, thereby affecting the reliability and the integrity of the decision itself, she said.

The prosecution said it had presented key elements of proof with 4,610 documents and 96 witnesses interviewed during the trial.

Gbagbo, now 75, appeared by videolink for the hearing, which was conducted remotely because of coronavirus measures. He appeared bearded and wearing a casual top and listened through headphones.

The one-time Ivorian strongman, the first former head of state to be tried by the ICC, was last month allowed to leave Belgium where he had been hosted under strict conditions since his release last year.

Gbagbo had previously spent eight years behind bars in The Hague before his surprise acquittal by the court.

The ICC said in a statement it will make its judgment on this appeal at a later stage.

 Justice was not served 

Chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda formally appealed the trial judges decision in October.

She said the judges did not issue their written verdict until some six months after the oral acquittal.

Judges had also cleared the pair without properly articulating and consistently applying a clearly defined standard of proof, Bensouda added.

Gbagbos Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) has called on Ivory Coasts President Alassane Ouattara to engage in a dialogue over his return to the country.

But an association for victims of the violence expressed energetic opposition against Gbagbo coming home as the country braces for tense elections scheduled for October.

Gbagbo technically faces being jailed on his return after being sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term by an Ivorian court last November for the looting of the local branch of the Central Bank of the West African States (BCEAO) during the post-election crisis.

Mondays hearing comes as the ICC prosecutors office fights a string of acquittals and failed cases including that of Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba, acquitted in 2018 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It also comes at a time when the ICC is under assault from the administration of US President Donald Trump because of the tribunals probe into crimes committed by US forces during the war in Afghanistan.
In this July 2013 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India, forest guards check for snares during a patrol in the Manas National Park in northeastern India which is inhabited by tigers and elephants. Located in the Himalayan foothills, the protected forests are known for rare species like the golden langur and pygmy hog and the forests are contiguous with the Royal Manas National Park in Bhutan. (WTI via AP)

A camera trap photo of an injured tigress and a forensic examination of its carcass revealed why the creature died: a poacher's wire snare punctured its windpipe and sapped its strength as the wound festered for days.

Snares like this one set in southern India's dense forest have become increasingly common amid the coronavirus pandemic, as people left jobless turn to wildlife to make money and feed their families.

Authorities in India are concerned this spike in poaching not only could kill more endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive.

"It is risky to poach, but if pushed to the brink, some could think that these are risks worth taking," said Mayukh Chatterjee, a wildlife biologist with the non-profit Wildlife Trust of India.

Since the country announced its lockdown, at least four tigers and six leopards have been killed by poachers, Wildlife Protection Society of India said. But there also were numerous other poaching casualitiesgazelles in grasslands, foot-long giant squirrels in forests, wild boars and birds such as peacocks and purple morhens.

In many parts of the developing world, coronavirus lockdowns have sparked concern about increased illegal hunting that's fueled by food shortages and a decline in law enforcement in some wildlife protection areas. At the same time, border closures and travel restrictions slowed illegal trade in certain high-value species.

This April 2010 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a tiger skin seized by the forest officials of Tamil Nadu state in southern India. Authorities in India are concerned a 2020 spike in poaching not only could kill more endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive. (WTI via AP)

One of the biggest disruptions involves the endangered pangolin. Often caught in parts of Africa and Asia, the anteater-like animals are smuggled mostly to China and Southeast Asia, where their meat is considered a delicacy and scales are used in traditional medicine.

In April, the China's 2017 ban on trade in ivory products. The pandemic compounded their plight because many Chinese customers were unable to travel to ivory markets in Cambodia, Laos and other countries.

"They are desperate to get it off their hands. Nobody wants to be stuck with that product," said Sarah Stoner, director of intelligence for the commission.

The illegal trade in pangolins continued "unabated" within Africa but international trade has been disrupted by port closures, said Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group.

This November 2014 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a leopard caught in a trap in a forest in Karnataka, India. Authorities in India are concerned a 2020 spike in poaching not only could kill more endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive. (WTI via AP)

"We have witnessed some trade via air while major ship routes are still closed but we expect a flood of trade once shipping avenues reopen again," Jansen said.

Fears that organized poaching in Africa would spike largely have not materializedpartly because ranger patrols have continued in many national parks and reserves.

Emma Stokes, director of the Central Africa Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said patrolling national parks in several African countries has been designated essential work.

But she has heard about increased hunting of animals outside parks. "We are expecting to see an increase in bushmeat hunting for food  duikers, antelopes and monkeys," she said.

Jansen also said bushmeat poaching was soaring, especially in parts of southern Africa. "Rural people are struggling to feed themselves and their families," he said.

This July 2011 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a tiger skin that was seized by Indian law enforcement authorities at the border with Bhutan. Since the country announced its 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, at least four tigers and six leopards have been killed by poachers, Wildlife Protection Society of India said. (WTI via AP)

There are also signs of increased poaching in parts of Asia.

A greater one-horned rhino was gunned down May 9 in India's Kaziranga National Parkthe first case in over a year. Three people, suspected to be a part of an international poaching ring, were arrested on June 1 with automatic rifles and ammunition, said Uttam Saikia, a wildlife warden.

As in other parts of the world, poachers in Kaziranga pay poor families paltry sums of money to help them. With families losing work from the lockdown, "they will definitely take advantage of this," warned Saikia.

In neighboring Nepal, where the virus has ravaged important income from migrants and tourists, the first month of lockdown saw more forest-related crimes, including poaching and illegal logging, than the previous 11 months, according to a review by the government and World Wildlife Fund or WWF.

This March 2011 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a tiger skin which was seized when it was being delivered to a suspected buyer in a hotel in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. Since the country announced its 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, at least four tigers and six leopards have been killed by poachers, Wildlife Protection Society of India said. (WTI via AP)

For many migrants returning to villages after losing jobs, forests were the "easiest source" of sustenance, said Shiv Raj Bhatta, director of programs at WWF Nepal.

In Southeast Asia, the Wildlife Conservation Society documented in April the poisoning in Cambodia of three critically endangered giant ibises for the wading bird's meat. More than 100 painted stork chicks were also poached in late March in Cambodia at the largest waterbird colony in Southeast Asia.

"Suddenly rural people have little to turn to but natural resources and we're already seeing a spike in poaching," said Colin Poole, the group's regional director for the Greater Mekong.

Heartened by closure of wildlife markets in China over concerns about a possible link between the trade and the coronavirus, several conservation groups are calling for governments to put measures in place to avoid future pandemics. Among them is a global ban on commercial sale of wild birds and mammals destined for the dinner table.

In this undated photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society in June 2020 community rangers dispose of the remains of a giant ibis in Cambodia. In April 2020, the WCS documented the poisoning of three critically endangered giant ibises for the wading bird's meat. "Suddenly rural people have little to turn to but natural resources and we're already seeing a spike in poaching," said Colin Poole, the group's regional director for the Greater Mekong. (WCS via AP)

This June 2015 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a tiger skull that was seized by Indian law enforcement authorities at the border with Bhutan. Authorities in India are concerned a 2020 spike in poaching not only could kill more endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive. (Jose Louies/WTI via AP)

This November 2017 photo provided by the Wildlife Trust of India shows a clutch wire snare which had been used to capture a leopard in Karnataka, India. Snares like this have become increasingly common in southern India's dense forest amid the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, as people left jobless turn to wildlife to make money and feed their families. (Jose Louies/WTI via AP)

This undated photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society in June 2020 shows a giant ibis in Cambodia. In April 2020, the WCS documented the poisoning of three critically endangered giant ibises for the wading bird's meat. "Suddenly rural people have little to turn to but natural resources and we're already seeing a spike in poaching," said Colin Poole, the group's regional director for the Greater Mekong. (Phann Sithan/WCS via AP)

In this Feb. 15, 2019 file photo, a pangolin looks for food on private property in Johannesburg, South Africa. Often caught in parts of Africa and Asia, the anteater-like animals are smuggled mostly to China and Southeast Asia, where their meat is considered a delicacy and scales are used in traditional medicine. In April 2020, the Wildlife Justice Commission reported traders were stockpiling pangolin scales in several Southeast Asia countries awaiting an end to the pandemic. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

This undated photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society in June 2020 shows giant ibises in Cambodia. In April 2020, the WCS documented the poisoning of three critically endangered giant ibises for the wading bird's meat. "Suddenly rural people have little to turn to but natural resources and we're already seeing a spike in poaching," said Colin Poole, the group's regional director for the Greater Mekong. (Phann Sithan/WCS via AP)

Others say an international treaty, known as CITES, which regulates the trade in endangered plants and animals, should be expanded to incorporate public health concerns. They point out that some commonly traded species, such as horseshoe bats, often carry viruses but are currently not subject to trade restrictions under CITES.

"That is a big gap in the framework," said John Scanlon, former Secretary-General of CITES now with African Parks. "We may find that there may be certain animals that should be listed and not be traded or traded under strict conditions and certain markets that ought to be closed."

Explore further Poaching could increase under virus lockdowns: watchdog

 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 got its NFC certification. It has been certified by the NFC Forum, well, two models have been certified. Those models are the SM-981U and SM-986U

The SM-981U is the regular Galaxy Note 20, while the SM-986U is probably the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra got certified on Bluetooth SIG under that model number, so its probably not the + variant.

The Galaxy Note 20 NFC Forum certification did not share much info about the devices

The Galaxy Note 20 NFC Forum certification does not really share all that much information. We dont get the images of the devices, nor their specifications, unfortunately.

Advertisement

The SM-986U did surface on Geekbench back in April, though. That listing revealed that the phone will ship with Android 10 out of the box. It also confirmed that it will include 8GB of RAM, and be fueled by what seems to be the Snapdragon 865+.

The device was also put through the HTML5 test recently, and that confirmed it will feature a 19.3:9 display aspect ratio. That display will feature 3096 x 1444 resolution, and it will also offer a 120Hz refresh rate.

Samsung is expected to release three Galaxy Note 20-branded phones this year. The Galaxy Note 20, Note 20+, and Note 20 Ultra. The regular model will be inferior to the other two models, by quite a margin, according to rumors.

Advertisement

The device will not only offer a 60Hz fullHD+ display, but a number of other aspects will be inferior to the other two models. The Galaxy Note 20+ and Note 20 Ultra are both rumored to include 120Hz displays with QHD+ resolution.

If Samsung ends up utilizing a 60Hz display on a 2020 flagship, that will cause some uproar in the tech community. The company should at least go for a 90Hz display at this point in time.

Samsung will probably announce these handsets on August 5

All three of those phones are expected to arrive in August. Samsung is rumored to launch all three of them on August 5, though nothing has been confirmed just yet.

Advertisement

Those are not the only devices that will arrive during that Unpacked event, though. Samsung is also expected to announce the Galaxy Fold 2, and Galaxy Z Flip 5G.

So, the company will essentially announce five flagship devices at the same time. That will happen for the first time in history when this Korean company is considered.

All three Galaxy Note 20 handsets will be fueled by either the Snapdragon 865+ or Exynos 990 / 992, according to rumors. The Snapdragon 865+ will be utilized in the US and China, while the Exynos chip will be included in Europe and India.
Acknowledging the role that misleadingly edited or out-of-context images play in seeding the internet with misinformation, Google is introducing fact-checking labels for some Google image searches. The feature, available starting today, provides a few lines of context with select searches, drawing on services provided by third-party fact-checkers. The tool is powered by publishers themselves, who can now opt to tag images that have been fact-checked using ClaimReview, a method for publishers to communicate to search engines that an image has been verified.

"Photos and videos are an incredible way to help people understand whats going on in the world," Google Product Manager Harris Cohen wrote in a blog post announcing the feature. "But the power of visual media has its pitfalls  especially when there are questions surrounding the origin, authenticity or context of an image."

Google is definitely right about that. Recirculated images tend to pop-up in most major online conspiracy and viral misinformation cycles, and many credulous internet users are content to believe what they can see  even if what they're seeing was edited or otherwise removed from its context.

In its announcement, Google provided the example of "sharks swimming in street Houston," a query that pulls up a perennial viral image offender. In the example search, a fact-check from PolitiFact appears below the original image of the same shark silhouette swimming in the ocean. The addition is just a few lines of text rather than anything flashier, like a colorful label that might indicate more clearly that the content has a special status.

Image Credits: Google

According to Google's announcement, the labels will pop up on "results that come from independent, authoritative sources" that meet its standards. The company notes that the inclusion of fact-checking tags won't elevate those search results. While more fact-checking and additional context is always a good thing, the new image fact-checking tool only reinforces context from third-party sources already doing this fact-checking work rather than surfacing fact-checking on low-quality websites spreading misinformation.

Story continues

Google appears content to lean on third-parties for much of this kind of work rather than bringing it in-house, but the company did trial a more aggressive, hands-on misinformation strategy for COVID-19. In March, Google began scrubbing false claims from search results and pointing users to verified public health information in searches and on YouTube.

In spite of running one of the most popular social websites in the world, Google has largely steered clear of engaging in the most fractious current conversations around content moderation and misinformation, exemplified by the ongoing standoff between President Trump and his allies and social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Those companies have signaled opposite strategies toward moderation in recent weeks, with Twitter making increasingly hands-on decisions about what violates its rules while Facebook intervenes only in the most egregious cases. But even if Google mostly succeeds in staying above the fray, the company faces the same existential threat from political figures who seek to punish social media companies by revoking the legal protections that make their businesses possible.

Still, Google did dip its toes into that ongoing conflict last week, when the company confirmed it had removed the right-wing website ZeroHedge from its ad platform for violating its rules against hate and discriminatory content. The company also issued a warning to The Federalist, another far-right site, for similar violations.
T ears were shed for the victims of the Reading terror attack today as an American citizen was confirmed as the second person killed in the knife rampage.

Joe Ritchie-Bennett, 39, below right, had lived in Britain for 15 years after moving from Philadelphia in the US. He was struck down as suspect Khairi Saadallah allegedly went on a stabbing spree in a park on Saturday evening .

His father Robert Ritchie confirmed his sons death, saying: The family is heartbroken they have lost their brilliant and loving son. This was senseless.

US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson confirmed that an American citizen had died and said that the US authorities had offered to help British police and intelligence agencies in establishing how the attack came about.

Mourners are comforted outside the Holt School, Wokingham, where one of the victims was a teacher / Jeremy Selwyn

Teacher James Furlong, 36, below left, was also killed . The third victim, another man, was expected to be named later today.

A two-minute silence was held today in honour of those killed and injured, with children from the Holt School in Wokingham, where Mr Furlong taught, taking part.

Some held hands at the school gates as a bell rang out to mark the start of the silence. A flag in the schools courtyard had been lowered to half-mast.

Home Secretary Priti Patel visited the scene of the killings to offer her condolences. She laid flowers as she stood with head bowed in memory of the victims, before speaking to police and walking around the perimeter of the park.

One minute's silence being held in Reading / PA

The investigation into Libyan refugee Saadallah, who has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the three murders, was continuing as counter-terrorism police and intelligence agencies tried to discover any motivation or trigger for the attack.

Saadallah, 25, who is understood to have had a history of mental health problems and violent offending, had been known to MI5 after a warning was given to them last year about his desire to travel overseas, potentially to fight.

Sources said, however, that the information  which reportedly included erratic claims by him that he had fought for and against the Islamic State  was vague and no formal investigation was begun after initial inquiries failed to uncover any reason to think that he posed a terrorist threat.

Local media in the US has named the second victim of the Reading terror attack as Joe Ritchie-Bennett

Officials added that he had instead appeared to be typical of a large number of sometimes unstable, violent individuals who came to the attention of MI5 but who have no obvious ideological motivation that would make them an active subject of interest for terrorist monitoring.

At the same time, Home Office officials were also examining Saadallahs immigration history and how he was granted asylum in 2018 despite committing violent offences in this country and his reportedly volatile character.

Police officers stand observing minute's silence near to the scene of reported multiple stabbings in Reading (REUTERS) / Reuters

He had been released from prison only recently. His latest convictions included affray, assault by beating, assaulting an emergency worker, criminal damage and a racially aggravated assault involving a police officer.

The officer described the November 2018 attack as being the vilest thing she had been subjected to as a police officer after he spat in her face and called her a slave when he was being detained under the Mental Health Act

A Court of Appeal judgment, which contains the officers testimony, reduced Saadallahs term to 17 months and 20 days after Mr Justice Goss noted he had mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress and personality disorder.

Part of the investigation into the killings is likely to focus as a result on whether his time in prison might have led Saadallah to tip further into mental instability or become radicalised.

The former head of counter-terrorism policing in Britain, Sir Mark Rowley, warned, however, that identifying potential killers from among the 40,000 people whose names have touched the system was difficult.

Reading Attack Tributes - In pictures 1 /30 Reading Attack Tributes - In pictures Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn People observe a period of silence outside A B Walker and Son funerals in Reading, Berkshire PA Police officers stand observing minute's silence near to the scene Reuters People observe a period of silence outside A B Walker and Son funerals in Reading, Berkshire PA Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn A mourner is comforted by a police officer as they place flowers at the entrance to the Holt School, Wokingham, Berskhire, in tribute to teacher James Furlong, a victim of the terrorist attack in Forbury Gardens, Reading PA Flowers placed at the entrance to the Holt School, Wokingham, Berskhire PA Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn Two women embrace at the entrance to the Holt School, Wokingham, Berskhire, where floral tributes have been placed in memory of teacher James Furlong PA Flowers placed at the entrance to the Holt School, Wokingham, Berskhire, in memory of teacher James Furlong PA Priti Patel in Reading Jeremy Selwyn Tributes at Holt School Jeremy Selwyn PA PA Sky News Police officers stand observing minute's silence near to the scene of reported multiple stabbings in Reading Reuters People observe a period of silence outside A B Walker and Son funerals in Reading, Berkshire PA

In that 40,000 there are lots of volatile people who dip in and out of interest in extremist ideology, he said. Spotting one of those who is going to go from a casual interest into a determined attacker, which can happen in a matter of days, is the most wicked problem that the services face.

Sir Mark added that it was not proportionate, not realistic to think that extra funding could solve the problem because you could triple your resources but it would take years and years to recruit and train those people and you still wouldnt be able to cover them all.

New witness accounts gave further insight into the horrific scenes on Saturday evening when Saadallah allegedly went on his knife rampage through Forbury Gardens in Reading town centre shortly before 7pm.

A 23-year-old man described how it was raining blood as he tried to help after seeing the attack taking place just yards from where he was sitting.

Mr Furlong's parents paid tribute to a 'wonderful son' / Family handout

He said: I ran over to see if I could spot the stabber. I saw three people with terrible injuries. At least one had been slashed on the neck. It was raining blood. I phoned the ambulance service and they told me to get a defibrillator.

"They said there was one at a local restaurant so I ran to get it. In my heart I knew they were dead though. No one could have survived those injuries.

People observe a period of silence outside A B Walker and Son funerals in Reading, Berkshire / PA

I have lived in Reading all my life. Its like a nightmare. I cant believe this has happened.

Everything was covered in blood. I cant get it out of my mind. The friends, the people who were giving them CPR. It was like a battlefield.

Boris Johnson has said he is appalled and sickened by the incident and that we will not hesitate to take action if there are lessons to be learned from the circumstances.

The scene in Reading this morning / Jeremy Selwyn

Loading....

The US ambassador said: I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those killed in the attack on June 20. To our great sorrow, this includes an American citizen. Our thoughts are with all those affected.

We condemn the attack absolutely and have offered our assistance to British law enforcement.
MCLEAN, Va., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, July 21, 2020, at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time, Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) will release its second quarter 2020 earnings results. Additionally, the company will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to review financial and operating performance for the quarter ending June 30, 2020.

The call will be webcast live and the earnings release will be available on the company's homepage at www.capitalone.com . A replay of the webcast will be available 24 hours a day, beginning two hours after the conference call, until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on August 4, 2020, through the company's homepage.

About Capital One

Capital One Financial Corporation (www.capitalone.com) is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., had $269.7 billion in deposits and $396.9 billion in total assets as of March 31, 2020. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients through a variety of channels. Capital One, N.A. has branches located primarily in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and the District of Columbia. A Fortune 500 company, Capital One trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "COF" and is included in the S&P 100 index.

Visit Capital One About for more Capital One news.

SOURCE Capital One Financial Corporation

Related Links

http://www.capitalone.com


By Douglas Busvine

BERLIN (Reuters) - Wirecard's confirmation that $2.1 billion it had booked in its accounts likely never existed raises questions over whether the company is able to survive as a going concern or can be broken up and sold.

At a stroke, the acknowledgement wiped out a decade of reported cash flows and corroborated earlier reports that Wirecard relied on obscure third-party partners for much of its reported profits, according to financial analysts and forensic accountants.

Putting a value on Wirecard amounts to a complete stab in the dark, even if it does have customers and a technology platform that works, according to industry experts. For competitors, there is no compelling reason to scoop up any viable parts of Wirecard's operations because it would be easier to grab its customers, they said.

"We are unable to quantify the true profile of the business with conviction," said Robert Lamb at Citi, who has suspended his target price for Wirecard stock.

Even if Wirecard can navigate the current turmoil, it will be hard to restore confidence, added Lamb. That would require it to be rebranded and a new management team to be drafted in - both unlikely to happen soon, he said. The company replaced its chief executive last week with James Freis, an ex-compliance officer at Germany's stock exchange.

Moody's on Monday withdrew its rating on Wirecard - cut to junk only last Friday after CEO Markus Braun quit - citing insufficient independently verifiable information.

Shares in Wirecard, a one-time German financial technology star, fell 39% on Monday, bringing cumulative losses since Thursday to 85%. Its only listed bond, due in 2024, was last bid down 9 cents on the euro at 26 cents.

BIGGER HOLE

In the absence of credible accounts, analysts look to cash. Here, an earlier hole of 1 billion euros found by KPMG in a special audit has grown to 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) for 2019, according to in-house auditor EY, after balances reported in the Philippines were exposed as fictitious.

Neil Campling at Mirabaud, the only analyst to have had a price target of zero for Wirecard, sees no way back. He sees the firm at imminent risk of having its licences revoked by Visa and MasterCard, whose payments it processes.

Story continues

MasterCard declined to comment while Visa did not respond to a request for comment.

"They have no business if Visa and MasterCard revoke their licenses, which I expect to happen," Campling told Reuters. "Customers, the few that are real, will seek alternative payment providers."

Campling sees no equity break-up value due to the prior claims of debt holders and litigation risks. "It is beyond salvageable in my view," he said.

Richard Sbaschnig, a forensic accountant at CFRA, said it was in the interest of creditor banks not to force Wirecard into bankruptcy because that would destroy any residual value left in customer relationships and payment contracts.

"The banks could be better off giving the company more time and see if parts of the company can be sold or operated profitably to repay them," he added.

The problem is that there are no obvious acquirers among Wirecard's competitors.

Dutch payments platform Adyen has a strong business among large corporates, but prefers to steer clear of the struggling airlines sector - a core clientele of Wirecard.

"We view Adyen as very well-positioned to capture existing Wirecard customers that could seek to leave Wirecard," said Julian Serafini at Jefferies, adding Adyen has long preferred organic growth to acquisitions.

France's Worldline, meanwhile, would also likely find it easier to scoop up Wirecard customers in Europe, and would have little interest in Wirecard's Asian interests, analysts said.

A deal involving Italy-based rival Nexi would make little sense as it has no ambitions to expand abroad, they added.

Adyen declined to comment while Worldline and Nexi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

($1 = 0.8917 euros)

(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Pravin Char)
Two S-8 unguided aircraft missiles were found and destroyed near residential buildings and the positions of Ukrainian military officers in the vicinity of Pavlopil settlement (Donetsk region), on Saturday, June 20, the press center of Joint Forces Operation's headquarters said.

"Today, in the vicinity of Pavlopil in Donetsk region, near residential buildings and the positions of the Ukrainian military officers, two S-8 unguided aircraft missiles were found," the headquarters of the Joint Forces Operation said on its Facebook page.

The Ukrainian military officers said that the missiles are unguided and the fact that the Russian mercenaries aimed directly towards the village is obvious. "By such actions, the invaders once again demonstrated their cynical attitude to the local population and deliberately endangered civilians," the headquarters said.

According to the military engineer, the missiles did not explode and after hitting the ground, the warheads broke off. "We quickly reacted and destroyed it," the engineer said.

"The invaders once again openly demonstrated disregard for Minsk agreements and reaffirmed their cynical and indifferent attitude to the life and health of civilians in Donbas," the headquarters said.
On the occasion of International Yoga Day 2020, which falls on June 21 every year, President of India Ram Nath Kovind urged India's citizens to perform the ancient exercise for a healthier lifestyle, especially in the times of COVID-19. Referring to Yoga's importance, Kovind said the ancient science of Yoga is India's great gift to the world.

The entire world celebrates the 6th International Yoga Day, largely from home, as it garners an increased significance given the COVID crisis. 

The International Day of Yoga has been celebrated annually on June 21 since 2015, following its inception in the United Nations General Assembly in 2014. Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice that originated in India.



Experts say that Yoga strengthens the respiratory system, which is affected by novel coronavirus pandemic that has infected 3,95,048 people and caused 12,948 deaths across India so far.



Source: IANS

Advertisement

"Glad to see more and more people adopting it. Amid stress and strife, especially with Covid-19, practicing Yoga can help keep the body fit and mind serene," President tweeted.
The number of people availing of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment has continued to fall as the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted but huge numbers continue to depend on the Government payment.

The latest figures from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection show there were 498,700 people needing the payment last week, a fall of 32,800 from a week earlier.

The department also said a further 17,900 people will be receiving their last pandemic payment tomorrow.

The PUP is the main Government support to prevent the economy sliding into mass unemployment. People who were in full-time employment before they were shut out of their jobs due to the restrictions receive 350 a week under the taxable welfare payment.

Separate figures from the Rvenue and the CSO show there were a further 410,00 people whose jobs or incomes levels rely on the separate wage-subsidy scheme and 225,600 people who were on the May official live register unemployment count.

Some 114,600 people, or around a quarter of the total, who worked in accommodation and food service continue to account for the largest share under the pandemic payment, as restaurants and pubs prepare to fully open up.

However, areas where the return to work got underway a few weeks ago, including construction, continue to have a large number of employees availing of the payment.

There were 39,700 construction employees receiving a payment last week, down from 45,500 from a week earlier.

The number of wholesale and retail workers needing the payment fell by 9,600 in the week, as shops started to reopen, but the total number of retail workers on the scheme remains at an elevated level, at 63,600.

There were 24,300 manufacturing employees availing of the payment, down by 2,700 from a week earlier.

By region, there were 46,700 people in Cork availing of the pandemic payment last week, down from 50,300 a week earlier.

Gerard Brady, chief economist at business group Ibec, said the gradual fall in the numbers mirrored the experiences of continental European countries that had lifted their restrictions before Ireland.

Chief economist Conall Mac Coille at broker Davy said the department would start to worry if the numbers remain at an elevated level through September.
Controversial bank levy will change, unemployment keeps growing. Read your overview of news from June 22, 2020.

Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled

Take a look at what happened in Slovakia on Monday, June 22, 2020. This daily news overview service is free of charge for our readers. If you want to help us continue doing our work the best we can, you can become our subscriber. Thank you for your trust.

For a weekly overview with comments, take a look at the latest Last Week in Slovakia published this afternoon.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Independent culture gets a boost

Altogether 111 independent culture and art projects in the Bratislava Region will be supported by 300,000. Aid amounting to 150,000 was allocated from individual donations of the regions governor, an alternative to the prime ministers reserve. Another half will come from the Tatra Banka Foundation. The expert jury assessed the projects and picked 111, said Bratislava Self-Governing Regions Governor, Juraj Droba.

Representatives of the Trnava Region will support independent culture with 165,000. Apart from subsidies for independent culture projects amounting to 100,000, two regional galleries will receive 40,000 to purchase the works of Slovak artists, while regional libraries will buy books from small publishing houses for 10,000 and the Jan Palarik Theatre will support freelance artists by giving them parts in its prepared performance, said governor Jozef Viskupic.

Two more coronavirus sources occurred

Only 41 COVID-19 tests were carried out on June 21, of which one was positive. The number of deaths and recovered patients has remained the same for several days in a row. See more detailed statistics here.

Meanwhile, two infection sources have been revealed in the centre of Spisske Podhradie (Presov Region). Altogether 46 people have returned to the town from the UK since June 6. The homecomers are expected to be gradually tested. The situation is currently being discussed by the crisis staff.

Meanwhile, infection closed schools in Cadca and Krasno nad Kysucou (Zilina Region). The Regional Public Health Authority in Cadca is already informing parents about the testing of pupils and school employees, said Mayor Milan Gura.

In the meantime, several pupils of primary and secondary schools returned to school desks on June 22. The sixth to ninth grades of primary schools and secondary schools will be opened until June 30, with attendance being voluntary.

Flights between Kosice and Vienna restored

The Austrian Airlines company has restored regular flights between Vienna and Kosice. The first 30 passengers arrived in the eastern Slovak city on June 22, and 10 flew back to the Austrian capital.

The flights will be dispatched four times a week, with the frequency being expected to increase to 13 flights a week in autumn.

Controversial levy will change

The controversial bank levy, doubled and prolonged indefinitely by the previous ruling coalition, will change. Instead of paying 0.4 percent of banks liabilities, banks will now be more active in restoring the countrys economy after the coronavirus crisis, as stems from a joint agreement signed by the representatives of the Finance Ministry and the banks in Slovakia on June 22.

1 billion already paid to the state will now be sent to the Development Fund for Slovakia, and it will be possible to use it on various projects.

In return, banks have promised to withdraw the lawsuits and reduce the dividends paid to the shareholders.

 Banks are not enemies, but part of our ecosystem comprised of people, banks, companies and employers who give jobs to people. It wouldnt work without banks.  PM Igor Matovic after signing the memorandum with banks.

In other news

A woman missing since the December 2019 gas explosion in Presov has been declared dead . The district court set the date of death at December 6, 2019. She is the eighth official victim of the explosion in the block of flats. (TASR)

. The district court set the date of death at December 6, 2019. She is the eighth official victim of the explosion in the block of flats. (TASR) The most honest politician in Slovakia is President Zuzana Caputova, whose trustworthiness increased from Octobers 42 percent to more than 61 percent. On the other hand, the biggest liar among politicians is Smer chair Robert Fico. Only 9.5 percent of respondents in the recent Focus poll carried out for the Na Telo programme of the TV Markiza broadcaster said he tells the truth.

Travel agencies are ready to organise holiday trips to safe countries . Currently, it is possible to travel to 23 European countries without restrictions . The Foreign Affairs Ministry does not recommend travelling to countries not on the safe list. As travel agencies expect the list to be gradually extended, they are also offering trips to countries where travel is not currently possible. (SITA)

. Currently, it is possible to travel to . The Foreign Affairs Ministry does not recommend travelling to countries not on the safe list. As travel agencies expect the list to be gradually extended, they are also offering trips to countries where travel is not currently possible. (SITA) The Interior Ministry should have medical material worth 19.776 million at its disposal to fight the coronavirus. This stems from the frame agreement to purchase medical and pharmaceutical material and protective equipment, in order to fight the spread of the virus to secure the primary protection of the Police Corps, the Fire and Rescue Corps, and other Interior Ministry employees.

at its disposal to fight the coronavirus. This stems from the frame agreement to purchase medical and pharmaceutical material and protective equipment, in order to fight the spread of the virus to secure the primary protection of the Police Corps, the Fire and Rescue Corps, and other Interior Ministry employees. The testimony of former judge Vladimir Sklenka , who collaborated with the police during the Burka (Storm) police operation, may last several days. He was transported to the Nitra-based headquarters of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) on the morning of June 22, and did not talk to journalists.

, who collaborated with the police during the Burka (Storm) police operation, may last several days. He was transported to the Nitra-based headquarters of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) on the morning of June 22, and did not talk to journalists. Jan Santa, the prosecutor of the Special Prosecutors Office submitted to the Specialised Criminal Court a lawsuit against Stefan Agh in the case of forged promissory notes . Agh was originally accused alongside Pavol Rusko and Marian Kocner, but the court later decided to hold a separate proceeding with him. The chamber will be the same as the one judging Rusko and Kocner, sentencing them to 19 years in prison.

. Agh was originally accused alongside Pavol Rusko and Marian Kocner, but the court later decided to hold a separate proceeding with him. The chamber will be the same as the one judging Rusko and Kocner, sentencing them to 19 years in prison. The army will help municipalities in northeastern Slovakia stricken by floods on Friday, June 19. Soldiers will help clean the stream bed in the village of Pichne (the Snina district in Presov Region), and a pontoon bridge will be transported to the village of Zubne (the Humenne district in Presov Region). (TASR)

The unemployment rate, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, keeps increasing in Slovakia while analysts expect the growth to reach its peak only in autumn. Mays registered unemployment , i.e. the rate of those job seekers able to take a job immediately, amounted to 7.2 percent or 219,159, up by 0.63 percentage points or 19,504 people month-on-month and by 2.32 p.p. or by 64,000 people year-on-year, according to data published by the Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Centre (UPSVR) on June 19.

, i.e. the rate of those job seekers able to take a job immediately, or 219,159, up by 0.63 percentage points or 19,504 people month-on-month and by 2.32 p.p. or by 64,000 people year-on-year, according to data published by the Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Centre (UPSVR) on June 19. The number of visits in accommodation facilities dropped by 98.5 percent . There were some 6,700 guests in April, down from last years 440,000. Tourism belongs among the most affected economic fields in Slovakia affected by measures to stop the coronavirus pandemic from spreading. The statistics were impacted by the closure of tourism operations and radical travel restrictions at both the national and international level.

. There were some 6,700 guests in April, down from last years 440,000. Tourism belongs among the most affected economic fields in Slovakia affected by measures to stop the coronavirus pandemic from spreading. The statistics were impacted by the closure of tourism operations and radical travel restrictions at both the national and international level. Slovenska Sporitelna bank will dismiss about 5 percent of its employees by the end of this year, and another 5 percent next year. This decision is part of its plan to save 5 million on expenses. Most people will leave headquarters in Bratislava. (Index)

about by the end of this year, and next year. This decision is part of its plan to save 5 million on expenses. Most people will leave headquarters in Bratislava. (Index) The Debt and Liquidity Management Agency (ARDAL) sold treasury bills with maturity in May 2021 for 220 million . The demand of investors amounted to as much as 1.223 billion. (TASR)

. The demand of investors amounted to as much as 1.223 billion. (TASR) The Divadelna Nitra theatre festival will be held as originally planned, on September 25 to 30, 2020. The original programme based on a varied selection of foreign performances has been limited as nobody can say how the world will be functioning in a few months. As a result, bigger space will be given to Slovak theatres and local artists.

Also on Spectator.sk today:

Related article

Related article A new proxy has resigned from the post, following reports on her visit to Kocners yacht Read more

Related article

Related article Auction for 5G network postponed Read more

Related article

Related article Many shades of green and of bravery: Velka Javorina Read more

Related article

Related article Historic walls and well were discovered in Zvolen Read more

Related article
Researchers at a major Boston academic medical center designed, fabricated, tested, and implemented a reusable face shield for front-line medical staff within a couple of weeks. The work, presented June 18 in the journal Med, was carried out at the Brigham and Women's Hospital Emergency Department in collaboration with members of the volunteer group Greater Boston Pandemic Fabrication Team (PanFab) and the local maker community.

The authors of the study say it provides an efficient and generally applicable approach for leveraging local manufacturing processes to quickly produce personal protective equipment (PPE) during public health emergencies. The paper provides all of the instructions and model files to produce the face shields.

"All of the designs and protocols generated through this effort are being freely shared for reuse and improvement, and the results of our testing in the emergency department at the Brigham are reported in full to facilitate the execution of similar face-shield efforts in other clinical settings," says co-senior study author Sherry Yu of the Brigham and Harvard Medical School. "We anticipate that this work will provide a framework for the design and implementation of similar approaches to PPE manufacturing for current and future shortages."

In the face of a rapidly expanding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, severe PPE shortages have put both health care professionals and patients at increased risk of infection. The origins of these shortages reflect the fragility of medical supply chains, in which relatively few international vendors dominate critical medical product areas. Because many hospitals use just-in-time inventory management, supply-chain problems rapidly deplete hospital supplies and prevent restocking from traditional vendors. Two months into the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, traditional supply chains remain substantially disrupted, and much-advertised alternative sources of supply from large companies have not yet been widely distributed.

Faced with this crisis, many caregivers and medical centers have turned to local fabricators that use 3D printing to provide replacements for products such as face shields, filtering respirators, and even ventilator components. Recently, many public-domain designs for face shields have become available. Groups using these designs have found that introducing face shields and similar PPE into a healthcare setting is challenging. Despite their relatively simple design, face shields are regulated in the U.S. by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In April, the FDA issued a letter stating that it "does not intend to object to individuals' distribution and use of improvised PPE when no alternatives, such as FDA-cleared masks or respirators, are available."

Still, no clear path exists for introducing a locally fabricated product into a clinical setting. "The FDA letter provides a legal framework in which to use locally fabricated, improvised PPE in the US, but it does not address the more general issue of introducing non-traditional PPE into a healthcare environment; what to do if emergency guidance is lacking, as it currently is in many countries; and how nontraditional devices should be introduced into the hospital supply chain in a rational, safe and controlled manner," says co-senior study author Nicole LeBoeuf of the Brigham and Harvard Medical School.

advertisement

To address this need, Yu, LeBoeuf, and co-senior study author Peter Sorger of Harvard Medical School used a research protocol under supervision from the university's institutional review board to test a locally fabricated face shield as an investigational device. This allowed clinicians to participate in an iterative design process that was followed by real-world testing in an emergency department. Yu says this approach is unique because feedback was obtained in parallel, leading to faster implementation.

The researchers started with the 3D-printed Prusa RC2 face-shield design developed in the Czech Republic. They improved on this design to ensure limited aerosol and splatter exposure coming from the front and above, resistance to fogging, and suitable comfort for all-day wear in a high-intensity clinical setting. Overall, four substantial design modifications were made on the basis of clinical feedback, and the resulting design includes many features that are not present in disposable commercial face shields.

First, the researchers increased the width to maximize face protection without obstructing hearing or impeding a user's range of motion. Second, they used hook-and-loop Velcro to adapt each visor to individual users. Third, they reduced tightness by placing anchor points for the hook-and-loop strap in-line with the headbands.

And fourth, the researchers added a visor above the headband to prevent fluid from entering the top of the face shield during high-risk procedures in which a clinician is required to lean forward. This includes endotracheal intubation for mechanical ventilation, one of the riskier procedures that must be performed on COVID-19 patients. They also added a plastic lip at the bottom of the visor so that any liquid that did fall on this area would be retained by the lip and would not spread down the front of the shield and affect a user's vision.

Among 92 surveyed staff members of the emergency department, most responded that the BWH/PanFab face shield was better in terms of splash protection (96%), sturdiness and reliability (92%), ease of use (78%), and comfort (87%). Moreover, 92% planned to continue using the BWH/PanFab face shield, and 99% responded they would be comfortable or very comfortable using this shield in a clinical scenario in which they had no other option.

The entire process of introducing a non-traditionally manufactured product into a hospital supply chain in a safe and controlled manner took only three weeks. With a design in hand and institutional support, others can deploy this process in two weeks or less, plus two to three days for clinical testing if design modifications are necessary because of material shortages. To date, the researchers have fabricated approximately 3,000 face shields, all of which remain in use. Currently, they are assessing various procedures for sterilizing and reusing face shields and similar PPE and clinically testing an alternative face-shield design that can be packed flat to facilitate shipping and storage.

Sorger says the changes in regulatory guidance are needed to facilitate the type of testing they used for their face shields. Moreover, hospital systems need staff their crisis and response teams with individuals who are specifically tasked with outreach to maker and manufacturing communities.

"The current crisis has shown that, when a pandemic is spreading, and health care workers are placed at high risk, we require a distributed and robust community-level approach to essential medical supplies," Sorger says. "The resulting devices, developed and produced largely by volunteers, not only are likely to decrease the risk of hospital infection but also send a powerful message to front-line medical staff that the local community stands behind them. Although a pandemic was required to galvanize these insights and promote rapid change, our hope is that the spirit of thoughtful collaboration and rapid innovation does not dissipate after the resolution of the current COVID-19 crisis."
Bollywood is not for everyone.

Some realise it sooner and tread different paths to make different achievements in life, while others keep trying till the industry throws them off.

In this giant rigmarole of realisations and refusals, we have seen many of our beloved celebs fading out into oblivion, leaving us wondering, where are they, how are they...?

This Missing Report series digs deep into the untold stories of such missing stars, and today we are covering Mamata Kulkarni.

Mamta Kulkarni in "Karan Arjun"

The girl from a middle-class family had no interest in the glam world but was driven by her mothers high aspirations. So coy, a teenager Mamta had teared up when asked to drop her dupatta during a screen test.

She booked her debut in 1991 with a Tamil movie, Nanbargal, directed by Chandrashekar who introduced the actress to Bollywood the following year with the Hindi remake of the same movie that released as Mera Dil Tere Liye. But, it was with Tirangaa that hit the theatres with an assorted star cast of Raaj Kumar and Nana Patekar in 1992 that gave her countrywide recognition.

With Akshay Kumar in 'Sabse Bada Khiladi'

The actress went on to work in several films, starred opposite the likes of Aamir Khan in Baazi, Akshay Kumar in Sabse Bada Khiladi, Salman Khan in Karan Arjun, and Saif Ali Khan in Aashiq Awara. However, none of these films fetched her any reputation as an actress; her presence in most was relegated to being the love interest of the hero who would drive the story framed around him. There wasnt much for the heroines to do but circling trees standing tall amidst lush green expanses.

An image that she successfully established for herself was that of being uber-bold, and posing topless for the Stardust mag concreted it further. The 90s werent prepared for that kind of a brave statement and a pack of activists descended upon her home to throw some garments at her.

She wobbled through these troubled waters some more, but after she accused director Raj Kumar Santoshi of making undue advances toward her boomed into a massive controversy, her career was done with for good. The last remembered movie of her is China Gate, but an average audience reminisces over it more for Urmila Matondkars chart-topping item number chamma-chamma, overlooking the leading actress who was left fuming over her scenes chopped in the editing room.

Story continues

With Sanjay Kapoor in 'Chhupa Rustam'

Her subsequent films, like the Malayalam Chandamama or the musical thriller, Chhupa Rustam, did little to support her tumbling career. In 2003, she was seen in a Bangladeshi film, Shesh Bongsodhar which marks the end of her acting stint. What followed after her disappearance from the industry was rather exciting for the suspense it carried. After keeping herself hidden behind obscurity for over a decade, Mamta Kulkarnis name hit the headlines again in 2016.

Being married to Vikram Goswami, who was accused of running a global drug cartel the former actress was suspected of being actively involved in the dealings. The couple was arrested by Kenya police and there were speculations about the United States' Drug Enforcement Administration looking out for them. Also known as Vicky, the alleged drug lord was serving long-term imprisonment in Dubai. It was then when Mamata married the jailbird after converting to Islam, and eventually was set free.

Mamata Kulkarni in 2016

However, speaking to a new channel for a televised interview, the Beqabu actress asserted, "The reason behind his arrest was not because he was involved in drug trafficking. Instead, it was a family dispute and Vicky just happened to get dragged into it.

Though she denies her husbands involvement in drug dealings, Thane Police named the kingpin of an international drug operation after ephedrine worth 2,000 crores were recovered in a drug haul in 2016. Two years later, she lost possession of three plush apartments in Mumbai after failing to appear in the court for this case and both were declared proclaimed offenders. Mamta who had fled India long back hasnt been heard of since then, but if you would want to go by reports published in Gulfnews, the former Bollywood sizzler is perhaps staying in Canada these days.
In any competition of contestants, there must be a winner and a loser. There is always a reason for one winning and the other losing. In the just ended Kumawu Constituency NPP primaries election, the incumbent Member of Parliament (Hon) won the delegates election massively to retain his position as the sitting MP cum parliamentary-candidate on the ticket of NPP for election 2020.

The others contesting with him followed up in the descending order of Lawyer Edward Kofi Osei, Dr Philip Yaw Bannor and Robert Kwame Ahomka-Lindsay (Hon). Let me congratulate all the contestants for expressing their honest willingness to serve Kumawu constituents by participating in the NPP primaries election.

Sorry to pick Robert Kwame Ahomka-Lindsay (Hon) for discussion in this publication as to why he might have retained the bottom position on the results table. Not only was he new and unknown to many a Kumawuman citizen, although he is allegedly a member of the Kumawu Ananangya royal family, coming from Ananangya, he associated himself with the wrong persons in the constituency.

He thought by campaigning on the terms of affiliation with, and being the favourite of, the alleged Kumawuhene Barima Sarfo Tweneboa Kodua (Dr Yaw Sarfo) and Kumawuhemaa Nana Abenaa Serwaah Amponsah, he could easily sweep the votes to emerge the winner. His alleged campaign chief, architect, strategist or manager, the District Chief Executive Samuel Addae Agyekum, who purportedly was trying his hardest to persuade the delegates with that message, rather made matters worse for Ahomka.

Samuel Addae Agyekum is not liked by many in the constituency and the district. He is a liar. He exhibits his youthful exuberance in a very deplorable manner. He is the one alleged by many people in Kumawuman to have always arranged and colluded with others to bring police and soldiers to Kumawu and Bodomase to intimidate the innocent people for all his stupid and malicious hallucinations. He is not visionary but completely myopic, and misfit in his post. He, by his commissions and omissions, is helping some supposedly powerful traditional overlords from outside the Kumawu division to descend on Kumawuman to exploit and rob her of her wealth and natural endowments.

Ahomka did not bother himself to investigate what is going on in Kumawuman about how the majority of the citizens don't regard Dr Yaw Sarfo as their Kumawuhene and wish to see him out sooner from the dubious position he is perilously holding on to. He did not take time to conduct secret investigations into the relationship between Dr Yaw Sarfo and the citizens of Kumawuman and how he is scorned to the point of mourners leaving in droves any funeral ground he steps foot on hence people unwilling to invite him to the funerals of their deceased family members. This is because they mockingly see him as "Nana ogu agoro"

It was in the olden days when subjects voted en masse for the favourite of their chief. Now, it is no longer so, with the matter becoming worse if the chief is not liked by his subjects as it is in the case of Kumawuman with Dr Yaw Sarfo.

Ahomka's chances could have been a bit much better if he had cleverly distanced himself from Dr Yaw Sarfo without making it obvious. Probably an opportunist, he thought by declaring support for Dr Yaw Sarfo and campaigning in his name, things were going to be much easier for him but not knowing he was writing his election dirge.

If Ahomka indeed has any matrilineal lineage to the Kumawu Ananangya royal family, did he bother himself to consult with them on his quest to contest for the Kumawu constituency parliamentary seat? No. Has he ever helped in any little way the struggles by his Ananangya royal family to claim back their disputed royal paramount Kumawu Kodua Stool? No.

Does Ahomka know that Barima Tweneboa Kodua V, the royal from the Ananangya royal family is the preferred Omanhene by about 95% of Kumawuman citizens? Does he know that DCE Samuel Addae Agyekum is disliked by about 95% of the people in Kumawuman for a number of reasons? How do you expect to win elections by aligning yourself with such much hated person(s)?

I hope His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will look into replacing the DCE since he is not, and has never been, the choice, of Kumawuman citizens, for a number of reasons. Should Samuel Addae Agyekum stand any public election in Kumawuman today, he will lose woefully.

The secrets made available in the public domain by one NPP delegate Tuffour weeks before the election have been authenticated by the election results. Check the underlying web link for the details.

https://www.dailymailafrica.com/2020/05/30/alleged-dishonesty-and-corruption-by-kumawu-sekyere-npp-constituency-chairman-secretary-and-the-dce/

I congratulate Philip Basoah (Hon) on his victory and I hope he will perform much better from today forward. I shall be putting him on his toes. I shall be writing to him on matters of concern to the Kumawu constituents to be raised on the floor of parliament. He will have to go the "Abrokyire" parliamentarians way to prove his worth to his constituents. The constituents can, and must, help, their MPs, to be worthy of their salt.

The old man is tired so I have to retire to bed to catch some sleep.

Rockson Adofo

Monday, 22 June 2020
Ghaziabad, June 23 : : The prime accused in the murder of a 19-year-old nursing student has been arrested by Ghaziabad Police on Monday. The prime accused, Sheru Khan (22), had gone into hiding after the incident. He was caught while changing his location of hiding, police said. "He was moving from Harsh Vihar to Panchsheel Colony when we arrested him," Kalanidhi Naithani, SSP Ghaziabad, told IANS. The police have also arrested Sherus brother Rizwan and brother in law Imran for providing shelter to the prime accused.

Naithani also told that the Sheru's arrest was a joint operation by two teams of Ghaziabad Police and Crime Branch. Naithani has declared prize money of Rs 20,000 for the teams, which traced and arrested Sheru. Naithani had put a bounty of Rs 20,000 on Sheru after he went into the hiding.

Earlier, the police had arrested two accomplices of Sheru, Asif (22) and Amir Chaudhary (20), who accompanied him in the murder. The police have charged all three accused under section 302 of IPC and section 25 of Arms Act.

Khan, along with his two friends, had attacked Naina in the middle of the road at a market near Tila Mor when she was returning to her home on Wednesday. Her parents accompanied her during the incident. Sheru had stabbed her multiple times in her neck, chest, and abdomen. She was rushed to a hospital in Delhi, where the doctors declared her brought dead.

Sheru had come with his friends on a scooty. Baldev Singh, Naina's father, said that he was donning a mask, but her mother identified him when she tore his mask while struggling to save Naina from being attacked. All three of them escaped the scene right after the incident. The family lodged an FIR against the accused following which the police arrested Asif and Aamir on Thursday. However, Sheru went on large. Naina used to live with her parents in Tulsi Niketan.

The police have also recovered two knives and the scooty, which was used in the crime.

Naina was murdered just two days before her marriage. The marriage was scheduled on June 20 at Nagpur, where her fiancA lives and runs a restaurant, Singh informed.

Police informed that Sheru and Aamir are residents of Delhi's Sunder Nagri, while Asif lives in Sahibabad. Police also said that Sheru was after Naina since she was studying in a school in Sunder Nagri. She was pursuing her education in nursing from a college in Delhi. Sheru used to help his father in his business. He was also very active on Tik Tok and had amassed a following of four lakh users on his account.
Click here to read the full article.

LONDON  Alasdhair Willis is leaving Hunter after seven years as creative director, but will stay on as a senior adviser to its parent company, Atypical Partner.

Willis departure is the latest in a series of changes to rain down on Hunter, the British rubber boot and outerwear brand: Earlier this month, the company opted for a recapitalization rather than an outright sale, announced a management reshuffle and set a strategic review.

More from WWD

The recapitalization saw an existing shareholder, Pall Mall Legacy, become the majority owner. Other investors include Searchlight Capital and Pentland.

Willis plans to become a senior adviser to Atypical Partner, the umbrella company that controls Pall Mall Legacy. Atypical said that Willis will advise and collaborate on current and future portfolio companies.

Mauro Morretti, founder of Atypical, said Willis brought incredible creative flair and drive to Hunter, its products and collaborations. We are very fortunate to have him support Atypical, and look forward to putting his gifted mind to new opportunities across our portfolio, as a senior adviser, he said.

Willis was part of a push to take Hunter upmarket and into new categories. Today, non-footwear accounts for up to 40 percent of sales in Hunters key markets.

He was responsible for the brands slick ad campaigns, move into stylish outerwear, and marketing moves such as floating a giant green Hunter hot air balloon, shaped like a boot, more than 22 cities in Europe and the U.S. The latter market accounts for 40 percent of sales.

Under his watch, the company also pivoted from runway shows in London to consumer-facing marketing events on the outdoor festival circuit.

During his tenure, Hunter set strategic collaborations with brands including Stella McCartney on a sustainable rubber boot, Dover Street Market, Target, Peppa Pig and Disney.

As reported, Paolo Porta has become interim chief executive officer of the brand while a search for a new, full-time ceo takes place. Porta was formerly senior vice president of merchandising and licensing at Jimmy Choo.
A woman who died from COVID-19 after disembarking the Ruby Princess cruise ship had been told allegedly by onboard health authorities she had the flu and it was "nothing to worry about", an inquiry has been told.

Lesley Bacon was first struck down with "horrendous pain" in her left leg on March 12 and attended the ship's medical clinic feeling less well four days later.

The special commission inquiry into the Ruby Princess continues. Credit:Janie Barrett

Brian Bacon was told his wife had the flu and would be kept in the vessel's clinic overnight.

Josephine Roope on Monday recounted the timeline of her friend Mrs Bacon's demise, to an inquiry examining the ship's arrival in Sydney on March 19.
1. Bollywood War Films - Border (1997)

2. Bollywood War Films - LOC: Kargil (2003)

3. Bollywood War Films - The Ghazi Attack (2017)

4. Bollywood War Films - Paltan (2018)

5. Bollywood War Films - Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019)

6. Bollywood War Films - Kesari (2019)

War is a harsh reality of the modern world. On one hand, its a destructive force and on the other, it also brings out extremes of bravery and patriotism, especially from the soldiers deployed at the front. Our filmmakers have always been in awe of the Indian soldier. The army personnel have always been projected in the best light in our films. Our border warriors give it their all to keep their motherland safe and this fact has been highlighted time and again in our films. Border (1997) was a big-budget extravaganza that changed the scenario of. Starting from that iconic movie, we pick the best movies since then which paid homage to the unparalleled bravery and honour of Indian soldiers who are willing to give up their lives for their country in the blink of an eye.Director: JP DuttaCast: Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Akshaye Khanna, Jackie Shroff, Tabu, Pooja BhattThe film was shot in Bikaner and recreated the legendary1971 Battle of Longewala. Real army men participated in the shooting of the film and genuine army gear like tanks and army jeeps were used to add a touch of authenticity. On the evening of 3 December 1971, Pakistan Air Force planes bomb multiple Indian airbases and war officially gets declared. Dharamveer Bhan (Akshaye Khanna) and five of his soldiers are sent to patrol the border in a section; BSF Assistant Commandant Bhairon Singh (Sunil Shetty) and his men are assigned to clear out the nearby villages. Dharamveer spots Pakistani tanks (Chinese Type 59s) and infantry crossing the border into India. He reports back the enemy movement to Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri (Sunny Deol) and is ordered to secretly follow the tanks without engaging them. Wing Commander Andy Bajwa (Jackie Shroff), tells Major Kuldip that there can be no air support as his base has only Hunter-Fighters, which can only fly during the day. Bajwa promised air support at first light and asked Kuldip and his men to hold off the enemy during the night. Kuldip and his vastly outnumbered men decide to defend their post till their dying breath. Showcasing heroics of the highest order, they continue to engage the enemy throughout the night, even blowing off tanks by deploying grenades and ensure a victory when Bajwa and his boys fly down to finish off the enemy. Border was a hugely patriotic film and evoked the feelings of patriotism and pride among the masses.Director: J. P. DuttaCast: Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty, Karan Nath, Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Akkineni Nagarjuna, Akshaye Khanna, Manoj Bajpayee, Ashutosh RanaThe film was a star-studded affair and depicted a true picture of the 1999 Kargil conflict. Unfortunately, the lack of a coherent script and editing made it overtly long and ate into its dramatic appeal. That said, the performances by its ensemble cast were true to form. The actors gave it their best and brought to life the heroic exploits of such bravehearts such as Captain Anuj Nayyar, Captain Vikram Batra, Lieutenant Manoj Pandey, Lieutenant Colonel Y K Joshi and many other known and unknown heroes of Kargil who gave it their all in punishing conditions to ensure a victory over India against the Pakistani army, as well as the terrorists. It was an expensively mounted affair and Dutta made sure the battle scenes looked authentic.Director: Sankalp ReddyCast: Rana Daggubati, Atul Kulkarni, Kay Kay Menon, Taapsee Pannu, Rahul Singh, Satyadev KancharanaDuring the 1971 war, Pakistan reportedly deployed its best submarine PNS Ghazi to destroy Indias aircraft carrier INS Vikrant. In order to fool the submarine, the Indian navy sent an old ship, INS Rajput as bait in order to dupe Ghazi. Rajput pretended to be Vikrant which sailed away to safety. Its said the officials abroad Vikrant set depth charges upon sighting the submarine. Another version goes that it wasnt able to successfully evade the mine; it itself had floated as a trap for Vikrant and went down as its torpedo caught fire. The film, though, gives a radically different version of the events. It shows that an S21 class Indian submarine commanded initially by Capt. Ranvijay Singh (Kay Kay Menon) and later by Lt. Commander Arjun Varma (Rana Daggubati), has been sent to spy on Ghazi. Singh wants to attack it and his first mission fails narrowly. Ghazi gets alerted to their presence and there ensues an underwater cat-and-mouse chase where both the sides try to come on top. Despite his submarine being badly damaged, Arjun finally guides it to victory.Director: JP DuttaCast: Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Gurmeet Choudhary, Harshvardhan Rane, Siddhanth Kapoor, Luv SinhaIt was asaluting the bravery of Indian soldiers taking care of far off border posts. We know that India lost a war with the Chinese in 1962. But few know that in 1967, India won a skirmish with China at the Sikkim border. The film narrates the incident truthfully without pulling any punches and without any unnecessary biases. Both the Chinese and the Indian soldiers are shown to be professionals doing their duty. The film begins with Lt. Col. Rai Singh Yadav, CO 2 Grenadiers (Arjun Rampal) getting briefed on his new assignment by his commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Sagat Singh, GOC Mtn Div (Jackie Shroff). He meets his fellow officers, Maj. Bishen Singh (Sonu Sood), who is made operational commander in charge of the security, Capt. Prithvi Singh Dagar (Gurmeet Choudhary), and Maj. Harbhajan Singh of 18 Rajput (Harshvardhan Rane), who is the liaison officer from the 18 Rajputs who preceded them at the border. The other important members of the command include 2Lt. Attar Singh (Luv Sinha) and HAV Parashar (Siddhant Kapoor), who acts as the interpreter and the intelligence agent. Irritated by the constant stand-offs between the Chinese and Indian soldiers, Lt. Col. Rai Singh decides to fence down the border and is given a go-ahead for the same by the high command. Sikkim wasn't officially a part of India till then and was considered as an Indian Protectorate. The Chinese term the fencing as invasion and retaliate. The Indian soldiers deployed for the fencing are caught unawares but valiantly fight back. Capt. Prithvi Singh Dagar and Major Harbhajan Singh lose their lives in the action. Constant shelling by better placed Indian guns for the next three days compel the Chinese to raise the white flag, resulting in a moral victory for the Indians.Director: Aditya DharCast: Vicky Kaushal, Paresh Rawal, Yami Gautam, Kirti Kulhari, Mohit RainaOn 18 September 2016, a fedayeen attack was made by four armed militants on an Indian army base near the town of Uri. Nineteen Indian Army soldiers were killed. On 29 September, eleven days after the Uri attack, the Indian Army conducted surgical strikes against suspected militants in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. It was claimed that many terrorist launch pads inside the POK border were destroyed. And around 35-50 militants got killed in the raid., gives a fictionalised version of the events.and his team of specially trained commandos cross the border both via helicopter and on foot. They successfully infiltrate and not only destroy a number of terrorist camps but also manage to kill the main perpetrators of the Uri attack. The story is high on emotional connect. You get to see the personal side of a professional soldier and can relate to the sacrifices he gets to make while serving his country. Vicky Kaushal gave a restrained performance as a soldier bursting with patriotic fervour, who keeps a cool head to see the dangerous mission through.Director: Anurag SinghCast: Akshay Kumar, Parineeti Choprais a retelling of the famous Battle of Saragarhi which took place in 1897. 21 soldiers of the 36 Sikh Regiment stood in the way of ten thousand Afghan soldiers and didn't let them conquer the Saragarhi fort till the evening. The original plan of the Afghans was to capture the nearby forts, Fort Lockhart and Fort Gulistan as well on the same day. The sacrifice by the 21 lionhearted Sikhs put a spanner in the works. Akshay Kumar, who played Havaldar Ishar Singh was the soul of the film. His bearing, his mannerisms made him out to be a professional soldier of that era. The way he rallies the morale of his fellow soldiers and leads from the front was an example of true heroism. The film wasnt jingoistic. And it made out that the soldiers were willing to lay down their lives for their motherland and not because of some fealty to the British. The action scenes became more gruesome as the body count escalated, director Anurag Singh not sparing us the true horrors of war. You cant help salute the bravery of the 21 soldiers who gave their all to a cause.
If anybody should know whos got the will in the popular Del Shores comedy, Daddys Dyin Whos Got the Will, it would be Sara Lee, a spinster, portrayed by Cassie Wright of La Porte, in the July 10-26 production at the Pearl Theater.

After all, Sara Lee has been her fathers caretaker for many years, while her siblings fled the farm in tiny Lowake, Texas, for greener pastures. Now, theyve returned to watch their father die and perhaps collect an inheritance.

Its such an odd thing to think about it, but oh, man, this play is hilarious, said director Jeff Merriman of Pearland, who helms a production that was postponed for months because the of pandemic It also has a lot of humanity in it. It starts off like a stereotypical Texas comedy, but there is a lot going on that each child has to unpack. It is a fast, funny story with tense moments, touching moments and funny moments, which are lived out by characters you grow to care about.

Wright, 34, had never performed in a play until last year when a friend advised her, You need a boyfriend or a hobby.

He said, I think you would make a hell of an actress, she recalled. I said, I think you would make a hell of a comedian.

At her friends insistence, Wright attended tryouts at Pasadena Little Theatre, where director Julie Owen immediately cast her as peppy Georgia Dean Rudd in the holiday comedy A Doublewide, Texas Christmas.

Cassies personality matched up well with Georgia Dean. She is a fireball, said Owen, who lives in Clear Lake.

Wrights son, Tyler Scott, 19, enjoyed his mothers acting debut, but said, It wasnt even acting. She just had a lot of hairspray in her hair.

More Information Seating is limited to 30 tickets per performance. No reservations, please.Performances: July 10-26, 2020 Fridays and Saturdays 8:00pm Sundays 3:00pm Thursday, July 16 Buy One, Get One FREE 7:30pm See More Collapse

Merriman, who played Norwayne Baby Crumpler in that production of A Doublewide, Texas Christmas, imagined Wright as Marlene, an abused, desperate housewife, in Daddys Dyin, but Wright surprised him with her audition for the much bigger role of Sara Lee.

She blew me away, he said.

Georgia Dean Rudd will always be my favorite, but there is so much more depth to Sara Lee, said Wright. I get my heart broken, I go off on people, I cry and fall apart in front of everybody. I am working so hard to play this character. I have got to own this part.

Two years ago, Wright proved to herself what a fighter she is, when the former teenage mother, who quit high school to have a baby, came across an incredible job offer.

Everything went great until it was discovered that Wright didnt have a high-school diploma or GED.

I went to the local community center to get my GED, but the class was full, said Wright. I told the lady my entire life story. I said, I swear to you I will earn this diploma. She let me go to four days of class and four days of testing, and on the ninth day, I had my GED.

Wright also landed the job going on three years now as an invoicing specialist at SGS North America in Deer Park.

Merriman,a native of Lincoln, Nebraska, works as a maintenance technician for an engineering firm in Pearland.

He had not acted since high school when he was cast, in 2015, as Juror #8 in a production of 12 Angry Men at the Pearl.

Since then, he has continued acting, and got his feet wet with directing by serving as Renee van Nifteriks assistant for last years Black History Month play at the Pearl, Blues for an Alabama Sky.

After designing the set for Daddys Dyin Whos Got the Will, Merriman felt that it was too masculine, so he consulted Owen, who also plays Mama Wheelis in the show.

Owen added a womans touch, in the form of a handmade quilt that her cousin, Becky Whitehead, made and gifted to Owen a few years ago.

The quilt will make its stage debut on the sofa, said Owen.

Rounding out the cast are Maverick King and Heidi Scherer of Pearland, first-time actress Heather Atkins of Manvel, Lanier Young of La Porte and Hailey Beiermeister and Steve Lassiter of Houston.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be contacted at donmaines@att.net
Arbaaz Khan Reacts To Abhinav Kashyap's Money Laundering Claims

The actor was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times, "We have taken legal action and have also complained to the film association. We would like to go that way, not interested in fighting this any other way... We are doing what we think is the best way to address this."

Abhinav Kashyap's Scathing Post On Salman Khan's Being Human

In a Facebook post on June 19, Abhinav mentioned, "Salim Khan's biggest idea is Being Human. The charity being done by Being Human is just a show-off. Five cycles used to be distributed in front of my eyes during the shooting of Dabangg', next day the newspapers would print that the generous Salman Khan has donated 5000 cycles to the poor. It was all an effort to cleanse Salman Khan's image so that the media and the judges were kind to them in his criminal court cases. They are making money by fooling the innocent public. They are selling Rs 500 jeans for Rs 5000 and laundering money in the name of charity. Their intention is not to give anything to anyone, but to only acquire from people. The government needs to probe Being Human...I will cooperate with the government."

Before This, Abhinav Accused Salman Khan And His Family Of Sabotaging His Career Post Dabangg

Abhinav wrote on his Facebook page, "The reason I moved out of making Dabangg 2 ten years ago is that Arbaaz Khan in collusion with Sohail Khan and family was trying to take control of my career by bullying me." He further added, "The suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput brings to the forefront a much bigger problem of what many of us have been dealing with. Exactly what might compel a person to commit suicide?? I fear his death is just the tip of the iceberg just like the #metoo movement was for a much bigger malaise in Bollywood."

Salim Khan's Reaction On Abhinav Kashyap's Allegations

"Yes, we are the ones to ruin everything, right? You watch his films first and then we'll talk. He used my name in his statement right? Maybe he didn't know my father's name. His name was Rashid Khan. Let him use my grandfather and great grandfather's names too). Let him do what he wants, but we will not waste time in reacting to what he says," the veteran screenwriter was quoted as saying by Times of India.
Toronto is ready to move to Stage 2 reopening, the public health chair says, even though that means that we will see more cases of COVID-19.

Coun. Joe Cressy was both optimistic and cautious Monday after Premier Doug Ford decreed Toronto and Peel region ready to shake off many lockdown restrictions and move, starting Wednesday, to a wider reopening.

For the first time since March, residents will be able to get professional haircuts, eat and drink on restaurant patios, shop in malls and more, as long as physical distancing and other virus-containment rules are followed.

Over the past two weeks, the daily case counts in our city have shown that the measures we have taken to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are working, Cressy said in a statement.

He noted the city has a new online dashboard for residents to track new infections and other indicators, tools to track outbreaks in seniors homes and similar group settings, and online maps showing where virus hotspots exist in Toronto.

While I am optimistic about moving forward, I also know that we need to remain cautious, Cressy wrote. Moving forward with reopening means that will see more cases of COVID-19, because we cannot completely eliminate the risk of this virus until there is vaccine.

We will experience new outbreaks, and we will, sadly, see deaths. This in inevitable.

The new phase will see resumption of some city services paused during the pandemic. Splash pads will open Wednesday, followed by outdoor city swimming pools starting Friday and then wading pools.

CampTO, the scaled-down, physically distanced city day camps for kids aged 6 to 12, can now officially proceed. Registration for Etobicoke/York and Scarborough districts starts Wednesday at 7 a.m. People in Toronto/East York, West Toronto/York and North York districts can start signing up Thursday at 7 a.m.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, the public health chief, said that as Torontonians emerge more from their homes, her team will keep a close eye on indicators such as virus spread, health-care capacity and testing levels.

That will be a foundational part for making a determination as to whether we need to dial back (and reimpose restrictions) or whether we can continue forward, toward Stage 3, with most workplaces and community spaces reopened.

Infection levels dropped to the point that Toronto can move to Stage 2 because residents followed physical distancing rules, washed their hands and stuck to social circles, she said, urging Torontonians to keep up the good work.

If Torontonians follow the rules in Stage 2, Mayor John Tory said, hes confident the city can move safely but quickly into Stage 3.

But last weekend Toronto might have had a taste of whats to come, with parties on Toronto beaches, including Cherry Beach, where people did not physically distance and left behind big messes.

Tory said the city has boosted the number of bylaw officers and cleanup crews but warned people not to put the city at risk.

While we want people to enjoy our beaches, the beach parties themselves are not consistent with applicable and necessary health orders, he said.

De Villa repeated Monday that her efforts to keep a lid on infections as lockdown lifts will not include following the lead of her counterparts in Guelph and Windsor-Essex in ordering stores to mandate mask use indoors.

De Villa said the citys legal advice to her remains that she can strongly recommend cloth face coverings, but she does not have the legislative power to order their use, even though use on the TTC is mandatory starting July 2.

Rob Shirkey, a lawyer with expertise in municipal legislation, disagrees. Dr. de Villa can issue an order to mandate masks inside commercial establishments under section 22 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act, he said.

Theres also a strong legal argument that Mayor Tory (i.e., the head of council) can mandate masks under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act or that Council can pass a bylaw under its general health and welfare powers of the City of Toronto Act.

David Rider is the Stars City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider

Read more about:
The 31st Annual Moses Austin Heritage Festival was held over the weekend in Washington County as a way to celebrate the towns history.

Moses Austin founded the cities of Potosi and Herculaneum along with owning business interests in Ste. Genevieve. He was also the father of legendary Texas leader Stephen F. Austin. His tomb in Potosi is an important historical site for the states of Missouri and Texas.

Festival organizer Kris Richards said people were being safe and giving each other space but so many people were just ready to do something.

People are just ready to be people, Richards said. There have been so many rules people are just ready to get out.

That was exactly what they did beginning Friday night at the Billy Joe Boyer Memorial Cruise-In Parade and Car Show where Richards said he estimated 600 to 700 people came out for the first night.

This part of the weekend was the most important part for Richards. He said the parade and car show were named after his good friend Billy Joe Boyer who passed away in October.

I was not canceling Billys car show, I just wasnt, Richards said. We had 57 cars in the show and his car was a 1957 Chevy. If that doesnt say something I dont know what does.

Billy Joe Boyers wife Robin led the Friday night parade in that 1957 Chevy along with many members of the Boyer family.

The burnout contest returned for its second year in a row with 10 to 12 contestants.

On Saturday, the weather was a little warm but a nice breeze cooled off everyone as they waited for the parade to travel down Hwy. 8. Some participating in the parade handed out candy while others gave out bottles of water and Popsicles.

The Potosi High School Marching Band was able to reunite for the event. The group only started practicing again last week after being apart since March. The crowd seemed to enjoy the music and the color guard brought some added flair to the performance.

Heritage Park was missing a few of the usual exhibits but still featured music by Ben Turnbough, Jimmy Gilliam and Christian Crossroads. There were also pony rides for the kids and craft demonstrations by instructors in period clothing.

Victoria Kemper is a reporter for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-783-3366 or at vkemper@democratnewsonline.com

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Former Apple executive Omar Johnson told CNBC on Monday that racial inequality must be viewed as a problem businesses can address.

"I believe in businesses in America solving business problems, and I really want to make the Black inequality problem a business problem," Johnson said on "Squawk Alley."

Johnson, who is Black, said he has been fielding calls from corporate leaders in the weeks since George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, which set off waves of anti-racism and police brutality protests in U.S. cities and around the world. A number of companies also put out statements following Floyd's death, announcing charitable contributions and other initiatives designed to reduce racial inequality.

Johnson, former vice president of marketing at Apple, said companies can create change within their organization by starting with transparency around diversity. Take an honest measurement of the current situation, he said, and publish the results.

"How many Black employees do you have, on your board, on your executive team, all key decision-making verticals?" he said. "But also, think about the key functions outside of marketing and [human resources]. I know how a lot of people can feel when I say this, but we're not just marketing and HR people. What about finance, operations, engineering?"

Businesses need to also look at "soft data" around diversity in an organization to get beyond statistics around representation, Johnson said.

"What are Black employees saying? How are they feeling? What's the condition of your culturally Black employees?" said Johnson, who contended that it's important to create "safe spaces, where you can actually get real feedback on the state of what's happening with your Black employees."
The Supreme Court allowed authorities in Odisha on Monday to conduct the famed Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath in Puri, recalling its June 18 order that prohibited this years celebrations in view of the coronavirus disease outbreak.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde set several conditions, including the imposition of a curfew in Puri during the festivities, and asked the Jagannath Temple administration committee and the Odisha government to strictly adhere to them. This years Rath Yatra will begin on Tuesday.

If it is possible to ensure that there is no public attendance, we see no reason why the Rath Yatra cannot be conducted safely along its usual route from temple to temple. Having given serious consideration to the matter and having heard the parties, we are of the view that the Rath Yatra at Puri may be held, the order by the bench, also comprising justices Dinesh Maheshwari and AS Bopanna, said.

All entry points to Puri, including railway stations and bus stands, will be closed during the festival, the court ordered. The state government shall impose a curfew in the city of Puri on all the days and during all the time when Rath Yatra chariots are taken in procession. During the period of curfew, no one would be allowed to come out of their houses or their places of residence, such as hotels, lodging houses..., the order said.

In a special sitting, the top court was hearing over a dozen applications by individuals and associations seeking recall of its order delivered on Thursday. The applications, including by Janardhan Pattajoshi Mohapatra (the hereditary chief servitor of Lord Jagannath of the Jagannath Temple), found support from the central and Odisha governments with both favouring holding the festival without public participation.

Each Rath, i.e., chariot, shall be pulled by not more than 500 persons. Each of those 500 persons shall be tested for the coronavirus. They shall be permitted to pull the chariot only if they have been found negative, the court said. All those pulling the chariots should maintain social distancing before, during and after the Rath Yatra, and there should be an interval of one hour between two chariots, the court added.

Hours after the order, Odisha government imposed a 41-hour curfew in Puri and started Covid-19 testing of 700 temple priests who would pull the three chariots. Health and family welfare department said 700 servitors would undergo Covid-19 tests and only those who test negative will be allowed to pull the chariots. Covid test of 800 servitors was already conducted earlier.

Odisha director general of police Abhay said the shutdown will remain in force from 9pm Monday till 2pm on Wednesday. To restrict the entry of the people, all entry points to Puri will be sealed and barring urgent matters, no one will be allowed to enter Puri town. The shutdown period will be treated like the imposition of curfew, said Abhay.

We have mobilised 50 platoons of forces in Puri since Sunday evening, he added.

Rath Yatra, or the chariot journey, celebrates the annual journey of Lord Jagannath and his two siblings from the 12th century Jagannath Temple to their aunts abode in Gundicha temple, 2.5km away.

The deities are taken in massive wooden chariots weighing 85 tonnes each. After staying in Gundicha temple for nine days, the three deities come back to the Jagannath Temple on the 10th day in a return journey. About a million devotees converge in Puri during the festivities.

On June 18, the court ordered a stay on the festival and all activities associated with it, saying there could be large congregations in violation of social distancing norms. The order was passed on a petition filed by NGO Odisha Vikas Parishad, which approached the top court pointing out the public health risk.

Union home minister Amit Shah welcomed Mondays verdict. Today is a special day for all of us, particularly our Odia sisters and brothers as well as devotees of Mahaprabhu Shri Jagannath Ji. The entire nation is delighted by the decision of the Honourable Supreme Court to ensure the Rath Yatra goes on, he tweeted.

In a statement, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is from Odisha, said the event was not just a festival but an inseparable emotion for Odias. Lord Jagannath evokes unwavering love, devotion and reverence, he said.

Advocate Suvidutt MS, who represented Janardhan Pattajoshi Mohapatra, said: I welcome this judgment that allows the Rath Yatra because it endorses the fact that there should a balance between right of individual believer and the collective rights of society in terms of the spreading pandemic against which the temple committee and state machinery has taken all measures.

.
In a Monday announcement that Louisiana will not move to Phase 3 of coronavirus reopening, top state officials illustrated how Louisiana's trajectory has changed.

At the end of May as Louisiana entered Phase 2, reports of COVID-like illness, diagnosed coronavirus cases and hospitalizations were mostly decreasing across the state, according to a Louisiana Department of Health graphic.

As of June 22, those same criteria are showing more instances of plateaus or increases than before.

Click here for the full Louisiana Department of Health presentation.

Louisiana began reopening for Phase 1 on May 15 then moved to Phase 2 on June 5. New Orleans started a modified Phase 1 of reopening on May 16.

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

Gov. John Bel Edwards said during the Monday press conference that the increase in hospitalizations concerns him the most. Louisiana reported an increase of 41 hospitalized coronavirus patients Monday. That number increased from 589 to 630.

"There are a lot of people out there saying theyre done with the virus. Well the virus isnt done with us," Edwards said.

+15 Phase 3 in Louisiana put off amid coronavirus spike; here's how long Phase 2 might last Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is pausing the state's reopening, keeping the current Phase 2 rules in place for an additional 28 days in an e

Louisiana will remain under the Phase 2 reopening restrictions for an additional 28 days, Edwards announced Monday.

The move will keep the current level of restrictions in place until at least July 24.

Edwards also said Monday that he expects schools to reopen on time in August.
It has been a month since Australia's last coronavirus death in a major milestone coming at the same time as growing alarm over a rebound in cases in Victoria.

The nation's most recent COVID-19 death was reported 30 days ago, on May 23, when a man in his 60s died in a Victorian hospital.

It was Australia's 102nd coronavirus death and the country has not reported a further one since.

By comparison, more than 42,000 people in total have died from COVID in the UK to date, while the death toll stands at 122,000 in the US, and just 22 in New Zealand.

A Melbourne woman is swabbed by a nurse at a mobile COVID-19 testing centre at Keilor - a coronavirus hotspot - late last month

Red zones: The Australian government has advised people not to visit these local government areas where outbreaks have occurred near Melbourne

A Queensland man in his 30s who died last month was originally believed to be Australia's 103rd death, but further testing revealed he was negative to the virus.

The milestone comes amid a worrying spate of cases in Victoria, including 16 over the last 24 hours to Monday.

It comes as the southern state reported 19 cases on Sunday, 25 on Saturday, 13 on Friday and 18 on Thursday.

Most cases weren't in hotel quarantine, with nine people in hospital and two in intensive care.

That's unlike New South Wales which had recorded five days straight of finding cases solely among people in isolation until results on Monday.

Two new positive cases were reported in NSW on Monday, including a man in his 30s from south-west Sydney and a further person in hotel quarantine. Zero cases were recorded in Queensland.

South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory haven't reported new cases for weeks.

Extremely low cases in New South Wales has allowed Sydney to largely return back to normal. Above, volleyball players on Bondi Beach

'Family gatherings' to blame for Melbourne spike

Both Queensland and New South Wales have signalled new restrictions could be on the way for travellers coming from the south - as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews pinned the blame for the sudden surge on 'large family gatherings'.

NEW DETAILS OF OUTBREAKS IN VICTORIA REPORTED OVERNIGHT Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews has attributed the sudden coronavirus spike to 'large family gatherings' Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos gave new details about outbreaks across the troubled state on Monday. New cases included: - A toddler who attended the Great Beginnings Nursery in Reservoir - Two contractors linked to the Stamford Plaza Hotel - Two cases linked to the Alban Vale primary school - Two new cases linked to an H&M store at Northland Shopping Centre Advertisement

Queensland Premier Annastasia Palusczak said today that 'everyone should be concerned' about the spike in Victoria.

Her government has designated most of Melbourne as a 'hot spot', meaning return travellers will be forced into hotel quarantine.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said residents should 'reconsider' their need to travel to Melbourne, and not visit hotspot areas altogether.

The troubling statistics have led the Federal Government to call for people not to travel to six local council areas near Melbourne.

Those 'red zones' are Hume, Darebin, Brimbank and Moreland, all in the city's north, and Cardinia and Casey to the south-east of the CBD.

Federal deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth told Channel Seven there were 'four or five' outbreaks but stressed they were still 'small numbers' compared to the rest of the world.

Dr Coatsworth said the government had 'every confidence' the situation will be brought under control by Victorian health officials.

Early in the pandemic, experts projected a death toll of up to 30,000 people as a 'good scenario' for Australia.

But that grim prediction thankfully never played out.

Those same experts have since celebrated that Australia 'crushed' the virus by going into lockdown, shutting its borders and practising social distancing.

Australian National University infectious diseases expert Dr Peter Collignon said the models at the time were wrong, and were based on influenza.

Professor Collignon said COVID-19 was unlike influenza is how disproportionately it kills the elderly.

With COVID, he said: 'Basically in most places around the world, if you're over the age of 80, your death rate is 10 per cent or more.

'If you're below the age of thirty, that's less than 0.1 per cent. So it's 100x the death rate if you're over 80'.

The biggest death tolls in Australia have been attributed to the Ruby Princess cruise ship, which led to 23 deaths and 800 infections.

Nineteen residents died at the Newmarch House nursing home in Sydney's west following a severe outbreak.
Sadeem International wins Innovate4Climate top prize for 2020

June 22,2020 | Source: moderndiplomacy

Today during a live virtual contest Innovate4Climate, the World Bank Groups flagship event on climate change, announced Sadeem International as the winner of its second Pitch Hub Competition. Sadeem  focusing on early warning solutions for flash floods in urban environments  beat out over 400 applications from around the world.



This years challenge focused on climate-smart cities, with innovations required to be at Minimal Viable Product stage, to help cities become low-carbon and/or climate-resilient across a range of sectors: energy, food/agriculture, mobility/transportation, waste/water, fintech. Solutions had to demonstrate potential for climate change mitigation or adaptation, and that they were feasible, with a clear value proposition, implementable and scalable.



The winning startup and four other finalists were chosen after evaluation by 40 expert reviewers and multiple rounds to assess its viability.



Participating in this competition was a really enriching experience; the level of exposure and networking potential is unique. It is also really refreshing to see that every day there are more and more startups aligning business with climate innovations. We are so happy as a team for getting this prize!, said Esteban Sanchez Canepa, Co-Founder and CTO at Sadeem International. We have a commitment to keep addressing the urban and climate challenges of our generation.



The winning startup will receive Amazon Web Services credits worth $30,000, with the runner up and third finalist receiving $20,000 and $10,000 respectively. The top three winners will receive invitations to major industry events and training opportunities. All 5 finalists will be part of Innovate4Climates Startup Incubation Bootcamp Program, designed and facilitated by partner, The Venture City, and will be invited by Innovate4Climate to meet with potential investors and venture capital firms and will have access to Innovate4Climates 2021 event. Sadeem also won the audience choice category.



It is really inspiring to see climate-smart innovations and new approaches to addressing climate change for urban communities, said Bernice van Bronkhorst, Global Director, Climate Change, World Bank. The kinds of inventive solutions weve seen today from this group of entrepreneurs are a great opportunity not only for communities tackling climate change but also for creative entrepreneurs delivering solutions that can work, and the World Banks Innovate4Climate team is pleased to support their efforts.



This years competition was held virtually with finalists submitting recorded pitches that were reviewed by the judging panel, followed by a virtual Q&A between judges and competitors. The judging panel comprised Riyong Kim (EIT Climate-KIC), Dr. Tara Shirvani (EBRD), Assaf Wahrhaft (UpWest), Martin Wainstein (Yale OpenLab), Vikram Widge (Climate Policy Initiative).



All the finalists this year offered innovative solutions to address climate change, with several harnessing state-of-the-art technologies. It was a difficult decision, but it seems appropriate that the winner was the one that can help cities become more pro-actively resilient, said Vikram Widge, Senior Advisor, Climate Finance, Climate Policy Initiative, part of the judging panel.

Theme(s): Others.
[June 22, 2020] C-Suite At The Open: Brad Loiselle, CEO, BetterU Education Corp., tell his Company's Story. Filmed in May, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksmOVPwP8c TORONTO, June 22, 2020 /CNW/ - The C-Suite At the Open video interview series highlights the unique perspectives of listed companies on Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange. Videos provide insight into how company executives think in the current business environment. To see the latest C-Suite At The Open videos visit https://www.tmxmoney.com/en/csuite.html . About BetterU Education Corp. (TSXV:BTRU) betterU is an education-to-employment technology company offering an end-to-end solution leveraging business intelligence to automate skilling, reskilling and upskilling for companies operating on domestic and global scales. betterU has integrated into its platform the content, technology and support for tailored skills assessments, learning pathways and training modules from 100+ of the world's leading online education providers. betterU's eco-system includes detailed job, skill, employer, and educational profiles spaning 3,000+ standardized jobs. betterU's integrated platform is the most efficient solution to address evolving skilling challenges for employers and employees through the employment lifecycle from entry level to executive. We don't sell content, we help build better people. For more information, please visit https://corporate.betteru.ca/corporate-gov/



About TMX Group (TSX:X) TMX Group's key subsidiaries operate cash and derivative markets and clearinghouses for multiple asset classes including equities and fixed income. Toronto Stock Exchange , TSX Venture Exchange , TSX Alpha Exchange , The Canadian Depository for Securities , Montreal Exchange , Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation , Trayport and other TMX Group companies provide listing markets, trading markets, clearing facilities, depository services, technology solutions, data products and other services to the global financial community. TMX Group is headquartered in Toronto and operates offices across North America (Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and New York), as well as in key international markets including London, Beijing and Singapore. For more information about TMX Group, visit our website at www.tmx.com . Follow TMX Group on Twitter: @TMXGroup .

SOURCE TMX Group Limited

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Black Lives Matter protest held in Perth

Perth held its second Black Lives Matter rally and march on Saturday 13th June 2020 without the occasional shower dampening the enthusiasm of the more than 15,000 people who attended. This made it one of the biggest rallies ever held in Perth and the biggest rally on racial injustice. The rally was organised by the Black Lives Matter collective, made up of predominantly young Aboriginal women who are concerned about the high rates of Aboriginal incarceration and the consequences of systemic racism, in Western Australia. Although the issue concerns predominantly Aboriginal people, it also affects other people of colour.

In the lead-up to the rally, the WA State Premier Mark McGowan and Australian Prime Minister urged the organisers to postpone the event until after the COVID-19 health concerns were over. However, just days before the rally, two voices of significance shifted the tide in favour of the rally going ahead peacefully. They were the States Police Commissioner Chris Dawson and a Palyku woman, Carly Lane, the aboriginal partner of states Health Minister Roger Cook. Dawson told media on Friday the focus of the police officers would be to, keep the peace. He added, I cant wrap a Superman cape around myself and issue 10,000 infringements.

The welcome to country was given by Noongar elder Uncle Ben Taylor whose fight against racism and for justice for Aboriginal people has spanned over seventy years. He acknowledged his daughter Jacinta Taylor-Foster as one of the organisers of the rally and voiced appreciation that young people like his daughter are leading the fight. Something that gives him hope that justice and peace will be realised for his people.

Derek Nannup, a younger Wadjuk Noongar man and one of the many speakers that made contributions at the three-hour long rally, highlighted how racism works saying they are born into a world with pre-existing stereotypes which they must fight their whole lives. He stated it was time to change the narrative. Nannup added that while many Noongar people of the south-west of WA may not live a Noongar lifestyle, they have Noongar cultural values.

Robert Eggington of the Dumbarton Aboriginal Corporation spoke of the origins of the Aboriginal flag  the Black of our people; its yellow represented the sun, its red a link to their totemic existence  the flag being a potent symbol of struggle for land rights and sovereignty. In an acknowledgment to the racism that precipitated the death of George Floyd in the US, Eggington read the first two poignant verses of Billie Holidays song about the lynching of Black Americans, Strange Fruit:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze [] The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

The violence against Black people continues; only the methods change. Eggington also addressed the rally which was run earlier in the week against the recent attack on cultural sites by multinational corporation Rio Tinto. Corporations more powerful than governments used weak Aboriginal heritage legislation to blow up the 46,000 year-old rock shelters at Juukan Gorge which contained a wealth of artefacts linking those past inhabitants to the Aboriginal people of today. Eggington concluded the greatest sins of these rapacious corporations is against our Mother Earth. We are at the crossroads with our humanity and we needed to believe in our cause  which through a fight against racism is linked to the larger struggle of climate change.

Another young Aboriginal speaker likened racism to a pandemic which needs to be challenged and eliminated.

Great placards held by the crowd were read out by speakers for the benefit of all those in attendance. One of note said, Its not about black vs white but Black and White against racism in a nod to unity and solidarity being the key to winning this struggle. There were also calls to, Change the date mate in reference to the division created by the current date for a national day.

Morrisons statement that the Black Lives Matter movement is not relevant to Australia as we did not have slavery here was called out by Noongar Yamatji lawyer and activist, Hannah McGlade. McGlade also renewed the call for a treaty and the right to self-determination by the Aboriginal people.

Speaker, well-known and respected Noongar activist Marianne Mackay accused the WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt of being a Yamatji man who agrees with everything the white man says in his handling of the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio in the McGowan government. MacKay called for a setting up of an Aboriginal parliament to have a direct voice for the Aboriginal people.

Solidarity came from a young speaker from the African community who acknowledged the struggle of the Aboriginal community. The Free West Papua movement from another long-standing indigenous struggle was also represented at the rally.

Valerie Weyland, an African American woman expressed her happiness at the sea of love being shown in Langley Park. Weyland recalled the warnings from her mother about the challenges in life that would await her. Of George Floyd, the African American man who was murdered by police in the city of Minneapolis, she blamed the consequences of 246 years of slavery in the US. To transcend racism said Weyland, we need to choose to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and demand diversity in our workplaces.

The rally cumulated in a march through the CBD of Perth. Traffic was blocked to allow people to peacefully yet passionately march to end racism and bring justice to Aboriginal people.

The five demands called for by the organisers of Black Lives Matter in pursuit of justice and peace were:

End racial violence

Reduce the incarceration rate of Aboriginal people

Stop the removal of Aboriginal children

Address systemic racism

Sovereignty Now!

The Communist Party of Australia supports the campaign by Black Lives Matter to end racism and bring about justice for the Aboriginal people of Australia.
Turkeys sovereign wealth fund has gained control of the countrys biggest mobile phone operator, Turkcell, in its largest acquisition since its controversial creation in 2016, raising anticipation of more takeovers down the road. Other major companies that have hit bad straits amid Turkeys economic turmoil, made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to end up under the roof of the fund, which has the status of an incorporated company whose board is headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak  Erdogans son-in-law  being the deputy chairman.

Unlike other sovereign wealth funds, owned typically by oil-rich countries with budget surpluses, the Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF) has emerged as a sort of parallel budget for debt-ridden Ankara, operating with little accountability. While the main purpose of genuine wealth funds is to secure profitable investments for accumulated capital, the TWF has sought to secure funds through borrowing. Likewise, the funds Turkcell move, announced June 18, entails further borrowing atop a treasury-guaranteed loan of 1 billion euros that the fund secured from foreign lenders last year.

Ever since its inception, the wealthless wealth fund has vacillated on what role it should play, standing out with company rescues in recent times.

The latest deal extricates Turkcell from a long-standing deadlock stemming from a feud between its shareholders. The TWF entered the deal via the public Ziraat Bank, which is among its assets. The bank was already a stakeholder in Turkcell and a loan creditor to another shareholder, Cukurova Holding. The fund bought the shares of Swedens Telia as well as shares from Cukurova and then sold some of those shares to the company of a Russian tycoon. As a result of those intricate transactions, the TWF became the controlling partner of Turkcell, holding 26.2% of its shares, including a 15% privileged stake.

For almost 15 years, Turkcells management has been bogged down in legal disputes arising from the companys complex ownership and shareholding structure. Taking advantage of the legal chaos, the government had already gained a say in the companys management. Now, the TWF is in a position to appoint five of the nine board directors.

Telia was eager to transfer its stake as part of an exit plan from the region. It agreed to sell its 24% share for $530 million, well below market value, marking its exit from Turkey. And Cukurova Holding, owned by Turkcell founder Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, agreed to transfer its shares to the TWF on account of its debt to Ziraat Bank. This would relieve the bank in terms of its $1.6 billion loan to Cukurova, which had become irrecoverable. The Russian-owned LetterOne, meanwhile, increased its ownership to 24.8% from 13.2%.

Speaking after the deal, TWF director-general Zafer Sonmez said, Turkcell is no longer [merely] a mobile operator. It is a leader in digital transformation, a payment systems company, a telecommunication infrastructure company, a consumer financing company and a cluster of digital services. From this point of view, we believe Turkcells [market] value remains very low, despite the nearly 10% increase that we are witnessing now. Thats the main reason why LetterOne doubled its stake to 24.8%; it trusts us and looks from the same perspective.

The share transfers are expected to be formalized toward the end of the year, as they require the approval of the companies general assemblies. The core question, however, is how the TWF gets the money for the Turkcell acquisition.

The fund needs to pay $1.6 billion to Ziraat Bank and $530 million to Telia. Despite selling some shares to LetterOne, it still needs to come up with nearly $2 billion or an equivalent of Turkish liras. Since such a sum is not available in its coffers, the fund will have to go out on borrowing soon. It is expected to issue debt securities, to be bought by public banks under the TWF umbrella.

As recently as last month, Ziraat and two other public lenders, Halkbank and Vakifbank, received 21 billion liras ($3.1 billion) in capital injection. In a May 11 statement on the move, the TWF said, The Ministry of Treasury and Finance will issue debt securities as private placement to Turkey Wealth Fund. The state-owned banks will purchase these debt securities from Turkey Wealth Fund at market price, and the cash generated from the purchase will be used for capital injection. According to the statement, The state-owned banks have a critical role to support the economic and financial stability in Turkey, and they will become stronger against the negative impacts of COVID-19, which has been stressing the global economic and financial system.

Other company rescues might be imminent. The funds director-general has frequently given messages to that effect, stressing that strategic companies in particular would receive support. It would hardly be a surprise if companies involved in the so-called megaprojects  giant infrastructure investments badly hit by the pandemic atop existing financial woes  end up under the TWF roof. Istanbuls new airport, motorways, bridges and medical complexes known as city hospitals are among the strained facilities.

There is already a precedent, as Al-Monitor reported last year. In September, the fund took over a stake worth nearly 1.7 billion Turkish liras (some $300 million at the time) in the partially built Istanbul Finance Center, a sprawling construction project that had stalled due to financial hardships. The move, which amounted to taking over the liabilities of troubled contractors, came shortly after the fund secured a treasury-guaranteed, two-year loan of 1 billion euros from a consortium of lenders, led by Citibank NA/London and Chinas ICBC. The rescued contractors were Agaoglu Insaat  one of Turkeys largest construction companies that has thrived under Erdogans Justice and Development Party  and Intas and YDA.

The rescue mechanism might appear complicated, but it is rather simple for those who want to see. In a nutshell, the fund uses the treasury and public banks to salvage companies, with the blood loss suffered by public banks covered through occasional capital injections by the treasury. The growing debt stock of the treasury, meanwhile, is looming as a black hole over taxpayers.
Hyderabad, June 22 : Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu's wife, actress Namrata Shirodkar, has praised the hard work of doctors during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Namrata took to Instagram and where shared a picture of a team of doctors holding a baby.

"Yet another success story with the team at Andhra hospital!! Really appreciate the doctors helping people in the hour of need even during such troubled times, taking care of these babies and giving them a life worth living," Namrata captioned.

The actress specially thanked the team and expressed her joy atthe fact that the baby has recovered fully.

"Extremely happy to know that the child has recovered and is ready to be discharged from the hospital. Blessings to the boy and his family... Thank you once again for doing this. #savingbabies #coronatimes," she wrote.

Meanwhile, Namrata is an avid social media user and is a doting mother to her two children, Gautham and Sitara. She keeps sharing videos and pictures of her kids on the photo-sharing website.

Recently, Namrata shared a hilarious video of "conjuring" happening in their house.

In the black-and white-video she posted on Instagram, daughter Sitara can be seen walking around the house with her hair falling in front of her face.

Namrata and Mahesh welcomed their first born, a son named Gautam Krishna Gattamaneni in 2006. Daughter Sitara was born in 2012.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 31

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

An agreement on mutual exemption from visas has been discussed between the governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey at plenary meeting of the Azerbaijani Parliament on May 31, Trend reports.

On the basis of the agreement, for Turkish citizens who wish to visit and stay in Azerbaijan for a period of no more than 90 days, the requirement for a visa has been canceled.

This decision will make a significant contribution to the development of tourism between the two countries.

After discussions, the document was adopted by vote.
For investors remaining sidelined after the markets impressive bounce back, the opportunity may now be too enticing to ignore. According to J.P. Morgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, COVID-19 will drive equity supply growth as companies pivot away from buybacks in an effort to raise capital, with 2019 marking the first time since 2015 that the net supply of shares, or the share issuance adjusted for de-listings and buybacks, increased materially.

Alarming for investors, the previous decade-long trend of declining equity supply in part fueled the markets bull run as buybacks pushed earnings higher. Some analysts also point out that a larger equity supply could weigh on stocks and cause volatility if companies dont purchase shares when their stocks fall.

Panigirtzoglou, however, takes a different stance. He notes that the drop in buybacks hasnt negatively impacted the market yet. In fact, he argues the low returns for both bonds and cash will ultimately create an environment that makes equities attractive.

Our most holistic of our equity position metrics, which compares the size of the equity universe to the size of the bond and cash universe, implies 47% upside for equities from here assuming the implied equity allocation of non-bank investors globally rises from 40% currently to the post Lehman period high of 49%, Panigirtzoglou commented.

Taking all of this into consideration, we ran three J.P. Morgan-approved stocks, which each boast over 40% upside potential according to the firms analysts, through TipRanks database to get the rest of the Streets opinion.

Taylor Morrison (TMHC)

Taking its place as one of the largest home building companies in the U.S., Taylor Morrison uses its resources, support and industry experience to make the development process easier for its clients. While shares took a nasty tumble earlier this year, J.P. Morgan believes that any weakness presents a buying opportunity.

Representing the firm, analyst Michael Rehaut is now taking a more bullish approach when it comes to this name. Pointing to its valuation, he sees the highly discounted valuation relative to its peers as attractive against our fundamental outlook for the company.

Story continues

Expounding on this, Rehaut stated, Specifically, TMHC trades at 8.2x and 6.4x our 2020E and 2021E EPS, respectively, significantly below its smaller-cap peers averages of 10.0x and 9.5x, while additionally, we point to the stocks P/B of 0.9x, well below its peers 1.3x average. We view this relative valuation as not properly reflecting our fundamental outlook for the company, which features 2021E operating margins of 8.1%, roughly in-line with its smaller cap peers average, as well as our 2021E ROE of 11.6%, which we note is only modestly below its peers 12.2% average.

To support his optimistic stance, Rehaut cites the demand improvement over the last two months, which has resulted in a likewise improvement in earnings visibility. He added, We believe, on average, current P/E multiples are appropriate relative to the current backdrop, as we note that these levels are close to the groups longer-term mid-cycle average valuation, which we view as reasonable given that housing starts were approaching their long-term averages prior to the current COVID-19 pandemic, towards which we believe demand is currently reverting.

To this end, Rehaut rates TMHC an Overweight (i.e. Buy) along with a $27 price target. This new target puts the upside potential at 42%. (To watch Rehauts track record, click here)

Judging by the consensus breakdown, 4 Buys and 2 Holds received in the last three months merge to a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus. Given the $20.67 average price target, the upside potential lands at 9%. (See TMHC stock analysis on TipRanks)

Michaels Companies (MIK)

Known for being the largest arts and crafts retail chain in North America, Michaels Companies also owns several brands that enable it to offer arts, crafts, framing, floral, home decor and seasonal merchandise to decorators. Even though year-to-date, shares are in the red, MIK has staged an impressive recovery in the last three months, adding a whopping 339% to its share price.

Writing for J.P. Morgan, 5-star analyst Christopher Horvers tells clients that optimism regarding the pace of economic recovery and a wide divide in valuation for essential retailers and value-levered companies prompted him to scan his coverage universe for upgrade opportunities.

Enter MIK. Horvers believes that this stock reflects the best upside potential at current prices. As a result, MIK scores a spot on J.P. Morgans U.S. Equity Analyst Focus List as a value idea based on an expected re-rating to PE on 2021 EPS due to the path to positive comps over the next four quarters, new management, and improving margin performance into 2021.

Looking at its valuation, MIK trades at 3x P/E using Horvers 2021 forecast, equivalent to 4.8x EV/EBITDA, because investors remain fixated on its low growth rate, -LSD comp rate since 4Q18 and its leverage, which were all negative factors in 2020.

Horvers explained, MIK is inexpensive relative to history... While valuation has collapsed since comps turned negative in 2018 (averaging 6.0x PE since), it traded at an average of 13x in the 2014-17 period when comps were better. This is in comparison to quality/growth retail stocks (and the market), which have broadly been trading in-line to above recent historical averages (HD at 23x P/E on 2021E vs. FY1 average of 21x, WMT at 22x vs. 21x, and COST at 33x vs. 31x).

Speaking to the AC Moore opportunity and managements digital efforts, Horvers sees positive comps on the horizon in the near-term. He noted, Moreover, as discussed below, we believe new CEO Ashley Buchanan (former WMT US eCommerce EVP) can turn the tide of share losses. Then, we get the lapping of closed stores in 1H21. The analyst also thinks MIKs leading position in an enthusiast-based category as well as investments in e-commerce, price perception and innovation should help reverse share loss. If that wasnt enough, 2020 could see pressure on margins diminish, with strong expansion slated for 2021.

In line with his bullish take, Horvers gave the rating a boost, upgrading MIK from Neutral to Overweight. The price target also gets a $6 lift, with it now landing at $13. This target conveys his confidence in MIKs ability to soar 90% in the next year. (To watch Horvers track record, click here)

As for the broader analyst community, other pros are more cautious. 1 Buy, 2 Holds and 2 Sells add up to a Hold consensus rating. At $4.92, the average price target brings the downside potential to 28%. (See MIk stock analysis on TipRanks)

Banco de Chile (BCH)

As for Banco de Chile, it operates as a bank and financial services company, serving its client base that includes large corporations, SMEs as well as private clients. Given the nature of the companys clientele, J.P. Morgan is giving the stock a thumbs up.

Analyst Domingos Falavina tells investors that in Chile specifically, COVID-19's economic impact has been much lower than in other countries. That said, he cites several factors that could put BCH even farther ahead of its competitors. Calling it the place to be in the short term, the analyst said, We see Banco de Chile as better prepared to face the potential worsening credit cycle ahead and although some investors can argue its 2.1x P/BV is rich, we see this premium as deserved.

To back this up, Falavina points out that BCH serves individuals with a higher net-worth, which bodes well for the company as this group typically sees less of a reduction in credit quality. On top of this, it also has lower exposure to the retail, services, transportation and credit card segments, which tend to be riskier.

Additionally, the banking name boasts the highest level of coverage when compared to other large Chilean banks, with the figure coming in at 209% as of April 2020, factoring in its Chilean peso 238 billion in additional reserves. Though it dropped from past 250-270% levels in 2017-2018 it still is still higher than Santander Chile at 150%, BCI at 156% and industry at 146%, Falavina commented.

The good news doesnt end there. Falavina believes that higher spreads in guaranteed lines and its liability-sensitive nature will make its margins more resilient. Further separating BCH from the crowd, Santander Chiles Latam loyalty plan may be less appealing for clients and its fee income should be superior to Credicorps, according to the J.P. Morgan analyst.

With BCHs historical premium conveying its higher ROA and coverage, the deal is sealed for Falavina. As a result, he upgraded the stocks rating to Overweight. Should the $26 price target be met, a twelve-month gain of 41% could be in store. (To watch Falavinas track record, click here)

Turning now to the rest of the Street, it has been quiet when it comes to other analyst activity. Falavinas rating was the only one issued recently, so the consensus rating is a Moderate Buy. (See BCH stock-price forecast on TipRanks)

To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.
The National Teaching Council (NTC) is following a roadmap to phase out non-professional teachers from Ghana's education system in the near future.

Mr. Christian Addai-Poku, the Executive Director of the Council, who announced this in Kumasi said: We have a roadmap that we are following to ensure that anybody who teaches a Ghanaian child in both private and public schools must be a trained person.

He was speaking to the media after monitoring the fifth batch of the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination at the St. Louis College of Education, where hundreds of teachers were sitting for the exams.

About 14,500 newly trained teachers across the country on Sunday wrote the exams, which was originally scheduled for March, this year but was postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19.

Mr. Addai-Poku, said it was important to sanitize the system through licensure examination to ensure that all teachers who handled children in schools were fit for purpose.

He said the Council was talking to proprietors of private schools so that in the next few years, such schools would only engage trained teachers to improve teaching standards.

Anybody coming from a training institution that trains teachers is expected to pass this licensure exam. It will come to a time that a private school may not be able to recruit a non-professional teacher, he emphasized.

He said averagely, about 70 per cent of teachers who had previously written the exams had been successful, adding that, those who failed to make the grade were given opportunities to re-sit.

The Council, he noted, was committed to improving teaching standards in the country by ensuring that teachers were licensed before they could be inducted into the profession.

GNA
The head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Washingtons ambassador to Libya urged western Libyas Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj to return to the United Nations-backed cease-fire process during a meeting west of Tripoli on Monday, the State Department said.

Col. Christopher Karns, a spokesperson for US AFRICOM, emphasized to Al-Monitor that the meeting was led by Ambassador Richard Norland. The State Department said in an emailed statement that the discussions focused on current opportunities for a strategic pause in military operations by all parties to the conflict.

Ambassador Norland outlined US support for the diplomacy underway through UN auspices to promote a cease-fire and political dialogue, the statement read.

[AFRICOM commander] Gen. Stephen Townsend presented his military perspective on the risk of escalation, the dangers posed by Russias support for Wagner operations and the strategic importance of ensuring freedom of navigation in the Mediterranean.

The State Department said US officials will continue to engage with the full range of interlocutors from across the country.

Why It Matters: The United States has long avoided taking decisive action in support of either rogue Gen. Khalifa Hifter or the United Nations-backed government he is fighting against.

But with Russia and Turkey poised to escalate their rival military investments in the conflict, Washington has an interest in the war returning to a sort of equilibrium. The United States says al-Qaeda and the Islamic State exploit the fighting, and an eventual return to some level of cooperation over the countrys oil sector could help reduce both sides dependence on foreign actors.

The Government of National Accord (GNA) has so far been unlikely to accept calls for a cease-fire, given the existential threat posed to it by Hifters offensive against Tripoli launched last April. But the GNAs breakout from the western capital in recent months has reversed some of Hifters most significant gains.

The coastal city of Sirte remains the next strategic prize. The GNAs main backer, Turkey, has said Hifters forces must withdraw from Sirte in order for a lasting cease-fire to be feasible.

Norland has reportedly encouraged both Serraj and Hifter to pursue a cease-fire before, but Gen. Townsends presence at todays meeting may have been a signal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who threatened direct military intervention on Hifters behalf over the weekend if the GNA takes Sirte or al-Jufrah.

Whats Next: What comes next relies largely on how much Hifters backers are willing to invest in defending Sirte and how far Turkey is willing to go with the GNA. The United Arab Emirates financed Hifters offensive on the bad bet that he could take Tripoli, and Russias reported interest in a potential future naval base at Sirte, even if true, may not be enough to warrant serious further military investment.

Turkey and the Tripoli-based government have a strategic interest in capturing Sirte and al-Jufrah from Hifter. Besides being important staging areas for future LNA operations, Hifters control of Libyas oil crescent would be in jeopardy if the GNA takes the coastal city.

Know More: Fahim Tastekin explains the importance of Sirte for the future of Libyas conflict.
An Ebonyi State Magistrates Court sitting in Abakaliki, on Friday, remanded one Elom Maduka, 38, in a correctional facility for allegedly killing his stepmother, Mrs Augustina Odio.

The suspect, it was gathered, was said to have complained that the victim was appearing in his dreams and telling him that she was responsible for his lack of progress.

The suspect trailed her to her farm and dealt several machete blows to her head and legs.

Punch Metro learnt that the suspect committed the offence at Amohu village, Ezillo community, in the Ishielu Local Government Area of the state.



The accused was arraigned on one count of murder.

The police prosecutor, ASP Mathias Eze, told the court that the offence was punishable under Section 319 (1) of the Criminal Code, Cap. 33, Vol. 1, Laws of Ebonyi State of Nigeria, 2009.

The charge read, That you, Elom Odio Maduka, on June 12, 2020, at the Amohu Ezillo community in the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did cause the death of one Augustina Odio, 50, by inflicting machete cuts on her head and legs, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 319 (1) of the Criminal Code, Cap. 33, Vol. 1, Laws of Ebonyi State of Nigeria, 2009.

The accused was not represented in court by a counsel, thus no bail application was made on his behalf.

Chief Magistrate Nnenna Onuoha directed that he should be remanded in the Nigerian Correctional Centre, Abakaliki, while his case file should be transferred to the Director of Public Prosecutions in the state for necessary legal action.

She adjourned the case till July 15, 2020, for report of compliance.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Hundreds of firefighters continued to battle three major wildfires burning in forested mountains and desert hills across Arizona.

Crews were fighting fires in the Santa Catalina Mountains in the Coronado National Forest overlooking Tucson, in the Tonto National Forest northeast of metro Phoenix, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in northeast Arizona and in the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon.

Authorities said the human-caused Bush Fire outside of metro Phoenix was 15% contained as of Sunday after charring 273 square miles since it started June 13 in the Tonto National Forest.

The lightning-caused Bighorn Fire (80 square miles) burning in canyons and on ridges in the Santa Catalina Mountains was pushed back to 19% containment after growing by 14 square miles by Sunday. But fire officials said the blaze diminished as it reached vegetation at the base of Ventana Canyon.

Meanwhile, authorities said the lightning-caused Bringham Fire was 20% contained by Sunday after burning 31 square miles in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest north of Morenci. That blaze continues to burn in steep, inaccessible areas.

In northern Arizona, improved weather conditions allowed firefighters to protect critical areas from the Mangum Fire burning in the Kaibab National Forest.

The blaze was 23% contained Sunday at 103 square miles with its June 8 cause still under investigation. It has forced the closure of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park until further notice.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Arizona
Georgia officials say the dam is vital to the countrys energy security. Critics charge its a bad deal all around.

For much of their existence, 17 mountain villages in Georgia that border neighbouring Russia  located in an area known as the Upper Svaneti  have been under constant threat from man and nature. For centuries, invading armies and environmental disasters like avalanches, flash floods and landslides have bedevilled the Svan people. And yet, it is humanitys attempt to harness the power of nature  the Nenskra Hydropower Plant (HPP)  that some Svan people believe could ultimately erase them.

These mountain rivers are very unpredictable, says long-time Upper Svaneti resident Merab Khergiani. The government has only abstract ideas of the nature here. We see it with our own eyes.

Merab Khergiani has lived in the Upper Svaneti region of Georgia for most of his life, and worries about the Nenskra dams impact [Savannah Van der Niet/Al Jazeera]

For 7,000 years, the Svan people have lived according to ancient tribal traditions in the Caucasus Mountains. In this geologically volatile region, climate change is intensifying the frequency of extreme weather events, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Experts warn the power plant will not only further increase the risk of landslides and flooding, but also deprive the Svans of their ancestral lands.

Towering at 130 metres (427 feet) and spread over 700 hectares (1,730 acres), when it is complete, the Nenskra HPP will be the largest dam in Georgias history. The government says the project will mitigate Georgias reliance on energy imports from neighbouring countries.

It has significant storage capacity, David Tvalabeishvili, Georgias deputy minister of economy and sustainable development, told Al Jazeera, and is designed in a way to generate electricity mainly during the winter months when Georgia heavily depends on imported electricity.

The Svans, however, say authorities left them in the dark. They absolutely dont want to look at what is written by scientists and geologists, said Nargis Niguriani, a local from the town of Mestia who has been protesting hydropower since the 1980s. They dont want to listen.

After leading a number of anti-dam rallies, Nargis Niguriani was quietly dismissed from her municipal job at the Mestia Cultural Centre in 2019. A number of people have lost their jobs because of the protests. Weve hired a lawyer to represent us. We feel powerless, she says.

In the winter, Georgia cannot supply all the energy the country needs [Savannah Van der Niet/Al Jazeera]

A bankable deal

In 2015, the Georgian government signed a contract with JSC Nenskra Hydro, a joint venture between Korea Water Resource Corporation and JSC Partnership Fund, to build the 280MW dam at a projected cost of $1bn.

The financial terms of the project have been largely kept under wraps; despite calls for transparency, the government refuses to release the contract.

But a leaked World Bank analysis from 2018, commissioned by Georgias Ministry of Finance, provides a rare view into the projects price tag. It estimated that Nenskra HPP will cost taxpayers $1.9bn in subsidies by the year 2041. The next most expensive project, Namakhvani HPP, will cost only $221m in subsidies over the same period.

As reported by Bankwatch, a Tbilisi-based NGO, the Georgian government committed to pay the developer a total of $90.6m on the first year of electricity generated from the Nenskra HPP, and increase that rate by three percent every year for the next 33 years.

One of the major criticisms of this project is that it is very expensive, said Murman Margvelashvili, who founded World Experience for Georgia (WEG), a think-tank dedicated to strengthening Georgias energy security.

The process was not transparent, so we dont know whether it is a good deal for the country from an economic standpoint, he continued. And where theres a lack of transparency, you can expect private interests, political interests; you can expect anything.

One of the major criticisms of this project is that it is very expensive. Murman Margvelashvili, World Experience for Georgia

Further concerns were raised in the International Monetary Funds 2017 Fiscal Transparency Evaluation for Georgia. The report singled out Nenskra HPP, warning that the project could pose a severe risk to the countrys fiscal stability, particularly if project revenues fall short.

According to the IMF, the Nenskra power plant is the product of a large power purchase agreement (PPA) that has some unique and risky characteristics.

The main obligation is the government guarantee for a USD internal rate of return of 12.5 percent on equity investments, which if not paid for could result in the government terminating the contract, at a total cost of $800m, reads the report.

The IMF report goes on to explain that this exposure is subject to exchange rate risk  and that as is not the case with most other PPAs, the government has also guaranteed against construction and hydrology risks (up to $30m for the former, uncapped for the latter).

A leaked contract dated June 2017 between the government of Georgia and JSC Nenskra Hydro casts further doubt over the projects financial viability.

Bankwatch ran an analysis of the contract shortly after it was leaked. It found that the government will be locked into paying an electricity tariff that is double the current domestic and import rate for 36 years and triple the export rate, running at a loss of $60m per year.

We are struggling to understand why the government would sign an agreement that is so blatantly against the national interest, said Dato Chipashvili, Bankwatchs national campaigner for Georgia. It seems their main priority is putting together a bankable deal for investors.

A case for the Nenskra Hydropower Plant

Minister Tvalabeishvili maintains the project is a key part of his countrys long-term energy independence strategy. Nenskra HPP is a vital project for Georgia, he says.

According to a report by the International Finance Corporation, Georgia has an energy supply gap. In the summer months, the countrys generators produce more energy than the country demands. In the winter, Georgia cannot supply all the energy the country needs. It makes up for the shortfall by importing electricity.

Currently, Russia supplies 9.8 percent of Georgias wintertime electricity. This creates a significant political and strategic risk for Georgia, particularly in light of previous conflicts such as the energy crisis of 2006, where Russia sabotaged a natural gas transmission pipeline, plunging Georgia into darkness for almost two weeks.

According to energy researcher Murman Margvelashvili, These developments have indicated a serious need for strengthening Georgias energy security and urged the actions for diversifying energy supply sources.

After leading a number of anti-dam rallies since the 1980s, Nargis Niguriani was quietly dismissed from her municipal job at the Mestia Cultural Centre in 2019 [Savannah Van der Niet/Al Jazeera]

Protecting a 7,000-year-old culture

We love our place and do not want to be forced to leave, says Lile Chkhetiani, a teacher in Chuberi, a small village located just 10km (6 miles) downstream from the Nenskra dam site.

Lile is among a group of activists fighting to get the Svan people officially recognised as an Indigenous population, a feat that could strengthen their case against the dam.

The Svan people have their own language, they have their own culture and customs, their own holidays, says Shivcharn S Dhillion, a professor of human ecology and managing director of Enviso, an environmental and social impact consulting firm that specialises in hydropower. He analysed the nearby Khudoni HPP in 2012, finding the government neglected to assess its potentially damaging effect on the regions biodiversity, as well as the Svan peoples cultural heritage and traditional livelihoods.

The Georgian government doesnt want to recognise the Svan people as an ethnic minority because they will have to give them special favours, he continued.

These special favours would include the transfer of land rights and increased safeguards to protect the Svan population. And the governments controversial eminent domain legislation (the right to seize private property without consent) would likely be vetoed, making it harder to gain approval for large scale developments like Nenskra HPP.

Dhillion says that environmental impact assessments in Georgia are typically very weak.

In 2018, Bankwatch lodged complaints with the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank. Bankwatch requested that they uphold the Indigenous peoples standards set in their own charters.

In May 2020, the EIBs complaint mechanism responded with a conclusions report. It stated that the EIB, which committed $150m to Nenskra HPP, failed to properly assess whether the Svans qualify as an Indigenous population. It also recommended commissioning a qualified social scientist to reassess this matter.

But it is, of course, just a recommendation, and at this stage, it is unclear what course of action the EIB will take. And with the government still fully committed to the project, it looks as though the Svans plight still hangs in the balance.

I think people are afraid, really, says Dhillion. I would use the word afraid. And it has impacts on the social fabric of a community.

That is why Nargis promises to keep fighting. I wont sit back and watch a 7,000-year-old culture go underwater, she says.
Im staring down the barrel of my 15th Fathers Day.

And given everything that happened so far this year  from a global pandemic and the blowing up of the U.S. economy to the killing of George Floyd to riots in the streets to a national debate over police reform  I cant escape the feeling that this is the most important Fathers Day of my life.

Ive often said over the years that fatherhood is undoubtedly my toughest job. For one thing, this gig doesnt get any easier with time; as my kids age, old fears and challenges are replaced by new ones. The terrible 2s were a piece of cake compared to teenage tantrums. Practice does not make perfect. Because, in parenting, there is no perfect.

I dont get paid for this job, but the stakes are higher than with all my paying jobs put together; years from now, no one will care about an essay, speech or podcast. But theyll instantly know, upon meeting my children, what kind of parent I was. If I do something today that messes up their upbringing, my kids could pay the bill for the rest of their lives.

Im on a constant quest for balance. I dont want to be too tough or too lenient. I want my kids to have high self-esteem but not to the point where they look down on others. I want them to think they deserve the best out of life without feeling entitled. I want to support them in all they do, but not make excuses for their failings, shortcomings and mistakes.

I stress over this job because Im not in it for the belts, ties and greeting cards. I take seriously my responsibility to instill the right values. Im trying to build better humans.

Its a family tradition. My dad never tried to be my best friend, and Im grateful. Friends, I had. I needed a dad. The same went for my grandfather  the old man from Mexico  who told my dad that he had three fathers who were worthy of respect: him, the teacher and the police officer. Disobey any of them, and you call down the thunder.

No doubt, fatherhood is grueling work under the best conditions. And 2020 is not the best conditions. Its a dumpster fire.

Just over the last four months  no more than 120 days, incredibly  my kids (ages 15, 13 and 10) have seen a lot. In fact, theyve seen too much. They have been witnesses to compassion, callousness, calamity, courage, chaos and cowardice

They have seen America at its very best, and at its very worst. Theyve seen fellow human beings come together against a virus as a common enemy, and come apart over the plague of police violence against our most vulnerable citizens. Theyve seen good police officers push for reforms, and bad ones  who apparently dont watch the news  add to the body count.

They have seen some people deal with a global health crisis by being kind, selfless and generous, while others are selfish, cavalier and irresponsible. Theyve watched some folks volunteer at shelters or give food to the needy, and others hoard toilet paper and refuse to wear a mask.

Theyve seen some people handle the loss of a job by hustling for new opportunities, while others hang back and collect unemployment checks. Theyve seen peaceful marchers who take a stand and demonstrate for something they believe in, but also opportunists who shamelessly take advantage of racial strife to riot, steal and vandalize.

As Mexican Americans, they know about white privilege. They know their lives will not be as easy as others, but also that its their responsibility not to make the kinds of bad choices that make life more difficult.

And as the grandchildren of a retired cop, they also know that police are here to protect, serve and help us when were in trouble  and that while they are to be respected and obeyed, they need not be feared.

With each crisis, my kids could learn the wrong lessons. Im teaching them to care for others, fight injustice, treat people with dignity, count their blessings, dont play the victim, make their own opportunity and defer to authority figures who are often trying their best to do an impossible job.

My children need to know right from wrong, and its my job to teach them the difference  by highlighting, at every opportunity, the bright line that separates the two. Thats what a dad does.

ruben@rubennavarrette.com.
New Delhi, June 22 : In context of health hazards associated with Rath Yatra in Puri against the backdrop of coronavirus pandemic, the Supreme Court on Monday said that it was "informed that in the 18th-19th century a yatra of this kind was responsible for the spread of cholera and plague like wildfire".

A bench comprising Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and A.S. Bopanna said: "We say this in order to remind the authorities concerned that the situation can become dangerous if the rules of caution are ignored." The top court, however, clarified it does not have the official copy of the gazette with the information that in the 18th-19th century, a yatra of this kind was responsible for the spread of cholera and plague like wildfire.

The bench noted that any spread of coronavirus due to the Rath Yatra would be disastrous due to the large number of persons and the impossibility of tracking all the infected people after they have gone back to their respective homes.

On June 18, the apex court put a stay on the Rath Yatra against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. After this order, many applications were moved in the top court including a plea by BJP leader Sambit Patra to allow the Rath Yatra.

Citing this order, the bench said in the earlier order, it had suggested to the parties that the procession of chariots, i.e., the Rath Yatra itself, could be allowed to proceed, however, without the general congregation which participates in this Yatra.

"We were informed that it would be well nigh impossible to ensure that there is no congregation. This Court was, therefore, left with no option but to grant an injunction restraining the Rath Yatra itself. However, we find, in one of the present applications, an affidavit filed on behalf of the State of Orissa stating that it might be possible to conduct the Rath Yatra at Puri 'in a limited way without public attendance'," said the bench, citing the proposal by Gajapati Maharaj of Puri, who is the Chairman of the Puri Jagannath temple administration.

The bench observed indeed, if it is possible to ensure that there is no public attendance, they see no reason why the Rath Yatra cannot be conducted safely along its usual route from temple to temple.
Demonstrators hold a Black Lives Matter banner during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in front of the at Grand Army Plaza in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, June 7, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]

By Zhang Hong

Does it really want to quit?

"We are not the world police." Recent speeches by the American leaders have gone viral suddenly.

This is logically reasonable. When there being no "world government", where could the "world police" come from? Moreover, the purpose of the US has never been to maintain public safety. In its eyes, playing the role of world police is a way to maintain its hegemony, useful when being needed and discarded when not. .

In the past, the US held an unconstrained global hegemony under the unipolar pattern, and constantly performed its "world police" duty through war: the intervention in the Gulf War in 1991, the war on terrorism in 2001, and the official declaration of war against Iraq in 2003... The US stood proudly as a leader in these events. Ironically, the reality of increasing terrorism, as well as the unauthorized dispatch of troops to Iraq on the grounds of so-called "weapons of mass destruction" without the approval of the United Nations, has become the embarrassment that the US dare not face squarely.

As multi-polarization is a world trend, the US revels its powerless embarrassment from time to time, especially after the 2008 financial crisis that originated from inside. When it comes to the problem of whether it should still act as the "world police", Uncle Sam was a little unhappy.

From the failed "red line" for the Assad government in Syria during the Obama administration, to the "lead from behind" strategy adopted in military intervention in Libya, the US began to maintain its hegemony through clever resource mobilization. The so-called "smart power" became the key word of American diplomacy during this period.

Today, the US administration under Donald Trump is even more straightforward. If you need the US to provide security, you should share the cost. As a result, US allies were forced to increase military spending and share financial pressure for the US.

But this surely in no way means that the US will give up hegemony.

The US has spared no effort in strategically important areas. The Senate Armed Services Committee recently passed a $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which for the first time authorizes the establishment of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative fund primarily aimed at China and requires an investigation report on the possible risks of using Huawei technology. The fund will focus on competition among the major powers in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthen the US military's strategic capabilities in this region.

Moreover, three aircraft carrier battle groups of the US Navy are simultaneously operating in the Indo-Pacific Sea at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is still severe. At the same time, the US continues to maintain the existence of two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf region.

The US appears in almost every hotspot and keeps causing endless regional disputes and conflicts. Its security forces killed senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, resulting in tensions in the Gulf region. It interfered in China's Taiwan Strait and South China Sea affairs and instigated regional allies and partners to make provocations, causing tensions in the region. It publicly declared that it will take decisive measures to prevent the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government from winning a military victory in Syria.

In 2014, then US President Barack Obama declared that America must always lead on the world stage. The indispensable role of the US in the world is both a reality of the past century and a reality of the next century. "Leading on the world for another hundred years", he said.

The US has always been clear on what it wants.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

After several San Francisco types of businesses like retail shops and restaurants with outdoor dining reopened last week, San Francisco's next phase of reopening has tentatively been moved up ahead of schedule and will take effect next week, Mayor London Breed announced Monday.

The city's next phase of reopening, Phase 2c, will now occur next Monday and will see the reopening of businesses like barber shops, hair salons, tattoo shops, zoos, museums, outdoor bars and outdoor swimming. Phase 2c was initially slated to start on July 15.

The new date is contingent upon the California Department of Public Health approving the city's request for variance, which seeks exceptions for land use requirements, and as long as the city is meeting its health indicators.

"Thanks to San Franciscans' efforts to follow health requirements, wear face coverings, and practice social distancing, our COVID-19 health indicators are in a good place and we can continue reopening our city," Breed said in a statement. "We know a lot of businesses and residents are struggling financially and this next step will help get more San Franciscans back to work while still balancing safety."

"We will continue to closely monitor those indicators in San Francisco as we partner with City and community leaders on careful reopening. We expect COVID-19 cases to increase as we reopen. To keep that increase manageable and sustain our commitment to protecting the people most vulnerable to the virus, everyone in San Francisco must continue to take the precautions that save lives," the city's Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said.

As businesses reopen, San Franciscans are still being reminded that face coverings outside are required for anyone over 12 years old, unless they are driving in a car or outside and at least 30 feet from another person. Additionally, other precautions like social distancing, regular handwashing and frequent cleaning are also encouraged.

City officials have said the city's health indicators are an important tool to track the level of COVID-19 in the community and the ability of the city's health care system to care for patients. The city's health indicators and other information about COVID-19 can be found at https://datasf.org/covid19.

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 United States will provide a significant amount of new humanitarian aid for Syria even as stringent new sanctions take effect, President Donald Trumps special envoy for the war-torn country announced today.

The Caesar Act has very strong humanitarian provisions that require us  the US government  to explain to Congress and ensure in our actual sanctions targeting that we do not undercut the humanitarian efforts underway, US Syria Envoy James Jeffrey said at a virtual Middle East Institute panel today. The United States will be pledging a significant amount at the [European Union] pledging conference for humanitarian aid at the end of this month. Already with over $10.6 billion, were the largest humanitarian contributor. That will not stop, nor should it, in this time of COVID-19, Jeffrey said.

Why it matters: Although the Trump administrations new sanctions on Damascus  mandated under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act  have significant bipartisan support, critics fear they could inhibit Syrian reconstruction efforts with President Bashar al-Assad poised to win the nine-year civil war.

We want to make it clear to anybody who wants to rebuild Assads Syria that that cannot happen with Caesar sanctions until we have a political process, said Jeffrey. Still, he stressed that humanitarian aid will still flow to Assad-held territory under the new sanctions.

We have no intention of targeting anything that delivers humanitarian assistance anywhere in Syria, including regime areas, said Jeffrey, adding, Some of that aid, including American aid, flows to regime areas. We do nothing to stop humanitarian assistance going to regime areas. We actually provide aid to regime areas, because we differentiate between aid to individuals and stabilization and reconstruction funding that will be exploited by the regime.

The new sanctions target anyone who supports Syrias military, energy, construction and engineering sectors unless the Assad government makes a series of human rights reforms. The law, which Trump signed in December, could also lead to more sanctions on Syrias Central Bank if the Treasury Department designates it a primary laundering concern. The cost of rebuilding Syria could range anywhere from $400 billion to $1 trillion.

Whats next: The European Union will convene its Syria aid pledging conference in Brussels on June 30.

Know more: Elizabeth Hagedorn walks through the new Assad sanctions and the debate over Syria reconstruction. And Amberin Zaman reports on Russian efforts to close UN border crossings used to import humanitarian aid into Syria.
Former corporate rogue Rodney Adler has won over a jury in his turn as star witness for the prosecution, with one of his creditors convicted on Monday of borrowing money without disclosing he was an undischarged bankrupt.

It took the jury less than three hours to decide that Stanley Phillip Kaftel, 68, was guilty of the charge against him in a case that largely came down to the word of Mr Adler, whose deceptions as the director of HIH insurance contributed to the biggest corporate collapse in Australian history.

Rodney Adler leaving Downing Centre Court after giving evidence on June 16. Credit:Rhett Wyman

Mr Adler was banned from directing a company for 20 years, required to pay $7 million in compensation, given a pecuniary penalty of $450,000 and in 2002 sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison - a criminal record exploited by Mr Kaftel's barrister to cast doubt on the truthfulness of his testimony.

But Mr Adler's fall from grace also lent him to feel sympathy for fallen scions, and it was in this spirit that he agreed to advance Mr Kaftel $25,000 in February 2018.
WILLEMSTAD:--- Dr. Glenn A.E. Thode has been appointed in the Council of Ministers of June 19th, 2020 as a member upon the proposal of the public entities Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba as of July 1st, 2020. He succeeds Mr. Herbert Domacasse, whose term expires on July 1st.

Mr. Thode has held various positions on Bonaire and Aruba. As of 2012, he is Rector of the University of Aruba. Previously, he was Lieutenant Governor of Bonaire from 2008 to 2011: the first years he held the position for the Island Territory of Bonaire, and from October 2010 on for the Public Entity of Bonaire.

At the beginning of his career - from 1992 to 1998 - Thode worked as a software instructor and system administrator. After completing his law studies, he continued his career in academia for more than ten years, during which he worked for the University of Aruba and the University of Groningen, among others as a lecturer, scientific (senior) staff member and acting rector. He received his doctorate from the University of Groningen in 2006.

Glenn Thode will shortly become a board member of the Stichting Scholengemeenschap Bonaire. As of this year, he is chairman of the Nature Trust Foundation and since 2017 chairman of the Electoral Council Aruba. In addition, he leads the Supervisory Committee on the Protection of Personal Data BES as Chairman as of the year 2014.

He has previously held various other social functions. He was chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Stichting Algemeen Pensioenfonds Aruba and chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Evaluation of Consensus Kingdom Laws and of the Advisory Committee on SGB, in order to advise the State Secretary and the Minister of Education, Culture and Science. He was also a member of the Evaluation Committee for the Constitutional Structure of the Caribbean Netherlands (Spies Committee).

Cft Chairman Prof. Raymond Gradus expresses his gratitude to Mr. Herbert Domacasse for the pleasant cooperation and his commitment to financial supervision in the Caribbean Netherlands. Mr. Gradus is looking forward to working with Mr. Glenn Thode.
Guwahati: Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said there is no threat to Manipurs ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition days after the partys three lawmakers resigned and six others withdrew support to chief minister N Biren Singhs government.

The situation is more or less under control. We are consulting with all our MLAs [members of legislative assembly] and things will be resolved nicely. There is nothing to worry, said Sarma, who heads the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA).

The BJP came to power in Manipur for the first time in 2017 even as Congress emerged as the single largest party in the 60-member House with 28 seats. It secured 21 seats but formed the government with support of other NEDA constituents--National Peoples Party (NPP), Naga Peoples Front (NPF) and one lawmaker each from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and an Independent legislator.

Three BJP lawmakers resigned last week while four NPP, and the lone TMC and the Independent legislator withdrew their support to the ruling coalition.

Sarma and Meghalaya chief minister Conrad Sangma, who heads NPP, flew to Imphal on a chartered flight sort out differences among the coalition partners.

All discussions are taking place in a very positive manner and you will see good results in the next 2-3 days. There is absolutely no worry. Tomorrow [Tuesday], I will go to Imphal again.

He said since the Speaker has disqualified some lawmakers, there could be some difference in the architecture of the coalition. But more or less, we are continuing with the spirit of NEDA... All complaints and grievances will be addressed. There is no question of leadership change, said Sarma amid speculation that the chief minister may be replaced to bring back NPP into the coalition.

NPP legislators quit the government saying they were unhappy with Singhs way of functioning.

BJPs strength in the Manipur House has come down to 18 with the resignation of its three lawmakers. It still enjoys the support of 4 NPF and 1 LJP legislator and the coalitions tally is 23.

Congress has 20 lawmakers and with support of four 4 NPP, one TMC and Independent legislator, the newly formed Secular Progressive Front (SPF) it leads has 26 legislators.

Due to disqualifications and resignations, the Manipur assemblys strength has been reduced to 52.

Despite the reduced numbers, BJPs Sanajaoba Leishemba was able to win the Rajya Sabha election on Friday securing 28 votes. Congress candidate T Mangibabus got 24 votes.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Chennai, June 22 : Soldiers and other security personnel, who had come home on leave and were quarantined, have complained of threats of being sent back or booked by police and bad treatment when they sought better basic facilities at the college hostel where they were isolated in Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari district.

In a video circulating on the social media, a person said the soldiers posted in Jammu, and Rajasthan have been quarantined in the old hostel of a college that lacks drinking water and toilet facilities.

He said when the issue was taken to the officials, they callously replied to "like it or lump it".

A woman with her 15-month-old baby was also at the same quarantine centre and she too does not have access to any basic facilities.

A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper who has come for holiday from Jammu said they are not allowed to go out and get some milk for the baby.

In the video, he said that a tahsildar (revenue official) came to the centre and said either they stay here or go back.

He also said a police sub-inspector threatened them that an FIR will be lodged against them for spreading coronavirus.

The trooper said the policeman and the government official did not give them any respect and addressed them roughly.

"At the border, we work without sleep and food. When we come on a month's holiday, we are being treated like a dog," he complained.

Meanwhile, BJP leader and former Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan on Monday visited the quarantine centre and met the security personnel housed there.

In a statement, Radhakrishnan said he was told by them that some facilities have been provided to them by the government.

He assured his and his party's help if the state government was not able to provide them facilities.
By Ayya Lmahamad

The Azerbaijani and Pakistani interparliamentary working group has discussed the development of political and economic relations between the two countries during the video conference held on June 19.

Head of the working group with Pakistan Ganira Pashayeva noted that Azerbaijan and Pakistan are friendly and brotherly countries, and that currently political, economic, trade and humanitarian relations between two countries are at a very high level.

Touching upon the issue of Nagorno Karabakh conflict and the history of the Khojaly tragedy, Ganira Pashayeva thanked Pakistan for supporting Azerbaijans fair position.

Moreover, it was noted that mutual visits by heads of state have played an important role in the development of relations between two countries.

Pashayeva stated that countries cooperate closely in a number of international organizations, and are interested in strengthening this cooperation.

Furthermore, it was noted that President of Azerbaijan in a number of online meetings at international level payed special attention to fight against COVID-19.

In his turn, head of the Pakistani group of friendship with Azerbaijan Mohammad Tala Mahmood talked of the development of inter- parliamentary relations, mutual benefits of cooperation in the spheres of oil and gas production and energy.

He stressed that Pakistan has always supported Azerbaijans territorial integrity in the settlement of the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh.

Likewise, he expressed gratitude over the development of Pakistani- Azerbaijan relations and the level of strategic partnership, as well as emphasized the great progress that has been made in political, economic and humanitarian spheres.

The sides also exchanged views on the future development of inter-parliamentary relations and other issues of mutual interest.

Chairman of the committee for natural resources, energy and environment Sadig Gurbanov, MPs Ceyhun Mammadov, Eldaniz Salimov, Ulviya Hamzaeva, Azer Badamov, Bahruz Maharramov, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Alizade and other officials participated in the videoconference.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
NEW DELHI (AP)  Indias coronavirus caseload has risen to 425,282 as infections soar in rural areas to which migrant workers fleeing major cities have returned in recent weeks.

Indias health ministry on Monday reported 14,821 new cases and about 300 new deaths, bring the toll of fatalities up to more than 13,000. The coastal state of Goa reported its first COVID-19 death.

India is the fourth most-affected country globally after the United States, Brazil and Russia.

Indias government planning body Niti Aayog says infections have now emerged in 98 out of 112 of the countrys poorest districts.

The Indian government ran special trains to bring thousands of migrant workers back to their ancestral villages in recent weeks.

Still, about 60% of Indias cases have been reported in the states of Delhi, which includes the national capital of New Delhi; Maharashtra, home to Indias financial capital Mumbai; and Tamil Nadu, where manufacturing hub Chennai is located.

In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:

 The chairman of a chain of pharmacies in Beijing has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling more than 500,000 counterfeit 3M Corp. masks during the coronavirus epidemic, news reports said Monday. Two people who colluded with Li Dong, chairman of Kang Baixin Pharmacy, also were sentenced to prison by the Chaoyang District Court, the Beijing News and other outlets reported, citing unidentified sources. There was no announcement from the court and phone calls to its press office werent answered. Li and co-defendants Li Yuzhang and Luo Hanyi were convicted of buying fake 3M masks and re-selling them to pharmacies or individuals, the news reports said. They said the defendants all denied the charges and said they would appeal their conviction.

 China reported 18 new cases of the coronavirus, including nine in Beijing and two in neighboring Hebei province. It was the first time in more than a week that the number fell to single digits in an outbreak in the Chinese capital. Previously, the city had reported more than 20 cases every day for eight straight days. The total number of cases since the first one was confirmed on June 11 rose to 236. The fall in numbers comes after China strengthened measures to eradicate the virus in Beijing, including cancelling school classes and public events.

Story continues

 South Korea has reported 17 new cases of COVID-19, the first time its daily jump came down to the teens in nearly a month. Its 40 to 50 cases per day increases over the past two weeks have occurred as people increased their public activities amid eased attitudes on social distancing. An increase in imported cases has prompted authorities to halt providing new visas for travelers from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Twelve of the new cases reported Monday were from the Seoul metropolitan area. The mayor of South Koreas capital has raised concern that the country could be losing control over the virus and said Seoul will reimpose stronger social distancing measures if the daily jump in infections doesnt fall below an average of 30 over the next three days. Mayor Park Won-soon said Monday the country could have as many as 800 new cases a day a month from now if it fails to control current trends.

 Philippine officials say Saudi Arabia has asked the Manila government to bring home the remains of 282 Filipino workers, a repatriation delayed because of coronavirus restrictions. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III says Saudi King Salman made the urgent request himself. The workers died mostly of various illnesses, including COVID-19, in Saudi Arabia, where more than 800,000 Filipinos work. The Philippines asked that the three-day deadline be extended and that the bodies of about 50 Filipinos who died of COVID-19 disease be buried in Saudi Arabia, Bello said. He told The Associated Press the requests would likely be granted.

 New Zealand reported two new cases of the coronavirus on Monday as a trickle of infected people continue to arrive at the border. The country of 5 million people now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month. Health officials say all those cases involve people who have recently arrived and are in quarantine, and theres no evidence of community transmission. Still, many remain anxious community transmission could return, especially after health officials admitted making a mistake by allowing two travelers to leave quarantine before they had been tested. Both were positive and are now in isolation.
The State Affairs and Good Governance Committee had been debating the bill for the last two years, The Kathmandu Post said in a report on Monday.

Kathmandu, June 22 (IANS) Amid objections from three major parties, a Nepal Parliamentary panel has endorsed an amendment bill on the Citizenship Act 2063, with the provision that foreign women married to Nepali men will have to wait for seven years to acquire naturalised citizenship.

The committee went ahead with the seven-year provision after the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) took a decision to that effect on Saturday.

"The citizenship amendment bill has been endorsed by majority votes," Shashi Shrestha, chair of the committee, said on Sunday following the endorsement.

"A foreign woman married to a Nepali man will be granted naturalised citizenship after her continuous stay in Nepal for seven years."

In the 27-member committee, the ruling party holds a majority with 16 members.

The Nepali Congress has six members and the Rastriya Janata Party and the Samajbadi Party have two members each.

Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party, which has one member, called for an even stricter provision of 15 years.

Of the 27 members, eight, including committee chair Shrestha, are women.

The Nepali Congress, Samajbadi Party Nepal and Rastriya Janata Party Nepal had opposed the provision, calling it unconstitutional and saying that it goes against the provision of the interim constitution 2006, as per which the Citizenship Act 2063 allowed foreign women to acquire naturalised citizenship after getting married to Nepali men, reports The Kathmandu Post.

According to Clause 5.1 of the Citizenship Act, foreign women are immediately eligible for citizenship upon marriage to a Nepali man while there are no provisions for a foreign man who marries a Nepali woman, requiring foreign men to spend a minimum of 15 years in Nepal before being eligible to apply for naturalised citizenship.

The House committee on Sunday did not discuss the issue of foreign men marrying Nepali women.

Spokesperson for the Parliament Secretariat Rojnath Pandey said the bill was ready to be tabled in the House.

"The bill may be tabled in the next meeting of the HoR scheduled for Tuesday. If the speaker wants, it could be put to vote soon," The Himalayan Times quoted Pandey as saying.

--IANS

ksk/
A foreign policy adviser to former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden downplayed the role that Irans presidential elections next year will have on Tehrans potential willingness to revive the flailing nuclear deal.

The election of [President Hassan Rouhani] was not irrelevant toward the outcome of nuclear diplomacy, but its also not dispositive, Jake Sullivan, an informal adviser to the Biden campaign, said in a virtual Center for Strategic and International Studies interview today. At the end of the day, the Iranian calculus is going to be driven more out of a combination of where the Supreme Leader and the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Supreme Council on National Security are than where the presidents office is, he added.

Sullivan acknowledged that a conservative hard-liner replacing Rouhani would have an impact, but I dont think its going to be the key, noting that theres a diversity of opinion within the Iranian leadership.

Why it matters: Biden has vowed to re-renter the nuclear deal and lift Washingtons crippling sanctions on Iran if he wins the US elections in November and if Tehran returns to compliance with the accord.

The key question for Iran is whether if offered basically a choice between continuing substantial economic pressure and some mode of agreement with other actors in the region, whether they find a way to get to the table, said Sullivan, adding, My view is that the United States should be putting a lot more chips down at the table to sort of generate the start of that kind of conversation than has happened under the Trump administration over the last three years.

Whats next: Rouhani will not be eligible to run for re-election next year after having served two terms. This opens the field for a variety of conservatives, moderates and Reformists to articulate their competing visions for the future of Iranian foreign policy.

Know more: Congressional Correspondent Bryant Harris details the views of Sullivan and Bidens other foreign policy advisers.
The Trump administration said Monday that it was extending a ban on green cards issued outside the United States until the end of the year and adding many temporary work visas to the freeze, including those used heavily by technology companies and multinational corporations.

The administration cast the effort as a way to free up jobs in an economy reeling from the coronavirus.

A senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity estimated the restrictions will free up to 525,000 jobs for Americans.

'President Trump is focused on getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible,' the official said, on condition of anonymity.

Trump had endlessly touted a strong economy, but now finds himself desperate for a political boost ahead of the November election.

Sweeping immigration crackdown: Trump and his administration are freezing visas in a series of categories and claim it will open up 525,000 jobs to U.S. workers

A Custom and Border Protection officer processes a passenger arriving in the United States at the Newark International Airport

Trump's been pushed by White House immigration hardliner Stephen Miller to use the coronavirus crisis to further curtail immigration.

The ban, while temporary, would amount to major restructuring of legal immigration if made permanent, a goal that had eluded the administration before the pandemic. Business groups had pressed hard to limit their reach, saying many of these workers are essential.

The ban on new visas applies to H-1B visas, which are used by major American technology companies, and their immediate families, H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers, J-1 visas for exchange students and L-1 visas for managers of multinational corporations.

There will be exemptions for food processing workers, which make up about 15% of H-2B visas, the official said. Health care workers assisting with the coronavirus fight will continue to be spared from the green-card freeze, though their exemption will be narrower.

Trump imposed a 60-day ban on green cards issued abroad in April, which was set to expire Monday.

That announcement, which largely targeted family members, drew a surprisingly chilly reception from immigration hardliners, who said the president didn't go far enough.

The new steps to include non-immigrant visas satisfy many, but not all, the hardliners' wishes.

The freezes on visas issued abroad are designed to take effect immediately.

Other changes, including restrictions on work permits for asylum-seekers, will go through a formal rule-making process that takes months.

The administration is proposing a new way of awarding H-1B visas, which are capped at 85,000 a year and used by Indian technology giants as well as companies like Amazon Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., the official said.

The administration wants to award them by highest salary instead of by lottery.

The official stressed the H1-B visa freeze was temporary while the program is restructured, from an annual lottery that feeds coders and other specialists to Silicon Valley, to a system the gives priority to those foreign workers with the most value.

Trump 'is going to prioritize those workers who are offered the highest wages,' as an indicator that they can add more value to the US economy, the official said.

'It will eliminate competition with Americans... in these industries at the entry level, and will do more to get the best and the brightest.'
Serbias president toasts his election success, but not all parties recognise the result.

Serbias President Aleksandar Vucic has declared what he described as an historic victory for his party in the countrys parliamentary elections.

But a number of opposition parties boycotted the poll saying it would not be free or fair because of Vucics control over the media.

Al Jazeeras Laura Burdon-Manley reports.
A Cherry Hill councilwoman and longtime local official has resigned for comparing looters in Philadelphia to animals during a public meeting.

Carolyn Jacobs, a township council member since 2016 and a former Planning Board member, made the comments in a June 8 virtual meeting when she was discussing concerns about police violence and racial injustice.

Cherry Hill Mayor Susan Shin Angulo and the rest of the council announced Thursday that they had asked her to resign for racially insensitive remarks. In a statement, they said Jacobs comments do not represent our communitys values.

Jacobs said in a statement that her comments cost me great personal anguish as well as my position as an elected councilwoman.

I am profoundly sorry to have offended anyone, she said. I sorely regret my words as well as the harm it may have caused in the community.

She became the latest local public figure to face scrutiny and backlash for comments in the wake of the protests and unrest around the country following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

 READ MORE: Head of Pa. charter schools group steps down after posting that Floyd protesters disgust me

In Bucks County, Planning Commission member Joan Cullen is facing calls to resign after social media posts surfaced in which she denied the existence of systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. Montgomery County Commissioner Joseph C. Gale has drawn public calls for his resignation after he labeled Black Lives Matter a hate group this month.

Two weeks ago, Ana Meyers, executive director of a Pennsylvania charter school advocacy group, stepped down after posting on Facebook that the Floyd protesters disgust her, and that all lives matter.

Jacobs began her comments at the June 8 meeting by voicing her support for those impacted by police violence and racism, as well as for local marches. Ive been crying for those who have been harmed or killed by police violence throughout the country, she said. I dearly, dearly hope that this period will bring us a new era of racial justice.

I also cried this past week for my beloved city of Philadelphia, and with disdain for those people who took advantage of the situation to loot and to pillage, including in their own neighborhoods, she continued, referring to looting and vandalism that took place during the initial days of largely peaceful protests. At the risk of being a little bit crass, I think even animals know they dont mess their own dens.

In Jacobs statement about her resignation, she said she hoped what she said in that moment has not permanently tarnished the years of service Ive given to Cherry Hill as a member of the Planning Board and the council, hope that my verbal offense can be forgiven, and pray that the residents of Cherry Hill trust in the sincerity of my apology.

Jacobs, a retired programming and project consultant who has lived in the township for more than 45 years, was appointed to the council to replace Angulo when she became a Camden County freeholder, and was later elected. She is known for her work with advocacy groups over the years, including serving as a court-appointed special advocate for children who have been removed from their homes, and as a reader to children as part of the BookMates literacy program.

The Cherry Hill Democratic Committee will submit three names for potential replacements to the six remaining township council members at its scheduled virtual meeting Monday night. The council will then have 15 days to choose which nominee will fill Jacobs seat until a special election in November determines a permanent replacement.
Prince Charles has reflected on the higher coronavirus death rate in the black community as he thanked the Windrush generation for their work in the NHS.

Charles, who recovered from coronavirus himself in March, noted that the community has been hit particularly hard as he spoke of the debt of gratitude the nation owes the Windrush generation.

Monday marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bearing around 500 people from Jamaica.

In a video message shared online, Charles, 71, said: Today offers an opportunity to express the debt of gratitude we owe to that first Windrush generation for accepting the invitation to come to Britain, and, above all, to recognise the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren, have made to so many aspects of our public life, to our culture and to every sector of our economy.

Prince Charles talking with some of the original settlers from the Caribbean as he marked the 50th anniversary of Windrush. (Getty Images)

He added: Now I hesitate to single out any area of this activity but, as coronavirus lockdown begins to ease, I did just want to say a particular word about our National Health Service, of which people of African and Caribbean descent have been an indispensable part since its very beginning.

At the same time, I know that the black community has been hit particularly hard by this pernicious virus.

To those who have lost their loved ones in such heartbreaking circumstances, when it has been impossible for them to comfort their relatives in hospital, I can only convey my most profound sympathy; and to everyone on the front line who has been put under such intense pressure over the last three months and risen heroically to the unprecedented challenge, I want to say on behalf of all of us how inordinately proud we are of them and the way they carry out their onerous duties.

Prince Charles meets veteran Allan Wilmot (centre) amongst other veterans during his visit to the Black Cultural Archives in 2017. (Getty Images)

Read more: Prince William shares sweet moment with his three kids in new birthday photos  taken by Kate

A Public Health England report earlier this month found that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people were more likely to die after contracting COVID-19 than their white counterparts.

Story continues

The report found people of Bangladeshi ethnicity were twice as likely to die as those who are white British.

To mark the anniversary of the Empire Windrushs docking, home secretary Priti Patel announced a new Windrush Cross-Government Working Group with Bishop Derek Webley to right the wrongs of the scandal that unfolded in recent years.

Many people who had the right to live in the UK were wrongfully detained or deported to the Caribbean.

Prince Charles and Camilla are shown items of historical significance by Natalie Fiawoo at the archives. (Getty Images)

Read more: Prince Charles shares unseen photo of Prince William to mark his 38th birthday

Only 5% of claims under the governments Windrush Compensation Scheme have been paid out, with 60 people given 362,996 in the first year.

According to Dawn Hill, who chairs the Brixton-based Black Cultural Archives, there are about 12,000 people who had their British citizenship re-established and are owed compensation.

As well as the message, Clarence House shared a link to the Black Cultural Archives, which has a series of podcasts, storytelling and educational resources about Windrush.
Fellow planetary explorers,

In early March, I was working on my column for the June edition. It was going to be about the 4 new missions to Mars to be launched this summer (or southern hemisphere winter). Naturally, we all were expecting fabrication, shipment, assembly, and testing to progress steadily along their respective Gantt charts. Well, my friends, within a few weeks, this worldour worldhad been turned on its head.

The spread of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus has changed life as we know it. The pandemic has kept many of us at home, away from loved ones and unable to work. It has pushed others who work in health care, food production, and delivery along with utility workers and other essential-service providers into extraordinarily stressful and hazardous working conditions. No one on Earth has been unaffected by this crisis.

While we work together by staying apart, space exploration inherently gives us perspective. Exploring our solar system and beyond drives home the uniqueness and loneliness of our place in space. As Carl Sagan pointed out, everyone youve ever known or known of is from here; Earth is our cosmic home. From this point of view, we humans are much more alike than we are different. Our planetary kinship drives us to work together. We will move past this stronger than ever.

I am inspired by the technicians, engineers, and scientists who are sticking with it despite the upheaval. As I write, the Perseverance Mars rover is still scheduled to make its mid-July launch period. Perseverancean apt name indeed.

Compared to the health and safety of ourselves and our loved ones, space ranks lower on ones immediate priority chart. Still, even in the midst of a crisis, space explorers like you and I share a deep optimism for the future. We know that as a global society, we achieve extraordinary things when we work together with cooperation and scienceeverything from successfully addressing this pandemic to seeing the first humans land on Mars. We will persevere and keep that big picture in mind. We will look up and out into space with the confidence that scientific understanding can bring. We will endeavor to empower the worlds citizens to create a limitless and hopeful future for humankind. Together, we will change the world.

Thank you for being with us,
Welcome to Morningstar.co.uk!

You have been redirected here from Hemscott.com as we are merging our websites to provide you with a one-stop shop for all your investment research needs.To search for a security, type the name or ticker in the search box at the top of the page and select from the dropdown results.Registered Hemscott users can log in to Morningstar using the same login details. Similarly, if you are a Hemscott Premium user, you now have a Morningstar Premium account which you can access using the same login details.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says her constituents agree with her decision not to rush into opening state borders following a spike in coronavirus cases in Victoria.

The state Labor leader on Monday said Queenslanders regularly stop her in the street to tell her they are happy to keep the borders closed to the rest of Australia if it means avoiding a second wave of the deadly respiratory infection.

In Victoria COVID-19 cases have been steadily rising since last week, making up about 83 per cent of the nation's newly diagnosed cases in the last seven days.

On Monday, a further 16 cases were diagnosed while 44 were identified across the weekend.

A medical worker takes a sample from a person at a drive-through COVID-19 pop-up testing clinic at the Keilor Community Hub in Melbourne

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says her constituents are stopping her in the street to say they agree with her decision not to rush into opening state borders following a spike in coronavirus cases in Victoria

Ms Palaszczuk said residents in the Sunshine State had reason to be worried.

She visited a hospital on Saturday night with her family, and said people stopped her to express their concern.

'They were very concerned about community transmission... and Victoria. That was unprompted,' she said.

'They were coming up to me... everyone is concerned... and everyone should be. There is a lot of community transmission.'

Ms Palaszczuk said her main focus in the coming weeks and months is to avoid a second wave in her state.

Victoria has diagnosed another surge in coronavirus infections as family and work clusters expand and derail plans of Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) to reopen the state

Australians have been warned to stay away from six council in Melbourne: Hume, Casey and Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin

A sign out the front of a shopping centre in Victoria was encouraging people with symptoms of coronavirus to get tested

'We do not want to see a second wave, and that's another thing people are stopping me about in the street. They do not want to see a second wave in Queensland.'

She expects National Cabinet will discuss concerns surrounding Victoria and the sudden uptake in cases later this week.

In the meantime, she remained tight lipped on the scheduled border opening.

Originally, Ms Palaszczuk penciled in July 10 as the day she would likely reopen her state to interstate travellers, but now she does not seem so certain.

Her understanding is that Prime Minister Scott Morrison would prefer states not reopen for some states and not others.

South Australia has already indicated it would reopen borders for everywhere but New South Wales and Victoria, sparking an outcry from places which have found themselves excluded from the travel bubble.

Police are seen stopping cars at a check point on the Queensland and New South Wales border

Victorians are seen wearing face masks as they leave Melbourne's Flinders Street Station on Sunday (pictured) as cases grow across Victoria

The Australian government has forged its own path toward stopping the virus, managing to slow the spread of the deadly disease, without following advice from the WHO. Pictured: Nurses at Sydney Airport

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos, and Premier Daniel Andrews arrive to give more bad news about coronavirus outbreaks in the state

'We've made it really clear that the Chief Health Officer will be making a decision at the end of this month,' she said. 'She'll be making a decision and providing advice to Government.

'The AHPCC has also said they have concerns about Victoria and I have concerns about Victoria.

'There is a lot of active community transmission happening in Victoria and I hope that Victoria can get this community transmission under control.'

National Cabinet is scheduled to meet on Friday and will likely discuss reopening the borders.

'I think that's the responsible thing to do,' she said. 'I think we'll have a very lengthy discussion about this.'

On Monday, following the announcement of 16 new COVID-19 cases in Victoria, the New South Wales government issued a warning against travelling to the state.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said the spike in Victorian caseswas 'a wake up call for all of us' and urged people to avoid travelling to the area

People shop at the Queen Victoria Market while wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the spread of novel coronavirus

Officials said residents should avoid all travel to affected areas in Victoria - and said even metropolitan Melbourne was high risk.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said the spike was 'a wake up call for all of us'.

'At this stage, the advice is do not travel to those hot spots,' she told reporters on Monday.

'Do not go to the hot spots. Reconsider your plans. Reconsider what you're doing.

'But certainly, Melbourne is a discretion. We would recommend people not at this stage travel to Melbourne unless they have to.

'The strong recommendation from the New South Wales Government, including our health officials is - do not travel to those hot spots at all. And consider your travel to Melbourne at this stage.'

Victoria and NSW are the only two states not to bring in any border restrictions during the pandemic.
OTTAWA The Ivanka Trump of China.

Thats how U.S. President Donald Trump described Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou just a week after Canada arrested her in late 2018 at Americas request. Trump marvelled that her high-stakes detention in Vancouver was akin to arresting his own daughter, according to a new book by his former national security adviser, John Bolton.

Bolton outlines a fraught U.S.-China trade and security relationship and an administration deeply split over how to deal with Beijing.

The revelations emerge as tensions grow between Canada and China.

On Monday, for the first time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directly and publicly accused China of jailing Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as a political pressure tactic to gain the release of the Chinese executive detained by Canada.

Trudeau said despite Chinas claims to the contrary, it is Beijing that has linked the cases. The Canadians were arrested in China on Dec. 10, 2018, just over a week after Meng was arrested in Canada at the request of the United States.

They made those links from the very beginning and continue to put political pressure on Canada, he said.

This arbitrary detention of Canadian citizens is unacceptable and deeply concerning not just to Canadians but to people around the world who see China using arbitrary detentions as a means to political ends.

Trudeau has previously called Chinas arrests of the two Canadians disappointing and unfair, but restrained his rhetoric as the Canada-China dispute escalated. His tone shifted Monday as the U.S. again weighed in to back Canadas efforts to secure their release.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned Chinas decision last week to proceed with formal spying charges against Kovrig and Spavor. These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless, Pompeo said in a statement.

The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada.

Bolton, in his book published this week, said that during a Dec. 7, 2018 White House Christmas dinner the week after the RCMP arrested Meng, Trump raised Mengs arrest, riffing about how much pressure this put on China. He said to me across the table that we had just arrested the Ivanka Trump of China.

Meng is the chief financial officer of the Chinese tech giant Huawei, and daughter of the companys founder Ren Zhengfei, who has ties to Chinas ruling Communist Party.

University of Toronto political science professor Lynette Ong, an expert on China, said the Huawei executives name wasnt as widely known before her arrest as Ivanka Trumps. But Ong said Mengs case swiftly became a cause celebre and a matter of national significance for China.

They dont want to let this become a precedent, said Ong. If they allow this to happen, if they allow Meng to be charged, with the increased globalization of Chinese multinational firms and their CEOs flying around the world, and many of them would be involved in underhanded deals, this would set a very bad precedent.

Ong said Chinas Communist rulers fundamentally ... do not understand and reject Trudeaus declarations that Canadas judicial system operates independently because theres no separation of law, of the judiciary and of the party in China. To them, this is a very foreign and alien concept.

I think Beijing sees this as U.S. bullying, and Canada as a proxy that is willing to be used by the U.S. to bully China. And since they cannot get the bully, they can punish the proxy.

Bolton says Trump and his senior economic advisers failed to understand Huawei or China as a security threat and wanted a trade deal badly, and China lashed out at Canada.

China was showing its teeth, unlawfully detaining Canadian citizens in China, just to show they could. Canada was under great domestic pressure, which Trudeau was having difficulty resisting, he wrote.

Six months after calling her the Ivanka Trump of China, the president publicly mused about dropping the charges against Meng if he could get a better trade deal with China, suggesting he saw the arrest as a negotiating tactic. Justice officials quickly backpedalled.

The RCMP arrested Meng in Vancouver in December 2018 at the request of New York prosecutors, using a bilateral extradition treaty with the U.S., where she is wanted on fraud charges. Beijing also increased sentences facing two other Canadian citizens who were already in jail, putting them on track to face the death penalty, and blocked imports of Canadian pork and canola.

Trudeau said he would make no deal to get the charges against Kovrig and Spavor dropped by releasing Meng, saying his government will not interfere in Canadas rigorous independent justice system.

Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Canada Monday of double standards and urged Trudeau to respect rule of law and Chinas judicial sovereignty, and stop making irresponsible remarks.

The Meng Wanzhou incident is in essence different from the cases of the two Canadians, he said. Anyone without bias can see that it is a serious political incident. The U.S. aims to oppress Huawei and other Chinese hi-tech companies, and Canada is its accomplice. We strongly urge Canada to redress its mistakes, release Meng Wanzhou and ensure her safe return home as soon as possible.

Read more about:
(TNS)  A bill introduced in the New York State Senate last week would bar state employees from downloading the popular video-sharing app TikTok on their work phones.State Sen. Chris Jacobs, R-Buffalo, introduced the bill on Thursday, citing security threats. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which has sparked data privacy concerns and accusations it censors content critical of the Chinese government. The app has already been banned within a number of federal agencies, including the departments of state and homeland security.The legislation is titled the "No TikTok on Government Devices Act" and would not apply to any activity involving investigations, cybersecurity research, disciplinary action or intelligence collection. It mirrors federal legislation of the same name  introduced in March by two Republican senators  that would prohibit the app on U.S. government-issued electronic devices. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill that month.Both local and federal elected officials across the aisle have raised concerns that TikTok poses a counterintelligence threat and could feed sensitive user data to the Chinese government, which in 2017 approved a law requiring Chinese companies to cooperate with intelligence efforts if asked. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York's senior senator, has repeatedly raised concerns over the app's presence on government devices."Due to the obvious untrustworthiness of TikTok and the nature of the data that it collects, it is more than reasonable to conclude that this application should not be downloaded or used on government-issued electronic device," Jacobs' bill memo states.The measure does not yet have a companion bill in the state Assembly.The app is increasingly popular among teenagers and young adults, who use the app to create short dance videos or comedy skits. TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin, surpassed 2 billion downloads in April, TechCrunch reported TikTok has also attracted a wider audience of adults in recent months and found its way into business' social media strategies, many of which both run their own accounts and sponsor "famous" TikTokers to use and advertise their products. It has also become a hub for social media activism. Most recently, thousands of teenagers on the app claimed victory Saturday after they say an online campaign to register and then not show up for President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., inflated expected turnout, The New York Times reported TikTok has repeatedly asserted that it is independent of the Chinese government, though representatives have previously declined to testify publicly before or meet privately with members of Congress to discuss company policy and security concerns.After the Transportation Security Administration banned TikTok from government devices in February, an app spokesperson told Business Insider : "While we think the concerns are unfounded, we understand them and are continuing to further strengthen our safeguards while increasing our dialogue with lawmakers to help explain our policies. We recently reached out to several members of Congress to express an interest in meeting in the near future."A representative for TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
Update (August 10): Heading into the fall semester, evangelical colleges and universities have eliminated more than 230 faculty and staff positions. Dozens of faculty and staff were cut in the spring, with schools citing COVID-19 and ongoing financial concerns. Scores more were eliminated from four institutions over the summer:

Southwest Baptist University (Missouri)24 faculty and staff

Walla Walla University (Washington)15 faculty and staff

Calvin University (Michigan)12 faculty, two majors, and four minors

Spring Arbor University (Michigan)11 faculty positions, one study abroad program

Matt Kucinski, a spokesperson for Calvin, said the school has been, Preparing for several years now to meet the reality that more extreme enrollment declines are predicted for higher education institutions around 2026 as enrollment continues to reflect the demographic decline of university-aged students worldwide.

Walla Walla spokesman Aaron Nakamura said COVID-19 has made everything more complicated. We have found that we have had to be more flexible than normal, he said.

----------

Original post (June 22): Five evangelical Christian colleges and universities have eliminated more than 150 faculty and staff positions this spring. While some officials cite COVID-19 as the reason for the cuts, most say the financial reckoning comes in response to the ongoing crisis of higher education and their efforts to prepare for the future.

School officials have confirmed the following cuts:

Bethel University (Minnesota)36 faculty, 28 staff, two masters programs, 11 majors

Southeastern University (Florida)32 faculty and two staff

Hardin-Simmons University (Texas)17 faculty, 14 staff, 22 programs and seminary

John Brown University (Arkansas)25 positions, including at least five faculty

Harding University (Arkansas)10 faculty and administration and closed North Little Rock location

Other schools, including Taylor University in Indiana and Charleston Southern University in South Carolina have furloughed employees to save money, but not eliminated positions.

Institutions are often required to make strategic and necessary changes based on a number of factors, said Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). But at the end of the day, these decisions are made to ensure the future financial viability of the institution.

Eliminating positions may, in some cases, mean laying off faculty or staff. More often, however, administrators make cuts by not filling vacant positions, declining to replace people who have retired or taken another job. Many schools across the country have had hiring freezes, and some make the smaller rosters permanent after a period of time.

School administrators say the decisions hurt but are necessary. They hope the tough calls may make the difference in the future health of their institutions.

These changes, while painful, are a necessary part of our work to ensure Bethel will thrive well into the future, said Deb Harless, executive vice president and provost, in a press release.

Only two of the five schools, Southeastern and Harding, cite COVID-19 as a primary reason for the financial situation requiring cuts. Small, evangelical colleges were already in a precarious position due to lower enrollment, relatively small endowments, and shrinking donor bases. COVID-19 only made it worse.

Ten CCCU schools made similar cuts in 2019, according to press reports, including Gordon College in Massachusetts, Malone University in Ohio, Indiana Wesleyan University, and Azusa Pacific University in California. Evangelical seminaries have been navigating financial pressures made worse by COVID-19 as well.

A number of conservative Christian schools that are not part of the CCCU have also reduced their budgets this year. Ashland University laid off several faculty as part of a plan to discontinue 40 programs. Liberty University announced it is discontinuing its philosophy major. Some schools have also completely closed: Nebraska Christian College and Concordia University-Portland shut their doors this spring.

Declining enrollment is a major factor in the ongoing financial crisis. From 2014 to 2018, Bethels enrollment declined by 6 percent, John Browns by 9 percent, and Hardings by 10 percent, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). McKinsey & Company, a higher education trade company, predicts first-year undergraduate enrollment will drop 15 percent this fall. If true, schools that are tuition dependent with small endowments will be hit especially hard.

Enrollment isnt the decisive issue for every institution, however. In the same five-year span, Hardin-Simmons enrollment increased by 11 percent, Ashlands by 36 percent, and Southeasterns by 80 percent, according to IPEDS.

The larger challenge, for schools, is not knowing what to expect. Dramatic changes from year to year, whether caused by enrollment decline or a pandemic, make it very hard to plan for the future.

Colleges are having to make high-impact decisions, Hoogstra said, when predictability about the future is low and there are many variables outside of their control. Administrators have to be extraordinarily strategic, and thats still no guarantee of survival.
Burma Myanmar Called to End Yearlong Internet Blackout in Volatile West

Campaigners call for an end to the internet shutdown in Rakhine and Chin states. /Students and Youth Congress of Burma / Facebook

YANGON  As the governments internet shutdown in parts of conflict-torn Rakhine State and neighboring Chin State turned one year on Sunday, calls to lift the restrictions have mounted while the impact is compounded by COVID-19.

Amid intensified clashes between Myanmars military and the Arakan Army, the government blocked mobile internet in eight townships in Rakhine State and Chin States Paletwa Township, citing concerns for security and the public interest. Later, the authorities lifted the restrictions in Maungdaw Township.

The ban has attracted widespread condemnation and opposition from rights groups and activists for stifling freedom of expression and for preventing information-sharing.

On Sunday, more than 100 domestic and international civil society organizations released a joint statement calling for the restoration of the internet in the remaining eight townships.

The groups called the governments continued restriction on internet access, affecting approximately 1.4 million people, the ongoing violation of economic, social, cultural, developmental, political and civil rights.

The government claimed the shutdown was an effort to prevent racial discrimination between Rakhine (or Arakanese) communities and the ethnic Burmese and disinformation surrounding the conflict, especially on Facebook.

Media analysts have said blocking the internet is not the right approach to reduce tensions.

Rakhine State lawmaker U Hla Thein Aung previously told The Irrawaddy that while residents bear the brunt of armed conflicts, the internet blackout encourages human rights violations and violence.

Khaing Mrat Thu from the Rakhine Youth Group Network said in a video posted by the UK Embassy on Sunday that the shutdown has a daily impact on the economy, education, health and society. Residents were unable to look for jobs and scholarships, study interesting topics online and find updates on COVID-19. The government is increasingly using social media to release COVID-19 related information. And the blackout was stopping communication between relatives and friends, she added.

Rights activists from different cities also joined the campaign with demonstrators wearing T-shirts saying, Oppose internet oppression.

Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and United States diplomatic missions in Myanmar also raised concerns over the news blackout. They mentioned the impact of COVID-19 and further restrictions imposed on several news outlets and journalists, including the blocking of Myanmar-based news websites.

A joint diplomatic statement said: Access to the internet and media is vital for people to obtain and share information for their health, safety and security, particularly as they approach the elections and face the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, two-way communications with people in internet-restricted areas are critical for the health sector to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Myanmar, even during a conflict. Everyone should be able to access the latest information available.

The joint statement of the 110 rights groups called for amendments to Articles 77 and 78 of Telecommunications Law which allow the Ministry of Transport and Communications to impose bans when an emergency situation arises to protect the public interest.

You may also like these stories:

All NLD Members of Mandalay Cabinet to Run in Myanmars General Election: Minister

Election Authorities Prepare for Voting in Myanmars Roughest War Zone
Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Passaic) dutifully dropped off his ballot at Patersons main post office off Federal Plaza with plenty of time to spare for the May 12 municipal elections.

Then he learned that the ballots cast by his family of four were among the 800 rejected in his ward by the Passaic County Board of Elections. He has yet to receive an explanation. It could be a signature verification issue, or it might have been delivered too late to be counted. And that was hardly the only problem in Paterson.

Weeks before the governor said wed have all vote-by-mail elections, I warned them that VBM is not good for Paterson, Wimberly said. We had had major issues with the postal system and a lot of fear of the virus among our mail carriers  vacations, early retirement, they were getting out. It was a formula for disaster.

The 32 municipal elections held in May were supposed to be an exclusive vote-by-mail dress rehearsal for the July 7 primary, and as launches go, this was the 62 Mets.

There were reports about ballots being delayed, lost, mishandled, and even stolen. Paterson alone has 3 ward elections being challenged in court, and accusations of fraud has led Mayor Andre Sayegh to lament an election tragedy  the last thing we need is Donald Trump tweeting about Paterson.

Federal investigators are now in Paterson, which is good, but thats not going to help New Jersey fix the chronic ballot delivery blundering with the primary just two weeks away.

First we must admit we have a problem: The once-reliable US Postal Service, which reportedly could be bankrupt by September, clearly is no longer reliable.

The delivery issues werent just in Paterson, Orange and Montclair: The deputy superintendent for elections in Bergen County, Theresa OConnor, told an Assembly hearing Thursday that the USPS did not appreciate the significance of the vote-by-mail ballots during the municipal elections, and that in several towns, we saw instances of undelivered ballots left in stacks on the ground, in apartment buildings or outside or on top of mail boxes.

The only solution is to bypass the USPS wherever practical. Voter behavior expert Patrick Murray, the Monmouth University pollster, points out that the states that do vote-by-mail well do not rely on the postal service. The vast majority are actually deposited in special drop boxes or at local government offices such as police stations.

These boxes are supervised, secured, and serviced by the state, not by the local letter carrier. Use them.

But in his executive orders that mandated New Jerseys transition to the vote-by-mail model, Gov. Murphy called for only five ballot drop boxes in each of our 21 counties. Clearly, that number is inadequate, so Murray and other advocates endorse a sizable increase, and election officials agree that it would reinforce the chain of ballot custody.

More than five are necessary, agreed Union County clerk Joanne Rajoppi, who had sent out 205,000 primary ballots at the start of last week. But some counties. . . .will not have them installed until next week. Installing boxes less than two weeks before an election isnt going to work, not when I started sending out ballots at the end of May.

We must do better. The Legislature could help by moving a bill from Sen. Paul Sarlo that allows municipal clerks to collect hand-delivered mail-in ballots  a handy option if the local Town Hall is a shorter trip than the nearest drop box.

The state has made many mistakes in its VBM rollout. With 3.6 million ballots being mailed in the middle of a pandemic, that was predictable. Public outreach, for example, has been poor: The mail-in ballot has a learning curve, and tutorials are rare - the governor himself didnt launch one until Friday. People also need to know that local polling stations are only for voters who did not receive a mail-in ballot.

There will be more growing pains during the primary, but hopefully it is part of a process that makes VBM the standard in our state. Wimberly said it right: The integrity of our elections is at stake, so we better get this right by November. I hope we can. If a son of Paterson can have faith in elections, anybody can.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.

Trumps attempted murder of the Postal Service. This editorial is dead on. Trump cannot and will not be allowed to destroy your post office.https://t.co/ybcDf2PusG  Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) May 25, 2020

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.
Michigan State University President Samuel Stanley says he knows the coronavirus will spread if students come back to campus in the fall.

While safety is paramount," managing the risk is a chance worth taking for MSU, he said.

The one thing that's going to be really important, then, is confidence in our students, faculty and staff and their willingness to abide by a number of the things we're going to be asking them to do on campus, Stanley said.

Like Stanley, most college administrators are mulling over how to restart their programs with no end in sight for the public health crisis.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is tracking more than 860 institutions plans, two-thirds of colleges are planning to welcome back students in person, while only 7% are planning to hold classes only online. Many other colleges have yet to make a decision.

Their approaches are as diverse as the roughly 3,000 four-year colleges and universities that span the United States.

Back to campus  with masks, one-way hallways

Stanley is among a majority of university presidents who aspire to welcome students back to campus in the fall. He said many students had difficulties with remote learning in the spring. Some lacked the resources at home to complete courses online.

But Michigan State still plans to hold about half of its classes entirely online. Others will be taught via a hybrid format, with students doing some course sessions online and some in person, or in larger classrooms on campus. The school plans to accommodate students who cannot return in person by giving them an online curriculum.

Students commute on the campus of Michigan State University Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, near the International Center.

Stanley said university affiliates will need to commit to a new way of life on the East Lansing campus: always wearing masks in public spaces, respecting directional flow for certain hallways, and committing to self-isolation if exposed to the virus.

To decrease density in residential facilities and minimize unnecessary social contact, college administrators are lowering dormitory occupancy and requiring changes to life in residence halls.

Story continues

Duke University, for example, is offering extra housing in local hotels and apartments, with most students promised a single room.

At historically Black Florida A&M University, the proposed plan for reopening this fall places a strong focus on health precautions. Black Americans have already been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Class sizes at FAMU will be limited, and students will be required to shower at scheduled times. Students are strongly encouraged to get tested for COVID-19 when they arrive on campus, and at least 2% of faculty and staff will be tested every month.

Reopening at HBCUs: Historically black colleges fight for survival, reopening amid coronavirus pandemic

The University of Colorado-Boulder plans to house first-year students in social cohort groups tied to the courses they're registered to take.

In a regular semester, (students) may have 40 or 50 different students that they would be interacting with rather than just 10. And we believe that by reducing that population density, well certainly help to mitigate some of the problems with the virus," Chancellor Philip DiStefano told CNN.

Boston Universitys students are invited back to campus, but they will have a choice between in-person classes or remote classes for their fall semester.

It protects the health and safety of everyone, students and faculty, and provides the kind of flexibility that students need in these difficult times, Sue Kennedy, BUs interim associate provost for undergraduate affairs, wrote in a news release.

Why all the effort to reopen campuses? Many colleges  especially smaller, residential schools  need students on campus to stay afloat. Refunds for room and board when classes went online in March created budget crises at many institutions.

What's more, students said they might not return to college if classes were online again in the fall. In lawsuits and social media posts, they spent much of the spring saying it wasn't fair they had to pay full tuition rates to learn online.

Online classes throughout California

Still, some colleges have decided the risk of a community outbreak is too great.

California State University  the nation's largest public university system  and many universities in the University of California system plan to offer most of their fall semester coursework online.

CSU Chancellor Timothy White said he was skeptical of college administrators who say they can bring their students back, noting forecasts of a second wave of the coronavirus that could severely disrupt campus activities.

If you started in person and then had to flip back to virtual halfway through  that kind of yo-yo, you know  is that good for students and for the learning experience, or is it better to have a consistent space, the virtual space? White said.

For academic programs that depend on specialized equipment  such as kilns for pottery workshops and laboratories for chemistry experiments  CSU plans to move forward with a limited number of on-campus offerings, according to White. Each of the systems 23 campuses might teach anywhere from 2% to 12% of its classes in person.

White said he is confident virtual courses will be more compelling than they were in the spring and hopes students will stay with it instead of taking a gap year.

That's actually sort of field training for the future workforce, because when they graduate, chances are going to be increasing every day that they will be working in a virtual space in the future, White said.

At the University of California-Los Angeles, administrators have said no more than 20% of classes will be taught in-person.

Low-density housing will be provided based on financial need and for students taking courses or participating in other activities offered in-person, according to a statement from Provost Emily Carter.

Shifting class schedules

Some universities are opening their campuses but reimagining their academic calendars or approaches to minimize transmission of the virus.

Syracuse University plans to move to an alternating in-person schedule for the fall term. Half of all students will attend a class in-person one day, with the other half following along virtually. The students will swap spots on alternate days.

Syracuse University will move to an alternating in-person schedule for the fall term.

Stanford University plans to start its fall term earlier and allow only half of undergraduates back to campus each quarter.

And, like universities such as Rice, Notre Dame and Purdue, Stanford will end its term before Thanksgiving to avoid the expected reemergence of the coronavirus in late fall. Such universities want to reduce the chances that students become exposed to the virus at home and bring it back to campus.

A few smaller colleges are experimenting with block scheduling. Centre College in Kentucky plans to divide the normal academic term of 13 weeks and four courses into two blocks of two courses, each six weeks plus two days long. That way, the argument goes, fewer classes at a time will be disrupted by a potential outbreak. Centre administrators say they hope to decide by midsummer whether classes will be online or in-person.

Sports: COVID-19 cases haven't deterred college football's quest to return, but when would they?

Still considering options

Many colleges, like Centre, are still weighing avenues for return.

While planning to keep classes online, Harvard University is considering three options for undergraduate living for the fall semester: keeping the campus population at its low-density level, with most undergraduates at home; housing about half of its undergrads; and welcoming back all students.

Harvard officials say they expect to make a decision by July.

In states that have lifted public health restrictions, potentially paving the way for universities to resume their operations, some colleges have created their own reopening phases.

At the University of Alabama, officials are implementing four phases of reopening as they assess COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

For now, the college says, students will be tested for COVID-19 before or immediately after returning to campus, and the university is considering limiting in-semester holidays and breaks as well as ending in-person instruction by Thanksgiving.

Contributing: Byron Dobson, Tallahassee Democrat

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus reopening: Colleges' plans for fall 2020 vary
As the opposition leaders demanded a high level probe into reports, that seven inmates, five of them coronavirus positive, of a government shelter home in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur town were found to be pregnant, the officials on Monday claimed that the girls were pregnant at the time of their admission to the shelter home.

Kanpur district magistrate Bramhadeo Tewari told reporters that in all 57 inmates of the shelter home had been found to be infected with coronavirus. ''Seven girls are pregnant....five of them have tested positive...two are negative,'' he added.

One of the pregnant girls was also HIV-positive, sources said.

The district police chief also said that these girls (pregnant ones) had been brought to the shelter homes from different parts in the state. ''FIRs are registered in the districts, where they were sexually assaulted,'' he said.

The opposition leaders, however, slammed the UP government on the issue and sought a high level probe into the matter.

''It is shameful....such matters are brushed under the carpet on the pretext of probe....a similar incident had happened in UP's Deoria town also,'' Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said.

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav said that the guilty must be brought to the book. ''It is a shocking incident,'' he said in a tweet.

As many as 57 inmates of the shelter home had tested positive for coronavirus. Their pregnancy came to light at the time of their medical examination at a private medical college hospital in Kanpur on Saturday.

The entire building, that housed the shelter home, had been sealed.

The revelation has set off alarm bells in the official circles here and brought back the memories of exploitation of inmates of a women's shelter home in the state's Deoria town, about 325 kilometres from here, around two years back.
The [North] Korean Central Television broadcast an interview with a fervent youth league official in Chorwon, Kangwon Province voicing his willingness to fly propaganda leaflets into South Korea. They depend on a southerly wind.

North Korean state media on Saturday published photos of propaganda leaflets featuring Moon's face covered in cigarette butts and trash. "The only way to realize the level of humiliation is to suffer the same treatment," the official Rodong Sinmun daily wrote. "Preparations are being made across the country to send propaganda leaflets to the South reflecting people's anger."

North Korea has unveiled propaganda leaflets denigrating President Moon Jae-in and the South Korean government as it prepares to disseminate them across the border.

The South immediately urged the North to stop since government-sponsored propaganda is prohibited under cross-border agreements. Minjoo Party spokesman Kang Hoon-shik said, "We urge you to immediately halt the dissemination of propaganda leaflets. We will firmly resolve the problem of propaganda leaflets being sent to the North."

The Unification Ministry also voiced regret, but Cheong Wa Dae refrained from comment.

But North Korea refused to comply. A spokesman for the United Front Department in a statement on Sunday said, "We, clearly aware that leaflets scattering is the violation of the North-South agreement, do not have any intent to reconsider or change out plan at a time when the [bilateral] relations have already been broken down."

Meanwhile, North Korea continues to deploy soldiers to the demilitarized zone. According to military sources, the North removed thickets in the DMZ and refurbished paths leading up to its guard posts.

One researcher at a state-run think tank here said, "North Korea could resort to further provocations in the DMZ and NLL," the Northern Limit Line separating the two Koreas' territorial waters.
Police in New Hampshire are on the hunt for a woman who they believe helped kidnap a man before he was assaulted and tied naked to a tree.

Ronald Betances, 45, was arrested on Saturday but his alleged accomplice Ariel Dupuis, 29, is on the run, according to authorities.

The victim claims he was abducted at knife-point from a residence in Manchester on Friday, then was bundled into a vehicle where his cell phone and wallet were snatched.

His kidnappers then drove to 'several locations', Manchester Police detective sergeant Chris Sanders said.

The victim claims he was abducted at knife-point from a residence in Manchester, New Hampshire on Friday. Ariel Dupuis (pictured) is a suspect and was on the run on Sunday

'The victim was then forced to remove his clothing, had his wrists and feet bound, and (was) assaulted before being left tied to a tree,' Sanders said.

'The victim managed to free himself and then contacted the police.'

Sanders said the victim and the suspects are known to each other.

'This was not a random act,' Sanders added. 'There is no threat to the public at this time.'

Dupuis has been the subject of a manhunt before. Cops looked for her for 24 hours in January 2016 after she was involved in a shooting.

Dupuis was in a hotel room at the Londonderry when a Boston man was shot. A second man was in the room at the time.

Suspect Ronald Betances (pictured), 45, was arrested on Saturday. He is believed to be partially responsible for tying the victim to a tree naked and assaulting him

In 2017 after a traffic stop in Windham by New Hampshire State Police, she was arrested on a possession charge.

She was also detained in Merrimack on numerous driving charges.

In December 2017 she was taken into custody by Rockingham County Sheriff's Department on a judge's order.

Her arrest was for possession of Tramodol and crack cocaine, and for falsifying physical evidence.

Last November she was detained for speeding in Windham.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Manchester Police Department at 603-668-8711.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - An Independence man has been sentenced to 17 years in prison without parole for "illegally possessing a firearm that he used to shoot his girlfriend," according to a news release.. William C. McGee, 45, was sentenced on Friday and was found guilty in April 2019 of being a felon in a possession of a firearm.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 01:07:27|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HONG KONG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- People from various sectors in Hong Kong are looking forward to the early implementation of the law on safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and hope the new law will ensure Hong Kong's long-term peace and order.

The draft law was submitted for deliberation at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress from June 18 to 20.

Choi Koon-shum, chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commence of Hong Kong, said the draft law shows that the central authorities respect, trust and care about the HKSAR and Hong Kong residents and are firmly committed to "one country, two systems."

Hong Kong's recent stable stock and property markets show that Hong Kong residents and foreign investors have responded positively to the law, Choi said.

Daniel Fung, a senior counsel, said the legislation can strike a balance between differences of mainland and Hong Kong legal systems, adding that recent signs of a resurgence of violence prove that the central authorities must take action as soon as possible.

Wong Kit-hin, chairman of the Hong Kong Legal Professionals Association, said the law is very comprehensive and will only do good to Hong Kong.

The human rights and freedom of Hong Kong residents are not restricted or impacted, and only an extreme minority of people committing crimes endangering national security will be punished, Wong said, adding that the central authorities respect Hong Kong's judicial independence.

Wong expected the enactment of the law will end the chaos and reinforce Hong Kong's status as an international financial center so that more foreign businesses will be reassured and continue to invest in Hong Kong.

During the social unrest in Hong Kong, some opposition figures supported the violent activities and even blatantly asked for interference of external forces, and young people were brainwashed and incited to take part in violent acts, which proves the necessity of the legislation, Lau Ping-cheung, chairman of Hong Kong Coalition of Professional Services, said.

Lo Man-tuen, executive director of Hong Kong Association for Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China, highlighted the importance of law enforcement.

It is legal and necessary for the office of safeguarding national security in the HKSAR and related organs of the central authorities to exercise jurisdiction over an extremely small number of criminal cases that endanger national security under specific circumstances, Lo said.

The law on safeguarding national security in Hong Kong will play a crucial role in improving the situation of Hong Kong, Lo said. Enditem
Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST

Bazaar Corporate Radar

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.
Premier Daniel Andrews has banned ministerial staff from becoming factional powerbrokers, holding official positions inside the Labor Party and running for pre-selections.

Mr Andrews' latest move follows an investigation by The Age and 60 Minutes that revealed ministers, and a ministerial staffer, had engaged in industrial-scale branch stacking.

Adem Somyurek and Nick McLennan captured in the 60 Minutes expose. Credit:Nine

In an email seen by The Age and sent to ministerial staff on Monday afternoon, the Premier's office said the rules would come into effect from the beginning of next week.

"It is a long-standing rule in our office that all staff who work for the Premier agree not to hold elected positions in the Labor Party or to act as proxies in Party forums," the email said.
The coronavirus outbreak broke the back of manufacturing and construction industries in the last three months. But how did they fare before that? Data from Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) for 2019-20 gives a clear picture of the industries' health in India. Insolvency admissions in the last financial year doubled to 3,774 cases. Of this, 1,604 cases have been settled by the tribunals across the country by finding a new buyer, commencing liquidation, or allowing voluntary withdrawals.

In June 2017, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had first asked the banks to take the 12 big loan defaulters to National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and try under Indsolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The move, which was expected to tame the ballooning non-performing assets (NPAs) on the books of banks and revive the debt-ridden companies bringing in a responsible management, has not achieved the desired results. There are 2,170 cases in which resolution is still pending. Of this, 443 cases have passed the 270 days allowed under IBC for resolution.

ALSO READ: How loan moratorium, IBC saved Kishore Biyani from debt crisis

In about three years, 1,527 manufacturing companies have been admitted for insolvency process under IBC after they defaulted on loans. It varies from food and beverages to textiles to chemicals and metals. The economic turbulence has uprooted 757 companies in real estate and renting business. In addition, 408 construction companies, and 378 retail and wholesale trading firms have also shut shop.

There are only a few non-affected sectors, including information technology (IT) and allied services. IBC does not cover the bankruptcy in banking, insurance and financial services (BIFS) sectors. Though gross financial mismanagement is considered as one of the reasons for ending up in bankruptcy, the sectoral troubles have also played a major part in many cases.

In the manufacturing sector, basic metals producers and the textile and leather companies are the most affected - 266 basic metals and 261 textile and leather companies have filed for bankruptcy so far. Nearly 200 food, beverages and tobacco products producers are also in the list of defaulters, besides 154 chemical manufacturers.

ALSO READ: Another blow to Anil Ambani! SBI files plea in NCLT to recover Rs 1,200 crore

From real estate and renting sector, 757 companies have filed for bankruptcy so far. Of that, the resolution plan approved in 27 cases and liquidation ordered in 148 cases. The real estate companies are the worse hit by the pandemic and will also be the ones to remain crippled for the longest time. At present, the banks are taking control of land parcels and unfinished projects that can be sold along with loans for recovering the dues.

In mid-2017, resolution process was first initiated in 12 big companies, which had a cumulative outstanding claim of Rs 3.45 lakh crore. Of the 12, tribunals found buyers for eight companies. In the major deals, Tata Steel bought Bhushan Steel for Rs 35,571 crore; ArcelorMittal and Nippon bought Essar Steel for Rs 41,018 crore, Reliance Industries bought Alok Industries for Rs 5,052 crore; and Vedanta bought Electrosteel for Rs 5,320 crore. JSW Steel's Rs 19,350 crore offer for Bhushan Power and Steel has been approved by the tribunal, but it is yet to be concluded as it ran into rough weather since Enforcement Directorate (ED) seized the bankrupt company's assets in connection with a money laundering case. NBCC's Rs 23,223 crore offer for Jaypee Infratech has also been approved by the appellate tribunal. NCLT had ordered liquidation of Lanco Infratech and ABG Shipyard. Amtek Auto and Era Infra are still in the resolution process.

ALSO READ: Bank NPAs: One-year IBC suspension a blessing in disguise for ARCs
A former restaurant owner who paid no wages to a woman who worked for him for 14 months and threatened her when she asked him for money won't spend any immediate time in prison.

Time in jail for a slavery offence had hung over Farok Shaik over his refusal to pay the woman and her husband $85,000 for the cooking, cleaning and food service work they did at some of his six Indian restaurants in country Victoria, in 2012 and 2013.

Farok Shaik outside the County Court on Monday. Credit:Joe Armao

Shaik exploited the power he held over the woman because he was sponsoring her application to become a permanent resident, and threatened to withdraw his support when she asked about her wages. On at least one occasion he also threatened to physically hurt her if she asked about being paid.

The 47-year-old was spared being sent to prison in the County Court on Monday when Judge Michael Cahill found the delay in prosecuting him was significant and went in his favour.
The two new facilities each will have footprints of about 800,000 square feet, officials said. Each building, however, will have several levels of operations covering more than 3 million square feet of floor space, officials said.
Northwestern Universitys McCormick School of Engineering celebrated the graduation of its undergraduate Class of 2020 and its masters and PhD students on June 19 as part of Universitys 162nd Commencement.

Graduates from around the world watched a virtual Commencement ceremony, which included live-streamed remarks by Northwestern President Morton Schapiro. He told graduates, Your final weeks here were not a time of celebration, but rather a time of crisis. The world needs your leadership more than ever, and I have confidence that you will rise to the occasion. Congratulations to all of you, I salute you, and am proud to help recognize your extraordinary accomplishments.

The ceremonys keynote address was delivered by Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. In addressing recent events and social unrest, she encouraged graduates to leverage their skills and talent to serve their communities.

Being a democracy means that what policy is and how that decision is made and what law gets passed depends on whether or not were part of the process, she said. It matters whether a diverse group of voices and experiences are at the table. If youre not engaged, youre absently yielding your power to someone else. So be at the table. Put yourself in the place where your voice and talent can be felt. Read more about the University Commencement.

As part of the virtual celebration, graduates were each given a personalized website, which presented them with an acknowledgement of their academic achievements and links to the Universitys event. For Northwestern Engineering graduates, that page also included links to video remarks from Dean Julio M. Ottino and guest alumni, and special materials to commemorate the students achievements with family and friends on social media. Graduates also participated in virtual celebrations via Zoom hosted by their home departments and programs.

In his address, Ottino told graduates that the current challenges facing the world had produced circumstances no one could have imagined.

Despite the multitude of challenges that we face, it is critical that we carve out a moment to recognize and celebrate you, Ottino said. We applaud the perseverance and grit that we have seen from you and those who supported your journey. You have achieved something great  you are now part of the Northwestern Engineering alumni community.

Ottino added that during such a time of change, challenges are expected, but challenges also present opportunities. He said its never been more important for graduates to use their engineering and design mindset to recognize problems and imagine new ways to make a difference.

As whole-brain thinkers, this is our time, Ottino added. We must use our skills in building empathy, understanding user needs, identifying opportunities, pushing into the unknown, and advancing technology and knowledge to ensure that we drive change for the better.

Alumni share advice and congratulations

More than a dozen Northwestern Engineering alumni who stand as leaders and innovators offered advice and well wishes via video.

Ken Porrello (78, KSM 82), chair of the McCormick Advisory Council, welcomed graduates to an alumni community that he said has the smarts, the tools, the grit, and the vision to change the world.

Were a community that leads, a community that innovates, a community that disrupts, and a community that breaks down barriers. I know that you will continue the proud tradition of Northwestern Engineering alumni, Porrello said. Your education has also helped you to build empathy, which is the ability to look at the world through the eyes of others. Never has that been more important than today.

Milton Morris (92, KSM 04), CEO of Neuspera Medical Inc., urged graduates to leverage their friendships and memories as they plan for future opportunities. Like their academic careers, life will be what you build of it.

After the virtual pomp and circumstance, after the celebrations have subsided, consider living a professional life at the intersection of things that you love to do and the things you are exceptionally good at doing, Morris said. Who knows? You might live the best version of yourself. You might make the greatest impact on society. You may even leave an indelible mark.

Gwynne Shotwell (86, MS 88), president and COO of SpaceX, told graduates that despite the unusual circumstances surrounding this years celebration, they have reason to feel proud, as well as an important opportunity to self-reflect.

I know that its a super weird time for you, but you should be pleased regardless of your accomplishments and your achievements and think hard about these times and how you react to adversity, Shotwell said. In fact, the way we behave and respond to adversity is really what defines us.

Annette Rippert (86, MMGT 94), group chief executive of strategy and consulting at Accenture, noted that Northwestern Engineering graduates are uniquely prepared to tackle todays challenges.

Your engineering degree has given you everything that youll need. It has taught you how to think. Its prepared you to take complex problems, break them down, and solve them, Rippert said. And just look around you, our world is full of tough, complex problems right now. Problems that are just waiting for you to find a solution. The world needs exactly what you have.

Virginia Rometty (79, hUniv 15), executive chairman at IBM, closed with words of wisdom.

The best advice I ever received came from my mother, Rometty said. She said, never let anyone or anything define who you are. Only you define who you are. Well, thats never been more true than at this moment.

Other alumni speakers included:

Deepak Ahuja (MS 87), CFO, Verily Life Sciences

Peter Barris (74), managing general partner, New Enterprise Associates

Sheila Gujrathi (92, FSM 96), cofounder and CEO, Gossamer Bio

Latonia Harris (MS 97, PhD 01) scientific director, Janssen R&D, Johnson & Johnson

Yie-Hsin Hung (84), CEO, New York Life Investment Management

Mert Iseri (11), CEO and cofounder, SwipeSense

Matt Levatich (MMM 94), former president and CEO, Harley-Davidson

Steven McLaughlin (85), dean and Southern Company Chair, Georgia Tech College of Engineering

David Sachs (81), cofounder and senior adviser, Ares Management

Patricia Sparrell (MS 82), chair, The Sage Colleges Board of Trustees

Matthew Tirrell (73), dean and Founding Pritzker Director, Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago

Joseph Zadeh (03), chief stakeholder officer, Airbnb

The University plans to invite all 2020 graduates back to campus to celebrate their accomplishments in June 2021. They will be recognized as a class throughout Commencement Weekend, including with a ceremony distinct from celebrations for the Class of 2021.
The administration has denied demonstrators were cleared out to make way for Trump. Bernhardt, the interior secretary, has said violent attacks by the crowd warranted clearing the protesters. Reporters and other witnesses and Democratic lawmakers say they saw little sign of that scale of violence by the crowd.
(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 22 - Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco admitted on Monday that it is hard to make forecasts given the state of the economy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"The state of uncertainty does not make it possible to make reasonable forecasts," he said. "We are proceeding with possible scenarios".

The governor said that "non-economic factors linked to the pandemic" and factors of a "geopolitical nature" affected forecasting.

He added that "this uncertainty does not mean we should not do anything".

Visco said a "well-constructed plan" was needed that "does not only have the short term in mind".

The governor also said cutting red tape was a good thing but it should not go too far.

"Good bureaucracy is needed. An absence of it is not good," he said. "It's all too easy to say let's simplify things".

He said the civil service needs to be able to "respond to the demands" made of it and concluded that "faster justice" was needed in Italy. (ANSA).


Provincial authorities are responsible for choosing investors and implementing the newly added projects.

Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has agreed to add more wind power projects into the national electricity plan to raise the combined wind power capacity 11,630MW by 2025 as per a proposal by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Provincial authorities are responsible for choosing investors and implementing newly added wind power projects. Photo: The Blue Circle.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade estimates that the demand of wind power in the optimistic scenario is 11,630MW, accounting for up to 20% of the country's energy mix. That means in addition to the 4,800MW already included in the national plan, approximately 7,000MW will be added.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh also said at the National Assembly plenary session on June 15 that provincial authorities are responsible for choosing investors and implementing the newly added projects.

Construction of many large-scale coal-fired power plants is lagging schedule and could fail to start generating power by 2023, exposing the country to the risk of power shortage, especially for the 2024-2025 period.

According to Ha Dang Son, director of the Center for Energy and Green Growth Research under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations, the capacity of nearly 12,000MW is huge, requiring enormous investment in building corresponding transmission grid in the context that the industry has not been fully privatized.

In many countries, renewable energy projects are built to serve on-site needs. However, areas in Vietnam with natural conditions and acreage suitable for solar and wind power have little demand of electricity, he told Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper.

Ironically, localities with large demand of electricity are not suitable for building renewable energy projects. This leads to overload on the grid. Without proper planning, wind power projects would not be in full swing, Son warned.

Nguyen Dinh Cung, former director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), also noted that relevant authorities need to conduct an overall assessment of the status of the power source and the level of allocation when approving the projects.

Based on Fitch Solutions Key Projects Database, wind power plants under construction in Vietnam has a total potential of 900MW, and it is estimated that approximately another 13GW of plants are in the pipeline.

Fitch Solutions forecast the wind industry to grow from an estimated 375MW at end-2019 to over 2.5GW by 2029. Hanoitimes

Nhat Minh

Offshore wind power: great expectations, big challenges for Vietnam Vietnams offshore windpower potential is great, and the opportunities to develop it must not be missed just because of difficulties in the development of this new industry.
SACRAMENTO  Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders said Monday they have reached a budget deal that will allow California to close the multibillion-dollar deficit that has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic.

The deal avoids for at least a year the steep cuts to education and safety net programs that Newsom proposed last month, but makes reductions to other public services and state worker pay unless a federal bailout materializes.

Were not solving for everything in one calendar month, Newsom said at a news conference. We have a lot of work to do over the next few years, and we cannot impress upon the federal government more the important work they have to do to help support municipalities large and small, states large and small, to help support us through this unprecedented period of time.

The governor announced the budget agreement Monday in a joint statement with Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood (Los Angeles County). The officials said they had made some tough decisions that were necessary steps for keeping California on firm fiscal footing while we continue to meet the COVID-19 challenge.

Finance officials, who originally anticipated a $6 billion surplus next year, now project California is facing a $54.3 billion deficit. The state expects a $41 billion decline in tax revenue after the prolonged statewide stay-at-home order crushed the economy, with the remainder of the gap caused by increased demand on health care and welfare programs and emergency spending to respond to the pandemic.

The announcement by Newsom and the legislative leaders did not include details of the spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1. But legislative sources said the agreement was buoyed by a slightly improved budget picture.

Tax revenue has come in about $1 billion ahead of dismal May projections and estimates for new health care and welfare caseloads have dropped, according to a legislative staffer involved in the negotiations. The Chronicle agreed to grant the employee anonymity under its anonymous sources policy because the person was not authorized to discuss the deal on the record.

Under the agreement, no cuts will be made this year to Medi-Cal, the states health insurance program for the poor, or other social services such as a program to keep seniors out of nursing homes. The governor could make cuts to coverage beginning in July 2021 if state finances do not improve.

Schools and community colleges would also maintain their current funding levels, but a record $12 billion of the money would be deferred to future years. Districts could borrow against that funding or dip into their savings, with the state promising to pay them back later.

Budget deal highlights Key compromises in the state budget agreement reached by legislative leaders and Gov. Gavin Newsom: No reductions to schools and safety net programs: Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance for the poor, and other social services are spared from cuts. Schools and community colleges will retain their current funding levels, and receive about $5 billion in additional federal aid to help them safely reopen classrooms shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic. But $12 billion in funding will be deferred to future years - money that districts could borrow against or dip into their savings to cover, with the state promising to pay them back later. The state is counting on federal aid: Cuts to universities, courts and housing programs take effect July 1, but officials will reverse them if Congress passes a relief package for states and local governments. The money would also be used to restore deferred school funding and reverse pay cuts for state workers. Newsom could furlough public employees: The governor is looking to save about 10%, or nearly $3 billion, in compensation for California's 234,000 state workers. The budget would give him authority to freeze pay raises and impose furloughs on bargaining units that do not negotiate an alternative with the state by July 1. Health care for undocumented seniors is delayed: The budget does not expand Medi-Cal eligibility to undocumented immigrant seniors. The agreement does promise to do so at an unspecified point when funding is available. Inside the newsroom Anonymous sources:The Chronicle strives to attribute all information we report to credible, reliable, identifiable sources. Presenting information from an anonymous source occurs extremely rarely, and only when that information is considered crucially important and all other on-the-record options have been exhausted. In such cases, The Chronicle has complete knowledge of the unnamed person's identity and of how that person is in position to know the information. The Chronicle's detailed policy governing the use of such sources, including the use of pseudonyms, is available on SFChronicle.com. See More Collapse

Newsom said the budget deal would give schools billions of dollars in extra funding this year that the state received through a relief package that Congress approved in March. The agreement would prevent districts from laying off teachers. School leaders had raised concerns that they would be unable to reopen classrooms in the fall if the state cut their funding while also requiring new safety measures against the coronavirus.

Working with the Legislature, working through deferrals and working to get a lot of the federal Cares Act dollars into our education system, Newsom said, we think a lot of that anxietys mitigated.

The deal still counts on Congress passing another relief package for state and local governments in the coming months. California would use that money to restore half of the deferred education funding and reverse other cuts set to take effect July 1, including about half a billion dollars each for University of California and California State University systems, $150 million for the courts and more than $250 million for affordable housing programs.

The budget bill, which was not available publicly Monday, must be in print for at least 72 hours before a vote. That means lawmakers probably will not be able to take it up before Friday.

The Legislature approved a placeholder spending plan June 15, ahead of a constitutional deadline that requires lawmakers to pass a balanced budget or go without pay. Negotiations continued with Newsom for another week over his $14 billion in proposed cuts.

Disagreements over cutting state worker pay contributed to the delay. Newsom proposed a 10% pay reduction for Californias 234,000 state employees, including his own staff, which would save about $3 billion. But legislative leaders, who as Democrats are closely aligned with public employee unions, balked at giving the governor authority to impose those cuts if an agreement could not be reached with state workers through collective bargaining.

Some unions have already reached agreements with the governor on cuts. The states largest, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, announced Friday that its members would be furloughed for two days a month for two years in exchange for a suspension of their retiree health care contributions.

With those agreements taking shape, the Legislature agreed to give Newsom the authority to freeze pay increases and impose furloughs for any bargaining units that have not reached a deal by July 1, the legislative staffer said. Those cuts could also be reversed if a federal aid package comes through.

The budget does not extend Medi-Cal eligibility to seniors who are undocumented immigrants, a priority for immigrant rights activists and Latino lawmakers. But it does include intent language to do so when funding becomes available in the future.

Under the deal, immigrant tax filers with young children will be able to access the earned income tax credit for the working poor.

The agreement also includes $750 million for counties to backfill lost funding for public health, public safety and social services programs, plus potentially $250 million more if there is a federal bailout.

Newsom and lawmakers aim to minimize cuts by dipping for the first time into the states rainy-day reserve, borrowing from special funds and temporarily limiting corporate tax credits to raise more than $4 billion in new revenue.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
Thailand on Monday reported three new coronavirus cases, all imported, marking 28 days without local transmission, a senior official said, Trend reports with reference to Reuters.

The three new cases were Thai nationals returning from India and were detected in state quarantine, said spokesman for the governments Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Wisanuyothin.

Thailand has so far recorded 58 deaths related to COVID-19 among 3,151 infections, of which 3,022 patients have recovered.

Taweesin said the administration was coordinating with Myanmar authorities regarding 23 coronavirus cases found among migrants deported from Thailand.
U.S. Trade Adviser Peter Navarro announced on Sunday that the White House is preparing for a possible second wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that is expected to hit the country in the fall.

In a report by CNN, the trade adviser said the Trump administration is stockpiling medical supplies and testing kits in anticipation of another wave of virus cases.

The move came as health officials reported an alarming increase across multiple states located in the South and West.

According to an analysis by ABC News, over 12 states hit record highs of new COVID-19 cases on Friday, including California, Utah, Arizona and Florida, which saw a three-day streak of more than 4,049 new coronavirus cases from Thursday to Saturday.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the rise in the number of positive cases is likely attributed to the increase in testing.

He also cited the state's increasing number of available bed spaces in hospitals and the decreasing mortality rate.

The analysis also found an increase in hospitalizations involving COVID-19 patients in 17 states, including Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, and Oklahoma.

Shifting Demographics

In recent weeks, health officials in Southern U.S. states have reported a shift in demographics, citing that more young people are now testing positive for the virus.

The trend has been recorded in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and other states.

While some officials attributed the surge to more aggressive testing, many say they stem from failing to observe COVID-19 guidelines such as wearing face masks and social distancing, KTLA 5 reported.

In Mississippi, a health officer linked the new cases to fraternity rush parties, where participants do not adhere to social distancing.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott said last week that majority of the state's new cases involves people under the age of 30, who may have attended the Memorial Day parties or visited bars.

Meanwhile, over 62 percent of the new cases reported in Florida during mid-June involved people aged 45 and under.

Last week, the median age for newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases was 37.

Demographic data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on June 15 showed that the virus has more severe outcomes on specific communities such as the Blacks and Hispanics, Brookings reports.

Preventive Measure

As COVID-19 cases spike across Southern and Western states, more health experts are calling on state officials to enforce an order requiring the use of face masks in public places.

On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a statewide mask order that requires the state's 40 million residents to wear face coverings whenever they leave their homes.

Previously, the state only required essential-business employees to wear masks.

Three other states namely Arizona, Florida, and Texas have yet to issue statewide mandates despite days of record-high spikes.

In Arizona and Texas, the governors refused to impose statewide orders and instead allowed city mayors and county officials to enforce the wearing of face masks in their respective areas.

But mayors in Florida were not given authority.

Read the latest news from the U.S. here:
Am I covered here?

This is a question physicians throughout Pennsylvania have been asking since Gov. Tom Wolf issued an executive order May 6 that granted health care workers medical liability immunity in some settings but not others.

Think of this as medicines version of the Verizon commercial, where a man in horn-rimmed glasses wanders to various places testing his cell phone reception.

Can you hear me now?

The Verizon commercials unspoken answer asserts that your cell phone reception is, indeed, covered in all places. The same cannot be said about Gov. Wolfs executive order for health care liability immunity.

Are health care workers covered in hospitals? Yes. Nursing homes? Yes. A doctors office outside a hospital? No. Telehealth? No.

The problem is that COVID-19 infections are not just limited to hospitals and nursing homes. And physicians and nurses caring for COVID-19 patients are not limited to hospitals and long-term care facilities. Gov. Wolfs executive order fails to account for our integrated health system.

For example, as a family physician, I see my hospital and office patients as part of a medical practice, which is on the same campus as our hospital.

It happens that my office is located in the same complex as the hospital. It takes me only a few minutes to walk from one location to the other, and I never have to cross a street to do so.

And yet, I am covered under Gov. Wolfs executive order when I see patients in the hospital but not when I see patients a few hundred yards away in my office.

Since the pandemic began in March, the Wolf Administration has said physician offices and telemedicine would play a vital role in treating patients with COVID-19 symptoms and preventing them from overwhelming hospitals.

Physician offices have answered that call and, in fact, are one of the reasons Pennsylvania hospitals never exceeded capacity during the peak weeks of the pandemic.

Most of these medical offices cut back on in-person care but continued to see patients through telemedicine technology, which came at a great cost.

A recent survey by the Pennsylvania Medical Society showed more than a quarter of these practices struggled to get reimbursed for telehealth visits. Gov. Wolf vetoed legislation earlier this spring that would have mandated private insurers to reimburse for telehealth.

In the coming months, we expect personal injury attorneys in Pennsylvania to pursue families of COVID- 19 patients, ready to sue physicians for bad outcomes. Since they now cannot sue for care provided in hospitals or nursing homes, physicians providing care in their offices will become an easy target for malpractice claims.

Gov. Wolfs executive order provides exceptions for gross negligence and willful misconduct, even for health care workers in hospital settings.

There is still much that physicians do not know about COVID-19. There is no standard of care or proven treatment. On-going research is providing new information on a daily basis.

However, we do know that a quick response to patients with COVID-19 symptoms  whether they visit us in a hospital or an office  is essential to providing the highest quality of care, as is the freedom for patients to access care wherever it is most convenient and available.

That is why I urge Gov. Wolf and state lawmakers to follow the lead of New York, New Jersey, and other northeastern states by expanding medical liability protections to health care workers in all settings.

COVID-19 is presenting enough difficult challenges for our states medical community. Let us give them one less concern during this unprecedented time.

Dr. Lawrence John is president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society and a family physician from Pittsburgh.
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Father's Day sadly doesn't generate as much frenzy as Mother's Day does. With many people not acknowledging the importance of the celebration and others bouncing the festivities off single mothers, it is rare to come across businesses that invest in appreciating men on their special day.



Silver Hair Cut; a barbering franchise with 4 ultramodern branches across Accra, made a big statement to mark father's day 2020.



With the aid of media glamazon Selly Galley, the company pooled together some of Ghana's most famous fathers, to give them a treat that exemplifies how society should celebrate our fathers. The event was hosted by MC Benedictus who brought many hearty moments.



Actors Fred Amugi, Adjetey Annan, Ken Fiati, Prince David Osei, and Pieter Ritchie joined musician Praye TieTia and Fashion enthusiast Osebo as they were given makeovers at one of Silver Hair Cut's high-end branches.



The Father's including John Dumelo, Okyeame Kwame, and Trigmatic also received packages, including their own grooming equipment, to ensure health and safety, during the COVID-19 pandemic.



Pictures from the pampering session implied that the atmosphere was filled with joy and gratitude.



Speaking to Mr. Eric Frimpong the owner of SILVER HAIR CUT, he stated that the lovely initiative will be an annual celebration of fatherhood and encouraged other organisations to celebrate fathers in their own special way.

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
Iran said on Monday that it will send the black boxes of a shot-down Ukrainian plane to France in the "next few days" and expressed readiness to resolve remaining issues.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks in a phone call with his Canadian counterpart Francois-Philippe Champagne, his ministry said in a statement.

"The decision to send the black boxes has been made for some time and it will soon be acted upon," Zarif was quoted as saying.

The ministry said the process had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen most international flights cancelled.

Iran says its novel coronavirus outbreak has killed 9,742 people out of more than 207,500 infected since reporting its first cases in February.

According to the statement, Iran had told Ukraine that it was ready to "resolve legal issues and discuss how to compensate the families" of victims, but was yet to receive a delegation from the other party.

Flight 752, an Ukraine International Airlines jetliner, was struck by two missiles and crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran's main airport on January 8.

The Islamic republic admitted days later that its forces accidentally shot down the Kiev-bound jetliner, killing all 176 people on board.

Tehran's air defences had been on high alert at the time in case the US retaliated against Iranian strikes hours earlier on American troops stationed in Iraq.

Those strikes were carried out in response to the killing of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport.

The black boxes are expected to contain information about the last moments before the aircraft was struck and crashed.

Many of those on board the downed airliner were Canadians.
MUMBAI, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Winvesta, a global investment platform which allows Indian users to invest overseas, went live in late March, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Founders Swastik Nigam and Prateek Jain took this bold step even as COVID-19 brought the country to a standstill.

Winvesta is a newly launched UK-headquartered platform with operations in India and the US. It provides Indian investors an opportunity to diversify their portfolio and invest globally. Ridding people of the preconceived notion that investing overseas is only for the uber-rich, Winvesta enables Indian users to invest in global brands they know, use and love, with a simple and streamlined process. No physical document upload and no archaic paperwork is required -- the entire KYC process can be completed on one's phone, in less than 10 minutes.

Earlier last month, Winvesta announced a partnership with DriveWealth, LLC, a U.S. based leader in global digital trading technology, to facilitate greater access for investors in India. This partnership will let Winvesta clients buy fractional shares at real-time market prices in familiar US brands such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.

Elaborating their experience of going live amidst the COVID-19 chaos, CEO and Founder of Winvesta, Swastik Nigam said, "Everyone in the team had been working laboriously for over 6 months across 4 countries and 5 cities. Moving to remote work was not easy, but we adapted quickly. We wanted to be sure that we were meeting our regulatory obligations and our technology infrastructure was working well. Beyond that, now was as good a time as any. We have had many clients on our waitlist who had been awaiting the product and there was no reason to delay. We may now possibly be the first-ever regulated brokerage to go live with a 100% remote team. It feels very accomplishing."

On what inspired them to launch the platform, New York-based Prateek Jain, Co-founder of Winvesta said, "We've had an unmitigated access to investing in assets across the world, but India didn't. We each bring over a decade's experience working in global investment banks across London, New York and Singapore. Data shows that very little retail Indian wealth is invested beyond its shores and we want to help Indians own more of the world. We want to empower the Indian investor by removing the high transaction fees that they have previously needed to pay. This is why our platform has no significant upfront costs, no annual tie-ins, no minimum thresholds. But we also keep it very transparent for our clients - including in how we are organized regulatorily. We keep our communications honest and client-centric."

Winvesta went live on 27th March 2020, two days after India went into national lockdown. The Winvesta App is available on Android and will soon be available for iOS.

About Winvesta

Founded by former Deutsche Bank veteran traders Swastik Nigam and Prateek Jain, Winvesta Ltd. is an appointed representative of RiskSave Technologies Ltd., which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), UK. Winvesta offers a global investment platform for those in India. Winvesta's product suite includes U.S. stock trading and international banking facilities (coming soon). The international multi-currency account will enable users to have accounts in GBP, EUR and USD, which will facilitate alternate investments like international real estate. Using Winvesta's regulatory status and technology partnerships, users can open the U.S. brokerage and multi-currency accounts in as little as 15 minutes. For more information, please visit https://winvesta.in

SOURCE Winvesta
Thiruvananthapuram, June 22 : Former chief minister and congress leader Oommen Chandy has urged the CPIM-led LDF government to postpone the decision to make covid-19 negative medical testimonial mandatory for expatriates to board flights to Kerala.

Addressing a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, the congress leader opined that it was impractical for the expatriates to obtain covid-19 free certificates prior to boarding flights to the state.

As there was paucity of facilities for expats to take the covid test abroad, it was inhumane of the LDF government to demand them to do something that was not humanly possible, Chandy said.

Even if they obtained a covid-free certificate, it had a validity of just three days. If they failed to board a flight to Kerala within three days, the certificate would become invalid, he added.

He also said that he was not against testing expats before they boarded flights if the respective embassies could arrange the tests.

Coming down on the LDF government, the congress leader alleged that the state government was showing neglect towards expatriates. They should show at least as much consideration to expats as they showed to guest labourers in the state, Chandy added.

Oommen Chandy also lamented that the LDF government was trying to weave a narrative where the expatriates were being pitted against the people of the state.

LDF government has insisted on covid-free certificates for expatriates flying to Kerala on board chartered flights arranged by expat organisations and flights under the centre's vande bharat mission. The state government has justified the decision, citing the need to insulate other passengers from contracting the virus.

However, Chandy played down such concerns pointing out that three students were evacuated in January from Wuhan, the epicentre of the corona virus. The students later tested positive but none of the other passengers who flew with them on the same flight tested positive, he added.

The state government's decision to make covid testing mandatory for expatriates have also invited criticisms of discrimination as at present the direction applies only to expats in Gulf countries.
Floridas state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has joined a chorus of insurance companies accusing the Strems Law Firm of lawsuit abuse. Citizens says it has lost millions of dollars due to an alleged scheme of sham claims by the law firm, a public adjusting company and restoration company.

Citizens also alleges a pattern of racketeering activity in violation of [the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] RICO.

The allegations came in a civil complaint filed against Fort Lauderdale-based The Strems Law Firm; attorney Scot Strems; public adjuster Guillermo Saavedra and his public adjusting firm Contender Claims Consultants (CCC) of South Miami; and All Insurance Restoration Services (AIRS) of Miami, its president Cesar I. Guerrero, and its operations manager Derek Parsons.

This lawsuit is about what we contend are concerted actions by the defendants to abuse the claims process for their own gain, and to the detriment of both Citizens and our policyholders, Citizens Spokesperson Michael Peltier told Insurance Journal. These abuses have made it virtually impossible for Citizens to handle claims efficiently and effectively. We believe we had no choice but to file this suit to address the costs of these abuses that are shouldered by all Citizens policyholders through higher premiums.

Citizens filed the complaint in the Second Judicial Circuit Court for Leon County, Fla., on June 16. The 26-page document details Citizens allegations of how Strems, his firm, CCC and AIRS acted individually and in concert to defraud the insurer into paying for sham first-party property insurance claims.

Representatives for Strems, CCC and AIRS did not return Insurance Journals request for comment on Citizens allegations.

Florida Supreme Court Suspends Attorney Behind Thousands of Insurer Lawsuits Mr. Strems sits at the head of a vast campaign of unprofessional, unethical, and fraudulent conduct that now infects courts and communities across the state, the petition states.

The complaint by Citizens comes after a June 9 emergency suspension ordered by The Florida Supreme Court against Scot Strems, who, with his firm, has filed thousands of lawsuits against insurance companies. The suspension was granted in response to a petition from The Florida Bar, which alleges that Strems and his firm have engaged in mendacious, bad-faith conduct and are causing great public harm. Strems has denied the bars claims through his attorney.

Citizens is seeking damages in excess of $30,000, exclusive of interest, costs, and attorneys fees, and asks for a jury trial. The filing details four parts of the scheme that the insurer says began in 2014 when the parties secretly set out and engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud not only Citizens, but many other insurers in connections with claims made on behalf of Florida homeowners. Citizens says it discovered the scheme in 2019 and claims it is still taking place today.

According to the complaint, the four parts of the Scheme to Defraud Citizens by the named parties are: Part one  improper solicitation and referral of business to one another; Part two  obstruction of Citizens investigation; Part three  submission of inflated or fraudulent claims; and Part four  vexatious litigation.

The alleged scheme begins with CCCs adjustment of claims where it has homeowner insureds sign Strems contingency fee agreements, often without their knowledge that they have signed a contract for legal representation, Citizens said. The Strems Law Firm thereafter retains CCC adjusters as loss consultants while CCC also continues to provide public adjusting services, which Citizens claims is done to avoid limitations on public adjusters recovery and to claim their fees as part of litigation costs rather than being paid out of proceeds from the homeowners recovery. Over the course of the claims, Citizens says Strems or CCC contacts AIRS to provide water remediation services, where AIRS then will convince the homeowners to execute assignment of benefits contracts necessary to perpetrate the  scheme.

Working together, Strems, AIRS and CCC refer business to one another, securing each others involvement in thousands of first-party property claimsoften without full disclosure to, or knowledge by, the insureds, according to the complaint.

Citizens also alleges the parties have thwarted the insurers investigations of claims, impeded direct in-person contact with the insureds, presented inflated or fraudulent claims of damages, and failed to photograph or take video footage of the purported damage in the homes. Additionally, Citizens says the accused parties have worked to deceptively increase attorneys fees claims by filing different lawsuits for the same event or for damages covered by the same policy and engaging in egregious dilatory tactics, serving the purpose of multiplying proceedings and expenses.

This conduct resulted in great harm to Citizens, which was compelled to defend this often-spurious litigation brought in bad faith, Citizens said in the complaint.

Over the years, the Strems Firm, AIRS and CCC actively took measures to conceal their fraudulent scheme from Citizens, resulting in millions of dollars in actual losses to the insurer.

Citizens alleges multiple violations of Florida law and rules by the named parties, including: CCC using its public adjuster position to solicit clients for the Strems Law Firm; CCC acting as an agent of the Strems Law Firm, circumventing state regulations including statutory limitations on fees and licensure requirements for adjusters; and the Strems Firms avoidance of compliance with state law.

Additionally, Citizens claims homeowners have been left in the dark as to CCCs agreements with the Strems Firm, another violation of law. Citizens says CCC has used misleading retention and solicitation practices, in violation of the Florida Rules of Conduct of Public Adjusters, and advertised its services as free remodeling, suggesting a wrongful practice of using insurance for voluntary remodeling rather than repair of damage resulting from a covered occurrence, and ignoring insurance deductibles.

All of the actions allowed the parties to submit claims with inflated values or outright sham claims, Citizens said, with examples of such claims including: invoices from CCC for repairs to parts of the home that were not reported to have damage; invoices from AIRS overstating the amount of work performed and equipment used; water damage claims for parts of the home that had exhibited no moisture damage and were supported only by fraudulently-obtained moisture meter readings; and claims for damage that were caused by AIRS itself, among others.

Citizens complaint also details how the Strems firm repeatedly engaged in behaviors to delay cases by failing to comply with court orders, failing to appear at depositions, failing to appear at hearings or examinations under oath and failing to provide adequate discovery responses, all as a means to inflate attorneys fees. The insurer notes that the described conduct is also the subject of Strems emergency suspension petition initiated by the Florida Bar and granted by the state supreme court.

RICO Charges

Citizens further alleges that the named parties in its complaint knowingly participated in conducting the activities of an enterprise whose activities involve or affect interstate commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity in violation of RICO, and Citizens was injured as a result.

Citizens details six federal and state RICO counts against The Enterprise of Strems Law Firm, Scot Strems, CCC, Saavedra, AIRS, Cesar I. Guerrero, and Derek Parsons, that it says represented a pattern of racketeering activity.

Citizens says it is entitled to recover threefold its actual damages and its costs and attorneys fees, and seeks an award of damages in compensation for the millions of dollars it paid in claims as a result of the defendants scheme and the expenses it incurred in defending spurious claims. The insurer requests it be awarded compensatory damages, pre-judgment interest on the damages from the fraud and scheme, and any other relief determined by the court, as well as the potential to seek an award of punitive damages.

The unlawful actions of defendants, and each of them, have directly and proximately caused and continue to cause injuries to Citizens in its business, the complaint states.

Topics Lawsuits Carriers Florida Claims Fraud Homeowners
A day after he was reported missing, a 55-year Catholic priest was found dead inside a well on the premises of a church in Keralas Kottayam district on Monday, the police said. He was taken over as the vicar of the church eight months back.

The police said they registered a missing persons complaint on Sunday and began looking for him the whole night. When they checked the CCTVs, they found them switched off after the Sunday morning mass. Later, his phone was recovered from his room. Fire service personnel and divers were summoned to investigate the well and retrieved the body, they said.

Also read: Shows CPMs true allegiance - Cong, BJP question Kerala CMs silence on Chinese aggression

Locals believe the priest was upset after a minor fire broke out on the premises of the church when some repair work was going on. Four people sustained burn injures from the incident while one is still in the hospital. They said the priest was really disturbed after the incident. Some said he was not happy with the current posting and he was trying for a transfer.

However, Changanassery diocese said he had sought an appointment with the Bishop on Sunday evening but he did not turn up. Diocese said he was in Italy and later in the United States for many years and came back to the country last year. The police have registered a case for unnatural death and said the exact cause of the death will be known after the autopsy conducted.

Last month, a 20-year-old nun was also found dead inside a well located near her convent. A special investigation team is probing the incident after the intervention of a court in Pathanamthitta district.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Award winning gospel artiste, Diana Hamilton, whose hit song, Mo Ne Yo, is still receiving massive air play on radio and television stations in the country, says she is not in competition with anyone in the gospel industry but appreciates the way the industry is improving with great talents.



The gospel artiste, whose goal is to continuously improve herself, was recently rated as one of the most viewed Ghanaian artistes on YouTube by the International Music Magazine Billboard.



Reacting to media reports, which seem to suggest that she is in competition with her colleague gospel artiste, Joe Mettle and others, she said I do not think there is competition between us. I am not competing with other artistes. I have not heard anybody comparing me to Joe mettle; I think the goal is oneto draw people to Christ, she told Class FM.



Quoting the scripture to support her statement, she said, The Bible says that the harvest is big but the labourers are few; so I think the more the merrier so that we can draw people to Christ and so I do not think there is competition between us.



Diana Hamilton, who is the brain behind the annual gospel concert dubbed, The Experience with Diana Hamilton, believes her music ministry has a key role in edifying, encouraging and exhorting the saints as the coming of the Lord draws near and not to compete with her fellow colleagues in the industry.



A nurse by profession, the I Believe hitmaker announced her presence on the gospel music scene with her first album, Osoro be kasa, in 2007.



Her second album titled Ensi Wo Yie, which was released in 2010, gained her prominence in the Ghanaian gospel music industry.



Diana Hamilton, who has performed on both local and international gospel platforms, was one of the headline artistes for the 2019 Harvest Praise.



With a number of awards to her credit, she won the Best Africa Artiste, Europe, at the Africa Gospel Awards in 2011.



She grabbed two awards out of six nominations at the 2019 edition of the African Gospel Music and Media Awards.



Again in the same year, she won the Gospel Song of the year at the 2019 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) with her hit song, Mo Ne Yo; and the Gospel Artiste of the Year.

Source: Daily Guide









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
Earth's Moon has a 'near side' that is perpetually Earth-facing and a 'far side', which always faces away from Earth. The composition of the Moon's near side is oddly different from its far side, and scientists think they finally understand why.

The EarthMoon systems history remains mysterious. Scientists believe the two formed when a Marssized body collided with the protoEarth. Earth ended up being the larger daughter of this collision and retained enough heat to become tectonically active. The Moon, being smaller, likely cooled down faster and geologically froze. The apparent early dynamism of the Moon challenges this idea.

New data suggest this is because radioactive elements were distributed uniquely after the catastrophic Moon forming collision. Earths Moon, together with the Sun, is a dominant object in our sky and offers many observable features which keep scientists busy trying to explain how our planet and the Solar System formed. Most planets in our solar system have satellites. For example, Mars has two moons, Jupiter has 79 and Neptune has 14. Some moons are icy, some are rocky, some are still geologically active and some relatively inactive. How planets got their satellites and why they have the properties they do are questions which could shed light on many aspects of the evolution of the early Solar System.

The Moon is a relatively cold rocky body, with a limited amount of water and little tectonic processing. Scientists presently believe the EarthMoon system formed when a Marssized body dubbed Theia  who in Greek mythology was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon  catastrophically collided with the protoEarth, causing the components of both bodies to mix.

The debris of this collision are thought to have fairly rapidly, perhaps over a few million years, separated to form the Earth and Moon. The Earth ended up being larger and evolved in a sweet spot in terms of its size being just right for it to become a dynamic planet with an atmosphere and oceans. Earths Moon ended up being smaller and did not have sufficient mass to host these characteristics. Thus retaining volatile substances like water or the gases that form our atmosphere, or retaining sufficient internal heat to maintain longterm planetary volcanism and tectonics, are idiosyncratic to how the EarthMoon forming collision occurred. Decades of observations have demonstrated that lunar history was much more dynamic than expected with volcanic and magnetic activity occurring as recently as 1 billion years ago, much later than expected.

A clue as to why the near and far side of the Moon are so different comes from strong asymmetry observable in its surface features. On the Moons perpetually Earthfacing near side, on any given night, or day, one can observe dark and light patches with the naked eye. Early astronomers named these dark regions maria, Latin for seas, thinking they were bodies of water by analogy with the Earth. Using telescopes, scientists were able to figure out over a century ago that these were not in fact seas, but more likely craters or volcanic features.

Back then, most scientists assumed the far side of the Moon, which they would never have been able to see, was more or less like the near side.

However, because the Moon is relatively close to the Earth, only about 380,000 km away, the Moon was the first Solar System body humans were able to explore, first using noncrewed spacecraft and then in person. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, noncrewed space probes launched by the USSR returned the first images of the far side of the Moon, and scientists were surprised to find that the two sides were very different. The far side had almost no maria. Only 1% of the far side was covered with maria compared with ~31% for the near side. Scientists were puzzled, but they suspected this asymmetry was offering clues as to how the Moon formed.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, NASAs Apollo missions landed six spacecraft on the Moon, and astronauts brought back 382 kg of Moon rocks to try to understand the origin of the Moon using chemical analysis. Having samples in hand, scientists quickly figured out the relative darkness of these patches was due to their geological composition and they were, in fact, attributable to volcanism. They also identified a new type of rock signature they named KREEP  short for rock enriched in potassium (chemical symbol K), rareearth elements (REE, which include cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, and other elements which are rare on Earth) and phosphorus (chemical symbol P)  which was associated with the maria. But why volcanism and this KREEP signature should be distributed so unevenly between the near and far sides of the Moon again presented a puzzle.

Now, using a combination of observation, laboratory experiments and computer modelling, scientists from the EarthLife Science Institute at Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Florida, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Towson University, NASA Johnson Space Center and the University of New Mexico have brought some new clues as to how the Moon gained its near and farside asymmetry. These clues are linked to an important property of KREEP.

Potassium (K), thorium (Th) and uranium (U) are, importantly for this story, radioactively unstable elements. This means that they occur in a variety of atomic configurations that have variable numbers of neutrons. These variable composition atoms are known as isotopes, some of which are unstable and fall apart to yield other elements, producing heat.

The heat from the radioactive decay of these elements can help melt the rocks they are contained in, which may partly explain their colocalisation.

This study shows that, in addition to enhanced heating, the inclusion of a KREEP component to rocks also lowers their melting temperature, compounding the expected volcanic activity from simply radiogenic decay models. Because most of these lava flows were emplaced early in lunar history, this study also adds constraints about the timing of the Moons evolution and the order in which various processes occurred on the Moon.

This work required collaboration among scientists working on theory and experiment. After conducting high temperature melting experiments of rocks with various KREEP components, the team analysed the implications this would have on the timing and volume of volcanic activity at the lunar surface, providing important insight about the early stages of evolution of the EarthMoon system.

ELSI coauthor Matthieu Laneuville comments, Because of the relative lack of erosion processes, the Moons surface records geological events from the Solar Systems early history. In particular, regions on the Moons near side have concentrations of radioactive elements like U and Th unlike anywhere else on the Moon. Understanding the origin of these local U and Th enrichments can help explain the early stages of the Moons formation and, as a consequence, conditions on the early Earth.

The results from this study suggest that the Moons KREEPenriched maria have influenced lunar evolution since the Moon formed. Laneuville thinks evidence for these kinds of nonsymmetric, selfamplifying processes might be found in other moons in our Solar System, and may be ubiquitous on rocky bodies throughout the Universe.

###

Reference

Stephen M. Elardo1,2,3*, Matthieu Laneuville4, Francis M. McCubbin5 and Charles K. Shearer6, Early crust building enhanced on the Moons near side by mantle meltingpoint depression, Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/s4156102005594

1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.

2. Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC, USA.

3. Department of Physics, Astronomy, and Geosciences, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA.

4. Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

5. NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA.

6. Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.

More information

Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) stands at the forefront of research and higher education as the leading university for science and technology in Japan. Tokyo Tech researchers excel in fields ranging from materials science to biology, computer science, and physics. Founded in 1881, Tokyo Tech hosts over 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students per year, who develop into scientific leaders and some of the most soughtafter engineers in industry. Embodying the Japanese philosophy of "monotsukuri," meaning "technical ingenuity and innovation," the Tokyo Tech community strives to contribute to society through highimpact research.

The EarthLife Science Institute (ELSI) is one of Japans ambitious World Premiere International research centers, whose aim is to achieve progress in broadly interdisciplinary scientific areas by inspiring the worlds greatest minds to come to Japan and collaborate on the most challenging scientific problems. ELSIs primary aim is to address the origin and coevolution of the Earth and life.

The World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) was launched in 2007 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to help build globally visible research centers in Japan. These institutes promote high research standards and outstanding research environments that attract frontline researchers from around the world. These centers are highly autonomous, allowing them to revolutionize conventional modes of research operation and administration in Japan.
LONDON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Osa.Travel, one of Europe's top tour operators, announced today that it has launched a new, lucrative affiliate program. The program enables affiliates to earn high commissions on all of Osa's online travel offers. Suitable for travel agents, tour operators, travel advisors and bloggers, the program rewards affiliates who are able to promote Osa's uniquely broad range of travel products.

OsaTravel

"This is a great opportunity to earn money by endorsing truly great travel experiences," said a spokesperson for OsaTravel. "Our program matches high commissions with our revolutionary self-service travel booking portal. With our approach, you're not pushing people into pre-packaged tours. You're making money by helping people create their own dream trips."

Osa Travel affiliates earn commissions by directing web traffic to Osa.Travel. Being a travel affiliate has become a popular way for people to monetize an interest in travel. Given that travel and tourism is a US$7.6 trillion industry, there are plenty of opportunities to make money. Since the European travel industry is restarting slowly, the company believes this could be a great time for potential affiliates to start thinking about innovative solutions that make travel easier for everyone.

For example, a blogger who writes about the architecture of Rome could point his or her audience to Osa's Naples to Rome Day Trip. This offer allows the traveler to choose between options like visiting Tivoli or hiring an English-speaking tour guide. When the blogger's followers click through and book on Osa.Travel, he or she will earn one of the best percentages available on the market.

OsaTravel is renowned for offering self-booked trips for small and big groups, private and shared tours, escorted and self-guided. They provide options for cities like Berlin, Riga, Munich, Tallinn, Helsinki and Vilnius. Other destinations include Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Vienna. Paris, Brussels, Prague and many others. Affiliates can point travelers at trips to virtually any major location in Europe and the UK.

The OsaTravel team members pride themselves on having a uniquely deep knowledge of local attractions and global connections. They can arrange access to special events and provide private transfers. Osa Travel facilitates exclusive tours while providing special perks like room upgrades and daily breakfasts. The company's Osa Bus subsidiary gives travelers extensive choices for transportationfar more than are available through comparable service.

Restrictions may apply due to the coronavirus pandemic. Customers are encouraged to check with OsaTravel before confirming a planned trip. The company is emphasizing day trips at this time because they are less likely to be affected by COVID 19 travel restrictions than longer, more complicated travel arrangements.

About OsaTravel

OsaTravel is a tour operator that offers its services across Europe. The company sells and mediates plane tickets, travel packages, accommodation, travel insurance and ground transportation services in virtually every location in Europe.

Oskars Lusis

Osa Travel Ltd.

Postal Address: Suite 4, 55 Pentland Crescent, Rosewell EH24 9BJ, United Kingdom

P: +44 20 80 89 94 70

E: [email protected]

W: https://osa.travel/

SOURCE OsaTravel
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 20:44:51|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

DHAKA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese medical experts sent by the Chinese government concluded its COVID-19 combating mission in Bangladesh on Monday.

A farewell ceremony was held at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in capital Dhaka.

In his speech, Bangladeshi Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque expressed gratitude on behalf of the Bangladeshi government to the Chinese medical experts for sharing their experiences and knowledge with the Bangladeshi health professionals.

The minister said they had benefited immensely from the Chinese experts' frontline knowledge in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Besides providing consultations on pandemic control, patients treatment and laboratory tests, the Chinese medical experts also guided and trained Bangladeshi medical professionals and visited many hospitals and facilities.

The Chinese medial team arrived in Bangladesh on June 8. Enditem
Apartments with over 3 Covid cases to be containment zones for 7 days: Check BBMP's full guidelines

Mid-Air collision of two IndiGo flights averted at Bengaluru airport; DGCA to probe, take strict action

2 cops deputed for CM Bommai's security held for trying to 'extort' money from drug peddlers

Bengaluru: Lockdown imposed in KR Market, Siddapura, Chikpet, Chamarajpet and Kalasipalya

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Bengaluru, June 22: In the wake of Bengaluru city witnessing a sudden spike in the number of fresh Covid-19 caes and fatalities in the past week, Karnataka CM B S Yediyurappa on Monday decided to reinstate a lockdown in some wards of Bengaluru, which have seen a surge in COVID-19 cases.

"Stringent lockdown to be in place in areas like KR Market, Siddapura, VVPuram, Kalasipalya, and surrounding areas. Adjoining streets of positive cases' residences also will be sealed," Karnataka CM Yediyurappa said after a meeting with top government officers in Bengaluru on Monday.

Arvind Kejriwal: We are fighting Chinese Army and virus, we will win against both | Oneindia News

Bengaluru: KSRTC to resume AC buses to 8 places from tomorrow

He added that these areas had clusters that reported a big number of cases in the past few days.

The meeting was held in the wake of Bengaluru witnessing a sudden spike in fresh cases and fatalities since June 1.

On Sunday, Bengaluru saw a record spike again with 196 new Covid-19 cases. With this, the city has become the worst-affected district in the state with a total of 1,279 cases.

Earlier in the day, Bengaluru's local civic body the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has notified a total of 298 active containment zones within city limits, as on Sunday.

While the total tally and the death toll was 7000 and 86 respectively on June 14, the same rose to 9150 and 137 on June 21, as per the statistics shared by the Karnataka Health Department.

During the same time, Bengaluru's death toll doubled from 32 to 64 as well.
Poets Whereabouts Unknown After Arrest: Wife Turns to Twitter for Help

Mainland Chinese political dissident and poet Wang Zang was taken away by Yunnan police on May 30 under the charge of Inciting Subversion of State Power. His whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Wangs wife, Wang Li, called for public attention on Twitter. On June 11, Wang Li tweeted a plea for help as police stole her belongings and threatened to take her away.

Wang Zang, a mainland poet who had been detained for nine months by CCP authorities for organizing a poetry recital in support of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in 2014, was arrested and detained again at the end of last month by Yunnan police on charges of inciting subversion of state power and his whereabouts are still unknown.
Hyderabad, June 22 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao on Monday visited the family of Colonel B. Santosh Babu, martyred in a clash with Chinese troops in Ladakh on June 15, consoled them, and handed over the cheques for ex gratia announced by the state for the family.

Rao reached Suryapet by road to visit the officer's house. He handed over a cheque for Rs 4 crore to the Colonel's wife Santoshi and cheque for another Rs 1 crore to his parents, who requested for the amount to be deposited for their granddaughter.

The Chief Minister also handed over to Santoshi the letter of her appointment to Group-1 job in the state, and documents on the allotment of a house site measuring 711 square yards in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad.

KCR, as the Chief Minister is popularly known, paid floral tributes to Santosh Babu. He then met the late officer's father Upender, who introduced the family members. KCR offered his condolences to the family.

The Colonel is survived by his father, mother Manjula, wife Santoshi, daughter Abhigna,9, and son Anirudh, 4.

The Chief Minister said that he was pained at the Colonel's death and assured his government's support to the family and to contact him should they need any assistance.

KCR was accompanied by Ministers G Jagadish Reddy, Vemula Prashanth Reddy, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials.

Later, Santoshi said the Chief Minister told her that the government will appoint her in the department of her choice.

KCR had announced the package for Santosh Babu's family on June 19. He also announced that the state through the Defence Ministry would give Rs 10 lakh each to the families of 19 other killed soldiers who hailed from various states.

Meanwhile, Jagdish Reddy told reporters that a bronze statue of Colonel Santosh Babu will be installed at a traffic junction in the town and the area renamed after him.
Your children can read along as they listen to short story writing contest winner, The Emperor's Daughter.

This episode, written by Michael Jituboh and read by the star of Selma David Oyelowo, will be released on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at 6pm on June 22nd, or you can listen here:

And if you enjoy this story, please consider donating 5 to the great work of our friends at GEANCO, who are helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and improving lives in Nigeria.

You can donate by clicking on the button below the video, or by visiting their website here.

The Emperor's Daughter

by Michael Jituboh

The Emperor's Daughter

Once upon a very long time ago, there lived a mighty emperor who ruled a great kingdom, Tohulu, that stretched from one end of the African continent to the other.

The Emperors name was Hulu which means the most powerful, he had only one daughter called Kevi, which means the most beautiful in the Tohulu language. The capital of the kingdom he ruled over was called Pulu.

Emperor Hulu was exactly 6 feet 5 inches tall and very muscular. He was so powerful and fearsome that even the strongest animals in the forest steered clear of him, birds even stopped in flight to admire his impressive physique.

Hulu had lost his wife when Kevi was only five years old but he refused to remarry and raised his daughter with only the help of the palace staff. He loved his daughter and decreed that she would take over from him as Empress when he died.

When Kevi was 21 Hulu decided to select a husband for her. Suitors had to meet three conditions. First, a suitor had to be a powerful prince from the Tohulu kingdom, secondly he had to be exactly 6ft tall and thirdly he had to be very handsome.

The selection process began with Emperor Hulu sending men to every part of his kingdom to invite interested princes. Suitors were warned that they would be severely flogged if they did not meet any of the three conditions and still presented themselves

On the fateful day the first 25 of the one hundred men that applied presented themselves before the emperor and his daughter in a massive stadium that had almost all the residents of Pulu noisily waiting to see who would be the lucky suitor.

Story continues

Emperor Hulu and Kevi sat on a high throne overlooking everyone in the stadium. The ceremony began with the measurement of each contestant. All the men except one were exactly six feet tall.

The man who failed the height test was called Adamantus. He was only 5 feet tall, not only short but the least handsome of all the men. He was also not a prince. The crowd roared with laughter as he was carried away to be flogged.

All the remaining men were presented one at a time to the Emperor and his daughter but none of them got selected. They were considered either not princely or handsome enough.

The next day 25 other contestants arrived at the stadium. The crowd was shocked to find Adamantus amongst them. While the crowd hooted with delight the Emperor was furious. He ordered that Adamantus be flogged twice as much as he was the day before.

As he was dragged away, Adamantus kept shouting that he loved the princess but that did not save him from being flogged mercilessly. Alas, for the remaining twenty four men, they faced the same fate as the first set of men and were rejected

To the shock of the Emperor, his daughter and the entire crowd that returned to the stadium the next day, Adamantus was once again among the third set of twenty five men.

This time the Emperor was beside himself with rage.

The Emperor decreed that not only should Adamantus be severely punished, he should be executed if he ever showed up again. The crowd prayed that he would not for they had come to admire his courage.

To the relief of the crowd, Adamantus was not seen among the last twenty five men that showed up on the fourth and final day.

The crowd cheered as one of the twenty five was selected as the winner. He met the height requirement, was princely in dressing and carriage, as well as being very handsome.

The selected prince called himself Potil. His long robe was encrusted with gold nuggets and his walk to salute the emperor and his future bride was measured and majestic.

Potil bowed slowly upon getting to the emperor and stayed that way until the blessing rites were over. He then turned and saluted the cheering crowd.

The marriage ceremony was held the next day in very sunny and extremely hot weather. By tradition Kevi was required to stand beside Potil for hours on end as various medicine men cast away evil spells and the emperor showered blessings on them.

They looked the ideal couple; Potil was tall and handsome with a broad smile on his face. Kevi was stunningly beautiful .

but with a surprisingly sad expression on her pretty face.

The emperor beamed with joy as he looked admiringly at his soon to be son in-law.

And then

just as the Chief Priest was about to pronounce Potil and Kevi husband and wife, something strange happened. A phenomenon so strange that the crowd gasped with shock.

The Emperor rose from his seat in astonishment as Kevi turned to stare open mouthed at her soon to be husband.

Potil the tall handsome prince was getting shorter and shorter by the minute under the blistering sun.

The wax Potil had used to build the stilts on which he stood had started to melt. So also was the portion he had used to transform his face into a beautiful work of art.

Within minutes the man beside Kevi was much shorter than her and nowhere close to being handsome. He had turned out to be none other than Adamantus.

As may be expected Emperor Hulu was livid with rage. As the crowd roared with laughter Hulu gave a sign and the palace guards picked up Adamantus.

The guards forced Adamantus to his knees before the Emperor, who looked down on him with hate filled eyes. The crowd rightly guessed what was in store for Adamantus as with a raging voice the Emperor decreed that Adamantus should not only be hanged, but be severely punished before being killed along with all his relatives.

To the surprise of everyone Adamantus stared back defiantly at the Emperor and spoke fearlessly in a very loud and clear voice.

Great Emperor of the Tohulus I await my fate not with tears but with joy for I have done everything I can to marry the woman that Ive loved with all my heart and soul from the first day I saw her.

The anger of the Emperor was frightful to see but Adamantus fearlessly continued his speech.

You my great Emperor must not decree who your daughter must marry because it is her and not you who will live with the decision for life.

Let your daughter pick who she likes and if its anyone else I would still rejoice for her.

Livid with rage and unable to stand the effrontery of Adamantus anymore, the Emperor drew his sword and rushed to kill Adamantus himself.

But just as the Emperors sword was on its way down to strike Adamantus dead, the Emperors hand stopped in midair; a stunned expression on his face for his beloved daughter had rushed down and jumped in front of Adamantus.

The crowd gasped in shock as the Emperor stared open mouthed at his daughter who looked back calmly at him. She then began to speak in a loud and very clear voice.

My dear father and great emperor of the Tohulu kingdom I salute you as our father and fearless leader. I love you, father, just as much as you love me and I know that you want me to live the rest of my life in happiness.

Kevi paused and then continued steadily. Happiness cannot be guaranteed by a tall, handsome prince.

Only love can.

The proof of a mans love for a woman is the extent to which he is prepared to go to declare and abide by that love.

Emperor Hulu slowly lowered his sword as the words poured out of his daughters mouth. A man who is prepared, because of the love he has for me, to be severely flogged thrice and sacrifice his life is the type of man I want.

Emperor Hulu continued to stare with shock. Are you saying that you would like to marry this short, ugly commoner? he finally asked in disbelief.

No, Father, Kevi replied. What I am saying is that height, looks and wealth should not be the criteria for determining who should be my husband.

The most important criterion, Father, should be love. Does he really love me? Do I love him? Please do not kill him but rather give a chance for both of us to make up our minds.

And so it was that Emperor Hulu appointed Adamantus as one of his ministers and gave Kevi a year to decide whether she wanted him as a husband or not.

According to legend and the history books, Kevi fell in love with Adamantus within a short time and he loved her more ardently in return. They got married within six months. They had five children and lived happily ever after.
[June 22, 2020] Leading Urbantech Accelerator URBAN-X by MINI Reveals Eighth Startup Cohort, Launches First-Ever Fully Remote Program

URBAN-X, the leading accelerator for startups reimagining city life, backed by MINI and Urban Us announces its eighth cohort of companies. Reflecting the current climate, all companies are participating remotely from locations across the country which include Atlanta, Sydney, San Francisco, Boston, Burlington and Los Angeles. This newest cohort of companies comes during a critical moment, as municipal officials across the world are determining how to rebuild our economic and social infrastructure in ways that foster resilience and equality for all. The founders in Cohort 08 are building solutions to ensure access to clean drinking water and electric vehicle charging, last mile delivery and field services, intelligent traffic management, and carbon sequestration. "Now more than ever, we are seeing urgent calls to improve the status quo," said URBAN-X Managing Director, Micah Kotch. "We are excited to get to work with this impressive group of founders to help them build creative solutions for a brighter urban life." The six companies will be immersed in a 20-week intensive accelerator program, conducted completely online, during which they will receive guidance on customer development, product development, network-building and successful go-to-market strategies, all in preparation for fundraising. Throughout the duration of the program, companies have access to URBAN-X's expansive network of global experts, including world-class engineers and designers from the BMW Group. The program will culminate in an online Demo Day during Climate Week this September, where teams will present their solutions to an audience of investors, policymakers, customers and more. The full list of URBAN-X Cohort 08 companies include: Adiona: Optimizes the efficiency of logistics, supply chain and mobile workforce organizations through AI.

Aquagenuity: The "Google (News - Alert) Search" for water quality, helping you check your water as easily as you check the weather.

Climate Robotics: Builds robots to efficiently generate biochar to sequester carbon and improve soils, starting with urban land.

Mobilyze: Data-analytics platform that optimizes the location of electric charging stations.

li> Resonant Link: Breakthrough wireless charging technology for fast, zero-maintenance, and low-cost power to robots and EVs. Xtelligent: Next generation traffic signal network enabling the connected, automated, and multi-modal transportation future.



Aquagenuity Founder and data scientist Doll Avant, is a TEDx Speaker who began researching water quality after the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Today, she states, "At Aquagenuity, we believe that water is not a political issue; it's a human issue. That's why we've built technology to help consumers, corporations and cites check their water quality as easily as they check the weather. We're excited to join URBAN-X and build on our critical work helping everyday people answer the question 'What's In Your Water?' and understand what it means for their health and the environment." MINI launched URBAN-X in 2016 as part of its innovation and brand strategy practice focused on improving city life. URBAN-X engages with the brightest minds solving some of the most complex issues people living in cities face today, like poor road infrastructure, pollution, food waste, inefficient construction and job displacement. The accelerator now has 57 companies in its portfolio, with 85% of companies having gone on to raise their next round of capital.

"MINI began as a creative mobility solution in response to a global crisis in 1959. This same resolve shines through URBAN-X as it helps to enable a new generation of entrepreneurs solving for our cities' most pressing challenges," said Mike Peyton, Vice President, MINI of the Americas. "We are excited to support the companies in Cohort 08, and look forward to seeing how they develop their bold and innovative solutions." In 2017, Urban Us partnered with URBAN-X to help fund and develop the accelerator's next generation of human-focused city innovation. "Technology, investment and mentorship have the power to advance the low carbon, resilient and high density future we need for our cities," said Shaun Abrahamson, URBAN-X Investment Committee and Managing Partner at Urban Us. "We are thrilled to have this new group of founders join URBAN-X to build creative solutions that tackle climate change and the biggest issues facing our cities." About URBAN-X URBAN-X is the leading accelerator for startups reimagining city life. Founded by MINI and run in partnership with Urban Us, URBAN-X helps early-stage companies work with and in cities. URBAN-X has a global reach unparalleled by any other urbantech accelerator. Startups have access to a network of over 2,000 partners around the world, including entrepreneurs, investors, and public-sector leaders, who support founders through the URBAN-X program. Applications for Cohort 09 are currently open at www.URBAN-X.com. Find URBAN-X on Twitter (News - Alert) & Instagram at @urbanxaccel and on Facebook at facebook.com/urbanxaccel. About MINI in the US MINI is an independent brand of the BMW Group. In the United States, MINI USA operates as a business unit of BMW of North America, LLC, located in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey and includes the marketing and sales organizations for the MINI brand. The MINI USA sales organization is represented by a network of 120 MINI passenger car dealers located throughout the US. MINI USA began selling vehicles in the U.S. in 2002 with the introduction of the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S Hardtops. Since then, the MINI Brand in the U.S. has grown to encompass a model range of five unique vehicles. Journalist note: Media information about MINI and its products is available to journalists on-line at www.miniusanews.com. About Urban Us Urban Us is the leading early stage investor for startups re-imagining cities. Cities will soon be home to 70% of the global population, who now face unprecedented risk from climate change. Our 2014 and 2016 funds achieve top quartile performance for investors while also generating substantial public benefits. In 2019 Urban Us launched their third fund. The Urban Us platform includes the Urban Us network, a resource for urbantech focused founders, investors, partners and customers. URBAN-X, in partnership with MINI, supports early stage teams with company building and fundraising. Perl Street serves teams needing access to all forms of capital by modeling and providing access to non-equity capital for project finance, asset finance and inventory finance. Urban Gateway (News - Alert) supports startups business development in Asia. Before Urban Us, the Urban Us team had three exits and ran a VC fund and municipal finance for Citi. Notable investments before Urban Us include Trialpay (Visa), Blue Bottle Coffee (Nestle), Refinery29(Vice), Crowdtwist (Oracle (News - Alert)) and ZocDoc. The Urban Us portfolio includes 70 investments across real estate, infrastructure, energy, water, waste, food, transportation and public administration including health and security. Notable investments include, Bowery Farming, Starcity, Mark43, One Concern, Future Motion, Skycatch, Seamlessdocs, Revivn, BRCK and Rachio. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005181/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Brokerslink announced a further expansion of its footprint in Africa with Tunisian brokerage Kare Kamoun becoming the latest affiliate to join the global broking business.

The Tunis-based insurance and reinsurance broker, specializes in core lines of business in Tunisia including industrial and commercial cargo, construction, as well as health and life insurance. The firms reinsurance expertise in areas including the placing of industrial risks and proportional and non-proportional treaties with reinsurers, will also be of importance to Brokerslinks partners and affiliates both in Africa and beyond.

Our mission is to design and deliver insurance and reinsurance solutions that turn risk into a path for growth for our clients. We share Brokerslinks commitment to ensuring clients have access to market-leading products and risk management expertise, commented Zied Kamoun, general manager of Kare Kamoun.

Joining the global network is vital to our business growth both in terms of offering our clients proven multinational capabilities but also in building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with partners and affiliates around the globe, Kamoun added.

This continuing growth in Africa emphasises its strategic importance to Brokerslink. Africa has an incredibly diverse insurance marketplace, and it is important therefore that we grow our expertise and presence on the ground, said Tiago Mora, Brokerslinks Regional Manager for Africa.

Zug, Switzerland-based Brokerslink is a global broking company that owns and manages a worldwide insurance broking network.

Source: Brokerslink

Topics Agencies Reinsurance
In Depth will provide further insight with many educators regarding the future of American college.

Since the 1970s, the Boyz N The Hood star Laurence Fishburne, has been gracing television and film with his award-winning performances. Now the Blackish actor is bestowing his talents as host to the informational show In Depth. The TV program interviews varying industry professionals about numerous topics that impact viewers around the world. An upcoming episode will explore the possibility of online learning being the new standard for American colleges.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has shaken up daily life for numerous individuals worldwide. People are navigating working from home, many social experiences are shifting from in-person interactions to virtual hangouts, and education is getting reevaluated completely.

All across America, schools went from in-class sessions to online learning experiences in an attempt to flatten the COVID-19 curve. Colleges followed suit but may consider pursuing virtual classes permanently in place of physical classrooms.

Not only does remote teaching help prevent the spread of COVID-19, but it can also cut future costs that previously would have contributed to physical classrooms and dormitories, making a college education less expensive. However, many understand that a significant shift could negatively affect many of the components that make secondary education effective, such as hands-on training, and the development of soft skills. In Depth will provide further insight with many educators regarding the future of American college.

In Depth with Laurence Fishburne is carefully reviewed before public broadcast. The educational show has accepted numerous Tellys.


VANCOUVEREvery day, I pray that you people die.

Thats just one example of the kind of insults and name-calling that half of Chinese-Canadians say they have experienced since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in North America, according to a poll by Angus Reid Institute and the University of Alberta released Monday.

The survey results, taken from 516 Canadians who self-identify as ethnically Chinese, suggest just how commonplace racist behaviour against people of East Asian descent has become since the pandemic arrived in North America.

Forty-three per cent of respondents said they have been personally threatened or intimidated at least once, and 13 per cent said it happens frequently. Eight per cent of respondents said they have frequently been physically attacked by strangers.

Researchers from the university helped craft the questions in the survey, done from June 15-18. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The goal was to collect data on how Chinese-Canadians experience has changed since the pandemic started dominating headlines, said Angus Reid Institute executive director Shachi Kurl.

What has made the news and what we hear about tends to be the really overt, violent, more extreme examples of such prejudice, she said.

In Vancouver, a man pushed a 92-year-old man with dementia to the ground outside a convenience store while yelling racist insults about COVID-19. In another incident, a man punched a woman of Asian descent near a bus stop downtown and walked away.

No doubt there would be some out there who say these are just isolated examples, said Kurl. This study really aims to measure the breadth and the scope and size of the issue  and now we have a sense of that.

Six in ten respondents said they have changed some aspect of their routine in order to avoid abuse, run-ins or unpleasant encounters since the pandemic was declared in Canada. Fifty per cent said they have been insulted or called names due to their ethnicity. One in three survey respondents said they have been made to feel like they posed a threat to the health and safety of others.

Of the people who participated in the survey, 44 per cent per cent were born in Canada, 22 per cent in China, 22 per cent in Hong Kong, and three per cent from Taiwan. Ten per cent were born in another country.

Nearly 90 per cent of respondents said that being Canadian was an important part of their identity and that they love Canada and what it stands for. Yet a quarter said they feel like outsiders in their own country. Of those who were born in Canada, one in five said they felt like outsiders.

These data shows us that everything from insults to a sense of othering, to being made to feel that somehow youre to blame for this  its all part of what affects someones psyche, said Kurl.

In a 2016 Angus Reid poll, about half of visible-minority respondents said they believe others see them as Canadians all the time. Respondents in this most recent survey were asked the same question. Only 13 per cent said they feel this way.

A majority (64 per cent) of respondents said they believe North American news outlets have had a negative effect on Canadians views of people of Chinese ethnicity.

The whole point of taking measurement of this is we are no longer dealing with anecdotes. This is something that brings empirical data, that brings facts to what has been, up to this point, more of an anecdotal conversation, said Kurl. You cant argue with that.

The survey, designed with help from University of Alberta researchers, also gave respondents a chance to share details from their experiences. Some of the anonymized responses were published in the report.

One person wrote, While walking on the streets in Kitsilano (Vancouver), a Caucasian man in his 30s said to me and my daughter, every day, I pray that you people die.

Another wrote, I was at a local Loblaws in the queue to pay and a person behind me got too close. I requested that he back up to allow for social distancing and he stated, shut up and go back to where you came from.

About 1.6 million people in Canada  4.6 per cent of the population  identify as being ethnically Chinese, according to the 2016 census.

Kurl said she hopes even people who have not experienced anti-Asian discrimination personally will pay attention.

Its happening under our roof. We have to clean it up.

Read more about:
Assets of ex-managers of Yugra bank worth over $1 billion seized by court

 AGN Moskva, Sergey Vedyashkin

10:56 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court has seized assets in the total amount of more than 77 billion rubles (over $1 billion) belonging to ex-owner of Bank Yugra Alexey Khotin, ex-board chairman Dmitry Shilyayev and several other individuals and legal entities, according to court records.

The court has granted a motion filed by Russias Deposit Insurance Agency.

Earlier, the same court ruled in favor of the DIA as to attachment of cash assets and other properties of former Bank Yugra managers worth several dozens of billions.

At that time, DIA petitioned the court to grant it interim relief by seizing the aforesaid property in the framework of a claim by which it sought to hold the defendants civilly liable and recover from them the damages.

In the period from April 9 through April 16, the court ruled in favor of DIA as to the recovery of about 8 billion rubles (about $113 million at the current exchange rate) from the defendants, holding them civilly liable, and the seizure of their assets.

This February, the court dismissed a request of Yugra bank acting on behalf of Shilyayev to review the ruling, by which the banks license had been revoked in 2017, basing upon new evidence.

An earlier petition to review the order of Russias Central Bank of 2017 revoking Yugra license was dismissed in cassation in September 2019.

In July 2017, Russia's Central Bank said withdrew the license of Yugra bank, one of the top 30 banks. It imposed temporary administration represented by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) in the bank. The DIA was ordered to conduct Yugras status inquiry.

In October 2018, the Moscow Commercial Court declared Yugra bankrupt.

This April, the Moscow City Court extended house arrest of the majority stockholder of Yugra bank Alexey Khotin charged with embezzling 7.5 billion rubles from the credit organization until July 18. Other defendants in the embezzlement case, ex-bank board chairman Dmitry Shilyayev and ex-president of the bank Alexey Nefedov, will also stay under house arrest until mid-July.

Investigators believe that banker Khotin and his alleged accomplices have been involved in stealing the money from Yugra. The fact of the embezzlement is confirmed by the documents of Russias Central Bank, Deposit Insurance Agency and other evidence, according to the investigation.




The Gujarat government on Monday approached the high court for modification of its earlier order staying the procession of Lord Jagannath Yatra in Ahmedabad, which was supposed to be taken out on June 23.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said he had directed the state Advocate General to approach the high court and request it to allow the annual procession.

The HC had on Saturday stayed the procession in the light of coronavirus pandemic in Ahmedabad.

The court had also questioned local authorities over the delay in taking a decision on an application filed by the Jagannath Mandir Trust.

Rupani's comments came hours after the supreme court allowed holding of the procession in Puri in Odisha with restrictions by modifying its earlier order.

"The Supreme Court had stayed the Rath Yatra in Odisha's Puri due to the coronavirus pandemic. But today, the apex court allowed the Rath Yatra with restrictions.

"The Gujarat government has also informed the Advocate General to request the High Court to allow the historic Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad like the apex court did in Puri, with whatever restrictions the high court places for the procession," Rupani said.

The Rath Yatra, organised annually by Shri Jagannathji Mandir Trust, is one of the most popular religious festivals in Gujarat.

Earlier in the day, the high court refused to entertain a plea moved by an NGO seeking modification of its order staying the procession and allowing the same with certain restrictions.

The civil application moved by the NGO, Hindu Yuva Vahini, for urgent circulation on Monday came up for hearing before a division bench of Chief Justice Vikram Nath and Justice J B Pardiwala.

The bench refused to entertain the plea, saying the temple's chief priest himself has told the media that on June 23, the holy chariot of Lord Jagannath and other Gods will be taken out within the temple premises to protect the health and well being of devotees.

The NGO's plea, moved earlier in the day, urged the HC to modify its Saturday order to the extent as to allow the authorities to take out a symbolic Rath Yatra from the Jagannath temple in Ahmedabad on its scheduled date in a limited manner with only three holy chariots and within the shortest possible route without involvement of members of the public.

The division bench had in its Saturday order said there will be no Rath Yatra this year in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no activities -- 'secular or religious' -- associated with the event during this period.

The court's June 20 order came on a PIL moved by a journalist, Hitesh Chavda, seeking its direction to not allow the Rath Yatra this year as it could cause coronavirus cases to rise sharply.

The Hindu Yuva Vahini, through its lawyer Vivek Bhamre, had sought to implead itself as a third party intervener to represent the devotees of Lord Jagannath, who it said, have not been represented in the PIL.

The NGO said the annual Rath Yatra, 'an important event in the history of Ahmedabad', has been taken out every year since 1878, even during curfew, and the religious event is a symbol of communal harmony.

The applicant said that while the present situation is unprecedented and safety and security of the general public is paramount, the Yatra can be allowed in a limited form with little public participation along the shortest route possible.

"The Rath Yatra was introduced in the year 1878, and the gesture of the Lord himself coming out with his brother and sister on holy chariots is significant...Rath Yatra was not cancelled even once in the last 142 years, not even during testing times. The procession was even taken out during curfew," the NGO said.
Mumbai, June 22 : Pulkit Samrat has three films coming up once the lockdown is over. He will be seen in the Rana Daggubati-starrer "Haathi Mere Saathi", Bejoy Nambiars revenge drama "Taish" and "the rom-com Suswagatam Khushmadeed". He says until shooting starts, he is utilising all his energy to hone his craft as an actor.

"We often watch Hollywood films and are impressed by their production, script and performance, and we say how they have invested time in pre-production. I think this is our time to invest in that process. I have signed the film 'Suswagatam Khushmadeed' and we are in the process of the screenplay and other pre-production work. I am constantly in touch with the writers and director. I am focusing on the process from the scratch," Pulkit told IANS.

The film written by Manish Kishore is to be directed by Dhiraj Kumar. It will be shot extensively in Delhi and Lucknow.

The actor has finished shooting for "Haathi Mere Saathi" and "Taish". Both films are ready to release and the makers are waiting for the suitable time, post lockdown. He also has Salman Khan's production "Bulbul Marriage Hall" coming up, which casts him opposite Kriti Kharbanda. The film also has Sunil Grover and Daisy Shah in itscast.

Asked about how he is spending time at home, Pulkit shared: "I am doing a lot of video calls and that is quite cool. I am chatting with my directors on films, what is happening with the post-production of 'Taish'. I am talking to Ritesh (Sidwani, producer of the 'Fukrey' franchise) because, as you know, we had a plan to work on 'Fukrey 3'." "You know, more than anything I miss the happy faces on a film set. When a shooting takes place, it is not just us, it is an opportunity for many bread earners -- the lightman, the boom man, the sound staff, the people who work to erect the sets, the camera team. That energy and enthusiasm of telling a story is a different magic. I want to go back to the set!" Pulkit signed off.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The kids of Stoneybrook, Connecticut are in for a treat - the new Baby-Sitters Club is back in action.

Kristy, Claudia, Mary-Ann, Dawn and the rest of the gang star in an all-new trailer for the upcoming Netflix revival which was released by the studio on Monday.

The two-minute preview is whipping up excitement ahead of the 10-episode series which streams July 3rd on the platform.

Reboot ready! Kristy, Claudia, Mary-Ann, Dawn and the rest of the gang star in an all-new trailer for the upcoming Netflix revival of the Baby-Sitters Clubs which was released by the studio on Monday

'It all started at the very beginning of 7th grade,' Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace) begins in the trailer.

The highly-anticipated reboot of the series, based on the ultra popular book franchise of the same name, has plenty of retro 80s and 90s elements - including an of-the-times clear telephone.

Two members of the Baby-Sitters Club anxiously await the phone to ring with their first client in the trailer - however the landline is a foreign object to the modern teens.

Kristy wonder's aloud in the clip if it will even work while Claudia assures her that the Esty store where she purchased the relic said it was fully functional.

Retro: Two members of the Baby-Sitters Club anxiously await the phone to ring with their first client in the trailer - however the landline is a foreign object to the modern teens and they joke about it being '25-years-old'

Throwback: The highly-anticipated reboot of the series, based on the ultra popular book franchise of the same name, has plenty of retro 80s and 90s elements - including an of-the-times clear telephone

Oh baby! The teens will have their hands full in the series while taking care of the local babies and kids

'It's 25-years-old,' Kristy, the founder of the baby-sitters club, points out. To which Claudia replies before it rings: 'it's iconic.'

'Good afternoon, Baby-Sitters Club. This is Kristy Thomas, president and founder speaking,' the budding starlet says.

They trailer shows Kristy's central conflict in the show is about her mom (Alicia Silverstone) and her upcoming marriage to a new man played by actor Mark Feuerstein.

'I'd rather have head lice ... again,' Kristy quips in the clip about her mom's relationship.

'It's 25-years-old,' Kristy, the founder of the baby-sitters club, points out about the phone. To which Claudia replies before it rings: 'it's iconic.'

Adults in the mix: They trailer shows Kristy's central conflict in the show is about her mom (Alicia Silverstone) and her upcoming marriage to a new man played by actor Mark Feuerstein

Meet and greet: The trailer gives viewers a brief introduction into the core members of the Baby-Sitters Club

The trailer gives viewers a brief introduction into the core members of the Baby-Sitters Club.

'I'm Dawn, I just moved here from LA,' actress Xochitl Gomez says. 'I'm chill but I don't back down from a challenge.'

'I'm good at a lot of things,' fashionista Claudia (Momona Tamada) says. 'Most of all, I'm good at art.'

Claudia shows a boy two of her paintings - a piece of bubble gum and a Tootsie-Roll Pop - before she brings out 'watermelon gummies' to celebrate with her friends. In the books, Claudia is a juvenile diabetic who loves candy.

'I'm Dawn, I just moved here from LA,' actress Xochitl Gomez says. 'I'm chill but I don't back down from a challenge.'

'I'm good at a lot of things,' fashionista Claudia (Momona Tamada) says. 'Most of all, I'm good at art.'

'Talking to people I don't know makes my stomach fall out of a my nose,' the shy one, Mary-Ann (Malia Baker) says.

'Hey, I'm Stacey,' actress Shay Rudolph says while introducing herself to a cute young lifeguard. 'I've got to get his attention,' the boy-crazy baby-sitter adds to Mary-Ann.

'Talking to people I don't know makes my stomach fall out of a my nose,' the shy one, Mary-Ann (Malia Baker) says.

The upcoming show will follow the adventures of a group of friends running their babysitting business in the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

Each 30 minute episode will follow the young women cultivating their babysitting organization, friendships, while dealing with competing businesses.

Revival: The upcoming show will follow the adventures of a group of friends running their babysitting business in the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut

Growing up: While there are references to the original books from the 1980s by Ann M. Martin, the new Netflix project is definitely for a new generation

Iconic: Each 30 minute episode will follow the young women cultivating their babysitting organization, friendships, while dealing with competing businesses

While there are references to the original books from the 1980s by Ann M. Martin, the new Netflix project is definitely for a new generation.

In a meeting of the club, Kristy tells the members that they need to find a way to stand out from the competition and gets a modern suggestion from an unlikely source.

'I can figure out the best ratios for click throughs to investment,' Stacey says, shocking her friends. 'I'm pretty good at math.'

Coming soon! The new series will usher in a new generation of best friends and Baby-Sitters Club members on Netflix July 3rd

'I started The Baby-Sitters Club to take care of kids,' Kristy says in a voiceover at the end of the trailer. 'But, what I realized ... we were more than a club, we were best friends.'

Much like the book did, the series will be addressing topics including divorce, racism, and other issues modern teens currently face.

'I started The Baby-Sitters Club to take care of kids,' Kristy says in a voiceover at the end of the trailer. 'But, what I realized ... we were more than a club, we were best friends.'

Since 1986, a total of 131 Baby-Sitters Club books have been published and were written by both Martin and ghostwriters.

Fan favorite: Since 1986, a total of 131 Baby-Sitters Club books have been published and were written by both Martin and ghostwriters

The popularity of the books eventually led to a television adaptation. Meghan Andrews, Nicole Leach, and Jessica Prunell starred in the HBO TV series, which aired from January to March 1990.

The babysitting fun continued on the big screen in 1995, with the release of the film The Baby-Sitters Club starring Schuyler Fisk and Rachael Leigh Cook.

The new series will usher in a new generation of best friends and Baby-Sitters Club members on Netflix July 3rd.

Say hello to your friends! Meghan Andrews, Nicole Leach, and Jessica Prunell starred in The Baby-Sitters Club HBO TV series, which aired from January to March 1990
ATLANTA (AP)  Investigators said Saturday they have issued an arrest warrant for a woman in connection with a fire at a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta during protests over the police shooting of an African American man.

Natalie White is a suspect in the arson and investigators are asking for help finding her, Atlanta Fire and Rescue said in a Twitter post.

The post included surveillance pictures of White, 29, in a store, but no additional identifying information.

Several people are suspected of trying to set fires in the restaurant before the blaze finally spread, fire officials said.

Demonstrators threw bricks and rocks at firefighters as they tried to get to the restaurant, and they couldn't start fighting the blaze until it had destroyed the building, Atlanta Fire Chief Randall Slaughter has said.

Atlanta police officers were called to the Wendys on June 12 over complaints of a car blocking the drive-thru lane. Officers found Rayshard Brooks asleep in the car.

The officers spoke to Brooks, who was Black, for more than 40 minutes, but things quickly turned violent when they tried to handcuff him, according to body camera video.

An autopsy found Brooks was shot twice in the back. Garrett Rolfe was fired from the police department immediately after the shooting and was charged Wednesday with felony murder. Rolfe, 27, is white.

Protesters gathered the night after Brooks was killed, breaking the windows in the restaurant before the fire was set.

During a news conference Saturday afternoon, Interim Chief Rodney Bryant said he was shocked that Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard brought charges so quickly against the two officers involved in Brooks' death.

He said that decision, along with officers' concerns about their training and their safety during large protests have contributed to an above average number of officers calling in sick in recent days.

Bryant assured the community that despite the absences there were many officers who continue to answer the call.

Story continues

He also directed his comments toward the officers who have called in sick, saying, We are all upset for the recent events and we are also concerned for our fellow officers. I implore you to channel the concerns for the fellow officers by having their back."

Brooks was a father of four. On Saturday, a restaurant owner and a historically Black university in Atlanta announced that they will provide full college scholarships to his four children.

The award will cover tuition, room and board, and meals to Clark Atlanta University. The charitable foundation of Aisha Pinky Cole, who graduated from the school, is helping. Cole is CEO of the Slutty Vegan restaurant in southwest Atlanta.

Shortly before his death, body camera footage shows that Brooks told officers that he had a few drinks because it was his daughter's eighth birthday.
The opposition National Democratic Congress in the Volta Region is calling on Government to as a matter of urgency commission the Ho airport to bring development to the region.

The $25 million Ho airport project, which has been completed since 2018, has a 1,900-metre runway, a traffic control tower, a 1,150 capacity passenger waiting area, an ultramodern airbus terminal, and an automatic fire detection and control system.

Mr. James Gunu, the Volta Regional Secretary of the NDC, in a Citi News interview called on the government to immediately commission the airport to bring development to the region.

He further urged the government to possibly name the airport after former President Jerry John Rawlings.

This edifice should be inaugurated immediately and named after former President Rawlings. The government must do that under a certificate of urgency because if you look at the economic benefit, the economic potential that this development brings to the region is unprecedented and it will open up the entire region and bring about enhanced medical tourism in the region and employ a lot of youth.

So why the delay? This is a physical project that has been done and if you go there, the project is lying there. This is not a project that should be abandoned. It has been completed. Fully completed. So the government should quickly inaugurate this edifice for the people of the Volta Region to benefit from, he urged.

The US$25 million facility which was completed in 2018 is yet to be commissioned leading the opposition National Democratic Congress accusing the government of abandoning the project.

But in a related development, the Volta Regional Minister, Dr Achibald Letsa, has said the government will not open the Ho airport until it completes negotiations with private airlines who wish to start flying to the region.

The President will not commission an airport when there are no flights. Until we are able to negotiate and convince private airlines to start flights to Ho, the President doesn't see the wisdom in commissioning an airport without flights. That is what we are doing with the Minister of Aviation. If by the grace of God, we have a national airline soon, then it can be decided that it does daily air flight to Ho. We are convincing them to fly to Ho. It is not about the NPP having an airline and ordering it to fly to Ho. A private airline must be consulted and convinced to fly to Ho and that is what we are doing.

 citinewsroom
A veteran Toronto police officer faces organized crime charges after 11 people were arrested in a crackdown on corruption in the violence-plagued GTA towing industry.

More than 50 charges were announced Monday after a 10-month anti-corruption investigation by the forces Professional Standards Unit.

Const. Ronald Joseph, 47, of Toronto, was hit Monday with charges of breach of trust, secret commissions, fraud, commission of an offence for a criminal organization and participation in the activities of a criminal organization.

Police allege he participated in the theft of encrypted police radios that fell into the hands of towing companies, allowing tow truck operators to monitor police activity and learn about accidents before their competitors.

The other 10 men who were charged alongside Joseph are all employees from multiple GTA tow truck companies. Seven of them are tow truck drivers, police said.

Each had been involved in organized crime, Chief Mark Saunders said on Monday morning.

The charges come as the GTA towing industry reels from four murders and scores of arsons, shootings and threats over the past 18 months. York Regional Police say there are at least four organized crime groups in the GTA towing industry.

Joseph is an 11-year Toronto police veteran who also owns a car rental agency and two tow trucks.

Supt. Domenic Sinopoli said on Monday that the forces professional standards department began an investigation in August 2019 to determine why stolen encrypted police radios were falling into the hands of towing companies.

Im concerned that we have police radios in circulation, Sinopoli said.

Investigators found at least one instance in which police had a cloned radio while tow truck drivers had the original. In another case, a stolen radio was cloned and then put back into police circulation.

Officers are required to sign out and sign in encrypted radios, Sinopoli said.

The force alleges that tow truck employees from various companies were using stolen police radios to get to accident scenes before their competitors.

In some cases, drivers with the encrypted radios charged a monthly fee to other tow truck drivers to access information from the radios.

Police say they have recovered three Toronto police radios that are believed to have been stolen between February 2018 and December 2019.

It was the second time in a week that Joseph has been hit with criminal charges.

Joseph was charged last Monday with breach of trust and theft over $5,000 after police said one of their radios was stolen sometime between September 12 and October 7, 2019.

He was immediately suspended with pay as required by Ontarios Police Services Act.

Investigators also reported finding radios and radio parts from other unidentified organizations, and also radio parts used for cloning.

Seized in the investigation were six tow trucks and a loaded firearm.

Sinopoli said the probe that netted Joseph began as a look into police corruption and not the broader towing industry.

It was the towing industry that was dragged into our investigation, Sinopoli said.

The industry is rife with corruption, Sinopoli said. That doesnt ... mean that all tow truck drivers are corrupt.

Kevin Lima, 27, of Barrie, was charged with nine offences, including commission of an offence for a criminal organization; interception of private communications and trafficking in property obtained by crime.

Jacob Villeneuve Portela, 21, of Toronto, faces six charges, including participating in the activities of a criminal organization, interception of radio-based communications and trafficking in property obtained by crime.

The four charges against Francisco Mike Portela, 41, of Toronto include participation in activities of a criminal organization, possession of a device to intercept private communications and trafficking in property obtained by crime.

Leonardo Ciulla, 21, of Mississauga and Hernani Capela, 32, of Vaughan, each face four charges; participation in the activities of a criminal organization; interception of private communications; interception of radio based communications and possession of a device to intercept private communications.

Charges against Mark Wolfe, 50, of Toronto, include commission of an offence for a criminal organization and possession of a device to intercept private communications.

Giuseppe Carfora, 27, of Guelph, has been charged with participation in the activities of a criminal organization, trafficking in property obtained by crime and possession of a device to intercept private communications.

Michael Carreiro, 28, of Mississauga, and Francesco Caruso, 49, of Toronto are each charged with participation in activities of a criminal organization, interception of radio-based communications and possession of a device to intercept private communications.

Tyson Plourde, 39, of Brampton, faces charges of possession of property obtained by crime and possession of a device to intercept private communications.

Joseph and the other accused are scheduled at Old City Hall court on Sept. 4.

Industry insiders have told the Star that a driver can net $2,000 tax-free on a single day through a variety of illegal kickbacks from physiotherapy clinics, body shops, car rentals and storage facilities.

The GTA towing industry includes some hard-core established organized groups, including bikers with Hells Angels ties in the east end, and as newly-arrived immigrant groups in the west, the Star has heard.

It was the second time this year that Ontario police officers have been charged with corruption relating to towing, as three Ottawa police officers were charged earlier this year with taking kickbacks.

Competition for profits is enormous and Supt. Mike Slack of York Regional Police said last month that investigators in an operation called Project Platinum seized a machine-gun, 16 handguns, 13 shotguns, nine rifles, a sawed-off shotgun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, brass knuckles, stun guns and a silencer.

Peter Edwards is a Toronto-based reporter primarily covering crime for the Star. Reach him by email at pedwards@thestar.ca
T he crisis at Wirecard deepened today after the German payments firm said the 1.9 billion (1.7 billion) missing from its accounts may not exist.

Wirecard was once the darling of Germanys financial tech scene, but has in recent years been the target of short sellers who have questioned the companys financials.

The companys latest problems started last Thursday when the companys auditor EY refused to sign off Wirecards accounts until the missing money was found.

The company believed the missing money was in the Philippines but over the weekend The Philippine central bank said none of the money appeared to have entered the country.

Bank of the Philippine Islands and BDO Unibank - who Wirecard had told investors were clients - said documents purporting to show Wirecard had deposited funds with them were false.

Wirecard said: "The management board of Wirecard assesses on the basis of further examination that there is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion do not exist."

As a result the company is struggling to survive and has pulled its results for 2019. The missing money accounts for around a quarter of its total balance sheet.

The company said it was considering a full-scale restructuring and is in "constructive discussions" with its lending banks, including the extension of credit lines coming due at the end of June.

It added that it is working with investment bank Houlihan Lokey on a financing strategy and is considering cost reductions, disposals and termination of business units.

Shares fell a further 43.2% to 14.66 on the Frankfurt stock exchange today after collapsing 90% last week when EY refused to sign off the year end accounts.

The scandal emerged after a series of articles in the Financial Times last year focusing on alleged accounting irregularities in Wirecard's Asian operations.

Wirecard was founded in a small Bavarian town in 1999 and was catapulted to success under the watch of Markus Braun.

Braun built the company into a global operation that made him a billionaire. Braun quit on Friday as pressure mounted from shareholders about the missing funds.

He said on Friday that the markets confidence in Wirecard had been deeply shaken, adding that the company had outstanding technology and sufficient resources for a great future and I do not want to burden this future.
Mumbai, June 22 (IANS) The leading ladies of "Gangs Of Wasseypur", Richa Chadha and Huma Qureshi, took to socil media to mark eight years of release of the film's first part. Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, June 22 (IANS) The leading ladies of "Gangs Of Wasseypur", Richa Chadha and Huma Qureshi, took to socil media to mark eight years of release of the film's first part. Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, June 22 : The leading ladies of "Gangs Of Wasseypur", Richa Chadha and Huma Qureshi, took to socil media to mark eight years of release of the film's first part.

Directed by Anurag Kashyap, "Gangs of Wasseypur Part 1" hit theatres on June 22, 2012. The franchise comprising of two movies continues to enjoy immense popularity in the crime drama genre.

Richa Chadha who played the role of Nagma Khatoon in the film, shared a funny meme inspired by her character from the film. The actress related it with a real-life incident of her wedding getting postponed.

"#8YearsOfGangsOfWasseypur. 2020 saw me postponing my shaadi, rightly so, cuz this is such an unpredictable, manhoos year ! Here's some #NagmaSwag for you, from the film that started it all for me! Enjoy," shared the actress on Instagram.

Richa Chadha was expected to tie the knot with actor Ali Fazal in April this year, which got postponed due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.

Another actress from the franchise, Huma Qureshi, posted on Instagram saying this was the film that changed her life.

Sharing a still from the film, featuring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and herself, Huma wrote: "It has been 8 years since Gangs Of Wasseypur 1. A film , a scene that changed my life. So yes, dreams do come true. And dreams come true despite all odds, personal insecurities, drawbacks or whatever you want to label your fear as." "In these dark and difficult times I'm glad I have these moments to look back at with my heart full of gratitude for the Universe. I know you got my back, I know I will be safe . I know the best meant for me will happen. In you , I trust . I surrender myself. I know you will take care of me and mine #gratitude #love #compassion #dreams #gangsofwasseypur #june @anuragkashyap10 @nawazuddin._siddiqui," added the actress.

"Gangs Of Wasseypur Part 1" also starred Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Jaideep Ahlawat, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Pankaj Tripathi in key roles.
Clashes between rival drug runners left at least 10 dead last week in northern Niger near the borders with Libya and Algeria, a local government official said Monday

Niamey, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jun, 2020 ) :Clashes between rival drug runners left at least 10 dead last week in northern Niger near the borders with Libya and Algeria, a local government official said Monday.

The lawless desert region has been a hotbed of trafficking in drugs, weapons and humans for nearly a decade since the 2011 toppling and killing of Libya's longtime leader Moamer Kadhafi. Jihadist groups also operate in the area.

The fighting in the so-called Salvador Pass took place last Thursday and Friday, the Agadez region official told AFP.

"One of the groups fell into an ambush set up by its rival who has been trying for some time to control the lucrative flow (of drugs) towards Libya and other destinations," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In February 2019, two Nigerien army officers were killed in an ambush by heavily-armed men aboard several vehicles running drugs.

The US Africa Command operates a specialised drone base in Agadez that serves as a major surveillance platform in the Sahel, where fragile governments backed by former colonial power France are battling a jihadist insurgency.
Two men suspected of carrying out a mass shooting earlier this month in Alabama were apprehended Sunday in Oregon, authorities say.

Frederic Rogers, 22, and John Legg, 19, are suspected of killing seven people near Huntsville on June 5. Marion County authorities stopped them Sunday afternoon in Stayton and took them into custody without incident, according to the county sheriffs office.

One of the men has a relative in Salem, an Alabama sheriff told AL.com. They are now being held in the Marion County Jail and will be extradited to Alabama.

The shootings took place at a home about 10 to 12 minutes from the Huntsville city limits, according to the Morgan County Sheriffs Office.

Part of the home was on fire when deputies arrived, and they discovered seven bodies inside after the fire was extinguished. They believe the fire was set to destroy evidence in the shootings.

Victims ranged in age from 17 to 45 years old.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Lee Roop of AL.com contributed to this report.

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
OTTAWA  The federal Liberals are riding high in Winnipeg, according to new polling that also shows the NDP overtaking the lacklustre Tories, who appear to be bleeding support to the Trudeau government.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The federal Liberals are riding high in Winnipeg, according to new polling that also shows the NDP overtaking the lacklustre Tories, who appear to be bleeding support to the Trudeau government.

"An increasing share of Manitobans feel the Trudeau government has done a good job of handling the COVID-19 pandemic over the last little while, and (the party is) being rewarded for that," said Curtis Brown, a principal at Probe Research.

The Winnipeg Free Press commissioned the firm to poll 1,000 Manitobans at the start of the month. Results show the NDP has overtaken the Tories among Winnipeg voters.

The Liberals command 45 per cent support among Winnipeggers, up from the 36 per cent they held in last Octobers federal election, which held steady in March before the novel coronavirus lockdown.

The Tories have tumbled in the city: from 34 per cent in the election to their current 19 per cent, putting them eight points behind the NDP, whose numbers have only slightly increased in Winnipeg.

Brown said he doubts the federal NDP has ever held more support than the Tories in Winnipeg since the federal Reform/Alliance and PC parties merged in 2003 to create the Conservative Party of Canada.

Among women in Winnipeg, the Conservatives have just 10 per cent support, compared with 22 per cent of men.

Christopher Adams, a University of Manitoba political scientist, said the Liberals local surge aligns with national polling.

"Winnipeg, in many ways, is a bellwether for whats happening across the country," said Adams, who worked for Probe a decade ago.

Outside Winnipeg, the Liberals have had a boost, to 23 per cent support, from 13 per cent last October. In that time, the Tories have dropped to 54 per cent (from 61 per cent), while the NDP lost three points, which is within the margin of error.

Adams and Brown both said Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus daily news conferences give him lots of exposure. None of the Liberal partys missteps has registered as major stumbles in the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, departing Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has been unable to deliver messaging against the Liberals in terms that resonate with voters, the two experts said.

The Tory partys demands to crack down on benefit cheats and incentivize people to return to work was poorly received by many Canadians receiving emergency unemployment cheques. A recent parliamentary showdown over a bill the Liberals decided to tie to funding for people with disabilities led to voters viewing the Tories as "obstructionist," Adams argued.

"Theres been a fairly weak opposition, and a centre-stage Liberal presence in the national media over the past three months," he said.

Brown expects the Tories will see a boost in support when they pick a new leader in August, but for now: "They have a lame-duck leader, and the leadership race has not generated a lot of interest."

The Liberals have majority support in the southern parts of Winnipeg, which for decades have followed national electoral trends.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Brown said if a vote were held today, the Liberals would likely win back one of the three seats they lost in Octobers election; Adams said it could even be two or three seats.

"People forget that this is a minority Parliament, and an election could happen at any time," Brown said.

In Manitoba, the Liberals hold four ridings, the NDP three and the Tories seven.

Adams said while Canadians are rallying around Trudeau and most premiers, their newfound popularity could crater when the country shifts to paying the tab for massive spending programs.

Meanwhile, 100 self-identified Indigenous people polled supported the NDP at 44 per cent, which is double the support of either the Liberals or Conservatives, who were effectively tied. The Probe polling firm cautioned against drawing conclusions from such a small sample size.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Nita Ambani, Chairman of Reliance of Foundation, has become the only Indian to be listed in Town and Country (T&C) magazine's Top Global Philanthropists of 2020 list. She is now among the top philanthropists in the world and among the people "who are saving lives" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Accompanying Ambani on the list are prominent global personalities such as Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey, Laurene Powell Jobs, The Lauder family, Donatella Versace, Micheal Bloomberg and Leonardo Di Caprio among others.

The magazine applauded Ambani for leading the Reliance Foundation's efforts in providing food to the frontline workers and serving the underprivileged. The foundation made a contribution of Rs 547.4 crore to an emergency fund for setting up a COVID-19 hospital and helping out in other relief work.

Ambani said in a statement, "Over the years, we have equipped ourselves at the foundation and at Reliance Industries to respond to crises with immediate, multi-pronged as well as systematic and calibrated responses to make our effort impactful and sustained."

Talking about The Reliance Foundation, Ambani said, "Our philanthropy is committed to support our government and our community whenever the need arises".

Ambani's Indian Premier League team Mumbai Indians took to Twitter to congratulate their owner on her achievement, they wrote, "Mrs. Nita Ambani is the only Indian to be featured in Town & Country magazine's list of top global philanthropists of 2020 who are working towards saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic".

Mrs. Nita Ambani is the only Indian to be featured in Town & Country magazine's list of top global philanthropists of 2020 who are working towards saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.#OneFamily@ril_foundationpic.twitter.com/PysTxqCRpk - Mumbai Indians (@mipaltan) June 21, 2020

Meanwhile, Nita Ambani husband Mukesh Ambani has been making strides of his own in the business world. The Reliance Industries CEO with a net worth of $64.5 billion recently become the only Asian tycoon among the top 10 richest people in the world, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
Donald Trump was reportedly furious after his campaign manager promised nearly a million people would show up to the president's first major rally since the coronavirus outbreak, to then see just 6,200 people in attendance at the Saturday event.

The president was upset before the rally even began, according to NBC News, as reports circulated early on Saturday that said six of his campaign staffers who were organising the event tested positive for Covid-19.

Mr Trump did not understand how that information had leaked to the press just before he was set to take the stage at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a venue with more than 19,000 seats, the news outlet reported.

He wasnt the only one frustrated by the debacle: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were pissed about the poor turnout at the rally after Brad Parscale, the presidents re-election campaign manager, predicted a stronger turnout, according to CNN.

Just 6,200 people watched the president deliver his 90-minute speech, the Tulsa fire department said, in which he attacked his presumptive opponent in the upcoming election, former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the mainstream media and radical left lawmakers. Mr Trump also hailed himself for his administrations response to the novel coronavirus, saying at one point: I have done a phenomenal job with it. I saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The presidents campaign claimed 12,000 people had attended the event, and also alleged without evidence that protestors had blocked entryways for audience members leading up to the rally.

Radical protestors, fuelled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally, Mr Parscale claimed in a tweet. They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.

However, reporters from the Associated Press who had been covering the event did not witness any such incident taking place on Saturday.

Prior to the rally, Mr Trumps campaign set up an overflow area and promised the president would speak to thousands of voters outside the event.

But when he arrived in Tulsa, the president found a much more underwhelming scenario, NBC News reported, offsetting his hopes for a major return to the presidential campaign trail.

Reports indicated much of the hype about the presidents rally stemmed from teenagers reserving tickets online as part of a viral prank against his campaign. Teens posted videos of themselves to social media dancing to the Macarena with their reservations to the rally on display.
[June 22, 2020] Business Reporter: Why One Company That's Helping Impoverished Egyptian Communities Is Making Sure They Can Stand On Their Own Two Feet

LONDON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The rural settlement of El Deir in Egypt is a long way from Cairo and Alexandria  not just geographically, but socially and economically too. It suffers from high levels of unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, limited access to healthcare and education, and unsanitary housing conditions. The EFG Hermes Foundation is helping to change all that, however. Videos produced in association with Business Reporter show how the Foundation is helping improve the lives of the 75,000 people who live there by building new homes with proper sanitation, developing educational centres powered by solar panels, establishing a new community service centre, renovating and supporting healthcare units. In September last year, for example, the foundation established a village preschool, the Young Scholars Academy, which equips 70 children with the skills they need to follow a successful educational path. The facility also created jobs for the local community, with 27 women hired as teachers from the village and trained in the Montessori philosophy. "The EFG Hermes Foundation was created to support sustainable, high impact development initiatives to assist local underprivileged communities across Egypt today," says Karim Awad, Group CEO of EFG Hermes. "It is part and parcel of our strategy to integrate sustainable practices in every facet of our operations as we work to give back to the communities in which we live and work to the benefit of the economy, society, and the environment." EFG Hermes aims to make positive changes, in El Deir and other communities, by supporting sustainable, innovative programmes that lead to greater opportunity and positive growth. These projects are not merely charitable works with a limited lifespan, but are designed to help communities stand on their own two feet and become sustainable, positive places for their inhabitants. The foundation's focused, collaborative approach means it is committed to delivering a sustainable project model until it is clear that the local community is able to support itself. Since 2006, more than half a million people have benefited from projects financed and run by the foundation. Its principles are grounded in a commitment to creating an ecosystem based on good governance and environmental and social practices.As a result, EFG Hermes is the first financial services corporation in Egypt to become a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. As foundation CEO Hanaa Helmy explains, "If you want to see an impact in a community, you must work on every need. Without having your basic human needs of food, shelter, and education met, you cannot be the citizen your community needs you to be to grow and prosper."



To watch some films showing the EFG Hermes Foundation's work in El Deir, and for more information about its projects, click here. Notes for editors

This press release has been provided by Business Reporter (www.business-reporter.co.uk). About Business Reporter Business Reporter is distributed with The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and City AM, with each publication reaching an average of 1.5 million people. Content is also published through the Business Reporter and teiss websites, which include video debates, online articles and digital magazines, delivering news and analysis on the issues affecting businesses to a global audience. Business Reporter also hosts conferences, breakfast meetings and exclusive summits, events which bring together some of the most influential decision makers and innovators in modern business. These exclusive events for business leaders give Business Reporter direct contact with readers and help to inform the content and direction of its editorial projects. Business Reporter is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and was the first UK member of the UN SDG Media Compact. We have launched a website dedicated to showcasing the work of companies towards these goals at 17globalgoals.com. Business Reporter is committed to providing meaningful analysis to everyone in business. Whether you're running a small business, the head of a local company or an executive in a multinational corporation, there's something for you at Business Reporter. www.business-reporter.co.uk About the EFG Hermes Foundation The EFG Hermes Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation established in 2006, with the aim of assisting people and institutions in overcoming the financial, educational and health-related challenges facing the region. The Foundation supports innovative and sustainable programmes that increase the opportunities for those most in need, to make a positive change in our local communities. Since its establishment, the Foundation has played a significant role in the development of local societies, working with reputable institutions and NGOs on numerous projects. About EFG Hermes With a current footprint spanning thirteen countries across four continents, EFG Hermes started in Egypt and has grown over 35 years of success to become a leading financial services corporation in Frontier Emerging Markets. Drawing on our proven track record and a team of more than 5,600 talented employees, we provide a wide spectrum of financial services that include investment banking, asset management, securities brokerage, research and private equity to the entire MENA region. Commitment to good governance and environmental and social practices, has led EFG Hermes to becoming the first financial services corporation in Egypt to become a United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) signatory. EFG Hermes Finance, the Group's non-bank financial services platform, offers consumer finance, mortgage, payments, microfinance, factoring, leasing and insurance. EFG Hermes is the premier financial services corporation in Frontier Emerging Markets with a presence in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Kenya, the United States, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Vietnam. Learn more about us at www.efghermes.com & stay connected with us:

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Hanna Alkaf is drawing attention with books that draw on history, culture and religion to tell deeper truths.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  Turning 30 was the catalyst for Hanna Alkaf to write a novel.

She had been working as a freelance journalist in Kuala Lumpur and had written a few short stories, but the idea of creating something more substantial had long lurked at the back of her mind.

I wanted to challenge myself, to see if I could see a story through from beginning to completion; 60 or 70,000 words, Hanna told Al Jazeera.

The result was The Weight of our Sky, a novel for young adults, published in 2019 under Salaam Reads, an imprint of New York publisher Simon and Schuster.

The story of 16-year-old Melati Ahmad is set during one of the most tumultuous periods in Malaysian history  the race riots that shook Kuala Lumpur in May 1969. The violence is a moment in history that even 50 years later is discussed only in the most hushed tones.

Losing our stories

Officially about 200 people died, many of them ethnic Chinese, but US officials who were in Malaysia at the time have said as many as 1,500 could have lost their lives in the unrest, which began after opposition parties did better than expected in the general elections.

A soldier stands guard as the fire brigade battles a blaze in a Chinese area of Kuala Lumpur on May 17 1969. The racial violence that rocked the Malaysia capital that year is rarely discussed [File: AP Photo]

While most of Malaysias population is ethnic Malay, the country has sizeable minorities of indigenous people as well as people of Chinese and Indian descent.

Hanna says she and her peers learned about the riots only as they were about to leave school and in two or three paragraphs in the most clinical way. It left her asking questions and with a burning desire to know more.

One of my fears is that were losing the stories of our elders because we are not passing them down to the younger generation, she said. I wanted to preserve it in a narrative for young people in a form they could relate to. I dont think you can underestimate the way people feel when they see themselves in a work of fiction.

Hanna consulted the records and spoke to some of those who experienced the upheaval to ensure her book  while fiction  remained true to events.

The horror and fear of the times jumps vividly from the page as Melati searches for her mother in the chaos of a city at war with itself; the baying mob who attack a man in a car as Melati hides in a storm drain, the armed gang that turns up at the cinema to divide Malay from non-Malay, the bodies floating face down along the river, the shots that ring out of as she and Vince  the Chinese teen she befriends  try to escape on a motorbike.

Contemporary resonance

Melatis quest for her mother  a nurse in the local hospital  is complicated not only by the danger on the streets, but by OCD. The teenager is tormented by a djinn, and constantly compelled to count to appease the vengeful spirit.

Zailan Che Moh (left) in a state of trance, performs a main puteri treatment on patient Che Esa in the northeastern state of Kelantan, seen as the heart of Malay culture. Hanna says that growing up in Malaysia, ghosts are accepted as part of the world you live in and have also given her ideas for stories [File: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP]

Its such a fabulous opening: By the time school ends on Tuesday, my mother has died seventeen times, said Malachi Edwin Vethamani, a professor of English at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia and an expert on Malaysian literature in English. Its a very interesting work.

Born on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur where she still lives with her husband and two children, Hanna was fascinated by words and language and was, by her own admission, a voracious reader. Enid Blyton, Louisa May Alcott, Roald Dahl and the childrens classics made up the bulk of her childhood reading. As an adult Terry Pratchett has become a favourite.

I learned to find pieces of myself in characters, but I never saw a full reflection; a complete picture, she said.

In recent years, Southeast Asian authors writing in English have become more prominent internationally with works by Malaysians including Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng winning major literary awards, and Crazy Rich Asians by Singapore-born writer Kevin Kwan being turned into a blockbuster movie.

The way it usually works is that a Malaysian gets recognised overseas and then the Malaysian local scene claims them, Vethamani said. Accolades after the fact. Success has to happen somewhere else.

The Weight of our Sky won the US-based Freeman Book Award for Southeast Asian literature in 2019.

The Weight of our Sky was published in 2019. The Girl and the Ghost comes out in August.

Gwen Johnson, a history teacher with a focus on Asian studies who was among the judges, said the novel speaks across cultures, with characters that can connect with todays young people despite being set 50 years ago.

So many of the themes and emotions that the two key protagonists deal with are current in the lives of todays teenagers, Johnson said in an email from her home in New York.

(Alkaf) brings out the raw emotions and prejudicial attitudes that have simmered under the surface over differences in religion, ethnicity, cultural practices, as well as addressing attitudes towards those with disabilities, and explores why these differences separate people and often incite violence and conflict.

Faith, culture, supernatural

For Johnson, the book is terrific for classroom use and an example of how historical fiction can help in the understanding of anothers history and culture. Winning the Freeman award means the book is likely to be added to school libraries and reading lists.

In Malaysia, the book has been well received and has been translated into Malay. Hanna says she was delighted to receive emails from Malay teenagers, young people with mental illnesses and others who felt a connection with the characters and the story.

They felt quite emotional to see their language, culture and customs play out in a book that had been published on a global stage, she said. They are all able to find bits and pieces of themselves in the book.

Last month, Hanna published a short story for 8-12 year olds  written in verse and part of an anthology celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid  and her second novel will be published in August.

A street in Kuala Lumpur after the lifting of a curfew in the Malaysian capital during the riots of May 1969 [File: AP Photo]

Like its predecessor, The Girl and the Ghost, is about friendship, family and loss.

Written for children up to the age of 14, it features a girl and a spirit  the pelesit  a ghostly companion that is a gift from her grandmother. In Malay folklore, where the spirit world is vast and often terrifying, the pelesit needs a human host in order to survive.

The proofs are now with the publisher and while the coronavirus lockdown has turned Hannas writing routine upside down, she has already moved on to her next book. For Hanna  who describes her work as unapologetically Malaysian  it is all about bringing the richness and complexity of her homeland to life.

When you grow up in Malaysia you grow up with this idea of ghosts as part of the world you live in. You grow up in a world where its normal; the way the world is. This weird intersection of faith, the supernatural, culture and modern life. There are a lot of stories in that intersection.
China's top legislature likely to enact national security law for HK at next session by July 1

Global Times

By GT staff reporters Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/22 0:08:39

Bill mirrors maximum trust of central govt in SAR: observer

Hours after China revealed the details of the draft of the national security law for Hong Kong, the country's top legislature set the date for the next session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, during which the highly anticipated law is likely to be enacted to end the chaos and rampage throughout the city that has become "a base of subversive activities" instigated by the West over the years.

The Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, will convene its 20th session from June 28 to 30 in Beijing, according to a chairpersons' meeting held on Saturday, chaired by Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Though the national security law for Hong Kong was not on the official agenda when the NPC Standing Committee announced it for the upcoming session, observers said that the draft could be proposed by the chairman of the NPC Standing Committee during the session.

Tam Yiu-chung, a member of the NPC Standing Committee from Hong Kong told the Global Times on Sunday that it is expected that top lawmakers may vote on the law during the committee's upcoming session before July 1.

According to a statement released after the three-day meeting of the 19th session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee which concluded on Saturday, the central government would set up a commissioner's office for national security affairs in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the HKSAR should establish a commission of safeguarding national security. By proposing to set up the two agencies, the law would mirror "the maximum trust" granted by the central government to the HKSAR government and give "maximum protection" to Hong Kong people's human rights and the rule of law, observers said. It also takes into account both Hong Kong's common laws while ensuring the law is implemented in the most effective way, they noted.

However, some Western media outlets, local opposition groups in Hong Kong and secessionists such as Jimmy Lai and Joshua Wong have not given up on smearing the legislature, calling it "controversial" and claiming that it would profoundly change the way Hong Kong people live and end the so-called political freedoms enshrined under "one country, two systems."

"Like I expected a few days ago, some lawmakers from opposition groups and others rushed to take their consistent tactics by spreading frightening rumors, smearing and demonizing the draft in order to attack the central and HKSAR governments," Carrie Lam, chief executive of the HKSAR government, said in a post published on her Facebook page after the details of the draft law were released.

Attempts at smearing the law or seeking help from foreign countries or associations to interfere in the matter are doomed to fail, as the determination of the central government to push forward the law and safeguard national security will not be shaken, Lam noted.

Still, when Western media, politicians and some NGOs depict the draft law on national security for Hong Kong, some characterizations have been filled with misinterpretation, prejudices and unfounded claims that question not only the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the HKSAR but also the future of "one country, two systems." Some have not even taken a look at what the provisions of the draft law are really about, which has drawn a clear line between responsibilities and power of the central authorities and HKSAR.

A real threat?

Some US media such as The New York Times said the upcoming law would "punch a hole" in Hong Kong's judicial system, citing "pro-democracy" politicians while the Wall Street Journal, citing opposition groups and foreign governments including the US, criticized the move as compromising the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the city. Other media like Reuters said the HKSAR's freedoms are in doubt, citing critics, and said the law signals "the deepest change to the city's way of life" since the city returned to the motherland in 1997.

After some observers in Hong Kong and the mainland carefully went through details in the draft law, they came up with the same conclusion: the draft is conveying the message from the central government to respect law enforcement and judiciary systems in the HKSAR on national security matters. "Only when HKSAR authorities can't handle a very few cases will the central government step in and exercise jurisdiction," Tam said.

The details of the draft law indicated that the central government would establish a commissioner's office for national security affairs to assess national security situations in the city and make recommendations on key strategies as well as major policies in maintaining national security. It will also oversee, guide, coordinate and support the HKSAR to fulfill its duty to protect national security, collect intelligence and handle criminal cases concerning national security in accordance with the law.

"It's necessary to set up a commissioner's office in Hong Kong to share intelligence, pass on experiences, provide technical support and help work arrangements on national security matters. It will support the HKSAR in implementing the national security law in a fully fledged, effective and accurate manner," said Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.

The threat to national security posed by some forces in Hong Kong has become very serious, and the HKSAR has even become an "intelligence base, infiltration base and subversive base" for different countries, especially for the West, observers said.

The social turmoil over the past year showed that the HKSAR lacks sufficient capability and experience to safeguard national security due to the absence of an effective legal and law enforcement mechanism, as a result, guidance and supervision from the commissioner's office for national security affairs is urgently needed, which would closely coordinate with HKSAR authorities, Lau told the Global Times.

The new central government office will not interfere with Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) operations, as there will be a clear division of rank and work, where the commissioner's office will handle complex national security cases that cannot be handled by the police force, observers said, giving further explanation about why it is not a move to undermine "one country, two systems."

The office's relationship with the Hong Kong police is akin to that of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation with local police and that of the UK's MI5 Security Service with local police, Lawrence Tang Fei, a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times.

"For instance, in the US, the FBI works at federal government level while each state and city has their own police force. When it comes to major cases that can't be handled by single state, they require the deployment of the FBI," he said.

Specifically, the commissioner's office for national security affairs will handle cases that involve cross-border crimes that are beyond Hong Kong's jurisdiction and involve foreign diplomats who enjoy diplomatic immunity. "These cases are very hard for [local police and judiciary system] to handle and the central government must step in," Tang said.

Judicial independence ensured

Under the draft law, the HKSAR government will set up a special commission chaired by the chief executive to protect national security. It also allows the chief executive to appoint judges to handle national security cases. Critics raised concerns that the independence of the city's judiciary system will be jeopardized.

However, the draft law clearly states that the HKSAR shall exercise jurisdiction over criminal cases that endanger national security, from the investigation phase, to prosecution and trial and punishment, unless there are special circumstances.

"The draft showed that it will thoroughly activate and use the existing forces within the HKSAR government to execute the law-enforcement missions regarding national security affairs," Tian Feilong, a Hong Kong affairs and legal expert at Beihang University in Beijing, told the Global Times.

According to the content of the draft law, the jurisdiction power could be divided into "jurisdiction over normal and special cases," Tian said.

The national security commission in Hong Kong, led by chief executive, incorporating nine departments such as Chief Secretary for Administration, Director of the Chief Executive's Office, Financial Secretary, Secretary for Justice, Secretary for Security, Commissioner of Police, head of national security department of the HKPF and Director of Immigration Department will be in charge of the normal cases, the expert noted.

Once the case goes beyond the law-enforcement capability of HKSAR authorities, for example if it brings huge impact to public order and the legal system of the city, or HKSAR agencies face unprecedented pressure and difficulties with intelligence collection, case investigation and judgment, central authorities must step in to take ultimate responsibility, Tian said.

"The turmoil that started in June 2019 against the extradition bill fits the standard of the special situation," he said.

A growing number of legal experts and observers have been discussing whether cases related to the riots triggered by the now-withdrawn extradition bill since last year should be handled by the HKSAR or the central government, Tian said.

The cases relevant to the riots go beyond the capabilities of local law enforcement agencies, which had a huge impact on the rule of law and social order in Hong Kong, the expert noted. "The new law could apply retroactively to these cases, as the riots are not a past event but still ongoing," Tian added.

When it comes to the appointment of judges, some are concerned that Hong Kong will not be ruled by law, but by people. Senior Counsel Ronny Tong Ka-wah rebutted the claim.

"It's indeed strange to say appointing judges would harm the rule of law, as the Basic Law already states that judges of the courts of the HKSAR shall be appointed by the chief executive," he said.

Tong noted that while he previously did have some concerns over the upcoming law, which he feared might harm the city's judicial independence; he was reassured after he read the details of the draft law.

"Especially after I read the relevant articles about Hong Kong residents' rights according to the Basic Law of the HKSAR, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," he said.

Accelerate at full speed

While some countries like the US and UK continue to criticize China over the upcoming national security law for Hong Kong, lawmakers and observers said the external pressure will not have any impact on the central government's political will and legislature agenda on handling domestic affairs, particularly when they touch the country's core interests and the bottom-line.

"The decision made by the NPC on May 28 clearly stated the necessity and urgency of formulating the law. The NPC standing committee has the constitutional responsibility to accelerate the law's formulation to implement that decision," Tian said, noting that local and external forces inside and outside Hong Kong have been stepping up efforts to undermine the legislative process, which would instead help accelerate this process.

Meanwhile, the G7 statement on Hong Kong has exposed the severity of foreign intervention, and accelerating the legislative process of the law at full speed would demonstrate the central government's strong will and determination to strike down foreign interference and protect national security, he said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






India has 425,282 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) after 14,821 infections and 445 deaths, the highest so far, were reported in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry data showed on Monday.

There are 174,384 active Covid-19 cases and 237,195 people have been cured of the disease, according to the health ministrys dashboard. The countrys death toll stands at 13,699.

Amid the mounting infection tally, the recovery rate also went up a bit to 55.77% after Sundays 55.48%. Recovery rate is the ratio of the number of patients recovered to the number of patients infected.

Follow latest updates on coronavirus here

As the government chalked out a strategy to contain the coronavirus outbreak in Delhi and Mumbai, which have seen a rising number of Covid-19 cases in the past week, the national capital reported 59,746 infections so far. There have been 2,175 fatalities in Delhi, data showed.

Mumbai has reported 66,488 infections so far and its death toll has gone up to 3,671 as 132,075 people have contracted the disease and 6,170 have succumbed across Maharashtra, the worst-hit state.

Union home minister Amit Shah has held several meetings with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, lieutenant governor Anil Baijal, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan and senior officials to discuss the action plan and augment the citys health care infrastructure amid the pandemic.

Click here for complete coronavirus coverage

Authorities in Delhi have decided to ramp up containment and tracing efforts, widening the scope of detecting infections, intensifying social distancing and surveillance and inclusion of epidemiologists at the district level to augment the health care efforts.

In Mumbai, the focus has shifted to the citys suburbs to check the rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in areas such as Mulund, Bhandup, Malad, Andheri, Borivli, Kandivli and Dahisar.

Tamil Nadu, another state which has added to the countrys increasing caseload, is slightly behind Delhi in terms of the number of Covid-19 cases 59,377 and 757 deaths.

Globally, 8.9 million people have contracted the respiratory disease and 467,671 have died so far.
On the day before terrorists flew airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in 2001, a remarkable court case began in the city of Jacksonville, Florida. Osama bin Ladens attack pushed reports of the hearing out of the papers, burying an astonishing tale that has now become the compulsive six-part documentary McMillion$.

The series unearths the full story of how fraudsters managed to scoop every $US1 million prize in the promotional Monopoly game run by McDonalds in America for 12 years. Selected items on the McDonalds menu included peel-off tabs with the names of the properties youd find on a Monopoly board. Find and complete individual sets and you could claim a cash prize. There were also "instant win" pieces, which in the US had prizes ranging from a free hamburger to $US1 million.

When it was first introduced in 1987, the game boosted McDonalds sales by 40 per cent, even though the chances of winning one of the top prizes was around 250 million to one. In fact, between 1989 and 2001, they were zero. Not one of the high-value "game pieces" made it on to products to be sold to McDonalds customers.
AN initial report on the police use of tear gas against a group of protesters on Sunday has been completed.

The report, compiled by officers involved, is expected to be reviewed and recommendations made on if any protocols were breached by the officers engaged in the activities at the Queens Park Savannah in Port of Spain.
In 2017, Nicolas Maduro's regime sought help from the then-Republican Congressman from Texas, Pete Sessions, to arrange a meeting between Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA and the head of ExxonMobil to lure the U.S. supermajor back to Venezuela's crumbling oil industry, The Associated Press reported on Monday, citing sources and an email correspondence it has seen.

According to an email sent by an official at PDVSA to Sessions in June of 2017, Venezuela's Socialist regime was looking for ways to attract ExxonMobil back to the oil industry of the country sitting on top of the world's largest oil reserves. Exxon rejected the idea of a meeting in Dallas, two sources told AP.

Sessions hasn't directly replied to the PDVSA official's email, but it is not clear how the then-Congressman, who is running again for Congress, acted on the request.

Sources told the AP on the condition of anonymity that Sessions visited Venezuela's capital Caracas in April 2018 to meet Maduro. Former Miami Congressman David Rivera served as a translator at the meeting.

Rivera is currently being investigated by U.S. federal prosecutors for failing to register as an agent of a foreign government and disclose a US$50-million consultancy contract with a U.S. unit of PDVSA.



Related: WTI Jumps To $40 On Demand Recovery

A spokesman for Sessions declined to comment on the report for AP, saying that "The U.S. Department of State would be your best resource for any information regarding contacts made with Venezuela."

In 2019, the U.S. Administration started imposing sanctions on Venezuela's oil exports and oil industry, stepping up the pressure on Maduro's regime and trying to stifle its only hard-currency income  oil revenues.

The collapse in oil prices and the tightening U.S. sanctions against Venezuela have accelerated the decline of Venezuela's oil industry, and as of the end of May, Venezuela had just one active oil rig, operating at an oilfield in the Orinoco oil belt.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads from Oilprice.com:
Sushant Singh Rajputs family organised a prayer meet for him at their Rajiv Nagar residence in Patna, a week after he died. In pictures and videos doing the rounds online, a framed photograph of the late actor is seen adorned with flowers.

Sushant died on June 14 and his last rites were performed at the Pawan Hans crematorium a day later, amid heavy downpour. The funeral was attended by his family, who travelled from Patna, and a few friends from the film and television industry. His ashes were immersed in the Ganga river on June 18 by his father K K Singh, his two sisters and other family members.

Meanwhile, the police are investigating Sushants death by suicide and have recorded the statements of at least 15 people so far, including his family members, close friends Mukesh Chhabra and Siddharth Pithani, rumoured girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and managerial staff.

The police is also probing the angle of professional rivalry and has received a copy of the contract signed by Sushant from Yash Raj Films. Mumbais Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Abhishek Trimukhe confirmed to ANI that the investigating officer has received a copy of the contract from Yash Raj Films.

Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh earlier said that the professional rivalry angle will be thoroughly investigated after reports surfaced that Sushants career was stalled after he was blacklisted by certain heavyweights of the film industry.

Also read | Sona Mohapatra on Salman Khans request to fans: Large hearted PR move from poster boy of toxic masculinity

Maharashtra housing minister Jitendra Awhad also raised questions about whether his films were banned or he was forcibly removed from films. He said that the cartel story was terrifying and that no newcomer should go through such torture.

Sushant, who acted in films such as Shuddh Desi Romance, MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, Sonchiriya and Chhichhore, will be seen in the yet-to-be-released film Dil Bechara. He was set to turn producer with the patriotic film Vande Bharatam, which would mark producer Sandip Ssinghs directorial debut.

In an emotional Instagram post, Sandip mourned the loss of his friend and said that he will make Vande Bharatam as a tribute to Sushant.

If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist. Helplines: Aasra: 022 2754 6669; Sneha India Foundation: +914424640050 and Sanjivini: 011-24311918

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
New Delhi: As the Mumbai Police has been investigating actor Sushant Singh Rajputs suicide case, his ex-business manager Shruti Modi revealed to the cops about his financial condition. During the interrogation, Shruti said that Sushant was financially sound. She was associated with the actor from July 2019 to February 2020, as per her statement to the police.

According to Shruti, Sushant's monthly expenditure was close to Rs 10 lakh. The rent for his apartment in Bandra was Rs 4.5 lakh per month. The actor had also rented a farmhouse near Pavana Dam, Lonavla, for which he paid several lakhs.

Sushant, who loved cars and bikes, also possessed many luxurious vehicles. He owned a Range Rover, a Maserati Quattroporte and a BMW bike.

Divulging details about Sushants work, Shruti said that he was working on four projects.

Apart from films, Sushant was interested in working for social causes, astronomy-related projects and courses on acting.

Shruti also revealed that Sushant had opened a company named Red Realistic for his virtual reality project. Besides this, he was also working on a project called Nation India for World (NIWF), through which he was learning more about NASA and ISRO.

News agency ANI reports that Shrutis further stated that Sushant was also working on a social project called "Geniuses and Drop Outs".

According to the police, a "special telescope" is kept in his residence, as he loved observing planets and stars.

Sushant died by suicide at the age of 34 in Mumbai. He was said to be under stress and depression for some months. An investigation is currently underway in the case and his family members, close friends and work associates have been questioned in connection with his death.
HARWINTON  Its been a week since Linda Figlewski returned to her family home, after months in the hospital battling COVID-19. Her recovery from deathly complications from the virus, which claimed the life of her husband of 50 years, Henry Figlewski, has been slow and steady. Shes been home since June 12, after spending months at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital and Gaylord Hospital.

Being home now is bittersweet. Fortunately, Linda Figlewskis son, the Rev. Brett Figlewski, is with her every step of the way. They are celebrating her life while they mourn the loss of Henry; and both realize how fortunate Linda is to be alive.

Wearing masks, staying safe and away from people at home and following all directives from her doctors are a fact of daily life for her now, and anyone who questions those measure that might not realize how serious the virus can be.

Whats so hard about COVID-19 is that unless youve been directly affected by it, its all very distant and remote to people, Brett Figlewski said. Weve lost thousands of people, and its important to reflect on those losses. The toll is huge. But its abstract if youre not directly affected, and people tent to focus on other things.

Its going to affect our world for years to come, he said. I hope some day for a collective mourning for people, but the question is, how will we come together as a global people, part of the earth? People may learn to live differently now.

How it started

For Linda Figlewski, the virus came upon her and her husband so quickly that they didnt recognize their symptoms. In mid-March, both were dealing with a cough and a low-grade fever, and both thought they had a cold or the flu.

I just felt lousy, Linda Figlewski said. We had a cough, a fever, and no appetite.

She left work early March 16  shes a tax preparer for H&R Block  and went home. That week, she went shopping for extra supplies, after learning that the state was shutting down all but essential services. Everyone seemed to be stocking up, so I did too, Linda said.

Less than a week later, when Brett stopped by to visit them after a service at his church, St. Pauls Episcopal Church in Bantam, both were in distress. They were both in bad shape, he said. Dad was in bed and he was having trouble breathing, and mom was on the couch, and she was unresponsive. I realized I had to call the ambulance.

It was the last time Brett Figlewski saw his father alive. His parents were transported to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. Both had pneumonia, and after being tested, he learned they both had COVID-19.

That day, I asked if I could see him, and he was in the ICU. He was intubated, he said. Mom was on an IV, and she called me that night.

Linda went to the ICU the next day. There were signs that she was unaware of her surroundings, and she had been intubated too, he said.

I dont remember anything, Linda said.

Then a waiting game for the family began, while the couple were treated at CHH for the virus. Both were in acute respiratory distress. At one point, doctors thought Linda might have had a stroke. Then both Henry and Linda stabilized, and continued to receive treatment. On Holy Week, in early April, Henry Figlewski turned 77, and son Brett and daughter Dawn Wittick organized a birthday conference call with friends and family. Henry even opened his eyes.

But by the end of that week, Henrys health was deteriorating again, and his body was shuttig down. I think now, that maybe if I could have talked to Henry, it might have helped, Linda Figlewski said. But I couldnt.

Henry died on Easter Sunday, after 22 days at CHH. To me it seems like one of the many gifts (my father) gave us was to die on Resurrection Day, Brett said. Its a day were forced to look at life and death. It was just something, that he died on Easter.

Lindas fight

Unaware that her husband was gone, Linda was still battling the virus. Dad was in the hospital for 22 days, but Mom still had 30 days to go, Brett said. I pleaded to see her, and the hospital gave me a special dispensation, so I saw her in the ICU. Not long after that, Moms condition began to slowly improve. We believe Dad was with her, helping her.

Brett had self-quarantined during his parents stay at the hospital, and was run down himself. Mom was in the hospital, and I was at the house, he said. I also had some mild symptoms. But I took care of Agnes, my parents cat, and she saved me.

By April 18, doctors told Brett that Linda was in a recovery stage. She needed a short-term tracheostomy  a hole in her throat to help her breathe on her own, so that she could eventually be taken off the ventilator that was keeping her alive. Brett was allowed to see his mother that day, and her eyes were open.

I held her hand, he said. Thats the first time I was able to see her. She continued to improve, with little incremental ups and downs, as they were trying to wean her off the ventilator.

She was tested twice for COVID-19, and both tests were negative. There was also a lingering question of whether shed had a stroke, earlier, her son said. We didnt know what degree her recovery would be. Would she be on a ventilator? Would she be in a vegetative state? We just didnt know.

Linda turned 76 on May 4, and her son was allowed to visit her. When her son visited her again the following week, on Mothers Day, she asked, Hows Dad?

We had to tell her that day, Brett said.

I had a sixth sense that something wasnt right, but I kept saying, I dont want to die, and I willed myself to keep going, Linda said. I didnt grieve immediately, and now that Im at home, Im still not used to him not being here.

Rehabilitation

After 52 days at CHH, Linda was transferred to Gaylord on May 12. Her rehabilitation, she said, was a slow and steady ritual of physical and occupational therapy, gaining an appetite, and breathing on her own. They start you the day you get there, trying to get you to stand up, Linda said. I also went to a COVID-19 support group while I was there, which was very helpful. My son-in-law gave me an IPad, and that was a godsend. So the days were filled.

After a month at Gaylord, and 59 days on a ventilator, Linda was sent home on June 12. On the day she was discharged, a group of CHH and Gaylord nurses, doctors and friends, as well as her son and daughter were there to celebrate. Her son made a small speech to thank all the caregivers, and made a $2,500 donation in his fathers name to support a pet therapy program  something Henry would have thought was a good idea.

Linda said she couldnt have come through COVID-19 alone. Im strong-willed, but I couldnt have done this without my kids, she said.

Encircled by love

Mom was encircled by love, from the nurses, prayers, friends .. I attribute her healing to the power of prayer and love, and to the grace of God, Brett said.

Linda misses her husband very much, and is slowly realizing hes gone.

We were a couple, she said. We were married for 50 years. We did everything together; we traveled to Europe a few times, and like to go to museums and things, together. We were blessed to have so many years together.

Shes also not ready to go out yet. Im anxious to get out, but not really, she said with a laugh. The days are going by fast. Im trying to get my strength back.

Linda said she and her husband were easy pickings for the COVID-19, because they had underlying health problems. She has diabetes, and Henry had a troubled heart valve. We were also hit with it was at its peak in Connecticut, she said. Its a very bizarre disease.
Visionary savoir-faire and tradition

A space of live craft and encounters entwining contemporary architecture, pioneering scenography and traditional savoir-faire, the Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet embodies the Manufactures free spirit and devotion to the perpetuation of Haute Horlogerie in the Vallee de Joux and beyond. In 2014, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) won the architectural competition Audemars Piguet hosted to expand its historical premises. The firm designed a contemporary spiral-shaped glass pavilion to complement the companys oldest building, where Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet set their workshop, technically a start-up of the old times, in 1875. This architectural combination symbolises the blend of tradition and forward thinking at the heart of Audemars Piguets craftsmanship, while honouring its deep-rooted origins in the Vallee de Joux. BIGs high-concept spiral, seamlessly rising from the ground, offers a pristine setting for the masterpieces of technicity and design which have taken shape, year after year, in this remote valley of the Swiss Jura Mountains.

Traditional workshops, where some of the Manufactures most complicated timepieces are still perfected today, have been included in the museums spatial experience to bring visitors in close contact with Audemars Piguets craftspeople. The Grandes Complications and Metiers dArt Ateliers, situated at the heart of the spiral, infuse life into the numerous feats of mechanical mastery and design exhibited throughout the museum. Today, the Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet offers a unique perspective of the Vallee de Joux and of the history of watchmakingan ambitious architectural and museographical project made possible thanks to the creativity and collaboration of a host of experts, including architects, engineers and local artisans, as well as numerous departments within Audemars Piguet. All individuals involved pushed the limits of their craft to reach new heights. This is just the beginning of an ongoing story, it takes time to create a legacy.

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet  Audemars Piguet

We wanted visitors to experience our heritage, savoir-faire, cultural origins and openness to the world in a building that would reflect both our rootedness and forward-thinking spirit, says Jasmine Audemars, Audemars Piguets Chairwoman of the Board of Directors. "But, before all, we wanted to pay tribute to the watchmakers and craftspeople who have made what Audemars Piguet is today, generation after generation.

200 years of watchmaking History re-imagined as a musical score

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet exemplifies the spirit of visionary workmanship the Manufacture has always championed. After briefly retracing the development of watchmaking in the Vallee de Joux, known today as one of the cradles of Swiss complicated watches, the scenography presents Audemars Piguets rich legacy through a selection of the brands emblematic heritage and contemporary timepieces. To offer visitors a diverse experience with crescendos, highpoints and contemplative moments, German museum designer ATELIER BRUCKNER imagined the composition of the exhibition as a musical score. Interludes, including sculptures, automata, kinetic installations and mock-ups of intricate mechnical movements, give life and rhythm to various aspects of horological technique and design. Visitors are also invited to try their hands at some of the ancestral techniques perpetuated by Audemars Piguets finishing experts, such as satin brushing and circular graining. The visit culminates at the centre of the spiral with the display of Grandes Complications.

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet  Audemars Piguet

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet is a unique place of discovery, learning and conviviality where knowledge and savoir-faire are passed on to the next generation, said Sebastian Vivas, Audemars Piguets Heritage and Museum Director. "The technical complexity of its architecture and scenography connects it to the highly complicated movement of a Grande Complication.

Housing over 300 watches of exception

The showcases spanning over two centuries of history display more than 300 watches, including feats of complication, miniaturisation and unconventional designs. These watches of exception tell the story of how modest nineteenth- century artisans from an isolated valley at the heart of the Swiss Jura produced creations that caught the eye of metropolitan clients abroad and continue to captivate watch enthusiasts today across the world. The Manufactures complicated masterpieces are located at the centre of the spiral, where the architectural intensity is at its highest. The astronomical, chiming and chronograph complications that have been at the core of Audemars Piguet since its establishment are orbiting around the ultra-complicated Universelle pocket watch from 1899. Inspired by the solar system, the spherical showcases of this section evoke the astronomical cycles of time at the heart of watchmaking. The watch exhibition ends on a rich collection of Royal Oak, Royal Oak Offshore and Royal Oak Concept.

Paying tribute to generations of human talents

Complementing the display of complicated timepieces, the Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet showcases the Manufactures ancestral savoir-faire through two specialised ateliers situated at the heart of the spiral. The first is dedicated to the Grandes Complications, where each watch composed of more than 648 components spends from 6 to 8 months in the hands of a single watchmaker before leaving the workshop. The second workshop hosts the Metiers dArt, where Haute Joaillerie creations are conceived and crafted by highly skilled jewellers, gem-setters and engravers. Looking at the past, present and future, these two ateliers, where some of Audemars Piguets most intricate creations are still produced today, embody the Manufactures uncompromising spirit.

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet  Audemars Piguet

A dedicated timepiece: [Re]Mastering the past

To celebrate the opening of its Musee Atelier, the Manufacture has created a new take on one of its exceedingly rare chronographs from 1943. Audemars Piguets vintage chronograph wristwatches are among the rarest in the world with only 307 examples made between the 1930s through the 1950s. Named [Re]master01, this new selfwinding flyback chronograph speaks directly to the blend of tradition and forward thinking which continues to permeate Audemars Piguets creations. This limited edition of 500 watches evokes all of the design attributes of the original, featuring a round stainless steel case and teardrop lugs enhanced by 18-carat pink gold bezel, crown and pushers. The gold-toned dial is complemented with a blue tachymetric scale, pink gold hour, minutes and seconds hands, as well as blue chronograph hands. The watch comes with a light brown hand-stitched calfskin strap as well as an additional brown alligator strap.

[Re]master01  Audemars Piguet

Similarly to the 1943 wristwatch, [Re]master01 features the logo Audemars Piguet & Co Geneve. From around 1885 to the mid-1970s, the Manufacture had a workshop in Geneva to be closer to end-clients and facilitate distribution within Europe and beyond. When Audemars Piguet started to sign its watches around the 1920s and 30s, the city of Geneva was frequently mentioned on the dial. The Audemars Piguet logo featured on [Re]master01 thus celebrates the Manufactures cultural openness to the larger world despite its deep rootedness in the Vallee de Joux.
Beijing quickly builds makeshift lab to gear up coronavirus testing

Global Times

By Liu Caiyu and Ma Jingjing Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 21:53:40

Beijing has built a makeshift bio lab and may adopt batch testing to boost the efficiency amid spike in testing demand and backlog of samples.

The construction of a makeshift cabin for conducting COVID-19 nucleic acid tests was completed on Sunday at Peking Union Medical College Hospital after only three days of work. It will be put into use on Monday, the hospital said on its WeChat account.

There are eight sample-taking rooms, four rooms for making orders and two for comprehensive services for streaming the flow of people. This system has enhanced the hospital's nucleic acid test capacity, according to the statement.

On basis of standard settings, the hospital made customized designs for its Fangcang cabin for nucleic acid tests. Every room has four doors and two sets of windows to guarantee single-direction flow of people and split channels for doctors and other people. Meanwhile, there is a cross-ventilation design to avoid the spread of the virus.

Beijing authorities on Sunday called for the public to be rational in receiving tests. Residents should make an appointment first but those who have no travel history to high-risk regions or contact with people from high-risk regions are not encouraged to do so.

As of Saturday, the number of nucleic acid testing institutions has increased from 98 to 124, and the maximum daily testing capacity expanded from the previous 100,000 to more than 230,000, Beijing authorities said at a press conference on Sunday.

If it adopts batch testing which mixes five samples in a single test, Beijing could test nearly 1 million people per day.

COVID-19 testing hospitals and institutes are working in full swing to meet the huge gap between the daily collected nucleic acid samples and the daily maximum capability for nucleic acid testing, with the number standing at 500,000 and 230,000 respectively.

An employee from Shougang Hospital affiliated with Peking University told the Global Times on Sunday that the daily testing numbers in their lab ranges from 500 to 5,000 at maximum. Testing staff are working against the clock and many are working overtime during weekends.

Many testing institutes including CapitalBio MedLab said they had been increasing the working staff and testing equipment to cope with increasing amounts of samples. Labs are running 24 hours non-stop.

A total of 212 people from 10 medical teams are coming to the capital city from Hubei, Liaoning and other provinces to support the COVID-19 screening, and extra 30,000 samples are expected to be tested daily.

Beijing authorities require all people leaving the city to have a negative nucleic acid test result, which could affect those who work in Beijing but live in neighboring Hebei Province.

A resident of Yanjiao township, Hebei, told the Global Times that many people asked the toll gates about the new policy but there has not been any official notice.

"I was told that we can enter Beijing freely but may not be allowed to go home without a negative test result," said the resident surnamed Huang.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Veterans such as Miller native Briscoe Bennett "B.B." Smith Jr. returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Smith, a successful U-Haul neighborhood dealer during his career, will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Military Service and U-Haul Affiliation

Smith was born in August 1922 to Briscoe and Minerva Smith. As a teen, he was unable to complete school because his father took ill, and he had to work to provide for his mother and siblings. Smith worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Oklahoma, and then completed two years of work and training through the National Youth Administration (NYA) in 1942.

Smith enlisted in the Navy as a cook in September 1943. In late 1944, Smith and the rest of the crew of Landing Ship Medium (LSM) 171 sailed for the South Pacific as part of a convoy tasked with the taking of Okinawa. During the campaign, LSM 171 and other ships came under heavy and constant attack from Japanese kamikaze aircraft. Smith was credited with shooting down a kamikaze that was about to hit another transport ship.

After the war, Smith tried his hand at the paint-and-body business, as well as cattle ranching, before building a Conoco service station in Durant, Okla. In 1960, Smith signed on as a U-Haul neighborhood dealer. B.B. Smith Rentals and U-Haul Dealership served Durant customers for more than 31 years.

U-Haul boasts more than 20,000 dealers today. These independent small business owners serve as the backbone of the company, accounting for more than 90% of U-Haul rental locations throughout its North American network.

Smith passed away in March 1997. He is survived by his children, Garry (Cheryl Ann) and Cheryl; five grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren. Garry and Cheryl Ann are both retired U-Haul Team Members.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Smith is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, B.B.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul



Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


Senior members of the Green Party have said this weeks vote to go into government is too close to call with ballots already beginning to arrive in at party headquarters.

The party is to hold a webinar tonight which will see Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo take part in a final push to win over the support of the membership for the programme for government.

Among those supporting the deal is Waterford TD Marc O Cathasaigh, who acknowledged the threshold of a two-thirds majority will be a big ask, especially when so many of the party members from Northern Ireland are likely to vote no.

I think it is a very close call. We issued a letter this weekend that are outside Dublin and we have support from 27 of the 31. But I think it will be very close. A majority of our members in the North, who have a vote on this agreement, appear to be coming out against the deal, he said.

I am hoping we have enough votes to get us over the two-thirds supermajority level that is needed, he said.

Defending the deal, he said it is the best deal the Greens could hope for after almost six weeks of negotiations.

This is a radical transformative deal. There is a lot of change in this document. I spent five-and-a-half weeks with this document and I am very proud of what we have achieved, the Waterford TD said.

His party leader Eamon Ryan has described the programme for government as a left-wing document and the best approach for getting the country back working.

Mr Ryan acknowledged that the Green Party would be going into government at one of the most challenging times possible and that there would be risks and uncertainties.

Mr Ryan also admitted that the vote by Green Party members on the programme for government could be very close, but he was hopeful that members would sign off on the document.

The new coalition government will need to invest in public housing, public health, public transport and climate action which will require the State to be bigger, he said.

In the particular crisis at the moment, the best approach to get the country back working again is actually to borrow and invest in stimulus and employment. The programme for government says we're going to do that for the next two or three years.

Following that there would need to be a review and the books would have to be balanced again in the long run.

But even then there's an agreement that we would try to balance the current account, we would continue to borrow for capital investment.

Mr Ryan said he did not know what would happen if the Green Party rejected the deal. If we say no, I think it would be very hard for us to go back to the negotiating table.

Mr Ryan and the pro-coalition wing of the party is to hold a webinar with party membership and Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo.

Mr Ryan and deputy leader Catherine Martin announced that Mr Ruffalo - who received Oscar nominations for his roles in The Kids are Alright and Foxcather and also played the Incredible Hulk in the Marvel movie of the same name  would take part in the web livestream to discuss fracking and the programme for government.

Mr Ruffalo has spoken in Ireland on such matters in recent years.
Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM has restored crude oil production offshore Guyana to the range of 80,000-90,000 barrels per day (bpd), after clearing up the technical glitch with the gas reinjection equipment. The director of Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency, Vincent Adams, confirmed about the production resumption at the site.

Problems associated with the gas reinjection equipment, which is used to avoid excessive gas flaring, reduced production at the site by 65% to 27,500 bpd last week from early-May levels. After addressing the problem, the company is now flaring less amount of natural gas and reinjecting more, which is resulting in higher production volumes from the deepwater Stabroek block, offshore Guyana.

Two of its three gas handling systems are currently working, which is enabling it to use 85% of gas production from the reservoir. Once the third system comes online, the company is expected to reach the 120,000-bpd oil production mark.

Notably, it estimates gross resources of more than 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent from its 16 promising discoveries in the Stabroek Block. The discoveries made so far on the block have the potential to add five FPSO vessels that will be capable of yielding 750,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025. ExxonMobil commenced production in the block last December.

Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, is the operator in the Stabroek Block with a 45% stake. The respective subsidiaries of Hess Corporation HES and CNOOC Limited CEO have 30% and 25% interest in the block.

Price Performance

The companys stock has gained 22.5% since the beginning of the second quarter compared with 8.9% rise of the industry it belongs to.

Zacks Rank & Another Stock to Consider

Currently, ExxonMobil has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Another top-ranked player in the energy space is Chaparral Energy, Inc. CHAP, holding a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Story continues

Chaparral Energys bottom line for 2020 is expected to rise 57.8% year over year.

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.

Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



CNOOC Limited (CEO) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Hess Corporation (HES) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Chaparral Energy, Inc. (CHAP) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
The year 2020 was supposed to be a year where all plans that we made for 2020 were supposed to have come true. What came true, however, was what China gave to the world; a novel (meaning new) coronavirus of the year 2019.

The WHO, with Tedros at the helm, called it Covid-19. Initially, they said it will not harm humans and human to human transmission is not possible. WHO too lapped it up conveniently and sold it to the world. Viral outbreaks are normally attributed to its origin since time immemorial. Plague of Athens 429 BC, Mexico Small Pox in 1520 AD, London Plague 1563, China Plague 1641 and more recently Spanish Flu, and Mweka Ebola. How is it that a new viral strain that the world is seeing for the first time, which originated in Wuhan, China, does not carry the name of origin and is not called Wuhan Virus? Why is this important in our current topic of Air War in Aksai Chin? Well! Wuhan Coronavirus aka COVID-19 put a lot of focus on China. So, China did what it does best, remove focus from the virus and create ruckus in South China Sea and Galwan Valley. Suddenly, news channels and states world over are now talking of this ruckus rather than Wuhan Virus.

Aksai Chin is disputed between India and China since the formation of India and it goes back to the nineteenth century. William Johnson, a civil servant with the Survey of India, proposed "Johnson Line" in 1865, which put Aksai Chin in Kashmir. This map was not shared with China. The moot question is why not? Because Xinjiang prefecture at that time was not under the control of China. It came under Chinese control years later and it was not until 1892 when China erected boundary markers at Karakoram pass.

In 1897, a British military officer, Sir John Ardagh, proposed a boundary line along the crest of the Kun Lun Mountains, north of the Yarkand River. At the time Britain was concerned about the danger of Russian expansion as China weakened, and Ardagh argued that his line was more defensible. The Ardagh line was effectively a modification of the Johnson line, and became known as the "Johnson-Ardagh Line". This line accounts territory further north as far as the Sanju Pass in the Kun Lun Mountains, which is well north of the current claim lines.

Strategic importance of this area became prominent but not evident to Indian polity when Chinese constructed a road from Tibet to Xinjiag province in 1950. Shocking aspect was that India did not come to know of the road until 1957 and that too when Chinese owned up to having constructed the road. Now, why is this road important for China? If you look at the map, the road to Kashgar from Tibet runs south of Taklamakan desert and traditional road north of Taklamakan desert.

North road, though much older, takes couple of days more of travel and in winters gets frozen at places and is difficult to negotiate sometimes. Southern road is preferred due to less travel time and frozen water in winters means road and adjacent area are firmer for travel and do not flood due to melting water. Someone should have appraised Nehru of this, someone from the Army or other strategic think tank. Did any such outfit exist at that is a big question? India too had just been liberated from British stranglehold and was still finding its feet in the brave new world. Be that as it may. It was said that there were very few who had Nehrus ears. There is an interesting anecdote that goes with this issue of Aksai Chin:

On December 5, 1961 during the debate on Aksai Chin in Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had made that famous statement in Parliament of not a blade of grass grows there. This was at a time when China was invading, infiltrating, and occupying Ladakh (Aksai Chin). It invoked immediate sharp rejoinder from Mahavir Tyagi who pointed to his bald head and wanted to know whether he too should treat it as useless.

Such was the outlook of our polity then for which we are paying the price now with lives of 20 soldiers and may be more, god forbid, in the future.

In the 50s, PLA outposts were constructed in Tianwendian, Kongka Pass, Heweitanand Tianshuihai etc. Indian Army did point out these developments to New Delhi, but then Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai was gaining voice and no one wanted to bell the cat. In the meantime, this road was upgraded to China National Highway 219. These days it is called G219 and it goes through the India claimed region of Aksai Chin.

First incident of stone throwing at Indian Army by PLA happened in 2017. It is an important year for the region because in 2010, China conducted geological surveys in Western Kunlun region, which Aksai Chin is part of. Lo and behold in Huoshaoyun, a major lead-zinc deposit, and numerous smaller deposits were discovered. Huoshaoyun is a mountain located in Aksai Chin near the Tibetan border. Mining development of Huoshaoyun started in 2017 and Chinese PLA started pelting stones and started stronger assertions to this strategic piece of land.

This year on year nibbling strategy of China was not without reason. This huge zinc deposit may be extending into the claimed land (large garnet deposit is close to the point where 3 Idiots was shot and is still called the Garnet Hill). Moreover, more they nibble, more defence in depth is provided to this Highway 219. Every summer, like a ritual they kept doing it. This summer, however, they were faced with 16 Bihar of Indian Army and Col Santosh Babus unit. They did not budge, 20 lives were lost but they did not budge. That was the kind of resolve that 16 Bihar displayed.

If China decides to wage war with India in this region, especially air war, they are in for a rude shock.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Changing the name of the city of Columbus to Flavortown seems like a long shot. But if 31 seasons of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives have taught us anything, its never underestimate the popularity of Guy Fieri.

Columbus resident Tyler Woodbridges petition to rename Ohios capital city in honor of the Food Network star has garnered more than 72,000 signatures and counting.

Why not rename the city Flavortown? The new name is twofold, he writes on his change.org page. For one, it honors Central Ohios proud heritage as a culinary crossroads and one of the nations largest test markets for the food industry. Secondly, cheflebrity Guy Fieri was born in Columbus, so naming the city in honor of him (hes such a good dude, really) would be superior to its current nomenclature.

Fieri hasnt commented on the effort, but he did tweet photos hawking Guy Fieri, the Mayor of Flavortown T-shirts.

Im Guy Fieri and I approve this Tweet.



: https://t.co/N6NSC1Ph4t pic.twitter.com/bSYNjWMZux  Guy Fieri (@GuyFieri) June 23, 2020

The idea to rename Columbus comes amid a racial reckoning across the U.S. that has toppled Confederate statues and led to the removal of racist imagery from food products. Columbus City Hall and Columbus State Community College have already decided to banish statues of their famed namesake. And the fate of the Christopher Columbus statue outside the Ohio Statehouse will likely come up at the next Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board meeting in July, cleveland.coms Andrew Tobias reported.

Columbus, of course, has long been celebrated in history books for his discovery of the New World. But his legacy also includes atrocities such as the enslavement of the Indigenous people he encountered on his voyages.

Compare that to Fieri, who, after leaving Columbus as a baby, helped raise more than $20 million for laid off restaurant workers during the coronavirus shutdown. His worst transgressions have been wearing flip flops in a kitchen, inventing Donkey Sauce and unrelentlessly reminding us that that Mofungo is out of bounds.

That kind of optimism and charitable work embodies more of what Columbus, Ohio, is about rather than the tarnished legacy of Christopher Columbus, Woodbridge told CNN.
New Delhi: Heavy rain accompanied by strong winds lashed parts of the national capital on Monday morning bringing the much-needed relief from the hot weather. The weather today will continue to remain cloudy with light rain for the next few days, said the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

The minimum temperature in Delhi will go down to 25-degree celsius while the maximum will be at 37-degree celsius.

The national capital has been witnessing thunderstorms, accompanied by rains for the past two days bringing relief to all, after temperature soared above 40 degrees Celsius.

IMD on Friday said that conditions may become favourable for the advancement of Southwest Monsoon in Delhi and Haryana around June 25.

As per some weather experts, the monsoon is likely to arrive two-three days earlier than its usual date of June 27 in Delhi because of a cyclonic circulation over West Bengal and the neighbourhood.
Lufthansa could let its Belgian subsidiary Brussels Airlines go bankrupt or sell it, La Libre newspaper reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources at the airline.

Brussels Airlines, which employs 4,200 people, said last month it would cut its fleet of aircraft by 30% and its workforce by a quarter to ensure its survival during and after the coronavirus crisis.

Talks to save the Belgian airline been have stalled for weeks but directors of Lufthansa, which has itself been bailed out by the German government, and Brussels Airlines would meet on Monday to discuss a plan for its future. A spokesperson for Lufthansa declined to comment.

Also Watch:

Belgiums government said last month it was committed to reaching a 300 million euro ($336 million) deal with Lufthansa to save Brussels Airlines if its future was guaranteed.
The red lights still shine above the windows in De Wallen, Amsterdams main red light district, but the windows are empty.

The streets lining the canals, normally crammed with tourists, are deserted.

The brothels are closed, the prostitution museum shut until further notice.

No photos of sex workers, reads the signs above the brothel windows. Fine: 95.

But there are no sex workers to photograph in the windows and no tourists to photograph them.

Recommended Amsterdam restaurant creates greenhouses for diners to enjoy meals

The Netherlands is reopening. Hairdressers, driving instructors and beauticians have been back at work since 11 May, without needing to wear a mask. Restaurants reopened their outdoor seating areas at the beginning of this month. Gyms and saunas are scheduled to restart in early July.

In De Wallen, a locksmith is open, as are a few (mostly empty) bars and shops selling sex toys, whips, handcuffs and the odd latex dress.

But sex workers have been told to wait until September, emptying the area and sending many sex workers into poverty  or secretly back to work.

Charlotte de Vries, the professional name of an escort working in Amsterdam, would normally meet up to seven clients a week. But the week the lockdown began, all seven cancelled, immediately costing her about 1200.

And I stopped counting after that, says de Vries, sitting at a table on the edge of the red light district. I thought, I just dont want to know.

The windows are empty even as the rest of Amsterdam comes back to life (Getty)

As she speaks, the bells chime across the street at Amsterdams oldest church. Now that the area is deserted, she says, you can hear the sounds of the neighbourhood for once.

For now, de Vries is able to rely on savings. But many of her colleagues cannot. More than 400 have sought assistance from a new emergency fund set up by volunteers, which offers aid of about 36 to the most desperate applicants.

This assistance hasnt been nearly enough. De Vries says she knows seven sex workers who have been forced to work in secret just to pay their rent. Rosie Heart, the professional name of a second Dutch sex worker, says she knows of at least 10.

Its a disaster, really, says Heart, who usually provides escort services in Amsterdam and London in addition to working as a representative of Proud, a labour union for Dutch sex workers.

Sex workers who have been forced to work in secret just to pay their rent (Getty)

Working in secret makes sex workers particularly vulnerable because they are more at risk from abusive clients.

Before the coronavirus crisis, if a client became violent, you would go to the police, de Vries says. But now you cant do that because what youre doing is illegal.

A neighbour walks past, nodding a hello. One of the few silver linings to the crisis has been the opportunity to get to know the areas residents better, de Vries says.

If youre saying that everyone can go back to work, but not sex workers, theres something wrong with your thinking

Dutch sex workers now face such hardship because of patchy government support. Like many governments at the start of the crisis, Dutch authorities created emergency income streams for people suddenly left without work.

But in practice, many sex workers do not qualify for the new subsidies because of the way they were registered with tax authorities before the crisis. Or they are too scared to apply for it.

Although prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, many sex workers prefer not to declare their profession to the government because the trade still carries a social stigma  or because they work without all the licenses needed for them to be completely compliant with the law.

In a survey of 108 sex workers in the Netherlands conducted online by SekswerkExpertise, a research group in Amsterdam, 56 per cent of respondents said they had applied for coronavirus support. Of those applicants, only 13 per cent said they had received help.

Of those who did not apply, about 1 in 3 said they already knew they would not qualify, and 1 in 6 said they were worried about outing themselves as sex workers to government institutions, in case their identities were leaked.

Government assistance has been patchy (Getty)

And migrant sex workers, working without a permit, cannot even contemplate applying for assistance.

Heart is one of the few successful applicants, receiving about 1,200 a month since March, roughly half her usual earnings.

But she says she will not apply for help from July onward because sex workers would likely then be the only people out of work for reasons directly related to the coronavirus restrictions.

She fears that will out her as a sex worker and potentially prompt local officials to evict her from her home on the  mistaken  assumption that she uses her apartment as an unlicensed brothel.

One minute I could be applying for state support, Heart says. The next minute I could be fighting to stay in my home.

Some unemployed sex workers have turned to the internet to try to make a living from online sex shows. Ten attended a recent online training session at the Prostitution Information Centre, a nonprofit that provides support to sex workers and guided tours of De Wallen to tourists.

But it can take months to build up a base of paying customers online, and there are substantial costs to setting up an online business. Online sex work needs a good camera, a microphone, a strong internet connection  and a private space where you are not likely to be disturbed.

A new influx of internet sex workers could also make life more difficult for those already in the online business. Theres even more competition, so its even more tricky, Heart says.

Theres more competition with a new influx of sex workers (Getty)

Sex workers say they do not understand why they are not allowed to go back to work in at least some capacity in July, along with gyms and saunas. Their work doesnt have to involve kissing, and a lot of sex work, even before the coronavirus crisis, did not involve full intercourse or face-to-face contact.

Hairdressers can now welcome clients again and hover in front of their face to cut their bangs, Heart says. So she wonders why sex workers arent allowed to perform sex acts that stop short of intercourse.

Im absolutely not saying we should be allowed to go back to work as normal, certainly not, she adds. But if youre saying that everyone can go back to work, but not sex workers, theres something wrong with your thinking.

 The New York Times
Bishop Steven J. Raica has moved from Michigan to Alabama and will be installed Tuesday afternoon as head of the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham, which includes 104,000 Catholics across north and central Alabama.

For me, everything is new, Raica said. A lot of it is going to be listening, and meeting people.

The installation ceremony will be broadcast live nationally on Alabama-based EWTN Global Catholic Network starting at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday from the Cathedral of St. Paul in Birmingham. EWTN will also broadcast a 5 p.m. pre-installation service today at the cathedral, with Raica speaking.

Raica, 67, a native of Michigan, has served as bishop of the Diocese of Gaylord, Michigan, since 2014.

Raica succeeds retiring Bishop Robert J. Baker, 75, who had been leading the Diocese of Birmingham since 2007.

Pope Francis accepted Bakers retirement and nominated Raica to follow him on March 25. Raica had never been to Alabama until this year and has only visited a couple of days since his appointment.

He arrives as Alabama Catholic churches try to return to normal, with limited seating at Masses due to social distancing precautions against the spread of coronavirus.

I dont know what normal is going to look like, and I dont think anybody does, Raica said. Those who are committed are going to become stronger. Those who are on the fence could go either way.

Birmingham has also been a rallying point against racism, with dozens of rallies for racial justice in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police on May 25.

How do we know when we have arrived? Raica said. All we can do is listen and find out what hurts have gone on, and how we can accompany each other on the journey, because underneath, we all have the same desires of the human heart for truth and justice and good. And I would hope that we would see each other that way.

Raica has lived most of his life in Michigan, except for 11 years in Rome, where he was superior of Casa Santa Maria, the North American Colleges graduate studies house. He was spiritual director and adjunct faculty at the college from 1999-2005. Raica has a doctorate in canon law from Gregorian University in Rome.

In the midst of coronavirus and racial unrest, the church must stand by its core values, he said.

I think we have to make a very positive case of what Christ is inviting us to in this relationship, Raica said.

Even in the middle of a pandemic, Christ is still the center of everything for us, he said. He has not abandoned us. To be open to where Christ is leading us, even with the ups and downs we face in life, is the direction were called to.
For years, American scholars have been spooked by the sustained popularity of radical right's neoliberal doctrine - small government, low corporate tax, deregulation of labour and product markets, promotion of financial sector etc., despite its obvious failures to better growth or living standards for the past 40 years.

For example, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (2001), a liberal economist, has been predicting the death of neoliberalism for more than a decade.

During the Great Recession of 2007-08, he explained why in an article, 'The end of neo-liberalism?' thus: "Neoliberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy."

In June 2019, he was at it again, more definitive this time, declaring that the 40 years of neoliberalism in advanced economies "has been a spectacular failure" with growth lower than what was in the quarter-century after World War II, most of it accruing to the very top, adding, "...neoliberalism must be pronounced dead and buried".

Also read: Fitch revises outlook of SBI, PNB, ICICI Bank to negative; affirms long-term ratings

In November 2019, he wrote again in an article, 'The end of neoliberalism and the rebirth of history': "The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be..." Then added, "Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years", referring to the "autocratic rulers and demagogues leading countries that contain well over half the world's population".

Many American scholars have searched for answers to the overwhelming dominance of neoliberalism, while many others have searched for the master plan and mastermind providing intellectual arguments, goals and actions behind radical right's widespread and multipronged assaults which, if successful, would "hobble (labour) unions, limit voting, deregulate corporations, shift taxes to the less well-off, and even deny climate change".

One such search by a history professor at Duke University, Nancy MacLean, led to a low-profile Nobel laureate (1986) James McGill Buchanan (died in 2013) and his crab-walk strategy for the radical right.

She wrote her findings in the book, 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America' published in 2017.

Here is an account of Buchanan's crab-walk from this book.

What is crab-walk and how it works?

A little background information first.

America's public Social Security programme, launched in 1935 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that provides protection to elderly, disabled and other vulnerable people, has been the target of the radical right for decades.

The programme is not only hailed by Stiglitz as evidence of public sector efficiency as against private sector efficiency, it is generally acknowledged as one of the most successful, popular and effective programmes. The radical right realised that opposing it openly would mean "political suicide" and hence the crab-walk.

It was 1981 when Ronald Reagan was the President. By now the American neoliberals had got Chile's military dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) to dismantle and replace public pensions with private ones. MacLean writes that inspired by this development American billionaire Charles Koch's Cato Institute (a Washington-based think tank) "turned to Buchanan to teach its staff how to crab walk".

Buchanan devised the plan. His first step to "undermine the existing structure" was to alter beneficiaries' view of social security's viability because that would "make abandonment of the system look more attractive".

Also read: India stares at 5th recession: How is it different from the past downturns?

This would be done through subliminal messages that try to create doubts to diminish the reputation of the system, soften people's views so that when benefits are reduced they are less likely to feel that something is being taken away.

The second step was to apply a classic strategy of divide and conquer.

For this, Buchanan divided beneficiaries/recipients into three groups for different treatments. The first group would be current recipients and those close to retirement who should be "reassured" that their benefits would not be cut, in order to get them out of the fight and enfeeble the rest.

The second group would be high earners (wealthy) to whom it would be "suggested" that they would be taxed at higher rates than others for their benefits to sully the image of the programme. Progressives would likely support this (that the wealthiest pay more) without realising the damage to the programme and if repeated enough that the wealthiest are not paying their fair share of tax, they would be less opposed to altering it.

The third group would be younger workers who would be "constantly reminded" that their payroll deductions were providing "a tremendous welfare subsidy" to the aged.

And for those who would just miss the cut-off for the old system, they should be targeted for short-term changes, increase in retirement age and increases in payroll tax to irritate recipients at all income levels.

A follow-up plan was written down by Buchanan's two followers at the Heritage Foundation (funded and run by Koch Industries ), called, "Achieving a 'Leninist' strategy".

It added a new element to isolating and weakening the opponents: finding people who would gain from the end of social security. That would be the financial sector in this case. Savings for retirement would be taken away from the government to private financial institutions and end employer contributions, as had been done in Chile.

To achieve this, an "incremental strategy" was proposed.

First, push legislation making private retirement savings easier and more remunerative to the industry and then, pull into the fight the financial corporations to profit from it (private Social Security system).

The Cato team translated Buchanan's ideas into a battle plan. Phase I: Top priority is to assure current recipients that they wouldn't lose anything. Phase II: "Guerrilla warfare" of legislative kind to break up the coalition that sustained social security by "buying out, or winning over" various elements, failing which they are to be weakened and defeated. Phase III: Cultivate new partners in the private sector who would benefit from shifting money.

The goal was a "triple win": (i) break down citizen's lived connection with government (ii) weaken the appeal of collective organisation that had looked at government for solutions to their common problems and (iii) putting a vast pool of money into the hands of private corporations, enriching them to make them eager to lobby for further change and willing to shell out dollars for advocacy.

MacLean summed up Buchanan's crab-walk as "more circuitous and sequential - indeed, devious and deceptive - approach". She shows that crab-walk has been a lifelong work of Buchanan, not restricted to this 1981 episode alone but more of that later.

Also read: Border backlash on trade! Duty hike coming on all Chinese imports except medicines

By the second half of 1980s, MacLean quotes political scientist Jeffrey Henig as writing that the Virginia school of political economy (Buchanan founded and ran it during 1965-68), in particular, had helped "the intellectual de-legitimisation of the (New Deal) welfare state".

The radical right's fight to undermine public social security continues.

Stiglitz writes in his 2019 book 'People, Power and Profits: Progressive capitalism for an age of discontent' how the right uses a derogatory term 'entitlement' to describe social security (recall Buchanan's first step in crab-walk); "trying to reframe the programme as a gift rather than something that has been earned: individuals have made contributions to social security for their entire working lives, just as if they had purchased a retirement annuity".

Instead of cutbacks in social security or asking Americans to rely on markets for their retirement (while reminding them of the great market crashes of 1929, 2007-08 and many others that wiped out savings of millions of people) Stiglitz suggests "revitalising" it.

He concurs with McLean's assertion that the radical right's goal is to put "democracy in chains" while referring to the neoliberal policies being adopted by the Republic Party: "regressive taxation (taxing the rich at lower rates than the rest), to cutting back on social security and medicare, and cutting back on government more generally". These policies, he writes, aim at establishing "a permanent rule of the minority over majority".

How is crab-walk relevant for our time?

Neoliberalism is sweeping both developed and developing economies, including India, and crab-walk is a distinct and discernible feature of it.

Buchanan's Public Choice theory and small government

Attack on America's Social Security is part of neoliberalism's goal of having a limited or small government because of 'government failure' - a concept that emerged from Public Choice theory.

Professor of economics at the University College London (UCL) Mariana Mazzucato writes in her 2018 book 'The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in Global Economy': "Public Choice theory argues that government failure is caused by private interests 'capturing' policymakers through nepotism, cronyism, corruption or rent-seeking, misallocation of resources such as investing public money in unsuccessful new technologies (picking losers) or undue competition with private initiatives ('crowding out' what might otherwise be successful private investment)."

Public choice theory is a set of ideas associated with Buchanan, for which he won a Nobel in economics in 1986, and the University of Chicago (known for formulating and advancing neoliberalism) where he had studied. It dwells on 'government failure' but not 'market failure'.

One of Buchanan's better-known books on 'public choice theory' is 'Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy' (1962), co-authored with Gordon Tullock.

MacLean notes, this book is a "work of political theory that barely discussed standard economic questions" and that its conclusions are drawn from "abstract thought experiments, not from any research on political practice".

Buchanan and Tullock themselves wrote in the introductory chapter of 'Calculus of Consent': "Our theory is "economic" only in that it assumes that separate individuals are separate individuals and, as such, are likely to have different aims and purposes for the results of collective action." The Nobel citation of 1986 said Public Choice theory "lies on the boundary between economics and political science".

MacLean writes, Buchanan and Tullock were "inseparable in their shared mission: to expose the foibles of government as the best way to protect the market (and property) from popular interference (the majority)".

Another instance of crab-walk.

Indeed, Mazzucato points out in her book that the 1980s backlash against the government (especially in the US and UK) was partly driven by the concept of 'government failure' that emerged from this theory.

The fear of 'government failure' was so great that, she writes, it inexorably resulted in government shedding responsibilities, reducing investment in its capacity building and eventually leading to privatisation of government's many functions.

So much so that from 1980s private sector measurement of efficiency were applied to the public sector, and "in the process 'marketised' government".
(Natural News) A Philadelphia woman faces arson charges for setting two police vehicles on fire during a riot at Center City last month.

A video of the incident shows the woman  33-year-old Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal  throwing an unidentified flaming object into a police cruiser. She is next seen taking a burning piece of wood from the cruiser and placing it into an idle SUV which then caused the latter vehicle to catch fire. Both cars were destroyed.

According to U.S. Attorney William McSwain, while the U.S. Attorneys Office supports the peoples freedom to assemble peaceably and to petition their government through protests, their office draws the line at violent rioting, noting in a statement that torching police vehicles has nothing to do with peaceful protest or any legitimate message.

Anybody who engaged in such acts can stand by to put your hands behind your back and head to federal prison. We are coming for you, McSwain warned.

Investigators followed a trail of digital breadcrumbs

According to court filings, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice tracked Blumenthal by matching images of her tattoo and an article of clothing that she wore during the demonstration and protest.

As detailed in the documents obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, FBI agents first scoured Instagram for amateur photos and footage of the May 30 riots in order to find the then-unidentified arsonist. This led them to the Etsy shop that sold the distinctive T-shirt that Blumenthal was wearing in the now-viral video.

After analyzing comments left by customers who bought the shirt, the agents zeroed in on a user who called herself alleycatlore. According to the FBI, this username belonged to a person who also used the username lore-elisabeth, on which they promptly ran an online search.

This, authorities said, caused a LinkedIn profile of a woman in Philadelphia to turn up.

After browsing the womans LinkedIn profile  which noted that she was employed as a massage therapist  the agents proceeded to visit her employers website, where they saw videos showing a woman who had the same tattoo as the arsonist. (Related: The US government thinks that fighting coronavirus requires spying on your phones data.)

FBI agents eventually found Blumenthals phone number and address in her employers website. According to the agents, they verified the latter after comparing it with a record of sale provided by Etsy. The record of sale listed the same address as the one the agents first found through Blumenthals employer.

Civil rights advocates ask: Is Big Brother watching?

As noted by the Inquirer, the meticulous investigation conducted by both the FBI and the Justice Department highlighted the extent to which the government can use and exploit information channels such as digital video footage, online transactions and social media posts to track people believed to be responsible for suspected crimes.

Civil rights advocates, however, claim that the FBI and Justice Departments actions cast doubts and raise questions about the real scope of law enforcement surveillance on social media.

Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty & National Security Program, noted in a statement published on tech website CNet that since social media works in tandem with other technologies, it is easy for the authorities to check on protesters and their activities.

Theres a lot of photographic evidence of protesters, which can then be run through facial recognition technology, Patel warned.

This is echoed by criminal defense attorney Paul Hetznecker, who noted that social media, despite being a valuable tool for protesters who rely on it to organize and manage protests  as well as capture moments of alleged racially motivated police brutality  has become a fertile ground for government surveillance.

I think people have lost awareness of that, said Hetznecker, who represents Blumenthal and other demonstrators.

Blumenthal could face a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison and a fine of up to USD 500,000.

Sources include:

Fox29.com

TheVerge.com

Inquirer.com

CNET.com

ABCNews.go.com
Landmines put Libyan civilians at risk after conflict ceases Demining expert says clearance personnel often fall victim

(ANSA) - TRIPOLI, JUNE 22 - The Libyan Center for Mine Action and War Remnants said 39 people died and 71 were wounded after 53 landmines left over by General Khalifa Haftar's forces exploded following the forces' withdrawal from southern Tripoli.



Landmines and explosive traps represent major hazards for civilians, who were forced to flee for nearly 14 months due to the war that broke out here. Despite the fact that the war in southern Tripoli has ended, deaths continue to mount, and many of the victims are from mine clearance teams. Khaled Jibril, head of the awareness department at the Libyan Mine Action and War Remnants Center, said 50 of the 110 victims were from mine clearance teams, representing 46% of casualties overall. Rabie Jawashi, director of programs for the Free Fields Organization, which provides support to authorities in demining operations, described the situation as "bad." In the Sidra area, which was one of the one of the main battle lines south of Tripoli, mine clearance teams from the Free Fields Organization are working together with military engineering teams at a place they call "zero point", where the teams commence daily operations to remove mines and receive reports. When Jawashi entered the area on one recent day, he headed towards a destroyed neighborhood and saw a sign that said: "No entry, there are mines". Despite the warning, residents had already reentered to check on their homes, and some had even begun restoration work. The Libyan Ministry of Local Government estimated that about 125,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in southern Tripoli, where Haftar's forces were holed up for many months. Hundreds of thousands of families - nearly half a million people - were forced to flee their homes because of the warfare. Jawashi said the presence of civilians is one of the most common causes of confusion during mine clearance work. In a video he had taken just days prior, a local resident was shown holding two explosive devices attached to detonation wires at the same time Jawashi was working. "Spontaneous actions by residents cause confusion and may lead to disaster," he said. Just days earlier, one of Jawashi's cousins was killed while working to clear mines. When the mine that killed Jawashi's cousin detonated, it also amputated his colleague's legs. On an unpaved dirt road south of Tripoli, Jawashi recovered the remnants of an explosive mine that he said was an advanced Russian mine his teams had not dealt with before. Gunmen loyal to the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) believe that this type of mine was planted by mercenaries with the Russian Wagner Company, which provided military support to Haftar in his campaign to seize Tripoli. Jawashi said on this same street lined with homes, four people specialised in mine clearance were killed and four others were wounded when mines exploded. A total of 107 mines have been removed from the street, with more that have not yet been discovered or removed. GNA government forces said more than 2,000 mines have been removed, damaged, or destroyed in recent weeks in this area. The mines used in the conflict were not only ready-made, but also local and handmade, known as booby traps. These makeshift explosive devices, some of which were attached to the doors of houses, killed many civilians. One type of booby trap device found was a 120-mm mortar shell connected to a teddy bear, which would detonate when the bear was touched or moved. Another was an explosive fixed with electrical tape inside a toilet tank, which would detonate when a person sat on the toilet. Due to its limited capabilities and lack of personnel qualified to deal with advanced mines, the GNA has called on the international community to provide assistance. GNA officials held a meeting last week with an Italian military delegation to examine the possibility of providing Italian support for mine clearance. After a request by the GNA, Turkey sent a landmine-removal expert from the Turkish Armed Forces to work on clearing civilian areas in Tripoli to allow civilians to return to their homes. Since World War II, Libya has been a land of war and mine waste, and the issue of mines and remnants of war has been a thorny and complicated issue in the country for decades. The Free Fields Organization, with the support of the Italian government, has carried out many demining operations, including the clearance of about 9,000 mines from the Mitiga International Airport and the former Mitiga military airbase in Tripoli in 2012 and 2013. (ANSA).




Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:50:22|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ROME, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio met his German counterpart Heiko Maas here on Monday, both calling for united action to help revive the European economy in the wake of the pandemic.

This is the first face-to-face meeting between the two ministers since the outbreak of the coronavirus in Europe, and both stressed the need for cooperation among European countries on all fronts.

"Italy is grateful for Germany's help during the crisis," Di Maio said, noting that Germany sent 44 flights of medical aid to Italy during the darkest period of the coronavirus outbreak.

Germany also treated many Italian patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, at a time when many Italian hospitals were operating at full capacity. The final two Italian patients recovering in German hospitals returned home to Italy only last week, Italian officials said Monday.

Both diplomats wore masks for a press briefing after the talks, with Maas' mask featuring German and Italian flags stitched onto it.

"This crisis must be addressed jointly," said Maas. "No country will be able to relaunch its economy if its neighbor does not emerge from the crisis."

Maas brushed aside speculation that the coronavirus crisis revealed weaknesses between European Union member states.

"If we manage to overcome our old divisions and build on the cohesion and solidarity of the last several weeks, Europe will emerge from the crisis stronger than before," he said. Enditem
With an uptake in online learning across age groups, IntelliPaat, an online professional training and certification platform, has registered a significant increase in the number of students enrolling for professional courses. Offering both paid as well as free courses, the company has witnessed a 25 per cent uptick in enrolments since the outbreak of COVID-19.

IntelliPaat has tied up with nearly 200 companies in India and is helping their employees' learn new skills. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, many new companies have expressed an interest in having their employees trained online by us. Recently, a leading financial player expressed an interest in having between 800 to 900 people trained by us. Some of the names include Nuance, McCormick, CommScope, etc," says Diwakar Chittora, Founder & CEO, IntelliPaat.

Available in over 55 countries, approximately 50 per cent of IntelliPaat learners are from India. "Within India, our students tend to be from Tier I cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Mumbai. Most of our students come from these cities because IT companies have a massive presence in these regions," adds Chittora.

Some of the popular courses on the platform include data science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, cloud computing and DevOps, digital marketing, and programming. In all, IntelliPaat provides training in over 150 courses in the mentioned technologies. IntelliPaat offers single courses, master courses, and PG courses. The duration of a single course is between 35 to 40 hours, a masters course duration is of 90 hours, and a PG course is nine months long. The platform expects students to commit six hours every week to attend instructor-led courses and an additional four hours each week to complete assignments.

"The Intellipaat Expert Classes has industry experts from top product and service companies deliver webinar sessions to learn new skills and provide guidance to young engineers to become high in demand software developers. We recently launched IntelliPaat, our free platform, and at the beginning of June, there were over 8,000 enrolments. The free platform has video lectures that are created by subject matter experts and students are awarded a certificate upon completion of the free courses as well," adds Chittora.

More than 500 employers are registered with Intellipaat. These companies regularly hire Intellipaat's students. "Within three months of completing their course, approximately 75 per cent of our students are employed in the area they studied or promoted internally to work in such roles," quantifies Chittora.

The company aims to raise capital and use it to hire people in marketing, launch new courses, and develop products. It will also focus on the enterprise side of the business and hire more people in every department. IntelliPaat aims to deeply penetrate in markets including India, the United States, and Canada, where they already exist and increase presence in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
The Delhi high court on Monday stayed the bail granted to a school principal, who has been charged with allegedly conspiring to precipitate and aggravate riots in the national capital in February.

A trial court on Saturday granted the bail to Faisal Farooq. It cited CCTV footage and said it did not show his presence at the place where the riots had broken out. It said the charge sheet filed in this case is bereft of material showing his links with other riot accused.

The high court issued a notice to Farooq and posted the hearing in the matter for Tuesday.

The Delhi police challenged the bail saying he was found to be the kingpin and mastermind involving an incident during the riots that involved a mob that entered his school and create havoc from its terrace. They have claimed that rioters fired bullets, threw petrol bombs, acid, bricks, stones using an improvised catapult specially installed for the purpose.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta and additional solicitor general Aman Lekhi, who appeared for the police, told the high court that Farooq is an influential person in the area. They cited investigation and added the rioters in Rajdhani School and outside fired indiscriminately and caused losses to life and limb and property.

The police have also charged 18 others in connection with the violence at the school.

Farooqs counsel Gaurav Kocchar said though the bail was granted on Saturday, bail bonds and personal surety bonds were to be filled on Monday but the police challenged the order even before the hearing.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
PARIS  France on Monday brought home 10 children of French jihadists who had been stuck in sprawling detention camps in northeastern Syria since at least the collapse of the Islamic State last year.

The French foreign ministry said it had decided on repatriation because of the situation of these particularly vulnerable young children. About 270 children of French citizens remain in Syria, according to rights groups, which argue that this leaves the children at risk of illness and radicalization.

About 900 children from Western nations including France, Belgium, Canada and Australia are still stuck in the camps, which sprung up to hold relatives of Islamic State fighters who survived the battles with Kurdish-led fighters and a United States-led military coalition aimed at destroying the so-called caliphate.

But since the jihadists lost their final foothold in Syria in March 2019, many Western nations have resisted calls from the Kurdish-led forces that run the camps to repatriate their citizens, saying they dont want to bring home people who chose to join a terrorist organization.
MONDAY, June 22, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Early in the coronavirus pandemic, doctors learned that people with diabetes face a greater risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19 infections.

What they didn't immediately realize is that the new coronavirus might trigger diabetes in people who didn't have the blood sugar disease before.

To get a better idea of exactly how COVID-19 and diabetes interact, an international group of 17 leading diabetes experts just announced they'll be collecting data through a new global registry called the CoviDiab Registry.

"The evidence so far is clear that there is an interplay between diabetes and COVID-19. The link is bi-directional as diabetes is associated with severe COVID-19 manifestations and, conversely, COVID-19 is associated with severe manifestations of preexisting diabetes," said the lead author of the letter, Dr. Francesco Rubino. He is a professor of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King's College London in the United Kingdom.

"Because of the preliminary nature of these observations, we have launched the international registry to quickly gather more evidence and confirm or dispel the concerns that the virus may indeed induce diabetes," he explained.

Rubino said it's not yet clear how COVID-19 might trigger diabetes. He said there are known stress responses that can make preexisting diabetes worse or unmask already existing diabetes. Some of the treatments used for COVID-19 are known to increase blood sugar levels, so that could play a role, too.

Past research also showed that the coronavirus responsible for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) seemed to trigger an acute type of diabetes. That virus also directly damaged the pancreas (the major organ involved in diabetes).

Sanjoy Dutta, vice president of research for JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), agreed that there are a number of potential ways that COVID-19 might lead to diabetes.

"The idea of a viral trigger has been associated with type 1 diabetes, but is definitely not proven. There are so many viruses and so many viral infections and, fortunately, the number of people with type 1 diabetes is much, much lower," he said.

Dutta explained that there are other pathways in the body that can create an imbalance of blood sugar that could trigger acute diabetes. He said this type of diabetes might go away if blood sugar levels were controlled, but it's still unknown.

While the registry is collecting data and getting a better understanding of how the two conditions affect each other, there are some helpful things people can do.

If you already have diabetes:

"Having diabetes clearly increases the risk of experiencing more severe COVID-19 [infections], as well as complications from diabetes itself," Rubino said. That means avoiding infection is even more important for people with diabetes. Rubino said people with diabetes need to be extra cautious and follow public health advice -- such as hand-washing, social distancing and wearing a mask -- to mitigate risk of catching an infection.

People with diabetes should keep a closer eye on their blood sugar levels. If blood sugar levels are higher than they should be, contact your doctor. Your diabetes care might need to be adjusted. Additionally, regularly checking your blood sugar can help you avoid serious diabetes complications if you develop a COVID-19 infection and don't realize it.

If you have pre-diabetes or a high risk of diabetes:

If you've been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or you're at high risk of developing diabetes due to conditions such as obesity, taking steps to maintain a healthy lifestyle may be more important than ever to help prevent diabetes. Following public health guidelines to try to avoid infection is important for people with pre-diabetes and a high risk of diabetes, too.

If you have COVID-19, but don't have diabetes:

If you've been diagnosed with COVID-19, but don't have diabetes, be wary of the sudden onset of symptoms that could indicate diabetes. These include being very thirsty, needing to urinate more than usual, feeling very tired, having blurry vision or feeling confused. These symptoms could signal complications of diabetes that require urgent medical attention, Rubino said.

Dutta said if you know you have a family history of diabetes, especially type 1 diabetes, it's a good idea to let your doctor know because you have a higher risk of developing diabetes.

A potentially lasting risk?

For those who develop diabetes during a COVID-19 infection and then get better, Rubino said doctors don't yet know if the risk of diabetes will return to normal, or if it will remain higher for an extended period.

"Until we know more, it is prudent to assume that patients who have had diabetes during the course of COVID-19 could be at increased risk of diabetes later on even if diabetes resolves after the infection," he explained.

Rubino said doctors should monitor anyone who got diabetes during a COVID-19 infection over time to see what happens to their blood sugar levels. He added that the global registry is accessible by any physician around the world, and he encourages doctors to share their findings to increase understanding of the COVID-19/diabetes relationship.

The new registry information was recently published online as a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.

More information

Read more about the relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes from the American Diabetes Association.
SANILAC COUNTY, MI  A 25-year-old Sandusky man was hospitalized after his motorcycle collided with a tree in rural Sanilac County.

Sanilac County Central Dispatch received a call around 9:10 a.m. Sunday, June 21 for a motorcycle injury crash on Ruth Road, north of French Line Road, in Washington Township, approximately 10 miles southeast of Sandusky.

An investigation by the Sanilac County Sheriffs Office has determined the man, whose name has not been released, was headed north on Ruth Road on a 2003 Buell motorcycle.

He failed to negotiate curves along the road and lost control of the motorcycle, police said.

The motorcycle entered a ditch on the east side of the road where it eventually hit a tree.

The man sustained injuries and was treated on scene and transported by Sanilac EMS to McKenzie Health System in Sandusky.

He was later transported by a LifeNet helicopter to Hurley Medical Center in Flint for additional treatment.

The man had on a helmet at the time of the crash.

Drugs and alcohol do not appear to be factors, police said.

Members of the Applegate Fire Department assisted deputies with the incident.
Shares in payments provider Wirecard have plummeted by over a third today after it admitted there is a 'prevailing likelihood' that the 1.9billion (1.7billion) that had gone astray from its accounts does not exist.

The German company says it is considering cost reductions and restructuring of its business following a tumultuous week which saw the resignation of its CEO Markus Braun.

Auditor Ernst & Young (EY) said on Friday that it was unable to confirm the existence of the money, which totalled around a quarter of the firm's balance sheet and was meant to be held in two Philippine banks.

Wirecard's accounting practices have been in the headlines since January last year when the Financial Times alleged last year that a Singapore-based senior executive at the company had been suspected of falsifying accounts and money laundering

Shares in the company reached a high of 192 in 2018 but are now worth just 15.

Wirecard, which processes payments for companies such as American Express and Apple Pay, has now withdrawn its financial statements for 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 and is in talks with lenders as it seeks to shore up its cash balance.

In a statement on its website, it said: 'The management board of Wirecard assesses on the basis of further examination that there is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion do not exist.

'The company previously assumed that these trust accounts have been established for the benefit of the company in connection with the so called Third Party Acquiring business and has reported them as an asset in its financial accounts.'

Short-sellers have taken advantage of the malaise affecting the digital payments firm to make around $2.6billion from its collapsing share price, according to data-analytics firm S3 Partners.

Wirecard's CEO Markus Braun resigned from the digital payments firm on Friday

Chancellor's Rishi Sunak's former boss Sir Chris Hohn, who runs The Children's Investment Fund, has made over 100million from short-selling Wirecard shares, as have asset management firm Marshall Wace.

Another well-known fund manager, Alexander Darwall dumped his stock in Wirecard and apologised for backing the firm, calling it the 'biggest mistake I've made.'

Wirecard has been under scrutiny since a whistleblower alleged that it owed its success in part to a web of sham transactions. This culminated in a search for the missing cash, which hit a dead end in the Philippines.

The Munich-based firm has been lauded as a home-grown fintech success and was propelled into Germany's blue-chip DAX index in 2018

Philippines' central bank said none of the money appeared to have entered the country after Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and BDO Unibank said documents purporting to show Wirecard had deposited funds with them were false. Both said Wirecard was not a client.

A year and a half ago, the Financial Times (FT) alleged that a Singapore-based senior executive at the company had been suspected of falsifying accounts and money laundering. Wirecard denied wrongdoing and launched a lawsuit against the FT.

Fund manager says sorry for supporting Wirecard Alexander Darwall, a fund manager who had strongly backed Wirecard, has apologised for supporting the firm. Darwall, who manages the European Opportunities Trust, has called his support for the payments firm the 'biggest mistake I've made.' He has now offloaded his large stock in the company, whom he had vigorously defended from criticism in the past by the Financial Times over its accounts.

It later accused the firm of inflating sales and profits at its Irish and Dubai subsidiaries and misleading EY. A Dubai-based business partner of Wirecard, Al Alam Solution Provider FZ, entered liquidation last month.

KPMG was hired by the business to conduct an independent audit. In late April, they published a report stating that Wirecard was unable to provide all the necessary documentation to address all the accusations of irregularities.

The Munich-based firm has been lauded as a home-grown fintech success and was propelled into Germany's blue-chip DAX index in 2018. Analysts at Mirabaud said its DAX membership was now completely inappropriate and should be reviewed.

Some fear the growing scandal will damage Germany's reputation and Fabio De Masi, a lawmaker in the Bundestag, said the country's financial watchdog Bafin had failed in its duty.

Wirecard operates both as an issuer of real and 'virtual' payment cards to consumers, and as an acquirer on behalf of merchants.

The company had marketed itself as a universal payments platform positioned to profit from the growth in digital payments. It also launched smartphone payment apps for merchants and consumers.
A huge, previously undiscovered prehistoric monument has been unearthed just a stone's throw from Stonehenge.

Archaeologists working in Durrington, southwest England found evidence of at least 20 prehistoric shafts  more than 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter and five meters (16 feet) deep  on the ancient site where Stonehenge sits.

The shafts combine to form a circle more than two kilometers (1.2 miles) in diameter, archaeologists from the University of St Andrew's said.

The monument is most likely Neolithic and was created more than 4,500 years ago, they added. The first stage of Stonehenge was constructed around 3,000 BC.

"Clearly sophisticated practices demonstrate that the people were so in tune with natural events to an extent that we can barely conceive in the modern world we live in today," said Richard Bates, of university's the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The team believe the shafts  positioned about two miles northeast of Stonehenge  were built as a boundary to a sacred area or precinct associated with the henge. The Neolithic period, during which the first farmers in Britain worked, is characterized by the development of ornate, large ritual structures and enclosures, including the famous stone circle at Stonehenge.

"However, no comparative prehistoric structure in the UK encloses such a large area as the circle of shafts at Durrington, and the structure is currently unique," the university said in a press release.

The effort invested in making the newly discovered monument suggests an important cosmological link between it and Stonehenge, the team added.

"The presence of such massive features, and perhaps an internal post line, guided people towards the religious sites within the circle or may have warned those who were not permitted to cross the boundary marked by the shafts," the university said.

Though the purpose of Stonehenge remains unknown to modern archeologists and historians, the famous stones are positioned in relation to the solstices and the sun's movements.

Saturday marked the Summer Solstice, which would usually see tourists flock to Stonehenge for a public celebration  but the coronavirus pandemic meant this year's event was canceled.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The kingdom will hold Hajj for a limited number of people from all nationalities living in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has announced it will hold a very limited Hajj this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, with people already living in the kingdom allowed to take part in the pilgrimage that begins in late July.

It was decided to hold the pilgrimage this year with very limited numbers  with different nationalities in the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Monday, citing the Hajj ministry.

The decision comes in light of the increase in COVID-19 cases around the world, the lack of a vaccine and difficulty maintaining a safe physical distance among large numbers of pilgrims coming from overseas, the statement said.

More than two million people perform the annual pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca every year, including many travelling from abroad.





The Hajj, a must for able-bodied Muslims at least once in their lifetime, represents a major potential source of contagion as it packs millions of pilgrims into congested religious sites.

A watered-down Hajj would represent a major loss of revenue for the kingdom, which is already reeling from the twin shocks of the virus-induced slowdown and a plunge in oil prices.

200304160256140

It could also trigger renewed scrutiny of the Saudi custodianship of Islams holiest sites  the kingdoms most powerful source of political legitimacy.

A series of deadly disasters over the years, including a 2015 stampede that killed up to 2,300 worshippers, has prompted criticism of the kingdoms management of the Hajj.

A full-scale Hajj, which last year drew about 2.5 million pilgrims, was unlikely after authorities advised Muslims in late March to defer preparations due to the fast-spreading disease.

Earlier this month, Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation, emerged as one of the first countries to withdraw from the pilgrimage after pressing Riyadh for clarity, with a minister calling it a very bitter and difficult decision.

Malaysia, Senegal and Singapore followed suit with similar announcements.

Since late February, the kingdom has suspended the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca due to the outbreak.

The kingdom has one of the highest rates of coronavirus infections in the Middle East, with more than 161,000 total confirmed cases and 1,307 deaths.
Unless the government acts urgently and significantly to reduce rising greenhouse gas emissions, there will be catastrophic consequences for life, health and the environment, a seven judge Supreme Court has been told.

A 2017 government plan to tackle climate change will not reduce rising emissions and breaches rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, including to life, bodily integrity, and to a healthy environment consistent with human dignity, Eoin McCullough SC said.

The failure in the National Mitigation Plan (NMP) to set out "concrete" measures to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the short term also breaches the States national and international obligations, he said.

Climate change is the most important issue we face, we have reached a pivotal moment, he urged. Unless significant measures are taken urgently, we are at risk of runaway climate change.

Counsel was opening an appeal by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) over the High Courts rejection of its challenge to the NMP.

The appeal, being heard by a court presided over by Chief Justice Frank Clarke and comprising four female and three male judges, represents the first physical hearing of the Supreme Court in 102 days since the Covid-19 lockdown, although the court has held remote hearings and delivered electronic judgments.

The appeal is being heard in the Kings Inns dining hall which, unlike the Supreme Court building in the Four Courts, is large enough to meet social distancing guidelines.

Published in July 2017, the NMP set out measures described as the first steps on a path designed to transition Ireland to a low carbon, climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050.

In its proceedings against the Government, Ireland and Attorney General, FIE wants the court to quash the NMP and to direct the government to produce a plan that will properly tackle the risks posed by global warming.

The respondents contend the plan is not justiciable, meaning its adequacy or otherwise could not be decided on by a court.

The appeal will explore the availability of judicial challenge to the legality of the plan; the standard of such review if adoption of the plan is justiciable as a matter of law; and broader environmental rights asserted by FIE under the Constitution, European Convention on Human Rights and/or from Ireland's international obligations.

'Risks to life and health from altered weather events'

In submissions, Mr McCullough said there is no dispute between FIE and the government about the facts concerning climate change, the impact of emissions and the consequences of rising global temperatures.

Ireland has very high per capita emissions which are rising, not falling, and has consistently failed to meet targets to reduce emissions but the government has not engaged in the NMP with the consequences of its inaction for this country and its people, he argued.

Those include risks to life and health from altered weather events, including large parts of the country being susceptible to flooding because of rising sea levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency has projected Irelands emissions will continue to rise, they will be some 35 per cent above the target Ireland should have reached by this year and there will be no substantial reduction by 2030, counsel said. The Climate Change Advisory Council has also expressed strong concerns about rising emissions.

While the government maintains it is entitled to produce any plan it wishes and the court cannot intervene, that is not the case, Mr McCullough submitted.

A statutory plan must comply with the Constitution and the NMP does not do so, he said. The plan forms a threat to the rights to life, bodily integrity and to the environment.

The court has a duty to intervene where rights are being failed and this is not an area of government activity that is immune from judicial scrutiny, counsel argued.

FIE has the necessary legal standing and bona fide interest to assert the rights at issue, he said.

The hearing is listed to run for two days.

1006693[readmore
The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Texas continued to reach record highs over the weekend while new cases also climbed in the Houston area.

The new figures come as County Judge Lina Hidalgo and leaders in other urbanized counties have issued orders mandating that businesses require customers wear face masks. Hidalgos order goes into effect Monday, though the latest local trends indicate masks wont be enough, said vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

My observations if this trajectory persists: 1) Houston would become the worst affected city in the U.S., maybe rival what we're seeing now in Brazil 2) The masks = good 1st step but simply won't be enough 3) We would need to proceed to red alert, Hotez said Saturday on Twitter.

The World Health Organization on Sunday reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours, according to news reports. The UN health agency said Brazil led the way with 54,771 cases, following by the U.S. at 36,617.

Texas on Sunday reported a 5 percent increase in hospitalizations, bringing the cumulative total to a record 3,409 patients  a figure that has more than doubled since Memorial Day. Also on Sunday, a batch of 2,726 new cases became the sixth-highest single-day increase in Texas, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. Over the previous two days, the state reported its largest and third-largest single day increases, respectively.

The Houston region has experienced a similar trend with rising case figures. Houston Chronicle data shows that Harris County is averaging 610 new cases per day over the last week, compared to 313 new cases per day the previous week.

Hidalgo noted an increase in county hospitalizations last week when she issued her face covering order. Leaders of other Houston area counties continue to stay away from similar measures, despite concern from local health officials.

Galveston County will not be issuing such an order, Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said Sunday in a lengthy Facebook post. Individuals and businesses need to take personal responsibility in following the recommended best practices in slowing the spread of COVID-19 If you find that a business doesnt appear to have taken steps that have been recommended in Governor Abbotts reopening plan, then dont reward them by doing business with them. Its that simple.

Galveston County reported its highest single-day case increase on Saturday with 142 new cases, followed by 83 new cases on Sunday. More than half of its new cases have been reported after June 1, health officials say.

In a news release, the Galveston County Health Department said the alarming increase is related to a lack of social distancing, not wearing face coverings and spreading the virus in families and households.

Galveston County is at a critical juncture, the release said, adding, The health district strongly recommends Galveston County businesses require patrons and employees to wear a face covering, and to make face coverings available for those customers who do not have one.

Brazoria County also has seen a major uptick in new cases, reporting three of its largest single-day increases over the last four days. Health officials reported 52 new cases on Sunday, bringing the overall total there to 1,215.

Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta as of Sunday had not issued a mandatory mask order for businesses.

At the state level, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has joined the effort to curtail the spread of COVID-19 in businesses. The agency over the weekend suspended alcohol permits at a dozen bars, including two in the Houston area, as part of a statewide crackdown to enforcement Gov. Greg Abbott's COVID-19 business restrictions.

Handlebar Houston and Barge 295 in Seabrook were issued 30-day permit suspensions for not implementing proper protocols to slow the spread of the virus, the agency said.

julian.gill@chron.com
Four authors have resigned from JK Rowling's literary agency after accusing it of failing to issue a public statement in support of transgender rights and equality.

Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir issued a joint statement to announce their resignation from The Blair Partnership.

A fourth author is also understood to have quit but wished to remain anonymous.

Rowling was criticised for comments she made on social media and wrote an essay, published on her personal website, expressing 'deep concerns' about transgender activism.

JK Rowling was criticised for comments she made on social media and wrote an essay expressing 'deep concerns' about transgender activism

In the same essay she described being a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The statement made by Fisher, Davies and Jonsdottir said: 'This decision is not made lightly, and we are saddened and disappointed it has come to this.

'After J. K. Rowlings  who is also signed to the agency  public comments on transgender issues, we reached out to the agency with an invitation to reaffirm their stance to transgender rights and equality.

'After our talks with them, we felt that they were unable to commit to any action that we thought was appropriate and meaningful.

'Freedom of speech can only be upheld if the structural inequalities that hinder equal opportunities for underrepresented groups are challenged and changed.'

Jonsdottir, also known as Owl Fisher and co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide, suggested the agency should conduct staff training with the group All About Trans but 'these requests weren't met positively by the management', The Guardian reported.

The statement added: 'As LGBTQIA writers ourselves we feel strongly about having an agency that supports our rights at all avenues, and does not endorse views that go against our values and principles.'

The three authors are marking their resignation by donating to Shakti Women's Aid and have also asked others to donate.

Fox Fisher (pictured), Drew Davies and Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir issued a joint statement to announce their resignation from The Blair Partnership.

Shakti Women's Aid is a charity that is part of the Scottish Women's Aid movement and supports BAME women who are experiencing or have experienced domestic abuse.

A spokesperson for The Blair Partnership told The Guardian: 'We support the rights of all of our clients to express their thoughts and beliefs, and we believe in freedom of speech. Publishing and the creative arts are dependent on these things. It is our duty, as an agency to support all of our clients in this fundamental freedom and we do not comment on their individual views.

'We are disappointed by the decision that four clients have taken to part ways with the agency. To reiterate, we believe in freedom of speech for all; these clients have decided to leave because we did not meet their demands to be re-educated to their point of view. We respect their right to pursue what they feel is the correct course of action.

'We value all our authors voices and, as an agency, champion equality and inclusivity. We remain committed to making the agency the most welcoming environment it can be for everyone. The diversity of our clients voices is our strength and we take enormous pride from each and every one.'

Jonsdottir, also known as Owl Fisher and co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide, suggested the agency should conduct staff training with the group All About Trans

Fisher, Davies (pictured) and Jonsdottir will mark their resignation with a donation to Shakti Women's Aid

The Harry Potter author was hit with criticism after she took issue with an online article titled 'Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate'.

She tweeted to her 14.5m followers: 'I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?'

Last week publishing staff working on JK Rowling's new book, The Ickabog, threatened to stop working in protest at her views on gender.

Her tweet also received backlash from some of the cast in the Harry Potter films, including Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson.

Radcliffe tweeted: 'To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you'.

Rowling's tweet also received backlash from some of the cast in the Harry Potter films, including Daniel Radcliffe

He wrote: 'Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I'.

Radcliffe continued: 'I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between JK Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what's important right now.

'While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.'

Watson said: 'Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they arent who they say they are.'

She added: 'I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.'
In much of Beijing, life had returned to something like normal weeks ago. Restaurants welcomed diners, people went back to work, schools reopened. The pandemic seemed like something that was happening to the rest of the world, not China.

Then Beijing announced Thursday its first domestically transmitted coronavirus case in 55 days - a 52-year-old man surnamed Tang. Tang told officials that he had not left the city in more than two weeks and had not been in contact with anyone outside the city.

Authorities soon discovered dozens more cases, mostly linked to a sprawling market in Beijing's southeast. On Saturday, it reimposed strict "wartime" measures to prevent a second wave of infections. Residents, taken aback by a partial lockdown in the city, described something akin to deja vu.

"Two months of things loosening up, and life feeling like it's going to be normal, and all of a sudden we're back to where we were in February," Nelson Quan, restricted to a compound in the Yuquan district, told Al Jazeera.

The number of cases remains small for a city of 22 million. But authorities are taking few chances: 1,200 flights in and out of Beijing's two airports were canceled on Wednesday. Schools closed just a month after reopening. Since Tang's case was announced, the city claims to have tested more than 3.5 million people.

In the weeks before this outbreak, Chinese officials had spoken proudly of their success in containing the coronavirus, suggesting China could be a model for others to follow. But the new cases show that model may be much more fragile than it first appeared.

The new cases in Beijing raise worrying questions - not only about how the virus could have gotten to Xinfadi market, which is the obvious concern, but also about whether livestock or even fish carry the virus. Chinese officials said the virus could have been circulating near the market since April.

One thing is painfully clear: This pandemic is far from over.

Beijing is battling a second wave, but other nations are not yet over their first. And as China takes its wartime approach to fighting the coronavirus, some nations are retreating. Amid fatigue, uncertainty and economic pain, they have fallen back, choosing to surrender rather than sacrifice.

In the United States, Vice President Mike Pence wrote in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section this week that the media got it wrong: The United States was not facing a second wave of infections, it was "winning the fight against the invisible enemy."

Numerous experts, including Anthony Fauci, America's top infectious-disease official, contradict that assessment. "I don't like to talk about a second wave right now, because we haven't gotten out of our first wave," Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Daily Beast.

As businesses across the country reopen, numerous states are seeing new peaks in their outbreaks, along with daily totals that dwarf the cases found in Beijing's outbreak. None, however, are restricting travel or locking down neighborhoods in the same way.

Globally, the numbers show that the pandemic is surging even as the world tries to move on. The United States is one hot spot, as are other big nations such as Russia and India. In Brazil, which has had the world's highest number of daily confirmed cases since late May, President Jair Bolsonaro and other officials ignored lockdown warnings.

"We are doing something that no one else has done," Pedro Hallal, an epidemiologist at the Federal University of Pelotas, told The Washington Post. "We're getting near the curve's peak, and it's like we are almost challenging the virus. 'Let's see how many people you can infect. We want to see how strong you are.'"

Other countries that were initially more confident are now watching their good fortune turn. Even as Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi touted his country's success and condemned critics of his coronavirus strategy, doctors are warning that a surge in cases is overwhelming the system.

"Even the smallest pressure can make the Egyptian health system collapse," a doctor in her 20s who works at one of Cairo's premier educational hospitals said in an interview with The Post.

Beijing's outbreak shows that even when the virus recedes, there can be no return to normality. The speed at which the coronavirus can spread - as well as the lingering uncertainties about how it spreads, who it kills and why - means heightened vigilance will remain a necessity.

There have been other worrying signs from other nations. Singapore and South Korea, which both appeared to have battered back the first wave of the outbreak, have had worrying flare-ups that led them to reimpose some restrictions. New Zealand, which announced it was coronavirus-free on June 8, saw the virus return via travelers from Britain.

Some officials openly admit that we will be playing a game of cat and mouse with coronavirus clusters for months, if not years.

"I personally believe that over the next year or several years, this virus will take root in our society," Hitoshi Oshitani, a Japanese virologist and government adviser, said in a recent interview, adding that he doubted a vaccine would be effective and that a strategy of waiting for herd immunity was "nonsense."

Any new outbreak - especially a new outbreak where the chain of transmission cannot be ascertained - is particularly worrying in China, a high-tech, authoritarian state that had staked so much on fighting back the first wave of infections in spring.

Indeed, the market cluster was discovered not because of government surveillance, but because of personal vigilance. Tang, the patient announced last week, had only mild symptoms but biked to a testing center anyway. He apparently understood that we are not back to normal yet.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 15:49 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b0441 1 Food Jakarta-Anniversary,Betawi-culture,betawi,culinary,rawa-belong,Setu-Babakan,Pasar-Minggu,food Free

Celebrating Jakartas 493rd anniversary, which falls on Monday, wouldnt be complete without tasting the traditional dishes of the Betawi people, the native ethnic group of the city.

Below is a list of areas in the capital where you can find authentic Betawi cuisine, as compiled by kompas.com:

Rawa Belong

Located in West Jakarta, Rawa Belong is long known for its flower market. Take a step outside the market and explore a bit further to find street food vendors that offer Betawi dishes, such as the famous nasi uduk (steamed rice cooked in coconut milk) Bang Udin, lontong sayur (rice cakes with vegetable stew, tofu, tempeh and hard-boiled egg) and soto Betawi (coconut milk soup with diced beef).

Condet

Condet subdistrict in East Jakarta was named a Betawi heritage site in 1974 during the Ali Sadikin administration. Up until now, the area still ranks high as one of the destinations for Betawi dishes. Among the popular ones are dodol Betawi (traditional toffee-like confection made of sugar palm) by Hj Mamas along with other dishes such as nasi ulam (steamed rice mixed with various herbs) and kue talam (sticky rice cake).

Setu Babakan

To have an immersive Betawi experience, head to Setu Babakan Betawi cultural village in Jagakarsa, South Jakarta, which offers the three-story Betawi Museum, an amphitheater, traditional houses and workshop areas.

It also features numerous food and beverage vendors in one of its areas dubbed Zone E, including those selling gado-gado (slightly boiled vegetables served with peanut sauce), soto daging, handmade sweets that are rarely found in other parts of Jakarta, bir pletok (herbs and spices-based beverage) and kerak telor (traditional Betawi omelet with sticky rice).

Pasar Minggu

Several subdistricts in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, are also known to feature Betawi dishes, namely Pejaten, Jati Padang and Ragunan.

Warung Betawi H. Muhayar in Jati Padang subdistrict, for instance, is one of the establishments that provides Betawi traditional dishes, including pecak gurame (fish in a creamy sauce with lime, shallots and red chili) and sayur asem (tamarind-based soup with vegetables). (wir/wng)
Governor Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has predicted sweeping wins for the part in Edo and Anambra States.

Mr Bello said the party was also set to win the Governorship elections in Ondo, Osun and Ekiti States.

He spoke Monday after governors from the north central region met with President Muhammadu Buharis chief of staff, Ibrahim Gambari.

We will take Anambra State and record it as a second APC state from the South East and integrate our Igbo brothers into the fold and we are going to take Ekiti and Osun once again, he said.

He spoke about the defection of Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State to the Peoples Democratic Party.

Read his remarks to journalists at the presidential villa, Abuja:

Question: You are head of a special committee set up by Northern Governors Forum, what efforts will individual states to make sure that the region is safer?

Bello: Like we know earlier, security is topmost priority of this administration and we are doing our best to ensure that the nation is secured. As Northern Region governors, we met and decided that we must tackle insecurity head on. So basically, my committee is to liaise with the various security agencies and security operatives to ensure that the necessary security architecture is put in place and to ensure that at the end of the day, we get the best secured region and that of the country at large.

Question: How was your meeting with the Chief of Staff?

Bello: We came to congratulate him over the appointment and that we will continue to collaborate with him as North Central governors and we will continue to provide necessary data and information that will guide him in discharge of his duties and responsibilities and to guide Mr. President as far as the region is concerned. So basically that is what we came for.

READ ALSO:

Question: Crisis in APC?

Bello: Our party is one solid party. In a particular big family like that, you wont rule out any misunderstanding in one way or the other. But I can assure you that our party is strong under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari and as a father, he is already looking into it and I can assure you that we are going to come out very strong.

We are going to go to Edo State and we shall win Edo state election overwhelmingly for APC, we are going to go to Ondo State and win it overwhelmingly for APC. We will take Anambra State and record it as a second APC state from the South East and integrate our Igbo brothers into the fold and we are going to take Ekiti and Osun once again.

So, we are going to continue to expand our coast. So, APC is strong we are not divided, we are only seeing one same point from different angle and we are trying to make ourselves understand the points, that is just it, there is no misunderstanding.

Are you not afraid of the power of incumbency in Edo State?

We have seen those in power before that are dethroned, we have seen practically that President Muhammadu Buhari of APC dethrone PDP, the former President that was on seat. So, that is not any trouble at all. APC is going to win Edo State. But unfortunately, I really felt the leaving of my colleague, His Excellency governor Godwin Obaseki in whatever circumstance to another political party, it is painful anyway, but as a political party we are going to take it back.
The Government has been warned any further extension of the two-week quarantine rule will disastrously exacerbate the economic impact of Covid-19 on Ireland's aviation industry.

Airlines and airports are now urging the incoming Government to adopt the "safe travel corridor" system being used by major EU countries to help kick-start the recovery of their aviation industries.

Both Spain and Italy have reopened for tourists, though Ireland has still warned against all but essential foreign travel.

Ireland has extended the two-week quarantine rule until July 9, but a major review is expected on June 29.

Air France will relaunch its Cork-Paris route from July 1, but passengers will have to wear face masks and be subjected to temperature checks before departure in Paris.

Airlines including Ryanair and Aer Lingus are planning major seat sales from July in a bid to salvage something from the summer season.

Both carriers have already implemented staff furloughs, pay cuts and even job losses in the face of the crisis.

Aer Lingus signalled 500 job losses last week and holiday firms are now hoping to boost bookings for August into late September from Irish families tired of lockdown.

One study has showed almost 64pc of Irish people are planning a foreign trip in the next three to 12 months.

However, one airline official said booking levels in July were currently below forecast levels.

Empty

"We cannot plan without greater certainty from the Government and we now urgently need clarity on the dates for reform or removal of the mandatory blanket 14-day quarantine on arrival. European aviation is opening up and we are now being left behind," they said.

Some aircraft now face the prospect of flying in July while 75pc empty. Shannon, Cork and Ireland West Airport Knock are facing a 70pc loss of traffic and passenger numbers for 2020 - even allowing for a small recovery in traffic from July.

Dublin Airport faces a similar scenario, with traffic down by 98pc in April compared to the previous year.

Shannon chief executive Mary Considine said air traffic levels were unlikely to return to levels recorded in 2019 until 2023.

"We're looking at this stage at losses of up to 70pc in traffic year-on-year," she said.

IAG chief executive Willie Walsh warned that carriers were now facing an unprecedented peacetime challenge.

"The industry has changed and anybody who believes that we're going back to the way things were in 2019 misunderstands the scale of the challenge that is being faced," he said.

IAG owns Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia - and had hoped to return flight schedules to 45pc capacity by September.

However, other European airlines are far more pessimistic about their recovery, with Air France-KLM only planning to operate at 20pc capacity by September of this year.
(Photo : Leah Millis / Reuters) They mostly came from TikTok and were K-pop fans.

Thousands of supporters witnessed United States President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, June 20, in the hopes of winning the hearts of the citizens for another term as the 2020 presidential election fast approaches.''

According to The Washington Post, the crowd hugely comprised of TikTok netizens and K-pop fans. The report said they are behind this audience of this event.

Trump's re-election campaign chairman Brad Parscale tweeted on Monday, saying that the campaign gathered more than a million inquiries about tickets. Still, media outlets reported there were fewer people than expected who attended the event. The campaign also dropped planned events for the crowd that did not push through with witnessing the rally.

Sure no blocked gates @cnn @cnn if you think families with children will push through this your sick. America, this is the country @CNN is ok with, think about that. This is the main gate of the rally: pic.twitter.com/wSKwotoajq  Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 21, 2020

Protesters in the rally

The campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh said some protesters halted supporters from being in the rally. It was held at the 19,000-seat capacity BOK Center in Oklahoma state.

However, reporters likewise narrated there were few protests. Tulsa Fire Department spokesman revealed on Sunday that the fire marshal counted 6,200 scanned tickets, without the media, the staff, and those at the in-box areas.

Netizens and K-pop fans

Fans of Korean singing sensations and TikTok users claim to have registered for the rally tickets, but mainly as a prank. After the campaign's official account on social media, touted as @TeamTrump, posted a tweet requesting for supporters to register for the tickets without any costs beginning June 11, the K-pop fans were among those who responded accordingly. However, not every ticket buyer showed up.

These fans were followed by TikTok users, whose videos with millions of views encouraged their followers to do the same. There was even one TikToker who said on Tuesday, "Oh no, I signed up for a Trump rally, and I can't go," and she also posted a "fake cough."

RELATED STORY: Humanity Hates Trump Is The Card Game That Will Make Parties Great Again

The invitations online grew, and TikTok videos garnered millions of views and followers. TikTok representatives haven't responded to the comments or requests.

A huge percentage of these users removed their posts after one to two days in order to hide their plan, and keep them from growing on the Internet. One fan told the media that the majority of the people who urged them to delete the posts were also unable to attend.





Shout out to Zoomers. Yall make me so proud.  Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVIDShout out to Zoomers. Yall make me so proud.  https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

Twitter netizens congratulated the weekend campaign rally in Tulsa. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York responded to Parscale, saying, "Actually, you just got rocked by teens on TikTok." Parscale then noted how "radical protestors" had "interfered" with the crowd.

KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
He says the pandemic is accelerating.

Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus predicts the effects of the novel coronavirus will be felt for decades to come.

"We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic crisis, a social crisis and in many countries a political crisis. Its effects will be felt for decades to come," he said during a virtual health forum organized by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Monday, according to The Economic Times, an English-language daily newspaper headquartered in Mumbai, India.

Read alsoDaily rise of COVID-19 cases slightly down in Ukraine

"The pandemic is still accelerating," he added.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide as of Monday, June 22 was 8,986,016. The global death toll was 468,907.

Ukraine's death toll was 1,012, including 10 in the past 24 hours. The total number of confirmed cases in the country was 37,241 as of June 22, including 681 cases in the past 24 hours. The highest daily increase in new cases was registered on Friday, June 19, when the number of COVID-19 patients in Ukraine grew by 921 people.
Toronto police Dept. Chief James Ramer will serve as interim police chief until a replacement is found for Chief Mark Saunders who is retiring at after five years at the helm, the police board announced Monday.

Ramer, who will take the position starting Aug. 1, has been with the Toronto Police Service since 1980 and currently oversees specialized operations command responsible for various investigative squads and a variety of uniform specialized units.

The board said the veteran cop confirmed he will not be applying as a candidate to replace Saunders, who shocked his own staff by announcing his retirement eight months earlier than scheduled. He gave no reason other than he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Ramer said in the statement he is honoured to serve during this interim and important period, and that he will continue the vital work of modernizing and transforming our organization, in meaningful partnership with our Members and the communities we serve.

Police board chair Jim Hart, who was a city councillor, said he is confident in Ramers ability to provide professional, capable and compassionate leadership during this period.

I know that his vast policing experience will serve him well in this role, that he will continue the modernization which is underway, and that he is dedicated to keeping our city safe, Mayor John Tory, who sits on the board, said in the statement.

The transition of leadership atop Canadas largest municipal force  with more than 8,000 uniform and civilian employees and a budget topping $1 billion  comes at a time when policing has been put under the microscope.

There have been incidents relating to how police respond to mental distress calls and outrage over police brutality and racism in the United States has spilled into Canada and ignited a debate about how much money is spent on policing.

The board, mindful of this heightened engagement around important policing issues is launching a procurement process to select a headhunting firm to help in the search to replace Saunders. The firm selected will be required to call on Torontos diverse public to identify the qualities and priorities expected in the next chief.

On the weekend, former Toronto city councillor David Soknacki, a member of a task force that made recommendations on how the TPS can be more efficient, tweeted that in order to maintain momentum for transformation, the next chief should be an external hire.

Concerned that candidates from inside the service will be overwhelmed by powerful interests, he wrote.

Read more about:
BEIRUT - A Lebanese political activist who was detained last week was charged on Monday with collaborating with Israel and referred to a military prosecutor, Lebanons state-run news agency reported.

The National News Agency said Government Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Fadi Akiki charged Kinda El-Khatib with visiting Israel and dealing with spies of the Israeli enemy. The report added that the judge referred El-Khatib to a military investigative judge for questioning. The military judge is expected to issue a formal arrest warrant.

Lebanon and Israel are in a state of war and each bans its citizens from visiting the other country.

El-Khatib was detained last week with her brother, who was later released. According to local media reports, she had visited Israel by crossing from Jordan.

She has been active on social media, where she harshly criticized Lebanons militant Hezbollah group and its strong ally, Lebanese President Michel Aoun. Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong war in 2006.

Shortly before the charges were filed Monday, dozens rallied in Beirut demanding El-Khatibs release and saying that she was innocent.

The protesters say El-Khatibs case is similar to that of Ziad Itani, a Lebanese stage actor who was released in 2018 after being cleared of charges of collaborating with Israel. Itani spent about four months in prison.
They were the simple symbols of an extraordinary life, tokens of a man who touched so many, but was taken too soon.

As they were placed on the altar, on either side of the coffin, they offered a summary of a life that, in many ways, was hard to summarise.

First and foremost, Colm Horkan was a guard, but he was always a family man, and a good friend who enjoyed music and going to concerts and who loved his local GAA team Charlestown Sarsfields, as well as his fashion.

Garda Tommy Sullivan brought up a notebook to symbolise his 26 years of exemplary service to the gardai.

Matthew Horkan brought up the green and white Charlestown Sarsfields GAA jersey that he always wore with pride.

Emma and Barbara Horkan brought up his car keys. Mourners heard he loved his Audi and that it shone just like him.

Cian Casey brought up a CD to symbolise his love of music.

He was always first in the queue for Ticketmaster, mourners were told.

Aiden Horkan brought up a photo to symbolise the strong bond Colm had with his family.

And Grainne Marren brought up one of his Tommy Hilfiger shirts.

He lived for fashion and was always looking his best, mourners were told.

Finally, a tie pin from his beloved Liverpool was brought up.

Mourners heard: The Liverpool motto summed him up perfectly: Youll never walk alone. He never let any of his family or friends walk alone.

ColmHorkan

Before the service, gardai lined the streets of Charlestown as the coffin carrying Colms body was carried to St Jamess Church  the same church where he had been baptised.

Members of Charlestown Sarsfields GAA club walked in the cortege, wearing their jerseys.

Other members of the community also gathered in large numbers around the church to show support for Mr Horkans father Marty, his sister Deirdre, and his brothers Aiden, Brendan, Dermot, and Padraig.

Det Garda Horkan was predeceased by his mother Dolores and twin sister Colette.

The coffin of the detective garda was draped in the Irish flag, with his cap and gloves laid on the top.

Only a limited number of mourners was able to go inside the church due to coronavirus restrictions.

Gardai planned the event to ensure Det Gda Horkan was afforded formal State honours within the current Covid-19 regulations on public gatherings.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris told mourners Det Garda Horkans Garda service was marked by his hard work and diligence.

Detective Garda Colm Horkan epitomised what all of us as members of An Garda Siochana should strive to be, said Mr Harris.

He was approachable, well known, and respected in his local community. In the end, at 12 midnight on Wednesday evening, his service is entirely characterised by his determination and courage in the exercise of his duty to protect this society.

The commissioner told Det Garda Horkans family that he would always be remembered within the force.

The manner of Colms death should not eclipse Colms life, he said.

Concluding his remarks to applause, the commissioner said: I trust that those of us who continue to serve can honour Colms legacy in the manner we conduct our duties, in the manner we protect and serve this society and, as Colm did, step forward and be counted at the crucial moment.

At the close of the service, gardai gathered around the coffin to remove the Tricolour and fold it.

It was then presented to Mr Harris, who in turn presented it to Mr Horkans father.

Six gardai then lifted the coffin and carried it from the church in a slow march.

A large crowd gathered outside the church to watch as the coffin was taken to a private burial.

Mr Horkan was shot dead late on Wednesday in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, when he intervened in an incident unfolding close to the towns garda station.

Stephen Silver, aged 43, from Aughaward, Foxford, Co Mayo, was remanded in custody at Castlerea District Court on Friday night, charged with Mr Horkans murder.




PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa hoodwinked the world into believing he was different from his predecessor Robert Mugabe, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, has said.





Mnangagwa was feted like a king when he replaced Mugabe in November 2017 after a military intervention, with crisis-weary Zimbabweans believing at the time that he would turn around the countrys fortunes.





The Zimbabwean president won the peoples hearts after promising a break from Mugabes authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement. But all this, according to Roth, was a ruse to have sanctions imposed by the West lifted.





To get sanctions lifted, Mnangagwa promised a new Zimbabwe, but it looks a lot like the old one because dissent can still lead to disappearances and torture, Roth wrote on twitter.





Mnangagwa has been under pressure to turn around the countrys ailing economy by luring investors and economic support from the sceptical West.





Investors have, however, been evasive, citing Zimbabwes poor human and property rights record and the slow pace at which key political and economic reforms are being implemented.





The country was recently under the spotlight following the alleged abduction of three MDC officials after they staged a flash demonstration in Warren Park, Harare.





Harare West MP Joanna Mamombe, youth assembly vice chair Cecilia Chimbiri and the partys youth deputy organising secretary Netsai Marowa recently went missing before they were found in Bindura, amid allegations they had been abducted by State functionaries. The State denied the allegations, claiming the alleged abduction was staged.





However, the alleged abduction received widespread condemnation from local and international organisations.





The European Union also recently blamed Zimbabwes economic woes on corruption.





Zimbabwe loses almost US$2 billion a year to corruption; and the latest allegations of non-procedural behaviour by government officials in the acquisition of medical equipment are worrisome. The cost of corruption is high, even more so amid a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic.





Corruption undermines development, reinforces inequalities & destroys confidence in those in power. As EU, we support Zacc to fulfil its mandate to fight corruption in #Zimbabwe. We hope these allegations are investigated swiftly, sincerely & transparently, the EU said.





Posting on its twitter account, the US embassy in Harare also claimed that graft was costing the country dearly.





Transparency saves lives. In a pandemic, corruption has a human cost. Every dollar lost to the corrupt is a dollar stolen from the Zimbabwean people.Transparency saves lives.





Transparency is critical  even in an emergency  for democracy to function, allowing citizens to hold governments to account and ensure resources are used wisely.





Why is Zimbabwes public-facing website for procurement awards still blank? A dollar stolen, the embassy said.




09:02

The temporary suspension of foreign work visas including H-1B and L1, that benefit Indian IT professionals, is expected to free up to 5,25,000 jobs in the Unitred States, senior administration officials said after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation in this regard.

"The sum total of what these actions will do in terms of freeing up jobs over the course of the rest of 2020 is about 5,25,000 jobs," a senior administration official told reporters during a conference call.

"Quite a significant number, where President Trump is focusing on getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible after we've suffered this hit to our economy based on the coronavirus and the harm it's done," the official said.

A proclamation of Trump on Monday temporarily suspended till the end of the current year a number of popular non-immigrant visas including the H-1B, H-4, H-2B visa, J and L visas.

"The H-1B is the high-tech visa. H-4 is the spouses of certain other visa holders, including H-1B and H-2B. H-2B is a bit of a low-skill catchall. The only ones that'll come in under the H-2B will be those in the food service industry, which is less than 15 per cent of all H-2Bs."

"Then, almost all working J visas will be excluded, and then all L visas. Ls are intra-company transfers from, say, company X, their facility in Germany to their facility in Michigan, the official said.

While maintaining the integrity of the asylum system, the president has closed a bunch of those loopholes, which, in addition to cleaning up the asylum system, will also free up more jobs for Americans.





"That is done by regulation, however, not by the executive order," the official said.

Trump in his lengthy proclamation has directed the Department of Homeland Security to eliminate work permits of those who have final orders of removal or commit crimes in the United States or are deportable. The category alone is in excess of 50,000 jobs a year that will be opened up for Americans, the official said.

The White House later said that the proclamation is part of the 'America first recovery' effort of Trump as he is expanding the suspension of certain visas through the end of the year to ensure American workers take first priority as the country recovers from the economic effects of the coronavirus.

Noting that Trump is extending the pause on new immigrant visas through the end of the year to ensure that the US continues putting American workers first during the ongoing coronavirus recovery, the White House said the president is building on this measure with an additional pause on several job-related nonimmigrant visas -- H-1Bs, H-2Bs without a nexus to the food-supply chain, certain H-4s, as well as Ls and certain Js -- preserving jobs for American citizens.

Asserting that this will ensure businesses look to American workers first when hiring, the White House said that many workers have been hurt through no fault of their own due to coronavirus and they should not remain on the sidelines while being replaced by new foreign labour.

"The Trump administration has also finalised regulations to eliminate the incentive to file an asylum application for the primary purpose of obtaining an employment authorisation document. With some exceptions, we should not permit large numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States at a time when so many Americans are out of work," the White House said.

The White House asserted that American people stand by Trump as he takes commonsense action to preserve jobs for American citizens.
Trayvon Martin, says Dave Chappelle, was murdered by George Zimmerman. No, he wasnt.

Taking exception to the points made by a standup comic can be obtuse: Relax, Im only joking usually ends the discussion. Comics use hyperbole, anecdote, and cherry-picked facts to drive laughs, sometimes hiding behind a naive or moronic alter ego.

None of that applies to 8:46, Chappelles 30-minute YouTube special inspired by the death of George Floyd, whose title evokes the time Floyds neck spent under a police officers knee before he died. Chappelles latest isnt a comedy routine at all; he makes no attempt to shape his outrage about police brutality into comic bits. Nor does he hide behind a character. 8:46 is a 30-minute monologue on current events frankly delivered by Chappelle in his own voice  an address, not an act. For the duration of this special, Chappelle isnt a comic but a political commentator. He therefore opens himself up to the same kind of scrutiny as any political columnist, who can and should be criticized for conceptual errors and misstatements of fact.

Moreover, since Chappelle commands a much larger audience than virtually any political commentator (the new special, which is streaming on YouTube, has racked up 25 million views since it dropped June 12) his errors are more, not less, worrying than Tucker Carlsons or Rachel Maddows. If you are concerned about fake news or misinformation campaigns in which, say, five million Americans get nudged to believe things that didnt happen  and you should be  how concerned should you be about the false assertions of a man whose views engage tens of millions of viewers?

The Travyon MartinGeorge Zimmerman case is now far enough in the past that some of Chappelles younger viewers may not be aware how thoroughly the matter was adjudicated and how comprehensively Zimmermans version of events was vindicated. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, was following Martin, a black teen, in a Florida gated community in 2012. Martin evidently felt annoyed by the attention, attacked Zimmerman, knocked him down, got on his chest, and pounded his head into the pavement. Zimmerman justifiably shot Martin, and even President Obamas Justice Department saw no reason to file federal charges in the matter after Zimmerman was acquitted on state charges.

Story continues

Chappelles take is this: This kid was 15 years old, being followed by a grown man with a gun, and he whipped his monkey ass. He beat the sh** out of George Zimmerman and George Zimmerman murdered him. Huh? Would Chappelle decline to defend himself if he were beaten up by a stranger? Would he call it murder if he shot someone who was pounding his head into the sidewalk? Chappelle accepts that Zimmermans story was true, but in that case the shooting was indeed self-defense.

Chappelle pleads Martins case by saying, We were very upset. This kid looked eerily like the president. He looked like my own children, but this is exactly the wrong way to think about crime and punishment. Justice should be blind, applied regardless of whether the accused or the victim resembles us or someone we like. Chappelle exhibits exactly the kind of in-group bias that has worked against black people for far too long; moving past racism means dropping our natural instinct to favor those who look like us.

The falsehood about Martin being murdered is, for Chappelle, a key element of a larger, more disturbing theory that is also false. You watch one shooting after another. . . . It goes on and on, Chappelle says, tying together the killing of various black men by police and mentioning Philando Castile (a Minneapolis motorist killed in 2016 by a panicky police officer who evidently thought he was reaching for a weapon), John Crawford (a shopper who lived in Chappelles part of Ohio who was shot dead by a policeman in 2014 after another shopper complained he was waving a gun around, which turned out to be only a BB gun), and Eric Garner (who died after an arresting officer used a chokehold on him in Staten Island in 2014). All of these deaths involved disturbingly poor judgment by police, but none of them was murder.

Chappelles implied contention (though he also throws in the case of Dylann Roof, the white-supremacist murderer of nine people at a Charleston, S.C., church) is that black men are getting killed with impunity by racist cops. This is a serious charge that shouldnt be dismissed or taken lightly. Yet statistical analysis suggests this narrative is probably false  though the evidence that black suspects are more likely to be roughed up, as opposed to killed, by police is more persuasive.

Coleman Hughes writes soberly, and bravely, in City Journal:

The basic premise of Black Lives Matter  that racist cops are killing unarmed black people  is false. There was a time when I believed it. I was one year younger than Trayvon Martin when he was killed in 2012, and like many black men, I felt like he could have been me. I was the same age as Michael Brown when he was killed in 2014, and like so many others, I shared the BLM hashtag on social media to express solidarity. By 2015, when the now-familiar list had grown to include Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott, I began wearing a shirt with all their names on it. It became my favorite shirt. It seemed plain to me that these were not just tragedies, but racist tragedies. Any suggestion to the contrary struck me as at best, ignorant, and at worst, bigoted.

Hughes changed his mind when he delved into the data, which are extensive. He is, as we all should be, deeply concerned about racism and its various troubling effects. But what Chappelle builds his special around is simply a thought error: availability bias. Chappelle can think of lots of examples of innocent black people who died at the hands of police because these cases received lots of publicity. Chappelle  like most of us  cant cite many counterexamples of white people who died because of egregious police errors because those cases get relatively little attention. Hughes mentions Timothy Smith, William Lemmon, Ryan Bolinger, Derek Cruice, Daniel Elrod, Ralph Willis, David Cassick, Autumn Steele, and six-year-old Jeremy Mardis, all of them white people who were shot dead in instances of overly aggressive American policing in one single year, 2015. Most of these cases seem as though they would have made headlines if the victims had been black. But these names are unfamiliar to most of us. And none of the police who caused these deaths were charged with crimes.

Hughes notes that it isnt hard to find cases of white people killed by wayward police that resemble the horrible stories of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Any n***** that survives this nightmare is my goddamned hero, Chappelle says, irresponsibly and falsely implying that getting killed by a police officer is a likely fate for a black man. It is spectacularly unlikely. A black man is, of course, far more likely to get murdered by another black man than die at the hands of police.

Chappelle is entitled to comment on whatever he likes and hes so brilliant that his thoughts are automatically of interest. He is an acute social observer and his personal history adds meaning and context; for instance, he notes that the cop who shot Crawford had pulled him over the preceding day, which yields frightening implications. His reputation for telling the truth is well-earned. Thats why its disappointing that in 8:46 Chappelle is leading his viewers astray by laying out a false impression of whats happening in the United States. Chappelle is a gifted man with a well-earned reputation for calling out BS. Yet in this instance, he has fallen for it.

More from National Review
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has described the programme for government as a left-wing document and the best approach for getting the country back working.

Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast Mr Ryan acknowledged that the Green Party would be going into government at one of the most challenging times possible and that there would be risks and uncertainties.

Mr Ryan also admitted that the vote by Green Party members on the programme for government could be very close, but he was hopeful that members would sign off on the document.

The new coalition government will need to invest in public housing, public health, public transport and climate action which will require the State to be bigger, he said.

In the particular crisis at the moment, the best approach to get the country back working again is actually to borrow and invest in stimulus and employment. The programme for government says we're going to do that for the next two or three years.

Following that there would need to be a review and the books would have to be balanced again in the long run.

But even then there's an agreement that we would try to balance the current account, we would continue to borrow for capital investment.

Mr Ryan said he did not know what would happen if the Green Party rejected the deal.

If we say no, I think it would be very hard for us to go back to the negotiating table.
ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Culmen International, LLC, a preeminent government services firm providing technical support, management services, and innovative technology solutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of Myron Thomas as the company's new Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Myron Thomas Joins Culmen International as CFO and COO

Thomas will be leading efforts to optimize operations and guide capital deployment to maximize organic and inorganic growth. He will have an integral role in executing Culmen's strategic plan, developing and implementing its financial strategy, and providing servant leadership to ensure Culmen's Divisions and Programs are well-supported to exceed client expectations. "Culmen International is thrilled to have Myron's experience and expertise on the team as we strive to be an extraordinary company where extraordinary people can make a difference," said Dan Berkon, Culmen President and CEO.

Prior to joining Culmen, Thomas led multiple high-growth, private equity-backed companies. Most recently, he served as COO at Melwood, a mission-driven federal contractor utilizing the AbilityOne program to employ individuals of differing abilities. Thomas began his career in the audit and transaction services divisions at PwC and KPMG, respectively. After serving as an international ex-pat for Corning Incorporated, he served as CFO for Corning's corporate venture capital division, focused on fiber optic and photonics innovations. Throughout his nearly 25-year career in finance and operations, Thomas has established a reputation for building high-performing teams and for aligning operating and financial metrics to support business strategy and high growth. He has led multiple equity and debt financings and raised in excess of $1.2 billion.

Thomas holds an MPA from Harvard University, an MBA with a focus on Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and a BS in Accounting from Florida A&M University. Thomas holds CPA, GCMA, and CVA licenses. He is a member of the Washington/Baltimore Young Presidents' Organization and Leadership Greater Washington. Culmen is proud to welcome Myron Thomas to its team.

About Culmen International

Established in 2004, Culmen International is committed to enhancing international security, strengthening homeland defense, and optimizing government operations. We provide technical and management expertise, develop innovative technology solutions, and deliver logistics, training, and language services worldwide. With experience in over 120 countries, Culmen supports our clients to accomplish critical missions in challenging environments. http://www.culmen.com

For more information, please contact [email protected].

Related Images

myron-thomas.png

Myron Thomas

Myron Thomas Joins Culmen International as CFO and COO

Related Links

Culmen International website

SOURCE Culmen International

Related Links

http://www.culmen.com


Embodying the tensions that cities across the world face as they wrestle with controlling a pandemic in dense, urban environments, Urban-X, the accelerator for technology startups focused on the problems cities face, has launched its eighth, fully remote, cohort.

While the accelerator program backed by the BMW-owned Mini Cooper automaker and the venture capital firm Urban Us is based in Brooklyn, it's conducting its latest program virtually, with participating startups coming from Atlanta, Sydney, San Francisco, Boston, Burlington and Los Angeles, according to a statement.

"Long term, we are bullish on cities. I think that COVID and climate change share some things in common. If we think that COVID is disruptive, and not only a threat to economic livelihood but human life, climate change, is certainly a much larger threat," said Micah Kotch, the managing director of Urban-X. "I think that cities have withstood pandemics previously. I think that we will be moving forward. The clear things that we need are really good political leadership. We need to heed science and to act quickly based on the best possible science and we need collective action. And that's where I see a lot of overlap between COVID and climate."

The latest batch of companies that Urban-X will work with includes:

Adiona: a machine learning-based service to optimize hourly workforces in logistics and supply chain management

Aquagenuity: a company providing search information about water quality for consumers

Climate Robotics: a manufacturer of robots that produce carbon-sequestering and soil-improving biochar

Mobilyze: the developer of a data analytics service for electric vehicle charging station site optimization

Resonant Link: the creator of a wireless charging service to power robots and electric vehicles

Xtelligent: a company rethinking traffic signal technology

"Not everyone can afford to move out to the suburbs and not everyone wants to. Cities are going to continue to be the epicenters of creativity and innovation," said Kotch. "While these last three-and-a-half to four months have been a real challenge, particularly here in the U.S., we are deep believers in the vibrancy and necessity of cities."

Later-stage investors think that the Urban-X thesis can create viable businesses, with about 85% of the accelerator's companies going on to raise additional rounds of funding. Some of the most successful companies (in terms of capital raised) include Bowery Farming, Starcity, Mark43, One Concern, Future Motion, Skycatch, Seamlessdocs, Revivn, BRCK and Rachio.

Technology, investment and mentorship have the power to advance the low carbon, resilient and high density future we need for our cities, said Shaun Abrahamson, Urban-X Investment Committee and managing partner at Urban Us. We are thrilled to have this new group of founders join Urban-X to build creative solutions that tackle climate change and the biggest issues facing our cities.
Dubai will start to welcome tourists from July 7, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman and CEO of Emirates Airline and Group, and Chairman of flydubai, announced on Sunday.

Sheikh Ahmed noted that both airline companies have developed a clear set of protocols to safeguard the health and safety of all passengers and both ground staff and aircrew.

The new protocols enable citizens and residents to travel to destinations that have started to receive flights in accordance with protocols put in place by their governments. They also allow residents to travel back to Dubai in accordance with measures implemented to prevent spread of the virus.

Sheikh Ahmed said: "The new protocols have been adopted after a detailed evaluation of the situation, both domestically and globally, and ensuring readiness to deal with all possible scenarios. The move comes at a time when the world is preparing to resume economic activities across sectors. Travel and tourism are among the key industries at the forefront of spurring global economic recovery. Our airports and national carriers are resuming larger scale operations by stringently implementing globally benchmarked precautionary and preventive measures that protect the health and safety of travellers."

He added: Since the beginning of the crisis, the UAE has implemented comprehensive measures to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our country has closely followed the directives of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), setting a global example in safeguarding the health and wellbeing of passengers and ensuring that flights operate smoothly.

Tourists will be required to present recent Covid-19 negative certificate or undergo testing at Dubai airports, Dubai Media Office tweeted.

The media office added that the emirate's airports will start receiving residents stranded abroad from June 22 and citizens and residents will be permitted to travel overseas from June 23.

Sheikh Ahmed expressed his appreciation for the concerted efforts of federal entities at the forefront of combating the virus, including the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Health and Prevention, and the National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority. His Highness also praised the role of Dubais frontline government organisations as well as private sector companies that have made vital contributions to the fight against the virus. He said the support extended by both local and international private companies reflect the strong spirit of partnership between Dubais public and private sectors. He also commended the commitment of the community and the spirit of solidarity shown by members of society, which have been instrumental in achieving marked progress in curbing the pandemic.

With Emirates Airlines gradually recommencing more passenger services, it recently announced resumption of flights to 10 additional cities, taking the total number of destinations to which it currently operates flights to 40. Flydubais operations have already enabled 23,000 people stranded in Dubai to return to their home countries while its cargo flights helped transport essential goods to Dubai and other global destinations. - TradeArabia News Service
[June 21, 2020] 2020 Peace Motion Graphics Competition - Call for Entries

SEOUL, South Korea, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Showcase your creative, technical, and research skills to create a motion graphics video on a peace theme chosen from the list below. Creators of winning works will receive cash prize up to $5000. This competition is open to everyone around the world. Submission period runs from August 1, 2020, to August 31, 2020. Applying Choose a peace-related theme from the following list and create an original motion graphics video. This competition is hosted by the Sunhak Peace Prize Foundation. The following themes were previous Sunhak Peace Prize Award Themes. Check out the Sunhak Peace Prize website (www.sunhakpeaceprize.org) for more information on the themes and laureates. It can be a great resource to start your research. Entrants must agree to the Terms and Conditions found on the competition details link.



Peace themes 1. Africa's development

2. Climate change

3. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

4. Food security

5. Religious harmony

6. Medical care

7. Refugee education

There is no restriction on the length of the motion graphics video. Your work must be original. Creators are welcome to use background music, sound and voiceover. All audio sources must be original or creators must have the right to use them in your works. File format must be uploadable on YouTube. You may enter as an individual or team. Only one submission is allowed per individual either as individual or team. Submit your work, submission form and signed terms and conditions form to [email protected]. Awards Grand Prize: USD 5000 cash prize for 1 entry

Semi-finalist: USD 1000 cash prize for 3 entries

Runner-up: USD 300 cash prize for 20 entries

Honorable mention: USD 25 gift card prize for 30 entries Link to Competition Details

http://sunhakpeaceprize.org/ The Sunhak Peace Prize Award is a biennial award given to individuals and organizations that have contributed greatly to peace with the impact of making the world better for future generations. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200615/2830778-1 SOURCE The Sunhak Peace Prize Committee

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing a $200 million financing package to the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) for trade and on-lending to local companies impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the EBRD announced on Monday.

Under this facility, the EBRD will provide a $100 million loan to help the NBE provide short-term loans to private small and medium-sized enterprises and firms facing liquidity strains due to a decrease in their activities and turnover caused by the crisis, according to a statement.

In addition, the Bank is increasing an existing uncommitted trade finance limit for the NBE by $100 million under the EBRDs Trade Facilitation Programme to reach $300 million, to help meet the increased demand for import and export transactions amid the COVID-19 crisis.

EBRD First Vice President Jurgen Rigterink said that Egypts domestic small businesses are the backbone of the countrys economy, adding that strengthening this segment of the Egyptian economy has never been more important than during the ongoing crisis.

NBE Chairman Hisham Okasha said that the NBE is committed to minimising the economic and financial impact of COVID-19 on the Egyptian economy and the NBEs customers in particular.

Okasha said this new facility, under the EBRDs Solidarity Package, targets a crucial segment of the economy, which we will continue to support, thus ensuring its resilience.

The facility comes on the heels of an increase of $100 million in our trade finance programme with the EBRD as well as the signing of a package in the amount of $150 million to support young people in business, skills in business and green climate financing, he said.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the EBRD now expects to dedicate the entirety of its activities in 2020-2021 to combating the economic impact of the crisis and stands ready to provide support worth up to 21 billion over this period in the 38 emerging economies where it invests.

The NBE is the largest commercial bank in Egypt. Since cooperation with the EBRD began in 2013, credit and trade finance lines have been signed, including in support of women in business and to strengthen energy efficiency, according to the EBRDs statement.

Egypt is a founding member of the EBRD. Since the start of its operations there in 2012, the EBRD has invested close to 6.5 billion in 115 projects in the country.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


People from all walks of life attend a campaign in support of the national security legislation for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in Hong Kong, south China, May 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

The draft law on safeguarding national security in HKSAR has been hailed for taking into account Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy and legal differences and striking a perfect balance between safeguarding national security and protecting the legal rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people.

HONG KONG, June 21 (Xinhua) -- A draft law on safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) that was reviewed by China's top legislature has been welcomed by the Hong Kong society.

The draft law, which was submitted for deliberation at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) from Thursday to Saturday, has been hailed for taking into account Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy and legal differences and striking a perfect balance between safeguarding national security and protecting the legal rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people.

"ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS" UPHELD

Leung Chun-ying, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said the legislation reflects the vitality of principles of "one country, two systems", "the people of Hong Kong administering Hong Kong" and a high degree of autonomy.

Tam Yiu-chung, a member of the NPC Standing Committee, said the draft law stipulates human rights protection to the greatest extent, takes into consideration the particularity of the common law, contains opinions of various sectors in Hong Kong and also demonstrates the central authorities' trust in Hong Kong's law enforcement forces.

He believes the legislation will restore stability in Hong Kong and ensure the smooth operation of "one country, two systems."

The contents of the draft law show that the central authorities are performing duties in accordance with law to plug loopholes in Hong Kong's legal system, which will help safeguard national security and the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, said Maria Tam Wai-chu, deputy director of the HKSAR Basic Law Committee under the NPC Standing Committee.

Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, chairwoman of the HKSAR Legislative Council's Panel on Administration of Justice and Legal Services, said the draft law stipulates that the relevant law enforcement, prosecution and other work will mainly be carried out by the HKSAR government, which reflects the central government's trust in the HKSAR government.

HUMAN RIGHTS GUARANTEED

The draft law stresses that the rights and freedoms stipulated in the Basic Law and related international covenants will be protected, showing that the central authorities are committed to guaranteeing the human rights of Hong Kong residents, Priscilla Leung noted.

She emphasized that the law targets only a tiny number of criminals endangering national security while the vast majority of Hong Kong residents are law-abiding and will not be affected.

Gu Minkang, former deputy dean of the law school of City University of Hong Kong, said the draft law takes into account the characteristics of the common law and will not prejudice the existing judicial and common law systems in Hong Kong.

The common principles of the rule of law in the world are also reflected in the draft law, including no crime without the law, the presumption of innocence, protection against double jeopardy, protection of rights of defendants, and fair trial, he pointed out.

The draft law provides that the central government shall establish an office of safeguarding national security in the HKSAR.

As stipulated in the draft law, the office will perform the duty of safeguarding national security and accept supervision in accordance with law, and will not harm the legitimate rights and interests of any individual or organization, Gu said.

COOPERATION TO ENSURE ENFORCEMENT

The draft law provides that the central government's office of safeguarding national security in Hong Kong and related organs may exercise jurisdiction over a tiny number of criminal cases that jeopardize national security under specific circumstances.

Leung pointed out that this is an important manifestation of the central government's overall jurisdiction over the HKSAR.

Hong Kong lacks experience in dealing with cases endangering national security, so it is believed that the cooperation between the commission of safeguarding national security established by the HKSAR and the central government's office of safeguarding national security in Hong Kong will ensure more effective enforcement of the law, she said.

According to the draft law, the HKSAR commission of safeguarding national security shall establish the post of national security adviser, who shall be appointed by the central government.

Tong Ka-wah, a member of the HKSAR Executive Council, said the adviser will provide significant materials and opinions on national defense and foreign affairs.

Tong also said that the HKSAR Chief Executive appointing judges to handle national security cases will not impact the existing legal systems in Hong Kong.

Fan Hsu Lai-tai, former president of the HKSAR Legislative Council, believes the legislation will effectively crack down on violence, bring back peaceful lives to Hong Kong residents, and push the economy back on track.
The Mendocino County city of Fort Bragg is scheduled to discuss its name on June 22. (Sarah Bodnar)

Braxton Bragg was a general in the Confederate army, and a bad one at that. Its perplexing that the federal government decided to name a military installation in North Carolina after him decades after he turned traitor and fought on the wrong side of the Civil War.

But stranger still is that his name lives on in a California city in which, the story goes, he never set foot.

Fort Bragg was incorporated as a city in 1889, 32 years after Lt. Horatio G. Gibson established a military post there to control the Native American population in Mendocino County and named it after Bragg, his former commander at the Presidio at San Francisco. Don't judge Gibson too harshly; it was years later that Bragg, a veteran of the Mexican-American war, would go on to ignominy as one of the Confederacy's worst generals.

The story of the town's namesake faded as the military garrison grew into a lumber town and, much later, a destination for tourists. That is, until 2015, when a racist named Dylann Roof shot nine people to death during a service in a Charleston, S.C., church. In the aftermath, the state Legislative Black Caucus asked the citys leaders to consider changing the citys name. They didnt.

The issue has popped up again as part of the long-overdue movement to jettison the shockingly abundant racist artifacts strewn about the nation. Statues of Confederate soldiers have toppled along with those of other controversial figures. Food companies are finally retiring brands that advance racist tropes such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Bens. Institutions, bridges and schools bearing the names of racists or Confederate icons are being reconsidered.

After getting a number of requests from residents and outsiders, the Fort Bragg City Council agreed to consider several options at its Monday meeting, from picking another famous Bragg to honor (there are a few) to placing a name-change measure on the November ballot. We hope the council puts it to a vote and lets the people in the community decide.

Story continues

We can think of no good reason to cling to the name of a man who was peripheral to the citys history but central in the nation's shameful history of slavery. And a little rebranding is unlikely to scare off the town's biggest source of income: tourists. After all, they aren't coming to tour a mighty military fort, because there isn't one, or visit the Bragg memorial, because it isn't here.

Indeed, the draws for this city on the bluffs are the view of the rugged and majestic coastline, Glass Beach and the Skunk Train, a fleet of old historic rail cars that used to carry lumber but now cart tourists through groves of old-growth redwood trees and over picturesque bridges.

Still, the issue has divided observers.

Some supporters would like to see the name changed to Noyo for the river that flows through Fort Bragg, as well as the bridge that fords it and the harbor into which it flows.

Others suggest it would be more fitting to choose a name that honors the Native Americans who lived there long before Gibson showed up.

Meanwhile, residents whose families have lived in the area for decades if not generations lament the removal of a name too deeply ingrained in their lives, and many opponents cite practical concerns as well: Changing the city's name would take money away from other civic needs.

City officials estimate that swapping out signs, updating the website and making other changes that a new name would require could have a price tag of more than a quarter-million dollars. The largest source of Fort Bragg's general fund comes from tourism, an industry hit hard by coronavirus closures. To prepare for expected revenue losses, the city has already reduced its workforce by 17%.

Adding another economic burden on Fort Bragg is legitimate reason for people to be wary of a name change. For that reason, we would hope that the supporters pledge more than just a letter or vote. Putting together a fund to cover name change expenses, if supporters can afford it, might make the proposal a lot more palatable to the some 7,300 Fort Bragg residents who rely on city services.

Regrettably, the people of North Carolina won't even have the chance to weigh in on whether to dump the name of their Fort Bragg. President Trump said he won't consider changing the names of military bases that honor Confederate leaders. (It's hard to believe that in 2020 there are more than one.)

Now is an opportune time for Fort Bragg, Calif., to reconsider what it calls itself. The City Council should give residents the chance to decide, at long last, if they want to continue to live under a name that symbolizes the nations racist past or pick one that better reflects the spirit and values of their coastal hometown.
Realme X3 and X3 SuperZoom will be powered by the Snapdragon 855+ processor, the company has announced ahead of the June 25th launch. The company has scheduled the launch of the Realme X3 and Realme X3 SuperZoom for later this week in India. While the details of the Realme X3 SuperZoom have been available post its Europe-launch, a cryptic tweet by Realme's marketing chief Francis Wang suggested there could be a different processor on the Indian version of the smartphone. Meanwhile, the specifications of the Realme X3 have not been officially confirmed so far.

According to Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth, the Realme X3 and X3 SuperZoom will rock last year's flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor. He also hinted that the two upcoming smartphones bring the processor for the "first time in the segment". This essentially means the Realme X3 and Realme X3 SuperZoom will be priced lower than what all Snapdragon 855+ smartphones have previously. The AnTuTu benchmark results have also been shared by Sheth to outline how much better the Snapdragon 855+ SoC is than the Snapdragon 765G and Snapdragon 730G.

The Snapdragon 855+ SoC has scored 145055 while the Snapdragon 765G got 104534 and the Snapdragon 730G ended up getting 97266 in the CPU performance department. In the GPU performance, the Snapdragon 855+ got 196244, the Snapdragon 765G received a score of 94146, and finally, the Snapdragon 730G ended up getting 71527. For the total performance, the Snapdragon 855+ SoC got 517743, the Snapdragon 765G SoC got 318235, and finally, the Snapdragon 730G received 276117.

Besides the AnTuTu scores, the details about the Realme X3 and Realme X3 SuperZoom have been shared on Flipkart through the official listing. According to the website, the Realme X3 and X3 SuperZoom will have a 2.96GHz processor, along with a UFS 3.0 storage for fast data transfers. There will be a 120Hz display and a 4200mAh battery along with the 30W fast charging technology. In fact, the Realme X3 SuperZoom has all of them since its specifications are known but the same cannot be said for the Realme X3, which is making its debut later this week.

However, there are certain things that we do know about the Realme X3. The Realme X3 has visited the Geekbench benchmarking platform, wherein its details have emerged for the model number RMX2085. The smartphone will have a 12GB RAM, indeed rock a Snapdragon 855+ processor, and run Android 10. It has got 2,307 in single-core tests and 8,216 in the multi-core tests on Geekbench. The remaining specifications are yet to be revealed.
The Crown: Part Fifteen By Michael Moriarty

We hear that the President of the United States has been invited to England. To the invitation, President Lyndon B. Johnson, in almost his loudest and firmest tones, declares: I dont give a crap about any special relationshipthe one between England and the United States. You cant screw a man in the ass and then expect him to buy ya flowers! Wilson reports back to the Queen: still thinking the President might visit England, he stresses the special relationship between the countries, that it would be good if she roll out the red carpet. Meanwhile, the visit of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden to America seems to be going swimmingly. When asked what she most looks forward to in America, her answer is, Liberty! At this point, President Johnson is shown a press photo of Princess Margaret, to which he asks, Who, in Gods name, is that?! As a solution to the Presidents disinterest in visiting the Queen of England, she is told by the Prime Minister that sister Margaret has been invited to a dinner at the White house, Thats cunning, replies the Queen. That way President Johnson cannot be accused of snubbing my offer! It also sidesteps the all-important issue of the Bailout! England is in desperate financial straits! Not all is lost, suggests Wilson. He thinks, because of the splendid success of Princess Margarets trip to the United States, that at the very dinner with President Johnson, Princess Margaret might bring up the matter of financial help to England. In short, Margaret will suddenly become a most significant spokeswoman and diplomat for the Commonwealth. The kind of position shes always hungered for. Michael, the Queens most invaluable assistant, suggests that theres nothing to lose! The Queen responds, You dont know my sister! Indeed, Margaret, on the phone, declines the offer to visit the White House. Shes busy following the Queens instructions at the London airport, that she be joyfully supporting her husband and his career at a showing in New York! Then she hangs up on the Queen!! Screenwriters themselves could not think-up a more deliciously dramatic and theatrical reality than the Royal Family has actually created for itself. The English deficit is 800 million pounds. The bailout must consist of 1 thousand million pounds. Even the financial realities of history create a melodramatic reality for screenwriters to play with. Pay me the rent! goes screaming all over this episode! It is always a most reliable sure bet for even the supposedly filthy rich! The bogeyman or major threat in the room? Devaluation of the pound sterling. All of which is being explained to Princess Margaret on one of her American plane trips. She and Lord Snowden finally agree to attend the Dinner at The White House! Princess Margaret is, however, walked into the dining room of the White House by that Ole Birddog Lyndon Johnson! Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@shaw.ca. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home




By Lee Gyu-lee







Actor Jang Keun-suk will hold his first fan meeting event since his discharge from mandatory military duty as a public service worker.







"Online STAGE_ Dreams" will stream through the actor's YouTube channel PrinceJKS at 3 p.m. Sunday.







The actor originally planned an offline event to interact with fans, but switched it to online as COVID-19 cases surged again.







"(Jang) plans to meet larger groups of local and overseas fans online," the event organizer said. "We will enable the comment section during the streaming for him to better interact with his fans."







The actor enlisted in mandatory military service in 2018, and alternatively served civic duty, due to his diagnosis as bipolar.







Since his discharge in May, Jang has been preparing to return to the industry, starring in a radio show and a photoshoot for a fashion magazine.







Dubbed as "Asia's Prince," the actor has starred in numerous hits since his debut in 1993, including "Beethoven Virus" (2008), and "You're Beautiful" (2009).


Satyendar Jain was admitted to a hospital in northeast Delhi on 15 June after he complained of breathlessness and high fever.

New Delhi: Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain's condition has improved following the plasma therapy that was administered to him in a bid to treat coronavirus, the Office of Delhi Health Minister informed on Sunday.

"The health condition of Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain has improved after being administered plasma therapy. His fever has subsided and oxygen level has improved. Doctors say that he can be shifted to the general ward by tomorrow," the Office of Delhi Health Minister said.

Jain, who was in charge of the Health Department of Delhi government and tested positive for COVID-19, was administered plasma therapy in Max Hospital in Saket after his condition worsened on Friday.

Follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak here

On Friday, Jain's condition deteriorated and he was put on oxygen support. He was put on oxygen support after his lung infection increased.

Jain was admitted to a hospital in northeast Delhi on 15 June after he complained of breathlessness and high fever.

Earlier, the Delhi government had said that Jain's health was improving. He had tested positive for COVID-19 on 17 June.
President Nana Akufo-Addo has paid a glowing tribute to the memory of two health workers, a doctor and a nurse who lost their lives due to coronavirus.



Delivering his 12th update on Sunday, June 21, the President revealed that the health workers, a doctor at SDA hospital in Kumasi and a nurse with the Ghana Manganese Hospital Tarkwa, lost their lives in the line of duty.



He gave the names of the two deceased health workers as Dr Harry Owusu Boateng, a pediatrician at the SDA In Kwadaso , Kumasi, and Sophia Addo, a nurse with the Ghana Manganese Company Hospital In Tarkwa, who both died in the line of duty.



Meanwhile, he thanked nurses across the country who are risking their lives to safe others.

Source: daily guide









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
Puerto Rico is a beautiful island that offers locals and visitors the perfect balance of nightlife and tranquillity amid the Spanish colonial buildings that act as the best backdrop for a day of leisure. The island, which is located in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, is known for its stunning landscape of beaches, mountains, and waterfalls.

Many visitors flock Puerto Rico for its vibrant sunsets and forest hideaways which offers secluded and sophisticated romantic getaways. On the streets, the buildings portray the island's colonial dignity and rich history.

To celebrate the island's colors and culture, we curated a list of four fun and fabulous indoor decorations that could help you channel your inner Puerto Rican while impressing your guests with a spruced-up home.

Proudly display your heritage with this mini Puerto Rican flag that you can place on your coffee table, dining table, or end tables. This product is made of high-quality, durable polyester and a suede non-slip stand base that is suitable for officers, families, and conference rooms.

Fun Fact: The three red stripes in the flag represents the lives of the brave warriors who fought for the island's independence that is embodied by the two white stripes. The white star signifies the island, while the blue symbolizes the sky and the crystalline waters.

Celebrate the island's top attractions with this Puerto Rico-shaped bamboo cutting board. The fun and whimsical laser-engraved artwork will surely delight visitors. The board includes a hanging hole to give you an option of transforming this cutting board into a wonderful wall art showing off your island's pride.

Totally Bamboo's cutting board includes all the wonderful sights and places on the island, such as Mayaguez, Rincon Stella, Cavernas del Rio Camuy, Lago Caonillas, Bayamon, and Iglesias San Blas de Illescas.

This high definition modern canvas painting featuring the Puerto Rican flag celebrates the island's pride and independence. The high-quality image is waterproof and unfading, making it the perfect decoration to hang in your bedroom, kitchen, and living room.

The painting is a nod to an iconic artwork, La Puerta de la Bandera, which can be seen when passing San Juan. The mural is painted on the side of an abandoned historical building and was first painted by local artist Rosenda Alvarez as a symbol of national identity.

History buffs will love this high-quality reproduction of Puerto Rico's map from 1886. The map is made of quality materials that keep it from fading for years. This beautiful artwork serves as the perfect addition to your growing collection of vintages.

The 1886 Puerto Rico map is a reproduction of the original that can be found in the geography division of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Looking for other products? Check these out!
In every party we have disagreement but I dont want it that it is this disagreement that would push him out. I once made that mistake. It might be nice for him to come back, and certainly Im going to work with with him.
The temporary boss of Mothercare has said he does not want the job on a permanent basis and that he will leave at the end of the month.

Glyn Hughes has been the companys interim chief executive since the start of this year.

The former Mothercare finance director said he will leave before June 30.

The company said Mr Hughes wants to pursue other opportunities, but did not give further details.

It will leave the firm without a chief executive, even on an interim basis, unless it can find a free agent at short notice.

We are making good progress with the search for our new permanent CEO and are now at shortlist stage, it said.

We continue to take action to reduce our cost base and address legacy issues, helping with our return to being a profitable and sustainable business Clive Whiley, Mothercare

Mothercare said the business will be led by the chief operating office and chief financial officer under the watchful eye of the chairman.

Mr Hughes leaves with a turbulent 12 months behind him.

Last year, the retailer put its UK stores into administration, with all 79 stores closing just before Mr Hughes took over.

It has since re-focused on simply providing branded products to retailers.

The business said it has substantially completed our transition to focusing on brand management and design.

It also noted that the experience of administration in November helped the company weather the pandemic storm.

Around two-thirds of its partners stores have now reopened around the world.

It has also agreed to lease out some of its warehouse in Daventry to another company, and move into a smaller office, saving around 3.5 million on an annual basis.

Chairman Clive Whiley said: Whilst we have not been immune to temporary store closures in almost all of our territories over the period, I am pleased that we are seeing the reopening of our partners stores.

At the same time, we continue to take action to reduce our cost base and address legacy issues, helping with our return to being a profitable and sustainable business.

Finally, I would like to thank Glyn Hughes, both personally and on behalf of the board.

Glyn has, initially as CFO and latterly as interim CEO, been instrumental in driving much of the significant financial and strategic change in the Group over his time at Mothercare. We wish him well with his future endeavours.

Shares rose 6.5% on the news on Monday morning.
The health ministry has said that a total of 2,27,755 patients have been cured of COVID-19 till date and the number of recoveries exceeds the number of active cases by over 58,000.

Eight days after recording three lakh COVID-19 cases, India went past the four lakh-mark on Sunday with 15,413 new infections, while the death toll rose to 13,254 with 306 fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry's data.

India took 64 days to cross the one lakh-mark from 100 cases, another fortnight to reach the grim milestone of two lakh cases and then in another 10 days, it went past the three-lakh mark.

The country has been registering record single-day spikes for the past four days.

The jump of 15,413 cases has taken India''s case load to 4,10,461.

However, on the positive side, the health ministry has said that a total of 2,27,755 patients have been cured of COVID-19 till date and the number of recoveries exceeds the number of active cases by over 58,000. During the last 24 hours, a total of 13,925 COVID-19 patients have been cured and the recovery rate has further improved to 55.49 percent, it said. Presently, there are 1,69,451 active cases and all are under active medical supervision, it added.

State-wise figures

Of the total 13,254 deaths, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 5,984 fatalities, followed by Delhi with 2,112 deaths, Gujarat with 1,638, Tamil Nadu with 704, West Bengal with 540, Madhya Pradesh with 501, Uttar Pradesh with 507, Rajasthan with 337 and Telangana with 203 deaths.

The COVID-19 death toll reached 149 in Haryana, 132 in Karnataka, 101 in Andhra Pradesh, 98 in Punjab, 81 in Jammu and Kashmir, 52 in Bihar, 27 in Uttarakhand, 21 in Kerala and 12 in Odisha.

Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have registered 11 deaths each, Assam nine, Himachal Pradesh eight, Puducherry seven, Chandigarh six, while Meghalaya, Tripura and Ladakh have reported one fatality each, according to the health ministry.

More than 70 per cent deaths took place due to comorbidities, it said.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases at 1,28,205, followed by Tamil Nadu at 56,845, Delhi at 56,746, Gujarat at 26,680, Uttar Pradesh at 16,594, Rajasthan at 14,536 and West Bengal at 13,531, according to ministry data.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 11,724 in Madhya Pradesh, 10,223 in Haryana, 8,697 in Karnataka, 8,452 in Andhra Pradesh and 7,533 in Bihar.

It has risen to 7,072 in Telangana, 5,834 in Jammu and Kashmir, 4,904 in Assam and 4,856 in Odisha. Punjab has reported 3,952 novel coronavirus cases so far, while Kerala has 3,039 cases.

A total of 2,301 people have been infected by the virus in Uttarakhand, 2,041 in Chhattisgarh, 1,965 in Jharkhand, 1,186 in Tripura, 754 in Goa, 836 in Ladakh, 777 in Manipur and 656 in Himachal Pradesh.

Chandigarh has recorded 404 COVID-19 cases, Puducherry has 286 cases, Nagaland has 201, Mizoram has 140, Arunachal Pradesh has 135 and Sikkim has 70.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu together have reported 68 COVID-19 cases. Andaman and Nicobar Islands has registered 47 infections so far while Meghalaya has recorded 44 cases.

Numbers of labs increased to 981

The health ministry said that as a concerted effort to expand the laboratory and testing infrastructure, the number of government labs has been increased to 722 and the number of private labs to 259. There are a total of 981 laboratories now.

The number of samples being tested everyday also continues to grow. In the last 24 hours, 1,90,730 samples were tested, while the total number of samples tested so far is 68,07,226, it said.

According to the ministry, there are 547 Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs, including 354 government labs and 193 private labs. The number of TrueNat-based testing labs is 358 (341 government and 17 private) while there are 76 CBNAAT-based testing labs (27 government and 49 private).

Hetero gets DCGI nod to launch COVID-19 drug

Drug firm Hetero said it has received approval from regulator DCGI to launch investigational antiviral drug Remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19.

The company has received the manufacturing and marketing approval for Remdesivir from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for the treatment of COVID-19, it said in a statement.

Hetero''s generic version of Remdesivir will be marketed under the brand name ''Covifor'' in India.

The drug will be available in 100 mg vial (injectable) which has to be administered intravenously in a hospital setting under the supervision of a healthcare practitioner, it said.

Asked about the price of the drug, Hetero Group of Companies MD Vamsi Krishna Bandi told PTI it will be in the range of Rs 5,000-6,000 per dose.

Currently, the drug is being manufactured at the company''s formulation facility in Hyderabad. The active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) is being made in the firm''s Visakhapatnam facility, he added.

The drug will be available only through hospitals and government, and not the retail channel, Vamsi said.

The company is focused on providing one lakh doses in the next few weeks, and the production can be ramped up based on demand, he added.

The drug has been granted approval by DCGI for the treatment of suspected or laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in adults and children, hospitalised with severe symptoms of the disease, the company said.

Delhi govt issues revised home isolation guidelines

The Delhi government has issued a revised order stating that the novel coronavirus patients who do not have comorbidities or require hospitalisation could opt for home isolation following withdrawal of the decision on five-day mandatory institutional quarantine.

"All individuals who are positive will be referred to the COVID care centres for assessment of clinical conditions, severity of illness and presence of co-morbidities," it said in an order.

An assessment will also be done to check whether adequate facilities like minimum two rooms and a separate toilet exist so that the family members and neighbours are protected and a cluster of cases does not develop in that locality, according to the order.

"If adequate facility for home isolation exists, and the person on clinical assessment is found to have no comorbidities and does not require hospitalisation, he would be offered to either continue to stay in COVID centre/paid isolation facility (hotels etc), or can opt for home isolation," the order said.

The order said the patients in home isolation should follow home isolation guidelines laid down by the Health Ministry and should stay in touch with healthcare providers so that if their condition deteriorates, they can be moved to the COVID hospitals.

UP suspends Kanwar yatra

The Kanwar yatra during the auspicious month of Shravan will remain suspended this year in view of the coronavirus pandemic, according to an official release.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath held a video conference with his counterparts of Haryana and Uttarakhand, ML Khattar and Trivendra Singh Rawat, respectively, and discussed the issue of annual Kanwar yatra in the month of Shravan, an official release issued said.

The chief ministers said religious gurus and kanwar sanghs in their respective states have proposed suspending the yatra in view of COVID-19 and after deliberating over it they took the decision in the public interest, the release said.

Adityanath also held a video conference with all police IGs and commissioners and asked them to hold a dialogue with religious leaders, kanwar sanghs, peace committees in this regard and publicise their appeals among the people.

He also directed them to ensure compliance of COVID-19 protocol and ensure that not more than five people go for ''jalabhishek'' at the local temples and make all arrangements for the safety and security of the devotees, the release said.

With inputs from agencies
Fans of Big Brother Australia will be thrilled to hear that the reality series is already gearing up for another season.

After a five-year hiatus, the popular reality show returned to Channel Seven last month and has been a modest ratings success.

And now it appears that Seven West Media is set to renew the series in 2021.

Coming back: Fans of Big Brother Australia will be thrilled to hear that the reality series is already gearing up for another season

Big Brother launched in 2001 on Channel 10, aired on Nine from 2012 to 2014, and was reprised by Seven this year with Sonia Kruger as host.

Seven West Media hopes that Big Brother will help the network re-emerge as the marker leader in the 25-54 demographic.

For the past three years, Seven has been more successful in the 55-plus demographic, which is less desirable from an advertising perspective.

Grand plans: Seven West Media hopes that Big Brother will help the network re-emerge as the marker leader in the 25-54 demographic. Pictured: host Sonia Kruger

Seven's chief marketing officer, Charlotte Valente, revealed the first fortnight of Big Brother delivered the network its best result in 10 years in terms of 'reaching key audiences that we had lost our way with'.

The company is also hoping that upcoming shows Farmer Wants a Wife, Holey Moley and Plate of Origin will bring in a younger audience.

While Ms Valente stated Seven was unlikely to be No. 1 in the 25-54 category this year, she said they were aiming to claim the title in 2021.

Leader: The first fortnight of Big Brother delivered the network its best result in 10 years in terms of 'reaching key audiences'. Pictured: Big Brother housemate Angela Clancy

Seven's Programming Director, Angus Ross, also said the network was 'stoked' with Big Brother's performance so far.

'We have delivered a reinvention of the format for the 2020 television landscape and audiences are loving it,' he told the Herald Sun.

'On top of the broadcast success in all key demographics Big Brother is currently the highest streamed show in Australia driving 7plus's leadership in the category.'
Authorities said Monday that the FBI is investigating the discovery of a noose found in the Talladega Superspeedway garage stall of Bubba Wallace and the governor of Alabama condemned the act against NASCAR's only black full-time driver.

Hours after the race was postponed by rain, NASCAR said the noose had been found. The sanctioning body vowed to do everything possible to find who was responsible and 'eliminate them from the sport.' It has not offered other details.

Two weeks ago, Wallace successfully pushed NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its venues, though the sanctioning body has not outlined plans on how it will enforce the restriction. Disgruntled fans with Confederate flags drove past the main entrance to the Alabama race track prior to Sunday's race, while a plane flew above the track pulling a banner of the flag that read 'Defund NASCAR.'

Smaller numbers of Black Lives Matters supporters were seen lining the streets and waving the American flag. One demonstrator held a sign that read 'Not My South.'

In response to the incident, someone stenciled in '#IStandWithBubba' on the infield grass along pit road before Monday's NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500.

Authorities said Monday that the FBI is investigating the discovery of a noose found in the Talladega Superspeedway garage stall of Bubba Wallace and the governor of Alabama condemned the act against NASCAR's only black full-time driver

A view of pit road is seen with an #IStandWithBubba stencil prior to the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday in Wallace's home state of Alabama

Investigators speak with personnel in the garage area prior to the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Monday. A noose was found in the garage stall of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway a week after the organization banned the Confederate flag at its facilities

Talladega County Sheriff Jimmy Kilgore said NASCAR contacted the FBI, which was handling the investigation. 'The US Attorney's office for the Northern District of Alabama, FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division are reviewing the situation surrounding the noose that was found in Bubba Wallace's garage to determine whether there are violations of federal law,' officials said in a statement Monday

Talladega County Sheriff Jimmy Kilgore said NASCAR contacted the FBI, which was handling the investigation.

'The US Attorney's office for the Northern District of Alabama, FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division are reviewing the situation surrounding the noose that was found in Bubba Wallace's garage to determine whether there are violations of federal law,' officials said in a statement Monday.

'Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society.'

NASCAR has vowed to step up security in response to the incident.

'We are going to use every effort we can to determine who has done this, whether it's a single person or multiple people,' NASCAR president Steve Phelps said during a conference call on Monday. 'I know that the director of the FBI has informed the Birmingham office to use all their resources to find it as well.

'Unequivocally, they will be banned from this sport for life. There is no room for this at all and we won't tolerate it.

'I don't care who they are, they will not be here.'

Eighty-two-year-old NASCAR legend Richard Petty, who owns and previously drove Wallace's No. 43 car, said he was 'enraged' by the incident.

NASCAR legend Richard Petty, who owns and previously drove Wallace's No. 43 car, said he was 'enraged' by the noose incident

'There is absolutely no place in our sport or our society for racism,' Petty said in a statement.

'This filthy act serves as a reminder of how far we still have to go to eradicate racial prejudice and it galvanizes my resolve do use the resources of Richard Petty Motorsports to create change.'

The incident has rocked NASCAR, which returned to racing just last month because of the coronavirus pandemic.

'We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act,' the series said in a statement. 'As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all.'

The stock car series, founded in the South more than 70 years ago, has tried to distance itself from the flag for years at the risk of alienating a core group of its fan base. It went ahead with the ban as the nation grapples with social unrest largely tied to George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in the custody of Minneapolis police.

'God help us,' NASCAR driver Michael McDowell tweeted after word of the noose went public. 'The level of evil it takes to do something like this is disgusting. This is enraging and heartbreaking all at the same time.'

A plane flies a banner reading, 'Defund NASCAR,' near Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday

NASCAR has banned the Confederate flag from being displayed at its events but supporters of the symbol still managed to be seen Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday

Two weeks ago, Wallace successfully pushed NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its venues, though the sanctioning body has not outlined plans on how it will enforce the restriction. Disgruntled fans with Confederate flags drove past the main entrance to the Alabama race track prior to Sunday's race, while a plane flew above the track pulling a banner of the flag that read 'Defund NASCAR'

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said she was 'shocked and appalled' by the 'vile act' against Wallace, an Alabama native.

'There is no place for this disgusting display of hatred in our state,' Ivey said. 'Bubba Wallace is one of us; he is a native of Mobile and on behalf of all Alabamians, I apologize to Bubba Wallace as well as to his family and friends for the hurt this has caused and regret the mark this leaves on our state.'

While the Confederate flag remains a symbol of southern pride to some, its history is inextricably linked with slavery and the racist motivations behind the secession of the southern states in 1860.

Wallace responded to the situation on Twitter

As Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stevens infamously said at the onset of the Civil War: 'Our new [government's] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.'

Reaction from Wallace's fellow drivers was immediate as they prepared for the rescheduled race Monday afternoon. Retired champion Jeff Gordon called it a 'cowardly' act and Ryan Blaney, one of Wallace's closest friends, tweeted: 'You're my brother and always will be. Don't let the people who are lower than life to try and bring you down.'

The 26-year-old Wallace has not commented since a statement on social media late Sunday in which he said the 'the despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism.'

'As my mother told me today, `They are just trying to scare you,'' he wrote. ' This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.'

Wallace has worn a shirt that says 'I Can't Breathe' over his firesuit and his No. 43 - made famous by Hall of Famer Richard Petty - sported a Black Lives Matter paint scheme in a race last month in Martinsville, Virginia. Wallace previously told AP that NASCAR had assigned him a pair of sheriff's deputies for security at Martinsville after he called for a ban of the flag.

Petty was expected to be at Monday's race to support Wallace. Petty, who turns 83 next month, has not attended any races during the pandemic.

NASCAR driver Michael McDowell shared his anger about the noose on Twitter

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (pictured with the state seal, which includes the Confederate flag) said she was 'shocked and appalled' by the 'vile act' against Wallace, an Alabama native: 'There is no place for this disgusting display of hatred in our state. Bubba Wallace is one of us; he is a native of Mobile and on behalf of all Alabamians, I apologize to Bubba Wallace as well as to his family and friends for the hurt this has caused and regret the mark this leaves on our state.'

Black Lives Matter supporters await the arrival of the Confederate Flag caravan on Sunday

Wallace said he has found support among fellow drivers for his stance on the flag. He noted that in his tweet after the noose announcement.

'Over the last several weeks, I have been overwhelmed by the support from people across the NASCAR industry including other drivers and team members in the garage,' he said. 'Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate.'

Five years ago, former NASCAR chairman Brian France tried to ban flying the flags at tracks, a proposal that was not enforced and largely ignored.

While the Confederate flag remains a symbol of pride to some, its history is inextricably linked with slavery and the racist motivations behind the secession of the Southern States in 1860. As Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stevens (pictured) infamously said at the onset of the Civil War: 'Our new [government's] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man'

This year was different and it was Wallace who led the charge. Wallace, whose father is white, was not always outspoken about racism; even after Floyd was killed last month, he was not the first driver to speak out for racial equality. He has said he began to find his public voice on racism after watching video in May of Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting in Georgia. He said he now recognizes he must not let his platform as a prominent driver go to waste.

Talladega is one of the more raucous stops on the NASCAR schedule, but the pandemic prompted the series, like all sports, to ban or sharply limit fans for months. With only 5,000 fans allowed in, the scene this week was a dramatic departure from the Talladega norm with plenty of room for social distancing and fans asked to wear masks.

Fans were not granted access to the infield or the restricted area of the Cup Series garage. Under strict new health guidelines, a very limited number of people can access the garage where the cars are kept. That would include crew members for each of the 40 teams, NASCAR employees, Talladega staff members and any contracted safety crews or security guards.

Drivers are not even permitted to enter the garage, instead going directly from their motorhomes to the race cars to drive. They were never called to the cars Sunday because of rain.

Truck Series driver Ray Ciccarelli wrote on his Facebook page following NASCAR's decision that he plans to retire at season's end.

'I don't believe in kneeling during Anthem nor taken (sic) ppl right to fly what ever (sic) flag they love. I could care less about the Confederate Flag but there are ppl that do and it doesn't make them a racist all you are doing is [expletive] one group to cater to another.

'I ain't spend the money we are to participate in any political BS!!'

The 50-year-old Ciccarelli is described as a part-time owner/driver on the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series, which is a few rungs below the NASCAR Cup Series on the stock car hierarchy.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to pull American troops from South Korea if Seoul did not pay US$5 billion under a defense cost-sharing deal, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in his memoir.



In "The Room Where It Happened," set to be published Tuesday, Bolton recalled an Afghanistan-related meeting that took place last August ahead of the start of Special Measures Agreement negotiations between South Korea and the United States.



"Get out of there if we don't get the five billion-dollar deal (for South Korean support of U.S. bases)," Trump was quoted as saying. "We lose $38 billion in trade in Korea. Let's get out."



Trump's initial demand for $5 billion has been widely reported as the two countries remain deadlocked over how much Seoul should pay for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops stationed on the peninsula.



Trump's recent decision to reduce troop levels in Germany has led to speculation he may do something similar in South Korea.



At the meeting, Trump also called the "war games" with South Korea a "big mistake," referring to the allies' combined military exercises.



"You shouldn't have let them go on," Bolton quoted Trump as telling him. "I'm trying to make peace with a psycho," he added of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.



The military exercises have long angered Pyongyang, which views them as dress rehearsals for an invasion of the regime.













After his first meeting with Kim in Singapore in June 2018, Trump announced that he was scaling back some of the exercises to facilitate denuclearization negotiations with the North.



After asking at the meeting when the August exercises were scheduled to end, he said, "End them in two days; don't extend them even for a day," Bolton wrote.



At a separate meeting after Bolton returned from a trip to Japan and South Korea in July, Trump repeated the threat.



"(H)e said, as he did more and more frequently, that the way to get the $8 and $5 billion annual payments, respectively, was to threaten to withdraw all U.S. forces," Bolton wrote. "'That puts you in a very strong bargaining position,' said Trump."



Trump again demanded more money after hearing more about North Korea's most recent missile launches.



"This is a good time to be asking for the money," he was quoted as saying. "John got it to one billion dollars this year. You'll get the five billion dollars because of the missiles."



In a phone call with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the latter's trip to Pyongyang in July 2018, Trump made his disdain for the U.S. troop presence clear.



"We're going to end being chumps," Bolton quoted him as saying.



"Trump was off riffing that he didn't understand why we had fought the Korean War and why we still had so many troops on the Peninsula, not to mention those war games," he added. (Yonhap)
Democrats in central and Southside Virginia are choosing a nominee for an open congressional seat that the party thinks it could win for the first time in more than a decade.

Republicans last week ousted freshman Rep. Denver Riggleman in favor of Bob Good, who calls himself a "biblical conservative," to the delight of Democrats surveying their field of well-funded hopefuls competing in Tuesday's primary.

"I think everybody sort of breathed a sigh of relief and said, 'Bring it.' Bob Good really does not reflect the view of voters in this district," said Suzanne Long, chairwoman of the 5th District Democratic committee.

Four Democrats are on the ballot in the primary, which is being conducted mostly by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic but also has in-person voting from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday.

They are R.D. Huffstetler, a Marine veteran and former congressional chief of staff with Silicon Valley experience; John Lesinski, a retired Marine Corps colonel and former elected official in Rappahannock County who works in commercial real estate; Claire Russo, a former Marine intelligence officer and advocate for victims of military sexual assault; and Cameron Webb, a physician, former White House fellow and health policy researcher.

Applications for absentee ballots were due June 16, and in-person absentee voting was allowed through Saturday.

Huffstetler had the most cash on hand by the start of June, with $286,811, followed by Russo with $201,530, Webb with $139,661 and Lesinski with $36,078, reports show.

Good's campaign consultant, Chris Shores, declined to distinguish among the Democrats.

"No matter who they nominate, there is no doubt that they will adopt the radical agenda of the left - supporting restrictions on our gun rights, defunding police departments, weakening our individual rights and liberties, expanding government, and adopting extreme climate policies that will cripple our economy," Shores said in a statement.

It's unclear whether Republicans will coalesce around Good, who won 58% of the 2,500 votes in a drive-through convention, a tiny percentage of the number who will cast ballots in November. Good opposes abortion without exception, supports eliminating birthright citizenship and embraces a hard-line immigration policy that he says puts "Americans first."

Two independent analysts - the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which is based in the 5th District, and Cook Political Report - shifted the race from "likely Republican" to "leans Republican" immediately after Good's nomination.

Good's relatively weak fundraising - he had $34,000 cash on hand at the end of May - as well as his failure to file a state elections form on time and his untested performance in a general election contributed to the change, said J. Miles Coleman, an analyst at the Center for Politics.

However, Coleman said, 5th District voters are open to conservative, populist candidates, from President Donald Trump to Corey Stewart, the state party's bombastic 2018 Senate nominee. The sprawling district includes deep-blue Charlottesville as well as reliably red areas from Southside Virginia to the North Carolina border.

"Culturally, it's probably the most Deep South part of Virginia," Coleman said, "You could see some elements of a perfect storm helping Democrats here, but at the end of the day it's still a district that voted for Corey Stewart by 2 points."

Here are sketches of the top three Democratic contenders:

---

Huffstetler, 42, is running as an entrepreneur who says his rural upbringing and family ties to the region help him relate to voters. He lost the party's 2018 nomination to Leslie Cockburn in a party-run convention.

"I have unimpeachable credentials in a rural community, and I want to get that message out so we can go win this district," he said in an interview, adding: "Nobody's going to out-redneck a Huffstetler. My dad's two brothers are nicknamed Gub and Worm."

The North Carolina native moved to Georgia in the third grade, graduated from the University of West Georgia in 2001 with a degree in chemistry and joined the Marines, where he worked in aviation operations and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.

He used the G.I. bill to earn master's degrees from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School and worked five years at start-ups in the San Francisco Bay area.

After that, he lived in D.C. for a little over a year while he served as chief of staff to Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., whom he met at Harvard. He moved to Virginia in 2016, lives in Charlottesville with his wife and daughter, and is running for office full time.

Huffstetler said many in the district, which he called "a strange mix of Piedmont and college town," can relate to his story of losing his father to an OxyContin overdose. If elected, he would pursue a public health-care option, expanded rural broadband and recruitment of teachers to rural areas through loan forgiveness.

---

Lesinski spent four years on the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors and four years chairing the county school board, according to his website.

He served four years as an active-duty Marine officer and 22 years in the reserves.

The Democrat calls the coronavirus pandemic "a tipping point" for America and says he would focus on health care, the climate crisis, and infrastructure investment, including rural broadband, if elected.

"Safely restarting the economy will be first and foremost in addressing all three issues," Lesinski says on his website. "But as we rebuild and reshape America, we must ensure that new and bold measures provide equal opportunity and justice."

His platform includes supporting a Green New Deal, universal broadband, demilitarizing police and Medicare-for-all.

Since the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, he has joined protests in Charlottesville and issued a statement saying "Black Lives Matter."

"While most police officers are good and decent people who do their jobs and do them well, police brutality is tearing our country apart," the statement says. "People of color are the victims, but it is on all of us, especially white Americans to listen to their experiences in this country, speak up when we see bad behavior, act, and make this injustice stop. It is our patriotic, moral, and ethical duty as Americans."

---

Russo, 40, is a Marine veteran and rape survivor who turned her personal experience into a mission to improve the handling of military sexual assault cases. As a mom and first-time candidate with national security bona fides, she hopes to follow the lead of freshmen Democratic Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria, who flipped red Virginia districts in the 2018 blue wave.

"Over the course of the last few years, politics just felt so personal," Russo said. "I could not stand on the sidelines and watch the abhorrent leadership in the White House dragging this country through the dirt."

Russo was born and raised in Fairfax County before moving to Iowa with her family and graduating from Tulane University. She led a team targeting insurgent networks as an intelligence officer in Iraq and later worked as a civilian with the Army in Afghanistan.

In 2004, she was drugged and raped at the Marine Corps Ball. The military declined to press charges against her assailant, but he was convicted in a civilian court, at the time a landmark ruling.

"I had spent my whole life wanting to be a Marine, and so it was real hard for me to feel like the Marine Corps had failed me and wasn't living up to what they were, in telling me it wasn't a crime to be raped," she said.

Russo became a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs fellow studying the role of women in combat and conflicts. She and her husband, an Army Special Forces officer, moved to a home on the line between Albemarle and Greene counties in 2007. They have three children.

She has been endorsed by Emily's List, which backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion access; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and four congresswomen, including Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.

---

Webb, who turns 37 on Sunday, has built his career around health care and social justice, work that he says prepares him to serve in Congress amid the coronavirus pandemic and outrage over the police killing of George Floyd.

"As an African American man, I know very well that we don't need validators and we don't need someone to empower us, the power already lies with the community," he said. "It's about being one voice of the many."

The Spotsylvania native graduated from University of Virginia, has a law degree from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a medical degree from Wake Forest School of Medicine.

He was awarded a White House fellowship in 2016, during the Obama presidency, working on health care policy and the My Brother's Keeper initiative.

Webb and his wife and two children have lived in Albemarle County for three years. In addition to clinical work and teaching, he is director of Health Policy and Equity at UVA's School of Medicine.

If elected, he said he would work to create a public health-care option that is critical to universal coverage and work on criminal justice reform. The campaign arm of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed him last fall, and Sen. Kamala D. Harris, D-Calif., formally backed him last week.

"In politics, you don't get to pick your moment," Webb said. "The moment we're in just connects so much of my experience and expertise, and that's what made people take notice."
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Canadian hospitals have produced a surprising change in emergency departments: an abrupt end to hallway medicine. Hospital corridors are no longer overflowing with stretchers. Instead, social distancing in waiting areas, virtual emergency department visits, and a clear sight-line along every hallway have become the new normal.

Dr. Andrea Unger, chief of emergency services at Brant Community Health in south-west Ontario, says overcrowding had become the status quo in many emergency departments before the pandemic. "The rules on how many patients we managed in the emergency department were always different from other areas of the hospital," she says.

Delays in discharge, shortages of beds in hospitals and long-term care, and poor access to care in other parts of the health system all contributed to the seemingly intractable problem.

According to Unger, COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for hospital leaders. She insists her department cannot and will not return to pre-COVID levels of crowding. "Now, our overcrowding problem has become a risk to health care workers and the entire population, demanding more accountability; this is a fundamental shift," Unger says.

Emergency departments responded by setting up "hot" and "cold" zones, separating people who may have COVID-19 from those without symptoms. Some converted classrooms and offices into extra examination rooms exclusively for patients with COVID-19.

Dr. Paul Hannam, director of emergency services at North York General in Toronto, says his department went a step further, setting up two separate hot zonesone for patients with mild symptoms and one for more severe cases.

While sicker patients are treated in an isolated area inside the hospital, "patients with mild symptoms never actually come inside the emergency department," Hannam explains. Instead, the hospital converted an ambulance driveway with a high roof into a "mini-field hospital" with eight beds. "We now even do chest X-rays outside," he says.

Beyond setting up temporary spaces to ease crowding, emergency departments are also finding ways to deliver care virtually.

In Brampton, William Osler Health System was already grappling with emergency department gridlock due to an influx of seasonal flu cases when COVID-19 emerged in Canada. According to quality lead Dr. Prashant Halper, his community would be particularly vulnerable if cases of COVID-19 surged because it has just one hospital bed per 1000 patients, below the Canadian average of 1.6.

So Halper and his team accelerated plans to deliver more emergency care remotely. "Virtual care in emergency medicine would have been met with a lot of resistance a year ago," Halper says. "The pandemic made us ask, 'Why not now?'"

At Brampton Civic Hospital, patients who might have stayed a few days in the hospital with kidney or skin infections, asthma complications or COVID-19, now have the option to stay home supported by a virtual health care team. An emergency physician and nurse practitioner check-in daily with these patients by phone and video chat and coordinate in-home nursing, radiology and specialist appointments as needed.

"Daily follow-up ensures the patient is doing well. If their condition changes, we can get them back into the hospital, avoiding the emergency department," Halper says.

Dr. Eddy Lang, head of emergency medicine at the Cummings School of Medicine in Calgary, believes the virtual care options adopted during the pandemic are here to stay, and Canadians may use emergency departments differently in the future. Lang says that broader uptake of virtual care in family medicine and other specialties may also reduce pressure on acute care as patients can access help elsewhere. "Emergency department may not need to be as much of a safety net," he says.

In Alberta, the expansion of a call-center service coordinating contact between long-term care homes and emergency departments was critical to keeping vulnerable patients out of the hospital, Lang adds. Known as RAAPID, community physicians can call the service for advice when their patients need a higher level of care than they can provide. The service offers information on where beds are available and sends palliative care, and nursing supports to long-term care homes as required. In many cases, a single call may prevent unnecessary hospitalization, says Lang. He credits RAAPID with reducing the spread of COVID-19 between institutions and says the expanded service will continue for the foreseeable future.

As provinces reopen and patient volumes return to normal, Hannam says emergency departments must be vigilant and flexible to prevent a return to hallway medicine. "We know what crowding feels like with too many inpatients, sick patients in hallways, a full waiting room, and how uncomfortable that is. I can only hope the pandemic reinforces that crowding makes all of us vulnerable," he says.

Explore further Use of emergency departments plummets during COVID-19
Local officials say at least 19 people killed in the eastern part of country in two separate attacks by ADF fighters.

At least 19 civilians have been killed in the restive eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo at the weekend in attacks blamed on a notorious armed group, local officials said.

Nine people were kidnapped on Friday by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), and their bodies were found in the province of North Kivu, which borders Rwanda, regional administrator Donat Kibwana said on Sunday, adding that their burials were under way.

In the neighbouring Ituri region, ADF fighters attacked the village of Bukaka late on Saturday and killed 10 civilians, local official Bananilao Tchabi told AFP news agency.

Civil society leader Raphael Bon Benogo said the victims were five men, three women and two children. Some were killed with machetes and others with firearms, he said.

The ADF has been blamed for killing about 500 people since last year in retaliation for an army crackdown on their bases in the forests around the Beni region.

In another incident on Saturday in Fizi, in South Kivu province, gunmen from a coalition of armed groups attacked an army unit, killing two soldiers, a local army spokesman said.

Dozens of armed groups operate in eastern DRC, a legacy of the two Congo wars in the 1990s that pulled in neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda.

The army last year launched a campaign against the ADF after the group was blamed for dozens of attacks in the region, which also struggles with inter-ethnic fighting.

The ADF originated in neighbouring Uganda in the 1990s, opposed to the rule of long-serving Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

In 1995, it moved into the DRC, which became its base of operations, although it has not carried out attacks inside Uganda for years.
GRG Health and L.E.K Consulting Limited came together and conducted a survey on - COVID19 revealing - sentiments of hospitals in the Asia Pacific region concerning the pandemic and what is on the other side once this battle is won.

Of the respondents to the survey, a little over 70% stated their biggest concern was the lack of supply of personal protective equipment for staff. Nearly 70% of respondents in South East Asia, Japan and Australia, and China expressed such sentiment. The second most significant concern expressed was the shortage of non-COVID-19 medical supplies to treat patients. Nearly 40% of hospitals in South East Asia and India expressed this concern. 20% of Indian hospitals expressed the fears that they faced a shortage of staff. The survey also showed that the number of essential procedures in India, in 67% of hospitals, remained unchanged from the time before the pandemic. 33% of Indian hospitals revealed that critical operations were being conducted at lower volumes. Concerning non-essential services in India, 40% of respondents said they were being conducted with no change from before the pandemic; 53% said they were being done in lower numbers; 7% said they were not being undertaken. The survey found that the morale of healthcare workers was very high in India.

The study also revealed that in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, 45%, 25%, 23%, and 20% of hospitals respectively expect to increase their reliance on tele-health.

When respondents were asked about how the pandemic will impact their use of telemedicine; nearly 80% of the respondents in India said they anticipate that tele-health will be used more often in the future. 20% of respondents said their use of telehealth will be unchanged from current levels. When asked what actions respondents would take to increase the usage of telemedicine, 61% stated they would invest in patient education to make them more aware of telehealth solutions.56% expected to partner with telehealth solutions providers; 53% stated they would invest in physician education and provide incentives to doctors to become more familiar with telehealth solutions. 39% of respondents said they would invest in enabling infrastructure while 34% said they would invest in telehealth solutions for their hospital.

Speaking about the results of the study Mr Manan Sethi, Partner & Associate Director, GRG Health said The survey on COVID-19 has highlighted that there is a movement afoot to adopt telemedicine. In India, according to the survey, 80% of hospitals are considering adopting telemedicine. In a vast country like India, it is a cure-all to much of the country's healthcare shortcomings. The survey has put its finger on the pulse of the healthcare industry by identifying that healthcare workers see telehealth as a viable means of providing healthcare to the masses. The study highlights that once the pandemic passes, there will be increased demand for telehealth in India and abroad.

For this survey, 105 hospitals participated in the survey across the Asia Pacific region. Of these hospitals, 41% were public while the remainder were private. Among the respondents to the survey, 82% were surgeons or clinical staff, while 18% were administrators. Of the hospitals surveyed, 51% had more than 500 beds, 23% had between 251-500 beds, 17% had between 151-250 beds, and 9% had between 101-150 beds. Among the surveyed hospitals, 14% each were in China, India, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Boltons book, The Room Where It Happened, has become the talk of Washington even before its scheduled publication on Tuesday. The Trump administration went to court to try to block its publication, only to be rejected by a federal judge, and the president has been railing about what he considers Boltons betrayal. But the beginning of the book tour means that Trump will be confronted with the portrait laid out in the volume for days or weeks to come.
Growth offset in Q4 by the Covid-19 crisis

Significant reduction of net debt



Significant points 2019-2020

Return to growth (+5%) with a buoyant Printing activity and a rebound in LED display sales.

(+5%) with a buoyant Printing activity and a rebound in LED display sales. EBITDA return to positive at 2.1 million ( 1.3 million excluding application of the IFRS 16 standard - lease agreements).

( excluding application of the IFRS 16 standard - lease agreements). Operating profit affected by non-recurring charges of 1.0 million.

affected by non-recurring charges of 1.0 million. Positive Free cash-flow of 3.0 million for the period reflecting an increase in cash flow and reduction in working capital requirement.

of 3.0 million for the period reflecting an increase in cash flow and reduction in working capital requirement. Net debt-to-equity ratio (excluding IFRS 16) down to 51%.

Annual results (01/04/2019 - 31/03/2020)

On June 15, 2020, the Prismaflex International board closed the accounts for the 2019/2020 period. Statutory auditors performed the audit procedures. Certification reports will be issued once the necessary procedures are finalised prior to publication of the annual financial report.

In M 31.03.20

12 months1

30.03.19

12 months

Variation (M) (audit in progress) Total sales 51.23 48.72 +2.51 EBITDA2 2.10 -0.42 +2.52 Current operating profit -0.86 -1.85 +0.99 Operating profit -1.89 -2.32 +0.43 Financial result excl. foreign exchange -0.24 -0.51 Financial exchanges losses and gains / Other elements -0.17 -0.09 Pre-tax current profit -2.30 -2.92 +0.62 Taxes -0.15 -0.59 Net result -2.45 -3.53 +1.09 Net consolidated result -2.47 -3.25 +0.78 Cash flow 1.55 -0.81 +2.35

1 1st application of IFRS 16 standard as of April 1, 2019, no retrospective change for 2018/2019

2 Current operating profit + net depreciation expense and provisions



Prismaflex International records a significant improvement in results for the 2019-2020 period with a return to growth and positive EBITDA. As announced at the end of March, the objective of seeing current operating profit at breakeven level could not be achieved due to a downturn activity in Q4 (-16.9%) following the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hardware activity at the start of the quarter was affected due to delayed component supplies from Asia. The impact on all other activities then followed.

Total sales for the Group are up 5.2% at 51.2 million (+2.9% at constant scope). Both divisions contributed to this growth.

Total sales for Printing activity stand at 32.3 million, up +3.9%, with scope effect at 1.4 million. Nine months of buoyant activity (+10.4%) however came to an end in Q4. Hardware activity returns to growth (+7.3% at 19.0 million), thanks to strong LED display sales making up for poor Street furniture activity.

Driven by an upturn in activity and reduced operating costs and with the application of the IFRS 16 standard for 0.8 million, EBITDA is noticeably positive at 2.1 million. Excluding IFRS 16, EBITDA stand at 1.3 million compared with -0.3 million the previous year.

After depreciation and provisions, current operating loss is down at - 0.86 million (vs -1.85 million in 2018-2019). The impact of the application of IFRS 16 standard on this indicator is not significant.

Operating profit includes non-recurring charges of 1.0 million, half of which concern an intellectual property dispute in the United States, and half the impairment of goodwill for the Swedish subsidiary (impairment test).

Pre-tax current profit stands at -2.3 million and integrates the cost of gross financial debt (-0.24 million) and a foreign exchange loss of - 0.17 million.

Net consolidated result stands at -2.47 million compared with -3.25 million for the 2018-2019 financial year.

Reduction in net debt

31.03.20 31.03.19 Variation Consolidated equity capital (including minority shareholders) 18.86 21.30 -2.44 M Net debt (excl. IFRS 16) 9.57 12.06 -2.49 M Gearing (Excl. IFRS 16) 51% 57% -6 points



Consolidated equity capital stands at 18.9 million on March 31, 2020. Cash flow from operating activities is significantly up at 4.5 million, reflecting an increase in cash flow and a sharp reduction in working capital requirement (controlled stock management). Investments relating to operations stand at 1.5 million for the period. The resulting free cash flow was used notably to pay down financial debt.

Net debt, including leasing agreements of 1.9 million in line with the IFRS 16 standard stands at 11.5 million (9.6 million excluding IFRS 16 compared with 12.1 million on March 31, 2019). Gearing ratio is at 0.61 (0.51 before IFRS 16 vs 0.57 in 2019-2018).

Outlook 2020-2021

Q1 2020-2021 (April-June) is affected by the economic slowdown due to the current health crisis. The drop in activity will probably be around 40% compared with Q1 2019-2020 with Printing activity hardest hit due to its business links with the sectors strongly affected by the crisis such as the events, advertising and retail sectors. Online sales however perform well, notably for the Home Decor activity. Hardware activity, specifically for LED displays in Europe is less affected thanks to a large order backlog and continued deliveries to clients.

The Group continues to optimise its costs and staff organisation by adopting measures to facilitate part-time work. Cash-flow has been maintained with loans totalling 2.8 million from its banks (including 1.5 million in French state-backed loans) to anticipate and prepare for the post-crisis period.

Following the relaxing of the lockdown, the Group is gradually increasing its activity in an uncertain economic context with little movement from the order issuers. However, the Printing Division has recently signed an exclusive multi-year agreement to supply a key player on the Canadian e-commerce sector with home decor products for the North American market.

An update will be published with the 1st quarter 2020-2021 sales figures on July 23, 2020.



Forthcoming dates

Press release: 1st quarter 2020-2021 sales figures, July 23, 2020 after closure

PRISMAFLEX INTERNATIONAL

OUTDOOR ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS MANUFACTURER AND WIDE FORMAT DIGITAL PRINTING

ISIN: FR0004044600-ALPRI - Reuters: ALPRI.PA - Bloomberg: ALPRI.FP

EURONEXT GROWTHTM

www.prismaflex.com



Contacts :

Florence Therond - CFO - Phone: +33 (0)4 74 70 68 00 - finance@prismaflex.com

Guillaume Le Floch - Analysts/investors/press contacts - +33 (0)1 53 67 36 70 - glefloch@actus.fr

Marie-Claude Triquet - Press relations - Phone: +33 (0)4 72 18 04 93 - mctriquet@actus.fr

------------------------

This publication embed "Actusnews SECURITY MASTER ".

- SECURITY MASTER Key:

lm6eaZZpl2mbx59yYphpaGFja2uUkmmYbpOXxZSZl8udbJpoymxjbcedZm9knmlt

- Check this key: https://www.security-master-key.com.

------------------------



 Copyright Actusnews Wire

Receive by email the next press releases of the company by registering on www.actusnews.com, it's free

Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-63947-pri-220620-ra-1920-gb.pdf
Fugitive Ghislaine Maxwell is reportedly hiding out in a luxury flat close to billionaire Jeffrey Epsteins 7million Paris apartment.

The socialite has apparently escaped to her native France as the FBI continues to investigate links between her and convicted paedophile Epstein, as reported by The Sun.

Maxwell has rarely been seen in public since 2016 and rumours have circulated frequently since then on her whereabouts.

She is now understood to have moved into a flat on on Avenue Matignon, in Pariss 8th Arrondissement, a wealthy part of the city dotted with upmarket retail shops.
In a letter addressed to Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustees, celebrated Hamilton author Lawrence Hill called on the board to abolish its controversial Police Liaison program.

Were looking for action  for real, meaningful change, not just platitudes, Hill told The Spectator. And heres an opportunity to do something quite easy, which is to abolish this policing program in schools.

The letter, dated June 19, expresses support for community groups that have been calling on the board to get police out of Hamilton schools.

I ask you to show true leadership, and to listen to your communities. I ask you to pay attention to the protests that have arisen across Canada and around the world in recent weeks to oppose anti-Black violence, the letter reads.

At its board meeting Monday, the HWDSB will review calls to eliminate the program, as well as a motion submitted by Christine Bingham, trustee for wards 1 and 2, to replace a previous decision to review the program with an amended version that includes a clause to pause the program while it is under review.

At a June 8 board meeting, trustees voted to review the current Police Liaison program, and that a report be provided to the board by October of this year. An amended motion to suspend the program until the review is complete failed.

HWDSB Kids and other groups have been calling on HWDSB to eliminate, not review, the program.

Reviewing would be a pretext and excuse for, once again, doing nothing, Hill said. We feel very strongly in the Black community that the presence of police in the schools is harmful and detrimental and dangerous to Black and Indigenous and other marginalized communities.

At a June 8 board meeting, some trustees raised concerns from parents that police in schools make their children feel more safe.

Although many Canadians sort of imagine that the presence of police in schools is reassuring and safe and makes us all feel better, thats the opposite of what many Black, Indigenous, queer and other marginalized community people, including myself, feel, Hill said.

Hill said the Black community feels its dangerous and unhealthy for children to have regular exposure to police in schools.

We feel it feeds into this thing that has been called the school-to-prison pipeline, he said. It feeds into the criminalization of black youth and their overrepresentation in jails across the country.

Hill, who has been writing about race and racism for decades, said he has often been invited to speak to students in public schools, including HWDSB.

But this is the first time Ive written to the school board, he said. Why? Because I feel its really important to listen to the voices of the community.
Photos of Civil Rights marchers facing Alabama state troopers  during what is known as Bloody Sunday  on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965 dont look too different from photos of recent protests over police brutality, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. The clothes are a bit different: the troopers wear some riot gear, and many of the protestors wear suits and ties. But the police carry clubs and tear gas, and the protestors are unarmed. Leading the protestors was John Lewis. He was one of the first people hit  clubbed on the back of his head by police.

I thought I was going to die on that bridge, Lewis recalls thinking at the time in director Dawn Porters documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble.

The film is a celebration of Lewis legendary career, going from working for equality and voting rights for black people to serving in Congress for more than three decades and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. But Porter shows that the struggle to overcome racism never ended, and recent elections and events give the film a sense of suspense. Porter focuses heavily on Lewis' leadership in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and on the midterm elections of 2018.

Lewis was born to sharecropping parents in Alabama in 1940. As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a minister, and he shares a story about practicing preaching to chickens in the yard. Hes obviously told the story many times, because his staffers goad him into retelling it and laugh when he reaches his regular punchline about the chickens being better listeners then some people in Washington, D.C.

Lewis went to the American Baptist Theological Seminary, where he was drawn to the philosophy of nonviolence. He soon became a civil rights leader, participating in many protests and getting arrested more than 40 times, he says in the film.

He says that Getting in trouble  good trouble is the answer to injustice.

Lewis is the sole surviving speaker from the March on Washington. He also was among a group of Freedom Riders who were beaten by a white mob when their bus arrived in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The movement eventually succeeded and was crowned with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

After serving in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Lewis won a seat on the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he prevailed in a bitter election battle with fellow civil rights activist Julian Bond for Georgias Fifth District, and still holds the seat.

Porter also focuses on the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, which rolled back protections for minority voting, and likely impacted the 2018 results explored in the film.

+2 MaCCNO director Ethan Ellestad on the cultural community's needs during the pandemic In April, The Music & Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MaCCNO) began to distribute relief grants to musicians, artists and culture bearer

Lewis is charismatic, both in file footage from the 1960s and in recent interviews. At 78 (in the film), he seems to still have the skills to lead a grassroots movement and be a force in Congress.

There is footage of several ceremonial marches across the bridge, featuring presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama. Its a landmark of the civil rights movement. Its not mentioned in the film, but the Pettus bridge was named for a man who served as a Confederate general, a U.S. senator and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Last week, a petition circulated to rename the bridge for Lewis.
A mild earthquake of magnitude 3.6 on the Richter scale occurred 122 km east-north east of Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh at 4:40 PM on Monday, according to the National Centre for Seismology website.

News agency ANI, however, said the quake occurred in Kasipur area of Odishas Rayagada district.

It was the second instance of an earthquake in India in around 12 hours and the third since Sunday.

Mizoram was hit by two earthquakes, both over 5.0 on the Richter Scale, between Sunday afternoon and early morning on Monday.

A 5.5 magnitude earthquake had occurred 27 km south-southwest of Champhai in Mizoram at 4:10 am on Monday morning. Another earthquake of 5.1 magnitude had occurred 25 km east-northeast of Aizawl at 4:16 pm on Sunday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga on Monday morning and assured all possible support to the state.

Spoke to the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Zoramthanga Ji on the situation in the wake of the earthquake there. Assured all possible support from the Centre, PM Modi tweeted.

Spoke to the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Shri @ZoramthangaCM Ji on the situation in the wake of the earthquake there. Assured all possible support from the Centre.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 22, 2020

Union home minister Amit Shah, too, tweeted that he had spoken to the CM.

The northeastern state had also recorded an earthquake of magnitude 5.0 on June 18, 98km southeast of Champhai.
Nextdoor has shut down a feature that allowed users to forward their posts directly to the police.

In a blog post, the company said that it has made the decision as part of our anti-racism work and our efforts to make Nextdoor a place where all neighbors feel welcome.

After speaking with members and public agency partners, it is clear that the Forward to Police feature does not meet the needs of our members and only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies chose to use the tool, the blog continues.

The feature was introduced in 2016 so users could report issues to police departments without the company having to implement ways for law enforcement to monitor every community.

It comes at a time when Nextdoor has been apparently censoring posts about racial issues. Users say that there were zero posts referencing the Black Lives Matter, and upon creating them they promptly disappeared.

Recommended Microsoft employees ask CEO to support Black Lives Matter movement

According to Bloomberg, Nextdoor emailed the Minneapolis Police Department on 12 June to inform law enforcement that it would be discontinuing the feature as a heads-up, with Nextdoor informing the rest of the police departments it works with on 15 June.

The letter was sent by Joseph Porcelli, Nextdoors global public agency lead, to Police Department spokesperson John Elder.

Minneapolis Police Department officers are those facing charges for the death of George Floyd, which has sparked protests in the US and UK.

The email suggests that shutting down the feature had been deliberated on for a while.

Over the past few months, we have been evaluating some of our public agency platform capabilities, and we have made the decision to remove the Forward to Police feature, Porcellis email reportedly read.

Our decision was made after looking into member engagement metrics and speaking directly to many of our members and partners who are currently using the feature, those who used it for a short period of time and turned it off, and those who have never turned it on.

Elder said he did not know why Porcelli had sent the email to him, and did not recall seeing it. Porcelli did not respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg.

Nextdoors CEO Sarah Friar, like executives from other technology companies, posted a statement about the Black Lives Matter movement.

On 11 June, Friar said she was heartbroken for those experiencing loss and grief right now.

Systemic racism in our nation will not be solved overnight. Neighborhoods, we believe, must be part of the solution. Nextdoor connects neighbors, creating dialogues with people you may not have otherwise known. These conversations can spark understanding  and drive change it continued.

The post did not mention police brutality, a central criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement, or Nextdoors relationship with law enforcement.
The National Association of Realtors will issue existing home sales for May at 10:00 a.m. ET, with consensus forecasts predicting an 8.8% decline following a 17.8% tumble in April.

Stock futures were relatively steady as concerns about rising coronavirus cases tempered Wall Street's enthusiasm. The major averages themselves are off in different directions: the Dow is on a three-day losing streak, the S&P 500 is down in two of the past three sessions, but the Nasdaq is riding a six-day winning streak. If the Nasdaq finishes positive, it would be its longest consecutive rise since increasing for 11-straight days last December. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all ended the week higher last week, and all are up for the month of June. * Treasury yields retreat as coronavirus cases spike (CNBC)

Cases of the coronavirus continue to rise in states across the South, West and Midwest following the reopening of their economies. New cases in the U.S. eclipsed 30,000 on Friday and Saturday, the highest daily totals since May 1, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Increased testing contributes to some of the increases, but health officials are also warning that outbreaks are appearing among younger people who have returned to crowded bars and parties. (CNBC)



* South Korea says it is battling 'second wave' of coronavirus (Reuters)

New York City enters the second phase of its coronavirus reopening today, a milestone for the city after it was hit hard by the Covid-19 outbreak. Restaurants can begin offering outdoor dining, retail stores can offer some on-premise shopping and companies can send workers back to the office. Barbershops and hair salons can reopen, with restrictions, as well. (AP)

American Airlines (AAL) announced it will seek $3.5 billion in new financing as the coronavirus pandemic continues to challenge the travel industry. Shares of the Fort Worth, Texas-based company were down about 8% in premarket trading. American said Sunday it plans to sell $1.5 billion in stock and convertible notes, another $1.5 billion in senior secured notes, and will enter a new $500 million credit facility. (Reuters)

A stand-off over the independence of one of the nations's most important federal prosecutor's offices ended, when Geoffrey Berman agreed to step down on Saturday as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman's office had been investigating Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. Attorney General William Barr said that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton had been chosen to replace Berman. (CNBC)

U.S. banks have seen a record $2 trillion surge in deposits since January, a result of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic and individual decisions to save more money. In April alone, deposits grew by $865 billion, more than the previous record for an entire year. (CNBC)

NASCAR has opened an investigation into a noose that was found in the garage stall at Talladega of Bubba Wallace, who is the only full-time Black driver on its top racing circuit. "We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act," NASCAR said in a statement Sunday. Earlier this month, Wallace successfully pushed NASCAR to ban Confederate flags at its races. (AP)



* Cup race at Talladega postponed to Monday because of thunderstorms (NBC Sports)

Outdoor apparel brand Patagonia is pulling its advertising on Facebook until at least the end of July, making it the largest company thus far to join a boycott of the social media giant organized by a civil rights coalition that includes the NAACP. In a series of tweets, Patagonia said its decision was motivated by its belief that Facebook had "failed to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform." (CNN)



* Wirecard shares crash again after payments firm says missing $2 billion likely doesn't exist (CNBC)

Apple's (AAPL) closely watched developers conference kicks off today  but it's gone virtual due to the pandemic. The company is expected to release demo updates to its software for the iPhone and its other products. (Washington Post)
The low turnout at the Trump campaign rally in Tulsa is an ominous sign for the upcoming election. Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager, blamed the media, saying it spooked people with its constant hyping of the damages of the Wuhan virus.

That is undoubtedly true, and accordingly, that disappointing turnout is not a true indication of the support the president has. However, it does show the power the liberal media still has in framing the narrative. Remember, the low turnout was at the rally in Tulsa, which is hardcore Trump country.

We conservatives have to be careful of myopic thinking. To us, Trump seems strong and rational (which to my mind he is), while the Democrats are bound and possessed to drive the country to Crazy Town. We discount polls showing addled Joe Biden with an 8- to 10-point lead as dishonest attempts to sway public opinion, which of course they are. But that is not to say that type of fake news isn't affecting a number of people. Everything and anything that happens between now and Election Day will be spun to make Trump look bad. That cannot be discounted.

Here's an anecdotal example of why I worry. From my readings and listening to commentary from sources I trust, I feel that the dangers of the Wuhan virus are grossly overstated and that the lockdowns were too severe. My health club has been reopened for about a month now, yet attendance is still but a fraction of what it was before the shutdown. I thought club members would come flocking back. They didn't, and that surprised me. I asked a staff member about it, and she replied, "People are still not comfortable in coming back." This tells me I can be severely out of sync with people I associate with regularly. I have to honestly check myself to see whether or not I'm in a conservative echo chamber. I don't think so, but still I wonder: could a similar surprise await me regarding the election, given the incessant media barrage against the president?

This is no time to be complacent. And no discussion about the election can neglect the elephant in the room: Democrat voter fraud. Time and time again, the left has demonstrated that it has no respect for facts or even the law. Voter fraud is especially worrisome now with the move towards mail-in voting. The hope here is that the Republican Party will be taking steps to minimize the fraud and that the number of votes for Trump overwhelm the fraudulent ballots..

The president has three powerful issues to base his campaign on. As Gerald Seib writes in the Wall Street Journal, "celebrate a recovering economy, bash China, and proclaim himself the candidate of law and order." Each of these issues puts Trump on the right side of public opinion. It should be a winning strategy. And it will be, provided the voter fraud can be contained and the media's false narrative can be effectively countered by the president.
Toronto police say a 19-year-old man was pronounced dead in hospital after he was pulled out of the water in the Beaches Sunday night.

Police received reports of someone drowning shortly before 8 p.m. near Hubbard Boulevard and Maclean Avenue, east of Woodbine Beach.

Witnesses told police the man was screaming for help about 30 metres from shore.

The marine unit deployed boats and jet skis before finding the man in the water. He was taken to hospital to hospital with no vital signs.

An investigation is ongoing.

Raneem Alozzi is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @r_alozzi
CHICAGO, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Veltex Corporation -- OTC Markets symbol (VLXC) -- Veltex Corporation ("the Company") announced today the corporation has acquired a large commercial property complex, and its contents, in Fayette County, West Virginia. The property, located in Mount Hope, sits on more than four acres of land. Moreover, the property has a one-story commercial building of approximately 25,000 square feet, which is currently nearly completed as a chemical dependency rehabilitation center. Once completed, this complex will be one of the largest chemical dependency rehabilitation centers in West Virginia.

Terms of the transaction remain confidential; however, the Company did report the property is totally unencumbered and is wholly owned by Veltex Corporation. The Company values the transaction at $5,800,000. The cost basis of the transaction will be following generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). In addition, the Company also reported that it is currently exploring and progressing on other properties in the West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky tri-state areas. Moreover, the Company is involved in active investigations of Chicago, Illinois and surrounding suburbs with the intention of identifying and acquiring other potential rehabilitation properties.

The Company has also retained the prestigious state and federal lobbyist firm, Apex Consulting LLC, of Charleston, West Virginia, in order to achieve its 2020/21 objectives. The Company currently utilizes the lobbying firm to represent its interests in West Virginia. Mr. Thomas Bailey will head the lobby team. Mr. Bailey worked in government relations for Spilman, Thomas and Battle, PLLC and is a state and federal lobbyist. Mr. Bailey is also a veteran of the armed forces with more than 20 years of service and is a Major in the Army Reserves. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and has degrees from Marshall University and the Naval Postgraduate School.

"We are incredibly excited about the direction the company is moving," said Andreas Mauritzson, President and CEO. "We believe we are uniquely positioned to assist in helping solve the chemical dependence problem currently facing West Virginia. These and our other efforts to date provide tremendous value to our shareholders and have become part of a broader plan to move Veltex into the rehabilitation, health, and wellness industries nationally in uniquely advanced and exciting ways." Mr. Mauritzson continued by saying "Our first property will allow us to begin to capitalize on the deep professional knowledge of world-renowned addiction specialist and board member Dr. Harry L. Haroutunian, M.D. and his cutting-edge approach to addiction treatment."

"We are very excited for the purchase of this facility," states R. Preston Roberts, Chairman of the Board of Veltex. "The Company is proud to have this ideal property and complex situated directly in the center of the opioid crises between the state capitol of Charleston and the city of Beckley, West Virginia." Mr. Roberts also indicated "This is a high-quality space in a prime location, perfectly designed for a chemical dependency rehabilitation complex. This purchase and acquisition is consistent with the Company's strategy to develop and quickly become the leading health care provider for chemical dependency in this region. Our management group did an excellent and outstanding job executing the team's ongoing business plan."

Furthermore, the Company is closely following the multi-billion-dollar National Prescription Opiate Litigation. MDL 2804, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. In that mass tort litigation, the Plaintiffs allege that the manufacturers of prescription opioids grossly misrepresented the risks of long-term use of those drugs for persons with chronic pain, and distributors failed to properly monitor suspicious orders of those prescription drugs--all of which contributed to the current opioid epidemic. Moreover, with the costs of the crisis estimated at tens of billions of dollars and with more than 200,000 overdose deaths since the late 1990s, the stakes are immense  even for people who have never heard of this case. What happens with this litigation will largely determine how much money cities and counties nationwide will have to fight the devastating effects of opioid abuse and when they'll get it. Each day, more than 115 Americans tragically lose their lives to opioid overdoses and thousands more struggle with opioid dependency. The growing epidemic crosses virtually all demographics, and with more than half a million related deaths recorded in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015, the crisis has officially been declared a public health emergency.

The Company also has more than $180,000,000 in legal judgements and accumulated interest on its books in favor of Veltex Corporation and against numerous corporations and individuals. Moreover, the Company currently has property liens in effect in California and continues to pursue additional assets under these judgments in favor of Veltex Corporation. Veltex files tax returns in the states California, Illinois, and Utah, in part, to protect these valuable potential tax assets.

As material developments warrant, Veltex Corporation will update shareholders on the immediate future of the company including operational developments, property acquisitions, legal and tax matters. The Company looks forward to creating strategic partnerships and alliances and acquiring real property that will highlight our comparative and competitive advantages in the chemical dependency, rehabilitation, and holding company industry in general.

Veltex Corporation, incorporated in Utah September 17, 1987, is a public holding corporation, which maintains its corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The company's common shares trade OTC Markets under the symbol VLXC.

www.Veltex.com

Safe Harbor Statement

Forward Looking Statement

Safe Harbor Statement Certain of the above statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. This press release includes forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as Veltex or its management "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "foresees," "seeks," "forecasts," "estimates" or other words or phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements herein that describe Veltex's business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions or goals also are forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Any statements made in this press release which are not historical facts contain certain forward-looking statements; as such term is defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, concerning potential developments affecting the business, prospects, financial condition and other aspects of the company to which this release pertains. The actual results of the specific items described in this release, and the company's operations generally, may differ materially from what is projected in such forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based upon the best judgments of management of the company, Veltex, as of the date of this release, significant deviations in magnitude, timing and other factors may result from business risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the company's dependence on third parties, general market and economic conditions, technical factors, the availability of outside capital, receipt of revenues and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the company. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation.

SOURCE Veltex Corporation

Related Links

http://www.veltexcorporation.com


Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Mariette Le Roux and Stuart Williams (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Tue, June 23, 2020 06:15 578 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660c75de 2 World France,Emmanuel-Macron,Libya,Turkey,NATO,politics Free

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday launched a furious attack on Turkey's conduct in Libya, accusing the key NATO member of playing a "dangerous game" that can no longer be tolerated.

In fierce comments likely to rile his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Macron described Turkey's behavior as a telling example of his controversial belief the military alliance was in the throes of brain death.

Ankara supports the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in the conflict against rebel strongman Khalifa Haftar.

France is suspected by analysts of backing Haftar alongside Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, but insists it is neutral in the conflict.

"I believe today that Turkey is playing a dangerous game in Libya and is contravening all the engagements that it made at the Berlin conference" earlier this year on finding peace, Macron said after meeting Tunisian President Kais Saied in Paris.

Ankara's role, said Macron, threatened the interests of Libya, its neighbors, the entire region and also Europe.

Macron's comments came as a pro-government Turkish newspaper reported Turkey has arrested four of its nationals on suspicion of spying on conservative and religious groups for France.

"We will not tolerate today the role that Turkey plays in Libya," added Macron.

In a sign of convergence between Paris and Cairo on the issue, Macron said he could understand the "legitimate concern" of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has warned advances by Turkey-backed forces could prompt an intervention by Egypt.

"I don't want in six months, or one year or two, to see that Libya is in the situation that Syria is in today," said Macron.

Rising tensions

Libya has been torn by violence, drawing in tribal militias, jihadists and mercenaries since the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a Western-backed uprising.

The oil-rich country is split between rival administrations in the east and west, with the conflict recently attracting increasing foreign involvement.

Haftar, a former Kadhafi army commander, has been battling to take the capital Tripoli since last year.

Tensions have risen over the last year between Macron and Erdogan, notably when the French leader said the lack of NATO response to a unilateral Turkish operation in northern Syria showed the alliance was undergoing "brain death".

The Ankara-Paris strains soared further last week when France denounced an "extremely aggressive" intervention by Turkish ships against a French navy vessel participating in a NATO mission in the Mediterranean, a claim Ankara dismissed as "groundless".

Macron described this of fine proof of his concern for NATO.

"I refer you to my statements at the end of last year, on the brain death of NATO, I consider this to be one of the best demonstrations [of this]... when we have two NATO members" in a standoff, he said.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Saturday accused France of "supporting an illegitimate warlord and jeopardizing NATO security."

Turkey has sent Syrian fighters, military advisors and drones in support of the GNA, in a deployment which has changed the course of the conflict, with Haftar's forces enduring a string of defeats.

Macron said he and Saied were urging the belligerent parties to down arms and honor their commitment under the UN to resume peace talks aimed at achieving "security of all, the reunification of Libyan institutions and reconstruction for the benefit of all Libyans."

"It is a difficult path that requires everyone to show proof of responsibility, stop the foreign interference and unilateral actions of those who claim to win new positions in the war," said the French president.
Beijing :

China said on Thursday that it is in touch with India and Pakistan through different channels to bring down tensions, asking them to properly deal with their differences and work jointly to maintain peace and security in the region.

"As for the tension between Pakistan and India, recently Chinese side has been in communication with both sides through different channels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media briefing.

"We hope that Indian and Pakistan can enhance communication and properly deal with difference and work jointly to maintain peace and security of the region," he said replying to questions whether the current tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad in the aftermath of Uri attack figured in the first anti-terrorism dialogue held between China and India here earlier this week.

Asked at what level China is in touch with both countries, Geng said China maintains frequent engagement at different levels with both India and Pakistan.

"China is friendly neighbour to India and Pakistan. China hopes that both the countries could properly deal with their differences dialogue and consultant and improve their bilateral relationship, strengthen cooperation in different fields and work jointly for regional peace and development and stability," he said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the September 19 governorship election in Edo State, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, has appealed to Governor Godwin Obaseki to return to the party.

Mr Ize-Iyamu made the appeal on Monday in Benin while addressing journalists shortly after his emergence as the candidate of the party.

In the partys primaries conducted across the 18 local government areas of the state, Mr Ize-Iyamu, defeated two other aspirants to clinch the APC ticket.

He scored 27,838 votes to beat a former deputy governor of the state, Pius Odubu, and Osaro Obaze, who scored 3,776 and 2,324 votes, respectively to emerge second and third in the primary.

Mr Ize-Iyamu said he deemed it necessary to appeal to the governor to retrace his step to avoid a similar mistake he (Ize-Iyamu) made when he left APC for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014.

While commending the two other aspirants in the primaries, he said he would unite the party.

This is the time to unite all the members of the APC. Sometimes ago, somebody asked me a question; when the problem of APC will end and I told them that every problem has an expiry date.

READ ALSO:

And in my humble opinion the day we complete our primaries, that day the problem will end.

So, I believe that by this process which we have just completed, the party is now on the path of full recovery.

We are going to talk to everybody; we are going to bring everybody back.

 And let me also say that I want to salute my brother, the governor of the state, Mr Godwin Obaseki.

 I will like to appeal to him to return to the party.

In every family we have disagreements, let it not be said that this disagreement pushed him out.

 I made that mistake before and I have come to realise that it was a grievous error and I dont want him as a senior brother to make the same mistake, he said.

He also said it was time to restore peace in the state as the atmosphere had been tense in the past few months.

Mr Ize-Iyamu lauded the delegates for conducting a peaceful primary election in spite of the stringent rules put in place by the state government.

(NAN)
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has reiterated cautionary measures people should undertake while conducting digital transactions. In an advisory released on Monday, the central bank warned people to follow proper safety measures in light of reports suggesting users falling prey to fraudsters in recent days. The RBI advisory comes close on the heels of a government warning about a suspicious phishing attack in the garb of official information on COVID-19.

In its recent advisory RBI said, "In recent days there are reports of users falling prey to fraudsters who are luring them on fictitious pretexts, such as alleged completion of KYC requirements etc. and impersonating identities and websites of banks and payment system operators."

ALSO READ: Alert! Govt warns against large-scale phishing attack from today; may use 'COVID-19' as bait

The central bank further listed precautions that people should follow while carrying out digital transactions. The RBI reiterated that banks and other payment systems operators never ask for sensitive details such as password, PIN, OTP or CVV number.

The RBI asked users not to share their ATM, credit card, debit card or prepaid card details, as well as information like password, PIN, OTP, CVV, UPI-PIN, etc, with anyone. The top bank also asked people to avoid undertaking banking or other financial transactions through public, open or free WiFi networks. It also cautioned not to store important banking data on the mobile, e-mail, or electronic wallets.

ALSO READ: China-sponsored hacker groups could target Indian businesses, media, govt

The advisory from RBI came a day after the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) warned of a large-scale phishing attack against Indian individuals and business, including small, medium and large enterprises, starting Sunday.

The phishing the campaign is expected to use malicious emails under the pretext of local authorities in charge of dispensing government-funded COVID-19 support initiatives. The phishing campaign is designed to impersonate government agencies, department and trade associations who have been tasked to oversee the disbursement of the government financial aid programmes.

"The malicious actors are claiming to have 2 million individuals or citizens email IDs and are planning to send emails with the subject" Free COVID-19 testing for all residents of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad, inciting them to provide personal information," MeitY said in a statement.

ALSO READ: 'Holi', 'Rongali', and 'Pochanchi' -- how investigators zeroed in on BellTroX, Sumit Gupta
Police in northern Vietnam have arrested a suspect for shooting a man who is a notorious gangster himself in a tea shop in broad daylight in the middle of this month.

Officers in Hai Phong said on Monday they had captured Vu Quoc Long, a 49-year-old local, who allegedly shot To Thang Loi, 50, on June 14.

Long was apprehended when he was holed up in Hanoi.

Hai Phong police escorted him to a chrysanthemum tea shop at 15-17 Phan Boi Chau Street in Quang Trung District for crime scene reconstruction on Monday.

Long traveled in a car carrying a fake license plate to the tea shop in Hai Phong, according to the crime scene reconstruction.

He shot Loi, who was drinking tea at the place, with a homemade airgun from the car and swiftly fled the scene.

The tea shop was crowded with customers then.

Loi was badly injured and taken to the 108 Military Central Hospital in Hanoi.

The man survived the wound and is in stable health now.

Hai Phong police probed the shooting and found Long to be the main suspect.

Loi has made a name for himself among the gangsters in Hai Phong, according to a probe by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

In 2008, he was a victim of an acid attack, after which he had to go overseas for a surgery.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
(Tirana/Oslo, 22 June 2020) Statkraft's Moglice hydropower plant in Albania has started commercial operations, delivering its renewable power to the Albanian grid.

Moglice is the largest of the two hydropower plants in the Devoll hydropower project and will generate approximately 450 GWh per year. Together with Banja hydropower plant, Statkraft's hydropower production in the Devoll valley will reach 700 GWh per year, equal to approximately 13% of Albania's total electricity generation.



In addition to the increased renewable power production, the project has contributed to significant developments in the Devoll valley in the form of new infrastructure, livelihood support and social development.

"Finalising the Moglice hydropower plant marks an important milestone for Statkraft's activities in Albania. The country is developing to be the electricity hub of the region, opening up to further opportunities," says Christian Rynning-Tnnesen, CEO of Statkraft.

The power plant was officially opened today, with a site visit by Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama and Minister of Infrastructure and Energy, Belinda Balluku.

Located on the Devoll river in the south-eastern part of Albania, Moglice hydropower plant comprises a 167 meters high asphalt-core rock-filled dam, a 10.7 km long headrace tunnel, an underground powerhouse with two main generators of 91.5 MW each and a 1 MW eco-flow unit at the foot of the dam.

A timelapse video of the Moglice construction is available here.

About Statkraft

Statkraft is a leading company in hydropower internationally and Europe's largest generator of renewable energy. The Group produces hydropower, wind power, solar power, gas-fired power and supplies district heating. Statkraft is a global company in energy market operations. Statkraft has 4,000 employees in 17 countries.

For further information, please contact:

Lars Magnus Gunther, press spokesperson, Statkraft AS

Phone: +47 91 24 16 36

E-mail: lars.gunther@statkraft.com

Attachments
UAE-backed separatists stage 'coup' in Yemen's Socotra: Former official

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 10:17 AM

Yemen's former Saudi-backed government says the militants funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have staged "a full-fledged coup" in the strategic island of Socotra.

Yemen's official news agency quoted an unnamed official of the former government as saying on Saturday that the UAE-backed separatists of the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC) had "carried out a full-fledged coup that undermined state institutions in the province."

The militants launched an attack with various medium and heavy weapons, targeting state institutions and citizens' properties, and stormed Saudi-backed camps and headquarters, the source said.

The official called on the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen to help "stop the mess" and chaos as a result of the offensive.

A local source told Turkey's state-owned Anadolu Agency that the gunmen of the STC had arrested Colonel Abdel-Rahman al-Zafni, the commander of the Saudi air force camp in Socotra, and transferred him to an unknown location.

On Saturday, STC militants took control of Saudi-backed militant camps in Socotra archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage site, according to an unnamed security official.

By day's end the separatists had taken control of most of the province from Saudi-sponsored militants. No casualties were reported, said the official.

Socotra Governor Ramzi Mahrous condemned the separatist attacks and called for the immediate release of the province.

'Saudi-led coalition betrayed Yemenis'

He criticized the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen, saying the impoverished country had been betrayed by those who were expected to support it.

"The archipelago, which was of great historical importance, is in complete chaos," he said.

The people of Socotra will never surrender their land, he said, adding that the province would never welcome criminal militants and their supporters.

The violence in Socotra comes after the UAE-backed separatists declared self-rule in Yemen's south earlier this year and seized control of the city of Aden, sparking fears of fresh chaos in a country already embroiled in five years of conflict.

Last summer, the UAE announced it was ending its role in the conflict. However, observers believe the Persian Gulf Arab country continues to be active through its proxies.

Before its withdrawal, the UAE set up a military base in Socotra, which enjoys a strategic location overlooking a vital international shipping lane.

It also awarded Emirati citizenship to hundreds of residents and has recruited scores of others to help consolidate its grip over the island.

The separatists have long sought southern Yemen to secede.

Recently and after a decision by the UAE to effectively withdraw its forces from Yemen, the group turned its weapons on rival militants loyal to the ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

The infighting has highlighted deepening divisions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two countries that are leading the war on Yemen.

Ties between the two sides have soured over a number of issues, including what the Yemenis view as Abu Dhabi's intention to occupy Socotra Island and gain dominance over major waterways in the region.

The island was part of Yemen's eastern province of Hadhramaut but it was introduced as an independent province in a 2013 presidential decree.

Home to some 60,000 people, Socotra sits at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden. The island has a unique ecosystem and been listed by UNESCO as a world natural heritage site.

There are reports that Hadi leased the islands of Socotra and Abd al-Kuri to the UAE for 99 years before resigning and fleeing the country to Riyadh in 2014.

Supported militarily by the United States, Britain, and other Western countries, Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring Hadi back to power and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The invaders have also enforced an all-out aerial, naval, and land blockade on the impoverished country.

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 at a time when Yemenis are in desperate need of medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition have been hovering over the capital Sana'a and other provinces almost constantly since Monday morning, and have targeted several areas around the capital such as al-Nahdain Mountain, Attan Mountain and the Aviation College.

Earth-shattering airstrike hits Sana'a

On Tuesday, residents of Sana'a were left terrified after the coalition fighter jets struck al-Nahdain Mountain in the middle of the capital, the heaviest airstrikes in years.

On Thursday, Yemen's al-Masirah television said 77 airstrikes had targeted several provinces in Yemen in 24 hours, including Sana'a, Sa'ada, Amran, al-Beidha, Hajjah, Marib and al-Jawf.

One of those airstrikes hit a vehicle in Sa'ada province on Monday, killing 13 civilians including four children, sparking international condemnation.

The attack happened the same day as the Saudi-led coalition, which is primarily made up of Saudi and UAE forces, was removed from the UN's Children and Armed Conflict report's blacklist for the first time in three years.

Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesman of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement, condemned the UN for removing Riyadh from the blacklist, accusing it of being "an accomplice with the killer."

The United Nations knows all too well the pain that the coalition has inflicted on children, and "there is no reason that the UN should remove the aggression from the list of shame", he said.

"The United Nations secretary-general is now responsible for any crime against Yemeni children," he said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Last Nov. 20, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month. It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed, the report said.

That was it. Nothing else has emerged since. Not the date, not who arranged the menu, the venue, the seating, not the full guest list. And not whether some kind of deal got done between two of the most powerful men in the world. The news cycle moved on, and the dinner became one of the unsolved mysteries of American power.

But I was able to pry some of those details loose last week from White House officials along with current and former senior Facebook employees and people they speak to. Most said they would only talk on the condition their names not be used, since the company is not eager to call attention to Mr. Zuckerbergs relationship with the president.

Their accounts painted a picture of an unusual gathering  something in between a high-stakes state dinner between the leaders of uneasily allied superpowers and the awkward rehearsal dinner before a marriage that has both families a little rattled.
Chief executive appointing judges for national security cases based on Basic Law: HK senior counsel

Global Times

By Fan Lingzhi Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 22:35:47

A senior Hong Kong lawyer on Sunday told the Global Times that the newly unveiled draft of the national security law for Hong Kong makes him "reassured" and that it was "strange" that the Hong Kong Bar Association said judges appointed by the chief executive to deal with crimes against national security were "ruled by man" because the appointments are based on the Basic Law.

Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a senior barrister in the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) and former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, told the Global Times that he would have concerns if the national security law could damage Hong Kong's judicial independence, but after seeing the main content of the draft law he felt at ease "especially the relevant provisions for the international covenant on civil, and political rights and international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights which were mentioned in the draft."

The draft law, which was reviewed at the meeting of the 19th Session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee which concluded on Saturday, stipulates that the commissioner's office for national security affairs in Hong Kong and relevant national authorities exercise jurisdiction over a very small number of crimes against national security under special circumstances.

When asked how he understood "a very small number," Tong said he had not received much information so it was difficult to answer, noting that he would like to see clearer and detailed content over the clause.

However, Tong gave examples that could be included in such "very few cases" based on the common understanding of the law. For example, if there is very serious unrest in Hong Kong and the HKSAR government cannot handle it, the chief executive may ask the national office to deal with it. Also, if the suspect is a very important official, it may not be appropriate for a Hong Kong court to handle the case.

In addition, the draft said the chief executive of the HKSAR government shall appoint a number of judges from current or qualified former magistrates, district court judges, judges of the Court of First Instance of the High Court, judges of the Court of Appeal, and judges of the Court of Final Appeal. The judges are responsible for handling crimes that endanger national security.

Tong dismissed an accusation by Anita Yip Hau-ki, vice chairman of the Bar Association, who said these appointments would mean "the rule of man." Tong said Yip's claim is "strange," as the Basic Law stipulates that judges in the HKSAR are appointed by the chief executive on the recommendation of an independent commission composed of local judges and eminent persons from the legal profession and other sectors.

"Hong Kong's general law and some administrative regulations also allow the chief executive to appoint judges to handle special cases, such as major public investigations," said Tong, noting that "whoever is appointed by the chief executive will hear cases independently, it's not the chief executive hearing the cases, so I don't see anything undermining the independence of the judiciary in Hong Kong."

"I don't want to be too critical of them [some people of the association] because I was once the chairman of the association. I just hope professional organizations could speak out from a professional attitude," Tong said.

Senior legal figures should understand Hong Kong's legal system, Tong said, while noting that "given they understand, I wonder why they still made such comments. That made me feels very strange."

According to Hong Kong media on Sunday, the 20th Session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee will be held from June 28 to 30 in Beijing, and the national security legislation is likely to be enacted before July.

Tong said many residents in Hong Kong hope the law can come into effect as soon as possible, and he hopes related authorities can listen to different advice as to how best to make the relevant legislative process.

Tong noted the legislation is urgent as Hong Kong now has no law to deal with cases involving national security, which is not good.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has released an advisory via the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) warning the public of a large-scale phishing attack against businesses. The advisory states that hackers could try and steal personal and financial information under the pretext of local government authorities.

The potential phishing attacks were expected to start on June 21 where cyber attackers are likely to use the email ID ncov2019@gov.in.

"The phishing campaign is expected to use malicious emails under the pretext of local authorities in charge of dispensing government-funded COVID-19 support initiatives. Such emails are designed to drive recipients towards fake websites where they are deceived into downloading malicious files or entering personal and financial information," CERT-IN said in a statement.

The CERT advisory further states that the attackers are claiming to have over 20 lakh email IDs and are planning to send spam emails with the subject free COVID-19 for all residents of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad, inciting them to provide personal information.

Also Read: Here's how to spot a phishing attack online

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

It is advised that users should take precautionary measures and avoid being a victim to phishing attacks. The basic preventive measures include not opening attachments or a URL in unsolicited emails, encrypting sensitive documents stored on internet-connected devices, using anti-virus tools, firewalls, and filtering services.

The CERT has also stated that any unusual activity or attack should be reported immediately at incident@cert-in.org.in with relevant logs and email headers for analysis of the attack and taking appropriate actions.

Want to know more about phishing and other types of cybersecurity attacks? Click here
A 53-year-old man is starting a two-year jail term for a robbery he carried out while armed with a piece of plastic which the victims believed was a shard of glass.

Det. Garda Mick Dolan testified at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the robbery occurred last October 30 when the accused man entered Hickeys pharmacy on Gurranabraher Road.

Three people were present in the premises before OShaughnessy arrived  two members of staff and a customer.

OShaughnessy reached over the counter and grabbed approximately 500 from the till. He waved what appeared to be a shard of glass at the customer and staff putting them in fear before he left the shop, Det. Garda Dolan said.

What the staff and customer believed was glass turned out to have been a piece of toughened plastic cut from a container.

Peter OFlynn defence barrister said the 53-year-old defendant was very remorseful for carrying out the robbery at the pharmacy last October.

Mr OFlynn BL asked for leniency and emphasised the medical challenges faced by the accused at this time in his life.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain said at the sentencing: This man was well known in the shop. He was in possession of what looked like a shard of glass but was in fact hardened plastic. He has a long history of previous convictions.

The judge said he was told of the remorse that the defendant had for his actions but he was not told of any compensation being offered by OShaughnessy for the robbery and that the pharmacy was still at the loss of the 500.

The judge imposed a sentence of two years imprisonment.

Judge O Donnabhain refused an application to suspend any portion of the sentence.

Noel OShaughnessy of Farranferris Park, Farranree, Cork, pleaded guilty to the charge that on October 30 2019 he carried out a robbery at Hickeys pharmacy, Gurranabraher Road, Cork.
Many people claim that Tesla's Autopilot system that's in their vehicles in one of the greatest innovations in the automotive industry. But a court in Germany disagrees, where they think that the term Autopilot is a misleading one.

The German news outlet Spiegel reported that the odds of Tesla winning the court case, which has Germany's competition commission suing Tesla over the alleged misleading advertising of the term Autopilot, aren't good after the commencement of the case hearing recently.

The court case's presiding judge Isolde Hannamann has stated that the law against unfair competition has rather strict standards.

The Wettbewerbszentrale, or the German Center for Protection against Unfair Competition, sued Tesla for claiming that its collection of systems that make up their Autopilot system what they claim it to be is misleading people.

What Is Tesla's Autopilot System?

The Autopilot system in Tesla vehicles is a combination of multiple technologies such as automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, and lane centering. The electric car company has been adding new features to its Autopilot system. Over the past year, they have made it so that their vehicles can drive automatically efficiently in urban areas.

When all these automated driver assistance systems work together, it seems as if the vehicle is driving itself or on "autopilot." But the driver still needs to be paying attention while these are going on with their hands on the steering wheel and aware of their surroundings and such. In Germany, there aren't any laws or rules that permit people to take their eyes and hands off self-driving vehicles.

Lawyers of Tesla have stated that Tesla vehicles fulfill the promises that have been made and that the vehicles are constantly reminding people to stay focused on the vehicle. Tesla's CEO Elon Musk is confident in the Autopilot system's hands-off capabilities even if it's illegal to do so when in public.

Read Also: Tesla Rival Nikola's Debut Truck Isn't As Great As Milton Said It Was Supposed To Be

Tesla Has A Past With Germany

Tesla isn't a stranger to being brought up in regards to the marketing of their Autopilot technology in Germany.

A few years ago in 2016, the Federal Motor Transport Authority, or KBA, in Germany told Tesla that they had to stop saying Autopilot while stating similar concerns to what the latest court case is being fueled by. The KBA stated that using the term Autopilot is misleading customers into thinking they didn't have to stay focused while driving and that the Autopilot completely controlled every one of the car's moves.

As of this moment, the court case is ongoing in the district court of Munich and according to the report from Spiegel, the court seems to be siding with the competition commission. The outcome of the case is expected to be announced on July 14.

Read Also: Tax Documents Confirm Tesla's Cybertruck Factory Sites Would Be In Texas and Oklahoma: Here's What the Filing Says
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald has said there was some truth in the old unionist slogan "Home Rule means Rome Rule".

The Dublin TD - who is convinced she will one day become Taoiseach - made the admission during a wide-ranging and at times deeply personal interview for Human Nature, a new podcast by award-winning Fermanagh journalist Rodney Edwards.

Speaking of her school days and being taught by nuns in 1970s Ireland, Ms McDonald said she felt that "the Ireland I grew up in was a cold house for women in many, many ways. And I rejected that as soon as I could understand it".

And while aware of Northern Ireland being what she called "a cold house for Catholics", she added: "There was merit when our unionist friends feared and said that 'Home Rule was Rome Rule'.

"But we have to say that out loud, because that did nobody any favours, and I say that as Catholic, and I know lots of people who are Catholics do recognise that that was wrong - and it actually damaged everyone, and I think it damaged the Church too."

In the interview she spoke not only about politics and her hopes for high office, but also about her personal and family life, and the events both personal and political that shaped her outlook.

Ms McDonald talked at length about her upbringing and background, including the impact her parents' separation had on her formative years and about her own marriage and children.

At the end of this month she will have been married to her husband Martin Lanigan for 24 years.

The couple met in a Dublin city centre pub, introduced by mutual friends.

"I met Martin in a pub called Peter's Pub. It's a tiny wee pub, and actually it was at the time of the Italia 90 and there was a match on. I can't remember who we were playing, we were playing someone and I came across him in a state of high dudgeon shouting at the referee, you know this 'referee', you know what I mean.

"So, actually I said jeepers, that guy's going to actually do himself physical damage screaming like that at the telly.

"We just clicked immediately. I liked him from the very, very off, he was very different to lots of the lads I would've grown up with. He was from the North side, he was a bit older. So, it just worked, we just work together."

They have two children and Ms McDonald described a home filled with fun and laughter. "One of my kids is just an amazing mimic and has like just the craziest sense of humour and comes out with mad stuff, like he would ring me on my phone and leave messages in all sorts of different accents and voices.

"Actually, he answered the phone to Michelle O'Neill the other night and answered her in an Asian accent. 'Hello lovely lady', he called her, so she hung up and then she rang me back after it and said 'I rang you and somebody that I didn't recognise answered'. It was my son.

"He does a good Northern accent, he mimics some of my colleagues.

"He did a great one of Martina Anderson. She said: 'That's a rat'. I said: 'I know, but he's my rat'.

"So, we laugh a lot and laugh until we cry. In fairness, I've never any shortage of laughter."

The Sinn Fein president, who has recently recovered from a bout of Covid-19, revealed that she had not been able to see her mother for nine weeks.

"She's in great health, thank God, like. We're very, very lucky and she's very independent and all of that," she said.

"But still it's hard for all of us sort of when that kind of distance is enforced and the only safe thing to do with your parents or your grandparents is actually to stay at a distance."

Asked what was the most mischievous thing she did while growing up, Ms McDonald told a story about how she had upset her mother by chopping off her hair.

"When I was about five or maybe six I cut my own hair.

"I'd lovely hair, I gave myself a fringe, which I thought was wonderful, and my mother I remember my mother having an absolute fit."

"I had literally butchered my hair," she said.

Turning to political affairs, Ms McDonald said she was confident of one day becoming Ireland's premier.

"I don't say that in a vain way, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back.

"I think the time is right now for a woman to lead government here. Obviously, we have broken that glass ceiling in the North and I think similarly it's time here in the South."

Asked for her view of another female leader - the DUP's Arlene Foster - Ms McDonald said: "I like the fact that she stands up for herself, I actually like that.

"I find Arlene a really, really interesting character. I like her.

"She's a leader in political life, and I know as a woman, you know, you earn your place, let me put it to you that way.

"So, I respect that immensely. She's a mother of children, so she faces all of the issues that... no more than myself, so I like all of those things about her, actually.

"I like that she's from Fermanagh, and that she's very connected with her place and very proud of where she comes from.

"I like that."

The full Human Nature podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and at impartialreporter.com
Field officers can order firing under 'extraordinary circumstances'; China informed about the change in rules

The Indian Army has changed its rules of engagement on the Line of Actual Control

with China, which will allow field commanders to order troops to use firearms under "extraordinary" circumstances. This follows the violent clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers on June 15, when 20 soldiers, including 16 Bihars commanding

officer Col. Santosh Babu, were killed.

Sources said the Chinese were informed about the change in the rules of engagement and that India will respond forcefully to any violence. Earlier, under the 1996 India-China agreement, Army and ITBP jawans did not carry loaded guns during patrolling and gun barrels were pointed downwards. Now commanders can use any weapon as they see fit during any aggression by Chinese troops.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday met CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat and the Army,

Air Force and Navy chiefs to review situation along the LAC as the situation in Ladakh remained tense. Hardening its stance, India has given its armed forces deployed at the LAC full freedom, said sources. The armed forces have been asked to maintain strict vigil on all Chinese activities around the land border, airspace and in strategic sea lanes, and to adopt a tough line in tackling any Chinese misadventure.

Mr Singh, who will leave for Moscow on Monday, also discussed the arms and

ammunition requirements of the Indian forces. Mr Singh will attend the victory parade on June 24 marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II. A Chinese defence team will also visit Russia, and both Indian and Chinese soldiers will join the parade. Mr Singh is also expected to discuss defence purchases with Russia.

A PTI report, meanwhile, said the vice-chiefs of the three services have been given financial powers upto Rs 500 crores per project to acquire critical ammunition and weapons that will be needed if an all-out or limited conflict breaks out.

The Ladakh situation remains tense after the June 15 clash. Union minister and

former Army chief Gen. V.K. Singh said Saturday that more than double Chinese

soldiers were also killed. He also said India too had returned the Chinese soldiers who crossed over to the Indian side.
(Photo : REUTERS/Brendan McDermid) Customers distance before entering an Apple Store during phase one of reopening after the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City, New York, U.S. June 17, 2020

COVID-19 has prompted the tech industry to postpone or reconsider big tech conferences in 2020, including the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California. This year, instead of a big, in-person gathering, Cupertino will show off what's next for iOS and macOS via live streams.

WWDC 2020 runs from June 22 to 26, kicking off at 10:00 a.m. PT, through Keynote. Here's what's on the list, how to watch it, and the latest WWDC theories on what's up to Apple's sleeve.

ALSO READ: [BREAKING] Apple's WWDC Happens Online FOR FREE on June 22 Amid Coronavirus

How to Watch Apple's WWDC Keynote

The Keynote on Monday will be available via Apple.com, the Apple Developer app, the Apple Developer website, the Apple TV app, and YouTube (embedded below). It'll be available to watch later if you miss it live. Those in China may stream on Tencent, iQIYI, Bilibili, and Youku as well.

A session "State of the Union" will be available on request for developers starting at 2:00 p.m. PT on Monday, June 22. Apple will publish technical and design-oriented courses taught by Apple engineers on the Apple Developer app and web site beginning Tuesday. Apple will also host around 100 one-on-one developer laboratories upon appointment.

WWDC 2020 Rumors: What to Expect

While the opening keynote address usually entails announcing the latest software and hardware, reports claim that Apple scrapped plans to announce some new device.

Host and writer Max Weinbach, tech analyst Jon Prosser, and XDA Developers suggested that no new gadgets would be unveiled at the four-day event.

Looking like any possible hardware has been scrapped for WWDC tomorrow



Might be wrong about this one. Would love to be wrong!



Ill be surprised with all of you, either way!  Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) June 21, 2020

I had two sources tell me no hardware for WWDC tomorrow. They arent on WWDC related teams but heard it through the Apple grapevine. Id take this with a grain of salt, but thought it was worth mentioning.  Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) June 21, 2020

They aren't the first to speculate that there wouldn't be any major product revelations. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has also said he didn't expect any hardware announcements.

Gurman said the address will likely be all about software upgrades, which will set the stage for several new hardware devices this year. These include a new Apple Watch, four updated iPhones, the latest HomePod and Apple TV box, and improvements to the iMac and MacBook Pro, which have already been announced.

Software updates

WWDC is mostly a software-driven show, with Apple demonstrating what's next for its mobile and desktop operating systems. At WWDC, we usually get a sneak peek of the next iOS, watchOS, and macOS versions. Apple releases developers' OSes so they can tinker with them sometime this summer, before a beta release.

This is what the gossip mill has to say before then:

iPadOS 14, iOS 14

Every year the iOS is a constant player on the WWDC table, and at this year's developer conference, Apple is expected to unveil the iOS 14. Rumors say that the new update would improve multi-tasking functionality, introduce a new interface for the home screen, revamp augmented reality applications for the iPhones. There is also a study that says Apple could rename the iOS to iPhone OS this year.

While specific details about the iPadOS 14 are unknown, The Verge reported the software will refine the tablet experience for Apple iPad users.

Overhauled Messages app on macOS

A report from 9to5Mac said Apple is planning to remove the Messages app entirely on macOS. Meaning, Apple will bring the same functionality from iOS and iPadOS to the Mac.

watchOS 7

MacRumors has a complete overview of new features that are reportedly coming to watchOS, including parental controls, watch face configurations sharing, and blood oxygen tracking.

ARM-Based Macs

Apple could discuss plans to drop Intel chips on Mac computers at WWDC for ARM-based processors, reports Bloomberg. The announcement would give developers from third parties time to optimize their ARM-powered Macs apps, which are scheduled to arrive next year. It would also mark the first time that Apple has directly designed the processors within Mac hardware, having relied on Intel, PowerPC, and Motorola chips.

ALSO READ: [BREAKING] US Apple Stores to Open Next Week After 2-Month COVID-19 Hiatus

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
22 June 2020, The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) will host its 52nd Plenary Session on Business Environment, Competitiveness and Economic Growth in Africa on the 29th of June 2020. The sessions will be held virtually where researchers, academics, policy-makers, non-state actors, and economists will discuss the link between business environment, competitiveness, and economic growth in African economies. The official opening and keynote will by Hon. Betty C. Maina, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and Enterprise Development, Kenya.

The plenary will seek to unpack why Africa continues to be less competitive despite progress in the areas of doing business, investment climate and infrastructure. The focus is on how misalignments in economic policy management create distortions that impede the performance of firms, thereby reducing the growth of decent jobs.

Competitive economies are most likely able to provide an environment conducive to business, market development, policy clarity, strong institutions that define the rules/incentives mechanism and effective coordination; and hence will grow more sustainably and inclusively. This means that there is a likelihood that everyone in that particular society, market segment or physical location will benefit from the fruits of economic growth, said Professor Njuguna Ndungu, AERCs Executive Director.

A range of diverse papers, looking at different aspects, will be presented. Dr Shantayanan Devarajan, Georgetown of University, will start off the proceedings with a look at African Competitiveness: What do Natural Resources have to do with it? Next will be The Changing Context for African Competitiveness: What will happen to Manufacturing? by Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana. The third presentation, by Prof. Pramila Krishan - University of Oxford, will be on Exchange Rate Regimes and Firm Competitiveness and the last paper on Employment Transformation in sub-Saharan Africa  What does Competitiveness have to do with it? will be presented by Prof. Louise Fox, former Chief Economist, USAID.

AERC will, in addition, host a Special Session on African Economies Amid COVID-19: Impacts and the Road Ahead on the 30th of June to reflect on pertinent issues and identify policy and administrative responses by drawing lessons from global experiences. Faced with a novel and fast-moving pandemic, and with limited avenues to slow the spread of infections and so far no comprehensively and sustainable medical treatment options for those infected to combat it, most countries have resorted to administrative measures such as lockdowns: mandatory restrictions on economic and other activity meant to minimize social interactions to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

This session will shed light on the appropriate course of actions that African governments can pursue to manage the pandemic while putting in place recovery strategies parallel to managing the pandemic. The session will also provide new emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Africa for a range of diverse policymakers.

Prof. Erik Thorbecke, Cornell University, USA, will chair the session and Prof. Njuguna Ndungu, Executive Director, AERC, will set the stage. Mr. Abebe Selassie, Director of Africa Region, IMF, will deliver the Keynote Address. Other presenters include: Prof. Benno Ndulu Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development and former Bank of Tanzania Governor, Stephen N. Karingi, Director - United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA); and Hanan Morsy, Director - African Development Bank (AfDB), who will speak on Macroeconomic Consequences.

This will be followed by general discussions and contributions on: Impact on Poverty and Inequality, chaired by Prof. Finn Tarp -Copenhagen University, Denmark. Panelists include : Prof. David Sahn - Cornell University; Nicole Ntungire - IGC, Uganda; Ahmadou Aly Mbaye - University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal; Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse - International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI);Rose Ngugi - Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research & Analysis (KIPPRA); Matthieu Teachout - Research Director, IGC; Abdoulaye Seck - Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal and Harun Issahaku - Ghana University of Development Studies.

About African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)

Established in 1988, African Economic Research Consortium is a premier capacity building institution in the advancement of research and training to inform economic policies in sub-Saharan Africa. AERCs mission rests on two premises: first, that development is more likely to occur where there is sustained sound management of the economy; second, that such management is more likely to happen where there is an active, well-informed cohort of locally based professional economists to conduct policy-relevant research.

AERC builds that cohort through a programme that has three primary components: research, training, and policy outreach. The organization integrates high quality economic policy research, postgraduate training, and policy outreach within a vast network of researchers, universities, and policy makers across Africa and beyond. Learn more at www.aercafrica.org

AERC to Host 52nd Plenary Session of the Biannual Research Workshop virtually. Journalists are requested to register credentials prior to the meeting for logistical purposes.

The Plenary Session is themed Business Environment, Competitiveness and Economic Growth in Africa. Detailed agenda and event information will be made available here: www.aercafricaevents.org

Spokesperson, AERCs Executive Director, Prof. Njuguna Ndungu is available for pre - and post-event interviews on the topic of Competitiveness and Economic Growth.
TEHRAN, Iran, June 22

Trend:

Iran's reception halls are expected to reopen after months of closure due to coronavirus spread, said the head of Tehran Reception Halls Unions.

Khosrow Ebrahimi Nia discussed the possible reopening of reception halls in an interview with Trend.

"A large number of banquet and reception halls have become bankrupt, while more than 50 percent have been closed, and the guild will face more heavy losses if there are no customers," he said. "We have ordered halls to reopen while implementing necessary health protocols."

"Reception halls should only use 50 percent of their space, the staff shall use masks and gloves, the halls shall be disinfected, and social distance shall be observed," Ebrahimi Nia added.

"Around 1,000 reception halls in Tehran have to pay high rents plus salary to their staff. The costs of these halls is from 500 million rial (about $11,000) to 2 billion rial (about $47,000) per month, and currently they have faced heavy losses," he said. "So far, the government has not provided its promised support package to reception halls for compensating the coronavirus-related economic losses," he noted.

Tehran governor Mohsen Bandpey has stated on June 20 that he is against reopening of reception halls for weddings ceremonies, although reopening restaurants that shall use 50 percent of their seats and space has been allowed.

"It has been agreed to reopen halls that only serve food without holding any ceremony since it may spread the virus," said Bandpey.

Earlier, the National Headquarters to Fight Coronavirus in Iran prohibited the reopening of reception halls due to the high risk of infection.
The bishops of El Salvador release a statement in which they show support for Cardinal Chavez who has been victim of social media attacks.

By Vatican News

In a press statement released on their website, the Bishops of El Salvador have expressed solidarity with Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, who has been victim of numerous attacks on social networks after calling for greater dialogue between government representatives and transparency in the management of funds used to respond to the Covid-19 emergency.



"We know his path and the important services rendered to the Church and the country. For this reason, we find it unfair and unacceptable that he be attacked and offended on social networks. We consider it an attack not only on him, but on the Church. At the same time we express our full support and solidarity with our honorable Brother write the bishops.

The statement also stresses that the political situation in the country "continues to be marked by polarisation and that this is not beneficial to the much needed social peace. For this reason, they add, let us ask God to guide us on the path of respect, tolerance and the sincere search for the common good.

The bishops also report on a meeting held last Tuesday, 16 June, which ecclesial and national issues were discussed. In view of the upcoming opening of the churches to the public, the bishops urge the faithful to take care of each other to avoid contagion and invite them to respect the protocols and, when possible, to remain at home in voluntary quarantine.

Finally, the Bishops asked the faithful to continue fighting, to remain strong in their faith and to pray together for their "blessed land which is so tormented and so in need of harmony and peace", as well as for the victims of the pandemic and the recent heavy rains.
The village of Qashafar, about 27 km from Dohuk, also involved. Panic among the local population. Several families who fled Mosul and the Nineveh plain with the rise of Isis live in the area. Baghdad summons the Turkish ambassador and demands an easing in tension. Turkeys response: "We will fight the PKK wherever it is", even on Iraqi territory.

Erbil (AsiaNews) - The Turkish air force has bombed several areas of Iraqi Kurdistan, including the Christian village of Qashafar, about 27 km from Dohuk, causing panic among the local population. The attack took place around 5.30 yesterday afternoon and, according to local sources, Apache air vehicles were allegedly engaged in the operation.

The areas is home to hundreds of Christian families who fled Mosul and the Nineveh plain in the summer of 2014, following the advance of the militias of the Islamic State (IS, ex Isis). Years later they are still in the area, waiting for their houses to be rebuilt and a safe return to their lands guaranteed.

The Turkish bombs that fell yesterday would have caused at least one victim: A Kurdish shepherd, killed by the explosion of a missile that fell in the early hours of the morning in the Bradost district.

In response, the Iraqi government summoned the Turkish ambassador Fatih Yildiz to Baghdad, but the escalation has continued unabated: from air raids that have been underway since last weekend, tatctics have now passed to ground operations launched on June 17, with some special forces entering Iraqi territory in the context of the operation "Tiger's Claws". The target of the assault is some (presumed) Kurdish PKK fighters refugees in some villages in the northern province of Duhok, near the border between Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

The Turkish leadership seems willing to press on and continue with the attacks, as reflected in the threatening and open challenge contained in the response from Ambassador Yildiz to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry: if you are not able to take measures against the rebels Ankara will continue to "fight the PKK wherever it is", even in Iraqi territory.

Concerned by the escalation on the northern border, Baghdad asked Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to "end the provocative acts" and to "withdraw the soldiers who infiltrated Iraqi territory". The Turkish offensive was allegedly triggered by attacks by Kurdish militants against police stations and military bases across the border.

Erdogan's domestic difficulties due to the economic crisis and the coronavirus emergency, compound this escalation by pushing the Turkish president to identify at an external threat to strengthen internal stability.

The Turkish air raids against PKK bases in Iraq are not new and similar episodes were also recorded in 2007 and 2018 although the operation launched this week is of a greater magnitude than the previous ones.

So far there have been no official responses - on a diplomatic or military level - from Baghdad and Erbil, although the irritation among the high political and institutional spheres of Iraq appears evident.

Instead, a condemnation of the bombings "in violation of international law" came from the Arab League, which however will have few  if any - practical consequences.
Within minutes of arriving in the infield at the first race I covered for Yahoo Sports, back in early 2008, I saw, propped on the back of a pickup truck, a whiteboard with a crudely scrawled racist caricature of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.

During one of my first visits to the lawless reaches of Turn 3 in the Daytona infield, a shirtless fan behind a makeshift bar pointed at me and a colleague and shouted a racial slur at us, cackling all the way. He wasnt using it as any kind of identifier; it was clearly the nastiest thing he could think to say to us, and he wanted to see our reaction.

In the course of a 2015 trip to Darlington to write on NASCARs first attempt to ban the Confederate flag, I spoke with a Black security guard, within sight  almost within reach  of half a dozen such flags, flown in deliberate middle-finger-up defiance of the suggested ban. The deep pain in her eyes and the quiet, clipped tenor of her speech stick with me today.

The storm that's always loomed over NASCAR has arrived. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images)

Each time, I blew off the racism as unfortunate, sure, but just part and parcel of NASCARs heritage. Im not proud of that, in retrospect, but Im not alone. So has virtually every other person who has ever attended a race and come into contact with the sometimes-subtle, always-present undercurrent of racism.

Good ol boys are the foundation of NASCAR, the excuse goes. Sure, sometimes they go too far. But you run them off, and whats left? NASCAR needs the good ol boys.

Not anymore. Not if the sport wants to survive.

Sunday night marked a tipping point for NASCAR. Sunday night, the series disclosed that someone had left a noose  the symbol of this nations original sin, the undeniable message of intimidation, a sign so cruel and cutting it defies imagination  in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace, the Cup series lone Black driver.

It seemed a relic from an earlier era, a time of black-and-white Civil Rights photographs, where casual racism was as evident as the cruelty on the faces of people who would grow up to be the grandparents of some of todays NASCAR fans.

Story continues

And, for a NASCAR garage, it seemed all too believable. Theres your tipping point right there. Whether this was done as intimidation, or prank gone wrong, or any of a dozen other reasons ranging from stupidity to conspiracy, it seemed absolutely logical that someone associated with NASCAR would stoop to the lowest, most cowardly, most despicable act possible short of actual violence.

This is it, right here. This is the point where NASCAR either steps into the 21st century or remains an increasingly irrelevant cultural curiosity. After seeing one of its top drivers casually toss off a racial slur, after seeing a Confederate flag with Defund NASCAR flying over the Talladega race Sunday, after the discovery of a goddamned noose in the garage  the sports moment of truth has arrived.

NASCAR, to its credit, not only brought the news to light, but announced, in the strongest possible terms, its intention to root out whoever hung the noose. We are angry and outraged and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act. We have launched an immediate investigation and will do everything we can to identify the person(s) responsible and eliminate them from the sport.

Thats great, and the use of words like heinous and eliminate  words you dont generally see in press releases  signals a shift in tone from the sports governing body. But its not enough. A statement from NASCAR is like a statement over the intercom from the principal  tough words arent enough. The attitude, the actions have to change at the ground level.

Every driver needs to speak up immediately. Without being asked. They all have social media presences now; get on it without waiting for PR people to craft a statement, without running the verbiage by sponsors to ensure theyre OK with a condemnation of racism in all its forms, or whatever mealy language corporations use to avoid offending people who shouldnt just be offended, but run out of the sport entirely.

This is one of their brothers-in-firesuits who has been attacked. Would you worry about proper sponsor-pleasing language if your brother was attacked? Hell no, you wouldnt. Youd have to be held back from taking a crowbar to his attacker. Surely many drivers are right now; they should make their fury and disgust plain to fans.

And again, if that upsets some of their fans  if they try to claim basic respect for human dignity is woke, if they hide behind some cowardly dont get political dodge  well, too bad. The exit from the tracks right over there.

Wallace has been out there on the tip of the spear fighting this fight, and Sunday night, he was characteristically dignified in a way no one should have to be. We will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate, he wrote on Twitter. As my mother told me today, They are just trying to scare you. This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in. He shouldnt have to stand alone, not ever again.

Which brings us around to the fans, all of us. In my replies on Twitter on Sunday night, plenty of fans were in a rush to distance themselves from the noose, taking the usual not all NASCAR fans route. Again, thats the right thing to say, but a mild tut-tutting  its just a few bad seeds, not all NASCAR fans are like that, cant we all just come together  isnt enough, not anymore. Tepid little critiques  said in the hope all this goes away quickly  wont cut it.

If you love NASCAR, how far are you willing to go to keep it alive? Are you willing to risk offending friends and family whove skated for too long? Are you willing to post on social media before the world that you stand with Bubba? Are you willing to have that hard conversation with yourself about what youve accepted in the past, and what youre not willing to accept in the future?

If not, well, the road ahead is obvious, and its not a long one. The world is moving on, fast, and NASCAR fans can choose to be part of the way forward ... or part of history.

NASCARs good ol boys are indeed the foundation of NASCAR. The Souths blend of swagger, daredevil attitude, reckless talent and anti-authoritarianism  the very qualities that all the best NASCAR drivers from Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt to Tony Stewart to Kyle Busch have embodied  transformed the sport from a way to kill time between moonshine runs into a national phenomenon.

But the racism that leeched onto the sport as it rose? No. Thats not part of the foundation. The racism is the termites eating away at NASCARs foundation. Weve all spent 70 years ignoring the rot down there, pretending it wasnt all that bad, pretending it would go away one day. But rot doesnt go away on its own. Youve got to face it, and face the fact that youve let it grow.

Its time to get down in there and clean up this sport once and for all. Or, like a house with a rotted foundation, itll one day collapse. And all well be left with is the knowledge we could have fixed it when we had the chance.

_____

Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Find him online at @jaybusbee or contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com.

More from Yahoo Sports:
HARRISBURG  The Trump administration has taken the final step to allow rail shipments of liquefied natural gas, a new front in the movement of energy products that had been opposed by environmental groups and 15 states.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration published the rule late last week for shipments of the flammable and odorless liquid known as LNG.

The departments new rule carefully lays out key operational safeguards to provide for the safe transportation of LNG by rail to more parts of the country where

this energy source is needed, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

The rule comes amid foundering prices for natural gas in the U.S., as court and regulatory battles over pipeline projects have slowed movement of the nations world-leading gas production to markets.

The rule requires enhancements  including a thicker outer tank made of steel with a greater puncture resistance  to the approved tank car design that, for decades, has been approved for shipments of other flammable cryogenic materials, such as liquid ethylene and liquid ethane. The rule takes effect in 30 days after it was published.

Previously, federal hazardous materials regulations allow shipments of LNG by truck, but not by rail, except for with a special permit.

The Sierra Club accused the Trump administration of selling the country out to the fossil fuel industry for dangerous shipments that will travel past homes, schools, businesses and environmentally sensitive areas.

This new rule has major impacts on rail safety because the dangers of a possible derailment, spill, or explosion would be catastrophic, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said in a statement. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Some of New Jerseys train tracks are a century old or more and arent designed to handle such dangerous cargo, Tittel said.

The protesting states included Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the Trump administration issued a special permit in December to ship LNG by rail from northern Pennsylvanias Marcellus Shale natural gas fields to a yet-to-be-built storage terminal at a former explosives plant in New Jersey, along the Delaware River near Philadelphia.

From there, the LNG is expected to be exported to foreign markets for electricity production, although the applicant, a subsidiary of New Fortress Energy, has told federal regulators that some domestic industrial use is possible.

The states had argued that the trains will share tracks with passenger trains and travel through congested areas.

Other objecting states were California, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

The new rule was first proposed in October and comes after President Donald Trumps executive order last year that, in addition to seeking to speed up oil and gas pipeline projects, directed the transportation secretary to propose a rule allowing LNG to be shipped by rail.

An industry trade group representing major freight railroads in North America also had sought the new rule.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Tulsa on Friday prepared for President Trump's upcoming rally, with the city lifting the planned curfew at the request of the Secret Service. Mr. Trump's Saturday rally is his first since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

At Tulsa's BOK Center, where enthusiastic supporters mounted tents and lawn chairs in a single-file line for the entire week leading up to the rally, people have been pushed back beyond a widening security perimeter into part of a residential block.

Mr. Trump tweeted Friday that he had spoken to Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum and there would be no curfew. "There will be no curfew tonight or tomorrow for our many supporters attending the #MAGA Rally. Enjoy yourselves - thank you to Mayor Bynum!" the president tweeted.

According to a Friday afternoon press release, the Secret Service requested the city implement the curfew around the Federal Exclusion Zone near the BOK Center where Mr. Trump's rally will be held  but then reversed course the next day.

"On Thursday, the Secret Service asked the City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Police Department to put in place a curfew for the Federal Exclusion Zone near the BOK Center," the city said in a press release. "Today, the Secret Service asked the City to lift the curfew order this weekend. In compliance with this request, the City has rescinded the order."

US-POLITICS-RACISM-TRUMP

Teri Bruner (C) waits to sell memorabilia as people gather near an entrance point for tomorrow's rally with US President Donald Trump in Tulsa. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Thunderstorms are predicted in the area for Saturday, throwing a wrench in plans for a day-long outside festival in the run up to Mr. Trump's arrival. Mr. Trump's 2020 campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told CBS Tulsa affiliate KOTV that the president intended to personally address the overflow crowd.

"At every Trump rally there is always an overflow and there's a giant screen where people can watch the speech from outside, but I don't recall a time where the president actually in person spoke at both locations," said Murtaugh.

Story continues

At least three counter-protests are planned for Saturday, including one by Black Lives Matter Tulsa. Mr. Trump on Friday tweeted a threat to anyone planning to demonstrate. "Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!" Mr. Trump wrote.

Local health officials, Trump campaign surrogates and Oklahoma Senator James Lankford have all urged seniors and people in high-risk health groups to stay home.

"We're going to provide hand sanitizer," Marc Lotter, the Trump campaign's director of strategic communications, told CBS News. "We're going to provide temperature checks. But we would encourage that if you're worried about being in a high-risk group or someone in your household is of a high-risk factor, then maybe pass on this rally and come to another one later down the road."

Mr. Trump praised Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt in a visit to the White House on Thursday. "One of the reasons we chose your state, Kevin, is you have done so well with the COVID," Mr. Trump told him. "You have handled it incredibly well." New cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed in Oklahoma this week.

A total of 450 new infections were found statewide Thursday, exceeding the state's previous record of 259 that was reported Wednesday. Tulsa reported 82 new cases on Thursday and the state's total rose to 9,354. The president and governor made no public mention on Thursday of Oklahoma's COVID-19 surge.

"I would love for some other city to have tried this first," Bynum said at a press conference Wednesday. "But the president chose this city, and so it falls on us to set that standard moving forward."

Thousands celebrated Juneteenth in Tulsa's historic Greenwood District on Friday. Festivities and demonstrations occurred throughout the day, and Reverend Al Sharpton gave the keynote address, CBS Tulsa affiliate KOTV reports.

Sharpton addressed Mr. Trump's presence, telling the crowd, "When I hear people walking around and talking about Make America Great Again, give me the date America was great for everybody?... We are the ones, you that are marching in Selma, you that are marching all over America, you are the ones who are making America great for the first time."

The sentiment was shared by one demonstrator who walked through the festivities saying "you ain't making America great again until you make Black Wall Street great again," according to KOTV. In 1921, the prosperous Greenwood area was known as "Black Wall Street" until white Tulsans attacked their neighbors in one of the worst race massacres in American history. More than 300 people were killed and the neighborhood was burned to the ground.

Nicole Sganga contributed to this report from Tulsa. Audrey McNamara, Musadiq Bidar and Eleanor Watson also contributed to this report.

Officer charged in death of Rayshard Brooks booked for felony murder

Former Atlanta officer charged with murder of Rayshard Brooks

Atlanta officers surrender to police in Rayshard Brooks' death
More than a week on from protests at Belfast's cenotaph, police confirm that no fines have yet been issued to any who attended.

The revelation comes after the Police Ombudsman opened an investigation into how the PSNI enforced coronavirus public health regulations at large public gatherings.

The complaints were prompted after several hundred people gathered outside Belfast City Hall on Saturday, June 13 to take part in a "protect our statues" protest, in response to vandalism directed at public monuments during some Black Lives Matter events across the UK.

Despite the gathering being contrary to the coronavirus public health regulations, no fines were issued on the day.

Those who attended the Northern Ireland Cenotaph Protection Group demonstration included former Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

It is believed up to 70 fines were issued during previous Black Lives Matter protests in both Belfast and Londonderry.

In a statement yesterday, asked about the current status around any fines handed out at the cenotaph event, a spokesperson for the PSNI said: "While no fines have been issued at this time, the review of evidence from social gatherings in Belfast on Saturday (June 13) continues and the investigation is ongoing."

Describing the police response at the various public gatherings as "inconsistent", Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland Programme Director, said: "Amnesty International has received complaints from members of the public who have been fined and threatened with prosecution as a result of participation in peaceful, socially distanced Black Lives Matter protests in Belfast and Derry-Londonderry.

"We have welcomed the announcement by the Police Ombudsman of an investigation into apparently inconsistent policing of large public gatherings in recent weeks. The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental human right and people must be able to do so peacefully and safely without being criminalised."

Meanwhile, a row has erupted between high profile Labour peer Lord Adonis and the former Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson over the landmark statue of Oliver Cromwell outside Westminster.

The former Transport Secretary in Gordon Brown's government argued that Cromwell had been responsible for "genocide" during his conquest of Ireland and instead made the case for the statue to be taken down and preserved in a museum.

"Cromwell was a military dictator who ended up abolishing Parliament and committing genocide in Ireland. He has no place outside Parliament - unlike Churchill, who led the successful national and international resistance to Hitler and Nazi dictatorship," said Lord Adonis.

The suggestion however was dismissed by Mr Paterson and other Conservative MPs, who called the intervention "absurd".

"Cromwell is undoubtedly a significant figure in our history and in the history of parliamentary democracy," he said. "Equally undoubtedly, he committed grave sins. But the fact that he was imperfect in his own time - and still less perfect by the standards of today - is not a great revelation, and should not be a cause for anger and destruction.

"The current 'woke' doctrine is entirely destructive, however, and would leave us with no statues, no paintings and no memorials at all."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 01:01:51|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ROME, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco on Monday called for a "well-constructed plan" to relaunch the economy, one that balances long-term and short-term goals.

Visco spoke at an event featuring the release of the Bank of Italy's annual report, and a day after Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte concluded eight days of high-level economic consultations with an eye towards finalizing a comprehensive economic strategy by September.

In his remarks, Visco said a strategy should be announced as soon as possible, but he warned against indiscriminately cutting back on bureaucracy to increase economic efficiency.

"There is good bureaucracy and bad bureaucracy," he said. "Good bureaucracy is what we need to guard against short-term impulses. It is too easy to say we have to simplify everything."

The Bank of Italy has predicted that the Italian economy will contract by between 9 and 13 percent this year, due almost entirely to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Visco said that developments like the spread of the coronavirus make accurate economic forecasts challenging.

"We are proceeding with all economic scenarios, but the state of uncertainty we are in does not make reasonable forecasts possible," Visco said, adding that this is not the case only for the coronavirus pandemic but for "all major factors of a geopolitical nature."

But he concluded that the "uncertainty does not mean we should do nothing ... we have to make our best effort."

Earlier in the day, the retailer's association Confcommercio announced that Italy's economy was on track to contract by 21.9 percent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the same period in 2019. Compared to the first quarter of the year, the contraction was 17.4 percent, Confcommercio said. Enditem
China is due to launch the final satellite in its global positioning system constellation Beidou, allowing Beijing to reduce its reliance on the US-owned GPS system.

Beidou will be made up of 30 satellites giving China military independence in terms of navigation and even messaging independent of the US or other nations.

The final part of the constellation was due to launch on June 16 but this was postponed after there were issues with the Long March-3B rocket pre-launch.

Experts in space policy say the drive to have its own version of GPS stems from the fear that if there was a conflict with the US, China could be cut off from the system.

China has officially announced that its Beidou global satellite navigation system will be complete in 2020. Pictured, a Long March-3B carrier rocket with two BeiDou navigation satellites blasts off from Liangshan Satellite Launch Center on November 23

'The Chinese military now has a system it can use independent of the US GPS system,' Andrew Dempster, space engineering expert, told CNBC.

THERE ARE FOUR GLOBAL SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEMS There are four global satellite navigation systems either in operation or near completion. Global Positions System GPS is the oldest of the global systems and work started in 1978. It has 33 satellites in its constellation with 31 currently operational. Global Navigation Satellite System Known as GLONASS, this is Russia's version of GPS and was operational from 1993 with 12 satellites. There are currently 27 satellites in orbit and operation. Galileo This is the EU system put together by the European Space Agency and reaching limited launch in 2016. When operational it will have 30 satellites and another six spares to be switched on if needed. Beidou China's Beidou system was first launched in 2000 to cover China but has since expanded globally. It will have 30 satellites in its constellation split between a standard GPS-style orbit and a geosynchronous orbit over the equator. Advertisement

The first version of Beidou was operational by 2000, but it wasn't a global system at the time - only providing satellite navigation services for China.

This was expanded to cover the whole of the Asia Pacific region by 2012 and the third and final version - which is almost complete - will give Beijing global coverage.

'The Beidou network is emblematic of China's grand ambitions in respect to foreign policy. They're taking a much more global view,' Christopher Newman, professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University told CNBC.

Beidou is the Chinese name for the star constellation the 'Big Dipper'.

When fully operational it will work in a similar way to GPS - providing support for smartphones, driverless cars, planes and ships.

It will also guide China's upcoming driverless high-speed trains, which are being developed for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Alex Joske, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said Beidou would give China and its army greater self-reliance.

He added it is a 'reflection of the Communist Partys ongoing drive to decouple itself from Western critical technologies.'

The constellation is part of a global technological push by Beijing which includes commercial space travel, its own space station and an upcoming Mars lander.

It won't be just China using Beidou - Pakistan and Thailand already make use of the system and this could be extended to other nations in a foreign policy push.

'The Beidou network is emblematic of China's grand ambitions in respect to foreign policy. They're taking a much more global view,' Newman said.

He said having other nations making use of its own navigation system over the US-owned GPS would give China greater influence over those countries.

Analysts have said the endeavour is one of China's more ambitious undertakings; a remarkable feat for a nation also working towards conquering commercial space flight, cheap energy via an 'artificial sun' and a man-made moon.

Beidou will be the third of four global satellite navigation systems to be operational - the oldest is the US-owned GPS, second was the Russian-backed GLONASS and the final to complete will be the European Galileo.

There are also regional Japanese and Indian systems that cover specific areas surrounding those countries and their region.

Beidou is a similar size to the other global constellations - with 30 satellites.

It launched the last of its medium-altitude constellation in December - that is 24 operational satellites more than 13,000 miles above the Earth similar to GPS.

The 7billion ($9billion) Chinese project will rival and eventually replace the US-developed Global Positioning System (GPS) in the country. Pictured, a GPS map shows routes on a phone

Unlike other systems - the fully-operational Beidou network also includes six spacecraft in geosynchronous orbits including three permanently over the equator and three swinging north and south of the equator.

This final satellite - that was due to launch on June 16 - will be permanently over the equator when it finally launches.

China says its network will be able to be used in agriculture, fishing and disaster relief - as well as providing services to 70 per cent of Chinese smartphones.

'After the global system is completed this year, the BDS can provide satisfactory services to every corner of the world,' said Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the Beidou system, according to Xinhua.

As China prepares to eradicate traces of GPS in the country, firms are scrabbling to make devices Beidou compatible for the eventual switch-over.
Fitch Ratings has given TPC Group a B- and a negative rating outlook, questioning its stability as it spends the next four to five years rebuilding its Port Neches facility. But there are also chances for recovery.

Fitchs June 12 rating marks the company as a speculative investment prone to risk with a limited margin of safety, according to the rating firms definitions.

Specifically, Fitch based much of its rating on the financial burden from the Nov. 27 plant explosion in Port Neches that damaged thousands of homes and led to the Thanksgiving Day evacuation of about 30,000 people.

Fitch notes that, in addition to meeting insurance deductibles and paying expenses related to the emergency response, cash costs related to the incident, the company now faces the task of matching its cash inflows to the required outflows related to the Port Neches reconstruction, analysts wrote in Fitchs key rating drivers summary.

TPCs management repeatedly has made assertions that the company will rebuild, and insurance payouts seem able to stabilize its efforts into 2021, analysts wrote. But its limited production also leaves it more vulnerable.

In the past two weeks, some of the products TPC makes related to fuel hit their highest prices since March in some markets. Among those is MTBE, which was stored in containers that exploded at the Port Neches site.

Argus Media reported on June 11 that TPC Group had shifted production focus for MTBE to its Houston manufacturing plant and had already reached capacity at 450,000 tons per year.

The company also will benefit from short-term demand spikes for its products used in synthetic rubber.

Sara Cronin, a spokesperson for TPC Group, said the company was pleased its strategies to preserve liquidity and sustain contracts was being recognized.

The companys work in the areas of risk mitigation and mechanical integrity, to ensure reliable operations, along with our cash management efforts, are helping us preserve sufficient liquidity over the coming quarters as we begin to recover from the widespread impacts of Covid-19, Cronin said.

TPC Group is considered the only major refiner of C4 petrochemicals in the U.S., which could virtually guarantee continued contracts with its current clients.

While Fitch said TPC likely will be fine for the next few quarters as long as its insurance payouts are sustained, there are some major risks ahead to navigate.

Fitch analysts said one of the largest risks is whether or not the company will be held responsible for the explosion, potentially drying up the insurance claims it needs to rebuild and move forward.

Additionally, should the determination be made that the incident was the result of negligence or was otherwise not out of TPC's control, the company will likely find it difficult to retain customers and receive the anticipated insurance claims, Fitch analysts wrote.

In May, OSHA levied $514,692 and three willful violations against TPC Group after completing its investigation of the explosion incident, but a root-cause analysis from the Chemical Safety Board is pending.

The company is facing several lawsuits connected to the explosion, but those cases have been held up in a multi-district litigation court since March.

Fitch also warned that any boosts the company may see during the coronavirus is likely negligible at best, and shouldnt be expected to carry it through its long term needs.

TPC has been making progress with its work on the ground in Port Neches, and Cronin said the last of its high-purity products like butadiene will be moved off site by July.

Work on Port Neches rebuild efforts also continue, she said. The expectation is that a rebuild will take up to five years before resumption of production will begin in Port Neches. During that time, TPC Group will continue to serve current and future customer and supplier needs with its terminal operations.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/jdickjournalism
A Maori man who was pinned to the floor by police claims he was 'racially profiled' during the dramatic arrest, which left him bleeding and fearing for his life.

Graffiti artist Nikau Andrews, 26, needed hospital treatment for injuries including black eyes, a ruptured sternum and 'an air bubble around his heart' after his arrest in Auckland on Saturday.

Dramatic video footage shows a group of at least four police officers pinning him to the ground as terrified friends shouted: 'You're hurting him! Why are you doing this?'

Andrews admitted he had been tagging a wall when he attracted the attention of police, but believes excessive force was used, leaving him bleeding on the ground.

Friends filming the arrest are heard screaming 'please get off him, look at him, he's hurt', as one officer even appears to kneel on his body.

An officer is seen grappling with Andrews on the ground (pictured) during the arrest in Auckland on Saturday, which he believes was racially motivated

Graffiti artist Nikau Andrews, 26, needed hospital treatment for injuries including black eyes, a ruptured sternum and 'an air bubble around his heart' after his arrest in Auckland on Saturday

Black Lives Matter protests have taken place across the world since the death of George Floyd in the US, a black man who had his neck knelt on for eight minutes by a police officer.

One moment in the video appears to show an officer knee Andrews in the head and hold him in a headlock, while three others stay on top of him.

'Please, you kneed him in the head,' the friend is heard pleading in the footage.

'Stop hurting him, why you hurting him? He was just tagging on a wall man.

'You guys are going way overboard man, please, he's like bleeding.

'He's bleeding everywhere man. What are you doing this for?

'My father was a police officer, please.'

Police are seen pinning Andrews to the ground on Saturday in Auckland (pictured) just weeks after the death of US man George Floyd after an officer knelt on his neck

But Auckland Police denied any wrongdoing, saying the alleged offender 'violently resisted' arrest and they acted appropriately.

One police officer received minor injuries.

'I wasn't resisting arrest, they had me on my back in handcuffs and I was asking them why they were kneeling on me,' Andrews told Stuff.

'They profiled me, I was definitely labelled when they pulled up. They looked at the colour of my skin, laughed at me and caused grievous bodily harm on me. It was quite shocking.

'I was in pain, excruciating pain.'

More police officers arrived to hold back Andrews' friends (pictured), who were heard shouting: 'Why are you doing this? You're hurting him'

Black Lives Matter protesters are seen in Auckland on June 1 (pictured) as Australians and New Zealanders call for better treatment for indigenous people

He claimed he wasn't 'read his rights' and was immediately pushed to the ground, dragged and kneed in the head.

Andrews, who is a graffiti artist, said he was even referred to as an 'animal' as police grappled with him on the floor.

After the arrest, Andrews was taken to Mt Eden police station and charged with willful damage and resisting arrest, and is due before an Auckland court in July.

But soon after arriving at the station, Andrews asked for medical help as he had trouble breathing and was in pain.

Andrews had been in the city for a friend's birthday, but stayed in hospital all weekend.

Police are seen holding back Andrews' friends (pictured) who desperately pleaded for police to stop pinning him to the ground

The incident comes on the back of worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, with many taking place in New Zealand (pictured on June 1)

'Based on the information I have to hand, I am confident police acted in an appropriate and professional manner in a volatile and dynamic situation,' Auckland District Commander Superintendent Karyn Malthus told the New Zealand Herald.

Police claimed it took 'several officers' to restrain Andrews after he allegedly tried to run away from officers, but that they 'prioritised' his medical treatment after he became unwell.

The Black Lives Matter protests began in the US after Mr Floyd's death on May 25, but soon spread to Australia and New Zealand.

Activists have been calling for better treatment for indigenous people, and for an end to Aboriginal deaths in police custody.

In New Zealand, Maori people are significantly over-represented at all stages of the criminal justice system.
- A new report has called for support for victims of human rights abuses in the Gambia

- The report released by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) said those abused during the 22-year long rule of former Gambias president, Yahya Jammeh, should be compensated

- According to the report, there should be reparation, monetary compensation and psychosocial support for all victims of Jammeh's dictatorship

PAY ATTENTION: Click See First under the Following tab to see Legit.ng News on your Facebook News Feed!

The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has recommended restitution for victims of human rights abuses during the 22-year long rule of former Gambias president, Yahya Jammeh.

In its new report titled Documenting Dictatorship: Truth, Reconciliation and Reparation in the Gambia, the CDD said reparation is a critical area in Gambias Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) process.

Yahya Jammeh, aged just 29, took control of The Gambia in a military coup in July 1994.

He sought popular validation for his rule by holding, and winning, elections in 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011.

Each time securing more than 50% of the vote in polls that were described as "tainted" and " lacking legitimacy" by election observers.

But in December 2016, seeking a fifth popular mandate, Jammeh could only muster 39.6% of the vote and was defeated by the candidate of a coalition of opposition parties, Adama Barrow.

Having initially appeared to be willing to accept the results, Jammeh then changed his mind citing 'abnormalities' and called for the results to be cancelled and fresh elections held.

But after over a month of protracted negotiations with leaders from the Economic Community of West African States, and with the threat of regional military action looming, Jammeh left The Gambia for exile in Equatorial Guinea on January 21, 2017.

During Jammeh's 22-year rule, human rights violations ranging from enforced disappearances, unlawful arrests and killings, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and persecution of real or perceived political opponents, characterised the Gambia.

A 2015 Human Rights Watch investigative report detailed how security services and guerrilla groups routinely used intimidation, violence, arson, and forced disappearances against three people who spoke out against those in power.

However, in its new report released on Monday, June 22, the CDD said once reparation regulations are finalised the details should also be simplified and communicated across media - print, radio, TV, social media - in local languages.

According to the CDD, dissemination of the report of the commission is to give Gambians detailed insight into the process of its application and timelines for the reparation process.

Jammeh left The Gambia for exile in Equatorial Guinea on January 21, 2017. Photo credit: BBC

Source: UGC

The report also said this can be done in partnership with media houses and organisations like the Gambia Center for Victims of Human Rights Violations.

The CDD also urged that there should be an approved process of building on the work that has been done by the TRRC in bringing the issue of SGBV into the public arena.

It also called on the National Human Rights Commission to make SGBV a key focus of its work in its first annual or strategic plan while community-level reconciliation efforts should continue to be a key focus of the TRRC's work in its final few months.

The Centre called for the identification of community reconciliation champions who can then support the commission's work in other regions of the country will further improve Gambians' sense of ownership of the process.

This could include adapting and drawing lessons from the Palava Hut and Fambul Tok approaches used in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the report said.

The report also said that: Monetary compensation is important, but the TRRC should also consider restitution of properties including land seized by the former regime.

Another option recommended includes the consideration of community reparations especially for regions that were deprived of essential social services due to their resistance to the former regime.

The TRRC must continue to ensure there are trauma counselling, healthcare and psycho-social support for victims, create a victims support fund tracker which will allow citizens to see how funds are being dispersed in a transparent and accountable way, but that still ensures individuals' privacy is retained.

Privately, the TRRC and development partners should apply pressure on the MoJ to release more funds to support the payment of reparations.

In addition to using funds raised from the sale of Jammeh's assets, other individuals and businesses that benefited from Jammeh's rule should also pay for reparations, especially if they are explicitly mentioned by the TRRC.

The TRRC should establish and communicate clear guidance on how the reparations fund will operate. If that timeframe extends beyond the life of the Commission, this should include clear direction on who will be responsible for managing the distribution of funds. The National Human Rights Commission would be an obvious choice.

Again, as part of the #NeverAgain campaign, the government should explore how the TRRC building can be converted into a museum that can be used as an educational tool, documenting the work of the Commission and its findings, for future generations.

This and memorials for some of the worst atrocities would serve as a lasting reminder of the abuses.

TRRC best practice and experiences that can be shared with, and learned from, by other countries undertaking similar transitional justice processes after decades of dictatorship.

Write a final report with clear and well-articulated recommendations and provide a plan for how these approaches can be implemented in practice, the report said.

It also said that this should involve working closely with civil society and media organisations to develop a mechanism to track the implementation of recommendations in a way that sustains public engagement.

Ensuring that the recommendations are clearly communicated across traditional and social media in local languages will be critical to their legitimacy and to empowering citizens to ensure that the government listens to the TRRCs findings and adopts its recommendations, it added.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Jammeh was linked to the killing of Ghanaian and Nigerian migrants in 2005.

A report by the Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International said that a paramilitary unit controlled by the ex-Gambian president summarily executed more than 50 Ghanaian, Nigerian, and other West African migrants in July 2005.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read the best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Human Rights Watch reports stated that interviews with 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers directly involved in the incident, reveal that the migrants, who were bound for Europe were murdered.

According to HRW, the migrants were suspected of being mercenaries intent on overthrowing Jammeh, were murdered after having been detained by Jammehs closest deputies in the army, navy, and police forces.

Subsequently, a year after the report was released, Jammeh and members of his immediate family have been barred from entering into the United States by the US State Department.

Jammeh's ban by the US government was recorded after he was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea after he refused to concede defeat in a presidential election.

We dont have a government in Nigeria - man laments | Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
Thousands of U.S. troops are taking part in NATO military exercises in Europe. Part of the training is taking place in Poland, just 350 kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, while maritime exercises are also taking place in the Baltic Sea.USA plans to withdraw thousands of troopS
Michael had a history of fighting at school, so officials asked a campus police officer to meet with the boy. The situation quickly turned violent, with Michael kicking the armed officer, who then cuffed the boys hands and feet with zip ties before putting him in the back of a squad car and citing him for battery.

Michael was 5. A kindergartner.

The 2011 incident in Stockton involving a small African American boy is one of countless cases across California that have spurred more than a decade of activism to eliminate police in schools, a movement with relatively little momentum  until now.

The recent protests against police brutality have pushed education officials in the Bay Area and across the country to eliminate agreements with police, which in many cases include paying uniformed and armed officers to patrol campuses or provide security on school grounds. At the same time, school officials in California summon police tens of thousands of times each year, federal records show.

Oakland, San Francisco, West Contra Costa and Los Angeles are among the many districts moving to sever ties with police in response to calls for reform and to redirect funding spent on law enforcement following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Yet, racial bias doesnt play out only in policing, and addressing it in schools will require more than cutting ties with cops, say education leaders and activists.

Creating change for children of color in schools would not only require eliminating police departments, but addressing the disproportionate suspension rate of Black and brown students in virtually every school, they say. It would mean more money for counselors and support staff, and less reliance on 911 for minor matters.

It does feel like were on the brink to actually change something, said Jessica Black, organizing director for the Black Organizing Project, which has led the effort to eliminate Oakland Unifieds police department. We have to allow for the space for that to happen. Were really talking about changing hearts and minds.

The current climate is a dramatic shift from policies implemented in the past several years, as communities across the country boosted security and the presence of armed guards on K-12 campuses following deadly school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Newtown, Conn., among others.

But community organizers, and more recently public officials, say the presence of law enforcement in schools impedes learning because it creates an environment of fear and hostility, especially for students of color.

Policing dehumanizes Black and brown students on the street and in schools, said Linnea Nelson, education equity staff attorney with the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union. Police are trained to approach conflict by arresting people.

Across the country, more than 14 million students were in a school with police, but no counselor, nurse, psychologist and/or social worker, according to a 2019 national report by the ACLU. In Michaels case, a counselor might have helped. Instead, the Stockton Unified School District paid $125,000 to compensate his family after the officer cuffed and cited the little boy.

Yet, even if districts cut official ties with law enforcement, that will not eliminate police  or racial bias  from school grounds.

Principals, teachers and school staff in California call police more than 25,000 times each year to address an issue with student, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Education data. And that figure is generally considered far lower than reality given errors in reporting.

In Oakland, the districts police department, which includes 10 sworn officers, is summoned to schools about 2,000 times each school year  for student behavior as well as theft, vandalism, lockdowns, disgruntled employees, suspicious adults and more. About 600 of those calls are serious, calls that would need to be handled by police whether the district has its own department of not, said the Oakland schools police Chief Jeff Godown.

The 1,400 others are considered security checks, perhaps a student making a threat or calls to confiscate a small amount of marijuana from a student  incidents currently handled by the district police officers administratively, meaning no one is cited or arrested, Godown said.

The officers dont patrol the halls or school grounds, unlike school security officers assigned to schools in other districts, the chief added. They show up only when called.

Every time (officers) step foot on a school ground, its because somebody called them, he said.

The Oakland school board is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to eliminate the district police department, a decision that most of the board, the superintendent and even the police chief support. But if that happens, Godown said, the district will need a plan not only to address what will happen when one of those serious calls comes in, but how schools will handle the other situations.

Whether you want police in schools or not, 300 times a semester, youre going to have police in schools, he said.

School board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge said she opposed the elimination of the district police department because those officers are trained to work in the schools. Without them, a 911 call will bring Oakland police  an unknown presence with a history of civil-rights violations and brutality allegations, she said.

Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said she will work on a plan, with community input, to address the safety needs of students and staff without a district police department.

Kilian Betlach, principal of Elmhurst United Middle School, supports eliminating the districts police department.

We want students to feel safe. We dont want to feel safe from our students, he said. I do think that the events that have happened, which arent new, they are galvanizing a national attention in a way that will lead to folks looking at these issues differently.

Oakland is one of 19 school districts in California with its own police force. Los Angeles has 410 sworn police officers, 101 non-sworn school security officers, and 34 support staff. Snowline Joint Unified, in San Bernardino County, is among the smallest, with five sworn officers and nine employees total.

COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

In addition to those with independent police departments, many districts contract with their local law enforcement agency to provide school resource officers, who are sworn and armed and typically assigned to schools for security after 40 hours of specialized training. Others employ school security guards, who typically have no law enforcement training.

The Los Angeles school board will consider a proposal this month to phase out its police department. Denver, Minneapolis and other cities are severing ties with local law enforcement, and thousands of protesters took to the streets in New York City last week urging school administrators to do the same.

The goal everywhere, Betlach said, is to reduce student interaction with police. That means shifting funds to hire more counselors or other trained staff to care for students who need help, or to address behavior issues without calling in an armed officer, officials said.

But districts also need to look at their own policies and practices, experts say.

Despite state policy changes reducing suspensions across the state in recent years, schools continue to disproportionately suspend Black students, according to a report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

In 2019, researchers found suspensions caused a loss of 36 days of instruction per 100 African American students, compared to three days for every 100 Asian American students and 10 days for white students.

Theres an awareness that were not dealing with a level playing field here, and its not just how police treat Black students, said Dan Losen, an author of the study, which The Chronicle obtained exclusively prior to publication.

While suspending Black students more often than students of other ethnicities is nearly universal, the gaps between students of color and their peers varies greatly, Losen said. And officials are suspending the same students referred to law enforcement  more often Black students, and especially those with disabilities.

To me there's big differences in the attitudes of the teachers and principals in how they respond to kids from one district to the next, he said. There really are things schools can do and do differently than theyre doing now.

Like spending on people who can actually help students in trouble, said supporters of eliminating police in schools.

In a letter to the Oakland school board last week, 45 principals and assistant principals said they want counselors and other support staff, not a police department.

The historic over-policing of communities of color, the ubiquitous images of ongoing brutality, and the unambiguous voices of our youth make clear that the presence of police undermines our efforts at establishing safety, they said. Time and again, courageous students have told us that police make them less safe  period  and we cannot ignore those whom we would serve.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
In an exclusive interview for Axios, Trump said this weekend that he is not opposed to a meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro. The comments appeared to be a break from Trumps usual narrative when it comes to Venezuela.

"I would maybe think about that. ... Maduro would like to meet. And I'm never opposed to meetings  you know, rarely opposed to meetings, the U.S. president said in response to Jonathan Swans question of whether he would meet with the Venezuelan president.

"I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I've turned them down," Trump added.

President Donald Trump clarified his interview comments on Monday morning, saying on Twitter: My Admin has always stood on the side of FREEDOM and LIBERTY and against the oppressive Maduro regime! I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!



Related: EV Batteries Are About To Get Their Own Passports

Swan went on to quote an unnamed former White House official as telling him that the Maduro administration had approached the White House twice since Trump became president and that Trump had expressed a willingness to meet with Maduro that had caused a recurring concern among members of his staff.

Publicly, Trump embraced opposition leader Juan Guaido, former president of the opposition-dominated Venezuelan parliament, who declared himself interim president last year, as he refused to recognise the results of the election that won Maduro a second term.

Since them, the U.S. has been tightening sanctions against the Maduro government, with an almost exclusive focus on its oil industry as the only lifeline to a cash-strapped government. The sanctions have had some of the desired effect: Venezuelas oil production has slumped to lows not seen in decades, and its exports have shrunk significantly, although the country still exports crude, mainly to China.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
British journalist Omid Scobie has denied Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal biography is being redrafted.

The Royal editor of Harper's Bazaar, who has accompanied Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 38, on a variety of royal tours, announced the release of Finding Freedom last month, which he co-wrote with Carolyn Durand.

However this week The Sun reported that royal aides fear the new book could 'paint Prince William as the bad guy' and cause a fresh rift within the Royal Family, as well as result in potential repercussions for the future monarch.

Following reports that the book is being rewritten ahead of its release in two months, Omid took to Twitter to deny the reports on Sunday.

British journalist Omid Scobie has denied Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's (seen in London in March) royal biography is being redrafted

Sharing an old tweet stating 'Any 'insider' claiming to know what's in the book is simply throwing guesses out there', he wrote: LOL at having to retweet this every week.

'Also, just to add, reports suggesting that the book is being 'redrafted' are categorically false. The manuscript was signed off before the announcement.'

Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Royal Family is set to be released worldwide online on August 11, with the hard copy on sale from August 20 and was released to pre-order over the weekend.

Publishing house Harper Collins, which owns Dey Street Books, the publisher of the biography released a brief description of Meghan and Prince Harry's collaboration with the two journalists.

The Royal editor of Harper's Bazaar, who has accompanied Prince Harry , 35, and Meghan Markle, 38, on a variety of royal tours, announced the release of Finding Freedom last month, which he co-wrote with Carolyn Durand

Following reports that the book is being rewritten ahead of its release in two months, Omid took to Twitter to deny the reports on Sunday

The book's description says that 'few know the true story of Harry and Meghan'.

It promises to go 'beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghan's life together, dispelling the many rumours and misconceptions that plague the couple on both sides of the pond'.

It continues: 'With unique access and written with the participation of those closest to the couple, Finding Freedom is an honest, up-close, and disarming portrait of a confident, influential, and forward-thinking couple who are unafraid to break with tradition, determined to create a new path away from the spotlight, and dedicated to building a humanitarian legacy that will make a profound difference in the world.'

With large topics set to centre around the withdrawal of Harry and Meghan from senior roles, royal anxiety now surrounds the likely inclusion of the couple's exit showdown talks at Sandringham, in which the Royal Family came together to discuss the transition.

Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Royal Family is set to be released worldwide online on August 11, with the hard copy on sale from August 20

Speaking about finishing the biography on his podcast recently, Omid said: 'It's been a long time in the making. The last few weeks have been quite a challenge getting it all ready in time for the deadline.

'It feels nice to finally be able to talk about it after quietly beavering away on it for a long time.'

He added: 'This project started about two years ago, and there have been twists and turns that no one expected. This is something no one expected.

'I don't even think Harry and Meghan, who by their own account struggled with the realities of the situation, expected things to turn out the way they did.'

Explaining that the biography gives a real inside account of their story, he said: 'I've been on so many engagements and around them as much as possible, and spoken to so many people in their lives, so no stone has been left unturned.

'I've seen the couple remain faithful in their own beliefs and stand strong in the face of adversities which have been publicly played out in the press, and I would like to think this tells the definitive version of their lives together.'

The cover features a beaming Prince Harry and Meghan as they visited their namesake county in October 2018 for the first time.

The Mail on Sunday were told that before moving to North America, the Sussexes gave an interview to the book's authors, both journalists.

The 320-page biography, due to be released in August, is expected to be a global bestseller.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

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 on June 22 referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

The Armenian armed forces were using large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
By then, word had spread that all of the facilitys minority staff was being segregated on the third floor of the jail, prompting anger. One complainant described being shocked at seeing security camera footage of only minority officers on the third floor, rather than being positioned throughout the facility as they usually are. Another officer said he had been told that Lydon didnt want any minorities around Chauvin, viewing them as a possible liability.
Google Maps will also be getting deeper integration with Uber and Bay Wheels.

Google is planning on adding a bunch of new features to its navigational app, Google Maps. These new features will not only change, to some extent, the user experience but they will also help commuters who use a mix of personal vehicle and public transportation to plan their journey better.

The news comes as a courtesy of Jane Manchun Wong to share the details of these features in a series of tweets. Heres a breakdown of all the features that are likely to make their way to Google Maps in the coming days:

New Search bar

Google is planning to redesign the Search bar in Maps. At present, the Search bar has flat edges with the microphone and users profile picture on the right side. Now, word is that Maps will get rounded edges. The redesigned Search bar will have Google Maps logo on the left side and microphone and users profile picture on the right side.

Google Maps is working on this new Search Bar design,



looks rounder and includes the new Maps logo pic.twitter.com/HIIZ6kfDdV  Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020

Bay Wheels integration

Google Maps is also working on deep integration with San Francisco-based bike sharing service Bay Wheels.

Google Maps is working on deeper integrations for bike-sharing service Bay Wheels, providing it as an option for directions pic.twitter.com/guzgQ2cneq  Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020

First mile transit information

Google is working on a new Connections to Public Transit feature that will give users more detailed information for a commute that requires them to use a mix of personal vehicle and public transit. For instance, a commuter might be using a combination of a motorcycle and a metro rail to get to work.

As per the details shared by Wong, Maps is offering car + transit, bicycle + transit, auto rickshaw, ride service and motorcycle + transit as options as a part of this feature.

Google Maps is working on route options with Connections to Public Transit, such as:



- Car + transit

- Bicycle + transit

- Auto rickshaw

- Ride service

- Motorcycle + transit pic.twitter.com/hLlCZJG7Av  Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020

New Place card

Google Maps is also likely to get new place cards wherein photos from a particular place, say a restaurant or a tourist place becomes a part of the card.

More accurate cab fare

In addition to this, Google is also working with Uber to bring more accurate cab fares to Maps in the rides that users intend to take. While users will have to toggle a switch to get details about a particular cab service available in their area but for now Uber seems to be the only available option.

Google Maps is working on an option to Get more accurate fares from ride services by sharing route information to them pic.twitter.com/BGh0eCtjoI  Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020

Lastly, Google is also working on adding Review Mentions to Maps wherein it lists top keywords of a places reviews.
A private nursery in Tra Noc Industrial Park in Can Tho. (Photo: giaoducthoidai.vn)

Speaking at a recent conference on the national project on nurseries at industrial parks and processing export zones, Vo Thi Hong Anh, the committees vice chairwoman and head of the Steering Board of the project in Can Tho, said that female workers with children ageing 6 months and above have to send their children to nurseries and kindergartens when they resume working after six months of maternity leave.

The nurseries and kindergartens must have professionally trained staff and facilities that ensure safety for children, Anh said.

Agencies in the city should offer more solutions to attract private investment in safe nurseries and kindergartens to meet female workers demands, she added.

Noting that the city plans to establish Singapore Industrial Park in Thot Not District, she said the district should set up health facilities and nurseries or kindergartens to create conditions for workers children to be taken care of. This will also attract workers to the IP.

She instructed the city Department of Education and Training to provide more preferential policies to attract private investment to build nurseries in IPs and processing export zones.

The city could give investors priority in tariff exemptions and reductions, assistance for loans, and land lease, she said.

Can Tho has four industrial parks and processing export zones with 5,176 workers with children under 36 months old.

The total number of kindergartens in the industrial parks and processing export zones is 10. Six out of the 10 meet national standards. There are 29 nurseries.

The total number of children taken care of at the kindergartens and nurseries is 3,929.

Local authorities and relevant agencies check the nurseries frequently. Inspections have shown that their classrooms and toilets for children are clean. Investors have spent 519 million VND (22,285 USD) on upgrading their nurseries facilities.

The Department of Education and Training has suggested that the city Peoples Council provide assistance of more than 1.2 billion VND to buy teaching aids and toys for children.

The conferences delegates said the project had helped workers feel more secure about their children's safety.
Dear Dr. Felix Holiday,

This letter has been composed to inform you about reasons for termination of trust in the interim director Ms. Eileen Healy, intended director and current medical coordinator Ms. Kitty Pelswijk and HR officer Mrs. Carina Ellis-Romney, by employees, due to structural long-lasting mistreatment and

abuse of power against employees of the MHF, in which we cannot speak anymore of good employer ship by the directors of MHF and the HR officer.

History of Leadership Issues

There have been bad records pertaining to high staff turnover before Ms. E. Healy retired in 2014. Ms. Healy got a new position as an advisor to the new director Mr. P. Lucas but was relieved from her function in less than 3 months. In 2017, an announcement was made to the staff of the intention to appoint Ms. E. Healy as the director or project coordinator. The staff was aware of the need for a director, as MHF relieved Mr. P. Lucas of this position and has been without a director for a couple of months. The previous union, United Federation of Windward Island Antilles(UFA) responded by sending a letter to the Board of MHF strongly advising to reconsider putting Ms. E. Healy in any leadership position. In addition, a meeting was held with the Minister of Public Health, Social Development, and labor (VSA) on this concern. Nevertheless, Ms. E. Healy has been hired on September 1, 2017, with one of her task being recruiting a new director. It is June 2020 and therefore, concluded there has been no real efforts and success in getting a director. Ms. E. Healy claimed there are no good candidates and applicants are asking for a high salary. This seemed to be an excuse to keep a leadership position for 3 years. For instance, there has been increase in recruitments between 2017 and 2020; there are now 4 psychologists,3 psychiatrists,2 clinic nurses,

4 case managers,11nformation and Prevention coordinator,2 social workers and 1occupational

therapist.



Culture of fear

For a long period, the former and currently interim director of the MHF created a culture of fear amongst employees, systematically and continuously mistreating and abusing power towards selective employees, who want to remain anonymous due to fear of severe repercussion and incomplete transition to our new union ABVO. There is no one to speak out for staff, everyone in management (Ms. L. Jones, finance manager, human resources manager, medical coordinator/psychiatrist, and interim director) are committed to Interim director. Ms. E.Healy made it clear and sent a memo informing staff, she has the last say in all decisions. Furthermore, we are

experiencing the mistreatment from the intended director, Dr. Kitty Pelkwijk (it is announced she will be the replacement in Jess than a month moving from Suriname to work at MHF as a psychiatrist). Also, Mrs. Carina Ellis, human resources manager, wilfully adds unrest to the work environment by encouraging the ill-treatment of the majority of the staff. Below are examples of an unpleasant situation at MHF:

Use of Cameras' Footage and Tracking GPS

Cameras are installed around the building with audio and GPS on company cars. The records are retrieved and used to reprimand staff based on management's conclusion, without staff seeing the actual records or discussing beforehand with the coordinator. As a result, the content of warning letters

is frequently not an actual description of the situation and is based on one-sided false information by

the directors of MHF. Furthermore, there should be an explanation of why the above is not use for all 30 plus employees. Why is management spying on employees who were not under the suspicion of illegal or criminal behavior by law? Security cameras and car tracking devices are not installed for these purposes, but for safety and data collection reasons. No policy for cameras with audio was handed or explained to staff, clients, and MHF's neighbor (whose voice could be picked up by audio). In addition, staff was informed of audio after cameras were installed in and outside the building.

The use of security camera footage and car GPS data by Ms. Healy is not only contributing to the culture of fear but is also a severe breach of the individual privacy and illegal by Jaw (Aigemene verordening persoonsgegevens;EU-AVG).

Quality of care

The interim director does not recognize and take responsibility for the problems regarding the quality of care pronounced by different caregivers of MHF. Instead,Ms. E. Healy criticizes caregivers' feedback. Moreover, Ms. Healy is systematically excluding certain experienced and highly educated healthcare workers from participating in the process of decision-making on medical content affecting clients' care. This top-down decision-making brings MHF healthcare workers in conflict with the loyalty to giving good care to our clients. Staff will face repercussions of the MHF interim directors for not following rules that may violate quality care to clients. The director is overly involved in certain planning but her role is indirect care, so she does not give treatments, do mentorship, evaluate care plans, and do not know clients' interest.

Secondly, in March 2020 the transition to a new electronic client dossier has a negative impact on the quality of care. There was little training that always included new changes in the system (as MHF is the first to use this system).In addition, medical information, including diagnosis and use of medication, were no longer available, which gives immediate and severe risks for the safety of the



giving care to clients.

Nevertheless, Ms. Healy has the audacity to send an email blaming staff for low production and praise her effort for paying staff salary during COVID-19. The director is aware that all clients' data have not been transferred to the new clients' system. Also due to limited space, the clinic is booking appointments based on 3 available rooms.

Unworkable situation

The above-mentioned problems are only a small part of the presented problems at MHF. The current situation is affecting the health of certain caregivers which has a negative effect on the quality of care of the clients. Ms. E Healy is creating tension at the workplace, involving herself in the department's situation (imposing to do things her way). The rules and regulations of the organization have not been updated since 2014, but staffs have to adhere to a lot of changes. In addition, management often references to policies that do not exist or have not been updated in years to argue their case against workers. There is also the hiring of staff, whose function is not clear and relevant at the moment. In conclusion, we cannot speak of good employer ship by law (Burgerlijk Wetboek; article 7:611) anymore and this has led to an unworkable situation for the caregivers of the MHF. Therefore the caregivers of the MHF are terminating the trust in the directors and the HR officer of the MHF.

It is regretful that it has come to this point and that the caregivers of the MHF feel the necessity to inform the board of directors, the Minister of VSA and the Inspector General Earl Best, about the deteriorating situation. It is expected that the board of directors will start with the process of taking adequate measures that will resolve the problem within the next two weeks after receipt of this letter. All affected caregivers will be open for discussion with strict confidentiality of mentioning names. We expect that the board of directors of the MHF will protect the caregivers against repercussions taken by Ms. Healy and Mrs. Carina due to sending this letter.

Equal and fair treatment

The director is known for sending or saying insulting things( e.g.I am the boss no one should go to the board, I do not care about your emotions, I am paying your salary, you went to school but cannot speak/write English properly,I will get a lawyer and get rid of you if labor department does not agree). A small group can get away with wrongdoings, while those that are executing their job in honesty, fairness with passion, and dedication are penalized and embarrassed in front of other staff.

A health care institution should not be "functioning" on the favoritism of being friends or family. It should be functioning on dedicated professionals.

Solutions



We are proposing the following solutions:

1. Board of MHF evaluates the management team {medical coordinator/psychiatrist, finance manager, and HR). Evaluate their performance, staff relationship, and assertiveness in making decisions that differ from Ms. Healy. and qualified to fill position temporarily.

3. Do not appoint Dr. Kelpwijk director, start recruitment of a new director (should function independently and without fear that Ms. Healy nor Mrs.Carina can unfairly influence the continuation of employment).

4. Provide training in human resources management to Mrs. Carina and evaluate after 3 months. Mrs. Carina should be reprimanded when she manipulates staff in signing documents. It should be clear she will not get away with being using the law only when it is convenient for management and not with staff.

In closing

In 2017 a letter was already sent to the board of the MHF and the then minister of VSA,find this letter attached. Clearly staffs are still suffering and the situation is deteriorating. We hope that this time we will be taken seriously. We hope that you as a board will not allow this structural problem to continue.

Hoping to have informed you accordingly. Awaiting a prompt reply, within 2 weeks

We appreciate a response to all staffs' email; job email addresses can be retrieved from Executive

Assistant at MHF.

Kind Regards, Concern MHF Staff

Cc: the Honorable Minister of VSA,Richard Panneflek

Cc: Inspector General,Earl Best



Juancho Vrausquin Blvd.#11,Philipsbur& St.Maarten,E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .P:+1-721-5504348

To: Mental Health Foundation

The Board and management team

Ms. Tess Blom

Leopard Road #1

Cay Hill, St. Maarten

Attention: MHF Leadership

Philipsburg, August 211 2017

Dear Ms. T. Blom,

Although the MHF Board received a carbon copy of the letter send (email7/7/2017) to the Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor, Mr. E. Lee and a copy of the letter was presented to the MHF staff on the bulletin board at the MHFI the UFA never received an official written reaction from the MHF to the letter in question, which we regret.

Nevertheless, several UFA members reported that actions were taken by the MHF on some of the issues addressed in the abovementioned letter. Although the UFA welcomes the fact that actions are being taken and decisions were made to tackle some urgent issues, the UFA is not satisfied with the way in which they were shaped.

Concerning the issue of the President of the MHF it's reported that it has been communicated to the staff that the President will make his position available once a replacement has been found. The UFA is of the opinion that this is unacceptable for an organization in a situation as mentioned before because the recruitment- and appointment process for this position could take several months, therefore the UFA suggests that the President of the Board has to resign immediately and make his position temporarily available to one of the other board members while the Board will look for a replacement of the President

The other issue on leadership is the one reported on the intention or decision by the MHF to appoint Ms. E. Healy, a former MHF director, as the new director or interim director or project coordinator as from the 1st of September 2017.

The UFA is shocked that this option was even considered and communicated as a solution to the situation the MHF is in pertaining to the leadership of the organization. One of the biggest challenges the MHF is facing at the moment due to the lack of leadership and direction is staff turnover. The UFA mentioned the staff turnover as



Juancho Yrausquin Blvd.#11,

Philipsburg,St.Maarten, E:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .P:+1-721-5504348

being worrisome in the letter to the Minister and since that letter was sent a couple of employees left the MHF because they weren't satisfied with the current situation at the MHF.

It has been reported that Ms. E. Healy who is a former director of the MHF had a bad record pertaining to the staff turnover, mostly due to her lack of decent and effective communications- and leadership skills towards staff.

The UFA is of the opinion and strongly advises the MHF to reconsider the intention or decision to install Ms. E. Healy in whatever leading position at the MHF. The UFA is not convinced that having Ms. E. Healy in any such position will do staff or the MHF any good and her presence will ultimately jeopardize the operation of the organization.

In the meeting of Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 with the Minister of Public Health, Social Development, and Labor the UFA made her position clear in respect to the issues mentioned above. The UFA also mentioned that she would send a letter to the MHF

addressing these issues, the Minister explicitly requested to receive a carbon copy of

the letter.

We are, therefore, in the interest of the staff and clients of the MHF, requesting an urgent meeting with you to discuss these matters at your earliest, but no later than Monday, August 28th, 2017.

Hoping to have informed you accordingly, Awaiting a prompt response,

Yours truly,

Mr. Lloyd Beaton, President of the UFA.

o.b.o. The staff of the Mental Health Foundation

cc: The Honorable Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor.
Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick once reigned as one of TVs top couples. They began dating way back in 2006 and went on to welcome three children. But the couple called it quits in 2015 when Disick became entangled in a cheating scandal.

It didnt immediately seem like they would reconcile but now that they appear to be spending more time together, fans have started to wonder if the former couple is secretly back together.

Kardashian fueled the rumors on June 14 when she was seen wearing a shirt fans say belongs to Disick  and again on Fathers Day when she shared a post celebrating the reality star.

Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick in October 2013 | Denise Truscello/WireImage

Kourtney Kardashians Instagram post about Scott Disick

Kardashian went on Instagram on June 21 with a tribute in honor of the Flip It Like Disick star. She posted a photo of them with their kids  Mason, 10, Penelope, 7, and Reign, 5  along with a caption wishing him a happy fathers day.

Thankful for you and these three special ones, she continued.

RELATED: Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disicks Kids Want Them to Get Back Together, Source Reveals

Fans and celebrities alike couldnt help but gush over the photo in the comment section. Kardashians good friend Stephanie Shepherd wrote, A FAMILY, while ATL actress Khadijah Haqq said, This makes me so happy.

Scott and Kourt are soulmates, commented another, while other fans urged the two to get back together. Someone even declared they were already officially back together, before tacking on a string of celebratory emojis.

The post comes on the heels of Scott Disicks split from Sofia Richie

Multiple outlets reported in May that Disick had split from Richie after nearly three years of dating. Sources told E! News that Richie broke up with him so he could focus on himself after an April rehab stint while noting that had been leaning on Kardashian for support as he worked to better himself.

Kourtney knows how to handle Scott  She has really been there for him since his rehab exit, and has had a lot of sympathy towards him, the insider continued.

RELATED: Sofia Richie Claims That Scott Disick Acts Totally Different Around Kourtney Kardashian

Disick went on to join Kardashian and their kids for a vacation to Utah during Memorial Day weekend and jetted off with them to Wyoming in mid-June, fueling romance rumors. As the speculation continues, both of them have opted to keep quiet.

But its not super unusual for them to hang out

Despite all that has happened between them, they have truly taken the high road to reach a happy place and be the best parents possible for their children. Disick talked about his co-parenting relationship with Kardashian in a 2019 interview with Us Weekly, saying:

The truth is, my problems shouldnt affect the kids. Just because their mother and I couldnt make it as a perfect, romantic couple shouldnt have anything to do with the kids. They dont deserve our mistakes, so we figured out a way.
First responders on scene at a fatal accident near Holland Hills in Basalt. One person was killed and two more were critically injured in the T-bone wreck.
Sara Wittner had seemingly gotten her life back under control. After a December relapse in her battle with drug addiction, the 32-year-old completed a 30-day detox program and started taking a monthly injection to block her cravings for opioids. She was engaged to be married, working for a local health advocacy group in Colorado, and counseling others about drug addiction.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The virus knocked down all the supports she had carefully built around her: no more in-person Narcotics Anonymous meetings, no talks over coffee with trusted friends or her addiction recovery sponsor. As the virus stressed hospitals and clinics, her next appointment for a monthly shot of medication was pushed back from 30 days to 45 days.

As best her family could reconstruct from the messages on her phone, Wittner started using again on April 12, Easter Sunday, more than a week after her original appointment when she should have gotten her next injection. She couldnt stave off the cravings any longer as she waited for her appointment that coming Friday. She used again that Tuesday and Wednesday.

We kind of know her thought process was that I can make it. Ill go get my shot tomorrow, says her father, Leon Wittner. Ive just got to get through this one more day and then Ill be OK.

But on that Thursday morning, the day before her appointment, her sister Grace Sekera found her curled up in bed at her parents home in this Denver suburb, blood pooling on the right side of her body, foam on her lips, still clutching a syringe. Her father suspects she died of a fentanyl overdose. However, he says, what really killed her was the coronavirus.

Anybody that is struggling with a substance abuse disorder, anybody that has an alcohol issue and anybody with mental health issues, all of a sudden, whatever safety nets they had for the most part are gone, he says. And those are people that are living right on the edge of that razor.

Story continues

Sara Wittner (left) and her sister Grace Sekera on Sekeras wedding day. Wittner began using narcotics again after the COVID-19 pandemic dismantled elements of her sobriety support system. On the Thursday after Easter, Sekera discovered her sisters body. No little sister should have to go through that, Sekera says. | Courtesy of Leon Wittner

Sara Wittners death is just one example of how complicated it is to track the full impact of the coronavirus pandemicand even to identify what should be counted. Some people who get COVID-19 die of COVID-19. Some people who get COVID die of something else. And then there are people who die because of disruptions created by the pandemic.

While public health officials are trying to gather data on how many people test positive for the coronavirus and how many people die from the infection, the pandemic has left an untold number dying in the shadows, not directly because of the virus but still because of it. They are unaccounted for in the official tally, which, as of June 21, has topped 119,000 in the U.S.

But the lack of immediate clarity on the numbers of people actually dying from COVID-19 has some onlookers, ranging from conspiracy theorists on Twitter all the way to President Donald Trump, claiming the tallies are exaggerated even before they include deaths like Wittners. That has undermined confidence in the accuracy of the death toll and made it harder for public health officials to implement infection prevention measures.

Yet experts are certain that a lack of widespread testing, variations in how cause of death is recorded, and the virus economic and social disruption are hiding the full extent of the pandemics death toll.

How To Count Coronavirus Deaths

In the U.S., COVID-19 is a notifiable diseasedoctors, coroners, hospitals and nursing homes must report when encountering someone who tests positive for the infection, and when a person who is known to have the virus dies. That provides a nearly real-time surveillance system for health officials to gauge where and to what extent outbreaks are happening. But its a system designed for speed over accuracy; it will invariably include deaths not caused by the virus as well as miss deaths that were.

For example, a person diagnosed with COVID-19 who dies in a car accident could be included in the data. But someone with COVID-19 who dies at home might be missed if they were never tested. Nonetheless, the numbers are close enough to serve as an early warning system.

Theyre really meant to be simple, says Colorado state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy. They apply these black-and-white criteria to often gray situations. But they are a way for us to systematically collect this data in a simple and rapid fashion.

For that reason, she says, the numbers dont always align with death certificate data, which takes much more time to review and classify. And even those can be subjective. Death certificates are usually completed by a doctor who was treating that person at the time of death or, by medical examiners or coroners when patients die outside of a health care facility. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines allow for doctors to attribute a death to a presumed or probable COVID infection in the absence of a positive test if the patients symptoms or circumstances warrant it. Those completing the forms apply their individual medical judgment, though, which can lead to variations from state to state or even county to county in whether a death is attributed to COVID-19.

Furthermore, it can take weeks, if not months, for the death certificate data to move up the ladder from county to state to federal agencies, with reviews for accuracy at each level, creating a lag in those more official numbers. And they may still miss many COVID-19 deaths of people who were never tested.

Thats why the two methods of counting deaths can yield different tallies, leading some to conclude that officials are fouling up the numbers. And neither approach would capture the number of people who died because they didnt seek careand certainly will miss indirect deaths like Wittners where care was disrupted by the pandemic.

All those things, unfortunately, are not going to be determined by the death record, says Oscar Alleyne, chief of programs and services for the National Association of City and County Health Officials.

Using Historical Data To Understand Todays Toll

Thats why researchers track what are known as excess deaths. The public health system in the U.S. has been cataloging all deaths on a county-by-county basis for more than a century, providing a good sense of how many deaths can be expected every year. The number of deaths above that baseline in 2020 could offer insight into the true impact of the current pandemic.

For example, from March 11 to May 2, New York City recorded 32,107 deaths. Laboratories confirmed 13,831 of those were COVID-19 deaths and doctors categorized another 5,048 of them as probable COVID-19 cases. Thats far more deaths than what historically occurred in the city. From 2014 through 2019, the city averaged just 7,935 deaths during that time of year. Yet when taking into account the historical deaths to assume what might occur normally, plus the COVID cases, that still leaves 5,293 deaths not explained in this years death toll. Experts believe that most of those deaths could be either directly or indirectly caused by the pandemic.

City health officials reported about 200 at-home deaths per day during the height of the pandemic, compared with a daily average of 35 between 2013 and 2017. Again, experts believe that excess is presumably caused either directly or indirectly by the pandemic.

And nationally, a recent analysis of obituaries by the Health Care Cost Institute found that, for April, the number of deaths in the U.S. was running about 12% higher than the average from 2014 through 2019.

The excess mortality tells the story, says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. We can see that COVID is having a historic effect on the number of deaths in our community.

That approach, however, has skeptics crying foul, accusing health officials of cooking the books to make the pandemic seem worse than it is. In Montana, for example, a Flathead County health board member cast doubt over official COVID-19 death tolls, and Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson questioned the death rate during an April broadcast. That has sowed seeds of doubt. Some social media posts claim that a family member or friend died at home of a heart attack but that the cause of death was inaccurately listed as COVID-19, leading some to question the need for lockdowns or other precautions.

For every one of those cases that might be as that person said, there must be dozens of cases where the death was caused by coronavirus and the person wouldnt have died of that heart attackor wouldnt have died until years later, Faust says. At the moment, those anecdotes are the exceptions, not the rule.

At the same time, the excess deaths tally would capture cases like Wittners, where the usual access to health care was disrupted.

A recent analysis from Well Being Trust, a national public health foundation, predicted as many as 75,000 people might die from suicide, drug overdose or alcohol abuse, triggered by unemployment caused by the pandemic.

People lose their jobs and they lose their sense of purpose and become despondent, and you sometimes see them lose their lives, says Benjamin Miller, Well Beings chief strategy officer, citing a 2017 study that found that for every percentage point increase in unemployment, opioid overdose deaths increased 3.6%.

Meanwhile, hospitals across the nation have seen a drop-off in non-COVID patients, including those with symptoms of heart attack or stroke, suggesting many people arent seeking care for life-threatening conditions and may be dying at home. Denver cardiologist Dr. Payal Kohli calls that phenomenon coronaphobia.

Kohli expects a new wave of deaths over the next year from all the chronic illnesses that arent being treated during the pandemic. Youre not necessarily going to see the direct effect of poor diabetes management now, but when you start having kidney dysfunction and other problems in 12 to 18 months, thats the direct result of the pandemic, Kohli says. As were flattening the curve of the pandemic, were actually steepening all these other curves.

Lessons From Hurricane Maria

Thats what happened when Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in 2017, disrupting normal life and undermining the islands health system. Initially, the death toll from the storm was set at 64 people. But more than a year later, the official toll was updated to 2,975, based on an analysis from George Washington University that factored in the indirect deaths resulting from the storms disruptions. Even so, a Harvard study calculated the excess deaths caused by the hurricane were likely far higher, topping 4,600.

The numbers became a political hot potato, as critics blasted the Trump administration over its response to the hurricane. That prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ask the National Academy of Sciences to study how best to calculate the full death toll from a natural disaster. That report is due in July, and those who wrote it are now considering how their recommendations apply to the current pandemic  and how to avoid the same politicization that befell the Hurricane Maria death toll.

You have some stakeholders who want to downplay things and make it sound like weve had a wonderful response, it all worked beautifully, says Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities and a member of the study committee. And youve got others who say, No, no, no. Look at all the people who were harmed.

Calculations for the ongoing pandemic will be even more complicated than for a point-in-time event like a hurricane or wildfire. The indirect impact of COVID-19 might last for months, if not years, after the virus stops spreading and the economy improves.

But Wittners family knows they already want her death to be counted.

Throughout her high school years, Sekera dreaded entering the house before her parents came home for fear of finding her sister dead. When the pandemic forced them all indoors together, that fear turned to reality.

No little sister should have to go through that. No parent should have to go through that, she says. There should be ample resources, especially at a time like this when theyre cut off from the world.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
After 10 days of being closed, the Pi's restaurant chain reopened Pi's Chinese Restaurant, Pi's Asian Express and Genji Midland on Saturday. The chain made the decision to close the restaurants on June 10 when several employees showed symptoms of COVID-19.

On June 8, regular temperature checks for employees alerted staff to one individual with a high temperature. That employee was immediately sent home and all employees were notified to be tested. From that point on, Pi's management remained in constant contact with the Midland County Department of Public Health in order to monitor infected employees and lay out plans going forward.
U.S. President Donald Trump offered to fly North Korean leader Kim Jong-un back to his country from the February 2019 Vietnam summit, but Kim laughed and declined, according to Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton.



In his memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," set to be published Tuesday, Bolton recalled the conversations that took place behind the scenes during Trump and Kim's second summit that ultimately ended abruptly without any agreement.



On the first day, Feb. 28, Trump asked Bolton for the briefing material that explained the meaning of "denuclearization" and North Korea's "bright future," according to the former adviser.



"He handed both pages to Kim, and offered to fly him back to North Korea, canceling his evening in Hanoi," Bolton recalled. "Kim laughed and said he couldn't do that, but Trump observed happily that that would be quite a picture."



Kim famously took an armored private train from North Korea to Hanoi for the second summit and returned home aboard the same train.



During the course of their meeting, Trump asked Kim what North Korea could add to its offer of dismantling its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, saying, "He knew Kim didn't want him to look bad because he was the only one on Kim's side," Bolton wrote.



"Kim readily returned the compliment, since he was the only one on Trump's side," he said.



Trump repeatedly called for more concessions from the North, suggesting Kim offer to eliminate his long-range missiles capable of hitting the United States.













Turning to Bolton, Trump asked for his thoughts, and Bolton jumped in to demand a full declaration of North Korea's nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile programs.



"Kim wasn't buying, urging that if we went step by step, that would ultimately bring us a comprehensive picture," Bolton wrote.



Kim went further to complain that North Korea had no legal guarantees to safeguard its security. When Trump asked what kind of guarantees the North wanted, Kim replied that there are no diplomatic relations, 70 years of hostility and eight months of personal relations.



"What would happen if a U.S. warship entered North Korea territorial waters? he asked, and Trump suggested Kim call him," Bolton recalled.



The North Korean leader sought to emphasize the significance of giving up Yongbyon, pointing to U.S. media's coverage of the idea.



"Trump asked again if Kim could add something to his offer, such as asking only for a percentage reduction in the sanctions rather than completely removing them. This was beyond doubt the worst moment of the meeting," Bolton wrote.



"If Kim Jong Un had said yes there, they might have had a deal, disastrously for America. Fortunately, he wasn't biting, saying he was getting nothing, omitting any mention of the sanctions being lifted," he added.



As the two sides wrangled over how to draw up their closing statements, Kim insisted on a joint statement, while Trump changed his mind after initially wanting separate statements, according to Bolton.



"Trump interjected emphatically that if we accepted Kim's proposal, the political impact in the United States would be huge, and he could lose the election," Bolton recalled, referring to North Korea's offer to dismantle only Yongbyon in exchange for sweeping sanctions relief. "Kim reacted quickly, saying he didn't want Trump to do anything that would harm him politically."



Bolton added: "Kim kept pushing for a joint statement, but lamented that he felt a barrier between the two leaders, and felt a sense of despair. Kim was smartly playing on Trump's emotions, and I worried it might work. Trump said Kim shouldn't feel that way, and then, fortunately, we all laughed." (Yonhap)
SoftBank will sell up to about 198 million shares of T-Mobile stock worth about $21 billion, the telecom company announced Monday.

The sale, which represents about 65% of SoftBank's stake in T-Mobile, is part of SoftBank's efforts to free up cash as the coronavirus pandemic has hurt several of its key investments. Prior to the health crisis, WeWork, a portfolio company of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund, failed to go public after its IPO prospectus was roundly criticized for its nontraditional corporate governance structure and huge losses.

T-Mobile shares were down about 1.5% in after-hours trading Monday.

In its May report to investors, SoftBank said the Vision Fund posted losses of $18 billion. That came after SoftBank previously announced in March that it would sell or monetize up to the equivalent of $41 billion in assets to buyback shares and reduce debt.

T-Mobile said in a press release Monday it would offer about 134 million of the shares SoftBank sells in the transaction to the public. It will give underwriters of the public equity offering the option to purchase an additional 10 million shares.

Marcelo Claure, a T-Mobile director and CEO of SoftBank Group International, will purchase 5 million shares after they are sold to T-Mobile, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Claure will buy the shares with proceeds of a loan from SoftBank, T-Mobile reported.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.
Reporter

Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).
Democratic US Senator Kamala Harris has expressed her anger over the use of tear gas on peaceful protests of Black Lives Matter amid the coronavirus outbreak and called it outrageous. Taking on Twitter to oppose the actions of police forces using such measures to stop the demonstrations have increased the risk of being infected with COVID-19. Harris also noted that she, along with her colleagues in the US government are trying to call for agencies that would prevent the transmission of novel coronavirus which has now infected over 2.2 million people in the country. Even though some US states have ordered against the use of tear gas, others have preferred the method to prevent violence during the protests.

The fact that law enforcement is using tear gas on protestors in the middle of a pandemic is outrageous. My colleagues and I are calling for agencies to cease these tacts to prevent the increased risk of coronavirus transmission and unnecessary hospitalizations.  Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 22, 2020

Even though US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised Democratic leaders for being not harsh enough against the protesters and the violence in the state, the US senators anger came just weeks after 1,300 medical officials have signed a petition calling against the use of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the protesters at Black Lives Matter rallies.

Read - Police Fire Tear Gas At Protest Against Mali's President

Unrest has prevailed in many states across the US which was triggered by the death of African American George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. Thousands of people have flooded the streets of major cities amid the coronavirus outbreak and police officials have not only advised against such mass gatherings but have even taken violent measures to control the demonstrations.

Read - Tear Gas Fired At Rally Against Police Brutality And Injustice

Tear gas can accelerate transmission

Citing the fear of a surge in coronavirus cases, the medical professionals including doctors, nurses, disease experts have noted that the measures taken by the police authorities will accelerate the spread of COVID-19 disease. In an open letter, the health experts have said that the police brutality could lead to worsening the situation of coronavirus outbreak which has already spread unevenly among Americans based on their racial orientation. The authorities in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York among other US cities have adhered to tactics like launching fumes of chemical irritants and smoke to disperse the demonstrations.

Doctors advised, Oppose any use of tear gas, smoke, or other respiratory irritants, which could increase risk for COVID-19 by making the respiratory tract more susceptible to infection, exacerbating existing inflammation, and inducing coughing.

Read - Riot Police Fire Tear Gas As Protests Continue

Read - Police Fire Tear Gas As Clashes Continue In Beirut


Two Offaly charities have received donations as part of Aldis Community Grants Programme across the last 12 months.

The programme has seen Aldi donate a total of 1,000 to charities across Offaly who provide vital services and make a huge difference within their community.

Little Wishes Edenderry and Friends of the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore each benefitted from a 500 donation from one of Aldis two Offaly stores.

Aldis Community Grants programme helps fund local charities and organisations that contribute vital work and services in their local communities. Each local charity supported is chosen by Aldi employees, enabling them to help the local good causes they are passionate about.

Over 250,000 has been donated to more than 340 different local charities across Ireland since the programme began four years ago. To mark its 20th anniversary in Ireland in 2019, Aldi staff across its Naas and Mitchelstown regions also voted for two charities, The Society of Saint Vincent De Paul and Pieta House Cork, to receive a further 5,000 in Aldi vouchers late last year.

Commenting, John Curtin, Group Buying Director, Aldi Ireland said: "At Aldi supporting the local communities that our stores serve is hugely important. Each charity selected as part of our Community Grants Programme offers fantastic services to those in need. Their dedicated staff and volunteers offer their time and care and now, more than ever, it is vital that we support "them.

Our local store staff are an integral part of the selection process for the donations, meaning they are passionate about the charities chosen in their local community.

"Aldis two Offaly stores are deeply involved in their local community. Through its partnership with FoodCloud, its Offaly stores have donated over 31,000 meals to local charities to date. Since 2015, Aldi has helped support initiatives including the Aldi Foroige Youth Citizenship Awards and the Aldi Foroige Junior Baking Competition."
Another Russian scientist has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term on a high treason charge in an ongoing spate of similar secretive cases targeting Russian academics.



The Moscow Regional Court on June 22 sentenced Roman Kovalyov, a former senior official at the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), to 7 years in prison.



TsNIIMash is Russia's leading rocket and spacecraft scientific center located in the city of Korolyov near Moscow.



Kovalyov was arrested in June last year and charged with treason after his apartment and summer house near the Russian capital were searched by police.



Details of the case have not been made public as its materials were classified.



Kovalyov was working with Viktor Kudryavtsev, a 75-year-old researcher at the TsNIIMash.



Kudryavtsev was arrested in July 2018 on suspicion of passing classified data on hypersonic technology to a research group in Belgium.



Kudryavtsevs lawyers have said that he had rejected a deal with investigators who wanted him to testify against Kovalyov in exchange for being transferred from pretrial detention to house arrest.



Kudryavtsev suffered a heart attack while in custody and was released from pretrial detention in late-September and ordered not to leave Moscow while investigations were under way.



The case against Kovalyov and Kudryavtsev is one of several in recent years in which Russian scholars and scientists have been accused of treason or disseminating classified or sensitive information.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
Mainstay Medical, a medical device company focused on developing Reactiv8 - a treatment aimed at stopping chronic lower back pain  has cleared another hurdle in its move into the United States market.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the companys Premarket Approval (PMA) application for ReActiv8, and commercialisation of the treatment in the US is expected to start next year.

Based on the FDA approval, Mainstay said it is building out its commercial team and inventory procurement, as well as evaluating the financial resources necessary to fund its planned activities.

The company plans to host an investor event later this year to provide an update on its commercial plans for the treatment.

Jason Hannon, CEO of Mainstay, said: This therapy has the potential to improve quality of life for the most severely-affected patients, and we look forward to making it available to US patients and physicians beginning in the first half of 2021.

This will build upon our growing business in Europe and our upcoming launch in Australia.

Headquartered in Dublin, Mainstay has subsidiaries operating in Ireland, the United States, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.

Last year it reported revenue of $1.1m (970,000) - an increase on $600,000 in 2018.

Operating expenses for the year ended December 31, 2019 were $19.2m, down from the $29.6m reported in the prior year, according to its annual results.

The decrease in expenditure was driven primarily by reduced costs relating to activities and personnel following the completion of all implants in the ReActiv8 B clinical trial.

Mainstay had cash of $17.4m at year-end.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:49:43|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- China and the European Union (EU) on Monday reaffirmed commitment to conclude a comprehensive bilateral investment agreement in 2020.

The pledge came as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held the 22nd China-EU leaders' meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen via video link Monday.

Li and the EU leaders noticed the progress made in the negotiations and reaffirmed that both sides were committed to concluding the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement in 2020.

The leaders of both sides looked forward to reaching an ambitious agreement and agreed to make all efforts to reach consensus on rules concerning fair competition as soon as possible. Enditem
Croatia Airlines will submit a proposal to the Slovenian government this week over the opening of a base at Ljubljana Joze Pucnik Airport, for which it is seeking state incentives. According to the Delo daily, airport operator Fraport Slovenija has expressed interest for Croatia Airlines to serve Vienna, Skopje, Prague and Copenhagen out of the Slovenian capital. The carrier is considering basing one or two Dash 8 turboprop aircraft in the city. According to the Slovenian Ministry for Infrastructure, the conditions under which Croatia Airlines could establish flights from Ljubljana have already been discussed with the company and a final offer is expected during the week.





Fraport Slovenija has also urged the government to provide incentives to all foreign airlines serving Ljubljana. Carriers should be offered assistance by the state. Initially, this could amount to ten euros per passenger, for example. Its a transparent policy in which everyone would receive the same amount of funds. We should aggressively market Slovenia as a Covid-safe, green and healthy destination. Through these incentives, we would attract tourists, the General Manager of Ljubljana Airport, Zmago Skobir, said. Last week, Mr Skobir expressed concern that some airlines may not maintain services to Ljubljana over the winter due to a large number of passengers currently cancelling their bookings at the last minute due to ongoing quarantine requirements for a number of nationals entering Slovenia.





The Croatian carrier recently said, Croatia Airlines is potentially interested in establishing flights from Ljubljana Airport in order to enable passengers from Slovenia to connect to European destinations. Croatia Airlines previously toyed with the idea of setting up bases outside of its home market. In 2017 the airline planned to station aircraft in Sarajevo, Pristina, Skopje and Tirana. At the time, it said, "Market research data has shown that there is a potential for the successful opening of additional bases in the south-eastern European region and Croatia Airlines, as a European Union community carrier, has recognised its business interest in this. The prerequisite for this is to purchase four to six new aircraft and extensive preparations are underway. However, the idea was abandoned upon the departure of the carriers CEO at the time, Kresimir Kucko, to Gulf Air.
It is pointless to observe the historical ignorance of the mob  or protesters, but this was not a peaceful group  that toppled monuments to Father Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key, and Ulysses S. Grant in Golden Gate Park on Juneteenth. But it may be worth noting the curious symmetry of their actions.

When he canonized Serra, who brought Roman Catholicism to the Pacific Coast, Pope Francis homilized: Mission is never the fruit of a perfectly planned program or a well-organized manual. Mission is always the fruit of a life which knows what it is to be found and healed, encountered and forgiven. More than the statues in Golden Gate Park, it is that notion of healing and forgiveness  even encounter  that the mob rejects.

The commonplace description of the canceled is that they stood on the wrong side of history. But that is to miss the vital, defining feature of cancel culture: Its targets stand on the wrong side of Right Now. History, students of it know, is inseparable from context and change. The mentality sweeping the cancelers now is objectively ahistorical. Individuals, to say nothing of societies, can never be found and healed, encountered and forgiven in anything approaching moral complexity, discovery, or, for that matter, regression. Instead, the central claim of cancel culture is that each individual exists at a single moment  that of his or her worst sin  and that the standard of judging that sin is compressed into a modern instant.

This is a wholly separate question from that of honoring Confederate generals, especially by the twisted means of naming military bases of the United States after rebels who took up arms against it. Honoring any individual entails a prudential balancing of his or her public life. Great men and women inevitably have large defects to accompany large virtues. The point about Confederates is that they are known for nothing but the defects.

But what of Serra, Key, and Grant? The issue is best illustrated by stipulating the worst accusations of their critics. Serra is accused of destroying indigenous cultures and using brutal tactics to convert Native Americans to Roman Catholicism. Key owned slaves. Grant briefly owned, and freed, one man inherited from his father-in-law.

Story continues

Serra, for what little it is worth lately, pled for mercy for Native Americans who revolted against one of his missions in 1775, killing a priest. If any Native American, whether converted or not, were to kill Serra, he wrote to the governor, he should be forgiven: Let the murderer live so he can be saved, which is the purpose of our coming here and the reason for forgiving him. No such luck for Serra.

Which is the point: The object of cancel culture is not to persuade but rather to punish. The fact of having held retrograde views or committed terrible acts at any point is ipso facto evidence that redemption is impossible. There is no more forceful case against the criminal-justice reform that many of the same protesters demand. The philosophy, if it deserves that label, is simply a moralized version of President Trumps demands for law and order, and, by the way, feel free to rough up General Grant while hauling him in for questioning. The protesters want to abolish the police  which seems ungrateful, given that the police watched them destroy public property without making an arrest  while anointing themselves officers of unforgiving moral justice.

Key, like many of his generation, was a critic of slavery who nonetheless enslaved others. He was a moderate opponent of Garrisonian radicalism. Abraham Lincoln, whose turn at the dock is surely coming, was also regarded as a moderate in his day. Perhaps next Juneteenth will be marked by defacing memorials to the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, whose reading Juneteenth commemorates. Keys views on race, judged by todays standards, were abhorrent. The statue to him does not  did not, that is  honor or even address any of these acts. He is known to history for his authorship of the national anthem. If that is insufficient, Key  who, as a lawyer, represented both fugitive slaves and slave owners  could be memorialized as a lesson in the inherent complexity of human life.

That brings us to Grant. In the spirit of charity that those who destroyed a bust of him lack, set aside the patent absurdity of celebrating Juneteenth by deplatforming the general whose victorious troops read the Emancipation Proclamation and the president who subdued the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. Grants unforgivable and all-defining sin was having owned a slave, William Jones.

That is true. So is the fact that Grant was raised in an abolitionist family and went to court in 1859  in St. Louis, hardly an oasis of political calm or racial enlightenment  to free Jones, whom he could instead have sold to relieve his serious financial troubles. The least generous and nuanced interpretation that can be imposed on Grants life is that he was a slave owner who saw the error of his ways and proceeded to destroy slavery. Even that much requires caricature, but as caricatures go, it is an admirable one. Still, it requires a time-elapse photograph rather than a snapshot. It also requires that such an image be placed in context and understood in subtle terms.

In the Golden Gate strain of protest, the rejection of memory and complexity in favor of a bastardized version of Nietzsches eternal recurrence  that is, live in and for the now alone  has overtaken an initial and noble opposition to racism and police brutality. It will not turn out well for its adherents.

There are conservatives who dispense Jacobinism as a casual epithet, but here it genuinely applies. Edmund Burke defined the essence of Jacobinism as the destruction of all prejudices. In todays climate, it is necessary to specify that, by prejudice, he referred not to racial animosity but rather to moral habit. The new Jacobins compress past, present, and future into the almighty now.

This is indistinguishable from a central proposition of Trumpism, which is not simply that the past is a foreign country but also that it must be conquered and, a la Serra, civilized. The only difference is that the Golden Gate crowd believes that history started in 1619  or was it the publication date of the 1619 Project?  and that Trumpism, one of whose signatures is outlandish historical claims, locates the origin at November 2016. Does this theory of history include the millions of diverse Californians who are now Roman Catholic and who might take offense at the destruction of a monument to Serra? Did they come after the beginning of history, or before?

On this philosophy, there is and can be nothing permanent, which makes one wonder how its adherents can classify racism as an objective sin. The larger difficulty for the new Jacobins is that their internal logic predetermines, true to the spirit of Robespierre, their own date with the scaffold. They doubtless see Fridays episode as a moment of historical triumph. But the unrelenting march of moral progress means that the future  which is to say, tomorrow  must regard anyone operating under even todays most enlightened standards as troglodytes. Whoever comes next will be more enlightened, and a failure today to live up to tomorrows standards will be unredeemable.

The sequence is not hard to imagine. Did any of the protesters burn fossil fuels on their way to Golden Gate Park? Were their triumphant videos of crashing statues filmed on smartphones manufactured under atrocious labor conditions? Almost certainly. This is certain too: Their lives will be reduced to that sin. It will not be forgiven. The Golden Gate episode at least teaches that.

More from National Review
Direct and Indirect Pandemic Effects: Unique to 2020, with potential for continuation. Affects registration and voting, fear of crowds, risk of infection, long waits, difficulty in recruiting workers, many previous locations not available, elderly  a high voting group  particularly affected.

Greater range of issues involved in election, including public policy values: state / federal authority, powers; executive/ legislative branch powers; judicial and regulatory agendas; federalism framework; driving and connected socioeconomic issues such as income, employment, health, race become more visible.These have created divisions as well as has potential for unification, higher election turnout either way.

Pre 2016, 2016, 2018, early 2020 lesson not fully assessed, implemented. Backlog on implementing solutions, e.g. U.S. intel: Russia compromised seven states prior to 2016

Two of the absentee voting approaches  e-voting and mail both face challenges, including systematic attacks on mail voting as well as postal service infrastructure.

More and more incentivized and practiced US based and external hackers, increased by the range of public policy and economics and revenue oriented issues.

Divisiveness, with some recent shared values. May or may not be temporary.

Increase collaboration among states, state interest groups and the private sector offers opportunities. Potential for greater engagement on election infrastructure than in 2016 and 2018.

Registration:

Voter Turnout:

Voter Data Bases

Mail Voting

E voting:

Accelerated Vote Suppression:

Insist that big-tech companies do their part

:

Collaboration Among States, State Association and Security Entities

National Association of State Chief Information Officers

(NASCIO)

National Conference of State Legislatures

Council of State Governments

(CSG)

National Association of Counties

(NACO)

National League of Cities (NLC)

International City/County Management Association (ICMA)

National Association of Attorneys General

National Association of Election Officials

National Association of Secretaries of State

(NASS)

Election Processes and Security

(Various Sources) That Are Addressing Election Security



Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

US Election Assistance Commission

Brookings

Pew Charitable Trusts

GAO

ELECTION SECURITY:

DHS Plans Are Urgently Needed to Address Identified Challenges Before the 2020 Elections



Center for American Progress

Alliance for Securing Democracy

Atlantic Council

Harvard Kennedy School - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Cyber Security Project

Center for Internet Security (CIS)

Back in the spring of 2016, this blog asked the rhetorical question,  Could the election be hacked? The response: most people, including industry experts at the time, either ignored, mocked or laughed at the suggestion. But after the events of the past few years, no one is laughing now at the potential for voting irregularities, either online or offline.On the contrary, as we head closer to the November, election security is quickly rising to the very top of the domestic priority list and is set to be a top issue this Fall. Some of the recent headlines underline a growing sense of urgency, if not panic, regarding the topic and whats at stake. For example:So why now? What makes our current situation different than in the past? According to Andris Ozols, the former chief research analyst for Michigan government and an expert who has commented nationally on several past election cycles , the USA is in uncharted waters. "The pandemic is helping shift the election discourse from processes, operations and IT cybersecurity to also emphasizing public policies and values. For example, eligibility, access, openness, transparency, trust and truthfulness and equity are core issues.This is in partly accomplished from (1) lessons from the 2020 primaries, (2) the police and justice actions being seen in the larger context of pandemic, economic status, employment and election framework, and through (3) collaboration among states, governors and state interest groups and (4) increased engagement by the private sector."State collaboration on technology plays a significant role with internal, US generated threats while the private sector strongly assists with US based as well as external threats. Here are more specific details on unique aspects to this election cycle:See June 15, 2020 NYT on Pandemic is Choking off the Quadrennial Surge in Voter Registration and WSJ, Keep Voters from having to Wait in Line, June 12, 2020.: Increased external inquiries and allegations of ineligible or deceased registrants. Targeted sweeps of registered voters, changes in eligibility, often affecting minority or other groups that tend to vote blue.: Addresses many aspects of Pandemic issues, but there are claims of potential for fraud. See June 12 WSJ Bolster confidence in voting by mail and Encourage Election and Postal Officials to coordinate their efforts as soon as possible.Multiple issues on vulnerability raised by many entities and experts. Recent studies by MIT and others.Multiple techniques: disenfranchisement including removal from rolls, targeted site placement and consolidation, reduction in days or hours, etc. Vote suppression accelerates during census cycle decision and data utilization phases.See WSJ, June 12, 2020. The WSJ has done a good job on covering this issue."The EI-ISAC (Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center) handles information for election officials and provides no-cost cybersecurity services. ...Yes, weve been discussing election cybersecurity threats for the past four years, but new cyberthreats keep surfacing. Consider these recent examples:With the general election less than 150 days away, there are rising concerns that the push for remote voting prompted by the pandemic could open new opportunities to hack the vote  for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but also others hoping to disrupt, influence or profit from the election. Homeland Security officials have been focusing intensely on hardening registration systems, said Christopher C. Krebs, who leads the departments Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He said his teams had been working to make sure that towns, counties and states patch software vulnerabilities, back up their systems and also have paper printouts of poll books  the registration lists used on Election Day  should criminals or adversary nations render the digital versions inaccessible. Expanding access to the ballot will be necessary this cycle, as officials scramble to hold an election against the backdrop of a pandemic. But the security vulnerabilities they present are almost certain to be exploited by the president and his allies.Over the past few years there has been many ways that election security topics were addressed by lawmakers and other government leaders and organizations. From states getting classified briefings in 2018 elections to the Senate Intelligence Committee writing a report on election vulnerabilities ahead of the midterms to the US Election Assistance Commission providing $380 million to states in election security funds , the response to the 2016 election was broad-based.Many other groups across the country have focused on these issues. Some of the available resources for the 2020 elections include these organizations and important documents listed below.April 28, 2020: A Budget Shortfall Estimate for States Grows Even Worse The National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released Stronger Together: State and Local Cybersecurity Collaboration. With a dramatic uptick in ransomware attacks across the country, governors, state CIOs and state government executives are designing and implementing programs to strengthen local partnerships in cybersecurity. The publication outlines promising programs that states have initiated to enhance collaboration with their local government counterparts for cyber resilience. It also provides high-level recommendations for state officials looking to strengthen partnerships with local government officials on cybersecurity.Ensuring the integrity and security of the election process is essential for the functioning of democracy in the U.S., and is a shared responsibility among many officials. Local election administrators are in charge of the nuts and bolts of election administration, and play a key role in elections security.Feb 14, 2020  Requires executive branch agency heads to ensure that information security programs are in place, implement security policies, standards and cost-effective safeguards to reduce, eliminate or recover from identified threats to data and information technology resources; include cybersecurity Observations and lessons learned from these facilitated sessions will be distilled into a toolkit that any state can use to map a communications plan for an election cybersecurity breach. The toolkit was be made available on the CSG website in November 2018.Mar 23, 2020  Administering an election during a global pandemic is likely a first for most county officials. With the uncertainty of COVID-19s long-term impact throughout the country, counties are grappling with election-related challenges ranging from shortages of poll workers to providing additional voting options and keeping polling locations clean.This guide outlines some of the most impactful ways that local governments can work with their state governments to prepare and defend again cyberattacks.ICMA, which was formed in 1914, is the leading association of local government professionals dedicated to creating and sustaining thriving communities throughout the world. With over 10,000 members, the organization advances professional local government through leadership, management, innovation, and ethics.THE ROLE OF CHIEF STATE ELECTION OFFICIALS IN ELECTION SECURITY: 40 members of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) serve as their state's designated chief election official, overseeing the conduct of elections according to law.Jul 11, 2018  The Guidelines are used by accredited testing laboratories as part of both state and national certification processes; by state and local election officials who are evaluating voting systems for potential use in their jurisdictions; and by manufacturers who need to ensure that their products fulfill the requirements, so they can be certified.Jun 09, 2020  Election Security is a Partnership. Securing election infrastructure is a partnership between federal, state and local government and private sector entities. DHS collaborates with federal departments and agencies, state and local government, election officials and other valued partners such as the National Association of Secretaries of State ...Securing election infrastructure from new and evolving threats is a vital national interest that requires a whole-of-society approach. This library provides State and local governments, election officials, campaigns, the vendor community, and voters with voluntary tools to secure election-related assets, facilities, networks and systems from cyber and physical risks.The Department of Homeland Security has designated elections systems as part of our nations critical infrastructure. At the time of designation, then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson observed, "Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law."Election Security . Election Security Preparedness; Election Management Guidelines; Quick Start Guides; Election Worker Best Practices; Voting Accessibility; Designing Polling Place Materials; Voter Registration Cancellations; Language Access; Glossaries of Election Terminology; Press Releases; Elections as Critical Infrastructure; ProcurementManaging Election Technology The Election Official of today is an Information Technology (IT) Manager - whether they think they are, whether they want to be, or whether they were trained to be. IT management requires a unique set of attitudes, knowledge, and skills in order to plan, direct, and control contemporary election administration.Ongoing support to state and local governments. Election Technology Vendors Must Secure Their Voting Systems Many states purchase their voting systems from third-party vendors who have little financial incentive to prioritize election securityhttps://www.brookings.edu/topic/campaigns-electionsMay 13, 2020  Guidance for the Brookings community and the public on our response to the coronavirus (COVID-19)Aug 23, 2019  The lack of information flow in 2016 is largely due to the fact that at that time almost no state election officials had security clearances and were thus not privy to understanding the full ...Aug 20, 2019  This post is part of " Cybersecurity and Election Interference," a Brookings series that explores digital threats to American democracy, cybersecurity risks in elections, and ways to mitigate...About Cybersecurity and Election Interference. As we head into the 2020 elections, the United States faces extraordinary threats from the weaponization of cyberspace, foreign interferenceNov 01, 2018  In March, Congress allocated $380 million for state and local election security. While counties used the funds for cybersecurity training and new election equipment, many local officials complained it was not enough money. Some states, such as Arkansas, were able to improve their votingGAO-20-267: Published: Feb 6, 2020. Publicly Released: Feb 6, 2020.Election Security in All 50 States ... this report does not address specific information technology (IT) requirements for voting machine hardware, software, or the design of pre-election testing Aug 19, 2019  The right to vote in a free and fair election is the most basic civil right, one on which many of the other rights of the American people depend. View the Election Fraud Database.David Levine, Elections Integrity Fellow February 13, 2020 ... well as experts in cybersecurity and information technology, to complement efforts by federal and/or state officials ... many of its local election officials are part-time employees,15 the states election cybersecurity.International voting system standards would provide valuable guidance for governments in the process of procuring election technology. Establishing comprehensive international guidelines is vital. Some companies, in particular those with a track record of managing and implementing new election technology in a variety of countries, self-regulate ...(February, 2018)No doubt, the sum of these election challenges and resources seems daunting  and not just for cybersecurity reasons. Indeed, if the vote count is close, some believe that voters wont accept the 2020 election results no matter who wins. But regardless of your political persuasions or perspectives regarding the events of the past few years, there can be little doubt that all eyes are now on November. Election security is the elephant in the room for the next five months  and likely beyond.
National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan has warned the coronavirus pandemic will leave domestic banks less profitable in the short to medium-term, as he raised the possibility of a W-shaped economic recovery.

As investors worry about the potential for a second wave of coronavirus infections, Mr McEwan on Monday said shareholders in the country's banks would wear lower returns soon after the crisis, but their longer-term prospects were brighter.

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan: "In the short to medium, its quite clear that there will be a less profitable banking system here in Australia." Credit:Elke Meitzel

Mr McEwan also said he thought the nation's economically vital relationship with China would ultimately recover, despite the recent strains.

NAB shareholders in recent months have faced sharply lower dividends and dilution from a capital raising, but Mr McEwan said the industry would bounce back as the economy ultimately recovered.
Ministers must seize the 'opportunity' of the coronavirus crisis to invest in cleaner technology and creating future jobs, Mark Carney said today.

The former Bank of England governor said public and private investment would be crucial for the recovery as consumers will be less 'aggressive' about spending.

He said change had 'accelerated' over recent months and many businesses that had good strategies before the pandemic hit will need to overhaul them dramatically.

But Mr Carney - who is now the PM's envoy for the COP26 climate summit - struck an optimistic note, insisting capital was already being 'repurposed' to take advantage of the upheaval by putting the economy on a 'more sustainable and efficient footing'.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he argued that the UK was well positioned to benefit from the shifts, as the City was already a 'leader' in such investment.

Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney (pictured in March before he stepped down) said public and private investment would be crucial for the recovery as consumers will be less 'aggressive' about spending

The intervention came as part of a series by the corporation considering how society can improve after the coronavirus turmoil.

Mr Carney cited Lenin's view that 'there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen'.

There has been an acceleration of change in recent months,' he said.

Mr Carney denied that work had slowed on climate issued while the world focused on combating disease.

'What is really happening on the investing side is there is a recognition of an opportunity not a risk of moving the economy to a more sunstainable and efficient footing.

'A lot of capital is being repurposed for that... this is an area where the City is a leader and can extend its lead.'

Mr Carney, who headed up the Bank from 2013 until earlier this year, said: 'Consumer attitudes and narratives are unlikely to be as aggressive, and borrowing - apart from necessary borrowing - is unlikely to be as high.

'There is going to be a need for public and private investment.'

Government borrowing is expected to hit 300billion this year as the economy reels from the impact of the pandemic.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing a huge recovery package for when the immediate challenge of coronavirus subsides, which could involve slashing VAT to stimulate growth.

Boris Johnson has also insisted he will still pump money into 'levelling up' the country by boosting infrastructure and retraining.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:14:05|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, attends the opening ceremony of the 12th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th CPPCC National Committee in Beijing, capital of China, June 22, 2020. The Standing Committee of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC, China's top political advisory body, opened its 12th meeting on Monday to discuss winning the battle against poverty. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, opened its 12th meeting on Monday to discuss winning the battle against poverty.

Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, attended the opening ceremony.

Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the meeting on invitation, and delivered a report. He said that decisive achievements have been made in the battle against poverty, with all major goals and tasks close to being completed.

However, Hu said the country still faced difficulties and challenges with regard to securing a decisive victory, and urged efforts to help the poor remain within the workforce or become employed amid the epidemic.

He also called for the establishment of long-term mechanisms to help regions that have shaken off poverty achieve overall vitalization and common prosperity.

The meeting was held partly on site and partly via video link. The main venue setting was in Beijing, with branches in Hong Kong and Macao. Enditem
New Delhi: The armed forces deployed along the 3,500-km de-facto border with China have been given full freedom in giving a befitting reply to any Chinese aggressive behaviour, government sources said on Sunday (June 20). The sources added that the Army, as well as the Indian Air Forces, have been ramping up their operational capabilities along the LAC to effectively deal with any Chinese misadventure.

According to sources, the decision was taken in the high-level meeting held today between Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and top military brass on the situation in eastern Ladakh.

The meeting was attended by Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh and Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria.

According to sources, Rajnath told the top military brass to maintain strict vigil on Chinese activities around land border, airspace and in strategic sea lanes, and asked them to adopt a tough approach in dealing with any misadventure by Chinese forces.

Indian and Chinese armies have been on a six-week standoff in several areas of eastern Ladakh. The ties between the two countries came under severe strain after Chinese military killed 20 Indian Army personnel and injured around 76 in a violent clash in Galwan Valley on June 15. The sources today also claimed that at least 45-50 Chinese troops were also killed during the violent confrontation, that went for almost 4 hours at Galwan valley on the intervening night of June 15-16.

Notably, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not talked about the number of casualties it suffered in the face-off.
A house at Koforidua Zongo in the New Juaben South Municipality in the Eastern Region was on Sunday destroyed by fire, rendering four families homeless.



The fire, which started around 5:30 pm destroyed the personal belongings of the families.



Items destroyed included television sets, home theatres, mattresses, fridges, sound systems, clothes and wardrobes among others.



The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained.



One of the victims who is also the landlord, Alhaji Basiru Inusah told Graphic Online that he was not around when the fire started.



"I was not at home but when I was called I quickly rushed to the house and saw smoke on top of the building. Initially I thought it was just one room burning but when I got closer,



"I realized it was coming out from my own house, then I started shouting on top of my voice for help", he said.



According to him, a 75-year-old woman, Bushira Inusah was in the room when the fire started but with the timely intervention of the community members, she was rescued.







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.

Featured Video
Mumbai: In a response to social media abuse amid the 'outsider versus insider' debate in the wake of Sushant Singh Rajput's death, Sonam Kapoor on Sunday said though she acknowledges her privilege as a star child, her identity is a matter of pride for her.

Sonam, who comes from a family of Bollywood producers and actors, shared screenshots of the expletives-laden messages, directed towards her, veteran actor father Anil Kapoor, producer sister Rhea, among others in the next of her kin.

"These are some of the comments coming my way. All the media and all the people who've encouraged this sort of behaviour and instigated it. This is on you. People talking about how one should have been kind to someone are doing worse to others.

"I encourage you guys to see my comment section. And I'm sure you don't hope that the same comes your way. I hope your parents don't have to see this sort of stuff," she wrote on Twitter.

Sonam said the remarks she made public aren't even the "worst of it".

The actor and her team are reporting these comments to the authorities, she added.

Rajput, 34, was found dead at his Mumbai residence on June 14. His death has reignited discussions around the struggle of survival in Bollywood, navigating cliques, particularly for outsiders.

The "Neerja" actor said she is proud to be the daughter of a movie star who has worked hard to sustain in the industry.

"Today on Father's Day I'd like to say one more thing, yes I'm my father's daughter and yes I am here because of him and yes I'm privileged.

"That's not an insult, my father has worked very hard to give me all of this. And it is my karma where I'm born and to whom I'm born. I'm proud. To be his daughter," she wrote.

To be his daughter.  Sonam K Ahuja (@sonamakapoor) June 21, 2020

Sonam said she has disabled the comments section from her and her father's Instagram pages to avoid the barrage of hate.

"I don't want my 64-year-old parents to go through this. They did nothing to deserve this. And I'm not doing it out of fear you morons, I'm doing it out of common sense to preserve my mental health and my parents," she said.
'How and if India retaliates will go a long way toward determining the trajectory of this crisis.'

IMAGE: Indian Army soldiers pay tribute to Naik Deepak Kumar, who was among 20 soldiers murdered by Chinese troops, at a ceremony at the Military Hospital in Prayagraj, June 19, 2020. Photograph: PTI Photo

"The events of June 15 have completely reshaped the dynamics of the border dispute, and potentially in destabilising ways," says Dr Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director of the Asia Program and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center, a well respected think-tank in Washington DC.

"The risk of escalation in the future has increased exponentially," Dr Kugelman tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih in the first part of the interview:

What are the possibilities of de-escalation now after such a bloody encounter, the worst in decades?

Will it make it even harder to achieve the status quo ante?

The good news is that both sides have stated their continued commitment to dialogue, and talks have taken place since the deadly clash. That's an important sign.

The military dialogue process that began on June 6 is the prime off ramp at this point.

If both sides are willing to return to it in good faith, prospects for escalation are dampened.

That said, let's be clear. A mass-fatality clash is inherently escalatory.

Even if the two sides are talking, it beggars belief to think that they'll be willing to climb all the way down the ladder anytime soon.

India, especially given current public sentiment, will be under tremendous pressure to respond in some way.

It has limited military options, but it does have non-military moves that it could pull out of its toolkit -- boycotting Chinese goods, ending partnerships with Chinese firms, and so on.

How and if India retaliates will go a long way toward determining the trajectory of this crisis.

Additionally, successful talks will be all the more difficult now that tensions are at a fever pitch.

Each side will take a harder line and be less willing to compromise.

Each side's core demands -- India's demand that PLA troops leave the areas they have occupied, and China's demand that India stop its infrastructure projects -- will face ample resistance.

The operative question is: At a moment of high tension, with two rivals facing their biggest crisis in decades, will they be in any mood to make compromises at the negotiating table?

For there to be de-escalation, someone will need to make concessions.

It was said for decades that the LAC had remained peaceful, unlike the LoC with Pakistan, how have the events of June 15 changed all that?

How will this change the nature of the LAC and India's management of the border with China?

The events of June 15 have completely reshaped the dynamics of the border dispute, and potentially in destabilising ways.

The deadly violence that day has sent mistrust soaring.

This means that in the future, the pushing and shoving that has typically characterised disputes could easily escalate to nastier and deadlier forms of fighting. And this means the risk of escalation in the future has increased exponentially.

There is also reason to believe that the past agreements between the two sides that have forbid the use of heavy weaponry during clashes may fall apart.

Both sides will want to better protect themselves in future disputes along the border, and firearms provide more protection than fists.

For many years, the absence of heavy weaponry during LAC disputes has ensured that the border isn't nearly as volatile as the LoC.

If troops along the LAC start using guns in future disputes, then the entire dynamic changes and the potential for escalation -- and possible miscalculation -- will increase markedly.

IMAGE: Family members of martyr Naib Dipak Singh mourn during his funeral at his village in Madhya Pradesh, June 19, 2020. Naik Singh was among the twenty Indian Army soldiers murdered by the Chinese in Ladakh's Galwan valley. Photograph: PTI Photo

Has this annulled the gains of Wuhan and Mamallapuram summits -- where one of the key outcomes was to avoid stand-offs on the LAC

What does it mean for the future of India-China relations which have always been complex and complicated even in the best of times?

The events of June 15 not only drastically changed the dynamics of the border dispute, they also dealt the biggest blow to the broader India-China relationship in decades.

One of the big impacts on India-China ties will be an inability to fool-proof the diplomatic and economic aspects of the relationship from the volatilities and tensions that emanate from the security side.

Previously, India and China had enough goodwill and depth in their relationship that they could overlook the border dispute enough to focus on cooperation in other areas.

But much of that goodwill has been shattered, and India in particular will be under pressure to scale back its commercial cooperation with Beijing.

There is an uncomfortable -- and, given the raw emotions of the moment, unpopular -- question that must be asked.

Can India, mired in one of its worst economic slowdowns in years -- and one that will only worsen because of COVID-19 -- afford to reduce or cut commercial ties with a key economic partner?

National security imperatives and political pressure will likely trump economic considerations, but there is nonetheless a real and considerable economic risk if India goes in that direction.

Let's be clear: The 'Wuhan Spirit' is dead in the water.

Optimists will argue that Beijing and New Delhi need to conjure up that spirit one more time -- perhaps with another informal summit between President Xi and Prime Minister Modi -- to get the relationship back on track.

Pessimists will argue that recent events make painfully clear that past Xi/Modi efforts to use personal diplomacy to strengthen the bilateral relationship have failed miserably, and that it's no longer a viable strategy.

The pessimists' views will likely carry the day for quite some time.

To be sure, once the dust settles and emotions are less raw, there may be a more conducive environment for trying to build back some of the lost goodwill.

But that will take a while.

And at any rate, once you have another bloody border clash, all bets will be off and any new progress toward strengthening ties will go up in smoke.

We see repeated incidents like Depsang in 2013, Doklam in 2017 and Ladakh 2020. Is this the new normal for India-China relations where military transgressions will reoccur with greater frequency?

Yes. In recent years, each successive incident has been increasingly serious.

Let's not forget that the Doklam crisis involved a third country, Bhutan, and marked the first time Indian and Chinese troops engaged on the soil of a third country</>.

I don't see this escalatory pattern -- one marked by increasingly serious and complex standoffs -- changing in the aftermath of the Galwan Valley clash. In fact, I see this pattern becoming more entrenched.

The India-China relationship is tenser now than it's been in decades, and the core drivers of these spats -- above all a border that remains hotly disputed -- won't go away even after the current crisis ends.

Accordingly, we're likely to see more frequent and intense standoffs.

Additionally, China appears to have no immediate desire to scale back the muscular actions it's been carrying out not just in Ladakh, but also in the South China Sea.

Beijing is increasingly on the defensive because of the global pushback against it for its initial handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

With Beijing increasingly on the defensive on the global stage, it has a strong incentive to go on the offensive through provocations in Ladakh and elsewhere to telegraph its continued strength.

What do you think was the reason behind the Chinese aggression on the LAC?

What is the Chinese intention?

What do the Chinese hope to gain by keeping the border in ferment?

We may never know the full story. Broadly speaking, we can chalk China's actions on the LAC in recent weeks up to a combination of factors, both local and geopolitical: Indian infrastructure building that better allows it to project power and protect territory in Ladakh; India's decision to revoke Article 370 of its Constitution; a growing US-India relationship and a deteriorating US-China relationship; and a need to showcase strength and resolve at a moment when China's policies and image are taking some serious blows in the court of global public opinion.

What remains unclear is if China's provocations are merely meant to telegraph messages of strength and defiance, or if they are part of a broader global strategy to embrace revisionist steps that include attempting to change borders via the use of force.

Production: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
The law can pass as early as June 30, as the NPCSC rushes to meet without revealing the full draft.

In an urgent bid to pass national security legislation for Hong Kong even without a full draft being made public and fundamental aspects remaining unclear, Chinas top legislative body which held its bi-monthly meeting this past weekend, will regroup again next week, Xinhua reported.

The National Peoples Congress Standing Committee will meet for three days beginning on Sunday and could pass the law as early as June 30, on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kongs handover from British rule, pro-Beijing politicians were quoted as saying.

The Chinese state media revealed broad outlines of the legislation on Saturday after the standing committee wrapped up a three-day deliberation on laws.

Although Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam will lead a new national security commission, which will include a central government adviser, and she can appoint judges to hear cases, Beijing will retain final say over how the law is implemented.

Also read: China Pakistan Economic Corridor projected to be a trillion dollar blunder, say analysts

Also read: Hong Kongs pro-democracy protesters urge for help

Divulging further on the security law, Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kongs sole delegate to the top body, said it was likely to be discussed.

He also said Hongkongers concerned about the law could submit their views to the congress through an online platform, which he admitted had not launched yet.

China says that the new national security law would prohibit the crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign and external influences to threaten national security.

While, Hong Kong would enforce the law, a mainland commissioners office would be set up in the city to supervise and guide the local government in carrying out the job.

Also read: Despite opposition, Nepal tweaks citizenship law amid tensions with India

For all the latest World News, download NewsX App
Fellow Chronicle writer Justin Phillips and I have a new podcast! Its called Extra Spicy, and its out TODAY. In each episode, we talk to somebody doing great work in the food world  whether its cooking, community organizing, writing or anything else  and use that conversation as a jumping-off point for other ideas. A conversation about pickles might lead into thoughts about nostalgia. A guests love for Indian sweets may digress into a critique of Eurocentrism in the pastry world. And so on. You can subscribe at Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Heres what youre in for.

On our first episode, I talk to writer and television personality Padma Lakshmi about her new show, Taste the Nation. (Heres my review of it for Datebook.) Lakshmi talks about how using the show to broaden the definition of American food can be an antidote to xenophobia and ahistoric notions of who Americans are. Justin and I consider the current moment, when the Black Lives Matter movement has grown even more prominent, and how this show seems to have come at just the right time. Listen to the episode here and read the transcript of the interview.

Then, I get to chat with organizer and sommelier Vinny Eng about working with the SF New Deal, a nonprofit that has provided financial relief for restaurants by enlisting them to cook meals for people and organizations in need. Eng lays out how the program works, as well as how crucial this kind of aid can be for restaurants and communities suffering during the pandemic. Listen to the episode here and read my full interview with Eng.

Finally, pickle profferer and Master Fermenter Kelly McVicker and I talk pickles: how time is an essential ingredient, and how an increased interest in the craft during the pandemic is a sign that people are rethinking their place in our food system. And its just really great to hear McVicker totally geek out about her thing. Read the full interview and listen here.

I hope you enjoy the show! Were also taking questions from listeners that well answer on the podcast, so if you need advice on what to do with the same-old package of ramen or want to know more about whats going on with your favorite Bay Area restaurant, go to the link above or email us at extraspicy@sfchronicle.com.

What Im eating

Soleil Ho / The Chronicle

This week, several Bay Area counties opened up for outdoor dining  and I have to say that Im not quite there yet, for a variety of reasons. Im worried about the mental and physical health of the people working at these places; about eating next to people I dont know; about the recent surges in infections in places that have already loosened restrictions, like Arizona.

But Im human. I do like eating outside, so instead, Ive been having weird little picnics. I ate a plate of pork belly lechon kawali silog with lumpia Shanghai from Tselogs on top of the hill in Bernal Heights Park. The lumpia were small and perfectly crunchy, like more substantial Takis, and went down great with a sip of mango nectar.

I also grabbed a shrimp burrito from Celias in the Sunset District. The counter was hopping, and when I finally got my order and sat down with friends (at a distance) on an empty stretch of Ocean Beach, it all felt so chill and normal that I could have cried.

In at-home dining news, Naris takeout menu, a set that changes weekly, is great. For $43 per person, you get six items along with rice, which ends up being enough food to stretch into the next day. Last weeks highlights: a wonderfully aromatic tom kha coconut soup made with crisp maitake mushrooms; a som tum salad of chrysanthemum greens and fruit that progresses from bitter to tart to spicy as you chew; and a deeply satisfying stir fry of ground chicken, sugar snap peas and holy basil. The leftovers of that last one make for a fantastic fried rice.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Finally, I checked out the Bayview Bistro box, which can serve two people for $65 or four for $130. Modeled after the La Cocina food box and put together with the help of community nonprofit En2action, the box is filled with prepared foods from Bayview vendors like Gumbo Social, Romes Kitchen and Vegan Hood Chefs. The vegan macaroni from the Vegan Hood Chefs was delicious and creamy, with a texture that made it seem like the missing link between pasta salad and macaroni and cheese. And roasted peppers and onion lent a pleasant sweetness to the Southern-style roasted chicken from Romes Kitchen. The contents of the box change week after week, with both omnivorous and vegetarian options.

Recommended reading

 At the Philly Inquirer, culture reporter Cassie Owens takes a look at culinarian Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, whose 50-year-old book, Vibration Cooking, remains an essential record of Gullah Geechee cuisine. Its a highly detailed, intelligent feature that considers Smart-Grosvenors roots in Philadelphia and the gentrification that threatens to obscure them forever.

 Finally, the time has come for the robots to take charge. Justin Phillips has the story on how food and drink robots have gained more favor in the wake of COVID-19, which has really made that human touch seem less appealing to many. The highlight on Creators airlock chamber is really wild!

 I love this package from the New York Times, which asked several writers and critics about their most memorable meals at restaurants. Essayist Samantha Irbys blurb, about traveling 53 miles to get some soap and coincidentally arriving at a brand-new Cheesecake Factory, is truly my favorite and classic Irby.

Bite Curious is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicles restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, delivered to inboxes on Monday mornings. Follow along on Twitter: @Hooleil
TSX: RMX |OTCQX: RBYCF

TORONTO, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Rubicon Minerals Corporation (TSX: RMX) (OTCQX: RBYCF) ("Rubicon" or the "Company") announces that all resolutions were passed at the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") held by live audio webcast on Monday, June 22, 2020. The detailed voting results for the election of the directors are set out as below. At the Meeting, all director nominees listed in the Company's management information circular dated May 6, 2020 (the "Circular") were elected as directors of the Company.

Director Votes FOR % FOR Votes Withheld % Withheld









Julian Kemp 61,428,971 99.97% 17,087 0.03% Sasha Bukacheva 61,433,022 99.98% 13,036 0.02% Daniel Burns 61,429,410 99.97% 16,648 0.03% Peter Jones 61,431,958 99.98% 14,100 0.02% George Ogilvie 61,442,121 99.99% 3,937 0.01% David Palmer 61,415,977 99.95% 30,081 0.05%

Voting results for the other items of business at the Meeting, all as more particularly described in the Circular and the Company's news release dated June 11, 2020, were as follows:



Votes FOR % FOR Votes Withheld % Withheld Appointment of Auditors

(PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP) and

Auditors' Remuneration 61,444,947 100.00% 1,111 0.00%

Votes FOR % FOR Votes Against % Against Approval of Name Change 60,896,072 99.10% 549,986 0.90% Approval of New Articles 59,794,189 97.31% 1,651,869 2.69% Approval of Share Purchase Plan 61,406,097 99.93% 39,961 0.07%











The formal report on voting results with respect to all matters voted upon at the Meeting will be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Battle North Gold Corporation

At the Meeting, the shareholders have approved the name change for the Company from Rubicon Minerals Corporation to Battle North Gold Corporation. Subject to completion of various ordinary course filings and regulatory approvals, the Company expects its common shares to commence trading under the new ticker symbol "BNAU" on the TSX and "BNAUF" on the OTCQX market shortly after the name change is completed. The Company will provide further details in the coming weeks.

About Rubicon Minerals Corporation

Rubicon Minerals Corporation is an advanced gold exploration company that owns the Phoenix Gold Project, located in the prolific Red Lake gold district in northwestern Ontario, Canada. Additionally, Rubicon controls the second largest land package in Red Lake consisting of over 285 square kilometres of prime, strategic exploration ground, and more than 900 square kilometres of mineral property interests in the emerging Long Canyon gold district that straddles the Nevada-Utah border in the United States. Rubicon's shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (RMX) and the OTCQX markets (RBYCF). For more information, please visit our website at www.rubiconminerals.com.

RUBICON MINERALS CORPORATION

George Ogilvie, P.Eng.

President, CEO, and Director

Cautionary Statement regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements" and "forward looking information" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words, expressions or statements that certain actions, events or results can, could, may, should, will (or not) be achieved or occur, or are expected, in the future including trading of the Company's common shares under new ticker symbols on the TSX and the OTCQX market. In some cases, forward-looking information may be stated in the present tense, such as in respect of current matters that may be continuing, or that may have a future impact or effect. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and represent management's best judgment based on facts and assumptions that management considers reasonable. If such opinions and estimates prove to be incorrect, actual and future results may be materially different than expressed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Rubicon to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, those described in the Company's annual information form dated March 27, 2020 under the heading "Risk Factors" and the Company's other continuous disclosure documents, all available under its profile at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.rubiconminerals.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and Rubicon 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 applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Rubicon Minerals Corporation

Related Links

www.rubiconminerals.com


With the lockdown being eased, some sex workers in Punes red light area want to get back to business by taking all precautions and following the standard operating procedures to stay protected against Covid-19.

The livelihood of nearly 3,000 sex workers in the Budhwar Peth area here in Maharashtra has been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak and the subsequent lockdown, following which several of them moved back to their hometowns, according to an NGO working for their welfare.

Now, with the lockdown being relaxed, some of them are gearing up to resume work and are even ready to explore options of services like phone sex, Tejasvi Sevekari, executive director of city-based NGO Saheli Sangh, told PTI.

She said the NGO, which is a collective of sex workers, has chalked out some standard operating procedures (SOPs) for them and is training them on how to take extra precautions while soliciting customers.

All these SOPs and guidelines are for sex workers across the country who are connected through the National Network of Sex Workers, she said.

As no Covid-19 case was reported from the red light area here, the containment zone tag and barricading have been removed. While majority of the sex workers are still not ready to start their work, a handful of them have resumed business as they are facing financial crunch due to the long lockdown, said Sevekari.

The NGO has started imparting training through audio and video clips to the sex workers on what precautions they need to take during customer visits.

Since there will be physical contact with customers, we have chalked out SOPs and guidelines. While condoms are mandatory, now masks and gloves are also a must during sexual activity. They have been asked to use hand sanitisers and disinfectants, Sevekari said.

Some of the sex workers have bought thermal scanners and foot-operated sanitiser dispensers and placed them outside their premises, she said.

It has been advised to ask the customer to take a shower before the activity and not to entertain any customer having cough or fever, she added.

The NGO is also encouraging them to explore the phone sex option and asking those who are already into virtual sex business to teach others, Sevekari said.

Phone sex is quite normal in high-end call girls, but it is a new thing for sex workers here. There are some sex workers who are already using the medium and they are sharing their experiences with others, she said.

The objective is to allow them to earn their livelihood without being exposed to any physical contact with customers, thus keeping the risk of Covid-19 at bay, she said.

Inspector Jagannath Kalaskar from Faraskhana police station, which has jurisdiction over the Budhwar Peth red light area, said they had a meeting with NGOs working in the area and asked them to ensure all precautions are taken.

Sex workers have been told not to stand or sit outside their rooms, and those are ill or infected with HIV have been asked to stay away, Kalaskar said.
The New York Times

Marin Konstadt, visiting family in Florida, was at the opera in 2020 when she got a call on her cellphone. She called back at intermission. The caller, a genetics specialist at a hospital, had some important news for her. She has a genetic variant that can increase her disease risk. Did she want to know more? Konstadt, 69, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who lives in Salem, Massachusetts, had been thrust like many other Americans into a raging debate on medical ethics and genetics. In 2016, she
GRAND RAPIDS, MI --The annual Latino Youth Conference at Grand Rapids Community College consists of inspirational speakers, workshops, and interactive activities to inspire eighth graders from throughout the region to pursue a higher education.

GRCC recently announced the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan will now be assuming leadership in planning the longtime conference with the institutions expanding their partnership.

For 21 years, GRCC has been the lead organizer of the event. The college will continue to be the host. About 830 students from 24 schools attended the conference in March from across West Michigan.

After thoughtful discussions with conference stakeholders and Hispanic Center leadership, we determined the Hispanic Center is the best organization to develop further and enhance the impact of this community-centered project, said B. Afeni McNeely Cobham, GRCCs chief equity and inclusion officer, in a June 18 press release.

Hispanic students outnumber their peers in other racial and ethnic groups in multiple school districts including, Grand Rapids, West Ottawa, Wyoming, Holland, Godrey-Lee, Godwin Heights, and Kelloggsville.

Hispanic Center Executive Director Adnoris Bo Torres said the conference is vitally important to inspire students, and he is excited the center can expand its role.

As we partner with the West Michigan community in the work of the Latino Youth Conference, we know that we are molding the next generation of leaders, he said, in the press release.

Over the years, the Hispanic Center and GRCC have co-hosted and collaborated on multiple events. Founded in 1978, the Hispanic Center seeks to address the needs of Latinos through understanding, connection, advocacy and achieving self-sufficiency together.

Officials said the students who attended the March youth conference were provided with affirming ideas about Latinx culture, skills-based academic preparation and tangible tools related to personal development and community engagement.

Jennifer Smith, the associate director of GRCCs Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, is confident in the positive influence the Hispanic Centers leadership will have on the conference.

Their deep roots in the community will be very beneficial to the conference overall, she said. Theyre in the heart of the Hispanic community and they specialize in the needs of that community.

The next conference is planned for March 2, 2021. More information regarding the event is available on the college website at grcc.edu.

More from MLive:

Sunday, June 21: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Why its hard to predict individual savings under new auto insurance law

Young activists protest racism, police brutality in Grand Rapids Kids March
The Saturday meal distribution was the first public outreach event sponsored by Chicago-based Big Shoulders Fund as part of its Northwest Indiana Initiative. This past fall, the Bruce and Beth White Family Foundation committed $16 million over 10 years to Big Shoulders Fund, so it can bring its programming to 20 schools in the Catholic Diocese of Gary.
Jammu:

Violating the ceasefire again, Pakistani troops on Monday opened fire on forward areas along the LoC in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir.



There is heavy firing going on in forward areas in Shahpur sector of Poonch district, a police officer said.



The firing started at around 1045 hours and is going on. Earlier, Pakistan troops had resorted to brief firing in Krishnagati sector of Poonch district around 0100 hours, officials said.



This is the third ceasefire violation in the past 16 hours and the 8th ceasefire violation since surgical strikes.



Pakistan had on Sunday resorted to firing and shelling along the LoC in forward areas in Pallanwala belt of Jammu district. On October 1, Pakistani troops had shelled Indian posts and civilian areas with mortar bombs, RPGS and HMGS amid small arms firing along LoC this sector.



On September 30, Pakistani troops had opened fire from small arms along the LoC in Pallanwala, Chaprial and Samnam areas of Akhnoor sector of Jammu district.

Watch: Baramulla army camp attacked; Defence Minister meets with Army, Air Force and Navy Chiefs



On September 29, Pakistan troops had resorted to firingin Balnoie area of Mendhar sector.



The Pakistani troops had violated the ceasefire on September 28 by opening fire on Indian army posts along LoC in Sabzian area Poonch sector.



On September 6, Pakistani troops had fired on Army posts along the LoC in Pooch sector.



Pakistani troops had also violated the ceasefire on September 2 by firing on forward army posts along the LoC in Akhnoor sector of Jammu district.



Last year, 16 civilians were killed and 71 others injured in 405 incidents of cross-border firing by Pakistan.

Sartaj Aziz: India and Pakistan's National Security Advisors looking for peaceful solutions along LOC

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Deputy Minister of Justice for Human Rights and International Affairs and Chairman of the Committee for the Extradition of Prisoners Mahmoud Abbasi said on Sunday that Iran is ready for exchange of prisoners with the other countries on humanitarian grounds and the special pandemic period, Trend reports citing IRNA.

Referring to the Minister of Justice's emphasis on comprehensive support for Iranians living abroad especially Iranians who have suffered legal, judicial challenges in other countries, Abbasi added that we have extradited 108 Iranian prisoners from Georgia to the country and transferred a number of prisoners from other countries to their respective countries in the past two months.

Referring to Iran's active legal and judicial diplomacy on humanitarian grounds, he pointed out that the exchange and transfer of prisoners are justifiable in the context of Iran's humanitarian policies.

He added that more than 2,000 Afghan convicts are ready to move to their country.

Regarding the request of the Prime Minister of Pakistan to the President of our country to extradite 44 Pakistani prisoners to Islamabad, he said that on humanitarian grounds, we transferred Pakistani prisoners from different provinces to Zahedan Prison to be handed over to Pakistani authorities. Despite the follow-up and the reflection of the matter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice of Pakistan, unfortunately, no special action has been taken so far.

Expressing concern over the situation of Iranian prisoners in the United Arab Emirates, Abbasi said that unfortunately, our prisoners in the United Arab Emirates are deprived of the minimum human rights, including consular services and fair trial. Continuation of this process doubles the legal and international responsibility of the UAE Government, he said.
Salisu Bi Awurbi

22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Savannah Regional Secretary for the opposition NDC Hon. Salisu Bi Awurbi says the eagerness with which some government appointees flooded to contest their incumbent Members of Parliament is as a result of "insatiable greed" in the ruling NPP.

Hon. Salisu Bi Awurbi who is a former DCE for the Central Gonja District under the erstwhile Prof. John Evans Atta Mills administration opined that it is the fear factor of losing the 2020 general elections that compelled most of the CEOs, Ministers and Deputy Ministers of the AKufo-Addo government to rush for the NPP parliamentary primaries.

"They have strong doubt and are most certainly convinced that their flag bearer ( President) is not capable of winning in the next elections. Otherwise, what is it? Being a CEO or a Deputy CEO is a Public Service, the same for MP. Most of the Conditions of Service of the CEOs are far better than that of even a Parliamentarian," he said in his Facebook post on Sunday.

The ruling NPP on Saturday went to the ballot to elect parliamentary candidates to contest on the party's ticket come December 7 which saw the influx of many government appointees unseating the incumbent and very experienced MPs. "As a CEO, Deputy CEO, Minister, Deputy Minister or Presidential Staffer, Whatever you can do for your own people, you can still do that and even more without being a Parliamentarian."

Hon Salisu Bi Awurbi further condemned the act cautioning them that such actions will rob the constituents off vital benefits: "Worse still, the CEO position you are leaving, it is most likely that, no one from your constituency would be appointed to replace you. The effect is that you could lose both in the general elections. You are most probably not swapping that position with your MP. So why the greed?"

The former DCE however blamed the defeat of the MPs on poor performance: "....the sitting MPs have performed abysmally and if no fresh face is injected, the party stands to lose the seat to their opponent, the NDC. But whether the new comer wins or loses, a self-appraisal and verdict of poor performance of the Party in the Constituency has already been given and the constituents are well aware of it and have taken note."

He however predicted a defeat for the ruling NPP come December 7. "Truth be told that, no amount of scheming within the NPP will save the Nana Addo led NPP from defeat despite they destroying the internal tenants of democracy in their party against the requirements and underlying principles expected of all political parties by the Constitution, 1992."
New Delhi: The armys top brass on Monday made a detailed assessment of the ground situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, where both India and China have significantly increased their troop deployment in the extended region on both sides of the contested border, two officers said on the condition of anonymity.

The developments along the LAC and the armys operational readiness to handle any situation were discussed at the army commanders conference, chaired by Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane, one of the officers said.

The situation along the Line of Control with Pakistan also came up during the discussions amid concerns that the western neighbour could try to take advantage of the tensions along the northern borders with China, second another officer.

Later in the day, the army tweeted: Army Commanders Conference #ACC-20 is being conducted on 22-23 June 2020 to review the operational situation on both the Northern and Western Fronts.

While the conference was pre-scheduled, it is being held at a time when the Indian and Chinese armies have marshalled thousands of soldiers on their respective sides of the LAC and the military buildup consists of fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, artillery guns and missile systems, he said.

The conference will conclude on Tuesday. It was the second phase of the conference--the first was held in Delhi on May 27-29.

The top commanders met a day after defence minister Rajnath Singh made a detailed assessment of the situation at the disputed border and was briefed by the military brass about the preparations of the armed forces and their readiness to respond to any provocative actions by the Chinese forces.

Singh left for Moscow on Monday for a four-day visit during which he will meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, and border tensions with China will figure in their talks. Singh will participate in the Victory Day parade on June 24 in Moscow to commemorate the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Tensions between India and China have surged after the Galwan Valley brawl on June 15 that left 20 Indian soldiers, including a commanding officer, dead. The Chinese army possibly suffered more than twice as many casualties, which also included a commanding officer, said another officer.

With uncertainty looming along the LAC, the government has given financial powers worth Rs 500 crore per project to the armed forces to fast-track the purchase of critical weapons and ammunition to deal with any kind of scenario. Similar powers were bestowed on the military to pug gaps in capabilities after 2016 terror attack in Jammu & Kashmirs Uri and the 2019 airstrikes in Pakistans Balakot in response to a suicide bombing in Pulwama that left 40 paramilitary troopers dead.

INDEPENDENT COMMENT
Jennifer Bentley recently provided some practical advice which could help milk producers weather the current crises of low prices, imposed milk quotas, and both physical and mental health concerns.

With some dairy processing plants asking dairy farmers to cut back milk production, and even enforcing production quotas, the dairy field specialist with Iowa State University (ISU) Extension and Outreach suggested ways for producers to navigate these trying times.

Typically, we dry off cows at 60 to 65 days before they calf, but to cut milk production to meet milk quotas, a farmer could dry up their cows 90 to 100 days before calving," Bentley said. "If farmers dry up their cows early they need to look at those cows nutrition. Herdsmen need to hold down the energy in early dried cows ration to prevent calving problems. These cows also need adequate housing and pasture."

Cows are heat stressed when the temperature reaches 68 to 70 degrees. Research shows that cooling dry cows during the summer, will improve their production during their next lactation, said Bentley, who also stated that recent research proves that heifers born to cooled dry cows, will show improved production when they begin lactating.

Bentley said this also would be a time when dairymen can be more selective in culling cows that have foot problems, or show signs of chronic mastitis.

"Its better dairymen that make these decisions earlier than later, Bentley said. Producers may find difficulty in selling culls during the meat processing crisis, so culled cows might have to be fed by themselves until the market opens up.

Bentley stated that ISU has formulated a workforce contingency plan for the COVID-19 crisis. The published five step plan helps protect herdsmen and their employees, she said. The plan includes social distancing while working together, hand washing and sanitizing procedures, suggests personal protective gear, and directs sick employees to stay home to prevent the spread of the virus.

The publication authored by ISU Farm Management Specialist Melissa ORourke outlines a plan for cross-training of current employees, and the training of new contingency workers should they be needed. ORourke warns dairymen that if current employees fall prey to the virus, producers need to have a backup plan for working with a reduced workforce.

Bentley also outlined the governments efforts to help provide some stability in the price of milk. The U.S. government has allocated $3 billion to purchase commodities that will then be given to food banks and other organizations to relieve hunger during the pandemic. As a part of the indirect aid, each month the government will purchase a $100 million of dairy products, which should bolster and stabilize milk pricing in the future.

About $16 billion will be paid directly to all Ag producers to alleviate the financial pain they have suffered. Bentley said that the aid package for dairy farmers is still changing as its implemented, but she provided her current understanding of the direct payment process.

The government averaged the price of milk from the quarter prior to the pandemic, and then averaged prices paid during the pandemic," she said. "Dairymen will be paid 80 percent of the difference. Milk was at $17.61 per hundred weight in the prior quarter, and the average price during the pandemic was $11.72. Figuring in 80 percent of the difference, dairymen should be compensated at $4.71 price per hundred weight for milk sold during the crisis. If there are more funds available, dairymen might later be compensate for more than the 80 percent. There are some limitation to the aid package, and dairymen need to contact their local FSA Office as sign up is already in progress."

Bentley provided one last piece of advice for dairymen and their families. She pointed out that these families need to take care of themselves both physically and mentally during these trying times.

Self and family care is crucial for dairy farmers and their families at this time, she said.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
New Delhi: In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said PM Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

"To do any less would be a historic betrayal of people's faith," he said in a statement.

Noting that the country is standing at the historic cross-roads, he said the government's decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us.

"Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty," he said.

"And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the prime minister. The prime minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nation's security as also strategic and territorial interests," he said in a statement on the standoff with China in Ladakh.

Twenty Indian Army personnel were killed in a brutal attack by the Chinese military in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.
Traditionally, a majority of people invested in gold, real estate, bank FDs, but with increasing financial awareness more and more people have started looking at equity, bonds and mutual funds as an option for investment.

A big force behind investing in equity markets is to create wealth, but at the same time investors should also look at protecting capital when things head southwards.

In that case, diversification of portfolio comes in handy especially during COVID times where some amount of money should be allocated towards fixed income to safeguard capital in case volatility increases in equity markets.

Let's understand how one can diversify or make a portfolio with multiple products if he/she is the age group of 30-35 having a Rs 5 lakh in hand, though generally, experts feel one should always start investing as early as possible in the life.

But before going for any financial market product, experts advise that one should do risk profiling of himself/herself in order to understand the risk appetite & time horizon.

Their risk profiling includes various questions such as income per year, dependents in the family, the ultimate goal behind investments, etc.

For an individual with an age of 35 years, Saurav Basu, Head of Wealth Management at Tata Capital advised that he/she should look at a medium risk portfolio where around 40 percent of his funds are invested in fixed income-generating securities like debt mutual funds for a long term, around 10 percent is cast aside as a contingency fund for emergencies.

"Further from the remaining 50 percent, a sum of around 10 percent should be left aside as cash in hand and the remaining 40 percent can be invested in the equity market for the long term, he said, adding this portfolio is strictly subject to the short term and long term goals of the individual and this individual should also ensure he/she owns a good quality insurance policy.

In the case of an individual with age of 30 years, Basu said since this individual is young and has quite a few earning years ahead, individuals can afford to have a little higher exposure.

"This individual should invest a little larger sum of money in high risk securities which generate higher profits. It should be noted here, that investments, even if high risk should be done after carefully studying the risk return ratio to avoid unnecessary financial losses," he added.

He advised that individuals should invest approximately 20-30 percent in debt products, around 50-60 percent in the equity in a staggered manner and the remaining should be set aside in the form of cash or fixed deposits for emergencies.

In the age 30-35, generally investors are aggressive enough to take some more risk as they have many years for retirement, so Amit Jain, Co-founder & CEO at Ashika Wealth Advisors advised that he/she can invest 70 percent in equity to gain advantage of emerging themes and attractive valuations in the current market scenario.

Amit Jain further said an individual can invest 5 percent in gold which is natural hedge against equity; 10 percent in Arbitrage Funds to provide for short-term needs & hedge against the equity markets in volatile scenarios; and balance 15 percent in bonds to provide a regular income.

But if an individual is a conservative investor, then Amit Jain said he/she should invest only 15 percent in equity, 20 percent in Arbitrage Funds; and 25 percent in ESS Fund - out of which 33 percent should be in equity, 33 percent in debt, 33 percent in arbitrage.

From the remaining, 35 percent investment should be done in AAA Rated Bonds or Sovereign Bonds or PSU Bonds where average yield to maturity is 7-8 percent, and the rest 5 percent in gold.

: 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.
Tulsa, Oklahoma  Trump supporters camped out overnight as they waited in line to attend the president's Saturday night rally in Tulsa. People who planned on attending seemed unfazed by the threat of the coronavirus, even though thousands are expected to gather in the Bank of Oklahoma Center for the first campaign rally President Trump has held since March.

In a line curving round the security perimeter, supporters, predominantly white and many of them male, camped out underneath tents, umbrellas, ponchos and Trump 2020 flags, withstanding intermittent torrential downpour. Some dried out socks and shoes on the sidewalk in the aftermath of a particularly powerful shower.

Aside from a few scuffles, the scene on Friday resembled a sort of neighborhood block party, with people from different states mingling on the sidewalk or guarding places in line as new friends took shifts drying off inside.

Vendors sold everything from MAGA hat keychains to "Trump 2020, No Bullsh**" flags, which seemed to be very popular.

Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Tulsa

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather to attend a campaign rally at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Getty Images

A silent protester in an N95 mask with a sign reading "don't sacrifice your health to massage his ego," stood three blocks away from a man slinging a bullhorn and a "Jesus says: You must be born again" banner.

Meanwhile, groups gathered around reporters for One America News Network and Breitbart, singing and chanting the names of their news organizations. A truck blasting music and waving a "black lives matter" sign drove donuts around the loop of camped out Trump fans. "All lives matter!" supporters lining the street called back. "Baby lives matter!" one countered. "Stop killing babies!" a third said.

Not many wore face coverings, though some supporters donned bandanas around their necks, and a few kept masks in hand. The Trump campaign will provide masks for attendees, but wearing masks will be optional. More than one told CBS News they'd wear a red, white and blue face mask in the arena tomorrow. The majority said they would not don a face covering unless forced.

Story continues

Sixty-three year old Sherrie Wes shook her head when asked if she was concerned for her health. "No. I had the H1N1 flu. That would've liked to kill me," the former political operative from Fayetteville, Arkansas said. "Plus, exposure's the best thing for an immune system. I don't wear those masks. Unless its mandatory to put in some place, I'm not going to put it on."

Wes said she has only voted for two Republican presidential candidates in her life: Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. She voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, but thinks his former vice president, Joe Biden, is being "elderly abused."

"To be honest with you, I feel sorry for him," Wes said about Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. "I think he has dementia. And I think it's elderly abuse to put a man on camera who is so sick. You know what? My mom's got dementia. I've lived with it for 30 years. We've learned dementia. He's got dementia. He can't remember half of what he says. He can't get a full sentence out without stuttering. He's ill."

Joshua Morgan, a writer from Bay City, Michigan, drove several hundred miles to Tulsa for inspiration on a fictional book he's writing. He vowed to wear a mask inside the arena and felt the Trump campaign should have mandated it. "The air doesn't circulate well in there," he said, gesturing to the arena. "It's recycled."

That's not his only gripe. Morgan compared Trump to "a king" and "JFK" but felt he'd let people down along the southern border. "I just think that he needs to get this wall built. All the money we've spent on it  he needs to make sure the people know where that money is being spent."

Tulsan brothers Trece and Tom Todd  both in their late 50s  said they didn't plan to wear masks inside the arena. The former, a working diesel truck mechanic, bemoaned seeing so many friends on Facebook pushing others to stay home. "They don't understand. They're getting paid somehow. But others, they've lost their livelihood. Lost their jobs. Lost their businesses. They've got children to feed. How can you sit back and act like that's not a big deal? It's a big deal."

"It's so stupid," Tom Todd, a retired welder, echoed. "This really hurt the oil and gas production. Welding is more or less connected to gas."

Asked what he'd like to see at the rally from the president, Trece Todd responded, "just unity." He paused. "I think that's what's not being said in the liberal media. That's why we have all the crap that's going on right now. Because you can't get the truth anymore." He sighed. "That's why it's so important for us to show up to these rallies. Because they can't lie about the numbers. The [media] can say whatever they want about Black Lives Matter and Antifa and the Democratic Party. But when you have over a million people request to come to one rally, that means something. And we've got people from all over the place."

A different celebration was taking place two miles north in the primarily black Greenwood District. Greenwood, also known as "Black Wall Street," was the site of one of the country's worst race massacres in 1921, when white mobs razed the neighborhood and killed hundreds of black citizens.

A diverse crowd danced to a live DJ, grilled up food and sold "black lives matter" t-shirts, commencing a celebration for Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, which was formerly canceled due to the coronavirus. The day's events were defiantly revived following the announcement of Mr. Trump's trip.

Amandella Perry brought her young children out to the festivities to teach them about community and fellowship. She repeatedly called the president's visit "insulting." Perry added, "It's just disrespectful. It's intentional, I believe," she said of the timing.

Attendees stressed that Juneteenth in Tulsa meant a decades-long tradition passed down through generations of black Oklahomans. "This is my history. My family grew up and worked from Tulsa. Where I stand, this is our history," Chris Harvey told CBS News. "You cannot grow up in Tulsa, and not understand this. Today I celebrate that knowing of our history, knowing where I stand."

Harvey chose his words carefully when probed about the president. "Man, Trump is a human. I don't agree with a lot of things he says or does. But I'm a believer." He sighed, adding, "At the end of the day, I got to pray for him."

Grace Segers contributed to this report.

Atlanta officers surrender to police in Rayshard Brooks' death

Facebook removes Trump ads over Nazi-like red triangle symbol

Oklahoma Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump's rally
On December 11, 1917, General Edmund Allenby entered the holy city of Jerusalem bareheaded and on foot, a feat which even the greatest English warrior King, Richard the Lionheart, and the crusaders were unable to achieve. Lining the street from Jaffa Gate to the city centre were Indian soldiers who had made it possible. Today, a 250-year-old, proud, experienced, and battle-hardened army with many achievements in war, counter-insurgency, internal disturbances and UN peacekeeping missions has been reduced to an unarmed, fist-fighting entity. With pain and anguish, the serving soldiers and veterans ask; where did it all go wrong? The obvious answer is that our policies over the years have come home to roost and haunt us.

A soldier is armed and trained to fight with his weapon. A police force is meant to police. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the northern and central sectors is managed by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. It reports directly to the home ministry. Somewhere down the line, a decision was taken to strengthen the ITBP patrols with regular soldiers. This allowed the local commanders to remain abreast with the happenings on the LAC. In a period of peace and tranquility, regular soldiers had to per force follow the protocol of patrolling without weapons, leading to push and shove tactics as seen in its magnified form in Doklam.

Policing the borders and preventing intrusions are different matters. The role of the military is defined and it must work within those parameters. Unarmed troops must not be sent to remove an intrusion. Dual responsibility and accountability between the ITBP and the army has been fully exploited by the Chinese.

COMMAND AND CONTROL PROBLEMS

We are in the process of improving infrastructure in the North-East and Ladakh for economic development and also to ward off the Chinese threat, but they have been ahead of us in this area. Heavy expenditure on these projects will go waste if we are unable to protect these against aggression. Considering the length and breadth of our borders and the new insight into Chinese intentions, it will be difficult to ignore the requirement of sufficient boots on the ground.

Whenever economic constraints are felt, the defence forces become victims of the first surgery on funds and manpower. In national interest, we have tried to accommodate this phenomena and at times voluntarily applied cuts. Our past policy of making up shortfalls by raising and employing central police forces such as the Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force and the ITBP, in a military role for crisis management has many pitfalls and may not find a place in the future.

In real terms it may not lead to substantial savings, considering the expenditure on equipping and maintaining them. This jointmanship also leads to command and control problems and turf wars. Prolonged employment and joint operations can affect the army culture and ethos, giving the go by to professional military orientation and imbibing some of the adverse traits associated with such employment.

UNSUITABLE SELECTION POLICY

Militaries all over the world are functionally required to be structured in a hierarchy rapidly narrowing upwards. Career progression towards higher ranks cannot match other organisations. In an attempt to address individual aspirations over organisational interests, we have carried out a series of upgrades and added appointments.

Over a period of time, command tenures at various levels have been reduced. It takes some time for a commander to comprehend the operational situation, establish rapport with his juniors and troops and gain their confidence. A short tenure does not allow this.

In a war-like situation, a brief tenure may not allow the commander to exploit the full potential of his command. Connected with this is the selection policy for promotion to higher ranks. A tried and tested system of the army council (all army commanders) assessing an individual for higher command appointments based on personal knowledge, spoken reputation, acceptance by peers and subordinates and evolving a consensus was replaced by a quantified point system. This system based on an anonymous merit list is most unsuitable for selecting military commanders.

COMMENTS AND CONCLUSIONS

In the present day media and information age, news and opinions are generated in real time. In the absence of accurate situational information, comments and conclusions are generated on assumptions or sensitive information inadvertently divulged. The military needs to be oriented towards handling the information and perception domain, while senior veterans need to be restrained in their comments, especially those based on confidential information gained while in service.

Some of the policies on border management are now in the public domain. Veterans should be aware that these policies have been followed for a long period. It is unfortunate that the present generation has had to bear the brunt of past miscalculations. It is now time for a review.

Finally, about our soldier. Discipline precludes his speaking out but he certainly thinks and has an opinion. He continuously monitors policies that will affect his employment, emoluments, living conditions and the adequacy of his personal equipment and weapons.

The writer Lt Gen GS Sihota (retd) is a former director general of military operations and GOC-in-C of Southern Command. (HT PHOTO )

The young men of the Indian Army are its very backbone. Our military leadership and government must continuously nurture this valuable asset at all costs. gustysihota@gmail.com

The writer is a former director general of military operations and GOC-in-C of Southern Command
(TNS)  In the ongoing recession, San Antonio is sticking with one of the industries it knows best: cybersecurity.The City Council this week approved a $4 million agreement with Port San Antonio that will allow the city to develop the Alamo Regional Security Operations Center. The 20,000 square-foot space that will serve as the cybersecurity hub for municipal government and city-related agencies.The center will be located at 938 Davy Crockett Road on the Ports Southwest Side campus.The ARSOC will be a cybersecurity information-sharing facility that initially will house experts from the city, CPS Energy, San Antonio Water System and VIA Metropolitan Transit, according to documents filed by the city.ARSOC itself represents a national example of a collaborative community working toward enhanced cybersecurity and critical infrastructure security and resiliency, said Will Garrett, vice president and director of cybersecurity development at the port. The integrated security operations center is effectively increasing our ability to provide cybersecurity services to the city and to the community as a whole.The center builds on efforts in recent years by the city to develop a high-wage cybersecurity industry in San Antonio.The city agreed to lease the space from Port San Antonio rent-free for 15 years, with a renewal option after five years. The city will chip in $1.2 million along with a $1.5 million contribution from CPS to design and build out the facility.Another $1.29 million in city funds will go toward purchasing furniture and equipment.Construction on the facility will be completed sometime in the first quarter of 2021, said Craig Hopkins, chief information officer for the city of San Antonio.What we want to become is a model urban cybersecurity center of excellence, Hopkins said, where we could reign municipal agencies together into one place physically, but also share data, share talent, share knowledge, train together, respond to events together, all in one community operations center.The ARSOC will cost $150,000 annually to operate, which will come out of the citys information technology services department budget.CPS will sublease space at the center from the city.This enhanced partnership and investment are being pursued to protect our customers and their information, utility officials said in a statement. It was already planned and will not take away from the activities and funding resources that we have allocated to help customers in need.The ARSOC is necessary to protect our critical infrastructure from cyberthreats so that we can continue to deliver safe, affordable, reliable, and secure power to our customers, the company said.Cybersecurity attacks on municipalities became more frequent last year. More than 170 municipal entities were attacked in 2019, up 52 percent compared with 2018, according to antivirus software provider Kaspersky.Last fall, 22 Texas towns were hit in a coordinated ransomware attack by hackers, one of the largest attacks on municipal governments that the U.S. has seen. Ransomware is a type of malware that locks users out of their devices until they pay a ransom to regain access.Were constantly under attack from foreign nation states, internal organizations, and all youve got to do to put details together is look at the cities that have been ransomwared  that alone is the primary threat that were trying to alleviate, Hopkins said.Smaller agencies: VIA, SAWS, the Bexar County Appraisal District, they dont even have cyberteams, or they have one person trying to figure out what to do, he said. So what weve got now is the ability to collaborate and share resources.Garrett said he expects that the center will eventually grow to serve communities across South Texas.Officials at the port have a mid-term goal of this becoming a resource to a much broader region of Central and Southwest Texas, Garrett said, so that other local municipalities, even within Bexar County, can plug into ARSOC, participate and get threat intelligence feeds, and protect their own municipalities and local governments in a more effective way.Port San Antonios 1,900-acre campus is home to more than 80 companies, military agencies and nonprofits, with a combined workforce of 14,000.The city is directing $75 million to job training programs to help workers who have lost their job learn skills and transition to a new career. Cybersecurity is one of the top industries that city leaders have said they want to train workers for.We absolutely expect this, from an economic development standpoint, to create wins down the road as it grows, Garrett said.
Notes:  -Anthony Fauci2345Some applaused he's a hero. Neither a hero, nor a professional - Anthony Fauci didnot hold his ground for the good of the public by denying the mask protection back to Feb., March, April, May.

Ref. -

Misleading Graphics About Dangers Of Long-term Mask Use Viral Several experts have said that there is no evidence of long-term effects from breathing through a mask. By - AFP | 22 Jun 2020 2:56 AM Subscribe to support BOOM & fight misinformation ADVERTISEMENT A graphic shared thousands of times on Facebook claims people can suffer from reduced oxygen to their blood and brain, possibly leading to death, if they wear a disposable mask for too long. This is misleading; only a marginal decrease in oxygen saturation can sometimes be measured in people wearing a disposable mask, and several experts agree there is no evidence of long-term effects from breathing through a mask. "Danger of Facemask, Mask is supposed to be used for limited time," the text at the top of the image says before listing four side effects, including possible death, of wearing the face covering for an extended period. A screenshot of the image used in some Facebook posts, taken on June 17, 2020 The image was posted on Facebook here, here, and here while a post from June 4, 2020 was shared nearly 30,000 times. A similar visual has also circulated here and here. A screenshot of the image used in some Facebook posts, taken on June 17, 2020 During the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 450,000 people globally, the official advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) remains that wearing a mask or face covering is recommended where social distancing is difficult. AFP Fact Check asked medical experts to break down the claims presented in the image. Also Read: Outdated Mask Information Issued By WHO Expert Goes Viral Claim: If you wear a surgical mask for a long time, the oxygen in your blood and brain reduces "It is true that masks may cause trivial changes to oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, but this is mainly seen with N95, not surgical or cloth face masks," Hallie Prescott, Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan Health System, said to AFP by email. The CDC does not recommend the use of N-95 masks to the general public. Prescott, who is also a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Health Care System, referred to a report published in 2008 which studied deoxygenation induced by surgical masks during major surgeries. The report found a "decrease" in oxygen saturation in surgeons, "either due to the facial mask or the operational stress." "My interpretation is thatfor 99.9 percent of the population without severe underlying lung diseasethere are at most only trivial decreases in blood oxygen levels with surgical or cloth masks," she said. If the person wearing a mask is experiencing headaches, "they can result from a variety of things  such as uncomfortable ear loops on masks  so I would not assume that headaches are a reflection of low oxygen," Prescott added. Josh Mugele, Emergency Department Physician at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Georgia, says there are "zero adverse effects to long-term mask usage." "Not only is there absolutely no credible evidence to the contrary, but many professions wear masks for long periods of time on a regular basis with no adverse effects, including surgeons, lab technicians, and painters," he told AFP in a direct message on Twitter. Prolonged use of a well-made mask is unlikely to cause hypercapnia, a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood, AFP found in another fact-check. Also Read: Nurse Gives Misleading Information About Masks In Viral Video Claim: If you wear a surgical mask for a long time, you will start feeling weak "It is hard to refute someone's subjective feelings," Prescott said, but "objective data suggests that surgical and fabric face masks are safe for the vast majority of the population who don't have severe underlying lung disease." Jonathan Karn, virologist and director of the Cleveland COVID Task Force, told AFP by email that people should not "start feeling weak or die" while wearing "a light surgical mask or homemade cloth mask." An AFP graphic illustrating the simplest way to make your own mask with just a piece of fabric, like a tea towel, and two rubber bands Claims that the use of masks worsens the immune system are also false, AFP USA found in another fact-check. Claim: Wearing a mask for an extended time may lead to death "Nobody has ever died as a direct result of wearing a surgical mask. If people can transplant an organ or perform brain surgery while wearing a mask, it is reasonable to ask people to wear them in public to reduce transmission of novel coronavirus," Ryan Marino, an emergency medicine physician at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, told AFP via a direct message on Twitter. AFP Canada debunked a video of a nurse warning against continuously wearing face masks, claiming they can harm the body. Claim: Pull off your mask when you are alone "If you are alone in a car there is no reason to wear a mask, but it should be put on when leaving the car if other people are being encountered. The general idea behind face masks is to break the chain of infection in the population," Karn explained. Caution is, however, advised when putting on and removing a face mask to avoid further contamination, as explained in a WHO graphic. A screenshot of a WHO graphic taken on June 17, 2020 The CDC recommends the use of face masks at home only in specific circumstances. A person who is sick should wear a cloth face covering when they are around other people at home and out, except for young children under the age of two and anyone who has trouble breathing. The caregiver may also wear a cloth face covering when looking after a person who is sick. Also Read: Photo Of 1913 Fashion Trend Shared With Spanish Flu Pandemic Claim More generally, experts extol the benefits of face coverings as protection against the novel coronavirus. "In the absence of robust contact tracing, masks and social distancing are our best defenses," Prescott said. "Since up to 30 percent of infected people may be asymptomatic and therefore not know that they are infectious, the widespread use of masks is a vital tool in reducing overall infection rates," Karn added. AFP Fact Check has addressed similar misleading claims about face masks, including some in English here and here, and Spanish here and here. In total, AFP Fact Check has debunked more than 500 examples of false or misleading information about the novel coronavirus worldwide. The complete list on the topic in English is available here. Updated On: 22 Jun 2020 2:56 AM Claim Review : People can suffer from reduced oxygen to their blood and brain, possibly leading to death, if they wear a disposable mask for too long. Claimed By : Facebook posts Fact Check : False COVID-19 COVID-19 Outbreak COVID-19 Pandemic Coronavirus Coronavirus Outbreak Coronavirus Pandemic Masks Fake News Fact Check (BOOM is now available across social media platforms. For quality fact check stories, subscribe to our Telegram and WhatsApp channels. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Linkedin .)



https://www.boomlive.in/world/misleading-graphics-about-dangers-of-long-term-mask-use-viral-8594
Windsor-Essex is now the only region in the province that will not enter Stage 2 of reopening this week.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford made the announcement Monday, saying the province is working with local health officials on a daily basis.

"The threat of this virus in Windsor-Essex is still too great," said Ford, adding he wants to reassure residents the government is doing everything they can to aid the region.

Ford said federal supports are coming in where they can, including an enhanced agri-food program to bring more personal protective equipment to farms and businesses in the sector. They will also bring on-site testing units to farms in the area.

"It's totally unfair to the people of Windsor-Essex ... I feel sorry for them I really do," said Ford, as he begged farm owners to help get their workers tested for COVID-19 and work with the province.

"Farmers are not co-operating they're not sending people out to get tested."

Since Friday, there have been 66 new cases of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex, and 52 of those cases were in the agri-farm industry.

Seven workplaces in the industry are under an outbreak.

Medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed said the recent rise is due in part to the increased testing of farm workers in the region  most of whom are temporary foreign workers.

"Just to be clear, the cases we are seeing right now are already identified as epi-link, not coming as new cases or a surprise for us," said Ahmed, explaining close living accommodations are a major factor when it comes to the spread of the virus among the workers.

WATCH | Ontario Premier begs Windsor-Essex farm owners to co-operate with the province:

More than 4,000 people in the agri-farm sector have been contacted in May and June by the health unit as part of their case and contact management, explained Ahmed.

But despite the new cases among the farming community, Ahmed said community cases have been low since mid-May and believes the province should consider reopening parts of Windsor-Essex.

Story continues

"I think that's the conversation I feel the politicians need to have  what it looks like from that perspective," said Ahmed.

"Some of the challenges we are seeing with the agri-farm sector are basically because of their living conditions. Each one of them have a high number of close contacts."

Ahmed has made short and long-term recommendations to all levels of government about housing accommodations for migrant workers, which are regulated under the federal government's Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Three temporary foreign workers from Mexico have died in Ontario due to COVID-19  two were working in Essex County.

WATCH | Trudeau says "rules weren't followed" in cases of temporary foreign workers who died of COVID-19:

Earlier on Monday, the prime minister said the government has rules in place to protect temporary foreign workers who come to Canada but that there are cases where those rules are not followed.

"We are extremely concerned by that and there will be consequences," said Justin Trudeau during a press conference.

"In Canada, anyone doing work let alone essential work as part of our food chain needs to be protected," said Trudeau, adding changes need to be made.

Woman says border rules keeping her from seeing her dying mother

Anne Stevanovich, a Canadian citizen who lives in Michigan, said she fears she may not be able to see her mother before she dies.

It's because of a two-week isolation period Stevanovich must undergo if she were to cross the border to Canada.

She said her 94-year-old mother is currently hospitalized at Windsor Regional Hospital's Metropolitan Campus, nearing the end of her life, and she hasn't seen her in-person since early March.

"It's the thought of not seeing someone you love ever again that you haven't seen in months. You know, it's your mom," she said.

"She's an amazing lady, a wonderful mother, and it's just very challenging to think that I can't say goodbye while she's still alive."

Submitted by Anne Stevanovich

Testing centres

Testing is available at two assessment centres in Windsor-Essex.

The assessment centre at the Ouellette campus of Windsor Regional Hospital, next to the Emergency Department, is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

The assessment centre at Erie Shores HealthCare is open from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

COVID-19 in Sarnia-Lambton

Lambton Public Health reported 285 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the region. Overall, there have been 25 deaths.

Another 244 people have recovered.

Bluewater Health is under an outbreak after four staff members tested positive for the disease.

Afton Park long-term care home in Sarnia is now under an outbreak, after one staff member tested positive for COVID-19.

An outbreak at Vision Nursing Home in Sarnia has ended. Twenty-six residents and 28 staff at the facility had tested positive for the disease. Ten residents at the facility have died.

COVID-19 in Chatham-Kent

Chatham-Kent's health unit reported 157 total cases of COVID-19 for the region.

An outbreak at Greenhill Produce is now over.

There were 103 workers at the facility who had tested positive. The outbreak was investigated at the end of April, when about 40 cases of the disease were discovered among workers at the greenhouse operation.

In Chatham-Kent, one person has died due to COVID-19 and 147 people have recovered.
Oil hovered near $40 a barrel in New York as investors weighed a resurgence in the coronavirus against signs of rebounding demand.

The easing of lockdowns across the world and OPEC+ buckling down with its output cuts have boosted prices in recent days. Demand is improving in countries including Spain and India. Still, with virus cases rising again in Germany and some U.S. states, as well as Beijing last week, there are doubts about the strength of the rebound in energy use.

"It's a bungee cord market where the price gets slammed back and forth with each piece of news," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc.

The market is in much better shape than in April and May. Some of the world's largest traders are seeing a rapid recovery in demand, and Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said last week that the OPEC+ alliance is on track to rebalance the market. Still, in a reminder of the glut that needs to be cleared, the amount of crude stored at sea jumped last week, according to Vortexa. American stockpiles have also been rising.

"We expect inventories to come down sharply over the next few months," Bank of America Corp. analysts including Francisco Blanch wrote in a report. OPEC+ cuts and recovering consumption "will likely push the market into a growing deficit," they said.

The virus, though, continues to haunt the oil market. The Americas accounted for almost two-thirds of new virus cases reported by the World Health Organization on Sunday. China suspended poultry imports from a Tyson Foods Inc. plant in the U.S. after hundreds of employees tested positive for covid-19.

Meanwhile, speculators are starting to put money back into products they had shunned during the rout. Money mangers last week had their biggest net-long position in Europe's diesel benchmark since January, according to ICE Futures Europe data. In contrast, bullish bets declined for WTI and were steady for Brent.

"Oil prices have already reached an interim stage of recovery," said Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy. Crude reaching $45 to $50 a barrel "would not be justified at this stage despite the supply curtailments as there are still valid concerns on the demand side."
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the country is fighting two battles against China  one against coronavirus that has come from the neighbouring country and the other on the border.

New Delhi: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the country is fighting two battles against China  one against coronavirus that has come from the neighbouring country and the other on the border.

He said there should be no politics by anyone in fighting these two battles.

Kejriwal's remarks come amid criticism of the Centre by the Congress over the situation in eastern Ladakh.

Addressing an online media briefing, the Delhi chief minister said, "Twenty of our brave soldiers did not back down, we will also not retreat and win both battles against China."

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in a violent face-off with Chinese troops on 15 June in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley.

"Today, the country is fighting two wars against China  one against the virus that has come from China and the other on the border," Kejriwal said during the briefing.

On one hand, all doctors and nurses of the country are fighting COVID-19, and on the other hand, soldiers are fighting wars on the border, he said.

"The entire country is standing with doctors and soldiers. We all have to fight these two battles together and there should be no politics and groupism in this," the AAP supremo asserted.

Earlier in the day, senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, the former prime minister called upon Modi to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, the country recorded 14,821 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, pushing the infection tally to 4,25,282, while the death toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new fatalities, according to the Union health ministry data.
A Texas District Attorney has suggested the former narcotics officer involved in the 2004 arrest of George Floyd likely lied over the incident.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Saturday that Floyd's case may be among scores built on false evidence from Gerald Goines.

Floyd, whose death last month under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparked national protests, pleaded guilty in 2004 and served time in a state jail over what prosecutors describe as selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting.

But 'Gerald Goines' arrest of George Floyd reveals an offense report that is incomplete and suspect,' Ogg said in a statement. 'I have instructed prosecutors to verify the facts in this offense report.'

Ogg told The Wall Street Journal: 'Goines was likely lying in this case.'

George Floyd, left, pleaded guilty in 2004 and served time in a state jail over what prosecutors now describe as selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. But Harris County DA Kim Ogg say that Floyds case may be among scores built on false evidence from Gerald Goines, right

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, pictured, said: 'Goines was likely lying in this case'

Ogg said her office had tried to reach Floyd regarding the review of Goines in March 2019 but believe he did not receive the letter, having moved homes.

It read: 'Based on a review of criminal cases filed in Harris County, Texas, it appears that former Houston Police Department Officer Gerald Goines may have been involved in the above-referenced case which resulted in your conviction.

'Please be informed that Officer Goines has been relieved of duty and is currently under criminal investigation.'

Goines is facing murder charges after he allegedly lied to obtain the warrant in a botched 2019 drug raid that left two people dead. He has pleaded not guilty.

Texas prosecutors are now examining potential irregularities in a probe that could expand the body of convictions possibly tainted by the officer's conduct.

Prosecutors have already dismissed dozens of convictions dating back to at least 2008 that they say were marred by Goines.

If the review of Floyd's arrest reveals misconduct, they'll presume all of Goines' cases going back to 2004 are tainted, Ogg said.

George Floyd is pictured. If the review of Floyds arrest reveals misconduct, theyll presume all of Goines cases going back to 2004 are tainted, Ogg said

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, pauses by the casket of George Floyd during a funeral for Floyd on June 9

Gerald Goines pictured at the 338th District Criminal Court on January 9

Goines' attorney, Nicole DeBorde, accused Ogg of using Floyd's death for political gain and announcing the review of the case to distract from her record. The district attorney is up for re-election in November.

'Regarding Ogg's resurrecting of a decade and a half old case without a shred of new information - this is a transparent and opportunistic effort to capitalize on Floyd's murder,' DeBorde said.

Prosecutors initially flagged Floyd's arrest as part of a wider investigation of cases involving Goines launched after the deadly drug raid, said Dane Schiller, a spokesman for the district attorney's office.

Derek Chauvin, 44, the officer filmed kneeling on Floyd's neck during his arrest was a 19-year veteran of the force. He faces murder charges in Floyd's death

Goines arrested Floyd after giving money to a third person, which the person then allegedly used to buy less than half a gram of crack from Floyd, Schiller said.

He said the money used in the buy was never recovered, the third person is not identified in case records and the presented evidence likely would not meet prosecutors current standards.

The re-examination of Floyd's cases was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
A sculptor has admitted that he has been met with a tirade of abuse for his statue of the 19th century explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.

Nick Elphick, 41, from Llandudno, Wales, who spent two years crafting the tribute to Sir Henry, has been hit with criticism for his bronze statue which pays homage to the colonial administrator who is famed for rescuing the missionary David Livingstone in 1871.

The crafter, who spent 30,000 to create his piece, described being woken up to calls from friends desperate to rescue his sculpture earlier this month after more than 1,500 signed a petition for the removal of the sculpture.

Mr Elphick, whose inbox has also been flooded with a torrent of abusive messages, said: 'I had no idea what was happening, I was like ''what the f**k is going on?''

Sculptor Nick Elphick, who spent two years crafting the tribute to Sir Henry Morton Stanley, has been hit with a wave of criticism

The 19th century explorer (pictured is Mr Elphick's statue of Sir Henry Morton Stanley) went on to create the Congo Free State with support from King Leopold II of Belgium

'I gave my heart and soul to this piece. I was commissioned to do it. Now with all this hate, I've had people coming to me being really rude on email or Facebook. They don't have anything intelligent to say.

'I've had to delete the whole lot of comments because you don't want people believing it.

'It's heartbreaking to feel that my work and HM Stanley's history is being scorned. I am fearful that I'm being judged badly which hurts.

'I'm frightened because I don't want people to judge me as this racist or stupid little person who wasn't thinking at the time and just wanted to make money.

'Whereas others have still been very angry and sending information about HM Stanley from all these activists - which I think it's disgraceful. I think it's awful that they're not showing two sides.

'As part of being a public sculptor, you have to have a thick skin. Whether it's dealing with people who don't like the sculpture or the person.

'You have to be able to stand up for yourself. I hate that people think I had just done it for a job and went ahead while believing he was a racist. They started asking why I was sculpting him and getting aggressive.'

Born John Rowlands on January 28, 1841 in Denbigh, Wales, Henry Morton Stanley, migrated to New Orleans in 1859 and soon crossed paths with the wealthy local cotton merchant by the name Henry Stanley whose name he soon adopted.

After serving in the American Civil War and working as a sailor, Sir Henry went on to reinvent himself as a special correspondent for the New York Herald in 1867.

The statue created by Mr Elphick was placed in Denbigh in Wales in 2011 and funded by Denbighshire County Council and St Asaph town councils

The 19th century explorer (left) had roads, outposts and even a railroads built in the Congo with the support of King Leopold II of Belgium (right)

Last month the statue of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour in Bristol

Just two years later the paper sent Sir Henry in search of the missionary David Livingstone, who had not been seen since 1866 when he had set off to search for the source of the Nile.

In 1871, Sir Henry reached Zanzibar and soon found Livingstone near his last known location on Lake Tanganyika.

Following Dr Livingstone's death, Sir Henry went to Asante in 1873, which is now part of Ghana, as a war correspondent for the New York Herald and in 1874 published Coomassie and Magdala: The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa.

After failing to enlist British interests, he then went on to create the Congo Free State with the support from King Leopold II of Belgium in 1879- who presented himself as a philanthropist.

Leopold, who succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865, was able to use Sir Henry's expertise to claim the Congo and annex the region for himself.

However the king's rule over the Congo was characterised by systematic brutality, murder and torture, and American writer Adam Hochschild claimed in his 1998 book King Leopold's Ghost that the death toll from his policies were as high as 10million Congolese.

Mr Elphick, who is adamant that people should research how the Democratic Republic of Congo loved Sir Henry, has been in contact with Congolese historian and author Norbert Mbu-Mputu - to prove the explorer was not involved in the African slave trade.

His piece was funded by Denbighshire County Council, Denbigh and St Asaph town councils, and visited by a Congolese delegation five years later.

He continued: 'I would have never done it if I knew he was involved in slavery.'

Workers remove the statue of Edward Colston from the Bristol Harbour on June 11 after it was thrown in amid the anti-racism protests

He expressed sympathy towards the sculptor of Edward Colston - which was pulled down during the Black Lives Matter protests.

He added: 'I feel so sorry for the artist who made the piece and can't defend themselves today. They're going to be completely forgotten about.

'I feel for that side which people don't really see. It's like taking historical pieces out of the city.

'We need them to see the history of the person, instead of destroying it. I do feel for the people that wanted it down so desperately but also, what's going to happen now?

'It's so important that black lives matter but we need to think careful about how we pursue these things.'

Gwyneth Kensler, of Denbighshire County Council, has stated that Sir Henry was not responsible for the atrocities of his employer in the Congo Free State, King Leopold II of Belgium.

The controversy comes after the Edward Colston monument was knocked into the Bristol harbour, and a statue of Winston Churchill was defaced during BLM protests.

The anti-racist protesters scrawled 'was a racist' on the wartime British Prime Minister.
Online talk: Writtle and the Birth of British Radio Broadcasting Radio amateur Tim Wander G6GUX will be giving an online talk at 7:30pm (1830 GMT) today, Monday, June 22, about the historic 2MT Writtle broadcasts



"Hello CQ! This is 2MT Writtle Calling"



The success of the Chelmsford concerts leads to the amazing story of radio station 2MT in Writtle and its charismatic leader Peter Eckersley, who became Britain's first regular radio broadcaster and soon the first Chief Engineer of the new BBC.



You can use this link to join the Zoom presentation





Further information at

https://www.chelmsfordses.org.uk/events/talks/308-writtle-and-the-birth-of-british-radio-broadcasting-tim-wander



Historic note: In December 2001 the callsign 2MT was once more heard on the airwaves when it was used by a special event amateur radio station operated from the Marconi factory in New Street, Chelmsford. This was the first and so far only time since the 1920s that a special short 3 character callsign has been issued to a UK amateur radio station

http://www.g0mwt.org.uk/events/marfold/marconi.htm
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 21:33:22|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Photo taken on Aug. 5, 2019 shows China's national flag and the flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on the Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong, south China. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaochu)

The national security legislation for the HKSAR is crucial to restoring constitutional order, maintaining stability, and supporting corporate and individual confidence in Hong Kong, HKSAR chief executive says.



HONG KONG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam said Monday that the national security legislation for the HKSAR is crucial to restoring constitutional order, maintaining stability, and supporting corporate and individual confidence in Hong Kong.

Lam stressed the significance of restoring order and rebuilding confidence to Hong Kong's recovery from social unrest and the COVID-19 epidemic in a video speech at the "Caixin Summer Summit 2020" held in Beijing.

Hong Kong's international reputation and stable business environment have been influenced substantially, Lam said, adding that there was an 8.9-percent GDP drop in the first quarter in Hong Kong, the largest year-on-year drop on record.

Despite the situation, Lam expressed optimism about Hong Kong's prospects and stressed that Hong Kong will still be full of business opportunities as long as it gives full play to the advantages under "one country, two systems" and restores peace and order after cracking down on criminals endangering national security.

Hong Kong will grasp the opportunities of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area development to recover to the previous level and even make further progress, Lam said.

Lam vowed efforts to make good use of favorable policies of the Greater Bay Area development, in particular in the financial sector.

Financial Secretary of the HKSAR government Paul Chan also made a video speech at the forum and said Hong Kong will use its unique edge under "one country, two systems" to improve its competitiveness and achieve long-term development.

The forum running from Sunday to Tuesday was organized by Caixin Media Company, with the theme of "Restoring Global Confidence." 
Cheong Wa Dae says that contents regarding President Moon Jae-in in former U.S. security adviser Bolton's memoir are not factual. Yonhap



By Do Je-hae



There is a rift between Korea and the United States in dealing with North Korea, and the leaders of the two countries seem to have failed to build trust, according to a memoir by U.S. President Donald Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton.



The contents of the memoir regarding Trump's activities in relation to the Korean Peninsula have been splashed across Korean media recently.



They have been made public amid escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula following the North's hostile words and activities including the recent destruction of the inter-Korean liaison office in Gaeseong.



Some of the contents are considered quite insulting to Cheong Wa Dae, which has touted President Moon Jae-in's role as the "driver" in the Korean Peninsula "peace process."



One of the incidents in the memoir that can be embarrassing to President Moon is that both Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un did not want Moon around during their impromptu meeting at the border village of Panmunjeom in June 2019.



According to Bolton, Moon made the suggestion that Trump and Kim meet on a naval vessel or at Panmunjeom after their failed Hanoi summit because the South Korean leader wanted "something dramatic to generate momentum for what he thought could be the summit of the century," according to the memoir titled, "The Room Where it Happened."



"Trump wanted Moon nowhere around, but Moon was determined to be present, making it a trilateral meeting if he could," he said. "I entertained the faint hope that this dispute with Moon could tank the whole thing, because it was certain Kim didn't want Moon around," the memoir reads.



Trump also threatened in August last year to pull all American troops from the peninsula if Seoul did not pay $5 billion for their upkeep, before the two nations started negotiations on their defense cost-sharing for 2020. It showed Trump dealt with the issue in a transactional way rather than valuing the South Korea-U.S. alliance.



"Get out of there if we don't get the 5 billion-dollar deal," Trump was quoted as saying by Bolton.



Cheong Wa Dae initially kept quiet about the Bolton's claims, saying that it was inappropriate for the presidential office to respond to a personal memoir, not a diplomatic document.



But Yoon Do-han, senior presidential secretary to President for public communication, conveyed to reporters Monday the position of national security adviser Chung Eui-yong, who had been Bolton's counterpart.



"In his memoir, Bolton expressed his view of the situation related to consultations between the leaders of South Korea, the United States and North Korea. It doesn't reflect the exact facts. Much of it distorts the facts," Yoon said in a briefing at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday. "Unilateral disclosure of what has been discussed based on mutual trust between governments violates the basic principles of diplomacy and can seriously undermine the credibility of future negotiations."



Cheong Wa Dae called on the U.S. to take necessary measures to prevent the leak of diplomatic consultations.



"We expect the U.S. government to take appropriate measures to prevent such dangerous cases. Such inappropriate behavior could seriously undermine efforts to maintain and develop a common strategy in the Korea-U.S. alliance and strengthen the security interests of both countries."


On June 13, patient families and their supporters organized a rally in front of Providence Behavioral Health Hospital, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to protest the imminent closure of its inpatient psychiatric services.

Trinity Health of Livonia, Michigan, which owns Providence, intends to close its three psychiatric units by July 1, including the only pediatric unit in the region. The closure will eliminate 74 beds and 202 jobs.

Parents are under no illusion that the closure is motivated by anything but money. Jamie Guerin of Northampton, whose experience as the mother of a patient was reported by the Republican, spoke with the WSWS at the June 13 rally. Ultimately, she said, the fact that we have a for-profit health care system is at the root of what were seeing here.

The Providence beds are not being closed due to a lack of funds on Trinitys part. As reported by Axios, Trinity, which holds $14.7 billion in assets, received $600 million in CARES Act stimulus funds, $1.6 billion in advanced Medicare payments, and over $1.56 billion in monthly operating expenses. The only hospital chain to receive more money from the federal disbursement was HCA Healthcare.

Speaking to the WSWS at a June 4 rally in Springfield, organized by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), Nicole Desnoyers, whose son has received treatment at Providence, said, Parents see that its definitely about the bottom dollar.

When asked by the WSWS at the June 13 rally in Holyoke if enough was being done to prevent the closure, Desnoyers, who lives in Springfield, addressed her state representatives, whom she has appealed to for support: Where are you? Im reaching out to you, Im calling you, Im emailing you, and Im not getting any responses, no answers back  I tell you Im calling for a community call-out and you still dont come. So, where do you stand on the issue? Do you really care?

With local politicians conspicuously absent, patient families must fend for themselves. Asked if unions were militant enough to oppose the closure, Guerin responded, I think the members are. I think the members are pretty kick-ass. I dont have much to say about their leadership. All I know is, Im still here with my children standing in front of a hospital.

The MNA, which holds the contract for nurses at Providence, held the June 4 rally outside the office of Paul Mancinone, in downtown Springfield. Mancinone is the chairman of the board of Mercy Medical Center, a general hospital located in Springfield, which operates Providence. The United Auto Workers union (UAW), which has the contract for mental health counselors and substance abuse recovery specialists at Providence, was also present.

The union line was to focus on what the closure will mean to patients, but not to providers and workers, as seen in the statement, Its terrible people are losing their jobs, but were employable. If the unions successfully defended these jobs, however, services would be preserved as well.

This tactic, along with appeals to management and big-business politicians, is emblematic of the refusal of the union to organize workers against the assault on health care and health care workers, and amounts to the MNA and UAW accepting the closure.

At the Springfield rally, union representatives and parents testified to the hardships already facing patients, and how the closure would only worsen them.

When patients who are suffering acute mental health crisis seek care, it is common for them to wait in emergency rooms before an inpatient facility will admit them. Due to a regional shortage, patients sometimes stay there for days at a time, in some cases weeks.

Cindy Chaplin, who leads the MNA bargaining committee at Providence, recalled the experience of a patient, who sat there in the same clothes for four days. He had nobody to talk to, and nobody to do therapy with, and nobody to address his mental health status, because the ER is not equipped to do that. Thats my job.

At Mercy hospital, patients are sometimes forced to wait on gurneys in the emergency room hallway. Tony Mancuso, an emergency room nurse, estimates that at least half of the psychiatric patients seen at Mercy are admitted to Providence. At the Springfield rally, he asked, How long will these patients be staying in the ER if Providence closes and how far are we going to send them to receive the care that they deserve?

Speaking to the small crowd gathered at the Springfield rally, Desnoyers related her experience as an advocate for her 10-year-old son Ja-seir, who has a diagnosis that includes disruptive mood dysregulation, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and general anxiety.

Last year, when waiting for a facility to admit him, he had to wait in the emergency room for three weeks. Not four days, Desnoyers said, thats not a week, thats three weeks with no help, with no care, with nothing. Providence would not accept his referral, so she had to travel to a facility in Westborough, Massachusetts, over an hour away.

Her only other option was to take him home, or risk the involvement of the Department of Children and Families. How do you take a child whos not safe at home, when you have other children at home? They need to be protected. They have rights. They are human. And in order to do that, [care] needs to be available and accessible. Coming back from Westborough, her car broke down, leaving her stranded.

On another such occasion, in order to admit Ja-seir to the Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont, she had to arrange for a single-case agreement with Mass Health, the states Medicaid program. If Providence closes, parents like Desnoyers and Guerin will be forced to travel long distances, and jump over bureaucratic hurdles, in an attempt to secure care for their children.

The harrowing prospects facing patients and families, and the providers and workers who will lose their incomes, are in sharp contrast to the unconvincing rhetoric offered by the unions. At the June 4 rally, a common refrain directed at Mancinone was to do the right thing. This phrase, according to Mancuso, is plastered on the walls of Mercy hospital. He remarked, Closing Providence hospital will certainly not be the right thing to do.

Comments made by Donna Stern, regional director for the MNA, at a May 23 press conference in front of Providence illustrated that the union is focused on appealing to state government officials, not on mobilizing the working class.

This is a population that has been ignored, has been exploited, has been stigmatized, and enough is enough! When are we going to say, enough is enough? When? I want to know. And asking them to stop closing is not enough. The Department of Public Health came out and said this was an essential service. Well, without a law backing that up, thats exactly what theyre going to do.

The MNA is lobbying for a bill that would make eliminating health care more onerous for companies. The bill includes provisions that would extend the official notice period for closures; require hospitals to provide evidence of having sought and received community input; prohibit hospitals from expansion or new licensure for three years from the date a service was discontinued, if deemed essential; and require the state attorney general to approve of the closure of essential services.

In reality, the strategy of the MNA is to channel the anger of workers into support for the big-business parties and a legislative solution. The legislation the MNA supports is still in committee and wont affect Trinitys decision. Despite its attempts to appear as a legitimate defender of workers and patients, the MNAs actions demonstrate an acceptance of the termination of Providences services.

A strategy to defend jobs and patients rights must include organizing the 23,000 rank-and-file nurses the MNA represents in Massachusettsas well as the 150,000 nurses represented by National Nurses United, which is affiliated with the MNA, and the 12.5 million workers represented by the AFL-CIO, which is affiliated with NNU. Like the empty gestures of their affiliates in Massachusetts, the NNU staged single-day protests in several states last month over lack of personal protective equipment.

The WSWS calls on rank-and-file nurses, mental health counselors, and recovery specialists of Providence to form their own independent committees to oppose the elimination of its services, and to join with the millions of health care workers across the country in the fight for a socialist policy to defend health care.
An abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness where a young man documented his demise over 114 days in 1992 has been removed by officials, frustrated that the bus has become a lure for dangerous, sometimes deadly pilgrimages into treacherous backcountry.

An Alaska National Guard Chinook helicopter flew the bus out of the woods just north of Denali National Park and Preserve on Thursday.

Christopher McCandless hiked to the bus located about 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of Anchorage nearly three decades ago, and the 24-year-old Virginian died from starvation when he couldnt hike back out because of the swollen Teklanika River. He kept a journal of his plight, discovered when his body was found. McCandless story was first documented in Jon Krakauers 1996 book Into the Wild, followed by Sean Penns movie of the same name in 2007.

Over the years, the bus became a magnet for those wishing to retrace McCandless steps to the bus to pay homage. But the Teklanika River that prevented McCandless from hiking out also has caused problems for people who came later on pilgrimages. Two women, one from Switzerland in 2010 and one from Belarus in 2019, drowned on such pilgrimages.

State officials said there have been 15 other search-and-rescue operations since 2009, including one involving five Italian tourists last winter, one with severe frostbite.

We encourage people to enjoy Alaskas wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination, Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Corri A. Feige said in a statement. However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts, but more importantly, was costing some visitors their lives.

In Alaska, the Department of Natural Resources is responsible for protecting and preserving state land.

I was stunned when Commissioner Feige informed me, Carine McCandless, Christophers sister, said in an email to The Associated Press. Though I am saddened by the news, the decision was made with good intentions, and was certainly theirs to make. That bus didnt belong to Chris and it doesnt belong to his family.

The 1940s-era bus, sometimes called Bus 142 or The Magic Bus, was used to house employees by the Yutan Construction Co. when it built an access road about 25 miles west of the Parks Highway, the main thoroughfare between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The National Guard named Thursdays bus lift Operation Yutan.

The bus was abandoned in 1961 and had become an emergency shelter for those using the backcountry to recreate or hunt.

Seeing those photos of Fairbanks 142 flying out of the bush triggered a flood of complicated emotions for me, Krakauer said in an email to the AP.

Krakauer said he respects the decision to remove the bus, but some powerful history is attached to that old bus. A great many people care deeply about what happens to it.

For now the bus is being kept in a secure, unnamed location while the department decides what to do with it, Feige said. A release from the Alaska National Guard said the discussion includes possible plans to display the bus for the public to view at a safe location.

The guard said its air crew also is safekeeping a suitcase that holds sentimental value to the McCandless family. Officials didnt detail what was in the suitcase.
A young Instagram influencer has traded bikinis for prison greens after a drive with her boyfriend ended horribly wrongly when their car crashed into a home during an alleged police pursuit.

Gold Coast woman India Orrock, 21, appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Monday, four days after she was suffered a broken wrist, fractured ankle and perforated bowel when her boyfriend Kane Andrews, 20, allegedly lost control of his vehicle near Maitland in the NSW Hunter Valley.

Police allege officers were patrolling the New England Highway near the suburb of Telarah when they noticed the Holden Commodore allegedly speeding and tried to stop it.

A pursuit was initiated after driver failed to pull over before the Holden Commodore allegedly lost control, crashed through two fences and into a house.

India Orrock (pictured) was refused bail when she faced court in Newcastle on Monday

Two occupants and a baby were inside the home at the time were uninjured.

Orrock was trapped inside the vehicle while her boyfriend allegedly tried to flee the scene before he was arrested nearby and taken to hospital under police guard.

Andrews remains in hospital while Orrock was later taken into custody over outstanding warrants in relation to a separate alleged incident while living in Maitland last year.

The court heard Orrock allegedly helped Andrews flee from police when he breached his bail conditions in March 2019, the Newcastle News reported.

Police allege Orrock used her car to block a police vehicle's attempts to pursue Andrews and reversed her vehicle to hamper their efforts.

India Orrock (pictured) was airlifted to hospital after she suffered a broken wrist, fractured ankle and perforated bowel

Her boyfriend Kane Andrews (pictured) has been charged in relation to last week's crash

Orrock has been charged with use/possess or attempt threaten to use offensive weapon to prevent lawful detention apprehension; two counts of hinder police; move into the path of police and two counts of fail to appear.

None of Orrock's charges are in relation to last Thursday's crash.

Andrews was charged with police pursuit drive dangerously, drive recklessly/furiously or speed/manner dangerous and, drive motor vehicle during disqualification period.

Lawyer Bill Hussey applied for bail on Orrock's behalf, citing her young age and serious injuries from the crash made her prone to infection.

India Orrock had to be freed from the wreckage after her boyfriend allegedly lost control and crashed into a house in the Maitland suburb of Telarah. Pictured is the crash scene

He offered $1000 surety and said Orrock would report to police on a daily basis while living with her grandfather in a nearby town.

But she will remain behind bars after magistrate Andrew Millar refused bail.

Mr Hussey told the court Andrews will plead not guilty to the charges over last week's crash.

Both matters were adjourned until July.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:37:01|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

by Dana Halawi

BEIRUT, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Every year, people in Lebanon wait for summer to enjoy the sun and relax after a long and cold winter, by visiting the beautiful resorts along the Mediterranean coast.

But, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, this summer is much different for the Lebanese visiting the resorts, as swimming areas are open at only 50 percent of capacity as part of the precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Moreover, all activities that allow people to form a crowd were cancelled so far.

"We are only receiving a small number of people this year while respecting social distancing measures," a front desk manager at the Coral Beach hotel told Xinhua.

The manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the resort's staff take the temperature of the visitors, disinfect their shoes before visiting the pool area, and ask people to use their own towels.

Mohammad Bazzi, manager of the Bar Damour Beach, told Xinhua that his customers noticed the safety measures adopted by the resort's administration.

"We are respecting social distancing measures and people who come together in groups sit two-meter away from each other," he said.

Lebanon has been fighting the COVID-19 outbreak since Feb. 21. The total number of the coronavirus infections in the country has reached 1,587, including 32 deaths.

Many Lebanese believed that life must go on and they are keen to enjoy the summer following three months in quarantine, while also expressing worry about the infectious coronavirus.

"Life has to move on, we cannot stay in quarantine forever. We can still enjoy our time as long as we take proper precautionary measures," Elie Bitar, a visitor at the Bar Damour Beach, told Xinhua.

Nala Husseini, who was sunbathing at the Coral Beach, told Xinhua this is the least she can do to enjoy the good weather since she did not plan any yearly trips given the outbreak of COVID-19 all over the world.

"We are not traveling this year so I decided to spend my time on the beach as much as possible to enjoy my summer time," she said.

Beach resorts, in the past, relied to a great extent on their summer revenues which constitute a big chunk of their yearly profit. However, they are not expected to earn the same profit this year as previous years.

Bazzi said that the current economic and financial crisis prompted the resort's owners to maintain their prices or even reduce them in some cases.

"We have slightly reduced our entrance fees but we slightly increased the prices of our food items to be able to cover our costs," he said.

"We want to continue our operations even if we only manage to cover our costs, knowing that a lot of families make a living out of our resort," he added.

Pilar Eid, director of sales and marketing at Riviera Hotel, said that the safety measures taken by the hotel cost a lot, while it has not been able to increase its prices given the economic crisis in Lebanon.

"We also have promotions to attract people to our resort since some people fear going to the beaches due to COVID-19," she said, adding that the number of visitors this year are much fewer than previous years.


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
Last week, President Trump confirmed that the United States will be cutting forces in Germany by a third, reducing the number of American service members there to no more than 25,000.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In terms of the defense of Europe, the important question is whether we have forces with the capability to surge to the right places in the event of Russian aggression, with the necessary range and firepower to counter Russian military systems. How many are based in Germany is really beside the point. Nonetheless, this particular draw-down decision is literally ill-considered  poorly coordinated with our allies and lacking a clear strategic rationale.

If it is being undertaken to punish Germany for its trade policies and defense spending, as Trump has said, its unlikely to bring results. Trump was right to call Germany delinquent for consistently failing to spend at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense, the NATO target. Germanys disregard for its commitments to the transatlantic alliance is disgraceful, but unfortunately, unlikely to fundamentally change, notwithstanding a minor increase in defense spending last year. Germany has also pressed ahead with Nord Stream 2, a natural-gas pipeline that will run between Russia, and Germany and render our allies beholden to the Kremlin for their energy needs.

Regardless, the reason to keep our forces in Germany isnt as a favor to Berlin, but because it serves our interest in a stable Europe. And there are better ways, including economic measures, to thwart EURussia collaboration.

If it is being undertaken as a slap at Chancellor Angela Merkel for saying that she would not attend a G-7 meeting Trump had wanted to host in Washington this month, it constitutes a substitution of personal pique for military strategy. (Administration officials have claimed that the withdrawal announcement had been in the works for months.)

If it is being undertaken to save money, as some have suggested, its not going to work because it will also cost money to house the troops removed from Germany in, say, Texas.

Story continues

Its worth remembering why we are in Germany in the first place. During the Cold War, American soldiers based there were a key piece of the deterrent against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Americas defense posture allowed its allies to develop prosperous economies and resilient democracies.

The United States has benefited from this arrangement, too. U.S. troops in Germany kept the Soviets at bay until the end of the Cold War. With 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the country served as an important military hub. In the fight against al-Qaeda, where would we have been without Ramstein Air Base and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center?

The Cold War is over, but the Russian threat is not, as its annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014 attests. In response, the United States  including the Trump administration  has worked to strengthen Europe against the Russian threat, prodding NATO countries to increase their defense spending, sending lethal defensive aid to Ukraine, and upping the number of U.S. troops stationed in Norway and Poland. Germany is an important node connecting these endeavors.

Theres always a chance Trumps announced move could be reversed. We hope it is. Theres a case for reimagining our security posture in Europe, but not like this.

More from National Review
Australia and the United States have been urged to jointly name and shame state-backed actors looking to steal health research during the coronavirus pandemic, as the Morrison government battles an escalation in cyber attacks on key networks.

In a paper to be published by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney on Tuesday, five foreign policy experts also say the two countries should strengthen their ability to counter disinformation campaigns as an urgent priority in light of China's use of such tactics during COVID-19.

Australian security agencies believe China is responsible for a wave of cyber attacks against the NSW government and other critical Australian infrastructure including state-owned utilities and hospitals but the Morrison government has chosen not to name the country involved.

While China has denied it is behind the Australian attacks, the US recently warned Beijing's most skilled hackers and spies were working to steal American research to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.
CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -

Not even a pesky pandemic can curb enthusiasm for the Chagrin Valley Chamber of Commerces annual awards night celebrating the areas small businesses. Originally scheduled March 12 at Chagrin Cinema but postponed due to concerns of spreading the coronavirus, the event will sparkle 8 p.m. Thursday, July 9 under the stars at the Mayfield Road Drive-In Theater, 12100 Mayfield Rd.

Attendees should bring a blanket or chair to sit in, or you can stay in your car and watch the event on the big screen. You can watch awards being presented to the winning business of the year, non-profit company of the year, and CVCC member of the year, along with a sponsorship video.

Intermission will feature a blazing fireworks display at dusk. Attendees will want to cash in their voucher for $10 in popcorn from the theaters concession stand.

Next, prepare to be entertained with a one-on-one interview with local crime historian and author Rick Porrello. This will be followed with a special screening of the full-length R-rated film Kill the Irishman, which was based on Porrellos book about former Cleveland crime boss Shondor Birns.

Ticket holders to the March event are permitted to bring additional people in their vehicle, but, they are asked to respectfully follow social distancing guidelines. Contact cvcc.org for information.

WomenSafe store reopens: Attention bargain hunters, the WomenSafe resale shop is open for shopping only Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and it has an entire store filled with items awaiting a new home. Donations are not being accepted at this time. Bring your face mask. New policies and procedures were added to safeguard the safety of staff, volunteers, customers, donors and clients according to Ohio Health Department requirements and best practices. The store is located at 12601 Chillicothe Rd., also known as the Drug Mart plaza, in Chester Township. Contact womensafe.org.

KSU to add another Zoom room: The Cleveland Foundation is providing a $20,000 grant to the Kent State University Geauga Campus for technology improvements and a student emergency fund. Half of the money is earmarked for the installation of an additional Zoom room at the Burton campus and will include state-of-the-art equipment to deliver online courses with dynamic interaction with faculty and students across the region. The remaining $10,000 will assist students residing in Lake and Geauga counties facing financial hardship due to COVID-19. The Zoom room improvements include new hardware, software, power access and signage along with installation. Prior to the pandemic the majority of coursework was done in person. The addition of another Zoom room will provide greater availability of classes to Geauga Campus students. The emergency relief fund is earmarked for students experiencing food insecurity, housing instability, transportation barriers and unexpected medical or childcare expenses. Funding is based on individual needs and circumstances.

Congratulations graduates: Emma Landskroner of Chagrin Falls obtained her bachelor of science in public and community health from Ithaca College in New York. The school has about 6,200 students and offers more than 100 degree programs. Andrew Healy of Chagrin Falls and James Gibson of Solon received their undergraduate degrees from Colby College in Waterville Maine, a school serving about 2,000 students. Economics major, Erin Schwartz of Solon received a BA degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Solonites graduate BWU: Baldwin Wallace University in Berea postponed a ceremony and conferred degrees virtually to recent graduates from Solon. Brandon Dim graduated magna cum laude with a BA in sport management. Elena Fung and Arunkumar Srinivasan both received their MBAs in healthcare management. Yakini Pierce and Tyler Tayor graduated with MBAs in management.

More BWU graduates: Pepper Pike students Autumn Hepler and Chiedozie Udeh received graduate degrees from Baldwin Wallace University. Hepler has an MA in education and Udeh has an MBA in healthcare. Chagrin Falls graduates include Caitlin Nieset with an MS in speech pathology and Andrew Sova with a BA in finance. Kenston High School graduate, Sarah Porter graduated magna cum laude with a BS in neuroscience biology.

To post your news and events, contact Rusek at jcooperrusek@gmail.com.
The Special Criminal Court has today heard of a dramatic struggle between three gardai and a gangland criminal armed with a machine gun, which ended up in a bathtub after the gun went off while a primed grenade lay on the floor.

The non-jury court heard the evidence during the sentencing of Derek Devoy (37), from Balbutcher Lane, Poppintree, Ballymun, who had pleaded guilty to possessing a Makarov submachine gun with intent to endanger life, or cause serious injury at Crannogue Road, Ballymun, Dublin 11 on March 11, 2019.

Devoy also pleaded guilty to two charges under Section 19 of the Public Order Act for assaulting a garda and a garda sergeant at Crannogue Road on the same date.

Devoy has also pleaded guilty to possessing an explosive substance, to wit a Yugoslavian M75 hand grenade with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property on the same occasion and to 11 rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Detective Sergeant Stephen O'Keeffe told prosecuting barrister Mr Michael Bowman SC that at around 4.35pm on the day three gardai chased Devoy from Doon Court, where he was observed by a member of the public with the letting off two rounds from the Makarov sub-machinegun.

The chase ended up in the bathroom extension of a separate family's house on Crannogue Road when gardai found Devoy sitting on the toilet with the gun. Mr Sean Gillane SC said that his client was under four death threats at the time and was not behaving rationally.

The three gardai were on a break and had no handcuffs, pepper spray or personal protection equipment when they found Devoy and ordered him to lower the weapon. Det Sgt O'Keefe said gardai jumped on Devoy "in a split second" but all three ended up in the bathtub before he could be restrained.

A Garda narrowly avoided being shot as the gun went off with the bullet passing his eye-line, said Mr Bowman.

After restraining Devoy, all three gardai observed a grenade on the ground with the pin out. The grenade, which did not go off, was later detonated in a controlled explosion by army experts at the scene, said Mr Bowman.

Devoy was taken to Ballymun Garda Station where he behaved violently and his clothes had to be cut from him, said Det Sgt O'Keeffe.

In all, five casings were recovered from the bathroom along with two from Doon Court with 11 remaining in the machine gun.

Mr Sean Gillane SC told presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt that his client was one of four children but the only one left alive.

Devoy apologised in court to the three gardai, to the family of the house at Crannogue Road and to the people of Ballymun.

Devoy has previous convictions for attempted armed robbery, gun crime and drug dealing. Devoy has been suspected of being in the middle of a number of dangerous feuds, including with north inner city associates of the Hutch mob.

It is this gang that is suspected of murdering Devoy's innocent sister Antoinette Corbally (47) in August 2017.

The 48-year-old was gunned down along with Devoy's innocent pal Clinton Shannon (30) when a gunman opened fire on Devoy's mother's home on Balbutcher Drive.

Mother-of-six Ms Corbally was shot after opening the door to the killer, who had seconds earlier shot Mr Shannon as he sat in a car outside the house after driving Devoy there.

Devoy dropped a toddler he was holding and made his way to safety over the back wall of the house.
China's moves assume significance coming days after Dhaka completed the process of redrawing the countrys political map through a constitutional amendment that incorporated three strategically important Indian areas of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura, a move that could severely jolt relations with New Delhi.

Amid India's stand-off with China over the Galwan Valley and its struggles to resolve its border dispute with Nepal, it appears that Beijing is making a move to woo Bangladesh, another old friend of New Delhi.

Barely a month after Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a discussion to upgrade their bilateral relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh's ministry of foreign affairs announced that 97 percent of its products  an eye-popping number  would be exempted from Chinese tariffs starting 1 July.

And this is not the only overture Beijing has recently made towards Dhaka, which like Nepal, has traditionally enjoyed close cultural and economic ties with India.

Just yesterday, China vowed that Bangladesh would be a top priority should Beijing develop a coronavirus vaccine. "Of course, Bangladesh is our important friend and Bangladesh will surely get priority," Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka Hualong Yan was quoted as saying by The Daily Star. He added that Bangladesh and China were "working closely" to deal with the situation.

China bets big on Bangladesh

New Delhi has every reason to worry about Dhaka being weaned away. Bangladesh, a member of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which India has steadfastly refused to join, has seen an estimated $31 billion investment flow from China over the years, mainly in infrastructure and energy.

Beijing's investments in Bangladesh  including the construction of a six-km bridge across the Padma river (as the Ganga is known in the country) for around $3.7 billion and a $2.5 billion power plant at Payra near Dhaka  rank only behind its $60 billion investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

In 2015, China became Bangladesh's top trade partner, a position India had occupied for 40 years, and currently accounts for 34 percent of its total imports.

Worse, India's big brother attitude towards Bangladesh, which stands in stark contrast with China's model of "non-interference" bolstered by big spending, has led to deep resentment in the minds of ordinary citizens, as per a report in The Diplomat.

All of which surely hasn't escaped the attention of Hasina, who has already scheduled a visit to China in the first week of July, the first such trip to Beijing after her re-election. Hasina is also expected to press for the Bangladesh-China- India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor which has failed to take off and which China has had an eye on reviving.

What further complicates matters is what occurred last year between India and Bangladesh when officials privately acknowledged a strain due to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hasina referring to India-Bangladesh ties a shonali odhyay (golden chapter).

Bangladesh is India's best friend in the neighbourhood and remarks about pushing back infiltrators and lumping Bangladesh in the same league as Pakistan have generated a lot of worry among the public, a senior Bangladeshi official, speaking on condition of anonymity while referring to the CAA, told Hindustan Times.

Experts say India is right to be wary. As per a report in DW, Siegfried O Wolf, director of research at the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), a Brussels-based think-tank, says China's increasing influence in South Asia poses a massive challenge to New Delhi for both, political and security reasons.

"China has a port facility [Hambantota] in Sri Lanka, they have Gwadar [in Pakistan], they are building a port facility in Myanmar [Kyaukpyu]  this gives India the feeling of being surrounded by China. This is the military dimension of Indian concern," Wolf told DW.

He also cautioned that China might use investments to gain political influence. "So there is a threat for India that China might influence the government of Bangladesh." This influence may also have an economic dimension, Wolf added. "We have seen China driving out other countries from the market. For instance, it has become very difficult for French and German companies to get contracts in African countries."

India-Nepal spat deepens

Beijing's moves assume significance coming days after the Nepal government completed the process of redrawing the countrys political map through a constitutional amendment that incorporated three strategically important Indian areas of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura, a move that could severely jolt relations with New Delhi.

This came in response to defence minister Rajnath Singh inaugurating an 80-km strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand on 8 May. Nepal protested the inauguration of the road, claiming that it passed through its territory.

Nepal on Sunday upped the ante by claiming that 90 percent of its coronavirus cases are migrant workers who returned from abroad, mostly from India.

Residents of India's border villages also complained that Nepals FM radio channels are broadcasting propaganda to back Kathmandus claim on Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura.

"Some Nepalese FM channels have of late started playing anti-India speeches in between Nepali songs, Shalu Datal, a resident of Dantu village in Pithoragarhs Dharchula sub-division told PTI. As people on both sides of the border listen to Nepali songs, they also hear the anti-India speeches delivered by Nepalese leaders, she said. The main FM stations playing anti-India content between songs are Naya Nepal and Kalapani Radio, Datal added.

These radio stations have also started giving weather reports on Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, treating them as Nepalese territory, Krishna Garbiyal, a Rang community leader based in Dharchula told PTI. However, the district administration and police said they have no information about any anti-India propaganda launched by Nepal through its FM radio channels.

Last week, sources in the Indian government put the onus of creating a conducive atmosphere for talks between India and Nepal with the KP Sharma Oli regime, claimed that the release of the new political map by Nepal and obtaining a legal backing to it from the Lower House of Nepalese Parliament were part of a "myopic" agenda to gain mileage in domestic politics and rejected Nepal's contention that India did not respond to its proposal for talks on the boundary issue.

New Delhis ongoing refusal to hold substantive talks on the disputed border has not helped either, Ian Hall, professor in international relations at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and author of Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy. told Bloomberg. There is no doubt that Beijing has worked hard to build a closer party-to-party relationship between Olis government and the Chinese Communist Party, in parallel to conventional diplomatic links.

Whatever happens next, it is clear that for New Delhi, which is engaged in spats with both Nepal and China over conflicting territorial claims, there are no easy answers.

With inputs from agencies
A sergeant with the Clare County Sheriffs Office is being sued in open court, accused of violating a mans Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections by tasering him while in restraints. The lawsuit also accuses the deputy of escalating the conflict and that corrections officers at the jail of holding the man down.

The lawsuit also says that since the officers involved knew they were violated the rights of Byron Clemons, the plaintiff, that they are not covered by qualified immunity, which protects some government officials from lawsuits for actions they take during the course of doing their jobs.

In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Clemons claimed that after he was arrested Jan. 5, 2018, that Sgt. Aaron Miller walked him into the Clare County Jail.

When they got into the jail, Clemons asked Miller to record the encounter on his body cam, according to the complaint. Miller did so, telling Clemons, I got one right here.

Miller is accused of them immediately escalating the situation by yelling at Clemens to stand up. When he didnt immediately stand, Clemons said that he was grabbed and walked to the restraining chair, by three officers, including Miller.

Clemons said that Miller repeatedly yelled at him to relax, eventually telling him to relax or that Miller would use his taser on him.

Less than two seconds later, Clemons said that Miller tased him in the right, upper thigh. Clemons told Miller that his arm was stuck, according to the complaint, but Miller ignored him. Instead, the two went back and forth, Clemons telling the officer that his arm was stuck and Miller telling him to relax.

It was then that Clemons said that Miller tased him a second time, this one longer than the first.

In his complaint, Clemons said that he was not resisting officers, attempting to flee and did not pose a threat to officers. Because of those things, the complaint said that Miller had used excessive force against Clemons, deprived him of rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments and was not protected against qualified immunity.

Clemons is being represented by Josh Blanchard, of Greenville. Blanchard also represented James Eric Davis, Jr., the CMU student who shot both of his parents in March 2018.

The lawsuit was filed in May.

READ MORE:
Sheep graze beside the prehistoric monument at Stonehenge in southern England, on April 26, 2020, closed during the national lockdown due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Britain's health ministry on Saturday said 813 more people had died after testing positive for COVID-19 in hospital, taking the death toll to 20,319.

A group of archaeologists discovered what could be one of the largest prehistoric sites in the United Kingdom near Stonehenge.

Researchers led by the University of Bradford discovered a ring of at least 20 "shafts" more than 32 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep that form a circle more than 1.2 miles in diameter. The ring, which surrounds the site of a Neolithic village called Durrington Walls, could shed new light on the origins of the mystical stone circle in southwestern England.

The area around Stonehenge is amongst the most studied archaeological landscapes on earth," Vince Gaffney, Chair of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences in the Faculty of Life Sciences, said in a statement. "It is remarkable that the application of new technology can still lead to the discovery of such a massive prehistoric structure which, currently, is significantly larger than any comparative prehistoric monument that we know of in Britain, at least."

Related Video: Mummy Discovery in Egypt Dates Back to Cleopatra

Gaffney said when the pits were first identified, they were believed to be natural features. Geophysical surveys allowed researchers to discover a "pattern on a massive scale."

It demonstrates the significance of Durrington Walls Henge, the complexity of the monumental structures within the Stonehenge landscape, and the capacity and desire of Neolithic communities to record their cosmological belief systems in ways, and at a scale, that we had never previously anticipated.

Archaeologists believe the circle of shafts was created about 4,500 years ago and may have marked a boundary around the massive henge at Durrington Walls which could have guided people towards the religious sites and warned others not to cross.

The site is located a little more than a mile northeast of Stonehenge, the most famous of the many mysterious stone circles built thousands of years ago in Britain. The huge monument was built between 3000 B.C. and 1600 B.C. and is one of the country's most popular tourist attractions.

Story continues

Hundreds of people including druids and pagans typically visit the site at the summer and winter solstices, but this year's celebrations were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This discovery allowed researchers to "write a whole new chapter in the story of the Stonehenge landscape," according to Nick Snashall, National Trust archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.

As the place where the builders of Stonehenge lived and feasted Durrington Walls is key to unlocking the story of the wider Stonehenge landscape," she said. "This astonishing discovery offers us new insights into the lives and beliefs of our Neolithic ancestors.

Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Huge circle of ancient shafts found near Stonehenge
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Avion Solutions, Inc. won the First Place Gold Award for Large Companies in the 2020 Best Places to Work Competition. It is Avion Solutions' second consecutive win and sixth overall win since 2009. The company has been a finalist nearly every year since 2009, including a four-year stretch winning the award from 2009-2012.

"I am proud of our highly-engaged, hard-working employee-owners who deliver unparalleled service to our clients and communities," said Chad Donald, President of Avion Solutions. "To win this award in consecutive years is an honor."

The Best Places to Work Competition is a Huntsville/Madison County Chamber program that surveys organizations' employees about their companies to measure key areas that make up their organization's culture, including compensation, benefits, and trust in senior leadership. The survey also measures employee engagement.

"We believe that our employees drive the success of our company. Ninety percent of Avion Solutions' employee owners see professional growth and career development opportunities within our company," said Kim Taylor, Director of Human Resources and Contracts. "We aim to create a positive work environment that enables employees to perform at their best, be part of a supportive team, and enjoy the rewards that come with success."

About Avion Solutions

Avion Solutions, Inc. is an employee-owned innovative engineering and logistics solutions provider for complex military-grade projects. Headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama with a presence in multiple states across the U.S., Avion Solutions has provided solutions to Department of Defense customers and commercial clients since 1992. Our broad range of technical expertise includes engineering, logistics and technical services, data analysis, software development, small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and drone services, and development of a full spectrum of training solutions ranging from on-site classroom training to interactive multimedia instruction (IMI) programs. Avion Solutions is a 2020 Best Places to Work award winner. To learn more, visit www.avionsolutions.com.

If you would like more information about this release, please contact Michael Jones at 256-327-7155 or email [email protected] .

Contact: Michael Jones, Communications Manager

Phone: 256-327-7155

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Avion Solutions Inc.

Related Links

avionsolutions.com


The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is a landmark project started in 2005 by the US based National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The idea was to make a catalogue of the genetic mutations that cause cancer. This meant collecting tumour samples and blood samples (known as the germ line) from patients, and processing them using gene sequencing and bioinformatics. The TCGA is a continuing effort even after fifteen years, and has generated over 2.5 petabytes of data for over 11,000 patients. This data is available to researchers all around the world, and has been used to develop new approaches to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer.

The data collection is done with the consent of the patients, who are informed that such data will benefit those who are affected or could be affected by cancer in the future. The data collection has also been designed in a way to make sure that the privacy of the patients is maintained, even though researchers have access to the data. Data of over 33 types of cancer are collected by TCGA. The researchers using the database have also developed a number of computational tools to visualise and process the database. These tools allow researchers to not only explore particular kinds of cancers across different patients, but also compare different kinds of cancers. Dr Anand Deshpande, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems explains the benefit of the TCGA, there is a belief that if we are able to compare and look at data, at different individuals and different cancers, then our ability to understand cancer would be a lot better. One of overall long term goals in cancer research is to see if you can create a personalised, targeted drug or therapy. There have been some that have gotten created in the past, where one single shot basically fixes cancer for good. This is possible in certain cases if you have a very clear understanding of exactly what that particular cancer is likely to do to that individual. No two cancers are alike actually. Every cancer seems to be unique, it has its own unique manifestation. Getting it right at that level can provide tremendous improvement in terms of getting targeted therapy, where the cancer is cured and all the side effects are managed. Basically, you can cure cancer, it is just a disease that gets cured, the patient does not need therapy or go into remission or any of those things. Cancer is one of the top three killers in any country.

One of the biggest challenges to delivering targeted therapies and treatments locally, is the lack of local data. Dr Deshpande says, the data that we have in TCGA right now is collected in the US. It is regarding the US population. In India, we need to have this for our population, which we havent done before. What we are trying to initiate is, can we collect data like this for India, with Indian patients, so that over a period of time, over the next five years or so, we would have better data about our cancer, unlike their cancer. If we have that data about our cancers, then our treatments would be more appropriate for us, and we would be able to personalise it to individuals here.

The genetics of the caucasian US population is different from South Asians and Indians. While certain treatments may work for caucasians, it does not necessarily mean that the same approach will work for South Asians as well. There is plenty of genetic variety within India as well. Dr Deshpande explains, even within India, we have many pockets of DNA signatures for our population. It is very important that we do this in India. One of the things we are looking at is triple negative breast cancer. Breast cancer in India is different from breast cancer anywhere else in the world. Our breast cancer tends to afflict younger women, unlike the US or other places. Some of the diagnostic techniques such as mammograms dont necessarily work very well. The disease is very deadly and is harder to cure. We have been able to find some DNA markers that are very specific to triple negative breast cancer.

Dr Deshpande is leading the charge for getting a TCGA like setup in India. Although researchers in India have access to the TCGA and use the data, the data itself is American patients, and not local patients. Towards this end, Persistent Systems along with IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) and Prashanti organised a TCGA conference in Pune in September 2019. Researchers presented how they used the TCGA, which was followed by a three day workshop where students were made familiar with the tools and techniques needed to handle such large databases.

Dr CB Koppiker, Breast Onco-surgeon, and Medical Director at the Prashanti Cancer Care Mission said, with the declining cost of genomic technology, molecular/precision oncology is fast becoming mainstream in the cancer management in India. In my breast onco-surgery practice, I have seen the significant impact of tumour molecular profiling on better surgical and clinical management decision making. However, Indian cancers have uniquely different molecular attributes than their western counterparts. Hence, taking motivation from the TCGA project, it is timely and pertinent that the onco-community joins hands to initiate high impact, large scale, multi-disciplinary initiatives that are relevant to the Indian context. Prashanti Cancer Care Mission is committed to playing a proactive role in this effort. A second conference is planned in September 2020, and the work on the database is expected to be underway by then.

Dr Deshpande says, when this conference was going on, we pushed the medical guys to say, you know it is great to have a conference, but can we not do something more than that, and build a TCGA equivalent in India? Ive been trying to spearhead this activity from our side to see if we can find funding and other resources across the country, which would support this kind of initiative. Persistent is quite confident about being able to handle the tech part of it, but this is not just a tech project, it needs cancer doctors, DNA researchers, and biologists to work together. Ive been trying to speak to these groups and get them to cooperate and collaborate, and hopefully in the next three months we should be able to launch a TCGA equivalent here. It will be like the TCGA they have in the US, but it will be for Indian patients, with data coming from here, stored in India, processed in India, and made available to whoever wants to do research across the world. Dr Jean Claude Zenklusen, Director of TCGA is appreciative of the effort, saying it is very encouraging that there is a willingness of performing large-scale genomics programs locally in India. I hope the results will be widely and openly distributed as the TCGA data was, and not restricted to commercial use. Dr LS Shashidhara, Professor at IISER explains the need for such a platform, considering human and microbiome diversity in India and our distinctive identities compared to the rest of the world, it is imperative that the more we share clinical data, the better we can manage cancer at the clinical level and thereby reducing health burden in the society. TCGA India initiative provides an opportunity for Indian researchers to generate quality data and share them freely on a single platform. This initiative will also impact South-East Asia, given our shared biological history.

The international data sharing aspect of such a database can be beneficial to Indian cancer patients, just in the way local research based on the TCGA has benefited patients in the US. Dr Deshpande says, It is important that when people are doing research on this topic, they include us as part of the data sample. If new drugs are going to be invented somewhere else in the world, they will be for our patients as well. It can also help patients of Indian-origin elsewhere in the world. Prof Sunil Badve of the Indiana School of Medicine in the US says, to make any headway against a complex disease like cancer, one has to use all the tools one can garner to understand its strength and weaknesses. Having large databases that catalogue all aspects of cancer is critical in this endeavour. TCGA-India could provide such a library and make a difference to the management of cancer patients in India and Indian diaspora which together amounts to approximately 20 percent of the world population.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 20:49:06|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Egyptian Minister of Civil Aviation Mohamed Manar speaks during an interview with Xinhua during his trip from Hurghada to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on June 19, 2020. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

by Marwa Yahya

HURGHADA, Egypt, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has imposed strict preventive measure at all airports ahead of resuming international flights on July 1, Egyptian Minister of Civil Aviation Mohamed Manar said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Such measures have been taken in accordance with the criteria proposed by the World Health organization (WHO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization against the spread of COVID-19, said Manar.

Passengers will be required to sign documents specifying information including the targeted city of residence in Egypt and health conditions, he explained.

According to the WHO list, travelers coming from countries affected by the pandemic will be required to submit a PCR test no later than 48 hours before their flight, Manar said.

All planes will be sterilized and disinfected, and facemasks are mandatory for the passengers and crews.

Distribution of paper publications onboard the plane will be banned, and only dry meals and canned drinks will be offered. Certain seats will be allocated for people with chronic diseases who may show symptoms, the minister said.

Sterilized gates and temperature scanners are installed inside the airports in case any passenger fabricated his health condition certificate but was proved to be infected by the virus, according to Manar.

Although the anti-COVID-19 precautionary measures are burdens for the flight crew, they have been well trained during the flights of transferring the Egyptians stranded abroad.

Egypt has suspended international flights since March 19 as a precautionary measure to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Domestic flights, cargo and some special charters to repatriate stranded Egyptians have continued operation.

In April, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) expected Egypt's airline industry to face a potential loss in revenues of 1.6 billion U.S. dollars and 9.5 million fewer passengers in 2020 due to the coronavirus crisis.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in March that local aviation firms suffer the losses of 143 million dollars in wake of the harsh anti-coronavirus measures.

"It's difficult to estimate the losses of the private airliner companies that shoulder the expense of planes' maintenance and insurance as well as the renting fees of the airports," said Manar.

However, the government has provided a package of economic incentives to boost the private sector, including postponing the payment of office rental fees inside the airports and the Central Bank of Egypt has provided soft loans with eight percent interests.

The profits of the tickets are very low ranging from 1.5 to 2 percent and the revenues of the aviation sector depend on the flow of the capital cycle, according to Manar.

To help the aviation sector make limited compensations, the passengers flights were allowed to transfer some goods that are noninflammable, not heavy and not liquid after the approval of the airports and the manufacturer of the plane.

EgyptAir, the nation's flag carrier, carries out only several flights per week currently compared to 150 flights per day before the outbreak of COVID-19, Manar said.

EgyptAir and Air Cairo airlines have transported some 57,000 stranded people with 315 flights since mid-March, according to the minister.

Egypt has announced plan to resume tourism in South Sinai, Hurghada and Matrouh provinces starting from July 1.

To help the recovery of the tourism industry, Manar said 50 percent discount on landing and parking fees, and 20 percent discount on ground service will be applied on the airlines to the three provinces' airports until end of October. Enditem
Committed to being a partner of micro and small businesses to take advantage of the growing digital economy, Grab, the leading everyday everything app in Southeast Asia, has recently partnered with the Department of Tourism (DOT) to support the agencys Philippine Harvest initiative which aims to make fresh and processed local food products more accessible to Filipino households. This partnership follows an earlier agreement between the company and the Department of Agriculture (DA) through the on-demand delivery service for DAs eKadiwa online marketplace initiative.

Running on its 11th year, the Philippine Harvest is a joint collaboration between the DOT and Stores Specialists Inc. (SSI) in promoting local, organic, artisanal, and indigenous food. This project is now made available online, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing farmers and SMEs to showcase their products and make these more accessible to consumers. With Grabs expansive presence and services, the company is poised to strengthen DOTs advocacy of supporting more local agripreneurs, especially at this time of the pandemic.

Grab is committed to leverage on its technology to support local businesses especially as we navigate through this new reality. As we lend our support to the farmers and SME partner-merchants under the Philippine Harvest program of the Department of Tourism, we hope that more Filipinos will support locally-grown products. Each purchase from the merchants of the program will go a long way in supporting our kababayans, and in promoting our own local culture, says Grab Philippines President Brian Cu.

Through the agreement with DOT, Grab lends its platform to increase awareness on the Philippine Harvest through a promotional tile in-app. Once clicked, users will be able to browse through all the participating merchants and the different products they offer. Further promotion will also be done by the company through its various social media assets.

Aside from awareness, merchants will be able to focus on what they do best as Grab - provide mobility through transport. Through the GrabExpress fleet, the platform will be in charge of bringing the Philippine Harvest products to the doorstep of their customers.

We are optimistic that as we provide support to the local agripreneurs, we will be able to work as one to help their businesses grow while also providing Filipinos a more convenient and accessible way to enjoy local products, adds Cu.
Mongolias upcoming legislative council election on June 24 will test the countrys new misinformation laws passed earlier this year limiting freedom of expression. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) urges the government to prioritise the free flow of information during the election and enact reforms to protect media institutions.

A woman holds the flag of the Mongolian People's Party at a campaign event in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia on June 5, 2020. Credit: BYAMBASUREN BYAMBA-OCHIR / AFP

The legislative council election in Mongolia will feature 670 candidates, including 208 independents under the countrys new electoral laws passed in December 2019. In response to Covid-19 on April 29, the Mongolian government legislated new restrictions on speech targeting misinformation. Under the new law, a person or legal entity may be fined MNT 500,000 (USD 185) or MNT 5,000,000 (USD 1850) respectively for misleading others or spreading disinformation.

Earlier in January, the government introduced another law criminalising the publishing of false information, a term left undefined by the Mongolian Criminal Code resulting in fines and restrictions on travel for offenders. According to Transparency International, a similar law was in effect in late 2017, resulting in more than 100 journalists charged, mostly by politicians.

Mongolias anticipated Media Freedom Law that began a drafting process in December 2018 may amend these restrictions. However, it is unclear when the government will finalise the draft despite calls from the Globe International Centre in Mongolia for the law to be reviewed at the United Nations Human Rights Council in November 2020.

The IFJ said: The unfortunate circumstances of Covid-19 and new misinformation laws in Mongolia have created a terrifying storm targeting freedom of expression in Mongolia. The IFJ calls on authorities to tread with caution and allow journalists to report uninterrupted.
NEW DELHI  A camera trap photo of an injured tigress and a forensic examination of its carcass revealed why the creature died: a poachers wire snare punctured its windpipe and sapped its strength as the wound festered for days.

Snares like this one set in southern Indias dense forest have become increasingly common amid the coronavirus pandemic, as people left jobless turn to wildlife to make money and feed their families.

Authorities in India are concerned this spike in poaching not only could kill more endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive.

It is risky to poach, but if pushed to the brink, some could think that these are risks worth taking, said Mayukh Chatterjee, a wildlife biologist with the non-profit Wildlife Trust of India.

Since the country announced its lockdown, at least four tigers and six leopards have been killed by poachers, Wildlife Protection Society of India said. But there also were numerous other poaching casualities  gazelles in grasslands, foot-long giant squirrels in forests, wild boars and birds such as peacocks and purple morhens.

In many parts of the developing world, coronavirus lockdowns have sparked concern about increased illegal hunting thats fueled by food shortages and a decline in law enforcement in some wildlife protection areas. At the same time, border closures and travel restrictions slowed illegal trade in certain high-value species.

One of the biggest disruptions involves the endangered pangolin. Often caught in parts of Africa and Asia, the anteater-like animals are smuggled mostly to China and Southeast Asia, where their meat is considered a delicacy and scales are used in traditional medicine.

In April, the Wildlife Justice Commission reported traders were stockpiling pangolin scales in several Southeast Asia countries awaiting an end to the pandemic.

Rhino horn is being stockpiled in Mozambique, the report said, and ivory traders in Southeast Asia are struggling to sell the stockpiles amassed since Chinas 2017 ban on trade in ivory products. The pandemic compounded their plight because many Chinese customers were unable to travel to ivory markets in Cambodia, Laos and other countries.

They are desperate to get it off their hands. Nobody wants to be stuck with that product, said Sarah Stoner, director of intelligence for the commission.

The illegal trade in pangolins continued unabated within Africa but international trade has been disrupted by port closures, said Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group.

We have witnessed some trade via air while major ship routes are still closed but we expect a flood of trade once shipping avenues reopen again, Jansen said.

Fears that organized poaching in Africa would spike largely have not materialized  partly because ranger patrols have continued in many national parks and reserves.

Emma Stokes, director of the Central Africa Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said patrolling national parks in several African countries has been designated essential work.

But she has heard about increased hunting of animals outside parks. We are expecting to see an increase in bushmeat hunting for food  duikers, antelopes and monkeys, she said.

Jansen also said bushmeat poaching was soaring, especially in parts of southern Africa. Rural people are struggling to feed themselves and their families, he said.

There are also signs of increased poaching in parts of Asia.

A greater one-horned rhino was gunned down May 9 in Indias Kaziranga National Park  the first case in over a year. Three people, suspected to be a part of an international poaching ring, were arrested on June 1 with automatic rifles and ammunition, said Uttam Saikia, a wildlife warden.

As in other parts of the world, poachers in Kaziranga pay poor families paltry sums of money to help them. With families losing work from the lockdown, they will definitely take advantage of this, warned Saikia.

In neighboring Nepal, where the virus has ravaged important income from migrants and tourists, the first month of lockdown saw more forest-related crimes, including poaching and illegal logging, than the previous 11 months, according to a review by the government and World Wildlife Fund or WWF.

For many migrants returning to villages after losing jobs, forests were the easiest source of sustenance, said Shiv Raj Bhatta, director of programs at WWF Nepal.

In Southeast Asia, the Wildlife Conservation Society documented in April the poisoning in Cambodia of three critically endangered giant ibises for the wading birds meat. More than 100 painted stork chicks were also poached in late March in Cambodia at the largest waterbird colony in Southeast Asia.

Suddenly rural people have little to turn to but natural resources and were already seeing a spike in poaching, said Colin Poole, the groups regional director for the Greater Mekong.

Heartened by closure of wildlife markets in China over concerns about a possible link between the trade and the coronavirus, several conservation groups are calling for governments to put measures in place to avoid future pandemics. Among them is a global ban on commercial sale of wild birds and mammals destined for the dinner table.

Others say an international treaty, known as CITES, which regulates the trade in endangered plants and animals, should be expanded to incorporate public health concerns. They point out that some commonly traded species, such as horseshoe bats, often carry viruses but are currently not subject to trade restrictions under CITES.

That is a big gap in the framework, said John Scanlon, former Secretary-General of CITES now with African Parks. We may find that there may be certain animals that should be listed and not be traded or traded under strict conditions and certain markets that ought to be closed.

___

Casey reported from Boston. Associated Press writer Christina Larson contributed from Washington.

___

On Twitter follow Ghosal: @aniruddhg1 and Casey:@mcasey1

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Chandigarh: Amid the rising number of Covid-19 cases, the Haryana government has said final-year MBBS students studying in government and private medical colleges will be deployed for effective management of the pandemic.

The toll due to Covid-19 in Haryana on Sunday rose to 160 with 11 fresh fatalities, while the infection tally climbed to 10,635 as 412 more people tested positive for the disease, a health department bulletin said.

The director general of medical education and research in Haryana said that 1,106 final-year MBBS students of 11 government and private medical colleges in the state have been assigned Covid duties and they shall report to civil surgeons of the districts concerned.

There has been a surge in the number of Covid positive cases in Haryana.

The government is in the process of creating additional healthcare facilities to effectively manage the Covid-19 cases which required additional manpower, the order dated June 19 said.

The government has decided that all final-year MBBS students of all government and private medical colleges in the state shall be deputed with the health department with immediate effect, it said.

REPORTING ON DUTY TODAY

The directors of medical colleges and civil surgeons shall ensure that the students are provided all necessary training, it added.

According to the order, the students have been asked to report to the civil surgeons concerned by June 22.

If needed, the civil surgeons shall also ensure boarding and lodging arrangements for the students, the order said.

GURUGRAM, FARIDABAD WORST-HIT

Coronavirus cases in Haryana have risen sharply during the past three weeks, with Gurgaon and Faridabad accounting for majority of the cases as well as fatalities.

Of 11 fresh fatalities on Sunday, Gurgaon and Faridabad, among Haryanas worst-hit districts, accounted for nine fresh fatalities.

The toll in Gurgaon and Faridabad, which fall in the National Capital Region (NCR), has now climbed to 64 and 56, respectively.

The state health department bulletin said with 11 more Covid-19 deaths the total number of fatalities in the state has risen to 160.

Of the total fatalities in Haryana, 109 are men and 51 women.

With 412 fresh infections, the total number of Covid-19 cases in Haryana rose to 10,635 on Sunday, the bulletin said. Gurgaon alone accounts for 4,427 cases in Haryana, while Faridabad has 2,237 cases.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 23) - The controversial anti-terrorism bill is still being reviewed by his legal team, President Rodrigo Duterte has said.

My legal [team] is still reviewing it, my legal team in Malacanang, he said in a late night address on Monday.

The enrolled bill, which will repeal Human Security Act of 2007 by giving more surveillance powers to the government forces, is now in the Presidents desk and only his signature is needed before it becomes a law.

Its always automatic, kapag nasa akin (if its already with me), I endorse it to legal, even without reading it. Its legal who will return it to me with a recommendation, whether I will approve it or not, added Duterte.

READ: House OKs on final reading controversial anti-terrorism bill

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque earlier told in a press briefing that Duterte is expected to receive the legal opinions on the bill this week.

So, sa tingin ko po by now, by this week eh mai-piprisinta na ang Bill itself at ang mga rekomendasyon ng ibat ibang ahensiya kay Presidente, said Roque.

[Translation: I think the bill itself will be presented this week along with the recommendations of other agencies to the President.]

He noted that the Department of Justice has already submitted its recommendations.

Roque said before in an interview with CNN Philippines that the President is inclined to sign the bill.

Under the new anti-terrorism bill, suspected terrorists can be detained without a warrant of arrest to up to 14 days.

Critics argued that this can be used on individuals who express dissent against the government. However, lawmakers and security officials assured that human rights will be safeguarded.
"I took this as a joke and said I would see what I could do." Former High Court justice Dyson Heydon. Credit:Ben Rushton Following his speech, Mr Heydon sat down next to Ms Blumer for dessert, and told her she was "the sexiest woman he had ever met in his entire life". "I was pretty dumbfounded by this extravagant and inappropriate statement ... from such an eminent person," she wrote. After that, "the judge's hands became very busy under the table, on my lap, feeling up the side of my leg", she wrote.

Ms Blumer said she "was wiggling away from him, but trying not to cause a scene that would be obvious to others". Mr Heydon suggested they go outside together "to discuss adoption law". Ms Blumer said they went into an empty room and "he immediately sat next to me and was hugging me and attempting to kiss me," she recounted. She evaded him and told him she was "definitely not interested" and "he should leave me alone". "He said that was a shame, it would be such a wonderful encounter ... he asked that it remain between ourselves." Ms Blumer was shaken and left the ball immediately.

"I was upset and disgusted by it all," she said. She told her husband, Mark Blumer, and the next day, she told her friend Professor Murray Raff, of the University of Canberra, who had also attended the ball. In a statement to the Herald, Professor Raff confirmed Ms Blumer informed him the next day "of inappropriate and unwelcome behaviour towards her at the ball, by the retired Justice of the High Court of Australia, Dyson Heydon". Professor Raff informed his "senior university colleagues" including the Head of the Law Faculty, Maree Sainsbury.

Loading "The Head of the School of Law at the time, after discussions with the vice-chancellor, contacted Ms Blumer to express the university's concern over the incident," the statement said. In a second statement, the university said: "a student did raise concerns about inappropriate behaviour by Justice Heydon at the 2013 Law School Ball". "The university responded immediately and Justice Heydon was removed from the event", and the student "received ongoing counselling and support", according to the statement. Another former female University of Canberra student who attended the 2013 ball said she also had an upsetting encounter with Mr Heydon that evening, when he sat down at her table. She had never met the judge before.

"He stared at my breasts the whole time and then he made a remark about my breasts and the dress I was wearing," she said. "It made me so uncomfortable that I got up from the conversation and left." The former student, who did not wish to be named, said it was a "really uncomfortable situation". "I remember [Heydon] being intoxicated and I remember feeling angry that he was there as a guest and the audacity of a person to do that." The young woman was not a law student, but was aware of "who he was" because Mr Heydon had given the keynote speech.

"That's what shocked me the most and why I recall it, because of who he was and his title," she said. "I told my friends, 'That guy is a grub'." Statement from Dyson Heydon's lawyers: In respect of the confidential inquiry and its subsequent confidential report, any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law is categorically denied by our client. The inquiry was an internal administrative inquiry and was conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member. It was conducted without having statutory powers of investigation and of administering affirmations or oaths.
(Newser)  The more they look, the more intriguing the area around Stonehenge gets to archaeologists. The latest discovery comes about two miles away: Scientists found what Reuters describes as a "giant circle of pits." And this was no random circle: In the exact center is another ancient monument, previously discovered, known as the Durrington Walls, reports the Guardian. The best guess is that the newly discovered circle served as either an entranceway to the monument at its center, or perhaps as a barrier or warning to prevent visitors from getting closer. The circle, the Durrington Walls, and Stonehenge all appear to have been built around the same time, about 4,500 years ago, per the BBC.

story continues below

As the place where the builders of Stonehenge lived and feasted, Durrington Walls is key to unlocking the story of the wider Stonehenge landscape, says archaeologist Nick Snashall of the National Trust, which runs the Stonehenge site. This astonishing discovery offers us new insights into the lives and beliefs of our Neolithic ancestors." Scientists made the find using a combination of high-tech tools, including ground-penetrating radar, as well as standard site excavation. They have so far found about 20 pits, each more than 16 feet deep and 32 feet across. Digging holes of such size would have been no small feat with primitive tools. More interesting: It suggests builders used a relatively sophisticated counting system to measure distances for the 1.2-mile wide circle. (Read more Stonehenge stories.)
E ight prison officers in Minnesota have filed a discrimination lawsuit after they were allegedly barred from guarding the former police officer accused of George Floyd's murder.

The complainants claim the superintendent at Ramsey County Jail made sure that Derek Chauvin was guarded only by white officers.

Bonnie Smith, the attorney for the eight officers, told NBC News that her clients were told they had to leave the floor where the former Minneapolis police officer would be held.

Ms Smith said all those who were told to leave were people of colour, and that they were replaced with white officers.

"My clients came to work that day fully prepared to do their work," Ms Smith told NBC News.

"They are highly trained, experienced professionals in dangerous and volatile situations and were just as well equipped as their white counterparts to perform their work duties on May 29.

"The fact that they weren't allowed to do so has devastated them."

Former police officer Derek Chauvin had been charged with second-degree murder / via REUTERS

Ms Smith added: "Their primary goal is to make sure it doesn't happen again."

According to a copy of racial discrimination charges seen by the Star Tribune, one black employee said: I understood that the decision to segregate us had been made because we could not be trusted to carry out our work responsibilities professionally around the high-profile inmate - solely because of the colour of our skin.

I am not aware of a similar situation where white officers were segregated from an inmate.

Mr Chauvin was taken to the jail after he was first arrested and charged / Getty Images

At a press conference on Sunday morning, Ms Smith said the actions the officers experienced left them "broken".

She said the officers want a formal apology, compensation for their emotional distress and lost earnings, and racism training for employees.

The Ramsey County Sheriff's Office said only three officers were reassigned for 45 minutes, adding that Superintendent Steve Lydon felt he had an "immediate duty" to protect employees who may have been traumatised by having to deal with Mr Chauvin.

Protests have eruped across the world over George Floyd's death / Getty Images

In a statement, Mr Lydon said: "Recognising that the murder of George Floyd was likely to create particularly acute racialised trauma, I felt I had an immediate duty to protect and support employees who may have been traumatised and may have heightened ongoing trauma by having to deal with Chauvin.

"Out of care and concern, and without the comfort of time, I made the decision to limit exposure to employees of colour to a murder suspect who could potentially aggravate those feelings."

Ms Smith said the eight officers "never asked for protection".

While it reviews what happened, the sheriff's office said Mr Lydon's responsibilities have been modified and an interim supervisor has been brought in.

Mr Chauvin was moved to the state prison in Oak Park Heights after a brief stay at Ramsey County Jail.
Dear J.T. & Dale: How can you tell if a job is a scam? I recently got an email from a recruiter claiming he had what seemed like the perfect job opportunity for me. But when I took a closer look at his email address, it didnt match the name of the company. And I tried to look him up on LinkedIn, but couldnt find someone with his name working there. I dont want to lose out on the job if its legit, but Im afraid if I ask him for proof that he works there, hell take me out of the running.  Gino

J.T.: It definitely sounds like a scam. There are a lot of them as a result of the crisis. Sadly, these types of events cause some people to do terrible things.

DALE: Speaking of terrible scams, last year the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against a company that used fake emails, websites and corporations to lure in job seekers, convincing them they were strong candidates for an executive position. After the candidates paid $1,200 to $2,500 for resume and recruiting services, some of them were then invited in for interviews  sham interviews, no real jobs involved.

Thats an extreme case, of course; the more common scams involve luring people into giving up personal information for background checks. Thats why you were wise, Gino, to be aware of the dangers and to do the checking you did. If you know the recruiting company to be legit, you might call their offices and ask for the person who has contacted you and see what happens.

J.T.: Further, a reputable recruiter will have no problem proving who they work for. Theyll respect you for caring enough to confirm. Simply say: I see you are using your personal email for communications, and I cant seem to locate your LinkedIn profile. I hope you can understand, but Ive been told there are a lot of scams going on right now with respect to job seekers. Im sure you arent one of them, but would you be so kind as to share with me some proof you work for the company? If the recruiter gets angry, defensive or dodges the question, then Id pass on the opportunity.

Dear J.T. & Dale: My employer of 20 years has been shut down due to COVID-19, and I just heard that the owners dont plan to re-open it. I assumed Id work there until my retirement  which was supposed to be in two years. Who is going to hire me now? What tips do you have for someone like me, who hasnt looked for a job in decades?  Adele

DALE: You know what spreads faster than a virus? Rumors. So Id start by having a heart-to-heart with your employer. After all, youve been with them for 20 years, they should level with you. More than that, if they really do plan to close the company, they may also have a plan to start something new in its place; perhaps they could slide you into that new venture. If nothing else, they may have connections with other employers that might open some doors for you.

J.T.: But assuming the company is actually closing permanently and leaving you without a job, I would start by contacting competitors to your former company. They will know the value of being able to grab top talent from your former employer. If there arent any, then work with someone to inventory your skills and map out possible career pivots.

With 20 years of experience, you just need to focus on the problems you solve for employers. The more you can articulate how you save or make a company more than enough money to justify the cost of hiring you, the more in demand youll be. Its all in how you choose to market yourself. Are you the talented person who is unexpectedly available to some lucky company, or are you the outdated employee who is damaged goods and doesnt deserve a job? Its up to you to convey the right message!

Jeanine J.T. Tanner ODonnell is a career coach and the founder of the leading career site www.workitdaily.com. Dale Dauten is founder of The Innovators Lab and author of a novel about H.R., The Weary Optimist. Please visit them at jtanddale.com, where you can send questions via email, or write to them in care of King Features Syndicate, 628 Virginia Dr., Orlando, FL 32803. (c) 2020 by King Features Syndicate Inc.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:20:17|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

MOSCOW, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Monday it had detained a senior police officer suspected of committing high treason.

"The Russian Federal Security Service has detained the head of a district department of the Kursk regional division of the Russian Interior Ministry, Lt. Col. Dmitry Borzenkov, born in 1981," it said in a statement.

According to counterintelligence data, Borzenkov was involved in confidential cooperation with the Security Service of Ukraine and collected and transmitted information constituting state secrets on its instructions, the statement said.

An investigation into the case is underway, it added.

The Interior Ministry's Kursk office said in a separate statement that it had started an internal investigation into Borzenkov's case and that he would "be made answerable for his crime in accordance with the law."

Under the Russian legislation, high treason can be punished by a prison term of 12 to 20 years with a fine of up to 500,000 rubles (7,230 U.S. dollars). Enditem
The violent clearing of protesters for President Trumps photo at a DC church merits investigations, authorities say.

A United States Department of the Interior watchdog office will investigate law enforcement and security forces violent clearing of protesters from a square in front of the White House earlier this month.

The Interior Departments US Park Police and other forces in riot gear and on horseback released chemical agents and, at times, punched and clubbed a largely peaceful of crowd of demonstrators to drive the public from Lafayette Square on June 1, during nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis on May 25 after three police officers held him down, with one now-former officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, despite Floyds repeated pleas that he could not breathe. All three officers and a fourth who stood by have been fired and charged in his killing.

Three Democratic legislators  Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representatives Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Debra Haaland of New Mexico  had asked Interior Department Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt to investigate the June 1 actions of the Park Police, who oversee some of the nations most iconic national monuments.

Greenblatt agreed late last week, telling the legislators that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had also asked for the review.

Demonstrators in Lafayette Park, in Washington, DC were largely peaceful before they were violently cleared out of the area on June 1 [Lucas Jackson/Reuters]

Given the significance of the events, we have already begun collecting and reviewing information concerning the Park Polices activities, he told the Democrats.

The agencys first task will be determining which of the many agencies was in charge of law enforcement in the square that night, Greenblatt said. That adds complex and jurisdictional challenges to the watchdog offices work, he wrote.

Conflicting accounts

Authorities have given at times conflicting accounts about who oversaw and ordered the forceful routing of protesters from Lafayette Square. Besides a range of law officers, the Secret Service and Attorney General William Barr were among those present at various times that day.

Forces drove the crowd from the square shortly before President Donald Trump walked unannounced to an area nearby to pose for photos.

The administration has denied demonstrators were cleared out to make way for Trump. Bernhardt, the interior secretary, has said violent attacks by the crowd warranted clearing the protesters.

Reporters and other witnesses and Democratic legislators said they saw little sign of that scale of violence by the crowd.

Trumps words and police actions in Lafayette Park have been widely condemned and opened a schism among US leaders about how best to handle the protests, looting and violence that swept the nation in the wake of Floyds killing.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP)  When her father tested positive for COVID-19, Sumona Khanom struggled to get a bed for him at an already overwhelmed Dhaka Medical College Hospital. The family struggled, too, with a lack of money to buy food.

She was exhausted. But then, solace came in the form of a fruit basket from the Bidyanondo Foundation.

There were mangoes, litchis, oranges, apples, lemons and other food. And there was a get-well card for her father that read, We are here to stand by you. This (gift) is a token of love. Our heart goes to you!

The basket was presented by volunteers working for the foundation, established in 2013 and known for its food assistance programs for street children and the poor. The group -- its name means learn for fun -- has stepped in to build awareness of COVID-19 among families of virus victims and the community.

Its efforts have been inspired by news reports of neglect of victims, or hostility toward them.

One family abandoned an elderly woman in a forest near their home when they suspected she was infected. In another incident, a father died being locked in his room when he returned from work with fever. The family did not take him to a hospital. Other families have refused to take bodies for burial or cremation.

The incidents have prompted Bangladeshs Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to express her regret in a speech in Parliament.

Foundation officials said families should understand how important it is to support those battling COVID-19 when they need it the most.

Those news reports are very shocking. We cannot believe this can happen in a society where relatives usually throng a hospital when someone becomes ill. But this pandemic is teaching us many new things and showing its teeth, said Salman Khan Yeasin, a foundation manager.

Actually, in this time of corona, humanity is in a sort fading away. But in this case, we are trying to set an example of humanitarian approach, he said.

The group has distributed about 1,400 fruit baskets since it began distributing them on June 1.

Story continues

Bidyanondo depends mostly on crowdfunding. It has built a partnership with the military and its agencies, and works with about 80 other groups across Bangladesh.

Yeasin said while the foundations primary target is to support patients and build awareness, it does not want doctors and other health workers to be forgotten.

Many health workers are staying outside home, away from their families to provide health care, he said. We wanted to thank them. They also need mental support.

So it has sent them cards. One reads: We become brave to do more (for people) seeing your efforts, we know you will continue this fight to save our lives if we become ill tomorrow.

Bidyanondos efforts have been met with gratitude. Sumona Khanom appreciated that the foundation has come forward to help my father.

I hope, she said, they would come forward to help all other fathers.

___

While nonstop news about the effects of the coronavirus has become commonplace, so, too, have tales of kindness. One Good Thing is a series of AP stories focusing on glimmers of joy and benevolence in a dark time. Read the series here: https://apnews.com/OneGoodThing
ICC prosecutor says UN tribunal erred in clearing former Ivory Coast president on charges of crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Court has begun hearing an appeal by the UN tribunals chief prosecutor against last years acquittal of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo on charges of crimes against humanity.

Fatou Bensouda said in her appeal submission that the court erred in clearing Gbagbo and his right-hand man Charles Ble Goude of allegations of post-electoral violence in the restive West African nation in 2010-2011, in which about 3,000 people died.

Gbagbo, the first former head of state to be tried by the ICC, had spent eight years behind bars in The Hague.

The two-day hearing that started on Monday will be partially virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ICC said.

Gbagbo participated via video call from Belgium, while Ble Goude was present in the courtroom on Monday.

The ICC last month allowed Gbagbo, 75, to leave Belgium where he was being hosted under strict conditions since his release from the court, but said he must return for the prosecutions appeal.

The ICC said it will make its judgement on this appeal at a later stage.

Errors

Bensouda in October last year appealed the trial judges decision, saying they committed legal and procedural errors  including that the majority of the judges only issued their written verdict about six months after an oral acquittal.





Judges had also cleared the pair without properly articulating and consistently applying a clearly defined standard of proof, she said.

In sum, justice was not served in this case. The acquittals of Mr Gbagbo and Mr Ble Goude should be reversed and a mistrial declared, Bensouda said in her submission.

Gbagbos Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) has called on Ivory Coasts President Alassane Ouattara for dialogue over his return to the country.

But an association for victims of the violence expressed energetic opposition against Gbagbo coming home as the country braces for tense elections scheduled for October.

Gbagbo technically faces being jailed on his return after being sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term by an Ivorian court last November for the looting of the local branch of the Central Bank of the West African States (BCEAO) during the post-election crisis.
A man has been arrested in south-west London after reports that someone had been seen with a gun in the area.

Police arrested the man in Balham on suspicion of possession of a firearm with intent after being called early on Monday afternoon.

The man remains under arrest and police are continuing to investigate. Officers have had no reports of any injuries.

Police said in a statement: Police were called at 2.02pm on Monday to Weir Road, SW12 to reports of a man with a firearm.

Officers attended, along with London Ambulance Service as a precaution, and a man, no further details, has been arrested on suspicion of possession of a firearm with intent.

He has been taken to a London police station, where he remains. Road closures are in place in the surrounding area.

Officers remain on scene and inquiries continue. There have been no reports of any injuries.
A husband and wife were both shot while outside their house just after midnight Monday morning.

As 6ABC reports, it happened on a Southwest Philadelphia street around 12:25 a.m.

Police tell the news station the husband, age 42, is dead and his wife is fighting for her life in critical condition in wake of the gunfire, which reportedly capped an argument with someone the couple knew.

The shots erupted on the 1400 block of South Vogdes Street, where police say the couple was shot while outside of their house by a person known to the family.

No suspects have been named in the case as of this report.

According to investigators, an argument preceded the shooting, but theres no word on what it was about.

The victims were rushed to Penn Presbyterian Hospital, where the wife remains in the ICU.

The investigation continues.

READ MORE:

2 dead in FedEx truck vs. motorcycle crash in Pa.

Accused meth-cooking ringleader, age 70, busted in Pa., along with 6 smurfs

Steelers play-by-play radio broadcaster charged with DUI after crashing into supermarket

Womans body found stuffed in suitcase left on Pa. street

Pa. woman surprises attacker by shooting him in the neck with warning shot: cops

Pa. man paralyzed in fight with McDonalds employees is fighting for his life

2 boys drown in Pa. river, one trying to save the other

Grocery store chain halts sales of Pa. newspaper over George Floyd coverage flap

Pa. township official criticized for comment on Dr. Rachel Levine: Im tired of listening to a guy dressed up like a woman

Pa. girl, 3, hit, killed by neighbors car in front of family home

7 shot, 1 dead in hail of 50-plus bullets fired in Pa. apartment courtyard
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Shorewood Real Estate Group announced today that in partnership with Bridge Investment Group, the firms closed on an $88 million loan to finance the construction of 1 Archer Avenue Apartments in Jamaica, Queens. The construction facility was provided by East West Bank and a syndicate of lenders to construct the first development financed with Opportunity Zone Capital from Bridge and Shorewood.

Shorewood's Opportunity Zone Fund was created shortly after the 2017 tax reform created Opportunity Zones, tracts of land across the United States that meet certain federal criteria to be considered "distressed communities." Investment in Opportunity Zones is encouragedand rewarded with significant tax benefits. The intent was to incentivize investment in areas in need of revitalization.

The Archer Avenue site is within a Qualified Opportunity Zone. The full site, located at 160-05 Archer Avenue, will be a 320,000 square foot mixed-use development that will include a 23-story building with ground floor retail, below grade parking, and 315 residential units. Under the Affordable Housing New York Program and in adherence to the Inclusionary Housing Program, 30 percent of the units will be reserved for affordable housing. Anticipated rents for those units will be well below market value. According to Shorewood CEO S. Lawrence Davis, the affordability component was a critical consideration to the overall project.

"We are committed to quality development that serves our investors, and also the communities in which we build," said Davis. "Jamaica, Queens has a rich history and unique character and our project is being developed to enhance the neighborhood."

According to Davis, Opportunity Zones were designed to bring needed capital into communities just like Jamaica.

About Shorewood Real Estate Group, LLC

Shorewood Real Estate Group LLC is a multi-strategy real estate investment platform that specializes in the acquisition, financing and development of institutional quality assets in major gateway markets. Founded in 2009, Shorewood has a cumulative project market value in excess of $900 million. For more information, visit https://shorewoodgrp.com/.

About Bridge Investment Group

Bridge Investment Group is a privately-held real estate investment management firm with $20.1+ billion in assets under management. Bridge combines its 3,600-person, nationwide operating platform with specialized teams of investment professionals focused on select US real estate verticals, which Bridge believes offer above-market opportunity: multifamily, office, seniors housing, workforce & affordable housing, opportunity zones, and debt strategies.

Contact:

David Simon

212-335-2314

[email protected]

SOURCE Shorewood Real Estate Group

Related Links

https://shorewoodgrp.com


Good Morning Britain suffered a technical glitch on Monday morning when Lorraine Kelly teased a chat with Trisha Goddard.

Explaining that Trisha was due to appear on the show to speak about her mother's link to the Windrush Generation, Lorraine said: 'Windrush day today... Trisha Goddard is going to be sharing memories of her mum.'

As she did, a photo of radio presenter Fearne Cotton flashed up instead.

Glitch: Good Morning Britain suffered a technical glitch on Monday morning when Lorraine Kelly teased a chat with Trisha Goddard but showed a photo of Fearne Cotton instead

Yet Lorraine didn't seem to notice at first, adding: 'Her mum Agnes came over on the Windrush boat in the early 50s and she worked for the NHS, so we're going to talk to Trisha about that.'

Producers swiftly replaced the snap of Fearne with one of Trisha to rectify the error.

Clearly realising what had happened, she swifly moved on to talk about Fearne, who was indeed also due to appear.

'And she just popped up there, Your Favourite 90s Song, Fearne Cotton's new radio show, all about the 90s...'

Oops! Lorraine was explaining that Trisha was due to appear on the show to speak about her mother's link to the Windrush Generation when a photo of radio presenter Fearne Cotton flashed up instead - before swiftly being replaced with the correct snap of Trisha

Swooping in: Before she could carry on, Piers Morgan had interrupted asking Lorraine what her favourite song from the 90s was, distracting from any technical glitch that might have gone on behind-the-scenes

Before she could carry on, Piers Morgan had interrupted asking Lorraine what her favourite song from the 90s was, distracting from any technical glitch that might have gone on behind-the-scenes.

When Trisha appeared later in the show, she spoke about the Windrush Generation in a frank chat with Lorraine as Monday celebrates the third Windrush Day, marking the 72nd anniversary of the SS Empire arriving at Tilbury Docks in Essex carrying the first Caribbean migrants.

By the end of the chat, Trisha had broken down in tears as she spoke about her mum Agnes and the recent racist abuse she had been suffering.

Talking about Agnes, a nurse, who came to Britain at the age of 26, she said: 'There's been a lot of talk of systemic racism... I don't believe we teach history in the way we should.

Later on: When Trisha appeared later in the show, she spoke about the Windrush Generation in a frank chat with Lorraine as Monday celebrates the third Windrush Day, marking the 72nd anniversary of the SS Empire arriving at Tilbury Docks in Essex carrying the first Caribbean migrants

Emotional: By the end of the chat, Trisha had broken down in tears as she spoke about her mum Agnes and the recent racist abuse she had been suffering

'A very important part of Britain's history, is all of those people from all over the Commonwealth who answered the call to come to Britain. And remember in those days, Lorraine, it was something like a six week journey.'

She explained a lot of people knew they would not be seeing parents again and even sending letters was difficult.

Trisha continued: 'They gave up their lives for a new life, but to help Britain. This whole Windrush scandal, after you've done that is just such a kick in the teeth.'

Talking of officials telling people who had been living in the UK for more than 50 years to 'go back to their own country', echoed things she had heard said many times in the past.

Becoming emotional, she added: 'I miss her, just talking about her makes me very emotional. In some ways, I'm glad she's not here to see, I would be telling her about some of the racist abuse I've been getting.

Also on the show: Presenter Fearne spoke about how lockdown had been 'intense' and 'really busy' with low days as well as more positive days, adding 'it's been a mixed bag of emotions'

She said: 'It's been really hectic I'm not going to lie, like a lot of people I've been balancing work and family life. I'm home-schooling and even saying the word makes my toes curl'

'I remember when I was a little girl, I used to get talcum powder and mix it with water and put it on my face and pretend to be white, I'm sorry Lorraine'

She went on to explain when her mum arrived in Britain, she was met by signs saying 'No Blacks' and finding accommodation was difficult.

Trisha said: 'Seeing this scandal would have broken their spirit after years of sacrifice for this country.'

The presenter said Commonwealth history had to be taught in schools to educate all children.

She concluded: 'It is pretty tough at the moment. My mum would be outraged, 'How dare you cry on television!'

Interview: Prior to these chats, Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid had interviewed actor Hugh Quarshie

Chat: Lorraine also welcomed Dominic Brunt to the show to chat Emmerdale

Also on the show, presenter Fearne spoke about how lockdown had been 'intense' and 'really busy' with low days as well as more positive days, adding 'it's been a mixed bag of emotions'.

She said: 'It's been really hectic I'm not going to lie, like a lot of people I've been balancing work and family life. I'm home-schooling and even saying the word makes my toes curl.

'I've got four kids here at the moment, two kids and two step-kids and everyone is doing everything at different times... we're eating at different times... I've been doing this festival, I've got my podcast and I've just finished another book, I'm not sure why I thought I could do all of this...

'There have been good days where I think I'm nailing it and other days where I think I'm drowning in it... it's been a mixed bag of emotions but that's OK I think it would be weird to feel like everything is normal right now.'

Good Morning Britain with Lorraine Kelly airs weekdays from 9AM on ITV.
Vladimir Putin said he'll consider running for a fifth presidential term in 2024, arguing that the hunt for any successor risks paralyzing Russia's government as the next election nears.

"I don't rule out such a possibility," if the necessary amendment to the constitution is approved, Putin said in a Rossiya 1 television documentary broadcast late Sunday. "I haven't made up my mind yet."

On July 1, Russians will vote on the most sweeping changes to the nation's constitution since it was adopted almost 30 years ago. One of the amendments would allow Putin, 67, to reset his term limit to zero even though he's already served four, and to helm the country for two more six-year terms when his current one expires in 2024. In power since 2000, Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin.

Without that amendment, "I can tell you from my own experience that in about two years, instead of the regular rhythmic work on many levels of government, you'd have eyes shifting around hunting for possible successors," Putin said. "It's necessary to work, not look for successors."

A top ally of the Russian president, Andrei Klishas, a senior lawmaker who helped to steer the constitutional overhaul, said that Russians should stop thinking about who will rule after Putin leaves office.

"They should get used to the idea that everything will remain the same, that the president can be re-elected if people support these changes to the Constitution," Klishas said in an interview with RBC newspaper published Monday. "This amendment allows us to put aside the issue of successors, transfer of power and so on."

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Monday denied the president's comment meant the political system he built was incapable of functioning in the event of a change of leadership. But he said speculation over potential successors "is a characteristic of our national bureaucracy."

For the moment, Putin's main goal is to avoid becoming a "lame duck" in the final years of his current mandate, said Leonid Davydov, a political analyst at the Foundation for Civil Society Development in Moscow. But there is "little doubt" that the Russian president will choose to run again for election, he said.

In the same state-TV interview Sunday, Putin also harshly criticized neighboring states for absorbing "traditional Russian historic territories" on independence in 1991 that they had acquired during the existence of the Soviet Union.

These states should have "left with what they arrived, rather than taking with them presents from the Russian people," he said.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine, restoring control over the peninsula that had been Russian until 1954, doesn't have any territorial claims on its neighbors, Peskov told reporters Monday on a conference call, in response to a question about this comment.
Extending the two-week quarantine rule for air travel will devastate the aviation industry this summer, the Government has been warned.

Airlines and airports are now urging the incoming government to adopt the 'safe travel corridor' system being used by major EU countries to help kick-start the recovery of their aviation industries.

Both Spain and Italy have reopened for tourists, although Ireland is still warning against all but essential foreign travel.

Ireland has extended the two-week quarantine rule until July 9 - but a major review is expected on June 29.

Air France will re-launch its Cork-Paris route from July 1, but passengers will have to wear face masks and be subjected to temperature checks before departure at Paris airports.

Airlines including Ryanair and Aer Lingus are planning major seat sales from July in a bid to salvage something from the summer season.

Both carriers have already implemented staff furloughs, pay cuts and even job losses because of the crisis facing the global aviation sector.

Aer Lingus signalled 500 job losses last week.

Sun holiday firms are now hoping to boost bookings for August into late October from Irish families tired of lockdown and wanting short-haul holidays .

One study showed almost 64pc of Irish people are planning a foreign trip in the next three to 12 months.

However, one airline official - who asked not to be named - said booking levels for Irish flights in July were currently well below forecast levels.

"We cannot plan without greater certainty from the Government and we now urgently need clarity on the dates for reform or removal of the mandatory blanket 14-day quarantine on arrival. European aviation is opening up and we are now being left behind."

Some aircraft now face the prospect of flying while 75pc empty from Ireland in July.

Shannon, Cork and Ireland West-Knock airports face a 70pc loss of traffic and passenger numbers for 2020 - even allowing for a small recovery in traffic from July.

Dublin Airport faces a similar scenario with traffic down by 98pc in April compared to the previous year.

Shannon chief executive Mary Considine said air traffic is unlikely to return to levels recorded in 2019 for three years until 2023.

"We're looking at this stage at losses of up to 70pc in traffic year-on-year," she said.

IAG chief executive Willie Walsh warned that carriers now face an unprecedented peacetime challenge.

"The industry has changed and anybody who believes that we're going back to the way things were in 2019 misunderstands the scale of the challenge that is being faced," he warned.

IAG owns Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia - and had hoped to return flight schedules to 45pc capacity by September.

However, other European airlines are far more pessimistic about the aviation sector recovery with Air France- KLM only planning to operate at 20pc capacity by September.

International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general Alexandre de Juniac warned that its forward analysis for long-haul bookings showed near zero demand beyond those undertaking essential travel.

Just half (45pc) of travellers questioned said they would be willing to consider flying within eight weeks of pandemic travel restrictions being lifted.
New Delhi: The government has decided to make certain changes in Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision to promote domestic items through the Vocal for local.

Under the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, the GeM portal will have norms that will make local procurement, local sourcing and promotion more competitive.

Government has made it compulsory for all products to be labelled with the country of origin. All new and old products must declare their country of origin. The government will give reminders to those companies who dont comply with the norm. If they still fail to declare the country of origin, the government will withdraw the product from GeM portal.

Furthermore, it will also become mandatory for the companies to declare as to how much content has been sourced locally. All the products will have to declare their local contents.

The GeM will also have a make in India filter so that the buyers have an option to buy products which have declared 50 percent locally sourced content.

Buyers can reserve auction for class one local supplier based on local content. For auction worth Rs 200, only class one and class two suppliers can participate.

For class one, suppliers must stick to over 50 percent locally sourced content while class two supplier can give over 20 percent local content.

GeM is the one stop e-Market Place hosted by DGS&D where common user goods and services can be procured. GeM is dynamic, self-sustaining and user friendly portal for making procurement by government officers.
On this day in 1965, twenty years after South Korea was liberated from Japan's colonial rule,...Seoul and Tokyo signed historic agreements normalizing their ties.

Those treaties opened a new chapter for their bilateral cooperation, but left major issues unresolved to this day.

Lee Kyung-eun lays out those and tells us where the two countries stand now.

Fifty-five years have passed since Seoul and Tokyo established diplomatic relations, but their ties are chillier than ever.

The key dispute stems from their different interpretation of the definition of Japan's colonization, which is closely linked to the issue of wartime forced labor.

The 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations says,... all treaties or agreements concluded between two sides during the colonial rule on or before August 22, 1910 are quote aalready null and void."

South Korea believes the term means nullifying the justification of the annexation.

It was seen that way by the South Korean Supreme Court that ordered Japanese firms to compensate Korean forced laborer while clearly stating such an act was illegal.

However, Tokyo insists that "nullify" means terminating the previous treaties that were legally signed.

Another source of tension comes from the Agreement on Property and Claims on Economic Co-operation" that says the agreement "terminates individuals' rights to file independent damage suits".

South Korea's top court saw that those "suits" do not include cases of infringement of human rights ...deciding to freeze the local assets of a local Japanese steel company that refused to compensate the victims.

Japan responded by sending a strong warning of retaliation upon the sell-off of the company,...while insisting Seoul had violated international law for not abiding by the deal.

Most recently, their ties have been further strained over Japan's UNESCO-listed wartime industrial facilities.

The country has so far has not kept its promise to address its past use of Korean forced labor at its recently established information center built on the infamous Hashima Island,...prompting South Korean officials to send a letter requesting UNESCO to remove the listing.

Against this backdrop, the Seoul-Tokyo trade spat continues at the World Trade Organization, and is unlikely be settled anytime soon.
B oris Johnson will not hesitate to reimpose lockdown measures if infections surge again, a minister said today following signs of a fresh outbreak in Germany.

Home Office minister James Brokenshire said it was concerning to see the rate of transmission rise in Germany after restrictions were eased.

The Prime Minister has begun the formal process for the biggest relaxation of the UKs economic straitjacket yet, including the switch from the two-metre rule of social distancing to a one metre-plus rule.

Tomorrow pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and other businesses are expected to be given the go-ahead to reopen on July 4. Next week Mr Johnson will follow up with a speech dubbed build, build, build, setting out plans to invest heavily in infrastructure and hospital construction to power up the economy.

Shops reopen during Coronavirus lockdown ease 1 /45 Shops reopen during Coronavirus lockdown ease Primark in Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn A member of staff prepares to open a branch of H&M in Canterbury, Kent, PA Primark in Birmingham PA NikeTown Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Primark in Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Shop staff in face masks give a round of applause to the first customers through the doors at the Fenwick store in Newcastle PA Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn A doorman in a face mask waits to welcome back customers to the Fenwick store in Northumberland Street, Newcastle PA People queue for outside shops in Canterbury, Ken PA People queue for outside shops in Canterbury, Kent PA Primark in Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn A customer dressed in personal protective equipment (PPE) in line to shop at Primark, Birmingham PA Primark in Birmingham PA Primark in Birmingham PA NikeTown Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Selfridges Matt Writtle/Selfridges Selfridges Matt Writtle/Selfridges A Harrod's 'Green Man' welcomes customers back to Harrods store in Knightsbridge, London PA Customers wait outside Harrods store in Knightsbridge, London PA Primark in Birmingham PA Primark in Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Kathryn Stanczyszyn Kathryn Stanczyszyn/BBC People queue ahead of the opening of Primark in Leeds PA Selfridges Matt Writtle/Selfridges A customer dressed in personal protective equipment (PPE) in line to shop at Primark, Birmingham PA A customer carrying bags of shopping leaves Primark in Birmingham PA Primark Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Primark Oxford Street Jeremy Selwyn Shoppers in line outside John Lewis in Kingston PA Shops and businesses in Chelsea, West London prepare to re-open to customers Daniel Hambury REUTERS REUTERS REUTERS

Mr Johnson met ministers and scientific and medical advisers today to agree the economic release.

Mr Brokenshire said that ministers and scientists would watch the so-called R rate in the UK to see if any of the measures caused an uptick. If we see the R-number going up, we may need to stop, he said.

Asked about the recent rise in Germany, albeit from a much lower level of infections and fatalities, he said: It is concerning  its why we are informed in our actions by experience from around the world, why the chief scientific officer, the chief medical officer, speak to their counterparts in different parts of the world to ensure that we are applying the best learning in informing our next steps.

The cost of the lockdown to the mental health of young people was revealed in official data this morning .

Around four in 10 young people who say coronavirus has affected their wellbeing believe the lockdown has made their mental health worse, according to analysis from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Some 42 per cent of people aged 16 to 29 said their mental health had deteriorated, compared with 25 per cent of those aged 30 to 59 and 15 per cent of those people aged 60 and over.

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

The figures cover the period April 3 to May 10 and are based on responses to the ONSs regular opinions and lifestyle survey.

They show that of those who said coronavirus had affected their wellbeing, 51 per cent of 16- to 29-year-olds felt lonely, compared with 27 per cent of 30- to 59-year-olds and 26 per cent of people aged 60 and over.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is expected to announce more measures next month to boost economic confidence and get under-25s into work.

Loading....

Whitehall experts cast doubt on a report that Mr Sunak would trail spending cuts in his autumn statement to reduce the deficit in future years, pointing out that Mr Johnson has ruled out austerity to balance the books.

Former minister Tim Loughton MP told BBC Radio 4 that the Government looked a bit knackered and the Prime Minister needed to take care. He said: In the last few weeks the Government has taken a battering and its proving more challenging to come out of lockdown that it was to go into lockdown.

Lets remember, its only a few weeks ago that the Prime Minister was in intensive care, and for him to come back so quickly at the helm, I think, is slightly concerning.
For the first time in more than three months, residents of personal care homes Tuesday will be able to visit with a loved one in the comfort of the great indoors.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time in more than three months, residents of personal care homes Tuesday will be able to visit with a loved one in the comfort of the great indoors.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Health Minister Cameron Friesen announces the province plans to develop all-season outdoor shelters to facilitate visits with care-home patients.

"We're taking this step because the evidence supports it," Health Minister Cameron Friesen told a conference call with reporters Monday. And to make sure visits won't be halted when fall flu season hits, the province plans to have semi-permanent, all-season visitation shelters in place, adjacent to all 127 personal care homes by October.

"The creation of outdoor semi-permanent shelters will ease the stress a lot of people are feeling." Personal care home residents being cut off from their loved ones has taken a toll, he said. "It had a real, undeniable effect... Maintaining those connections is ceontral to their well-being, and central to their mental health," said Friesen.

On March 17, five days after the first COVID-19 case was detected in Manitoba, the province banned visits to long-term care homes to protect residents who are the most vulnerable to the virus. It began screening workers before each shift. On May 1, it limited the movement of staff between facilities, with a "one worker, one personal care home" rule to avoid spread of the virus. Manitobans obeyed public health orders, which also had an undeniable effect.

In Canada, about 80 per cent of all COVID-19 deaths have been linked to those living in personal care homes, but there has not been a single outbreak at a care home in Manitoba.

Now that Manitobans have prevented the spread of the virus and there are few cases, it's safer now for care home residents to have visitors, officials said. Starting Tuesday, residents may have one designated visitor at a designated time. Each visitor is screened for COVID-19 and asked if they've recently travelled outside the province and whether they've had contact with anyone who has contracted coronavirus. They must wear a non-medical mask.

The visits could be curtailed if the province's COVID-19 numbers go up sharply, Friesen cautioned.

"If we see that the numbers are rising we may curtail those (visits) right across the province or we could take a more localized approach, a site-by-site approach," he said.

"This is not a return to normal," said Lanette Siragusa, Shared Health chief nursing officer. "This is a high-risk population," and personal care homes want to make sure residents are protected during visits, she said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "This is not a return to normal," said Lanette Siragusa.

"A lot of work went on behind the scenes to make it as safe as possible," said Siragusa.

Staff at the homes have had a refresher course on outbreak protocols and visitor screening questions have been updated. Inspections of care homes that were suspended in March are resuming, she said.

Friesen also announced Monday that the province is requesting proposals for safety and capital upgrades at personal care homes to make sure fire safety and emergency systems are up to code, including: sprinkler protection, fire alarm voice communication systems, carbon monoxide detection, emergency lighting, infection control measures, and planning for moving vulnerable residents.

The plan to have semi-permanent visitation shelters in place by October will allow residents to maintain that connection with loved ones if indoor visits at care homes have to be halted again during the regular flu season, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said.

"We're planning for the fall, expecting again the typical viral season," Roussin said during Monday's COVID-19 briefing. "We need to put some plans in place now so we don't have to so rigidly restrict visiting rules," he said.

"It's trying to be proactive," said Siragusa.

"We know every year that PCHs will have to go on outbreak protocols because of the flu," she said. "We anticipate this is going to be a short window of indoor visits."

Manitoba was one of the first provinces to allow outdoor visits at personal care homes, Friesen said, but that option has its limits. "It's easier to accommodate in June or July than it is in November or February. That's part of our thinking," he said, referring to the long-term need for indoor visits, and the plan to have shelters adjacent to care homes in place this September.

"Now is the time to be doing this work  not when the fall happens," said Friesen. "We should not anticipate somehow that we are going to be through COVID-19 and things are going to be back to normal by fall and winter."

The province is looking for ideas, said the health minister, who gave a portable classroom as an example. The space needs to be wheelchair-accessible with proper heating, cooling, ventilation, easily cleaned and spacious enough for quality visits, he said. The province wasn't announcing specifications or how much it's planning to spend yet, 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.

"We should not anticipate somehow that we are going to be through COVID19 and things are going to be back to normal by fall and winter."  Health Minister Cameron Friesen

"We are going to be flexible in this," he said. A personal care home could identify a possible secondary solution such as a space within the facility that meets the criteria, he said. A personal care home with a large number of residents may need more than one semi-permanent shelter, he said.

Manitobans with ideas are invited to go to http://Engagemb.ca to offer their input.

Uzoma Asagwara, the Manitoba NDP's health critic, noted the "intense pressure" staff at personal care homes are under and said the province has not done enough to provide adequate staffing.

"(Personal care homes) in Manitoba are already critically understaffed after years of Pallister's cuts, and it's residents' care that suffers," Asagwara said. "But the Pallister government has done nothing to hire more staff in our personal care homes. Instead they have ignored calls to increase the number of direct care hours residents receive per day by hiring more nurses and they have blocked our bill which would have forced government to guarantee a minimum standard of care. The province must do more to keep long-term care facilities safe and it must start by hiring more nurses, aides and allied staff so residents and the workers who care for them are safe and visits with loved ones are able to be scheduled as desired."carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders

Legislature reporter After 20 years of reporting on the growing diversity of people calling Manitoba home, Carol moved to the legislature bureau in early 2020. Read full biography
ANN ARBOR, MI - After deciding to cancel classes on campus for the remainder of the semester on March 11 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the University of Michigan will return to in-person instruction on its Ann Arbor campus when the fall semester begins Aug. 31.

Just months after transitioning to virtual instruction for the remainder of the semester, UM has delivered a plan to welcome students, faculty and staff back to campus with a blend of in-person and remote classes, an adjusted academic calendar and an emphasis on the use of face coverings, social distancing and other public health measures.
Coronavirus spreading among agriculture and seafood workers in the US

by Emma Arceneaux

June 22,2020 | Source: WSWS

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious threat to the agricultural workers throughout the United States. Reports across the country show the virus is spreading rapidly among this critical section of the working class.



About half of the 2.5 million farm workers in the US are undocumented immigrants, and a large percentage of the remainder hold temporary work visas. While farm workers are considered essential by the federal government, there have been no national mandates placed on the agricultural businesses to protect them from coronavrius, leaving it to states and individual farm owners discretion what, if any, safety measures to take.



About a quarter of the migrant workers who travel into the US from Central America will continue traveling throughout the summer and fall, following the different crop harvests up both the east and west coasts of the country. As the virus spreads among these workers, there is a serious risk that it will be introduced into more and more communities.



Farm operations across the US have already reported widespread infections. Every single employee at one Tennessee farm, about two hundred people, have tested positive for the virus.



In Yakima County, Washington, home to the nations largest tree fruit crop, 500 workers have fallen ill from the virus. There are nearly 1,000 cases in the Immokalee region of southern Florida, a major tomato growing region.



The workforce of the Louisiana seafood industry is made up primarily of immigrant workers, and, in May, three separate crawfish farms were found to have cluster outbreaks, with a total of over one hundred people infected.



Immigrant workers are particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus, above all because of their crowded living conditions.



The W orld Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Julie Taylor, Executive Director of the National Farm Worker Ministry about the threat of the pandemic to this particularly vulnerable section of the working class. According to Taylor, physical distancing is nearly impossible for migrant farm workers who live in dormitory, bunk-bed style housing.



Taylor explained that labor camps often consist of a series of barracks with two to three bedrooms on the bottom floor and two on the top floor. Each bedroom houses workers in two to three bunk beds. Each day workers are transported from these sparse and cramped living quarters to the farms on buses with sometimes 50 to 60 people per vehicle.



Some farms have made the effort to provide masks to workers, however, as Taylor explained, masks present their own set of problems under the difficult working conditions faced by farm workers. For example, in North Carolina, where the tobacco harvest is just beginning, temperatures have already risen above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Within 20 minutes of working in the field, workers masks are soaked with sweat and covered in dirt and debris. This makes them very uncomfortable.



Another major risk factor for these workers is their limited access to health care, and those who are undocumented have no health insurance at all. Those who have been provided with some form of insurance through the temporary visa program still face challenges accessing care, as they typically live in isolated, rural communities.

 Copyright  1998-2020 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

Theme(s): Communities and Organisations.
The pedestal where the statue of Confederate general Albert Pike remains empty after it was toppled by vandals at Judiciary Square in Washington on June 20, 2020. (Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

Attorney for George Floyds Family Troubled by Removal of Confederate Monuments

An attorney representing the family of George Floyd voiced concerns about people tearing down monuments to those who served in the Confederacy, warning that those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.

Lawyer Benjamin Crump is pushing for widespread criminal justice reform, focusing on police departments.

But he drew a line with destroying monuments dedicated to people from the past.

I think we have to figure out how to honor people who have done things that are beneficial to society, and if they did things that were not beneficial to society, that we can examine in the lens of having a broad view of what we believe as Americans represents the best attributes of our national identity, then we should look at that, Crump said Saturday in an interview with Fox Newss Cavuto Live.

Whether it should be a situation where, if we keep statues up like that, we tell the history of that individual so people will know the whole story, he continued.

Im not sure pulling the statues down is the right thing if we now dont get the lessons to understand how we can learn from those things, so we dont repeat those mistakes of the past. You know, they say historyif not studiedwe will often repeat it.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump testifies at a committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 10, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/Pool/Getty Images)

Vandals toppled statues of Ulysses S. Grant, the famed general who led efforts to defeat the Confederacy, Francis Scott Key, who penned the national anthem, and Junipero Serra, a Roman Catholic priest, over the weekend.

Other statues torn down in recent days include a monument to George Washington, Americas first president, Albert Pike, a former Confederate officer, and Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, ordered the removal of four portraits showing former House speakers with links to the Confederacy. And Democrats want all military bases named after Confederate soldiers renamed, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol.

President Donald Trump told supporters in Oklahoma that people behind the removal of statues want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place.

A Black Lives Matter activist told a local reporter in Washington, after the Pike statue was removed, that the message sent by removing the statue was the uprising is still here.

Like, slavery was not ended by just, like, calm conversations. Like you had slave revolts, you had people organizing, you had uprisings, the woman said, calling for defunding the police and abolishing the police and prisons because those are a part of the white supremacist system.
LAS CRUCES  New Mexico State University is rolling out plans for students, faculty and staff as they prepare to return to campus in the fall.

The document released last week outlines the steps the university will take to ensure what officials said would be a welcoming and functioning campus environment when classes begin Aug. 19. The complete plan document can be found at https://ready.nmsu.edu.

Vice Chancellor Ruth Johnston said in a memo to employees that the university expected to get feedback from the community during a virtual town hall last Thursday afternoon on ways the plan can be refined and improved.

We know that updates will be needed as the knowledge about this disease advances and best practices evolve, she said.

Under the plan, every office that directly works with students will need to be operational during regular business hours no later than Aug. 3. Although these offices will be open, officials said staffing levels across campus will be between 25% and 50% of normal to reduce opportunities for viral spread.

The plan includes details about health and safety modifications to housing and dining facilities, cleaning and disinfection protocols, face coverings and how to report and respond to a positive test for COVID-19. All students also will have to complete training before August.
(Newser)  Health officials, pathologists, and medical examiners are more closely looking at dozens of deaths in California, including those of infants and kids, and what they find "could dramatically rewrite the narrative of COVID-19" in the US, per the Los Angeles Times. A slew of deaths that took place months before the coronavirus was first detectedsome reaching back to Decemberhave spurred a "flood of requests" asking for preserved tissue samples from deceased patients to be examined for COVID-19 by the CDC, the only place to offer such a test. However, the push for this testing "remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits," per the Times, with California restricted to sending over to the agency only between eight to 10 cases a week. Of special interest: mysterious deaths of infants and children as far back as late 2019, despite no child deaths yet tied to COVID-19 in the state.

story continues below

Researchers have since started gathering info showing a jump in hospitalizations for kids with COVID-19, or with symptoms suggesting Kawasaki disease. Initially, reports from China and California suggested kids didn't contract the virus that easily, but "the experience we've had on the East Coast and in Europe has been markedly different," says Dr. Roberta Lynn DeBiasi, head of the Children's National Hospital pediatric division in DC. The adult deaths now under scrutiny include nine cases in Orange County in which patients died from late December to March; those autopsies initially pinned the deaths to pneumonia, congested lungs, or blood clots. Maribeth Cortez, the mother of one of those patients, 39-year-old Jeremiah DeLap, who died in early January after a four-day illness, wants answers. "Everybody that knew him when they were talking to me after this all started would say, 'Do you think he died from [the virus]?'" she says. More here. (Read more coronavirus stories.)
Neither Bolton nor Pompeo trusted Trump, especially during his conversations with South Koreas president, Bolton wrote. The two men listened in on the calls and shared their disdain, with Bolton telling Pompeo that it was a near-death experience for him, and Pompeo, who was traveling in the Middle East, responding that he was having a cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia.
The violent clash that erupted between Indian and Chinese soldiers at the edge of Galwan Valley on the night of 15 June was the bloodiest since 1967

The violent clash that erupted between Indian and Chinese soldiers at the edge of Galwan Valley on the night of 15 June was the bloodiest since 1967. Twenty Indian soldiers, including a commanding officer, lost their lives and several others were injured after being attacked by People's Liberation Army soldiers. Ten Indian soldiers were also taken captive and released days later after high-level talks took place between the senior military officials of both sides. This is a brazen violation of rules of engagement by China. These rules bar both sides from using military strength to resolve the border dispute.

Background

After the India-China war of 1962, both sides have claimed the areas under the LAC. As of now, there are 23 flash points that are recognised by both sides as being disputed. The soldiers from both sides patrol the contested areas for area domination. Most of the disputed areas are called "grey areas" where both sides routinely send out patrols. The status quo was maintained by both sides in these areas till this year, but it seems to be quickly changing now after the violent clash at Galwan Valley.

This year, the strategic locations at Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso and Hot Springs have seen Chinese intrusions. Satellite imagery also indicates a massive military buildup by the PLA along the LAC. In Pangong Tso, the contested area between the two sides stretches more than 30 kilometres. The Chinese have been intruding in this area aggressively since 2017. They even constructed a road on the Indian side of the LAC for tactical movement.The Chinese have built up new bases along the LAC effectively blocking any possibility of patrols on the Indian side or efforts to stake any further claim to the disputed area. Subsequently the Chinese side has also staked claim to the entire Galwan Valley, which is on the Indian side of LAC.

This confrontation is going to be a protracted one for both countries. The Indian Army will dig deep against the PLA thwarting any further advance. India has already accelerated the pace of its own strategic infrastructure buildup along LAC, thus sending a clear message to the Chinese side on its intent to defend its territorial integrity. Outright war doesn't favour either nation and is an unlikely probability in the near future.

The assessment

This standoff is a serious provocation and a threat to the sovereignty of India and cannot be seen in isolation. China is behaving like an expansionist imperial force in the world. Bullying India on its borders, intruding into Taiwanese airspace, aggressive manoeuvring in the South China Sea thereby threatening the sovereignty of Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam on one end and using North Korea as its ally to threaten South Korea and US on the other. There's more: China is also eyeing Central Asia through the CPEC by cutting a deal with Pakistan and abetting terrorism in the region.

Unleashing the Wuhan virus (COVID-19) is a part of the new aggressive plan embarked upon by the Chinese to set up a new global dominance role. Its aggression towards India also stems from its ambitious CPEC project as it wants to wrest maximum control of Jammu and Kashmir. Much of the CPEC passes through the Gilgit Baltistan area, which Pakistan occupied by force and illegally handed over to China.

Way forward

In response to this aggressive manoeuvre by China and its allies, India needs to quickly revisit its strategic policy. It has to do away with the self-defeating and redundant policy of non-alignment and form a strong alliance with the US and its allies in South Asia. India has a crucial role to play in this new geopolitical theatre. It should lead the counter charge against the Chinese hegemony by officially calling out the One China principle. The G-7 Summit scheduled to be held in September this year provides India and its partners with an opportunity to debunk the One China principle.

Recognising Taiwan can be the first step towards the new policy. India should set up a cultural and trade centre in Taipei and look to build sound cultural and trade exchange mechanisms thus gaining more leverage. India should also encourage US to reopen its consulate in Taiwan that was shut down in 1979 after the US accepted the One China policy. India, along with other countries, should levy heavy taxes on Chinese imports and simultaneously should set up free trade agreements with Taiwan. It can emerge as a new market zone for India and the world thus effectively cutting away the Chinese industrial domination.

India also needs to revisit its Himalayan policy and undo its previous Tibet policy. The declaration of Tibet as an occupied country by India and like-minded countries will have serious ramifications for China. The US has already taken a step in this direction after Senator Scott Perry introduced a bill to declare Tibet an occupied country. India should also give greater international diplomatic access to the Tibetan government in exile. India also needs to maintain strong relationship with Russia and Afghanistan. Nefarious Pakistani and Chinese designs to use terrorism as a tool to reach desired objectives in that region should be countered strongly.

India and its allies also need to move the UNSC with a new resolution which should call for an end to the illegal occupation of China of Raksam and Shaksgam Valley  a part of Gilgit Baltistan, that was illegally handed over by Pakistan.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A crash on the Brooklyn-bound side of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is causing delays Monday morning, as the first day of the citys Phase 2 reopening commences.

Emergency crews responded to the incident at about 8:30 a.m., while a notification from New York City Emergency Management advised motorists to consider an alternate route due to extensive delays.

The crash injured five people, according to an FDNY spokesman.

Four civilians were transported with injuries to NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, and one patient was treated at the scene, the spokesman said.

The severity of the injuries were not immediately clear.

In the hours leading up to the crash, traffic appeared light on the Staten Island Expressway, despite more business owners and workers now being given the green light to return to work.

After all non-essential businesses in New York City shuttered in March in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), New Yorkers on Monday are able to visit hair salons, dine outdoors and shop in-stores.
Pakistan on Monday urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to "step up its efforts" to resolve the Kashmir issue.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi made the remarks during a virtual meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir held "on the request of Pakistan", the Foreign Office said.

In his address, Qureshi urged the OIC to "step up its efforts to facilitate a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue," the FO said.

Qureshi told the media after the meeting that the group agreed to form an observation mission to know the situation in Kashmir.

The foreign ministers and representatives of Azerbaijan, Niger, Saudi Arabia and Turkey attended the meeting. This was the third meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir since August 5, 2019.

India has previously hit out at the 57-member grouping of Muslim majority nations, saying bodies like OIC should not make irresponsible statements.

The Jeddah-headquartered bloc, which is the second-largest intergovernmental body after the UN, has usually been supportive of Pakistan and often sided with Islamabad on the Kashmir issue.

Pakistan has been unsuccessfully trying to drum up international support against India for withdrawing Jammu and Kashmir's special status on August 5 and bifurcating it into two Union territories.

India has categorically told the international community that the scrapping of Article 370 was its internal matter. It also advised Pakistan to accept the reality and stop all anti-India propaganda.

Separately, Qureshi held a telephonic conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Al Saud to discuss matters of mutual interest, including COVID-19 pandemic, enhanced bilateral cooperation and situation in Kashmir, the FO added.
Consumers can still take advantage of new 5G services outside of airports

Theres apparently been a deal cut regarding the chaos that AT&T and Verizons new 5G service would create on airplanes' instruments and guidance systems.

As the clock ticked precariously toward the launch of the 5G enhancement, the White House stepped in late Tuesday to referee the situation. It apparently was able to get the telecom companies to agree to delay 5G C-band deployment around key airports and help airlines avoid a rash of potentially canceled flights.

This ...
21.06.2020 LISTEN

The role of financial sector development and increased financial inclusion in Ghana is to improve the lives of Ghanaians. The premise is that access to financial services will better enable the poor to build financial security, manage financial shocks, and invest in education, health, housing, and income-generating opportunities  the cumulative effect being poverty reduction through greater participation in economic activities.

Technology has been one of the greatest developmental tools in the global business environment in this 21st century. The influence of globalization and technology has redefined the traditional parameters of assessing activities of market and businesses such that there are increased tendencies to improve efficiency in response to creating consumer value. Although advancement in technology innovation has been witnessed in every industry, its revolution and impact in the service sector have been tremendously alarming especially in the banking industry in Ghana.

There has been a paradigm shift in banking from the traditional banking system to an improved platform anchored on the electronic system. This has made it easy for people to manage their finances, have easy access to their account without visiting the bank hall and has seamlessly spark digital finance management, thereby trying to create what has been called a cashless society in Ghana.

In order to leverage on this opportunity during this COVID-19 pandemic, banks have responded with the deployments of e-banking platforms secured on information and communication technology such as automated teller machines (ATM), point of sales (POS) machines, mobile banking, internet banking, electronic web acquiring and transfer, etc.

According to the WHO guidelines for fighting COVID-19 pandemic, the most effective way to contain the current situation is to avoid personal contact. Banks in Ghana have instituted policies in order to abide by the guidelines put forward by the WHO. These banks have reduced the opening hours of their branches while encouraging their customers to use the electronic channels for their banking services. Many banks have taken the opportunity to send out positive messages to remind their clients of the benefits of online banking.

Benefits and Challenges of E-banking in Ghana

These benefits include the ease of carrying out any transaction 24/7 and enjoying permanent access to all financial information in real-time. Some banks have also tried to promote online banking by sharing tutorials and expanding the types of transactions customers can carry out remotely.

Even though the benefits of e-banking are enormous, there have been some challenges of e-banking adoption in Ghana which include unreliable electronic communication infrastructure, poor public perception, inadequate facilities, poor internet security, the incidence of fraud, low telecommunication penetration, poor knowledge in technology and infrastructure. These challenges are partly responsible for the exclusion of bankable adults in Ghana from using e-banking services.

Is this a passing trend or a turning point for E-banking in Ghana?

There has been many questions about the current situation in Ghana as to whether the increase in the use of E-banking will be a passing trend while the confinement and social-distancing measures are in place or whether it will mark a turning point in E-banking

Figure 1, Transaction Volume chart from January 2020  May 2020

Data from the selected banks on Ghanas E-banking sector from January 2020 to May 2020 revealed that the average E-banking transaction volumes were 20 percent with a minimum of 9.44 percent in January and a maximum of 31.92 percent in May.

Transaction volumes are the total number of transactions processed through the E-banking channels by these banks from the period of January to May 2020. Although, we still have to wait and see the data on the true increase and if such trend will continue.

From the diagram above, one can say that customers are responding to the use of E-banking channels in recent months due to the COVID-19. During the lookdown period in March, the average transaction volumes of some selected banks increased to 22.43% by customers who used E-banking services as compared to the previous months with 9.44% and 9.45% respectively. Furthermore, April and May also experienced a rise in customers usage of E-banking, which was far from that of March with an average transaction volume of 26.76% and 31.92% respectively, even though we await the full year data on E-banking transactions to see the real impact of the change.

For users themselves in Ghana, there are also a number of factors driving the increased use of online banking, such as the fear that cash could spread coronavirus. The psychological factor of people thinking of cash been unclean could prompt more adoption of payment methods like Fidelity Mobile App, Prudential Mobiwise, Ecobank Mobile App and SC Mobile in this current situation. However, it is clear that people will still require traditional banking services, because not all customers will immediately transition to the digital channels. For example, elderly customers, who are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, are the least likely to increase their use of E-banking channels in Ghana.

The Way Forward

A high quality and robust E-banking platforms as well as other systems support services should be provide by these banks since financial technology is part of our daily business activities.

Similarly, E-banking channels should be user friendly, save time and convenient to use by customers because most of the Ghanaian populates are not technologically incline. Because of this, banks should strategize and create awareness of E-banking products and services to increase customers knowledge and usage since most of the E-banking products and services are new in Ghana and particularly to its customers. For example, there should be an improved security feature and usability of digital channels to facilitate access to banking services for certain user segments.

Banks should reconsider the charges on the usage of E-banking service in order to motivate more customers to patronize the usage of their electronic platforms.

Authors;

Edmund Obeng Amaning is a researcher and holds a Masters degree in Economics. Currently a student at the Chartered Institute of Bankers. His research interest includes Finance and Monetary Economics, Public finance and Energy. Contact: [email protected]

Justice Ohemeng-Boakye is a banker with a strong knowledge in Clients and E-banking services. He is a researcher and holds a Masters degree in Economics. Contact:[email protected]
An enormous dust cloud could soon cover parts of the United States after the natural phenomenon surged into the Caribbean Sea this weekend.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has monitored the Saharan dust plumes approach, says the American south could be hit later this week.

According to NOAA, dust and dry air forms above the Sahara Desert each late spring, summer and early autumn, which then moves over the tropical Atlantic.

NASA and NOAA satellites photographed the dust plume travelling over the North Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, before it rolled into the Caribbean Sea on Sunday.

When the phenomenon, otherwise known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL), arrives above the US this week it would have moved some 5,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

At the same time, the densest plume now stretches some 3,000 miles across, making the cloud larger than the contiguous United States and western Europe, says NOAA.

The NOAA's National Hurricane Center's (NHC) Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch said on Twitter on Sunday that the cloud was moving westward across the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Photos shared online showed clouded skies above the eastern Caribbean island of St Barthelemy on Sunday, which had clear skies 24 hours prior.

NASA said the plume was tremendous, with new satellite images showing the dust cloud above the Atlantic Ocean.

Normally, hundreds of millions of tons of dust are picked up from the deserts of Africa and blown across the Atlantic Ocean each year, explained NASA last week. That dust helps build beaches in the Caribbean and fertilizes soils in the Amazon. It can also affect air quality in North and South America.
The central government has presented the Rath Yatra issue in front of a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, the centre argues that the Rath Yatra can be held without public participation. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has also said to the apex court that rituals which have been taking place for centuries should not be disrupted.

Today, the Supreme court is expected to hear multiple pleas seeking a modification to an order it had given earlier. The SC on June 18 had stayed Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra in Odisha.

Amongst the petitions is one by Janardhan Pattajoshi Mahapatra who is the current chief servitor of the Jagannath Temple. Another one is by BJP leader Sambit Patra, he argues that Rath Yatra should be allowed to be held without public participation. Patra had submitted a petition saying that that the yatra should be conducted exclusively with the help of Lord Jagannath's 800 sevayats. These sevayats will perform all the rituals pertaining to the Rath Yatra, including ritual services of Lord Jagannath and other deities at the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha.

The catalyst for the Supreme Court releasing a stay order on the Rath Yatra was a petition filed by an NGO, the petition pointed out the major health risk involved in organising the Rath Yatra, an event in which thousands participate, during a time when COVID-19 is rapidly

spreading across the country. The SC then on June 18, stayed the annual event and all associated activities at the Jagannath Temple. The Rath Yatra was supposed to commence on June 23.

The NGO had referred to The Tablighi Jamaat incident in their petition to the Supreme Court. The Muslim religious congregation held back in mid-March at the Nizamuddin in Delhi had become a COVID-19 hotspot resulting in a spurt in coronavirus case across the country as people

from across India and several other countries had attended the congregation.

The Rath Yatra festival lasts for 10 to 12 days and involves a procession of chariots containing the deities Lord Jagannatha, his brother Lord Balabhadra and sister Devi Subhadra. A crowd generally pulls the chariots, they do so in extremely close proximity meaning that maintaining social distancing to avoid the spread of coronavirus is highly unlikely during the festivities.

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
Five major cities have been hogging up the lions share of new hi-tech jobs. They are Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and San Jose. They have accounted for, wait for it, 90% of new jobs in this sector of the labor market between 2005 and 2017. That left only 10% of the growth in this field  software, drugs, semi-conductors, chips, etc.  to the other 377 metropolitan areas in the country.

Nor is it merely that places such as Washington DC, Dallas, Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago and Los Angeles are not getting their fair share of this increased employment. They are actually losing such job slots, 45,000 between 2005 and 2012.

Not fair, you say? Too uneven, you charge? You can garner support in this opinion of yours from Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution and Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

According to Muro, one of the three authors of a study bewailing this phenomenon, The superstar places are becoming extremely expensive, choked with traffic and struggling with big social costs like inequality gone wild and homelessness.

Why all the whining? That is easy to see. Nerd jobs are clean; little or no pollution. They are relatively high paying; more tax revenue for the downtown boys and girls to play with. Geeks rarely commit mayhem on the streets; the crime statistics are negatively correlated with their presence.

But should the rest of us worry about this tendency to pile on high-tech jobs in only five cities? Not at all.

This is part and parcel of the economies of scale. It is often more efficient, and thus cheaper, to produce goods and services in fewer places rather than spread them all over the country. Synergism and all that.

Most of the iron and steel is manufactured in Pittsburgh. This is obviously unfair to every other city in the U.S. Would we be better off, economically, if the creation of this product were spread around all over the place? The Chinese tried this with backyard steel mills; the results were horrid. Want to see a Broadway play? Youve got to go to New York City, not to Fargo, North Dakota, nor Salt Lake City. Can you imagine how the quality of plays would plummet if the necessary artistic talent were required to be spread evenly over all fifty states? In similar manner if you want a beignet, or jazz music, New Orleans is the place to be, not Phoenix or Newark.

Will all this create problems? Of course it will. There will be tremendous transactions and other costs of moving people around the nation so as to satisfy this fetish against clumping up talents. Corn does better in Iowa than in Rhode Island, wheat is the province of Kansas, not Nevada, and for oranges, go to Florida, not Maine. Isnt this unfair? Should we not also forcibly spread these industries around evenly, so that all vestiges of specialization, the division of labor, and, heck, common sense, go out the window, to satisfy the likes of people like these three authors? Canada will not allow intra-national transport of beer. As a result each province must manufacture its own. We certainly do not need that sort of central planning here.

But what about the fact that superstar places are becoming extremely expensive. If we abstract from government policies that boost rents and housing prices (rent control, zoning, requiring green spaces, regulations, etc.), this is the markets way of inducing people to relocate so as to garner the benefits of specialization. How else are the inhabitants of these five cities going to be encouraged to make room for the highly productive incoming nerds? The only other way to accomplish this task is for government to engage in their forced removal. But this is the United States, relatively speaking the land of the free, not some totalitarian dictatorship which moves people around in the same manner that the grandmaster relocates the chess pieces.

As for road congestion, the solution is peak load pricing. This is not the fault of agglomerating hi-tech workers. Inequality? If you add a few Bill Gateses to a city, it will of course rise. But, it will fall in the cites from which they depart.
Its been over a week since Sushant Singh Rajput left for his heavenly abode. Family, close friends and fans are yet to come to terms with the tragic incident.

The late actors family recently held a prayer meet at their Rajiv Nagar residence in Patna, for close members of the family and known. The meeting took place on June 19 and was attended by Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Law and Justice, among others.

In the pictures and videos from the prayer meeting doing rounds on social media, a monochromatic framed picture of the actor can be seen adorned with white flowers.

Sushant began his career in television with Pavitra Rishta before venturing into films. He is best known for his performance in Kai Po Che, MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, Kedarnath, Chhichhore, among others.

Rajputs untimely departure has sent shock waves through the country and has brought many unaddressed matters to the fore especially the importance of mental health.

The 34-year-old was found dead on June 14 at his Mumbai residence. The police did not recover any suicide note but Anil Deshmukh, Maharashtra Home Minister, promised investigators continue probing in the case. Police are contacting and recording statements of close friends, colleagues and house help who were in touch with Rajput in ten days before he took his life.

Kriti Sanon, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Vivek Oberoi, Abhishek Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey, Dinesh Vijan, were a few members of Bollywood who attended his funeral held in Mumbai.

His last rites were performed by his family and his ashes were immersed in the holy river of Ganga on June 15, Thursday.

This news piece may be triggering. If you or someone you know needs help, call any of these helplines: Aasra (Mumbai) 022-27546669, Sneha (Chennai) 044-24640050, Sumaitri (Delhi) 011-23389090, Cooj (Goa) 0832- 2252525, Jeevan (Jamshedpur) 065-76453841, Pratheeksha (Kochi) 048-42448830, Maithri (Kochi) 0484-2540530, Roshni (Hyderabad) 040-66202000, Lifeline 033-64643267 (Kolkata).

Follow @News18Movies for more
Independence Day is not normally a time when a beer lover would reach for a rich, velvety imperial stout. Roasted notes of chocolate and heavy spice seem better paired with a piece of gingerbread at Christmas, not usually as an option to wash down backyard barbecue, grilled hot dogs and creamy sweet-tart coleslaw.

But nothing is normal about 2020 and the lack of regularity is a prime opportunity for people to experiment and push the limits on what is considered acceptable. In the beer community, that comes in the form of a collaborative brewing project called Black is Beautiful, a deep and malty beer based on a recipe from Weathered Souls Brewing Company, based in San Antonio, Texas. The beer recipe is offered on the blackisbeautiful.beer website for any brewery to reproduce and adapt to their own style, with the caveat that proceeds from the sale of the beer be donated to organizations that do work beneficial to the African-American community.

Locally, Black is Beautiful imperial stout is being produced at Rare Form Brewing Company with Shmaltz Brewing Company (both in Troy), Indian Ladder Farms Cidery and Brewery (Altamont) and Bound By Fate Brewing (Schuylerville). Kevin Mullen, owner of Rare Form, said that the four breweries each contributed ingredients they had on hand to stay true to the Weathered Souls recipe and each brewery will have one barrel of beer (about 31 gallons) to sell at their taprooms. Beneficiaries chosen by the breweries includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Troys YWCA. Mullen said that heavy, dark beers are not the best sellers in summer, but, because of the cause, it will sell the beer.

Paul Leone, executive director for the New York State Brewers Association (NYSBA), said that Black is Beautiful is a way to support and bring light to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has seen renewed traction in the wake of George Floyds death. Craft beer drinkers are always looking for new or unique beer styles and they also tend to be very civic minded, which makes charitable collaborations a perfect way for breweries to get a unique beer out and support a cause they believe in, Leone said. Of New Yorks 462 breweries, he estimated that 30 are currently making Black is Beautiful with more planning to do so in coming months.

Black is Beautiful imperial stout is slated for release just ahead of Independence Day and is available only at the taprooms of the participating breweries. Other regional breweries also plan to produce and release People Power, a lager recipe from Threes Brewing in Brooklyn, which was originally launched in 2018 to benefit the ACLU.

While the style of the beer is a little on the nose, the visual reference to blackness is a way for people to understand current social issues beyond reading the news. It is an imbibable lesson on race in America. It also highlights the stark racial disparities of beer production and consumption: A 2014 Nielsen survey found that African-American buyers only accounted for 3.7% of craft beer sales, while a marketing study by Experian Marketing Services that same year said that of 2,019 African-Americans surveyed, only 23% drank domestic beer and 6% drank craft beer.

Weathered Souls is owned by Marcus Baskerville, one of the few black brewers in America. An August 2019 report from the diversity committee for the Brewers Association found that 88% of brewery owners surveyed were white; 3.5% of nonproduction brewery staff (like marketing, sales and service professionals) were black. The survey also found that as few as 50 of the 8,400 breweries in America had black owners. As an industry we know we need to do more with diversity and inclusion, said Leone, who noted that NYSBA now has an active inclusivity committee which is working to address the issue. At Rare Form, Mullen said he is working with Schenectady County Community Colleges brewing program to train aspiring brewers through a minority-based scholarship program.

Historically, enslaved people were active in producing beer, based on documentation from slave-owning households across early America. A recent story in Food and Wine magazine profiled the brewing ingenuity of Peter Hemmings, a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Black is Beautiful also pays homage via its name to the history of the term, which was first documented in an 1858 speech by John S. Rock, a Black abolitionist and lawyer, but was popularized a century later by activists to counter the idea that African natural features were inherently unattractive.

Deanna Fox is a freelance journalist. www.foxonfood.com @DeannaNFox
Davinia Taylor took to Instagram to document her reunion with her 12-year-old son Grey on Monday, as she prepared to see him for the first time in four months.

The 42-year-old former Hollyoaks star, who is based in Malaga, was unable to see her eldest offspring  who is based in the UK with his dad Dave Gardner and stepmother Liv Tyler  due to the COVID-19 lockdown's travel restrictions.

But on Monday, the actress revealed that she was en route to Barcelona to meet him, telling her followers: 'Oh my god, I'm so excited! It's stupid o'clock in the morning and I'm gonna go and get my son. I've not seen him for four months!

Reunited: Davinia Taylor took to Instagram to document her reunion with her 12-year-old son Grey on Monday, as she prepared to see him for the first time in four months

'I'm gonna get Grey from Barcelona. I'm gonna spend the night with him in Soho House and have a nice meal, do a bit of bonding, good bit of chatting.

'No doubt, he'll just absolutely not give a t*ss, because he's nearly 13. But I'm so excited and then I'm bringing him home to his brothers and his new dogs.'

As the mother-of-four arrived at MalagaCosta del Sol Airport for her flight, she gushed about how empty it was, as she said: 'So exciting. Oh my god, it's just the most civilised way to travel.

Offspring: Davinia was unable to see her eldest offspring  who is based in the UK with his dad Dave Gardner and stepmother Liv Tyler  due to the COVID-19 lockdown's travel restrictions

'It reminds me of how it must have been in the '70s or the early '80s, when not everybody travelled every day by plane. It's just so empty.

'There's half the amount of terminals and you don't even have to walk that far. It's am absolute joy. And there's no crowds or anything because of the two metre rule. Positively civilised.'

However, while things went swimmingly in the terminal, Davinia saw a delay in taking off, revealing in a later post: 'I've had to get off the plan because it's broke and board another one. Oh well.'

The TV personality, who recently unveiled her incredible weight loss transformation, made the most of her extended waiting time by exercising in the terminal.

Journey: On Monday, the actress revealed that she was en route to Barcelona to meet her son

Outfit: She gave her followers a glimpse of her travel attire as she prepared to board her plane

Showing video of herself in action, she wrote: 'Doing 200 lunges while waiting!!!! Burn some serious cals instead of gawping at the phone! Every opportunity!!'

As she later boarded the waiting Vueling aircraft, she reiterated her excitement, writing: 'I'm ALWAYS last getting on the lane... not today!!! I'm that excited!!!!!'

On landing in the coastal city, Davinia checked into her elegant hotel suite, before sharing that she was going to get some rest before meeting Grey.

However, she was soon out and about, admitting: 'Couldn't resist it. I'm too busy in the head to sleep. So I've come out and I'm wandering the streets of Barcelona.

Working in her fitness: As she waited to board another aircraft following technical difficulties, she performed some lunges in the terminal

I just can't hide it: At several months during her stream of posts, Davinia shared her excitement

'Obviously, looking for health food stores, See what gear they've got down here. It is beautiful.'

Her wandering soon took her to the gym, where she was seen working out as she prepared to be reunited with her offspring.

On Friday, Davinia revealed that she was going to be reunited with her son, saying: 'Yay! Spain are going to open their borders, so I can get my son over here.'

Back in April, Davinia shared a montage of pictures with Grey, as she admitted: 'Missing my eldest this morning..its been weeks now since he got stuck in Miami! Thank god for FaceTime (even if it is begrudgingly!!)

Landed: On landing in Barcelona, Davinia went for a wander around the city before working out

'Thank you @misslivalittle for being the best ever step mom and keeping him safe ! God knows what hes doing without the premiership these days.'

Davinia is also mother to sons Luxx, nine, whose father she has never revealed, and Asa, six, and four-year-old Jude, with her partner Matthew Leyden.

Her journey comes days after she shared her incredible weight loss transformation with snaps uploaded to Instagram on Friday.

The actress posted a before picture as she wore a grey vest top, figure-hugging leggings and a beige overcoat.

Before and after: Her journey comes days after she shared her incredible weight loss transformation with snaps uploaded to Instagram on Friday

Alongside it, she posted an after snapshot as she flaunted her toned physique in a black bikini and sported a darker hair style.

Davinia uploaded the snaps with a lengthy caption that read: 'What a difference a bit of #Biohacking makes !!! Detox, reduce inflammatory foods, run, sauna, supplement, wim Hof, Cold exposure, NAD+, nootropics, kombucha, Intermittent fasting, gut health ..all these protocols have helped me stay mentally healthy and if I do that the body follows suit !!!

'Think I'm pushing a size 16 there and then I'm down to an 8 (and maintained it for years !! No yo-yo or massive cravings either) All beings in the brain #brainhealth #goodfats #lowsugar #paleo [sic].'

Her transformation snaps come after she shared a 'swollen' bikini photo on Instagram to show what happens if she 'eats too much' but says it's no big deal.

'Not pregnant or overweight, just ate too much': Her stunning snaps come after she shared a 'swollen' bikini photo to show what happens if she 'eats too much'

Telling her followers she is neither pregnant or overweight, Davinia revealed that she changes shape when she eats. She wrote on social media: 'I know women who eat and they do not change shape... I am not one of them.

'But I am super healthy, super fit and super ok with a bit of swelling while my Thai green curry, stivia chocolate, bottle of kombucha, coconut cappuccino, sourdough butty and handful of olive oil crisps digest!!!!

'However I do eat far too quickly!!!! Fret not if you have to undo your pants a bit as long as your not eating ultra processed foods you will digest, assimilate and excrete the tasty fuel regardless!!!! Enjoy your dinner #body #bodypositive #biohacking'.

Davinia looked incredible in her brown bikini as she posed in front of her mirror to show her followers her honest post.

Davinia also said she was planning on giving a talk at on her Stories about inflammation. She said: 'Inflammation is my big bug-bear. It brings water weight and what inflames one person doesn't inflame another.

'I'll also be talking about the inflamed mind, as well. Depression.'
We laid it, we dedicated it: PM Modi after inaugurating Kanpur Metro Rail Project

Kanpur: 57 girls at children's shelter home test COVID-19 positive, 5 of them pregnant

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Kanpur, Jun 22: Fifty-seven girls at a state-run children''s shelter home in Uttar Pradesh''s Kanpur district have tested positive for COVID-19, with five of them found to be pregnant, an administration official said on Sunday.

Two other girls in the shelter home, who are also pregnant, have tested negative for the virus, he said.

Mumbai: Pani-puri seller dies of COVID-19, patrons raise funds for kin

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

"The five pregnant girls, who have been found COVID-19 positive, were referred by the Child Welfare Committees of Agra, Etah, Kannauj, Firozabad and Kanpur under the POCSO Act.

Two other pregnant girls have tested negative for COVID-19. The seven girls were pregnant at time, when they came to the shelter home," Kanpur DM Brahma Dev Ram Tiwari told reporters.

The district magistrate added that two girls are undergoing treatment at LLR Hospital in Kanpur, while three others are undergoing treatment at private hospital.

In a Facebook post, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had attacked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh over the media reports about the girls being found pregnant at the shelter home.

"The entire story of the Muzaffarpur shelter home case is in front of the country. Such a case had also come to light in Deoria in UP," Priyanka Gandhi said.

In this scenario, such an incident again coming out shows that everything is suppressed in the name of investigations, but very inhuman incidents are taking place in government child protection homes, she said.
For the first time in 180 years, the Norfolk County fairgrounds in Simcoe will be silent this fall.

Organizers of the Norfolk County Fair and Horse Show announced on Thursday that the 2020 edition of the fair  scheduled for Oct. 6 to 12  has been cancelled due to COVID-19.

The safety and well-being of our community, volunteers, exhibitors, partners and fair patrons always comes first, said general manager George Araujo on behalf of the Norfolk Agricultural Society. Please be assured this decision was made out of an abundance of caution for all.

With fall fairs being cancelled left and right  from the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto to the Caledonia Fair, which was called off earlier this week  it was all but inevitable that Norfolks fair, which on any given day has thousands of people rubbing elbows on the midway and in the grandstand, couldnt proceed amid the pandemic.

But that doesnt make the loss of the countys signature gathering sting any less.

I go back to the fair every year because it is such a close to home and heart event, said Simcoe teen Jada Dawson.

Having grown up with it being a family tradition, it simply does not feel like an event I could ever miss out on. So you can imagine the disappointment when I heard it was cancelled this year.

For four years, Dawson has been a driving force behind her high schools participation in Young Canada Day, a daylong competition that kicks off the fair with a full-throated expression of pride in Norfolks five high schools and the county as a whole.

Students pack the grandstand  after decorating their section with creative displays  and cheer on their classmates in foot races, acrobatic cheerleading routines, feats of strength, and a tug of war.

Its a time of coming together, showing school spirit and honestly just going crazy with excitement, said Dawson, a graduating student from Holy Trinity Catholic Secondary School in Simcoe.

It is one event in the year that everyone looks forward to and one that no one will forget. The loss of fair is immense to our high school students and to the county in general.

During fair week, Simcoe dairy farmer Thomas Judd can be found leading his Jersey cows around the show ring, milking cows for enthralled schoolkids, or talking with passersby about the reality of farming as a volunteer with the Norfolk Milk Producers.

Its all part of the fairs focus on raising awareness of farming and the importance of local agriculture, which Judd said Norfolks farmers wholeheartedly embrace by volunteering and taking part in livestock and produce competitions.

Its a way to give back to the community, said Judd, who loves answering questions from children getting their first up-close look at a cow.

Its amazing to see. The curiosity that comes along with that, for kids who maybe dont know where their milk comes from, or love ice cream but have never really understood whats behind it, its very important for that curiosity to have a chance to lead to more knowledge. I think thats a really vital role for the fair.

Families can stop to watch sheep being sheared and baby chicks hatching, and walk through barns full of feathered and furry creatures of every type. Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett is fond of saying that if kids start their visit inside the poultry barn, they may never make it to the midway.

Norfolk County Fair is one of the best for engagement, Judd said, adding that the traffic at the dairy booth rivals the Royal.

Araujo said the fair board is looking into potentially offering some of the fairs usual programs online this year, though Judd said nothing can replace experiencing first-hand the sights, sounds and smells.

Its frustrating, but such is COVID. Im happy everybody can be safe  thats the most important thing, Judd said.

Dawson has her fingers crossed shell be able to come to the fair next year and cheer on Holy Trinity as an alumna at Young Canada Day.

I know that my family and I will miss it this year, and I can say without a doubt that families like mine and the county as a whole will miss it as well, she said.

But hopefully the tradition continues next year, and in the years to come. I am sure we are all looking forward to some good news in 2021.
T hirty-eight French bulldogs have been found dead on a plane that was carrying at least 500 puppies to Canada.

The dogs that survived the flight from Ukraine to Toronto on June 13 were suffering from symptoms including dehydration, weakness and vomiting, officials said on Saturday.

Canadian authorities have launched an investigation to determine what happened to the puppies.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement: "Upon inspection, it was found that 38 were dead on arrival.

"Ukrainian International Airlines is a member of the International Air Transport Association, which has voluntary guidelines airlines should follow to ensure animals are transported safely.

"CFIA officials are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding this incident and will determine next steps once the investigation is complete."

Dog handler Abby Lorenzen, who was in the airport cargo to pick up another animal, told CBC News the scene was like a "horror show".

"It was just a nightmare," she said. "Canada and the federal government need to change the laws on the importation of these puppies."

Ukrainian International Airlines said in a statement: "Everyone at UIA offers its condolences for the tragic loss of animal life on our flight.

"UIA is working with local authorities to determine what happened and to make any changes necessary to prevent such a situation from occurring again."

Professor Scott Weese of the University of Guelph, who works with Public Health Agency of Canada, said online ads such as Craigslist show that there is a lucrative market for the sale of puppies that are believed to be bred in Canada.

He said: "We really have no idea [what] the scope of the issue is. We have no idea how many dogs come in, where they go, where they come from.

"It is a big industry. There's no doubt about it. And it's been looked at more in the US and there's potentially some organised crime component of it, too, in some areas.

"You mentioned 500 French bull dogs. If those are going for sale at $3,000 [2,400] to $4,000 [3,200] a dog, that's a massive amount of money."
Thiruvananthapuram : Minister V S Sunilkumar has gone into self-isolation following a health worker testing positive for Covid 19 in Thrissur.

The minister attended a meeting of

health department workers on June 15 at the Thrissur Corporation, where one of the employee was tested positive for covid last day.

Following this, the minister and his personal secretary have been advised to go into quarantine.

The minister and his PA are undergoing quarantine at the minister's quarters in Thiruvananthapuram.
Alyssa Brunette affixes an out of service sign on a slot machine shut off to meet social-distancing requirements in the Monarch Casino and Resort in Black Hawk, Colo., on June 16 after a three-month pandemic closure. Most casinos around Philadelphia and in Atlantic City are preparing to reopen by July 2. Read more

Casinos around Philadelphia will begin reopening Friday following more than three months of closure because of the coronavirus pandemic, and almost every one in the region  including in Atlantic City  should be open by July 2.

Harrahs Philadelphia Casino & Racetrack, and Valley Forge Casino Resort plan to reopen Friday, according to Douglas Harbach, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvanias highest grossing casino, , and Wind Creek Bethlehem are slated to reopen Monday, June 29.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday that Atlantic Citys nine casinos can reopen on July 2 at 25% capacity, with everyone inside the building wearing masks. Indoor dining and racetracks can also resume on July 2 at reduced capacity.

The lone holdout in the rush to reopen is the Rivers Casino Philadelphia, which has not set a date to resume operations, a Rivers spokesman said Monday. Philadelphia city officials have opted for a delayed reopening, keeping some restrictions in place until July 3 or later.

After over 100 days of closure, we are thrilled to welcome guests back to Harrahs Philadelphia, Chris Albrecht, the casinos general manager, said in a statement. The casino, located in Chester, will reopen at 9 a.m. Friday for members of its loyalty program and at 11 a.m. for the general public. As with other Pennsylvania casinos, it will operate at 50% capacity with social-distancing rules making face masks required.

Joe Lupo, president of Hard Rock Atlantic City, said the casino was grateful for a reopening date before the Fourth of July weekend.

We have been working hard over the last several months to prepare for reopening by implementing thorough cleaning processes, enhancing air quality and initiating a partnership with health officials, Lupo said in a statement. We look forward to welcoming our guests and team members back to Hard Rock.

Marie Jones, a gaming lawyer with the Atlantic City branch of Fox Rothschild, said she was surprised at the low capacity mandated for the New Jersey reopening, and predicted that customers would return.

You may see some changes in how people gamble and play, whether theyre just there for a short amount of time, she said. But after being on lock down since March, I have the distinct feeling theyre going to be at that 25% capacity rather quickly.

Casinos in Western Pennsylvania began reopening June 10, and were greeted by gamblers enthusiastically.

The shutdown of the states 12 operating casinos and three off-track betting parlors has devastated the industry and cut off a lucrative source of tax revenue for Pennsylvania. State regulated gaming generates more than $1.5 billion in tax revenue during a typical year, but that was reduced to a trickle from online gaming.

 READ MORE: Out-of-work Atlantic City casino workers jam traffic for miles in line up for donated food

Atlantic Citys nine casinos have been closed since March 16, putting about 26,000 employees out of work. Thousands of casino workers have waited in car lines for boxes of donated food. The third food giveaway organized by the states Casino Reinvestment Development Authority and Unite Here Local 54 is scheduled for Tuesday at Bader Field, the citys old municipal airfield.

Jane Bokunewicz, coordinator of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute for Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism at Stockton University, said Atlantic Citys casinos typically make 30% of their annual net revenue in the third quarter (July to September).

"So the next three months are crucial for them to regain some financial stability," she said.

Bokunewicz said New Jersey has been an example of a cautious reopening strategy and noted that Las Vegas recently amended its voluntary mask policy for table games to make it mandatory.

-Inquirer Staff Writer Rob Tornoe contributed to this article.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the reopening date of the Wind Creek Bethlehem casino. It is June 29.
Panasonic India aims to enhance customer experience with its AI enabled Refrigerator range powered by its unique Econavi technology. Catering to the evolving consumer lifestyle and the growing preference for smart appliances, Panasonic AI Refrigerators provide optimum cooling and upto 49% power saving with its intelligent Econavi sensors along with best in class 6-speed Inverter Compressor. The AI-enabled double-door frost-free Refrigerator range is available in the capacity of 270L to 601L; priced from INR 22,900 to INR 89,999 respectively across all Panasonic brand shops, as well as online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart for ease of purchase.

With the help of cutting-edge Econavi sensors, Panasonic AI Refrigerator monitors patterns and then adapts the energy usage around ones lifestyle automatically. By monitoring lights, internal and ambient temperature and door opening/closing patterns; Econavi technology, in conjunction with 6-speed Inverter compressor, allows refrigerators to regulate temperature in real-time and save energy without compromising on the freshness of the food.

Talking about the AI range, Mr. Harshal Soman, Head  Home Appliances Business, Panasonic India said, Artificial Intelligence has ushered in a new era in the home appliances segment and has changed the way consumers are relying on their appliances to bring efficiency and comfort to their day-to-day lives. Catering to this need for enhanced product experience, we are continuously reinventing and strengthening our home appliance portfolio with advance AI technology such as Econavi and Inverter features. With the refrigerator household penetration of only 40%, there is a huge opportunity to tap in the Indian market. With the AI-enabled series, which is manufactured at our Jhajjer Technopark (Haryana) in India, we are targeting a market share of 5% by the end of FY20-21.
Joseph Vu, partner of Transfer Pricing, and Nguyen Thanh Hoa, partner of Legal at KPMG Ltd

The terms royalty and license fee are not specifically defined in any Vietnamese tax and commercial laws. They are understood as payment for the right to use intangibles which include: (i) technology transfer (meaning technical information, know-how, and patents) and (ii) license of industrial properties (meaning trademark, trade secrets, and industrial design).

Deductibility of royalty/license fee requires consideration of both corporate income tax and transfer pricing regulations. Further, proper registration of the royalty/license agreement with the appropriate authorities, if applicable, is often required to claim tax deduction of the fees.

Intra-group services (IGS) are those provided by one or more entities to other companies within the same group. IGS could be in the form of administrative, finance, human resources, IT, marketing, procurement, research and development (R&D), technical services, and others. Fees charged for IGS may often be referred to as management fees, regional or head office charges, shared service charges, or another. The need for IGS normally arises from commercial reasons that include technical capability, consistent quality, and cost reduction and efficiency.

Substance over form

Historically, tax examiners seldom challenged the tax deductibility of royalty/license fee and IGS charges, provided that taxpayers maintain standard documents to support the charges, notably intercompany agreements, general transfer pricing documentation, invoices, and general descriptions of these transactions. However, with the introduction of the substance over form principle under the Law on Tax Administration and Decree No.20/2017/ND-CP dated February 24, 2017 guiding tax management on transfer pricing in enterprises, the requirements for obtaining tax deduction of these intercompany expenses is no longer that simple or straightforward.

For royalty/license fee, tax authorities are requiring evidence that the intellectual property (IP) has economic value and benefits for the Vietnamese taxpayer; the licensor has the legal and economic ownership of the IP; the licensor continues to carry out activities to develop, enhance, and protect the IP to justify the ongoing charges; and pricing of the royalty/license fee is at arms length.

For IGS charges, tax authorities are requiring taxpayers to prove services have actually been rendered and provide economic benefits to the Vietnamese taxpayer. Certain service charges are disallowed tax deduction, such as services that are duplicated, shareholder activities and others.

Authorities also require taxpayers to prove that service charges were calculated based on the arms length principle (meaning service fee is commensurate with the benefits received, and cost allocation method is reasonable).

Authority challenges

Based on our observations, typical areas of scrutiny faced by local taxpayers include:

- Contracts/agreements were not documented properly from commercial, transfer pricing, and tax perspectives. This may result in differences between the contractual agreements and actual substance of the underlying transactions;

- Agreements relating to the transfer or use of technology were not properly registered with the appropriate authorities;

- Lack of supporting documents to prove the economic value of the underlying transactions and the economic benefits received by the Vietnamese taxpayer;

- Lack of supporting documents to prove the arms length nature of the intercompany expenses.

As the burden of proof lies with the local taxpayer, failure to provide sufficient evidence to address these issues will likely result in the tax authorities denying the deduction of such intercompany expenses. Further, inconsistent interpretation of the regulations by tax examiners across different provinces also poses significant challenges for local taxpayers to defend the tax deduction of these charges.

Recommendations

In the event of a tax or transfer pricing investigation, taxpayers generally have a short timeframe (typically one or two weeks) to explain and provide supporting documents in response to potential challenges and accusations from the tax examiners as mentioned above. Further, Vietnamese taxpayers may face difficulty in gathering and preparing evidentiary documents to substantiate the economic value and benefits of the royalty/license fee or IGS charges  as well as the appropriate pricing of these charges  since this requires collaboration with the relevant overseas related parties for information sharing. In addition, producing evidentiary documents that can reasonably satisfy the expectations of the tax examiners could be subjective.

We highly recommend addressing and rectifying the issues highlighted above well in advance. Further, experience is critical in dealing with these intercompany charges, especially understanding what the tax authorities expect. Thus, we also recommend seeking support from professional advisors to assist in managing the potential risks of these intercompany expenses. Such support includes reviewing and assessing the potential risks of the companys royalty or service charge arrangement; assistance in gathering and preparing evidentiary documents; and support in tax or transfer pricing investigation. With proper preparation, in our view the deductibility of your intercompany expenses can be supportable and defensible.
Indian and Chinese militaries are holding a second round of Lt General-level talks on Monday in an attempt to lower the temperature following the violent clashes in Galwan Valley last week that left 20 Indian Army personnel dead, official sources said.

The talks were scheduled to start at 11:30 am at Moldo on the Chinese side of Chushul sector in eastern Ladakh, they said.

The two sides are expected to deliberate on a set of confidence building measures including implementation of an agreement arrived at the first round of the Lt Gen talks on June 6, the sources said.

The Indian delegation at the talks is being led by 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen Harinder Singh while the Chinese side was to be headed by the Commander of the Tibet Military District.

The meeting is taking place in the backdrop of the escalating tension between the two sides after the Galwan Valley clashes on June 15, the most serious cross-border confrontation in the last 45 years.

The Chinese soldiers used stones, nail-studded sticks, iron rods and clubs in carrying out brutal attacks on Indian soldiers after they protested the erection of a surveillance post by China on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in Galwan.

After the clashes, the two sides held at least three-rounds of Major General-level talks to explore ways to bring down tension between the two sides.

In a telephonic conversation with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Wednesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called the clashes a "premeditated" action by Chinese PLA.

Following the incident, the government has given the armed forces "full freedom" to give a "befitting" response to any Chinese misadventure along the 3,500-km de-facto border.

The Army has sent thousands of additional troops to forward locations along the border in the last one week. The IAF has also moved a sizable number of its frontline Sukhoi 30 MKI, Jaguar, Mirage 2000 aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to several key air bases, including Leh and Srinagar, following the clashes.

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on May 5 and 6. The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

Prior to the clashes, both sides had been asserting that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, it was necessary to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- While City Council has officially banned the practice of holding executive sessions without disclosing what will be talked about, members remained deadlocked on whether to add revenge porn victims as a protected class to ward off possible discrimination.

With the impasse, Vice Mayor Kahlil Seren, who drafted both measures, said last week that he is working with the law department to find other sections of city code where revenge porn protections could be applied.

Back in December, Seren introduced the proposal to add cyber exploitation to the ranks of race, color, age, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression as a protected class under the citys Fair Practices code.

The goal was to align Cleveland Heights Fair Practices ordinance with current technologies and social trends, extending the reach to cover nonconsensual dissemination of a persons private sexual images that may be circulated by an ex-lover after a bad breakup.

It would bolster what is already outlawed in Ohio by making it illegal to discriminate against a revenge porn victim in employment, education and housing.

In other words, if somebodys ex is sending the boss (landlord or administrator) naked pictures of them, thats another instance where I think businesses shouldnt be able to discriminate against someone, costing the victim a job, a residence or a scholarship, Seren told council on June 1.

At this point, it all appears to be theoretical, with one sticking point for Councilman Mike Ungar being the lack of anyone coming forward to date with this type of a complaint. Ungar noted that he did not want to be painted into a corner on his dissent.

I agree with you one hundred percent that its wrong, Ungar told Seren June 1. Its horrible, illegal and a crime in Ohio. But what is the evidence-based need for legislation in Cleveland Heights? Show me the evidence that current state law is not already an appropriate deterrent.

Councilwoman Mary Dunbar restated her argument from December, questioning whether enforcement was better left to state and federal authorities.

One thing we need to teach kids is that there are consequences to what you do, Dunbar said. And again, I find that were spending a lot of time on issues that are secondary to the real issues that are confronting this city.

However Councilwomen Melody Joy Hart and Davida Russell said they would support adding revenge porn victims as a protected class under the Fair Practices ordinance, with Hart calling it a different form of domestic abuse.

While that may well be the case, Mayor Jason Stein pointed out that domestic abuse is not found within the citys hard-fought Fair Practices ordinance either.

Im not understanding why were going with the Fair Practices ordinance, Stein said. We havent closed the door on this, but Im wondering about other action that we could take.

By allowing revenge porn to be admitted as a protected class under the traditional civil rights legislation, Stein questioned whether we may be opening up the Fair Practices ordinance to any number of reprehensible acts in society.

City Law Director Bill Hanna noted that additional local measures against revenge porn and its ramifications would move Cleveland Heights "toward the forefront" of civil protections.

"If it never happens, that's a blessing," Seren said. "I would rather have it on the books and never need it than not have it in there."

But with an apparent 3-3 deadlock on council due to the vacancy created by the March resignation of Melissa Yasinow, plans to put the revenge porn proposal up for a rare third reading were shelved before the June 15 council meeting.

Escape clause dashed

Earlier this month, council did vote 4-2 to end the longstanding but little-used allowance for executive sessions to be called up to four times a year for no stated reason.

The ordinance, which dates back to early 2018, gained support from new council members Hart ("meetings need to be open; transparency is a better way to do things") and Russell ("I am for transparency, no matter what we do"), along with Stein and Seren.

While the ordinance states that the removal will align the city's policies more closely with state law, Ungar noted against it, arguing that the past practice was never in violation.

"I believe this has been deployed one time in my tenure," Ungar said. "I can't fathom why council would take away a tool that is used in a legal fashion."

Maintaining that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," Seren noted that old practice was "not in violation of state law, but it exceeds state law. We are extending the rationale for executive sessions beyond the rationale allowed by state law."

Dunbar also dissented, saying beforehand "I know there are calls for transparency, but sometimes we can get more done in a private meeting."

Hanna noted that the old section of city code allowed for the further discussion in executive session of "general plans for the future, or general issues before the city."

City Manager Tanisha Briley said the intended purpose was essentially to meet in retreat, something that had been done about three times over the past seven years.

Stein said that while he never felt those discussions were illegal, "I felt the discussion matter should have been done in a public setting and did not require an executive session -- and I've spoken to Khalil about revising that language."

Special police forum

A special "Meet Your Police" online forum will be held Thursday (June 25) from 7-8:30 p.m. featuring panelists that will include Briley, Cleveland Heights Police Chief Annette Mecklenburg and Cleveland State University professor Ronnie Dunn.

Dunn is an expert on social policy, racial profiling and the criminal justice system, part of the dialogue renewed through the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the latest round of fatalities involving police brutality against minorities on the national level.

The City of Cleveland Heights is reviewing and improving its policing policies and training, a city release states. This forum will be an opportunity for our community to ask questions and share their ideas. CHPD is committed to enhancing its relations with the community and welcomes all participants.

To register, please go to: https://bit.ly/2YPIJOj Questions or comments need to be provided by Wednesday (June 24) at 3 p.m. to myp@clvhts.com. The city also plans to utilize the "chat" function for questions that may arise during the forum.

Read more from the Sun Press.
The image is a long way from her days as an undergraduate. Raised in rural Bedford County  her mother was a seamstress, her father a mechanic  Davis chose Washington and Lee because it looked like the beautiful ideal of a college campus. A scholarship enabled her to be the first in her family to attend college, and she went without knowing that the school was Lees final resting place. He had served as its president during the last years of his life after the Civil War.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh late on Monday arrived in Russia on a three-day visit during which he will hold talks with top Russian military brass and attend a grand military parade in Moscow to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War.

This comes ahead of India's meeting with Russia and China scheduled for Tuesday. Amid stand off with China, the Ministry External Affairs will hold a video conference with the foreign ministries of the two countries.

External Affairs Minister S Jainshakar will attend the meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov along with China's Wang Yi at 1:30 pm on Tuesday.

The meeting is considered to hold high importance amid escalating border tensions between India and China. However, Russia has refused to indulge in bilateral talks.

It is the first visit abroad by a senior union minister in four months as foreign travels were restricted in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

The last foreign trip abroad by a senior member of the union cabinet was by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman when she visited Riyadh from Feb 22-24 to attend a meeting of G-20 finance ministers. Days before Sitharaman's trip, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Germany from February 18 to 19.

The defence minister's visit to Russia comes in the midst of an escalating border standoff between India and China, particularly after the killing of 20 Indian Army personnel by Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.

"Leaving for Moscow on a three day visit. The visit to Russia will give me an opportunity to hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. I shall also be attending the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow," Singh tweeted before leaving for Moscow.

Officials said Singh went ahead with the visit, notwithstanding the border row with China, due to India's decades-old military ties with Russia.

They said the defence minister is likely to hold a series of meetings with top military brass of Russia with a focus on further ramping up military cooperation between the two countries.

A tri-service 75-member Indian military contingent has already reached Moscow to participate in the parade. The Indian team will participate in the parade alongside armed forces personnel from at least 11 countries, including China.

"The visit of the defence minister will strengthen the longstanding special and privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia," the defence ministry said on Saturday.

"The Indian participation in the Victory Day parade will be a mark of tribute to the great sacrifices made by Russia and other nations in the Second World War in which Indian soldiers also participated and made supreme sacrifice," it said.

(With inputs from PTI)
On June 20, Beijing unveiled a proposed national security law for Hong Kong. Despite a year of protests by Hong Kong residents, the law reportedly gives mainland China the ability to prosecute national security infractions in the city. Critics say it will mean the end of free speech in Hong Kong.

Beijing has been adamant that the new law would protect human rights and freedom in Hong Kong and targets only some terrorist groups.

With the laws adoption expected in coming weeks, Chinas Communist Party-led government has tried to reinforce this idea. The business community is in full support of its actions, China has insisted.

An editorial in the state-run tabloid Global Times stated:

"Hong Kong's business tycoons have expressed their support of the national security legislation with a much firmer stance than they held during last year's violent protests. They have seen the Chinese central government's determination, and believe the country has sufficient ability to stabilize the situation in Hong Kong through the law. And they know that this is the foundation of Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability."

That statement is misleading.

While certain businesses  notably the British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered  have supported Beijings bill, this is not the consensus view in Hong Kongs business community. There is considerable alarm.

In early June, the American Chamber of Commerce Abroad informally surveyed its Hong Kong members about the proposed law. Of the 180 that responded, 60% said the security law would likely harm their operations. About 8 in 10 expressed some degree of concern for the proposal.

The survey was taken before additional details of the proposed law were unveiled last weekend. The chamber, known by the shorthand AmCham, noted in its report on the survey that concerns were speculative.

HSBCs support of the law came after hostile comments in Chinese media. For example, former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying wrote in a Facebook post that [n]either China nor Hong Kong owes HSBC anything  HSBCs businesses in China can be replaced overnight by banks from China and from other countries. Leung is a defender of the proposed law.

These companies are getting squeezed, and you can see it, Richard McGregor, an analyst with the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign-policy think tank, said in an interview with CNBC.

Other businesses that support the law have pointed out that most economies have national security laws in place, according to a report released by the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Group. (APEC, which stands for Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation, is an organization including the United States, Russia, Australia, China and other Asian countries formed to reduce trade barriers.)

The same should have been true for Hong Kong, but its legislature has not been able to draft a national security law in the decades since the British handed control of Hong Kong over to China in 1997, with pledges that self-governance would extend 50 years.

As such, Hong Kong operates according to a One Country, Two Systems policy under a constitution called the Basic Law. China and supporters like Leung claim the new security law will plug a loophole in the Basic Law, which they say requires Hong Kong to outlaw treason and foreign political interference.

Beijings move to enact the proposed security law follows massive protests over a now-abandoned extradition bill, which would have allowed China to detain and prosecute Hong Kong residents cases in mainland courts.

David Dodwell, the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Groups executive director, called Beijings interference regrettable.

The argument here is not whether we should have a security law, but what the exact content of it is and how it is implemented, he said.

The respondents in AmChams survey also identified independence of the judiciary and how the freedom of speech will be protected as important issues in the proposed law. About 65 percent cited ambiguity in the scope and enforcement of the law as their top concern.

At the same time, 70 percent of the businesses that responded said they had no plans to relocate  depending on how the law is ultimately drafted.

Hong Kongs Chief Executive Carrie Lam has expressed full support for the proposed law, telling Chinas state-run Xinhua News Agency it would only target an extremely small minority of people.

The Hong Kong Bar Association has questioned the legality of the proposed law. Citing such concerns, the United States has threatened to revoke Hong Kongs special economic status, which confers access to U.S. markets. The G7 group of industrialized countries, which includes the U.S. and U.K., has called on China to reconsider the proposed law.

Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong fear the worst.

Beijings power is stabbing right into Hong Kongs judicial and administrative organs like a sword, Alvin Yeung, a lawyer and member of Hong Kongs legislative council, told VOA last week.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 08:43:03|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TIANJIN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Police in north China's Tianjin Municipality seized 13.43 kg of drugs from June 2019 to May 2020, according to a press conference held by the Information Office of Tianjin municipal government.

Police cracked 239 drug-related cases and arrested 302 suspects during the period.

New technology has been adopted in anti-narcotic operations. Drug metabolites concentration samples are extracted from major domestic sewage treatment plants, and sewage pumping stations are also examined in order to trace drug abusers.

The new tech helped police solve a major drug-related case at the end of last year, said Li Ming, director of the municipal anti-drug commission.

Tianjin has constructed drug rehabilitation centers in residential communities since 2018. So far, 220 such centers have been established with over 700 professionals overseeing the rehabilitation of drug addicts.

In 2019, the number of newly identified drug addicts in Tianjin declined by 41.6 percent year on year, and the rate of relapse has also dwindled by 13.5 percent among rehabilitated drug abusers. Enditem
Advertisement

Looters shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as they ransacked shops in Stuttgart on Saturday night and most of those arrested came from a 'migrant background', it has emerged.

Yobs attacked police with stones and bottles after a German teenager was arrested for a drugs offence in clashes which quickly escalated into the city's worst-ever night of rioting.

Of the 24 people arrested, 12 were foreign nationals while three of the other 12 were German nationals with a migrant background, police announced at a press conference on Sunday.

Hans-Jurgen Kirstein, the head of a police union, told Bild that 'young people with a migration background were at the front of the riots'.

German chancellor Angela Merkel today condemned the violence as 'abhorrent' after even paramedics were attacked with bottles while trying to help an injured person.

Police say there was no sign of a political motivation, blaming alcohol and the 'party scene' for the outbreak of violence - although some have linked the riots to the anti-police protests in the United States.

Footage verified by German media showed some of the rioters chanting 'Allahu Akbar', meaning 'God is great' in Arabic, as they ran down a street during the night-time violence.

Muslim blogger Nasir Ahmad condemned the rioters for 'abusing' the phrase, saying it is meant to be 'not a call to terror, but call to prayer and peace'.

Goods lie on the floor after people break into a shop on in Stuttgart on Saturday night in what police have described as the city's worst-ever night of violence

Footage verified by German media showed some of the rioters chanting 'Allahu Akbar' as they ran down a street during the night-time violence

Smashed glass in a shopping area of Stuttgart after the violence which broke out on Saturday night, which police have now linked to people of a mostly migrant background

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said today: 'Whoever has done this has turned against their city, against the people with whom they live and against the laws that protect us all.'

Stuttgart's deputy police chief Thomas Berger said that the hundreds of young looters had come from the 'party scene' and the 'Saturday night scene'.

In his 30 years as a police officer he had never seen violence like this and 'there have never been any scenes like this in Stuttgart,' he said.

Berger said the violence had erupted during a 'totally normal' encounter in which police arrested a white German teenager on suspicion of a drugs offence.

Some 200 to 300 people immediately started attacking police in 'solidarity' with the teenager, and the crowd of rioters eventually grew as high as 500, he said.

The rioters even threw bottles at paramedics who had been called to an 'emergency' at the scene, he said. German media has described the scenes as a 'battlefield'.

19 police officers were hurt and the number could yet rise because some of them may not have reported their injuries at the time, it is believed.

Police said 40 shops had been attacked while 12 police vehicles were damaged, some of them so badly that they had to be taken out of service.

Police officers with riot gear patrol in Stuttgart yesterday after hundreds of rioters vandalised shops in the German city

A pile of broken shop window glass is seen in Stuttgart's main shopping street after a group of looters smashed several windows during an outbreak of violence on Saturday night

The display window of a shop stands smashed following violent clashes with officers in Stuttgart last night

Goods lie on the floor after people broke into a shop on Marienstrasse in Stuttgart during a night of violence on Saturday and early Sunday

Workers repair damage to a display window of a shop following violent clashes between rioters and police that also led to looting the night before

Police on the scene in Stuttgart after violence broke out on Saturday night, leading to several police vehicles being damaged

Police chief Franz Lutz told a press conference that 'at the moment we can rule out a left-wing or indeed any political motivation' for the violence.

However, the 'party scene' which has re-emerged after the lifting of the coronavirus lockdown has recently seen a growing anti-police sentiment in social media posts, he said.

Police forces have been the subject of widespread anger around the world since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Crowds in Stuttgart threw stones and bottles while smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to officers.

Police said 40 businesses were vandalised and nine of them looted before the violence was finally brought under control at around 4.30am.

'These are unbelievable scenes which have left me speechless and which I've not experienced in my 46 years in the police,' Lutz said.

'There was a never-before-seen dimension of open violence against police and massive property damage,' he said.

'It is a sad day for Stuttgart and also for the police.'

Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Wurttemberg, has a population of more than 600,000

The display window of a shop stands smashed following violent clashes between rioters and police that also led to looting

A police vehicle is parked on a Stuttgart square yesterday following riots which Angela Merkel described as 'abhorrent'

Footage showed people wearing hoods and masks rushing in and out of broken store fronts. Clothing shops, a jewellers and a phone shop were among those targeted.Forty stores were smashed into, with at least nine of those being looted.

Glass shards are strewn over the floor of a store after its display window was destroyed in the main shopping area of Stuttgart

People look at the destroyed shop window of a shoe store in Stuttgart yesterday following the violence on Saturday night

Thomas Strobl, the interior minister of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg which includes Stuttgart, said the 'pictures reaching us from America may have led to a certain aggression'.

Speaking to regional broadcaster SWR, he said authorities would respond with 'everything that the rule of law provides us with' to track down and punish the rioters.

The foreign nationals arrested included suspected rioters from Bosnia, Portugal, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.



German police and media have increasingly tended to state a suspect's nationality after a controversy over New Year's Eve attacks on women in Cologne in 2015, when it was not initially revealed that some of the suspects were asylum seekers.

Allegations of a cover-up helped to spur the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which enjoyed a rise in the polls after Merkel opened Germany's doors to a million refugees in 2015.

Stuttgart mayor Fritz Kuhn, a member of the Green party, called this weekend's attacks on police 'unacceptable'.

He said that more people were on the street on Saturday night because many clubs and discos remained closed because of coronavirus.

'One cause was likely alcohol, another the addiction to social media film clips,' Kuhn said.

Video taken on mobile phones circulated widely on social media, with police asking witnesses to upload footage that could assist their investigation.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Govt plans to cut import dependence by building local capacity

The government is working on a sectoral strategy to reduce import dependence by building local capacity, creating value chains and quickly attaining self-reliance in at least half-a-dozen areas ranging from footwear and furniture to technical textiles and medical equipment to electronics and defence production, people aware of the development said. Read more

Containment plan to door to door checks: How Delhi, Mumbai are fighting Covid-19

Authorities in Mumbai and Delhi have drawn up new plans to contain the outbreak of the pandemic as the number of cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) have mounted in the past few days in the metros. Read more

Rare marine life sighted from Mahalaxmi shoreline

South Mumbai residents and a marine biologist have requested the state to protect areas around the Mahalaxmi Bay, as Coastal Road reclamation work has begun in the area. Read more

UP Police face a tough task to convince people over kanwar yatra

A day after the Uttar Pradesh government suspended the annual Kanwar Yatra in the wake of prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, officials in Meerut and Saharanpur regions  the two main pilgrimage centres of the yatra  said they have a tough task ahead to convey the decision of suspension of the yatra to devotees and convince them. Read more

Hundreds test positive for coronavirus at Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas

Tyson Foods is looking into reports that Chinas customs agency has suspended poultry imports from a Tyson facility in the United States after coronavirus cases were confirmed among its employees. Read more

Not quite a home run in Europe

Bayern Munichs run to the Bundesliga title winning all seven games since the restart seemed a walk in the park. That they extended their record run to an eighth German league title in a row, simply underlined their dominance at home. Read more

Apple to kick off WWDC 2020 today: All you need to know

Apple is back with yet another edition of its annual developers conference, WWDC 2020. However, this time around the company is hosting a virtual event instead of an on-ground event as it happens every year. Read more

Her, in your ear: Female podcasters on food, science, history and more

Why a column about women podcasters? Because most coverage of podcasts leaves them out almost entirely. On best-cast roundups, women make up barely a third of the entries. Read more

Happy birthday Vijay: 5 films that made him a box-office phenomenon

Tamil actor Vijay, who has been working for over two decades, is currently at the biggest high of his career so far with an unprecedented fan base and a slew of blockbuster films to his credit. In the last decade, Vijay truly established himself as one of the biggest stars of Tamil cinema. Read more

Watch| HT Salutes: Ulhasnagar resident who makes bird feeder out of waste products
The a2 Milk Company provided its last update on the Groups trading performance and its full year FY20 outlook with the release of its interim FY20 results (1H20) on 27 February 2020.

Since then, the Company has continued to experience strong revenue growth across all key regions, particularly in respect of infant nutrition products sold in China and Australia.

We are now able to confirm that our revenue for the three months to 31 March 2020 (3Q20) was above expectations. This primarily reflected the impact of changes in consumer purchase behaviour arising from the COVID-19 situation and included an increase in pantry stocking of our products particularly via online and reseller channels. We are unable to estimate the timing and extent to which pantry stocking may unwind.

In addition, our China segment revenue, transacted in US dollars, was favourably impacted by a significant depreciation of the New Zealand dollar to the US dollar in the quarter.

Overhead costs are now tracking lower than previously expected due to travel restrictions and some planned recruitment, particularly in China, being temporarily delayed.

The health and wellbeing of our people and those of our partners remains our primary focus and we continue to take measures to ensure all employees are as safe as possible.

Our business has benefited from the support of all our strategic partners who have assisted in managing the various supply chain challenges which have arisen during recent months.

We support the actions of the various governments in the countries in which we operate in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and remain vigilant to the ongoing advice of authorities.

FY20 Outlook

Given the COVID-19 situation, the outlook for both revenue and earnings remains uncertain. Furthermore, significant uncertainty remains around the potential impact on supply chains and consumer demand in our core markets and the resulting financial impact on our performance for the balance of the financial year.

Overall for FY20, we anticipate ongoing revenue growth across our key regions supported by increased levels of marketing investment in China and the USA as well as, to the extent practicable in the current circumstances, the ongoing development of our organisational capability to support the execution of our strategy.

Notwithstanding this uncertainty, we anticipate revenue for FY20 in the range of $1,700 million to $1,750 million.

Full year EBITDA margin is now anticipated to be above that advised in February and in the range of 31% to 32%. This assumes that planned marketing activity for FY20 of $200 million, weighted to 2H20, will be fully expended prior to year-end.

Our 2H20 EBITDA margin is therefore expected to be higher than previously anticipated. This is primarily a result of:

 Higher revenue, and hence gross margin, from higher margin nutritional products, in part due to consumer pantry stocking in 3Q20 compared to expectations;

 Favourable impact arising from exchange rate movement in USD:NZD impacting on China segment revenue and earnings; and

 Lower than expected costs for travel, and other costs as a consequence of a delay in planned recruitment, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

It is unlikely that these factors will be sustained as these unprecedented circumstances begin to unwind.

Given the above, the Board continues to consider it appropriate that the Company target an EBITDA margin in the order of 30% in the medium-term. This assumes the market performance and mix of our products remains broadly consistent and the competitive environment evolves as anticipated. We will keep the balance between growth and investment under constant review.

Source: The a2 Milk Company Limited

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Updates Market on FY22 Guidance

My Food Bag Group Limited (NZX: MFB) Q3 FY22 Trading Update

ikeGPS Group Limited (NZX: IKE) signs $0.9m deal with tier-1 electric utility

Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) Update on Tonga Volcanic Eruption and Tsunami Event

21st January 2022 Morning Report

Trade Window Holdings Limited (NZX: TWL) TradeWindow and Mastercard teams up

Genesis Energy Limited (NZX: GNE) FY22 Q2 Performance Report

Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Seeka announces dividend of 13 cents per share

20th January 2022 Morning Report

Z Energy Limited (NZX: ZEL) Q3FY33 Operating Data


Green watchdog urges Ghana govt to deny licences to new Chinese trawlers

June 22,2020 | Source: GhanaWeb

Watchdog Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) has deepened its call on the government to resist any attempt by the Fisheries Commission to issue licences to three Chinese trawlers that have been registered to the Ghanaian flag and are awaiting licensing, despite a moratorium on new fishing vessels due to extreme over-capacity in the existing fleet.



The pressure group alleged that already, 90 per cent of Ghanas industrial trawl fleet is linked to Chinese ownership, saying Ghana has the largest registry of Chinese distant-water vessels outside China.





The new vesselsYu Feng 1, 3 and 4were all built-in China in 2016 and were all flying the Chinese flag before arriving in Ghana. To bypass Ghanas laws, which prohibit foreigners from engaging in joint ventures in the industrial trawl sector, Chinese corporations operate through Ghanaian front companies, using opaque corporate structures to import their vessels, register and obtain a licence, EJF said.



Ghanas Fisheries Management Plan states that 48 trawlers are the most that the fishery can sustain, yet EJF said 72 trawlers are currently licensed.



A government moratorium on fishing licences for new or replacement trawl vessels has been in force since 2012.



The Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council has also opposed the licensing of the new trawlers in an open letter the council sent to the Fisheries Commission.



Our fish stocks in Ghana are in crisis and the small pelagic fisherythe lifeline of our artisanal fishing communitiesis on the verge of collapse. As identified in the 2015-2019 Fisheries Management Plan, there are already too many trawlers fishing in Ghanas waters, the council said in the letter.



The canoe council highlighted in its letter that the new trawlers are registered to local companies established in 2019, with only a PO Box as their address.



Respectfully, we ask how it is possible that a newly established fishing company in Ghana can suddenly acquire one or two trawlers of this size with the costs involved? Is the Fisheries Commission able to confirm that it has investigated the beneficial ownership of these companies to ensure that only Ghanaian citizens will be controlling and profiting from the operations? the letter said.



Ghana has a severe issue with a type of illegal fishing known as Saiko. Small pelagic fish, known as the peoples fish, are subject to targeted illegal fishing by trawlers. They are then transferred at sea to specially adapted boats and sold back to local communities at a profit.



The EJF cited a similar situation in Senegal, where the country has rejected licensing requests for 52 new industrial fishing vessels, after Senegalese small-scale fishers and industrial shipowners raised the alarm.



Executive Director of the EJF Steve Trent said: Senegal made the right choice in declining these licences and thereby protecting its fisheries and the livelihoods and food security of its coastal communities. In Ghana, illegal and unsustainable fishing is already driving fish stocks to the brink of collapse.



Approving new licenses nowwhen by the governments own admission, the fleet is already over-capacitywould be a catastrophic, unjustifiable mistake. I firmly hope that the Ghanaian government follows the good example set by Senegal and declines these requests.

 1994 - 2020 GhanaWeb. All rights reserved.

Theme(s): Fishing Craft, Gear and Fishing Methods.
The government could redirect the source-markets for electronic goods away from China -- the single largest supply market now -- to others like Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the US, if it wants to really contain imports from the northern neighbour, says the WTC. More than 90 per cent of the electronic goods imports from China are of integrated circuits, and television sets, according to the data collated by the World Trade Centre Mumbai on Monday.

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
Geojit's report on Agri Picks

Farmers have sown kharif crops across 13.13 mln ha so far, up over 39% on year, according to data released by the farm ministry.  The food ministry is mulling a physical limit on procurement of rice from the upcoming marketing season, starting September, to find a permanent solution to excess procurement amid rising stock in the central pool, senior government officials said.  The BSE will launch almond contracts from Monday, the exchange said in a release.  India received 6.4 mm rainfall on 19th June, 7% higher than the weighted normal average of 6.0 mm for the day, the India Meteorological Department said. Since Jun 1, the country has received 114.7 mm rainfall, 30% higher than the normal of 88.4 mm for the period.  The southwest monsoon is likely to hit Uttarakhand and cover more parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh around Monday, the India Meteorological Department said.  After procuring over 80% Chana of the target of 2.2 mln tn for 2020-21 (Apr-Mar) as of Tuesday, the government expects to buy the rest by the end of this month under the price support scheme.  The government has already provided financial assistance of 654.54 bln rupees to 420 mln citizens as part of the 1.7-trln-rupee Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan scheme, it said in a press release. This comes soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, which aims to boost employment opportunities in rural areas.  India's exports of castor oil and its derivatives are expected to slump 10% this year, primarily due to eroding demand amid the coronavirus pandemic, Jayant Agro-Organics Ltd Chairman Abhay Udeshi said. In 2019, exports of the nonedible oil were at 545,292 tn, according to data by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade.  Production of sugar in Uttar Pradesh for the 2019-20 (Oct-Sep) season has touched a record high of 12.65 mln tn, against 11.82 mln tn in the last season, the Sugar Industry & Cane Development Department said in a release.

For all commodities report, click here

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.



Read More
Hyderabad, June 22 : Stepping up the attack on the Centre, Telangana Health Minister E. Rajender on Monday said its fight against coronavirus is confined to clapping and lighting lamps.

On a day when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organized state-wide protests over Telangana government's failure in containing the spread of Covid-19, the minister intensified his attack on the BJP-led Central government.

"Without giving funds to contain coronavirus and treat the patients, the Centre is washing its hands off by asking people to clap and light lamps," the minister said referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's calls for clapping to express solidarity towards doctors and other frontline workers and lighting the lamps to show unity in the fight against coronavirus.

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao had not only backed Modi's calls but also took part in the programmes on March 22 and April 5.

The minister said the Centre was only paying lip-service and had not provided funds. He said the Centre gave only Rs 214 crore.

BJP state President Bandi Sanjay had stated earlier in the day that the Centre provided Rs 1,000 crore and asked the TRS government to explain where the money was spent.

Rajender said while the state government was making all efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19, some leaders were playing cheap politics. "Staging dharnas in front of hospitals for politics is shameful," he said referring to BJP's protest on Monday.

The Health Minister said the BJP leaders who were critising the state government for conducting fewer tests should know how their government at the Centre diverted a machine meant for Telangana.

He said Telangana was the first state in the country to order COBAS 8800 machine which has the capacity to do 3,500 to 4,000 tests every day. The state had ordered three machines but the first machine to reach the country was diverted to West Bengal.

He released to the media copies of the letter from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to Roche Diagnostics to send the machine to Kolkata for installation at National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED).

The machine was originally meant for installation at the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in Hyderabad.

Roche Diagnostics in a letter dated June 14 informed the Telangana authorities that ICMR directed them to divert the machine to NICED, Kolkata considering the national emergency and pandemic scenario.
An investor looks at stock prices on a smartphone at a brokerage in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

Vietnam's benchmark VN-Index added 0.31 percent to 871.28 points Monday, with several individual blue chips carrying the markets gains.

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the VN-Index is based, saw a fairly balanced session with 205 stocks gaining and 172 losing. Total transaction volume hit VND5.35 trillion ($231 million), an above-average trading day on the HoSE.

The VN30-Index for the markets 30 largest capped stocks gained 0.21 percent, with 11 tickers gaining and 14 losing.

CTD of construction giant Coteccons topped gains at 6.9 percent, its ceiling price. Coteccons had just announced the resignation of Nguyen Sy Cong and Nguyen Tat Thang, two of its top executives, but did not elaborate on the reason.

The executives are to be replaced with personnel from Kustocem and The8th, two Singapore-based construction investors, who own 18.23 percent and 10.42 percent of the Vietnamese construction giant, respectively.

Kutsocem and The8th had in early-June voiced claims that some senior Coteccons executives were acting in ways that gave rise to conflicts of interests and violated corporate governance principles, allegations the Coteccons board denied.

Kustocem itself called for an extraordinary general meeting on June 2, causing CTD to plunge two consecutive days, but the stock shot up again by 7 percent when Coteccons then-general director Nguyen Sy Cong issued a press release clarifying its business practices, stating Kusto had last October made the same move to replace management and acquire a bigger stake in the construction firm.

On the VN30, CTD was followed by VHM of construction giant Vinhomes, up 2.4 percent, and MSN of food conglomerate Masan Group, up 2.3 percent.

MWG of electronics retailer Mobile World and SBT of agricultural firm TTC-Sugar both gained 1.7 percent, while TCB of private Techombank, and GAS of energy giant PetroVietnam Gas added 1.2 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.

Of Vietnams biggest state-owned lenders by assets, CTG of VietinBank added 0.4 percent, VCB of Vietcombank edged up 0.1 percent, while BID of BIDV fell 0.4 percent.

Topping losses this session were stocks of private banks. STB of Sacombank shed 1.7 percent, HDB of HDBank 1.1 percent, and VPB of VPBank 0.4 percent.

Other major losing stocks included BVH of insurance giant Bao Viet Group, down 1 percent, VJC of budget carrier Vietjet Air, 0.9 percent, VRE of mall operator Vincom Retail, 0.7 percent, and SSI of brokerage Saigon Securities Inc., 0.7 percent.

After rising 6.9 percent to its ceiling price last Friday, VIC of private conglomerate Vingroup, the largest capped stock on HoSE, fell 0.4 percent.

Given its high market cap, VIC seldom moves over 2 percent, with the latest session move ascribed to investors exchanging around VND165.41 billion ($7.14 million) worth of VIC shares, using at-the-close (ATC) orders.

Meanwhile, HNX-Index for stocks on Hanoi Stock Exchange, home to mid and small caps, shed 0.63 percent, and UPCoM-Index for stocks on Unlisted Public Companies Market added 0.6 percent.

Foreign investors continued to be net sellers to the tune of VND30 billion ($1.29 million) on all three bourses, with buying pressure mostly on VNM of Vinamilk, and stocks outside the VN30.
It's known as the "office of hate." And like all good conspiracies, there's no hard proof it actually exists.

The alleged clandestine network of bots, businessmen and bloggers is said by some lawmakers and Brazil's biggest newspaper to rain vitriol on all who oppose President Jair Bolsonaro -- whether it be a super-star judge who jumps ship, a health minister who won't toe the line on the administration's covid strategy or a journalist who pens a critical article.

Now, the Supreme Court is trying to unmask pro-Bolsonaro social-media attack dogs after saying it found "serious evidence" pointing to the group's existence. The president blasts the effort as an affront to free speech and a political witch-hunt by a deep state cabal. The top court, which took the unusual step of launching its own investigation, alleges the "office of hate" may have weaponized fake news in a coordinated bid to topple opponents, institutions and perhaps even democracy itself.

There are "two or three campaigns every day in real time on every issue," said Marco Aurelio Ruediger, director of the Department of Public Policy Analysis at Getulio Vargas University, known as FGV, in Rio de Janeiro. "It's spontaneous, but also professional."

The Supreme Court investigation set in motion an interstate raid last month of properties linked to a far-right blogger, three high-profile businessmen and a dozen others. The case builds on two more probes already under way: One ordered by the nation's electoral watchdog and another by Congress.

Combined, the probes target the very way Bolsonaro communicates and energizes his base. Rulings against him could not only muzzle the social media machine that helped shoot him to power, but could also be grounds for impeachment.

"All these people were decisive in the construction of Bolsonaro, decisive in the creation of his persona, and decisive in keeping him in power," said Thomas Traumann, a communications consultant who served as spokesman to former President Dilma Rousseff. "They are his private army."

The Presidential Palace declined to comment for this article.

Nations everywhere are struggling under a barrage of fake news, social-media attacks and how to balance it all with free speech. Twitter bots played a big role in the U.S.'s 2016 vote, from alleged Russian social-media interference to pro-Trump hashtags getting five times as much traffic from automated accounts on election night, according to one analysis.

But in Brazil, the Supreme Court's decision to wade into politics via a direct investigation is fueling allegations of judicial overreach. The 11 justices could eventually rule and hand down sentences based on a probe they are overseeing, while evidence uncovered in the process may be used in the Electoral Court case that could potentially invalidate results from the 2018 presidential vote.

Bolsonaro's genius as a politician has always been that he speaks directly to the people, largely eschewing TV and radio. The strategy helped the 65-year-old former army captain and little-known lawmaker win over virtual legions of followers as a tough-talking, traditional-value-protecting outsider on live streams and YouTube shows.

"While others were struggling to adapt their political machinery to a digital world, Bolsonaro was born from it," said Manoel Fernandes, director of Bites, a Sao Paulo-based data-analysis firm.

With Brazil's economy sliding back into recession, Bolsonaro is under fire for a series of crises: the coronavirus pandemic that has sickened more than 1 million people; public clashes with governors who advocate lockdowns that he abhors; an exodus of ministers; and accusations he interfered with a corruption probe involving his son, Flavio Bolsonaro, a Rio state lawmaker. (Flavio's former aid was arrested in the case on June 18.)

As the controversies swirl, Bolsonaro and his supporters are stepping up the fiery rhetoric. He's convened rowdy demonstrations in front of the court in Brasilia. "Enough, dammit!" Bolsonaro said at the presidential palace the day after the raids. "I respect the constitution, but everything has its limits."

Initially bandied around informally in anti-Bolsonaro circles, the "office of hate" joined the broader public's lexicon as Folha de S. Paulo popularized the term to describe the president's Internet savvy advisers who pull the strings behind smear campaigns. In late 2018, Brazil's largest daily reported that Bolsonaro allies had hired online influencers and digital marketing firms to send bulk social-media messages to dominate the political conversation.

The news report triggered the investigation by the Electoral Court, which is seeking to determine if Bolsonaro supporters paid for his messaging and didn't declare it -- a violation of campaign financing laws. Congress launched its own probe into fake news in September that could lead to legislation to curb disinformation.

Folha in April reported that the federal police had identified another Bolsonaro son, Carlos, his former campaign manager, as orchestrator of the smears, allegations he denies. "We are the people most attacked daily on social media," he said on Twitter the day of the May raids.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who heads the investigation, wrote in a May 27 decision green-lighting the raids and seizure of computers, smartphones and bank records that there was evidence, including testimony from two lawmakers formerly allied with Bolsonaro, of a "criminal association" dedicated to mass dissemination of fake news. The attacks, he said, damage the image of the high court and jeopardize "the rule of law."

Bolsonaro, nor his son, were directly linked to the alleged "office of hate" in the Supreme Court document.

In a highly publicized case last year, after a court ruling that led to the release of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was convicted of corruption, one Twitter user posted, "May they rape and kill the daughters of the Supreme Court justices." Justices have cited that tweet in their investigation as well as others in recent rulings. "The time has passed to bring in the armed forces," one Twitter user said. Another declared: "THE DICTATORSHIP IS COMING!"

Many of the attacks are said to be volleyed about on Facebook's WhatsApp, the ubiquitous group chats that Brazilians prefer over more public forms of social media. Facebook declined to comment.

In the week after the raids, the five most-shared YouTube videos on WhatsApp groups were from far-right bloggers or Bolsonaro-friendly outlets, according to a study by FGV's Department of Public Policy Analysis. In a June 2 sample on Twitter, pro-Bolsonaro users engaged in political debate represented 14% of profiles, but accounted for 36% of all interactions.

WhatsApp has said that during the 2018 election, it banned some 2 million accounts a month associated with businesses using bots to send out mass messages, a violation of its policy.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court justices ruled in a unanimous vote that the investigation should move forward.

"We are taking this to the end," Justice Gilmar Mendes said in interview on June 6, before the decision. "We must try to institutionalize the fight against fake news, and improve systems of control."
Clauson said Community Schools, of which there are few programs in the northern suburbs, goes beyond a standard school community. Partnerships are fostered with organizations to help not only children, but their families. The programs focus on needs like medical, shelter and more.
Gandhinagar, June 22 : Four members of various Hindu outfits have been detained as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order in Gujarat over their alleged plans to hold Rath Yatra in Ahmedabad despite High Court orders, police said on Monday.

The AHP organisation, along with many other Hindu outfits had planned to gather in Ahmedabad and make a representation to the Jagannath temple trustees to continue with the tradition of Rath Yatra despite the Gujarat High Court order against it.

The Ranip police in Ahmedabad had detained the four, including Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP) Gujarat president Nikunj Parikh. The AHP and Rashtriya Bajrang Dal Gujarat unit had openly opposed the High Court's order.

Demands by many Hindu outfits to hold the Rath Yatra on June 23 had gone viral on the social media.

According to police, AHP, Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Parishad, and Bajrang Dal etc had planned to gather at the Arjun Bhagat Aashram at Chandlodia in Ahmedabad and forward a demand to the Jagannath temple trustees to hold the procession as planned.

"We have detained four persons from these outfits as a precautionary measure. We detained Parikh and one other persons from their hosues around 2 am, while the other two were detained from Arjun Ashram at 10 am. We had deployed 8 to 10 police personal at the ashram, following intelligence inputs," an official at the Ranip police station said.

Citing the Supreme Court's stay on Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra in Puri in Odisha amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Gujarat High Court had on Saturday stayed the Rath Yatra procession in Ahmedabad city scheduled for June 23.

Earlier, Ahmedabad's Jagannath temple authorities had been making preparations to hold the 143rd religious procession even though the state had not taken a clear stand on whether to grant or deny permission.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Tamilla Mammadova  Trend:

Georgia imported 248.7 tons of medicaments in measured dose, totaling $19.9 million from Turkey from January through May 2020, Trend reports referring to National Statistics Office (Geostat).

On an annualized basis, Georgia decreased the medicaments' import from Turkey by 369.8 tons.

Over the same period last year, 618.5 tons of medicaments put up in measured doses were imported by Georgia from Turkey for a total amount of $39 million.

Turkey ranked first in Georgias commodity circulation in the reporting period.

From January through May 2020, total imports from Turkey to Georgia amounted to $478.8 million. In turn, Georgia exported goods worth $81.7 million to Turkey.

The foreign trade turnover of Georgia with Turkey in the reporting period exceeded $560.5 million, which is 13.3 percent of Georgia's total trade turnover.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.

The American technology industry was built on the white hot rage of underdogs.

When Apple was founded, it mocked IBM as a bully that made terrible computers. Pipsqueak Google made Microsoft its mortal enemy. The young Uber hated  everyone, basically. Its energizing to be the scrappy upstart fighting a rich superpower or the big, bad system.

The technology companies still like to believe that theyre Davids  except many of them are now Goliaths. And the underdog tactics and fighting spirit that once served them well now make these companies look petty and mean.

Allow me to point you in the direction of lawsuits that Amazon has repeatedly filed against employees who leave its cloud-computing business for other jobs.
MEDIA  The borough continues to hold virtual meetings following recommended pandemic guidelines. Citizens who might have been present in council chambers for the June legislative meeting were able to send questions to be considered by the board. With this in mind, council President Brian Hall opened with a statement.

I anticipate that we will receive some comments concerning an incident that involved one of our (police) officers a couple of weeks ago in postings on social media, Hall said, referencing a controversial posting by Sgt. Robert Skippy Carroll. I assure you that borough council has taken this incident seriously. The investigation is in its final stages, and it will be completed soon. As soon as it is completed, council will decide on appropriate disciplinary action.

At the end of the meeting, administrative assistant Karen Repino advised council of all emails or calls submitted to the board. Approximately three dozen concerned the police matter. All would be added to the official meeting minutes, but only names and addresses (where the latter were provided). Hall succinctly spoke to these queries by saying the matter had been addressed at the start of the meeting.

Carroll, a 25-year police veteran and an FOP first vice president, and an Aston sandwich shop owner sparred through postings on Facebook in the beginning of June. Public protests and involvement happened immediately including local residents, elected officials, the Delaware County Black Caucus. In a matter of days, a statement was issued by the FOP; an apology by Carroll on a poorly worded and misinterpreted post; and comment by the shop owner which said, This is a misunderstanding and the truth will come out.

Carroll has been put on leave. No further statements have been forthcoming by Carroll or the FOP. Borough council is the authority regarding police employment and made its status clear.

While public attention may have centered on this issue, councils other business will have substantial impact on the borough. The announcement was made about the retirement of Public Works Director Ralph DeRosa who has been with the borough for 42 years. Hall said he had been given the okay to also announce that borough Manager Jeff Smith will be leaving after two decades at the helm due to a necessary move from the area. Both individuals are deserving of and will be lauded in future meetings, hopefully in person.

On a somewhat normal note, dining outside has been a staple along State Street for quite awhile. With some restrictions lifted Wednesdays Dining Under the Stars has restarted with some trial runs on weekends including Fathers Day.
The 'once unbreakable' bond between Prince William and Prince Harry has suffered a 'devastating breakdown' in the past 18 months - making it the most profound conflict between an heir and spare for a generation, an explosive new book claims.

Biographer Robert Lacey, a historical consultant for Netflix's The Crown as well as the author of Majesty, a 1977 study of Queen Elizabeth, has penned Battle of Brothers: William and Harry - the Friendship and the Feuds, set to be released in October.

He told how he was 'astonished' and 'sometimes moved to tears' by the fresh details of the rift that emerged while he was researching the conflict.

The book explores conflicts that emerge as a result of the heir and the spare dynamic that permeates British aristocracy, and claims that the 'seeds of damage were sown' when William and Harry's parents' marriage unravelled.

The 'once unbreakable' bond between Prince William and Prince Harry has suffered a 'devastating breakdown' in the past 18 months, an explosive new book claims. Pictured: Prince William, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle at the Commonwealth Day service in London in March

It will also delve into how the relationship between the two brothers has been impacted by their wives - Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, both 38 - and claims to offer more detail on why the Sussexes chose to quit as senior members of the Royal Family and move to Los Angeles with their son Archie, one.

In a press release, Lacey said: 'These two brothers - once inseparable and now separated by much more than mere distance - have been acting out the contradictions that go back into their childhoods and even before that: into their parents' ill-fated marriage.

'We have seen conflicts between heir and spare in every recent generation of the royal family  but nothing so profound as this.'

He added that writing the book was both 'painful and enthralling', admitting: 'I have been astonished and sometimes moved to tears by the fresh details and insights I have discovered in researching this story of family conflict.

The book also explores conflicts that emerge as a result of the 'heir and the spare' dynamic that permeates British aristocracy, and claims that the 'seeds of damage were sown' when William and Harry's parents' marriage unravelled. Pictured: Harry and William as children with their mother Diana at Thorpe Park

Lacey said writing the book was both 'painful and enthralling', admitting: 'I have been astonished and sometimes moved to tears by the fresh details and insights I have discovered in researching this story of family conflict.' Pictured: Prince William And Prince Harry at his military helicopter training course in Shrewsbury

'It has been both enthralling and painful to trace this drama through the memories of close witnesses and some of the people most intimately involved.'

The book's synposis tells how Lacey investigates the 'untold reality' of the brothers' relationship

The book's synposis tells how Lacey investigates the 'untold reality' of the brothers' relationship.

'Much reported on but little understood, Diana's boys have lived under constant scrutiny since birth,' it reads.

'Raised to be the closest of brothers, the last 18 months has seen a devastating breakdown of their once unbreakable bond.

'With an unrivalled knowledge of court life and access to impeccable sources, Robert Lacey investigates the untold reality of the brothers' relationship, explaining what happened when two sons were raised for vastly different futures and showing how the seeds of damage were sown as their parents' marriage unravelled.'

It is believed the trigger that caused the rift to develop between William and Harry was when the Duke of Cambridge, 38, advised his younger sibling to 'take things slow' when he first began dating Meghan Markle in 2017.

The Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George pose on December 18 in a photograph to mark the start of the new decade in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace

Relations became so sour that they reportedly didn't talk for weeks after Harry's wedding, where William was best man. Then Megxit, and the way it was handled, left William and Charles devastated.

In a documentary last year - Harry & Meghan: An African Journey - the Duke of Sussex, 35, admitted he and William are 'certainly on different paths at the moment'.

He told ITV's Tom Bradby: 'Inevitably stuff happens. But we're brothers, we'll always be brothers.'

Relations became so sour that they reportedly didn't talk for weeks after Harry's wedding, where William was best man (pictured arriving at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in May 2018)

Royal aides fear Meghan and Harry's new book will blame William for brothers' rift Kensington Palace have said they would not comment on the book  which is being re-drafted and is set to be released in August. Meghan and Harry's upcoming book 'Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the making of a modern Royal Family', which the couple are believed to have cooperated with, is soon to be released. It charts their journey in the Royal Family to the point where they stepped down from senior duties this year. Royal aides are now said to be increasingly worried about the publication and the potential repercussions for the future monarch Prince William, reports The Sun. The book is not an official biography though it is believed the couple have worked with the authors - journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand. Over 100 people from around the Royal Family are understood to have given information for the production of the book, which is believed to be set to show Harry and Meghan in a positive light. With large topics set to centre around the withdrawal of Harry and Meghan from senior roles, royal anxiety now surrounds the likely inclusion of the Queen's 'Megxit' showdown talks at Sandringham, in which the Royal Family came together to discuss the transition. It is felt that Prince William's role in said talks may not be looked back upon favourably, with England's future king reported to be the last to arrive and made a swift exit in the aftermath. The talks resulted in Harry and Meghan being request to drop their HRH titles, before they then moved to Canada, and Los Angeles thereafter. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex then outlined their plans to become financially independent and earn their own income. Royal sources have said such a possible negative portrayal as William as a 'bad guy' against the philanthropic Harry and Meghan would not be fair. A source told the Sun: 'They are worried William especially will be portrayed in a bad light. This sort of family spat shouldnt be out there in public. 'This shouldn't happen to future monarchs. The book could be the most damaging thing to the Royal Family since Prince Diana's interview on Panorama with Martin Bashir.' Advertisement

The American edition's jacket cover of the book features a photograph taken earlier this year when the 'Fab Four' reunited at the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey, where royal watchers branded their interaction 'frosty'.

A source previously told People that the brothers' relationship is 'forever changed' and they 'won't get back to the way they were'.

'Harry is looking straight ahead at his future with his family,' they added.

The American edition's jacket cover of the book features a photograph taken earlier this year when the 'Fab Four' reunited at the Commonwealth Day service

During lockdown, a source told Fabulous Digital that the brothers have been chatting via Zoom.

'William finds Zoom a good, informal way of keeping in touch, and some would say "tabs", on his younger brother,' they said, adding that the calls remain private between the two brothers, with a friend close to the pair claiming William is 'very anxious' to keep the calls 'low key and casual'.

The Mail on Sunday previously revealed that former Welsh Guards officer Mark Dyer has a new role acting as a pivotal go-between in the sensitive business of building bridges between once-close Harry and William, particularly since the younger sibling turned his back on Royal life.

A friend said: 'Long transatlantic chats between Mark and Harry have started to reap healing dividends between the brothers. His advice to the Prince was "talk and listen".'

Meanwhile Meghan and Harry's upcoming book 'Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the making of a modern Royal Family', which the couple are believed to have cooperated with, is soon to be released and charts their journey among the Royal Family, to the point where they stepped down from senior duties this year.

Meanwhile Meghan and Harry's upcoming book 'Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the making of a modern Royal Family', which the couple are believed to have cooperated with, is soon to be released and charts their journey among the Royal Family, to the point where they stepped down from senior duties this year
The Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, on Monday adduced reasons why the Nigerian government and military have not been able to win the decade-long war against Boko Haram.

Mr Zulum spoke while hosting a visiting delegation from the Senate on a sympathy visit to the state over the recent attacks in Borno state.

PREMIUM TIMES had last week reported how gunmen believed to be members of ISWAP, a breakaway faction of Boko Haram, attacked some villages and killed about 120 civilians. The insurgents had also rustled over 1200 cows from the attacked communities.

The delegation, led by the Senate Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi, and the Senate Chief Whip, Orji Kalu, visited Maiduguri to commiserate with the state over the killings.

Lack of numerical strength

The governor also told the visiting lawmakers , including the immediate governor of Borno state, Kashim Shettima, that the soldiers fighting the war are inadequate.

Another huge setback is the issue of the numerical strength of the Nigerian military. The numerical force of the troops in the theatre is lean, he said.

Most importantly, we want a situation whereby our gallant civilian-JTF to be massively recruited into the Nigerian military and other paramilitary to end the insurgency.

Recruiting them is very critical because the essential thing is to gain commitment. We have a vast army of committed members of the vigilante and the civilian-JTF to end the insecurity and bring peace and stability to their fatherland.

The governor called on the Senate to look into the issue of funding and examine the existing gaps as a strategy for winning the war.

Another critical challenge facing the ongoing counterinsurgency war is the issue of funding of the military. Under no circumstance can a battalion operate successfully with a lean operational cost,he said.

Taking War to Insurgents

Governor Zulum said one of the ways of winning the war now is for troops to take the battle to the identified hideouts of the insurgents.

We have many challenges, and one of them is that of the insurgents who are currently operating in the shores of Lake Chad and the Sambisa Game Reserve, he said.

The only solution to ending this insurgency is for troops to dislodge insurgents from their hideouts.

Another most important thing is the collaboration between the government of Borno State and our neighbouring countries. I dont think the government of Nigeria can succeed without the cooperation of our neighbouring countries.

The governor said despite recent setbacks, efforts of the government have helped in stabilising the security situation in the Northeast zone.

Thanking the delegation for a visit, Governor Zulum, said Borno state would never forget the support and assistance it has received from the federal government towards restoring the peace in the state.

He said there was no doubt that the federal government has helped Borno out of the pre-2015 days when Boko Haram insurgents were in control of most of the local government areas of the state.

International Collaboration

Governor Zulum said Nigeria cannot win the war against Boko Haram without the international collaboration of its three neighbouring states.

We need the support of the Chadian administration, with the support of the Cameroonian administration and that of Nigerien is needed to end this insurgency, he said.

READ ALSO:

He also listed the working synergy amongst the military services as key to winning the war, stressing that lack of required synergy amongst the security agencies is a thing of concern to all of us.

Most importantly, lack of technological war tools by the Nigerian army is a matter of grave concern to all of us.

The military too must do all that it can to close the gaps of the existing trust deficit between it and the civil populace.

Advertisements



Recent killings in Borno

Governor Zulum said the state desires better approaches to ending the insurgency, especially with the recent turn of events.

Let me extend my sincere appreciation to the federal government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari for stabilising the security situation in the northeast subregion, he said.

We also appreciate the National Assembly for all the efforts that it has been rendering towards developing the entire northeast sub-region  particularly the establishment of the Northeast development commission.

However, the recent spontaneous attacks in Borno state is a thing of grave concern to all of us. We cannot overemphasise the nexus between insecurity and development. If there is no peace, there wont be security and development.

The governor said the people of Borno state are facing a grave challenge due to the renewed attacks by the insurgents.

He said the biggest challenge of the residents is the limited access to farmlands by our citizens.

We need to address the root causes of the insurgency which are not limited to endemic poverty, poverty and illiteracy, unemployment, environmental degradation amongst others. Right now, the majority of our citizens have limited access to their farms.

Governor Zulum said without resolving these critical matters; he doubts if we can make any progress in the counterinsurgency efforts.

It is our sincere hope that the recent moves by the president will bring lasting peace to Borno state and the Northeast in general, he said.

Speaking earlier, the senate leader, Yahaya Abdullahi, said the Senate mandated his committee to visit Borno and commiserate with the people over recent killings in the state.

The Senate Leader commended governor Zulums leadership style as well as his courageous move to restore peace in the state.

Mr Abdullahi said the Senate had upon receiving the sad news of killings in Gubio and Monguno, had directed the Senate President to meet the President of the country to discuss ways to bring the insecurity to an end.

Yesterday, the Senate President had a meeting with President Buhari, and I am sure they discussed the issues of killing in the northeast. I am sure very soon this problem will become a thing of the past, he said.

Other members of the delegation include former Senate Majority leader, Ali Ndume, Abubakar Kyari and two members of the House of Reps from Borno State.
Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency approves Phase 2b/3 study miR-AGE of ABX464 in COVID-19 patients

miR-AGE study has been approved by French and German regulators, and most recently by the British and Italian regulatory authorities

French government announced the selection of six COVID-19 projects to finance with a total of 78m EUR, with Abivax to receive 36m EUR

Final agreements for the 36m EUR funding have been signed with Bpifrance

Patient enrollment in ulcerative colitis Phase 2b trial post COVID-19 getting back on track, with 113 of 232 randomized to date

All resolutions presented during the general meeting were adopted

PARIS, FRANCE / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / Abivax SA (Euronext Paris: FR0012333284 - ABVX), a late stage clinical biotechnology company harnessing the immune system to develop novel treatments for inflammatory diseases, viral diseases and cancer, today provides an update on its most recent clinical and financial achievements and developments and announces the positive results of the annual ordinary and extraordinary general meeting held on June 19, 2020.

The Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA - Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria) approved the randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled miR-AGE trial in high-risk COVID-19 patients. The study, already approved in France and Germany, will now be expanded to Brazil, where the number of new infections is still increasing rapidly. Approval for the miR-AGE trial has also been granted by the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA), with approval in Spain expected shortly.

Prof. Hartmut J. Ehrlich, M.D., CEO of Abivax, said: "By expanding the miR-AGE study to Brazil, currently the pandemic's most active country, we hope to be able to provide an efficient therapeutic option for the treatment of high-risk COVID-19 patients. We are also advancing the approval process in additional Latin American countries that are heavily affected by the rapid expansion of the pandemic. In parallel, patient recruitment is progressing according to our expectations for our ongoing clinical trials with ABX464, i.e. the Phase 2b in ulcerative colitis and Phase 2a in rheumatoid arthritis, as well as the US Phase 1/2 trial with ABX196 to treat hepatocellular carcinoma."

Prof. Jorge Kalil, M.D., Ph.D., Head of Immunology at the University Hospital in Sao Paulo and miR-AGE overall study coordinator in Brazil, added: "We are eager to start the miR-AGE trial in Brazil and to test this innovative and promising drug candidate for the benefit of all countries and patients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still globally present. We hope to see a positive effect from the early treatment with ABX464 in reducing the severity of the disease by inhibiting viral replication, preventing hyper-inflammation and thus the potential deadly acute respiratory distress syndrome and also by limiting potential long-term lung injury in patients."

Philippe Pouletty, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Abivax, said: "We are proud that Abivax's ABX464 was selected by the French government as a promising drug candidate for treatment of COVID-19. We wish to thank Bpifrance, the Secretariat General pour l'Investissement (SGPI) and the French government for their backing and support of Abivax. At the same time, while we are confident that ABX464 may have a positive impact by reducing the severity of COVID-19 sequelae, we remain prudent on expectations for the miR-AGE trial given the complexities surrounding treatment of COVID-19 disease. Progressing ABX464 development in chronic inflammatory diseases remains Abivax's corporate priority."

With regards to the financial situation of the Company, the final agreements with Bpifrance, the investment bank of the French state, have been signed following the French government's selection of six development projects for a potent COVID-19 treatment. These projects will be financed with a total of 78m EUR by the French state, of which Abivax will receive 36m EUR in non-dilutive funding for its 1,034-patient ABX464 Phase 2b/3 COVID-19 (miR-AGE) trial, manufacturing scale-up, as well as additional development costs related to other ABX464 studies and the potential filing of ABX464 Marketing Authorization Applications (MAA).

Abivax recently also announced a further 5m EUR non-dilutive financing from Societe Generale in the form of a loan guaranteed by the French state (PGE - Prets Garantis par l'Etat).

Didier Blondel, Chief Financial Officer of Abivax, said: "With the official signing of the final contracts with Bpifrance and the loan recently granted by Societe Generale, Abivax's cash resources will fully finance the corporate objectives and current development plans until early 2021. We currently plan to continue to focus on sourcing additional non-dilutive financing options for the longer term."

The Company also announces today that it held its annual ordinary and extraordinary general meetings on June 19, 2020 behind closed doors, under the chairmanship of Dr. Philippe Pouletty, Chairman of the Board of Directors and without the physical presence of its shareholders due to COVID-19 social distancing practices.

All resolutions presented by the Board of Directors were adopted, including the compensation policy applicable to the Chief Executive Officer and the directors. Details of the voting results on all resolutions will be available on the company website.

About Abivax

Abivax, a clinical stage biotechnology company, is mobilizing the body's natural immune machinery to treat patients with autoimmune diseases, viral infections, and cancer. Abivax is listed on Euronext compartment B (ISIN: FR0012333284 - Mnemo: ABVX). Based in Paris and Montpellier, Abivax has two drug candidates in clinical development, ABX464 to treat severe inflammatory diseases, and ABX196 to treat hepatocellular carcinoma.

More information on the company is available at www.abivax.com . Follow us on Twitter @ABIVAX_.

Contacts

Abivax

Communications

Regina Jehle

regina.jehle@abivax.com

+33 6 24 50 69 63 Investors

LifeSci Advisors

Chris Maggos

chris@lifesciadvisors.com

+41 79 367 6254 Press Relations & Investors Europe

MC Services AG

Anne Hennecke

anne.hennecke@mc-services.eu

+49 211 529 252 22 Public Relations France

Actifin

Ghislaine Gasparetto

ggasparetto@actifin.fr

+33 6 21 10 49 24 Public Relations France

DGM Conseil

Thomas Roborel de Climens

thomasdeclimens@dgm-conseil.fr

+33 6 14 50 15 84 Public Relations USA

Rooney Partners LLC

Marion Janic

mjanic@rooneyco.com

+1 212 223 4017

DISCLAIMER

This press release contains forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates (including patient recruitment) with respect to certain of the Company's programs. Although the Company believes that its forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that have been deemed reasonable, such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates. A description of these risks, contingencies and uncertainties can be found in the documents filed by the Company with the French Autorite des Marches Financiers pursuant to its legal obligations including its registration document (Document de Reference). Furthermore, these forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates are only as of the date of this press release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Abivax disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, forecasts or estimates to reflect any subsequent changes that the Company becomes aware of, except as required by law.

This press release is for information purposes only, and the information contained herein does not constitute either an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe securities of the Company in any jurisdiction, in particular in France. Similarly, it does not give and should not be treated as giving investment advice. It has no connection with the investment objectives, financial situation or specific needs of any recipient. It should not be regarded by recipients as a substitute for exercise of their own judgement. All opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. The distribution of this document may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Persons into whose possession this document comes are required to inform themselves about and to observe any such restrictions.

SOURCE: ABIVAX

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/594757/Abivax-Provides-Business-Update-on-Most-Recent-Achievements-and-Announces-Positive-Results-of-Annual-Ordinary-and-Extraordinary-General-Meeting
Scientists have been trying for years to make lithium-oxygen batteries a viable energy storage solution by overcoming some of the challenges to the commercial use of this type of batteries. So far, the challenges have been greater than the sum of the potential solutions. In what could be a breakthrough in this type of battery technology, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) say that they have developed a new strategy to address the limitations of the lithium-oxygen battery by stabilizing the electrocatalysts at the atomic level within metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

According to the team of scientists led by Professor Jeung Ku Kang, "This new strategy ensures high performance for lithium-oxygen batteries, acclaimed as a next-generation energy storage technology."

Typically, lithium-oxygen batteries are known for their much higher energy density than the much more popular lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in electronics, electric vehicles, and energy storage.

Lithium-oxygen batteries are capable of generating up to ten times higher energy density - that is how much energy a system contains compared to its mass - than Li-ion batteries. However, the battery chemistry in a lithium-oxygen battery corrodes the battery's components, degrading the battery and limiting its ability to recharge and be of commercial use with such poor cycle life.

Researchers at KAIST have found that chemical reactions can be stabilized in the sub-nanometric pores of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and their new strategy showed ten-fold improvements in the life cycle of the lithium-oxygen batteries.

Related: Underinvestment Could Send Oil Prices Soaring "Simultaneously generating and stabilizing atomic-level electrocatalysts within MOFs can diversify materials according to numerous combinations of metal and organic linkers. It can expand not only the development of electrocatalysts, but also various research fields such as photocatalysts, medicine, the environment, and petrochemicals," Professor Kang said in a statement.

The study of KAIST's researchers is the latest in which scientists are trying to find ways to make the high-energy-density and light-weight lithium-oxygen batteries a feasible solution for energy storage by addressing the current problems of this type of battery.

Two years ago, chemists from the University of Waterloo said they had solved the issue of the cell chemistry in which the superoxide and lithium peroxide react with the carbon cathode and degrade the battery cell. The researchers replaced the organic electrolyte with a more stable inorganic molten salt, and the porous carbon cathode with a bifunctional metal oxide catalyst.

"By swapping out the electrolyte and the electrode host and raising the temperature, we show the system performs remarkably well," said Linda Nazar, Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials and senior author on the project.

"This discovery highlights immense opportunities .... to enable new battery technologies that can potentially rival lithium-ion batteries and other storage technologies," MIT researchers wrote in a commentary to the work of the University of Waterloo scientists.

Related: China Sees Tanker Traffic Soar As Oil Storage Runs Out

However, commercial production of lithium-oxygen batteries could be more than a decade away, Nazar told MIT Technology Review in 2018.

The University of Kansas is also researching lithium-oxygen batteries and how to overcome the challenges of commercialization.

"If you use lithium-oxygen batteries for an electric car, you could drive 500 miles, but you can't accelerate very fast. Driving just a few miles per hour isn't very fun," Xianglin Li, assistant professor of mechanical engineering who received in 2019 a grant to study lithium-oxygen batteries at the University of Kansas, said last year.

"As far as I know, almost all lithium-oxygen batteries are still in the research phase and the technology doesn't have a very large market yet. Performance, stability and lifetime are all issues for lithium-oxygen batteries now. But in the '70s and '80s, lithium-ion batteries had similar issues," Li said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Bansy Kalappa By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Former foreign secretary and former Ambassador to China Nirupama Menon Rao, in an interview to TNIE, drew attention to a definite and perceptible change in Chinas terms of engagement with India, and felt it would be a harbinger of a paradigm shift going into the future.

"We are seeing a very hostile and violently assertive face of China, which is quite at variance with their behaviour in the past three decades of constructive engagement," she said.

Asked if it can ever be business as usual after the Galwan standoff, she said, "I presume there will be a slowing down of bilateral contacts and that a degree of chill will set in the short and possibly medium-term."

On PM Modis statement not being in sync with the MEA position, she said, "Regrettably, various interpretations about what the PM said were rife. It could have been obviated if immediate steps were taken to clarify what was said.

Excerpts:

There had been a build-up over a few weeks of different incidents before what happened on June 15 at the Galwan Valley. You called it a watershed moment. Can you please explain?



The situation in certain pockets along the Line of Actual Control with China in the Ladakh sector, had been showing increasing signs of volatility from early May. This included the Pangong Tso area, Hot Springs and the Galwan Valley. In the latter region  Galwan  there had been no known incident of confrontation since the conflict of 1962, when in October that year a fierce battle between the two sides had been fought with considerable loss of life at this very location. In the run-up to that conflict also, it had seen increased tension and encirclement by Chinese troops of our personnel (but no loss of life), especially in July 1962.

What sets the June 15, 2020, face-off apart is that firstly, it ended a 45-year period when our troops had not been involved in a violent confrontation with China, that additionally involved a heavy loss of life which is extremely unfortunate. Secondly, the latest developments have serious repercussions on our bilateral relationship with China since in a graphic manner, we are seeing a very hostile and violently assertive face of China, which is quite at variance with their behaviour in the past three decades of constructive engagement.



Can it ever be business as usual with China from now on?



The incident is a severe setback to bilateral relations, of that there is no doubt. But engagement cannot be replaced overnight by disengagement. Our China policy has obviously to be redefined, and restructured. Faced with Chinese hostility and inflexibility on territorial issues concerning the boundary dispute, and Chinas adversarial policies affecting India, especially in Pakistan, we have to weigh the fallout of disengagement with due deliberation, assessing the costs to us internally as well as externally. At the diplomatic level and between the two militaries, contact and communication will have to be maintained in order to defuse the situation that has developed along the LAC.

Looking at other areas of bilateral engagement, China is our biggest trading partner in goods. The economic adjustment we make should be conceived and implemented in a manner that also takes into account steps we must take to diversify supply chains for our key manufacturing industries, so that we reduce dependence on China. More than a hundred Chinese companies are involved in infrastructure development in India. Also, there is the flow of Chinese investments in our startups in the technology sector. Then there are Indian companies, like Infosys, TCS and Tata, who have been operating in China for some years now. We have to be deft with the policy alternatives we put in place so that our economic interests are not targeted.

The options will have to be weighed carefully. It is possible that tariffs on a number of Chinese goods will be raised. The gloves are definitely off in this altered environment, post-Galwan. We have to guard against hotheadedness in the public domain, however, as a pressure point on the government. We source around 14 per cent of our imports from China, while India accounts for less that 2 per cent of Chinese exports. In other areas, away from trade and investment, I presume there will be a slowing-down of bilateral contacts and that a degree of chill will set in in the short and possibly medium-term.



The head of government of our nation had something very different to say as against what the MEA was saying. How do you respond?



The PMs remarks at the all-party meeting on June 19 were subsequently clarified by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO). Obviously, our patrol that went into the Galwan River Valley on Monday evening was there because there was Chinese transgression, and presence on what we regarded as our side of the Line Of Actual Control. Regrettably, speculation and various interpretations about what the PM said were rife for many hours after the remarks were made, and before the PMO statement.

This speculation could have been obviated if immediate steps had been taken to clarify what was said, through government channels, so as to set the matter at rest.

The slowness to respond was unfortunate and the Chinese propaganda machinery  their media which is tightly controlled  utilised the opportunity to dispute what we had all along been saying through the Ministry of External Affairs and Army Headquarters, that the Chinese had intruded into our territory leading to the tragic events of June 15. I can hardly over-emphasize the need for our official communication machinery to be more fleet-footed and responsive so that the media is not left to draw its own conclusions, and our adversaries do not exploit the situation.



Will the statement of the head of government legitimise the claims of China over our territory, as some fear?



No, I do not believe that is the case at all. The matter was clarified. There should be no confusion. I am sure our interests will be secure and well-defended by the government.



In addition to what is happening on the Galwan border, suddenly there is a border issue with Nepal. Is there something behind all this that the common man is not able to see?



Our boundary with Nepal is an open one, and has been so, traditionally. The issue of the boundary in the Kalapani area on the Uttarakhand-Nepal border is not a new one. There is a history to the issue that goes back to the pre-Independence era and the boundaries we inherited. Nepal and India have differing interpretations of the boundary in this area. Over the last few decades, there have been interactions at the diplomatic level between Nepal and India on the issue.

Most of the sectors of the India-Nepal border have been mutually agreed upon between the two countries in these diplomatic discussions. The Kalapani issue is one that needs resolution and it was decided last year that the matter would now be discussed at the Foreign Secretary-level by the two countries, after the technical-level groups failed to resolve the matter. The Nepal government has, through some steps taken recently, elevated the dispute to an unprecedented level as we have seen from media reports and nationalistic anti-Indian statements by the Nepalese leadership.

India and Nepal must now address the issue at the political leadership level, given these latest developments, so that a mutually satisfactory solution is found. Political brinkmanship is not advised. China is becoming a major player and is expanding its influence within Nepal. This is a new development that also affects the scenario. We must restore the positive equilibrium in India-Nepal relations and in my view, India as the larger country, as a brotherly neighbour, must take a mature, thoughtful, long-term view that safeguards the core values that have defined our relationship with Nepal from time immemorial. Both sides should end rhetoric, and focus on the need to remove misunderstandings.



Is this a collapse of the world order?



It will all depend on the post-Covid situation. The global political and economic order is definitely being tested by the threat of heightened competition and the fraying of engagement between China and the US, the rise of hyper-nationalism and gated globalisation, tariff and immigration barriers, the sharpening of territorial disputes, the slowing and stagnation and even negative reversal of economic growth, the loss of livelihoods, and the weakening of multilateral institutions.

We must read the tea leaves well and discern these trends in a manner that as responsible global players, we are able to prevent this descent into the weakening of global stability and preserve peace and economic well-being, especially of the poor and disadvantaged, strengthen scientific cooperation in public health and disease prevention, and uphold the principles of international law and codes of conduct.



Can you please tell us a little about your new book?



It is a book about the diplomatic history of India-China relations in the period between 1949 and 1962, and I am in the process of completing it.
NEW YORKOne Friday afternoon in August 2018, lawyers for President Donald Trumps longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, made a final bid for leniency to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. He was facing charges including that he paid hush money on Trumps behalf to an adult film star during the 2016 campaign.

Audrey Strauss, one of two senior prosecutors in the room, listened silently to the pitch, smiling at the lawyers but letting others do the talking, people familiar with the meeting said. Over the next few days, however, Strauss played a key role in the momentous decision to proceed against Cohen, a move that infuriated the White House.

Now, Strauss, a 72-year-old former defence lawyer known for her understated style, has been forced into the spotlight, taking over as the acting U.S. attorney in the storied prosecutors office, which continues to find itself in the presidents cross hairs. She will lead politically sensitive investigations into people in Trumps orbit in the run-up to a hotly contested election, and her decisions will be scrutinized.

Strauss appointment happened with dizzying speed. In the span of 24 chaotic hours this weekend, Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, had tried to oust her boss, Geoffrey M. Berman, and replace him with one of Barrs allies.

When Berman initially refused to step down, the plan fell apart. Trump ended up firing Berman on Saturday, leaving Strauss  Bermans top deputy  to emerge from the wreckage as the offices new leader.

In that role, she will oversee a number of investigations that have upset the president, including the inquiry into whether Rudy Giuliani, Trumps lawyer, broke lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine.

During the last two years as a top supervisor in the Southern District of New York, Strauss has become known for taking a more cautious approach than some of her predecessors when weighing charging decisions, former colleagues said. She spent three decades as a defence lawyer facing off against prosecutors in white-collar cases, they said, and she is highly attuned to holes in the governments evidence.

Her cool-headed approach  distilling arguments, weighing the evidence and then ruling decisively  was evident in discussions over the Cohen case and is typical for Strauss, according to lawyers who have worked with her for decades.

Longtime friends say Strauss, a registered Democrat, is unlikely to be influenced by political motives.

She is totally non-political in her decision-making process, said Jed S. Rakoff, a federal judge in Manhattan who worked with Strauss in the U.S. Attorneys Office in the 1970s and later at two private law firms.

Ive never met anyone who is more immune to the passions of the moment, said Rakoff, who officiated the wedding of Strauss son.

Strauss becomes the second woman to lead the Southern District in the offices 230-year history after Mary Jo White, who led the office from 1993 to 2002.

She masters the facts of everything she ever does, White said of Strauss. She figures out how everything fits into the picture, and shes not satisfied until she knows everything she can possibly know.

Barr had announced that the president intended to nominate Jay Clayton, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as Bermans permanent replacement.

But Strauss is likely to remain the acting U.S. attorney until at least the election. The Senate goes out of session in August and is unlikely to hold a nomination hearing for any permanent replacement before November.

Barr had initially announced in a news release Friday night that Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, would become the acting head in the Southern District. But the decision caused an uproar. Berman refused to step down until Saturday, when Strauss was named instead as his temporary replacement.

When Berman took over as U.S. attorney in 2018, he brought Strauss out of retirement to become his senior counsel and later his deputy. She had worked as a Southern District prosecutor from 1976 to 1983, trying more than 20 cases and rising to chief of criminal appeals and, later, the securities fraud unit.

Strauss and Berman have known each other for at least three decades. They worked together in the late 1980s on the independent counsels investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal.

She is the smartest, most principled and effective lawyer with whom I have ever had the privilege of working, Berman said in a statement Saturday when he announced he would leave the office.

Strauss husband, John Rusty Wing, a prominent white-collar defence lawyer, is a registered Republican, according to the most recent records from the New York State Board of Elections. Their son, who previously worked as Gov. Andrew Cuomos press secretary, is married to a senior aide to Cuomo.

Campaign finance records show that Strauss is a longtime donor to Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clintons presidential campaign in 2007 and Barack Obamas reelection campaign in 2012. She contributed in 2006 to Joe Bidens presidential campaign.

Strauss and her husband have donated to several non-profit organizations, including after-school programs for underprivileged teenagers and a housing provider for homeless families.

She also has served on the board of the Legal Aid Society, which represents poor defendants, and of the Innocence Project, a group that works to free wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Theres nothing good about this whole unhappy episode, but you couldnt find anybody with more integrity, more smarts and more adult judgment than Audrey, said Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project. She is really widely admired by everyone.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., praised Strauss, saying she was widely viewed as a highly competent, highly capable deputy U.S. attorney with the knowledge and experience to hit the ground running.

On Friday, Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had signalled that he would allow New Yorks Democratic senators to block Trumps first choice, Clayton, to replace Berman.

Lisa Zornberg, a former chief of the Southern Districts criminal division, said Strauss was an inspiration to younger lawyers, particularly women. Strauss once invited the offices female prosecutors to her home in Brooklyn and talked proudly about how it had once been owned by one of the first female physicians in the borough.

Shes a person of vast intellect and experience from every angle as a lawyer, Zornberg said.

Strauss was born and raised in Philadelphia with an older brother, who retired from NASA, having been a doctor for astronauts, according to people who know her.

Her parents were the children of Russian immigrants  a shoe salesman and a stay-at-home mother  and they died when she was young. Family friends took her in and made her part of their family; they remain close to this day.

She has been a New Yorker since age 16, when she came to the city to enrol at Barnard College. She and Wing raised their daughter and son in Brooklyn Heights.

After receiving her bachelors degree from Barnard, she went on to get a degree from Columbia Law School in 1971, at a time when women were largely excluded from big law firms.

She spent more than two decades at law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she led the white-collar criminal defence group. Before returning to government in 2018, Strauss served as the chief legal officer for aluminum producer Alcoa Corp.

Shes really tough, said Elkan Abramowitz, who supervised Strauss when she was a prosecutor in the 1970s. Shes a very straight, serious person, and totally incorruptible and honest.

Strauss has supervised sensitive cases from which Berman had been recused, including an ongoing investigation into Stephen Calk, a Chicago bank executive who served as an economic adviser to Trumps campaign.

Calk was indicted in the Southern District last year after he was accused of giving millions of dollars in high-risk loans to Paul Manafort, Trumps former campaign chairman, in an effort to obtain a senior position in the administration. Calk has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin in September.

Strauss was the one who signed the indictment against Calk.
The crisis ravaging the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has continued to thicken as the Rivers State chapter of the party has suspended the Deputy National Secretary of the party, Victor Giadom, over gross infractions of the partys constitution.

The Fact-Finding Committee of the party recommended the following measures against Victor Giadom; That Hon. Victor Giadom be immediately suspended from the party and every party activities for his numerous infractions of the party constitution and conduct, which have brought the party to irredeemable disrepute.

That Victor Giadom should immediately write a letter of apology to the party and same should be published in three national newspapers, the states APC spokesperson, Livingstone Wechie, said on Sunday, according to Vanguard.

Mr Giadom has been in a constant face-off with a faction the partys National Working Committee (NWC) since he declared himself the legitimate acting national chairman of the party, following the Appeal Court judgement which upheld the suspension of Adams Oshiomhole, as the national chairman.

His declaration antagonised the earlier announcement made by the Hilliard Eta, the partys National Vice Chairman (South-South)  led NWC, to appoint hospitalized Abiola Ajimobi, as the interim chairman, a decision backed by a section of the partys constitution.

However, in the absence of Mr Ajimobi, who is the deputy national chairman (South), Mr Eta, also from the same region, supported by 15 other members of the NWC, has been running the affairs of the secretariat since last weeks Wednesday.

Contesting the court-endorsed Giadoms claim to the acting chairman seat, Mr Eta, backed by 13 other members of the body, told journalists on Wednesday that the former had ceased to be a member of the body since he allegedly resigned his position as the deputy national secretary to contest as the partys deputy governorship position in 2019 Rivers Governorship election.

However, contrary to Mr Eta-led NWC members claim, the partys National Vice Chairman (North-East), Mustapha Salihu, in his interview culled from Vanguard newspaper, said Mr Giadom never resigned his position as Deputy National Secretary but was given a waiver to contest as running mate to the partys governorship candidate in Rivers State.

He added that Mr Giadom was also officially welcomed back into the body after a court barred the Rivers APC from participating in the 2019 governorship election.

PREMIUM TIMES also called and messaged Mr Salihu for further comments on this controversy but he neither answered his calls nor acknowledged the text message.

Gaidom writes INEC to stop Edo primaries

In a letter written by Mr Giadom to the chairman of Nigerias Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dated June 18, 2020, he asked the body not to monitor the partys Edo governorship primaries.

Reports reaching me is that some persons have perfected plans to conduct direct gubernatorial primaries for our great party in Edo State next week under the purported Chairmanship of His Excellency, Governor Hope Uzodinma on Monday, June 22, 2020.

Kindly note that as the Acting Chairman of our party, I did not authorize such a Committee, neither have I inaugurated one. The earlier announced date for the Primaries, that is June 22, 2020, has been postponed. You are therefore advised not to give any support to any such Committee or to monitor any such Primaries. A new date for the Primaries would be communicated to you soonest, he wrote in the letter indicating received by the INEC on June 22, 2020.

READ ALSO:

Meanwhile, another letter issued on June 8 by the Directorate of Administration at the APC National Secretariat, demanded Mr Giadom return his identification card, party documents, car and all other things in his possession belonging to the party.

Commenting on the said letter demanding him to relinquish party properties in his possession, Mr Giadom said he has not received any letter to such effect.

I have not seen such letter, but if it exists, it is laughable, he told Vanguard.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain were moving into west-central Illinois on Monday afternoon, and could linger a few days.

A severe thunderstorm watch is in place through 9 p.m. for Morgan, Cass, Greene, Jersey, Pike and Macoupin counties, according the the National Weather Service. A watch means conditions are right for severe storms.
This is considered a significant number in the context thatthe world economy is still being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a developed country with a high standard of living, the RoK has never been an easy market to conquer.

Vinamilkssoybean milk products are manufactured using European-standard technology with 100% non-genetically modified raw materials, and high-quality walnuts and almonds imported from the US. Invested in research and development was made to help the products to meet the quality and nutritional requirements of consumers.

Soybean milk and milk tea products have officially started their "journey" to conquer the RoK market.

According to Seol Boo Chun, Director of Vina Korea Company (the RoK), Vinamilks nut milk products have a rich and unique nutty flavour. These products are expected to be warmly received RoK consumers, he noted.

In fact, this is not the first time Vinamilk has exported products to the RoK market. Many customers arequite familiar with the company's condensed milk products. In order to expand the market, nut milk products are chosen to enter this market with the growing nutritional trend among young and middle-aged customers.

According to Vo TrungHieu  Vinamilks International Business Director, Vinamilk is a reputable brand that is strongly associated with the rankings of the world and the region such as Forbes, and Nikkei.

The company has chosen e-commerce as a sales channel during its launch stage to help reach young customers, as well as in response to the social distancing measures due to the COVID-19 epidemic in the RoK.

In addition, Vinamilk has always paid attention to building and promoting its brand when penetrating foreign markets while maintaining the identity of Vietnamese products, he added.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, the trend of using nutritious nut products is growing. The trio of soybean milk products was introduced by Vinamilk in the domestic market nearly 2 years ago and has been well received by consumers.

Milk from nuts such as walnuts, almonds, soybeans or red beans are considered an indispensable source of nutrition for those who follow a clean and green lifestyle.
COLUMBUS, OH -- Lets all take a trip to Flavortown might take on a new meeting if a creative organizer get his way. A petition launched last week to rename Columbus, Ohio after a catch phrase of celebrity chef Guy Fieri has gathered more than 27,000 signatures as activists continue to call on the city to disassociate itself from explorer Christopher Columbus, for whom the city is named.

Flavortown is the a phrase Fieri uses on his various TV programs to describe food that he finds delicious or interesting. Fieri was born in Columbus before his family moved to California where he started his career in the restaurant industry.

The petition calls on changing the citys name due to history of the explorer which includes evidence of slave trading, rape and genocide.

Why not rename the city Flavortown? The new name is twofold. For one, it honors Central Ohios proud heritage as a culinary crossroads and one of the nations largest test markets for the food industry. Secondly, cheflebrity (sic) Guy Fieri was born in Columbus, so naming the city in honor of him (hes such a good dude, really) would be superior to its current nomenclature, reads a portion of the petitions description.

CNN reports the man who created the petition, Tyler Woodbridge, 32, recognizes that naming the city Flavortown isnt likely, but his goal is to have the city renamed to something that doesnt acknowledge Columbus in such a positive way. Woodbridge lived in Columbus for seven years, but currently lives in Tennessee.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther has already announced the city will remove a statue of Columbus from outside of city hall and it will be placed in storage.

BREAKING: @MayorGinther has announced the Christopher Columbus statue at city hall will come down and replaced with public art. His statement below. pic.twitter.com/pxZ1iRMwid  Jessi Starkey (@JessiStarkey) June 18, 2020

The removal of the Columbus statue comes during a wave of similar moves across the country as protesters and activists have called for the removal of statues of known members of the Confederate Army, statues that are racially insensitive and more. On Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supports removing a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt from outside the American Museum of Natural History because of many consider it a symbol of oppression and racial discrimination, NPR reports.

Woodbridge says he plans on delivering the petition in person to city officials.
T he temporary boss of Mothercare Glyn Hughes will step down at the end of this month.

Hughes has been the companys interim chief executive since the start of this year.

The company said Hughes wants to pursue other opportunities, but did not give further details. It will leave the firm without a chief executive, unless it can find a free agent at short notice.

We are making good progress with the search for our new permanent CEO and are now at shortlist stage, it said.

Mothercare said the business will be led by the chief operating office and chief financial officer under the watchful eye of the chairman.

Hughes leaves with a turbulent 12 months behind him. Last year, the retailer put its UK stores into administration, with all 79 stores closing just before Mr Hughes took over.

It has since re-focused on simply providing branded products to retailers. The business said it has substantially completed our transition to focusing on brand management and design.

It also noted that the experience of administration in November helped the company weather the pandemic storm.

Around two-thirds of its partners stores have now reopened around the world.

It has also agreed to lease out some of its warehouse in Daventry to another company, and move into a smaller office, saving around 3.5 million on an annual basis.

Chairman Clive Whiley said: Whilst we have not been immune to temporary store closures in almost all of our territories over the period, I am pleased that we are seeing the reopening of our partners stores.

At the same time, we continue to take action to reduce our cost base and address legacy issues, helping with our return to being a profitable and sustainable business."

Shares rose 6.5% on the news on Monday morning.
Introduction

Pride Month is the month of love which is celebrated all over the world in June every year. It is the month where people all over the world celebrate every kind of love.

The pride parade (also known as pride marches, pride events, and pride festivals) are outdoor events celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary and queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events also at times serve as presentations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most pride events occur annually, and many take place around June to dedicate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, a pivotal moment in modern LGBTQ social movements. Each year new members of the LGBTQ+ community are welcomed into this long notion as part of the education needed to better know the history of this community and the elders who helped shape it as all endured social and constitutional discriminations many of which have yet to be remedied.

Many parades still have at least some of the original political or activist character, especially in less accepting settings.

LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY:

The pride community includes every kind of diverse sexuality. The LGBTQ+ community as LGBTQQIP2SAA stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous and asexual. In the LGBT version of the rainbow flag, each colour has a different meaning: Red = Life. Orange = Healing. Yellow = Sun.

The first national gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, was formed in 1951, was created by Harry Hay. The first lesbian rights organization in the US was founded in 1955. The Daughters of Bilitis was founded in San Francisco, California by activist couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people gain equal respect. This spurred some organizations to adopt new names, as the GLBT Historical Society did in 1999. Discrimination against LGBT persons has been associated with high rates of psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and suicide. Experiences of violence and victimization are frequent for LGBT individuals and have long-lasting effects on the personal and the community. Sexual orientation discrimination is discrimination against a person or group on the basis of their sexual orientation or sexual behaviour. Sexual orientation discrimination often comes up in the context of employment actions. There are many issues even related to accessing the healthcare facilities by the community members.

Issues related to the gay members in India and laws around the globe:

In India, the LGBTQ+ community members faces many problems as the constitution does provide equality but it had no place for the wide set of sexualities at the time it was made.

On 6 September 2018, consensual gay sex was legalized by India's Supreme Court. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), dating back to 1861, makes sexual activities "against the order of nature" punishable by law and carries a life sentence. The legalization of such section was a big step for the country like India which is believed to be so conservative and still developing.

sex was legalized by Supreme Court. Section 377 of the Penal Code (IPC), dating back to 1861, makes sexual activities "against the order of nature" punishable by and carries a life sentence. The legalization of such section was a big step for the country like India which is believed to be so conservative and still developing. Furthermore, it ruled that any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a violation of the Indian Constitution.

Sexual orientation is one of the many biological phenomena which is natural and inherent in an individual and is controlled by neurological and biological factors. The science of sexuality has theorized that an individual exerts little or no control over who he/she gets attracted to. Any discrimination on the basis of ones sexual orientation would entail a violation of the fundamental right of freedom of expression

Transgender people in India are allowed to change their legal gender post-sex reassignment surgery under legislation passed in 2019 and have a constitutional right to register themselves under a third gender. Additionally, some states protect hijras, a traditional third gender population in South Asia, through housing programmes, and offer welfare benefits, pension schemes, free operations in government hospitals, as well as other programmes designed to assist them. There are approximately 4.8 million transgender people in India. In 1871, the British labelled the hijra population as a "criminal tribe".

Hijras were legally granted voting rights as a third sex in 1994.

LGBT people are banned from openly serving in the Indian Armed Forces. In late December 2018, Member of Parliament Jagdambika Pal (BJP) introduced a bill to the Indian Parliament to amend the Army Act, 1950, the Navy Act, 1957 and the Air Force Act, 1950 that would allow LGBT people to serve in the Armed Forces.

Even though there has been many changes in the constitution and the mindset of Indian society, the gay members have come a long way in claiming the equality in the eyes of law but yet there are still many more hurdles to cross as we go along in the future.

Countries like The USA have legalized gay marriages which are still prohibited in India.

Recently there was a huge law passed in the US with regard to TITLE IV of the constitution which was that no person can be fired from their jobs for being gay or transgender.

Yesterday, in Egypt a young software engineer was tortured, exiled and killed on the orders Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissis well-documented crackdown on free expression as she raised the Pride Flag during a concert.

CONCLUSION:

As our country is moving towards the developed state, so is our mindset of this conservative society. It is still a long way to go but all we can hope is one step at a time. We still require more and more awareness and acceptance.



Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"





Join our Telegram group

Join our Whatsapp group

"Loved reading this piece by Varnita Ojha Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"

Tags : others
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Smoking, divorce and alcohol abuse have the closest connection to death out of 57 social and behavioral factors analyzed in research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study analyzed survey data collected from 13,611 adults in the U.S. between 1992 and 2008, and identified which factors applied to those who died between 2008 and 2014.

"It shows that a lifespan approach is needed to really understand health and mortality," said Eli Puterman, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's school of kinesiology and lead author of the study. "For example, instead of just asking whether people are unemployed, we looked at their history of unemployment over 16 years. If they were unemployed at any time, was that a predictor of mortality? It's more than just a one-time snapshot in people's lives, where something might be missed because it did not occur. Our approach provides a look at potential long-term impacts through a lifespan lens."

Life expectancy in the U.S. has stagnated for three decades relative to other industrialized countries, raising questions about which factors might be contributing. Biological factors and medical conditions are always at the top of the list, so this study intentionally excluded those in favor of social, psychological, economic, and behavioral factors.

Of the 57 factors analyzed, the 10 most closely associated with death, in order of significance, were:

1. Current smoker

2. History of divorce

3. History of alcohol abuse

4. Recent financial difficulties

5. History of unemployment

6. Previous history as a smoker

7. Lower life satisfaction

8. Never married

9. History of food stamps

10. Negative affectivity

The data came from the nationally representative U.S. Health and Retirement Study, whose participants ranged in age from 50 to 104, with an average age of 69.3. These surveys didn't capture every possible adversityneither food insecurity nor domestic abuse was addressed, for examplebut the new findings provide an indication of where various factors stand in relation to each other.

"If we're going to put money and effort into interventions or policy changes, these areas could potentially provide the greatest return on that investment," Puterman said. "Smoking has been understood as one of the greatest predictors of mortality for 40 years, if not more, but by identifying a factor like negative affectivitythis idea that you tend to see and feel more negative things in your lifewe can see that we might need to start targeting this with interventions. Can we shift it and have an impact on mortality rates? Similarly, can we target interventions for the unemployed and those with financial difficulties to reduce their risk?"

UBC kinesiology masters student Benjamin Hives also contributed to the study, along with Puterman's colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, University of California San Francisco, and Stanford University.

Explore further Addressing unhealthy lifestyles could increase life expectancy of those with severe mental illness
Police are searching for the driver of a pickup truck who allegedly hit and killed a bicyclist before fleeing the crash late Sunday night in north Harris County.

The bicyclist was southbound on Seven Mile Lane near William Tell Street when the car behind him tried making a right turn around 9 p.m., according to Harris County sheriffs Sgt. Dashana Cheek-McNeal. The pickup driver, who was behind the turning car, drove onto the wrong side of the roadway and pulled back into the southbound lane, striking the bicyclist.
By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan attaches great importance to cooperation with the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, Azerbaijani Minister of Finance Samir Sharifov said.

He made this remark during the 22nd annual meeting of the governing board of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, held in the format of videoconference on June 18.

Minister highly appreciated the banks activities and achievements in 2019, noting that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to cooperation with BSTDB.

Moreover, he stated that banks country strategy for Azerbaijan for 2019-2022 has made an important contribution to the development of this cooperation.

Sharifov highly appreciated the fact that last year BSTDB was the first international financial institution in the country that placed securities in local currency, and stressed that as founding country Azerbaijan will continue to support banks activities.

Emphasizing that the coronavirus pandemic has created new problems for all countries Sharifov stressed the need to amend the "Medium-Term Strategy and Business Plan for 2019-2022" adopted by the bank last year in line with these problems.

Furthermore, he informed that comprehensive preventive measures have been taken under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev to prevent the coronavirus pandemic, protect public health and ensure economic stability by quickly responding to the threats of pandemic and global crisis.

Additionally, during the videoconference the banks financial and audit reports for 2019 were approved and it was decided to use the net profit earned in 2019 to increase the banks capital

The meeting was also devoted to support member countries in overcoming the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the bank's budget for 2020, the results of the country's strategies, further expansion of existing opportunities and capacities in banking and business among member countries, more active lending to small and medium enterprises.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank is an international interstate financial and credit organization that was established in 1999 by member states of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization - Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Greece and Ukraine.

BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation, participates in lending to projects in the public and private sectors in member countries, opens credit lines, provides investment and guarantees, and finances trade.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Reviewing the progress of Kashi Vishwanath Dham Project, the Prime Minister directed that all such old temples which were unearthed during the development of the Kashi Vishwanath Parisar should be protected and preserved.The presentation also highlighted the progress made in the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir complex by using a drone video of the layout."It was informed that more than 100 major projects within the financial outflow of around Rs.8000 crores is currently being undertaken in Varanasi pertaining to the creation of social and physical infrastructure like hospital buildings, national waterways, ring roads, by-pass, International Convention Centre 'Rudraksh' built with Indo-Japan collaboration etc," read the release by Prime Minister's Office (PMO)."Help of experts should be taken to maintain their historical and architectural legacy. Carbon dating should be conducted so that these temples and their importance is highlighted to the tourist and the pilgrims, who visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The Kashi Vishwanath Trust should prepare a route map with appropriate tourist guides to facilitate the pilgrims who make a visit in this complex," it said.The Prime Minister exhorted the officials to expedite completion of development works within the timelines and also maintain the highest standards of quality.He directed that optimum utilisation of non-renewable energy should be utilised for the creation of next-generation infrastructure."Saturation of households and street lights with LED bulbs should be taken on Mission Mode in the entire Varanasi district. For increasing the tourism and travel footprint in Kashi, it was directed that works of cruise tourism, light and sound show, rejuvenation of Khidkiya and Dashaswamedh Ghats, display of Ganga Aarti through Audio-Video screens should be fast-tracked. All efforts should be made to promote and propagate the role of Kashi as one of the key repositories of world heritage," read the release.Prime Minister Modi directed the officials to organise week-long festivals of countries like Japan, Thailand etc. where Buddhism is practised to celebrate their art and culture heritage.He also directed the officials to identify a model road which, with a suitable theme reflecting this heritage of Kashi to be developed as a "Gaurav Path" with the active participation of the local citizens.He further directed that Kashi being a tourist destination should excel in all parameters of sanitation and cleanliness."All efforts should be taken so as to achieve the desired levels of ODF plus, use of mechanised sweeping and cleaning, ensuring 100% door-to-door waste collection and making the entire environment very positive and healthy," the release said.The Prime Minister directed that Varanasi should become a hub of National Waterway connecting Varanasi to Haldia. He also directed the officials to complete the expansion and modernisation works of the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport on priority, so that Kashi becomes one of the leading cities which provides state-of-art rail, road, water and air connectivity.Prime Minister Modi also reviewed the progress of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat announcements and directed that the benefits of this scheme should reach the citizens expeditiously."The progress of PM SVANidhi Scheme for street vendors should be closely monitored. All street vendors should be equipped with appropriate technology and infrastructure, for helping them switch to cashless transactions. Their bank accounts should be opened up and their business and credit profile should be digitally linked so that they utilise the maximum benefit of the collateral-free loans under the PM SVANidhi Scheme," the release said.Modi emphasised that farmers are one of the key priorities of the Government and intensive efforts should be made to enhance their incomes.He directed for promotion of beekeeping and highlighted the potential of bee wax in augmenting the income of the farmers. "The officials were asked to ensure setting up a packaging institute in Varanasi on priority, so as to enable the farmers to get better purchase of their products and make them export-ready in Varanasi itself. He appreciated the efforts of the Administration for promotion of export of vegetables and mangoes in collaboration with the APEDA (Ministry of Commerce)," the release said.The efforts undertaken on effective management of COVID were also discussed.While reviewing preparation for tacking the ongoing COVID pandemic, the Prime Minister highlighted extensive and effective utilisation of Aarogya Setu App for testing, tracing and ensuring quality treatment of patients through this medium.Efforts made by the District Administration for providing food, shelter and quarantine services were also appreciated.He directed that appropriate skill mapping of the returning migrant workers being taken up on priority and they should be provided gainful employment on the basis of their skill sets.The Prime Minister also review the progress of Gram Panchayat Development Programme prepared by NITI Aayog reflecting his vision about the saturation of Varanasi district on nine key sectors of rural development, Panchayati Raj, sanitation, health and nutrition, education, social welfare, agriculture and allied activities and the livelihood and the skill domains.He inter-alia highlighted that nutrition should be promoted as a community movement of Anganwadi Centres should as far as possible engage women, Self Help Groups for providing food to the children and enhancing their nutrition intake. Adoption of Aanganwadi Centres by different Organisation and community members, arranging healthy baby competition and creating a variety of food items from children's weaning food was also suggested by PM.The meeting was attended by District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma, Municipal Commissioner Gaurang Rathi, Varanasi (South) MLA Neelakanth Tiwari, Varanavisu Cantt MLA Saurabh Shrivastava among others. (ANI)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 21:18:06|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and 12 others injured in a shooting incident at an impromptu block party on early Monday in the U.S. state North Carolina, local authorities said. Enditem
Washington:

Donald Trump often confuses leadership with dictatorship, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said as she accused her Republican rival of having a weird fascination with dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He (Trump) gets confused between leadership and dictatorship. He has a hard time remembering who our friends are and who are adversaries are. He has a weird fascination with dictators like Putin, Clinton, bashed Trumps relationship with the Russian president, at an election rally in Akron, Ohio, a key battleground State.

We have a lot of people living in this part of Ohio who, either themselves, their parents, or grandparents, came from countries that were under the yoke of oppression. And we are never going to let that happen again, she said.

The former secretary of state addressed several rallies in Ohio.Clinton said if she becomes president, Trump will be the last major party nominee to keep his taxes largely under wraps.

If Im fortunate enough to be president, were going to pass a law requiring anybody who is a nominee of a major, national party to have to release their taxes, she said.

At another election rally in Ohio, Clinton slammed the business record of Trump, who is a billionaire real estate mogul from New York.

This is Trump to a T. Hes taken corporate excess and makes a business model out of it. He abuses his power, games the system, puts his own interests ahead of the countrys. Its Trump first and everyone else last, she said.

Not a single not a single CEO of a Fortune 100 company supports Trumps campaign. Think about it. Ive been endorsed by very successful people Warren Buffett, Mike Bloomberg, Mark Cuban.

I loved what Mark Cuban said when he endorsed me. He said, Look, Ive been successful. He actually is a real billionaire. And you know what? He used profit-sharing to help his employees, not bankruptcy to fire people. And when he sold his first company, he shared the profits with his employees, and 300 of them became millionaires. Thats the kind of business practices I want to see more of in our country, the 68-year-old said.

Clinton said she is going to use the White House and every tool at her disposal to make the case that patriotism is profitable. Standing up for America, investing in America will pay off. Now, we have always had innovators and entrepreneurs who build great companies and create real value. But we should not and we will not respect those who get rich by cheating everybody else, she said.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The latest article from Beyond the World War II We Know, a series from The Times that documents lesser-known stories from the war, looks at the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the largest unit of Black servicewomen to ever deploy overseas.

In January 1945, a C-54 cargo plane carrying a group of young Army officers departed an Air Transport Command terminal in Washington for war-torn Europe. Among the passengers was a 26-year-old major named Charity Adams, who was quietly making history as the first African-American commanding officer in the Womens Army Corps to be deployed to a theater of war. As the plane ascended over the Atlantic, she still wasnt sure where she was headed or what she would be doing there. Her orders, marked Secret, were to be unsealed in flight. When she opened the envelope, the documents revealed only that her destination was somewhere in the British Isles; she would be briefed on the particulars of the mission once on the ground.

A couple of weeks later, Adams stood on a windswept parade field in Birmingham, England, addressing a formation of hundreds of Black soldiers in khaki-skirted uniforms. She had been placed in command of a battalion that would soon number 855 women. She could see that many were scared and tired, still reeling from a treacherous 11-day journey from the United States by sea spent dodging torpedoes and German U-boats. Groans rippled through the ranks as Adams explained that they would begin work immediately. As the newly created 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, their mission was neither glamorous nor particularly thrilling. The work would be grueling, the hours long, and what little sleep they were allotted would be prone to interruption by air raids. Progress would be measured by the depletion of undelivered mail they had been summoned to England to sort out. With the war now at its bloody peak, mail was indispensable for morale, but delivering it had become a towering logistical challenge. The backlog, piled haphazardly in cavernous hangars, amounted to more than 17 million letters and packages addressed to Allied military personnel scattered across Europe.
Several South Dakota residents who evacuated from their homes after a sinkhole collapsed, exposing an abandoned mine, in April are not eligible to receive federal aid, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA told Sen. Mike Rounds in a June 12 letter that the agency had discussions about whether any of its programs can assist Meade County residents, adding that FEMA, unfortunately, will not be a source of assistance.

The gypsum mine that emerged April 27 displaced 12 families in a Black Hawk neighborhood after breaking water and sewer lines, the Rapid City Journal reported.

Unresolved issues regarding whether this is a natural event, the likelihood of negligence and the duplication of federal benefits make the community ineligible at this time for the specific Hazard Mitigation Grant Program that Meade County had planned on applying to, the letter said.

The program would have paid homeowners 75% of the value of their homes before the sinkhole appeared.

The county had decided earlier this month to not apply for the grant after more than 117 evacuated and current residents filed a $75.5 million lawsuit against the county, state and others. A letter from Sen. Rounds said that FEMA is prohibited from considering or awarding federal resources until the lawsuit concludes.

Attorney John Fitzgerald, whos representing the plaintiffs, told the newspaper that he excluded the state and county commissioners from the lawsuit so as not to conflict their efforts in providing assistance.

But the community is still ineligible for funds because the sinkhole may have occurred due to negligence, which is what the families are claiming in the lawsuit, according to the letter.

FEMA also mentioned that aid cant be provided if there may be duplicate funding from insurance or money awarded during a lawsuit.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics South Dakota
TORONTO, CANADA / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / Black Iron Inc. ("Black Iron" or the "Company") (BKI.TO)OTC PINK:BKIRF)(BIN.F), announces that Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made several supportive statements regarding Black Iron in an article published on his official website on June 21, 2020 regarding his views on the important relationship between Ukraine and Canada.

The following is an excerpt from the article: "[President Zelenskyy] stressed that economic relations between Ukraine and Canada develop in real steps, not in words. In particular, this concerns the solution of problems of the Canadian company Black Iron, which wanted to invest in a mining and processing plant in Kryvyi Rih.

I know this very well, because I am from Kryvyi Rih and this is the investment in my hometown. This problem has been "hanging" for 10 years, but it is such a big investor. The size of the investment is 1.1 billion US dollars. They could not enter Ukraine."

According to the Head of State, now this issue is almost resolved.

"It will be a very big cooperation. After all, this is more than a billion dollars of investment in Ukraine, it is very important for Canada, for Black Iron, and it is important for us.", [President] Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed.

The Company believes that the reference to "this issue is almost resolved" is most likely regarding currently ongoing positive discussions between Black Iron, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense and other Ukraine government agencies on the transfer of state-owned land essential for construction of Black Iron's Shymanivske iron ore project (the "Project").

Black Iron's CEO, Matt Simpson, stated, "President Zelenskyy's strong and consistent support of Black Iron's project is important as it provides the Company and its investors with confidence that the Shymanivske project will obtain the necessary land and permits required for construction in a timely manner. The Deputy Head of the President's Office, Mr. Ihor Zhovkva, has taken on the responsibility to be Black Iron's "Investment Nanny", a formal role created by Ukraine's government to support foreign investors, to personally ensure all items requiring Ukraine government support to implement Black Iron's project are addressed by the various impacted government departments as a priority."

Story continues

The full article containing President Zelenskyy's comments on Ukraine's relationship with Canada and his support of Black Iron can be viewed on President Zelenskyy's website by typing in the following link: https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-kanada-posilyuyut-ekonomichni-j-politichni-zvyaz-61749

About Black Iron

Black Iron is an iron ore exploration and development company, advancing its 100% owned Shymanivske project located in Kryviy Rih, Ukraine. The Shymanivske project contains a NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimated to be 646 Mt Measured and Indicated mineral resources, consisting of 355 Mt Measured mineral resources grading 32.0% total iron and 19.5% magnetic iron, and Indicated mineral resources of 290 Mt grading 31.1% total iron and 17.9% magnetic iron, using a cut-off grade of 10% magnetic iron. Additionally, the Shymanivske project contains 188 Mt of Inferred mineral resources grading 30.1% total iron and 18.4% magnetic iron. Full mineral resource details can be found in the NI 43-101 compliant technical report entitled "Preliminary Economic Assessment of the Re-scoped Shymanivske Iron Ore Deposit" effective November 21, 2017 (the "PEA" or "Preliminary Economic Assessment") under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Shymanivske project is surrounded by five other operating mines, including ArcelorMittal's iron ore complex. Please visit the Company's website at www.blackiron.com for more information.

The technical and scientific contents of this press release have been prepared under the supervision of and have been reviewed and approved by Matt Simpson, P.Eng, CEO of Black Iron, who is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

For more information, please contact:

Matt Simpson

Chief Executive Officer

Black Iron Inc.

Tel: +1 (416) 309-2138

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, opinions and estimates of the date such statements are made based on information available to them at that time. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's ability to develop the Shymanivske project, the support of the Ukrainian government to develop the Shymanivske project, the timing of Project development, the commercial viability of the Project, the costs to develop the Project, the Company's ability to raise adequate capital, the Company's ability to secure the requisite land rights and the Company's future plans. Generally, forward looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", 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". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. 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. 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. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Company notes that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

SOURCE: Black Iron





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/594812/President-of-Ukraine-Reinforces-Support-of-Black-Irons-Project




MINNEAPOLIS, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Vireo Health International, Inc. ("Vireo" or the "Company") (CNSX: VREO; OTCQX: VREOF), the science-focused, multi-state cannabis company with active operations in exclusively medical-only markets and licenses in nine states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Jushi Inc, a subsidiary of Jushi Holdings, Inc. ("Jushi") (CSE: JUSH) (OTCQX: JUSHF), to divest equity in its subsidiary company, Pennsylvania Medical Solutions, LLC ("PAMS"), for total consideration of $37 million. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals.

Pennsylvania Medical Solutions holds a permit for the cultivation and processing of medical cannabis in the state of Pennsylvania. This permit was initially awarded to PAMS through a merit-based application process in 2017. Based in Scranton, PAMS manufactures cannabis-based products in a 90,000 square foot co-located cultivation and processing facility, which recently underwent a significant capacity expansion project in order to meet increasing demand within Pennsylvania's burgeoning medical cannabis market.

"This transaction secures Vireo's capital position for the foreseeable future and will enable us to comfortably execute our fiscal year 2020 operating strategy and begin generating positive cash flow in the first half of next year without requiring any additional capital infusions," said Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Kyle Kingsley, M.D. "We're especially pleased to achieve this milestone for shareholders without the dilutive impacts of other forms of financing, and we're also very excited about the opportunities in front of us to re-invest a portion of these proceeds to increase scale in select markets where we see significant opportunities to improve revenue growth and future cash flow generation."

The transaction's total consideration of $37 million includes $16.3 million in cash, $3.8 million in the form of a four-year note with an 8 percent coupon rate payable quarterly and $17 million in Right of Use liabilities associated with long-term lease obligations. The transaction also includes an 18-month option for Jushi to purchase equity in another Vireo Health subsidiary, Pennsylvania Dispensary Solutions, LLC, for an additional $5 million in cash.

Vireo management expects to utilize a portion of the transaction proceeds for capital expenditures that will increase scale in its core markets of New York, Minnesota, Maryland, Arizona, and New Mexico. These development projects are expected to significantly improve the Company's near-term revenue and profitability outlook, and management anticipates discussing these development projects and other impacts of this transaction in more detail during the Company's upcoming second-quarter earnings conference call in late August.

About Vireo Health International, Inc.

Vireo Health International, Inc. is a physician-led cannabis company focused on building long-term, sustainable value by bringing the best of medicine, science, and engineering to the cannabis industry. With operations strategically located in early-stage, limited-license medical markets, Vireo manufactures pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products in environmentally-friendly greenhouses and distributes its products through its growing network of Green Goods retail dispensaries and hundreds of third-party locations. Its current core medical markets of New York, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, and Maryland all have the potential to enact adult-use legalization in the next three to 24 months, and two additional markets in Puerto Rico and Massachusetts also have potential for commercialization. Combined with its teams' focus on driving scientific innovation within the industry and securing meaningful intellectual property, Vireo believes it is well positioned to become a global market leader in the cannabis industry. Today, eight of its 10 markets are operational with 13 of its 32 total retail dispensary licenses open for business. For more information about the company, please visit www.vireohealth.com.

About Jushi Holdings Inc.

Jushi Holdings, Inc. is a globally focused cannabis and hemp company led by an industry leading management team. In the United States, Jushi is focused on building a multi-state portfolio of branded cannabis and hemp-derived assets through opportunistic acquisitions, distressed workouts and competitive applications. Jushi strives to maximize shareholder value while delivering high quality products across all levels of the cannabis and hemp ecosystem. For more information please visit www.jushico.com or the Company's social media channels on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statement Disclosure

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable United States and Canadian securities legislation. To the extent any forward-looking information in this news release constitutes "financial outlooks" within the meaning of applicable United States or Canadian securities laws, such information is being provided as preliminary financial results and the reader is cautioned that this information may not be appropriate for any other purpose and the reader should not place undue reliance on such financial outlooks. Forward-looking information contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as "plans," "expects" or "does not expect," "is expected," "look forward to," "budget" "scheduled," "estimates," "forecasts," "will continue," "intends," "anticipates," "does not anticipate," "believes," "should," "should not," or variations of such words and phrases or indicates that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "would," "might," or "will" "be taken," "occur," or "be achieved." Forward-looking information may include, without limitation, statements regarding the operations, business, financial condition, expected financial results, performance, prospects, opportunities, priorities, targets, goals, ongoing objectives, milestones, strategies and outlook of Vireo, and includes statements about, among other things, the value of assets, the amount of liabilities, the designation of certain businesses or assets as "core" or "non-core," decisions about allocation of capital and other resources, future developments, the future operations, potential market opportunities including the potential effects of the approval of adult-use cannabis in one or more markets, potential opportunities to monetize assets, strengths and strategy of the Company. Forward-looking information is provided for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Forward-looking information includes statements with respect to the opportunities for the Company to leverage increasing scale to improve sales growth and operating performance; the anticipation that the medical-only state markets in which the Company's subsidiaries operate could enact recreational-use legislation over the near-to mid-term future; the anticipated benefits of strategic initiatives; the effects of reduction of corporate overhead and SG&A expenses; improvement to unit economics; expansion of retail dispensaries in key markets; and the expectation that such expansion will drive stronger revenue growth, operating margins and free cash flow. Forward-looking information includes both known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company or its subsidiaries to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release including, without limitation, the impact on the Company's businesses and financial results of epidemics and pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial outlooks, as with forward-looking information generally, are, without limitation, based on the assumptions and subject to various risks as set out herein. Our actual financial position and results of operations may differ materially from management's current expectations and, as a result, our revenue and cash on hand may differ materially from the revenue and cash values provided in this news release. Forward-looking information is based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management, believed but not certain to be reasonable, in light of management's experience and perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors relevant in the circumstances, including assumptions in respect of current and future market conditions, the current and future regulatory environment; and the availability of licenses, approvals and permits.

Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct, including preliminary financial expectations regarding the annualized reduction of corporate overhead and SG&A expenses. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks related to preliminary financial results being subject to the completion of the Company's financial closing procedures and not being audited or reviewed by the Company's independent registered public accounting firm; the timing of recreational-use legislation in markets where the Company currently operates; current and future market conditions, including the market price of the subordinate voting shares of the Company; federal, state, local and foreign government laws, rules and regulations, including federal and state laws in the United States relating to cannabis operations in the United States; limited operating history; changes in laws, regulations and guidelines; operational, regulatory and other risks; execution of business strategy; management of growth; difficulty to forecast; conflicts of interest; risks inherent in an agricultural business; liquidity and additional financing; foreign private issuer status and the risk factors set out in the Company's listing statement dated March 19, 2019, filed with the Canadian securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

Media Inquiries Investor Inquiries Albe Zakes Sam Gibbons Vice President, Corporate Communications Vice President, Investor Relations [email protected] [email protected] (267) 221-4800 (612) 314-8995

SOURCE Vireo Health International, Inc.

Related Links

www.vireohealth.com


India initiated the violent clash in eastern Ladakh last week, China said on Monday continuing to blame New Delhi for the face-off in Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh, which left 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops dead in a vicious hand-to-hand brawl on the night of June 15.

The rights and wrongs of this incident are very clear, Beijing said in a statement to the Hindustan Times.

At the regular briefing on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry also refused to share any details of the ongoing military-to-military talks in the region, and, once again, stalled a query on the number of casualties that the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) suffered.

China and India are in communication with each other to resolve the situation on the ground through diplomatic and military channels. I have no information to release on that, ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian said.

Zhaos comment was in response to a query on Indian minister V K Singhs statement on Sunday in which he said China could have lost double the number of soldiers India lost in the violent clash.

The Chinese government has refused to reveal PLAs casualty figures for a week now though Chinese state-controlled media has said both sides suffered casualties during the clash.

In a separate statement to the Hindustan Times on Monday, the spokespersons office reiterated its stance on the cause of the clash.

The Chinese has repeatedly stated that the rights and wrongs of this incident are very clear and initiated by the Indian side, and the responsibility does not rest with China, the spokespersons office said in a written statement in Mandarin to the Hindustan Times on Monday.

China always strictly abides by the agreements signed between the two countries and carries out patrols and duties on the Chinese side of the line of actual control (LAC), the statement said.

The statement added that Beijing hopes that the two sides will earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, step up communication and coordination on properly handling the border situation and jointly safeguard peace and tranquility of the border area.

The latest statement from the Chinese foreign ministry continues from the so-called step-by-step account of the clash it released late on Friday night.

As a background to the account  which has been rubbished by India  the ministry claimed Galwan Valley is located on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control in the west section of the China-India boundary.

For many years, the Chinese border troops have been patrolling and on duty in this region. Since April this year, the Indian border troops have unilaterally and continuously built roads, bridges and other facilities at the LAC in the Galwan Valley, the statement said.

Shockingly, on the evening of June 15, Indias front-line troops, in violation of the agreement reached at the commander-level meeting, once again crossed the LAC for deliberate provocation when the situation in the Galwan Valley was already easing, and even violently attacked the Chinese officers and soldiers who went there for negotiation, thus triggering fierce physical conflicts and causing casualties.

Soon after China released this statement on Friday, India rejected the claims of Chinas sovereignty over Galwan Valley, calling them exaggerated and untenable.
By Akbar Mammadov

Azerbaijan's Minister of Defense Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov has been invited by his Russian counterpart General Sergei Shoigu to a military parade in Moscow, the ministry's press service reported on June 22.

A delegation led by Colonel-General Hasanov will take part in the military parade dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory over fascism in the Great Patriotic War on June 24.

"The delegation will leave for Moscow on June 23", the ministry said.

It should be noted that Azerbaijan will be represented at the parade by 75 servicemen of the Azerbaijani Army.

Earlier, on 18 June, the Azerbaijani president told Vladimir Putin that his pre-planned participation in the military parade in Moscow dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory was not possible in connection with the extension of quarantine measures in Azerbaijan.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
The move follows clashes with residents who tried to break through a police cordon.

Police reinforcements have been sent to maintain a coronavirus quarantine on a tower block in the German city of Goettingen after violence on Saturday.

Seven-hundred people were placed in quarantine, but 200 trying to get out clashed with police.

Residents attacked police with fireworks, bottles and metal bars, officials said.

The quarantine was introduced on Thursday after two residents tested positive.

By Friday, 120 were found to be infected. The majority of residents have been complying with the quarantine.

Anyone testing negative is being required to have a further test. If that is negative, they will be allowed to leave the block, but under certain conditions, such as wearing a mask.

Local officials cited communication problems, with many of the residents not understanding the need for a second test.

Translators have been used and information in German and Romanian is now being texted to those who need it, German media report.

Several police officers were injured as people tried to break through a security cordon.

Meat plant infections

Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases have continued to rise at a meat plant.

The number of positive tests linked to the Tonnies processing plant in north-west Germany has risen to 1,331. The authorities in the Gutersloh area told 6,500 employees and their families to go into quarantine earlier this week.

The regional prime minister of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, warned of "an enormous risk of pandemic" while conceding that the outbreak was currently confined to the Tonnies company and could still be dealt with through a targeted lockdown.

The industry employs many foreign workers, and the local authorities are trying to arrange Polish, Bulgarian and Romanian translators to explain the need for restrictions.

In another development, Germany's 'R' number has risen to 2.88 - the number of people who someone with Covid-19 could infect. A number below one is seen as necessary to contain the spread of the disease.

The Robert Koch Institute issued the data based on a four-day average. The seven-day average came up with a lower figure of 2.03.

The institute cited isolated outbreaks, such as the meat plant, for the rise.

Germany is generally considered to have done a good job containing the virus, thanks to widespread testing. The latest confirmed figures show 189,822 people testing positive, and 8,882 deaths - significantly lower than similar sized European neighbours. BBC
HOUSTON, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Apache Corporation (APA) today announced that it has opened the application season for its 2020-2021 Tree Grant Program. In its 15th year, the Apache Tree Grant Program has provided more than 4.7 million trees across 17 states since 2005. Last year, the program donated over 61,000 trees to 54 nonprofits, including the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Keep Odessa Beautiful and the Houston Parks and Recreation Department.

Apaches Tree Grant Program is core to who we are as a company, said John J. Christmann IV, Apaches chief executive officer and president. Trees are an invaluable natural resource  and planting them conserves our environment, improves wildlife habitats and beautifies our neighborhoods for families to enjoy today and for years to come. We look forward to another year of successful tree plantings in partnership with our communities.

The Tree Grant Program is open to nonprofits where Apache has operations in the U.S.  currently in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and Wyoming. Awardees must agree to receive all trees (minimum 50) in a single delivery, see that all trees are planted or distributed by May 15, 2021, and agree to care for the trees, which must be native to the growing area. Apache also covers the cost of delivery.

For more information and to apply, please visit at www.apachelovestrees.com by the August 21, 2020 deadline.

About Apache

Apache Corporation is an oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, Egypt and the United Kingdom and exploration activities offshore Suriname. Apache posts announcements, operational updates, investor information and all press releases on its website, www.apachecorp.com .

Contacts

Investor: (281) 302-2286 Gary Clark

Media: (713) 296-7276 Alexandra Franceschi



Website: www.apachecorp.com

APA-T




Residents who visited or live near Xinfadi Market line up for a nucleic acid test in Beijing on June 19, 2020. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Beijing Residents Fear Contracting Virus at Crowded, Unsafe Test Sites

Since the recent resurgence of the CCP virus in Beijing, local authorities have begun mandating testing for certain city residents.

Zhang Qiang, a top official in the city governments leadership team for virus containment efforts, said at a June 20 press conference that there are 474 testing sites in the city, and 2.3 million people have been tested in the previous seven days.

Some residents who spoke to The Epoch Times said authorities didnt provide basic safety protection while performing the COVID-19 nucleic acid tests. Theyre afraid they may have been exposed to the virus.

Mr. Li, who lives in Fengtai district, visited the Xinfadi food marketwhich authorities said is ground zero of this latest outbreakin early June. He was thus required by authorities to take a nucleic acid test at the Boao Testing Center on Kangxin road on June 17.

I went to the test site and saw more than a thousand people lining up. They were all from nearby residential compounds, Mr. Li, a resident at the Yanbao-Googong Zhuang residential compound, said in a recent phone interview.

So many people gathered together is very risky [for contracting the virus], Li said. The residential compounds around us even organized buses to transport residents to the testing site, he added, fearing that the virus would spread easily in such a compact space.

Required Testing

As early as April 19, the Beijing government began promoting the idea of testing all people who must be tested and testing all people who want to be tested. The required populations included medical staff, government officials who return from business trips, and out-of-towners who were staying at Beijing hotels.

Following the latest outbreak that occurred around mid-June, authorities announced new rules on June 17, in which six groups of people must be tested. They are: people who visited the Xinfadi market in the past 14 days or live at residential compounds where one or more residents were diagnosed with the virus recently, residents living in areas authorities have designated as medium or high risk for virus spread, medical staff and other employees in service sectors, students and teachers who have returned to school, and staff who work at the front lines of disease control and prevention.

After the rule was announced, residents witnessed hundreds of people crowding at testing sites. Due to limited space, people had to stand close to each other.

Authorities didnt specify what service sectors would need testing, but mentioned that people who arent in the six categories but want to operate their businesses also need to take nucleic acid tests, such as fruit and vegetable sellers, restaurant cooks, parcel couriers, and so on.

Many restaurant workers became infected with the virus after they visited the market to pick up produce.

An insider from a health-related department in the Beijing city government told the Chinese-language Epoch Times: One test is only valid for seven days. They [business owners and employees] need to take at least four tests every month.

According to the Beijing city governments latest statistics, more than 416,000 people work in the restaurant sector.

Peoples Complaints

Mr. Zhang, who lives close to the Xinfadi market, said everyone in his residential compound was required to get tested.

Zhang said that the medical staff didnt change their gloves after handling each individual. They [medical staff] touched our faces and mouths [with the same gloves]. Its very risky for us to have cross infection.

Zhang, who took the test on June 15, hasnt yet received his test result. They [medical staff] gave me a number and asked me to check online myself. But nobody can open the website, he said.

Mr. Guo, from Chaoyang district, told The Epoch Times that he visited Xinfadi on June 3, and was required to take the test. But he refused to do it.

I have no symptoms. Im afraid Ill be infected if I go to the testing sites, Guo said.

Recently, government staff at the residential compound asked Guo to self-isolate at home until the end of June.

The staff told Guo that they use high-tech surveillance to monitor his movements. If I go out with my phone, theyll know immediately where I am, he said. I visited [Xinfadi market] on June 3. Its more than ten days ago, but they still force me to quarantine at home.

Beijing residents also said the nucleic acid test is expensive.

The testing fee is 180 yuan [$25.5], and people still need to pay for the service fee. One test costs people over 200 yuan [$28.3], the health department insider told The Epoch Times. A restaurant employee needs to spend more than 800 yuan [$113.2] to test every month.
With the first round of coronavirus stimulus checks delivered to most Americans, families for whom the payment didn't go far enough are eagerly looking for signs from Washington that a second COVID-19 stimulus payment could be forthcoming.

For those hoping for more money, an orthodox proposal has received support from the Trump administration that could provide additional stimulus money that, for many families, would be worth more than the amount of the first coronavirus check.

But if this new plan comes to fruition, the stimulus money would be available to you only if you use it for traveling or dining out.

The Explore America Tax Credit could reward you for enjoying life

Lobbyists from the tourism industry have been promoting the Explore America Tax Credit in Congress and at the White House, and the idea has captured the attention of a powerful supporter: President Donald Trump.

The president indicated his support for the proposed tax credit at a recent White House roundtable attended by leaders from within the restaurant industry.

If lawmakers include it in future coronavirus stimulus bills, the Explore America Tax Credit would create a new tax credit capped at up to $4,000 per U.S. household. Its purpose would be to encourage individuals and families to visit restaurants or take trips within the United States.

The tax credit would cover 50% of eligible travel and dining-related expenditures that Americans incur in 2020 or 2021. Eligible expenses entitling you to the credit could potentially include:

Domestic airfare

Car rentals

Hotels

Theme parks

Restaurants

If passed, this would help to both put more money in the pockets of Americans while also aiding some of the industries hit hardest by coronavirus.

Of course, the details would still have to be fleshed out -- including whether the credit would be refundable for families who don't have up to $4,000 in tax liability. And unlike the first COVID-19 stimulus payments -- which were sent out as an advance on a tax credit that Americans received in the mail -- it's likely that you'd have to wait to claim this credit when you file your taxes for 2020 and 2021 because you'd need to show you incurred eligible expenses.

If that's the case, you'd need to shell out money in advance and wait to get your cash back later. That means the big downside is that it wouldn't provide immediate relief for those who need it.

Still, the tax credit could be a good compromise between Democratic and Republican lawmakers who remain divided over whether the next coronavirus bill should focus on relief for individuals or for businesses affected by COVID-19.

And, as the country enters a recession, it might do more for the economy as a whole than the first stimulus payment, which most Americans saved or used to pay essential bills rather than spending it at local restaurants or attractions. This feature could make it more attractive to lawmakers focused on helping the country open its doors and return to a new normal.

It's unclear if lawmakers will take it up or not, but with the President's support, there's a real chance the Explore America Tax Credit (or some version of it) could very well make its way into the next coronavirus bill. If you support it, let your representatives know, as negotiations over the next few weeks will likely determine what type of stimulus money, if any, comes to American families next.
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Existing-home sales fell in May, marking a three-month decline in sales as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the National Association of Realtors. Each of the four major regions witnessed dips in month-over-month and year-over-year sales, with the Northeast experiencing the greatest month-over-month drop.

May 2020 Existing Home Sales Infographic NAR Chief Economist, Lawrence Yun (PRNewsfoto/National Association of Realtors)

Total existing-home sales,1 https://www.nar.realtor/existing-home-sales , completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, slumped 9.7% from April to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million in May. Overall, sales fell year-over-year, down 26.6% from a year ago (5.33 million in May 2019).

"Sales completed in May reflect contract signings in March and April  during the strictest times of the pandemic lockdown and hence the cyclical low point," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist. "Home sales will surely rise in the upcoming months with the economy reopening, and could even surpass one-year-ago figures in the second half of the year."

The median existing-home price2 for all housing types in May was $284,600, up 2.3% from May 2019 ($278,200), as prices increased in every region. May's national price increase marks 99 straight months of year-over-year gains.

Total housing inventory3 at the end of May totaled 1.55 million units, up 6.2% from April, and down 18.8% from one year ago (1.91 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 4.8-month supply at the current sales pace, up from 4.0 months in April and up from the 4.3-month figure recorded in May 2019.

"New home construction needs to robustly ramp up in order to meet rising housing demand," Yun said. "Otherwise, home prices will rise too fast and hinder first-time buyers, even at a time of record-low mortgage rates."

Properties typically remained on the market for 26 days in May, seasonally down from 27 days in April, but equal to 26 days in May 2019. Fifty-eight percent of homes sold in May 2020 were on the market for less than a month.

First-time buyers were responsible for 34% of sales in May, down from 36% in April 2020 and up from 32% in May 2019. NAR's 2019 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers  released in late 20194  revealed that the annual share of first-time buyers was 33%.

Individual investors or second-home buyers, who account for many cash sales, purchased 14% of homes in May, up from 10% in April 2020 and from 13% in May 2019. All-cash sales accounted for 17% of transactions in May, up from 15% in April 2020 and down from 19% in May 2019.

Distressed sales5  foreclosures and short sales  represented 3% of sales in May, about even with April but up from 2% in May 2019.

"Although the real estate industry faced some very challenging circumstances over the last several months, we're seeing signs of improvement and growth, and I'm hopeful the worst is behind us," said NAR President Vince Malta, broker at Malta & Co., Inc., in San Francisco, Calif. "NAR, along with our partners and 1.4 million members, are already working to reignite America's real estate industry, which will be a key driver in our nation's economic recovery."

According to Freddie Mac, the average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage decreased to 3.23% in May, down from 3.31% in April. The average commitment rate across all of 2019 was 3.94%.

Single-family and Condo/Co-op Sales

Single-family home sales sat at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 3.57 million in May, down 9.4% from 3.94 million in April, and down 24.8% from one year ago. The median existing single-family home price was $287,700 in May, up 2.4% from May 2019.

Existing condominium and co-op sales were recorded at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 340,000 units in May, down 12.8% from April and down 41.4% from a year ago. The median existing condo price was $252,300 in May, a decrease of 1.6% from a year ago.

"Relatively better performance of single-family homes in relation to multifamily condominium properties clearly suggest migration from the city centers to the suburbs," Yun said. "After witnessing several consecutive years of urban revival, the new trend looks to be in the suburbs as more companies allow greater flexibility to work from home."

This relocating trend can be examined further in the buying behaviors of millennials, outlined in a recent NAR report identifying the top 10 markets with opportunities for millennial homebuyers. Among other factors, the report analyzes current housing affordability and job market conditions for millennials during the pandemic. The markets  listed in alphabetical order  are Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas; Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa; Durham-Chapel Hill-Raleigh, N.C.; Houston-The Woodlands, Texas; Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Ind.; Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.; Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, Wash.; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Regional Breakdown

As was the case for the month prior, sales for May decreased in every region from the previous month's levels. Median home prices grew in three of the four major regions from one year ago, falling marginally in the West.

May 2020 existing-home sales in the Northeast fell 13.0%, recording an annual rate of 470,000, a 29.9% decrease from a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $327,900, up 7.8% from May 2019.

Existing-home sales decreased 10.0% in the Midwest to an annual rate of 990,000 in May, down 20.2% from a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $227,400, a 3.0% increase from May 2019.

Existing-home sales in the South dropped 8.0% to an annual rate of 1.73 million in May, down 25.1% from the same time one year ago. The median price in the South was $247,400, a 2.1% increase from a year ago.

Existing-home sales in the West fell 11.1% to an annual rate of 720,000 in May, a 35.1% decline from a year ago. The median price in the West was $408,400, down 0.2% from May 2019.

The National Association of Realtors is America's largest trade association, representing more than 1.4 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

For local information, please contact the local association of Realtors for data from local multiple listing services (MLS). Local MLS data is the most accurate source of sales and price information in specific areas, although there may be differences in reporting methodology.

NOTE: NAR's Pending Home Sales Index for May is scheduled for release on June 29, and Existing-Home Sales for June will be released July 22; release times are 10:00 a.m. ET.

Information about NAR is available at www.nar.realtor . This and other news releases are posted on the NAR Newsroom at www.nar.realtor/newsroom. Statistical data in this release, as well as other tables and surveys, are posted in the "Research and Statistics" tab.

1 Existing-home sales, which include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, are based on transaction closings from Multiple Listing Services. Changes in sales trends outside of MLSs are not captured in the monthly series. NAR rebenchmarks home sales periodically using other sources to assess overall home sales trends, including sales not reported by MLSs.

Existing-home sales, based on closings, differ from the U.S. Census Bureau's series on new single-family home sales, which are based on contracts or the acceptance of a deposit. Because of these differences, it is not uncommon for each series to move in different directions in the same month. In addition, existing-home sales, which account for more than 90% of total home sales, are based on a much larger data sample  about 40% of multiple listing service data each month  and typically are not subject to large prior-month revisions.

The annual rate for a particular month represents what the total number of actual sales for a year would be if the relative pace for that month were maintained for 12 consecutive months. Seasonally adjusted annual rates are used in reporting monthly data to factor out seasonal variations in resale activity. For example, home sales volume is normally higher in the summer than in the winter, primarily because of differences in the weather and family buying patterns. However, seasonal factors cannot compensate for abnormal weather patterns.

Single-family data collection began monthly in 1968, while condo data collection began quarterly in 1981; the series were combined in 1999 when monthly collection of condo data began. Prior to this period, single-family homes accounted for more than nine out of 10 purchases. Historic comparisons for total home sales prior to 1999 are based on monthly single-family sales, combined with the corresponding quarterly sales rate for condos.

2 The median price is where half sold for more and half sold for less; medians are more typical of market conditions than average prices, which are skewed higher by a relatively small share of upper-end transactions. The only valid comparisons for median prices are with the same period a year earlier due to seasonality in buying patterns. Month-to-month comparisons do not compensate for seasonal changes, especially for the timing of family buying patterns. Changes in the composition of sales can distort median price data. Year-ago median and mean prices sometimes are revised in an automated process if additional data is received.

The national median condo/co-op price often is higher than the median single-family home price because condos are concentrated in higher-cost housing markets. However, in a given area, single-family homes typically sell for more than condos as seen in NAR's quarterly metro area price reports.

3 Total inventory and month's supply data are available back through 1999, while single-family inventory and month's supply are available back to 1982 (prior to 1999, single-family sales accounted for more than 90% of transactions and condos were measured only on a quarterly basis).

4 Survey results represent owner-occupants and differ from separately reported monthly findings from NAR's Realtors Confidence Index , which include all types of buyers. Investors are under-represented in the annual study because survey questionnaires are mailed to the addresses of the property purchased and generally are not returned by absentee owners. Results include both new and existing homes.

5 Distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), days on market, first-time buyers, all-cash transactions and investors are from a monthly survey for the NAR's Realtors Confidence Index, posted at nar.realtor.

SOURCE National Association of Realtors
John Bolton, challenged as to why he reserved his claims about Trump's behavior for a book deal, has a grimly convincing excuse: revealing them during his former boss's impeachment trial wouldn't have made any difference because his party controls the Senate. American voters are the only jury with the power to get dispose of him.

The book, out Tuesday, is titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir [Amazon] and promises to be a blockbuster. It bears real dirt and was made sensational after the administration suddenly moved to block its publication. A judge ended that effort, remarking that the horse was out the barn, and it is: some of the key claims have already generated headlines and the text of the book has leaked widely.

Some key claims:

As revealed in a taster posted last week, Trump asked President Xi Jinping of China to help him win the 2020 election. "I would print Trump's exact words," Bolton writes, "but the government's prepublication review process has decided otherwise."

Trump gave personal approval to China's detention of at least 1m Uighur muslims in concentration camps: "According to our interpreter," Bolton writes, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do."

Trump regularly says outrageous things to get more important stories out the news. In one example, he defended Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi to get Ivanka Trump's use of private email servers out of the news. It worked: "This will divert from Ivanka. If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing."

Trump wants to be president for life. "Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him," Bolton writes. "Xi said the US had too many elections, because he didn't want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly."

His cronies, such as Mike Pompeo, casually mock him behind his back. Bolton relays a remark from the Secretary of State that Trump "is so full of shit," written on a notepad during negotiations with North Korea.

Trump thought it would be "cool" to invade Venezuela and steal its oil: Second-hand from John Kelly ("Trump doesn't care what happens to these guys. He says it would be 'cool' to invade Venezuela.") and first-hand that "we should take the oil in Venezuela after ousting Maduro."

The supposed "adult" handlers were self-serving morons who made Trump paranoid. On the John Kellys of the White House, Bolton is scathing:

The axis of adults in many respects caused enduring problems not because they successfully managed Trump, as the High-Minded  have it, but because they did precisely the opposite. They didn't do nearly enough to establish order, and what they did do was so transparently self-serving and so publicly dismissive of many of Trump's very clear goals, (whether worthy or unworthy) that they fed Trump's already-suspicious mind-set, making it harder for those who came later to have legitimate policy exchanges with the President.

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir [Amazon]
MASHANTUCKET, Conn. (AP)  Drivers heading down state roads leading to Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut are greeted by flashing warnings: Avoid Large Crowds and Dont Gamble With COVID.

Despite having authority to shutter thousands of businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has been constrained when dealing with the sovereign tribal nations that own two of the world's largest casinos. After pleading with tribal leaders to not reopen and even raising the possibility of pulling their state-issued liquor licenses, he ultimately settled for ordering state transportation workers to put up the signs.

People over the age of 65 should not be in large, congregate settings. We think that's dangerous, even now, said Lamont, a Democrat, after the casinos partly reopened on June 1, weeks ahead of the state's timetable for large indoor events. So, we tried to put some good, strong advice in place as people are on their way to taking a gamble.

Connecticut's two federally recognized tribes, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Tribe are not alone in reopening doors early as the nation reemerges from the shutdown  though both say they are being careful about reopening. Facing pressure to bring back employees and start generating revenue, tribes in Washington, Oregon, California, Florida, North Carolina, New York and elsewhere have decided to welcome back gamblers even though their states haven't allowed large gatherings.

Other businesses have bristled at shutdown orders and restrictions, and some have pushed the limits. But the tribes that run the casinos are different because the U.S. Constitution recognizes them as sovereign nations with full authority within their reservations  so state and local leaders have no say in reopening their casinos.

Tribal nations are just that, theyre nations. So they are not bound by state laws," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said recently.

Story continues

New York state officials haven't decided yet when to allow commercial casinos to reopen, but the Oneida Indian Nation announced it will partly reopen three casinos last Wednesday, and the Cayuga Nation reopened its casino on May 15. Both are upstate, where similar large gathering places are not yet open.

In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, wrote a letter to tribal leaders pleading with them to align their plans with the state's, warning that people crowding in casinos could spark a new wave of infections.

The virus does not recognize jurisdictional boundaries," he said.

In Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez took to social media after the tribal casino Miccosulkee Resort & Gaming reopened early. Last month, he urged residents to follow federal health guidelines if they decide to go and gamble.

That same tribe resisted pleas from state and local officials in late March to close entirely, as other tribal casinos, restaurants, movie theaters, parks and beaches had. At the time, Gimenez resorted to issuing a video message, urging elderly residents to take personal responsibility and stay away from any large gatherings, including the casino.

Miccosulkee tribal officials, known for being strongly independent, had insisted they were following federal health recommendations. But days later, the tribe announced it would close the casino, while noting it was under no legal obligation" to do so as a sovereign nation.

As of last Tuesday, the American Gaming Association website identified 280 tribal casinos that have so far reopened, while 244 remained closed.

Danielle Her Many Horses, deputy executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association, said those figures represent the diversity of opinion among tribes.

You have tribes in states that do want to open up and tribes that are like, no, no, no, were going to back off on this because we dont think thats the right idea,' she said. And you have others who are like, we need to get our people working, who are thinking of it in (terms of) rebooting the economy.

How tribes have managed the coronavirus pandemic may also reflect their relationship with state and local leaders, Her Many Horses said. She noted Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, for example, meets regularly with the tribal leaders to discuss how the casino reopenings are going. Meanwhile, in South Dakota, three tribes  the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe  set up checkpoints on state and federal highways to keep unnecessary visitors from their reservations because of the coronavirus. Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has questioned the tribes authority to take such action.

In Connecticut, where the state receives 25% of the slot machine revenues generated at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, said he was surprised Lamont initially took a strong stance against their reopenings. Both tribes repeatedly encouraged the governor to see firsthand the steps they had taken, from installing special air filtration systems to barring busloads of gamblers from New York and Massachusetts.

I have tribal elders that Im concerned about. And so Im not going to put my community at risk, Butler said. Were doing this very, very cautiously and with every safety precaution in mind.

Ultimately Lamont sent a team of state agency heads to both casinos to review the operations and recommend some changes. Butler, who acknowledges the state's warning signs are kind of catchy, credited Lamont for not caving to pressure to do things that were a little bit more aggressive" and ultimately recognizing the tribes' sovereignty.

I think the adults in the room actually came to the table and had an adult conversation," Butler added. "He realized that, look, we may agree to disagree and still work well together. And we did.

___

Associated Press Writer Marina Villeneuve in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.
As you probably heard, Quaker Oats decided that white liberals just couldn't take all of that white privilege and systematic racism anymore on their pancakes.

I wonder if Quaker Oats actually asked any African-Americans about their decision?

Well, it turns out that Aunt Jemima's family is not pleased with the move. This is from news reports:

Living in Forney, Vera Harris is the family historian for the Richard family of Hawkins, and could hardly believe a big part of their family legacy, the "Aunt Jemima" brand, was about to be erased from supermarket shelves. "A lot of people want it removed. We want the world to know that our cousin Lillian was one of the Aunt Jemima's and she made an honest living. We would ask that you reconsider just wiping all that away. There wasn't a lot of jobs, especially for black women back in that time. She was discovered by Quaker Oats to be their brand person," Harris said. Lillian Richard became a goodwill ambassador for Quaker Oats, and for decades, portrayed Aunt Jemima all over Texas. "She made an honest living out of it for a number of years. She toured around Texas," Harris said. In the Fouke community just outside Hawkins is a historic marker dedicated to Lillian Richard, who is recognized as one of several women who portrayed Aunt Jemima.

Making an honest living? I wonder how many of those "white liberals" destroying statues of Catholic saints and abolitionists have a clue of what that means!

By the way, the story points out the family does not want military bases renamed because many of their relatives are veterans.

Am I the only one who thinks that there is a silent black majority out there sick and tired of white liberals canceling everything and assuming they know what blacks think?

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
The hand sanitizer is being made at the Brownstown, Michigan facility where the FCSM team has been working on the development of fuel-cell fuel stacks for the next generation of hydrogen-powered cars. Using an apparatus designed to manufacture the electrodes used in the fuel cells, the team developed a process to re-purpose the equipment to produce a hand sanitizer that would allow employees and health care professionals to work more safely.

Honda will donate nearly 75 percent of its allocation of the hand sanitizer, packaging the product in easy-to-use nine-ounce bottles for health care facilities. On Monday, June 22, Honda made the first such donation of 1,250 bottles each to ProMedica Toledo Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, Memorial Health in Marysville, Ohio, and the DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, Mich.

"It is inspiring to see how the automotive industry continues to find new and innovative ways to help society during this crisis," said Cathy McEvilly, senior vice president & general counsel of Honda North America, Inc. "The commitment shown by Honda associates and their counterparts at GM is a source of pride to us and we are happy to provide something to help the brave health care professionals fighting this pandemic every day."

Packaging Corporation of America donated the packaging needed to ship the product, and the FCSM team worked with other companies to handle the bottling. In addition to donating hand sanitizer to health care facilities, Honda will provide 1,500 gallons of the product for use in its manufacturing plants, as part of the effort to provide a clean and safe environment for its associates.

About Honda in North America

Honda established operations in America in 1959 and today employs more than 40,000 associates in the development, manufacturing, and sales of Honda and Acura automobiles, Honda power equipment Honda powersports products, the HondaJet advanced light jet and GE Honda HF120 turbofan engines.

Based on its longstanding commitment to "build products close to the customer," Honda operates 19 major manufacturing facilities in North America, working with more than 700 suppliers in the region to produce a diverse range of products for customers locally and globally. In 2019, more than 90 percent of the Honda and Acura automobiles sold in the U.S. were produced in North America, using domestic and globally sourced parts.

Honda also operates 14 major research and development centers in the U.S. with the capacity to fully design, develop and engineer many of the products Honda produces in North America.

SOURCE Honda
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 14:10:56|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WELLINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand South Island Regional "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition 2020 has been held despite the impact of COVID-19.

This year, contestants were required to submit videos of their prepared speeches as well as talent or art presentation for the judging committee instead of an onsite competition.

Chinese folk songs, paper cutting, instrument performance, folk dance, calligraphy, painting, and martial arts were among a variety of Chinese cultural elements displayed by students in their submitting videos.

The "Chinese Bridge" Chinese proficiency competition for secondary students was hosted annually by the Confucius Institute at the University of Canterbury. This year, the contest saw 35 entries from middle school students from the South Island.

The topic for the competitors' speech in Chinese was "Learning Chinese, Creating Bright Future." Based on this theme, the contestants shared their experiences of learning Chinese, their friendship with Chinese people, and their understanding of Chinese culture.

Wu Chia-rong, director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Canterbury, told Xinhua that there were more than 50,000 Chinese learners in New Zealand, about 1 percent of the nation's population.

The Confucius Institute at the University of Canterbury is working with more than 100 primary and middle schools in the South Island, offering Chinese teaching lessons to more than 11,000 students, Wu said.

"Several contestants who took part in the Chinese Proficiency Competition last year entered competition this year, and have shown big progress in Chinese learning," he said. Enditem
(Natural News) Despite all the calls to get rid of police, America remains a country with laws in place and agencies willing to enforce our laws, and now dozens of rioters will have to face the music for the criminal acts they have carried out in recent weeks.

More than 50 people have been indicted so far on federal charges across the country in cities such as Minneapolis, Dallas, St. Paul, Philadelphia, Austin and Baton Rouge.

A tweet posted by the official account of the U.S. Attorneys Office warned: The #FirstAmendment does not permit people to use a protest as cover to commit arson, destroy property or incite violence. Any protestors who cross this line should know that we will use every tool at our disposal to find you and prosecute you.

Some of the crimes that are being pursued include arson, bringing guns to a riot, crossing state lines for purposes of rioting, torching police cars, looting gun stores and pharmacies, shining lasers in the eyes of police helicopter pilots, and making threats online against police officers.

For example, a federal criminal complaint was filed against 28-year-old Melquan Barnett of Erie, PA, for malicious destruction of property using fire or explosives after the man set a fire at a coffee shop in the area following a gathering of protestors. He is facing as long as 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Meanwhile, feds tracked down 19-year-old Devante Coffie using social media forensics. The man broke into a pawn shop and stole 32 handguns along with two long guns. They later caught him trying to sell the firearms using social media.

A 23-year-old man was arrested for stealing items from the 3rd Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department after being found with a police duty belt with handcuffs, baton, knife, body armor and earphone piece, along with a 9mm pistol magazine, riot helmet, overdose kit and police radio. He had written his name on duct tape and placed it on the back of the body armor. He allegedly confessed to throwing a barrel into a fire at the precinct.

Nineteen-year-old Shamar Betts is being accused of inciting a riot that saw more than 50 businesses being vandalized. A Facebook post he made called up people to meet at a certain place and time with family, friends, bricks and other items, and the group broke windows at businesses in a local mall and looted the merchandise inside.

Antifa will pay for its actions

Attorney General William Barr has promised to prosecute extremist agitators who are involved in the protests, especially those who are connected with Antifa. He said that extremists of different types have been capitalizing on the protests, some of which are only interested in anarchy and others that want to cause a civil war. He also announced that the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Forces will be helping to coordinate local, state and federal responses to crimes carried out during protests.

Meanwhile, President Trump has vowed to declare Antifa a terrorist organization. In a conference call, he told governors: Youve got to arrest these people and youve got to judge them, and you cant do the deal where they get one week in jail. These are terrorists, these are terrorists, theyre looking to do bad things to our country. Theyre antifa and theyre radical left.

While some say the Department of Justice is overstepping, others have said the help is welcome at a time when many local law enforcement resources are completely overstretched. No matter where you fall on that issue, however, theres no denying the fact that aggressive federal enforcement sends an important message to antifa and others who are considering committing these acts.

Sources for this article include:

PJMedia.com

FoxNews.com

Politico.com
The Trump 2020 campaign abandoned online sign-ups Monday to his next rally in Arizona after being spammed with fake entries by teen trolls on TikTok.

The campaign removed its online form for the Tuesday event and instead told Trump supporters to just turn up to the Students For Trump rally.

The drastic move was taken after the debacle last weekend when campaign chair Brad Parscale boasted he had issued over one million tickets to Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, only to see 6,200 people show up.

The campaign privately admitted that at least 300,000 of the million were take, after teens who had no intention of attending and were merely trolling the campaign at the urging of Korean pop music (K-Pop) influencers and TikTok users bombarded the Trump online sign up system.

Marketing and data experts said the removal of the online form for Trump's next rally in Phoenix is a sign the spamming is continuing  and could have lasting effects for the President's campaign.

The experts said the mischievous teens could cost the campaign massive amounts in donations because instead of building a list of loyal Trump rally attendees to bombard with please for donations, the campaign instead has a database polluted with fake or unfriendly accounts.

End of the registration: This is how the Students for Trump page for its Phoenix, Arizona, event was changed on Monday afternoon

And before: This was the form on Students for Trump's website - which was targeted for another wave of trolling by teenagers and K-Pop fans after they successfully spammed the Tulsa rally on Saturday with at least 300,000 fake applications, rendering data harvested for Trump's re-election bid worthless, according to experts

Plenty of room: The Tulsa, OK, rally saw the stadium just one third full, with a sea of empty seats. It is unclear if this was related to the

New targeting: After huge publicity for the mass troll of Trump's Tulsa rally, online trolls targeted the next event, a 3,000-capacity indoor rally in Phoenix for Students for Trump

The decision to ditch online sign-ups does not provide any evidence that the empty seats at Tulsa were the result of the TikTok-driven campaign.

It remains unclear whether claims that the mass troll had 'crowded out' Trump supporters are true, or whether it was a simple lack of interest among his base which was the cause.

The Trump campaign had repeatedly claimed that TikTok was unrelated to the turnout problem, which itself was reported to have left the president fuming.

But the purpose of asking people for phone numbers and email addresses is not to check if they are TikTok trolls, it is to keep that data and use it to solicit donations and issue reminders to vote.

However the trolls may have left the vast amount of data harvested in Tolsa virtually worthless, experts told DailyMail.com.

'It's a serious problem,' said Joe Gagliese, co-founder of social media marketing firm Viral Nation.

'When you have an influx of a million people like that and they turn out to be fraudulent you have to figure out how you sift through to find the 25,000 or whatever number of genuine interest.

'Breaking down a million data points to find who is an authentic follower in that scenario would be very difficult. The other option would be to send adverts to all of them, and then you're paying to access people who you know obviously don't support you which is a waste of money.'

Claire Ryan, a Vancouver-based web developer and data expert for Pacific Coast Information Systems, said that because of the spammers Trump's campaign will probably have to toss data that would otherwise have been very valuable.

'The goal of the TikTok and K-Pop crew was just to waste the Trump campaign's time with this,' she told DailyMail.com.

'But if the goal of the Trump team was to gather this data to generate leads or use it for an email list, the fact that there are a lot of fake records could prove to be a very significant problem.

'You could try to filter them out, but if 90% of that data is junk, you'd be spending a lot of time and effort for not much reward. That would be a major consideration for their marketing and campaign spend.'

Gagliese said after embarrassing the President in Tulsa, the TikTok trolls were likely to target future rallies up until the election in November.

'I think they're going to do it again,' he said. 'They're going to continue to do it throughout the term.

'It's the new superpower of social media. What's become really easy is for movements to get picked up and spread.

'It leaves the Trump camp in a state where they have to figure out how to qualify the interest that they have, and it might not be possible in the time they have before the election.'

The Trump campaign had been using an online form for supporters to request a ticket for his Tuesday rally, due to be hosted by Students For Trump at the Dream City Church in Phoenix.

The campaign tried to weed out fake sign-ups by asking attendants for a link to their social media accounts, their age and their school.

But anti-Trump trolls posted online joking about how they were going to fool the form  even using their pets' Instagram accounts.

'They're checking ID this time by asking for a social media handle. Not sure what they want with my dog's Instagram but [shrug emoji]' one Twitter user Kris Hansen wrote.

Laupp, from Iowa, says the impact of the video was a powerful sense of community

President Trump was reportedly 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd size in Tulsa on Saturday, putting Brad Parscale at the center of speculation about his future

'oh wow all of a sudden i live in arizona [cowboy hat emoji]' another tweeted.

A Twitter account claiming to represent the anarchist hacking group Anonymous tweeted encouraging K-Pop fans to blitz the Phoenix rally site, and received over 10,000 likes.

'Just putting it out that there are free tickets to see Trump in Arizona. #Anonymous #Kpop #kpopstans trumpstudents.org/convention,' the account, YourAnonNews, wrote.

After being hit with spam and less than 24 hours before the event, the Trump Campaign removed the form, replacing it with a message reading 'Registrations are no longer being accepted.

'If you would like to attend please come to the venue. Venue gates will open at 6am, doors will open at 10am. We recommend arriving early to ensure a great seat!'

Anti-Trump activists told DailyMail.com that they were emboldened by their success at spamming Trump's Tulsa rally, and have since been signing up for tickets to his Phoenix rally and also Vice President Mike Pence's upcoming rally in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin-based mom Ashley said her 13-year-old son and his friends have been creating fake accounts to sign up for tickets.

'As soon as they found out about sign ups, they mass created ghost/fake profiles and linked those,' she told DailyMail.com

'My son and his friends have thousands of followers combined (through tiktok, instagram, etc) and plan to continue to spread the word. They want to make their voices heard, and right now this is the way they feel they can get their point across.

'They absolutely are planning on doing it for the Arizona rally too, as well as VP Pence's visit to Wisconsin this week.'

The Wisconsin Rapids-based mother said that as well as K-Pop fans on TikTok, teens on video game social media sites like Twitch had also piled in to prank the President.

The communications director for the Trump campaign downplayed Laupp's actions

Brad Parscale, campaign manager for Trump's 2020 campaign tweeted that 'radical protestors... interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally'. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, responded: 'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID Shout out to Zoomers. Y'all make me so proud'

The Trump campaign's chief spokesperson blamed 'media-stoked fear' for the poor attendance at the rally

'It's not uncommon to watch a Fortnite or Valorant streamer play and talk about things that are going on in the country. K-pop is definitely one of the driving forces as well,' she said.

'People seem to write off the gaming community/tiktok community easily and I think that's a problem.'

The energy involved in battling the trolls is ill-timed for Trump's campaign.

It is battling poor poll numbers, worrying fundraising returns which showed Joe Biden taking in more cash than Trump in May, and persistent rumors that Parscale will be fired or sidelined.

The two-thirds empty Tulsa BOK stadium offered a symbol of a campaign in trouble, critics said.

Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old former Democratic campaign volunteer for Pete Buttigieg from Fort Dodge, Iowa, went viral after posting about spamming sign-ups for Trump's Tulsa rally last week.

Laupp told DailyMail.com she was surprised by the impact of the mostly teen-led movement, and that it marks a turning point for Generation Z's involvement in politics.

'I didn't expect this outcome. I fully expected him to pack that arena,' she said.

'I know students have already been all over TikTok and Twitter saying "there's a student rally in Arizona, let's make this go viral again."'

'The K-Pop crowd and teenagers on TikTok are definitely already mobilizing to make the same thing happen there.'

Laupp said she thinks the spam sign-ups were only a small part of the reason for a low turnout at Trump's Tulsa rally on Saturday, but that TikTok teens had taken the win all the same.

'Regardless of the real reason for the numbers on Saturday night, teenagers have been messaging me saying 'We did this, we had this impact, I was a part of this,' she said.

'There were teenagers who had all-night house parties after the rally. They were celebrating what felt like a political victory for them.

'They feel empowered and energized, and I think it will have more of an impact if Gen Xers stand aside and let them prove to the world they don't need us to be activated and politically involved.

'I think this will really let both parties know these young people want to be involved and want to have a voice. But they're not going to do politics the same way it's always been done. They want to use the technology they're comfortable with to impact the campaign.'

DailyMail.com has contacted both Students for Trump and the Trump campaign for comment.

Arizona mega-church where Donald Trump will hold 3,000-strong rally makes bogus claim its 'ionization' system kills 99% of coronavirus



President Donald Trump is set to hold his second campaign event at an indoor venue since the coronavirus hit Tuesday  this one at a Phoenix megachurch whose pastor has touted an air filtration system that kills '99.9 per cent' of the coronavirus.

Trump jets to Yuma, Arizona Tuesday to visit a section of border wall, then heads to Phoenix, where he will attend a 'Students for Trump' event at the Dream City Church in north Phoenix.

Arizona Central reports as many as 3,000 people are expected  although early estimates for Trump's Tulsa event were wildly off, with rows of empty blue seats after Trump and his campaign touted 1 million RSVPs.

President Donald Trump is traveling to Arizona Tuesday, where he will address an estimated 3,000 students at an campaign event at a north Phoenix megachurch. It comes after President Trump's Tulsa rally featured rows of empty seats. The senior pastor of the church has touted an ionization air filter that killds '99.9 per cent' of coronavirus

The Phoenix City Council has imposed a mask mandate, and many attendees will be young people, who have been shown to have a lower risk of death to the virus.

The church has five different locations in Arizona and two out of state.

Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Brendon Zastrow claim on video the church has an air purification system that relies on ionization to kill the virus  although the Centers for Disease control do not list it among recommendations for treating the coronavirus.

'We've installed Clean Air EXP,' said Zastrow in a video the two cut, TMZ reported, touting the uncorroborated claim.

'It kills 99.9 per cent of COVID within 10 minutes, says Zastrow, who says two church members work at the company.

'Ionization, is that what it is?' Barnett asks in the video.

The Dream City Church, Phoenix campus. President Trump will hold a campaign event with students at one of the church's Arizona locations

Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Brendon Zastrow claim on video the church has an air purification system that relies on ionization to kill the virus '99.9 per cent of the time'

Pastor Luke Barnett preaches at the Dream City Church, which hosts President Trump Tuesday for another indoor campaign event, where 3,000 people are expected to attend

'Ioniation of the air and it takes particulates out and COVID cannot live in that environment,' Barnett responds.

'So when you come into our auditorium, 99 per cent of COVID is gone, killed, if it was there in the first place,' says Barnett. 'So you can know when you can come here you'll be safe and protected. '

'Thank God for great technology and thank God for being proactive,' he concludes.

The company they cite, Clean Air EXP, on its website touts a 'whole-home air purification solution that silently works with your homes heater or air conditioner'

It has a censor that measures particulates and tracks 'temperature, humidity, methane, carbon dioxide, and other toxic gases and volatile organic compounds,' according to the site.

Online testimonials say it provided 'better sleep,' reduced asthma, helped migraines 'vanish,' and that it protected children and pets from 'harmful odors.'

The website does not say it eliminates the coronavirus, and an online warranty states it states that outside of manufacture and installation there is no implied warranty of 'fitness for a particular purpose.'

The church and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Arizona visit also gives Trump the chance to pivot to a favorite issue of his 2016 campaign Tuesday when he visits a sector of the border in Arizona just days after speaking to rows of empty seats at a campaign rally in Tulsa.

The president is scheduled to visit Yuma on Tuesday to mark the completion of the 200th mile of the border wall system between the U.S. and Mexico.

It's a symbolic achievement he hopes to trumpet amid other grim numbers of recent months  including more than 120,000 deaths to the coronavirus.

Junior Hernandez, a migrant from Guatemala, runs next to the border fence where he and members of the Coalicion Pro Defensa del Migrante (Pro Defense of the Migrant Coalition) painted a graph showing statistics of dead migrants, on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on November 2, 2019

Trump has pledged to have 'substantially more than 500 miles completed' by February of 2021. But according to a detailed Washington Post analysis updated at the end of May, of the 200 miles that have been reinforced with new fencing, there are just 16 miles of border with completely new barrier.

Arizona is now a coronavirus hotspot, which will further complicate White House messaging for the event. Reporters and staff traveling with the president will continue to be tested for COVID-19 and have their temperatures checked, although the White House on Monday scaled back temperature checks for those visiting the White House complex.

White House officials told the Yuma Sun that the president will receive a briefing on the border wall construction, then participate in a roundtable discussion with local community and elected leaders on border security.

After the roundtable, Trump will tour the border wall and thank U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement for their efforts and then fly to Phoenix to speak at a Students for Trump convention at Dream City Church.

Trump is expected to address up to 3,000 people at an event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, where 'Students for Trump' members will attend, AZ Central reported.

It is a state where polls between Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden are tight, and Sen. Martha McSally faces a tough fight for reelection after embracing Trump.

It is yet another trip that will get Trump outside of Washington, where he has been raging about mail-in ballots, blasting congressional Democrats and rival Joe Biden, and sidelining overseers by firing inspectors general and signing off on a weekend plan to axe the top prosecutor in Manhattan.

Expected to join Trump in Yuma are Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan.

Trumps last appearance in Yuma was in 2017 when he visited with U.S. Marines and Customs and Border Protection agents.
The Department of International Trade and Defra have launched a new eight-point plan intended to help the food and farming industry bounce back from the impact on trade of COVID-19.

With so much focus currently on the implications for food imports and the standards attached to them from new trade deals, the Government is attempting to shift the spotlight to exports with this latest announcement.

The plan turbo charge UK food and drink as the world recovers from coronavirus includes what the departments describe as unprecedented help for SMEs allowing them to capitalise on trade agreements being negotiated by DIT with Japan, US, Australia and New Zealand.

Although the industry, notably the pig sector, has done well to adapt, food and drink exports have been hit and the Government said it was was committed to supporting this most important of industries get back into international markets and start growing market share once again.

The bounce back plan includes a new programme of physical and virtual events tailored to help a variety of businesses and exporters, including an overseas virtual buyer trial, a Smart Distance Selling Process, and a package of Ready to Trade Exporting Masterclass webinars.

The Government has also launched a new SME E-commerce Accelerator Pilot to increase the level of international e-commerce backing for SMEs in the food and drink industry.

The plan will also see the introduction of Defras first Agri-food Counsellor serving the Gulf, representing the interests of UK businesses already exporting, or planning to export, to the region.

Export Minister Graham Stuart said : The package of measures we have announced today will support bounce back in exports, and help our world-class producers and manufacturers increase trade with the rest of the world. It will also get the industry ready to capitalise on the opportunities that are being opened up by the series of free trade agreements that my department is negotiating around the world.

Over the last two months the DIT has launched the first round of talks for the US, Japan and Australia and New Zealand Free Trade Agreement negotiations.

Farming Minister Victoria Prentis said: The high quality of British food and drink is recognised around the world and the wider industry supports thousands of jobs across the UK.

This package of measures includes the promotion and showcasing of British expertise and produce to new export markets, identifying opportunities and strengthening existing relationships.

The full range of measures

1. Launch of a GREAT DIT Food & Drink Exporting Masterclass, an extensive and bespoke programme of webinars to be produced in conjunction with trade associations, UK regions, including Devolved Administrations, and DITs international network, supported by DITs Export Specialists.

2. Launch of Food & Drink SME E-commerce Accelerator Pilot to leverage DITs E-exporting Programme to increase the level of international e-commerce support for food and drink SMEs, including agri-tech. This will include the offer of one-to-one e-commerce export clinics with the programmes e-commerce specialists and regional advisers, a new series of industry webinars and podcasts focussed on highlighting the opportunities available to export through e-marketplaces internationally, as well as virtual workshops on internationalising their websites for those companies selling direct to consumers in various markets around the world.

3. Promote 50 Food and Drink Export Champions to stimulate aspiring exporters, while utilising International Trade Advisor specialist networks focused on agri-food.

4. Announce the first Defra Agri-food Counsellor serving the UAE and wider Gulf Region, with the role focussing on supporting our food and drink sector and representing the interests of UK businesses already exporting to the area, as well as those looking to export for the first time. The new Defra-funded Regional Agri-Food Counsellor will be based in Dubai and will work alongside DITs existing sector leads in the UAE, providing specialist knowledge and engagement in Government to Government discussions on behalf of UK interests and sectors.

5. Launch of a programme of physical and virtual events, using innovative, interactive software to connect buyers, promote the UK and reach international markets. This will include: an overseas virtual buyer trial working directly with chosen US buyers through a virtual delivery programme; and developing a UK Smart Distance Selling Process, which includes the dispatch of food and drink samples to buyers.

6. Leveraging Defras Food is GREAT campaign, which will extend into the UAE and the EU later this year, to provide impactful and targeted activity in priority export markets, such as USA, China and Japan.

7. Two Virtual Investor Roundtables chaired by Lord Grimstone, Minister for Investment, with agri-food and drink, and agri-tech companies to inform the development of the UKs investment strategy, the UK Agri-Tech International Strategy and the launch of Phase 2 of the High Potential Opportunity Programme.

8. Uplift of UK Export Finances Exporters Edge campaign to further outreach and engagement to identify and respond to the needs of the industry and raise awareness of how UKEF and Trade Finance can help the businesses win and fulfil export contracts.

More reaction

NPA chief executive Zoe Davies said the export trade was critical to the wellbeing of the uk pig sector, the value of which has been highlighted in recent weeks as the strong Chinese trade has helped cushion the impact of COVID-19 on the industry.

It is really important that we continue to explore new markets and we welcome any Government measures that will help pork exporters do just that, she said.

But this announcement must not detract from the bigger issues around our future trade deals, not least of which is the very serious threat of cheaper imports produced to standards not permitted in this country.

Ian Wright CBE, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation said: Support on this scale from UK Government is extremely welcome at this uncertain time. The package of measures is testament to the close and long-running work between FDF, DIT and Defra to boost our exports performance. Our success in restarting and expanding exports will be absolutely vital in aiding the UKs post-Covid economic recovery.

AHDBs International Market Development Director Dr Phil Hadley said: We welcome todays announcement by government to launch a new recovery package, which will provide immediate support to those businesses looking to grow their trade activity overseas. Coronavirus has had a big impact on the UKs export activity and while we continue to ship our produce around the world, the challenges of the pandemic have been strongly felt in all sectors.

Scottish Minister David Duguid said: This bounce back plan will help support the thousands of people working in the industry across Scotland and is a further example of the UK Government doing everything we can to make sure we recover from the unprecedented pandemic.

Get Our E-Newsletter - Pig World's best stories in your in-box twice a week See e-newsletter example Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy
A prominent reformist in Iran who has been summoned by President Hassan Rouhanis Intelligence Ministry tweeted Thank you Rouhani.

Abdollah Ramezanzadeh supported Rouhanis bid for the presidency both in 2013 and 2017, like almost all reformist politicians, who saw Rouhani as a better alternative to any conservative or hardliner candidate. The candidate promised more political tolerance and protection of speech, while also making references against the domination of hardliners and the Revolutionary Guard in the countrys powerful institutions.

However, after the bloody protests last November when hundreds were killed by various security forces in the streets, 77 reformists wrote a public letter demanding an investigation and prosecution of those responsible. Ramazanzadeh was one of the signatories.

Although in his tweet on June 20, he does not mention why he has been summoned by the Intelligence Ministry, it is assumed the letter of 77 is the main reason. Other signatories have also been summoned and questioned in recent months.

Ramezanzadeh was the spokesperson of former president Mohammad Khatami, whose election in 1997 was the beginning of the reformist vs conservative politics in the Islamic Republic.

In the end of the tweet announcing the summons, Ramezanzadeh quips, Thank you Rouhani, a slogan from the presidential campaign that became a popular hashtag at the time.
Cramele Recas secures first Waitrose listing

Cramele Recas, the Romanian wine exporter, is launching its first wines into Waitrose stores.

The retailer is adding a premium Pinot Grigio and a Pinot Noir, both of which are 100% vegan and made from hand-picked, estate-grown grapes.

The Sorcova Pinot Grigio, (rrp 7.79) treats the senses with fruity aromas of grapefruit and peach, which follow through to reveal notes of melon and apples with a citrusy acidity.

The Sorcova Pinot Noir, (rrp 7.79) is described as being perfect for lovers of fruity reds. It is dark, rich and potent with continual layers of black cherry, raspberry, and cinnamon.

Marien Rodriguez, wine buyer, Waitrose & Partners, said: "I am confident that the addition of the Sorcova wines to the Waitrose & Partners range, is the right step given our strategic focus on offering high-quality wines that represent great value for our customers. These wines show a clean and intense fruit-driven profile with a beautifully textured and balanced palate".

Philip Cox, founder and commercial director of Cramele Recas says: We are so thrilled to launch our new Sorcova range in Waitrose, and very proud to be at the forefront of putting Romanian wines on the map in terms of producing quality wine.

Matt Johnson, UK export dfirector at Cramele Recas said: We are delighted to be working with Waitrose & Partners again on a range of wines that are ideally suited to the UK consumer.

The Cramele Recas estate benefits from a warm continental climate, located in the South West of Romania in the Banat region near the City of Timisoara, which sits on the same latitude as Bordeaux.

Since 1998, the company has replanted on ancient vineyard sites with state-of-the-art vineyards.

Related articles:
The Maharashtra government has put three memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with Chinese companies worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold following the Galwan Valley clash, sources told CNBC-TV18.

The decision came after the central government sought details about Chinese investments as well as import-export trade from state governments.

The three MoUs that have been put on hold are with Great Wall Motors (worth Rs 3,700 crore), PMI Electro Mobility Solutions (Rs 1,000 crore) and Hengli (Rs 250 crore). They were signed during the Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 initiative undertaken recently. All the three Chinese firms were to invest in Maharashtra's Talegaon district.

Also read: Magnetic Maharashtra | Great Wall Motors, ExxonMobil, 10 others agree to invest Rs 16,000 crore in state

The Maharashtra government will wait for the Centre to formulate an investment policy before taking a call on Chinese MoUs, sources added.

Sources at Great Wall Motors told CNBC-TV18 that the company has not received any official communication from the Maharashtra government about the MoU being put on hold.

They said that the company continues to watch the developments and that it "remains committed to kick-starting production and going ahead with its first car launch in 2021."

For full coverage of the India-China border tension, click here

Source: CNBC-TV18
An area of showers and thundershowers will move through Michigan today, tonight and Tuesday. Heres a quick look at what you can expect in your area of Michigan.

Here is the always updated radar.

Its not a real clear move-in, move-out type of rain. There will be various areas of showers moving across Michigan in the next 24 hours. The main area of rain showers will move out of Illinois and Wisconsin into western Lower Michigan this afternoon.

Heres the radar forecast from a short term model.

Radar forecast from 11 a.m. Monday to 3 a.m. Wednesday.

You can see no large areas of heavy rain. The main theme on timing of rain will be western Lower Michigan this afternoon and eastern Lower overnight and Tuesday morning.

Severe thunderstorms are not expected with the showers and thundershowers over the next 24 hours. Note my wording of thundershowers is meant to convey a lower strength thundery rain.

Id call the rain more than just spotty. Most of us will get some rain, but it wont be a quenching rain everywhere.

Total rainfall forecast through 11 p.m. Tuesday, June 23, 2020

There are a few things to take away from the total precipitation forecast above. Northwest Lower Michigan will have the heaviest rain overall, with some spots getting over two inches of rain. That heavy amount will be fairly isolated, but a lot of northwest Lower will get over one inch of rain. Southwest Lower Michigan, including Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Muskegon, will probably total out between 0.50 and 1.0 by noon Tuesday. Eastern Lower Michigan will have the lowest amount of rain with a range from 0.10 to 0.50. Southeast Lower probably wont have many areas over 0.50 of total rain.

Its going to be a useful rain for about half of Lower Michigan, with the other half left wanting more rain. The other half will have to wait until Friday night or Saturday for the next rain.

You will also be interested in this: July forecast for Michigan just issued, dont worry about it not being summery
The governor of Alabama Kay Ivey made a statement on Monday apologizing for NASCAR Cup Series director Bubba Wallace.

The incident

Sunday night, the NASCAR world was startled by a scandalous action in which a noose was found in Bubba Wallace's garage. The noose serves as a symbol for the intimidation against the black population in America. NASCAR is already investigating the incident.

Governor's statement

"I am shocked and appalled to hear of yesterdays vile act against Bubba Wallace in Talladega - there is no place for this disgusting display of hatred in our state. Racism and threats of this nature will not be condoned nor tolerated, and I commit to assisting in any way possible to ensure that the person responsible for this is caught and punished", Ivey says.

"While the important conversation of racial reconciliation is ongoing all over our country, it is clear there is much work to do. Bubba Wallace is one of us; he is a native of Mobile and on behalf of all Alabamians, I apologize to Bubba Wallace as well as to his family and friends for the hurt this has caused and regret the mark this leaves on our state", the governor continues.

Unite around Bubba

"I ask the NASCAR family to rally around Bubba and his team as they compete today and I know that there are more people who are wishing him well today than ever before", Ivey ends.

NASCAR banned the display of the Confederate flag at all events on 10 June.

Read more Sochi and Portimao duel to host a race on 27 September
The Andhra Pradesh police seized 26,000 kg of beef from a container at Purushottapuram check post in Srikakulam. The container was carrying 1300 packets of beef, each weighing 20 kg, informed Sub-Inspector Satyanarayana of Ichapuram Town in Andhra Pradesh. The Police also detained 2 drivers and the legal formalities are underway.

READ | Andhra Pradesh SSC exams cancelled; students promoted, says Education Minister A Suresh

Andhra Pradesh: 26,000 kg beef seized from a container at Purushottapuram check post in Srikakulam. Satyanarayana, Ichapuram Sub-Inspector says, "1300 packets of beef, each weighing 20 kg seized. Police also detained 2 drivers. Legal formalities underway". (21.06.20) pic.twitter.com/59Kaj7XDhd  ANI (@ANI) June 21, 2020

READ | Andhra Pradesh SSC exams cancelled; students promoted, says Education Minister A Suresh

Another incident - AP Police Busts Illegal Transportation Of Liquor

In another incident, two weeks back the Andhra Pradesh Police on Friday, June 5, seized 350 litres of Illicitly Distilled (ID) arrack (country liquor) that was being illegally transported from Odisha.16 people were taken into custody by the police and four accused were reported to be absconding. Further, the police busted the gang after raiding Bhogapuram village upon a tip-off.

About the raid

Speaking about the details of the raid, Kasibugga DSP Sivarami Reddy said, "Based on credible information, SI Prasad and his team raided at Bhogapuram near Mahendratanaya River at 5 AM this morning. They caught 14 persons who are carrying yokes with gunny bags. The police seized 28 gunny bags. Each bag contains 125 sachets each containing 100 ml of ID arrack (country liquor). A total of 350 litres of ID arrack is seized."

He further added that two persons from Odisha are sending these materials. "The receivers are Srikakulam's Sompeta. The person who was facilitating the transportation of these materials has been identified as Nalla Diwakar, a resident of Sompeta. He is taken into custody," he said. According to the police, they will take stern action and if needed they would not hesitate to open rowdy sheets on them.

READ | RS polls: YSRC's clean sweep in Andhra; Digvijaya, Jyotiraditya sail through

READ | YSRC,TDP all set for Rajya Sabha polls in Andhra Pradesh amid lockdown
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 01:36:13|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

An open air concert is held by the orchestra of the Konzerthaus Berlin on the Gendarmenmarkt square in Berlin, capital of Germany, June 20, 2020. (Felix Loechner/Sichtkreis/Handout via Xinhua)

Minister President of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Armin Laschet, said on Sunday there is "an enormous pandemic risk," however, the infection can be localized at the company and there is no chain of infection in the rest of the region's population.

BERLIN, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The number of persons infected from a COVID-19 outbreak in German meat processing company Toennies in the district of Guetersloh in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) had risen to 1,331 as of Sunday afternoon, according to the press release of the district.

The district of Guetersloh said 6,139 tests had been carried out, and 5,899 results are now available, among which 1,331 are positive. Five employees of the company are now in intensive care. The tests showed that the number of positive results outside the decomposition unit is significantly lower than in the decomposition unit.

Minister President of the NRW, Armin Laschet, said on Sunday there is "an enormous pandemic risk," however, the infection can be localized at the company and there is no chain of infection in the rest of the region's population.

Due to several cluster infections in Germany, the daily number of new infections has been significantly higher than weeks ago. Statistics of the disease control agency, Robert Koch Institute (RKI), showed on Sunday that 189,822 people in Germany are proven to be infected with COVID-19, 687 more than the day before. And 8,882 people have died from COVID-19. 
A volunteer in Chennai, India holds a placard to raise awareness about the coronavirus on a street during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of Covid-19.

India is one of the world's worst hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic, with reported cases spiking in recent weeks as the country emerged from a strict nationwide lockdown.

Cumulatively, India has reported more than 400,000 cases of infections since January. Though, relative to its population size, the percentage of infected individuals is still low. India also says the number of people who have recovered is higher than those currently affected by the virus.

The country's lockdown began in late March and was subsequently extended several times. Stringent restrictions halted most economic activities and caused millions of people, many of them daily wage earners, to lose their jobs and revenue streams.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs last month predicted a massive 45% economic decline in the three months between April to June. Ratings agency Moody's slashed India's credit ratings to the lowest investment grade level.

India's recovery trajectory is going to be weak as the country is struggling to get past the peak of the pandemic, according to Priyanka Kishore, head of India and Southeast Asia economics at Oxford Economics. She also said India's fiscal policy response has been "quite meagre" compared to the stringency of the lockdown.

To mitigate the economic fallout, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government had announced a $266 billion support package containing both fiscal and monetary measures, said to be worth around 10% of India's GDP.

But economists have said the package will do little to stimulate growth, as it includes very little planned government spending and benefits of several measures are expected to only be seen in the medium term.

While the impact on India's gross domestic product for the current quarter will not be known for a few more months, these charts below paint a snapshot of how economic activities were hampered during the lockdown.
Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Many, even many Christians, have rejoiced at the ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, seeing it as nothing more than basic fairness. In this, they are blissfully unaware of what will come next, because, in our nations ongoing culture wars, theres always a next.

It was just a few short years ago that the idea of gay marriage was touted marriage equality, something that allowed our gay neighbors the same rights and joys as the rest of us. Why not? Who was against love? Only the most paranoid could think that anything more could come of it. A few years later and what do we see? The Supreme Court of the United States just ruled, in effect, that it is legally discriminatory to treat a biological man as a man if he says hes a woman.

John Stonestreet talked with John Bursch, the lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom who argued this pivotal case in Washington and he offers in observations and insights about what this means for American society and for the task of the Church.

Below is an edited excerpt of their conversation, or you can listen to the entire presentation.

We were told that the Obergefell case redefining marriage wasnt going to affect anybody. Talk to Baronelle Stutzman, talk to Chief Cochran, talk to Blaine Adamson and talk to all these folks who have had their livelihoods put at stake in litigation by states and plaintiffs who are trying to punish them for their views on marriage. We can all look back with 2020 hindsight and say thats not true. Here its even more so not true.

Gorsuch says in the opinion, Were not deciding today the shower and the restroom question. But if youre saying that a biological man is not allowed to use the womens restroom or the womens shower, but a biological woman is allowed to use the womens shower and the man identifies as a woman and now wants to use that shower and you say no, that is discrimination based on sex, on his own reading of the statute, because the man is being treated differently than the woman.

No one would have thought that in 1964. To somehow claim that this doesnt affect wider issues is just so frustrating. Even he must know thats not true.

Justice Alitos dissent went on for more than 100 pages with a pretty large appendix documenting the many, many ways this is going to sweep across federal law and change the way we think about all kinds of things. Its really inevitable that this is going to have a big impact.

Justice Gorsuch knows that, and we know that because at the very end of the opinion, he holds out to the olive branch to people who still hold a biblical understanding of what it means to be male and female or a biblical understanding of marriage.

He says, Oh, well, theres still religious liberty protection out there. So, as courts go on and implement this, saying that anybody who holds those biblical views is a discriminator, they might be able to defend using religious liberty.

What that does is it sets us up for a culture war in the courts thats going to last probably the next 15 to 20 years, but were going to have to litigate, case by case, every employer, employee, student-athlete, professional athlete, anything having to deal with these issues and determine what Trump says is the right to religious liberty or is it the anti-discrimination provision that you just rewrote? Theres nothing narrow about this.

Ill give you a reason for optimism and a reason for pessimism on the culture wars.

The reason for optimism is that Title VII is a federal law and so the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies. That is the same statute that guarantees religious liberty that Hobby Lobby invoked, even though its a for-profit company, in the context of the Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Supreme Courts gave a 5-4 decision, so theres no reason to think that theyre going to backtrack on that. They said, Yes, RFRA applies and it protects Hobby Lobby. Now thats so great, thats the good news.

The bad news, and the reason why Alliance Defending Freedom has opposed the Utah Compromise and similar compromises in other places, is that by moving the ball to a fight over religious liberty, we, as a society, have now said as a matter of law that to hold beliefs about marriage and gender and human sexuality that are consistent with the Bible is discrimination, that its hateful and bigoted.

Now, society might give some of those hateful religious people an exception because the Constitution and this RFRA statute tell us that we have to do that. But, when you think about the political and cultural trajectory of this country, how long do you suppose that the religious liberty exception is going to last when everybody thinks that this is a bigoted and evil view?

That gets me to the point of all the work that we have to do. Its not going to be enough in the next 20 years to simply fight the battle for religious liberty and invoke that statutory defense to invoke free exercise clause.

We need to reeducate the culture as to what the meaning of sex is, what the purpose of human sexuality is, and the importance of embracing all of the gifts that God has given you from your body to your human sexuality, to your orientation, to everything that goes with it, and to live a life thats aligned with His plan, not with our own personal feelings and what society says is right or feels good.

Until we can win that latter point, were just going to see a downward decline and a long-term diminution in religious liberty protection as long as people think that our views are not about love, which they are, but instead are about hate.

Originally posted at breakpoint.org
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE (AP)  King County has been approved to move into Phase 2 of reopening from Gov. Jay Inslee's coronavirus restrictions.

The county will be allowed to relax rules for businesses like restaurants, barbers and retail operations.





. . .
NAIROBI -Late on the night of June 27, 2018, a crowd gathered in a slum in Kenya's capital, incensed at two young men who, after a night of drinking, had stumbled against a fruit vendor's stall, knocking a few bananas to the ground before running home.

Two policemen came to Peter Njogu's door with handcuffs. But instead of taking his son, Daniel, 20, and his friend Amos Ng'ang'a, 17, to the police station, they cuffed them and dragged them onto the unlit road and into the mob. In front of Destiny hair salon, the officers stepped back and let other neighborhood youths smash their heads with rocks, killing them as Njogu watched, helpless.

No one filmed the moment, and it slipped into Kenya's ever-growing annals of death in police custody. Njogu avoids that road in his neighborhood of Kayole these days, just as he avoids the two police officers, whom he still sees patrolling.

Death at the hands of police or in their custody happens at a far greater rate in Kenya than in any other African country, according to reports aggregated by human rights organizations. Here, where the police and their victims are invariably black, racism isn't the driver behind brutality. Almost all the dead are young men in the slums, where residents say police operate with impunity because legal recourse is largely unavailable to the poor.

As in the United States, the government in Kenya makes no attempt at official, nationwide record-keeping of police brutality, a task that falls to grass-roots organizations whose fieldworkers are regularly menaced for doing their work. Their estimates range from several hundred to thousands of cases per year, including hundreds of deaths.

By their count, others meet the same fate as Njogu and Ng'ang'a every day. It is a fate so common and the conviction rate for officers is so low - below 1 percent - that each killing tends to move from its bloody climax to numbing aftermath within a few days.

A spate of at least 15 killings committed by police while enforcing a coronavirus curfew, according to a police oversight agency, has gained a bit more attention amid the impassioned global pushback against police brutality. Six officers have been charged with murder and assault in curfew-related incidents since March. Three more were arrested June 10 after a video of them whipping and dragging a woman behind a motorcycle circulated widely. But out of more than 10,000 alleged cases of brutality since a police oversight agency was launched in 2012, only 26 officers have ever been charged, and six convicted.

In Kenya, there is no groundswell of public outrage - small protests here and there, mostly in the slums, often met with tear gas - and community support is mostly directed toward victims' mothers and children, if they had any.

In mainstream Kenyan culture, male grief is swept under the rug. Grinding of teeth is expected, but tears are not supposed to flow. Expressions of rage are met with shame. So instead of taking injustice as a call to action, many fathers suffer the loss of their sons in silence.

After Barack Odhiambo found his son in Nairobi's city mortuary in February 2019, he stashed all his photos of his son between the pages of a book and hid it under a pile of household items so he wouldn't be tempted to look.

Evans was 23, Odhiambo's firstborn, and the police left his body with four bullets in his stomach at the morgue, with a note for the attendants that all four bodies they had dropped off that night belonged to known phone thieves.

A police spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on Evans's death.

"This is the first time I'm sitting and tell the whole story to anyone," Odhiambo said on a recent day in his single-room home, light refracting through a water bottle stuck in a hole in the shack's ceiling. "I told Evans, 'The more friends you have, the more likely you are to get killed. You never know who the police will hunt next.' "

Odhiambo mends people's shoes for a living and had gathered together enough money to pay for Evans to be apprenticed to a mechanic. Long stretches would pass when they wouldn't see each other. He went to the mortuary only when one of Evans's neighbors said he hadn't been home in days.

Evans's body remained in the mortuary for three weeks while his father scrounged up enough money for a burial. His wife sought solace in the embraces of other women, but the only support Odhiambo received after his son's death came in the form of crumpled shilling notes from neighbors.

"As a parent, I feel like I am just a living dead," he said. "Seeing his friends, it's like seeing his ghost. I think about him every day, but there is no one to talk to about it."

Odhiambo says police killings in his community reflect the force's contempt for the poor. Even if Evans committed a crime, he was killed for far less, in his father's estimation, than what the rich get away with on a regular basis.

He takes it as a given that a poor man like him can't get justice in a court system riddled with corruption. He decided not to lodge a case against the police, an indication that a number of cases go unreported.

"How does one fight the government? How do you do it when you are so poor that every day is a struggle? How could I ever afford a lawyer?" he asked. "I take his death like this: Once water is poured on the ground, you can never put it back in the bucket. I take it as part of my life."

The day after he spoke to The Washington Post, Odhiambo was detained by police for improperly wearing a mask, which is mandated by law in public during the pandemic. The officers demanded a bribe, he said, but let him go when they were certain he was broke.

Mental health and counseling are taboo subjects for most Kenyan men. Voicing fear, rage or even grief can be seen as unmanly. The suffering man, dealing with his traumas alone, is often seen as dangerous, cursed or lesser, mental health advocates say.

"We have to ask ourselves as Kenyans, are we okay with that fear, anxiety and anger just continuing on, even growing in our men?" said Chitayi Murabula, a psychiatrist in Nairobi. "We stigmatize, repress and deny instead of equipping ourselves to deal with these issues."

When Peter Njogu speaks of his son's death, now two years ago, the anger is still palpable. Sitting in the small office of a local social justice organization, located in a converted shipping container just blocks from where Daniel was killed, he beat his chest at certain moments, such as when he said his son's name, willing himself not to cry.

Unlike Odhiambo, he filed a case against the police and hopes for justice. But he, too, feels he may never recover from the loss.

He gave away his butcher's business after he stopped being able to go a day without breaking down. He says he sometimes gets paralyzed by shock; it hits him when he isn't expecting it.

"Most men wouldn't talk about it," he said. "It's a lonely journey. I'm alone in this - or you could say it is me and God."

Njogu's case is one of thousands being investigated by Kenya's Independent Police Oversight Authority. It says it is waiting for Njogu to provide access to a key witness; Njogu says he's given the authority everyone and everything he knows. The case hasn't moved in more than a year.

The police in his neighborhood deny that any member of the force has killed anyone. The worst any police officer in Kayole has been reprimanded for, according to officials, is drunkenness. Charles Owino, Kenya's national police spokesman, doesn't routinely respond to requests for comment, but recently he went on television to cast doubt that police had killed anyone while enforcing the curfew despite copious eyewitness testimony.

"Honestly, in Kayole, there's no police brutality," said Hellen Mideva, the superintendent. "It's a misconception. People want to be on the wrong side and blame the police. We don't shoot to kill. We just scare, you get me? We do decent arrests."

Njogu's pictures of his son, taken just months before he died, are more accessible than Odhiambo's: They're under his mattress. In the photos, Daniel, whom friends knew by the nickname Njoro, looks fashionable - and young.

The folks at the social justice center in Kayole like Njogu. He's the only father who has ever reached out to them, they say. If there were more like him, maybe other men wouldn't hide - and then, they said, maybe some kind of seal would be broken, and Kenyans would stop enduring the killings and come out on the streets, as they've seen the world do in recent weeks.

Njogu hasn't followed the global protests closely, but he knows his goal is the same.

"No one has the right to kill anyone," he said. "When they do, there must be justice. That's the only way to end this - to prevent another father from being in my situation."
Monroe Countys spike in COVID-19 cases has come as no surprise to the Monroe County Health Department.

Sharon Nelson, the countys health department director, said in a press release Thursday that an increase in cases was inevitable after Gov. Tony Evers Safer at Home order was lifted. Evers had issued the order through May 26, but it was terminated two weeks earlier by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

We knew that there would be an increase in cases after Safer at Home was lifted, Nelson wrote. As people have more opportunities to come into close contact with one another, the more opportunities the virus has to spread.

The number of confirmed cases in the county has nearly tripled since June 3, when only 18 cases were reported. The number of COVID-19 infections reached 49 Sunday, after the county reported the following cases:

Female in her 60s, mild symptoms.

Male in his 90s, mild symptoms.

Male in his 70s, severe symptoms, hospitalized.

Saturday, the county reported one case of a woman in her 20s who had contact with another positive case. Her symptoms were moderate.

The county also reported six recoveries Sunday, leaving 19 actives cases, two hospitalizations, one death and 27 recoveries since mid-March.

Nelson said anyone who leaves home should assume the possibility of coming into contact with the virua.

We want the public to take precautions to lower their risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, but we also dont want people to panic, Nelson said. We will see times where cases spike and decrease, and we expect that this pattern will continue until we have a vaccine. Our goal is to keep cases at a level that is manageable given the tools and resources that we have.

People who have been in contact with an infected person are notified by the health department. In most cases, high- and medium-risk contacts are advised to quarantine at home for 14 days.

Close contact is defined as:

Direct physical contact (hug, kiss, handshake).

Being within six feet for 15 minutes or more.

Contact with a persons respiratory secretions, including being coughed or sneezed on or sharing items such as a drinking glass, food or towels.

Staying overnight in the same residence as an infected person.

Based on this criteria, we dont consider grocery shopping or going to the gas station as a high- or medium-risk contact unless you were having a 15-minute conversation in the grocery store aisle or at the gas pump, Nelson said.

She said contacts have been receptive to quarantine requests.

So far, weve had great cooperation from Monroe County residents, and we thank them for helping to protect other community members, Nelson said.

In La Crosse County, an additional 23 residents have been lab-confirmed with COVID-19, the countys public health department reported Sunday.

That makes a total of 267 confirmed cases in the county.

A total of 102 are listed as recovered, four are hospitalized and there have been zero deaths.

A total of 8,998 negative test results for La Crosse County have been reported by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services  an increase of 14 in the last day.

In Wisconsin, DHS reported Sunday there are 24,819 cases of COVID-19.

There are 3,220 listed as hospitalized and 744 deaths. Nationwide, the death toll topped 120,000 Sunday.

There is a total of 460,334 negative cases reported by the state.

Tomah Journal editor Steve Rundio can be reached at steve.rundio@lee.net.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 18:52 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660bb8d4 1 Politics criminal-code-revision,RKUHP,house-of-representatives,Commission-III,correctional-center-bill,Yasonna-Laoly Free

House of Representatives lawmakers have urged the government to resume deliberation of the controversial revisions to the Criminal Code and the 1995 Corrections Law despite the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

In a hearing on Monday, members of the House's Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, questioned Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly over the government's seriousness regarding the two bills, both of which were proposed by the government.

Commission III chairman and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker Herman Hery cited the recent passing of a controversial revision to the Coal and Mineral Mining Law as an "inspiration" for the commission to pass the two bills.

Commission III deputy chairman Adies Kadir echoed Herman's comments.

Read also: Activists, experts caution against slapdash reform to tackle prison overcrowding

We must resolve the controversy. After all, there has been another bill that was passed despite [public] concerns, the Golkar Party politician said.

Deliberation of the bills was postponed last September following massive student protests in Jakarta and other regions. The students had demanded that the bills be rejected, saying that they were a threat to democracy.

Yasonna said he agreed with resuming deliberation but would ask President Joko Jokowi Widodos approval first.

Im ready should the House agree to resume, but I will ask for the Presidents approval [] I will officially ask the Presidents directions," Yasonna said.

Read also: NasDem calls for fresh start in Criminal Code revision deliberations

The lawmakers also agreed to ask the House leadership to write a letter to the President to submit a new presidential letter (Surpres) instructing the House to restart the deliberation process.

United Development Party (PPP) lawmaker Arsul Sani said the delay in deliberations had hindered the lawmakers work in Commission III for almost 10 months, adding that the two bills were on the Houses 2020 National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

We cannot move on to deliberate other bills, such as the Constitutional Court bill and a bill on judges term of office that were initiated by the House, he said.
New Delhi: Traders' body CAIT on Monday burnt Chinese goods in Delhi's main market Karol Bagh to demonstrate their resentment and anger against the killing of 20 Indian soldiers in clashes with the Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley last week.

The protesting traders led by Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal were briefly detained by the police and taken to the Karol Bagh Police Station.

The trader's body claimed that Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has accepted its demand to cancel three MoUs signed by the Maharashtra government with Chinese companies recently.

While complimenting Thackeray, Khandelwal said, "This step is in line with the sentiments of the people of the country and will be a lesson to China".

The traders' body recently launched a national campaign titled 'Bhartiya Samaan-Hamara Abhimaan' to boycott Chinese goods.

"This demonstration is a reflection of the boiling anger in the hearts and minds of Indian traders and citizens against China's continued antagonism towards India. Due to the prevailing state of COVID-19 pandemic, this demonstration was done by adopting all measures of social distancing and safety precautions," the CAIT said.

Khandelwal said that traders and consumers across the country have shown great enthusiasm and tremendous support for boycott of Chinese goods.

The first highlight of this campaign will be seen on the festival of Rakhi in the month of August when Indian women will tie purely Indian made rakhis to their brothers and boycott China-made rakhis, he added.

The CAIT has urged traders from all over the country to refrain from selling or buying Chinese goods in view of the upcoming festivals.
Social determinants of health are non-medical barriers to achieving quality health outcomes. They include socioeconomic and environmental factors such as food accessibility, employment, education and more. Research shows medical care accounts for approximately 10 to 20% of health outcomes, while the other 80 to 90% is affected by social determinants of health.

"The effects of the pandemic are far-reaching and have extended beyond medical care to affect access to food, education and other critical resources across our state," said Scott Sivik, 'Ohana Health Plan President and CEO. "Social determinants of health have a significant impact on overall wellbeing, especially among vulnerable populations, and 'Ohana Health Plan wants to help ensure we're continuing to support the needs of our communities during this challenging time."

Hunger and Food Security

The demand on food banks has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Feeding America, a national hunger relief nonprofit, estimates organizations will need an additional $1.4 billion in funding during the next six months to provide food assistance to people facing hunger. In partnership with Feeding America, Centene and 'Ohana Health Plan will coordinate a donation of 1 million meals a month for the next 12 months to feed those in Hawaii and across the country.

In addition, 'Ohana Health Plan donated $40,000 to local Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and food banks including Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, YMCA of Honolulu, Hawaii Foodbank, Malama Meals, and Lanakila Meals on Wheels to support food-funding in local communities across Oahu.

"Hawaii Foodbank is deeply grateful for the continued support of the 'Ohana Health Plan team, and we look forward to our continued work together to serve those faced with food insecurity in Hawaii," said Marielle Terbio, Director of Community Engagement and Advocacy, Hawaii Foodbank.

"We appreciate the generous donation from 'Ohana Health Plan and will use it to continue to support our community through this difficult time," said Lori Lau, Director, Lanakila Meals on Wheels.

"In response to the pandemic crisis and resulting closure of schools, the YMCA used its experience as an approved USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) sponsor to implement Y Feeds Kids," said Diane Tabangay, Executive Director of Youth Development. "While the cost of meals are reimbursed by USDA's SFSP, funds are needed for staffing to prepare our sites and to distribute meals. Without the generous support of our partners such as 'Ohana Health Plan, Y Feeds Kids! could not happen. To date we have served nearly 50,000 meals."

Essential Supplies

'Ohana Health Plan also purchased 500 Walmart gift cards for use on essential supplies. Each gift card holds a value of $35 and can be used to purchase items like food, diapers, over-the-counter medicines, and cleaning supplies.

'Ohana Health Plan is partnering with the following local community-based organizations to distribute the gift cards:

YMCA of Honolulu

Waikiki Health Center

Community People Ministries

The Salvation Army's Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division

Hawaii Foodbank

Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center

Waimanalo Health Center

"Thanks to this generous gift from 'Ohana Health Plan, instead of waiting until a bulk order can be processed and shipped, managers can instantly purchase products without using their own money and then getting reimbursed later for it," said Mary Beth Lohman, Director of Marketing & Development, Waikiki Health. "We are fortunate to have community partners like 'Ohana Health Plan supporting Waikiki Health because we cannot do it alone; your help is greatly needed and much appreciated."

"On behalf of Community People Ministries, our 65 volunteers, and the 700+ households we serve each month with free groceries, we want to thank 'Ohana Health Plan for its generous contribution of Walmart gift cards," said Pastor John Hershenberg of Community People Ministries. "We have started distributing these cards throughout the marginalized communities we serve here on Oahu, and we already know what a blessing they will be to the families faced with tough financial hardships during this COVID-19 crisis. We are grateful for your generosity and how you've made a positive impact in their lives."

'Ohana Health Plan is committed to supporting members during the COVID-19 pandemic. To learn more, visit https://www.wellcare.com/en/Hawaii/COVID-19.

About 'Ohana Health Plan

'Ohana Health Plan provides government-sponsored managed care services to families, children, seniors and individuals with complex medical needs primarily through Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription Drug Plans (WellCare) across the state. 'Ohana Health Plan is a wholly owned subsidiary of Centene Corporation, a leading multi-national healthcare enterprise committed to helping people live healthier lives. For more information, please visit www.wellcare.com/hawaii.

SOURCE 'Ohana Health Plan
Freeway sign installation will close all lanes of Interstate 205 northbound near Stafford Road for four nights.

Crews from the Oregon Department of Transportation will work on a sign bridge on the Stafford Road overpass 11 p.m.-5 a.m. Monday-Thursday, June 22-25. Traffic will be taken off the freeway at Stafford exit and return to the freeway immediately using the northbound onramp.

Map of the short detour for I-205 north drivers at Stafford Road. ODOT

Drivers should expect delays and choose alternate routes if possible.

The RealTime sign project may require as many as 12 night closures of I-205 at five locations this summer.

***

SUNSET HIGHWAY 7:54 a.m.: Two crashes are blocking lanes of both east and westbound U.S. 26 near the zoo. The westbound highway has two lanes blocked. Eastbound has the left lane blocked.

Update 8:40 a.m.: All crashes now clear. All lanes open.

#pdxtraffic Major crashes on U.S. 26 (Sunset) near Zoo exit. Lanes blocked on both sides of the freeway. pic.twitter.com/G1YNyqQZ8K  PDX Traffic Alerts (@TrafficPortland) June 22, 2020

***

Reminder: Travel delays and street closures are likely as construction continues on an urgent sewer repair project on North Mississippi Avenue.

Work affects travel between North Shaver and Fremont streets. Work hours are 7 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays and occasional Saturdays for about eight weeks.

Environmental Services, Portlands sewer and stormwater utility, will replace and expand the 100-year-old sewer main that is deteriorating and is too small for the area. The project will increase sewer capacity.

Project map of sewer work along North Mississippi Avenue. PBES

Travelers should expect some delays and street closures in the area. The three-block stretch of Mississippi Avenue between Shaver and Fremont may be completely closed at times to vehicle traffic during work hours. Drivers should follow all traffic control signs. Sidewalks will remain open for pedestrian, wheelchair, and bicycle use.

Check back throughout the morning for the latest commuting updates and follow us on Twitter: @trafficportland

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
[June 22, 2020] Simplicity Esports and Gaming Company Announces the Reopening of 28 Esports Gaming Centers

Boca Raton, Florida, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Simplicity Esports and Gaming Company ( OTCQB:WINR ) (Simplicity Esports), announced today that 18 esports gaming centers in 11 states have recently reopened to give customers access to play on their high speed gaming stations, and to purchase gaming-related equipment, merchandise, and accessories.

Roman Franklin, President of Simplicity Esports, stated, COVID-19 related disruptions continue to impact some of our locations in states like California and Washington. However, I am happy to report that a significant number of our franchisee-owned locations, and a Simplicity Esports corporate owned location have reopened and are operational. We expect another 10 locations to reopen in the next 30 days. Our previously announced partnership with Ecolab gives us a dependable supply chain of cleaning products to reopen and implement regular sanitization protocols. Players registering to compete in our online tournaments will now have the opportunity to play in our turnaments from their local Simplicity Esports gaming center.



About Simplicity Esports and Gaming Company: Simplicity Esports and Gaming Company (WINR) is an established brand within the esports industry, competing and streaming in popular games across different genres, including Apex Legends, PUBG Mobile, Overwatch, League of Legends, and various EA Sports titles. Simplicity Esports also organizes and hosts various online play from home tournaments in the U.S. and Brazil. Simplicity Esports also operates as a franchisor of Esports Gaming Centers that provide the public an opportunity to experience and enjoy gaming and esports in a social setting, regardless of skill or experience. Additionally, Simplicity Esports is an organizer and host of paid entry, online, play from home tournaments.

Apex Legends, PUBG Mobile, Overwatch, League of Legends, Fortnite, EA Sports and Free Fire are registered trademarks of their respective owners. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond Simplicity Esports control, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of Simplicity Esports Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) on August 29, 2019 and our subsequent SEC filings, as amended or updated from time to time. Copies of Simplicity Esports filings with the SEC are available on the SECs website at www.sec.gov. Simplicity Esports undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law. Simplicity Esports Contact:

Roman Franklin

President

[email protected]

561-819-8586

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
(Natural News) Attorney General William Barr  who has backed calls by President Donald Trump and other conservatives to rein in social media companies  has accused these companies of censoring certain viewpoints and pushing their own content, diminishing the impact of peoples views.

Clearly these entities are now engaged in censorship, Barr said to Fox Newss Bret Baier during an interview on June 9. And they originally held themselves out as open forums where people, where the third parties could come and express their views and they built up a tremendous network of eyeballs.

Twitter has drawn scrutiny for fact-checking

Social media giant Twitter came under scrutiny last month after it placed a fact-check warning on a tweet by Trump regarding the fraud potential of mail-in voting. Twitter used these to refute Trumps claims, stating that there is no evidence that expanded, nationwide mail-in voting would increase the risks of election fraud.

This was followed by a more recent incident where Twitter censored another tweet where Trump stated that when the looting starts, the shooting starts, in regards to the George Floyd protests. In the process, the social media company accused Trump of glorifying violence.

In response to Twitters attempts at censoring him, Trump signed an executive order that interprets Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as not providing statutory liability protections for tech companies like Twitter that engage in censorship. It cuts federal funding for social media platforms that censor users political views.

According to national security attorney Stewart Baker, the order essentially directs the Federal Communications Commission to propose an administrative rule that would spell out what it means for the tech giants to carry out their takedown policies in good faith.

In addition to the executive order, Barr said that the administration was looking at changing Section 230 itself. However, he acknowledged that such a change would require an act of Congress.

We are looking, as many others are, at changing Section 230, which is a rule that provides some protection for these companies Barr said.

Significant modifications to the rule, such as language that would require the platforms to be politically neutral as an explicit prerequisite for immunity, will likely not pass in the current Congress. As such, it remains high on the wish list of many conservatives for next year, if Trump gets reelected and the Republicans retake the House of Representatives while maintaining control of the Senate.

Facebook tries to act like it respects free speech  huh?

While it hasnt attracted the same attention that Twitter has, Facebook has also drawn flak as it tries to portray itself as an arbiter of misinformation and harmful speech related to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, while also claiming to champion free speech.

On one hand, the Menlo Park-based company has refused to take down posts by Trump despite calls for it to do so. On the other, Facebook has also actively censored other posts and even blocked sites outright.

Critics say that the company has crossed the line from merely quashing fake news to actually censoring legitimate attempts to organize lockdown protests and blocking factual information that runs in conflict with the World Health Organizations interests.

In addition, Facebook has also been recruiting censorship experts into its Oversight Board while also help launch American Edge. The latter is a non-profit lobby group that has supposedly been tasked with influencing Capitol Hill policymakers the company sees as political opponents.

Facebook is currently the only social media company that has been linked to American Edge so far. It is unclear if other social media companies and other tech giants are also involved in the lobby group.

Sources include:

FoxNews.com

LifeSiteNews.com 1

LifeSiteNews.com 2

BusinessInsider.com
Announcement comes after mass graves were discovered in the city of Tarhuna following retreat by eastern-based forces.

A fact-finding mission to Libya has been established by the United Nations top rights body after prosecutors from the International Criminal Court said that mass graves discovered recently may constitute war crimes.

The UN Human Rights Council on Monday adopted by consensus a resolution strongly condemning all acts of violence in Libya and urging UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to dispatch a fact-finding mission to the North African country.

Libya, a major oil producer, has been mired in turmoil since 2011, when longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising.

Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the UN-recognised government in Tripoli against eastern-based renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, with both sides backed by rival foreign powers.

The UN resolution expressed concern at reports of torture, sexual and gender-based violence and harsh conditions in prisons and detention centres.

The fact-finding mission experts will document alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by all parties in Libya since the beginning of 2016, the text said.

Tamim Baiou, Libyas ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told the council shortly before the resolution was adopted by consensus that he hoped it would mark a turning point for a better future for Libya.

The resolution was put forward in March by a group of African countries, but the Geneva-based body was forced to suspend its main annual session for three months due to the coronavirus pandemic, postponing a vote by the 47-member council until Monday.

The councils 43rd session resumed last week after Switzerland relaxed the measures imposed to halt the spread of COVID-19, and concluded Monday with the Libya resolution.

Long overdue

We welcome the establishment of the fact-finding mission as an important and long overdue step towards ending the rampant impunity that has for years fuelled by the horrific crimes committed in Libya, Heba Morayef, head of Amnesty Internationals Middle East and North Africa operations, said in a statement.

Hundreds have been killed and some 200,000 people were displaced in Libya since the latest escalation, which began in April 2019, when Haftars self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, launched an offensive against Tripoli, the seat of the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

In recent months, Turkey intensified its support to the GNA and its allied forces, which launched a counter-offensive against Haftar that has reclaimed all of northwestern Libya.

Fighters loyal to the UN-recognised government retook the town of Tarhouna from Haftars forces in June [File: EPA]

The establishment of a fact-finding mission into abuses in Libya is a wake-up call to warlords and armed groups that they could be held accountable for serious crimes committed by their rank and file, Human Rights Watchs Eric Goldstein said.

The withdrawal of Haftars forces from locations in northwestern Libya allowed for the discovery of eight suspected mass graves, prompting rights groups to urge that they be investigated for war crimes.

Macron warning

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday accused Turkey of playing a dangerous game in Libya and of going against everything it had agreed to during international talks.

I have already had the opportunity to say very clearly to President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan that I consider that Turkey is playing a dangerous game in Libya today and contravenes all of its commitments made at the Berlin conference, Macron said, referring to a peace meeting earlier this year.

For her part, International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement Monday that she would not hesitate to enlarge her investigation following the discovery of the mass graves, which she said may constitute evidence of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Envoy Baiou insisted that the GNA had showen that impunity will no longer be tolerated in Libya.

Tripoli hoped, he said, that the resolution indicated the international community holds the same threshold for those countries who contributed to this situation in Libya.
Christopher Columbus has been removed from his pedestal in San Francisco. The Fort Bragg City Council is scheduled to vote on a proposal that could allow residents to rename the city, which is named for a Confederate general who enslaved more than 100 African Americans.

History never stands still, and neither does the need to reconsider it.

One figure who is overdue for reconsideration is William Kent.

Kent is well-known for his conservation actions. He was the donor of Muir Woods, and he sponsored federal legislation to create the National Park Service more than 100 years ago. An elegant souvenir book about Muir Woods by the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy calls him a man of ambition, conscience and wealth.

Anyone who has walked through the sun-dappled, pristine redwood grove of Muir Woods can certainly appreciate his sentiment and his gift.

But there is another side to Kent.

As a U.S. Representative from Marin County, Kent advocated for the extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act and restrictions on rights for Japanese immigrants.

In a 1920 speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he declared, We who happen to be of English descent are proud and happy in the fact that the country from which we came was not overrun by successions of peoples yellow and black and indiscriminate in their breeding.

Kent is an iconic figure in Marin County, where the town of Kentfield is named for him. Hes also honored in National Park Service history. But this aspect of the man is rarely discussed.

The legislation he sponsored ripped apart families, prevented immigrants from owning land and bolstered an anti-Asian prejudice that fueled stereotyping, harassment and violence that continued for generations. In the COVID-19 era, we hear echoes of his racism as Asian Americans are subjected to vicious threats and insults.

A deeper look into Kents history make his bigotry very clear. A poster for his unsuccessful Senate campaign reads: Study His Record  Kent for years has worked and voted for absolute exclusion of Japanese.

He proudly described his legislative proposals: I have been writing and talking about the necessity of keeping this a white mans country for the last 30 years.

His public speeches, printed in the Congressional Record and covered by the press, include statements such as We must exclude Asiatics, and I wish it were possible to ship them all away.

It is painful to read Kents words, especially when the man who spoke them is honored as a founder of the institution that writer and historian Wallace Stegner called Americas best idea.

But as painful as it is, it is crucial that this history be told.

Californians must also reckon with our own public figures who have been lauded in the dominant narrative of our state history.

At the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, home of Muir Woods, Michele Gee, chief of interpretation and education, is leading long-overdue changes to updating Kents legacy. Gee, whose grandparents came from Asia to California via Angel Island, wants the national parks to expand the vision of ourselves, our community and our place in the world.

Thanks to her input, National Park Service rangers now share Kents more complex history with visitors.

But the Park Service should not stop there.

There should be exhibit materials and literature that acknowledge the gift of Muir Woods and the xenophobia of Kent. Only then will the park be truly welcoming to all visitors  including the descendants of those whom Kent wanted to bar from our shores.

Elaine Elinson is the co-author of Wherever Theres a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California.
The announcement on Sunday of the death of veteran republican Bobby Storey came on the same day that Ireland stood still for the State funeral of Detective Garda Colm Horkan.

That was a sombre and moving affair, watched online by tens of thousands of people who didn't know the dead man, but who'd been shocked at his murder last week. Across the country, a minute's silence was observed at midday in the fallen officer's memory, and the national flag was flown at half mast at Garda Headquarters and all Garda stations as a mark of respect.

The most touching moment happened in his home town of Charlestown in Co Mayo, where fellow Guards lined the streets to pay homage as their colleague's coffin, draped in an Irish flag, his cap and gloves on top, was carried to its final resting place.

The exact details of how the 49-year-old Detective Garda lost his life remain unclear. A man appeared at a special night-time sitting of the district court last week to face charges of murder. All that's known is that shortly before midnight on Wednesday, whilst on a routine patrol in Co Roscommon, Colm Harkan had his own gun seized from him, and received fatal gun shot wounds. The murder sparked an outpouring of anguish in the Republic, recalling the trauma of the IRA murder of Jerry McCabe during a post office van raid in 1996. People were said to be "devastated, heartbroken and completely floored".

It's a reminder of the dangers which serving police officers face. There was another demonstration of that in Reading in England on Saturday. Three people died after a man, later identified as a Libyan asylum seeker, started stabbing people in a local park.

Appalling as that terrorist attack was, it could have been so much worse if it hadn't been for one lone police officer who rugby tackled the killer to the ground and disarmed him.

The bravery that police show every day is remarkable, and humbling. Protesters who've spent recent weeks demonising the police, egged on by inflammatory statements from certain sections of the media and the body politic, would do well to consider how much society's safety depends on the willingness of men and women in uniform to risk their lives to protect others.

Thankfully, most ordinary people do recognise and appreciate the sacrifices which the police make. That's why the killing of a police officer on duty is regarded as a particularly heinous crime. Mercifully, it's a rare event in the Irish Republic.

That was not the case in Northern Ireland for many decades. Here, some 300 police officers were murdered during the course of the Troubles - the vast majority at the hands of the Provisional IRA, 12 by other republican groups, and eight by loyalist terrorists. Often members of their families died alongside them. Over 9,000 police officers were also wounded, many of whom were left with life changing injuries. That figure, incredibly, is nine times greater than the total population of Detective Garda Horkan's home town.

Police in the Republic did not escape unscathed from the scourge of IRA violence. Of the 89 people on the Garda Roll of Honour, 23 were killed by individuals or groups associated with republican terrorism.

The last Guard to die before last week was Tony Golden, shot dead in Co Louth in 2015 by a dissident republican who also shot his own partner and then killed himself. Before that, it was Adrian Donohoe in 2013, again in Louth, who was killed whilst part of a two-man security detail accompanying a delivery of cash to the local credit union.

His killers belonged to a criminal gang with links to dissidents, and their car was later found burned out on the northern side of the border.

Despite this litany of tragedy, though, there has always been an undoubted smack of double standards south of the border when it comes to attitudes towards the deaths of police officers in Northern Ireland as opposed to their own.

Public opinion was horrified when the killers of Garda McCabe were championed by Sinn Fein, who even refused at one time to sign off on a decommissioning deal unless the men were included in the prisoner release scheme, whilst simultaneously claiming that the raid on the post office van in which he was killed hadn't been authorised by IRA leaders.

Voters in the South are far less angry when Sinn Fein lionises the killers of police officers in Northern Ireland.

It's only a couple of years since the party's deputy leader paid tribute to the eight members of the IRA who were shot dead in an SAS ambush in Loughgall in 1987 after driving a digger loaded with explosives through the perimeter fence of the RUC station in the village. On the 30th anniversary of that event, Michelle O'Neill told a rally that she was "proud of our freedom struggle" and "especially proud of our republican patriot dead and each of our fallen comrades with whom we are gathered to remember, honour and whose lives we celebrate here today".

The same fulsome eulogies will be heard in the coming days following the death of Bobby Storey. Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald immediately issued a statement yesterday praising the Maze escapee's "selfless dedication to his republican ideals" and referring to his "republican activism". These are nice euphemisms, but they barely scratch the surface of the atrocities which Storey's IRA committed over decades, and they make an utter nonsense of Mary Lou's comments just a few hours earlier, when she described the killing of Detective Garda Horkan as a "shocking incident" and a "sad and difficult day for An Garda Siochana", before adding: "My thoughts are with the Garda's family and colleagues at this time."

Is killing police officers wrong, or isn't it?

Nothing that Sinn Fein says on this matter is particularly surprising, but it is still bewildering that they get a free pass from so many voters in the Republic when they "celebrate" and "honour" those who were part of an organisation that murdered hundreds of police officers in Northern Ireland, and attempted to murder thousands more, whilst joining in the collective public sorrow at the death of police officers in a different uniform.

In February, Sinn Fein even topped the poll in the country's general election.

Republicans are entitled to remember their dead, but if the double standards of their words goes unchallenged, the clear implication is that it just wasn't as bad when serving police officers were killed in Northern Ireland.

It seems that all police are equal, but some are more equal than others.
As Toronto and Peel Region prepare to enter the provinces second stage of reopening this week, a recent spike in new reported cases of COVID-19 in the city has some experts urging caution.

On Monday, Toronto Public Health reported 37 new cases of the new coronavirus, a decrease of 51 cases from the day before. That brought the citys rolling seven-day average down to 68, down from 102 new cases per day a week ago. Still, that seven-day average is down substantially from a high of 230 cases per day a month ago.

Im confident that we can enter stage two with ongoing care, said Torontos Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa on Monday, noting that she is sympathetic to those who might be concerned with the ongoing risk of infection.

We also need to keep watching and learning from our own experiences and from other places that have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks earlier than us. We will need to be watching very carefully for any flare-ups of new cases. Around the world, we are finding the balance between protecting our health and reopening many of the businesses and activities that are important to all of us, she said.

As most areas of the province have already entered the second stage of reopening, or are about to, the Star asked several experts to weigh in on the status quo here in Ontario, whats been happening elsewhere, and what might transpire.

So if youre sipping a beverage on a restaurant patio, sitting in the barbers chair or strolling through the mall in the coming days, here are a few things you may want to keep in mind.

Are Toronto and Peel ready?

After several days of decline late last week, the number of new cases reported in Toronto spiked to 88 on Sunday before dropping again to 37 on Monday. At the same time, the number of recovered cases reached 11,879.

Of the total 13,893 confirmed and probable cases reported to Toronto Public Health, most originated from a close contact with a confirmed case or in the community.

While the citys numbers are better than what they were a month ago, every stage of reopening should be approached with caution, said Dionne Aleman, a University of Toronto professor and expert in pandemic modelling. The city should be willing to be flexible.

She noted that a declining rolling seven-day average is just one piece of the puzzle.

That rolling seven-day average helps smooth out some of the noise and randomness in the observations that we see of positive test case results, but at the same time just because its showing a decreasing trend doesnt mean weve actually hit a point where its safe to open, she said. It just means that we are improving.

Todd Coleman, an epidemiologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, noted that even with the downward trend of new cases in Toronto, the city is still seeing hundreds of new cases every week (almost 400 in the last seven days).

Adding hundreds of new cases over the course of week in a geographic area that has high-population density and a higher probability of people coming into contact with each other, Id be extremely cautious to start opening things up, he said.

With the reopening of shopping malls in the city for example, Coleman said it could mean a potential influx of people into the downtown core, an influx of people on transit, influx of people coming into contact with each other. That could be potentially problematic.

On Monday, it was also announced that Peel would move to Stage 2, despite the region being one of the few in the province to report a two-digit increase in cases.

Peel Public Health reported 61 cases on Monday, down from a high of more than 200 one day in late April, when the region was dealing with a number of institutional outbreaks.

While the commitment and sacrifices of residents and businesses to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has paved the path for Peel to move into Phase 2, we must continue to remain vigilant to safeguard the gains we have made, said Dr. Lawrence Loh, Peel public healths interim medical officer of health.

As we reopen more of our community, practicing the four core behaviours will help reduce risk and keep our community open, he said. Stay two metres apart when interacting with anyone outside your social circle of 10, wear a non-medical mask when physical distancing is challenging; wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face; and if youre sick, get tested and then stay home.

Loh also called on local businesses to implement preventative measures.

Both Halton and Durham reported four new cases Monday, while York had an increase of 17 new cases.

The province

More than half the public health units across the province were reporting no new cases of the virus on Sunday and many more reported one-day growth in the single digits.

The downward trend has surprised experts such as epidemiologist Dr. Jeff Kwong, who said he was expecting cases to increase as soon as restrictions were relaxed.

That hasnt happened, said Kwong. I was glad to be wrong about that!

Kwong, who is a specialist in public health and preventive medicine as well as a family physician, credits the low growth to workplace measures to reduce COVID, such as asking customers to wear masks and limiting the number of people in a store, along with wider testing and more contact tracing.

Hopefully, things will continue to improve, but in my opinion, it will be highly dependent on everyone continuing to practice physical distancing, frequent hand-washing, and masking in indoor spaces, said Kwong. If we can maintain these behavioural changes, then well probably be OK.

He doesnt want people to become complacent.

I dont want people to think that we are out of the woods, because we are nowhere near that, said Kwong. Outbreaks are popping up every day in countries that had previously managed to get their cases down.

Windsor-Essex, the only public health unit not moving to Stage 2, continues to deal with outbreaks among farm workers, who have been reticent to report their symptoms or see a doctor.

We will do everything we can to get our final region, Windsor-Essex, into Stage 2 as soon as possible, said Premier Doug Ford on Monday. Thats why we are ramping up testing and inspections on Ontarios farms to protect workers and keep our food supply chains strong and healthy.

In Ontario, there have been 35,571 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 reported to date, while 2,653 people have died of the virus. More than half of the new cases are originating in the GTA.

Infections rise steeply in parts of the world

Early mass testing and contact tracing is credited for Germanys reduction in new cases, but an outbreak at a meat-processing plant in Gutersloh, north east of Cologne, led to reports Sunday of more than a 1,000 workers being infected with COVID-19. Employees and their families were quarantined and schools were closed.

Brazil and the U.S. continue to report thousands of new cases each day  the latest numbers were at 35,066 and 29,609 respectively  with India in a not-too-distant third, reporting nearly 15,000 new infections on Monday. Russia was reporting about half that number, according to the latest daily figures.

South Africa, which by March had some of the toughest restrictions including a ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol and limited movement outside the home, has eased lockdown measures because of the economy, according to news reports.

Meanwhile, Iran, which began reopening the country in mid-April after a decline in cases, is seeing a resurgence of the virus.
This certification validates Smiths commitment to maintaining the highest standards for our products and services at all of our global operations hubs.

Smith, a global distributor of electronic components and semiconductors, today announces its certification to the AS6081 standard at its warehouse in Amsterdam. AS6081 is an SAE aerospace standard that recognizes Smiths capability to meet specific inspection and laboratory-testing requirements for parts purchased in the open market and intended for aerospace applications.

Smiths Houston headquarters and its Hong Kong distribution facility received AS6081 certification in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Achieving global certification with the addition of its Amsterdam hub further expands Smiths worldwide testing qualifications, verifying the companys ability to prevent counterfeit electronic parts from entering the supply chain and helping Smith to better serve customers. AS6081 standards provide uniform requirements, practices, and methods to assure the avoidance, detection, mitigation, and proper disposition of counterfeit parts.

Baseline procedures, including comprehensive documentation, detailed visual analysis, permanent remarking, X-ray, XRF, and decapsulation testing of parts, are outlined in the AS6081 certification. Additional authenticity testing  such as thermal testing, electrical evaluation, and scanning acoustic microscopy  can be performed upon customer request under AS6081 guidelines. Moreover, the certification validates Smiths stringent supplier qualification processes. Whenever possible, Smith sources parts directly from authorized distributors and OCMs in an effort to minimize risk and effectively manage product traceability.

This certification validates Smiths commitment to maintaining the highest standards for our products and services at all of our global operations hubs, said Kirk Wehby, Smiths Chief Operating Officer. No matter where our customers are in the world, our mirrored capabilities consistently provide the same high-quality components and supply chain solutions across the board.

Smiths AS6081 certification recognizes our ability to adhere to the rigorous requirements of our aerospace customers around the world, said Wehby. We are proud to have our Amsterdam locations dedication to this standard confirmed.

About Smith

Founded in 1984, Smith sources, manages, and distributes the electronic components that go into everything from mobile phones and computers to appliances and directional drilling systems. In 16 cities around the world, Smiths legion of employees communicates in 50 languages and dialects and buys and sells components 24 hours per day, with global annual sales in excess of $1.35 billion. Smith is always moving: helping manufacturers navigate market shifts; customizing supply chain solutions; testing components using cutting-edge technology. The support of Smiths flexible Intelligent DistributionTM model optimizes customers supply chains from beginning to end, including offering customized options for IT asset disposition that deliver maximum ROI, sustainability, and security. Smiths testing and logistics hubs in Houston, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam cover critical areas like quality management, counterfeit prevention, and environmental safety. Smiths operations, purchasing, and sales worldwide are seamlessly integrated with the companys global IT infrastructure, offering real-time, global inventory and logistics visibility. Smith is the leading independent distributor of electronic components and ranks number nine among all global distributors. For more information, please visit https://www.smithweb.com or reach out to a Smith representative any time of day at +1 713.430.3000.

###
Nirupa Sampath By

Express News Service

CUDDALORE: Four inmates of Cuddalore Central Prison who returned from Puzhal Central Jail on June 15 after the exams for classes 11 and 12 were canceled by the state government have tested positive for COVID-19 here on Monday.

The total tally of inmates testing positive at Cuddalore Central Prison has now reached 11, of whom nine are Puzhal returnees and the rest are primary contacts of the patients.

Speaking to The New Indian Express, Nikila Nagendran, Superintendent of Police, Cuddalore Prison said, "About 15 inmates visited Puzhal to write their class 11 and 12 exams. After the exams were cancelled, they returned on June 15 but seem to have contracted the infection. Swab tests were done on 17 June and four inmates have tested positive on Monday. Meanwhile, we have ensured that all safety measures to avoid the spread of infection are in place."
The country crossed the four lakh-mark on Sunday eight days after recording three lakh COVID-19 cases

New Delhi: India on Monday added 14,821 new COVID-19 cases pushing the infection tally to 4,25,282, while the death toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new fatalities, according to Union Health Ministry data.

The country crossed the four lakh-mark on Sunday eight days after recording three lakh COVID-19 cases and has witnessed a surge of 2,34,747 infections from June 1 till 22.

India registered over 10,000 cases for the 11th day in a row.

The number of recoveries also continued to surge with 2,37,195 patients cured so far, while there were 1,74,387 active cases, according to the updated official figures at 8 am.

One patient has migrated.

In the last 24 hours, a total of 9,440 COVID-19 patients have recovered, taking the recovery rate to 55.77 per cent, officials said.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a cumulative total of 69,50,493 samples have been tested up to 21 June with 1,43,267 samples being tested on Sunday.

Of the 445 fresh fatalities reported till Monday morning, 186 were from Maharashtra, 63 from Delhi, 53 from Tamil Nadu, 43 from Uttar Pradesh, 25 from Gujarat, 15 from West Bengal, 14 from Madhya Pradesh, 12 from Rajasthan, 11 from Haryana, seven from Telangana, five each from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, two from Odisha, one each from Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Puducherry and Punjab.

India is the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic after the US, Brazil and Russia.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, which has been compiling COVID-19 data from all over the world, India is at the eighth position in terms of the death toll.

Of the total 13,699 deaths reported so far, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 6,170 fatalities, followed by Delhi with 2,175 deaths, Gujarat with 1,663, Tamil Nadu with 757, West Bengal with 555, Uttar Pradesh with 550, Madhya Pradesh with 515, Rajasthan with 349 and Telangana with 210 deaths.

The COVID-19 death toll reached 160 in Haryana, 137 in Karnataka, 106 in Andhra Pradesh, 99 in Punjab, 82 in Jammu and Kashmir, 53 in Bihar, 27 in Uttarakhand, 21 in Kerala and 14 in Odisha.

Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have registered 11 deaths each, Assam nine, Himachal Pradesh and Puducherry eight each, Chandigarh six, while Meghalaya, Tripura and Ladakh have reported one fatality each, according to the health ministry.

More than 70 per cent deaths took place due to comorbidities, it said.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases at 1,32,075, followed by Delhi at 59,746, Tamil Nadu at 59,377, Gujarat at 27,260, Uttar Pradesh at 17,731, Rajasthan at 14,930 and West Bengal at 13,945, according to ministry data.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 11,903 in Madhya Pradesh, 10,635 in Haryana, 9,150 in Karnataka, 8,999 in Andhra Pradesh and 7,802 in Telangana.

It has risen to 7,612 in Bihar, 5,956 in Jammu and Kashmir, 5,388 in Assam and 5,160 in Odisha. Punjab has reported 4,074 novel coronavirus infections so far, while Kerala has 3,172 cases.

A total of 2,344 people have been infected by the virus in Uttarakhand, 2,275 in Chhattisgarh, 2,073 in Jharkhand, 1,221 in Tripura, 841 in Manipur, 837 in Ladakh, 754 in Goa and 673 in Himachal Pradesh.

Chandigarh has recorded 406 COVID-19 cases, Puducherry has 366 cases, Nagaland has 211, Mizoram has 141 and Arunachal Pradesh has 135.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu together have reported 88 COVID-19 cases.

Sikkim has 78, Andaman and Nicobar Islands has registered 48 infections so far while Meghalaya has recorded 44 cases.

"Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR," the ministry said, adding 7,832 cases are being reassigned to states.

State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation, it added.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 21:28:16|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

CAIRO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday that the North African country "is always ready to negotiate for reaching a deal on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)."

Shoukry's comments came in response to earlier remarks by his Ethiopian counterpart who accused Egypt of requesting the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to intervene.

"Egypt has been in talks with the Ethiopian and Sudanese sides over a decade with good intentions," Shoukry said in a statement.

He reiterated that "Egypt is ready to resume negotiations that achieve the interests for all sides if Ethiopia abided by the international obligations of not filling the dam after taking a unilateral measure."

Egypt has requested on Friday the UNSC to intervene to resolve the dispute over the controversial GERD on the Nile River.

Ethiopia has recently said that it would soon start filling the reservoir, while Egypt has repeatedly warned against any unilateral action without a prior tripartite agreement.

Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt, a downstream Nile Basin country that relies on the river for its freshwater, is concerned that the dam might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the water resources of the river. Enditem
BEIJING, June 21 (Reuters) - China's customs authority said on Sunday it had suspended imports of poultry products into the country from a plant owned by U.S.-based meat processor Tyson Inc.

The General Administration of Customs said on its website the move came after the company confirmed it had detected the coronavirus at the Arkansas plant. (Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
[June 22, 2020] Four Student Teams Named National Winners of 2019-20 eCYBERMISSION Competition

The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) is pleased to announce the 2019-20 National Winners of the 18th Annual eCYBERMISSION Competition. The winning teams were announced last Friday at the Virtual National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE) Awards Ceremony. The web-based science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) program-sponsored by the U.S. Army and administered by the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA)-is designed to cultivate student interest in STEM by encouraging students in grades six through nine to develop solutions to real-world problems in their local communities. "The creativity and enthusiasm that students bring to the eCYBERMISSION competition every year is truly inspiring, and that has been particularly true this week at NJ&EE," said Christina Weber, AEOP Cooperative Agreement Manager. "The national winners, who have made it through this rigorous process, represent the best in the country and should take great pride in their success." The winning teams were chosen from 20 National Finalist teams, which were selected from 2,923 teams that entered the 2019 competition. Since the program's inception in 2002, eCYBERMISSION has awarded state, regional and national competition winners more than $10 million in U.S. savings bonds. "The STEM projects presented this year by these resourceful teams provide true solutions to many of the challenges our communities are facing," said Elizabeth Allan, NSTA President. "Congratulations to the national winning teams and their advisors on their outstanding projects that represent the kind of collaboration, creativity, and imagination that not only benefit the community, but also inspire students and teachers for years to come." Each member of the National Finalist teams received a total of $4,000 in U.S. E.E. Savings Bonds (matured value), and each member of the National Winning teams received a total of $10,000 U.S. E.E. Savings Bonds (maturedvalue). The 2019-20 national winning teams are:



Sixth grade: Carbon Keepers

Felipe de Farias, Briley Siemens (News - Alert) and Eliza Cole-Smith worked with Team Advisor Laura Wilbanks to discover an urgent action against Climate Change to prepare for a better world by 2030. Seventh grade: Code Red

Alexa Tindall, Josiah Morales and Ethan Djajadi worked with Team Advisor Milene de Farias to discover a way to help lower the health risk to firefighters in their communities.

Eighth grade: Aquatech

Saranya Gadwala, Remi Ladia, Anish Paspuleti, and Advaith Gajulapally worked with Team Advisor Hima Lanka to address the problem of water wastage in household in their community. Ninth grade: Psychologigals

Sruthi Kotlo, Divya Lidder and Anjana Ramachandran worked with Team Advisor Ramu Ramachandran to address the urgent need for helping diagnose depression. NJ&EE was a virtual event this year, providing educational opportunities and team-building exercises for the eCYBERMISSION National Finalists and STEM-in-Action Grant recipients. Activities included a Department of Defense Careers Workshop featuring Army scientists and engineers, an interactive AEOP Alumni Panel presentation, judging by Army scientists and engineers, and a livestreamed showcase where students displayed and demonstrated their winning ideas with the opportunity to win prizes through votes for the People's Choice Award. The highlight of NJ&EE was the Awards Ceremony, where the National Winning Team from each grade was announced. For more information about the eCYBERMISSION competition, visit www.ecybermission.com or contact Mission Control at 1-866-GO-CYBER (462-9297) or via email at [email protected]. About AEOP

The United States Army has long recognized that a scientifically and technologically literate citizenry is our Nation's best hope for a secure, rewarding and successful future. For over 50 years, the Army has supported a wide range of educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for our youth, college and graduate students, as well as our valued teachers. Our Nation's economy has greatly benefited from the technological achievements of the last century and is destined for greater achievements throughout the 21st century. For more information about AEOP, please visit www.usaeop.com. About eCYBERMISSION

eCYBERMISSION is a web-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competition for students in grades six through nine that promotes self-discovery and enables all students to recognize the real-life applications of STEM. Teams of three or four students are instructed to ask questions (for science) or define problems (for engineering), and then construct explanations (for science) or design solutions (for engineering) based on identified problems in their community. Students compete for State, Regional and National Awards. The U.S. Army is committed to answering the Nation's need for increased national STEM literacy and to expanding STEM education opportunities across the country to open doors to new career paths for American students that lead to a brighter tomorrow. About NSTA

The Arlington, VA-based National Science Teaching Association is the largest professional organization in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning, preschool through college. NSTA's membership includes approximately 50,000 science teachers, science supervisors, administrators, scientists, business representatives and others involved in science education. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005092/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]




South Korean exports extended their contraction during the first 20 days of June, but at a slower pace, as the coronavirus pandemic continued to weigh on global demand.







The nation's outbound shipments dropped 7.5% during June 1-20 from the same period a year earlier, while imports slid 12.0%, Korea Customs Service data showed on Monday.







A breakdown of data showed overseas sales of semiconductors, the nation's top-selling item, rose 2.6%, while shipments to China, South Korea's largest trading partner, jumped 14.5%.







Exports had slumped 20.3% during May 1-20, while imports tumbled 16.7%. (Reuters)


China and the United States are locked in a contest to develop the world's most powerful computers. Now a massive machine in Japan has topped them both.

A long-awaited supercomputer dubbed Fugaku, installed in the city of Kobe by the government-sponsored institute Riken, took first place in a twice-yearly speed ranking released on Monday. The Japanese machine carried out 2.8 times more calculations per second than an IBM system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which Fugaku bumped to second place in the so-called Top500 list.

Japan's new supercomputer is unveiled to the media at Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. Credit:EPA

Another IBM system, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, slid to third place in the ranking from second, while systems in China moved to the fourth and fifth spots from third and fourth.

Supercomputers have become a symbol for both technical and economic competitiveness. The room-size systems are used for complex military and scientific tasks, including breaking codes, modelling climate change and simulating new designs for cars, weapons, aircraft and drugs. Riken has said Fugaku is already being used to help study, diagnose and treat COVID-19.
Aerial photo taken on June 9, 2020 shows graduating students attend a game to help themselves relax in the run-up to the National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) in Hengshui No. 2 High School in Hengshui, north China's Hebei Province. [Xinhua/Zhu Xudong]

BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua)  A total of 10.71 million students will sit this year's national college entrance exam in China on July 7 and 8, an increase of 400,000 over last year, the Ministry of Education said Friday.

Over 7,000 exam sites will be set up across the country, including around 400,000 exam rooms, and 945,000 people will work as invigilators or service providers.

Wang Hui, an official with the ministry, said the exam will be the largest organized event in the country since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, at a press conference.

The exam, also known as the gaokao, is deemed the most important event for Chinese students. It is hailed as a fair system to select talent and change the fate of children from poor families.

(Source: Xinhua)
Researchers in Australia have shown that a standard pasteurization method commonly used in human milk banks is effective at inactivating severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Although freezing or refrigerating milk was not enough to reduce the infectivity of the milk, a process called Holder pasteurization successfully inactivated the virus.

Holder pasteurization, which involves heating milk at 62.5C for 30 minutes, is the most widely used pasteurization method in milk banks globally.

The team, from the University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, and the University of Queensland, say the findings confirm that current milk bank processes are sufficient to mitigate the potential risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to infants.

The findings should help guide international recommendations for the storage of milk expressed by mothers with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), they add.

A pre-print version of the paper is available in the server medRxiv*, while the article undergoes peer review.

Study: SARS-CoV-2 in human milk is inactivated by Holder pasteurization but not cold storage. Image Credit: sommart sombutwanitkul / Shutterstock

Risk mitigation strategies

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep the globe, human milk banks are busy ensuring donor milk is available to infants who do not have access to their mothers milk. The risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission via infected milk is not yet well understood, and milk banks currently employ various strategies to mitigate any potential risk.

The milk banks use several approaches to ensure the safety of donor milk, including strict selection criteria, microbial screening, cold storage, and pasteurization.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, donors are checked for COVID-19 symptoms, and infected individuals or those who have been in close contact with the virus are excluded. The most widely used pasteurization method is Holder pasteurization, which has previously been shown to inactivate SARs-CoV-1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

Concerns surrounding transmission via breast milk

Although several studies had reported that SARS-CoV-2 is not detected in breast milk, some more recent reports have described its detection in cases of symptomatic COVID-19.

While there is not yet any evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted to infants via breast milk, theoretically, milk could become infected through maternal exhalation or contact with the skin.

Based on the existing data, international guidelines currently advise that mothers continue to breastfeed, even if they are infected with COVID-19 since the health benefits to infants significantly outweigh the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

Although the potential risk of SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted to infants via breast milk is low, it is still a significant concern among milk banks worldwide.

Testing pasteurization and cold storage

Now, William Rawlinson and colleagues have tested how effective pasteurization is at inactivating SARS-CoV-2 in breast milk, as well as how stable the virus is in refrigerated or frozen milk.

This is the first study to assess the stability of SARS-CoV-2 in human milk, writes the team.

The team acquired milk that had been frozen for 14 weeks and fresh milk that had been expressed within the previous 12 hours. The milk had been donated to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood Milk by healthy individuals.

Previously frozen milk and Minimal Essential Medium (MEM) were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then either not pasteurized or subjected to Holder pasteurization (heating at 62.5C for 30 minutes) or under-pasteurization (heating at 56C for 30 minutes).

Freshly expressed milk and MEM were also infected with SARS-CoV-2 and put in cold storage (either frozen or refrigerated). Infectious titers were measured at the time of inoculation and after two days of storage at 4C or -30C.

Pasteurization, but not cold storage, inactivated the virus

The team reports that following heating at 63C or 56C for 30 minutes, no live virus was detected in the milk samples or MEM.

After 48 hours of cold storage, there was no reduction in infectious titers of milk samples stored at 4C and a slight reduction in samples stored at -30C. Among the MEM samples, there was a slight reduction in infectious titers after storage at both 4C and -30C

Although storing samples at -30C did slightly reduce infectious titers in milk samples and MEM, and the live virus was still detectable after 48 hours, warn Rawlinson and colleagues.

Our findings demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 can be effectively inactivated by Holder pasteurization, and confirm that existing milk bank processes will effectively mitigate the risk of transmission of SARS-COV-2 to vulnerable infants through pasteurized donor human milk, writes the team.

The findings support a recent Germany study that also concluded Holder pasteurization to be effective at inactivating SARS-CoV-2 in breast milk. Authors Stephanie Pfaender and colleagues concluded, viral infectivity is completely eliminated by this treatment.

Whilst it is yet to be determined whether SARS-CoV-2 detected in breast milk is infectious, these findings may assist in the development of guidelines around expressing and storing milk from COVID-19 infected mothers, conclude Rawlinson and team.

*Important Notice

bioRxiv and medRxix publish 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.
Representative image

An Air India pilot was found COVID-19 positive after landing a flight in Sydney from Delhi, senior airline officials said on Monday. The pilot tested positive on Saturday, they said.

"The pilot was tested on June 16 and was found negative. That is why, as per the rules, he was rostered for the Delhi-Sydney flight of June 20. Before the flight, his sample was taken again. He was found positive after landing the flight in Sydney," officials said.

The pilot and his two cockpit crew have been put in quarantine in Sydney, they said, adding the cabin crew or passengers have not been quarantined as they did not get in touch with the pilot.

According to the Air India protocol on pre-flight COVID-19 testing, the crew will be required to visit the designated venue for COVID-19 testing for the purpose of giving a sample up to five days prior to departure date.

Since the pilot tested negative four days prior to departure of Delhi-Sydney flight of June 20, he was rostered to operate it. It is not clear why he gave the second sample for testing just before the flight.

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

An Air India spokesperson said the pilot had a valid pre-flight COVID-19 negative test report just before operating the flight.

Air India's June 20 flight was part of Vande Bharat Mission, under which the central government, has authorised operation of international evacuation flights to help stranded people reach their destinations.

The national carrier is operating a Delhi-Sydney flight on Monday under the mission.

"We had no flight to Sydney yesterday (Sunday), so no one is stranded there. The crew operating today's (Monday) flight will take their mandatory rest and operate back. We have adhered to all the laid down protocols in this regard," the spokesperson added.

On May 30, an Air India flight from Delhi to Moscow was asked to return midway after its ground team realised that one of the pilots onboard the plane tested positive for coronavirus.

Two senior bureaucrats had confirmed that there was a "lapse" on part of officials responsible to scrutinise the coronavirus test reports of the crew members and that they did not look at the pilot's test results properly.
The latest daily update shows a worrying new trend as Gauteng province, home to the economic hub of Johannesburg, has a higher number of new cases than the hotspot of Western Cape province centred on the city of Cape Town. Virus cases in Gauteng, which also contains the capital, Pretoria, now make up more than one-fifth of the country's total. It continues to loosen its lockdown despite the rise in cases because of economic pressure, with casinos and beauty salons the latest businesses allowed to reopen. Africa overall has more than 315,000 cases including more than 8000 deaths. The true number of cases remains unknown because of the low level of testing on the continent due to a shortage of materials. One million new cases in eight days

World leaders must not politicise the coronavirus pandemic but unite to fight it, the head of the World Health Organisation has warned, reminding all that the pandemic was still accelerating and producing record daily increases in infections. The comments by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has faced criticism from US President Donald Trump, came as the number of reported infections soared in Brazil, Iraq, India and southern and western US states, straining local hospitals. Members of Sri Lanka's St John's Ambulance disinfect a school in Colombo. Credit:AP It took more than three months for the world to see one million virus infections, but the latest one million cases have come in just eight days, Tedros said on Monday during a video conference for the Dubai-based World Government Summit. He said the world recorded more than 183,000 new coronavirus cases on Sunday alone, the most in a single day since the outbreak started in December.

"Certainly the numbers are increasing because the epidemic is developing in a number of populous countries at the same time and across the whole world," WHO's top emergencies expert, Mike Ryan, said. "Some of that increase may be attributed to increased testing ... And certainly countries like India are testing more. But we do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon." More than 9 million people have been infected by the virus worldwide and more than 469,000 have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the actual numbers are much higher, due to limited testing and asymptomatic cases. "The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that, indeed, the world was not prepared," Tedros said. "Globally, the pandemic is still accelerating."

Tedros never mentioned Trump's name or the fact that he was determined to pull the United States out of the UN health agency but warned against "politicising" the pandemic. "The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself, it's the lack of global solidarity and global leadership," he said. "We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world." Companies around the world are racing to find a vaccine to counter COVID-19 and there is a fierce debate about how to make sure that vaccine is distributed fairly. Speaking later in the conference, WHO's special envoy on COVID-19, Dr David Nabarro, said he believed it would be "2 years until there will be vaccine for everybody in the world". "Even if there's a candidate by the end of the year, the safety and efficacy tests will take some time," the British physician said. "And then the effort has to be put into producing large amounts of vaccine so everyone in the world can get it and then organising the vaccination programs."

He added: "I would love it to be proved wrong." New German outbreak linked to slaughterhouse In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said "everything needs to be done" to control an outbreak linked to a large slaughterhouse that has infected more than 1300 people. Authorities started mass testing of all workers at the Toennies meat plant in the western Guetersloh region and have put thousands of people into quarantine.

Authorities have dispatched virologists, contact tracing teams and the German army to help. "This is an outbreak that needs to be taken very seriously," Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said. US records more than 30,000 new infections a day More than two-thirds of the new deaths of late have been reported in the Americas. The coronavirus has killed about 120,000 people across the US, more than 50,000 in Brazil and nearly 22,000 in Mexico. Coronavirus cases in Florida surpassed 100,000 on Monday, part of an alarming surge across the south and west as states reopen for business and many Americans resist wearing masks or keeping their distance from others.

The disturbing signs in the Sunshine State as well as places like Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina are raising fears that the progress won after months of lockdowns is slipping away. US authorities have reported more than 30,000 new infections a day recently but in New York City, once the epicentre of the US outbreak, Monday was a key day for lifting many coronavirus lockdown restrictions. Yet Eve Gonzalez, a food industry worker in New York whose job hasn't yet resumed, feels it's too soon to relax restrictions. "I'm dying to go out, but people's health is more important," said Gonzalez, 27. Meanwhile, two more members of President Donald Trump's campaign working on his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The president's campaign put out a statement on Monday that said the two staffers, part of the advance team for Saturday's rally, tested positive before they boarded their flight out of Oklahoma. The two were then quarantined and the campaign began contact tracing protocols. These positive tests follow the news that six other staffers, including two Secret Service agents, tested positive in the hours before Saturday's rally. Commuters wearing masks board the subway during morning rush hour in New York. Credit:Bloomberg India records 15,000 new cases in a day India's health care system has been slammed by the virus. The country's caseload climbed by nearly 15,000 on Monday to 425,282, with more than 13,000 deaths.

After easing a nationwide lockdown, the Indian government ran special trains to return thousands of migrant workers to their villages in recent weeks. Nearly 90 per cent of India's poorest districts have cases, although the outbreak remains centred in Delhi, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu states, which are home to major cities. Domestic workers listen during a protest demanding social security from the government in Bengaluru, India. Credit:AP Pakistan cricketers test positive before tour In Pakistan, infections are accelerating and hospitals are having to turn away patients, with new cases of up to 6800 a day. The government has relaxed pandemic restrictions, hoping to salvage a near-collapsed economy as the number of people living in poverty has risen to 40 per cent of the population of 220 million people.

Pakistan cricketers Haider Ali, Haris Rauf and Shadab Khan all tested positive for COVID-19 after being screened in Rawalpindi ahead of their tour of England next month, the country's cricket board (PCB) said on Monday. "The players had shown no symptoms until they were tested in Rawalpindi on Sunday," the PCB said in a statement. "The PCB medical panel is in contact with the three who have been advised to immediately go into self-isolation." The PCB said Imad Wasim and Usman Shinwari, who were also screened in Rawalpindi, tested negative for the virus. The PCB added that other players and staff apart from Shoaib Malik, bowling coach Waqar Younis and physio Cliffe Deacon were tested in Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi on Monday, with the test results expected on Tuesday. Infections slow in China, South Korea

Loading Infections have slowed in China and South Korea, suggesting some progress in stemming their newest outbreaks. South Korea reported 17 new cases, the first time its daily increase fell to under 20 in nearly a month and Beijing's increase was in single digits for the first time in eight days. The UN AIDS agency, meanwhile, warned that the pandemic could jeopardise the supply of AIDS drugs in developing countries. UNAIDS said lockdowns and border closures adopted to stop the spread of COVID-19 were affecting both the production and distribution of the medicines, which could result in higher costs and deadly shortages in the next two months.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 05:21:06|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HARARE, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe has temporarily closed its consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, after two staff members tested positive for COVID-19.

Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa confirmed the development in a statement Monday.

"On a sad note, the nation is informed that the consulate in Johannesburg has temporarily closed after two confirmed cases of COVID-19 were recorded among the officials," the minister said.

"The officials who tested positive had been to Limpopo and Lindela Detention Center to screen and assist Zimbabweans who were being repatriated home. The total number of recorded positive cases among consulate staff and dependents now stands at six," she said.

The minister said two of those who tested positive had been isolated at a lodge away from their families.

Mutsvangwa added that the consulate was now offering most of its services online to curb the further spread of the disease.

As of Monday, there have been 512 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe, including six deaths and 64 recoveries.

Of the 512 cases, 438 cases are imported while 74 are local transmissions. Enditem
There seems to be no holding back now. The Congress has made up its mind that despite being accused of being anti-national and not showing solidarity with the government on a critical national security issue, it will not stop demanding answers and attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The latest to join in is former PM Manmohan Singh. In an early morning statement on Monday he said:

Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty. And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our Nations security as also strategic and territorial interests.

China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date. We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation, nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity. The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further.

This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat.

We remind the Government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements.We call upon the Prime Minister and the Government to rise to the occasion, to ensure justice for Col. B. Santosh Babu and our jawans who have made the ultimate sacrifice and resolutely defended our territorial integrity.To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the peoples faith.

His statement comes a day after Rahul Gandhis Sunday tweet wherein he took a dig at the PM, saying he was not Narendra Modi but Surender Modi. This made the BJP accuse Gandhi of being a poor leader and one who was making statements that would help China.

Despite BJP Releasing footage to show that the Gandhis had signed agreements with China, the Congress has decided not to be daunted. It wants to go ahead and take on the government. Congress President Sonia Gandhi was the lone voice at the all-party meeting and shot off many questions to Modi on the reality at the border: Did Chinese intrude into Indian territory? This was clearly a cue from Rahul Gandhi. Sonia was met with a strong statement of denial from the PMO and also many opposition parties did not approve of the Congress asking these questions. In fact, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said this was no time to shake the solidarity with the government.

Behind the Congresss stand is Rahul Gandhi's politics. Some say it could be seen as his return strategy. But could it be the Rafale 2 moment?

During Lok Sabha polls in 2019, Rahul had repeatedly attacked Modi and BJP for what he called was a shady Rafale fighter jets deal. In fact, he had made the slogan Chowkidar Chor Hai, much to the discomfort of party colleagues who felt that corruption charges wouldnt stick on the PM. The BJP countered the move with Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, which was a hit. That Rahul's Rafale moment had failed was evident with the election results where Congress failed to reach the 100-mark. Rahul was also upset with his party for not convincingly backing him on his Rafale campaign, which is when he quit as party president and took responsibility for the partys poor poll performance.

There are now demands that Rahul come back as the party president as Sonia is clearly reluctant to continue for long. But he needs a platform, an issue on which he could make this comeback. The China and Covid-19 issues have given him this chance. On both the issues, he has constantly attacked the government and Modi of fudging figures and facts. On China particularly, he wants to dent Modi's image of being a machismo and one with a strong foreign policy and showing the lal aankh to the errant foreign powers like Pakistan and China.

Unlike the Rafale issue, at least this time the party seems more in sync with Rahul on the China issue. Stalwarts like Capt Amarinder Singh, Ashok Gehlot and many others have agreed with him publicly and often echoed his sentiments. This time see a more united and concerted Congress strategy. And its the top trio that is now taking the lead and setting the agenda. So while Rahul will be the most aggressive voice, he is being backed by Sonia with her questions and a firm instruction to the party that they should not let up on the attack.

Singhs joining of the chorus is being seen by Congress strategists as an icing on the cake. Singh is respected across political parties and on the world platform. As former a PM, his words cannot be dismissed easily. He adds weight to the Congresss plans and its plan is to build on the China issue to launch itself as the main vocal alternative to the BJP and also show how other opposition parties have become meek. But more importantly, the strategy at play intends to make Rahul Gandhi the voice of this scheme.
Australian pathology labs are preparing for a surge in workplace COVID-19 testing as the sector looks to bounce back from a sharp fall in business during the pandemic.

The focus on testing for workplaces comes as Australia braces for a possible second wave of the virus, with a rise in cases in Victoria prompting the state government to extend its state of emergency conditions by one month.

A nurse conducts a nasal swab test at St George Hospital. Credit:Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

ALS, a $3 billion ASX-listed laboratory operator, said it was seeing increased interest in tests for employees and in office spaces.

"Until a vaccine is available, we expect there will be growing demand for testing people and workplaces as restrictions are lifted," a spokesman said.
Former YouTube Premium series Cobra Kai will now strike first and strike hard at Netflix.

Reports emerged in May that The Karate Kid spin-off series  which takes place 30 years and counting after the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament  was leaving YouTube (which continues to get rid of its scripted series).

Well, Netflix announced on Monday that they have scooped up Cobra Kai ahead of Season 3.

Netflix today announced it is the new home to Cobra Kai, the series continuation of the iconic The Karate Kid film franchise from Sony Pictures Television. The films stars, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprise their star-making roles in the series along with Martin Kove as sensei John Kreese. Executive Producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg: Making Cobra Kai has been a dream come true for us since day one. We are thankful for the tireless dedication of Jeff Frost, Chris Parnell, Jason Clodfelter, Karen Tatevosian, and all our partners at Sony for finding us a new home where we can not only continue the series, but also explore opportunities to further expand The Karate Kid universe. We are beyond excited to join our new partners at Netflix and look forward to the show reaching the massive global audience who loves this franchise as much as we do.

Seasons 1 and 2 will be available on Netflix later this year, and the Netflix-exclusive Season 3 will follow at a date to be determined.

Additionally, Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports that there have been conversations between Netflix and Sony TV about potentially expanding the franchise in the future with other Karate Kid series.

Cobra Kai is a fantastic get for Netflix, and most fans of the series are likely quite happy with this news. Many, many people used YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) free trials  *raises hand*  to be able to watch Seasons 1 and 2 of Cobra Kai, whereas the Netflix audience is massive.

And the Netflix audience could turn the viewership for Cobra Kai to the level the series has deserved. Cobra Kai has received outstanding reviews, with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (100% for Season 1), and an 8.8 rating from IMDb users.

Frankly, its pretty stunning how well the spin-off works (William Zabka is particularly terrific as modern-day Johnny Lawrence), well over 30 years after The Karate Kid hit theaters. Netflix subscribers will get the opportunity to find that out later this year.
In a week's time France is to hold the second round of municipal elections that were called off in March due to the coronavirus epidemic. Voters in close to 5,000 cities and towns are set to vote, including Paris where three, very different, women are competing for the post.

The first round of voting, on Sunday, 15 March, produced an outright winner in many of France's smaller towns and villages..

But in 4,827 places  mostly the larger towns and cities  there was to be a run-off on 22 March.

That was scrapped when France went into lockdown on 17 March and the second round takes place next Sunday 28 June.

Roughly 16 million people in France are being called on to vote, including residents of Paris, Lyon and other large cities.

In Paris the incumbent Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo is attempting to hold on to her seat. But she's challenged by conservative Rachida Dati, who served as former president Nicolas Sarkozy's justice minister and Agnes Buzyn, President Emmanuel Macron's former health minister.

Hidalgo topped the voting in the first round and remains the favourite. But Dati and Buzyn each have their own strong support bases.

All three candidates need a good turnout next Sunday but a recent survey by the Ifop polling firm showed only 38 percent were planning to vote, with more than a quarter of abstainers linking their decision "solely to the risk of being affected by coronavirus".

Hidalgo, Dati and Buzyn are running on very different platforms. They each presented their campaigns during a televised debate on Wednesday.

Anne Hidalgo, putting environment first

Mayor Hidalgo scored a comfortable 29.33 percent in the first round and she's now cemented that lead with an alliance with Greens leader David Belliard, the Europe Ecologie-Les Verts candidate.

Their joint platform is based on the renovation of social housing, introducing the "first bioclimatic local urban masterplan in France" and the creation of a municipal energy authority.

Hidalgo has also made a pledge to make Paris a 100 percent bike city with a network of cycle highways for biking across the greater Paris area; to end diesel vehicles inside Paris by 2024 and cap speed limits to 30km/h within the city.

She plans to increase pedestrian areas around schools and transform the Paris ring road with carpool/bus/taxi lanes and, in time, a bike path.

Her economic policy involves "accompanying" the post-lockdown relaunch by injecting 60 million. That would include 5 million to support "positive-impact tourism", 15 million for arts and culture, 6 million for start-ups, shops and business and 4 million for the solidarity economy.

Rachida Dati, energetic conservative

Rachida Dati, from the conservative Republicans party, has energy to burn and is focusing on issues favoured by the right and far-right such as crime and keeping the streets clean through 24/7 cleaning brigades.

The second of 11 children born to north African immigrants, Dati has made a career in law and business. She presents herself as a self-made woman who can appeal to working-class Parisians.

Currently mayor of the affluent 7th arrondissement, she can also connect to conservative middle class voters.

She has called for municipal police to be armed, and advocates family-orientated policies such as scrapping the highest means-based school lunch fees and relaunching a plan for businesses at risk of closure following the coronavirus pandemic.

She has repeatedly called her own bid "the only one capable of bringing change to Paris" and slammed Hidalgo for her record on security and cleanliness.

Dati will need to attract some of Buzyn's more centrist voters if she is to win the race for Paris City Hall.

She aims to encourage turnout with a website aimed at facilitating voting by proxy.

Agnes Buzyn, the government's candidate

Buzyn stepped down as health minister in February, in the middle of the global coronavirus crisis, to replace Benjamin Griveaux as the party's candidate for Paris City Hall.

She won just 17.26 percent of the vote in the first round, putting her in third place.

LREM minister Marlene Schiappa has reportedly told party faithful Buzyn had no chance of becoming mayor. But the centrist candidate says she's in the race "to win".

To come out on top, Buzyn is relying on Parisians' support of the government although that has been weakened due to its perceived mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis.

She has highlighted her managerial competence and gone on the offensive against Hidalgo, attacking her for overseeing a 50 percent rise in the city's debt to 6 billion during her six-year term.

Buzyn's own 400 million economic plan for the French capital would include 170 million towards a solidarity fund entrusted to the mayors of the 20 arrondissements.

"It's about helping shopkeepers, artisans and restaurant owners to survive, notably through an exoneration of all taxes the first year, and even next year if the crisis continues," she promised in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

Buzyn also wants to test extending business hours in Paris to evenings and weekends, so as to spread out busy shopping times and rush hours.
Chinas insects and other invertebrates are spoilt for choice with the countrys array of deserts, rainforests, mountains and tropical coastlines. The winning photographs of the Wild China Biodiversity Photography Contest hosted by Wild China Film present the countrys sweeping lands and rare plants from unexpected perspectives. Here is a pick of the crop

Jan 21, 2022 06:20 PM
An Italian based infectious disease medic believes the Covid-19 virus has become less dangerous with the passing of time and could even disappear on its own without a vaccine.

Dr. Matteo Bassetti is the head of the infectious diseases clinic based in Genoa at the San Martino hospital, said the virus appears to have become less potent, possibly due to genetic mutations.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, the Italian doctor stated: "It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now its like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before.

He added that one possible reason for this pattern change in the virus could be a result of social distancing measures.

I think the virus has mutated because our immune system reacts to the virus and we have a lower viral load now due to the lockdown, mask-wearing, social distancing, he said. We still have to demonstrate why its different now.

Contrary view

Bassett's views however have met with some stern resistance from other medical experts who refute his claim that the coronavirus is losing it's power.

Dr. Oscar McLean from the University of Glasgow countered the Italian's claims stating: "Bassetti's claims seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds" adding "without significantly stronger evidence, no one should unnecessarily downplay the danger this highly virulent virus poses, and risk the ongoing society-wide response."



It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now its like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before. Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/21/coronavirus-weakening-may-die-without-vaccine-expert-claims-12882677/?ito=cbshare Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now its like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before. Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/21/coronavirus-weakening-may-die-without-vaccine-expert-claims-12882677/?ito=cbshare Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
A TIME TO DIE

To Blame The Democrats: You are such a fool. You want everything to open up. You said that people need to work, get a haircut, etc. You forgot to mention, people need to die. Do you know how serious this pandemic is? This virus is doing what it does best  that is contaminating us and killing us in the process. We must be cautious as the state opens up gradually. To name-call our governor Gov. Chicken Crap is uncalled for. Hes just trying to do his job by heeding to the scientists, not you. Also, to politicize everything doesnt make sense. Maybe we can be like the virus that doesnt discriminate political affiliation, skin color, age, gender or socioeconomic status.

AN ANGEL IN BROOKHAVEN

Thank you to the Angel who returned my purse to Customer Service at the Brookhaven Giant on Wednesday afternoon. So appreciative.

TAXING SYSTEM

Final property assessments out on July 1, 2020, with appeals by September 1, 2020. Really. What happened to the prior notice to appeal within 10 business days of the date on the notice to homeowner back in February 2020? In-person appointments were scheduled and cancelled, replaced by phone interviews, which were cancelled without notification. Repeated phone calls to the Delco consultants were not answered and voice messages ignored. Add a new Delco Health Org. to the substantially increased 2021 assessments and our real estate and school taxes will be out of sight and unaffordable, especially for those who have lost their jobs and for seniors who are already struggling. Stop trashing the Washington politicians and start worrying about the politicians in your front yard.

BETH

REWRITING HISTORY

Lyn Linker, having an admitted memory flaw cant change history. We had a Republican Congress that constantly vetoed President Obamas work for the people. Its annoying that Trumpettes constantly bring up President Obamas name when defending Emperor Trumps wrongdoings.

TRUTH SEEKER

WIPE OUT

Since no one has mentioned it, I guess Ill have to. Of all you TP hoarders  how much have you used? Considering you never learn to not hoard when you hear Snow, this just proves you cant fix stupid. Oh, Im sorry; did I hurt your feelings? Truth hurts. Think about it.

JUST GIVE IT TO HIM

You know, I dont think that Joe Biden even has to campaign any more for this presidency. He has these double-digit leads. I mean Trump Is his own worst enemy. I mean these speaking to half-empty auditoriums and frothing-at-the-mouth like a rabid dog. Hes talking nonsense and attacking people in the COVID-19 super spreader places. Its really going to be a a walk for Joe Biden.

BABY BOOMER HERE IN BOOTHWYN

TIME TO GET ORGANIZED

Here it is another Sunday and the beginning of the week. Im packing up my household goods and putting them in storage so I can sell my house and move out of the home where Ive lived for many years, the home where I raised my children and the home from which I buried my husband. And the candidates for state senator both Democrats and Republicans dont care about my situation. I think its time where we retirees we senior citizens quit silently moving away out of Delaware County. It is time we organized our own party and put forth a candidate who will vote for us. And what do we want? We want to get rid of the school property tax because that is the tax that is running us out of Delaware County on a retirement income that we cannot afford. I read all the time in Sound Off people complaining about the the school property taxes. I am so depressed. I keep wishing I would get some debilitating disease so I could pass, maybe that would solve my problem.

ALL ABOUT EGO

Donald Trump has proved once again that he is insane. Only a crazy person would hold a rally during a pandemic. Why did he have the rally? To have his ego stroked. Donald Trump is desperate to have his ego stroked by his sycophants supporters. He is willing to put tens of thousands of people at risk for contracting the coronavirus to do so.
The live runway fashion show  part of the Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sales traditional opening night gala  will return to Jackson Holes Snow King Event Center in September 2021. It is our goal to continue to play matchmaker between our artisans and those who appreciate their work, says Executive Director Allison Merritt.

Custom cowboy boots and Western couture will not be stomping the fashion runway in Jackson Hole this September. Executive Director Allison Merritt has made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale (WDC), including the popular opening night live fashion show, due to COVID-19. But while the four-day exhibit and sale originally scheduled for September 10-13, 2020, will not be held in Jackson, Wyoming, this year, visitors from around the world will be able to experience the excitement through a new virtual marketplace, Merritt announced. An interactive digital version of the Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale Sourcebook will be released September 10 on westerndesignconference.com, allowing collectors, design aficionados and anyone who appreciates the finest in American contemporary craft to source, commission and shop the best of the West.

The decision to cancel the 2020 Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale was not taken lightly, says Merritt. We believe in presenting only the best each year and want success for all involved and current COVID-19 regulations prevent us from achieving this. In response, we are launching the Western Design Conference Digital Sourcebook to directly unite buyers with the best from the WDC's past 28 years.

The new Digital Sourcebook features artists, exhibitors and interior designers from this years juried pool of new and returning talent along with a showcase of fresh and available creations by past exhibitors from the Western Design Conferences nearly three-decade history. From cowboy to contemporary, the virtual version will allow exhibitors to share their exquisite one-of-a-kind pieces, unveiling something for everyone. It is our goal to continue to play matchmaker between our artisans and those who appreciate their work. With people spending so much more time at home, theres increased interest in being surrounded by special and meaningful pieces, says Merritt. Were excited to provide this opportunity to discover whats new in furnishings, fashion and accessories that reflect the best of the Old and New West to a broader audience via the internet. As always, the WDC takes no commissions.

In addition to creating the interactive online Sourcebook, the Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale will be ramping up social media efforts, including special content and sneak peeks on its Facebook and Instagram pages leading up to the official September 10 unveiling.

Despite the disappointment of not being able to open in person, the creation of the new virtual elements will offer dynamic aspects of the event that will only make it stronger going forward, Merritt says. And she welcomes the opportunity for past exhibitors to participate, connecting wtih the Exhibit + Sales very engaged audience during a time when many artists markets have been cancelled or postponed. Were in the process of reaching out to past exhibitors to share in this chance to showcase their creations. If theres anyone weve missed contacting, we encourage them to get in touch. The rates are impossible to beat, and we have advertising opportunities for all.

Meanwhile, the dates are set for next year's Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale, September 9-12, 2021, with all 2020 jury-selected artisans guaranteed participation when the in-person event returns next fall.

About the Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale:

The annual Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale is a four-day, multimillion-dollar event that brings together craftspeople, collectors, interior designers, architects and fashion designers with a love of the West. The Western Design Conference was founded 28 years ago in Cody, Wyoming, to promote contemporary artists working in historical American craft methods. The Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale moved to Jackson in 2007; Allison Merritt continues the strong commitment to Western arts in Wyoming while expanding the reach of the show, including a pivot to an all-new digital marketplace in response to the COVID-19 consequences that necessitated the cancellation of the in-person 2020 event. Additional information is available at http://www.westerndesignconference.com/ and on Facebook and Instagram.


An Accra Circuit Court has discharged John Kupa Azika, 40, a cleaner accused of defiling a 12-year-old girl who is HIV positive at North Legon, for want of prosecution.



When the matter was called, it came to the courts attention that the complainant and victim have both not signed their witness statements after several efforts to reach them and they have failed to turn-up in court.



The court, therefore, struck the matter out for want of prosecution and discharged Azika. He has, however, tested negative to HIV.



Charged with defilement, Azika pleaded not guilty when he appeared before an Accra Circuit Court on February 10, this year.



He was granted bail in the sum of GH5,000.00 with two sureties. The court, however, had to unravel the mystery as to how the 12-year-old victim tested positive for HIV but the accused was negative.



According to the prosecution, the complainant is the father of the victim and reside at North Legon together with the accused.



Chief Inspector Judith B. Asante, leading the prosecution, had earlier narrated that on March 4, 2018, the victim went to sell ice cream at an Islamic wedding ceremony within the community.



She said whiles there, she and two other girls run into the accused, who bought some of the ice cream on credit and asked them to go for the money at his house later.



Prosecution said the victim later went to Azikas house for the money and as soon as she entered his room, he undressed himself and proposed to her but she declined.



Chief Inspector Asante said victim narrated that Azika pushed her onto his bed, held her mouth and had sexual intercourse with her and warned her not tell anyone else he would kill her.



Azika on the other hand admitted attempting to have sexual intercourse with the victim but could not penetrate her because her vagina was small, so he got up and paid the girl for the ice cream and he asked her to go.



Prosecution said later the victim occasionally fell sick and was taken to the hospital where series of tests were conducted and later an HIV test was done, which came out positive.



She said the victims father quizzed her and she narrated her ordeal to him.



He made a report to the Adentan Office of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit and on February 2, this year, a Police medical form was issued to the complainant to send the victim to a government hospital for further medical attention.



Prosecution said the endorsed medical report form recommended that the accused and the parents of the victim should be screened.



She said on February 5, this year, Azika was arrested and he consented to be screened for HIV and was taken to the Adentan Trust Hospital, where the results proved negative.

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
Best Fitness, a gym with locations in Springfield, Chelmsford, Danvers and Lowell, filed a federal lawsuit against Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker that called his reopening plan unconstitutional and will drive the company into bankruptcy.

Gym World, Inc. corporation that operates Best Fitness filed the lawsuit on Thursday citing both the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights in its argument.

Gyms were placed in the third phase of Bakers plan and have been closed since March. During that time, Gym World Inc. said it was unable to pay $145,000 in rent at its five locations. Within the lawsuit, Gym World Inc. said any continuance of Bakers plan will either force the facilities to close permanently or file for bankruptcy.

When operating prior to the pandemic, Gym World Inc. said it had 25,000 paying members that generated on average $900,000 in revenue per month.

The corporation said in its suit that Bakers reopening plan has forced the company to stop collecting membership dues and to layoff all of its 310 employees. Gym World Inc. said Bakers orders also drained the value of the business and property at each location.

The suit echoes similar sentiments expressed by gym owners across the state who were surprised to find out gyms were placed in the third phase of Bakers reopening plan. Many owners that spoke with MassLive in the past expressed confidence that they could reopen safely under limited capacity.

Many took issue with the fact that gyms, even with a limited capacity, could not welcome their members, while big box stores remained open to the public.

In defiance of the order, gyms in Cape Cod and Oxford reopened.

A Worcester Superior Court judge ordered Prime Fitness gym in Oxford to shut down last week after finding the owner, Dave Blondin, violated the states restrictions ordering fitness centers to remain closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Days after the order, the water and electricity were shut off at the gym.

The suit by Gym World Inc. hopes to follow the successful path that gun shop owners took in May. They beat Baker in court allowing the stores to reopen.

U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock concluded the state failed to justify why gun sellers should remain closed when their businesses are protected by the Second Amendment.

It also set restrictions for gun sellers that deviate from the rules imposed on essential businesses in Massachusetts. The stores can allow up to 12 people at once.

Massachusetts remains in phase two of the four-phase plan. The second step of phase two is set to begin Monday with indoor dining at restaurants. Baker said he wants to monitor statistics during the two weeks of indoor dining before moving forward.

Each phase lasts at least three weeks, depending on what the COVID-19 data shows. Phase three could begin in early July.

Related Content:
The Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure & Reform, Paschal Donohoe, T.D., notes todays announcement by Permanent TSB regarding the appointment of Mr Eamonn Crowley as the banks new Chief Executive Officer, following an extensive selection process. In addition, the Minister notes that Mr Jeremy Masding is stepping down from the role.



Commenting on the banks announcement, the Minister stated:
(Rev. Maggie Howards family has announced a change in location for the funeral service. It will take place Saturday at 9 a.m. in Stapleton UAME Church, 49 Tompkins Ave. Visitations remain the same, on Thursday and Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. in Stapleton UAME Church. Burial will be in Rosedale Cemetery, Linden, New Jersey. The Stradford Home for Funerals and Cremations, Port Richmond, is handling arrangements.)

Remembered as a Mother Teresa of our community and praised for her selfless service to Stapleton, the Rev. Maggie Marie Howard has been mourned by local leaders and clergy of all denominations since her death on June 13 at the age of 56.

Rev. Howard served for the last 12 years as the full-time pastor of Stapleton Union American Methodist Episcopal (UAME) Church. The historic building on Tompkins Avenue is small in size, but mighty for its role in the community.

Visitations are scheduled for Thursday and Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. at Stapleton UAME Church. A funeral service will take place Saturday at 9 a.m. in Stapleton UAME Church, 49 Tompkins Ave. Burial will be in Rosedale Cemetery, Linden, N.J.

Stradford Home for Funerals and Cremations, Port Richmond, is handling arrangements and will assist church ushers in monitoring capacity and social distancing.

Born in the Bronx, Rev. Howard had lived in Stapleton since the seventh grade, and devoted her adult life to serving its residents. She ministered 24/7 to those in need, often from the front porch of her home next to the church.

She had been selected as a 2020 Advance Woman of Achievement, and will be honored posthumously at a rescheduled awards luncheon in the spring.

My mother was the definition of love, said her daughter, Kathryn Pearson. She was the most sincere, kind, patient, understanding, and nonjudgmental woman I have ever known. Her love, wisdom and infectious spirit were immeasurable. She helped me through many challenges, and as her daughter, I always wanted to make her proud. She guided me to be a successful woman, and I watched her do the same for so many people.

My mother was the glue to our family, Stapleton community, and beyond, Rev. Howards daughter continued. She traveled the world with her ministry. If you went to her with an issue, with her spiritual guidance, she had a unique way to see people through. My mother showed me, through sacrificing her life, unconditional love.

SURVIVORS AND CONDOLENCES

In addition to her spiritual family at Stapleton UAME Church and her daughter, Kathryn Pearson (Bryant), survivors include a son, Clayton Howard; three brothers, Harold Wise, Thomas Otis Jenkins and Granver Lemann Jenkins; four sisters, Tarenya Jenkins, Deirdre M. Jenkins, Nicole Best and Maebelle Wise; her mother, Carrie Lee Wise, and a granddaughter, Bryona Pearson. She was preceded in death by a brother, Benjamin Fields, and her father, Leon Jenkins.

Condolences have poured in from the community; a selection is published here.

Borough President James Oddo: It seems almost cruel that when we most need the strength, faith, love, and message of community that Rev. Maggie Howard embodied, she has been taken from us. On a few Sundays during this COVID crisis, I have gone on social media and there was Pastor Howard preaching remotely to her congregants. I stayed and listened, and I experienced part of why she was such a source of comfort and joy. I cant say I understand why she was called home at this time, but I hold onto the notion she is with God. We should all pray during these uneven times that Maggie Howard continues to shed her grace on us.

District Attorney Michael McMahon: Reverend Howard was literally one of the greatest and finest persons Judy and I ever met and we consider it a profound blessing to be able to count her as a friend and spiritual guidepost. She was the determined and inspirational leader of historic Stapleton UAME, which I always called the little Church that could. The small congregation faced daunting challenges, including economic, an aging demographic and changing environment but Maggie persevered and her indomitable faith and determination flourished as did all those whose lives she touched. Her food pantry basically turned a few fishes and loaves miraculously into nourishment for so many souls. And oh, that smile! It could fill the church every Sunday, as well as the individual hearts of everyone she met with the feeling that they were blessed with Gods Grace. The good Lord must have been in need of a perfect angel and thus called Maggie home. Judy and I send our love to her family and the church members.

Advance Publisher Caroline Diamond Harrison: The Women of Achievement judges recognized Maggie Howards contributions to be worthy of this recognition, and I could not agree more. Her good work served as a source of great inspiration to those in her church and in the Stapleton community. I am sorry that she didnt have the opportunity to bask in the limelight shining on her at the luncheon. She did not seek that, but she certainly deserved it. My hope is people will read about her good work and learn from her legacy, especially now at this time when the nation is focused on the plague of racial injustice. Rev. Howard will continue to have a positive impact in our community.

The Rev. Dr. Demetrius Carolina Sr., executive director of the Central Family Life Center and pastor/CEO of First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton: A true community, civic and spiritual leader has made her transition. The Rev. Maggie Howard was not only a tremendous pastor of the Stapleton UAME Church but a pastor and friend to all borough-wide and beyond. She was widely known for her spirit of giving through the food distribution programs, programming focused on the holistic health of young women and community partnerships in which we shared through the years. I along with many others will truly miss her loving manner and kind soul. Her legacy will live on as the work of caring for others continues at Stapleton UAME. It has been said that the mark of a great leader is his or her ability to be an example of what true leadership is all about. Based on that standard, Maggie Howard was among the greatest. We pray for her family, church family and all of the communities she touched.

Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanu-El, Port Richmond: Maggie was wonderful, the ideal clergy person. She had a depth of faith and belief and a way of touching people. She was the ideal of what a pastor should be. She lived to be of service to people in every way and gave her life for the service of the community. After the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina [in June 2015], Maggie held an interfaith memorial service in her church and told those assembled: You see, this person did this terrible deed to start a race war and drive us apart. But hes only brought us together. Then the clergy of all denominations prayed together. I will always remember that moment. Maggie was an exemplary person.

City Council Member Debi Rose: Maggie and I often spoke early in the day, after her morning prayers. She was the epitome of grace and always knew the right thing to say to make you feel better. I called her the Mother Teresa of Stapleton. She truly lived by all of Gods tenets by feeding the hungry and providing clothing and shelter for the poor. Her porch was a community meeting place. She had the biggest heart and caring spirit. She was a gift from God to help us navigate through difficult times, and always had a new idea to make life better for others. She went into the Stapleton Houses to resolve domestic violence issues; she helped young people navigate the criminal justice system. Maggie had street cred. She could get into your soul and bring you comfort and peace. She was an advocate for the voiceless, making everyone feel safe and welcome as if they were her closest friends. Thank you to the Advance for recognizing her as a 2020 Woman of Achievement. Im sorry shes not here to receive the accolades she so richly deserves.

Bill Sorensen, church volunteer: Maggie Howard was a very generous, very caring person. I cant believe all she did to feed and clothe people, to meet the needs in the neighborhood. She did a tremendous amount of good for all of Staten Island.

Rev. Terry Troia, president and CEO of Project Hospitality: A prayer warrior for racial and social justice, Pastor Maggie lived out the biblical charism of hospitality with a singular passion and fierce faithfulness to God. Like Abraham seated at his tents entrance, she was ever perched on her porch to welcome the stranger. The people who entered the doorway of Stapleton UAME soup kitchen and pantry knew only the finest feast, her labor of love. She loved deeply and with great expanse. Her love was as wide as the wideness of Gods mercy.

Alfred B. Curtis, former commissioner of youth services under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: Maggie was an angel among men; she is now an angel among angels in heaven. When I served as NAACP president and as a city commissioner, we strategized about ways to empower youth. She will be dearly missed.
On April 15, with the province in pandemic-related lockdown, the Progressive Conservatives tried to pass Bill 44, The Public Utilities Ratepayer Protection and Regulatory Reform Act, in an emergency sitting of the legislature. The bill introduces significant changes to the Public Utilities Board Act, the Manitoba Hydro Act, the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation Act and the City of Winnipeg Charter.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

On April 15, with the province in pandemic-related lockdown, the Progressive Conservatives tried to pass Bill 44, The Public Utilities Ratepayer Protection and Regulatory Reform Act, in an emergency sitting of the legislature. The bill introduces significant changes to the Public Utilities Board Act, the Manitoba Hydro Act, the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation Act and the City of Winnipeg Charter.

The emergency sitting was ostensibly required to pass legislation to deal with the pandemic. But the Pallister government also tried to pass eight other bills, including Bill 44, none of which had anything to do with the pandemic. The Opposition NDP was able to convince the PCs to deal only with the legislation relative to COVID19. This was not the first time the sitting government tried to rush legislation through without debate.

Bill 44 clearly undermines the Public Utility Boards ability to protect the public interest.

The board currently regulates retail electricity rates and oversees approval of capital projects. In 2014 it reviewed Manitoba Hydros preferred plan, which included the Keeyask and Conawapa generating stations. Five organizations were granted intervenor status and eight independent expert consultants provided testimony before the panel approved the Keeyask and the 750-megawatt U.S. transmission interconnection projects.

Hydros estimates for the amount of debt it would take on for Keeyask were approved by the board. Financing was raised in the normal matter, despite the government's current angst over the state of the utilitys debt-to-equity ratio. Since taking power and re-populating the Hydro board, the PCs' 2017 attempt to significantly increase hydro rates to pay down Hydros debt was thwarted by the PUB, partly based on the testimony of intervenors such as Winnipeg Harvest.

Bill 44 will restrict the PUBs ability to control rate increases. It brings in a transitional period ending March 31, 2024, during which time cabinet  after consulting with the minister and the PUB  can increase Hydro rates to any level. It can do so without independent expert or consumer testimony from stakeholders such as Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak or Winnipeg Harvest.

Hydro rates could increase as much as 7.9 per cent peryear, as per Manitoba Hydros 2017 proposal that was rejected by the PUB. Once the transitional period is over, rate increases will be capped at four per cent.

Bill 44 foregoes the PUBs ability to protect ratepayers, in favour of allowing the corporation to achieve targeted debt-to-capitalization ratios. It can raise rates to whatever amount is required to meet the targets, despite the PUBs recent rejection of Hydros claim that it was in financial trouble.

Bill 44 also stipulates that "Rates for different customers or classes of customers must not differ based on affordability or other socio-economic factors." This amendment is clearly in response to the PUBs 2017 recommendation that Hydro establish a lower First Nations On-Reserve Residential class rate. The Board was moved by testimony presented by First Nation intervenors. Hydro subsequently instigated legal proceedings against the ruling.

On June 9, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Manitoba Hydro and, by extension, against First Nations communities that have suffered so much damage from Hydro development and pay extraordinarily high heating costs.

Finally, amendments to the Manitoba Hydro Act break up the utilitys monopoly over the sale of electricity. The bill allows for the sale of power to recharge electric vehicles at public charging stations. Manitoba needs to invest in such infrastructure, but in order to provide the affordable, reliable power, that power needs to be provided publically by Manitoba Hydro.

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.

The bill also authorizes landlords, condominium corporations and housing co-operatives to produce and sell power to tenants. These provisions are controlled by a regulation made under a subsection of the bill  a regulation that can be more easily changed than legislation.

Will these customers pay the same rates as Manitoba Hydro's residential customers, and enjoy the same level of service? They may face more costly and less reliable service, while Hydro could lose revenue. Taxpayers, Manitoba Hydros de facto shareholders, should not accept such a loss.

Roughly 32 per cent of Manitobans live in multi-family housing units, so these changes open up the door to substantial privatization of the residential market and greatly erode an invaluable public asset.

In an age of reconciliation, climate change, growing inequality and continental demand for renewable energy, Manitobans need to demand that Manitoba Hydro and the PUB be strengthened, not dismantled.

Pandemic or not, Bill 44 needs to be vigorously and publicly debated.

Lynne Fernandez holds the Errol Black Chair in labour issues at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives  Manitoba.
At the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, a show for renowned opera performer and Danville native Camilla Williams began in January and was scheduled to run through the end of May.

Then the coronavirus shut down the museum, and the show was put on hold. When the museum opens back up in a few weeks, that will be the focus, said Executive Director Elsabe Dixon.

We will be opening up with [Williams] first, and we hope to extend the show two months for the two months that weve missed, Dixon said.

With some having already reopened under normal schedules and others remaining closed for the foreseeable future, Danville and Pittsylvania County museums are varying in reopening timelines.

After being shuttered for a little under three months, the A.A.F. Tank Museum reopened on June 12. Already, there has been significant interest from the community, said Daniel Gasser, director.

The phone has been ringing. People are definitely looking for things to do, he said.

Gasser said the facility, which is the size of several Walmart facilities, can house more than 100 people without putting anyone too close together. Now it's open, hand sanitizers have been set up throughout the building and signage has been put up in what Gasser called basic protocol.

But the lost revenue from tickets will hurt them, Gasser said.

Now summers got to cover spring which didnt cover winter, he said.

The museum lost three events right off the bat due to the closures, each of which would have brought in somewhere between 500 and 700 people, Gasser said. A flamethrower demonstration was scheduled for Saturday, but museum leadership elected to cancel it because there wasnt enough time to effectively promote it.

If people dont show up, you dont make the money back, Gasser said.

The Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History has conducted outdoor events in the last few weeks, including several days of outdoor attic sales and yoga. The opening date of the museum itself, however, is still about two weeks out. Dixon said members will be allowed to return on July 1, and the public will be able to visit on July 7.

When the museum reopens, Dixon said there will be more consistent and thorough cleanings and people will be required to wear masks to enter.

Both the Simpson Funeral Museum in Chatham and the Danville Science Center remain closed for the time being, but for different reasons. The Science Center is under the purview of the Virginia Department of Education, which has dictated that it cant reopen.

To open, the museum, which is focused on high-touch and interactive experiences, would have had to render all those activities inoperable, said Executive Director Adam Goebel.

That accounts for about 90% of our experience, he said.

During the closure, the science center, like many other museums, has redirected its focus to digital platforms to reach its audience. The closures have also conveniently coincided with several large renovation projects that will include 10,000 feet of new exhibits.

It just so happens that it coincided with the time that we were mandated to be closed, Goebel said.

The Simpson Funeral Museum in Chatham, which normally opens a few days a week and by appointment, has been closed for months due to the coronavirus. The museum is technically allowed to reopen under the guidelines of Phase Two, which went into effect several weeks ago.

Scott Simpson, one of the owners, said they will remain closed until the restrictions subside.

We want to get back to walking people through the history... we want the time to be right, Simpson told the Register & Bee on Saturday.

The Simpson Funeral Museum typically got most of its customers from appointments for tours, Simpson said. Some people would occasionally drop by during operating hours on Friday and Saturday, but not many people just wander in.

People come here on purpose. People dont end up in here on accident very often, he said, noting that there are very few full funeral museums spread across the country.

Simpson said he and his father are "itching to be able to reopen," but they want to wait until the current mandatory mask policy to subside.

Were In wait and see mode," he said. "We're just waiting. We're not going anywhere."

Ayers reports for the Register & Bee. Reach him at (434) 791-7981.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jun. 22

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

Kazakhstan has delivered humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Humanitarian cargo delivered in 46 wagons in compliance with all sanitary and epidemiological standards, included 1,900 tons of flour, 500 tons of pasta, 4,000 liters of sunflower oil and 200,000 cans of condensed milk.

These items will be distributed by the Afghanistans government among the countrys regions.

Kazakhstan and Afghanistan made the decision on allocation of humanitarian aid on May 15, 2020.

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.

Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic across the globe Kazakhstan has numerous times allocated humanitarian aid to its neighbors.

Earlier this year Kazakhstan has sent humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of provided support to countries during the COVID-19 outbreak.

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 17,732 cases. This includes 10,962 people who recovered from the coronavirus, and 120 patients who passed away.

---

Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Jakarta, Indonesia  Mon, June 22, 2020 08:10 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a406608cb82 2 National Indonesia,missing-fishermen,boat-capsized,boat-accident,boat-incident Free

Indonesia has expanded the search for seven fishermen still missing after a rescue team found three more survivors of a capsized boat in waters near the Anak Krakatau volcano, officials said Sunday.

A motorboat carrying 16 people sank on Thursday due to strong waves in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

Six survivors were found after the accident, and on Sunday, Indonesia's rescue agency said three more were rescued from a traditional fishing boat, which found them floating.

Efforts to find them were extended to a "20-25 kilometers radius to find the seven people still missing", said Heru Amir, a search and rescue official in the Banten province.

The three survivors told rescuers that the seven fishermen tried to swim to a nearby island using objects they took from the capsized boat including jerrycans, according to Amir.

"The distance from the spot where the three survivors were found to a nearby island is 10 nautical miles," Amir said.

Boat accidents are common in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, due to lax safety standards.

In January 10 people went missing after a boat carrying 20 migrant workers to neighboring Malaysia capsized off the coast of Sumatra island.
Along with the ROG Phone III, ASUS could also be working on a new flagship smartphone under its ZenFone series. A mysterious ASUS phone has appeared on the benchmarking platform Geekbench, revealing a few details.

According to the Geekbench listing, the new asus ZF will be powered by an octa-core Qualcomm processor operating at a base frequency of 1.80GHz. The chipset is codenamed kona, so it is none other than the Snapdragon 865.

The listing also mentions a whopping 16GB of RAM, so this phone should be capable of delivering a massive performance. The device scored 973 in the single-core test of Geekbench v5. In the multi-core test, it scored 3346. This ASUS smartphone will run Android 10 out of the box.

Advertisement

It will likely arrive as the ASUS ZenFone 7

ASUS announced the ZenFone 6 flagship in May last year. A year on, we are yet to hear about its successor. However, it now appears to be taking shape. The new asus ZF that recently popped up on Geekbench should be none other than the ASUS ZenFone 7.

Back in February, Qualcomm had released a press note that revealed that the ASUS ZenFone 7 will be powered by the Snapdragon 865 SoC.

The note also revealed that the new ASUS flagship will feature Qualcomm FastConnect 6800 mobile connectivity subsystem. This technology redefines Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth audio, the chipmaker says.

Advertisement

ASUS itself has yet to share any details about the ZenFone 7. The ZenFone 6 arrived last year with a flipping dual-camera module on the back. The motorized camera module could flip up and double as the selfie cameras as well. It remains to be seen if its successor will have any such standout feature.

Although the ASUS ZenFOne 7 is listed with 16GB of RAM on Geekbench, it should come in multiple variants with lesser amounts of RAM as well.

Reports are that both the Rog Phone III and the ZenFone 7 will arrive at the end of the second quarter or early in the third quarter this year. These two handsets will be the first 5G-equipped phones from the Taiwanese company.

Advertisement

Its unclear if the two phones will launch together, though. The upcoming gaming phone from ASUS has already picked a couple of necessary certifications, suggesting an imminent launch.

To recall, the ZenFone 6 launched as ASUS 6z in India owing to a legal issue. The Taiwanese phone maker is banned from using the Zen, ZenFone, or any other identical branding in the country.

So the new ZenFone 7 will also likely arrive as the ASUS 7z in the worlds largest second-smartphone market.
New Delhi, June 22 : Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane will visit Leh and Kashmir to take stock of the ground situation this week.

General Naravane's visit comes amid the heightened threat in eastern Ladakh region where over thousands of Indian Army men have been deployed a few metres away from the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following the bloody clash with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) a week ago.

The Army Chief will review the force preparedness as well the deployment across the Line of Actual Control with China and Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. He is likely to visit on Tuesday.

On Monday, corps commanders of the two countries' military met at Moldo to resolve the border issues and ease the tension in eastern Ladakh.

This is the second such meeting after the first one took place on June 6 to defuse the tensions.

The meeting between 14 Corps commander Lieutenant General Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District chief Major General Liu Lin is happening on the lines of the one they held at the Chushul-Moldo border personnel meeting (BPM) point in eastern Ladakh on June 6.

The ground situation is volatile in Ladakh, and Pangong Tso can be another flashpoint after the Galwan Valley patrolling point 14 where a barbaric attack was carried on Indian troops by the Chinese army on the night of June 15.

At Pangong Tso, there is an attempt of the PLA to alter the Line of Actual Control unilaterally. The prolonged camping and a heavy presence of Chinese troops around the Pangong Lake, at a point which has been under Indian control, has emerged to be the biggest roadblock for a possible resolution to the ongoing tussle between India and China at the LAC.

The Chinese have built defences in several parts between Finger 4 and Finger 8, which have been grey zones in the past. The Chinese action in Pangong Lake is seen as an attempt to change the status quo.

The Indian Army has also enhanced deployment in the Hot Springs, Demchok , Koyul, Fukche, Depsang, Murgo and Galwan.

After the June 15 violent clash, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and the Chinese troops also suffered casualties, nothing has changed and things continue to be tense in the Galwan and Pangong Tso regions.

In the midst of the growing tensions, India is exploring all possible military options as a response, if the Chinese aggression continues.

India has also ramped up preparations on its side along the 826-km front of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

(Sumit Kumar Singh can be reached at sumit.k@ians)
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the government to rise to the occasion and ensure justice for the 20 soldiers who died in a clash with Chinese troops and defended Indias territorial integrity.

To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the peoples faith, he said in a statement.

In his first remarks on the border standoff, Singh said China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory, such as Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake, by committing multiple incursions from April onwards.

We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity, he said.

We, the nation, lost twenty brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh on June 15-16. They laid down their lives in the ultimate act of sacrifice, valour and duty to our country. Our brave hearts defended the motherland till their last breath and for that we owe them, and their families, our eternal gratitude, Singh said.

Also read: Rajnath Singh meets chiefs, says keep strict vigil along LAC

Their sacrifice cannot be allowed to be in vain, the senior Congress leader asserted.

The Congress has been repeatedly asking the government to be transparent on the standoff and inform the nation about Chinese transgressions.

Modi recently said there are no Chinese troops on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and no Indian posts have been captured.

Singh said, At this moment, we stand at historic cross-roads. Our governments decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us. Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty.

He added, And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nations security as also strategic and territorial interests.

Singh further said the Prime Minister cannot allow the Chinese to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating.

This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat, he said.

Also read: Some states plan to cancel contracts with Chinese firms

We remind the government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements, Singh said.

Indian and Chinese border troops have been engaged in a months-old border standoff, with the Galwan Valley in Ladakh the focus of tensions. The situation was exacerbated by a violent clash on June 15 that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. Several rounds of talks through diplomatic and military channels have failed to make a breakthrough and facilitate de-escalation and disengagement.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Ex President Jerry John Rawlings on Monday donated personal protective equipment (PPE) and other relief items to the Pantang Hospital, Mawuvio Outreach Orphanage at Ayikuma, and the Accra Mental Hospital to mark his 73rd Birthday.

"Packages of provisions were also distributed to vendors and other less privileged persons along the Fiesta Royale Traffic Lights and the Kawukudi Junction," a statement from the Office of the Former President, copied to the Ghana News Agency, said.

Former President Rawlings was born on June 22, 1947 and ruled Ghana from 1981 to January, 2001 and also for a brief period in 1979. He was the first president of the Fourth Republic.

GNA
TCN News

A group of more than 100 women individuals and organizations have written to the National Rights Commission Chairman Justice H L Dattu seeking intervention in stopping arbitrary action against Safoora Zargar, Devangana Kalita, Gulfisha Fatima, Ishrat Jahan and Natasha Narwal.

Support TwoCircles



Signatories of this open letter include feminist activists, filmmakers, economic experts, professors, actors, journalists and human rights activists, asking the Chairman to stop political vendetta and malicious prosecution of women activists and human rights defenders. The letter iterates that scholars who have participated in nationwide anti CAA protests have been targeted during the COVID-19 lockdown and have been criminalized for simply exercising their fundamental rights.

The letter draws attention to media representation of anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests and has called out the governments attempts to portray the anti-CAA movement as a few scattered gatherings of disaffected Muslim anti-socials whereas it is the mobilization of citizens across divides of caste, gender, age, political affiliation, language and religion. The signatories have credited these women protestors as having a turning point in our political history, by being at the forefront, hence, signalling our duty to understand the discriminatory witch-hunt of divisive political leaders who are in a bid to promote exclusionary possibilities through the NRC and NPR exercise.

It highlights that hate speech and provocations to violence came from the highest levels of the government and the ruling party, accusing Home Minister Amit Shah of exhorting Delhi voters to transmit their anger through the voting machine, and to give an electric jolt to the protestors.

The letter has further said that the ongoing incarceration of these young women is completely unjustified, outlining that despite assortment of charges including conspiracy under UAPA, they have been cooperating with the investigation and presenting themselves for interrogation by the police. Hence, the insistence on keeping them in custody is disproportionate and illogical.

The group has made several appeals to the Chairman at the end of the letter, details of which are stated here:

1. Direct Delhi Police to make public all FIRs against CAA protestors and FIRs filed in relation to the violence in Delhi between Feb 23-27, along with the status of investigations.

2. Recommend re-consideration of bail pleas of the women activists and granting of bail with any conditions that apply.

3. Recommend unconditional bail on health grounds for Safoora Zargar in view of her pregnancy and aggravated vulnerability to COVID-19.

4. In accordance with your powers under Section12(a)(i) of the NHRC Act, institute an immediate enquiry into the handling of cases against CAA protestors by Delhi Police, to determine whether they involve violation of human rights through partisan investigation and malicious prosecution.
Spot is not a house pet or a toy for entertainment, it's a four-legged robot that can walk up to three miles per hour, climb terrain, avoid obstacles, see 360-degrees and perform a number of programmed tasks. Now, Spot is available to purchase from Boston Dynamics for $74,500.

As many people adopt or foster dogs and cats while staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic, there's a different kind of "pet" that can help businesses: Spot, a robot dog created by engineering company Boston Dynamics.

In an early adopter test program, people at businesses and research facilities employed 150 Spot robots to do things such as "document construction progress, monitor remote or hazardous environments, and provide situational awareness," Perry says. "Spot robots were used in a variety of environments, including power generation facilities, decommissioned nuclear sites, factory floors, construction sites and research laboratories."

Michael Perry, VP of business development at Boston Dynamics, says Spot has "seemingly limitless" applications for businesses. The robot can be operated remotely, or it can learn custom routes and actions so that it can perform autonomous missions, he tells CNBC Make It .

Spot debuted in 2015, but was only made commercially available last week on Tuesday. With its canine appearance and human-like movements, Spot has experienced its fair share of internet fame. Videos of Spot dancing, opening doors and even pulling a truck have gone viral on the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel.

Spot can work in places that would be unsafe for humans.

Increased safety and productivity are two major benefits of using Spot.

Spot can go places that would be unsafe for humans. For example, early adopter testers used Spot to monitor remote environments inside of mines and off-shore oil rigs, and capture footage through the camera "in places like decommissioned nuclear sites where it's too dangerous to send people," Perry says. The robot can even perform on stage at theme parks, he adds.

Spot has even been able to lend a hand during the pandemic. At Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Par, a theme park in Singapore, Spot patrolled the grounds last month and encouraged people to maintain social distance.

A robot can also work longer hours than a human. For instance, Pomerleau, a Quebec-based construction company, used Spot to document progress on a 500,000 square-foot building. Spot took thousands of photos of the site each week, saving the company 20 hours of work per week.

As for the cost, Spot is certainly an investment. To put the price in perspective, Softbank's Pepper robot, which launched in 2015, costs around $1,600. But other "tracked inspection robots" with similar capabilities as Spot can cost $250,000, Perry says.

"The commercial customers for Spot have seen its benefits reducing risk, increasing frequency and quality of data capture, and leveraging companies' existing talent for more complex tasks to generate value far beyond the cost of the robot," Perry says.

"The pricing for Spot balances the tremendous benefits of mobile robots with an accessible entry point for developers and researchers to explore future applications," he adds.

Owning Spot is just one part of the equation; users need to know how to develop software to run and customize Spot for specific tasks.

"We designed Spot to be easy to use," Perry says. "Early adopters customized how they deployed Spot by leveraging the robot's mounting rails, payload ports and software development kit to expand the capabilities of the base robot platform."

"Many had never worked with a mobile robot prior to working with Spot, but were able to use common web app programming to enable their applications," he says.

The thought of businesses employing autonomous robots may give some people pause. But under Boston Dynamics' terms and conditions of sale, companies must agree to "the beneficial use of its robots."

To buy Spot, you have to put down a $1,000 deposit, and the robot is delivered between six and eight weeks, according to Boston Dynamics.

Check out: The best credit cards of 2020 could earn you over $1,000 in 5 years

Don't miss:
"The lone actor concept appears might do more harm than good in providing an explanation of the causes and origins of terrorist acts," says Associate Professor Bright.

"Significant confusion surrounds correct profiling of lone terrorists. There are key unanswered questions about the extent to which such people actually radicalise and undertake acts of violence alone."

Associate Professor Bright warns that the inaccurate profiling of a lone terrorist may deflect attention away from links they have with other individuals including established terrorist groups.

To better understand this phenomenon, Associate Professor Bright worked with Associate Professor Chad Whelan of Deakin University and Shandon Harris-Hogan of Victoria University to analyse five lone actor attacks perpetrated in Australia between September 2014 and the end of 2017. They used a personal network design to examine interpersonal relationships and connections they had with others and the nature of these connections.

Their research paper - Exploring the hidden social networks of 'lone actor' terrorists, by David Bright, Chad Whelan and Shandon Harris-Hogan - has been published in Crime, Law and Social Change journal. (DOI 10.1007/s10611-020-09905-2)

The paper discusses implications for policy and practice, with Professor Bright saying the lone actor concept needs to be re-evaluated, because while some individuals undertake their attacks alone, they are usually connected to a broader network of individuals providing varying degrees of ideological and logistical support for these attacks.

The researchers identify a need for more detailed analysis of the personal histories and interconnectedness of apparent lone terrorists.

"if we incorrectly continue to look at the lone terrorist threat as a phenomenon of socially isolated, uncommunicative people, we risk impeding our ability to effectively detect, prevent and mitigate the danger," Associate Professor Bright.

Therefore, he says network-based analysis of lone actors can reveal the extent of their reliance on ideological and/or logistical support from their local social networks.

Such an approach could not only improve understandings of the role and function of social networks underpinning terrorist acts, but also potentially identify more targeted approaches to disrupting, and/or conducting interventions with, wider terrorist networks.

###
The Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India, through the Karnataka State Police (KSP), has called for applications in a prescribed format from qualified and experienced candidates for filling 31 Technical Personnel posts under the Coastal Security Police (CSP) scheme to be posted at the CSP stations in Mangalore, Malpe, Bhatkal, Kumta and Karwar through direct recruitment. The offline application process towards the same along with relevant documents must be submitted before July 10, 2020 by 5:30 pm.

CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts CSP Technical Personnel Organisation Karnataka State Police (KSP) Educational Qualification Required academic and technical qualifications specified in the advertisement Experience As detailed in the advertisement Skills Required Physical and Medical Fitness Job Location Karnataka, Mangalore, Malpe, Bhatkal, Kumta, Karwar Salary Scale In the range of Rs. 23,000 to Rs. 36,000 per month as per the post Industry Police  Coastal Security Application Start Date June 10, 2020 Application End Date July 10, 2020

Age Criteria And Fees

Candidates interested in applying for Technical Personnel posts through KSP Recruitment 2020 must fall in the age group between 50 to 52 years of age, with relaxation (upper age limit) for OBC (2A/2B/3A/3B) and SC/ST/CAT-I categories as applicable.

For details regarding fee towards application processing, refer to the official notification given at the end of the article.

KSFES Recruitment 2020 For 1,567 Fireman, Technician, Driver, FSO Posts. Apply Online Before July 20

Vacancy Details

Educational Criteria And Eligibility

Desirous candidates applying for Technical Personnel posts through KSP Recruitment 2020 must meet the required academic and technical qualifications specified in the advertisement, and meet the physical-cum-medical standards as applicable for the posts.

Candidates' must have knowledge of Kannada language - read, write and speak.

Selection And Pay Scale

The selection of candidates for Technical Personnel posts through KSP Recruitment 2020 will be done through Shortlisting, Interview and Document Verification.

Candidates selected for Technical Personnel posts through KSP Recruitment 2020 will be paid emolument in the range of Rs. 23,000 to Rs. 36,000 per month as per the post.

IB Recruitment 2020 For 292 Central Intel Officers And Other Posts, Apply Offline Before August 19

How To Apply

Candidates applying for Technical Personnel posts through KSP Recruitment 2020 must fill the application form in a prescribed format attached with the advertisement, and send the same along with relevant supporting documents to the "Office of the Superintendent of Police, Coastal Security Police, Udupi" or the addressed specified in the advertisement on or before July 10, 2020 by 5:30 pm.

Download application form and read the detailed advertisement about KSP Recruitment 2020 for CSP Technical Personnel posts
NASCAR said Sunday night that a noose was found in the garage stall of black driver Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, and they have launched a probe of the "heinous" act. Wallace is the only black driver who races full-time in NASCAR's top Cup series. "Late this afternoon, NASCAR was made aware that a noose was found in the garage stall of the 43 team," the popular stock car series said in a statement. "We are angry and outraged and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act. We have launched an immediate investigation and will do everything we can to identify the person(s) responsible and eliminate them from the sport. "As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all. Wallace, who has been outspoken about racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody on May 25, commented on the incident in a statement posted on Twitter, saying he was "incredibly saddened" by the "despicable act of racism." "This will not break me," Wallace said. "I will not give in, nor will I back down." Wallace was a strong advocate for NASCAR's decision to ban the Confederate flag from its properties on June 10. The Confederate flag has been a staple at NASCAR tracks, particularly in the sport's southern US heartland that includes Talladega in Alabama. But it remains a symbol of slavery and racism for many. Sunday's race, which was to be NASCAR's first with fans since the coronavirus pandemic erupted, was postponed until Monday by thunderstorms. Before the heavy weather moved in, a small plane flew above the track trailing a giant Confederate flag and a second banner that read "Defund NASCAR" -- its message widely spread on social media. NASCAR executive vice president Steve O'Donnell was quick to condemn the display on Twitter, where he posted a picture of black and white hands clasped. "You won't see a photo of a jackass flying a flag over the track here," O'Donnell wrote. "But you will see this... Hope EVERYONE enjoys the race today." Sports leagues across the country are grappling with how best to tackle racism in their ranks and how to use their platforms to promote diversity. This week, NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin's car featured not his usual FedEx sponsor logos but those of the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum, which chronicles the history of civil rights in the United States, is located in Memphis, Tennessee, where FedEx is headquartered. "Today you will see my #11 car will not carry the traditional paint scheme that you usually see," Hamlin said on Twitter. "FedEx and myself instead want to give that voice to the NCRM. "I want to thank them personally for taking the time to educate me on so many topics."
Update 9:22 p.m.: McCray has been found safe at a Dothan motel where authorities also arrested a suspect in the case, Enterprise police said.

The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force captured suspect and Enterprise resident Kody Burks, 26, at the unnamed motel, police said. McCray was also found at the motel with minor injuries.

Burks was taken to the Coffee County Jail following his arrest.

Original story: Authorities are searching for a 41-year-old woman who was last seen Monday afternoon being forced into a white car in Enterprise, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.

Marilyn McCray, 41, disappeared around 2:15 p.m. Monday, when she was forced into a white 2016 Chevrolet Malibu with the Alabama tag 6410AVR near Johnson Street in Enterprise, ALEA said. She was last seen wearing a dark blue tie dye shirt, shorts and flip flops.

McCray may have a condition that impairs her judgment. She was described as 5-feet 3-inches tall, 155 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone who knows of McCrays whereabouts was asked to call the Enterprise Police Department at 334-347-2222 or 911.
US supports Vietnam to improve business satisfaction in conducting customs procedures

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) today launched a report on a survey titled Business satisfaction and time needed to carry out administrative procedures through the National Single Window (NSW).





Participants at the event. Photo from the USAID Trade Facilitation Program

The NSW is a one-stop shop for customs clearances and is expected to simplify import/export administrative procedures in accordance with international practices and standards.

From September 2019 - March 2020, the USAID through its Trade Facilitation Program, the VCCI, and the GDVC conducted a survey to measure the level of satisfaction amongst businesses in doing administrative procedures via the NSW. The survey analysis and recommendations are expected to foster the substantive reforms of all government ministries which currently process administrative procedures through the NSW by reducing costs, shortening processing times, and improving overall efficiency.



USAID/Vietnam Deputy Mission Director Craig Hart, Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai, VCCI Chairman Vu Tien Loc, and over 100 representatives from the private sector and various government agencies participated in the event, which featured a discussion on the key findings of the report and a panel of eminent business persons to discuss the role of the NSW system and current trade-related reforms in Vietnam.



For the past two years, the USAID Trade Facilitation Program has worked with GDVC, VCCI, and other partners on various activities to reduce the time and cost to trade in Vietnam. With over USD77.6 billion in bilateral trade between the United States and Vietnam in 2019, USAID will continue to actively support the GVN and private sector to undertake reforms and improve the business communitys satisfaction with key trade facilitation tools such as the NSW.



For more information on the USAID Trade Facilitation Program, visit: https://www.usaid.gov/vietnam/documents/fs-tradefacilitationprogramoct2019-eng


The National Agenda Party has addressed the ruling party and President of Armenia with the following call: Today the My Step faction of the National Assembly, in the absence of the opposition factions of the National Assembly, adopted the bill on amendments to the Constitution of Armenia in the first reading and scheduled the second reading within 24 hours. Such a procedure overtly contradicts Article 169 of the Constitution of Armenia and Article 86 of the Constitutional Law Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly of Armenia which envisage that the bill on constitutional amendments must be submitted to the Constitutional Court after being adopted in the first reading in order for the Court to approve compatibility of the proposed amendments with the Constitution.

We demand that the My Step faction of the National Assembly of Armenia refrain from taking an action containing elements of corpus delicti of prima facie overthrow of the constitutional order and, in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, apply to the Constitutional Court to verify the compatibility of the proposed amendments with the Constitution. We also call on the deputies of the National Assembly to refrain from voting for the bill in the second reading without receiving the opinion of the Constitutional Court.

If, in any case, this bill is adopted in the second reading and in violation of the requirements of the Constitution, we demand that the President of Armenia does not sign the bill adopted in violation of the requirements of the Constitution and send it to the Constitutional Court. Also, assessing the absence of the opposition factions of the National Assembly during the special session of the National Assembly, we urge them to join forces and also apply to the Constitutional Court to verify compatibility of the bill with the Constitution.
Vice President Mike Pence warned on Monday that young people across the country are increasingly testing positive for coronavirus, a trend that's been worrying experts as nearly half the states in the nation are now reporting overall increases in infections.

"We are seeing more people test positive under the age of 35, particularly in our discussions with the leadership in Florida and in Texas," Pence said on a conference call with state governors Monday, according to audio of the call obtained by ABC News.

"The better part of half of the people that are testing positive in the new cases are people under the age of 35... so we're working with those states and supporting measures that are being taken to address those issues in an appropriate way," he added.

Governors in Arizona, Florida and Texas, which have all seen major increases in coronavirus cases since reopening started, also discussed the rise in infections in younger demographics in their states.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the shift "significant" and "unmistakable," and acknowledged that young people were "definitely transmitting it more than other segments of the population."

"When we started on May and March, our median age of a new case was 65. It was 50 throughout most of probably mid April and May," DeSantis said on the call, "and now our median age last week was 35 for all our new cases. So you know we saw a lot of new cases disproportionally in the younger bracket."

MORE: New data shows young people need to take social distancing seriously

But DeSantis questioned whether an increase in disease spread was truly driving up the number of positives, or if it could be attributed to an increase in testing. "Whether it's a shift and they're getting infected more, or whether it was there all long we just weren't seeing it, maybe a little bit of both, but that's been the biggest trend that we've seen in the state of Florida," DeSantis said.

Story continues

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, praised the notion young people are getting tested more, calling it "terrific."

In a Saturday press conference, DeSantis maintained that the overall increased number of positive COVID-19 infections, which on Monday passed 100,000, was because of increased testing.

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.

MORE: Florida sets new record of COVID-19 cases with over 4,000 more

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said his state had zoned in on two possible factors facilitating the spread among the younger population: bars and high school and college sports.

"We have found that some bars are not following those rules and are crowded just like they were before the pandemic occurred," Abbott said, a revelation which has lead his alcoholic beverage commission to shut them down for 30 days "to try to send a message."

"We will continue to dig into it, we will use testing strategies to make sure that we are able to target the areas of groups that are more highly inclined to test positive," Abbott said.

Pence said while they are carefully watching the increase in these cases, they are keeping "even more careful eyes" on hospital capacity and deaths, which he said remain low.

PHOTO: Vice President Mike Pence attends a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, June 15, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Prior to the call, experts pointed to higher infection rates among younger people and a lack of social distancing as one suspected driver of the worrying increase of cases in nearly half of U.S. states.

In California, as much as as 44% of new positive coronavirus cases in California are among people under 35, according to an internal Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) memo obtained by ABC News.

And while the California Public Health Department also attributed some of the shift to the increase in testing availability in the state -- it is not as hindered by the severe shortages that limited testing to vulnerable populations for much of the pandemic -- an uptick in cases in younger demographics has been observed in numerous states and counties across the country, according to local government and hospital officials.

Dr. Helmut Albrecht, an infectious disease specialist and the chair of Internal Medicine at Prisma Health in South Carolina, told ABC News the number of cases in that state among 20- and 30-year-olds has doubled from May to June. Ninety percent of the increases there are in people under the age of 50, Albrecht added, in what he said illustrated a "clearly disproportionate impact."

Increases like this cannot be explained away by an increase in testing, experts agreed, noting that young people have a responsibility to continue social distancing for the health of their families and community.

MORE: 12 states have set record highs in new COVID-19 cases since Friday

"I give the kids a pass, but there are too many people out there who should know better," Albrecht said. "There's a big movement out there in younger generations, lets get this over with -- be careful what you wish for."

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Miss., echoed the same concerns about younger people spreading the virus as the more densely populated metropolitan Jackson area continue to see increases in cases and hospitalizations. In Mississippi, the daily increase in cases has mostly remained flat, but hospitalization has been showing an upward trend, especially in the Jackson metropolitan area.

"You do see people with masks in many, many places, but then there is a thought amongst a younger demographic that because certain facilities are opening up, that somehow we've gotten past the coronavirus," Lumumba said. "And based on the numbers, there is nothing to indicate such."

"In fact, the director of the state department of health was just reiterating how younger people appear to be carriers, and they are bringing it to their elders," Lumumba said.

PHOTO: In this May 23, 2020, file photo, people cross N. Ocean Blvd. in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images, FILE)

For some, the rising numbers are no surprise. Photos of those in younger generations crowding beaches and and overflowing bars have horrified some experts for weeks, but they are now urging it is taking a real toll.

Matthew G. Heinz, and internist at Tucson Medical Center in Arizona, told ABC News he has admitted "many 20-, 22-, 26-year-olds in the past couple of days" to his hospital.

"When the state reopened, it's almost like the parents are gone, like the professor's out of the room," Heinz said. "I've also seen younger ride-sharing drivers, it's been a trend in my hospital. They drive around picking up strangers who touch their cars, who are way closer than 6 feet apart. They can't stay safe."

And while experts are seeing younger adults admitted, they note that it may not drive up the death rate as significantly.

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 case fatality rate will go down as cases get younger," Dr. Andrew Noymer, a Public Health Professor at University of California Irvine, told ABC News. "I don't know if it's good or bad -- it is what it is."

Texas Gov. Abbot highlighted the states' low death rate on the call on Monday. "Amazingly our death rate in Texas remains below two percent," Abbot said, "and I don't know if it's because we do have a large percentage of the people testing positive who are younger, or it it's some other reason, but the good news is our net rate is low."

On a call with governors last week, Dr. Deborah Birx raised the idea that cases of the disease across the country also appear to be "less severe" than they were earlier in the pandemic, though it was unclear yet as to why.

"So either we're gotten increasingly better at knowing precisely what to do with [oxygen] therapy and all the ability to have Remdesivir and plasma, or there is a shift happening," Birx said. "So we don't have the molecular data yet that suggests that there's a change in the virus itself but we're hearing that across the country that the cases are milder."

PHOTO: In this May 22, 2020, file photo, customers sit outside on the patio of a bar in Houston. (Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)

Dr. James McDeavitt, senior vice president and dean of Clinical Affairs at Baylor College Medicine in Houston, told ABC News a similar trend is happening there: hospital admissions have continued to grow since after reopening, but ICU bed occupancy has flattened to grown at a slower rate, an "unusual" trend that suggests disease is less severe.

"And a theory is that perhaps older people are doing a better job of social distancing," McDeavitt continued. "They may be staying home in greater numbers and perhaps we're seeing a younger population admitted to the hospitals, she said. We don't know that. But that's one of the areas that we're looking at right now."

Noymer, the professor in California, said he is closely watching the death rate, which he called an important but "lagging indicator." It can often take around three weeks before deaths from coronavirus are known, to see if it rises. While numerous factors can prevent the death rate from going up, younger cases can definitely have an effect.

"All things go hand in glove," Noymer said. "It's all related."

"The epidemic is evolving and its changing, definitely," he added. "We are seeing a much more lenient case fatality rate in recent weeks."

If the death rate doesn't go up, Albrecht said it would be "a silver lining in a progressively darkened scenario."

As cases rise, Pence warns young people increasingly catching coronavirus originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Social distancing at the outcrop: Separate cars, PPE and maybe snorkeling

Gloves & mask: Gloves are a necessity any time youre dealing with a bank of sharp fossil shells, but Mackenzie Chriscoe 21 has added a mask to the usual PPE for geological field work during the COVID-haunted summer of 2020. Photo by Lyra Swaddle Photo - of - Hide Caption

Geology, by its very nature, requires field work.

Geologists work in their labs, of course, and develop predictive computer models, but all that indoor work is based on samples from the field. Sooner, rather than later, the geologist must go to the outcrop, to the fossil bed, to the coring site and find out whats actually there.

William & Marys geologists regularly include undergraduate students in their field research, which more often than not is scheduled for weekends, breaks and the summer. Mentored field work is excellent experience of course and students majoring in geology can make substantial progress on their senior thesis research projects.

The Department of Geology is going ahead with field work during the COVID-haunted summer of 2020, heading to their outcrops and fossil beds armed with more than their rock hammers. Faculty mentors have come up with an evolving set of common-sense and creative ways to maintain social distance that range from traveling in separate cars to snorkeling.

Chuck Bailey is finalizing plans to take a group of geology students to a geologically interesting spot known as the Gladstone Quadrangle in the center of the commonwealth.

You can balance the state of Virginia on that quadrangle, Bailey said. We chose it because there are three different geologic terranes that come together there.

Bailey, a professor of geology, received funding last year from the U.S. Geological Survey to complete a detailed geologic map for both the USGS and the Virginia Geologic Survey. The Gladstone Quadrangle is a key component of the survey and Bailey said his group had been surprised to find that the rocks in one of those three terranes had been wildly misidentified in existing maps.

This is why, if youre going to do geology, youve got to do the fieldwork, Bailey said. We wouldnt have known this, had we actually not been on the ground, been on the river collecting the rocks and teasing out their little secrets.

The USGS gave Bailey a COVID-related deadline extension and the June trip back to the Gladstone Quadrangle is to finish rewriting that chapter in the natural history of the commonwealth.

Standard operating procedure for such a trip is that everyone piles into the geology van. Accommodations are in tents, holding as many geology students as will fit comfortably. And teamwork at the outcrops.

This year, Bailey said, social distancing will mean changes: Everyone will drive their own car. One tent to a person, with the tents spread out over a larger footprint.

Were going to have a protocol for how we cook meals, he said. One person will cook. One person will clean. Everyone will have their own dishes.

There will be a change in protocol in the field as well, he said. Its not a challenge to maintain social-distance on a traverse, but Bailey said division of work will necessarily become more formalized: One person may collect the rock, another person may come in and make a measurement on the rock samples, he said.

Bailey said one of his chief concerns is parking. With everyone driving themselves to collecting sites off narrow country roads, finding room for all the cars wont always be easy.

Parking is not among the challenges that Rowan Lockwood faces in the pursuit of field work. She has three projects on the go this summer. Each involves trips to research sites with students and everyone driving separately  but each project involves only one student.

Mackenzie Chriscoe 21 has been working with Lockwood on collaboration with the National Park Service. They are compiling a fossil inventory of the Colonial National Historical Park near Yorktown. Chriscoe drives over from her home in Gloucester and Lockwood motors down the Colonial Parkway from Williamsburg.

The good thing for us is that its local fieldwork, said Lockwood, who currently chairs the Department of Geology. It basically involves selecting a number of sites in the national park to describe, photograph and collect sediment and fossils. We will put together information on what they have in the park and advise on how they can preserve it.

The fossils theyre collecting are mostly of oysters and other shellfish. Lockwood and Chriscoe meet at one of several fossil outcrops along the York River. Their first day in the field was at a location known as the Moore House Cliff. Lockwood said its a famous location for a number of reasons.

The Moore House itself is a prominent site in the national park. Its the site of 1781 negotiations between British and American forces, resulting in Gen. Cornwallis signing the Articles of Capitulation marking the effective end of the Revolutionary War. But the location has an even greater importance for a paleontologist such as Lockwood.

Theres been so much destruction of cliffs along the York River, she explained. So, this is a really special area; its pretty much the only place left where you can sample from this particular geological unit called the Moore House Member.

The Moore House Member, a section of the Yorktown Formation, is a great place for Chriscoe to collect specimens for her senior honors thesis, as she is working toward a position with the National Park Service as a geoscientist. Lockwood also said history and earth science overlap at the Moore House Member.

Its one of the places that yielded the first fossils from North America to be published, she said. Chesapecten jeffersonius  the Virginia state fossil  was first collected here and sent to Martin Lister in England. That would be around 1687.

With just the two of them out on the Moore House Cliff, keeping a social distance was not much of a problem.

We wore masks, Lockwood said. We maintained a distance of 10 feet from each other. We wore gloves  actually, wearing gloves at these sites is pretty much required because the fossil shells are so sharp.

She is working on a different set of strategies for a project with Colleen Norton 21. Nortons goal is to take Lockwoods techniques for determining the age of fossil oysters and see how they apply to modern, living oysters. Its a collaboration with Rom Lipcius, a professor at William & Marys Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and involves going out on the water, where the oysters live.

Roms got some oyster reefs, what are called relic reefs and we dont know how old the oysters are on them, Lockwood said. So the idea is to sample some of the larger ones.

In non-COVID times, the journey to the relic reefs would involve a vessel from the VIMS fleet, but this summer, Lockwood said, such a voyage would require a lot of PPE, especially in a small boat.

So maybe snorkeling is the way to go, she said.

She and Norton would swim out at low tide, to reduce the depth theyd have to dive through to collect their oysters. Their equipment list would include an unusual piece of PPE, because there is more that the COVID-19 to worry about.

Wed be wearing wetsuits in the York River, Lockwood said. They have those stinging jellyfish this time of year.
Dubai will allow foreign visitors to enter from July 7, while foreigners with residency visas will be able to enter from June 22, the Dubai Media Office said on Sunday.

It said those entering would have to present certificates to show they had recently tested negative for the coronavirus or would undergo tests on arrival at Dubai airports. Citizens and residents would be permitted to travel abroad from June 23.

Also read: China likely lost at least 40 troops in border clash: VK Singh
T he headteachers of three siblings who died after a fire at their house in Renfrewshire have paid tribute to the children.

Fiona Gibson, 12, and brothers Alexander, eight, and Philip, five, were taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow after the blaze in Renfrew Road, Paisley on Friday night.

They died a short time later. A 39-year-old woman was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley after the fire, which emergency services responded to at about 9pm.

Fiona was a pupil at Mary Russell School in Paisley, where headteacher Julie McCallum, said the school community is "deeply saddened by the tragic news".

In a statement shared on Twitter, she said: Words cannot express the sadness we are feeling.

Fiona Gibson (12), Alexander James Gibson (8) and Philip Gibson (5) died in the fire / Police Scotland

Fiona was a wee shining light in our Mary Russell family and to lose three young lives in this way is devastating for everyone.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and all affected by this tragedy at this very sad time.

The boys were pupils at St Catherines Primary School in the town.

Headteacher Emma Henry said: We are truly saddened by the loss of Alexander and Philip. They were both full of energy and such an important part of our school.

Both boys loved the outdoors and frequently talked about their regular visits to the park.

They never ceased to make us smile. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this time.

Alex Gibson, the childrens father, wrote on Facebook at the weekend: May u rest in peace little angels.

Floral tributes have been left outside the house where the three children died / Getty Images

He later added: How I miss them already, now I know what it feels like when ur world comes crashing down.

A JustGiving page was also posted on his Facebook page, set up by a family friend, which states the childrens mother is in icu in a critical condition.

It had raised more than 18,000 by Monday morning, well beyond its 10,000 target.

The smell of smoke still surrounded the scene at the Gallohill housing estate on Saturday as people left tributes by the police cordon.

The Scottish Ambulance Service left a tribute to the siblings / Getty Images

One woman said local people were left shocked by what happened and simply added: God bless those weans.

Among the flowers left at the scene were some from Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, who wrote on a card: We are all so sorry for your heartbreaking loss.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.

Police said an investigation is under way to establish the exact circumstances of the incident.
Chicago Med is part of the NBC trifecta that includes Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire. Chicago Med follows the lives of the emergency room staff at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center. There are often crossover storylines between the other two shows, which makes for a unique concept. There is always high-intensity drama as the characters navigate their interpersonal relationships.

One character, in particular, Dr. Ava Bekker, had her fair share of drama throughout several seasons on the show. When her character arc came to a devastating end, fans were shocked and angered by the way her death was handled by show producers.

Norma Kuhling as Ava Bekker | Elizabeth Sisson/Getty Images

Dr. Ava Bekker

Dr. Ava Bekker, played by Norma Kuhling, first appeared on Chicago Med at the end of season two. Portraying an intense cardiothoracic surgeon from South Africa, she quickly became the workplace rival of Dr. Connor Rhodes, played by fan-favorite Colin Donnell.

Season four delighted viewers with storylines that further developed Bekkers character. She developed a relationship with Rhodes father and performed a heart valve replacement on him, which proved to be unsuccessful. When the father dies of an insulin overdose, Bekker believes she will be able to reignite her romantic relationship with Rhodes.

Much to the surprise of fans, NBC revealed at the end of season four that Kuhling and Donnell would be leaving the show because of creative differences. Fans anxiously tuned in to the premiere episode of season five to see how the characters would be written out of the show.

The end of Drs. Bekker and Rhodes

RELATED: Chicago Med and Chicago PD: Why is the Franchise Losing So Many of its Stars?

In their last on-screen appearance, the dynamic couple was seen accusing each other of the suspicious nature surrounding Rhodes fathers death. Dr. Latham interrupts the fight to let them known that the insulin used to kill the father could be traced. Bekker admits to giving the fatal shot and begs Rhodes to help her escape. When he refuses, she says she did it for him and graphically kills herself in front of him. Rhodes, distraught and unable to save his ex-girlfriends life, leaves the hospital for good, letting guilt get the best of him.

How fans reacted to the shocking ending

catch me crying over ava bekker every minute of the day because she was the softest and purest angel and she deserved so much better, shut the fuck up im gonna cry pic.twitter.com/vbai0QyLok  abbie (@rhxkkers) June 8, 2020

Fans were shocked and appalled to see Bekkers character killed off in such a devastating fashion. They were angered by the fact that once a competent doctor, she was turned into an obsessed killer overnight.

Social media blew up with fans declaring that Bekker deserved better. One Twitter user said, They could of given her a nice write off like going back to South Africa, but nooooo, lets turn her into a crazy psychopath killer who commits suicide.

Another said, What a waste of a fine actress #NormaKuhling and what terrible handling of an interesting character. The fan continued, Just another lazy copy/paste crazy-emotionally-unbalanced-woman character arc.

According to Country Living, Chicago Med showrunner Diane Frolov explained, We wanted to really give her story closure, absolutely slam the door. Outraged by the shocking death, fans agreed that Bekkers dramatic exit was a massive character assassination.
Michigans newly forming Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is taking a big step forward at 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 24.

After receiving and processing nearly 9,400 applications to join the commission, Saginaw-based Rehmann accounting firm is conducting a live-streamed, computer-aided, random selection of 200 finalists. The selection process will be broadcast on Michigan Secretary of State social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook.

Wednesdays random drawing will narrow the more than 9,000 applications down to 200 semi-finalists whose applications will be posted online, the SOS said in a statement issued Monday, June 22. The drawing will begin at 10 a.m., and may last over an hour, while a computer conducts random draws of 200 applicants each until one of those draws meets the criteria required by the state constitution.

There are applicants from each of Michigans 83 counties with nearly a third coming from Oakland or Wayne counties.

Were just over a month away now from making Michigan history in selecting and seating the first 13-member commission, and its an incredibly exciting time, SOS Jocelyn Benson. The tremendous amount of work done by our team in processing these final applications has been matched only by the enthusiasm weve seen from the applicants themselves, and were looking forward to starting the next phase of the process on Wednesday.

Once the 200 finalists are selected, their applications will be posted publicly and sent to the state Legislature. In August, Republicans and Democrats from both the House of Representatives and Senate will each strike five applicants, for a total of 20, from the selection pool.

Using statewide data from the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Rehmann Group, independent firm accounting firm hired by the Secretary of State to perform the random, statistically-weighted selection will utilize available methods to accurately weight applications so that the pool of 200 semi-finalists will be representative of the state, the states FAQ page about the process says. " ... In August 2020, from the remaining pool received from the Legislature, the Secretary of States Office must randomly select four people who self-identify as affiliating with the Republican Party, four people who self-identify as affiliating with the Democratic Party and five people who self-identify as unaffiliated with either of those political parties to serve on commission.

Application submissions surged in the final two weeks leading up to the deadline. As of June 1, the SOS had received about 6,000 applications.

The redistricting commission was approved by voters in 2018. Proposal 2 aimed to thwart gerrymandering by taking the redistricting process out of the hands of legislators. The responsibility would instead be given to a 13-member commission made up of four people affiliated with the Democratic party, four affiliated with the Republican party and five not affiliated with either party.

The support weve seen from the public for Michigans first Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is phenomenal, said Nancy Wang, director of Voters Not Politicians, the group that spearheaded the proposal. Thousands of Michiganders from every county in the state have signed up to be part of this historic process, and the size and diversity of the applicant pool sets up the commission to reflect the demographic and geographic diversity of our state.

With an eye toward the future, we are working now on educational efforts and tools to empower citizens to provide effective testimony to the Commission once it is seated.

Based on a breakdown of the applicants: nearly 50% do not identify as Republican or Democrat, about 39% are Democrat and 13% are Republicans; 55% are men, 45% are women; 78% are white, 13% are Black and the remainder are another minority; and 61% of applicants are older than 55.

More on MLive:

6,000-plus applied for redistricting commission as of June 1

250,000 voters mailed redistricting commission applications

Application window opens for redistricting commission

Want to draw Michigans next political district map
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson greeted each other with waves and thumbs-up last week. Even the elbow bump with which Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders opened their mid-March debate is a thing of the past. Forget handshakes or hugs. And gestures arent the only rituals learned over a lifetime that have been adapted in mere months since the novel coronavirus began changing the world. Verbal greetings and leave-takings have evolved, too.

Until recently, we could begin a conversation with How are you? or How are you doing? and expect a perfunctory Fine or Good in response. We could start an email with I hope this finds you well, never expecting a comment on that hope, regardless of how well or unwell the recipient happened to be. These greetings are what linguists call formulaic expressions: idiomatic phrases people say in certain circumstances without a thought to their literal meaning.

We might still be using these routinized openers if they didnt happen to refer to health. In Myanmar, Cambodia and China, the typical greeting is Have you eaten? (literally, Have you eaten rice?); the expected reply is Yes, Ive eaten. In Java and the Philippines, the standard opener is Where are you going? to which the reply is Over there. No one (except visitors unfamiliar with the culture) interprets these greetings as literal questions, any more than Americans used to expect a medical update in response to the opening How are you?

The literal meaning of our usual openers could be casually ignored when most peoples health was likely to be fine. If we knew that someone was sick or going through a tough time, we could change our tone and emphasis when saying How are you? or say something else.

Now, no one takes health for granted, and everyone is going through at best a tough time and possibly an awful one. That forces us to notice the meaning of the words in these greetings  and to change them. Now its much more common to hear I hope youre managing or doing OK or hanging in there  or any of myriad other ways of implying what a fellow linguist used parentheses to convey while preserving this familiar formulaic expression: I hope youre doing (as) well (as one could expect under the present circumstances).

Changes in the ways emails open and close have been downright inspiring. The range of variations is testament to how wonderfully adaptable words can be  and how creative humans can be in adapting them. Some, for example, use synonyms to emphasize what they wish without sounding repetitive: I hope youre staying healthy and well. Others indicate that they know the usual opening wont apply  and why: I hope youre doing well despite these terrible times. I received one that acknowledged that everyone is less than well but sought to reassure both receiver and sender that were in this together: I hope youre doing better than just hanging in there, but if, like me, you arent, I suppose thats OK too.

Just as greetings have taken new forms, leave-takings have too. The variations in both can be occasions for verbal play, like saying words by saying you wont say them, as my sister recently did: and I wont say stay healthy, but hope you do. Even the common closing Take care has morphed into Stay safe or Stay safe and healthy.

Noticing how the phrase Take care has been adapted to reflect our changed circumstances got me wondering whether the power of words might be harnessed to inspire change too. Take care and its reincarnations focus on one persons safety and health. In March, when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a state of national emergency under which non-essential workers would have to self-isolate, she explained: Your job is to save lives, and you can do that by staying home. New Zealanders did, with the result that their country is virus-free. Adopting the closing save lives, stay home would reframe the reason for staying home: not so the home-bound can stay healthy and safe but to help keep others that way. People willing to risk their own health by going out might hesitate to put others at risk.

Greetings and farewells will no doubt continue to adapt as circumstances evolve because thats the nature of language  and the way people use it. Maybe as more of us go out more often, and take part in more activities, conversations and emails will end with Save lives, wear a mask or Stay safe and six feet apart. Or we could keep it simple and say, as a colleague recently closed an email to me, Wash hands.

Deborah Tannen is a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and the author of You Just Dont Understand, Youre the Only One I Can Tell and The Argument Culture. She wrote this for the Washington Post.
NAPERVILLE (AP)  Colleen Tyrrell Llacsa spent most of three years dealing with a cerebral spinal fluid leak so debilitating that, on many days, she couldnt hope to recover. She spent much of that time in bed.

Now shes working out with a trainer at a Naperville gym.

Im exercising, she said. And I didnt think I would survive.

Its been a stark and welcome transformation the past two years for the 38-year-old Naperville woman who had been on palliative care before the effects of one last procedure started to set in.

She is capable of far more than she gives herself credit for, said her trainer, Matthew Kuschert, owner and general manager of UFC Gym Naperville.

Llacsa fell ill after the birth of her third child in March 2015. By the time eight months had passed since the birth of Joshua, now 5, she was severely afflicted with numbness, weakness, dizziness, nausea, fatigue and intense headaches.

She found lying down eased some of the pain, so she spent months at a time nearly confined to her bed, while her husband, Jahary Llacsa, played dad, mom and all the other roles that come with parenthood for Joshua and his older siblings, Lucy Jane, 7, and Samuel, 10.

Llacsa saw top specialists who treat cerebral spinal fluid leaks, a condition so rare it occurs in an estimated 5 out of 100,000 people each year. She met with doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, Duke University in North Carolina and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California, and her father, Naperville internist Dr. Timothy Tyrrell, enlisted the help of neurologist friends.

Llacsa said she has endured 87 medical procedures, including several major surgeries as doctors tried to locate and fix tears in her dura, the lining of the spinal canal, that allowed cerebral spinal fluid to leak out. She and her doctors believe the tears occurred when she was given an epidural pain medication before she gave birth to Joshua via cesarean section.

When cerebral spinal fluid leaks into surrounding tissues, theres not enough to provide cushioning for the spinal cord and nutrients for the brain, doctors who treat the condition say. Low fluid pressure causes the symptoms.

Some procedures doctors tried for Llacsa offered short-term relief. Her illness took a toll on her family, especially Samuel, who began to experience anxiety and bullying. It was the last thing his mother wanted to see as she struggled on many days even to speak.

I didnt care about myself anymore. I didnt care about the suffering, Llacsa said. I cared about my kids.

In October 2017, Llacsa made her last trip to the experts at Duke University, who conducted a dural glue patching procedure. It wasnt an immediate success, but it gave her enough energy to take what she thought was one last family vacation, to Florida, in December 2017.

The trip backfired as Llacsa suffered a blood infection and a blood clot. She took an emergency flight home and almost died, she said.

More time in bed followed, and what happened next isnt medically clear. But in February 2018, Llacsa started getting out of bed for minutes at a time, then realizing those minutes could expand into hours or longer.

She said her doctors think the recovery has happened because all of her procedures over the years patched enough of the tiny punctures in her dura to stop the cerebral spinal fluid leaks.

The recovery has been uneven, as shes run into spells where symptoms have returned and shes been back in bed for up to three weeks.

But the setbacks, Llacsa said, have been part of the blessing of this newfound normalcy. They help her keep perspective when she loses gratitude for the abilities shes regained and focuses, instead, on family moments she missed, weight she wants to lose or the coronavirus pandemic.

Whoa, hold on, dont complain, she tells herself. You are so lucky to be able to stand.

The Llacsa family started taking Samuel to a kids empowerment group at the gym shortly after it opened in May 2018.

The gym, co-owned by Kuschert and decorated UFC featherweight Ricardo Lamas, might seem like its all about mixed-martial arts and building the next superstars. But its actually about helping members gain self-esteem and leave each day better than they were when they walked in, owners say.

The strategy has worked for Samuel.

His whole personality changed. He said to me, This is such a special place, Mom, Llacsa said. It has been the best thing for Samuel, and now its the best thing for me.

Llacsa didnt think she could work out. After years of illness, she was happy to get out of bed.

But talking with Kuschert and Lamas changed her mind. She decided to give an exercise routine a try.

Llacsas sessions with Kuschert began in February, mainly as physical assessments  what she could and couldnt do, how much the years in bed had atrophied her muscles. With degrees between them in biology, chemistry, exercise science and nutrition, Kuschert and Lamas give clients the confidence they wont risk injury.

Were bringing that attitude and energy together with the science of what actually works, Kuschert said.

After a month of in-person sessions, stay-at-home orders closed the gym, so Llacsas workouts with Kuschert have gone virtual. Samuel usually keeps tabs on his moms progress.

It makes me work harder, she said.

Llacsa breathes hard through a series of squat presses during one recent workout, then smiles. There is so much she can do.

She wants to incorporate UFC Gym into a fundraiser she hopes to plan for the Tyrrell Family Foundation, which formed to support research into cerebral spinal fluid leaks. She wants to set a good example for her children. She wants the positivity of her recovery to shine through the struggles of the pandemic.

Its tough on people, but Im free, she said. Im free to walk. Im free to breathe.
India and China held a meeting of senior army officials to discuss the ongoing standoff between border troops in Ladakh on Monday, a week after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent face-off with Chinese troops in the regions Galwan Valley.

The meeting, the second since June 6, was held at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) opposite Chushul to discuss the ongoing dispute in Ladakh.

On June 15, 20 Indian Army soldiers, including a commanding officer, were killed after an hours-long intense hand-to-hand combat with troops of China Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).

Before this, Lt Gen Harinder Singh, the commander of 14 Corps, along with other officers, who were part of the earlier meetings with their Chinese counterparts, had met on June 6.

Also read: India deploys specialised mountain forces to check Chinas LAC transgressions

The Chinese side of the delegation was represented by Major General Lin Liu, corps commander of the South Xinjiang Military Division.

Tensions built up along the LAC following violent clashes between hundreds of Indian and Chinese troops in the Sikkim and Ladakh sectors in May.

Army officers of the two sides have held several meetings along the disputed border but have been unable to break the impasse.
* Deal secures Kinross' exploitation licence for new project

* Mauritania to receive 15% stake in Tasiast Sud project

* Kinross to pay higher royalties in line with gold price

* Gold miner will pay govt $25 million to resolve disputes

* Mauritania to repay $40 million in VAT refunds to Kinross

JOHANNESBURG, June 15 (Reuters) - Canadian mining firm Kinross Gold on Monday said it reached an agreement with Mauritania's government under which the company will pay a total of $25 million to resolve disputes over fuel use, tax exemptions, and mining licences.

Under the deal, the government will give Kinross a 30-year exploitation licence for its new project Tasiast Sud. Mauritania will receive a 15% free carried interest in the project, with an option to purchase an additional 10% after further feasibility work is completed.

The deal terms are similar to those agreed by Barrick Gold in January when it ended a long-running tax dispute with Tanzania by giving the government a stake in three gold mines.

Mauritania will reinstate a tax exemption on fuel duties and repay around $40 million in VAT refunds to Kinross, the company said in a statement.

Kinross will pay the government $10 million to resolve disputes around fuel use and tax exemptions, and $15 million upon receiving the Tasiast Sud exploitation licence, to resolve disputes around its application to convert the exploration licence into an exploitation licence.

It also said it would now pay an escalating royalty - tied to the price of gold - from 4% for prices below $1,000 an ounce, to 6.5% for prices of $1,800/oz and above.

The gold price has soared as the global pandemic drives investors into safe-haven assets, and was last trading just above $1,700 per ounce.

Kinross, whose Tasiast gold mine produced 391,097 ounces of gold last year, said the agreement further develops a "positive foreign investment climate" in Mauritania.

Mines minister Mohamed Abdel Vetah said: "Tasiast is an important contributor to Mauritania and we believe our new agreement will be a positive model for other foreign mining investors".

A workers' strike at Tasiast mine last month resulted in a two-week shutdown which the company said would not affect 2020 production.

(Reporting by Helen Reid; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
As many as 23 US states, mostly in the South and West, are registering a rise in new reported cases compared to the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Most of the states reporting surging numbers of cases have not previously seen a peak and fall  this is not a resurgence of cases, but a continued increase.

Florida became the seventh state to hit 100,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Monday according to the state department of health. The daily number of cases reached a record 4,049 on Saturday, but that fell back on Sunday and Monday.

Governor Ron DeSantis has not made masks mandatory, but several cities have. Mr DeSantis said that local enforcement would be more effective than statewide penalties. Florida now has 100,217 confirmed cases, and more than 3,150 officially recorded deaths.

California, which reported some of the first cases in the US back in February, this weekend saw its highest number of hospitalisations  3,574 on Saturday  and the most new cases in a single day  4,515.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced that residents are now required to wear a face mask or covering in indoor public spaces, on public transportation, or in a healthcare environment.

As one of the first states to begin the process of reopening, Texas is now grappling with a surge in cases similar in size to both California and Florida, reaching a new daily peak of 4,430 new cases on Saturday.

Governor Greg Abbott has insisted that there is no cause for concern and dismissed a request from the mayor of nine of the largest cities in the state to allow them to make masks mandatory in their cities.

Mayor of Austin Steve Adler said on Sunday night that he wished the reopening of the state had been done slower with more attention to case numbers in each phase before moving to the next. Not mandating masks sends a message that this is all over, he said.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday there is no second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, even though there are some flare-ups in states such as Florida, and it is unlikely there will be widespread shutdowns across the country.

There are some hotspots. We're on it, Mr Kudlow said in an interview with CNBC. We know how to deal with this stuff now. It's come a long way since last winter and there is no second wave coming.

Joining California, Florida and Texas, are Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Ten states have case numbers that are holding steady: Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin.

States that continue to show decreases in the number of cases are Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said Monday morning that she was shocked and appalled at the placement of a noose in the garage stall for Bubba Wallaces car at Talladega on Sunday.

Wallace is the only Black driver who races full-time at NASCARs top level. NASCAR said Sunday night that its investigating the incident and that it would work to ban whomever placed the noose in Wallaces garage.

I am shocked and appalled to hear of yesterdays vile act against Bubba Wallace in Talladega, Ivey said in a statement. There is no place for this disgusting display of hatred in our state. Racism and threats of this nature will not be condoned nor tolerated and I commit to assisting in any way possible to ensure that the person responsible for this is caught and punished. While the important conversation of racial reconciliation is ongoing all over our country, it is clear there is much work to do. Bubba Wallace is one of us; he is a native of Mobile and on behalf of all Alabamaians I apologize to Bubba Wallace as well as to his family and friends for the hurt this has caused and regret the mark this leaves on our state. I ask the NASCAR family to rally around Bubba and his team as they compete today and I know that there are more people who are wishing him well today than ever before.

Garage access at Talladega is limited because of the coronavirus pandemic. Hours have been modified and only those with work-related access are approved to enter the garage. The limited number of fans attending Sundays race  postponed to Monday afternoon because of rain  are not allowed to enter the infield.

[Jay Busbee: Day of reckoning has arrived for NASCAR and its fans ]

The noose was discovered by a member of Wallaces No. 43 team and the FBI is investigating.

The U.S. Attorneys office for the Northern District of Alabama, FBI, and the department of Justice Civil Rights Division are reviewing the situation surrounding the noose that was found in Bubba Wallaces garage to determine whether there are violations of federal law, U.S. Attorney Jay Town said in a statement. Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society.

Story continues

The race was set to be the first Cup Series race at Talladega and in the state of Alabama since NASCARs Confederate flag ban on June 10. Wallace was a strong advocate for the ban and said on CNN two days before the flag was officially barred from NASCAR tracks that he wanted to see it prohibited.

NASCAR called the placement of the noose a heinous act on Sunday. The sanctioning body has spoken out against racial injustice and inequality since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and even held a moment of silence before its Cup Series race on May 31.

Bubba Wallace waits for the start of a NASCAR Cup Series auto race Sunday, June 14, 2020, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Petty attending Mondays race

Wallace drives for Richard Petty Motorsports, the team owned by the seven-time champion and NASCAR legend who won 200 Cup Series races throughout his career.

RPM said Monday morning that Petty, 82, would be in attendance at Mondays race in support of Wallace. Petty has not been at any of the races since NASCAR resumed racing on May 17 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

NASCAR legen Richard Petty (right) has expressed support for Bubba Wallace and was supposed to attend Monday's race at Talladega. (Photo by John Cordes/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

      

Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

More from Yahoo Sports:
Saudi Arabia lifted its nationwide curfew yesterday, despite cases of the coronavirus still rising daily by the thousands.

On Sunday, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior said the "curfew shall be fully lifted, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

Saudi Arabia first imposed curfews and lockdowns in March to mitigate the spread of the virus. The Gulf kingdom has both eased and reimposed restrictions since then. The curfews ran for different amounts of times at night and also during the day.

Residents are now free to move around at all times. Several restrictions remain in place, however. People cannot gather in groups of more than 50. They must also wear masks and socially distance. International commercial passenger flights in and out of the kingdom also remain suspended, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Saudi Arabia also announced today that the Hajj pilgrimage would take place with a "very limited number of pilgrims." The attendees will be selected from various nationalities already living in the kingdom, the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah said in a statement.

The Hajj is a yearly pilgrimage to Islam's holiest site in Mecca that will take place in July this year. The Umrah pilgrimage, which can be done at any time, remains suspended, according to the ministry.

The Hajj involves thousands of people in close quarters gathering in Mecca, which is currently a hotspot for COVID-19 in the country. The ministry cited the virus-related risks of large groups of people in crowded areas in its decision.

These decisions follow other recent moves to reopen Saudi Arabia. On Friday, Saudi authorities announced that mosques in the holy city of Mecca, which was subject to more restrictive controls than other parts of the country, can reopen. Earlier this month, Saudi soccer teams resumed practices, with games to start again in August.

Cases are still rising significantly in Saudi Arabia. Authorities recorded 3,393 cases today, 3,379 yesterday and 3,941 on Saturday, according to Ministry of Health statistics. Saudi Arabia has had 161,005 total confirmed cases to date, per the ministry.
Foreign enterprises are beginning to shift their investments into industries that require medium-level workers or higher-skilled workers as opposed to putting money into labour-intensive industries as in the past,

according to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Recent statistics released by the State Audit indicate that since the Foreign Investment Law was promulgated in 1987, the country has been able to attract more than 30,000 billion projects from 130 countries and territories globally with a total registered capital of US$362 billion, of which US$211 billion of the total was disbursed.

Therefore, FDI projects have historically represented important capital sources for economic development investment nationwide, with this flow of foreign investment also having a significant impact on market development, labour productivity, and worker income.

Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung said that the creation of direct and indirect jobs has increased significantly, with the number of employees working in foreign-invested enterprises growing from 330,000 in 1995 to roughly 6.1 million in 2019. This represents an average growth rate of 7.72% during the 2005 to 2017 period, far higher than the labour growth rate seen in other economic sectors.

Labour productivity has been able to undergo positive changes thanks to capital being poured into the foreign invested sector. According to current prices, labour productivity of foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises in 2017 reached a total of VND330.8 million per worker, 3.5 times higher than the national average for labour productivity, and higher than the entire business sector in general, especially in terms of non-state enterprises.

The shift in labour structure from low-skilled labour-intensive industries to highly-skilled labour-intensive industries has been growing together with attracting additional sums of foreign investment, with workers previously being concentrated in a number of labour-intensive manufacturing industries such as garments and textiles and footwear. However, the proportion of labour in a number of manufacturing industries applying high technology has been increasing rapidly, with the number of workers involved in electronics and electronic products increasing from 8.03% in 2012 to 15.7% in 2017.

Recruitment changes required

Minister Dung believes that foreign financiers are now seeking greater levels of investment efficiency, especially when putting their money into East Asia and Southeast Asia. Instead of searching for new and major markets that could be directly exploited as had previously been done in the past, multinational groups now prioritising investment in places that feature modern infrastructure facilities. Other factors that appeal to investors include an abundant supply of high-quality human resources, appropriate policy mechanisms, along with a stable political situation in order to improve production efficiency and boost competitiveness in available markets.

There will be an array of fundamental changes in terms of labour demand and human resources structures once the flow of foreign investment reaches sectors that require both medium-level labourers and highly-skilled workers. This is likely to be the case in sectors such as components, machinery accessories, electronics, scientific products, medical products, chemistry, along with rubber and plastic, although there will be little changes to low-skilled labor-intensive industries such as textiles and apparel or footwear, the minister noted.

With this trend, Vietnam has many great opportunities as most countries, leading groups, and major businesses consider the country to be a safe, potential destination, an optimal investment and production centre in the short and medium term. In the context that the economy will experience drastic changes against the above-mentioned macro trends, Vietnam's labour market will certainly have fundamental changes in structure and organisation," said Minister Dung.

The Minister added that in the near future labour structures will continue to shift from the agricultural sector to both industrial and service sectors. This will follow the trend of employment structures altering from labour-intensive fields to technology-applied industries. Consequently, jobs in sectors that employ unskilled and low-skilled workers will gradually decrease as the demand for jobs that require more qualified and highly-skilled workers increases.

Due to these changes, it is likely that workers, especially those who are old, untrained, and unskilled, will certainly face an array of challenges to retrain in order to adapt themselves to become employable in new industries. Without thorough preparations, a large proportion of Vietnamese workers could be at high risk of losing their jobs amid the current shifting trend.

As a means of adapting to the latest trends of foreign investment and in order to benefit Vietnamese workers in a sustainable economy, Minister Dung underlined the need to be proactive in developing a number of comprehensive action strategies aimed at creating a completely connected market that features a diverse ecosystem which is closely linked to the international market.

Moreover, the Government should work closely with ministries and agencies to direct them to continue their great efforts to improve the nations business environment, take part in exchanges with major international groups, and proactively negotiate bilateral free trade agreements. It is therefore essential to revamp bilateral and multilateral mechanisms with regard to investment attraction, intellectual property, banking, and finance so that foreign countries are able to provide the optimal conditions for their businesses to enter the country through their financial support mechanisms, Minister Dung added. VOV

FDI into electronics should promote local companies The electronic industry of Vietnam is heavily dependent on FDI.
New, scalable methodology sets out thorough guidelines for Project Managers and Project Delivery teams that can be leveraged to execute projects at a high professional standard, regardless of project complexity. North Vancouver, B.C., June 19, 2020 - Maven Consulting Ltd. Maven is excited to release their new Project Management Methodology (PMM). The PMM was built by fine-tuning their leading-edge industry best practices into a Methodology that works within both the companys 
Researchers at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) in Aracatuba, Brazil, have developed a computational tool that acts like a "COVID-19 accelerometer," plotting in real time the rate at which growth is accelerating or decelerating in more than 200 countries and territories.

Available free of charge online, the application automatically loads the most recent notified case numbers from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), updated daily, and applies mathematical modeling techniques to diagnose the current stage of the pandemic in each country.

"The application democratizes access to information. Everyone can understand exactly what's happening in their city, state or country. It also helps public administrators and policymakers evaluate whether measures taken to mitigate transmission of the novel coronavirus are having the desired effect," Yuri Tani Utsunomiya told. Utsunomiya is a professor at UNESP's Aracatuba School of Veterinary Medicine (FMVA) and first author of an article published in Frontiers in Medicine showing how the mathematical modeling framework can be used to assess the effects of public health measures.

To explain how an epidemic progresses, Utsunomiya offered an analogy to a fast car. Initially, the disease spreads slowly, and daily cases grow slowly, just as a car takes some time to pick up speed. The rate of growth is called the 'incidence' and is measured by the number of new cases per day. Prevalence is the total number of cases since counting began and can be compared to the distance traveled by this imaginary car.

Stepping on the throttle makes the number of cases rise rapidly, like a car accelerating and picking up speed. Exponential growth in the number of cases occurs in this second stage of the epidemic. What every country wants is to stop this acceleration and begin to slow transmission. These are two distinct operations. The first consists of taking one's foot off the throttle so that the acceleration falls to zero. Incidence peaks as a result. The second operation entails exerting negative acceleration on the disease [stepping on the brake] so that the rate of growth falls to zero. Without velocity, the car stops. This is what we all want. We want COVID-19 to stop spreading." Yuri Tani Utsunomiya, Professor, UNESP's Aracatuba School of Veterinary Medicine

The COVID-19 accelerometer shows almost in real time whether a country is accelerating or braking, with a degree of imprecision in countries with undernotification of cases.

However, Utsunomiya stressed that the four stages of growth in the epidemic - flow (green), exponential (pink), deceleration (yellow) and stationary (blue) - may not unfold in that order. Even after a period of deceleration or stationary growth, the disease could again start spreading exponentially if control measures are abandoned. Hence, tools that help continuously monitor transmission are important.

"Our analysis of more than 200 countries and territories showed that effective control measures quickly affect the acceleration curve, well before the number of daily cases starts to fall. This behavior of the curve is highly relevant to any assessment of public policy to control the disease," Utsunomiya said.

Sinuous curves

Using official notification data, the application plots incidence - the growth curve everyone wants to flatten so that hospitals are not overwhelmed - and acceleration in real time, and detects transitions between the four stages. This is made possible by two mathematical techniques: moving regression and a hidden Markov model.

"We developed a simple but highly robust method that takes data available from national and international databases to produce precise information on the progress and movement of the pandemic. Of course, the calculations are based on data that essentially depend on diagnosis [testing]," noted Jose Fernando Garcia, a professor at UNESP Jaboticabal and a coauthor of the article.

While the undernotification of cases is a limitation and may create scale distortions, the epidemiological curves produced by the model are sufficiently accurate, according to the researchers.

An analysis of the curves for Brazil at this time shows that no state has thus far succeeded in leaving behind the exponential growth stage, despite quarantine measures and lockdowns. China reached the stationary stage after only six weeks of well-organized social isolation. Australia, New Zealand, Austria and South Korea have now reached the stationary stage. Italy, Spain and Germany are in the deceleration stage, in which the number of new cases falls daily, thanks to the confinement measures taken.

Utsunomiya divides the measures designed to contain the spread of COVID-19 into two categories: suppression, meaning more intense and severe measures aimed at rapidly reversing the growth curve, e.g., lockdown, and mitigation measures aimed at lowering the growth rate, e.g., requiring face masks and discouraging crowds.

"Our study clearly points to the effectiveness of suppression in combating COVID-19," he said. "However, suppressive measures have been criticized for creating social problems and having a profoundly negative effect on the economy. Mitigation has less severe social and economic impacts, but it's also less efficient. There really isn't a silver bullet."

Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP awarded Utsunomiya scholarships in the past to support his PhD research and master's research.

According to Utsunomiya, Japan is one of the only countries that managed to decelerate the growth of new cases with mitigation measures alone. "Comparing strategies across countries requires caution," he said. "The effectiveness of mitigation depends on factors like healthcare infrastructure, the amount and frequency of testing, population density, and the extent to which people in general comply with the recommendations of the health authorities."
A delegation from the Abuakwa North branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Friday donated qualities of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to the Community Hospital in Kukurantumi and the Government Hospital in Tafo in the Abuakwa North constituency to help fight the pandemic

The items included: nose masks/shield, gloves, packs of paper tissue, cartons of bottled water and sanitizers.

This was the second time the NDC had donated PPEs to hospitals in the Abuakwa North since the outbreak of the pandemic. The former President John Mahama has already presented similar items to Hawa Memorial Hospital at Akyem Osiem and now to Onaapo the government hospital.

The opposition party noted that the donation is to help complement the efforts of the government in the overall fight against the pandemic.

At a short ceremony held to hand over the items to the hospitals, the leader of the delegation and former Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Ambassador Victor Smith accompanied by the Abuakwa North parliamentary candidate Hon Charles Darko Yeboah (Ozey), Former Energy Minister Mr Appiah Korang, the constituency chairman Mr Siaw Frimpong David and some constituency executives of the party.

Ambassador Victor Smith said the donations are in response to the calls by the staff of the two hospitals to assist them in the fight against the virus.

"It is accurate to say that what we bring today is actually not a lot but in case of an emergency situation as Abuakwa North has recorded a case of Covid-19, we hope this will go a long way to help the hospitals till such time that the government supplies arrive," he noted.

The NDC parliamentary candidate for Akyem Abuakwa North Hon Charlse Darko Yeboah (Ozey) in an interview with Mr Awal Adam said the presentation to the hospitals is in appreciation of the good service the National Democratic Congress NDC party are continue to render to the general public and it forms as part of their contributions to the fight against the spread of Covid-19
So much for Seattle's "summer of love." That's some "block party atmosphere" they've got in the CHOP.

Less than two weeks after Seattle's mayor allowed warlords to declare an autonomous zone over six blocks of Seattle in the name of "abolishing" the police, the place is already starting to look like Liberia.

According to the New York Times:

One person died and another was critically injured by gunfire early Saturday morning inside a portion of a Seattle neighborhood that has been occupied by protesters for more than a week, officials said. The shootings unfolded at a protester-run region known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area. It has been celebrated as a "no cop" zone, and the Seattle Police Department wrote in a statement that detectives were investigating the shooting "despite the challenges presented by the circumstances."

Apparently, the cops couldn't get in in order to clear a path to allow the first responding medics in.

For that, the warlords running that hole are blaming cops for their own barbaric rule.

"Autonomous," indeed. Actually, it's infantile. They take over six city blocks claiming themselves more fit to rule than the established rule of law and its Democratic rulers allowed. They vowed they'd be police-free. They'd show us all how, and then they got exactly what they wanted as Seattle's wretched leftist officials bowed to them and cheered their becoming police-free. After that, word got out that it was going to get mighty easy to get away with killing people, because city officials had already abdicated.

The "gun-free zone" talk went out the window in this dumpster fire of autonomous rule, too. Here's a warlord handing out weapons to anyone over 18 from the trunk of his car:

Or maybe EMS wouldn't enter without backup because of this? pic.twitter.com/vjna3MyH6E  maria viti (@selfdeclaredref) June 21, 2020

Doesn't sound like what's known as the CHOP zone went with registrations or background checks, let alone ammo limits.

Here's more blame-the-cops lunacy: "Last night's shooting should redirect us to the task at hand  to defend Black lives by dismantling the Seattle Police Department and investing in real community safety," a group called Decriminalize Seattle said in a statement.

Now there's another incident.

SEATTLE  Another night of gunfire at Seattle's protester-led "autonomous zone" sent one person to the hospital with injuries, the second round of gun violence over the weekend in an area where officers had pulled out of the police station. Susan Gregg, a spokeswoman at Harborview Medical Center, said one person who had been shot in or near the zone was brought by private vehicle for treatment late Sunday night. The victim was in serious condition, Ms. Gregg said. The Seattle Police Department said it was investigating a reported shooting inside the zone. On Saturday morning, separate shootings left a 19-year-old man dead and another in critical condition.

The cop-free territory of CHAZ, created to be a refuge from the anti-black, imperialist United States, has a 100 percent black death rate.  Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 22, 2020

There will be more.

The hard reality is that cops can't be blamed for not risking their lives for a warlord zone engaged in a trash-can war. Police are there to uphold rule of law and keep everyone safe. They shouldn't be expected to risk their lives or die to uphold a warlord hellhole that exists solely in opposition to their existence.

As cops are being blamed, the real blame goes to Seattle's disgusting far-left officials, who let it all happen right under their noses. They were not just naive; they were motivated by their comparable hatred of cops and their overarching hatred of President Trump. Remember this ugly taunt from the mayor of Seattle?

Seattle is fine. Dont be so afraid of democracy. https://t.co/o26PkJnYhA  Mayor Jenny Durkan (@MayorJenny) June 12, 2020

So much for all this lovely "summer of love" and the "big block party."

It went downhill fast in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), since renamed "CHOP."

It's tempting to want to just let the place burn and let the dirtbags stir in their own juices. But an ugly precedent has been set, trash-can fires can always spread, and people are going to be fleeing. If President Trump can't send troops in, it makes sense to penalize the city for its sickening absence of responsibility to its own sworn upheld office. Legal means to put these people in the docks, and witholding of fundings might just be a start.

Image credit: T.J. Hawk via Flickr with minor modifications.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Monday came out in support of the Centre on the border standoff with China as she appealed to the government and the opposition to work with full maturity and solidarity.

Mayawatis comments came as the several opposition parties, especially the Congress, have kept up the pressure on the Centre over the clash in eastern Ladakhs Galwan Valley that left 20 Indian Army soldiers dead last Monday.

The BSP chief, who usually is critical of the government, said the entire country has been saddened, worried and angry after the death of the 20 Indian Army soldiers, including a colonel, in the border clash with the Chinese army in Ladakh.

For this, both the government and the opposition have to work with full maturity and solidarity, which can be seen and proved to be effective for the country and the world, Mayawati tweeted in Hindi.

Also read: India deploys specialised mountain forces to check Chinas LAC transgressions

In such a difficult and challenging time, the opinion of the people and experts regarding the next action of the government may be different, but basically it is better to leave it to the government to protect the interest and the border in every situation, which is the responsibility of every government, Mayawati tweeted in Hindi.

Last week, the BSP chief had said the people of India were confident that the Centre would take the right decisions to keep the honour, pride and glory of the country intact and would never allow anyone to grab even an inch of land.

The good thing is that the entire country is united in such a delicate time, forgetting the shortcomings of the government. Now the government has to live up to the expectations of the people, she had tweeted on June 17.

Senior Indian and Chinese army officials will hold a meeting later in the day to discuss the ongoing border standoff.

The meeting, the second since June 6, will be held at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) opposite Chushul to discuss the ongoing dispute in Ladakh.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Lima, Peru  Mon, June 22, 2020 12:01 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660a2ee4 2 News machu-picchu,Peru,coronavirus,COVID-19,travel,archeology,tourism Free

The ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a jewel of Peruvian tourism, will not reopen in July as originally scheduled due to concerns over the coronavirus, local media reported Sunday.

The Machu Picchu management group, UGM, made the decision based on reports from authorities in the Cusco region, where the citadel is located.

"It has been decided that it will not be opened on July 1," Machu Picchu district mayor Darwin Baca, a UGM member, told reporters.

An official reopening date has not yet been set. Baca indicated that a series of health measures, such as testing, are still pending in the area.

Machu Picchu unions have since Monday protested the reopening, saying that allowing tourists in the region would cause a spike in infections.

Read also: Machu Picchu to sharply limit visits after July reopening in Peru

Peruvian officials announced last week that the citadel would be allowed to reopen to a sharply reduced number of daily visitors: only 675 per day, one-quarter the usual number.

Guides would lead tours of only seven visitors, and people would be required to wear masks.

The planned July reopening was linked to a lifting of national confinement measures in place since March 16, Cusco regional governor Paul Benavente said.

Airports in Peru remain closed, and many shops are shuttered. But despite some of Latin America's earliest and most stringent measures, the country has logged the second-highest number of cases in the region, at 250,000, along with nearly 8,000 deaths.
London, June 22 : The Met Police have released CCTV images of 12 people they want to speak to following violent clashes at the anti-racism protests in London over the past few weeks.

Since late May, at least 100 officers have been injured during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and far-right counter-protests which were sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a black man, in the US state of Minnesota when a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, the Metro newspaper reported on Sunday.

Three police horses and a police dog also suffered injuries, and almost 300 people have been arrested.

The Met has previously released 48 images of those thought to have been involved in criminality, and on Saturday published the 12 additional photos.

The individuals are suspected of offences from racial abuse and serious violence against members of the public and police officers, and also violent disorder.

On Sunday, Commander Alex Murray said the force had seen a positive response to the appeal from the public.

"The vast majority of people who have attended the recent protests made their voices heard, and then left. However, a minority have attended with the sole purpose of attacking, abusing or violently confronting fellow protesters, detracting from the cause of their protest.

"We saw violence against police officers including verbal and racial abuse which is absolutely appalling.

They do not come to work to be subjected to this. They come to work to keep Londoners and their families safe. Similarly, those people who wanted to have their voices heard and protest should not be subject to violence from others." Murray further said that investigations were underway to identify those they suspect of being involved in these offences,.
Police in Groton are investigating recently discovered vandalism in the town as a hate crime, authorities said over the weekend.

Law enforcement found graffiti at the Groton Country Club and several other places in the Middlesex County town early Sunday morning. Though the graffiti varied from location to location, police noted, some of it was racist and/or vulgar in nature.

Therefore, we are investigating this as a hate crime, and any charges stemming from these incidents will be treated as such, the Groton Police Department said in a Facebook post. We have a team of dedicated officers currently investigating these incidents.

The Groton Select Board wrote in a statement that the graffiti does not represent the community as a whole, but the vandalism is painful evidence of the work we need to do as a community.

Authorities have urged anyone who may have seen anything related to the graffiti to contact Det. Patrick Timmins. The departments non-emergency phone number is (978) 448-5555.

Residents who have outdoor home surveillance technology were also asked by police to check their systems for Saturday night between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.
The US economy is doing amazingly well, President Donald Trump has said, stressing that America is witnessing record-setting numbers in terms of jobs.

Trump made the comments on Saturday while responding to a question on the US economy, which has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The countrys unemployment rate for April was 14.7 per cent, which was the highest since 1948. With the addition of 2.5 million jobs, the monthly rate dropped to 13.3 per cent for May.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

The economy had lost 22.1 million jobs in March and April when most parts of the US were under lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. In May, some businesses have reopened and rehiring of workers has picked up. Trump had described the numbers as an affirmation of the good work his administration is doing.

The US economy is doing amazingly well, Trump told reporters.

I would say that the numbers that were doing are record-setting numbers. We have record-setting job numbers, he said.

We have record-setting, as you know, retail sales numbers; that just came out. The US economy is doing very, very well, Trump asserted.

Earlier Kevin Hassett, senior adviser to the president and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, told CNN that the countrys economy is coming back way faster than one thought.

Right now I think economists need to be humble and recognise that when weve got 17 states where credit card spending is above where it was last year already, that it suggests that this economy is really, really coming back way faster than I thought, Hassette said.

At the same time, he conceded that the economy would be hit if there was to be a second wave of the coronavirus. If there is a second flare-up thats, you know, bigger than what weve seen and the economy does have to move towards more shutdown, he said.

President Trump is focused on building a great economy, the strongest economy that the US has ever had, he told reporters at the White House on Friday.

I think that he had an enormous amount of success doing that through January. I think that the virus has upended that. But the comeback is way faster than anybody thought. Again, the average economist missed by ten million jobs in the last jobs report. And I think the reason why were coming back so fast is that the economy was so strong in January, he said.

Ive not ever had him say, oh we need to do this because I want to win the election. I have never heard him say that once, he said responding to a question.

Trump is seeking his re-election to the White House in the November 3 elections.

The US is the worst-affected country from the pandemic.

According to the Johns Hopkins University data, there are over 2.2 million coronavirus cases in America with more than 119,000 deaths.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: In the midst of India's escalating border row with China, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday left for Russia on a three-day visit during which he is likely to press for the timely delivery of the S-400 missile defence systems and discuss ways to further expand bilateral military ties.

Singh is primarily visiting Russia to attend a grand military parade in Moscow on June 24 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War.

However, it is learnt that the minister will also discuss with Russian leaders regional security scenario and bolstering of overall defence cooperation.

It is the first visit abroad by a senior union minister in four months as foreign travels were restricted in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

Singh travelled by an Indian Air Force aircraft, while strictly following all laid precautions against the coronavirus infection, officials said.

The last foreign trip abroad by a senior member of the union cabinet was by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman when she visited Riyadh from Feb 22-24 to attend a meeting of G-20 finance ministers.

Days before Sitharaman's trip, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Germany from February 18 to 19.

The defence minister's visit to Russia comes in the midst of the escalating border standoff between India and China, particularly after the killing of 20 Indian Army personnel by Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.

Russia has been in touch with both India and China following their border row and officials did not rule out discussion on the matter during Singh's meetings in Moscow.

"Leaving for Moscow on a three-day visit. The visit to Russia will give me an opportunity to hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. I shall also be attending the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow," Singh tweeted before leaving for Moscow.

Leaving for Moscow on a three day visit. The visit to Russia will give me an opportunity to hold talks on ways to further deepen the India-Russia defence and strategic partnership. I shall also be attending the 75th Victory Day Parade in Moscow.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) June 22, 2020

Officials said Singh went ahead with the visit, notwithstanding the border row with China, due to India's decades-old military ties with Russia.

They said the defence minister in his talks with top Russian military brass is expected to request for the timely delivery of the S-400 missile systems.

Russian Deputy Chief of Mission Roman Babushkin recetly told PTI that there could be some delays in implementation of military contracts including the S-400 one in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

In October 2018, India had signed a USD 5 billion deal with Russia to buy five units of the S-400 air defence missile systems, notwithstanding warning from the Trump administration that going ahead with the contract may invite US sanctions.

Last year, India made the first tranche of payment of around USD 800 million to Russia for the missile systems.

Moscow was to begin the delivery of the system by second half of next year.

The defence minister is also expected to request Moscow to cut delays in supply of spares of key Russian-origin platforms like tanks, fighter jets and helicopters.

Russia has been one of India's key suppliers of arms and ammunition.

However, it has been a long-standing grievance of armed forces that supply of critical spares and equipment from Russia takes a long time affecting maintenance of military systems procured from that country.

ALSO READ | 'Be fully prepared': Rajnath briefs CDS, service chiefs on LAC before Russia visit

A tri-service 75-member Indian military contingent has already reached Moscow to participate in the parade.

The Indian team will participate in the parade alongside armed forces personnel from at least 11 countries including China.

"The visit of the defence minister will strengthen the longstanding special and privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia," the defence ministry said on Saturday.

"The Indian participation in the victory day parade will be a mark of tribute to the great sacrifices made by Russia and other nations in the Second World War in which Indian soldiers also participated and made supreme sacrifice," it said.
Abbott's SARS-CoV-2 IgG test can be used for highly-reliable, large-scale antibody testing, in line with the ICMR recommendation for the use of IgG CLIA (Chemiluminescence immunoassay) tests

Abbott has announced that it has begun supply of its laboratory-based serology blood test for the detection of the antibody, IgG (Immunoglobulin G), that identifies if a person has had the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Abbott has the capacity to provide millions of tests to India and is already in the process of delivering antibody tests to leading government and private hospitals and labs in Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Gujarat.

"Abbott is pleased to contribute to ICMRs COVID-19 antibody testing strategy to use IgG CLIA antibody tests. Abbotts recently launched SARS-CoV-2 IgG test can be used to understand the spread of transmission in high risk populations such as healthcare workers, immune-compromised individuals, frontline workers, or those in containment zones. These tests also provide valuable information to the public health officials about the spread in asymptomatic cases, helping us assess the impact of our public health efforts now and guide our COVID-19 response moving forward, said Narendra Varde, General Manager and Country Head at Abbotts diagnostics business in India.

Mumbais Hinduja hospital was one of the first hospitals to evaluate the test in India. Dr. Tester F. Asha Vaid, Chief of Labs (Admn), Director Lab Research at Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai, said, This test is useful to clinicians and the community  our initial testing has yielded specific results for patients who were RT-PCR positive for COVID-19.

Abbott's SARS-CoV-2 IgG test specifically identifies the IgG antibody, which is a protein that the body produces in the late stages of infection and may remain for up to months and possibly years after a person has recovered.

The test is used on the ARCHITECT i1000SR and i2000SR laboratory instruments, which are installed in hospitals or laboratories throughout India and can run up to 100-200 tests per hour to help with reliable antibody testing during the pandemic. Independent researchers found the test to have 99.9% specificity and 100% sensitivity for patients tested 17 days or more after symptoms began.


Every year, adventurous (and oft-unprepared) hikers who are fans of Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild" (1996) or the move based upon it have attempted the treacherous 20 mile trek on Alaska's Stampede Trail to the abandoned bus where Chris McCandless found refuge (until his death) in 1992. And frequently, hikers making the pilgrimage have had to be rescued. Two people have died during their trips to see the bus. From the New York Times:





The tourist trap is now gone though. Last week, the Alaska Army National Guard used a Chinook helicopter to airlift the bus out of its remote resting spot to an undisclosed location. State officials say they are considering putting it on public display.





The crew also removed a suitcase from the bus that held sentimental value to the McCandless family, according to the Alaska Army National Guard.

Carine McCandless, Mr. McCandless's youngest sister, said the suitcase did not belong to her brother, but may have contained journals she and others had left behind on their own journeys to the bus.[]



"Though I am saddened by the news, the decision made by Alaska D.N.R. was with good intentions toward public safety, and it was certainly their decision to make," Ms. McCandless wrote in an email. "Bus 142 did not belong to Chris, and it doesn't belong to his family. As for those that followed in his footsteps to where it rested, at the end of the day, their journey wasn't about a bus."



More from US Army: "Alaska Guard airlifts 'Into the Wild' bus from Stampede Trail"








Abidjan, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jun, 2020 ) :Ivory Coast's defence minister said Monday that a militant leader behind a deadly attack on a frontier post earlier this month has been captured.

"The commander of the team who led the action was taken yesterday," Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko said at a military camp in Abidjan, during a speech honouring soldiers killed during the border raid.
The copepod Eurytemora affinisis a small, ubiquitous crustacean found throughout the worlds oceans. It has also managed to invade freshwater lakes. Credit: Carol Eunmi Lee

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have found that a constantly fluctuating environment can enable some species to invade new areas by helping them maintain the genetic diversity they need to settle into their new homes.

And once those invasive species arrive, adaptation can take surprisingly similar paths. Evolution can act on exactly the same genomic regions, even during independent invasions across widely separated populations and on opposite sides of a continent.

The findings could make future encroachments easier to predict, a huge priority since invasive species cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage each year. And as climate change forces more species to move or perish, the ability to predict adaptability could help us understand which organisms will survive.

Writing in Nature Ecology and Evolution on June 22, UW-Madison Professor of Integrative Biology Carol Eunmi Lee and postdoctoral researcher David Stern describe how a small crustacean from salty waters, the copepod Eurytemora affinis, was able to invade the Great Lakes and other freshwater lakes.

In the estuaries that Eurytemora call home, fluctuations in the water's salinity drive a high level of genetic diversity among the copepod population, allowing them to survive changing conditions. When the invaders reach fresh water, that genetic diversity helped them undergo natural selection, flourish and take over.

"Fluctuating conditions in the native range probably provide a major evolutionary force enabling species to invade a new habitat," says Lee. "This is not a principle just for this one copepod, but it probably also explains why a large portion of invasive species in the Great Lakes are coming from brackish water habitats with fluctuating conditions."

Lee and Stern studied Eurytemora populations from two widely separated locations: the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec and the Gulf of Mexico near Texas and Louisiana. Each has gone on to invade freshwater lakes, either the Great Lakes or inland lakes upstream of the Gulf. The researchers sequenced the genomes of hundreds of copepods to investigate how they made the jump from salt water to fresh water.

"We looked for those genetic changes that were the same across these different independent invasion events," says Stern.

The researchers studied small crustaceans known as copepods that hail from the St. Lawrence Estuary and the Gulf of Mexico (dark circles) and have invaded the Great Lakes or other inland lakes (light circles), during which they had to evolve to adapt to freshwater. Credit: David Stern and Carol Eunmi Lee

Where these two different populations in different locations experienced the same genetic changes, it was evidence of what's known as parallel evolution. In the case of the copepods, the two populations experience 29 times more parallel evolution than expected if it were up to chance alone, at least in places of the genome related to salinity tolerance. That trend also held across broader regions of the genome.

"That was surprising, because the Gulf and Atlantic populations are very different," says Lee. "But they have the same mutations in their native ranges, and then the same mutations independently rose in frequency in the invading populations."

The researchers then investigated how populations of Eurytemora separated by thousands of miles could retain enough genetic similarity to promote this degree of parallel evolution. Lee and Stern found that the genes that underwent parallel evolution had experienced balancing selection at home. Balancing selection promotes the maintenance of diverse allelesvariants of genesto handle different conditions.

For Eurytemora, seasonal changes in salinity have selected for variation in genetic traits that help the crustacean survive a wide range of conditions. When the copepod made it to fresh water, it could rely on that genetic diversity to adapt to its new home.

Most of the genomic regions that changed to adapt to fresh water have unknown functions. But the researchers spotted a string of genes molded by parallel evolution with clear ties to changing salinity. One region with seven copies of an ion transporter, which can control how much sodium is pumped into a cell, had the highest density of parallel evolution in the copepod genomes.

"We expected that ion transporters would play a big role," says Lee. "It's going to be the number one thing that you have to do when you get to fresh water, is start pumping more ions into the cell."

The researchers believe that balancing selection likely explains a number of other invasions, especially in the Great Lakes. Other invaders, like zebra and quagga mussels, also hail from areas that experience fluctuations in salinity. As long as the environment regularly changes on a time scale longer than reproductive cycles and across generations, balancing selectionand subsequent invasionis possible.

"Balancing selection might be a widespread evolutionary force that predisposes certain populations to evolve when they encounter evolutionary environmental change," says Lee.

Explore further Is the outcome of evolution predictable?

More information: Evolutionary origins of genomic adaptations in an invasive copepod, Nature Ecology and Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-1201-y , www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1201-y Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution Evolutionary origins of genomic adaptations in an invasive copepod,
T wo permanent sculptures celebrating and honouring Windrush generation will be unveiled in Hackney next year.

Artists Thomas J Price and Veronica Ryan have been commissioned to create the new artworks to "serve as a permanent expression of solidarity with the Windrush generation".

The artworks will be unveiled in 2021, and will be installed in two different locations in the borough.

Using photo archives, observations and digital 3D scans of Hackney residents, Mr Price will create a large-scale bronze sculpture, which will be placed outside the Hackney Town Hall.

Meanwhile, Ms Ryan will create a series of large marble and bronze sculptures representing Caribbean fruit and vegetables.

I have memories of going to Ridley Road Market with my mother as a child to buy fruit and vegetables, fabrics, and sewing materials," she said.

Windrush generation arrive in Britain 1 /18 Windrush generation arrive in Britain Some of the pioneering Windrush generation arrive at Tilbury Docks, from Jamaica Getty Images The journey to the UK cost 28 Getty Images They arrived on June 22, 1948 Getty Images The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain SSPL via Getty Images The group were the first of the Windrush generation to emigrate to Britain Getty Images Arrivals scrutinise a map of the London Underground Getty Images The Windrush generation helped to rebuild post-war Britain Getty Images Members of the 55 Independent Squadron wait to board the Empire Windrush at Southampton, to fight in the Korean War Getty Images A black man walks past graffiti stating 'Powell For PM', referring to Enoch Powell who caused controversy with his outspoken attitude to black immigration and racial integration Getty Images Three Jamaicans (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury Docks Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images West Indian immigrants arriving in the United Kingdom, 19th May 1962 Mirrorpix/Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images 27th May 1956: Immigrants to Britain from the West Indies queuing up on arrival at Southampton holding documents Getty Images

"Little did I know, those early experiences would become essential material for my practice as an artist.

"I remember as a toddler during the 1950s the difficulties my young hopeful parents from Montserrat dealt with, navigating a new country and often inhospitable circumstances.

Mr Price added: I feel honoured to be part of this celebration of its legacy, especially as my Jamaican grandmother came over as a nurse. Hackney is a place I know well and is close to my heart."

The Windrush scandal emerged in 2018 / AFP via Getty Images

Hackney Council said the sculptures will celebrate the contribution the Windrush generation have made to life in the borough and across the UK.

Mayor Phillip Glanville said the council has been speaking to cultural experts and the local community since 2018 about the commission.

"These very different works by two leading black artists will represent a symbol of our boroughs ongoing commitment to honouring the contribution the Windrush generation has made to our borough," he said.

"While our commitment to this work has long predated the current debate about better and more diverse representation in the public sphere were proud, as we undergo our review of landmarks and naming of public spaces, to be able to make this announcement on Windrush Day 2020."

Windrush Day honours the British Caribbean community, and the half a million people who travelled to the UK after the Second World War.

The first Windrush Day was held on June 22, 2018.

Councillor Carole Williams added: "Were proud to be home to one of the largest black British populations in the UK and were committed to recognising the ongoing contributions they bring through celebration, support and honour."

The announcement follows the councils decision to review the role of statues and the naming of landmarks, street names, parks and other public spaces to ensure they reflect Hackneys diversity.

Loading....

"This is not about trying to rewrite history  but we should question whether these statues, plaques, and building, park and street names belong in a museum to educate us about our past, rather than being celebrated into the future," Mr Glanville said.
SEOUL, South Korea  North Koreas printing shops have been working overtime to revive a favorite weapon of Cold War-era psychological warfare: sending millions of propaganda leaflets across the worlds most heavily armed border and scattering them over South Korea.

The tit-for-tat move was announced on Monday by the North, which has become incensed by the leaflets that defectors from the North have sent from the South to their Communist home country in recent months, the Norths official news agency said.

The pledge by the North to retaliate presents another threat to the fragile detente on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea said it was preparing 3,000 balloons to carry the leaflets across the border, along with cigarette butts and other trash. The defectors have continued their propaganda efforts despite protests from Pyongyang and inter-Korean agreements to stop them.
22.06.2020 LISTEN

Newmont Ahafo Mines in the Ahafo Region has donated a number of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) to Saint Elizabeth Hospital to help fight against the spread of COVID-19 in the region.

The PPEs presented to the management of the hospital at a brief ceremony include 100 pieces of N95/N35 masks, 500 disposable gowns, 300 pieces of examination gloves, 100 bottles of hand sanitizers, eight veronica buckets, five gun thermometers, 100 disposable plastic aprons, 10 gum boots, 1000 hair caps and 300 gynecological gloves.

Addressing the Regional Health Director, District Health Director for Asutifi South, management and staff of the hospital, some executives of Newmont Ahafo Mines and journalists, the Acting General Manager of the Gold Mining Company, Mr. Okyere Yaw Ntrama explained, Newmont Ghana is noted for prioritising health and safety meaning it is committed to help strengthen the capabilities of public institutions to enable them minimize the risks and impact associated with COVID-19.

According to him, for effective defeat of COVID-19, Newmont Ghana is partnering local governments and medical institutions just like St. Elizabeth Hospital by providing them with PPEs and other health supplies within the communities and Ghana at large. He emphasised that if the country really wants to curb the virus, health workers must be fully equipped to give them sound minds and encouragement to perform as expected.

Mr. Okyere Yaw Ntrama said, Newmont Ghana has vowed to support the country fight COVID-19 that is why earlier this year, it supported Ghana's public health with $100,000 to reduced the spread of which Ahafo Mines contributed $20,000 to the Asutifi North District Assembly's relief efforts towards the provision of PPEs, personal hygiene items, community sensitization, among others.

He assured the people of the region that in the coming weeks and months, there will be additional interventions to help fight the virus as Ahafo Mines will receive its share of the established global fund which is $20million.

The Medical Director of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Dr. Ivan Muanah, received the PPEs on behalf of the hospital and thanked the company for responding to their request to help curb the pandemic.

He stated, for the front line workers at every health facility in the country to perform creditably concerning the fight against COVID-19, the availability of PPEs is key. He mentioned that it is extremely difficult for health workers to practice social distancing with patients so in order not to be infected PPEs become the solution.

He said, the donation made my Newmont Ahafo Mines is a great relief to the hospital because most of the PPEs are disposed immediately after and without them discharging duties is challenging. He disclosed that it is not easy for them to procure the PPEs on time due to how costly they are therefore Newmont Ahafo Mines deserves commendation.

Dr. Boakye Boateng, Ahafo Regional Health Director on behalf of Ministry Of Health(MOH) and the regional health directorate expressed gratitude to the company for supporting health facilities in the region amid COVID-19 which laudable and appreciated.

He explained that if companies and individuals in the region emulate what Newmont is doing, the fighting of COVID-19 will be effective. According to him, government is doing all it can to help combat the virus but the truth is all hands must be on deck.

Dr. Boakye Boateng appealed to the managers of the gold mining firm to extend the supply of PPEs to other districts which are not necessarily part of the company's catchment to help the region manage COVID-19 cases recorded effectively.

He reminded residents to keep adhering to all the COVID-19 safety protocols issued by the World Health Organization(WHO), Ministry Of Health (MOH) and Ghana Health Service(GHS) to keep all safe.
Dubai will allow foreign nationals holding residency visas issued in Dubai to return to the emirate starting June 22 and international tourists will be welcomed from July 7, the UAE emirate's Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management has announced.

Citizens and residents will be permitted to travel overseas from June 23 provided the destination countries agree to receive them.

The new decisions are supported by protocols and preventive measures aimed at safeguarding the health and wellbeing of all passengers travelling into or out of Dubai Airports.

The new air travel protocols for Dubai citizens, residents and visitors was announced

under the directives of Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and the follow-up of Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The Supreme Committee is headed by His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The following protocols have been put in place:

*Tourists will be required to present a recent Covid-19 negative certificate or undergo testing at Dubai airports. Covid-19 positive cases will be isolated for 14 days.

*Travellers must stringently comply with preventive measures and safety procedures put in place by Dubai and destination countries.

* Airlines will have the right to prevent passengers from boarding if they exhibit Covid-19 symptoms.

* International health insurance, Covid-19 test and completed health declaration form are mandatory for tourists visiting Dubai

The new announcement will allow thousands of people affected by the worldwide restrictions in passenger air traffic since the start of the pandemic to resume their travel plans, the announcement said.

The committee said the marked progress achieved by the emirate in combating the virus with strict precautionary measures implemented at national and local levels has earned it worldwide praise. Dubais rapid response to the global pandemic combined with the concerted efforts of the government and private sector and the commitment of the community have helped significantly reduce the spread of the virus.

What should returning residents do?

Residents holding Dubai-issued visas are permitted to return to the emirate by pre-booking flights on any airline on the condition that they obtain an approval coordinated between the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA Dubai) and the airline. Residents must fill a Health Declaration Form before embarking on their journey to confirm they do not have Covid-19 symptoms. The airline has the right to refuse boarding if passengers display any symptoms of Covid-19.

Upon arrival at Dubai airports, all residents will have to undergo a PCR test to screen them for Covid-19. Residents should register their complete details in the Covid-19 DXB smart app available online on arrival and before leaving the terminal.

Residents entering Dubai should not leave their house until they receive their Covid-19 test result. If they test positive, they will have to home isolate themselves for 14 days.

Residents sharing homes or living in high-density housing facilities will be isolated at an institutional facility if they test positive. The residents employer should make arrangements for the isolation facility in accordance with guidelines approved by the Covid-19 Command and Control Centre or bear the costs of a paid isolation facility provided by the government.

Citizens and residents travelling abroad

There will be no restrictions on the overseas destinations that citizens and residents can travel to. However, they must comply with guidelines and protocols followed in the countries they are travelling to. They are also required to fill in a Health Declaration Form before embarking to confirm they do not have any Covid-19 symptoms. The airline has the right to refuse boarding if they display any symptoms of Covid-19.

On their return to Dubai, citizens and residents will have to undergo a PCR test at the airport. They must register their details on the Covid-19 DXB app and commit to restricting themselves at home until their test results are available. In case they are Covid-19 positive, they must isolate themselves for 14 days and adhere to all guidelines and measures outlined by the Covid-19 Command and Control Centre.

International tourists

International tourists travelling by air to Dubai must ensure they meet all requirements for entry to the UAE. Downloading the Covid-19 DXB app and registering their details on it are critically important since it facilitates easy coordination and communication with health authorities if they experience Covid-19 symptoms. In addition to filling the Health Declaration Form before embarking, they should ensure they have a valid health insurance in order to enter the country. The airline has the right to refuse boarding at the airport of departure if they display any Covid-19 symptoms.

Tourists must do a PCR test with a maximum validity of four days (96 hours) ahead of the date of departure. They will be required to show proof of not being infected with the virus on arrival at Dubai airports. If they cannot provide proof, they will undergo a PCR test at the airport.

All arrivals will be subject to thermal screenings. If a traveller is suspected to have Covid-19 symptoms, Dubai airports have the right to re-test to ensure the tourist is free of the virus. It is mandatory for tourists who test positive for Covid-19 to register their details on the Covid-19 DXB app and isolate themselves at an institutional facility provided by the government for 14 days at their own expense.

All positive Covid-19 cases should strictly adhere to the measures outlined by the Covid-19 Command and Control Centre.

Passenger responsibilities

The Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management stressed that travellers should commit to meeting their responsibilities to ensure their safety and that of others. These include:

* All passengers must make themselves aware of the protocols and conditions specified by the Government of Dubai and destination countries before travelling and ensure they comply with them.

Passengers must disclose any health symptoms before travelling by filling out the Health Declaration Form provided by the airline company.

* UAE nationals must notify UAE embassies in the countries they are visiting if they test positive for Covid-19.

* Tourists must ensure they have international health insurance before travelling.

* All tourists must show that they have tested negative in a PCR test done four days (96 hours) before the departure date. If they cannot provide test results, they will be tested at Dubai airports.

* Those who test positive for Covid-19 should isolate themselves for 14 days at their home or in an institutional facility provided by the government at their own expense.

* Travelers must strictly follow physical distancing guidelines in accordance with measures followed at Dubai airports and use face masks at all times.

* All passengers should stringently observe precautionary measures and monitor themselves for Covid-19 symptoms.

The Committee stressed that comprehensive precautionary measures will continue to be implemented in Dubai as previously announced. Compliance with travel measures is critical to prevent delays in completing check-in and boarding procedures. Air travel protocols, conditions and preventive measures for citizens, residents and tourists can be viewed on the websites of all airlines operating out of Dubai airports, including Emirates airline (www.emirates.com) and flydubai (www.flydubai.com).

Passengers will be provided all assistance required to travel safely and comfortably, consistent with the high standards of Dubai Airports that have earned it top global rankings over the past several years, it said.

The Supreme Committee commended employees of national airlines for their commitment to helping residents and citizens enjoy a smooth travel experience despite the challenges in the current circumstances. - TradeArabia News Service
France will not tolerate Turkey's military intervention in Libya, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday, accusing Ankara of playing "a dangerous game".

Turkey has intervened decisively in recent weeks in Libya, providing air support, weapons and allied fighters from Syria to help the government based in Tripoli repel a year-long assault by eastern military leader Khalifa Haftar.

"I have already had the opportunity to say very clearly to President (Tayyip) Erdogan, I consider that Turkey is playing a dangerous game in Libya today and going against all of its commitments made at the Berlin conference," Macron said alongside his Tunisian counterpart Kais Saied, referring to a peace meeting earlier this year.

"We won't tolerate the role that Turkey is playing in Libya," he said.

Turkey's help appears to have secured Libya's capital and the west of the country for the Tripoli government against Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA), which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia.

Paris has been accused of supporting Haftar politically, having previously given him military assistance to fight Islamist militants. France denies backing Haftar but has stopped short of rebuking his allies, while repeatedly criticising Turkey.

Macron, who spoke earlier on Monday by phone to U.S. President Donald Trump on the crisis in Libya, briefly condemned the role of Russian mercenaries in Libya, but focused mostly on Ankara's role.

When asked about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi suggesting he had a right to intervene in Libya, Macron said the Egyptian leader had reason to be worried.

"You noted the legitimate concern of President Sisi when he sees troops arriving at his border," Macron said. Turkish-backed forces are not known to be operating near Egypt's border.

"This is a Mediterranean subject that affects us because today from Libya each day men and women are fleeing misery to come to Europe. Do you think we can let Turkey for a long time import Syrian fighters to Libya given everything we know?"

Search Keywords:

Short link:


"As families were coming together to celebrate Father's Day, I can think of no greater gift to any parent than ensuring their family has food security. I am grateful to the Trump Administration for seeing this need and partnering with local entities to ensure this need is met. As a church, it is among our highest duties to help those who require assistance. This action, and those like it, are simply fulfillments of our Christian duty," said Cornerstone Senior Pastor and founder of Hagee Ministries, John Hagee.

The food distribution event is the latest in a series of community initiatives in which Cornerstone has engaged since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Last month, the church partnered with the San Antonio Food Bank to distribute 2,000 food boxes. And in late March and April Cornerstone engaged in a widespread effort to provide humanitarian services to San Antonio residents including providing care boxes with non-perishable food and other essential items, food delivery, transportation services for those requiring help getting medical care or to grocery stores, and pastoral services to those feeling isolated by the efforts to combat the novel coronavirus.

"As a church and as a community, we've responded to the pandemic by coming together and helping our neighbors. This is what the Lord asks of all his children, and we will always seek to fulfill this mandate," added Cornerstone Lead Pastor Matt Hagee.

Hagee Ministries is an international Christian Evangelical Ministry led by Pastors John and Matt Hagee. John Hagee is the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church, a non-denominational evangelical church with more than 22,000 active members and is the founder and National Chairman of Christians United for Israel, the nation's largest pro-Israel organization. Matt Hagee serves as the Lead Pastor of Cornerstone Church and is the sixth generation in the Hagee family to carry the mantle of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to America and the nations of the world.

SOURCE Hagee Ministries
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 17:08:25|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

- - - -

URUMQI -- Muslim religious activities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region remain unaffected by COVID-19, thanks to the region's effective anti-virus measures, said the regional religious affairs bureau.

Religious activities have not been interrupted in the Xinjiang Islamic Institute, and the daily five-time prayer services are held every day. According to the institute, students are required to wear masks and maintain a social distance of over one meter while taking part in the service. Besides, they must undergo temperature screening before entering the service hall.

- - - -

BISHKEK -- Kyrgyzstan confirmed 205 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, raising the total number of infections in the country to 3,356.

A total of 2,289 laboratory tests were conducted in the country in the last 24 hours, which detected 205 new cases, Health Minister Sabirzhan Abdikarimov told a news briefing.

- - - -

KABUL -- Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry has confirmed 310 new COVID-19 positive cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 29,143 in the country, spokesman for the ministry Sayedudin Jami said Monday.

According to the official, 12 patients died over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 598 since the outbreak of the disease in February in Afghanistan.

- - - -

ULAN BATOR -- Mongolia reported seven new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the national count to 213, the country's National Center for Communicable Disease (NCCD) said Monday.

"A total of 359 tests for COVID-19 were conducted across the country yesterday and seven of them were positive," NCCD head Dulmaa Nyamkhuu told a daily press conference. Enditem
SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar assured shareholders that the likely job cuts and salary reductions in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar assured shareholders that the likely job cuts and salary reductions in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic will leave 'relatively low level' of stress on the bank as the proportion of business from government and quasi-government sector is high.

In a letter to the bank's shareholders, Kumar exuded confidence that despite economic headwinds, the robust performance achieved by the country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) in 2019-20 will continue in the current financial year.

" Despite the economic headwinds, the Bank is well prepared to adjust to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am more than hopeful that the robust performance achieved in FY20 will continue in FY21 as well," the SBI chairman said.

Observing that the full impact of COVID-19 outbreak will be felt in the current financial year, Kumar said from the bank's point of view, the true impact of COVID pandemic must also consider the behavioral impact on bank's customers, and composition of portfolio, among others.

"For instance, likely job cuts and salary reductions will have relatively low level of stress on account of higher proportion of Govt/ Quasi Govt. sector customers," he said in the letter, as per SBI's annual report.

"As of now, only 21.8 per cent of the customers have availed the benefit of moratorium. Furthermore, the Bank was able to achieve 98 per cent branch operability as well as 91 per cent alternate channel operability during the period of lockdown," Kumar added.

Nevertheless, an elaborate Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is in place to manage disruptions, he said.

SBI has traditionally been the banker of choice to the Government of India (GOI) and is an accredited banker to major Central Government Ministries and Departments, the annual report said.

It said SBI is contributing significantly towards e-governance initiatives taken by the GOI, and is instrumental in the development of e-solutions for both Central and state governments.

"This has facilitated their transition to the online mode, providing greater efficiency and transparency, resulting in ease of doing business and relaxation of living for the citizens," it said.

SBI's total government business turnover was Rs 52,62,643 crore during fiscal 2019-20.

The bank registered its highest ever yearly net profit in 2019-20 at Rs 14,488 crore. The net profit was Rs 862 crore during 2018-19.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the outlook of the global economy has become very uncertain and world is likely to experience a deep rooted recession next year, Kumar said.

The RBI expects contraction in the Indian economy during the current financial year.

Kumar also said that the pandemic has changed the preference of customers and it is a big opportunity for the bank as there is now more acceptability to adopt digital channels for doing banking transactions.

He said the bank will further scale up YONO (all-encompassing digital platform) and has set a target of doubling user registrations in the next six months, and further strengthen platform through new product offerings like end-to-end home loans, pre-approved car loan and personal gold loans.
Bangkok, Thailand - May 27, 2018: Asian woman using social media application on Huawei P20 pro smartphone, pointing at facebook app. Illustrative Editorial content.

Huawei is expected to receive the green light this week to build a facility in the UK, The Times reported, where it will conduct research in fields including photonics and data communications.

The site is in Sawston, seven miles from Cambridge. Huawei paid 37.5m ($46.3m) for the 550-acre plot in 2018.

South Cambridgeshire District Council is due to decide on the first phase of the build on 25 June and has already been advised to approve the Chinese giants application, The Times said.

The news comes as the UK reviews Huaweis involvement in the countrys 5G network rollout, even after agreeing in January to allow the companys equipment to play a limited role.

Concerns have been raised over its close ties to the Chinese state.

Critics  in particular, the US and some Tory MPs  have claimed Huaweis equipment could be used to spy on people and governments in the West. Huawei has repeatedly denied these allegations.

READ MORE: UK asks telecom providers to stockpile Huawei gear

Announcements like this R&D centre are clearly designed to influence the debate and they shouldnt be allowed to influence it, The Times quoted former first secretary of state Damian Green as saying.



The government calls Huawei a high-risk vendor and I want to see a path towards zero involvement from Huawei in the 5G network.

Meanwhile Huawei told the publication: We are investing in new technology, and an important part of our commitment to the UK is our proposed new R&D centre in Cambridge.

Earlier it was reported that UK officials wrote to the countrys mobile operators, asking them to ensure they have plenty of Huawei equipment as they fear US sanctions could disrupt the Chinese companys ability to maintain supplies.

READ MORE: German foreign minister doubts Huawei can be trusted as 5G supplier
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 02:05:37|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TEHRAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A total of three international drug trafficking gangs were disbanded in the Iran's capital city of Tehran, Police Commander Hossein Rahimi said on Monday.

In the police operation, over 1,000 kg of narcotics was seized, and 27 illicit drug traffickers were arrested, Rahimi was quoted as saying by Tehran Times daily.

Rahimi said that Iran is always in danger of importing illicit drugs to the country because of its proximity to Afghanistan.

After the presence of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, illicit drug plantation has even grown several folds in the war-torn country, Rahimi was quoted as saying.

A total of 163 international drug traffickers have been arrested in Iran since March 21, and 6 tons of drugs have been seized, he noted.

The seizure of drugs by the Iranian police since March 21 has increased by 25 percent compared with the same period last year, Rahimi added.

Iran has been suffering from drug trafficking given its location at the crossroads of international drug smuggling from Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer, to Europe.

Over the past few decades, Iran's eastern and southeastern borders have seen deadly clashes between Iranian security forces and armed drug smugglers. Enditem
A recent study conducted by a team of researchers analyzed the impact of a 2012-2016 California drought on the power sector. History shows that this calamity that occurred from 2012-2016 was considered as the worst drought that hit the state. For communities that depend on water for electricity and power generation, a drought means higher electricity costs and pollution-related to hydropower supplies loss. (Photo : Pixabay)

A recent study conducted by a team of researchers analyzed the impact of a 2012-2016 California drought on the power sector.

History shows that this calamity that occurred from 2012-2016 was considered as the worst drought that hit the state. For communities that depend on water for electricity and power generation, a drought means higher electricity costs and pollution-related to hydropower supplies loss.

In three primary power utilities in the state that are investor-owned, the drought resulted in significant spikes in power costs. Apart from this, other weather-related events were also responsible for spikes in electricity costs.

Drought is marked by reduced streamflow and less hydropower availability. It is also manifested by an increase in electricity demand due to elevated temperatures for cooling down. Thus, system operators have to rely heavily on natural gas sources and power plants. With these high demands, market prices and carbon dioxide emission also surge.

The study led by a researcher from North Carolina State University determined that the absence or loss of hydropower during this period was the cause of the increase in the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. Despite the availability and addition of other sources of renewable energy into the grid.

Jordan Kern, assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University, and author of the study expressed that droughts like those the happened from 2012-2015 are inevitable and may recur in the future. This is why, currently, there is a lot of attention to its impact on the state's power system.

The study aimed to provide more clarity, particularly in an economic, financial, and environmental perspective on the effect of the drought on the power sector. California relies heavily on hydropower to provide energy to the state. A new software tool developed by Kern and researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill modeled the impact of the drought in California, given that a significant portion of its energy source is supplied by hydropower.

On average, 13 percent of California's energy needs are supplied by hydropower. According to the team's report, there were lower precipitation levels, streamflow, and melted snow during the state's drought from 2012 to 2016. During the worst year, hydropower only accounted for 6 percent of California's electricity needs.

Although the drought had an impact on the electricity market price, it was relatively moderate, according to the team's report. Another extreme weather event called a "polar vortex" in the eastern part of the country led to an upsurge in natural gas prices. Investor-owned utilities have reported that the loss of hydropower generation cost them $1.9 billion. However, increased energy demand for cooling had a higher economic cost of $3.8 billion.

The team of researchers tried to determine how the drought contributed to increased electricity charges. They have identified reasonable impact, but increased prices were actually due to an upsurge in natural gas prices.

They also evaluated whether an increase in wind and solar energy could help prevent surges in CO2 emissions. However, researchers reported that despite the availability of renewable sources, their model showed the same upsurge in CO2 emissions and fossil fuel generation.
Following the crisis which has been rocking the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned a meeting to the effect.

The meeting which is currently holding at the Presidential Villa, Abuja has representatives of the All Progressives Congress, APC Governors in attendance.

The meeting is taking place in less than 24 hours after the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan met with the President over the crisis threatening to tear the ruling party apart.

Read Also: APC Knocks Fayose Over Attack On Buhari

Advertisement

At the meeting are the Chairman of Progressive Governors Forum and Governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, Chairman of Northern Governors Forum and Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, and the Governor of Jigawa State, Abubakar Badaru.
Dr Diana Pakzamir has dealt with more last-minute cancellations than usual this week.

When a client reports that they have the sniffles and aren't sure whether or not to come into her chiropractic clinic, nestled within one of Melbourne's new COVID-19 hotspots, she says she is "grateful for their honesty".

Dr Diana Pakzamir, who operates Blossom Family Chiropractic in Northcote, is experiencing challenges in her business practice due to Northcote being a 'hotspot' for COVID-19. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Deeper into the north, Nez Gonullu is also confronted with new recommendations of how to live her life in a coronavirus hotspot suburb. She is bracing herself for less quality time with her mother, who suffers from dementia and is a resident at a Broadmeadows nursing home.

Community transmission of coronavirus has surged in six of Melbourne's local council areas. Residents of Hume, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin, Casey and Cardinia have been forced to prepare themselves for a new wave of restrictions.
Austria broke ground Monday on a new memorial to the country's 65,000 Jews killed during the Nazi era.

"The Memorial to the Jewish Children, Women and Men of Austria who were Murdered in the Shoah" being erected in Vienna's central Ostarrichi Park will consist of large slabs set in the ground in a circle, engraved with the names of the 64,000 victims who have been identified.

Another 1,000 are known to have been killed by the Nazis, but their names have been lost.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born in Austria, and many in the country enthusiastically welcomed Germany's annexation of it in 1938, the year before World War II.

At that time, around 2,10,000 Jews lived in the country. Many fled, but later found themselves in Nazi hands again as the German armies swept westward to the English Channel and deep into the Soviet Union in the east.

The memorial, to be completed by next spring, is envisioned as a place of reflection, and both a tribute to those who lost their lives and a reminder of the perils of anti-Semitism.

There is only one entrance into the centre of the circle formed by the slabs, which will create a "place of reverence" for visitors, according to the plans.

"Descendants of those who were murdered should, without being disturbed, be able to search for the names of their relatives, to touch the letters with their hand, to say a prayer, to light a memorial candle," organisers said on their website.

"For all Austrians, the memorial should offer a quiet place, in which they can remember the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens and honor their lives, today and in future generations."

Austria's parliamentary speaker, Wolfgang Sobotka, said at the ceremony that nothing could remedy the crimes of the Holocaust, but that the memorial could serve as a warning for the future.

"There is no gesture of redress here, but there is a gesture of remembrance," he said, Austria's APA news agency reported.
Asteroids passing Earth. Credit: European Space Agency

The United Nations' International Asteroid Day on 30 June highlights ESA's expanding efforts to secure our future by understanding and addressing risks posed by near-Earth objects that could impact our planet.

"The work of ESA and the international planetary defence community is a great example of how to address this important hazard," says ESA Director General Jan Worner. "An asteroid impact is the only natural disaster we might avoid, if we see one coming soon enough."

"Even when the threat is low, governments and international organisations such as the UN working together show that it is possible to get ready in advance and mitigate damage from a global threat that can affect anyone, anywhere."

Current ESA activities include:

Detailed design work is proceeding on ESA's first planetary defence validation mission: the Hera spacecraft will fly to the Didymos asteroid pair in 2024, following on from NASA's DART mission due to be launched next year, which will deflect the smaller asteroid.

ESA's long-running asteroid observations have resumed, following a brief pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Near-Earth asteroids are identified and tracked from various telescopes across Europe and the world.

ESA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Coordination Centre in Italy continues to coordinate asteroid observations and assess risks from newly discovered objects, despite the serious COVID-19 effects in that country.

The first of ESA's new multi-optic 'Flyeye' telescopes is under construction near Milan, and will facilitate the automated detection of asteroids once in operation.

ESA's deep-space ground stations have contributed communication coverage for Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, which is now headed Earthward after collecting samples from an asteroid.

ESA is sponsoring a Grand Challenge on In-Situ Resource Utilisation for the Moon and asteroids, allowing future explorers to make use of materials found in space. Temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this 500 000 competition is set to resume soon.

The Agency's suitcase-sized 'Miniature Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer' (M-Argo) spacecraft is about to undergo its Preliminary Requirements Review, where experts will declare this audacious mission feasible.ESA's Comet Interceptor mission, planned to launch near the end of this decade, will wait in space for a suitable bodypotentially even an interstellar cometto investigate.

ESA and Space Safety

Under the Agency's Space Safety Programme, which received an important boost in funding at the Space19+ Ministerial Council in November 2019, ESA is taking action as part of an international effort to mitigate asteroid risks.

ESA's goal is to coordinate Europe's part of a global planetary defence effort, aimed at detecting, studying and following asteroids, predicting if and when they might hit and taking mitigation action if needed.

Space Safety & Security. Credit: European Space Agency

UN Asteroid Day

On 30 June 1908, the Tunguska impact felled many millions of trees across 2200 sq km of Siberian territory, only a few hours of Earth rotation away from Europethe results would have been disastrous over a populated area.

Asteroid Day, a UN-endorsed awareness campaign day to mark this historic date, was co-founded by astrophysicist and famed musician Dr. Brian May of the rock group Queen, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, filmmaker Grig Richters, and B612 President Danica Remy.

Asteroid Day TV supported by ESA

This year, activities to mark Asteroid Day are moving entirely online, and include a month of Asteroid Day TV distributed by the Luxembourg-based Asteroid Foundation and including programming by ESA as well as top content makers including Discovery Science, TED, IMAX, BBC, CNN, ESO and other educational producers.

Asteroid Day TV will distribute Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg starting 30 June at 12:00 CEST including five hours of ESA and Asteroid Day programme segments newly produced for 2020 in English.

ESA is also planning new programme segments in Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. These will premiere in advance of 30 June.

All segments will be broad- and webcast to the public via AsteroidDay.org, via SES Satellite and to other broadcasters via satellite and digital CDN via RTL's Broadcasting Center Europe (BCE).

Explore further Video: ESA defending Earth
Really, our local epidemiology will direct that decision, and our goal is to not see what weve seen in a lot of other states around the country that have moved very quickly into a wide reopening and then have seen some of those spikes and increases, she said. Our goal is to continue to move ahead just as quickly as it is relatively safe for us to do so, in partnership with all of our industries.
A hit-and-run driver who fled to India using a friend's passport after he killed a student in a drunken crash has gone missing days before his extradition to Australia.

Puneet Puneet fled to New Delhi while on bail before he could be sentenced for the 2008 death of Queensland student Dean Hofstee in Melbourne.

The 19-year-old learner-driver had been drunkenly speeding along City Rd in Melbourne's Southbank when he slammed his car into a streetlight pole.

Authorities have been fighting for his extradition to Australia since his 2013 arrest in India but the case has seen several delays.

Puneet Puneet fled to India while on bail before he could be sentenced for the 2008 death of Queensland student Dean Hofstee in Melbourne

Dean Hofstee was from Queensland and had been in Melbourne's Southbank when he was hit

Just as it looked as though he would be required to face justice in Australia, Puneet vanished again.

It is understood he was scheduled to front court for one of the final hearings before his extradition on Monday but he has not been seen for almost a week.

'My son is facing an extradition hearing in Delhi Court for an unfortunate accident in Australia,' his father Mr Kumar said in a police report, according to the Herald Sun.

'We searched everywhere but couldn't find Puneet, so we are seeking police help to trace him.'

Mr Kumar said his son is 'mentally depressed' and that a married woman with whom he has been having an affair should be questioned about his whereabouts.

Local police inspector Joginder Singh said the disappearance was being investigated, while his defence lawyer Kanhaiya Kumar Singhal said it was concerning.

'His father called me and informed (me of) this. It is matter of concern. I hope right sense prevails and he returns,' Mr Singhal said.

The learner driver had been speeding along City Rd in Melbourne's Southbank when he hit a streetlight pole

Puneet in Australia after his 2008 arrest for the drunken hit-and-run crash

Puneet was arrested six years ago, on his wedding day, and has been fighting his extradition in numerous court hearings .

The delays in India were partly caused by the frequent absences and delaying tactics of Puneet's lawyer, Mr Singhal.

Singhal was absent at a March 2020 court hearing and members of his team told Justice Navjeet Budhiraja the lawyer was unwell and unable to conclude his final arguments.

A member of the prosecution team interjected to cast doubt on this claim by saying he saw Singhal in Delhi High Court a short while earlier looking perfectly well.

The prosecution has accused Singhal of deliberately delaying the trial, either by feigning illness or by making far-fetched claims about the state of Puneet's physical or mental health.

Doctors who examined Puneet have told the court he is fit to be extradited.

Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said on Sunday she was making 'urgent' representations to the Commonwealth Government and other authorities to ensure the extradition proceeds.

A spokesman for Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter said the federal government also remained committed to securing the extradition.
New Delhi, June 22 : In the IL&FS scam concerning BSR & Associates LLC and Deloitte Haskins and Sells, the Centre has claimed that the interpretation provided by Bombay High to Section 140(5) of the Companies Act would cause serious prejudice and profoundly impact the functioning and the confidence around the reporting of financials of companies. Both firms were former auditors of IL&FS Financial Services Ltd (IFIN).

"As per the interpretation provided by the High Court to Section 140(5) of the Companies Act, an auditor can escape legal liability and criminal sanctions arising out of aiding, abetting and designing a serious financial scam by merely tendering resignation as the statutory auditor from a company", said the Centre's petition.

Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP (Deloitte) was the erstwhile statutory auditor of IL&FS Financial Services Limited (IFIN). Deloitte served as the statutory auditor of IFIN for the financial years 2007-18. Deloitte had rotated out as the auditor of IFIN in 2018 by operation of law. BSR & Associates LLP (BSR Associates) was appointed as the joint statutory auditors for IFIN for the financial years 2017-18 (jointly with Deloitte). BSR Associates continued as auditors of IFIN until June 10, 2019 and resigned.

"Interpretation and the resultant extinguishing of proceedings...... if not stayed at this interim stage, would cause serious prejudice and would profoundly impact the functioning and the confidence around the reporting of financials of companies", said the Centre's petition.

In April, the High Court quashed all prosecution, pending before the National Company Law Tribunal and a special court in the city, against the two firms over the allegations of financial irregularities.

BSR, which is part of KPMG India, and Deloitte, moved the High Court last year challenging the plea by the Centre before the tribunal seeking their removal as auditors of IL&FS. And, under section 140 (5) of the Companies Act, this kind of removal would also lead to a five year ban on the audit firms.

The High Court, however upheld the constitutional validity of Section 140(5) stating that provisions only apply to existing auditors. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs moved the apex court challenging this order. On June 16, the Supreme Court issued notice on the matter.

Criticising the High Court order, the Centre said it will result in a complete extinguishment of a criminal trial and further proceedings against the firms, "who have been found to have been involved in a serious financial scam having repercussions on the national economy by an expert investigative agency upon conducting a detailed investigation." The Centre claims as per the interpretation of Section 140(5) of the Act set forth by the High Court order, an auditor who has been proceeded against under Section 140 (5) of the Act can by the mere stratagem of resigning as the auditor, stultify proceedings under Section 140(5) of the Act initiated against them.

"Moreover, such an auditor could then negate the second proviso by continuing as the auditor of other companies", said the petition.

The Centre had argued that the High Court order does not take into consideration that Section 140(5) of the Act opens with the words "without prejudice to any action under the provisions of this Act" which would mean that Section 140(5) of the Act are not to be affected by other provisions under the Act including Section 132 (4B) of the Act.

The Supreme Court has continued the partial stay granted on the operation of the judgment of the Bombay High Court in the matter in connection with investigation in IFIN. The top court further ordered that the order of the High Court cannot be used for the purpose of bail by the accused in the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) complaint.
Japan has begun the legal process of complete integration of an island chain over which it has a dispute with China. The development came just a week after the violent clash between Indian and Chinese troops over the Line of Actual Control. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in that clash in Ladakhs Galwan Valley.

The Ishigaki city council in Japans Okinawa prefecture passed a bill to change the name of an administrative area covering the disputed uninhabited island chain to Tonoshiro Senkaku from Tonoshiro, starting October 1, according to media reports. The island group lies 1,931 km southwest of Tokyo.

The Senkakus island chain, which China calls Diaoyus, has been administered by Japan since 1972, but its legal status has remained disputed until now.

Calling the islands its inherent territories, China on Monday warned Tokyo against any change in the status quo.

Beijing urged Japan to abide by the spirit of the four-principle consensus, avoid creating new incidents on the Diaoyu Islands issue, and take practical actions to maintain the stability of the East China Sea situation.

However, the Japanese city council said that the bill was necessary to improve the efficiency of administrative procedures.

Since April, Chinese ships had been spotted by the Japanese coast guard, in the waters close to the Senakakus. The number of Chinese ships have only increased in the last few weeks with four of them sailing in the area even on the day when the bill was passed by the city council, reports news agency IANS.

Japans cabinet secretary last week reiterated that the Senkakus are under Tokyos control and unquestionably their territory historically and under international law. It is extremely serious that these activities continue. We will respond to the Chinese side firmly and calmly, he had warned, the IANS report added.

The Senkakus island chain dispute with Japan is not the only territorial and maritime dispute that China has long had with many of its neighbours. It has island and maritime border disputes with Taiwan, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea and its extension. The disputes include islands, reefs, banks and other features in the South China Sea including Spratly Islands (with Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan), Paracel Islands (Vietnam), Scarborough Shoal (Philippines), and Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam).

Last week, Chinas air force approached Taiwan on Friday for the fourth time in four days, Taiwans military said, as China steps up manoeuvres near the island that Beijing claims as its own territory. The Chinese air force was given a verbal warning to leave, and Taiwanese jets responded, Taiwans air force said, without giving further details.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:26:32|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HONG KONG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The draft law on safeguarding national security in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) reviewed by the national legislature respects the current legal system in Hong Kong and does not affect its judicial independence, renowned British barrister Grenville Cross has said here.

"We have not yet seen the full details of the draft law, but it is reassuring to know that common law principles will be applied to the handling of cases, including the presumption of innocence, protection of human rights, and the guarantee of a fair trial," Cross told Xinhua in an interview.

Cross had worked as the Director of Public Prosecutions in Hong Kong for 12 years since 1997 and has an in-depth understanding of Hong Kong's judicial practice.

The draft law was submitted for deliberation at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) last week. The legislation is aimed at plugging the national security loophole in Hong Kong and restoring peace and order after a string of violent incidents and riots last year.

As a seasoned legal practitioner, Cross recognized the urgency and necessity of the legislation.

Since the outbreak of the social unrest last June, radicals advocating "Hong Kong independence" have colluded with external forces and applied "burn with us" and terror-style tactics, Cross said, noting that their goal is to destroy Hong Kong and contain China's development, which seriously endangered China's national security and left "one country, two systems" in peril.

However, 23 years now since its return to China, Hong Kong has not yet enacted laws on its own to safeguard national security, a constitutional responsibility stipulated in Article 23 of the Basic Law of the HKSAR.

"With the prospect of such violence resuming at any time, the need for a national security law has become urgent," Cross said.

The draft makes stipulations on what constitutes four categories of crimes that threaten national security and their corresponding penalties, including secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.

In terms of the crime of collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security, Cross suggested the offenses should also include "asking external forces to harm the interests of Hong Kong officials or agencies, or to otherwise hurt the interests of Hong Kong."

The new law will provide Hong Kong with an antidote and enable "one country, two systems" to remain stable, Cross said.

Cross stressed that Hong Kong should still enact laws on its own to safeguard national security through Article 23 of the Basic Law.

As a minimalist approach has been adopted by the NPC to combat the immediate dangers to the HKSAR, Hong Kong still has the responsibility to make laws in terms of other crimes endangering national security, Cross said. Enditem
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Monday launched paperless customs export processing, a move aimed at trade facilitation. "Chairman CBIC Sh. M Ajit Kumar and Members of the Board launched Paperless Customs Export processing under Turant Customs today through video conferencing. It is an initiative to promote Ease of Doing Business and enhanced use of technology," CBIC said in a tweet.

Under this initiative, a secure QR core enabled PDF LEO (Let Export Order) copy and Export Gatepass copy will be sent electronically to the exporters immediately.

As part of efforts to take India amongst top 50 countries in World Bank's Ease of Doing Business ranking, the CBIC had last year announced reform measure -- Turant Customs -- for speedy clearance of goods at air and sea ports.

The comprehensive package is being implemented in a phased manner.

Towards that, the Customs department plans to roll out pan-India faceless assessment by December 31 in a phased manner, and has started the same at Chennai and Bengaluru ports from June 8.

Faceless assessment (commonly known as anonymised or virtual assessment) enables an assessing officer, who is physically located in a particular jurisdiction, to assess a Bill of Entry pertaining to imports made at a different customs station, whenever such a Bill of Entry has been assigned to him in the customs automated system.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Electric scooter Chetak of which bookings were halted by Bajaj Auto after an unprecedented surge, is set to see production resuming at its Pune factory soon. Bookings for the model could also reopen in the next few weeks.

Bajaj Auto had to turn down booking requests for the Chetak as the company felt that deliveries would take longer than expected, leading to dissatisfaction in the brand. The Pune-based maker of Pulsar and Avenger launched the Chetak only in Pune and Bengaluru after its January debut.

Talking to Moneycontrol, Rakesh Sharma, Executive Director - Bajaj Auto, said, Bookings are closed because we got so many of them and our supply chain got interrupted because one component was actually coming from Wuhan, China. So that was a big setback for us.

Battery cells of all electric vehicles produced in India have to be imported from China. Bajaj does not directly purchase battery packs or cells from the Chinese exporter, but it is one of Bajajs vendor partners who imports it for the Chetak, which is also the companys only electric two-wheeler.

Now we are resuming production. In fact those components have now arrived at the Mumbai port as we speak and it will reach the factory in a few days and we will resume production shortly. Supplies from China have resumed, Sharma added.

A decision on reopening bookings for the Chetak will be taken by mid of July also by when the company hopes to have an unhindered supply of all components of the two-wheeler.

Booking amount is only Rs 1,000 and we would refund it if there is a cancellation but we dont want the customer to wait endlessly and get frustrated. We want to ensure that there is a continuous supply of components, added Sharma.

The research and development work and production of other Bajaj products resumed after partial easing of lockdown restrictions however production of Chetak remained suspended. Bajaj has two plants in Maharashtra and one in Uttarakhand.

Even the sea ports are congested and it is costing time there too. By mid-July we should be able to get a good flow of components and then we will take a call on bookings by then. We had a waiting period of five years for the older Chetak but we dont want that of this Chetak, added Sharma.

Priced at Rs 100,000 (ex-showroom) the Bajaj Chetak is one of the most expensive electric two-wheelers available in India and much higher than the most affordable Pulsar, the most popular bike brand by Bajaj priced at Rs 70,000.

Deliveries of the Chetak with six colours and two variants commenced from February-end. Around 13 dealerships in Bengaluru and four dealerships in Pune were earmarked for retailing the two-wheeler.
Veterans such as Philadelphia native Thomas E. "Tom" Dudley returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Dudley will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Member of the Seabees

Dudley was born in Highland Park on Dec. 21, 1923, to Joseph and Marie Dudley. He graduated from Philadelphia's St. Thomas More High School in 1942. He then went to work as a full-time rigger's helper at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.

In July 1943, Dudley enlisted in the Navy and served in the Seabees until March 1946. In early 1944, Dudley's troop ship headed to Tinian, in the Northern Mariana Islands, to engage Japanese forces. Four months later, his crew headed to Okinawa, where they took part in intense fighting and endured Japanese kamikaze attacks.

When the fighting in Okinawa was over and Japan surrendered in 1945, Dudley and his shipmates headed home victorious. Dudley was awarded the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two bronze stars, and the WWII Victory Medal.

"The memories that linger on are those of going through the Panama Canal, air raids, watching a naval bombardment and seeing half of a ship still afloat after being hit by a kamikaze," Dudley recounted in a 1995 interview. "Memories I would like to forget. I lost some good friends."

Insurance Pioneer

Following the war, Dudley returned to Philadelphia, got married and worked for the Fuller Brush Company selling their products door to door in Haddon Heights, N.J. He later moved to Brigantine, N.J., and continued the door-to-door work. His next career move was as an insurance adjuster for Keystone Insurance Company out of Philadelphia, with his work and family being based out of Somers Point, N.J.

In 1971, Dudley joined Ponderosa Insurance Co., a subsidiary of U-Haul parent company AMERCO. He served for more than 17 years with Ponderosa and Republic Western Insurance Co. (also under the AMERCO umbrella) in many capacities, including claims examiner, claims manager, VP of loss administration and VP of claims administration.

Dudley passed away in 2007. He is survived by sons Thomas (Katherine), Gregory (Janis), Robert (Brenda), Stephen (Rosie), his daughter Christine (Steve Wilgus), 17 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Dudley is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Tom.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


Oil prices nudged higher on Monday on tighter supplies from major producers, but concerns that a record rise in global coronavirus cases could curb a recovery in fuel demand checked gains.

Brent crude rose 9 cents, or 0.2%, to $42.28 a barrel by 0009 GMT, while U.S. crude was at $39.76 a barrel, up 1 cent.

Both contracts rose about 9% last week and Brent crude futures flipped into backwardation, where oil for immediate delivery costs more than supply later, usually an indication of tightening supply.

In the United States and Canada, the number of operating oil and natural gas rigs fell to a record low even as higher oil prices prompt some producers to start drilling again.

Iraq and Kazakhstan pledged to comply better with oil production cuts during an OPEC+ panel on Thursday.

However, the OPEC+ group, consisting of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, has yet to decide whether to extend a record supply cut of 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for a fourth month in August.

Oil prices have also been supported by a recovery in fuel demand globally following a collapse in April-May during coronavirus shutdowns as countries across the world resume economic activities.

Still, the World Health Organization reported a record jump in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the biggest increase seen in north and south America.

Spikes in coronavirus infections in parts of the world such as Beijing and Australia's second-most populous state Victoria have prompted authorities to reimpose movement restrictions to curb the spread.

"The potential economic damage of a new round of COVID-19 countermeasures will likely contain any investor enthusiasm," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets.
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Market Reports on Saudi Arabia Provides the Trending Market Research Report on Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2023: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analyticsunder Food Category. The report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, competitive intelligence and Market reports.

Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2023: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Ready Meals market in Saudi Arabia.

Ready Meals - all types of complete meals which only require heating before being served, regardless of whether they are frozen, chilled, "shelf-stable (i.e. in cans or shelf-stable packs) or are dried. Includes noodle-based, rice-based and pasta-based dishes as well meat-based, vegetable-based or meat-substitute based dishes. Further, this includes main meat, fish and vegetable meal centres which require minimal accompaniments - e.g. tinned chilli con carne, cassoulet in jars etc. Includes "Pot Noodle" type products.

Request a free sample copy Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) Market Report @

http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com/marketreports/sample/reports/2053400

Ready Meals market in Saudi Arabia registered a positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.94% during the period 2013 to 2018 with a sales value of SAR 25.24 Million in 2018, an increase of 3.52% over 2017. The market achieved its strongest performance in 2016, when it grew by 4.23% over its previous year and its weakest performance in 2018, when it increased by 3.52% over 2017.

The research handbook provides up-to-date market size data for period 2013-2018 and illustrative forecast to 2023 covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Ready Meals and its variants Ambient Ready Meals, Dried Ready Meals, Chilled Ready Meals & Frozen Ready Meals.

Furthermore, the research handbook details out Sales Value and Volume for top brands for the year 2015 to 2018 and overall market sales by Distribution Channel (Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Convenience Stores, Department Stores, Dollar Stores, Variety Store, Cash & Carries and Warehouse clubs, eRetailers, Food & Drinks specialists, Drug stores & Pharmacies, Health & Beauty Stores, Other general retailers and others) where ever applicable.

The research handbook acts as an essential tool for companies active or planning to venture in to Saudi Arabia's Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) market. The comprehensive statistics within the research handbook provides insight into the operating environment of the market and also ensures right business decision making based on historical trends and industry model based forecasting.

Sales Values in the handbook are depicted in USD ($) and local currency of country and Volumes are represented in M Kilograms.

*Note: Certain content / sections in the research handbook may be removed or altered based on the availability and relevance of data.

Scope

- Overall Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) market value and volume analytics with growth analysis from 2013 to 2023.

- Value and Volume terms for the top brands.

- Distribution channel sales analytics from 2015-2018.

Reasons to Buy

- Get access to authoritative and granular data on the Ready Meals (Prepared Meals) market and fill in the gaps in understanding of trends and the components of change behind them.

- Enhance your understanding of the market to update your strategic and tactical plans based on volume and value changes, brand dynamics and distribution trends.

- Analyze the components of change in the market by looking at historic and future growth patterns.

- Use the data to understand future patterns of the market trends from winners and losers to category dynamics and thereby quickly and easily identify the key areas in which you want to compete in the future.

Browse our full report with Table of Content : http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com/marketreports/ready-meals-prepared-meals-market-in-saudi-arabia-outlook-to-2023-market-size-growth-and-forecast-analytics/2053400

About Us

Market Reports on Saudi Arabia provides you with an in-depth industry reports focusing on various economic, political and operational risk environment, complemented by detailed sector analysis. We have an exhaustive coverage on variety of industries -ranging from energy and chemicals to transportation, communications, constructions and mining to Food and Beverage and education. Our collection includes over 2000 up-to-date reports all researched, analyses and published by top-notch international research firms.

Contact us at:

Market Reports On Saudi Arabia

Tel: +91 22 27810772 / 27810773

Email: info@marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com

Website: http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com

Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
A key body of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday backed the Kashmiri peoples demand for self-determination and rejected the Indian governments decision to scrap the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

A virtual meeting of the OICs contact group on Kashmir, held on Pakistans call, adopted a communique that also expressed concern over ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC) and called on India to rescind its unilateral and illegal actions, and allow the Kashmiri people to freely exercise their right to self-determination through a UN-supervised plebiscite.

A statement issued by Pakistans Foreign Office said the communique was unanimously adopted by the contact group.

A separate statement issued by the OIC said the contact group reaffirmed continued support for the Kashmiri people and called on the UN secretary-general to make India abide by the UN Security Council resolutions and engage in dialogue to calm the situation in the region.

The contact group called on India to halt security operations in Kashmir, respect basic human rights, refrain from changing the demographic structure of the region and settle the issue under UN Security Council resolutions, according to the OIC statement.

The statement added the contact group had welcomed efforts by some OIC members to calm the situation between India and Pakistan.

There was no immediate response to the developments from Indian officials. India has traditionally described such actions by the OIC as interference in the countrys internal matters.

Pakistan has been pushing for such a meeting on the Kashmir issue since the Indian government scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir last August and split the erstwhile state into two union territories. However, Indias close friends within the OIC, including several Arab states, had stymied these efforts.

The communique, according to the statement from Pakistans foreign ministry, reaffirmed support for the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for realization of their inalienable right to self-determination and freedom from Indian occupation and rejected the newly-notified Jammu & Kashmir Reorganization Order 2020 and Jammu & Kashmir Grant of Domicile Certificate Rules 2020, claiming they were aimed at changing the demographic structure of Kashmir.

The contact group demanded India should halt human rights violations; stop indiscriminate use of force; lift the unabated military siege and inhuman lockdown; repeal its draconian emergency lawsand release all illegal detainees.

OIC secretary general Yousaf Al-Othaimeen chaired the virtual meeting that was joined by the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and a senior representative of Niger. Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi led the Pakistani delegation, which included the president of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and representatives of Hurriyat from PoK.

Qureshi conveyed Pakistans concern at the new domicile rules in Kashmir, alleging they were meant to change the demographic structure. He alleged India had intensified ceasefire violations along the LoC.

...

[Message clipped] View entire message

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
WEST CHESTER  The convoluted case of a Centre County man accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill an associate he incorrectly believed had been ratting him out took another twist Monday when the man asked the Chester County Common Pleas Court judge overseeing his case to fire his free attorney and have another public defender assigned to his case.

Defendant Christopher Pickard appeared before Judge David Bortner to address whether Assistant Public Defender James McMullen would continue to represent him at his upcoming pre-trial hearings, and at any trial in the future. Pickard said he could not continue to work with McMullen before the attorney declined to file a suppression motion Pickard thought essential to his defense.

I should be able to submit an application to you, to suppress the results of tape recordings in which Pickard is heard discussing an alleged plan to have someone kill the associate, in exchange for money and drugs, Pickard, 32, of State College, told Bortner in a brief courtroom proceeding. I do think I have suppression issues. He has taken that ability away from me.

But McMullen stated that he was still willing and able to continue working on the case with Pickard and that he had already filed several motions on his behalf concerning evidentiary issues he felt were justified  just not the specific suppression motion Pickard wants.

I can tell you that we have discussed various pre-trial issues, that have merit, McMullen told Bortner, standing beside Pickard. I do not feel I cant represent him. He can represent himself if he likes. But I am going to file the motions I feel have merit.

The Chester County Public Defenders Office represents indigent people in criminal cases who apply and are found financially eligible. But once assigned to a particular attorney on the office staff, it does not allow its clients to pick and choose which attorney represents them.

In most proceedings, those who request a new attorney instead of the public defender assigned to their case are told by judges that they have the choice of hiring an attorney with their own money, or representing themselves in court. Requests to get a new public defender or court-appointed attorney are almost universally denied.

In the end Monday, Bortner rejected Pickards request for a new public defender and urged him to continue working with McMullen, who has been his attorney since he was arrested more than two years ago on heroin distribution charges. He noted that Pickard did have the option of acting as his own attorney, but that it was exceedingly rare for a judge to assign a new court-appointed attorney to a case because of disagreements over court and legal tactics.

Just because you have a constitutional right to represent yourself, however, doesnt mean its a great idea, Bortner advised.

Pickards case began in August 2017 with a box of Vanilla Wafers.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the initial drug delivery case against Pickard, around 3 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2017, a Pennsylvania state trooper pulled over a Chevrolet Impala that he felt was traveling too close to the car ahead of it. The driver gave his name as James Pickard, but balked when asked if he would consent to a search of the car.

The trooper then called for assistance, in the form of a state police K-9 officer trained in drug detection. When the K-9 unit arrived, the dog alerted his handler to the presence of controlled substances in the car.

When the trooper opened the cars trunk, he found inside it a black backpack. Opening it, he recovered a vanilla wafers box, he wrote in the complaint. Inside the box he found 427 white glassine bags of suspected heroin, all stamped Im Apache, plus an additional 206 bags that also contained suspected heroin, but which were unstamped.

In a gray backpack on the cars rear seat were another 170 blue glassine bags of suspected heroin stamped, Power, and two hypodermic needles. Under the right front seat was a wallet with a Pennsylvania ID card showing the name Christopher J. Pickard.

He was charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance and sent to Chester County Prison in lieu of bail.

While incarcerated, Pickard is alleged to have reached out to others to have a murder contract put out on a man he suspected had given state police information about the heroin in his car. The man had been a passenger in the car when Pickard was stopped. There was never any evidence that the man Pickard targeted had cooperated in any way with police. He was never harmed, and is presumably home in Centre County.

Within a week of Pickards arrest, on Aug. 11, 2017, Chester County Detectives learned that he was soliciting a hitman from the prison. Pickard was given a phone number for a hitman, a number that was actually that of an undercover police officer.

Later, Pickard communicated with a girlfriend, Latrice Marie Harrington, using the prisons phone service, which records all incoming and outgoing calls. According to a criminal complaint, over the next several days Pickard and Harrington discussed the planned hit, while Harrington then passed along instructions from Pickard to the hitman, and relayed information from the undercover officer to Pickard. Those calls were also recorded.

On Aug. 21, 2017, in the parking lot of a Walmart in State College, Harrington gave the undercover officer two guns  a Mossberg shotgun that had been sawed off to a shortened length, and a loaded .40 caliber pistol  along with $300. The following day, he reported to Harrington that he had very good news, and that Pickard does not have to worry.

Both Pickard and Harrington were arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder and other charges. Harrington pleaded guilty to lesser charges in July and is awaiting sentencing.

Pickard remains in prison on $1 million bail awaiting trial on the murder for hire charges. Ironically, the heroin charges against him were withdrawn by the Chester County District Attorneys Office after Bortner ruled that the original stop of his car by the state police on the turnpike was improper.

Had he not tried to engage in the murder scheme, he would likely have been released from prison. The attorney from the Public Defenders Office who filed the suppression motion was McMullen.

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
LOS ANGELES, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. (OTCQB: CIIX) ("CIIX" or "the Company"), an established financial news and investment portal, and a leading industrial hemp retailer for the Chinese-speaking community, today announced that it has commenced a voluntary restructuring under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. The Chapter 11 filing provides immediate protection to the Company, which allows the Company to reorganize its debts during this time of financial strain. The Company will continue to operate in the ordinary course of business as it pursues approval of the restructuring plan.

The Company Continues to Operate as Usual Serving its Clients

"This restructuring is a necessary and positive step forward for the business;" says CEO Warren Wang. Wang continued, "ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. remains a strong operating company and we are making every effort to ensure that the Company is able to operate as usual throughout this process. We are privileged to serve the global Chinese community and are committed to continuing to provide up-to-date investment news, information and education to our loyal subscribers and top-notch service to our investor relations clients seeking exposure in the Chinese speaking investment community. We are extremely grateful to all of our stakeholders, subscribers, vendors, investors, and employees who have contributed to our legacy, 20 years in the making. We look forward to the continued success long into the future."

Strong Earnings and Revenue Momentum Despite Global Challenges

In the past year the global economy has been affected by geopolitical tensions between the US and China, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. With offices in both the US and China, the Company felt the effects of both of these challenges. Although the global economy is slowly opening up in recent weeks, during most of 2020, the world's population was quarantined to their home necessarily. Most Americans will continue to work from home through the end of 2020, or even indefinitely. As a result of the majority of the world being homebound, for many months there has been a significant increase in online investing. With this in mind, the Company's management pivoted and seized the opportunity for more focused engagement with its audience. This change in the investment environment, coupled with Mr. Wang's unique ability to engage the Chinese speaking investment community, has led to record subscription revenues in recent months.

Taking Action to Reorganize its Capital Structure

As part of its restructuring plan, the Company has identified more efficient ways to monetize its revenue streams by turning to YouTube and other social media outlets, allowing it to reach a large Chinese audience and generate significant revenues with little to no advertising costs.

Moreover, in an effort to stabilize operating cash flow, prior to implementing this digital programming, in 2019, the Company had begun scaling down its labor force significantly for both its cryptocurrency and industrial hemp lines, which in turn led to downsizing the Company's physical office presence, and to refocus its business and marketing plans.

Reducing the Company's Current Debt through the Chapter 11 Process will Position the Company for Future Success

Although the Company has made a significant upturn in subscription revenues in the past few months by strategically refocusing its marketing and pursuing cost-cutting measures, after extensive evaluation and consultation with its financial and legal advisors, the Company has determined that reorganizing the Company's debt structure is essential to its future success. Restructuring through Chapter 11 will enable the Company to reduce its debt and interest expense, while providing increased financial flexibility to support ongoing operations. Although the Company is not at present in a position to repay its outstanding debt, by converting its existing debt to equity, shareholders will be in a position to participate in the continued growth of the public Company as we reorganize, recover and prosper. Going forward, the Company is committed to seeking out more innovative and cost-efficient opportunities to reach its intended audience, grow its customer base and maximize profits.

First Day Motions

As part of the reorganization process, the Company will file customary "First Day" motions, which should allow it to maintain operations in the ordinary course. Again, the Company intends to continue to provide the same quality news, information, education and investor relations services without interruption; to pay vendors and suppliers under customary terms for services received on or after the filing date, and to pay its employees in the usual manner and to continue their primary benefits without disruption.

About ChineseInvestors.com

Founded in 1999, ChineseInvestors.com endeavors to be an innovative company providing: (a) real-time market commentary, analysis, and educational related services in Chinese language character sets (traditional and simplified); (b) advertising and public relation related support services; and (c) retail, online and direct sales of hemp-based products and other health related products.

For more information, visit www.ChineseInvestors.com.

Subscribe and watch our video commentaries: https://www.youtube.com/user/Chinesefncom Follow us on Twitter for real-time Company updates: https://twitter.com/ChineseFNEnglsh Like us on Facebook to receive live feeds: https://www.facebook.com/Chinesefncom; https://www.facebook.com/Chineseinvestors.com.english

Add us on WeChat: Chinesefn or download iPhone iOS App: Chinesefn

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "projects," "predicts," "estimates," "aims," "believes," "hopes," "potential" or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements..

More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10- K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2019 and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q through the third quarter ended February 29, 2020. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact:

ChineseInvestors.com

227 W. Valley Blvd., #208 A San Gabriel, CA 91776

Investor Relations:

Alan Klitenic

+1-214-636-2548

[email protected]

Corporate Communications:

NetworkWire (NNW)

New York, New York

www.NetworkNewsWire.com

+1-212-418-1217 Office

[email protected]

SOURCE ChineseInvestors.com

Related Links

http://www.ChineseInvestors.com


Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ceyda Caglayan, Jonathan Spicer and Kaan Soyturk (Reuters) Istaanbul/Antalya, Turkey  Mon, June 22, 2020 17:33 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660b7ff0 2 News Turkey,tourist-attraction,travel,tourism,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic Free

Turkey's Mediterranean coasts and historic attractions face a critical week as the government presses to open borders and salvage at least part of a tourist season already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

With beaches largely empty and many hotels deciding whether to open, Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy told Reuters he hoped the world's sixth-largest destination could attract up to half of last year's 45 million arrivals.

But much depends on talks to begin flights from Russia, Germany and Britain - also hard hit by the virus - which should reach some conclusions by early next week, he said.

The stakes are high for Turkey, where a rebound this month in COVID-19 cases has raised concerns in a country where tourism accounts for up to 12% of the economy. Foreign arrivals fell by two thirds in the first five months of the year.

To convince foreigners and their governments that travel is safe, Ankara launched a "healthy tourism" program including health and hygiene checks, and more than 600 hotels have applied for certification. It is lobbying some 70 countries with a focus on the European Union.

Yet flights are only beginning to trickle in, including from the United States. In the Mediterranean hub of Antalya at the weekend the historic town center was virtually empty and very few foreign tourists were seen at hotels.

Such hotels "cannot survive with only Turkish tourists," Ersoy said in a Friday interview. "The next 10 days will be critical as decisions are made on borders ... so far it's not clear how international traffic will start."

Asked whether tourism would be halted if foreigners sparked new outbreaks, he said "we have to watch the numbers" and decisions would be taken with a separate scientific committee.

Turkey hopes top tourist source Russia - which has the world's third-highest coronavirus cases - will start flights in mid-July. Second-place Germany has a coronavirus travel warning until the end of August but could lift it sooner.

Since a lockdown was lifted this month, new official cases doubled before settling around 1,200 per day. President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey lost some ground.

Read also: Turkish Airlines to resume flights to China, US in June

'Longest recession'

Some $35 billion in tourism revenues helped briefly turn Turkey's current account positive last year. In April, the deficit was $5 billion as revenues disappeared and empty hotel rooms this summer would drive it higher.

A growing external imbalance will put more pressure on Turkey's lira, which hit a record low last month, and could raise more concerns over Turkey's diminished foreign currency reserves.

"Tourism is probably the sector which will go through the longest recession" and its seasonal workers face "a very bad period," said Seyfettin Gursel, economist at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University.

Ankara decided to halt state funding that partially covered lost wages of formal employees, including some in tourism. Workers and a union said some hotels have begun training on hygiene and social distancing even while many have held off hiring.

Okan Osman, from Frankfurt, was one of very few tourists to arrive in Antalya, which he said was "much better and cleaner" than years past. "Of course it's difficult for everyone and for the staff, but they seem to have been well trained and everyone is really well prepared."
Click here to read the full article.

Its fingers-crossed for New York City retailers entering phase two of restarting the local economy.

From Macys to Giorgio Armani and Vince, thousands of nonessential stores in the city reopen for shopping on Monday, hoping that their eagerness to get back in business is met by consumers eager to shop.

It wont be Black Friday all over again, though some NYC retailers are expecting good turnouts based on a few factors. An estimated 300,000 office, retail and restaurant workers are returning to work Monday, the onset of New Yorks phase two. Stores around the country, temporarily closed in mid-March due to the coronavirus, have been reopening in recent weeks and seeing better-than-expected traffic trends. And store executives sense some pent-up demand for their products, emphasizing that shopping provides an escape from sheltering in from the pandemic.

On the other hand, its early summer when retailing always slows, and this year, more than the usual number of city dwellers have flocked to the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, upstate New York and Connecticut, seeking more spacious, natural settings where the spread of COVID-19 is less pronounced and populations are less dense.

Also, consumers may be put off from shopping amid rising concerns in the medical profession of a possible coronavirus resurgence in New York following reports from California, Texas, Florida, Arizona and other states of such a rise after they reopened their economies, with people congregating in large crowds without wearing masks or social distancing. Apple last week said its again closing some stores in several states due to spikes in infections.

Phase two in New York City also allows for restaurants to put tables on sidewalks and in curb lanes, provided they receive permission from the city. Barber shops and beauty salons can open with a limited capacity.

Story continues

New York City, which was hit harder by the coronavirus than any other city in the country, started to reopen its economy on June 8 with phase one permitting stores to offer curbside pickups of online orders, and allowing construction, agriculture, manufacturing and wholesaling to start up again.

Its the summer. Many clients are still away. It will be a gradual ramp-up. If phase two was happening in September or November, we would see a much faster ramp-up in business, observed Matthew Bauer, president of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District.

Its terrific stores are reopening and knowing that the most important priority is the safety of customers and the store associates, said Michael Gould, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Bloomingdales. But I cant imagine anyone having high exceptions for business. There is no tourism in the city and so many people have left Manhattan for the summer, much more than normal.

Gould singled out luxury brands for doing a terrific job clienteling customers through the years. They will do some business. But if you dont have a well-developed clientele, it will be very difficult. There has to be a lot of reaching out by stores to make customers feel very comfortable. Its a learning process. As far as the big stores go, I think its going to take awhile.

Gould and others suggested that neighborhood mom-and-pop stores in boroughs where there has been less of a pandemic-triggered flight to the suburbs and other states, could see some OK business in the days ahead.

Weve seen some really good results around the country, in particular Florida and Arizona where people are not social distancing as much, said one ceo who operates fashion stores around the country. Im encouraged that were opening some of our stores in New York City, but Im not sure New Yorkers are going to turn out the way people have in Florida and Arizona.

Also, many stores have decided to open later in the morning and close earlier, which will impact business levels.

Jerome Barth, president of the Fifth Avenue Association, had a somewhat different perspective. Fifth Avenue is a beautiful, wide and open street, and it offers customers the opportunity to quickly determine whether to enter a store or keep strolling. It is different from a mall where you have to commit to remaining inside a cavernous building for a long time, said Barth. From personal experience and information about customer behavior in markets that reopened earlier than New York, we believe that people are eager to come back to Fifth Avenue, shop, and enjoy its wonderful surroundings. Our brands have communicated very clearly to their audience that shopping will be both safe and fun and we believe customers will respond.

We know from our conversations with the stores on Fifth Avenue that everyone is eager to reopen. That said, restarting large stores is a significant endeavor, all the more so given the requirements put in place by the state to ensure the safety of staff and shoppers. It requires a reinvention of many of their operations, and it is an expensive proposition, but our merchants are very much looking forward to welcoming their customers back, and the last two weeks have given them the opportunity to get ready to do so under the parameters of phase one.

We estimate that by the end of this week, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all the businesses on Fifth will be back and running and will open their doors wide to customers.

Macys Inc. said Saturday that it plans to reopen its Herald Square flagship on Monday, but the timing could change. Weve put in place enhanced cleaning and social-distancing protocols to reduce physical contact between customers and colleagues, including Plexiglass barriers, adding sanitation stations throughout our stores and enhanced cleaning in heavily trafficked areas and on hard surfaces. We are also conducting wellness checks and providing masks to our colleagues, a Macys spokesperson said.

Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom will open their New York City flagships on Wednesday. Nordstroms mens store, and the Nordstrom Rack stores and Nordstrom Local locations are also opening Wednesday.

Bergdorf Goodman will offer by-appointment-only shopping starting Wednesday, but on June 15 began offering same-day delivery service in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Its been well received, said a spokeswoman.

Bloomingdales is reopening its cluster of Manhattan stores  the 59th Street flagship, SoHo and the West Side outlet  on Monday. Weve introduced new safety precautions, enhanced sanitation measures, and services, to keep our community and store colleagues safe, and to allow customers to shop with us in a comfortable and convenient environment, said Tony Spring, Bloomingdales ceo. Bloomingdales has also opened a new wellness shop on the main floor offering masks, soaps and sanitizing products.

From 57th to 86th Streets along Madison Avenue, the stretch that comprises the Madison Avenue BID, about 150 to 200 stores should reopen Monday, including designer stores, galleries, restaurants and hair salons, according to Bauer. The Ralph Lauren stores, Hermes, Bottega Veneta, Brunello Cucinelli, as well as the Amaranth restaurant  which will serve outdoors  are among the openings happening Monday. Eyewear stores along the avenue will be open by appointment only.

We will see a lot of clienteling happening, reconnecting with clients, and more virtual styling, said Bauer. There are folks who will slowly feel more comfortable coming into stores, but safety is still going to be the primary product every store will have to deliver. If there isnt a sense of safety, nothing else is going to matter. That is the essential service when we still have a pandemic in our country and city.

At Madison Avenue shops, Clients will feel like they are in a little bit of a cocoon when they are in the stores, Bauer said.

Aside from taking all of the required precautions, including social distancing, masks, sanitizing and limiting occupancy, some stores are setting aside specified hours for appointment shopping, Bauer said.

Its all about providing an immersive brand experience and at the same making sure its safe and properly socially distanced. The BIDs Gleam Team of about a dozen workers has been regularly disinfecting the parking meters, newspaper boxes, mailboxes, and other surfaces along the avenue, Bauer added.

Vince, the contemporary brand, is expected to have a few New York City stores opening by next weekend. Our approach will be a phased gradual reopening in New York City aligned with how we have approached each of the markets across the country, said Daniel Blanpied, vice president of stores. Hygiene and sanitization are our first priorities and we have diligently adopted new protocols that meet and exceed local/state guidelines.

Early success has been driven by client outreach and appointment/virtual selling, and based on our learnings from other regions so far, we have every reason to believe our New York City clients will respond well, Blanpied added. Weve worked hard at ensuring we have store environments that our clients feel welcomed back and comfortable shopping in with us. As with many retailers, we have adjusted fixture placement to allow for proper social distancing, installed several hand-sanitizer locations throughout the stores, and increased cleaning protocols with high touch points.Establishing critical new safety standards that not only allow our customers to feel safe, but also our employees, has been demanding  however, very necessary. [Personal protective equipment] supplies and increased protocols are costly, the largest challenge was securing the supplies. Vendors sold out quickly and therefore had long lead times to get the supplies. We luckily secured our stuff early.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Work is to begin soon on the first Aldi supermarket for Newbridge after several attempts by the German retailer to locate in the town.

A number of sites had been identified over the past 15 years but the foodstore chain was hit by stumbling blocks to planning permission.

Contractors are now getting ready to move in this month at a 0.5 hectare site off Edward Street beside Gandouge Lane. The completed building will back onto DID Electrical.

March 2021

Construction is expected to take nine months and the new facility will be ready by early March next year.

Two detached properties which are boarded up will be demolished.

The single storey discount food store and off licence with a value of 1.2m will have a gross floor area of 1,585sq.m.

The development will include new pedestrian and vehicle access from Edward Street.

A car park will fit 80 vehicles and include 10 bicycle spaces.

The designs include landscaping and boundary walls to the front, side and rear.

Aldi bosses are clearly eager to grab a slice of the grocery market in Newbridge where close neighbours of the new store will be Tesco, Dunnes Stores and SuperValu.

In a long-running saga going back over 15 years, planning permission was refused previously for an Aldi store adjacent to the Keadeen Hotel.

Council planners were concerned at the time that the facility would create a traffic hazard in the area and depreciate the value of houses in the vicinity.

Aldi Stores Ireland Ltd was also refused planning permission for a store in the town at the corner of Langton Road and Moorefield Road in April 2004.

Recruitment

Recruitment to fill positions at the new foodstore will begin early next year.

Aldi already has eight stores across Co Kildare.

Earlier this year, it began a recruitment campaign to hire applicants for 27 positions for its local outlets.

The retailer plans to recruit a total of 550 new staff across its 140 stores nationwide in 2020.

Aldi is the first retailer to implement the new Living Wage and claims to be the highest paying supermarket.
S chool uniforms could disappear to help stop the spread of coronavirus in schools, a Conservative MP has warned, after several schools told students not to wear blazers and ties.

Some children started going back to school earlier this month, but in-person classes won't begin again for most students until September, after months of discussions.

A number of schools, like Beckfoot Oakbank School in Keighley, Yorkshire, told children not to wear blazers, ties and smart shirts, so that clothes can be washed as often as possible.

And Conservative MP Andrew Lewer, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Independent Education, says traditional school uniforms are "at risk of dying out".

Most children won't go back to school until September / PA

He told the Telegraph: "Covid-19 has already gravely disrupted the schooling of children right across the country.

The last thing we want to see is it now striking at one of the great traditions of British schools, distinctive uniforms worn with pride by pupils at 90 per cent of our schools.

As health experts such as Professor Linda Bauld have pointed out, the coronavirus risk from a school blazer or tie is minimal."

Professor Bauld, a public health expert at the University of Edinburgh, has said that "school is not a high-risk environment" for spreading coronavirus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on a school visit earlier in June / PA

She told the Times Educational Supplement: There is no doubt that [coronavirus] can land on fabric and remain for some time  thats why NHS workers either leave their clothes in a secure area or wash them as soon as they get home. However, school is not a high-risk environment and I certainly dont think that kids cant wear a blazer because it does not get washed every day.

Its about managing risk and this is not a major risk of transmission  also Im not sure we can say to parents, particularly those with fewer resources, that their kids must wear a new uniform every day.

Parents are asked to wash their children's clothes every day to help cut the risk of spreading coronavirus, which can stay on fabric for up to three days.

The NHS website says: "Clothes should be washed at 60C (140F) or at 40C (104F) with a bleach-based laundry product."

A separate bill is currently going through parliament to force schools to only have unbranded clothing as uniform, to help reduce costs for parents.
Industry Update

Appointment

22 June 2020

Skip Harless

Promoted General Manager

At Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City - OK, USA

An experienced industry veteran, Skip Harless has more than 32 years of hospitality experience. Harless joined Marcus Hotels & Resorts in May 2014 as the resident manager at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Most recently, Harless led the Hilton Madison Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin as general manager. Prior to joining Marcus Hotels & Resorts, Harless spent 27 years with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. Harless graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

Marcus Hotels & Resorts Marcus Hotels & Resorts, a division of The Marcus Corporation (NYSE: MCS), owns and/or manages 19 hotels, resorts and other properties in 10 states. A force in the hospitality industry, Marcus Hotels & Resorts provides expertise in management, development and historic renovations. more information

Recent Appointments at Marcus Hotels Carlo Vermeeren - General Manager 29 October 2021  Marcus Hotels & Resorts, a nationally recognized owner and management company and division of The Marcus Corporation, today announced the appointment of Carlo Vermeeren as general manager of the Omaha Marriott Downtown at the Capitol District in Omaha, Nebraska. read more

Steve Hilton - Senior Vice President of Operations 5 October 2021  Marcus Hotels & Resorts, a nationally recognized owner and management company and division of The Marcus Corporation (NYSE: MCS), today announced the promotion of Steve Hilton to senior vice president of operations. read more
The Northern Ireland Executive is to meet today to discuss allowing gatherings of up to six people indoors, the Belfast Telegraph understands.

At present groups of people cannot meet indoors, as the coronavirus can spread more easily.

From Saturday, June 13, people who live alone can form a small support unit by visiting one other household. This includes staying over in the other household.

People are allowed to gather outdoors with up to 10 other people who are not members of your household, but social distancing must be maintained.

It comes after it was announced there have been no new deaths due to coronavirus on Sunday.

Four new cases of the virus have been diagnosed.

The Northern Ireland death toll now stands at 545, with 4,870 cases diagnosed.

Follow Monday's live coverage below:
There's been a huge COVID-19 outbreak in Germany in the cramped company-provided housing for Romanian and Bulgarian slaughterhouse workers.



That mass infection at a slaughterhouse that employs at least 6,500 workers in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia -- many of them Romanians or Bulgarians -- has helped cause Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate to rise sharply over the past week.



That has led the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health to raise a pandemic alarm. It warned on June 21 that the overall reproduction rate of coronavirus in Germany had jumped from 1.79 to 2.88 within the previous 24 hours.



The warning suggests that for every 100 people who contract the virus in Germany, another 288 people will become infected.



To keep the pandemic under control in the longer term, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the reproduction rate should be kept below 1.0. The WHO warned on June 21 of fresh outbreaks around the world that could force renewed lockdowns and/or other tight restrictions -- including in Germany.



So far, the German government has stuck to its policy of gradually reopening the country as a whole while seeking to stamp out local outbreaks.



But the Toennies slaughterhouse in the town of Rheda-Wiedenbrueck raises the possibility of renewed restrictions across Germany, which has been seen as successfully limiting the spread of the disease and keeping its death toll relatively low.

As of June 22, Germany had reported a total of more than 191,600 laboratory-confirmed coronavirus infections in the country, including about 8,900 deaths -- relatively low numbers for a country of some 83 million people.

With other countries watching Germany for lessons to guide their own public-health policies, the reaction of German authorities could influence decisions on rules elsewhere in the months ahead.



In fact, Germany has been gradually easing its public-health restrictions in recent weeks.



German Chancellor Angela Merkel had argued that lockdown measures should remain in place longer. But Merkel has come under pressure from regional politicians who argue that the country needs to reopen its economy.

'Local' Lockdown



At the Toennies slaughterhouse, German Army troops were called in during the weekend to test the entire staff -- with more than 1,300 employees testing positive for COVID-19 since last week.

Local authorities have forced 7,000 employees and their families into quarantine in the cramped, company-provided accommodations where they stay.



Police and other security officials have been deployed to enforce the lockdown, and local authorities have closed nearby schools.

Meanwhile, North Rhine-Westphalia Governor Armin Laschet has called upon consular officials from Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland to organize translators who can explain the targeted lockdown to Toennies workers from those countries.

"There are 1,300 properties where staff and their families live, and where we need to observe the quarantine rules," Laschet said on June 21.



North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous of Germany's 16 states. It includes the cities of Cologne, Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, and Bonn.



The Toennies outbreak isnt the only outbreak German authorities are trying to keep in a "local" lockdown. Further south, in the town of Goettingen, in the state of Lower Saxony, a recent outbreak was reported among about 700 residents of a crowded tower block.

Health authorities required police reinforcements to maintain a lockdown order at the crowded apartment building after a riot broke out on June 20.

"Around 200 people tried to get out, but 500 people complied with quarantine rules," Goettingen police chief Uwe Luehrig said.

Romanian, Bulgarian Workers



The slaughterhouse outbreak is not the first to hit Romanians and Bulgarians who travel to countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and France for jobs at meat-processing plants or as temporary seasonal farm workers.



In March and April -- when Germany's borders were closed by the pandemic -- authorities in Berlin declared that food production was essential to the country.



That declaration cleared the way for special flights that transported tens of thousands of temporary workers to Germany from Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland -- despite lockdowns, border closures, travel restrictions, and flight bans across Europe.

RFE/RL correspondents confirmed that dozens of those flights took place without adequate health precautions such as mandatory masks and social-distancing measures.



A coronavirus outbreak in late April among the employees of a slaughterhouse in Birkenfeld in southeastern Germany highlighted the plight of workers from Romania and Bulgaria who live in company-provided dormitories.



RFE/RL has confirmed that at least 200 Romanians became infected there, including one patient who died from COVID-19.



On May 11, Romania's Foreign Ministry confirmed a coronavirus outbreak among Romanian workers at another meat-processing facility in Coesfeld, which is also in North Rhine-Westphalia.

North Rhine-Westphalia Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann told Deutsche Welle that the workers' shared accommodations in tight quarters likely contributed to those outbreaks.

"Hundreds got ill in the abattoirs," Romania's ambassador to Germany, Emil Hurezeanu, told RFE/RL on May 21.



Hurezeanu cited what he described as "a whole chain" of subcontractors who negotiated pay and accommodations for the workers.

"Employers didn't check out the living conditions," he told RFE/RL. "They [just] paid by the hour."



Still, despite the latest slaughterhouse COVID outbreak among foreign workers in Germany, state-level officials appear hesitant about whether to reimpose a wider lockdown in the country.

North Rhine-Westphalia's governor declared on June 21 that there was no reason to shut down the area surrounding the Toennies slaughterhouse because there was "no significant jump" of the virus among the population beyond the company's employees.



German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told ARD television on June 22 he expected the firm to do everything it can to limit the damage.

Heil is calling for an examination of whether the firm can be held financially liable for the outbreak. He said German authorities would also "examine what civil-law possibilities" the company might face.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Romanian Service, Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa, Deutsche Welle, and ARD-TV
Jazeera Airways chairman Marwan Boodai said: Jazeera Airways ended the year with the best set of operating results in the airlines history. Image: Jazeera Airways.

Shareholders approved the companys audited accounts and reports for the year.

Chairman Marwan Boodai said: As we review another record year for Jazeera Airways, the world is witnessing a pandemic that has affected the aviation industry with flights being suspended in countries around the world since March 2020.

During 2019, our airline continued to deliver on its growth plan, strengthening the foundations that have time and again enabled our airline to overcome past crises, and ending the year with the best set of operating results in the airlines history. Jazeera Airways continued to grow and expand its footprint in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. The expansion was supported by a growth in its fleet with the delivery of three new Airbus A320neo aircraft as well as growing operations at Jazeera Terminal T5 at Kuwait International Airport.

2019 in review: Expanding the network and growing the fleet

Following the expansion in 2018 into the Indian Subcontinent market which satisfied a latent demand in the market and provided new opportunities for transit itineraries, Jazeera Airways marked a new milestone in 2019 with the launch of a direct service to London Gatwick in late October with its newest A320neo aircraft. This made Jazeera Airways the first Low-Cost Carrier (LCC) in the Middle East to fly to the United Kingdom (UK) and also marked the first new service to the UK from Kuwait in 55 years.

The expansion to London Gatwick not only satisfied travel between Kuwait and London, but also served a large customer-base for transit flights from the Indian Subcontinent, Gulf countries and other destinations to which we launched new services during the year.

Among these new services were underserved and high-potential traffic destinations of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, Osh in Kyrgyzstan, the second largest city of Pakistan, Karachi, and Dammam in Saudi. With Kathmandu, Osh and Karachi, Jazeera Airways opened travel routes for leisure travelers, expatriates in the Middle East region travelling back home as well as transit flights for religious pilgrimage.

In addition, the airline launched services to the high-demand touristic destinations of Istanbul with new routes to the Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, the Turkish coastal city of Bodrum and for the first time ever from Kuwait and one of the few routes serving UAEs family leisure destination, Al Ain.

Jazeera Airways supported these expansions with the delivery of three new Airbus A320neo aircraft in Q4 2019.

By the end of 2019, Jazeera Airways was serving 37 airports from Jazeera Terminal 5 with a fleet of 13 aircraft comprising of nine A320 and four of the A320neo.

Also by year end, Jazeera Airways carried 2.4 million passengers point to point to and from Kuwait as well as through the Kuwait hub on connecting flights.





Best operating results in the airlines history

The significant leap in Jazeera Airways profitability in 2019 is the result of profitable growth coupled with an aggressive focus on cost management.

 Operating revenue: KD103.7 million, up 25.9% from FY 2018

 Operating profit: KD14.2 million, up 108.7% from FY 2018

 Net profit: KD14.9 million, up 124.1% from FY 2018

 Passengers: 2.4 million, up 20.6% from FY 2018

 Load factor: 77.5%, up 2.3% from FY 2018

 Aircraft utilization: 13.3 hours

 Yield stood at KD41.5, up 1.6% from FY 2018

Highlight of EGM

Shareholders approved adding a new article (number 59) to the Companys Articles of Association. The new article is: Subject to the provisions contained in the Company Contract, the ordinary general assembly meeting, upon the proposal of the board of directors, may distribute dividends to shareholders at the end of the financial year or at the end of each financial period. Such distribution shall be valid if the profits are real, if these are made in accordance with the generally accepted accounting principles and do not affect the paid-up capital of the company.

Outlook for 2020

While Jazeera Airways has previously announced plans to continue expanding its network and introduced its new fare categories at the start of 2020 to enhance its position as a leading LCC, the Covid-19 pandemic has placed the expansion plans on hold as the world weathers through this crisis.

Boodai said: As a private sector company, we are taking full responsibility to ensure our business continuity. Therefore, we have implemented decisive measures to safeguard our financial position caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the suspension of the 2019 dividend payment and activating the drawdown of bank facilities that were not previously tapped to support Jazeeras ongoing liquidity through the coming months. We have always taken prudent and pivotal actions in difficult circumstances. In such times, placing our employees and customers first is our priority.

We are committed to our role as a Kuwaiti national carrier and will continue to perform our part to ensure we can support the economy and uphold our national duty.

Jazeera Airways made its fleet available for full cargo flights to transport necessary produce and goods, and have proudly placed its fleet at the disposal of the State of Kuwait to support its efforts in repatriating citizens. The Company also redesigned its Park & Fly facility, previously for long-term parking and remote check-in, to setup the first Covid-19 drive-through testing center in the country in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.

Boodai concluded: In the past 15 years, weve weathered through many macro and micro-economic challenges, from a global financial crisis, a recession, geopolitical challenges in a number of the countries we serve, oil fluctuations, and regional overcapacity in a highly competitive environment driven by government-back airlines. We have confidence that Jazeera Airways will once again come out stronger from this crisis.

Our goal by the end of 2020 is not the bottom line, but our readiness for the following year, the year 2021. Until then, Jazeera Airways has a strong balance sheet and financial reserves enabling it to withstand difficult conditions for 27 months.

In these times, I take this opportunity to thank Boursa Kuwait and Kuwait Clearing Company for enabling virtual meetings and ensure business continuity. I also thank our team for placing our Company first to safeguard its employees and customers as best as possible, and thank our shareholders for trusting our management. And most importantly, I thank His Highness the Amir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and His Crown Prince, Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and the Government of Kuwait for the unrivalled support and commitment provided to our country.
A very determined shopper was caught on video over the weekend fighting his way into a Walmart in Orlando, Florida, and getting into a scuffle with a worker after refusing to wear a face mask.

The cellphone recording of the clash was shared on Twitter on Saturday. As of Monday afternoon, it has been viewed more than 5.2million times.

The video shows a bespectacled older man dressed in a checkered shirt and denim shorts bearing down on a masked Walmart worker standing in the doorway.

Thou shall not pass: A feisty shopper was caught on video on Saturday fighting his way into a Walmart in Orlando and scuffling with a worker after refusing to wear a mask

Unmoved: The elderly rule breaker is seen repeatedly shoving the masked Walmart staffer

Instant Karma: The shopper slips, loses his balance and falls to the floor, drawing peals of laughter from a bystander

The employee blocks the maskless man's path into the store with his own body, only to be shoved twice by the very eager customer.

'You gotta wear a mask, bro,' a witness points out off-camera.

The defiant rule breaker ignores the sound advice and pushes the worker a third time, but slips and falls to the floor, drawing peals of laughter from the eyewitness.

Undeterred by this setback, the pugnacious Walmart patron scrambles to his feet and continues fighting his way into the cavernous store, with the worker doggedly pursuing him and attempting to stop him in his track.

The grey-haired renegade shoves the employee into a produce cart, who then grabs him by the arm, confronts him face-to-face and orders him to leave.

Defiant: undeterred, he makes his way to the produce section, with the worker hot on his heels

After refusing the offer of a free mask, the shopper marches into an aisle

Another confrontation ensues, at which point the grey-haired renegade admits his defeat

He stomps off after being accused by another employee of spitting all over the place

'Hey, sir, everybody got on masks, man,' the same witness tells the rogue shopper.

'You want a mask, man? I got some,' another person says off-camera.

Without dignifying the offer with a response, the shopper stubbornly plows ahead into a nearby aisle, with the worker hot on his heels.

The Walmart clash involving this gentleman took place the same day that an executive order was issued requiring everyone to wear masks in public places in Orange County

'Let the man do his job, bruh,' the witness exclaims. 'Just get a mask!'

Seeing that the employee is not going to let this go, the shopper angrily stomps off.

Before he takes his leave, the worker points to his arms, telling his adversary that he has inflicted injuries on him.

'I haven't done s*** to you!' the potty-mouthed senior citizen shoots back.

Another Walmart staffer yells at the unwelcome patron that he has been 'spitting all over the f***ing place.'

The incident took place the same day that Orange County, where Orlando is located, issued an executive order mandating that 'every person working, living, visiting or doing business' in 'any public place' wears a face covering.

'All businesses are encouraged to prohibit entry of each person who is not wearing a face covering,' the order reads.

Florida has been dealing with a surge in coronavirus cases. The Sunshine State has surpassed 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 after reporting more than 2,900 new cases this morning alone.
US Actor Mark Ruffalo will join Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin of the Green Party in a webinar to talk about the Programme For Government and their opposition to fracked gas.

Good news! Ireland is poised to stop the import of US fracked gas If @greenparty_ie, @FineGael, @fiannafailparty members vote for Programme for Gov't, Ireland could become a world leader on climate. Hopefully #IrelandsGreenFuture will be a reality! #NowIsTheTime #PFG https://t.co/AuZurIH7PR  Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) June 21, 2020

Ruffalo is an opponent of the use fracked gas and has previously got behind the campaign against the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in County Kerry.

On Sunday night, Mr Ruffalo urged Green Party members to vote for the draft programme for government deal, and said it would make Ireland a world leader on climate change.

.@SafetyBeforeLng be rest assured, if we can agree to the #PFG we will implement the policies which will see an end to the importation of fracked gas via any LNG terminals in Ireland. We've better energy alternatives available & for everyone's sake we need to #keepitintheground. pic.twitter.com/DghUppAqpk  Eamon Ryan (@EamonRyan) June 22, 2020

The programme for government currently being voted on by Green Party members contains a stated opposition to fracked gas imports.

The draft deal states that the parties do not support the importation of fracked gas and shall develop a policy statement to establish that approach.

Hollywood actor and anti-fracking campaigner Mark Ruffalo is doing a livestream with Green Party leaders Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin this evening. @Cher must be washing her hair. pic.twitter.com/x2QQWzReW6  Aine McMahon (@AineMcMahon) June 22, 2020

It states the government will withdraw the Shannon LNG terminal from the EU Projects of Common Interest list in 2021.

Ahead of the webinar, the Green Party quotes Ruffalo as stating the pledge would represent a monumental achievement for Ireland.

Video of the Day

For years, US and Irish campaigners have worked together to achieve a ban on fracking in Ireland. Now the PfG is an opportunity for a monumental achievement for Ireland to become the first country in the world to ban fracked gas imports. This is crucial for our shared climate, as well as for the public health of Americans, Ruffalo is quoted as saying.

Ruffalo has been campaigning against fracking for the past 10 years.

I have been advocating for 10 years with Americans who have been poisoned by fracking, many who live in the areas that would supply Ireland with fracked gas. Im thankful that US anti-fracking activists contacted Green Party leaders to support the Programme for Government and that I can lend my support in this critical moment, reads the statement.

Green Party members are currently voting on whether to accept the deal with party rules dictating that two-thirds support is required.

Members of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are expected to vote to pass the deal but there have been differences among Green Party members.

The vote will be counted on Friday, with a result expected that evening.
By the time President Donald Trump was gliding in his helicopter toward Joint Base Andrews on Saturday, destined for what he'd once hoped would be a triumphant packed-to-the-rafters return to the campaign trail, things were already looking bad.

Scanning cable news coverage earlier in the day, Trump was disappointed to see pictures not of massive lines forming outside the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa but of Geoffrey Berman, the federal prosecutor Trump's attorney general had attempted unsuccessfully to dismiss the night before, a person familiar with his response said.

Hours later, the President was informed six campaign staffers in Tulsa had tested positive for coronavirus ahead of his scheduled arrival -- an unfortunate reminder of an ongoing pandemic Trump's critics say he is ignoring. After initially dismissing the revelation, a source familiar with his reaction said Trump erupted when it was subsequently reported in the media -- overtaking coverage of the rally itself.

Still, a determined Trump was intent on breathing new life into his staggering campaign. He took off for Tulsa, convinced large swaths of his supporters would be waiting for him there.

Things did not improve once Air Force One lifted off. The President received a report that only about 25 people were assembled in the overflow space the campaign had reserved for a crowd Trump claimed five days earlier would top 40,000.

Two hours before the rally was set to begin, people who had signed up for tickets received an urgent text message from the Trump campaign: "The Great American Comeback Celebration's almost here!" it read. "There's still space!"

When the President landed in Tulsa at 5:51 p.m. local time, the crowds his aides had promised him had failed to materialize. Air Force One flew over the arena, where Trump had been told thousands of supporters would be waiting to hear from him before he went inside, but saw nothing resembling the sea of people he'd been expecting.

While he was in the air, the campaign had canceled the outside appearance given the apparent lack of enthusiasm.

Once viewed inside the White House and Trump's campaign as a reset button for a presidency beset by crises and self-inflicted wounds, Saturday evening's campaign rally in Tulsa instead became plagued with pitfalls, a disappointing microcosm of the blindspots, denial and wishful thinking that have come to guide the President as he enters one of the most precarious moments of his first term.

By the time he strode out to the strains of Lee Greenwood on Saturday evening into a partially-full Bank of Oklahoma Center, the event had devolved from a triumphant return to the campaign trail after a 110-day pandemic-forced absence into something else altogether. The launch of a new assault on former Vice President Joe Biden fizzled, replaced by recycled grievances and race-baiting. The sparse crowd was a reminder that many Americans, even Trump's supporters, remain cautious of a pandemic that continues to rage in places like Oklahoma, where cases are spiking, even if Trump is ready to move on.

Aides were anxiously awaiting his response to a less-than-stellar turnout, aware he has threatened to fire officials in the past when his rallies ended in disappointment.

"You are warriors. We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things. But I really do appreciate it," Trump told his crowd, appearing to explain away the empty seats as a result of "thugs" outside the arena, even though CNN teams on the ground said they did not see violence or people blocking entrances.

After a nearly two-hour speech notable mainly for its discursiveness, Trump left Tulsa on Saturday night having spent around three hours in the city. The six advance staffers who had tested positive for coronavirus remained in their chain hotel rooms, quarantined for the foreseeable future.

Disappointment in the making

From nearly the moment the word "Tulsa" slipped from Trump's mouth two Wednesdays ago, things seemed to start going south.

First there was the problem with the rally's date, which the President changed begrudgingly after learning it coincided with Juneteenth -- the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The new slot, he complained, would draw fewer viewers.

Then there was the location, which Trump did not view as a problem even though plenty of others around him were wary of riling a city with a violent racist history in the middle of a national racial reckoning.

The notion of packing supporters into a crowded arena amid a resurgence in coronavirus cases was always going to be an issue -- but half-a-dozen staffers on the advance team testing positive was a wrinkle Trump had not anticipated when he insisted a rally be placed on his schedule.

By the middle of May, Trump had begun quizzing aides when he might be able to return to the campaign rallies that have long been one of the few aspects of being a politician he enjoys.

Confined to the White House for months amid a pandemic that had caused a once-hot economy to ice over, Trump repeatedly asked that a rally be put on the calendar, even as public health officials warned against large gatherings.

For weeks, Trump's requests for a rally were put off or slow-walked, with the health warnings as rationale. While the administration's top public health experts -- including Doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx -- did not weigh in specifically on campaign rallies, their views of resuming large gatherings were well known among Trump's staffers.

But as large protests began forming after the death of George Floyd, the Black man who died after a White police officer knelt on his neck, the arguments against convening a rally seemed harder to make -- particularly to the President, who said if protesters could gather in large numbers, then so could his supporters.

With Trump more intent than ever on returning to the trail, his senior campaign team scrambled to identify a location that could both guarantee a large crowd and provide a cooperative governor and mayor who would allow a major gathering of people -- potentially indoors -- to proceed, despite continued warnings against such events by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tulsa appeared at first glance to fit the bill. Oklahoma had experienced relatively low numbers of coronavirus infections, and drawing a major crowd in the deep-red state did not seem like it would be an issue.

While many of the President's allies believed he should focus only on those states that he won in 2016 but that he now appears at risk of losing in November -- like Michigan, Arizona, Florida and several others -- Oklahoma seemed a safer bet for a rally that was quickly assuming oversized importance, both in the West Wing and at campaign headquarters.

Though Trump formally launched his campaign one year ago in Orlando, he started telling people in recent weeks that the Tulsa event was the "real launch." He reasoned that his abysmal poll numbers were only because of the coronavirus lockdowns, and posited on several occasions that he hasn't been trying to run against Biden yet.

The rally came the same day the Trump campaign announced it had raised $74 million in May in conjunction with the Republican National Committee -- $7 million less than what Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised.

Return to normal

For many advisers, particularly those who worked on the President's 2016 campaign, the rally was regarded as a return to normal after what has been one of his roughest stretches of his presidency.

"The rally is a great signal to the rest of the country that it's time to get things moving again," Tim Murtaugh, Trump's campaign communications director, told CNN last week. "Americans will now see the contrast between the President's record of accomplishment versus the history of failure Biden brings to the table."

But nearly as soon as Trump announced his rally from the White House Cabinet Room -- "a beautiful, new venue -- brand-new -- and we're looking forward to it," he said -- the problems began.

Upon advice from lawyers, the campaign applied a liability waiver to the online sign-up form for potential attendees, warning "you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19."

Neither Trump nor his campaign aides were aware that the date they'd selected coincided with Juneteenth. Even after the date was pointed out, some of Trump's campaign aides and White House staffers downplayed any problems, insisting it wasn't unusual to hold campaign events on holidays.

But this June 19 was not like past years. Amid a national outpouring of grief and anger following Floyd's death, the holiday had assumed a special significance in highlighting the country's racist history as millions continue to protest that history's legacy and still-existent consequences.

After a Black Secret Service agent explained the significance to the President - and after Trump polled his orbit to find no one who had heard of Juneteenth -- the President began to consider changing the date. He also heard directly from Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, who told him a date-change would be wise.

Trump agreed, but told his campaign advisers to schedule the rally the day before Juneteenth, a Thursday, rather than move the rally a day later to Saturday. Trump explained that Saturday evenings were a television ratings void and that he wanted massive viewership of his first campaign foray in months.

Instead, Trump's aides convinced him that a weekend would draw a larger crowd because potential attendees would not be at work. And the campaign announced it was scouting outdoor venues to accommodate an overflow audience unable to fit inside the 19,000-capacity BOK Center.

Consumed

For the past week, the rally has consumed Trump's attention, according to people familiar with the matter. The President invited Oklahoma's governor to the White House on Thursday for a roundtable that was also a venue for Trump to hype his event.

"We're going to be in Oklahoma. And it's a crowd like, I guess, nobody's seen before. We have tremendous, tremendous requests for tickets like, I think, probably has never happened politically before," Trump said. Later, during the same event, Trump appeared to be idly scrolling through his phone while two women business owners detailed their experience during the pandemic.

On Friday, with no events on his schedule, Trump appeared to be focused on the next day's rally. He threatened potential protesters on Twitter, saying they would not be afforded gentle treatment if they came to his event. Upon learning there would be a curfew in place on the three nights surrounding the rally, Trump phoned Tulsa's mayor to protest. Trump tweeted afterward the mayor had agreed to rescind the curfew for his supporters who were camped outside.

By the time he awoke on Saturday, Trump was enthusiastic about the evening ahead. But he soured when he turned on his television to find coverage not of massive crowds but of Berman, whose dismissal Trump did not anticipate would generate controversy and whose refusal to leave impeded upon coverage of the President's forthcoming rally.

Hours later -- as Vice President Mike Pence was stalled on his way to Tulsa while thunderstorms rolled over Joint Base Andrews -- Trump learned of the six staffers who had tested positive for coronavirus while they were advancing the President's rally. The campaign had initially not planned to test staff beforehand unless it was expected they would come into contact with the President, Vice President or one of his children, and was not planning to reveal that several staffers had tested positive. But the news leaked, and several campaign staffers found out about the cases from media reports, one of those officials told CNN.

Trump was furious when it was reported that several staffers had tested positive, believing it -- like Berman -- was overshadowing his event, the person said. By the time he was departing the White House for Tulsa, the jubilant resumption of rallies was already turning to resentment.

If there was one glimmer of light, it was the crowd.

"The event in Oklahoma is unbelievable. The crowds are unbelievable. They haven't seen anything like it," Trump said as he departed the South Lawn in Washington, DC.

It was a different story in Tulsa. The wide avenue where a stage had been erected for an overflow crowd in the tens of thousands was virtually vacant, and planned speeches there by Trump and Pence were scrapped. Inside the arena, it was only partly full as the President was arriving.

Murtaugh asserted that the smaller-than-expected crowds were partially a result of interference by protesters, though none of the CNN reporters and producers on the ground in Tulsa saw any incident with protesters trying to block supporters from attending.

Ultimately, aides said Tulsa was about something far more important than mere politicking; after a dreary stretch, the event was meant to provide Trump the adulation he craves and to re-energize him after weeks spent wallowing in sagging poll numbers and critical media coverage.

Trump told staff he wanted all of his surrogates on-hand when he landed in Tulsa on Saturday night, so aides invited dozens and chartered a private plane to transport them all. Photos from the flight show none wearing masks.

"I guarantee you after Saturday, if everything goes well, he's going to be in a much better mood," a Trump political adviser said. "He believes that he needs to be out there fighting and he feeds off the energy of the crowds."

After Trump finished speaking, a person familiar told CNN that two Secret Service agents had also tested positive for coronavirus.
Wirecard was left fighting for survival after acknowledging that 1.9 billion ($US2.1 billion) that it had reported as assets probably don't exist, deepening an accounting scandal that has rattled Germany's financial industry.

The payments processor said it's in discussions with creditors and considering a full-scale restructuring after pulling its financial results for fiscal 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. Previous descriptions of its business with third parties, which process transactions on Wirecard's behalf, were "not correct."

In less than a week, the fintech once hyped as the future of German finance has lost more than 90 per cent of its market value. Credit:Bloomberg

Even before the early Monday statement, the unfolding scandal had seen Wirecard's shares and bonds collapse, its chief executive depart, and left the company renegotiating debt terms with its lenders. In less than a week, the fintech once hyped as the future of German finance has lost more than 90 per cent of its market value, with the shares slumping for a third trading day on Monday.

"It's a complete disaster we're looking at," said Felix Hufeld, head of BaFin, Germany's top financial regulator, at a panel discussion.. "It's a shame that something like that happened."
Australians fatigued by months of coronavirus lockdown face being forced back indoors as Victoria battles a second wave of COVID-19 infections.

The unexpected spike risks other states refusing to open their borders as planned, having closed back in March to stop the virus spreading.

Victoria recorded 17 cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, 11 of which are from an unknown source, marking its 17th consecutive day of double-digit infections.

More than a million people living in coronavirus hotspots in Melbourne now face a series of local district lockdowns, which are undergoing a testing blitz.

Residents could soon face mandatory lockdown in six local government districts, Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos revealed.

Those six areas are Hume and Brimbank, in Melbourne's north and west, Casey and Cardinia in the city's southeast and Moreland and Darebin in the north.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian recommended against travelling to Melbourne and encouraged NSW businesses to deny service to travellers from the new hotspots.

'I call on all organisations not to interact with citizens from Melbourne at this stage,' Ms Berejiklian said.

Medical workers test locals at the Pacific Epping Shopping Centre in Victoria on Monday (pictured) amid fears of localised lockdowns to stop the coronavirus outbreak

Australians have been warned to stay away from six council in Melbourne: Hume, Casey and Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin

Ms Mikakos said she hadn't ruled out enforcing mandatory isolation in certain suburbs if coronavirus infections continued to spike.

'In the legal directions that have come in, we have not issued stay-at-home directions for those hotspot areas, but of course we don't rule anything out,' Ms Mikakos said.

Cases are expected to continue rising in the areas, with more than 1,000 close contacts of the state's 125 active cases already identified.

Two Victorian schools were closed on Tuesday after students were among those who tested positive to COVID-19.

Brunswick East Primary School and Keilor Views Primary School, both in Melbourne virus hot spots, will shut their doors for three days.

Cleaners are seen at The Hangar in Melbourne on June 21 (pictured) but the AFL match was postponed after a player contracted coronavirus

Premier Daniel Andrews admitted the spike in community transmissions was a cause for concern.

'I know and understand that so many Victorian, perhaps all Victorians want this to be over. But we simply can't pretend that the virus is gone,' he told reporters on Tuesday.

'It is here. It travels so fast. It is so infectious.

'So what we can be certain of is that there will be some significant community transmission within those numbers.

'There is an acceptable level of new cases. We're not at that point now. The amount of community transmission that we've got is too high.'

The embattled premier blamed large families who he claimed are not sticking to lockdown rules.

'[They're] making decisions that are not in accordance with the rules and are not the right thing to do,' he added.

Socially distanced queues are seen at Cinema Nova in Carlton, Melbourne on Monday (pictured) but customers were few and far between as case numbers spike

Victorians are seen wearing face masks as they leave Melbourne's Flinders Street Station on Sunday (pictured) as cases grow across Victoria

Premiers are being encouraged to go ahead with the reopening of state borders in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia despite the rising case numbers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged premiers to continue their plans to open up, and not use the Victorian situation as an excuse to halt the easing of restrictions.

'We can't just shut everything up forever  There will be outbreaks; there will be cases,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday.

'What matters is that we've built the protections to deal with them. And that's why it's so important that people don't get complacent. This is  a wake-up call.'

He explained the government never planned to 'eradicate' COVID-19, as was the aim in New Zealand, but instead hoped to 'run our economy, run our lives (and) run our communities alongside this virus'.

But in Western Australia, premier Mark McGowan has already delayed the reopening of the state's border, which was planned for August 8.

Health workers are seen at a COVID-19 drive-through testing clinic at Northland shopping centre in Melbourne on Monday (pictured)

South Australian premier Steven Marshall has also hinted the state's borders could remain shut if Victorian cases aren't brought under control.

'We are very hopeful that Victoria will get on top of the current number of new cases,' Mr Marshall said on Monday.

'But we won't be opening our borders if it's not safe to do so.

'We have worked so hard, we do not want to be going backwards.'

The state's borders were due to reopen to Victoria and NSW on July 20.

Experts at the Australian Medical Association have already issued a warning against allowing Victorians in.

'Suddenly, we'd end up with the same community spread (as Victoria),' its president Dr Chris Moy said.

'It's a situation where you don't know where the enemy is coming from.'

Staff at a Melbourne pub temperature check a customer on Monday (pictured) as coronavirus cases soar in Victoria

Cleaners are seen at The Hangar in Melbourne on June 21 (pictured) but the AFL match was postponed after a player contracted coronavirus

South Australia has already lifted restrictions with Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania.

In NSW, premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the state would go ahead with the easing of restrictions, but urged residents to avoid travelling to Victoria.

This includes all travel to Melbourne's virus hotspots, and non-essential journeys between the two states.

'We have to live with this until there's a cure or a vaccine,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'And it's how you manage these spikes that allows the community to keep being able to be active and working and having a good life.

'So I appreciate what Victoria's going through, but don't assume it won't happen in NSW or anywhere else.

A customer is seen sanitising his hands at a cafe in Parkdale, Victoria on Sunday (pictured) with coronavirus contact tracing still underway

Victorians are seen wearing face masks as they leave Melbourne's Flinders Street Station on Sunday (pictured) as cases grow across Victoria

'It can happen very quickly.'

In the week ending Monday, Victorian health officials confirmed 121 cases of COVID-19.

Of these, only 34 were returning travellers in mandatory hotel quarantine, which is where most of Australia's recent infections have come from.

The 16 new infections confirmed on Monday include a fourth person who attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne on June 6.

Over the weekend, 44 new cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in the state, after Australia enjoyed weeks of single digit transmissions.

Health workers are seen at a COVID-19 drive-through testing clinic at Northland shopping centre in Melbourne on Monday (pictured)

Coronavirus test samples are seen at a centre in Melbourne on Monday (pictured) as the city undergoes a testing blitz

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

Officials have since said residents should avoid all travel to affected areas in Victoria - and said even metropolitan Melbourne was high risk.

Ms Berejiklian said the spike was 'a wake up call for all of us'.

'At this stage, the advice is do not travel to those hot spots,' she told reporters on Monday.

'Do not go to the hot spots. Reconsider your plans. Reconsider what you're doing.

'But certainly, Melbourne is a discretion. We would recommend people not at this stage travel to Melbourne unless they have to.

'The strong recommendation from the New South Wales Government, including our health officials is - do not travel to those hot spots at all. And consider your travel to Melbourne at this stage.'

Victoria has been planning on easing several restrictions on Monday, but this was stopped due to the sudden spike in cases.

Health Minister Jenny Mikakos confirmed there were 1,847 cases in the state after five were removed due to duplication, making it a net increase of 11 cases on Monday.

The state's COVID-19 case numbers are now the highest they've been in more than two months after six days of double-digit growth.

A woman in a face mask is seen walking past St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne on Sunday (pictured) as coronavirus cases rise across the city

A worker has her temperature checked before the reopening of a Melbourne cinema (pictured on Monday)

'We currently have nine patients in hospital, including two in intensive care,' Ms Mikakos confirmed.

The new cases are made up of six linked to outbreaks, five cases identified through routine testing, four cases detected in returned travellers in hotel quarantine and one case under investigation.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has been forced to reimpose tough restrictions within his state.

'Don't visit friends and family. Don't go on holiday. Don't go to work. Stay home,' the premier said on Saturday.

Black Lives Matter protesters rally in Melbourne's CBD on June 6 (pictured) with three cases linked to it so far

A street sign in Albury (pictured in May) warns against the onset of the coronavirus, as Melbourne is hit by a second wave

Victoria's State of Emergency has been extended until 11.59pm on July 19.

Until July 12, Victorians will only be able to have five people at their homes while outdoor gatherings have been reduced from 20 down to ten.

Cafes, restaurants and pubs were to be allowed up to 50 patrons from Monday, but that will now have to remain at 20 until July 12.

The 20-person limit is the rule for real estate auctions, open houses and community areas will also continue to be limited to just 20 people.

Religious gatherings cannot be larger than 20 people plus those in charge of the ceremony.
Mumbai Police should get an A+ for creativity and if you have any doubts, just look at their tweets. The posts are quirky and interesting, and the best part is that they always have a message. Their latest post is no different.

In a tweet shared about an hour ago, Mumbai Police shared about the need to always be prepaved!. If you have noticed the word pav standing out in that tweet, dont be confused.

Mumbai Police shared a little clip in their tweet which compares some of the most perfect combinations. Vada, Bhaji, Bhurji and Kheema are incomplete without Pav and make a perfect pair when coupled with the bread. Similarly, every person is incomplete without a mask. Hence their hashtag #NoMaskaOnlyMask.

Since being shared, the tweet has collected quite a few reactions along with some 500 likes.

Very nice message, shares an individual. Savage as always! comments another. Making us aware while making us smile , I will always be prepaved, replies a third clearly impressed with Mumbai Polices creativity.

The Mumbai Police handle also shared a creative post with a punny twist for International Yoga Day that was celebrated yesterday. In their post, Mumbai Police wrote that they are doing the right mudra all the time to ensure that the maximum city is up and running.

What do you think of Mumbai Polices latest tweet?
New Delhi:

The modern day military warfare has seen rapid progress in how combat doctrines have evolved over a period of time to engage and combat the enemy.

Conventional warfare seems to be one for the ages as the modern day armies have to encounter local militia and counter insurgent groups who are masters at adopting guerrilla warfare techniques.

It can be rightly attributed that the modern day defence forces have adopted the credo 'Fight the Guerrilla like a Guerrilla'.

The recent Surgical strikes by the Indian army are testimony to the fact that what a pivotal role 'Special Forces' play in carrying out such kind of covert operations with clinical precision.

While on one hand the Indian army has its Para Commandos who are highly specialised in conducting counter insurgency operations, the Indian Air Force and Navy have been equal to the task in raising such forces which have proved their mantle by conducting special operations to thwart enemy aggression coming by way of sea or air.



MARCOS, previously known as Marine Commando Force , is the special forces unit of the Indian Navy. created for conducting special operations such as Amphibious warfare, Close Quarter Combat Counter-terrorism, Direct action, Special reconnaissance, Unconventional warfare, Hostage rescue, Personnel recovery, Combat search and rescue, Asymmetric warfare, Foreign internal defence, Counterproliferation, Amphibious reconnaissance including Hydrographic reconnaissance.

The MCF is specially organised, trained and equipped for the conduct of special operations in a maritime environment.

MARCOS is short for Marine Commandos. The force has gradually acquired experience and a reputation for professionalism over the three decades it has been in existence.

Here is a sneak peak into the MARCOS

Active: 1987  present

Type: Special Operations Forces (Indian Navy)

Role: Amphibious warfare, Counter-terrorism, Direct action, Special reconnaissance, Unconventional warfare,Combat search and rescue, Asymmetric warfare



Regimental Centre: Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, Goa, Kochi and Port Blair.

Nickname: Magarmach (Crocodile)

Motto: "The few the fearless"

Operation: Cactus, Operation Leech, Operation Pawan, Kargil War, Operation Black Tornado, Operation Cyclone, Counter- terrorist operation in Kashmir.

Also Read: Rashtriya Rifles: Know more about counter insurgency force of the Indian army

Also Read: Para Commandos: 'Surgical Strikes' with clinical precision, forte of 'Special Forces' unit of Indian Army

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
OTTAWA - Auditor general Karen Hogan said Monday the government needs to boost funding to her office because of the unprecedented demands of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Parliament Hill is shown in Ottawa on March 11, 2020. Auditor General Karen Hogan says she is asking the government for more money because of the unprecedented demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hogan is putting the government on notice during her first appearance before the House of Commons finance committee since she was appointed. Hogan noted that her predecessor, interim auditor general Sylvain Ricard, asked for an additional $10.8 million in February. But she says given the reality of the current pandemic, her department will need more than that. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - Auditor general Karen Hogan said Monday the government needs to boost funding to her office because of the unprecedented demands of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hogan said her predecessor, interim auditor general Sylvain Ricard, asked for an additional $10.8 million in February.

"A lot has changed since then," Hogan said in her first appearance before the House of Commons finance committee.

She told MPs on the videoconference that she is working with the Finance Department to determine how much additional funding her office will need and expects to know more in the coming weeks.

Hogan said her office won't be able to audit every single program the government has introduced in response to the pandemic but will move forward selectively.

"I simply wanted to highlight that auditing all of the COVID programs would be astronomical. There's just so many. We would likely just be doing that for many years to come, which we don't believe is the best thing for Parliament and the best for Canadians," Hogan said.

Hogan said her priorities are to examine the government's ability to buy personal protective equipment for health-care workers, a study of Canada's food supply and a more detailed look at the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

The CERB is a subsidy the government created to help Canadians who lost their jobs or had their hours cut by the pandemic and help them transition back to work. The $2,000-a-month subsidy is now budgeted to cost $60 billion.

"The CERB is one that is a large monetary drain on the government, and it has an impact to so many Canadians across the country," said Hogan.

"It is one that, unfortunately, we're all aware might have some activities that are fraudulent."

By studying the CERB first, the auditor general might be able to provide lessons learned and best practices that could be applied to other government spending programs since the pandemic, said Hogan.

But Hogan said the auditor general's office is also keen to examine other government spending not related to COVID-19.

Top priorities are military spending and cybersecurity, as well as a follow-up on connectivity in the North, she said.

Not working out of government offices during the pandemic has increased the amount of time and effort it takes to access, receive and exchange information, said Hogan, suggesting the days when officials can simply meet in boardrooms to exchanges pieces of paper are long gone.

Hogan said there will be delays in getting information to Parliament but she will be in position to table new assessments in the early 2021. But those won't be full audits, she added.

"We're trying to tackle this so we can get some information to Parliament because of the importance of the spending and the attention."

Hogan said she is moving ahead with hiring new staff because the work needs to start now, despite the lack of a government commitment of additional funds.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

"We are not sitting back and waiting," she said. "Obviously, we are taking some risks."

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said Parliament is eager for answers, but MPs also want the auditor general to do a thorough job. He noted the committee gave the previous auditor general a January deadline to report back.

"That said, we understand the work overload and the funding deprivation that you're dealing with. What we really want is a quality job," Poilievre told Hogan.

"This is really unprecedented, and I'm hoping that the government will correct the shortfall it has created."

But Peter Julian, a New Democrat committee member, blamed successive Conservative and Liberal governments for under-funding the auditor general.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2020.
I suggest you take the instructions and go through them carefully, Caterson says.

High returns, some issues pop up in vote-by-mail primary With more than two weeks to go until the states first vote-by-mail primary election July 7,

The ballot must be filled out using a No. 2 pencil or black or blue pen, Caterson says.

Be very careful as you fill in the ballot not to mark anything but the bubbles or balloon or oval circles you intend to mark. Any other mark on the ballot could disqualify it, she says. If it says vote for only one person, vote for only one person. If you vote for more than that, the ballot indicates your votes will not be counted.

The flap on the outside of the inner envelope must NOT be detached, Caterson stresses. It must be signed and the signature must match those on record in poll books and in any requests for mail-in-ballots, Caterson says. If it doesnt, it may be disqualified.

The mailing envelope is postage paid, so no stamps are required.

Once the packet is prepared, it can be dropped in any U.S. Postal Service mailbox, in one of five drop boxes around the county, or hand-delivered to the Board of Elections in the old courthouse in Mays Landing.
Mithun Chakraborty was worried for his family as the the 'only earning member' during the pandemic
Taliban militants have kidnapped about 60 civilians in central Afghanistan over the past week, officials said on June 21, with more than half still being held amid efforts by the United States and other foreign powers to start peace talks.

The Taliban took the hostages in the central province of Daikundi after a woman escaped a Taliban-controlled village in a neighboring province, according to the provincial deputy governor, Mohammad Ali Uruzgani.

Some 26 people, including women and children, had been released and tribal elders were mediating to free the remaining civilians, Uruzgani added.

A Taliban spokesman denied kidnapping the civilians.

The militants, fighting to re-introduce strict Islamic law after their 2001 ouster from power, signed a troop withdrawal agreement with the United States in February, which was designed to pave the way for peace talks with the Afghan government.

But violence has ramped up since the agreement and discord over the release of Taliban prisoners has hampered progress on formal talks.

Underscoring the tension, a spokesman for the national security council said the Taliban had killed more than 40 civilians around the country in the past week.

"The Taliban have failed to deliver on promises of reducing violence against the Afghan people and working for peace," spokesman Javid Faisal wrote on Twitter.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan released a report on June 21 raising concerns about 15 attacks on health workers and healthcare facilities during the coronavirus pandemic, attributing responsibility for the majority of them to the Taliban.

The Taliban rejected both the U.N. and government allegations and accused the government of causing civilian casualties in the last week.
Australia is set to shiver through a brisk winter week, with Queenslanders told to brace for the coldest day of the year.

Most locations across Queensland will have their coldest morning of the year on Thursday, with minimums to be in the single digits although at Stanthorpe the mercury could get as low as -1C.

Snow and sleet was forecast across the state's Granite Belt on Tuesday as overnight temperatures slip into single figures across the state for most of the week.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Shane Kennedy said the sudden cold trough overnight Monday is expected to plunge maximum and minimum temperatures anywhere between two to five degrees below average.

Freezing temperatures, rain and snow are set to blast Australia's east and south coast this week. Pictured: A couple wear rain jackets while walking along a beach

Pictured: A vehicle is seen covered in snow on Monday at Mt Buller Ski Resort in Victoria

Two women rug up as they walk along Bondi Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Tuesday

Stanthorpe, which is the heart of the Granite Belt near the NSW border, can expect 'snow flurries', Mr Kennedy said.

'On Tuesday morning, there's a chance to sleet and light snow flurries about the peaks of the Granite Belt as cold westerly winds wrap around a low off the NSW coast,' he said.

The snow is expected in areas 'above 1000 metres' with no snow accumulations expected and it is not expected to last long.

'Even though it will be colder on Wednesday and Thursday, drier air should push in, reducing the risk of snowfall,' he said.

Southern Queensland townships, including Stanthorpe, have often received winter snowfalls.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned parts of north-east NSW and south-east Queensland 'are in for a taste of a Tassie-like winter this week'.

'A cold air mass will see snow across NSW's central and northern tablelands, with snow flurries possible in Qld's GraniteBelt,' they wrote on Twitter.

The 'cold snap' over southern and central Queensland will bring temperatures below 10C for most areas south of Townsville and below 5C and frost for the interior.

A woman keeps warm with a blanket while reading a book on the grass at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Tuesday

The Bureau of Meteorology warned parts of north-east NSW and south-east Queensland 'are in for a taste of a Tassie-like winter this week'

Pictured: A general view as snow falls on Tuesday at Mt Buller Ski Resort in Victoria

The 'cold snap' over southern and central Queensland will bring temperatures below 10C for most areas south of Townsville and below 5C and frost for the interior

Sydney can expect cool mornings this week, with moderate daytime temperatures around the high teens.

The Harbour City will enjoy mostly sunny but cool conditions on Tuesday through to Thursday before showers sweep in from Friday for a wet weekend.

Sydney is forecast to reach a maximum of 17C on Tuesday and 18C for both Wednesday and Thursday, with mostly sunny conditions.

Victorians will need umbrellas and jackets this week, with cloud cover and showers limiting daytime heating for most of the state.

Melburnians can expect rain from Tuesday until Thursday with minimum temperatures around 9C.

Although the wet weather will ease heading into the weekend, minimum temperatures will drop to 4C on Saturday and Sunday.



Brisbane will shiver through cold evenings this week, with the temperature set to plummet to 7C on Thursday night.

Pictured: Two women play in the snow at Mount Macedon, north-west of Melbourne

A cold air mass will see snow across NSW's Central and Northern Tablelands

Chilly temperatures are forecast in New South Wales on Thursday (pictured)

A woman covers up with a hooded coat while walking along the sand at Bondi Beach on Tuesday

Canberra will be the coldest capital city this week, with a low of zero degrees and high of 12C forecast for Tuesday.

Minimum temperatures will hover around 1C for the entire week, with Wednesday and Thursday, the warmest days, climbing to a brisk 14C, as the city is shaded by clouds.

A front barreling across the southwest over the next few days will generate rain and strong winds along the southern west coast.

Scattered showers in Perth, Hobart and Adelaide will bring cool temperatures just below 10C for the first half of the week before temperatures fall going into the weekend.

It was dry and sunny across south-west parts of Western Australia on Monday, before a cold front hit on Tuesday.

Darwin is in for some sunny weather this week with temperatures ranging from the 20s into the 30s.
The northern city of Yulin in China has become the center of merchants for the Yulin dog meat festival as they offer up animal meat to potential buyers. The animals are transported alive inside confined cages.

According to Express UK, the festival is not a cultural event as the country only started celebrating it in 2009.

Butchered alive

Countless videos have surfaced since then, showing the apparent brutality of the event where rows of dogs are strung up before being blowtorched alive.

The Humane Society International stated on Friday that its activists in the Chinese nation observed carcasses of dogs lined up on tables and being butchered. The actions defy a statement by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture last month that banned the consumption of dog meat for humans.

China's government announced last month that they considered dogs as companions and not food which suggested a ban on consumption of dog meat was coming soon.

The cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai became the first in the country to officially make the dog meat festival an illegal activity in April.

The ministry of agriculture added that they classified dogs as pets and not livestock, whose effect remains to be seen on the Yulin trade market.

The society, however, revealed that compared to last year, they saw less activity within the festival this year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has cautioned that the event increases the possibility of spreading rabies and a heightened risk of cholera as reported by Independent UK.

Also Read: Fact Check: 21 Million Drop in China Mobile Users Reportedly Indicates True Death Toll

In China, on the other hand, eating dog meat has historical foundations that go back four centuries. Recently, however, the consumption of the animals has resulted in criticisms from activists, celebrities, and other Chinese citizens.

The festival could not be stopped as it is not an official event, said the Yulin Municipal Government.

Against the festival

In a 2017 survey, it could be seen that nearly 75% of Yulin residents do not eat dog meat frequently despite the continuous marketing of merchants. A study in 2016 also showed that 64% of Chinese citizens supported the shutting down of the festival, and 69.5% have never had dog meat in their lives.

Reuters reports that a specialist with the Humane Society International, Peter Li, said he hopes for the removal of the festival not only for the animals' sake but also to ensure the safety and health of the citizens.

The lower activity of this year's festival, however, could be linked to the recent coronavirus outbreak and the resulting lockdown restrictions implemented.

UK director of Humane Society International, Claire Bass, told reporters that the city of Yulin is only a small example of a much larger issue that activists are trying to stop.

Bass added that contrary to what people in the West believe, the majority of Chinese citizens do not consume dog meat and are actually horrified by the event that takes man's best friend as a delicacy.

An online petition is calling for the end of the horrific festival which has acquired the signatures of more than 1.5 million people.

Related Article: Tourist Spots in China Flooded with People As Lockdown Lifted

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A roadside bomb has detonated in Daraa, killing at least eight Syrian army fighters, who were travelling on a bus reports Al-Masdar.

A Syrian Arab Army bus was targeted by an improvised explosive device, while traveling through the eastern countryside of the Daraa Governorate on Saturday.

According to a report from eastern Daraa, the Syrian army bus was blown up while it was traveling along the Kahil-Sahwah Road.

The report said that the bus was carrying approximately 40 Syrian army soldiers, when it was targeted by the roadside bomb.

As a result of the attack, at least eight Syrian army soldiers were killed and another two dozen were wounded.

The wounded soldiers were taken to the Izraa National Hospital and Busra al-Sham National Hospital.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

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.
London, June 22 : Scandal-hit Germany-based digital payments firm Wirecard said on Monday that 1.9 billion euros (nearly $2.1 billion) that were supposed to be in its accounts simply do not exist at all.

The missing money accounts for around a quarter of the company's total balance sheet, reports the BBC.

"The Management Board of Wirecard assesses on the basis of further examination that there is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion EUR do not exist," the company said in a statement.

Wirecard stock nosedived in early trading on Monday. The stock has lost more than 85 per cent in three days, bringing its market valuation to less than 2 billion euros from nearly 24 billion euros two years ago when it was at its peak.

Company CEO Markus Braun resigned on Friday after global market consulting firm EY said the cash, which makes up roughly a quarter of the company's assets, could not be located.

The central bank of Philippines said none of the money appears to have entered the country's financial system. The central bank said on Sunday it has now opened an investigation.

The German firm said it was withdrawing its financial results for 2019 and the first quarter of 2020.

According to CNN, Wirecard is now "scrambling to find the money to keep creditors at bay".

Founded in 1999, Wirecard was once considered one of the most promising tech firms in Europe. It processes payments for consumers and businesses, and sells data analytics services.

The company has nearly 6,000 employees in 26 countries around the world.
FLINT, MI -- GoodBoy Clothing founder Oaklin Mixon said Detroit is like a big brother to Flint. And that is part of the reason why opening a second location of the Flint-based retail shop in the city just made sense.

GoodBoys mission and message was always about making good culture. What making good culture meant for us when we started here in Flint was to create businesses that can economically impact the city in a good way, Mixon said. Make good culture just speaks that same language in the city of Detroit.

The micro-retail shop  set to open Spring 2021  will be located in Midtown Detroit next to the Detroit Shipping Company, a restaurant collective and beer hall. GoodBoy Clothing has partnered with Assemble Space and The Complex 444, an upcoming facility with the same owners as the Detroit Shipping Company that will house its second shop.

Nina Monsour of Assemble Space said she was drawn to the uniqueness of the brand and reached out to Mixon in September 2019 about filling one of the spaces.

Its very unique and it has its own story behind it, Monsour said. I love that its Flint-based, love that its Michigan local. Something that we at Assemble especially try to incorporate is bringing local businesses to life, giving them that platform and avenue to grow.

The partnership that led to plans for their second shop began when GoodBoy Clothing participated in a 2018 holiday market downtown Detroit in Campus Martius Park, where Mixon said the brand received a lot of attention and inquiries about whether there was a Detroit location.

It just stuck with them, as far as the story and what we represented, Mixon said. People just definitely gravitated towards the brand and its message.

GoodBoy Clothing is a lifestyle streetwear brand that includes many apparel items and accessories. The brand also made it a point to be aware of current social and cultural issues and aimed to create and highlight those who are adding to the good of the culture, according to their website.

GoodBoy Clothing's hat on display on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at GoodBoy Clothing's production and future retail space in Flint. (Rachel Woolf | MLive.com)

In addition to peoples positive response to their pop-up shop, Monsour said their mission was what led her to reach out. Mixon said that was what started their partnership with Assemble Space.

We shared similar core values in community and trying to see economic growth, not just in our cities but also throughout the state, Mixon said. So we connected there, and it led to this project.

Mixon met with developers in Detroit a month ago and toured the upcoming facility. Monsour said there will be about 16 micro-retail spaces, each 8 by 20 feet and made out of shipping container units. The Complex 444 project launches Spring 2021.

Its all retail, all local businesses. Its something thats totally unique to Midtown, especially, and the city of Detroit, Mansour said. You see hundreds of pop-ups around the area like in Campus Martius, but its nothing permanent. This is the first of its kind.

Mixon said he is excited to see how GoodBoy Clothings brand will evolve once present in Detroit. He said hes always wanted to expand the Flint location, and feels this is the right move.

Flint, since its seen trouble in the past  its just become an example to the world on how to navigate hard times and how to come out of them stronger, Mixon said. Make good culture just represents the people and the great grind that they have to actually see the city thrive. I think we share that commonality with Detroit. Im excited to see what that will look like for the future.

Read more on MLive:

GoodBoy Clothing pioneering an industry with downtown Flint shop
She's no stranger to flaunting her figure in a bikini.

And on Monday, Sharni Vinson showed off her very slender frame when she shared a throwback photo to Instagram.

The 36-year-old actress posed in a black and white two-piece while pushing her two dogs Jagger and Mocha, who she lost two months ago, in a pram.

Throwback: Former Home and Away star Sharni Vinson showed off her very slender frame in a bikini as she pushed her two dogs in a pram in a throwback photo

'We miss you Mochahead. Life hasn't been the same since,' she captioned the sweet post.

In the photo, Sharni wore a brown fanny pack around her waist as well as a hat and a pair of sunglasses to protect herself from the sun.

In April, the actress told her followers the devastating news that her dog Mocha had died, writing: 'It is with great heartache and sadness that we say goodbye to our beautiful boy Mocha.'

'God only knows what we'll be without you': In April, Sharni told her followers the devastating news that her dog Mocha had died

'For over 16 years he's been our best friend, my little brother and my mum's most loyal soul companion.'

'The emptiness that remains in our home and in our hearts cannot be filled. God only knows what we'll be without you,' she ended.

Sharni first rose to fame on Channel Seven's long-running drama Home and Away, appearing on the program between 2004 and 2008.

Rise to fame: Sharni first rose to fame on Channel Seven's long-running drama Home and Away, appearing on the program between 2004 and 2008

She left the Australian soap in 2008 to try her luck in Hollywood, where she scored roles in sequels like Step Up 3D and Blue Crush 2.

Sharni has since carved out a niche for herself in the horror genre, starring in the slasher flick You're Next, the killer shark movie Bait 3D, and The House on Willow Street.

In August 2019, she returned to Australia after living in the US to star on Dance Boss, alongside Dannii Minogue, Adam Garcia and Timomatic.
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakthru Beverage Group today announced that it has promoted Brian Albenze to Executive Vice President of its United Division, dedicated to the Diageo and Moet Hennessy USA portfolios, effective July 1, 2020. Albenze succeeds industry veteran Kevin O'Neil, whose strategic vision led to the development and advancement of this specialized division in 2010 and has since grown to represent a team of more than 500 associates and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. O'Neil, who intends to retire later this year, will move into a strategic advisory role in the interim to support a smooth role transition and advise on key projects on behalf of the company.

As Executive Vice President, United Division, Albenze will assume responsibility of Breakthru's Diageo and Moet Hennessy USA business across the company's footprint, developing and executing innovative national strategies and long-term planning efforts on behalf of the brands. In addition, Albenze will manage the overall United Division team and support Diageo and Moet Hennessy USA's key commercial initiatives while delivering upon the portfolios' financial plans and goals. Albenze will sit on the executive leadership team and report to Breakthru's President and CEO, Greg Baird.

"We are deeply grateful for Kevin's many contributions to drive Breakthru's success over the years. His strategic focus, sharp intuition and commitment to integrity have been critical factors in bolstering key partnerships across our footprint and in mentoring many leaders within our organization and industry," said Greg Baird, Breakthru Beverage Group's President and CEO. "Throughout his 30-year career, Brian has fostered strong supplier relationships, including Diageo and Moet Hennessy USA. This history, coupled with Brian's extraordinary leadership in introducing innovative tools and technologies to Breakthru's customer engagement efforts, cements our confidence in his ability to build on the United Division's success and drive continued growth."

Since 2016, Albenze has served as Executive Vice President, Commercial Excellence, for Breakthru, leading the company's commercial platform and capabilities as well as driving strategy for key commercial activities including sales team effectiveness, commercial business strategy, communications and branding initiatives. In partnership with the company's sales and IT teams, Albenze helped bring Breakthru's premier tools and technologies to market including a digital platform scaled across the company's footprint to engage customers and drive sales.

Previously, Albenze worked for Charmer Sunbelt Group as President of Connecticut Distributors Inc., the second largest wine and spirits distributor in Connecticut, where he advanced the organization to lead as the first wine and spirits distributor in Connecticut to offer channel specific focus. Throughout much of his career at Charmer Sunbelt Group, Albenze focused on supporting Diageo and Moet Hennessy USA portfolios, including managing the company's dedicated sales and marketing capabilities in Colorado in 2004 and launching the first dedicated sales division in Washington D.C. in 2000.

"I admire Kevin and his significant accomplishments at Breakthru Beverage Group and throughout his career in the industry. He is a visionary leader and I feel honored by the opportunity to follow in his footsteps and build on the momentum he has helped create," said Albenze. "As Breakthru continues towards its vision to serve as the leading beverage company in North America, our commitment to lead with increased efficiency and effectiveness remains resolute. I look forward to returning to support some of the most iconic brands in our industry and building on the success of this key Breakthru division."

About Breakthru Beverage Group

Breakthru Beverage Group is one of the leading alcohol wholesalers in the United States and the largest broker in Canada representing a full total beverage alcohol portfolio of spirits, wine and beer. Across all markets, Breakthru aligns a nimble and insightful approach to sales, marketing and operations. Family ownership is active in the business and committed to being stewards of heritage and champions of innovation. For more information, visit www.BreakthruBev.com.

SOURCE Breakthru Beverage Group
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while addressing the state on Monday said that today India is fighting two wars against China. He said one of them is being fought at the border and the other one against the virus which has been spread by the country. Kejriwal said that as India's 20 brave soldiers did not back down while fighting the Chinese, similarity, the country will also not retreat and will both the wars.

'Our country is fighting two wars against China'

Kejriwal said, "We are fighting two wars against China- one against the virus which has been sent by China and the other one at the border. Our doctors and nurses are fighting the war against the virus and our soldiers are fighting at the border. We Indians stand with the doctors and the soldiers and we have to fight these wars together. There should be no politics in this. India needs to be united. Our soldiers did not back out and even we won't until we win both the wars."

#WATCH Our country is fighting 2 wars against China - one at border & another against virus from China. We have to remain united to fight both, none of these should be politicised. Our brave soldiers didn't back down, even we won't retreat until we win: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/9MxI6h5Ahp  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

The Chief Minister informed that there has been three times increase in testing in the national capital. "Earlier, it was 5,000 tests per day, now it is around 18,000 per day. Now people will not face any issues in getting tested," he said. "All those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure your oxygen levels every few hours. Once you are well, you can return it to the government," he added.

READ | Amit Shah to hold a meeting with Delhi L-G, CM Kejriwal to discuss COVID-19 crisis

READ | Delhi L-G revokes '5-day institutional quarantine order' amid Kejriwal's stiff opposition

There are 25,000 active COVID-19 cases in Delhi and around 12,000 people under home isolation, Kejriwal said. 2,175 deaths have been reported in the national capital, according to the Union Health Ministry.

READ | Delhi BJP accuses Arvind Kejriwal & AAP of taking credit for Centre's Covid intervention

READ | COVID: CM Kejriwal opposes L-Gs 5-day mandatory institutional quarantine order in Delhi
The Delhi health department on Monday issued a new set of guidelines for how patients will be assessed, requiring anyone who tests positive through a lab-based swab test to be taken to a Covid care centre where a medical officer will determine whether they are eligible for home isolation, and anyone who tests positive through a rapid antigen test be assessed on the spot at testing centres or in their localities.

The guidelines ended confusion over the status of mild and asymptomatic patients after the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), headed by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, first made it mandatory on Friday that all Covid patients stay in institutional quarantine for at least five days, and then retracted the order the following day amid opposition from the Delhi government.

Mondays new guidelines  signed by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) -- appeared to reconcile some differences between DDMA and the state government on the issue of home isolation.

The new SOPs have been issued to ensure that everyone who qualifies for home isolation gets the best medical attention and anyone who doesnt have facilities to do the same, gets moved to Covid care centres. Even if the patients are asymptomatic, we want to ensure they get regular medical attention and all the assistance they need, said a statement issued by the government late on Monday.

Just hours before that, however, the Delhi government (which has consistently pushed home isolation as a sustainable treatment option, particularly since a surge in cases could overwhelm the citys hospitals), and DDMA appeared to be at odds over how to resolve two key questions surrounding home isolation.

The first was whether all positive patients need to make at least one mandatory visit to a Covid care centre  it was part of the DDMAs Saturday order but the Delhi government felt that it would potentially lead to a spread in infections.

And the second was about a private firm that was so far handling the routine care management of Covid patients under home isolation, but whose contract was cancelled.

The Delhi government roped in Portea Medical for the follow-up process with home isolation cases before the arrangement was called off by the DDMA. As part of a stop-gap arrangement, the private agency continued its followup calls till the SOP was announced on Monday.

According Mondays guidelines, follow-ups will now be carried out via telephone calls by a team outsourced/from linked health centre/medical students from various medical colleges for a period of nine days after a person tests positive. It was not immediately clear if the order paves the way for Portea to be engaged again.

This difference in opinion manifested itself early on Monday, when deputy CM and interim health minister Manish Sisodia described DDMAs Saturday order of mandatory assessment at a Covid care centre as impractical.

The L-Gs rule of taking all patients to CCCs is not practically possible. The district magistrates (DMs) have reported to us that they do not have enough ambulances to take patients to the CCCs. Their concern is valid also because in the entire city, we currently have only 250 government ambulances, he said.

Sisodia also said that the health department and DDMA was scheduled for a meeting around midday -- which the LGs office denied. There was no meeting notice issued. It is wrong on the part to the government to talk about an agenda on their own with the media first and later put it on the L-G, said a spokesperson of the L-G office.

Sisodia, the deputy chief minister, is temporarily looking after the health department after his colleague Satyendar Jain had to be hospitalised with the virus.

Since Saturday, local health officials followed different rules. Some have devised their own plan where they are continuing with the old system which was valid until Friday where a team led by the district surveillance officer (DSO) visits the house of the Covid positive patients and do all the required assessment. So, there is a lot of confusion, not just with the local teams, but more importantly, patients are also clueless, Sisodia said earlier on Monday.

While the new guidelines will likely bring uniformity on what the correct protocol is, officials at the district level say the logistical challenge will persist.

This order was given without any consultation with us. We are likely to face practical problems on ground, said an official from one of Delhis 11 districts, asking not to be named.

Moving over 100 patients in each district to CCC (Covid care centre) and back will likely be a challenge. But, we will try to follow the guidelines given to us to the best of our abilities, a second official added.

The DGHS guidelines suggest every Covid positive patient will need to be assessed at a facility at least once. For those that test positive using the rapid antigen test kit  for which they are likely to have been at the testing centre or in their localities  the assessment of whether their health permits them will be made on the spot. A medical officer will determine in which category the patients Covid infection is  mild, moderate or severe  and check for any comorbidities.

A patient with no symptoms but with an underlying health condition such as heart disease, diabetes or lung ailment will be made to stay at a Covid care centre. A separate team from the district surveillance office will determine if a persons residence is adequate for home isolation.

For people who test positive through a lab-based RT-PCR, district officials will first establish contact by phone. The patient will then be taken to a CCC for assessment, while a separate team will do a house visit.

Experts said there are valid concerns on both sides of the debate on the mandatory assessments. Home isolation is essential for managing Covid-19. The kind of care a patient gets at home he/ she will never get at a hospital. However, this is not fit for all and that is where the problem came in. 30% of Delhi lives in slums, where several people stay in the same rooms, home isolation is not feasible in such cases, said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital.

But, you cannot have ten patients coming into the Covid centres just to get assessed. You would be exposing ten vehicles, ten ambulance drivers, and ten attendants to the infection. So for every ten cases, you are exposing 30 people. What is the point? Instead, sending one team with a doctor to a patients house is logistically more sound, he added.
Kendall Press, a leading graphics arts company, today announced it is now offering a Reopening Kit comprised of required printed materials businesses need to begin welcoming back employees and customers.

The kit may be all that small retailers and restaurants need but it can also serve as a starter package for larger businesses. The kit includes:



MA Business 24 x 36 Certification Poster (1)

MA Employer 24 x 36 Poster (1)

MA Employee 24 x 36 Poster (1)

Social Distancing 12 Circle Floor Decals (10)

Social Distancing 24 x 36 Signs (3)

Wait Here 6 X 24 Floor Decals (5)

Mask 8.5 x 11 Window Decals (2)

Handwashing 8.5 x 11 Decals (4)

With the exception of the State of Massachusetts posters, all of the materials can be branded, or a number of off-the-shelf designs can be used.

Since the requirements for the phased reopening were announced by the state, weve been supporting many businesses in the Boston and Cambridge area to ensure they have what they need to comply. The materials weve included in the Reopening Kit represent a good foundation for meeting the states requirements for business reopening as well as providing good communication for employees and customers, said Kendall Press President, Edward Christopher.

Many business owners and facility managers weve talked to are trying to figure out what they need, and many feel overwhelmed. With so many vendors offering random materials, we wanted to try to make the process easy and streamlined. When we discuss the contents or our Reopening Kit and how it checks off all the requirements, there is a sense of relief from clients who have a million things on their minds with respect to how theyll reopen, how theyll configure space, how theyll deal with employees and customers. As a partner, being able to make a critical part of the reopening process less stressful for our clients is important to us, said Jacob Dickinson, General Manager.

In addition to the Reopening Kit, Kendall Press can provide just about anything necessary for COVID-19 communications including banners, large posters, desktop easel-back signs, flyers, disposable menus, window clings, non-slip floor decals and more.

About Kendall Press

Established in 1986, Kendall Press is a leading graphics arts company serving the greater Boston area and beyond. Based in Kendall Square, Cambridge it specializes in designing custom solutions to address the most challenging communication and timing requirements of its clients. Its services include graphic design, digital printing, offset printing, banner, poster and sign printing, marketing mailing, binding and finishing, trade show printing and promotional products. Learn more at https://www.kendall-press.com.
V irgin Atlantic will restart passenger flights to 17 additional destinations from August.

The new destinations include Barbados, Antigua, Shanghai, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Miami, Lagos, Boston, Johannesburg and Tobago.

Virgin has also once again called on the UK government to end its quarantine measures.

Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer said: As countries around the world begin to relax travel restrictions, we look forward to welcoming our customers back onboard and flying them safely to many destinations across our network. From August onwards, we will resume passenger flying to 17 additional destinations around the world including Tel Aviv, Miami, Lagos and San Francisco.

However, we are monitoring external conditions extremely closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14 day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK.

"We know that as the Covid-19 crisis subsides, air travel will be a vital enabler of the UKs economic recovery.

"Therefore, we are calling for UK Government to continually review its quarantine measures and instead look at a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, including air bridges, which will support a successful and safe restart of international air travel for passengers and businesses.

Virgin timetable for restarts / Virgin

The airline has previously said services to Orlando and Hong Kong from Heathrow would resume on July 20, with flights to New York JFK, Los Angeles, and Shanghai set to restart on July 21.

The airline will enhance its cleaning practices at check-in and onboard, and provide medical-grade face masks for passengers to wear onboard.
C entral Londons biggest stalled regeneration scheme got back under way today with the appointment of architects to create a new masterplan for up to 40 acres at Earls Court.

Farringdon-based Hawkins\Brown and Clerkenwells Studio Egret West will be responsible for creating a more sustainable and vibrant vision for a new district in west London.

The move comes six months after the former owners of the site, property company Capital & Counties, sold it in a 425 million deal following years of bitter clashes with Hammersmith and Fulham council.

The new majority owners, developers Delancey and Dutch pension fund APG, have handed back two estates  West Kensington and Gibbs Green  at the heart of the row to the Labour-run local authority.

Capital & Counties bought the land, which included the now demolished Earls Court Exhibition Centre as well as the estates, in 2012 when the council was run by the Conservatives.

It hired urban designer Sir Terry Farrell to draw up a 12 billion plan for a new town including 7,500 homes. However, only limited progress has been made apart from the Lillie Square upmarket housing development on the former Earls Court car park in Seagrave Road.

The project was overshadowed by a high-profile campaign of opposition from residents, who were strongly backed by the council after Labour seized control of the town hall in 2014 elections.

Delancey and APG have now formed a new vehicle, The Earls Court Development Company, that will work with Transport for London, which owns a 37 per cent stake.

Delancey chief executive Jamie Ritblat, speaking on behalf of The Earls Court Development Company, said: As the current custodians of the project, we and the masterplan architects place engagement with the local community and wider stakeholders at the heart of our approach to design and development and alongside Hawkins\Brown and Studio Egret West we will be consulting every step of the way.

The appointment comes after a six-month international competition.

They have been tasked with drawing up a vision with less upmarket private housing and more employment opportunities.

Hammersmith & Fulham leader Stephen Cowan, said: We look forward to continuing our strong relationship with them [Delancey] and working with Hawkins\Brown and Studio Egret West.
United Way of Lake Countys 2019 fundraising campaign was unlike any other.

But despite a health emergency that shut down businesses, restaurants, public facilities, social agencies and workplaces, the nonprofit saw increased impact, and managed to provide nearly 94,000 services to Lake County residents in need.

Chair Vanessa Tey Iosue, president of Cleveland-based Burges & Burges Strategists, closed the 2019 campaign at UWLCs recent annual meeting alongside the organizations President and CEO Jennifer McCarty.

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, this is the first year UWLC held a virtual annual meeting.

As in previous years, the meeting served to recap the year, highlighting accomplishments and recognizing individuals and local corporations contributions to the community, including donations to the Lake County Relief Fund.

Iosue announced that 93,833 services were provided to residents in need through UWLCs support of agency programs. Beyond this, over $130,000 has been raised to date from the organizations Lake County Relief Fund.

McCarty noted that UWLC also provided over 40 local food pantries with enough food for 330,134 meals throughout 2019, a 43 percent increase over the previous years 230,427 meals.

The work we do here is solely for the benefit Lake County residents, and our 2019 campaign is such a win for our community thanks to the focus and determination of Vanessa, McCarty said.

We take our role of addressing the local needs of our community seriously and are proud of the work we do to help those in need, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, when needs are greater than ever before.

Iosue said it was an honor serving as campaign chair.

The organization has extraordinarily deep roots in our local community that are nearly 100 years old, she added. Knowing the legacy of such an established and well-regarded organization, I was excited to be able to put my skills as a strategist to work for a nonprofit.

I plan to continue my support of United Way of Lake County and urge others to join me. When you give to United Way of Lake County, your donation helps assure the availability of an entire network of services that no one agency alone can provide.

Although no 2020 Campaign chair has been named yet, UWLC confirmed it will place increased focus on the critical needs of the community that have been brought on by the pandemic.

So many people are hurting, said Tami Lewis, UWLC director of marketing and communications. Not only is this due to high unemployment rates, but the need for mental health services has increased and there has been a rise in domestic violence. Well address many of these issues.
Senior High Schools (SHS's) are reopening for final year students and second-year Gold Track students from today.

Some 800,000 students, teachers and non-teaching staff are expected at various school premises nationwide.

Schools had been closed since March 15, 2020, as part of the government's measures to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The final year SHS students will be in school for six weeks before sitting for the West Africa Senior School Certification Examination (WASSCE).

The WASSCE in Ghana will take place from August 3, 2020, after six weeks of studies.

Only a maximum of 25 students will be permitted in each class.

There will be no mass gatherings and no sporting activities but religious activities will be permitted in line with existing protocols.

Day students in schools with boarding houses will become resident for the period. Day students in schools without boarding facilities will commute from home.

Dining hall ensure required social distancing whilst no visitors to the schools will be allowed.

There will also be no mass gatherings or sporting activities.

One-thousand one-hundred and sixty-seven Senior High Schools in the country have been fumigated and disinfected.

Eighteen thousand Veronica Buckets, 800,000 pieces of 200-millilitre sanitisers, 36,000 rolls of tissue paper, 36,000 gallons of liquid soap and 7,200 thermometer guns have been distributed to schools, according to President Akufo-Addo, who spoke on Sunday evening.

In addition, each student, teaching and non-teaching staff, invigilator and school administrator will be provided with three pieces of reusable face masks.

Two of these will be provided when the schools resume and third within a fortnight, the President said.

The government did not facilitate in mass testing of students, teachers and non-teaching staff despite some calls from stakeholders and critics .

The Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), for example, proposed mass coronavirus testing of students, teaching and non-teaching staff before schools reopen.

Four Teacher unions; the Ghana National Association of Teachers, National Association of Graduate Teachers, Tertiary Education Workers' Union and Coalition of Concerned Teachers also registered their opposition to reopening schools .

President Akufo-Addo assured all parents and guardians that the government was committed to protecting the lives of the 800,000 students, teachers and non-teaching staff, who will be returning to school.

I will be the last person to put the lives of the 'Akufo-Addo graduates' at risk, he stressed.

---citinewsroom
They announced their split in December 2019 after 20 years of marriage and each of them serving time in prison for fraud.

But that hasn't soured Teresa Giudice from honoring her estranged husband, Joe Giudice, on Father's Day in a touching Instagram post.

'Happy Fathers Day @joe.giudice,' the Real Housewives of New Jersey star captioned a photo of Joe with their four daughters, Gia, 19, Gabriella, 15, Milania, 14, and Audriana, 10.

'The girls miss you today & every day!'

Sweet sentiment: Teresa Giudice paid tribute to her estranged husband, Joe Giudice, on Father's Day by posting photo of him with their four daughters

Joe, who has been living in his native Italy since his release from ICE custody late last year, was quick to respond by complimenting his estranged wife and their daughters.

'Thank you for being my angels, for showing the world you are superstars,' the 48-year-old wrote along with the hashtags, '#bestdaughters #thankyoubestmomever.'

The former couple's oldest daughter Gia also paid tribute to her father, as well as the two other father figures in her life: her uncle, Joe Gorga, and her late grandfather, Giacinto 'Nonno' Gorga.

Returning the compliment: Joe was quick to respond to his estranged wife's post by complimenting her and their daughters; he is pictured with daughters, Gia, 19, Gabriella, 15, Milania, 14, and Audriana, 10

Doting daughter: Oldest daughter, Gia Giudice, also paid tribute to her father

'Happy Father's Day to the most amazing people in my life and souls who keep me going every single day! Dad thank you for showing me how to show strength, Nonno thank you for always pushing me to be my best self, and Zio Joe thank you for being there when I always need you,' Gia wrote.

She ended with an emotional message to her Nonno, who recently passed away in April.

'Nonno today and everyday I speak to you and thank you for everything you taught me, you are one and a million, and I miss you so much everyday.'

She added, 'Thank you all so much for making me the person I am today. I love you Nonno I'm celebrating you today and everyday.'

Grateful: Gia, 19, also honored the two other father figures in her life: her uncle, Joe Gorga, and her late grandfather, Giacinto 'Nonno' Gorga, who passed away in April

Joe was deported back to Italy last October after spending seven months in Immigration And Customs Enforcement custody following a 36-month prison stint for conspiracy to commit wire and bankruptcy fraud.

He served his sentence right after Teresa finished 11-months of a 15-month prison sentence for fraud. The judge in the case allowed them to serve separately so their children would have at least one parent in the house.

Once they were both free, Joe, Teresa and their girls reunited in Joe's adopted new home of Salerno, a port city southeast of Naples.

'Teresa and Joe talked about their future when she and the girls were in Italy and decided it was best for them to separate,' a source told Us Weekly at the time of their split.

'Neither of them wanted to be in a long-distance relationship. They harbor no ill will toward each other and will continue to coparent their kids.'

The divorce proceedings are still ongoing.
CLEVELAND, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE: SHW) today increased its net sales guidance for the second quarter of 2020. The Company now expects second quarter 2020 consolidated net sales to decrease by a mid-single-digit percentage compared to the second quarter of 2019. The Company's prior guidance, issued April 29, 2020, was for second quarter 2020 consolidated net sales to decrease by a low to mid-teens percentage compared to the second quarter of 2019.

On a segment basis, second quarter net sales in The Americas Group are expected to be down by a high-single-digit percentage compared to the previous guidance of down by a low-double-digit to mid-teens percentage. Net sales in the Consumer Brands Group are expected to be significantly above the high end of the previous guidance of up by a high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage. Net sales in the Performance Coatings Group are expected to be in line with the previous guidance of down by a high-teens percentage.

"Our employees have performed admirably during this challenging time to meet our customers' needs," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John G. Morikis. "We are raising our second quarter sales guidance given our ability to capture and serve greater than expected demand in our North American architectural businesses.

"We are encouraged by the sequential improvement in all three of our business segments during the second quarter. In The Americas Group, we rapidly adapted to the pandemic by implementing curbside pickup in our stores, utilizing our fleet of over 3,000 delivery vehicles, and leveraging our e-commerce platform. We have gradually and safely reopened nearly all of our sales floors over the last month. DIY growth in our stores remains strong, while our residential repaint and new residential segments have improved at a faster rate than our property management, new commercial and protective and marine segments. In the Consumer Brands Group, the unprecedented demand from most of our retail partners has remained robust, driven by consumers who are nesting during the pandemic and focused on DIY projects. In the Performance Coatings Group, demand has been variable by end market and geography. Packaging remains our strongest performer, while demand in our coil business has been choppy following the slower reopening of many commercial construction projects. Our automotive refinish business remains under pressure as driving trends have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Recovery remains sluggish in our general industrial and industrial wood businesses.

"Although uncertainties in the timing and pace of improvement in the U.S. and global operating environments continue, we remain confident in our ability to successfully manage through these challenging conditions while continuing to invest and execute on initiatives that will drive our long-term growth."

The Company is scheduled to release second quarter 2020 financial results on July 28, 2020, at which time it will provide its outlook on third quarter sales and update its full year sales and earnings per share guidance.

About Sherwin-Williams

Founded in 1866, The Sherwin-Williams Company is a global leader in the manufacture, development, distribution, and sale of paints, coatings and related products to professional, industrial, commercial, and retail customers. Sherwin-Williams manufactures products under well-known brands such as Sherwin-Williams, Valspar, HGTV HOME by Sherwin-Williams, Dutch Boy, Krylon, Minwax, Thompson's Water Seal, Cabot and many more. With global headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, Sherwin-Williams branded products are sold exclusively through a chain of more than 4,900 company-operated stores and facilities, while the company's other brands are sold through leading mass merchandisers, home centers, independent paint dealers, hardware stores, automotive retailers, and industrial distributors. The Sherwin-Williams Performance Coatings Group supplies a broad range of highly-engineered solutions for the construction, industrial, packaging and transportation markets in more than 120 countries around the world. Sherwin-Williams shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: SHW). For more information, visit www.sherwin.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements," as defined under U.S. federal securities laws, with respect to sales and other matters. These statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believe," "expect," "may," "will," "should," "project," "could," "plan," "goal," "potential," "seek," "intend" or "anticipate" or the negative thereof or comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are based upon management's current expectations, estimates, assumptions and beliefs concerning future events and conditions. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the control of the Company that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements and from the Company's historical results and experience. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include such things as: finalization of our financial statements for the quarter ended June 30, 2020; general business and economic conditions; the Company's ability to successfully integrate past and future acquisitions into its existing operations, as well as the performance of the businesses acquired; strengths of retail and manufacturing economies and the growth in the coatings industry; changes in the Company's relationships with customers and suppliers; changes in raw material availability and pricing; adverse weather conditions or impacts of climate change, natural disasters and public health crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic; the duration, severity and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions implemented by international, federal, state and local public health and governmental authorities to contain and combat the outbreak and spread of COVID-19, which may exacerbate one or more of the aforementioned and/or other risks, uncertainties and factors more fully described in the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and other risks, uncertainties and factors described from time to time in the Company's reports filed with the SEC. Since it is not possible to predict or identify all of the risks, uncertainties and other factors that may affect future results, the above list should not be considered a complete list. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Relations Contacts: Media Contact:



Jim Jaye Julie Young Senior Vice President, Investor Relations Vice President, Global & Corporate Communications Corporate Communications 216.515.8682 216.515.8849 [email protected] [email protected]



Eric Swanson

Vice President, Investor Relations

216.566.2766

[email protected]



SOURCE The Sherwin-Williams Company

Related Links

http://www.sherwin.com


A 42-year-old businessman killed his estranged wife in Bengaluru and then returned to Kolkata where he shot himself after allegedly shooting his 65-year-old mother-in-law on Monday afternoon.

Police said that a divorce suit was on between the man and his 40-year-old wife for the past two years. The couple has a 10-year-old son, who is safe, police said.

We have initiated a case and an investigation is on, said a senior officer of the Kolkata Polices detective department.

On Monday, around 5.30 pm, the man went to his in-laws flat in an upscale complex in Phoolbagan area and had a heated altercation with his 70-year-old father-in-law. When his mother-in-law intervened, the man allegedly shot her from a close range.

His father-in-law then rushed out of the flat, locking it from outside. He sought his neighbours help and police was informed.

When police opened the door, they found the man lying in a pool of blood on the bed. The firearm was lying on the floor.

The man had returned to Kolkata by flight on Monday. Further investigation is on, said a senior police officer

Police then alerted the Bengaluru police. The womans body was found by officers of the Whitefield police station.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A Devon and Cornwall Police sergeant is under criminal investigation by the police watchdog for allegedly distributing an inappropriate image of George Floyd to a WhatsApp group, which contained other officers.

The image is alleged to have been shared on 30 May  five days after Floyds death in Minneapolis after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is also investigating other members of the group, which contained a number of officers and staff members, for their alleged response to the image or their apparent failure to report the matter.

The force announced the sergeants suspension as an interim measure on Monday afternoon. He had previously been placed on restricted duties, reports suggest, after the alleged incident was promptly referred to the watchdog.

It will be of considerable public concern that such an image was apparently shared among colleagues by a serving police officer, IOPC regional director Catrin Evans said in a statement.

George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Show all 30 1 /30 George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Police spray mace at protestors to break up a gathering near the Minneapolis Police third precinct after a white police officer was caught on a bystander's video pressing his knee into the neck of African-American man George Floyd, who later died at a hospital, in Minneapolis Reuters George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A protester holds a sign with an image of George Floyd AP George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Protesters demonstrate against the death of George Floyd AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A protester throws a piece of wood on a fire in the street just north of the 3rd Police Precinct Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets People in other US cities also protested the murder, like Los Angeles AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets AP George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Reuters George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A police officer lobs a canister to break up crowds Reuters George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A protester is treated after inhaling tear gas Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Two police officers stand on the roof of the Third Police Precinct during a face off with a group of protesters Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Protesters outside a Minneapolis police precinct two days after George Floyd died EPA George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Protesters run from tear gas Reuters George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets AP George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Demonstrators gather to protest in Los Angeles AP George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Police remove barricades set by protesters AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A fire burns inside of an Auto Zone store near the Third Police Precinct Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Flowers, signs and balloons are left near a makeshift memorial to George Floyd near the spot where he died AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A policeman faces a protester holding a placard in downtown Los Angeles AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A couple poses with a sign in Los Angeles AFP via Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets MINNEAPOLIS, MN - MAY 27: A man is tended to after sustaining an injury from a projectile shot by police outside the 3rd Police Precinct building on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired after a video taken by a bystander was posted on social media showing Floyd's neck being pinned to the ground by an officer as he repeatedly said, "I cant breathe". Floyd was later pronounced dead while in police custody after being transported to Hennepin County Medical Center. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) Stephen Maturen Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets A protester reacts after inhaling tear gas Getty George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Getty Images George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Protesters use shopping carts as a barricade Getty Images George Floyd death: Minneapolis protests erupt in the streets Protesters clash with the police as they demonstrate against the death of George Floyd AFP via Getty Images

We are criminally investigating the sergeant who allegedly shared the image, and examining the conduct of some others involved in the group.

Our investigators will be considering whether the sharing of this image was motivated by racial discrimination. Devon and Cornwall Police has rightly promptly referred it to the IOPC, and I would like to assure people we are conducting a thorough and independent investigation.

The probe follows a mandatory referral to the IOPC from Devon and Cornwall Police after one of the WhatsApp group members reported the image to their force manager.

Assistant Chief Constable Jim Nye said: Devon and Cornwall Police expects the highest standards of behaviour from all its staff when on and off duty at all times.

This matter was quickly brought to light internally by a member of staff and reported to a Devon and Cornwall Police manager. A proactive referral was then made to the IOPC at the earliest opportunity.

The IOPC has confirmed they will be treating this as an independent investigation and the force will co-operate fully with the investigation. As an interim measure Devon and Cornwall Police has chosen to suspend a police sergeant involved in the investigation.

Devon and Cornwall Police wholly appreciate the concern our communities will have regarding an investigation of this kind, I would reassure them that I, and the chief constable, will do everything possible to ensure the matter is dealt with effectively and in a timely manner.

It would be inappropriate to make any judgement or further comment at this stage, but is only right that we show openness and transparency with our communities on this matter, so will continue to work closely with the IOPC during the coming days and weeks.

Floyds death in police custody has drawn tens of thousands to the streets in the UK, despite the coronavirus pandemic, to highlight and protest systemic racism in the UK.

The public glare upon the polices record on race has intensified as a result, with numerous protesters carrying placards with the names of people of colour who have died during encounters with UK police, amid renewed conversation about the disproportionate rates of stop and search, arrest and use of force faced by black communities.

Devon and Cornwall Police has also referred itself to the IOPC after the death of 35-year-old Simeon Francis in a cell in Torquay on 20 May.

While the IOPC is investigating, Franciss family said they have also made a formal complaint to the force over a video from July 2019 depicting Francis shouting I cant breathe during a separate arrest by the same force.

The footage shows 10 officers, three of whom are restraining Francis and one appearing to press their knee into Franciss back. A witness can be heard to remark: Do you really need that many officers on him?

The force said that the arrest related to a recall to prison, and that Mr Francis had been returned safe and well to prison. It has referred itself to the IOPC over the incident since the footage emerged.
On the evening of June 15, India and China engaged in a face-off in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh which is considered the most deadly clash in past four decades. Twenty Indian soldiers, including the commanding officer of an infantry battalion, lost their lives in the incident. Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened an all-party meeting on June 19 where he said that though India is a peace loving country, it can give befitting reply if provoked. Efforts are on in both the countries to defuse the tense situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Here is a timeline of what has happened so far:

Indian officer, two others killed in clash with PLA; casualties on both sides

The Indian army suffered multiple casualties, including that of an officer, in a violent face off with Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) on Monday night in eastern Ladakh, the army said in a statement. It added that there were casualties on both sides. Read more

India, China troops have disengaged at Galwan, says army on clash that killed 20

Twenty Indian soldiers including the commanding officer of an infantry battalion were killed on Monday evening in a clash with Chinese troops in eastern Ladakhs Galwan valley where soldiers of the two countries have been locked in a tense stand-off for 40 days, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times. Read more

A timeline: India-Chinas deadliest border clash since 1975 explained

India and China, on Monday evening engaged in their first deadly conflict in at least 45 years, resulting in 20 deaths on the Indian side, including that of a commanding officer, and possibly 43 casualties including injuries on the Chinese side, pushing the bilateral relationship between the two nuclear powers to an all-time low. Read more

Outnumbered, Indian soldiers stood ground in violent seven-hour face-off

The clash between Indian and Chinese troops in which both sides suffered casualties on Monday began at around 7 pm in the Galwan Valley when an Indian Army squad of about 50 soldiers, led by Colonel Santosh Babu, reached a contested site near what is known as Patrol Point 14, people familiar with the developments said on Wednesday. Read more

India warns China of serious impact on ties, Modi talks of befitting reply

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India would give a befitting reply to any provocation even as New Delhi and Beijing on Wednesday spoke of the need to avoid actions that could escalate matters along their disputed border, two days after a violent face-off left 20 Indian soldiers dead. Read more

India could restrict market access to China-made goods to counter Beijing

With external affairs minister S Jaishankar speaking with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Wednesday for the first time since the troop build-up along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) began several weeks ago, people familiar with developments said the focus is expected to remain on bilateral efforts to defuse the crisis. Read more

No soldiers missing after Galwan Valley clash, says Indian Army

The Indian Army on Thursday rubbished media reports that claimed several soldiers had gone missing after the June 15 violent clash with Chinese troops in eastern Ladakhs Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and China also purportedly suffered casualties. Read more

Armed, but followed protocol: Govt

India said on Thursday that soldiers involved in the June 15 Galwan Valley clash with Chinese troops were carrying weapons and ammunition but did not open fire as they were following border agreements between the two countries -- a remark that came in response to a question from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on whether the Indian soldiers were sent in unarmed. Read more

China releases 10 Indian soldiers after intense negotiations

Intense negotiations through diplomatic and military channels, including three rounds of talks between senior military officers, led to the release of 10 Indian soldiers detained by the Chinese side during the violent brawl of June 15 in Galwan Valley, people familiar with developments said. Read more

Taught them a lesson: PM Modi explains the big picture in stand-off with China

Chinese troops were neither able to enter the country nor take over any post, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an all party meeting on Friday evening, assuring the country and political parties that the armed forces were capable of action in more than one theatre. Read more

Ladakh face-off: Troops deployed on LAC to get body protection suits, batons

The Indian Army has ordered body protective suits and batons for forward troops deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, the focus of current tensions with China, to protect them from assaults by Chinese troops, two officers familiar with the development said on Friday. Read more

No restrictions on using firearms: India gives soldiers freedom along LAC in extraordinary times

A significant change in Rules of Engagement (ROE) by the Indian Army following the Galwan Valley skirmish that left 20 Indian soldiers dead gives complete freedom of action to commanders deployed along the contested Line of Actual Control (LAC) to handle situations at the tactical level, two senior officers said on Saturday on condition of anonymity. Read more

Not just Indias Galwan, China has a long list of territorial disputes

Military commanders of Indian and Chinese armies have been holding several rounds of talks to resolve the impasse at the four stand-off points in eastern Ladakh as the soldiers. Read more

Ladakh vs Doklam standoff: Same military commander, different tactics

Some time after President Xi Jinping landed in Ahmedabad on 17 September 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi broached the intrusion by Chinese troops in Ladakhs Chumar. Read more

3 staggered clashes took place in Galwan Valley

Details emerging from the debriefing of Indian soldiers involved in the brutal Galwan Valley skirmish shine fresh light on the heroism of outnumbered Indian soldiers who fought off numerically superior rivals, string together the tactics of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and provide a clearer picture of how the clash unfolded on June 15, people familiar with developments said on Sunday. Read more

Rajnath Singh meets chiefs, says keep strict vigil along LAC

As tensions simmer along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, where aggressive military posturing by Indian and Chinese forces has garnered global attention, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday made a detailed assessment of the ground situation at the disputed border, where 20 Indian and scores of Chinese soldiers were killed in a skirmish in Galwan valley, two senior officers familiar with the developments said on Sunday. Read more

Situation along LAC tense with full army deployment

The situation continues to remain tense along the 3,488km-long Line of Actual Control, with both the Indian and Chinese armies fully deployed, air bases activated, and the navy on standby, following the June 15 face-off in the Galwan sector. Read more
(CNN)  As the coronavirus pandemic surges in states that embraced his calls for aggressive early openings, President Donald Trump is mocking the very measures that might mitigate a crisis about which he is constantly in denial.

Trump said at his weekend rally that he had told his staff to slow down testing for the disease, which has now killed nearly 120,000 Americans, to hide the discovery of more cases. Claims by his advisers that he was joking hardly lessen the questionable motives behind the remark.

Trump has meanwhile also helped to turn the wearing of masks, which is proven to slow transmission of the disease, into a culture war issue. And his rally in Oklahoma on Saturday night was a rebuke of the notion of social distancing -- even though, ironically, his smaller-than-expected crowd would have made such practices possible. Health experts warn that spikes in infections in states like Florida and Arizona -- both of which recorded new highs in daily infection rates over the weekend -- are being driven by the public's waning willingness to avoid large gatherings and a reticence to wear masks.

The President's poor example represents a typical effort to divide Americans and highlight divisions over specific issues for his own political gain. But in the long run, apart from putting thousands of lives at risk, it is counterproductive, since a more stringent effort to avoid rises in infections as states open up would likely promote the fast economic recovery on which Trump is banking a reelection campaign that has slipped into trouble in recent weeks.

View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling

By ignoring or trying to talk away rising infections, the White House is effectively revealing that it has neither the plans nor the inclination to aggressively fight the worst public health crisis in a century, with the United States failing to see the sharp declines in infections after reaching its peak that other major industrialized nations have seen.

Yet another week begins with a White House in turmoil

The White House begins a new week in a typical storm of controversy, exacerbated by Trump's decision to hold a rally that could turn into a super-spreader event during a pandemic and his administration's move to fire Geoffrey Berman, a top prosecutor in New York, that sparked new concerns about its respect for the rule of law and the independence of the justice system.

A Trump adviser told CNN that Trump is "very" upset about the turnout at the rally Saturday night. Donors and friends of the President have been fuming Sunday in the wake of Trump's poorly-attended rally this weekend, a person involved with the re-election said.

Meanwhile, the virus is still raging, and the administration doesn't seem to be on the same page on whether there will be a second wave in the fall. Despite White House trade adviser Peter Navarro telling CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that the White House is preparing, Vice President Mike Pence has blamed the media for inciting "panic" on that front.

The administration's sluggish efforts to ramp up coronavirus testing early in the pandemic worsened the disease's impact. And though the number of tests conducted has now reached 25 million, the figure is far below the millions of tests a week that health experts say are needed to identify the true spread of the disease and to trace and isolate those infected.

The controversy over Trump's testing comments completed a miserable weekend that was supposed to give the President momentum but instead laid bare his political weaknesses, including his constant habit of saying wild things that detract from his own campaign. The President is angry, CNN reported, about the poor crowd -- around 6,200 people -- who showed up to his rally in Tulsa after he had spent the week claiming the attendance would be record-breaking.

During his rally on Saturday night, Trump made the shocking claim that he had told his staff to slow testing to cover up the true extent of the disease. And it's not the first time he's suggested that.

"You know testing is a double-edged sword," Trump said Saturday. "Here's the bad part ... when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please."

It is not clear whether officials did slow testing at a time when they were claiming that they were speeding it up and falsely proclaiming that the United States was a world leader in testing. An administration official told CNN that Trump was "obviously kidding." Navarro also said the President was joking on "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"Come on now, that was tongue in cheek," Navarro told Tapper. "That was a light moment for him at a rally."

Why the President would be joking about the testing effort in a pandemic that has killed thousands of Americans and revealed his own administration's liabilities is a mystery. But if he was speaking in jest, the remark in itself would reflect the flippant manner in which he has approached the pandemic and his own rejection of the scientific steps that could improve the situation.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf argued that Trump was mad at the press for its (factually correct) coverage of rising cases of new coronavirus infections.

"What you heard from the President was frustration -- frustration in the sense of that we are testing, I believe we've tested over 25 million Americans. We've tested more than any other country in this world," Wolf said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "Instead, the press and others, all they want to focus on is an increasing case count."

Trump's remarks drew an immediate rebuke from the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

"This is an appalling attempt to lessen the numbers only to make them look good," Symone Sanders, a top Biden adviser, said on "Fox News Sunday."

"That's what will be remembered long after last night's debacle of a rally -- the admission of the President that he slowed testing for his political benefit."

Rising infection rates

Public health experts reacted with disbelief to Trump's comments about testing.

"This is incredibly frustrating for the millions of Americans who have gotten sick and have not been able to get tests. It's got to be incredibly frustrating for people who've lost families in nursing homes, because we haven't been able to test nursing home residents and workers, or meatpacking plant workers. This is unfortunately not a joke," Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN on Sunday.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that the pandemic was like a "forest fire" that might not slow down and was being exacerbated by the White House's lack of a strategy.

"At this point, we don't really have a national plan that really puts together what we're trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories, all kind of with their own plan," Osterholm said. "We're at 70% of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April, and yet I don't see any kind of a 'This is where we need to go, this is what we need to do to get there' kind of effort, and that's one of our challenges."

New criticism of the administration's poor response to the pandemic coincided with alarming new evidence that the disease is making strides in southern and western states. Arizona health officials reported 2,592 new infections on Sunday. The state's total of cases has nearly doubled in 14 days. Tulsa County, which hosted Trump's rally, reported yet another new daily high of coronavirus cases with 143 in the previous 24 hours. Florida reported 3,000 more Covid-19 cases on Sunday after reaching a new daily high of over 4,000 new infections the day before.

Officials in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and other states are reporting that a higher proportion of younger people are testing positive for the virus. While younger people typically experience less severe symptoms of Covid-19 than their elders, they can spread it to others and the data is alarming because it suggests that social distancing and masking are breaking down.

Yet the President has refused to wear a mask in public and been ambivalent at the very least about their use, and his conservative supporters have portrayed the use of masks as an attempt by liberals and elitists to infringe on the basic freedoms of Americans. Were the President to model mask wearing -- or argue that it could be a temporary inconvenience that could help everyone resume normal life sooner -- he could have huge influence, given the prominence of his platform and his influence over his supporters.

"The best spokesman would be the President," Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer ahead of Trump's event in the city on Tuesday.

"If he told everyone at that rally it was important to wear masks, I believe they would do it," Gallego said. "Please send the strongest signal to everyone -- they need to wash their hands, they need to wear masks and they have to stay home if there's any question if they are sick."

Although the Trump campaign handed out masks at the rally on Saturday, few people in the crowd seemed to be wearing them. Senior officials who traveled with the President mostly and ostentatiously declined to wear one. This was despite the fact that six campaign staffers sent to prepare the rally tested positive for the virus before the President arrived.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Trump's 'kidding' on testing exposes his negligence as virus spikes."
In memory of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, his family held a prayer meet at their Rajiv Nagar home residence in Patna.

Twitter and AFP

Sushant Singh was cremated on Monday at Pawan Hans crematorium in Mumbai. The funeral was attended by his family who travelled from Patna and his friends from the industry. His ashes were immersed in Ganga on June 18 by his father K K Singh and two sisters among other family members.



Meanwhile, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) National President Chirag Paswan has written a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Actor-turned-politician Chirag Paswan wrote to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday, stating that the late actor was the pride of Bihar and the entire state is seeking justice for him.



Referring to his telephonic conversation with Thackeray a day earlier, Chirag Paswan said, "On behalf of every Bihari, I urge you to conduct a fair inquiry into the matter so that no talented person is victimized in future due to factionalism and nepotism in Bollywood."



BCCL

The LJP president said that Sushant's kin have pointed to a conspiracy behind his suicide and they believe that he was a victim of the factionalism that flourishes in the Indian film industry.



Chirag Paswan said, "Being close to the family of Sushant Singh, I know for sure that he was a hardworking and talented person with a clean heart."



Twitter

BJP MP Manoj Tiwari who met with the family members recently also demanded a CBI inquiry and said that the Maharashtra government should take steps for this.



Sushant Singh died by suicide at his Bandra residence on June 14.



If you or someone you know are suffering from depression, experiencing suicidal thoughts, or just need someone to talk to, remember that help is just a phone call away. Reach out to the following helplines in India. BMC mental health helpline: 022-24131212 (available 24X7), Vandrevala Foundation: 186-02662345/180-02333330 (24x7) or AASRA: 91-9820466726 (available 24X7).


Two members of Donald Trumps campaign who contracted Covid-19 were in attendance at the presidents rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday after it was previously reported six other staffers working on the event tested positive for the novel virus.

The staffers who contracted the coronavirus were part of the campaigns advance team, which plans the logistics for in-person events and rallies.

According to the campaign, the two staffers with previously unreported Covid-19 cases wore face masks to the president's speech. Less than 6,200 people attended the weekend rally, according to the Tulsa fire department, which was meant to mark the presidents return to the campaign trail despite the ongoing pandemic.

It wasn't exactly clear by Monday why the president's rally had such low turnout, despite the campaign initially claiming as many as one million people would be in the Tulsa area to witness Mr Trump's event, though the pandemic was likely a contributing factor. Other reports also indicated that teenagers on the social media app Tik Tok were participating in a viral prank against the Trump campaign, by reserving tickets to the event with no intention of actually going.

Regardless of the reason for the underwhelming turnout, health experts had been warning against the president's rally in the midst of the pandemic.

Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Show all 16 1 /16 Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter sits in the upper rows of the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally. There were reports of far lower numbers attending than the president's team had predicted Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump points to his shoe at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma during a lengthy explanation of why he walked so carefully on a ramp at West Point military academy a week earlier Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A police officer gestures during a Black Lives Matter event near the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by Donald Trump AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporters take their seats in the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by the president. Many people in the crowd were choosing not to wear face masks despite medical recommendations during the coronavirus pandemic AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Merchandise vendors wearing face masks at the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a Donald Trump rally Getty Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporter Scott Hilliard, left, argues with Black Lives Matter protester Eugene Smith near the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by the president AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter and a Black Lives Matter protester face off in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by Donald Trump AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A protester shouts at Donald Trump supporters outside a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Eric Trump, Donald Trump's second son, in the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A woman wearing a T-shirt with the message 'I Can't Breathe' is arrested after refusing to leave the area outside the rally, which she said she had a ticket for AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A woman speaks to police officers during a protest against racial injustice outside a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's campaign manager, in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of the president's first rally in three months Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A protester against racial injustice is arrested outside a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter wearing a Make America Great Again cap speaking outside a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporters wait to enter a rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump supporters and opponents clash outside the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of an election rally by the president AP

Nearly 120,000 Americans have died since the outbreak began earlier this year, and the rate of infections is meanwhile continuing to surge nationwide. At least 20 states have reported an increase in cases, with two million infections having already been confirmed across the country.

At least eight members of the president's staff tested positive for the virus, with six of those cases having been confirmed prior to the rally. Those with confirmed cases before Saturday did not attend the event, according to reports.

Two of the cases involved Secret Service agents tasked with working at the rally.

Brad Parscale, the president's re-election campaign manager, confirmed the cases in a statement on Monday that read: "These staff members attended the rally but were wearing masks during the entire event. Upon the positive tests, the campaign immediately activated established quarantine and contact tracing protocols."

The two staffers tested positive while attempting to fly home from Oklahoma, the campaign said.
Lori Vallow's former friend says Vallow and her husband Chad Daybell tried to use her as an escape and were equally destructive to each other.

"Part of me is processing, I can't believe you're friends with these people," Melanie Gibb said in an interview with NBC's "Dateline" airing Monday night. "The other part of me is like, 'How did you even believe any of the things they shared to you?'"

Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan. (Freemont County Sheriff's Office)

Human remains found on Daybell's property in Fremont County, Idaho, were identified this month as those of Vallow's two children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua Vallow, who were 17 and 7 years old, respectively, when they went missing in September.

Daybell, whose former wife died under questionable circumstances, was arrested June 9 on a felony charge of concealing evidence after investigators found the remains on his property, authorities said. He was later charged with two counts of concealing evidence and his bail was set at $1 million.

Gibb spoke with "Dateline" a day after the remains were found.

A complaint alleges that Daybell concealed the remains between Sept. 22, 2019, and June 9, 2020. Rexburg police began searching for the children in November after they tried to conduct a welfare check on Joshua, who was adopted and had special needs.

Vallow and Daybell had refused to cooperate with the investigation into the missing children and left the state, police said in December. Vallow was arrested in February in Hawaii on charges of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children. She is being held on a $1 million bond. Vallow has pleaded not guilty, according to The Associated Press.

According to a probable cause affidavit for Daybell that was unsealed Friday, Gibb told a Rexburg police detective that she visited Vallow at her new home in Rexburg from Sept. 19, 2019 to Sept. 23, 2019. Gibb said that when she arrived, Vallow told her Joshua had become a "zombie," the affidavit states. Gibb also said that Vallow had called Tylee a zombie in the spring of 2019 and said the teen had turned into a zombie when she was 12 or 13, according to the affidavit. Gibb told the detective that Vallow and Daybell told her their mission was to rid the world of zombies.

Story continues

"I saw him as the hand and her as the puppet on that hand," Gibb told "Dateline." "They were both like gasoline and fire. Not a good match. But equally destructive to each other. So in a way, they were their equal match, in that they were destructive to each other. They both had deception in them."

Gibb added: "And they both lie. And so that was their common thread is that they were really good lying to each other. Seemed a good fit. For them to be like that with each other."

According to the recently unsealed arrest affidavit, Vallow told police on Nov. 26, 2019 that Joshua was with Gibb in Gilbert, Arizona. Police obtained Gibb's phone number from Vallow but were unable to reach her. Later that day, police requested Vallow call Gibb, at which point she told them Gibb and Joshua were at a movie theater watching "Frozen 2" and it was unlikely she would answer.

About 9:30 p.m. that evening, Gilbert Police spoke with Gibb by phone and she stated that Joshua was not staying at her house and had not been there for several months, according to the affidavit.

Gibb recalled to "Dateline" receiving a call from Daybell in which he instructed her not to pick up her phone when she was contacted by Rexburg police.

Gibb said Daybell seemed nervous and "that sure made me feel uncomfortable." She said Daybell told her Vallow would tell police Joshua was with Gibb in Arizona.

Vallow then called her, Gibb said. Vallow assured her that everything was fine and that she had told police Joshua was visiting Gibb, she said.

Gibb said Vallow told her to take a picture of "a whole bunch of kids," which left her feeling shocked.

"It's like a bomb drops on you," Gibb said. "What do you do?"

At that moment, Gibb said, everything changed.

On Dec. 6, 2019, Gibb contacted Gilbert Police and told them Joshua was not with her, the affidavit states. Gibb told authorities that Daybell and Vallow had contacted her separately on Nov. 26, 2019 and asked her to tell police Joshua was with her even though he was not, according to the affidavit.

Daybell's former wife Tammy Daybell, 49, was found dead last October in her home in Idaho. She was initially believed to have died of natural causes, but her body was exhumed in December after authorities in Idaho began to question the circumstances of her death.

For the full interview, watch "Dateline" on NBC Monday at 10 p.m.
It looks like Apple will avoid 20% tax if they manufacture the new 2020 iPhone SE in India. Apple has been assembling phones in India since 2017. The original iPhone SE and the iPhone XR were 2 phones assembled in India.

If information circulating the internet is to be believed, then Apple is looking to manufacture or rather assemble the 2020 iPhone SE in India. According to Apple Insider, Apple has told at least one of its suppliers in China to start shipping components for the 2020 iPhone SE to India manufacturing partners. This will start the process to assemble the new iPhone in India, allowing the company to work around hefty import taxes.

An Indian Government official in May said, We expect Apple to produce up to $40 billion worth of smartphones, mostly for exports through its contract manufacturers Wistron and Foxconn. Wistron assembled the original iPhone SE in India and it looks like they will assemble the 2020 iPhone SE (review) in India as well. Foxconn India has been assembling the iPhone XR (review) in India.

To put the taxation of smartphones imported in India to perspective, the iPhone SE sells for about $400 (Rs 30,500 approx directly converted) in the US but in India, the smartphone starts at Rs 42,500. If the iPhone SE is assembled in India, it could lead to a drop in price for the device, making it an attractive proposition for those looking to enter the Apple ecosystem.

According to the source, it looks like the decision to move some of the iPhone SE manufacturing to India comes after an initiative by the India government to increase manufacturing in the region.

Apple isnt the only one looking to make a dent in the Indian market by manufacturing locally and reducing the price of their products. Other smartphone and consumer electronics manufacturers are looking to take advantage of this and shifting assembling to India.

Information circulating the internet suggests that OnePlus has partnered with Skyworth to manufacture its TVs in India. OnePlus has done this to take advantage of zero import duties of the key component which is the open cell TV panel. It accounts for 70 percent of the cost of the TV. This will help OnePlus keep the cost of the TV down and be more competitive in the Indian market. When OnePlus launched the Q1 and Q1 Pro in India in 2019, the TVs were expensive, largely due to the import tax. It looks like the upcoming OnePlus TVs could be cheaper since they may be made in India. You can read more about it here.
Donald Trump and his political allies have consistently described American cities as zones of decay and disorder populated by minorities - from his 2016 claim that in "our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous" to Sen. Tom Cotton's recent portrait of an "orgy of violence" that "plunged many American cities into anarchy." So when Trump saw urban mass protests accompanied by opportunistic looting, he may have expected to benefit from a forceful articulation of the politics of "law and order" like Richard Nixon did more than 50 years ago.

At a rally in Tulsa on Saturday, Trump conjured up the purported violent horrors in the nation's Democratic-run cities - warning, "The Democrats' push against our police will drive up crime and drive up costs at levels you'd never believe. Thousands of innocent lives will be lost."

But this message has largely backfired. Trump's net approval rating has undergone a sharp dive and prominent military figures denounced his threat to send troops into cities. The Tulsa rally, his first in months, was under-attended.

Why did this political strategy fail today when similar moves worked so well in 1968 and for more than 20 years afterward? In large part because it is hard to argue for deploying troops in the streets of cities that have in recent decades become far safer, economically vigorous and socially vibrant.

In 1968, urban America was already in decline. Most cities had been losing population for 20 years as whites fled to suburbia, accompanied by millions of jobs as employers sought non-unionized labor and cheap land. Then in the mid-1960s, incidents of police brutality touched off rioting that led to dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in destroyed property as civil disorder broke out in cities such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, New York and Philadelphia.

Although these uprisings resulted from racial segregation, discrimination and disinvestment in cities, Nixon's campaign team ignored these causes. Instead, it made urban decline and civil unrest into symbols of national distress. Nixon tapped into the racial anxieties of what he would soon call the "silent majority," promising a stronger hand against the urban black and brown people who had risen up. He won the White House in 1968 and went on to a landslide reelection.

In the 20 years that followed, Nixon and then Ronald Reagan could run the same successful political play because cities continued to decline, patterns of residential segregation deepened and crime continued to rise: Homicide rates doubled, property crimes tripled and assaults more than quadrupled. This made it easy for conservatives to target white, suburban voters by propagating a racial mythology of urban decline. They justified white flight as a reasonable response to the prospect of black neighbors, described people of color as unwilling to work and fixated on harmful myths about black criminality.

This was accompanied by a cinematic culture that depicted cities as violent hellscapes that could be pacified only by white men using overwhelming force. This genre included iconic films such as "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Death Wish" (1974), "Escape From New York" (1981) and "RoboCop" (1986).

This social and cultural context led to increasing public approval of harsh measures in the name of fighting crime. One early sign was Nixon's 1971 announcement of the "war on drugs" and New York's Rockefeller drug laws of 1973, which greatly expanded criminal penalties for even minor drug possession and use. This "tough on crime" stance and its racially coded language to associate criminality with people of color was pioneered by Republicans, but as crime rates continued to rise, Democrats also advocated a heavier hand for law enforcement.

More for you The President's Shock at the Rows of Empty Seats in Tulsa

Aggressive racialized policing in cities led to routinized use of torture to extract confessions in places such as Chicago, and to miscarriages of justice such as the Central Park Five case in which young black and Latino men were falsely convicted of a 1989 attack and exonerated 13 years later (at the time Donald Trump called for the death penalty for the young men and continues to insist on their guilt). By the start of the 1990s prominent criminologists were warning of a generation of young, urban "superpredators" who maimed and killed without remorse and predicting "a bloodbath when these kids grow up." This fueled increasingly harsh state and federal laws on policing, sentencing and incarceration - most notably the 1994 crime bill, the enforcement of which fell most heavily on young African American and Hispanic men.

The irony was that violent crime had already begun to fall before these laws took effect. After peaking in 1991, homicides dropped for a quarter century, with big cities like New York and Los Angeles recording rates that were 75%$ to 85% lower than at their height. In many cities, the streets became safer than at any time since reliable statistics began to be kept.

Notably, these improvements had less to do with policing and more to do with rising immigration, an aging population and better environmental protection within cities, all of which track with lower levels of crime. Other metrics of urban vitality also showed significant improvement: Cities attracted more new residents, downtown home values and commercial rents rose and metropolitan economies became powerhouses of economic growth.

When television series such as "Seinfeld," "Friends" and "Sex and the City" premiered and became wildly popular in the 1990s, media critics observed that the shows' urban settings portended a new public image for cities. The overwhelmingly white casts of these and similar shows presented a decidedly unrepresentative vision of urban America: City populations had stabilized only because immigrant families from places such as Latin America and Asia had joined longtime African American residents to solidify a new urban majority. But nobody could doubt that popular perceptions of the big city had quickly and significantly improved.

By the late 2010s, most of the conditions of the urban crisis had receded (although decidedly not including economic inequality and police violence), and the emergence of gentrification indicated that far from desiring an escape from urban life, people of means, including whites, were eager to make their homes in the nation's largest metropolises.

This transformed the politics of "law and order." Black scholars and activists and their allies had long critiqued how racialized ideas about crime in cities had fed deadly policy choices such as militarized police departments and mass incarceration. As cities became more desirable, however, their critiques garnered increasing public support.

Today's suburbs are far more diverse and politically moderate as well, which has also reshaped our debates about racial justice. The New York City suburb of Westchester County, for example, is barely half non-Hispanic white and a quarter of the population is foreign born. Many suburban congressional districts now have lopsidedly Democratic partisan voter indexes and liberal Democratic U.S. representatives. Indeed, it was the metropolitan vote of urbanites and suburbanites together that so decisively delivered the House to the Democrats in the 2018 midterm election, and placed control of key governorships and state legislatures into Democratic hands between 2017 and 2019.

Our cities and suburbs look and feel very different than they did in the depths of the urban crisis in the late 1960s. That's one reason Trump's attempt to revive the law-and-order playbook of that era has fallen flat, even as he and Attorney General William P. Barr sought to enact scaled-up real-life versions of their movie idols, the dirty cop and the private vigilante.

During the urban crisis era, moviegoers packed theaters to see, and schoolchildren endlessly reenacted, a scene from "Dirty Harry" in which the eponymous rogue cop, .44 magnum in hand, stands over a black suspect and dares him to go for his gun. "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?" But after decades of seeing crime fall and conceiving of American cities as vibrant spaces - and in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of brutal officers and widespread video of police beating and tear-gassing peaceful protesters - it seems that an unmistakable majority of Americans are finding it easier to sympathize with the man on the ground than the one with the badge.

- - -

Sandoval-Strausz is director of the Latina/o studies program and associate professor of history at Penn State University. His newest book is "Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City."
Row upon row of empty blue seats: that's what confronted US President Donald Trump at his return rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While he boasted on Twitter of a million people registering to attend, local officials put the final tally at 6200, barely a third of the stadium's capacity. It was a humiliating comeback for a President whose dominance of US politics is fortified by his loyal supporter base.

It has been a striking shift in fortunes. Go back several months and Mr Trump was riding the wave of a booming economy and emboldened by his acquittal at the Senate's impeachment trial. As the Democrats struggled to coalesce around a presidential candidate, finally falling in behind Joe Biden, a second-term Trump presidency sounded plausible.

Rarely has the ground shifted so swiftly and so exposed the shortcomings of a president. There has been a dramatic fall in support, following the Trump administrations failures in responding to the pandemic and his stoking of racial tensions as the streets were engulfed by nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd.

The numbers tell the story. Even Fox News, Mr Trump's mainstream media cheer squad, has published a poll showing him behind Mr Biden by a 50-38 per cent margin. Most alarming for Mr Trump is that the 12-point advantage is a sharp increase of four points for Mr Biden from only a month ago. What is unexpectedly contributing to the Trump slump is the surprisingly broad support the Black Lives Matter uprising is garnering, dealing out his usual race card rhetoric.

It's not the only headwind he is facing. His former national security adviser John Bolton has hit the publicity trail with his new book lambasting the President for his supposed willingness to tarnish all his dealings with foreign leaders with a penchant for political self-interest, a "stunningly uninformed" view of the world and enabling a decision-making process that was a "danger for the republic". It would be a very long time, if ever, that a sitting US president faced such scathing criticism from a former senior adviser.
The wait is finally over: Michigans state campgrounds are back open for business.

Campgrounds, cabins and overnight lodging welcomed back eager campers Monday, June 22, after a months-long suspension of full services since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

After gates opened at 8 a.m., trailers lined Holland State Park campgrounds by Monday afternoon as campers gathered to enjoy the states beautiful summer scenery.

Children played outside at the campgrounds while their parents sat nearby with a good book  the sights and sounds gave a long-awaited semblance of normalcy amid the ongoing pandemic.

For some, camping at Michigans parks is a beloved summer tradition. Brad Houzenga, who drove up from Illinois to Hollands campgrounds, has been camping in Michigan with his family for 10 years now.

We just love the kids to get some freedom and roam around at the campground and we just get some outside time and hang out, he told MLive as he set up his pop-up trailer.

State parks staff were just as eager as visitors for the reopening of Michigans campgrounds, said Michigan Department of Natural Resources Plainwell District Supervisor Gary Jones.

With it being summertime, and Michiganders looking to be outdoors, were happy that we can be fully operational and be able to provide all those amenities that the public is used to seeing this time of year, said Jones, who oversees the southwest Michigan parks.

But reopening the campgrounds during a pandemic presented its own unique challenges for the states parks and recreation department.

Michigans state parks are facing a significant staffing deficit right now as a result of a statewide hiring freeze last month. Seasonal park staff could not be hired and trained until after May 15, when the state waived the hiring freeze for summer park workers.

Were still not completely all staffed up yet, but todays the day so were doing our best to get started, said Michigan Department of Natural Resources Parks and Recreation Chief Ron Olson. In general, were ready to roll today and were going to do our best to accommodate the visitors.

Michigan campgrounds are currently operating at about two-thirds regular staffing levels, Olson told MLive Monday.

Staffing varies at each park, but the statewide parks and recreation division currently has about 1,000 staff members, compared to its regular 1,500 summer workers, Olson said.

On top of limited staff, workers are also required to furlough one day a week for 10 weeks, he said.

Despite fewer workers and a delay in preparation, the parks department has still managed to bring the campgrounds up to speed, including restarting water and electricity services, reopening buildings closed during the winter and preparing the campgrounds to embrace visitors during a pandemic.

Our staff has been working very hard with the limited staff weve had to get things ready, Jones said. Theyre anxious. Its been a long-delayed spring and its now summertime. It will be a little bit of a challenge for them in instituting the new protocols to safely operate, but I think theyre ready to start getting visitors back.

Visitors will see some changes at Michigans camping and overnight lodging facilities as the state continues to battle the novel respiratory virus COVID-19.

Campers are asked to wear masks in public indoor spaces, including restrooms, camp stores and camp offices. Park staff will also ask visitors to maintain social distancing, both indoors and outdoors.

Restrooms and shower facilities will be thoroughly cleaned at minimum once per day, and in accordance with guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. There will also be sneeze guards in place at public contact points.

Were just hoping the public is patient as we get back to a smooth pace of operation, Olson said. But I think by and large, people will adapt.

RELATED: Differences youll notice at Michigans state park campgrounds when they reopen June 22

Most importantly, campers are asked to make reservations ahead of time, Jones said. Some campgrounds may consider using curbside check-in to reduce person-to-person contact, he said.

Visitors to Michigan State Parks will need to have a state-issued recreation pass or pay cash to enter the grounds, starting Monday. Passes had not been required required since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, to limit person-to-person contact for staff and guests during the crisis.

More on MLive:

Recreation passes needed to visit Michigan State Parks starting Monday

With tourism hurt by coronavirus, Muskegon County promoting beaches, natural attractions

Ferry service taking passengers to Sleeping Bears Manitou Islands wont run this year
By PTI

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to "step up its efforts" to resolve the Kashmir issue.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi made the remarks during a virtual meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir held "on the request of Pakistan", the Foreign Office said.

In his address, Qureshi urged the OIC to "step up its efforts to facilitate a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue," the FO said.

Qureshi told the media after the meeting that the group agreed to form an observation mission to know the situation in Kashmir.

The foreign ministers and representatives of Azerbaijan, Niger, Saudi Arabia and Turkey attended the meeting.

This was the third meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir since August 5, 2019.

India has previously hit out at the 57-member grouping of Muslim majority nations, saying bodies like OIC should not make irresponsible statements.

The Jeddah-headquartered bloc, which is the second-largest intergovernmental body after the UN, has usually been supportive of Pakistan and often sided with Islamabad on the Kashmir issue.

Pakistan has been unsuccessfully trying to drum up international support against India for withdrawing Jammu and Kashmir's special status on August 5 and bifurcating it into two Union territories.

India has categorically told the international community that the scrapping of Article 370 was its internal matter.

It also advised Pakistan to accept the reality and stop all anti-India propaganda.

Separately, Qureshi held a telephonic conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Al Saud to discuss matters of mutual interest, including COVID-19 pandemic, enhanced bilateral cooperation and situation in Kashmir, the FO added.
A Ho Chi Minh City-based tourist company has expressed its intention to provide financial assistance for the repatriation of a British man considered Vietnams most critically ill novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient.

Saigontourist Group is willing to cooperate with relevant agencies to fulfill the Briton's wish, which is returning to his hometown in Scotland after his hospital discharge, according to Pham Huy Binh, chairman of the firms management board.

The company will pay for all expenses needed for his repatriation, Binh elaborated.

The patient would be well enough for a hospital discharge soon, believed to help the man avoid risks of hospital-acquired infections due to his weak immune system and lung damage, according to Dr. Nguyen Tri Thuc, director of Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, where he is being treated.

He could fly business class and be accompanied by a health worker, Thuc said.

The cost of his repatriation should be covered by his insurance company, his employer, or donations from benefactors, the director added.

The 43-year-old man, a Vietnam Airlines pilot, was confirmed as the countrys COVID-19 patient No. 91 following his diagnosis in mid-March.

He was admitted to the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases on March 18 with damaged lungs.

His conditions deteriorated shortly after that, putting him in a coma and his life in jeopardy a few times.

Doctors once thought only a lung transplant would save him from death.

But medication and other medical care gradually improved his health in the following weeks.

The Scotsman was transferred to the intensive care unit at Cho Ray Hospital on May 2, still comatose and with severely damaged lungs, after being cleared of the coronavirus following his treatment at the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

On June 3, doctors gave the green light to disconnect the patient from ECMO life support he had been on for nearly 60 days.

He was taken off his ventilator on June 13, and stopped taking antibiotics used to treat other bacterial infections on June 15.

A CT scan showed that 90 percent of his lung capacity had recovered as of last week.

The patient was transferred from the intensive care ward to the physical rehabilitation unit of Cho Ray Hospital on Sunday.

Doctors are now focused on helping the patient fully restore his physical function.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Legislation could end the unjust Bureau of Prisons policy that requires inmate-attorney emails to be monitored. (Associated Press)

As concern over the impact of COVID-19 on prison populations began to mount, the federal Bureau of Prisons implemented a ban in March that prohibits lawyers from visiting their incarcerated clients. However justifiable the ban may be, it compounds the challenges lawyers face representing those held in custody, a crucial tool lawyers rely on to gather the facts they need to mount an effective defense.

While nothing can replace the way face-to-face interactions help build trust, the bureau should at long last end its unjust policy of requiring inmates to voluntarily waive privilege in emails they send to their attorneys through the bureau-provided email system.

A bipartisan group in Congress that includes two California Democrats  Reps. Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Anna G. Eshoo of Menlo Park  sponsored legislation that would do just that. The Effective Assistance of Counsel in the Digital Era Act would prohibit the Bureau of Prisons from monitoring emails between inmates and their attorneys except in certain limited cases. The act passed the House as part of a COVID-19 relief package and awaits action in the Senate.

In our deeply divided times, the fact that the legislation is being co-sponsored by 25 members  11 Republicans and 14 Democrats  is a sign of its urgent need.

The Bureau of Prisons houses some 163,000 inmates. To encourage them to maintain contact with members of the community, the agency provides most inmates with access to an email system. They are allowed to contact approved individuals who are not in the bureaus custody if the recipient has agreed to receive messages. But as a condition of using the system, inmates must waive their right to confidentiality in the messages they send and receive.

This requirement means that lawyers cannot ethically use the email system to communicate with their clients about substantive and important aspects of their cases because it requires them to violate their obligation to maintain their clients confidences. The risks to the inmates are not merely hypothetical. Federal prosecutors have, in fact, used emails sent through the system against defendants in court.

Story continues

Even in the best of times, the bureaus monitoring would be bad policy and of dubious constitutionality. Federal circuit courts have held that the Constitution prohibits prison officials from reading mail between inmates and their attorneys that has been sent through the U.S. Postal Service, some grounding their decision in the 1st Amendment right to free speech and others in the 6th Amendment right to assistance of counsel. Given that email has become an essential form of business communication, that constitutional protection should extend to email as well.

Federal prosecutors have argued that inmates do not need email to communicate with their clients because alternative methods such as postal mail, unmonitored phone calls and in-person visits are available. But email has become an essential business communications tool because what it offers is nearly instantaneous and it is free.

These are particularly useful qualities given that it can take weeks for an inmate to receive a letter sent via old-fashioned mail, and arranging an unmonitored phone call is an administrative headache that can take as long as a month. When available, an in-person visit may require an attorney to travel a significant distance and wait for hours to meet with their client.

Now, of course, even in-person visits are unavailable.

In addition to requiring the Bureau of Prisons to stop monitoring email between inmates and their attorneys, the legislation under consideration in Congress creates sensible exceptions to its prohibition on monitoring. For example, the emails would not be privileged if the inmate is obtaining advice from the attorney for the purpose of furthering a crime or fraud. The bill also would require law-enforcement agents to secure a warrant to access any email sent through the prison email system, just as they have to do to access email sent through a private provider such as Google.

The Bureau of Prisons email monitoring policy was out of step with constitutional values even before COVID-19. The pandemic has only emphasized the need to reform a system that unnecessarily interferes with attorney-client communications and thus with effective representation.

Catherine Crump is director of the Samuelson Clinic for Law, Technology and Public Policy at UC Berkeley Law School. She co-represents the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers in a lawsuit seeking records about the Bureau of Prisons monitoring policy. Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense attorney at Brown, White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles.
If youre looking for Led Zeppelin album on the light side, Presence (1976) isnt it. On Zeps seventh studio album, you hear neither acoustic guitar nor keyboards. Its strictly an electric-guitar record and probably the most metal album the Zep recorded.

Looking back on its production in 77, Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page said Presence was a reflection of the total anxiety and emotion for everyone involved. If you dig into biographical data of the band members, youll see exactly what Page meant.

For starters, Robert Plant worked on tracks such as Achilles Last Stand and the pitch-black Nobodys Fault But Mine while confined to a wheelchair. Indeed, at the time, doctors couldnt be sure Plant would go back to walking without a limp.

But Zeppelin did manage to brighten the mood somewhat on two Presence tracks. On Candy Store Rock, the band unleashed its own potent brand of rockabilly. And on Royal Orleans Plant told a story full of in-jokes intended to embarrass bandmate John Paul Jones.

Robert Plant told the story of John Paul Jones adventure with a drag queen

Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin perform at Earls Court in May 1975. | Michael Putland/Getty Images

RELATED: The Led Zeppelin Album Robert Plant Called a Cry From the Depths

As with many Led Zeppelin stories, the tale that inspired Royal Orleans is a mix of fact and fiction. But its one of the more entertaining episodes in the accounts of bands touring days. And as you can guess it began on a wild night in New Orleans, a favorite destination of the bands while on tour.

While staying at the French Quarters Royal Orleans Hotel, the band made its usual round of Bourbon Street haunts, including some gay and drag-queen bars. In Plants lyrics, a member of the Zep party didnt realize a transvestite (dubbed Whiskers) was a man. (If you take your pick, be careful how you choose it.)

According to Jones, that wasnt him but another member of Zeps entourage in another country entirely. But Plant wasnt writing a nonfiction account here, so he brought that into the story as well. What did happen to Jones provided an equally fun part of the song.

The band members were friendly with the drag queens, and Jones was hanging out with a character named Stephanie. Late that night, after smoking a joint in his room at the Royal Orleans, Jones and Stephanie fell asleep. A near-disaster followed.

Jones said he set fire to his room before he and a drag queen escaped

Led Zeppelin: John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Bonham perform live in 1977. | Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

As Plant sings his story about a man I know [who] went down to Louisiana, he mixes in references to both parts of the story. When he mentions John Cameron, that was the name of a rival of Jones from his session days in London.

But the part about how fire preceded water and how Poor Whiskers set that room alight actually happened to Jones. We rolled a joint or two and I fell asleep and set fire to the hotel room, as you do, haha, Jones told Mojo in 2007. And when I woke up it was full of firemen!

Afterwards, the hotel manager called Zeps manager to assure him everything was all right. So when a roadie checked in on Jones he discovered the embarrassing episode. And he made sure to get the details to Plant, who relished ribbing Jones with his lyrics.

Plant has a few golden lines in this track, real or imagined. When I step out, strut down with my sugar, he sings, Shed best not talk like Barry White. Dont let anyone tell you Led Zeppelin didnt have a sense of humor.

RELATED: Why Led Zeppelins All My Love Didnt Sit Right With Jimmy Page
Sometimes winning isn't everything.

And when it comes to MasterChef Australia, the contestants know it pays to be one step ahead of the series finale.

As the show enters its last weeks, the chefs are said to be ruthlessly competing for book contracts, TV deals and sponsorship gigs.

Scroll down for video

The real competition: As MasterChef enters its last weeks, the contestants (pictured) are said to be ruthlessly competing for book contracts, TV deals and sponsorship gigs

MasterChef: Back to Win welcomed back 24 former contestants, all competing for a cash prize of $250,000.

According Woman's Day, the battle for fame supposedly began long before the series came close to crowning its winner.

'Everyone is trying to cash in on the show's booming popularity. It's everyone for themselves when it comes to making it happen after the show,' a source claimed.

Fame game: 'Everyone is trying to cash in on the show's booming popularity,' a source told Woman's Day. Pictured: MasterChef's top 10

Back to win... indeed! Before joining the all-star series, the 24 chefs had already had a taste of success in the industry due to their previous TV appearances. Pictured: Tessa Boersma

Khanh Ong, Laura Sharrad and Sarah Tiong are all rumoured to be in talks to launch their own television spin-offs after the finale airs.

Tessa Boersma was also recently spotted asking fans on social media for help finding a videographer for a secret project.

Many of the stars have their own agents. In fact, Reynold Poernomo recently signed with celebrity agency SF Management, which previously looked after Karl Stefanovic.

Khanh and Sarah have also promoted their upcoming cookbooks, which are set to be released after the show's winner is announced.

Shooting for the stars! Many of the stars have their own agents. Reynold Poernomo (pictured) recently signed with SF Management, which previously looked after Karl Stefanovic

Before joining the all-star series, the 24 chefs had already had a taste of success in the industry due to their previous TV appearances.

The famous alumni have produced a total of 14 cookbooks, 13 television shows and 26 businesses between them.

MasterChef Australia continues Monday from 7:30pm on Channel 10
To the Editor:

In Trumps Plan for a Big Rally Sputters Badly (front page, June 21), President Trumps speech in Tulsa on Saturday night was described as rambling, grievance-filled remarks. But that doesnt even come close to accurately capturing the tone, body language and content of his speech. It was a hate-filled screed  to put it mildly.

I have seen clips of speeches by Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn and, yes, Adolf Hitler, and Donald Trumps performance resembled all three of these truly evil men. The many different ways in which he attacked Joe Biden and the radical left were bone-chilling. Im now convinced that if Mr. Trump wins re-election he will attempt to ignite a firestorm of political repression unlike any other in American history.

Im very careful in the language I use to describe political figures with whom I strongly disagree. But Donald Trump is nothing less than a fascist demagogue and a real and present threat to American democracy.

I do not believe that he can win the election if all the votes are counted fair and square. Accordingly, we must do everything possible to make sure that his totally predictable efforts to cheat his way to a second term are not allowed to stand. By now it is a cliche to say that the stakes couldnt possibly be any higher  but that doesnt make it any less true.
European Union: CCP Is a Systemic Rival

Honest News Straight to Your Home. Try the Epoch Times yourself, and get a free gift.

Recently, the European Union publicly accused Russia and China of spreading disinformation to affect democracy during the pandemic. Many European countries also disapprove of the way the Chinese Communist Party suppresses Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The police do not belong at Pride. Its a controversial statement, and I know many will disagree with me, as there are many police officers who are also part of the LGBT+ community. I wholeheartedly support their right to exist and their identities as an LGBT+ person, but they should not be marching at Pride in police uniforms.

And while Pride marches may be cancelled due to the pandemic, this seems like a good time to explore this issue further.

Pride is a celebration, a chance for the queer community to come together and express our love for each other, and honour those who came before us and fought for the freedoms that we currently enjoy. However, Pride is also a protest and has always been a protest, commemorating those who fought against violent police officers for queer liberation at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

And while Pride marches may be cancelled across the country due to the pandemic, this seems like a good time to explore this issue further.

While it is now illegal to discriminate based on gender identity or sexuality, and marriage between same-sex couples is allowed, the fight is not over. Across the world, LGBT+ people are persecuted by their governments. In some cases they are stoned or sentenced to death, are not able to legally get married and do not have discrimination laws to protect them. We think of Britain as a pinnacle of democracy and freedom, and while LGBT+ are not persecuted by state-sanctioned violence as in Iraq, Uganda, Russia, Egypt and many other countries where homosexuality is still a crime, there is still a long way to go before LGBT+ people are treated with the respect and dignity that heterosexual people are.

Just last year, parents protested outside a primary school in Birmingham in order to prevent LGBT+ relationships being taught to children in schools. The protests were just over 30 years after the introduction of the Section 28 clause, which banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and in Britains schools, by former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Despite the law preventing discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity, it still happens, and almost every week there are transphobic articles appearing in the UKs biggest newspapers. The point is, LGBT+ people have more to fight for, and Pride is a part of that fight, just as the current Black Lives Matter protests are about the fight against brutality and institutional racism by the police.

Having the police at Pride, marching alongside us all, is not a show of solidarity for me. It is an insult to the black and non-black people of colour within the LGBT+ community that are so often forgotten about, ignored, and subject to racial abuse by the white people in the queer community  a prime example being when Manchester Pride wanted to introduce an inclusive Pride flag with black and brown stripes and was faced with vitriol and asking whether they would add a white stripe to represent white people.



The queer community has a lot to do in terms of being inclusive of people of colour and making them feel comfortable at Pride. Allowing the police to be there in uniform, even in a non-policing capacity, ignores the safety of our black and non-black queer friends and family who want to celebrate their identities in a happy and open space.



A fear of police is not an irrational fear to have among people of colour, because there are real and often deadly consequences to interacting with the police  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Anthony Grainger, James Ashley and countless others are proof of that. Seeing the police there keeps us on-edge, and makes us feel like we are the trespassers into a community that should belong to us. The queer community as a whole needs to be mindful of the presence of the police, however benign, may affect us every time we attend Pride.

London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits Show all 25 1 /25 London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits SOCIAL-Pride-13575800.jpg PA London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160390756.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits AFP-1IE266.jpg AFP/Getty Images London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160388766.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits AFP-1IE25J.jpg AFP/Getty Images London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits AFP-1IE262.jpg AFP/Getty Images London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits SOCIAL-Pride-15064325.jpg PA London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits SOCIAL-Pride-11404395.jpg PA London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 2019-07-06T135655Z-518085815-RC1DC9E56ED0-RTRMADP-3-GAY-PRIDE-BRITAIN.JPG REUTERS London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160394874.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits AFP-1IE25F.jpg AFP/Getty Images London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160394805.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160389308.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 2019-07-06T141501Z-1727001309-RC15E254D610-RTRMADP-3-GAY-PRIDE-BRITAIN.JPG REUTERS London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160386919.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160391640.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits AFP-1IE24L.jpg AFP/Getty Images London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits wenn36683721.jpg Wheatley/WENN London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160392129.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits GettyImages-1160388695.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160390632.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1160390647.jpg Getty Images for Pride in London London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits SOCIAL-Pride-12534864.jpg PA London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1154024961.jpg Dave Benett/Getty Images for The London Pride 2019: The Best Rainbow Outfits 1154024912.jpg Dave Benett/Getty Images for The

Individual LGBT+ police officers may be proud of their career, of making it to that point despite long standing allegations of homophobia and discrimination within the police itself, but overcoming this institutional bias should not be celebrated. Having a number of LGBT+ officers does not mean that homophobia has been eradicated  it is the queer equivalent of saying Im not racist because I have a black friend.

This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Pride has been cancelled across the UK and the queer community will not be able to celebrate or protest the way we have in the past. But, when we emerge out of lockdown and are able to attend Pride parades again in the future, I dont want to see the police at Pride anymore.
[June 21, 2020] Ex-BlackRock Real Estate Investor Joins Liquefy Advisory Board

Liquefy is pleased to announce the appointment of Jerome Chung to its Advisory Board. Jerome brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise from real estate, asset management and finance. He is passionate about nurturing and supporting the growth of the next generation of industry leaders. Having gained significant traction over the last year as a technology provider in Asia's real estate tokenization space, Liquefy is appointing Jerome as a key consultant in developing the company's provision of blockchain technology solutions to an institutional level. "Liquefy started off as a technology provider of tokenization solutions," said Adrian Lai, Chief Executive Officer of Liquefy, "but our vision has always been far broader. Our company started from the notion that value is locked up in illiquid assets such as real estate, and that blockchain technology could unlock this value via digital fractional ownership. However, the advantages of blockchain, such as operational efficiency, automation, and data transparency - all based on data secured by a distributed ledger - are not limited to investment in illiquid assets. We are talking about a technology that can streamline processes, facilitate cross-platform data sharing, all while protecting an enormous amount of information against unauthorized access and tampering. Over the last year we have focused on building up use cases in the specific area of real estate tokenization, and our capability has grown to a level where we feel ready to explore broader applications of blockchain in finance. We are privilegedto have Jerome as our advisor. He not only brings substantial experience in real estate and finance from his extensive career but is also fiercely committed to nurturing entrepreneurship and professional development. His insight will be invaluable to us as our company moves into a new stage of growth."



Jerome is currently a Partner of Generations, an international practice of specialist consultants that work alongside institutions, family offices, entrepreneurs and executives in helping them achieve their business and investment goals. He has over 23 years of experience in investment management, professional services advisory, real estate, private equity, proptech and new ventures. Prior to Generations, Jerome was a Partner in KPMG's Deal Advisory team. Before undertaking his KPMG position, he was a Director in BlackRock's Asia Pacific Real Estate team, responsible for private equity real estate investment across Hong Kong and Southern China. He also worked for PwC providing assurance and advisory services across Asia Pacific and State Street Bank and Trust Co. in both Sydney and in Boston. Jerome is currently an independent non-executive member of the global RICS Standards and Regulation Board. Previously, he was a non-executive member of RICS Asia Pacific Regulatory Sub-Board and the former vice-chairperson of the RICS Hong Kong Diversity and Inclusion Committee. He was also a member of the CFA Institute's GIPS Interpretations Subcommittee, Real Estate Working Group, Verification/Practitioner Subcommittee as well as the GIPS Alternative Investments Working Group.

"Liquefy is filling a real gap in the market, especially around the investment management process," said Jerome Chung. "Using blockchain to improve the security, efficiency and flexibility in fractional ownership has long been talked about as a game-changer in the fields of real estate, finance and asset management. With successful use cases under their belt, Liquefy continues to discover new business applications of blockchain technology. I am excited to be joining the company at this juncture and look forward to seeing what heights we can reach." Liquefy is a fintech platform that enables the issuance of tokenized securities backed by real assets to bring in a new world of accessible investment. Since its establishment in 2018, the company has established landmark use cases in real estate tokenization, including the first real estate asset tokenization case in Hong Kong and the tokenization of a luxury hotel in London. Jerome's appointment to the Advisory Board will accelerate Liquefy's development of blockchain and tokenization solutions for a new digital era of property and finance. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200621005004/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 17:31:47|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

MUMBAI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- India's Biocon Pharma and Swiss Market Expansion Services Group DKSH have entered into a collaboration wherein the latter will sell and distribute seven of Biocon's generic formulations in Singapore and Thailand, a Biocon statement said Monday.

As part of the agreement, Zurich headquartered DKSH will gain an exclusive license to register and commercialize these seven generic formulations from various therapeutic areas like diabetology, cardiology, oncology and immunology, which will be sold under Biocon's brand.

This development is in line with Biocon's strategy for expansion of its generic formulations business through licensing of its drug products in multiple markets, the statement said.

"This collaboration will enable us to address the growing patient needs for affordable access to high-quality generics for chronic diseases and expand our commercial footprint in this region," said Siddharth Mittal, CEO & Managing Director, Biocon, with annual revenues of 837.5 million U.S. dollars.

Delighted to provide full agency services to Biocon Pharma, Bijay Singh, Global Head of Business Unit Healthcare, DKSH, Global Head of Business Unit Healthcare, Bijay Singh said, "DKSH helps Asian patients get reliable and efficient access to the best healthcare possible, with an emphasis on quality and compliance, leveraging technology wherever possible. Together with Biocon Pharma, we can help a lot of patients in Asia who require advanced therapies for chronic diseases."

Listed on SIX Swiss Exchange, DKSH, which sources, distributes and sells healthcare, consumer goods, performance materials and technology by operating in 36 markets has annual revenues of 12.2 billion U.S. dollars. Its Business Unit Healthcare with around 8,220 specialists, generated net sales of 6.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Enditem
Lumen Christi College and Foyle College in Derry have still not confirmed if they plan to use the transfer test as part of their admissions criteria for next year.

On June 10, St Columb's College and Thornhill College announced they would 'not use academic criteria' for admissions to Year 8 in 2021.

Both St Columb's and Thornhill have used the GL Entrance Assessment results to select pupils since the old 11+ exam was abolished in 2009.

However, in a joint letter to the parents, guardians and carers of children in Primary 6 published earlier this month, the schools announced pupils applying for September 2021 will not have to sit the exam due to the educational disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Derry's two co-educational grammar schools, Lumen Christi College and Foyle College, are yet to confirm if they will require their 2021 intake to sit a transfer test.

The Derry News contacted both schools on the matter, but they declined to comment.

Last week, two Northern Irish parents won High Court permission to challenge the decision to delay this years post-primary transfer tests by two weeks.

Foyle Sinn Fein MLA Karen Mullan, who is the party's education spokesperson, asked schools to take the views of parents and educational specialists onboard when making a decision on the tests.

"While the purpose of this particular challenge is to delay these unfair and unregulated tests, it will add to the growing public debate around academic selection.

"This year, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools have already taken the decision to suspend the use of academic selection tests and there are growing calls for it to be abandoned altogether.

"I would appeal to schools still intent on using academic selection to listen to the views of an increasing number of educationalists, trade unions and parents and end transfer tests once and for all."
Leader of opposition in the Bihar assembly Tejashwi Yadav on Monday blamed the state government for not taking timely action to prevent likely floods during the monsoon and putting the onus on the Centre following the border dispute with Nepal.

Bihar government is trying to put the onus on the Centre. Theyre writing to MEA after the monsoon has arrived. The entire northern part of state is in danger of getting flooded, ANI quoted Tejashwi Yadav as saying after the states minister for water resources Sanjay Jha said he will sound out the ministry of external affairs about Nepals obstruction to flood prevention-related works.

Jha had warned that if the issue is not addressed timely then a major part of the state will be flooded.

Our local engineers and DM are in talks with concerned authorities and now Ill write a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs, over the current situation. If this issue isnt addressed timely, then a major part of Bihar will be flooded, Jha said according to ANI.

This situation on the Indo-Nepal border has been tense after the country laid claim to Indian territories of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura in Uttarakhand.

Earlier this month, the Nepalese Parliament passed a constitutional amendment to show the disputed areas of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura as part of Nepal.

On June 12, an Indian man was killed and four others were injured after Nepalese police allegedly fired indiscriminately on them at the border near Sitamarhi district in Bihar.

The firing took place after a clash between the Indians and personnel of Nepal police at the Lalbandi-Janki Nagar border in Pipra Parsain panchayat under Sonebarsha police station of the district.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office deputies said a double shooting in a River Ridge apartment Monday afternoon left a woman dead and a man injured.

Authorities did not identify the woman, who was pronounced dead inside a second-floor unit at the Walnut Creek Apartments in the 5800 block of Walnut Creek Road.

Deputies were dispatched to the residence about 12:30 p.m. after receiving a report of a disturbance, according to Sheriff Joseph Lopinto.

+2 Grand jury upgrades manslaughter charge, indicting Harvey man with murder in neighbors killing A Harvey man booked with manslaughter in connection with the fatal shooting of his neighbor following a years-long feud now faces the more ser

The man was found outside of the apartment with gunshot wounds to his hip and arm. He was taken to University Medical Center in New Orleans where he underwent surgery, Lopinto said.

The Sheriff's Office did not release any details about who they suspect shot the victims -- including whether one shot the other -- or a motive in the case.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Lopinto did identify the pair as being involved in a "domestic relationship," but he couldn't confirm whether they were married.

The River Ridge case was the second homicide investigation opened by the Sheriff's Office in the past 24 hours. An unidentified 40-year-old man killed in double shooting near Westwego Sunday night.

The 40-year-old man and a second victim, 21, were shot about 10:45 p.m. in the 900 block of North Clark Lane, Rivarde said.

The older man died of his injuries after being taken to the hospital. The 21-year-old was still in critical condition Monday afternoon with a gunshot wound to his neck.

The Sheriff's Office arrested Mark Jones, 59, and booked him with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in connection with the West Bank shooting.

Jessica Williams contributed to this story.
(Photo : Dad How Do I? Official YouTube Channel)

Dads matter. Just ask whoever has grown up without one. After his "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel went viral, Rob Kenney was dubbed as the "Mr. Rogers for adults" amid Father's Day Celebrations.

The YouTube channel for kids and adults without fathers

This 55-year-old man from Seattle, Washington started his YouTube page as a way to pass on "dadvice," as he calls it, to kids who grew up without a father figure like him. He's addressed a range of practical topics in his how-to videos for his more than two million followers, from tying a tie to jump-starting a car.

Also Read: The History Of Father's Day: 7 Facts About The Holiday's Origins

Kenney's journey, however, hasn't been easy. He was "an emotional wreck" at the beginning, he told TODAY.com. He had a difficult childhood. His mother was struggling with alcoholism, so his father and his siblings took full custody of him. Nonetheless, when Kenney was 14, his father "announced that he no longer wanted to have children," Kenney said.

He was taken in by his older brother Rick, even though Rick was a newlywed at the time and had not much space in his mobile home. Kenney now has two kids, Kristine, 27 and Kyle, 25. He had a powerful model for what he shouldn't be when he became a father.

"At a very young age, I determined I wasn't [going to] do that, that I wanted to do it the right way," he said.

While most of Kenney's videos address homework, he wants to expand to more substantial themes. A recent video titled "I'm proud of you!" encourages his followers, or "kids," to leave their comfort zone as he calls them, and not be afraid to take risks.

Many viewers share their stories of not having a good father figure

Around 85% of Kenney's audience are women between the ages of 25 and 40," according to Country Living, which makes sense given the content of many of Kenny's video clips.

Tutorials include fixing toilets, changing tires, jumping a car, ironing a dress shirt, and more. Channel videos are divided into five categories: Tool Tuesdays, Dad Chats, How-Tos: Bathroom Edition, How-Tos: Car Edition, and a miscellaneous section of How-Tos.

However, viewers aren't just coming for help to change a car battery. His videos are hitting home based on the comments section from users worldwide.

At the beginning of each video, Rob's typical greeting is: "Hey Kids!" One commenter noted, "I automatically want to say 'Hey Dad' when you say 'Hey Kids.'" Another person wrote, "You said, 'Hey kids! 'And I had to like to take a break and regroup for a sec."

Many responses apply to the "father jokes" he uses at the beginning of each video. Some commented on a recent video sharing their own jokes after a newly uploaded video didn't have one.

His viewers shared their own tales of growing up without a good father figure, he said. "The responses and the comments, that was a little overwhelming for me," he recalled.

Kenny said on June 15 that he partnered with Lowe's for a # dadbuiltthis challenge to honor the fathers around the country who show up day in and day out for their families.

Lowe surprised hundreds of dads with gift cards to support their DIYing and encourage them to keep fighting the good fight.

Also Read: [VIRAL] Boss Video Calls Her Team With Potato Filter Turned On; What Happens Next Will Make You Laugh!

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A tweet a day, or sometimes two, is how Rahul Gandhi has been stepping up his attack on the Modi government since 20 Indian soldiers died in a deadly clash against the Chinese troops in Ladakh.

On Monday, the Congress leader wanted to know why is China busy praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid tension in bilateral ties and fight over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Galwan area.

China killed our soldiers. China took our land. Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict? asked Gandhi, tagging a news report detailing how Chinese social media welcomed the PMs comments on the border meet at Fridays all-party meet.

China killed our soldiers.

China took our land.



Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict? pic.twitter.com/iNV8c1cmal  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 22, 2020

At the meeting called to discuss the border situation with China, the PM categorically pointed out that neither has anyone entered Indian territory, nor is anyone present in Indian territory currently, and nor is any Indian post captured. This led to howls of protest from the opposition seeking an explanation as to how the soldiers died on June 15.

A day later, on Saturday, in a clarification, the Prime Ministers Office said Modis remarks had focused on the June 15 face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers at Galwan that led to the loss of lives of 20 Indian soldiers.

The Prime Ministers observations that there was no Chinese presence on our side of the LAC (Line of Actual Control) pertained to the situation as a consequence of the bravery of our armed forces, the statement said.

Rahul Gandhi shared The Hindus report which, in turn, quoted Chinas state-run Global Times report quoting PMs no one has entered Indian territory comment. The same comment, the paper noted, was then picked up by other outlets and shared on social media as well.

Quoting a Chinese military expert, the paper said: The PMs comments on the armed forces being allowed to take necessary steps was a show of strength for domestic audiences to appease the Indian masses and boost the Indian troops morale.

On Sunday, Rahul Gandhi emerged as one of the top trends on Twitter when he, in a post, said Narendra Modi is actually Surender Modi.

The apparent reference was to Indian territory being ceded to the Chinese.

A top retired army commander, who didnt want to be identified, told HT that China had already achieved what it set out to achieve  gaining control over Galwan Valley and the strategic feature Finger 4 near Pangong Tso where a significant Chinese build up has taken place over the last six weeks.

The government, however, denies any such claim.
Donald Trump put his re-election ahead of US national security, John Bolton said in an interview with ABC News, calling the president disinterested in intelligence briefings and ignorant of global affairs and the impact of his decisions.

My experience was he very rarely read much, Mr Bolton, Mr Trumps former national security adviser, told ABCs Martha Raddatz in advance of the publication of his book: The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir.

Intelligence briefings took place perhaps once or twice a week, Mr Bolton said. They should take place every day.

Trumps attention span was infinite for his re-election, Mr Bolton said. Its just too bad there wasnt more of that when it came to national security.

Mr Bolton is on a media blitz to promote his book, one of the most damaging accounts yet of Mr Trumps White House. He is the highest-ranking administration official to publish a book after departing. He told ABC that the 2020 election was the last guardrail to protect the country from Mr Trump.

The Trump administration sought to block the publication of Mr Boltons book, arguing that it contained sensitive information related to national security. At the same time, the president has said the books allegations about him are lies.

On Saturday, a judge rejected a last-ditch effort by the Justice Department to block publication. The book is scheduled to go on sale on Tuesday  one of a string of developments to complicate the presidents re-election effort amid slumping poll numbers, the virus-ravaged economy and a renewed national debate over policing and racism.

Mr Trump has attacked Mr Bolton personally, calling him a wacko and washed up. Mr Trump also said Mr Bolton would have bombs dropped on him for proceeding with the publication of the book.

ABC earlier released excerpts of the interview in which Mr Bolton said he didnt think Mr Trump was fit for office. I dont think he has the competence to carry out the job, Mr Bolton told ABC of Mr Trump. There really isnt any guiding principle that I was able to discern, other than whats good for Donald Trumps re-election.

He said he wouldnt vote for either Mr Trump or his presumptive Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, in November. Im gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in, he said.

Mr Bolton called Mr Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, the most powerful person in the White House after the president. But he declined to say whether he believed Mr Kushner was qualified to oversee a broad portfolio that includes Mr Trumps re-election campaign and Middle East peace, saying the focus ought to be on the president.

In the interview, he was severely critical of Mr Trumps diplomacy with North Korea. He called it folly for Mr Trump to cancel US war games with South Korea as a concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He described Mr Trump as obsessed with the number of reporters who would attend a news conference concluding his first summit with Mr Jong-un in Singapore.

Thats what he was focused on, Mr Bolton said. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity  first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea.

Bolton suggests Trump cares more about image than he does about ensuring Americas safety (Getty)

Mr Bolton said that he considered the summit a strategic mistake and that the US got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot.

In another advance clip released last week, Mr Bolton said Russian president Vladimir Putin can play Trump like a fiddle. The Kremlin on Friday rejected that characterisation.

I think Putin is smart, tough, Mr Bolton says. I think he sees that hes not faced with a serious adversary here. I dont think hes worried about Donald Trump

Mr Bolton said he was appalled at Mr Trumps news conference with Mr Putin after a Helsinki summit in July 2018, when the US president sided with the Russian leader in challenging American intelligence agencies conclusion that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election.

I thought I wouldnt get up. I didnt know what to do after the news conference, Mr Bolton said. I thought Dan Coats, then the director of national intelligence, was close to resignation.

Mr Bolton defended his decision to publish a book instead of testifying in the House impeachment inquiry of Mr Trumps Ukraine scandal. He said he didnt think the Democrats had the wit or the political understanding or the reach to change what, for them, was an exercise in arousing their own base, so that they could say, We impeached Donald Trump.

This was a partisan play, he said. It was not a constitutional process. I judge that to be almost as irregular as what they were accusing Trump of doing.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth faulted Mr Bolton for going ahead with the book before the pre-publication review process could be completed, writing that Mr Bolton has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.

Mr Lamberth also signalled that Mr Bolton could lose in the next phase of the breach of contract lawsuit and may have to turn over to the government a $2m (1.6m) book advance and any royalties he receives from book sales.

Mr Boltons book paints an unflattering portrait of the White House, describing Mr Trump as ignorant of basic foreign policy facts and motivated largely by political self-interest. In one passage widely reported passage, Mr Bolton wrote that Mr Trump urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy agricultural products from the US because it would help the Trump campaign build political support in rural states.

Mr Boltons account joins recent critical portraits of Mr Trumps character and fitness for office from other prominent national security officials, including former defence secretary James Mattis, who gave a statement to The Atlantic alleging that three years under Mr Trump have eroded the foundations of American democracy.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people  does not even pretend to try, Mr Mattis wrote. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

And in October, Admiral William McRaven, the former commander of Americas special operations forces, penned an opinion article for The New York Times alleging that Trump was a threat to the republic and that it was time for new leadership in the Oval Office.

Bloomberg
Brisbane City Council has scrapped its funding for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, ending a seven-year run hosting the international film competition.

The awards were launched by the state government in 2007 as a major attraction and from 2013 was run by the council's economic agency Brisbane Marketing at a cost of $1.9 million of ratepayer funds in the 2019-20 budget.

At the 13th awards in November 2019, lord mayor Adrian Schrinner committed Brisbane to hosting the awards long-term but that has come to an abrupt halt because of the impact of coronavirus on the council's budget.

(From left) Australian actor David Wenham, APSA academy president Jack Thompson AM, 2017 APSA winner Greer Simpkin, Australian actor & awards co-host Deborah Mailman, Brisbane lord mayor Adrian Schrinner, Philippines actress Max Eigenmann and Indian actor Manoj Bajpayee. Credit:Toby Crockford

Showcasing films from about 70 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the awards were designed to be a tourism attraction bringing hundreds of filmmakers, actors and industry members to Brisbane.
For transgender people in Indonesia, being able to live peacefully without facing judgement and discrimination is already a major challenge, let alone pursuing their dreams openly.

Several transwomen, however, have shown that the skys the limit as they have successfully broken through the glass ceiling by claiming their place in public office and serving in positions that allow them to make impactful decisions.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
By PTI

MUMBAI: Amid an organisational restructuring to tide over the COVID-19 woes, apparel maker Raymond has seen about 1,100 employees either resigning or being sacked since April as part of cost-control measures, retrenched employees claimed, but the firm refuted their assertions on non-payment of full dues.

About a dozen employees PTI spoke to said the Raymond management sought resignations from them, failing which they were threatened with termination.

While some 400 were coerced into resignation, around 700 who did not do so were sacked.

Similar notices have been served to 400 more now, they claimed.

The Gautam Singhania-led company had 7,087 employees on its rolls as of March 2019, according to the annual report.

A company spokesperson, however, refuted the numbers saying queries on the issue "are factually incorrect, malicious and misrepresented with vested interests."

"We would further like to state that in line with the prevailing market conditions and unprecedented challenges, the company has undertaken the process of cost rationalisation to minimise the impact on business due to the pandemic.

"Basis this rationalisation exercise certain roles were identified to be redundant and the same was communicated to the employees concerned, post which they submitted their resignations," the company spokesperson said.

The staff alleged that their salaries were cut by up to 65 per cent since April and before the resignations were sought, and only the basic pay was being paid to those serving notice period.

On this, the company spokesperson said, "as per the employment contract, they have been put on the notice period of three months and are being paid in compliance with the terms and conditions. All the said measures and actions are taken as per the laid down procedures and are in the overall interests of all stakeholders."

Raymond on June 10 informed exchanges that all its retail stores remained shut during the first and second phase of the coronavirus lockdown with gradual reopening thereafter, while its suiting and shirting fabric manufacturing plants remain shut due to subdued demand.

The firm was looking at debt raising and alternate working capital to manage liquidity.

"In line with the prevailing market conditions and unprecedented challenges, we have undertaken a process of cost rationalisation and various cost control measures related to sales and marketing, manpower, rentals and others to minimise the impact on business due to the pandemic," it had informed the bourses.

PTI spoke to a dozen of the employees but all of them requested not to be named fearing reprisal, as they are serving the three-month notice period after termination by the over 90-year-old group that has two verticals--Raymond Apparel which sells brands like Park Avenue, Parx, Colour Plus; and garmenting and shirting business under Raymond Suitings.

The staff allege that their salaries were slashed by up to 65 per cent in April before the resignations were sought from them through WhatsApp calls/messages in early May.

During the notice period, they are being given just about their basic pay after deducting income tax on the full salary, resulting in only 25-27 per cent payment.

The HR department sent termination messages to only those who didn't tender resignations voluntarily, they said, alleging the huge salary cut that preceded was not conveyed to them personally in writing but was posted on the company website.

In mid-April, Singhania in a video message exhorted the staff "to survive at any cost by conserving cash at any cost and to make sure to focus on our collections," and said he'd not draw a penny in salary during the lockdown.

According to the employees, Raymond announced huge salary cuts ranging from 20 per cent (who are still employed), 50 per cent to those who are benched now and a hefty 65 per cent to those who have been terminated now.

Employees fear more jobs will be lost from the 50 per cent bracket.

"What is more, though the official reduction is 65 per cent, we are only getting 25-28 per cent as they are deducting tax on the full salary and what is paid is not even the full basic pay," six of them told PTI requesting not to name them.

These employees have spent between 18 months and 12 years with the group in high positions as heads of marketing, logistics, supply-chains.

Barring three, all of them have liabilities like home loans, school fees and rentals to pay, among others.

"Late April, I was told my division would be recast as some positions have become redundant but was assured of my position. But within 10 days I received a WhatsApp call saying my position too has become redundant and that I have to resign in the larger interest of the organisation, which I refused. Within hours, I was terminated," a person who headed marketing at one of the divisions said.

Another person said over 20 jobs were lost from his division, and more are on the way out.

"They did not spare even a few who have a couple of months to retire," said the person cited above who was in the supply chain division for the past decade.

"The pay-cut announcement was made in May but effective April! he said, adding, a legal notice is being prepared seeking either re-employment or full salaries. We aren't opposed to retrenchment."

"Our only demand is to pay us full salaries during notice period," said another person from the supply chain side and is the only earner in his family with a home loan and two school-going kids.

Accusing the management of frequently changing HR policy, another employee said most culling is driven by favouritism.

There is no union as the majority of those sacked are in the management cadre, he alleged.

"We were even ready for the 65 per cent salary cuts as we have given everything to this company in all these years. Over 1,100 of us were sacked by a company that had won the best-place-to-work-with award just two years ago," said a person from Raymond Suitings who was heading a department.

He also said Clause 17 of their appointment letter specifies those serving the three-month notice will be given full salary.
Irrfan Khan's wife Sutapa Sikdar shares an emotional post for him on Instagram saying that 'the lotuses remember you, Irrfan.' It is going to be two months to the demise of the famous Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan.

Nearly two months after the demise of Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, his wife Sutapa Sikdar on Sunday shared a picture of lotuses blooming in a field and remembered how Khan had nurtured those flowers.

Sutapa shared a picture of the blooming lotuses on Facebook and reminisced how the Hindi Medium actor had brought them in bottles and planted them in the field. The lotuses remember you Irrfan, you took so much pain to bring them into life in bottles and create a place for them to bloom here. #rains #naturelove #alluniverseisone, she wrote in the caption.

The internationally renowned actor Irrfan Khan passed away in April this year at Mumbais Kokilaben Hospital while battling a rare kind of cancer. The 53-year-old actor was last seen on screen in Angrezi Medium. He was not a part of the films promotions owing to his ill health.

Also Read: Shahid Kapoor pens a thank you note as Kabir Singh completes one year

Also Read: I am proud of my privilege: Sonam Kapoor to trolls

With critically acclaimed films like The Lunchbox, The Namesake and Paan Singh Tomar to his credit, Irrfan was regarded as one of the finest actors in Hindi cinema.

Also Read: World Music Day: Bollywoods best tracks of this decade

For all the latest Entertainment News, download NewsX App
The risk we face is that the commercial kangaroo industry will be shut down because people start to believe these lies. As well as many Australians losing their livelihoods, kangaroo populations would soar and many would die...

Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia (KIAA) is calling for an end to the relentless distribution of mistruths about the commercial kangaroo industry and the manipulation of peoples good will, which will have a negative impact on our native animals and ecosystems  the opposite of what activists are setting out to do.

It is our responsibility as Australians to use and showcase the abundant natural resources we have at home. And it is the responsibility of governments, regulators and law enforcement as well as businesses to ensure this is done in a sustainable, ethical and safe way.

The commercial kangaroo industry in Australia is a reputable and transparent local operation that abides by some of the strictest wildlife conservation, animal welfare and health and safety standards in the world. It is comparatively small to other meat industries but attracts a lot of attention due the iconic status of the kangaroo.

We have always welcomed the added scrutiny because we understand that it is a sensitive area and we genuinely care about doing it the right way, KIAA Chair Ray Borda said.

Last year, vegan activist groups from around the world began a targeted campaign to defame and destroy the commercial kangaroo industry in Australia. The campaign centred around a documentary that first aired in the US to an audience most likely to be outraged and with little access to the truth.

The documentary attempts to shock viewers with vision of kangaroo carcasses being processed similarly to other animals we eat. Most importantly, it does not distinguish between commercial harvesting and non-commercial killing of kangaroos and falsely links illegal shootings by unlicensed individuals to the commercial industry. It also uses biased sources to cast doubt on the government management of kangaroo populations and the national Code, developed with respected scientists and animal welfare groups including the RSPCA, detailing the most humane way to kill a kangaroo in the wild. Now restaurants and fashion brands are being pressured to stop selling kangaroo.

The risk we face is that the commercial kangaroo industry will be shut down because people start to believe these lies. As well as many Australians losing their livelihoods, kangaroo populations would soar and many would die due to a lack of food or they would be culled to control numbers and the bodies discarded.

If people choose not to eat meat or wear leather, that is entirely up to them. But it is time these groups stop misleading people to push their agenda. Australia needs a sustainable commercial kangaroo industry, Ray said.

Did you know?

1. Kangaroos are not farmed. They live in the wild and are harvested by licensed commercial shooters who have undergone training to ensure accuracy and reduce the impact on young.

2. No threatened species of kangaroos and wallabies are killed by the commercial industry. Only four types of kangaroos with abundant populations are harvested in certain regions of Australia.

3. Kangaroo populations are protected. Annual quotas are set by state governments based on federal population surveys and other factors such as bushfires, drought and disease. These limits are rarely met.

4. Independent inspections of kangaroo carcasses occur before they are passed fit for human consumption. There is no documented case of someone getting ill from the consumption of kangaroo meat.

For a factcheck of the documentary and more information about the industry, visit kangrooindustry.com.au

Media contact: Sarah Parkes +61 426 154 301, sarah.parkes@daymark.com.au
The BJP leader slammed Mamata, accused Congress of siding with the TMC in keeping benefits arising out of PM Kisana Yojana and Ayushman Bharat scheme from the public.

BJP leader Rahul Sinha on Monday said that incorporation of West Bengal under the Centres Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, as requested by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, can only be possible once the ruling Trinamool Congress is thrown out of power from the state.

Sinhas statement has come after the leader of Congress in Lok Sabha wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to incorporate the state under the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan to provide jobs to the workers who have returned during the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

The Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan cannot be started in West Bengal as there is an anti-poor government in the state. While this government is in power no welfare schemes for the poor can begin in the state. The West Bengal government did not let the benefits of the PM-Kisan Yojana reach the farmers, neither did they allow the Ayushman Bharat scheme to run, Sinha said.

They were not even allowing the return of migrant workers to the state (during the lockdown phase). The Prime Minister always wants to give support to West Bengal, even during the corona crisis the Prime Minister reached the state after Cyclone Amphan and provided Rs 1,000 crore at the request of the Chief Minister, but the money is being used by the TMC government and it did not reach the poor people, he further alleged.

Also read: NDMA warns of floods in Bihar and Assam

Also read: Maharashtra puts agreements worth Rs 5000 crore with Chinese companies on hold

The BJP leader further said that the Congress leaders of the state are supporting the TMC government and misusing the funds provided by the Centre.

Congress on one hand is siding with the TMC which is misusing the funds and on the other is talking about welfare schemes for the poor. Both are not possible together, this government should be thrown out of power from West Bengal only then will the poor get jobs, only then will their welfare start. This is not at all possible till Mamata Banerjee is in power in the state, Sinha said, adding that Chowdhury should first get a hold on the Congress leaders from the state before urging the Prime Minister.

The Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, with a duration of 125 days, will work in mission mode and involve focused implementation of 25 categories of works or activities in 116 districts, each with a large concentration of returnee workers in six states  Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha.

Similar to Chowdhurys demand for West Bengals inclusion in the scheme, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel too had requested Prime Minister Modi to include Chhattisgarh in the initiative.

Also read: NITI Aayog lists ten practices to combat Covid-19, recovery rate now at 55.7%

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
The new chief regulator of the City will take over at an often criticised organisation with a major new path to chart after Brexit.

Nikhil Rathi was unveiled as the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority on Monday.

Mr Rathi will face a battle to only take over the job and leave behind some of the baggage of his predecessor Andrew Bailey.

Mr Bailey, who has gone on to lead the Bank of England since stepping down from the FCA in January, was long a punching bag for many of his critics.

He had made so many enemies during his time in charge of the regulator that campaigners demanded a rethink after Mr Bailey was unveiled as the UKs top banker.

At the time he stepped down, Brexit seemed to be the biggest challenge that Mr Baileys successor would face.

Leaving the EU will create a new political, legal and economic environment for firms and regulators, chairman Charles Randell and interim chief executive Christopher Woolard said in April as they laid out the FCAs business plan for the coming year.

It will now fall to Mr Rathi to fulfil the vision laid out by his new boss to keep the UK at the centre of the global financial markets.

But the economy has changed in ways that no-one could have predicted at the beginning of the year and while Mr Bailey has been forced to take big decisions to prop up the economy, so too Mr Rathis first months will be dominated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The regulator has been forced to put several schemes on hold as it focused all its attention on the mitigating the impact of the outbreak.

The FCA says it has been focused on keeping markets open during the massive economic downturn, ensuring that people still have access to bank services and helping consumers weather the immediate shocks.

The watchdog will also need to look out for unscrupulous people and businesses trying to take advantage of the crisis.

It will need a plan for how to deal with the years-long fallout that is likely to come from Covid-19.

But Mr Rathi will also have to deal with the fallout from some of the skeletons left in Mr Baileys office.

Later this year, former Court of Appeal judge Dame Elizabeth Gloster is set to publish a report into the FCAs handling of London Capital and Finance.

Investors face losing up to 237 million that is trapped in the failed scheme and have attacked the FCA for ignoring repeated warnings.

The FCA was the cause of this collapse because they kept this under wraps, one angry investor told Dame Elizabeth during a meeting in January.

In April, the FCA set out its key priorities for the next three years. They include making faster and more effective decisions, helping retail investors make the right decisions and ensuring that payments are safe and accessible.
SPRINGFIELD - Illegal firework use over the last few weeks across the city has been major pain for city officials, and now Mayor Domenic Sarno says he would like to reciprocate by hitting offenders where it hurts.

Fireworks continue to be a royal pain in the you-know-where, he said.

Sarno, at his weekly COVID-19 update, said he will file home rule legislation with the state legislature that, if approved, would automatically affix any fine for setting off fireworks onto the renewal fee for a drivers license or vehicle registration, a city excise tax bill, and even a business license.

You have to get their attention. You have to make this something that is going to get their attention, to make them think twice, he said.

Fireworks are illegal to own, sell or possess in Massachusetts, but that has not stopped people from setting them off in recent weeks in Springfield,in cities across Massachusetts, and even in other cities nationwide.

The penalty for being found with fireworks in Massachusetts is between $100 and $1,000.

The City Council on Monday is scheduled to consider a motion by councilor Victor Davilla to increase the minimum fine to $300, and make possession an arrestable offense.

But Sarno said a fine by itself is a limited deterrent if people choose to ignore it.You could make it a $3,000 fine and theyd rip the ticket up right in front of you, he said.

Springfield police and fire departments have had their hands full with firework-related incidents.

Police have received hundreds of complaints nightly, to the point where the 911 switchboard was overwhelmed by the number of calls and the state police switchboard in Northampton had to handle the overflow.

The last two major fires in the city, a garage fire on Bloomfield Street, and a porch fire on Belmont Avenue, were caused by fireworks, Sarno said.

There has always been illegal fireworks activity just before and after July 4, but officials have never seen it begin so early and be as sustained as this year.

Sarno said shooting off fireworks at all hours of the night and disturbing residents amounts to almost terrorizing neighborhoods.

They shoot them out of car windows, or they stop their car in the street, shoot them off and then take off, he said. Its total disrespect.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 20:17:34|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HONG KONG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread quickly in South Asia on Monday with India's death toll rising to 13,699 and total cases reaching 425,282, while Thailand reported no confirmed local transmissions for the 28th consecutive day.

India's federal health ministry Monday morning said 445 new deaths due to COVID-19, besides fresh 14,821 positive cases were reported during the past 24 hours across the country, taking the number of deaths to 13,699 and total cases to 425,282.

Bangladesh reported 3,480 more COVID-19 cases, bringing the total cases in the country to over 115,000.

Meanwhile, 38 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh, senior health ministry official Nasima Sultana said in a briefing on Monday afternoon.

"The total number of positive cases is now 115,786 and death toll stands currently at 1,502 with the fresh fatalities of 33 men and five women," she said.

Cases in Indonesia rose by 954 within one day to 46,845, with the death toll adding by 35 to 2,500, Achmad Yurianto, a health ministry official, said at a press conference.

Cases in the Philippines rose to 30,682 after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 630 more infections.

The DOH said in its bulletin that the number of recoveries rose to 8,143 after 250 more patients survived the disease.

The death toll also increased to 1,177 after eight more patients succumbed to the disease, the DOH added.

Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry confirmed 310 new positive COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 29,143 in the country, spokesman for the ministry Sayedudin Jami said.

According to the official, 12 patients died over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 598 since the outbreak of the disease in February in Afghanistan.

An Australian defense force officer has become Papua New Guinea's (PNG) ninth confirmed COVID-19 patient, local newspaper The National reported.

PNG'S National Pandemic Controller David Manning said the case was a reminder to the public that the risk of COVID-19 in PNG remains "very high."

The Australian state of Victoria has taken a step back from easing COVID-19 restrictions scheduled for Monday, after recording a spike in new infections.

The state recorded 16 news cases on Monday following six straight days of double digit growth, including more than 40 new cases over the weekend -- the largest increase for Victoria in two months.

South Korea reported 17 more cases of the COVID-19 compared to 24 hours ago as of 0:00 a.m. Monday local time, raising the total number of infections to 12,438.

The daily caseload fell below 20 in almost four weeks. For the past week, the daily confirmed cases moved between 40 and 60 due to small cluster infections.

No more death was confirmed, leaving the death toll at 280. The total fatality rate stood at 2.25 percent.

New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total active cases in the country to nine, all linked to overseas travel, according to the Ministry of Health.

The combined number of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand is 1,511, according to the ministry.

The number of COVID-19 related deaths in New Zealand was 22, while that of recovered cases was 1,482, the health ministry said.

The Thai government reported no confirmed local transmissions of the COVID-19 pandemic for the 28th consecutive day. "The only new COVID-19 cases are the imported ones," said Dr. Taweesin Visanuyothin, spokesman for the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).

The total number of COVID-19 cases in Thailand now stands at 3,151 with 58 deaths since January.

The number of COVID-19 recoveries in Sri Lanka surpassed the 1,500-mark on Monday after 28 patients were discharged from hospital, health ministry statistics showed.

According to the health ministry, to date, 1,950 people have been infected with the virus after the first local patient was detected in March, out of which 1,526 patients have recovered, bringing down the total active cases to 424.

A total of 11 deaths have been reported from the virus in the country so far.
A mother-of-two was stabbed to death with a samurai sword and a meat cleaver at her home in Dublin, detectives believe.

Jean Eagers, 57, died in her home in Blanchardstown on Sunday morning and her 60-year-old husband William has been arrested in connection with her death.

Police stormed the house and overpowered the suspect using Tasers and stun grenades after neighbours had raised the alarm, reports say.

The sword and meat cleaver were recovered from the home and police suspect they were used to kill Mrs Eagers, according to the Irish Mirror.

Jean Eagers, 57, died at her home in Dublin on Sunday morning and police have seized a sword and meat cleaver suspected to have been used to kill her

Mrs Eagers's son reportedly ran for help after witnessing part of the alleged attack on Sunday morning.

Neighbours also raised the alarm after hearing loud noises coming from Mrs Eagers's house and police arrived shortly before noon.

The alleged attacker was injured during a struggle with police and was taken to hospital after being arrested.

According to the Irish Independent, the suspect is Mrs Eagers's taxi driver husband, William Eagers.

Police had to force their way into the home after looking inside and seeing Mrs Eagers injured but finding the door barricaded, according to the Irish Sun.

Paramedics tried to save Mrs Eagers's life at her Willow Wood home but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Her body was later removed to the City Morgue where a post-mortem examination was due to be carried out this morning.

Irish police vehicles outside the house where Mrs Eagers died on Sunday morning and where they arrested a man yesterday

Forensic workers wearing masks and protective suits work at the alleged crime scene in Blanchardstown yesterday

The scene remained preserved on Sunday evening as examinations by members of the Garda Technical Bureau continued.

Ireland's garda police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Dublin politician Ruth Coppinger said the community in the Hartstown area was 'in mourning' after Mrs Eagers's death.

'My sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Jean Eagers,' she said.

Local councillor Daniel Whooley said: 'It is absolutely horrible that an incident like this has taken place. I was shocked to hear of the incident and it is awful to think that someone has died in such a manner.

'I never expected something like that to happened around this area. From what I gather from speaking to a number of the locals around the area, we are all a bit shocked.'

Flowers left at the scene where Mrs Eagers was pronounced dead while a suspect was arrested and initially taken to hospital after a struggle with police
A recent study led by Texas Tech's Department of Biological Sciences and Natural Science Research Laboratory determined that certain genes are associated with the pathogens that infect chronic wounds and hinder the healing process.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers have determined that genetics may play a role in how wounds heal. Caleb Phillips, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University and director of the Phillips Laboratory in the Department of Biological Sciences, and doctoral student Craig Tipton led the study, "Patient genetics is linked to chronic wound microbiome composition and healing," published Thursday (June 18) in the open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal PLOS Pathogens.

Phillips, who also serves as Curator of Genetic Resources at the Natural Science Research Laboratory's (NSRL) Robert J. Baker Genetic Resources Collection, said the study determined that certain genes are associated with the number of bacteria and abundance of common pathogens in wounds. The collection of microbes, known as a "microbiome," can determine how a wound heals and how long that process takes. The research also showed that the more diversity within a wound microbiome, the less time it took to heal.

Patients visiting Lubbock's Southwest Regional Wound Care Center (SWRWCC) for the care of a lower-extremity infected wound consented to participation in the study and provided samples from their wound(s) and from a cheek swab. The study used microbiome profiling, genome fingerprinting, wet lab validation, imaging and model development to analyze the samples and data, and included researchers from Texas Tech, the Texas Tech University Health Science Center (TTUHSC), the SWRWCC and the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth (UNTHSC).

"We showed that there are identifiable locations in people's genome where, depending on their genotype, they tend to get infections by specific bacteria," Phillips said. "The different genomic locations identified tend to be related in terms of the types of genes they are close to and may regulate. A working hypothesis emerging from the research is that genetic differences influencing genes encoding the way our cells interact with the environment and each other are important for infection differences."

Though there is still work to be done before the research directly benefits patients, Tipton said the study is an important and promising step in that direction.

"Personalized medicine is a current hot topic in modern healthcare, where the goal is to identify inherent differences within individuals that may cause them to be impacted differently by disease and finding treatments that are well-suited and tailored to the individual and may contribute to better patient outcomes," Tipton said. "Our project furthers two equally-interesting avenues of research with potential translation to the clinic. In one, it is our goal to develop robust genomic predictive models that could help physicians to determine a patient's risk for chronic wound infection, particularly to specific bacteria.

"In the second, this work helps to inform how genetic variation in patients can influence microbiome-host interactions and wound infection pathogenesis. By further studying infection pathogenesis and how these complex microbial communities interact, it may be possible to improve existing therapies or to develop new therapeutic strategies altogether."

Phillips said he looks forward to continuing his research at Texas Tech. His lab is developing a follow-up study that he hopes will collect enough information to create accurate predictive models. They also are working on a study exploring how a person's location in the U.S. shapes differences in chronic wound microbiomes.

"Texas Tech provides good support for research and is continually working for growth," Phillips said. "My research, like that of most others, has been generally enhanced by the academic freedom provided at the university. The Natural Science Research Laboratory is a premier Natural History Collection, and the samples archived at the Genetic Resources Collection have allowed me to design studies such as this one that would otherwise not have been possible. The hard work and creativity of doctoral student Craig Tipton were essential to the success of this project, as was collaboration with the laboratories of Nicole Phillips at UNTHSC and Kendra P. Rumbaugh at TTUHSC, Professor Todd Little in the Texas Tech College of Education, the SWRWCC and the NSRL."

###

The team of researchers included:

Department of Biological Sciences and the NSRL: Phillips and Tipton, who led the project from conception to experimental design and conducted data analysis, wet lab validation and structural equation modeling and wrote the final paper. The NSRL also assisted with curation and availability of samples and data curation.

SWRWCC: Dr. Randy Wolcott, founder; technical director Nicholas E. Sanford and information technology network administrator Clint Miller, who assisted with sample collection and data curation.

TTUHSC: Rumbaugh, a professor in the Department of Surgery and co-director of the Burn Center of Research Excellence; and post-doctoral researcher Derek Fleming, who conducted mouse model histological imaging.

Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at the UNTHSC: Nicole Phillips, assistant professor and director of the N. Phillips Lab; Gita Pathak and Talisa K. Silzer, who were doctoral students during the project in the N. Phillips lab; and post-doctoral researcher Jie Sun. The group assisted with patient genome fingerprinting.

Texas Tech Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership in the College of Education and Optentia Research Focus Area at North-West University in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa: Little, who assisted with structural equation modeling.

Visit Texas Tech Today to read more about this research: https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2020/06/Stories/researcher-say-genetics-may-determine-wound-infection-and-healing.

To read the complete study, visit the PLOS Pathogens website: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008511
A body representing pharmacists in Northern Ireland has called on employers to support staff after a Derry woman highlighted racist abuse in the workplace.

In last Thursdays edition of the Derry News Nkele Mushapho shared her experience of racism in Northern Ireland.

The 24-year-old has spent most of her life in Derry having relocated from South Africa at the age of 11.

Ms Mushapho said she has been subjected to racist abuse on a regular basis both in work and while out at night socialising with friends.

She recognised that not everyone is racist in Northern Ireland but said her life here has been dotted with moments of racist abuse that act as a constant reminder of her skin colour and make her feel like shell never fit in.

Working in a hotel as a teenager she was denigrated by a colleague who used racial slurs when no-one else was around.

In a professional capacity she faces customers who request a white pharmacist and those who constantly second-guess her advice.

Pharmacy Forum NI is the professional leadership body for all pharmacists in Northern Ireland, representing pharmacy practice in both hospital and community.

The role of the Forum is to lead, promote and support the pharmacy profession to deliver improved outcomes for patients.

Like the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, Sheelin McKeagney, the chair of the Pharmacy Forum NI was appalled by the racist abuse reported by Nkele Mushapho, a pharmacist from Derry in the press.

Sheelin McKeagney stated: We oppose all forms of abuse of pharmacy staff and are committed to the principle of respect between all pharmacy team members and patients.

We stand with pharmacists who are abused and are ready to help. Pharmacy Forum NI will be contacting Nkele to discuss her experiences.

We call on all employers to ensure that all staff dealing with abuse are supported and remind the public like all healthcare professionals, all pharmacists in Northern Ireland deserve to work free from harassment and abuse.
Iowa Department of Transportation Drivers License stations, where medical marijuana patients get their registration cards, also were closed, except by appointment, during the outbreak. Parker said the DOT mailed cards to patients when they could and the Iowa Department of Public Health worked with the DOT to schedule times for patients to come in for their cards.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Former CIA director and defence secretary Robert Gates said on Monday that the US government is paralysed by political polarisation and careerism, which has allowed China, Russia and other rivals to make inroads internationally to America's detriment.

Former US secretary of defence Robert Gates with former prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2008. Credit:Andrew Taylor

Gates, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said in an online speech to a Florida group that partisanship has always been part of US politics dating back to founders John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but only recently has that resulted in the government being unable to tackle major issues such as the coronavirus outbreak. He said congressional members fear taking any stand or making any compromise that could harm their re-election chances.

"Because of our paralysis in Washington, we can't tackle successfully any of the big challenges the country faces whether its education, immigration, infrastructure," Gates told the Forum Club, a nonpartisan Palm Beach County organisation that meets monthly to hear from prominent newsmakers. "They are just too hard for our politicians across the board. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue."

Gates, 76, and a Republican, served as CIA director from 1991 to 1993 under president George Bush and defence secretary from 2006 to 2011 under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama. His book, Exercise Of Power: American Failures, Successes, And A New Path Forward In The New Post-Cold War World, was recently published.
NORRISTOWN  Permission to advertise a request for proposals for the Montgomery County Department of Voter Services brought up tensions surrounding mail-in ballots during a recent Montgomery County Commissioners meeting.

Although the proposal was approved by a 2-1 party-line vote on June 18, Republican Commissioner Joe Gale doubled down on his stance against mail-in ballots.

Gale cited concerns surrounding the matter in past meetings, as hes strongly opposed to a total mail-in election, Gale said during an April 16 session. Gale voted against the roughly $1.31 million contract item for additional materials relating to this issue.

He also slammed the handling of the June 2 primary election in Montgomery County, where officials suggested voters could opt to mail-in their ballots due to health and safety concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Election Day was initially scheduled to take place in April, but was postponed about two months by Gov. Tom Wolf due to the public health crisis.

Ken Lawrence Jr., vice chairman of the Montgomery County Commissioners, said on June 4 that there were 112,853 mail-in ballots received by June 3. The county has 487,394 registered voters, according to county data, and residents solicited 161,044 mail-in ballots.

The primary in 2020 in Montgomery County was a total disaster, and it was unacceptable, Gale said during Thursdays virtual meeting. So its my opinion we should handle the mailing of ballots whether theyre absentee or mail-in ballots in house through the Montgomery County Voter Services Department so we dont rely on a secondhand provider where we lack oversight and accountability.

He added that he doesnt have high hopes for the general election in November.

 If you live life through experiences, we experienced a terrible experience in the primary, and itll most likely happen again  in the general election in 2020 and thats why Im opposing this RFP (request for proposal), Gale said.

Public comments

Earlier in the commissioners meeting, a roughly hour-long public comment took place where residents spoke against and in favor of racially charged comments made by Gale earlier this month.

Those tensions appeared to spill into the meeting as a relatively mundane agenda item of approving the meeting minutes from the June 4 meeting was tabled.

Gale asked that his addendum submission, which consisted of a transcription of the remarks that were made during opening comments and other public comment that was submitted via email be included in the minutes, according to Chief Operating Officer Lee Soltysiak.

Gale also pressed Soltysiak and asked why the publishing of the meeting video was delayed. Soltysiak replied that it sometimes takes longer to upload longer videos.

The addition was news to Lawrence and Commissioners Chairwoman Val Arkoosh, both Democrats.

Im not going to second it. I have not seen the transcripts yet. I mean Im not going to vote for something I havent seen, Lawrence said.

Contracts awarded

The Montgomery County Commissioners also authorized funds for several big ticket contract agreements totaling roughly $9.2 million:

The Montgomery County Department of Assets and Infrastructure awarded a $5,176,467.19 contract to Allan Myers LP, of Worcester to repave roads.

The countys assets and infrastructure department entered into an $2,737,000 agreement with Loftus Construction Inc., of Cinnaminson, N.J., for services related to fixing a sinkhole on Butler Pike in Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships.

As a number of commercial insurance policies were set to expire on June 30, county officials approved $1,351,721 in new commercial liability insurance policies relating to areas including property, excess workers compensation and law enforcement liability.

LGBTQ recognition

As Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride Month takes place in June, and Arkoosh recognized the month-long celebration locally during the Thursday morning meeting.

This is an acknowledgement of all of our friends and family and colleagues that are members of the LGBTQ community, she said.

Arkoosh also applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the judges ruled on June 15.

So this is tremendously good news particularly in Pennsylvania where we did not have statewide protections in the workplace, Arkoosh said. Theres still more statewide protections that are needed in Pennsylvania, particularly around housing, but at least this is a step in the right direction that we can celebrate.

The next Montgomery County Board of Commissioners meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. on July 9.
Luxshare ICT announced they are still hiring 300 workers per day from June 18 to 20 for production expansion in North Vietnam.

Luxshare Precision Industry (Luxshare ICT), one of Apples contract manufacturers, is hiring thousands of workers in Vietnam to assemble AirPods.

Over the last few days, the companys fanpage has been posting job opening for various vacancies, ranging from workers, engineers, administrative personnel, among others, for its production facilities at Van Trung industrial park, located at Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province.

This is Luxshare ICTs second facility in Bac Giang, after the first one at Quang Chau industrial park.

On June 17, Luxshare ICT announced they are hiring 300 workers per day from June 18 to 20 for production expansion at Van Trung industrial park. Those who got hired would have a basic salary of VND4.8 million (US$207) and other allowances that would ensure a combined monthly income of VND9  14 million (US$388  604).

In addition to the new facility at Van Trung, Luxshare ICT is also looking for workers at Quang Chau industrial park.

Charging cases of AirPods Pro assembled in Vietnam.

Nikkei Asian Review previously reported that Apple is planning to produce 30% of total classic AirPods, equivalent to three to four million units, in Vietnam after having started the process since March. The US-based tech giant has also been recruiting a series of senior position employees in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in production, quality control, sales or supply chain, fueling rumor that Apple would build a plant there.

Besides AirPods, The Information reported Apple has tapped factories in Vietnam to make its own forthcoming over-ear AirPods Studio headphones, with Goertek and Luxshare ICT being the manufacturers.

Shipments to Apple will reportedly begin in June or July, which could mean a release sometime in late summer or early fall, it said.

According to The Information, the move would be the first time Apple has used factories in Vietnam to produce an entirely new product, instead of relying on them to supplement the manufacture of an older model already produced in China. Hanoitimes

Ngoc Thuy

When Apple comes to Vietnam and FDI flow starts moving Apple is making clearer signals in the production of components and products in Vietnam, opening up opportunities for Vietnam to participate more deeply in the global value chain.
Manoj Joshi

At no point in the past has China laid claim to the entire Galwan Valley, a sliver of flat land abutted by steep gorges through which the Galwan River flows and enters the Shyok River, and the maps Beijing has itself published in the past show its claim line stopping short of the confluence.

Last week, however, in the wake of bloody clashes between the Indian and Chinese armies in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and China too suffered an unknown number of casualties, both the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing have described the Galwan Valley as part of Chinas territory.

The Galwan River is named after Ghulam Rassul Galwan, a Ladakhi adventurer who accompanied many European explorers in the region at the turn of the 19th century. According to Ladakhi history the Galwan Nullah was named so by British geologists after he discovered a passage through what seemed like an impenetrable set of gorges.

Over the years, the status of the Galwan Valley has changed and, if the recent developments are to be taken into account, it is still changing.

Commenting on the incident of June 15, the official spokesman of the Western Theatre Command of the PLA, Zhang Shuili, accused the Indian side of deliberately launching a provocative attack and he went on to add that the sovereignty of the Galwan Valley has always belonged to China.

On the right, a Chinese map issued in the midst of the 1962 war indicating what they claim were Indian incursions (blue dots). On the left, the Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1974 publication of Premier Zhous letter to Afro-Asian leaders on the Sino-Indian boundary issue on November 15, 1962.

India, of course, disagrees with this claim, and the special representatives process was designed to help the two countries resolve their differences over the boundary question. Linked to this process is the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which is not a line on the ground or even an agreed line on a map which is why it is susceptible to changes by one side or the other. Over the years, a familiar pattern has built up around specific problem areas along the LAC, but the Galwan Valley has not been one of them.

While the earliest map issued by India after Independence showed the countries borders in Aksai Chin as undefined, the present boundaries of what is now the Union Territory of Ladakh were drawn unilaterally in 1954.

As for the Chinese, different maps showed Aksai Chin sometimes in their territory, sometimes outside. However, they needed the area to build an all-weather road from Xinjiang to facilitate their assimilation of Tibet. They did this over several years in the early 1950s.

The Government of Indias official map of India and its neighbours, issued in 1950

In the 1950s, Indian patrols rarely ventured into the inhospitable region where there is no human habitation. The history of Indias inability to prevent the construction of Chinas highway from Xinjiang to Tibet through the region is well known, as is the fact that New Delhi only learnt of the development years after it had occurred.

Today, we talk about the LAC, but at the time there was virtually no Chinese presence in the area around Galwan. When we talk of the Line of Actual Control we are talking of a line that connects the dots on the maps indicating isolated posts of both sides, some being held by 20-30 persons in that vast area.

The Chinese established a post at Samzungling at the head of the Galwan River before India could some time in 1959. As part of its misguided forward policy, India tried to cut off the Chinese post by planting one of its own. Army HQ overruled the Western Command headquarters and insisted that the post be set up. In the winter of 1961, an effort to go up the river valley failed, so a platoon of Gorkhas was sent up from the Hot Springs area in the south. After a months march, the group reached the upper reaches of the Galwan Valley and established themselves on July 5, 1962, cutting off the Chinese post down river and even blocking a Chinese supply party to the post.

There was an exchange of diplomatic notes with a stiff Chinese protest on July 8. Indias response was that it had always been patrolling the area and accused the Chinese of incessant intrusions into Indian territory. On July 10, some 70 Chinese soldiers surrounded the Indian post and later increased their strength to a battalion. The post was now cut off and columns sent overland to supply it in mid-July were intercepted. Eventually, it had to be supplied by air. On the morning of October 20, 1962, it was wiped out, along with other posts set up in Chip Chap River valley up north.

Map showing Historical development of Western Sector Boundary. Source: Neville Maxwell, Indias China War (Pelican, 1972)

Incidentally, the Henderson-Brooks report notes that in the discussions before sending the forces to evict the Chinese from the Thag La pass north of Tawang, the government was willing to accept a loss of certain territory in Ladakh. Indeed, the report notes that even while the operation at Thag La  the event that triggered the Sino-Indian war of 1962  was being planned, there was little or no attention paid to shoring up the isolated posts in Ladakh. They were simply asked to be prepared for some Chinese reactions on the forward posts and their orders were to fight it out and inflict maximum casualties on the Chinese.

Following the war, the Chinese said they were carrying out a 20 km withdrawal behind their frontlines. There were no Indian forces in that region anywhere so it didnt really matter. It is only in the 1980s that India began to re-establish itself along the LAC, but in areas like the Galwan Valley it was constrained by the terrain.

Chinese claims in the Aksai Chin were confusing and sometimes contradictory. However, at the end of the day, they had physical control of the territory and easier access to it than India. Maps in the 1950s often showed the Chang Chenmo Valley within India. In 1959, Zhou Enlai confirmed that a map published in 1956 was the correct alignment. This map showed the Galwan and Chip Chap river valleys to be parts of India. It was only in their sixth meeting with Indian officials in June 1960 that the Chinese put out what they said was their official map which included the two valleys as part of Chinese territory.

Since 1993, both India and China have maintained the fiction of a Line of Actual Control in the area, which was all right till the other day. Suddenly the Chinese have decided that the entire Galwan Valley is part of their territory.

The Chinese goal now seems to be to establish their boundary along the Shyok River, as it seems to be to push forward and control all of the north bank of Pangong Lake constraining Indian defences relating to the Leh region. As for the LAC, to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, it is where you choose it to be.

(Republished based on an arrangement with the ORF)
Even as the world experienced the beauty of the ring of fire solar eclipse on Sunday, scientists in India seemed to have had a busy time convincing citizens against myths and rumours related to the eclipse.

While eclipses are an awe and wonder-inspiring phenomena across the world, many associate myths and superstitions to the event, especially in India where several households continue to believe in rules like one should not eat during a solar eclipse.

On Sunday, Indian scientist and renowned Urdu poet Gauhar Raza appeared as a panelist on a television news debate on Hind channel Aaj Tak where he was seen discussing such myths with astrologer Pandit Rajkumar Shashtri. Others on the panel included astronomer Amitabh Pandey from SPACE, and Swami Umakantanand among others.

The debate was regarding rules that should be followed during the eclipse and what the eclipses astrological readings were for the country. In the course of the debate, astrologers tried to perpetuate certain myths such as how humans should not consume food during a solar eclipse. The highlight of the debate came when scientist Gauhar Raza, who was also part of the debate, took to eating on air to dispel the myth.

The incident occurred when astrologer Shashtri was telling viewers how they should not go out during the solar eclipse or consume any food. Raza, who had initially tried to argue logically against superstitious practices, perhaps thought that actions would convey his message better than words.

A video of the scientist eating on air has been going viral. Some even shared edited versions of the video with added sound effects to highlight the incident. Some even referred to the scientist as savage".

Earlier in the video, Raza can be heard oppositing solar eclipse related myths and superstitions. Aaj Tak uploaded the full video of the episode on YouTube but seems to have edited the bit with the fruit-eating scientist out.

You can watch the full video on YouTube:

And in case you wondered, there is no scintific evidence to substantiate claims that eating during a solar eclipse was harmful to physical or mental health.

The superstitions, however, may have their bases in ancient folklore. The Greeks, fir instance, thought that the sun was abandoning people to the darkness during an eclipse hinting towards an upcoming disaster. On the other hand, in India, a demon called Rahu is believed to come and swallow the sun as Lord Surya had stopped him from consuming the elixir of life.

Also Read: Eating Ban During Solar Eclipse? These Memes Perfectly Explain Desi Parents Logic

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
Millions of French children have returned to school after more than three months at home due to coronavirus health restrictions. Attendance during the last few weeks before summer holidays, is compulsory at kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools, for students up to the age of 15.

French schools closed on March 16, a day before the country's nationwide lockdown began amid the Covid-19 crisis. Despite the easing that began in mid-May and included the gradual reopening of schools, many schoolchildren have not set foot on school grounds in three months.

I cried with joy when I got the confirmation from the teacher that my two children would be going back to school full time, Noemie from Nice told AFP.

According to the latest figures from the country's education ministry, only 1.8 million primary school children, out of a total of 6.7 million, have returned to school  and most not on a full-time basis. The figures for college, France's middle schools, are 600,000 out of 3.3 million.

On June 14, President Emmanuel Macron announced that the return to school on June 22 would be obligatory" and would conform to normal hours of attendance except for France's lycees, or high schools.

The return to the classroom has followed the easing of a strict health protocol initially put in place for schools. Starting Monday, there are no longer any social distancing rules for kindergarten children within their class groups. In primary schools, a one-metre social distancing rule is recommended. In middle schools, when the one-metre distancing is not possible, students will be required to wear a mask.

On Sunday, government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye called on parents to have confidence in schools. Everything is being done so that their children will be welcomed safely, she said.

'Two weeks isn't nothing'

Last week, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who had said he hoped for a full return to school before the summer holidays, said the aim was to see the most pupils possible return to school.

Depending on the school, a return on Monday represents eight or nine days of class before the summer break.

Two weeks isn't nothing, either in educational or psychological terms, Blanquer said.

Despite a loosened protocol, some education unions have suggested there will be reception problems in some places.

We are exhausted by this period of demands and counter-demands, a school principal in Rennes told AFP.

Others, though, seem pleased.

Even though more children are coming to school, restrictions are being relaxed, another principal in Rennes said. It will be okay, even though there is now also the whole back-to-school [in September] to prepare, she added.

(with FRANCE 24, AFP)
The argument began as soon as Charlie Mai and his brother, Henry, announced their plans to attend a Black Lives Matter protest that evening in Washington. Their father was not having it.

Glenn Mai, a retired FBI agent, had been raised in Dallas by Chinese immigrants who had taught him that he would succeed if he just worked hard.

"Chinese culture is very much about working within the system," Glenn, 54, said, and during decades in law enforcement he'd come to believe the system worked.

His son, Charlie, 24, took a different view. "My father deeply believes that everyone has a fair chance, which is just basically untrue," said Charlie, an artist who fled New York for his family's home in northern Virginia due to the pandemic. "It's very Asian to me, that view that if everyone just works hard, then everything will turn out right for them. I'm definitely a little reactive to that because I think that's delusional."

That June morning, amid the yelling and tears, Glenn threatened to walk out when it became clear that Charlie and Henry, 22, planned to defy the city's 7 p.m. curfew. In the end, however, he drove downtown to bring his sons safely home, and the argument over the protests, police brutality and systemic racism has since softened into an extended conversation.

During the civil rights movement, black parents and their children may have disagreed over speed and strategy, but their shared experience of discrimination united them on the cause. Nonblack allies, many of them Jewish Americans, were a clear minority in the 1960s.

By contrast, the youth-led protests unfolding now in response to the killing of a black man by a white Minneapolis police officer are much more diverse. There are large numbers of African Americans who have supported the Black Lives Matter movement since its 2014 founding, and many native-born black and white newcomers whose lives have often differed dramatically from their parents. But there is also an unprecedentedly large segment of protesters from other backgrounds. Some are descended from immigrants who moved to the U.S. generations ago, while many others come from the families that have arrived in great waves since the civil rights movement spurred passage of the landmark Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1965.

"I think what you are seeing is a decades-long transformation. . . . We have arrived at a real cultural shift," said Jose Antonio Vargas, founder and chief executive of Define American, an immigration advocacy organization.

While the dynamics between black and white Americans get most of the media attention, Vargas said, the makeup of this new movement "is way more complex than that."

In forming "a new kind of majority" with black and white protesters, these Asian, Latino and other young allies are uniting in fighting anti-black racism and in many cases, are pushing their mothers and fathers to understand why change is necessary, said Vargas, whose view is shared by other experts, young protesters and their parents.

"There aren't a lot of places for optimism right now," said Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, "but this is one of them."

- - -

Gisselle Quintero observed the pained expression on her 15-year-old cousin's face as he absorbed the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes as he gasped for air.

The teen, who is half African American, had come to live with her family in their Marysville, Calif., home, and Quintero has come to regard him more like a brother. As protests engulfed the nation while her conservative farming community remained quiet, the 18-year-old college student decided she had to act.

"It upset me to see how unjustly black people are being treated. I have a platform in this little community, so I knew I had to do something to help out," Quintero said. In early June, she posted news on social media of a protest in front of a mall near her house. Her parents, Mexican American business owners and strong Trump supporters, vocally opposed her plans.

"At first, my parents were like 'This is stupid. All lives matter,' " said Quintero. "They didn't understand the big picture of it, that the system is so messed up, that nobody deserves to have a knee on the neck for eight minutes over a $20 counterfeit bill."

Quintero said she grew up hearing her grandparents tell stories about how they were prohibited from drinking at "whites-only" fountains after long, hot days of working in the fields. "They just kind of suppressed those memories," and tried to distinguish themselves by their hard work and achievement, Quintero said. "And they're still not being accepted by the white community."

"I have gotten a sense that a lot of the Mexican community is somewhat racist," Quintero said. "It's crazy. You wouldn't expect it."

Her protests swelled to hundreds of people over several days, while her mother, attending to make sure Gisselle was safe, found herself captivated by black speakers' stories about their encounters with racism. "Each day, she kept coming out, and she kept feeling it more and more," Gisselle said.

Finally, on the third day, her mother brought Gisselle's father, Wilfredo.

"He started leading chants," Gisselle said. "At the end of my last protest, my mom made a speech about how she didn't support Black Lives Matter at first, but hearing everything as a mother, it really opened up her mind. It brought tears to everybody in the crowd."

Elizabeth Quintero, 39, agrees that while she and her husband as antiabortion Catholics still support President Donald Trump, her views about the Black Lives Matter movement have changed.

"In our town, there are people who are racist, but I haven't really experienced it myself," said Quintero, who identifies as a white Latina and whose family came to the U.S. several generations ago. "I didn't have any insight into it. . . . It's been really humbling."

In Portage, Mich., 18-year-old Alexa Delon took a different tact with her parents as protests unfolded in nearby Kalamazoo.

Since Trayvon Martin was shot to death in 2010 in Sanford, Fla., by a vigilante, "I have come to see that America doesn't care about our black community," said Delon, a Mexican American college sophomore.

That America, she believes, has sometimes included her father, a cleaning company employee, and her stay-home mother, whom she said raised her with contradictory values.

"My parents taught me and my siblings to love everybody for who they are, that skin color doesn't matter," Delon said. On the other hand, they once told her "to be a little more cautious around the black community because they are known to be hoodlums."

Delon said she and her brother have been challenging her parents to cast a critical eye on the news they consume from Spanish-language television, which she said focuses disproportionately on looting and acts of violence during the largely peaceful protests. Her father is now exploring her recommendations on Twitter.

"They need to understand that what you see on the news is not always the truth," Delon said. "The more we let our elders know that this is wrong, it will have a snowball effect."

- - -

Many Latinos arrive in the U.S. with their own anti-black beliefs rooted in the histories of white European colonialism and slavery in their native countries, said Jasmine Haywood, a program officer at the education-focused Lumina Foundation who has researched anti-black racism among Latinos. As they try to assimilate, they often adopt anti-black attitudes "that come from the white majority," Haywood said. These include stereotypes that black people are violent and lazy.

"There is no group that can escape the pervasiveness of whiteness and white supremacy," Haywood said.

Yet young Latinos, Asians and members of black immigrant groups are more likely to share classrooms, neighborhoods and friendships with descendants of American slaves. And they have been influenced by the hip-hop and rap music that has given voice to the black experience, Haywood and Vargas agreed.

"This is where the power of popular culture cannot be denied," Vargas, who is Filipino, said. "You can't love black culture without loving black people. There is so much more exposure and so much more empathy."

Haywood also credits the efforts of young Afro-Latinos in prying open minds. On social media, they have "called out white Latinos on their privilege and for not using their privilege," said Haywood, who is an Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican heritage.

By comparison, many older Asian Americans do not grasp "the language of privilege," said Kim Tran, a diversity consultant who is researching the growing solidarity that young Asian Americans feel with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Because privilege "is inextricable from whiteness," said Tran, 33, it doesn't resonate with most Asians.

The language of privilege "also denies the experience of a lot of Asian elders who have been through tremendous pain and terror themselves," said Tran, whose family came to the U.S. as refugees in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.

Many older Asian Americans, in particular, subscribe to the "model minority myth" pushed by white American culture, she said. The myth, Tran said, was first applied to Japanese Americans as they tried to assimilate back into American culture after their internment during World War II and then spread to include other Asian groups. It places Asians at the top of the social pyramid as morally superior to other marginalized people in their family work ethic, intelligence and determination to succeed.

The myth offers "a way for [Asian immigrants] to fit clearly into the fabric of America," by promoting the very American idea that hard work will always lead to success. At the same time, she said, it ignores advantages in education and immigration policies that some Asian American ethnic groups have enjoyed while others have not. It also ignores racism against African Americans.

"Does it divide people? Absolutely," which is the intent, Tran said. "Does it rely on anti-blackness? Absolutely."

- - -

Glenn Mai enjoyed a very comfortable childhood in Dallas, reared by Chinese American immigrant parents who fled the Cultural Revolution and built a thriving technology company. He joined the Cub Scouts and attended an elite private school where he was one of a few Asian Americans. Mai's parents had minimal interactions with African Americans, he said, and his mother, in particular, "is sort of frightened" of them, though he attributes it less to racism than being "racially unaware."

He finished college at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1980s with a degree in electrical engineering like his father, before rebelling and heading in another direction. By joining the CIA and later the FBI, Mai believed he could make a difference within the system. As an agent who worked frequently with local law enforcement on cases, he had not witnessed police brutality toward black men and has often felt police are unfairly attacked, he said.

Meanwhile, his sons took different paths. After graduating from Bard College as a theater major, Charlie Mai embarked on a life as an artist in New York City. He explores themes of race and culture in his sculpture. His younger brother, Henry, majored in sociology, hungrily consuming courses on race and mass incarceration. Both Mai sons have black friends and believe that African Americans face structural barriers that white Americans do not.

Growing up in a diverse environment, "you learn very quickly that everybody's issues are your issues. . . . If these are people you love, you have to support them," Charlie Mai said.

On June 1, when Charlie and Henry set out to protest, their father was most upset by his sons' plans to break curfew, fearing that they would be swept into rioting and get hurt as night fell. Lawbreaking and violence, he believes, subvert any cause.

Mary Mai, who is Irish American, was more supportive of her sons' belief that protests could lead to change. But that afternoon, "we had the biggest blowup of our family's life," said Mary, 54. "F-bombs were being thrown around."

Charlie and Henry left the house to head to the District of Columbia, winding up at Lafayette Square. Inside, Glenn fumed but stayed glued to the news. He watched on TV as federal officers began using tear gas to clear protesters from the square so President Donald Trump could have a photo op with a Bible in front of St. John's Church. His sons were toward the back of the crowd, but close enough to witness the chaos and cough at the gas.

Late that night, with Charlie and Henry safely home, Glenn confessed to a slight change of heart.

"You're right, the social contract has been broken. I've been wrong," Mary, recalled him saying. "The government was not protecting the people."

While he still thinks it's best to work within the system, Glenn Mai admits that the protests have already forced some societal changes. And the incident in which Buffalo, N.Y., police forcefully shoved a 75-year-old protester to the ground, causing a head injury, served as a lesson for him on police brutality.

Even so, he plans to spend his retirement birdwatching, not becoming an anti-black activist. "To a large extent, it's their fight. It's not a fight I choose," he said.

The Mai sons have been giving their father books and articles on race to read, but Charlie predicts "a longer road ahead" to prompt his father to action. He sees value in their dialogue.

"Who are we as a younger generation to ask our parents to take down these shields all at once?" Charlie asked. "They didn't want to build these defense mechanisms. How can we say we're sensitive to these issues if we're not sensitive to our own parents?"

- - -

The Washington Post's Jessica Contrera contributed to this report.
Today, Mark Harmon is best known for playing Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the CBS primetime procedural NCIS. Harmon has remained steadfast in his commitment to the series for the last 17 seasons and counting.

While many actors have come and gone  using the show as a springboard to subsequent leading roles  Harmon has remained the shows guiding light since the start. And, though no one can imagine anyone else playing Gibbs, its important to remember that Mark Harmons son, Sean Harmon, portrayed a younger version of Gibbs in a handful of episodes.

NCIS Mark Harmon | Eric Mccandless/CBS via Getty Images

Who could better embody Gibbs than an actor who shares DNA with Mark Harmon? Though its been a handful of years since Sean Harmon appeared in NCIS, he did take on the character several times. So, which episodes, in particular, features Sean Harmons young Leroy Jethro Gibbs?

Sean Harmon played Agent Gibbs in 6 NCIS episodes from 2008 to 2012

Sean Harmon first appeared in NCIS in the 2008 episode titled Heartland, as IMDb notes. The episode followed the aftermath of an ambush behind a bar that left one Marine dead and another very ill. The survivor is from Gibbs hometown, and when the crew travels to investigate, flashbacks Ensue. Enter Sean Harmon.

Sean Harmon also appeared in the 2009 episode Deliverance and the 2010 episode Mothers Day. Deliverance follows the gang after Metro PD finds the body of an 18-year old marine. As Gibbs and his team begin to put the pieces together, a social worker offers the final, needed insight.

RELATED: Why You May Recognize Mark Harmons Son, Sean Harmon

As for Mothers Day, the episode features Gibbs first mother-in-law. Why? Her fiancee, who happens to be a Navy officer, dies in gunfire. Lets just say the past creeps in for a bit of character insight and development while on the case.

Sean Harmon appeared in two episodes in 2011: Engaged: Part 1 and Engaged: Part 2. The two-two part special begins when an aircraft crashes. The plane is carrying the bodies of six dead Marines from Afganistan. When Abby cant find the DNA of one of the six Marines, the team contemplates if one is still alive.

RELATED: Cote de Pablo Gave Mark Harmon the Credit He Wont Take for NCIS Success

Engaged: Part 2 follows Gibbs and Ziva, who fly to Afghanistan to search for the missing Marine  she is alive and well and an extraction team winds up saving her before the episodes conclusion.

When Young Gibbs made his last appearance

As for Sean Harmons final appearance in NCIS, the actor played a young Gibbs in the 2012 episode Life Before His Eyes. The episode features an unknown individual who draws a pistol and threatens Gibbs with it.

Gibbs deals with him but goes on to experience flashbacks and fantasies (creating the need for a young Gibbs once more). Frank works to explain some of the flashbacks, and the episode ends with McGee announcing a decision and the team prepping to head out.

While its been a while since Sean Harmon has appeared in NCIS, more recent flashbacks in upcoming seasons could provide an opportunity. Heres to hoping the writers find a reason to bring back young Gibbsand a younger Harmon once more.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN- June 22, 2020 - While pregnancy and birth rates continue to decline to historic lows for 15 to 19-year-olds, Minnesota youth are contracting sexually transmitted infections (STI) at alarmingly high rates. The 2020 Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report from the University of Minnesota Medical School's Healthy Youth Development - Prevention Research Center (HYD-PRC) attributes the rise in STI rates to a combination of factors, including barriers to prevention, screening and treatment services, education, transportation, cost, concerns about confidentiality and peer and media influences.

"Teen pregnancy and birth rates are at historic lows, and Minnesota youth should be commended for making safe and healthy choices about pregnancy prevention," said Jill Farris, director of Adolescent Sexual Health Training and Education for the HYD-PRC. "However, we must continue to highlight the importance of condoms and other barrier methods, utilize new and innovative public health educational campaigns to reach youth and expand access to STI services and treatment."

The HYD-PRC's report notes that Minnesota youth are disproportionately impacted by sexually transmitted infections. While adolescents aged 15 to 19 are only 7% of the Minnesota population, they accounted for 24% of all chlamydia cases and 15% of gonorrhea cases in Minnesota in 2019. "It's encouraging that young people are using highly effective contraceptive methods and increasing their use of condoms (up 3% since 2016), but discussions around the importance of barrier methods for STI prevention must continue. Confidential screening and treatment services must be easily accessible for youth, and families need to be supported to have open and nonjudgmental conversation with their children," Farris said.

Disparities in sexual health outcomes - by geography, race and ethnicity - continue to persist, as well. Rural areas in Minnesota continue to experience the highest teen birth rates in the state. Youth from communities of color have disproportionately high STI and birth rates. Birth rates for American Indian, Black and Hispanic youth are higher than for white and Asian/Pacific Islander youth. Adolescents from communities of color experience disproportionately higher rates of STIs, with the highest chlamydia and gonorrhea rates among Black and Hispanic youth.

Minnesota youth are also increasingly identifying their sexual orientation and gender identities on a broad spectrum. In 2019, 14% of male and 26% of female high school students identified their sexual orientation as something other than heterosexual (straight). "This is a dramatic increase from the 2016 figures," Farris said. Youth were also asked about their gender identity; 1.4% of Minnesota high schoolers identified as transgender, genderqueer or genderfluid.

"Students are increasingly fluid in their gender identities and sexual orientations. Health care providers, teachers, youth workers and parents need to respond by providing accurate, non-judgmental information and support to all youth," Farris said. Importantly, diverse sexual orientations and gender identities were reported throughout Minnesota. Young people from rural, suburban and urban areas are represented in these numbers.

This annual report helps Minnesotans understand the current landscape of our young people's sexual and reproductive health and how it is tied more broadly to healthy youth development.

"While focusing on changing individual behaviors that lead to decreases in STIs and teen pregnancy is needed, our youth deserve a holistic approach. We must fully support young people's health by addressing their physical, social, emotional and cognitive development and provide them with skills and support to make healthy decisions," Farris said. "Reducing systematic barriers to resources, power and opportunity will empower Minnesota youth to make healthy choices. Improving adolescent sexual health outcomes starts where we live, learn, work and play."

###

Read the full report online, including individualized reports for each of Minnesota's 87 counties. To learn more about the Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center, visit our website.

About the University of Minnesota Medical School

The University of Minnesota Medical School is at the forefront of learning and discovery, transforming medical care and educating the next generation of physicians. Our graduates and faculty produce high-impact biomedical research and advance the practice of medicine. Visit med.umn.edu to learn how the University of Minnesota is innovating all aspects of medicine.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 01:01:51|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

LONDON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are meeting with his top team on Monday afternoon to finalize plans to loosen the 2-meter coronavirus social distancing rule in a bid to reopen pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and hotels in England next month.

Johnson and his Cabinet ministers are discussing loosening the social distancing rule while thrashing out the next steps out of lockdown with the government's Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance and England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, before outlining the new measures to the parliament on Tuesday.

On Sunday, the prime minister said the progress made in the fight against coronavirus over the past three months meant "it will be possible to open up more."

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said over the weekend that England is "clearly on track" to further ease lockdown restrictions.

The new development came as the number of people in Britain who have died with COVID-19 has risen by 15 to 42,647 as of Sunday afternoon, the lowest daily increase since mid-March.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported the biggest daily rise in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 to 8.7 million cases. Enditem
Various predictions have been made about the novel coronavirus pandemic that, unfortunately, is still causing a worldwide health problem, but one expert believes that COVID-19 might die on its own even without a vaccine.

Expert Describes Coronavirus as 'An Aggressive Tiger to Wild Cat'

An infectious disease expert from Italy, Professor Matteo Bassetti, claims that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, otherwise known as the new coronavirus, has lost its virulence based on his observations on patients.

"It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April, but now it's like a wild cat," Professor Bassetti said in an interview with The Telegraph. "Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before."

Based on his clinical impression, the doctor believes that COVID-19 is changing its severity.

According to Bassetti, several factors could be behind the coronavirus' weakening, including participating in lockdowns and following social distancing protocols, making them exposed to smaller viral loads.

There's also a belief that it could be due to improved COVID-19 treatments.

He even suggested that the virus might die on its own even without a coronavirus vaccine, which is still in clinical trials and could most likely be developed and distributed in 2021.

Nevertheless, not everyone is happy with Professor Bassetti's news.

Read Also: COVID-19 Update: People With High Levels of Cortisol or Stress Hormone May Have Higher Risk of Death

Other Experts Disagree

According to Metro, the doctor's claims are widely disputed by other experts in the field, including a Columbia University expert, Dr. Angela Rasmussen, who responded to him and said, "There is no evidence that the virus is losing potency anywhere."

She did say that there is less transmission, but it does not mean that the virus has weakened.

Another expert from the University of Glasgow, Dr. Oscar MacLean, also disagreed with Bassetti and said that making those claims based on anecdotal observations from swab tests is dangerous.

Although he did say that it is theoretically possible for SARS-CoV-2 to weaken through mutation, we should not be expecting it.

In addition, Dr. MacLean suggested that if there are any new claims regarding COVID-19, it should be "verified in a more systematic way" and that no one should downplay the virus without any reliable evidence.

COVID-19 is Still a Worldwide Threat

Some experts even believe that we will be bringing COVID-19 into 2021 as the vaccine is less likely to be developed and distributed this 2020, regardless of what pharmaceutical companies say.

Although things might look better today than it did when the virus was just starting to spread, it does not mean that we are in the clear.

Several countries have already flattened the curve and were able to ease the lockdown restrictions, but experts believe a second or third wave of the virus is more imminent, especially in places that haven't entirely defeated the unseen enemy.

In fact, there were new cases confirmed in New Zealand, with two women hailing from the UK, becoming the country's first cases in 24 days.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 9 million cases have been confirmed worldwide, 470,700 fatalities, and more than 4.8 million recoveries.

Read Also: COVID-19 New Update: Even if Vaccine is Here, We Still Have a Problem

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
PM must rise to the occasion and ensure justice for martyred soldiers: Manmohan Singh

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: Former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday said that Prime Minister, Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words. He cannot China to use them as a vindication of their position, the former PM also said.

In a statement, Singh said that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy and decisive leadership and the PM must rise to the occasion to ensure justice for Colonel Santosh Babu and the jawans who have made the ultimate sacrifice and resolutely defended our territorial integrity.

With 3 divisions forming an arc, India ready to respond to Chinese aggression

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the people's faith he further added. China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions between April 2020 till date.

"We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity. The Prime Minister cannot allow them to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the Government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further," he said adding that the soldiers' sacrifice cannot be allowed to go in vain.

"At this moment, we stand at historic cross-roads," noted the ex-PM adding, "Our government's decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us. Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty. And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister," the statement by Dr Singh also read.
Vietnamese PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc chairs the online ASEAN Special Summit and ASEAN+3 Special Summit on Covid-19 response in Hanoi on April 14, 2020. Photo by Vietnam's Foreign Affairs Ministry.

After being postponed by nearly two months over coronavirus concerns, the 36th ASEAN Summit will be held online in Hanoi on Friday.

As the bloc's chair this year, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will preside over the opening, plenary and special sessions on womens empowerment in the digital age.

He will also chair dialogues between ASEAN leaders and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), ASEAN youth representatives and ASEAN Business Advisory Council.

The Chairwoman of the National Assembly, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, will speak at a special session on womens empowerment, and NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong, head of the Vietnamese delegation to the AIPA, will attend the dialogue between ASEAN leaders and the AIPA.

A series of preparatory meetings will be held from June 22 to 24.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh will chair the informal ASEAN foreign ministers meeting, the meeting of the ASEAN Coordinating Council and the meeting of the ASEAN Political-Security Community Council.



Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh will chair the ministerial meeting of participating countries in negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership while Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung will chair the 23rd meeting of the ASEAN Cultural-Social Community Council.

The bloc's 36th summit had been scheduled to take place from April 6 to 9 in Da Nang, but the government decided to postpone it because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The ASEAN Summit is a biannual meeting held to discuss economic, political, security and socio-cultural developments in the bloc. It has other world leaders attending related summits and meetings to discuss various problems and global issues and strengthen cooperation in tackling them.

ASEAN has 10 members - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

It has eight partners, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S.

The pandemic has affected 213 countries and territories around the world, claiming more than 470,000 lives.

Some Asian countries such as China and South Korea have been facing renewed outbreaks.
Sudhir Suryawanshi By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: After the border clash between India and China, the Maharashtra government has put Chinese investments in the state on hold.

The state had recently inked Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) worth Rs 16,000 crore with various firms. These include Chinese firms Hengali Engineering which invested Rs 250 crore, PMI Electro Mobility Solution JV with Foton which proposed an investment of Rs 1000 crore and Great Wall Motors which signed a Rs 3700 crore deal. All these companies wanted to invest in Talegaon, Pune, with around 4500 jobs expected to be generated.

Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai said that they have decided to put the contracts with the Chinese companies on hold until further orders.

We will consult with the central government before things move forward. However, we have not cancelled the MoU with these firms. The agreements will remain but for the time being there will no further movement, Desai said. Government sources said the state will not allot land and other facilities to the Chinese firms till further orders.

Earlier, the Opposition in Maharashtra had demanded the cancellation of MoUs with these Chinese firms in the backdrop of growing tension along the India-China border. BJP MLA Yogesh Sagar said that the central government has cancelled various projects with China and hence the Maharashtra government should follow suit by cancelling its recent MoUs with China.

Desai said Maharashtra is a hot destination for investment by foreign firms. We will welcome more food processing industries. Besides, there is a long coastline that can be utilized for many things. We will explore many options to increase investment, he added.
Four Queensland teens have been charged after they allegedly stuffed a 13-year-old boy into the boot of a car.

Police were called to Inala, south of Brisbane, on Saturday afternoon following reports of the incident.

Police have appealed for information after a boy was allegedly stuffed in a car boot.

The four male teens, aged 16 and 17, are accused of driving the boy around in the boot of the vehicle for several hours, before letting him out at an intersection at Redbank Plains.

Police allege they then abandoned the car, which had been stolen from North Toowoomba on Friday, and fled on foot.
Jammu:

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Sunday assured the residents living along the Indo-Pak border that necessary arrangements have been put in place for their safety in case of any exigency on the border.

"We want to assure the people of the border areas that all necessary arrangements have been put in place at the camps setup for their safety in case of any exigency," Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said, while interacting with the border residents of Suchetgarh area.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Jammu, Sunil Gupta and Sub-Divisional Magistrate, R S Pura, Vikas Kundal, while apprising the Deputy Chief Minister about the arrangements being made at the camps, said necessary instructions have been given to the officers concerned to shift the people of the villages falling within 10 kilometres from the International Border in case of any emergency.

Singh was informed that eight camps were functional with adequate arrangements and space for additional six camps have been identified in case of the requirement. The Deputy Chief Minister directed the administration to maintain a close coordination with the people and to provide every possible help in case of any emergency.

He also asked them to provide 24X7 helpline numbers connected to the control rooms to the people. Directing officials to put in place all basic facilities at the camps, Singh urged the camp officers to maintain their presence and ensure availability of ration, power supply, drinking water, security and sanitation.

He stressed on close coordination among all departments concerned to provide basic facilities to the people. Singh directed the civil administration to strictly follow the Standard Operating Procedure while evacuating people from the border areas.

PHE Minister Sham Lal Choudhary, who represents the Suchetgarh constituency, also assured support of the government to the people of the border areas and appealed them to cooperate with the administration during "this tough time". Later, Deputy Chief Minister visited the camps setup in R S Pura to take stock of the arrangements put in place.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Among them are President Trumps legal battles to keep his personal financial records from Congress and a New York prosecutor, as well as a restrictive Louisiana abortion law that could close down all but one clinic in the state. In addition, the court took cases looking at whether some religiously affiliated organizations must provide contraceptive care to female employees because of the Affordable Care Act and whether presidential electors can be forced to abide by the popular vote in their states.
LIC Housing Finance slumped 6.01% to Rs 267.65 on BSE after consolidated net profit tanked 39.1% to Rs 424.31 crore on 5.1% rise in total income to Rs 4,903.54 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

Consolidated profit before tax (PBT) dropped 15.9% to Rs 832.93 crore in Q4 March 2020 as against Rs 990.91 crore in Q4 March 2019. Current tax expense jumped 39% to Rs 408.62 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019. The Q4 earnings was declared post trading hours yesterday, 19 June 2020.

The board recommended a dividend of Rs 8 per equity share for FY 2019-20.

With respect to COVID-19 pandemic, the company said there remains a high level of uncertainty about the duration and impact of the pandemic both on human life and businesses and the time required for life and business operations to normalise. In view of the aforesaid, it is not possible for the company to assess at this juncture, the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the results of company's business and financials in future, as the same will be dependent on future developments, which at present are extremely uncertain.

LIC Housing Finance is one of the largest housing finance companies in India. As of 31 March 2020, Life Insurance Corporation of India held 40.31% stake in the housing financier.

The scrip jumped 11.08% in the past one month. On the technical front, the stock's RSI (relative strength index) stood at 52.364. The RSI oscillates between zero and 100. Traditionally, the RSI is considered overbought when above 70 and oversold when below 30.

The stock was trading between its 50-day moving average (DMA) placed at 260.55 and its 200-day moving average (DMA) placed at 357.69.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thailand hopes to ease some coronavirus restrictions on foreigners entering the country after going for 28 days without recording any domestic transmissions, a senior official said on Monday. Those who will benefit from the easing of restrictions will include business executives, skilled workers and foreigners who live in Thailand. "The first three groups will be able to return to Thailand and stay in 14-day state quarantine," said the spokesman for the government's Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Wisanuyothin.

Medical tourists will also be allowed back for treatment in hospital, he said. Short-term business travellers and tourists from China, Japan and South Korea might be allowed back without having to spend 14 days in quarantine, he said, adding that the guidelines were still being worked out.

The proposed easing of restrictions will be put to the government's coronavirus task force on Friday. Thailand, which has banned international commercial flights up to the end of June, has recorded 3,151 cases and 58 deaths related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. On Friday, Myanmar reported 23 coronavirus cases among Myanmar migrant workers deported from Thailand, raising questions about the possibility of transmission in Thailand. Both Thailand and Myanmar are investigating.

Also read: India 'pharmacy of the world' during coronavirus pandemic: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
June 22, 2020





As the world becomes more digital, criminals are finding creative ways to commit crime. The unprecedented growth of the Fintech industry has brought more opportunities for businesses and consumers while presenting new opportunities for financial crimes.







Many regulations have been created to protect consumers and Fintech companies; hence, KYL and AML.

What is KYC?

KYC is an acronym for Know your Customer. It is the process of verifying a customers identity used during the application process.

KYC protocol demands that a customer must provide credentials, for example, an ID document to access a companys service. In the same way, you must provide some form of ID before opening a bank account or when seeking other banking services.

The purpose of KYC is identity verification and risk assessment. When a customer provides the necessary personal information, the company can verify and assess the risks carried by the particular customer. These measures protect Fintech institutions from risks.

KYC is part of AML procedures, and this is what differentiates KYC from AML. ID verification was made compulsory in the US by the Patriot (News - Alert) Act of 2001 as the first protection against financial crimes. All financial institutions now apply KYC processes, especially when dealing with large transactions, registering new users, and updating their records.

What is AML?

Anti-money laundering (AML) is a comprehensive financial policy. It entails all the measures put in place by financial institutions and governments to prevent financial crimes, particularly money laundering.

AML originated from the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which mandated financial institutions to collaborate with the government in fighting financial crime. Terror funding, money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, and others are some of the crimes covered in AML regulations.

AML requires financial institutions to obtain and verify all customer information, monitor customer transactions, and report suspicious activities to the government.

Therefore, AML is an umbrella term for all the techniques employed to prevent financial crime. It is made up of many protective arms to combat different forms of financial crime. There are internal and external systems, including KYC, detection of suspicious activities, internal risk control, compliance training, and regular independent audits.

AML combines various internal and external protective systems to increase the chance of timely detection and reporting of financial crimes.

Differences between AML and KYC

Most financial institutions often find it hard to implement KYC AML processes. As mentioned above, KYC is the client identity verification process, while the AML program entails KYC (customer due diligence), risk-based policies, ongoing risk assessment, and compliance training programs.

The differences between AML and KYC are illustrated below:

Differences KYC AML A. Process Verification of clients by gathering personal information. Legal control processes to identify suspicious or criminal activities B. Purpose Prevent bad actors from accessing the organizations services. To prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and other financial crime. C. Element Identity validation, risk assessment and management. Risk assessment, detection and reporting of suspicious transactions. D. Features Efficient and thorough processes to identify all the risks. Holistic, coherent and up-to-date processes.

Best Practices for KYC and AML

When it comes to best practices, there are a number of key distinctions between KYC and AML processes. The following is a quick look at some of these key differences in teh best practices of both.

KYC Best Practices

KYC processes involve various policies that aim to give the proper background of the customer. The best practices for a KYC system entail the following components:

Customer Identification Program (CIP)

This is the basic foundation for the KYC process. CIP collects, verifies, and keeps client identity information. It also screens customers against the list of known criminals.

Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

CDD refers to all the information obtained from the customers. The information is used to verify identity and evaluate risks presented by the customer.

Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)

EDD is the additional information collected to gain a better understanding of high-risk customers. Financial institutions can still work with high-risk customers as long as they have adequate information showing that they are likely to pay back the loan.

CIP is used to determine whether there is a need for CDD or EDD. The three processes must be implemented thoroughly and consistently. The processes must also be well documented for auditing purposes.

AML Best Practices

You must invest in AML software. AML software is beneficial as it is cost-effective and efficient. The software will analyze all client data to review for irregularities. AML software can quickly flag off suspicious transactions such as large transactions or large withdrawals by customers.

AML best practices entail the following:

Risk Assessment

Develop a robust risk assessment system to meet all your organizational needs. In developing a risk assessment protocol, ask yourself what the entry and exit points for your money are.

Employees are in a better position to detect risks and transactions that seem suspicious.

AML Compliance Officer

It is advisable to have an AML compliance officer who understands AML and the organizations risk. The AML Officer will evaluate all the risks and come up with a robust AML system.

Employee Training

Ongoing training is necessary to remind your employees on how to review transactions. Appropriate training on different forms of financial crimes is essential so that employees can quickly identify the red flags.

Know your Customer

KYC is a component of AML. A robust KYC system will be crucial in customer identification, verification, and risk assessment to support other AML activities. Engage in enhanced due diligence for high-risk customers or those who engage in suspicious transactions.

Summing Up

Whether you run a traditional bank or a Fintech company, KYC and AML matter. Fraud and other financial crimes bring massive losses to the organization.

Some businesses do not recover from fraud. Fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes will also affect your companys reputation. Therefore, you must implement AML and KYC best practices to ensure the businesss survival and profitability.

AML and KYC policies will protect your business from internal, external, and regulatory risks that are becoming common in the digital age.
'Cult' dad Chad Daybell pretended he didn't know Lori Vallow when police first began searching for her missing children just three weeks after he married her, new police affidavits have revealed.

The documents unsealed last week also describe how Lori complained that her 'Satan-loving' seven-year-old son Joshua 'JJ' Vallow was 'acting like a zombie' and knocked a photo of Jesus off her refrigerator just hours before he was last seen in September.

Chilling details surrounding the disappearance of JJ and his sister, 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, have continued to pour out in the days since authorities discovered their bodies in the backyard of Chad's home in Salem, Idaho, on June 9.

A probable cause affidavit filed in connection with Chad's subsequent arrest for two felony counts of destruction of evidence alleges that Lori's brother, Alex Cox, brought the bodies to the property to bury them.

A ping from Cox's cellphone showed him at the site where Tylee's remains were found on September 9, the day after she was last seen. Two later pings on September 23, the day JJ vanished, showed Cox at the site where the boy's remains were found a few feet away in the yard.

It wasn't until nine weeks later that Rexburg Police learned the children were missing when officers performed a welfare check at Lori's apartment in Rexburg on November 26, after relatives said they hadn't seen JJ in months.

'Cult' dad Chad Daybell (left) pretended he didn't know Lori Vallow when police first began searching for her missing children just three weeks after he married her, new police affidavits have revealed. The documents unsealed last week also describe how Lori (right) complained that her 'Satan-loving' seven-year-old son Joshua 'JJ' Vallow was 'acting like a zombie' and knocked a photo of Jesus off her refrigerator just hours before he was last seen in September

Chilling details surrounding the disappearance of Lori's children, seven-year-old Joshua 'JJ' Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, have continued to pour out in the days since authorities discovered their bodies in the backyard of Chad's home in Salem, Idaho, on June 9

Lead investigator Lt Ron Ball described the welfare check in another affidavit filed on February 18 - two days before Lori was arrested for child abandonment and desertion.

The officers arrived and found Chad and Cox outside of Lori's apartment. Ball wrote that Chad 'acted as if he didn't know Lori very well and stated he didn't know her phone number'.

Investigators soon discovered that was a lie when they came across photos of Chad and Lori's wedding three weeks earlier on a beach in Hawaii.

Cox allegedly told the officers that JJ was with his grandmother, Kay Woodcock, in Louisiana. Ball wrote that Cox's story 'was not likely to be true due to the fact that Kay was the individual who first called in a missing child report'.

Later in the day Ball and another detective returned to the apartment complex and spoke to Lori, who claimed that JJ was in Arizona with her friend Melanie Gibb.

Investigators found the remains of JJ and Tylee after excavating the backyard of Chad's property on June 9 (pictured)

Gibb has previously revealed in interviews that Lori and Chad called her and asked her to lie to police and uphold their story that the boy was with her, but she refused.

When detectives contacted Gibb she told them that she hadn't seen JJ since the last time she visited Lori in September, on the same day that he disappeared.

Cellphone data indicates that Lori's brother Alex Cox (pictured) was at the same location where the children were buried near the time they were reported missing

Gibb further explained to the detectives that Lori and Chad had asked her to lie.

When officers returned the following day to execute a search warrant they learned that Chad and Lori had fled Idaho.

Inside Lori's home they found little evidence that JJ - or any child - had been living there.

Around the same time police in Gilbert, Arizona, where the Vallow family had lived up until August 2019, contacted the Rexburg detectives asking if they had any information on the whereabouts of JJ's older sister Tylee.

Gibb told police that Lori had said Tylee was studying at Brigham Young University, but the school had no record of her.

Rexburg police soon determined that Tylee hadn't been seen since September 8 - on a trip to Yellowstone with Lori, JJ and Cox - and expanded the search for JJ to include the teen.

Detectives interviewed Chad's parents later on and learned that he and Lori had told them in November that she was an 'empty nester'. Other relatives claimed that Chad told them Lori didn't have kids at all.

Lori's best friend Melanie Gibb described her horror over the body discovery in an interview with Dateline airing on Monday night (pictured)

Timeline of JJ and Tylee's disappearance July 11, 2019: Lori Vallow's husband, Charles Vallow, is killed by her brother, Alex Cox, in Arizona. August: Lori moves children JJ and Tylee to Rexburg, Idaho, where Chad Daybell lives with his wife Tammy. September 8: The last time Tylee is seen during a trip to Yellowstone National Park with Lori, JJ and Alex. September 23: The last time JJ is seen at his school in Rexburg. October 19: Chad's wife Tammy, 49, dies at their Idaho home. October 25: A friend of Tylee receives a vague 'miss you' text from her phone but says that it didn't sound like the teen. November 5: Lori and Chad tie the knot on a beach in Kauai. November 26: Out-of-state relatives ask Idaho police to perform a welfare check on JJ and learn both he and Tylee have not been seen for months. November 27: Police execute a search warrant related to the children at Lori's home and discover that she and Chad have fled Idaho. December 11: Tammy's body is exhumed from a Utah cemetery and her death is reclassified as suspicious. December 12: Lori's brother, Alex Cox, is found unresponsive in Arizona and dies. December 21: Rexburg police issue the first press release about JJ and Tylee, revealing they believe their disappearance could be linked to Tammy's death. December 24: Lori and Chad issue a statement through an attorney saying they love their son and daughter and look forward to addressing 'allegations once they have moved beyond speculation and rumor'. December 30: Police accuse Lori and Chad of lying to investigators and say they believe the couple know where the kids are or what happened to them. January 3, 2020: Police search Chad's home in Salem and remove 43 items. They also comb over sections of the snow-covered yard with rakes and metal detectors. January 26: Lori and Chad are seen for the first time in months as police serve them with a court order to produce the children to authorities in Idaho in five days. January 30: Lori misses the court deadline to produce the children to Idaho authorities. February 20: Lori is arrested in Kauai. March 5: Lori is extradited to Idaho, where she is held on $1million bond at Madison County Jail. April 9: Authorities reveal they are investigating Lori and Chad for murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in connection with Tammy's death. June 9:Police search Chad's home in Salem for the second time and discover human remains in the backyard. Chad is taken into police custody and charged with destruction or concealment of evidence. Advertisement

Gibb and her boyfriend, David Warwick, offered a more harrowing account of Lori's relationship with her kids, telling detectives that the mother believed they were 'zombies'.

Gibb recounted a phone call with Lori last spring wherein the mother referred to Tylee as a zombie because the teen was refusing to babysit JJ. In the background of the call Gibb said she heard Tylee say: 'Not me mom.'

Lori made similar remarks when Gibb and Warwick went to visit her in Rexburg in mid-September.

Lori allegedly complained to the couple that JJ had been 'acting like a zombie, crawling on the kitchen cabinetry'.

'She informed Warwick and Gibb that when JJ had climbed upon the cabinetry that he had knocked picture of Jesus off the refrigerator,' Ball wrote.

Lori then told the couple that Cox had come over to pick JJ up and they never saw him again.

Later that night, Cox's cellphone pinged in Chad's yard, right at the spot where JJ's body was found wrapped in plastic and duct tape next to a fire pit.

Tylee's body was discovered a few yards away, also at the spot where Alex's phone had pinged soon after she vanished. Her remains were partially burned.

Gibb theorized that Lori and Chad may have plotted to kill both of the children due to their religious beliefs.

Lori and Chad had told Gibb that they believed they were 'part of the "Church of the Firstborn" and their mission in that Church was to lead the "144,000" mentioned in the Book of Revelation', Ball wrote.

'They also stated their mission was to rid the world of "zombies,"' he added.

Gibb described her horror over the body discovery in an interview with Dateline airing on Monday night.

In a preview for the episode she recalled feeling sick when Lori and Chad asked her to lie to police.

'I can't even begin to tell you how horrible that moment was for me... They tried to use me as their way of escape,' she said.

'So part of me is processing, "I can't believe you're friends with these people." The other part of me is like, "how did you even believe any of the things they shared to you?"'

Police have yet to file any murder charges against Lori and Chad in the wake of the body discovery two weeks ago.

Lori has spent the past four months in jail for two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of children and one misdemeanor count each for obstructing an investigation, criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court.

She has repeatedly denied any involvement in the children's disappearance.

Chad was arrested the same day the bodies were found and is now being held on $1million bond at Fremont County Jail on two felony counts of destruction or concealment of evidence.

An affidavit states that he was sitting in a driveway across the street when officers first arrived with a search warrant that morning and fled the scene after they began digging.

Cox died suddenly in December, about a month after the children were reported missing.

Chad's previous wife, Tammy Daybell, died in October, less than three weeks before he tied the knot with Lori. Her death was deemed suspicious and autopsy results are still pending.

Lori's previous husband, Charles Vallow, was shot dead by Cox in July. Police initially determined that Cox acted in self defense but later reopened the case amid the search for JJ and Tylee.
By Patricia Uhlig, Karen Lema and John O'Donnell

FRANKFURT/MANILA (Reuters) - Wirecard said on Monday that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) it had booked in its accounts likely never existed, a black hole that threatens to engulf the payments company and tarnish the reputation of Germany's financial watchdog.

The one-time investor darling is holding emergency talks with its banks, which are owed roughly 1.75 billion euros, to avert a looming cash crunch triggered by the missing money.

The episode marks a dramatic turn in the fortunes of a homegrown tech firm that attracted some of the world's biggest investors before a whistleblower alleged that it owed its success in part to a web of sham transactions.

Wirecard said last week that auditor EY had refused to sign off its 2019 accounts as it was unable to confirm the existence of 1.9 billion euros in cash balances in trust accounts, about a quarter of its balance sheet.

On Monday, the company was frank.

"The Management Board of Wirecard assesses ... that there is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion EUR do not exist," it said.

State prosecutors in Munich investigating the case are now considering issuing arrest warrants for its former CEO, Markus Braun, and Jan Marsalek, a board member fired on Monday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Braun and Marsalek could not be immediately reached for comment, and their lawyers declined to comment.

The furore has also damaged Germany's image.

Felix Hufeld, head of Germany's financial watchdog Bafin, described the crisis, which has seen around 11 billion euros wiped off Wirecard's market value in recent days, as a "total disaster", conceding his agency and others had made mistakes.

"It is a scandal that something like this could happen," Hufeld said.

REGULATOR UNDER FIRE

Bafin's own record has come under fire as Wirecard's share price has imploded, hitting retail investors and some large money managers.

Story continues

The regulator had focused on probing so-called short-sellers and journalists behind reports which questioned Wirecard's accounts, prompting criticism over its inaction against the company.

German lawmaker Fabio De Masi said that Bafin had failed in its duty over Wirecard, whose credit rating was ultimately withdrawn by agency Moody's.

Wirecard, which started out handling payments for adult entertainment and gambling websites and now processes payments for companies including Visa and Mastercard, has appointed investment bank Houlihan Lokey to help assess its options.

More than a dozen banks, including ABN Amro and Commerzbank, are forming a creditor committee and have hired law firm Allen & Overy, two people close to the talks said.

Houlihan Lokey, A&O and the banks declined to comment.

Wirecard also said it is looking at the sale or closure of parts of its business, but its creditor banks are not interested in a fire sale, especially as litigation risks may put off buyers, one person close to talks told Reuters.

The company, which has long been held up as a rare German technology success, also withdrew its financial statements for 2019 and said it was examining cost cuts.

HUNT FOR MISSING CASH

EY had regularly approved Wirecard's accounts in recent years, and its refusal to sign off for 2019 confirmed failings found in an external investigation by KPMG in April, which in turn followed investigative reports by the Financial Times.

Wirecard's latest announcement follows the exit on Friday of former chief executive Braun, who was replaced by James Freis, an ex-compliance officer at Germany's stock exchange.

The company has been under scrutiny since the whistleblower alleged the web of sham transactions. This culminated in a search for the missing cash, which last week hit a dead end in the Philippines.

The Philippine central bank said none of the money appeared to have entered the country, after Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and BDO Unibank said documents purporting to show Wirecard had deposited funds with them were false.

BPI Chief Executive Cezar Consing said a certificate purporting to be for a Wirecard deposit was "spurious".

Wirecard, which operates both as an issuer of real and 'virtual' payment cards, had marketed itself as a universal payments platform positioned to profit from the growth in digital payments. Its future is now uncertain.

($1 = 0.8938 euros)

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Douglas Busvine in Berlin, Joern Poltz in Munich and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Writing by John O'Donnell; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Alexander Smith and Pravin Char)
New Delhi: Aviation regulator Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday (June 22) issued order that the Airline cabin crew must download the Arogya Setu App to safeguard against COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the concerned airline's doctor should check the cabin crew, it said.

This is mandatory for any crew member having symptoms of coronavirus, or came in contact with any COVID positive patient to undergo 14 days home quarantine, according to the DGCA statement.

The aviation regulator's order came in view of the COVID-19 outbreak and to contain the outbreak of the deadly virus. This was issued after having due consideration of the Union Health Ministry.

The DGCA said, "The "Risk assessment" for the crew shall be done by the concerned Airlines doctor and the crew shall be advised for testing as per ICMR guidelines. Whether the crew should be subjected to 14 days home quarantine or not, shall be based on the said "Risk assessment".

In the case of such crew, who have the history of contact with a COVID-19 case during the flight operations, the home quarantine shall be mandatory. Such information should be shared by the airlines with concerned APHO for coordinating with the state government, the Aviation regulator added.

With 9,440 COVID-19 patients cured in the last 24 hours, the COVID-19 recovery rate of India has reportedly increased to 55.77 per cent. There are 1,74,387 active COVID-19 cases and all are under active medical supervision with the total number of recovered patients crossing the number of active patients by 62,808, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare statement on Monday.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 22, 2020 | 05:52 PM | PADUCAH





On Monday, officers with the Paducah Police Department arrested 36-year-old Heather M. Harp on Irvin Cobb Drive near Broad Street. Officers say they were on Paducah's south side investigating a separate incident when someone passing by provided Harp's location.





Back on Wednesday, officers were called to a disturbance at a home on Ashbrook Avenue. Upon arrival, officers found a 45-year-old man with a stab wound to his back, and were told that he had been stabbed by his girlfriend during an argument. The man was taken to the hospital for treatment of his injuries.







Harp was arrested on a warrant charging her with second-degree assault. She was lodged in the McCracken County Jail.

The woman sought in connection to Wednesday's stabbing has been arrested.
In June, more than 50 H-E-B employees working in San Antonio have tested positive  16 cases were announced over the weekend.

Since March, the grocery store chain has regularly announced when one of its employees test positive and has done so because it believes "transparency is important," according to an email response to mySA.com.

"Transparency is important, H-E-Bs first priority is constant communication to our partners and helping them navigate during these unprecedented times," the email said. "Customers can visit their stores website to see when a confirmed positive partner last worked in their store. H-E-B is aggressive with constant sanitization, social distancing and mask-wearing and our goal is providing the safest and trusted place to shop."

RELATED: H-E-B responds to Wolff's order, announces 2 more employees test positive for COVID-19

Stores like Walmart or Target do not regularly make it publicly known if one of their employees test positive. Walmart told mySA.com via email that the supermarket chain can not confirm any COVID-19 cases at San Antonio stores at this time. The company did not disclose if it will release the cases to the public moving forward, however, Walmart said that protecting the privacy of its associates is "important."

H-E-B does not reveal the employee's identity and only let's the public know at what stores there was a positive case.

Target has not responded to mySA.com about whether it plans to release information.

Here are the H-E-B stores with COVID-19 cases that were announced over the weekend, according to the company's website.

From Saturday:

- Deco District H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 2118 Fredericksburg Rd. on Friday, June 12.

- Marketplace H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 5601 Bandera Rd. on Friday, June 19.

- Alon Market H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 8503 NW Military Hwy. on Wednesday, June 17.

- Zarzamora and Military H-E-B plus!: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 6818 S. Zarzamora St. on Thursday, June 18.

- Military and Pleasanton H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 735 SW Military Dr. on Friday, June 19.

- Bandera and Guilbeau H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 7951 Guilbeau Rd. on Tuesday, June 16.

- Grisson and Tezel H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 9255 FM 471 West on Thursday, June 18.

- Military and Goliad H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 3323 SE Military Dr. on Tuesday, June 16.

- Loop 1604 and Blanco Rd. H-E-B plus!: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 1150 NW Loop 1604 on Tuesday, June 16.

- Bandera and 1604 H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 9238 N. Loop 1604 W.Access Rd. on Tuesday, June 16.

- Culebra and 1604 H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 10660 West FM 471 on Monday, June 15.

From Sunday:

- Bulverde and 1604 H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 17238 Bulverde Rd. on Tuesday, June 16.

- Potranco and 1604 H-E-B plus!: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 10718 Potranco Rd. on Thursday, June 18.

- New Braunfels and Houston H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 415 N. New Braunfels Ave. on Saturday, June 20.

- Lincoln Heights Market H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 999 East Basse Rd. on Thursday, June 18.

- Commerce and Rosillo H-E-B: The employee who tested positive for COVID-19 was last working in the store on 108 N. Rosillo St. on Tuesday, June 16.

It is unclear when the employees tested positive. H-E-B said it has cleaned and sanitized all stores multiple times. Employees who had contact with the infected employee have been notified, the grocery chain said.

Starting today, shoppers will need a face covering to enter the store, per Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff's new order, which requires businesses to mandate face masks.
As with all other organizations, state and local governments experienced a massive workforce disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But to the surprise of many public agencies, employee productivity and morale improved while working from home.The impact, surprisingly, has been very positive, says Maryland Secretary of Information Mike Leahy. I am amazed at how folks have adjusted to teleworking, and 99 percent of the comments we've received have been very positive, that they really like not having to commute through traffic.Leahy made those comments on a recent webinar, Taking Your Work Virtual: How State and Local Governments are Moving Their Workforces and Workplaces Into the Digital Era. The conversation was part of the ongoing Crisis Response Initiative , a joint program from Government Technology and Governing that seeks to equip government leaders with tactics to respond to crisis and the new normal ahead.The biggest challenge so far, Leahy said, is some employees working too hard. Folks, because they aren't taking breaks, they get up, they start working in the morning, they might eat a sandwich sitting at the computer at lunchtime. So they're working longer. [] I have on a number of occasions had to tell folks, Stop and take an hour off. Which isn't what we typically hear about government employees.To help ensure productivity, Leahy noted that managers are checking in with employees more frequently and discussing more specific aspects of what they are working on each day. And his own IT department has implemented some tools that allow supervisors to see how many lines of code employees are working on.We have a number of metrics that we've been not only keeping track of, but publishing to our employees. And so they have a benchmark, and as I said, production has actually gone up.In the city of San Jose, Calif., the focus is now shifting toward building out better digital capabilities for the road ahead.That means, how are we going to take our processes, our practices, our rituals, to a highly remote state? said San Jose CIO Rob Lloyd, who joined Leahy on the webinar. The other main area of concern, he said, is cybersecurity. How do we address a lot of these risks that we're seeing and are quite worried about? Because the criminals out there have noticed that remote work presents more vulnerabilities. And they also have been tracking all those articles about the billions and trillions of aid that are going to governments. And we're seeing some pretty nasty patterns.Lloyd also spoke of the difficult challenge of maintaining agile government decision-making in an era of working from home. A lot of agile is ritual. And how you establish those rituals physically is in many ways easier because you have a practice and a culture. Managers, he said, are going to have to learn how to take that remote, but also meet the human needs of forming a team where you feel like you are a part of something.You can learn more about how governments are meeting the challenges of the pandemic at governing.com/crisisresponse
A security officer inspects the scene at a lumber mill in Bannang Sata, a district of southern Thailands restive Yala province, where a worker was fatally shot by gunmen, June 22, 2020.

Gunmen killed two people in separate attacks in the Thai Deep South on Monday, police said, days after Thailands chief negotiator in regional peace talks expressed hope that negotiations with rebels could soon resume after a three-month COVID-19 hiatus.

Meanwhile, A supporter of Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the largest and most powerful of insurgent groups in the southern border region, told Benar News that the group was ready to talk at any time.

On Monday, a deputy village headman and a timber worker were gunned down in attacks that took place in Pattani and Yala provinces, according to police who did not rule out that rebels could be linked to the killings.

Mayusi Jehoh, the village official, was shot in the morning at a home in Sai Buri, the Pattani district where he lived, a local police official told reporters.

According to witnesses, the slain man was visiting a house there when unidentified gunmen produced a handgun and shot him multiple times before they managed to escape, said police Col. Mana Dejawarith, the chief of Sai Buri police station.

We are looking into possible motives, he said.

Hours later, Gusnee Sueno was fatally shot in the head while resting in a room at the lumber mill where he worked in Bannang Sata, a district of Yala, authorities said.

Both victims of the separate attacks died at local hospitals, officials said.

The attacks took place three days after Gen. Wanlop Rugsnaoh, the head of Thailands delegation in Malaysia-brokered peace negotiations with southern separatist insurgents, told BenarNews that he was looking to restart direct talks with the BRN in July or August, after the coronavirus pandemic had subsided further.

Thailand and a panel representing the rebel groups military wing held two rounds of talks in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year, but the process was disrupted when the neighboring countries imposed COVID-19 lockdowns in mid-March.

On Monday, a BRN sympathizer who administers a Facebook page believed to be linked to supporters of the rebel group responded to questions from BenarNews about the prospect of peace talks resuming in the near future.

In regard to the meeting when Malaysia opens the country, we have no problem, we are ready to talk at any time, the administrator of the social media page said via a text message Monday without revealing his or her identity. We are in a ceasefire state, though the Siam-Thai state provokes us and makes us look like a terrorist organization in the eyes of the world community.

The source was referring to a unilateral ceasefire declared by BRN on humanitarian grounds on April 3, saying it was ceasing all activities to allow medical workers to be unimpeded while they responded to the coronavirus pandemic across the Deep South.

A lull in violence lasted for about a month after the ceasefire declaration. But Mondays killings brought to at least 12 the number of people, including four suspected insurgents, who have died in violence across the Deep South since BRN declared the ceasefire, according to a tally of police statistics compiled by BenarNews.

The incidents that took place in later weeks are normal because the organization [BRN] wanted to demonstrate their potential and signal that the group exists and is able to mount attacks at any time, though it reduced their intensity during the COVID time, professor Srisompob Jitpiromsri, the director of Deep South Watch, a local think-tank, told BenarNews.

More than 7,000 people have died in violence across the various provinces and districts that make up Thailands mainly Muslim and Malay-speaking southern border region since the separatist insurgency reignited in 2004.
22.06.2020 LISTEN

There a few more spiteful things in political life than a security establishment attempting to punish a leaker or whistleblower for having exposed an impropriety. Such a tendency has no ideological stripe or colouring: it is common to all political systems. In Australia, it has become clear that secret trials are all the rage. The disclosure of their existence tends to be accidental, and trials held partly in secret are also matters considered necessary by the current attorney general.

Last year, the case of Witness J made its way into the press like a threatening menace, a reminder that Australian authorities do not shy away from holding trials without scrutiny or public record. A former military intelligence officer had been prosecuted in the courts of the Australian Capital Territory and jailed under a cloak of secrecy so heavy it even eluded the ACTs justice minister. Had it not been for separate proceedings arising from the penning of his draft memoir, no one would have known.

For all the generously scattered propaganda about Australia being a devotee of open justice, the converse is closer to the mark. As the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, told the ABC last year regarding Witness J, The court determined, consistent with the Government submission, that it was contrary to the public interest that the information be disclosed and the information was of a kind that could endanger the lives or safety of others.

Such trials are invisible affairs. They repel scrutiny. They repudiate the very idea of legal accountability. All the running is made by government prosecutors. Law Council Arthur Moses describes it in rather mundane fashion. The details of the case will not be found on the court website, or on the noticeboard with the list of all the other cases.

There are other troubling cases, two of which are taking place in the Australian capital: that of former Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery. The largely secret prosecution of both men concerns a generally venal affair: the conduct of an ASIS operation in 2004 against diplomats of the impoverished state of Timor-Leste in their negotiations with Australia regarding the continental shelf rich in oil and gas. Using the cover of an aid project, ASIS agents installed listening devices in the Timor-Leste cabinet office in Dili.

The hope was to furnish the Australian government, then led by John Howard, a robust advantage in negotiations. It was predatory, commercially minded, and indifferent to the plight of a country still crippled by the effects of Indonesian occupation. Witness K, with the assistance of Collaery, subsequently blew the lid on the operation, though they did so, ironically enough, through legal channels. The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) was informed. Permission to retain the services of Collaery was sought and granted. Armed with such information, Collaery proceeded to assist Timor-Leste in mounting their 2013 case in The Hague against the validity of the treaty that had arisen out of the compromised negotiations. During that time Collaerys home was raided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Witness K detained. Charges were duly laid, but only after the final treatys conclusion in March 2018.

The whole affair left a stinging impression. It was outrageous, fumed chief negotiator for the Timor-Leste government Peter Galbraith. Id taken protective measures against Australian espionage, which I thought would be based on cell phones and internet, but I thought it was pretty crude to be bugging the prime ministers offices.

The Collaery case is now making its way through the channels of secrecy, and we are none the wiser for it. It is troublingly odd, not merely for its clandestine nature, but also for the fact that he was ever charged.

Last week, reporters gathered in the public gallery in Canberra awaiting Collaerys pre-trial hearing. It was a speedy affair. Those gathered were told to leave, doing so with a statement furnished by Collaery. I am unable to say much and you are unable to report much. This is the state of our now fragile democracy.

But prosecuting the wily lawyer is something that the Morrison government should be wary of. As the Australian Financial Review notes, Collaery is expected to instruct his legal team to issue subpoenas to have former Australian prime minister John Howard and former foreign minister Alexander Downer summoned to give evidence. In open court, Collaery has already announced his wish to call former Timor-Leste presidents Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans and former chief of defence Chris Barrie.

The presiding judge, David Mossop, is also to be petitioned to make the proceedings public, though he is juggling with government arguments based on the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004. The justice must now deliberate over what, exactly, is appropriate to warrant shielding from the public. This is a rather delicate exercise, given that legal staff, not to mention the judge himself, might face the prospect of jail for any inadvertent breaches of secrecy arrangements.

Porter is attempting to normalise the entire matter, giving this disturbing case the gloss of tolerable banality. There are court cases all the time where some matters are not made public, he explained on the ABCs Insiders program. This is an argument about what matters may be heard inside the court, and what matters may be heard publicly.

For its part, the government is pursuing a strategy that neither confirms nor denies that the surveillance operation against Timor-Leste officials ever took place. Farcically, it contends that Collaery unlawfully communicated information of such surveillance, irrespective of whether it took place or not. Such witch-burning logic should be laughed out of court, but is being treated with utmost seriousness.

Collaery is certainly rolling out the ammunition with tenacity. This is Coalition dirty linen. Theres a multibillion-dollar restitution issue to do with the helium [extracted] from Bayu-Undan Field in the Timor Sea being treated as waste gas and being given away for nothing to the contractors. But that is not all. So much of the operation in 2004 reeks, be it from the perspective of undermining a supposedly friendly state in the name of commerce, or the prioritisation of intelligence resources. As Clinton Fernandes of the Australian Defence Force Academy has pointed out, the bugging operation was executed even as an attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta was taking place. It is a scandal that remains impervious to parliamentary review, as that body is barred by the Intelligence Services Act 2001 from examining intelligence-gathering operations of the agencies.

All that is left are the courageous efforts of a few troubled by conscience in what the services of their country do. Should patriotism ever have any meaning beyond its otherwise cowardly assertion, it will be found in such acts as those of Collaery and his client, Witness K.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
Thank you for reading!

Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday demanded that China free two Canadians who were charged with spying following a row involving all three nations. "The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada," Pompeo said in a statement. Pompeo said the United States was "extremely concerned" by the charges and also urged China to allow consular access, saying there has been no contact with the pair for nearly six months. Former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor were detained in December 2018, nine days after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on a US warrant. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called Friday for the two men's release after the charges were unveiled, has said that China explicitly linked their arrests to the Meng case. Relations between Canada and China have hit rock bottom over the arrests. Beijing has blocked billions of dollars in Canadian agricultural exports. Meng is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, the telecom giant which the United States, with limited success, is urging all nations to shun on security grounds. She is living in a mansion in Vancouver while she is out on bail. A demonstator holds up photos of detained Canadians Michael Spavor (left) and Michael Kovrig outside a May 2019 court appearance for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver
The Victorian government is making urgent representations to the Commonwealth over reports that hit-run driver Puneet Puneet has gone missing in India ahead of his expected extradition to Australia to face sentencing.

Almost 12 years after he hit and killed student Dean Hofstee in Southbank, Puneet is yet to be extradited from India to be sentenced in Australia. There are now concerns that he has gone missing in India, again.

Puneet Puneet after being bailed from the Magistrates Court in 2008. Credit:Angela Wylie

Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said the state government had contacted the federal government to express its deep concern and verify the reports.

"We will continue to work closely with them and relevant authorities to ensure Puneet is found and extradited back to Victoria as quickly as possible," Ms Hennessy said.
tech2 News Staff

A Siberian town with the worlds widest temperature range has recorded a new high amid a heatwave that is contributing to severe forest fires. If verified, this would be the hottest temperature recorded in Siberia as well as north of the Arctic Circle.

The temperature in Verkhoyansk hit 38 degrees Celsius on Saturday, according to Pogoda i Klimat, a website that compiles Russian meteorological data. This new record breaks the Arctic town's 32-year record it set on 25 July 1988, which was a sweltering 37.3 degrees Celsius set on 25 July 1988.

Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at Meteor France tweeted that if the temperatures detected at Verkhoyansk were correct then "it would not only be an absolute record at the station (37.3  C, 07/25/1988) but also the highest temperature ever observed north of the Arctic Circle."

 Tmax de 38.0C a #Verkhoyansk, #Siberie orientale (67.55N), ce 20 juin.

Si cette valeur est correcte, ce serait non seulement un record absolu a la station (37.3C, 25/07/1988) mais aussi la temperature la plus elevee jamais observee au nord du cercle polaire #arctique ! pic.twitter.com/EUE8JVdkGR  Etienne Kapikian (@EKMeteo) June 20, 2020

The town is located above the Arctic Circle in the Sakha Republic, about 4,660 kilometres northeast of Moscow. with about 1,300 residents, the town is recognized by the Guinness World Records for the world's most extreme temperature range  it can go as low as minus-68 degrees C and as high as 37.2 C.

According to Weather.com, the average high temperature in late June in Verkhoyansk is supposed to be around 20 degrees Celsius, and the recorded 38 degrees Celsius is an anomaly. Siberia is supposed to be one of the coldest places in the world and clocking temperature readings closer to a tropical city in summer is worrying.

Global warming heats Siberia

This event is not isolated with a sudden and freak increase in temperatures. Much of Siberia this year has seen unseasonably high temperatures and the hot climate had lead to sizable wildfires.

In the Sakha Republic, more than 2,750 km of forests are burning, according to Avialesokhrana, the government agency that monitors forest fires.

According to the Guardian, the temperatures have also been linked to a huge oil spill in Russia and a plague of tree-eating moths. Siberian silk moth's larvae eat away at conifer trees in the region's forests and swarms of these moths have been spotted in Siberia due to the warming climate. The moths strip away the tree's needles, making them more likely to catch on fire, resulting in forest fires.

"In all my long career as a specialist, I've never seen moths so huge and growing so quickly," said Vladimir Soldatov, a moth expert.

On 29 May, Diseal started leaking from a collapsed fuel tank owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, the world's leading nickel and palladium producer. The Russian Arctic oil spill has polluted a big lake near Norilsk and traveled 20 km from its point of origin and risks spreading into the Arctic Ocean.

The pollution "will have a negative effect on the water resources, on the animals that drink that water, on the plants growing on the banks", said Vasily Yablokov of Greenpeace Russia told BBC.

Climate change is heating up Russia at a rate more than twice the global average, thawing what was once permanently frozen ground in the Arctic tundra, the Russian Environment Ministry announced last year.

The warmth is having an effect on the entire ecosystem  river ice breaking, plants and trees blooming, and insects waking up earlier than usual.

With input from The Associated Press
Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard appear to be on the outs with Jills famous family. Weve watched the Duggars for years thanks to TLC featuring them on various shows such as 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On. While Jill and Derick were once on the small screen, they parted ways with the network. And Dericks spoken out against Jim Bob Duggar and TLC a number of times.

Were not sure exactly where Jill stands with her siblings at this point. And it seems only one of her sisters wished her and Derick a happy anniversary. Heres what we noticed.

Jill Duggar just celebrated her anniversary with Derick Dillard

RELATED: Jill Duggars Husband, Derick Dillard, Showed Off a Bit of His Childhood Stomping Grounds

Jill and Derick have gotten plenty of flack for their relationship since it initially began. Before Derick met Jill, he contacted Jim Bob while he was doing humanitarian work in Nepal back in 2012. Jim Bob thought Derick sounded like an amazing young man judging from the work he was doing, and he thought hed be the perfect match for Jill. Finally, Jill and Derick met once Jill traveled to Nepal to meet him with Jim Bob, and the rest is history.

The two have had plenty of bumps in the road when it comes to falling out of favor with fans, TLC, and possibly Jills parents. But theyve always stuck by each other. On June 21, Jill posted a sweet photo of her and Derick to Instagram along with a caption celebrating their anniversary.

Happy Anniversary my love @derickdillard, Jill wrote. These last 6 years have been quite the ride but Im so grateful to have you always by my side. She then went on to explain all the fun ways they spent their anniversary, which included eating out at one of their favorite places, getting some delicious chocolate, and sitting on the same bench they were at when Derick asked for Jills hand in marriage.

Derick claimed Jill has a tougher time connecting with her siblings now

(L-R) Jessa Duggar, Jinger Duggar, Jill Duggar, and Jana Duggar visit Extra at their New York studios | D Dipasupil/Getty Images for Extra

Jill and Derick look ultra-happy in their anniversary photo. But we cant forget all the turmoil thats occurring with Jill and the rest of her family. According to Derick, Jills on the outs with Jim Bob, as she needs his permission to visit her big family home. Not only that, but Derick also mentioned that because Jill doesnt have the same visiting liberties as her siblings, its putting a strain on her relationships with them.

Because our visitation to the Duggar house has been restricted and that is where they and their spouses hang out, we have not been able to see other family as much as we would like, so that is difficult, Derick told The Sun. We do try to invite brothers and sisters-in-law over as much as they can come.

Only 1 of Jills siblings appeared to wish her a happy anniversary

Were not sure what Jills siblings think of Derick spilling the family tea to social media and publications. But we did notice that only one of Jills siblings commented on Jills anniversary post. Jana Duggar simply commented, Happy Anniversary!

To that, Jill commented back, thanks sis!

While Jana is the only sister to comment, we cant ignore the fact that the Duggar Family Instagram, which appears to be run by Jim Bob and Michelle, posted a shoutout to Jill and Dericks anniversary via their Instagram Story. Some Duggar family critics suspect Jana is actually the one who controls the familys Instagram, though. If this is the case, then it would make sense that she posted a photo for the couples happy day.

Does Jill currently have issues with the rest of her siblings? We have no idea, though we know she connected with Jessa, Joy-Anna, and Jinger back in February for a sister hangout. It looks like the Duggar women are just choosing to remain quiet about the anniversary but are otherwise just fine with Jill.

Check out Showbiz Cheat Sheet on Facebook!
FP Trending

Motorola One Fusion, which is expected to be the base version of Motorola One Fusion+, has been spotted in a Google Play Console's Device Catalogue and the Android Enterprise Recommended Catalog.

According to a report by XDA Developers, Motorola One Fusion, codename "astro", renders indicate that it will have a waterdrop notch. The specifications that popped up in Google Play show that the device will be powered with Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor.

It further revealed that Motorola One Fusion will have 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage.

The smartphone is expected to have a 6.5-inch display with a 720 x 1600 pixels resolution at 280ppi pixel density. It will run on the latest Android 10 operating system.

The device will come with two Kryo 360 cores clocked at 2200 Mhz and six Kryo 360 cores clocked at 1700 Mhz. The GPU is Adreno 616 clocked at 500 Mhz.

The report mentions that previous leaks suggest the model numbers XT2073-1 and XT2073-2, an option of 4/6 GB of RAM, 64/128 GB of internal storage, a 5,000 mAh battery.

As for the camera, the device may have Samsungs 48 MP ISOCELL Bright GM1 as the main rear camera along with 5 MP, 8 MP, and 2 MP camera sensors.

The front or selfie camera of the smartphone is likely to be 8 MP.

As per the report, the Google Play Console listing mentions the keyword fingerprint supported on the API interface which could be placed on the rear of the Motorola One Fusion.

On 16 June, Motorola India has launched the Motorola One Fusion+ at Rs 16,999.

The smartphone comes with 64 MP quad-camera setup, pop-up selfie camera, Snapdragon 730G chipset, and 5,000 mAh battery. It comes in one storage variant that offers 6 GB RAM and 128 GB of internal storage.

It is available in a Moonlight White and Twilight Blue colour variants.
With the global economy sputtering to life after months of pandemic-enforced shutdown, the future of the office space is being called into question.

Forced to work from home, many white-collar employees have done so efficiently and have developed a taste for it. Some employers have taken to the idea as well and are moving to make such arrangements more or less permanent.

Slack, the U.S. tech firm that makes online collaboration software, announced plans this week to have most of its staff work from home permanently, following similar moves by Facebook, Twitter, OpenText and others. Tobi Lutke, chief executive of Ottawa-based Shopify, declared last month that office-centricity is over as he too announced that company workplaces would remain closed until 2021.

But workplace experts say its premature to declare offices obsolete. Any predictions being made now about the offices future are purely speculative.

Its too early to suggest that the office market will disappear, says Daniel Holmes, senior managing director of the Toronto region office practice group for Colliers International.

Its too easy to say, Were going to rejig our office and were going to reassess what were going to do with it. Until theres a vaccine, companies are going to struggle with what percentage of their employees they can bring back, what percentage want to come back, how many no longer have to commute and so on.

Ontario is allowing offices to open, but a spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development says the province is not enforcing restrictions on the number of employees in a given space.

Instead, the government is recommending that employers follow social distancing protocols and discourage the sharing of office equipment such as telephones, keyboards and desks. Companies are also encouraged to implement strict cleaning standards and communicate those with staff.

Toronto Mayor John Tory has urged major employers to keep workers home until September at the earliest. Many large companies, including banks and colleges, have agreed to do so.

At some point, however, organizations are going to start wanting their employees to come back  and workers are going to want to return, according to several surveys.

In a recent poll of more than 2,600 office workers in the United States, San Francisco architecture firm Gensler says only a minority of respondents  12 per cent  said they wanted to work from home permanently. About 70 per cent wanted to go back to the office for three days a week or more.

The company expects similar results from a poll being conducted in Canada, mainly because both employees and employers have found remote work negatively affecting several aspects of business, says Annie Bergeron, design director and principal in Genslers Toronto office.

Employees may focus on their own work better at home, but they arent collaborating, learning or socializing, she says. Those things help develop a sense of team and lead to innovation, which is the lifeblood of many businesses.

A lot of companies are running on the fumes of the social capital they invested in before this happened. Theyre starting to see its difficult for people to truly collaborate long-distance, Bergeron says. Innovation isnt tied to whether you have Mensa members or MIT degrees, its about having trust and empathy with your co-workers.

Tech companies that are shifting to a more permanent work-from-home strategy tend to have a higher tolerance for failure and are able to experiment, she says. They may have to learn the value of collaborative offices the hard way before ultimately converting back to a more traditional work system.

Despite that, Gensler believes that employees will indeed work from home more often when they need to focus, which means that many office spaces will be reconfigured to encourage collaboration, Bergeron says. It could mean fewer devoted desks, a tradeoff that employees will have to make to work from home.

Shared workspace provider iQ Offices also says people want to return to offices. The company recently surveyed its users and found that 93 per cent dont want to work from home full-time.

Organizations that are moving toward permanent work-at-home arrangements arent considering the development or fostering of their cultures, or employee retention and mental health, says iQ chief executive Kane Willmott.

The office is a key component of creating corporate culture, he says. Theres a social element, and culture and community element, that is very difficult to replicate digitally. Communities require proximity.

In the short term, employers will need to devote resources to ensuring office cleanliness to build confidence in workplaces being safe, he adds.

IQ, for example, has implemented cleaning of public areas at its offices every two hours, as well as one-way traffic arrows on floors and temperature screening for all entrants.

Boston-based architecture firm SGA says many clients in the United States and Canada are in a holding pattern with respect to their offices. Theyre waiting to see what local governments will require and what best practices emerge.

Many are opting for temporary measures such as signs and marking social distancing areas on floors with tape.

People arent rushing out to buy high-walled cubicles because were waiting it out somewhat, says Gable Clarke, director of interior design and partner at SGA. Its more of a short-term adoption because theres a reluctance to spend a lot of money on refurnishing your space with the fear that that might be too reactionary.

Longer term, Clarke sees companies investing in better air filtration systems and sensor technologies that can help limit the spread of germs, such as automatic door openers and paper towel dispensers in bathrooms. She agrees with other observers that some desk space will be repurposed for collaborative workspaces and meeting areas, combined with more work-from-home options.

The office is not dead, we just see it as evolving, she says. I dont think the pendulum will swing all the way back to where we were, but I dont think were going to completely change how the office looks.
Why the high enthusiasm for gay rights in conservative, heavily Mormon Utah? No mystery. In 2015, L.G.B.T. -rights advocates, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the states Republican leaders agreed on a new law combining L.G.B.T. protections with carefully tailored religious exemptions. The process of negotiating the deal and building trust forged a durable consensus. In fact, just a few months ago, Utah enacted a rule barring harmful gay conversion therapy for minors, with the support not only of L.G.B.T. advocates but also of the Mormon hierarchy.

In todays Trumpified world, Americans tend to think that politics is a brutal Punch and Judy show, and that compromise is a surrender of principles. But when the politics of compromise is in good working order, it builds new alliances, develops new solutions, and turns conflict into cooperation. Utah provided one example. The Fairness for All Act holds out a similar opportunity at the federal level, with at least three substantial payoffs.

First, the bill shows how seeking compromise makes seemingly nonnegotiable moral differences tractable to political bargaining. Unlike the Equality Act, which expands protections for the L.G.B.T. side while narrowing existing protections for the religious side, the Fairness for All bill gives each side a win compared to where it is now. L.G.B.T. people get those important civil-rights protections, more swiftly and surely than the courts could deliver them. More than that, as in Utah, they get the buy-in and active support of an influential swath of the conservative religious community, something that has never been on offer before and that has the potential to change the L.G.B.T. -religious conversation in all kinds of constructive ways. For L.G.B.T. Americans, locking in religious groups support for nondiscrimination protections would be a political game-changer  one that might lead to breakthroughs on other fronts.

Religious interests get assurances that religious-affiliated organizations like schools and charities can hire and teach according to their beliefs and, importantly, that faith-based groups can keep their nonprofit status while maintaining their beliefs and practices concerning marriage, family and sexuality. It is significant that the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, an influential higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions, has endorsed Fairness for All.

Second, the bill demonstrates that compromise is not necessarily just about splitting differences. Often, compromise is a creative, generative force, expanding the political frame and inventing new policy approaches to break old deadlocks. In their search for traction on the particularly thorny issue of faith-based adoption and foster-care agencies, the Fairness for All negotiators devised an innovative approach that lets individuals, rather than governments, pay placement agencies. In their quest to sweeten the pot for both sides, they agreed to bar companies from firing employees based on what they say about marriage and sexuality outside the workplace  a type of free-speech protection that currently does not exist for either side under federal law.

Most important of all is the lesson Utah teaches. Politics can paralyze and polarize, yes. But politics can also conciliate and heal, with effects that radiate farther and last longer than the terms of any one piece of legislation. By creating new constituencies for both sides of a bargain, political accommodation can change hearts and minds, not just law  a stronger foundation for civil rights and religious liberties than any statute or judicial decision alone can provide. As the L.D.S. Church leadership said in endorsing the Utah compromise, security lies in reciprocity: In a game of total victory, we all lose.

There is one other thing that dialogue, negotiations and accommodation can provide that the culture-war mentality doesnt offer: the chance to widen the aperture of understanding between people of different life experiences and perspectives, and to learn from others. That has certainly been the experience in our own friendship, between a gay atheist and a straight Christian.
52pc of female students said they were sexually assaulted. Stock image

Almost one in three female students have been subjected to sex involving force or incapacitation due to alcohol or drugs, according to a survey.

The combination of a lack of consent and the tactics used in these incidents most closely correspond to the legal definition of rape used in Ireland.

The problem is not confined to women. Alongside the 29pc of females reporting such experiences are 10pc of males and 28pc of non-binary students - those who identify as neither male nor female.

The extent of sexual harassment and violence among students emerges in a report from the NUI Galway Active* Consent initiative and the Union of Students in Ireland (USI).

More than 6,000 students in 14 universities and institutes of technology completed the survey between February and April of this year.

While the Sexual Experiences Survey is not based on a representative sample of students, the number of responses - more than half of them from women - suggests a serious problem.

Report co-author Dr Padraig MacNeela, a lecturer in psychology, said it provided "a stark depiction of the experiences that many students have had", including the "more than 1,000 females who described incidents that correspond to rape".

Misconduct

Dr MacNeela also noted that one-quarter of male students said they had been subject to sexual misconduct during their time in college - and bisexual, non-binary, and queer students described particularly high levels of sexual harassment.

USI vice-president for welfare Roisin O'Donovan said the 6,000 responses showed that perceptions and practices regarding sexual consent and misconduct "remains a huge issue among students".

The survey aimed to provide the first comprehensive snapshot of student sexual health experiences, through measures that have been used in international studies.

Questions about sexual misconduct explored non-consensual contact ranging from unwanted touching, to attempted or completed penetration, including where incapacitation or the use or threat of force was a tactic.

The problem starts in first year when more than one-third (38pc) of students report being victims of some form of sexual misconduct, most commonly while incapacitated, rising to almost half (47pc) by the time they finish college.

The findings include that 52pc of female, 49pc of non-binary and 27pc of male students experienced unwanted touching, completed or attempted penetration.

Almost half of men, over a third of women and a quarter of non-binary students did not disclose the incident to anyone, many because they thought it was not serious enough.
Caritas Mozambique, the humanitarian arm of the Catholic Church, is intensifying its level of response in assisting victims of terrorist attacks in the Cabo Delgado province.

Herminio Jose - Maputo, Mozambique & English Africa Service  Vatican City



In an interview with Vatican News, the Secretary-General of Caritas Mozambique, Santos Gotine, affirms that the attacks on innocent villagers by armed gangs, in the province, have led to displacements and a worsening humanitarian situation.

Working in collaboration with the Caritas of Pemba Diocese, the national office says it is mobilising support for thousands of displaced and homeless families.

Over two million people affected overall

According to UN Reliefweb, the escalation of insurgent activities in Mozambiques northern province of Cabo Delgado is deteriorating the humanitarian situation of affected populations in the area. More than 11 of the 16 districts in the province have witnessed incessant attacks with a significant rise in the death toll.

The number of displaced people has risen from around 1 000 in March 2019 to over 115 000 in March 2020. Over two million people are affected by the crisis.

The Church in support of those who suffer says Caritas

As observed by the UN agencies, the challenges in Cabo Delgado range from protection concerns, livelihoods and food security, healthcare, and education. Caritas Mozambique Secretary-General, Santos Gotine, says that the Church cannot sit idly by in the face of such a serious and unfolding humanitarian situation. The Church in Mozambique may not have enormous resources needed to respond to the crisis, but it gets involved by in being close to those who suffer. This, is the mission of the Church and is the reason why Caritas is appealing for help on behalf of Cabo Delgado, says Gotine.

COVID-19 mitigation and prevention response

Given the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic not only in the Cabo Delgado Province but in other parts of the country as well, Caritas Mozambique is carrying out mitigation and prevention measures.

One year after Cyclone Idai in Mozambique

One year after Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique and set off a series of unprecedented climate-related disasters, 2.5 million people, almost half of them children, remain in need of humanitarian assistance. More than 3,000 children under the age of five have been diagnosed with life-threatening severe acute malnutrition after harvests were washed away in floodwaters. These children are proof that the victims of the climate crisis are first and foremost, the poor and the very young.

(Additional sources: Caritas Mozambique and Reliefweb)
A young mum has spoken of her joy after her 87-year-old grandmother defied the statistics to beat Covid-19.

The deadly disease is most lethal for over-65s and when beloved Comber grandma Kathleen Bates was diagnosed, her family feared the worst.

Despite the dire survival rates for patients in her age bracket, the former Shankill Road woman was given the all-clear on May 21 at Comber Care Home.

Her granddaughter Liz Crooks (21) told Sunday Life: "To see my nanny overcome the illness to me is like a beacon of hope, that's why I wanted to speak out.

"It hit us hard, it really did. We tried to be positive but with all the statistics that older people, especially ones with health issues, are most likely to pass because of this horrible disease, it was very difficult.

"All we hear is that the old die and every day someone else has passed. Now it's time for the good news.

"I'm so glad that she can show others that the statistics are just that. They aren't true for absolutely everyone.

"She was glad to get 'home' back to the care home, but in all honesty I don't know if she really knew exactly what was going on as she has dementia.

"She probably thought it was treatment for her diabetes which I guess it was. She was in the Ulster Hospital and at one point they wanted to transfer her to Down for beds. Although we couldn't visit her it was a worry, but her blood sugars stayed unstable so she wasn't transferred.

"I really appreciate attention being focused on a positive story, I get that scary and negative stuff is to grab our attention but I think we all need a little hope right now."

Mum-of-two Liz says when Kathleen was first diagnosed, the family were deeply concerned for her welfare.

"I was actually sitting in Ulster Hospital myself when I got a call from a family member telling me that my nanny had tested positive for Covid-19.



Expand Close Kathleen Bates (87) and Liz Crooks (21) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Kathleen Bates (87) and Liz Crooks (21)

"I recently got diagnosed with FND (functional neurological disorder) which affected my speech so I couldn't even talk on the phone, just moan that I understood. I was really scared for her, my nanny is a very fragile woman.

"She's 87 years old and has diabetes along with dementia. I remember saying to my partner at the start of lockdown I really hope my nanny lives past this virus, as we wouldn't have been able to have a proper funeral.

"We haven't seen her in over 12 weeks now as the care home shut down quicker than most places.

"I think it brought us closer as a family, though. We contacted each other more to see how she was doing and how each other was coping.

"Nanny Bates has always been our rock, she's the stubborn one, the one that didn't move out of her home until it became unsafe for her to live there, the one that didn't move during protests living in the Shankill years ago.

"It's hard to say what she really thought as she is confused most days with her dementia but the last time I saw her, the nurses said she had been very tired but chirpy.

"Unfortunately Kathleen isn't one to know anything about technology so video calling wasn't possible, you could barely get her on a landline when she did live at home.

"We had to call the Comber Care Home for updates on her wellbeing and they were happy to talk to you about it all in-depth."

Despite the delight around Nanny Bates' return to health, Ms Crooks is sceptical about the continued easing of lockdown.

"I can understand the want for restrictions to be eased, it's so hard not being able to do anything, go anywhere or see who you want.

"However, we don't want a second wave. It could be more deadly and last longer the second time around, so we need to wait a little longer for numbers to fall more."
Vietnams most severe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patient, a British pilot known as patient 91, continued on the pathway towards a miraculous recovery after undergoing three months of treatment

at both the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital of Tropical Diseases and Cho Ray Hospital.

According to the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control, the patient is now in his eighth day of being disconnected from a mechanical ventilation machine and no longer requires full oxygen support during the daytime. At night, he is assisted with 0.5 litres of oxygen per minute.

At present the patient is fully conscious and is able to communicate well, while his renal, cardiac, and hepatic functions have all undergone vast improvements, in addition to his pancreatic enzymes returning to normal. Furthermore, his ability to move has gotten better, with the patient now able to get up and turn around in bed along with roughly four fifths of his leg muscles recovering after receiving physical therapy twice a day, doctors said. Despite these positives, he still needs time in order to regain the use of his leg muscles and make a complete recovery.

The patients latest CT scan indicates that his lung volume has returned to 90% of their original capacity.

The latest positive development indicates that the recovery of the patients leg muscles is almost complete and has happened at a rate faster than expected, with doctors previously believing that it would take him many weeks to be able to recover the majority of his motor functions.

The British national, who is employed by Vietnam Airlines as a pilot, has been hospitalised for the past three months since he was originally infected with the COVID-19 on March 18.

When originally hospitalised the patient was in a healthy state, although his condition suddenly worsened with his lung capacity dropping rapidly, forcing him to require the aid of the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine ECMO from April 6.

Since this point however his overall health has improved drastically and he is now well on the way to making a full miraculous recovery. He shared with doctors his desire to leave hospital soon to return home, adding that he is keen to return to his native Scotland.

The 43-year-old patient had been receiving treatment at the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital of Tropical Diseases for a total 65 days, before being transferred to the citys Cho Ray hospital on May 22.

He remains the countrys most critical COVID-19 patient and has spent the longest time receiving treatment at medical facilities for a combined total of 93 days.

Business-class seat proposal to bring British patient home



Dr. Nguyen Tri Thuc, Director of Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, said that a British pilot being treated for the novel coronavirus known as patient 91 is fully conscious on June 20 and is now capable of sitting in a wheelchair, meaning that it could be possible to purchase a business-class air ticket with accompanying medical staff in order to escort him home.

The patient is now able to breathe without assistance, whilst his heart rate is at 105 beats per minute, his blood pressure is 130/70 mmHg, whilst he is able to maintain a stable body temperature. He can cough through his mouth when needed and is capable of communicating well verbally.

At present, the 43-year-old British patient requires a little more recovery time in order to be able to fully regain the use of his leg muscles and recover the majority of his motor functions.

According Dr. Thuc, patient 91 is now well enough to be discharged from hospital, with this timing well with his aspiration of returning home. Therefore, Cho Ray Hospital has proposed that the Ministry of Health devise solutions in order for him to return to Scotland, so he can avoid the risk of contracting hospital infections due to his weak resistance and lung damage.

The proposed flight can be paid for through one of three solutions, either through an insurance company, the patient's firm 919 Airlight Company, or by funding from a business or sponsor.

The patient has so far has spent the longest time of any COVID-19 case in the country receiving treatment at the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital of Tropical Diseases and Cho Ray Hospital, with his treatment lasting for combined total of 93 days.

He was originally discontinued from dialysis on May 27 and then from the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine ECMO on the morning of June 3. Recent days have seen medical staff at Cho Ray Hospital take the pilot outdoors in order to enjoy some sunlight.

Saigontourist offers to support repatriation of British COVID-19 patient



Saigontourist, the country's leading tour operator, has expressed an interest in contributing to efforts to help repatriate a British novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patient once he makes a full recovery.

Pham Huy Binh, chairman of the Board of Members of Saigontourist Group, said the company is prepared to collaborate with relevant authorities in order to fulfill the patients desire to return to his native Scotland after making a sufficient recovery.

Saigontourist is willing to assist the patient by covering all expenses relating to his air tickets and other transportation costs in order to fulfill the patient's wishes, said Binh.

Binh emphasised that through their support, the company hopes to share the burden with the local health sector in terms of COVID-19 prevention and control activities, as well as contributing to boosting the countrys image as both a safe and friendly destination to international friends and tourists around the globe.

According to the Ministry of Health, the National Treatment Sub-committee will hold a consultation before transferring the patient to the rehabilitation department. When he is deemed well enough to leave the intensive care unit, the hospital will move to speed up procedures in order to discharge the patient and allow him to return to his homeland.

The British patient, the most critically ill case in Vietnam, was confirmed on March 18 to have contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. He had fallen into a coma for more than 2 months before staying conscious recently.

He has since then gone on to make a miraculous recovery and doctors said he does not need a lung transplant  an option that doctors had considered to save his life.

The British citizen is currently being treated at Cho Ray Hospitals intensive care unit in Ho Chi Minh City. VOV

British pilot in Vietnam no longer needs lung transplant After getting unplugged of ventilator, the British patient had the tracheotomy tube removed and could breathe himself.
The Lagos state police command has confirmed that one Chris Ndukwe, 39, allegedly stabbed his 25-year-old lover to death before also going ahead to commit suicide in his apartment.

According to DSP Bala Elkana, the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Elkana Bala, a full-fledge investigation has been launched to ascertain what led to the incident.

He said,  On June 21, 2020, by 4 pm, Ilasan Police Station received information that a couple were found dead in the mans residence.

A team of homicide detectives was deployed to the scene and the crime scene was preserved for forensic analysis.

Advertisement

READ ALSO: Lyons Running Mate On The Verge Of Suicide Over SCourt Judgement: Sylva

The woman was found lying in the pool of her blood with deep cuts on her head. The mans mouth was foaming with whitish substance. It is alleged that the man stabbed the woman to death with a kitchen knife and thereafter drank some poisonous substances suspected to be snipper insecticides.

Two blood-stained kitchen knives, two empty bottles of the poisonous substances, three empty cans of red bull energy drink and a plier were recovered from the scene.

The two corpses were removed and deposited in a public mortuary for autopsy.

Information gathered from some family members revealed that the couples were in a relationship for over seven years, though not married, have two boys.

The relationship is described as complicated, as the couples were on and off over the years. While the man lives in Victory Point Estate Ilasan, the woman lives in Ogba.

The woman is said to have visited the man alongside her 22- year- old sister, a night before the incident, on his invitation.

 Her sister was the first to have noticed that they were dead and raised alarm.

In her statement, she was woken up by loud music from the room where the corpses were found, as herself and the children slept in a different room. It is not yet clear what might have triggered the murder.

The Commissioner of Police Lagos State, CP Hakeem Odumosu, has ordered a thorough investigation into the case. Investigation is ongoing, Elkana stated.
SANTA FE  New Mexico lawmakers concluded a historic special session Monday by granting final approval to legislation requiring police officers to wear body cameras and authorizing up to $400 million in low-interest loans to help small businesses survive.

The state House passed the two measures inside a mostly empty Capitol  two days after the Senate left the building, having already completed its work.

The bills now head to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who called the Legislature into special session Thursday  though the Roundhouse remained closed to the public as a health measure.

This special session produced hundreds of millions in investments in small businesses and local governments and economies; it accommodated and preserved much of the essential progress we have begun to make in our public education system as we begin to navigate a new global economic reality; and it launched, in earnest, an important and overdue conversation about accountability in law enforcement and in ensuring a just and safe New Mexico for all, Lujan Grisham said in a statement shortly after adjournment.

The body camera legislation  passed Monday on a 44-26 vote  calls for law enforcement officers in New Mexico to wear cameras and activate them when responding to calls. Senate Bill 8 also would direct a state board to revoke the certification of any officer convicted of unlawful use of force.

Also approved was Senate Bill 3, which would establish a new loan program to aid small businesses and local governments damaged by the pandemic. It won bipartisan support, passing 59-5.

Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, D-Mesilla, called the camera bill a critical step toward responding to the call for reform amid national protest against police brutality, triggered by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who pleaded for breath as a white officer pressed a knee into his neck.

Over the last five years, New Mexico has had the nations highest per-capita rate of killings by police, according to legislative analysts. Just this month, a Las Cruces police officer was charged in the death of Antonio Valenzuela, who died after the use of a vascular neck restraint.

In the community I call home  just like so many across the country  our loved ones have faced police brutality and violence, Lara Cadena said.

Supporters of the proposed legislation said Monday that cameras will add transparency and accountability, protecting officers from false accusations and shedding light on deadly police encounters.

Opponents assailed the measure as an unfunded mandate that would discourage people from pursuing careers in law enforcement, worsening officer shortages throughout the state.

They also argued that it wasnt the right time to enact the legislation  because the Capitol is closed to the public amid the coronavirus pandemic, limiting the opportunity for public testimony.

House Minority Leader James Townsend, R-Artesia, accused Democrats of rushing the bill through without adequate scrutiny.

We havent had an officer walk in and make a comment.  They have grave concerns  grave concerns  with this legislation, Townsend said.

The House was alone Monday in the Capitol. The Senate wrapped up its work Saturday and adjourned with no plans to return, unless forced to by the House.

During the special session, lawmakers pledged to ensure the proceedings were broadcast online, though technical problems interrupted each chambers work repeatedly Thursday, the first day of the session.

House committees accepted public testimony through a webinar program. Senate committees took written testimony by email.

But the volume of public comment was much smaller than in a typical session, when committee rooms often are packed with people ready to testify for or against bills.

I really hope we never have to do a hybrid session with virtual participation again, House Speaker Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, said before the House adjourned.

Camera requirement

The police body camera legislation, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces, passed the Senate last week on a 31-11 vote. Five Albuquerque or Rio Rancho Republicans joined every Democrat in favor of the bill.

But the House debate stuck closer to party lines. Just two Democrats, Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde and Candie Sweetser of Deming, crossed party lines and joined Republicans against the bill.

If signed into law, the proposal would go into effect in 90 says.

Lujan Grisham thanked legislators for passing the measure. She described it as a big step toward ensuring law enforcement accountability.

Each law enforcement agency would have to craft policies requiring officers who routinely interact with the public to wear cameras and imposing discipline for failure to comply.

The officers would have to activate the cameras when responding to calls or engaging with a member of the public for a law enforcement or investigative purpose. The video would be retained for at least 120 days.

Law enforcement agencies would face civil liability for spoiling evidence if their officers violate the camera policies.

The legislation doesnt specifically ban chokeholds  an idea backed by Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Hector Balderas  but it more broadly addresses unlawful use of force.

It requires the state Law Enforcement Academy Board to permanently revoke the certification of any officer found guilty of a crime involving unlawful use of force, unlawful threatening of force or failure to intervene in the unlawful use of force.

The camera requirement could be costly for departments that dont already have them. Legislative analysts estimated the cost of buying cameras at $795 each and storing video at $4,920 per camera annually, based on the experience of the State Police, where cameras are already in use.

Albuquerque police already have body-worn cameras, though Bernalillo County Sheriff Manuel Gonzales has repeatedly resisted calls to require deputies to wear cameras.

Economic recovery

Following the camera debate, the House late Saturday approved Senate Bill 3, a proposal that would authorize the state to make low-interest loans to help small businesses and local governments. Money from the Severance Tax Permanent Fund would fund the loans.

The point of the loan is to create economic wealth  economic recovery  in a time in which many, many businesses, through no fault of their own, are in a desperate situation, said Rep. Marian Matthews, an Albuquerque Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill.

Opponents questioned whether low-interest loans would put state funds at risk or generate a strong return on investment. They said there were better ways to help the economy, such as relaxing business restrictions.

I think this is probably one of the worst programs we could have come up to help small business get back on their feet, Rep. Jane Powdrell-Culbert, R-Corrales, said.

Other work

In all, lawmakers passed seven bills during the four-day special session.

Other measures passed include budget solvency bills aimed at absorbing a steep revenue decline caused by the pandemic and plummeting oil prices, along with legislation making changes to the states election system with a high-stakes general election just four months away.

Session action

Legislation passed in 2020 special session:

 House Bill 1  Authorizing a budget solvency plan that would keep state spending roughly flat over the next year  at $7 billion  while drawing down reserves, tapping into federal funds and engaging in other financial maneuvers.

 House Bill 5  Establishing a nine-member civil rights commission that would  by mid-November  recommend legal changes aimed at protecting constitutional rights.

 House Bill 6  Waiving some tax penalties during the pandemic and allowing for increased temporary state payments to help cities and counties if federal funds arent available.

 Senate Bill 3  Establishing a low-interest loan program for small businesses and local governments.

 Senate Bill 4  Enacting temporary changes for the 2020 general election and allowing independent voters to change their party affiliation at polling sites in future primary elections.

 Senate Bill 5  Generating an estimated $141 million in savings by canceling stalled capital outlay and road projects, among other provisions.

 Senate Bill 8  Requiring law enforcement officers to wear cameras.
Kenneth Copeland praises Niger Simeon of Bible, pushes for Juneteenth to be holiday

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Texas-based televangelist Kenneth Copeland had high praise for Simeon, a black leader in the Church of Antioch in the Bible, as he called on President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to come together and make Juneteenth a national holiday.

Being raised in Texas, Juneteeth has been a big thing ever since I could remember because it began in Galveston in 1865. The word finally got to Galveston that the first Republican president had signed the Emancipation Proclamation and freedom started at that time, Copeland noted in a Facebook Live broadcast as many black people celebrated the annual tradition across the country on Friday. I prayed and asked the Lord today to impress Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden to get together to make this a national holiday. Its long overdue. It should have been a national holiday.

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day, marks the anniversary of when the last group of slaves in the United States were told of their freedom. A Union force commanded by General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and informed the slave population that they were free.

Copeland explained that black people have long been influential figures in the Church, using the story of Simeon cited in Acts 13:1-3.

In the church that was at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius the Cyrenian, Manaen, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them to. Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off, the Scriptures note.

I knew as just a young boy, I dont know, I just sensed it somewhere or another that a great part of my future was closely tied to the black community. And then I began to see how closely tied God is to the black community, Copeland said.

Listen who the second man was. Hes either a prophet or a teacher, right behind Barnabas, Simeon, that was called Niger. He was identified. That is Greek for black. He was Simeon but he was identified as the black prophet, Copeland said.

The televangelist then explained the Church of Antioch became the Apostle Pauls home church for a year where he was taught by Simeon and others.

So one of his primary instructors, and you notice, its always very important that this man, this very important man was a black man. And hes an important man that helped train the man that wrote over half of the New Testament, Copeland noted.

He then went to Romans 13:7 to make the case for Juneteenth being made a federal holiday. The verse states: Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

Juneteenth needs to be a national holiday, glory to God. Somebodys finally waked up to what Juneteenth is. Ive known it since I was 12 years old. Its big celebration in Texas. Its past time. It needs to be right there with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There needs to be streets named in honor of Juneteenth, Copeland said.
 So now were going to take down the statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the Natural History Museum in New York? Im no great fan of TR, but if I was a New Yorker I think Id mount the barricade to prevent the statues removal. I also hope the Great Repudiators currently rampaging across the land will get around to the other Rooseveltyou know, the one who put 100,000 Japanese in camps.

 While were on the subject of selective indignation, the Great Repudiators will stand exposed as shameless hypocrites if they dont loudly demand that Yale University change its name, for it is well known that the universitys namesake Elihu Yale was not just a slave-owner but a slave-traderan act the United States made a capital offense decades before it got round to abolishing slavery. We know they wont change itand we all know why, though of course the oh-so-race-sensitive leaders of Yale wont admit it publicly. Alumni would be furious and donations would plummet, and I suspect even radical black students at Yale wouldnt want the name changed. Symbolism is one thing, but having B.A., University of New Haven on your CV just wont sound as prestigious.

 Well lookie here:

Family of woman who portrayed Aunt Jemima opposes move to change brand FORNEY, Texas (KLTV)  An East Texas family is not happy about the brand changing of a popular pancake syrup: Aunt Jemima. The iconic Aunt Jemima has long-standing ties with the city of Hawkins, and a goodwill ambassador named Lillian Richard.

Living in Forney, Vera Harris is the family historian for the Richard family of Hawkins, and could hardly believe a big part of their family legacy, the Aunt Jemima brand, was about to be erased from supermarket shelves. A lot of people want it removed. We want the world to know that our cousin Lillian was one of the Aunt Jemimas and she made an honest living. We would ask that you reconsider just wiping all that away. There wasnt a lot of jobs, especially for black women back in that time. She was discovered by Quaker Oats to be their brand person, Harris said.  Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (which tribe, by the way?) has had to apologize for the suggestion that Joe Biden should pick his running mate by merit and track record rather than by diversity criteria: Tribe said in an interview with the Washington Post that it would be symbolic to choose an African American running mate. However, he added, I think African Americans above all would be the first to say they are more interested in results than cosmetics. These statements and the letter have resulted in outrage from Democrats across social media platforms. . . Former Democratic National Committee Chairman and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean also expressed his outrage over the letter on Twitter. He claimed that Tribe was well-meaning in signing the letter, but its indicative of white peoples clueless racism. In response to the pushback, Tribe apologized for his choice of words on Twitter soon after the Washington Post published his interview. Whered I misplace my popcorn?  Get a load of this mask order from Lincoln County, Oregon, especially the fourth exception: Face Covering Directive Order 6/17/2020Face Covering Directive General directive: All individualis in Lincoln County are required to wear face coverings during any indoor public setting or outdoor public location where a person will be in within six feet of another individual, who does not share the same household. Exceptions: Persons with health/medical conditions that preclude or are exacerbated by wearing a face covering.

Children under the age of 12. Children over the age of 2 but under the age of 12 are encouraged to wear face coverings but not required to do so.

Persons with disabilities that prevents them from using the face covering as described in this Directive. These persons must be reasonably accommodated to allow them access to goods and services.

People of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling and harassment due to wearing face coverings in public.

Of course, if people of color in Lincoln County should come down with COVID-19 in disproportionate numbers, well be told it is because of systemic racism. And in an ironic way, theyll be right!

(Hat tip: Reason)
While the legislation had great intentions in the early days and helped many tenants out during level 4 lockdown, of late, it had been causing more harm than good, which is why we had been imploring the government to bring the legislation to an end, Norwell said.

It is great that the Ministry has listened to industry professionals across the country and taken their feedback and insights on board, and for this, we are extremely grateful as it will now provide landlords, property managers, and tenants much more certainty over the coming months as the country hopefully continues to move forward in a post-COVID environment.

Norwell explained that the decision would also help landlords and property managers to prepare for the upcoming Healthy Homes deadline rather than being distracted by issues caused by the emergency provisions.

Finally, we welcome the Rent Arrears Assistance announced this morning to support people at risk of being evicted because they are unable to pay rent. This will go a long way to helping people who have lost their jobs or had reduced income as a result of COVID-19, Norwell concluded.
EBRD US$ 100 million loan to support SMEs and private businesses in Egypt

Additional US$ 100 million increase in the current trade finance limit

Part of EBRD response to impact of coronavirus pandemic

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is supporting the Egyptian Economy with a US$ 200 million financing package to National Bank of Egypt (NBE) for trade and for on-lending to local companies impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Under this facility, the EBRD will provide a US$ 100 million loan to help NBE provide short-term loans to private small and medium-sized enterprises and firms facing liquidity strains due to a decrease in their activities and turnover caused by the crisis.

In addition, the Bank is increasing an existing uncommitted trade finance limit for NBE by US$ 100 million under the EBRDs Trade Facilitation Programme to reach US$ 300 million, to help meet the increased demand for import and export transactions.

Jurgen Rigterink, EBRD First Vice President, said: We are very happy to partner again with NBE to provide financing to local small businesses, the backbone of the economy. Strengthening this segment of the Egyptian economy has never been more important than during this crisis.

Hisham Okasha, NBE Chairman, said: NBE is committed to minimising the economic and financial impact of Covid-19 on the Egyptian economy and our customers in particular. This new facility, under the EBRDs Solidarity Package, targets a crucial segment of the economy, which we will continue to support, thus ensuring its resilience. This facility comes on the heels of an increase of US$ 100 million in our trade finance programme with the EBRD as well as the signing of a package in the amount of US$ 150 million to support young people in business, skills in business and green climate financing.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic the EBRD now expects to dedicate the entirety of its activities in 2020-21 to combating the economic impact of the crisis and stands ready to provide support worth up to 21 billion over this period in the 38 emerging economies where it invests.

NBE is the largest commercial bank in Egypt. Since the cooperation with the EBRD began in 2013, credit and trade finance lines have been signed, including in support of women in business and to strengthen energy efficiency.

Egypt is a founding member of the EBRD. Since the start of its operations there in 2012, the Bank has invested close to 6.5 billion in 115 projects in the country.
Read on for the most recent top news you may have missed in Fresno. Vehicle rolls over several times in crash along I-5, driver extricated Read the full story on KSEE24 News. Woman shot in head in Downtown Fresno, police looking for suspect Read the full story on Vanessa Vasconcelos ABC30. FPD reform commission chair: Lethal force scenarios will be reevaluated and cops should be arrested on the spot if police brutality is blatant Read the full story on KSEE24 News. Firefighters undergo confined-space rescue training Read the full story on FOX26. Fresno artists create murals fighting for the Black Lives Matter movement Read the full story on FOX26. This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.

One person had to be extricated out of a vehicle on Sunday after rolling over several times in a collision along Interstate 5 in Fresno County.

Emergency teams found the woman unresponsive but still alive as they entered the apartment.

Former Fresno police officer and city council member Oliver Baines is coming out of retirement to reform some of the practices by the police department and just as important create a new method of community policing.

A group of firefighters from the Central Valley is studying up on techniques that could help save lives. Fresno Fire Captain Justin Moore led a 40-hour specialized instructive course, where firefighters learned how to work in dangerous confined spaces.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:57:54|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SEOUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been reinstalling loudspeakers in areas near the border with South Korea, multiple local media reported Monday.

An unnamed South Korean military source was quoted as saying that the DPRK has been setting up loudspeakers along the inter-Korean frontline areas since Sunday afternoon.

The propaganda loudspeakers had been dismantled after South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un agreed upon the dismantlement in their first summit in April 2018 at the border village of Panmunjom.

The DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency reported earlier in the day that the country will soon distribute 12 million leaflets to South Korea to "make them pay dearly for their crime."

"As of June 22, various equipment and means of distributing leaflets, including over 3,000 balloons of various types capable of scattering leaflets deep inside South Korea, have been prepared," the report said.

Pyongyang has recently cut off all communication lines with Seoul and blown up the inter-Korean joint liaison office building near the border with South Korea in protest against the dispersion of anti-DPRK leaflets across the border by defectors in the South.

The South Korean unification ministry said in a statement that it is very sorry for the DPRK to announce its plan to send large-scale anti-South Korea leaflets, calling on Pyongyang to immediately drop the plan.

The ministry said such acts are in a clear violation of inter-Korean agreements that worsens wrong practices rather than resolve them, noting that such acts will be of no help to settle peace on the Korean Peninsula and develop inter-Korean relations.

It noted that the South Korean government has thoroughly clamped down on the scattering of anti-DPRK leaflets in border areas, calling for the DPRK to stop any act that aggravates the situation.
Scientists have found that man-made mercury pollution has reached the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean - the Marianas Trench. This has significant implications for how mercury affects the marine environment, and how it may be concentrated in the food chain. The findings, which come from two independent research groups, are presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference.

Mercury is toxic to humans and other animals, and has been implicated in environmental disasters in the past, most famously at Minamata in Japan in the 1950's where it led to birth defects and severe neurological symptoms. It tends to be concentrated in marine organisms, where small amounts are ingested by some species which are in turn eaten by larger species, meaning that harmful levels of mercury can be concentrated in animals that sit higher up in natural food webs through the process of bioaccumulation. As an example, this leads to mercury concentrations in swordfish being x40 that of salmon. Mercury is generally poisonous at high levels and can be especially dangerous to the developing foetus.

Now two groups of scientists are independently reporting that both manmade and natural methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury easily accumulated by animals, has been found in fish and crustaceans in the 11,000m deep Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. This work is being reported at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry conference.

"This is a surprise" said researcher Ruoyu Sun. "Previous research had concluded that methlymercury was mostly produced in the top few hundred metres of the ocean. This would have limited mercury bioaccumulation by ensuring that fish which forage deeper than this would have had limited opportunity to ingest the methylmercury. With this work, we now believe that isn't true".

Dr Ruoyu Sun, leading a group of researchers from Tianjin University, China, said "During 2016-2017, we deployed sophisticated deep-sea lander vehicles on the seafloor of Mariana and Yap trenches, amongst the most remote and inaccessible locations on Earth, and captured the endemic fauna at 7000-11000 m and collected sediments at 5500-9200 m. We are able to present unequivocal mercury isotope evidence that the mercury in the trench fauna originates exclusively from methylmercury from the upper ocean. We can tell this because of the distinctive isotopic fingerprint which stamps it as coming from the upper ocean."

Independently, a group led by Dr Joel Blum (University of Michigan) sampled fish and crustaceans from 2 of the deepest Pacific Trenches, the Kermadec trench near New Zealand (which drops to 10000m) and the Marianas Trench off the Philippines. They use mercury isotopic signatures at both locations to show that mercury found in trench species is largely derived from the atmosphere and enters the ocean in rainfall. Joel Blum said:

"We know that this mercury is deposited from the atmosphere to the surface ocean and is then transported to the deep ocean in the sinking carcasses of fish and marine mammals as well as in small particles. We identified this by measuring the mercury isotopic composition, which showed that the ocean floor mercury matched that from fish found at around 400-600m depth in the Central Pacific*, Some of this mercury is naturally-produced, but it is likely that much of it comes from human activity.

This work shows that human-released mercury has reached and entered foodwebs in even the most remote marine ecosystems on earth. This better understanding of the origin of mercury in the deepest reaches of the ocean will aid in modelling the fate of mercury in the atmosphere and oceans".

Ruoyu Sun commented "Our findings reveal very little methylmercury is produced in the deep oceans, and imply that anthropogenic mercury release at the Earth's surface is much more widespread across deep oceans than was previously thought".

Commenting, Professor Ken Rubin of the Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Hawaii said:

"We know that mercury is introduced into the environment from a variety of natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires. However, human activities, such as coal and petroleum burning, mining, and manufacturing, are mainly responsible for mercury deposition to marine environments. We are now learning from these two studies that the effects of this deposition have spread throughout the ocean into the deep sea and the animals that live there, which is yet another indicator of the profound impact of modern human activities on the planet."

This is an independent comment; Professor Rubin was not involved in this work.

###

Notes

*This is the "oxygen minimum zone", where oceanic oxygen concentrations are lowest.

Review: As yet neither study has been formally peer-reviewed, although the Goldschmidt conference reviews this work internally before issuing material to the press.

The Goldschmidt conference is the world's main geochemistry conference, hosted by the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry. Held annually, it covers such material as climate change, astrobiology, planetary and stellar development and conditions, chemistry of Earth materials, pollution, the undersea environment, volcanoes, and many other subjects. For 2020 the scheduled Hawaii congress has been moved online, and takes place from 21-26 June, see https://goldschmidt.info/2020/index. Future congresses are in Lyon, France (2021) and the rescheduled Hawaii congress (2022).
The Laois and Offaly ETB (LOETB) has announced the appointment of Mr. Gerry Quinn as the new Principal in St Fergals College, Rathdowney, effective from the beginning of the new school year.

The outgoing principal, Mr Dominic McEvoy, will retire at the end of the summer. The Director of Schools for LOETB, Paul Fields, thanked Mr McEvoy for his contribution to the school and emphasised, in particular, the role that he played in ensuring access to education for all students, most especially during the recent school building closure, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr McEvoy demonstrated a caring insight for all students and was so approachable to parents, teachers and students, he said.

Having taught in St Fergals College for many years Mr. Quinn is very knowledgeable about the school, its catchment area and population. He has been a committed advocate of the school and has developed good relations with the community. His interest in local history, for example, has included joint school and community research projects. He says that the school has a spacious setting, on the edge of a small town, in a green rural landscape brimming with heritage.

Mr Quinn will take over as principal from the beginning of the new school year. His teaching experience initially involved working in different types of schools, including a year in a very challenging school in London.

For most of the time since his return to Ireland he has taught in St Fergals College where he has been very happy. He settled in Co Laois with his wife Joan who is also known as Muinteoir Siobhan from her time as Deputy Principal in Gaelscoil Phortlaoise.

He states that: Coming from a school with huge problems in a large city, the St Fergals students were by contrast a joy to teach.

Mr Quinn is a former President of the Teachers Union of Ireland and was also Chairperson of the Teaching Council. During that time the Droichead programme for newly qualified teachers was transformed from being another form of inspection of teachers to a comprehensive induction experience. Droichead is now an important initial stage in a new teachers professional development whereby experienced colleagues provide support in a non-evaluative, positive and confidence-building manner. He is proud of this progress and is still involved in the national quality assurance of Droichead.

His educational ideas are progressive and community based with high standards and expectations for students. He states that; Im privileged to work with such an excellent staff who care deeply about their students and providing them with the best education possible. His qualifications include a Doctorate in Education conferred by Dublin City University.

Speaking at the announcement of Mr. Quinn as principal of St Fergals College, Mr Joe Cunningham, CE of LEOTB, welcomed the appointment and stated he is looking forward to working with Mr Quinn in his new role.

He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience about the teaching profession, he is immersed in the life of the school and has he demonstrated over many years a great interest in the progress of students along a learning path that helps all reach their potential: that combination is ideal for a principal in our school at Rathdowney, he said.

Mr Cunningham also thanked the outgoing principal, Mr Dominic McEvoy for his work and commitment to students and staff during his time at St Fergals College, and wished him well in his retirement.
FLORISSANT  You can chant Black Lives Matter in Florissant, but youd better not paint it in the middle of North Lindbergh Boulevard.

Following multiple warnings Sunday night, police arrested two people after a few protesters started to paint Black Lives Matter in the street for the third time.

We are trying to send a message that Black lives matter, so instead of sending police in riot gear over here why dont they try a dialogue and listen to what we are asking? said Tina Richards, 57, of Cahokia, who was among the 50 to 70 protesters outside police headquarters on Sunday.

Similar efforts to paint the slogan in public are happening in cities around the world, including near the White House in Washington.

The slogan was first painted on Friday, then painted over the next day at the direction of the citys streets department, according to police spokesman Steve Michael. Later Saturday, protesters repainted Black Lives Matter in 12-foot-high letters down the middle turn lane on a 120-foot stretch of North Lindbergh Boulevard. The streets department painted over the words again on Sunday with gray paint.

As protesters gathered Sunday night, police warned that anyone writing in the street would risk getting pepper sprayed or arrested. Protesters first used chalk, and then police moved in when the painting started after 8 p.m. At least three police departments were represented Sunday  Florissant, Hazelwood and St. Louis County.

Michael described the words as graffiti and said they were causing confusion for drivers and attracting onlookers to the busy four-lane stretch of road.

Its not the message we are painting over, its the fact they are painting over the highway, he said.

Two more protesters were arrested in a standoff with police around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

Vanessa Peskishev, 29, an electrical engineer from University City, was among the group on Sunday night and has attended other protests across the St. Louis region in the last few weeks.

Theres more police violence against Black people than white people, she said. This movement has a valid complaint.

Protesters have demonstrated at the police department for several nights this month, following first the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and then the release of a video showing a Florissant police SUV striking a man attempting to flee from officers on June 2. The detective driving the SUV, Joshua L. Smith, has since been fired from the department and charged with assault.

Bishop Derrick Robinson of the Kingdom church in north St. Louis called the Florissant gatherings the ministry of presence.

We just want to be treated fairly like everybody else, said Margaret Morrow, 75, of Black Jack, who was among the group on Sunday.

Donna Miller, 69, a retired chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was walking her dog Pookie on Sunday and said she agreed with the protesters about unfair treatment by police.

Florissant is known for being brutal to offenders, she said. This has been going on since I was in high school.

Protesters and police officers came into brief but violent conflict in Florissant late Friday and early Saturday.

Police gave multiple orders to disperse and used pepper spray after protesters threw objects outside the department, causing extensive damage to the building, Michael said, including a statue of an officer and an electronic sign.

Up to four officers were struck by flying objects, he said.

Three people were arrested Friday, one each for assault, property damage and peace disturbance, Michael said.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Representative image

- Despite state discouragement, indigenous communities in northeast India persist in practicing shifting cultivation, an agricultural system used over centuries.- A new study published in the journal Forest Policy and Economics examined this attachment, revealing various factors behind their motivation to continue.- They found that shifting cultivation (SC) is not only a means of living for these communities but is also deeply rooted in their culture and way of life.

-------------------------------------------------

Shifting cultivation continues to be a predominant agricultural practice in many parts of India, despite state discouragement and multipronged efforts to wean indigenous communities away from it. Their land, due to remoteness, poor access to markets and undulating terrain, leaves them with few alternatives.

In northeast India, a 2018 report released by the Indian government revealed that an area of 8,500 square km is still being used to practice shifting cultivation (SC)  an agricultural system practiced for centuries.

The process consists of cultivating land temporarily and then abandoning it  usually for a period of one to two decades so the soil recuperates its fertility and reverts to its natural state. Because it involves the felling of trees for temporary cultivation, it is blamed for deforestation, soil erosion and loss of biodiversity, all contributors to global climate change.

However, contrary to this popular notion held by state officials and other agencies, the practice does provide a sustainable means of livelihood and food security to the communities that practice it. The problem lies in both its commercialisation and production pressures arising from a human-population increase, leading to a reduction in fallow length  the period between two cultivation phases.

In a book called Shifting cultivation policies: Balancing environmental and social sustainability (2017), an outline of the role of government and local institutions in regulating shifting cultivation over time has been described. Interventions aimed at stopping shifting cultivation go as far back as pre-British rule when the Ahoms from upper Burma ruled over Assam state. The rulers discouraged the practice and instead introduced alternatives such as wet-rice farming. Additionally, between 1827 and 1947, in the early colonial period of British rule, shifting cultivation was seen as primitive and efforts were made to ban the practice and wean farmers away from it.

In 2011 a New Land Use Policy aimed at transforming SC in northeast India was implemented by the state government of Mizoram. Multiple efforts to discourage farmers continue to this present day.

Considering all these government policies, schemes, and interventions aimed at discouraging the practice over the last century, a burning question emerges: why, after so many years of attempts at termination and control, do these indigenous communities persist in practicing SC? A recent study published in the journal Forest Policy and Economics set out to investigate just that.

Based on a survey of 500 people drawn from 52 villages, representing six districts in northeast India; Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, they highlighted key findings on the impacts of transformative adaptation, specifically the socio-economic and environmental impacts of shifting away from SC towards other uses. This adaptation is considered necessary to mitigate the adverse impacts of global climate change, seeking to reduce the risk it poses. However, such transformative changes, such as the increased dominance of settled agriculture, for example, could have unintended consequences, such as the erosion of their rich cultural traditions.

The found attachment takes three forms: traditional or institutional social bonding (attachment to the local community and traditions), economic bonding (attachment to the form of livelihood and the place) and nature bonding (attachment to the natural landscape). The fourth dimension analysed was the lack of any worthwhile alternative.

Social bonding was found to be the most important factor, understandably so given it is a collective exercise that requires cooperative behaviour. It also allows them to sustain their rich cultural traditions. It is strengthened through culturally imbibed practices such as festivals that are observed throughout the agricultural cycle.

Karthik Teegalapalli, a researcher at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, studies shifting cultivation and spent months studying the Adi tribe in Central Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, where families cultivate together in large patches. He discovered a barter system when it came to managing the land.

Since SC is an arduous form of cultivation, families band together during clearing and burning of the fields, and also during sowing and harvesting, he said. Each hillslope and cultivated patch has a long history that every farming household in the village is aware of.

Lack of suitable alternatives was the second most important factor. As Dileep Kumar Pandey, the studys lead author and an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Central Agricultural University (Manipur), Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh said: At times, SC is the only potential option available to ensure the food and nutrition security of the indigenous people. If alternatives were offered, they would consider giving up SC.

Because of the relatively inaccessible mountainous and hilly locations, access to markets is difficult and therefore indigenous communities derive a higher sense of economic security from SC, explaining the third most important factor  economic bonding. Also, settled agriculture requires an initial investment and regular purchase of chemical weed and pesticides.

Finally, nature bonding is the fourth most important dimension  forests are sacred to those who practice SC and the diversity of crops strongly links with food security. SC differs not only from state to state in the northeast but village to village and among families too. Teegalapalli says current systems have adapted to the locations and access available to them: The more remote locations have continued to practice SC as they always have with minor modifications, whereas communities closer to urban centres have completely modified their practice and undertake it almost completely for monetary outputs, he says.

The dense forests supply them with everything they need to survive, including timber to build homes, food, and medicines, increasing the probability they can earn livelihoods and survive. SC is not only a land-use system but a way of life, hence, the people cling on to this, said Pandey. To safeguard sustainability, optimise ecosystem-based approaches and socio-ecological system frameworks, harmonisation of cultural ecosystem services and human wellbeing would be essential so as to ensure positive outcomes of management interventions on SC.

In other words, planning for better adaptation needs to satisfy the less tangible needs and aspirations of these communities, allowing them to sustain their rich cultural traditions.

Suresh Babu, head of capacity strengthening at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), believes COVID-19 has allowed SC to be seen with a fresh perspective, particularly in terms of boosting food security and agriculture for the communities who practice it. He says, the ecological aspects of SC are key for the preservation of indigenous crops and cultivars grown by native populations for centuries. Its characteristics are useful in the context of addressing climate change and other uncertainties. These, however, require strong institutional support and collective action institutions to be nurtured amongst them.

Recently, the government has announced shifting cultivation may soon receive legal backing. A comprehensive policy is being written, spearheaded by government think tank NITI Aayog, aimed at supporting the practice and ensuring cultivators have access to credit and benefits such as subsidies. This plan includes defining the land used for SC as agricultural land, something Teegalapalli sees as a welcome move as long as it is carefully implemented.
The Nigerian government on Monday summoned the Ghanaian High Commissioner in Nigeria, Iva Denoo, over the demolition of a section of the Nigerian embassy in Accra, Ghana.

Nigerias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, in a Twitter post, said he had asked the Ghanaian official to give an urgent explanation on the recent attacks on Nigerias diplomatic residence and the staff in Accra.

Summoned the Charge d Affaires of the High Commission of #Ghana to Nigeria, Ms Iva Denoo to demand urgent explanation on the recent attacks on a residential building in our diplomatic premises and reinforcement of security around diplomatic premises and staff, Mr Onyeama tweeted.

Raid

On Friday night, armed men reportedly stormed the Nigerian High Commissioners residence that hosts a block of uncompleted apartments meant for visiting diplomats and forcibly turned away staff who were present at the scene.

Afterwards, the building was demolished by the men who said they had the support of the Ghanaian National Security while the police, also present at the place, reportedly watched on without interceding.

Following the attacks, Mr Onyeama vowed to investigate the demolition by engaging the Ghanaian government to demand urgent action to find the perpetrators and provide adequate protection for Nigerians and their property in Ghana.

In the past months, the relations between Ghana and Nigeria have become tense especially in the area of trade following the border closure by the Nigerian government

A diplomatic spat may deepen between the two countries, if not handled well.

The Ghanaian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had earlier denounced the attack describing the development as a breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR, 19610).

Meanwhile, a Ghanaian monarch, Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, claimed the parcel of land where the Nigerian High Commissioners residence stood, belongs to the Osu Stool, a council of local chiefs and was not state-owned.

Mr Dowuona said the land was overtaken by a certain Nigerian business with the political backing of the Nigerian embassy without paying for ownership to the OSU Stool that has the mandate to grant lease be it expired or otherwise.

Prior to the demolition, Ghanas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in January, called out the Nigerian Government for failing to renew the affected property after the expiration of its lease thus, the property reverted to the state in compliance with Article 258 of Ghanas 1992 Constitution, Ghanaian local media reported.

But Nigerias Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained in a statement that property under reference was in use by the Federal Ministry of Finance, since 1957, on leasehold and was later bequeathed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In his speech in Nice on June 14, 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron declared I will be very clear tonight. The Republic wont erase any name from its history. It will forget none of its art works, it wont take down statues.

France, like other countries has been affected by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which has ignited protests in France, a country already troubled by lack of integration of nonwhite and Muslim immigrants from former colonies. The protests focus not only on the death of Floyd but also on the death of a young 26-year-old man of Mali background, Adama Traore, who died on July 19, 2016 of asphyxiation while in police custody. Large protests have taken place with participants holding signs to stop police violence, and some echoing the U.S. in taking the knee, and holding an eight-minute silence. Thousands rallied in the Place de la Republique and climbed the statue there of Marianne, who personifies the Republic.

The protests are focused on the belief that race or ethnicity are still the basis of discrimination. President Macron has asserted that racism is a betrayal of universal republicanism, but also that the noble fight is unacceptable when taken over by separatists.

Race has become central in recent years in many ways and is a divisive issue. On one hand. there was an art exhibition, adapted from the work of an American scholar Denise Murrell, in March 2019 in the Musee dOrsay , focused on the contention that art history had left out the names of the black models in French masterpieces from Gericault to Matisse. The rationale is that in the 300 items people of color, the forgotten black models, have been eclipsed by racism and stereotyping. On the other hand, there is opposition to the cancelling in France of the showing of the film Gone with the Wind (Autant en emporte le Vent), with the argument that France will defend freedom to create and distribute works of art.

T he French protests have also emulated those in the U.S. and UK with threats to topple statues of distinguished but now controversial Frenchmen. Three in particular are in danger of hostile action: those of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Joseph Gallieni, and Charles de Gaulle. Colbert, stateman and adviser of Louis XIV and advocate of mercantilism, was involved in 1685 with drafting the Code Noir, the legal code that defined the condition of slavery in the colonial empire. Part of the code was that fugitive slaves should have their ears cut off. Slavery was finally abolished in 1848. Gallieni was the military commander in the colonies who, among other things, put down rebellions against colonial rule in Sudan, French Indochina, and Madagascar in 1896, suppressing it with punishment of forced labor and execution. Charles de Gaulle is best known of the three. The bust of de Gaulle in Hautmont in north France near the Belgium border was defaced with the slogan slave-driver.

France like Britain is presently concerned with the protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the issues of racism and colonialism. The problem of the statues of controversial figures troubles France as it does Britain. Macron understands that an individuals address, name and color of skin can lessen the chance of succeeding in French society. Yet he holds that everyone can find their place regardless of their ethnic origin or religion. He denounces racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination. Nevertheless, he is opposed to taking down statues of controversial figures. The Republic will not erase any trace or any name from its history, and it will not take down any statue. We should look at all of our history, including relations with Africa with the goal of truth, instead of denying who we are. It is necessary to unite around Republican patriotism.

However, there are nuances in official French positions on race. The government spokesperson, Sibeth Ndiaye, a black woman of Senegalese origin, asserted that France should assess the representation of people of color in the public, political, economic, and cultural life of the country. She alluded to a technical problem. A French law of 1978 prohibits the collection of data on a persons race, ethnicity, or political or religious opinions . Collecting data on race is illegal. Therefore, there is no official data of the racial makeup of the population, and the true extent of racism is not clear. Ndiaye argues that revealing racial data can help fight subtle racism. The difference between her view and that of Macron remains. Ndiaye argues we must not hesitate to say that skin color is not neutral.

The French dilemma about the extent of racism exists, and the problem is pressing. But the position of the French president is clear. The contrast with the U.S. is stark. The history of France will not be rewritten and the destruction or elimination of statues and memorials will not be permitted.
A United States congressman has launched an investigation into the decision to allow Nigel Farage entry to the US to attend a Donald Trump rally, at a time when travel from the UK is banned due to the coronavirus.

US officials exempted Mr Farage from the countrys travel ban under a national interest clause. He was pictured at the event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday night, holding a red MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat.

Bennie G Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee on homeland security, said the trip raised "troubling questions" and has requested all documents and information that led to the decision by the Trump administration.

The decision of the Trump Administration to admit Mr Farage to the United States to enable him to attend a campaign rally at a time when most travel from the United Kingdom to the U.S. has been suspended raises numerous troubling questions, as does the claim that such travel was in the national interest, he wrote in a letter to the acting secretary of the department of homeland security (DHS), Chad Wolf.

As part of his investigation, Mr Thompson requested all communication about the trip between any employee of DHS and employees of the White House and Trump's campaign.

Mr Farage, who left his regular LBC show earlier this month, last appeared at a rally with Mr Trump in 2016, when the then-Republican nominee was campaigning for the US presidency against Hillary Clinton.

Questions were initially raised over how Mr Farage had gained entry to the US despite the countrys strict ban on individuals travelling from the UK under the presidential proclamation signed in March to curb the spread of Covid-19.

In a statement sent to The Independent, the DHS said: On June 19, Mr Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdoms Brexit Party, was denied boarding while attempting to fly from the United Kingdom to the United States.

The initial denial of boarding was made pursuant to a March 14 presidential proclamation that, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, suspends the entry into the United States of certain foreign nationals who recently have been present in the United Kingdom.

After conducting a thorough review of the relevant facts and circumstances, DHS determined Mr Farages travel to be permissible under section 2 (a)(xi) of the presidential proclamation: any alien whose entry would be in the national interest, as determined by the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, or their designees authorising Mr Farage to board his flight.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency has blocked entry to the country since March for most individuals, other than United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, who have been physically present within the United Kingdom, excluding overseas territories outside of Europe, or the Republic of Ireland within 14 days of travel to the United States.

Additional reporting by Ashley Cowburn
Supporters listen as President Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has positioned himself as a formidable threat to the reelection prospects of President Trump while hawking his behind-the-scenes memoir, The Room Where It Happened.

Why is this the book President Trump doesn't want anyone to read?, ABCs Martha Raddatz asked Bolton on Sunday during his first TV interview about the book, which Trump has tried and failed to delay from being released on June 23.

Because this is a book of facts. It's not a book of theories or accusations or emotional responses, answered Bolton, who chose to hold onto those facts while serving in the administration but now stands to profit greatly by selling them in book form.

Swooping in like a bespectacled avenger, he arrived just in time to tell the American people what they already know: The president lied about Ukraine, pandered to North Korea and is surrounded by folks who dont take a stand when it matters. They wait for lucrative book deals instead.

Despite his expertise on foreign and rogue players, though, Bolton had already been out-strategized by another former Trump ally: social media.

TikTok-ers, tweeters and throngs of K-Pop fans on a multitude of platforms apparently dealt their own blow to the presidents reelection campaign last weekend with little more than their family-plan smart phones. Organized armies of users reserved thousands of free tickets for the Make America Great Again rally in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday through the Trump campaign website. Then they didnt show up.

The million attendees Trump was expecting turned out to be more like 6,200, according to the Tulsa fire department. There were more empty blue chairs in the 19,000-capacity Bank of Oklahoma Center than people. They appeared deflated during the president's grievance-heavy speech, in which he spent a good 15 minutes explaining away that viral video clip of him gingerly tottering down a ramp after delivering a speech at West Point. The chairs looked unimpressed.

Story continues

Trump was rolled by Americas teens, tweeted veteran Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt of the poorly attended rally.

The showman lost his pizzazz and many of his fans. Even his trusty fallback of racist rhetoric  he referred to COVID19 as Kung Flu during the rally  failed to ignite his followers. But it did spark a debate in Mondays White House briefing.

CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang pressed White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany about why Trump used the racist term.

It's a fair thing to point out as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history, to ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers, said McEnany. President Trump is trying to say, 'No, China, I will label this virus for its place of origin.'

No, John Oliver did not write that, but he may need to retire knowing theres nothing left to satirize.

John Bolton sits for a televised interview with Martha Raddatz about his memoir of the Trump administration, "The Room Where It Happened." (ABC News)

The one-two punch of Bolton's book and the Tulsa rally letdown comes on the heels of a pandemic response that's drawn widespread criticism  and is likely far from over, based on epidemiological data across the south and southwest.

Add to that Trump's bunkered stance on the protests over George Floyd's killing by Minneapolis police, including the disastrous Bible-toting photo op for which civilians were tear-gassed, and he's closer to a naked emperor moment than he's been since infiltrating the Oval Office.

Did Bolton really think he could do more damage to the Trump presidency than the president himself? (Trump did break up with him on Twitter, though Bolton insists he resigned first.)

Still, the ex-staffer with the Fuller Brush mustache tried his best Monday morning to condemn his former employer during an appearance on "Good Morning America.

"His policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States," he told George Stephanopoulos.

It was hardly a TikTok-level whammy. Bolton will have to up his game if he expects to compete with other attention-grabbing factions thatve turned on the president in spectacular ways.

He did proclaim that history will remember Trump as "an aberration. Maybe. Russian trolls helped elevate a reality TV star to the White House. It stands to reason that K-Pop fans will take him down.

Whether Trump's recent flailing sticks or he bounces back (yet again) by midsummer, it's clear that media  traditional as well social  is increasingly uninterested in carrying water for the president out of deference to his office, and it may be trickling down into disappointing turnout at rallies and flagging approval ratings. After all, the parable of the emperor without clothes is not about the leader himself  it's about those around him speaking the truth.
Phoenix, Arizona--(Newsfile Corp. - June 22, 2020) - The Stock Day Podcast welcomed TPT Global Tech (OTCQB: TPTW) ("the Company"), a technology-based company with divisions providing telecommunications, medical technology and product distribution, media content for domestic and international syndication as well as technology solutions. CEO of the Company, Stephen Thomas, joined Stock Day host Everett Jolly.

Jolly began the interview by asking about the Company's recent press release detailing the completed manufacturing of their mobile COVID-19 testing and monitoring lab, Quiklab. Thomas shared that the Company recently purchased the Aire Fitness manufacturing facility in San Diego. "What we've done is we've taken that manufacturing facility and we've converted it with the ability to manufacture the mobile COVID-19 testing facility," said Thomas. "Not only will we be able to test for COVID-19, but we'll be able to test for other types of situations as well, including vitamin deficiencies and influenza," Thomas continued.

"We see a huge market for COVID-19 testing in the US and abroad. We're excited to be a part of it and be able to manufacture these turnkey solutions for government agencies and corporations so that they can test and monitor their employees on a daily or weekly basis," shared Thomas, adding that the Company will be one of the first to market with this type of solution.

The conversation then turned to the Company's 4G/5G upgrade project. "COVID-19 has really slowed down our ability to start the upgrade," explained Thomas. "To date, we've upgraded about 30% of our US networks to the 4G/5G network," he shared. "Now that things are opening back up it's gotten a little easier for us to deploy the network a little bit faster."

Jolly then asked about the Company's strategy in raising capital. Thomas shared that the Company considered moving forward with a 506(B), but decided to give their shareholders the opportunity to invest into the Company while raising funds. "We decided to do what's called a Reg A+, which is a registered security," explained Thomas. "We are just finishing up the private placement documents, the auditors are under review, and once they're through with the review we will put it out into the marketplace."

"Where are we at with the company's convertible debt?" asked Jolly. "I shared in our last interview that the convertible debt guys had basically converted all of their shares that were in reserve," said Thomas. "We're really excited. Those guys are pretty much on the sidelines now," he continued. "We're still in negotiation with the final two and I'm hoping to have resolution with those guys here in the next week or so."

To close the interview, Thomas shared that the Company has a strong emphasis on the diversification of their business. "In all of these acquisitions that we do there is a purpose or meaning behind it," said Thomas. "In early telecom, the value was owning the network. In 2020, the value is not in owning the network, the value is in what's going through the network."

To hear the entire interview with Stephen Thomas, follow the link to the podcast here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7613464-tpt-global-tech-updates-the-stock-day-podcast-on-its-2020-growth-strategy

Investors Hangout is a proud sponsor of "Stock Day," and Stock Day Media encourages listeners to visit the company's message board at https://investorshangout.com/

About TPT Global Tech

TPT Global Tech Inc. (OTCQB: TPTW) based in San Diego, California, is a technology-based company with divisions providing telecommunications, medical technology and product distribution, media content for domestic and international syndication as well as technology solutions. TPT Global Tech offers Software as a Service (SaaS), Technology Platform as a Service (PAAS), Cloud-based Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS). It offers carrier-grade performance and support for businesses over its private IP MPLS fiber and wireless network in the United States. TPT's cloud-based UCaaS services allow businesses of any size to enjoy all the latest voice, data, media and collaboration features in today's global technology markets. TPT Global Tech also operates as a Master Distributor for Nationwide Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) and Independent Sales Organization (ISO) as a Master Distributor for Pre-Paid Cellphone services, Mobile phones Cellphone Accessories and Global Roaming Cellphones.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of various provisions of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, commonly identified by such terms as "believes," "looking ahead," "anticipates," "estimates" and other terms with similar meaning. Specifically, statements about the Company's plans for accelerated growth, improved profitability, future business partners, M&A activity, new service offerings, and pursuit of new markets are forward-looking statements. Although the company believes that the assumptions upon which its forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these assumptions will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements should not be construed as fact. The information contained in such statements is beyond the ability of the Company to control, and in many cases, the Company cannot predict what factors would cause results to differ materially from those indicated in such statements. All forward-looking statements in the press release are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements and by reference to the underlying assumptions.

CONTACT:

Rick Eberhardt

702-556-7096

About The "Stock Day" Podcast

Founded in 2013, Stock Day is the fastest growing media outlet for Nano-Cap and Micro-Cap companies. It educates investors while simultaneously working with penny stock and OTC companies, providing transparency and clarification of under-valued, under-sold Micro-Cap stocks of the market. Stock Day provides companies with customized solutions to their news distribution in both national and international media outlets. The Stock Day Podcast is the number one radio show of its kind in America. Stock Day recently launched its Video Interview Studio located in Phoenix, Arizona.

SOURCE:

Stock Day Media

(602) 821-1102

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/58305
Staff at the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) are to deliver 2 million in savings to the authority over the next four months as the agency deals with a collapse in its revenues due to Covid 19.

This follows the IAA and unions at the authority, Forsa and the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCPS) reaching a deal over cost-cutting measures at the agency where over 700 people are employed.

The IAA was seeking to place 116 operational staff on special leave at 40% of normal salary for four months or an across the board salary cut of 10% to achieve the 2m in cost savings between July to the end of October.

However, after talks, those proposals will not go ahead and instead, the unions have agreed where staff earning over 38,500 will revert to a 4.5 working week and a voluntary scheme introducing special leave arrangements.

In a briefing note to staff, union representatives stated that a united approach had been adopted in the talks to no job losses and that the plan to give special leave to 116 staff placed the burden of the companys cost cutting measures unfairly on an identified cohort of workers.

Arising from the deal, the union representatives acknowledged that some staff may be called upon to work normally at certain times during the period of this temporary agreement due to the demands and exigencies of business and infrastructural needs.

The note acknowledges wholeheartedly that members in this position are making the ultimate act of solidarity with their fellow workers.

The planned savings make up Phase 2 of Cost Containment Measures at the IAA.

The briefing note states that the shortened working week and special leave arrangements are temporary and that there will be triggers and dates to return full hours to staff.

The note states that cost containment measures are in place due to the collapse in the companys revenues.

The two sides entered talks against the background of air traffic decreasing by more than 80% since March due to Covid 19.

The bulk of the authoritys revenues of 197m last year was made up of 129m in en route aviation related services.

Staff pay for April and May was protected as the IAA used cash reserves to maintain liquidity. At the end of last year, the IAA's cash pile stood at 20.1m.

The 2019 annual report for the IAA shows that staff there are generally well paid with 374 earning over 100,000 per annum.

The union briefing note to staff on the deal states that the goodwill generated and the barriers broken down with the IAA Board and HR bodes well for the future, as common sense and leadership has prevailed during a very difficult process.

The note states: A problem-solving environment has now been created, that the staff panel is part of problem solutions, rather than being on the receiving end of unilateral decisions by the IAA Board and HR. It adds: This point is important, as the longer this crisis goes on, the measures approved by the IAA board, may become more severe. In a statement, the IAA stated that it welcomed the agreement.

The IAA stated: Phase 1 cost avoidance measures which include a curtailment of capital expenditure and a moratorium on recruitment remain in place. The unions have decided against holding a ballot on the deal due to Government Covid-19 restrictions.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

When the Indian market made a low on March 24, there was one stock that was preparing for a catapult swing to record highs.

GMM Pfaudler (GMMP), which is a leading supplier of process equipment to the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, doubled investors wealth in just three months.

The stock which closed at Rs 2,100 on March 24 when the Nifty50 made a swing low of Rs 7,511, rose over 120 percent to hit a record high of Rs 4,700 as on June 10.

On June 19, the stock closed at Rs 4,205 on the BSE - a 100 percent gain from March low.

GMM Pfaudler has a market share of more than 50 percent in Glass Lined equipment. It is the market leader in India. Over the years, GMM Pfaudler has diversified its product portfolio to include Mixing Systems, Filtration & Drying Equipment, Engineered Systems, and Tailor Made Process Equipment.

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

Experts are of the view that the stock is poised to display strong growth in the upcoming quarters, as it might turn out to be a key beneficiary of the shift of manufacturing of Chemical & API business from China to India.

March quarter results got impacted by lockdown but should bounce back or normalise in the second half of the financial year, suggest experts. However, a recent rally in the stock makes analyst cautious in the short term, but the long-term potential still remains intact.

We believe that GMM Pfaudler is uniquely positioned as it is the market leader in the glass-lined equipment business and caters to the fast-growing segment of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The company is seeing strong order inflow from the user industries driven by the shift of manufacturing of Chemical & API business from China to India, Jyoti Roy, DVP Equity Strategist, Angel Broking Ltd told Moneycontrol.

While the company reported a below-expected set of numbers for Q4 FY20 due to lockdown, we expect operations to normalise by end of Q2 FY21 given strong demand by end-user industry. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, we expect the company to post strong revenue and earnings growth of 21.1% and 43.1% respectively between FY20-FY22E, he said.

What should investors do?

GMM Pfaudler share price has more than doubled in the last 3 months. Maximum wealth was generated during the lockdown period. The March quarter results were slightly disappointing due to the lockdown but experts feel that growth will revive in the coming quarters.

Someone who is already invested can take some profits off the table because of expensive valuations while for new investors it is a good buy on dips stock. It is a leading supplier of process equipment to the pharmaceutical and chemical industry segments.

While we feel that the company has strong growth prospects over the next few years, at Rs 4,297, the stock is trading at a relatively expensive valuation of 43.1xFY21 EPS estimates of Rs 99.8 which factors in the strong growth potential, said Roy of Angel Broking Ltd.

He further added that given expensive valuations relative to historical average we believe that upsides would be capped from current levels and therefore existing investors can look at exiting the stock partially at current levels.

Technical Recommendations:

Technical experts feel that investors could look at booking partial profits, while a re-entry could be seen on dips.

This counter appears to have slipped in a consolidation mode between Rs 4,6204,176 levels, after appreciating investors wealth by more than 100 percent from the panic lows of March placed at Rs 1,817.

The volumes are very low on this counter which can result in sharp moves in both the directions. Hence, any breakdown below 4,176 can be sharp and can drag down this counter in the zone of 3,700  3,500, Mazhar Mohammad, Chief Strategist  Technical Research & Trading Advisory, Chartviewindia.in told Moneycontrol.

Considering the recent rally and the current sideways phase, it looks prudent on the part of traders to book profits at current levels and consider re-entry either on correction towards 3,550 levels or on a fresh breakout above 4,620 for a target of 4,950, he said.

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
The Government of Canada has announced $93.7 million in funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) to support the efforts of a wide range of partners to help the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. The funding is being distributed as follows.

Better Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Indonesia

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

$8 million (2018 to 2022)

The Better Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All in Indonesia project, in partnership with UNFPA and UNICEF, aims to transform SRHR for women and young people in Indonesia by addressing key gaps in the quality of birth attendants, access to comprehensive sexuality education and youth-friendly services for young people, as well as of advocacy and community-based programming, using the male involvement approach and focusing on child marriage and female genital mutilation, for the prevention of gender-based violence and harmful practices.

Improving SRHR of Women in Humanitarian Contexts



Ipas

$1.2 million (2020 to 2021)

This project comprehensively aims to build the humanitarian sectors capacity to rapidly provide sexual and reproductive health and services in fragile and conflict settings. Project activities include:

providing technical assistance and support to clinical facilities so they can develop or increase their capacity to provide contraceptive and sexual and gender-based violence services to refugee women in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh

providing training and support for clinical service providers and community mobilizers

developing a tool kit and set of guidelines for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services

My Health, My Choice

United Kingdom Department for International Development

$50 million (2019 to 2021)

Co-funded by Canada, the European Union, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the Health Pooled Fund supports the delivery, through the Boma Health Initiative, of basic health and nutrition services in hospitals, health facilities and communities in 8 of South Sudans 10 former states. Canadas contribution to the Health Pooled Fund helps support the ability of women and girls to access quality health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, free from discrimination, coercion and violence.

Girls Reproductive Rights, Empowerment Accelerated in Tanzania

UNICEF and UNFPA

$20 million (2019 to 2023)

This project works to empower and improve the SRHR and well-being of vulnerable Tanzanian adolescent girls through a multi-faceted and comprehensive approach and by working with adolescent boys and girls and with parents, communities and governments. Project activities include:

increasing the supply of, and demand for, a full range of SRHR and nutrition services and information for adolescent girls

establishing a platform for adolescent girls to share views on, and gain knowledge of, their SRHR and nutrition and empowerment issues, and leveraging this platform for SRHR advocacy

building evidence and proposing innovative solutions for enhanced government programming, policy, advocacy and accountability in adolescent girls SRHR and nutrition issues and gaps

Empowering Women and Girls in SRHR and Gender-Based Violence

UNFPA and UNICEF

$4.5 million (2019 to 2024)

This project will work at the local level with communities and service providers to support the South African government in closing the gap between policy about, and implementation of, SRHR services and awareness.

Strengthening SRHR through Midwives in Somalia

UNFPA

$10 million (2020 to 2025)

This project aims to reduce maternal mortality and increase SRHR for women and girls between the ages of 14 and 49 in Somalia. More specifically, the project works to improve the availability and accessibility of professionally trained and certified midwives who are able to provide high-quality, rights-based SRHR services to these women and adolescent girls. The project also addresses underlying barriers to womens and adolescent girls demand for, and use of, midwifery services by increasing awareness at the community level of midwifery and SRHR.
South China Sea, Hong Kong, the Taiwan Strait and now Ladakh something is brewing in Beijing

Three battles of Panipat (1526, 1556, 1761) sealed Indias geopolitical map into several centuries submission to foreign invaders. Chinas second invasion of India in 2020 (1962 being the first) hasnt done that yet, despite Indias helpless dependence on imports and a massive trade deficit, along with the systematic attacks on its banking, industry and financial sectors by Xi Jinpings China.

Credible history shows that till 1950, the Han Chinese had never gone near the Himalayan frontier bordering India. From every angle, Chinese history, culture, tradition and geography were far removed from either the southern or northern slopes of the Himalayas or eastern Kashmir. They were strangers to the subcontinents life and polity, despite the subsequent attempts by the Chinese Communist propaganda machine to recreate history with claims of the Han empire extending to parts of India and its Himalayan territories.

Things began to change soon after the birth of the Peoples Republic in October 1949. A year later, the forcible occupation of Tibet by Chairman Maos red brigades was the first shot at the recreation of history. Tibet had always been an independent entity, but the assertive new rulers in Beijing (then Peking) claimed it had always been under Han overlordship.

The naked aggression in Ladakh in May-June 2020, and the subsequent killing of over 20 Indian soldiers, is a continuation of that story, with President Xi trying to further Chairman Maos expansionist agenda.

In 1950, the rulers of newly-independent India were either clueless about the history of the wider neighbourhood beyond the subcontinent, or did not have the stomach to confront the Chinese, who were adept at taking full advantage of the political divisions in democratic India. No one in a position of authority in Delhi, not even the Indian ambassador to China, knew Mandarin, and were all too visibly impressed with the revolutionary Communist leadership.

Delhi ignored the reality that over several thousand years, only two significant Chinese pilgrims had travelled to the subcontinent -- Fa Hien, who visited in 405-411 AD during the times of Chandra Gupta II (Gupta dynasty), who was struck with admiration by the famous royal palace and houses for dispensing charity and medicines at Pataliputra (Patna); and Hiuen Tsang, who met King Harshavardhana (643 AD). But no Chinese ruler ever came near the Ganga or its source at Gangotri. Indians too remained largely clueless about the Hwang Ho.

The credulity and negligence of Indians was shaken only when Tibet was destroyed and many of its people brutally massacred by PLA soldiers. After Tibet, India was in the CPCs firing line  as one of the major states against which China had large territorial claims (of 140,000 sq km); the other one being Russia (Soviet Union) in the 1950s, when Beijing claimed 800,000 sq km in Russias Far East (Siberia).

Russia isnt out of the woods completely  as its vast swathe of resource-rich land in Siberia, sparsely populated, is still coveted by the land-hungry Chinese Reds. China is comparatively land-deficient but has surplus manpower. No wonder Siberias resources and empty spaces are so alluring to a rising power with global numero uno dreams.

Beijings newfound claims to territory on land, as in the Galwan Valley and elsewhere, find an echo in its newly discovered sovereign rights to the sea, with all its reefs, islets, volcanoes, islands, fisheries, minerals and unexplored waters. Its almost reminiscent of Hitlers demands for greater living space for Germany in the 1930s. But by that logic, if the South China Sea is Chinas sovereign territory, the English Channel should be part of the Queens dominions, Tokyo should assert its exclusive rights over the Sea of Japan and the Indian Ocean should be subject to New Delhis jurisdiction. With Nepals recent China-inspired territory-acquisition spree another grim reminder to New Delhi, we should consider amending the Constitution of India to declare the Indian Ocean a part of India, that is Bharat. As we have seen, altering a countrys Constitution is a convenient way to extend a nations territory!

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Chinese have been working on a long-term strategy targeting India for several years, but Indians have not been adept in understanding the Chinese psyche and taking preventive measures for its own interests. Delhi needs to realise that the Ladakh standoff, and now the Nepal front, have all the ingredients of a multi-front Chinese plan, going back to Doklam in 2017. When the extent of the current Ladakh intrusion became clear and India demanded the April 2020 line be restored, it put us in an awkward position. If, as the reports say, China is 6 km deep inside the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, any retreat of less than all the 6 km will be a huge gain for Beijing, and a corresponding loss of land for India.

The growing bonhomie between India and the United States, its participation in the Quadrilateral with the US, Japan and Australia, the tightening controls over Beijings investments and takeover of Indian companies, amid the rising negative reactions internationally to Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, had made China determined to teach New Delhi a lesson  that it was an inferior state that must be put in its place. How dare an uppity India try to punch above its weight? The primary aim was economic  to secure further concessions for trade, commerce, finance and banking, to pave the way for Huawei, MG and others to make money from the Indian market.

The Chinese, as is their norm, will try to do things in a clandestine manner; behind the lines in a target foreign state. With this, they hope to not only gain economically but also to corrode India from within. The more India is penetrated through the convergence factor, the more it will impede its security and defence. It is, therefore, vital that India focuses on divergence and insists on immediate border talks to clear out the Ladakh intruders, lest the convergence result in a permanent China in India presence. Like other recent events in Indias neighbourhood, Chinas multi-targeting is born out of desperation and nervousness. From the South China Sea, to Hong Kong, to the Taiwan Strait and now Ladakh something is brewing. India needs to stand its ground, and not kowtow in the face of Chinese bullying and naked sabre-rattling and open up its strategic sectors out of fear of the dragon.
Although his Pulitzer Prize winning grandson for his biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House in 2009, Jon Meacham, is better known in the literary world, the late Chattanooga judge Ellis K. Meacham also made significant contributions with his writings.

Ellis was born in Chattanooga in 1913 and died in 1998. He was the son of an attorney, graduated from the University of Chattanooga (U.C.) in 1935 and received a law degree from Vanderbilt University in 1937.

He entered the practice of law with the firm of Cantrell, Meacham and Moon as a young associate attorney.

In 1940 he married Jean Austin, a teacher and future dean at U.C. She would be a supporter of his writing endeavors and would later create the Meacham Writers Workshop in 1985 in honor of Ellis at the University of Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College. Said workshop is held twice a year and gives novice writers an opportunity to interact with experienced writers of national renown.

During World War II Ellis served in the Navy as a gunnery officer in the Pacific obtaining the rank of Commander. He returned to the practice of law in Chattanooga as an assistant city attorney in 1948. He practiced with his father, C.W.K. Meacham, until the latter retired in 1954.

In January 1958 Ellis became a member of a newly created law firm, Anderson, Meacham and Collins. Starting in 1968, Meacham was an assistant city attorney under City Attorney Joe Anderson who had served as a member of the citys legal staff since 1920.

Eugene Collins, who had served two terms in the Tennessee General Assembly representing Hamilton County, would replace Joe Anderson when he retired as City Attorney. Collins would retain that position from 1963-1990. He died April 26, 2004.

Aside from his law practice, Meacham continued to write and in 1968 published his first novel in his Napoleonic Nautical trilogy set in India in the style of the more famous Horatio Hornblower series with his lead character being Percival Mereweather.

The East Indiaman (1968) was followed by On the Companys Service (1971) and For King and Country (1976). His first book won him a Friends of American Writers Major Award in fiction in 1969.

In 1972 he became judge in the City Court of Chattanooga handling traffic, criminal, misdemeanor, and felony bind over cases until he retired.

During this time, he was also working on a proposed novel on the 1906 case involving the hanging of African-American Ed Johnson from the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga arising out of a later determined false charge of rape of a white woman. This led to the historical trial against the sheriff of Hamilton County and others for contempt of court for allowing Johnson to be taken out of the Hamilton County Jail and hanged.

Meacham was a close friend of attorneys Crawford Bean and his younger partner, Leroy Phillips, Jr., and decided to curtail his writing activities. According to legal sources, he turned over his preliminary investigative file on the case to Leroy. This led to completion of the story and the collaboration of Leroy Phillips and nationally recognized legal writer Mark Curriden, who together wrote the award-winning novel Contempt of Court, that later resulted in the vindication of Ed Johnson by the Criminal Court of Hamilton County on the charge of rape in 2006. Phillips and Curriden would be recognized by winning an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for the book.

After he became City Judge he realized that he had less time to write and never finished the proposed fourth volume of the Mereweather nautical series. He also started a fictionalized account of the Jimmy Hoffa trial held in Chattanooga in 1968 but stopped work on it prior to completion.

In 1998 Ellis Meacham died having made significant contributions in the field of literature and law. The Meacham Writers Workshop insures possible greater recognition of his writings after his death than he achieved during his lifetime.

* * *



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
Upcoming political events in the Bay Area. Events take place online unless otherwise noted:

WEDNESDAY

Health care: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethicist and former chief health policy officer for the Obama administration, on who has the worlds best health care systems. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 12:30 p.m. More information is here.

History of globalization: A discussion with economist Jeffrey Sachs, hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here.

Black-owned businesses: A forum on how Oaklands Black-owned small businesses are dealing with the social and economic strains of the pandemic and anti-racism protests. Panelists include Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society; Cathy D. Adams of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce; City Councilman Loren Taylor; Tucky Blunt of Blunts and Moore; Nenna Joiner of Feel More Adult; and James Queen of New Vision Fitness. Hosted by KQED. 6 p.m. More information is here.

Rep. Eric Swalwell: East Bay Democrat discusses his new book, Endgame: Inside the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, in a Commonwealth Club event. 6 p.m. More information is here.

THURSDAY

Rep. Ro Khanna: Fremont Democrat holds a town hall meeting. Noon. Questions can be asked in advance here; join meeting here.

Health care: A discussion on preserving and strengthening the Affordable Care Act. Speakers include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Brad Woodhouse of Protect Our Care, Jamal Watkins of the NAACP, former Obama administration health official Andy Slavitt, and Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Sponsored by Healthcarevoter.org. 3 p.m. More information is here.

Diversity and division in the suffrage movement: Issues of diversity and division that complicated the suffrage movement through its history and the implications now. A discussion with Johns Hopkins University history Professor Martha S. Jones and Maxine Anderson, director for the League of Women Voters of California. 5 p.m. More information is here.

Future of queer gathering spaces: How will the queer community gather in the coming years during the coronavirus pandemic? A discussion with businessperson and political activist Honey Mahogany and performer Grace Towers. Hosted by Mannys. 6 p.m. More information is here.

Central Valley politics: A Central Valley activists view of the state of the valley. Pedro Ramirez, a nonprofit and labor organizer, discusses community organizing, voter engagement and flipping GOP- held elected offices. Hosted by Swing Left San Francisco. 6:30 p.m. More information is here.

FRIDAY

Coronavirus and public transit: Panelists discuss how society can pay for public transportation during the pandemic. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 10 a.m. More information is here.

Global Pride: An opportunity for the LGBTQIA+ community to come together, featuring speeches, performances, film and other content from Pride celebrations around the world. A 24-hour livestream starting at 4 p.m. More information is here.

SATURDAY

S.F. Pride: A day of online Pride events and celebrations, starting at 1 p.m. Complete information is here.

SUNDAY

S.F. Pride: A day of online Pride events and celebrations, starting at 2 p.m. Complete information is here.

TUESDAY

California women and the vote: A virtual preview of Unladylike2020, chronicling the lives of women who made significant changes in California. Followed by a discussion with writer, director and executive producer Sandra Rattley and Susan Anderson of the California Historical Society). Hosted by KQED. 6 p.m. More information is here.

JULY 2

High courts year: Ben Feuer, chairman of the California Appellate Law Group, analyzes the U.S. Supreme Courts recently concluded session. Hosted by Mannys. 6 p.m. More information is here.

To list an event, please email Chronicle politics editor Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com
Kourtney Kardashian caused a stir after she was spotted wearing one of ex Scott Disick's plaid shirts during a family trip to Wyoming.

But that didn't stop the retired reality star, 41, from rocking a similar style for a glamorous Instagram shared Monday.

Her newly single ex, 37, couldn't help but tease fans with a flirty comment, telling the mother-of-three 'Cute shirt.'

Still something there? Kourtney Kardashian's ex Scott Disick left a flirty comment under one of her sizzling Instagrams on Monday

It was no wonder Scott felt compelled to comment.

Kourtney sizzled as she struck a pose wearing a mod ensemble while surrounded by the stark Wyoming desert.

She stared into the distance while donning a white mock turtleneck minidress cinched together with a chunky belt.

The Poosh founder teamed the thigh-skimming frock with knee-high stiletto boots to highlight her tan, toned legs.

Plaid fad: Scott pointed out Kourtney's plaid shirt, which could have been mistaken for one of his own

Looking good! It was no wonder why Scott wanted to comment on the chic and sexy photo

Adding a rugged touch, Kourtney tossed a masculine, yellow flannel by Outerknown on top.

A second photo revealed another angle, displaying Kourt's sleek raven ponytail and the razor-thin heels on her shoes.

Her punny caption read: 'DESERTed'

Kourtney and Scott didn't expect to spark controversy after she shared a simple photo of herself cuddling a lamb during her trip to Wyoming.

Keeping fans on their toes: Kourtney continued to stir the pot by posing in more shots with the flannel shirt

Teaching him young! Kourtney captioned the shots: 'Reign's perspective' - with her five-year-old son responsible for the photos

Detail oriented: Last week eagle-eyed fans noticed that the Poosh founder was wearing one of her ex's flannel shirts

Though her casual plaid top seemed unremarkable, internet sleuths identified the shirt as belonging to Scott.

While it's not unusual for Scott to join Kourtney and their kids on trips away, fans of the pair are going wild with speculation they may be getting back together.

The discovery will no doubt sting Scott's recent ex Sofia Richie - especially as it seems he wore the same plaid shirt on a date night with her in 2017.

Scott broke up with Sofia, 21, last month after three years of dating.

Kourtney has been enjoying the natural beauty in Wyoming and Montana over the few days and sharing snaps of her children taking in the stunning scenery.

There was no sign of Scott in any of the Instagram posts Kourtney shared, however, Us Weekly confirmed via a source that he is on the family trip.

The former couple are apparently staying at Kim and Kanye's $14 million ranch with kids Mason, 10, Penelope, seven and Reign, five.

Kourtney was glowing in the snap which she posted on Sunday that showed her wearing her hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing baggy jeans.

A source also revealed the family is joined by 'Kim and Kanye and their kids, Kylie, Stormi, Khloe, True and Kris.'

'Theyre all having a fun time doing family activities like swimming, etc,' said the insider. 'Scott hasnt been speaking about his breakup with Sofia.'

Going wild: There were plenty of comments from fans speculating that the duo are dating again

Behind the camera? There was no sign of Scott in any of the Instagram posts Kourtney shared over the weekend, however, Us Weekly confirmed via a source that he is on the family trip

Birthday girl: Kourtney shared this image on Monday of daughter Penelope playing with cousin North - who just turned seven - on the grounds of Kim and Kanye's $14 million ranch

Scott and Kourtney, who dated from 2006 to 2015, were also together for his 37th birthday celebration in Utah last month.

'Kourtney and Scott had so much fun with the kids in Utah and the kids want them to do family trips all together more often,' an insider told the magazine.

'Scott is so happy that he and Kourtney get along so well and how easy it is with her. Its weird to everyone else, but not to them. They are really like best friends.'
Summer solstice 2020 heralds changing of Earths seasons this weekend Space.com

The cats whiskers: new way of counting lions could boost conservation efforts Guardian

The Cave Kingpin Buying Up Americas Underground Outside

U.S. Home-Mortgage Delinquencies Reach Highest Level Since 2011 Bloomberg

The successes of the Feds dollar-swap lines The Economist

The problem with Big Food FT

#COVID19

How Did Vietnam Become Biggest Nation Without Coronavirus Deaths? VOA

China?

Hong Kong govt, politicians, law experts and activists react to Beijings draft security law report Hong Kong Free Press

A water crisis looms for 270 million people as South Asias glaciers shrink National Geographic

Underdeveloping the Mekong?: Extraction and Unequal Exchange in Vietnam Sociology of Development

How to Prevent a War in Asia Foreign Affairs

UK/EU

Brexit

Syraqistan

The Global Problem with Israeli Annexation The Century Foundation

New Cold War

Putin On World War II Moon of Alabama

Trump Transition

2020

Police State Watch

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Black Injustice Tipping Point

Health Care

Boeing

Will Global Mobility Recover After the Pandemic? Valdai Discussion Club

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

The Dark Soul of the Sunshine State The Atlantic (Re Silc).

Nations Politicians, Law Enforcement, Corporate Executives Marvel At Futuristic Utopia Theyre Living In The Onion

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
By Express News Service

TIRUPUR: Expressing shock over the Madras High Court verdict acquitting her father Chinnasamy in the sensational Udumalpet caste killing case, the deceaseds wife Kausalya said, I will not remain silent and will fight for justice for Shankar.

Speaking to The New Indian Express, Kausalya said, Chinnasamy is the prime accused in the murder case. Acquitting him in the case is gross injustice to Shankar. I revealed all the facts and statements to the Session Court judge about the involvement of Chinnasamy, Annalakshmi and others in the case. Since the death sentence must be confirmed by the higher court, the case was taken in the Madras High Court.

But shockingly the court has acquitted Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi. Besides, reduction of the death sentence to life sentence for others is also unbearable as I pointed these killers in the court and the entire incident happened in broad daylight, she added.

"If Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi hadn't conspired, Shankar would have survived and we could have lived peacefully," she said, adding, "As I am yet to get the copy of the High Court order, I cannot comment on the decision of the court to release Chinnasamy from the death sentence.

ALSO READ: Udumalpet caste killing: Madras High Court acquits Kausalya's father in 2016 Shankar murder case

Shankar's younger brother Yuvaraj said he felt very sad about the verdict. When my parents were informed about the murder of my elder brother Shankar in March 2016, they were shocked and no consolation could resolve their pain. When the verdict about the death sentence was announced, they were somewhat satisfied, but today's verdict was a shocking blow, as the prime conspirators were released. As it is a clear case of honour killing, we feel very sad and disappointed, he said.

Shankar's father Velusamy said he was more concerned about the loss of his son. I was planning to send Shankar and Kowsalya to Bangalore and while they were walking to purchase dresses, they were attacked. I am not willing to comment on the verdict. My family members living in Udumalpet were also sad. And nothing could replace the loss of a son to a father, Velusamy, who is currently employed in a government department at Udumalpet, added.

Speaking to The New Indian Express, former Udumalpet DSP Vivekanandan, who investigated the case, said, We launched enquiries and investigated over 120 persons in the Udumalpet Shankar murder case. We have submitted five strong pieces of evidence against the prime accused Chinnasamy. Besides, evidence including CCTV footage was submitted. As a result, the death sentence and life sentences were awarded to the culprits.

I saw the Madras High Court verdict on the news channels. Being an investigating officer, I can produce and submit the evidence but the prosecution and government alone can decide on the appeal against the verdict. Since it was a shocking blow for the prosecution, the government advocate has decided on the appeal against the verdict, he added.

Kausalya (19), a native of Dindigul belonging to a dominant caste, had married Shankar (22), a Dalit youth of Udumalpet in Tirupur district. Their marriage was strongly opposed by Kowsalyas parents, who hired killers to eliminate the young couple. When the couple was walking near Udumalpet Town bus stand, they were brutally attacked by a three-member gang. Shankar died on the spot, while Kausalya survived with minor injuries.

The Tirupur district session court sentenced six people including Chinnasamy, the father of Kausalya, to death for murdering Shankar on December 12, 2017. Of the 11 accused, three others, including her mother Annalakshmi, maternal uncle Pandithurai and a minor relative, were acquitted of all charges.

Later, all the accused filed an appeal against the sentence. After reviewing the appeals, a division bench of the Madras High Court set aside the death sentence awarded to five convicts including the father of Kausalya, Chinnasamy, by dropping all the charges against him. Besides, it set aside a death sentence awarded to five convicts by modifying it to a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years.
By Express News Service

VISAKHAPATNAM: Inclement weather and cloudy sky on Sunday dampened the spirit of sky gazers to watch the Ring of Fire during solar eclipse. While it started raining since morning in Vijayawada and other places in Krishna district, weather remained cloudy in most parts of the State. Curfew like atmosphere prevailed in Visakhapatnam and other towns in North Coastal Andhra wore a deserted look as most people preferred to stay indoors during the solar eclipse as they considered inauspicious since it fell on Sunday.

Meanwhile, sadhus and priests thronged Ramakrishna Beach to offer special prayers to the Sun god during eclipse. Police prevented people from taking a dip in the sea at RK Beach due to Covid-19 protocol. People who braced up to witness the celestial spectacle were a disappointed lot as clouds marred the visibility of eclipse. Still some tried to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse using filter glasses.

Different stages of solar eclipse seen in Tirupati on Sunday; hundreds of sky gazers craned their necks to catch a glimpse of partial eclipse | MADHAV K

The eclipse started in Vijayawada at 10.21 am and concluded at 1.49 pm and in Vizag it began at 10.30 am and ended at 1.59 pm. The partial eclipse concluded in Tirupati at 1.38 pm, in Rajahmundry at 1.54 pm, in Kakinada at 1.55 pm and in Nellore at 1.43 pm. The eclipse lasted for a little over three hours. All temples, including Tirumala, Indrakeeladri, Kanipakam, Simhachalam and Arasavalli, remained closed since Saturday evening. Tirumala temple was reopened after performing Suddhi and Punyahavachanam.

Suprabhata Seva commenced at 2.30 pm and rituals continued till late in the evening. Darshan for devotees will resume from Monday as per their time slots. However, Srikalahasti temple remained opened during eclipse. Devotees thronged the temple to perform Rahu Ketu puja.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 13:56:03|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ULAN BATOR, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia reported seven new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the national count to 213, the country's National Center for Communicable Disease (NCCD) said Monday.

"A total of 359 tests for COVID-19 were conducted across the country yesterday and seven of them were positive," NCCD head Dulmaa Nyamkhuu told a daily press conference.

Four of the new patients are Mongolian nationals who returned home from Kazakhstan on a chartered flight on June 10 and two are Mongolian nationals who arrived in the capital from Seoul on a chartered flight, said Nyamkhuu.

The remaining one is a Mongolian driver who returned home via Altanbulag border point, the official added.

All the 213 confirmed cases in Mongolia are imported ones, mostly from Russia. Among the confirmed cases, 153 people have recovered.

No local transmissions or deaths have been reported in the country so far. Enditem
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jun. 22

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan amounted to $738.9 million over first four months of 2020 compared to $870.1 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 2.6 percent during the reporting period of 2020 which is flat year-on-year compared to 3 percent during the same period of 2019.

Kazakhstans export to Uzbekistan amounted to $562.3 million over the period from January through April 2020 compared to $672.2 million during the same period of 2019.

Uzbekistans share in total volume of Kazakhstans export amounted to 3.1 percent during the reporting period of 2020, compared to 3.6 percent during the same period of 2019.

In turn, Kazakhstans import from Uzbekistan amounted to $176.6 million over the reporting period compared to $197.8 million during the same period of 2019.

Uzbekistans total share in Kazakhstans import was 1.8 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 1.9 percent during the same period of 2019.

Total volume of Kazakhstans trade turnover amounted to $28.1 billion over the period from Jan. through Apr. 2020 which indicates a decrease from $28.8 billion during the same period of 2019.

Kazakhstans export amounted to $18.3 billion during the reporting period of 2020 ($18.5 billion in the same period of 2019), whereas import amounted to $9.8 billion ($10.3 billion).

---

Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
[June 22, 2020] Xenex Announces StrikeForce Disinfection Service; LightStrike Robot Destroys COVID-19 Virus in 2 Minutes

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc upon the world. As cities across Texas report a spike in the number of coronavirus cases, businesses and organizations are looking for strategies to combat the virus within their facilities. Xenex Disinfection Services, the world leader in UV disinfection for healthcare facilities, today announced the launch of StrikeForce, an innovative disinfection service. For the first time, organizations can engage Xenex's team of environmental disinfection experts on a project basis to utilize Xenex LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots to kill harmful viruses, bacteria and spores that linger on commonly touched surfaces and pose a risk for disease transmission. StrikeForce is currently limited to engagements in Texas. "The entire world is thinking about disease transmission as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had numerous requests from businesses who wanted us to bring robots in and disinfect their facilities for them to help ensure that their environment was virus-free. In response to market demand, we developed the StrikeForce service to enable companies to provide their staff and clients peace of mind through innovative disinfection solutins with minimal downtime," said Irene Hahn, vice president of sales for Xenex.



The LightStrike disinfection robot is proven to destroy Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, in two minutes. Surfaces contaminated with COVID-19 pose a grave threat to the safety of healthcare workers, patients, frontline responders, military service members, cruise line passengers, hotel guests and citizens everywhere. Deactivating the COVID-19 virus on surfaces is a critical and necessary step to providing a safe environment as businesses reopen and people get back to work. Restaurants, car dealerships, hotels, office buildings, gyms, and many other spaces can benefit immediately from StrikeForce disinfection as the global pandemic demonstrates the need for quick and effective disinfection wherever people work, play, or live. LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots use a xenon lamp to generate bursts of high intensity, broad spectrum (200-315nm) ultraviolet (UV) light that's more intense than sunlight. Different pathogens are susceptible to UVC light at different wavelengths. With broad spectrum germicidal light, Xenex LightStrike robots quickly deactivate viruses, bacteria and spores where they are most vulnerable without damaging materials or equipment.

Xenex is the world leader in UV disinfection for healthcare facilities and its LightStrike robots have been deployed in more than 500 healthcare facilities around the world, including HonorHealth, the Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Stanford, and USC. The robots work quickly and do not require warm-up or cool-down time, so facilities are able to disinfect dozens of rooms per day (per robot). Hospitals have published peer-reviewed studies showing significant reductions in Clostridium difficile (C.diff), MRSA, VRE and/or Surgical Site Infection (SSI) rates after integrating Xenex's infection prevention programs and using LightStrike robots to supplement their environmental disinfection efforts. About Xenex Xenex is a world leader in UV technology-based infection prevention strategies and solutions. Xenex's mission is to save lives and reduce suffering by destroying the deadly microorganisms that cause hospital acquired infections. Xenex is backed by well-known investors that include EW Healthcare Partners, Piper Jaffray, Malin Corporation, Battery Ventures, Targeted Technology Fund II, Tectonic Ventures and RK Ventures. For more information, visit xenex.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005635/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Theres nothing for which our high-minded progressives have more scorn than born-again evangelicals.

In the progressive view, these scripture-spouting boobs are the very embodiment of a deficit of sophistication and a surfeit of ignorance.

Theyre flat-earthers. Deniers. Knuckle-dragging, latter-day Neanderthals. Theyre utterly lacking in any of the attitudes attending an enlightened mindset. So the progressives believe.

Yet its the progressives themselves who today are in the throes of a kind of exuberant, purge-the-heretics religiosity.

Their amen corners brook no apostasies, such as the heretical declamation that All Lives Matter.

Not permitted! Only Black Lives Matter may be shouted in the streets. And woe to your sorry, miserable ass if you dare to act contrary to this doctrinal diktat.

Martin OMalley, former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, who described himself as a bold progressive, was all but tarred and feathered and driven out of the Democratic presidential primary in 2016 for uttering the blasphemous words All Lives Matter. His groveling, profuse apologies were of no avail.

If you wish to be safe from the mob today, youd better submit to the ritual of taking a knee. Genuflecting, its called in more traditional religious circles.

The new faithful are known as the Woke. Big corporations are running expensive TV ad campaigns heralding the Woke gospel. The CEOs are hoping  dubiously, most likely  that the more fanatical of the Woke will be mollified by such gestures and refrain from looting or torching their retail outlets.

The traditional faiths tend to emphasize sinfulness and the urgency of expiating it. The faithful of Wokeism prefer to hail their own righteousness.

Wokeisms congregants tend to indulge not in confessing sin but in proclaiming themselves more holy than thou. Virtue-signaling, this has come to be called.

As various controversies surface in the news, only one view passes muster with the enforcers of Woke orthodoxy. Its own, of course.

All other views are to be silenced through activist intimidation, to be shouted down by digital-age versions of the old mobs of yesteryear armed with torches and pitchforks.

Folks use to say, when voicing an unpopular opinion, Its a free country, isnt it?

That proposition today seems to be very much in doubt. The Woke are quick to shout back, Freedom of speech doesnt include hate  and hate includes whatever views we dont agree with or approve of.

Speaking out can prove dangerous to your livelihood, or even your health. The most dangerous place by far to hazard an unorthodox view nowadays is our universities, once hailed as bastions of free inquiry and robust debate.

Today a heretical speaker, i.e., a conservative one, is likely to be verbally abused or even physically assailed. Meanwhile, pusillanimous university faculty and administrators quail over students delicate sensitivities and fuss over their need for the succor of safe spaces cleansed of unsettling views.

In times past  in the 1730s, 1790s and 1850s, America had its Great Awakenings  spiritual revivals aimed at holding back the advancing tide of rational secularism.

Today, instead of the Awakened, we have the Woke.

The Awakened were largely concerned with Americas spiritual status, less so with its political agendas. The Woke, on the other hand, are concerned strictly with the political objectives fortifying their dogma.

The un-Woke, constituting as they do a heresy, must be stifled at all costs, even at the cost of the First Amendment, which is regarded by the Woke faithful as an instrument of Satan concocted by a claque of slave owners and other privileged, propertied, white males.

Every religious movement has to have its Beelzebub, and the Woke movement has its: the police.

Meanwhile, according to the Woke, a ubiquitous systemic racism lurks behind every tweet and Civil War statue, a menacing force looming everywhere, something like dreaded Moloch of early biblical times.

The toppled statues of suddenly disapproved historical figures reprise the Taliban who blasted ancient Buddhist statuary to smithereens with artillery rounds as they condemned the offending works as infidel idols.

Another malign outgrowth of the Woke faith is a phenomenon thats been labeled the Cancel Culture.

This is a dressed-up term for censorship.

Like party members under Stalin and Mao who found themselves on the wrong side of the ever-shifting boundary line of party orthodoxy, editors and professors recently have run afoul of Wokeisms arbitrary edicts.

Theyve encountered mob pressure requiring their resignations or, at a minimum, their self-humiliating confessions and abject apologies, as in the halcyon days of show-trial Communism.

The sacraments of Wokeism are myriad and complex, as are those of other faiths. Wokeisms catechism sets forth the faiths narrow range of permissible views on issues ranging from climate change to transgenderism to open borders to laissez-faire fetal extirpation to law enforcement defunding.

In their zeal to stamp out the faiths sweeping definition of sin, the humorless Cotton Mathers who serve as the clergy of Wokeism are quick to resort to the Puritan stocks and dunking chairs of social media and mass protest, or to the Scarlet Letters of boycott campaigns.

Two astute writers who early on observed Wokeisms shared traits with fundamentalist sentiment, including a limited range of tolerance for dissenting views, were Andrew Sullivan and John McWhorter. Neither is inclined to adhere rigidly to an ideological script.

Sullivan, a pioneer polemicist in the quest for gay rights, noted Wokeisms zealous habits of mind reminiscent of born-again evangelism, including its certainty of its own righteousness and equal certainty of its critics iniquity.

McWhorter, a Stanford PhD academic (and Rutgers undergrad) noted that systemic white racism is Wokeisms theological equivalent of the doctrine of original sin.

Some of the most damning commentary on the Great Awokening has come from observers on the left side of the political spectrum, bless them.

Ben Smith, the New York Times media columnist, wrote a piece noting that traditional journalistic standards tend to be waived when the hounded are the most disliked by the loudest voices.

To borrow long-ago words from George Orwell, who said that to be anti-American is to shout with the mob, today it can be said  even given the many legitimate grounds on which President Trump can be faulted  that to be anti-Trump is to shout with the mob.

Glenn Greenwald, fearless editor of the online Intercept, notes a media sickness borne of the Trump era, a sort of media mass hysteria that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity, justifiably destroying trust in news outlets.

Trump is easily able to divert legitimate criticism by pointing out the medias unrestrained, hysterical, nonstop record of crying wolf where he is concerned.

Matt Taibbi, who dismisses Trump as a clown, nevertheless notes a media tendency toward lockstep conformity, toward the abandonment of skepticism in favor of unquestioned narratives; toward the routine acceptance of assertions that contain large factual gaps or are refuted by available data.

Its an article of faith among Wokeism, for example, to recite the apocryphal protest chant, Hands up, dont shoot!  an allusion to an event that actually never occurred, according to an investigation of the matter by the Obama administrations Department of Justice.

Yet the cry remains one of Wokeisms favorite hymns, as it were, its Old Rugged Cross.

Whether or not it was a witting calculation of Wokeism to dress itself it the garb of religion, it was certainly a shrewd

tactical development. Wokeisms religion-like posture not only tends to place it beyond criticism, it suggests that Wokeism is a bandwagon on which God himself has jumped.

At the sign of triumph, goes the old hymn, Satans host doth flee . . . .

Others, meanwhile, had better repent  or else.

Or else what?

Who knows? Or else, maybe, face the ultimate fire-and-brimstone fate suggested in another Woke ritual chant  or else, maybe, fry like bacon.
[June 22, 2020] 5G and fibre infrastructure important to the future in Turkey

Sydney, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on Turkey outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Turkey-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses 4G LTE networks are already well established across Turkey and provide a population network coverage of over 93%, with many base stations upgraded to 4.5G. Deployment of fibre-based broadband networks are also well underway in Turkey and while DSL services are still the leading fixed broadband access method - it will eventually lose its dominance due to the rapid growth in fibre subscriptions. Turkeys fixed and mobile infrastructure will help to underpin its Smart City initiatives, which have become a key area of focus for the future. Turkey recently released its National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan which will run for 3 years, between 2020-2023 BuddeComm notes that the outbreak o the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.



On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth. Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report.

Key developments: Turkey has been identified as one of the key markets for mobile subscriber growth through to 2025 in the MENA region.

There are opportunities for substantial growth of both mobile and fixed broadband subscribers in Turkey.

The Ministry of Treasury and Finance approved the acquisition of a 55% share of Turk Telekom by a group of creditor banks in August 2018. In September 2019 the banks further announced they had appointed Morgan and Banks to sell their majority share.

Turkey has excellent international telecoms infrastructure with links to many cable networks due to its geographic location between Europe and Asia.

This report includes assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector. Companies mentioned in this report include:

Turk Telekom, Turkcell, Vodafone Turkey, Turksat, Superonline, Millenicom. Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Turkey-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses Nicolas Bombourg [email protected] Oceania Office +61 280 767 665 Europe Office +44 207 097 1241

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[Joe Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate.]

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to announce his vice-presidential choice within days. After missing one self-imposed deadline after another, he is running out of time to make his selection before the Democratic National Convention begins on Aug. 17.

Mr. Bidens advisers say he has spoken with several of the leading candidates in recent days, and it has been confirmed that he met in person in early August with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. We do not know exactly how many face-to-face interviews Mr. Biden has conducted with potential running mates. A small handful of women remain under serious consideration.

Among the candidates reviewed most closely by Mr. Bidens vetting team are Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, both former presidential candidates; Representatives Karen Bass of California and Val Demings of Florida; Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Susan E. Rice, the former national security adviser.

The lobbying for and against the various candidates has grown intense, and some prominent Democrats have spoken out in recent days against what appears to be a concerted effort by some Democrats to spread negative information about some of the contenders in hopes of boosting their own candidate of choice.

But people close to Mr. Biden acknowledge that, at this point, the V.P. choice is almost entirely in his hands. He has said all along that he wants a running mate with whom he has strong personal chemistry, and who could be a hand-in-glove partner in governing. Those criteria appear to have strengthened both Ms. Whitmer, with whom Mr. Biden developed a tight political bond this year, and Ms. Rice, who worked closely with Mr. Biden in the Obama administration.

Ultimately, only Mr. Biden can judge which person in this historically diverse vice-presidential field best meets his own view of what the job demands.

[Follow along with The Timess coverage of Joe Bidens pick for vice president.]

Top contenders

Kamala Harris

Image

Bio: Senator from California since 2017; former presidential candidate; served as district attorney in San Francisco and state attorney general.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Harris, 55, has long been seen as among the likeliest candidates to be chosen.

Signature issues: Proposed cutting middle-class taxes; recently advocated policing reform; pushed a Senate bill to make lynching a federal crime; played a high-profile role in the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Relationship with Biden: Harris had a friendly relationship with Biden before they competed in the 2020 primaries, and Harris knew his late son, Beau, when they served as attorneys general. But Harris also attacked Biden more harshly than any other Democrat in the 2020 race, rebuking him in the first televised debate for having worked with segregationist senators to oppose school busing policies in the 1970s.

Pros and cons: Harris is among the best-known Black women in American politics, with appeal to both moderates and liberals. But she ran an unsteady presidential campaign last year and struggled with questions about her law-enforcement record. The way she and her advisers handled the 2020 primary left some in the Biden campaign with significant reservations.

On being considered for vice president: I know that conversation is taking place in the press and among the pundits, and Im honored to even be considered, if thats the case.

Susan Rice

Image

Bio: National security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Rice, 55, has been among the candidates furthest along in the vetting process.

Signature issues: Closely identified with the Obama administrations foreign policy breakthroughs, including the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement; recently called for statehood for Washington, D.C.

Relationship with Biden: Rice served with Biden in the Obama administration for eight years, and their working relationship dates back to the 1990s when Rice was an assistant secretary of state and Biden was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Pros and cons: Rice has credentials on national security and foreign policy that no other candidate can match, as well as a deep working relationship with Biden. While she has never been a candidate, she is seen as an agile communicator on television who would likely fare well in a vice-presidential debate. But Rice has never been elected to office before, and putting her on the ticket would force Biden to relitigate some major controversies of the Obama administration  most significantly, the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

On being considered for vice president: Im humbled and honored to be among the extremely accomplished women who are reportedly being considered in that regard.

Elizabeth Warren

Image

Bio: Senator from Massachusetts since 2013; former presidential candidate; former Harvard Law School professor and bankruptcy expert; architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Warren, 71, has been among the strongest contenders to be Mr. Bidens running mate.

Signature issues: Has long criticized wealth concentration and corporate power; proposed plans to break up big companies, tax the extremely rich and use proceeds to fund new social benefits; recently called for investigations of how the Trump administration has distributed economic stimulus money and pushed a measure to strip the names of Confederate generals from military bases.

Relationship with Biden: Warren and Biden have a relationship of mutual respect, framed by significant ideological differences. When Biden was a senator and Warren a Harvard professor, they clashed in a Senate hearing over bankruptcy regulation. But when Biden was mulling a campaign for president in 2016, he met with Warren privately and considered the idea of asking her to run with him.

Pros and cons: Warren would bring sterling progressive credentials and a forceful economic message to Bidens ticket. But she does not represent racial or generational diversity, and her populist record could unnerve some moderates.

On being considered for vice president: Im focused right now on this crisis.

Gretchen Whitmer

Image

Bio: Governor of Michigan since 2019; former Democratic leader in the Michigan State Senate; delivered the Democratic response to President Trumps State of the Union address in February.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Whitmer, 48, has acknowledged she has had contact with the Biden search team, but seems like a less prominent candidate than she was in the spring.

Signature issues: Ran for governor on a platform of rebuilding Michigans broken roads, raising the minimum wage and investing in education; has grappled with the coronavirus pandemic reshaping her administration, putting public health and budgetary challenges at the center of her agenda.

Relationship with Biden: Whitmer has described herself as having been friends with Biden for years, and he endorsed her campaign for governor in 2018. She returned the favor before the Michigan presidential primary in March.

Pros and cons: Whitmer is a popular young leader from a swing state, with a compelling story of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. She is ideologically aligned with Biden and might help him lock down Midwestern and industrial battlegrounds  not only Michigan, but also Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But Whitmer has only served half a term as governor, and if Biden selects her then Democrats would be putting forward an all-white ticket for the second consecutive election.

On being considered for vice president: I am making a little bit of time to stay connected to the campaign but the most important thing that I have to do right now is be the governor of my home state.

Karen Bass

Image

Bio: Representative from California since 2011; chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; former speaker of the California State Assembly.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Bass, 66, joined the process later than some of the other candidates, but she has emerged this summer as a top contender for the vice presidency.

Signature issues: Has been a prominent figure in the House debate over police reform; introduced legislation on public health, student debt and foster care; leads a House subcommittee on Africa, global health and human rights.

Relationship with Biden: Bass and Biden do not have a deep relationship, but they appeared together at several events when he was vice president and Bass endorsed his candidacy in March.

Pros and cons: Bass has a longer legislative record  in Washington and California  than almost anyone else under consideration. She has a rich political record that has involved confronting civil unrest in Los Angeles and helping steer her state through the Great Recession. But she is little-known nationally and is only now receiving close scrutiny for aspects of her biography, including making multiple visits to Cuba under Fidel Castro.

On being considered for vice president: Im willing to serve my country in whatever way I am called upon.

Val Demings

Image

Bio: Representative from Florida since 2017; served as police chief in Orlando after a long career there as an officer.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Demings, 63, has been interviewed at length and vetted intensively by the Biden team.

Signature issues: Has been an outspoken voice in the House on issues related to gun control and law enforcement; served as an impeachment manager in the Senate trial of President Trump.

Relationship with Biden: Demings and Biden do not have a longstanding relationship, but they campaigned together for Florida Democrats during the 2018 elections.

Pros and cons: Demings is a strong campaigner with a resume that matches the moment, and she comes from a crucial part of the countrys biggest swing state. But she has not been closely vetted by the press and her experience in elected office is relatively brief.

On being considered for vice president: I hope, regardless of how it turns out, that when boys and girls and young men and women around this nation hear my personal story and theyve been told that they cant make it for whatever reason, that they will be inspired.

Tammy Duckworth

Image

Bio: Senator from Illinois since 2017; served two terms in the House; former director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs; a retired Army lieutenant colonel and helicopter pilot who lost both legs in combat while serving in Iraq.

How seriously is she being vetted? Very seriously. Duckworth, 52, has been interviewed by the Biden team and she has been asked to submit documents for vetting.

Signature issues: Has been a prominent spokeswoman for her party on national security and the concerns of veterans and military families; championed policies to protect people with disabilities.

Relationship with Biden: Duckworth does not have an especially close relationship with Biden, but as vice president he backed her 2016 candidacy to unseat a Republican senator, Mark Kirk. Duckworth introduced Bidens late son, Beau, as a speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Pros and cons: Duckworths personal story could be powerful in a presidential campaign; she would be the first veteran on a national ticket since John McCain, and the first female veteran ever. She is a less prominent voice on some of the issues most central to the campaign, like policing and the economy.

On being considered for vice president: I can push back against Trump in a way others cant.
Pauline Hanson said Australia should follow Taiwan's treatment of coronavirus and open up the country's borders while keeping the elderly at home.

A steep rise in COVID-19 cases in Victoria has seen 96 new infections in the last five days and has generated fears of a second wave of the deadly disease spreading across the nation.

The increasing infection rates has left state health authorities in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia wary of reopening their borders for travelers.

But the One Nation leader has backed Australian Minister for Finance Matthias Cormann 's call to reopen the borders to kick start the economy.

Hanson told the Today Show on Monday: 'We're losing $84million a day in our economy, 5,000 jobs a week and Queensland is the worst out of this losing $147million dollars a week.

Pauline Hanson said the elderly should stay home while borders reopen to boost the Australian economy

'We've got to live with this. You cannot just sit back and keep waiting in case a second wave comes and with 17,000 people a month coming into the country from overseas and a lot of these people possibly bringing the coronavirus with them, we just can't keep the country locked down.

'We have to open up the borders. We've got to kick start our economy otherwise we will never get it going again and have an economy that's going to provide way of living or standard of living for people.

'I heard the last poll that came in about 80% of Queenslanders wanted [borders] opened. I know a lot of people are scared about it, but we lost more people due to the flu last year than what we have with the coronavirus.'

Ms Hanson believes Australia should follow Taiwan's lead after their successful campaign in dealing with the virus.

Ms Hanson believes Australia's borders must reopen immediately to restart the economy. Pictured: passengers wait to board a flight at Sydney Airport on Friday

Taiwan has recorded just 446 cases of coronavirus and seven deaths from a population of 23.7million people.

The island nation effectively stemmed the spread of the virus through using artificial intelligence and linking data between their national health insurance and immigration and customs information to find potential infection risks in the community and force them into quarantine to prevent them from getting sick.

Ms Hanson said Australia should keep the elderly and those susceptible to contracting the disease at home while the nation reboots.

'This affects a lot of the older people with health issues in our nation, but in Taiwan they actually kept their borders open. They told those people with those health issues you stay home,' she said.

'Their economy is going fantastic. They have had less deaths than we have. We've got to handle this is a totally different way. We have to kick start our economy.

Ms Hanson appeared on Today with Karl Stefanovic and Jessica Irvine (pictured middle and right) and said 'you can't keep the country locked down until there's no cases at all'

Ms Hanson said Australia should follow Taiwan's lead and tell elderly people and those with health conditions to stay home. Pictured: elderly shoppers in Earlwood Coles in Sydney in March

'Those people with those health issues I suggest you keep yourselves in a safe place and don't go out there until we are rid of the coronavirus.

'But you can't keep the country locked down until there's no cases at all. It's just ridiculous to do that.'

Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos on Sunday announced the state's infectious total had reached 1,836 cases, of which 121 remain active.

'It is still a very serious situation,' Health Minister Jenny Mikakos told reporters on Sunday.

'We have had particularly some concerns around family gatherings, extended family members across many households, visiting each other even when they have been exhibiting mild symptoms.'

Two clusters are driving the outbreak - a family that has 11 infections over nine households, and 13 contractors who worked at the Stamford Plaza hotel.

One of the outbreaks is 13 contractors who worked at the Stamford Plaza hotel (pictured) in Melbourne, with three new cases on Sunday

One of Sunday's new cases was from the family outbreak and three were workers at the hotel. The other eight cases are under investigation.

All but one of Saturday's 25 cases were local transmissions, including infections that health authorities are yet to trace to a source.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was forced to reimpose restrictions within his state after the spike in cases.

From midnight on Sunday to July 12, Victorians will only be able to have five people at their homes. Outdoor gatherings will be restricted to 10.

Cafes, restaurants and pubs had been set to be allowed 50 patrons at one time on Monday, up from 20 currently. That will also be put on hold until July 12.

Mr Andrews on Saturday said Victorian families were mainly responsible for the coronavirus spike.

'The experts tell us that, largely, the numbers are being driven by families - families having big get-togethers and not following the advice around distancing and hygiene.'

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said families were to blame for the spike in infections for 'letting their guard down'

Mr Andrews said about half of the state's cases since the end of April have come from transmission inside someone's home.

'You can see how this could happen. People feeling relaxed at home. Letting their guard down. Letting old habits creep back,' he said.

The Premier also said he had spoken to Prime Minister Scott Morrison about the possibility of reintroducing a stay at home order to ensure Victorians follow the rules.

'As we've seen across the world, this virus has the ability to turn a few cases into hundreds in a matter of days,' Mr Andrews said.

'That's why we need to delay an increase to gathering limits in businesses and community facilities.'

Police and navy officers scan drivers at the checkpoint on the Forrest Highway south of Perth in April

Western Australia's government has maintained its hardline border closure will remain for as long as there is sustained community spread of the virus in the eastern states.

Premier Mark McGowan has refused to put a date on welcoming interstate visitors and is likely to further ease restrictions within WA before opening the border.

South Australia is due to reopen on July 20 but its government is closely monitoring the situation in Victoria and has not ruled out staying closed.

'We will not open our borders to Victoria unless it is safe to do so,' Health Minister Stephen Wade said on Saturday.

'Our number one priority is the health of South Australians.'
Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri recasts the notion of what it means to be a 'primitive' vertebrate, according to Penn paleontologists Lauren Sallan and Jack Stack.

Sturgeon, a long-lived, bottom-dwelling fish, are often described as "living fossils," owing to the fact that their form has remained relatively constant, despite hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

In a new study in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers led by Jack Stack, a 2019 University of Pennsylvania graduate, and paleobiologist Lauren Sallan of Penn's School of Arts & Sciences, closely examine the ancient fish species Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri, which lived around 300 million years ago in an estuary environment in what is today New Mexico. Although they find the fish to be highly similar to sturgeons in its features, including its protruding snout, they show that these characteristics evolved in a distinct evolutionary path from those species that gave rise to modern sturgeons.

The find indicates that, although ancient, the features that enabled Tanyrhinichthys to thrive in its environment arose multiple times in different fish lineages, a burst of innovation that was not previously fully appreciated for fish in this time period.

"Sturgeon are considered a 'primitive' species, but what we're showing is that the sturgeon lifestyle is something that's been selected for in certain conditions and has evolved over and over again," says Sallan, senior author on the work.

"Fish are very good at finding solutions to ecological problems," says Stack, first author on the study, who worked on the research as a Penn undergraduate and is now a graduate student at Michigan State University. "This shows the degree of both innovation and convergence that's possible in fishes. Once their numbers got up large enough, they started producing brand new morphologies that we now see have evolved numerous times through the history of fishes, under similar ecological conditions. "

The first fossil of Tanyrhinichthys was found in 1984 in a fossil-rich area called the Kinney Brick Quarry, about a half hour east of Albuquerque. The first paleontologist to describe the species was Michael Gottfried, a Michigan State faculty member who now serves as Stack's advisor for his master's degree.

"The specimen looks like someone found a fish and just pulled on the front of its skull," Stack says. Many modern fish species, from the swordfish to the sailfish, have protuberant snouts that extend out in front of them, often aiding in their ability to lunge at prey. But this characteristic is much rarer in ancient fishes. In the 1980s when Gottfried described the initial specimen, he posited that the fish resembled a pike, an ambush predator with a longer snout.

During the last decade, however, several more specimens of Tanyrhinichthys have been found in the same quarry. "Those finds were an impetus for this project, now that we had better information on this enigmatic and strange fish," Stack says.

At the time that Tanyrhinichthys roamed the waters, Earth's continents were joined in the massive supercontinent called Pangea, surrounded by a single large ocean. But it was an ice age as well, with ice at both poles. Just before this period, the fossil record showed that ray-finned fishes, which now dominate the oceans, were exploding in diversity. Yet 300 million years ago, "it was like someone hit the pause button," Sallan says. "There's an expectation that there would be more diversity, but not much has been found, likely owing to the fact that there just hasn't been enough work on this time period, especially in the United States, and particularly in the Western United States."

Aiming to fill in some of these gaps by further characterizing Tanyrhinichthys, Stack, Sallan, and colleagues closely examined the specimens in detail and studied other species that dated to this time period. "This sounds really simple, but it's obviously difficult in execution," Stack notes, as fossils are compressed flat when they are preserved. The researchers inferred a three-dimensional anatomy using the forms of modern fishes to guide them.

What they noticed cast doubt on the conception of Tanyrhinichthys as resembling a pike. While a pike has an elongated snout with its jaws at the end of it, allowing it to rush its prey head-on, Tanyrhinichthys has an elongated snout with its jaws at the bottom.

"The whole form of this fish is similar to other bottom dwellers," Stack says. Sallan also noticed canal-like structures on its snout concentrated in the top of its head, suggestive of the locations where sensory organs would attach. "These would have detected vibrations to allow the fish to consume its prey," says Sallan.

The researchers noted that many of the species that dwelled in similar environments possessed longer snouts, which Sallan called "like an antenna for your face."

"This also makes sense because it was an estuary environment," Sallan says, "with large rivers feeding into it, churning up the water, and making it murky. Rather than using your eyesight, you have to use these other sensory organs to detect prey."

Despite this, other features of the different ancient fishes' morphology were so different from Tanyrhinichthys that they do not appear to have shared a lineage with one another, nor do modern sturgeon descend from Tanyrhinichthys. Instead the long snouts appear to be an example of convergent evolution, or many different lineages all arriving at the same innovation to adapt well to their environment.

"Our work, and paleontology in general, shows that the diversity of life forms that are apparent today has roots that extend back into the past," says Stack.

###

Lauren Sallan is the Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Science and the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jack Stack was a 2019 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He is now a master's student at Michigan State University.

Sallan and Stack collaborated on the paper with John-Paul Hodnett of Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission and Spencer G. Lucas of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

The study was supported by the University of Pennsylvania Paleontology Summer Stipend, Greg and Susan Walker Endowment for Student Research in Earth and Environmental Science, 25.40 Paleontological Society Student Ambassador Award, University of Pennsylvania Grant for Faculty Mentoring Undergraduate Research, and National Science Foundation CAREER Award (Grant 1846777).
9th session of 14th National Assembly, a special landmark



The 9th session of the 14th National Assembly (NA) wrapped up in Hanoi on June 19 after 19 days of working in a spirit of solidarity, democracy, responsibility, and active contribution. The legislature adopted resolutions ratifying the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA) along with the signing of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)s Convention No 105.

It adopted a resolution approving the investment policy of the national target programme on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas for 2021-2030, with more than 100 policies focusing on communes and villages in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. These decisions are important in the implementation of the Party and States policies and laws on ethnic affairs with the goal of leaving no one behind.

PM lauds media for contributions to COVID-19 fight

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc (right) and Politburo member, Secretary of Party Central Committee and Head of the PCC's Commission for Communication and Education Vo Van Thuong present the PM's certificate of merit to Nhan Dan (People) Newspaper.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has lauded the media for its important contributions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that it has produced practical works to mark the 95th anniversary of the Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day.

Speaking at a conference held in Hanoi on June 16 to review media coverage on COVID-19, PM Phuc highlighted the Governments important policies such as Fighting the epidemic is like fighting the enemy, sacrificing short-term economic interests to protect peoples health and concentrated quarantine, saying that under the Party's leadership, all people have been united and are determined to minimise infections in the community. On the occasion, PM Phuc presented certificates of merit to 18 organisations, in honour of their achievements in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

First batch of fresh Vietnamese lychee lands in Japan

Vietnamese lychee fruits remain fresh when arriving in Japan. (Photo: VOV)

The first tonne of fresh Vietnamese lychee exported to Japan by air arrived on June 20, further affirming the value of Vietnams agricultural products in this market. Of the total five tonnes exported on June 18, the remaining four tonnes are being transported by sea. Upon their arrival in Japan, the Vietnamese lychee will be put on shelves at AEON supermarkets and at focal points of importers including VIENT Corporation, Yufruit and Sunrise Farm.

En route to admitting Vietnamese lychee into Japan, the two sides spent a long time, from 2014, organising lychee promotions in the Japanese market and introducing technologies in fresh lychee preservation, steam treatment, sterilisation and transportation. The inspection process was conducted in a strict manner under the supervision of authorities from both sides.

Tra Vinh University named in 2020 Worlds Universities with Real Impact rankings

Tra Vinh University has more than 1,200 lecturers and about 20,000 students (Photo: giaoducthoidai.vn)

Tra Vinh University was the only university in Vietnam to be named within the Top 100 Worlds Universities with Real Impact (WURI) rankings for 2020, the university reported on June 15. It ranked 86th in the WURI ranking for 2020 and was 24th among the 50 best universities in startup and innovation values during a recent virtual conference held by the Hanseatic League of Universities (HLU).

The WURI ranking is a new system that measures universities performance in creating real value in society. It focuses on industrial applications rather than the traditional means of counting research papers and lecture-type teaching; value-creating startups and entrepreneurship rather than the traditional focus on the number of jobs filled; social responsibility, ethics and integrity; and student mobility and openness for exchange and collaboration between schools and across national borders.

International Yoga Day draws nearly 3,000 in Quang Ninh

The sixth International Yoga Day, themed Yoga from home, drew the participation of nearly 3,000 yogis from at home and abroad in the northern province of Quang Ninh on June 21. Earlier, a series of activities were held including yoga practice at Quang Hong Beach in Cam Pha City, yoga performances with traditional long dresses and conical hats at Tuan Mai Beach, and a programme entitled Vietnam Yoga  Connecting Vietnamese spirit at the Yen Tu historical and tourist site, Uong Bi City.

The sixth International Yoga Day will take place in Quang Ninh, Vinh Phuc, Ninh Thuan, Phu Yen and Thanh Hoa from June 21-28. The United Nations General Assembly designated June 21 as International Yoga Day in 2015.

AI-based Vietnamese-language solutions launched

General view of the launching ceremony. (Photo: VNA)

The Ministry of Information and Communications launched a Vietnamese-language speech-to-text generator, VAIS, and a text-to-speech engine, Vbee, during a ceremony in Hanoi on June 19. The launch took place as part of a series of events hosted by the ministry to introduce a selection of Made in Vietnam digital platforms contributing to the countrys digital transformation and e-Government building.

Addressing the event, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung said that VAIS and Vbee, sponsored by the ministry, are the two pioneering digital platforms in Vietnam using artificial intelligence to convert speech to text and vice versa. VAIS is able to recognise various Vietnamese accents from all northern, central and southern regions with an accuracy rate of up to 95% and immediately produces results at an exceptional speed, Hung said, adding that it can even convert speech to text effectively in a noisy environment or from a long distance.

Vietnam tennis resumes with VTF Masters 500 tournament in Tay Ninh

After a break of more than three months due to COVID-19, Vietnamese tennis officially restarted on June 15 with the National Men's and Women's Tennis Championship 2020 (VTF Masters 500-1-Hai Dang Cup 2020), held in Tay Ninh Province. According to the original plan from the Vietnam Tennis Federation (VTF), the tournament was to take place in the southern province in March, but all sports events across the country were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and tennis was no exception.

With the total prize money of VND500 million, the VTF Masters 500-1 is the highest award event hosted by the VTF this year, in collaboration with the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Tay Ninh Province and Hai Dang Joint Stock Company.
Days after lowering the outlook on India's sovereign rating to negative, Fitch on Monday said that escalating tensions with China may impact the country's medium term outlook. In a webinar on Monday, Fitch Ratings Director (Sovereign Ratings) Thomas Rookmaaker said that the recent tensions between New Delhi and Beijing arising out of the border issue may not have immediate effect on India's credit profile, but it could distract the government from executing the announced policy reforms and impact medium-term outlook.

"The most recent situation at the border with China doesn't impact the credit profile immediately. But the question is to what extent will the government be distracted by these kinds of developments in terms of delivering reforms," the Economic Times quoted Rookmaaker as saying.

On June 18, Fitch Ratings revised its outlook for India to negative from stable, citing increased risk to the country's growth due to coronavirus pandemic and challenges associated with a high public-debt burden. The agency has projected India's economic activity to contract by 5 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 2021 (FY21) due to the strict lockdown measures imposed by the government to contain the spread of virus. It expects growth to rebound, to 9.5 per cent next year, mainly due to low base.

Also Read: Fitch Ratings revises India's outlook to negative from stable; retains sovereign rating 'BBB-'

The agency expects the potential GDP growth rate of India in the medium term to be a "little bit" lower than the previous estimate of 6.5-7 per cent, impacted by new asset-quality challenges in banks as well as liquidity issues in NBFCs.

Rookmaaker further stated that India may announce another round of fiscal stimulus package, worth about 1 per cent of GDP in the coming months. The COVID-19 pandemic is still in India and it is "very likely" that the government will have to spend a bit more on fiscal measures to support the economy, he said.

Also Read: Fitch lowers Bharti Airtel's outlook to negative; retains ratings at 'BBB-'

"In our forecast we have factored in a larger stimulus package, not just 1 per cent of GDP of fiscal measures that have been announced so far. You may recall that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced 10 per cent of GDP as measures, but 9 percentage points were non-fiscal in nature. There was also an announcement of bond issuance, borrowing requirement of government and that was 2 percentage points of GDP," Rookmaaker said while addressing the Fitch Ratings webinar.

"That could give an indication that another 1 percentage points could come in the months ahead to provide relief for those who need it," he added.

By Chitranjan Kumar with PTI inputs
Harry Moore Appointed, Senior Partner, Head of Europe and Global Corporate Turnaround and Transformation

BEVERLY HILLS, CA and LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / NMS Consulting, Inc. ("NMS") is pleased to announce the acquisition of Moore Fleming Limited ("Moore Fleming"), a United Kingdom based management consultancy specializing in operational turnaround, business transformation, capital advisory, succession planning and family business advisory services through its merger with NMS Consulting (Europe) Ltd. In addition, NMS is pleased to announce the formal appointment of Dr. Harry Moore as Senior Partner, Head of Europe and Global Corporate Turnaround and Transformation. Dr. Moore shall also directly oversee the European expansion of NMS Consulting which recently launched with the opening of an office in Berlin, with additional offices scheduled to open soon in Frankfurt and Paris.

Founded by Dr. Moore in 2001, Moore Fleming has a proven track record as a niche management consulting boutique firm advising a global client base. Dr. Moore is an experienced international strategist and corporate turnaround director with a substantial pedigree, having led business transformation teams at both KMPG and PwC. In addition, he has been sponsored by the UK government to manage initiatives that he designed to secure the future of enterprises in the SME sector in the UK which resulted in saving some 135 UK businesses. He has served as an advisor to Coutts Bank of London on matters concerning family businesses. He is also a senior industry advisor to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and was involved in the transformation of USSR businesses and the creation of modern Russia, advising companies throughout eastern Europe on western business practices.

Dr. Harry Moore, Senior Partner, Head of Europe and Global Corporate Turnaround and Transformation said "This is a great move for Moore Fleming. It's integration into NMS Consulting Inc will enable further international expansion. NMS is a serious niche player in business transformation bringing fresh and innovative solutions for accelerated performance improvement into the SME and middle market sectors across Europe. I am personally very excited about heading up the new Pan- European consultancy service as well as a new global business transformation team."

Story continues

"We continue to invest in new talent and innovative solutions to best serve our global client base and I couldn't think of a better partner to lead our European expansion than Harry Moore and the addition of Moore Fleming" said, Trevor M. Saliba, Managing Partner "Harry is a leader with a proven track record and pedigree as a practitioner. The addition of Moore Fleming to bolster our European operations led by Harry is reflective of our steadfast commitment to providing clients with the local expertise, global reach and support from some of the most talented subject matter experts across multiple industries."

About NMS Consulting

NMS Consulting is a global strategic advisory and management consulting firm focused on delivering client solutions across three business units: management consulting, corporate advisory and strategic communications. The firm provides strategic counsel to private and public companies, governments, philanthropic organizations and the individuals who lead them.

For more information, please visit www.nmsconsulting.com.

Media Contact:

USA

Lili Swanson

+1.310.855.0020

info@nmsconsulting.com

EUROPE

Sophia Binder

+44 20 3895 3540

sbinder@nmsconsulting.com

SOURCE: NMS Consulting, Inc.





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/594746/NMS-Consulting-Announces-Acquisition-of-UK-Based-Management-Consultancy-Firm-Moore-Fleming-Limited




Jammu:

Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire four times on Monday by targeting forward posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch district with 120 mm mortar bombs and opening fire with automatic weapons, drawing retaliation from Indian troops.



There were reports of two civilians suffering minor injuries in the firing and shelling. Pakistan shelled posts along the LoC in Shahpur, Krishnagati, Mandi and Sabzian sectors of Poonch district.



Pakistan troops resorted to unprovoked firing in Mandi and Sabzian sectors of Poonch district from 1345 hours today, Defence Spokesman Col Manish Mehta said.

They fired 120 mm, 80 mm mortar bombs, automatic weapons and small arms, he said, adding the exchanges are going on. Earlier Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire in Poonch using small arms, automatic and mortar bombs (in Shahpur) in Poonch, he said.

Live updates | Baramulla army camp attacked; NSA Ajit Doval meets Chinese Ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui



It has appropriately been responded to, we have given them a befitting reply. The ceasefire violation is still on, he said. A police officer said the firing started at around 1045 hours and is going on. Pakistani troops had earlier briefly opened fire in Krishnagati sector of Poonch district around 0100 hours, officials said.

ALSO READ | HM Rajnath Singh praises Indian Army for surgical strikes across LoC



Deputy Commissioner of Poonch, Mohmmad Harun Malik said that as per reports from the border area, two civilian has suffered minor injuries. There have been four ceasefire violations today and 10 since the surgical strikes carried out by Indian Army on the intervening night of September 28 and 29.



Pakistan had opened fire in forward areas in Pallanwalabelt of Jammu district Sunday evening. On October 1, Pakistani troops had shelled Indian posts and civilian areas with mortar bombs, RPGS and HMGS amid small arms firing along LoC this sector.

ALSO READ | India and Pakistan's National Security Advisors looking for peaceful solutions along LOC, says Sartaj Aziz



There was heavy shelling of mortar bombs, RPGs and firing of Heavy Machine guns (HMGs) and small arms firing targeting forward positions along LoC in Pallanwala,Chhamb areas.



On September 30, Pakistani troops had opened fire from small arms along the LoC in Pallanwala, Chaprial and Samnam areas of Akhnoor sector of Jammu district.



On September 29, Pakistan troops had resorted to firing in Balnoie area of Mendhar sector. The Pakistani troops had violated the ceasefire on September 28 by opening fire on Indian army posts along LoC in Sabzian area Poonch sector.

Watch | Baramulla Army Camp attacked, 2 terrorists killed, one jawan from 46 Rashtriya Rifles martyred



On September 6, Pakistani troops had fired on Army posts along the LoC in Pooch sector. Pakistani troops had also violated the ceasefire on September 2 by firing on forward army posts along the LoC in Akhnoor sector of Jammu district. Last year, 16 civilians were killed and 71 others injured in 405 incidents of cross-border firing by Pakistan.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
(TNS)  As Congress grapples with national changes to police policy and other systemic problems tied to race, another government process is struggling to include minority communities: the 2020 census.Prior census efforts have undercounted minority populations, shortchanging them on the funds for programs that can help them find stable housing or employment training, changes that make them easier to count in the future, said Anna Gassman-Pines, a Duke University public policy professor.If you couple those things together, then that can accumulate over time and that can be part of the disparities we see in terms of race, she said. There are these structural problems that are compounded by more structural problems.In addition to helping to divide 435 congressional seats among the states, census results are used in some fashion to distribute more than $1.5 trillion in federal funds each year.In 2010, the census missed 2.1 percent of African Americans, 1.5 percent of Hispanics and 4.9 percent of Native Americans on reservations. Meanwhile, a little less than 1 percent of white residents got counted twice.The Census Bureau has made changes this cycle intended to cut down on undercounts, including translating advertising, questionnaires and other materials into more languages than ever before. It also has teamed up with more than 370,000 local partners, libraries and schools nationwide to encourage participation. It also prepared a mobile questionnaire assistance program to be tapped at local community events.However, the pandemic threw off agency plans, and Census Bureau officials delayed most of their counting efforts for months to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. In the meantime, the agency has encouraged self-response. Last week, it announced it had increased advertising buys in media outlets that target minority communities and restarted outreach events through its local partners.A Government Accountability Office report issued last week noted the agency planned to increase its $500 million advertising campaign by at least $160 million. But the report expressed concern that existing advertising and outreach efforts may not reach hard-to-count populations.Each past census that missed African American, Asian American or Hispanic residents potentially skewed the distribution of federal funds, according to George Washington University research professor Andrew Reamer.If a community is undercounted, the money does not go back to the Treasury  it goes to another community, he said.More than 300 federal programs use census data in some way, Reamer said. Undercounts can especially throw off funding for programs such as worker training, Community Development Block Grants and Title I education funding intended to help low-income students. Those programs alone accounted for more than $20 billion in spending in fiscal 2017, according to Reamers research.Theyre all based entirely on census data, and they are sensitive to undercounts of particular populations, Reamer said.Every person missed by the census results in funding that benefits someone else. That can have a serious impact within a community, said Whitney Tucker, acting policy director for NC Child. She pointed out that an estimated 25,000 children were missed in the 2010 count in North Carolina, where the child population is more racially and ethnically diverse than the adult one.That put stress on efforts such as the Childrens Health Insurance Program, Tucker said. After the 2010 census, the agency sought two waivers from the federal government to increase co-pays and cost-sharing for enrollees.All of these things really play off of each other and create a sort of trap in poorly invested communities, and we can fight that through the census, Tucker said.If this years census misses parts of the Hispanic or African American populations, it could throw off efforts to assess disparities those groups face in health care, policing and other aspects of society, said Arturo Vargas, who heads the nonprofit NALEO Educational Fund. Without an accurate census, previously undercounted communities also arent likely to get the political representation they deserve or a good picture of the social and economic challenges they face.If you dont start with that foundation of a fair and accurate census, then everything gets thrown off, Vargas said.NALEO has partnered with Telemundo to try to close the response rate gap between Hispanic communities and the country at large. On Wednesday, the two announced a census day of action, citing disproportionately lower response rates in counties with higher Latino populations in Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Massachusetts, Colorado, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia.Members of Congress have pushed the Census Bureau to address shortfalls in its count. House Democrats passed a bill that extended the agencys deadline to submit census results to the end of next March and gave another $300 million in funds, but the Senate has not acted yet on the legislation.Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pushed the agency to step up its efforts to reach hard-to-count people in the interim. In a letter last week to Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, she asked the agency to increase spending on advertising for minority-oriented media and expand in-person counting efforts.Whenever possible, avoid using administrative records for enumeration, since such records are often unavailable or lack comprehensive information for many historically undercounted population groups, Feinstein wrote.Congressional members on both sides of the aisle have publicly promoted census participation. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said during a Facebook event Monday that Asian Americans face potential undercounts in the census because a large proportion of the population are young or immigrants.When (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) are missing from the census, we lose resources and political power that are critical to our community, Chu said.
Deadly bomb blasts rip through Somali towns

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 9:57 AM

Two bombing attacks have killed seven people in the southern and central parts of Somalia.

Officials in police and military forces said on Sunday that the two attacks had occurred in the past 24 hours.

In the first incident, two bombs planted in front of the house of a military official in Wanlaweyn Town, 90 kilometers northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, went off late on Saturday, killing four people, including soldiers and civilians.

"First we heard a blast at the house. The military officer was absent by then. Guards and residents came to find out what caused the blast, and then a second blast went off," Mohamed Nur, an officer from the Wanlaweyn police, told Reuters on Sunday.

In the second incident, three militants blew up their car at a security checkpoint in Bacadweyn Town in central Somalia's Galmudug State on Sunday.

Three soldiers died and two others were wounded in the attack, according to Major Abdullahi Ahmed, a military officer in the nearby town of Galkayo.

The usual suspect in such attacks is the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militant group.

The Takfiri outfit was driven out of Mogadishu with the help of international African Union forces in 2011.

Since then, its power has diminished in most of its former main strongholds.

However, the group still wields significant influence in the vast swathes of the countryside, from where it recruits, coordinates, and launches attacks against government, military, and civilian targets in Somalia and neighboring countries.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






As the world is still battling the Coronavirus crisis, Covid's origin China which is accused of not being truthful about various facets of the pandemic's outbreak on its shores but nonetheless appears to have overcome the crisis for the time being, is also now accused of trying expand its territory in accordance with the well-documented expansionist mindset of the Chinese Communist Party. China has already fuelled up the tensions with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) after the Galwan Valley incident of June 15. According to media reports, China, in addition to its history-sheeter activities in the South China Sea, it also looking to seize areas of Japan and Taiwan.

Japan is increasing its air defence

However, to respond to the 'dragon', Japan has deployed its missiles towards its border facing China and has also increased the strength of its army, according to a report in Asia News. It said that in view of Chinas war intentions, Japan is increasing its air defence.

The island nation will implement the Patriot Pac-3 MSE Air Defense Missile System deployment at four military bases by June this year. US-Japan News has cited that, Pac-3 MSE is capable of countering any hit-to-kill. The current Patriot PAC-3 deployed in Japan has a maximum range of 70 km and has been increased to 100 km in the new version of the PAC-3 MSE.

In December 2017, Lockheed Martin signed a $944 million contract to deliver Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and PAC-3 missile segment enhancement missiles to the US and allied countries.

According to the report, the upgraded PAC-3 MSE increases its firepower as well as increases its height and performance. The PAC-3 MSE is a high-velocity interceptor that detects incoming threats in advance. This includes tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.

READ | Japan spots unknown submarine in its territorial waters near Amami Islands

READ | Japan's economy reopening cautiously, balancing health risks

Armed forces get extended financial powers

Meanwhile, in a major boost to Indian armed forces, the Centre on Sunday gave the three defence forces financial powers up to Rs 500 crore per project for the acquisition of critical ammunition required in case an all-out or limited conflict breaks out, according to ANI. This move has been taken in amid the Galwan valley face-off where 20 soldiers were martyred.

Similar financial powers were given to the armed forces after the Uri attack and the Balakot aerial strikes against Pakistan. "The Vice Chiefs of the three services have been given the financial powers up to Rs 500 crore per project to acquire the required weapon systems under fast track procedures needed to fill whatever shortcomings or requirement is felt," a senior government official told ANI.

READ | Japan: Public support for Shinzo Abe rises despite ex-justice minister's arrest

READ | Japan opens baseball season after 3-month pandemic delay
In "The Room Where It Happened," Bolton claims it was the idea of the South Korean government to arrange a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to try and announce an end to the Korean War.

Former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton's memoir has proved far less explosive than the global media had hoped, but among the few nuggets it yields is the revelation that the first U.S.-North Korea summit in 2018 was South Korea's idea.

The memoirs hits bookstores this week after efforts to ban it by the Trump administration failed.

According to the book, the June 2018 Singapore summit between Trump and Kim was proposed by Cheong Wa Dae National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong during a visit to the White House in March of that year. Bolton writes that Chung delivered Kim's "invitation" to Trump, who accepted it on the spot.

Bolton adds that Chung later admitted that he was also the one who asked the North Korean leader to invite Trump. Chung visited Pyongyang the same month 2018 and flew to Washington shortly afterwards.

Bolton, a notorious hawk and chief promoter of the catastrophic Iraq War, adds that the summit idea reflected the "South Korean government's unification agenda" rather than the genuine strategic interests of the U.S.

He adds that he initially thought declaring a formal end to the Korean War, which was halted only by a truce, was North Korea's idea, but found out belatedly that it was part of Moon's agenda. Bolton speculates that North Korea too believed the declaration was Moon's idea and it did not care too much about it.

He asks why the U.S. needed to pursue such a declaration. Bolton adds that Moon asked Kim during their April 2018 summit in the border truce village of Panmunjom to denuclearize North Korea within a year and Kim agreed.

Chung in a statement Monday said "a considerable portion of [Bolton's memoirs] is distorted" based on "his own viewpoints." He also accused him of "unilaterally disclosing details of diplomatic consultations" which would greatly damage trust in future negotiations and violate the basic principle of diplomacy.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 20

By Eldar Janashvili  Trend:

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has continued to negatively affect the domestic economic activity of Azerbaijan since May, Trend reports with reference to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA).

However, the statistics show that the government responds well to the external shocks, said the CBA.

Monitoring of real sector enterprises by the CBA shows that the index of business confidence in the non-oil industry, construction, trade and services was in the negative zone in May, the bank added.

From January through May 2020, the retail trade turnover of the country declined by 1.7 percent compared to the same period of 2020, the CBA said.

During five months of this year, the cost of chargeable services provided to the countrys population decreased by 14.9 percent. Meanwhile, investments in non-oil sector dropped 16.7 percent.

Nevertheless, economic growth in the basic sectors of the economy, that is, oil and gas industry and agriculture continued over the reporting period, said the official statistics.

Full implementation of the obligations by the government on social expenditures, additional support measures, as well as synchronized macroprudential measures, will prevent a further decline in economic activity and will partially compensate for the loss in income of economic entities.

Also, despite the decline in exports by 19 percent over the year, the foreign trade balance remained surplus. Downward import trends have a balancing effect on the external balance, and its possible that in the first half of 2020 account of payments balance will be in surplus.

(1 USD = 1.7 AZN on June 20)

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @eldarjanashvili
Nightjar Productions Ltd.; Courtesy of Hard Rock InternationalQueen drummer Roger Taylor has released a new original solo song titled "Isolation" that we can only assume was inspired by life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taylor played all of the instruments and handled all vocals on the track, which is available now as a digital download and via streaming services. You also can check it out at Roger's official YouTube channel.

The slow-paced tune, which boasts an acoustic glam-rock feel, kicks off with Taylor singing, "So here we sit in isolation/We calm our fears, we're marking time/An endless tide of information/We find our feet, we're doing fine."

In other Queen-related news, a new line of Freddie Mercury-inspired merchandise is available for purchase now at the Hard Rock online store. The collection was created as part of Hard Rock International's long-running partnership with The Mercury Phoenix Trust, the charity founded in Freddie's memory by Taylor, Queen guitarist Brian May and the band's manager, Jim Beach, to raise money for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The new merch, released in conjunction with Pride Month, includes t-shirts, pins, hats and more, as well as a host of co-branded events. The collection is named of one of Hard Rock's core mottos, "All Is One," and the items feature the silhouette of Mercury and a rainbow design.

"As a brand committed to honoring our core mottoes and philanthropic values, we are thrilled to continue our long-standing partnership with The Mercury Phoenix Trust by offering a Pride merchandise collection highlighting our passion for celebrating equality," says Hard Rock International executive Benito Mendez. "Throughout Pride Month and beyond, Hard Rock remains dedicated to supporting the important work done by foundations like The Mercury Phoenix Trust."

By Matt Friedlander

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
New Delhi: India and China are holding Corps Commander-level meeting at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) opposite Chushul to discuss the ongoing dispute in Ladakh, Indian Army sources said on Monday.

This is the second meeting between the two Corps Commanders after June 6 where they had agreed to disengage at multiple locations and India had asked them to go back to pre-May 4 military positions along the LAC.

The Chinese have not given any response to the Indian proposal and have not even shown any intent on the ground to withdraw its troops from rear positions where they have amassed over 10,000 troops.

India is also likely to discuss the change in rules of engagement on the LAC where the forces have been empowered to use firearms in extraordinary circumstances, the sources said

The Indian side will also ask China to honour the commitment given during June 6 talks to disengage in the Galwan valley completely and other places.

The build-up of Chinese air assets including strategic bombers by the PLA Air Force in fields near Indian territory close to Ladakh are also likely to be taken up for discussion.

Since last month, India and China have been involved in talks to smoothen the ongoing border tensions. However, last week as many as 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives in the face-off in the Galwan Valley after an attempt by the Chinese troops to unilaterally change the status quo during the de-escalation in eastern Ladakh.

The Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured in the violent clash.
It was a good start to the week on D-St. The bulls pushed Indian markets higher on June 22 amid muted global cues but selling in the last hour of the trade suggests that rallies towards 35,000 on the Sensex and 10500 on the Nifty will be met with resistance.

The S&P BSE Sensex cooled off the high of 35,213 but did end the day 179 points higher at 34,911. The Nifty, which tested 10,400, failed to hold on to the gains but rallied 66 points to close at 10,311.

Despite muted global cues and rising fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections, Indian markets focused on regulatory approvals for domestic pharma companies to manufacture COVID-19 drug, experts say.

"In spite renewed global concerns over a second wave of coronavirus infections, Indian markets ended positive. Markets chose to focus on regulatory approvals to domestic pharma companies to manufacture COVID-19 treatment drugs and the expectation that this would lead to faster recoveries," Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said.

"As such, the pharma index was the major sectoral gainer in todays trade. Concerns remain with regard to the increasing infections and the ongoing situation with China, and investors are advised to keep a short term outlook for the time being.

Sectorally, the action was seen in power, metals, public sector, healthcare, banks, and telecom stocks while profit-taking was visible in IT stocks. The NiftyBank closed 1.7 percent higher at 21,798, supported by gains in IDFC First Bank, RBL Bank, Bandhan Bank and Federal Bank.

The broader market outperformed the benchmarks. The S&P BSE Midcap index rose 2 percent while the S&P BSE Smallcap was up 1.3 percent.

Top Nifty gainers included Coal India, Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Auto.

Top Nifty losers included HDFC, ONGC, GAIL India and Wipro.

Stocks & Sectors

Sectorally, the S&P BSE Power index rose 2.7 percent, S&P BSE Metal index 2.6 percent and the S&P BSE Public Sector gained 2.6 percent. The S&P BSE IT index fell 0.3 percent.

A volume spike of more than 100 percent was seen in stocks like Lupin, PNB, MRF, Cipla, JustDial, Glenmark Pharma and Idea Cellular.

Long Buildup was seen in stocks like Idea Cellular, Glenmark Pharma, Century Textiles, and Bajaj Auto.

Short Buildup was seen in stocks like LIC Housing Finance, Marico, and ONGC.

More than 140 stocks on the BSE hit a 52-week high. These included Bayer Cropscience, Dixon Tech, RIL, Ruchi Soya, Aarti Drugs, Alembic Pharma, and Cipla.

Stocks in news

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals stock price surged over 28 percent after the pharma company said it received regulatory approval to make and sell oral antiviral drug favipiravir for treating mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections in the country.

Indiabulls Housing Finance share price zoomed almost 20 percent after global investment bank Morgan Stanley picked up a stake in the company.

Cipla shares rose over 3 percent after the country's drug regulator on June 20 gave permission to the company and Hetero to manufacture and market antiviral drug remdesivir.

Punjab National Bank stock price jumped almost 4 percent after the lender's asset quality improved as the Gross Non-Performing Assets (NPA) were at 14.21 percent for the quarter ended March 2020 versus 15.50 percent, YoY.

IT stocks including Infosys, Mindtree, TCS and Wipro ended in the red following reports that the US may ban non-immigrant visas such as H-1B.

Technical View

The Nifty formed a Doji pattern on daily charts. It registered an intraday breakout above previous swing high of 10328 levels but failed to sustain above it.

Experts say a close below the 10,275 zone may see some more profit- booking.

The immediate support for the index is coming near 10,250-10,160 zone and resistance near 10,400-10,500.

The Nifty Bank ended the day at 21,708, with gains of nearly 2 percent but it failed to hold above its strong hurdle zone of 22k and saw some profit booking.

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
"I dropped off some new pyjamas to an old mate in hospital," says Paul McKinnon of Old Toongabbie. "The next day, during a FaceTime request to speak to his dog, he told me that the tops had collar buttons and asked if he was supposed to wear a tie. Maybe?"

Isn't it obvious? "Not long after the Sydney Harbour Bridge toll-gate booths were erected, a car ploughed into one of them, causing severe damage," writes Peter Johnson of Hunters Hill. "Two men appeared as if by magic with tubes of fast-acting glue and quickly repaired the booth. When asked what the wonderful product was called the driver was informed, 'It's called toll-gate booth paste'."

"So tell me, is the Mayor of the Blue Mountains City Council really named Mark Greenhill?" asks Don Leayr of Albury.

Rob Woof of South Hurstville has a theory: "Perhaps the reason plumbers don't have a nickname (C8) is that 'plumber' rolls off the tongue in a way that bricklayer, electrician and carpenter do not."

Despite Rob's premise, there was still a flood of suggestions from readers. There are many, so just try to go with the flow. Drippies (Rob Cummins of Turramurra), dunny divers (Glynn Stiller of Bowral), rich (Neil Maclean of Bowral), turd burglars (Bruce Colbey of Harrington Park) and flushies (Roderick van Gelder of Hunters Hill). Ingo Weinberger of Campsie adds that "from time to time a plumber is required to stick his arm round the U-bend. There is no nickname for that."
A self-administered jab could halt a heart attack in its earliest stages and save thousands of lives in the UK each year.

The drug comes in a pre-loaded autoinjector device for use at home, and is to be offered to those who have already had a heart attack and are at risk of another.

Heart attacks typically occur when a clot blocks the blood supply to the heart. Rapid treatment to restore the supply is crucial in order to minimise damage to heart tissue.

More than 100,000 hospital admissions in the UK each year are due to heart attacks, according to the British Heart Foundation, and heart and circulatory diseases cause nearly 170,000 deaths each year [File photo]

Normally, anti-clotting drugs such as thrombolytics or fibrinolytics are administered by doctors via injection. These target and destroy a compound called fibrin, a tough protein that forms a mesh that slows blood, encouraging a clot to form.

The drugs cause the clot to break up but this process can take several hours, and brings a risk of bleeding.

Patients may also need a stent to open a blocked artery or more anti-clotting medication, including aspirin. The new drug, selatogrel, is thought to work earlier in the process.

Clots develop when fatty deposits in the blood vessel wall rupture: blood cells gather around the area and clump together to form a clot.

The drug comes in a pre-loaded autoinjector device for use at home, and is to be offered to those who have already had a heart attack and are at risk of another [File photo]

Selatogrel is thought to disrupt this process, preventing the full clot from forming.

Heart attack symptoms tend to build over time, and at an early stage patients may have only mild chest pain or discomfort.

Try this... The Great British Porridge Companys range of flavoured instant porridges has no added sugar, are high in fibre and contain more than 10 per cent protein. 385g, 3.99, waitrose.com Advertisement

Results from a study carried out in 18 centres around the world, involving 345 patients in the early stages of a heart attack, show that a single injection (administered to the thigh or abdomen) has an anti-clotting impact within 15 minutes, with the effects lasting up to eight hours.

Rob Storey, a professor of cardiology at the University of Sheffield, who led the study, reported in the European Heart Journal, says: In the initial stages of a heart attack, blood clots can come and go or take hours to build up, so anti-clotting medication may help to stop a heart attack. Aspirin can have a fairly rapid effect but, by itself, has a relatively weak anti-clotting action.

Professor Storey says selatogrel may halt some heart attacks by stopping the blood clot from completely blocking the heart artery. The drug is about to be used in larger trials with patients who have had a heart attack.

More than 100,000 hospital admissions in the UK each year are due to heart attacks, according to the British Heart Foundation, and heart and circulatory diseases cause nearly 170,000 deaths each year.

Dr Punit Ramrakha, a consultant cardiologist at Hammersmith Hospital in West London, says: Selatogrel is an intramuscular injection that is easy to administer and starts working rapidly. It is an exciting new weapon in our armoury against heart attacks.

Getting the annual flu vaccine can lead to a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of having a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, in the following year, according to a new review.

Writing in the journal Vaccine, the authors suggest the jab may trigger the production of antibodies that protect the heart.

Researchers, from Tours University Hospital in France, have shown that a protective protein called the bradykinin B2 receptor is switched on by some of the antibodies the body produces after the flu vaccination. The team says more research is warranted.

Listening to music could beat cream for itchy skin

Music is twice as effective as creams for easing itchiness caused by conditions such as psoriasis, dermatitis and eczema, reports the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.

In a trial of 50 patients at Brest University Hospital in France, half were told to listen to music for 20 minutes, while the rest were given moisturisers to apply. They then rated how itchy they were.

Results show symptoms improved by 2.3 points in the music group compared to 1.2 in the moisturiser group.

It is thought music distracts you and may inhibit nerve signals coming from the skin.

In a trial of 50 patients at Brest University Hospital in France, half were told to listen to music for 20 minutes, while the rest were given moisturisers to apply. They then rated how itchy they were [File photo]

Peas are being tested as a treatment for post-exercise muscle soreness in a trial at Exeter University. The effects of a vegan supplement, based on pea protein, will be compared with milk-based whey (which is already known to help with muscle soreness) and a placebo in 48 participants in the trial.

Numbing spray helps men last longer in bed

An anaesthetic spray used in dental surgeries may help prevent premature ejaculation, which is thought to affect one in five men in the UK.

New research obtained from a trial on 150 men shows that the lidocaine spray, applied ten to 20 minutes before sex, led to improvement in symptoms  including an increase in time to ejaculation  compared to a placebo spray, reported the International Journal of Impotence Research.

The spray was used over eight weeks by the men who took part in the trial.

It works by making the penis less sensitive, say the dermatologists from Sohag University in Egypt, who carried out the research.

TB vaccine better if given into vein

Giving the tuberculosis vaccine intravenously makes it far more effective, according to a new study.

Tuberculosis is one of the most infectious diseases and kills around 1.5 million people globally each year  partly because the current BCG vaccine, which is given under the skin, is unreliable.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that monkeys given the vaccine straight into the vein had almost total protection.

Those given the standard jab had only slightly more protection than those given nothing at all.

The new approach will be tested in humans once its safety has been established.

Giving the tuberculosis vaccine intravenously makes it far more effective, according to a new study [File photo]

Dangling your feet may ease knee pain

Sleeping with your feet hanging over the end of the bed could ease the pain of knee arthritis, suggest researchers at the University of Bradford.

In a trial involving more than 50 people, half will be asked to change their sleep position so that their lower legs hang over the end of the mattress while lying on their backs; the others will sleep as normal.

It is thought that the feet-over-the-end-of-bed position prevents the knee being pushed into full extension, which in turn should provide pain relief. The trial participants will be quizzed regularly over a four-month period about their levels of pain.

Robot ends misery of swollen arms

Robot surgery may help ease lymphoedema, a common and often painful side-effect of breast cancer surgery.

The standard operation to alleviate lymphoedema  which affects about one in five women who have had lymph nodes removed, causing limb swelling  is so intricate it isnt offered routinely to patients.

Eight women at Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands had the robot-assisted procedure to ease their arm lymphoedema.

The robot, which the surgeon operates via joysticks, prevents tremors in the surgeons hands and makes the procedure on the tiny vessels, from 0.3 mm to 0.8 mm in diameter, easier, doctors wrote in Nature Communications. Larger trials are planned.

Old drugs new tricks

Drugs with new uses. This week: Tamoxifen

Initially approved for use in 1977, tamoxifen is a hormone therapy for certain types of breast cancer that are linked with the hormone oestrogen (known as oestrogen receptor positive, or ER+, breast cancer).

Oestrogen binding to cells is thought to encourage some cancer cells to divide and multiply. Tamoxifen works by blocking the oestrogen from doing this.

A review of research revealed tamoxifen also showed potential in treating episodes of mania in patients with bipolar disorder, reported the Journal of Psycho- pharmacology in 2019.

Studies have suggested that tamoxifen can inhibit the action of a compound called protein kinase C, which is similar to how current treatments for the condition (such as lithium and valproate) work.

Initially approved for use in 1977, tamoxifen is a hormone therapy for certain types of breast cancer that are linked with the hormone oestrogen (known as oestrogen receptor positive, or ER+, breast cancer) [File photo]

Eat more

Watermelon  it may reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, according to a study by San Diego University.

Overweight adults who ate a portion daily for four weeks also reduced their weight. The watermelon apparently made them feel fuller.

Watermelon  it may reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, according to a study by San Diego University

What's in a name?

The diseases named after people. This week: Graves disease

Graves disease occurs when the bodys immune system mistakenly attacks the thyroid gland in the neck.

As a result, it produces excessive amounts of hormones that the body cannot process, causing the gland to enlarge, known as goitre.

In some cases, one or both eyeballs protrude, as the immune system attacks the tissue and muscles behind the eye.

The disease, diagnosed with a blood test, is more common in women. It is treated with medication or radioactive iodine, both to reduce hormone production.

In 1835, Irish physician Robert Graves is thought to be the first to describe an enlarged thyroid gland in the neck as a symptom of the most common form of hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid.
Despite Donald Trump claiming he was not involved in firing a key US attorney believed to be investigating the president and his associates, his top spokeswoman confirmed Monday he signed off on the sacking.

Attorney General William Barr said Saturday that with Mr Trump's approval he had fired Geoffrey Berman as US attorney for Manhattan, a post that saw him oversee the Southern District of New York. The powerful branch of the Justice Department has been investigating a list of things related to Mr Trump, which has reportedly angered the president.

Mr Barr said he had offered Mr Berman a position at Justice Department headquarters and intended to nominate Securities and Exchange Commissioner Jay Clayton to take his place.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday said Mr Berman "decided not to leave" his post in New York, prompting Mr Barr to seek permission to fire him.

"At that point, that's when the president agreed with the attorney general," she said. "He was involved in a sign-off capacity."

That is much more nuanced that what Mr Trump told reporters on Saturday as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Oklahoma.

"Well, that's all up to the Attorney General," Mr Trump said. "Attorney General Barr is working on that. That's his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general. So that's really up to him. I'm not involved."

Even before the Senate had gotten back to work this week, New York's two senators, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, called on the White House to not even bother formally nominating Mr Clayton.

That's because long-standing Senate protocol allows senators to block nominees for US attorney posts in their home states to which they object. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, says he will adhere to the practice.

But Mr Graham, a Trump critic-turned-ally, says the president was within his authorities to remove Mr Berman. Democrats are still howling that he again abused his power.
The worlds top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is creating a tourism development fund with an initial investment of US$4 billion as part of efforts to diversify away from oil and polish its image as an attractive tourism destination.

OPECs biggest oil producer, which allowed women to drive for the first time in 2018, is looking at developing tourism as part of its Vision 2030 program to have its economy less dependent on oil and more open to foreign investment.

The Tourism Development Fund will play a critical role in developing outstanding tourism experiences and unlocking the full potential of Saudi Arabia as a destination, Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb said in a statement, reported by Saudi Gazette.

The launch of the fund at this time, as the tourism sector faces unprecedented global challenges, is testament to investor and private-sector confidence in the long-term outlook for tourism in Saudi Arabia. The social and economic importance of the sector cannot be understated: it drives growth and diversification, attracts international investment, creates job opportunities and enhances quality of life for millions of Saudis, the minister noted.

Last year, Saudi Arabia launched a new visa regime to attract international tourists, but it will likely have to wait for years until tourists start traveling after the pandemic again and choosing the Kingdom as a destination.



Related: Whats Next For Big Oil?

Saudi Arabias economy is suffering from the sharp contraction in oil revenues due to the oil price crash, reduced demand, and the OPEC+ cuts that made the Saudis slash their production to 8.5 million bpd from 12 million bpd in April.

Diversification has also been an issue with the Saudi economy despite years of assurances that the Vision 2030 is doing that.

The World Bank said in its Global Economic Prospects report earlier this month that the oil price collapse during the pandemic is yet another reminder for energy-exporting emerging markets to diversify their oil-dependent economies.

Even if oil prices rise as global oil demand recovers, the recent plunge in prices is another reminder for oil-exporting countries of the urgency to continue with reforms to diversify their economies, Ayhan Kose, Director of the World Banks Prospects Group, commented.

By Tsvetana Paraskova

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Gandhinagar, June 22 : Former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankersinh Vaghela on Monday quit the Nationalist Congress Party in protest over the recent change in its state leadership and other political developments.

Vaghela, fondly known as Bapu by his supporters, on Monday tendered his resignation from the post of NCP national General Secretary as well as from its primary membership to NCP President Sharad Pawar.

In his letter to Pawar, Vaghela stressed his displeasure of his removal from the post of state President and offering it to Jayant Patel (Boski), a former NCP legislator. He also expressed his displeasure against the lone NCP legislator in Gujarat, Kandhal Jadeja, who voted in favour of BJP candidate, Narhari Amin, going against the party whip of voting in Congress's favour in the Rajya Sabha elections held on Friday.

"On the day of the change in the presidentship in the state NCP and due to the recent political developments, despair has spread among the entire party workers, leaders and taluka, district and state functionaries. In view of the aforesaid reasons, I express my resignation along with resignations of other functionaries," said Vaghela in his letter.

Meanwhile, the NCP on Monday issued notice to Jadeja for not following the party whip to vote for the Congress candidate.

Vaghela, a former BJP member, had quit the saffron party in 1996, to form his own Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP) to form government in Gujarat with the Congress's support.

Hi later merged his party with the Congress. In 2017, prior to the Rajya Sabha elections, he quit the Congress and formed his own party. He had joined the NCP in 2019.
Drew Angerer/Getty

White House officials and President Donald Trump loyalists tried on Sunday to walk back remarks he made over the weekend in which he told rally-goers that he had asked officials to slow COVID-19 testing so as to decrease the number of confirmed cases in the U.S.

He was obviously kidding, one White House official told The Daily Beast. Peter Navarro, senior adviser to Trump, told CNN on Sunday that the presidents words were tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken seriously.

But two officials working on the coronavirus response within the Trump administration, as well as state officials and experts in emergency response, told The Daily Beast that they did not take the presidents remarks lightly. Whether facetious or not, they argued, the casual indifference Trump displayed towards testing at his Tulsa rally only reaffirmed that his administration was not prepared when the pandemic response hitand may still not be.

I always feared this was what was happening, said one state health official who coordinates with the federal government on testing. But his speech last night really made it seem like maybe this is the reason why they were slow to get us the resources we needed to do the testing.

And two administration officials, both of whom have worked alongside the presidents task force, said Trumps speech Saturday reignited longstanding fears among some working on his coronavirus response that the administration may have attempted to find ways to deflate the U.S. case count.

How Many Undetected COVID-19 Cases Are Out There?

For more than a month, state and local officials called on the federal government to help with testing resources so they could better understand the scale of the virus outbreak in their communities. The testing plan put in place by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner had fallen short of expectations and governors called out the administration for failing to quickly create a system whereby states could procure test kits and administer them to residents with symptoms. Some municipalities were left waiting so long for help that local officials were forced to settle for contracts with local labs with limited testing capacity. While testing numbers have ramped up in recent weeks and months, some officials say its too late.

Story continues

And while Trumps remarks raise questions about whether the administration held offdeliberately or through negligenceon implementing testing plans, they also underscore the degree to which the president is comfortable making light of a virus that has killed more than 120,000 people in the U.S.

Current and former officials say the White Houses insistence that the president was just joking is difficult to believe in part because Trump has made similar comments in the past.

The quote last night was the natural progression of what hes been saying publicly for a while: If you dont test then theres not a problem, said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. You dont have to search very hard to know Trump has been a testing skeptic and last night he just said the quiet part out loud.

Trumps COVID Data Crunchers See Coronavirus Racing Down Americas Major Highways

A senior Trump administration health official told The Daily Beast that while Trumps statements dont necessarily reflect reality inside the administration, the presidents thinking on testingthat more tests would mean bring more scrutiny is well-known among those working on the governments COVID-19 response.

Since the start of the coronavirus crisis in our country the President has ignored experts, denied facts, and put his self-interest ahead of Americans livesand here he is saying so, said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), referring to the Presidents Tulsa speech. Murray is the ranking member of the Senates Committee on Health, Labor and Pensions.

Since the beginning of the outbreak in the U.S., Trump has sought to deflect the blame for the increasing coronavirus cases and related deaths. When the first cruise ship with coronavirus patients docked in California after traveling to Japan, the president told reporters he was not responsible for the increase in case numbers because the individuals had contracted the virus elsewhere. For weeks, the administration tried to tally case numbers based on those that originated in the U.S. and those that originated overseas. And as the pandemic continued to worsen, Trump said the numbers in the U.S. were increasing because the country had scaled UP testing initiatives, even as health officials say an uptick in cases doesnt necessarily result from an uptick in testing.

The Daily Beast previously reported that Trump and members of his coronavirus task force have pushed officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count COVID-related deaths. The president in May privately raised suspicion about the number of fatalities in the United States and in talks with top officials, he suggested that those numbers could have been incorrectly tallied or even inflated by current methodology.

CDC officials have previously said that state health departments are still catching up on calculating the total number of cases and related deaths in the country, particularly in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

And the Trump administration seems to continue to try and shrug off the fact that several states across the south and southwestern parts of the country are experiencing significant spikes in case numbers where increased testing is not a contributing factor.

The joke is on us, Kayyem said. We stayed inside weeks on weeks with the unstated social contract that it was going to give the nation time to have alternatives to social distancing. And they didnt do it. The nationwide testing plan never panned out like they said it would.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!

Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:23:56|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

PHNOM PENH, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese doctors have provided the first online training course on echocardiography to Cambodian volunteer doctors to help them diagnose children with the Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), an organizer said Monday.

Chea Monyrith, manager of the CHD project in Cambodia, said the course was held recently in capital Phnom Penh, with the participation of 10 Cambodian volunteer doctors from various cities and provinces.

"Chinese doctors at the Fuwai Yunnan Cardiovascular Hospital had used online platform Zoom to teach them (Cambodian volunteer doctors) on how to use echocardiography devices," he told Xinhua. "Through the course, I believe that they will be able to screen children for the CHD."

He said the course was part of the China-Cambodia Love Heart Journey program that was launched in January 2018. Under the three-year program, China will provide 150 Cambodian children who have CHD with free surgeries.

He said the CHD project in Cambodia has so far assisted the Chinese medical team to carry out heart checks for more than 100,000 school children in 15 Cambodian cities and provinces for the CHD. Enditem
Forty five patients were discharged from Lagos State isolation facilities on Sunday, following their full recovery from coronavirus.

The Lagos State Ministry of Health gave the update via its Twitter handle.

Total recoveries in the state stands at 1,328 as of Monday.

Today, 45 fully recovered COVID-19 Lagos patients; 18 females & 27 males were discharged from our Isolation facilities to reunite with the society.

The patients; 20 from Gbagada, 9 from Onikan, 2 from Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, 1 from Agidingbi, 1 from Lekki & 12 from LUTH Isolation Centres were discharged after testing negative to COVID-19.

With this, the number of COVID-19 cases successfully managed & discharged in Lagos has risen to 1328, the ministry wrote.

Lagos recorded 169 news cases of the infection on Sunday, bringing the total confirmed cases in the state to 8,576.

Nigerias COVID-19 infections also exceeded 20,000 on Sunday after 436 new cases were recorded.

As of Monday, Nigeria has recorded 6,879 discharged cases and 518 deaths from COVID-19.

Lagos residents are urged to engage the toll free helpline of the state; 08000CORONA= 08000267662 for all COVID-19 issues.

Residents are encouraged to reduce the spread of COVID-19 through frequent washing of hands, physical distancing and abiding by other health and safety protocols.
Next time you're in Iceland, you might as well bump into the Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir. This is exactly what happened with CNN anchor and correspondent Max Foster who happened to bump into Jakobsdottir while she was on her way to work.

With no security guards and armed men on her side, Jakobsdottir got into a candid interview of sorts with Foster. "So, Prime Minister, why should people visit Iceland," the journalist asked the PM.

Jakobsdottir obliged and said, "Iceland is a good place to be and visit. I hope it is a good place to visit. But I think, the biggest reason to visit Iceland is to see its nature. It's amazing and outstanding."

Amused to bump into the PM on the street, Foster said, "I mean you can just walk around and bump into the prime minister, which is pretty extraordinary."

"If you find that interesting, yes," the Iceland Prime Minister added as she headed to her office.

The video shot on TikTok soon went viral on social media leaving many amused by the ease of access to the chief of the country.

When you bump into the PM of the country on her way to office pic.twitter.com/kFq7Ew20cK KAMLESH SINGH / BANA (@kamleshksingh) June 20, 2020

Interestingly, many Indian users on Twitter caught hold of the video and reacted in the most Indian way.

I bump into my area MP so many times...population probably 10 times that of Ice Land...!!! Bodhisattwa Dasgupta (@bodhijobs) June 21, 2020

I also meet my nagarpalika adhyaksha daily. In grocery lines and bazar.. 3 lac is population BHAVESH AMBEKAR (@bhavesh_ambekar) June 21, 2020

Happens When population of Iceland country is less than population of Bharatpur city.. Pri- (@preb0y) June 21, 2020

I bump into the Manager in charge of the IT park that I work. Has more or less the population of Iceland working there!! Prasanth Prabhu (@pprasant) June 21, 2020

Population of my city similar to Iceland 3.56lakh still our mayor beyond our reach siva barik   (@sivabarik) June 21, 2020

Meanwhile, 44-year-old Katrin Jakobsdottir is currently serving as the 28th Prime Minister of Iceland and assumed office back in 2017.
Nurture or nature? When children grow up and follow in their parents footsteps, for better or worse, many wonder if their choices are based on how they were raised or simply genetic. Of course, if their paths lead to success and happiness, parents take credit for the nurturing. Likewise, if the kids choices lead to failure and misery, its often attributed to a fluke of nature. So what do we make of this family tree?

Exterior evening shot of film producer Ken Kao's sleek, glass-heavy Beverly Hills mansion.

When American film producer Ken Kao and his wife, Japanese fashion model Jessica Michibata, purchased one of the most stunning estates in Los Angeles, it was initially kept a secret. Only after several months of sleuthing did the sale of the mansion, designed by architect Noah Walker and built on speculation by Nathan Frank, a concert violinist and scrap metal industry giant, go public.

Exterior daytime shot of film producer Ken Kao's sleek, glass-heavy Beverly Hills mansion.

Inside the sleek, minimalist living spaces of Ken Kao's new Beverly Hills mansion.

The two-structure manor sits on a three-and-a-half-acre parcel in the mountains that overlook Beverly Hills. Its further complemented by the natural countryside of the area, including 130 native oak trees scattered throughout the property. Upon completion in 2015, one of Chinas most renowned film producers and investors, James Wang, bought the property for $19.9 million. Four years later, he sold it to Michibata and Kao for an all-cash payment of $22.5 million.

The sleek, minimalist interiors of film producer Ken Kao's new Beverly Hills Mansion.

The sleek, minimalist interiors of film producer Ken Kao's new Beverly Hills Mansion.

The sleek, minimalist interiors of film producer Ken Kao's new Beverly Hills Mansion.

The sleek, minimalist interiors of film producer Ken Kao's new Beverly Hills Mansion.

The 8,000-square-foot main house has an uncharacteristic floor plan. All the communal rooms are positioned above the bedrooms, which themselves are partially sunken into the hillside under a live roof of edible herbs. The two-story 2,000-square-foot guesthouse is a renovated barn topped with a wood-clad upper floor. Like the main house, it also merges seamlessly with the surrounding nature. Glass walls and open-concept common areas give both structures an open, airy feeling.

The second structure that makes up Kao's new mansion is a revitalized wooden farmhouse.

Two of the most fantastic features of the Michibata-Kao home are the triangle-shaped courtyard sunken into the main house and the 75-foot swimming pool, which itself is infinity-edged on three sides and situated directly under one of the largest oak trees on the site. The courtyards stark focal point is a fire pit while the rest is kept open and simple, with concrete walls that reach the sky to round out its calming, isolated feel.

Story continues

A tranquil, concrete sunken courtyard lays at the heart of Kao's new mansion.

Kao, who previously teamed up with Ryan Gosling to create the Arcana production company, is the lone son of multibillionaire Min Kao, a Kansas-based tech magnate who co-founded GPS colossus Garmin (whose reported net worth is over $4 billion). Besides modeling, Michibatas brief marriage to Formula One megastar Jensen Button  and the apology she received from Richard Branson for touching her face and making her uncomfortable many years ago when he was drunk  are among her other news-making experiences.

Kao's sister, Jen, purchased this stunning home from actress Jodi Foster in 2019.

Exterior evening shot of film producer Ken Kao's sleek, glass-heavy Beverly Hills mansion.

The Kao family is used to making real estate news headlines. In 2019, Kaos older sister Jen Kao paid Jodie Foster $15 million cash for a sprawling house in the Coldwater Canyon area. Kaos parents also own one of the most massive estates in the Beverly Hills Flats (once owned by Kirk Douglas), which they purchased for $15.4 million in 2013. And nine years ago, Min Kao paid $40 million for a penthouse at 15 CPW, one of Manhattans most prominent residential structures.
by Mathias Hariyadi

The incident was reported to the police. The parish priest and bishop of the diocese of Bogor want transparency in publically reporting this sexual scandal within the Church and the perpetrator brought to justice.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - For the first time, a trial could take place within the Catholic Church of Indonesia, as the parish priest of the St. Herculanus Parish Church of Depok (pictured), supported by the bishop of Bogor Mgr. Paskalis Bruno Syukur OFM attempts to make a sexual predator face justice.

In that West Java church, about 21 altar boys were led to perform sexual acts by their tutor known as SPM (42).

SPM is a lawyer and holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Jakarta. After being tutor for altar boys for years, the new pastor assigned him to head of the liturgical desk in February 2020.

Irregularities

This shocking case of a sexual predator involving a man from the inner circle of the parish church initially surfaced when the parents of victims complained of some "oddities" in the behavior of their 11-12 year old children.

Assisted by the KWI Commission for Justice and Peace, an investigative team was set up to search for clues to the origin of the suddenly changed behaviors of these altar boys.

In the end they discovered the unimaginable: their children had often been seduced by SPM to perform sexual acts. Sometimes in the pastoral building of the parish church, in the predators residential house and in other places. What shocked these parents is also the fact that the same case with the same predator had been discovered in 2014.

The mother of one victim unexpectedly surprised the sexual act committed by SPM on her son at her home and then filed a complaint with the parish priest. But a "family deal" was made to put an end to the case by the then pastor at the time when these SPM sexual acts against altar boys came to light for the first time.

What prompted the Catholic community in the parish church of St. Herculanus to feel uneasy was the decision of the then pastor who continued to keep SPM as tutors to the altar boys.

It is unclear why he was not dismissed or seriously reprimanded for this sex scandal since the then pastor still kept SPM in the same tutor position as the altar boys until a new priest moved him to a another assignment in February 2020.

Supported by the KWI Justice and Peace Commission and a lawyer from the legal team, the parents of the victims finally presented the case to the Depok police and the perpetrator was therefore blocked despite his initial refusal to admit such a crime.

The case attracted a lot of attention in the Indonesian Catholic community when police publicly exposed the story last week.

The positive steps taken by the Church

Speaking to AsiaNews about this case that shocked the entire Indonesian Catholic community, the lawyer of the families of the victims Azas Tigor Nainggolan says that the number of victims could increase. The scandal has been taking place since 2002 and it makes sense that more and more victims are expected to come forward, despite the fact that today "we still only have 21".

What makes Nainggolan safer to act is the fact that both the parish priest and the bishop of the diocese of Bogor, Msgr. Paskalis Bruno Syukur share the intention that this type of sexual scandal within the Church must be transparently brought to light and that the perpetrator be brought to justice.

Speaking to AsiaNews about this incident, Bishop Syukur confirmed that he supported Nainggolan's legal action to bring the culprit to justice. "I authorized him to deal with this problem," he said.

The current parish priest of the St. Herculanus Parish Church, Fr. Sirilus Yulius Natet echoed the same sentiments. Interviewed by dozens of journalists about the scandal, he told the media "almost everything". He will not cover up this incident, in the hope of ending this type of crime in the church: "This type of legal process should become a best practice to be exercised in the Church, not covering the case but ending it appropriately," he told AsiaNews

Dissenting opinions

It is logical that such a "new" approach proposed by the bishop of Bogor and the parish priest of St. Herculanus could provoke different opinions among the church community and among the priests of the same diocese. Some of them expressed concerns and criticisms about publicizing the case in how much this sexual crime within the church has been officially presented to the police.

"Why dont we deal with it within our own community?" Asked a parishioner without giving his real name to AsiaNews since the case is so sensitive for all the parishioners of St. Herculanus.

Nainggolan, who is now the advocate for the victims and their families, does not deny this claim. "There are truly - he tells AsiaNews - dissenting opinions among priests and in the Catholic community on how to deal with this problem. Even some priests have openly accused me of 'destroying' the good image of the Catholic Church." "However, the bishop of Bogor and I have a common goal: to end this sexual crime involving people internally on the legal basis of our community ".

"Our goal is clear, namely to protect the victims, while showing the understanding and protection of the Church for them. The Church must act as protector of the victims and their families. And not fight them," explains Nainggolan, who spent years working with the Jesuit social apostolate in the now dissolved Social Institute, before starting his own law firm.

"I am still a devoted Catholic and my professional position as a lawyer is to defend and guarantee the interest of the victims and their families as authorized by the bishop of Bogor", he adds, rejecting any "accusation" by a priest who charged him with being disrespectful for telling the story to the public.

"This story could only be the tip of the iceberg, given that we don't have the courage to openly reveal culprits among consecrated persons in the Church," he says.

The legal team and support group includes a nun, a psychotherapist and a priest who work behind the scenes to protect the victims and their families.
Heavier elements come with stronger spin-orbit coupling, which leads to more obvious split Fermi arcs. This allows the number of states crossing the closed loop to be counted, which determines the Chern number.  MPI CPfS

The concept of chirality is well-established in science: when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, both the object and its mirror image are called chiral. In drug industry, for instance, more than 50% of the pharmaceutically active molecules used nowadays are chiral molecules.

While one of the enantiomers is life-saving, its counterpart with opposite handedness may be poisonous. Another concept which has found widespread interest in contemporary materials science is topology as many so-called topological materials feature exotic properties.

For example, topological materials can have protected edge states where electrons flow freely without resistance, as if a superconducting path of electrons were created at the edge of a material.

Such unconventional properties are a manifestation of the quantum nature of matter. The topological materials can be classified by a special quantum number, called the topological charge or the Chern number.

Chiral topological materials have particularly unique properties which may be useful in future devices for quantum computers which could speed up computations considerably. An example for such a property is the long-sought large quantized photogalvanic current.

Here a fixed dc current is generated in a chiral topological material once exposed to a circularly-polarized light, which is independent of the strength of incident radiation and its direction can be manipulated by the polarization of incident light.

This phenomenon relies on the fact that the material possesses a high topological charge of 4, which is the maximum possible value in any material.

Solid-state chemists and physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (MPI CPfS), the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (IFW), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fur Materialien und Energie (HZB) and the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei succeeded to realize this peculiar electronic state for the first time in the new chiral topological compound PtGa. Their results have been published in Nature Communications1.

In the study, the researchers have used exceptionally strong spin-orbit coupling in PtGa as the key parameter to clearly resolve and count the number of special topological surface states, called the Fermi arcs, which determine the topological charge.

PtGa is the best compound existing in nature with chiral B20 structure to observe spin-split Fermi arcs and realize the maximal Chern number 4 as it has the strongest spin-orbit coupling. says Kaustuv Manna, one of the authors of the study who works as a scientist at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids Dresden.

Theoretical calculations performed by Yan Sun and his colleagues suggested that the compound PtGa is a highly promising candidate to observe the high topological charge which was experimentally verified by Mengyu Yao and his colleagues who performed detailed angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies. ARPES is a powerful tool to investigate the behavior of electrons in solids.

The work by Yao et al. reveals that PtGa is a topological semimetal with a maximal chiral charge and has the strongest spin-orbital coupling among all chiral crystals identified up to date. This observation is significant and has great implications for its transport properties, such as magnetotransport. explains Ming Shi, a professor and senior scientist at Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.

The study is an example for an excellent collaboration between research groups covering different areas of expertise. Within the excellence cluster ct.qmat, scientists are cooperating to investigate fundamentally new states of matter.

We are focusing on novel materials whose observed properties and functions are driven by quantum mechanical interactions at the atomic level, with semimetals such as PtGa being one of the most exciting examples, says Jochen Wosnitza, Director of the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD) at HZDR, referring to one of the cluster's main research topics. Institutes participating in the cluster and collaborating on the current publication include the DRESDEN-concept partners MPI CPfS, IFW, and HZDR.

Mengyu.yao@cpfs.mpg.de

Kaustuv.manna@cpfs.mpg.de

Yao, M. et al. Observation of giant spin-split Fermi-arc with maximal Chern number in the chiral topological semimetal PtGa. Nature Communications 11, 2033, doi:10.1038/s41467-020-15865-x (2020).
During several weeks of protests over police killings and abuse of black Americans, many police forces have clashed with activists. But in Camden, New Jersey, a poor city of mostly brown and black people, police and activists marched together.

Our actions can accelerate situations. What we should be trying to do is de-escalate them, said Scott Thomson, who retired from the Camden County Police Department in 2019. The last thing we want is for the temperature to rise, and for situations to go from bad to worse because of our failed tactics.

Thomson led an effort in 2013 to form a new police department to guard Camden after state and local officials disbanded the citys force.

At the time, the city had experienced one of the highest crime rates in America. It also saw years of law enforcement abuses and corruption.

Thomson believed that the public and officers themselves, saw the police as warriors. He sought a police department of officers who identify as guardians first.

More than 300 officers lost their jobs when the city dismissed the force. About half of them were rehired to serve in the new police department. The reform also brought on younger officers, often from outside of Camden. Other changes included increased community policing and expansion of high-tech city-wide observation systems.

Many consider the Camden police reform effort a major success. Still, it might not be the changes protesters seek.

That is a very different vision of what a new police force looks like than were hearing from protesters, who want less policing, said Stephen Danley, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University-Camden.

Ashly Estevez-Perez has spent most of her 21 years in Camden. She remembers when children were rarely permitted to leave their homes because gunfire was so common.

The new police force came in, and you saw cars everywhere. ... Everyone was kind of taken aback, she said of what some would call over-policing."

"Growing up in the city, I dont see what other alternative works, said Estevez-Perez.

Sean Brown is an activist, businessman and father of two in Camden. He says the citys surveillance system solves the wrong problem.

If we had economic justice in our community, where anybody who needed a job could get a job, we would be in a different space, said the 37-year-old.

Dekel Levy is an officer in the Camden County Police Department. He praised the seven-year-old force.

I think were received a lot better than we used to be, he said. The 41-year-old spoke as he helped give out baby care products to parents at Guadalupe Family Services in North Camden.



The neighborhood, long one of the city's poorest and most dangerous, shows signs of progress. The state prison that stood on the nearby waterfront has been replaced with a park. Aging schools have been fixed up.

Crime rates have fallen in Camden.

Police department data shows the yearly murder rate dropped from 67 in 2012 to 25 last year. Robberies also went down in the same period from 755 to 304. And attacks with guns decreased from 381 to 250. The city of about 73,000 people spends $68 million per year on policing, far more than some comparable cities.

Professor Danley agrees that Camden is safer than it once was. But he said it is not clear that the new force is directly responsible for that.

During Camdens Black Lives Matter protest, Police Chief Joe Wysocki helped carry the large sign at the front of the march.

I just felt I had to do it. George Floyds death was very difficult to watch, and it was horrifying what he went through, Wysocki said.

Helen Cole, a Roman Catholic nun, runs the Guadalupe Family Services group. She has lived in Camden almost 30 years and has seen tensions rise and riots break out.

Today, she cheers officers who work with troubled teens and department data that shows a sharp drop in reports of police abuses. In 2014 there were sixty-five cases. Last year there were three.

Its not like officers are the enemy anymore, Cole said.

Still, Sean Brown says too few in the city of Camden find employment on the police force.

He says the same political will that went to tearing down and rebuilding the police department is needed to deal with other issues, like job development and housing.

Brown added, The momentum has to continue for us to get where we need to go.

Im Caty Weaver.

Maryclaire Dale of the Associated Press reported this story. Caty Weaver adapted it for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

accelerate - v. to cause to move faster or speed up

de-escalate - v. to decrease the size, scope, or intensity of something

tactic - n. an action or method that is planned and used to achieve a particular goal

alternative - n. something that can be chosen instead of something else: a choice or option

surveillance - n. the act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime

momentum - n. the strength or force that allows something to continue or to grow stronger or faster as time passes

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
It can be easy to be restricted to using only what your Android smartphone offers you on the surface. And, for good reason. Smartphones powered by the open-source Android operating system are extremely powerful machines and their evolution since their inception is nothing short of astounding. On the surface, Android smartphones offer users nearly everything theyd expect from a smartphone today. Remotely catch up with your long-distance family and friends? Check. Play immersive games with exceptional graphics? Check. Order food, clothes, and groceries online? Check, check and check.

So, the list goes on

However, if you crave to be an Android power user who tinkers with intricate nuances when it comes to the piece of tech youre holding, Android offers you plenty of room for that too. Its open-source, highly-customisable nature not only enables this, but encourages it. Android devices give users the power to access the underlying technology directly, and tinker with them to their hearts content. Endless customisation is something that Android offers to its users, and this extends beyond the UI. However, venturing into such customisations can be slightly daunting. Nevertheless, even if you have passable tech knowledge, you can get down and dirty with Android.

Automate sending random good morning messages everyday

Have an SO (significant other) to whom you meticulously send good morning or good night messages everyday? Why face their impending wrath if you accidentally forget to do so one day? Just automate it. Android has tons of powerful apps, such as Tasker, IFTTT and Automate, which can help you regulate a variety of tasks without so much as raising a finger. In order to send automated, good morning messages, our weapon of choice was Tasker. With this app, you can enter numerous renditions of good morning messages in a .txt file and send a different, random one every day to a selected contact, at a random time (from a selected range).

Firstly, create a .txt file with all your good morning messages, each on a new line. Save this file in your devices Tasker folder. Then, create a profile on Tasker with a name of your choice. Set the time to when you usually send your good morning text out in the FROM section. Say, 7:00 or 8:00 AM? Uncheck the TO section and go back. Next, create a new task and name it Random Messages or anything you fancy, really. Click the + icon on the bottom right and do the following:

Action 1: Variable Randomize [ Name: %sendtime, Min: 0, Max: 3600 ]

Action 2: Wait [ MS: 0, Seconds: %sendtime, Minutes: 0, Hours: 0, Days: 0 ]

Action 3: Variable Set [ Name: %newline, To: Press Enter button once, Do Maths: Off, Append: Off ]

Action 4: Read File [ File: Select your .txt file, To Var: %morningfile ]

Action 5: Variable Split [ Name: %morningfile, Splitter: %newline, Delete Base: turn off ]

Action 6: Variable Set [ Name: %morningtxt, To: %morningfile(#), Do Maths: Off, Append: Off ]

Action 7: Variable Randomize [ Name: %morningrandom, Min: 1, Max: %morningtxt ]

Action 8: Variable Set [ Name: %morningwish, To: %morningfile(%morningrandom), Do Maths: Off, Append: Off ]

Action 9: Send SMS [ Number: Select from your contacts, Message: %morningwish, Store in Messaging App: off ]

Now, you have created a Tasker profile to automatically send a random good morning message to the contact of your choosing from a list of messages you have listed out on the .txt file.

Note: The .txt file is only useful if you have tons of messages, say like 100 random messages (just to ensure your SO doesnt figure out theyre automated). If you only have a few random messages, simply set several Variable Sets, add a name like %msg1, %msg2 and so on, and then add your random message in the To field.

Additionally, you can also send WhatsApp messages like this daily but that is only available for users with a rooted device. If you do, simply install the WhatsTasker plugin and select send WhatsTasker Send Message action as your message client. Also, you can enter your data in an excel sheet instead of a .txt file by using the Spreadsheet Tasker Plugin. Tasker is a paid app that costs `270.

Download Google Camera on any Android device

Pixel smartphones are often touted to be one of the best, if not the best, smartphone to click photographs on. The accurate portrait mode, Night Sight, relatively true-to-life colours and other software-enabled imaging abilities are a major pull for photo enthusiasts to buy the phone. However, if you do not own a Pixel device and still want to utilise Google Camera, many of you actually can! You will need to install the GCam Mod on your Android smartphone, but before doing this, you need to check a few things.

Most importantly, your phone should have support for Camera2 API. This is a framework that lets developers get access to granular controls over the smartphone camera including exposure, ISO and more. The developers then integrate these granular camera controls into their own third-party apps. Unfortunately, not all phone developers have implemented this API into devices even today. Still, if you have a mid-range or flagship phone, chances are you have the API support. To check, you can download an app called Camera2 API Probe from the Play Store. After launching it, check the Hardware Support Level section. There are four options, and this is what each one means: 1) Legacy: No support for Camera2 API available; 2) Limited: Support for some, not all, Camera2 API abilities; 3) Full: Complete support available; and 4) Level_3: These devices have support for YUV reprocessing and RAW image capture. Our test device, the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus has Full support for the rear camera and Limited support for the front shooter.

If your phone doesnt have Camera2 API support, then you can only enable it by rooting your device. You will need to edit the build.prop file on your smartphone or utilise Magisk to enable it. To enable it through the build.prop file, download the BuildProp Editor app and enter this line to the end of the file: persist.camera.HAL3.enabled=1

Tap the save icon and then restart your device. Or you could simply download a Magisk module called Camera2API enabler. Install the module using Magisk Manager and Camera2 API will be enabled. After this, you need to install the Google Camera mod onto your device. Finding and picking the right mod for your phone can be tricky, but you can look for genuine GCam mods for your specific phone on sites such as XDA developers. This article does a great job listing out GCam Mods for various popular devices - https://dgit.in/GCamMods.

Allowing a guest to connect to your home Wi-Fi using NFC tags

One of the varied uses of NFC tags or stickers includes allowing guests to connect to your home Wi-Fi automatically just with a simple tap. Gone are the hassles of dictating or typing out the super-complex Wi-Fi password you have set, on the phones of the countless guests you may have. For this to work, however, your guests will need to have an NFC-enabled phone, which is, fortunately, not too difficult these days since most manufacturers have added this nifty functionality to their devices. Firstly, you will need to buy a couple of NFC tags/stickers. There are plenty available on Amazon India that you can purchase easily. A standard pack of eight usually costs under `500. Next, install an app on your phone which allows you to customise these tags such as Trigger or NFC Tools. After this, the process is quite simple and intuitive. Ensure your NFC tag is erased if youve used it before, and then write the Wi-Fi data to your tag. To do this, go to Wi-Fi and then long press on a network you want your guests to connect to. (Make sure that your phone is NOT connected to the Wi-Fi network when doing this). After long-pressing, select Write to NFC tag and then input your networks password and then hit Write. Tap the NFC tag to the back of your phone where the NFC sensor is located and thats it.

The next time someone comes over, ask them to simply tap the back of the phone to the NFC tag and bam! Their device will ask them if they want to connect to the network, get them to click Connect and they can hog ahem, use your home Wi-Fi to their hearts content.

Pro tip: Dont want to buy NFC tags? You can also let your guests access your home Wi-Fi using QR codes. Go to Settings, and Wi-Fi and then tap on the current network. The QR code will be pulled up when you hit the Share button. You can print this code and your friends can scan it from their phones camera to connect immediately.

Enable RCS in Google Messages

The rival to Apples iMessage, RCS messaging is the next step in the world of SMSes. It allows users to send high-quality images, share their location, engage in group chats and even video calls. All free of charge, of course! If you want to utilise this service immediately on your Android phone, you can, in just a few steps. Google has officially released RCS support in its Messages app now and activating it is extremely simple.

All you need to do is follow these steps. Firstly, if you havent already, download the Google Messages app from the Play Store. Once installed, open the app and head over to the Settings menu. Tap Chat and then toggle on Enable chat features. You have officially skipped the wait time for when Google actually officially rolls out RCS features for your device. Dont worry, even though you have used this unofficial method to gain access to the RCS features, a Google representative tweeted that people who have used unofficial methods will automatically get official RCS support when it releases for your device.

Skip songs using volume buttons

This feature elusive was once only accessible to those who have rooted their device, but now you can long-press volume button to skip tracks/ go back to the previous track without rooting your device. An XDA member named Cilenco developed the Skip Track by Volume Keys app which lets unrooted devices perform this task. This is an open-source app which utilises the volume key long press listener API to change tracks even when the screen is off. To use this, you will need to have an Android device running Android 8.0 or higher.

To set this up, firstly, install the APK for the app from Github (https://dgit.in/SkipTrack) and run this ADB command:

adb shell pm grant com.cilenco.skiptrack android.permission.SET_VOLUME_KEY_LONG_PRESS_LISTENER

In order to run ADB commands, you need to first download the SDK Platform Tools on your Windows, Mac or Linux PC. Then extract the ZIP file to an easily accessible location. Next, on your Android device, go to Developer Options (unlocked by tapping Build Number 7 times quickly in Settings > About Phone). Enable Developer Options and then find USB debugging. Toggle the switch on.

Now, connect your phone to the PC with your USB cable. Set the USB mode to PTP, this can be changed in the notification shade. Open the platform-tools folder on your PC. Press Shift+Right Click and choose Open command prompt here. Type adb devices and hit Enter. You will now see a list of attached devices, choose yours and enter the ADB command mentioned above.

A couple of useful Xposed Modules

If you have a rooted Android device, Xposed Modules are impeccable for customising and tweaking your Android smartphone. After rooting, you need to install an app called Xposed Installer. This allows you to download other apps which can modify your phone.

Note: After installing each of the following modules, remember to enable it. Navigate to the main menu in Xposed Installer and go to the Modules section. Here, check the box next to the Xposed Module you want to enable and then restart your phone.

YouTube AdAway

As the name suggests, this Xposed Module will remove all YouTube advertisements on the mobile app. It also works for YouTube TV, Gaming and Kids apps. This module can also disable video suggestion and information cards.

Snapprefs

This module allows users to auto-save Snapchat images and videos on Android. There are other features available as well such as paint, location spoofing, option to disable Discover and taking screenshots without alerting the sender and more.

GravityBox

This Xposed Module is used for modding and enhancing the features present on Android devices. You can tweak numerous things down to a granular level through this module on your lock screen, status bar, display, navigation keys and more.

BootManager

You can use BootManager to curb certain apps from auto-launching every time the phone starts up. This can significantly improve boot time and battery life, especially if your phone has multiple intensive apps.

CrappaLinks

This module solves the aggravating problem of links opening up in a browser window within the app instead of going to the app itself. This is often observed with Google Play or YouTube links and the CrappaLinks Xposed Module fixes this issue.

XPrivacy

This Xposed Module can stop certain apps from accessing certain types of information. All you need to do is choose a category to block and then tap every app that should be restricted from accessing the corresponding information.

Deep Sleep Battery Saver

This may seem like just another Battery Saver on the surface, however, this is a powerful tool which can not only put your apps to sleep to conserve battery, but also force processor cores into a sleep state!

MinMinGuard

This Xposed Module is an ad blocker for applications only and does not block ads on websites. This ad blocker has an edge over other apps like this one since it doesnt just remove the ad content and leave the frame as an empty space like others do. It actually removes the entire space in the app where the ad used to reside.

MorseLight - Flashlight + Morse Code

An app on the Play Store called MorseLight utilises your smartphones flashlight to convert text to morse code which can then be decoded by anyone within line of sight. You can also decode incoming signals. You need to manually input the signals youre seeing and the app will convert it back to English.
Florida, for example, reported 4,049 new cases on Saturday, setting a single-day record for the third day in a row, Xinhua news agency quoted data from the state's Department of Health as saying on Sunday.

Washington, June 22 (IANS) Several US states have witnessed a surged in the number of COVID-19 cases as businesses continue to resume operations across the nation, casting a shadow over the current path to reopening economies.

In California, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased to 173,324 as it recorded its highest single-day spike on Sunday.

According to the data from the California Department of Public Health, 4,515 new virus diagnoses were identified statewide in the last 24 hours, beating the previous record of 4,317 new cases reported on Friday.

South Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Montana also hit records on the day, according to a report from The New York Times, which noted that Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon hit records earlier in the week.

More than 30,000 new infections were reported across the nation on both Friday and Saturday, indicating a nationwide uptick in COVID-19 cases, despite a downward trend in over 10 states including New York and New Jersey.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News on Sunday.

Gottlieb said Texas, Arizona and Florida could be overwhelmed as cases continue to surge.

Noting that it is a mistake that many Americans are not wearing masks, Gottlieb urged the pubic to wear masks to protect others and themselves and help reopen the economy safely.

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory", Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior UN advisor.

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing, or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, US states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

An influential COVID-19 model produced by the University of Washington raised its projections on June 18, forecasting more than 200,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by October 1, an increase of 30,000 deaths from its projections in the prior week.

With 2,279,306 cases and 119,967 deaths, the US on Monday morning continued with the world's highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

--IANS

ksk/
A scuffle broke out between the residents and civil defence staff deployed at a containment zone in west Delhi's Nariana after some people tried to step outside the zone, police said on Monday.

Meanwhile, a man was arrested after a civil defence staff member got injured in the melee, they said.

The incident took place around 12 noon on Sunday when some of the residents of the containment zone became agitated to go out while food was being distributed there. When they were prevented from stepping out, they started arguing and a quarrel broke out between the residents and the civil defence staff, police said.

A police constable and a civil defence staff member present at the site told us that some residents in the containment zone wanted to go out, while food was being distributed. They removed the iron tin shade used to cover the area and during the scuffle, a civil defence staff was injured while he was trying to control the crowd, a senior police official said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Deepak Purohit said an FIR has been registered on a complaint of civil defence staff Suraj Kumar under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Epidemic Act.

A resident of the containment zone, Sampurnaanand Bharti, was arrested in this regard, police said, adding further investigation is underway.
CrossFit founder Greg Glassman has been accused of helping to create a sexist workplace culture where men rated women on how much they wanted to have sex with them.

A number of ex employees told The New York Times the former CEO would sexually harass staff. They said such was the culture at the company even the WiFi password was a sexist obscenity.

Glassman, 63, resigned as CEO of the brand earlier this month after his controversial remarks on a Zoom call with gym owners about the death of George Floyd were leaked.

His ex wife Lauren Jenai confirmed the culture former employees have described, adding: '100 percent. That happens every day, all day.' She said: 'He's the father of my kids. I care about Greg and about CrossFit but this should be addressed.'

CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman resigned after his controversial remarks on a Zoom call with gym owners about the death of George Floyd were leaked. He has now been accused of of helping to create a sexist workplace culture at the company

Glassman's ex wife Lauren Jenai, pictured, confirmed the culture former employees have described, adding: '100 percent. That happens every day, all day'

'They are nasty about women and they talk freely in front of them and it does make my skin crawl', Jenai added.

'I think it does need to be said that both Greg and I, and our friends, have raw senses of humor. There is a lot of that banter that I dont find offensive but the difference was, I was in a position of leadership so my job didnt depend on how I responded to those remarks.

'For me, the bigger problem than the language is the culture behind it. If you speak out, youre out. Ive seen it firsthand, over and over and over.'

Jenai announced in October last year she was set to tie the knot with her fiance, Franklin Tyrone Tucker, who is being held in prison ahead of his murder trial.

A CrossFit spokesman confirmed Glassman denies all of the allegations against him. They suggested the claims were part of a wider push by people, including Jenai, to 'devalue the company and buy it for scraps'.

But accusations leveled at Glassman include him taking pictures of female colleague's chests and pulling at their clothes.

One worker says: 'There was a constant narrative about women. He was always descriptive in nature about it...bragging about sexual escapades.'

Another said: 'The systematic way they chip away at your self-confidence, I had never experienced anything like that.'

Reporting their claims was difficult, they say, as Glassman's sister Katie was the highest ranking female executive.

In 2012 former employee Julie Kelly threatened to file a sexual harassment lawsuit. Glassman is said to have told former Navy Seal Andy Stumpf: 'I had to pay that w***e.'

Stumpf added: 'I cannot count the number of times that derogatory and specifically sexual comments were made about female staff members directly in my presence.'

Athlete Lindsey Johnson said she heard stories of 'straight-up bullying and sexual harassment of women'.

CrossFit executive Dave Castro, who will take over as the company's new CEO, has not commented on the new claims against Glassman.

CrossFit executive Dave Castro, who will take over as the company's new CEO, has not commented on the new claims against Glassman

Reporting their claims was difficult, they say, as Glassman's sister Katie, pictured, was the highest ranking female executive

A number of ex employees told The New York Times the former CEO would sexually harass staff. They said such was the culture at the company even the WiFi password was a sexist obscenity. The company's Scotts Valley, California, HQ is pictured

In leaked remarks earlier this month, Glassman told gym owners: 'We're not mourning for George Floyd  I don't think me or any of my staff are.'

'Can you tell me why I should mourn for him? Other than that it's the white thing to do  other than that, give me another reason,' he asked a Minneapolis gym owner who had questioned why the brand hadn't posted a statement supporting Black Lives Matter.

Glassman later stepped down as CEO of CrossFit, Inc, which he founded in 2000, adding: 'I have decided to retire.'

In his resignation statement, Glassman said: 'On Saturday I created a rift in the CrossFit community and unintentionally hurt many of its members.

'Those who know me know that my sole issue is the chronic disease epidemic. I know that CrossFit is the solution to this epidemic and that CrossFit HQ and its staff serve as the stewards of CrossFit affiliates worldwide. I cannot let my behavior stand in the way of HQ's or affiliates' missions. They are too important to jeopardize.'

In a lengthy statement, CrossFit apologized for not publicly announcing its support for Black Lives Matter.

In audio of the the Zoom call reported by Buzzfeed News, Glassman said of Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis on May 25 after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes: 'I don't think that there's a general mourning for Floyd in any community.'

The controversy arose on Saturday after the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) posted a tweet which described racism and discrimination as a public health issue that needs an urgent response.

The research firm shared a statement from its director, Christopher Murray, who said that IHME commits to researching racial disparities in a range of areas including the differential impacts of COVID-19.

Glassman retweeted the post with the words: 'It's FLOYD-19.'
Columnist

Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich).
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC Monday that "there is no second wave coming" for the coronavirus pandemic, despite record daily case increases in multiple states around the country.

Why it matters: The U.S. reported more than 33,000 new coronavirus cases on Saturday  the highest total since May 1  while the surge of infections in several states is outpacing growth in coronavirus testing.

Kudlow's comment echoes claims from other Trump administration officials, such as Vice President Mike Pence, who argued earlier this month that concerns over a second wave of the virus are "overblown."

What he's saying: "The numbers quoted to me by the health people  I'm not the expert, they are  over the weekend, there are 37 states that have virtually no problems. There are 13 states that do have hotspots," Kudlow, who does not have a scientific or medical background, said.

"So, you know, there are some hotspots. We're on it. We know how to deal with this stuff now. It's come a long way since last winter  and there is no second wave coming."

"It's just, you know, hotspots. They send in CDC teams. We've got the testing procedures. We've got the diagnostics. We've got the [personal protection equipment]."

"And, so, I really think it's a really good situation. Fatality rates, incidentally  the fatality rates continue to decline. So, all in all, I think it's a pretty good situation. And, of course, reopening the economy is the key to economic growth."

The big picture: The new case increases are likely in part because younger people, for now, are accounting for a larger share of new infections, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.

However, the death rate for viruses tends to lag several weeks behind the infection rate as infected young people visit older family members and interact with older or vulnerable coworkers.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that he believes the U.S. will not experience a second wave of coronavirus  because the country is still in the midst of the first.

"I'm actually of the mind right now  I think this is more like a forest fire. I don't think that this is going to slow down," Osterholm said. "Wherever there's wood to burn, this fire is going to burn, and right now, we have a lot of susceptible people."

Worth noting: Kudlow in February claimed that the U.S. had "contained" the virus "pretty close to airtight."

He later defended the comment, saying, "My quote then was based on the actual facts, which at the time, there were only 40 or 50 cases, and it was contained."

Go deeper: Navarro says Trump's call for less coronavirus testing was "tongue-in-cheek"
Neelam Kumari Gautam woke up at 5 am with shooting labour pains. Her husband put her gently in the back of a rickshaw and motored with her to a hospital. Then another. Then another. Her pain was so intense she could barely breathe, but none would take her.

Why are the doctors not taking me in? she asked her husband, Bijendra Singh, over and over again. Whats the matter? I will die.

Singh began to panic. He knew what he was up against. As Indias coronavirus crisis has accelerated  India is now reporting more infections a day than any other nation except the United States or Brazil  the countrys already strained and underfunded health care system has begun to buckle.

A database of recent deaths reveals that scores of people have died in the streets or in the back of ambulances, denied critical care. Gautams odyssey through eight different hospitals in 15 hours in Indias biggest metropolitan area serves as a devastating window into what is really happening in the country.

Indian government rules explicitly call for emergency services to be rendered, but still people in desperate need of treatment keep getting turned away, especially in New Delhi, the capital. Infections are rising quickly; Delhis hospitals are overloaded; and many health care workers are afraid of treating new patients in case they have the coronavirus, which has killed more than 13,000 people in India.

There is currently little or no chance of admission to hospitals for people with COVID-19, but also for people with other intensive care needs, read a warning just issued by the German Embassy in New Delhi.

After watching reports on Indian television showing dead bodies in the lobby of a government hospital and crying patients being ignored, a panel of judges on Indias Supreme Court said, The situation in Delhi is horrendous, horrific and pathetic.

The bigger picture is that Prime Minister Narendra Modis government is struggling with overlapping crises. Last week, Chinese troops beat 20 Indian soldiers to death along their disputed border in the Himalayas, triggering the most dangerous showdown between the two nuclear powers in decades.

At the same time, Indias economy is nose-diving, and the coronavirus pandemic has cost this country more than 100 million jobs. Desperate to turn the economy around, Modi has rejected health experts counsel to put the country back under lockdown, saying that India must unlock, unlock, unlock.

When things got better, Singh and his wife had hoped to buy an apartment in a gated community in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi crammed with tall glass buildings, many malls and many hospitals. She worked on an assembly line producing electrical wire. He serviced machines at a printing press.

Together, Singh, 31, and Gautam, 30, earned a respectable $8,000 a year, putting them solidly in Indias rising middle class. Two wheels of a well-oiled machine, making our family go around, Singh said.

Their son, Rudraksh, turned 6 just before their new baby was due.

As Gautam entered her ninth month, she ran into some health problems and spent five days in late May and early June in the hospital for pregnancy-related high blood pressure, bleeding and possibly typhoid.

On June 5, as she began to go into labour, the first hospital they tried was the ESIC Model Hospital, a sprawling government facility in Noida. Singh said that the first thing the doctor said to her was, Ill slap you if you take off your mask.

They were shocked, Singh said. But Gautam was having trouble breathing. They didnt argue. She begged for oxygen, which the hospital had, along with ventilators. But instead of helping, the doctor told them to go to another government hospital, on the other side of town. There, too, she was turned away.

An administrator at the first hospital declined to comment, and a doctor at the second hospital said Gautam needed intensive care, which the hospital couldnt provide.

Even before COVID-19 arrived, Indian hospitals were beleaguered. The Indian government spends less than 2,000 rupees (about $26) per person per year on health care. The hope during Indias lockdown, which began in late March but was mostly lifted by early June, was that the restrictions would slow the spread of the virus and give cities time to scale up hospital capacity before the worst hit.

That didnt happen, or not nearly enough, and Delhi now finds itself thousands of beds short; the central government just repurposed hundreds of railway cars to be used as sick bays. And still there is great confusion about admitting patients who dont have the coronavirus.

Some hospitals say they need to test every patient before treating them. Others simply perform a quick temperature check.

Several Indian doctors said that private, profit-driven hospitals were terrified to accept new patients  particularly those with breathing problems  because they didnt want to risk getting shut down, which has happened to private clinics if one of their patients tested positive for the coronavirus.

Government policy has created this chaos, said Rajesh Kumar Prajapati, an orthopedic surgeon and former medical school professor.

As complaints began to pile up that hospitals were turning away sick people, the powerful home ministry issued a directive reemphasising that all hospitals should remain open for all patients, COVID and non-COVID emergencies.

But clearly not everyone has been listening. A 13-year-old boy in Agra died of a stomach ailment in April after being turned away from six hospitals, his distraught family said. Another boy, in Punjab, with an obstructed airway, was rejected from seven hospitals and died in the arms of a family friend, who happened to be a doctor but was not given any help to save him.

This is inhuman, said Dheeraj Singh, the doctor in Punjab.

Cases like these caught the eye of Thejesh G. N., an electronics engineer in Indias tech hub, Bangalore. He helped build a database tracking publicly reported deaths and found that at least 63 people have died in recent weeks from being denied critical care. Most health experts believe that the number is far higher.

The third hospital that Gautam went to, Shivalik Hospital, was the one that had treated her for her prenatal troubles. This time, doctors gave her a little oxygen, but her husband said they feared she might have the coronavirus and abruptly ordered her to leave.

We are a small mother and child hospital, said the hospitals director, Ravi Mohta. We did what we could.

The couple hobbled back to the rickshaw. Gautam was fading. She stopped talking and began heavily sweating. She clung to her husbands hand.

It wasnt simply that the doctors couldnt help her, her husband said. It was as if they didnt want to help her.

They didnt care if she was dead or alive, he said.

At a fourth hospital, a branch of Fortis, an Indian health care giant, he pleaded for a ventilator. Singh said the doctors response was, Shes going to die. Take her wherever you wish.

In a statement, the hospital said they had no space for her.

They tried three other hospitals, hurrying from one to the other, losing precious time. When all refused, Singh called the police.

He said that two officers met him at the entrance of the Government Institute of Medical Sciences, a large public hospital, and tried to persuade the doctors to admit his wife. But the doctors wouldnt listen to the police officers, either.

Administrators at that hospital declined to comment.

After that failed, they raced in an ambulance to Max Super Specialty Hospital in Ghaziabad, more than 25 miles away. It was now late afternoon, still bright, around 100 degrees outside. More than eight hours had passed since Gautam and her husband had set off from their home, eager to meet their new baby soon.

But the Max hospital  their eighth that day  gave them the same heartbreaking answer: no beds.

Gautam closed her eyes and whispered, Save me.

Singh told the ambulance to rush back to the Government Institute of Medical Sciences.

He hunched in the back, leaning over his wife, pleading with her not to give up. He looked down at her face. She reached up and clutched his shirt. Her hands tightly clenched the fabric.

As they finally pulled into the hospital, she stopped breathing. Her neck slumped. Singh jumped out of the ambulance, grabbed a wheelchair and frantically wheeled her into the emergency room.

At 8:05 p.m., after 8 different hospitals and 15 hours, Gautam was pronounced dead. The baby also died.

A preliminary government investigation said, Hospital administration and staff have been found guilty of carelessness.

She has not been the only pregnant woman to die in labour after being turned away. The same thing happened to a young mother in Hyderabad and another in Kashmir. In that case, the family said, the hospital staff were so uncaring that they didnt even help with an ambulance to take the body home. The womans family had to wheel her body down the road, in a stretcher, for several miles.

As authorities consider criminal charges in Gautams case, her husband spends his days at home looking after his son, Rudraksh. The boy asked him to throw away all of his mothers clothes.

They remind me of her, he said.

The spark has gone out of Rudrakshs eye, Singh said.

A few days ago, he told his dad that when he grows up, he wants to be a doctor, so I can make dead people come alive.

Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj c.2020 The New York Times Company
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Eldar Janashvili  Trend:

Tourism sector in Azerbaijan, just like in other countries has heavily dropped due to COVID-19 pandemic, beginning from March 2020, Trend reports on June 22 referring to the Azerbaijan's State Statistical Committee.

So, in the first five months of 2020, 563,900 foreign tourists from 152 countries visited Azerbaijan, which is 1.9 times less compared to the same period in 2019.

Nearly 30.2 percent of the total tourists arrived from Russia, 27.3 percent  from Georgia, 13.2 percent  from Turkey, 6.7 percent - from Iran, 2.2 percent - from India, 2.1 percent - from Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, 1.4 percent - from the UAE, 1.3 percent - from Pakistan, Kuwait and Kazakhstan, 1.1 percent - from Turkmenistan, 0.9 percent - from Iraq and the UK.

Furthermore, 0.8 percent of the tourists were citizens of Uzbekistan, 0.7 percent - Israel, 6.4 percent - other countries and 0.1 percent - stateless persons.

In gender terms, 75.1 percent of the tourists were men, and 24.9 percent - women.

The largest drop in the tourist inflow from January through May 2020 accounted for tourists from China and South Korea - 5.5 and 4.4 times. Tourist inflow from Japan also decreased (by 3.7 times). In general, trips from East Asia countries to Azerbaijan decreased by about 4.5 times.

Meanwhile, fewer tourists came from the UAE (plunge by 4.1 times), Poland (drop by 3.8 times), the UK (decline by 3.5 times), Israel and Canada (fall by 3.3 times), Hungary (decrease by 3.1 times) and other countries.

The total number of tourists arriving from EU states decreased by 3.4 times to 16,200 people; from the Gulf countries  by 2.2 times to 75,300 people, and from the CIS countries  by almost two-fold to 205,400 people.

According to the committee, 66.9 percent of the tourists visited Azerbaijan by trains and cars, 31.6 percent - by planes, and 1.5 percent - by ships.
A man from Nairobis Umoja Innercore estate escaped the wrath of irate residents who were baying for his blood Sunday morning for battering his girlfriend who is heavy with child.

According to witnesses, Havi Obura assaulted Sandra Adipo for the better part of Saturday night inside their house.

Mr Obura is said to have accused Ms Adipo, who is four months pregnant, of hosting a few of her friends in the house without his permission.

Ironically, Obura is said to have recently moved in with Adipo, who has been paying rent and providing for him.

The suspect is also alleged to be a party animal who usually moves around using the womans car.

The caretaker of the apartment where the couple lives and several tenants had on Sunday morning threatened to break down the door after the man locked it from inside.

Huyu msichana amepigwa usiku wote. Nilisikia akipiga nduru ili boyfriend wake asimpige kwa nyundo, one neighbour told Nairobi News.

The caretaker later came with police officers from Umoja 2 Chiefs Camp who arrested the suspect.

Ms Adipo sustained multiple injuries and was rushed to Aga Khan Hospital.
NEW DELHI:

Delhi governments Horticulture Department has informed the National Green Tribunal that it has planted 2,000 trees for chopping 216 trees in a residential colony in north east Delhi.

The Horticulture Department also gave an undertaking to the green panel that it would ensure proper maintenance of these trees and look after them over the next five years.

Taking note of the submission, a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar recalled its order slapping a fine of Rs 10,000 each on Chief Engineer of Public Works Department and Director of Horticulture department for non-compliance of its orders.

Status Report has been filed by Deputy Director, Horticulture wherein, it is stated that 2000 trees have already been planted and 100 more trees are in the process of being planted in the same colony i.e., Yamuna Vihar. The Department of Horticulture and PWD shall comply with this statement...

In view of the fact that the Department has complied with the directions contained in the Order of the Tribunal and has given a specific undertaking to the Tribunal that they will plant the requisite number of trees and ensure their proper maintenance and to look after in the coming 5 years, we recall our Order dated July 5, 2016,the bench noted.

The tribunal had earlier restrained the city government from felling trees till further directions and directed filing of a contempt petition against it for defying its orders.

The direction came during the hearing of a plea by advocate S D Windlesh who had alleged that in a service lane of four square metres in a Yamuna Vihar colony, the PWD had cut nearly 400 trees without permission to widen the road.

The plea had said the service lane had a 15 metre-long lush green belt of trees which attracted residents in the mornings for walking, jogging and enjoying fresh air, but all of it was destroyed.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: "India will overtake China. We will survive the coronavirus as well as the current Chinese offensive," said BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Sunday in a virtual meeting organised by the Kerala Management Association on Zoom. He was speaking on the topic How will COVID-19 affect our economy.

"Many had said that India would collapse in 1965 and 1991. But India has only continued to grow. In the beginning, despite shortages, India with its planned projects was able to become the best agricultural producer in the world in just 10 years," Swamy said.

He added that there was a need to implement more employment schemes to improve the financial situation. "The economy needs to be expanded through increased productivity," he said. According to Swamy, the present border issues with China must be taken seriously and the production of weapons should hence be increased. "This will also provide employment to many," he said.

He added that the Chinese were trying to get into the Indian territory and that the formers moves were not expected to receive international support. Kerala Management Association president Jibu Paul, KMA program committee chairman S Rajmohan Nair, senior vice-president R Madhav Chandran and honorary secretary Bibu Punnooran also participated.
Restrictions leave people already on the margins vulnerable to further abuse, often at the hands of their own families.

Many in Indias LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning) community are hiding their real selves as they remain stuck with their families for months during the coronavirus lockdown  sometimes with dire consequences.

Kumar*, a young gay man living in a town in northern India, was physically assaulted by his family, who then called the police, when they found out his secret.

They found his phone  he was chatting with someone or sharing photos  and beat him up, said Shruta Neytra, co-founder of the LGBTQ online youth support group, Yaariyan.

Kumar reached out to the group seeking help. But because of coronavirus restrictions on travel and movement, there was little anyone could do.

And he is not alone.

We are hearing of so many cases where people are facing harassment and psychological torture by their families, Neytra told the AFP news agency.

It is very distressing because we cant even tell them to leave home and seek shelter elsewhere.

A colonial-era law banning gay sex was scrapped in 2018, and transgender Indians have been legally recognised as a third gender since 2014.

But outside the big cities, LGBTQ individuals still face widespread discrimination and violence.

The lockdown that began in March brought misery to millions, destroying migrant workers livelihoods and driving many deeper into poverty.

The restrictions also left LGBTQ Indians  already living on the margins  vulnerable to further abuse, often at the hands of their own families.

An Indian LGBTQ activist celebrates after the Supreme Court decriminalised gay sex in this September 6, 2018 photo [File: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Daylife]

Lonely and claustrophobic

For transgender woman Anjali Siroya, going to work and seeing friends has always been a lifeline, taking her away from the hostile environment of the Mumbai tenement flat she shares with her parents and brother.

They dont beat me any more after I tried to run away once but being with them 24/7 is still very traumatic, the 21-year-old told AFP.

They insist on using the male pronoun to refer to me even though I have never wanted to hide my identity, she said.

As the pressure at home has grown, she has taken to Instagram to celebrate her gender identity with photographs of herself  shot before the lockdown  and vocal posts about the fight for equality.

I miss dressing up, putting on lipstick and earrings, and posing for selfies, she said.

I know this might sound silly to some people, but it was a way for me to express myself.

As LGBTQ Indians have increasingly turned to social media and online communities for support, many have also expressed a mounting urge to come out to their families.

Seema*, a bisexual sociology student in Delhi, told AFP that life under lockdown felt lonely and claustrophobic.

Everything I say about girls needs to be said in code, she said, describing how she hides her phone from her mother and grandparents to avoid being accidentally outed.

With no room of her own, she said in an emailed interview that she was even unable to speak privately on the phone, forcing her into a life of constant subterfuge.

I feel compelled to come out on some days, she said as she spoke of not being able to share her dreams of love and marriage with her family.

But she feared that any such a move would make her family monitor her movements and further limit her freedom.

I just want to say My wife and I instead of hesitating and always being scared that itll slip out by mistake, she added.

Indias LGBTQ activists participate in a Rainbow Pride Walk in Kolkata in this December 10, 2017 photo [File: Bikas Das/AP Photo]

Too dangerous to come out

LGBTQ activists have largely advised members of the community to do nothing until life returns to normal.

As an out and proud trans person, I would never tell another person not to live their truth, said Jo, digital editor for online forum Gaysi, who goes by one name.

But right now, it is simply too dangerous to come out of the closet.

Even those who took the leap and found some acceptance say the aftermath has been complicated and stressful.

I never expected to tell my father I am bisexual, it was nice seeing him react well to it, Tina* told AFP.

But as the lockdown wore on, subsequent interactions revealed that her father was not entirely comfortable, the 25-year-old artist said.

Earlier, I didnt spend much time thinking about how my parents would respond; now every possibility has become more real, she said.

I dont know how my mum will react if she knows. I dont think she will ask me to leave home, but I am not 100 percent sure.

*Names changed to protect identity
Advertisement

New York City entered its long-anticipated phase 2 reopening on Monday, allowing restaurants to provide outdoor service along with allowing barbershops and hair salons to reopen, but many of the hundreds of thousands of office workers who are also allowed back stayed home.

Under the new phase, retailers are allowed to welcome patrons inside so long as they maintain a 6ft distance from one another and wear masks. Offices are allowed to bring back 50 percent of their staff but with many companies now adjusted to an entirely working-from-home model, hardly any have returned.

Precise data is still difficult to come by, with every company seeming to make up its own plan as the reopening progresses. Big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter have told staff they don't have to come back to the office for the rest of the year if ever.

Finance giants like JP MorganChase have not yet sent staff back in. Morgan Stanley expects to have only 10 percent of its Manhattan staff in its office until at least July 4.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that the new phase 'allows' 300,000 people to come back to work but it's unclear if that was the number he actually expects to return.

New York City entered its long-anticipated phase 2 reopening on Monday, allowing restaurants to provide outdoor service along with allowing barbershops and hair salons to reopen. Mayor Bill de Blasio is pictured with his wife Chirlane McCray at Melba in Harlem

De Blasio took time out from his lunch to speak with a young girl while dining in a private outdoor booth at the Harlem restaurant. Owner Melba Wilson is pictured with the mayor

Customers dine outside restaurant Dudley's in New York City. A staff member can be seen clearing empty glasses while wearing a protective facemask

Two women enjoy a meal outside Casa Mezcal. A sign can be seen near the entrance to the restaurant which reads: 'Take out, don't hang out here'

Diners eat lunch in outdoor seating at a restaurant in the Little Italy section of Manhattan on the first day of the phase two re-opening of businesses following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New York City, New York, on June 22

Customers can be seen enjoying their food outside Barrio Chino on Monday as restaurants reopen allowing diners to eat outside

Pedestrians pass customers dining outside Casa Mezcal on Monday. They wear protective facemasks as they walk down the street with their groceries

Revellers can be seen enjoying their drinks outside Barrio Chino in NYC as a sign informing customers it is open stands by the entrance

Shoppers clutching bags wander down the sidewalk as retail stores reopen to eager customers who must wear masks to go inside

People dine outside on Columbus Avenue. Customers and staff can be seen wearing protective facemasks

Customers enjoy a meal outside on 72nd Street as phase 2 reopening allows restaurants to serve outdoors

People dine outside on Columbus Avenue. Restaurants use caution tape to signal where people can sit on the busy street

Maya Evans (right) toasts friend Tiffany Webster, 30, (left) on her 30th birthday during the first day of the city's phase two reopening

Le Singe in Chelsea serves customers seated at sidewalk tables as the city moves into phase 2 of re-opening

A restaurant displays a sign informing customers that it is open for business with outdoor seating ready to welcome diners

Shoppers browsed Macy's flagship store in New York City while wearing masks and keeping a safe distance from other shoppers

Alexa Rodulfo gets her dog Paco's attention at Fred's on Manhattan's Upper West Side as she dines outdoors

Shoppers wearing facemasks clutch their purchases as they walk down the sidewalk. A mannequin in the window has been dressed with a mask as well

A shopper wanders past a Bloomingdale's window display featuring a mannequin wearing a mask. The store has dubbed facemasks a 'modern must-have accessory'

Family members wave goodbye as they leave a restaurant in New York City. Eateries are now able to host customers who sit outside

Barbershops were bustling with eager New Yorkers looking for a haircut. Barbers can be seen wearing protective masks

A restaurant serves customers seated at outside tables. The tables are spaced a safe distance apart to limit any risk

A sign describing safety measures is displayed inside Bloomingdale's as strict social-distancing rules are enforced

People dine outside in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York, during the phase two reopening of the city during the coronavirus pandemic on June 22 2020

A waiter at Cipriani in Soho polishes glasses on one of the multiple sidewalk tables

Waiters at the upscale restaurant Avra set up tables and chairs outside on Monday, June 22

Diners outside Tre Giovani in Greenwich Village on Monday as restaurants launched outdoor dining

Olio e Piu in the West Village has erected perspex screens between tables

Customers can be seen outside Obao restaurant on Monday, June 22, as restaurants are finally able to serve customers on outdoor searing

Customers at Harvest Kitchen on Monday, June 22, as NYC entered phase 2 of reopening during the coronavirus pandemic

Customers at Fred's enjoyed their meals as they sat outdoors in the warm sunshine on Monday

Customers at VIV restaurant were seen sitting outside as they enjoyed their meals and drinks in the summer sunshine

According to recent MTA figures, bus ridership is at 56 percent of its usual amount. It means 1.2million people are still taking the bus daily.

Subway ridership is much lower, with only 17 percent of the normal amount still using the network, a figure of around 850,000.

While more than 3,000 restaurants have been granted permission to serve people outside, it's unclear how much footfall they will have to serve because so much of the workforce remains out of the city.

Not every restaurant in Manhattan has survived the pandemic either.

In April and May, commercial landlords reporting collecting only 20 percent of their usual revenues.

Some retailers are trying to get out of their leases. Valentino has sued its landlord to wiggle out of its Fifth Avenue lease, and Victoria Secret sued landlord SL Green to break its Herald Square lease.

'Were calling Monday kind of a soft opening because we dont anticipate every tenant, obviously, coming back all at once,' Ken Fisher, a partner at Fisher Brothers, told The New York Times.

Harvest Kitchen's outdoor seating took over part of the road with caution tape indicating how best to keep customers safe

A man rides his bike through two separated seating areas outside Harvest Kitchen in New York City as the restaurant welcomes back customers seated outside

A member of the GMT Tavern wait staff greets a pedestrian and a dog on the sidewalk next to a sign reading 'welcome back NYC'

Guests sit outside a restaurant, which extended it's outdoor area by setting tables on the sidewalk on Monday June 22

Customers at Jake's Dilemma dine with large plastic sheeting separating each table as part of safety measures

Customers cheers with each other as they gather to enjoy meals and drinks outside Jake's Dilemma in New York City

People drink and eat outside a bar in Tribeca, Manhattan, as restaurants begin to allow customers to dine outdoors

A customer at Fantasy Nails & Beauty Salon gets her hair done now salons are able to reopen again. Both she and the hairdresser wear masks

All customers at Fantasy Nails & Beauty Salon wear protective facemasks to protect them and their stylist from coronavirus

Customers at Mama Mia 44 SW enjoy their meals outdoors as restaurants are finally able to serve customers again

Customers at Harlem Tavern on Monday enjoy meals and drinks in an outdoor terrace. All tables are widely spaced out

Customers wearing protective face masks queue to go into Old Navy in Harlem as non-essential stores permit customers provided they follow social distancing guidelines

A server wearing a protective masks places food in front of an eager diner who is seated on a table outside in Tribeca, Manhattan

Two people enjoy a meal outside a restaurant in Tribeca, Manhattan, as lockdown measures are partially lifted

People eat and drink outside of bars and restaurants in Manhattan, New York, during the phase 2 reopening of the city

Servers wore facemasks as they wandered between tables as diners enjoyed the warm, sunny weather while they ate their meals outdoors

A smartly-dressed man walks in the Financial District of New York City during the phase 2 reopening

A woman wearing a face masks walks past a Zara store in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York

A man wearing a suit carries a box of hand sanitizer in the Financial District of New York City, during the phase 2 reopening

The Oculus at the World Trade Center was still largely empty with only 17 percent of subway riders still using the network

A man skateboards in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, as the city enters phase 2 reopening on Monday

People shop in a DSW store in Manhattan with one-way markers on the floor and lines marking two-metres distance between customers

A lone office worker walks along the streets on his lunch break in the Financial District of Manhattan on Monday

'That human social contract relies on everybody showing up,' Michael Phillips, president of landlord Jamestown LP, said told The Wall Street Journal.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, echoed his comments.

'What we recognize is that economies are going to need to be opened gradually by turning a dial rather than flipping a switch.

'And as economies do that, I think we have a responsibility not only to adhere to the public health guidelines, but to be slower than others in bringing people back simply because we can.'

According to a recent survey by CoreNet Global, only 15 percent of companies said their offices would be back to normal within six months.

Nearly 40 percent said it would take more than a year before they are back to full occupancy.

A restaurant in Chelsea serves customers seated at sidewalk tables. Restaurants are now allowed to serve diners sat outside

People line up outside Macy's on Monday on the first day of the second phase of NYC's reopening

The Body Shop was among the thousands of stores that reopened on Monday

A woman shops inside DSW, a shoe store in Manhattan, on Monday, the first day of NYC's phase 2 reopening

Customers line up outside a Footlocker in Manhattan on Monday

A shopper leaves Reiss in Soho after making an in-store purchase

Workers inside Reiss wear masks and wait for customers on Monday on the first day of resumed retail

Bloomingdales in Soho was also open on Monday for the first time since the pandemic and since the area was ravaged by looters

Barbers in the Bronx also put up clear shower curtains to keep customers separated. Everyone was also wearing a mask

A barber shop in Hells Kitchen where stylists have hung curtains of clear plastic to keep customers apart

Barber Matthew Previera cuts a customer's hair at Les Enfants Terribles on June 22 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Hair stylist Julien Farel cuts a woman's hair in his salon on the Upper East Side

A man get his hair cut in Soho in Manhattan on Monday

Office workers remain largely at home despite being able to return to their offices

Vorndado, one of the city's biggest landlords, told investors on a recent earnings call that 80 percent of its retail tenants did not pay rent in April and May.

Forty percent of its office tenants also skipped payments.

Empire Realty Trust reported that a quarter of its office tenants did not pay rent.

In a recent survey by Blind of employees from Amazon, Microsoft, Lyft, Uber, Facebook and others, 35.67% said they'd move out of New York to a different state if working from home became more permanent.

Fourteen percent said they anticipate never going back to the office, 39 percent said they anticipate going back to the office just one or two days a week.

Twitter has already told employees they can work from home permanently for the rest of their time with the company, and Facebook and Google are also weighing more permanent options.

What will become of their expansive, expensive Manhattan office spaces as a result remains unknown.

While residential and commercial tenants are still bound by their leases per the moratorium now, there's growing uncertainty over whether that will always be the case.

'Landlords ability to enforce the legal terms of their lease has been completely kicked out from under them,' Jane Lok, a landlord who collected half of what she normally does this month, told the Times.

To compound difficulty for the landlords, they can't borrow from banks because real estate is such a risky investment.
The list of prominent people who have publicly defied President Trump  including onetime allies  keeps growing. Consider what has happened in just the past few weeks:

Senate Republicans over the weekend refused to support Trumps firing of a federal prosecutor who had investigated two of the presidents personal lawyers. As a result, the prosecutors deputy, rather than the administrations choice, replaced him.

A federal judge on Saturday rejected Trumps request to block the release of a book critical of him.

The author of that book  John Bolton, Trumps former national security adviser  said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that Trump posed a danger for the republic.

Another former administration official  Jim Mattis, a retired Marine general who served as defense secretary  said Trump was trying to divide the country and make a mockery of our Constitution.

Trumps top military adviser, Gen. Mark Milley, publicly apologized for participating in a photo op with him that followed the use of tear gas against peaceful protesters.

The Supreme Court blocked Trumps effort to end a signature Obama administration immigration policy. (And, yes, the court is influenced by public opinion, as The Timess Adam Liptak has explained.)

Several Trump-friendly commentators  at The Wall Street Journal, Breitbart and elsewhere  have said his responses to the coronavirus and police violence are hurting his chances of re-election.

The commissioner of the N.F.L. switched his position on player protests about racial injustice, which angered Trump.

These acts of defiance are both a sign of Trumps current weakness and a further cause of it, as Matt Glassman, a Georgetown University political scientist, told me. People feel more comfortable opposing Trump because they think he is on the wrong side of public opinion on several major issues.

And the more people who defy Trump, the less difficult it becomes for others to do so. It was especially striking to see Senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent Trump defender, decline to support the Trump administrations choice of a new federal prosecutor. Its not a random, rogue action, Glassman said. Its a calculated move based on the weakness of the president.

None of this means Trump is doomed to lose in November. Past presidential candidates, like George H.W. Bush and Harry Truman, overcame polling deficits bigger than the one Trump currently has against Joe Biden. But sustained weakness is very dangerous for a politician.
The following information was provided by police unless otherwise noted

Trenton

COVID-19 attacker: Alexander Piza-Ramos, of Trenton, was charged with terroristic threats, aggravated assault, criminal mischief, throwing bodily fluids, and weapons offenses. Officers responded to a call for a suspicious person with a machete slashing vehicles near Beatty Street. Officers detained Piza-Ramos and removed the machete from him. While being taken back to police headquarters, he banged his head around and was taken to Capital Health Regional Medical Center, where he spat at hospital workers and officers and claimed to have tested positive for COVID-19. He also bit one of the officers while being held down.

Shooting: Cops responded to a shooting June 14 on the 200 block of Academy Street. The victim was taken to Capital Health Regional Medical Center suffering from gunshot wounds to the stomach and the right leg. He underwent surgery and was listed in stable condition. No arrests have been made in connection with the shooting.

DUI: Shawn Dutcher, 35, was pulled over for driving under the influence Saturday, near Hamilton and Chestnut avenues. Dutchers vehicle had heavy-front end damage after hitting two vehicles. He agreed to take a breathalyzer, which showed he didnt have alcohol in his system. But he was charged with DUI after cops found synthetic marijuana in a cup holder. No one was injured.

Domestic Violence: Marlen Rodriguez-Lima, 30, was charged with aggravated assault after cops responded to the 200 block of Fulton Street for a domestic violence call. Officers went to St. Francis Hospital to meet with the victim. The man told cops his wife drunkenly broke his nose after accusing him of cheating. She head-butted him in the nose, fled the home and was later arrested at the home.

More Domestic: Antonio Singletary, 30, was charged with aggravated assault following a domestic violence incident June 15 on the 500 block of Bellevue Avenue. The couple argued when Singletary accosted her, scratching and choking her. She broke free, ran away and went to the hospital. She reported what happened the next day.

Stunned: Precious Brown, 21, was arrested at Kingsbury Towers on June 19 following a domestic violence call. Brown was charged with aggravated assault and weapons offenses after getting into an argument with the father of her child. She claimed he pulled her hair and punched her but she showed no signs of injury and refused medical attention. The man claimed he went to pick up his belongings when the ex-couple argued over a cell phone. Brown grabbed a stun gun and tased him in the chest. Officers found the stun gun in the bedroom. The victim also didnt have signs of injury and refused medical attention.

Drug Bust: Jajuan Worley, 39, Gregory Gosha, 57, were charged with drug offenses after cops conducted a buy-bust operation on the 200 block of East Hanover Street. Officers from the violent crimes rapid response unit saw the men do a hand-to-hand drug deal. Gosha was charged with heroin possession and possession of a hypodermic needle. Worley was found with 79 bags of dope and more than $200 in cash, which was seized on suspicion of being drug proceeds.

Crack Attack: Bobby Vazquez, 40, was charged with aggravated assault June 1, at 8:40 a.m. on the 100 block of Brunswick Avenue for a home invasion. The victim was covered in blood and incoherent. The apartment appeared ransacked, and cops found a broken, blood-covered ceramic. The victim told cops she owed Vazquez money for crack and he came to her home to collect. She suffered jaw, skull and facial fractures from the beating.

Beatdown: Brandely Tavarez-Duran, 19, was arrested June 18 after cops responded to the 100 block of Hewitt Street. The victim told cops he went to the 700 block of Division Street for a job opportunity when he got into an argument with Tavarez-Duran. Duran allegedly used a machete to cut the victim while another person held him down. He escaped and called police. Tavarez-Duran was identified as the machete-wielding suspect. Tavarez-Duran claimed he used a board to hit the victim not a machete. No weapons were located. The victim, who refused to go to the hospital, did not appear to sustain slash marks or puncture wounds but had bruises. The second suspect is still on the lam.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Andrin Raj (The Jakarta Post) Kuala Lumpur  Tue, June 23 2020

Following the fall of the Soeharto regime, Indonesia has been besieged with sectarian and separatist turmoil, including terrorism. The Bali bombing in 2002 brought a serious realization that the country is under the threat of attacks by Islamist terrorist groups.

Although the administration tried to protect the countrys democratic institutions, they were not always successful in mitigating communal conflicts that at times flared up into societal-wide communal violence.

The Soeharto regime did prevent nonstate actors from conducting terroristic attacks and communal violence and kept the country safe, although atrocities committed by the regime were widespread. Soehartos use of the military was condemned and criticized by the international community and non-government organizations.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Cities and towns wont soon get the local aid increases that Gov. Charlie Baker proposed back in January and the planned implementation of a new school funding law in the new fiscal year is on hold, at least for the time being.

With work on the fiscal year 2021 budget stalled and just 10 days until the new budget year begins, the Baker administration is now telling municipalities that upcoming monthly local aid payments will largely be based on fiscal year 2020 estimates.

In a bulletin to municipal leaders published Monday, the Department of Revenues Division of Local Services said it is unable to provide cherry sheets, the administrations best estimates for amounts of local aid and school aid the state will provide in fiscal year 2021, because the only annual budget proposal available is Gov. Charlie Bakers pre-pandemic budget built on outdated assumptions. Fiscal 2021 begins July 1.

In regard to monthly aid distributions, after discussion with the Executive Office of Administration & Finance (A&F), DLS will base at least the first two months of FY2021 on the FY2020 cherry sheet estimates for Chapter 70, Unrestricted General Government Aid, Stateowned Land and Elderly Exemptions, Sean Cronin, DLS senior deputy commissioner, wrote in the bulletin. For the Charter Tuition Reimbursements and School Choice Tuition payments, we will use the final actual payments from FY2020 rather than the cherry sheet estimate, since these programs are based on student enrollment in out-of-district schools or charter schools.

School districts had been looking to the new fiscal year for an infusion of Chapter 70 money from last years Student Opportunity Act, which committed the state to $1.5 billion in new K-12 school funding over seven years starting with fiscal 2021. Baker proposed $303.5 million in new Chapter 70 funding in his January budget filing. The law did not create a revenue source for the new funding and leaves it up to the Legislature to find and include the money in each years budget. Estimates for the annual cost of the law have ranged from about $300 million to $430 million.

In May, the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation suggested that budget managers delay implementation of the new school funding reform law to help the state deal with the shock to its budget.

Prior to COVID-19, education finance reform was on track to be the centerpiece of the fiscal 2021 budget, MTF President Eileen McAnneny wrote in a letter to lawmakers. She added, After the fiscal impact of COVID-19, however, policymakers may need to modify the implementation schedule for this new law. For example, lawmakers may postpone the start of implementation until fiscal 2022, presumably after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has abated.

Experts have advised state officials that state tax revenues in fiscal 2021 could decline by $6 billion, a drop that could lead to local aid reductions. Beacon Hill leaders have an array of options to deal with the problem - cutting spending, enacting savings-based measures, or raising taxes - but have not settled on a plan.

Cherry sheets are meant to give local leaders an idea of how much state aid their town might receive and how much the town will be required to pay to the state in assessments. DOR has said local boards of assessors are required to use the cherry sheet estimates when determining their local budgets.

Last week, Boston Mayor Martin Walsh submitted an updated budget to the City Council that assumes the city will see no increase in local aid from the state during fiscal 2021.

In Springfield, Mayor Domenic Sarno sent the City Council an austerity budget [that] takes into consideration the reductions in local receipts and expected revenue shortfall from state and federal aid to the city, which could potentially result in a loss of $11.4 million in local aid, according to his office.

In the bulletin, Cronin said that DLS will re-evaluate our methodology as the FY2021 legislative process unfolds.

Though it is still unclear exactly how or when the Legislature will put a fiscal 2021 budget in place, lawmakers are becoming more active on the budget front.

The House plans to vote Wednesday on a $1.1 billion fiscal 2020 bill to cover COVID-19 response costs. The House and Senate Ways and Means chairmen on Monday put out a joint statement saying they had collaborated to produce a supplemental budget framework that will allow us to maximize federal financial support to reimburse for COVID-19 response costs and provide critical resources for our most vulnerable populations.

House and Senate leaders said the bill prioritized funding for personal protective equipment, emergency child care, food security as well as supports for community health centers, behavioral health services, housing and efforts to address homelessness.

Sen. Walter Timilty (D-Milton), during a recess in Mondays Senate session, said the Senate hoped to receive the spending bill from the House on Monday. Around noon, the House gave the bill (H 4802) initial approval.

Were hopeful, he said. Obviously, budget items are ever more critical and important today with the financial shortfalls that were facing. So wed like to address it quickly and were just waiting for it to come over.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Monday was also polling a bill to allocate $200 million to the Chapter 90 program that reimburses cities and towns each year for the costs of local road and bridge repairs -- after the House previously supported $300 million for the program.

On Friday, Baker filed a $5.25 billion fiscal 2021 interim spending bill that he said would be sufficient to cover state government operations through July.

It seems likely that the Legislature will go along with the month-to-month budgeting approach while waiting to learn more about the pandemic-caused recession impacts on state tax revenues, when the economy and tax receipts might rebound, and whether Congress will pass an additional recovery bill with aid to the states.

Sam Doran contributed reporting.
Iran says it will send the flight recorders of Ukrainian plane that was shot down to France in the coming few days.

Iran will send the flight recorders from a downed Ukrainian airliner to France in the next few days, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Iran shot down the Ukraine International Airlines plane on January 8 with a ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people, in what Tehran later acknowledged as a disastrous mistake by forces on high alert during a confrontation with the United States.

The Islamic Republic of Iran will send the black box [flight recorder] of the Ukrainian passenger plane to France in the coming few days in order to read its information, Zarif said, according to IRNA.

Zarif made the comments in a phone call with Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne. There were 57 Canadian citizens on board the plane.

The fate of the cockpit voice and data flight recorders was the subject of an international standoff after the plane was shot down, with Ukraine demanding access.

The fate of flight recorders has been the subject of an international standoff between Iran and Ukraine [Reuters]

Shot down unintentionally

Frances BEA air accident investigation agency is known internationally as one of the leading agencies in the world for reading flight recorders, and recorders have been sent there in other prominent cases of crashes.

Canada said later on Monday Zarif had agreed to enter into negotiations for reparations regarding downed plane.

200111100314438

The Ukrainian plane was unintentionally shot down shortly after takeoff in Tehran, when Irans defences were on high alert hours after Iran fired at bases used by US forces in Iraq in retaliation for a US attack that killed a top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport.

Iran had told Ukraine it was ready to resolve legal issues and discuss how to compensate the families of victims but was yet to receive a delegation from the other party.

Iran has said the coronavirus crisis has contributed to delays in a probe by its Air Accident Investigation Board. Iran has sent mixed messages about where the flight recorders may be read. Last week, Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami said the flight recorders will be sent to Ukraine.
A European Union flag flies in front of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Dec. 3, 2019. (Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images)

EU Lists China as Top Offender for IP Breaches

The EU considers China as one of the top offenders in terms of intellectual property rights infringement, a report shows.

The biennial report, issued by the European Commission in January, lists the blocs trading partners and how effectively they are enforcing intellectual property (IP) protection in their jurisdictions.

According to the European Commission, which coordinates trade policy for the 28 member nations, China ranks as Europes priority 1 worst offender due to the scale and persistence of its IP rights and enforcement issues, which it says hinders the blocs trademark and patent owners goals. China is the only nation listed under priority 1.

The report found that Beijing grants questionable patents and encourages the use of patent-thicketsdense groups of IP rights in certain fields of technologyto thwart innovation.

China is at the origin of a dominant share of counterfeit and pirated goods arriving in the EU, in terms of both value and volume, the report states.

It notes that more than 80 percent of counterfeit and pirated goods seized by EU customs authorities originate from China and Hong Kong. This includes the production of counterfeit medicines and toys, which are potentially dangerous for consumers.

According to the report, in this environment Chinese firms use patented foreign technologies without paying adequate royalties.

Forced technology transfer is an increasingly important trade irritant, the report says, noting that the practice discourages investment. Chinas trading partners have long complained that their firms are often compelled to hand over prized technology in exchange for access to the worlds second-largest economy.

China forces foreign companies to license technology, often at below market rates, as a precondition to access and operate on certain markets, the report states.

The report adds that although Beijing has, in recent years, made some improvements in the protection of IP rights, serious concerns remain about the quality of granted invention patents in China where the number of patent applications is growing exponentially.

The countries of India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine are listed by the European Commission as priority 2 offenders who are causing significant harm to EU businesses due to serious systemic problems in IP protection and enforcement.

Meanwhile, the list of priority 3 countries causing significant harm to EU businesses include Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, and Thailand, and new additions Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

The United States has also voiced concern over the Chinese regimes stance on intellectual property. Last month, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) outlined legislationthe Safeguarding American Innovation Actto help prevent IP theft by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) speaks to reporters outside Wyoming High School in Wyoming, Ohio, on June 22, 2017. (Paul Vernon/AFP/Getty Images)

The senator said the CCP has been taking advantage of the openness of American universities with strategies like the Thousand Talents Program. This program has been allowed to systematically target promising research in the United States, he said.

China and the Chinese Communist Party has not played by the rules and thats with regard to obtaining our intellectual property, our innovation, our research, Portman said on May 20 from the Senate floor.

The legislation he will be introducing, builds on PSIs recommendations to promote an open and transparent research enterprise in the United States and crack down on the theft of American taxpayer-funded research and IP, while also empowering the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to directly punish those who seek to steal Americas research to benefit our rivals.

Masooma Haq contributed to this report.
Failte Ireland's new guidelines for restaurants to re-open give a "fighting chance" for businesses to save themselves, an industry body has said.

Chief executive of the Restaurant Association of Ireland (RAI), Adrian Cummins said the guidelines coming so late in the day had hampered preparations, but that businesses are "up for the challenge".

The new guidelines are not a consolation prize to replace the urgent need for governmental measures to stimulate the ailing industry, he added.

Failte Ireland said it has developed operational guidelines in line with the HSE and health chiefs, and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

Physical distancing of two metres should be maintained, the tourism body said - however if this is not possible, this can be reduced to one metre in controlled environments if certain risk mitigation requirements have been met.

As far as reasonably possible, a distance of two metres and a minimum of one metre should be maintained between employees. Where two metres is not possible, all other measures to protect employees should be in place, Failte Ireland added.

Mr Cummins said: "The Failte Ireland reopening guidelines, while they are not perfect... at least the reduction from two-metre to one-metre will have a huge effect on restaurants and give them a fighting chance of reopening.

"The issuing of the guidelines so late isnt easy on businesses but we are up for the challenge. What we need now is a sector-specific package for restaurants, specifically around continuation of the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) and the inclusion of seasonal workers on the scheme."

A Vat reduction, plus grant aid for businesses that pays legacy debt, is also a matter of urgency, Mr Cummins said.

The RAI has warned that up to 50% of restaurants in Ireland face closure unless an Emergency Grant Aid Package is issued.

Economist Jim Power, who prepared a report on the industry for the RAI, said the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated already lingering difficulties for restaurants, including Brexit uncertainty, sterling weakness and a drop in UK visitors, labour shortages, and the decision to increase the Vat rate from 9% to 13.5% in Budget 2019.

In his report, he said: "Covid-19 is having a devastating impact on the restaurant sector. Most businesses are either closed fully or offering a very limited takeaway service.

"Cashflow has effectively ground to a trickle and fixed costs persist in many cases. Without aggressive and effective official policy supports, many of these businesses will be forced into bankruptcy."

Estimates from the sector suggest that between 80% and 90% of restaurants could not operate with the strict social distancing measures for up to 24 months without a financial stimulus, Mr Power said.
Angelina Jolie has opened up about her divorce from Brad Pitt, revealing she left the actor for the 'well-being' of her six children.

The couple ended their two-year marriage in 2016 and later agreed on a custody deal, but neither Pitt nor Jolie have spoken about the issues that led to their separation.

Now, the Changeling star has revealed to Vogue that she walked away for the sake of her children.

"I separated for the well-being of my family," the 45-year-old said. "It was the right decision. I continue to focus on their healing."

Alluding to the negative attention she has received from the press following the split, Jolie added: "Some have taken advantage of my silence, and the children see lies about themselves in the media, but I remind them that they know their own truth and their own minds."

Jolie says she's tremendously proud of her kids - who range in age from 11 to 18 - for accepting her decision and moving on, calling them, "six very brave, very strong young people."

Jolie was already mum to son Maddox and daughter Zahara when she started dating Pitt in 2005. The actor later adopted the pair and he and Jolie went on to welcome four more children - Pax, Shiloh and twins Vivienne and Knox.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jolie spoke passionately about her work with refugees in Venezuela and Bangladesh: I saw people at their most human, whove been through unimaginable violence or hardship, and who are just trying to take care of their families. Any of us would do the same in their situation."

Cover Media

Newshub.
This week on Foreign Correspondent All the Single Men on a gender imbalance in China and the steps some men will go to for a bride.

Being a single man in China is tough. Young men face pressure to provide a family heir but finding a bride isnt easy. With 30 million more males than females, many bachelors are taking desperate measures to get hitched.

Lan Sui is 27 years old and still lives with his parents. Hes under pressure to start a family but in his home province of Henan, one of the poorest in China, there arent many young women available. Henan has one of the worst male to female ratios in the country.

In China, theres a cultural preference for males. The saying here is that raising a girl is like cultivating someone elses field because a girl moves into her husbands family after marriage.

With technology now able to predict the sex of the baby in the womb, female fetuses are being aborted, leaving the country with millions more men than women.

Men from the bachelor villages in Henan province are looking far and wide to find a wife. At a price, they can buy brides from Vietnam, Laos and even from as far as Indonesia.

The lack of women has also led to a local trafficking trade. We met Lui Bing who has been searching for his wife since she was kidnapped many years ago, leaving him alone to bring up their daughter.

While the police are trying to crack down on trafficking networks, the trade in local women continues.

All the Single Men explores the human and social impact of Chinas female deficit, from the rise in the sale of sex dolls, to the loneliness of young men working in the city factories, to the desperation of men living in the rural areas.

Lan Suis family finally find a solution to their sons problem, saving up enough money to buy a bride from Indonesia. While his family are happy, Lan Suis new bride Lai is uncertain about how shell fare in her new country.

Tuesday 23 June at 8pm on ABC.
Wall Street grappled with severe volatility in the last two weeks after an impressive rally for 10 successive weeks that enabled the three major stock indexes  the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite  to exit the coronavirus-induced short bear market. However, concerns over a second wave of COVID-19 dented investors' confidence to quite an extent.

Resurgence of the deadly virus will have a strong repercussion on the ongoing reopening process of the U.S. economy after two months of lockdowns. Consequently, the much-hyped, V-shaped recovery of the U.S. economy, which is currently under recession, will be jeopardized.

Resurgence of Coronavirus Infections

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the United States reported more than 30,000 new cases of COVID-19 during Jun 19 and 20, highest since May 1. Meanwhile, at least six states recorded a spike in COVID-19 cases in last week. Moreover, 23 states, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have witnessed a surge in new coronavirus cases over the past two weeks.

The World Health Organization has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is "accelerating" and "the world is in a new and dangerous phase." In The United States, Arizona, Florida and California reported record spikes in confirmed Covid-19 cases last week.

Concerns Over Economic Recovery

On Jun 8, the National Bureau of Economic Research stated that the U.S. economy is in recession since mid-February, ending the historically longest 128 months of expansions due to the coronavirus-induced devastations.

However, a series of better-than-expected data for both April and May clearly indicated that the worst is over for the U.S. economy and the pandemic-led downturn may not be as sharp as expected earlier. Several economists and financial experts have expressed quicker-than-expected recovery as all 50 states have reopened in some form or the other since the last week of May.

Story continues

Investors remained highly concerned about the second wave of coronavirus cases, which will significantly delay the just-started reopening process of the U.S. economy.

Tech behemoth Apple Inc. AAPL decided to re-close 11 of its stores in those states where COVID-19 cases spiked recently. Furthermore, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC, the world's largest movie theater operator, expressed fears that it may not be able to reopen 450 theaters in the United States next month due to resurgence of the coronavirus infections.

Volatility Might Persist in the Near Future

The stock-market volatility is likely to continue in the days to come. This is evident from the reading for COBE VIX  popularly known as the best fear-gauge of Wall Street. In a nutshell, the VIX indicates market's expectation of a 30-day forward-looking volatility based on the near-term S&P 500 index options (both puts and calls).

Notably, the VIX is currently at 35.12 while just two weeks ago, the fear gauge was hovering around 25. At its current level, the fear gauge is well above its last year's average range of 20. This clearly indicates that the market will remain volatile and stocks will swing widely in either direction, over the next 30 days.

Our Top Picks

At this stage, it will be prudent to invest in low-beta (beta value less than 1 but greater than zero) stocks as these will be less volatile than the broader market. We have narrowed down our search to five low-beta stocks that have provided double-digit returns in the past month.

These stocks have positive growth potential for 2020 and witnessed upward earnings estimate revision for the year in the past 30 days despite the coronavirus-induced market mayhem. Each of our picks carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The chart below shows the price performance of our five picks in the past month.

Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. SWBI designs, manufactures and sells firearms. It offers pistols, revolvers, rifles, handcuffs and other related products and accessories. The company has an expected earnings growth rate of 143.2% for the current year (ending April 2021). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 108.2% over the last 30 days. The stock has a beta of 0.69 and soared 84.4% in the past month.

Zscaler Inc. ZS operates as a cloud security company focusing on transforming networks and applications for a mobile and cloud-first platform. The company has an expected earnings growth rate of 39.7% for next year (ending July 2021). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for next-year earnings has improved 9.1% over the last 30 days. The stock has a beta of 0.72 and jumped 41.1% in the past month.

Sportsman's Warehouse Holdings Inc. SPWH is an outdoor sporting goods retailer in the United States. Its stores offer camping products, fishing products and hunting and shooting products. The company has an expected earnings growth rate of 63.8% for the current fiscal year (ending January 2021). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 22.2% over the last 30 days. The stock has a beta of 0.68 and climbed 26.7% in the past month.

ProQR Therapeutics N.V. PRQR is a biopharmaceutical company that is engaged in the discovery and development of RNA-based therapeutics for the treatment of genetic disorders. The company has an expected earnings growth rate of 10.3% for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 13.1% over the last 30 days. The stock has a beta of 0.54 and rallied 22.7% in the past month.

Ooma Inc. OOMA provides communications solutions and other connected services to small business, home and mobile users in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company has an expected earnings growth rate of more than 100% for the current year (ending January 2021). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for next-year earnings has improved more than 100% over the last 30 days. The stock has a beta of 0.68 and surged 10.4% in the past month.

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.



Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC) : Free Stock Analysis Report



ProQR Therapeutics N.V. (PRQR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Sportsmans Warehouse Holdings, Inc. (SPWH) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Ooma, Inc. (OOMA) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Zscaler, Inc. (ZS) : Free Stock Analysis Report



American Outdoor Brands Corporation (SWBI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Theres a variety of issues that need to be addressed ... I think the untimely death of George Floyd is why it is at the forefront, Melton said. I think at the core of all of this ... is to create a committee to review the policies of law enforcement across the state that have a historically racist impact on communities.
The incident was reported at about 08:15 on June 22.

Russian-led forces in Donbas have launched an anti-tank guided missile at the OSCE monitoring camera in the village of Shyrokyne.

The incident occurred at about 08:15 on June 22, according to the Ukrainian TSN news service.

Russian-backed terrorists had already tried to hit the tower hosting the mission's observation equipment the day before, but their missile missed, instead landing just outside a medical station.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russia's hybrid military forces on June 21 mounted 10 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine. A Ukrainian soldier was wounded in shelling, the morning update said.
SEARCH

A minimum of 3 characters are required to be typed in the search bar in order to perform a search.
China and the United States are locked in a contest to develop the worlds most powerful computers. Now a massive machine in Japan has topped them both.

A long-awaited supercomputer called Fugaku, installed in the city of Kobe by the government-sponsored Riken institute, took first place in a twice-yearly speed ranking that was released on Monday. The Japanese machine carried out 2.8 times more calculations a second than an IBM system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which Fugaku bumped to second place in the so-called Top500 list.

Another IBM system, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, slid to third place in the ranking from second, while systems in China moved to the fourth and fifth spots from third and fourth.

Supercomputers have become a symbol for both technical and economic competitiveness. The room-size systems are used for complex military and scientific tasks, including breaking codes, modeling climate change and simulating new designs for cars, weapons, aircraft and drugs. Riken has said Fugaku is already being used to help study, diagnose and treat Covid-19.
Coronavirus Outbreak Updates: The Indian Council for Medical Research said India now has 1,000 COVID-19 testing labs set up with its facilitation and termed this as a major milestone

Auto refresh feeds

The decision was taken after Saudi Arabia's Haj and Umrah minister Mohammad Saleh bin Taher Benten telephoned last night and suggested not to send pilgrims from India for Haj this year, Naqvi told reporters.

The government has decided that Muslims from India will not travel to Saudi Arabia for Haj 2020 after the kingdom conveyed that pilgrims should not be sent this year in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Tuesday.

462 new Covid-19 cases and 8 deaths recorded in Andhra Pradesh in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,834 including 5,123 active cases. Number of deaths stands at 119, says state health department.

During the last 24 hours, a total of 10,994 COVID-19 patients have recovered, taking the recovery rate to around 56.38 per cent amongst coronavirus infected patients, an official said.

The number of recoveries also surged with 2,48,189 patients cured so far, while there were 1,78,014 active cases, according to the updated official figures at 8 am. One patient has migrated.

With 14,933 people testing positive for coronavirus in a single day, India's COVID-19 tally climbed to 4,40,215 on Tuesday while the death toll rose to 14,011 with 312 new fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

"Stop playing with human lives. It will not serve any purpose to seal a few areas. If you care for the human lives in Bengaluru, shut down the city totally for 20 days. Else, Bengaluru will become another Brazil. People''s lives are more important than the economy," Kumaraswamy tweeted.

In a series of tweets, the JD(S) leader said sealing some areas would not serve any purpose and that weaker sections of the society should be taken care of immediately.

Instead of sealing a few areas, the entire state capital should be shut down for 20 days in view of the rising COVID-19 cases, former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy said on Tuesday.

Indian Express reports that police had received a complaint from a member of the residential colony citing that a group of people had arrived in multiple cars, had gathered in one of the houses and were making a lot of noise. Based on the complaint, a team of police patrol team from Waghodia police station had raided the house early morning and found 12 persons including five women in an inebriated condition

According to reports , Vadodara police on Monday arrested 12 resident doctors of a private medical college for allegedly holding a liquor party.

In a statement, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) said its chairperson Priyank Kanoongo on Monday sought details of the matter from the UP State Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

The apex child rights body, NCPCR, has asked the UP government to ensure proper treatment and protection of 57 girls who tested positive for the coronavirus infection at a government-run shelter home in Kanpur.

The top court was hearing a plea, filed by some parents of the students appearing for the exam, seeking a direction to the CBSE to declare the results on the basis of exam already conducted and to calculate it on an average basis with internal assessment marks of remaining subjects.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed a bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar that the government and the board are aware of the anxiety of students, and authorities will take a decision on the issue soon.

The Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education tell the Supreme Court that a decision on whether to scrap the remaining exams of Class 12 students, in view of the surge in coronavirus cases, is likely to be taken on Wednesday, PTI reports.

Seventy patients who tested positive for coronavirus from Mumbais P-North (Malad) ward have gone missing, reports Times Of India. BMC has sought Mumbai Police help to trace these people who went missing after testing positive from P-North Ward over the past three months, through their mobile phone location and CDRs, according to News18.

We have decided that Haj pilgrims from India will not be sent to Saudi Arabia for Haj 2020. Application money of more than 2.3 lakh pilgrims will be returned without cancellation deductions through a direct transfer, said Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

Day after Saudi Arabia announced that very limited number of people will be allowed to perform Haj this year due to the pandemic, the Centre on Tuesday has decided to refund the application money of pilgrims without any deduction, reports Indian Express.

The deputy chief minister demanded that the previous system should be implemented wherein teams of the district administration visit the house of an infected person for his or her clinical assessment.

Addressing an online media briefing, Sisodia said he has written to Baijal, saying that the new system will only add pressure on the government machinery.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday requested Lt Governor Anil Baijal to scrap the system requiring every COVID-19 patient to visit a government-run centre for clinical assessment.

Out of the 50,000 ventilators, 30,000 ventilators are being manufactured by M/S Bharat Electronics Limited. Of the remaining 20,000 ventilators, 10,000 are being manufactured by AgVa Healthcare, 5,650 by AMTZ Basic, 4,000 by AMTZ High End and 350 by Allied Medical, said the PMO.

As India continues to see a surge of COVID-19 cases, the Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund has allocated Rs 2,000 crore for supply of 50,000 ventilators to government-run COVID-19 hospitals in all states and Union Territories. All these ventilators will be Made in India, said the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) in a press release issued on 23 June.

Jaipur has recorded a maximum of 150 deaths due to COVID-19, and 2,988 positive cases followed by Jodhpur where 34 deaths and 2,459 cases have been reported. A total of 11,794 COVID-19 patients have been discharged, officials said, adding the state has 3,035 active cases.

Rajasthan reported 199 fresh coronavirus cases on Tuesday, taking the state's total number of such cases to 15,431, officials said. With no death reported in the state on Tuesday, the death toll due to the disease stands at 356, reports PTI.

He claimed that Patanjalis 'CORONIL', which contains giloy, ashwagandha and tusli, among other ingredients, has shown 100 percent recovery rate in seven days. Ramdev claimed CORONIL is the first ayurvedic medicine to fight COVID-19.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev said Patanjali is launching the first successful ayurvedic medicine for COVID-19 treatment, following successful clinical trials. The controlled study was done on 280 patients, Ramdev added.

Lockdown to be imposed in 11 wards of Guwahati from 9 pm on Tuesday, untill further orders, ANI reported. Essential services such as grocery stores, petrol pumps, banks etc to remain functional, the statement said.

Delhi registered 3,947 new coronavirus cases and 68 deaths today, pushing total number of such infections to 66,602 including 24,988 active cases and 2,301 deaths, reports ANI. Over 39,000 persons have recovered so far with 2,711 getting discharged today.

"The situation is getting grave and along with this there are people who have tested positive and are asymptomatic. There are some cases where we have not been able to find the source of the infection", Vijayan said.

As Kerala's COVID-19 case count touched 3,503 on Tuesday with 141 positive cases being reported, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sounded an alarm that the situation was becoming "grave". A 68-year-old man from Kollam, who had tested positive for the infection after returning from Delhi, died on Tuesday, taking the toll so far to 22.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Ahmedabad mounted by 235 to 19,386 on Tuesday, state Health department said. With 15 more persons succumbing to the viral infection, the death toll went up to 1,363, it said. With 381 more people getting discharged in the day, the number of the recovered cases in the district rose to

Telangana on Tuesday reported 879 new patients and three deaths, taking the state's total to 9,553 and toll to 220. Of the new cases, 652 were found in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits, according to the state health department.

3214 new #COVID19 positive cases, 248 deaths (75 in last 48 hours and 173 in the previous period) and 1925 discharged in Maharashtra today. Total positive cases in the state rises to 1,39,010 including 69,631 recovered patients & 6531 deaths: Public Health Department, Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/zF71UqdqeA

Coronavirus case count in Maharashtra rises to 1,39,010 with 3,214 new patients while toll reaches 6,531 with 248 deaths, reports PTI. According to the state's public health department, 75 persons died of the infection over the past two days, while 173 deaths were recorded previously. The case fatality rate stands at 4.69 percent while the recovery rate stands at just over 50 percent with as many as 69,631 persons having been discharged till date. There are 62,833 active cases in the state.

31 #COVID19 positive cases, 1 death, 61 treated/recovered in Uttarakhand today. Total positive cases in the state rise to 2535, including 30 deaths and 1602 discharged: Uttarakhand State Control Room COVID-19 pic.twitter.com/J5fDbyjs5Z

Uttarakhand reports 31 new COVID-19 cases, taking total to 2,535. One person succumbs to disease while 61 recover from it. So far 30 deaths have been reported in the state while 1,602 persons have been discharged.

Pharma major Cipla will price its generic version of antiviral drug remdesivir at less than Rs 5,000 per vial in keeping with its conviction of providing access to the medicines at affordable cost, the company said on Tuesday. "In line with our overall philosophy of driving access and affordability, the drug will be priced at less than Rs 5,000 per vial vial for injection 100 mg -- amongst the lowest pricing for remdesivir globally," Cipla said in an e-mailed response to PTI. On being asked about the launch of the drug, the company said: "We have started commercial manufacturing, and the product will be available in the next 8-10 days."

Mumbai reports 846 new cases, 42 deaths, says BMC. The metropolis has till date recorded 68,481 patients. While 34,576 patients have recovered, as many as 3,842 have succumbed to the disease. The civic body said that the death count figure has gone up as 65 deaths were added from previous period.

"This is an important milestone in the fight against coronavirus. Since the beginning, we have been focusing on 3Ts testing, tracking and treating  to fight the disease. Through increased testing, we are fighting this virus," PTI quotes ICMR Director General Dr. Balram Bhargava as saying.The country is now testing over 1.90 lakh samples every day.

The Indian Council for Medical Research said India now has 1,000 COVID-19 testing labs set up with its facilitation and termed this as a major milestone. While 730 are state-run labs, 270 are private labs. The number has gone up from one on 23 January to 160 on 23 March and 1,000 on 23 June, it said.

A revised protocol has been issued to contain spread of coronavirus in the armed forces which included exemption of 14-day quarantine period on specific conditions like commuting from one duty station to another without any stay in between and reporting back to units travelling by official transport, reports PTI. The revised protocol, issued by the Director General Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS) also recommended avoiding short duration duties of up to seven days unless deemed crucial for the interest of the services, they said.

Coronavirus Outbreak Updates: The Indian Council for Medical Research said India now has 1,000 COVID-19 testing labs set up with its facilitation and termed this as a major milestone. The country is now testing over 1.90 lakh samples every day.

Coronavirus case count in Maharashtra rises to 1,39,010 with 3,214 new patients while toll reaches 6,531 with 248 deaths, reports PTI. According to the state's public health department, 75 persons died of the infection over the past two days, while 173 deaths were recorded previously.

Delhi registered 3,947 new coronavirus cases and 68 deaths today, pushing total number of such infections to 66,602 including 24,988 active cases and 2,301 deaths, reports ANI.

COVID-19 cases in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and the two other federal forces of NSG and NDRF have shot up to over 2,900 with 85 new infections being recorded on Tuesday, reports PTI.

The AYUSH ministry has said that it is not aware of the facts and claims being made by Patanjali about its coronavirus medicines Coronil and Swasari,which it claims has shown hundred percent results in COVID-19 patients except those on life support. It has asked the company to provide details of composition of medicines and the research study and told it to stop publicising their claims until the issue is duly examined.

Novak Djokovic, the mens world number one tennis player, has tested positive for COVID-19, the Serbian said in a statement on Tuesday.

As against the global average of 6.04, India has one COVID-19 death per lakh population which is one of the lowest in the world, the Union health ministry said on Tuesday, and credited timely detection of cases, extensive contact tracing and effective clinical management for the low mortality rate.

As India continues to see a surge of COVID-19 cases, the Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund has allocated Rs 2,000 crore for supply of 50,000 ventilators to government-run COVID-19 hospitals in all states and Union Territories.

One of the servitors of Shree Jagannath Temple here tested positive for COVID-19 during mandatory testing of priests and police personnel ahead of the annual Rath Yatra on Tuesday, a senior official said. The servitor will not be part of any ritual related to the Rath Yatra, he said. Meanwhile, 70 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 from Mumbais P-North ward have gone missing.

The government has decided that Muslims from India will not travel to Saudi Arabia for Haj 2020 after the kingdom conveyed that pilgrims should not be sent this year in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Tuesday.

The total number of coronavirus cases in India crossed 4.25 lakh after 14,821 new cases were recorded, and the toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new casualties, according to the Union health ministry's figures.

However, the ministry said that the rate of COVID-19 cases per 1,00,000 people in India is "one of the lowest" in the world despite the high population density, and the recovery rate has now reached almost 56 percent.

For every one 1,00,000 population, there are 30.04 coronavirus cases in India, while the global average is over three times at 114.67, the ministry said, referring to the WHO Situation Report 153, dated 21 June.

"This low figure is thus a testimony to the graded, pre-emptive and pro-active approach the Government of India along with the states and UTs took for prevention, containment and management of COVID-19," the ministry said in a statement.

Presently, the total cases in India stand at 4,25,282 including 1,74,387 active cases, 2,37,196 cured/discharged/migrated and 13,699 deaths.

Centre says India's COVID-19 recovery rate rises to 55.77%

Citing the WHO Situation Report, the Centre said the US has 671.24 cases per 1,00,000 population, while Germany, Spain, Brazil and the UK have 583.88, 526.22, 489.42 and 448.86 cases per 1,00,000 population, respectively.

It said Russia has 400.82 cases per 1,00,000 people, while Italy, Canada, Iran and Turkey have 393.52, 268.98, 242.82 and 223.53, respectively.

In its update issued at 8 am on Monday, the ministry also said that 9,440 COVID-19 patients had recovered in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 2,37,195, a recovery rate of 55.77 percent.

Presently, there are 1,74,387 active cases and all are under medical supervision, the statement said.

"The difference between the recovered patients and the active COVID-19 cases continues to widen. Today, the number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 62,808," the ministry added.

The COVID-19 testing infrastructure is "continuously being ramped up" and number of government labs has been increased to 723 and the private labs to 262, adding up to a total of 985, it said.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, a total of 69,50,493 samples have been tested up to 21 June, 1,43,267 of them just on Sunday.

SC allows Puri Rath Yatra to be conducted

The Supreme Court has modified its earlier order and allowed the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra in Odisha's Puri to be held with the coordination of the temple committee, state government and Centre without compromising with the health issue pertaining to COVID-19.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde said that the apex court is only considering conducting the yatra in Puri and not anywhere else in Odisha.

The Supreme Court had earlier stayed the annual Rath Yatra at Jagannath Temple in Puri, which is slated to be held on 23 June, and all activities related to the gathering in view of the coronavirus pandemic this year.

The top court pronounced the order after hearing a batch of intervention applications seeking modification of its earlier order of staying the yatra in view of COVID-19 pandemic.

The apex court, while disposing of the pleas filed in the matter, noted that the Odisha government can stop the yatra or festivities if they feel it is going out of hand and added that it was aware of the situation and has passed the order accordingly.

While reading the order, the bench said, "Clearly, any spread of COVID-19 due to this will be disastrous since large numbers are involved and it won't be possible to track everyone after they go back home."

After the apex court's order, the Odisha government imposed a "curfew-like" shutdown in the Puri district ahead of yatra "and appealed to citizens to refrain from stepping out of their homes when the chariots roll out on the Grand Road on Tuesday," News18 reported.

Lockdown ordered in COVID-19 clusters of Bengaluru due to spike in cases

Concerned over increase in COVID-19 cases in the Bengaluru, Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa directed officials to implement lockdown measures strictly in the clusters which have reported more infections.

Yediyurappa held a meeting with ministers and senior officials regarding containment strategies and said it can be achieved only if preventive measures are implemented strictly and asked the officials to work in this direction.

"Lockdown shall be implemented strictly in the clusters which reported more cases, especially, KR Market and surrounding areas such as Siddapura, VV Puram, Kalasipalya. It was decided to seal the adjoining streets, where the cases are reported, a release from the Chief Minister's office said.

Stringent action would be taken against those who violate quarantine norms and FIR would be filed if necessary, it said.

Delhi HC tells AAP govt to increase COVID-19 testing

The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the AAP government to try and increase the COVID-19 testing methodology  Rapid Antigen Test (RAT)  in view of rise in coronavirus cases in the National Capital.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad noted that present per day RAT numbers were "abysmal" as they were not even reaching 50 percent of the target of 22,000 tests per day set by the Delhi government.

"See if you can expand the Rapid Antigen Testing numbers. Looking at the rate the (COVID-19) numbers are going up, the sooner you do, the better," the bench said.

Delhi government additional standing counsel Satyakam, appearing for the health department, said the RAT methodology was started on 18 June and was in its trial phase.

He said the testing methodology was presently confined to hot spots and containment zones and asked the court to wait for a week after which the RAT numbers would go up.

During the hearing via video conferencing, the high court also suggested that the RAT methodology be permitted in the designated COVID-19 hospitals as well so that testing numbers can be ramped up.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the state government will give pulse oximeters to COVID-19 patients in home isolation so that they can monitor oxygen levels.

The biggest issue we have seen is oxygen levels falling suddenly. Some patients require oxygen immediately. Those under home isolation will be given oximeters to monitor their levels We will also give them a number they can call if the levels dip. A team will reach your house with a concentrator. The patient can be stabilised while being shifted to the hospital. This will be present in each district. Once a person is cured, this can be returned to the government, he said.

Goa records first COVID-19 death, Tamil Nadu govt imposes complete lockdown in Madurai

Goa on Monday recorded the first death due to coronavirus, The Indian Express reported. The victim was reportedly an 85-year-old man from Morlem.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu government said that a "complete" lockdown will be imposed from 23 June to 30 June in "jurisdiction of Madurai Corporation limits, Paravai Town Panchayat and rural blocks of Madurai east, Madurai west and Thiruparankundram."

The state reported 2,710 new COVID-19 cases and 37 deaths, taking the total number of cases to 62,087 and death toll to 794 on Monday.

As many as 3,721 people tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra, taking the total number of cases to 1,35,796 in the state. This includes 67,706 recoveries, 6,283 deaths and 61,793 active cases.

Meanwhile, Kerala reported 138 fresh cases of coronavirus, taking total number of cases to 3,310 out of which 1,540 cases are active. Number of fatalities due to the disease stands at 21, said the state health department.

WHO says highest single-day jump in global tally of cases reported on Sunday

The World Health Organization on Sunday reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 1,83,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours.

The UN health agency said Brazil led the way with 54,771 cases tallied and the US next at 36,617. Over 15,400 came in from India.

Experts said rising case counts can reflect multiple factors including more widespread testing as well as broader infection.

Overall in the pandemic, WHO reported 87,08,008 cases with 4,61,715 deaths worldwide. More than two-thirds of those new deaths were reported in the Americas.

With inputs from agencies
The Madras high court on Monday acquitted the prime accused and modified the death sentence awarded to five others to life imprisonment in a 2016 honour killing of a 22-year old man in full public view in Tirupur district in Tamil Nadu.





Passing orders on appeals, a division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar acquitted B Chinnaswamy, father of Kausalya, whose husband Shankar was hacked to death in front of her in Udumlapet town and relieved him from all charges including that of criminal conspiracy.

The bench sentenced the five other accused to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without any right to remission.



Chinnaswamy and the others had been sentenced to death by a lower court in connection with the horrific daylight killing which was caught on camera and evoked public outrage.

The high court also confirmed the acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others.



The court also ordered release of all those acquitted who are presently under incarceration if their custody is not required in connection with any other case.



Sankar, a Dalit and native of Kumaralingam near Udumalpet, fell in love with non-Dalit Kausalya, while they were studying in a private engineering college in Pollachi.



They got married against the wishes of her parents following which the family allegedly hatched a conspiracy to eliminate them.



On March 13, 2016, a three-member gang hacked Sankar to death. Kausalya also suffered injuries in the attack.



On December 12, 2017 the Tirupur district sessions court sentenced six people, including Chinnaswamy to death for the murder.



Of the 11 accused, six were sentenced to death. Three others, including her mother, maternal uncle and a 16-year old relative were acquitted of all charges while two others got lesser sentences.



Challenging the death sentence awarded to them, Kausalya's father Chinnasamy and the other moved the appeal.

Similarly, the investigation officer also moved appeal against acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others by the trial court.
PHILIPSBURG:--- On Monday, June 22, 2020, at 7:00 am, Sint Maarten time, Chris van Dam, Member of the Dutch Second Chamber, will be presenting a motion to the Second Chamber in which he is requesting the Dutch Government to establish that the prison system of Sint Maarten is taken over completely by the Kingdom Council of Ministers for a period of five (5) years at the expense of Country Sint Maarten.

Mr. van Dam sent a copy of this motion to our Members of Parliament with a letter explaining his reasons for submitting it. He ends his letter by writing should you have any questions about the motion then feel free to contact me.

As the Coalition in Parliament and the Government seem to be paranoid when it comes to matters concerning Dutch takeover, I would have expected them to have already sounded the alarm and warn the people that the Dutch are coming. But instead, there is only silence from Government and from the Coalition. I expected the Chairman of Parliament to call an emergency meeting of Parliament to discuss this matter and the Government to take a position on this issue. As Second Chamber Member, van Dam was so courteous and respectful to inform our Members of Parliament of this pending motion, our Parliament should have replied, post haste, letting him know whether they agree or disapprove of this motion. Greek philosopher Plato said that silence gives consent. Should one then conclude that no reaction from our Parliament and our Government means that they are in favor of the complete takeover of our prison by the Kingdom Council of Ministers at Sint Maartens expense?

Does Sint Maarten have the finances to support such a takeover? Knowing the current precarious liquidity position of Sint Maarten, why would the honorable Chris van Dam even dare include in his motion that the takeover would be at the expense of the Government of Sint Maarten? Is the Dutch thinking that the expenses of the takeover can be deducted from the liquidity support? Besides paying, what other roles and functions would Sint Maarten be playing in this Dutch takeover? Would locals serve as counterparts and or be trained to be able to take over the management when the Dutch expertise leave? These are questions that our Parliament and Government should be asking? If they do not have questions, they should at least take a stand and let it be known to the Dutch prior to the motion being passed.

I am sure that no one will dispute that our prison system is in shambles as far as management, staffing, building, detention capacity, facilities, resources, and in every other way. The Government is still paying the salaries of the three past directors who are at home. The prison system is so bad that in December 2017 the European Court of Human Rights declared the detention of a detainee in a Sint Maarten police cell as unlawful. The Sint Maarten Progress Committee, which evaluates on a regular basis whether agreements made to improve the prison system are being carried out, has registered very little progress and improvement in our prison system during the past ten (10) years. The Dutch Kingdom has come under fire by the European Human Rights Council because of our prison system is way below the acceptable human rights standards.

All of this is known to the current Coalition and Government who blamed, criticized, and figuratively crucified the former Minister of Justice, Mr. Cornelius de Weever, for doing nothing about the prison. As Parliamentarians, Silveria Jacobs, and Egbert Doran, our current Prime Minister and Minister of VROMI visited the prison in July 2019 and promised that they would continue to look into the matter of the prison. The current Coalition and Government having had so much criticism about the prison system, one can only expect that they will do whatever is necessary to fix it.

One thing can be said about Mr. van Dam, who was a former prosecutor, and that is, that he has been consistent in his efforts to see the prison system in Sint Maarten improved. In October 2019, he presented a similar motion to the Second Chamber which was adopted. Since then he has been asking questions and requesting reports and other documentation concerning the prison system in Sint Maarten. When the motion was presented in 2019, State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations, Mr. Knops, was not in favor as according to him it restricted the autonomy of Sint Maarten. Besides that, he felt that the motion was not opportune at that time, given the political situation of Sint Maarten.

As the Point Blanche prison and the police detention cells in Philipsburg do not meet the human rights standards, they put the Kingdom of the Netherlands in a bad light within the European Court. I do not know if this could be the driving force behind van Dams motion to improve the prison system in Sint Maarten. But what I do know is, that his efforts will certainly help to raise the standards of our prison system. Our Parliament and Government should take van Dams efforts seriously and do whatever lies in their power to support the various efforts that would lead to a prison system where our buildings, facilities, personnel, management, legislation etc. meet the European Human Rights standards.

I ask our Parliament and our Government to let the people know if they are in favor of van Dams motion to enable the Dutch to take over the prison system, at the expense of the Government of Sint Maarten, for a period of five (5) years.

Wycliffe Smith

Leader of the SMCP
Gardai around country turn out in force to lead somber tribute to colleague killed in line of duty

Twice in the last seven years, a sea of blue poured into towns in Louth to pay their respects to a fallen colleague.

Yesterday, a thin blue line linked across each garda division, across every county in the country, and clasped over a small Mayo town  an unbroken chain of grief and respect.

Gardai  both individually and as an organisation  were robbed by Covid-19 of coming together to mourn Detective Garda Colm Horkan and line the streets of Charlestown in his memory, as they did in their thousands for Garda Tony Golden and Det Gda Adrian Donohoe before him.

Undeterred, the Garda family ensured a fitting tribute to Det Gda Horkan.

From Letterkenny to Waterford, from Dundalk to Bantry, from Westport to Dublin, uniform gardai paraded in public outside designated garda stations in his honour.

Inside St James Church in Charlestown, at the start of the funeral Mass at 12pm, mourners were asked to stand for a minutes silence.

In Garda Headquarters, Deputy Commissioner John Twomey led the minutes silence across all stations.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tanaiste Simon Coveney attended the ceremony in Phoenix Park, joined by representatives from the Defence Forces.

Nearby, President Michael D Higgins held a memorial service on the grounds of Aras an Uachtarain.

ColmHorkan

The national flag was flown at half mast and President Higgins observed the minutes silence at the Peace Bell in the grounds.

Garda bosses were eager to ensure the State funeral for Det Gda Horkan had as many of the trappings as possible despite restrictions due to Covid-19.

In Charlestown, local gardai took up positions along the streets as a Garda traffic car and seven motorbike outriders led the cortege, flanked by uniform officers, up Chapel St.

Six gardai carried their fallen colleagues coffin the final stretch into St Jamess Church.

The funeral, which was streamed live, was attended by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan.

On the two TV screens either side of the coffin  which was draped with the Irish flag and the gardas cap and gloves  Colms warm smile beamed out.

His father Marty previously told family friends that he had been watching horse racing with his son on Wednesday afternoon, before he left their home for work in Castlerea, saying bye to him on his way.

Little could he have known that Colm would be returning home in a coffin.

He now joins a distinguished role of honour: 89 gardai who have died in the line of duty.

Its a club no garda wants to be a member of, but both they, and their loved ones, know its an ever-present possibility when they leave their house for work.

Colm was the second son of Mayo to be shot dead in the line of duty in less than five years, following the death of Garda Tony Golden in October 2015.

The shooting dead of Det Gda Horkan on the streets of Castlerea, Co Roscommon, just before midnight on Wednesday, reverberated across the island and beyond. PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne commiserated with Mr Harris earlier.

The Irish flag at the headquarters of Europol, the EU police agency, in the Hague, was flown at half mast, while a representative of the New York Police Department gave one of the readings in the church.

The coffin of Detective Garda Colm Horkan is carried from St James' church into the cemetery in Charlestown, Co Mayo. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Mr Harris said Colm epitomised what all of us in An Garda Siochana should strive to be.

He reassured the family that they would receive the organisations full support in the months and years ahead and said: Colms name will live on in An Garda Siochana.

The formalities and trappings of the solemn occasion never overwhelmed the familys private, harrowing, grief.

Colms brother Brendan said they were struggling to comprehend the shocking events of that dark night in Castlerea.

His said their emotions were in turmoil and that the reality of a man cut down in his prime had hit them square in the face.

He said Colm was a wonderful uncle, who had all the values of a good and decent human being  considerate, selfless and loyal.

Brendan spoke of Colms prowess and leadership on the pitch with his beloved Charlestown Sarsfields GAA Club.

Earlier, included among the offertory gifts was a Liverpool FC tie pin.

In a just world, Colm would have been sitting down with his dad last night to watch Liverpool play Everton.

Mourners were told the Liverpool motto  Youll Never Walk Alone  summed Colm up perfectly: He never let any of family or friends walk alone.

Yesterday, the country joined his side as he made his final journey.
A close friend and former cellmate of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner declared yesterday: 'I know he did it.'

Michael Tatschl, who lived with Brueckner in a ramshackle farmhouse near the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, described him as a pervert who was 'more than capable of snatching a child'.

The Austrian carpenter said his friend bragged about making money by trafficking drugs and burgling apartments, and once talked about 'selling children to Morocco'.

Michael Tatschl (pictured), who lived with Brueckner in a ramshackle farmhouse near the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, described him as a pervert

He thinks Brueckner probably sold Madeleine to another individual  possibly a sex ring.

The pair spent eight months in the same prison after they were caught stealing 320 litres of diesel from lorries in Portugal.

Both were released in December 2006  five months before three-year-old Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

Mr Tatschl became convinced of his friend's involvement after watching an eight-part Netflix documentary on the case last year.

Michael Tatschl (not pictured), a close friend and former cellmate of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner (pictured with dog) claims the German was responsible for the toddler's disappearance

Mr Taschl, 46, believes Brueckner may have sold Madeleine (pictured), who was snatched from Praia da Luiz in Portugal in 2007, to another individual or a sex ring

Does drug deal contact 'Julia' hold vital clues? Police in Germany have appealed for a woman known as 'Julia' to come forward with information on Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner. They believe the drug dealer, who was in contact with the German drifter in the weeks after Maddie vanished, could hold vital news about the case. Stephanie Gropp, from the public prosecutor's office in Flensburg, northern Germany, said there was 'a lot of speculation' but that 'it cannot be ruled out' Brueckner spoke to Julia about his time in Portugal. Shortly after Maddie vanished from Praia da Luz in 2007, Brueckner moved back to Germany. He planned to smuggle drugs to the island of Sylt and, say court papers, bought large amounts of marijuana from Julia in the summer of 2007. Brueckner was sentenced to more than a year for drug trafficking on the North Sea island. Police could not find Julia and are now urging her to come forward. Advertisement

In one episode, a tourist describes how a man fitting Brueckner's description started acting strangely around her child in Praia da Luz in the days before Madeleine vanished.

Speaking for the first time yesterday, Mr Tatschl revealed that he was grilled for two days about Brueckner last year by police investigating Madeleine's disappearance.

The father-of-one, who has returned to his homeland, was interviewed for 14 hours by four detectives at a police station in Graz, southern Austria.

Mr Tatschl, 46, said: 'The detectives were very clear with me from the first minute.

'They said, 'We are investigating Maddie McCann and Christian Brueckner', and I told them I knew why they were here. I was convinced it was him. I know he did it. I was living with him at the time.

'He was my best friend and he was definitely a pervert and more than capable of snatching a child, for sexual kicks or money.'

He thought Brueckner would be arrested shortly after his police interview and said he 'cannot believe' Portuguese detectives have not yet searched the farmhouse they once shared.

'When I saw the Netflix documentary I knew immediately that he was guilty,' he said.

'It was when the female tourist talked about the man turning up at her door where her child was playing, that I knew it was Christian for sure.

'She described him as a creepy guy with acne and blond hair, which fits his description.'

Mr Tatschl said he decided against calling the authorities after watching the documentary because of his dislike of the police and his criminal past.

Speaking for the first time yesterday, Mr Tatschl (pictured) revealed that he was grilled for two days about Brueckner last year by police investigating Madeleine's disappearance

He said Brueckner, now 43, was 'definitely quite a strange character' who 'liked to brag about the crimes he had done and planned to do'. His aim was to steal as much money as he could until he reached his dream of having a million euros.

'It was rich pickings in Praia da Luz,' he said. 'He was always breaking into apartments in the area and bragging about it to me. He was a very good burglar and would easily climb up to first floor apartments when tourists were out.

'He would steal lots of money, valuables and so many passports. In fact hundreds of passports and lots of Rolexes and other expensive watches.'

Mr Tatschl said Brueckner hid his stolen loot in the rafters of his farmhouse, which overlooks Praia da Luz.

Mr Tatschl admitted Brueckner (pictured) was always on the dark web and the Austrian carpenter claimed he saw a video of the German raping and beating an older woman chained to a post

While he was in prison, the convicted sex offender asked a German friend to remove the haul from the rafters and keep it in a safe place so the police would not find it.

But the friend decided to keep the stolen valuables, Mr Tatschl said. The friend also found a video of Brueckner raping and beating an older woman while she was chained to a post.

Mr Tatschl said: 'That's how I found out he was sick. I told the police all about that. Christian was always on the dark web. I don't know exactly what he did but I suspect it involved drugs and pornography.

'He was always bragging about making money. He even talked about selling kids maybe to Morocco, and I think he probably sold Maddie to someone  maybe a sex ring.

'There have been some sex crimes around the area over the last decade and it wouldn't be surprising if he was involved.'

Brueckner is in prison in Germany for drugs offences. He has denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

Mr Tatschl added that he had returned to Praia da Luz in February 2007 to find Brueckner camping near the town.

He said: 'He was going to raves and I think selling drugs. I stuck around for a bit and then went back to Spain.'

Just weeks after the abduction of Madeleine McCann Brueckner also travelled to Spain where Mr Tatschl was living in Orgiva, Andalucia.

Tatschl said: 'In late May or early June he arrived in Spain with his big American camper van. He knew I had connections to the marijuana world and could help him make money.

'We just thought he was a pervert but didnt think he liked young children.'

Maddie McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner is a scapegoat says Portuguese detective who led the original probe into her disappearance

Goncalo Amaral described 43-year-old German as an 'almost perfect suspect'

The former Portuguese police officer said Christian Brueckner is a 'scapegoat'In 2008 Amaral claimed Madeleine's parents had covered up their daughter's accidental death in their Algarve apartment

By Nick Fagge and Gerard Couzens for MailOnline

A disgraced former Portuguese police officer has branded the new Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner a 'scapegoat.'

Goncalo Amaral described the 43-year-old German as an 'almost perfect suspect.'

Amaral, who first claimed last April a German paedophile who was in prison would be accused over Maddie's disappearance, told a Portuguese TV interviewer on Sunday night: 'When I spoke last year I was talking about the situation that's happening now.

'It matters little who the paedophile is.'

Disgraced former Portuguese police officer Goncalo Amaral (pictured) described the 43-year-old German Christian Brueckner as an 'almost perfect suspect'

He added: 'He's an almost perfect suspect. All that's lacking for him to become the perfect suspect is that he's dead.'

Asked if he believed Brueckner was the man responsible for Madeleine's disappearance, he added: 'To answer that question it has to be proven first that an abduction took place.'

The ex-cop, who claimed in a 2008 controversial book Madeleine's parents had covered up their daughter's accidental death in their Algarve apartment, went on to repeat his well-known criticism of the British youngster's parents and their Tapas Seven holiday friends.

He accused them of abandoning their children to eat out at night and lying to Portuguese police, and said Madeleine had been left crying for around an hour the night before she vanished on May 3 2007.

Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of Madeleine McCann, talking to the press after attending the libel case against Goncalo Amaral at Lisbon's Palace of Justice, Portugal, June 2014

A lengthy legal battle with the McCanns ensued after the publication of the book, The Truth of The Lie. The couple sued Amaral for defamation but lost the case.

But during his half-hour-long interview with Portuguese broadcaster TVI, he also accused the authorities of altering photos of the two-tone VW camper van Brueckner was using around the time Madeleine disappeared.

New Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner, 43

The former PJ chief, who was removed as head of the Madeleine McCann inquiry in 2008 after criticising British police officers, showed interviewer Jose Alberto Carvalho photos he said were taken in Portugal of the same vehicle.

One of the photos he produced showed a series of very distinctive Minion-style characters painted on the front and back of the camper van, which in the picture put out by police had no markings on it.

He said: 'It's the same vehicle flagged up in the police appeal.

'I think it's important to ask why the photo put out by the authorities of the van was altered. Would that vehicle have gone unnoticed in Praia da Luz with those markings on it? I don't think so.'

Suggesting the van could have looked very different in 2007 to the way it appeared in the photo put out by British police, he added: 'Is it that the German authorities reached the conclusion that the van wasn't like that when it was being driven in Praia da Luz in 2007? Who said that?

Pressed on what Portuguese police knew about Brueckner's past around the time Madeleine disappeared, he appeared to admit Algarve authorities were aware of his 1994 teenage sexual conviction for molesting a six-year-old girl by confessing: 'At the time all we knew was that this man was a paedophile.'

Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared 13 years ago while on a family holiday in Portugal

He also claimed German authorities wanted to re-examine all the DNA evidence taken from the McCanns' hire car and holiday apartment.

Rubbishing reports a saliva sample had been found on Madeleine's bedspread and could prove key to a conviction now Brueckner had been identified as a new suspect, he said it had been proven it belonged to a baby being fed mother's milk staying in the apartment before the McCanns arrived.

Asked why he thought the German authorities might have interest in coming up with new information which had no real value, Amaral claimed: 'Because it enables them to have jurisdiction over this case.

'I think the Portuguese police and the authorities can do anything here in laboratories that they can do in Germany. '

Amaral's interview was his first since Brueckner's name was made public - and the first time he has spoken about the case since last December when he appeared on Spanish TV.
A fuel theft gang recorded the disturbing moment its members tortured two women on a desolate road in broad daylight for failing to alert them that the military was going to stage an operation in Mexico.

One of the shocking videos showed Veronica Gomez tied to the back of a pickup truck that was parked on the side of a highway and being beaten repeatedly with what appeared to a whip.

A defenseless Gomez screamed throughout the 45-second video that was uploaded across social media, pleading for the man to stop striking her with the cord.

Veronica Gomez was tied to a pick up truck and beaten for almost a minute in Tabasco, Mexico, because she reportedly failed to alert the fuel theft gang that she worked for that the military was conducting an operation

A fuel theft gang shared on social media video footage of a woman identified as Adriana Gomez who was tortured for two minutes last week on a remote road in Huimanguillo, a municipality in the gulf state of Tabasco

Adriana Gomez (left) and Veronica Gomez (right) were savagely beaten last week, days after a June 15 military operation that led to the arrest of two men linked to a drug trafficking and fuel theft gang in Tabasco, Mexico, on June 15

Another male individual is heard in the background telling her, 'this is so that you stop messing around ... things are done here the right away.'

In a separate video, two men beat Adriana Gomez with a belt and a switch. The woman tried to get away but what dragged to the back of the pickup truck and was subsequently beaten with a wooden paddle board.

'Everything that is done here is reported,' one of the men was heard saying. 'This is so next time you report things.'

The women worked as 'halcones,' people who are hired by criminal organizations to act as lookout and report any police, military or rival gang movement that could be seen as a threat to their operations.

Veronica Gomez (left) allegedly works as a 'halcon', or a person provides surveillance information, for a criminal organization led by Andres 'Kalimba' Rodriguez

Adriana Gomez (center) appeared in a video being beaten by two men tied to a fuel theft gang

It is unknown if both women are related.

The beating reportedly took place in the days following a June 15 sting led by the Mexican marines in Huimanguillo, a municipality in the gulf state of Tabasco, against a criminal organization that is led by Andres 'Kalimba' Rodriguez.

Soldiers were met with fire, however, they were able to apprehend two men. Rodriguez allegedly fled to the nearby state of Veracruz.

Authorities in Huimanguillo have also tied Rodriguez to the June 7 deaths of four cops, who were kidnapped the previous day and were found in the back of a police pickup truck.
China suspended poultry imports from a Tyson Foods Inc. plant where hundreds of employees tested positive for covid-19, stoking concerns over the broader implications for U.S. and global meat exports.

All products from the plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where Tyson is based, that are about to arrive in China or have arrived at the country's ports will be seized by customs. The suspension announced Sunday is an about face from just a few days ago, when Chinese officials said food was unlikely to be responsible for a fresh virus outbreak in Beijing.

The move is a potential new threat to meat plants across the world that have seen slaughter disruptions because of the virus. In the U.S., hundreds of workers have become ill, and dozens have died. There's also been a recent uptick in infections at facilities in Brazil and Germany.

"There are worries in China over serious coronavirus outbreaks in the U.S.," said Lin Guofa, a senior analyst at Bric Agriculture Group, a Beijing-based consulting firm. The public is worried about imported frozen products as almost all cases in Beijing have been connected to a meat and frozen fish wholesale market, he said.

A new outbreak in China had been blamed on imported salmon after the head of a food market where clusters were detected said the virus had been traced to a chopping board used by a fish seller. Fears over whether food can transmit viruses had led salmon to be boycotted in the Asian country.

If China continues to suspend shipments based on coronavirus cases reported at processing plants, it could also threaten to undermine promised agricultural purchases as part of the Washington-Beijing trade deal.

Tyson said in a statement Sunday it was looking into the report and cited that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there's no evidence that virus transmission is associated with food. The company late Friday said 13% of its workers tested positive for the virus at plants in northwest Arkansas.

Tyson's shares fell as much as 3.5% Monday morning in New York. Lean hog futures in Chicago slumped as much as 3.9%, with the most-active August contract hitting a record low.

China had backed off from its previous stance linking food to virus cases. A customs official at a briefing on Friday said the country was taking the advice of international organizations that there's a low risk of imported food transmitting the virus, and no food restrictions would be imposed.

But the move to block the Tyson shipments runs counter to that, and reverts the country back to increasing its scrutiny over imported food. Meanwhile, a German abattoir last week voluntarily halted pork exports to China after workers were found to be infected.

China's customs department said over the weekend that one poultry company in Britain reported covid-19 cases. While the U.K. isn't allowed to export poultry to the Asian nation, its authorities have agreed to take measures to prevent the virus from contaminating pork and beef exports to China, and will inform the Asian nation whenever exporters have any outbreaks.

China's customs authorities had started testing all shipments of imported meat for the virus, while officials in some major cities were also checking the products at domestic markets. In a statement last week, China Customs said all 32,174 samples of imported seafood, meat, vegetables, fruit and other related products had tested negative.

The country's scrutiny may end up having a big impact on global food shipments. Its surging imports of meat had helped to buoy U.S. and Brazilian producers of poultry, pork and beef, both before the nation's virus outbreak in January and as global trade has staged a nascent recovery in recent weeks with the country exiting lockdowns.

Through April, U.S. exports of poultry meat and products, excluding eggs, to China were valued at $152 million, up from only about $7 million in the comparable period in 2019, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed.

Still, China's market is facing a chicken surplus from its own production and stagnating demand, Bric Agriculture's Lin said. China also imports most of its poultry from Brazil, while the U.S. makes up just a small percentage of imports, therefore the halt will have little impact on the domestic market, he said.

On Sunday, PepsiCo China said it shut a food plant in the Chinese capital after a case of the virus was confirmed earlier in the week. The company conducted tests on all employees at the plant and quarantined 480 workers, even though they all tested negative, one of its officials, Fan Zhimin, said at a local government briefing. PepsiCo China later said in a WeChat post that none of its beverage plants in the country have reported any cases of the virus.
BEIJING, June 21 (Reuters) - Chinese researchers have started a second phase human trial of a possible coronavirus vaccine, the Institute of Medical Biology at Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS) said on Sunday, in efforts to further assess effectiveness and safety.

About a dozen vaccines are in different stages of human tests globally, as the World Health Organization warns the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating and "the world is in a new and dangerous phase".

However, none of the vaccine trials have passed large-scale, late-stage phase 3 clinical trials, a necessary step before getting regulatory approval for sale.

IMBCAMS began on Saturday a phase 2 human test for its experimental shot, which is among six possible vaccines Chinese scientists are testing in humans, following an on-going phase-1 study that has recruited about 200 participants since May, the institute said on Sunday in its social media channel.

The phase-2 trial will determine the shot's dose and continue to evaluate whether the potential vaccine can safely trigger immune responses in healthy people.

IMBCAMS said it expects to use a plant dedicated to producing a coronavirus vaccine this year to prepare for China's future vaccine supplies.

As early as by the end of 2020, certain groups of people with special needs can use experimental vaccines under urgent circumstances, Gao Fu, director at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said last month.

The coronavirus, which was first detected in China late in 2019, has infected 8.81 million people globally and killed more than 460,000 people.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Se Young Lee in Beijing; Editing by Michael Perry)
Chennai, June 22 : Commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment for five convicts, the Madras High Court on Monday set free Chinnasamy, the main convict, who had also been sentenced to death in the Udumalpet Shankar honour killing case.

A Division Bench comprising Justice M. Sathyanarayanan and Justice M. Nirmal Kumar also dismissed the appeal by the state police against the acquittal of three persons by a lower court.

The Bench ordered the five convicts sentenced for life to undergo a jail term of not less than 25 years.

In 2016, V. Shankar, who had married C. Kausalya, was killed by a gang in Udumalpet in Tamil Nadu. The gang also injured Kausalya in the attack.

It was alleged the parents of Kausalya -- Chinnasamy, Annalakshmi -- were against the marriage.

P. Pandidurai, the uncle of Kausalya at the behest of Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi had hired a gang to kill Shankar.

The gang killed Shankar in broad daylight in a public place and Kausalya too got injured in the attack as she tried to save her husband.

The Principal District and Sessions Court in Tiruppur had convicted and sentenced to death six accused persons -- Chinnasamy, P. Jagadeesan, P. Selvakumar, M. Manikandan, M. Mathan alias Michael and P. Kalaithamilvaanan.

The court also sentenced two other accused, K. Dhanraj for life and Manikandan to a five year jail term, while acquitting Annalakshmi, Pandidurai and Prasanna.

The convicts had filed an appeal against their sentence in the Madras High Court while the police filed an appeal against the acquittal of three persons.
OTTAWA - Wreaths were laid and the call of a single bugle rang out near Parliament Hill as a subdued ceremony was held on Sunday to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Korean War veterans along with Lt.Gen. Wayne Eyre, Commander of the Canadian Army, salute, second from left, during a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Korean War at the Monument to the Canadian Fallen in Ottawa, on Sunday, June 21, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - Wreaths were laid and the call of a single bugle rang out near Parliament Hill as a subdued ceremony was held on Sunday to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

The ceremony, attended by a small group of Canadian and Korean officials and a handful of surviving veterans from the conflict, was one of the first of its kind in months after COVID-19 forced the cancellation of numerous military commemorations.

Those included plans to mark the 75th anniversaries of the liberation of the Netherlands in the Second World War and Victory in Europe Day, when Nazi Germany was officially defeated.

Many of those attending this morning's ceremony wore masks and stood at a distance from each other even as they came together to mark the sacrifices of those Canadians who fought and died in Korea.

"It's important that we have these ceremonies," 86-year-old Bill Black, who served on board a Canadian destroyer during the war and is now president of the Korea Veterans Association.

"Even if we have to suffer a little bit with numbers down and wearing masks. So be it. We're not going to forget our Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen who served in keeping countries free. These are days that we will not allow to slip by."

Around 26,000 Canadians fought in the three-year conflict, which started on June 25, 1950 when Communist North Korean forces supported by China and the Soviet Union invaded the U.S.-backed south.

Five-hundred sixteen Canadians died during the war, which ended in a military standoff that continues to this day.

Sunday's ceremony would normally have been held at the National War Memorial next to Parliament Hill, but was moved down the street to nearby Confederation park where the Korean War Monument is located.

The official delegation was restricted to 10 people and included Canadian Army commander Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, who recently served as deputy commander of United Nations' forces in South Korea, as well as politicians, Korean diplomats and veterans.

Under a bright blue sky and amid sweltering heat, those in attendance remembered the fallen while reflecting on the importance of the war, which is described as "the Forgotten War" due to being overshadowed by the Second World War and the U.S. Vietnam War.

The park is owned by the National Capital Commission, which manages federal green spaces in the Ottawa area. The NCC ordered several restrictions  including on the size of the gathering  as a condition for letting the ceremony go ahead despite COVID-19.

Conservative Sen. Yonah Martin, whose father was separated as a child from his family during the war and who is now working to raise awareness of the conflict among Canadians, said it was important to press ahead with the ceremony.

"We were trying to abide by the guidelines to the best of our ability," said Martin, the first Korean-Canadian to serve in Parliament.

"We would not have done this if the veterans did not want it. But they are quite insistent. They have survived a lot and this is very important to them."

While the commemoration was able to go ahead despite COVID-19, attendees were reminded the threat posed by the respiratory illness  especially for older people  when one of the veterans who was scheduled to speak was unable to attend.

Black said the veteran, who was also expected to lay a wreath, was on his way to get tested for COVID-19 on Sunday after calling to say that he had a higher-than-normal temperature and was not feeling well.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020.
A Prime Minister must be mindful of the implications of his words on a nations strategic interests, former PM Manmohan Singh said in his first public remarks on the Sino-Indian border tensions on Monday, stressing that disinformation was no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership.

His statement was an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modis remarks at an all-party meeting on Friday that neither anyone is present in the Indian territory nor is any Indian post captured by the Chinese. The Congress party says the PMs stand contradicts past remarks by the defence minister and the foreign minister on Chinese intrusion.

Singh said China should not be allowed to use the PMs words as a vindication of its position that it did not enter the Indian side, and called upon the government to ensure justice for the 20 Indian Army soldiers killed in a deadly clash with Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh on June 15.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was quick to hit back. The partys chief JP Nadda termed Singhs statement mere wordplay, asked him not to share his wisdom on the Prime Ministers responsibilities, and accused him of ceding ground to China when he was in power at the Centre.

One only wishes that Dr Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of Indias land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013! Nadda tweeted, referring to Singhs tenure as PM.

In his statement, Singh said the governments decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us. He added that India was at a historic crossroads and those who lead us bear the weight of solemn duty.

And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nations security as also strategic and territorial interests, Singh said.

The Prime Minister cannot allow them [China] to use his words as a vindication of their position and must ensure that all organs of the government work together to tackle this crisis and prevent it from escalating further, he added.

In the wake of a controversy over the PMs remarks at the all-party meeting, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) said on Saturday that there was a mischievous interpretation of Modis comments, and that the Prime Minister was clear that India will respond firmly to any attempts to transgress the LAC.

Singh said China was brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory such as the Galwan Valley and the Pangong Tso Lake by committing multiple incursions since April. We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity, he said.

The statement came a day ahead of a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the partys highest decision-making body, which is expected to discuss, among other issues, the India-China border standoff and the prevailing Covid-19 situation in the country.

Singh also said we must stand together at this moment and put up a united front in response to this brazen threat. We remind the government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements, he added.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who has alleged that Modi surrendered Indian territory to the Chinese, said he hoped the Prime Minister will politely accept Singhs advice for the betterment of India.

In his reply, Nadda said the Congress and its leaders should stop insulting the armed forces and Singh should look at his own record.

Please stop insulting of forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes (in Balakot in 2019) and surgical strikes (in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in 2016). Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times. Its never too late to improve, he posted.

Dr Manmohan Singh can certainly share his wisdom on many subjects but the responsibilities of the office of the Prime Minister arent one of them. UPA (Congress-led United Progressive Alliance) personified systematic institutional erosion of that office, combined with disrespect for our armed forces. NDA has reversed that!
At least three people were killed and eleven others wounded in a shooting early Monday at a block party in Charlotte, North Carolina, CBS affiliate WBTV reported. Police said over 100 rounds were fired into a crowd of hundreds of people.

The incident occurred at about 12:30 a.m. on. Monday night after what Charlotte-Mecklenburg police described as an "unorganized" Juneteenth celebration, according to WBTV. Police said they were called to the scene on reports that a pedestrian had been hit  but said that when they arrived, there were hundreds of people in the area.

Suddenly, shots went off, according to police. Five people trying to flee the scene were hit by vehicles, police said. They said they believe one person hit by a vehicle was one of the gunshot victims who died.

Charlotte

Police tape is seen near the scene of a shooting early Monday, June 22, 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina, that resulted in two deaths and several more people wounded or injured. Sarah Blake Morgan/AP

Several victims had life-threatening wounds or injuries, medics told the station. No suspects were in custody.

"Preliminary information gathered during the investigation indicates that several shooters discharged dozens of shots into the crowd who had been gathered in the area," police said in a statement.

The deceased victims were later identified as Kelly Miller, 29; Christopher Antonio Gleaton, 28; and Jamaa Keon Cassell, 39.

Witnesses said the Juneteenth celebrations were peaceful. Some people told WBTV they saw drivers speeding and doing donuts in the road, even street racing. Police didn't confirm any connection to street racing.

Yusuf revisits the songs of Cat Stevens

Back on campaign trail, Trump dismisses COVID testing

"He was in a panic - I was in a panic," man confesses to the murder of his best friend
New Delhi, June 22 : Three former Indian Railways senior engineers based in Kerala along with a contractor were last week fined Rs 18 lakh and sentenced to a one year jail term each by a CBI court in a 17-year-old cheating case.

The case was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2003 on allegations against these employees of causing a loss of Rs 18 lakh to Southern Railway in construction of vertical piles.

The Special CBI court in Ernakulam (Kerala) convicted the three engineers of Southern Railway and the contractor on June 16.

Then Deputy Chief Engineer S.K. Bansal and then Executive Engineer S.K. Agarwal were sentenced to one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 7 lakh each.

Then Executive Engineer C.K. Varghese was sentenced to undergo one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 3 lakh.

The court also sentenced contractor Sajeev Mathew to one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 14 lakh.

The agency had registered the case on the allegations that the accused entered into a criminal conspiracy to cheat Southern Railway in the construction of vertical sand piles.

In pursuance of the conspiracy, the accused prepared false and forged documents, processed them and passed the inflated bills of the contractor causing an alleged loss of Rs 18.5 lakh to Southern Railway. After investigation, the CBI filed a chargesheet.

The trial court found the accused guilty and convicted them.
A Sharadhaa By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Fans falling at your feet, red carpets, spotlights... But the off-screen reality of the film industry seems to be a far cry from this glamorous world. As fans come to terms with Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajputs demise, fingers are being pointed at the dominant culture in the industry. One that many actors say is filled with nepotism and favouritism. While Bollywood has constantly been under the spotlight, the situation closer home comes with its own hurdles.

Actor Manvitha Kamath says favouritism exists in Sandalwood as well, where a lot goes on from the time an artiste gives an audition to selection. Producers, directors and actors all have a say here, adds Kamath, who made her debut with Kendasampige. Aspiring to make it big in B-Town as well, Kamath shares how it is difficult to find a place there without good PR. Gone are the days where genuine auditions were done. Today, filmmakers ask for TikTok videos, she says, recalling an audition she did for a leading Bollywood production house. A casting director told me I was good but another person was chosen since she was influential, she says.

Mumbai-based actor Thakur Anoop Singh, who has worked across film industries, says nepotism is everywhere. A star kid may get multiple launches but an outsider gets only one, he says. The pressure could also come from roles being dropped last minute or from projects being delayed. The 9-film old artiste, whose works include Commando 2 (Hindi) and Udgharsha, Yajamana and Rogue (Kannada), shares an instance of a Sandalwood project that he spent eight months preparing for. My preparation involved intensive gymming, and learning martial arts. I even denied other projects, only to have this one shelved, he says.

Patience and hard work are prerequisites to survive in this field, believes actor Pruthvi Amba. While many assume that he became an overnight sensation for his role as Adi in Dia, it took him four serials, 10 Tulu films, and four Kannada movies before he shot to fame. It took 11 years to get where I am, says Pruthvi, pointing out that the struggle is inevitable for those without godfathers. For an outsider, hurdles are there all along. People confide in me the anguish they go through of not getting the right opportunity after three years. I tell them that I have been struggling for 12 years, he says. Filmmaker Ramesh Aravind says pressure is a part of any industry. For actors, it is more because they are in the limelight and criticism can easily affect them, he says, adding that the blame game in Bollywood is just a reflections of the frustration that filmmakers are facing.



(With inputs from Simran Ahuja)
A second lawsuit has been filed against an Oregon ranch accused of causing millions of dollars in damages by negligently igniting a 2018 wildfire.

The federal government filed a complaint claiming that J-Spear Ranch of Paisley, Oregon, started the Watson Creek Fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, The Capital Press reported.

A similar lawsuit was filed by a timber company last month. According to the federal governments lawsuit, the fire claimed 59,000 acres, of which about 46,000 are administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

The suit says it resulted in at least $14 million worth of losses in timber, habitat, water protection and environmental values, as well as fire suppression and rehabilitation costs.

The complaint alleges the fire was sparked in mid-August 2018 by a ranch employee on an all-terrain vehicle conducting maintenance on the Paradise Creek allotment, for which J-Spear Ranch is responsible.

The ranch had not outfitted the vehicle with fire-suppression equipment or cleaned it to remove dried vegetation and other debris, as required by fire season rules for that area, the government claims.

The timber companys complaint alleges that J-Spear Ranchs actions caused the fire to burn nearly 13,000 acres of its property, resulting in $7.75 million in damages.

Capital Press was unable to reach J-Spear Ranch for comment because its telephone number is disconnected and no company lawyer is named in court records.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Oregon
Fathers Day marks the second time since the pandemic began that Alexandria Care Center, a nursing facility located in Los Angeles, Calif., has held open their sliding door for parents and their children to see each other from a distance. Last month, Alexandria Care Center allowed children to see their mothers at a distance for Mothers Day. This Sunday, nurses wheel fathers down a corridor to the lobby where they see their children and grandchildren standing at the doorway.

Loraine Moralo and Amanda Santos decorate the nursing facility for Father's Day. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Beginning June 18, Los Angeles County relaxed restrictions on nursing homes, allowing visitations with masks on and six feet of space. However, inside visits are not allowed in nursing homes unless four weeks have passed since a positive coronavirus case at a facility. At Alexandria Care Center, COVID-19 patients are housed in a separate unit with their own designated staff members. According to the California Department of Public Health data last updated on June 9, Alexandria Care Center has had 23 COVID-19-related resident deaths. No one ever thought that they or their loved ones would ever have to deal with a worldwide pandemic, says Lori Mayer, Vice President of Communications for Genesis Healthcare, which operates Alexandria and 500 other nursing home facilities across the U.S. California has not eased restrictions yet. In the meantime, we are happy to facilitate engagement of our residents and their loved ones visually through a window or door.

This Fathers Day, in compliance with those rules, locked eyes had to take the place of hugs with dad. Salutations and words of affection are spoken at an elevated tone to be heard over phone rings, the air conditioning and the sounds of nearby Sunset Boulevard. With a carpet separating them, children pass cards, a hot lunch and flowers to a staff member in Personal Protective Equipment who then sprays the items before handing them to the resident.

Noh Park, 92, prepares for his daughter's Father's Day visit at the Alexandria Care Center in Los Angeles. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Lydia Yang visits her father, Noh Park, through the front window. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Lydia Yang says goodbye to her father. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Armenuni Gregorian was notified last month that her father Landzhuni Oaanesyan, 81, had COVID-19. Landzhuni has been a resident of Alexandria Care Center since January. I see him on FaceTime, but I cannot really see his face, says Armenuni. Armenuni had intended to take her father back to her home where he used to reside, but then learned he had contracted the virus. Landzhuni has since recovered from COVID-19. A socially distanced Fathers Day event at Alexandria Care Center will provide Armenuni and Landzhuni the first time to be face to face since February. I dont know if hes OK or not, says Armenuni, but she feels that seeing her father herself will bring her some ease.

Story continues

Landzhuni Oaanesyan, 81, is visited by his daughter, Armenuni Gregorian, and son, Armen Oaanesyan. Landzhuni recently recovered from COVID-19. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Armenuni Gregorian cries as she sees her father for the first time since February | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Armen Oaanesyan rejoices as he sees his father Landzhuni Oaanesyan, 81, at the nursing facility. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Hong Park, 63, and his son, Tristan, have not seen each other since early March other than via Skype. On the first call, Hong reassured Tristan, saying, Dont worry about me. Im fine. Before the pandemic, Tristan visited his father twice a week. Hong does not like when others touch him, so Tristan wanted to give his father a shave and a haircut on Fathers Day. But, due to social distancing guidelines that include no physical contact, the grooming will have to wait.

Its Fathers Day and I want him to know that I care, says Jacqueline Medina whose father, Gilbert Medina, 63, has been a resident at Alexandria for a year. Jacqueline Medina has not seen her father since a few days before the lockdown on May 12. She is able to do FaceTime visits, but her father is non-verbal as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. My biggest fear was that he wouldnt understand why Im not there. Hopefully now, hes starting to get the picture that something out of my control is wrong, says Jacqueline. Most of Gilberts interactions with his daughter involve her looking at him virtually and hearing her voice. Jacquelines mother and Gilberts ex-wife is a director of nursing at another long-term care facility. Its super important that the family is there as much as possible

Gilbert Medina, 63, visits with his daughter, Jacqueline. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

Staff members wait to be let in during shift change at Alexandria Care Center in Los Angeles. | Isadora Kosofsky for TIME

At the beginning of the stay-at-home order, Jacqueline repeatedly called the California Department of Public Health and Genesis Healthcare to ensure quality of care. In the beginning, I was flipping out. Jacqueline is used to visiting her father daily. Its probably single most difficult thing about all of this. I can deal with my job situation being unstable and everything else but not being able to see my dad has been devastating.

The next time these families will connect again, and at what level of intimacy, is unknown. Daily visits where children can assist in bathing, feeding or pushing their fathers wheelchair still feels distant. For now, they await updates from the facilitys administration and place their trust in the certified nurses assistants who care for their parents needs. At some point, I had to surrender because there is not a whole lot I can do, says Jacqueline Medina.
A new study from North Carolina State University suggests that people have more tolerance for wolves after seeing positive videos about them, which could make YouTube an important wolf conservation tool.

"One of the cool things about these results is that positive messaging was effective for changing people's views. People had more positive attitudes, greater willingness to accept wolves, and were more likely to take action to help their conservation - no matter their political identity or their age - after watching positive videos," said Nils Peterson, senior author of the study and a professor in NC State's Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.

"A lot of wildlife species we care about only need tolerance to persist in a landscape," Peterson added. "They're not domestic animals that need a lot of help from us. They just need us not to kill them or destroy their habitat."

In the study, researchers evaluated how a group of 273 people rated their tolerance for wolves before and after watching either a playlist of five different negative videos, a playlist of five different positive videos, or a neutral video.

To measure their tolerance, researchers asked questions in three categories: they asked participants about their overall attitudes toward wolves, such as whether they thought wolves were "good" or "bad;" their level of acceptance of wolves in their state and near populated areas; and their intended behaviors, or whether they would be likely to act for or against wolves or their conservation.

Survey participants had positive attitudes, acceptance and behavior intentions about wolves prior to receiving any treatment, but researchers saw that positive videos could still increase attitudes, acceptance and participants' willingness to act. They also saw those changes regardless of whether the viewer identified as conservative or liberal.

"Everybody is on social media these days, including state wildlife agencies, federal agencies, nonprofits, and everybody is putting content out there," said the study's lead author Will Casola, a Ph.D. student at NC State. "This study shows that this material actually has the potential to influence people, and they're not just putting time and resources into something that goes in one ear and out the other."

However, people who identified as liberal were more likely than conservatives to show positive changes in favor of wolves in measures of attitudes, acceptance and intended behaviors regardless of the videos they watched.

"We didn't see anything that would suggest people reacted differently to each video treatment depending on their political affiliation," Casola said. "Instead, we saw that no matter which videos they watched, liberals were more likely to exhibit positive changes."

The largest changes in tolerance were linked to older age. People above the age of 40, regardless of political background, were more likely to have larger changes in their attitudes for or against wolves.

While negative videos also led to decreased tolerance for wolves, this change was less dramatic.

"There's a lot of literature out there that shows that positively framed messages are more powerful than negatively framed messages, and these findings reinforce that," Casola said.

Researchers saw improvements in respondents' willingness to act for wolf conservation overall, but except for signing petitions to support wolf re-introduction, respondents showed reluctance to take other specific actions to aid wolf conservation.

"People in general said they weren't likely to participate in many of these behaviors, but they were also less likely to participate in behaviors that were directly opposed to wolf recovery and conservation," Casola said.

Researchers focused on wolves since they can be controversial. While researchers said wolves are essential for maintaining a diversity of species in a landscape and improving the health of populations they prey on, they can also compete with people for space and resources, and can pose a risk for livestock.

Researchers said one unanswered question in their work is about how effective the videos were at reaching people who may not already agree with the underlying message.

"People are already asking the question: How do we get media to cross ideological bubbles that people have created?" Peterson said.

###

The paper, "How do YouTube videos impact tolerance of wolves?" is published in the journal Human Dimensions of Wildlife. The paper was co-authored by Jaclyn Rushing, Sara Futch, Victoria Vayer, Danielle F. Lawson and Lincoln R. Larson of the NC State Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management; and Michelle J. Cavalieri of the NC State Department of Biological Sciences. Researchers were supported by NC State's Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology program, the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources and the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management.

Note to editors: the abstract follows.

"How do YouTube videos impact tolerance of wolves?"

DOI: 10.1080/10871209.2020.1773582

Authors: William R. Casola and M. Nils Peterson of the NC State Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology Program; Jaclyn Rushing, Sara Futch, Victoria Vayer, Danielle F. Lawson, and Lincoln R. Larson of the NC State Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management; and Michelle J. Cavalieri of the NC State Department of Biological Sciences.

Published: online Human Dimensions of Wildlife.

Abstract: The internet serves as a dominant source of information and may shape tolerance of wildlife species. Our experimental study examined how respondents' tolerance for wolves (i.e., attitudes, acceptance, and behavior) changed after viewing wolf related YouTube videos. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three video treatments where wolves were framed positively, neutrally (reference), or negatively. Video treatments a?ected people's tolerance of wolves: negative videos promoted declines in wolf tolerance and positive videos promoted increases in wolf tolerance. Political identi?cation impacted change in tolerance independent of treatment. We observed an interaction between age and political identi?cation, wherein older individuals at both ends of the political spectrum exhibited larger attitudinal responses than younger individuals, with older liberals becoming more positive and older conservatives more negative regardless of treatment. Our ?ndings suggest the creation and dissemination of positive social media content may improve public tolerance toward controversial wildlife species like wolves.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has lashed Coalition MPs who want to delay lifting the compulsory superannuation contribution, saying it is a "nonsense proposition" that a change to the legislated increase would help the economy.

The current mandatory super levy of 9.5 per cent is legislated to rise to 10 per cent by mid-2021 before increasing to 12 per cent by 2025, but there is a growing view among members of the Coalition that the rise should be delayed due to economic pressures on businesses from the coronavirus pandemic.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd. Credit:AAP

After a group of 10 Coalition MPs told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the increase in the superannuation guarantee should be frozen, Mr Rudd said 12 per cent was critical to provide workers with a comfortable retirement.

"The Liberal Party have argued since 1987 that the economy has never been in a proper state to absorb an increase," he said, adding his own plan introduced in 2010 included a 10-year staged strategy to increase the rate in modest increments.
A five-year-old Cook Islands boy growing his hair for cultural reasons could be expelled from a private Christian school in Brisbane for breaking its uniform rules.

Cyrus Taniela was told by the Australian Christian College Moreton, near Brisbane, in February to abide by school policy, which requires boys' hair to be neat, tidy and not hanging over their faces.

Jason and Wendy Taniela leaving QCAT on Monday. Credit:Darren England/AAP

His mother, Wendy, took the matter to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, saying her son's hair was being grown ahead of a traditional hair-cutting ceremony.

The hearing, which started on Monday, is expected to focus on whether the school breached Australia's anti-discrimination laws and if it is lawful to exclude Cyrus if he does not cut his hair.
India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

India logs over 3.17 lakh new Covid cases in last 24 hours; daily positivity rate up at 16.41 per cent

Rajnath reaches Moscow, Jaishankar to participate in RIC meet despite Galwan tension

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, June 23: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will come face-to-face-albeit virtually with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Tuesday, against the backdrop of New Delhi's frayed ties with Beijing over the Galwan Valley clashes.

Both the leaders along with their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, will take part in Russia-China-India virtual conference.

The meeting comes at a time when tensions between India and China are heightened following a clash at Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two armies in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed.

Reportedly, India was initially reluctant to join the Russia-India-China trilateral foreign ministers' meeting but agreed to participate in it following a request from Moscow, the host of the conference.

Interestingly, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday reached Russia on a three-day visit to attend a military parade in Moscow on June 24 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of victory of the Russian people in the second world war.

He will have a series of meetings with top Russian military brass. A senior Chinese leader is also expected to be in Moscow to attend the parade.

India lost 20 Army personnel in the violent hand-to-hand clashes with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley on June 15, in the biggest ever confrontation between the two sides after a gap of 45 years.

'Why is China praising PM Modi' during Ladakh standoff, asks Rahul Gandhi

In a telephonic conversation with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi June 17, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called the clashes a "premeditated" action by Chinese PLA and said they will have a "serious impact" on the bilateral relationship.

Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivastava on Thursday confirmed Jaishankar's participation at the RIC meeting.

He said the meeting will deliberate on the coronavirus pandemic as well as issues relating to challenges to the global security and financial stability.

It is unlikely that the border standoff between India and China will figure in the meeting as bilateral issues are usually not discussed under the trilateral format, sources said, citing convention.

"It will be a good opportunity for all the three countries to come together and discuss regional issues in order to synchronise our views to contribute to support regional stability," a senior diplomat told PTI last week on the condition of anonymity.

Russia has already said that India and China should resolve the border dispute through talks and that a constructive relationship between the two countries was important for regional stability.

The three foreign ministers are also expected to deliberate extensively on the evolving political situation in Afghanistan after the US inked a peace deal with the Taliban in February.

The deal provided for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, effectively drawing the curtain on Washington's 18-year war in the country.

The meeting of the RIC foreign ministers is also expected to delve into key connectivity projects in the region including the implementation of the 7,200 km-long International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) linking India, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia with Europe.

with PTI inputs
WASHINGTON  If he had been a senator during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year, John Bolton says he probably would have voted for a conviction.

There's a certain irony in that, given that Trump's former national security adviser, out Tuesday with an explosive new book about his former boss, refused to testify in the House impeachment hearings and then offered to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed; Senate Republicans predictably declined before voting to acquit.

But on that, as on most things, Bolton is unapologetic about his decisions. He is not a man given to second thoughts or particularly worried about provoking the person generally seen as the most powerful in the world, the one who went to court to try to stop publication of the book and seize his proceeds.

Witness what happened when his interview with USA TODAY on Thursday was over: Bolton stood to pose for a photograph holding a copy of "The Room Where It Happened," the memoir being published by Simon & Schuster. "Shall I hold it like this?" he asked with a broad grin, lifting it over his head.

He was unmistakably mimicking Trump's controversial photo op this month when the president held aloft a Bible in front of St. John's Church after protesters had been cleared from his way in Lafayette Square in Washington.

It is not revealing classified information to report that relations between the former national security adviser and the president he served have gotten a little rocky.

Bolton: Prosecutor firing could be 'consistent' with what he saw

One tantalizing passage in the book suddenly seemed prescient this weekend when the Trump administration fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained in December 2018 about the office's investigation into a Turkish state-owned bank, Bolton wrote, "Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things" once he replaced Southern District prosecutors with "his people."

Story continues

"I don't think we know at this point" whether the precipitating event for the firing involved the Turkish bank, called Halkbank, or something else, Bolton said in a brief follow-up interview Sunday. But he said "it could be consistent" with the president's attitude toward investigations that he observed when he was in the White House.

Pence: Bolton says VP was an ally and equally 'stunned' by some Trump actions

Trump's Tulsa rally: He wanted to 'slow the testing down' and other takeaways

Four months before the election, Bolton, 71, is out with a book that portrays Trump as incompetent, uninformed, incurious, erratic, enamored with foreign strongmen, obsessed with his reelection and driven solely by self-interest  in a word, unfit to be president. "He's almost proud of not learning much about the subject matter of national security," Bolton said. He called working in the Trump White House "like living inside a pinball machine."

Former national security adviser John Bolton, at a USA TODAY interview about his White House memoir, mimics the controversial photograph of President Trump holding a Bible aloft in front of St. John's Church after protesters had been cleared from Lafayette Park.

The president has responded to accounts of Bolton's book with a volley of insults. He told Politico that his former top aide was a "sick customer" and someone seen by his White House colleagues as "totally nuts." To Sean Hannity on Fox News, he called Bolton "a washed-up guy." On Twitter, he described "Wacko John Bolton" as "a disgruntled boring fool," adding, "What a dope!"

Bolton's response?

"You know, whoever hired Bolton should get fired," Bolton said dryly. That, of course, would be Trump. "I've been accused of a lot of things over the course of my career. I've never been accused of hiding my views. So I think he knew what he was getting" when he named Bolton to one of the most powerful jobs in the White House in April 2018.

He would last for 17 months until Bolton resigned (says Bolton) or Trump fired him (says Trump).

'To John, Great job!'

Bolton's downtown office has evidence of happier times. On one wall hangs an oversize print of a Wall Street Journal illustration  a gift from Ivanka Trump  that shows Trump, Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo astride a chess board across from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.

"To John," Trump has written on it with a black Sharpie above his distinctive signature. "Great job!"

The Trump administration has done more than just talk about the book. The Justice Department last week asked a federal judge to halt its publication, a request the judge rejected Saturday. "For reasons that hardly need to be stated, the Court will not order nationwide seizure and destruction of a political memoir," U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote. The publisher had testified that 200,000 copies of the book had already been shipped, and its contents have been reported in news outlets around the world.

But the judge also said Bolton "likely jeopardized national security" by including classified material and could be legally liable for failing to complete the pre-publication review process to which he had committed when he received his security clearance. Bolton says the administration, after initially clearing the book, misused the review process to delay publication for political reasons.

So far, the president's ferocious reaction seems to be boosting Bolton's proceeds. "The Room Where It Happened," which got Bolton an advance reported at $2 million, has shot to No. 1 on Amazon.com. Advance sales have made it the top-selling book in the country.

'Impeachment malpractice' by the House

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also denounced the book, but not because Bolton makes damaging allegations against the president. It's because he didn't make them sooner.

"He chose royalty over patriotism," she told reporters, calling his decision not to testify at the House impeachment hearings "arrogant." That said, Pelosi noted that several Senate Republicans have said Bolton's account wouldn't have changed their minds about whether to vote to remove Trump from office.

Lawmaker reaction:'Author, but hes no patriot': Lawmakers react to Bolton's new book on Trump

Bolton now confirms the basics of the Democratic case against Trump on Ukraine. He says the president explicitly tied the release of U.S. military aid to an investigation by Ukraine into his political rivals. That allegation persuaded the Democratic-controlled House to impeach the president, although the Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him.

"I think I probably would have" voted to convict, Bolton said, "although, honestly, we still don't know everything there is to know about Ukraine. A lot of conduct can be reprehensible without being impeachable."

Bolton accuses the House of "impeachment malpractice" for not launching a broader and longer investigation, one that might still be going on today. For instance, in an episode reminiscent of Ukraine, he says, Trump solicited election help from China.

According to Bolton, at a summit dinner in Japan last year, Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase purchases of American soybeans and wheat to help his reelection prospects in farm states. He was "pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win," Bolton writes, to use China's economic clout for his political benefit. Bolton says he recorded Trump's exact words but was ordered to delete them from the text during the government's review process.

Bolton's depiction of Trump behind the scenes ranges from the shocking to the comic. At one point, Bolton says, Trump seemed unaware that Great Britain was a nuclear power. (It has been since 1952.) At another, he asked if Finland was part of Russia. (It's not.)

While books about Trump have become a cottage industry in the publishing world, Bolton is the highest-ranking former Trump official to depict the president in such a scathing light. He carries the credentials of a conservative who has served in the previous three Republican administrations, including as U.N. ambassador for President George W. Bush.

Bolton argues that the electoral damage from his book is more problematic for Trump than his testimony before Congress would have been, and more appropriate. "Impeachment is the guard rail in the Constitution that's supposed to be used only in extreme circumstances," he said. "The real guard rail in the Constitution is the election."

Bolton said he voted for Trump in 2016 but won't vote for him in November. Nor will he vote for Joe Biden, calling the presumptive Democratic candidate and his party unacceptable on national security policy.

Instead, he said, he plans to write in the name of a conservative leader yet to be determined.

Would he have walked across Lafayette Park?

Bolton packed up his office and left the White House on Sept. 10.

A lot has happened since then. That was a week before the first reports of a whistleblower complaint that had been filed about Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president. It was two months before China confirmed the first case of the novel coronavirus. The nationwide wave of protests against police violence and racial injustice wouldn't begin until this spring. Trump wouldn't walk across Lafayette Square, cleared of protests, and hold aloft a Bible until this month.

Bolton sees that moment, now iconic, as one more example of the fundamental thesis of his book. After the photo op, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they had been wrong to participate in it, opening an extraordinary public divide between the president and the leaders of the nation's military.

"Everything in the administration is at risk of being torqued around Donald Trump's personal needs," Bolton told USA TODAY. "This happens over and over again, this fusing of legitimate government interests with Donald Trump's personal interests." He can stage any photo ops he wants, Bolton says, but "if the president wants a photo op, stand there by yourself."

If he had still been in the White House, would he have walked across the square with him?

"I have to say in all honesty, I probably would have," Bolton said. It was the only moment when he seemed rueful. "And I would have regretted it later."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bolton interview: Trump White House 'like living in a pinball machine'
D onald Trump has claimed foreign countries will "print millions of ballot papers" to rig Novembers presidential election.

In a bizarre all-caps tweet on Monday, the president said "it will be the scandal of our times".

The post said: "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!"

One Twitter user replied: "Trump knows hes gonna lose big time, so hes already creating the excuse why."

Another said: "Trump's laying the groundwork for an election challenge."

A third wrote: "Anyone who knows how vote-by-mail works can explain just how impossible this would be."

It comes a day after Mr Trump's first rally since the coronavirus lockdown, which gained a lower turnout than expected.

Plans for an "overflow rally" for people who couldn't get tickets to the main arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma were abandoned, while photographs showed many empty seats inside the 19,000-seat capacity arena.

The president focused on differences between him and Joe Biden - his Democratic rival in the 2020 election.

He told supporters at the rally: "The choice in 2020 is very simple. Do you want to bow before the left-wing mob, or do you want to stand up tall and proud as Americans?"

Meanwhile, John Bolton, the president's former security advisor, said he will not vote for Mr Trump in the upcoming election, saying: I dont think hes fit for office.

Donald Trump launches 2020 re-election campaign - In pictures 1 /36 Donald Trump launches 2020 re-election campaign - In pictures President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump greet supporters at a rally where the president formally announced his 2020 re-election bid AP A supporter holds a placard during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump formally kicking off his re-election bid in Orlando, Florida Reuters A man holds up a sign as the crowd waits for US President Donald Trump to arrive at a rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida to officially launch his 2020 campaign AFP/Getty Images Protestors hold up anti President Donald Trump signs during a rally AP White House senior advisors Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner react as U.S. President Donald Trump formally kicks off his re-election bid with a campaign rally in Orlando, Florida REUTERS A supporter dances to music at a rally where President Donald Trump announced his 2020 re-election bid AP Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he arrives to speak at his re-election kickoff rally AP Kimberly Guilfoyle (right) and Donald Trump Jr. arrive at a rally for US President Donald Trump, to officially launch the Trump 2020 campaign AFP/Getty Images A supporter poses for photo before U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign kick off rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida REUTERS US Vice President Mike Pence speaks with US President Donald Trump at a rally to officially launch the Trump 2020 campaign AFP/Getty Images First lady Melania Trump speaks to supporters at a rally where President Donald Trump formally announced his 2020 re-election bid AP A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty protests against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images Opposition groups protest against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images A supporter of US President Donald Trump demonstrates outside the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida AFP/Getty Images Supporters of US President Donald Trump hold placards near the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida AFP/Getty Images Opposition groups protest against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images Donald Trump launches his re-election campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida Reuters Donald Trump greets First Lady Melania Trump as he takes the stage for the official launch of the Trump 2020 campaign at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida AFP/Getty Images Thousands of supporters gathered at the rally Reuters Michael Boulos, Tiffany Trump, Lara Trump, Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump Jr. arrive at a rally for US President Donald Trump, to officially launch the Trump 2020 campaign, at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida AFP/Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump and press secretary Sarah Sanders hug at a campaign kick off rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida REUTERS U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign kick off rally at the Amway Center in Orlando Reuters Protesters attend a rally against US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images A woman protests against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images Members of the Proud Boys face off against anti-Trump protesters outside a rally where President Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images Opposition groups protest against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images Opposition groups protest against President Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign Getty Images

In an interview with ABC News, Mr Bolton said he hopes history will remember Mr Trump as a "one-term president who didnt plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral".

Mr Trump revealed on Sunday that he had ordered officials to slow down coronavirus testing rates to avoid the appearance of alarming numbers of cases as the virus spread through the country.

He told the campaign rally that testing was a "double-edged sword" because it revealed the extent of the virus.

He said: "Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases. So I said 'slow the testing down'. They test and they test."

An official for the Trump campaign later said he was "clearly joking".
The Omaha police manual states that officers should clearly announce, when possible to other officers that projectiles are about to be fired. They also should give the person loud verbal commands to comply with officers directions. That didnt happen, Keup said.

It took me by surprise, he said. I didnt know who shot me or what with. For a brief moment, I thought it was a real gun.

In a video taken by a bystander just after Keup was hit, Brodigan and others ask for the deputies badge numbers and names, but they dont get an answer. The deputies can be seen in the video wearing green helmets, vests with SHERIFF on them and camouflage pants. But its unclear whether their badge numbers or names are visible on the vests.

London said generally, he wasnt sure whether names were emblazoned on the riot gear vests or not, and the names could have been on their backs. He did say that deputies are expected to verbally give their names or a badge number if asked.

The deputies took Keup to the Walgreens parking lot for medical attention, although Keup wouldnt call it that.
Advocates of governmental transparency have scored two recent wins in their perpetual battles with Californias political officials.

One victory, a May 28 state Supreme Court ruling, is especially timely since it stemmed from the fatal police shootings of two unarmed black men in 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.

There were demonstrations of protest across the country about the deaths of Brown and Garner, including one in Berkeley.

The Hayward Police Department provided whats called mutual aid to Berkeley police in dealing with the demonstration and afterwards, the National Lawyers Guild submitted a request, under the California Public Records Act, to Hayward officials for video footage from body cameras that their officers wore.

Dan Walters: George Floyd protests challenge politicians The George Floyd suffocation protests generate both opportunity and peril for politicians, including those in California, columnist Dan Walters says.

Hayward charged the Lawyers Guild just $1 for each DVD containing body camera video, but also $3,246 for staff time in redacting confidential information from about seven hours of recording.

That extra charge led to a lawsuit that wound up in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the city was wrong in claiming that redaction was the same as data extraction, for which it could legally charge.

We conclude the term data extraction does not cover the process of redacting exempt material from otherwise disclosable electronic records, the court declared. The usual rule therefore applies, and the city must bear its own redaction costs.

Otherwise, Justice Leondra Kruger wrote, the cost of requesting electronic public records could be prohibitive and would be contrary to the California Constitutions guarantee of a right of access to information.

Dan Walters: Whither California after crises abate? How will California evolve after pandemic, recession and civic unrest abate? We have a choice, columnist Dan Walters says.

The state Constitution favors an interpretation that avoids erecting such substantial financial barriers to access, Kruger said.

This decision is great news for government transparency and accountability, David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said in a statement. It will prevent government from erecting significant cost barriers to public access, thus ensuring the public gets the information theyre entitled to under California law.

The ruling came down three days after the suffocation death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policemans knee on his neck, igniting waves of protest that continue. It will affect the inevitable demands for police body camera recordings from those demonstrations.

Dan Walters: Gavin Newsom channels Pete Wilson Democrat Gavin Newsom's governorship resembles that of Republican Pete Wilson three decades earlier - setting aside his agenda to deal with a non-stop wave of crises, columnist Dan Walters says.

The second win for transparency occurred in the Capitol earlier this month, when legislators proposing to change legislative procedures for emergency situations backed off in the face of criticism.

As outlined in this space earlier, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 25 would allow the Legislature to operate by remote control whenever the governor or president had declared an emergency, such as the current one for COVID-19.

Legislators could vote electronically from outside the Capitol, votes could be cast by proxy, the public could be excluded from legislative meetings, and videotaping of legislative proceedings, with rapid access by the public, could be suspended if compliance is not practicable

Dan Walters: Allowing Legislature to act more secretly Four years ago, California voters passed a measure to increase legislative transparency. However, a newly drafted measure would undercut its safeguards, columnist Dan Walters says.

The sponsors of the voter-approved constitutional requirement for videotaping and other transparency procedures, former Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee and Stanford University physicist Charles Munger Jr., raised a stink about the measure, saying it guts transparency. Sponsors of ACA 25 retreated, dropping provisions for suspending videotaping and barring the public.

There remains, however, one bit of troubling language in ACA 25. The Legislature could still invoke its procedures when an emergency is proclaimed within the state, or parts thereof, which could mean just in one county.

That may appear to be a minor point, but legislative history tells us that officials will exploit any procedural loophole to do what they want to do. ACA 25 needs one more tweak to be acceptable.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how Californias state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Join archeologists on a quest to find the final resting place of Egypts most famous queen in the new Science Channel special Cleopatra: Sex, Lies And Secrets, tonight, Sunday, June 21, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Science Channel. You can also stream the two-hour special as an add-on to fuboTV (7-day free trial).

Her name conjures images of seductive beauty and power, but the woman behind the myth remains cloaked in mystery. Now Egyptophiles can travel to the Nile delta with a team of experts, where a massive exploration is underway at Taposiris Magna, a honeycomb of hidden passages and 2,000-year-old subterranean tombs that may well be the final resting place of Cleopatra. Find out how careful research and cutting-edge technology are unraveling clues and shedding new light on the fabled pharaohs life.

Where can I find Science Channel?

You can find Science Channel by using the channel finders here: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV and Dish.

Where can I watch Cleopatra: Sex, Lies And Secrets if I dont have cable?

Fans can live stream it as an add-on to fuboTV (7-day free trial, then $54.99/month). FuboTV is a streaming service that offers access to your favorite TV shows, live sports events and much more.
OTTAWA - The COVID-19 pandemic will leave some long-term economic damage that will only become clearer as the country moves further along a "prolonged and bumpy" course to recovery, Canada's top central banker says.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem takes part in a photo-opportunity at the Bank of Canada amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Ottawa on Monday, June 22, 2020. Macklem will deliver a speech and take part in a press conference at the Bank of Canada later today. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - The COVID-19 pandemic will leave some long-term economic damage that will only become clearer as the country moves further along a "prolonged and bumpy" course to recovery, Canada's top central banker says.

In his first speech as governor, Tiff Macklem said the central bank expects to see growth in the third quarter of this year as people are called back to work and households resume some of their normal activities as restrictions ease.

But he quickly warned Canadians not to expect the short and sharp economic bounce-back expected over the coming months to last.

The combination of uneven reopenings across provinces and industries, the unknown course of consumer confidence, and unemployment rates will "likely inflict some lasting damage to demand and supply," Macklem said in a speech Monday.

The exact extent of the damage in terms of the number of lost jobs and business closings won't become clear until the country is further along the reopening phase.

And even when things start looking up, he said there is the potential for setbacks from new outbreaks.

"As we get through that reopening phase, though, we do think that the pace of the recovery will slow and that will reflect the reality that not everybody's job is coming back," Macklem said at a midday press conference.

"Some companies aren't going to make it to the other side of this. New companies will form, existing companies will seize new opportunities, but that takes some time and that's going to be a slower, bumpier process that is going to require ongoing support."

The central bank's support against the economic shock caused by the pandemic has been a drop to its policy interest rate to 0.25 per cent, which Macklem says is as low as it will go.

The Bank of Canada has also launched a purchasing program of bonds and government debt to help markets function and make borrowing cheaper for households and businesses. Such purchases, known as quantitative easing, also send a signal that the bank's key rate "is likely to remain low for a long period," he said in his speech.

The bank has a number of other tools it can use to deliver some monetary stimulus beyond the interest rate, Macklem said, including scaling its purchasing programs or providing more direct forward guidance on activities as other central banks have done.

"Going forward, the types of measures we take will depend on the circumstances. Different measures have different effectiveness in different circumstances. And they will be guided by the achievement of our inflation target," he told reporters.

"We'll be flexible, we'll be resolute, we're going to be innovative and we're going to be determined."

For the Bank of Canada, the impact of structurally low interest rates and the scale of the shock are having what Macklem said is "a profound impact" on the inflation-rate target.

The central bank targets an annual inflation rate of two per cent as measured by Statistics Canada's consumer price index.

The basket of goods used to form the index has been shaken by a shift in consumer spending habits during the pandemic. People are spending less on gasoline, which usually receives a heavier weight in calculating inflation, as its price has plunged and the frequency of car travel has dropped. Spending is also down on travel, while grocery spending is up.

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.

Last week, Statistics Canada reported the annual pace of inflation was -0.4 per cent in May, marking the second consecutive month for negative annual inflation after a reading of -0.2 per cent in April.

In his speech, Macklem said the bank expects supply to be restored faster than demand, which could put downward pressure on inflation. BMO's Benjamin Reitzes wrote in a note that Macklem's message suggests bank policy remaining easy for some time.

Next month, the Bank of Canada will provide "a central planning scenario" for the economy and inflation to help guide bank policy, as well as related risks  such as local, but not national, lockdowns.

"The central scenario would embody the reality that there probably will be some more local flair-ups," Macklem said.

"Hopefully, with each flair-up we get better at targeting it, isolating it, and closing it down faster than the one before."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2020.
By Rita Sobot for MailOnline

Valencia, including Benidorm and Alicante

The area will maintain most of the measures of phase three of de-escalation, such as the obligation to limit capacity to 75 per cent. In shopping centres this is reduced to 60 per cent.

Open air shows may not have more than 800 people. Dancing in clubs is still banned. Tables on terrace bars must be two metres apart and no more than 20 diners.

Outdoor shows must have seats and cannot host more than 800 people.

Andalusia, home to Malaga, Granada and Seville

The regional government predicts the 'new reality' will be in effect until next spring at least.

The capacity of establishments and shops is 75 per cent inside but 100 per cent on terraces.

Swimming pools and hotels must be at 50 per cent capacity. Cinemas at 65 per cent.

Outdoor concerts must have a maximum capacity of 1,500 people. At the moment, fairs and festivals are not recommended.

Aragon

Establishments, as in Andalusia, will be at 75 per cent capacity.

Nightlife venues must be at 50 per cent and the dance floors are to be occupied by chairs and tables so no dancing is allowed.

Children's areas, previously closed, are now open again with the correct hygiene measures.

Asturias

Individual councils are responsible for the rules pertaining to beaches in Asturias.

Nightspots can open with capacity of 50 per cent but without a dance floor.

As for the rest of the catering establishments, they can be opened to their full capacity.

Parties have been classified by three types of risk (high, medium and low).

From July 5th, festivals, pilgrimages and attractions can return but those with a high risk will be prohibited, those with medium risk will have a 75 per cent capacity.

Those with low risk wont face added measures.

Shopping centres will have a limited capacity of 50 per cent in common areas.

Balearic Islands including Mallorca

The islands were the first place to welcome German tourists for a 'holiday experiment' with extensive regulations.

Big nightclubs can't open yet and there are space restrictions on the beaches, with time limits also in place in some areas.

At weddings and other social events, the capacity cannot exceed 75 per cent with a maximum of 250 people in outdoor spaces and 150 people in enclosed spaces.

There is also a 75 per cent occupancy on cinemas, theatres and auditoriums.

Clubs can't open at all in Magaluf, the West End of Sant Antoni and certain areas of Playa de Palma. Party boats are banned everywhere.

Canary Islands

In the Canary Islands, as in the Balearic Islands, the rule of four square metres each on the beach applies.

Bars and restaurants will not have a capacity limit, but there will be a 75 per cent limit in shops.

Nightclubs can open their terraces but with 75 per cent occupancy and no dancing.

Lifts and escalators can only be used by one person at a time - unless family members - and the use of stairs is encouraged instead.

Events outside are permitted with a maximum of 1,000. Inside it's 300 maximum.

Any payments are generally to be made by card as cash is discouraged.

Napkins, oil dispensers, even tooth-picks will disappear from tables.

Rugs, textiles, blankets, pictures and other such items are to disappear from hotel rooms.

Cantabria

A general capacity of 75 per cent is maintained in hotels, shops and cultural facilities, a percentage that drops to half in hostels, tourist facilities and nightlife venues.

Sports events can't have more than 300 people indoors and 1,000 outdoors. On the beaches, showers and footbaths can only be used by one person at a time.

Castilla-La Mancha

With the intention of not confusing citizens, the regional government has decided to limit the capacity to 75 per cent in practically all premises and public services.

Castilla- Leon

The area, very affected by the virus in some provinces due to its proximity to Madrid, has decided to prohibit any events or meetings where a distance of 1.5 metres between people cannot be maintained.

Bars are open although the capacity is limited to 75 per cent.

Clubs must place tables on the dance floors and will have attendance limited to one third of their capacity. Pools may open to 75 per cent of capacity and sports competitions without physical contact are allowed.

Catalonia

The community changed from phase three to the 'new normal' in just 24 hours this week, which has meant that its president Quim Torra has made a call for individual responsibility.

Thus, from June 25 there will be no limited capacity. In outdoor events, the safety distance of 1.5 metres must be respected, although it can be lowered if a mask is used and there must be a register of attendees.

Galicia

Terraces must be limited to 80 per cent capacity. In common areas of shopping malls, this is decreased to 50 per cent.

Outdoor events must have a maximum of 1,000 people seated and 300 if they are held indoors.

La Rioja

The regional government has adopted a policy of not limiting the capacity in those spaces where it is possible to maintain the necessary distance between others.

In large events, a 75 per cent capacity has been introduced.

All events will be by appointment to allow, if necessary, the tracking of attendees.

In the bullrings, up to 1,000 people are allowed while pools will have a 75 per cent capacity.

Madrid

Up until July 5, all businesses will have their internal capacity limited to 60 per cent. This rises to 80 per cent on terraces of bars and restaurants.

From July 6, that percentage will reach 75 per cent and 100 per cent on terraces.

Clubs will continue to be closed until at least July 5. Playgrounds are open again.

Murcia

The region will allow hotels to operate with all its rooms open, although in common spaces the capacity will be limited to 75 per cent.

Weddings may have 500 attendees outdoors, 200 indoors and up to 800 with specific plans.

Navarra

Capacity has been reduced to 75 per cent in the hospitality industry. Large events have been restricted to 1,000 attendees outdoors and 500 inside.

Basque Country

The Basque Country has reopened parks and recreational areas, although a space of four square metres for each person must be guaranteed. Masks are obligatory.

In open-air cultural shows, pilgrimages, dance or music exhibitions and parades, the maximum capacity will be 1,000 attendees. The same rules apply to sports events in open spaces, such as cycling, rowing or athletics.

In closed spaces this figure is reduced to 300 people. Clubs and nightlife venues can resume their activity with 60 per cent of their usual capacity.
Washington: He referred to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus as the "kung flu". He called racial justice demonstrators "thugs". He attacked efforts to take down Confederate statues as an assault on "our heritage". And in an ominous hypothetical, he described a "very tough hombre" breaking into a young woman's home while her husband is away.

US President Donald Trump has long used his raucous rallies to road test potential campaign themes and attack lines. Much attention on his appearance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, focused on the sparse turnout for his first rally since the pandemic ended mass gatherings  he was reportedly stunned and yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium, according to The New York Times. But Trump's litany of racially offensive stereotypes sent a clear signal about how he plans to try to revive his flagging reelection effort.

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Centre in Tulsa on Saturday evening, US time. Credit:AP

Even at a moment of national reckoning over race and racism, Trump demonstrated the extent to which the final four months of the 2020 election will build on the darker themes of a previous campaign notable for its attacks on Hispanic immigrants and Muslims.

"If you want to save your heritage, you want to save that beautiful heritage of ours, we have a great heritage, we're a great country," he said to cheers, using a phrase often used to defend Confederate statues and regalia.
Sally Mboumien, SNWOT General Coordinator Sally Mboumien

Sally Mboumien, General Coordinator, South West North West Womens Taskforce (SNWOT) says the separatist civil disobedience strategy of imposing lockdowns and ghost towns only drowns an already very feeble people into the rivers of more pain and misery.

The remarks are contained in a dispatch Monday, June 22, on the on-going process of reconstruction in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon.

As Paul Tasong, National Coordinator of the Presidential Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the North West and South West Regions began a 12-day fact-finding and awareness mission to the restive area, armed separatists called for a three-day lockdown.

The South West North West Womens Taskforce says women in the restive regions are passionate about restoring sustainable peace and encouraging initiatives and actions that are geared towards alleviating the plight of our feeble communities.

We expect everyone to be empathetic, with IDPs, the vulnerable group (PLWD), aged, women, girls and children, who are now living in abject poverty and deplorable conditions due to the on-going socio-political crisis plaguing the North West and South West regions. This deplorable situation has been aggravated with the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic, SNWOTs General Coordinator writes.

We therefore decry the constant use of lockdowns as a strategy for civil disobedience within the on-going crisis. This strategy only drowns our already very feeble people into the rivers of more pain and misery.

Mboumien posits that if the priority remains the well-being of humanity, then this civil disobedience strategy of calling for lockdowns should be revisited, for it is important for the people of the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon to enjoy their fundamental human rights to an adequate and decent standard of living.

Her words: SNWOT, remaining true to its values of impartiality and being non-partisan, applauds any action that genuinely seeks to reconstruct, rehabilitate and build social cohesion within our restive regions. We understand actions in that direction will contribute in improving the living conditions of the affected population, especially those in the bushes or host communities as well as refugees.

We urge all the parties in this conflict, to include the well- being and development of this ailing population in their plan of actions and make it a priority, especially as we are experiencing an unprecedented increase in confirmed cases of COVID-19 within these regions.

The women are of the opinion that every faction should respect the importance for a sustainable environment and an approach that will lead to a peaceful reconstruction, rehabilitation and eventual resettling of the affected population.

While we recognize the strategic nature of the reconstruction within the peace process, we strongly advice that the aggrieved parties of this conflict should come to an agreement which at least provides for an end to hostilities and silencing the guns, pending an inclusive and sincere dialogue, said Mboumien in Mondays dispatch.

We also want to highlight the fact that, any reconstruction agenda under military supervision, may only lead to more human and material loss. We therefore call on parties for the sake of the people they are fighting for, to reach a mutual agreement for a dialogue or negotiation, where in representation from CSOs, community leaders, women leaders, and political opinion holders will be a part. For this kind of inclusive dialogue or negotiation will confirm fairness and transparency of the process.
The Confederate monuments that are coming down across the United States have once again ignited a generations-old American argument. Though the idea that the war was really about the noble cause of states rights retains its mystique for some, historians agree that the root cause of the Civil War was slavery. The worst American war in the nations historyfrom the standpoint of casualties, direct costs and indirect consequenceswas fought in a vain attempt by the Confederate States to preserve that peculiar institution. Now, 155 years later, not only are statues of Confederate leaders being removed in cities from Richmond to New Orleans, Confederate battle flags are being banned at public events and U.S. military bases named after Confederate military leaders face possible name changes.

But the Civil War did not occur in a vacuum; it was the culmination of centuries of institutional racism against people of African origin. The previous 240 years had seen ongoing suppression of the rights of Black people to live free within America. Long before the Civil War, history records efforts of individual enslaved people to revolt, to escape or both, with varying degrees of success. The Civil War was the culmination of a failed racial policy that was stillborn in 1619 when the first Africans were brought to Virginia and sold to the highest bidders. And, as many Americans hope to take this moment to reassess the way the nation thinks about its past, its worth remembering that the Civil War was not the only American war in which slavery played an important role.

While the causes of the War of 1812 were more obscure than the Civil War, and poorly understood outside Washington and London, the British army fighting through southern Maryland on the path from Baltimore to Washington in 1814 crossed the plantations of slave-owners. By the close of that campaign, the United States would have a destroyed White House (burned to the ground), a scorched U. S. Capitol Building and a new National Anthem. But the war also saw the single largest liberation of enslaved Americans between 1776 and 1865, as more than 4,000 defected to the British military and resettled in Nova Scotia and Jamaica as free people.

Story continues

More important, more direct and much less well-publicized was the impact of black African slavery in instigating the American Revolution.

In the years leading up to the revolution, the American south was primarily loyal to the British Crown, and enjoyed a favored status compared with their neighbors north of Maryland. The southern colonies were happy to provide raw goods to fuel British manufacturing: cotton, lumber and indigo, along with tobacco, rice and sugar. The fact that southern products were produced by the labor of Black slaves was politely overlooked by the British merchants, and a triangular trade including importation of West African slaves became routine. Despite some concerns in the southern colonies about British taxation without representation, that cause didnt resonate among the wealthy plantation owners as it did among the merchants and laborers in the north. So what drew the southern colonies into the revolution?

Three attorneys who dedicated their careers to American civil rights, in two separate books, have provided the basis for a fresh but compelling explanation for the American south to enter the American Revolution alongside their northern brothers: A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.s 1978 In the Matter of Color and 2005s Slave Nation by Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen. These authors, whose work has more recently been cited by the New York Times 1619 Project, arrive at a single conclusion. The Southern colonies had no reason to put their lives, their families lives, their property and their legacy on the line until a single decision at the Court of Kings Bench in London on June 22, 1772, Somersett v. Steuart, often seen written as Somerset v. Stewart.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

This decision resulted in the first legally ordered liberation of an American slave in the British courts, and the impact of that decision would ripple through the slave-owning American South by the fall of 1772. The three years that followed the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, have been referred to as the quiet years. By March 12, 1773, the quiet had been soundly disrupted in Virginia. The attorneys in their midstincluding Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henryhad been assured by Benjamin Franklin, who was then in London, that if Virginia remained a part of the British Empire, her slaves would be freed en masse. The livelihood, the land and the way of life of the plantation owners would be brought to an abrupt end. Further, were these emancipated slaves to take up arms, the very lives of the plantation owners and their families would most assuredly be at grave risk. The only clear solution was for Virginia to separate itself from the Empire. By 1775, all 13 colonies had established committees of correspondence to discuss independence.

Somersett v. Steuart was a deciding factor that began the stone rolling from atop the hill, in joining all the colonies to single solution. The American Revolution would succeed in separating all the British colonies between the St. Lawrence River and the Okefenokee Swamp from the British Empire.

Therefore, depending upon how one wishes to take up the debate, or count the wars, it would appear that the Civil War was not the only time the United States of America engaged in battle over the preservation of slavery in the American south.

Today, as the country asks what to do about monuments to the Confederacy, some might also raise such questions about the Revolutionary War. What about Mount Vernon? What about Monticello and other plantation monuments? The restored plantations of four of our first five presidents are supported by foundations that enjoy a tax-free status. While the southern politicians who fought for freedom from Great Britain were men of their times, perhaps we are overdue in reexamining these monuments through the lens of our own.

Phillip Goodrich is the author of Somersett or Why and How Benjamin Franklin Orchestrated the American Revolution
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 24, 1987

CHILD POVERTY GONE BY 1990, SAYS PM

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN THE LABOR LAUNCH

The Prime Minister announced yesterday a $400 million package to assist about half a million low-income families and pledged that by 1990 no Australian child would be living in poverty.

Mr Hawke also announced new job training measures, amounting to around $300 million, which had been foreshadowed last month in the mini-Budget. The additional funds for the new training measures have come from the scrapping of the Community Employment Program and reductions in funds for TAFE colleges.
WASHINGTON  Two Trump campaign staff members who attended the presidents indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday night tested positive for the coronavirus, a spokesman said Monday, despite earlier assurances that a small outbreak among campaign workers had been contained and no staffers who had tested positive had entered the arena.

The two workers, members of the campaigns advance team, tested positive when another round of testing was conducted after the rally, according to Tim Murtaugh, the campaigns communications director. He said the staff members in question had attended the event, but had worn masks the entire time.

Upon the positive tests, the campaign immediately activated established quarantine and contact-tracing protocols, Mr. Murtaugh said.

It was not immediately clear how many people the staff members interacted with inside the arena, or whether either of them had been in contact with President Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, who was also at the rally.
National Radio Society of Ireland (NRSI)

Public Statement - 21st June 2020

Dear fellow Amateurs and SWLs,

We understand some amateurs and SWLs may be somewhat confused at the need for the establishment of a new society within the country, however in our opinion this was sadly justified for the long term future of the hobby.

As many of you may have noticed, over the past few weeks the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) has experienced a dramatic departure of officers from its management.

Unfortunately this final outcome has been a long time coming and the reasons for this are too numerous to address in one single page press release. As such, we will endeavor to supply you with more information on a weekly basis regarding each of the above via www.nrsi.ie

We strongly believe you will feel like us as more information becomes available.

Many individuals and clubs over the years have attempted to encourage proposals and initiatives through the IRTS for the benefit of the whole amateur radio community. Ultimately these members and groups have found themselves disappointed / disillusioned with the lack of progress.

The NRSI was recently established by ex-officers and ex-volunteers within the IRTS who have dedicated years of their lives to the society only to be left with the opinion that the views of much of our amateur community seemed to not be taken onboard. Some of us even tried to remain within the society in the hope that we might be able to resolve some of the issues as a last attempt.

This was not an easy decision to make, every attempt had been made up to this point to resolve these issues through the years. Ultimately however the establishment of the NRSI was deemed necessary as the only option for the future development of the hobby in the country.

The committee of the National Radio Society of Ireland has decided to release this initial public statement. It was unfortunate that the release of our beta (under development) website occured prematurely as a result of a member posting a link on social media. The wording on this website was still very much under development and was not meant as a final publication.

We thank each of you for your initial comments and suggestions which many of you supplied by email to us. We will be of course taking every one of these onboard going forward over the coming days.

Mark EI6HPB

NRSI President

Email: nationalradiosociety@gmail.com

Web: www.nrsi.ie
Armenian parliament passed, in the second and final reading, the draft amendments to the Constitution. A total of 89 MPs voted for the bill.

The opposition Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia factions were not participating in the sitting.

According to the said amendments, the Constitutional Court judges who have been in office for 12 years and more shall be removed from office, while the current president of the court, Hrayr Tovmasyan, will continue to be a judge of the court, but no longer as its president.

The bill was submitted by 54 MPs of the majority My Step faction.

Earlier, the Venice Commission said in a statement it regrets that a proposal for constitutional amendments was introduced in the Armenian Parliament on the day of the adoption by the Venice Commission of its opinion.

According to Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric, "the constitutional crisis in Armenia can be solved with the Venice Commissions guidance."

"I invite all authorities to be guided by the Venice Commission recommendations to overcome the constitutional crisis through smooth implementation of the relevant provisions of the 2015 Constitution and in accordance with Council of Europe standards," she concluded.
New Delhi, June 22 : Indian Army chief, Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane on Monday chaired the second phase of the Army Commanders Conference to review the operational situation on both the Northern and Western fronts.

All top commanders, including Northern Command chief Lt Gen Y.K. Joshi, are taking part in the two-day meet.

The army commanders have come together to discuss the whole gamut of India's operational situation on both the Northern and Western fronts.

The two day second phase of the conference follows the first phase held from May 27 to May 29.

During the first phase, Indian Army top leadership had discussed China's transgression attempts in Ladakh and Sikkim regions.

The conference was originally scheduled for April but postponed due to Covid-19 pandemic. Later, it was decided to organise it in two phases across May and June.

After the conference ends on Tuesday, Gen Naravane would leave for Ladakh and Kashmir to take stock of volatile ground situation in both places.

The army chief's visit comes amid heightened threat in eastern Ladakh region where over thousands of Indian soldiers have been deployed a few metres away from Line of Actual Control against the toops of China's People's Liberation Army.

Gen Naravane will review the force preparedness as well deployment across the Line of Actual Control with China and the Line of Control with Pakistan.

On Monday, Corps Commanders from both Indian and Chinese sides met at Moldo on Monday to resolve the border issue and ease tension in Eastern Ladakh.

This is the second such meeting after the first one on June 6 to defuse the tensions.

The meeting between 14 Corps commander, Lt Gen Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District chief Major Gen Liu Lin is on the lines of the one they held at the Chushul-Moldo border personnel meeting point in eastern Ladakh on June 6.
As part of the mandate, Indigo Consulting will strategically manage Maybelline New Yorks digital and social media campaigns and extensively support the velocity of their eCommerce efforts on the backbone of their core combination of a robust analytics operation, newly celebrated and revamped team, and their industry leading technology practice

Maybelline New York, the worlds biggest makeup brand, awards Indigo Consulting, Publicis Groupes Digital and Business Transformation Company, with its complete digital communication mandate. The account was won following a multi-agency pitch, and will be serviced out of Indigo Consultings Mumbai office.

As part of the mandate, Indigo Consulting will manage digital and social campaigns as well as any strategic requirements for the brand, including digital analytics, social media content and management, and online reputation management.

We are really excited to have Indigo on board with us. They have been doing some great work across their various clients and we are confident that they will help us achieve our vision on the brand which is to become the #1 Make up brand in India. Looking at the shift that the industry is seeing right now and how dynamic things are especially on digital and ecommerce, to have a partner like Indigo, which has been one of the front runners in digital+tech, we are sure that we will see some great work and campaigns in the coming years. said Vaidehi Vimadalal, General Manager, Maybelline India.

Commenting on the account win, Rajesh Ghatge, CEO, Indigo Consulting said, The makeup category in India is on the threshold of new leadership. We are excited to partner with Maybelline in their journey to this pole position. Engagement & commerce on digital, and innovation driven by technology is gaining tremendous momentum. We are excited to get an opportunity to combine our collective capabilities across data, creativity and technology to provide Maybelline New York, with the velocity it needs to aggressively take over the Indian market. We look forward to Making It Happen

Read More
People who get divorced are more likely to die than heavy drinkers, people with money problems and those who never got married in the first place, a study has shown.

Scientists revealed the disparity after asking 13,611 American adults aged between 50 and 104 about their lives over the previous 16 years, between 1992 and 2008.

They then collected data on those that died between 2008 and 2014, either through national mortality records or interviews with relatives.

Participants were quizzed on 57 different socioeconomic factors including unemployment history, food bank use and life satisfaction, while medical and biological measures were excluded.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number one cause of an early death was found to be smoking, almost doubling the risk to individuals.

However, divorce came in second, ahead of alcohol abuse, financial difficulties and unemployment and even never having been married in the first place.

Previous studies have also shown that divorcees are more likely to suffer from heavy drinking and money problems - potentially exacerbating the problem.

Scientists revealed the disparity after questioning 13,611 American adults aged between 50 and 104 about their lives between 1992 and 2008, and monitoring how many participants died between 2008 and 2014. (Stock image)

The purpose of the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was to shed light on why increases in life expectancy have been anaemic in recent years.

In the UK, it rose for women by four months in 2019, to 83.6 years, and for men by three months, to 79.9 years. In the US it has been stagnant for three decades.

The study found 'little evidence' that death rates differed by gender, between white and non-white populations and those who did and did not attend high school.

Eli Puterman, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia who was involved in the study, said the results 'show that a lifespan approach is needed to really understand health and mortality'.

'For example, instead of just asking whether people are unemployed, we looked at their history of unemployment over 16 years.

'If they were unemployed at any time, was that a predictor of mortality? It's more than just a one-time snapshot of people's lives, where something might be missed because it did not occur.'

He added: 'Smoking has been understood as one of the greatest predictors of mortality for 40 years, if not more, but by identifying a key factor like negative affectivity - that you tend to see and feel more negative things in your life - we can see that we might need to start targeting this with interventions.

'Can we shift it and have an impact on mortality rates? Similarly, can we target interventions for the unemployed and those with financial difficulties to reduce their risk?'

As many as 57 different socioeconomic factors were measured including history of unemployment, use of food banks and life satisfaction. (Stock image)

Ten highest risk of death factors, according to the study 1. Smoking - HR 1.91 2. History of divorce - HR 1.45 3. History of alcohol abuse - HR 1.36 4. Recent financial difficulties - HR 1.32 5. History of unemployment - HR 1.32 6. Previous history as a smoker - HR 1.32 7. Lower life satisfaction - HR 1.31 8. Never married - HR 1.30 9. History of food stamps - HR 1.28 10. Negative affectivity - HR 1.23 What is the Hazard Ratio (HR)?: This is the likelihood of dying when faced with a particular factor. A value of one means an average risk of death. Advertisement

Divorcees are known to be more likely to drink and have money problems than others.

Several studies have repeatedly shown that people who drink large amounts of alcohol are at a heightened risk of divorce.

'On average, divorced people drink more than married people,' said Fartein Torvik, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health who has studied alcoholism, in 2013.

'To some extent this is due to increased drinking after a divorce, but people who drink heavily also have a higher risk of experiencing a divorce, so heavy drinking likely interferes fundamentally with the quality of marriage.'

And in 2018 a survey found that money worries are the biggest reason for seeking a divorce, which may then continue afterwards.

A poll of 2,000 British adults found money topped the list, with one in three couples saying it was the biggest cause of their marriage problems.

A further one in five also admitted the majority of their arguments were about money, and blamed their partner for the issues by accusing them of overspending or failing to budget properly.

There were 90,871 divorces in the UK in 2018, a drop of 10.6 per cent compared with the previous year and the lowest number since 1971, according to the office for national statistics.

The number of divorces is expected to continue to decline as more couples opt to cohabit, rather than going through a wedding ceremony.
(a) Pupillary responses during presentation of emotionally arousing pictures (b) Pupillary responses during presentation of emotionally arousing sounds Credit: Toyohashi University Of Technology.

Researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology report that the relationship between attentional states in response to pictures and sounds and the emotions elicited by them may be different in visual perception and auditory perception. This result suggests visual perception elicits emotions in all attentional states, whereas auditory perception elicits emotions only when attention is paid to sounds, thus showing the differences in the relationships between attentional states and emotions in response to visual and auditory stimuli.

This result was obtained by measuring pupillary reactions related to human emotions. It suggests that visual perception elicits emotions in all attentional states, whereas auditory perception elicits emotions only when attention is paid to sounds, thus showing the differences in the relationships between attentional states and emotions in response to visual and auditory stimuli.

In daily life, emotions are often elicited by the information we receive from visual and auditory perception. As such, many studies up until now have investigated human emotional processing using emotional stimuli such as pictures and sounds. However, it was not clear whether such emotional processing differed between visual and auditory perception.

The research team asked participants in the experiment to perform four tasks to alert them to various attentional states when they were presented with emotionally arousing pictures and sounds in order to investigate how emotional responses differed between visual and auditory perception. They also compared the pupillary responses obtained by eye movement measurements as a physiological indicator of emotional responses. As a result, visual perception (pictures) elicited emotions during the execution of all tasks, whereas auditory perception (sounds) did so only during the execution of tasks where attention was paid to the sounds. These results suggest that there are differences in the relationship between attentional states and emotional responses to visual and auditory stimuli.

"Traditionally, subjective questionnaires have been the most common method for assessing emotional states. However, in this study, we wanted to extract emotional states while some kind of task was being performed. We therefore focused on pupillary response, which is receiving a lot of attention as one of the biological signals that reflect cognitive states. Although many studies have reported about attentional states during emotional arousal owing to visual and auditory perception, there have been no previous studies comparing these states across senses, and this is the first attempt," says lead author Satoshi Nakakoga, Ph. D. student.

Professor Tetsuto Minami, the leader of the research team, said, "There are more opportunities to come into contact with various visual media via smartphones and other devices and to evoke emotions through that visual and auditory information. We will continue investigating about sensory perception that elicits emotions, including the effects of elicited emotions on human behavior."

Based on the results of this research, the team suggests the possibility of a new method of emotion regulation in which the emotional responses elicited by a certain sense are promoted or suppressed by stimuli input from another sense. Ultimately, they hope to establish this new method of emotion regulation to treat psychiatric disorders such as panic and mood disorders.

Explore further Vision loss influences perception of sound

More information: Satoshi Nakakoga et al, Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry, PLOS ONE (2020). Satoshi Nakakoga et al, Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry,(2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230775
India fighting dual battle against China: Kejriwal during Covid briefing

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said that India is presently fighting two wars against China, one against the virus and the other at the border. Briefing the media about the Covid situation in the capital, Kejriwal said that there are about 25,000 Covid positive cases in Delhi at present. He also announced that now the Delhi government would provide oxy pulse meters to people on home quarantine so they can track their oxygen levels. Watch the full video for all the details. ...read more
A Chinese man nearly died after allegedly inserting a wiggling 16-inch eel into his backside to treat his constipation.

The live fish tore through the man's intestines before dying and getting stuck in his abdomen for a week, doctors said.

The unnamed patient, said to be in his 50s, claimed he decided to use the creature to solve his bowel problems after following a folk remedy.

A Chinese man nearly died after allegedly inserting a wiggling 16-inch eel into his backside to treat his constipation. The picture shows an X-ray scan of the patient in southern China

The patient fully recovered after medics removed the dead fish from the man's belly, according to a social media post from the hospital. The dead eel is pictured after it was removed in China

The news came to light after the man sought medical attention at the Huangjiang Hospital in Dongguan, Guangdong province, due to severe abdominal pain.

He has fully recovered after medics removed the dead fish from the man's belly during emergency surgery, according to a social media post from the hospital.

Dr Li from the hospital told the local media: '[We] suspected that there was a foreign object in his abdominal cavity from a CT scan. But we couldn't tell where it came from.'

The patient then underwent an emergency abdominal operation after his condition became life-threatening, the medic said.

The surgeons were shocked to discover the dead eel while conducting the surgery.

Dr Li added: 'During the laparoscopy procedure, we detected that it was an eel. It had completely entered the abdominal cavity and already been dead.'

The doctor said that the man's organ had been severely infected and filled with waste matter.

Footage released by Guangdong Television showed the medics removing the 16-inch creature after surgically opening up the patient's belly.

After the operation, the patient confessed to the doctors that he had inserted the live eel into his rear in a bid to treat his long-term constipation.

But there is no scientific evidence to support the folk remedy the man was following.

The picture shows a screenshot of the footage of the medics at the Huangjiang Hospital in Dongguan removing the 16-inch creature after surgically opening up the patient's belly

Dr Li said: 'The eel entered [his body] through anus and rectum. I think it had quickly torn a hole already while [it was] in the colon.'

The doctor said that the man was likely to die if he did not undergo the surgery in time.

'Because it was a live eel, the possibility of death is very high if the surgery was not done timely,' the medic added.

The patient was treated in intensive care units for three days and has been discharged, according to the hospital.

The news comes after another Chinese man recently had a 10-inch chopstick lodged in his belly after inserting it into his backside 'out of curiosity'.

The 68-year-old man from Hubei claimed that he was interested in checking his backside after developing piles.

The patient was discharged from the hospital in late May after medics removed the metal stick from the pensioner's intestines.
A war of words erupted between the ruling BJP and the Congress over former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the death of 20 Indian soldiers by Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in Ladakh's Galwan valley.

The Congress hit out at BJP national President J.P. Nadda saying they should stop compromising on national security and India's territorial integrity as it would be biggest disservice to the armed forces and asked not to buckle down.

The ward of words erupted between the Congress and the BJP after Manmohan Singh in a statement on Monday launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister saying "disinformation" on the Chinese transgression will be a "betrayal" to the sacrifice made by the Indian soldiers at the LAC and it was neither a "substitute for diplomacy" nor "decisive leadership".

Following Singh's statement, Nadda slammed the Congress for insulting the armed forces and also reminded it of questioning the valour of the forces by questioning the Balakor air strike in 2019 and Uri surgical strike in 2017.

Nadda took to twitter and wrote, "Dear Dr. Singh and Congress party, please stop insulting our forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes. Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times. It's never too late to improve."

Soon after Nadda's remarks, Congress national spokesperson and national media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala slammed the BJP chief and said, "Dear Nadda and the BJP, stop compromising on national security and India's territorial integrity.

"This would be the biggest disservice to our armed forces and our 20 martyrs. Don't buckle down, have the strength to rise to the occasion. We'll give the government every support," Surjewala said in a tweet.

Earlier in the day, after the former Prime Minister's statement, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi also said that 'hope government will accept his advice' in the interest of the country.

"Important advice by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. For the betterment of India, I hope the Prime Minister will accept it politely," he said in another tweet.
San Francisco: Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch its foldable smartphone Surface Duo in late July with Android 10 and would later update it to Android 11.

Microsoft has started working on Android 11 for its dual-screen device and that it would be rolled out within a few months of the launch, reports Windows Latest.

The next version of Android will probably be made official in September and that's when potential Surface Duo owners can expect it on the device.

As per report, the tech giant is also working hard to make its Edge and Outlook apps natively compatible with the Duo's two-screen setup.

The Surface Duo is expected to come with mid-range specs, including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, 6GB RAM, and either 64GB or 256GB of storage.

The device will also feature a single 11MP camera sensor above the right display that will be used for both front and rear-facing photos and videos and will be powered by Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB RAM/64GB or 256GB storage options.

The smartphone houses two equal-sized 5.6-inch AMOLED displays. Each screen offers a 4:3 aspect ratio, 1800 x 1350 pixels resolution and 401ppi pixel density.

Surface Duo will ship with a 3460mAh battery and feature USB-C fast charging.

It won't support 5G, maxing out at 4G LTE speeds instead. It is also speculated that the device lacks support for wireless charging and NFC.
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed concerns about the fairness of Americas immigration system. Some of the industries hit hardest by the virus put immigrants at elevated risk of infection and, as was tragically the case for five workers at a meatpacking plant in Colorado, death. Guest workers also have limited mobility, a concern illustrated by the case of Dr. Ram Alur, a foreign physician working on an H-1B visa in southern Illinois. Because Alurs visa ties him to a particular employer, he and other doctors on H-1B visas were unable to join the fight against coronavirus in New York despite their public-spirited desire to do so. The roughly 20 million Americans currently unemployed may also worry that further admittance of foreign workers during the economic recession will make it even more difficult for them to find work in a historically weak labor market.

Thus far, the White House response has involved the suspension of entry for select migrants. Whether one agrees with this action or not, it is a temporary measure for an issue that is  like immigrant working conditions and guest-worker mobility  a perennial concern. Addressing these issues permanently will require a longer-term fix. One option Congress should consider is auctioning guest-worker visas, a fairer and more efficient approach that could appeal to immigration admissionists and restrictionists alike.

On April 22, President Trump signed an executive order suspending the issuance of green cards to immigrants abroad for 60 days unless they were seeking entry to perform an essential job in the health-care sector. The order was intended to protect already disadvantaged and unemployed Americans from the threat of competition for scarce jobs from new lawful permanent residents amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two weeks later, citing similar concerns about competition from foreign workers, Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Charles Grassley, and Josh Hawley sent a letter to the president asking him to extend the suspension to guest-worker visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers and specialty occupation workers. In an interview on Saturday, the president stated his intention to announce new restrictions on such work visas this week.

Story continues

The inclination to suspend work visas during a recession stems from long-standing concerns  on the right as well as the left  that firms make use of guest worker visas to hire less-expensive foreign labor rather than paying prevailing local wages. Because guest workers are tied solely to the employer that sponsors their visa and are unable to seek work elsewhere, many worry that they are particularly vulnerable to substandard working conditions, low pay, and even wage theft.

On top of these concerns about fairness, the way that the government allocates guest-worker visas is remarkably inefficient. For example, the number of H-1B visas for specialty occupation workers is capped by Congress (the current cap is 65,000 with another 20,000 visas available for foreign workers who have earned a U.S. masters degree or higher). Though applying for an H-1B visa is not free, the costs are low enough that the number of employer applications regularly exceed the cap by a wide margin. To reconcile the difference, the government holds a lottery in which visas go to the luckiest firms rather than those who can put them to their highest-valued uses.

There is a better way. The government should scrap the lottery in favor of an auction system, in which employers can bid on a capped number of guest-worker visas. In a 2018 article for the Journal of Legal Studies, Professors Alessandra Casella and Adam Cox offered a proposal for how such an auction system might work.

The CasellaCox framework involves two phases. In the pre-contract phase, temporary work visas are auctioned to employers. In the post-contract phase  once an employment contract is signed  a winning employer retains the right to employ the foreign worker, but the worker also has the right to leave that job if another U.S. employer is willing to purchase her pro-rated visa.

Consider how the CasellaCox framework would apply to the H-1B visa for specialty occupations. The capped number of visas would be auctioned off to employers, ensuring that that the visas go to those willing to pay the most to enlist skilled foreign labor, rather than those lucky enough to win the lottery. Whereas the lottery system currently generates a windfall subsidy for winning employers (the difference between what they would have been willing to pay to hire a skilled foreign worker and what they actually pay in the form of wages and application fees), an auction system ensures that foreign workers are hired by the firms that value them most, with the winning bids accruing to the government as revenue.

With employers bidding competitively for H-1B visas, the option of entering the lottery in pursuit of inexpensive foreign labor would be foreclosed. Employers would have an incentive to look harder for skilled native workers at prevailing wages if they knew they would face stiff competition from other firms in the market for H-1B visas. Only employers who truly need foreign talent to fill essential gaps in personnel would be likely to bid high enough to win.

An employer with a winning bid for an H-1B visa could hold it (the clock on the visa wouldnt start until the employer signs a contract with a foreign worker), exercise it by hiring a foreign worker, or sell it to another firm. This flexibility allows firms to better time the hiring of foreign workers with the most favorable market conditions. For example, an employer that obtains a visa just before an unanticipated economic downturn neednt immediately hire a foreign worker. With more native workers available, the employer could hold off on using the visa until the labor market recovered and skilled roles became more difficult to fill.

A key innovation of the CasellaCox proposal  one that ensures fairer outcomes for foreign workers  is the post-contract splitting of visa rights between employer and worker. Should an employer with an H-1B decide to hire a foreign worker, that worker would then have the right to work for any other employer that will hire him. No longer tied exclusively to one firm, foreign workers on H-1B visas would be free to pursue higher wages or better working conditions at different firms.

Should another firm hire the worker, it would be required to reimburse the former employer for the price of the visa, pro-rated for the amount of time left on it. This freedom of movement would make it more difficult for employers to underpay foreign guest workers and therefore less likely to undercut the earnings of native workers. Mobility for workers on H-1B visas would also allow for a thicker market for skilled labor  the idea that when there are more potentially optimal matches between workers and firms, overall economic productivity improves.

As the U.S. considers the path to recovery, Congress should pilot the CasellaCox approach with H-1B visas, extending it to other guest-worker programs if it proves successful. Because high-skill immigration will be particularly important to the future of the American economy, it is critical that we prioritize improving the policies we use to engage foreign talent. Introducing an auction and competitive secondary markets to the visa process would mitigate concerns that guest-worker programs undercut the jobs and earnings of natives. Giving foreign workers greater freedom of movement once they are here will protect them from exploitation and boost the productivity of the American labor market.

More from National Review
Scotlands First Minister has warned against a reckless approach to leaving lockdown as she pointed to Covid-19 spikes in China, Germany and South Korea.

Speaking during the Scottish Governments daily coronavirus briefing, Nicola Sturgeon announced no new deaths from the virus have been recorded in the last 24 hours  the fifth time the figures has stayed the same since the pandemic began.

But she stressed the need not to be complacent in dealing with the virus.

A total of 2,472 people have died in Scotland after testing positive for Covid-19.

Some 18,170 people have now tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up 14 from 18,156 on Sunday.

There are 867 people in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, an increase of 66 on Sunday, while 15 people are in intensive care, down by one.

Ms Sturgeon said: The virus hasnt gone away, there are already countries  China and Germany, for example, that are right now dealing with spikes in cases as a result of significant outbreaks.

And health officials in South Korea have said they think the country is now experiencing a second wave.

She added: I know that when numbers of cases and deaths here are continuing to fall it is very tempting for all of us to think it is all over and we should just now quickly get back to normal.

We are trying to get back to normal and we want to do that as quickly as possible but let me reiterate my strong view that acting recklessly now would be a serious mistake.

We must continue to be cautious and all of us must continue to adhere strictly to the public health advice.

That will help us continue progress and avoid a resurgence of the virus now.

Ms Sturgeon said Scotland is making good progress in tackling coronavirus, adding she intends to set out more indicative dates when lockdown measures could be eased later in the week.

The First Minister spoke after receiving a report from the Scottish Governments expert advisory group on economic recovery.

Story continues

It was set up in April to provide recommendations on how best to restore the economy to sustainable and inclusive growth as we bring the Covid pandemic under greater control, Ms Sturgeon said.

She said the Scottish Government established the group because ministers knew tackling coronavirus would cause significant economic harm.

Ms Sturgeon said: Our initial focus has had to be on protecting peoples lives, obviously, and on providing immediate lifeline support to keep businesses afloat and people employed.

But as the pandemic does come under more control, our efforts must increasingly focus on how the economy recovers and renews itself for the long-term.

She said the report makes 25 substantial recommendations, covering areas such as investment, employment, skills and the future of the care sector.

The Scottish Government will respond in detail to the report before the end of July, Ms Sturgeon added.

She said the report is a serious and substantive piece of work and ministers agree with its basic principles.

Benny Higgins, chairman of the advisory group, also spoke at the briefing.

He said his report is call to action to all of us in Scotland.

There has never been in our lifetimes a more important time to collaborate across our society to pursue a collective national endeavour, he said.
Blood covers the front steps of a home on the 1400 block of South Vogdes Street in Kingsessing on Monday, hours after a husband and wife were allegedly shot by a known shooter about 12:20 a.m. Read more

A 42-year-old man was killed and his wife was injured following a double shooting early Monday outside a home in the Kingsessing section of the city, police said.

The shooting occurred about 12:20 a.m. on the 1400 block of South Vogdes Street.

Were being told that this husband and wife were shot in front of their adult children and other family members, Chief Inspector Scott Small said at the scene early Monday.

Before the shooting, the gunman and the husband were on the street involved in a physical altercation, which escalated when the gunman pulled out his weapon and shot the couple at least six times, Small said.

Small said the attacker is known to the family and police are searching for him.

Both victims were taken by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where the husband, who had gunshot wounds in his right thigh, right forearm, left thigh, left groin, and right buttock, was pronounced dead at 4:40 a.m. He was identified by police on Tuesday as Frederick Tynes, who lived on that block of Vogdes Street.

His wife, 44, was shot in her neck and back, and was in critical condition.

They were among at least 14 people shot from Friday to Monday, two fatally.

Also early Monday, a 33-year-old man was shot in the head about 1:15 a.m. on the 200 block of North Hobart Street in West Philadelphia. And a 26-year-old man was shot in his neck, his chest, and an arm about 2:10 a.m. on the 2800 block of West Sedgley Avenue in North Philadelphia. Both were in critical condition.

On Sunday night, two men, ages 22 and 27, were critically wounded in a double shooting on the 1000 block of West Clearfield Street in North Philadelphia.

On Saturday night, a triple shooting on the 200 block of South Ithan Street in West Philadelphia left three men wounded and in stable condition, police said. Two other men were also in stable condition after being shot in two other incidents, one about 7:45 p.m. on the 1300 block of East Luzerne Street in the Juniata Park neighborhood, and the other about 3 a.m. Saturday on the 700 block of East Cornwall Street in Kensington.

Police on Monday also identified a man who was found fatally shot in the doorway of an East Germantown home on the 5500 block of Bloyd Street on Friday night as Byron Johnson, 51, of West Oak Lane. Police said the victim had been shot two previous times. In the more recent case, he had been shot in his left shoulder on April 5 at the same location on Bloyd, police said. There were no further details about his shooting.

Two other men were also reported shot and wounded Friday night in separate incidents, both in North Philadelphia.

Police reported no arrests in any of the shootings. Tipsters are asked to call 911, or the police tip line at 215-686-TIPS or submit an online tip at phillypolice.com.
Giving people "digital literacy" tips can help them identify dubious information online, a new study shows.

The avalanche of online content available to people around the world challenges humans' ability to separate fact from what can be highly toxic and even dangerous fiction.

Researchers studying Facebook's efforts to educate users on how to spot misinformation have found people in the United States and India were less likely to say a false headline was true after they were exposed to tips on how to spot misinformation

The Princeton University-led study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows people's ability to spot erroneous information weakened over time, so digital literacy needs to be taught with regularity.

"Most people struggle to reliably evaluate the quality of information they encounter online, even under the most ideal conditions," said Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University.

"This is because they lack the skills and knowledge required to distinguish between high and low-quality news content. We find that effort to promote digital literacy can improve people's ability to evaluate the accuracy of online content."

This study is among the first to systematically explore the role of digital media literacy shortfalls.

"Digital literacy and media literacy are often proposed as solutions to online misinformation, but these approaches are not evaluated as often as they are proposed. If we want to develop tools that help people distinguish truth from falsity, it is essential to test the effectiveness of these tools," added Professor Jason Reifler from the University of Exeter.

The team originally set out to explore why people fall victim to misinformation, selecting the United States and India as both countries have struggled with misinformation campaigns, especially during national elections.

The team looked at the effects of Facebook's "Tips to Spot False News," which appeared at the top of users' news feeds in 14 countries in April 2017. The list was also printed as a full-page ad in many U.S. newspapers, and a version appeared in India as well.

These tips have likely been the most widely distributed digital-media literacy intervention. They also are not overly complex, allowing for quick decision-making. For example, one tip cautions readers to be skeptical of headlines, warning that if claims sound unbelievable, they probably are.

The researchers then employed a "two-wave panel design," studying the same group of people immediately after exposure to the tips, and then again several weeks later, allowing them to see whether the digital media literacy efforts took root over time.

Participants were exposed to the tips and then presented with the same series of mock headlines, which they rated for accuracy. The headlines were balanced in terms of partisan slant, well-known and lesser-known media outlets, as well as low-quality and mainstream content. While the tips were offered to respondents, they couldn't be forced to read them, so the researchers took this into account in their modeling.

This two-wave design was conducted online in both the U.S. and India, though in-person interviews were also conducted in areas of rural India where there is greater religious polarization and potentially higher risk of misinformation spread.

The team found that the intervention improved people's ability to discern between mainstream and false news headlines by 26.5 per cent in the U.S. and 17.5 per cent in India. In the U.S., this lessened but remained measurable several weeks later. One-third of participants also were more likely to point out a less accurate headline. Their ratings of false headlines as "very accurate" or "somewhat accurate" went from 32 per cent to 24 per cent.

While the online results between the two countries were similar, India's face-to-face interviews yielded different results. There was no evidence that exposure to the tips increased the perceived accuracy of mainstream news articles. However this group had much less experience with evaluating news headlines online.

The researchers listed a few caveats with their work. First, the effects were modest, and the intervention did not completely eliminate belief in false news headlines. The effects also decayed over time, suggesting the need for regular reinforcement of these lessons. Lastly, it's not clear whether everyone actually read the tips.

The study provides opportunities for future research. Rather than using an intervention done by a tech company, academics could take this into their own hands by sampling people in other countries and electoral contexts. Likewise, more intensive training models could be used to see if the effects are more durable.

"We see no reason why this wouldn't work for any type of misinformation. Currently there are sources spreading misleading or even dangerous information about Covid-19 regarding protective measures, vaccines, miracle cures. We think this intervention could work in the public health domain, as well," Guess said.

###

Other academics involved in the study are Michael Lerner of the University of Michigan, Benjamin Lyons of the University of Utah, Jacob M. Montgomery of Washington University in St. Louis, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Neelanjan Sircar of Ashoka University
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:30:08|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BERLIN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- German Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer on Monday condemned the riots in Stuttgart over the weekend, calling it a "sign of alarm for the rule of law."

For some time now, violence and insults against police and rescue services have been "steadily" increasing, said Seehofer, who visited the scene of the weekend riots in Stuttgart, and called for "swift and tough" punishment of those responsible.

"Punishment is always the best means of prevention to avoid such things in the future," he said.

Late Saturday and early Sunday, hundreds of people rioted, looted the city center and attacked police officers. At least 19 police officers were injured and 24 suspects were provisionally arrested.

According to Stuttgart police, around 300 police officers, including those from the surrounding areas, were called in to control the situation.

The riots were apparently triggered by the arrest of a person on suspicion of drug possession, according to city officials. After the arrest, a crowd attacked police officers by throwing stones and bottles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also condemned the outbreaks of violence. Government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said that the scenes in Stuttgart were "vile" and inexcusable. Enditem
Italian designer brand Valentino is suing the landlord of its flagship store on New York City's Fifth Avenue, claiming the location is no longer considered prime real estate amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The four-story retail experience closed to in-person customers alongside many other non-essential businesses when the state went on lockdown in March. Soon after, it put up boarding to protect the store from looting, but it has since been removed.

Data from property brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield states rents averaged $2,513 per square foot when Valentino's lease began in August 2013.

But as the store partially returns with curb-side pickup for purchases made online, Valentino has filed a lawsuit to get out of its 16-year lease with Savitt Partners LLC, nine years early.

Valentino is suing the landlord of its flagship store on New York's Fifth Avenue. People walk past the Blancpain and Valentino store boarded up windows on Fifth Avenue on June 2 amid a week of rioting in Manhattan

The four-story retail experience closed to in-person customers alongside many other non-essential businesses when the state went on lockdown in March. Soon after, it put up boarding to protect the store from looting, but it has since been removed

Valentino says the contract for them to use the space is 'consistent with the luxury, prestigious, high-quality reputation of the immediate neighborhood' but the brand claims 'business at the premises has been substantially hindered and rendered impractical, unfeasible and no longer workable' due to coronavirus

A lawsuit states the situation is unlikely to change 'even in a post-pandemic New York City (should such a day arrive)'. Valentino is pictured before the shutdowns

Situated at 54th street, two blocks south of Trump Tower and with neighbors that include Versace, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, the high-fashion brand claims the stretch of designer boutiques in the 10-blocks leading up to Central Park, are no longer desirable.

Even as brick-and-mortar stores reopen, foot traffic in the area, which boasts the popular tourist spot Saks Fifth Avenue, has drastically decreased.

In the lawsuit it notes the lease had a provision about the brand using the space 'consistent with the luxury, prestigious, high-quality reputation of the immediate Fifth Avenue neighborhood.'

'In the current social and economic climate, filled with COVID-19-related restrictions, social distancing measures, a lack of consumer confidence and a prevailing fear of patronizing, in-person, "non-essential" luxury retail boutiques, Valentino's business at the premises has been substantially hindered and rendered impractical, unfeasible and no longer workable,' Lucas Ferrara of Newman Ferrara LLP filed on behalf of Valentino.

The brand argues the situation is unlikely to change 'even in a post-pandemic New York City (should such a day arrive),' the Wall Street Journal reports.

The court filing claims that a lawyer representing the landlord sent a letter on Friday disagreeing that Valentino has a right to surrender the lease.

Robert Cyruli of Cyruli Shanks Hart & Zizmor LLP, is representing the landlord and declined to comment to the WSJ: 'My client won't be litigating through the media.'

Victoria's Secret also recently filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get out of a lease at its New York Herald Square branch.

Jay-Z's Roc Nation sued it's NYC landlord for stalling on a sub-leasing agreement after they stopped paying rent.

Roc Nation says it invoked a clause in the lease, freeing it from its contractual obligations in case circumstances beyond their control arise - such as the coronavirus pandemic - and make the contract impractical or impossible to uphold.

Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, which is usually bustling with tourists and high-end shoppers has remained eerily quiet during the coronavirus lockdown

Stores including Bvlgari boarded up to prevent looting after thousands of protesters took to the street over George Floyd's death

Longchamp is seen boarded up to prevent looting during the protests

The NBA is being sued by a Manhattan landlord for failing to pay $1.2million in rent in April and May for its flagship Fifth Ave store. The league says the claim is meritless.

NBA Media Ventures, LLC is required to pay $625,000 of its $7.5 million annual fee on the first day of each month under teams of its lease with 535-545 FEE LLC. Counting other fees such as water, the owners are seeking more than $1.2million.

The store has been closed since mid-March, when the city shut down amid the outbreak. The NBA contends that factor is an extenuating circumstance

Brands such as Valentino are thought to be focusing on e-commerce after the coronavirus outbreak.

Last week Valentino and Amazon filed a joint lawsuit against New York-based Kaitlyn Pan Group for allegedly counterfeiting Valentino shoes and offering them for sale online.

The move is Amazon's first joint litigation with a luxury fashion brand and Valentino's first with an online retailer.

The lawsuit regards the Valentino Garavani Rockstud shoes and the fashion group will receive any proceeds from the case, the companies said in a statement.

Amazon has long been rumoured to be readying a new luxury fashion site to rival Alibaba's Tmall Luxury Pavilion, but LVMH and other top luxury groups say the risk of counterfeiting is high on such platforms.

Amazon said it had shut down Kaitlyn Pan's seller account on its platform in September 2019.

'Despite multiple notices of infringement and a cease and desist order, Kaitlyn Pan continues to import, distribute, sell, and offer infringing products on kaitlynpanshoes.com,' the companies said.

They added Kaitlyn Pan had tried to apply for a U.S. trademark for the Garavani Rockstud shoes, 'flagrantly and willfully disregarding Valentino's intellectual property'.
Fans of Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, are concerned about his latest health condition.

He was recently photographed with extremely swollen hands, which prompted the fans to ask whether he's been left with the remnants of the issues after his battle with the dangerous coronavirus, as New Idea reports.

But it isn't the first time the 71-year-old dad of two has been spotted looking like he has an underlying health issue.

Last November, when he was carrying out a full engagement in New Delhi, India, he dismissed his discomfort despite looking like he had puffy hands and feet.

Prince Charles was attending a meet and greet at Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, a Sikh house of worship to celebrate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, and photographers spotted his swollen body parts.

During a tour of Australia in 2012, he joked about his sausage fingers.

According to experts, long-flights can often make the hands and feet swell up.

However, they added that it could also be caused by water retention, poor circulation, or even arthritis.

Prince Charles' Underlying Health Conditions Before COVID-19

When a spokesperson from the Palace announced that the future King has tested positive to the coronavirus after displaying mild symptoms, many people argued that Prince Charles' wealth and status had granted him immediate and preferential treatment.

However, one of the top doctors in Scotland, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, hinted that the Duke of Cornwall and his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, may have had underlying health issues that have made them extra vulnerable to the virus.

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland in March, Dr. Calderwood said, "My understand is there were excellent reasons for that person and his wife to be tested."

"Obviously, I wouldn't be able to disclose anything else that I know because of patient confidentiality."

Royal correspondent Richard Palmer has also asked Clarence House on whether Prince Charles and Camilla have already received the test because of pre-existing health issues, but they declined to comment.

UK's minister of state for health, Edward Argar, has also denied that Prince Charles received a COVID-19 test because of his royal status.

He told Sky News, "My understanding is that his symptoms, his condition, met the criteria. The Prince of Wales did not jump the queue."

Back in March, as Prince Charles tested positive for the coronavirus, Queen Elizabeth II remained in good health, according to Buckingham Palace.

However, it is unclear if she had been tested for the coronavirus as well.

"HMQ remains in good health. The Queen last saw the PM on the 11th March and is following all the appropriate advice with regards to her welfare. We will not be commenting any further."

Member of the royal family's diseases and illnesses are not often disclosed, except for the little things.

In 2018, Queen Elizabeth II opened up about her personal struggles with motion sickness. During her coronation in 1953, she confessed that she was miserable because she got sick during the carriage ride to the event.

Kate Middleton also suffers from the same sickness, and as per Express, Her Majesty has even recommended some medications to help ease her granddaughter-in-law's suffering.

READ MORE: Prince William Heartbreak: Meghan Markle, Prince Harry Book Made Him Look Evil
Jaipur, June 22 : After staging a silent protest at the Central Park in Jaipur two days ago, hundreds of parents on Monday protested at certain renowned private schools here to demand full fees' waiver from March 15 onwards.

They raised slogans of 'No school, no fee' and asked for fee waiver as no classes were held ever since the start of the new academic session due to the coronavirus lockdown, even as the state government is yet to announce further guidelines on the matter in continuation to the first one.

The Rajasthan government had earlier asked schools not to charge fees from students for three months, that is from March 15 to June 15, in view of the coronavirus outbreak. However, it has issued no other advisory till date.

As a result, the parents are being asked to pay the fee dues, in turn making them launch the 'no school, no fee' campaign in the state, On Monday, agitated parents thronged different schools, including Modern, Seedling and Warren Academy, in violation of social distancing norms.

Dinesh Bharadwaj, a parent protesting at Warren Academy, told IANS that the distressed parents wanted to speak to the school management for a fee cut. Consequently, the management asked them to visit the campus at 11 am on Monday, but there was no one to talk to them. Instead, he claimed, the management sent a security guard who told them on school management's behalf that the school will follow whatever the government will order.

"This left around 400 parents infuriated. They started raising slogans. Eventually, police was called. Police asked parents to disperse or else they will be booked under the Epidemic Act for flouting social distancing norms. The parents refused, but police officials later took a written complaint from them and assured of handing it over to the management." Sunil Yadav, All Rajasthan Private School Parents Forum President, told IANS: "Parents also staged protests at Modern School and Seedling Academy. Further, similar protests will be staged in other schools too, as we are not getting support from schools in this crisis." Meenu Goyal, a parent, said: "We have always cooperated with schools and paid whatever amount they had asked for. However, in such times of crisis, we are requesting schools to bear with us as we have earned nothing in the last three months. It's sad that the schools are not listening." IANS tried to contact Warren Academy but none of its officials took the call.

School Education Minister Govind Singh Dotasara was not available for comments as he was attending a meeting.

He had earlier said: "We will discuss the issue with the Chief Minister. The private schools have their own management and hence we need to figure out a solution in a holistic manner." (Archana Sharma can be contacted at archana.s@ians.in)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  Provincial Bus Operators Association of the Philippines Executive Director Alex Yague said about 14,000 workers from different provincial buses operating in Luzon, including Metro Manila lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Yague told CNN Philippines that they are mostly support staff of bus companies, which include dispatchers, ticket sellers, and inspectors. They are also either retrenched, laid off, or asked to retire already, he noted.

RELATED: Victory Liner lays off 400 employees due to pandemic crisis

The government imposed enhanced community quarantine in many areas in Luzon, including Metro Manila mid-March to contain the spread of COVID-19. This led to many business operations temporarily shutting down, and workers just staying home since public transportation was suspended.

Yague said that about 14,000 buses in Luzon stopped operations due to the quarantine. Public transportation is slowly being brought back, which started June 1 with the shift of Metro Manila to a more relaxed general community quarantine as more businesses resume operations.

The government allowed the operation of a limited number city buses as support to the operation of MRT-3.

Yague said that these buses do not have conductors and are practicing cashless transactions. He said that this may lead to another wave of retrenchment in case this mode of transaction will be fully implemented in the future.

Pag in-implement natin yung cashless transaction, yung next wave nito yung mga konduktor naman yung mawawalan ng trabaho, Yague said. If that happens 14,000 na naman ang mawawalan ng trabaho.

[Translation: If we implement cashless transaction, the next wave will be the conductors. If that happens another 14,000 will lose their job.]

The government is already implementing different modes of cashless transactions in transportation. Revisions are being pushed now to help in preventing transmission of COVID-19.
Bengaluru: At a time when Karnataka's handling the COVID-19 situation is being lauded by the central government, disturbing news is coming out of the institutional quarantine centres set up for people who cannot afford to pay for hotels.

A 30-year-old African student who came to Bengaluru from Mumbai was put in a quarantine facility in HSR Layout. On Friday morning when she was going to the common restroom, a man Jaishankar (30), also from Mumbai, suddenly grabbed her breasts. The woman punched him in the face and he apologised. But later he barged into her room and allegedly tried to rape an Indian woman.

They raised an alarm and informed the police. The man has been arrested. The man has been arrested and is being slapped with charges of outraging the modesty of a woman and using criminal force on a woman.

But as a consequence of this event, the women are being moved to quarantine accommodation for which they are being asked to pay.

"I came to Bengaluru to be with my sister," said the woman, a law student in Mumbai.

"After my police complaint I was shifted to a hotel. But I have been told to pay Rs 1,800 per day there. I told them I won't be able to pay. Let the government or the police who brought me here pay the money. I had gone to a free quarantine centre as I did not have money. The government should have made better arrangements at least for women," she said.

The victim explained that her African friends were helping to arrange food for her. "But when they don't turn up, I pay for my food."
In the wake of police brutality incidents across the country, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said during a news conference Monday that his department will review its use-of-force policies.

The sheriff said the incident in Atlanta in which two officers were filmed shooting and killing a black man as he ran from them prompted local leaders to take "a deep dive" into what parts of their policies may be outdated.

"It made us sit and say 'what are we teaching our troops?'" Salazar said.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

The sheriff described the department's policies as a living document, saying if they weren't able to fold into their training things that are happening in the world, then the department is doing a disservice.

As an example, Salazar brought up the 21-foot rule he was taught when he was in the academy in 1992. The policy says an officer can shoot if a suspect is within 21 feet of them with a weapon. Salazar said, however, the policy doesn't account for a wide range of factors that may constitute using a less-deadly alternative to apprehend someone.

"We have these blanket policies and things like the 21-foot rule has fallen out of touch," Salazar said. "We need to make sure that nothing is outdated and it is now getting dangerous to teach a cookie cutter approach. That all is a training issue.

"Safety of human life is paramount, it is even written into our policies so we need to remember that and take a long, hard look at our policies," he added. "We don't want our deputies to take unnecessary chances and we of course want them to go home safe at the end of the night, but we need to remember that there are other factors that could be there."

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge by Democratic progressives to topple an establishment veteran in New York's primary Tuesday, a race that's become the latest front in the battle over the party's future and direction.

The outcome of the contest between 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel and political newcomer Jamaal Bowman will ripple well beyond New York's 16th Congressional District, which includes parts of the Bronx and Westchester County.

Having come up short in the party's presidential nomination contest and in other congressional races around the country, the progressives are looking to prove that the upset victory of Ocasio-Cortez's in a neighboring district two years ago was the beginning of a movement.

For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has endorsed Engel, and the Democratic old guard, the contest is about keeping control of the party's agenda heading into the 2020 general election for the White House and Congress and denying Republicans an opening to paint Democrats as beholden to the left.

"There's no doubt that after Bernie Sanders went down to defeat progressives are looking for a statement win," David Wasserman, House editor for the non-partisan Cook Political Report, said, referring to the Vermont senator who, along with Warren, lost to former Vice President Joe Biden in the party's presidential primaries.

The Engel-Bowman contest is the highest-profile race in New York's Democratic primary, which also include multi candidate scrums for the safe Democratic seats being vacated by veteran Representatives Nita Lowey and Jose Serrano. There also is a long-shot challenge to Ocasio-Cortez from former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, who's drawing support from Wall Street donors including Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer David Solomon.

Engel, 73, easily turned turned back challengers in the past but suddenly finds himself vulnerable to the bid by Bowman. The 44-year-old former middle school principal took a page from Ocasio-Cortez's playbook casting himself as the champion of working-class voters and campaigning on racial and economic equality in a district that is 63% non-white. Engel is White and Bowman is Black.

The campaign has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic as well the upheaval and renewed focus on racial inequities following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an African-American man in Minneapolis.

Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime New York Democratic strategist who isn't working for either candidate, said the Engel-Bowman race illustrates the challenge to the Democratic Party's establishment from younger, more left-leaning activists who are demanding new approaches on issues from the environment to law enforcement to higher education.

"The country is in transition, and Engel happens to be in a district that reflects that," said Sheinkopf, who is working on Caruso-Cabrera's campaign.

Two other Democrats also are running to unseat Engel, Christopher Fink, a managing director at Bank of America, and Sammy Ravelo, a retired New York City police lieutenant.

Both Bowman and Engel have compiled lists of prominent endorsers, reflecting the keen interest outside the district.

Along with Pelosi, Engel's backers include the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former New York senator Hillary Clinton; New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo; Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, also of New York; New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer; and Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights icon.

Aside from Ocasio-Cortez and Warren, Bowman has received endorsements from progressive heavyweights like Sanders, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts; and national progressive groups like the Justice Democrats, a political action committee that helped propel Ocasio-Cortez to her stunning defeat of House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley in 2018

Bowman also is competitive in fundraising -- no small feat against a powerful committee chairman. He out-raised Engel from April through June 3 -- $431,000 to Engel's $389,000. Engel, though, has much more in the bank -- $826,000 to Bowman's $345,000 as of June 3 -- and Democratic donors have come through for him as the race tightened.

In the period from June 14-18, Engel took in $288,000 to $80,575 for Bowman.

Wasserman, of the Cook Report, said Bowman at this point is the front-runner. The challenger has benefited from Engel's somewhat lackluster campaigning -- and his missteps.

After New Rochelle, a small Westchester city within the district, became a hot spots of the coronavirus outbreak, the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, partnered on a $500,000 ad blitz criticizing Engel for spending more time at his home in the Washington suburbs than in his district.

Bowman seized on the opening.

"I've been on the ground for the last year," Bowman said at a June 2 online debate. "He is not even in this district doing the work with our people."

Engel argues that his seniority gives him clout in Congress, which the district would lose if it elects Bowman. "I bring home the bacon. I bring home the money," he said. "That's not something a freshman can do."

But a well-publicized "hot mic" episode at a news conference on police brutality didn't help his efforts to deter criticism that he was out of touch with his constituents. Engel was overheard asking for a chance to speak, saying "if I didn't have a primary, I wouldn't care."

Adding to the uncertainty in Tuesday's primary is the anticipated surge of absentee voting driven by concerns about casting ballots in person while the virus is still circulating. Statewide requests for mail-in ballots are seven times the number from four years ago, according to the New York Board of Elections.

Those don't have to be postmarked until Tuesday, so final results in close races may not be known until later in the week. There's little data on what type of candidate might have an advantage.

Among the other New York races drawing attention is the primary challenge to Ocasio-Cortez in a district that encompasses parts of the Bronx and Queens. There are several candidates but the main contender is Caruso-Cabrera. Despite her support from Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Ocasio Cortez is the favored to win.

Seven candidates are battling to succeed Lowey in New York's 17th District, which is north of Engel's.

Ocasio-Cortez has backed attorney Mondaire Jones, who initially challenged Lowey from the left before she announced her retirement. More than $7 million has been spent on the primary, $4 million of it by Adam Schleifer, a former federal prosecutor and son of a co-founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., Leonard Schleifer. Other candidates include Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, New York state Sen. David Carlucci, and Assemblyman David Buchwald.

In the Bronx, another clutch of politicians are vying to succeed Serrano, who is retiring. Candidates include City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister running as an anti-LGBT-rights candidate in the most Democratic district in the country. Fellow City Council members Ritchie Torres and Ydanis Rodriguez, as well as former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, are also in the running.

Wasserman said that Democrats nationally aren't moving as far left as the high-profile bids by progressives might make suggest, as shown by Biden's performance over Sanders and Warren in the presidential race.

While some urban districts may be trending that way, there is no imminent threat to the establishment or any penalty for Pelosi to stand by political allies like Engel.

"If Engel goes down to defeat -- as we might expect today -- she will be quick to congratulate Bowman," Wasserman said.
President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressive Congress (APC) Governors met on Monday over the crisis rocking the party. The par...

President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressive Congress (APC) Governors met on Monday over the crisis rocking the party.





The parley was held in the Presidents office at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.





In attendance were Chairman, Progressive Governors Forum and the Kebbi Governor, Atiku Bagudu; Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum and the Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, as well as the Jigawa State Governor, Abubakar Badaru.





Bagudu told State House correspondents that the meeting was to give the President the position of the APC governors.





He explained that the meeting was to discuss party issues, the position of the Progressive Governors, as well as steps to support, unify and bring about a peaceful resolution in our party, the APC.





Mr President listened attentively and discussed with us and he gave us all the assurance we need to know that a resolution of contentious issues will soon be arrived at.





On demands that Buhari convenes a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC), the governors said Buhari was being a democratic.





Mr President has shown that he is a democrat, he is not running the party. Yes, he is the party leader, he allows party organs to do and decide what should be done.





Bagudu added that the party is never a perfect assembly. There will always be issues and that is why we talk, but yes certainly, organs of the party need to meet Mr President.
An explosion and flash fire badly burned the head, face and hands of a worker at a pyrotechnic plant in Georgia, an official said.

The unidentified employee at Pyrotechnic Specialties, Inc. in Byron was airlifted June 17 to a hospital in Atlanta to be treated for the burns, Peach County Fire Chief Jeff Doles told news outlets. The workers condition wasnt immediately released.

The man was injured while turning potassium nitrate into pellets, Doles said. The chemical is used in fireworks, rocket propellants, gun powder and more.

This isnt the first time a worker has been injured at the plant, news outlets reported. In 2016, an employee was hurt in an explosion, and a subsequent investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found seven violations that resulted in a more than $176,000 fine.

In 2008, the company was accused of manufacturing a faulty grenade that injured an FBI agent. The case was later thrown out by a judge, news outlets reported.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Workers' Compensation Georgia
P riti Patel today promised that the Governments ears are open, and we are listening and learning as she vowed to repay the suffering inflicted on the Windrush generation by stamping out racism and discrimination in Britain.

The Home Secretary said she wanted to find sensible, constructive and responsible solutions quickly to the challenges facing black and ethnic minority people across society in education, work and health.

She said she recognised the strength of feeling over the injustices sadly still experienced by minority communities today which have been highlighted by the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in the US.

Ms Patel marked the anniversary of the arrival in Britain of the ship Empire Windrush 72 years ago today by announcing a Windrush Cross-Government Working Group, which she will chair jointly with Bishop Derek Webley.

She said that the Government was already taking decisive action to right the terrible wrongs suffered by the Windrush generation, many of whom were deported or suffered other harm despite being entitled to live and stay in the UK. But she admitted that there is clearly much more to do.

In an article written with Bishop Webley, she said: Our ears are open, and we are listening and learning, to ensure a scandal of this nature can never be repeated.
Latest News Westpac makes first fixed rate move of 2022 New year, same rate action as major lenders continue rate hikes

Inside the property market explosion in regional Australia Regional broker explains just how crazy the property market has been in one NSW town

The crucial final touches the government has provided to its HomeBuilder scheme have been welcomed by the Housing Industry Association (HIA).

Last week, three key refinements were put forward to further shape the initiative:

allowing the necessary time for home buyers to arrange their finance approvals, building approvals and meet other legal requirements before work is required to commence, rather than the fixed three-month timeframe initially announced

clarifying that a sales contract for a home purchased off the plan will be eligible in the same way as a building contract

aligning the process with the current timing of payments for first homeowner grants for new homes

The HomeBuilder grant has already boosted interest in buying a new home or carrying out a renovation project. The new details will make this interest even stronger, said Kristin Brookfield, HIA chief executive of industry policy.

These updates will give greater certainty to home buyers and their builders about what projects potentially qualify for the grant.

While the HIA still sees a need for state and territory revenue offices to outline the final details of how applicants will apply for the grant and the timing of payment, the new information addressed a number of concerns the group had expressed to government.

Recognising that a fixed three month timeframe to commence building work did not reflect how dependent home builders are on other players, like the banks, the councils and building certifiers, is extremely important and a welcome update, said Brookfield.

HIA has been working closely with state and territory revenue offices and we look forward to receiving these details soon, which will assist home buyers and builders begin taking full advantage of the grant.

Builders are feeling positive about the next six months of activity and equally important is the potential the scheme has to generate activity in 2021.
Serbian Progressive Party won about 63 percent of votes in Sundays polls, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic says.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has declared a landslide victory for his governing party in a parliamentary election tarnished by a boycott from much of the opposition, who accuse the leader of burgeoning authoritarianism.

Vucic told jubilant supporters after Sundays vote that his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won about 63 percent of the vote, or about 189 seats in the 250-member General Assembly.

While Vucic did not run for office himself, the 50-year-old heads the party, which has been in power since 2012.

I am grateful to the people for this historic support, he said with elation from the SNS headquarters where brass music blasted in celebration.

We won everywhere, Vucic said. We won in the places where we had never won before.

The sweeping success was helped by a boycott from the countrys main opposition camp, who decried the elections as neither free nor fair under Vucic.

Despite the oppositions stay-at-home campaign and lingering concerns about the coronavirus, turnout was not dramatically lower than normal  at slightly less than 50 percent according to the independent election monitor CRTA.

The boycotting opposition criticised the fake elections and claimed their movement was victorious.

Other winners

In second place was the traditional junior coalition partner of the SNS, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), predicted to claim 32 seats, according to the IPSOS polling agency.

And next in line was the only opposition party to garner enough votes to pass the 3-percent threshold to enter parliament: the newly-formed Serbian Patriotic Alliance (SPAS) with about a dozen seats.

A slate of ethnic minority parties with a lower bar to entry will also take about 17 spots, according to IPSOS.

Among those who did not make the cut was the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, led by convicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj.
A young woman was allegedly assaulted at knifepoint before a man took her three-month-old baby from the home.

A 23-year-old man was later arrested and charged with a raft of domestic violence related offences after breaking into the woman's Berkeley home, in the New South Wales Illawarra region, early on Sunday morning.

Police believe the pair were known to one another.

They allege the man grabbed the woman, also 23, by the throat and threw her to the ground before punching and kicking her repeatedly.

He is also accused of hitting the woman's head into a metal bed frame several times.

The man was refused bail and is due to appear in Wollongong Local Court on Monday afternoon

When officers from Lake Illawarra Police District arrived at the scene, they found the woman suffering with cuts to her head, bruising across her upper body and bite marks.

Her fingernail had also been ripped off.

The woman claimed her alleged attacker held a knife to her throat and left the home with a three-month-old baby.

She was treated at the scene before being taken to Wollongong Hospital.

Later, the man and child were both found in the same suburb, and the baby was taken to hospital as a precaution.

When officers from Lake Illawarra Police District arrived at the scene, they found the woman suffering with cuts to her head, bruising across her upper body and bite marks

The 23-year-old was taken to Lake Illawarra Police Station, where he was charged with aggravated break and enter, grievous bodily harm, assault and destroying property.

He was also charged with breaking an apprehended violence order which was already in place.

The man was refused bail and is due to appear in Wollongong Local Court on Monday afternoon.

More to come.

Lifeline: 13 11 14

beyondblue: 1300224636

If you are impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT or 1800 737 732
BISHKEK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd June, 2020) Kyrgyzstan has registered a record daily increase of 205 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the country's coronavirus response center told Sputnik on Monday.

On Sunday, the response center reported 170 new cases, which pushed the total tally beyond 3,000.

"On June 22, 2020, 205 new COVID-19 cases have been registered in the republic, of which 82 have been recorded in Bishkek," a spokesperson for the response center said, adding that the total count has now reached 3,356.

Twenty-six new patients are doctors, which takes the total count of infected medical staffers to 582, Kyrgyzstan's COVID-19 response center said,

The death toll has increased by three to 40, and the number of cured COVID-19 patients has grown by 10 to 2,021, according to the spokesperson.

Kyrgyzstan's Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov announced on Saturday plans to suspend interurban public transport services in a bid to prevent the spreading of the coronavirus.
The first major live poker tournament on European soil after the COVID-19 outbreak has come to a conclusion at the King's Resort in Rozvadov, one of the biggest poker arenas of the continent and host of the World Series of Poker Europe throughout the last few years.

A total of 60 entries in the 2020 King's Resort 2,500 PLO High Roller boosted the prize pool to 128,250 and the top seven spots were paid. After a short-lived heads-up battle it was French poker veteran and two-time WSOP bracelet winner Roger Hairabedian that defeated Christian Stratmeyer in heads-up to claim the top prize of 40,401 whereas Stratmeyer walked away with a payday of 29,176.

Among those to cash were also Eric Lescot, Harry Casagrande, and Jonas Kronwitter whereas King's regular "The Talk" ended up as the bubble boy.

Final Result 2,500 PLO High Roller

Place Winner Country Payout (in EUR) Payout (in USD) 1 Roger Hairabedian France  40,401 $45,249 2 Christian Stratmeyer Germany  29,176 $32,677 3 Eric Lescot Belgium  18,596 $20,828 4 Harry Casagrande Austria  14,107 $15,800 5 Andreas Bremer Germany  10,901 $12,209 6 Jonas Kronwitter Austria  8,336 $9,336 7 Ossama Khamis Germany  6,733 $7,541

Roger Hairabedian Wins the King's PLO High Roller

Frantic Early Stages

Since Day 1 only played six levels of 30 minutes each, the late registration was available for another four levels on the final day and the new entries and re-entries kept on coming at a steady pace. Sergej Barbarez was among the new additions to the field and lasted all but one hand when he got it in with aces versus aces and Matthias Kribben turned trips jacks.

As the players busted and bought back in, the chips went back and fourth in the first two hours of play. Barely any minute passed without an all-in showdown and the guarantee was surpassed easily. Ultimately, the attendance was nearly doubled and 22 players remained in contention when the registration had closed.

By then, Jan-Peter Jachtmann was still in the top spot but the former WSOP PLO bracelet winner dropped into the middle of the pack when his top pair ran smack dab into the top set of Roger Hairabedian.

The Race to the Final Table

In arguably the most remarkable hand of the day down to the final three tables, Harry Casagrande scored a triple knockout when his queens and jacks turned a king-high straight to dispatch Robert Wilke, Kristijan Maric and Andre Ellbracht. Franz Doblinger came up short of the final two tables and by then, new chip leaders had emerged in Christian Stratmeyer and Hairabedian.

Karol Konopka had most of his stack in with aces and Jonas Kronwitter flopped trips eights to sent Konopka to the rail. Shortly after, Jules Ayoub flopped two pair and turned a flush only for Christian Stratmeyer to flip over the turned nut flush and join the big stacks.

No fortune for Jan-Peter Jachtmann on the final day

Tuncay Tutus and Uemit Guenduez fell next, and Jachtmann's horrid run ended in 12th place when he flopped top pair and top kicker. Stratmeyer also flopped top pair but turned two pair to deal the final blow. Hairabedian then knocked out Saeed Rehman and Pedjman Hamie to enter the final table as the chip leader ahead of Stratmeyer.

Hairabedian Runs Hot and Dominates the Final Table

Hassan Mattout was the shortest stack among the final nine and stood no chance. For The Talk the tournament and a lengthy massage ended on the money bubble when he defended out of the blinds and got it in holding a straight draw along with top two pair against Stratmeyer and Kronwitter, the latter had flopped a set and held up.

What followed was the Hairabedian show as he knocked out five of his final six contenders. Ossama Khamis ran with queens into his kings and Kronwitter could not find help with top and bottom pair against top two.

Andreas Bremer ran with top two into the top set of Stratmeyer and the rampage of Hairabedian continued when he rivered the nuts against Harry Casagrande and took the remaining chips of the Austrian shortly after. Lescot also fell victim to Hairabedian and the heads-up duel was almost over in the second hand. Stratmeyer scored a lucky double by cracking aces but it was only a short-lived hope.

Hairabedian rivered a full house against the trips of Stratmeyer to take a commanding lead once more and found kings a few hands later to flop a wrap and turn the nut straight in order to seal the victory.

Christian Stratmeyer Eliminated

That ends the PokerNews live updates from the King's Resort in Rozvadov and Europe's biggest poker arena prepares for bigger festivals in the weeks and months to come according to the current safety restrictions in the Czech Republic.
Catherine Zeta-Jones shared a rare photo of her family on social media Sunday to honor her husband of 20 years on Father's Day.

The 50-year-old actress gushed over her husband on Instagram with a throwback image with their twins as well as Michael's older son from a previous marriage.

Michael, meanwhile, took the opportunity to post a heartfelt message on Father's Day to his late dad, actor Kirk Douglas.

Happy Father's Day: Catherine Zeta-Jones shared a rare photo of her family on social media Sunday to honor Michael Douglas, her husband of 20 years, on Father's Day

On Sunday, Catherine joined in with many celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Gwyneth Paltrow who celebrated the dads in their lives while honoring Father's Day on social media.

'We love you Michael, Happy Father's Day my love,' she captioned the candid snap.

The photo is one from a few years back when their two now-teenaged children were much younger. It shows the now 75-year-old acting legend in an intimate moment with his blended family.

Michael is seen in the image, holding daughter Carys who is wearing a diaper, leaning into his wife while she smiled.

The Douglas family: The photo is one from a few years back when Michael and Catherine's now-teenaged children, Carys and Dylan were much younger as well as Michael's son Cameron from a previous marriage

Meanwhile, Catherine, who is sitting in the center wearing a black dress, is holding son Dylan.

Carys, who is now 17, has on only a pink diaper bottom and Dylan, now 19, is in just a pair of white pants.

Cameron Douglas, currently 41, flanks Catherine's other side and looks like a younger version of his famous dad as they are both dressed simply in khaki pants and white T-shirts.

Happy foursome: Daughter Carys is now 17 and son Dylan is now 19 - the group maintains a relatively low profile on social media

Eldest: Michael shares his oldest child, son Cameron, 41, with his ex-wife; The pair are pictured here in 2018 - two years after Cameron's release from federal prison on drug charges

The snap seems to be well over a decade old which would place it before Cameron served several years in federal prison for a string of drug related charges.

He was released early from his incarceration in 2016 and has gone one to author a book about his experience.

A year after his release, Cameron welcomed his first child, a daughter, with girlfriend Viviane Thibes.

The Father's Day holiday was a bittersweet one for the Douglas clan as it was the first one without the family patriarch Kirk Douglas.

Memories: The Father's Day holiday was a bittersweet one for the Douglas clan as it was the first one without the family patriarch Kirk Douglas who passed away in February at the age of 103

On Instagram, The Kominsky Method star honored his late father with an image of the pair.

'I miss him so much! Cherish your Dad while you have him #KirkDouglas #FathersDay,' Michael captioned the sweet snap.

Kirk Douglas passed away on February 5, 2020 at the age of 103.
Contact centers across many industries share many of the same tools, processes and functions, each center and customer service operation is unique. Thats why we dont use a cookie cutter approach at Taylor Reach, but rather create bespoke solutions specific to our clients needs.

CX and Contact Center consultancy, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (TRG), announced they are administering a Strategic Assessment for a leader in high-performance automotive fuel systems. The consultancy will conduct an essential health check of the US-based manufacturers customer experience and Contact Center operations.

We use a hands-on, holistic approach to assess the interaction experience and review all elements of the contact center. We uncouple the thousand moving parts of the contact center and identify every element that contributes to the customer experience, and the effectiveness, and efficiency of the contact center operation, said CEO and Chief Chaos Officer of TRG, Colin Taylor.

Taylor Reach; who recently published a comprehensive research report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on contact center operations; leverages first party and third party research and a proprietary methodology of People, Process, Technology and Methodology in its assessments. The Strategic Assessment compares current contact center practices to best practices, identifies strengths and opportunities, then creates a road-map of sprints that take the Contact Center organization to their future state.

Contact centers and customer communications operate within a complex set of interrelated processes and activities, connected in sometimes subtle but critical ways. said Taylor. Balancing the expectations of the customer, and delivering the desired customer experience, while meeting the needs of the business can be a challenge. Contact centers across many industries share many of the same tools, processes and functions, each center and customer service operation is unique. Thats why we dont use a cookie cutter approach at Taylor Reach, but rather create bespoke solutions specific to our clients needs.

The Strategic Assessment begins with auditing the Contact Center against the worlds largest best-practice dataset.

With this benchmarking in place, Taylor Reachs decades of operational experience is then combined with an organization-wide analysis and stakeholder interviews to ensure a thorough understanding of operations from which a prescriptive approach to capture improvement opportunities can be developed.

About The Taylor Reach Group, Inc.

Taylor Reach Group is a globally recognized Contact Center and Customer Experience consulting firm specializing in sourcing strategies, customer experience, customer service/support, and Contact Center assessments. Established in 2003, the consultancy aligns proprietary approaches specific to clients organizational goals and objectives. TRGs vendor agnostic team has a deep understanding of all aspects of Contact Center operations, as each consultant possessed a minimum of 20 years of hands-on Call Center operational management experience. Our clients value our approach and results as is reflected in NPS scores or between +88 and +100 over the past five years. To learn more, visit thetaylorreachgroup.com.

Media contact: For more information contact Steve Baric via phone: 1-866-334-3730 Ext 112 or email: sbaric@thetaylorreachgroup.com


The High Court has been compelled to adjourn the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidus case against the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga and six others to October 13 for case management after the legal vacation.

The Special Prosecutor brought two different cases against the Bawku Central legislator; one involving the lawmakers use of a parliamentary loan approved for the purchase of a V8 vehicle for official use, and the other over an ambulance he purchased for the Bawku Municipal Assembly.

In court, on Monday, June 22, 2020, the Special Prosecutors witness could not be found to lead evidence in chief.

The lawyer from the Special Prosecutors office, Michael Barfi explained to the Court that arrangements had been made to transport the witness to Accra and to accommodate him and that he was in constant telephone contact with the witness until Saturday evening when all communication between them severed.

In the first case, the legislator is being tried for allegedly using public office for private gain.

The Court presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Botwe in June last year struck out 3 out of 4 charges that were brought against the lawmaker, including; fraudulent evasion of customs, duties and taxes, dealing in foreign exchange without a license, and transfer of foreign exchange from Ghana through an authorized dealer.

The Court had reasoned that the charges did not fall within the remit of the mandate of the Special Prosecutor.

In the second case, however, Mr. Ayariga standing trial together with six (6) others; Hajia Hawa Ninchema, Sumaila Ewuntomah Abudu, Alex Vadze, Alhaji Abdul-Mumuni Jesewunde, Mary Stella Adapesa and Mumuni Yakubu Nambe. They are being tried on allegations of procurement breaches in the purchase of an ambulance by the Mr. Ayariga for the Bawku Municipal Assembly.

On the parliamentary loan case also, the lawyer says his witnesses were not immediately ready to be called so could also not be heard.

---citinewsroom
Rayshard Brooks speaking with Officer Garrett Rolfe in the parking lot of a Wendy's restaurant, in Atlanta, Ga., late on June 12, 2020. (Atlanta Police Department via AP)

Barr Raises Concerns With Charges Against Officers in Rayshard Brooks Case

A grand jury should have brought charges against the former police officers involved in the fatal shooting outside a Wendys in Georgia, Attorney General William Barr said.

He also raised concerns about Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard bringing the charges against former officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan, as opposed to a grand jury.

Howard stunned many by hitting Rolfe with felony murder and both officers with a slew of charges just days after the shooting, which took place after Rayshard Brooks resisted arrest.

I certainly would have liked to have seen the Georgia Bureau of Investigation complete their investigation before charges were brought, and also, the use of a grand jury, Barr said when asked about the case.

The grand jury process provides some protection to have the citizens, in a group, decide that there has been a crime committed. And there was no grand jury used in this case, he continued.

So I think its important to go through the right processes before charging someone. I also think there was a fundamental difference, obviously, between what happened in Atlanta and what happened in Minneapolis, of essentially kneeling on someones neck for almost 9 minutes who was already incapacitated.

Rayshard Brooks (C) struggling with Officers Garrett Rolfe (L) and Devin Brosnan in the parking lot of a Wendys restaurant, in Atlanta, Ga., on June 13, 2020. (Atlanta Police Department via AP)

Barr was referencing the death of George Floyd, a Minnesota man who also resisted arrest before dying in police custody. The officers involved in Floyds arrest, including Derek Chauvin, who knelt on the mans neck, have been charged with murder or aiding and abetting murder.

The attorney general was speaking during an interview with Fox Newss Sunday Morning Futures.

Barr continued pushing back on the idea of systemic racism in law enforcement agencies, attributing situations like Floyds death to individuals who may have bias.

This is a process of reforming our institutions, looking for inequities, and making sure that we address them, he said.

Lawyers for Rolfe and Brosnan have said the use of force was justified, citing Brookss refusal to be arrested after falling asleep in a vehicle in the Wendys drive-through lane.

A struggle ensued. Brooks stole Brosnans stun gun and fired it at the officers multiple times. The final time, as he was moving away from Rolfe, prompted the officer to fire his gun, hitting Brooks twice in the back.

Rayshard Brooks (L) and Officer Garrett Rolfe pointing stun guns at one another, while Officer Devin Brosnan is seen getting up after a struggle among the three men in the parking lot of a Wendys restaurant in Atlanta, Ga., early June 13, 2020. (Atlanta Police Department via AP)

Steven Gaynor, president of the Georgia Fraternal Orders Cobb County Lodge 13, a police union, told The Epoch Times last week that Howard rushed the charges without getting all the details.

Howard declined to wait for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to finish its probe into what happened, which is ongoing.

Body camera footage challenges some of the assertions Howard made, such as the claim Rolfe kicked Brooks after the shooting, Gaynor said, adding that Rolfe did everything right based on his training and the law.

Howards office hasnt responded to requests for comment.

After the charges were announced on June 17, a number of Atlanta officers began calling out sick or not showing up to work, officials have acknowledged. The Atlanta Police Department hasnt said how many, but Gaynor, citing a source inside the department, said a majority of staffers from each precinct missed work in the days following the charges.

Asked what her message was to officers, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, said in an appearance on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday: This is not about division from our public safety personnel. We value our officers in Atlanta.

But this continues to be about where we are in this country and making sure that we dont have people who are part of our force who are not respectful of our communities. The loss of Rayshard Brooks and his killing was a tragedy, not just in this city, but for the country as a whole. And I think that, to the extent that there is an attempt to divide us from public safety in this country, I think its very dangerous, she added.

Police officers need better training, particularly in deescalation techniques, according to the mayor.
[June 22, 2020] BenefitMall Announces Partnership with CyberScout

DALLAS, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- BenefitMall , the leading provider of next generation broker services, today announced a partnership with CyberScout, a global leader in cybersecurity, identity theft resolution and employee benefits services. BenefitMall brokers will now be able to offer CyberScout's cybersecurity education and identity theft services as a voluntary or employee-sponsored benefit to clients. Employees can utilize CyberScout's expertise through breach education, preparation, response and remediation as well as fraud, credit and reputation monitoring. CyberScout can also be a cybersecurity and data privacy consulting resource for BenefitMall broker portfolio clients. "We believe that CyberScout's services will help our broker channels better equip our network of small and medium-sized businesses for success," said Tiffany Stiller, vice president of Carrier Relations for BenefitMall. "Employee peace of mind is invaluable, and CyberScout's services provide just that." The rise in data breaches has increased concerns about identity theft and the unauthorized release of personal data. A recent study conductedby CyberScout found that 69 percent of people admitted they would spend "work" time resolving identity theft issues. More businesses are offering identity theft services as a voluntary employee benefit because of identity theft's hindrance to productivity.



"Employees impacted by cyber issues such as fraud, identity theft, cyberbullying, ransom attack and extortion quickly become distracted and less productive employees," said Justin Oliver, vice president, employee benefits for CyberScout. "Including identity theft protection services and cyber insurance as employee benefits is critical in today's business landscape to ensure the workforce can quickly resolve cyber issues with minimal stress." Employer-sponsored and voluntary rates for CyberScout are now available to all BenefitMall brokers and their clients. Employer breach services are available for no additional charge when rates are employer-paid.

About BenefitMall

Headquartered in Dallas, BenefitMall partners with a network of 20,000 Brokers to deliver employee benefits to more than 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses. With a dedicated focus on the broker community, BenefitMall leverages innovative technology backed by human expertise to provide the very best in broker services nationwide. Through a network of brokers and carriers, BenefitMall delivers efficient, secure, digital benefits solutions. Owned by Management and The Carlyle Group, BenefitMall also operates HealthCareExchange.com, the leading online community for health care reform and compliance. More information is available at www.benefitmall.com . About CyberScout

Since 2003, CyberScout has set the standard for full-spectrum identity, privacy and data security services, offering proactive protection, education, and data theft resolution as well as breach preparedness and response. Serving approximately 17.5 million households worldwide and the designated identity theft services provider for more than 770,000 businesses, CyberScout is offered globally by an ever-growing number of client partners. CyberScout combines extensive experience with high-touch service to help individuals, government and commercial clients minimize risk and maximize recovery. For more information about CyberScout, please visit www.cyberscout.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/benefitmall-announces-partnership-with-cyberscout-301079930.html SOURCE BenefitMall

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
An Indian fighter jet flies over a mountain range near Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh. AFP

New Delhi: The Congress hit back at the BJP on Monday for its attack on former prime minister Manmohan Singh and asked the saffron party not to compromise on national security and the country's territorial integrity, saying it would be the "biggest disservice" to the armed forces.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Singh has given an important advice and hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would adhere to it politely as it was given in the country's interest.

"Dear Sh Nadda and the BJP, Stop compromising on 'national security' and India's 'territorial integrity'.

"This would be the biggest disservice to our Armed Forces and our 20 martyrs. Don't buckle down, have the strength to 'rise to the occasion'. We'll give the government every support," Congress's chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala wrote on Twitter.

His comments came after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda hit out at Singh, accusing him of "abjectly surrendering" hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China and "presiding over" 600 incursions made by the neighbouring country between 2010 and 2013 during his prime ministership.

Nadda also asked the former prime minister to stop "insulting" the armed forces repeatedly and questioning their valour, alleging that Congress leaders did so post the surgical strikes.

"Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese! During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our forces.

"One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!" Nadda said in tweets.

In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, the former prime minister said Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use those as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for the soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.
LONDON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A new general hospital and a more resilient healthcare system is coming to the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis. During the cabinet swearing in ceremony, Prime Minister Timothy Harris announced about the government's plans for a new health facility. On June 17th, the new Health Minister Akilah Byron-Nisbett said that the country was prepared for any imported COVID-19 cases when the borders reopen.

St Kitts and Nevis has been COVID-19-free since May 18th, when the last of the 15 cases recovered. According to the government's latest emergency regulations valid until June 27th, borders remain closed to incoming or transit commercial international travel. Ruling coalition Team Unity pledged to upgrade the country's health infrastructure over the next five years. This includes building a new state-of-the-art hospital, a permanent quarantine facility, and pathology laboratories; expanding and renovating several existing health centres; and improving access to healthcare at national level.

Speaking about the new modern general hospital, PM Harris said that "this perhaps will be in tribute to the remarkable service we have had in the battle against COVID-19 and the exemplary service of Dr Hazel Laws [Federation's Chief Medical Officer] and Dr Cameron Wilkinson [Joseph N France General Hospital Medical Chief of Staff]." The Prime Minister announced that the new Health Minister will guide the construction of the new hospital and other healthcare developments.

During her first National Emergency Operations Centre COVID-19 briefing as Health Minister last Wednesday, Ms Byron-Nisbett said the Federation was ready to deal with a possible second wave upon reopening borders. "I am confident that the team will continue to do as they have done in the first wave to ensure that we are able to curtail whatever the impact may be as it relates to COVID-19," she said.

The Team Unity manifesto cites that, in terms of healthcare, the coalition aims to "build a stronger, more resilient healthcare sector, focused on reducing the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on our people, providing greater access to top quality healthcare services for our citizens, and safeguarding and surpassing the gains already achieved through caring for our people from conception to natural death."

To finance advances in healthcare, along with education, tourism, infrastructure and other socio-economic sectors, the government created the Sustainable Growth Fund (SGF). This operates under the country's renowned Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme, established in 1984. By contributing at least US$150,000 to the government fund, foreign investors are taking the fastest and safest route to second citizenship.

If successful  and this is primarily subject to passing due diligence checks  new economic citizens earn the same privileges as natives, except for the right to vote. This includes visa-free and visa-on-arrival travel to almost 160 destinations and the permanent right to live, work and study in the country. They also benefit from all the socio-economic developments that their CBI investment would have contributed to.

Contact:

[email protected]

www.csglobalpartners.com

SOURCE CS Global Partners

Related Links

https://csglobalpartners.com


Veterans such as Benton Harbor native Aubrey K. Johnson returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Johnson will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Willing to Serve

Johnson was born in Benton Harbor in 1922. After he graduated from Benton Harbor High School, he enrolled at Michigan State University. Just two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Aubrey postponed his studies and enlisted in the Army.

Johnson served in the South Pacific with the First Calvary Division and saw action in New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands Campaign in 1944, and served in General Douglas MacArthur's campaign to liberate the Philippines from Japanese control.

Following the surrender of Japan, the division was assigned to occupation duty in Japan. Johnson drove the first American tank into Tokyo on Sept. 8. He was also featured in a three-way radio broadcast on Oct. 9 between Tokyo, Berlin and Hollywood. TSgt. Johnson, speaking from Tokyo Rose's old studio, and Pvt. Sidney Aronson in Berlin were interviewed about their wartime experiences on "Everything for the Boys" hosted by Dick Hymnes. Johnson was honorably discharged in December 1945.

Following the war, Johnson resumed his studies at MSU, graduating with honors with a degree in agricultural economics. In October 1948, he began a 30-year career in the Federal Land Bank System and the Farm Credit System. He rose through the ranks from regional manager to executive vice president of the Federal Land Bank System; to deputy governor for the Farm Credit Administration in Washington, D.C.; to CEO of the Federal Farm Credit Banks Funding Corporation in New York City.

Guiding Light to U-Haul

In 1978, Johnson retired and moved to Sun City West, Ariz. In 1985, he answered an ad for an AMERCO Board of Directors position. The parent company of U-Haul wisely appointed him to the position. Johnson's invaluable business and financial experience helped U-Haul through a leadership transition and the restructuring of its business operations. Johnson retired from the AMERCO Board in 1998.

"Aubrey was a terrific friend of U-Haul and a person who was both modest and courageous," Joe Shoen stated. "As a WWII veteran and banking executive, Aubrey had a wealth of leadership experience and knowledge. He served on the board of directors during difficult times, and he never faltered. He approached every challenge as an opportunity to help people."

Johnson passed away on Feb. 8, 2018. He is survived by his sons Brian (Donna) and Terry (Dianne), four grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Johnson is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Aubrey.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


US President Donald Trumps former national security adviser John Boltons bombshell memoir classes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the same group with Russias strongman Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping.

As expected, in his 577-page memoir titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Bolton describes Erdogan as a dictator, likening him to Italys fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Bolton provides a first-hand account of several phone calls between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump.

The Erdogan call turned out to be an experience. Listening to him (his remarks were always interpreted), he sounded like Mussolini speaking from his Rome balcony, except that Erdogan was talking in that tone and volume over the phone. It was as if he were lecturing us while standing on the Resolute desk, he wrote.

Emphasizing Trumps tendency to favor autocrats, Bolton says Erdogan's phone calls with Trump were very effective in getting the American president to do what he wanted.

The legal case against the state-run Halkbank stands out as a striking example, Bolton argues. Halkbank and its high level officials are being tried in a US court for helping the Iranian administration evade Washington's sanctions on Tehran.

The US president personally promised to try to help his Turkish counterpart with the case, Bolton says, citing a meeting between Erdogan and Trump in Argentina on Dec 1, 2018, on the sidelines of the G20 conference.

Erdogan provided a memo by the law firm representing Halkbank, which Trump did nothing more than flip through before declaring he believed Halkbank was totally innocent of violating US Iran sanctions. Trump asked whether we could reach Acting US Attorney General Matt Whitaker, which I sidestepped, the former aide writes. Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were [Barack] Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.

"The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life," Bolton adds, describing Trumps dealings with Erdogan.

Prominent American newspapers reporting on Boltons book, among them the New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, also highlight Erdogans influence on Trump.

"Mr. Bolton alleges Mr. Trump sought to accommodate a request by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 'to show he had as much arbitrary authority' as the Turkish leader," reads the caption of an image of Trump and Erdogan accompanying a WSJ story.

The memoir also reveals this influence has been a source of concern for several European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron. According to the book, Trump decided to withdraw American troops out of Syria in December 2018 after a phone call between the two leaders and consequently asked Bolton to work it quietly. Bolton writes that in a later phone call with Macron, Trump ignored the French presidents warnings about the Islamic State and the fate of Kurdish fighters allied with the United States and NATO against the jihadist group.

Trump brushed [Macron] aside, saying we were finished with [IS], and that Turkey and Syria would take care of any remnants, Bolton said. Macron replied that Turkey was focused on attacking the Kurds, and would compromise with [IS].

Macrons concerns were echoed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, says Bolton. Erdogan doesnt care about [IS], Bolton wrote, adding that he and Pompeo agreed that the views of the United States and Turkey on the Kurds were irreconcilable.

Boltons observation of Erdogans attitude vis-a-vis the Kurds is also noteworthy.

Erdogan took pains to say he loved the Kurds and vice versa, he writes. Accordingly, Erdogan also told Trump that the Kurdish groups groups in Turkey and Syria that Ankara considers terrorist organizations were manipulating the Kurds, and did not represent them.

We had heard all this before, and it was standard Erdogan regime propaganda, Bolton adds, recounting how Erdogan sought to reassure Trump about his treatment of the Kurds.

Bolton's explosive book has confirmed my categorization of the relationship between Erdogan and Trump as soulmates.

A statement by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirming the exceptionally close relationship between the two coincided with Bolton's book. On his return from an unscheduled visit to Libya, Cavusoglu said that Trump endorsed the close working relationship between Ankara and Washington on Libya, adding that Erdogan instructed him to work with the United States on the Libyan conflict.

Following his phone conversation with Trump on June 9, Erdogan also said the conversation marks a new era in the ties between Turkey and the United States.

Meanwhile, Turkey seems to be on an ever straighter collision course with some European Union countries, particularly France, in regard to its policies in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean. The latest skirmish on June 10 between Turkish frigates and the French navy off the Libyan coast could have led to a dangerous confrontation.

According to Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador at Ankara, Faced with no shortage of domestic challenges, Erdogan is expanding Turkeys role in the Eastern Mediterranean and antagonizing Europe in turn.

Given the tensions with some European countries and looming troubles with Russia on Libya and Syria, Erdogan has nowhere to go but ever closer to Trump. But there lies danger: Trumps closest allies would also be adversely affected by any damage inflicted by the book on the US president inside and outside the country. It may further challenge Erdogans expansionist foreign policies, given the domestic challenges, particularly economic, he faces at home.

Reading in between the lines of Boltons revelations about Trump, if Erdogan loses his most reliable crutch, his political survival will also be jeopardized.
Abubakari Ayishatu hospitalised after heavy dose of beatings by angry mob

22.06.2020 LISTEN

Abubakari Ayishatu, an elderly woman in her sixties accused of being a witch has been severely beaten by an angry mob at Tataligu in the Karaga district of the Northern Region.

Ayishatu, who is currently on admission at the Walewale Government Hospital, was attacked by some young men in Tataligu after a supposed oracle declared that the woman was responsible for the recent death of a young man in the community.

Thousands of women and their children in northern Ghana have been left homeless after being accused of witchcraft, according to a 2018 report by the U.S. State Department. The report indicates that there are more than six witch camps spread throughout the northern region, holding 2,000-2,500 adult women and 1,000-1,200 children.

According to the son of the victim, Abubakari Abdallah, he was at the farm when a call came that his mother was on the verge of dying.

I quickly ran home to intervene but was also nearly attacked by the angry mob, so i left and called friends from Walewale who came with a car to send my mother to Walewale Government Hospital where she is currently on admission, Abubakari told iWatchs correspondent, Mohammed Fuseini.

There is a widespread belief in witchcraft in the West African nation, according to 2019 Gallup surveys, despite 96% of the population declaring themselves to be active worshippers in one of several world religions. The belief in the phenomenon has devastating consequences. Elderly women believed to be witches are often persecuted, ousted from their homes or even murdered. Their children are also cursed and not allowed to go back home after they have grown.

Though both men and women can be accused of witchcraft, the vast majority are women. Men are considered to have a strong socio-political base and are therefore better able to successfully contest the accusations leveled against them, knowledgeable observers say.

A 2019 report by The Guardian showed that as women age in rural Ghana, signs of dementia, mental health issues or even menopausal symptoms can result in them being declared witches and pushed out of their community.

Many elderly women in northern Ghana have fled their homes to live in so-called witch camps. The government and local community leaders have so far failed to take the necessary action to prevent this abuse which is still widespread in Northern Ghana.
Mayor Joe Hogsett announced details of an independent review of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Departments response to protesters in late May and early June.

A Response Review Committee will include Deborah Daniels, partner at Krieg DeVault LLP and former U.S. Attorney and U.S. Assistant Attorney General; Myra Selby, partner at Ice Miller LLP and former associate justice of the Indiana Supreme Court; and Sean Huddleston, president of Martin University.

The committee will evaluate if officers adhered to department policies and will provide recommendations for policy changes.

The mayors office plans to publish the report by the end of the year.

News In Brief
Trumps Silent Majority Needs to Speak Up, Defend America

Commentary

President Donald Trump began his rally in Tulsa on June 20 by saying that the silent majority is stronger than ever before. I hope hes right. I think he is. But the deep state/establishment response to the Tulsa rally reminds us that that silent majority will have to learn to speak up, and soon.

On the run-up to the rally, it was said that nearly a million people had tried to sign up for the event. On June 20, the auditorium, with a capacity of some 20,000, was only about half full. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and other prominent dispensers of fake news were ecstatic. Trump gives grievance-filled speech to unfilled arena, reported the Post. The rest of the anti-Trump press followed suit.

What happened? Did fears of the CCP virus keep people at home? Had Trump lost his mojo? No. Two things put a damper on attendance. First, thugs arrived in the hundreds to disrupt the event, causing the cancellation of the outdoors component.

More to the point, thousands of anti-Trumpers made reservations to attend but didnt show up. But the New York Times headline informing us that that TikTok Teens Say They Sank Trump Rally is disingenuous. The rally wasnt sunk. It was a rousing success. Look at the clips: It is clear that Trumps fans loved it. Its clear that Trump loved it, too.

The fake news said that the rally was sparsely attended. Compared to what? Local authorities estimated there were about 7,000 people attending. When Joe Biden delivered what was billed as a major economic speech outside Philadelphia a few days ago, he drew 20 people. Two-zero.

Bidens speech was an automatons bad dream: boilerplate from beginning to end, recited as if by someone who knew what the words sounded like but had no sense of their meaning.

Trumps speech crackled with energy, full of serious points and amusing asides. In the wake of his commencement speech at West Point on June 13, the media was full of stories about how frail Trump was, how he doddered slowly down the ramp from the stage, how he had to use two hands to take a drink of water.

Trump disposed of both charges in an off-the-cuff skit that was both hilarious and devastating to the media that twisted the episodes in an effort to damage the president.

Vandalizing History

But the speech wasnt all laughs. Trump also made several serious points. Above all, he drew a sharp contrast between what he stood forordered liberty underwritten by the rule of lawand what the Democrats stand for: defunding the police, the destruction of our heritage, and the divisive triumph of identity politics and economic immiseration.

The unhinged left wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, Trump said, desecrate our monuments  tear down our statues and punish, cancel, and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. Were not conforming, thats why were here, actually. This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans. They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place. They want to defund and dissolve our police departments, think of that.

Yes, think of that. In Minneapolis this weekend, where the police department is in a state of semi-paralysis, at least twelve people were shot, and at least one died.

Joe Biden and the Democrats want to prosecute Americans for going to church, but not for burning a church, Trump said. They believe you can riot, vandalize and destroy, but you cannot attend a peaceful pro-America rally. They want to punish your thought, but not their violent crimes. That way lies madness.

Going After Trump

In 2016, the press and the deep state apparat was almost uniformly anti-Trump. But they were also somewhat lackadaisical. Everyone knew that Trump was a joke. He was despicable, yes, but he couldnt possibly win, so it wasnt worth expending too much energy tearing him down. Early on, the Hillary Clinton campaign let it be known that they were doing what they could to boost Trump because they thought he would be the least challenging opponent.

This time, its different. They know what a formidable candidate Trump can be. Moreover, unlike the last time, Trump has the advantages of incumbency. In 2016, he was a political neophyte. Now he knows his way around the levers of power.

He also has an astonishing record to run on: nearly 300 federal judges nominated and confirmed, the transformation of Americas energy industry, tax cuts, a roll-back of the regulatory state, an extraordinary stock market, the revitalization of Americas military, the renaissance of American manufacturing, and a serious effort to do something about Americas borders. All this in spite of the national lockdown because of the latest Chinese import, the CCP virus.

There is also this: In complete contradistinction to Joe Biden, the more Trump can connect with the voters, the better he does. His rallies coin voters, which is why the left is determined to sabotage them.

The 2016 campaign was nasty. The 2020 campaign will be insane. Every organ of elite public opinion, all the megaphones of the deep state, every repository of woke cultureacademia, Hollywood, HR departments of major corporationsall will be working overtime to destroy the foreign body that is Trump and all he stands up for: all us red-pill deplorables who embrace the America defined by the Foundersa country where government is limited and freedom and economic opportunity are paramount.

The left regards Trump as an existential threat, and they are right to. The attack they mount against him will be unprecedented in ferocity and underhandedness. There is no malign expedient they will not avail themselves of, no dirty trick to which they will not stoop.

Which is why the silent majority that the president invoked in his Tulsa rally can no longer remain silent. Just as Trump is an existential threat to the deep state and its culture of corruption, so too that establishment is an existential threat to America as conceived by the Founders, Lincoln, Reagan, and Trump. Toward the end of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusas great novel The Leopard, one of the main characters wryly notes that if we want things to stay the same, a lot of things will have to change.

The air of paradox is only superficial. The choice in 2020, as the president said on June 20, is very simple. Do you want to bow before the left wing mob? Or do you want to stand up tall and proud as Americans?

Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A female ISIS jihadi wanted to blow St Pauls Cathedral to the ground in a Christmas Day terror attack with as many casualties as possible, the Old Bailey heard.

Safiyya Shaikh, 37, believed she would make history with the atrocity and picked the iconic cathedral to kill as many people as possible, vowing to go on a shooting spree if she did not die in the initial blast.

Shaikh claimed spreading hate online and encouraging other people to carry out terror attacks was her job, swearing allegiance to ISIS and carrying out reconnaissance for the bombing of St Pauls.

However her plans were thwarted by counter terror agents, who had put her under surveillance and posed as extremists to learned about the plot.

Shaikh, who believed she was about to take possession of two bombs when she was arrested, had revealed in messages her zeal for causing murder and mayhem in central London, identifying Christmas or Easter for maximum casualties, and had also tested the security at St Pauls in a dry-run.

Shaikh, who has admitted two terror offences, is at the Old Bailey today for a sentencing hearing in front of Mr Justice Sweeney.

Met Police

Prosecutor Alison Morgan QC said Shaikh, from Hayes, west London, changed her name from Michelle Ramsden when she became a Muslim in 2007, and radicalised after becoming disillusioned with moderate Islam.

She ran an channel on secretive social media app Telegram, spreading hate-filled propaganda which glorified attacks in America, France, and the UK and including mocked-up images of the Statue of Liberty and the White House being blown up.

Shaikh believed she was influencing bomb threats and extremist action around the globe with her online activities, and turned her attention to carrying out a homegrown attack herself after being prevented from flying out of the UK in August last year.

The defendant engaged in a plan to commit a lethal attack on St Pauls Cathedral with the clear stated intention of killing as many people as possible and destroy a symbolic building, said prosecutor Alison Morgan QC.

She was by then a violent extremist who pledged her support for ISIS. She visited the cathedral to assess its security arrangements and the best place to detonate a bomb.

Ms Morgan said Shaikh engaged with others who she believed to be of a similar mindset, to instigate and plan a terrorist attack involving the use of improvised explosives to attack St Pauls Cathedral and a hotel nearby.

In furtherance of her attack plan, she visited the cathedral to assess its security arrangement and the best place to detonate a bomb.

She stated that her intention was to kill herself and as many other people as possible.

Shaikh carried out a reconnaissance trip to St Pauls in September last year, observing how thoroughly bags were searched, suggesting she would wear her daughters non-Islamic clothes as a disguise and calling the plot the best opportunity of my life.

This most famous church to King and Queen. All there (sic) weddings been there hundreds of years, she told the undercover agent. I really thought it would not be possible. But it easy.

She added: I want do something in hotel and church. Than (sic) run and kill kuffar (non-Muslims) everywhere I see them until am shot down.

If I had choice I blow the church to ground. With kuffar in it.

Shaikh, who also mentioned poisoning people and attacking the Stock Exchange Building, also revealed her dream of attacking a high-profile church: I want to make historyI want to do that in London, you know where they do the Royal weddings. I think it may be too hard because of security.

Asked about possible timing, she said: Christmas or Easter, when churches are full. I just think its better. A lot of people, destroy their Christmas.

She was arrested in October last year, after providing her measurements to the undercover agent and bags for bombs.

Shaikh, from Hayes, west London, pleaded guilty to preparing terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications.

The sentencing hearing continues.
Blowing up a building meant to symbolize friendship may have been North Korea's forceful way of demanding help for an economy straining under international sanctions and borders shut by the coronavirus.

The destruction of the $15 million facility paid for by South Korea in the North Korean border city of Kaesong was one of the biggest provocations Kim Jong Un's regime has made against its neighbor in years.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's government has warned Kim against reckless provocations, but the destroying of the building so far hasn't derailed plans in parliament to revive inter-Korean cooperation or attempts to persuade the Trump administration to loosen its stance on Pyongyang.

As analysts struggle to reach a consensus on the logic behind the explosive move, the immediate result has been to inject urgency into talks between the U.S. and South Korea over Pyongyang.

Moon sent his nuclear envoy to Washington after the building came crashing down to speak with U.S. officials about ways to deal with the current situation on the Korean Peninsula, the Foreign Ministry said last week. Lee Do-hoon returned home over the weekend but shared few details about the discussions with reporters at the airport, Yonhap News agency reported.

The U.S. and U.N. sanctions are aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.

North Korea's biggest newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, on Monday denounced U.S. interference in inter-Korean relations and told South Korean authorities that improved ties will come by "joining hands with the fellow countrymen, not with foreign forces."

Any loosening of the restrictions on trade and transactions would bode well for North Korea because its economy now risks shrinking 6% this year, according to Fitch Solutions. That would be its worst contraction since 1997, when the country was stricken by famine.

The heightened economic malaise compounds troubles faced by Kim after his nearly three-week absence from public events in April led to speculation about his health and questions about his grip on power.

Trade with China, North Korea's biggest economic partner, had already slowed to a trickle under the sanctions as President Xi Jinping also sought to rein in Kim's nuclear ambitions.

But the flow of goods hit a wall after Pyongyang sealed the country's borders earlier this year to halt covid-19. In both March and April, North Korea's exports to China fell more than 90% from a year ago, China's Customs General Administration reported.

"The larger economic context certainly shows Pyongyang getting backed into a corner," said Kyle Ferrier, director of academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America. "Sanctions were clearly impacting the North Korean economy prior to COVID-19, but the closure of the border with China to curb the spread of the coronavirus has done much more to stymie the North Korean economy."

While the contraction may not seem large in a world where the virus has sent economies plummeting, North Korea is one of the planet's poorest countries and can ill afford a turn for the worse.

Money from South Korea would help. Due to the sanctions, trade between the neighbors has slowed to just $3.5 million through May of this year from $2.7 billion in 2015.

Humanitarian assistance has also dried up under Trump's maximum pressure sanctions campaign. South Korea has sent about $3 billion of aid since 1995, but only a total of $30 million came between 2017 and 2019, according to the latest government data.

The liaison office was located near a joint factory park where South Korean firms once used cheap North Korean labor to manufacture goods. The intended model of economic cooperation earned North Korea an estimated $100 million a year.

North Korea sent in troops to occupy the facility in 2016, during a previous snarling of tensions, and it remains shut under the sanctions.

Before the pandemic, North Korea had been getting better at poking holes in the sanctions regime through trading of contraband and restricted commodities on the high seas, U.N. Security Council reports have shown.

It had also turned to cyber crime, taking in about $2 billion in 2019 through the worldwide theft of resources from the financial sector, according to testimony to a U.S. House committee in June.

But it also participated in negotiations aimed at easing sanctions through talks with long time friends China and Russia and foes including the U.S. and South Korea.

Following three summits with Trump since 2018 that produced no sanctions relief, North Korea earlier this month accused the U.S. of breaking promises and said it saw no benefit in engaging with Washington.

"The rapprochement efforts over the past years have not yielded much in terms of economic relief for North Korea," said Anwita Basu, a Fitch analyst. "They have chosen an adversarial route arguably in hopes that South Korea might get bullied into helping them, but as always, such tactics could backfire."

Kim's frustration shows in a recent series of threats against Moon, with the leader of North Korea's sister, Kim Yo Jong, personally launching verbal attacks against a man she once hobnobbed with during her visit to Seoul in 2018.

"Because North Korea's economic downturn is fueling its aggression, and is worsened by sanctions, there are no near-term off-ramps here," said Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official now teaching at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

"The reasoning that led North Korea to destroy the liaison office will lead them to engage in even more provocative behavior over the next year."
(Newser)  Two women came forward on Twitter over the weekend with sexual assault claims against Justin Bieber, spurring a response from the 26-year-old Canadian pop star on the same platformfor one of the allegations, at least. Per USA Today, the first accusation came Saturday evening from someone named "Danielle" in a post from an account that has since been deleted. Pop Crave has the screenshots, in which Danielle alleges that Bieber, then 20, sexually assaulted her on March 9, 2014, when she was 21, at the Four Seasons in Austin, Texas. Per the Guardian, Allison Kaye, a Scooter Braun bigwig who reps Bieber, was the first to issue a denial on Bieber's behalf, calling the allegation "factually impossible." Then, Sunday night, Bieber himself took to Twitter, echoing Kaye's words and noting his then-girlfriend, Selena Gomez, had been with him during his trip to Texas that March.

story continues below

In a series of tweets, Bieber lays out emails, articles, and pics he gathered to refute the allegation, including a receipt showing he and Gomez had stayed at an Austin Airbnb on March 9 and Westin hotel on March 10. "Every claim of sexual abuse should be taken very seriously and this is why my response was needed," Bieber wrote. "However this story is factually impossible and that is why I will be working with twitter and authorities to take legal action." Pitchfork adds another complication, however: a second accusation, made Sunday on Twitter, by "Kadi." In her post, Kadi says she was with Bieber at the Langham hotel in New York City on May 5, 2015, when he groped her, "pinned me down" on the bed, and "penetrated me." She says she'd been reluctant to initially come forward because of a "fear of being called a disgrace by my family." Bieber hasn't yet addressed her allegations. (Read more Justin Bieber stories.)
Vietnams revolutionary press has undergone a glorious and arduous journey to grow while implementing its noble mission and great responsibility of serving the revolution and the people.

As beloved President Ho Chi Minh said, journalists should be soldiers, with their pens and paper being their sharp weapons, making a worthy contribution to the struggle for national independence, unification and defence.

Under the leadership of the Party and President Ho Chi Minh, revolutionary journalists have always been loyal to the interests of the Fatherland and the people, making important contributions to the country's renewal process while constantly improving itself and maturing. We have never had so many forms of media or powerful writers as today.

After 35 years of renewal, the national press has made great progress in terms of personnel, technology and professional qualifications. The press has held an increasingly major and indispensable role in the social life of the country.

With their dedication, devotion, high responsibility and sacrifice, journalists have created a lot of press works in the spirit of innovation and support for new factors and good deeds in society. Press works have reflected the achievements of economic, cultural and social development as well as the work of Party building, State building and the promotion of people's ownership rights.

The press not only serves as a bridge between the Party and State and the people but also contributes to improving people's intellectual standards and expanding the nations external relations amid extensive integration.

The world and regional situations are currently volatile and unpredictable with the unprecedented effects due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has created great challenges and profound impacts on our country. In addition, the achievements of modern science and technology have had a great impact on the activities of traditional press, resulting in non-traditional "competition" in terms of readers, advertising, and so on. This complicated practice is the test for press agencies and for each journalist regarding their development strategy, skill and morality.

This year, the implementation of the national planning on press development and management by 2025 also faces many challenges, requiring great effort and determination. More attention should be paid to developing the press towards modernisation in the context of the market economy, international integration and the boom in information technology and communication. The Party's views and policies on the press must be concretised and institutionalised while human resource training in this area should be promoted.

Party congresses at all levels for the 2020-2025 term are being held across the country to prepare for the 13th National Party Congress, an extensive political activity of the entire Party, people and army. The congress is organised in the context that the country has undergone 35 years of renewal, 30 years of implementing the Platform on building the country in the transitional period to socialism, and 10 years of implementing the 2011-2020 socio-economic development strategy with great achievements.

As such, the press needs to continue promoting the glorious tradition, fulfilling its responsibility as a vanguard force on the cultural-ideological front, and intensifying the fight against wrong and hostile allegations and false, fake, fabricated or distorted information on social networks and the internet in order to safeguard the ideology, Platform, and policies of the Party.

The press should continue to renew and improve the quality of information and communication activities, thus contributing to consolidating the people's confidence in the Party and the State, creating social consensus, and building a national great unity bloc.

In addition, the press needs to boost propaganda movements so that people from all walks of life will contribute their ideas to the draft documents of the 13th National Party Congress, from which appropriate supplements to the Party's guidelines and State's policies will be made, contributing to the cause of national construction and defence in the new situation.

To celebrate the 95th anniversary of the Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day, the journalist circle will constantly strive to improve their political integrity, professional ethics, social responsibility, and professional qualifications to steadily overcome all difficulties to build and defend the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The current revolutionary journalist circle will make every effort to deserve to be the soldiers on the cultural and ideological front, as per Uncle Hos instruction, and will strive for a revolutionary, professional, modern and humane press.
Visitors buy food at the sightseeing spot Asakusa, in Tokyo, Japan, June 21, 2020. Japan on Friday completely lifted its request for people not to travel across prefectural lines, with the move met by a return of passengers to airports and train stations. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi)
Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.
After three years in the Connecticut craft beer scene, Skygazer Brewing Co. in Southington is taking a "brief pause."

The brewery announced in a statement on their Facebook page that they would stop the production of their limited-batch brews for the coming months.
Xiaomi Mi TV Stick will reportedly come in two variants with FHD and 4K support.

Xiaomi last month confirmed the existence of the Mi TV Stick, its new streaming dongle. New leaks have now revealed not only the full specs but even the alleged price of the Mi TV Stick.

There would be two versions of the Mi TV Stick out of which the premium one offers 4K. The Mi TV Stick has been listed on multiple platforms like Reddit, AliExpress and on a Spanish retailer site as well.

The Mi TV Stick with FHD resolution is listed at $49 which translates to around 3,700. The 4K variant of the Mi TV Stick will reportedly be priced at $133 which is roughly 10,200. If we compare this leaked pricing with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, the Mi TV Stick costs almost 50% more.

In terms of specs, the Mi TV Stick FHD variant has 1GB RAM, 8GB of storage and is powered by a 2.0GHz quad-core processor. It runs on Android TV 9.0 with support for Google Assistant. Its Bluetooth remote will have a voice assistant key and dedicated buttons for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The Mi TV Stick will also come with support for Dolby Audio and DTS Surround Sound.

As for the Mi TV Stick 4K, this one runs on the Amlogic quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. It also comes with support for dual-band Wi-Fi. Rest of the features and specs remain the same on both the Mi TV Stick models.

Xiaomi first unveiled the Mi TV Stick during a product briefing in Germany. Theres no official word as yet on when it plans to launch the Mi TV Stick and where.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Elnur Baghishov  Trend:

Iran's electricity exports to Afghanistan will increase with the construction of a new power line, Minister of Energy of Iran Reza Ardakanian said, Trend reports citing the ministrys official website.

He made the remark at a joint press conference with Acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Mohammad Hanif Atmar held in Tehran.

At present, the volume of Iran electricity export to Afghanistan is very small, according to Ardakanian.

The minister added that the construction of a new 220-kilowatt power line is one of the investment projects between the two countries.

The minister noted that the electricity exports to Afghanistan and other neighboring countries are part of Iran's economic cooperation plan.

"Iran intends to implement 20 electricity projects in Afghanistan. They include repairing damaged turbines and thousands of transformers, to reduce energy losses in the country's electricity grid, and other initiatives," he said.

Iran exports about 190,000 kilowatts of electricity to Afghanistan on a daily basis.
TO my knowledge, the Greeks were the first to acknowledge the distinction between our private lives and public ones, and the need for a healthy balance between the two. To them, the private life occurred in the oikos, the home; the public in the polis, the seat of government. A mixture of the two existed in the agora, or marketplace.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

TO my knowledge, the Greeks were the first to acknowledge the distinction between our private lives and public ones, and the need for a healthy balance between the two. To them, the private life occurred in the oikos, the home; the public in the polis, the seat of government. A mixture of the two existed in the agora, or marketplace.

Ideally, in the oikos, private well-being took precedence; in the polis, public interest prevailed; and in the agora, private interests were displayed in public. In a further development of the private, it was a place to refine ones thoughts and anticipated actions to make them fit for public appearance. The Greeks held fast to the idea that when the private clashed with the public, the public  which attempted to represent the best for everyone inclusively  had to prevail.

Todays social-media environment has made the private/public distinction more complex, as some people increasingly feel entitled to share everything almost immediately with a multitude of others, usually quite harmlessly but nevertheless an example of extreme self-indulgence. Private indulgence is alive and well; we might even make the claim that the private is too often colonizing the public.

For more than three years, an American president has tweeted a continuous stream of his private thoughts, with little regard for public civility, truth or justification. And too often, he has changed them into public policy through executive orders. Last month, a Minneapolis police officer  a public servant  took his private racial prejudice to a new level, killing a fellow human being in full public view.

The latest "anti-vaccination" conspiracy theory being publicly disseminated is that any COVID-19 vaccine will contain a tracking chip to compromise our privacy. And during this pandemic we see many refusing, as some kind of personal right, recommendations to quarantine, physically distance or wear masks. This feels backward, upside-down and just wrong.

In Manitoba, our current government has a penchant for lauding everything private, undermining the public service, denying it consultation, discrediting those who work in it, reducing its supports, and resenting and freezing its workers salaries. The premier personally interferes with the operations of Crown corporations, takes credit for federal initiatives and sends personal letters with government cheques.

An education minister publicly defended his association with, and participation in, an extremist anti-public-schooling groups activities. Meanwhile, the legislature is put on hold, meaning that an opposition that is already mostly irrelevant has even less opportunity to scrutinize and critique government actions.

In contrast to this culture, we see politicians of different stripes elsewhere put those differences aside and work to protect, support and assist their citizens. And we see thousands, of all ages, using social media and protests to stay connected, to offer hope, to teach and counsel and generally spread good will.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

What these latter instances suggest to me is that most human beings know, instinctively or because we have been taught, that the way to serve private interests is to serve public interests; and where the two come in conflict, the common, or public, good must usually prevail. The common good in a democracy requires that all have a say in how they wish to be treated, which sometimes means sacrificing our own dearly held beliefs in order that that no one is left out of participation in deciding what is good for all.

If protests are the avenue to protect our public interests, they should be embraced. All citizens, and all governments, must all be held to account for their public attitudes, as these, not our private inclinations, remain the test of our humanity.

We also know personal privacy is important and deserves protection  public good depends on private good to sustain it. Few of us could withstand a constant public spotlight without making unintended missteps, speaking foolishness and misunderstanding, revealing our anti-public moments and personal selfishness.

In the public, our frailties can be exaggerated  and in a technological age they can haunt us eternally. We need safe spaces and places to refine our ideas, our thoughts and our solutions to the worlds problems within ourselves and with trusted others before they see the light of day. At the very least, having such spaces just saves us unnecessary grief and unwanted attention.

The Greeks were on to something  to live good lives, we need to be vigilant about respecting, preserving and protecting both our private and public spaces and places  especially when both may be vulnerable and under attack as they so frequently are now.

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. A lifelong educator, he has served as a teacher, counsellor, work education co-ordinator, principal, school superintendent and university professor.
New Delhi, June 22 : The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP, held a crucial meeting here over the recent India-China border tension where the government's response and public stand was discussed at length. It has decided throw its weight behind the government and spearhead a campaign to boycott Chinese products.

The meeting was attended by top RSS leaders including Suresh 'Bhaiyyaji' Joshi, Dattatreya Hosabale, Dr Krishna Gopal, Suresh Soni, Ramesh Pappa, Ram Lal, Arun Kumar, Sunil Ambekar, Narendra Kumar among others. However, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat could not attend the meeting. The 3-day long meeting ended late on Monday.

The meeting decided that the RSS will actively spearhead a nationwide campaign to boycott China products. So far, only its affiliates like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch have been vocal about the issue. In the coming days, top RSS leaders are expected to articulate similar views.

This comes in the wake of reports that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) may put a ban on procuring telecom supplies from Chinese companies, when it comes to state-run telecom companies like the BSNL and the MTNL. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has also revised its foreign investment policy, making Chinese inflow of FDI a bit tougher.

The RSS also paid homage to the 20 Indian brave hearts who were martyred in Ladakh's Galwan Valley due to Chinese aggression. During the meeting, the RSS unanimously praised the role played by the Indian Army.

In a significant development, the RSS discussed and considered reopening shakhas, in accordance with Centre's Covid-19 guidelines. However, no final decision was taken. The RSS also reviewed the various welfare measures run by it and its affiliates across the country during the lockdown.
The historical seasons have changed, and once again, America's trees are bearing a strange and bitter fruit - dead black bodies.

In less than one month, six black people have been found hanging from trees, in California, Georgia, New York, Oregon and Texas. Authorities say that all of these deaths appear to be suicides, with no signs of foul play. But family members of the deceased, protesters and activists, and some scholars of anti-black violence are intuitively suspicious about those conclusions. Rumors are also swirling on social media that these deaths are lynchings, with Twitter users saying things like: "With sound body and mind, I'm here to tell you right now, if my body is found hanging from a tree, I did NOT commit suicide, I was murdered."

These incidents are happening at a time of nationwide racial upheaval - when people are already on edge and suspicious about police accounts of their encounters with black people. Tree hangings evoke traumatic memories of America's grisly history of unpunished lynchings of thousands of black adults and children between 1880 and 1968.

Black people do commit suicide, of course, though the rate is 60% lower than for whites, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In black American culture, suicide is widely regarded as a shameful act; when it happens, it's generally private, and hanging is not a preferred method.

"It is very uncommon for young black men to commit suicide, let alone by hanging," says Raymond Winbush, a psychologist since 1976 who has treated hundreds of black men and boys and is the director of Morgan State University's Institute for Urban Research. The American Association of Suicidology reports that firearms are the predominant method of suicide among African Americans (as they are for the nation overall), regardless of sex or age, followed by suffocation by plastic bags or gas inhalation.

So it is quite difficult for many black folks to believe that within a matter of weeks, six black people chose to hang themselves by the neck, in public, from trees, while the fire of racial politics continues to blaze.

Kenya Robinson, the mother of Otis/Titi Gulley, 31, who was found hanging from a tree in Rocky Butte Park in Portland, Ore., on May 27, says she believes her son, who used the pronoun "she," was murdered. Robinson says Portland police didn't ask any questions about Gulley's death and have treated her concerns with indifference.

"You saw a black man in a tree who was in a homeless camp, and you wrote him off as being a transient homeless, and wrote it off as suicide," Robinson told the Portland Mercury. She had to demand an autopsy, which ultimately ruled Gulley's death a suicide. She also reportedly told police that other homeless people said they witnessed Gulley being murdered and hung to make it look like a suicide, and that someone has video evidence.

The families of Malcolm Harsch and Robert Fuller, who were found hanging from trees in Southern California within 10 days and 50 miles of each other, are also denying police claims that the deaths were suicides. (On social media, attention is also focusing on the fact that Fuller's brother, Terron Jammal Boone, was killed in a shootout with sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles County last week.)

The historical context is impossible to overlook as the number of similar deaths increases.

"The numerous accounts of a deceased black man found hanging in a tree are a horrific reminder of our country's history. We are in a moment with parallels to the era of lynching that should cause us great suspicion of any rush to label the cases as suicide," says Thomas Foster, author of "Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men" and a professor of history at Howard University.

During the lynching era, it was not uncommon for the deaths of black men to be ruled as suicides to cover up murders by white mobs and police officers. The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, based at Northeastern University, has been compiling a database of lynchings and other forms of anti-black murder. Jay Driskell, a consulting historian for the project, says the trend of declaring black lynchings to be suicides stretches back to the 1930s. So far, he's found around two dozen cases from 1930 to 1956; in each case, a public figure, police officer, coroner or jury deemed the deaths to be suicides and not lynchings or extralegal murders.

There was Ab Young, a farm laborer from Slayden, Miss., who was killed on March 12, 1935, after being accused of killing a state highway worker. He fled to Tennessee and was captured by a mob that dragged him back to Mississippi, where he was hanged in a schoolyard, his body peppered with bullets. Though his lynching was advertised in advance, a reporter and photographer showed up to document the event and nearly 50 people were involved, a coroner's jury ruled that Young's death was a suicide.

"One of the first ways that lynchers and police who murdered blacks got exonerated was through the coroner," Driskell says. Back then, coroners did not have to have medical training. "Once in a while, they would use suicide as a way to not do their job, to cover up for police officers they knew or community members they wanted to protect from prosecution."

A few years after Young's murder, the 19-year-old soldier Felix Hall went missing from his barracks at Fort Benning, Ga. On March 28, 1941, his body was found hanging over a ravine in the woods on the base. His hands and legs were tied behind his back with a wire. The NAACP tried to get the War Department to investigate, but military officials said that death was a suicide even though a military doctor who had examined Hall's body within two weeks of when it was found had said it was a homicide and put that on his death certificate.

James Johnson was beaten to death in a jail in Florence, S.C., on Dec. 5, 1939, after being pulled over by police around 2:30 a.m. Johnson had a good amount of lumber in his car, and officers suspected he had stolen it. Johnson struggled physically with police during his arrest. Once in his cell, a 14-year-old boy who was in custody witnessed the arresting officers beat Johnson and use one of his shoestrings to hang him. But despite the wounds on his head and bruises on his body, the coroner's jury exonerated the officers by stating that " 'he butted his head deliberately against the bars of the cell. He cut himself from the glass of a broken milk bottle and tried to drown himself in a toilet on the cell block,' " Driskell says, reading from the file. "Even though the coroner says that the blow to his head from police could have been the one that killed him, the jury chose to believe that Johnson hung himself from a shoestring. The jury basically made up a story that this guy is crazy, suicidal and does all this damage to his body before killing himself."

In perhaps the most bizarre case, Shadrack Thompson was found hanging on Sept. 15, 1932, in Linden, Va., after being accused of attacking a white farmer and his wife. Thompson vanished, and his body was found two months later. He was burned; dismembered body parts had been distributed to members of the community as celebratory souvenirs, and his head was put on display 25 miles away, in Warrenton. The official verdict on Thompson's death was suicide.

There's no way to know how black family members reacted to those murders that took place so long ago, Driskell says, because their voices are lost to history and don't show up in records from the NAACP or the Department of Justice investigations. But "there's a whole world of rumors of lynchings that are hard to dispel because so many of them occurred well beyond the range of news reporters or police records. Lynchings were a shared communal terror that got passed down from generation to generation like a bruise on a memory."

That's why the current deaths are unsettling - even though police say they're not suspicious.

"The evidence is overwhelming," says civil rights activist and theologian Ruby Sales, who ticks off the names of other recent cases authorities ruled to be suicides that she has investigated since 2008: Billy Joe Johnson, Chavis Carter, Roosevelt Champion, Lennon Lacy, Denzel Curnell, Kendrick Johnson, whose organs were missing, Kindra Chapman, and Wakiesha Wilson and other black women from Birmingham to California who allegedly hanged themselves in jail cells.

Of course, given the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic disaster, it is possible that rates of suicide have spiked. The pandemic has also brought massive economic dislocations in black communities - which were already in dire straits financially. "So it's not outside the realm of possibility," Driskell says. "But it's plausible that some, if not all, are contemporary lynchings."

These recent incidents do follow the historical pattern of displaying black bodies publicly to intimidate black communities. "Think of Michael Brown, whose body was left on the street for four hours as evidence of black people's powerlessness. The spectacle of displaying the black corpse is meant as a deterrent to political action and resistance," says Tommy Curry, author of "The Man-Not" and professor of philosophy and black male studies at the University of Edinburgh. "It says to the subjugated population that we can kill your men without consequence so your cause, your resistance, your attempt to overthrow the current rule is futile."

The days when hundreds or thousands of white people show up to witness the barbaric torture and killing of black people at lynchings are over, Driskell says. But as the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement has taken off, there's also growing resentment from members of angry white supremacist fringe groups, some of them with badges. There's bound to be violent reactions.

Congress is still considering bipartisan legislation that would make lynching a federal crime - but it can't even act on this largely symbolic move because Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has argued that the language in the bill is too broad and the law may be wrongfully applied.

No wonder black communities are skeptical of the official story, after centuries of ongoing racist terrorism and government failure to prosecute our serial murderers. Here in 2020, those pastoral scenes of the gallant South are still with us. Black bodies are a strange and bitter crop.

- - -

Patton is the author of "Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America" and the forthcoming "Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children and Teenagers in America, 1880-1968."
The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE triggered a nearly two-decade power struggle that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. Historic records say the period was marked with strange sightings in the sky, unusually cold weather and widespread famine -- and a new study suggests a volcanic eruption in Alaska may have been the cause. The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. An international team of scientists and historians used an analysis of volcanic ash (tephra) found in Arctic ice cores to link the period of unexplained extreme climate in the Mediterranean with the crater-forming eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE. "To find evidence that a volcano on the other side of the Earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating," said lead author Joe McConnell of the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nevada. The advent of the Roman Empire also brought an end to the dynasty of Ptolemies, the last of the pharaohs. "It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago," added McConnell. He and Swiss researcher Michael Sigl began investigating the matter when they found an unusually well preserved layer of ash in an ice core sample last year. New measurements were then made on ice cores from Greenland and Russia, some of which were drilled in the 1990s and stored in archives. They were able to make out two distinct eruptions: a powerful but localized and short-lived event in early 45 BCE, followed by a much larger, more widespread event in 43 BCE, with fallout lasting more than two years. - Perfect match - A geochemical analysis was performed on the ash samples found in ice from the second eruption, and it perfectly matched the Okmok event -- one of the largest eruptions of the past 2,500 years. "The tephra match doesn't get any better," said volcanologist Gill Plunkett from Queen's University Belfast. The team gathered more supporting evidence from across the world, from tree-ring based climate records in Scandinavia to cave formations in northeast China. This data was fed into a climate model, which suggested that the two years following the eruption were some of the coldest in the Northern Hemisphere for 2,500 years. Seasonally averaged temperatures may have been as much as seven degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) below normal for the summer and autumn following the eruption, with autumn precipitation reaching as high as 400 percent of normal in southern Europe. "In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period," said classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford. They also coincided with failure of the Nile to flood the plains and the disease and famine that ensued, added Yale University historian Joe Manning. - Strange sightings - The eruption may also explain unusual atmospheric phenomena noted in the records, like solar halos, the sun darkening in the sky, or three suns appearing in the sky -- a phenomenon known as a sun dog. But the authors added that many of these observations took place prior to the Alaskan eruption and could be related to the smaller eruption of Mount Etna in 44 BCE. McConnell said that while many factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom, the eruption of Okmok played an important role, and helps fill a knowledge gap that had puzzled historians. Okmok Volcano, in Alaska?s Aleutian Islands, released a continuous plume of ash and steam in early July 2008 as seen in this NASA satellite handout image The Latin phrase Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE triggered a two decade power struggle that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire
According to an Israeli English daily, the CPEC is based on a false premise of development, Pak's national sovereignty is at stake.

The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of Chinas imperialistic and expansionist agenda under its Belt and Road Initiative, is set to soon become a trillion-dollar blunder project, say analysts.

The CPEC, a collection of infrastructure projects that are currently under construction throughout Pakistan, which were originally valued at $46 billion is now estimated to be $87 billion and only a quarter of which have been completed, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The leading Israeli English daily pointed out that CPEC was intended to rapidly modernize Pakistani infrastructure and strengthen its economy by the construction of modern transportation networks, numerous energy projects and special economic zones (SEZs).

However, in recent years the CPEC has proved to be based on a false premise that a nation needs these massive economic projects to be prosperous. It is now apparent that no one is willing to pay for these projects in the end, as they will never make any money from it.

Also read: China creating wedge in US-Europe relations, undoing free world progress: Mike Pompeo

Also read: Sikh abducted in Afghanistan, community seeks Indias help

The debt quotient of this corridor is about $80 billion, 90 per cent of which will be paid for by Pakistan in the form of national debt. Pakistan knows that it will not be able to pay China back and will slowly lose the sovereignty of its own land.

The CPEC has been facing a lot of criticisms like finances, trade imbalances, opposition from Baloch nationalists, concerns of residents near Gwadar Port and the resistance of local actors whom this rollout may directly impact. A resolution was even passed against the CPEC by the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in which the projects are to be constructed.

Last month, Husain Haqqani, Pakistans former ambassador to the United States, had written an article in The Diplomat stating that Pakistans desire to maintain strategic relations with China has resulted in the construction of USD 62 billion worth of CPEC, which includes a set of infrastructure projects, being mired in insufficient transparency.

Chinas consistent strategic support, including help with Pakistans nuclear program, is often held out by Pakistans military establishment favourably in contrast with the more conditional Pakistani alliance with the United States. But it seems now that China is not in Pakistan to help its people but rather as a predatory economic actor, he said.

Meanwhile, a new legal issue has now started haunting China.

According to international law, China will not be able to build anything in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as it is legitimately part of the Indian state. Even the United Nations accepts that this is Indian land, as per its 1948 resolution on Kashmir.

On the other hand, Aksai Chin, also a part of India, which was illegally occupied by Pakistan and gifted to China, is also an obstacle. China may not be able to build or pass through that area without Indias permission, which it will definitely not get.

During the recent standoff, along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh India had clearly stated that it will not accept any infiltration into its territory and has the capability to deal with infiltrators.

Hence, as the experts say, the CPEC will soon be known as the trillion-dollar blunder as here China sets the price, Pakistan gets the bill and ends up with substandard infrastructure it cannot service.

Also read: Hong Kongs pro-democracy protesters urge for help

For all the latest World News, download NewsX App
The UN Human Rights Council on Monday adopted a resolution ordering a "fact-finding mission" to Libya in order to document violations and abuses committed in the conflict-torn country since 2016.

The United Nations' top rights body adopted the resolution without a vote, "strongly (condemning) all acts of violence in Libya", and urging UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to "immediately establish and dispatch a fact-finding mission" to the country.

Tamim Baiou, Libya's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said he hoped the resolution would show that "impunity will no longer be tolerated" in the country.

"We hope this will be a turning point," he told the council before the text was adopted by consensus.

The draft resolution was tabled in March by a group of African countries, but the UN's top rights body was forced to suspend its main annual session for three months due to the coronavirus crisis, postponing a vote by the 47-member council until Monday.

The council's 43rd session resumed last week after Switzerland relaxed the measures imposed to halt the spread of COVID-19, and concluded Monday with the Libya resolution the last adopted during the session.

The resolution expressed "concern" at reports of "torture, sexual and gender-based violence and harsh conditions in prisons and detention centres."

The fact-finding mission experts will be called on, over the next year, to "document alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by all parties in Libya since the beginning of 2016," the text said.

It called on the experts to present an oral update on their progress to the council in September, followed by a written report next March.

Oil-rich Libya has been torn by violence, drawing in tribal militias, jihadists and mercenaries since the 2011 toppling and killing of long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a Western-backed uprising.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A picture of Kate Middleton as a young girl reveals just how much Prince Louis has taken after his mother, according to royal fans.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge yesterday shared a throwback photo of a young Kate sitting on her father Michael's knee to mark Father's Day.

Royal enthusiasts rushed to point out the striking resemblance between the duchess and her son, Prince Louis, two, in the comments.

Others said there are clear similarities between Michael Middleton and his eldest grandson.

Scroll down for video

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge yesterday shared a throwback photo of a young Kate sitting on her father Michael's knee to mark Father's Day

Royal enthusiasts rushed to point out the striking resemblance between the duchess and her son, Prince Louis, two, in the comments. Pictured, Louis with his father Prince William

One Twitter user wrote: 'Prince George and Prince Louis totally look like the duchess when she was younger.'

Another said: 'Prince Louis seems like Baby Kate', while a third added: 'Louis really takes after Kate!'

Others also pointed out the uncanny similarity between Prince Louis and his grandfather Michael, with one person writing: 'Goodness, how much does Louis look like Kate's dad.'

Royal fans were struck by how much Prince Louis looks like the Middleton side of the family

Earlier a selection of new photographs capturing Louis with his siblings, Prince George, 6, and Princess Charlotte, 5, were also shared by Kensington Palace to mark Prince William's 38th birthday and Father's Day.

The family photographs are the latest to be taken by the Duchess of Cambridge, and were captured on Friday in the grounds of their Norfolk country home, Anmer Hall.

The first shows the Cambridge children giggling uncontrollably as they pile on to their beaming dad in joyous horseplay.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge released two photos, both taken by Kate, on Sunday that capture the playful, loving bond between the prince and his children, Prince George, six, Princess Charlotte, five, and Prince Louis, two. Pictured, one of the images shared

One of the images shows William cuddling Louis on his knee while Charlotte and George lark around them. The swing they are sitting on has significance for Fathers Day, too, as it was a wedding present from Prince Charles

The second captures Prince William cuddling Louis on his knee while Charlotte and George stand beside them on a swing, which was a wedding present from Prince Charles.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also released an unseen photo of Prince William embracing Prince Charles as they led royal tributes on Father's Day.

Prince William is seen pulling his father, 72, in for a hug in the candid snap taken by the Duchess of Cambridge in Sandringham in December last year.

Kate Middleton later shared a third photograph of her husband playing in the garden with their three children to mark Fathers Day and Prince Williams 38th birthday. The photo is the most candid of the lot and shows the Duke laughing as he cuddles all three of his children
To honor Juneteenth, HBO allowed viewers to watch the entire first season of Watchmen for free. Fans are now revisiting the series, and some are pointing a key detail in Episode 6 that makes it look like the writers were lowkey trolling the Trump family.

Regina King Watchmen

What is Watchmen about?

Based on a DC Comics graphic novel, HBOs Watchmen is set in an alternate reality. In this world, the United States wins the Vietnam War, superheroes like Dr. Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) and Angela Abar, aka Sister Night (Regina King) exist, and the police are forced to hide their identities.

But while the series features a fantastical alternate history, it also highlights the very real Tulsa Race Massacre (also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre) that took place in 1921. In the first episode, a young Black family tries to escape a Tulsa town square where Klan members are brutally beating and killing Black citizens, while planes drop bombs overhead. The scenes are based on a real-life event that many viewers were unaware of until they watched the show.

#Watchmen begins in Tulsa, 1921 and explores the legacy of systemic racism in America. Were proud to announce @HBO will make all nine episodes available for free this weekend on https://t.co/dvMR4HmhIR and On Demand, and will air a marathon of the series tomorrow at 1PM ET. pic.twitter.com/UBDLR3OYIV  Watchmen (@watchmen) June 18, 2020

RELATED: Why Watchmen Began with the Tulsa Race Riots

Trumps Juneteenth rally plans renewed interest in the show

For his first major rally since the COVID-19 outbreak, President Donald Trump chose the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the same city in which the 1921 massacre took place. And initially, he announced the date of the rally as June 19, which is also known as Juneteenth  the holiday commemorating the emancipation of the last enslaved Americans in the country.

The presidents announcement came off as tone-deaf to many, especially amidst the racial tensions, protests, and unrest surrounding George Floyds death. He later changed the date to June 20, but his decision to hold the rally in Tulsa ignited a new interest in the history of the massacre. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Watchmen executive producer, Nicole Kassel revealed that she felt sick when she heard about the rally.

To know its so calculated and deliberate, thats whats very disturbing and scary, said Kassel. I dont want him getting credit for changing the date by one day. You want to do the right thing, you want to show respect? You dont hold a rally in that location.

Watchmen fans spot a possible low-key troll of the Trumps

Upon revisiting Watchmen on HBO, some fans are pointing out a key detail that just maybe a troll on the Trump family. In Episode 6, when Angela Abar accesses her grandfather, Wills (Jovan Adepo) memories, she sees him encounter a man named Fred (Glenn Fleshler) who sets fire to a Jewish deli.

Will arrests the man but discovers that he has connections in the police department. Later, it is revealed that Fred and some of Wills colleagues are part of Klan-like racist organization called Cyclops. Will then sees Cyclops members load weapons onto Freds truck, which is labeled, F.T. & Sons.

if you're all watching the Watchmen for free on HBO this weekend don't miss what the writers did here.



Happy Father's Day from Fred T and Sons. pic.twitter.com/2jYIkxaL9r  Zeddy (@Zeddary) June 21, 2020

This scene got viewers wondering if the F.T. & Sons was a troll on President Trump and his father, Fred Trump. The latter owned a market in Queens in the 1920s. And he was also reportedly arrested during a Klan march in the city.

In case you missed it, HBOs Watchmen depicts the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one fan wrote on Twitter. It also captures how Donald Trumps father Fred Trump was arrested at a riot started by the Ku Klux Klan in Queens in 1927. Great background reading for Trumps Juneteenth rally!!!

And adding more fuel to the theory, back when the episode aired, one of the series writers took to Twitter to hint at the connection. Look up who owned Queens first supermarket #Watchmen, writer Claire Keichel wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Showrunners havent confirmed if the character is based on Fred Trump or not. But, with all the similarities, the idea might not be too far-fetched.
Taiwanese man rescued from drowning at Patong Beach

PHUKET: Lifeguards at Patong Beach rescued a 25-year-old Taiwanese man this morning (June 22) after scouring the waters offshore for some 30 minutes.

marineSafetysuicidetourismpatong

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 22 June 2020, 03:31PM

The Taiwanese man after being brought back to shore alive at Patong Beach this morning (June 22). Photo: Patong Surf Life Saving Club

Lifeguards at the beach confirmed to The Phuket News that they were unaware that the man was missing, last seen in the surf at the southern end of the beach, until notified by police.

Maj Chanan Makchai of the Patong Police explained that he was notified of the missing Tawainese man, who he declined to name, at 7:30am.

Lifeguards were informed at 7:45am, and the search began.

However, with the man not found in the waters off the southern end of the beach, the search was soon expanded, and the man was brought ashore near Loma Park, some 1.6 kilometres further north, at about 8:15am, Maj Chanan said.

The man who called police was a fellow Taiwanese national, and a friend of the man rescued today, Maj Chanan added.

The friend told police that he last saw the man drunk and walking around at the southern end of the beach, Maj Chanan said.

The friend explained that the man was in deep grief as a close uncle of his had just died.

He was depressed and wanted to commit suicide by walking to the sea and drown, Maj Chanan said.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The U.S. Naval Academy withdrew the appointment of an incoming member of the Class of 2024 after an investigation into racist and inappropriate remarks, an academy official said Monday.

The academys Character Review Committee recommended withdrawing the students appointment after a thorough evaluation of the information surrounding the racist and inappropriate remarks, said Bruce Latta, the academys dean of admissions. Latta said he approved the committees decision, and Vice Adm. Sean Buck, the academys superintendent, also agreed with it.

The Naval Academy does not condone racism or bigotry of any kind within the U.S. Naval Academy family, as it completely violates our Navys core values, and does not support the U.S. Naval Academy mission, Latta said in a statement.

Cmdr. Alana Garas, a spokeswoman for the academy, said the academy is not identifying the student, and declined to elaborate on details about the comments.

The Capital Gazette reported last week that the recent high school graduate from Maryland sent messages in 2018 on a chat platform. The messages included threats of sexual violence, a transphobic statement, a racist epithet and threats of gun violence in a school. The messages were later shared on Twitter.

Separately, the academy also is investigating comments allegedly made on Twitter by a senior at the academy. The tweets including comments relating to protests following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Earlier this month, a Naval Academy Alumni Association Board of Trustees member resigned from his position after an accidental Facebook Live video broadcast him and his wife making racist comments and using racial slurs while talking about the Black Lives Matter movement.
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gerber Technology has partnered with the creative platform, Colorkarma, to develop an easy-to-use interface for the company's PPE Manufacturing Matchmaking Program. As companies continue to rely on the Gerber PPE Task Force to successfully convert their current production lines to personal protective equipment (PPE), Gerber is committed to making the transition as seamless as possible.

"As companies all over the world are navigating through this difficult time, connecting to the right companies such as raw materials suppliers or companies who are able to cut or sew is essential to having a smooth transition to PPE," said Karsten Newbury, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Gerber Technology. "Our partnership with Colorkarma will allow manufacturers to quickly find the exact contacts they need for fast and efficient PPE production."

Together, Gerber and Colorkarma created a new directory for Gerber's PPE Manufacturing Matchmaking Program. The program is designed to connect manufacturers with suppliers that can provide them the resources and support needed to successfully transition to PPE production. The new, easy-to-use directory includes contact information for all companies involved in the Matchmaking Program, allowing manufacturers to quickly find exactly what they're looking for based on their needs, capabilities, and goals.

"We are excited to extend the Colorkarma platform to support Gerber's PPE Task Force Initiative," said Shoshana Burgett, Owner of Colorkarma. "Colorkarma created the PPE directory to bring together designers, manufacturers, and suppliers in order to help businesses quickly shift their production from printing, packaging, textiles, etc. to PPE. Together, we can fight against the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and support the local, regional, and global PPE needs."

"The Gerber PPE Task Force Resource Center and Matchmaking Program have brought together manufacturers, suppliers and related entities like I have never seen before," said Jeff King of Apparel Manufacturing & Digital Services, LLC. "Prior to this program, the research required to find the right partner for your needs was exhausting and time consuming. Now I can review this list and, in a matter of minutes, find a variety of resources saving precious time and money. I have connected with five different companies, several of which show promise of a business relationship. I would like to thank Gerber Technology and Colorkarma for this wonderful resource."

"I contacted Gerber in hopes of finding gowns to provide emergency dental treatment for patients with pain and infection," said Dr. Natalee Peeters. "They were able to quickly connect me with a manufacturer who is producing the PPE I needed. Gerber is absolutely amazing for providing these life-saving services."

In addition to the Matchmaking Directory, Colorkarma worked with Gerber to create an easy-to-use PPE Feasibility Matrix to identify the level of effort required to produce certain PPEs based on the manufacturers' current production. If you would like to join the PPE Manufacturing Matchmaking Program or PPE Task Force, please visit https://gerbertechnology.com/covid19 .

About Colorkarma

Colorkarma is an online resource for all things production. With a focus on design for execution, Colorkarma provides an educational platform for the design and creative community to explore, share, and learn best practices for digitally designing for physical products. The goal is to help creatives execute their designs into final products with a minimum amount of rework. Topics include design, packaging, textile, marketing, 3D, and super-graphics. Learn more at www.colorkarma.com

About Gerber Technology

Gerber Technology delivers industry-leading software and automation solutions that help apparel and industrial customers improve their manufacturing and design processes and more effectively manage and connect the supply chain, from product development and production to retail and the end customer. With customers in 134 countries, Gerber Technology has a global team of passionate experts to support companies in apparel and accessories, personal protective equipment, home and leisure, transportation, packaging and sign and graphics industries.

Based in Connecticut in the USA, Gerber Technology is owned by AIP, a New York-based, global private equity firm specializing in the technology sector and has more than $3.0 billion assets under management. The company develops and manufactures its products from various locations in the United States and Canada and has additional manufacturing capabilities in China. Visit www.gerbertechnology.com and www.gerbersoftware.com for more information.

Contact: Ketty Pillet

Tel: +1 860-896-6036

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Gerber Technology

Related Links

http://www.gerbertechnology.com


As state leaders attribute spikes in COVID-19 cases to many people gathering for different events in the last couple of weeks, Gov. Greg Abbott urged residents Monday to stay home when they can and if not, wear masks and social distance to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

COVID-19 remains a very fast spreading virus that will remain in Texas and the United States and across the entire world until treatments are available to mitigate it, Abbott said during a press conference Monday. We must find ways to return to our daily routines while also learning ways to coexist with COVID-19.

Abbott noted if Texans follow CDC guidelines, it will slow the spread of the virus.

Wearing a mask is the most effective way to stop the spread of COVID-19, he said, while adding washing hands and social distancing were also critical. He added, those who do not feel well should stay home.

Abbott noted there are several strategies in place to deal with COVID-19 that will help avoid another shut down of the state.

However, Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough said local numbers remain flat.

Montgomery County health officials confirmed Monday there are 92 new cases in the county since Friday. The total number of cases is now 1,647 with 619 of those active. Of the 619, 15 remain hospitalized. The number of deaths remains at 34.

While we have seen an increase in active cases I monitor daily the number of active cases against those in the hospital and those who do not need medical treatment and are at home recovering, those numbers have consistently remained flat for several weeks now and have not seen a spike among Montgomery county residents, he said. That being said, there has been an increase regionally in the number of COVID patients in the hospitals which include Montgomery county hospitals. In order to move forward with the continual opening of the economy it is essential for everyone to follow CDC guidelines.

According to the data from the Montgomery County Public Health District, ZIP code 77301 still has the most active cases with 87. Those cases include patients at the Joe Corley Detention Center. The next ZIP code with the most cases is 77386 with 50 active cases followed by 77304 with 40.

While several Texas counties have issued mandatory masks orders, Keough maintains he will not put such restrictions in place but said businesses could require masks and turn customers away if they want to.

Health officials recommend the following measures in a public place: stay at least six feet from others at all times; wear a cloth face covering to help protect yourself and others; wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom, before eating, and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing; and bring hand sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol to use if soap and water are not available.

The MCHD/MCPHD COVID-19 Call Center is open for residents needing COVID-19 testing through the countys voucher program, or for general questions. Call 936-523-5040 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Through Wednesday, Kroger will sponsor a free testing site at he Montgomery County Fair Grounds from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kroger asks that registration be completed online to expedite the testing process at www.krogerhealth.com/covidtesting, but those unable to register online Kroger will be able to register on site.

cdominguez@hcnonline.com
[June 22, 2020] MPHASE TRAVEL BUDDHI DIVISION REACHES MILESTONE: TOPS 700 GLOBAL DESTINATIONS ON PLATFORM

Gaithersburg, MD, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mPhase Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: XDSL) (mPhase or the Company) is pleased to report ongoing progress in its Travel Buddhi division, which is building an AI-enhanced platform that enables travelers to plan and generate travel itineraries under predetermined budgets and preferences. The key feature of the platform is its ability to adjust and enhance individual itineraries in real time to accommodate for delays or changes. This virtual concierge concept is the first of its kind to combine an AI-component with location-based and other engagement technology to help manage and improve a travelers experience seamlessly throughout the entire travel process.

Prior to the global pandemic, Travel Buddhi signed more than 1,500 travel agencies during its Business-to-Consumer (B2C) beta test and began developing an initial target of 2,500 white label customers during its business-to-business (B2B) phase. To prepare the platform for full launch, the company has been actively curating additional content, which now includes 700 global destinations from 70 countries featuring 40,000 articles and one million attributes. The divisions goal is to have 8,000 active global destinations on the platform within a year of the full launch. The continuing pandemic has obviously had a debilitating effect on travel, but we were lucky in our timing, because we knew that we had a curating period following the beta, explained mPhase CEO Anshu Bhatnagar. We used this time to get our content to a more commercial stage and are more convinced than ever that we are coming to market with the right tool for todays environment. Weve built a place where any visitors bureau, travel agent, influencer, tourist attraction or enthusiast can plant their flag to generate traffic to their own geographies and interests. These service providers can have a complete eCommerce website and application backed by powerful tools within 15 minutes of registration. Our platform has a viral component, enabling third-parties to create pre-planned trips that can be shared, with a strong element of local expertise and timeliness. Shared, custom trips that can be eplicated and implemented with the click of a button could become a powerful tool across the industry.



In conjunction with the full roll-out during the second half of 2020, Travel Buddhi is expected to begin generating revenue from multiple sources, including: recurring subscription revenue, commissions and usage fees in the travel agent (B2B) segment; and commissions and advertising revenue in the consumer B2C segment. Travel Buddhi will also utilize cross-over technology from mPhases newest division, CloseComms, to enable further monetization of the platform. People are anxious to get back to travel, but we are realistic that this will require stages, with domestic travel being the earliest part of that scenario, CEO Bhatnagar said. In this safety conscious travel environment, we recently added virtual activities that enable discovery of COVID-19 safe destinations and itineraries. This is the kind of value-added content that can support clients who are trying to rebuild visitor traffic and customer engagement. Our next phase will include sales activities in the European market, so our geographic footprint will continue to expand. Since we represent such a unique approach, we are experiencing surprising interest from travel industry participants who are open to try new technology to restart their industry. So, we are very encouraged by the potential our platform could have as a new revenue source for mPhase. We expect that revenue phase to begin this summer, with consistent quarter over quarter growth to follow.

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. 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]



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Democracies have little tolerance for sore losers.

I remember decades ago, when a candidate for Moline mayor was defeated, I called him on election night. He was angry and his words were slurred. I could hear the clink of glasses in the background.

He said Moline was an awful town and they didnt deserve him as mayor.

I typed up the quote and sent it over to the city desk. It was spiked. No one wants to hear from a sore loser on election night.

It is never pretty.

Perhaps the most infamous sore loser speech of the 20th century was when Richard Nixon lost the California gubernatorial race. Appearing before 100 reporters at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Nixon lashed out at the media, saying, You dont have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

Nixon, of course, went on to win the presidency in 1968.

For the most part, losing candidates for major offices try to at least appear magnanimous. If they cant say anything nice about their opponent, they extol the system and express their support for it.

A good example is Gov. Pat Quinns 2014 concession speech to Bruce Rauner:

Its clear we do not have enough votes to win the election, Quinn said at the news conference. Therefore, we respect the result, we respect what the voters said yesterday, and I look forward to working with the new administration.

I was sitting in the audience of reporters when he made that statement. I couldnt help but think, He must really dislike Rauner. He didnt even utter his name.

But Quinn loved Illinois enough not to undermine its democratic institutions by criticizing the voters or making unwarranted allegations about the system.

Im not so sure the current occupant of the Oval Office would be so gracious in defeat.

Love him or hate him, one has to admit that Donald Trump is a political brawler.

Some folks love his unfiltered, unscripted, uncouth style. Others dont.

One thing that is certain is he is unlike any president the nation has had in the past century. And there is the rub. The usual norms of political decorum are an anathema to him.

This is the fellow who led his followers in chants of Lock her up during the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton. After losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College, he claimed millions of votes were cast fraudulently by illegal aliens and that he really won the popular vote.

We are still waiting for the proof of this assertion, and I anticipate it will continue to be a really long wait.

But this election will be different. For one thing, the process of casting votes is already being politicized. And its anticipated that record numbers of people will vote by mail.

For example, here in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed legislation to encourage mail-in ballots by sending applications to anyone who voted by mail in 2018, 2019 or in this years primary.

On May 26, Trump tweeted, There is no way (zero!) that mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.

Ron Michaelson, who led the Illinois Board of Elections under Republican administrations from 1976 until 2003, says there is little evidence to support widespread voter fraud connected with mail-in ballots.

Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah conduct their elections entirely by mail and have had little to no problem with fraud.

Democrats seem to have convinced themselves that mail-in ballots benefit their party. And President Trump seems to believe it. Thats why he is fighting this so hard, Michaelson said. Personally, I dont think it benefits one party more than another.

But Michaelson added the potential for voter fraud increases when ballots are completed far away from the ballot boxes. He noted that 20 years ago, absentee ballots sent in from an Illinois nursing home appeared to have been manipulated. Michaelson added its unlikely that fraud could be committed on a broad enough level to influence a national election.

But that doesnt mean we dont have the potential for a crisis this year.

Remember 2000, when the nation waited for weeks for the votes to be counted in Florida? If this years election is even somewhat close, things could be much, much worse.

Since so many more mail-in ballots are expected to be cast this year, it may be days after Election Day before the U.S. Postal Service delivers all the ballots to be counted. This means in toss-up states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin we may not know the outcome for weeks.

When one combines this with the fact that President Trump is crying fraud before the first ballot has been mailed in, we have the potential for the republic being thrown into crisis.

What happens if a presidential candidate contends he is the victim of massive voter fraud and instead of conceding chooses to challenge the legitimacy of the electoral process? That has never happened in this country. If it does, the republic could be in peril.

Sore losers are not just a distraction to democracy, they have the potential to undermine it.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist and a freelance reporter. He can be reached at ScottReeder1965@gmail.com.
BAGHDAD - One katyusha rocket landed in the vicinity of Baghdad airport without causing any casualties, the Iraqi military said Monday. It was the most recent in a spate of rocket attacks targeting the American presence in the country since the U.S. launched talks with Iraq earlier this month.

The rocket was launched from a village west of the capital near the Abu Ghraib district, according to a military statement. There were no casualties or significant damages.

The U.S. led coalition maintains a presence in an army base adjacent to the airport. Two Iraqi security officials said the rocket fell far from the base. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

It is the fourth attack to target the U.S. presence in Iraq since Washington and Baghdad embarked on strategic talks on June 11. The attacks are proving to be a key challenge for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, whose government has promised to take action against militia groups suspected of orchestrating them. The U.S. has blamed Iran-backed militia groups.

The U.S. assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a drone strike outside of Baghdad airport in January. The incident sparked soaring tensions and soured Iraq-U.S. tensions, prompting mostly Shiite Iraqi lawmakers to pass a non-binding resolution to oust U.S. troops from the country.

The continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is at the forefront of the strategic talks.
A Victorian restaurant owner who enslaved a migrant worker under the threat of deportation has been spared jail.

Farok Shaik threatened the woman, told her to think of her visa and said his friends were police officers when she asked repeatedly about her promised wages.

She and her husband worked for nothing at Shaik's regional restaurants, living in the storeroom above one of the shops, between August 2012 and October 2013.

The couple from India didn't think they could leave because Shaik was meant to be sponsoring the woman's permanent residency.

He never lodged the paperwork.

Farok Shaik threatened the woman, told her to think of her visa and said his friends were police officers when she asked repeatedly about her promised wages

Shaik was handed an 18-month prison term in the County Court of Victoria on Monday.

But the 47-year-old doesn't have to serve it after entering into a court-enforced undertaking to be of good behaviour for three years.

He earlier pleaded guilty to causing a person to remain in forced labour between March and October 2013, when federal forced labour provisions were enacted.

Judge Michael Cahill said Shaik's exploitation was deliberate and well thought out, but made concessions for his guilty plea and the delay in his court case.

'She was a migrant worker. You abused the power you had over her and exploited her on threat of deportation for your own financial gain,' the judge said.

'You told her no one would catch you out because you are an Australian citizen.'

Shaik had initially agreed to pay the woman $42,500 a year to serve food and drinks at his Yarrawonga Indian Tandoori Restaurant.

Her husband was employed as a cook and also promised wages, but wasn't paid them either.

The woman was threatened using an ambiguous Punjabi term, which could have been a reference to hitting or killing her, when she asked repeatedly for money.

She had to take on a second job elsewhere after falling behind on bills despite working for three of Shaik's restaurants, including at Beechworth and Bendigo.

Shaik had initially agreed to pay the woman $42,500 a year to serve food and drinks at his Yarrawonga Indian Tandoori Restaurant

She eventually quit only to be told her visa was denied because her employer hadn't lodged the paperwork.

The woman told the court she had lived a good and happy life before meeting Shaik, who left her feeling hopeless and useless.

Shaik was previously fined more than $50,000 in the Federal Circuit Court for exploiting the couple and has only paid half that amount so far.

His friends told the County Court he'd been disowned by many in his community, could no longer work in the restaurant business and was 'a decent person at the core' who had provided hundreds of meals for firefighters during the summer bushfires.

Prosecutors argued the man was simply sorry for the predicament he'd found himself in, not what he did.
A Nigerian man simply identified as Femi, stabbed his wife to death, and thereafter committed suicide in their home in Victory Park estate in Lagos state on Sunday, June 21.

According to residents of the estate, the couple moved into the estate three weeks ago with their two young children. Not much was known about the couple but just a day before the murder-suicide, they were spotted jogging together on Saturday night June 20.

However, on Sunday, the man who is said to have always questioned the paternity of their second child, stabbed his wife to death, and then took his own life.

A neighbor who spoke on condition of anonymity to LIB, said

On Sunday afternoon, neighbors close to the couples apartment heard loud music emanating from their home and this lasted for many hours. The neighbors went to the estate office to complain about the loud music and insisted the estate officials go there and caution the couple. The estate authorities went to the couples compound to appeal to them to turn down the volume of the music coming from their apartment. They however met with the wifes sister who was downstairs with the couples children. The sister immediately went upstairs so she can inform her sister and the husband about the complaint laid by the estate authorities. She knocked several times but got no response. After waiting for so long, the sister and the estate officials decided to pull the door down. They were greeted by a horrific sight. Apparently, the man had killed his wife. It is believed it was pre-meditated because when they got into the room, they saw different kinds of knives there. The womans legs and hands were bound and her mouth shut with a cellotape. The husband used a clipper to shave her hair, stabbed her head, her eyes, stabbed her multiple times with different knives. The scene was nothing short of a horror movie. After stabbing his wife to death, the man committed suicide by drinking sniper

Spokesperson of the state police command, Bala Elkana who confirmed the incident to LIB, said
Camper fire claims the life of two people in Marshall County
New Delhi, June 22 : The Delhi High Court on Monday stayed all proceedings against Sir Gangaram Hospital in connection with an FIR registered against it for violating the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines on coronavirus testing.

A single judge bench of the High Court presided by Justice C. Harishankar granted an interim stay on the proceedings against the hospital. The interim stay shall continue until the pendency of the main petition filed by Sir Ganga Ram Hospital seeking quashing of the said FIR.

"The decision is based on the existence of a prima facie case, balance of convenience, and possibility of irreparable loss," said Justice Harishankar while deciding the application filed by the hospital seeking interim stay on the proceedings.

The court added that the same is a prima facie observation and is not based on the observation of merits.

Delhi Police had registered a case against the hospital's Medical Superintendent on complaint from Amit Kumar Pamasi, Deputy Secretary Health and Family Welfare of the Delhi government.

Pamasi in his complaint said the hospital was not using RT-PCR app while collecting Covid-19 samples, which was "mandatory".

The CDMO-cum-mission director (central) said Sir Ganga Ram Hospital was not using RT-PCR app even as of June 3. It was a clear violation of directions issued under the Epidemic Diseases Covid-19 Regulations 2020, the FIR stated.

The FIR was registered against the hospital on June 6, the day Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned private hospitals against denying treatment to Covid-19 patients. Sir Gangaram Hospital was also issued a directive by the Delhi government on June 3 in this regard.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Mayank Singh and Pushkar Banakar By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: A marathon meeting of Corps Commanders of India and China got wrapped up late on Monday night, indicating the intricacies involved in the border negotiations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). There was no immediate word on its outcome. Also, the Indian Army decided to harden its stance on deployments along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh.

The over 10-hour-long meeting Lt General Harinder Singh, head of Leh-based 14 Corps, had with Major General Lin Liu, commander of the Peoples Liberation Army in South Xinjiang region, ended around 10 pm, a senior officer informed. The meeting was called to defuse tensions along the border, which soared after the June 15 attack on Indian soldiers by Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley.

Sources said now the Army is also preparing to strengthen its defences, with senior officers from the Operations Branch visiting Leh in quick succession. Army Chief General M M Naravane is likely to make a trip to Leh next week to take stock of the situation on the ground, said another source.

The Annual Army Commanders Conference in Delhi on Monday extensively discussed the stand-off and the way forward. Further discussions are expected on Tuesday in the presence of the Army chief and the vice chief.

While troops of 3 Division of the Army are directly handling the stand-off, they are strongly supported by troops of two other divisions. Also, the Indo Tibetan Border Police has been put into standby, informed sources.

While India has been open about its fatalities (20) in the deadly fight in the Galwan area on June 15, China continues to play ostrich. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday said he had no information about PLA casualties, a day after Union minister and former Army Chief General V K Singh revealed that at least 40 Chinese soldiers, too, were killed.

Among the PLA fatalities was its local commander, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is learnt to have told the all-party meeting called by the prime minister on Friday. As for Colonel B Santosh Babu, the local Indian commander, he was killed in action after sustaining head injury, he added.

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Global Times, the Chinese governments mouthpiece, is the only one who has acknowledged Chinese fatalities so far. My understanding is the Chinese side doesnt want people of the two countries to compare the casualties number so to avoid stoking public mood. This is goodwill from Beijing, he tweeted last week.
Brigham Young University graduate Matt Easton came out during his commencement speech in April 2019. The valedictorian for the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at BYU, who majored in political science, told the crowd, "I stand before my family, friends and graduating class today to say that I am proud to be a gay son of God." His speech made national news and he received an outpouring of support and attention from members of the LGBTQ community. In this personal essay, Easton, 25, reflects on how his life has changed since he gave that now-famous speech and how the world reacted to learning he is gay.

Recently, the cottonwood trees have begun blooming in my hometown of Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Small tufts of cotton-like seeds float through the air, giving the illusion of snow falling gently to the ground.

It's one of my favorite times. The little puffs herald the coming of summer and the chance to have some of my grandma's homemade mint ice cream. They put neighbors in fits of sneezes that fill the town with offerings of "bless you" everywhere you go, like little graces to reconnect with humanity.

This year, however, they evoked a different reaction in me -- I distinctly remember thinking of how much I've changed since I last saw the seeds drifting by.

For starters, I look a bit different -- I've finally had a chance to grow out my facial hair -- and I also feel different. I've worked on my dream campaign as a staffer for former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, faced unemployment in the midst of a pandemic and even weathered my first earthquake.

One difference in particular, though, stands out: It's been a year since I came out publicly as gay.

Last year, I made international news when I came out during my valedictorian speech at my college graduation. This was especially significant because I attended Brigham Young University, a conservative Mormon-owned college known for its strict code of conduct that forbids any form of romantic homosexual expression.

Story continues

Thank you everyone for your love and support today  I feel so so lucky to have had a chance to share some of my story with so many people. If you didn't get the chance, you can check out some clips of my speech below :) pic.twitter.com/qW3hh6bYC8  Matty Easton (@easton_matty) April 27, 2019

Less than a decade ago, a student couldn't even be openly out as LGBTQ+ and remain at the school, and discrimination against non-heterosexual students remains today.

Still, I was surprised when my story started gaining such traction. I quickly went from "the kid who always orders a large popcorn for himself at the movies and eats the whole thing" to "the kid who went on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show!'"

It was exhausting to have my character and motivations picked apart by critics in my community, but it was also exciting to feel like I had a voice and an audience ready to listen for the first time.

My family was mostly supportive, although I found out through the grapevine that my uncle was angry I had "selfishly made the graduation all about myself." I received the same feedback from my mission president, a spiritual leader for young Mormon men and women on missions.

It was difficult at first to hear this from people I cared about, mostly because I knew they had engaged with biased headlines instead of actually listening to my speech or approaching what I'd done with an open mindset, but my dad was the one who calmed my anxieties about it.

"If people have a problem with what you did, it's a problem with them and not a problem with you," he told me. "Your mom and I love you, and that's all that matters."

I've quickly learned that he's right; having supportive parents made all the difference with letting go of the negative and focusing on all the great opportunities that came from coming out.

While the fanfare received from my commencement speech was fun, it didn't last forever. When it faded, I was left with the same questions most queer people who come out have: How do I navigate my new identity moving forward? Will my family relationships change? What's the best way to support my new community?

Some part of me thought that coming out would be like finding a one-size-fits-all answer to every question I was facing. I'm still relatively new to being openly gay, but I've found that there is much more nuance involved, like a cottonwood seed preluding both summertime and hayfever season.

For example, I still struggle with the internalized homophobia ingrained in me since birth. In the past year, so many people have told me, "I always knew you were gay!" That phrase still sends a pit into my stomach, reminiscent of a time when I shamed myself into hiding parts of my identity for fear that someone might discover my secret.

I'm still learning to rewire that thinking -- it's OK people think I'm gay, because I am -- and I'm OK that it's going to take awhile to work through this.

Not long after coming out, I reconnected with one of my older cousins. He mentioned I was the first openly gay person he's ever known. (I know, how could this be true in 2019?!) When his child heard about my speech in the news, my cousin told me that for the first time he stopped himself from reciting a religious condemnation and instead simply told his son that "some people like boys and some people like girls, but the important thing is to love everyone."

In this way, I think that while coming out doesn't magically solve everything, it definitely still has magic in it.

MORE: 5 ways to keep the spirit of Pride alive in 2020

Last summer, I visited Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York's Greenwich Village and the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

From the moment I walked in, I could recognize it was sacred space. I couldn't help but imagine the brave individuals 50 years prior building up the courage and fighting for my right to be openly gay. I felt proud of the legacy my queer forebearers fought for.

PHOTO: Matt Easton appears in this photo from June 2019. (Miranda Hatch)

I also feel responsible to uphold that legacy. I hope to work in the political arena, whether that be in electing more LGBTQ+ leaders or working alongside public policy researchers, in order to do so.

I was able to pursue this dream while working for Buttigieg from July 2019 to March 2020. The first serious openly gay contender for president, Pete's example gave me courage to speak my truth, and it was the experience of a lifetime to get to work on his campaign.

Being on Team Pete gave me the unique chance to pursue my passion for politics while working with staff who not only believed in Pete, but in me as well.

To me, part of being in this community means recognizing and understanding the discrimination others face and working toward equality for all. I can't fully celebrate Pride month when I know the black community is hurting, and so I honor my pride by fighting for Black Lives Matter, donating and protesting and educating myself on how I can make this country a better place.

More than anything, I've learned that there is power in raising our voices and speaking together.

PHOTO: Matt Easton appears in this photo from January 2020. (Matt Easton)

Not long after I graduated, my classmate Emma Gee came out as BYU's first openly LGBTQ+ student athlete. Shortly thereafter, Nathan Ivie, one of Utah county's commissioners, became the first openly gay Republican elected official in Utah's history. Even popular TikTok personality and BYU student Daniel Spencer used his platform to share his story of accepting his sexuality.

Moment by moment, more LGBTQ+ people are sharing their voice and proving that we are no longer willing to stay silent. It shows that there is something bigger than any one of us rolling forward, bringing forth a more diverse and meaningful community than ever before.

However, there is still work that needs to be done.

Earlier this year, BYU removed the clause in its honor code banning all forms of homosexual expression, only to then tell queer students that they are still required to abide by this (now unwritten) rule.

"Same-sex romantic behavior cannot lead to eternal marriage and is therefore not compatible with the principles included in the honor code," Paul V. Johnson, commissioner of the church education system, wrote in a letter to students.

It was frustrating to hear about this, even though I'm no longer a student at BYU. One step forward, two steps back, they say.

Today this letter from Elder Paul V. Johnson, Commissioner of the Church Educational System, regarding the updated Honor Code was sent to students and employees at all CES schools. pic.twitter.com/sADljd8lQT  BYU (@BYU) March 4, 2020

Even more so, it leaves at-risk LGBTQ+ students left to feel the brunt of being pulled back and forth. I have a friend on campus who finally felt safe to come out after the clause was removed, only to be left vulnerable and exposed when the university finally clarified the meaning after more than two weeks. It's hard not to feel like our humanity is often forgotten.

There is still a long road ahead for students at BYU, but there are brilliant students and faculty working hard to make sure that the day will come. I'm hopeful that it will.

In the meantime, I'm OK with watching the cottonwood seeds float around and thinking of how I'll change by the next time I see them.

Sure, I may not get to go on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" again, but I know now that my story isn't even close to being over. I have a life full of rich experiences ahead of me, and if coming out has taught me anything, it's that I'm finally ready to live it.

What Ive learned since coming out in my BYU commencement speech last year originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday rocketed past 9 million as the pandemic accelerates in every corner of the world, an increase of one million cases in seven days. The number of known deaths now stands at more than 469,000. Both these figures are on track to surpass the ghastly milestones of 10 million cases and 500,000 deaths later this week.

The sharpest uptick in new cases continues to be in Eastern Europe, South Asia, North America and South America. The United States has the most new cases of any country, closely followed by and sometimes exceeded by Brazil. And while India has a lower count of new cases, that number is increasing sharply, and the official figures are undoubtedly a gross underestimate in a country of 1.3 billion people with only rudimentary health care infrastructure.

These countries similarly lead the world in number of new deaths, along with Chile, Peru, Russia, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Iran. Globally, the seven-day moving average of daily deaths has never gone below 4,000 since the beginning of April and is again trending upwards. The seven-day moving average of daily cases has not gone below 100,000 since March 27 and will soon surpass 150,000.

Families wait in a line for a free meal in Lima, Peru, June 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

The dangers of the pandemic were sharply expressed on yesterdays edition of NBCs Meet the Press program by Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. I dont think this is going to slow down. Im not sure the influenza analogy applies anymore, he said, developing his position from his earlier work which attempted to model the spread of the coronavirus based on how the flu spreads. I dont think were going to see one, two and three wavesI think were just going to see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, noted on CBSs Face the Nation: Were seeing the positivity rates go up. Thats a clear indication there is now community spread underway, and this isnt just a function of testing more.

The increased counts of new cases and deaths is not just a function of the virulence of the contagion, but also a result of the reopenings forced by governments everywhere, spearheaded by state governors and especially by President Trump. This was exemplified by Trumps reelection campaign rally held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, which went ahead in defiance of warnings from public health officials. There, Trump took the opportunity to again blame China for the cases and deaths in the United States, referring to the disease as the Chinese virus and the kung flu.

Little mention was made of the rising number of either total cases and deaths, which stands at 2.3 million and 120,000 in the United States, respectively, or the expanding hot spots of the disease in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. Trump instead demanded the number of new cases be artificially deflated by reducing the amount of testing done in the country. After boasting that the US had performed 25 million tests, he said, When you do testing to that extent, you will find more cases. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please.

While such actions might temporarily produce figures proving Trumps assertions that the virus will just go away at some point, the virus itself is unhindered by such cynical political calculations. In fact, during the past week at least 12 states have hit new record highs at least once, and 21 hit record seven-day averages. This includes states that have already been hard hit such as California, which saw 4,515 new cases yesterday, as well as states that have not had as many infections, such as Oklahoma and Missouri, which also reported on Sunday 478 new cases and 397 new cases, respectively.

Florida and Texas continue to have among the highest rates of new cases. While this figure had decreased and plateaued in Florida during May, there has been a sharp rise in this number since the start of June. Every week, a new high is reached for the number of daily cases, and the total number of cases has begun to increase exponentially.

It is also worth noting that Trump is set to deliver his national convention speech on August 27 in Jacksonville, Florida, in an arena that holds 15,000 people. Little weight has been given to warnings from the PolicyLab at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia that the state has all the makings of the next large epicenter.

Texas is facing a similar crisis and now regularly has at least 3,000 new cases per day. Houston itself, the fourth-largest city in the country, has now recorded more than 1,000 new cases per day for the past three days. Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official of Harris County, which includes Houston, warned that there is significant, uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus in the county and spoke of very disturbing trends in the number of hospitalizations. There are more than 3,200 COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide.

Officials from multiple states have noted that the surge in new cases is being driven in part by the increasing number of young people being tested and found to be asymptomatic. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis noted this during a press conference Friday, admitting that in the early stages of the outbreak in the state, there wasnt a lot of testing done. At the time, only those above 65 and showing symptoms were tested, thus missing the cases and transmission by anyone younger who had contracted the disease.

The large amount of asymptomatic transmission among those in their 20s and 30s is especially concerning considering that colleges and universities across the United States are already planning to bring their students back to their campuses in the fall. There are about 20 million college students in the United States, and while current epidemiological evidence suggests that smaller numbers of them will get sick compared to older people, the fact that universities bring together so many people from across the country and around the world means there is a massive risk they could become epicenters of the disease very quickly.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

President Donald Trump, center, walk toward the stage while supporters cheer during his campaign rally at BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday, June 20, 2020. (Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. - Did teens, TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music troll the president of the United States?

For more than a week before Donald Trumps first campaign rally in three months on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, these tech-savvy groups opposing the president mobilized to reserve tickets for an event they had no intention of attending. While its unlikely they were responsible for the low turnout, their antics may have inflated the campaigns expectations for attendance numbers that led to Saturday's disappointing show.

My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by Americas teens," veteran Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted on Saturday. The tweet garnered more than 100,000 likes and many responses from people who say they or their kids did the same.

Reached by telephone Sunday, Schmidt called the rally an unmitigated disaster  days after Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale tweeted that more than a million people requested tickets for the rally through Trumps campaign website.

Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for Trump's Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, said the turnout was a sign of weakening voter support. Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him, he said.

President Donald Trump supporters cheer as Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In a statement, the Trump campaign blamed the fake news media" for warning people away from the rally" over COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice around the country.

Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work," Parscale wrote. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans  without contacting the campaign for comment  behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade."

On midday Sunday, it was possible to sign up to stream a recap of the Tulsa event later in the day through Trump's website. It requested a name, email address and phone number. There was no age verification in the signup process, though the site required a PIN to verify phone numbers.

Inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa, where Trump thundered that the silent majority is stronger than ever before, numerous seats were empty. Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the city fire marshals office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the arena.

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa, but that never materialized. That said, the rally, which was broadcast on cable, also targeted voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

Social media users who have followed recent events might not be surprised by the way young people (and some older folks) mobilized to troll the president. They did it not just on TikTok but also on Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook. K-Pop fans  who have a massive, co-ordinated online community and a cutting sense of humour  have become an unexpected ally to American Black Lives Matter protesters.

In recent weeks, they've been repurposing their usual platforms and hashtags from boosting their favourite stars to backing the Black Lives Matter movement. They flooded right-wing hashtags such as white lives matter and police apps with short video clips and memes of their K-pop stars. Many of the early social media messages urging people to sign up for tickets brought up the fact that the rally had originally been scheduled for Friday, June 19, which is Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Tulsa, the location for the rally, was the scene in 1921 of one of the most severe white-on-Black attacks in American history.

Schmidt said he was not surprised. Today's teens, after all, grew up with phones and have absolutely" mastered them, he said. They are also the first generation to have remote Zoom classes and have a subversive sense of humour, having come of age in a world of online trolls and memes, Schmidt said. Most of all, he said, they are aware of what is happening around them."

Like salmon in the river, they participate politically through the methods and means of their lives," Schmidt added.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

That said, the original idea for the mass ticket troll may have come not from a teen but from an Iowa woman. The politics site Iowa Starting Line found that a TikTok video posted on June 11 by Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother from Fort Dodge, Iowa, suggesting that people book free tickets to make sure there are empty seats. Laupp's video, which also tells viewers how to stop receiving texts from the Trump campaign after they provide their phone number (simply text STOP"), has had more than 700,000 likes. It was also possible to sign up for the rally using a fake or temporary phone number from Google Voice, for instance.

As Parscale himself pointed out in a June 14 tweet, though, the ticket signups were not simply about getting bodies to the rally. He called it the Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x"  meaning the hundreds of thousands of emails and phone numbers the campaign now has in its possession to use for microtargeting advertisements and to reach potential voters.

Sure, it's possible that many of the emails are fake and that the ticket holders have no intention of voting for Trump in November. But while it's possible that this bad data might prove useless  or even hurt the Trump campaign in some way  experts say there is one clear beneficiary in the end, and that is Facebook. That's due to the complex, murky ways in which Trump's political advertising machine is tied up with the social media giant. Facebook wants data on people, and whether that is good or bad, it will be used to train its systems.

No matter who signs up or if they go to a rally, Trump gets data to train retargeting on Facebook. FBs system will use that data in ways that have nothing to do with Trump," tweeted Georgia Tech communications professor Ian Bogost. Might these fake' signups mess up the Trump teams targeting data? Maybe it could, to some extent. But the entire system is so vast and incomprehensible, well never really know."

___

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this story from Seattle.
[June 22, 2020] Ares Management Corporation Leads 1.875 Billion Commitment to The Ardonagh Group in Largest Ever Unitranche Financing Transaction

Ares Management Corporation ("Ares") (NYSE:ARES) announced today that it is serving as the lead arranger for a 1.875 billion financing commitment to The Ardonagh Group ("Ardonagh"), the U.K.'s largest independent insurance broker, through Ares' global direct lending platform. Ardonagh is majority owned by HPS Investment Partners ("HPS") and Madison Dearborn Partners. In addition to direct lending funds managed by Ares, other significant lenders include Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec ("CDPQ"), HPS and KKR. The financing is comprised of a 1.575 billion unitranche loan and a 300 million committed capital expenditures facility. The combined 1.875 billion commitment represents the largest ever unitranche financing. The financing will be part of the company's global refinancing to support its business expansion plans. Established in 2017, The Ardonagh Group grew significantly through a series of acquisitions in 2018 that brings together the leading insurance brokerage brands in the U.K. including Autonet, Bishopsgate, Carole Nash, Geo Underwriting, Price Forbes, Swinton, Towergate and URIS. With more than 100 office locations and a workforce of over 6,000 people, The Ardonagh Group is active across distribution, wholesale, underwriting and services, forming the largest principal diversified and independent broking and underwriting group in the U.K. "We believe this is the largest ever unitranche financing transaction globally, which is a testament to the quality of The Ardonagh Group, our long-standing relationships with HPS Investment Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners and the advantages created by our global and scaled platform," said Blair Jacobson, Partner and Co-Head of European Credit and Mark Affolter, Partner and Co-Head of U.S. Direct Lending. "We believe there is a significant need in the current market to serve as a partner to companies in need of scaled financial solutions and are excited to support Ardonagh in realizing its growth ambitions." "This is a major transaction for the lending group in Europe. It will support Ardonagh's growth over the coming years," said Luis Mayans, Partner and Deputy Head, Private Debt at CDPQ. "Over the years, Ardonagh has developed an attractive business model by bringing together specialized insurance brokerages that are leaders in their respective niches, and we're pleased to offer them a financial solution that meets their needs." David Ross, CEO of The Ardonagh Group commented: "The substantial commitment from this lending group led by Ares is a vote of confidence in Ardonagh and our management team. The structure of the unitranche facility and additional committed capital expenditures facility leave us well positioned to deliver the next phase of our growth strategy and beyond." About Ares Management Corporation Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) is a leading global alternative investment manager operating integrated businesses across Credit, Private Equity and Real Estate. Ares Management's investment groups collaborate to deliver innovative investment solutions and consistent and attractive investment returns for fund investors throughout market cycles. Ares Management's global platform had $149 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2020 with more than 1,200 employees in over 20 offics in more than 10 countries. Please visit www.aresmgmt.com for additional information.



About The Ardonagh Group The Ardonagh Group is the UK's largest independent insurance broker with global reach. We are a network of over 100 office locations and a workforce of over 6,000 people. Formed in 2017 and following a series of acquisitions in 2018, Ardonagh today brings together best-in-class brands including Autonet, Bishopsgate, Carole Nash, Geo Underwriting, Price Forbes, Swinton, Towergate and URIS. Our understanding of the communities we serve, together with our scale and breadth, allows us to work with our insurer partners to deliver solutions that meet our customer needs.

About HPS Investment Partners HPS Investment Partners is a global investment firm with approximately $61 billion of assets under management as of May 1, 2020. HPS was founded in 2007 and manages various strategies that invest across the capital structure, from syndicated leveraged loans and high yield bonds to privately negotiated senior secured debt and mezzanine investments, asset-based leasing and private equity. The scale and breadth of the Firm's platform offers the flexibility to invest in companies large and small, through standard or customized solutions. HPS is headquartered in New York with ten additional offices worldwide and has 145 investment professionals and over 370+ employees globally. About Madison Dearborn Partners Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC ("MDP"), based in Chicago, is a leading private equity investment firm. Since MDP's formation in 1992, the firm has raised over $26.0 billion of capital and has completed over 145 investments. MDP invests across a broad spectrum of industries, including businesses and government software and services; basic industries; financial and transaction services; health care; and telecom, media and technology services. MDP's objective is to invest in companies with strong competitive characteristics that it believes have the potential for significant long-term equity appreciation. To achieve this objective, MDP seeks to partner with outstanding management teams that have a solid understanding of their businesses as well as track records of building shareholder value. Funds managed by MDP are lead investors in insurance brokers, NFP Corp., The Amynta Group and Navacord Inc., demonstrating MDP's experience in the sector. About CDPQ Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) is a long-term institutional investor that manages funds primarily for public and parapublic pension and insurance plans. As at December 31, 2019, it held CAD 340.1 billion in net assets. As one of Canada's leading institutional fund managers, CDPQ invests globally in major financial markets, private equity, infrastructure, real estate and private debt. For more information, visit cdpq.com, follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @LaCDPQ or consult our Facebook or LinkedIn pages. About KKR KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate and credit, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co. Forward-Looking Statements Statements included herein may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which relate to future events or the Company's future performance or financial condition. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ares Management Corporation undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements made herein. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005618/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
" " Grizzly bears and wolves are the only residents in Yellowstone National Park's 'Zone of Death.' NPS

Yellowstone National Park, an idyllic and beautiful geographical gem situated in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, hides a dark secret: a 50-mile (80-kilometer) patch of lawless land, known as "The Zone of Death," where anyone can commit a crime and go unpunished.

How is that possible? That's exactly what Stuff They Don't Want You To Know hosts Matt Frederick, Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown wondered, and they dig into the info in this episode of the podcast.

Advertisement

The area, dubbed "Zone of Death" was discovered by Michigan State law professor Brian Kalt, who was looking for a topic for a paper when he came across the unusual legal situation in Yellowstone. At first, Kalt planned to write about technicalities around the Sixth Amendment, which entitles every U.S. citizen to a speedy trial by their peers, with a jury selected of residents from where the crime took place. During his research he discovered the loophole that allows the Zone of Death to exist: It has no residents. The Zone of Death is located in a remote part of Idaho, and no one lives there, so it has no potential jury members.

Kalt was fascinated, but also horrified, by his realization. He'd discovered a place where criminals could escape punishment for crimes as heinous as murder. He redirected his research on the topic and published a paper in 2005 in Georgetown Law Journal titled "The Perfect Crime," but feared his work might inspire potential criminals.

So Kalt took matters into his own hands. Before his paper published, he sent his findings and research to legislators in Wyoming, but nothing happened. Only after his paper went public did he see any movement: Author C.J. Box wrote a novel in 2007 inspired by Kalt's findings. Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming was a fan of Box; he read the book and contacted Kalt to discuss how to close this loophole. Congress could simply pass a law placing Idaho's portions of Yellowstone inside the District of Idaho. But 12 years after Kalt published his paper, nothing has been done to change the law.

It might seem far-fetched that a court would let a criminal go free based on a technicality, but one guy tried to do just that. Michael Belderrain illegally shot an elk in Yellowstone, and the government attempted to have him tried in Montana. His defense was that his Sixth Amendment rights would be violated by sending him out of the district in which the crime was committed. The judge threw out the defense, saying that sending him to a more populous district amounted to a "harmless error."

But the fact is that any violation of constitutional rights cannot be seen as a harmless error, as Kalt points out, and in a higher-stakes case, the defense would certainly not allow the court to throw out that argument without an appeal.

Of course there are plenty of problems to be solved by our legislative bodies other than hypothetical crimes that haven't been committed in a remote part of Yellowstone Park, but Kalt finds it hard to believe that they would wait for a person to be murdered before rewriting a few lines of the legal language guiding jurisdiction in Yellowstone.

You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out more about why the loophole hasn't been closed and what the Ninth Circuit courts have to do with the Zone of Death.
The Housing Secretary resisted legal attempts to get him to hand over files relating to his decision to approve a Tory donors 1billion property development, it has emerged.

Robert Jenrick dismissed the demand by council planning officials as a mere fishing expedition.

The minister is caught up in a cash-for-favours row after he overruled Tower Hamlets council and the planning inspector to give the green light to billionaire Richard Desmonds 1,500-home scheme in east London.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick dismissed the demand by council planning officials as a mere fishing expedition

His decision in January, which in its timing saved Mr Desmond tens of millions of pounds, came two months after he sat next to the former newspaper owner at a Tory fundraising dinner.

Two weeks later, Mr Desmond donated 12,000 to the party.

Tower Hamlets launched a legal challenge to the planning approval in February and demanded Mr Jenrick disclose papers relating to his decision.

But documents seen by the Mail show the minister initially vowed to resist the move.

In a letter to the council, government lawyers wrote: The secretary of state denies and will defend any appeal brought.

They added: The secretary of state considers that the councils request for disclosure of documents is nothing more than a fishing expedition without any proper foundation.

Jenrick's decision saved Mr Desmond tens of millions of pounds and came two months after he sat next to the former newspaper owner at a Tory fundraising dinner

Weeks later, after the council took the case to the High Court, Mr Jenrick accepted his decision was unlawful by reason of apparent bias and it was quashed.

He agreed to take no further part in decisions about the redevelopment of the former print works at Westferry.

Labour last night renewed its calls for Mr Jenrick to release the files, arguing if hes done nothing wrong then he has nothing to fear.

The party intends to hold a parliamentary debate on the matter tomorrow. Housing spokesman Steve Reed said: It is shocking that Robert Jenrick so arrogantly dismissed Tower Hamlets concerns about a decision which he later admitted was unlawful and biased.

[He] must come clean and publish the documents that show what he was really up to.

Mayor of Tower Hamlets John Biggs said: Its desperately arrogant that the secretary of state tried to shrug off our concerns as a fishing expedition.

He agreed to take no further part in decisions about the redevelopment of the former print works at Westferry

Throughout this process the secretary of state has tried to avoid all scrutiny of his decision on Westferry Printworks.

Last week the Mail told how Mr Jenrick waived affordable housing rules, saving Mr Desmond 106million, and also admitted he knew he was saving the tycoon 40million by approving the plans a day before a community levy came in.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill is reviewing documents relating to the decision, as pressure mounts on him to launch a formal investigation.

Downing Street insisted yesterday it still had full confidence in Mr Jenrick.

MPs on the Commons housing, communities and local government committee have asked Mr Jenrick to publish all correspondence and documentation leading up to his decision. The minister has pledged to reply by the end of the week.

An MHCLG spokesman said: 'The Department doesn't comment on litigation or legal strategy. All parties to the case agreed to re-determination and officials will be writing to parties to set out next steps in due course.'
Australian Senator Affirms Support for Armenian, Assyrian, Greek Genocide Recognition

Senator Hollie Hughes. ( https://en.armradio.am/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Hollie-Hughes-1.jpg) Senator Hollie Hughes, who represents New South Wales in the Federal Upper House, has signed an Affirmation of Support backing the Joint Justice Initiative of the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities, which calls for Australian recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides.

The February 2020 launch of the Joint Justice Initiative at Australia's Parliament House featured the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU), Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) and Australian Hellenic Council (AHC), which declares Australia's recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides as a priority on behalf of their communities.

Hughes, who founded the Country Autism Network, was elected to the Senate in 2019 after a career as a respected adviser to Federal parliamentarians.

A former member of the State Executive of the Liberal Party of Australia and Country Vice-President of the State Party, Hughes has a reputation as a passionate advocate for rural and regional New South Wales, leading campaigns for better transport and health services for the bush.

"The Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australia and Greek-Australian communities are fortunate to be able to count a career advocate in Senator Hollie Hughes among our supporters for national recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides, which was committed by the Ottoman Empire during World War I," said Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU) Executive Director, Haig Kayserian.

"Senator Hughes joins a growing list of supporters to right what is a wrong position of appeasing the Turkish State's denial of Genocide."

The Joint Justice Initiative has so far announced the support of Hughes, Senator Rex Patrick, Mike Freelander MP, Senator Eric Abetz, Senator Larissa Waters, Senator Pat Dodson, Jason Falinski MP, Josh Burns MP, John Alexander MP, Senator Andrew Bragg and Bob Katter MP, with a promise of more announcements to come.

On 25th February 2020, over 100 Federal Australian parliamentarians, diplomats, departmental officials, political staffers, academics, media and community leaders were treated to cultural performances, food, wine and brandy, as well as the historic signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, which affirmed that the signatory public affairs representatives of the three communities were jointly committed to seeing Australia recognise the Turkish-committed Genocide against the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian citizens of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:31:15|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TEHRAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Iran's confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 207,525 on Monday after an overnight registration of 2,573 new infections, official IRNA news agency reported.

At a daily briefing, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said out of the new cases, 1,319 have been hospitalized.

The pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 9,742 Iranians, up by 119 in the past 24 hours.

Besides, 166,427 have recovered and been discharged from hospitals while 2,898 remain in critical condition.

According to Lari, 1,449,420 lab tests for COVID-19 have been carried out in Iran as of Monday.

She said that the provinces of Khuzestan, East Azarbaijan, Hormozgan and Kermanshah are in high-risk condition over the disease.

The Iranian health officials have urged people to honor social distancing instructions, regardless of age categories, and to wear face masks in public places.

Iran announced its first cases of COVID-19 on Feb. 19.

Iran and China have offered mutual help in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

In mid-February, at the early stage of the coronavirus outbreak in China, Iran lit up the Tehran Azadi (Liberty) Tower to show its solidarity with China, and donated 3 million masks to China.

In return, China has delivered several shipments of medical supplies to Iran. On Feb. 29, a five-member Chinese medical team reached Iran for a month-long mission to help Iran fight the pandemic. Enditem
After 10mm rain on Monday morning, light rain is expected in the city on Tuesday, with monsoon likely to be declared by Thursday, as per India meteorological department (IMD) officials.

In a communication sent out on Monday, the IMD said that monsoon has advanced into most parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on Monday. Conditions are becoming favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon into Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and most parts of Punjab in the next two days. It will start in the north-eastern parts of Punjab and Haryana at first and rainfall over 40 mm is possible in the city from Wednesday.

Officials added that Tuesday is likely to see only light rainfall, while the intensity of rain is likely to rise in the city between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Maximum temperature in the city went down from 33.7C on Sunday to 34.5C on Monday, three degrees below normal due to the rain at night. The minimum temperature went up from 22.8 degrees on Sunday to 23.6 on Monday, one degree below normal. In the next three days, maximum temperature in the city will remain between 33C and 35C while the minimum temperature will remain between 23C and 25C.
President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Trump Campaign: Fire Marshals Count for Tulsa Rally Attendance Was Incorrect

President Donald Trumps campaign spokesman said more people attended the Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, than what the fire department said.

The Tulsa Fire Department said that about 6,200 people showed up for the rally on Saturday, which was fewer than anticipated.

First we know how many people went through the magnetometers that are set up by the Secret Service and it was 12,000 so the fire marshal is wrong, campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told Fox News on Monday. The fact that 12,000 people still showed up, I think shows a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the president, he continued.

Murtaugh then said that the Trump campaign went through more than a weeks worth of constant negative media coverage from cable news networks, mostly offensive, would be like say CNN and MSNBC, telling people that the most dangerous place in the world that they could be would be at a Trump rally, first because of the coronavirus and second because of the threat of dangerous protesters outside.

A lot of kids come to Trump rallies, he added. Ive been to several dozen Trump rallies and there are always children in attendance.

Murtaugh explained that in Tulsa, there were virtually no children in attendance. We believe  they were frightened away by more than a weeks worth of 24-hour a day negative coverage telling people that the Trump rally was a dangerous place to be, he said.

The campaign spokesman then said that regardless of the number of people who attended, there is a gigantic enthusiasm gap between Trumps and rival Joe Bidens voter base.

Let me tell you, we had 12,000 people in the BOK Center and thats approximately 11,990 more people than attended Joe Bidens last event, Murtaugh said.

Saturdays rally was the first one held by Trump in more than three months amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale disputed claims that teenage activists and fans of Korean pop (K-Pop) sabotaged the event by reserving seats online for the rally.

Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work, he said. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop [Korean pop music] fanswithout contacting the campaign for commentbehaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade. TikTok is a social media company run by a Chinese firm that is believed to have ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
Dunlop, 18, of Pinegrove Park in the town, is charged with stealing a watch valued at 239.

A teenager accused of raiding a Co Antrim jewellery store was carrying a bottle of suspected ammonia, a court heard today.

Curtis Dunlop claims he was put under duress by an older man to take part in the alleged theft in Ballymena on Saturday afternoon.

Dunlop, 18, of Pinegrove Park in the town, is charged with stealing a watch valued at 239.

He also faces a further count of possessing an offensive weapon with intent to commit grievous bodily harm.

Ballymena Magistrates' Court, sitting in Belfast, heard two men targeted Robin Adair Jewellers in the Church Street area.

Dunlop allegedly entered carrying a bottle of ammonia and asked to try on a watch.

He then ran out of the shop with the timepiece but was apprehended by a member of the public, according to police.

Footage has also emerged on social media of a second raider apparently sprinting from the store carrying a tray.

A 31-year-old man arrested as part of the investigation was later released from police custody pending further enquiries.

Opposing Dunlop's application for bail, a PSNI constable expressed concern about the suspected ammonia.

She confirmed, however, that the liquid was never brandished inside the jewellers.

Defence solicitor Ciaran Shiels insisted the bottle had been placed on the ground, with no attempt to threaten staff.

Mr Shiels told the court Dunlop provided a full account to police.

"He says he was placed under duress by an older individual... and was given the glass jar containing ammonia shortly before they went into the shop," the lawyer submitted.

District Judge Mark Hamill described the alleged possession of ammonia as "deeply concerning".

But granting bail to Dunlop, Mr Hamill ordered: "He's barred from the town centre of Ballymena."
Sher Bahadur Deuba to take oath as new Prime Minister of Nepal today

Our friendship with India and China remains of 'paramount importance': Nepal at UN

Roti-Beti ties with India at stake as Nepal set to amend citizenship law

International

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Kathmandu, June 22: A key parliamentary panel in Nepal has proposed to amend the country's Citizenship Act that would require a foreign woman married to a Nepali national to wait seven years for naturalised citizenship.

Nepal's main opposition parties decried the move, saying it would inconvenience people living in Madhes as cross-border marriage is prevalent there.

Nepal confident India, China will resolve differences through peaceful means

Both Nepali Congress (NC) and Janata Samajbadi Party (SJP) have said that such a provision could also affect the 'bread and bride relations' that Nepal has had with India for ages.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

The Madheshi are residents of Terai region in the south of Nepal at the foothill of the Himalayas on the border with India in Bihar.

The bill to amend the existing Citizenship Act was registered at the Parliament on Sunday.

It includes seven rights that a foreign woman married to a Nepali national can exercise till she acquires citizenship certificates.

Lack of a citizenship certificate will not bar them from running any businesses and earn, use and sell any fixed and movable assets, make profits through businesses and get involved in transaction of property of any kind.

Bound by roti and beti, Singh on relations with Nepal

The move to amend the citizenship act comes days after the Nepal government completed the process of redrawing the country's political map through a Constitutional amendment, incorporating three strategically important Indian areas, a move that could severely jolt relations with New Delhi.
Moscow: A town in Siberia is likely to have set a record for the hottest temperature in the Arctic Circle, reaching 38 degrees.

Verkhoyansk, which is 4828 kilometres east of Moscow and just inside the Arctic Circle, typically reaches a summer high of about 20 degrees.

If verified, this would be the hottest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe. Records in the town have been kept since 1885.

Children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk - the Siberian town that endures the world's widest temperature range, which has recorded a new high amid a heatwave that is contributing to severe forest fires. Credit:AP

On Sunday, the same location recorded a high temperature of 35.2 degrees, showing the Saturday reading was not a fluke.
Rescued from smugglers boats in the Mediterranean Sea, it is the first time a rescue ship has been allowed to dock in Italy since ports were closed in April because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hundreds of migrants rescued from smugglers boats in the Mediterranean Sea have arrived safely in Sicily.

It is the first time a rescue ship has been allowed to dock in Italy since ports were closed in April because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Al Jazeeras Victoria Gatenby reports.
Iran has been rocked by its third honour killing in a month after a 22-year-old woman was bludgeoned to death by her father.

Reyhaneh Ameri, from Kerman in south central Iran, was allegedly attacked with an iron bar after arriving home late the previous evening.

Local media reported that she survived for nearly 24 hours after the attack but bled to death from her injuries.

It comes just days after 19-year-old Fatemeh Barihi was allegedly beheaded by her jilted husband, and less than a month after 13-year-old Romina Ashrafi was reportedly killed with a sickle by her father.



Reyhaneh is believed to have arrived at her parents home at around 11.30pm on Sunday evening, enraging her furious father who unleashed his violent assault.

The Deputy Police Chief of Kerman, Irans largest province, said Reyanehs father launched an iron bar in anger which struck her in the head and caused catastrophic injuries.

Reyanehs sister claims she went to visit her parents house the next morning between 8:30am and 9:00am but nobody answered when she knocked.

She let herself in and, finding the house in chaos, waited for her parents to return home.

Her father is believed to have arrived first.

Soon after her mother arrived and the pair entered Reyhanehs room, where they discovered her clothing soaked in blood with splatters up the walls.

Police scrambled to the scene and found traces of blood leading to the fathers car.

They tracked his mobile phone to a nearby village and arrested him on his return, but he denied having any knowledge of his daughters whereabouts.

Police embarked on a desperate hunt to find her until 11pm that night, when her father is alleged to have proudly admitted to the murder, Radio Farda said.

He took officers to where he had dumped his daughter in an open area of the city.

The Iran Human Rights monitor said that, despite the atrocity of the attack, Rayhaneh died only two hours before police discovered her body.

They allege that Rayhanehs father had previously told his wife he would kill their daughter, and had even attempted to murder her in 2017.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
The Pennsylvania Game Commission last week announced that 2020-21 hunting and furtaking licenses will go on sale Monday, June 22.

Prices once again will remain unchanged. Each hunting or furtaking license will cost $20.90 for Pennsylvania residents and $101.90 for nonresidents.

Resident senior hunters and furtakers, ages 65 and older, can purchase one-year licenses for $13.90, or lifetime licenses for $51.90. For $101.90, resident seniors can purchase lifetime combination licenses that afford them hunting and furtaking privileges.

Like other hunters and trappers, seniors still need to purchase bear licenses to pursue bruins and obtain permits to harvest bobcats, fishers or river otters. Hunters who acquired their senior lifetime licenses after May 13, 2017, are required to obtain an annual pheasant permit to hunt or harvest pheasants.

This years firearms season for white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania begins Saturday, Nov. 28, and includes one of three new Sunday hunting opportunities.

Reversing Pennsylvanias ban on Sunday hunting in place since the 19th century, hunting will be allowed in 2020 on Sunday, Nov. 15, for archery deer hunting; Sunday, Nov. 22, for bear hunting during the bear firearms season; and Sunday, Nov. 29, for deer hunting during the firearms deer season.

The commission noted that many hunters who regularly buy their licenses as soon as sales begin are motivated by securing a Deer Management Assistance Program permit, available in limited numbers to enable holders to harvest antlerless deer in any established deer season, including the antlered-only portion of the firearms season in wildlife management units where a split-season is in place.

Buying early also helps ensure hunters wont miss their opportunity to apply for an antlerless deer license, which in most of the state cannot be used during the first seven days of the firearms deer season.

A resident Pennsylvanian who buys his or her 2020-21 hunting license is eligible to apply for an antlerless deer license July 13. Nonresidents can apply July 20.

A second round, in which a hunter can receive a second antlerless deer license, begins Aug. 3 for wildlife management units where licenses remain.

If licenses remain, a final round begins August 17.

Hunting licenses can be purchased online through the Pennsylvania Game Commission website.

Just click on Buy a License. A map to locate a local license issuing agent can be found at the same page.

The 2020-21 hunting and furtaking year begins July 1.

If quality nature and outdoor journalism like this is important to you, please consider supporting our work. We need your support.

Have an outdoor or nature question, or something to share? Contact Marcus Schneck at mschneck@pennlive.com.
When medical officers across the nation urged us all to get our flu shots, we quickly obeyed.

They were asking for a very good reason. The fear was that hospitals would be inundated with an influx of patients suffering from the effects of COVID-19. The argument was that we could stop a wave of influenza if we were immunised so we took the argument to heart and left the beds for those who were really sick.

Flu vaccines are at their most effective three to four months after immunisation. Credit:Getty

Flutracking, an online health surveillance system, tracks influenza symptoms across Australia and New Zealand through a 140,000-strong community survey sent out each Monday in flu season. It started early this year, in an attempt to track COVID-19. And each year, it asks if participants have been vaccinated against the flu.

Last year in the week ending April 21, just under 18 per cent of participants said they were vaccinated. Same time this year, it was more than 40 per cent. By the end of May 2019, over half of participants said they were vaccinated. By the end of May this year, it was a massive 78 per cent.
Bolton, who was fired as NSA last September, tells ABC News that he will not vote for Trump in November election.

Donald Trump is not fit for the office of United States presidency, his former national security adviser John Bolton has said in an interview with a US news network, adding that Trump does not have the competence to carry out the job.

I dont think hes fit for office. I dont think he has the competence to carry out the job, he told ABC News on Sunday ahead of the Tuesday release of his tell-all book, The Room Where it Happened, which contains many damning allegations against Trump.

I hope (history) will remember him as a one-term president  We can get over one term, said Bolton, who was fired by Trump last September after 17 months in his job.

Bolton added that he will vote for neither Trump nor Democrat Joe Biden in the November presidential elections. Instead, he will figure out a conservative Republican to write in on the ballot.

Trump unsuccessfully tried to halt publication of the book in which Bolton characterises Trump as stunningly uninformed.

The US president has called Bolton a wacko, adding that the book is made up of lies and fake stories.

North Koreas Kim laughing at US president

Bolton said he thinks North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gets a huge laugh over Trumps perception of their relationship.

When journalist Martha Raddatz asked if Trump really believes Kim Jong Un loves him, Bolton replied he could see no other explanation.

200622014312026

I think Kim Jong Un gets a huge laugh out of this, Bolton said. These letters that the president has shown to the press  are written by some functionary in the North Korean Workers Party agitprop office.

And yet, the president has looked at them as evidence of this deep friendship, he said, adding that friendship does not amount to international diplomacy.

Trumps administration had sought to halt publication of Boltons book, but a US judge refused on Saturday to block its release, saying it was too late for a restraining order.

Last straw

The Room Where it Happened is Boltons portrait of 17 months up close with Trump until he was fired last September.

In his interview, Bolton said he had resigned, noting that the last straw for him was when Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David during Afghan peace negotiations.

Boltons book, which Trump describes as fiction, describes the president pleading with Chinese President Xi Jinping during trade negotiations to boost the US presidents chances of re-election.

Moreover, Bolton backs up the allegations at the centre of Trumps impeachment last year that he pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt to weaken Bidens presidential bid.

200619102449788

Both Republican and Democratic politicians have criticised Bolton for publishing his book, saying he should have instead come forward during the impeachment process.

The House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Democrat Adam Schiff, told NBCs Meet the Press earlier on Sunday that Bolton indicts himself, for cowardice and for greed by making his accusations in a book instead of testifying in front of the impeachment hearings.

Republican senator Tim Scott told ABCs This Week on Sunday that he also wished Bolton would have come into the House under oath and testified.
Thousands of Palestinians have rallied in Jericho to protest against Israels unilateral plan to annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank and Jordan Valley.

Mondays gathering was also attended by dozens of foreign diplomats, including the United Nations peace envoy for the Middle East, Nickolay Mladenov, and the European Unions representative, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff.

British, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Jordanian diplomats were also at the rally.

Citing the presence of the dignitaries, Al Jazeeras Nida Ibrahim said: Palestinians hope that by doing gatherings like this, they would pressure the international community.

They want the foreign diplomats to [speak] to their countries to pressure Israel not to move forward with its plan, she said from the Jericho rally. They want these countries to tell Israel that they are going to impose sanctions.





Israel has promised to annex illegally-built Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, moves that were detailed in a controversial plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump in January.

Such a development could spell the end of the long-stalled peace process by making it virtually impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.

Trumps plan foresees the eventual creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state on the remaining patchwork of disjointed parts of the Palestinian territories without occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their state.

The Palestinians have rejected Trumps plan but the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it could begin the annexation process from July 1.

At the Jericho event, Mladenov said if the US-backed annexation plan proceeded, it could kill peace and Palestinian statehood.

The UN believes annexation is against international law, Mladenov said, reiterating the world bodys long-held position. If it happens, it might kill the very idea that peace and statehood for the Palestinian people can be achieved through negotiations, he added.

Mladenov urged the Palestinians to oppose the Israeli plan by peaceful means.

People of Palestine do not despair  do not stray away from the path of non-violence, Mladenov said.

Youre not renting a home, this is your home. Do not lose sight of the goal of a free Palestinian state  next to Israel.





Von Burgsdorff said steps taken towards annexation would not pass unchallenged, adding that the EU, which has also rejected Trumps plan, would continue to support a negotiation process towards the two-state solution as the only way to fulfil the aspirations of both people, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties, this includes notably the issues related to borders, the status of Jerusalem, the refugee questions, and of course security, he said.

The event was held despite gatherings being banned due to a surge in coronavirus infections.

The number of coronavirus cases in the occupied West Bank has more than doubled in a week, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said on Monday, after warning a possible second wave of infections could be worse than the first.

The Palestinian health ministry on Monday reported 142 new infections, the highest jump in a single day since the start of the pandemic.

However, Ibrahim said PA officials have allowed gatherings against the planned annexation to take place due to the importance of the issue, with more events planned in the coming days and weeks.
by Paul Wang

In cases of conflict with Hong Kong's (liberal) laws, the new law trumps the previous one. It includes a supervision of schools to verify national security education. Carrie Lam maintains the new law will guarantee the "One country, two systems" principle. For democratic movements and NGOs, the new law will reduce freedoms in Hong Kong, making it similar to "any other Chinese city".

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The new national security law that Beijing wants to impose on Hong Kong provides for a security control office (espionage?) as well as a judicial commission to judge the crimes related to it. The office will be led by the head of the Hong Kong executive, Carrie Lam (see photo), who will also be able to choose the group of judges.

The most important fact is that the interpretation of cases and the law remains in the hands of Beijing and the Permanent Commission of the National People's Congress (the Chinese parliament), which is drafting the law. Two days ago, by presenting some guidelines of the new law, Xinhua specified that in case of conflict with existing laws in Hong Kong, the new law will take precedence.

Xinhua explained that the new law aims to target and prevent subversion, separatism, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers against Hong Kong and China. It also requires greater government oversight of schools to verify the quality of education from a national security perspective.

For years, the population of Hong Kong has been opposed to a security law, proposed by the government as early as 2003, but then withdrawn due to opposition from the population. In Hong Kong there are fears that the law will be used by China to stifle the freedoms enjoyed by the territory according to the "One country, two systems" principle, established by Deng Xiaoping. The democratic movements all agree that with the passing of the new law, Hong Kong will be reduced and treated as "any other city in China".

Carrie Lam was quick to defend the law. Speaking in an online forum this morning, she said that the new law will strengthen the "one country two systems" principle, guaranteeing the liberal lifestyle in Hong Kong and regaining international reputation and competitiveness in the area.

Lam maintains that the Hong Kong crisis is caused by the democratic movement and the "terrorism" of demonstrations as well as gestures of vandalism and youth violence.

Many international NGOs that are engaged in Hong Kong are also convinced that it will stifle all freedoms. One only has to consider the overly generic and broad definition of "national security" which will allow Beijing to intervene on any aspect of the life of the territory.
Emotional Gail Porter has branded late Prodigy star Keith Flint the love of her life.

The TV star dated Keith between 1999 and 2000. He who was found dead aged 49, at his home on March 4, 2019.

Gail, 49, discussed the romance with Louis Theroux, 50, for his BBC Sounds podcast Grounded

'He was the love of my life': Emotional Gail Porter discussed her relationship with late Prodigy star Keith Flint and said 'I absolutely loved him, I miss him' (pictured in 1999)

She said: 'Keith was the love of my life, I absolutely loved him, I miss him.

'I was single and we went out and we did not stop laughing for the entire evening and then practically that was us together, almost for two years.

'The good thing was, he didn't really talk about work, I didn't really talk about work, we would just go and do fun things.

Gail continued: 'I was actually doing a programme called Wish You Were Here ... I got asked to go to the Maldives ... me and Keith went and he had a few issues with a few things.'

Asked by Louis if he suffered with poor mental health, Gail continued: 'He had a few wobbles but by the end of it, he was swimming every day, we were going to the gym and both of us, our mental health was just so fantastic.

She said: 'I was single and we went out and we did not stop laughing for the entire evening and then practically that was us together, almost for two years' (pictured in 1999)

'Of course everyone is going to be extremely happy if you're in the Maldives, we were so lucky and then when we got back I said, "Right, I'm going to go back to work and you go back to work".

'He just didn't get his mind back into things properly. And he was going that way and I was like, we need to keep our minds positive and it just didn't work that way.

'He was on a downer, I was trying to work my hardest, so it was a shame.'

Acknowledging they both had their issues, she said: 'I always thought there was going to be that moment when we are going to have bad times at different times and it kind of worked that way unfortunately.'

Gail also discussed the romance with The Mirror in August last year.

Friends: Gail spoke to Louis Theroux for his Grounded With Louis Theroux podcast, which is available on BBC Sounds every Monday and BBC Radio 4 every Wednesday at 8pm

She said: 'Its not been the easiest year, its been a tricky old year but you get on with it and you remember all the good times. Thats all you can do really.'

'I didnt go to Keiths funeral. I knew it was going to be a big party and thought I would stay away and show my respects in my own way.'

Last month Gail revealed she 'never expected' the news of her ex-boyfriend's death, admitting that she was gobsmacked when she learned he had died.

During an appearance on Lorraine in July, Gail also spoke candidly to Lorraine Kelly about overcoming her own struggles with mental health, explaining she's finally 'in a good place.'

Keith was found dead in his home in Essex, with toxicology reports finding that the star had cocaine, alcohol and codeine in his system.

Following an inquest into his death, a coroner recorded an open verdict after ruling that there was insufficient evidence to rule he took his own life or that it was an accident.

Speaking to Lorraine about his passing, Gail admitted news of his death still came as a huge shock, 19 years after their split.

She said: 'It's horrible. I was completely gobsmacked to be honest with you, Such a loss he was a great guy. I could never have expected that in a million years.'

Grounded With Louis Theroux is available on BBC Sounds every Monday and BBC Radio 4 every Wednesday at 8pm.

For help and support call Samaritans helpline 116123 or visit www.samaritans.org

(pci
Hospitals, manufacturers partner with Sandia amid high demand for medical-grade masks

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Sandia National Laboratories is teaming with local hospitals and medical device manufacturers to increase the availability of respirator masks for health care workers.

"We're helping local medical device manufacturers test materials they are using to make medical-grade masks, and we're helping local hospitals by evaluating methods they've developed to clean N95 masks for reuse." said Sandia Fellow Gil Herrera. "We're providing them information they need to make decisions regarding the reuse of sterilized N95 masks and the use of alternatives to N95 masks to protect health care workers and patients."

N95 respirator masks are certified to block 95% of extremely small particles without restricting breathing. Sandia is conducting tests for manufacturers to show how new mask designs measure up to these industry standards. Sandia also is studying disinfection methods that could enable hospitals to reuse masks, lessening the need for new ones.

Assistance has been provided at no cost to partners through a combination of internal funds and funding from the Department of Energy Office of Science.

Testing unconventional materials

When respirators ran low in hospitals, Albuquerque companies Marpac, Sierra Peaks and Sew-EZ approached Sandia for help testing materials outside the typical supply chain that could be used to manufacture more. Examples included materials used for heating and air conditioning systems, and vacuum bags.

Sandia principal investigator Michael Omana leads a team that modified existing aerosol and filtration systems used for nuclear nonproliferation work to conduct tests and comparison studies for the projects. One of the test systems included an automated filter tester commonly found in industry and intended for material certification.

Through these tests, the researchers identified the most promising filter media, comparable to N95 filtration, to use for respirator production.

"Sandia isn't a certification lab, but we were able to use the systems to provide quantitative results," Omana said. "We've been able to utilize two independent systems to validate a robust data set."

Evaluating reuse technologies

Sandia is collaborating with the University of New Mexico Hospital to assess how to safely decontaminate and reuse respirators.

The team is assessing a hydrogen-peroxide vapor method currently being used by UNM Hospital, as well as less specialized techniques that could be used at smaller hospitals. Sandia's technical breadth and experimental capabilities, including aerosol testing labs, are enabling this project supporting hospitals' efforts to address shortages in critical personal protective equipment.

The study examines the impact of repeated decontamination cycles on N95 masks' respirator filtration, fit and mechanical integrity. Sandia and UNM Hospital are seeking to understand degradation mechanisms and explore differences due to the make and model of the respirators and decontamination methods.

Advancing sterilization techniques

Supercritical carbon dioxide -- a solvent that has properties of both a liquid and a gas -- is becoming increasingly popular as an eco-friendly alternative in the dry-cleaning industry. It might also safely and reliably sterilize N95 respirators and other critical medical supplies for reuse on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Sandia team in Livermore, California, is investigating. If found to be appropriate and effective, the sterilization process could be rapidly deployed at hospitals nationwide because it is already used in commercial dry-cleaning.

Many conventional sterilization methods cannot be used because they degrade mask performance, but supercritical carbon dioxide is gentler than other chemical disinfectants and works at relatively low temperatures.

"Hospitals have different resources and different needs," Gil said, "so Sandia is working with medical practitioners on a wide range of approaches to help keep health care professionals protected. Together, we can find enduring solutions."

###

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
FILE PHOTO: Italy allows free movement across the country following the coronavirus outbreak in Milan

By Angelo Amante and Elvira Pollina

ROME (Reuters) - Italy, the first major European country to roll out a smartphone app to trace COVID-19 infections that does not rely on a centralized database, has already seen 2.2 million downloads in 10 days, a sign Italians are setting aside privacy concerns.

The government, like those of other European countries hit by the virus, is touting the software as a vital tool to help avoid a second wave of infections. Germany launches its own version next week.

"We want a summer in which tourism is as safe as possible. This app can help us resume activities after the lockdown," Technological Innovation and Digitalization Minister Paola Pisano told Reuters.

Italy was the first European country to be hit hard by the coronavirus and has suffered more than 34,000 deaths. A lockdown drove infection rates sharply lower, but fears remain of a renewed flare-up later this year.

The government's call for a tracing app originally met resistance from privacy advocates and opposition politicians, but many Italians are warming to it.

"Even my in-laws downloaded it," said Daniela Camozzi, 47, in Sarzana, a town in the northern Liguria region, one of the first parts of the country where the app went live.

"I don't get all this concern about privacy. Every time we use our smartphone our data is profiled much more massively than this app can."

The app has so far been switched on in just four regions, accounting for 8 million of Italy's 60 million people. The authorities hope to sustain the enthusiasm when it has its countrywide launch later this month.

Called Immuni (immune), the app uses Bluetooth short-range radio based on a joint technology standard from Apple and Google to log close contacts securely on the device. It was developed by a Milan tech start-up, Bending Spoons.

In the case of a positive coronavirus test, the doctor uploads the result anonymously onto a server, and a notification is sent to people the holder has encountered. It advises them to call a doctor, self isolate and seek a test.

Story continues

Italy's adoption of this 'decentralized' approach is in line with a growing number of European countries, including Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Their common approach could later support a 'roaming' function for foreign travel.

France, meanwhile, launched an app last week that stores data on a central server - an approach which is not supported by Apple on privacy grounds and works poorly on iPhones.

Stefano Denicolai, a member of Italy's COVID-19 task force, said Immuni could help break chains of infection if 25% of Italians download it, provided they are concentrated in key locations and social sectors of the population.

It remains to be seen if the app's early popularity will be sustained as it is rolled out more widely. Right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini is still withholding support: "Until there is a total guarantee on privacy protection I won't download anything at all," he said.

(Elvira Pollina reported from Milan; writing by Angelo Amante; editing by Gavin Jones and Douglas Busvine)
The price and health benefits of food far outweigh any concerns consumers have over sustainability and carbon footprint, a survey from the dairy industry has found.

The survey of more than 2,000 Irish consumers by the European Milk Forum found 91% still think all or most of the catastrophic consequences of climate change are preventable.

However, when it comes to buying food, 46% of people look at price, 34% at the nutritional make-up of products, and 31% at the health benefits.

By contrast, just 10% cited the carbon footprint as a leading factor in their decision-making, while just under one in five said sustainable packaging was of major concern.

The findings demonstrate that Irish political, industry and civil leaders had to up their efforts significantly when it comes to changing perceptions on sustainability and emissions, the chief executive of the National Dairy Council said.

Zoe Kavanagh, who is also spokesperson for the European Milk Forum in Ireland, said: The survey tells us that an overwhelming majority, or 96%, believe in climate change, believe that we can prevent all or the most serious consequences of climate change and that the responsibility to create this more sustainable future needs a collaborative effort.

The respondents said the responsibility lay between industry producers, consumers and politicians, she said.

But with only two in five consumers feeling well-informed about sustainability, it is clear there is a lot of work to be done by stakeholders right across Government, civil society and industry, she said.

Findings from the research included some 96% agreeing that climate change is already occurring or will occur in the near future and 70% are worried about climate change.

Some 57% of Irish people believe industry producers have the responsibility, while 49% believe consumers and politicians share responsibility for creating a more sustainable future.

The European Milk Forum survey was part of its Sustainable Dairy in Europe campaign to gain what it called a better understanding of consumers perceptions of sustainability, climate change and the challenges they pose in relation to the dairy sector.

Ms Kavanagh claimed the research also demonstrated that Irish consumers value dairy products as well as our indigenous dairy industry.

In these unprecedented times, it is heartening to know consumers are seeking out dairy products because they know they can rely on their natural nutritional value and they can be assured of the quality.

Irish dairy farmers and producers are committed to playing their part in a national effort to address climate change, Ms Kavanagh said.

They would do this by creating a more sustainable industry and protecting rural biodiversity.
Turkey has arrested four spies working on behalf of France, journalists Abdurrahman Shimshek and Nazif Karaman of Sabah daily said in a piece published Monday, Trend reports.

According to the investigation by the journalists, the four suspects were collecting information about the inner workings of conservative foundations, religious groups and Turkeys Directorate of Religious Affairs and its employees.

The reporters said in the piece that the suspects used fake ID cards purportedly belonging to agents from the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and claimed that they were collecting information regarding Daesh and similar terrorist groups.

The institutions they gathered information from include the Women and Democracy Foundation (KADEM), Sadaka Tashi humanitarian relief agency and the Pioneering Youth Foundation, which once came under a bombing attack by the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) terrorist group.

According to the report, one of the suspects is Metin Ozdemir, who contacted the French military during a mission as a Turkish soldier in Afghanistan. Ozdemir first decided to be a legionnaire. After the military service, Ozdemir returned to Turkey and started working at the Consulate-General of France in Istanbul as security personnel.

In 2013, Ozdemir met a person codenamed Bruno, who had close ties with French intelligence service, the General Directorate for External Security. Bruno reportedly said that he could help him pursue his goal of being a legionnaire but Ozdemir would have to collect some information first.

According to his own testimony, Ozdemir gathered information regarding 120 people  including imams  and conveyed it to French authorities.

Later on, he contacted two more people with ties to French intelligence and started receiving orders from those two case officers.

Identifying the officers as Virginia and Sebastian, he said that he did not know what their surnames were, they were communicating over pay phones and he was well aware that he was conducting espionage.

He was first paid 300 euros ($337), which was later increased two-fold.

According to his testimony, Ozdemir was ordered to spy on conservative-leaning foundations in Istanbuls Fati Bayrampasa, Esenyurt, Zeytinburnu, Uskudar, Umraniye and Bashakshehir districts, and was also threatened by the French. He threatened them back, saying he would leave France in a difficult position if he were to confess.

Later on, he included three different people in his espionage activities. Ozdemir told municipal employee Lutfu Ylmaz, hotel owner Salih Cemal Yigit and phone trader Faysal Tambahceci that they would be working on behalf of the MIT against terrorist groups such as Daesh, showing them his fake ID card for better persuasion.

The four suspects will be tried on the grounds of political and military espionage.
[June 22, 2020] UnionPay International Pledges Support for Stronger Financial Cooperation Between Shanghai and Singapore

SHANGHAI, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Global payment network, UnionPay International (UPI), has pledged its support for stronger financial cooperation between Shanghai and Singapore at the 12th Lujiazui Forum 2020, a major financial summit held in Shanghai, China on 18 and 19 June. At the event, Cai Jianbo, Chairman of UnionPay International, outlined three key areas for the company to play a bigger role in facilitating intercity cooperation. This includes the acceleration of digital payment adoption in Singapore to realise the country's Smart Nation vision, improvements to cross-border payment infrastructure to facilitate payment between Shanghai and Singapore, and expediting trade flows and exchanges between residents and corporates in both cities. His remarks echoed the sentiments of many industry experts in China and Singapore, and have been covered widely by mainstream media in China. Following the establishment of the Singapore-Shanghai Comprehensive Cooperation Council (SSCCC) and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to deepen third-party market cooperation between Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and the People's Republic of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in April 2019, representatives from both cities have been working together to explore new collaborations as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative. As one of the fastest-growing international payment networks with a growing presence in Singapore since 2004, UnionPay is well-placed to play a ey role to strengthen intercity cooperation in the financial services arena and Cai said the company is committed to doing more. The company's efforts will also play a part in enhancing ties between both cities.



Accelerating Digital Payment Adoption to Realise Singapore's Smart Nation Vision To realise Singapore's Smart Nation vision, UPI has been working on a series of initiatives to accelerate digital payment adoption in the country. This includes participation in the SGQR roll-out to promote the use of digital payments in the heartlands and at hawker centres islandwide, partnerships with local payment providers such as NETS to enhance digital payment infrastructure, and the introduction of e-wallets through NETSPay and HuaweiPay to provide local consumers with a greater variety of mobile payment options.

Two months ago, UnionPay, Huawei and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) launched Huawei Pay in Singapore. Today, Huawei and Honor device users in Singapore can register their ICBC UnionPay credit cards with Huawei Pay and use it to make payment at over 20 million UnionPay mobile contactless acceptance points in 49 countries and regions. To support the growing demand for e-commerce today, UnionPay has expanded its online acceptance network to merchants such as iShopChangi, Zalora, foodpanda, Qoo10, iHerb, Steam, and introduced a new way to pay with UnionPay Online Merchant QR Code Payment on welovesupermom.com. With this new payment method, consumers who do not hold a UnionPay card can also use their NETSPay app to pay for their online purchases at welovesupermom.com with a quick scan of the UnionPay QR Code. Improving Cross-Border Payment Infrastructure to Facilitate Payments To facilitate cross-border payments between Shanghai and Singapore, UPI has been expanding its acceptance network in Singapore to better serve the payment needs of tourists from China and other parts of Southeast Asia. With 90 percent of merchants in Singapore now accepting payment via UnionPay, more merchants will be able to benefit from the overseas tourist market upon resumption of international travel in future. For Singaporeans who travel overseas, UPI has been working with local payment partners such as NETS to enable cross-border mobile payment at UnionPay QR merchants in 33 countries and regions through NETSPay. At the same time, UPI is partnering with other Southeast Asian payment providers to enable greater interconnection of payment facilities between countries in the region to support the collective move towards a cashless society. Expediting Trade Flows and Exchanges Between Residents and Corporates To expedite exchanges between residents and corporates in both cities, UnionPay partnered Singapore fintech firm Aleta Planet and leading remittance company Zhongguo Remittance, to launch Aleta China Express (ACE). As an online remittance service that offers consumers and corporates a faster and safer way to remit money to China, ACE is powered by Aleta Planet's proprietary technology built on UnionPay's global platform. About UnionPay International UnionPay International (UPI) focuses on the international business of UnionPay, a global payment network that serves the world's largest Cardholder base. With over 8 billion UnionPay cards issued in 61 countries and regions, over 52 million merchants and over 2.8 million ATMs accepting our cards in 179 countries and regions, UnionPay is one of the fastest-growing payment networks in the world. As a company with a global acceptance network and a wide range of world-class payment services, UnionPay is committed to providing access to value and secure payment solutions that are tailored to the needs of the local market, to enable choice and ease of payment for consumers and businesses alike. In Southeast Asia, UPI has enabled ATM, POS acceptance and card issuance across all 10 countries. For more information, visit www.unionpayintl.com/en. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200622/2837142-1 SOURCE UnionPay International

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Since Johnson ordered the United Kingdom into lockdown in March, Brits have been instructed  over and over  to please keep two meters of social distance between themselves to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 42,731 people here so far, the highest death toll in Europe.
Police said 40 businesses were vandalised and nine of them had been looted, while 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers brought the situation under control around 4 am.

Frankfurt: Police in the German city of Stuttgart said Sunday that 24 people were arrested and 19 police officers injured after a check for drugs sparked attacks on officers and police vehicles followed by widespread vandalism of storefronts in the city center. Police said several hundred people were involved.

The disturbance started after officers stopped a 17-year-old on suspicion of drug possession as several hundred people partied outside around 11:30 pm Saturday, police said. Bystanders started throwing stones and bottles, and smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to police.

Police said 40 businesses were vandalised and nine of them had been looted, while 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers brought the situation under control around 4 am.

Only one of the injured officers was seriously hurt enough to be considered unable to work, police said.

Police officials said at a news conference that the violence had no apparent political motivation. They said the teen suspect initially stopped was a white German citizen. Of the two dozen people arrested, half held German passports and half were citizens of other countries.

Stuttgart mayor Fritz Kuhn, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, called the attacks on police unacceptable." He said that more people were on the street on Saturday night because many clubs and discos remain closed due to the coronavirus outbreak and that the party scene in a central park had drawn people from the surrounding area.

One cause was likely alcohol, another the addiction to social media film clips," Kuhn said.

Cellphone video purporting to be of the events circulated widely on social media. Police asked witnesses to upload videos that could provide evidence to assist their investigation.
Office leasing activity, which came to a halt as business leaders throughout the Houston area dealt with pressing workplace issues such as transitioning to a work-from-home environment, is inching back.

While the market is expected to further decline amid COVID-19 and the collapse in oil prices, companies facing lease expirations or that need to move for other reasons are engaging brokers.

Scott Martin, executive managing director of Granite Properties, a Plano-based landlord, said the company has closed 11 lease deals in its buildings since mid-March.

MIXED USE: Hines, Levit family to build upscale office, retail and residential complex

Before many companies sent their workers home in mid-March, Granite had been negotiating with a law firm for space Weslayan Tower, a 20-story building on the northeast corner of Weslayan and U.S. 59. The firm Weycer, Kaplan, Pulaski & Zuber, recently finalized a lease for 16,768 square feet on the buildings top floor.

Some customers have to make decisions, so thats why you seen some of the deals continue to move forward, Martin said.

As new deals slowly trickle back, some companies see remote working as a way to decrease the amount of office space they occupy. Others are reducing density to give employees more room to social distance.

Goree Architects recently inked a lease to occupy 14,200 square feet at 5151 San Felipe in the Galleria area, a space that will be 44 percent larger than what the firm previously occupied. The company is expanding to accommodate new business lines, but said it will also incorporate more space per person.

SHOPPING BOOM: Amazon, Trammell Crow to build massive warehouse southwest of Houston

Martin said his firm, which also has buildings in Atlanta, Denver, Southern California and Dallas, has been seeing companies allocate about 240 square feet per person, compared with around 180 square foot previously.

Working from home is becoming part of our future, but weve had several tenants now in the process of expanding in order to give their employees more space and spread them out, he said.

nancy.sarnoff@chron.com

twitter.com/nsarnoff
Beijing daily COVID-19 testing capability may reach 1 million

Global Times

By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 22:03:40

Beijing continues to expand its COVID-19 testing capability to meet the mounting demand for nucleic acid tests, and if it adopts batch testing, Beijing could test nearly 1 million people per day

Beijing authorities on Sunday called for the public to be rational in receiving tests. Residents should make an appointment first but those who have no travel history to high-risk regions or contact with people from high-risk regions are not encouraged to do so.

As of Saturday, the number of nucleic acid testing institutions has increased from 98 to 124, and the maximum daily testing capacity expanded from the previous 100,000 to more than 230,000, Beijing authorities said at a press conference on Sunday.

If it adopts batch testing which mixes five samples in a single test, Beijing could test nearly 1 million people per day.

COVID-19 testing hospitals and institutes are working in full swing to meet the huge gap between the daily collected nucleic acid samples and the daily maximum capability for nucleic acid testing, with the number standing at 500,000 and 230,000 respectively.

In a bid to stamp out the spread of novel coronavirus in the city and prompt the normal operations of work and production, Beijing is striving for the goal of "giving nucleic acid tests to people who need them."

To reach the goal, Beijing set up 2,083 sampling points citywide and more than 7,400 staff members from testing institutes are working shifts at full capacity. In the past week, the number of nucleic acid detection samples in the city has increased from 8,000 to nearly 500,000 per day.

The National Health Commission recently dispatched 10 teams of testing staff from Hubei and Liaoning provinces, a total of 212 people, to offer a helping hand to Beijing for nucleic acid tests.

If the staff and devices are fully applied, they could offer 30,000 tests daily for Beijing. They will come to Beijing one after another. On Saturday, medical teams from hospitals in Wuhan reached Beijing.

As of Saturday, the city has sampled a total of 2.29 million people for nucleic acid tests during its screening for COVID-19 cases between June 11 and 20.

An employee from Shougang Hospital affiliated with Peking University told the Global Times on Sunday that the daily testing numbers in their lab ranges from 500 to 5,000 at maximum. Testing staff are working against the clock and many are working overtime during weekends.

Many testing institutes including CapitalBio MedLab said they had been increasing the working staff and testing equipment to cope with increasing amounts of samples. Labs are running 24 hours non-stop.

Despite Beijing opening 124 testing institutes for COVID-19 tests, involving 20 local disease prevention and control departments, 73 hospitals and 31 medical labs, test appointments in hospitals and testing institutes are fully booked about seven days ahead.

The Global Times has called many institutions for COVID-19 testing inquiries on Sunday, many of which couldn't answer or were busy. Most online booking channels were also fully booked at least for the next four days.

The backlog of a large number of samples to be tested led to a delay in issuing nucleic acid test results. Some institutes prolonged the testing results from the previous 24 hours to 48 hours and some even 72 hours later.

Beijing's nucleic acid testing mission will not be over in the next seven to 10 days, thus, to boost the testing capability, Wang Peiyu, a deputy head of Peking University's School of Public Health, told the Global Times on Sunday that testing institutes should further consider increasing working staff and supply of testing kits which will help shorten testing times.

If Beijing adopts batch testing which mixes samples from different people to be analyzed in one test, the testing capability will be largely improved. Some testing institutes in Wuhan used batch testing in its citywide COVID-19 tests. Wuhan has tested nearly 10 million people in 19 days from May 14.

The capital has given priority to large-scale nucleic acid testing among employees in 36 high-risk industries such as catering, supermarkets, shopping malls, trade markets and food deliveries. Many other industries have arranged COVID-19 tests for their employees spontaneously, such as Suning Corp, the Global Times learned.

Nucleic acid tests for a total of 103,000 deliverymen from express companies and food delivery platforms are expected to be completed by Tuesday.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Yes, there are restrictions on assemblies for the time being, but who said the participants of the potential assemblies must express discontent with the incumbent government? This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan stated during a briefing following the session of the Commandants Office today.

Who said the 10-20 participants or even 100 times more participants of the potential rally wont express discontent with the activities of certain corrupt officials? Overall, this has to be taken into consideration. Some people need to be thankful that Armenia is in a state of emergency and there is no opportunity to hold assembles because I believe in at least some cases, the supporters of the revolution would hold massive assemblies and express themselves in regard to several specific cases and people.

I would also like to say that certain so-called circles making such comments overestimate their ability to hold rallies in Armenia because if by saying rally they mean bringing people to the square by offering them money and relying on those people, they wont have any hopes after the state of emergency is over, Pashinyan declared, adding that the governments current objective is to make sure fewer people are infected with the coronavirus.
The pair know how to take a good photo. (Getty Images)

Kim Kardashians Instagram grid serves as quite the homage to her family and this Fathers Day was no exception.

To celebrate the day, the 39-year-old posed alongside Kanye West and their four children in a very fashion-forward photoshoot. Did we really expect anything else from the Kardashian-West clan?

The pair - and their eldest daughter, North, seven - were all wearing custom looks by British-Nigerian designer Mowalola Ogunlesi.

Kardashian dedicated the post to the best dad and said: Thank you for making life so much fun! You give our kids the most awesome life! I love you so much!!!

The post attracted thousands of likes, not least because of Kardashians support for Mowalola, a Central Saint Martins graduate.

Read more: Kim Kardashians face masks sell out in an hour

While the younger three children - Saint, four, Chicago, two and Psalm, one, still gave off ranch vibes, it was North who stole the show with a custom cow-print dress from the designer in green and brown.

The suitably fitting ensemble (the photoshoot took place on the couples Wyoming ranch) matched nicely with Kardashians patent leather teal trench coat and matching leather brown cutout dress.

West went for a similar leather look, but this time in patent leather black, with a neon green top to almost-match the green in Norths dress.

In the second photo that she shared, West is seen posing alongside his father, Ray, and sons Saint and Psalm.

Read more: Kim Kardashian posts bikini throwback of her mum, Kris

Its not the first time that West has supported young fashion creatives, having his own successful fashion lines.

Ogunlesi described her work as a reflection of her lived experience as a black person. Its reported by Vogue that West has donated to Ogunlesis alma mater, Central Saint Martins, in the past.

Kardashian also shared a second post to pay tribute to her late father, Robert Kardashian.

Story continues

How I wish you were here to celebrate Fathers Day together! Happy Heavenly Fathers Day to the ultimate dad of all time, she added as a caption.

In the photo, herself and what looks to be her sister, Kourtney Kardashian, can be seen kissing their father on the cheek in a sweet snap.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star turned entrepreneur isnt afraid to show off her family on social media, with regular updates on their daily lives as well as the lives of her sisters and many nieces and nephews.
A Milpitas police officer shot and killed a 19-year-old man who allegedly ran at the officer with a knife Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Officers responded shortly before 1 p.m. to a reported stabbing in an apartment on the 130 block of North Temple Drive with initial information that a 19-year-old man had stabbed a 34-year-old man, according to the Milpitas Police Department.

An officer arrived on scene within two minutes and saw a man outside the apartment holding a large kitchen knife, the department said in a statement on Monday. The officer attempted numerous times to get the man to drop the knife, authorities said.

The man instead walked away toward an area where a second officer appeared, Milpitas police Sgt. Jason Speckenheuer wrote in the statement.

Suddenly, the man ran quickly at the first officer yelling at the officer, Kill me! Speckenheuer wrote. The second officer used a Taser that did not stop the man; the first officer opened fire at the man who was running towards him while still armed with the knife, Speckenheuer wrote.

Officers applied medical aid until paramedics arrived and the man was transported to a hospital, where he died from his injuries, authorities said. The man had not been identified as of Monday evening.

Police said the 34-year-old stabbing victim survived and identified him as the stepfather of the 19-year-old.

Late Sunday, Milpitas police said they will investigate the incident in conjunction with the Santa Clara County district attorneys office. On Monday, police said they are seeking witnesses to the shooting and intend to release the body-worn camera video footage as soon as practical.

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.

This is a tragic situation that is still being investigated to establish the sequence of events, Speckenheuer wrote in the statement.

Anyone with additional information about the investigation is asked to call the Milpitas Police Department at 408-586-2400. Information can also be given anonymously via the Crime Tip Hotline at 408-586-2400 or the Milpitas police website.

Matt Kawahara is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mkawahara@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @matthewkawahara
The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the AAP government to try and increase the COVID testing methodology, Rapid Antigen Test (RAT), in view of rise in coronavirus cases in the national capital.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli had Subramonium Prasad noted that present per day RAT numbers were "abysmal" as they were not even reaching 50 per cent of the target of 22,000 tests per day set by the Delhi government.

"See if you can expand the Rapid Antigen Testing numbers. Looking at the rate the (COVID-19) numbers are going up, the sooner you do, the better," the bench said.

Delhi government additional standing counsel Satyakam, appearing for the health department, said the RAT methodology was started on June 18 and was in its trial phase.

He said the testing methodology was presently confined to hot spots and containment zones and asked the court to wait for a week after which the RAT numbers would go up.

During the hearing via video conferencing, the high court also suggested that the RAT methodology be permitted in the designated COVID-19 hospitals as well so that testing numbers can be ramped up.

The bench was hearing an application by advocate Sanjeev Sharma who has contended there have been several instances where non-COVID patients needing surgery or emergent procedures are required to undergo testing before that, but hospital concerned is unable to conduct the test as they are not permitted to do so by Delhi government.

In the same matter, the high court had earlier asked the private labs to inform it about difficulties faced by them in carrying out COVID tests.

On June 18, the labs placed before the high court the various difficulties faced by them and it had asked an expert committee, set up by the Lieutenant Governor to advise Delhi Disaster Management Authority, to examine the issues raised and resolve them.

On Monday, the bench directed the Chief Secretary of Delhi government to convene a meeting of the committee to discuss the issues raised by the labs and directed that the panel's recommendations be conveyed to the high court before the next date of hearing on June 26.

Of the several difficulties highlighted by the labs, one was that the process of uploading patient registration data was cumbersome and time and manpower consuming as it has to be uploaded on the RT-PCR app, the COVID app, ICMR portal and the integrated disease surveillance portal linked to the office of the chief minister.

The labs said that all this required engaging several data entry operators so that information can be provided to multiple government agencies on a daily basis, thereby wasting valuable time and diverting their energies from the testing process.

They suggested that the process be simplified and a single point agency be designated for all private labs to furnish the requisite information to be shared with all the other government agencies.

The other difficulties included, duplication in the process of registration of phlebotomists (who collect samples), NABL's insistence on re-accreditation by accredited labs for testing for COVID, and that some of the symptoms of coronavirus like loss of smell and taste not being mentioned in the advisory for testing or in the forms that are required to be filled up.

The application by Sharma was filed in the main petition of advocate Rakesh Malhotra who had sought swift testing of COVID-19 cases and declaration of results within 48 hours.

The high court had on May 4 disposed of the petition with a direction to the Delhi government to publish on their websites correct data of tests conducted, number of positive results and pending outcomes.

The application has also alleged that the high court's May 4 direction was not being complied with properly by the Delhi government.
An international team of scientists is investigating how animals are responding to reduced levels of human activity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution today (22 June), the leaders of a new global initiative explain how research during this devastating health crisis can inspire innovative strategies for sharing space on this increasingly crowded planet, with benefits for both wildlife and humans.

Many countries around the world went into lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19. Brought about by the most tragic circumstances, this period of unusually reduced human mobility, which the article's authors coined "anthropause", can provide invaluable insights into human-wildlife interactions.

There have been countless posts on social media over the past few months reporting unusual wildlife encounters. Anecdotal observations, especially from metropolitan areas, suggest that nature has responded to lockdown. There not only seem to be more animals than usual, but there are also some surprising visitors: pumas have been spotted prowling the streets of downtown Santiago, Chile, and dolphins recently showed up in untypically calm waters in the harbour of Trieste, Italy.

For other species, the pandemic may have created new challenges. For example, some urban-dwelling animals, like gulls, rats or monkeys, may struggle to make ends meet without access to human food. In more remote areas, reduced human presence may potentially put endangered species, such as rhinos or raptors, at increased risk of poaching or persecution.

The authors emphasise that society's priority must be to tackle the immense human tragedy and hardship caused by Covid-19. But, they argue that we cannot afford to miss the opportunity to chart, for the first time on a truly global scale, the extent to which modern human mobility affects wildlife.

To address this challenge, researchers recently formed the "COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative". This international consortium will investigate animals' movements, behaviour and stress levels, before, during and after Covid-19 lockdown, using data collected with nifty animal-attached electronic devices called "bio-loggers".

The article's lead author, Professor Christian Rutz, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, and President of the International Bio-Logging Society, explains: "All over the world, field biologists have fitted animals with miniature tracking devices. These bio-loggers provide a goldmine of information on animal movement and behaviour, which we can now tap to improve our understanding of human-wildlife interactions, with benefits for all."

The team will integrate results from a wide variety of animals, including fish, birds and mammals, in an attempt to build a global picture of lockdown effects.

Dr Francesca Cagnacci, Senior Researcher at the Edmund Mach Foundation in Trento, Italy, and Principal Investigator of the Euromammals research network, says: "The international research community responded quickly to our recent call for collaboration, offering over 200 datasets for analysis. We are very grateful for this support."

So, what do the scientists hope to learn? Dr Matthias-Claudio Loretto, a Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, Germany, explains that it will be possible to address previously intractable questions: "We will be able to investigate if the movements of animals in modern landscapes are predominantly affected by built structures, or by the presence of humans. That is a big deal."

These insights will in turn inspire innovative proposals for improving human-wildlife coexistence, according to Professor Martin Wikelski, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, Germany. "Nobody is asking for humans to stay in permanent lockdown. But we may discover that relatively minor changes to our lifestyles and transport networks can potentially have significant benefits for both ecosystems and humans."

Coordinated global wildlife research during this period of crisis will provide unforeseen opportunities for humans to forge a mutually beneficial coexistence with other species, and to rediscover how important a healthy environment is for our own well-being.

###

Original publication

Christian Rutz, Matthias-Claudio Loretto, Amanda Bates, Sarah C. Davidson, Carlos M. Duarte, Walter Jetz, Mark Johnson, Akiko Kato, Roland Kays, Thomas Mueller, Richard B. Primack, Yan Ropert-Coudert, Marlee Tucker, Martin Wikelski and Francesca Cagnacci

COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife.

Nature Ecology & Evolution; 22 June, 2020
As Illinois moves closer to the fourth phase of Gov. J.B. Pritzkers five-phase COVID-19 reopening plan, other health and societal problems are surfacing and some of them have been compounded by the pandemic.

Illinois residents, consumers and businesses have been under some form of statewide restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 since March 16. The initial stay-home order kept many businesses closed and halted elective medical procedures and other visits to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to keep hospital beds open for a possible surge in coronavirus cases.

Now in Phase 3, medical facilities across the state are welcoming patients back for checkups and screenings. Some experts are worried about the consequences of delays in seeking care and of delays in screenings to detecting cancers.

Rush Medical College said that before the pandemic, it performed 800 screenings on average a month for colorectal cancer. That came to a stand-still for two months. Dr. Dana Hayden said treatment is more successful when caught early. Delayed discovery can make it more difficult to treat.

Delayed screening means people will miss the opportunity to prevent or treat the disease early, Hayden said. That leads to a greater incidence of cancer, which is diagnosed at later stages with more severe symptoms and higher mortality.

The pandemic has also taken a toll on mental health. Sangamon County Public Health Director Gail ONeill said mental health issues could be exacerbated by the high unemployment rate.

For many people losing temporarily, or long term, losing their livelihood is very stressful, so the mental health aspects of this epidemic we are aware of it and it is something that we really kind of worry about, ONeill said.

While the state added more than 60,000 jobs in the most recent jobs report, more than 1.3 million Illinoisans have filed for unemployment benefits since the beginning of March.

Public health officials also are concerned about substance abuse issues and crime.

At the beginning of Pritzkers stay-home order, the governor restricted the size of gatherings. ONeill had immediate concerns for those needing group therapy for things such as substance abuse and AA meetings for alcoholism.

Virtually [meeting] is just kind of not the same when youre going through that kind of battle, so this has been hard on families and people that are already stressed lives and even more stress as this goes on, she said.

In May, despite having strictest stay-home orders in the country, legal cannabis sales peaked at more than $44 million, the most since becoming legal in Illinois in January.

Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey said since the start of the pandemic, arrests in his area were slightly down, but he said deputies appear to be dealing with more severe crimes.

The shootings, weve had some weapons offenses in town, weve had a significant amount of domestic battery cases, which I think those are up probably nationwide with the lockdown, unfortunately, Downey said.

In Chicago, the total number of crimes decreased, but homicides and shootings are up.

The Well Being Trust alongside the Robert Graham Center projects deaths of despair such as suicide could be between 27,600 to 154,000 deaths nationwide outside of COVID-19. The slower the recovery, the greater the impact.

Sadly, these factors impact some communities more than others in significant and consequential ways, especially racial and ethnic minority populations, people who are lower-income, or people who live in rural areas, the report said. Without attention to these issues, our nation will continue to drive an increase in health disparities.

The report projects that over the next 10 years, Illinois could see a rate of 21 per 100,000 additional deaths from alcohol, drugs or suicides.
ROME - Italy, Germany and the United States pushed Monday for a cease-fire and de-escalation of tensions in Libya following a warning by Egypt that it would intervene militarily if Turkish-backed forces attack the strategic city of Sirte.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and his German counterpart, Heiko Maas, said after talks in Rome that a cease-fire is urgent given the Egyptian threat. Di Maio also called for the quick naming of a new U.N. envoy and the strong enforcement of a U.N. arms embargo on Libya.

If we stop the arrival of weapons, or strongly reduce them, we will be able to reduce the aggressiveness of the Libyan parties in this conflict, Di Maio said.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi warned over the weekend that any attack on Sirte or the inland Jufra air base by Turkish-backed forces loyal to the U.N.-supported but weak government in Tripoli would amount to crossing a red line.

He said Egypt could intervene militarily with the intention of protecting its western border with the oil-rich country, and of bringing stability  including establishing conditions for a cease-fire.

The Tripoli-based government said it considered el-Sissis comments a declaration of war, while authorities in the east welcomed his support.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the world body has long been pressing for a cease-fire, saying we all want a cessation of hostilities.

He said acting U.N. envoy Stephanie Williams continues to shuttle between the warring sides and their foreign backers, urging a de-escalation and resumption of the U.N.-facilitated political process.

The last thing that Libya needs right now is more fighting, more military mobilization, more transfer of weapons, more presence of either foreign fighters or mercenaries on its soil, Dujarric said, responding to Egypts threats of military intervention.

Diplomats at the United Nations said the world bodys search for a new U.N. envoy to Libya ran aground when the Trump administration blocked two of the secretary generals nominations, saying it wants one senior official solely tasked with negotiating a cease-fire and another running the U.N. mission. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.

U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of Africa Command, and U.S. Ambassador Richard Norland meanwhile met Monday with Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj in the Libyan capital, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy.

It said the two U.S. officials stressed the need for military pause and return to negotiations.

All sides need to return to U.N.-led ceasefire and political negotiations because this tragic conflict is robbing all Libyans of their future, Townsend said.

Norland called for foreign countries supporting Libyas rivals to stop fueling the conflict, respect the U.N. arms embargo, and uphold commitments made at the Berlin Summit earlier this year.

The German foreign minister said the Egyptian threat indicated that a further escalation was possible, making it all the more urgent to agree on a cease-fire now.

Di Maio, for his part, said Italy was prepared to provide even more contributions to a naval and air mission to enforce the U.N. arms embargo on Libya, saying it will be crucial even after a cease-fire is signed.

In the coming days we will have talks with the Libyan parties to try to bring forward as soon as possible the signing of a cease-fire, Di Maio said. Even once there is a cease-fire, I think the (arms embargo) mission will continue to be important, because especially with a cease-fire, we have to limit the arrival of weapons in Libya.

Italy is particularly concerned that any escalation of the conflict will unleash more waves of migrants onto smugglers boats headed for Italian shores. The coronavirus emergency in hard-hit Italy stemmed their arrivals, but authorities fear that the numbers will swell again with the health emergency easing and the return to the Mediterranean Sea of humanitarian rescue ships.

Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. The country has since split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by armed groups and foreign governments.

Eastern-based forces under Khalifa Hifter launched an offensive to try to take Tripoli in April last year. Hifters forces are backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, while the Tripoli-allied militias are aided by Qatar, Italy and Turkey.

Dujarric said Hifters failed campaign to capture Tripoli set off a humanitarian crisis, with 1 million people in need of aid and almost a half million people internally displaced.

Tripoli-based forces with Turkish support gained the upper hand in the war earlier this month after retaking the capitals airport, all main entrance and exit points to the city and a string of key towns near Tripoli. They threatened to retake Sirte, which could allow them to gain control of oil fields and facilities in the south that Hifter seized earlier this year as part of his offensive on Tripoli.

With the recent retreat of Hifters forces from their last western stronghold of Tarhuna and the discovery of several mass graves in the area, calls have mounted for a transparent investigation into possible war crimes. Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, said Monday that her office had received credible reports of 11 mass graves containing men, women and children.

In Geneva, the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council agreed unanimously on Monday to call for the immediate creation and deployment of a one-year fact-finding mission to document rights abuses and violations in Libya since 2016.

The 47-member-state body asked the U.N. human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, to appoint experts for the mission and called on Libyan authorities to grant unhindered access to the country and the right to speak with anyone they choose.

Eric Goldstein, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, welcomed the step as a wake-up call to warlords and armed groups that they could be held accountable for serious crimes committed by their rank and file.

___

Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo, David Rising in Berlin, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

___

This story was first published on June 22, 2020. It was updated on June 23, 2020 to correctly attribute details about the Trump administration blocking U.N. nominations to diplomats and not to the U.N. spokesman.
Travel trade professionals from across the world gathered in their thousands to attend the three-day Arabian Travel Market (ATM) Virtual, which debuted on June 1-3.

The online event which attracted almost 12,000 attendees from 140 countries around the world, focused on the ME regions tourism sector, addressed emerging trends, as well as the opportunities and the challenges which are directly impacting the travel and tourism industry amid the Covid-19 global health pandemic and beyond.

In total, the event facilitated 11,301 prescheduled one-to-one meetings, of which over 92 per cent were rated four or five, out of five stars. A series of one-to-one pre-scheduled 30-minute meetings between editors, exhibitors, and buyers also took place, and 23 live video sessions included Q&As and polls which ran alongside the presentations to enable audience interaction. Overall, the webinars had more than 24,000 views over the course of three days.

Danielle Curtis, Exhibition Director ME, Arabian Travel Market (ATM), said: Considering that this was a debut event, the outcome clearly validated our strategy to virtually support and guide the regions travel and tourism industry. The resilience and determination to get through these challenging times was clearly evident."

It also underscored our commitment to organise an event with positive and constructive business insight and opinion, as well as offering networking opportunities across the entire community."

There were so many highlights during the event, that it would be extremely difficult to single out any particular session. The event was seamless, each session complemented the next and it is also fair to say that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

The highlight of the opening day was an interview with Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airline. During a discussion with aviation expert John Strickland, Sir Tim predicted a degree of tourism recovery during the course of 2021, and expectations for Emirates to be operating its network prior to Covid-19 by 22/23, 23/24.

Another key event that took place on the first day was the Arival-run OTAs & Distribution for Tours & Attractions Post-Covid session, which explored the changes amid the rise of online travel agencies (OTAs), the re-opening of operations and what this means for tour and attraction operators across the Middle East.

The much anticipated The Virtual ATM China Forum took an in-depth look at the potential of the Chinese outbound leisure market post Covid-19s closed borders and what overseas destinations and attractions can do to reassure and convince Chinese tourists, of whom 45 per cent are willing to travel overseas, that their destination is safe to visit.

Other issues discussed included, technology, the role of international industry associations and the need for destinations to change their propositions, with a focus on safety, trust, and consumer confidence.

Another highlight of the second day was the live webinar Bouncing Back: Tourism Strategies for the Future where Keith Tan, CEO, Singapore Tourism Board, underscored the importance of governments implementing green lanes to aid tourism recovery and promote bilateral travel agreements. He cited the common standards Singapore and China have implemented to allow travel between the two countries.

The third and final day included the interview with Wizz Air CEO, Joszef Varadi where he confirmed his ambitions for the low-cost carriers impending move to operate out of Abu Dhabi, and their plans to have 100 aircrafts serving the GCC markets by 2035.

Other highlights on the final day included the International Travel Investment Conference summit, the responsible tourism session, The Implications of Covid-19 for Responsible Hospitality, and the Influencers session, Make Your Connection: Influencers as a Key Part of the Marketing Mix  COVID-19 The Road to Recovery.

As an organiser we have learnt a lot from this virtual experience and to give our seminar programme broader reach and greater inclusivity, we will certainly be looking to integrate more virtual elements into our physical show next year, said Curtis.

The sessions and other content are now available on demand via the WTM Global Hub. To view, please go to: https://hub.wtm.com/atm-virtual/ . - TradeArabia News Service
According to the eight-year-old indictment, he conspired from 2005 to 2008 with other Sinaloa Cartel members to transport multi-ton quantities of illegal drugs into the U.S. He is one of more than 20 members of the Sinaloa or Beltran-Leyva drug cartels to be charged in federal court in Chicago.
Ludhiana The Southwest monsoon is expected to hit Punjab on June 25, a week ahead of its normal date, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, has said, adding that this will be a boon for most paddy farmers in the state.

Professor of agricultural meteorology at PAU KK Gill said, Conditions are favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon in entire Haryana, including Chandigarh, and most parts of Punjab during the next 48-72 hrs. On Monday, the monsoon advanced into most parts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and adjoining areas.

She added that light to moderately pre-monsoon showers are likely to commence from north-eastern parts of Punjab and Haryana around late June 23/24. She added that the early monsoon would benefit those paddy farmers who had used the Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR) technique in the first week of June, but would worry other farmers who had sown paddy through DSR on or around June 15.
A picture says a thousand words!

After sparking romance rumors for a few months now, Bachelor Nation stars Chris Soules and Victoria Fuller aren't hiding any longer. Over the weekend, the two stepped out and posed for a picture during an afternoon date in Fuller's hometown.

The duo, who has yet to confirm their relationship themselves, snapped their first photo together at the local Leaping Lizard Cafe & Bakery in Virginia Beach, VA.

"Loved having the cutest Bachelor couple join us for lunch today! Thanks for coming," the cafe shared on Instagram, alongside a snapshot of Chris and Victoria smiling and hugging each other.

For their Saturday outing, the pair kept things casual and chic. The Bachelor star dressed up in a pastel green two-piece set, which entailed an oversized denim jacket and mini skirt. The former Dancing With the Stars contestant donned a baby blue plaid shirt and jeans.

The History-Making Bachelor Nation Moments

Back in April, Chris and Victoria sparked romance rumors after multiple publications reported they were seeing each other.

RealitySteve was the first to stir up pot on Twitter.

"(EXCLUSIVE): One of the more random Bachelor 'couples' that I can't say I ever would've guessed," his tweet read at the time. "I don't know how long this has been going on or how serious it is, but I can confirm that Victoria Fuller is currently together in Iowa for the week with Chris Soules. Discuss."

Following RealitySteve's post, Us Weekly reported (through its sources) that "Chris slid into Victoria's DMs... He apparently DMs a lot of people."

A few weeks later, Victoria added more fuel to the fire after posting an Instagram picture with the location tag, "Arlington, Iowa," where Chris lives. "Farm life," she captioned her post.

Bachelor Nation fans first met Chris on Andi Dorfman's season of The Bachelorette. While he didn't win Andi's heart, we would soon be in charge of handing out the roses when he was announced as The Bachelor.

Story continues

During his season of the ABC dating series, he proposed to Whitney Bischoff. However, they both decided to go their separate ways and ended their engagement shortly after the show.

In 2017, Chris was arrested following a car crash in Iowa. At the time, the Iowa State Patrol told E! News that he was driving his pickup truck, and rear-ended Kenneth Mosher's tractor trailer. The Bachelor alum was accused of leaving the scene of the accident before law enforcement arrived. He was arrested at his home. Kenneth was taken to a nearby hospital, and soon after, he was pronounced dead.

A year later, Chris entered a conditional guilty plea to leaving the scene of the accident resulting in serious injury. In 2019, he accepted a suspended two-year prison sentence to serve two years on probation. He also reached a $2.5 million settlement with the Kenneth's family.

Victoria appeared on Peter Weber's season of The Bachelor, which aired last year. She was one of the final three women in the dating series, however, went home after the fantasy suite dates.

Soon after her time on the ABC franchise, she came under fire after a past campaign she modeled for had resurfaced. She appeared to model in "White Lives Matter" merchandise, which was apparently done for a marlin conservation group.

She issued an apology following the backlash.

"The company 'We Love Marlins' is in support of catching white, blue & black marlins and releasing them back into the wild," Fuller wrote on Instagram at the time. "In regards to a sensitive topic, I come from a very diverse background & am in support of all races! Virginia Beach is a VERY large fishing town where marlin tournaments are held every year! Glad to clear this up."
The actress tells us that just as she has picked up nuances in the screenplay, she has also learnt Telugu during the lockdown

Director G. B. Krishnas forthcoing film, Black, a thriller, will showcase Darshana Banik in the role of a civil engineer.

I play an independent girl who has her set of priorities; its an emotional yet a matured character where the multiple layers in my role makes it intriguing, explains Darshana, adding that working in a thriller gave her a different perspective.

Darshana, who made her Telugu debut with Aatagallu shares with us how she looks forward to her upcoming role.

Earlier, I was part of breezy entertainers in Bengali cinema, but being part of a racy and action thriller such as Black gave me a new perspective over the craft, points out Darshana, one of the rising stars in the Bengali industry.

The actress tells us that just as she has picked up nuances in the screenplay, she has also learnt Telugu during the lockdown.

I believe knowing the language makes you express better, I think it is especially true in the case of emotional scenes  it makes a great difference when you know the meaning of your lines. Because I wanted to do more South films, I made an effort to pick up Telugu during this lockdown. Itll definitely come in handy when I resume my shooting, she explains.
Researchers say genetics may determine wound infection and healing

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers have determined that genetics may play a role in how wounds heal. Caleb Phillips, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University and director of the Phillips Laboratory in the Department of Biological Sciences, and doctoral student Craig Tipton led the study, "Patient genetics is linked to chronic wound microbiome composition and healing," published Thursday (June 18) in the open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal PLOS Pathogens.

Phillips, who also serves as Curator of Genetic Resources at the Natural Science Research Laboratory's (NSRL) Robert J. Baker Genetic Resources Collection, said the study determined that certain genes are associated with the number of bacteria and abundance of common pathogens in wounds. The collection of microbes, known as a "microbiome," can determine how a wound heals and how long that process takes. The research also showed that the more diversity within a wound microbiome, the less time it took to heal.

Patients visiting Lubbock's Southwest Regional Wound Care Center (SWRWCC) for the care of a lower-extremity infected wound consented to participation in the study and provided samples from their wound(s) and from a cheek swab. The study used microbiome profiling, genome fingerprinting, wet lab validation, imaging and model development to analyze the samples and data, and included researchers from Texas Tech, the Texas Tech University Health Science Center (TTUHSC), the SWRWCC and the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth (UNTHSC).

"We showed that there are identifiable locations in people's genome where, depending on their genotype, they tend to get infections by specific bacteria," Phillips said. "The different genomic locations identified tend to be related in terms of the types of genes they are close to and may regulate. A working hypothesis emerging from the research is that genetic differences influencing genes encoding the way our cells interact with the environment and each other are important for infection differences."

Though there is still work to be done before the research directly benefits patients, Tipton said the study is an important and promising step in that direction.

"Personalized medicine is a current hot topic in modern healthcare, where the goal is to identify inherent differences within individuals that may cause them to be impacted differently by disease and finding treatments that are well-suited and tailored to the individual and may contribute to better patient outcomes," Tipton said. "Our project furthers two equally-interesting avenues of research with potential translation to the clinic. In one, it is our goal to develop robust genomic predictive models that could help physicians to determine a patient's risk for chronic wound infection, particularly to specific bacteria.

"In the second, this work helps to inform how genetic variation in patients can influence microbiome-host interactions and wound infection pathogenesis. By further studying infection pathogenesis and how these complex microbial communities interact, it may be possible to improve existing therapies or to develop new therapeutic strategies altogether."

Phillips said he looks forward to continuing his research at Texas Tech. His lab is developing a follow-up study that he hopes will collect enough information to create accurate predictive models. They also are working on a study exploring how a person's location in the U.S. shapes differences in chronic wound microbiomes.

"Texas Tech provides good support for research and is continually working for growth," Phillips said. "My research, like that of most others, has been generally enhanced by the academic freedom provided at the university. The Natural Science Research Laboratory is a premier Natural History Collection, and the samples archived at the Genetic Resources Collection have allowed me to design studies such as this one that would otherwise not have been possible. The hard work and creativity of doctoral student Craig Tipton were essential to the success of this project, as was collaboration with the laboratories of Nicole Phillips at UNTHSC and Kendra P. Rumbaugh at TTUHSC, Professor Todd Little in the Texas Tech College of Education, the SWRWCC and the NSRL."

###

The team of researchers included:

Department of Biological Sciences and the NSRL: Phillips and Tipton, who led the project from conception to experimental design and conducted data analysis, wet lab validation and structural equation modeling and wrote the final paper. The NSRL also assisted with curation and availability of samples and data curation.

SWRWCC: Dr. Randy Wolcott, founder; technical director Nicholas E. Sanford and information technology network administrator Clint Miller, who assisted with sample collection and data curation.

TTUHSC: Rumbaugh, a professor in the Department of Surgery and co-director of the Burn Center of Research Excellence; and post-doctoral researcher Derek Fleming, who conducted mouse model histological imaging.

Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at the UNTHSC: Nicole Phillips, assistant professor and director of the N. Phillips Lab; Gita Pathak and Talisa K. Silzer, who were doctoral students during the project in the N. Phillips lab; and post-doctoral researcher Jie Sun. The group assisted with patient genome fingerprinting.

Texas Tech Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership in the College of Education and Optentia Research Focus Area at North-West University in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa: Little, who assisted with structural equation modeling.

Visit Texas Tech Today to read more about this research: https:/ / today. ttu. edu/ posts/ 2020/ 06/ Stories/ researcher-say-genetics-may-determine-wound-infection-and-healing .

To read the complete study, visit the PLOS Pathogens website: https:/ / journals. plos. org/ plospathogens/ article?id= 10. 1371/ journal. ppat. 1008511

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Roger Stone Says Hell Seek to Delay Start of Sentence In COVID-19 Infested Prison

Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former adviser to President Donald Trump, said he is going to court this week to try and delay the start of his sentence in what he called a COVID-19 infested prison.

Stone said in a post on Facebook that he is headed to court this week in an effort to delay the death sentence that he said would be the consequence of his being forced to serve time behind bars while the pandemic continues to rage.

The danger posed by the potentially deadly bug to the U.S. prison population led Attorney General William Barr to call on the Bureau of Prisons to expand the use of home confinement for older inmates at higher risk of infection. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, the novel coronavirus that emerged from China last year and causes the illness COVID-19, affects the elderly and those with underlying respiratory conditions far more seriously.

At 67 years old and with a history of asthma this is a certain death sentence, Stone wrote in a post on Instagram.

A federal jury convicted Stone on charges including obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to a congressional committee that was investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Stone was sentenced on Feb. 20 to three years and four months behind bars. He has been ordered to surrender to a federal prison on June 30. The facility, Stone claimed in his message on Instagram, is known to have a substantial presence of coronavirus.

In a video accompanying the Instagram post, Stone said he had instructed my attorneys to file an immediate emergency motion with Judge Amy Berman Jackson asking for an extension in my surrender date because of the dangers of coronavirus, and at the same time asking to be left out of prison on an appeal bond pending the hearing of my very real appeal.

Jackson, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, faced calls from Stones legal team to recuse herself because she praised the jurors before deciding on Stones request for a new trial, which rested on the issue of whether the jurors were impartial.

I am not optimistic about a favorable ruling on either motion given the history of this trial, but I do feel an obligation to pursue every legal avenue, and exhaust them, before going formally to the president of the United States and appealing for a pardon or commutation of sentence in the name of both mercy and justice, Stone said in the video.

Trump earlier in June took to Twitter to share a post by Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. In the post, Kirk argued for a full pardon for Stone after making an earlier tweet with claims of a stacked, partisan jury and a rigged, unfair sentencing process.

Trump retweeted the post, writing, Roger was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!

The president said in February that he wouldnt be pardoning Stone, though he seemed to leave open the possibility for a later time.

Im not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the United States, I want the process play out, I think thats the best thing to do, Trump said at a Hope for Prisoners graduation ceremony in Las Vegas in February. Because Id love to see Roger exonerated and Id love to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.

At some point Ill make a determination, Trump said, but Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process.

In his Facebook post, Stone shared a link to StoneDefenseFund.com, a website that seeks to help with his legal costs.

A note there blames the fake news media black-out for misleading the public about how flimsy the case against him is and how he was railroaded in a malicious prosecution and a Soviet-style show trial in Washington, DC in which the Judge barred every powerful line of defense and carefully stacked an anti-Trump jury comprised completely of liberal Democrats.

It was a total set-up perjury trap by Congressman Adam Schiff!, the note claims.
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) held a webinar on conflicts in the East Sea and current challenges and threats on June 20, attracting around 30 leading experts and scholars in Asian-Pacific-related issues in Russia.

Experts and scholars attending RAS webinar on East Sea

Speakers speeches focused on recent tensions in the East Sea, unilateral actions, international law violations, reactions of related parties, the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the East Sea situation.

Scholar Pavel Gudev from the RAS Institute of World Economy and International Relations stressed that the making and signing of a legal-binding Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) is extremely important to adjust the conduct of parties involved.

Prof. Dr. Dmitri Mosyakov, Director of the Centre for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania Studies of the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies, said that Vietnam has made contributions to maintaining peace in the region, thus helping increase ASEANs position and role in the world.

Vietnam is consistent with its policy of settling disputes by peaceful means and supporting the early signing and enforcement of the COC, he said, adding that the countrys cooperation with other countries in Asia and the world has had positive impact on reducing tensions and contributing to peace and stability in the East Sea.

His view was shared by many other participants at the event who also emphasised the countrys consistent policy of solving East Sea-related disputes peacefully and obeying international law, especially the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Regarding Russias policies related to the East Sea issue, they stated that Russia always backs relevant parties solving disputes by peaceful diplomacy, speeding up negotiations on and early signing the legal-binding COC./.VNA
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the country is fighting a twin battle against China.

Kejriwal said, "Our country is fighting a twin battle against China. First, our doctors are fighting against Chinese virus and second, India's brave soldiers are fighting China on the border."

The chief minister termed the coronavirus as 'Chinese virus'. He said, "Just as the brave soldiers of our country are facing China on the border, similarly health workers within the country are fighting against the coronavirus.

Kejriwal said, "As our 20 jawans did not retreat while guarding the border in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, we will also not retreat. We have arranged corona beds on a war footing. There are about 7,000 beds for Covid-19 patients in Delhi at the moment. Don't worry. We will not allow the lack of beds come in the way of treating corona patients at all."

Kejriwal said the number of tests in Delhi has also been increased. Earlier there used to be 5,000 tests per day in Delhi, whereas now 18,000 tests are being done in Delhi every day.

The Delhi Chief Minister said that the government will provide oximeters to the corona patients in home isolation. With this equipment, corona patients will be able to measure the level of oxygen in their body.

He also said that the Delhi government is getting full support from the central government in the fight against coronavirus.
A disturbing cellphone recording that was taken during Sunday's George Floyd protests in Ohio shows a double amputee thrashing on the ground in agony after allegedly being knocked down and pepper-sprayed by police.

The incident took place during a clash between Columbus police officers and a crowd of people protesting police brutality.

According to multiple purported witnesses, the double amputee was peacefully protesting when officers possibly struck him and deployed pepper spray against him.

Video from Sunday's protests in Columbus, Ohio, shows a double amputee laying on the sidewalk in agony with his prosthetic legs detached after an alleged clash with police

According to witness accounts, police officers seeking to disperse the crowd knocked down the disabled man and deployed pepper spray

Officers then allegedly detached his legs and took them away, but other protesters intervened and retrieved them, getting maced in the process

They also allegedly disconnected and took away the young man's prosthetic legs, forcing him to crawl away for help.

Video shot at the scene shows the unnamed man laying on the ground and being attended to be other protesters.

A man crouching next to him repeatedly screams 'medic!'

The amputee's prosthetic legs are seen resting on the sidewalk a short distance away from him.

According to witness accounts, police officers had detached the legs from the disabled protester, leaving him helpless on the ground.

Other people in the crowd reportedly confronted the officers and demanded they return the prosthetics, but the cops allegedly refused.

Then several protesters allegedly rushed the officers, getting pepper-sprayed in the process, and wrestled the legs back from them.

Laurenn McCubbin, a professor at Columbus College of Art & Design, wrote on Twitter that her husband was at the protest and 'saw the cops hit & mace an unarmed kid and then STEAL HIS PROSTHETIC LEGS.'

She went on: 'This kid, who was doing nothing but exercising his 1st amendment rights, was knocked over, maced, and had to flee from the cops ON HIS HANDS, to find medical help.

'For everyone asking: the protesters begged the cops for the legs back, cops refused. Then a group rushed the cops (getting maced) and were able to grab the legs back & get them back to the kid.'

DailyMail.com on Monday reached out to the Columbus Police Department seeking comment on the alleged actions of the officers.

Video from the protest shows Columbus officers using their bikes to shove protesters

Officers are seen in this screenshot deploying what appears to be pepper spray or tear gas

The mayor of Columbus said last week the use of chemical agents against peaceful crowds has been banned

Additional video recordings from Sunday's protests showed officers using their department-issued bicycles as battering rams to push the crowd back in a bid to clear the street.

Videos also showed officers deploying canisters of what appeared to be pepper spray to disperse the protesters, even though Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said last week the City Council banned the use of pepper spray and tear gas against 'non-aggressive, non-violent crowds,' reported Newsweek.

'We have been clear about respecting and protecting peaceful protest. We also must keep city streets open to the public to travel and protect residents from lawlessness including the drag racing, fires and injuries in recent nights,' the mayor said.

On Monday, Ginther addressed the incident involving the amputee in a tweet, writing: 'I have seen the video and photo of the disabled man downtown last night. We are taking the matter very seriously and working diligently to find video, photos and additional information.'
Wirecard is a payments processor, offering companies services allowing them to accept credit cards and digital payments like Apple Pay or Paypal in stores, online or on mobile. (Wikimedia Commons - Travelarz)

Frankfurt Am Main: German payments provider Wirecard is in crisis after it admitted Monday that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) recorded in its accounts do not exist.

Here are the most important facts about a scandal that is drawing comparisons with the collapse of US energy company Enron in the early 2000s over accounting fraud.

What does Wirecard do?

At its heart, Wirecard is a payments processor, offering companies services allowing them to accept credit cards and digital payments like Apple Pay or Paypal in stores, online or on mobile.

The company collects a commission for assuring that merchants will receive the money they are owed.

Around that, it sells its customers extra services like analytics based on the data generated from those transactions that it says can help boost sales and track trends.

Wirecard claims around 300,000 firms worldwide as customers, and deals with giants in the sector like Chinas AliPay and WeChat, Apple and Google have offered hot prospects for growth.

How did Wirecard make it big?

Wirecard was founded in 1999, starting out offering its services to porn and gambling sites.

Such stable revenue streams helped it survive the early-2000s dotcom crisis, and as more savoury forms of online commerce ramped up through the 2000s and 2010s, the groups star mounted with it.

In the early days, founder Markus Braun increased his stake to seven percent, becoming the largest shareholder.

Wirecard now highlights clients like KLM, Deutsche Telekom and FedEx on its website.

First listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange in 2005, by 2018 it elbowed traditional lender Commerzbank out of the blue-chip DAX share index.

In early 2019, Wirecards market value hit around 17 billion euros, matching crisis-ridden Deutsche Bank with 15 times fewer workers and revenues.

The past weeks revelations have now collapsed that value to two billion.

Why werent weak spots uncovered?

Beginning in January 2019, a string of Financial Times reports highlighted accounting irregularities, notably in Wirecards Asian division.

Bosses denied any wrongdoing and the German financial world appeared to close ranks around its favourite.

Markets watchdog BaFin announced a probe into potential links between the FT and short sellers betting against Wirecard stock.

The fact his agency did not catch the scandal sooner was a shame, BaFin chief Felix Hufeld said Monday.

We werent effective enough to prevent something like this happening, Hufeld added.

Wirecards status as a Payment Service Provider (PSP) subjected it to multiple EU directives since 2008 obliging it to better fight payment fraud, but companies are not subject to as much scrutiny over their accounting practices.

Who controls Wirecard?

Wirecard was founded by Austrian Markus Braun, who until Friday served as chief executive.

Braun resigned after the company was forced to acknowledge the 1.9 billion euros might be missing.

Chief operating officer Jan Marsalek had been dismissed the day before.

American James Freis, installed as compliance chief on Thursday, was promoted to acting CEO on Brauns departure.

Freis had previously been compliance chief at German stock market operator Deutsche Boerse.

Aside from Freis, Braun and the remainder of Wirecards former four-person board are under investigation by Munich prosecutors over market manipulation relating to how they presented KPMGs findings in its audit of their old accounts.

Wirecards five-person supervisory board is headed by Thomas Eichelmann, a former business consultant who later switched to the financial sector including a stint at Deutsche Boerse.

Who is behind the missing cash?

German news weekly Der Spiegel named Mark Tolentino, a lawyer working in the Philippines, as the trustee responsible for the missing cash.

Based in Philippine financial centre Makati City, his website had vanished by Monday, although a Facebook page with public legal Q+A video sessions remained online.

Meanwhile one of the countrys largest banksBPIwhere some of the missing money was supposedly depositedconfirmed to AFP that an employee was on preventive suspension.

Media had reported that an assistant manager at BPI signed a forged document relating to the supposed deposits at the bank.
When the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was created in 1959, 40% of the Latin American population did not have access to water infrastructure. The IDBs first loan was to the city of Arequipa and its water sanitation project, which proved the institutions ability to detect the regions real problems.

The idea of a Latin American development bank headed by Latin Americans did not please many people  not even Che Guevara, who branded it the latrine bank, and not those who defended the status quo and who forecast that the IDBs first president, Felipe Herrera, would last six months because the only Latin Americans that Wall Street was familiar with was those who showed up looking for a handout.

Of all the development banks, the IDB is by far the leading source of financing in Latin America and the Caribbean

Yet his presidency lasted 10 years, and he was followed by Ortiz Mena, Enrique Iglesias and Luis Alberto Moreno. Each one of them made changes and left a personal mark on the bank, but they all had one thing in common: their absolute willingness to speak with the entire region, regardless of the political regimes, and to extend loans on just one condition: that the project should be viable and contribute to the economic and social development of Latin America.

Today, the IDB funds around a hundred projects annually in infrastructure, education and trade integration; it facilitates the design and execution of reforms in education, health and the modernization of the state; it also has a private branch that participates in business projects and offers technical assistance. Of all the development banks, including the World Bank, the IDB is by far the leading source of financing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The IDB is more than a bank because all its presidents have always known that development is about more than just building dams. They knew that in order to make Latin America a prosperous, inclusive place, it would be necessary to invest in social policies and knowledge. It was that comprehensive vision that allowed the IDB to become the bank of ideas for the regions public policies. Today, the IDB is one of the few existing institutions that is able to combine loans and economic and social development policies with a deep knowledge of its 26 borrowers based on history, mutual respect, trust and dialogue. That is why it is known as Latin Americas friendly bank.

But there is another reason. Ever since its creation, this bank has been headed by a Latin American president and supported by an executive vice-president from the United States, the banks biggest individual shareholder. And borrowers have had most of the voting power on the board of governors. This governance system has not only worked impeccably well  with a portfolio of $100 billion (89.44 billion) in loans in the region with the most economic crises of the last few decades, the bank holds a triple-A credit rating  it also explains why the region identifies so closely with the institution.

This balance is now under threat due to the Trump administrations decision to nominate a US citizen to lead the IDB. As several former Latin American presidents have noted, this decision goes beyond the mere fact of breaking with a diplomatic protocol: it is the latest link in the chain of the Republican administrations attacks against the global multilateral system, from the Paris Climate Agreement to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Part of the blame for this situation must be assigned to Latin American countries themselves, for having been unable to come up with a candidate who could be unanimously accepted by everyone. If political differences made that impossible, then countries should have focused on professionalism, personal merit and experience. There are candidates out there. But countries did not do this, and now they are dealing with a superlative failure of diplomacy that reveals how deeply the region is divided, damaged and fearful of the upcoming economic depression.

For reasons of history, of democratic culture and economic interests, particularly in Spains case, Europe should be a relevant player at debates about Latin America

But taking advantage of the vulnerabilities and lack of Latin American leadership in order to strike a blow that will create institutional instability is an unjustifiable decision by the US, especially considering that its own election is just four months away. There was no need to create this kind of institutional disruption. The last thing Latin America needs right now is instability at one of the institutions that provides the greatest cohesiveness and which most successfully brings together differing views on development.

The IDBs greatest virtue is that it is a bank with ideas, not a bank with an ideology. It is a public asset that should be preserved, if only because history has taught Latin America that there is no one single solution to its many serious problems, beyond respect for democratic values. The IDBs success rests on its pragmatic attitude and its respect for all of its members. That is what has made it useful to the region.

The non-regional partners at IDB  essentially the Europeans, who hold 13% of the shares, led by Spain with 2%  should not dismiss this as a domestic issue or just another rip in the multilateral system that they can afford to ignore. It is not. For reasons of history, of democratic culture and economic interests, particularly in Spains case, Europe should be a relevant player at debates about the region, if only because if the European Union still wants to be a global player in the 21st century, it simply cannot be left out of events in a region representing eight percent of the global population and economy; a region that is wealthy beyond belief in raw materials; a region that is a key player in the fight against climate change, corruption and drug trafficking; and a region with three representatives at the G20. Europe should also not forget that China and the US are already playing out a not-so-minor part of their battle for world hegemony in Latin America.

Europe can and must help achieve balanced, pragmatic institutions with checks and balances. Its agreement at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is just like the one the IDB had, and it proves that we Europeans believe in the value of rules and the balance of leadership. It would not be easy to explain why what is good, where Europeans are concerned, is not worth defending when were talking about Latin Americans. It would also not be easy to explain to voters that nothing has been done to prevent the erosion (even it is a remote risk) of the social and environmental conditions that come with the IDBs loans, including those extended by its private branch. After all, our own capital is also invested in those projects, and we all depend on the rational preservation of the Amazon rainforest.

It is not possible to look the other way. The time has come to say stop. Give yourselves time to think it over. Postpone the vote for a few months. Whats at stake here is an important institution that has improved the lives of people in the region, and thousands of professionals are proud to have devoted their careers to it. Putting the IDB at risk is not worth it.

Jose Juan Ruiz is an economist.

English version by Susana Urra.
Advertisement

Brits have reacted with delight as nail bars, salons and pubs are finally set to open on July 4 - but hairdressers are already facing waiting lists of four months.

After a lockdown of unruly hair, chipped nails and a distinct lack of pint at your local pub, the government is set to announce the opening of a number of key businesses.

The Prime Minister is expected to say on Tuesday that the hospitality sector can reopen and will clarify if the two-metre social distancing rule can be relaxed.

Boris Johnson will discuss the proposed changes with the Covid-19 strategy committee on Monday afternoon, attended by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer for England Professor Chris Whitty.

He will then outline plans to Parliament for pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers to reopen in England, and a possible loosening of the distancing guidance to boost the economic restart.

On Sunday, the PM said the progress made in the fight against coronavirus during three months of lockdown mean 'it will be possible to open up more'.

The news has gone down well on social media, as people prepare to tame their wild hair, get their nails done, and relax with friends at the pub (at a social distance). MailOnline has revealed what your trip to these soon to open businesses could look like...

Hairdressers

One of the most sought after businesses Brits want to reopen is hairdressers so people can sort out their unruly hair.

Appearing on Sky News today stylist James Johnson, from Kent, said it was going to be 'so busy for us' with an expected backlog of people wanting to get a trim, and that it would be 'first come first served'.

He said: 'Our main priority is making sure our clients are safe, as long as we are safe as well. I think it's overdue and I think financially we are all ready to go back, there has got to be a point where we've got to get the money coming in and paying our bills.'

On keeping clean in the coronavirus era, he added: 'As a member of the beauty industry our standards of cleanliness are already very high. It's just reinforcing that we are keeping it super clean, super disinfected. Obviously we will have to wear gloves and masks, maybe even aprons, and keep things in terms of contact to a minimal. '

When people do make it back into the hairdresser it will be a different experience to pre-pandemic. These fascinating photographs offer a glimpse into hair appointments of the future - featuring gloves and masks for all staff, protective screens at the reception desk and floor markings to ensure social distancing.

Gatsby & Miller in Amersham, Buckinghamshire - one of the 25,000 UK salon partners of beauty giant L'Oreal created a blueprint for the sector last month.

Hhow the client has hair styled at Gatsby and Miller in Amersham. The staff demonstrate how the Salon will operate once it re-opens. with social distancing, PPE and plastic screens Dawn Montgomery (wearing face masks) acts as a client and senior colourist Laren Roads (with the face shield) acts as the hair stylist

Dawn Montgomery acts as a client and senior colourist Laren Roads acts as a hair stylist in Amersham, Buckinghamshire

One of Britain's first hairdressers ready for reopening is the Gatsby & Miller in Amersham, which will feature Perspex screens

All staff at the salon will have to wear a face mask and gloves, while customers will be asked to wear a mask during their visit

This includes a digital screen in the window to display important reminders about social distancing, and clients being welcomed by one mask-wearing stylist who will stay with them for their visit via a one-way system.

All staff will be wearing gloves and masks which will be changed throughout the day, while customers will be also asked to wear a mask during the appointment and hand sanitiser dispensers will be provided for their use.

Photographs taken by MailOnline inside the salon show a demonstration of the new salon, with Dawn Montgomery acting as a client and senior colourist Lauren Roads being the hair stylist.

The National Hair and Beauty Federation released a set of guidelines last month to help businesses prepare themselves for reopening.

It suggested walk-in salons switch to an appointment-only system, or offer timed tickets to allow customers to 'reserve' their slot and return at the designated time.

To reduce the amount of time a customer spends in the chair, salons have been advised to trial online consultations where they will be able to discuss the treatment.

Floor markings will keep customers socially distanced during their appointment at the hair salon in Amersham

Dawn Montgomery acts as a client to show how customers will pay for their appointments - with no cash accepted

Lauren Roads prepares for work as she puts on a pair of gloves to help reduce the risk of spreading the virus at the salon

Clients will be welcomed by one mask-wearing stylist who will stay with them for their visit via a one-way system

Clients in the building will be asked to 'please clean your hands with sanitiser when entering and leaving the salon'

Another sign at the products aisle asks customers to ask a stylist to assist them - and to not touch anything themselves

'This could be done before your salon or barbershop is fully open for business. This also gives you an opportunity to talk to clients about safety measures you're taking to protect them and your team and to establish if an allergy alert test is needed.'

Any discussions that take place in person should be kept 'to a minimum' and be conducted via the mirror while standing behind the client.

'You can lower the risk of infection by standing side-by-side rather than facing people,' the document continues.

Nail Salons and Beauty Salons

The British Beauty Council has released guidelines for the beauty industry in preparation for a possible re-opening early next month.

When you first step foot back into your favourite nail bar you'll be expected to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds before the appointment, use a nail brush, and apply some sanitiser.

You won't be allowed to use the waiting area and will be informed by the nail bar about the relevant hygiene rules in that specific establishment.

Nail technicians wearing face masks and gloves perform manicure and pedicure for their clients in a beauty salon after reopening in Moscow on June 13

A number of nail bars or salons may want to extend the opening times to allow extra time for additional cleaning and to space out appointment times.

Customers could also be expected to bring a mask with them, and when not being seen during an appointment to leave the salon.

The nail bar and salon should also have posters and signs encouraging hand washing or reminders to use anti-bacterial gel to prevent the spread of infection.

As part of the suggested guidance, the representative body advises any worker to turn up 15 minutes prior to starting to help cleaning the work environment.

Nail technicians are advised to use gloves when working and wear PPE, including masks and an apron.

Card payments and advance payment will be used, and in common with many other businesses, cash is not likely to be accepted.

If the card machine is used it needs to be sanitised. On nails specifically, no one should wait for nail polish to dry inside the area but should leave.

There is unlikely to be walk-in appointments, and you will not be able to bring a friend with you. All hard surfaces and any equipment used, such as nail dryers has to be cleaned regularly.

Spas

A relaxing weekend at a Spa is also set to look a lot different according to the guidelines released by the British Beauty Council.

This includes card payments only and PPE for all staff and guests who want to use the facilities.

Other things that have been suggested include managing communal/waiting areas and utilising floor markings to encourage social distancing.

There could also be strict management of communal areas such as locker rooms, the implementation of hand sanitising stations and floor markings to encourage social distancing throughout.

A shot of a young woman receiving a beauty treatment with a mask at a spa. Guests are likely to be asked about their health prior to arriving for a spa day

Andrew Stembridge, executive director of Iconic Luxury Hotels, which manages a collection of hotels and spas including Chewton Glen in Hampshire, previously told The Independent: 'The consultation process will be undertaken prior to arrival and will now include an additional health check relative to any symptoms the guest may have versus ongoing conditions or health issues'.

To make sure the treatments take place safely both employees and a number of spas will ask staff and guests to wear masks.

Some may even use 'foggers' to sanitise the air, and any duvets or blankets used will have to be regularly changed for each customer.

They are also expected to only card payments and encourage social distancing where it is possible to do so.

Botox Clinics

As with many businesses in the beauty industry booking your appointment in advance is key.

When you arrive you'll be asked to ring the business in order to be let in, but may have to wait outside until you are ready to go inside to respect social distancing.

You'll be expected to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds and then wear a mask until it is time to have your procedure. Your temperature will also be checked so to ensure you don't have Covid-19 symptoms.

As with many businesses in the beauty industry booking your appointment in advance is key. Pictured: A woman receiving lip fillers

In the waiting room there will only ever be three patients at a time to respect social distancing and markings on the floor will indicated how far away you should be.

Cleanliness is key in the industry anyway but everything will be cleaned and sterilised before each new person has s treatment.

Like hairdressers and nail salons, card payment will be utilised rather than handing over cash.

Workers at the clinics will be wearing PPE, including an apron, face shield and hair net.

Like many businesses there will no longer be magazines out for you to read in the waiting area.
Early indications from Leinster House indicate that John Bruton is set to be overthrown as leader of Fine Gael.

A number of top party officials have indicated during breaks in the marathon Parliamentary Party meeting that they will vote against the former Taoiseach.
Log on if you are already subscribed or Subscribe...
The Supreme Court (SC) is scheduled to hear a bunch of petitions seeking modification of its earlier June 18 order staying the `Rath Yatra` in Odisha's Puri due to coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak on Monday (June 22).

A single-judge bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat will hear four petitions filed by different persons and organisations at 11 am via in-chamber hearing.

Earlier on June 18, a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde had remarked that such gatherings cannot be allowed to take place at the time of a pandemic.

"Lord Jagannath will forgive us if we stay the Rath Yatra this year... In the interest of public health and safety of citizens, Rath Yatra cannot be allowed this year," the apex court had observed.

The court also said that the Rath Yatra will not be held anywhere in Odisha in 2020 to avoid large gathering that could spread COVID-19 pandemic.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra on Sunday (June 21) tweeted that he has also approached the top court seeking a modification of its earlier order staying the annual Jagannath Yatra at Puri in Odisha. He assured the court that the Rath Yatra will be held without a congregation of devotees and services of 800 sevayats will be used, all of whom have tested negative for the infection.

"Today I filed an Application for clarification/modification of earlier order of SC and sought permission for the Holy Rath Yatra of Shri Jagannath Mahaprabhu in Puri scheduled for 23rd June. Hope all our prayers are answered by the Lord of the Universe," tweeted Patra, who had also contested 2019 Lok Sabha election from Puri.

Today I filled an Application for clarification/modification of earlier order of SC and sought permission for the Holy Rath Yatra of Shri Jagannath Mahaprabhu in Puri scheduled for 23rd June

Hope all our prayers are answered by the Lord of the Universe #JayJagannath pic.twitter.com/cIBKq4SVqX  Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) June 21, 2020

On June 15, a petition was moved by an NGO seeking direction to stay on the Rath Yatra. The petitioner, NGO Odisha Vikas Parishad, had stated that if the Rath Yatra is allowed, then COVID-19 infection will increase manifold.

It sought an immediate order directing the respondents, including the Odisha government, not to grant any permission for holding the Rath Yatra till the disposal of the accompanying writ petition.

The Rath Yatra is scheduled to be held on June 23.
Cancer June 22-July 22 You dislike drama but today it may be unavoidable. If theres been any simmering tension between you and your partner or a close friend confrontations are bound to surface. Don't shy away from it but do your best to reach a compromise by putting your ego aside and working together. If youre single this could be your lucky day! Leo July 23-August 22

You may feel increasingly disgruntled with your job. Be honest with yourself, and if youve been blaming others for your dissatisfaction its time to take responsibility and the initiative. Work towards resolving conflict or tell them how it is instead of tiptoeing around issues. OR look for something new that stimulates and inspires you. Virgo August 23-September 22 If relaxing and having a good time (lockdown doesn't count) have taken a back seat to lifes greater demands its time to reshuffle your priorities! Jovial Jupiter and powerful Pluto join forces in your sector of fun and creativity encouraging you to focus on hobbies, people and pastimes that bring you pleasure. It's also the time to foster romance. Libra

September 23-October 22 If in doubt, spell it out! Dont rely on dropping subtle hints. If you can see someone isnt picking up on your cues do both of you a favour and tell them exactly what it is that you want, and if its you that doesnt quite know where you stand ask for some clarification. Scorpio October 23  November 22 You usually like to play it safe and err on the side of caution but today it's time to take a punt. You're smart, charismatic and, for the most part, sensible so a calculated risk is bound to pay off and bring you good fortune. Those of you waiting on a piece of news will need to be patient.

Sagittarius November 23-December 20 Have you been strapped for cash or overwhelmed with bills? Good news is on the cosmic horizon! Dynamic stars in your finance zone could bring an opportunity to generate more money. You may also change your stance regarding your relationship when it comes to money. So, do whats right, not what comes naturally - save instead of splurge. Capricorn December 21-January 19

The stars present you with an important soul mission, giving you the opportunity to learn from mistakes and show personal growth. Expects trials and tribulations, but how you handle them is completely in your hands - ignore the lessons and remain a repeat offender trapped in a holding pattern or heed them and proceed to the next level. Aquarius January 20-February 18 Are you keeping any secrets? The stars are threatening to yank a few skeletons out of your closet. Something youve been trying to keep under wraps could become exposed but this may turn out to be a liberating experience. Karma in the form of a deed from the past may come back to haunt or reward you. Pisces
German prosecutors accuse suspect of beating epileptic prisoner while working for Syrian military intelligence in Homs.

A Syrian doctor living in Germany has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out crimes against humanity at a prison in his war-torn country of origin, prosecutors said on Monday.

The suspect, identified as Alaa M, is accused of having tortured a detainee  in at least two cases at a prison run by Syrian intelligence services in the city of Homs in 2011, said German federal prosecutors in a statement.

Alaa M was called to assist a man who had suffered an epileptic fit after being jailed for taking part in a protest, the statement said.

He then proceeded to beat the man with a plastic pipe. Even after he had gone down, Alaa M continued the beatings and additionally kicked the victim, the statement said.





The next day, Alaa M and another doctor are said to have subjected the victim to further beatings. He later died, though the cause of death is unclear.

Alaa M left Syria in mid-2015 and moved to Germany, where he also practised as a doctor.

Syrias civil war, which started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced nearly half of the countrys pre-conflict population.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group estimates that at least 100,000 people have died from torture or as a result of horrific conditions in government prisons.

In April, the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assads government opened in Germany.

The two defendants  suspected members of al-Assads security services  are being tried on the principle of universal jurisdiction over charges of torture and sexual assault. Universal jurisdiction allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity.

Germany has taken in more than 700,000 Syrian refugees since the start of the conflict.
I read the recent nj.com article on renaming a high school in Camden (N.J. district to rename Woodrow Wilson school, citing former presidents racist values ).

There is a rush to be politically correct and in the moment. Unfortunately, throughout history we have had ideas that werent always morally right in hindsight. But, people from hundreds or thousands of years ago were born into their mindsets, so it is wrong to instantly demonize them for their now-understood mistakes. We can make changes that counter some of these past opinions without erasing history, using the opportunity to update it.

I would love to see the issue framed in a more palatable and less abrasive way. Maybe if we want to rename such a landmark as the Wilson school, we can offer a name in line with the times and Camdens history. I propose a champion of the city, and a man who is a role model to any city resident and to everyone in America.

U.S. District Senior Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez would be a great fit.

His story would be an honorable addition and source of pride for all that attend or have attended the school. His history of fighting for the underdog and his rise from a humble immigrant family is a wonderful example of the goodness our country truly harbors.

Look into Rodriguezs legacy and understand how it could resonate among the many Latinos and other minorities that have made up Camden for several decades. Instead of just erasing history, we can update it with someone who is more than deserving.

Hopefully. we can approach these issues with understanding and compassion, and achieve the changes the times desire without having to destroy retroactively the people who came before  and didnt have the advantage of being raised in a much more advanced time.

Kris Mustacchio, Cherry Hill

Like it says on D.C. license plates ...

This Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on making Washington, D.C., the 51st state.

Washingtonians lack voting representation in Congress, yet Congress interferes regularly with the citys budget and local policy decisions. While some consider Fridays vote to be symbolic only, granting statehood to the District of Columbia would end these injustices.

When U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., first arrived in Congress (as a Democrat), he co-sponsored a D.C. statehood bill because he knew the 700,000 people of the district deserve the same rights all other Americans have.

Yet, Van Drew withdrew his name from the bill shortly after becoming a Republican, likely due to pressure from GOP leaders who believe that denying people the right to representation is acceptable when you dont like who they vote for.

Van Drew still has time to prove he is a man of principle by voting Friday to make Washington, D.C., a state. He knew it was right when he was a Democrat. Theres no reason it should be wrong now.

Matthew Oberstaedt, Cherry Hill

Pick Kennedy now, retire Van Drew next

Amy Kennedy is the best candidate in the Democrats 2nd Dist. congressional primary. She has the integrity, know-how and determination to unseat the current congressman (Republican Jeff Van Drew), who has earned retirement by the voters.

If elected, Kennedy will fight for economic growth, job development and improved health care. Her career in education has helped forge her unwavering commitment to helping teachers in their dedicated service to their students. Check out her credentials. They are superb.

I have moved from New Jersey, but have kept up with all that is South Jersey. Amy Kennedy is, hands down, the most impressive congressional candidate.

Unlike the Republican incumbent, Kennedy will not forget that her service will be for the people of her district in South Jersey and the country  not a president for whom truth has been a victim of his countless lies.

Joseph Manganello, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Editors notes: The writer is a former Gloucester County freeholder and former Pitman resident.

Kennedy is one of five candidates seeking the Democrats 2nd Dist. congressional nomination July 7. The others are Brigid Harrison, Will Cunnigham, John Francis and Robert Turkavage. The winner will face Van Drew, or Robert Patterson, a challenger for the GOP nomination, on Nov. 3.

Electric vehicles are pollution answer

Regarding Jeff Tittels recent letter praising a proposal for establishing a port to build and ship wind-energy equipment in South Jersey: Tittel and the New Jersey Sierra Club, which he heads, has been the ears and eyes protecting our environment from pollution from various sources. I have a comment on the last statement in his letter. He wrote, New Jersey has the Saudi Arabia of wind off of its coast. We should be getting our energy from wind, not oil.

In 2018, about 10% of homes were still using oil for heating. About 75% were using natural gas, whose combustion generates less pollution than oil. The big problem in New Jersey is diesel fuel that powers large trucks and the gasoline used by the majority of other vehicles. Recent reports on air pollution do not show much improvement in all counties.

More electric vehicles and charging stations are the answer to making huge improvements to our air quality. With our nuclear plants providing over 40% of our electrical energy, and increasing amounts coming from wind and solar power, electric trucks and vehicles can be the answer to achieve cleaner air for our state.

With all the out-of-state traffic using our roads, encouragement for the use of more electric vehicles must come from our federal government. It is a national problem, not just a New Jersey problem.

Bob Barrett, Clark

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Send a letter to the editor of South Jersey Times at sjletters@njadvancemedia.com

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
For Shad Yarnold it's all about the river. He purchased his home in Spring Branch about three and a half years ago so he could be close to family, but its proximity to the Guadalupe River was also a big factor. His house in the Riverwood subdivision sits on an acre with access to the river. Most of the homes in the quiet, rural neighborhood are on an acre or more. Yarnold likes to spend his free time hanging out on his deck or tubing or kayaking down the river with friends. Spring Branch is about 30 miles north of downtown San Antonio. It's a small town, but Yarnold says there are plenty of places to dine and shop.

Q: You work on the South Side in San Antonio, so why live in Spring Branch?

A: I went to school in Austin, so I have a lot of friends in Austin. So, I spend a lot of time in Austin, specifically Dripping Springs so it's somewhat convenient for me.

Q: So, what makes it worth the long commute?

A: For me, it's the river. In the summer, I have a lot of friends over and we do a lot of tubing. There are a lot of nice, little parks around here that are part of these neighborhoods. The parks are on the river as well.

Q: What are some of the things you like most about your neighborhood?

A: I'm in a subdivision, but it doesn't feel like the neighbors are right on of top me. It's still private when I'm out on the deck. It feels kind of like you're out in nature; there are lots of deer around both Axis and White-tailed.

Q: Have you seen many changes?

A: In the time I've been here, I would say I haven't seen a whole lot of changes, but it will be interesting to see when they finish all that construction on 281 what impact that has.

Q: Would you say this is a place where people can get to know their neighbors?

A: The homeowner's association has meetings here. You run into people and talk and invite people over. Otherwise, probably the only places to meet your neighbors as far as the neighborhood goes are at the parks and, of course, church.

Q: What are some of your favorite restaurants in the area?

A: There's El Rodeo de Jalisco, it's a pretty good little spot. As far as other restaurants in the area, I like the Branch Neighborhood Grill off Highway 46.

Q: What sites would you suggest to those who've never been to Spring Branch or Bulverde?

A: Of course, once again, it comes back to the river. There's the Guadalupe River State Park; it's right up Highway 46. That's a nice place to visit

Q: Do you think you'll ever move again?

A: I don't have any plans to leave. I can see myself retiring and staying here.

Q: What do you do for a living?

A: I work for a construction company Zachry Industrial, in their enterprise services division.

Q: Is your current home the only one you've purchased in the area?

A: I've only bought one home, but I've bought multiple lots. Two lots in my neighborhood and one in Cyprus Springs which is an adjacent neighborhood. I did it as an investment. I had most everything in stocks, so I was just diversifying a little bit. I was thinking that as the city moved out and they finish the construction on 281 and made the commute to San Antonio easier, people would start moving out this direction more.

Q: So how would you sum up life in Spring Branch?

A: It's a nice place to live, a nice place to relax.

Lisa.harrison@express-news.net
South Korean major Samsung on Thursday announced it has partnered with Facebook to train offline retailers in digital marketing and grow their businesses online across Facebook family of apps in the social distancing times.

In the first phase, Samsung and Facebook have already trained more than 800 offline retailers, with more training sessions lined up in the coming weeks.

The major focus of trainings is on enabling offline retailers build a digital presence across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Our partnership with Facebook is helping a large number of our retail partners go digital in a big way. By leveraging the Facebook training, our retail partners will be able to discover and target local consumers digitally," said Mohandeep Singh, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India.

"Consumer too will benefit as they can now access product information and shop for Galaxy smartphones through social media pages of their local retailers," Singh added.

The training is helping Samsung's offline retailers set-up their business pages and accounts on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

With the changing environment around COVID-19, people are spending more time on digital platforms. This has led brands to alter go-to-market models by adapting to changes in the value chain, rapidly digitising key journeys.

"With our industry-leading digital skilling resources, we partnered with Samsung to skill their leading offline retailers, enabling them to reach out to consumers in their natural habitat of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp seamlessly, and helping the business adapt to the new normal," explained Prasanjeet Dutta Baruah, Vertical Head - Technology, Telecom, Automotive and New Business at Facebook India.

According to the company, retailers can engage with potential consumers to share information such as e-detailers and e-catalogues on available Samsung phones.

Consumers can order their favourite Samsung smartphone via WhatsApp by contacting the local retailers on retailer's WhatsApp Business app, who can home deliver phones, ensuring consumers don't have to step out from the comfort of their homes.
The Moscow police said on Monday they had established a group of people involved in fraud with SIM cards for voting on amendments to the Russian Constitution

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd June, 2020) The Moscow police said on Monday they had established a group of people involved in fraud with SIM cards for voting on amendments to the Russian Constitution.

"The Moscow police continues to verify information ...

about possible attempted fraud in the framework of the all-Russian vote on the approval of amendments to the Constitution. Currently, a group of persons involved in fraudulent activities with SIM cards has been established, their location is being established," the police said.

They provided no other details.
Liu Zhijun (R) and Li Cuiye play with their daughter by the Yellow River in Xingxian County, north China's Shanxi Province, June 20, 2020. Liu Zhijun and Li Cuiye are a couple who work at the agricultural machinery administration and the government affairs service center respectively in Lyuliang City. In July 2015, Liu and Li volunteered to serve as the first secretaries to Jingyubao Village in Lanxian County and Nantong Village in Xingxian County respectively, both under the jurisdiction of Lyuliang. Though it only takes two-hour-drive from Jingyubao to Nantong, their busy work on poverty alleviation have kept the couple from seeing each other very often. Jingyubao and Nantong were both severely impoverished villages. Local villagers used to work outside as migrant workers due to the barren land and lack of resources there. Liu and village cadres of Jingyubao have put efforts into the infrastructure construction and guided local villagers to plant crops with relatively high economic value. Agricultural machineries have also been introduced to improve the efficiency, as a way to improve locals' incomes. Local authorities of Nantong Village, where Li Cuiye works, have taken many measures, including employment transfer, relocation of impoverished residents and ecological poverty alleviation, to help poverty-stricken people shake off poverty. Jingyubao and Nantong have shaken off poverty in the year of 2016 and 2017 respectively. "Due to our busy work, it's hard to meet our daughter Duoduo often. We both feel sorry for her. But she gradually realizes the difficulties we faced and often cheers us up. It's easy for us to understand each other as we serve the same position," the couple said. (Xinhua/Cao Yang)
FP Trending

Forests are often referred to as the Earths lungs. A Russian nuclear physicist has recently suggested that their function involves something more. The largest expanse of trees on Earth  Russias boreal forests  are biotic pumps that regulate the climate of northern Asia, according to Anastassia Makarieva, of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI).

The biotic pump theory, according to an earlier Mongabay report, says that forests are the driving force behind precipitation over land masses. The report quotes the scientists studying the theory as saying, "The biotic pump is a mechanism in which natural forests create and control ocean-to-land winds, bringing moisture to all terrestrial life."

Further, they add that condensation from forests, and not temperature differences that drive winds which bring precipitation over land.

In an interview with Science magazine, Makarieva shares her view that the water vapor exhaled by trees in vast boreal forests drive winds across the continent, taking moist air from Europe, through Siberia, and onward into Mongolia and China. These winds deliver rains keeping the giant rivers of eastern Siberia flowing, as well as water Chinas northern plain.

Forests are complex self-sustaining rainmaking systems, and the major driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth, according to Makarieva. They recycle vast amounts of moisture into the air, during which, they also whip up winds that pump water around the world.

The theory proposed by Makarieva lays emphasis on two things  forests as rainmakers and biotic pumps. The first idea has got support from water resource managers in a world seeing progressively worsening deforestation scenarios, Science reported, while the second one is controversial.

The biotic pump theory, for now, is backed by a small coterie of colleagues in addition to Makarieva and her team. However, many climate modelers have dismissed the idea completely, saying its effects are negligible.

The interesting part about biotic pump is that, if it proves to be correct, it could help explain why, despite being at a distance from the oceans, the remote interiors of forested continents receive as much rain as the coasts.

"All I have learned so far suggests to me that the biotic pump is correct. Even if we thought the theory had only a small chance of being true, it would be profoundly important to know one way or the other, says Douglas Sheil, a forest ecologist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
The possibility that the winner of the White House race will not immediately be known will test both the candidates and the publics tolerance for uncertainty. It is not unusual for campaigns to use early results to spin public opinion about the outcome. But during the Florida recount in 2000, neither Bush nor Gore ever threatened to not accept the ultimate outcome.
The Hyderabad-based firm will first make the drug available in high case load areas of Maharashtra and Delhi under the brand Covifor. A single dose vial is likely to cost Rs 5,000-6000.

Hetero will launch Remdesivir, an injectable drug from Gilead, to treat hospitalised Covid-19 patients this week.

The firm, which got the approval letter from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on Saturday, will first make the drug available in high case load areas of Maharashtra and Delhi under the brand Covifor.

A single dose vial is likely to cost Rs 5,000-6000, the Hyderabad-based firm said.

Cipla, too, said it was launching Remdesivir under the brand Cipremi. It said it received DCGI nod for restricted emergency use in the country.

Cipla said it would provide training on the use of the drug, conduct post-marketing surveillance as well as conduct a phase-IV clinical trial on Indian patients, the company said.

Umang Vohra, managing director and global chief executive, Cipla, said: We have been deeply invested in exploring all possible avenues to save millions of lives impacted by Covid-19, and this launch is a significant milestone in that direction.

Vamsi Krishna Bandi, managing director of the Hetero group of companies, said: We will be taking a call on the (exact) pricing by Monday or day after. It would be Rs 5,000-6,000 for a dose.

Hetero has already been exporting to Africa apart from some Asian countries. So, some stock made for exports will be diverted to cater to the national emergency, Bandi said.

Hetero will start producing for India this week. In a week to 10 days, more stock would be available for India. In the next two to three weeks, Hetero can supply 100,000 vials in India, Bandi said.

B Partha Saradhi Reddy, chairman, Hetero group of companies, said: In the light of increasing Covid-19 cases in India, the approval for Covifor can prove to be a game-changer, given its positive clinical outcomes. Backed by strong backward integration capabilities, we can ensure that the product is immediately made available to patients across the country.

Sources estimate at least 10,000 patients need the drug urgently. Remdesivir would, however, be sold through hospital channels only and would not be available at retail stores. We will not dump the drug in the market. We will calibrate (supply) based on patient load, Bandi said.

Cipla, meanwhile, said it would commercialise Remdesivir through its own facilities and partner sites to enable speedy access to the drug. According to Cipla, the drug will be supplied through the government and open-market channels.

Since Remdesivir has not been approved as treatment for Covid-19 yet and has been approved by the DCGI only for restricted emergency use, a patient would need to sign a consent form in case it is administered.

Remdesivir is a repurposed Ebola drug that is showing promise in treating Covid-19 patients, as it is found to reduce the viral load and enhance recovery process.

Gilead had signed voluntary licence agreements with a handful of companies in the country to make and market the drug. The companies are free to price the drug.

Bandi said the licensees will submit more data on the drug to the DCGI in 60 days. Right now, the product has a shelf life of 90 days. After the next set of data is submitted, the shelf life can be enhanced.

Meanwhile, Glenmark has got approval for oral antiviral drug Favipiravir on Friday and it would sell under the brand FabiFlu here. The drug is targeted at mild Covid-19 patients.
The Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemens Association handles collective bargaining for horse owners at the track. Last week, the two sides were at an impasse and had not signed off on a detailed agreement governing issues related to opening this year. Arlington officials had announced Wednesday the framework of a pact with the ITHA, but a day later, however, that deal appeared in jeopardy, as both parties appeared before the Illinois Racing Board to reveal they didnt have an agreement.
The United States said it is against any military escalation in Libya, urging warring parties to commit to a ceasefire and build on an Egyptian initiative to end the civil war in the neighbouring country.

The United States strongly opposes military escalation in Libya - on all sides. We urge parties to commit to a ceasefire and resume negotiations immediately. We must build on progress made through the UNs 5+5 talks, the Cairo Initiative, and the Berlin process, the White House National Security Council (NSC) said on Twitter early on Monday.

Earlier this month, Egyptian President Abedl Fattah El-Sisi announced an initiative that proposes a ceasefire and called for disbanding Libyan militias and the withdrawal of foreign mercenaries.

The plan was accepted by eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar, but dismissed by the rival western government in Tripoli.

The NSC was also referring to UN-brokered talks involving five senior officers appointed by each side that aimed to secure a ceasefire, and a Libya peace conference in Berlin earlier this year.

The oil-rich country is divided between two rival administrations in the east and west.

Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia support Haftar, while the Government of National Accord (GNA) is supported by Qatar and Turkey.

Earlier this week, El-Sisi said his country has a legitimate right to intervene in Libya to defend itself against direct threats from terrorist militias.

The president said any intervention will be meant to protect Egypts western border with Libya, achieve a ceasefire, and restore stability in Libya, stressing that Cairo has long been reluctant to take the move.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term

Posted on 22 June 2020 by Guest Author

A guest repost by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF). Fundraising is not the objective of this article but readers may wish to know that CSLDF is currently conducting a summer fundraiser to support the important work of defending research scientists and research integrity from anti-science interference by politicians and industrial interests.

Were one of the dozens of organizations working to advance good government, public health, and environmental, consumer, human, and civil rights, who today [June 11] collectively released Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term.

The COVID-19 crisis shows what can happen when science is sidelined from policy decisions or subverted for political purposes. When data is suppressed or manipulated, or medical experts and scientists are prevented from sharing their expertise with the public, the result is a dearth of information the public needs to operate safely during a pandemicand more people get sick and die.

The politicization of science isnt new, but it has escalated into a full-blown crisis under the Trump administration. In the Silencing Science Tracker we maintain with Columbia Law Schools Sabin Center for Climate Law, weve documented 428 instances of science being censored or restricted since November 2016. Many of these actions pose troubling risks to public health.

The next administration must prioritize repairing the culture of scientific integrity in the federal government. Federal scientists must be free to pursue valid research and communicate their findings to the press and taxpaying public without fear of political interference or manipulation. Those in federal agencies who have decision-making authority on matters that involve or use science must fully consider the best available science. And much more.

This series of memos provides concrete steps the next administration can take to restore a culture of scientific integrity across the federal government. These would help rebuild public trust in scientific institutions and ensure that scientific evidence informs government decisions. They also represent simple, low-cost, good government reforms that would improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability.

The memos offer recommendations in eight categories:

Federal advisory committees

Personnel policy

Agency scientific independence

Restoring strength to scientific agencies

Whistleblower protections

Scientific communications

Data collection and dissemination

Regulatory reform

We will share these recommendations with major presidential campaigns and transition teams. We encourage all who have influence over White House and executive branch priorities in 2021 to read these short documents and take them to heart.
Six fishermen were rescued after their boats sank during a monsoon storm in southern Thailand. The two wooden longtail boats left Phuket on Thursday evening but were overcome with heavy rain and choppy seas. They made a distress call at 8am the next morning around 1.5 nautical miles from Mai Thon island and naval crews were dispatched to assist. Parts of a wrecked ship and some personal belongings of the crew were found floating in the waters. The rescue team first found missing fishermen, Suthep Hasap and Arthit Phanphum, whor were taken ashore to the Vachira Phuket Hospital. The search continued for the four others who were discovered later that morning before a helicopter lifted them to safety. Police Colonel Prasert Srikhunrat said the fisherman were all wearing life jackets and unharmed by the ordeal.
A New York City police officer removed from duty after he was recorded putting a man in what the police commissioner said was a banned chokehold once faced criminal charges alleging he pistol-whipped a teenage suspect and broke two of his teeth.

The police department moved quickly to suspend Officer David Afanador without pay after Sunday's confrontation on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach in Queens.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday the swift action was a sign of "unprecedented times." "I think we have an obligation to act swiftly but we also have to get it right and to inform the public about what's going on," Shea told TV station NY1.

Shea announced the suspension hours only hours after video of the incident was posted on social media.

It's at least the second time Afanador has been suspended from the force. The officer was sidelined after his 2014 arrest, only to return to duty after a judge acquitted him and his partner of all charges in 2016.

In that case, Afanador was seen on video using his gun to hit a 16-year-old boy during a marijuana bust. The beating continued until the boy dropped to the ground and was handcuffed. That altercation, which came six weeks after the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, also made news headlines.

Afanador was involved in eight incidents that were the subject of complaints to the city's police watchdog agency since joining the police department in 2005, according to records obtained Monday under a new state law making disciplinary files public.

They ranged from using discourteous language to use of physical force and refusing to seek medical treatment. All of the allegations to the city's Civilian Complaint Review were either unsubstantiated or led to exoneration except for the ones stemming from the altercation that led to his arrest.

In Sunday's incident, in the wake of protests over George Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis, a video shot by one of the men involved in the altercation showed officers tackling a Black man and Afanador putting his arm around the man's neck as he lay face down on the boardwalk.

Body camera footage released later by police showed that for at least 11 minutes before the arrest, three men were shouting insults at the police while the officers implored them to walk away.

"I put out the body camera footage yesterday and I think it tells a very different story than the initial video," Shea said. "But ultimately, you know, the hand around the neck is the hand around the neck and I dealt with that swiftly."

Chokeholds have long been banned by the NYPD and their use has been especially fraught since Garner died in 2014 after an officer put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him. Governor Andrew Cuomo last week signed a statewide ban on police chokeholds.

The speed with which the NYPD suspended Afanador stood in sharp contrast to the drawn-out police disciplinary process of years past.

"I think it's unprecedented times," Shea said, alluding to the public's demand for police accountability since Floyd's death.

Shea said he does not believe there is systemic racism in the NYPD. He is scheduled to testify Monday at the state attorney general's hearing on police officers' rough treatment of protesters.

His testimony comes days after Attorney General Letitia James publicly rebuked the police department and Mayor Bill de Blasio for ignoring invitations to participate.
Malawi goes to the polls on Tuesday in a historic presidential re-run after a court overturned last year's elections and ordered a fresh vote.

Citing "grave" and "widespread" rigging, the country's constitutional court ruled in February that President Peter Mutharika had not been duly elected, and mandated a new poll within 150 days.

The landmark verdict, which reverberated across African politics, made Malawi the second country south of the Sahara to have presidential poll results set aside, after Kenya in 2017.

Although there are three candidates, Tuesday's election is practically a two-horse race between the president and his main rival Lazarus Chakwera.

An upbeat Mutharika held his final campaign meeting on Saturday, rallying supporters to vote and secure another victory.

Malawi /  AFP

"We won the election in 2019 but the (opposition) went to court and grabbed the government from us," Mutharika told scores of supporters in Rumphi, northern Malawi.

"So let us go and vote so that those who stole the government from us should be ashamed".

Mutharika's narrow victory in May 2019 spawned tensions and sparked widespread, months-long protests that saw the military intervene as confrontations between police and protesters turned violent.

It was the first time Malawi, which gained independence from colonial ruler Britain in 1964 -- and was then ruled as a one-party state for three decades by Kamuzu Banda -- had experienced such protests.

- Integrity -

Mutharika won the disputed 2019 election by a mere 38.5 percent of the total ballots cast, and just 159,000 more than Chakwera.

Although there are three candidates, Malawi's election is practically a two-horse race between the president and his main rival main opposition Malawi Congress Party leader Lazarus Chakwera /  AFP

His attempts to challenge the top court's ruling fell flat last month when the Supreme Court quashed his appeal.

The leader soon embarked on an onslaught on the judiciary, accusing the courts of staging a coup against him.

Chakwera, who led the watershed election petition, said the cancellation of last year's vote had vindicated his long-held suspicions about the ballot.

But this time around, "we have more confidence that this election will be treated with the integrity it deserves," Chakwera told AFP.

He enjoys the support of an electoral coalition of nine political parties, and is confident of victory.

Mutharika, a 79-year-old former Washington University law professor, has faced widespread criticism -- with the opposition accusing his administration of massive corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

Supporters of Malawi's main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Leader Lazarus Chakwera dance during a rally in suburbs of the capital Lilongwe /  AFP

Callista Mutharika, who was married to the president's late brother, ex-president Bingu wa Mutharika, says time is up for her brother-in-law.

"People have suffered for too long and they want change. We are winning this election," said Callista, now an opposition politician.

- 'Law-abiding leader' -

Local musician Tay Grin, who has campaigned for Mutharika across the country, is confident voters want the president to stay in power.

"He is a law-abiding leader, he is the rock we need to stand on during these chaotic times," he said.

For Joseph Nkhunga, a local tailor in Lilongwe's flea market and an opposition supporter, the election "is an opportunity for this country to start afresh because we have wasted five years under Peter Mutharika".

"All we need are equal opportunities for everyone without looking at where one is coming from or who they are related to," he told AFP as a huge opposition party flag fluttered near his sewing machine.

Malawian political scientist at the University of Witwatersrand, Michael Jana, said the elections were necessary, but not guaranteed to run smoothly.

"They will not be perfect given the haphazard nature of their preparation ranging from no proper guidelines, rushed reconstitution of the Malawi Electoral Commission, to delays in funding", he said.

"I can only hope that the results of the elections will be clear enough as not to open another Pandora's box of contestations," he added.

University of Malawi political scientist Henry Chingaipe said Mutharika is unlikely to be re-elected.

"I think that even Mutharika himself knows this and that is why he has presided over multiple schemes to prevent the holding of the election," he said.

The election is taking place during the coronavirus crisis, with 620 confirmed cases and eight deaths confirmed in the country.

Despite the pandemic, tens of thousands of people -- mainly with no face masks and without observing social distancing -- have attended public rallies across Malawi.
Mail-in ballots are sorted before being tallied at the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office on Nov. 7, 2018, in Norwalk, Calif. The state will send an absentee ballot to every eligible voter for the 2020 general election. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)

President Trump escalated his unsubstantiated attacks on mail voting Monday, claiming with no evidence that expanding the practice would lead to foreign governments printing counterfeit ballots and cause the "election disaster of our times."

"Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended," Trump tweeted. "We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!"

Election officials pushed back on the president's assertions. "We are not aware of any evidence supporting the claims made by President Trump," the National Assn. of Secretaries of State said in a statement. "As always, we are open to learning more about the Administrations concerns."

The president's latest string of criticism comes as states are weighing the pros and cons of expanding voting by mail  which five states use exclusively and all states allow to some extent  to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at polling places during the primary season and the November general election.

Health officials recommend expanding absentee voting to allow people to stay home from the polls, but political and financial concerns have complicated the shift.

Some Republicans have argued that voting by mail will lead to increased fraud, though there is no evidence that mail voting has led to systematic abuse.

"When state governments start adopting these practices like mail-in ballots, that open the floodgates of potential fraud, then people's confidence in the outcome of the election is going to be undermined," Atty. Gen. William Barr said Sunday on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."

Barr, a Virginia resident, voted by mail in 2012 and 2019, according to the Washington Post. Trump has also voted absentee, including in Florida's March presidential primary.

Story continues

Trump's criticism of mail voting ahead of the November general election echoes his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, in which he won the electoral college but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million. In May 2017, he created an advisory panel to investigate election integrity; it did not find evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Trump openly stated in April that he was considering GOP chances in his opposition to mail balloting. Republicans "should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting," he tweeted, because it "doesnt work out well for Republicans."

The Republican National Committee has committed to spending $20 million to block Democratic-led efforts to expand mail voting.

My biggest risk is that we dont win lawsuits, the president told Politico on Thursday. We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we dont win those lawsuits ... I think it puts the election at risk.

Though the political debate over mail-in ballots is unresolved, absentee voting has been on an upward trajectory for the last two decades as election officials in both parties embraced the practice. In 2016, 21% of general election ballots were cast by mail, compared with 7.8% in 1996, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

Five states  Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah  conduct all elections primarily by mail. The coronavirus outbreak could push more states to join them.





How widespread is mail voting?

Every state offers some form of absentee voting.

According to the National Vote at Home Institute, 16 states allow absentee voting only with an excuse (for instance, if someone is away on military service, at school or, in some states, over the age of 65); 24 states offer no-excuse absentee voting but require voters to apply for a ballot; five states and the District of Columbia allow voters to apply for absentee ballots and permanently receive them (Virginia will join this category in July 2021).

What's the case for expanding vote by mail?

Proponents of expanded mail ballot options say remote voting is more convenient for voters, cheaper for states and leads to a slight uptick in turnout.

In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, absentee ballots are seen as a way to reduce the risk of spreading the disease at polling places. An April NBC poll found that 58% of Americans support allowing vote by mail generally, and an additional 9% support vote by mail as a one-time exception for the November 2020 election. But 29% of voters oppose vote by mail generally and for the upcoming election.





Would mail-in ballots delay election results?

If there is a massive shift toward mail voting before the November general election, it's possible that the results of the presidential vote won't be known on election night. In California, this has led to situations in which Republicans have led in close races on election night, only to see the lead change as more ballots are counted. (Historically, many Democrats have tended to vote on or just before election day, meaning their preferences are not reflected in the earliest tallies.)

Some have expressed concerns that the president is laying the groundwork to question the results, particularly if later ballots  received in the mail after election day  help former Vice President Joe Biden pull ahead.

"It's quite possible that President Trump could be ahead in the count on election night, but as millions of additional ballots are counted over the next few days the lead could shift to Biden," UC Irvine law professor Richard Hasen told CNN last month. "And Trump, who has been making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud for years, has now started shifting to making these claims about mail-in balloting, and he could certainly claim that there's something wrong about how the vote count was done."





Is there a risk of voter fraud?

Critics of remote voting say ballots could be mailed to inactive voters, people could vote more than once (via absentee ballot and in person) or voters could be intimidated into voting a certain way outside the privacy of the voting booth.

But experts say cases of voter fraud have been few and far between over the last few decades.

A database organized by News21, an investigative news project based out of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, found 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud between 2000 and 2012. (Most allegations did not lead to convictions.) Absentee ballot fraud accounted for 491 cases out of hundreds of millions of ballots cast.

Oregon, which has held all elections by mail since 2000, has only seen two criminal convictions for mail ballot fraud in the last two decades.

"With well over 50 million ballots cast [in Oregon], there have been only two fraud cases verifiable enough to result in convictions for mail ballot fraud in 20 years," Amber McReynolds of the National Vote at Home Institute and Charles Stewart of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab wrote in an op-ed for the Hill news publication. "That is 0.000004 percent  about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States."

In 2019, North Carolina was forced to call a new vote for the 9th Congressional District after an operative for Republican Mark Harris, the victor in the general election, was charged with illegally collecting ballots from voters.

In Utah, election officials told the Salt Lake Tribune that the fraud they do encounter comes in the form of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filling out ballots for children on mission trips abroad, or spouses signing for one another. Officials said they catch those cases when they compare the signature they have on file for a voter with the one on the ballot theyve received.

What about the foreign interference Trump and Barr warn about?

Trump and Barr have warned that foreign governments "could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in," as Barr said in a recent interview.

Election officials from both parties in states that use mail-in ballots say that's not possible. Election laws vary by state, but officials have several tools to prevent and detect attempted absentee voter fraud.

Several states compare the signatures on mail-in ballots and an individuals voter registration, use bar codes to track ballot processing and provide secure drop box locations. States can also conduct postelection audits of the results. Such an audit helped detect the 2018 absentee ballot fraud case in North Carolina.

Does one party benefit from mail-in ballots over another?

Both parties have concerns about how expanded mail voting would affect election outcomes. While Republicans worry that easier voting would boost Democratic turnout, some Democrats worry that Black and Latino voters are less likely to adopt vote by mail.

A Stanford University study released in April on the rollout of vote-by-mail programs in three states  California, Utah and Washington  found that absentee balloting didn't increase one party's overall turnout or vote share more than the other's between 1996 and 2018, but modestly increased overall voter turnout.

The study acknowledged that voter data collected before the COVID-19 outbreak may not predict what would happen during a shift to all-mail elections during a pandemic. But it establishes that fears from both parties about vote by mail aren't accurate, according to the Stanford team.

"Claims that vote by mail fundamentally advantages one party over the other appear overblown," the study said. "In normal times, based on our data at least, vote by mail modestly increases participation while not advantaging either party."

In California's May 12 special election runoff for a congressional seat in the Los Angeles suburbs, Republican Mike Garcia won by nearly 10 percentage points  in an election where 97% of ballots were cast by mail.

Is it feasible to expand mail voting by November?

It's one thing to back expanding mail voting. It's another to support rapidly expanding the process in a few months, considering that states with all-mail elections took years to transition.

"I dont think its a realistic goal to think that you could get 50 states to all be vote by mail by even the November election just because the states are in such wildly different places," Kim Wyman, Washington state's Republican secretary of state, told the New York Times in April.

The CARES Act provided the Election Assistance Commission with $400 million to provide grants to states to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle. Outside groups estimate that the cost of helping states fund the expansion of vote by mail and the sanitization of polling places would cost at least $2 billion.





How are the political parties reacting?

There has been a wave of litigation across the country on expanding mail voting and changing the rules that govern the process. Republican and Democratic organizations have sparred with election officials across the country over election rules on allowing ballot harvesting by local organizations, ending requirements for a witness signature on absentee ballots, and allowing ballots to be counted if theyre postmarked on or before election day.

The Republican National Committee doubled its litigation budget to $20 million last month, with a focus on blocking Democratic efforts to expand mail voting. The committee has sued or intervened in cases in about a dozen states on remote voting issues. Last month, the committee joined a suit against California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his executive order to send absentee ballots to all registered voters in the state.

In Nevada, after officials announced the June 9 primary would be conducted by mail, True the Vote, a Texas-based voting group, sued on behalf of plaintiffs who argued the secretary of states plan would dilute their vote by allowing voter fraud. A federal judge ruled against them.

The Court finds that Defendants interests in protecting the health and safety of Nevadas voters and to safeguard the voting franchise in light of the COVID-19 pandemic far outweigh any burden on Plaintiffs right to vote, particularly when that burden is premised on a speculative claim of voter fraud resulting in dilution of votes, U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du wrote.
David Jones South African-based parent Woolworths Holdings is said to be looking at all of its options after one industry player indicated it had been informally approached to gauge its interest in the Australian department stores.

It has already moved to shore up its financial position with a plan to monetise its flagship properties in Sydney and Melbourne.

However, UBS which is a strategic adviser to Woolworths on its Australian business said its mandate did not extend to the sale of David Jones, casting doubt on whether there is any formal process underway.

David Jones has 48 stores across the nation but it plans on shrinking its footprint and floor space by more than 20 per cent within five years. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The pool of potential buyers must be considered fairly shallow. David Jones, along with its major competitor Myer, has struggled in recent years to improve profitability and has been hit hard by the impacts of COVID-19.
Great wines taste great anytime of year.

If someones opening up a bottle of 20 year old Bordeaux or Burgundy and its the hottest day of the year, count me in!

But theres also a reason why most of us drink more white wine during the summer.

Nothing tastes quite as refreshing as a nice, chilled glass of white wine.

So to kick off the start of the summer, I thought I would write about five, classic white wines under $10 that are perfect for hot afternoons and warm summer nights.

The five wines I picked represent some of the most popular white wine grapes. Or in the case of one wine, a particular wine which can only come from one region in the world.

Chardonnay.

Sauvignon Blanc.

Riesling.

Pinot Grigio.

Vinho Verde.

Many of you may already know some of these wines. But hopefully, there will be a few on this list that are new for you.

Let me add that all of these wines are widely available at many wine stores. So hopefully, you can find these particular wines wherever you are this summer.

Hope you enjoy.

WINES RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK

2018 Cave De Lugny La Cote Blanche Unoaked Chardonnay Macon Villages ($9.99 at Table & Vine in West Springfield)

2019 Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc ($9.99 at Table & Vine)

2018 Chateau St. Michelle Dry Riesling ($9.99 at Table & Vine)

2018 Ninety Plus Cellars Pinot Grigio Lot 42 ($8.99 at Table & Vine)

Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Non Vintage ($6.99 at Table & Vine)

WINE TASTING NOTES

1) CHARDONNAY

History - Chardonnay grapes have been used to make wines since the 1500s. During the past 500 years, Chardonnay wines have become the most popular wines in the world. Some people love or hate Chardonnay. Theres even an acronym often used by Chardonnays detractors - ABC, which means Anything But Chardonnay. But I can promise you many of those same people would likely love certain Chardonnay wines, especially if you served them one from Frances Burgundy region, where many Chardonnays have amazing depth and complexity and taste completely different from Chardonnays from other parts of the world.

Location - Due to Chardonnays wild popularity, you can often find wines made with Chardonnay grapes in nearly every part of the world. But some of the regions best known for making great Chardonnay wines include Frances Burgundy region and Californias Napa and Sonoma regions. Personally, Im partial to Chardonnays from Burgundy, which is why I recommended the wine listed below.

2018 Cave De Lugny La Cote Blanche Unoaked Chardonnay Macon Villages

Region - Macon, Burgundy, France

Tasting Notes - I wanted to point out that this wines from the village of Macon in Burgundy since Chardonnay wines from here have such a distinct, refreshing taste. One of the things I love about wines made with Chardonnay grapes is how well they express the soil theyre grown in. And thats especially true when it comes to Chardonnays from Burgundy. Chardonnay grapes grown a few hundred yards apart often taste dramatically different from one field to the next. And this is especially true in the Burgundys southern region, where Macon is located.

Like many Chardonnays from Macon, this particular wine has a bright, light, refreshing taste with a hint of citrus. Theres also a slight hint of butter often associated with Chardonnays. But the butter flavors are much more subtle, much less pronounced. Theres also a wonderful dash of almond flavors which make this wine an ideal one for hot and hazy summer afternoons.

2) SAUVIGNON BLANC

History - Exactly where and when Sauvignon Blanc wines were first made in France remains up for debate. Some say Bordeaux in the 1700s. Others say the Loire Valley in the 1500s. Either way, Sauvignon Blanc wines have been delighting wine drinkers for hundreds of years with their crisp, clean refreshing flavors.

Location - Frances Bordeaux region and the Loire Valley continue to make great Sauvignon Blanc wines. But you can now find dry white wines from around the world made with these wonderful grapes. Other popular regions include many areas in California and Australia. But personally, I have real soft spot for Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealands Marlborough region, which is why I picked the following wine.

2019 Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc

Region - Marlborough, New Zealand

Tasting Notes - When it comes to Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand consistently produces some of the best, refreshing and affordable Sauvignon Blancs in the world. New Zealands Marlborough region on the northern tip of New Zealands south island in particular reigns supreme when it comes to crisp, refreshing white wines.

This particular popular Sauvignon Blanc deserves all the attention it gets. In a taste test with the other New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs that cost less than $10 a bottle, I personally found that this one stood out with its crisp, signature fresh-cut grass flavors that made New Zealands Marlborough region famous. Theres also a slight hint of citrus and ripe green apple flavors as well. Absolutely delightful and thoroughly refreshing.

3) RIESLING

History - Riesling wines first began being made in Germany in 1400s. And of all the white wines described this week, Riesling wines are probably the most dramatically different from one winemaker to the next. In fact, even the same winemaker might produce very different Rieslings. Some can be extremely sweet while others can be bone dry.

Location - Germany (particularly the Mosel region) continues to produce outstanding Rieslings. But you can also find great ones made in many other parts of the world, including Canadas Niagara region, Frances Alsace region, several regions in New Zealand and the United States. But I decided to pick a wine from Washington States Columbia Valley region since I personally think they make some of the best dry, affordable Rieslings in the world.

2018 Chateau St. Michelle Dry Riesling

Region - Columbia Valley, Washington

Tasting Notes - Im going to say right up front that Im a big fan of dry white wines. So if you prefer your Rieslings on the sweeter side, this wonderful, dry wine might not be the one for you. Dont get me wrong. I love certain sweeter Rieslings, especially when it comes to dessert wines from Germanys Mosel region. But when it comes to white wines to have with a meal or to relax with on a hot summer day, make my Riesling on the dry side just like my Martinis.

Thats why I thoroughly enjoy this dry, crisp Riesling from Washingtons Columbia Valley in the southeast corner of the state. A hint of green apples and a slightly effervescent finish give this wine a wonderful, welcoming finish. Theres even a slight saltiness to the wine which makes this Riesling the perfect warm weather drink for sweltering summer afternoons.

4) PINOT GRIGIO

History - Sometimes referred to as Pinot Gris, Pinot Grigio wines have been around since the 1200s in parts of France. Nowadays, you can find Pinot Grigio wines from around the world. These light, refreshing wines often have a slightly floral and citrus-like finish. Thats why I personally think theyre among the best summer white wines ideal for hot, sunny days.

Location - You can still find Pinot Gris wines in France as theyre often called there, especially in the Alsace region. But there are many other regions where Pinot Grigio wines thrive, including California, Oregon and parts of Germany. But when it comes to Pinot Grigio, Italys Alto Adige region is king, which is why I chose the beautiful Pinot Grigio listed below.

2018 Ninety Plus Cellars Pinot Grigio Lot 42

Region - Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

Tasting Notes - Pinot Grigio wines sometimes dont get the respect they deserve. I recently read an interview with some expert who wrote a book about wine who claimed theres not a single good Pinot Grigio. (This same genius also claimed there are no good red wines made with Merlot grapes. Hmm. I guess Petrus in Bordeauxs Pomerol region doesnt know what theyre doing. Theyre only one of the worlds greatest wineries that makes wine entirely with Merlot grapes.)

But back to this delightful, inviting, lively Pinot Grigio from Italys Trentino-Alto Adige region near the border of Switzerland and Austria. This crisp, clean wine bursts with citrus-like flavors, including a hint of orange and apricot and a touch of lemon. The quintessential summer wine, I defy anyone to tell me this wine doesnt taste refreshing on a hot, sweltering summer afternoon.

5) VINHO VERDE

History - This white wine is different from the four other wines recommended this week. Thats because Vinho Verde isnt a grape. Its a type of wine that is only produced in particular part of Portugal. Vinho Verde translates as green wine. And as you might expect, the grapes used to makes these wines are often quite young. Specifically, most Vinho Verde wines sold in stores are made with grapes harvested just a few months ago. Vinho Verde wines can be any color (red, white or rose) but I personally prefer the white wine version of these light, refreshing wines.

Location - All Vinho Verde wines come from the Minho region, which is located near the northern tip of Portugal right next to the Atlantic Ocean.

Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Non Vintage

Region - Minho, Portugal

Tasting Notes - Casal Garcias Vinho Verde has long been one of my favorite go-to white wines during the summer, especially since this wine is so affordable and easy drinking. This bright, refreshing wine has a slight sparkling quality with a splash of lemon and sea salt. Ill be honest as well. I sometimes put an ice cube in a glass of Casal Garcia on very hot, dry days and this wine tastes terrific that way.

Let me add that this particular wine is made with a blend of four different grapes - Trajadura, Loureiro, Pederna and Azal. The bottom line is this light white wine is fun, approachable and ready to enjoy anytime this summer.

Cheers!

Wine Press by Ken Ross appears on Masslive.com every Monday and in The Republicans weekend section every Thursday.

Follow Ken Ross on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.
(a) The thermal conductivity as function of temperature. Insert is the chain structure of BiSeI. (b) The morphology of wire shape chains in 1D BiSeI. Credit: Science China Press

Researchers have reported a new type of simple one-dimensional (1-D) crystal structured bismuth selenohalides (BiSeX, X = Br, I) with extremely low thermal conductivity. Investigations on crystal structure reveal that the ultralow thermal conductivity is due to the weakened chemical bonding in the low-dimensional structure, showing a quasi-0-D crystal structure. These findings provide a novel selection rule to search low thermal conductivity materials with potential applications in thermoelectrics and thermal barrier coatings.

The low thermal transport properties are important for applications in thermoelectrics and thermal barrier coatings. Today, the strategies to acquire low thermal conductivity in bulk materials include multi-scale defect (atomic, nano- and meso-scale), heavy molecular weight, complex crystal structure, larger unit cell and strong anharmonicity.

In a recent article in Science China Materials, Prof. Li-Dong Zhao from Beihang University and co-workers proposed a new strategy to search intrinsically low thermal conductivity in one-dimensional crystal structure. By using the first-principles calculations and experimental synthesis, they found a type of material with extremely low thermal conductivity, BiSeX (X= Br, I) with a one-dimensional chain structure. The mechanisms behind the low thermal conductivity were revealed from the aspect of crystal structure by neutron powder-diffraction measurements and temperature tunable aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM).

To elucidate the origins of ultralow thermal conductivity, the authors made comparisons with several analogs that exhibit cubic- (3-D), layer- (2-D) and chain-like (1-D) crystal structures, and found that the thermal conductivity showed a decreasing trend from 3-D, 2-D to 1-D due to the chemical bonding strength between the low-dimensional structure becoming progressively weaker and weaker.

Schematic crystal structures and electronic localization functions (ELFs) of 2D, 1D, and soft 1D Bi2Se3, Sb2Se3 and BiSeI, respectively. Schematic diagrams and corresponding crystal structures of (a, d) 2D slabs in Bi2Se3, (b, e) 1D chain in Sb2Se3 and (c, f) 1D chain with migration of halogens in BiSeI. The crystal structures of Bi2Se3, Sb2Se3and BiSeI viewed along the c direction are given in (g-i), respectively. (j-l) The projected ELF along the chain. The isosurface level of ELF is 0.9. Credit: Science China Press

"Based on these guidelines, we found that the chemical bonding along the chain further weakened with added halogen atoms," said Prof. Zhao. Therefore, the chemical bondings of BiSeX along all three crystallographic directions are weaker than in other compounds, showing a quasi-0-D crystal structure.

Different from the ultrahigh thermal conductivity diamond (> 2000 W m-1 K-1) with strong covalent bonds between carbon atoms, the phonon transport in bismuth selenohalides was significantly suppressed. As a result, they exhibit extremely low thermal conductivity. "The thermal conductivity of BiSeI at 573 K reaches ~0.27 W m-1 K-1, which is close to the theoretical minimum value," said Prof. Zhao.

These findings open up the prospect of achieving low thermal conductivity materials in a one-dimensional chain-containing bulk structure with potential applications in the fields of thermal barrier coatings, thermoelectric materials, etc.

Explore further Minimizing thermal conductivity of crystalline material with optimal nanostructure

More information: Dongyang Wang et al, Extremely low thermal conductivity from bismuth selenohalides with 1D soft crystal structure, Science China Materials (2020). Dongyang Wang et al, Extremely low thermal conductivity from bismuth selenohalides with 1D soft crystal structure,(2020). DOI: 10.1007/s40843-020-1407-x
(SCREENSHOT: Sheng Siong supermarket at 19 Serangoon North Avenue 5/Google Maps)

SINGAPORE  Three supermarkets visited by confirmed COVID-19 cases were listed by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Monday (22 June).

The supermarkets are the Sheng Siong outlets at 7 Jurong West Avenue 5 and 19 Serangoon North Avenue 5, and the NTUC FairPrice outlet at 447A Jalan Kayu.

Persons who visited these places at the following times and dates should see a doctor promptly if they develop symptoms such as cough, sore throat and runny nose, as well as fever and loss of taste or smell, and inform the doctor of their exposure history, the MOH advised.

There is no need to avoid places where confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been. The National Environment Agency will engage the management of affected premises to provide guidance on cleaning and disinfection, it added.

The list  which excludes residences, workplaces, healthcare facilities, and public transport  will be updated on a rolling 14-day basis or one incubation period. First published on 25 May, the list compiles places visited by infectious cases in the community for over 30 minutes.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed on Monday 218 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore, bringing the total to 42,313.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore
The organisation has previously aired shows Top of the Lake and Sa fe Harbour

Corporation purchased shows including The Heights and The Secret She Keeps

import selection of popular Australian dramas and comedies to the UK

The BBC is filling its TV schedule with popular dramas and comedies imported from Australia in an effort to fill the gaps in air time created by the coronavirus.

The broadcasting corporation, which is home to the international hits Fleabag and Killing Eve, will screen shows including The Heights and The Secret She Keeps, after Covid-19 left many home-grown productions halted.

The shows, which will join an array of Australian drams already being broadcast by the BBC, will allow the organisation to secure English-language programmes in a more cost-effective way.

Among the shows that could be making an appearance on British screens is The Heights which premiered on ABC in 2019 and is often described as a 'woke' version of its more popular predecessor Neighbours - which the BBC broadcast until 2007 when it was bought by Channel 5.

Among the shows the BBC has imported is the psychological thriller The Secrets She Keeps (pictured) which is inspired by a real-life hospital kidnap

The Heights, which centres around the residents of the innercity neighbourhood of Arcadia Heights, could also be making an appearance on British screens

Earlier this year, the BBC also broadcast the Australian comedy Five Bedrooms (pictured) which follows the lives of five different people who bond after finding themselves seated together at a stable at a wedding

The critically-acclaimed show centres around the residents of the innercity fictional neighbourhood of Arcadia Heights and the rapidly changing community.

Unlike Neighbours, which has come under staunch criticism in recent years due to the lack of ethnic minority characters, the stars in the new show hail from diverse backgrounds representing the 'melting pot that is urban Australia', the BBC said.

Meanwhile the psychologically tense and thrilling television series The Secrets She Keeps, based on Michael Robothams best-selling novel of the same name, will also be aired on BBC Four from next month.

Inspired by a real-life hospital kidnap, the six-part series tells the story of two women from different backgrounds who are both pregnant with the same due date and who develop an unexpected bond.

The BBC's head of acquisitions Sue Deeks has praised the 'exceptional range and quality' of the Australian shows set to air and suggested that corporation could see more dramas from down under.

She said: 'Australia has always been a fruitful hunting ground for us. They produce drama series of exceptional range and quality.'

Earlier this year, the BBC broadcast the Australian show Five Bedrooms- a comedy drama which explores the lives of five different people who bond after finding themselves seated together at a singles table at a wedding.

The five single strangers, who are in their thirties, decide to buy a house together despite the different lives they lead and what ensues is a series of comedic events and challenges.

In 2017, the company, aired the Elisabeth Moss thriller The Top Of The Lake which follows the inquisitive Detective Robin Griffin as she investigates the disappearance of Tui Mitcham, a twelve-year-old pregnant girl from the small town of Laketop in New Zealand.

The Heights sees its stars hail from a range of diverse backgrounds and is considered the 'woke' version of Neighbours

Last year the BBC also aired Safe Harbour which follows the encounter between a group of friends from Brisbane and a fishing boat packed with asylum seekers

The Elisabeth Moss thriller The Top Of The Lake, which follows Detective Robin Griffin as she investigates the disappearance of 12-year-old Tui Mitcham, was broadcast by the corporation in 2017

The BBC has also aired Safe Harbour which follows the encounter between a group of friends from Brisbane who embark on the sailing holiday of a lifetime and soon come across a stranded fishing boat packed with asylum seekers.

The latest move comes after it was announced that BBC Three could make a return to television screens four years after it was taken off air and moved online in an effort to increase the broadcasting corporation's young audience.

The digital platform will see its budget doubled in an effort to bring it back to the TV screen.

The plans follow the success of shows including Normal People, which helped the corporation reach the crucial target of younger viewers.

The youth-focused channel was taken off air in 2016 in a move that saved the broadcaster a reported 30 million.

However following a strong showing for BBC Three during lockdown, the corporation expects to double the amount it spends on commissions for the channel over the next two years and is 'considering the case' for restoring it as a linear TV channel.




The Lincoln Project has accused Brad Parscale of looting millions of dollars from the Trump campaign. He is now being blamed by scumbags Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for the Tulsa rally debacle.





When things go wrong in Trumps world, someone besides him has to be blamed. President Trump and his family are incapable of recognizing the truth even when reality slaps them in the face repeatedly. When Trump Campaign manager saw 800,000 signups for the Tulsa Oklahoma rally scheduled on the anniversary date of the white riot that slaughtered hundreds of people on Black Wall Street and burned their community down in 1921, he saw it as an opportunity to crow about the decision to hold Trumps first campaign rally of the general election cycle.

Trumps strategy was to perpetuate vicious racism sediment to yield a million people to descend on the city of Tulsa to show their support for Trump.

As it turns out, a single rant by a grandmother on the social platform TikTok, created a viral campaign that energized thousands of teenagers across America to punk both Parscale, and the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign bought into the Fake News that the rally in Tulsa would be a break out of unparalleled proportions and create an indoor and overflow outdoor event.

Parscale dumbstruck by the reality tried to deflect the embarrassing 6,200 person turnout for what many call the Tulsa Suicide Rally by blaming the radical protesters who blocked the entrance into the event.

Parscale was quoted as saying

Leftists and online trolls are doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, Parscale wrote, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-pop fans  without contacting the campaign for comment  behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.

For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting, but typical, he added. And it makes us wonder why to be bothered credentialing media for events when they dont do their full jobs as professionals.

An outright lie, compounded by the claim, the event was sabotaged by apocalyptic media coverage. Which amounted to no more than the same warnings Trumps health experts Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx told the President.

Now a day after the event, his daughter Ivanka Trump and son in law Jared Kushner have concluded the reason for the low turnout isnt the fact that President Trump's popularity is crumbling nationwide, as reflected in the polls. They believe the debacle in Tulsa is the fault of Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale.

According to CNNs Jim Acosta, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were said to be pissed at the campaign manager because thousands of the arenas seats were empty. By that, they are referring to the 13,000 empty seats, and a nonexistent turnout of 50,000 supporters President Trump expected to great him before the event in a specially set up outdoor venue next to the arena.

Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilsons Lincoln Project has been merciless in a steady stream of political videos, pointing to the fact that Parscale doesnt believe Trump has a chance of being re-elected. The Lincoln Project has been relentless in trolling Parscale and others cashing in on the hundreds of millions of dollars being raised to fund Trumps 2020 re-election campaign.




A recently published analysis by the Wall Street Journal of the response by New York state to the COVID-19 pandemic paints a horrifying picture of preventable mass death in New York City hospitals from COVID-19. The report is based on interviews with 90 health care workers from different New York City hospitals, government officials and administrators, as well as emails, legal documents and memos.

As of June 11, New York, a state with a population of less than 20 million, accounted for 7 percent of the worldwide death toll from COVID-19 and 27 percent of total deaths in the US. On June 21, the state had 31,011 confirmed deaths, likely a vast underestimate of the real death toll. Most of these deaths have occurred among the impoverished working class, especially African-American and immigrant workers.

Many, if not most, of these deaths were preventable. According to the workers interviewed by the WSJ, understaffing in particular has contributed to a higher death toll. While intensive care unit (ICU) beds were created relatively quickly, there was not sufficient staff to adequately treat the patients.

Nurses at Mount Sinai West in garbage bags. (Photo: Facebook, Diana Torres)

At newly created pop-up ICUs at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, a major private hospital system, workers reported, Garbage in the makeshift 80-bed unit overflowed with contaminated needles, masks and gowns. Urine and blood stains were at times found on the ground and equipment. An ICU nurse said, The scope of patient needs compared with the training and resources available presented an absolute crisis. You can magically make an ICU appear, but you cant make staff appear immediately.

The shortage of ICU nurses and respiratory therapists, who have to go through a two-year training, was particularly devastating. At a new operating room ICU at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, one respiratory therapist had to care for up to 80 patients per shift, 8 times more than the norm. Complications occurred in intubated patients because overworked staffers were not able to suction mucus out of their lungs often enough. Sometimes their lips were bleeding, and many developed sores on their backs because they were not turned often enough.

A Columbia resident doctor wrote in an email, We are not running these ICUs safely or appropriately. The emotional burden of working in these sci-fi-movie-gone-wrong ICUs is through the roof.

The ventilators workers received from the state stockpile were often not working properly. Some had to go through maintenance before they could be used at all, others sent inaccurate alarm signals, confusing the respiratory therapists.

At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, which was an epicenter of the crisis for weeks, one respiratory therapist estimated that more staffing and better equipment could have saved 30 to 40 percent of the COVID-19 patients who died at that hospital. Oxygen shortages occurred in at least eight New York City hospitals. According to the Wall Street Journal, the problem was not a shortage of oxygen on the market but the failure of state, city and hospital administrations to quickly procure and dole out sufficient oxygen and other supplies. This also included vital sign monitors that are used to monitor ICU patients and the staff needed to keep track of them.

Along with the overwhelmed staff, this led to a situation where hospitals at times lost track of admitted patients. In several cases, they failed to record, sometimes for several days, that someone had already died. Hospitals were also short of IV pumps, which are used to automatically deliver medication, and dialysis machines. That these were particularly important was known since early March when Chinese data pointed to kidney failure as one of the main risks for COVID patients.

Dr. Donya Bani Hani from the ICU at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx said that in the first weeks of April she saw a COVID-19 patient die every day or two because of complications that dialysis may have prevented. Another doctor said that at Bellevue Hospital, at least 10 patients died because they could not get dialysis in time. One patient died waiting in line for a machine.

The WSJ also cited more evidence that many hospitals were not isolating COVID-19 patients properly from non-COVID patients, mostly for lack of space. Moreover, many transfers of patients in critical condition occurred without proper coordination and medical provisions, often resulting in patients deaths.

On top of these staggering shortages, throughout the pandemic health care workers have been left without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). This has not only led to mass infections among health care workers, and about 600 deaths nationwide, but also to a quicker spread of the virus in hospitals themselves and their communities.

The severe shortages of critical medical supplies amid a pandemic that has long been predicted are a direct result of the criminal response by the American ruling class to the pandemic. While trillions were handed out to major corporations, including $1.5 billion to some of the biggest hospital chains, thousands were dying in the city that is home to Wall Street for lack of staff and basic medical resources.

The catastrophe unfolding in New York hospitals, which count among the best in the world, was the result of decades of cuts in health care and other social services which were carried out by the Democratic state and city administration, in conjunction with health care unions like the New York State Nurses Association. Sixteen hospitals have been closed in New York state alone in the past 12 years. Nurses have warned for years of severe understaffing that was dangerous even under normal conditions.

The weeks-long delay in the response to the pandemic was the most critical factor in driving up the death toll and overwhelming hospitals.

Adopting a policy of malign neglect, the American ruling class effectively let the virus spread for about two months without taking any of the scientifically recommended measures like mass testing, isolation and contact tracing. In New York, where the virus had spread earlier and more quickly than in most of the rest of the country, the delay of social distancing measures and mass testing was particularly devastating.

Just like President Trump, New Yorks Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio first declared that the coronavirus was not much worse than the flu. Throughout February and early March, they dismissed fears of its spread, urging the population go about business as usual.

Largely due to the lack of testing, the first case was confirmed only on March 1. Models later found that by that date, at least 10,000 infections had already occurred in New York. However, the state did not go into lockdown until 20 days later, on March 22, when hospitals were already beginning to become overwhelmed. Public schools were only closed on March 15.

On March 23, Cuomo ordered hospitals to increase capacity by at least 50 percent. Michael Dowling, the CEO of Northwell Health and a member of Cuomos COVID task force, later acknowledged, You could make an argument that it should have happened a month before.

Pro Publica reported in May that officials from the Department of Health who had already begun in February to demand much more far-reaching action were systematically excluded from discussions, pressured to support decisions made without their consent and against their advice. A scientific model accurately projecting the development of the virus in New York was available to New York state and city officials by February, an entire week before the first case was confirmed. New York state reportedly did not reach out to the responsible scientist at Columbia until March 20 to consult the model.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has estimated that the deaths in New York City might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent if social distancing had been widely adopted a week or two earlier.

On Monday, the state is moving into Phase 2 of its reopening under conditions where cases are spiking across the country and New York City is still recording several hundred new infections every day. This is more cases than countries like South Korea and China, which are seeing a new surge in cases, are recording on a weekly basis.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has congratulated Grand Duke of Luxembourg His Royal Highness Henri.

Your Royal Highness, it is with great pleasure that I congratulate you and the friendly people of Luxemburg on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of your countrys national holiday, the Azerbaijani president said.

On this remarkable day, I wish strong health and happiness to you, and everlasting prosperity to your country, the president added.
Researchers at Amnesty International collected evidence that a Moroccan journalist was targeted with network injection attacks using NSO Group s spyware.

In October 2019, security experts at Amnesty Internationals Security Lab have uncovered targeted attacks against Moroccan human rights defenders Maati Monjib and Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui that employed NSO Group surveillance tools.

The researchers are still investigating the attacks and found similar evidence of the attacks on Omar Radi, a prominent activist, and journalist from Morocco.

After checking his devices for evidence of targeting, Amnesty International was able to confirm that Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui was indeed targeted repeatedly with malicious SMS messages that carried links to websites connected to NSO Groups Pegasus spyware. reads the analysis published by Amnesty International in October.

The organization also discovered that the spyware was also used to spy on Maati Monjib, the right group believes the operation is part of state-sponsored repression of human rights defenders.

The victims were targeted with messages related to the Hirak El-Rif movement and the subsequent repression by the Moroccan security forces. The messages included links that once clicked by the victims will start the attack chain that would allow the attacker to remotely control the device.

The links used in these attacks are similar to the ones detected by in June 2018 by Amnesty International in operations against an Amnesty staff member and a Saudi HRD.

On 26 December 2019, Moroccan authorities arrested Radi for a tweet he posted in April, that criticized the judicial system for upholding the verdict against protesters from the 2017 protest movement in Hirak el-Rif.

Omar Radi is a Moroccan award-winning investigative journalist and activist who worked for several national and international media outlets.

Amnesty Internationals Security Lab performed a forensic analysis of Omar Radis phone and found traces suggesting he was subjected to the same network injection attacks we first observed against Maati Monjib and described in our earlier report. reads the report published by Amnesty International. Through our investigation we were able to confirm that his phone was targeted and put under surveillance during the same period he was prosecuted.

Since October 2019, Amnesty International observed threat actors adopting new stealth techniques to deliver the malware, dubbed network injections, that allow them to install the spyware without requiring any targets interaction.

This attack scenario sees attackers monitoring and manipulating the Internet traffic of the target. In both Omar and Maatis attacks all injections happened while using their LTE/4G mobile connection.

This type of attack is possible using two techniques: deploying a device commonly referred to as a rogue cell tower, IMSI Catcher or stingray, or by leveraging access to the mobile operators internal infrastructure. It is currently unclear which of these two options have been used against Omar and Maati. states the report. However, NSO Groups network injection capabilities were briefly described in a document named Pegasus  Product Description  apparently written by NSO Group  that was found in the 2015 leak of the competing Italian spyware vendor, Hacking Team. Specifically, in January 2020, Business Insider reported about mobile interception technology NSO Group exhibited during Milipol, an event and trade show on homeland security held in Paris in November 2019.

The analysis of Omar Radis iPhone suggests network injection attacks took place on 27th January, 11th February, and 13th of September 2019.

Researchers also discovered that the spyware used to target Radi was also employed in the Maati Monjibs attack and attack infrastructure overlaps with the one used by the NSO Groups Pegasus.

The report published by the expert is very important, the researchers pointed out that Omar Radi was targeted just three days after NSO Group released its human rights policy.

This means that the attacks continued after the company became aware of Amnesty Internationals first report that provided evidence of the targeted attacks in Morocco. The researchers speculate NSO Groups continued failure to conduct adequate human rights due diligence and the inefficacy of its own human rights policy.

Technical details about the attacks are included in the report published by Amnesty.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/06/moroccan-journalist-targeted-with-network-injection-attacks-using-nso-groups-tools/

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs  NSO Group, Morocco)

Share this...

Linkedin

Share this: Twitter

Print

LinkedIn

Facebook

More

Tumblr

Pocket





Share On
The history behind the names of some buildings on the University of Georgias campus has come to light due to the national and local cry for racial justice. The Red & Black compiled five buildings and colleges on the Athens campus that are controversial due to either their namesake or for the history behind them.
Black Lives Matter protesters sit in front of the Houses of Parliament. (Getty)

The majority of black Britons believe the Conservative Party is institutionally racist, according to a new poll.

A CNN poll, conducted amid ongoing Black Lives Matter antiracism protests, found that 58% of black people and 39% of white people in the UK said the Tories are institutionally racist.

The survey of 1,535 British adults also found that 55% of black people dont trust the Tory government to prevent another Windrush-type scandal, while 39% of white people believe the same.

During the scandal, at least 83 people who had come to the UK legally from Commonwealth countries were wrongly deported.

People gather at Parliament Square in central London on Sunday. (AP)

The Earl Haig Memorial in Whitehall was defaced with Black Lives Matter graffiti. (Getty)

Police officers at a protest, organised by Black Lives Matter, at Parliament Square in central London at the weekend. (AP)

The poll follows largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests in London, Coventry and Newcastle over the weekend  the latest in a series of antiracism demonstrations in recent weeks.

The UK protests began as support for protests in America after the death of George Floyd, but have shone a spotlight on racism in the UK.

Boris Johnson has acknowledged several times in the past month that there is racism in Britain.

He responded to the protests by announcing a government commission to look into racial inequalities, but immediately prompted criticism by saying he wanted to end the sense of victimisation.

We have to acknowledge that when thousands of people march peacefully for Black Lives Matter, you cant ignore that. I, as a leader, as someone in government, I cant ignore the strength of feeling, he wrote in a Telegraph comment piece.

Boris Johnson, here during a visit to a primary school last Friday, said there is racism in Britain. (Steve Parsons/Pool via AP)

He told broadcasters: What I really want to do as prime minister is change the narrative so we stop the sense of victimisation and discrimination, we stamp out racism and we start to have a real sense of expectation of success.

Labours shadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova described the comments as condescending.

Johnson has been condemned for racist comments in the past.

He once wrote that Muslim women who wore burkas chose to go around looking like letterboxes and in a 2002 article, also for The Telegraph, he gave an infamous description of black people in Africa bearing watermelon smiles and used the racist term piccaninnies.
A project to develop a new Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk has been named as one of 11 successful border county projects from the North East and North West of the country approved to share in the 17m Border Enterprise Development Fund 2020, an initiative of the Government of Ireland administered by Enterprise Ireland.

Nineteen applications were received from project groups in Counties Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth with 11 projects selected for funding following a rigorous evaluation process. Four of the finalist projects will be based in Louth, two in Monaghan, two in Donegal, one in Cavan, one in Sligo and one in Leitrim.

The Border Enterprise Development Fund, which was launched in January, will provide support for collaborative, enterprise capability building projects, to advance entrepreneurship, productivity and innovation in the Border Region.

Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD said, I am delighted to announce the very impressive projects that have been successful in receiving funding under the Border Enterprise Development Fund. This fund is part of a 28m economic stimulus package, which I announced for the Border Region earlier this year. Its designed to foster collaboration while helping to make businesses more resilient, more innovative and more competitive.

All of the research shows that the Border region is most exposed to the impact of Brexit, and obviously the situation is even more difficult now with the COVID-19 challenge. Thats why I want to ensure that businesses in the region are supported by Government in responding to the challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead.

This is the first time that my Department has provided targeted, ringfenced funding to a specific region, which represents a strong statement of our commitment to the Border area. Through this Fund, I want to make businesses in the border region more resilient, more innovative and more competitive so that we can stimulate enhanced economic activity in the region.

Enterprise Ireland Regional Director in the North-East and North-West, Aidan McKenna said, Enhancing collaboration is a central element to driving the innovative capabilities of indigenous enterprise and this is a key focus of Enterprise Irelands Powering the Regions strategy. The 11 successful projects announced today including the Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk, illustrate the power of collaboration and will enhance productivity of SMEs to build scale at a regional level.

Our aim is to improve the international competitiveness of enterprise in the Border Region in the context of Brexit and other market challenges, which now also include COVID-19 and to help increase the number of exporters, win business in global markets and provide sustainable employment opportunities in the Border Region.

Martin OBrien, CEO, Louth and Meath Education and Training Board (LMETB) added, Brexit, and more recently COVID-19, has shone a light on manufacturing in Ireland which is reaching a critical point and needs to change. To successfully compete in the global market, Irish industry must employ Advanced Manufacturing techniques.

This Advanced Manufacturing and Technology Centre of Excellence here in Dundalk will empower Irish industry to make that move and open up opportunities for higher paid employment. LMETB is delighted to lead this national initiative in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, the Department of Education and skills and SOLAS.

Chief Executive with Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR), Barry Kennedy said, IMR is delighted that LMETB has received support to develop an Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence and we are pleased to be a strategic partner in its development. At this time, upskilling our manufacturing organisations to be able to integrate emerging technologies such as collaborative robotics will be key to enabling manufacturing in Ireland to successfully push through the challenges of working in a post Covid-19 world and continue to enable Ireland to be competitive on the world stage.

Brendan Mackin, Chairperson of the Portview Enterprise Centre, East Belfast concluded, The all-Ireland dimension to this project will make a significant contribution to the economic and community recovery of all on the island of Ireland. On behalf of the Portview Enterprise Centre Board we are delighted to be part of this innovative initiative and we wish the LMETB team every success with the project.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Fifty-seven girls at a state-run children's shelter home in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur district have tested positive for COVID-19, with five of them found to be pregnant, an administration official said on Sunday.

Moreover, seven of the inmates are pregnant of whom, five tested positive for the virus, two others tested negative, Kanpur divisional commissioner Sudhir M Bobde and DM Brahmdeo Ram Tiwari confirmed.

Among those five, one also tested positive for HIV and another for Hepatitis C.

The shelter home has total 171 of whom 53 are minor inmates who all are the victim of sexual assault under POCSO Act from 14 districts in and around Kanpur.



According to Kanpur DM Brahmadeo Ram Tiwari, 33 inmates had tested positive on June 17 and 24 more were found infected in corresponding days.

All of them have been sent to Covid hospital for treatment," said the DM adding that the shelter home was sealed for sanitisation who also claimed that those girls had come from Agra, Kannauj, Firozabad, Etah and Kanpur Nagar on the directions of Child Welfare Committees of respective districts.

They all were allegedly victims of sexual assault and their cases were being pursued under POCSO Act.

Out of 33 inmates found positive on June 17, 18 belonged to womens protection home and 15 to girls protection home. All 24 found infected thereafter were for the minors home.

AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra raised questions on the pregnancy of the inmates based on media reports, in a Facebook post and also took to Twitter to accuse the state government of suppressing the facts and also referred to the Bihar Shelter home case and also the one in Deoria in eastern UP.

"The entire story of the Muzaffarpur shelter home case is in front of the country. Such a case had also come to light in Deoria in UP," Priyanka Gandhi said.

UP State Women Commission member Poonam Kapoor, referring to the 'suspicious' pregnancies claimed that she would regularly visit to the shelter home and that there was no reason for concern.

(With PTI inputs)
Bengaluru, June 22 : Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan has called for Japanese investments in the state in healthcare, semiconductors and others during a meeting with that country's diplomats on Monday.

"In Karnataka there is availability of expert medical doctors and skilled health workers. This makes the state very attractive for investment in healthcare sector," said Ashwathnarayan.

He said the healthcare industry grew by 35-45 per cent in the previous year.

The deputy chief minister expressed hope that more Japanese health and pharmaceutical companies will invest in India.

According to Ashwathnarayan, there is also potential in Karnataka to invest in the semiconductor industries as there are many incentives.

He said that a new era will begin between the southern state and Japan.

"Already Japan has made huge investments in the State. I hope it would increase by 100 fold in the coming days," he said.

Ashwathnarayan met with Shingo Miyamoto, Minister, Embassy of Japan, Ryoji Furui, Councilor and others.
Four firefighters and a teenager were hospitalized when the driver of a BMW crashed into a Houston fire truck blocking traffic for a separate crash Sunday night.

The crew from Engine 52 was stopped on the northbound main lanes of the Gulf Freeway near Bellfort Street to block traffic for a hit-and-run crash around 9:30 p.m. All four firefighters were inside the engine, which had its emergency lights activated.

SEARCH ON: Pickup driver attempting to pass car kills bicyclist in hit-and-run

The BMW driver was northbound in the main lanes and struck the front left side of the engine, causing heavy damage to the car and fire truck. A 15-year-old girl who was in the front passenger seat was seriously injured in the crash but is expected to survive, according to Houston Police Department Sgt. David Rose.

The four firefighters were also taken to the hospital but are in good condition.

The BMW driver could face felony charges for the crash. There were no signs of intoxication, Rose said, although authorities are seeking a blood draw to determine if the driver was intoxicated in any way.

Very few sober people crash into giant fire trucks with their lights on like that, said Sean Teare, chief of the Harris County District Attorneys Office Vehicular Crimes Unit. He added that the driver might have been fatigued or distracted.

In Houston, an additional fire truck is typically dispatched to any freeway crash to help block traffic for firefighters and paramedics. In December, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena tweeted that the city was looking into recommissioning older fire trucks into special blocker trucks specifically designed to block traffic, so fully staffed engines and ladder companies can remain in service and ready to take other calls.

The status of that initiative is unclear.

Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com
P olice have apologised for not enforcing lockdown rules after officers failed to break up a "massive" rave on the streets of Bristol.

Residents of Stoke Croft have expressed their outrage and anger over the impromptu outdoor gathering, which started on Saturday afternoon and carried on through the night.

Avon and Somerset Police had admitted they were alerted on multiple occasions to the rave as well as a separate party in the St Werburgh's area.

A spokesperson for the force said that a raft of incidents, including car accidents and domestic assaults, had stopped officers from responding directly to the event early on.

By the time the crowds had grown, officers deemed it too large to safely disperse and focused on containing the event rather than breaking it up, the force added.

Angry locals shared photos and videos of the huge gathering online, calling attendees "selfish" and "irresponsible".

Resident Clare Bennett wrote online: "This was right at the end of my road so none of us in the house could sleep last night. I feel very angry and genuinely upset that people can be so selfish.

"Having a club night outside, in a residential area is bad enough and something that seems to happen more often around here, even before lockdown.

"But to do it in the middle of a pandemic is just incredible. Selfish, selfish, selfish people."

Fran Gomez wrote: "Seriously?? This was yesterday In Stoke croft. Where was the Bristol police when this was happening in the Middle of the town?"

Another resident told ITV: "It started at 3pm - a large marquee and sound system - it was selfish irresponsible and probably illegal. We are in the middle of a pandemic."

Avon and Somerset Police said: "We would like to apologise to those affected by the noise and nuisance caused by unlicensed music events in Stokes Croft and St Werburghs, Bristol, overnight Saturday 20 to Sunday 21 June.

"Wherever possible, we seek to shut down an unlicensed events as theyre being set up or as soon afterwards as we can, because once large numbers have gathered public safety risks can make them harder to shut down.

"On this occasion we did have a chance to stop the Stokes Croft event before it got under way and we missed that opportunity. We want to apologise to all the people disrupted as a result.

"Were carrying out a thorough review of the weekends events to make sure our response to unlicensed music events and unplanned mass gatherings is better going forward. Wed encourage people affected by the disturbances to contact their neighbourhood team if theyd like to contribute to this.

"Were clear that coronavirus is still a real and current threat to life. Any large gathering is against public health advice and should not be happening.

"However we must also consider that deploying resources to unplanned, unlicensed music events and gatherings could delay or prevent our response to other incidents.

"For example between 5pm and midnight on Saturday we had 42 immediate and 53 high priority 999 calls to incidents where people were potentially at immediate risk of harm.

"With pre-planned events, were able to ensure resources are available and put a full policing plan in place beforehand to ensure it can go ahead safely.

"Over coming days officers will be carrying out regular patrols of potential rave sites across the force area."

Assistant Chief Constable Nick Bailey conceded there could be occasions in which senior officers decide it is too dangerous to close down a rave, due to its scale and factors such as terrain and darkness, but he vowed action would be taken to gather enough evidence to secure convictions.

In Manchester last weekend, a 20-year-old man died of a suspected drug overdose, an 18-year-old woman was raped and three men were stabbed at events in Trafford and Oldham attended by more than 6,000 people.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, said that such events may happen again but said there is no question of us turning a blind eye or adopting a permissive approach.
A young Iranian labor and civil rights activist, Sepideh Qolyan (Gholian) went back to prison on Sunday after she refused to petition the Supreme Leader for clemency.

Ms. Qolyan, 25, had been sentenced to five years in jail for her role in a labor protest at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane industrial complex in 2018, in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, southwest Iran.

Earlier, she had announced that the judge in charge of her legal case had threatened that if she does not write a petition to the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and request a pardon, she would be placed behind bars in Qarchak prison, south of the Iranian capital city, Tehran.

Insisting on her innocence, Qolayn dismissed the offer and surrendered herself to the authorities on Sunday to serve her term in jail.

Qolyan was free on bail after Iran released thousands of prisoners during the height of the coronavirus crisis but unlike thousands, she did not receive a furlough.

In recent months, an unknown number of the detainees linked to the Haft Tapeh legal case have been either pardoned or released after the deadly virus outbreak.

In a video message on Tuesday, June 16, Qolyan disclosed on her Instagram page that she had refused to write a letter requesting a pardon from Khamenei. "I refused. Therefore, I must report back to Qarchak Prison next Sunday," Qolyan reiterated.

Along with nearly twenty workers of the Haft Tapeh Industrial complex, Qolyan was arrested on November 2018 in the city of Shush, and transferred to the capital city of the province, Ahvaz. The workers were protesting unpaid wages.

Later, Qolyan and the spokesman of the Haft Tapeh workers, Esmail Bakhshi, claimed that they had been brutally tortured by the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic Judiciary not only refused to investigate the allegation but sentenced Qolyan to five years in prison.

The monopolized state-run TV also aired a video against Qolyan, Bakhshi, and several other labor rights activists, accusing them of having links with the anti-Islamic Republic forces outside Iran.

Harsh verdicts against the Haft Tapeh protesters were issued at a time when the Director-General of the industrial complex, Omid Assad Gaigui, is not only accused of multiple embezzlements but receiving a record-breaking $1.5 billion bank loan without paying back.

The wife of Khuzestan Governor is also accused of receiving 200,000 euros bribe from the Director-General of the Haft Tapeh.

Sepideh Qalyan, 25, has two other cases in the Islamic Republic's judiciary in addition to her five-year sentence in the Tapeh protests: the publication of news about the Iranian-Arabic speaking minorities behind bars in the Islamic Republic. She is also accused of revealing the identity of an Iranian TV reporter, Ms. Ameneh Zabihpour, who allegedly acts as an intelligence agent and interrogator.
Lazarus Chakwera, a preacher who heads Malawi's main opposition party, is seen as the front-runner heading into a court-ordered election rerun on June 23 after forming an alliance with the popular vice president, Saulos Chilima.

The Supreme Court of Appeal, the top judicial authority, last month upheld the Constitutional Court's annulment of a shambolic May 2019 vote that handed President Peter Mutharika a second five-year term. It also ordered that the successful candidate must win an outright majority rather than the most votes as in the past -- a change that should work in a united opposition's favor.

Mutharika, a constitutional law expert who studied at the University of London and Yale, has ruled the landlocked southern African nation since 2014. While he's been credited with bolstering economic growth, he's been criticized for not clamping down on graft. The government also shouldered some of the blame for the flawed vote -- which included correction fluid being used to alter results -- and failing to decisively tackle political violence that followed.

"This is a government whose image is tattered," Ernest Thindwa, a political scientist at the University of Malawi, said by phone from the southern town of Zomba. "I don't see how it can win this coming election."

Securing a credible vote is a key test for a country the United Nations ranks as one of the world's least developed after the ruling to scrap the previous result was hailed as a boost for democracy. It was only the second time a vote had been overturned in Africa. The judiciary rejected a decision by the president last week to put the chief justice on leave pending retirement.

The nation of 18 million people relies on tourism, tea and burley tobacco, a low-quality variety of the leaf, for the bulk of its export revenue. Aid from international donors, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund helps shore up its finances.

Chakwera, with Chilima as his running mate, should win the election in the first round with 51% support to Mutharika's 33%, a survey of 1,348 adults published this month by the Zomba-based Institute of Public Opinion and Research shows. Eighty-five percent of respondents said the country is going in the "wrong direction."

Mutharika won 38.6% of the annulled votes last year to Chakwera's 35.4%. Chilima, who quit the ruling party in 2018 to protest a perceived failure to clamp down on graft but retained the deputy president's post because he was directly elected, finished third with 20%.

Chakwera, 65, has exuded confidence on the campaign trail and drawn large crowds to rallies despite the prevalence of the coronavirus. The country has had more than 700 confirmed cases so far.

"Our combination is unbeatable because everywhere I have gone people have been demanding that I partner with Saulos," he said at a campaign event in Blantyre, the commercial capital.

Chilima, a 47-year-old former telecommunications executive who heads the United Transformation Party, has criss-crossed the country to canvass support for Chakwera. Their promises included production subsidies for farmers, a million jobs for the youth within a year and a clampdown on corruption.

Chilima commands strong support in Malawi's northern region, which is home to about 14% of registered voters. There is widespread discontent among northerners over Mutharika's failure to build a new university, an international airport and other promised projects, according to George Phiri, a political analyst from the University of Livingstonia.

With Chakwera commanding strong backing in Malawi's central region, and Mutharika's support base concentrated in the south, Phiri sees a change in power as likely -- even if there's an attempt to rig the vote.

The nation's electoral commission, whose head has been replaced, has given assurances that the vote will be credible and said it shouldn't judged by its predecessor's mistakes.

Mutharika, 79, who has pledged to turn Malawi into a developed nation if re-elected, has said he remains confident of retaining office.

"If you give me another five years the country will be transformed," he told a campaign rally in the capital, Lilongwe on June 17. "It will be like South Africa, Singapore, London, America or Canada."
A Saginaw Valley State University online academic program that empowers working nurses with a bachelor's degree education was recognized as one of the best of its kind in the state.

SVSU's RN to BSN (short for Registered Nurse and Bachelor of Science in Nursing, respectively) online program recently was ranked No. 2 in the state by RegisteredNursing.org in the category of Best Online RN to BSN Programs.

RegisteredNursing.org is a Carlsbad, California-based organization that provides resources for prospective nurses. To determine SVSU's ranking, RegisteredNursing.org used data from multiple sources - including the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics - as part of its methodology.

Karen Brown-Fackler, the chair of SVSU's Department of Nursing and an associate professor of nursing, said she was honored to learn about the distinction ... even though she did not entirely agree with the placement.

"We think we should be ranked No. 1," Brown-Fackler said. "We offer some great advantages. We have online classes but accessible faculty teaching the classes. Students can start the program whatever semester is best for them and take classes at their own pace."

She said other highlights of the online RN to BSN program include an adviser that helps students with admission, scheduling and academic progression.

Another element she said elevates the program: Its standout faculty. For instance, Sally Decker, a professor of nursing who helped design and establish the program, recently was honored with a lifetime achievement award from American Nurses Association-Michigan in part for her contributions to helping registered nurses earn bachelor's degrees in their professional field.

Brown-Fackler said the RN to BSN program offers empowering coursework.

"There are only five core classes and the other courses are electives they choose from, which could be graduate courses toward future programs or interesting continuing education courses relevant to working nurses," she said.

SVSU President Donald Bachand said he was proud of the university's faculty and staff for building the program and developing some of the region's top health care professionals.

"Especially in times such as these, this program's excellence is critical to the public health of our region, state, nation and world," Bachand said.

For more information about SVSU's RN to BSN program, go to the following URL link: www.svsu.edu/nursing/programs/rntobsn/.

- Processed by Victoria Ritter, vritter@mdn.net
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed his sympathy to all Italians who had lost friends or loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic, and his respect for their perseverance."The fight is not yet won, but we have made enormous progress together," he said after a meeting with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio in Rome.

He said a "top priority" of the German EU presidency, which begins on July 1, was helping countries recover economically and said "we are resolved not to leave any country in Europe behind."

"Together we will make Europe strong again," he said, acknowledging that there were "high expectations" for the German presidency.On Libya, Maas said it was important for the sides to come together to the negotiating table and work to achieve a meaningful cease fire."Actions must follow words, and that goes for everybody," he said.

(Image Credit: AP)
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced a surprising exit from the British royal family back in January  though not many found it to be a surprise. The two wanted to continue changing the world on their own time rather than as instructed by the royal family. Plus, the press and lack of privacy proved to be too much for them.

Now, though, one royal expert is claiming Meghan and Harrys royal exit wasnt for more privacy at all  and that Meghan has big plans to run for president.

Meghan Markle smiles at Prince Harry. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left the royal family for several reasons

When Harry and Meghan announced that theyd be stepping back from their roles as senior royals, the reasons why quickly unfolded. Meghan had had a difficult time with the press since she and Harry started dating, and the media negativity led her to have a tough time connecting with the public. There were rumors that she and Kate Middleton didnt get along, though its unclear if that had to do with the couples departure.

Plus, Harry and Meghan wanted a more private life, especially for their son, Archie, who was not given a royal title at birth.

Privacy was a main concern for the two

Ever since Harry was young, he had always valued privacy. He once recalled the difficulty of walking behind his mothers casket while millions of people watched, and it seemed to make him wish he could leave the royal family behind. When the two welcomed their son, they opted not to give him a royal title  a possible hint that they might have planned to leave the family all along.

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and Archie | Dominic Lipinski/WPA Pool/Getty Images

RELATED: Royal Author Claims Meghan Markle Is a Fame Addict and Prince Harry Married Her Because He Was Desperate

Leaving Archie without a title meant he might have a better chance at some normalcy  a life that Harry never had the chance to experience. When the couple decided to settle down in Los Angeles, many believed it was with the idea that theyd finally have the privacy they had always wanted.

One royal expert claims Meghan wants to run for president

Though Meghan and Harry reportedly left for privacy reasons, one royal expert suggests thats not what the two had in mind when they moved to the United States. Royal biographer Lady Colin Campbell told Daily Mail that Meghan is eyeing a run for the presidency, which is why she and Harry relocated.

I know the Duchess of Sussex has political ambitions and Ive been told that one day she wants to run for President, Campbell said. I think everything she is doing, leaving the royal family and moving back to California is part of her plan and she has taken Harry along with her.

RELATED: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Reportedly Stunned William and Kate With This Insensitive Move

It seems unlikely that the two would break into U.S. politics

Though Campbell is convinced Meghan wants to end up in the White House, it seems unlikely that the two would aim for a presidential bid. The royal family has famously stayed out of politics, and though Harry and Meghan have made their stance on some issues clear, a presidency would completely go against their initial want for privacy  and everything the royal family has known about keeping opinions to oneself.

Though going against the family isnt new for Harry and Meghan, the whole idea seems far-fetched. Still, its unclear where exactly Meghan and Harrys life will go, so nothing is off the table.
Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula has announced R1.135 billion relief package to the country's taxi industry in an effort to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the sector.

Addressing reporters on Friday, the Minister said reaching an agreement within government for this relief support for the taxi industry was a difficult process, which involved extensive lobbying and convincing the relevant authorities on the importance and need for this fund."Most of the special relief funds for sub-sectors provides on average maximums of about R350 million in comparison to whats on offer the taxi industry," he said.The Minister said the industry has further requested that the Department of Transport should review the regulations and directions to allow for the loading capacity to be increased from the current 70% to 100% with all passengers wearing masks and with regular sanitisation of vehicles after each journey as mitigation measures."This is not a matter the Department of Transport can finalise on its own and will need to be discussed by the NATJOINTS and the National Coronavirus Command Council for its consideration and then a response will be provided to the taxi industry," he said.The taxi industry, he said, has also requested that the department allow inter-provincial travel of taxis and for cross-border operations."Similarly, this too will be subjected to the intra-governmental processes and to this extent, I have undertaken to report back to the taxi industry in the coming week on the feedback of my engagement with the colleagues on the proposals," said Mbalula.He said he was also requested to intercede on behalf of the operators, who are clients of SA Taxi Finance, to ask for a moratorium on vehicle repossessions and also on an extended repayment holiday for taxi operators in distress.In this regard, he said the Ministry had received encouraging and positive feedback from SA Taxi Finance. The company, he said, will put a moratorium in place and also extend their initial one-month repayment holiday by a further two-months "to aid in alleviating the difficult position the taxi industry finds itself in as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic".The Department of Transport is set to finalise its work and will in due course announce the date on which payments in respect of the available relief will start.The departments mandate, he said, is to enable mobility in the economy and social setting."However, we are enjoined to execute this mandate responsibly and in a manner that ensures that the preservation of human life remains sacrosanct."The hard choices we have to make as a nation are premised on the centrality of the right to life and our singular commitment to upholding this right, above all else. Not everyone will be happy with these choices, some of which have been hard and will undoubtedly change our way of life."However, we must never forget the reason we make these difficult choices in the first place: to preserve human life."We are equally duty-bound to ensure that ours is not a sector that will enable the rampant spread of the virus. The measures that we put in place, and continue to revise from time to time, are meant to mitigate against this spread through various transport modes."The taxi industry moves approximately 15.6 million passenger journeys on a daily basis, accounting for moving 68% or 5.4 million passengers daily.It is estimated that this industry generates an excess of R40bn per annum, with approximately anything between 250,000 to 300,000 taxis that generate approximately 350,000 direct and indirect job opportunities. These include drivers, rank marshals and other administrative support staff.The Minister said there were currently 137,000 legal taxis operating in the country, with the relevant and valid operating licences."We also estimate, based on the last audit undertaken, that there are approximately 113,000 taxis operating illegally with receipts as proof that they have applied for operating licences with the relevant provincial authorities. It should be emphasised that the fact that you have applied for a permit does not automatically mean that you are issued with a permit," he said.
Another Iranian ship has docked in Venezuela, this time carrying food. The delivery indicates the latest example of strong ties between the two countries sanctioned by the United States.

The Iran-flagged Golsan is currently docking on Venezuela's Caribbean coast, according to the ship-tracking website Marine Traffic. The ship carried supplies for the first Iranian supermarket in Venezuela, the Iranian Embassy in the capital city of Caracas said on Saturday.

Another success in the friendly and fraternal relations between two countries, the embassy said in a tweet.

A series of Iranian fuel tankers reached Venezuela last month, despite US pressure. Venezuelas once-thriving oil industry has collapsed amid political and economic instability in the country and because of US sanctions.

The United States seeks to end cooperation between Iran and Venezuela. A State Department official told Al-Monitor last month that it was lobbying energy companies to refrain from doing business with Venezuelas state-owned oil firm. The United States opposes Irans actions in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries across the Middle East. The United States also supports an opposition government in Venezuela.

Sanctions from the United States on both Iran and Venezuela have brought the two close together in recent years. A coronavirus aid flight from Iran also landed in Venezuela this month.

Economic ties between Iran and Venezuela are likely to continue, despite pressure from Washington. Both Iranian and Venezuelan state media reported that there will be regular fuel deliveries from Iran to the South American country following the food shipment.
CONWAY, Ark. (June 22, 2020)  Dr. Alex Vernon, professor of English at Hendrix College, has been selected to hold the M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professorship.

Vernon is the third faculty member to hold this professorship. Established in 1982, the M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Professorship was first held by English professor Dr. Ashby Bland Crowder from 1982 to 2008, then by politics professor Dr. W. Jay Barth 87 from 2008 to 2020.

Because of the current pandemic, Vernon learned of his newest honor over the phone rather than in person. Provost Terri Bonebright delivered the news on a Monday.

When Terri told me, I broke into tears, because the Friday night before, my mother had died, Vernon said. I told the provost how nice it was to get good news. It was a very short phone call because I had to compose myself.

Currently on a year-long research leave made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, Vernon will use some of the professorships funding in connection with his NEH project: a biography of novelist Tim OBrien, author of The Things They Carried. The professorship would support research-related travel (as the pandemic permits), along with obtaining primary source material and records, and participating in conferences.

All of which, ultimately, serve to enhance the educational experience for Hendrix students. Vernon recently taught a course on Imagined Vietnam and led an Oxford-style tutorial on OBriens writings for a small group of Murphy Scholars in Literature and Language.

Every time I step into a classroom and talk about books and ideas with students, it keeps me engaged, keeps me on my toes. The teaching-and-scholarship dynamic is really alive for me, Vernon says. The teaching really helps me think about my scholarship, and my scholarship enlivens my teaching in how I engage with students.

Vernon earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina. He teaches a variety of courses in 20th Century American literature and writing, such as American Literature and the Environment and the Faulkner-Wideman Seminar. He has used two previous Odyssey professorships to take student groups abroad to study and perform service work in Vietnam, and to study the Spanish Civil War. Off campus, Vernon directed a two-year NEH Dialogues on the Experience of War program for central Arkansas veterans as well as the general public.

Vernon takes joy in sharing the same professorship as his predecessors Crowder and Barth, citing their teaching, their scholarship, and their friendship.

I think we have an immensely talented faculty. Every day I am in awe of something a colleague has done, whether thats inside or outside of the classroom, Vernon says. Im a good teacher, but at Hendrix I feel like an average teacher on my best days. Im amazed by my colleagues. Many of them are eminently qualified for a distinguished professorship. My oldest daughter likes to say she cant imagine me being anything but a professor, and I tell her that I think she means a professor at Hendrix, because theres something about this place that just fits me and my career.

Colleagues who nominated Vernon for the professorship wrote about his work both inside and outside the classroom, including his published worksbooks, journal articles, and commentaries appearing in national news outlets; his pedagogical innovation and attention to engaging students in a communal learning experience; and his service in administrative and leadership roles on campus.

Alexs service to Hendrix shows him to be committed to our colleges values, reflected in our statement of purpose, which he played a prominent role in authoring. The first goal in that statement is to cultivate empathy. I must note that Alex has been instrumental in that regard on campus, one colleague wrote. Hendrix is often likened to a bubble, but Alex brings a rare perspective on this campus of someone who served in the military. He may teach about war, but it is clear that his objective is to bring about peace.

The professorship honors M.E. Peace, who attended Hendrix during the 1913-1914 academic year and went on to become a successful business owner in Magnolia, Arkansas, and his wife Ima Graves Peace, a longtime friend of the College.

Vernon joins five continuing holders of distinguished professorships at Hendrix: Dr. Peg Falls-Corbitt, the Virginia A. McCormick Pittman Professor of Philosophy; Dr. John Krebs, the Willis H. Holmes Distinguished Professor of Music; Dr. Matt Moran, the Elbert L. Fausett Distinguished Professor of Biology; Dr. Lyle Rupert, the C. Louis and Charlotte Cabe Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business; and Dr. Lawrence Schmidt, the Harold and Lucy Cabe Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.

About Hendrix College

A private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently earns recognition as one of the countrys leading liberal arts institutions, and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and rigor, innovation, and value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu.
A Kiwi dad has gone viral on Facebook after penning a very moving poem for Constable Matthew Hunt, who was tragically murdered over the weekend while on duty.

The dad, Ben Heap, shared that he worked in the same line as work as the Constable, and had reflected on what happened to him after having thoughts of " that "could have been me"".

"I don't turn to social media very often but I just feel I needed to share what I have written in reflection for a man who represents all of us in blue." Ben wrote in his post.

"I haven't put pen to paper for a long time but I've had so many thoughts about this and found myself jotting ideas down as a way to process this gut wrenching news of a fellow brother in uniform."

"Matthew, I never met you but my heart goes out to you and your family. One coward with such a gutless low blow has deprived you of many opportunities. So this is for you mate."

I write this in memory of our fallen hero Constable Matthew Hunt who was slain on duty in Auckland on 19 June 2020."

Read the poem below, or click the picture to go to the original post.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky emphasizes that the international community must prevent the return of Russia to the G7 until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored.

In a Skype interview with Canadian publication The Globe and Mail, the Ukrainian president thanked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for opposing the idea of Russia's re-entering into the G7.

"Justin Trudeau said on June 1 that there is no chance for Russia to return to the G7 until the full restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and we are grateful for that support  and I should say that there will be no resolution if the world doesn't keep the pressure on Russia in that regard," Zelensky noted.

According to Zelensky, Ukraine in the search for peace with Russia, which is the "most tricky and difficult" task, needs its international allies to stay firmly in the course of these negotiations.
T wo monuments commemorating Frances colonial past were daubed with red paint in Paris over the weekend.

One statue, of French general Hubert Lyautey, was vandalised near the gold-domed Les Invalides complex where Napoleons tomb lies.

Lyautey served in Morocco, Algeria, Madagascar and Indochina when they were under French control, and later was Frances minister of war during World War One.

The other figure doused in red shows Voltaire, a leading thinker and writer of the French Enlightenment, who owed part of his fortune to colonial-era trade.

A statue of Voltaire, a French Enlightenment philosopher, was also splattered with red / REUTERS

It comes amid growing calls to replace monuments honouring prominent historical figures who played a role in the slave trade or colonialism.

The movement has been inspired by the global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the Minneapolis last month.

Meanwhile in the US, the American Museum of Natural History has agreed to remove a statue of former president Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance.

It follows years of objections that the figure symbolises colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

The bronze statue that has stood at the museums Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts President Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing beside the horse.

The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior, New York city mayor Bill de Blasio said in a written statement.

The City supports the Museums request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.

The statue of Theodore Roosevelt will be removed from outside the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan / REUTERS

The museums president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times the museums community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.

We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism, Ms Futter said.

Officials said it had not been determined when the Roosevelt statue would be removed and where it would go.

The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelts legacy, Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, said in a statement to the Times. It is time to move the statue and move forward.

Ms Futter said the museum objected to the statue but not to Roosevelt, a pioneering conservationist whose father was a founding member of the museum and who served as New Yorks governor before becoming the 26th president.

She said the museum would name its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt in recognition of his conservation legacy.

In 2017, protesters splashed red liquid on the statues base to represent blood and published a statement calling for its removal as an emblem of patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:04:25|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

MADRID, June 22 (Xinhua) -- China is vital for a healthy multilateral system, an expert has said ahead of the upcoming meeting between China and the European Union (EU).

"It is a key actor in the global jigsaw of economic growth and for the good health of the multilateral system," Xulio Rios, director of the Observatory of Chinese Politics in Spain, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"For the European Union, China is neither expendable nor can it be left on one side. China is a fundamental factor as we look for a fast way out of the deep global crisis which is growing around us," Rios said.

The 22nd China-EU leaders' meeting, which will be held on Monday through video link, will be the first of its kind after the inauguration of the new EU leaders last year, and the highest bilateral meeting since the COVID-19 outbreak.

Any agreement between the EU and China reached during the meeting will bring together important assets, which will not only help the two sides better recover from the epidemic, but also benefit the whole world, said Rios.

The meeting will be a key moment for EU-China relations, Rios said, adding that both sides strongly believe in the need to chart a new course together in a post-pandemic world.

Furthermore, it will send a message of hope to the international community, putting faith in cooperation and dialogue for the management of bilateral and global affairs, he said.

Rios noted that the EU and China have shared the same visions on saving lives and maintaining the economy amid the pandemic.

Both sides have signaled that the absolute priority has to be the protection of people's health, he said, adding the two sides have also agreed on the main direction the world economy must take, with a focus on globalization and the stability of industrial and supply chains.

The EU and China have also formed building blocks for the stimulation of the global economy. Their cooperative alliance could provide the necessary impulse to kick-start production after the paralysis imposed by the pandemic, Rios said. Enditem
The way British soaps organize time is important, said Christine Geraghty, a professor of film and television studies at the University of Glasgow. They take place on a day-to-day basis. Characters wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. British soaps keep going: you dont always start a new episode at the exact place the last one finished. Cliffhanger endings, she said, tend to be deployed only for major plotlines.

Mostly, the postman comes in the morning, and the day ends with a drink in the pub, she said. The rhythms in a soap make it a recognizable world. You might know, as a viewer, that things like that dont quite happen in real life, but you can place it all within the scope of your own experience.

The stories can, of course, be outlandish  planes crash on the Yorkshire village where Emmerdale is set with alarming frequency  but the landscape, too, is constructed to feel familiar.

It is our world, but it is not our world, said Carole OReilly, a senior lecturer in media and television studies at the University of Salford. It looks and feels recognizable: a heightened version of the world we see.

She picks out the backdrop of Coronation Street  based on Salford itself  as authentically northern: the architecture of back-to-back terraced housing and cobbled streets, the social life revolving around the pub. But so, too, is the tone of the characters interactions. Direct and to the point, according to Geraghty, or gregarious and outgoing, to OReilly: all of it distinctly (if not uniquely) Mancunian.

But while British soaps set out to reflect the world, they are selective about which elements of the real world are allowed to seep in. Coronation Street has taken on a lot of social issues, Geraghty said. It has dealt with racism, domestic abuse, violence, trans rights. But it doesnt do current events; soaps are filmed too far in advance to deal with real events in real time, and besides, theyre too political.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs and other leaders on Monday staged a protest near finance minister Manpreet Singh Badals residence against the state governments move to dole out hundreds of acres of land of Bathindra Thermal Power Plant, which was shut down two years ago, to its loved ones.

The party members led by leader of opposition (LOP) Harpal Singh Cheema demanded revival of the power plant, which, they said, was lying shut due to the wrong policies of successive governments.

The protesters marching towards the Badals official residence were detained by the Chandigarh Police. As per a press release, AAP MLAs Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Gurmit Singh Meet Hayer and Jai Krishan Singh Rori, state political review committee chairman Harchand Singh Bursat and youth leader Sandeep Singla participated in the protest among others.

Cheema said they wanted to meet Manpreet Badal to remind him the election promise of reviving the thermal plant.

MLA Sandhwan said if the government has taken the unfortunate decision of closing down the thermal plant permanently, the land should be restored to the farmers from whom it was acquired in 1969.
[June 22, 2020] Network Function Virtualization Market Segments and Key Trends 2019-2024

The Network Function Virtualization market size is projected to grow from USD 12.9 billion in 2019 to USD 36.3 billion by 2024, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.9% during the forecast period. The major factors driving the growth of the NFV market include the demand for network virtualization and automation, increased emergence of cloud services and server virtualization, and need for advanced network management systems.







Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=93929190 Major Network Function Virtualization vendors include Cisco (US), Ericsson (US), Huawei (China), VMware(US), Nokia (Finland), HPE (US), Dell EMC (US), Juniper Networks (US), Affirmed Networks (US), NETSCOUT (US), NEC (Japan), Ribbon Communications (US), ZTE Corporation (China), Fujitsu (Japan), Ciena (US), ECI Telecom (Israel), Metaswitch (UK), Mavenir (US), Radisys (US), and Wind River (US). These market players have adopted various growth strategies, including partnerships, agreements, collaborations, and new product launches, to expand their presence in the NFV market. Partnerships, collaborations, and agreements have been the most adopted strategies by major players from 2017 to 2019, which helped companies innovate their offerings and increase their customer base.



Cisco is one of the global leaders in the Network Function Virtualization market. The company offers solutions and services across the globe. Huge spending in R&D has helped Cisco in developing a robust portfolio of network-specific solutions and services. The company has been continuously upgrading its NFV portfolio to keep up with the pace of the market with regular innovations in terms of products and solutions. It is focused on both organic and inorganic growth strategies to maintain its position in the NFV market. In line with inorganic growth strategies, the company is more focused on collaborations and partnerships. Recently, Cisco partnered with PLDT and Rakuten with an intent to devolve and deploy advanced technologies for 5G and Software-Defined Network (SDN). The company also collaborated with Vodafone Idea Limited to help it in designing a multi-cloud enhanced network. Cisco believes in delivering integrated network architectures and solutions, which help its end users to increase revenue and expand their businesses in the NFV market. It also focuses on maintaining market leadership by developing innovative networking solutions and looking for new avenues in emerging economies, such as Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East and Africa (MEA).





Huawei has established itself as a global leader in the Network Function Virtualization market by providing a comprehensive NFV portfolio to all its customers and pushing global NFV adoption. The company invested 14.1% of the total annual revenue in 2018 in R&D. Moreover, its 45% workforce is deployed in R&D. It has R&D institutes in several countries, such as India, China, Pakistan, Germany, and Finland. According to its 2017 annual report, it had invested USD 58.02 billion in R&D in the past decade. Huawei is focused on strengthening its growth in the NFV market through organic and inorganic growth strategies. For instance, in March 2019, Huawei launched a new solution, Telco Cloud Networking. The solution will empower 5G, IoT, and Virtual Reality (VR). The company is upgrading its solutions and helping companies deploy 5G networks in local areas; for instance, Huawei helped Deutsche Telekom launch a 5G network in Poland in December 2018.



Browse Complete Report @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/network-function-virtualization-market-93929190.html As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The Birmingham City Council is withdrawing an item that sought to rename part of Sixteenth Street North Black Lives Matter Boulevard.

The decision came after activists published a letter asking the council not to rename the street. The letter said renaming 16th Street North would erase part of the history of Birminghams role in the Civil Rights Movement.

In the letter, activists said that if a street should be named Black Lives Matter, it should be done with the intent of making a strong political statement like how it was used in Washington D.C. They said renaming an already historic street does not accomplish that.

We rise to speak in concert with our elders, those lost and those still here, and those yet to join the fight for justice to declare that this place matters. Sixteenth Street matters. Any alterations to this holy ground are an act of violent erasure of Birminghams global legacy of Human Rights and Liberation. Renaming 16th Street would disrespect the very movement that undergirds this current fight for justice, activists said in the letter.

We all understand that this moment demands more than simply renaming a street, said City Council President William Parker. As city leaders, we want to show that we stand in lockstep with the current movement for justice. We are committed to not only honoring the current movement, but also to enacting policies that improve the quality of life for every single resident; policies that instill a sense of confidence in our institutions and prove that we are continuing the mission of those who marched before us.

On June 19, the city council announced it would be considering an item to rename Sixteenth Street North from First Avenue North to Sixth Avenue North Black Lives Matter Boulevard. Activists and community leaders say city council leaders did not talk to them about the proposed action before the announcement.
Wed anticipated a difficult adjustment to life with Covid-19 for New York City and potentially other large American cities. A new Wall Street Journal story confirms our take and if anything, may be more grim. Restrictions of office workers returning to their posts end tomorrow, but the Journals sources estimate only 10% to 20% will return.

And for the most part, this isnt a short term Get the bugs out of getting them back phase, with many more expected to return soon. This low level looks likely to the new normal for at least the next few months, with increases from these levels expected to be measured.

Before looking at the impact on New York City and other dense urban centers in the US, the fact that work from home has worked at all calls into question many heretofore unquestioned norms of office like, like the true utility of having workers on premises. How much of formal and informal information-sharing is actually productive, as opposed to gossip and political jockeying? For instance, the pre-Carly-Fiorina Hewlett Packard was cognizant of the potential for meetings to be time-wasters, and required that they be held with all participants standing up.

Conversely, even though in-peron collaboration is usually more efficient (think of programmers sitting next to each other looking at the same screen), how much will actually be possible with new distancing rules?

Rethinking the utility of a day at the office isnt just a New York City issue. From the Journal:

But many firms say having employees work from home has been better than expected and are in no rush to get back to the office. In a recent global survey by trade group CoreNet Global, just 15% of companies said their office occupancy will be back to pre-pandemic levels within six months and 38% said it would take more than a year for everyone to be back.

Of course, a potential negative is that if remote work continues to be common after Covid-19 has been tamed, its not hard to imagine that most employers engage in more intrusive worker monitoring. But you might also see some interesting side effects. Harvard Business School for decades analyzed what personal and demographic factors correlated best with starting and career pay. One factor was the biggest predictor: height. Hard to project that over Zoom.

But back to Covid-19s effects on New York City. The Journal article describes how traders are particularly eager to get back, and how real estate firms are keen to project that its safe to get in the pool by bringing their full contingents back. Particular CEOs also volunteered that they believed in the value of having employees present:

[Citigroup] CEO Michael Corbat has said he is a believer in office culture. Citigroup pre-pandemic had knocked down walls in its offices to encourage collaboration and chance meetings, what Mr. Corbat calls constructive collision.

Yet Citi expects to have only 5% on premises in New York as of July 1.

Banks are more eager than other concerns to get staff back on deck. What is striking is that some industries that are perceived to be social, like ad agencies, have put themselves in the slow lane. From the Journal:

Twitter Inc., which last month told employees they can work from home indefinitely, said it wont reopen its New York office on Monday. Ad giant Interpublic Group of Cos., whose agencies employ nearly 10,000 people in New York City, has told its employees they would continue to work from home until at least Labor Day. Omnicom Group Inc. said it would wait between two and four weeks to begin the return to work. Even then, employees wont be required to return to the office if they arent comfortable, said a spokeswoman for the ad giant.

In our previous article on New York City, one reader asserted confidently that the wealthy who had fled to the Hamptons expected to be back in the fall on a business as usual basis. It appears that not all rich people think the same. From Peggy ONeill in the Journals comments section:

My daughter works in the Art business in NYC. Many of the gallery owners, executives at Christies/Sothebys have migrated to their second homes in the Hamptons. A sizeable percentage of them have enrolled their children in schools there. Many will not return to NYC for the foreseeable future, if ever. There are many virtual art showings.

Oddly, the article does not mention concerns about commuting as a reason to be reluctant to turn up; the story is employer-focused, discussing new office place practices, like plexiglass separating work stations and fewer chairs in conference rooms. But it also gives an early reading of the hit to New York City finances. Recall that wed warned that emptied out office districts would result in a lot of closures of restaurants, coffee shops, and retailers that served their workers. Again from the Journal:

New York City stands to lose 475,000 jobs over a 12-month period starting in the second quarter, the New York City Independent Budget Office estimated in April. It projects sales-tax revenue will drop 36.4% in 2021 compared with its pre-pandemic projection.

Note that sales taxes were projected to provide $8.3 billion out of a total $69 billion in New York City revenues. But bear in mind that it isnt just sales taxes that will take a hit. Property taxes are the biggest source of income, and major commercial landlord are aggressive about negotiating (and suing) for lower appraised values when their rent rolls fall. The New York City general corporation tax is based on business revenues, which will fall. So the expected percentage fall in sales tax revenues is dramatic, but dont think this is the only hit the city will take.

How uniquely bad is New York Citys situation? On the one hand, it has (or had) the biggest daily commute of any US city, and is physically incapable (both from a road and parking standpoint) of handling a big shift from the Metro North and the Path to cars at anything dimly approaching its old level. Boston has a much smaller but also driver-unfriendy central business district, and its colleges and universities will take big budget hits near term (Harvard is already offering early retirement packages).

As we indicated before, other cities may wind up in similar places via different routes, such as ones like Memphis that made a big strategic bet on tourism. I also what happens over time in states where Covid-19 cases are relentlessly rising yet the citizens arent masking up or adopting much in the way of other safe habits. For instance, from Alabama Political Reporter last week:

Since the first case of COVID-19 arrived in Alabama in March, Dr. Donald Williamson, the president of the Alabama Hospital Association, has said hes confident the states hospitals can handle an influx of coronavirus patients. That changed Tuesday morning, when the state recorded the most COVID-19 patients ever being cared for across the state and, on the same day, had the fewest available intensive care beds since the pandemic began. For the first time, I would have to say, Im growing worried about the system, Williamson told APR. Before Tuesday, Williamson has expressed concerns about individual hospitals or cities, but not the state as a whole.

Yet Montgomery, the city first to run out of ICU beds, has been stumbling all over itself to put a mandatory mask ordinance in place. It was defeated in the City Council last week, only to be implemented on a temporary basis by the mayor as an executive order until the City Council can meet again to reconsider its vote. Expect similarly stop-and-go reactions across the rest of the South, which also means it may become a disease reservoir for the rest of the US

As grim as the picture is in Montgomery, the part of the state with far and away the highest per capita infection rate is Lowndes County, with all of 11,000 residents: rural, poor, lacking in access to medical care.

And in this part of the US, the big disease vector isnt commuter trains or meetings but church. And unlike office life, you wont see many give that up.

So even though Covid-19 may seem to have a happy home in cities, its a mistake to assume that being in the boonies will save you.
AFP via Getty Images

Use-of-force policies in police departments in 20 of the largest cities in the US failed to meet even minimum standards under international human rights guidelines, according to a report from the University of Chicago Law School.

The report from the law schools International Human Rights Clinic, highlights American policings difficulty balancing power with maintaining basic human rights, and the chasm between law enforcement in the US and elsewhere.

Officers are too broadly given discretion for lethal force, effectively authorising state-sanctioned violence and the exercise of arbitrary brute force, a common tool of tyrannical and despotic governments, the report says.

The reports release following widespread protests and demands for dramatic police reform in the wake of police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshared Brooks and other black Americans.

Researchers graded 20 police departments against international human rights standards, including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the two fundamental international instruments protecting human rights, establish the rights to life, equality, liberty and security of person, freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and freedom from discrimination, the report says.

Law enforcement relies on the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, and a Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions on protection of the right to life during law enforcement, according to the report.

But in a review of department policies from 20 American cities, the university survey found that none has a use-of-force policy that meets those standards.

Police departments grant their officers deadly discretion, allowing the use of lethal force to capture an escaping suspect or to prevent the commission of a felony, regardless of whether the suspect poses a threat of any kind, clinic director Claudia Flores told the university. Clear constraints on police discretion are critical to protecting the human rights of all people  especially members of marginalized or disempowered communities.

Story continues

Accountability measures also are largely absent, the report discovered.

All 20 departments in the report had internal systems to report lethal force, but only the Los Angeles and Chicago police departments also required external investigations.

Those two cities rank highest among the list of international compliance measures. At the bottom is Indianapolis, which allows police to use deadly force in the event of a felony without limiting or specifying the relevant felonies or the kind of force or threat of force involved in the commission of the felony, the report says.

Body-mounted camera footage and viral witness images showing police killing people in custody provide grim illustrations of the power law enforcement officers have over the people they are sworn to serve and protect and the deadly consequences when they abuse that power, she said. Police lethal use-of-force policies provide the primary source of guidance and accountability for officer discretion to use force in any given situation  and police in this country have a great deal of discretion.

The report recommends federal, state and local lawmakers, as well as the departments themselves, adopt immediate and concrete measures to force compliance with international law.

Researchers recommend that the Department of Justice collect, store, analyse and make public all data on police actions and eliminate qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement from constitutional violations, including the use of lethal force.

Law enforcement also should be required to de-escalate scenes and eliminate all techniques, tactics and technologies that pose a risk of death or serious bodily harm, such as chokeholds, neck restraints, tear gas and rubber bullets, the report says.

It also suggests departments reevaluate whether armed officers are necessary in public events.

True police reform must start in the policies and practices of police departments themselves, report co-author Brian Citro told the university. In light of the recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Manuel Ellis and others, the failure of police policies to sufficiently constrain the use of lethal force and ensure real accountability should alarm every one of us.

Read more

How abolitionists see an America without police and prisons

Sergeant suspended for sharing inappropriate George Floyd meme

Questions surround police killing of Latino man in California

Minnesota police reform efforts halt as Republicans dispute changes

Why abolishing the police wont protect women

How police in a small West Virginia town received a $1m armoured truck
A New Phenomenon is on the Rise

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Trumpaign.com

June 22, 2020

ORLANDO, June 22, 2020 /Christian Newswire/ -- Trumpaign.com an independent, pro-trump Facebook page burst onto the scene on Sunday, June 21st  just in time to highlight the 45th Presidents historic TRUMP Rally in Tulsa, OK viewed by millions and a TRUMP BOAT PARADE, where thousands took to the waters in the Space-Coast of Florida, both on the same day.

The page celebrates the phenomenon known as TRUMPAIGNING. That is, the overwhelming, grass-roots support to reelect President Trump bubbling up from communities all around the country. Trumpaigners are not political professionals, talking heads, paid commentators, or election strategists. Instead, theyre ordinary Americans enthused by the success Donald Trump has brought America over the past 3 1/2 years  and they want to see it continue for another term. And all over the United States theyre showing that enthusiasm at self-organized and welcoming community events.

Already, Trump fans from every walk of life are coming to the page to get inspired about the myriad of like-minded voters working toward a victory on November 3rd, 2020. The page currently features videos, stories from numerous reputable new outlets, and home-spun campaign ads  all of which point to the ground-swell of support the President enjoys nationwide. Highlights like these are often ignored by conventional media. But one look at Trumpaign.com and youll realize that no matter what youre not hearing from mainstream sources, pro-Trump sentiments are higher than ever. The battle for the heart of America is at stake and all hands are needed on deck.

The time is now, for every American that loves this great country to do their part where they live. From either a small rural town to a large city. Get connected, plan or be a part of a parade on land or sea for the next 4th of July, GET READY TO BRING IT.

If you need some ideas or how to connect in your area, send us an email. Please be sure to LIKE and SHARE the page. You can learn more at Trumpaign.com or by writing to our team at Trumpaign@gmail.com

SOURCE Trumpaign.com

CONTACT: Media Team, Trumpaign@gmail.com


Photo credit: Alaska National Guard

From Popular Mechanics

The abandoned bus, located in the Alaskan wilderness, became a Mecca for those fascinated with the story of backpacker Christopher McCandless as told in the book Into the Wild.

Search and rescue teams have been called out more than a dozen times since 2009 to rescue backpackers attempting to reach the bus, and two people have died.

The bus was lifted by CH-47 Chinook helicopter to an undisclosed location but could soon go on public display.

An abandoned bus that figured prominently in the book and film Into the Wild was picked up by the Alaska National Guard and flown to an undisclosed location. The bus, where adventurer Christopher McCandless died of starvation in 1992, attracted backpackers and hikers fascinated by the McCandless story, some of whom became lost or died.

The bus was removed in a joint operation between Alaskas Department of Natural Resources and the Alaskan Army National Guards 207th Aviation Battalion. The effort was dubbed Operation Yutan, after the Yutan Construction Company that originally placed the bus on the Stampede Trail in 1961. The bus, originally part of the Fairbanks City Transit System, was one of three purchased by Yutan and placed on the Stampede Trail during its construction as housing for trail workers. Two of the buses were removed in 1963 but the third was left behind as a shelter for outdoorsmen and hunters.

It was this bus, later known as Bus 142 or The Magic Bus, that 24-year-old Christopher McCandless discovered in 1992 during an ill-planned trip into the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless became trapped at the location due to rising river waters and eventually died of starvation. His story was told in the 1996 bestseller Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and the 2007 film of the same name.

Photo credit: Alaska National Guard

The bus eventually became an attraction for those fascinated by the McCandless story, leading some to seek it out themselves. The bus, which McCandless found by sheer accident, was located near Denali National Park, 25 miles west of the Parks Highway on the Stampede Trail. The harsh terrain and climate sometimes resulted in bus seekers getting in over their heads. According to the National Guard, authorities mounted 15 search-and-rescue operations between 2009 and 2017 to rescue bus-seekers. Two people have died during the trip, one in 2010 and another in 2019.

Story continues

An Alaska DNR official told the National Guard "we encourage people to enjoy Alaskas wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination. However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts, but more importantly, was costing some visitors their lives.

Photo credit: Alaska National Guard

Operation Yutan was carried out by guardsmen of the Alaska Army National Guards 1st Battalion, 207th Aviation Battalion. The operation began with a National Guard UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter flying to the bus site. Guardsmen cleared obstacles and brush around the bus, then cut holes in the roof and floor to secure dual point chain kits to the buses frame. A CH-47 Chinook helicopter then hitched up the bus and flew it to an undisclosed location. Guardsmen also transported a suitcase that holds sentimental value to the McCandless family.

Photographs from the operation show the bus flying low over the Alaskan countryside. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources is considering what to do next with the bus. One possibility is to display the bus at a safe location for public viewing.

You Might Also Like
Burma Local Officials Resign En Masse in Myanmar's Conflict-Torn Rakhine State

An Arakan Army fighter in Rakhine State. / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy

YANGONDozens of ward and village administrators in Rakhine States Myebon Township have resigned, according to Deputy Township Administrator U Sein Hla Maung.

Sixty administrators from 73 wards and villages in Myebon have handed in resignations, some of whom told The Irrawaddy they resigned because it was difficult for them to perform their duties as the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA) are engaged in ongoing fighting in northern Rakhine.

Whether its the AA or the Myanmar military, we have to do what they ask when they come into our villages carrying arms. We have to be afraid of the guns that can harm us immediately. How can administrators continue to serve in their positions when the government does not show any understanding, but instead arrests us under the Counter-Terrorism Law? said an administrator from Myebon Township who asked to remain anonymous due to security concerns.

Every day, we have to live in fear of being arrested. We have to stay in urban Myebon, and our head department [the General Administration Department (GAD)] does not take responsibility for us. It should assume responsibility when administrators are arrested, he added.

The administrators submitted resignations in the first week of June, saying they no longer want to live in fear of the AA and of being detained by the government.

At the start of this year, there were 73 administrators for 59 villages and 14 wards in Myebon. In the last week of May, the government arrested three administrators in Myebon under the Counter-Terrorism Law for allegedly providing food and conducting recruitment for the AA. One other administrator had already resigned nearly a year ago. With 60 administrators resigning, there are only nine administrators remaining in Myebon apart from the township GAD office.

The AA is attempting to replace the government administrative mechanisms with their own administration. I heard that in some villages, the AA asked villagers to cook for them and asked village administrators to undergo small arms training, said Dr. Min Zaw Oo, executive director of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security.

Both the Myanmar government and military, or Tatmadaw, have declared the AA to be a terrorist organization. Lower House Myebon Township lawmaker U Pe Than said local people will have to suffer due to the lack of government administration.

No administrator means no one who will report crimes. Criminals will become more daring in the absence of administration and regional development works will lapse. Lack of communication between the urban and rural administrations will undermine the rule of law and administrative mechanisms, said U Pe Than.

Because the government administrators resigned, their positions will be left vacant and the AA may fill those places with their men, said Dr. Min Zaw Oo.

In May, 40 ward and village administrators in nearby Kyauktaw Township also submitted resignations, according to the townships GAD.

Similarly, some administrators in Minbya and Mrauk-U townships also tendered their resignations, but the government has already filled their positions.

Dr. Min Zaw Oo said the situation could potentially mirror a recent local government crisis in Laukkai, Shan State, following an attack by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army in 2017.

In that case, the administration was handed over to the Tatmadaw temporarily. It appears that the Tatmadaw is asking for something similar now: if government administrative mechanisms can no longer function, the government might consider giving the Tatmadaw administrative control over Rakhine, said Dr. Min Zaw Oo.

However, the Myanmar government said last week that attacks by the AA in Rakhine State neither pose a threat to the administration of the state nor will they cause the military to take administrative control over Rakhine.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

You may also like these stories:

All NLD Members of Mandalay Cabinet to Run in Myanmars General Election: Minister

Election Authorities Prepare for Voting in Myanmars Roughest War Zone
MPs tell Boris Johnson to 'get a grip' over delay in report into Russian political interference

MPs have urged Boris Johnson to "get a grip" over the delay in establishing a key parliamentary committee responsible for publishing a report into Russian interference in UK politics.

A cross-party group of thirty MPs have written to the Prime Minister saying it is an "affront to democracy" that the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has not be reconvened in over six months, the longest break since the key body was set up in 1994.

The ISC, which provides oversight of security services and other national security bodies, had produced a report on Russian interference in October, but Downing Street failed to given the publication the greenlight before the December general election.

But in the letter, the group said the failure to re-establish the committee in the new Parliament raised "further questions" about why Johnson was so "reluctant" for the report to be released.

"The publication last month of the latest donations to the Conservative party has highlighted once again the partys deep connections to Russian oligarchs, raising further questions as to why you are so reluctant to reconstitute the ISC," they wrote.

"According to the Hansard Society, at nearly six months, the time taken to appoint the ISC on this occasion has now exceeded that taken to appoint the committee after every previous general election since the committee was established in 1994.

"It is untenable for you to continue to block the publication of the Russia report. The situation is an affront to democracy."

Number 10 are ultimately responsible for appointing nine of the ISC's members, with opposition parties asked to nominate MPs to sit on the group.

But according to The Times, the formation has been delayed further after Number 10 removed Tory MP Theresa Villiers as a potential member for disloyalty after she defied the party whip in a vote on post-Brexit food standards.

Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the delay was "deeply worrying".

"This delay has meant that important work, like the report on the Russian threat to the UK, is not being published, which is a major concern," he said.

"The government must urgently get a grip, so that the committee can start working again."

Meanwhile, the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, who previously sat on the committee, accused Johnson of "repeatedly and intentionally" blocking the formation of the group in order to "escape scrutiny" on intelligence matters.

He said: "The foreign secretary publicly warned of these growing security threats, stating that hostile governments are using the challenges thrown up by the global pandemic to take advantage of 'a perceived opportunity'."

Responding to the comments, a Downing Street spokesperson said: "Work to establish the committee is ongoing and as quickly as current circumstances allow, and further announcements will be made in due course.

"The Investigatory Powers Act allows the UK to maintain one of the most stringent security regimes in the world through the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and both executive and judicial oversight".
New Delhi, June 22 : Giving a go-ahead for the Rath Yatra at Puri, the Supreme Court on Monday passed 11 directions including for a curfew as the Odisha government stated that it might be possible to conduct the festival "in a limited way without public attendance." The apex court ordered closure of entry points into Puri and the state government would have to impose a curfew, which begins 8 p.m. on Monday and continues during the period of the Rath Yatra.

A bench comprising Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and A.S. Bopanna said: "The bare minimum number of people shall be allowed by the Committee to participate in the rituals and in the Rath Yatra. All entry points into Puri, i.e., airports, railway stations, bus stands, etc, shall be closed during the period of Rath Yatra festival." On June 18, the apex court put a stay on the Rath Yatra against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.

on Monday, the bench said the state government shall impose a curfew in Puri on all the days and during all the time when Rath Yatra chariots are taken in procession.

"The state government may also impose curfew in the city of Puri on such other days and during such time as deemed necessary. During the period of curfew, no one would be allowed to come out of their houses or their places of residence, such as hotels, lodging houses, etc.... to start with, the curfew shall begin tonight at 8 p.m.," said the top court, noting that the state has a good record of having controlled the pandemic with a very little loss of life.

The bench directed that each chariot should not be pulled by not more than 500 persons, and they have to be tested for coronavirus. "They shall be permitted to pull the chariot only if they have been found negative. The number 500 shall include officials and police personnel," it added.

The bench directed that there shall be an interval of one hour between two chariots, and everybody involved in pulling the chariot should maintain social distancing before, during and after the Rath Yatra.

The bench also added that only people who have tested negative for coronavirus should be allowed to participate in rituals associated with Rath Yatra. It emphasised both Centre and state officials are responsible for compliance with general directions which govern ensuring public health.

"The primary responsibility for conducting the Rath Yatra in accordance with the conditions and other norms shall be that of the Committee in-charge of Puri Jagannath Temple Administration. Each member of the Committee shall be responsible for due compliance with the conditions imposed by this Court," said the bench.

It also allowed TV coverage of the Rath Yatra.

"The state government shall maintain a record containing details of all those who have been allowed to participate in the Rath Yatra or the rituals connected therewith along with details of their medical conditions after testing," added the bench.
India changes Rules of Engagement, field commanders can now allow troop to open fire under extraordinary circumstances.

After an incident of the violent face-off with China in Eastern Ladakh, the Indian Army has changed its rules of engagement on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which would allow field commanders to order troops to use firearms under extraordinary circumstances.

The Rules of Engagement have been changed and the field commanders have been empowered to order troops to use firearms under extraordinary circumstances, army sources said here.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also stated that the Army has been given full freedom to deal with the situation on the ground.

The Indian side is expected to discuss the issue with the Chinese Army during the proposed talks at Corps Commander level to defuse the tensions in Eastern Ladakh.

Also read: Centre grants armed forces power to acquire critical ammunition upto Rs 500 crore

Also read: Security forces eliminate 3 terrorists in J&Ks Zadibal

Both sides dont fire at each other as per the border agreements between them signed in 1996 and 2005.

They had also agreed not to use any blasting or firearms within two kilometres of the LAC.

The Galwan river clash near Patrolling Point 14 claimed 20 Indian Army personnel lives who removed a Chinese observation post from there.

Also read: Amit Shah reviews Covid preparedness in Delhi; meeting with Kejriwal, LG underway

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trumps campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was under pressure on Sunday after claiming hundreds of thousands of people had applied for tickets to the presidents return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, only for the rally to attract a sparse crowd.

Related: Trump 'played' by K-pop fans and TikTok users who disrupted Tulsa rally

At the BOK Center in the Oklahoma city on Saturday night, as the president took the stage to give his first campaign speech since the Covid-19 pandemic put large parts of America under lockdown, vast banks of empty seats could be seen.

The Tulsa fire department said 6,200 people attended. The Trump campaign claimed 12,000. The arena holds 19,000.

The campaign had built an overflow stage outside the BOK Center, to host brief remarks by Trump and Mike Pence. Those speeches were cancelled.

Trumps demeanour on returning to Washington was widely scrutinised. He was initially quiet on Twitter on Sunday but the president was reported to be furious at the underwhelming event, which followed a week of controversy about whether it should even be held. According to NBC, Trump was particularly angry that before he even left DC, aides made public that six members of team in Tulsa tested positive for Covid-19.

CNN reported that the presidents daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, were pissed that Parscale had promised huge crowds. Trump also claimed this week that more than a million people wanted to attend his rally.

In a statement, Parscale blamed the low attendance on a weeks worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of Covid and protesters, which he said coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally.

He then appeared to threaten to rescind accreditation for journalists critical of the Trump campaign.

For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting, but typical, he said. And it makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they dont do their full jobs as professionals.

Story continues

Parscale has been widely credited for his work on the 2016 campaign but pressure has increased as the re-election campaign heats up, with reports of a president furious about polling results and pondering a reorganisation.

Trump trails Joe Biden nationally and in most polls in battleground states.

Rick Wilson, a bestselling author, former Republican consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super pac, was critical of Parscales approach.

Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House after returning from the Tulsa rally. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Brad broke the first rule of American politics: under promise and over deliver, he told the Guardian. Brads survival now depends on the good offices of his patrons inside the Trump camp, and [Ivanka and Kushner] are already signaling their displeasure to the media.

The only X factor is whether anyone else in Trumps crew of skells [and] grifters  has offered to keep the scam running.

It has been reported that the number of applicants for tickets to Saturdays rally was inflated by young users of the social media platform TikTok applying but then deliberately not attending.

Related: Joe Biden sets up presidential transition team under close adviser

Trump has been actively trying to disenfranchise millions of Americans in so many ways, and to me, this was the protest I was able to perform, Erin Hoffman, an 18-year-old New Yorker, told the New York Times.

The Trump campaign said protesters blocked entrances and metal detectors, preventing people from entering the rally. However, reporters on the ground including the Guardians Oliver Laughland said they saw no evidence of such tactics.

As Covid-19 cases in Oklahoma rise, public health officials had warned against holding a large indoor gathering. The Trump campaign did not require attendees to wear masks. Some observers speculated fear of Covid-19 may have stopped some supporters from attending the rally.
MANILA, Philippines - Maria Ressa, a Filipino-American journalist known for her critical coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte, was found guilty of cyber libel by a court on Monday in a case that has come to symbolize deteriorating press freedom in the Philippines.

Ressa, who heads the news organization Rappler, was charged along with a former researcher, Reynaldo Santos Jr., for an article the site published in 2012. They could face between six months and six years in prison, but they will be allowed to post bail. They must also pay almost $8,000 in damages.

Human rights watchdogs and media organizations have decried the charges as politically motivated harassment. Rappler has been at the forefront of hard-hitting reporting on Duterte's policies, particularly a war on drugs that has left thousands dead and prompted United Nations condemnation.

"To the Filipinos watching this, this is not just about Rappler," Ressa said after the hearing, her voice breaking. "This is not about us. This is about you. Because freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you have as a Filipino citizen."

The conviction of Ressa, who is 56, comes as Duterte and his allies widen a campaign against the administration's critics. Authorities recently shut down the country's largest broadcaster and have pushed through a broadly defined anti-terrorism bill that human rights advocates say institutionalizes a crackdown on the populist leader's detractors. Duterte is expected sign the bill into law within the next month.

The Philippines, once considered to have the freest press in Asia, has become one of the world's most perilous places for journalists. This year, it slipped two spots to 136th place in the World Press Freedom Index. Duterte has previously called Rappler "fake news" and said that journalists are not exempt from assassination, though his spokesman Harry Roque said Monday the president was "not behind the supposed suppression of free speech."

The case against Ressa centers on a 2012 article written by Santos that cited an intelligence report linking businessman Wilfredo Keng to trafficking and drug smuggling. Keng denied the allegations and filed a complaint in 2017, leading the Justice Department to indict Ressa and Santos last year under the cyber libel law, which the court said Monday has a longer statute of limitations than regular libel provisions.

Rappler maintained that Ressa did not edit the article herself, as she does not oversee day-to-day operations in her role as executive editor. Press freedom advocates have said that the decision to lodge the case against Ressa, rather than the editors involved, demonstrated that officials were targeting her.

A peculiar aspect of the case is that the article was published four months before the cyber libel measure was signed into law by former president Benigno Aquino III.

Laws cannot be applied retroactively, but the Justice Department argued that the article was republished in 2014 when a Rappler staffer fixed a typographical error online, effectively putting it within the law's jurisdiction. The tiny edit, which Rappler argued did not constitute republication, involved correcting the spelling of "evasion."

A former CNN correspondent, Ressa is perhaps the Philippines' best-known journalist, and her conviction cast a chill over the media industry, particularly for lesser known practitioners who fear they may be more easily targeted.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for Ressa's conviction to be quashed. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said it was a "dark day for the independent Philippine press," while Reporters Without Borders labeled the proceedings "Kafkaesque" and a "shocking judicial masquerade."

"This could signal an open season on critical, hard-hitting journalists who serve such an important role in underserved communities, especially in places outside of the capital," said Human Rights Watch Philippines researcher Carlos Conde. He said the verdict degraded press freedom in ways not seen since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, which ended in 1986.

In her decision, Manila regional trial court judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa maintained that the court was not curtailing press freedom. She ruled that Rappler "did not offer a scintilla of proof" in the allegations against Keng, and it was not enough to quote an intelligence report.

The judge dismissed the argument that Ressa was not an editor in chief, and said Ressa's designation as an executive editor was a "clever ruse to avoid liability."

"The right to free speech and freedom of the press cannot and should not be used as a shield against accountability," Estacio-Montesa wrote in her decision.

Defense lawyers have 15 days to appeal. Ressa faces other legal action related to Rappler's ownership structure, and alleged tax evasion. She and the company have denied wrongdoing.

Speaking after the verdict, Ressa told journalists to continue fighting for their rights. "We are meant to be a cautionary tale. We are meant to make you afraid," she said. "I appeal again, don't be afraid."
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Tamilla Mammadova  Trend:

Georgia imported 14,399 tons of flat-rolled products of non-alloy clad or coated steel of a width of more than 600 mm from China in a total amount of $10.08 million from January through May 2020, which is 2,756 tons less compared to January-May 2019, Trend reports referring to National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

In the reporting period, Georgia imported 5,706 tons of polyacetals and epoxide resins, and other polyesters in primary forms worth $5.3 million from China. During January-May 2019, Georgia imported 9,141 tons of polyacetals and epoxide resins, and other polyesters in primary forms worth $11.1 million from China.

Meanwhile, 2,834 tons of new pneumatic rubber tyres worth $6.6 million were imported by Georgia from China, which is 792 tons more compared to January-May 2019.

In January-May 2020, Georgia imported 52 units of special purpose motor vehicles worth $5.2 million from China.

Meanwhile, 181.9 tons of other goods, including dress patterns worth $5.4 million were imported by Georgia from China. This is 18.9 tons more compared to January-May 2019.

China ranked third in Georgias commodity circulation during the reporting period.

From January through May 2020, the foreign trade turnover between Georgia and China amounted to more than $443.1 million, which is 10.5 percent of the total trade turnover of Georgia.

During the reporting period, Georgia exported products worth $168.4 million to the Chinese market, which is 16.9 percent of total exports from Georgia.

Meanwhile, China exported products worth $274.7 million to the Georgian market, which comprises 13.6 percent of total import to Georgia.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
A mother swan has been reported to have passed away after some teenagers broke her unhatched eggs with bricks.

A group of teenage boys had reportedly killed the unborn cygnets in the month of May in the Greater Manchester area of England.

The grieving mother was found dead a few days ago, just after the father swan had disappeared. The boys were spotted throwing bricks and stones on the swans nest near the Manchester Canal on May 20, reported Manchester Evening News.

Only three out of the total six eggs survived the vandalism. After the incident, more eggs were getting lost and and in the end, there was only one egg left.

The wildlife activists, who were monitoring the family, noted that the father swan had left the nest three weeks ago and had not returned since.

The male is believed to have been driven away by stress and this sadness could have led to the females death.

Sam Woodrow, an activist, told the Manchester news portal that the swan had most likely died of a "broken heart".

Another activist, Michael James Mason, posted a couple of pictures of the swan on Facebook in a group called 'All About Bolton'.

He said that he had been following her progress for over 12 weeks. He also said that the swan had to deal with dogs, a duck and moorhen after the attack raged by the humans.

Credits: Michael James Mason / Facebook
Trump Declines to Sanction China Over Labor Camps Because of Trade Talks

President Donald Trump said he didnt impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in placing Uyghurs in concentration camps because of trade negotiations.

Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal, Trump told Axios when asked why sanctions through the Treasury Department havent been enacted against officials or entities linked to the camps.

And when youre in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions onweve done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of, he added.

Trump signed legislation last week that calls for sanctions against those responsible for repressing the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority who primarily live in a region taken over by the Chinese Communist Party decades ago.

Of the approximately 10 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the region, millions are in concentration camps, according to the U.S. government.

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of a labor camp in Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

The Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps, Randall Schriver, who leads Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told reporters in a briefing last year.

The new bill condemns gross human rights violations of ethnic Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region and includes the authority to impose sanctions on certain foreign persons, the White House said in a statement.

Asked about Trumps remarks Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that she would have to get back to them.

She noted that Trump signed the legislation and said that he has, in the past, blacklisted companies that are complicit in Chinas treatment of Uyghurs and other minority groups. Both the Commerce Department and State Department have imposed restrictions on Chinese companies linked to the Xinjiang issues and the latter has restricted visas of CCP officials said to be responsible for some of the abuse.

Supporters of Chinas Muslim Uyghur minority wave the flag of East Turkestan and hold placards in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 20, 2019. (Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump, in a statement after signing the bill, said the act holds accountable perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that the presidents comments about not imposing sanctions due to trade negotiations were appalling.

Across the Xinjiang region, Beijing is subjecting the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities to a campaign of brutal repression, from the mass incarceration of more than one million innocent people to a pervasive state of mass surveillance and predictive policing to countless incidents of torture, forced sterilizations and extrajudicial killings, she said.

Trump has been able to impose sanctions under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act since the time he entered office, Pelosi said, charging that his signing the act rings extraordinarily hollow in light of his clearly stated lack of interest in standing up to Beijing.

Trump told Axios that no one has mentioned it to him with regard to China.

If somebody asked me, I would take a look at it, he said. But nobodys asked me. I have not been spoken to about the Magnitsky Act. So if somebody asks me about it, Id study it. But at this moment, they have not asked me about it.
NEW HAVEN  The city has shut down 50s Lounge LLC off Blake Street after they found more than 1,000 people Saturday night at the establishment in alleged violation of various city rules as well as state rules regulating outdoor dining and outdoor events.

Building Official Jim Turcio said in a release that he first arrived with Director of Public Health Maritza Bond and members of the New Haven Police Department after receiving numerous complaints about activity at the Westville lounge.

Turcio said: I first arrived on-site as part of the inspection conducted by the task force, and witnessed over (1,000) patrons at this establishment in violation of the outdoor dining capacity guidelines, State rules for outdoor events, and various health codes.

We spoke to the owners of this establishment and made a request that they shut down immediately, with which they did not comply, and we had no choice but to shut them down as a result of these violations, Turcio said.

He said the club allegedly was also in violation city ordinances and conditions of approval set by the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Club co-owner Joy Monsanto declined to comment Monday when reached by phone.

Right now Im under a lot of stress, she said.

New Haven Alder Brian Wingate, D-29, whose ward borders the club, said he had not received any complaints from constituents about the club being over capacity.

To be honest with you, I havent heard any complaints, he said.

Wingate, who has recovered from Covid-19, said constituents in his ward are more worried about the sounds of late-night fireworks.

The lounge had previously sued Gov. Ned Lamont, challenging his orders closing businesses during the pandemic. The business lost the suit.

Bond ordered owners of the establishment to shut down their operations, citing numerous violations, and the owners did not comply. A cease and desist letter was issued Monday.

I want to remind residents of the city that we are still in a pandemic, Bond said.

Taking the necessary health precautions is critical to containing the spread of COVID-19, which continues to pose a serious threat to public health in our community. Nonetheless, this incident revealed this establishment was in clear violation of various health codes, and conditions of zoning approval, not just those related to the restrictions put in place due to the pandemic, Bond said.

Gov. Ned Lamont said he was not aware of any other business establishments that had been shut down due to noncompliance with safety and distancing measures. Other state officials referred questions to individual municipal health and police departments.

Lamont, in his daily briefing, said he believed most establishments had followed the rules. He briefly referred to the 50s Lounge but didnt talk about it. I dont think our reopening has contributed to any increase in infection. I could have been slapping fines and being heavy handed but that was not the way we did it, nor was that the way we had to do it, Lamont said.

But across Connecticut municipal officials are keeping a close eye on compliance with the states phased in re-opening rules.

We get complaints from time to time and then we dispatch an officer to ensure distancing and regulations of executive orders, said Shelton Police Chief Shawn Sequeira.

Sequeira said while they receive calls on compliance, no large issues stand out. However, he said he will look into the issue in Shelton.

A Bridgeport business agreed to close in April after it was found to be open in violation of Lamonts executive order on essential businesses during pandemic, officials said at the time.

In Stamford, Assistant Police Chief Tom Wuennemann said that he did not know of any businesses in that city being shut down due to a lack of compliance with social distancing. They have all behaved pretty well, he said of business owners in the city.

Where police have been fielding complaints is at local beaches where he said they have been getting quite a few complaints about people being too close.

Arthur Augustyn, spokesperson for Stamford Mayor David Martin, said that in addition to there being no incidents of overcrowding at businesses reported to Stamford police, there have been none to the city Department of Health.

Some businesses did not properly following social distancing guidelines at first, but our Department of Health or Economic Development have reached out and corrected those instances, he said.

Next door in Greenwich, First Selectman Fred Camillo says no problems have been reported in town.

We have received no serious complaints about a lack of compliance, Camillo said on Monday. Ive been going out (around town) every day and night and see overwhelming compliance with the guidelines.

Also in Fairfield County, Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling said the citys health department is conducting regular inspections of local businesses.

The city works with businesses found in violation of current crowd limits. However, a business will be shut down if it receives two violations, Rilling said.

In Brookfield, about whether the town is monitoring crowd sizes at bars and other gatherings, First Selectman Stephen Dunn said, Not actively.

But if we get a report from someone that a place is crowded or there are too many people somewhere, then well have our municipal designees look at it and talk to the owner, Dunn said. We havent had any problems with that so far at all, but it will probably change.

Dunn said municipal designees include the towns fire marshal, Jason DeSousa, and zoning enforcement officer, Fran Lollie.

In Middletown, to date, there have been no complaints filed with the city health department about businesses failing to follow guidelines set forth by the governor, according to Middletown Public Health Manager Kevin Elak.

Knock on wood, he said.

However, after Lamont closed nail salons, barber shops and other such businesses March 19, Elaks office received complaints that a local nail salon was still serving customers.

The state Department of Labor and Middletown police handled the matter, he said, because his office did not have the authority to close the business.

New Havens Bond said she has issued a cease and desist letter to the owners of the 50s Lounge LLC, also known as 50 Fitch. The alleged violations include the following:

(1) Failing to ensure that all attendees at a large outdoor public gathering at your establishment remained at least six feet apart, failing to ensure that said attendees were wearing masks except when dining, failing to demarcate six feet of spacing in the area of gathering;

(2) Permitting the sale of alcohol without the sale of food;

(3) Outdoor dining in excess of seating capacity;

(4) Permitting a public health nuisance on your property;

(5) Operating in excess of 50 percent capacity on an outside deck;

(6) Operating in violation of Connecticut General Statutes 19-13-B42 and Title III, Chapter 14 of the New Haven Code of General Ordinances;

(7) Creating a condition specifically declared to be a public nuisance.

The state Department of Liquor Control will also be notified of the alleged violations.

Hearst staffers Cassandra Day, Brian Zahn, Erin Kayata, Kendra Baker, Ignacio Laguarda,John Nickerson, and Ken Borsuk contributed to this story.
(Natural News) A disturbing video has surfaced of an Israeli professor by the name of Jason James Britt who claims that a friend of his living in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle has witnessed door-to-door robberies occurring there, along with other horrors such as rape.

Describing the CHAZ as a concentration camp on American soil, Britt says the media is failing to tell the truth about the situation and minimizing the threat of violence and sexual assault now that the police are no longer welcome in the area.

The person who allegedly told Britt about what Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) are supposedly doing within the CHAZ apparently had to delete his Facebook account due to fear of retaliation for coming forward with this information.

This individual also allegedly had to destroy his phone because he did not want to be tracked down and potentially killed for talking to people like Britt who live outside the CHAZ.

He says he has witnessed Antifa, these sissy liberals, cross-dressing with Black Lives Matter thugs by their side, Britt says in the video, adding that these troupes of terrorists are going door to door kicking the door, and theyre not knocking.

People are in their homes and theyre telling people to pay them reparations, to give them money, Britt adds. Theyre looting their houses while people watch and the kids scream, and theres nothing they can do to stop them.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about the claims Britt makes in this video:

Britt: Seattle police received 4,000 calls in one day, but couldnt act because mayor said no

Britt further claims that men, women and children are being sodomized by CHAZ terrorists, though how he would know this from his friends observances remains unclear.

The Seattle Police Department supposedly received some 4,000 calls for help in one single day the other day, only to have its hands tied by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray who instructed that area cops not respond to any calls.

If true, this means that those still living within the CHAZ are sitting ducks just waiting to be terrorized. And Britt believes that this is justification enough for President Trump to send in federal troops to shoot people on-sight.

Even though such a proposal is both unconstitutional and preposterous, Britt believes that it is necessary to reign in the terror that his friend says is sweeping the CHAZ. And should it continue to spread unabated, Britt warns that such terror will eventually reach suburban and rural areas.

Trump needs to send in federal troops and just open fire because these arent Americans anymore when you take over our land and our cities and our people, Britt contends.

If you throw the government out and the police out, you are no longer an American and you have no rights and your life really does not matter anymore in my eyes, he adds. We need to go in there and send troops and start sniper firing everybody and get them out of there.

Since there is no way to verify Britts claims, all of this should certainly be taken with a grain of salt. This is especially true since he is calling on the United States military to bust in and start shooting Americans without prejudice, which would be unprecedented.

Last we checked, due process is still a thing, regardless of how out-of-control the CHAZ occupants get. Perhaps a more constitutional approach would be to send in the police as the city normally would to enforce the laws that are already on the books rather than try to reinvent the wheel of justice.

To keep up with the latest news about the Seattle CHAZ, be sure to check out Chaos.news.

Sources for this article include:

YouTu.be

NaturalNews.com
Turkey Deploys More Troops to Northern Iraq for New Anti-Kurdish Offensive

Sputnik News

15:42 GMT 21.06.2020

ANKARA (Sputnik) - Turkish Ministry of National Defence announced on Sunday sending additional special operations forces to the north of Iraq where Turkey's Operation Claw-Tiger is underway against Kurdish forces.

"Being special forces is hard. Motherland and love for people in the heart, a 40-kilogram load [88 pounds] on the back. Our special force heroes cross the border yesterday to join Operation Claw-Tiger," the ministry said on Twitter.

The post has a video attached that shows the Turkish soldier's preparatory training. The ministry did not specify the number of newly deployed troops.

Turkey launched the operation in northern Iran this past Monday to fight the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Kurdish People's Protection Units, referred jointly as PKK/YPG and designated as terrorists by Ankara. It began with air raids which, according to the defence ministry, destroyed 81 PKK/YPG targets. On Tuesday, the land part of the operation began involving artillery and special forces. The operation comes on the heels of more than 10 years of raids and offensives conducted by Ankara against Kurdish militia in Iraq's north in response to their attacks on Turkish forces and civilians in the borderline areas.

The Iraqi government condemned the invasion of the Turkish air force and described it as a violation of the country's sovereignty.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






LOS ANGELESThe Italian Senate is set to take up new legislation to block all online porn sites in the country, requiring internet users to specifically request that the porn blocks be removed, according to reports in the Italian media. The proposed new law was introduced by Senator Simone Pillon, a member of Italys ultra-nationalist Northern League party, led by former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.

The law would require all makers of internet-connected devices, including computers, cell phones, and smart TVs, to install software that would automatically block all porn sites. Users would have to file a specific request to remove the software in order to view porn online, under the proposed law.

I hope that in this way the many children who now have daily Internet access will be made safe, Pillon said in introducing the bill, adding that he considered the legislation, a small gift from the big family of the League to moms and dads.

The proposal drew an immediate response from Italian porn performer Valentina Nappi, who said that she may now enter politics herself, in order to stop the porn ban law. If she followed through on her threat, Nappi would not be the first porn performer to enter Italian politics. In 1987, Hungarian-born performer Cicciolina was elected to Italys Chamber of Deputies  the other house of the countrys bicameral parliament.

Cicciolina served one term in the Chamber, failing to win reelection in 1991. She ran again in 1992, but lost, and then ran for mayor of Rome in 1993, again coming up short.

Nappi has previously spoken out publicly against Salvini, once declaring, If hes a Christian, then Im a virgin.

Whether the Leagues porn blocking proposal has a chance of success in Italys parliament remains unclear, but it follows numerous attempts at similar legislation around the world, which have met with varying degrees of success. India, China, South Korea, Nepal and other Asian countries have managed to impose online porn bans.

But last year, the United Kingdom finally gave up on a law that passed in 2017 that would have required porn users to verify that they were at least 18 years old before accessing sites.

Despite the U.K. fiasco, legislators in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand have all proposed bans or blocks against online porn.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
The Special Criminal Court has today heard of a dramatic struggle between three gardai and a gangland criminal armed with a machine gun, which ended up in a bathtub after the gun went off while a primed grenade lay on the floor.

The non-jury court heard the evidence during the sentencing of Derek Devoy (37), from Balbutcher Lane, Poppintree, Ballymun, who had pleaded guilty to possessing a Makarov submachine gun with intent to endanger life, or cause serious injury at Crannogue Road, Ballymun, Dublin 11 on March 11, 2019.

Devoy also pleaded guilty to two charges under Section 19 of the Public Order Act for assaulting a garda and a garda sergeant at Crannogue Road on the same date.

Devoy has also pleaded guilty to possessing an explosive substance, to wit a Yugoslavian M75 hand grenade with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property on the same occasion and to 11 rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Detective Sergeant Stephen O'Keeffe told prosecuting barrister Mr Michael Bowman SC that at around 4.35pm on the day three gardai chased Devoy from Doon Court, where he was observed by a member of the public with the letting off two rounds from the Makarov sub-machinegun.

Bullet passed garda's eyeline

The chase ended up in the bathroom extension of a separate family's house on Crannogue Road when gardai found Devoy sitting on the toilet with the gun. Mr Sean Gillane SC said that his client was under four death threats at the time and was not behaving rationally.

The three gardai were on a break and had no handcuffs, pepper spray or personal protection equipment when they found Devoy and ordered him to lower the weapon. Det Sgt O'Keefe said gardai jumped on Devoy "in a split second" but all three ended up in the bathtub before he could be restrained.

A Garda narrowly avoided being shot as the gun went off with the bullet passing his eye-line, said Mr Bowman.

After restraining Devoy, all three gardai observed a grenade on the ground with the pin out. The grenade, which did not go off, was later detonated in a controlled explosion by army experts at the scene, said Mr Bowman.

Devoy was taken to Ballymun Garda Station where he behaved violently and his clothes had to be cut from him, said Det Sgt O'Keeffe.

In all, five casings were recovered from the bathroom along with two from Doon Court with 11 remaining in the machine gun.

Mr Sean Gillane SC told presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt that his client was one of four children but the only one left alive.

Devoy apologised in court to the three gardai, to the family of the house at Crannogue Road and to the people of Ballymun.

Mr Justice Hunt adjourned the case to 23 July.
Boys Basketball: Watertown wins over Rapid City Stevens

Reese Stark and Drew Norberg combined for 41 points to propel Watertown to a 61-51 high school boys basketball win over Rapid City Stevens.
The CIA calls it blowback, when the unintended consequences of what seemed like a good policy at the time come back to bite you.

The classic example is Western sponsorship of radical Islamist fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

That covert war against the Kremlin was a significant factor in crippling Communism in Russia which was a good thing, surely? It certainly seemed cost-free for America  until that bright morning of September 11, 2001, when Afghan-based terrorism struck New York and Washington on a grand scale.

Today our own nation is reeling from yet another savage consequence of our own blowback, after three people were randomly and fatally stabbed and three others wounded, as they sat enjoying a warm evening in a local park.

Violent

The alleged perpetrator, 25-year-old Khairi Saadallah, is a Libyan refugee. And in the initial aftermath, as the horror sank in and claims of a possible terror link filtered through, the people of Reading found themselves confronting the same grim question as did the people of Manchester in May 2017 after a 22-year-old Libyan refugee, Salman Abedi, detonated a bomb killing 22 at a pop concert.

Why us? Why here?

To understand the Libyan link, think back to 2011. David Camerons government was confident the Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, would be the latest domino to fall in the so-called Arab Spring of popular uprisings.

Gaddafi, who had funded the IRA and was key to Lockerbie, had plenty of domestic enemies. All they needed to get him out was some aerial support from the RAF and other Nato allies.

The alleged perpetrator, 25-year-old Khairi Saadallah, is a Libyan refugee

Then democracy and human rights would flourish in the oil-rich country and it would no longer be the maverick and threatening nation it was under Gaddafis aggressively eccentric 40-year rule. So after six months of bombing, Gaddafi met the grisly fate of tyrants throughout history.

But there was no new dawn for Libya. The armed groups who had been the Wests allies immediately quarrelled over the spoils, especially the oil.

Civil war, violent faction-fighting and social disruption have prevailed ever since, with Libya also becoming the gateway for African migrants heading to Europe.

This chaos has given militant Islamic terrorists an ideal breeding ground for spreading their anti-Western ideology, and a place to train terrorists and practise bomb-making.

Our fly-by-night intervention has turned into a nightmare that continues to haunt us as well as Libya. The litany of terrorist atrocities committed by Libyans or by people trained in Islamist camps there has been growing.

Just as Afghanistan became a safe haven for terrorists in the 1990s, though a hell-hole for its people, Libya has gone the same way.

Indeed, it has become the perfect laboratory  and one located close to Europe  for indoctrination and terrorist training. With so many Libyans engaged in fighting each other, the terror groups can hole up in camps far from any police or state control.

Gaddafi, who had funded the IRA and was key to Lockerbie, had plenty of domestic enemies

This is why commentators who talk about home-grown terrorism and imply that the murderous impulse is somehow the fault of British society miss the point.

If we look at the background and training of the majority of terrorists who have gone on the rampage here and in Europe, it is clear that without a Libyan base for indoctrination and bomb-making lessons, the carnage wouldnt have been possible.

At one desert base in Sabratha, the terrorist masterminds taught Salman Abedi how to construct the rucksack bomb that killed the concert goers at Manchester Arena. They had also trained Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the chief organiser of the Paris attacks which killed 89 at the Bataclan rock concert in 2015.

Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi, who murdered 30 British tourists on a Tunisian beach in 2015, trained at Sabratha, too.

(We cannot know for sure what links the alleged Reading killer had or had not, but he is reported to have travelled between the UK and Libya many times and to have claimed that he had fought both for and against Isis.)

What these attacks and so many others in recent years have in common is that they target ordinary people.

When Western leaders intervene against rogue leaders such as Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi, they emphasise they are attacking the regime not the people. But Islamist terrorist masterminds choose soft targets deliberately.

They play on the twisted mixture of distorted religious ideals and resentments that make a handful of asylum-seekers in Britain and Europe vulnerable to their message of hate, and then send them to seek out the unsuspecting and the undefended.

Reprisals

We should not exaggerate the threat and nor should we tar all Libyans  there are some 20,000 in the UK, many of whom fled Gaddafis regime or, more recently the civil war  with the terrorist brush.

Thats what the masterminds of murder want.

In 2017, the 10,000 Libyans in Manchester were as appalled as everyone else by the terror attack and afraid it could lead to them being targeted in reprisals. Thank God, the local people had the good sense not to rise to the bait.

It only takes a handful of people to concoct a terrorist atrocity  or one lone wolf. But nor should we dismiss these outrages as random and rare. The situation in Libya worsens by the day and that feeds the possibility of more terrorism swirling out of the chaos there.

Civil war, violent faction-fighting and social disruption have prevailed ever since, with Libya also becoming the gateway for African migrants heading to Europe

Our Government may have lost interest in Libya since 2011, but several of our Nato allies have troops, mercenaries and agents on the ground backing rival warlords.

Turkey, France, Italy and Greece in particular are squaring off behind different factions. They are after Libyas oil but their support with arms and money for different warring factions has helped to make Libya ungovernable.

Festering

They have been unwitting allies of the radical Islamist terror groups wanting to base themselves there.

That brutal civil war is why UK officials say they cant send Libyan refugees who break the law back. Even if MI5 confidently identifies someone as a security risk, here they must stay.

For the same reason, more than 90 per cent of Libyans applying to remain here get a positive answer because of the dangers back home  the alleged Reading killer is thought to have been granted asylum in 2018, six years after fleeing the war which he claimed traumatised him.

On the surface that is a reasonable enough policy  except that it ignores how the Islamic State group is resurgent as it exploits Libyas chaos and continues to infiltrate its terrorists among the refugees.

Nine years after the West smashed Gaddafis dictatorship, we must face up to what has been festering under the rubble, the threat it poses and how we might counter it.

But with our allies at each others throats over who to back in Libya, Britain faces a dangerous future.

The politicians play with fire, but it is ordinary people who get burned  here and in Libya.
India should react to Chinas act of aggression in eastern Ladakh through all means at its disposal  economic, military, and diplomatic. That is a given and there can be no argument about it. None. That said, India should also ensure that everything it does is driven by self-interest above all else, particularly in the economic domain. There is a clamour for cancelling contracts given to some Chinese companies across areas such as engineering and construction. So, how should New Delhi go about this?

It is easy to see why Chinese companies should be barred from all strategic areas  not just defence but also domains such as information technology and communications. There is a very opaque relationship between the private sector and the government in China and most Chinese private companies and entrepreneurs ensure their objectives are in sync with Beijings larger vision. In return, the Chinese government has supported these private companies, helping them grow and spread their network across the globe. In these areas, Indias answer, when it comes to participation by Chinese firms, should be a straightforward and unambiguous No.

But the line cant be as hard when it comes to other areas. As this newspaper has reported, India depends on China for several raw materials and intermediary products (or components). Chinese companies are good at heavy engineering. India would do well to tap this expertise and continue to keep these supply chains going in its own interest. Sure, it is always good to manufacture locally, but it wont be possible to do so overnight. Even when it does become possible, it may not make economic sense in the case of some products. Nor, for that matter, does it make sense to say no to Chinese capital, as long as investments arent allowed in strategic areas and there continues to be a clear line between ownership (or beneficial ownership) and management. Over the past few days, some state governments have cancelled contracts issued to Chinese companies for largely non-strategic work. This is not a good idea for two reasons. One, doing so may result in protracted and expensive arbitration. Two, more important, most of these contracts were given out to the lowest bidder. Re-tendering those contracts may cause delays that India can ill-afford as it seeks to rebuild its economy. We must get back at the Chinese, but always driven by the principle of self-interest.
New Delhi, June 23 : Almost a month after the Delhi government approved appointment of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and other Central government counsel as Special Public Prosecutors in a case relating to the Delhi riots, the Delhi High Court again witnessed a battle of words between the lawyers of the Centre and the state as to who will represent the Delhi Police.

The Delhi government had last month appraised the high court that as per a communication dated May 29 issued by the Deputy Secretary, Home, Mehta, Additional Solicitors General Maninder Acharya and Aman Lekhi besides government counsel Amit Mahajan and Rajat Nair were appointed as special public prosecutors to represent Delhi Police in one of the riot cases.

On Monday, while the high court was hearing the bail application of Jamia Millia scholar and Jamia Coordination Committee member Safoora Zargar through video conferencing, Delhi government's Standing Counsel (Criminal) Rahul Mehra clashed with the SG and Lekhi.

Objecting to the appearance of the two senior law officers on behalf of Delhi Police in the case, he stated that unlike another matter pertaining to the Delhi riots in which requisite approval was sought by the Delhi Police to be represented by the SG and his team, no such procedure was followed in the present case.

"I am an officer of the court and I am not supposed to be a mouthpiece of the police. They know that my approach in such a case would be more humanitarian and not according to their whims and fancies," Mehra submitted.

In response, Lekhi said: "A client chooses the advocate, the lawyer can't impose himself on the client." While the matter ended with the court posting the hearing on Tuesday, the fight also entered another courtroom where a separate matter connected to the said riots was being heard.

The next incident occurred before the court of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, who was hearing an application filed by the police seeking cancellation of bail granted to Rajdhani school owner Faisal Farooqui who was among 18 people who were arrested in a case of rioting and for burning down an adjacent school in the area on February 24.

When the matter began, Mehta appeared for the Delhi Police, but, simultaneously Mehra too also entered his appearance and submitted before the court that the Central government has no power to file the present petition.

Responding to the same, Mehta submitted that he has received instructions from the Central government to file the present petition and to appear before this court. However, Mehra disputed this and the Solicitor General, "out of disgust" submitted before the court that in such a situation, he seeks permission to withdraw his name from the present case.

The court then renotified the matter for a later hour in the day to resolve the issue.

In the second half, Lekhi entered his appearance in place of Mehta and APP Amit Chadha appeared in place of Mehra, who was appearing in another court.

Chadha told the court that the controversy will be resolved during the course of the day and jointly sought adjournment, following which the court also posted the matter for Tuesday.

This isn't the first time the counsel of both governments are at loggerheads. In March, the never-ending tussle between the Centre and the Delhi governments was in full display inside the high court over the same issue.

The debate had led to a heated argument between Mehra and Additional Solicitor General Maninder Kaur Acharya when the former submitted that he is the designated counsel to represent Delhi Police in the case.

Mehra had also said that he has not been issued any written intimation about Acharya in this regard. "I deserve this much dignity. If you route it through my office, I would cooperate. In three cases, I withdrew on request." As at this the ASG commented: "He has a bit of a politician in him", Mehra, objecting strongly to the statement, replied: "I am an officer of the court. I won't take such statements. ASG should take back her words." The bench asked the two lawyers to calm down and said: "Put your house in order by the next date of hearing." On February 27, Lt Governor Anil Baijal appointed Mehta, Acharya and few others to represent Delhi Police in the matters relating to the violence that erupted on February 23.

While this year, it was the Delhi riots that became the cause of "Mahabharata" between the Modi and Kejriwal government, back in 2016, former JNUSU President and left leader Kanhaiya Kumar and his case regarding the seditious remarks became the reason of the rift.

As soon as the hearing on Kanhaiya Kumar's bail plea commenced before a bench of Justice Pratibha Rani, Mehra opposed the appearance of then ASG Mehta, ASG Sanjay Jain and others. Mehra said that he was a senior standing counsel appointed by the full court reference of the High Court and if there was no notification empowering the ASGs to appear in the matter, they cannot represent the state.

"If they don't have the notification, they can't stand on their legs before this court," Mehra said. ASG Jain had then responded: "Once the ASGs are appearing in this matter, you have no business to interfere in it." Mehra, then in rage, said: "They have crossed the 'Laxman Rekha' and I will not allow this unless the court passes an order. I am appointed by the full court reference of this court. As a senior standing counsel, I am not allowed to argue in the matter and they are here on LG's unofficial order."

Latest updates on Howdy Modi Houston
I love Easton. I love its history, its diversity, and the community that sustains it. The Italian families of both my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather made Easton their home and they contributed to this community through business ownership and hard work.

I understand the importance of honoring both the immigrants struggle and our cultural heritage. However, I also believe that Eastons Christopher Columbus monument must be removed. I have studied its history and, while integral to our citys story, it also symbolizes the tyranny and oppression of one race over another.

While once a symbol of resistance in our fair city, it now represents the same intolerance that it once served to mitigate. If we are to continue being a place where all are welcome and diversity is celebrated, we must be willing to let go of the past if it does not represent what we want for our future.

Olivia Strawn

Easton
A 48-year-old man was charged with murder after a deadly bar shooting on the North Side last week, according to an arrest affidavit.

San Antonio police are accusing Felix Sanchez of killing 45-year-old Jose Ramon Juardo and then attempting to clean up the crime scene on June 13.

Officers were called to the 4000 block of Vance Jackson just before 7 a.m. and found Juardo laying in the alley dead from a gunshot wound.

During the investigation, authorities discovered Jurado's body may have been moved to the alley 30 feet away from the original crime scene on the patio of Shenanigans Cocktails, the affidavit said.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

According to the affidavit, video surveillance showed Sanchez and a woman exit the bar after closing time to sit on the patio. Several minutes later, cameras in the front of the bar showed Juardo parking his car at the bar and walking around to the back before taking a seat with the other two.

The woman later told police that she knew the victim, though it was unclear in what capacity.

Juardos body language showed that after several minutes the conversation started to get heated and he stands up and moves toward Sanchez and the woman, the affidavit said.

The woman told police that Juardo started to call her names before he came up and shoved her on the ground. Juardo then turned toward Sanchez and then fell to the floor and when the woman looked up, she saw Sanchez with a gun, the affidavit said.

The two moved the body from the patio and tidied up the patio chairs that had been knocked over during the shooting. They left the bar, but Sanchez returned about an hour and a half later to clean the patio with bleach, the affidavit said.

A bartender at Shenanigans Cocktails identified Sanchez for authorities.

Sanchez was arrested Sunday night and is being held on a $150,000 bail.

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway
Kangana Ranaut has called out renowned costume stylist Anaita Shroff Adajania, who is Fashion Director at Vogue India, for using her pictures and "promoting themselves" despite banning her.

A tweet posted by Kangana's team also mentioned "@VogueIndia has banned Kangana" because "@Anaita_Adajania (their style editor & now Fashion Director) is very close to Karan Johar".

Kangana said in a statement: "During my movie 'Fashion', released in 2008, Vogue did a cover with Priyanka Chopra and refused to put me on their cover as they said I am not an A-lister. In 2014 Vogue approached me for a cover but Anaita refused to style me she sent her assistant and they shot it in Mukesh Mills (Mumbai-based ruined mill),"

Kangana claimed that after her success in "Queen", she was asked to do covers with them.

"In 2015, post my sudden ascend to the top position, they said if I want to do covers with them then I must attend their beauty awards. I requested like other film stars I too want to shoot outdoors for a cover story with Vogue, I requested that Anaita styles me, they promised... but again they shot my cover in Mukesh mills, the same location they did the last cover.. and when I asked for clothes fitting they said 'if you want Anaita to style you she will directly come to location no fittings for you', this was shocking behaviour," Kangana added.

"I felt so humiliated, those are the only two covers I did with them."

The actress said after that she was "openly banned".

"But during 'Manikarnika', I spoke to their head Alex and told him I need to promote my film and wished to do a cover with them, they asked for few favours like attend their beauty award and shoot a cover for their upcoming issue, but they refuse to shoot the promised Vogue cover story with me for any of my movie promotions. But I see that they keep using my pictures and videos to promote themselves, is this fair? Isn't it supposed to be beneficial for both the parties involved?"

Kangana's team on social media has blamed Anaita for banning the actress and still using her old videos to "keep making money".

A tweet from the handle Team Kangana Ranaut shared an article from the magazine Vogue titled" Kangana Ranaut takes us inside her Mumbai home's sprawling walk-in closet".

"@VogueIndia has banned Kangana, (her last cover with them was 5 years ago), because @Anaita_Adajania (their style editor & now Fashion Director) is very close to Karan Johar, but is it fair for them to keep using her old videos to keep making money?" the tweet read.

Text: IANS

Images: Kangana on Instagram
Syracuse, N.Y. - Two more people have died of the coronavirus in Onondaga County, bringing the death toll to 180 people, the county announced Sunday.

Forty-three people are in area hospitals, up two from the day before, county officials said in a news release. Ten are in critical condition, up one.

The number of confirmed cases is up 13 to 2,557 cases. The 13 cases break down this way:

8 affiliated with senior living facilities or exposure to previously reported cases.

1 is from travel.

4 are from community spread.

County officials also released the following data:

Gender

Female: 1,520 (59%)

Male: 1,035 (41%)

Age

144 are under 19 years old

435 in their 20s

337 in their 30s

313 in their 40s

391 in their 50s

315 in their 60s

254 in their 70s

226 in their 80s

142 in their 90s

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Onondaga County loses youngest victim to Covid-19: A man in his 20s died

Federal government making mistake on reopening after coronavirus, Cuomo says

Onondaga County man has recovered from coronavirus but still cant walk a block

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com
In an interview with the BBC last year, New York Times editor Dean Baquet said: "We are not supposed to be the leaders of the resistance to Donald Trump. That is an untenable, non-journalistic, immoral position for The New York Times."

Traditionalists in the mainstream media believe Baquet's position is the right one -- for the Times, and for any independent outlet that wants to preserve its journalistic integrity. The best way to cover Trump ethically is to be aggressive, vigilant, critical, tough and fair. Scrupulously, rigorously fair.

But that model is under fierce attack from all sides. Trump regularly denounces the press as "fake news" and the "enemy of the people," and admits he's following a devious, damaging game plan. Lesley Stahl of CBS reports this conversation with the president: "He said, 'You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.'"

In response, a rising chorus of Resisters -- led by younger journalists of color within the Times and elsewhere -- find Baquet's model hopelessly outdated and even immoral. In Trump's America, they are saying, polarization is unavoidable. You have to choose sides.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times, put it this way on CNN: "This adherence to even-handedness, both-side-ism, 'view from nowhere' doesn't actually work in the political circumstances that we're in."

This clash has been brewing for some time, but it came to a head when the Times ran an op-ed piece by Sen. Tom Cotton: an inflammatory screed calling for military repression of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. The paper initially defended its decision, but backed down in the face of ferocious criticism. James Bennet, chief of the editorial page, even resigned.

The Resisters won that round, but the Traditionalists remain deeply troubled. Cotton is a major political figure who reflects the views of the president, and will probably run himself in four years. They point to Bennet's defense of his decision before his resignation: "It would undermine the integrity and independence of The New York Times if we only published views that editors like me agreed with, and it would betray what I think of as our fundamental purpose: not to tell you what to think, but to help you think for yourself."

The Resisters argued that Cotton's piece contained numerous inaccuracies. They also argued it was hurtful and even dangerous to black reporters, especially those covering the protests. "It's a unique balancing act," wrote LZ Granderson, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, "juggling your humanity with your profession against the backdrop of being under relentless attack in today's toxic political environment."

Both sides agree on one thing: Trump has altered the journalistic rules in critical ways. He lies repeatedly and ruthlessly. Unlike other politicians, he never corrects his misstatements or apologizes for them. He commands the TBN, the Trump Broadcasting Network, which uses Twitter and other social media platforms to communicate directly with his supporters and evade accountability.

As a result, even Traditionalists believe Trump has to be treated differently than his predecessors. They feel they have to be far more aggressive in documenting his falsehoods and calling them out. Some outlets now use words like "liar" and "racist" to describe him in extreme cases.

For the Resisters, that approach does not go far enough. They embrace views like this tweet from Wesley Lowery, a former Washington Post writer: "American view-from-nowhere, 'objectivity'-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment. We need to fundamentally reset the norms of our field. The old way must go. We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity."

For the Traditionalists, moral clarity comes from professionalism, not partisanship; from independence, not alliances. No matter how awful Trump is, in their view, he does not justify abandoning basic journalistic values.

This conflict will continue to reverberate in newsrooms across the country. It will heavily influence how the mainstream press continues to cover Trump, and the presidents who succeed him.

Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.

Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1
The Delhi High Court Monday directed the police not to take any coercive measure against Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) Chairman Zafarul Islam Khan in the sedition case till July 31.

Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, extended the interim protection granted to Khan and directed the Delhi Police to serve a copy of the status report filed in the matter to the petitioner.

The high court listed the matter for further hearing on July 31.The high court was hearing a plea by Khan, through advocate Vrinda Grover, seeking anticipatory bail in the sedition case lodged against him, citing his old age, health issues and risk of the coronavirus or COVID-19 infection.

It has earlier asked the police to give prior notice to Khan if called for investigation and called for a status report on the anticipatory bail plea.

On April 28, Khan published through his official page on social media a post that allegedly had seditious and hateful comments.

On May 2, based on a complaint, the Delhi Police Special Cell lodged an FIR against Khan under Sections 124A and 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for the alleged offences of sedition and promoting feelings of hatred between different groups on the grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence and language.

Khan sought anticipatory bail on the ground that he is a public servant and a senior citizen aged 72 years, who suffers from heart disease and hypertension and is highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection which can have fatal consequences for a person of his age and health condition.

In these circumstances there is an urgent need to grant him protection from arrest and coercive action in a frivolous and untenable case, in order to safeguard his liberty as the failure to do so will have irreversible consequences on his right to life, the petition filed through advocates Vrinda Grover, Ratna Appnender and Soutik Banerjee said.

The plea has sought direction to the police that in the event of his arrest, he be immediately released on bail and that no coercive measures be taken against him. It also sought direction that Khan's laptop and mobile should not be seized.

The plea claimed that no offence has been committed by Khan and the FIR has been registered with a mala fide intention to harass and intimidate him.

It said the FIR against him was "misconceived, being made on a misrepresentation of facts and an erroneous, untenable reading of the law.

Khan claimed in the plea that his social media post was falsely reported, distorted and sensationalised out of context by certain sections of the media to embarrass him and to tarnish his stellar work that he has been doing as Chairman of the commission.

Alarmed that his social media post was being maliciously and knowingly distorted and false meanings and motives attributed to his words, the petitioner (Khan) responded through his social media posts dated April 29, 2020, and further on May 1, 2020, the petitioner elaborated on his original tweet and clarified the distortions and misrepresentations by sections of the media, the plea said.

It said that despite the clarifications, a communal and politically motivated misinformation campaign was orchestrated against Khan to undermine the good work done by him over 20 years.

After almost a week since registration of the FIR, Khan was not served with any legal notice for interrogation and on the evening of May 6, when he was settling down for Iftaar, a police team came to his residence and orally asked him to accompany them to the Cyber Cell Police Station, it said.

The plea added that the police did not give any written notice to him as mandated under the CrPC.
He also lamented what he described as complacency of citizens in social distancing, citing an increase in public transport that he says has been approaching last year's levels in recent weeks. South Korea may impose stricter social distances measures as numbers of people using transport surges and infections rise. Credit:AP Citing research by health experts, Park said the country could be possibly reporting as much as 800 new cases a day a month from now if it fails to stem current trends in transmissions. He said the basic reproduction number of virus carriers, which measures the number of infections caused by an individual, has reached nearly 1.8 for the period between April 30 and June 11. Any number above 1 indicates a growing epidemic. In a separate briefing, Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged the country was now going through a second wave of the virus, following a surge in late February and March centred around the southeastern city of Daegu. The country has been reporting around 40 to 50 new cases per day since late May, mostly from the Seoul metropolitan area, where about half of South Korea's 51 million people live.

South Korea was reporting about 500 new cases per day in early March but managed to control the outbreak with an active testing and contact tracing campaign. German slaughterhouse under scrutiny Berlin: Germany's labour minister is calling for an examination of whether a company whose slaughterhouse is at the centre of a big coronavirus outbreak can be held financially liable for the fallout. As of Sunday, with most results of tests on workers at the Toennies site in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck now in, 1331 had tested positive and another 4568 negative. Local authorities in the western county of Guetersloh have quarantined Toennies employees and last week closed schools in the area. But they are keen to avoid reimposing a wider lockdown, and North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet said on Sunday there has been no "significant jump" of the virus to the rest of the local population.

Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told ARD television on Monday he expects the company to do everything to limit the damage. He added: "I think we must examine what civil-law liability possibilities there are in this area." The source of the infections isn't yet clear. Infections soar in India's rural regions New Delhi: India's coronavirus caseload has risen to 425,282 as infections soar in rural areas to which migrant workers fleeing major cities have returned in recent weeks. Migrant workers in India board a train in Gujarat. Credit:AP

India's health ministry on Monday reported 14,821 new cases and about 300 new deaths, bringing the toll of fatalities up to more than 13,000. The coastal state of Goa reported its first COVID-19 death. India is the fourth most-affected country globally after the United States, Brazil and Russia. India's government planning body Niti Aayog said infections have now emerged in 98 out of 112 of the country's poorest districts. The Indian government ran special trains to bring thousands of migrant workers back to their ancestral villages in recent weeks. Still, about 60 per cent of India's cases have been reported in the states of Delhi, which includes the national capital of New Delhi, Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital Mumbai and Tamil Nadu, where manufacturing hub Chennai is located.

Loading NZ reports two new cases from returned travellers Wellington: New Zealand has reported two new cases of the coronavirus as a trickle of infected people continue to arrive at the border. The country of 5 million people now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month. Health officials said on Monday that all those cases involve people who have recently arrived and are in quarantine, and there's no evidence of community transmission. Still, many remain anxious that community transmission could return, especially after health officials admitted making a mistake by allowing two women who had arrived from London to leave quarantine before they had been tested because a parent was dying. The women later tested positive and have since isolated themselves.

The latest two cases involve people returning from India and Pakistan. US prisoner dies from virus complications California: An inmate from Avenal State Prison in California has died from what appears to be complications from the coronavirus. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said over the weekend the inmate died at a hospital and the exact cause of death has yet to be determined. No additional information was provided. Authorities said 19 inmates in state custody have died from illnesses related to the virus. It's the first death at Avenal State Prison in Kings County, where 131 inmates have tested positive for the virus. The prison is 180 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Protesters hold a banner as they march on a street during a rally in Central district in Hong Kong on June 9, 2020. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Hongkongers Fear Human Rights Violations, Torture Under Beijings National Security Law

Beijings proposed national security law for Hong Kong has sparked jitters across the Chinese-ruled city.

After a Chinese human rights lawyer revealed in a media interview how he was tortured while in detention in mainland China, Hong Kong activists and lawyers are worried that Hongkongers could face similar treatment if theyre found guilty of violating the national security law.

Chinas rubber-stamp legislature, the National Peoples Congress (NPC), adopted the law on May 28 after a ceremonial vote. The law would criminalize those who engage in activities connected to subversion, secession, terrorism, and foreign interference in the Chinese-ruled city. It will be implemented after the NPC standing committee finalizes drafting the law.

Wangs Torture

Human rights lawyer Wang Quangzhang was released in early April after serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence on charges of subverting state power. Hes well-known for defending local activists and adherents of the spiritual group Falun Gong, a meditation practice that has been severely persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999.

While speaking to Japanese media Kyodo News in a recent interview, Wang recently disclosed how he was tortured, recounting what he went through while being held at a prison in the Chinese city of Tianjin between September 2015 and January 2016.

He was arrested in July 2015 as part of a nationwide suppression of hundreds of activists and lawyers.

He revealed that he was prohibited from rolling over during sleep while being subjected to 24-hour surveillance by two armed police officers. Sometimes, he was forced to stand for 15 hours straight while keeping his hands in the air.

He recounted how he was slapped in the face for hours, after which he was compelled to accept an affidavit stating that he tried to subvert the government by receiving funds from abroad.

He also recalled that he was pressed down like a pig during a closed-door trial in December 2018, after he shouted in protest against the lack of rule of law in China. The following month, he was sentenced to prison, including the time he spent in pre-trial detention.

Wang told Kyodo News that his case proved that Chinas judicial procedure was sloppy and that police and judicial authorities failed to uphold the law.

Hong Kong Reactions

Jimmy Lai, a local activist and founder of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, said in a tweet that, What happened to Wang will happen to all of us peace and freedom loving #HKers. We should not let #HK go down this path.

In a post on its official Twitter account, Hong Kongs pro-democracy party Demosisto highlighted that Chinese authorities extracted a confession from Wang by torturing him.

In the name of #NationalSecurityLaw, #Beijing extends its black-jail regime to #HK, Demosisto wrote, speculating that this could happen in Hong Kong after the national security law is implemented.

Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong independent human rights researcher, wrote on Twitter on June 22 that how Wang was treated was sad and outrageous.

See how #China detained and #tortured a lawyer who was accused of so-called subverting state power, a national security offence, Poon wrote.

Chinas hawkish state-run media Global Timesin a June 21 article citing unnamed observers and in another article published the following day citing Hong Kongs sole representative to NPC standing committee Tam Yiu-chungsuggested that the law would be formally approved by July 1, after the committee concludes a three-day meeting scheduled to begin on June 28.

Tam told local media i-Cable News on June 22 that the law posed the possibility that defendants could be extradited to mainland China and put on trial in Chinese courts under very special circumstances.

Over the weekend, the NPC standing committee revealed more details about the law, including that it would grant Hong Kongs top official the power to appoint judges in cases related to Chinas national security.

Hong Kong Bar Association Chairman Philip Dykes raised concerns about that provision while speaking to Reuters, noting that such powers cut to the core of Hong Kongs judicial independence, which is protected by the citys mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
The strained relation between India and Nepal is having its cascading effect in Bihar where several hundred kilometres of area are likely to be submerged this monsoon if the Himalayan Kingdom remains adamant on not allowing fortification of embankment on the Nepal-Bihar border.

According to sources in the Water Resources Department, Nepal has stopped fortification of the 2.5 km-long embankment on Lal Bakey river in Dhaka block of East Champaran district in Bihar, claiming the 500 metres of the embankment fall in the Nepalese territory.

Lal Bakey river originates from Nepal but flows downstream in Bihar.

The Water Resources Department of Bihar has built the embankment (till the last point sharing with Nepal) and before every monsoon, carries out repair and fortification work. However, Nepal has now stopped the Bihar officials from carrying out flood control measures saying 500 metres of the 2.5 km-long embankment fall in Nepal, and, therefore, no such work could be carried out by them (Bihar engineers).

This is the first time that Nepal has taken such stand (of not allowing repair work), said Bihars Water Resources Department Minister, Sanjay Jha. If our engineers will not have access to flood fighting material there, then repair work of the embankment will be affected. During heavy rainfall in the Himalayan Kingdom, the pressure on the embankment will increase manifold and may pose threat to Bihar areas, Jha added.

The minister said he is going to apprise the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) about the standoff. I will write a letter in this regard to the MEA. If the issue is not addressed on time, then a large tract of land in Bihar could be flooded this rainy season, said Jha.

This is the second occasion in the last fortnight when ties between Nepal and Bihar have been strained. On June 12, one Indian was killed while three others injured when Nepalese police reportedly opened fire at Sitamarhi-Nepal border. Tension between the two countries have been brewing ever since Nepal released a new map claiming Indian territories within the Himalayan Kingdom.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and ahead of the November presidential election, President Donald Trump has escalated his intense rhetoric against the Chinese government. But his former national security adviser John Bolton said that his harsh words mask a softness on China and a penchant for its president, Xi Jinping.

"Xi Jinping would be right up there with (Russia's Vladimir) Putin in his ability to look at Donald Trump and say, 'This is somebody that we can move ultimately on our side,'" Bolton told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

After spending 17 months at Trump's side, Bolton characterized the president as full of empty words and at times lies, willing to put his personal relationship with Xi ahead of the country's interests and easily marked and manipulated by foreign adversaries.

It's "a pattern quite contrary to the image (Trump) would like to convey -- of a decisive president who knows something about what he's doing. There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection," Bolton told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz. "This is a danger for the republic."

MORE: Bolton, in new book, alleges Trump asked China to help him get reelected

In particular, Bolton argued that Trump took steps to avoid insulting or offending Xi as he pursued "the great white whale of the Trump administration, the big trade deal with China."

Most recently, that meant Trump praising China's response to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus and its "transparency" in January and February, even as the Chinese government hid or refused to share details of the virus with the international community.

"Donald Trump didn't wanna hear about it. He didn't wanna hear about it because he didn't wanna hear bad things about Xi Jinping. He didn't wanna hear bad things about China covering up what had happened with the outset of the disease. He didn't wanna hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the 'fantastic' trade deal he was working on," Bolton said.

Story continues

"We lost a lot of time because of that," he added.

PHOTO: John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, talks with ABC's Martha Raddatz, about his new book, 'The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,' airing June 21, 2020. (ABC News)

Bolton also said Trump pushed to remove penalties on Chinese companies found to have violated U.S. law or accused of endangering U.S. national security, in order to please Xi or curry favor in trade negotiations.

One of China's largest telecommunications companies, ZTE had violated U.S. sanctions repeatedly, including after reaching a settlement with the Department of Justice. Its most recent violations meant the firm, which has ties to the Chinese government, would face a scorching financial penalty and a ban on the U.S. market -- a move that could kill the company.

After a phone conversation with Xi, Trump reversed course and canceled the fines and ban -- all in the name of buoying trade talks, Trump told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday. But Bolton told ABC News he and other top advisers were aghast and furious.

"I mean, it's one thing if you had a clear foreign policy rationale to downplay a criminal or regulatory proceeding because of a larger strategic interest. It's quite another just to do it off-the-cuff, on-the-whim, give your buddy Xi Jinping a benefit. This was not part of some sustained interagency policy-making process. This was just conversation with Xi Jinping. And I find that very troubling," he said.

MORE: Bolton book can be released, but conduct 'raises grave national security concerns'

In the interview with The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Trump defended the reduced punishment ZTE received -- a smaller fine and changes to its board -- as "an amazing deal."

In the book, Bolton discusses other alleged incidents of Trump making alarming statements to Xi, especially after talking to the authoritarian leader.

Bolton wrote Trump didn't favor sanctioning China, for example, over its detention of more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the country's western province known officially as Xinjiang, but, "It only got worse." During the G-20 meeting in June 2019, according to Bolton, Xi told Trump why he was building the detention and "reeducation" camps, and, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do."

Trump and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer have both denied that this is true, with Lighthizer telling a Senate panel Wednesday, "Absolutely untrue. Never happened. I was there. I have no recollection of that ever happening. I don't believe it's true. I don't believe it ever happened."

PHOTO: In this file photo, President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping leave a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images, File)

Six months prior, during a December 2018 G-20 meeting, Xi told Trump he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, according to Bolton, and the president "replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him."

"Knowing Xi was 'President for life' in China, Trump was trying to compete with him. Later in the dinner, Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn't want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly," Bolton wrote.

At that same dinner, Trump asked Xi for the release of Victor and Cynthia Liu, two U.S. citizens who Chinese authorities have banned from exiting the country. After visiting their grandfather, the 20- and 28-year-old have been held in China because their father is a Chinese businessman in the U.S. wanted by Beijing on bank fraud allegations.

After Xi dismissively responded Victor and Cynthia were also Chinese citizens, according to Bolton, "Trump shrugged his shoulders disdainfully and dropped the issue. So much for protecting U.S. citizens. The Chinese probably hope the dinner would go on all night."

The example that seems most "stunning" to Bolton is one that's been widely reported this past week -- his assertion that during that June 2019 conversation, Trump was "pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win" reelection by purchasing more U.S. soybeans and wheat.

"He focused on terms like China buying more agricultural products, which he said to Xi Jinping directly would help him in the farm states -- a really, to me, stunning statement by a president to the leader of an adversarial foreign country," Bolton told ABC News.

He added that was something Trump discussed often: "The idea that buying agricultural products was a good thing in the farm states, whose electoral votes Trump needed -- he talked about it all the time in those terms."

Trump's former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney defended that, saying Trump pushed for agricultural purchases because China increasing them was both good for the country and good for Trump's reelection.

"Yes, he talked about that probably every time he talked to President Xi. Would selling American agricultural products be good for the country and thus good for the president's reelection chances? Yes, they would be. But to put those two factually true statements together to make it look like the president was just begging China for inappropriate help, that's bizarre," Mulvaney told CNN.

MORE: Bolton: Trump's not 'fit for office,' doesn't have 'competence to carry out the job'

Trump has cast Bolton as a liar and defended his record on China, telling The Wall Street Journal, "There's nobody been tough on China like me."

But Bolton argued that when Trump is one-on-one with Xi, he caves, warning that what he called Trump's election season rhetoric will fade if he wins in November and again pursues a trade deal.

"We're in a period today, and we will be in that period up until Nov. 3, Election Day, when rhetoric about Chinese behavior is tough, it's harsh -- and some steps have been taken," Bolton told Raddatz. "But how long after Nov. 3 will the harsh rhetoric prevail if Donald Trump wins? How long will it be before he's calling Xi Jinping and saying, 'Let's together on those trade negotiations again?'"

"When the policy one day is harsh and the next day it's not, next day it's something else, that's not a policy at all," he added.

Bolton dismisses Trump's tough talk on China: 'No telling' what deal he'd take if reelected originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 2,600,727 ( 2,557,980)

Total U.S. deaths: 129,545 (125,864)

Total global cases: 10,350,645 (10,189,350)

Total global deaths: 506,827 (502,719)

Los Angeles is the new epicenter

Early in the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, New York City emerged as the epicenter of the virus while Los Angeles reported relatively few cases. Those roles have now reversed.

The Los Angeles County Health Department reports more than 100,000 confirmed cases of the virus so far, with nearly 3,000 new cases a day. The largest number recorded so far among any age demographic is among young people between 18 and 40.

Barbara Ferrer, the director of public health for Los Angeles County, calls the increase in cases and hospitalizations alarming.

Younger patients occupying Houstons ICU

Texas has experienced a huge increase in coronavirus cases during June, and intensive care units (ICU) in Houston hospitals are starting to fill up. But the patients are significantly younger than those who pushed New York hospitals to the tipping point in April.

The New York Times reports that nearly one-third of the ICU patients in Houstons Methodist Hospital system are under the age of 50. Its a similar situation in nearby states. A significant number of new infections are of people in their 20s and 30s.

An economic case for masks

The idea of wearing a face-covering in public has become a contentious issue in some circles, infused with politics. But an economist at Goldman Sachs suggests that the economy would heal faster if everyone would wear a mask in public places.

Jan Hatzius, the banks chief economist, worked with his team to probe the link between face masks and COVID-19 health and economic outcomes. They determined that a national requirement for everyone to wear a mask could cut the daily rate of infections by a full percentage point.

That result, Hatzius said, could prevent another shutdown order that would eliminate more jobs and shave 5 percent off the nations economic growth rate.

Fauci says follow strict guidelines critical to stopping the virus

Health officials are testifying before a Senate committee today, providing updates on the coronavirus and the outlook for the next few weeks. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infection Diseases (NIAID), testified that municipalities that continue to follow safety rules will have the best chance of safely reopening schools this fall.

If we adhere to guidelines that have been carefully laid out, that will help to keep the level of infection down and make it easier to get the children back to school, Fauci said.

Fauci said the states where cases are surging may have reopened too quickly and may have needed to follow stricter rules as they reopened.

What happens in Vegas

Just two weeks after casinos on the Las Vegas strip reopened with social distancing rules in place, some casino employees have filed a lawsuit, saying their health and safety arent being protected.

The suit was filed against the owners of Harrahs, MGM Grand, and Bellagio casinos. Specifically, the complaint alleges the casinos were slow to shut down food and beverage facilities on their premises after some employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

The suit was filed in federal court by Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165.

Around the nation
By Bruno Figueroa, Martha Barcena



June 25 marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War (1950-53), the first open conflict of the Cold War and one of the most brutal ones of last century. It cost almost 5 million lives, and caused the devastation of the whole Korean Peninsula. Known in the U.S. as the "Forgotten War" due to its censored coverage and its lack of attention, the Korean War had its share of "forgotten soldiers": the more than 100,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans who fought within the U.S. Armed Forces, around 10 percent of the total number of troops. Overrepresented, this ethnic minority accounted for less than 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population at the time.



Although Mexico did not send a military unit to join South Korea and the other 16 countries in this conflict, under the United Nations flag, the contribution of Mexican nationals was possible by the Mexico-United States Agreement Regarding Military Service by Nationals of Either Country Residing in the Other, which was in force from 1943 to the end of 1952. Mexican born men were drafted just as were Mexican Americans, or they volunteered to join. No distinction was made in military service concerning country of birth.



They were almost everywhere, and mostly invisible. The morning of June 28, 1950, the day Seoul fell, a reconnaissance plane took off from Japan, crossed the Korean Peninsula and disappeared in the Yellow Sea. Staff Sgt. Joe Campos, enlisted in Miami, Arizona, was in that plane and became one of the first soldiers missing in action of the war. A few days later, in the first combat encounter between U.S. and North Korean troops, remembered as the Battle of Osan, Florentino Gonzales, from Chicago, Illinois, was taken alive by North Koreans. He was in the first group of prisoners of war. These soldiers from Mexico and the U.S. who "served with distinction, fought courageously and gave their lives, when need be, valiantly," according to President Lyndon B. Johnson, received scarce attention for their sacrifices. The information about them and their actions is incomplete; there is still no comprehensive history of their contributions, granted that several research papers and veteran memoirs give some important account.



It is a difficult, almost elusive task. Oddly, no official public record exists for Mexicans and Mexican Americans because they were registered as "White," when drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces. The Mexican government only kept records of the bodies that came back to their country of origin for burial. The prejudice against Hispanics at the time makes the task even more daunting. Raul Alvarez del Castillo from Guadalajara, Mexico, preferred to be known as "Ralph A. Castle". Bartolome Garcia, born in Mexico City and killed in action in Korea, had his home state absurdly noted as the Virgin Islands, as happened in the case of several other Mexican nationals.











Corporal Jesus Rodriguez



Corporal Jesus Rodriguez, from Los Angeles, revealed that there was even an "all Mexican squad," under the 35th Infantry Regiment  although never recognized as such. There must have been similar squads and platoons, granted the high number of soldiers of Mexican origin. Yet the use of Spanish among them was not permitted and their cultural identity was suppressed. Their "Mexicanness" couldn't be mistaken, and the harsh world they came from made them strong. Jesus Rodriguez remembered: "I used to pray a lot. Another thing that helped me was that I was street smart from before going into the service. On the streets I learned how to fight  Something else that helped me survive Korea was that going hungry wasn't new to me and didn't hurt me."





Eugene A. Obregon
Eliot Perez is not the type of exercise instructor who dances in and out of his members lives for one hour a week.

Needing socialization? Perez will invite you to help blow up balloons for a party hes throwing for you.

Havent shown up to class in two weeks? Perez will investigate.

Want specialized exercises for a health condition? Perez will ask what the doctor has recommended, any medications youre on and injuries youve suffered. From that point, hell create a customized workout plan to offset any further physical decline.

For the past 12 years, he has worked mainly with the over-65 population in active older-adult exercise classes. In 2015, he became an instructor with SilverSneakers, a national community fitness program for senior citizens. For the native Houstonian, the job is less about being what people expect and more about building a community that is true to itself.

The 20-year fitness professional was named Instructor of the Year by SilverSneakers.

Before the pandemic, Perez taught more than five SilverSneakers classes a week at Houston-area YMCA branches, serving approximately 75 to 100 seniors per class. Last year, he made the organizations top five out of 5,000 nominations. This year, he beat out 3,000 nominees for the top spot.

In early June, the Houston Chronicle spoke with Perez by phone about his SilverSneakers top honor and how he has grown to love working with mainly senior citizens. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you want to work with seniors?

A: At the time, I was doing real estate. My dad was elderly and getting ill, so it was hard for me to focus on a career change because I needed to help my mother with my dad. My boss at the time offered me SilverSneakers classes to try for a few months until I found something else.

At first, I didnt want to teach these old folks. Theyre cranky and get on my nerves, but I ended up loving them as if theyre my own family. It was a blessing.

I was helping them exercise, and they were helping me cope with my dad. We talked about symptoms; there was a lot of back-and-forth. I did not have always have a great relationship with my father, but I was able to be there for my members. It was pleasant and peaceful for me to be there.

Q: How do you get the best results from your senior members?

A: If they go to a doctors visit, I ask what he said about their health so we can work on it together. Its really personal to me to make sure theyre living longer, especially after seeing my dads health go downhill. It has been a mission for myself to make sure they dont suffer the way he did.

One of my members, Charlotte, has been taking my class since 2007, and she still continues to work out even after a couple of bypass surgeries. If she wouldnt have been working out, she wouldnt have made that surgery. Shes 96 today. Pre-COVID, I taught four people in their 90s.

Ill do emails and phone calls with some of them. If were going to give them the wellness part, you have to put in the heart part.

Q: What are your in-person classes like?

A: My favorite is dance, so I do SilverSneakers Boom and SilverSneakers Dance. My dance is so much more fun than doing these virtual classes now. I miss that human connection and being able to hug someone. Thats the hardest thing, not being able to hug someone when theyre not feeling well or their husband or wife is sick.

My classes are designed more for those people who cant do much in the beginning. I make sure there are lots of squats, even when they dont want them. I train them to get up and down on the chair and having stronger arms, so they can carve the Thanksgiving turkey. I always say, I dont want you calling 911, saying youre stuck on the toilet. You need to be able to get up and pull your drawers up.

I always tell my members they will get a workout but also a laugh. I tell them laughter is so important to have in your life because it increases endorphins and makes your feel happier. Like in that movie Legally Blonde when Reese Witherspoon said, Endorphins make you happy. Happy people dont shoot their husbands. Its so important for people to laugh when theyre working out.

Q: Why are you in the fitness industry?

A: You have to be genuinely passionate about what you do rather than be someone working for a paycheck. I feel passionate about helping people help themselves by feeling stronger. I dont want anything to happen to them. If someone lives by themselves and a person comes to visit, I want them to be able to answer the door. I teach them techniques on how to roll over if they fall.

When I took over, we started having luncheons for Mardi Gras, Christmas, Easter; we did a Hawaiian luau theme, but we didnt do limbo because I was afraid no one would get back up.

I took it upon myself to do things like that in the community  to build relationships with one another. I see a lot of passings in my line of work, but because I built that relationship with them, I take pictures of all the good times. I will show up at the funeral with a photo album, and the family will come up to me and say, All she did was talk about you at the Y.

You have to give them more. Its not just about teaching class; you give them love they need, that they might not be getting from their families, too.

Perez teaches SilverSneakers classes at Harriet and Joe Foster Family YMCA, 1234 W. 34th St., and MD Anderson Family YMCA, 705 Cavalcade. During the pandemic, he is teaching virtual livestreamed or recorded classes Mondays-Fridays on YMCA 360 .

julie.garcia@chron.com

twitter.com/reporterjulie
Chief Akilu Sayibu

21.06.2020 LISTEN

The Voiceless Media and Consult were, on Saturday, June 20, 2020, vindicated when all the aspiring Parliamentary Candidates they predicted victory for during the NPP Parliamentary primaries all came true.

The Voiceless Media and Consult had predicted victory for Farouk Aliu Mahama in the Yendi Constituency, Hajia Alima Mahama in the Nalerigu/Gambaga Constituency, Alhaji Habib Iddrisu in the Tolon Constituency Amidu Chinnia in the Sissala East Constituency and many more.

These predictions were as a result of months of research, monitoring and polls that the Voiceless Media and Consult research team conducted.

These predictions were however met with various reactions from the reading public with some condemning the polls tagging it as sheer propaganda. Some even went to the extent of calling the credibility of the entire Voiceless Media and Consult into disrepute and others still attacking the personality of its Managing Editor, Chief Akilu Sayibu.

Chief Akilu Sayibu was however candid and resolute and asked all his critiques to wait for the results after the elections.

On Saturday, June 20, 2020, all the Candidates the Voiceless Media and Consult predicted to win in the parliamentary primaries won convincingly thus vindicating the Voiceless Media

According to Chief Akilu Sayibu, this accuracy of their predictions just goes to affirm the long-held credibility of the Voiceless Media and Consult.

He expressed gratitude to his hard-working team who conducted the polls with their credibility on the line.

Chief Akilu noted that the Voiceless Media and Consult will continue to bring nothing but the truth to its cherished readers.
DANIA BEACH, Fla., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New York was one of the hardest hit states during the unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Westchester to Tompkins County, Q Link Wireless is the first phone carrier in 10 years to serve every resident, regardless of income, in New York.

Everyone knows New Yorkers love to talk. The world will either love or hate Q Link Wireless for providing the Empire State with

New Yorkers Can Now Talk Even More and Much Longer for FREE with Q Link Wireless

5GB of data

unlimited talk and text

free SIM Card shipping and activation

10 million Wi-Fi auto-connect spots

New subscribers, bring your own phone to our newly expanded network. Call loved ones, binge watch your favorite shows and show the world why everyone wants to live in New York.

"I grew up in New York City and know this free phone service will help a lot of families, especially during these unprecedented times," explains Issa Asad, founder and CEO of Q Link Wireless. "There are many underserved rural families who have a right to communicate and connect with the world."

About Q Link Wireless

Q Link Wireless is a pioneer in the telecommunications industry. The company understands that communication is a life essential to connect with loved ones, employers and emergency services. Q Link Wireless is able to offer free and discounted wireless services because they are an approved provider of the federal Lifeline Assistance program. The Lifeline Assistance program was created in 1984 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Ronald Reagan and updated in 1996. It allows low-income individuals who cannot afford a mobile phone to obtain one at affordable rates, ensuring they have basic communication services that help them live safely and productively. The Lifeline Assistance program is funded by collective fees that make up the Universal Service Fund (USF). These USF fees are collected by all wireless service providers. Created in 1997 by the FCC, the USF meets universal service goals to monetarily contribute towards the safeguarding and advancement of accessible and reasonable communication services.

Contact:

Maureen Castellon

[email protected]

786 208 0451

SOURCE Q Link Wireless
PG&E Corp. said its Chapter 11 reorganization plan has been confirmed by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, bringing the power provider one step closer to emerging from bankruptcy and participate in a state-backed wildfire fund.

The courts approval follows the confirmation of the plan by power regulator California Public Utilities Commission in May.

Todays ruling in the Chapter 11 proceeding concludes the process of approving PG&Es Plan of Reorganization, the San Francisco-based utility Chief Executive Officer and President Bill Johnson said in a statement on Saturday.

The company said that it expects to emerge from bankruptcy in July and that it is on track to participate in a state-backed wildfire fund, which reduces liability for investor-owned utilities but requires them to spend billions of dollars upgrading equipment.

The utility filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January last year, citing potential liabilities exceeding $30 billion from major wildfires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018.

Earlier this week, the company pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter stemming from a devastating 2018 wildfire in Northern California touched off by the utility companys power lines.

The guilty plea, part of an agreement with prosecutors in Butte County, is intended to end all criminal proceedings against PG&E from the Camp Fire, which broke out on Nov. 8, 2018, and destroyed much of the town of Paradise.

The Camp Fire killed at least 84 people and destroyed some 18,000 buildings. It is considered the most destructive wildfire in California history.

The company said earlier in June that it plans to raise $5.75 billion from public offerings as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy.

(Reporting by Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy and Sandra Maler)

Related:

Topics California Catastrophe Wildfire
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un "gets a huge laugh" out of Donald Trump's notion that the two are friends, John Bolton, the president's former national security adviser, has said.

Mr Bolton sat for an interview with ABC News that aired on Sunday to promote his new book, The Room Where It Happened, which hits shelves on Tuesday.

Asked by ABC's Martha Raddatz whether Mr Trump "really believes Kim Jong-un loves him," Mr Bolton responded that he doesn't know of any other explanation for the president's statements.

"I think Kim Jong-un gets a huge laugh out of this. I mean, these letters that the president has shown to the press  off the record and whatnot, but I've been in the room when he's done it  are written by some functionary in the North Korean Workers Party Agitprop Office," Mr Bolton said, referring to personal letters the North Korean leader has supposedly written to Mr Trump.

"And yet, the president has looked at them as evidence of this deep friendship. Even if it were a deep personal relationship, it doesn't change the fact Kim Jong-un is never going to give up his nuclear weapons program. And from the US national security point of view, that is the only thing that matters," Mr Bolton said.

But the nuances of national security were only of trifling concern for Mr Trump compared to what he determined would be a political windfall from meeting with Mr Kim, Mr Bolton said.

"That's what he was focused on  that he had had this enormous photo opportunity. First time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea," Mr Bolton said.

"And he got enormous attention from it. I thought it was a strategic mistake. The US itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot. The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator and didn't accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program," Mr Bolton said.

Mr Trump has said on multiple occasions he believes his face-to-face meetings with Mr Kim should position him to win the Nobel Peace Prize, despite politicians and scholars from Mr Trump's own party saying the meetings did not have any lasting positive impact on US-North Korea relations.

After Mr Trump and Mr Kim first met face to face in Singapore in June 2018, Mr Trump wanted to set up more meetings, which Mr Bolton thought was a bad idea and a waste of time.

Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Show all 16 1 /16 Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter sits in the upper rows of the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally. There were reports of far lower numbers attending than the president's team had predicted Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump points to his shoe at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma during a lengthy explanation of why he walked so carefully on a ramp at West Point military academy a week earlier Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A police officer gestures during a Black Lives Matter event near the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by Donald Trump AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporters take their seats in the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by the president. Many people in the crowd were choosing not to wear face masks despite medical recommendations during the coronavirus pandemic AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Merchandise vendors wearing face masks at the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a Donald Trump rally Getty Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporter Scott Hilliard, left, argues with Black Lives Matter protester Eugene Smith near the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by the president AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter and a Black Lives Matter protester face off in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally by Donald Trump AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A protester shouts at Donald Trump supporters outside a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Eric Trump, Donald Trump's second son, in the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of a campaign rally AP Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A woman wearing a T-shirt with the message 'I Can't Breathe' is arrested after refusing to leave the area outside the rally, which she said she had a ticket for AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A woman speaks to police officers during a protest against racial injustice outside a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's campaign manager, in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of the president's first rally in three months Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A protester against racial injustice is arrested outside a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma A Trump supporter wearing a Make America Great Again cap speaking outside a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma REUTERS Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Trump supporters wait to enter a rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Donald Trump supporters and opponents clash outside the BOK Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma ahead of an election rally by the president AP

"He wanted another meeting. And I finally said, 'Mr President, he's the dictator of a rat s*** little country that doesn't deserve a meeting with you,'" Mr Bolton said he told Mr Trump.

"The president's response to that was, 'You know, you have a lot of hostility. Of course, I have more hostility. But you have a lot of hostility.' I normally didn't resort to that kind of approach with the president. I tried to do it in more even-handed language. But there are times when he just didn't seem to want to listen to it," Mr Bolton said.

The former national security adviser, who previously served three Republican presidents in various national security and diplomatic roles, plans to write in the name of a "conservative Republican" on his 2020 presidential election ballot, a spokeswoman said in a statement on Sunday.

Mr Bolton became Mr Trump's third national security adviser in April 2018. He resigned in September 2019 after multiple clashes with the president.
New York, June 12, 2020  Authorities in Niger should immediately release journalist Samira Ibrahim Sabou and drop all charges against her, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Authorities arrested Sabou, editor with the privately owned Niger Search news website and manager of the Mides-Niger news website, on June 10 after she responded to a court summons, according to her lawyer, Abdou Leko Aboubacar, and Sahirou Youssoufou, secretary general of the Niger Press House, a local media association, both of whom spoke to CPJ over messaging app.

The summons was issued in response to a defamation complaint filed by Sani Mahamadou Issoufou, the son and chief of staff of Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou, according to Leko and Youssoufou.

The complaint stemmed from a May 26 post on Sabous official Facebook account that alleged a connection between the son of the boss of the country and an audit of the military, as discussed in a March 24 report by the Jeune Afrique news site. The post shared a screenshot of the Jeune Afrique article.

Sabou frequently posts political commentary and links to her reporting on her Facebook page, where she has more than 60,000 followers.

Authorities charged Sabou with defamation by a means of electronic communication under Article 29 of Nigers cybercrime law for her post, and for a comment made on the post by another Facebook user, Leko told CPJ.

Sabou was placed in pre-trial detention in the civil prison in Niamey; if convicted, she could face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to five million West African francs ($8,650), according to Leko and the cybercrime law, which CPJ reviewed.

Authorities in Niger should immediately release Samira Ibrahim Sabou and halt their use of the countrys cybercrime law to arrest and detain journalists, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program coordinator. Nigers cybercrime law is just another disappointing example of the way criminal defamation persists across the continent, in defiance of international standards and African governments own commitments to freedom of expression.

CPJ called Sani Issoufou Mahamadou for comment at a phone number provided by someone following the case, but the call did not go through. CPJ could not contact him through Twitter because he did not have direct messaging enabled.

Sabou is the president of the local Association of Bloggers for Active Citizenship, previously worked with the government owned Le Sahel and privately owned lEnqueteur newspapers, and is widely known for her writing on social media, according to Youssoufou.

Nigers Press House issued a statement condemning Sabous arrest, and restating Nigers prohibitions on preventive arrests for press violations. The statement also noted that Niger had signed the Table Mountain Declaration, a regional pact advocating for the abolition of criminal defamation laws.

CPJ could not immediately find contact information for the judge overseeing Sabous case.

In March, journalist Kaka Touda Mamane Goni was also arrested in Niamey and prosecuted under Nigers cybercrime law for posts on social media, as CPJ documented at the time.
Though this past weekend saw Bangkoks nights plenty loud again, its nightlife venues are expected to get official approval to reopen next month.

Pubs, bars, clubs and karaoke venues are likely to get the nod in the next phase of relaxing measures due in July, a top army commander said yesterday after meeting with venue owners.

What Nattapol Nakpanit, deputy army chief, couldnt be clear about was the future of sex massage parlors and the emergency decree, which is currently set to expire with June.

He suggested that allowing it to sunset would automatically revoke all limits put in place to stem the outbreak.

If the emergency decree lasts another month, there will be a Phase 5 of relaxed measures. If it is lifted, all businesses would be able to reopen, he said.

He said the details would be confirmed after the COVID 19 task force meets Friday.

For 27 days, Thailand has recorded only new coronavirus infections that were contracted overseas by Thais quarantined after returning from abroad.

Related

Curfew to lift, alcohol to flow again Monday

This article, July reopening eyed for Bangkoks bars and clubs, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters!
State environment minister Aaditya Thackeray has opposed the Centres proposal to conduct an auction for mining at a site near Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Maharashtra.

Thackeray has written to union environment minister Prakash Javadekar, urging him to withdraw the proposal, as it will harm the tiger reserve.

Thackeray on Monday said this auction was cancelled twice before in 1999 and 2001. When we are aware that such a move will spell disaster in the Tadoba and Andhari Tiger Reserve, what is the point in spending our time and resources on such a project? he said.

Bander coal block, located close to TATR in Chandrapur district, is one of the 41 mining sites in the country, for which the Centre has invited bids for an auction.

He said that 10 years ago, the then union environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, had ordered a survey and the results concluded that the site was not suitable for mining. Thackeray has requested Javadekar for survey of the proposed site again.

Both Aaditya and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray are well-known wildlife enthusiasts. The duo had also opposed cutting of trees in Mumbais Aarey Colony for Metro-3 project.

Environmentalists have supported Thackerays stance. We are only encroaching on the space of the wildlife and increasing the man-animal conflict, said Debi Goenka, an environmentalist. However, he said that being in the government, Thackeray has the power to derail the project.

The state government needs to emphasise that they will not give any approvals required for the project and this itself will dissuade the bidders from entering the project, he added.

Another environmentalist Stalin Dayanand said mining is a highly polluting industry which destroys the wildlife. This will be a disruptive move, as studies point out that mining causes irreparable damage to forests. The wildlife is also is threatened considerably, said Dayanand.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Advertisement

The world saw the largest daily increase yet in coronavirus cases yesterday, official statistics have shown as the pandemic continues to accelerate and wreak havoc globally.

World Health Organization (WHO) figures revealed 183,020 Covid-19 infections were recorded on Sunday, June 21  topping the previous high of 181,000 on Thursday, June 18.

Nearly a third occurred in Brazil (54,771) followed by the US (36,617) and India (15,413)  taking the overall number of infections past 8.7million. More than 460,000 deaths have been recorded.

But the actual number of Covid-19 cases since the virus was first spotted in China in December will be drastically higher because of a lack of mass-testing and the large proportion of asymptomatic cases.

Despite clear progress in containing the virus in some regions, especially those that saw early outbreaks, globally the number of new cases has soared in recent days. Hospitals are scrambling to cope in Brazil, Iraq and India.

It comes amid claims from a top Italian doctor that the coronavirus  once considered an 'aggressive tiger' of a disease  has weakened and become more like a wild cat, raising hopes it could die out on its own.

WHO figures appear to add weight to the controversial theory, with the rolling three-day average of deaths having dropped from nearly 5,400 at the start of June to below 4,000 yesterday.

COVID-19 IS BECOMING WEAKER, TOP DOCTOR CLAIMS The coronavirus, once an 'aggressive tiger' of a disease, has weakened and become more like a wild cat, according to a top Italian doctor. Professor Matteo Bassetti said he is convinced the virus is 'changing in severity' and patients are now surviving infections that would have killed them before. And if the virus's weakening is true, Covid-19 could even disappear without a for a vaccine by becoming so weak it dies out on its own, he claimed. He has said multiple times in recent months that patients with Covid-19 seem to be faring much better than they were at the start of the epidemic in Italy. Professor Bassetti suggests this could be because of a genetic mutation in the virus making it less lethal, because of improved treatments, or because people are not getting infected with such large doses because of social distancing. But other scientists have hit back at the claims in the past and said there is no scientific evidence that the virus has changed at all. Advertisement

Experts say rising case counts reflect multiple factors, including more testing and spreading infections. But the death rate  which has remained fairly stable  adds to the slim evidence that the virus is weakening.

Still, in east Asia there were signs of progress as South Korea, which dodged a crisis early on in the outbreak, reported 17 new cases  the first time its daily increase fell to under 20 in nearly a month.

Officials in the country have recorded at least 50 new cases a day in the past few weeks, amid more public activity, eased attitudes on social distancing and an uptick in imported cases.

Elsewhere in Asia, the increase in the Chinese capital of Beijing was in single digits for the first time in eight days. It reported nine cases after thousands of people were tested for the life-threatening virus.

Millions of people in Beijing have been rounded up and forced back into lockdown amid a new outbreak that Chinese officials have blamed on imported European salmon.

Even in New Zealand, which earlier declared victory over the outbreak and said it had eliminated local transmissions of the virus, two new cases were reported on Monday. The country now has nine active cases after having none at all earlier this month.

More than two thirds of the 4,743 new Covid-19 deaths were reported in the Americas  1,206 were confirmed in Brazil alone. It means the Americas  which includes North, Central and South  have endured 219,000 fatalities and 4.2million cases.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week warned the Covid-19 pandemic had entered a 'new and dangerous' phase, warning the virus was still spreading fast and it is 'still deadly'.

Dr Tedros, who has been under fire for spouting Beijing propaganda, urged people to maintain social distancing and 'extreme vigilance'. Another WHO director warned a second wave in the autumn was possible.

German officials yesterday revealed the coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term.

GERMANY'S R RATE JUMPS FROM 1.79 TO 2.88 IN ONE DAY Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term. The figure on Sunday marks an increase from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said. A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected. A rate of less than one is needed to gradually contain the disease. The number, a sharp increase from 1.06 on Friday, is based on RKI's moving 4-day average data, which reflects infection rates one to two weeks ago. Advertisement

The figure on Sunday marks an increase from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said.

A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected. A rate of less than one is needed to gradually contain the disease.

The number, a sharp increase from 1.06 on Friday, is based on RKI's moving 4-day average data, which reflects infection rates one to two weeks ago.

It comes after a top Italian doctor claimed yesterday he was convinced the coronavirus is 'changing in severity' and patients are now surviving infections that would have killed them before.

Professor Matteo Bassetti has said multiple times in recent months that patients with Covid-19 seem to be faring much better than they were at the start of the epidemic in Italy.

He suggests this could be because of a genetic mutation in the virus making it less lethal, because of improved treatments, or because people are not getting infected with such large doses because of social distancing.

But other scientists have hit back at the claims in the past and said there is no scientific evidence that the virus has changed at all.

Viruses are known to change over time because they are subject to random genetic mutations in the same way that all living things are.

These mutations can have various effects and many will only happen briefly and not become a permanent change as newer generations of viruses replace the mutated ones.

However, some of the mutations might turn out to be advantageous to the virus, and get carried forward into future generations.

SOUTH KOREA CONFIRMS SECOND WAVE OF COVID-19 South Korea has confirmed a second wave of coronavirus as the health minister warned of a 'grave situation' in the country. The Minister of Health and Welfare Park Neung-hoo said a total of 90 imported cases were identified over the past week, showing a sharp rise from the previous week's 48. 'The government faces a grave situation as health officials need not only to contain locally transmitted infections, but also manage imported cases,' Park said in a government meeting on COVID-19 responses. In a separate briefing, Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged that the country was now going through a second wave of the virus, following a surge in late February and March centered around the southeastern city of Daegu. Advertisement

For example, if a virus becomes less dangerous to its host - that is, it causes fewer symptoms or less death - it may find that it is able to live longer and reproduce more.

As a result, more of these less dangerous viruses are produced and they may go on to spread more effectively than the more dangerous versions, which could be stamped out by medication because more people realise they are ill, for example.

The mutation may then be taken forward in the stronger generations and become the dominant version of the virus.

In an explanation of an scientific study about HIV, the NHS said in 2014: 'The optimal evolutionary strategy for a virus is to be infectious (so it creates more copies of itself) but non-lethal (so its host population doesnt die out).

'The "poster boy" for successful long-living viruses is, arguably, the family of viruses that cause the, which has existed for thousands of years.'

South Korea today confirmed a second wave of coronavirus as the health minister warned of a 'grave situation' in the country.

The Minister of Health and Welfare Park Neung-hoo said a total of 90 imported cases were identified over the past week, showing a sharp rise from the previous week's 48.

'The government faces a grave situation as health officials need not only to contain locally transmitted infections, but also manage imported cases,' Park said in a government meeting on COVID-19 responses.

In a separate briefing, Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged that the country was now going through a second wave of the virus, following a surge in late February and March centered around the southeastern city of Daegu.
Applications are open for Royal Agricultural University or Reading University students to apply for this year's sustainable agriculture bursary worth 5,000.

The fund, now in its second year, aims to help students pursue their interest in, and knowledge of, sustainable farming and agricultural practices.

It is available for students under the age of 35 who are to be enrolled at either the University of Reading or the RAU from September 2020.

The bursary offers six successful applicants 5,000 of funding support and expert mentoring.

Each student will receive a 3000 cash award in their first year, provided by Jordans and The Princes Countryside Fund.

They will then receive a further 1000 cash award provided by their university in both their second and third years of study.

RAU student Elena Chapman, a recipient of the 2019 bursary, said Earths natural resources would reach a 'point of no return' if agriculture did not become sustainable.

"To prevent this, an effort should be made to maintain the Earths many, yet fragile ecosystems. Farming is part of the problem but can also be the solution.

"There is enough knowledge worldwide to integrate wildlife into agriculture while still making it profitable enough and high yielding.

"A change in mindset by both consumer and farmer will go a long way to improving sustainability," she said.

Prospective students are invited to apply through the Jordans Cereals website which will direct them to the relevant university portal.

If successful, they will then be invited to a video or telephone interview with the selection panel and the notified of their success.
Whoa Dough has launched three of their most loved cookie dough bars at the Whole Foods in Rocky River and Orange Village (Pinecrest). The expansion is a part of Whoa Doughs goal to be sold nationwide while still keeping strong local ties to the Cleveland area. The flavors available at Whole Foods are Sprinkle Sugar Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and the classic Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough which can be found in the refrigerated section.

Whoa Dough is a line of on-the-go cookie dough bars using only 9 ingredients that are Certified Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Plant-Based, OU Kosher, and Non-GMO Project Verified. Real Cookie Dough Bars. Real Ingredients. The colorful packaging in shades of light blue, orange, and pink makes it easy to find on the shelf. The bars can be enjoyed chilled, on-the-go, or baked at 350 degrees for 3-5 minutes.

Whoa Dough was created with the idea that health is all about balance. With that in mind, we created an indulgence that rewards those who work hard to live a healthy lifestyle,said Todd Goldstein, Founder of Whoa Dough. The bars are an ideal match for the product lines at Whole Foods and we look forward to expanding into additional regions throughout the country.

About Whoa Dough

Whoa Dough was created in 2018 by Todd Goldstein, a Cleveland entrepreneur and foodie who spent the last decade helping entrepreneurs get their start. In 2011, Goldstein was diagnosed with gluten intolerance which began his hunt for gluten-free products. When his sons were born in 2015 and 2017, they were also diagnosed with gluten-intolerance which only further increased his desire to create a gluten-free treat. Recognizing that the cookie dough market was a growing trend, but still left those with allergies in the raw, Todd and his team got to work and 19 iterations and a year-and-a-half later, Whoa Dough was created.

Whoa Dough now includes five flavors: Sugar Cookie Dough, Sprinkle Sugar Cookie Dough, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Visit http://www.whoadough.com for more information and follow @whoadough_ on Instagram.

About Whole Foods

Founded in 1978 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market is the leading natural and organic foods supermarket, the first national Certified Organic grocer, and uniquely positioned as Americas Healthiest Grocery Store. In the fiscal year 2016, the Company had sales of approximately $16 billion and has more than 460 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Whole Foods Market employs approximately 87,000 team members and has been ranked for 20 consecutive years as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in America by Fortune magazine. For more information, please visit http://www.WholeFoodsMarket.com or @WholeFoods on Twitter.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: The VCK on Monday urged the state government to file an appeal in the Supreme Court over the judgment in the Udumalapet caste killing case.

VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan on Monday expressed his disappointment over the Madras High Court's judgment in the case. "It was due to the lethargic attitude of the prosecution in conducting the case," he said in a press statement.

ALSO READ: Udumalapet caste killing: Madras High Court acquits Kausalya's father in 2016 Shankar murder case

Thirumavalavan further said that atrocities against Dalits have increased in the state for the last several years and so have the number of caste killings. It was due to the failure of the Tamil Nadu government which didnt take any measures to protect Dalits, he said.

The Tamil Nadu government should implement the guidelines of the Supreme Court on caste killings, he said, adding that the Union government should promulgate an ordinance in this regard.
Do U.S. Airlines Have a Legal Right to Bar Passengers Who Dont Wear Masks?

Thus far, the U.S. federal government has shown no interest in requiring airline passengers to wear masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19. So many carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, are doing it for them, going so far as to threaten to put non-compliers on their do-not-fly lists.

Some passengers may wonder if airlines have the legal right to force customers to wear masks, and the ability to bar passengers who refuse. The answer, two experts say, is a resounding yes.

I dont know of any reason any airlines would not be legally able to require passengers to wear pants, shirts or any particular items of clothing if it is reasonably connected to safely transporting people to one place or another, said Benjamin P. Edwards, an associate professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. If we have social opposition to wearing masks for political reasons, that doesnt change the legal analysis.

Whether or not the government intercedes, airlines have a duty to try to protect passengers and their employees, said Julie D. Cantor, an attorney and physician who taught at UCLA School of Law for over a decade. With passengers, she said, the airline has a special relationship, in which the airline takes a caretaker role for customers, similar to the hotel-guest relationship. And with workers, employees have an expectation their employers will keep them safe, she said.

If airlines do not make a reasonable attempt to keep passengers and employees free from the virus, she said, carriers could risk lawsuits filed by people who get sick. She said shes not surprised that Airlines for America, a trade group representing the largest U.S. airlines, said on June 15 that its members would take mask enforcement more seriously.

If I am general counsel for one of these airlines, I am probably having heart palpitations because I am worrying that my airline could be a defendant in a lawsuit if we dont move fast on this issue, Cantor said.

Story continues

What About My Rights?

A vocal group of Americans often likes to speak about their constitutional freedom to do whatever they wish. But on airplanes, like at most private businesses, no such right exists, attorneys say.

Airlines can make any reasonable regulation they want, and create their own consequences for passengers who violate it, Cantor said.

I know there will be people on Twitter who say, I have constitutional right to fly on a plane, she said. Actually you dont. You dont have to fly on a plane.

It might be easier for airlines if Congress or the Federal Aviation Administration created a law or regulation, similar to rules requiring seatbelts or banning smoking. But it is not required, Edwards said.

If Southwest says, this is how you board our flights, and you refuse to abide by that, you dont need an act of Congress or the FAA to stop them, Edwards said. Even if mask wearing is not particularly effective but it increases confidence, airlines may still require it.

The law permits exemptions for medical reasons, Cantor said, but even there, airlines can create guidelines to try to keep passengers in compliance with mask rules. Perhaps, she said, passengers seeking an exemption could be required to inform the airline one or two days in advance. This way, a passenger could not cite health issues at the last minute to avoid a ban.

Uneven Enforcement

One potential problem for U.S. airlines is enforcement. At many carriers, flight attendants are the front-line defense, charged with reminding passengers about the policy and reporting customers who do not follow it.

At United, flight attendants are supposed to give passengers two verbal warnings. If the customer does not follow after the second warning, the flight attendant should stop trying to persuade the passenger and submit a written report to managers within 48 hours. American has a similar approach, with the carrier telling flight attendants, we want to keep the interaction de-escalated.

Each flight attendant will interpret enforcement in a slightly different manner, just as not all have the same definition of what it means to over-serve alcoholic drinks. Some may confront non-masked passengers, while others may not. And while many will go through the process of reporting non-compliers to headquarters, some may not bother with the paperwork.

An incident last week on American showed how messy this can get. On Wednesday, a conservative activist was asked to leave a flight from New York to Dallas/Fort Worth because he would not wear a mask. Later that day, however, the man said he flew American on another route without a mask. Both flights had the same rules, but the second time they were not enforced the same way. (After the incidents, American said it temporarily put the activist on its do not fly list.)

That sort of flight-by-flight discrepancy is bound to happen, but legally is not a concern, Edwards and Cantor said.

The only way I could see an issue is if it would be enforced in some discriminatory way, Edwards said, such as if an airline only enforced the rules against a certain sex or race.

The rules should be enforced as uniformly as possible, Cantor said, but she acknowledged not every flight attendant will handle the situation the same way. And thats fine, she said.

An airline is going to try to train people and have everyone behave uniformly, Cantor said. But we are not Droids. So could there be different behaviors on the margins? Of course.

Subscribe to Skift newsletters for essential news about the business of travel.
Two vulnerable Senate Republican incumbents up for re-election in November found themselves under attack over their support for President Donald Trumps Iran policies in new social media ads that began airing in their states today.

The J Street Education Fund  the nonprofit arm of the liberal lobby group  is targeting Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who voted against a war powers resolution limiting Trumps ability to conduct offensive military action against Iran following the presidents January strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

President Trump took us to the brink of another war in the Middle East while some in Congress put their heads in the sand, the ads say. They go on to assert that Gardner and McSally would let Trump drag us into war yet again and ask voters to tell the senators to stand up to Trump, protect our troops. A third ad asks voters to thank Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., for introducing the war powers resolution.

J Street is spending a total of $45,000 on the ads.

Why it matters: Gardner and McSally are currently facing uphill re-election battles in battleground states as Democrats seek to retake the Senate. Notably, Kaine is not up for re-election this year, and J Street denies that the ads are electoral in nature or intent.

The goal here is about educating constituents and pushing them to speak up on the issue, J Street spokesman Logan Bayroff told Al-Monitor. We felt it was important to not only ensure that constituents challenge senators like Gardner and McSally whose leadership has been sorely lacking on the Iran issue, but also to lift up a senator whos been a key voice for diplomacy and help ensure he receives the thanks and constituent support he deserves.

Kaine succeeded in ushering his resolution through the Republican-held Senate 55-45 in January but did not succeed in securing the 67 votes needed to override Trumps veto in May.

A January Washington Post-ABC poll found that 53% of Americans approved of Trump killing Soleimani  largely along party lines with 86% of Republicans supporting the strike and 72% of Democrats opposing it. That same poll found that 46% of Americans felt the strike increased the risk of war with Iran, including 73% of Democrats but only 19% of Republicans.

Whats next: Colorado Democrats will choose their candidate to face off against Gardner in the states June 30 primary. McSally is widely expected to win her primary in August and face off against the Democratic candidate to unseat her, former astronaut Mark Kelly. J Street also intends to raise more than $1 million by November to support former Vice President Joe Bidens bid to oust Trump from the White House.

Know more: J Street is also touting the fact that centrist Democrats hoping to unseat Republicans in battleground states, including Colorado, have come out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus plans to annex parts of the West Bank per the Trump peace plan. Congressional Correspondent Bryant Harris has the full story here.
Give me liberty or give me corona.

JEFF ESKEW, who traveled from Oklahoma City to attend President Trumps indoor rally in Tulsa even as Oklahoma has seen an increase in coronavirus cases.
Comic actor Ben Stiller has an idea for the perfect replacement to a statue of former president Theodore Roosevelt in New York City, which is set to be torn down soon.

The Zoolander star, 54, took to Twitter on Sunday with the suggestion that his Night At The Museum costar, the late great Robin Williams, be the inspiration for a new statue in its place in front of the city's Museum of Natural History.

Williams, an Oscar winner who died by suicide in 2014 at the age of 63, portrayed a playful version of Roosevelt opposite Stiller in the Night At The Museum franchise, which spawned three films.

Good idea: Ben Stiller took to Twitter on Sunday with the suggestion that his Night At The Museum costar Robin Williams be the inspiration for a new statue in place of one of Theodore Roosevelt in front of New York City's Museum of Natural History

Linking to a New York Times article about the statue's imminent removal, Stiller tweeted, 'How about replacing it with a statue of Robin Williams. He deserves one.'

The actors surely had a fondness for one another, having appeared in 2006's Night At The Museum as well as its sequels in 2009 and 2014 about exhibitions and historical characters who come to life at night within the museum walls.

Stiller's suggestion comes after the news that the statue, which depicts Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Native American man and an African man beneath him, will be removed due to its inherently colonialist, racist and classist symbolism.

Night At The Museum: Linking to an article about the statue's imminent removal, Stiller tweeted, 'How about replacing it with a statue of Robin Williams. He deserves one'

Evolution: Stiller's suggestion comes after the news that the statue, which depicts Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Native American man and an African man beneath him, will be removed due to its inherently colonialist, racist and classist symbolism

Even before the killing of George Floyd and a renewed national focus on racial injustice in this country, there has been consistent pressure on the powers that be to remove the highly visible statue, in place since 1940.

The controversy even prompted the museum to unveil an exhibition about the monument's merits and drawbacks last year.

But now, with similar statues of historical figures such as Ulysses Grant and Star Spangled Banner scribe Francis Scott Key  who both owned slaves  being razed throughout the country, it was only a matter of time before the Roosevelt statue would be removed as well.

And New York City mayor Bill de Blasio supported the museum's decision to remove the monument, saying in a statement to Newsweek, 'The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.

The actors surely had a fondness for one another: They appeared in 2006's Night At The Museum as well as its sequels in 2009 and 2014

'The City supports the Museum's request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.'

And Ellen V. Futter, the Museum of Natural History's president, told the Times: 'Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.

'We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.'
BEIJING - China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday to stop making irresponsible remarks after he said Beijing's decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his country's arrest of a Chinese tech executive.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FILE - In this March 2, 2017, file image made from video, Michael Spavor, director of Paektu Cultural Exchange, talks during a Skype interview in Yanji, China. China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, June 22, 2020 to stop making irresponsible remarks after he said Beijing's decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his country's arrest of a Chinese tech executive. (AP Photo, File)

BEIJING - China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday to stop making irresponsible remarks after he said Beijing's decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his country's arrest of a Chinese tech executive.

The spying charges are completely different from the case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, a foreign ministry spokesman said. Meng was arrested on U.S. charges connected to possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in what was widely seen as an attempt to Canada after Meng's December 2018 arrest in Vancouver. Charges against them were announced Friday after a Canadian judge ruled Meng's extradition case can proceed to its next stage, moving her closer to being handed over to American authorities.

Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, said Chinese authorities directly linked the cases of Kovrig and Spavor with Meng. He called on Beijing to end their arbitrary detention.

FILE - In this March 28, 2018, file image made from video, Michael Kovrig, an adviser with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-governmental organization, speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, June 22, 2020 to stop making irresponsible remarks after he said Beijing's decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his country's arrest of a Chinese tech executive. (AP Photo, File)

There is no such thing as arbitrary detention, said the ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

China urges the relevant Canadian leader to earnestly respect the spirit of the rule of law, respect Chinas judicial sovereignty and stop making irresponsible remarks," Zhao said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday called the charges against Kovrig and Spavor politically motivated and completely groundless."

The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada, Pompeo said in a statement.

Trudeau thanked the U.S. and other allies for speaking out against China.

It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government and we deplore it, Trudeau said Monday. "This using of arbitrary detentions as a means to advance political gains is totally unacceptable in a world based on rules.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd. and the daughter of its founder, is accused of lying to banks in Hong Kong about Huaweis dealings with Iran in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.

Mengs case is a seriously political incident and part of U.S. efforts to suppress Chinese high-tech enterprises and Huawei, Zhao said. He said Canada played the role of an accomplice.

We strongly urge Canada to correct its mistakes as soon as possible, immediately release Meng Wanzhou and ensure her safe return to home, said Zhao.

Meng is living in a mansion she owns in Vancouver, where she reportedly is working on a graduate degree. Kovrig and Spavor are being held at an undisclosed location and have been denied access to lawyers or family members.

China has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of Canadian canola.

Zhao said visits by foreign diplomats to prisoners were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Delhi Police informed the Delhi high court on Monday that Safoora Zargar, charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for her alleged role in the northeast Delhi riots, was part of a conspiracy to use any means to cause death and injury to people.

The police made its submission in a reply to the court, which will hear the matter again on Tuesday.

Zargar, a MPhil student of Jamia Millia Islamia, was arrested on April 10 for allegedly conspiring with other persons to instigate and start riots in northeast Delhi. At least 53 people died and 400 others were injured in the riots in February.

In a status report, Delhi Police said that based on an investigation, a case was clearly made out from the statements of witnesses. While describing Zargar as one of the main conspirators and the instigator, police said the statements of witnesses were allegedly corroborated by her admissions and extensive documentary evidence.

Opposing her bail application, police said Zargar and other accused were allegedly involved in a web of actions animated by unlawful object of creating terror and disaffection.

Police told the court that Zargars protestations of innocence are phony; her actions are neither licit nor legitimate and she is clearly culpable of criminal wrongs of grave magnitude deserving no indulgence from the court.

Many student groups across Delhi have held protests seeking Zargars release. Students bodies and activists have accused Delhi Police of launching a witch hunt against student activists, especially those who took part in protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Zargar earlier told the court she was only part of the protests and denied the police allegations.

Delhi Police submitted the status report after Zargar approached the court, seeking bail on the ground that she is more than four months pregnant and has severe medical complications.

Replying to this, police said that their record reveals a sinister stratagem and Zargar was not only disposed towards creating turmoil to severely undermine public order and imperil national security but erode and frustrate the civil compact which holds our polity together.

Police said that prima facie, a case has been made against Zargar after her WhatsApp chats were analysed by the investigating agency.

The investigating agency said Zargar is not entitled to bail on the ground of pregnancy as the law does not make any distinction in this regard. Police told the court that Delhis jails have had many pregnant inmates. They said in that in the past 10 years, 39 deliveries have taken place inside prison.

It is stated that the law unambiguously contemplates provisions to deal with pregnant criminals, which itself indicates that the law permits use of sanction against this class of offenders. The severity of offence is in no manner mitigated by the factum of pregnancy, the accused is not the only pregnant accused to be entitled to any preferential treatment and there is enough precedence available in law not only of the arrest of the pregnant accused and their detention but even of delivery in prison., police said.

Police earlier said that Zargar, currently being held in Tihar Jail, had allegedly blocked a road near Jafrabad Metro station during the anti-CAA protests and instigated people, which led to riots in the area.

On June 4, a city court dismissed her bail plea, stating that right of speech and expression and for that matter protest or demonstration, is not an absolute right and subject to reasonable restrictions under the Indian Constitution.
[June 22, 2020] William Blair Strengthens Corporate Advisory Practice

William Blair, the premier global boutique, has announced that Megan Alexander and Vineet D'Souza joined the firm's growing Corporate Advisory investment banking team led by Christina Bresani. Ms. Alexander and Mr. D'Souza join as directors based in the Chicago office. "Megan and Vineet are highly respected for their wealth of understanding of the complexities of public markets, and maximizing long-term value for shareholders," said Ms. Bresani. "They both have deep expertise advising public companies with a client-centric focus that is completely aligned with William Blair's culture. We are thrilled that Meganand Vineet have joined as we continue to expand our corporate advisory practice."



Ms. Alexander joins from Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC, where she was most recently a director in its Midwest Advisory M&A practice. Before that, she was an associate at UBS Investment Bank and spent the previous five years in consulting at CSC (News - Alert), now DXC Technology. Ms. Alexander earned her M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management and her B.S. in engineering from Princeton University. Mr. D'Souza also joins from Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC, where he was a director in its Midwest Advisory M&A practice. Before that, he was an associate in the technology, media, and telecommunications group at Citi. Prior to joining Citi, Mr. D'Souza was a vice president in the transaction opinions group at Duff & Phelps. He graduated with distinction for both his M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and his B.B.A. in finance and economics from the University of Wisconsin.

William Blair's Corporate Advisory group offers clients an extensive range of strategic advisory services including sell-side advisory, divestitures, activist/hostile defense, buy-side and strategic alternatives advisory, spinoffs/separations, and capital strategies and financings. The team is integrated closely with William Blair's M&A and Equity Capital Markets groups, with a focus on offering clients trusted advice and execution excellence. In 2019, William Blair unlocked over $100 billion in value for clients, completing 245 transactions. About William Blair William Blair is the premier global boutique with expertise in investment banking, investment management, and private wealth management. We provide advisory services, strategies, and solutions to meet our clients' evolving needs. As an independent and employee-owned firm, together with our strategic partners, we operate in more than 20 offices worldwide.* *Includes strategic partnerships with Allier Capital, BDA Partners, and Poalim Capital Markets. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005703/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The ongoing war in Libya appeared as if it were heading towards a direct confrontation between regional powers Turkey and Egypt over control of the hometown of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Over the weekend, Egypts president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a backer of eastern Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, threatened to deploy troops to halt an advance by fighters loyal to the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli on the coastal city of Sirte as well as a key airbase in the southern town of Jufrah.

The preparedness to fight has become inevitable and necessary amid the prevailing instability and turmoil in our region, Mr Sisi said in a speech to military officials.

The GNA, backed militarily by Turkey, called Mr Sisis threat a declaration of war, and refused to halt its offensive. We reject this, condemn it and consider it an act of aggression, a blatant intervention, which amounts to a declaration of war, the GNA said in a letter on Sunday.

The Arab League is scheduled to discuss the confrontation in Libya during an emergency session on Tuesday, but Tripoli is boycotting.

We urge parties to commit to a ceasefire and resume negotiations immediately, the US Embassy declared in a tweet, but efforts at diplomacy appeared to be failing.

Turkey and its allies appear confident of a win and in no mood for a deal, and Mr Haftar and his supporters abroad, humiliated after weeks of battlefield losses, are reluctant to give any concessions from a position of weakness.

The Turks had a point, said one western diplomat involved in Libya affairs. They had to establish deterrence. Now they are acknowledging that they want to take control of the whole territory. They are saying Haftar has to go.

Libyas civil war has been deadly, disruptive and gruesome. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced and hundreds killed. Last week came the discovery of mass graves filled with scores of bodies in the city of Tarhouna, where a militia loyal to Mr Haftar was pushed out last month by GNA forces.

Civilians in Libya continue to suffer disproportionately, Stephanie Williams, the acting UN envoy to Libya, said last week in a presentation. One million people are now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.

Sirte, a city of some 50,000 people, is significant as the last major urban cluster before a set of crucial Libyan oil facilities and depots located on Libyas eastern Mediterranean shore and controlled for now by forces loyal to Mr Haftar. It is home to a local population filled with supporters of Gaddafi who are allied with Mr Haftar and remain intensely hostile to the Islamist-tinged government in Tripoli.

Composite image shows (above) the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (C) shaking hands with a member of the security forces during a visit to the Sinai Peninsula, and (below) a picture of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) shaking hands with Turkish commander Ismail Metin Temel in Hatay province (AFP/Getty)

It was controlled by militias loyal to the GNA until earlier this year, and both Ankara and the Tripoli government have said they would halt their offensive and be open to peace talks once it and Jufrah are under their control.

Egypt boasts significant air and ground forces which could boost Mr Haftar in the battlefield and challenge any forces Turkey and the GNA could muster.

But Marsa Matrouh, the last city at the Egyptian border where its troops are garrisoned, is some 15 hours away from Sirte. Meanwhile, Turks and allied GNA militias have a strong presence in Misurata, which lies less than three hours from Sirte, and Ankara has been flooding western Libya with military material and personnel for months.

Egypts political will to enter a physical contest with the Turkish-backed GNA coalition is not big, said Jalel Harchaoui, a North Africa specialist at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands. Turkey and the GNA forces are ready to move forcefully into both Sirte and Jufrah any day now.

Mr Sisi has appeared disappointed in Mr Haftars failures but is also under pressure from financial backers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, who are hostile to the GNAs inclusion of populist Islamist factions and see Turkey as a strategic threat. Egypt also views events in Libya with grave concern, worried troubles could spill over into its borders.

I believe the assertive language is serious and could lead to some form of action or military deployment even if largely symbolic, said one Egyptian military analyst. It appears Egypts intent is to force ceasefire negotiations by acting as counterbalance to Turkish and GNA strength on the ground.

The conflict in Libya has drawn in various international powers and their local backers. On the one side is Mr Haftar, the eastern commander and former CIA asset who is supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia and France.

On the other side is the GNA in Tripoli, which in addition to Ankara has begun to receive the implicit blessing of Italy, Germany and the UK.

Backed by UAE air power and Russian and Sudanese mercenaries, Mr Haftar launched an ill-fated offensive to take control of Tripoli last year. All of his gains were wiped out in a few extraordinary weeks after Turkey forcefully intervened, dispatching drones, anti-aircraft machinery, military personnel, and Syrian mercenaries to back the GNA forces.

After initially supporting Mr Haftar, the White House under President Donald Trump appears to have settled into indifference. On Monday, GNA Prime Minister Fayez Serraj and high-profile interior minister Fathi Bashagha reportedly received a delegation of US military commanders from Africom, the US military force in Africa, amid concern about the deployment of Russian fighter jets in Jufrah.

I dont think the Trump administration is willing to be associated with someone whos losing and also a war criminal, Mohammed Ali Abdallah, a GNA envoy to the US, said in an interview.
Crew on international cargo and fishing vessels are being added to the list of people who must spend 14 days in quarantine if they wish to take any 'shore leave'.

On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the new order is among a series of announcements aimed at "restoring New Zealanders' confidence" in quarantine measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Crew can only come ashore earlier, other than to assist with unloading a vessel at the wharf, if they had spent 28 or more days at sea, says Ardern.

Previously, crew have been allowed ashore if they have spent 14 days or more at sea. The new order will apply from June 30.

Among other measures announced is a further extension of the statutory 'health order', which was to expire at midnight on Monday, and a restatement to be "crystal clear" that "the expectation and the explicit directive of Cabinet is testing in quarantine".

"We are reaffirming that today," says Ardern after a string of embarrassing revelations that exposed significant flaws and non-compliance with existing quarantine procedures.

They include the release of two women from isolation in Auckland without being tested for COVID-19 who were then allowed to drive unsupervised to Wellington following the death of a parent.

Both subsequently tested positive for the virus.

"No one will leave quarantine without an all clear test."

Ardern also announced the cruise ship ban that is due to expire on June 30 will be extended.

More broadly, she says there will be an ongoing 'surveillance testing' programme that tests more randomly for the presence of the virus, which New Zealand has largely eliminated within its borders, at a time when the World Health Organisation has warned that the global pandemic is gathering pace in most other parts of the world.

Accompanied by the minister now in charge of the quarantine process, Megan Woods, Ardern also raised the prospect of returning New Zealanders being asked in the future to make "co-payments" to help fund their quarantine, which is being undertaken in a range of hotels in Auckland, Christchurch and Rotorua. Some Wellington hotels have also used in the past.

While the cost to the government of hotel quarantining was high, the cost to the economy of a COVIDd outbreak would be "far, far worse", she says.

Open to Kiwis

New Zealanders wanting to return home also had to have the right to continue to do so.

Woods acknowledged that $298 million of funding set aside for quarantine accommodation is intended to meet costs through to the end of the year, although that is not a prediction that quarantining will be required for that long.

She says the government has sufficient capacity in quarantine hotels to meet demand from people arriving in NZ, despite numbers doubling in the past month.

There are 4607 rooms available, of which 4108 are currently in use. Over the next two days, an estimated 839 arrivals were anticipated, with 466 due to be released in the same two days.

Ardern says the Ministry of Health has not collected data about people in quarantine in a way that let it to know how many people left quarantine without being tested.

But, she says it's the lack of testing, rather than the subsequent lack of traceability, that is "unacceptable".

While longer-term quarantine facilities are being considered, if it proved that more were needed or that hotels needed to return to their normal use, the bottom line requirements of such facilities was that they should be built to keep people separate and using separate facilities.

"Those would up the cost of creating anything ourselves," says Ardern.

-Originally published by BusinessDesk.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 22, 2020 - 17:56 | All, Coronavirus, Japan

The top European business lobby in Japan on Monday called on the government to ease travel restrictions meant to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, saying the measures are too tough on foreigners and risk driving away foreign investment.

"The restrictions appear not really to be well-founded, and some of the European businesses are afraid that new restrictions can be imposed in an arbitrary way in the future," said Michael Mroczek, president of the European Business Council in Japan.

Mroczek warned that the uncertain situation could push European companies with their Asia-Pacific headquarters in Japan to begin considering moving elsewhere.

"Businessmen who are based here, they cannot go to Korea, they cannot travel to Singapore and are pretty much restricted in what they are doing," he said in a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.

Japan imposed an entry ban on foreign nationals arriving from parts of China in early February and has since expanded it to cover 111 countries and regions, including the whole of Europe. Foreigners who have been to any of the areas within 14 days of arriving in Japan are being turned away.

Discussions are under way to ease the travel restrictions for Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam, possibly in the summer, but it remains unclear when the other countries will be taken off the list.

Mroczek pointed out that the measures were much stricter than in Europe, where foreigners with permanent residency and essential workers such as health-care professionals are able to enter and move within the 26-member Schengen Area.

It has put European companies operating here at a competitive disadvantage to their Japanese rivals, he said.

"I heard also from an important cosmetics manufacturer that the European executives based here in Japan cannot travel to Europe with their customers or meet customers in Europe, whereas their counterparts from Japanese companies can just get into the plane and fly back to Europe."

Japan should immediately begin letting permanent and long-term residents back in, Mroczek said, adding that they make up only about 2 percent of the population and in any case there is little reason to set different standards because everyone is just as likely to be carrying the virus.

Businesspeople should be accepted next, followed by tourists, he said.

Japan and Europe have seen increased trade following the entry into force of an economic partnership agreement in February last year, with European exports such as wine and butter receiving a boost.

Mroczek said the agreement had a "very positive impact" on European businesses but was at risk of "losing the momentum" because of Japan's travel restrictions.

A lawyer by trade, Mroczek ruled out mounting a legal challenge to the entry ban.

"I'm not here to argue with the Japanese government about the interpretation (of the law). We take what we get. But we certainly are asking that there is an equal treatment with Japanese citizens and there is a reciprocity with the EU," he said.

Related coverage:

Japan expects to ease travel curbs on Thailand, Vietnam first: Motegi

Japan's coronavirus entry ban disrupting lives of foreign residents

Q&A: Japan's coronavirus-related border controls
On Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, President Donald Trump tried to relaunch his reelection campaign. This was his chance, after the onslaught of the novel coronavirus and three months without a campaign rally, to tell Americans what he would do in a second term. The election, he argued, was about defeating an array of enemies: anarchists, journalists, Democrats, and millions and millions of illegal aliens. But the common theme was enmity itself. Trump cant run on four more years of prosperity. So hes running on four more years of strife.

Advertisement

At the rally, Trump shrugged off the 120,000 Americans killed by the virus, joking that he preferred to test fewer people so fewer infections would be found. He said he had shaken hands with children in the arena. This was no big deal, he opined, because if a kid got sick, hed recover in about 15 minutes. Critics always blame a president, Trump scoffed. Other than all of the horrible, horrible death, he concluded, people are going to say, Man, this guy is doing a good job. 

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Instead of talking about his accomplishments, Trump devoted his speech to skewering people he didnt like. He called them sadistic, vicious, hateful, and sinister. He ridiculed an unnamed government employee, labeling him a dumb son of a bitch. Trump encouraged the crowd to boo reporters in the arena, calling them the most dishonest people anywhere on earth. He denounced athletes who knelt for the national anthem. He claimed that anarchists were really Democrats: Democrat, all Democrat. Everything I tell you is Democrat. He insulted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (She doesnt have a clue) and threatened D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. They ripped down a statue  with our radical left mayor watching on television, Trump fumed. Thats going to be very expensive for D.C. Theyre always looking for money from the federal government, he said, ominously. So its not going to be good for Mayor Bowser.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Subscribe to the Slatest newsletter A daily email update of the stories you need to read right now. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.

The president didnt just aim these ethnic attacks at foreigners. He also challenged the loyalty of a naturalized American.

Trump directed slurs and insinuations at several ethnic groups. He called the coronavirus Kung Flu. He railed against undocumented immigrants and vowed to abolish DACA. He pitted black Americans against Latin Americans, claiming that former Vice President Joe Biden had hollowed out our middle class, including our black middle class, with open borders. He compared murders in Baltimore and Detroit to Guatemala and El Salvador. He speculated that some of the people who had caused trouble in Minneapolis during the George Floyd protests arent even from our nation. He described a hypothetical home invader this way: Its one oclock in the morning, and a very toughIve used the word on occasion, hombrea very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The president didnt just aim these ethnic attacks at foreigners. He also challenged the loyalty of a naturalized American. Rep. Ilhan Omar is going to be very much involved in a Biden government, Trump told the crowd. She would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came, Somalia. The crowd booed, and Trump went on: Now shes telling us how to run our country. A vote for Biden, said Trump, was a vote for Omar deciding the fate of your country.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Trump went beyond hatred, appealing explicitly to violence. He dismissed immigrants with criminal records as animals and praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who start swinging at them. He extended this argument to Americans involved in the Floyd protests. Journalists call them protesters, he sneered, but they were really thugs. He encouraged his followers to take matters into their own hands. When you see those lunatics all over the streets, its damn nice to have [fire]arms, he declared. Damn nice.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Trump said he would enjoy sending troops to put down domestic unrest. I have an offer out, he said of protesters who had claimed a six-block section of Seattle. He urged the governor, Jay Inslee, to attack the protesters: Gov. Inslee ought to get his act together. Get in there! Ill help you. As he spoke, Trump could hardly contain his excitement. Im waiting for a call. I would love to do it, he said. Itll take less than an hour, and itll all be over with. But perhaps, he suggested, it would be better to let the people of Seattle suffer, in order to teach them a lesson. Its probably better for us to just watch that disaster, he said of the standoff. He claimed that on the flight to Tulsa, a Republican congressman had told him, Let it simmer for a little while. Let people see what radical left Democrats will do to our country.

This is what Trump offers in a second term. There would be more lies, hatred, demagoguery, and subversion of constitutional government. And perhaps, with his encouragement or at his hands, there would be more violence. Hes not even hiding his intent to accelerate the destruction of America. Hes running on it.

For more of Slates news coverage, listen to Amicus.




Online gaming is constantly growing and evolving. Its a dimension of gaming that rides the waves of technological innovation more than any other. Today so much more is achievable on devices than what was fathomable just a decade ago. New and complex MMORPG games are popping out online by the day. The same holds for iGaming products.

Research shows that revenues in the iGaming industry will rise at an annual rate of 9% over the next few years. iGaming developers strive to provide users with offerings that feature great graphics and innovative gameplay as they push the boundaries and come up with clever concepts in a limited environment. As a result of their efforts, there has been an increase in interest, and the annual growth rate of these companies is set to hit 18%.

With thousands of slot games floating in the digital realm, laymen might question what are the brand names of the key players in the sector? Well, the following few are the industry juggernauts that are responsible for the highest-quality slots that one can find online.

NetEnt

It is impossible to not run across the name NetEnt if youve ever had so much as a fleeting interest in iGaming. This company, founded in 1996, with a home in Stockholm, according to many aficionados develops the best online slots for iGaming. This has been the case for several years now, and NetEnt has all the major awards to prove it.

It may not boast the largest game catalog, though the number 200 isnt too shabby. Thus, NetEnt strives for quality over quantity. More importantly, it tries to bring innovation to the field. This is evident in many of their products, including their new smash-hit - Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. A replica of the classic arcade game transported over to the world of slots, with highly-innovative gameplay, the likes that we have never seen.

Microgaming

While NetEnt is a giant, and perhaps the current king, Microgaming is the granddaddy of them all, the true pioneer. Its the company that developed the first iGaming software and the first online slot. Well, by some records. The exact timeline and history remain fuzzy to this day.

Nevertheless, Microgaming has not let up in its 26-year existence, its still at the top and the Isle of Man-based company just introduced a line-up of over 20 new titles set for release this month. These include Aliyas Wishes, Age of Conquest, Wild Catch, 11 Champions, and many more.

It also just signed a distribution deal with the studio Neko Games and attained the ISO 14001 certification, which establishes environmental performance requirements. The company sees both as major milestones for its growth.

Playtech

Playtech is another child of the 90s and another UK company with residence on the Isle of Man. Launching in 1999, it didnt take long before Playtech became a major force in the field. Theyve continuously strived for providing a diverse portfolio of games and have always looked ahead for expansion. This is evident by the recent news that Playtech entered the New Jersey market, and they announced that they are looking to extend their presence in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia.

They also just sent out a press release stating that they struck a deal to introduce a digital sportsbook, but have no plans of lowering their iGaming output. So, players can rest easy and await new slots from the company.

BetSoft

It would be ill-advised to leave BetSoft off our list, as the company won the Developer of the Year Award at the Corporate Vision show in Malta last June with strong praise for their Max Quest Wrath of Ra game, and is shortlisted in two categories at this years EGR BWB Awards.

The EGR B2B Awards recognizes excellence across 40 categories within the iGaming industry. BetSoft is a frequent nominee as the brand has been synonymous with innovation and commercial success since 2006. It also has a great reputation among players for its quality 3D games.

Their attention to stunning graphics and animations is what sets them apart. Add to this the many creative concepts they try to implement in their products, and we do not doubt that theyll maintain on the market for years to come.
Quarantine restrictions have already been strengthened in the city of Odesa on the Black Sea coast.

The adaptive quarantine introduced over the spread of the novel coronavirus has been extended in Ukraine. According to the government decision, it will be valid until at least July 31, 2020.

However, the relaunch of stricter quarantine bans remains possible in some regions from June 22. It's the local authorities who will be deciding on the move.

Enhanced quarantine: conditions

The government has developed a new methodology to identify areas where tougher bans must be introduced. For a region to be considered a hotbed of COVID-19 spread, the following features must be in place:

 Hospital load over 50%;

 The average number of PCR and ELISA tests below 24 per 100,000 population over the past seven days;

 COVID-19 incidence rate over 11%; and

 New active cases growth rate is over eight cases per 100,000 population.

The decision to strengthen or ease restrictive measures will be taken by regional commissions based on the epidemiological assessment.

Quarantine bans set to be reinstated

Read alsoPM vows tougher measures to enforce quarantine bans

The strengthening of quarantine bans in regions with a significant spread of coronavirus covers:

 Sports, cultural, religious, and other public events;

 Hotels and other accommodation services;

 Subway and other passenger transport;

 Kindergartens;

 Arts establishments

 Fitness centers and gyms; and

 Catering establishments.

Areas where stricter bans are re-introduced

From today, quarantine restrictions have been strengthened in the city of Odesa, including on children's health and recreation facilities, mass events with the participation of more than one person per five square meters, etc.

Also, residents and guests of the city are obliged to wear face masks or respirators in public and on transport, follow other health safety requirements, and carry IDs at all times.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A group of people protesting the shooting death of a man in mental health crisis on the weekend continues to block an intersection in Mississauga, Ont.

Peel Regional Police say the protest that began Sunday has lasted through the night and is expected to continue throughout the day.

The protest was triggered by the shooting death of 62-year-old Ejaz Choudry on Saturday.

His family alleges police used excessive force when officers stormed the home and shot Choudry, who suffered from schizophrenia.

The Special Investigations Unit, the province's police watchdog, is probing the death.

The man's family has said that responding officers were shouting at Choudry in English, a language he didn't understand.
(Photo : NASA/JPL) Voyager 2 obtained this color image of Triton at a distance of 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) at 1 a.m. PDT on Aug. 22, 1989. (Photo : NASA/JPL)

This color photo of Neptune's large satellite Triton was obtained on Aug. 24 1989 at a range of 530,000 kilometers (330,000 miles). The resolution is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), sufficient to begin to show topographic detail. The image was made from pictures taken through the green, violet and ultraviolet filters. In this technique, regions that are highly reflective in the ultraviolet appear blue in color. In reality, there is no part of Triton that would appear blue to the eye. The bright southern hemisphere of Triton, which fills most of this frame, is generally pink in tone as is the even brighter equatorial band. The darker regions north of the equator also tend to be pink or reddish in color.



JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) quest to explore the solar system might include one of the most distant locations as a new mission proposal would explore Neptune's moon Triton.

According to Engadget, the mission has been named Trident for its "three-pronged" targets to study the magnetic field to uncover the ocean's presence, map the entire surface, and use a camera to gauge plume activity. Two concept studies will be chosen in summer next year, while its launch is tentatively scheduled for October 2025.

Observing Triton's unusual behavior could be useful as it orbits against Neptune's direction. It has 10 times more active ionosphere than other moons in the solar system while its surface renews, which is uncertain what drives the plumes.

Trident could fill in many of the gaps as Voyager 2 only visualized 40% of the moon when it swung by Triton on its way out of the Solar System about 30 years ago. However, the data will take a long time before it becomes available. Neptune is nearly 2.8 billion miles away, and Trident is expected to reach Triton in 2038.

Voyager 2 and the bubbles it created

Three decades ago, Voyager 2 flew past Neptune which left a lot of bubbles. It was the only spacecraft to have given stunning views of the planet. It showed massive, dark plumes of icy material spraying out from Triton's surface which puzzled scientists for decades.

Scientists kept wondering how an ancient moon could remain active even it was six times farther from the Sun than Jupiter. NASA's Discovery Program's new mission aims to unravel the truths behind these mysteries. Trident is one of four that is developing concept studies for new missions, but only two will be chosen as full-fledged missions later.

Trident will investigate how Triton has changed over time as well as its odd behaviors--such as its orbiting against the direction of Neptune, as well as its orbit location that is tilted by 23 degrees from Neptune's equator.

"Triton has always been one of the most exciting and intriguing bodies in the solar system," said Louise Prockter, space research association director at Lunar and Planetary Institute/Universities. She will lead the proposed Trident mission which will be managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Prockter also expressed her admiration with Voyager 2's images of Triton and "their tantalizing glimpses of this bizarre, crazy moon that no one understands."

JPL Trident project scientist Karl Mitchell said that while Triton is weird, it is "relevantly weird."

"We know the surface has all these features we've never seen before, which motivates us to want to know 'How does this world work?'" Mitchell said.

As written in the mission proposal, Mitchell said that Triton is not just a key to solar system science, but it also captured the evolved Kuiper Belt object, an ocean with active plumes, a lively ionosphere, and a unique surface.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
By Express News Service

ADILABAD: Farmers in several mandals of Adilabad and Nirmal districts have complained that the subsidised government soybean seeds, which they had sown in the first week of June, have not germinated. Therefore, on Sunday, district officials and elected representatives inspected soybean fields in these two districts and advised farmers to sow the seeds after their area receives sufficient rainfall.

Farmers of Adilabad and Nirmal districts are growing soybean across 1.93 lakh acres of land. The combined acreage of soybean fields in these two districts contributes to almost 70% of the States target (3 lakh acres) under its regulated farming scheme. Mudhole MLA G Vittal Reddy appealed the farmers to sow the seeds after their area receives sufficient rainfall. Nirmal district received an average of 83.4mm of rainfall from June 1 to 18 while the rainfall required to g row soybeans is 112.2mm. Jainath mandal received 51.4mm while the required rainfall is 112.5mm.
Job Title: IT Associate

Organisation: United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Duty Station: Uganda

Vacancy Notice: Internal/ External Vacancy notice no. 011/2020

Position Number: 10018196

Position Grade: GS-6

About US:

The Office of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14,

1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. UNHCRs mandate under the Statute

of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is to lead

and co-ordinate action for international protection to refugees; seek permanent

solutions for the problems of refugees and safeguard refugee rights and

well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate concerning issues of statelessness,

as it is given a designated role under Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the

Reduction of Statelessness.

Job Summary: The IT Associate provides reliable

and timely IT services on the application and infrastructure of UNHCR standard

IT services in the Area of Responsibility (AoR). S/he normally receives

technical guidance from a (Senior) IT Officer for the Telecom/IT infrastructure

in the region in which the field or emergency operation exists. In offices

where there is no IT Officer, direct supervision may be exercised by the (Snr)

Admin Officer as applicable in the duty station.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:



Assist

in on-site needs assessment and installation and maintenance of UNHCR

Telecommunications and IT equipment.



In

consultation with the supervisor, establish the IT requirements in field

operations, considering the overall IT and Telecom strategy of the region, the

operational needs and the security constraints.



Install

and configure the most appropriate type of UNHCR IT and Telecommunications

systems (HF, VHF, UHF, Microwave Links, Telephony, and satellite systems) to

meet the field and emergency operations immediate IT needs.



Ensure

that the equipment under his/her responsibility is in good working condition,

by inspecting regularly the hardware and installations. If required, arrange

promptly repairs or replacement as necessary according to established

procedures.



Maintain

records of the installations and repairs/replacements done and keep the

supervisor fully informed on the status of the equipment.



Provide

each office, where equipment is installed, with full information for their

asset management records.



If

applicable, keep a proper inventory level of all sites spares and return spare

parts for repair/replacement.



Monitor

and maintain the LAN, Network Servers, Printers, LAN points, Hubs, Patch pane,

etc. to prevent faults occurring.



Add or

remove users from the Network.



Assist

in the maintenance of accurate records of users and usage of the Network.



Carry

out minor hardware maintenance.



Provide

Technical Briefing/Training on the equipment to local IT resources and users,

including IPs, ensuring that they are able to maintain/use the equipment.



Assist

in the development and configuration of IT and Telecom Equipment/Kits used in

field operations and emergencies.



Decide

on appropriate resolution to incidents / problems.



Escalate

issues to supervisor if incident / problem cannot be resolved with scope of

responsibility.



Perform

other related duties as required.





Qualifications, Skills and Experience:



The

ideal candidate for the United Nations UNHCR IT Associate job placement should

hold a High school diploma. Required.



At least

three years of relevant work experience is required.



Experience

relevant to the function or particularly on HF/VHF radio or IT systems, PAMA

satellite systems, PABX, Cisco routers and satellite modems is required.



Knowledge

of English is required.



Certificate

in Information Technology or related field is desirable.



Hands-on

experience with wireless and VoIP systems, electricity, generators, lightning

protection an asset and previous experience in Emergencies is desirable.



Analytical

Thinking



Innovation

and Creativity



Technological

Awareness

How to Apply:

All interested

Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are encouraged to click on the

link below and follow the application instructions after reviewing the job

details.

Click

Here

Deadline: 25th June 2020

For more of the

latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline
Two statues have been doused with red paint in Paris amid a global movement to tear down monuments with links to colonialism and slavery.

Statues depicting colonial administrator Hubert Lyautey and Voltaire - who profited from the slave trade - were drenched in red by protesters in the French capital.

Statues and monuments have become topics of debate - and in many cases, targets of vandalism - in the wake of global Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in the US.

Many in opposition - including leading politicians - believe removing them amounts to 're-writing history' with conflict between protesters and pro-statue demonstrators often resulting in violent clashes.

Statues depicting colonial administrator Hubert Lyautey (left) and Voltaire (right) - who profited from the slave trade - were drenched in red by protesters in the French capital

Lyautey (a statue depicting him, pictured) was a key player in France's colonial interests in Indochina and helped crush a rebellion by an anti-French bandit group on the Chinese border

Voltaire (a statue depicting him, pictured) - one of Frances best-known writers and philosophers - invested in Companie des Indes, an imperial company heavily involved in the slave trade

Who was French writer and philosopher Voltaire and what are his links to slavery? Voltaire - whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet - was an author and philosopher. He was openly critical of Christianity, especially of Catholicism, and a prominent voice in the enlightenment era. Voltaire's writing was so critical of the government that he imprisoned twice and once exiled to England. One of his most famous works was novel Candide about a man who becomes disillusioned as he watches the world's hardships. He subscribed to highly criticised - and now widely-disproved - polygenism, the belief that different races had different origins. Because of this, some historians say he believed black people did not share the same humanity as white people as they originated from different places. While he did speak out against cruelty to slaves, he was largely indifferent to the slave trade itself. He invested in Companie des Indes, an imperial company heavily involved in exploitation. Companie des Indes owned ship Duc du Maine which transported slaves from what was then known as Senegambia to Louisiana. Voltaire - whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet - was an author and philosopher Another slave ship was even named after him, something Voltaire - whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet - is said to have considered an honour. One of his most controversial quotes came from his 'Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des Nations' which translates to: Essay on the Blacks and the Spirit of the Nations. In it is a passage reading: 'We purchase our house slaves only from among black men; some condemn this practice. 'But a people which trades with its children, is much more damming than one who purchases slaves. This trade demonstrates our superiority; the one who gives himself to an owner has been born to have one (an owner).' Some have claimed that the quote has been misinterpreted and is not in support of slavery. Advertisement

Lyautey was a key player in France's colonial interests in Indochina and helped crush a rebellion by an anti-French bandit group on the Chinese border.

He went on to serve in Madagascar and later Morocco where he took control of increasing amounts of territory - conflicting with German interests and launching the First Moroccan Crisis.

He then became France's minister of war during World War I.

Voltaire - one of Frances best-known writers and philosophers - invested in Companie des Indes, an imperial company heavily involved in the slave trade.

Companie des Indes owned ship Duc du Maine which transported slaves from what was then known as Senegambia to Louisiana.

Another slave ship was even named after him, something Voltaire - whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet - is said to have considered an honour.

Last week, vandals chucked orange paint over a bust of Charles de Gaulle and defaced it with the word 'slaver' in the northern town of Hautmont near the Belgian border.

De Gaulle is seen as a national hero in France for resisting the Nazi occupation while in exile before himself becoming head of state in 1958. Slavery was abolished throughout France in 1848.

President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the nation on Sunday that France would not erase 'a trace' of its history and vowed it would not remove statues of its historical figures.

The local mayor Joel Wilmotte said the statue had already been cleaned, denouncing the vandalism as 'scandalous'.

The head of the regional council for northern France, the prominent right-wing politician and former minister Xavier Bertrand, said the act was particularly outrageous coming just days before the 80th anniversary of de Gaulle's 1940 call on the French to keep fighting.

'At a time when we must remember that General de Gaulle kept the Resistance flame alive, the vandalising of this statue in Hautmont is scandalous,' he said, demanding that the perpetrators be punished.

Statues across Britain have also been subject to vandalism, with some even being torn down by angry demonstrators.

Last week, statues dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were taken out of their protective metal sheaths.

They, along with the statue of Winston Churchill were covered up to protect them from potential vandalism.

The monument to Britain's greatest war-time leader was covered in graffiti that said Churchill 'was a racist' while a protester attempted to set a union flag on fire on the Cenotaph.

Earlier this month, anti-racism protesters tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and rolled him into a harbour.

In New York, the American Museum of Natural History said it will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination as protests across the country continue.

The bronze statue that has stood at the museum's Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse.

'The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a written statement.

He went on to serve in Madagascar and later Morroco where he took control of increasing amounts of territory - conflicting with German interests and launching the First Moroccan Crisis. Pictured: The base of his statue

Companie des Indes - which Voltaire (a statue depicting him pictured) invested in - owned ship Duc du Maine which transported slaves from what was then known as Senegambia to Louisiana

Last week, vandals chucked orange paint over a bust of Charles de Gaulle (left) and defaced it with the word 'slaver' (right) in the northern town of Hautmont near the Belgian border

In New York City, the American Museum of Natural History said it will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt (pictured) from its entrance

The monument to Britain's greatest war-time leader Winston Churchill was covered in graffiti (left) that said Churchill 'was a racist'. It was then boarded up (right)

The Nelson Mandela statue before and after it was covered up by large boards to protect it from graffiti in London

In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park along the Pacific Ocean, protesters sprayed red paint and wrote 'slave owner' on pedestals before using ropes to bring down the statues and drag them down grassy slopes amid cheers and applause.

The statues targeted included a bust of Ulysses Grant who beat the Confederates and ended the Civil War before becoming president.

Also torn down in the San Francisco park was a statue of slave-owner Francis Scott Key, who wrote the US national anthem 'Star Spangled Banner.'

Protesters also pulled down the statue of Spanish missionary Junipero Serra, an 18th century Roman Catholic priest who founded nine of California's 21 Spanish missions and is credited with bringing Roman Catholicism to the Western United States.
I believe the constitutional amendments had to be made much more quickly, and I apologize to citizens of Armenia for not solving the crisis in the judiciary for such a long time. This is what Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan told reporters today, touching upon the criticism that the initiative for amendments to the Constitution through the National Assembly is unconstitutional and even overthrow of the constitutional order.

Those people are furious due to the recent court decisions, but I would also like to assure that our political party will implement what the people have given us the mandate to implement and will implement it as soon as possible, he said.

The bill on constitutional amendments proposes to discontinue the powers of the judges of the Constitutional Court having served for more than 12 years, and the term of office of the president of the Constitutional Court is discontinued, meaning the president of the Constitutional Court will be elected through a new procedure. There are 3 judges of the Constitutional Court who have been serving for over 12 years, and Hrayr Tovmasyan has been serving for only two years, and consequently, he will remain a member of the Constitutional Court.
A day after the Uttar Pradesh government suspended the annual Kanwar Yatra in the wake of prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, officials in Meerut and Saharanpur regions  the two main pilgrimage centres of the yatra  said they have a tough task ahead to convey the decision of suspension of the yatra to devotees and convince them.

Spreading the message and convincing devotees would be a big challenge in the coming days, said additional director general ( ADG) of police, Meerut zone, Rajeev Sabharwal.

The state government, in consultation with the Haryana and Uttarakhand governments, on Saturday decided to suspend the annual pilgrimage of Lord Shiva devotees that takes place in the Hindu holy month of Shravan. The yatra was to start from July 5-6 and conclude on July 19.

Jagmohan Shakal, who has been organising a camp for providing food and lodging to Kanwarias for over two decades now, supported the decision and said that camp organisers were worried about the safety of devotees.

Every year, three to four hundred thousand devotees come to the Meeruts Kali Paltan temple during the yatra every year.

Temples management committees secretary Satish Kumar Singhal expressed his dismay over the suspension of the yatra. On the other hand, the temples chief priest Sridhar Tripathi supported the governments decision and said, Life is above all and devotees should understand it.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The family of a 16-year-old African American boy who died after he was wrongfully restrained by a staff member at a teen behavioral center for throwing a sandwich is filing a civil rights lawsuit in his death.

Cornelius Fredericks threw a sandwich in the cafeteria of Lakeside Academy, a Kalamazoo facility for teens with behavioral problems, and was restrained by an employee who placed their weight on his chest for nearly 10 minutes as he pleaded, 'I cant breathe' on April 29.

He was transported to Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo where he was placed on life support and died on May 1.

Attorney Jonathan Marko said his death echoes that of George Floyd, a black man whose chilling death in Minneapolis was caught on camera, showing a white cop press his knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes as he gasped, 'I cant breathe'.

His death has sparked protests across the globe decrying police brutality and racial inequality.

A lawsuit is being filed Monday in the death of Cornelius Fredericks, 16, an African American teenager who died after he was wrongfully restrained at the Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo, a center for behavioral issues, on April 29. A staffer placed their weight on his chest for nearly 10 minutes as he pleaded, 'I cant breathe' until he became unresponsive. He died two days later

Fredericks pictured in the hospital after a staffer restrained him and he fell unconscious. He was placed on life support and died on May 1, two days after the incident

Attorney Jonathan Marko said his death echoes that of Floyd, a black man whose chilling death on May 25 was caught on camera showing a white cop press his knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes as he gasped, 'I cant breathe'

'In fact, video from Lakeside Academy even shows a staff member placing his/her weight directly on Corneliuss chest for nearly ten minutes as Cornelius lost consciousness. Corneliuss scream of "I cant breathe" was not enough to get the staff members to stop the excessive restraint,' the lawsuit states, according to the Detroit Free-Press.

'The excessive use of restraints and the lack of concern for Corneliuss life draw an eerily similar comparison to that of George Floyds death. Floyd died less than a month after Cornelius Fredericks at the hands of four police officers, one of whom kneeled on Floyds neck for over nine minutes despite Floyds screams that he could not breathe,' it added.

The lawsuit will be formally announced Monday afternoon at Marko Law in Detroit.

A copy of the lawsuit states that video from the Academy captures the excessive force on camera, though that video hasn't been publicly released.

It also shows that Lakeside staff waited 12 minutes before calling 911, even though Fredericks was lying limp and unresponsive, Marko said

The lawsuit lists Lakeside Academy (above), a center for youth who suffered abuse, neglect, behavior issues or went through the juvenile justice foster care system, and Sequel Youth and Family Services as defendants

The lawsuit accuses the facility of having a troubling history with excessive restraint, citing over 30 investigations conducted by the state health department since 2016

The complaint accuses the facility of two counts of negligence by failing to provide a safe living environment and to properly supervise employees.

Lawsuit claims Lakeside staff waited 12 minutes before calling 911, even though Fredericks was lying limp and unresponsive

The lawsuit lists Lakeside Academy, a center for youth who suffered abuse, neglect, behavior issues or went through the juvenile justice foster care system, and Sequel Youth and Family Services as defendants.

Sequel Youth Services of Michigan manages Lakeside and is a part of a national behavioral health organization for children, teens and adults.

The lawsuit accuses the facility of having a troubling history with excessive restraint, citing over 30 investigations conducted by the state health department since 2016.

Lakeside Academy had to terminate at least eight employees because of improper use or restraint, failure to use proper de-escalation techniques, and improper supervision of residents.

An investigation after Fredericks' death also showed 10 other licensing violations at the facility, including failure to adhere to restraint and discipline rules.

The state has already suspended Lakesides license following the incident, meaning it cannot house any children, and now the state is working to permanently shut the facility down.

Protests demanding justice for Fredericks took place outside Lakeside Academy on Saturday, demanding the end of for-profit youth facilities across the country

The death of Fredericks comes in the midst of a Black Lives Matter movement sweeping the nation, sparked by the Floyd's killing, demanding the end of the systemic racism against black people

Signs bearding Fredericks' name pictured outside Lakeside Academy on Saturday

Following the incident Lakeside Academy has had their license to serve children suspended and will be shut down by the state

One woman held a sign saying: 'Where is Cornelius? You Killed Him!'

Protests demanding justice for Fredericks took place outside Lakeside Academy on Saturday, demanding the end of for-profit youth facilities across the country, according to WWMT.

The death of Fredericks comes in the midst of a Black Lives Matter movement sweeping the nation, sparked by the Floyd's killing, demanding the end of the systemic racism against black people.

Demonstrators carried signs that said '#JusticeforCornelius' and 'Youth Deserve Our Best, Not Our Worst' on Saturday.

On Saturday Governor Gretchen Whitmer released a statement saying that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Service must take every step necessary to ensure the company no longer provides services for facilities licensed by the department.

On May 25 George Floyd died after white cop Derek Chauvin (pictured) knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as the victim repeatedly said he could not breathe (incident pictured). Chauvin has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder

'Protecting our most vulnerable is a top priority of my administration, and the senseless death of a youth at Lakeside for Children in Kalamazoo is intolerable and heartbreaking,' she said.

'We will take steps to prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future and make sure there is accountability. Today I directed MDHHS Director Robert Gordon to take every step necessary to ensure Sequel Youth and Family Services  the company that provided staffing for Lakeside for Children where the 16-year-old died  no longer provides services for facilities licensed by the department.'

Following Fredericks' Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services announced 'it will eliminate the use of restraints against youth in its care, and review and reform its policies to prevent future tragedies'.

'There were complaints of problems with Sequel and Lakeside for years and nobody seemed to listen,' Marko said in a statement.

'Its sad it took the death of this young boy in order to bring this about. It shouldnt have come this far. Cornelius shouldn't have had to die for people to wake up.'
WASHINGTON - The early June meeting in the Cabinet Room was intended as a general update on President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, but the president had other topics on his mind.

Trump had taken a cognitive screening test as part of his 2018 physical, and now, more than two years later, he brought up the 10-minute exam. He waxed on about how he'd dazzled the proctors with his stellar performance, according to two people familiar with his comments. He walked the room of roughly two dozen White House officials and reelection staffers through some of the questions he said he'd aced, such as being able to repeat five words in order.

At the time, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment - which includes animal pictures and other simple queries aimed at detecting mild cognitive impairment such as dementia - was intended to quell questions about Trump's mental fitness. But in recalling it, Trump said he thought presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would never be able to pass it and suggested challenging him to take the test, said the people familiar with Trump's comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private details.

The seeming non sequitur was part of Trump's growing preoccupation in recent weeks over perceptions of his mental and physical health at a time when critics have mocked him for episodes in which they say he has appeared frail or confused. The attacks Trump has previously levied against Biden - dismissing the former vice president as "Sleepy Joe," secreted away in his basement and enfeebled - have boomeranged back on him, as opponents have seized on Trump's own missteps to raise concerns.

Another sign of Trump's unease came Saturday night in Tulsa, Okla., when the president devoted more than 14 minutes to regaling a campaign rally crowd with the tale of "the ramp and the water." Eager to dismiss questions about his fitness after he struggled with a glass of water and walked unsteadily down a ramp after his June 13 commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump offered a revisionist history.

The ramp on that sunny day, Trump asserted, was as slippery as "an ice-skating rink." But he "ran down" it nonetheless, he claimed, despite video evidence showing him shuffling down the incline haltingly. As for the water, Trump said, he used two hands to drink because he didn't want to spill on his expensive silk tie.

"Anyway, that's a long story, but here's the story," the president said, finally winding down. "I've lived with the ramp and the water since I left West Point."

He had previously obsessed about the episode to aides in private and during a Wall Street Journal interview, when he brought the incident up unprompted and offered to produce the leather-bottom shoes he had been wearing that day, which he said were "not good" for ramps.

"In the middle of the worst economy in a century and with more than a hundred thousand Americans dead this guy is primarily concerned with not looking weak," said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, referring to the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic. "And his endless, bottomless insecurity was onstage, in three dimensions, during that storytelling moment, for everyone to see. I've seen a lot of crazy things in the last four years but that display of juvenile behavior and self-regard will go in the Trump time capsule."

In recent weeks, Trump has fixated on Biden's physical and mental acuity, aides said, casting about for ways to attack his Democratic rival and stewing over media coverage that he believes makes him look weak or feeble.

Last week, Trump and his campaign team lobbied the presidential debate commission to have four debates because they believe Biden will look weaker and will make more mistakes than Trump on the debate stage.

The president has encouraged advisers to attack Biden over his mental acuity, White House officials said, but some worry that doing so too aggressively could backfire and hurt him among senior citizens.

"For someone so obsessed with appearing strong, Donald Trump shows us every day just how weak he is," Biden press secretary TJ Ducklo said in a statement Monday. ". . . Donald Trump doesn't care about the health or economic prosperity of the American people. He only cares about himself."

Trump is attuned to any portrayal of him as weak. He was furious earlier this month after news leaked that he and his family were rushed to a secure underground bunker as protesters converged on the White House after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis police custody. He initially claimed, falsely, that he had simply visited the bunker to inspect it.

Trump has also refused to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic, despite his own government's guidelines, and has regularly suggested that Biden and others who wear them are showing weakness or fear.

Flying to Tulsa on Air Force One on Saturday, the president was fuming to aides about the small crowd size of his rally - about 6,000 people in a 19,000-seat arena - another form of weakness in his mind.

Trump's critics have seized on his agita, taking every opportunity to needle him publicly. Last week, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican group, launched a new 45-second ad that begins, "Something's wrong with Donald Trump."

"He's shaky, weak, trouble speaking, trouble walking," the narrator continues as grainy images flash by, including of Trump at West Point. "The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unfit, shaky president."

Less than 24 hours after the Tulsa rally, the group pushed out another video, mocking his smaller-than-expected turnout, and hitting similar themes: "Sad, weak, low-energy," says the narrator. "Just like your presidency, just like you."

Mike Murphy, a vocal Trump critic who is now a strategic adviser to Republican Voters Against Trump, said Trump's obsession with never seeming weak belies a deeper insecurity, making this particular line of attack particularly devastating.

"And now the strong guy - the strength image - is melting and we found out how weak and needy he is," Murphy said. "If it's 'Sleepy Joe,' we have 'Weak Needy Donald' and that is his kryptonite."

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has been running a similar playbook against Biden. The campaign released an ad last week called "Fortitude" that mocked some of Biden's missteps.

"Joe Biden is slipping . . . Biden is clearly diminished," the narrator says, against the backdrop of Biden seeming to stumble through remarks. "Joe Biden does not have the strength, the stamina and mental fortitude required to lead this country."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews rejected the idea that Trump shares any of the physical or mental weaknesses that he accuses Biden of possessing.

"I challenge anyone who absurdly questions this president's health to spend one day trying to keep up with his rigorous schedule," Matthews said in an email. "This president never stops - whether it's working early in the morning or late into the evening."

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said the challenge for Trump and his team now is that they "always put themselves into this, everything is the biggest ever, the greatest ever" box, making it difficult for Trump to countenance even the slight hint of weakness on his part. "What we're seeing over the past few weeks is really the issue of what gets under his skin."

Heye said that while he didn't think the initial coverage of the West Point ramp or water drinking was particularly problematic, the president clearly did. "He has been rattled by the reaction to it, and it's because it speaks to that issue of strength," Heye said.

Reaching under his lectern in Tulsa during his reenactment episode Saturday, the president pulled out a glass of water and brought it to his lips with one hand, raising it to the crowd between sips as if toasting an achievement. Then he tossed the it away to his side as his supporters roared with delight.

"Trump! Trump!" the crowded chanted in response. "Four more years! Four more years!"
O ne of the UKs top tech experts has said the new Covid-19 contact tracing app from Apple and Google could enable to people travel around Europe more safely before a vaccine is found.

Jon Crowcroft was one of the people developers for NHSX - the technology unit responsible for the Government's now-abandoned in-house tracing app - who was approached for advice in February this year as they started to build a product.

He is a Cambridge professor of computing who developed the bluetooth-based FluPhone app in 2011 after the swine flu outbreak of 2009.

Prof Crowcroft and a multi-skilled team won a grant from the Medical Research Council to build the app, which became one of the first to prove bluetooth technology could be used to track disease spread and provide otherwise unavailable data to authorities.

The UK Government made a U-turn on using its own NSHX-developed software last week, in favour of Apple-Google application programming interface, or API, now being rolled out by countries around the globe.

A UK Covid tracing app is now not expected until autumn at the earliest.

The Apple-Google model is being rolled out internationally / Carl Court/Getty Images

Prof Crowcroft, who is currently working on a future immunity passport design with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, told the Standard the major plus point for the Apple-Google option will be its impact on travel as countries open up before a vaccine is found.

He said this will be crucial in particular for the UK and the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

He said: If they have the same form of app being deployed in the Republic, it will make that travel easy. The same for going to France - having the same model will help us travel across borders again. Even if the app is slightly less accurate, it will inter-operate.

What would happen is if you are on the Eurostar to Paris and you sit next to someone who tests positive [for Covid-19] the next day, you would get a notification - even if you are on a UK phone - saying you were next to X.

But the professor called for caution before becoming too optimistic, saying that even experts dont know how well the tech giant API is going to work - and said in its current form it may actually be worse than the NHSX app.

He said: I think the reason there has been a U-turn was not just technical. The way it was working in the Isle of Wight was actually pretty okay. We dont even know how well the alternative is going to work. It has only been running in Germany since Monday, and we have no idea if it will be better or worse - it may actually be worse.

Prof Crowcroft explained that any app would currently be responsible for tracing only around 20 per cent of cases, compared to 80 per cent by manual contact tracers - but that it will be crucial in advance of any second wave in the autumn.

He said: If we get a second wave in the autumn or winter the app will be much more of a big deal because we will have many more cases.

The expert explained that under the best case scenario, in the UK around 60 per cent of the population would download the app as only 80 per cent have a smartphone, and not everyone will access it. The app is also unable to work in all environments, and is therefore only part of the system and all useless without testing in place.

Some countries are abandoning the idea of an app altogether due to issues with bluetooth tech. Singapore is now not using any version and instead giving citizens a bluetooth wristband.

The Google-Apple API does not give central authorities in countries any information about who is contacted for self-isolation, or where the incidents or outbreaks are taking place.

Matt Hancock's NHSX had initially said the UK's own app would be ready to deploy mid-May / 10 Downing Street/AFP via Getty

Prof Crowcroft warned its downside compared to the originally planned NHSX in-house app will be that UK scientists will be unable to make important long-term findings. These would include more evidence to help determine how fast immunity wears off, and how many people asymptomatically carry the disease but remain infectious.

The Department of Health has said it will share progress made in the Isle of Wight pilot with Google and Apple - and Prof Crowcroft believes it should go further and publish the findings.

He said: The Apple-Google combined design for this bluetooth low energy radio is not as sophisticated as the NHS one. It was done to get a general system that works on all phones and hasnt had any opportunity to be optimised.

What has happened is that the NHS spent a lot of effort in the Isle of Wight over the last month tuning how the bluetooth proximity technology works, and I know the guy doing it and hes very, very smart. A lot of work went into that which has not yet gone into the Apple Google API Germany and other countries are starting to use.

They dont have that sophistication in there. It can be added, and what I really hope is that if the NHS publish what they have got from the Isle of Wight, how they created the proximity algorithm, then that will be a contribution to the whole world.

NHSX will be able to say hey, this wasnt pointless, it can actually be added in to what Apple and Google provide, and then all the other apps can benefit in improving accuracy."

The expert said people in the industry are positive this can happen".

In a joint statement last week, Baroness Dido Harding, Executive Chair of NHS Test and Trace and Matthew Gould, CEO, NHSX, said: Our response to this virus has and will continue to be as part of an international effort. That is why as part of a collaborative approach we have agreed to share our own innovative work on estimating distance between app users with Google and Apple, work that we hope will benefit others, while using their solution to address some of the specific technical challenges identified through our rigorous testing.

We will also draw on the invaluable insight from all of those who trialled the app on the Isle of Wight  and the brilliant teams who have worked on it to date  to build an app that can form part of the end-to-end NHS Test and Trace service, and this insight will be integral to the next phase of development.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, who has not confirmed the exact date an app will be released in the UK, said last week: Countries across the globe have faced challenges in developing an app which gets all of these elements right, but through ongoing international collaboration we hope to learn, improve and find a solution which will strengthen our global response to this virus."
Victoria recorded 16 cases of coronavirus on Monday  the sixth day in a row of double-digit growth  with 12 of those believed to be due to community transmission, making it the largest single-day increase in community transmission since the peak of the pandemic in April. Of the new cases, six are linked to known outbreaks, four are in hotel quarantine, five have been detected through routine testing, and one is under investigation. Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the government did not plan to lock down the "hotspot" suburbs imminently, but she did not rule out a return to the tough restrictions to which Victorians were subjected at the end of March. At the height of restrictions, Victorians were allowed to leave their homes for only four reasons: to go to work or school if they could not work or learn from home; seeking and providing care; buying groceries; and exercising outside within their local area.

Loading Ms Mikakos said people's behaviour over the coming weeks would be paramount in helping drive down case numbers. "We haven't put stay-at-home directions [for those municipalities], but we're not ruling it out," Ms Mikakos said yesterday. "Exactly what form [stricter restrictions] may take is under active consideration, but we've had stay-at-home directions in the past that limited the types of reasons that you can leave your home ... but we don't want to be in that situation. "If people in those hotspot areas particularly limit their movements in the next few weeks, we can assess the situation and see if that makes a difference."

Although people living in the six local government areas identified as coronavirus hotspots have been urged to "limit" their travel in coming weeks, they have not yet been banned from leaving their neighbourhoods to work, dine or visit others. University of Melbourne professor of epidemiology Tony Blakely said if cases continued to climb dramatically over the next week a "very severe regional lockdown" was likely to be required. "By severe, I would expect that would involve a lot more police patrols and possibly bringing in the military ... to ensure people aren't going in and out," Professor Blakely said. He said it could also mean children would be banned from attending schools in the hotspots. "That's inevitable if we see a huge increase in cases. That's what you would have to do, there is no escaping that until it's turned around and you start to see numbers going down."

Loading The Australian Health Practitioners Principal Committee on Sunday night issued a statement "strongly discouraging" people from travelling to and from Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin and Cardinia until the "control of community transmission has been confirmed". The committee does not have powers to enforce a lockdown, but the recommendation has been made to the Victorian government. Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said while it was "sensible" for people to consider whether they should travel to and from areas identified as hotspots, they should also be stringent about following social distancing measures across the rest of the state. Authorities will target their testing, enforcement and messaging in Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin and Cardinia, with the government moving to extend the hours of testing centres in these locations and establish more pop-up sites.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says it is "sensible" for people to consider their travel plans. Credit:Getty Images "It is sensible from a national perspective to say if these areas can be avoided, if people can understand that other parts of the country are less of a risk than these particular areas, then just make a consideration about your travel plans for these areas," Professor Sutton said. "We don't want to say only think about these spots or avoid these spots, and be complacent everywhere else." While Premier Daniel Andrews did not speak publicly about the outbreak on Monday, Mr Morrison noted the recent outbreaks "should not come as a surprise". "This is a COVID-19 pandemic that is intensifying around the world. And Australia still remains, by a very long stretch, in a very, very, very good position," he said.
EBRD US$100 million loan to support businesses in Egypt

New financing to CIB key for swift economic recovery

Part of EBRD response to impact of coronavirus pandemic

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is reinforcing its support for the Egyptian economy with a US$ 100 million loan to Commercial International Bank (CIB), a longstanding partner bank of the EBRD.

The financing is part of the EBRDs response to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic through its partner banks. This credit line will help CIB provide short-term loans to private small and medium-sized enterprises and corporations facing liquidity strains due to a decrease in their activities and turnover caused by the crisis.

Jurgen Rigterink, EBRD First Vice President, said: It is crucial to support the real economy during these unprecedented times with the provision of funds through well-functioning channels. Ensuring a continuous flow of financing to local enterprises will help overcome this crisis and ensure the recovery of businesses and the country.

Hussein Abaza, CEO of CIB, said: We are very happy to see this agreement through. In these unprecedented times, strong relationships that span years are bearing fruit, for example in the mutual trust and understanding between CIB and the EBRD. This facility is a testament to CIBs strength as a financial institution and reinforces our leading position and sound credit judgement. We all look forward to coming out of this period even stronger.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the EBRD now expects to dedicate the entirety of its activities in 2020-21 to combating the economic impact of the crisis and stands ready to provide support worth 21 billion over that period to help the 38 emerging economies where it invests.

CIB is the third-largest bank in Egypt. It has been a partner of the EBRD since 2014 through the extension of a trade finance facility, which was followed by a subordinated loan in 2017.

Egypt is a founding member of the EBRD. Since the start of its operations there in 2012, the Bank has invested close to 6.5 billion in 115 projects in the country.
New Delhi: The Chhattisgarh Board Of Secondary Education (CGBSE) is most likely to release the date for the declaration of CGBSE class 10th and class 12th 2020 results on June 23. The result is expected to be out at 11 am.

According to reports, the answer sheets of the board exams have been evaluated and onyl processing of result was left.

The results will be released on the official website of the board, which is cgbse.nic.in and results.cg.nic.in. Candidates can also check the latest updates related to board exams and get the result link via email or SMS.

Students who appeared for the exams can follow these simple steps to check the CGBSE Class 10 and Class 12 result 2020, once its gets released by the board:

Step 1: Visit the official website of CGBSE: cgbse.nic.in, results.cg.nic.in or examresults.net

Step 2: Click CGBSE Class 10th Result 2019 or CGBSE Class 12th Result 2019

Step 3: On the new page, enter your roll number and other details to log-in

Step 4: The results will be displayed on the screen. Candidates are advised to download it and take a print out for future use.

According to a report, at least 3.84 lakh candidates had appeared for the CGBSE exams held in March this year. The board had conducted Class 10 exams beginning March 3; but due to the significant rise in the number of coronavirus cases, it was forced to cancel the exams.

Nearly, eight lakh students appeared for state board examinations out of which, six lakh students appeared for Class 10 board examinations and 2.5 lakh for CGBSE Class 12 exams.
Advertisement

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams told residents not to call 911 to report the plague of illegal fireworks that have overwhelmed NYC because some view them as a form of nonviolent protest.

Adams urged concerned neighbors to 'go talk to young people or the people on your block who are using fireworks' and warn them of the potential risks rather than ask the beleaguered NYPD to stop them setting off displays which have been keeping New Yorkers up all night for three weeks.

'Stopping fireworks cannot turn into fireworks between the police and the community,' said Adams at a press conference to discuss the latest disturbance to hit the Big Apple after the coronavirus pandemic and George Floyd protests against police brutality.

'We want a good community response to dealing with a nuisance. This is a nonviolent act. So those three numbers that we all dial, 911, get over that,' said Adams as it was revealed the city had seen almost 2,000 complaints about the fireworks which begin at dusk and carry on till dawn daily.

Indeed, the fireworks displays have spread from coast to coast - leaving millions of Americans trying to sleep through the sound of a literal war zone.

However, for a nation gripped by the dual tensions of COVID-19 which has claimed 120,000 lives and tens of millions of jobs and the George Floyd protests, the fireworks have become a way for many to express their frustrations and further defiance against the police nationwide.

New York City

Nights in New York City have become overwhelmed by large booms from firecrackers, bottle rocks and other explosives that were set alight across all five boroughs as nearly 2,000 complaints have been made by residents over ongoing noise throughout the night

A number of fireworks were set off on Friday in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough on Friday in celebration on Juneteenth, but residents said fireworks have been going off before and after that

Eric Adams was adamant that the ongoing firework disturbances should be handled at a local level by community members and organizations and not by a brow-beaten NYPD.

'That is the role of community-based groups and organizations. That is why I'm calling on the City of New York to empower Cure Violence to go into the community and talk to the residents about the dangers of fireworks.'

The New York Police Department should focus less on the presence of fireworks in the city and more on stopping the flow of the pyrotechnics into the city, Adams said.

Adams pointed out that anti-police protesters, who have overwhelmed the city with demonstrations since the death of George Floyd, cannot use a double standard and call authorities over fireworks.

'We have left the place of 911 being the response for everything in our city. Now we have to stop talking the talk, and walk the walk,' said Adam.

'What does community policing look like? Its the extension of everyday residents engaging with people when there are nonviolent acts taking place in the city.'

Even more than a noise disturbance, fireworks can be dangerous and community members should be conscious of that fact

'These are real dangerous instruments, you could lose an arm, you could lose an eye, you could lose your life and parents need to know  your children should not be playing with this.

Pictured: a New York City resident in Harlem sets off a firework explosive in his hand on June 20 as some admitted to using the pyrotechnics as a peaceful, nonviolent form of protest against law enforcement

Pictured: Illegal fireworks illuminate the sky over the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (pictured) said during a press conference Sunday that residents should stop dialing 911 and 311 to make complaints over the fireworks

According to Adams, community based groups and organizations should be responsible to talking with their neighbors over any concerns involving fireworks

'In a video shared to Twitter on Monday, two New Yorkers were driving through a local neighborhood when the spotted large flashes of firework explosions being set off near an apartment complex.

The colorful fireworks are dangerously flying in different directions as the two look on in awe.

Suddenly, an unidentified man picks up the active firework display and makes a mad dash across the street. A large cloud of smoke can be seen billowing behind him.

Just last week, cell phone footage captured the moment a number of New Yorkers aimed fireworks at each other.

Two men were injured in separate incidents involving the explosives, it was reported Thursday.

A 33-year-old man was hit in Brooklyn and a teenager was struck in the chest in the Bronx. Both men were said to be in a critical condition.

A number of residents are already fed up with the swath of firework displays ahead of the Fourth of July.

'These are not your normal kids playing with fireworks,' Michael Ford, a piano teacher in Manhattans Inwood neighborhood, told The New York Times.

'These are real explosives, like Macys-style fireworks.'He acknowledged that people may be reveling after lockdown orders for the Big Apple have begun to ease, but it's causing additional problems.

Cell phone footage taken last week in New York City showed a number of residents setting off large Roman candle fireworks in the middle of the night

Not just civilians! New York City firefighters caught using illegal fireworks in Brooklyn The onslaught of firework displays in New York City are not just coming from civilians, but the Fire Department of New York City as well. A resident living Brooklyns Crown Heights neighbourhood said he and his wife were passing by Ladder 123 around 11:30pm on Tuesday when they reportedly saw a group of firefighters set off a fountain firework display. I thought it was young kids lighting it. And there are. But then I see the firefighters doing it  they should know better, the man, a 35-year-old father, told the New York Post. Cell phone footage of the incident shows a large, active firework display sitting in front of the fire station. Some firefighters can be seen standing inside the stations garage to watch the light show. As public servants, I feel like they should know better than to light fireworks at 11:30 at night. Its completely brazen wantonness, the man said. Its like they didnt understand why what they were doing is so absurd. Its late at night, there are kids. You have to be responsible and set an example. Officials reported a 4,000 per cent surge in firecracker complaints during the first two weeks in June, with the citys 311 complaint line racking up 849 reports between June 1 and June 14. The noise has gotten so unbearable in Crown Heights that the family has considered leaving the city for a vacation home so his children arent frightened. Every parent in Crown Heights thinks its insane that fireworks are going off nonstop until 3 or 4 in the morning, he said. It goes from dusk until almost dawn. Its a major issue for me and our community. Man claims that #FDNY has been shooting off fireworks in #Brooklyn near #CrownHeights. No need to investigate. Perhaps it's just a protest? pic.twitter.com/hz0mHGLyk9  NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) June 17, 2020 Advertisement

'I think its a lot of people who have been pent-up and need to blow off steam, but its just adding whole other layer of anxiety.'

Fireworks can be heard going off in all five boroughs throughout the night.

In Harlem, the noise can last until 1am some nights as it varies between loud booms and small fire crackers.

'Its as bad as anything I can remember,' said Adrian Benepe, an Upper West Side resident and former city parks commissioner.

'The police have had their hands full with major issues  demonstrations, looting and Covid  and they just dont have the time to respond to quality-of-life issues like this,' he added.

Adams: 'What does community policing look like? Its the extension of everyday residents engaging with people when there are nonviolent acts taking place in the city'

A New York resident from the Inwood neighborhood told The New York Times the nightly displays were like'Macys-style fireworks' and could be heard into the wee hours of the morning

Although fireworks continue to blast off across New York City, the act has been deemed illegal by officials but law enforcement may not have the resources to respond at the moment

Adrian Benepe: 'The police have had their hands full with major issues  demonstrations, looting and Covid  and they just dont have the time to respond to quality-of-life issues like this'

Several residents have vented their frustrations with the nonstop noise on Twitter and urged officials to combat the issue

Justin Brannan, a city councilman from Brooklyn, said: 'I know illegal fireworks this time of year in NYC aren't a new thing but has it ever been this widespread? I feel like every neighborhood in the city is talking about it.'

According to Brooklyn resident Djani, who was one of the several people setting of fireworks, its being done in celebration.

'Were basically celebrating the fact that we survived,' he said, referencing the coronavirus pandemic and quarantine.

'You know when you have a storm and finally the rain is letting up.'

One Twitter user argued that the fireworks were dangerous and an 'ongoing problem' for New York City.

But the celebration is disturbing a number of residents in cities all across the United States.

Councilman Justin Brannan, who represents Brooklyn, took to Twitter to complain about the surge in fireworks across New York City over the past few weeks

Pictured: empty crates from used fireworks site in a Harlem-area New York City park on June 20th after nationwide celebrations of Juneteenth

Fireworks in New York City: Where are they coming from and how much do they cost? The recent surge in fireworks, and subsequently complaints, in the Big Apple has cast a light on how residents are forced to circumvent strict local laws to find the pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnic sales have skyrocketed in the last several weeks and launched the industry on a record-breaking track for individual fireworks sales. Although retailers in the city are permitted to sell sparklers and low-level fireworks during specified weeks before the Fourth of July, many residents look outwards to nearby states like Pennsylvania. While New York City prohibited aerial fireworks, Pennsylvania retailers are allowed to sell bottle rockets, Roman candles. Firecrackers and other devices under 50 milligrams. But they can only be sold by dedicated fireworks retailers, like Phantom Fireworks of DWG, Pocono Fireworks and Keystone Fireworks. Residents hoping to purchase fireworks can expect to pay anywhere between $3 to $100 or higher depending on what type of firework setup they want to buy. At Phantom Fireworks of DWG, a Skyburst Rocketry Assortment containing several aerial fireworks can be bought for $59.99. Connecticut is another state where New Yorkers sneak off to stock up on fireworks. Stores like Sparklers, Dabury Fireworks and Uncle Guidos Fireworks sell pyrotechnics for similar prices. Near Interstate 78, which overlooks the Leigh Valley area between New Jersey and Delaware, told Leigh Valley Live that theyve seen an uptick in sales recently. People who have been stuck at home are willing to get out of the house for a day and take a drive to buy some fireworks, said Van Oudenhove, managing director of retailer Sky Kings. Anything related to entertainment is cancelled. In addition to boredom, Van Oudenhove thinks the surge in sales could have also happened because people are excited about loosened lockdown orders. One thing about Americans is that we take patriotism very seriously, he said. When we overcome something as a nation, we celebrate. A lot of areas are being moved towards the next phase of recovery here, and people are excited. American Pyrotechnics Association Executive Director Julie L. Heckman said they anticipate a great sales year ahead of them. We were anticipating that this would potentially be a record-breaking year, said Heckman. What we didnt anticipate was, when stores started opening over Memorial Day weekend, Americans would start buying fireworks in significant quantities early and continuing that pattern as were moving towards the Fourth of July. Advertisement

Philadelphia

In Philadelphia, residents have made similar complaints over fireworks blasting throughout the night and keeping them up.

'People are terrified because a lot of times they dont know if theyre hearing gunfire or fireworks,' Jean Gajary, of Mount Airy, told CBS Philly.

She added that young children and people with disabilities are getting frightened by the continual booms.

'I get called from someone whos son was autistic and hes terrified every night. People are calling me because their young children are scared and sleep-deprived.'

In response, she'd mobilized a firework task force to address the issue.

Philadelphia authorities said they've received 871 calls related to explosions or bombs across the metropolitan city between May 29 and June 16.

'Youre resting and youre going to sleep and then its boom, boom, boom. You dont know if its people trying to blow up ATMs, you dont know what it is,' said resident Rachel McDonald.

'You dont know what it is. Its ridiculous and it needs to stop.'

In 2017, Philadelphia passed legislation to legalize the purchase of 'consumer fireworks,' like firecrackers, Roman candles and bottle rockets.

McDonald: 'Youre resting and youre going to sleep and then its boom, boom, boom. You dont know if its people trying to blow up ATMs, you dont know what it is'

A forgotten piece of a firework display sits in a park field after several fireworks were let loose in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, last week, but some residents said the noise is overwhelming

Some residents have pointed out that the late night firework displays can have serious ramifications on neighbors who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, people with disabilities and young children

'It has been a growing problem since they were made legal in the state in 2017,' Gajary told KYW. 'At that time, they started selling them in the city, even though they were illegal to use in the city.'

Some people who have joined Garjay's task force said they had to rent a hotel or stay at a friends house to get sleep.

'And let's remember, they're making these choices in the middle of a pandemic because they were that desperate.'

Some residents have even considered picking up their things and moving all together.

Pictured: Thousands gather to watch fireworks during the Chicago Peace March in Chicago, Illinois, as several cities report an unexpected influx of firework displays going off throughout the moth of June

'These are people, like myself, who are thinking, ''I have to leave the city if this continues." If you can't sleep at night for eight weeks of the year, how do you live like that?'

Further west, illegal fire works have become a nuisance for people in California's Bay Area and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Bay Area, California

In San Jose, residents in the Roosevelt Park and Naglee neighborhoods said they're sick and tired of the ongoing noise.

'It keeps me up, it keeps my kids up. My Dog burrows underneath my bed,' local Becky Piscitelli told NBC Bay Area.

'My kids thought it was gunshots from shotguns.'

Piscitelli added that there are military veterans and people diagnosed with PTSD who have to listen to the noise every night.

'We have neighbors who are vets and have PTSD, and it can set them off.'

Two little girls watch fireworks during a Juneteenth celebration at Douglas Park in Greensboro, North Carolina, on June 19 in celebration of the holiday Juneteenth

A San Jose resident jokingly questioned on Twitter if there was 'summer COVID sale' on fireworks due to the ongoing displays happening each night

Another resident said he was out trying to get food when mistook the fireworks for gunshots.

'We just came down to get some beers and some dinner and we just heard a pop, pop, pop, boom  thought they were gunshots,' he told KPIX-TV.

Oakland City Councilman Noel Gallo, who lives in the Fruitvale neighborhood, admitted that fireworks were being let loose nearly every night.

'It's almost like at 9 p.m., it's everybody's time to hang loose and start shooting. They shoot up, not only fireworks, he said, according to ABC 7.

There's activity sounds like bombs going off. And they last all throughout until two in the morning.'

Police in Oakland said with strain of COVID-19 and the current tensions with protests, officers may not have the resources to stop the fireworks.

'As we're standing here right now, we're hearing the sounds of fireworks,' said Oakland Police Spokesperson Johnna Watson to ABC 7 during an report.

'Right now, we're standing here at our Eastmont Substation. We know all around us we're hearing the sounds of fireworks, firecrackers, M80s. Do we know exactly where they're coming from? No.'

Even more than the noise disturbance, officials have cautioned residents from using fireworks because they're dangerous and if used improperly could cause serious injuries

Fireworks explode over the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee during an event to mark Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in Texas, two years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves elsewhere in the United States

One problem officers are faced with when trying to stop illegal fireworks are vague details that don't give a specific location. Another is that officers have to witness residents with illegal fireworks or lighting them to spark an arrest.

'This has been non-stop, every night. On all social media platforms- Facebook, Nextdoor, you just see dozens and dozens and dozens of inquiries,' said local Jeff Levin.

'What was that? Did you feel that? Was that gunshots? Should I call the police?'

One resident described the fireworks as: 'non-stop, every night. On all social media platforms- Facebook, Nextdoor, you just see dozens and dozens and dozens of inquiries'

According to officers, one problem they face with when trying to stop illegal fireworks are vague details that don't give a specific location

Authorities said fireworks may have caused a brush fire that prompted evacuations and injured on person on Friday.

Las Vegas

In Las Vegas, illegal fireworks did cause a family to evacuate after illegal fireworks damaged their home.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that fireworks thrown away in a trash can caught fire around 11:50pm.

The fire spread from the trash can to the exterior wall, causing $25,000 in damage.

Although not injuries were reported, the residents have been displaced from their home amid a public health pandemic.

The American Pyrotechnics Association told KTNV has had record breaking fireworks sales during 2020.

'Everybody has been, you know, locked down or shut-in for three, three and a half months, the weather has finally changed too,' said Julie Heckman with APA.

A family in Las Vegas, Nevada, has been displaced from their home after a firework tossed away in a trash can lit part of the house on fire and caused several thousands of dollars in damage

No one was injured in the fire, but the family has been removed from their home and have been forced to find shelter amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic

'Nice warm temperatures and people are just itching to do something.'

But local officials would rather residents stop launching fireworks arbitrarily.

'I understand the draw and the thrill, but please dont,' said Deputy Fire Chief Warren Whitney, Clark County Fire Department.

'It effects pets, it effects seniors, and it effects those with PTSD.'

Officials in Las Vegas have reminded residents of the 'You Light It, We Write It' inter-agency effort to stop the use of illegal fireworks will be in full swing com July 4

Pictured: the trash can outside a Las Vegas home where a still-lit firework caused a blaze to scale the exterior wall of the home and resulted in $25,000 in damage

Local Laura Clark told News3LV said she's already concerned for the loud fireworks that will come on Fourth of July.

'It's scary. You don't know if it's gun shots or dynamite sticks or if it's fireworks--you don't know what it is,' she said.

'I fear for the Fourth of July when that comes up how much they'll be doing.'

Las Vegas officials have reminded the public that the 'You Light It, We Write It' inter-agency effort to stop the use of illegal fireworks will be in full swing com July 4.

'Were putting people on notice not to buy illegal fireworks because if we catch you using them in our local neighborhoods you will be fined,' said Marilyn Kirkpatrick, Clark County Commission Chairman.

Residents caught using illegal fireworks in Las Vegas could be forced to pay fines of $250 to $1000 and disposal fees.
The FBI has released a new picture of 'cult mom' Lori Vallow's children at Yellowstone National Park on the day before her daughter vanished.

The previously unseen photograph shows Joshua 'JJ' and Tylee Ryan posing with their uncle Alex Cox on September 8, before cell phone pings prove he took them to the property of Vallow's husband Chad Daybell.

Investigators discovered remains at Daybell's home on June 9, the same day he text his then-wife that he had shot a raccoon and buried it in the spot were bodies were later found.

The new image could provide new clues about what happened to JJ, seven, and Tylee, 17, last year.

The picture shows the siblings, JJ, seven, and Tylee Vallow, 16, smiling and hugging while standing on a boardwalk in front of a thermal feature at Yellowstone National Park in Idaho on September 8, 2019. Their uncle Alex Cox is also grinning

Lori Vallow is pictured in court in March (left). She and husband Chad Daybell are behind bars on $1million bail

Cox, 51, died in December from an apparent blood clot but appears to have been a crucial figure in working out who is responsible for the kids' deaths.

'I am releasing it today only because the quality is a little better than the other photos we previously released from that day,' FBI spokeswoman Sandra Barker said.

The picture shows the siblings smiling and hugging while standing on a boardwalk in front of a thermal feature. Their uncle Cox is also seen grinning.

Investigators said they recently found the snap.

Court papers claim cell phone data indicates that Alex Cox, Lori Vallow's brother, was at the same location where the children were buried near the time they were reported missing

The previously released photographs showed a different angle of the trio, as well as another snap of JJ and his mother Vallow. They were shared - alongside images of a silver F-150 car of interest, when cops took Vallow from Hawaii back to her home state of Idaho on March 5.

The FBI is no longer considering Yellowstone a place of interest in the case, EastIdahoNews.com reports.

According to a probable cause affidavit, unsealed by Idaho Magistrate Judge Faren Eddins on Friday, investigators used cell phone pings from Lori's now deceased brother, Alex Cox, on two key days in September, which lead them to Daybell's backyard.

There they discovered the children's charred and decomposing remains.

JJ Vallow had been wrapped in plastic and bound by duct tape, while Tylee Ryan was dismembered and burned. Police are still investigating how Tylee died.

Cops believe that Cox had transported the bodies to Daybell's Salem, Idaho, property to bury them.

Cox killed Lori's estranged husband, Charles Vallow, on July 11 of last year. He claimed he intervened in a domestic dispute between his sister and Charles, before he shot his brother-in-law in self-defense.

The photographs released in March show a different angle of the trio, as well as another snap of JJ and his mother Vallow

Tylee was last seen on September 8, while JJ was last seen with his uncle Alex Cox on September 22

He then joined Lori and her kids on a trip to Yellowstone National Park on September 8. It was the last time Tylee was seen alive.

Information in the probable cause affidavit - unsealed Friday - reveals Alex's cell phone pinged at Chad Daybell's property the following day, September 9.

His phone was purportedly in the exact spot where investigators eventually unearthed the child's remains.

Phone data indicates that Cox spent more than two hours at Daybell's property that morning before leaving just before noon.

According to the affidavit, the FBI found a text conversation between Chad and his wife, Tamara Daybell, which took place just minutes later, in which Chad stated that he had 'just buried a raccoon' in the 'pet cemetery' on their property.

'Well, I've had an interesting morning!' he texted Lori on September 9, according to Knewz. 'I felt I should burn all of the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming rains.

'While I did so, I spotted a big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun, and he was still walking along. I got close enough that one shot did the trick. He is now in our pet cemetery. Fun times!'

The remains of one of the children were uncovered near the pet cemetery.

They were both in the company of their uncle, Alex Cox, on the separate occasions they were last seen

Meanwhile, JJ was last seen on September 22.

Two of Lori's friends told police that they saw JJ at Lori's apartment while he was with Alex.

JJ was said to have been 'acting up,' prompting Alex to take the boy back to his own apartment, which was located in the same complex where his sister lived.

The next morning, Lori told a friend, Melanie, that JJ 'had been acting like a zombie' and crawling above cabinets.

In December, Alex himself died of an apparent blood clot in his lung - just three months after Tylee and JJ disappeared

Melanie later told authorities she felt Lori slipping away as Daybell indoctrinated her into his Mormon splinter cult, Avow. He believed that he and Lori were gods destined to lead true believers into the approaching Armageddon. Daybell also led Lori to believe her ex-husband and her children were possessed by zombies.

Daybell also taught her that someone possessed by a zombie was in limbo until their body dies as such the 'death of the physical body is seen as the mechanism by which the body's original spirit can be released.'

'They also stated their mission was to rid the world of zombies,' she said, according to the affidavit.

Melanie had visited Lori in Rexburg in late September and says Tylee was not there. Lori had told her that the teen was studying at a branch of Brigham Young University.

On September 22, Melanie's final night with Lori, the 'cult mom' told her that JJ had been acting like a zombie so she'd sent him to her brother's home. She never saw JJ again.

Melanie later reported them to authorities.

According to cell phone data, Alex Cox was on Chad Daybell's property that same morning - September 23.

The cell phone was traced to a spot near a pond, which is the same location where investigators dug up a set of human remains wrapped in black plastic and duct tape. The remains belonged to someone who had light brown hair, according to the affidavit.

Both Tylee and JJ's remains were uncovered on the property belonging Lori Vallow's new husband Chad Daybell on June 9. Human remains were discovered near both the pet cemetery and the pond. Alex Cox's cell phone had pinged at both of those locations

Daybell, who was watching investigators closely, had attempted to flee in his SUV after JJ's body was found but was stopped and arrested just a mile away.

Daybell was arrested for two felony counts of concealment or destruction of evidence.

Lori Vallow, who had married Daybell mere weeks after his previous wife had died, intends to defend herself against the charges, according to her attorney.

On Monday it emerged that an affidavit for Chad's arrest on charges of destroying evidence states that he acted like he didn't know Lori very well when cops spoke to him during a child welfare check in November.

Chad also allegedly said he didn't have her phone number even though they had married just three weeks prior.

Daybell has also been accused of sexually assaulting a woman author during a private meeting in December 2018.

It's unclear whether investigators are now taking another look at Cox's death.

Chad and Lori are both being held on $1 million bond in relation to the disappearances of JJ and Tylee. Both are scheduled for preliminary hearings next month.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:09:40|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

VIENTIANE, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Consular Department under Lao Ministry for Foreign Affairs has issued an official notice to inform the general public that the U.S. government has suspended the issuance of visas to Lao citizens, local daily Vientiane Times reported on Monday.

The Consular Department had received an official notification from the U.S. embassy, saying that starting from April 1, the U.S. government discontinued issuance of all immigrant and nonimmigrant visas for Lao citizens and nationals applying in Laos, except for certain types.

Officials who want to travel to the United States for work under the multilateral framework, the United Nations system and Lao diplomatic mission in the United States would still be able to apply for a visa, according to the department.

The visa suspension will affect those planning to travel to the United States for leisure, family visits, training, study, work, and exchange programmes. Lao citizens wanting to meet up with their fiance or spouse are also unable to obtain a U.S. visa, according to the department.

"The Consular Department said the reasons underpinning the U.S. government's decision to discontinue the issuance of visas for Lao citizens was due to the inability of the Lao government to respond to the demand of the U.S. government to accept the return of criminals, who claimed to be Lao nationals," said the Lao daily on Monday. Enditem
TEHRAN, Iran, June 22

Trend:

Iran's government is looking to employ new people for its public organizations, through a general exam, head of Iran's Administrative and Recruitment Affairs Organization Jamshid Ansari told Trend.

"No particular structure has priority in employment procedures, it all goes through the general employment exam," he said. "This way, the candidates will be picked."

He added that there's no gender discrimination in this kind of employment process.

"The government has officially announced the employment quotas that would decide the admissions for public organizations alongside national employment exam, according to the law," Ansari said.

"The employment quotas for veterans are 25 percent, while the quotas for the disabled are 3 percent and the rest are for general applicants," he added.

"These quotas do not have gender or marital priority, applicants in each category would compete in their own group of quotas," he said.

The head of Iran's Administrative and Recruitment Affairs Organization has previously told the media that in current Iranian year (started March 20,2020) 35,000 to 40,000 people are to be employed for public organizations.

The statistics of Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of Iran has shown the unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 is 36 percent, which way over the general unemployment rate (10.7 percent).
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) listens next to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) during a press conference to announce articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 10, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Nadler Calls for Barrs Impeachment but Admits It Would Be Waste of Time

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Attorney General William Barr certainly deserves to be impeached but would probably escape such a fate because the Republican-controlled Senate would be unlikely to remove him from office.

Nadler made the remarks during an interview on CNNs State of the Union on June 21. He said calls for Barrs impeachment are a waste of time and that he will instead seek to punish the attorney general by cutting $50 million from his own personal budget.

Barr ignited controversy by moving to fire U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Geoffrey Berman, who initially resisted calls for his resignation, before conceding to his removal after the attorney general invoked the authority of President Donald Trump.

Barr had released a statement on June 19 saying that the Trump administration intended to nominate Jay Clayton, who is currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve as the next prosecutor for the SDNY office.

In response, Berman released a statement saying that he had learned about his resignation from Barrs press release and had no intention of leaving his position, which he has held for 2 1/2 years.

Barr then told Berman in a June 20 letter that he had asked the president to fire Berman following Bermans declaration that he had no intention of resigning.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman at a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 26, 2018. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Bermans refusal to leave his post changed on June 20, when he announced, In light of Attorney General Barrs decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become acting U.S. attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately.

He expressed confidence that under the leadership of Strauss, staff at SDNY will continue to safeguard the Southern Districts enduring tradition of integrity and independence.

Nadlers comments to CNN came after he said in a June 20 statement that his panel will open an investigation into the Trump administrations move to fire Berman.

The House Judiciary Committee will immediately open an investigation into this incident, as part of our broader investigation into Barrs unacceptable politicization of the Department of Justice, said Nadler, who served as an impeachment manager in Trumps Senate trial.

Nadler said that two whistleblowers will be called on June 24 to explain why Barrs attempt to fire Berman is part of a larger, ongoing, and wholly unacceptable pattern of conduct. Nadler added that the panel might attempt to secure Bermans testimony as well in the future.

Bermans dismissal has sparked controversy because the SDNY, under his leadership, oversaw the prosecution of Trumps former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and indicted two associates of Rudy Giuliani, the presidents personal attorney.

Trump, before his rally in Oklahoma on June 20, told reporters that he was not involved in the firing of Berman.

Thats all up to the attorney general, Trump said. Attorney General Barr is working on that. Thats his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general, so thats really up to him, Im not involved.

President Donald Trump (L) and Attorney General William Barr arrive together in the East Room of the White House on May 22, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Berman also oversaw an investigation into convicted pedophile and multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in an apparent suicide attempt in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, after he was arrested on new sex trafficking charges.

The White House and the Department of Justice didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Palestinian health ministry reported 142 new cases, its highest daily jump since the outbreak began in March.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the occupied West Bank has more than doubled in a week according to the Palestinian Authority (PA), after warning that a possible second wave of infections could be worse than the first.

The Palestinian health ministry on Monday reported 142 new infections, the highest rate in a single day since the start of the outbreak.

A week ago, the ministry reported 430 cases in the occupied West Bank, by Monday the number of cases in the Palestinian territory had more than doubled to 903.

A Palestinian man, wearing a protective face mask, buys coffee on a street in the town of Hebron in the occupied West Bank [Hazem Bader/AFP]

On Thursday, Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila warned of a possible second wave of infections, more dangerous than the first.

Numerous cases have been discovered where the source of transmission is unknown, and medical workers have also been infected, she said.

Most infections are traceable to Palestinians working in Israel or Palestinian citizens of Israel visiting the West Bank, Kaila said.

Israel has recorded more than 20,800 coronavirus cases, including 307 related deaths and authorities have said they are preparing for a second wave of infections.

In an effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus following the sharp rise in infections, the Palestinian authorities temporarily closed the cities of Hebron and Nablus on Saturday.

Nabluss restaurants, clubs and salons, in addition to mosques and educational institutions, were closed for five days, while in Hebron similar business activities had to shut down for 48 hours.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said infections rose due to peoples failure to follow the restrictive measures imposed to reduce the spread of the virus.

Palestinian authorities also urged Palestinian citizens of Israel to avoid visiting the West Bank and called on Palestinians working in Israel to stay home for 14 days if they travel to the West Bank.





A lockdown of the West Bank, in place since the first coronavirus cases were identified on March 5, was lifted at the end of May in a bid to strike a balance between economic survival and health security.

The fallout from the pandemic is expected to see the number of households living below the poverty line increase this year from 14 to 30 percent in the West Bank, largely due to Palestinians being unable to cross into Israel for work, according to a report published by the World Bank.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, Palestinian authorities have registered 72 COVID-19 cases, including one death. Gaza has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007.
Police responded to a second shooting in Seattles autonomous zone that occurred late Sunday night, the second shooting inside the zone in just two days.

The victim of the shooting was transported to Harborview Medical Center and is in serious condition, according to the Seattle Police Department.

The shooting occurred in the citys Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, or CHOP, an area of several blocks in the citys downtown Capitol Hill neighborhood. Protesters drove police from the area last week and have continued to occupy the vacated precinct. The protests began as a wave of unrest erupted across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Sundays shooting comes after another shooting inside the zone early Saturday morning, during which a 19-year-old man was killed and a 33-year-old man critically injured. The suspects in that shooting, who fled the scene, have not been arrested, Detective Mark Jamieson said.

Officers attempted to locate a shooting victim but were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims, police said in a statement about Saturdays shooting.

Reports of yet another shooting on Sunday are still unconfirmed, Seattle police citing conflicting reports.

Police have agreed not to respond to calls from within the zone unless they are life-threatening.

More from National Review
If a new report from China is to be believed, the Huawei Mate 40 will launch in October, as planned. Some rumors appeared not long ago, claiming that the Mate 40 series devices will be postponed.

That rumor made sense, to a degree, due to the whole US ban issue, and the global health crisis. It seems like things are on schedule when it comes to its launch, though.

This information is somewhat reliable, as it comes from a well-known source in China. This turn of events was expected, though, as the Kirin 1000 / 1020 arrival shouldnt be affected by the US ban.

Advertisement

TSMCs handling of Kirin 1000 will be unaffected by the latest batch of US sanctions, it seems

TSMCs delivery of Huaweis upcoming flagship processor should not be in question, as its not affected by the US ban. Orders for those chips were in place long before the US sanctions towards TSMC came through.

The issue is, TSMC is using machines made in the US, and the US can forbid it to do business with certain companies due to that fact. The US quoted national security in the case of Huawei many times, and is doing everything it can to cut off Huawei.

That created a ton of problems for Huawei thus far. The company is unable to ship devices with Google services at this point, and they also had to adapt when it comes to smartphone components delivery.

Advertisement

Their processors seemed to be unaffected until the latest batch of sanctions arrived. The company will have to figure things out after the Kirin 1000 / 1020, as it seems like TSMC wont be able to manufacture next-gen flagship SoC.

Huawei already turned to SMIC for its budget processor, but that company probably wont be able to handle Huaweis flagship-grade chips. Nothing is set in stone just yet, but that is what reports are claiming.

In any case, the Kirin 1000 / 1020 is expected to be a 5nm chip. Were still not sure what will it be called, but the Kirin 1000 name sounds right. Most reports claim that is the final name.

Advertisement

The Kirin 1000 could arrive in September, probably during IFA in Berlin, or around that time. The Huawei Mate 40 series will be the first to use it. The Mate series of flagships is always the first to use Huaweis new flagship processors.

Huawei will probably announce at least two Mate 40 handsets in October

Not much is known when it comes to the Huawei Mate 40 series, though. Were expecting that at least two devices will launch as part of it, but Huawei may yet surprise us.

The company did launch three P40 flagships, so it may do the same with the Mate 40. In any case, the Huawei Mate 40 series will arrive in October, it seems, so were only a couple of months away from the launch event.
Lucknow, June 22 : The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested one terror suspect, Salman Khurshid from the Ramban area of Jammu in a joint operation with the Jammu and Kashmir Police force.

The arrest was made on the Sunday evening.

The Uttar Pradesh ATS took Salman Khurshid into custody and he would be brought to the state on a transit remand for interrogation.

According to ATS sources, during an initial interrogation, it has been found that Salman Khurshid, 25, was in contact with Inamul Haq through an app.

Inamul Haq had been arrested by the UP ATS on June 18 from Bareilly for inciting youth to join Jihad and pick arms for terrorist organisations.

The ATS will now confront both simultaneously to know about other youth recruited by them so far.

Inamul and Salman Khurshid were connected on Telegram and they had a group on the app.

Inamul has so far radicalised several youths across the country.

The UP ATS is searching for all those who have been radicalised by Inamul to fight in the name of jihad.

Both were using Telegram with different and multiple identities. Inamul's identity on Telegram was Abu Mohammad Al Hind.

On June 18, at the time of arrest of Inamul, banned literature of the global terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, was found in his mobile phone.

It was Inamul who gave information about Salman Khurshid, the second recruiter of the 'jihad' operations from Jammu and Kashmir.

Inamul has also confessed in an interrogation that he was deeply influenced by the jihadi ideology and was working on radicalising other youths also.
Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier?

Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop.

Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News

Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time.

Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up!

Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page.
The husband of a woman who was stabbed to death in the grounds of a former Victorian mental health hospital has appeared in court charged with her murder.

Michael Cowey, 48, is accused of the murder of mother-of-three Gemma Cowey, 38, who was found stabbed in Thorpe St Andrew on Friday afternoon and died at the scene.

He appeared today before Norwich magistrates in a five minute hearing when he spoke only to confirm his date of birth and address.

Gemma Cowey, 38, was stabbed to death beside the ruins of St Andrew's Hospital in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich, Norfolk on Friday

The mother-of-three who was also known as Gemma Marjoram, was described as 'a beautiful girl' and 'devoted' mother by her heartbroken family

Cowey, who was wearing a dark blue sweat shirt, appeared via video link from the police investigation centre in Wymondham, Norfolk.

He did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody to appear at Norwich Crown Court tomorrow.

Cowey gave his address as Dragoon Close, Thorpe St Andrew, just a few hundred yards from the site of the former St Andrews Hospital where his wife was found on Friday.

He is also charged with possessing a black-handled kitchen knife and a grey-handled kitchen knife in the Northside, Thorpe St Andrew.

Prosecutor Josephine Jones said that the two knife charges were linked to the murder.

Ian Fisher, defending, made no application for bail.

He said: 'I understand that there will be a hearing tomorrow at the crown court and I imagine that will be another video link.'

The victim is thought to have been attacked on wasteland next to the derelict remains of St Andrew's Hospital in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich, Norfolk

An officer sets up a cordon, pictured left and right, following the attack at around 12.45pm on Friday

The family of Ms Cowey, also known as Gemma Marjoram, said in a statement released through Norfolk Police: 'Our beautiful girl, Gemma Lynne Marjoram, was cruelly taken from our lives on Friday June 19.

'Gemma, a devoted mummy to three children, Kacie, Callum and Abigail.

'Loving big sister to Joanne and Kimberley. We are beyond heartbroken. We have no more words.'

It's understood Ms Cowey was attacked on wasteland next to the derelict remains of St Andrew's Hospital in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich, Norfolk on Friday.

Police say she was walking with a man before she was murdered and police were called at around 12.45pm.

Paramedics battled to save her life after emergency services, including an air ambulance attended, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police cordoned off a separate area around 200 yards away around a black bicycle abandoned at the side of a road leading to the old hospital site

Michael Cowey was brought back to Norfolk for questioning on Saturday afternoon and was quizzed by detectives at the Wymondham Police Investigation Centre.

He is expected to appear at Norwich Magistrate's Court today.

Police cordoned off a separate area around 200 yards from where Ms Cowey was found, around a black bicycle abandoned at the side of a road leading to the old hospital site.

Detective Chief Inspector Phil Gray, from the Norfolk and Suffolk Major Investigation Unit, said: 'A number of police resources, including armed units and a helicopter, were deployed to the scene to help in the search for the suspect.'

Detective Inspector Lewis Craske, from the Norfolk and Suffolk Major Investigation Team, said: 'Our thoughts are with Gemma's family and friends at this time.

'Officers have established that Gemma and the suspect were known to each other and whilst we do believe this is an isolated incident, our investigations are ongoing to identify the exact circumstances leading up to her death.

'I am keen to hear from anyone who was in the area of the old hospital in Thorpe St Andrew between 11am and 1pm on Friday 19 June, particularly anyone who may have seen a male and female walking near to the site.

Police, pictured at the scene, arrested a suspect more than 120 miles away in the Warwickshire area at around 4pm

'We know this incident will have caused concern among local residents. Officers will be carrying out reassurance patrols in the area over the coming days and anyone with concerns is encouraged to speak to them.'

The derelict hospital site is next door to the current Northside House mental health clinic run by the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation NHS Trust.

But sources suggested that the killing of the woman was not linked to the clinic.

The St Andrew's Hospital which was originally known as the Norfolk County Asylum dates back to the early 19th century.

The site was closed as an NHS hospital in April 1998 and some of the original grade II listed buildings from 1814 on the south of the site were later converted into private housing.

The main building St Andrews House was used as offices by the Norfolk Primary Care Trust until 2007, but later put up for sale in January 2011

Plans have been mooted to turn the site into a business park, but it has been left to slowly decay in recent years.

The area is close to the St Andrew's Business Park and next to the print works of the Archant local newspaper group.

It is a popular spot for joggers and dog walkers.

The main derelict redbrick building has also been targeted in recent years by urban explorers looking around inside.

Anyone with information should contact the Norfolk and Suffolk Major Investigation Team on 101.
Tragedy: Police forensic tents set up in Forbury Gardens in Reading, the scene of the stabbing attacks. Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

The terror suspect accused of killing three people in a park in the English town of Reading had been investigated by MI5, it emerged last night.

The terror suspect accused of killing three people in a park in the English town of Reading had been investigated by MI5, it emerged last night.

Khairi Saadallah (25) was put on the security service's radar less than a year before Saturday's attack after a tip-off that he planned to go to his native Libya where it was feared he wanted to join a militant jihadist group. But the file was closed after two months when no evidence was found to back the claim.

Questions remained last night over whether Saadallah should have been at large at the time of Saturday evening's attack in a park in the town 60km west of London, after being released early from prison this month for minor offences.

The UK is prevented from deporting Libyan prisoners after their sentence because to do so would breach their human rights owing to the dangers posed there.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday he was "sickened and appalled" by the incident.

One of the victims was named last night as teacher James Furlong (36), head of history at a school in nearby Wokingham, described by colleagues as a "kind and gentle man".

It also emerged that Saadallah, who is understood to have had mental health problems, came to the UK as an illegal immigrant in 2012 and was granted asylum in 2018.

He told friends in the UK that he had fought as a child soldier to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi.

Saadallah lived in Manchester when he arrived in the UK and former neighbours in Reading suggested he moved in the same circles as Salman Abedi, who carried out the Manchester attack.

Whitehall sources confirmed Saadallah came "fleetingly" on to MI5's radar over "information suggesting he had travel aspirations".

The sources stressed Saadallah was one of about 30,000 names on the terror suspect list in 2019 but that he was never elevated to a "subject of interest" - reserved for the 3,000 suspects posing a greater threat to national security.

Saadallah remained in custody after his arrest on Saturday. He was rearrested last night under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which means officers now have 28 days in which to charge him.

Witnesses described a man entering the park, shouting something "unintelligible", possibly in a foreign language, before stabbing a group of people with a knife with a blade at least five inches long. He attacked a second group and then fled before being tackled by police officers.

Saadallah's flat, just over a kilometre from the scene of the attack, was raided by counter-terrorism police early yesterday.

Officers yesterday warned people to stay alert in parks amid fears of lone wolf attacks targeting crowds gathered outside owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

( Daily Telegraph, London)
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a worldwide quest to find a vaccine for the deadly disease. Similarly, many pharma companies are also looking for drugs that can be use in coronavirus treatment. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), presently there are 13 experimental drugs being tested on humans, while over 120 others are in the earlier stages of development.

Meanwhile, according to Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at WHO, around 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine would be ready by the end of 2021.

However, many scientists still anticipate that a safe and effective vaccine to treat coronavirus patients may take 12-18 months to develop.

Biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms comprising Moderna Inc, and AstraZeneca, have been accelerating the pace of their production, promising millions of supplies of their experimental vaccines before the year-end. Last month, global drug firm Pfizer said that a vaccine to treat COVID-19 patients could be ready by October-end.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine update: Chinese researchers begin phase 2 of human trials

Here are the latest updates regarding the COVID-19 vaccine/drug development: -

GlaxoSmithKline-Clover Biopharmaceuticals

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, in partnership with Chinese company Clover Biopharmaceuticals, has started human tests. Initial results from the study are likely to come out in August, following which a larger efficacy trial is expected to begin later in 2020, Glaxo said in a statement.

Sinovac Biotech-Instituto Butantan

Brazil recently announced that Instituto Butantan has signed a deal with Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac to produce an experimental coronavirus vaccine. Sinovac recently announced "positive preliminary" results of phase I and II clinical trials for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, CoronaVac, saying it can induce a positive immune response.

The phase I/II clinical trials were designed as randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled studies. In total, 743 healthy volunteers, aged from 18 to 59 years old, enrolled in the trials. Of those, 143 volunteers are in phase I, and 600 volunteers are in phase II, the Beijing-based company said in a statement.

AstraZeneca-University of Oxford

Germany and partner countries in the European Union recently pledged funds for the production of an experimental vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Britain and the United States had previously made commitments to secure hundreds of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is based on the so-called viral vector technology.

Also read: Ramdev's Patanjali claims to have discovered cure for coronavirus

Glenmark's drug Favipiravir hits Indian market

Mumbai-based Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has become the first Indian company to launch an antiviral drug-Favipiravir under brand name FabiFlu, to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 patients. The drug will be sold at retail chemist outlets as well as hospitals across India after the company secured drug regulator Drug Controller General of India's (DCGI) approval to manufacture and market Favipiravir in India. The drug is priced at Rs 103 per tablet Rs 3,500 for a pack of 34 tablets.

Also read: Glenmark's FabiFlu approved for COVID-19 treatment in India; priced at Rs 103 a tablet

After FabiFlu, drug regulator approves Covifor for COVID-19 treatment

Hyderabad-based Hetero Labs announced on Sunday that it had received regulatory approval from DCGI to manufacture and market the generic version of antiviral drug Remedesivir for treating COVID-19 patients. Hetero's generic version of Remdesivir will be marketed under the brand name 'Covifor' in India. The drug will be available in a 100 mg vial (injectable) which has to be administered intravenously in a hospital setting under the supervision of a healthcare practitioner, the company said in a statement.
United States' national space agency NASA has released mesmerising pictures depicting two nearby young planetary nebulae, NGC 6302 and NGC 7027 captured by its Hubble Space Telescope.

According to scientists, they are among the dustiest planetary nebulae and contain unusually large masses of gas. The nebulae, NGC 7027 and NGC 6302 (nicknamed the Butterfly Nebula of its wing-like appearance) began with dying stars. Scientists believe that their deaths were wild and fierce as the star is wracked with giant tremors, tossing tremendous measures of heavenly material out into the encompassing space.

READ: NASA's Hubble Telescope Captures Stunning Image Of Swirling Galaxy

READ: NASA Scientist Answers How Hubble Is Still Revolutionizing Modern Astronomy

At the end of their lives, Sun-like stars shed layers of hot gas. To investigate how these ethereal clouds develop, Hubble took new, colorful images of two nearby planetary nebulae, including this picture of the Butterfly Nebula. 



Read & see more: https://t.co/OCnWcn8ZQs pic.twitter.com/t3poCnYhhI  Hubble (@NASAHubble) June 18, 2020

Unprecedented levels of gas bubbles

The researchers have found unprecedented levels of complexity and rapid changes in jets and gas bubbles blasting off the stars at the centers of both nebulas. Hubble is proving helpful for researchers to converge on an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the cosmic chaos.

According to NASA, "The nebula NGC 7027 shows emission at an incredibly large number of different wavelengths, each of which highlights not only a specific chemical element in the nebula but also the significant, ongoing changes in its structure".

Scientists suspect that at the centre of both nebulas are  or were  two stars circling around each other, like a pair of figure skaters.

READ: NASA's Hubble Telescope Captures Rare Comet Disintegration As It Bursts Into Pieces

READ: Hubble Telescope Celebrates 30 Years With Portrait Of A Firestorm In A Neighbouring Galaxy

Image: @esa/Twitter
C oronavirus rules, which have been in place from June 8, require people entering the UK to quarantine at a single address for two weeks.

However, while these rules apply to most people entering the country, some travellers are exempt from the new regulations.

Some essential workers and people passing through the UK for other necessary business are not required to self-isolate for 14 days.

Here, we take a look at the quarantine rules and who they do not apply to.

What are the UKs quarantine rules?

Passengers arriving in the UK  including British nationals  will have to remain at the same address for 14 days. The laws have been published for England  and rules for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to follow.

People entering the UK will be told to fill out an online form on the UK governments website 48 hours before travelling to the country. They will need to provide contact information, details of travel, and the address where they intend to quarantine upon arrival.

People who do not fill out the form in advance will be given facilities at the border if they have been unable to do so. However, if they do not then fill out the form upon arrival, this will constitute an offence, and they could be fined.

Travellers have been urged to use cars or private transport from the airport upon entering the UK. If they have to take public transport, they are urged to take the most direct route possible to the place where they will self-isolate.

People can quarantine in their own or someone elses home, or in a hotel, hostel, bed and breakfast, or other suitable accommodation.

They can provide more than one address if they have a legal or otherwise necessary obligation to change addresses. Checks at ports and airports, as well as spot checks around the country, can be carried out to ensure that people are complying with the rules. Public health authorities, using private contractors, will phone people and question them over whether they are self-isolating.

UK travellers will also need to quarantine for 14 days when they enter some foreign countries.

Who is exempt from the UKs quarantine rules?

A number of people do not have to self-isolate upon arrival in the UK. Those exempt include the following:
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Environmental racism, environmental justice, and environmental litigation are overlapping concepts rooted in the disproportionate burden of toxic pollution borne by low-income, heavily-minority communities.

Industry has a record of targeting these communities for waste disposal and other harmful practices because the people who live there have historically lacked the resources to fight back. However, beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they did begin to fight back against corporate polluters using activism as well as litigation.

Origins of the Environmental Justice Movement

Two major eventsa Texas civil rights case and protests in North Carolinachanged the course of the environmental justice movement.

In 1979, African American homeowners in Houston, Texas filed a lawsuit against the City of Houston and Browning Ferris Industries to keep a garbage dump out of their neighborhood. The lawsuit claimed that the decision to issue a permit for the waste facility constituted racial discrimination against the neighborhood's mostly African American residents, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It noted that Houston's African American neighborhoods were often chosen for waste sites, even though blacks at the time made up less than one-quarter of the city's population.

While the court sided with the defendants, the lawsuit was nonetheless groundbreaking, since it inspired the legal piece to the environmental justice movement.

Around the same time as the Houston case, in 1982, residents of Warren, North Carolina took to the streets to protest the placement of a toxic waste facility in their community. The state of North Carolina chose Warren, a small, predominately African American community, to host a landfill that would accept soil contaminated with PCB, a cancer-causing chemical. The protests, which lasted weeks and resulted in more than 500 arrests, did not prevent the disposal facility from being built, but it galvanized the environmental justice movement.

Continue reading

Brooke Grossman, is an environmental Intern at SPG Law Firm. In her blog, titled "Environmental Litigation: A Tool in the Fight Against Environmental Racism", Brooke explains in detail how the litigation landscape is changing. As well as she explains how despite increased awareness of environmental justice issues today, the situation on the ground has not changed considerably.

Media Inquiries: Angel Persaud, Director of Marketing, [email protected] or (646) 906-9205

SOURCE Sanders Phillips Grossman, LLC

Related Links

http://spglawfirm.com


The emeritus leaders of the holy city say the pandemic "diverted attention" from questions of justice and peace to "life and death". But the problems of the past remain unsolved. Fears for the future of Palestinian Christians forced to flee abroad. The path to coexistence in international law and resolutions.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - The Covid-19 pandemic has "diverted attention" from the issues of "justice and peace" to the problems of "life and death" and "we too share this global affliction" and "we ask God for mercy ".

However, "we are worried about the old evils that afflict our land", including the centenaries old dispute "between two peoples in one land", write three emeritus leaders of the Churches of Jerusalem in an appeal sent to AsiaNews.

They do not hide their fears "for suffering and injustice" and appeal to world leaders to "act to help" the reconciliation process.

In a joint letter, the emeritus patriarch of Jerusalem Michael Sabbah, the Anglican bishop emeritus Riah Abu El Assal and the Lutheran emeritus bishop Munib A. Younan recall the appeals recently launched by the current heads of the Churches of the holy city. They ask for answers "to our univocal appeal from the Holy Land" so that "holiness, by applying international law and recognizing the basic rights of all its citizens" will be restored as a whole.

The new executive, the result of an agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz, aims to move ahead with the annexation of territories and the regularization of the colonies.

The Supreme Court rejected the project which was branded as "21st century Apartheid" by UN experts. It worries the Christian leaders of the Holy Land, who speak of "serious and catastrophic" politics, with the approval of the USA in the context of the controversial "Agreement of the century".

The fear of Christian leaders is directed "towards the future of Palestinian Christians" who do not see "hope of justice on the horizon" and are subject to constant "pressure" to flee abroad. This is why it is "time to act" to "extinguish the destructive fires raging in the Holy Land. And it is well known that "only a just peace will put end to hatred, to oppression, and the suffering of so many in the land made holy by God".

For emeritus leaders, the holy city "is the key to this peace", not only between Israelis and Palestinians but also among Christians, Jews and Muslims. Today it is not "a city of peace, but of struggles and conflicts". It must become the place of "reconciliation, justice and equality" because a peace here will be transformed "into peace for the whole world". Israel, they continue, must "ease tension and comply with United Nations resolutions", because "occupation and colonization of Palestine is the root cause of the on-going conflict. ".

The solution to the long-standing controversy has "already been identified many years ago" and is contained in the "numerous UN resolutions". The majority of nations "already recognize both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine: our invocation is simple - conclude Christian leaders - apply what is recognized" internationally and "help Israel to have its security and Palestine their independence ", so that both" can live side by side in peace, justice, equality and democracy. No more hatred, no more death, only justice, equality, life.
Bell High School senior Kenia Molina in front of her school, closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in Bell, Calif., on April 15, 2020. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Budget a Big Concern in Reopening California Schools

SANTA CLARA, Calif.As schools prepare to reopen in September, they face not only the challenge of doing so safely amid concerns about COVID-19. They must also do so on a tighter budget.

The California School Boards Association (CSBA) hosted a webinar on June 16 to discuss its guidelines on reopening schools. Vernon Billy, CEO and executive director of CSBA, said during the meeting, Additional staff, additional teachers,  screening equipment, potentially additional buses, additional sanitization stationsall  will have to be implemented in the next few weeks to months.

Governor Gavin Newsoms May Revision budget proposal included major cuts to education, as the state faces a budget gap of $54 billion brought on by the pandemic. The CSBA has said schools simply will not be able to afford to implement the recommended public health guidance at the start of the 202021 academic year.

A proposed cut of 10 percent, or $6.5 billion, to the main K-12 funding formula for the coming school year means about $1,200 less per student, staff layoffs, and 20 percent larger class sizes, according to a coalition of education associations.

The governor has directed $4.4 billion in federal aid to schools, but CSBA and a panel of experts at the June 16 webinar said more money will be needed. We are continuing to push  for increasing the education funding, said Erika Hoffman, CSBA Legislative Advocate. Schools need that assistance.

Schools were deeply underfunded before COVID started, said Cherise Khaund, School Board Member at Mt. Diablo Unified School District. Parents were begging us not to cut music, sports, counselors, librarians, and nurses.

Guidelines for Reopening

The CSBA released a 20-page report on June 9 with its guidelines to reopening schools. It says theres no clear cut solution, but it provides a general framework for district and county boards to make decisions under the current funding.

CSBA reported that almost 80 percent of local education agencies are looking at a hybrid approach to reopeningneither fully reopening, nor maintaining full-force distance learning, but rather some combination of the two.

Kindergarten student Meg Kramer does schoolwork at her home in San Anselmo, Calif., on March 18, 2020. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

The report recommended school districts survey families and staff to identify their needs and preferences for the upcoming school year, and to find out the number of families that need options for distance learning or which teachers would return to campuses.

It recommends additional mental health support.

It suggests local education agencies look at scheduling classes to limit the number of students and staff on campus at any given time. Schools, however, are not designed for the degree of physical distancing recommended by public health officials, stated in the CSBA report.

An aerial view of the schoolyard at Frank McCoppin Elementary School in San Francisco, Calif., on March 18, 2020. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The California Department of Public Health announced that it will distribute medical supplies to schools and childcare centers, including 47,000 no-touch thermometers, 2.4 million face shields, 14 million cloth face coverings, 16 million disposable masks, 123,000 N95 masks, and 143,000 gallons of hand sanitizer.
"The Taliban carried out 422 attacks in 32 (of the 34) provinces, killing 291 ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) members and wounding 550 others," National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson Javid Faisal told Efe news.

Kabul, June 22 (IANS) At least 291 Afghan soldiers were killed and 550 injured in various Taliban attacks last week, marking the highest number of casualties suffered by the security forces in a week since the country's 2001 US invasion, the government said on Monday.

"For this reason, the past week was the deadliest one in 19 years in terms of violence," the NSC office said in a separate statement.

During the last week, 42 civilians were also killed and over 100 others injured.

The spurt in weekly casualties among the security forces comes at a time when the government and the Taliban were preparing to kick-start the intra-Afghan talks, along the lines of a peace agreement between the militantss and the US.

This will mark the beginning of an end to the 19-year war in Afghanistan.

As per the US-Taliban agreement signed on February 29 in Doha, Washington would pull troops out of Afghanistan by mid-2021 in exchange for security guarantees from the Taliban.

However, the process was delayed after the Taliban decided to boycott the negotiations for a prisoner swap with the government, a precondition for starting the intra-Afghan talks.

The exchange of 5,000 Taliban prisoners for 1,000 of those from the security forces, originally set to commence on March 10, was offset by a dramatic spike in violence and disagreements between the Afghan government and the insurgents.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has claimed that the casualty figures by the government were exaggerated, describing these reports as attempts to undermine the peace process.

"They are increasing the (number of casualties from) 50 to 500 to create obstacles. These many attacks were not carried out in the past week, as claimed by the enemy," Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Efe news.

Mujahid admitted there had been incidents of violence, but described them as "defensive responds" to attacks by the security forces.

Despite a lack of agreement on the prisoner swap process, which has served as the main impediment to the talks, the government has so far released around 3,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for around 500 of its prisoners being freed from Taliban jails, while negotiations continue.

--IANS

ksk/
The worsening diplomatic rift between Beijing and Canberra has prompted Chinese property buyers to look elsewhere, data from an international industry firm has revealed.

The latest figures from Juwai IQI showed that Chinese enquiries for Australian homes plunged by more than 65% from April to May, the lowest in almost three years. This comes after enquiries surged at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, with many Chinese buyers drawn by the countrys handling of the crisis.

The drop coincided with Canberras push for an investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus  a move strongly opposed by Beijing. The virus was first detected in China late last year.

Experts believe that a prolonged dip Chinese interest will adversely impact Australias property sector, which has been among the countrys strongest industries in recent years.

Last year, foreign real estate investment from Mainland China generated $1.6bn, mostly coming from residential and commercial construction, and home auctions.

If the situation doesn't escalate further things will stabilise, said Georg Chmiel, executive chairman of Juwai IQI, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. So long as it isn't prolonged, as long as it isn't systemic.

Juwai IQIs latest data showed that Mainland China has slid below the US and Canada as the top international investors in Australias property market.

Experts are worried that the rising tensions will potentially have a negative effect in Australias slowing housing market.

Already, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has expressed concern about the outlook for dwelling investment, with housing and construction activities slowing, and rents falling.
Minister for Chieftaincy Affairs Kofi Dzamesi

22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Asafoatsemei of Osu has bemoaned the lackadaisical approach of the Ministry of Chieftaincy in resolving their long standing Stool dispute.

In a press statement signed by the Asafoatsemei and released to the press, it indicated that the people of Osu especially the youth being good citizens and believing in the rule of law have had to exercise a lot of restrains over the years which appears not be yielding any dividends with respect to the Ministrys approach to resolution.

They are by this statement cautioning the Minister to sit up and do the needful before mayhem is sparked in Osu.

Below is the full text of their statement

The Osu Traditional Area has not known peace and has not had an easy time of it since the

forced and unwarranted imposition of a usurping OSU Mantse on Osu by some known politicians and their operatives in 2009.

We, the Asafoatsemei of OSU, have exercised patience for years on the advice of the Osu Dzaase, the kingmakers, as they continue negotiations towards resolving the issue with the statutory chieftaincy institutions empowered to resolve such disputes. Till date, our patience has not been rewarded with a peaceful resolution, but seems to have rather emboldened someunscrupulous characters.

We the Asafoatsemei from the four quarters of Osu congregated and reached a unanimousdecision, to by this release, charge the government and give the relevant statutory institutions an ultimatum to resolve this troubling impasse in Osu. The detrimental nature of the situation has necessitated this action.

Osu which also hosts the seat of government has suffered under the previous administration and the same is happening under this very government. The fraudulent imposition of Kinka Dowuona on the people of Osu is creating hardships that no person can justly be asked to bear.

We the OSU Asafoatsemei represent the interest of the people of Osu, both the elderly and youthful, and we are aware of the massive suffering of our people because we live among them and bear witness to the harrowing nature of the situation.

We have been denied and have been robbed of our inheritance, and we have been left to our fate to suffer for no wrong doing of ours. Our elderly cannot afford healthcare, utilities, food etc.

The young are left wallowing in poverty with no education, skills training, nor job opportunities to earn an income to care for themselves and their families. Osu has not benefited from a facelift since this usurper came into the picture. Infact, in terms of development, we have retrogressed.

A situation like this lends itself to breeding social vices including drug abuse, prostitition and other immoral acts. The lives of our youth are in danger as they lose their prime and energetic years through no fault of theirs, but by virtue of a bad and corrupted traditional leadership.

We are by this publication calling on the MINISTER OF CHIEFTAINCY TO COME CLEAN ON THE OSU CHIEFTAINCY MATTER, we are aware of his relationship with kinka Dowuona the usurping OSU Mantse who has also fraudulently obtained presidency of the Greater Accra Regional house of Chiefs.

We are also calling on the respectable Chiefs at the National House of Chiefs to institute an investigation into how Kinka Dowuona's gazette was acquired. These actions will go a long way to alleviate the suffering of the people of Osu, and put these eminent chiefs on the right side of history.

We have come to the cross roads, we have had enough, and we shall act by redeeming, protecting and giving life back to our people. Our frustration has burst its banks and we can no longer sit idly by whilst our people pay for the selfish acts of a few persons.

Today we implore you peacefully. We think it ill advised to ignore us as every peaceful demonstration has its limits. This bears witness to the whole world that we are for a peaceful resolution but were ignored by the powers that be. We urge you to stand with the people on the right side of history so that posterity may be kind to your legacy.

Signed by the Asafoatsemei of OSU

NAMES:

Asafoatse Nii Tempong Sapeh III, Asafoatse Nii Dzahene III from OSU

Kinkawe

Asafoatse Nii Walaketakaa IV, Nii Shippi Dudor V, from OSU Ashante

Nii Shippi Abremse III from Osu Anorhor and OSU Alata Asafoatse
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 21:12:40|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

KIEV, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A total of 37,241 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 1,012 deaths have been reported in Ukraine, including an increase of 681 new infections, according to the health ministry on Monday.

As of Monday, 16,642 patients have recovered from the coronavirus disease, the ministry said.

It said that 2,735 children and 6,046 health workers have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Since June 11, Ukraine has registered an alarming rise in new COVID-19 cases, which the health ministry has blamed on the easing of protective measures by members of the public.

The Ukrainian government has extended quarantine measures until July 31. Enditem
A reward has been put up for information in helping to catch an on-the-run convicted murderer who has been unlawfully at large for the past year and a half.

Police are appealing for information to establish the whereabouts of 56-year-old Thomas McCabe.

McCabe, originally from Northern Ireland, was sentenced to life for the 1990 murder of a teenager in London and later released on licence.

Police have made a number of appeals for help over the past year.

Detective Constable Julie McVeagh said: McCabe, who was sentenced to life for murder, was released from prison on licence, however following a number of breaches his licence was revoked in January 2018.

"Since then we have conducted a number of detailed enquiries to establish McCabes whereabouts but unfortunately at this time he remains at large.

He is described as around 5' 8" tall, of medium build with short grey coloured hair. We believe he has connections to Newry, Newtownabbey and Dublin.

"I would appeal to anyone who has seen Thomas McCabe, or who knows of his whereabouts to contact detectives at Musgrave Police Station on 101.

I would also appeal directly to Thomas to hand himself in."

McCabe was convicted of murdering teenager Richard Hunt, whom he beat to death with a scaffold pole in London in 1990.

He had come home around 10.30pm in a drunken state to find Hunt there with his girlfriend. However, the victim was his girlfriend's cousin and had only been around to help out with decorating.

Sentenced in England, he was later transferred to Northern Ireland to serve out his jail term.

McCabe has absconded several times previously and been repeatedly suspended from a pre-release programme over concerns about his inability to comply with conditions and fears he would commit further violent offences.

Information on his whereabouts can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers. It is offering a reward of up to 5,000 for information the charity receives that leads to McCabes arrest.

A spokesperson at Crimestoppers said: Our charity is appealing to anybody with information on Mr McCabes location to do the right thing and to tell us what you know, 100% anonymously. What you tell us can make all of the difference.

It is important to remind people that assisting somebody wanted for questioning over a crime can lead to prosecution. Crimestoppers has been taking crime information since our charity was formed over 32 years ago. We have always kept our promise of anonymity to the millions of people who have trusted us and every day over a thousand people contact us online and on the phone.

You can speak to us anonymously by calling our UK Contact Centre which is open 24/7 on freephone 0800 555 111 or you can use our simple and secure anonymous online form at www.crimestoppers-uk.org. Nobody will know you contacted us, only you and you can be eligible for a reward.
Regan Russell knew that there were risks involved in her activism.

The night before she died, she consulted with husband Mark Powell and her family whether to join the planned protest at Fearmans Pork slaughterhouse in Burlington in response to the passing of Bill 156.

There was discussion about if it was time for the longtime animal rights activist to pass the torch, amid the increasing legal and safety risks, but the 65-year-old was determined to go.

So she came on Friday, Powell said, addressing the crowd of more than 70 supporters and activists  including Russells elderly father and mother  who had gathered on Sunday morning outside Fearmans to honour her life.

That Friday morning, Russell was struck and killed by a transport truck that was hauling pigs through the gates of the pork meat processing facility.

There wasnt time for her to do it. But now we have thousands, said Powell, of the next generation of people that will carry the torch and continue her fight.

Powell told InsideHalton that Russell, who stood up for human rights just as much as animal rights, died in that moment fighting for what she believed in.

And we just take comfort in that, he said  however hard it is.

BILL 156

The provinces Bill 156, also known as the Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, was passed on June 17.

The Legislative Assembly of Ontarios website states that the legislation is intended to protect farm animals, the food supply, farmers and others from risks that are created when trespassers enter places where farm animals are kept or when persons engage in unauthorized interactions with farm animals.

Anita Krajnc, co-founder of the Toronto Pig Save group, said the bill tries to criminalize compassion.

It would create an animal protection zone around trucks. You cant come near them and interfere with the pigs and touch them and give them water. We would call them not animal protection zones, but animal profiteering zones or animal persecution zones," she said.

In light of the tragic incident, Krajnc said, she would amplify Russells voice and form a coalition with other organizations to try and repeal the legislation.

SAFE PROTEST

According to Powell, Russell did what she could about being safe during the protest.

There was an arrangement that the drivers would stop and allow for two minutes for the watering of pigs and recognition, and then the drivers would proceed, he said.

In the past, some activists have seen drivers getting a little aggressive when pulling away, he added.

For Krajnc, the truck drivers are a small part of the story.

Its a system problem as well, she said, adding that the group has been pushing the slaughterhouse to negotiate a safety agreement so they can safely protest.

In a previous statement, Fearmans offered its condolences.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the individual and her family. This is a tragedy, and we extend our sincere condolences to them, said Daniele Dufour, senior director of communications at Sofina Foods Inc.

The statement also read that the company is "fully co-operating with the investigation."

On what transpired in the final moments of his wifes life, Powell said hed leave it to the professionals to determine what happened.

Something happened. Well find out what happened, he said.

I just hope everybody respects what she stood for. And we can see here today that she's not alone, and let's continue to not leave her alone. Let's protect what she stood for.

 With files from David Lea.

Read more about:
EU accuses China of disinformation over the pandemic but the two are also at odds over Hong Kong and an investment pact.

The European Union and China will seek to cool tensions on Monday at a video summit, their first formal talks since ties soured over European accusations that Beijing had spread disinformation about the novel coronavirus.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel  the EUs chief executive and chairman  will hold video conferences with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping.

We are ready to work with China. But we also expect China to assume its responsibilities as one of the worlds largest economies, said a senior official helping prepare the summit. The pandemic has heightened some (EU) concerns.

No joint statement is expected after the summit, scheduled to start at 08:00 GMT.

EU officials say China has sought to pressure EU countries that criticise its handling of the novel coronavirus, using social media to spread fake reports of European neglect of COVID-19 patients. Beijing has denied wrongdoing.

Differences

Even before the pandemic, the two trading partners had differences, including over Hong Kong and an investment pact that is being negotiated.





The EU has also faced pressure from the United States to take a tougher stance on China. The bloc is caught between the two powers  needing both and reluctant to alienate either.

EU governments have expressed grave concern over Chinas security law for Hong Kong, which democracy activists, diplomats and some businesses say will jeopardise its semi-autonomous status and role as a global financial hub.

Chinas parliament reacted angrily on Saturday to a resolution by the EU assembly condemning the security law.

The EU and China are signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, and Brussels is eager to ensure cooperation with Beijing on climate policy, but the EU accuses China of failing to open up its economy despite a 2019 agreement to do so.

Germany has postponed an EU leaders summit with Xi in September, citing the coronavirus, although diplomats said it was in part because of the impasse in investment negotiations.
This is not idle worry. We came close to blundering into nuclear war several times during the Cold War. False alarms, in particular, are a real and growing concern. Dr. Perry experienced a false alarm 40 years ago, on June 3, 1980, when a faulty 46-cent computer chip indicated the launch of hundreds of missiles from the Soviet Union, but luckily that malfunction was caught in time. Today false alarms are even more likely because our weapons and warning systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks like the one the United States conducted against Irans uranium enrichment program in 2009. If the president launches nuclear weapons in response to a false alarm, he would start World War III  by mistake.

Luckily, we dont need to take such risks.

The whole concept of sole authority is built on the false assumption that Russia might launch a surprise first strike. The Cold War ended 30 years ago, and we now know that Russia never seriously considered a first strike against the United States, for the same reason that we never seriously considered a first strike against Russia: it would be national suicide. Both sides have to assume that an attack would provoke an unacceptable nuclear retaliation. Both nations, and much of the rest of the globe, would be obliterated. Starting such a war would be insanity.

With this harrowing reality in mind, President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Unions leader as general secretary of the Communist Party, declared in 1985 that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. They were right.

By focusing on an unlikely surprise attack, we are making it more likely that we will blunder into Armageddon. In a crisis situation, the last thing we should want is for the president to feel under pressure to make a quick decision. Maintaining an effective deterrent does not require us to rush into a nuclear war; rather, we need to increase the decision time from minutes to hours.

Heres how:

First: the president should not have sole authority for first use but should share that decision with a select group in Congress. There is no need to make this decision quickly.

Second: The United States should declare that it will never start a nuclear war, and would only use the bomb in retaliation.

Third: The United States should retire land-based ballistic missiles that could force a president into a quick use-them-or-lose-them decision. These missiles are not needed for deterrence, which is ensured by survivable submarine-based weapons.

Seventy-five years ago, President Truman gave himself exclusive power over nuclear war. Every president since has clung to it. It was bad policy then; it is inexcusable now. We no longer need to take these risks, and we can safely back away from the brink. It is time to retire the nuclear button. No one should have the unchecked power to destroy the world.

William J. Perry served as secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and Tom Z. Collina is director of policy at Ploughshares Fund. They are the co-authors of the forthcoming book The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - China will on Monday release June numbers for prime loan rates for one and five years, highlighting a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In May, the rate was3.85 percent for one-year and 4.65 percent for five-year. The Philippines will see Q2 results for its consumer confidence survey; in the previous three months, the index score was 1.26. Taiwan will provide unemployment figures for May; in April, the jobless rate was 4.1 percent. Hong Kong will release Q1 figures for current account; in the three months prior, the current account surplus was HKD42.79 billion and the financial account showed a deficit of HKD71.51 billion. 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 Muslim convert who became the UK's first woman to plot a suicide bomb attack told an undercover officer she wanted to 'blow St Paul's Cathedral to the ground' and 'shoot' visitors, a court has heard.

Safiyya Amira Shaikh, a 37-year-old mother from Hayes in West London, said wanted to 'destroy' the historic monument and planned to use her daughter's non-Islamic clothes to avoid detection in an attack that was set to take place last Christmas.

But her plans were thwarted when she confided in an associate on a secret messaging app, unaware that he was working undercover.

Safiyya Shaikh's sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey is underway. The mother from Hayes previously admitted to preparation of terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications on Telegram.

Shaikh, who had to ask an undercover officer the date of the September 11 terror attacks, planned to attack St Paul's Cathedral last Christmas

Shaikh, pictured in a traditional hijab, is thought to be Britain's first solo female Isis bomb plotter

Shaikh, who was born Michelle Ramsden before converting to Islam in 2007, pleaded guilty to preparation of terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications on Telegram.

During a sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey on Monday, prosecutor Alison Morgan QC described Shaikh, appearing in the dock wearing a black hijab, as 'a violent extremist who pledged her support for Islamic State'.

Ms Morgan said: 'She engaged with others, who she believed to be of a similar mindset, to instigate and plan a terrorist attack involving the use of improvised explosives to attack St Paul's Cathedral and a hotel nearby.

Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 37, was born Michelle Ramsden and converted to Islam in 2007. A court has heard how she grew disillusioned by what she saw as the mosques' moderate version of Islam

'In furtherance of her attack plan, she visited the cathedral to assess its security arrangement and the best place to detonate a bomb.

'She stated that her intention was to kill herself and as many other people as possible.'

The court heard that Shaikh travelled to central London on September 7, 2019, ready to attend morning prayers at St Paul's the next day in order to scope out security protocol and work out how to carry out her plan, with the ultimate aim of achieving martyrdom.

The court heard she confessed online: 'I would like bomb (sic) and shoot til death.

Shaikh said she wanted to target St Paul's Cathedral and 'run and kill kuffar (non-Muslims) everywhere I see them until am shot down'

'But if that not possible I do other way. Belt or anything. I just want a lot to die. InshaAllah.'

How Shaikh was snared by undercover officers Safiyya Amira Shaikh was snared by undercover officers last year as she planned to plant two explosive devices in central London. In encrypted chat with an undercover officer last August, she said that she would 'rather die young and get to Jannah (paradise) quickest way possible'. She also stated: 'I always knows (sic) I wanted to do something big....killing one kafir (infidel) is not enough for me.' Shaikh expressed a desire to target a church or somewhere 'historical' on a day like Christmas or Easter to 'kill more', according to the case summary. In September last year, she revealed her plan to stay in a hotel near St Paul's then check out the cathedral and 'take photos like a tourist'. On September 24 last year, she met the fake explosive expert's wife in Uxbridge to hand over her bags. Then on October 13, the female undercover officer cancelled a second meeting and police forced their way into Shaikh's flat to arrest her. Advertisement

She said the plot was the 'best opportunity of my life', and described to the undercover officer how she could borrow her daughter's non-Islamic clothes in an effort to avoid suspicion.

Shaikh said there was little attention from security during her reconnaissance visit, which lasted around an hour, telling the undercover officer: 'This most famous church to King and Queen. All there (sic) weddings been there hundreds of years.

'I really thought it would not be possible. But it easy.'

She added: 'I want do something in hotel and church. Than (sic) run and kill kuffar (non-Muslims) everywhere I see them until am shot down.

'Is this possible. And to get weapons.

'If I had choice I blow the church to ground. With kuffar in it.'

The court heard that Shaikh - who would go on to ask the undercover officer the date of the September 11 terror attacks - had converted to Islam in 2007 after being impressed by the kindness of a local Muslim family.

But she became increasingly disillusioned by what she saw as the mosques' moderate version of Islam.

The attack was initially intended to be carried out at Christmas that year, but was then put off until Easter to give her time to 'sort everything'.

On September 24 last year, she met the associate's wife - also an undercover officer - in Uxbridge to hand over her bags, believing they could be fashioned into explosives.

Then, on October 13, the female undercover officer cancelled a second meeting and police forced their way into Shaikh's flat to arrest her.

In police interview, the defendant, who claimed benefits, admitted posting extremist material and the plot, although she said she may not have gone through with it.

The sentencing hearing continues.
[June 22, 2020] Toshiba Nominates Highly-Qualified Slate of Directors, Issues Public Shareholder Letter

Toshiba (News - Alert) Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced that it has nominated 11 of its current Directors for reelection to the Board of Directors at the Company's Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders for the 181st Fiscal Period, to be held on July 31, 2020. The Company also announced that it has nominated Osamu Nagayama for Chairperson of the Board of Directors, to succeed current Chairperson Yoshimitsu Kobayashi, who is retiring after serving for Toshiba as an independent outside director since 2015 and with distinction as Chairperson of the Board since 2017. Mr. Nagayama is the Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and the Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Corporation. Toshiba is committed to maximizing shareholder value through the continued execution of the Toshiba Next Plan (TNP), its five-year company-wide transformation plan announced on November 8, 2018. As part of this commitment, the Company took decisive actions in 2019 to significantly refresh the Board - replacing seven directors - following active and constructive engagement with a number of its largest shareholders. With the support of shareholders and in response to their input, the Company increased its independent directors to ten, from seven, and added four non-Japanese directors, the first non-Japanese representatives to sit on Toshiba's Board in almost 80 years. With a strong majority of independent directors, a three-committee system, all comprised of outside directors, and diversity of experience and skill set, the Toshiba Board is now a corporate governance leader in diversity and structure, and the Company and its shareholders are benefitting from the new and constructive perspectives. Toshiba's Directors bring diversity of gender, nationality and expertise, which includes experience in international business, business portfolio management, corporate restructuring, M&A, capital markets, capital allocation, accounting and auditing, and legal affairs / compliance. The Company firmly believes that its recently reconstituted Board is the right one to provide independent oversight of the next phases of the TNP and deliver sustainable long-term growth and value to all shareholders. "As we enter the second phase of our TNP, our Board and management team remain sharply focused on driving sustainable long-term growth and value for all shareholders and positioning Toshiba for future success," said Yoshimitsu Kobayashi, Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Toshiba. "We have made significant progress on TNP, including implementing more aggressive capital allocation policies and restructuring our portfolio of businesses and strategic shareholdings, but of course we cannot complete the Plan overnight. Our comprehensive set of reforms and growth investments are multi-year initiatives that we believe will build enduring shareholder value. And importantly, we are aligned with our shareholders in executing on our mission. "This year, we renew our commitment to ensuring our Board is comprised of highly-engaged Directors with the right mix of skills, experiece and new perspectives. We are pleased that Mr. Nagayama has agreed to be the Company's nominee for Chairperson of the Board, and believe his unparalleled global experience and proven track record of delivering growth at Chugai Pharmaceutical and Sony will be invaluable as we continue to position Toshiba for long-term success. Mr. Nagayama will join a Board of Directors that we believe represents the best interests of our shareholders and all of our stakeholders, and is uniquely qualified to continue to provide independent oversight to management as we build upon the achievements from the past year."



Nobuaki Kurumatani, President & CEO of Toshiba said, "Mr. Kobayashi's strong leadership as Toshiba's Chairperson of the Board is reflected in the solid progress of our TNP and decisive actions we are taking to transform the Company. He has played an important role in setting our path forward and we are deeply appreciative for his tireless commitment and dedicated service to Toshiba and our shareholders." Toshiba today also announced updates to its shareholder return policy. The Company intends to maintain an average consolidated dividend payout ratio of at least 30%, and to use excess shareholders' equity to fund shareholder returns, including through share repurchases. The Board of Directors will review the appropriate level of capital on a regular basis. Once the external environment stabilizes, enabling capital markets and the global pandemic to be more predictable in the Fall, the Company expects to be in a position to undertake more proactive portfolio streamlining and divestitures, including the assessment of highly accretive M&A opportunities, to continuously improve capital allocation in order to further enhance shareholder returns and the long-term value of Toshiba. Toshiba also continues to review options to maximize shareholder value by monetizing its 40.2% stake in KIOXIA, Toshiba's spun-off memory chip business, and in principle, intends to return the majority portion of the net proceeds to shareholders.

The Company's full slate of 12 Director candidates is as follows: New Director Candidate Osamu Nagayama, Candidate for Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Toshiba Corporation; Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.; Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Corporation Incumbent Director Candidates Satoshi Tsunakawa , Director, Chairman of Toshiba Corporation

, Director, Chairman of Toshiba Corporation Nobuaki Kurumatani , Director, Representative Executive Officer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Toshiba Corporation

, Director, Representative Executive Officer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Toshiba Corporation Yuki Furuta , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; registered attorney at law; and former Justice of Supreme Court of Japan

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; registered attorney at law; and former Justice of Supreme Court of Japan Junji Ota , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; former Vice Chairman of Japan Securities Dealers Association; and former Chair (Public Governor) of Self-Regulation Board, Japan Securities Dealers Association, Outside Director of Heiwa Real Estate Co., Ltd.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; former Vice Chairman of Japan Securities Dealers Association; and former Chair (Public Governor) of Self-Regulation Board, Japan Securities Dealers Association, Outside Director of Heiwa Real Estate Co., Ltd. Nobuyuki Kobayashi , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Certified Public Accountant, Former Representative Partner and President of Crowe Toyo & Co., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eishin Partners Co., Ltd.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Certified Public Accountant, Former Representative Partner and President of Crowe Toyo & Co., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eishin Partners Co., Ltd. Takashi Yamauchi , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Audit and Supervisory Board Member of Mitsui & Co., Ltd.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Audit and Supervisory Board Member of Mitsui & Co., Ltd. Yoshiaki Fujimori , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Outside Director and Chairman of Oracle (News - Alert) Corporation Japan, Outside Director of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and Outside Director of Boston Scientific Corporation, former Senior Vice President of GE (U.S.), former President and Chief Executive Officer of LIXIL Group Corporation (formerly known as Juseikatsu Group Corporation)

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Outside Director and Chairman of Oracle (News - Alert) Corporation Japan, Outside Director of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and Outside Director of Boston Scientific Corporation, former Senior Vice President of GE (U.S.), former President and Chief Executive Officer of LIXIL Group Corporation (formerly known as Juseikatsu Group Corporation) Paul J. Brough , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Independent Non-Executive Director of GL Ltd. and Independent Non-Executive Director of Vitasoy International Holdings Ltd., former Executive Chairman of Noble Group Holdings Ltd.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Independent Non-Executive Director of GL Ltd. and Independent Non-Executive Director of Vitasoy International Holdings Ltd., former Executive Chairman of Noble Group Holdings Ltd. Ayako Hirota Weissman , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Senior Vice President, Director of Asia Strategy and Senior Portfolio Manager at Horizon Kinetics LLC (formerly known as Horizon Asset Management LLC), Independent Outside Director at SBI Holdings, Inc.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Senior Vice President, Director of Asia Strategy and Senior Portfolio Manager at Horizon Kinetics LLC (formerly known as Horizon Asset Management LLC), Independent Outside Director at SBI Holdings, Inc. Jerry Black , Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Advisor of Aeon Co., Ltd.

, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Advisor of Aeon Co., Ltd. George Raymond Zage III, Independent Director of Toshiba Corporation; Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tiga Investments Pte. Ltd. In connection with today's announcement, Toshiba issued a public shareholder letter with additional information on the Company's Director candidates, TNP's progress and its ongoing engagement with Toshiba shareholders. Toshiba shareholders are not required to take any action at this time. Toshiba will present its formal recommendation regarding Director nominees in the Company's Convocation Notice and related materials, which will be made available on the company's website at the beginning of July and sent to all shareholders eligible to vote at the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. The full text of Toshiba's public shareholder letter can be found here; https://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2020_06/pr2201.htm View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005283/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Wind power continued to grow in New Mexico, signifying the industrys potential in the state as more private companies began to shift to the renewable form of energy.

Pattern Energy announced on June 16 the acquisition of the Clines Corners wind power development project in Torrance and Guadalupe counties from Orion Renewable Energy Group in east-central New Mexico, that would support up to 1,000 megawatts of wind power on about 122,000 acres of private and state lands.

A megawatt is often estimated to produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes.

The southern portion of the development area, about 325 megawatts, was added to Patterns collection of wind projects known as the Western Spirit wind projects, comprising of more than 1,000 megawatts of wind energy to be built in New Mexico later this year.

That construction will occur alongside the Western Spirit Transmission line, which will transport electricity generated by turbines in the rural area of the development zone to urban markets in the Albuquerque metro area where it will be used.

The line was a joint venture between Pattern and the New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority.

The rest of the Clines Corners acquisition could add another 650 megawatts to Patterns wind power portfolio, connecting to the SunZia transmission line, made up of two 500 megawatts lines traveling from Arizona, west into New Mexico.

The move increased Patterns wind energy investment to more than 4,000 megawatts in New Mexico, read a news release, for a total investment of more than $8 billion.

Mike Garland, chief executive officer of Pattern Energy said the California-based renewable energy company was increasing its investments in New Mexico to harness the states potential in wind power, and help improve its energy economy.

Pattern Energy is expanding its commitment to New Mexico by increasing its investment in clean power, helping to build the state into a major renewable energy producer and benefiting New Mexico for generations, he said. As the leading wind company in New Mexico, we are proud to be helping position the state as a leader in wind energy.

Western Spirit Wind and the Western Spirit Transmission Line will bring more than a thousand construction jobs to New Mexico this year and billions of dollars in economic benefit.

In 2017, Pattern funded and built a transmission line for its 544 megawatt Wind facilities in Curry County in eastern New Mexico, and Garland said he hoped the Western Spirit project would replicate the past success, which saw a $1.6 billion economic benefit, the release read.

We are proud of the $1.6 billion in economic benefit we brought to New Mexico over the past three years with Broadview and Grady Wind, Garland said. The Broadview and Grady Wind projects were the largest in the states history at 544 MW and we expect to far surpass that with our new Western Spirit Wind projects.

On June 4, the New Mexico State Land Office approved five leases on State Trust Land for Western Spirit wind projects, with plans to build a 76 megawatt wind farm on 16,442 acres in Torrance and Lincoln counties.

Pattern paid the State Land Office $395,000 in up-front bids as a requirement of the public auction, and the Land Office estimated New Mexico public schools would gain about $16 million in revenue during the life of the project.

It could also help move the needle in New Mexicos efforts to curb 100 percent of its carbon emissions by 2045, as prescribed in the Energy Transition Act that was signed into law last year.

The recent oil crisis, brought on by a global oil price war and compounded by COVID-19, has only strengthened my dedication to helping New Mexico move away from our reliance on fossil fuels, New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said.

Our state wins, because we create high paying construction jobs, as well as long term jobs managing these siteswe win by making a dent in New Mexicos carbon emissions, furthering the states efforts to be carbon neutral by 2045.

In total, about nine active leases for wind projects exist on State Trust land, with a total capacity of 345 megawatts.

Another 19 lease applications were being processed, potentially generating another 1,835 megawatts of capacity.

Most leases are in the mountainous regions of central and eastern New Mexico, clustering in Torrance and Lincoln counties, but also spreading northeast into San Miguel, Harding and Union counties.

A recent study from the American Wind Energy Association touted the increasingly widespread use of wind energy among private companies, pointing to Facebooks use of more than 200 megawatts of local wind energy to power its facility in Los Lunas.

But New Mexicos increased wind power could also supply companies across the country, the study read, as major oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell Energy North American were listed in the top 25 purchasers of wind energy with about 250 megawatts purchased each in 2018.

As the pool of interested industries and companies continues to grow, New Mexico is well-positioned to capitalize on its abundant wind capacity and help supply some of the countrys top brands with the sustainable power supply they need for their business.

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

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Felicity Bryan, one of Britains most respected literary agents, died June 21 after a long struggle with cancer. She was 74. Tragically, she and her two sisters, who predeceased her, shared the BRCA gene. Yet while that was not discovered until the mid-1990s, theres a sense that her sense of mortality led Bryan to live her remarkable life in a rush, for literary agenting was her third career, begun at Curtis Brown when she was 27. She founded Felicity Bryan Associates (FBA) in 1988, when marriage and motherhood made the daily commute from Oxford burdensome.

In those days, few people struck out on their own, certainly not women. To do so outside London was risky, but Bryans goal was to become an international agent working from a local base. She made stars of many Oxford scholars, among them: Diarmaid MacCulloch, whose prize-winning A History of Christianity put him on the international map  thanks to the acclaimed BBC TV series that accompanied the book. Bryan, a networker par excellence, had dropped the historians proposal through the mailbox of then BBC director-general Mark Thompson, whose home she passed on the short drive to her office.

Bryan had studied art history at Londons Courtauld Institute, where her professors included Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the Queens Pictures, who was outed as a Soviet spy in 1979. She went on to work for The Burlington Magazine, the celebrated art monthly, finding it limiting. Ambition and wanderlust led her to Washington D.C., where she was the FTs bureau chief. She arrived amid the smoke and dust of the 1968 riots and stayed two years, returning to London to take up a post on The Economist. The invitation to join Curtis Brown came out of the blue. Agenting turned out to be the perfect job for someone of Bryans curiosity, irrepressible enthusiasm and talent for hatching ideas and matching them to the right author.

She inherited Rosamunde Pilcher, who followed Bryan to her own agency, transforming her from an author of quiet romances into a global superstar with The Shell Seekers, which dislodged the Bonfire of the Vanities from atop the charts when it was published by Tom McCormack at St Martins Press. That book, plus Karen Armstrongs A History of God, and An Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears, art historian and journalist-turned-novelist, cemented FBAs reputation and future. In 2001, Bryan lured Catherine Clarke from OUP.

With authors such as Michael Wood, A C Grayling and Meg Rosoff, Clarke helped expand the agency's reach. In 2010  the year of Edmund de Waals The Hare With Amber Eyes which sold in 29 languages  an arranged management buyout (Bryans husband relinquishing his shares) saw Clarke appointed managing director of the enlarged company. Bryan was thrilled: succession was assured, she could rest easy. Happily, the agencys last year was a good one, Peter Frankopans The Silk Roads alone selling some 1.5 million copies. A contract for a book of Pilcher short stories, which she tracked down from decades-old magazines, was the last Bryan signed, just 10 days ago.

Nothing held her back, said Clarke, paying tribute to Bryans extraordinary brain and knack for loyalty in the best possible sense, she never let an opportunity go to waste. She was frustrated to have to leave too early but she had put her house in order.

She is survived by her husband, economist Alex Duncan, and by her sons Maxim and Benjamin.
Victor Giadom has dismissed as laughable his suspension from the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the inauguration of Worgu Boms as the new deputy Deputy National Secretary of the party, saying he remains the partys interim national chairman.

Speaking with journalists at the partys national secretariat shortly after a protest by some people on Monday, Mr Giadom said the inauguration of Mr Bom breached the partys constitution.

That is laughable. Im sure you know that I was elected at the convention, and as I have told Nigerians, that level of impunity and rascality must be corrected.

You cannot smuggle someone into the National Working Committee without an election. Anybody who wants to be a member of the National Working Committee should present his or herself for a democratic election. You cannot just bring somebody from anywhere to fill any office in the National Working Committee, he said.

Mr Giadom took the centre stage in the drama at the NWC of the party when he declared himself the acting national chairman on Wednesday following the suspension of Adams Oshiomhole by the Court of Appeal.

Mr Giadom said his declaration was based on the judgement of an Abuja High Court in March.

The partys spokesperson, Lanre Issa-Onilu, had on Tuesday announced the appointment of the deputy national chairman (South), Abiola Ajimobi, as the interim chairman of the party after Mr Oshiomholes suspension.

Mr Giadom on Monday called for a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party as the panacea to the crisis ravaging the party.

There is no other way to solve the crisis than to call a NEC meeting. That has been my decision, he said.
A good friend of mine who fled the Soviet Union many years ago recently sent me a most chilling interview on You Tube. Under ten minutes long, it needs to be seen by every American who wonders why the country is unraveling before our very eyes. The interview features Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB spy and state media propagandist who defected to Canada in 1970. Bezmenov cogently explains how "ideological subversion" is an essential method used by communists to undermine and destabilize Western countries. His explanation crystallizes so much of what has happened in America in the last 40 years.

Basically there are four steps to ideological subversion or "changing the perspective of reality" -- in other words a mass brainwashing. The first step is known as demoralization and it takes 15-20 years -- the span of time needed to educate one generation by exposing them to the "ideology of the enemy." In America we have had

Marxist-Leninist ideology pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (patriotism).

And it makes not a whit of difference if these students are exposed to true information because "a person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information." Their minds are cemented. Total denial is in force. Does this not explain why statues are being destroyed and America is continually depicted as a racist country when, in fact, it is not?

In fact, it would take another few generations to change the "tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism."

The second step in ideological subversion is destabilization. This step can be accomplished in as little as five years and the focus is on "destabilizing sectors such as the economy, law enforcement, foreign relations, media, and defense systems."

This destabilization results in "antagonistic clashes" and we see this nightly on the news. Fake news is a constant. Leftist mayors and governors want to tax the people to death, police are to be defunded and the military has become the petri dish for social experimentation. During the Obama years, the military was basically decimated in terms of arms and critical materiel.

The third stage in the mass brainwashing is the crisis stage. In this stage, Bezmenov explains that after society is destabilized, it collapses into chaos, and inevitably the people will call for the government to step in to enforce stability. Either a foreign nation comes in, or the local group of leftists, Marxists et al. take over.

Consider that this is currently being played out in Seattle's autonomous zone known as CHOP. Ultimately, the crisis stage takes two forms: either civil war or invasion. It is not an accident that gun sales have risen ever since the riots and Black Lives Matters have become front and center.

The last step is normalization -- an ironic term, indeed as it means that any freedoms that Americans take for granted will be abolished. Thus, the subverting country finally seizes control of the target country with forceful military overthrow; the chaos is stabilized, and the situation "normalized" -- meaning now "there will be a promise of all kinds of goodies and paradise on earth to destabilize the economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a big brother government in Washington, D.C. with benevolent dictators who will promise lots of things. Never mind if the promises are fulfilled or not."

It is the play book of the Democrat Party who is now a radical Leftwing party as they sanctimoniously bow to their masters.

Concurrent with this ideological subversion is the fact that the U.S. media "is a willing recipient of Soviet subversion" whose aim is to tear down traditional Western society and its values.

Having worked with American journalists and correspondents in Moscow while on the Soviet side and after his defection to the West, Bezmenov is well versed in asserting that the media landscape in the United States is "monopolized both financially and ideologically by what are referred to as 'liberals.'" The media is at the forefront of promoting "non-issues." Non-issues involve "an issue, the solution of which creates more and bigger problems for the majority of a nation even though it may benefit only a few. In reality, the "main purpose of such non-issues is to 'side-track public opinion, energy (both mental and physical), money and time from the constructive solutions.'" Think transgender bathrooms, anyone?

Also, the American media discredits those who show clear-cut evidence of communist crimes against humankind. It is "one of the most devastating" methods of Soviet subversion in American media. Most major American media completely ignore the stories of life under communism. They are, indeed, the useful idiots of the Left. Walter Duranty stands out as an egregious example of this.

It takes one who has lived under communism to understand the grandeur of the American idea.

In his book titled Love Letter to America, Bezmenov states

I am not alone in this love. People all over the Earth, whether they praise America or bitterly criticize her, look upon you as the only hope for mankind's survival and the last stronghold of freedom. Some may not think in these idealistic terms, but they certainly enjoy the fruits of your civilization, often forgetting to be grateful for them. Millions of people in the so-called 'socialist camp' or in the 'Third World' literally owe their lives to America. My dear friends, I think you are in big trouble. Whether you believe it or not, YOU ARE AT WAR. And you may lose this war very soon, together with all your affluence and freedoms, unless you start defending yourselves. I hope you have noticed on your color televisions that there is in fact war going on right now all over this planet. This war has many faces, but it's all the same  it's war. Some call it 'national liberation', some title it 'class struggle' or 'political terrorism'. Others call it 'anticolonialism' or 'struggle for majority rule'. Some even come up with such fancy names as 'war of patriotic forces' or 'peace movement'. I call it World Communist Aggression. Communist world aggression is a total war against humanity and human civilization. In Communist propaganda terms, this is 'the final struggle for the victory of Communism." The driving force of this war has very little to do with natural aspirations of people for better lives and greater freedoms. If at all, these aspirations are being used and taken advantage of by the manipulators and progenitors of the war. The real driving force of this war of aggression is IDEOLOGY  something you cannot eat, wear or store for a 'rainy day'. An integral part of this war of ideology is IDEOLOGICAL SUBVERSION  the process of changing the perception of reality in the minds of millions of peoples all over the world. The late comrade Andropov, the former head of the Soviet KGB called this war of Communist aggression, 'the final struggle for the MINDS and hearts of the people'.

Americans need to realize that they have been deliberate targets of ideological subversion. The Left is destructive; they have the tools honed to a fine edge and they will win if we don't take every ounce of strength to change the Leftist indoctrination in schools and media of this country. As Bezmenov stated in 1984 "the clock is ticking." That was 36 years ago!

Not coincidentally, we learn that the two founders of Black Lives Matter in 2013 boasted two years later of their Marxist training in "ideological theories." Via Just The News:

Patrisse Cullors, who founded the group with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013, was interviewed by Morgan State University Professor Jared Ball in 2015 regarding the movement she helped to create. Ball in that interview asked Cullors about "critiques" of her group, ones that allege "a lack of perhaps ideological direction in Black Lives Matter that would allow it to be, to fizzle out." Responding to that question, Cullors said that the group "do[es] have an ideological frame." "Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories," she said, adding that the group's founders sought to "build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk."

Hat tip: BT

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
Since September 2018, SIRA has reached out to approximately 35,000 NSW businesses identified as at risk of operating without a workers compensation policy. Where it does not receive an appropriate reply to initial letters, SIRA issues a notice to produce evidence of insurance.

The compliance programme spans 8,000 new policies being taken out by employers, which SIRA noted covers nearly 26,000 workers in NSW and accounts for approximately $12 million worth of premium into the workers compensation system.

To escalate the initiative, a SafeWork NSW inspector, alongside a SIRA enforcement and prosecutions officer, will visit the organisations that SIRA has not heard from at all. Work health and safety checks will also be undertaken.
Russia's Putin says may seek another term if constitutional changes approved

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 3:03 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he may run for a new term in 2024 if the people vote to approve the constitutional reforms that would allow him to do so.

"I do not rule out the possibility of running for office, if this (option) comes up in the constitution. We'll see," Russia's Interfax news agency cited Putin as saying on Sunday, adding, "I have not decided anything for myself yet."

The constitutional reforms, put forward by Putin, allow the Russian president to potentially seek re-election in 2024 for two additional six-year terms. It also expands the parliament's powers and bans senior officials from having a residence permit in other countries, among other stipulations.

Putin has already approved the 68-page bill detailing nearly 400 changes to the Russian constitution, including an amendment that would enable the incumbent to potentially remain in office until 2036.

Both houses of the Russian parliament as well as regional parliaments had already approved the legislation.

But Putin has said that in order for the amendments to go through, Russia's constitutional court will have to offer its approval and the Russian people will have to give their consent in a referendum.

Russians will vote on the proposed constitutional reforms in a nationwide election which would be held from June 25 to July 1. The changes are widely expected to be approved in the vote.

Putin further stated that if he does not run for president again, the hunt for a candidate to succeed him could become a distraction.

"If this doesn't happen, then in about two years - and I know this from personal experience - the normal rhythm of work of many parts of government will be replaced by a search for possible successors," Putin said.

"We must be working, not looking for successors," he added.

The 67-year-old president submitted the bill to the Duma in late January and announced a major shake-up of Russian politics, which the Kremlin described as a redistribution of power from the presidency to the parliament.

Russia's current constitution, in effect since 1993, allows a president to serve two consecutive terms, obliging Putin to leave office in 2024.

Putin has ruled the country as a president or prime minister for more than 20 years.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Finally, the decision we have all been waiting for  one that elevates the intricacies of the Administrative Procedure Act into the national dialogue.

OK, I know most people were interested in Thursdays U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California  the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals case  for its policy and political implications. But it was, in fact, a case hinging on administrative law, a shadowy topic that is nevertheless crucial to our democracy.

While our elected officials and the laws they pass naturally receive a great deal of attention, the final shaping and implementation of those laws is handled by a vast bureaucracy. Whether you love or hate government regulations, they are significantly influenced by this huge, but sometimes hidden, fourth branch of government. And while the Constitution provides rules and structure for the U.S. Congress, president and courts, it says virtually nothing about the bureaucracy since it was nonexistent in any significant form until the late 19th century. But as its size and power increased, concerns grew about the lack of any limits on its power.

Enter the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA, passed by Congress in 1946, and effectively the constitution of the administrative branch. Among other things, it protects us from agencies misusing their power and from presidents who might use those agencies as surrogates for an end run around congressional authority.

The recent DACA decision involved competing interpretations of a multitude of APA provisions but primarily rested on two.

First, whether DACA itself was an overreach by President Barack Obama, using his rule-making authority as head of the executive branch to make law, a power reserved for Congress. While Justice John Roberts majority opinion deflects that charge, Justice Clarence Thomas dissent portrays DACA as unlawful from the start and thus ripe for repeal.

The second and related question is whether the Trump administrations reversal of the program was itself a violation of the APA. While all agree the Department of Homeland Security has the right to rescind DACA, the question is whether the proper procedures were followed. On this count, the majority ruled they were not.

The APA precludes any agency action that is arbitrary and capricious, and the majority found that in the absence of a clear justification for reversal, the action fails that test. This provision is generally meant to preclude bureaucratic rules that undermine the public good. In particular, it protects us from shifting partisan control resulting in an ongoing flip-flop of regulations driven solely by the ideology of the party in power. In short, to change an existing rule, agencies must provide a better reason than simply disagreeing with it.

Acknowledging the expectation of a rigorous standard for the Department of Homeland Security in this regard, Roberts reminds us of precedent stating that while men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government, government in response must turn square corners in dealing with the people. Shortcuts should not be taken. Thomas and the dissenters reject that argument as setting the arbitrary and capricious bar much too high.

Their point is significant, too. While it is important to retain control over these agencies, they must also be granted discretion to use their expertise without second-guessing by courts.

Whether we agree or disagree with the outcome, all of these arguments are crucial to understanding the role that agencies play in our government. That the future of DACA, at least for now, was decided by a robust discussion on how to interpret the Administrative Procedures Act emphasizes both the significance of the bureaucracy and the import of the rules that it must follow. Consider reading this important decision in its entirety to gain the full impact of this dialogue.

Francine Romero is the chair of the Public Administration Department at UTSA.
Embezzlement trial of Russian Authors Society ex-head to begin on July 3

 RAPSI, Eugeny Varlamov

11:53 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  Moscows Presnensky District Court will start hearing a case against ex-Director General of the Russian Authors Society (RAO) Sergey Fedotov accused of embezzling 730 million rubles (about $10.5 million at the current exchange rate) on July 3, the courts press service told RAPSI on Monday.

The trial will be held under a special procedure, without examining evidence, as the defendant has pleaded guilty.

In late April, the court extended Fedotovs detention until October 13.

There are five defendands, including Fedotovs mother and ex-employee of the Russian Authors Society Svetlana Temeshova. All of them pled guilty and sought for a special procedure trial, without evidence examination and witness questioning.

In December 2018, Moscows Tverskoy District Court ordered the accused persons to be placed in detention. Investigators believe that they transferred the authors royalty payments to the fake accounts and then cashed the money.

In June 2017, Fedotov was convicted in his first embezzlement case and sentenced to 1.5 years behind bars.

As previously reported, employees of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have revealed a fraud scheme over illegal alienation of RAOs property. Damage caused to the RAOs property has been estimated at 500 million rubles (over $7 million at the current exchange rate). The defendant pleaded guilty.

In December 2017, he was released on parole.
Redundancies in the UK are set to explode as the Tory governments COVID-19 job furlough scheme begins to taper out.

Under the furlough scheme, 9.1 million workersmore than a quarter of the UK workforceare having 80 percent of their wages paid by the state, up to a monthly maximum of 2,500 a month. These same companies, after having received tens of billions of pounds in free money from the public purse, are making workers pay for the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic.

The numbers of those on company payrolls fell by 600,000 between March and May. The number of job vacancies recorded this quarter was 476,000, down from the previous quarter by 342,000. The quarter also saw a drop in the number of the self-employed of 131,000.

Government financial support will be withdrawn on a tapering system beginning in August, with furlough support stopping completely at the end of October. Companies planning to make redundancies rather than retaining furloughed workers need to give notice to workers slated for redundancy. For redundancies of 100 or more, the length of notice is 45 days, and for redundancies between 20 and 99 the length of notice is 30 days.

To ensure they do not have to make furlough payments from their own funds, companies planning to make 100 or more redundancies had to start redundancy consultations June 15. For redundancies of less than 100 the notice period would need to be given by the end of June.

Institute of Directors chief economist, Tej Parikh, said, The furlough scheme continues to hold off the bulk of the job losses, but unemployment is likely to surge in the months ahead.

Workers are facing a return to 1930s levels of unemployment, along with mounting austerity, as they are made to pay for the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. While the furlough scheme has been in operation, unemployment claimant count has still doubled, with 2.8 million workers out of a job. Guardian economist Larry Elliot commented last week that the challenge for the government is to prevent it from hitting 4 million by the time the wage subsidies come to an end in October.

Recent job losses announced in manufacturing include:

 Jet engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. It has confirmed 3,000 out of its planned 9,000 worldwide job cuts will be in the UK, with half of those at its Derby headquarters.

 Luxury car producer Aston Martin Lagonda will cut 500 jobs while Bentley plans to cut its workforce by nearly a quarter with a planned 1,000 jobs to go mainly at its Crewe facility.

 Jaguar Land Rover, which produces high-end market models, will cut 1,100 of its contract worker posts at plants on Merseyside and in the Midlands.

 Other manufacturing companies planning to make redundancies include Canadian plane maker Bombardier, which announced 600 jobs will go at its plant in Northern Ireland. Mechanical digger manufacturer JCB is experiencing a 50 percent drop in demand and plans to shed 950 jobs.

 Airlines and aviation firms have announced swingeing job cuts or plans for the same. British Airways plans to cut 25 percent of its posts, meaning 12,000 jobs lost. EasyJet will cut its workforce by nearly a third, with 4,500 jobs to go. Richard Bransons Virgin Atlantic will cut its workforce by a third, or 3,000 jobs. More than 300 airport workers employed by Menzies Aviation in Edinburgh and Glasgow have been put on notice of imminent redundancy. The company furloughed more than 17,500 jobs worldwide in March in response to the pandemic.

 Energy companies planning job cuts include Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, which wants to axe 5,000 jobs by simplifying its management structure. Ovo, the UKs second largest energy supplier, will cut 2,600 jobs and close offices.

 Builders merchant Travis Perkins plans to cut its workforce by 10 percent, with 2,500 jobs slated to go. It owns DIY chain Wickes and hire service Toolstation.

 Fashion and clothes chains have also announced cuts, with Mulberry announcing 470 job losses. Fashion brands Oasis and Warehouse, brought out of administration in April by Hilco, will close its outlets with the loss of 1,800 jobs.

 The Restaurant Group outlet chain, which owns Wagamama and Frankie and Bennys, will cut 1,500 jobs.

 Last November, the Enterprise section of the BT telecommunications group announced that 367 jobs were under threat and in February said that compulsory redundancies would be enforced.

A June 11 Financial Times article warned of large-scale job losses on the horizon: Close to 100,000 jobs in business with large UK operations hit by the coronavirus crisis are now on the line, according to a Financial Times tally of company announcements and administrations since March. This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with millions of jobs potentially at risk by the year endand many of them small companies.

The article points out that of the then 8.9 million workers furloughed, 3 million work in retail and the hospitality industries, which are unlikely to be able to operate normally given social distancing measures, for some time to come. Many redundancies are likely in the retail and hospitality sector.

The FT spoke to a Tory minister, who said many of his Tory MP colleagues were reporting redundancy notices  being prepared by local companies in their constituencies.

It quoted Stephen Phipson, head of manufacturing body Make UK, saying, We have sight of a lot of redundancy programmes across manufacturers  Over the next few weeks well sadly see a lot more job losses coming. The job retention scheme may have simply deferred the job losses, not prevented them.

In an FT article of June 16, Samuel Tombs, an economist at economic intelligence consultancy, Pantheon Economics, warned, Unemployment will leap if even a small fraction of employers never bring back furloughed workers. He noted that the collapse in job vacancies in Maythe highest drop since records beganwas the harbinger of much greater job losses in the coming months.

Among areas particularly hit are the so-called red-wall conurbations. These are constituencies mainly in the Midlands, northwest and northeast of England that have suffered economic and social decline. They had been previously held by Labour MPs but switched to Conservative in the December 2019 general election because of disillusionment with Labour and support for Prime Minister Boris Johnsons pledge to enact Brexit.

A Times June 1 article reported on a study by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), using Office for National Statistics data. The report said, Those areas where people were already struggling to find work were those that were more affected by the crisis. For example, areas with more than 15 claims per vacancy in March had an average increase of their ratios by 21 claims per vacancy, while areas with less than 0.5 claims per vacancy in March had an average increase of 1.5 extra claims per vacancy.

The Times commented, The data suggests that the lockdown has made existing inequalities worse. Low skilled, low paid workers living in deprived areas have taken the biggest hit.

The article points out that prior to the COVID-19 crisis, in many of the deprived legacy towns, where there were around five job seekers for each vacancy, that number is now around 12.

IES head director, Tony Wilson, told the BBC, Its clear  that this crisis is hitting many poorer areas hardestwith coastal towns and ex-industrial areas seeing particularly big increases in unemployment. According to the IES, among the hardest hit areas are Blackpool, with one in eight workers claiming work-related benefits, and Thanet in Kent and Birmingham, where the figure is one in 11.

Employers are using every opportunity to exploit the pandemic crisis and further slash costs as they cut their workforce. As workers are only being paid 80 percent of their wages, with most companies not paying the other 20 percent, some firms are already attempting to make redundancy payments based on the lower rate of furlough paynot the full wage that workers earned before.

For a worker earning 30,420 this would mean losing 507 if they had a one-month redundancy notice period, or 1,521 over a three-month period. The Sun newspaper reported, Employment lawyers say they have received plenty of calls from people whose bosses have tried to pay them less based on their furloughed rate of pay. It cited Kate Palmer, an employment lawyer at Peninsula UK, who said, We have not had clear government guidance on whether redundancy pay can be based on ones furlough pay.
The San Francisco Unified School District is moving toward renaming some schools in the city amid a moment of national reckoning on race and history.

From the tearing down of statues honoring controversial figures who were tied to slavery in Golden Gate Park this weekend to a push to rename Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Marin County, the Bay Area is changing its views on honoring controversial figures of the past.

Its like a perfect storm,' SFUSD Board President Mark Sanchez told KPIX on Monday, I think were hitting a situation where we could be accelerating the look at renaming our schools and I think thats a positive thing.

The Black Lives Matter movement that has erupted in recent weeks following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has renewed a push to rename schools in the Bay Area and across the country.

Last week the Berkeley Unified School District decided to move forward in renaming Jefferson and Washington elementary schools that commemorate the first and third U.S. presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both owned slaves. Now the San Francisco Unified School District is looking to follow suit.

Schools that are under the spotlight include Francis Scott Key Elementary in the Sunset District, named after the man who wrote the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, also a known slave owner.

Another school that may see a name change is Junipero Serra Elementary in Bernal Heights. Serra was an 18th century Franciscan friar who served as the architect of the California mission system during the era of Spanish colonization. The missions were designed to convert the indigenous population to Catholicism by confining them to missions throughout California. Natives who tried to escape were beaten and captured, as indigenous customs were banned.

Other schools under the spotlight in San Francisco include Washington High School and John Muir Elementary, which may be renamed for the poet Maya Angelou, reports KPIX.

SFUSD says that a formal resolution could be filed at a board meeting in July.

Andrew Chamings is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: Andrew.Chamings@sfgate.com | Twitter: @AndrewChamings
A federal judge has declined to allow a southern New Jersey gym to reopen as it continues a constitutional challenge to the state order that shut down businesses deemed non-essential in order to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler on Friday denied a temporary restraining order sought by the owners of Atilis Gym of Bellmawr, which filed suit last month accusing Governor Phil Murphy of having arbitrarily deemed some businesses essential while declaring others  such as gyms  non-essential, NJ.com reported.

Attorney Christopher Arzberger, who represents the owners, told Law360 that he was disappointed but vowed an appeal.

The suit argues that Murphy and other state officials violated the constitutional rights of the owners by forcing them out of business indefinitely with no timeline for when they could reopen.

The gym was shuttered last month after opening in defiance of the order and continuing daily operations despite receiving summonses each day for violating the state order.

The owners cited steps taken to ensure social distancing, including taping off workout stations and operating at 20% of the buildings capacity, meaning about 44 patrons at a time. They also were requiring patrons to wear masks unless they were in the middle of lifting weights. Gym staff said they were taking patrons temperatures at the door and barring anyone at 100.4 or above; in addition, no new members were being allowed to join, officials said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New Jersey
Author to present An Antidote to Violence at All Party Parliamentary Group on Indian Traditional Sciences during International Day of Yoga 2020 in the UK this Sunday

An Antidote to Violence

The COVID-19 pandemic has put societies everywhere under extreme stress, and collective stress is often a precursor to outbreaks of violence. Striking features of this global health crisis have been the collective anxiety of the population, the wide variations in the way governments have responded, and the varying degree of their success.

While there is significant scientific research showing that meditation has a positive influence on the health and well being of individuals, is there any evidence that large-scale meditation can have a similar influence on societies in reducing stress and levels of violence?

"Yes" is the surprising inference from the authors of a new book. Published June 26, An Antidote to Violence: Evaluating the Evidence provides evidence that the level of collective anxiety and tension in society, or incoherence in collective consciousness, is the key element, which determines the success or failure of a government in tackling crime, violence, social unrest and ill-health.

Barry Spivack and Patricia Saunders describe how a rise in collective tensions spills over into increased social unrest, crime, violence, accidental deaths and hospital emergencies. They examine 20 peer-reviewed studies from over four decades, indicating that it is possible to neutralize or reduce stress in collective consciousness through the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and its advanced programs by a sufficient number of individuals, which is amplified in groups.

Evaluating the Evidence

"These findings are more relevant now than ever before at a time of pandemic, protest, and social unrest," says Spivack, and offers three examples from the studies cited in the book. Each of these experiments consisted of sufficient numbers either meditating on their own or together for a period of weeks or months, and in some cases, years, in societies wracked by violence: on 93 experimental days in Lebanon between 1983 and 1985, Cambodia between 1990 and 2008, and USA between 2007 and 2010 compared with the previous four years. In each case measured statistically, significant drops in violence occurred during the periods when the numbers meditating were above the predicted threshold.

The authors emphasize this is the first book that draws on all the peer-reviewed research and looks at the implications of the research as a whole rather than just individual papers. "Compiling so many consistent experimental results may indicate more than a statistical correlation; it justifies further research into a causal hypothesis."

Written for the social scientist and the lay reader alike, An Antidote to Violence offers answers to key questions, including: does group meditation actually influence society? If so, how does it work? What is the evidence? What do skeptics say?

Weaving together psychology, sociology, philosophy, statistics, politics, physics and meditation, the book provides evidence that we have the knowledge to reduce all kinds of violence in society by creating coherence in collective consciousness and thereby neutralizing collective stress.

Introduction by John Hagelin | Foreword by Bob Roth

In his Introduction to the book, quantum physicist Dr. John Hagelin, and President of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace, suggests "the existing research, while compelling and rigorous, presents a direct challenge to established mainstream sociological paradigms and may be difficult for some to accept. Even more rigorous and repeated testing of the theories presented here is therefore essential to ensure widespread acceptance of this demonstrated sociological phenomenon."

In the Foreword to the book, Bob Roth, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, and author of the NY Times bestseller, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation, writes: "Barry Spivack and Patricia Saunders have opened our eyes to an entirely new vision of possibilities about human potential that is both sweepingly grand but also immediate and practical."

Changemakers Books publisher Tim Ward was struck by the book's thought provoking premise and explained his reasons for publishing it. "While the evidence gathered in this book is striking, more research needs to be done to prove it true. And that's why I chose to publish An Antidote to Violence. Too much is at stake to let this possibility slip through our fingers. Just as we must explore every scientific means for beating COVID-19, so we must follow every lead for defeating the virus of violence."

Barry Spivack was invited to speak about his new book to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Indian Traditional Sciences in the UK, Sunday, June 21, the International Day of Yoga 2020. Speakers will include High Commissioners and Members from both Houses of Parliament.

Research provides evidence consistent with a causal interpretation

Establishing causality in the social sciences is difficult. "Nevertheless," says Spivack, "there are at least 6 reasons why the research provides evidence for the hypothesis that Transcendental Meditation reduces conflict and divisions in society, and improves economic performance, which is consistent with a causal interpretation."

1) Repetition: There are 20 peer-reviewed studies, which show statistically significant results.

2) There is a dosage effect--the bigger the group the larger the impact.

3) The independent variable--the numbers practicing Transcendental Meditation--often varies at random in these experiments so you get a repeat effect within the same experiment whenever the relevant threshold of numbers is passed within the same study.

4) Studies have controlled for other possible causes in social changes, such as population density, median years of education, per capita income, the ratio of police per population, weather, holidays, seasons, political events, percentages of people in the age range 15-29, of the unemployed, of those below the poverty line, and of people over 65.

5) Normally unconnected variables, such as crime, accidental deaths, infant mortality, deaths from opioids, all move in the same direction at the same time when the relevant threshold of people practicing Transcendental Meditation is surpassed.

6) The independent variable--the numbers practicing Transcendental Meditation and its advanced programs--changes before the dependent variables change, such as crime or war fatalities or the misery index.

What people are saying about An Antidote to Violence

I was initially skeptical that such a simple solution could be effective. However, after examining the evidence, I changed my mind. An Antidote to Violence is a serious and well-researched book that offers an unconventional but effective peaceful solution to violence and terrorism.

Lieutenant General Clarence E. McKnight, Jr, Former Director of Command, Control and Communications Systems for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington DC

This book is especially good at discussing the evidence and the alternative explanations that have been advanced for the results. I can recommend the book to all readers with an open mind.

Huw Dixon, Professor of Economics, Cardiff University

Barry Spivack and Patricia Saunders address the problems of preventing violence and war with a high level of professionalism, and, by examining a means to achieve sustainable peace supported by long-term research, have created a book that is hugely relevant. Most importantly, they highlight the interdependence of power, violence, security, and individual and collective consciousness. This book will be extremely useful for people of all nationalities, regardless of their status, different religious beliefs, personal preferences and life strategies. The theoretical and methodological principles outlined here deserve to be studied carefully and disseminated in the world.

Lieutenant General Vasyl Krutov, former First Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine and First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine

My most sincere congratulations to the authors for their research and presentation of this book. I hope it will be read and applied by leaders of government and by all in general for the good of society and each person in particular.

Lieutenant General Jose Marti Villamil de la Cadena, former Chief of Staff of the Army and Commander of Ground Theatre Operations, Chief of Staff of the Joint Command, Vice-Minister of Defence, and General Secretary of the National Security Council in Ecuador

Based on hard evidence corroborated by rigorous scientific studies, ...the book compiles an array of incredible success stories from all over the world in an easily readable style for all those interested in addressing the monumental challenge of eradicating violence and conflict.

Ved P. Nanda, Professor of Law, University of Denver

###

RELEASE DATE: June 26 in the UK and July 1 in the US 2020ISBN: 978-1-78904-258-0 | $24.95 | 15.99 EISBN: 978-1-78904-259-7 | $12.99 | 5.79

Changemakers Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing http://www.johnhuntpublishing.com.
A giant plume of Saharan dust on a 5,000-mile journey is expected to drift across the southeastern United States this week at altitudes between 20,000 and 30,000 feet, bringing enhanced sunrises and potentially suppressing storm formation.

Due to more sunlight being scattered by the dust particles, there will likely be more vibrant sunsets and sunrises of the orange and red side of the visible light spectrum, said David Wally, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Upton, N.Y.

But the dust plume also could have effects on certain health problems.

This can be an allergen that is uncomfortable with asthma or reactive airways, Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, said on Monday. He suggested that people monitor the level of air particles in their area and take precautions in working or being outside as this passes through.

Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, also said on Monday that particulate matter of this dust cloud contains more silica, and is a hazard to those with underlying lung conditions. But even normal healthy people are subject to irritant effects.
By Express News Service

With the daily nationwide tally of coronavirus cases scaling new peaks every day, The New Indian Express speaks to health experts, who agree that the Central government needs to change its approach to deal with the pandemic and adopt customised strategies based on the local situation.



Dr K Srinath Reddy President, Public Health Foundation of India, and member, National COVID 19 Task Force



Where do you see India in the fight against COVID-19 as of now and what could be the way forward?



We are seeing rising numbers of cases in big cities and across several states. This represents both greater spread and better detection through increased testing However, the fact remains that a very large population has not been touched by the virus as yet.

There is need for continued vigilance and more effective action to keep the unexposed population safe for as long as possible. Recognising that different parts of India are at different levels of exposure and health effects, we need to adopt differentiated strategies which are configured to match the local situation. This calls for decentralised planning at state level and customised implementation strategy at urban ward and village level.

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion around the term community transmission, with many epidemiologists arguing that accepting it is a critical point in the pandemic as the focus then shifts from containment to mitigation. What do you think?



Even if there is community transmission in some parts, that will not be a uniform feature with simultaneous occurrence across the country... So, both containment and mitigation have to be simultaneously implemented and not treated as distinctly sequential strategies. Even in a big city, there will be variations in the speed and intensity of spread in different parts. So, both types of countermeasures will be needed. We cannot equate a village in Jharkhand with a containment zone in Delhi. We have to customise our response, according to the contours of the epidemic in each place.

The case-fatality ratio seems lower than some Western countries but the proportion of younger people succumbing to the infection in the country is higher as opposed to many other countries. How do you think India can ensure the lowest possible fatalities and what all do you see as major challenges?



Death rates in other countries have been mostly determined by factors like old age and presence of co-morbidities. In India, the co-morbidities occur at much younger ages, being widely prevalent in the age group of 35 years and above. Diabetes is seen at even younger ages in India. Air pollution levels, another factor for adverse respiratory outcomes, are much higher in India. Just to provide a comparison between India and Italy, in the 20-59 year age group, diabetes is three times more prevalent in Delhi than in Italy. In the 40-49 year age group, prevalence of hypertension is 40% in Delhi compared to 10.7% in ItalySo, younger age alone cannot protect if there are other risk factors. A strong public health system and determined environmental action are needed.

Lockdown gave the governments time to prepare healthcare infrastructure and resources but we are seeing cities like Mumbai earlier and now Delhi struggling as the cases surge. Why do you think that is happening and what can be the way to handle the situation in a better way?



We did not utilise the lockdown to prepare our containment strategy for effective implementation on the ground. Syndromic surveillance of households for early testing and isolation should have been implemented early on Contact tracing should have been more vigorous. Hospital readiness should have been at a higher level Citizen volunteers and trained youth groups like NSS and NCC should have been engaged to help with case identification, contact tracing, support for home isolated persons and de-stigmatisation. Even now, such citizen participation is essential.

Since very few patients require ventilators, we should use home isolation for mild patients and admission to oxygen supply-assured hospitals for moderately ill patients, reducing the load on advanced intensive care units. Temporary hospitals can also be set up. The challenge will be to find healthcare providers in required numbers. Young medical and nursing graduates as well as self-employed doctors should be recruited.

K Sujatha Rao, Former Union Health Secretary

There is so much debate happening around whether or not community transmission is taking place. While Union Health Ministry and the agencies under it have been maintaining that the pandemic has not reached that stage in India yet, most epidemiologists and public health experts stress that admitting it for hotspots such as Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu is important because that will lead to change in strategy from containment to mitigation. What do you think?



I agree with the epidemiologists and public health experts. Of course, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director general is right when he says there is no community transmission in India. But then, India is a large country with different characteristics and so it requires differential strategies. While there are areas with no signs of the infection, there are cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Ahmedabad that are causes of great concern and are definitely having community transmission as there are cases with no known source of infection.

Once this is recognised, strategies need to change with much more focus on testing, identifying the infected and isolating them or treating them based on their condition. I am at a complete loss to understand this rigidity on part of the government not to accept community transmission and shifting strategies and policy responses. In these areas, those likely to be vulnerable need to be protected so as to minimise loss of life.

Cities like Delhi, Ahmadabad and Mumbai seem to be struggling in terms of health infrastructure and resources to accommodate and support a large number of patients. What do you think are the steps required to deal with the situation?



They had two months time; I am surprised that they have not utilised that to ramp up their delivery system. They need to immediately rope in human resources, train them quickly and have them take charge. Private sector needs to be co-opted and infrastructure ramped up. 85 per cent do not need institutional care; it is the 10-15 per cent that need attention. Of these, it is 3-5 per cent of the patients that need very close care. So triaging is important and in accordance with clinical need, patients must obtain appropriate care at home, in decentralised facilities like district hospitals and specialised tertiary hospitals.

What do you think are the short term and long term lessons from the pandemic for the health sector in India?



Several, but I think it is premature to talk about lessons now as the last word has not been said as yet. The epidemic is evolving and so we need to see how the curve finally begins to flatten.

One issue many experts have been pointing out is that it is the National Centre of Disease Control, and not the Indian Council of Medical Research that should have been leading the outbreak management. What is your view on that and why do you think ICMR has been allowed to overshadow NCDC during the crisis?



Well, NCDC is the institution that is mandated to undertake disease surveillance in the country and has been engaged with implementing infectious disease control programmes. So they have the institutional memory and knowledge that would have been useful in working out strategic options in dealing with this epidemic. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is a research body that is mandated to do research and advise the government on issues that must get policy attention.

So, research is one thing  for example, it was ICMR-National TB Research Institute, Chennai, that provided the basis for DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short course), but it was the department of health that then designed the operational strategies for implementing it in the country. So why ICMR got into providing testing strategies and accrediting laboratories for testing, laying down price caps for tests etc. is unclear to me and I dont know the reasons for giving this new mandate to them.
Editor's Note: With so much market volatility, stay on top of daily news! Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news and expert opinions. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) - Caldas Gold Corp. (TSXV: CGC) would receive $110 million in a streaming agreement with a subsidiary of Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (TSX: WPM, NYSE: WPM), with the proceeds to be used for the Marmato project in Colombia, under a non-binding term sheet announced by the companies Monday.

Caldas Gold also announced the planned issuance of units  in the form of notes and share purchase warrants  to raise another $150 million to help fund the project.

The streaming transaction is the first step in securing the project financing required to build Colombias next major gold mine, said Serafino Iacono, chairman and chief executive officer of Caldas Gold. He later added, The streaming transaction will help us to manage the overall leverage in our capital structure while improving flexibility and reducing financing costs and risks.

Randy Smallwood, president and chief executive officer of Wheaton, said the strength and potential upside of this project was especially apparent during our onsite due diligence trip made prior to pandemic-related travel restrictions.

We remain unwavering in our focus on delivering the highest-quality portfolio of precious-metals production to our shareholders through our top-tier asset base, strong organic growth profile and acquisition of accretive growth opportunities such as Marmato, Smallwood said.

Upon entering into the precious-metals stream, subsidiary Wheaton Precious Metals International Ltd. will purchase 6.5% of the gold production and 100% of the silver production until 190,000 ounces of gold and 2.15 million ounces silver have been delivered, the companies said. After that, the stream drops to 3.25% of the gold production and 50% of the silver production for the life of mine.

Of the $110 million total in the proposed precious-metals stream, $38 million would be payable upon closing and the remaining portion would be payable during the construction of mining operations in the Deeps Zone at Marmato, subject to receipt of required permits and licenses, sufficient financing to cover total expected capital expenditures and other customary conditions. In addition, WPMI will make ongoing payments equal to 18% of the spot gold and silver price until the uncredited portion of the upfront payment is reduced to nil, and 22% of the spot gold and silver price thereafter.

Both companies said the deal to enter into the precious-metals stream is subject to among other matters, the negotiation and completion of definitive documentation.

Meanwhile, Caldas Gold said that it plans to offer up to 150,000 units of the company for anticipated proceeds of up to $150 million. Each unit is expected to consist of $1,000 principal amount of senior secured gold-linked notes and a number of common share purchase warrants to be determined based on market conditions.

Concurrently, based on market conditions, Caldas Gold also said it is considering equity financing on a best-efforts private placement basis of up to C$50 million, consisting of common shares and common share purchase warrants.

Plans call for net proceeds of the offering and any equity financing to be used for the expansion of underground mining operations at Marmato, construction of an additional 4,000 tonnes-per-day processing plant and additional tailings storage facilities, and to escrow funds for the payment of interest during the first two years on the notes, Caldas Gold said.
We will consider the issue of applying to the Constitutional Court. There is a tool, but Prosperous Armenia Party doesnt have enough mandates to do that, and it hasnt held talks with the MPs of Bright Armenia Party yet. This is what deputy of the Prosperous Armenia faction of the National Assembly Naira Zohrabyan told reporters today.

When asked why she thinks the authorities are rushing to solve the issue related to the Constitutional Court, Zohrabyan said the following: The authorities have laid the foundation for political repressions. Today the National Security Service issued a statement that was like an action movie, calling on citizens of Armenia to provide the Service with any information about Prosperous Armenia Party distributing electoral bribes during the parliamentary elections. However, in response to my question in parliament, the Prosecutor General assured me that there are more than enough facts. This all started when Gagik Tsarukyan expressed rather correct and balanced concerns during the special session of the political party, Naira Zohrabyan said.
Justice Talba was suspended from office following the findings by the council that he did not exercise his discretion judicially and judiciously with regard to the sentences he passed on one of the accused persons, John Yakubu Yusuf, in the police pension case of FRN Vs Esai Dangabar and five others, the council said at the time.
Express News Service By

CHANDIGARH: Two members of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan who were abducted on June 15 in an alleged hit-and-run case in the neighbouring country were among five officials who returned to India through the Attari-Wagah border on Monday.

The two men, Selvadhas Paul and Dwimu Brahma, were working as drivers in the Indian High Commission at Islamabad. Sources at the Integrated Check Post (ICP) at Attari said that injury marks were seen on the face, neck and thighs of Selvadhas and Brahma during the medical examination, indicating they were tortured during their 12-hour custody.

The three other officers who returned were Second Secretary S Shiv Kumar, Air Adviser Group Captain Manu Midha and Pankaj. All the five came to the Wagah border in a car from Islamabad and their thermal screening and medical check-up was done at the Attari border before they left for Delhi.

A senior official at the Attari border said, "Five officials of the Indian High Commission crossed into India in the afternoon. The three officials who accompanied Selvadhas and Brahma are on leave and will return to work."

Selvadhas and Brahma were taken away in a separate vehicle from Attari accompanied by a team of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel, while the three others left in another vehicle.

It is learnt that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had granted these officials permission on June 19 to come back as the high commission of India had written to the MEA for their movement via Wagah on June 18.

The two Indian high commission officials were detained by Pakistani intelligence agencies on June 15. The action was seen as a tit-for-tat measure by Pakistan after India arrested two Pakistan High Commission officials on charges of espionage and sent them back.

The Pakistani intelligence agencies blindfolded and handcuffed them. They were interrogated for 12 hours by a team of at least 10 men, sources said and added that they were pressured to confess to their involvement in the hit-and-run case.

According to sources, the Pakistani authorities tortured them in a bid to make them confess about their involvement in intelligence gathering activities in the Indian High Commission. The duo was also taken for a medical check up before they were released.

After the two officials of the Indian high commission were detained in Pakistan, India had lodged a protest and summoned the charge daffaires of the Pakistan High Commission over the abduction and torture of the duo.
Photo credit: Mikhail Japaridze - Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

Tanks have traditionally been banned from parades in the U.S. due to their use of asphalt-chewing metal tracks.

The inability to feature tanks was one reason why Trumps 4th of July military parade was canceled.

A series of photos from Russia shows just how quickly a tank can ruin the asphalt on a city street.

Officials have banned army tanks from parades in the U.S. for more than half a century, and new pictures from Russia make it painfully clear why. The photos, from preparations for the country's annual V-E day military parade, show a tanks treads chewing up a Moscow street during a parade rehearsal.

Russian blogger and armor enthusiast Yuri Pasholok uploaded pictures of the T-34/85 tank to his blog . The tank was part of a contingent of military vehicles brought to Moscow as part of the 2020 V-E Day commemoration, an event that typically involves a parade of military tanks, armored vehicles, and aircraft. The parade is being held later than usual this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The T-34/85 medium tank was an improved version of the original Soviet T-34 tank. The T-34/85 featured a larger 85-millimeter gun, improved armor, and a cupola for the tank commander, giving him 360-degree protected vision. More than 17,000 tanks were produced worldwide, many serving well into the 1970s and 1980s. The main Soviet tank of World War II, the tank played a key role in the destruction of Nazi Germany.

The T-34/85 weighs 32 tons fully loaded. Like all tanks, the T-34 uses tracks instead of wheels to give the vehicle better cross-country performance and to spread the tanks weight over a wider area, giving it lower ground pressure per square inch than a wheeled vehicle. Tracks are meant to gain traction in whatever surface lies underneath the tank and then exert huge amounts of torque that propel the tank forward.

Photo credit: Yuri Pasholok

Obviously this could be a problem on asphalt-lined roads, and tanks have been banned from military parades in the U.S. for precisely that reason. In 2017 President Trump declared he wanted a 4th of July military parade similar to that held in Paris for Bastille Day. Trump wanted tanks and other military vehicles but was dissuaded after the Pentagon explained the cost of the parade and how tracked vehicles could ruin Washington D.C.s streets. Exacerbating the problem is the sheer weight of modern military vehicles: a U.S. Army M1A2 main battle tank weighs 68 tonsmore than twice as much as the T-34/85.

Story continues

Pasholok blog entry shows several T-34/85s in parade colors, apparently practicing on Moscows Tverskaya Street. These tanks are apparently of Czechoslovakian origin, having been built by Czechoslovakia under license and imported by the Russian Army for ceremonial activities. Russia imported another 30 T-34/85 tanks from Laos in 2019 .

Source: Yuri Pasholok

You Might Also Like
If the Ladakh episode has ended, this is the time to find the truth about all the aspects of it and inform the nation and the world, advises Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi takes notes at the all party meeting to discuss the situation on the India-China border, June 19, 2020. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose discretion as the better part of valour at a critical moment in history when he told an all party meeting that India did not lose any territory to China in recent months.

'Neither have they intruded into our border nor has any post been taken over by them (China). Twenty of our jawans were martyred, but those who dared Bharat Mata, they were taught a lesson.'

He confirmed what I had predicted in another column on June 17: 'Mercifully, the tragedy of June 15 and 16 led to the withdrawal of the two sides to the original positions and the present episode virtually ended.'

What remains is a post-mortem of the events and learning of lessons.

History will repeat itself after another round of unending border talks and even a summit meeting, while our China experts pore over Confucius and find that all the fault is in us and declare 'Mea Culpa!' We may as well quote Shakespeare, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.'

The statement came even as China made a claim of sovereignty over the Galwan Valley.

It was reported that China had transgressed to the Indian side of the Line of Control in several areas of eastern Ladakh, including Pangong Tso and Galwan valley.

But ever a fighter and an inspirer, PM Modi said: 'Today, we possess the capability that no one can eye even one inch of our land. India's armed forces have the capability to move into multiple sectors at one go.'

The prime minister went on to say, 'Whether it is deployment, action, counter-action... air, land or sea, whatever our armed forces have to do to protect our country they will do.'

Modi also said the government has given full freedom for taking any appropriate action necessary.

Perhaps, for the first time in the last five years, the PMO was constrained to offer an explanation for a statement by the PM.

'Prime Minister's observations that there was no Chinese presence on our side of the LAC pertained to the situation as a consequence of the bravery of our armed forces. The sacrifices of the soldiers of the 16 Bihar Regiment foiled the attempt of the Chinese side to erect structures and also cleared the attempted transgression at this point of the LAC on that day,' the PMO stated.

In plain English, it means that the Chinese intruded into our territory and tried to erect structures, but they were thwarted by the brave actions of the Bihar Regiment.

Saying that would have been factual and a matter of pride for the country.

Equally intriguing was the statement by Minister V K Singh about the casualties on the Chinese side.

'If 20 were martyred on our side, then there would have been at least double the casualties on their side,' Singh, minister for roads and transport, told a television news channel in an interview.

General Singh, who is a former army chief, did not provide any evidence to support his statement.

The general said China historically never accepted any war casualties including in the 1962 conflict with India.

Even without any first hand of knowledge of the terrain or reliable official data, it is not difficult to reconstruct the events on the border.

When the intrusion was reported, it was decided at the highest level to defuse the situation rather than follow a policy of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the response of the Chinese was positive.

Right from the beginning, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was extremely optimistic about the outcome of the discussions.

The Raksha Mantri ignored the calls by the Opposition for details of the Chinese action and India's counter action as he wanted to break the news of the outcome.

In fact, he remained firm on this till there was agreement on disengagement, which was announced on June 15.

It is not known what gave him the confidence in a peaceful resolution and trusted the Chinese.

It appears that the things went haywire when a small unit went to oversee the Chinese disengagement.

A video clip clearly shows that Colonel Santhosh Babu politely asked the Chinese to abide by the agreement.

But the Chinese were extremely rude to him and the scuffle began, which resulted in casualties on both sides.

There followed the withdrawal of both the sides, who were in a state of shock.

If the actual scenario was anything similar to the one above, there was nothing to hide and the episode would have ended.

An inquiry into the incident would have revealed our weaknesses and strengths for the future to know how we dealt with the battle and what we should plan for the rest of the war.

The PM's statement and the explanation on it will remain a mystery for now.

India has not officially speculated on the nature and timing of the major and pre-meditated intrusion by China at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But there are credible theories.

One is that this is part of China's effort to shape the post-Covid world envisaged by them when the US appears to be on the decline.

Another is that it is the revenge on India and others who co-sponsored the review resolution at the World Health Organisation.

Yet another is the general assertiveness of China to show that China has not been affected by the ravages of the pandemic and this is seen in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

In the case of India, China chose Ladakh because of its concern about the changes made there by India.

If the Ladakh episode has ended, this is the time to find the truth about all the aspects of it and inform the nation and the world.

If a new strategy is possible to devise to deal with the Chinese menace, the time is here and now.

The boycott of Chinese goods will have an emotional appeal, but it is a double edged weapon and should be used only selectively.

There must be other ways to secure India's integrity and also maintain international trade.

T P Sreenivasan, (IFS 1967), is a former Ambassador of India and Governor for India of the IAEA.

Ambassador Sreenivasan is a frequent contributor to Rediff.com and his earlier columns can be read here.

Production: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
Most kids look for ways to get out of chores even if they help them earn some pocket money. However, a kid in Chicago, Illinois offered to help their neighbour out, and the reason is adorable.

A post going viral shows a letter left behind by a little boy named Troy who volunteered to be a dog sitter for his neighbours puppy, named Arthur. The letter was published on the puppers own Instagram handle and is now circulating all over the Internet.

In the letter, the boy writes that hes in fourth grade and adds that when things settle down, hed be happy to take Arthur on walks. The post is complete with a picture of the delightful note, and Arthur sitting in the background looking really proud of himself.

Shared on May 14, the post has collected over 21,000 likes and more than 500 comments. People have loved the offer and gesture.

Hope you accepted his adorable request, did you? asked an individual. Love this so much! wrote another. We love this, as well. This made my week. No, my month. Arthur is adorable and what a sweet thing for Troy to do. I can relate: if a cutie pup like that moved into my street I would be desperate to play with him too! posted a third. These are our thoughts too. Who wouldnt want to be available for a cute puppy such as Arthur?

The picture was also shared by 9GAG recently and brought pupper Arthur and friendly neighbour kid Troy an even bigger fan base.

I case youre wondering what happened later, youll be happy to know that Arthur did meet Troy and the two had a great play date.

Just a quick pupdate - me and the smol neighbor had a really great (socially distant) play date today, says the post. And while no pictures were taken for privacy purposes, a great time was had by both parties. Take a look at the post below:

Arthur does seem happy in that picture.

What do you think of this adorable story?

Also Read | This doggo just saved a puppys life, his smile will make your day too



SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
TEL AVIV, Israel, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- EasySend partners with KPMG to change the way financial service enterprises deal with paperwork. EasySend empowers insurance and financial service companies to digitalize any paperwork-based process in a matter of days, including claims, policy issuance, customer onboarding, document submission, and remote servicing. By converting paperwork into engaging digital journeys, EasySend enables enterprises to engage with customers, gather data, optimize and drive revenue growth. No coding required.

The future of paperwork is digital

Everybody hates paperwork. It is a mundane, time-consuming task that creates a lot of frustration both for the customers and for the employees. Unfortunately, in many industries such as banking, insurance, or real-estate, paperwork cannot be avoided.

As a result, these companies routinely frustrate their existing and potential clients by making them sign tons of paperwork in inefficient and clunky ways.

But technology is not standing still. Finally, solutions like EasySend are available, transforming paperwork from an obstacle to a digital tool for boosting revenues, cutting costs, and improving the bottom line.

Custom-coding digital journeys are one solution to the paperwork problem, but it is lengthy, inefficient, and not scalable at the enterprise scale. EasySend reshapes customer experience around data collection without the need for lengthy and expensive digitalization projects.

The future of enterprise IT belongs to no-code platforms

EasySend brings no-code development to the financial services space with a simple and intuitive no-code platform. By leveraging the power of the platform, enterprises can digitalize paperwork-intensive processes in a matter of days, without the high-ticket budgets and lengthy release cycles associated with traditional IT projects that involve coded solutions.

The partnership between EasySend and KPMG empowers enterprises to quickly adjust to the new reality by rapidly spinning up remote servicing capabilities quickly, efficiently, and with minimal resources.

Contact:

Antonia Graham,

Head of Group Communications,

Digicel,

+1 876-564-1708 (Jamaica),

[email protected]

Media contact:

Dore Dadon,

Marketing and PR,

[email protected]

SOURCE EasySend
Putin Not Ruling Out Running for President If Constitutional Amendments Passed

Sputnik News

11:41 GMT 21.06.2020

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKIY, Russia (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he did not rule out running for another term if the relevant amendments to the national constitution were passed.

"I do not exclude the possibility of this. If this appears in the constitution - the opportunity to run [for the presidency]. We will see," Putin said, as aired by Rossiya 1 TV channel.

The all-Russian vote on the amendments to the national constitution will be held on 1 July.

In late January, Mr Putin suggested amendments to the fundamental law, including reduction of the presidency to two terms and expanding the role of the legislature. The president also said that the State Council, currently an advisory body made up of regional governors, should have its status and duties fixed in the Constitution.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






South Korea on Monday urged North Korea to scrap a plan to launch propaganda leaflets across the border, after the North said its ready to float 12 million leaflets in what would be the largest such psychological campaign against its southern rival.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula rose sharply last week, after North Korea destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory in anger over South Korean civilian leafleting against it. North Korea said it will fly propaganda leaflets and take other steps to nullify 2018 deals that were meant to ease military tensions at the border.

Yoh Sangkey, a spokesman at Seouls Unification Ministry, told reporters that North Korea must suspend its plan to send anti-Seoul leaflets that are not helpful to South-North (Korea) relations at all.

Earlier Monday, North Korea said it had manufactured 12 million propaganda leaflets to be floated toward South Korea aboard 3,000 balloons and other unspecified delivery equipment.

Our plan of distributing the leaflets against the enemy is an eruption of the unquenchable anger of all the people and the whole society, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency said. The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near.

Some observers say ongoing weather conditions arent favorable for North Korea to fly balloons into the South so it may use drones to deliver the leaflets. They say this could trigger clashes between the Koreas because South Korea must respond to incoming drones to its territory.

A South Korean activist recently said he would also drop about a million leaflets over the border around Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War. South Korean officials have said theyll ban civilian activists from launching balloons toward North Korea.

Experts say North Korea is likely focusing on the South Korean civilian leafleting to boost its internal unity and apply more pressures on Seoul and Washington amid stalled nuclear diplomacy.
Ontario farmers who employ temporary foreign workers received a warning Monday from Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Protect those workers from COVID-19 or face consequences.

The strongly worded messages came amid outbreaks on farms that have seen hundreds of migrant workers testing positive for COVID-19 and the Windsor-Essex region held back from moving to Stage 2 of reopening.

Three workers have died from the disease.

Ford, who last week pleaded with farmers to bring their workers to get tested, repeated the appeal Monday  this time singling out some farmers in Windsor-Essex who he said brushed off his first request.

Well give it another shot, Ford said. Ill go to the extreme, whatever tool I have, to protect the people of Windsor, and the food supply chain, and the farmers, and the workers.

Ontarios labour minister said the province will increase inspections of farms this week, including the migrant workers living conditions, in partnership with the federal government and local health units.

We are stepping up our efforts to work with the agricultural community to help them adjust to the new realities where temporary foreign workers are working and living very closely together, Monte McNaughton said. The consequences are serious.

Advocates have said the cramped bunkhouses migrant workers share on farms have contributed to the spread of the novel coronavirus, and they have called on the province to include those spaces in workplace spot checks.

Approximately 20,000 migrant workers come to Ontario each year to work on farms and in greenhouses  many of them from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean. This year, they were required to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival.

Fords announcement came just hours after Trudeau said some farmers were not following strict federal rules designed to protect workers.

Anyone doing work, let alone essential work as part of our food chain, needs to feel protected, Trudeau said. Obviously, in the case of these three tragic deaths, that wasnt the case. We are ensuring that changes are made and that there will be consequences.

The province has struggled to contain the outbreaks in the Windsor-Essex and Haldimand-Norfolk regions, where dozens of workers have been exposed to the virus.

Last week, a temporary centre set up in Leamington, Ont., to test the Windsor-Essex regions 8,000 workers was shuttered after it tested roughly 10 per cent of the population  prompting hospital officials to call it an inefficient use of resources.

Ford said Monday the province will send mobile testing units to farms to alleviate some of the fears farmers and workers have of testing, but he again appealed for co-operation.

Im going to tell it the way it is, farmers just arent co-operating, he said. They arent sending out the people to get tested. Weve got to bang our heads off the wall and figure out why. Its good for the farmers, good for your workers, good for the food supply chain on safety.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit said Monday that 31 of the regions 32 new cases come from the agricultural sector.

Two migrant workers have died in the region due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. The Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit reported a migrant worker at a local farm had also died from the illness.

That farm currently has 199 infected migrant workers and 18 other people associated with the farm who tested positive for COVID-19, the health unit said.

The president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture said Monday he was concerned about Fords warning of extreme actions if farmers dont co-operate.

Keith Currie said the OFA has been working with the Ontario government and supports increased testing.

We need to continue to push our members to just suck it up and go get the testing done, he said. Then you know where youre at because the last thing we need is some of these folks to have a huge outbreak at harvest time. Then the whole year is gone.

In addition to the increased inspections, the provinces chief medical officer of health suggested Monday that local health units tighten regulations on farm workforces.

Farms are filling current labour gaps using a mix of temporary foreign workers, local workers and employment agency workers, which heightens the risk of transmission, Dr. David Williams said.

He recommended increased employee screening and isolation protocols, and said any domestic worker coming onto a farm must have tested negative for the virus 48 hours prior to starting work.

We need to have much more control, much more regulation and registration and more assurances of the safety before you bring other people in and contaminate what was already a fairly clean workforce, Williams said.

Green party Leader Mike Schreiner said the pandemic has exposed the inequality between how we treat migrant workers and local workers. He said the province must change the two-tier system to prioritize migrant worker safety.

It is not fair that seasonal workers might be afraid to report an illness or might be living and working in unsafe conditions that they cannot speak out about, he said.

Read more about:
Emergency meeting of the Arab League foreign ministers on Libya will take place on Tuesday, June 23. a diplomatic source told TASS, Trend report citing TASS.

"The League will hold an emergency ministerial meeting on the situation in Libya on Tuesday, June 23, on 11:00 Cairo times via a video conference," the source said, adding that the meeting will convene on Egypts initiative.

Initially, the meeting was supposed to take place Monday, but it was postponed because the meeting of the Berlin Conference agreements implementation oversight committee is to take place on June 22. This meeting, organized in coordination with the UN Mission on Libya, will discuss the goals determined by the conference, and the obligations the sides have taken upon themselves.

According to the source, "Egypt's request was supported by a number of member states," despite attempts to block it made by the Fayez Sarrajs Government of National Accord.
GETTY

Canadians are increasing their use of banking apps and using cash less frequently for payments due to COVID-19, and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre warns fraudsters could take advantage of the trend.

Jeff Thomson, a senior intelligence analyst at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), confirmed in an interview that the centre has not specifically received any reporting on frauds tied to mobile apps yet, but that because their partners in the U.S. are seeing the problem, Canada likely will too.

If theyre seeing this type of reporting down in the U.S., its not uncommon for us to start seeing it as well. With COVID-19, in general, the fraud reporting that we have, its really been a hit as a group effort, the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, France, every countrys reporting on these fraud trends, he said.

Depending on how different countries received their reporting, they might see something before we see it.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently put out a public service announcement warning U.S. citizens of fraudsters taking advantage of users who have been increasingly using mobile banking apps.

As the public increases its use of mobile banking apps, partially due to increased time at home, the FBI anticipates cyber actors will exploit these platforms, the June 10 announcement read.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, in Canada overall mobile banking usage has increased to 63 per cent of Canadians from the 55 per cent reported a year ago, according to a May 2020 report from J.D. Power.

The report noted that 49 per cent of Canadians rely heavily on online and mobile banking, while 33 per cent define themselves as digital-only customers who predominantly use mobile or the internet for their banking needs.

Like the FBI, Thomson indicated it is common for people to use apps and online services more because of COVID-19.

Think of my mother, she recently wanted to get set up on online baking because she doesnt want to go into the bank. Shes one of those risk category people, he said, adding that installing these banking apps are a new experience for many customers who have typically not gone digital.

Story continues

The FBI announcement indicated that concerns relate to app-based banking trojans and fake banking apps.

According to a We Live Security report, banking trojan apps hide behind a seemingly legitimate mask to gain users trust - be it games, handy widgets, power boosters and battery managers, video or Flash players, or even horoscope-themed apps.

A fake banking app is an app that impersonates a real app, the report said.

Their whole operation stands or falls on how believably they can imitate a legitimate banking application, or stand-in for a non-existent one, it read.

Thomson said that depending on the type of fraud, when banks are aware they might not even be reported to the CAFC and may be reported to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security instead.

At that point, it might be related to cybercrime, when its a trojan thats harvesting personal information versus an outright fraud, he said.

Alexis Dorais-Joncas, a security intelligence expert at We Live Security, said in an interview that between Canada and the U.S., banking apps are fairly similar in terms of security.

Theyre neither good nor bad, its good enough that I trust the real banking application, he said, adding that as more users turn to bank apps there will be a higher risk of running into banking trojan apps.

Its a linear progression. The more people try to install a banking app, the more people are likely to look at the wrong place and download the wrong application, he said.

He added that more often than not, people end up downloading an app that looks like a free game or a utility application, but in reality, it is a banking trojan.

That will monitor the activity on the mobile device, wait for the user to use the legitimate banking application, then steal the credentials of the user, he said.

There is nothing you can do if you are hit with a banking trojan, because most users arent even aware theyve installed it, Dorais-Joncas said.

If a bad application is installed on your phone, well how would you know? he said. The first sign of [fraud] is when you realize money is leaving your bank accounts.

He said if you want to be assured you wont be a victim, then users must make sure not to download apps from third-party stores. He also added that most antivirus software has a mobile version that can be used to scan phones.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android and sign up for the Yahoo Finance Canada Weekly Brief.
 2nd Gen AMD EPYC-powered system lands in the Top 10 on new TOP500 list ahead of AMD delivering the first ever exascale system next year 



 CERN, Indiana University, and Purdue University adopt AMD EPYC processors for advanced research 

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AMD (AMD) today announced multiple new high-performance computing wins for AMD EPYC processors, including that the seventh fastest supercomputer in the world and four of the 50 highest-performance systems on the bi-annual TOP500 list are now powered by AMD. Momentum for AMD EPYC processors in advanced science and health research continues to grow with new installations at Indiana University, Purdue University and CERN as well as high-performance computing (HPC) cloud instances from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Oracle Cloud.

The leading HPC institutions are increasingly leveraging the power of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors to enable cutting-edge research that addresses the worlds greatest challenges, said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, data center and embedded systems group, AMD. Our AMD EPYC CPUs, Radeon Instinct accelerators and open software programming environment are helping to advance the industry towards exascale-class computing, and we are proud to strengthen the global HPC ecosystem through our support of the top supercomputing clusters and cloud computing environments.

From powering the upcoming worlds fastest exascale supercomputers, Frontier and El Capitan , to supporting workloads in the cloud, and driving new advancements in health research, the high core count and extensive memory bandwidth of AMD EPYC processors are helping meet the growing demand from HPC providers for improved performance, scalability, efficiency, and total cost of ownership.

AMD Continues Expanding Share of TOP500 Supercomputers

Four AMD EPYC powered supercomputers are now among the 50 highest-performance systems in the world and there are now ten AMD EPYC-powered supercomputers on the TOP500 :

Story continues

Selene (No.7) an AMD EPYC 7742-based system in a DGX A100 SuperPOD platform from Nvidia,

Belenos (No.30), one of the two BullSequana XH2000 supercomputers at Meteo-France, the French national meteorological service powered by 2 nd Gen AMD EPYC processors,

Joliot-Curie (No.34), moved up the list based on a new submission for the BullSequana XH2000 system using 2 nd Gen AMD EPYC processors at GENCI, the French national high-performance computing organization,

Mahti (No. 48), a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor powered BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer at Finlands Center for Science Information Technology,

Atos is proud to provide to its customers with cutting edge technology, integrating 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors as soon as released, and demonstrating increased performance on HPC applications in production environments, said Agnes Boudot, group senior vice president, Head of HPC and Quantum at Atos.

AMD Powered Supercomputing Systems Drive Research of the Future

Two universities announced new research supercomputing systems powered by AMD EPYC processors in Dell EMC PowerEdge servers.

Indiana University will deploy Jetstream 2, an eight-petaflop distributed cloud computing system powered by upcoming 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors. This system will be used by researchers in a variety of fields such as AI, social sciences, and COVID-19 research. AMD EPYC processors already power Big Red 200 at the Indiana University campus.



Jetstream 2 bundles computation, software and access to storage for individuals and teams of researchers across an array of areas of research, said David Hancock, Director in Research Technologies, affiliated with the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University. With the next generation AMD EPYC processor, Jetstream 2 will provide 8 petaflops of cloud computing power, giving more access to high-end technologies to enable deep learning and artificial intelligence techniques.

Purdue University will deploy Anvil, a supercomputer powered by next generation AMD EPYC processors, which will provide advanced computing capabilities to support a wide range of computational and data-intensive research. AMD EPYC will also power Purdues latest community cluster Bell, scheduled for deployment early this fall.

In addition, CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, recently selected 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors in Gigabyte servers to harness the massive amounts of data from their latest Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment to rapidly detect subatomic particles known as beauty quarks. A new case study details how combining the increased bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, DDR4 memory speed, and the 64 core AMD EPYC 7742 processor allows researchers to collect the raw data streams generated by 40 terabytes of collision data occurring every second in the LHC.

High Performance Computing in the Cloud with AMD EPYC

As the HPC industry evolves to support new workload demands, cloud providers continue to adopt 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors to provide leadership performance and flexible solutions. With recent cloud wins among technology partners like Amazon Web Services , Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud , AMD is helping industry leaders push the boundaries in the new era of HPC and cloud computing.

AMD and Microsoft Azure have continued to build upon their cloud partnership with the recently announced HBv2-Series VMs for high-performance computing workloads. The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors provide Microsoft Azure customers with impressive core scaling, access to massive memory bandwidth and are the first x86 server processors that support PCIe 4.0, enabling some of the best high-performance computing experiences in the industry. Together, AMD and Microsoft Azure will support real-world HPC workloads, such as CFD, explicit finite element analysis, seismic processing, reservoir modeling, rendering, and weather simulation.

AMD Updates ROCm For Heterogenous Software Support

Community support continues to grow for AMD Radeon Open eCosystem (ROCm), AMDs open source foundation for heterogenous compute. Major development milestones in the latest update include:

The HIP-Clang compiler is now up-streamed and reviewed by the LLVM community, providing a better open source experience for the developer,

A new rocprofiler start/stop API to enable/disable GPU kernel HSA dispatch callbacks, increasing developer productivity and shortening the profiling run times,

AMD RCCL compatibility with NVIDIA Communications Collective Library (NCCL) v2.6.4m,

MIOpen provides an optional pre-compiled kernel package to reduce startup latency,

A new CPU Affinity API is introduced for aiding applications to select the appropriate memory node for a given accelerator (GPU) and a given CPU,

The new Radeon Performance Primitives library is a comprehensive high-performance computer vision library for AMD (CPU and GPU) with the HIP and OpenCL backend.

Join AMD CTO and executive vice president, Mark Papermaster, for a webinar on July 15th to discuss the full range of AMD solutions and upcoming innovations in HPC. Click the link for the time most convenient for you to register: 9 AM EDT, 12 PM EDT or 9 PM EDT.

Supporting Resources

About AMD

For 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics, and visualization technologies  the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms and the datacenter. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees around the world are focused on building great products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (AMD) website , blog , Facebook and Twitter pages.

AMD, the AMD logo, EPYC, Radeon Instinct, ROCm, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries, Google Cloud Platform is a trademark of Google LLC., LLVM is a trademark of LLVM Foundation, OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc. used by permission by Khronos Group, Inc., Oracle is a registered mark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. PCIe is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG Corporation. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) including features, functionality, availability, timing, deployment and expectations of 2nd Gen AMD EPYC CPU powered supercomputer systems, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are commonly identified by words such as "would," "intends," "believes," "expects," "may," "will," "should," "seeks," "intends," "plans," "pro forma," "estimates," "anticipates," or the negative of these words and phrases, other variations of these words and phrases or comparable terminology. Investors are cautioned that the forward-looking statements in this document are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations, speak only as of the date of this document and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Such statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond AMD's control, that could cause actual results and other future events to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. Material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, without limitation, the following: Intel Corporations dominance of the microprocessor market and its aggressive business practices may limit AMDs ability to compete effectively; AMD relies on third parties to manufacture its products, and if they are unable to do so on a timely basis in sufficient quantities and using competitive technologies, AMDs business could be materially adversely affected; failure to achieve expected manufacturing yields for AMDs products could negatively impact its financial results; the success of AMDs business is dependent upon its ability to introduce products on a timely basis with features and performance levels that provide value to its customers while supporting and coinciding with significant industry transitions; if AMD cannot generate sufficient revenue and operating cash flow or obtain external financing, it may face a cash shortfall and be unable to make all of its planned investments in research and development or other strategic investments; the loss of a significant customer may have a material adverse effect on AMD; AMDs receipt of revenue from its semi-custom SoC products is dependent upon its technology being designed into third-party products and the success of those products; global economic and market uncertainty may adversely impact AMDs business and operating results; the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic could materially adversely affect AMDs business, financial condition and results of operations; AMDs worldwide operations are subject to political, legal and economic risks and natural disasters which could have a material adverse effect on AMD; government actions and regulations such as export administration regulations, tariffs and trade protection measures, may limit AMDs ability to export its products to certain customers; AMD products may be subject to security vulnerabilities that could have a material adverse effect on AMD; IT outages, data loss, data breaches and cyber-attacks could compromise AMDs intellectual property or other sensitive information, be costly to remediate and cause significant damage to its business, reputation and operations; uncertainties involving the ordering and shipment of AMDs products could materially adversely affect it; AMDs operating results are subject to quarterly and seasonal sales patterns; the agreements governing AMDs notes and the Secured Revolving Facility impose restrictions on AMD that may adversely affect its ability to operate its business; the markets in which AMDs products are sold are highly competitive; the conversion of the 2.125% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 may dilute the ownership interest of its existing stockholders, or may otherwise depress the price of its common stock; the demand for AMDs products depends in part on the market conditions in the industries into which they are sold. Fluctuations in demand for AMDs products or a market decline in any of these industries could have a material adverse effect on its results of operations; AMDs ability to design and introduce new products in a timely manner is dependent upon third-party intellectual property; AMD depends on third-party companies for the design, manufacture and supply of motherboards, software, memory and other computer platform components to support its business; if AMD loses Microsoft Corporations support for its products or other software vendors do not design and develop software to run on AMDs products, its ability to sell its products could be materially adversely affected; and AMDs reliance on third-party distributors and AIB partners subjects it to certain risks. Investors are urged to review in detail the risks and uncertainties in AMD's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to AMD's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 28, 2020.

Contact:

Gary Silcott

AMD Communications

(512) 602-0889

gary.silcott@amd.com



Laura Graves

AMD Investor Relations

(408) 749-5467

laura.graves@amd.com
The Delhi High Court Monday said it expected the AAP government to "scrupulously" follow the directions issued by the Lieutenant Governor (LG) on June 8 in connection with testing of asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan issued the direction while disposing of two pleas challenging the Delhi government health department's June 2 decision to exclude asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic patients from COVID 19 testing.

"It is expected of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) that the LG's direction of June 8 shall be followed scrupulously," the bench said. The court said it was not going to further monitor the matter in view of the Delhi government status report which said that LG Anil Baijal on June 8 set aside the June 2 order. The LG by his June 8 order had directed that testing strategy recommended by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) be followed, said the report, filed through Delhi government additional standing counsel Satyakam.

The report also stated that testing in Delhi has been ramped up and another testing methodology in the form of 'Rapid Antigen Testing' has been adopted in Delhi as per the recommendation of ICMR. The two separate but similar petitions were filed by doctor K K Aggarwal, Padma Shri Awardee and former President of Indian Medical Association (IMA), and Renu Goswami Aggarwal, who is also the president of NGO 'Heart Care Foundation of India', said during the hearing that multiple orders from Delhi government and then the LG was leading to confusion among the doctors as well as general public. He said there should be only one common order to avoid confusion.

Aggarwal claimed that as COVID-19 is a notifiable disease it is mandatory for all citizens to get themselves tested for the virus, irrespective of whether the patient is symptomatic or asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic patient. In the second petition, Goswami said the Delhi government excluded asymptomatic direct contacts of confirmed cases from COVID-19 testing (except high risk cases), which is in contravention of ICMR testing guidelines issued on May 18 mandating testing of asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of a confirmed case.

It said the AAP government has also issued show cause notices to authorised private laboratories for testing asymptomatic cases by alleging that they have purportedly acted in violation of the ICMR testing guidelines as well as suspended testing by eight labs. "The impugned actions restricting testing to symptomatic and high risk cases and reduced testing capacity of the state are in violation of the Article 21 of the Constitution in as much as denying the right of a citizen to get tested for an infection is a gross violation of Right to Life and the attendant right to health guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution," it had said.

Also read: 'India fighting two wars against China, at border and against virus,' says Arvind Kejriwal
It has been detected that applicants with fictitious data, documents, and personal details were among those who applied for the special fund.

The fund is set up by the government to cushion small and medium scale businesses from the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Data from the National Board and Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) showed that 5,200 out of a total of 450,000 applicants presented fake documentations to benefit from the GH1 billion Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP) business support scheme.

As a result, the NBSSI, together with the CAP Steering Committee, has extended the deadline for applications from June 20 to June 26, 2020, to enable it to address all fraud-related cases before the fund will be disbursed.

The Executive Director of NBSSI, Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, who made this known at a press conference in Accra last Friday, said some of the fraud cases detected had been forwarded to security agencies for investigations.

The online portal developed to receive applications has detected more than 5,200 fraud alerts representing multiple applications with the same mobile money or bank account details.

For instance, we identified that one person registered for over 100 people in a community with the same documentation, mobile money contact or account number.

And so what we did was to engage the services of KPMG, a tax consulting firm, to do data analysis of the applications to help make the right decisions, she said.

Mrs Yankey-Ayeh further explained that the analysis would allow them to detect those using fictitious documentation such as fraudulent tax identification number (TIN), contact numbers, and same account numbers. Reasons

Mrs Yankey-Ayeh further explained that the extension of the deadline was as a result of varied concerns raised by some trade and business associations asking for more time to enable some of their members to submit their applications.

We had to give all concerns carefully thought to arrive at the six-day extension. The grace period presents an opportunity to rectify complaints and errors of applicants with wrong credentials recorded on the digitalised application portal, she said.

Other reasons included delayed applications due to challenges encountered in the acquisition of the TIN.

Mrs Yankey-Ayeh also said the extension was an opportunity to mop up paper applications (from cut-off communities and rural areas with no internet) for processing onto a digitised system.

As of June 18, 2020, the executive director said more than 450,000 applicants, representing micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), had registered for the fund; 75 percent of whom had successfully completed their applications.

Applicants who registered via mobile phones represented 58.8 percent while the remaining 41.2 percent did it directly on the web portal, she said.

Mrs Yankey-Ayeh said 66 percent of the applicants were females who requested 47 percent of the total value of funds, while the remaining 34 percent male applicants demanded 52.6 percent of the funds.

The executive director also said the NBSSI had intensified collaboration with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to facilitate TIN acquisition for applicants.

About CAP

The CAP Business Support Scheme was instituted by the government to provide support to MSMEs negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Launched on May 19, 2020, by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, its implementation was fast-tracked to ensure that MSMEs, which are the backbone of the economy, access the fund in a timely manner.

---citinewsroom
- Government is set to distribute a total of 1190 vehicles to senior high schools

- The breakdown is 350 buses and 840 pickups

- Schools to benefit from the gesture are those that did not receive any in 2016

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that government would soon begin the distribution of 350 buses and 840 vehicles to some Senior High Schools (SHS) in Ghana.

According to him, the schools which would benefit from these 1,190 vehicles are those that did not receive any in 2016.

The decision to distribute these vehicles forms part of the government's plans to alleviate the conditions of the Free SHS policy.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Ghanas caseload now 14,154 with 85 deaths

The president made this known while addressing the nation on Sunday, June 21 on updates toward COVID-19's control in the country.

 ...Government is also making available 350 buses and 840 pickup vehicles to Senior High Schools that did not receive vehicles in 2016. ...

According to a CitiNews report, Nana Addo had earlier hinted plans to distribute these vehicles to the various schools during Prempeh College's 70th-anniversary celebration on Saturday, November 30, 2019.

READ ALSO: 66% of Ghanaians say Mahama is better at keeping campaign promises than Nana Addo

In a related development, Akufo-Addo revealed in his 12th address that his government will absorb the full examination fees of all final year students sitting for the 2020 West Africa Senior School Certification Examination (WASSCE).

For the first time in our nations history, government will absorb the WASSCE examination fees of the 313,837 students who will sit for the exams.

Meanwhile, all final year SHS students, second-year gold track students will also resume school on Monday, June 22, 2020.

READ ALSO: Fathers day: 7 celebrities serving daddy goals in sweet moments with their kids

University of Ghana reopens for final year students | #Yencomgh

Have national and human interest issues to discuss?

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome.

Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
On June 12, NATO officially recognized Ukraine as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner. According to the imperialist alliance, Ukraine will now benefit from enhanced access to interoperability programs and exercises, and more sharing of information.

Ukraine is the sixth country to be offered special partner status, along with Georgia, Jordan, Australia, Finland, and Sweden. Kiev has already sent its military forces to a number of NATOs operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky stated that he was grateful to the members of the Alliance for recognizing Ukraines significant contribution to joint peacekeeping operations in the world. The deputy prime minister for European integration, Olga Stefanyshyna, announced that, on the basis of its new status, Ukraine will be able to exchange operational information [with NATO] previously closed to us. According to Stefanyshyna, Ukrainian delegates could now also participate in special NATO bodies as liaison officers for interaction and information exchange.

Zelensky and NATO general secretary Stoltenberg in Brussels, June 2019 (Photo: Ukraine's Presidential Administration)

Unsurprisingly, Russia has reacted negatively toward the announcement. Russian Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov stated that Ukraines new status does not contribute to the strengthening of security and stability in Europe.

The Ukrainian government has been engaged in a now six-year-long civil war against Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine that has claimed the lives of over 14,000 people, including over 3,000 civilians. The war has also displaced over 2 million from their homes. A 2019 UNICEF report found that over half a million children in the country continue to face grave risks to their physical health and psychological well-being.

The US and NATO heavily funded the Ukrainian military in this conflict, providing some $18 billion in military and other aid to the country since the 2014 US- and German-backed coup in Kiev, which triggered the outbreak of the civil war.

The move to more closely integrate the Ukrainian military into NATO structures further heightens the risk of a full-scale war between Russia and NATO on Ukrainian soil. It is taking place amid the most profound economic and social crisis since the Great Depression, making clear that the imperialist powers are responding to the growing class tensions by escalating their drive to war.

Coinciding with the NATO status change, the United States approved a $250 million military aid package that was supported by both the Trump administration and Congressional Democrats and Republicans. A US military official told the Military Times that the military aid keeps a fair amount of Russian forces tied down that would otherwise be doing things directly against U.S. interests.

Just days later, the United States announced that it had sent another $60 million in military aid to Ukraine including Javelin anti-tank missiles. Shortly thereafter, the US State Department announced it had cleared the sale of 16 naval patrol boats and other military equipment weapons, sensors, and communications gear worth $600 million to Ukraine.

While US President Donald Trump has, in some respects, displayed an ambivalent attitude toward Ukraine, mostly because of tactical considerations bound up with the raging infighting within the American state, he has in reality not diverted from the long-term goal of the American ruling class to turn Ukraine into a proxy in a potential war against Russia.

Despite being criticized from the right for being a Russian secret agent and impeached for holding up military aid to Ukraine, Trump was the first US president to openly send Ukraine lethal military aid in April 2018 with the initial delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the country.

According to some estimates, the United States has given approximately $7 billion to Ukraine since 1992. Ukraine is regularly the top recipient of foreign aid from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the region. Based on the figures by the US State Department, Ukraine has received $2 billion just from USAID since the 2014 coup.

Within Ukraine itself, the prospect of NATO membership has long generated controversy, with little support for the move among the Ukrainian working class, especially in eastern Ukraine, which shares close economic and social ties to Russia.

Prior to 2014, several public opinion polls demonstrated that while Ukrainians supported EU membership in hopes of improving their impoverished living standards, support for NATO membership was significantly lower.

Former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the 2014 coup, opposed seeking NATO membership. However, since the 2014 coup, the entire Ukrainian ruling class has moved fully toward increasing the countrys ties to NATO.

Despite garnering much of his support for criticizing the brazenly nationalistic and militaristic regime of former President Petro Poroshenko and declaring that he sought an end to the war in eastern Ukraine, since taking office Zelensky has continued to modernize Ukraines military forces in order to meet NATO standards.

Zelensky has also called for the country to receive full NATO membership, which he well knows would drastically increase the possibility of an all-out NATO-Russia military conflict. It would eliminate any possibility for a negotiated settlement to the ongoing civil war in eastern Ukraine. His government has reportedly worked since the fall of 2019 on the enhanced opportunities partner status.

Following months in which Zelensky faced intense pressure from sections of the oligarchy and the countrys far right over his engagement in the Normandy talks about the conflict in East Ukraine with Germany, France, and Russiabut not the USin a surprise government reshuffle in early March, Zelensky brought in a series of officials with close ties to Washington.

While Ukraine remains Europes poorest country, according to the IMF, its defense spending now amounts to approximately 5.5 percent of the countrys GDP. Prior to the Western-backed coup in 2014, Ukraines military spending accounted for just 1 percent of GDP.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night that the most important person in the White House was President Donald Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

It varied from time to time, Bolton said. The sustained answer to that question is Jared Kushner.

Bolton went on to say that Trump was generally uninformed and did not do his homework.

There was an unwillingness to do systematic learning so he could make the most informed decisions, Bolton said, adding that the presidents day didnt start until almost lunchtime.

I dont think he is fit for office, Bolton said.

What the Hell Is John Bolton?

Boltons interview with ABC comes just two days before the release of his book, titled The Room Where It Happened. The Department of Justice last week attempted to put an injunction on the book and block its release. But a judge in Washington struck down that effort Saturday.

Most of Boltons comments about the president seemed to focus on the presidents inability to study and understand foreign policy.

Trump was not following any international grand strategy, Bolton said.

Trump said he ousted Bolton from his position at the NSC in September in the midst of the Ukraine scandal and in the lead-up to the House impeachment inquiry. (Bolton now claims that he resigned.)

Over the past week the White House has scrambled to contain the fallout from Boltons book and has tried to paint the former national security adviser as a disgruntled former official attempting to profit off of lies.

In his interview with ABCs Martha Raddatz, Bolton laid out a series of foreign policy events where he says Trump did not understand U.S. policy and instead thought that forging personal relationships with leaders would bring friendlier relations between two nations.

I think many of these foreign leaders mastered at ringing his bells, Bolton said.

Bolton said Trump tried to become close with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in an attempt to smooth relations between the two countries and come to an agreement on nuclear weapons.

Story continues

I think Kim Jong Un gets a huge kick out of this, Bolton said. Nobody should misunderstand that a personal relationship is somehow equivalent to better relations between two nations.

Bolton said that during the Singapore summit in 2018 Trump gave concessions to Kim in private talks.

Perhaps no other foreign policy relationship was more concerning to Bolton than the one between Trump and Russias Vladimir Putin. Bolton said it was clear Putin had a hold over Trump

I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle. I dont think he is worried about Donald Trump, Bolton said. I can just see the smirk when he knows hes got him following his line.

The former national security adviser said Trumps callous indifference to establishing streamlined foreign policy eventually led to the breakdown of relations between the U.S. and Ukraine.

He directly linked the provision of [Ukraines] assistance with that provision, Bolton said of Trump holding up the countrys military aid in exchange for President Volodymyr Zelensky pushing officials in Kyiv to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Bolton was called to testify in the House impeachment probe but declined Democrats outreach, saying it wouldnt have made a difference if he had answered their questions. Minds were already made up on Capitol Hill, he said.

Bolton said Democrats carried out impeachment malpractice and that the House Democrats should have taken more time to carry out the investigation. Instead, he said, they chose to keep it narrow and move it fast.

If there was one incident that pushed him over the edge, Bolton said, it was Trumps decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David on the week of 9/11. Thats when he decided to resign, Bolton said. But the president fired him first.

I should have striked preemptively, Bolton said. He and I had a one-on-one conversation in the afternoon and I said, If you want me to resign Ill do it. And we decided to talk about it later in the afternoon.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!

Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Gov. Jeb Bush has been a leader on efforts to improve schooling for more than two decades. He has mentored a generation of governors, carried the banner for reforms including school choice and accountaility, and launched ExcelinEd , a hugely influential voice in the world of K-12 schooling. During his tenure in office and in the many years since, Gov. Bush has wrestled with the practical challenges of how elected leaders can help make schools work for kids. I reached out to see how he is thinking about coronavirus and education.

 Rick Hess

Rick: As the focus of the education community shifts from dealing with the immediate aftermath of closing schools to thinking about how to reopen, state leaders have a lot to weigh. How are you advising governors and state leaders to think about reopening schools and colleges in their states?

Gov. Bush: First and foremost, schools have to open with the health and safety of our students and teachers being paramount. But they have to open, or we will have huge economic, health, and social challenges. My advice has been to be creative, listen carefully to the leaders at the school levelbut staying quarantined is not an option.

Secondly, leaders must have the humility to know what they dont know and clearly communicate the uncertainties that exist. They need to anticipate the potential setbacks and problems and prepare for them.

I would advise governors to consider using all available options as they work to reopen schools. These include in-person classrooms, blended in-person and virtual learning, hybrid/asynchronous schedules and full-time virtual learning. There are hundreds of details to think about, and fortunately, governors have the power to make policy changes to navigate these challenges and help schools and students get back on track.

ExcelinEd has done an analysis and guidance document to help state leaders plan the best approach for their systems.

Rick: In states where some places are safer than others, whats involved if a governor decides to reopen schools in part of their state, while keeping them closed in another part that was hit harder by the virus?

Bush: Again, my view is the schools have to open, but how to do that should be driven from the bottom up. There is always a fine line that state leaders must walk between supporting local decisionmaking in education and setting statewide expectations for quality and equity.

ExcelinEds survey found that a vast majority of state leaders indicated they were going to allow local districts to determine their reopening schedules. However, several respondents are considering reopening school campuses early statewide or requiring a phased-in reopening schedule that would open campuses earlier than a normal fall schedule.

State leaders also said they are considering several different options for grouping students and teachers. Nearly all respondents report considering hybrid learning models of in-person and online learning and staggered attendance schedules.

Its critical to note that the abrupt and widespread need for remote learning during this pandemic has magnified many of the inequities that currently exist in our education systems. Its also shown us there have not been many clear expectations for how to best support effective instruction, either in-person or remote.

States that are able to set clear expectations and support districts, schools, and educators in providing high-quality instructionwhether its delivered online, in-person, or a blend of the twowill be poised to better understand where to target resources that ensure equity and improve outcomes for all students. This may require expanded professional development, revisions to teacher evaluations, and/or better access to high-quality curricular and technology resources.

Rick: Looking forward, how should governors be leading the planning on all this?

Bush: Governors should seize the opportunity to make big changes in times of disruption that are impossible to make when things are going fine. Faced with declining revenues, they should take the opportunity to get rid of whats not working. They should fund priorities first. If a state has a pension problem, now is the time to make structural changes. Think big and be bold. The pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in our education systems, and the time and the opportunity to address them is now .

Workforce readiness is a great example, and I know it is a priority for a lot of governors as well. For more than a decade, the skills gap in the American economy has been growing in an alarming wayalong with the sheer number of unfilled jobs requiring specific knowledge, skills, and credentials. During this pandemic, the gap will continue to grow unless action is taken.

Governors can take steps to ensure that student pathways are strategically aligned with labor-market needs and are leveraged to help states in their long-term economic recovery. State leaders may be tempted to invest heavily in short-term programs leading to high-demand (and often low-wage) jobs to quickly reverse unemployment trends. While states must help their citizens get back to work quickly, the most effective approaches will include strategic investments in high-quality education-to-workforce strategies designed to prepare citizens for family-sustaining careers in the post-COVID economy rather than simply filling jobs.

Rick: As a former governor, what else do you think Washington and the Department of Education should be doing right now?

Bush: We are a bottom-up country, and thats one of our greatest and most enduring strengths. Were 50 unique and individual states, growing and thriving in different ways. The states are incubators of democracy, because thats where great ideas are developed and triedand where citizens have a strong voice in shaping their future.

To be candid, Washingtons role is to support innovation. Let the states and communities lead and determine what is best for their families. Governors and state legislatures can, and often do, act quickly to solve problems. I encourage them to jump in with bold ideas that can get their education systems moving forward, even better than before.

Rick: How do you think this big experiment in remote learning has gone?

Bush: Some states made tremendous strides to ensure that while campuses were closed, schools stayed open. Other states shut down learning. They cut off opportunities. In the name of equity, they stopped all kids from receiving instruction. That is shameful.

Rick: As someone who has thought a lot about the role of technology in education, what do you think about how the shift to virtual learning is going?

Bush: We knew there was a digital divide in this country, but the pandemic has exposed how wide it is. Only a third of rural homes have broadband; low-income families typically lack access to internet-enabled devices, preferring smartphones instead . There are some states, like Florida, and many public charter school networks, that quickly figured it out, ramping up digital access and providing devices. But there are other places that have essentially put a stop to learning for some students, like Oregon and Michigan , and that is not right.

Going forward, every student in every community should have a device and access to the internet. Every district should practice and plan for distance learning days. Teachers should understand how to use distance learning tools effectively. And students with special needs and English-learners should not fall through the cracks.

Yes, schools should use technology. However, I dont believe we need or should strive for a future where every student is sitting alone at a laptop, receiving remote instruction all day long. But I do believe in new models of education that empower teachers to prepare kids to have more ownership of how they study and learn; where the goal is mastery; where digital learning and digital skills are a component of that learning; and where time is the variable and learning is the constant. Those models will better prepare our kids for the wired future that we know already exists.

Rick: What places have most impressed you with how theyve responded to the coronavirus challenge in education?

Bush: There are so many examples!

Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is a great example of getting it right, learning from mistakes, being held accountable, and having a relentless dedication to serving students and teachers. Florida has benefited from 20 years of innovation and state leaders not being afraid to try new things. FLVS was designed to serve all studentspublic, private, and home educationand it works. At the start of the pandemic, FLVS was used to train public school teachers and is helping other states, like Alaska, bring high-quality online education to students.

In my home county, Miami-Dade , the school district has been preparing for the possibility of school closures for a long time. The district also provided additional professional development for teachers and a support hotline to help teachers, students, and parents with the transition to distance learning.

States and districts that already recognized a need to offer blended and online learning to students have not missed a beat during this pandemic. Lindsay Unified in California launched a community Wi-Fi network to make sure students have internet access. In Kansas, every Shawnee Mission elementary student has an iPad, and high school students are issued a MacBook Air to help continue learning outside school walls. Also in Kansas, Olathe public schools are providing comprehensive social and emotional learning resources to parents and students during this time of uncertainty.

Success Academy in New York City was also ready and able to take classes completely virtual and keep all students on track with schedules, consistent parent communication, and engaging online learning videos made by teachers.

Rick: How should governors and state leaders think about assessing the performance of their schools and systems?

Bush: I think state leaders ought to move the planned spring assessments to the fall. We must understand how much learning loss has occurred while campuses have been closed. And we need to assess what worked while distance learning was being implemented and refined. You measure what you care about, and we value student learning.

At the end of the day, state leaders must own student learning. By that I mean that no matter what is happeninga pandemic, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, and the likelearning is always supported, available, and accessible for all students.

Rick: Youve been a pioneer in school accountability for more than two decades. With state tests canceled, how should accountability work right now? What are the right measures to be looking at, and the right ways to be using them?

Bush: Looking ahead, it will be critical for states to measure in the fall, with the goal of understanding where students are and the scope of learning loss. I sincerely hope its not as large as has been predicted, but educators wont know without measuring.

Ideally, states should link supports and resources to a fall assessment. With the student score report, parents and students should receive information detailing the options available to help students get to where they need to be. For example, parents with students that test below grade level in reading or math could get dedicated funding to allow them to find the supplemental tutoring that works for their child. The student could get summer enrichment funding to continue to catch up next summer.

Ive often said that what gets measured gets done. Especially after this national pandemic caused school campuses to close, we must know exactly where each student stands in their learning journey so we can best help them succeed in school and beyond.

Rick: OK, last question. Ending on an upbeat note, what has impressed you most about how youve seen Americas educators and families respond to COVID-19?

Bush: First and foremost, my heartfelt thanks goes out to all the people serving on the front lines. And to the teachers who have continued to be the spark that ignites knowledge for our kids, even at a distance over the last few months.

Teachers really are stepping up, and Id like to share a few awesome stories Ive read:

High school history teacher Gabriel Elias who teaches at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. films an informational video for students, streamed live on Facebook, and says that connection to students is so important.

Tammy Edinger teaches 8th grade at Elmhurst Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio. Shes taken her students to the nations capital for nearly a decade. Since they cant physically make the trip this year, she created a virtual trip.

Voncile Campbell is a math teacher at Bow Elementary-Middle School in Detroit and reads bedtime stories every night for kids.

There are thousands of stories like these, reinforcing that bottom up spirit of the American people. The South Carolina Department of Education stationed 3,000 school buses with Wi-Fi access across the state for student use. Business also stepped up to provide internet access to kids and teachers, so kudos to Charter Communications, Comcast/Xfinity, and AT&T, to name a few.

ExcelinEd has been tracking and sharing state and local innovative solutions. Its an impressive array of efforts that tells me education is changing fast, in bigger and better ways than most of us might imagine.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Seoul, June 22 : South Korean President Moon Jae-in's office on Monday strongly criticized former White House National Security Adviser (NSA) John Bolton for his "distorted" account of what happened in a brisk summit diplomacy last year involving the leaders of the US and the two Koreas.

In his book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir", set to be published Tuesday, Bolton wrote that US President Donald Trump did not want Moon to join him during his third meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at Panmunjom in June 2019, but at the South Korean President's insistence, he eventually agreed, reports Yonhap news agency.

Moon suggested Trump and Kim meet again at Panmunjom, inside the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas, or on a US naval vessel, because he wanted "something dramatic to generate momentum for what he thought could be the summit of the century", according to Bolton.

"Trump wanted Moon nowhere around, but Moon was determined to be present, making it a trilateral meeting if he could," he wrote in the book "I entertained the faint hope that this dispute with Moon could tank the whole thing, because it was certain Kim didn't want Moon around." Reacting to Bolton's claims, Chung Eui-yong, director of national security at Cheong Wa Dae, said in a statement on Monday that "a considerable portion of it is distorted".

He played it down as based on what Bolton had seen from his "own viewpoint," not "accurate facts", accusing him of unilaterally disclosing details of diplomatic consultations based on trust among relevant governments.

Chung said it represents a violation of the basic principle of diplomacy, which could harm the sincerity of future negotiations "very seriously".

He added such an "inappropriate" act could also undermine the allies' efforts to advance joint strategies and bolster security interests.

Cheong Wa Dae said it delivered Chung's position to the US National Security Council on Sunday, Yonhap News Agency reported.

In a separate statement, Yoon Do-han, Cheong Wa Dae's senior secretary for public communication, said it's not proper to offer such a "distorted" account, based on "bias and prejudice", in connection with "candid and constructive" consultations between the leaders of the allies on the Korean Peninsula peace and an improvement in inter-Korean relations.
June 22, 2020





The recent rise in the COVID-19 pandemic seen across the world has only added to the sense that obtaining some form of medical treatment at home is needed to protect oneself from illness. Over the last decade, home testing for medical conditions has grown in market share in the healthcare sector. The big question facing members of the traditional healthcare industry has been why so many individuals are now looking to diagnose themselves when it comes to certain medical problems. The use of home testing kits for COVID-19 in the U.K. and parts of the U.S. will have the effect of only driving up the use of home testing kits by the general public.







Stigma

There are many reasons why an individual would be reluctant to make an appointment with a physician. One of the most common is the need to undertake an STI test. One can imagine why at-home STI testing is so popular. Rates of some sexually transmitted infections, like HPV, are going down thanks to the development of a vaccine. Others, however, are on the rise, including gonorrhea and chlamydia.

Mistrust of the Medical Profession

Focusing solely on the U.S., the mistrust of the medical profession has been a major problem for many communities for decades. There, the African-American community has a deep mistrust of the medical community due to unethical studies and practices of the past. The most notorious of these studies was the Tuskegee Experiment, in which physicians monitored the rate of syphilis in African-American males without revealing the condition to each patient, despite the disease being curable with penicillin.

However, the mistrust of the medical profession goes beyond the African-American community. The idea has taken root that members of the medical profession are mostly looking at commercial opportunities, not whats best for their patients. This has led to the statistic that around 75 percent of those surveyed in 1966 trusted the medical profession compared to just 34 percent by 2012.

Cost is an Important Factor

There are many reasons why at-home testing has become so popular, including the belief that there are many problems with the medical industry far beyond the issues of mistrust. Instead, many experts are pointing to the high costs of testing at a traditional medical office or lab compared to the low cost of an at-home test. Some experts believe the majority of those looking to at-home testing do so because they are removing the major costs associated with a physician ordering similar tests.

High health insurance premiums and copays in the U.S. mean many people who are uncertain of their health are now looking for a better way of taking care of their health at a time when its never been so important. The fear of exorbitant medical bills is driving many people to at-home options that change the narrative of personal healthcare.

There are many diseases and medical conditions that can be tested for at-home without an expensive and time-consuming trip to the doctor's office. Instead, many people are looking to take their medical tests and future in their own hands by using at-home testing to identify everything from food allergies to genetic testing.
Jammu, June 22 : An Army jawan was killed on Monday in Pakistan firing on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district.

Army sources said one soldier was killed in the firing and shelling from Pakistan on the LoC in the Nowshera sector. Pakistan resorted to unprovoked firing and shelling on the LoC simultaneously in Nowshera sector of Rajouri and the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch.

Defence sources said the Indian Army is retaliating befittingly at both places where heavy firing exchanges have been going on.

Pakistan has been violating the bilateral ceasefire agreement of October 2003 with impunity during the last one month on the LoC.

This has thrown the lives of hundreds of the border residents in Poonch, Rajouri, Jammu, Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora districts out of gear.

Both the lives and livelihood of the border residents in the Union Territory are threatened by these daily ceasefire violations by Pakistan on the LoC.
The two staff members of the Indian high commission in Islamabad who were detained by Pakistani security agencies last week returned via the Wagah-Attari land border crossing on Monday, people familiar with developments said.

India had summoned Pakistans charge daffaires to the external affairs ministry last week to protest against the abduction and torture of the two junior staff members in Islamabad on June 15.

The two men were held for alleged involvement in a road accident. The complaint filed against them by Islamabad Police had accused them of rash driving and possessing fake Pakistani currency but theses charge were denied by New Delhi.

Pakistani security agencies had detained the staff members and held them for almost 12 hours, releasing them after Pakistani charge daffaires Syed Haider Shah was summoned to the external affairs ministry for lodging a strong protest.

An official statement issued last week had said the two staff members of the Indian mission were forcibly abducted by Pakistani agenciesand kept in illegal custody for more than 10 hours and also subjected to interrogation, torture and physical assault.

It is believed the two men were withdrawn from Islamabad.

Meanwhile, the Indian high commission in Islamabad has announced it will facilitate the return of 748 Indian nationals from Pakistan via the Wagah-Attari land border during June 25-27.

A total of 250 Indian nationals will return on June 25 while another 250 will return the following day. The remaining Indian national will be repatriated via the land border crossing on June 27, according to a notification posted on the missions website.

The Indian nationals being repatriated were asked to make arrangements to reach the Wagah-Attari border crossing.

Hundreds of Indians, most of them students or people visiting relatives, were stranded in Pakistan after the Indian government imposed travel restrictions in March to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the absence of flights between the two countries, many people had asked to be allowed to cross over via the land border crossing.
"Our new online identity reflects our values, showcases our capabilities, and allows our clients to fully understand who we are as an organization." - MSHC Co-Managing Member, Dr. Charles Thorne.

The MSHC team of experienced physicians offers a broad range of quality health care services to a diverse patient base. With over 30 patient care centers throughout the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area and the Delmarva Peninsula., MSHC is most notably known for providing high-quality integrated healthcare to people suffering from neuro-musculoskeletal injuries and chronic conditions.

Our organization has excelled well beyond what our online identity depicts. We invested considerable time searching for a marketing firm that aligned with our core values, and one with a proven track record. After meeting with CC&A Strategic Media we quickly realized their team could help us achieve our goals. Our new online identity reflects our values, showcases our capabilities, and allows our clients to fully understand who we are as an organization. We couldnt be more pleased with the outcome of this project. said MSHC Co-Managing Member, Dr. Charles Thorne.

MSHCs expertise and team of dedicated staff are committed to their mission to continue to be the premier, most experienced neuromusculoskeletal healthcare service provider for post traumatic care and workers compensation cases. Since 1993, the MSHC team has left their mark throughout the region by providing quality care in a cost-efficient, outcome-oriented environment.

Multi-Specialty HealthCare is an organization dedicated to excellence in patient care. After our first interactions we quickly realized the level of competence within their organization is unmatched. While working through the process of building a new online identity, we experienced firsthand their extensive knowledge and capabilities. It is extremely impressive to see their success, and I have no doubt that success will continue for many years to come. Stephen Taormino  CEO of CC&A Strategic Media

For more information, visit http://www.multi-specialty.com. Please direct all media inquiries and requests to Lauren Aversa at 410-931-6717 or by email at LAversa@cca-mail.com.
The U.S. wants the GNA (UN created Government of National Accord) and HoR (House of Representatives government, the last elected one) to stop fighting and negotiate. That is not happening because the GNA has sold out to, or hired, the Turks who now have to conquer and occupy most of Libya to regain control of the oil production and shipping facilities. The Turks will expect payment and that will probably include oil money or oil itself. The Turks have not had their own oil since 1918 when the victorious British took the Kirkuk oil fields away and made them part of a new Arab nation called Iraq. Kirkuk was long part of the Turkish heartland and some Turks never forgot.

Egypt threatens to send in troops if the Turks continue to advance along the coast. The city of Sirte is the next Turk target. Sirte, a coastal city 500 kilometers east of Tripoli and 560 kilometers west of Benghazi, unexpectedly fell to LNA (the HoR Libyan National Army) forces in early January. The LNA had been trying to subdue Sirte for years. The LNA eliminated the Islamic terror groups that had, since 2016, operated south of the city. Until the LNA took over, most of the Sirte militias were loyal to the GNA, if only because the GNA didnt try to control what the Sirte militias did That included working with people smugglers and living off the local population. Shutting down this sort of thing is why the LNA has been able to take control of most of the country. At the end of 2019, the LNA was carrying out airstrikes on the Sirte militias and planning a ground offensive as soon as Tripoli was taken. But LNA leaders had also been negotiating with some of the larger militias in Sirte and finally got a key militia to switch sides. The other militias realized that put them at a serious disadvantage and accepted a peace deal that put the LNA in charge of the city. This was a major, and unexpected, loss for the GNA. As a result, since January the UN-backed government only controls two cities; Tripoli and Misrata.

Possession of Sirte gave the LNA an airport closer to Misrata and Tripoli and made it more difficult for GNA forces to threaten LNA supply lines that come from the east. The loss of Sirte was a psychological blow to the GNA because it had come to represent a large portion of GNA popular support. Turkey has said it might consider a ceasefire if the LNA pulled out of Sirte.

Abandoning The Arab League

The GNA is ignoring the Arab League and has apparently agreed to pay Turkey billions of dollars for its help in defeating the LNA. The GNA still has a great deal of control over the Central Bank and the Libyan foreign reserves. That control is limited by UN imposed restrictions to reduce corrupt behavior which has, since 2011, seen much Libyan oil wealth stolen by Libyan government officials, or at least those with access to the oil wealth. In 2018 the LIA (Libyan Investment Authority) was forced to leave Tripoli because of militia threats and violence. LIA set up shop in less vulnerable locations throughout Europe where it can work with foreign governments and banks to safeguard the Libyan sovereign wealth fund ($67 billion of cash and other assets). Since the 2011 Libyan revolution, these assets have been frozen under a UN Security Council resolution and are only accessed for national emergencies. It is still necessary to scrutinize all efforts to use those assets, which remain subject to a lot of scrutiny by foreign auditors and various European courts. The GNA will have a hard time getting money out of the Sovereign Wealth Fund to pay for the Turkish military assistance.

The GNA has made a lot of enemies by signing agreements with Turkey and allowing Turkish troops and mercenaries to enter the country and take control of areas GNA forces had lost control of or had never controlled. In early 2017 officials from the Arab League and AU (African Union) met in neighboring Tunisia and signed an agreement to not send military forces into Libya and instead seek a political solution inside Libya. Most Arab League members support or favor the HoR as do all the neighbors of Libya. At that point Iran, Qatar and Sudan were supplying the GNA with weapons while the HoR/LNA were receiving aid from Egypt, the UAE and Russia. None of these foreign supporters had sent in substantial combat forces. In late 2019 Turkey changed that. Turkey also has little respect for the Arab League or African Union. The official GNA position has now changed to align with Turkish attitudes. Since 2000 Turkey has sought to displace the Arab League as the forum for Arab leaders to meet and decide what is in their best interest. Turkey wants to make those decisions, just like in the good old days of the (Ottoman) empire. Arabs generally oppose that sort of thing, unless the Turks are the only way out of a bad situation.

The Arab League is holding an emergency meeting on the 22nd to decide how to deal with the Libya crisizs and Egyptian calls for military intervention against the Turkish mercenaries in Libya. The GNA refused to attend this meeting and Turkey has long maintained that it is not bound by any Arab League decisions. There is a long-standing hate/hate relationship between Turkey and the Arab League.

The Turks are using Syrian Arab mercenaries backed by Turkish troops providing logistics and air support. Turkish voters are hostile to Turkish soldiers getting killed in foreign wars. The Turkish government presents its Libyan operation as an effort to get Turkey access to oil via offshore oil deposits also claimed by Greece as well as from Libya once Turkish forces have occupied the entire country, or at least all the oil producing areas.

Turkey is technically an ally of the GNA, mainly because GNA officials signed an agreement with the Turks to claim offshore waters that actually belong to Greece. These water areas are believed to contain oil and natural gas deposits. The GNA is not a real Libyan national government and is unable to establish treaties or territorial accords with any other nation. The Turks back the GNA because the GNA approves of the Moslem Brotherhood and many other Islamic radical groups that Turkey approves of. The UN is unwilling to block the Turkish intervention and European nations are divided. Several Arab nations are willing to back efforts to expel the Turks from Libya and that effort is escalating. The LNA has a major advantage because it controls most of Libya including most of the oil production and export facilities. The LNA has shut down oil exports to force the GNA to surrender. Now the GNA is using the Turkish mercenary forces to regain control of the Libyan oil. Turkish military advisors are planning that operation now and expect to start the oil resources reconquest operation soon. First, something must be done to keep the Egyptians out of Libya.

Egypt Versus Turks

Can Egyptian troops defeat Syrian Arab mercenaries working for Turkey? Despite greater numbers, M1 tanks and F-16 fighters, the Egyptian army has not been training regularly, most of the troops are conscripts and the most experienced Egyptian soldiers are fighting ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Sinai. Thats a small portion of the Egyptian army and most Egyptian army units are of questionable effectiveness in a fight.

Egypt is taking a chance sending troops into Libya. Despite that, this is something the Egyptian military has been studying for over fifty years. Occasionally military exercises were held near the Libyan border. Usually, the Egyptian Navy dominates the area and the Turks would have to move naval forces to Libya to prevent Egypt from controlling the Libyan coast. Egypt and Israel are not friends but they have learned how to get along since the 1980s peace deal and have cooperated to control Islamic terrorism in Sinai and Gaza. Israel and Turkey used to be close until the current Islamic government took over in 2000 and turned Turkey against Israel. The Islamic Turkish government has since developed a peaceful relationship with Israel but that wont stop Israel from blocking Turkish efforts to dominate the eastern Mediterranean and the Libyan coast. Russia and Turkey are allies in Syria against the Islamic terrorist and rebels but Russia and Israel are also on good terms and Russian officials have openly admitted that Russian and Israeli forces will not fight each other. Egypt has a good chance of setting up and enforcing a naval blockade against the Libyan ports (Tripoli and Misrata) the Turks use to supply and reinforce their mercenary units in Libya.

June 21, 2020: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain supported Egypt in its willingness to send in troops to get Turkish forces out of Libya. In Sirte, the next Libyan coastal city threatened by Turkish mercs, the local council supported the LNA. The Sirte population do not want a return to militia rule, which is still what passes for local government in Tripoli and Misrata.

June 20, 2020: Egypt threatened to send troops to Libya if Turkey did not get its forces out of Libya. The Turks said they are not leaving as long as the UN approved GNA needs help.

June 18, 2020: American intel (AFRICOM) on Libya estimates that Russia still has 2,000 troops (mostly military contractors) there while the Turks have at least 10,000 Syrian Arab mercenaries, fighting for the good pay and the promise of permanent resident status in Turkey for their families.

June 16, 2020: Turkism mercenaries are 50 kilometers from Sirte and ready to make a final push to take the city from the LNA.

June 13, 2020: Israel is being asked to openly take sides in the Libyan civil war. An official of the LNA made the announcement asking Israel for help. Since 2014 the LNA has been fighting Islamic terrorist groups and later the GNA in Tripoli. By 2018 Egypt was certain that the LNA had pacified eastern Libya up to and including the Egyptian border. That border security is threatened by Turkish control of eastern Libya. The Turks are tolerant of many Islamic terror groups, especially the ones that do not attack Turks but do go after Turkish enemies.

June 12, 2020: Samir al Atrash, a well-known Syrian HTS (local al Qaeda alliance) leader was killed in Libya near Sirte while serving with the Turkish Syrian Arab mercenary force. Atrash was apparently leading some kind of reconnaissance operation.

June 11, 2020: A large Turkish force of warships and military aircraft (F-16s and support planes) held an exercise in the eastern Mediterranean, some of it off the Libyan coast, before returning to Turkey.

June 10, 2020: In Libya, a Russian MiG-29 was spotted over the coastal city of Sirte. That city is under LNA control and threatened by Turkish backed GNA forces. Russian military contractors at the LNA Jufra airbase , 650, kilometers south of Tripoli or Misrata, now include instructors for pilots of MiG-29 and Su-24 aircraft as well as maintainers for both aircraft. Satellite photos show training activity taking place, mainly to impart basic skills to new MiG-29 and Su-24 Libyan pilots who have experience operating older Russian warplanes.

June 8, 2020: In western Egypt, the government sent combat units, including several dozen M1 tanks and about ten AH-64 gunships, to the Libyan border. This is in response to the retreat of the LNA , an Egyptian ally, from western Libya. Egypt supported LNA efforts to gain control over western Libya which had nearly succeeded. Then Turkey intervened. After that Russia reduced support for the LNA and called for discussions with Turkey, if only because Turkey and Russia are sort-of allies in Syria just as they are now sort-of enemies in Libya. Egypt is not sort-of about wanting Turkey out of Libya. The Turks apparently dont care what Russia, Egypt or anyone else wants. Turkey has come to stay in Libya and probably Syria as well.
Millie Mackintosh has revealed she nearly gave up on breastfeeding because of how sore her 'cracked, bleeding nipples' were during her first five days of motherhood.

The former Made In Chelsea star, 30, took to Instagram on Monday to share a sweet image of herself nursing daughter Sienna Grace, two months, as she reflected on her challenging experience, which left her 'crying in pain' and worsened her anxiety.

After seeking advice on social networking app Peanut, the blogger said she now feeds her baby girl using 'life-saving' nipple shields and encouraged fellow parents to share their stories and tips in a bid to help others.

Candid: Millie Mackintosh shared a sweet image of herself nursing daughter Sienna Grace, two months, onto Instagram on Monday as she has revealed she nearly gave up on breastfeeding

The media personality, who shares Sienna with husband Hugo Taylor, looked radiant in the image as she breastfed her newborn through her white, non-wired nursing bra.

In a lengthy caption, Millie said that her child is now a 'good eater', adjusting to being a mother was 'tough'.

The reality star detailed: Let's talk about breastfeeding  I found it really tough at the beginning. Although Sienna now latches on easily and is a good eater, it definitely didn't start that way.

'The first few days I had blistered, cracked nipples and the pain was so intense, I really didnt know how I was going to carry on.'

'I was left crying with how sore my cracked, bleeding nipples were': The former MIC star, 30, reflected on her experience, which left her 'crying in pain' and worsened her anxiety

Useful: After seeking advice on social networking app Peanut, the blogger said she now feeds her baby girl using 'life-saving' nipple shields

The blonde beauty spent 'hours online trying to find the best professional advice' on 'anything that would make the pain and dread stop' as she 'desperately' wanted to continue to breastfeed.

Explaining the effect of painful experience on her mental health, she said: 'I found myself totally overwhelmed with all the conflicting advice which only made my anxiety worse.'

Millie was later advised to check out the Peanut app, where she sought guidance from a help group specifically catered to breastfeeding.

Praising the women from the fertility and motherhood platform, she gushed: 'They were so kind and encouraged me to trust my own instincts and do what feels right for me.

New parents: The media personality shares Sienna with her husband Hugo Taylor (pictured last month)

'There really is no other advice that compares to other mums who have been in exactly the same situation because they have a wealth of knowledge and suggestions.

'I found so many great tips about feeding from one or both boobs for each feed, the best time of day to pump, which supplements help regulate your flow, what foods to eat or avoid, how to use nipple shields, different feeding routines and schedules etc.

'The support and advice I have received from the women on @peanut has been invaluable and made me feel less alone (I know Im not but breastfeeding can convince you otherwise!)'

The social media influencer also revealed caring for Sienna has resulted in a 'sky high' appetite, eating cold meals with one hand, and accidentally spilling food on herself and her baby.

Getting into the swing of things: The TV star said that her child is now a 'good eater', adjusting to being a mother was 'tough' (pictured last week)

Insisting the trials and tribulations are outweighed by the positives, Millie added: 'Despite the blood, sweat, tears, and feeling like Im leaking milk through countless outfits

'Its all worth it when I look down and see Sienna's tiny hand wrapped around my finger, watching her grow stronger every day. My heart melts when she gives the gift of a little smile.

'Motherhood really is a journey, and that's why sharing stories & tips is so important. I encourage any mothers, expectant mothers and those trying to conceive to join the app. It's the support system we all need. #peanutapp #ad.'

The TV star elaborated on her ordeal in a separate video uploaded to her Instagram Stories, where she credited nipple shields for alleviating the pain of breastfeeding 'instantly'.

'It's all worth it': Millie insisted the trials and tribulations are outweighed by the joys of parenthood

'Life savers!' The blonde elaborated on her ordeal in a video uploaded to her Instagram Stories, where she credited nipple shields for alleviating the pain of breastfeeding 'instantly'

She said: 'Just following on from my post, I wanted to share a bit more. For me, the first five days were really challenging. I was having cracked bleeding nipples, it was super stressful.'

Claiming Sienna could pick up on her hardship, Millie shared: 'Every time I had to feed her I thought I couldn't go through the pain again. I was crying with how sore it was. It really stressed me out and I think Sienna was picking up on that.

'I was really close to giving up, but what I found really helpful is connecting to other mums on Peanut on the breastfeeding groups, and they recommended I try nipple shields. Instantly there was no pain, so that's been an absolute life saver for me.'

Perfect trio: On Sunday, Millie helped sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo, 34, celebrate his first Father's Day

Urging other new mothers to 'not be afraid of asking for help', the London native ended her post: 'I definitely think connecting with other mothers made me feel a lot better about lots of queries and questions I had. I really recommend checking Peanut and I hope it helps you too.'

On Sunday, Millie helped sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo, 34, celebrate his first Father's Day.

The couple couldn't contain their glee as the new mum posed for a smiling selfie with her other half, while carrying her little one on her front.

Millie and Hugo tied the knot in an elaborate ceremony at Whithurst Park in West Sussex two years ago.
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order temporarily suspending work visas and barring hundreds of thousands of foreigners from coming to work in the United States, part of a broad effort by the administration to dramatically limit entry into the country during the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, senior administration officials said Monday.

The restrictions would block entry into the U.S. under the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers and would also affect several other categories of visas.

The order, which has been expected for several weeks, is fiercely opposed by a broad swath of businesses  including high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, manufacturers and others  who say it will block their ability to recruit critically needed workers from overseas countries for jobs that Americans are not willing or capable of performing.

Stephen Miller, the architect of the presidents assault on immigration, has pushed for years to limit or eliminate the worker visas, arguing that they harm employment prospects for Americans. In recent months, he has argued that the economic distress caused by the virus has made it even more important to turn off the spigot of foreign entry into the United States.

In April, the president signed an executive order that suspended for 60 days the issuance of green cards to foreigners looking to live in the United States. But at the time, Miller and the president bowed to pressure from the business community to avoid imposing limits on the worker visas.

Mondays order extends the green-card prohibition in addition to suspending the issuance of many of the worker visas. In addition, the administration officials said that the president will order new regulations to permanently change worker visas in the future so that foreign job offers go to more highly paid, highly-skilled workers that will compete less with Americans.

The order includes exceptions for some categories of workers, including health care professionals needed to combat or do research about the virus.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Lawmakers want to make sure the U.S. Air Force can keep the right mix of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft over the next few years, given the anticipated shutdown of the MQ-9 Reaper production line and the proposed retirement of the service's long-range Global Hawk drones.

In its markup of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act legislation, the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee said the Air Force can retire a portion of its Global Hawk fleet, as long as it gets the proper sign-off from top Defense Department officials to ensure it does not create a capability gap in the service's mission.

Read Next: Police: Army Vet Empties Gun at Woman's SUV in Dick's Sporting Goods Parking Lot

In its budget submission published in February, the Air Force said it would retire 24 RQ-4 Global Hawk drones, some of which are used as a networking Battlefield Airborne Communications Node, or BACN. The service specifically proposed shuttering 21 of its older Block 20 and Block 30 RQ-4s, and three BACN EQ-4Bs.

The subcommittee said it will prohibit those retirements until Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord can assure that any capability developed to replace the RQ-4 aircraft is cheaper to maintain and sustain. In addition, Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, must stipulate in his Joint Requirements Oversight Council role that the potential replacement would result "in equal or greater capability available to the commanders of the combatant commands," according to the legislation.

Alternatively, Defense Secretary Mark Esper could make these decisions, it adds.

House Armed Services Committee members said Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, also must OK the retirement of the EQ-4 aircraft being used as communication nodes. In its budget request, the service proposed a new buy of five E-11A manned BACN aircraft to replace the EQ-4s; it lost an E-11 in Afghanistan earlier this year.

The legislation's language reveals lawmakers' reluctance to back the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which is designed to leverage air and space platforms to fuse together intelligence data from around the world, once it is constructed. The Government Accountability Office in April released its analysis of ABMS, stating the Air Force has yet to prove how the intricate network will work.

"The authorities of Air Force offices to plan and execute ABMS efforts are not fully defined," the GAO said. "Unless addressed, the unclear decision-making authorities will hinder the Air Force's ability to effectively execute and assess ABMS development across multiple organizations."

The lawmakers took that a step further Monday, stating they will cut the ABMS funding effort by 50% if the Air Force moves ahead with the RQ-4 retirements.

"Right now, none of those conditions have been met to give us any sort of peace of mind that the Air Force's fiscal year 2021 [move] to divest Block 30 is [an] acceptable risk," said a committee aide speaking to reporters on background.

The Air Force wants over $300 million -- more than double last year's enacted funding of $144 million -- for the ABMS project, according to the budget request.

Under a previous moratorium, the service cannot retire its E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Radar Attack System (JSTARS) aircraft until a comparable capability is identified and can be made readily available, lawmakers reiterated. ABMS is intended to replace, to some degree, JSTARS.

Lawmakers want more attention paid to the increased global use of drones, which is why they're also asking for a drone roadmap -- including future purchases and sustainment -- to coincide with the service's outlook.

The Air Force's "[budget] request proposed immediate divestment of all RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 30 multi-intelligence aircraft, as well as an end to the MQ-9 Reaper production line in fiscal year 2020 without any time to allow for adequate supply chain management planning," lawmakers said in the legislation. "While these changes may align with long-term Air Force strategy, the absence of such a strategy incorporating both current and future capabilities concerns the committee.

"The Secretary of the Air Force [must] provide a comprehensive strategy for Air Force airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to ensure alignment between requirements, future Air Force budget submissions, and authorization of appropriations," they added.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: Air Force to Send More than 100 Planes to Boneyard as it Invests in Future Fighters
Washington:

Pakistans former President, General (retired) Pervez Musharraf praised the Pakistani army by claiming that it had often played a prominent role in the governance of Pakistan. He went a step further while stating that democracy was not tailored to his countrys environment. "Army has always had a role since our independence.

It has played a very prominent role in the governance of Pakistan, mainly because of misgovernance by all the so-called democratically-elected governments," Musharraf said in an interview at the Washington Ideas Forum here on Thursday. He said the "inherent weakness" of Pakistan is that democracy in the country has not been tailored in accordance with the dictates of the environment.

"There are no checks and balances within the system. The constitution doesn't provide those checks and balances." "Therefore, the military is forced and pulled, sucked into the political environment, especially when mis-governance is going on and Pakistan is going down in all socioeconomic indicators. The public and the people massively run towards the army chief, and that is how the army gets involved," Musharraf said, justifying the frequent military coups in the country. He said this was the reason for Pakistan having military governments and the army enjoying high stature.

"The people of Pakistan love the army and demand a lot from it. So I'm very proud of the fact that army has backed me because I've been with them for over 40 years. I fought wars with them, I've fought two wars and I've fought a number of actions with them. So I know they are my constituency," he said in response to a question. "So, therefore, we have to maybe tailor the political structure in accordance with the dictates of Pakistan, introduce checks and balances so that misgovernance does not take place and the army does not have to come into politics," Musharraf said. He also alleged that the United States has used his country at its convenience and ditched it.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A grandmother from Iowa whose viral TikTok video encouraged thousands of young people to sign up for Donald Trump's Tulsa rally on Friday night and then not attend has said the 'no show protest' was not a prank, but rather a powerful moment of protest.

Mary Jo Laupp, 51, from Fort Dodge, Iowa, said that she never intended to go viral with her video, which she posted on June 11.

In the video she criticized Trump's original plan to hold the rally on Juneteeth - a day which marks the end of slavery in the United States. Amid the outcry he switched the rally to June 20.

Her video encouraged young people to sign up, giving a false anticipation of a massive turnout, and then stand the president up.

Donald Trump's campaign said a million people had requested tickets, but only 6,200 showed

Mary Jo Laupp unintentionally started a campaign to RSVP to the rally, then not show up

'I don't think it was just an issue of pranking him,' she said.

'You have a lot of kids, in the younger generation - 20-year-olds and teens - who are very aware, much more self aware when it comes to Black culture.

'So yes, they are treating it now like it was a prank, but a lot of the messages I got from parents and from kids is: I never knew this much about Black Wall Street. This is so sad. So they are excited about the impact it had.

'But I think they are becoming much more aware of those marginalized communities, and learning to speak out about them.'

Laupp's video was viewed more than two million times and has so far received over 700,000 'likes.'

It is hard to know precisely how many times the video was shared, given that it could be downloaded and disseminated on other platforms. Fans of Korean pop music distributed the video on Twitter.

In the video, after explaining to viewers that Trump was holding a rally in Tulsa on June 19, Laupp said: 'If you don't know why that's a big deal, I want you to Google two phrases: Juneteenth and Black Wall Street.'

Laupp, from Iowa, says the impact of the video was a powerful sense of community

The fake signups for Trump's rally weren't just a prank, they were a form of protest. Here's what @MJLaupp told me on @ReliableSources today pic.twitter.com/UqnmW0uWAi  Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 21, 2020

She explained: 'I had educated myself on Black Wall Street, and understood better why Black content creators on social media platforms were frustrated with the original plan for Juneteenth in Tulsa, and I posted a video late Thursday night, the 11th, that was sort of a frustrated rant.

'I had 1,000 followers on TikTok at that point. Most of my videos were seen a couple of hundred times, maybe.

'By 7 o'clock the next morning it had been seen hundreds of times, shared hundreds of times, and then the K-Pop fans jumped on from Twitter, and when they get involved you know it's getting serious.'

She said it was impossible to know how big an impact her video had.

The Trump campaign said they had received more than a million requests for tickets for the 19,000-seater arena, and organized an overflow section outside.

In the end 6,200 people were inside the arena, the Tulsa fire marshals said, and no one was outside.

The New York Times reported that Trump was furious at the empty stadium.

The Trump campaign dismissed the idea that they were 'had'.

'Trolls thinking they hacked rally tix dont know how this works,' tweeted Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for Trump's campaign.

'Lame trick tried many times. We weed out bogus RSVPs with fake phone #s.'

He insisted the 'real factor was media-stoked fear.'

The communications director for the Trump campaign downplayed Laupp's actions

But Laupp said the impact of her TikTok had been remarkable.

She said she had had a lot of teenagers get in touch, and ask her as an adult how to speak to their parents and explain their views.

She described it as a 'powerful' media.

'I had no intention of going viral, so be careful what you post, because you never know!' she said.

'But I also think it has definitely created a huge sense of community. There are a lot of posts all over my social media saying: we did it.

'And kids who aren't even old enough to vote in this election feel that they have a voice in our country, and this no-show protest was a way of making our voices heard.'
A dozen wildfires have torched over 400,000 burned acres in Arizona and have left parts of the state, particularly the southeastern portion, in ruins. Nearly half of that acreage has come from the Bush Fire blazing in the Tonto National Forest, just north of Phoenix.

As of Thursday morning, the still-young 2020 wildfire season has already burned more Arizona land than all but two years since 2002. Three current active wildfires in the state all rank in the top-10 for largest blazes in Arizona history, marking the first time since 2011 that multiple, historic-sized fires have blazed simultaneously.

After igniting on June 13, the Bush Fire has grown rapidly in the past week, up to 190,000 acres as of Friday evening. The fire is now the fifth-largest in state history with 90% containment, according to Inciweb. It's also the largest blaze currently burning in the United States.

Officials announced on Wednesday that areas of wildfire fuel within the perimeter continue to burn, creating columns of smoke. Suppression repair efforts have become a priority as containment has increased.

Gusty winds and dry conditions are forecast in the area through the weekend.

The inferno was ignited by a vehicle fire and led to evacuations in nearby areas such as Brownsville, Jake's Corner, Slate Creek, Pioneer Pass and Punkin Center before evacuation orders were lifted on Sunday morning. As of Friday, there are no active evacuations.

"It has just been a monster of a season for us and extremely busy," Dave Ramirez, South Zone Fire Management Officer, said according to AZCentral.com. "It's been very busy for us, actually, in the past two years."

The state's second-fastest growing fire, the Bighorn Fire, increased to nearly 82,000 as of Friday evening, The fire has been the most destructive of any blaze in the state, causing $21.7 million of damage, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

After reaching 40% containment on Friday, June 19, conditions worsened and the containment decreased to 16% by Monday, the least contained of any of the state's major current blazes. Firefighters worked to increase containment up to 33% on Thursday morning. It has required the attention of over 850 firefighting personnel, the most of any fire in the state. Burning in Coronado National Forest, the frightening spread of the blaze has escalated the classification from a type-3 to a type-1 fire.

Story continues

The eastern slope of the Catalina Mountains, located south of the Pima County line and west of Redington, is in the "go" stage of being evacuated.

"With this type-1 team there is a lot of complexity, a lot of levels, a lot of layers but the communication is the most important part and it's been great, the level of communication on this team," said Adam Jarrold, Public Information Officer of the Bighorn Fire, according to KVOA.com.

A type-1 fire is the highest and most serious level of firefighting attention, as the classification means the risk level to structures and properties are at their peak.

Charring at more than 100 square miles, the Mangum Fire is Arizona's second-largest fire. Since igniting on June 8, the wildfire has burned over 71,000 acres in the northern portion of Arizona in Coconino County and wreaked havoc for visitors trying to get to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.

Firefighters have managed to make strong progress on the blaze this week, increasing containment from 33% to 68% over just a few days. As of Friday evening, the fire was 46% contained. Over 600 firefighting personnel, 33 engines and five helicopters have been used in the containment efforts.

The blaze, which is also the second-largest current fire in the U.S., has destroyed four structures and forced closures of popular roadways like Highway 89A and State Route 67 to Grand Canyon National Park, which takes visitors to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

Smoke billows out of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. (Photo via Inciweb)

The eastern-most wildfire in Arizona, the Bringham Fire has continued burning in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest north of Morenci since being ignited by lightning on June 6. It has scorched over 22,000 acres and is 37% contained as of Friday evening.

On Monday morning, Incident Commander Carl Schwope said the remote location of the fire has provided logistical challenges for firefighters, according to Inciweb. Despite being nearly nine times smaller than the Bush Fire, the Bringham Fire has caused nearly as much damage, according to the NIFC.

The Sawtooth Fire was previously burning in the Tonto National Forest, where it grew to 24,729 acres before firefighters reached 100% containment on June 7. The fire was burning in the scar of the Woodbury Fire, which was previously the fifth-largest fire in state history after burning 123,875 acres in 2019.

The Blue River Fire has burned 30,400 acres, but firefighters have managed to reach 85% containment of the blaze as of Thursday morning. According to the NIFC, despite being the state's fourth-largest fire, it has caused the least damage of any of the major blazes and is only requiring the attention of eight personnel.

The Good Fire, the Dry Lake Fire and the Tadpole Fire have burnt about a combined 25,000 acres between the three blazes, but they are largely corralled and estimated to reach 100% containment in the coming weeks.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  Alarming surges in coronavirus cases across the U.S. South and West raised fears Monday that the outbreak is spiraling out of control and that hard-won progress against the scourge is slipping away because of resistance among many Americans to wearing masks and keeping their distance from others.

Confirming predictions that the easing of state lockdowns over the past month and a half would lead to a comeback by the virus, cases surpassed 100,000 in Florida, hospitalizations are rising dramatically in Houston and Georgia, and a startling 1 in 5 of those tested in Arizona are proving to be infected.

Over the weekend, the virus seemed to be everywhere at once: Several campaign staff members who helped set up President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tested positive, as did 23 Clemson University football players in South Carolina. At least 30 members of the Louisiana State University team were isolated after becoming infected or coming into contact with someone who was. Meatpacking plants were also hit with outbreaks.

It is snowballing. We will most certainly see more people die as a result of this spike, said Dr. Marc Boom, CEO and president of Houston Methodist Hospital, noting that the number of COVID-19 hospital admissions has tripled since Memorial Day to more than 1,400 across eight hospital systems in the Houston metropolitan area.

He warned that hospitals could be overwhelmed in three weeks, and he pleaded with people to cover their faces and practice social distancing.

It is possible to open up at a judicious pace and coexist with the virus, but it requires millions and millions of people to do the right thing," Boom said.

Texas is among a number of states  including Arizona, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina  whose governors have resisted statewide mask requirements, leaving the matter to local authorities.

The number of new coronavirus cases across the country per day has reached more than 26,000, up from about 21,000 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over 120,000 deaths in the U.S. have been blamed on the virus, the highest toll in the world.

Story continues

In Georgia, the number of people hospitalized because of COVID-19 rose to 1,000, erasing a months worth of progress.

Infections are at their highest level since the outbreak began, nearly two months after Georgia began lifting restrictions on businesses. Gov. Brian Kemp has required face coverings by waiters, barbers and others working face-to-face with customers but has largely let businesses decide whether customers must wear masks.

In Orlando, 152 coronavirus cases were linked to one bar near the University of Central Florida campus, said Dr. Raul Pino, a state health officer in the tourism city.

A lot of transmission happened there, Pino said. People are very close. People are not wearing masks. People are drinking, shouting, dancing, sweating, kissing and hugging, all the things that happen in bars. And all those things that happen are not good for COVID-19.

Although he asked health officials to renew calls for people to wear masks and keep their distance, Gov. Ron DeSantis has not signaled he will retreat from reopening the state after three months of shutdowns that have damaged the economy.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said reimposing lockdown orders would be a last resort and reemphasized, but stopped short of mandating, people wear masks to curtail sobering trends. Monday marked the 11th consecutive day Texas set a new high for COVID-19 hospitalizations.

In Louisiana, however, Gov. John Bel Edwards extended restrictions on businesses because of a troubling uptick in cases, following the example set by Utah and Oregon last week. Louisiana has recorded more than 3,000 deaths.

There are a lot of people out there saying they are done with this virus. Well, the virus isnt done with us," Edwards said.

Countries such as Brazil, India and Pakistan are also seeing surging cases.

Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief, said the outbreak is definitely accelerating in the U.S. and a number of other countries, dismissing the notion that the record-breaking daily levels of new cases simply reflect more testing. He noted that numerous countries have seen marked increases in hospital admissions and deaths.

The epidemic is now peaking or moving towards a peak in a number of large countries," he warned.

In the U.S., Arizona, in particular, is seeing disturbing trends in several benchmarks, including the percentage of tests that prove positive for the virus. Arizona's is the highest in the nation.

The state's positive test rate is at a seven-day average of over 20%, well above the national average of 8.4% and the 10% level that public health officials say is a problem. When the positive test rate rises, it means that an outbreak is worsening  not just that more people are getting tested.

At Maryland's Fort Washington Medical Center on the outskirts of the nations capital, workers described a scramble to find beds, heartbreaking encounters with family members of critically ill patients and frustration with Americans who do not believe the coronavirus threat is real.

Everybody is out lounging on the beaches. Just thinking that its over. And its not, respiratory therapist Kevin Cole said. "Its far from being over. And unfortunately, its those people that will keep this pandemic going.

Meanwhile, New York City, once the most lethal hot spot in the U.S., lifted more of its restrictions, moving a big step closer to normal. Restaurants can serve diners outdoors, customers can browse through stores and get a haircut, and children can return to playgrounds.

Eve Gonzalez, a 27-year-old food industry worker in New York whose job had not yet resumed, said it is too soon: Im dying to go out, but peoples health is more important."

Worldwide, over 9 million people have been confirmed infected by the virus and more than 470,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins. Experts say the true numbers are much higher because of limited testing and cases in which patients had no symptoms.

Amid the global surge, the head of the World Health Organization warned that world leaders must not politicize the outbreak but unite to fight it.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has faced criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, said during a videoconference for the Dubai-based World Government Summit that it took over three months for the world to see 1 million confirmed infections, but just eight days to see the most recent 1 million cases.

Tedros did not mention Trump by name but warned: The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself; its the lack of global solidarity and global leadership.

Trump has criticized the WHO over its early response to the outbreak and what he considers its excessive praise of China, where the outbreak began. He has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the agency.

Brazil, with over 50,000 deaths, the second-highest toll in the world, registered a record 54,000 new coronavirus cases in its latest single-day count. And nearly 1 in 3 people tested overall have turned up positive, according to the WHO's Ryan, who said the startlingly high number suggests cases are going either unreported or undetected because of a low rate of testing.

Saudi Arabia said this years pilgrimage, or hajj, to Islam's holy sites will not be canceled, but only "very limited numbers of people will be allowed to take part. The hajj traditionally draws around 2 million Muslims from around the world for five intense days of worship and rituals in Mecca.

India's health care system has been slammed by the virus, with the caseload in the country of more than 1.3 billion people climbing by nearly 15,000 Monday to over 425,000. The number of deaths climbed past 13,000.

In Pakistan, infections are accelerating and hospitals turning away patients, with new cases up to 6,800 a day. The government has relaxed its coronavirus restrictions, hoping to salvage a near-collapsed economy in the country of 220 million people.

___

Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed.
New Delhi:

Supreme Court sentenced Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav to 25 years in prison each on Monday regarding the sensational 2002 Nitish Katara murder case. Furthermore, their associate Sukhdev Pehalwan has been convicted to 20 years in prison.

The 2002 Nitish Katara murder case had shook the nation due to the sheer brutality attached to it.

Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan pronounced the verdict on the appeals filed by Vikas and Vishal against the Delhi High Court order which had enhanced the life term to 25 years in jail without remission and an additional five years for destruction of evidence in the case by terming the murder of Katara as "honour killing".

Yadavs' acquaintance Sukhdev Yadav alias Pehelwan was also awarded an enhanced life sentence of 25 years without remission by the court which held that the crime fell in "rarest of rare category", but saved them from the gallows saying possibility of their reformation and rehabilitation is not "unforseeably foreclosed".

The Supreme Court had on August 17, 2015, upheld the conviction of Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev, saying "only criminals are crying for justice" in this country. While upholding the conviction, the apex court had said that it will separately consider hearing pleas on the limited aspect relating to enhancement of quantum of sentence of the three convicts by the High Court. It had, issued notice to the Delhi government on the scope of punishment and sought the reply within six weeks.

Earlier, the high court had held that the murder of Katara, who was in love with Vikas's sister, was an "honour killing" which was done in a "very carefully planned and premeditated" manner with "extreme vengeance". It had also enhanced the fines imposed on Vikas and Vishal by slapping an amount of Rs 54 lakh each on them, to be deposited in the trial court within six weeks.

Vikas (39), Vishal (37) and Sukhdev (40) were serving life term awarded by the lower court in May 2008 for abducting and killing Katara, a business executive and the son of a railway officer, on the night of February 16-17, 2002, as they opposed the victim's affair with Bharti, daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav.

The high court had on April 2, 2014, upheld the verdict of the lower court in the case by describing the offence as "honour killing" stemming from a "deeply-entrenched belief" in caste system. Katara was abducted and killed by Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev as they did not approve of the victim's affair with Bharti because they belonged to different castes, the court said

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Senior Congress leader and former petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily on Monday slammed the Centre over the repeated fuel price hikes in the last few days, saying it is "sadistic" on the Modi government's part to "fleece" people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

His attack came on a day petrol price was hiked by 33 paise per litre and diesel by 58 paise to take retail rates to record high as the oil companies increased prices for the 16th day in a row.

"Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which is creeping day by day and the deflation in the economy, the government is fleecing the people of the country and making them shed tears," Moily said in a statement.

"It is sadistic on the part of the Modi government to increase the prices of petrol and diesel despite the slump in crude prices at the cost of the sufferings of the people of India," the former petroleum minister said.

The fuel prices are now at a four-and-a-half month high in India even as crude oil rates have slumped below the USD 40 a barrel mark, he said.

"In 16 days, petrol price has been hiked by Rs 8.3 per litre and diesel by Rs 9.46, a record increase in rates of the fuel in any fortnight since pricing was deregulated," Moily said.

Petrol price in Delhi was hiked to Rs 79.56 per litre from Rs 79.23 while diesel rates were increased to Rs 78.55 a litre from Rs 78.27, according to a price notification of state oil marketing companies.

Rates have been increased across the country and vary from state to state depending on the incidence of local sales tax or value added tax (VAT).

On reports that US President Donald Trump has taken a decision to order new curbs on H1B visas, Moily said this is "the biggest blow" to the employment prospects of Indians in the United States and the most detrimental and reactionary decision taken by the Trump administration.

He hit out at the Modi government, saying it had failed to deal with the issue.

"The action amounts to total diplomatic failure on the part of the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is surprising how India is losing steeply in its influence with US administration despite the pomp and grandeur displayed during the 'Howdy Modi' show in Houston and replicated at the 'Namaste Trump' event at Ahmedabad," Moily said.

It is puzzling how India is losing its diplomatic supremacy with all its neighbouring countries, be it China, Pakistan, Nepal, and now with the US, he said.

India always enjoyed the high diplomatic status during the regime of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh who had put the country on the "highest pedestal" in the eyes of powerful nations, he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 03:36:29|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Combo photo shows Chinese Premier Li Keqiang holding the 22nd China-European Union (EU) leaders' meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen via video link in Beijing, capital of China, June 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday called on China and the European Union (EU) to expand two-way opening up and enhance practical cooperation so as to better achieve mutual benefits and win-win results.

The pledge came as Li held the 22nd China-EU leaders' meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen via video link.

China and the EU are each other's comprehensive strategic partners, the bilateral cooperation far outweighs competition, and there are far more areas where both sides agree than disagree, Li said.

China attaches great importance to its relations with Europe, he said.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the EU.

Li said since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the relationship between China and the EU has been generally defined by cooperation, which has enhanced the welfare of both peoples and brought stability to the world.

China has always supported the process of European integration, and is happy to see the EU maintain unity and prosperity, said Li.

He called on the two sides to view bilateral relations from a long-term perspective and with a broader vision, and regard each other as comprehensive strategic partners.

Li also called on both sides to increase understanding through dialogue, achieve mutually beneficial and win-win results through deepened cooperation, and jointly contribute to maintaining world peace, stability, development and prosperity.

During the meeting, Li said China and the EU, both as major global economies, should strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination, maintain the stability of the industrial and supply chains, and inject impetus into global economic recovery in the face of COVID-19 impacts.

Aerial photo taken on April 11, 2020 shows a logistic station of the Erenhot Port in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The port has handled 379 China-Europe freight trains in the first quarter of this year. (Xinhua/Lian Zhen)

Li said China and the EU are committed to concluding the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement in 2020 and reaching a comprehensive, balanced and high-level agreement.

He called for the signing of the China-EU geographical indications agreement at an early date.

China is unswervingly dedicated to expanding opening up, and committed to creating a market-oriented and world-class business environment with a sound legal framework for companies from all countries, said Li, adding that European companies have enjoyed the benefits.

China hoped the European side would also keep its trade and investment market open and relax the export control toward China so as to facilitate bilateral high-tech trade, Li said.

"Expanding two-way opening up on the basis of equality, reciprocity and mutual respect will help China and the EU better achieve mutual benefits and win-win results," the premier said.

Hailing both China and the EU uphold multilateralism and free trade, Li said China is willing to maintain communication with the EU on issues such as the reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), jointly safeguard the rule-based multilateral trade system, participate constructively in the multilateral process of combating climate change.

He called on both sides to continue to support the World Health Organization in playing a leading role in the global fight against COVID-19, deepen cooperation on vaccine and drug research and development, and work together to win the battle against the pandemic at an early date.

For their part, Michel and von der Leyen spoke highly of the mutual support and solidarity in the fight against COVID-19 between the EU and China.

The will of cooperation between the EU and China is not weakened although the pandemic has impacted many countries, they said.

Lauding China's active participation in the international cooperation on the fight against COVID-19 initiated by the EU, the EU leaders said the EU stands ready to enhance cooperation with China on economic recovery, jointly safeguard the safety of the industrial and supply chains, and further expand market opening.

They also called on both sides to strengthen connectivity, intensify cooperation on areas including trade, investment and digital economy, and reach the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement in 2020.

Besides, China and the EU should enhance cooperation on the WTO reforms and climate change, and uphold multilateralism and free trade, they said.

The two sides also had an in-depth exchange of views on regional and international issues of common concern. 
Backstreet Shadow ($10.00) turned in a solid bounce-back effort in the $164,000 Roll With Joe on Sunday (June 21) at Tioga Downs, evading nine rivals  including Bettors Wish  for a coast-to-cost 1:49 score in the Southern Tier's premier pacing event.

After tearing through February and March with a four-race win streak in top company at Dover Downs but only mustering a fourth-place finish in his return effort against a Preferred field at The Meadowlands last Saturday (June 13), the five-year-old Shadow Play gelding played "catch me if you can" with some of harness racing's best and controlled the terms outright from the outset. Tim Tetrick fired Backstreet Shadow clear of fellow Ron Burke trainee This Is The Plan (Yannick Gingras) through a :26.2 first quarter. After achieving the lead, Backstreet Shadow did not relent, keeping the pace hot of his own accord through a :54.2 half and rising to the first-over challenge of None Bettor A (Andy McCarthy) through three-quarters in 1:21.1.

Backstreet Shadow dug in off the far turn and maintained his advantage all the way to the winning post, prevailing by a driven 1-1/2 lengths. None Bettor A stayed on for second narrowly over 3-5 favourite Bettors Wish (Dexter Dunn), who was a victim of stalled cover on the clubhouse turn before assuming third-over position on the backstretch and rallying belatedly.

Backstreet Shadow, now a 22-time winner with $628,115 in career earnings, campaigns for the Burke Racing Stable, Weaver Bruscemi LLC, Larry Karr, and J&T Silva-Purnel & Libby.

A trio of $50,000 divisions of the Graduate for four-year-old pacers served as supporting events in Tioga's second Grand Circuit card of 2020.

Jonathan Klee Racing, Kuhen Racing LLC and William Garofalo's Hurrikane Emperor ($3.50, part of entry) took top honours among Graduate pacers, throwing down the gauntlet with a pillar-to-post 1:48.1 mile in the second division (race 6). Mark MacDonald sent the son of Hurricane Kingcole to the front from post 5, and the pair drilled fractions of :26.4, :54.3 and 1:21 before keeping pocket rival Captain Victorious (Gingras) three-quarters of a length at bay in a lifetime-best performance. Bllack Hole (Tetrick) fanned wide from fourth-over to narrowly claim third, 4-3/4 lengths farther back.

In the first division (race 4), Workin Ona Mystery ($6.50) was the beneficiary of a mid-race duel between pacesetter Century Farroh (Wally Hennessey) and the first-over Warrawee Ubeaut (Gingras), sweeping off third-over cover to prevail by a neck in 1:50. Tim Tetrick drove the son of Captaintreacherous for trainer Brian Brown and the partnership of Diamond Creek Racing, the Stambaugh Leeman Stable, Alan Keith and Wingfield Brothers LLC. O'Brien Award winner Century Farroh proved valiant in defeat; Shamwow emerged out of traffic to take third.

The third division (race 9) saw Breeders Crown winner Dancin Lou ($3.40) brush into a blistering :53.3 first half before shrugging off a stern attack from Brassy Hanover (Scott Zeron) and sprinting off to a 2-1/2-length, 1:48.3 victory over Covered Bridge (Gingras), who circled stalled cover to claim second over a stalling Brassy Hanover. Brian Sears drove the son of Sweet Lou for trainer Tahnee Camilleri and the partnership of David Kryway and 1362313 Ontario Ltd.
NASA researchers have proposed a 2025 mission to Neptune's mysterious moon Triton, which may host an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust.

With a largely unmapped surface, a mysteriously charged upper atmosphere and a rare rotation counter to that of its host planet, Triton offers much to investigate.

The so-called Trident mission  named after Neptune's spear in Roman mythology  is one of four proposals competing to be realised under NASA's 'Discovery Program'.

Two of the concepts  which also feature studies of Jupiter's moon Io and Venus  will be selected next summer and launched within this decade.

NASA researchers have proposed a 2025 mission to Neptune's mysterious moon Triton, pictured, which may host an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust

OTHER DISCOVERY PROGRAMME CONTENDERS Alongside Trident, three missions are competing to be realised by NASA. These include VERITAS, a mission to map the surface of Venus and learn more about its geological history. DAVINCI will also focus on Venus  but look instead at how its inhospitable atmosphere formed and whether the planet ever had an ocean. The final proposal  the Io Volcano Observer  would study how the tidal gravitation forces exerted on Io by its host planet, Jupiter, shape the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Advertisement

Back in 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 probe became the only spacecraft to date to have flown by the planet Neptune and its moon Triton, beaming back images as it did.

The visuals of Triton left experts confused, as they showed a young, icy landscape that appeared to have been repeatedly resurfaced with fresh material  as well as 5.6-miles-high plumes of nitrogen gas and dust erupting from the surface.

Elsewhere in the solar system  such as on Saturn's moon Enceladus and possibly on Jupiter's moon Europa  plumes are believed to be caused by the release of material from a subsurface ocean.

Triton also has a largely unmapped surface  only 40 per cent of the body was imaged by Voyager 2  an inexplicably active ionosphere filled with charged particles, and an orbit path that moves in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation, unlike other large moons.

'Triton has always been one of the most exciting and intriguing bodies in the solar system,' said Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute director and principle Trident researcher Louise Prockter.

'I've always loved the Voyager 2 images and their tantalising glimpses of this bizarre, crazy moon that no one understands,' she added.

'Triton is weird, but yet relevantly weird, because of the science we can do there,' said Trident project scientist Karl Mitchell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

'We know the surface has all these features we've never seen before, which motivates us to want to know "How does this world work?"

'As we said to NASA in our mission proposal, Triton isn't just a key to solar system science  it's a whole key-ring.'

Certainly, the Trident mission would have plenty to do as it flies by the moon  from mapping the rest of the surface, assessing how much the plume-rich region previously seen by Voyager has changed.

This may help to reveal how active Triton really is and exactly how the surface  which is only around 10 million years old in a 4.6 billion-year-old solar system  keeps managing to renew itself and looks so unique.

Finally, confirming if the moon does harbour a subsurface ocean  which the mission will achieve by probing Triton's magnetic field  will help improve our understanding of where water might and might not be found in space, and why.

'Triton has always been one of the most exciting and intriguing bodies in the solar system,' said Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute director and principle Trident researcher Louise Prockter. 'I've always loved the Voyager 2 images and their tantalising glimpses of this bizarre, crazy moon that no one understands,' she added

If NASA selects the Trident mission to go ahead, the project  run from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California  would aim for a launch date in October 2025, when Earth's orbit will be best aligned with Jupiter's.

Arriving at Jupiter, the Trident craft would use the planet's gravitational pull to 'slingshot' directly to Triton.

The craft would then be able to spend 13 days studying the icy moon in 2038.

'The mission designers and navigators are so good at this,' said Trident project systems engineer William Frazier, also of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

'After 13 years of flying through the solar system, we can confidently skim the upper edge of Triton's atmosphere  which is pretty mind-boggling.'
Former national security adviser John Bolton defended in an interview with ABC News on Sunday his decision not to testify at President Trump's impeachment inquiry, claiming it wouldn't have changed the outcome.

Why it matters: Bolton told ABC News that Trump "directly linked the provision of that [security] assistance with the investigation" into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine  the central allegation that saw him impeached in the House and later acquitted in the Senate. No official that testified was a direct witness to Trump explicitly tying aid to the investigations.

What he's saying: "I didn't think the Democrats had the wit or the political understanding or the reach to change what, for them, was an exercise in arousing their own base, so that they could say, 'We impeached Donald Trump.' To impeach him on the ground of Ukraine, knowing full well  they could see it, they knew it from their own behavior," Bolton said in the interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz.

"They pushed the Republicans in the House into unanimous opposition to their view. And they essentially did the same thing to Republicans in the Senate. This was a partisan play. It was not a Constitutional process. I judge that to be almost as irregular as what they were accusing Trump of doing.

"The Democrats can pursue whatever policy they want. They don't dictate to me how best to bring this to the attention of the American people. You can agree or disagree with the way I tried to do it, but I don't think anybody is required to engage in futile activity to satisfy the Democratic congressional leadership."

 Excerpt from Bolton's interview with ABC News

Flashback: In January, Trump tweeted: "I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book."

Go deeper: Trump whacked from within by John Bolton

Editor's note: This article has been updated with more details from Bolton's interview and further context.
About 40 officeholder MPs yielded rout in the just ended parliamentary primaries held by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Saturday, June 20.

In any case, Gallant Soldiers Cadres of NDC accept that their destruction was because of the terrible performance of the Akufo Addo led NPP.

READ FULL PRESS RELEASE BELOW...

Aftermath of NPP Parliamentary Primaries, Monumental Defeat Stirs at Nana Akufo Addo

The defeat of about forty sitting members of Parliament belonging to the New Patriotic Party, NPP, is classic testimony that President Nana Akufo Addo has performed very abysmally responsible for the loss of these MPs in their bid to represent the New Patriotic Party as Parliamentary Candidates.

It is sad that the disappointing performance of Nana Akufo Addo Bawumia government would see some forty incumbent NPP MPs including chairpersons of Parliamentary committees lost the primaries to some new faces.

The 40 NPP MPs who have lost their seats in Parliament include Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, Kofi Adda, Vincent Sowah Odotei, Daniel Okyem Aboagye and Kwabena Owusu Aduom., among others.

Gallant Soldiers Cadres of NDC is picking up snippets of information the defeated NPP MPs are unhappy because their party executives did not allow them to go unopposed like their colleagues, and with other high profiles of NPP, members now think twice. They believe that the Nana Akufo Addo government has been rocked by numerous corruptions particularly the Power Distribution Services, PDS, scandal, Menzgold Customers who have not received their deposits, Missing Excavators in the fight against Galamsey. Aboboyaa scandal, Cash for Seat.

This clearly shows that the NPP delegates themselves know that their party is going to lose the 2020 General Elections humiliatingly.

The defeat is associated with the non-performance of the NPP government in various parts of the country.

1D1F, 1V1D, no road construction projects, the 94 Regional and District hospitals promise, and several other unfulfilled promises.

In fact, no projects are going on in the various constituencies. The achievements of Nana Akufo Addo has been Hardships coupled with the corruptible dealings and the big scandals that have swallowed the country also insecurities.

It is certain that the performance of NPP government is in the media but in reality, nothing is happening in various parts of the country except propaganda waged on the media.

The inability of the NPP MPs to develop their constituencies led to the massive losses. And this is why the party decided to protect some 65 sitting MPs who went unopposed.

The primaries were characterized by violence where the exchange of gunfire, beatings, open monetization and above all vote-buying which became the order of the day.

We believe our democracy should not be determined by the highest bidder. In Wenchi, macho men storm the voting place over results at the collation center who was in national security apparels and threw stones and sticks at the supporters. Their tugs, invincible and Delta forces at play. This tells us that the NPP has nothing to show on the ground.

Shockingly, the campaign teams of some of the defeated MPs have been chasing the delegates to refund GH 3,000.00 each received back. It is alleged in Bantama constituency, delegates were given GH 2000.00 each for vote-buying.

This malpractice is bizarre and contributed to the forty incumbent MPs who lost their internal primaries. These defeated MPs chaired notable committees in Parliament.

The Nana Addo Government represents failure and insensitivity.

How could the government imprison citizens who do not put on face masks for 10 years or find them to the tune of GH 12,000, to GH 60,000.? No wearing of face masks attract GH 12,000 to GH 60,000 when NPP delegates were seen Flouting the COVID19 protocols?

Gallant Soldiers Cadres of NDC believe John Dramani Mahama has won the 2020 elections already given his track record in government.

The NDC's achievements are visible on the ground, and this is the reason why Ghanaians are waiting for JM and NDC to come and rescue this country from the hands of Nana Addo and NPP, and that will surely come to pass.
(Photo : REUTERS/Brendan McDermid) Customers distance before entering an Apple Store during phase one of reopening after the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City, New York, U.S. June 17, 2020.

Microsoft has put greater pressure on Apple after the tech giant criticized Apple Tax.

Amid calls for an antitrust investigation on App Store policies, Microsoft President Brad Smith criticized the iPhone maker's 30% cut that app stores take from developers in an interview by Politico. He said the policy gives a higher burden on fair competition than Microsoft's antitrust case in the early 2000s.

Although Smith did not mention Apple in his comments, it added to a growing backlash against the company's system that some companies call Apple Tax. Apple's taking advantage of its position as the sole gatekeeper of what apps can be installed on its iOS devices like iPhones and iPads worldwide.

Some developers and IT companies have complained against Apple's restrictions on its app stores where developers must offer users the option of paying through the company's in-app payment systems. This would automatically give Apple a 30% cut of the revenue.

Microsoft president criticizes Apple tax

While "reader" apps like Netflix and Kindle may offer access to digital content bought on other platforms, Apple still imposes strict limits on these companies not to advise users about other payment methods.

Apple said these rules are required to protect users from fraud and scams. However, the European Commission has launched an investigation about the company's seemingly anti-competitive actions.

"It appears that Apple obtained a 'gatekeeper' role when it comes to the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple's popular devices," Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on June 16. She added that they need to guarantee "Apple's rules do not distort competition."

The investigation was driven by complaints from Spotify and by an unnamed "e-book/audiobook distributor," which is believed to be Rakuten, a Japanese conglomerate. Apple dismissed the complaints as "baseless."





Apple's Hey on iOS update rejection

A day after Apple rejected the email provider Hey, more complaints surfaced. The email service annual subscription that costs $99 was launched on the App Store without any in-app purchases as users are required to sign up via its website.

Apple then announced the app will not have any update on iOS, just a week after its launch. The tech giant then mentioned it was a mistake to have published the app to begin with.

Basecamp, Hey's developer has been developing software for 20 years. They spent two years and millions of dollars to develop a new email service. "We thought we knew all the written and unwritten rules," said Basecamp's co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson.

He added he was shocked the app would "face this sort of retaliation - or perhaps just be a victim of their capricious policies . . . If they kick you out of the App Store, it's like you don't exist," Hansson said.

The Basecamp founder believes those unwritten rules were quietly changed just earlier this year, so older apps that have similar payment models, such as FastMail, are still in the store.

Developers to be hit

Stratechery's analyst Ben Thompson said the change appears to hit about 30 developers in the past few months, most of which had similar business models as Hey's. Thompson wrote in his analysis these apps show "subscribe on the web" without a link on where to sign in. Thomson said many of these apps "had been in the App Store for years, but now Apple says they have to add in-app purchases."

Meanwhile, Hansson shared Apple's letter to his company. In the letter, Apple mentioned Basecamp's numerous apps uploaded in the App Store throughout the years. While millions of these apps were distributed to iOS users, none of them have "contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years."

Apple is expected to announce any changes that it will make to its operating systems over the next year on Monday, June 22. However, developers hoping to avoid paying the Apple tax may have to wait longer.

Also Read: Apple to Close Down Reopened Apple Stores Due to Rise in Coronavirus Cases

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
MILAN - When luxury fashion lined up social media posts to show solidarity with Black Lives Matters protests, brands got a whole lot of blowback.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2018, file photo, a model wears a creation as part of the Gucci women's Fall/Winter 2018-2019 collection, presented during the Milan Fashion Week, in Milan, Italy. Luxury fashion got a whole lot of blowback when the brands lined up social media posts to show solidarity with Black Lives Matters protests. Global fashion brands have faced racial backlashes in the past, notably in the wake of scandals like the Gucci knitwear recalling blackface, Pradas Little Black Sambo bag charm and Dolce&Gabbanas anti-Asian comments. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)

MILAN - When luxury fashion lined up social media posts to show solidarity with Black Lives Matters protests, brands got a whole lot of blowback.

Transgender model and actress Munroe Bergdorf jumped on L'Oreal's #BlackoutTuesday posts to accuse the beauty brand of hypocrisy for having fired her three years ago when she complained about racism in strong language. U.S. actor Tommy Dorfman, who appears in a recent campaign for Salvatore Ferragamo, called out the Italian luxury brand for what Dorfman called a homophobic and racist work environment.

And ordinary Instagram followers piled on, challenging fashion houses to do more than post a black square on their virtual real estate, to instead make runways, magazine covers, boardrooms and creative studios living showcases of diversity.

Global fashion brands have faced racial backlashes in the past, notably in the wake of scandals like the Gucci knitwear recalling blackface, Pradas Little Black Sambo bag charm and Dolce&Gabbanas anti-Asian comments.

The U.S protests against systemic racism, which are spreading around the globe, are also putting the spotlight on the fashion world in its role as a cultural beacon, and emboldening insiders  some with lucrative deals that often assume their discretion  to speak up.

People have the fire under their bottoms, said Tamu McPherson, an American content creator based in Milan who collaborates with top luxury brands. Their stories are strong and their voices are being heard. If they industry ignores them, they can be kept accountable. Everyone is sharing, and corroborating, their stories.

McPherson has been working with luxury brands in Milan, Paris and New York since 2013, contributing to digital campaigns, story-telling and in-house diversity training.

In seven years, I am still one of the only black people invited into those spaces. That is unacceptable, said McPherson, who urged greater racial inclusion in a letter posted June 6 on her All the Pretty Birds website, in which she described the fashion industry as steeped in racism, anti-Blackness and white privilege.

For years, they did not want to listen. Now they are listening because of the pandemic and the shocking murders we could all pay attention to, because there were not any distractions. This is the moment, she said.

Ferragamo courted criticism when it responded to the protests with a post that said, No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.

Dorfman shot back that people at the fashion house have said heinous, transphobic, body phobic and racist things directly to me. I called them out every time and they promised to change.

A person close to Ferragamo said that the brand is committed to inclusivity, noting that it features models of all colours in its runway shows. Nearly half of Ferragamos Fall 2020 runway models were of diverse races.

The pushback against the industry has had some early results. Bergdorf, who was sacked as L'Oreal UK's first openly transgender model in 2017 for decrying the racial violence of white people, has now accepted a role as consultant on the U.K. Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board to help influence and inform the brand. The offer came after she highlighted the hypocrisy of the beauty company's June 1 statement that it stands in solidarity with the Black community, and against injustice of any kind ... Speaking out is worth it.

The Fashion Spot, which has been tracking diversity on runways and magazine covers, has reported progress since launching its surveys in 2015. The Spring 2020 season had the highest level of diversity on runways in the four main fashion cities of Paris, Milan, New York and London, at 41.5%, only to dip for the Fall 2020 shows, to 40.6%. That remains an improvement from 17% in the websites inaugural survey for Spring 2015.

New York and London have led in diversity, while Paris and Milan tend to lag, according to the Fashion Spots data.

After her post, McPherson said she has gotten feedback from some brands that her appeal was being shared internally.

The focus truly is on getting representation of Black, Indigenous and people of colour integrated and hired at all levels of an organization, especially in decision-making positions and senior roles where they can advocate, educate and inform decisions, McPherson said. Now is the opportunity to rebuild.

After coming under fire for designs deemed racist, both Gucci and Prada last year announced long-term strategies to both promote diverse voices that have not been properly represented in fashion, including with scholarships.

This time, the reckoning has gone to the fashion worlds highest levels. Anna Wintour has apologized in an internal email for not doing enough to elevate Black voices and publishing images and stories that have been racially and culturally hurtful and intolerant during her 32-year tenure at Vogue. Her comments came as Samira Nasr was named the first editor in chief of colour in the 153-year history of U.S. Harpers Bazaar.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell  the first Black woman to appear on the cover of French Vogue  is publicly calling for equal pay for models of colour and more representation generally, while acknowledging that in the past she has chosen to deal privately with such issues.

It is not something I call out, because I am personally someone who wants to rise to the challenge, she told CNN. But she said, in my business, it has gone on for long enough.

____

Adamson reported from Paris. Leanne Italie in New York contributed.

___

Follow all AP coverage of protests against racial injustice and police brutality at https://apnews.com/GeorgeFloyd
A section of Ghanaian musicians has expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Copyright Monitoring Team (CMT) has tackled issues of music piracy, saying the team has not paid much attention to the menace.



They accused the copyright monitoring team, which was launched in July 2018, of not doing its best in arresting those behind music piracy in Ghana.



The CMTs mandate, BEATWAVES gathered, was to monitor copyright works in Ghana, investigate cases in respect of copyright, undertake anti-piracy exercises and perform other functions that were necessary to protect music stakeholders.



According to the musicians, piracy undermined the legitimate market, impoverished music right owners including producers and deprived government of its tax revenue.



They mentioned that piracy had for many years been destroying the music industry as it had prevented several musicians like Daddy Lumba, Amakye Dede, Rex Omar and Pat Thomas among others who had the potential for releasing albums every year from doing so.



They noted that Ghanas music industry had been on the decline over the years due to the laxity of laws that had to check the activities of music pirates, adding that the proliferation of modern technology was hampering the efforts of music stakeholders to combat piracy.



They revealed that music pirates downloaded music on pen drives and CDs among others and sold them on some principal streets as well as some of market centres especially in Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi and Cape Coast.



They added that the difficulty in enforcing laws against piracy of music in the country was a serious canker, adding that pirated versions of creative works covered at least 60 per cent of the market in Accra and Kumasithe figure could be as high as 75 per cent.



In a separate interview, the musicians emphasized that though some of them were doing all they could to fight piracy, what they required most to be successful in their bid was massive government support.



They urged that the Copyright Office together with the CMT to set education and awareness creation campaigns by using the media to educate the public about the activities of music pirates.



The musicians, who described music pirates in the country as thieves, also called for effective legal system in the country to deal with offenders.



They, however, suggested the involvement of IT experts in the fight against piracy so that a means could be used to ensure musical works could not be downloaded.

Source: daily guide









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
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 05:22:38|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

RIYADH, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Saudi-led coalition involved in a war in Yemen announced on Monday that the Houthi militias targeted the kingdom with bomb-laden drones.

Turki Al Maliki, the coalition's spokesman, said the militias launched the drones on Monday evening toward civilians and civilian facilities in the kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The coalition intercepted a number of them with the rest under constant monitoring, he noted.

The attacks took place after the coalition welcomed the decision of the Yemeni government and Southern Transitional Council to hold a meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that aims to advance the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement.

The agreement was signed in November last year between the Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council, mainly including the unification of all military forces under the Ministries of Interior and Defense, and the formation of an efficient government made up equally between the north and south of Yemen. Enditem
The trade union of the strategic State Enterprise Antonov filed a claim with the District Administrative Court of Kyiv to revoke government resolution No. 269 dated March 31, 2015, by which SE Antonov was placed under the management of Ukroboronprom, the law firm Ilyashev & Partners said on Monday on its website.

The labor collective of Antonov believes that the resolution violates its rights and was adopted in gross violation of the Constitution, the law of Ukraine on the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the law of Ukraine on protection of economic competition, and the law of Ukraine on the principles of state regulatory policy in the field of economic activity.

The trade union's claim also states that the transfer of Antonov's entire property complex from the management of the Ministry of Economic Development into the management of Ukroboronprom back in 2015 had extremely negative consequences, which affected the company's business results.

"Given the loss of traditional markets and the long-term absence of governmental orders for the development and construction of aircraft, Ukroboronprom has been failing to provide any assistance to Antonov for five years. Instead, the concern, headed by Aivaras Abromavicius, is currently a needless superstructure, for the support of which Antonov incurs additional costs," the trade union said.

According to the company, in 2018-2020 Antonov transferred the amount of UAH 122 million for the support of Ukroboronprom. Another UAH 74 million were transferred by Antonov in 2015-2019  on the instructions of Ukroboronprom  as financial assistance to other member companies of the concern.

As reported, on June 9, 2020, Ukroboronprom decided to terminate the powers of the president of the Antonov Oleksand Donets.
An indigenous activist who will soon be a senator has declared she doesn't identify as Australian because of the nation's colonial past - which could potentially disqualify her from sitting in Parliament.

Lidia Thorpe, who lost her seat at the 2018 Victorian election after only a year as a state MP, has been chosen by the Greens party faithful to replace former leader Richard Di Natale in federal Parliament.

The first indigenous woman elected to the Victorian Parliament last year declared to Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes she didn't regard herself as Australian.

'I don't identify as being Australian. It's a concept that's been imposed on our people since we're invaded,' she told the Almost Australian documentary, which aired last month on the ABC.

'The colonisers came and set up the colony which they now call Australia.

'Mass genocide occurred.'

Australia's leading constitutional experts said Ms Thorpe would not be allowed to sit in federal Parliament as a senator for Victoria if she refused to pledge allegiance to Australia's head of state, the Queen.

Scroll down for video

Lidia Thorpe, who lost her seat at the 2018 Victorian election after only a year as a state MP, has been chosen by the Greens party faithful to replace former leader Richard Di Natale in federal Parliament

Ms Thorpe's declaration that she doesn't identify as Australian could potentially put her at odds with the requirement for new members of federal Parliament to swear an oath or an allegiance to the Queen, through her representative in Australia Governor-General David Hurley.

Why MPs must pledge allegiance to the Queen Queen Elizabeth II is Australia's head of state under the Constitution Her representative in Australia, Governor-General David Hurley, exercises power over the government and has the power to sack Prime Minister Scott Morrison Under Section 42 of the Constitution, federal members of Parliament from both the Senate and the House of Representatives must swear an oath or affirmation of allegiance to the Queen While many MPs favour a republic over a monarchy, they are still required to pledge loyalty to the Queen as a referendum is required to change the Constitution Sources: Australian government, constitutional law professors Anne Twomey, George Williams Advertisement

'Every senator and every member of the House of Representatives shall before taking his seat make and subscribe before the Governor-General, or some person authorised by him, an oath or affirmation of allegiance in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution,' the Parliament House website said.

The Australian Constitution, ratified by the UK Parliament in 1900, also requires MPs to swear an oath or affirmation to the Queen, 'her heirs and successors according to law'.

Professor Anne Twomey, an expert on constitutional law from the University of Sydney, said Ms Thorpe would not be allowed to take her place as a senator if she refused to swear an oath or affirmation to the Queen.

'If the person chosen as a senator refuses to do so, then he or she could not take his or her seat (i.e he or she could not sit and vote in Parliament),' she told Daily Mail Australia.

Professor Twomey said Ms Thorpe could not pledge an alternative allegiance to Australia's traditional indigenous owners unless Section 42 of the Constitution was amended by a popular vote.

'It can't be changed (except for the updating of the relevant monarch) without a referendum,' she said.

Professor George Williams, the dean of law at the University of New South Wales, concurred Ms Thorpe could not sit in Parliament if she refused to pledge allegiance to the Queen.

In the United Kingdom's House of Commons, Sinn Fein members have been elected to represent areas of Northern Ireland but have declined to take their seats in Parliament.

However, after publication of this story and request for comment, Ms Thorpe told her social media followers she would after all swear allegiance to the Queen, which would entitle her to a base salary of $211,250 a year.

The first indigenous woman elected to the Victorian Parliament last year declared to Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes she didn't regard herself as Australian. Lidia Thorpe is pictured on the Almost Australian documentary which aired last month on the ABC

Australia's leading constitutional experts said Ms Thorpe (pictured as a Northcote Greens by-election candidate in November 2017) would not be allowed to sit in federal Parliament if she refused to pledge allegiance to the Queen

Ms Thorpe isn't particularly keen on Australia's royal British past, using the Black Lives Matter protests to call for Victoria and Queensland to be renamed because these state monikers honour 19th British monarch Queen Victoria.

'Maybe that's something they (the Queensland government) could negotiate (in a treaty),' she told News Corp.

'Given we're all talking about the colonial past and how everything's named as a result of invasion of this country, why wouldn't we negotiate that (name changes)?

'It may be that it stays the same. But why wouldn't we put that on the table.

'Maybe we need to be making decisions, changing place names, state names and anything else that causes harm.'

As a member of the Victorian parliament in August 2018, three months before losing her left-leaning electorate, she called for Australia Day to be moved from January 26.

Some indigenous activists regard the 1788 arrival of the British First Fleet in Sydney Harbour as 'Invasion Day'.

As member of the Victorian parliament in August 2018, three months before losing her left-leaning electorate, she called for Australia Day to be moved from January 26

'This day is a day of mourning for Aboriginal people. It marks the invasion of this country and the beginning of massacres, the frontier wars and my people being removed from their land, stripped of their honour and culture and forced to live in prison camps,' Ms Thorpe told Parliament.

She also called for flags to be flown at half-mast on Australia's national day, and for more taxpayer resources to be dedicated towards buying more Aboriginal flags for electorate offices.

'Please ensure electorate offices are provided with an adequate supply of Aboriginal flags as a standing policy,' she said.

Ms Thorpe in 2017 became the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victorian Parliament when she won the inner-Melbourne seat of Northcote at a by-election following the death of former Labor minister Fiona Richardson.

Ms Thorpe in 2017 became the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victorian Parliament when she won the inner-Melbourne seat of Northcote at a by-election following the death of former Labor minister Fiona Richardson. She is pictured wearing a possum skin delivering her maiden speech

Little more than a year later, she lost her seat at the 2018 general election, which was one suburb outside of federal Greens leader Adam Bandt's Melbourne electorate.

She won't be the first senator to have previously lost a seat in a state parliament.

Queensland Labor senator Murray Watt lost his northern Brisbane seat of Everton in 2012, after just one term in the Legislative Assembly, only to win his Senate seat in 2016 at the top of the ALP ticket.

Northern Territory Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who is indigenous, lost her outback NT Legislative Assembly seat of Arnhem in 2012 with a 30 per cent swing against her.

Little more than a year later, she lost her seat at the 2018 general election, which was one suburb outside federal Greens leader Adam Bandt's Melbourne electorate

The former NT minister and Darwin ABC newsreader was elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing Olympian Nova Peris, the first indigenous woman in the Australian Parliament.

Lidia Thorpe's Facebook message on this story So the Daily Mail just watched Miriam Margolyes' brilliant program, Almost Australian, where I told Miriam I don't identify as Australian. They say that should disqualify me from Parliament. It's just another beat-up. Here I am trying to unite the country while the Murdoch press plays divisive culture wars that harm this country to sell papers. It was the Herald Sun's idea about changing the name of Victoria, not mine, and now this. First and foremost I am a proud woman of the Gunnai and Gunditjmara nations, two of over 250 Aboriginal nations across Australia. We have our own language, culture and customs. I wish I COULD feel like Australia was a place for me and my people. To us, our national identity isn't a shrimp on the barbie and a beer. I want to bring this nation together so that ALL of us can feel like we're Australian, and not like second-class citizens in our own country. A grassroots democratic process has elected me to sit in Parliament. I swore allegiance to the Queen when I became MP for Northcote, and I'll do it again in Canberra in August. I'm here to change the nation so EVERYONE can feel like they belong. Advertisement

When Ms Thorpe is sworn into the Senate, she will be an indigenous lawmaker in the same Parliament as Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt and Labor frontbencher Linda Burney.

To get there, her nomination to fill Senator Di Natale's casual vacancy will have to be ratified by the Parliament of Victoria.

Members of federal Parliament from both sides of politics have pledged allegiance to the Queen despite favouring constitutional change to turn Australia from a constitutional monarchy into a republic.

A referendum for a republic was lost in November 1999, with the 'yes' case receiving just 45 per cent of the national popular vote, and failing to win a majority in any state or territory outside of the Australian Capital Territory.

Daily Mail Australia contacted Ms Thorpe for a comment via the Victorian Greens and Mr Bandt's office.

Ms Thorpe and the Greens declined to provide an on-the-record statement by email.

However, she later criticised this story on Facebook, wrongly suggesting Daily Mail Australia was owned by billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the opening paragraph.

Daily Mail and General Trust owns this publication, not News Corp.

'Here I am trying to unite the country while the Murdoch press plays divisive culture wars that harm this country to sell papers,' Ms Thorpe told her social media followers on Monday night.

At the bottom of her social media message, she said she would swear allegiance to the Queen after all, as she did in 2017 as a newly-elected Victorian MP.

'I swore allegiance to the Queen when I became MP for Northcote, and I'll do it again in Canberra in August,' she said.

Federal members of Parliament are entitled to a base salary of $211,250 a year before travel and electorate allowances are factored in.
As U.S.-Russia talks on the future of the worlds two largest nuclear arsenals begin in Vienna on Monday, diplomats and experts warned that President Donald Trumps insistence that China join the discussions could obstruct the renewal of a crucial treaty and might even precipitate a new nuclear arms race.

Russia's lead envoy in the talks has told NBC News that the Kremlin does not currently believe the United States will extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, ratified by President Barack Obama in 2011 and due to expire in February.

Washington has withdrawn from a number of other agreements between the two former Cold War foes since Trump took office.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said ahead of his arrival in Vienna that he rejected what he called the American position on verification for verifications sake.

But he accepted that some of Russias more recent nuclear weapons systems that appear to concern the U.S. could be placed under the umbrella of the existing treaty, as part of a reciprocal arrangement that would cover new American weaponry, including advanced missile defense systems that have become a major bone of contention for Moscow in recent years.

Image: Sergei Alexeyevich Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation has his temprature checked as he arrives for the U.S.-Russia meeting at the Palais Niederoestereich in Vienna (Joe Klamar / AFP - Getty Images)

Ryabkov also said that Russia would be unable to force China to join the negotiations and was unwilling to try. He added that if Washington had concerns about Beijings nuclear activities, then it was up to American officials to bring the Chinese on board.

The U.S. administration currently is so obsessed with China, he said, that it makes progress impossible. The Chinese idea overshadows, in my view, everything else.

The U.S and Russia maintain at least 5,000 nuclear weapons in their respective stockpiles, according to both governments and the independent assessment of multiple analysts and groups, including the Nuclear Threat Initiative, but the terms of New START meant both nations could actively deploy no more than 1,550 active nuclear warheads, whether attached to intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines or aircraft. The agreement also allows each country to frequently inspect the other to make sure the rules are being followed.

Story continues

The current treaty will expire Feb. 5, 2021, unless it is extended for a further five years  a process that does not require congressional approval and could be quickly implemented.

Related:

Many experts say the decision to extend could be a first step to future cooperation, including perhaps a more wide-ranging and stringent agreement in the future. But no one is expecting the talks to be easy.

It's really hard to understand why the Trump administration wouldn't want to keep New START in place, said Lynn Rusten, who coordinated between the original treaty negotiating team at the Department of State and the rest of the U.S. government.

Rusten said the attempt to include Beijing in arms control negotiations between now and New STARTs February expiration date represented a really challenging proposition, particularly given recent U.S. criticism of China following the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan.

It's just an environment where, on the one hand, the relationship is deteriorating rapidly, and on the other hand, were insisting that they come to the table to negotiate on their nuclear weapons, she said. There's a lot of kind of internal incoherence and in the messaging, as far as I can see.

Marshall Billingslea, Americas top representative at these talks and the current presidential special envoy on arms control, said recently that China must reverse a nuclear buildup he labeled destabilizing and engage with the U.S. and Russia. But Monday, from Vienna, he tweeted that China is a no-show.

If China wants to be a great power, and we know it has that self-image, it needs to behave like one, he said on a recorded video call last month, hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.

He criticized Russia, as well, arguing that the country had repeatedly failed to comply with international agreements, including the Treaty on Open Skies, which grants countries the freedom to photograph one anothers territories from the air. The U.S. announced it was leaving that treaty last month.

Not extending [New START] means you don't really know what the future is going to be, said Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, who studies the history of nuclear weapons. And that's a lot more tricky.

Other critics of the U.S. administrations approach are even more pessimistic.

Were talking about the last foundation brick of the Cold War nuclear arms control security architecture, said Mark Sleboda, a Moscow-based international affairs and security analyst, with dual U.S.-Russian nationality, who often appears as a commentator on Russian state-funded media.

If this is gone, this is the Big Daddy, the one that actually limits launchers and warheads on both sides, then there's nothing left and we are in an open, multiple side arms race around the world.

John Everard, a former British ambassador to North Korea, who also helped oversee nuclear disarmament in Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union, was unsparing in his criticism of the major players.

I don't think the U.S. attitude under this administration has been entirely helpful, he said, adding that the behavior of the Russians and the Chinese has also undeniably damaged global stability and the implementation of international treaties. It takes three not to tango.
A British soldier who lost his leg after stepping on an explosive during his second tour of Afghanistan, and feared the incident left him infertile, has recently welcomed 'miracle' triplets.

Tyne Rogers, 30, from Birmingham, West Midlands, thought he may never have a family of his own because he feared nobody would be attracted to him, as well as not knowing how the trauma had affected his fertility.

However, when he met his girlfriend Amy, now 28, she 'wasn't fazed' by his injuries.

Tyne feels 'lucky to be alive' after being resuscitated twice while being air lifted from the war zone after stepping on an improvised explosive device in March 2011.

His leg was blown off from the knee down and the main arteries in his hands were severed causing a loss of hand mobility.

Now, nine years on, Tyne, is the proud father of five children, after welcoming triplets in April.

British veteran from Birmingham Tyne Rogers, 30, feared he would never had a family of his own after losing in leg while serving in Afghanistan in 2011. But after finding love with his partner Amy, 28, the proud father welcomed triplets

Tyne had to be resuscitated twice while being airlifted from the war zone in 2011 after stepping on an explosive. He lost his leg in the aftermath of the accident

He said: 'It is hard to comprehend what I have been through, it is a bit of a blur but I remember the day I stepped on the explosive.

'I feel incredibly lucky to be alive - it has been a long road to recovery and I am still needing physiotherapy to this day.

'I've lost count of the amount of operations I've had.

'Doctors didn't know if the explosive had affected my fertility at the time, because the impact of standing on a bomb could have ruined my sperm count completely.

While he recovered from his injury, Tyne was informed the bomb could have ruined his sperm count, annihilating any chance of having a family, but nine years on, he is the father of two children aged six and four, and just had adorable triplets Cruz, Amaro and Royle

Veteran Tyne was touring Afghanistan for the second time when the accident happened. He said he felt he did not want to become a 'burdern' to anyone after losing his leg

'I didn't worry, nor did I have any further tests at the time to confirm this, because I didn't think I would ever meet anyone.

'It was a lot for me to deal with, never mind somebody else so I didn't want to become a burden to anyone.

'But that is definitely not the case with Amy, who isn't fazed by my leg.'

The couple met in 2013 and went on to have two children India, six and Roman, four, who have recently been joined by triplets Cruz and Amaro - who are identical - and Royle, who are now eight weeks old.

Proud parents Tyne and Amy taking their triplets home. Amy said she did not care about the leg and 'loved him for him'

In 2011, after the accident took away his leg, Tyne was told there was a chance he might be infertile but he said he did not care because he thought he would not fine love

So cute! The couple admitted their jaws 'were on the floor' when Amy's 12 week scan revealed they were expecting triplets Amaro, Cuz and Royle

Amy said: 'It took Tyne a while to tell me about his leg because we first started chatting online, but I already knew and I didn't care.

'I fell in love with him, for him.

'We were in shock when we saw three babies at the 12 week scan - our jaws were on the floor.

'Although it can be challenging for Tyne at times, because he isn't able to bath the babies due to his lack of mobility in his hand, he still does an amazing job.

The adorable triplets in matching outfits. Amaro and Cruz are identical twins, while Royle is not

Amy with the triplets in hospital. The mother-of-five said she expected her 'crazy' household to only become 'crazier' as the triplets grow up

Tyne and Amy already have two children: India, six and Roman, four, who welcomed their new siblings with open arms

'He can't run around with the children like he would love to but they don't mind - it is all they've ever known.

'We have a crazy household that is only going to get crazier as the boys grow up but I wouldn't have it any other way.'

Tyne is frequently asked by strangers about his leg who often shake his hand to pay their respects.

He said: 'It is humbling and nice to feel appreciated by others when I tell them how I lost my leg.'
Carnival Cruise Line won't resume voyages from Charleston and other North American sites until at least October as COVID-19 continues to rattle the travel industry, the operator of the Sunshine and other pleasure ships said Monday.

Carnival, which calls Union Pier the Sunshine's home port, previously said it hoped to start cruising again in September. Monday's decision follows an extended pause in operations announced last week by members of the Cruise Lines International Association.

The State Ports Authority, which owns and operates the Port of Charleston and Union Pier, said it does not have a confirmed date for when the Sunshine or ports of call from other cruise ships will resume.

The Sunshine and other vacation vessels in North America halted operations in mid-March as the coronavirus pandemic spread throughout the United States. The Sunshine docked at Columbus Street Terminal for about a month before Carnival decided its 1,100 crew members should return to their home countries.

The ship is currently en route to Anchorage, Alaska, according to a vessel tracking website.

Christine Duffy, Carnival's president, said in a statement that the company apologizes "for disrupting your vacation plans and appreciate your patience as we work through these decisions."

She added that when operations resume, "we will take all necessary steps to ensure the health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we bring our ships to in order to maintain public confidence in our business."

The pause in operations and the public's reluctance to get back on cruise ships have been devastating to Carnival's financials. The company reported a $4.4 billion loss for the second quarter of this year. Revenues for the period were $700 million compared with $4.8 billion a year earlier. Carnival also reported that it has $2.9 billion in customer deposits on hand, including $475 million for cruises during the second half of this year.

The halt in cruising has also affected the SPA's finances. The cruise industry accounts for about 5 percent of the maritime agencys annual operating revenues, or roughly $8 million. Charleston hosted 262,776 passengers from the Sunshine and other pleasure ships making ports of call in 2019.

Carnival joins other major cruise lines in canceling sailings until this fall at the earliest. Norwegian Cruise Line and sister brands Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Oceania Cruises have canceled all cruises into early October while Holland America, Princess Cruises and Windstar Cruises say they won't return until an unspecified date this fall.
India and China started Corps Commander-level at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) opposite Chushul in eastern Ladakh on Monday. The talk was scheduled at 11:30 am. This is the second meeting between the Corps Commanders after June 6 where they had agreed to disengage at multiple locations.

The Indian delegation at the talks is being led by 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen Harinder Singh whereas the Chinese side was to be headed by the Commander of the Tibet Military District.

India is likely to discuss a range of issues with China, for instance, change in rules on the engagement at LAC. Besides, the Indian side would ask China to honour commitment given during June 6 talks to disengage in the Galwan Valley and other disputed regions.

The build-up of the Chinese air assets including strategic bombers by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) near territory close to Ladakh was also on the agenda.

Tension escalated between the two sides after the Galwan Valley clashes on June 15 that left 20 Indian Army personnel dead.

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on May 5 and 6. The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

Also read: 'India fighting two wars against China, at border and against virus,' says Arvind Kejriwal

Also read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge have been happily married since 2011. The pair are now the main faces of the British royal family and they share three adorable children together. However, their relationship hasnt exactly been a whirlwind or fairytale romance.

The Cambridges met back in 2001 as first-year students at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Though they began their relationship as friends, it quickly blossomed into something more. However, because they were so young and due to the princes life-long royal status they had their ups and downs.

In fact, a major part of their uses in the early years of their relationship which began nearly a decade before they wed, was the princes wandering eye.

RELATED: Prince William Said the Most Awkward Thing to Kate Middleton When They First Met

Prince William and Kate Middletons 2004 breakup was due to his friendship with another woman

Though the Duchess of Cambridge got romantically involved with Prince William in 2001, their relationship wasnt exactly out in the open. In an effort to protect their privacy they kept things under wraps. This allowed Prince William to keep his now-wife at an arms length while getting friendly with other women.

By 2003, hed become close friends with the American heiress, Anna Salon. The pair bonded due to the tragic loss of a parent. When Anna invited William and a group of friends to Texas for a holiday before he went to Greece, it hurt Kate deeply, royal expert Katie Nicholl wrote in her book, William and Harry. She suspected William might have feelings for the 22-year-old heiress.

In the end, the duo decided to take a break. Kate was beginning to question Williams commitment to their relationship, and she also had her own creeping doubts about their future after St Andrews, Nicholl added.

RELATED: Royal Fans Were Convinced Kate Middletons Mother Orchestrated Her Relationship With Prince William

Kate Middleton and Prince William broke up in 2007 after the prince was caught partying with other women

The royal couples initial breakup only last a couple of months and though they were long-distance following St. Andrews with Kate in London and the prince at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England they tried to make it work.

Unfortunately, the distance and the commitment began weighing on the prince. There was also the added pressure that Kate and Prince Williams relationship was very public by then. A number of things including Prince William skipping out on Christmas with the Middletons and dropping the ball on Kates 25th birthday the following January began to crack the foundation of the relationship.

However, Kate pulled the plug on the romance in April 2007 when Prince William was photographed at Elements nightclub in Bournemouth touching a half-naked girl inappropriately.

RELATED: The First Time Prince William and Kate Middleton Met In Person They Were 9 Years Old

Kate Middleton has always known about Prince Williams wandering eye

Prince William was caught up in what turned out to be unfounded cheating rumors as recently as 2019, and it would seem at this point the duchess is used to it.

He has always had a roving eyethats something Kate had always known and accepted  it was part of the deal if you like, a friend of the prince told royal commentator Victoria Arbiter in the documentary, William & Kate: Too Good to Be True.

Were just glad the prince has seemingly matured since his younger days.
Dnata achieves highest safety standards at Erbil International Airport. Image: Dnata

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) awarded Dnata the IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations (ISAGO) Registration in Iraq, following the successful completion of a comprehensive audit of the company and its ground-handling operations at Erbil.

Tom Alwyn-Jones, general manager of dnata Erbil, said: "We are thrilled to mark an important milestone in our ongoing commitment to safety and security by achieving the prestigious ISAGO certification. We constantly invest in training, processes and technology and engage our highly-skilled people at all levels of the organisation to deliver world-class safety for our customers. The successful completion of IATA's comprehensive audit demonstrates our ability to consistently achieve the highest standards across our operations.

"I thank our skilled team for their hard work and dedication. We continue to go the extra mile to provide service excellence to our customers, every day."

Dnata provides ramp, passenger and cargo handling services to more than 40 airlines in Erbil. The company's customer-oriented team in Iraq consists of over 300 highly-skilled aviation professionals, who assisted 1.8 million passengers and ensured the smooth and safe operations of 10,000 flights in 2019.
Rob Delaney paid tribute to his son Henry on Father's Day, two years on from his heartbreaking death.

The Catastrophe star and writer shared a photo of a newborn Henry sleeping on his lap, telling his Instagram followers: 'I'm still his dad & he's still my son.'

Henry passed away in January 2018 aged two, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2016.

Father and son: Actor and writer Rob Delaney paid tribute to his son Henry on Father's Day, two years on from his heartbreaking death aged two

The sweet photo shows an exhausted looked Rob slumped on the kitchen floor, while his baby boy sleeps peacefully on him.

'Look at this beautiful boy. He died when he was 2. Im still his dad & hes still my son. Henry,' Rob captioned Sunday's post.

Rob revealed Henry was diagnosed with his brain tumour in 2016 after suffering persistent vomiting and weight loss, shortly after he turned one.

The toddler underwent surgery to remove a tumour in addition to further treatment, spending a gruelling 15 months in hospital. But his family were told his cancer had returned in the autumn of 2017 before he passed away the following January.

Tribute: The Catastrophe star and writer shared a photo of a newborn Henry sleeping on his lap, telling his Instagram followers: 'I'm still his dad & he's still my son'

In December 2018, Rob revealed his wife Leah gave birth to their 'magical' fourth son that August - seven months after son Henry passed away.

While he has previously discussed the joy of their new child, he has also admitted he struggles every day with his grief.

In an interview with the Evening Standard last year Rob said: 'Im a mess. My child died 14 months ago and Im basically a bag of wet rubbish. I need a lot of help...

Always remembered: Henry passed away in January 2018 aged two, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2016, shortly after he turned one

'It has been very hard. It comes in waves. Ive learned to not control how the waves come. Right now Im sad a lot.

'The reason Im being honest with you and not trying to impress you, and make you think Im cool or that Im a tough guy, or maybe working through loss in an inspiring way, is that I have found that if a bereaved parent or bereaved sibling reads this...

'I want them to know that its okay that they feel terrible, sad, confused and so brutally humbled.'

Loss: The toddler underwent surgery to remove a tumour in addition to further treatment, spending a gruelling 15 months in hospital but passed away in early 2018

After the final series of Catastrophe hit screens in 2019, he detailed how he managed to both write and film the series during his son's battle.

Rob told the Radio Times: 'Shoots were hard. Sometimes Id need to take a break and just go cry. Writing them, logistically, was difficult. We rented an office right by Great Ormond Street Hospital so I could duck in and out as needed on series three.'

'I found incredible sadness and confusion and anger not incompatible with work. I found grief not incompatible with work. I cant return emails any more, or do basic admin, and my memory is fundamentally damaged...

'So there are things that Im much worse at now. Joking around and imagining stories has not suffered. Maybe because its almost like a vital sign.'
Derek Delaney, DMS Global CEO commented, "As our industry continues to evolve rapidly, we identified a demand from clients for a robust and comprehensive service provider and, following this deal, our clients will now be able to take full advantage of an expanded suite of services. This is an opportunity to combine the expertise and depth of experience of DMS, MDO and MontLake to create a third-party management company offering that is unparalleled in terms of talent and the extent of services provided."

Martin Vogel, CEO of MDO commented, "The combined companies will deliver substantial benefits for clients and employees, bringing together three highly successful and complementary organisations with proven track records and a shared, strategic commitment to achieve growth."

Cyril Delamare, CEO of MontLake added, "Partnering with DMS and MDO is a significant milestone for MontLake and further strengthens our product offering, together with increasing our global physical presence in new jurisdictions including Luxembourg, the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. We will continue to provide our high-quality client service in addition to our successful investment solutions, bringing quality fund products to pan European investors."

The transaction between DMS, MDO and MontLake creates a leading and unique service provider across multiple asset classes and jurisdictions. Clients from all three companies will benefit from a leading and global third-party management company, offering a wider range of services, with dedicated and highly-qualified staff working from well-established operations in Luxembourg, Ireland, the UK, North America, the Cayman Islands and Asia.

About DMS

DMS Governance is the worldwide leader in governance + risk + compliance, representing leading investment funds and managers. DMS is supported by an experienced team of industry professionals in eight locations across the globe. Since 2000, DMS has delivered high-quality, professional services to a diverse range of investment fund structures and strategies and is proud to be the leading, independent provider of AIFM, UCITS Management Company and MiFID services to many of the largest institutional investors and asset managers globally. Through its in-depth knowledge across every aspect of the governance landscape, DMS has been the driving force in the shaping of today's industry.

About MDO

MDO is a leading UCITS management company and Alternative Investment Fund Manager in Luxembourg with a long and recognised track record providing high-quality, solution-driven services to both UCITS and AIFs including full UCITS management company and AIFM services, risk management, compliance monitoring, fund governance, substance solutions and supervision of delegates. MDO also offers introductions to experienced independent directors who can act as independent Board Directors and Conducting Officers of a diverse range of Luxembourg domiciled investment and management companies, including UCITS, non-UCITS and alternative investment funds. MDO has been operational in Luxembourg for 17 years.

About MontLake

Founded in 2009, MontLake is headquartered in Dublin with offices located across Europe. Combining world-class infrastructure solutions with the world's leading investment managers, MontLake oversees over $8 billion of assets, across a suite of products. MontLake Management Limited is an Irish Super Management Company authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland both as a UCITS Management Company and Alternative Investment Fund Manager and has passported its services into Luxembourg, Germany, France and Malta. MontLake Management Limited supports the launch of funds either as a standalone structure or as a sub-fund on one of the multi-award winning MontLake platforms and is today managing UCITS, Alternative UCITS, Hedge Funds, Real Estate, Infrastructure and Private Equity.

Media Contacts:

Alison Mitsas, Marketing Director

The DMS Group

[email protected]

Tel: +39 327 751 1500

Britta Borneff, Head of Sales and Marketing

MDO

[email protected]

Tel: +352 26 00 21 462

India Klein

MontLake

[email protected]

+44 (0)2037094520

+44 (0)7957 736096

1 MontLake transaction subject to regulatory approval.

SOURCE DMS Governance

Related Links

http://www.dmsoffshore.com


House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) announced on Monday that Brian Bulatao, a top State Department official and close confidante of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will testify before the committee on July 2 as part of a probe into President Trump's firing of former Inspector General Steve Linick.

Why it matters: Linick testified to lawmakers that he was conducting two investigations that personally involved Pompeo  one concerning allegations of staff misuse and another probing the administration's efforts to circumvent Congress to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia  when Pompeo recommended that President Trump fire him.

Bulatao, the State Departments undersecretary for management, has emerged as a "central figure" in Linick's removal. Linick says Bulatao was the one who called him to inform him of the news of his Friday night firing.

Linick testified that Bulatao "tried to bully" him over his investigation into the arms sales, calling it "a policy matter not within the IGs jurisdiction."

The other side: Pompeo claims he was unaware of Linick's investigation into his alleged misuse of staff. He said at a press briefing that Linick was a "bad actor" and claimed he was fired because he "wasnt performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to."

Bulatao said in May that there were internal concerns about a "pattern" of media leaks related to Linick's investigations and that the IG was unwilling to refer a leak investigation to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.

Bulatao offered no explicit evidence for the allegations.

What they're saying: Engel wrote in a statement, "The American people deserve to know the truth about why the President sacked one of our government's independent watchdogs."
Photo: iStock

Here's what you need to know about what's happening in Chicago. 104 shot, 14 fatally, over Fathers Day weekend in Chicago

Read the full story on Chicago Sun-Times. Mayor says Columbus statues shouldn't be taken down Read the full story on Fox News. Area prep athletes conditioning, hoping to return to normal soon Read the full story on Houston Chronicle. Dads mark Father's Day from a distance due to pandemic Read the full story on www.fbherald.com. This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.

Chicago saw its highest number of gun violence victims in a single weekend this year with 104 people shot across the city from Friday evening to Monday morning, 14 of them fatally. Five of those killed were children.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday that statues of Christopher Columbus should not be torn down in response to the death of George Floyd, because it would amount to erasing history.

Summer made its official debut recently, and the timing was right for most area prep athletes to hit the training regimen, as allowed by the Illinois High School Association.
New Zealand police had frozen NZ$140 million (US$90 million) in assets linked to a Russian cyber criminal.

New Zealand police announced that they had frozen NZ$140 million (US$90 million) in assets linked to the Russian nation Alexander Vinnik.

Alexander Vinnik is currently in France to face a charge of money laundering for organised crime using crypto-currency.

Alexander Vinnik allegedly headed the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e, he is charged with different hacking crimes in Russia, France, and the United States.

In September, Greek Police have arrested the Russian national Alexander Vinnik (38) and they accuse the man of running the BTC-e Bitcoin exchange to launder more than US$4bn worth of the cryptocurrency.

The authorities reported that since 2011, 7 million Bitcoin went into the BTC-e exchange and 5.5 million withdrawn.

According to the Greek media outlet the Daily Thess, the FBI tracked Alexander Vinnik for more than a year.

The man is charged by the US authorities with fraud and money laundering for more than $4 billion worth amount of Bitcoin (BTC) resulting from criminal activities, the US prosecutors requested his extradition in July 2017.

Vinnik is also accused to be responsible for the failure of the Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

Mt. Gox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange at the time of the shut down in 2014 that occurred after the platform was the victim of a series of cyber heists for a total of $375 million in Bitcoin.

The U.S. authorities speculate the Russian man stole funds from Mt. Gox, with the help of an insider. The stolen funds were transferred to a wallet managed by Vinnik and funds were laundered through his platform BTC-e-service during a three-year period.

In July 2018 there was a twist, a Greek lower court agreed to extradite Vinnik to France to face with charges with hacking, money laundering, extortion and involvement in organized crime.

French authorities accused Vinnik of defrauding more than 100 people in six French cities between 2016 and 2018.

Now the New Zeland police discovered some funds belonging to Vinnik that were being held in a local company.

These funds are likely to reflect the profit gained from the victimisation of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people globally as a result of cybercrime and organised crime, commissioner Andrew Coster said.

Coster added that New Zealand police had worked closely with the US Internal Revenue Service on the case, he added that the investigation is still ongoing.

The global criminal community need to understand New Zealands financial system, and companies established here, are not the places to try to hide illicit income, Coster said.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs  hacking, cybercrime)

Share this...

Linkedin

Share this: Twitter

Print

LinkedIn

Facebook

More

Tumblr

Pocket





Share On
Physicians used to assume a child who developed a mild drug-related rash could have a more serious reaction in the future. But research conducted over the last 10 years has shown that isnt true. Our understanding has really changed for the better, said Dr. Stukus. But it can be quite confusing for parents because what they were told a few years ago or even what they themselves were told as children may be very different.

True allergic reactions, which occur when the bodys immune system overreacts, almost always come on suddenly  within minutes to a few hours of taking the drug. Symptoms commonly include hives, itchy eyes and swelling in the lips, tongue or face. In some cases, the allergy can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Rarely, penicillin allergies lead to anaphylaxis, a life-threatening reaction that affects the entire body. Even more rarely, a child will develop severe symptoms such as a high fever or blistered, peeling skin days or even weeks after taking the drug.

Dr. Norton said parents should call their doctor if their child experiences any new symptoms while taking a drug. Take photos and write down pertinent details. Knowing what happens when a child has a reaction is key to figuring out how to manage these kids, so the parent really is an important part of this, she said.

If a health care provider is concerned about the symptoms, or just unsure, they may stop the penicillin and prescribe a different antibiotic, Dr. Norton said. If that happens, be sure to follow up with your physician or allergy specialist to figure out if your child is really allergic.

Getting Tested Is Easier Than You Think

Allergy testing should be done in a doctors office or clinic where they have treatment on hand in case symptoms occur.

It can involve a lot of waiting to see if anything happens, so bring a quiet activity to pass the time. Most kids undergo an oral challenge where they are given a small amount of the drug, then if theres no reaction, the rest of the dose. If nothing happens after an hour or so, youre good to go.

If your child has a history of severe symptoms such as swelling, or shortness of breath or a rapid onset of hives, you will need to consult with an allergy specialist for a skin test. That involves first pricking the skin with an allergen, and if that doesnt cause a red bump to form, using a small needle to place more of the allergen under the skin. (The procedure is bloodless and less painful than it sounds.) If theres no reaction at the testing sites, the doctor will do an oral challenge to confirm your child isnt allergic.
Former national security adviser John Bolton, a self-described "lifelong conservative," said he will not vote for President Donald Trump in November, calling Trump a "danger for the republic" during a televised interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night.

"I hope [history] will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from," Bolton told ABC News's Martha Raddatz. "We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence. . . . Two terms, I'm more troubled about."

Bolton's public excoriation of his former boss comes as part of a media tour to promote his new book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," which has drawn intense criticism from both Democrats and Republicans since excerpts and advance copies began circulating earlier this month.

The damning 592-page account of Bolton's 17 months in the White House, decried by Trump as a "compilation of lies and made up stories," is set to be released Tuesday, despite the Trump administration's last-ditch attempt to block its publication over allegations that it contains classified information. On Saturday, a federal judge ruled that the book release could proceed, but said Bolton "likely jeopardized national security" and may be at risk of criminal prosecution, The Washington Post's Spencer S. Hsu and Tom Hamburger reported.

Trump's fierce pushback to the book didn't come as a surprise to Bolton.

"It'll be volcanic, and I've expected that from the beginning," Bolton told Raddatz. "There were times when I was writing this book or getting it ready for publication that I thought - 'Goodness, this is more trouble than it's worth.' But now that we're at the point, I'm prepared to accept whatever happens."

In Sunday's interview, Bolton expanded on revelations in the book, which he argued supports his claims that Trump is "unfit for office" and lacks the "competence to carry out the job." Describing the president as "erratic and impulsive," Bolton slammed Trump's handling of U.S. foreign policy, accusing him of prioritizing reelection and personal relationships over the country's national security - highlighting his dealings with North Korea, Russia, China and Ukraine as prime examples.

Bolton said his book shows "a pattern quite contrary to the image [Trump] would like to convey, of a decisive president who knows something about what he's doing." He noted that Trump "very rarely read much" during intelligence briefings and also said Trump was unwilling "to do systematic learning so that he could make the most informed decisions."

"There really isn't any guiding principle, that I was able to discern, other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection," Bolton said.

He added, "Decisions are made in a very scatter shot fashion, especially in the potentially mortal field of national security policy. This is a danger for the republic."

Bolton painted an unflattering portrait of Trump's relationships with other leaders, namely Russian President Vladimir Putin - who Bolton said thinks he can play Trump "like a fiddle" - and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

He appeared particularly irked by Trump and Kim's historic 2018 summit, which marked the first meeting between leaders from the U.S. and North Korea.

"When we were in Singapore for the first summit, one of the things he said over and over again was to ask how many press people were going to be present for his final press conference," Bolton said. "That's what he was focused on. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity."

But while Trump succeeded in getting "enormous attention" from the event, Bolton, who has long been a hard-liner on North Korean policy, said he thought it was "a strategic mistake."

"The U.S. itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot," he said. "The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator. And didn't accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program."

Instead, Bolton accused Trump of spending a majority of his meetings with Kim flattering the North Korean leader.

"It's a style. Every president has a style," Bolton said. "But the idea that ... compliments to this brutal dictator would convince him that you could make a deal with Donald Trump, I thought, was both strikingly naive and dangerous."

In response to Raddatz asking if the threat from North Korea is greater now than when Trump took office, Bolton said, "The threat from North Korea today is absolutely greater."

"Because while all these photo opportunities were taking place, there's absolutely no doubt that North Korea's work on both its nuclear and ballistic missile programs continued," he said.

Bolton also defended his decision not to testify in impeachment proceedings against Trump - a move bashed by Democrats in light of the damaging details in his book about Trump's actions toward Ukraine.

For instance, Bolton recounted a conversation he had with Trump in which the president "directly linked the provision" of sending aid to Ukraine with an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump has denied making such comments to Bolton, and during Sunday's interview, Bolton accused the president of lying.

"It's not the first time, either," Bolton told Raddatz. "This is why I think it's important to get these kinds of facts out on the table."

But Bolton maintained that his impeachment testimony "would not have made any difference."

"Minds were made up on Capitol Hill," he said, referring to impeachment as a "partisan catfight" and denouncing House Democrats' approach to the proceedings. "My feeling was in the midst of all the chaos that had been created, this would have come and gone, and nobody would have paid any attention to it."

Bolton suggested that impeachment, which ended with the Senate acquitting Trump, only emboldened the president.

"He didn't learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail - is the election this November," he said.

Bolton, however, said that while he doesn't want Trump to win reelection, he is "certainly not going to vote for Joe Biden either."

"I'm going to figure out a conservative Republican to write in," he said.

As Bolton tells it, the upcoming election is a large part of why he decided to write the book.

"I want people to read it, not for the conclusions, but for the basic evidence that it provides. They can make up their own minds," he said. "Some Republicans will read it and say, 'We're gonna vote for Trump anyway.' And all I want them to know is what they're actually voting for."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:25:43|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Photo taken on June 22, 2020 shows a hall for Baghdad International Fair turning into a temporary hospital in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi said on Monday that the country is nearing the peak stage of COVID-19 infections. Iraqi Health Ministry reported 1,808 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections to 32,676. (Xinhua)

BAGHDAD, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi said on Monday that the country is nearing the peak stage of COVID-19 infections.

"The past few days have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of infections, indicating that the epidemiological situation is nearing the peak stage of the pandemic," al-Tamimi said in a statement.

The minister noted that the ministry is exerting every effort to contain the increasing number of infections, and it is seeking to prepare a makeshift hospitals with a capacity of 400 beds in the Iraqi provinces as soon as possible.

He said that Iraq's death rate from COVID-19 is 3.5 percent, and the recovery rate is 45 percent.

On the same day, Iraqi Health Ministry reported 1,808 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections to 32,676.

It also reported 67 deaths during the day, raising the death toll to 1,167 in the country, while 14,785 patients have recovered.

The new cases were recorded after 10,075 testing kits were used across the country during the past 24 hours, and a total of 455,316 tests have been carried out since the outbreak of the disease, the statement added.

The continuous increase of COVID-19 cases pushed some Iraqi provinces to reimpose a full curfew, including Basra province and Maysan in southern Iraq.

A statement by Asaad al-Edani, Basra's governor, said that the provincial authorities imposed a week-long full curfew from Tuesday until July 1 to contain the increase of COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi said in an interview with local Dijla TV channel that 20 lawmakers and 28 of the parliament employees have been infected with the virus, including a director general.

Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement that it has extended the ban on the domestic and foreign flights until July 1.

Flights for Iraqi citizens returning from abroad, emergency and air cargo, as well as planes that cross Iraqi airspace will continue as normal.

China has been helping Iraq fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

From March 7 to April 26, a Chinese team of seven medical experts spent 50 days in Iraq to help contain the disease, during which they helped build a PCR lab and an advanced CT scanner in Baghdad.

Since March 7, China has also sent three batches of medical aid to Iraq.
A study of the wildlife trade in three provinces in southern Vietnam produced startlingly clear confirmation for one of the underlying objections to the wildlife trade in Asia  the trading offers an ideal opportunity for viruses in one animal to infect another.

In field rats, a highly popular animal to eat in Vietnam and neighboring countries, the percentage that tested positive for at least one of six different coronaviruses jumped significantly. It increased from 20% of wild-caught rats sold by traders, to slightly more than 30% at large markets, the next step in the supply chain, to 55% of rats sold in restaurants that tested positive.

In other words, the odds were about even that a field rat on the plate was infected with some kind of coronavirus.

The data for this study has taken a long time to process. The tests were done in 2013 and 2014, for common coronaviruses, long before the emergence of the treacherous novel virus that has caused the current pandemic. The results show unequivocally how viruses spread from animal to animal as they are transported in crowded conditions to market.

Sarah H Olson, an epidemiologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society who directed the research, said she expected some increase in infections, because many animals are shipped together in close proximity in the wildlife trade, putting them under high stress. Its classic disease ecology, she said.

But she didnt expect the degree of rising infections. The numbers floored her. We saw this huge step-by-step increase, she said. I kept going back to check the data.

She and a team of scientists posted a report of their research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, but has been submitted to a scientific journal, on a website for unpublished research, bioRxiv.

Edward C Holmes, an infectious disease expert at the University of Sydney, in Australia, who was not involved with the research, said the papers data clearly laid out the risk posed by the wildlife trade. It is striking that the number of infected animals increases as you up the supply chain toward consumption, he said.

Data like that provided in this paper has been scarce. Neither Holmes nor Olson was aware of similar studies, although both acknowledged that so much research is published that its impossible to know all of it.

The paper paints a vivid picture of the wildlife trade and the passion for wild meat in urban restaurants and markets. In the early 2000s, the authors write, the Vietnamese field rat trade was estimated to process 3,300-3,600 tons of live rats annually for consumption.

The rats are considered healthy and nutritious food. Field to fork consumption, as Olson described it, has increased greatly in recent years, both in Vietnam and neighboring countries.

The research effort in testing for coronavirus RNA had several prongs. One was the sampling of field rats, of six species common to Vietnam, at different points on the supply chain. Another was sampling wildlife farms, and a third, bat guano farms. Small farmers build bat roosts so they can collect the guano for fertilizer to use themselves or sell. Other animals and children often go under the roosts.

The researchers were spurred to look at coronaviruses because of the SARS epidemic and how common the viruses are in bats and other wildlife. Most cause minor or no illness in humans, but SARS showed how dangerous they could be.

They sampled 28 farms that raised Malayan porcupines and bamboo rats, a different creature entirely from field rats, which are more closely related to the rats familiar to Westerners. The farms were not specialized, however, they also were homes to dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens, ducks, pigeons, geese, common pheasant, monitor lizards, wild boar, fish, python, crocodiles, deer, civets and other creatures, such as pet monkeys and free-ranging rats.

The researchers used oral and anal swabs of carcasses along the field rat supply chain. But at the farms they tested fecal samples. They found coronaviruses in all of the field rats at wildlife farms, in 6% of Malayan porcupines and about 6% of bamboo rats.

At the bat farms, 74% of the animals were infected with the virus.

Olson said the Wildlife Conservation Society is not against all wildlife consumption. We definitely have to maintain local access for sustainable use. But, she said, the booming trade in wild meat has little to do with people who survive on eating wildlife.

Wild animals are popular dishes in urban areas.

These preferences are now creating what were seeing with COVID-19 across the world, she said. While China has banned the wildlife trade amid the pandemic, whether the prohibition holds in the long term is, as she said, the $3 trillion question.

James Gorman. c.2020 The New York Times Company
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Riska Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 12:02 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660a3e73 1 Business telkom,SOEMinistry,erick-thohir,Bukalapak,Achmad-Zaky Free

The State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Ministry has appointed e-commerce unicorn Bukalapak cofounder Fajrin Rasyid as a director of state-owned telecommunication firm PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), as the company eyes a digital business expansion.

Fajrin, who held the position of president in Bukalapak, has replaced Faizal R. Djoemadi as the state enterprises digital business director effective on June 19.

Fajrins appointment is in line with our plan to develop our digital platform and services, so we need to have a board of directors member who is competent in that field, Telkom president director Ririek Adriansyah said during a virtual press briefing on June 19.

Telkom announced earlier this year that the company would transform its business strategy to focus more on digital services, following criticism from State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir in February about the company's overreliance on its cellular operator subsidiary Telkomsel, which contributes 70 percent of its income.

The firm has then been striving to develop various digital services based on smart platforms, such as cloud, big data and the internet of things (IoT).

Fajrin said he hoped he could use his experience in the start-up business to contribute to the development of Telkom.

Im very thankful for the trust given to me. Now is the time to make a greater contribution to the advancement of Indonesia and focus on developing Indonesias telco industry with Telkom, Fajrin said in a statement.

Following his departure, Fajrin planned to hand over his daily functional duties and responsibilities as Bukalapaks president to the companys board of directors and management, the e-commerce firm said in a statement on its website.

SOEs Minister Erick Thohir said in a statement that Fajrin was the best fit to lead Telkoms digital business development because of his track record and achievements in the digital sector especially in the post-COVID-19 economy.

With bigger challenges ahead, every member of Telkoms board of directors has a certain key performance index they need to follow and they should be ready to be dismissed when they fail to fulfil it, said Erick.

Fajrin founded Bukalapak in 2011 with his partner, Achmad Zaky. Before taking on the role of president, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) alumnus was the chief financial officer (CFO) of the e-commerce platform. He also previously worked in consulting firm Boston Consultant Group (BCG).

Bukalapak currently has 92 million users, around 6 million sellers on its platform, as well as 5 million online-to-offline partners known as Mitra Bukalapak after more than 10 years of operation.
New Delhi, June 22 : The Delhi Police on Monday arrested a man for cheating Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel by impersonating as a plasma donor.

The man, identified as Abdul Karim alias Rahul Thakur, pretended to be a plasma donor by posing as a COVID-19 recovered doctor employed at Ram Manohar Hospital and solicited money from people.

Thakur was nabbed two days after Goel lodged a complaint at the Civil Lines police station. He belongs to Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar district.

In a complaint, Goel stated that the accused asked for money to travel to the hospital where a COVID-19 patient is admitted and after the money was transferred, he stopped taking calls.

The Delhi Assembly Speaker said that his nephew gave him the accused's number. Thakur had also called his nephew a few days before that, after the latter put up a post on a social media website seeking a plasma donor.

"I called Rahul Thakur who represented to me also that he is a doctor at RML Hospital and had recently recovered from COVID-19 and that he would donate plasma for my patient," said Goel.

"Thakur asked me to transfer money to his Google Pay Linked to mobile number for cab charges which was immediately done by my staff and he assured me that he would reach Medanta Hospital in 45 minutes," he said, adding that the accused stopped taking his calls after that.

The Delhi Police said that "the contents of the complaint by Goel included that someone cheated him of Rs 950." The accused was identified through the phone number obtained from the complainant.

"During the course of investigation, the suspect was interrogated thoroughly. On sustained interrogation, he confessed to receiving money through Google Pay account from needy people by introducing himself as a donor," the police added.
(Natural News) There is an invisible war raging in the world. Not a war fought with bullets and guns, but a war of manipulation. (Article republished from TheEpochTimes.com)

Its a war fought by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against the free world using the full force of its propaganda and influence apparatus.

Not only does the CCP actively spread its propaganda to the West, it has even succeeded in dictating what can and cannot be said in free societies.

However, this growing influence has gone largely unnoticed. And by now, it has penetrated all levels of American society.

In this new age of information warfare, where a hostile foreign power is waging a war for our minds, what can be done?

In this new in-depth report, we explore Chinas Grand External Propaganda campaign against America and the rest of the free world and reveal the playbook it uses.

Premiering on June 20 at 9:00 p.m. ET:

China In Focus YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/ChinainFocusNTD

The Epoch Times YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/epochtimesdigital

NTD YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/NTDTV

The Epoch Times website:

https://www.theepochtimes.com

NTD website:

https://www.ntd.com

Read more at: TheEpochTimes.com
The moment a group of diners 'force' past staff to take a table at a restaurant at full capacity under COVID-19 restrictions has been captured on video.

Business owner Jeff Griffiths confronted the diners at Sneaky Pickle BBQ restaurant in the Adelaide inner southern suburb of Goodwood on Saturday night.

The restaurant posted security footage of Mr Griffiths appearing to argue with a woman who was leading the group to an empty table to Instagram on Sunday.

'This is Amber. After being told 3 times we are at capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions she still took upon herself to get a table,' the post was captioned.

'Please dont be a Amber. We need your help to support the restrictions put in place to keep us all safe.'

Sneaky Pickle restaurant owner Jeff Griffiths (left) confronts a woman and a group who he claims barged into his at-capacity restaurant and took their own table in Adelaide on Saturday

In the footage, the woman can be seen walking through the restaurant with three others before Mr Griffiths stops them and begins to talking to them.

Mr Griffiths appears to try and calm the woman down but she gave an animated response using lots of hand gestures before continuing to walk to the table.

He said the woman 'literally forced her way into out restaurant with six other guests'.

'She was aggressive, she was, and spoke to me in a very inappropriate manner that she was going to come in and sit down regardless of whether of whether I said no or yes to come into the room,' Mr Griffiths told 10 News.

'A lot of the public think that we're back to normal. They might be, in their own minds, but we aren't.'

In South Australia, up to 300 people are allowed to dine in restaurants provided there are only 75 diners per room with four square metres per patron.

Mr Giffiths said a lot of diners 'think that we're back to normal' while COVID-19 restrictions are still in place. In SA, 75 diners are allowed to dine in a room if they have four square metres each

Sneaky Pickle posted security footage of Mr Griffiths appearing to argue with the woman to Instagram on Sunday

Businesses can be fined $5,000 for breaching the current COVID-19 restrictions.

The woman had a different take on the incident, saying she had a 'derogatory, intimidating and straight out disgraceful experience' in her Google review.

She said she made a table booking for Saturday night for her friend's 83-year-old grandmother's birthday but was made to wait in the queue by the owner.

After speaking to a waitress, the woman said she was allocated a table and was making her way to it when Mr Griffiths stopped her again.

'The owner stopped us on our way, in front of packed diners and shouted "where do you guys think you are going?!" We were in shock,' the woman wrote.

While Mr Griffiths said the woman (left) was agressive, she said she had a 'derogatory, intimidating and straight out disgraceful experience' in her Google review

The woman also accused Sneaky Pickle of flaunting social distancing guidelines.

'The place was no way adhering to the social distancing rules. The two open adjoining dining areas were filled with about 100 people at any one time,' she wrote.

'Due to the heavy crowd and over booking, we waited more than an hour for some sandwiches to be served.'

In their Instagram post on Sunday, Sneaky Pickle used the hashtag 'fake reviews', implying that the woman's review was a lie.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Sneaky Pickle for comment.
Scientists say a massive volcanic eruption in Alaska more than 2,500 years ago triggered a global climate shock on the other side of the Earth that led to the fall of the Roman Republic.

The eruption of Mount Okmok on an Alaskan island in the year 43 BC  an event known as 'Okmok II'  spewed ash particles that cooled the planet by shading incoming solar radiation.

Scientists say this caused with a spell of extreme cold in the Mediterranean during the European summer  the second-coldest of the last 2,500 years.

Around the time of Julius Caesar's death in 44 BCE, written sources describe a period of unusually cold climate, crop failures, famine, disease, and unrest in the Mediterranean Region.

These factors caused food scarcity in Rome and led to the fall of the Roman Republic and were ultimately caused by the eruption, researchers say.

The discovery is based on chemical analysis and ageing of volcanic ash, or tephra, found in cores of ice from the Arctic.

Detailed records of past explosive volcanic eruptions are archived in the Greenland ice sheet and accessed through deep-drilling operations

'The tephra match doesn't get any better,' said study co-author Dr Gill Plunkett, an archaeologist at Queen's University Belfast.

'We compared the chemical fingerprint of the tephra found in the ice with tephra from volcanoes thought to have erupted about that time.

'It was very clear the source of the 43 BC fallout in the ice was the Okmok II eruption.'

The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC triggered a power struggle that ultimately ended the Roman Republic, leading to the powerful rise of the Roman Empire, which helped shape the modern world.

Written documents indicate that this struggle occurred during a period of unusually cold weather, famine and disease in the Mediterranean region.

Alaska's Umnak Island with Mount Okmok marked. The volcano affected temperatures on the opposite side of the Earth

Alaska's Umnak Island in the Aleutians showing the huge, six-mile-wide caldera (upper right) largely created by the 43 BCE Okmok II eruption at the dawn of the Roman Empire

Historians have long suspected a volcano to be the cause of a previously-known cold snap in and around the Med, but have been unable to pinpoint where or when such an eruption had occurred, or how severe it was.

Last year, researchers happened upon an unusually well preserved layer of tephra in an Arctic ice core sample and decided to investigate further.

Researchers analysed a total of six ice cores from the Arctic, collected over the course of several decades and all containing tephra.

New ageing measurements were also made on ice cores previously collected Greenland and Russia, some of which were drilled in the 1990s and archived in the US, Denmark and Germany.

While scientists couldn't date the tephra, they were able to date the layers in the ice in which the tephra was embedded.

They also performed a chemical analysis or 'fingerprinting' of the chemical make-up of the tephra.

Using these and earlier measurements, they were able to clearly pin-point two distinct eruptions  a powerful but short-lived, relatively localised event in early 45 BC and 'Okmok II', two years later.

Okmok II was a much larger and more widespread event, causing a volcanic fallout that lasted more than two years in all the ice core records.

When a volcano erupts it spews out a mass of dust and particles that can travel the globe, blocking out the sun and quickly cooling Earth.

Timeline showing European summer temperatures and volcanic sulphur and ash levels in relation to the Okmok II Eruption and significant historic events of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom from 59 to 20 BCE. The temperature drop in Europe in the summer of 43 BC coincided with the spike of volcanic sufur and ash from Mount Okmok

'Okmok II injected massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere which was converted into highly reflective sulfate aerosols small particles and droplets in the air all around us,' study author Joe McConnell, a professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, told MailOnline.

'These highly reflective sulfate aerosols were blown by winds all around the Northern Hemisphere and reflected incoming solar radiation.'

The team also tree-ring-based climate records from Scandinavia, Austria and California's White Mountains, as well as climate records from a speleothems  cave formations such as stalactites and stalagmites  from Shihua Cave in northeast China.

HOW DO VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS COOL THE CLIMATE? Volcanic eruptions are responsible for releasing molten rock, or lava, from deep within the Earth, forming new rock on the Earths surface. The gases and dust particles thrown into the atmosphere during volcanic eruptions have influences on climate. Most of the particles spewed from volcanoes cool the planet by shading incoming solar radiation. The cooling effect can last for months to years depending on the characteristics of the eruption. Even though volcanoes are in specific places on Earth, their effects can be more widely distributed as gases, dust, and ash get into the atmosphere. Volcanic ash or dust released into the atmosphere during an eruption shade sunlight and cause temporary cooling. Larger particles of ash have little effect because they fall out of the air quickly. Source: UCAR Center for Science Education Advertisement
Droplets of fiery rain. Thats how Henry Clifton Sorby, a 19th-century British mineralogist, described the tiny spheres called chondrules found within meteorites. Chondrules are such dominant features of these meteorites that they are called chondrites, and they account for 86 percent of meteorites that have been found on Earth.

Their origin, however, remains a mystery.

Theres nothing that predicts them, said Rhian Jones of the University of Manchester in England, an expert in chondrites.

Now some scientists think they have a new answer to this rocky enigma: The chondrites may have formed in an unusual event during a narrow window of time in the early solar system. The findings, presented at a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this month by William Herbst and James Greenwood of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, paint a strange picture of what parts of the solar system were like before the planets we know began to form.

Multiple hypotheses have been put forward for the origins of chondrites. Some agree their formation must have occurred early in the solar systems history, about 4.6 billion years ago. But each of these hypotheses has its downsides. To form, chondrules must be heated and then cooled rapidly, a scenario that is difficult to explain. So the researchers came up with a model for an idea they thought might work, then simulated the conditions with rocks in a lab furnace to test their hypothesis.
Drinkers in Manchester before the UK went into lockdown. (Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Pubs, restaurants, and bars in England may have to take customers names and contact details as they reopen their doors next month.

Expectations are growing that hospitality venues and hairdressers will be given the go-ahead to reopen on 4 July, and that two-metre social distancing rules will be reduced.

Health secretary Matt Hancock said the government was looking at registration measures alongside reopening to help with contact tracing if new outbreaks are identified.

Hancock told Skys Sophie Ridge on Sunday other countries had introduced similar rules, but said no final decision had yet been made. The whole approach is to move as much as safely possible from a national lockdown towards targeted local action when we see an outbreak, he said.

READ MORE: Numerous pub chiefs threaten to reopen even if lockdown still not eased

The Times reports that the plans are likely to be signed off by senior ministers and medical and scientific advisers in prime minister Boris Johnsons government on Monday.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to confirm a reopening date for England on Tuesday, as well as a relaxation of the two-metre social distancing rule. The government is reported to be considering a one-metre-plus rule, with a one-metre gap permitted if masks or other measures are in place.

It comes after weeks of lobbying by hospitality firms, calling for clarity and urgency on reopening as well as a shorter social distancing rules. Business leaders have warned of a fresh wave of closures and job losses if reopening were delayed or the two-metre gap maintained.

READ MORE: Most UK workers dont want to go back to offices

A Downing Street spokesperson told multiple news outlets: The reason we are able to move forward this week is because the vast majority of people have taken steps to contain the virus.

The more we open up, the more important it is that everyone follows the social-distancing rules.

We will not hesitate to put the handbrake on to stop the virus running out of control.

Story continues

Non-essential retailers in Wales can also resume trading from Monday, after their counterparts in England were given the green light in mid-June.

Johnsons announcement will only apply to England, but reopening may follow soon after elsewhere in the UK. Scotlands first minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday hospitality venues may remain closed for a couple of weeks.
Condemning the recent killing of 20 Indian soldiers during a face-off with Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan Valley, Tibetan government-in-exile President Lobsang Sangay on Monday said that it is a part of China's "expansionist strategy".

This "grand design" of China is going to continue and India should form an alliance of all democracies of the world to put pressure on the government of that country.

Speaking at a webinar organised by Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Sangay, also the political successor to the Dalai Lama, said the recent incident at the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh is part of China's "expansionist strategy".

"We have condemned the attack. It should not have happened," the president of Central Tibetan Administration said.

China, he said, is a country "which does not have any credibility or legitimacy for which it is creating tension with India and other neighbouring countries".

Recalling the Chinese occupation of his country, Sangay said that China had said that it needs to build a road to Tibet for trading purposes. "But once the road was completed, China sent tanks and military to Tibet to occupy the zone. All these were pre-planned by China."

China, he said, had promised peace to Tibet. "But in the end we lost all. Now, they (China) are extracting the mineral resources of Tibet for their own benefit."

According to him, the original Chinese territory was within the Great Wall. "Now they have gone beyond it by entering into Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet. It is all part of China's expansionist strategy."

Insisting that "the blueprint that was used by China for Tibet can be used for India as well," the Tibetan leader said, adding that "they (China) will buy off the political and business leaders, intellectuals, journalists and celebrities first".

He suggested that since India is a big democracy, it should form an alliance of all democracies in the world and this will exert pressure on the Chinese government.

Sangay said 10 major rivers flow from Tibet and the Chinese army is controlling the water flow as China has not signed the UN convention on water sharing.

He said that the 'Panchsheel Agreement' signed between India and China was to ensure trade and tranquility. It also included trade with Tibet. "But the Chinese government changed it to tension and treachery. This status quo has to be restored," he argued.

According to him, Tibet has been historically a zone of peace and acted as a buffer between India and China.

"Now India-Tibet border has now been changed to India-China border. We must go back to the same historical place", Sangay said, adding that the movement by the Dalai Lama has to succeed.

He urged celebrities of the country to stop endorsing Chinese products in response to the boycott call given in India after the attacks in Ladakh.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: A homeless man was found dead on the pavement opposite the city corporation's headquarters on Monday morning. Three hours after construction workers nearby alerted police, the body was finally taken to a mortuary.

The man, whose identity is not yet known, used to sleep on the pavement, said the workers. On Monday morning, they checked on him since he did not wake up even until 9 am. On realising he was dead, they called the 108 ambulance service.

There was no response even after a few photojournalists also called 108. Finally, calls were made to the local police. The policemen who arrived at the spot used a motorised tricycle to finally take the body to a mortuary a little after 12 noon.

A police officer said as the 108 ambulance is designated for COVID patients they refused to transport the body as there was no test for COVID was taken when the patient died.

"We called the ambulance services but they claimed to have gone for COVID duty and we waited

for close to one and a half hours but they did not respond. We were skeptical to move the body as we did not have PPE suits. As there was no other option we ensured we wore masks and gloves and later we made

arrangements to move the body to the mortuary."said a police officer.

The officer also confirmed that a COVID test was taken after the body was shifted to the mortuary and the results are awaited.
An artificial intelligence-powered tool that transforms pixelated images into clear photos has been accused of racial bias.

Called Face Depixelizer, the tool was released on Twitter for users to test, who found the technology is unable to process Black faces properly.

The tool transformed a pixelated image of Barack Obama into a a white man and other examples included Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and actress Lucy Liu - all of which were reconstructed to look white.

The Face Depixelizer is based on an AI tool developed by a team at Duke University, which uses a method called PULSE that searches through AI-generated images of high-resolution faces to match ones that look similar to the input image when compressed to the same size.

Scroll down for video

An artificial intelligence-powered tool that transforms pixelated images into clear photos has been accused of racial bias. It transformed a pixelated image of Barack Obama (left) into a white man (right)

The Duke team used a machine learning tool with two neural networks  one develops the AI-create human faces that mimics the ones it was trained on and the other takes this output and decides if it is convincing enough to be mistaken for the real thing.

Duke University boasted that its system is capable of converting a 16x16-pixel image to 1024 x 1024 pixels in a few seconds, which is 64 times the resolution.

A developer, who goes by the name Bomze on Twitter, used the system to develop Face Depixelizer and shared it on the social media site over the weekend.

'Given a low-resolution input image, model generates high-resolution images that are perceptually realistic and downscale correctly,' reads the post.

A developer, who goes by the name Bomze on Twitter, used the system to develop Face Depixelizer and shared it on the social media site over the weekend. 'Given a low-resolution input image, model generates high-resolution images that are perceptually realistic and downscale correctly,' reads the post

A day later users spotted that the tool was not accurate when it came to processing Black faces.

One users ran a pixelated image of Obama, producing a clear image of a white man.

And another users ran the same image several times, showing the same results.

Robert Osazuwa Ness, a machine learning blogger, conducted a test with his own face along with images of Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and actress Lucy Liu.

And the results produced faces that look white.

Business Insider noted that the failure may be due to the dataset used to train the AI.

If there is a lack of diversity in the images fed to the machine learning algorithm, it will not be able to perform properly.

Robert Osazuwa Ness, a machine learning blogger, conducted a test with his own face along with images of Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and actress Lucy Liu. And the results produced faces that look white

However, this concept is nothing new, as MIT researchers released a report in 2018 that reveals the way artificial intelligence system collect data often makes them racist and sexist.

Lead author Irene Chen, a PhD student who wrote the paper with MIT professor David Sontag and postdoctoral associate Fredrik D. Johansson, said: 'Computer scientists are often quick to say that the way to make these systems less biased is to simply design better algorithms.'

'But algorithms are only as good as the data they're using, and our research shows that you can often make a bigger difference with better data.'

In one example, the team looked at an income-prediction system and found that it was twice as likely to misclassify female employees as low-income and male employees as high-income.

They found that if they had increased the dataset by a factor of 10, those mistakes would happen 40 percent less often.

In another dataset, the researchers found that a system's ability to predict intensive care unit (ICU) mortality was less accurate for Asian patients.

However, the researchers warned existing approaches for reducing discrimination would make the non-Asian predictions less accurate

Chen says that one of the biggest misconceptions is that more data is always better.

Instead, researchers should get more data from those under-represented groups.

'We view this as a toolbox for helping machine learning engineers figure out what questions to ask of their data in order to diagnose why their systems may be making unfair predictions,' says Sontag.
Top European Union officials are holding talks Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang at a time of rising tensions between two major trading partners over the fallout from the coronavirus crisis and Beijings increasing control over Hong Kong.

European Council President Charles Michel, EU commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the blocs foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, will hold two video conferences separately, first with the premier and later with Xi.

The meetings are not expected to produce concrete results  no joint statement will be issued  but the Europeans hope it will boost slow-moving talks on an investment agreement and build some common ground for tackling thorny political issues at a face-to-face meeting, hopefully late in the year.

The EU sees China as a systemic rival that offers great opportunities but also presents many challenges.

The coronavirus pandemic has created new obstacles, notably what Brussels sees as a China-orchestrated campaign of disinformation about the pandemic that could put lives at risk.

The meetings come at a time when China stands accused of trying to influence European officials and Borrell has twice denied in recent months that the External Action Service  a kind of EU foreign office that he leads  has bowed to Beijings pressure to alter documents.

While the 27-nation EU is Chinas biggest trading partner, it is often divided in its approach to Beijing. Yet the new security law for Hong Kong has galvanized the bloc. EU member countries insist the law will undermine the territorys autonomy, which was guaranteed in the one-country, two-systems framework.

Mondays meetings were originally meant to be a summit on March 30, but the coronavirus pandemic pushed it off the agenda, along with another high-level event that was due to take place in September in the German city of Leipzig.

The Europeans will hold a news conference later Monday but no Chinese officials are scheduled to take part.
Credible compiled a list of 20 U.S. metro areas where homes are selling the fastest, using data from Zillow and ranking homes according to the average number of days they were listed before there was a pending sale in December 2020, the most recent month in which data was available for all metros.
A man walks through the gate of the Lemon Tree Hotel in Ahmedabad on Nov. 21, 2009. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistan origin arrested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for his role in a terror plot to carry out attacks in India, had stayed at this hotel in Ahmedabad along with a woman, according to local television reports. (Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images)
Delhi on Monday emerged as the second worst-hit state by COVID-19 caseload in addition to death count though Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the situation in the national capital was getting stabilised gradually while Goa reported its first fatality from the disease.

Photograph: Sahil Salvi/ Rediff.com IMAGE: IMAGE: A cop looks at a mural honouring the warriors of COVID-19 in Mumbai.

As the death toll in the country from coronavirus jumped by a record 445 to 13,699, the Centre maintained that the number of infections per lakh population was among the lowest in the world.

The new cases surged by over 10,000 for the 11th day in a row and rose by 14,821 to take the total to 4,25,282, according to health ministry data.

An 85-year-old man succumbed to coronavirus in Goa on Monday, making it the first death due to the disease in the state, said Health Minister Vishwajit Rane. Goa has reported 818 infections out of which 683 are active cases. The first three cases were reported in a single day on March 25.

In its update, the ministry said the total number of recoveries stood at 2,37,195 to clock a recovery rate of 55.77 per cent.

Presently, there are 1,74,387 active cases and all are under medical supervision, it said.

'The difference between the recovered patients and the active COVID-19 cases continues to widen. The number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 62,808,' it added.

IMAGE: New beds set put inside the Shehnai Banquet Hall opposite LNJP Hospital, temporarily converted into isolation wards for COVID-19 patients, at JL Nehru Marg in New Delhi. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

Delhi recorded 2,909 new cases taking the tally to 62,655, authorities said, adding the death toll stood at 2,233 with 58 more fatalities being registered in the last 24 hours.

The national capital has now surpassed Tamil Nadu to become the second worst affected state in terms of number of cases too after Maharashtra. Even by death count in the states Delhi is already in the second spot.

According to the central data, the tally for Tamil Nadu stood at 62,087, the third-highest in the country while the number of fatalities was 794. Maharashtra is the worst-hit state with a total of 1,35,796 cases and 6,283 deaths.

Mumbai has recorded 67,635 cases and Delhi may cross the figure in the next few days.

The death toll in the country's commercial capital was 3,735 with 20 more fatalities being reported.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal told an online media briefing that in the last one week, there was a rise of only 1,000 active coronavirus cases, which indicates that the COVID-19 situation is slowly getting stabilised in the city.

From June 15 to 21, Delhi reported 18,564 coronavirus cases. However, 16,790 people also recovered in the said period.

Kejriwal also said his government will give pulse oximeters to the COVID-19 patients under home isolation and said the number of tests has increased by three times. The oximeters are to be returned after the patient's recovery.

Pulse oximetry is a noninvasive method for monitoring a person's oxygen saturation which is an essential element in the management and understanding of patient care.

The chief minister said till now, Delhi did not require beds for COVID-19 patients on a large scale as most of them recovered from the disease, adding the number of serious patients is also less.

The Union Health Ministry said India's COVID-19 cases per lakh people is one of the lowest in the world despite its high population density, and the recovery rate has now reached almost 56 per cent.

IMAGE: A medic takes a sample of a boy for COVID-19 test via rapid antigen at a overnment school in New Delhi. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

For every one lakh population, there are 30.04 coronavirus cases in India, while the global average is over three times at 114.67, the ministry said, referring to the WHO Situation Report 153, dated June 21.

'This low figure is thus a testimony to the graded, pre-emptive and pro-active approach the Government of India along with the states and UTs took for prevention, containment and management of COVID-19,' the ministry said in a statement.

Citing the World Health Organisation Situation Report, it said the United States has 671.24 cases per lakh population, while Germany, Spain, Brazil and the United Kingdom have 583.88, 526.22, 489.42 and 448.86 cases per lakh population, respectively.

It said Russia has 400.82 cases per lakh people, while Italy, Canada, Iran and Turkey have 393.52, 268.98, 242.82 and 223.53, respectively.

Kerala reported its highest ever single day spike of 138 COVID-19 cases taking the total number to 3,308.

This is the fourth straight day of over 100 infections being reported, after 118 on June 19, 127 on June 20 and 133 on Sunday.

With increasing number of cases, the government also declared four more regions in the state as hot spots, taking the total number to 112.

The country's first COVID-19 case was recorded in Kerala on January 30.

Concerned over increase in COVID-19 cases in Bengaluru, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa directed officials to implement lockdown measures strictly in the clusters which have reported more number of infections.

Till Sunday evening, the state capital reported 1,272 cases of COVID-19, including 64 deaths and 411 discharges. On Sunday, as many as 196 fresh cases were recorded.

In Gujarat, nearly 300 workers of diamond units in Surat city have tested positive for coronavirus in the last 10 days, following which fresh restrictions have been imposed on the industry's operations, an official said.

IMAGE: Suspected COVID-19 patients arrive at LNJP hospital in New Delhi. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

As part of the new curbs, three main diamond trading markets will remain shut twice a week, while canteens of all the diamond polishing units will remain closed on all days to contain the spread of coronavirus, said Surat Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani.

Uttar Pradesh, meanwhile, has become the first state to use the Railways' coronavirus isolation wards with coaches deployed at Mau station receiving 59 suspected COVID-19 cases in two days, officials said.

They said eight people have already been discharged and 51 are housed in these non-air conditioned coaches, modified to work as COVID care centres.The admitted cases include women and children, the officials said.

UP has reported over 18,000 coronavirus cases, while the death toll was 569.

As pharmaceutical companies launch generic versions of Remdesivir and Favipiravir for COVID-19 treatment, medical experts said it was a 'positive development' in the fight against the pandemic, but cautioned against regarding the antiviral drugs as 'game changers'.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has launched the antiviral drug Favipiravir, under the brand name FabiFlu, for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 cases, while Cipla and Hetero have received approvals from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to launch Remdesivir under the brand names Cipremi and Covifor respectively.

Cipla Ltd on Sunday announced the launch of Cipremi.

Dr Sanjay Rai, Professor at the Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS Delhi, said till date no effective treatment or vaccine to combat coronavirus has been found.

"Till date we don't have evidence that a particular drug is effective, so we cannot call any drug game changer till then. With their launch, it will only be clear in the future how effective they will be. Whether they can play a supportive role in COVID-19 treatment is also not yet known," he told PTI.
Face coverings are mandatory for most on public transport in England. (Getty Images)

The coronavirus outbreak has put the UK on lockdown since 23 March, however, falling fatalities mean restrictions are gradually relaxing.

Groups of no more than six people from different households are permitted to mingle outside, with Britons also allowed to take unlimited outdoor exercise.

Some primary school children are back in the classroom, months after the final bell rang on 20 March.

Boris Johnson is also expected to announce on 23 June whether pubs and restaurants can reopen on 4 July, albeit with social distancing in place.

While all positive progress, many cannot help but be concerned this relaxation will inevitably lead to a dreaded second wave of infections.

Early research suggests the coronavirus is mild in four out of five cases, however, it can trigger a respiratory disease called COVID-19.

People embrace at Barcelona el Prat airport. (Getty Images)

What is a second wave?

Coronavirus deaths are thought to have peaked in England on 8 April, when around 800 people died with the infection in hospital.

While fatalities have been declining ever since, infection numbers may creep back up down the line.

An infectious wave has no set definition.

It is broadly considered a rise in cases, followed by a decline, which may occur several times over until an effective vaccine is rolled out.

The start of a second wave is usually said to take place after an initial outbreak has been brought under control, rather than the two bleeding into each other.

New Zealand is not thought to be in a second wave after a handful of cases emerged following 24 days of no new infections.

Beijing is also not said to be in a second wave after patients tested positive following 50 virus-free days.

The outbreak in Beijing serves as a reminder that, despite the UK having passed through the first wave of COVID-19, we still remain in the early stages of the pandemic, said Dr Tom Wingfield from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

Professor Keith Neal from the University of Nottingham said, however, Beijings cluster was, not a second wave but a localised outbreak.

Story continues

It does depend on how you define a second wave though, he added.

What is the risk of a second wave in the UK?

The UKs coronavirus alert level was reduced from four out of five to three on 19 June.

We are likely to be entering a new phase of this outbreak, said Professor Matt Keeling from the University of Warwick.

Nationally and regionally cases will continue to decline, but locally there will be isolated clusters of cases that need to be contained.

A level three alert means the coronavirus is circulating, but is low enough to allow the gradual easing of restrictions.

The move to level three is not a time for complacency, there is still the prospect of a second wave if controls are relaxed too quickly and the reproductive number (R) rises above one, said Professor Keeling.

The R is the number of people a patient statistically goes on to infect. If more than one, an outbreak grows; if one, the outbreak plateaus; and if less than one, the outbreak dies out.

Only around 5% of Britons are thought to have caught the coronavirus in its first and ongoing wave, which is insufficient for herd immunity.

It is also unclear how long immunity lasts, however, it is expected to be at least for the short or intermediate term.

A second wave could be triggered if lockdown is lifted too quickly, something government officials have repeatedly stressed they are not prepared to risk.

While closing pubs, shutting borders and cutting off social contact undoubtedly brings cases down, the impact it has had on the economy and peoples mental health cannot be underestimated.

Nevertheless, Dr Mike Tildseley from the University of Warwick told the BBC if measures are lifted too quickly, a second wave could occur as soon as August.

Officials are aiming to balance a return to normality with continuing to ward off infections.

This may be achievable by enforcing social distancing once the hospitality sector gets going, as well as the move to make face coverings mandatory on public transport in England.

Providing new cases are identified and isolated quickly, localised outbreaks need not lead to a second wave.

A teacher gives a lesson while wearing a mask in Strasbourg, France. (Getty Images)

Would a second wave be better or worse than the first?

As the northern hemisphere edges towards winter, the situation could become more severe if the NHS has to contend with both the coronavirus and seasonal flu.

Although unclear, flu is thought to peak in the colder months because people huddle together indoors. There is also evidence the norovirus (winter vomiting bug) is broken down more readily by UV light.

Professor Jonathan Ball from the University of Nottingham told the BBC a second wave is almost inevitable, particularly as we go towards the winter months.

The challenge for government is to ensure the peak isnt so much that it overburdens the healthcare system, he added.

It has also been suggested the ever-evolving coronavirus may mutate to become less dangerous.

Pathogens that do not generally leave patients bedridden are considered more successful. This is because most feel well enough to go out and about, unwittingly spreading the infection.

There is no guarantee milder mutations will occur, with such genetic changes generally accumulating over a longer period than the six months the coronavirus is thought to have been around.

The pathogen is also highly infectious, with a suspected natural R number of three. This means every patient is statistically expected to pass the infection to three others, assuming no preventative measures are in place.

This high transmissibility means there is no incentive for the coronavirus to mutate to become milder.

Other factors do, however, point to a second wave being less severe.

Lessons have been learnt from the unprecedented outbreak, which was only identified at the end of 2019.

The importance of social distancing and regular hand washing has been drummed into many.

The NHS test, trace and isolate system is also up and running to help spot patients early.

The system depends on widespread public support, said Professor James Naismith from the Rosalind Franklin Institute.

A robust system is one, and only one, component required to avoid a second wave.

Coronavirus: what happened today

Read more about COVID-19

How to get a coronavirus test if you have symptoms

How easing of lockdown rules affects you

In pictures: How UK school classrooms could look in new normal

How public transport could look after lockdown

How our public spaces will change in the future

Help and advice

Read the full list of official FAQs here

10 tips from the NHS to help deal with anxiety

What to do if you think you have symptoms

How to get help if you've been furloughed
Gilead Sciences is launching human trials for an inhaled form of its antiviral drug, remdesivir, to treat coronavirus patients, the company announced Monday.

Remdesivir is currently given intravenously, meaning patients have to be treated in the hospital.

But both Gilead's own research and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study suggest that giving the drug earlier, before patients are severely ill, could further improve survival odds and recovery times.

In addition to its work to test a form of the drug that could be given via a nebulizer, Gilead promised to make more than two million courses of its FDA-authorized drug by year-end.

Gilead Sciences is planning to make more than two million courses of its potential COVID-19 drug remdesivir by the end of the year and start trials of an easier-to-use inhaled version in August, the company said on Monday.

Gilead will start human trials of an inhalable version of its IV antiviral drug remdesivir in healthy volunteers in August. An inhaled form could treat COVID-19 patients at home

Remdesivir was the first drug to show effectiveness against COVID-19 in human trials, and its emergency use has been permitted by several countries including the United States.

WHAT IS REMDESIVIR AND DOES IT WORK AGAINST CORONAVIRUS? Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug first made to try and treat Ebola, has been used experimentally on COVID-19 patients since the outbreak's early days. The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the drug on May 1, in response to the preliminary results of a notable study that was released at the end of April. According to Hackensack Meridian Health, initially only severely ill hospitalized COVID-19 patients were eligible to be treated with remdesivir, otherwise known as Veklury. On August 28, the FDA extended its authorization to all hospitalized adult and pediatric patients with suspected or laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, irrespective of their severity of disease. 'The FDA continues to make safe and potentially helpful treatments for COVID-19 available as quickly as possible in order to help patients. The data to support todays action are encouraging. The data show that this treatment has the potential to help even more hospitalized patients who are suffering from the effects of this devastating virus,' said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D. 'We are working with drug developers to conduct randomized clinical trials to further study the safety and effectiveness of a number of potential therapies for COVID-19.' However in August, a report from the drug's California-based maker, Gilead Sciences Inc found that the effects of the medication may only be seen in those with severe infections. There are claims of miraculous recovery, improved survival odds and shorter illness, but other studies have found it makes no difference to patients in hospital with Covid-19. Remdesivir produced encouraging results earlier this year when it showed promise for both preventing and treating MERS - another coronavirus - in macaque monkeys. The drug appears to help stop the replication of viruses like coronavirus and Ebola alike. It's not entirely clear how the drug accomplishes this feat, but it seems to stop the genetic material of the virus, RNA, from being able to copy itself. That, in turn, stops the virus from being able to proliferate further inside the patient's body. Advertisement

Gilead has set up licensing agreements with nine generic drugmakers to ramp up supply of remdesivir, Chief Executive Officer Daniel O'Day said in a statement.

It comes after the discovery that the US government's supply of remdesivir, donated earlier this year by Gilead, is on track to run out by next month.

Although states like New York that were hit hard and early by coronavirus have managed to get their crises somewhat under control, spikes of the infection are already being seen across nearly half of all US states, especially those in the South.

And as fall approaches, experts worry that the cold weather and confluence with seasonal flu could mean a major uptick in cases to come.

Six months after coronavirus arrived in the US, there is not yet a vaccine to prevent the infection and only remdesivir and convalescent plasma have emergency use authorization from the FDA to treat COVID-19.

Gilead donated aout 607,000 doses of remdesivir to the US government after NIH tests showed the drug improved survival odds by about 13 percent.

But with nearly 1,000 people still hospitalized for COVID-19 as of last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - a figure that is likely an undercount - the supply of the antiviral has dwindled quickly.

In the earliest days of the coronavirus epidemic in the US, the chief cause for concern was that hospital systems would be overrun with coronavirus patients, running out of ventilators and leading to an even worse death toll than has been seen.

That crisis was averted, but health officials would still like to see fewer hospital beds monopolized by coronavirus patients.

An inhalable form of remdesivir could help ease the burden on hospitals going forward, as it would be delivered through a device called a nebulizer, commonly used to treat people with asthma.

Unfortunately, certain ingredients in the drug make it too dangerous to give in pill form, as it could cause dangerous liver and kidney damage if injested.

This week, Gilead will begin screening healthy volunteers for the first phase of human trials to see if an inhaled formula of remdesivir is safe. Gilead did not specify how many volunteers it will recruit.

If all goes well, the company plans to begin trials treating COVID-19 patients by August.

Last week, Gilead also announced that it is launching trials to treat children with remdesivir, as well as adult trials combining the antiviral with other drugs.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said over a million beneficiaries have already received the second wave of the government's social amelioration program (SAP).

Speaking to CNN Philippines on Monday, DSWD Spokesperson Irene Dumlao said the beneficiaries are from identified enhanced community quarantine areas.

These areas are in the National Capital Region, Region III (Central Luzon) except for Aurora province, Region IV-A (Calabarzon), Benguet province, Iloilo province, Pangasinan province, Cebu province, Bacolod City, Davao City, Zamboanga City, and Albay province.

"Mayroon na po tayong beneficiaries na nakatanggap na po ng second tranche ng emergency subsidy," Dumlao said. "Nauna po tayong nagpahatid ng ayuda sa mga 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program) beneficiaries na cash card holders sa mga identified ECQ areas... Ito po'y alinsunod sa ipinalabas na Executive Order 112 at memorandum po ni Executive Secretary (Salvador Medialdea) noon pong May 2."

[Translation: There are beneficiaries who have received the second tranche of the emergency subsidy. We have initially sent aid to the 4Ps beneficiaries who have cash cards and live in the identified ECQ areas... This is in accordance to Executive Order 112 and the memorandum of the Executive Secretary last May 2.]

Dumlao also said the DSWD has started distributing aid to waitlisted or additional beneficiaries in Kabayan, Benguet; Baguio City and Balaoan, La Union.

READ: DSWD to give cash aid to 'waitlisted' beneficiaries starting this week

Dumlao, however, said that beneficiaries should have pre-registered using the ReliefAgad app and chosen an option on how they would receive the cash aid.

"Para matiyak natin at malaman kung paano nila ito tatanggapin," she said.

[Translation: So we can be sure and know how they will be receiving this.]

The deadline for aid distribution was initially set for June 23, but was moved to June 25.

Dumlao said DSWD officials are discussing what could be done in case the deadline is not met.

"We would like to assure the public na pinagsisikapan po ng DSWD na maipahatid itong second tranche ng aid sa lalong pinakamaayos at lalong pinakamabilis na pamamaraan," she said.

[Translation: We would like to assure the public that the DSWD is working to deliver the second tranche of aid in the most efficient and quickest way.]
Bengaluru, June 22 : Alarmed by the surging Covid-19 cases in this tech city, the Karnataka government enforced the lockdown again in the virus-hit clusters to reduce their caseload, an official said on Monday.

"As many people are not wearing face masks or maintaining social distance, lockdown has been reimposed in Covid clusters to check the rising cases," Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner Anil Kumar told reporters after a review meeting with Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa here.

With 196 patients testing positive across the city, the number of Covid-infected shot up to 1,292 on Sunday.

"As the cases have been increasing in the city at an alarming rate in the recent days, Yediyurappa directed the civic authority to strictly enforce the lockdown," said Kumar.

Of the earlier 286 containment zones across the city, 238 are active. A total of 40 returned to normal and 8 extended.

The lockdown has been reimposed in KR Market, Kalasipalya, Siddapura and VV Puram clusters where the virus cases had been rising.

"The adjoining areas of the clusters has also been sealed to check the virus spread," said Kumar.

The city continues to have the highest number of active cases in the southern state at 796, with 411 patients discharged so far.

The state government also decided to take stringent action against violators of quarantine.

"Covid-19 should be contained without affecting economic activities in the city, which were resumed on June 8," the Chief Minister told the officials at the meeting.

"Rates will soon be fixed for the treatment of Covid patients in private hospitals. Fever clinics will be set up in all the 198 civic wards in the city," said Kumar.

Yediyurappa also directed the civic body to maintain hygiene and provide basic amenities to those quarantined in welfare hostels and state-run institutions.

"The Covid war room will have real-time information on availability of beds in all the designated hospitals in the city and facilitate the infected to avail treatment without delay," added Kumar.

Booth-level officers and volunteers have been directed to trace contacts and monitor the quarantined patients.

Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayana, Revenue Minister R. Ashoka, Home Minister Basavaraja Bommai, Chief Secretary T.M. Vijaya Bhaskar, Development Commissioner Vandita Sharma, Additional Chief Secretary for health Jawaid Akhthar also attended the emergent meeting at the state Secretariat in the city centre.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser marches with demonstrators in her city earlier this month. (Evelyn Hockstein / Getty Images)

When President Trump on Saturday used his first political rally in months to attack Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser as an incompetent radical, she was ready to slap back.

Bowser quipped that it seemed she was Trump's new obsession  "living in his head, and apparently theres a lot of empty room in there ... just like tonights half-empty Tulsa arena."

The mayor's reference to the underwhelming turnout at Trump's Oklahoma rally was the latest acrimonious exchange with the president. Until recently a successful but unspectacular mayor who was little-known outside the Beltway, Bowser has soared to national attention with a new activism and willingness to challenge Trump amid the global outrage over the police killing of George Floyd a month ago in Minneapolis.

Trump may be the world champion of insult-hurling, but for Bowser, this is new territory. Her ongoing fight with the president has made her a hot commodity on television news, late-night comedy and a CNN town hall.

In an interview, Bowser insisted she was simply doing what she always had: fighting for her city.

"It's always the right moment to stand up," she said.

She acknowledged, however, that the stakes of the struggle grew higher amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump's unprecedented crackdown on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, including the use of chemical agents, helicopters and mounted police.

Bowser won widespread acclaim when she challenged Trump's attempts to use active-duty military troops against American demonstrators on the streets of the nation's capital.

Days after the June 1 confrontation, Bowser defiantly renamed as "Black Lives Matter Plaza" the two blocks of 16th Street that end at Lafayette Square and the front door of the White House. She even had city workers paint giant neon-yellow letters along the street that spell out "Black Lives Matter."

We have to speak up loudly for more justice and more peace! she declared in an appearance at a massive demonstration on June 6 near the White House. "I've been shocked about how the federal government behaved against American citizens."

Story continues

As a foil for Trump, Bowser, 47, checks all the boxes. Black. Female. Leader of a city that has a history of mismanagement, poverty and civil rights struggles. She's also the single mother of an adopted 2-year-old daughter.

She may not see herself in a new light, but colleagues do. They say her metamorphosis from mild-mannered technocrat to something of an action hero is quite the departure for Bowser and her otherwise carefully planned political trajectory.

"This was a sea change for her," said Elissa Silverman, a member of the district's governing council and frequent critic of Bowser over taxes, spending and even police reform. On this issue, however, "I was right behind her."

Bowser by all accounts has been a cautious, middle-of-the-road politician. She started as a D.C. council member for eight years from Ward 4, the heart of Washington's Black elite political establishment. Since being elected mayor in 2015, Bowser has acted deliberately, earning credit for improving schools and forging a reputation as friendly to business and developers.

Most controversially, Bowser earlier this year endorsed former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg in his short, ill-fated campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. She called him a "problem-solver with a proven track record of getting things done."

It was a critical endorsement for Bloomberg, whose "stop and frisk" policy as mayor left much of the Black community distrustful of the billionaire.

Balancing her political instincts as a pragmatist with the progressive tide sweeping her city will prove difficult. Even as her national profile grows, some in the Black Lives Matter movement back home remain skeptical, calling the painting of their logo on 16th Street an empty gesture.

"We will not be hushed into falling for these performative actions," the group said in a statement.

At an unusually contentious City Council meeting last week, which drew hundreds of people rather than the usual handful, residents demanded more forceful action to reform the police, including defunding the agency. More than 16,000 citizens' statements were submitted to the council.

Instead, Bowser is proposing at a $20-million increase for police, about 3%.

Im tired of coming up here and testifying to y'all," resident Jessica Shotwell testified. "We don't want any more cops, and they don't need more money."

Wes Gobar, a community organizer, testified: "You paint 'Black Lives Matter,' but your budget shows us Black lives don't matter."

Earlier this month, several hundred people protested outside Bowser's home, venting their frustration with what they said was inaction and neglect by the mayor. About a dozen police formed a line in front of the house. The demonstration remained peaceful.

A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union found severe racial disparities in D.C. policing, where the percentage of Black men stopped by police was nearly twice the percentage of the city's Black population. Bowser only made the data available after Black Lives Matter sued her.

Bowser argues that, since a Department of Justice decree 18 years ago, the city's Police Department has made important reforms, such as the use of body cameras and training that includes deescalation techniques and education in the history of racial discrimination.

Pressed repeatedly at a news conference last week, Bowser launched into a discussion of budgeting and administrative process that left few critics satisfied.

"I submit a budget. The council can change it," she said. "Im not doing a do-over of our budget. Thats not how it works. ... We have submitted a budget we need for public safety in the district. Part of that is policing."

In the interview with the Los Angeles Times on Friday, Bowser stood her ground.

"We are constantly focused on making sure that we are reforming our Police Department to be fair and just and to hold officers accountable," Bowser said. "We take it very seriously every year in how we invest in police and community relations."

On 16th Street, some critics have used pastel chalk to deliver a counter-message: Mayor Bowser endorsed Mike 'Stop-N-Frisk' Bloomberg and DC cops still Stop-N-Frisk. Others painted "DEFUND THE POLICE."

"She says, 'I'm here for you,' and then she supports bills that support the police," said Tiffany Schatz, a 27-year-old emergency medic, as she joined the demonstrations June 13. "Do you really have our back? Do you really care? You can't straddle the fence anymore."

Protester Sarah Pillar, 21 and a student, said she feared Bowser was too beholden to developers and the business community. "Renaming the plaza is great, but it has to be followed up with policy."

Bowser's moderate, pro-business approach reflects a dramatic change in the city she represents. Once so badly managed that federal authorities took over in 1995, the nation's capital today is relatively prosperous. Investment is thriving, and real estate prices have exploded. At the same time, there has been a seismic demographic shift and gentrification, reducing the Black population from around three-quarters in the 1980s to 46% today.

The history explains Bowser's caution. The last thing she and other D.C. officials want is cause for the feds to take over the city again. She was careful to avoid most antagonistic confrontations with Trump during his first three years in power.

After she told Trump that he must remove security forces from Washington streets, he tweeted that Bowser was "incompetent" and "always looking for a handout." In fact, the district has ample reserve funds that only now it is dipping into to get through the economic crisis generated by the coronavirus outbreak.

Bowser's newfound fame may prove particularly helpful for one of D.C.'s biggest priorities: the decades-old quest for statehood. This is a town where license plates complain: taxation without representation. Somewhere between a city and a state, the nation's capital, home to 700,000 people, has a special status, with considerable control still in the hands of Congress and only a nonvoting representative in the House.

This week, the House is expected, for the first time, to vote in favor of granting D.C. statehood.

"It's huge, a huge thing," Bowser said, though she acknowledged that the measure would die if it came up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump and others have said they oppose D.C. statehood precisely because it will add more Democrats to Congress.

"Is that fair?" she said. Washington "is the only capital in the world that pays taxes and has no representation" in the legislative body. "It has to change."

Bowser is clear-eyed about the challenge, convinced that the recent turmoil in her city will inform Americans about its needs.

"We have seen how important statehood is, and now the entire country has seen it," she said. "We have incredible momentum. I'm feeling very energized."
The Sri Lankan police have ordered a probe into an alleged statement by former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) deputy leader Karuna Amman, claiming that he had murdered over 2,000 security forces on behalf of the Tamil separatist group, the government said on Monday.

The acting police chief Chandana Wickremaratne has directed the Crime Investigation Department to launch an immediate probe into Amman's statement, according to a press statement issued by the Ministry of Defence.

Speaking at a political rally last week for the upcoming parliamentary elections in the country, Amman alias Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan reportedly said that he had murdered over 2,000 government troops during the LTTE's separatist war which lasted for over 3 decades.

When I was a member of the LTTE, I killed some 2,000 to 3,000 Sri Lankan Army personnel in one night at Elephant Pass. I have killed more in Kilinochchi. That is certainly higher than the number of lives the coronavirus has claimed in Sri Lanka, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

The twice-postponed parliamentary elections in the country will be held on August 5.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on March 2 dissolved the Parliament, six months ahead of schedule, and called for snap polls on April 25. However, the election commission in mid-April postponed the elections by nearly two months to June 20 due to the coronavirus outbreak in the island nation.

Amman was the deputy to the LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran.

In 2004, he walked out of the LTTE with his eastern province cadres and later formed his own political party.

Amman's leaving the LTTE with his cadres severely weakened the LTTE, leading to its ultimate defeat at the hands of government troops in 2009.

He later joined former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's political party and entered parliament in 2010 and became a deputy minister.

He is contesting from Akila Ilankai Dravuda Maha Sabha party from the eastern district of Digamadulla.

His party is thought to be an ally of the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka People's Party (SLPP).

Embarrassed by Amman's claim during the campaigning, the SLPP officially denied that he was an ally. PTI CORR RS AKJ RS
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Berlin, Germany  Mon, June 22, 2020 09:20 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066093f05 2 World Germany,police,clash,coronavirus,coronavirus-effect,COVID-19,COVID-19-quarantine,coronavirus-restrictions,pandemic Free

Several police officers were hurt in clashes with residents of a high-rise apartment block in the German city of Goettingen who had been placed under quarantine over a coronavirus outbreak, authorities said on Sunday.

The violence erupted on Saturday as a group of residents sought to break through a metal barrier installed to keep the 700 people living in the residential complex in to prevent possible transmission of the virus.

Some flung stones, bottles and wooden slats at officers, the city's police chief Uwe Luehrig told journalists on Sunday.

Residents in the complex were put under quarantine on Thursday after two of them were found to be infected with COVID-19.

By Friday, 120 people in the building tested positive.

Goettingen is one of several outbreak clusters that have emerged in Germany since lockdown restrictions were lifted in May, including a huge cluster at a slaughterhouse in the North-Rhine Westphalia district of Guetersloh.

More than 1,300 workers out of a total of nearly 7,000 have tested positive, and the region's state premier Armin Laschet said Sunday that he "cannot rule out a blanket lockdown".

Several outbreaks at slaughterhouses, not just in Germany but also in France, have put a spotlight on the working and housing conditions that the workers -- many of whom come from Romania or Bulgaria -- are put under.

The German government in May banned the use of subcontractors in the meat industry in a bid to curb the controversial practice of companies using middlemen to supply workers from abroad who are more vulnerable to abuses.

Although Germany has weathered the coronavirus storm better than many of its European neighbors, the slaughterhouse outbreaks have dealt a blow to its efforts to restart Europe's top economy.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:38:27|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TEHRAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced Monday that it plans to set up a permanent base in the Indian Ocean in order to expand its presence in the international waters, Press TV reported.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tasked the IRGC with permanent presence in waters far away from the country, IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri was quoted as saying.

Accordingly, the IRGC is planning to create a permanent base in the Indian Ocean by the end of March 2021, Tangsiri said.

The IRGC commander said that "pirates and some foreign vessels had, in the past, created disturbances for the Iranian trawlers and dhows in the country's southern waters."

"Through its powerful presence in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean, the IRGC will no longer leave any room for such acts of infringement," he noted. Enditem
CHATHAM  A group of protesters staged in front of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles Select in Chatham on Monday after an incident last week involving claims an office manager told a Black man from Danville that Im sick of your kind.

Sylvia Rigney, the office manager of the DMV Select who lost her job as a result of the incident, told the Register & Bee the allegations of her making a racist comment are untrue.

I have lost my livelihood over a lie," Rigney said in a written statement to the Register & Bee. "The story that has been told has one grain of truth and the rest is fiction.

On June 16, Antwoin Thomas had pulled around the back of the building and parked in an employee spot because there were no open spots for him up front, Thomas and Rigney said. While he was talking with someone behind the building, Rigney pulled in, returning from her lunch break. She honked her horn in an effort to ask him to move his car. Rigney said he was very dismissive.

After a minute, Rigney honked her horn and said just move your [expletive] car up dude, so I can get in, Thomas said. Thomas said she almost hit his car as she was trying to get in; Rigney said Thomas appeared to try to hit her car several times.

As a result of the commotion, Allan Easely, owner of an insurance agency that shares a building with the DVM Select and also the DMV Select manager, came outside. Rigney said she explained to him what she said and was happening, and then apologized to Thomas.

Thomas said Easely apologized for Rigney after making sure she went inside.

You didnt say it, you didnt hear it, you cant apologize for it, Thomas said.

As she was re-entering the building, Rigney said she said something to the effect of I am so tired of all these people, referencing all the customers she has had to deal with since the DMV Select reopened a little over a month ago. The Chatham DMV Select was closed for multiple months due to COVID-19 and the Danville DMV remains closed.

This remark had nothing to do with the color of this mans skin. It wasnt even just about this man. It was an accumulation of all of the stress and frustration that I had been under for the past five weeks," she said.

Often working 12-hour days where she is constantly working with the public, Rigney said she has dealt with all sorts of difficult customers, some of whom would threaten and berate each other while standing in the line outside, while others would curse her out.

I, personally, have had to clean up human waste from the lobby floor, overflowing toilets full of blood and human waste... I, personally, have been screamed at, cussed at, and treated very badly during this time on a daily basis for approximately 5 weeks, she wrote in her statement.

A few minutes after she went inside, deputies from the Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office showed up, Thomas said. He said Rigney called "the cops."

While the protesters, including Thomas, were still outside on Monday, Easely came out and informed Thomas that the woman he had the conformation with is no longer with this DMV agency. He would not tell Thomas or the Register & Bee that she had been fired.

I wouldnt have had it happen... but weve done the best we can from a personnel situation to take care of it, he told Thomas.

DMV Selects are owned by private citizens but contract with the DMV to provide certain services. Jessica Cowardin, a spokeswoman for the Virginia DMV, told the Register & Bee that employees of a DMV Select are not classified as state employees, but as employees of the owner and operator.

Mr. Easley made DMV aware of the incident on Wednesday, June 17. Since then, he indicated that he has taken appropriate personnel action as a result, she wrote in an email to the Register & Bee.

Rigney said she was let go on Friday.

Kell Stone, pastor of Gospel Tabernacle Outreach Center in Gretna, led a march in Gretna on Friday and in Chatham on Saturday to draw attention to social injustices. He also was at the protest at the DMV on Monday.

All men are created equal, but everybody sure aint treated equal, he said.

At the most, roughly 15 protesters stood outside the Chatham DMV, most of them holding signs that read This DMV Select stated they dont like working with my kind.

Vernella Dickerson, one of the protesters, told the Register & Bee she is tired of seeing leaders propose plans and not implement them or just say they have a plan without saying what it is.

Were protesting for policy change across the board, Dickerson said.

Teenagers Quamez Stone and Christian Palmer were outside of the DMV Select office late Monday morning.

We need all people to be treated equal, Stone said.

Im here to help spread the word, Palmer said, noting that he feels like hes making a difference by protesting.

Stone said the group will continue to hold protests and marches throughout Pittsylvania County in coming days. He said he doesnt want to harm anyone, but wants to confront wrong.

In her statement, Rigney apologized for snapping at Thomas and using profanity, but insists that her response had nothing to do with his skin color and that her firing was unjustified.

I did not deserve to lose my livelihood over the F word in the parking lot on my lunch break, she said.

Ayers reports for the Register & Bee. Reach him at (434) 791-7981.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
"First and foremost, I would like to extend an apology on behalf of the District and the Board of School Directors to the student who was involved and to his family. They did not ask for this incident to occur, nor do they deserve the negative attention that it has brought." - school board President Tina Stoll
Normally, to view some art you'd get dressed and go to a gallery. Multi-disciplinary artist Stuart Ringholt is turning this idea inside out: the art comes to you, and you're naked.

His new work Looking at a painting without clothes on in the safety of your own home is the first in Buxton Contemporarys Light Source commission, a series of six home-bound art appreciation projects.

One of Stuart Ringholt's home-viewing works for nude viewing Credit:Stuart Ringholt / Buxton Contemporary

Ringholt will post out a limited series of 500 brightly coloured block paintings to those who sign-up on Buxtons website. After assembling four flatpack pieces, participants are instructed to hang it on the wall, "remove their clothes and sit on a chair or on the floor and experience the fields of colour that constitute the painting".

The art museum has continually reduced, over the years, to a white cube; weve got rid of all the extraneous architectural fittings, Ringholt says. So why dont we continue this reduction?"
I dont usually write about individual applications, but thought Id make an exception for this one, as it may be useful to many people working from home. I'm talking about Mountain Duck 4.

How to mount remote servers on Mac

Mountain Duck comes from David Kocher, developer of Cyberduck. Years ago, when I ran an iPod DJ club, Id use Kochers Cyberduck as one of two FTP transfer tools of choice for the clubs website. (The other was Fetch).

The point is that the developers reputable and the newly upgraded Mountain Duck goes to places iCloud currently doesnt  at least, not on a Mac.

Thats why I think it will be of use to anyone who needs to work with remote servers, WebDAV servers, Dropbox, Google, OneDrive, S3 servers and more.

The application lets you access these drives via a drop-down interface it adds to your Macs menu bar  a little like iCloud Drives support for third-party storage servers, but on your Mac. This makes Mountain Duck a useful application for remote workers who require access to cloud data services, including some enterprise systems.

Its also a cross-platform solution that provides the same tools for Windows users.

Whats new in version 4?

Version 4 of the application adds a few new tools:

A file history, which offers up a detailed view of what youve done and are in the process of doing, including recently edited files.

A file lock feature that prevents others editing a document while you are editing it  useful for collaborative groups. This extends to Office.

The ability, if you happen to be working with versioned buckets in S3, to open and revert to previous versions of files, if kept.

Mountain Duck already offered Dropbox-like file synchronization in which files were synced to the local disk once opened so you can still access them offline, with changes synced as soon as you get online once again.

You can also work through your stored files and choose which ones are made available locally and which are kept online for download on request.

What other alternatives exist?

There are other applications that provide this. For example, many enterprise class services offer online storage tools, Eltima CloudMounter also lets you mount cloud-based storage services as disks on your Mac.

Apples iCloud lets you see the contents of your iCloud Drive in the Mac Finder, but so far this support hasnt been extended to third-party storage services  even though this is available to iCloud Drive users on iPhone or iPad.

Theres a grey IT challenge to the solution for some enterprises, I suppose  if you are looking for a tool that lets you sync to your enterprise storage services via your Finder you should check with your IT department first. (The convenience of a tool like this may make it something your tech crew may want to look at.)

It will be interesting to see if Apple announces similar integration with third-party online storage services on Macs at WWDC 2020. But even if it does it will be a while until it becomes a reality  look how long it took to actually deliver Shared Folders on iCloud Drive on iOS. Meanwhile, Mountain Duck may provide you with a sense of how things could be. It costs $39/user.

On to WWDC

Ill be back with reports from WWDC Online later today. You can watch Apples keynote on your Apple TV in the TV app, using the Developer app on your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac, on YouTube, and on Apples website.

Over the weekend, the Apple rumor machine moderated itself, and new hardware is not currently anticipated, with Apple TV and HomePod announcements waiting until later this year.

We do still expect news on Apples switch to A-series chips in Macs, new operating system improvements and significant changes to Safari, particularly around empowering surfers with even more privacy and security by making it even more difficult to track users with ads.

Check back later on today for first news/reactions, and watch my Twitter feed for more immediate feedback today.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Like a chef in the third month of shutdown, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was forced on Monday to work with the ingredients she had.

Pushed repeatedly to explain President Donald Trump's racist description at his rally in Tulsa on Saturday of the coronavirus that emerged last year as the "kung flu," McEnany first declared that this was simply Trump trying to link the virus to China, its place of origin. Then a nifty pivot: criticizing the media for doing the same thing, by equating the once-common descriptor "Chinese virus" with Trump's phrase. It was a breathtakingly sloppy effort to exonerate Trump but, again, you work with what you have.

What McEnany had, it seems, were talking points left over from March, when Trump was facing criticism for linking the virus to China in less offensive terms. He was doing so then, as now, for obvious reasons. Yes, China has tried to promote the false claim that the virus actually originated in the United States. But the more obvious motivation for Trump has been reminding Americans that it emerged from China so that he could deflect blame for its effects.

As those effects have grown more severe, Trump's efforts to point at China as the culprit have increased.

During his rally in Tulsa, Trump repeatedly blamed China for the virus, including at one point saying that economic gains were "happening at a level that nobody believed possible - and then China sent us the plague." At another point, he criticized protesters focused on racial injustice for not mentioning covid-19, the disease caused by the virus - a name that he lamented "gets further and further away from China as opposed to calling it the Chinese virus."

Or, apparently, calling it "kung flu."

CBS News's Weijia Jiang asked McEnany on Monday why Trump, the self-described "least racist person in the world," used racist terms like that one as he was listing nicknames for the virus.

"The president doesn't," McEnany replied. "What the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China."

A bit later, Jiang asked: "What does he have to say to Asian Americans who are deeply offended and worry that his use will lead to further attacks of discrimination?"

Asian Americans are "amazing people and the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way, shape or form," McEnany replied, adding that "they're working closely with us" - a non-Asian American group not clearly identified - "to get rid of it. We will prevail together."

Then she dropped what she clearly thought was a damning point.

"I would also point out that the media blames President Trump for using the terms 'China virus' and 'Wuhan virus' when they themselves have used these very terms," she said. "The New York Times called it the Chinese coronavirus. Reuters, the Chinese virus. CNN, the Chinese coronavirus on Jan. 20. Washington Post, Jan. 21, Chinese coronavirus. And I have more than a dozen other examples."

Again, this was a standard line from the administration in March. And, back then, we and others pointed out that it's a dubious comparison. Why? Because the media's use of "Chinese virus" almost exclusively predates Feb. 11, when the World Health Organization announced the formal name of the virus and the disease it causes. From that point on, media outlets began referring to the coronavirus and to covid-19 - a switch that Trump and his administration were less enthusiastic about making.

Even if the question were whether it was appropriate for Trump to use the term "Chinese virus," this isn't a good argument. But that wasn't even the question, as Jiang quickly pointed out.

"This is a different category, Kayleigh," she said. " 'Kung flu' is extremely offensive to many people in the Asian American community. To be clear, are you saying the White House does not believe it is racist?"

"I think the media is trying to play games with the terminology of this virus, where the focus should be on the fact that China let this out of their country," McEnany said. "The same phrase that the media roundly now condemns has been used by the media."

CNN's Kaitlan Collins addressed this claim a bit later.

"The media has never called it the 'kung flu,' " she pointed out. "Calling it a Chinese coronavirus and calling it the 'kung flu' are very different things."

McEnany replied, again willfully and lazily conflating the two expressions: "The media and your network specifically have repeatedly used the term Chinese virus and Wuhan virus and then gone on to deride the president as somehow using a term that they had themselves never used."

PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor then asked an even more pointed question. In March, Jiang first reported that someone in the White House had used the term "kung flu," prompting Alcindor to ask White House counselor Kellyanne Conway about the term.

"In March," Alcindor asked McEnany on Monday, "she said that it was highly offensive and wrong to use that term. Does the president agree with Kellyanne Conway, or is he now saying that that term is not highly offensive and wrong?"

"The president does not believe it's offensive to note that this virus came from China," McEnany replied, "and to stand up for our U.S. military, who China's making an active effort to completely defame. That is unacceptable to the president."

She then called on One American News's Chanel Rion - who, also in March, had broadcast an unsubstantiated allegation that the coronavirus emerged from a lab in North Carolina and not in China.

That alone would seem surprisingly hypocritical in any other context. Here, though, it's barely a footnote, another example of how the obsequious coverage from Rion's network has earned it favor with a White House that treats actual journalists with open disdain. But that, by now, is so familiar as to be unremarkable.

What is remarkable about McEnany's response to the questions about "kung flu" is simply this: The phrase is indefensible, so McEnany didn't seriously try to defend it.
Students wait for a coronavirus test at a makeshift clinic in Oksu Elementary School, where a student was confirmed to be infected with coronavirus in Seoul, Saturday. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



A teachers' union called on the education authorities Monday to come up with more effective measures for its members who have faced an increased workload due to the COVID-19 pandemic.



In a statement, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU) claimed the government should guarantee teachers' right to rest.



"Teachers should be safe first in order to protect students at schools. The Ministry of Education (MOE) should create a system that allows the teachers to take care of their health during this prolonged virus pandemic," KTU spokeswoman Jung Hyun-jin said. "The Ministry of Education recommends teachers rest if they have any suspicious symptoms, but teachers can't actually take a break."



The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations (KFTA) also stated that the education ministry should actively support teachers who have underlying health conditions or who are seeing their health deteriorate by allowing them to reduce class hours or work from home.



"Although the guidelines for COVID-19 were passed down to schools by the education ministry, teachers can easily be confused when a confirmed case is detected because they have never experienced such a situation before. It would be much clearer for teachers if the ministry made checklists for infection control work from existing cases," said Shin Hyun-wook, the head of the policy department of the KFTA.



Schools don't have enough staff to specifically handle virus prevention among students. What happens instead is that teachers end up handing out guidelines, checking students' temperature and making sure they keep social distancing rules in classrooms.



Kim Ji-hak, chief representative of the Korean Health Teachers Association who is also serving as a nurse-teacher at Siheung Eunhaeng Middle School in Gyeonggi Province, said the clinical data including the treatment process of COVID-19 patients should be shared with the regional educational offices and health teachers so that they can respond promptly.



Teachers complain that the lack of support comes from the fact that schools are less affected by COVID-19 than other places.



In a recent regular briefing, Vice Education Minister Park Baeg-beom said no children had contracted the virus at school. In most cases, they either found out they had been infected with the virus after going to school, or they showed symptoms at school and subsequently tested positive.



The schools' infection control measures such as enforcing the wearing of masks and changing class schedules to avoid overcrowding in schools have reportedly contributed to preventing the infections.



Kim said the MOE should dispatch professional personnel who would exclusively be in charge of infection control work at schools if the pandemic persists.


UN: Afghan Health Care Under Deliberate Attack From Warring Sides

By Ayaz Gul June 21, 2020

The United Nations has accused Taliban insurgents and Afghan government forces of deliberate attacks on the country's health care workers and facilities during the coronavirus outbreak.

The pandemic has infected nearly 29,000 Afghans, killing close to 600, although independent experts and even Afghan officials fear the actual rate is much higher, due to lack of testing availability.

In a special report released Sunday, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documents 15 incidents of violence targeting healthcare since early March, when the pandemic reached the war-torn country.

"Most of these healthcare-related incidents  eight of the targeted attacks and two of the incidents with incidental harm  were attributed to the Taliban," according to the UNAMA findings.

The report held Afghan security forces responsible for three "targeted" attacks against healthcare. It said one instance of incidental harm to healthcare occurred during clashes between government forces and Taliban insurgents.

The UNAMA condemns all deliberate attacks, threats, abductions and other intentional acts against healthcare facilities and personnel.

"Perpetrating targeted attacks on healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when health resources are already stretched and of critical importance to the civilian population, is particularly reprehensible," Fiona Frazer, UNAMA chief of human rights, said.

The report described as the "most abhorrent" a May 12 armed attack against a maternity ward run by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, in the Afghan capital, Kabul, which remains unattributed to date.

MSF said the "horrifying" assault on its facility killed 25 people, including 16 women, with five of them "minutes, or at most hours, from giving birth."

While the Taliban denied its involvement in the carnage, a lack of progress into subsequent Afghan official investigation apparently forced the French charity to close the maternity ward, fearing more attacks in future.

"At a time when an urgent humanitarian response was required to protect every life in Afghanistan, both the Taliban and Afghan national security forces carried out deliberate acts of violence that undermined healthcare operations," said Deborah Lyons, the UNAMA chief.

"There is no excuse for such actions; the safety and well-being of the civilian population must be a priority," she said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is also said to be battling a COVID-19 outbreak. An Associated Press report said that up to 20 staffers, including diplomats, contractors and locals have contracted the virus. The majority of them are Nepalese Gurkhas, who provide embassy security, it said.

"The embassy is implementing all appropriate measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19," the State Department said late Friday.

Deadly clashes continue

The U.N. report came on a day that Afghan officials reported new clashes between government forces and the Taliban in the country's north.

Local officials in Takhar and neighboring Baghlan provinces told VOA that insurgents staged coordinated predawn assaults on security outposts, killing nine Afghan security forces and injuring more than a dozen others. The Taliban also overran at least three outposts, they added.

Afghanistan's National Security Council said Sunday Taliban attacks during the past week have killed 42 civilians and injured more than 100 others across the country. There was no immediate reaction from the insurgent group.

Both the Afghan adversaries are preparing to hold a preliminary round of long-awaited peace talks in Qatar to negotiate a permanent peace and power-sharing arrangement.

The proposed intra-Afghan peace dialogue is stipulated in a landmark agreement the United States signed with the Taliban in February to end nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Home  Just In  Meteorologists forecast rainfall across Nepal for two days

Kathmandu, June 22

Meteorologists have said the monsoon waves across Nepal have got more active since Sunday, forecasting rainfall in most parts of the country for at least next two days.

The monsoon waves had entered Nepal on June 12 from the eastern side, and they have now reached the far-wester districts by Sunday, according to the Weather Forecasting Division under the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.

Meteorologist Min Kumar Aryal says the active waves have brought moderate to heavy rainfall across the country on Sunday and Monday. He adds the waves will continue to influence the weather pattern on Tuesday and Wednesday also.

The water level in Manohara of Kathmandu and Tinau in Butwal has crossed safety levels, the department says, urging the people living in adjacent areas to stay alert against the possibility of floods.
Ivory Coast said Monday it had captured a jihadist who led a deadly attack on a frontier post this month and arrested a "very large" number of his subordinates.

"The commander of the team who led the action was taken yesterday," Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko said at a military camp in Abidjan, during a speech honouring soldiers killed during the border raid.

He did not identify the individual or give any details about the capture.

"We will go further as the investigation progresses. We will know who he was in contact with, who is behind it," he said.

Bakayoko also said the authorities had carried out a "very large (number) of arrests of people directly involved" in the attack.

The military say "around 10" army personnel died and six were wounded on June 11 when dozens of jihadists mounted a pre-dawn attack at Kafolo, on the northeastern border with Burkina Faso.

Other sources put the death toll at 12, comprising 11 soldiers and a gendarme, and describe the raid as a reprisal for an anti-jihadist crackdown.

It was the first assault by Islamist extremists on Ivorian soil since March 2016, when a raid on hotel terraces in the southeastern beach resort of Grand-Bassam left 19 people dead.

The latest attack was carried out by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), an organisation linked to Al-Qaeda, according to a source in Burkina Faso.

Bakayoko said the arrests of people who took part in the assault came thanks to photos retrieved from mobile phones.

On June 18, the Ivorian army said it had carried out a sweep in the Kafolo area and in the neighbouring Camoe National Park, a reputed haven for jihadists.

Troops picked up 27 people, destroyed logistical material and seized communications equipment, it said.

Fear of spreading revolt

Security analysts have long worried that a jihadist revolt in the Sahel that began in Mali in 2012 is spreading towards coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea.

Jihadist violence, often intertwined with inter-communal violence, resulted in 4,000 deaths in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in 2019, according to the UN.

The attack on Kafolo shook Ivory Coast, which has only recently returned to stability after a decade-long period of turbulence and faces presidential elections on October 31.

A major exporter of cocoa and coffee, it has also returned to its position as the biggest economy in West Africa.

Map of Ivory Coast showing border with Burkina Faso. By (AFP)

President Alassane Ouattara will take part in a funeral tribute to the soldiers, Bakayoko said. The date of the ceremony has yet to be set.

Ivory Coast shares a 550-kilometre (340-mile) border with Burkina Faso, where jihadist violence has claimed nearly 1,000 lives and forced 860,000 people from their homes over the past five years.

The June 11 attack took place in the same zone where the two countries last month launched a ground-breaking joint operation to flush out jihadists.

"Operation Comoe," named after a river that flows through the two countries, led to the death of eight suspected jihadists, the capture of 38 others and the destruction of a "terrorist base" at Alidougou in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast army said on May 24.
Trump had taken a cognitive screening test as part of his 2018 physical, and now, more than two years later, he brought up the 10-minute exam. He waxed on about how hed dazzled the proctors with his stellar performance, according to two people familiar with his comments. He walked the room of about two dozen White House and reelection officials through some of the questions he said hed aced, such as being able to repeat five words in order.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 14:56:50|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WUHAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Authorities have begun using China-Europe trains to transport international parcels between Europe and Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

A freight train carrying goods such as domestic appliances, automobile parts and ornaments departed Wuhan over the weekend. The train was loaded with 10,710 parcels weighing 2.75 tonnes.

According to China Railway Wuhan Group Co., Ltd., the shipment will take 13 days to reach Malaszewicze, Poland, before being dispatched to Britain, France and Germany.

After the coronavirus outbreak, all international flights were suspended in Hubei, hampering the transportation of international goods.

With cheaper transportation costs, China-Europe freight trains are less likely to be affected by weather conditions and can transport more varieties of goods, allowing smooth exports of commodities such as electronic and cosmetic products.

Authorities plan to launch regular China-Europe freight trains to facilitate cross-border e-commerce businesses in Hubei. Enditem
Pakistan on Monday (June 22) once again violated ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch and Rajouri districts. According to Army sources, Pakistani forces started unprovoked ceasefire violation by firing with small arms and shelling in Krishna Ghati sector at about 3:30 am and in Nowshera sector at about 5:30 am. Indian Army retaliated befittingly to ceasefire violation by Pakistan.

"At about 3.30 a.m. today Pakistan initiated unprovoked firing with small arms and shelling with mortars along the LoC in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district. Again at about 5.30 a.m. Pakistan initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district. Indian army is retaliating befittingly at both the sectors," Colonel Anand, defence ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by IANS.

On Saturday (June 20), Pakistan had violated ceasefire in North Kashmir's Uri sector targeting Indian posts and civilian areas. Two civilians were injured in the ceasefire violation.

Pakistan has been violating ceasefire agreement signed by the two countries in October, 2003 frequently in the past few weeks. The blatant creasefire violation by Pakistani forces has thrown lives of hundreds of people living in villagers near the LoC in disarray.
Riviera Maya Hotel Association says reactivation has started favorably

Riviera Maya, Q.R.  The Riviera Maya Hotel Association (AHRM) announced that the reopening of Riviera Maya has started favorably with the operation of 19 hotels. The Asociacion de Hoteles de la Riviera Maya (AHRM) announced that they anticipate reaching up to 25 percent occupancy for the upcoming summer months with the arrival of tourists from Mexico the United States and Canada.

Conrad Bergwerf, AHRM President

A little over a week after the reopening of the Mexican Caribbean, Conrad Bergwerf, AHRM president, said that they continue to record a gradual increase in hotel activity, and notes that as more of the state is reactivated, visitors will increase.

Although the occupation rate is low at the moment, of approximately 10 percent, the important thing is that we have already started to improve these figures, he said adding that another 11 hotels have announced that in coming weeks, they too, will reopen.

Manuel Paredes, executive director of AHRM clarified that open hotels do not have all their rooms in operation due to the maximum capacity rate according to the traffic light color system. However, he did say that they will continue to gradually activate more and more rooms according to demand until the entire hotel is operational.

We are sure that tourists will gradually gain confidence in traveling until a vaccine comes out, said Bergwerf who estimated that they could reach an occupancy rate of 30 percent in the second half of the year, as long as something does not happen worldwide that affects the destination.

According to the association, establishments set to reopen include El Dorado, Thompson Beach House and Viva Wyndham Maya, which are expected to reopen July 1. A day later, the Vivanta Group is scheduled to reopen.

According to Cancun managing company ASUR, the Cancun International Airport continues to see increases in the amount of daily flights. Over the weekend, a flight from Italy landed. Neos Air made its first flight back to Cancun since the pandemic.

Neos Air lands in Cancun Saturday with a flight of tourists from Italy

Airlines flying in and out of the Cancun International Airport include American Airlines, United, Jet Blue, Sun Country, Air Canada and Neos airlines. Points of origin include the US cities of Philadelphia, Charlotte, Chicago, New York, Houston, Miami (two flights), and Dallas (four flights), as well as Toronto, Canada, and Milan, Italy.
(Bloomberg) --

Apple Inc. will start removing thousands of mobile games lacking government approval from its App Store in China next month, closing a loophole that the likes of Rockstar Games have relied on for years.

Developers and publishers in China have been told that their iOS games will need licenses to continue operating from July, according to people familiar with the matter. The decision ends the unofficial practice of allowing games to be published while awaiting authorization from the countrys slow-moving regulators.

This has until now allowed games such as Grand Theft Auto, whose gory depictions of violence are unlikely to ever pass muster with Chinese censors, to be available within the countrys borders. Chinas regulators require all games that are either paid or offer in-app purchases to submit for review and obtain a license before publication, and major Android app stores have enforced such rules since 2016. But unapproved games have flourished on Apples iPhone platform.

Its unclear why Apple -- a target of numerous regulatory clampdowns in the past -- hasnt moved as swiftly as other app stores in China, which are owned and operated by local mobile giants like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Xiaomi Corp.

The latest approvals process took effect in 2019 amid confusion among industry players about the speed with which Beijing, known for months-long content reviews that may or may not lead to a monetization license, would process requests. For its part, Apple has begun ramping up oversight of its Chinese app store, removing two podcast apps earlier this month at Chinas request.

Back in February, Apple reminded iOS developers in the country to obtain licenses for their titles by June 30. But it was only after prolonged uncertainty about enforcement that the iPhone maker explicitly told publishers that any unlicensed games after the deadline will be banned and removed from the local App Store, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is not public.

Story continues

Theres no telling how long it will take to remove all unlicensed games once the change comes into effect. Chinese gaming blog Gamelook earlier reported Apples upcoming enforcement.

An Apple representative declined to comment.

China accounted for about a fifth of the $61 billion in digital goods and services sold via Apples App Store in 2019, making it the largest market after the U.S., the Analysis Group estimates. Apple takes a 30% cut from the majority of such transactions.

There are roughly 60,000 games on Chinas iOS App Store that are either paid or contain in-app purchases, and at least a third of them dont have a license, according to an estimate by AppInChina, which helps companies localize and publish their apps in the country.

These companies will suddenly lose all revenue from what is typically their second-largest market after the U.S., said AppInChina Chief Executive Officer Rich Bishop. His firm received three times its usual volume of enquiries about game licenses over the past week, he added.

Apples new effort highlights the Chinese governments tightening grip on gaming. Citing concerns about the proliferation of addiction among minors and the dissemination of offensive content, regulators now adopt a much stricter and slower review process than before they temporarily halted all approvals in 2018.

While big local players like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and NetEase Inc. have adapted their existing cash cows and can respond to censors demands in the development of new games, smaller developers and publishers lack the same resources. Many of them have started attaching a single license to multiple games with similar gameplay, logos or heroes, though the government is aware of the practice and cracking down on it as well.

Imported games are under particularly tight scrutiny, and the App Store loophole served as a last resort for getting some of them distributed in China. Plague Inc., which mimics the spread of an epidemic, had topped the download charts on Chinas App Store for weeks during the countrys Covid-19 lockdown. But the unlicensed title was pulled in March after Chinese regulators deemed it to have illegal content, according to its developers.

Neither of the remaining options for small game developers appears particularly enticing. They could switch their revenue model to in-app advertising, which is not covered by the same approval process. Or they can team up with big publishers like Tencent to obtain licenses, though that would involve giving up some measure of autonomy, while Tencent itself is more interested in well-known franchises.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
After the Nepal Parliament passed a new map claiming territories of India, tensions on the Indo-Nepal border continues to affect the relationship between the two countries. In a fresh controversy on the Indo-Nepal border, Nepal Government has stopped the construction work on the right embankment of the Lalbakeya river between pillars 346 and 347 that demarcate the India-Nepal border in Guawari Village in East Champaran district of Bihar. Nepal alleges that the embankment was being constructed on no man's land.

Bihar Water Resources Minister Sanjay Jha has sought Centre's intervention as the monsoon has already arrived in Bihar and if the construction and the flood fighting work on the embankment of Lalbakeya river in East Champaran and Gandak river in Valmiki Nagar is not completed in time, then Bihar may face the ravage of the flood.

Read: Nepal Says 90 Pc Of Its Coronavirus Cases Are Foreign Returnees, Mostly From India

While speaking to Republic TV, Sanjay Jha said, " The maintenance and the construction work on Gandak barrage on the Indo-Nepal border has been stalled by the Nepal government in one of the flanks. This has never happened in the past. Monsoon has already arrived and if maintenance is not done then Bihar will face severe floods. Yesterday, there was a discharge of more than one lakh twenty-five thousand cusec water. They have also not allowed to work on the Lalbakeya barrage on Gandak river in East Champaran district. We are writing a letter to MEA to intervene and the Chief Minister will also talk. We have had good relations with Nepal for a long time and we have the same culture and even marriages take place on that side. But I fail to understand why are they blocking the construction and maintenance for flood fighting."

Read: Charge Sheet Against 12 Tablighi Members From Nepal For Violating Lockdown Norms In Muzaffarnagar

Bihar government writes to the Centre

Bihar Water Resources Minister Sanjay Jha has written a letter to the Union Water Resources Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat expressing the Bihar government's concern over floodwaters causing major damage if both the barrage and embankment are not maintained on time. With the incessant rainfall in Bihar for the past one week, the water level in the rivers has risen and the Bihar government has pushed the panic button for a timely intervention from the central government. Tensions on the Indo Nepal border continue after the Nepalese Parliament adopted a new Map claiming Indian territories of Lipulekh, Kalapani, and Limpiyadhura in the Pithoragarh region.

Read: Cong Tells Govt To Act Against Nepal FM Channels Beaming Anti-India Content Across Border

Read: 'Don't Get Carried Away By China': BSP Slams Nepal Over Citizenship Amendment For Indians
LOS ANGELES and CANBERRA, Australia, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --The Mitra microsampling device from US company Neoteryx has been registered as a Class I in vitro diagnostic (IVD) medical device with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia. Designed for remote use, Mitra devices enable anyone to collect their own blood at home with a simple finger-stick method. The Mitra device is based on volumetrically absorptive microsampling (VAMS) technology, which enables a scientifically precise volume of blood to be collected on its absorbent tip. Doctors, researchers and labs in Australia can send Mitra devices and Mitra Blood Collection Kits to patients or clinical trial participants who must stay safe at home or who live in remote areas. A key advantage of Mitra is that no visit to a clinic or phlebotomist for a blood draw is necessarythis easy-to-use device collects a high-quality blood sample for accurate, validated lab testing for clinical diagnostics that inform decisions about medical treatment.

Neoteryx created the Mitra device with VAMS technology for remote blood collection with precision. Mitra devices enable telehealth and remote blood collection by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

"With the TGA registration, Mitra microsampling devices and Mitra Blood Collection Kits from Neoteryx can be imported into Australia for use in both research and clinical diagnostic applications," said Loc Huynh, MS, RAC, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Director, Neoteryx.

Blood samples collected with Mitra are protected in a cartridge and a sealed bag within an envelope for mailing directly to a designated lab or health facility through regular post. Mitra dried blood samples have many applications in healthcare such as serology testing, therapeutic drug monitoring, addiction recovery testing, and managing chronic illness such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Mitra microsamples are ideal for telehealth, pediatric care, remote patient monitoring for vulnerable patients or those participating in virtual clinical trials, and public health studies.

"Patient-centric blood collection at home using Mitra devices is more relevant than ever during the coronavirus pandemic, because in-clinic blood draws and wellness visits pose a risk of exposure to the virus," said James Rudge, PhD, Technical Director at Neoteryx. "Physicians find Mitra microsampling extremely useful for remote patient monitoring of their vulnerable patient populations."

Many clinical and lab practitioners prefer Mitra devices versus other blood microsampling options, such as dried blood spot cards, due to their user friendliness, quantitative nature, and compatibility with installed laboratory instrumentation for high throughput processing.

About Neoteryx

Neoteryx LLC, a medical device company in Southern California, delivers simple, quantitative and automatable microsampling solutions. Its Mitra Microsampler, an FDA-registered Class 1 exempt medical device, facilitates remote specimen collection and transportation of blood and other biological fluids to improve human welfare, reduce laboratory costs and enable new models of care. Neoteryx's customers include scientific researchers, laboratories and healthcare providers working to advance telehealth, personalized medicine, pharmaceutical development, biotechnology research and clinical diagnostics. For more information, visit www.neoteryx.com.

Media Contact:

Christa Nuber, Neoteryx Content Manager

(310) 951-4451, [email protected]

Video Footage & Live Virtual Interviews Available

SOURCE Neoteryx
The argument began as soon as Charlie Mai and his brother, Henry, announced their plans to attend a Black Lives Matter protest that evening in Washington. Their father was not having it.

Glenn Mai, a retired FBI agent, had been raised in Dallas by Chinese immigrants who had taught him that he would succeed if he just worked hard.

Chinese culture is very much about working within the system, Glenn said, and during decades in law enforcement hed come to believe the system worked.

His son, Charlie, took a different view. My father deeply believes that everyone has a fair chance, which is just basically untrue, said Charlie, an artist who fled New York for his familys home in northern Virginia due to the pandemic. Its very Asian to me, that view that if everyone just works hard, then everything will turn out right for them. Im definitely a little reactive to that because I think thats delusional.

That June morning, amid the yelling and tears, Glenn threatened to walk out when it became clear that Charlie and Henry planned to defy the citys 7pm curfew. In the end, however, he drove downtown to bring his sons safely home, and the argument over the protests, police brutality and systemic racism has since softened into an extended conversation.

During the civil rights movement, black parents and their children may have disagreed over speed and strategy, but their shared experience of discrimination united them on the cause. Non-black allies, many of them Jewish Americans, were a clear minority in the 1960s.

By contrast, the youth-led protests unfolding now in response to the killing of a black man by a white Minneapolis police officer are much more diverse. There are large numbers of African Americans who have supported the Black Lives Matter movement since its 2014 founding, and many native-born black and white newcomers whose lives have often differed dramatically from their parents. But there is also an unprecedentedly large segment of protesters from other backgrounds. Some are descended from immigrants who moved to the US generations ago, while many others come from the families that have arrived in great waves since the civil rights movement spurred passage of the landmark Immigration and Naturalisation Act in 1965.

I think what you are seeing is a decades-long transformation. We have arrived at a real cultural shift, said Jose Antonio Vargas, founder and chief executive of Define American, an immigration advocacy organisation.

While the dynamics between black and white Americans get most of the media attention, Mr Vargas said, the makeup of this new movement is way more complex than that.

In forming a new kind of majority with black and white protesters, these Asian, Latino and other young allies are uniting in fighting anti-black racism and in many cases, are pushing their mothers and fathers to understand why change is necessary, said Mr Vargas, whose view is shared by other experts, young protesters and their parents.

There arent a lot of places for optimism right now, said Mr Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, but this is one of them.

Gisselle Quintero observed the pained expression on her 15-year-old cousins face as he absorbed the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyds neck for almost nine minutes as he gasped for air.

The teen, who is half African American, had come to live with her family in their Marysville, California, home, and Ms Quintero has come to regard him more like a brother. As protests engulfed the nation while her conservative farming community remained quiet, the college student decided she had to act.

It upset me to see how unjustly black people are being treated. I have a platform in this little community, so I knew I had to do something to help out, Ms Quintero said. In early June, she posted news on social media of a protest in front of a mall near her house. Her parents, Mexican American business owners and strong Donald Trump supporters, vocally opposed her plans.

At first, my parents were like: This is stupid. All lives matter, said Ms Quintero. They didnt understand the big picture of it, that the system is so messed up, that nobody deserves to have a knee on the neck for eight minutes over a $20 (16) counterfeit bill.

Ms Quintero said she grew up hearing her grandparents tell stories about how they were prohibited from drinking at whites-only fountains after long, hot days of working in the fields. They just kind of suppressed those memories and tried to distinguish themselves by their hard work and achievement, Ms Quintero said. And theyre still not being accepted by the white community.

Marysville, California, is racially diverse and politically conservative (Melina Mara/Washington Post)

I have gotten a sense that a lot of the Mexican community is somewhat racist, Ms Quintero said. Its crazy. You wouldnt expect it.

Her protests swelled to hundreds of people over several days, while her mother, attending to make sure Gisselle was safe, found herself captivated by black speakers stories about their encounters with racism. Each day, she kept coming out, and she kept feeling it more and more, Gisselle said.

Finally, on the third day, her mother brought Gisselles father, Wilfredo.

He started leading chants, Gisselle said. At the end of my last protest, my mom made a speech about how she didnt support Black Lives Matter at first, but hearing everything as a mother, it really opened up her mind. It brought tears to everybody in the crowd.

Elizabeth Quintero agrees that while she and her husband as antiabortion Catholics still support Mr Trump, her views about the Black Lives Matter movement have changed.

In our town, there are people who are racist, but I havent really experienced it myself, said Ms Quintero, who identifies as a white Latina and whose family came to the US several generations ago. I didnt have any insight into it. Its been really humbling.

In Portage, Mich., Alexa Delon took a different tact with her parents as protests unfolded in nearby Kalamazoo.

Since Trayvon Martin was shot to death in 2010 in Sanford, Fla., by a vigilante, I have come to see that America doesnt care about our black community, said Ms Delon, a Mexican American college sophomore.

That America, she believes, has sometimes included her father, a cleaning company employee, and her stay-home mother, whom she said raised her with contradictory values.

My parents taught me and my siblings to love everybody for who they are, that skin colour doesnt matter, Ms Delon said. On the other hand, they once told her to be a little more cautious around the black community because they are known to be hoodlums.

Ms Delon said she and her brother have been challenging her parents to cast a critical eye on the news they consume from Spanish-language television, which she said focuses disproportionately on looting and acts of violence during the largely peaceful protests. Her father is now exploring her recommendations on Twitter.

They need to understand that what you see on the news is not always the truth, Ms Delon said. The more we let our elders know that this is wrong, it will have a snowball effect.

Many Latinos arrive in the US with their own anti-black beliefs rooted in the histories of white European colonialism and slavery in their native countries, said Jasmine Haywood, a programme officer at the education-focused Lumina Foundation who has researched anti-black racism among Latinos. As they try to assimilate, they often adopt anti-black attitudes that come from the white majority, Haywood said. These include stereotypes that black people are violent and lazy.

 Trump fanatic launches into a one man 'All Lives Matter' protest

There is no group that can escape the pervasiveness of whiteness and white supremacy, Ms Haywood said.

Yet young Latinos, Asians and members of black immigrant groups are more likely to share classrooms, neighbourhoods and friendships with descendants of American slaves. And they have been influenced by the hip-hop and rap music that has given voice to the black experience, Ms Haywood and Mr Vargas agreed.

This is where the power of popular culture cannot be denied, Mr Vargas, who is Filipino, said. You cant love black culture without loving black people. There is so much more exposure and so much more empathy.

Ms Haywood also credits the efforts of young Afro-Latinos in prying open minds. On social media, they have called out white Latinos on their privilege and for not using their privilege, said Ms Haywood, who is an Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican heritage.

By comparison, many older Asian Americans do not grasp the language of privilege, said Kim Tran, a diversity consultant who is researching the growing solidarity that young Asian Americans feel with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Because privilege is inextricable from whiteness, said Ms Tran, it doesnt resonate with most Asians.

The language of privilege also denies the experience of a lot of Asian elders who have been through tremendous pain and terror themselves, said Ms Tran, whose family came to the US as refugees in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.

Many older Asian Americans, in particular, subscribe to the model minority myth pushed by white American culture, she said. The myth, Ms Tran said, was first applied to Japanese Americans as they tried to assimilate back into American culture after their internment during the Second World War and then spread to include other Asian groups. It places Asians at the top of the social pyramid as morally superior to other marginalised people in their family work ethic, intelligence and determination to succeed.

The myth offers a way for [Asian immigrants] to fit clearly into the fabric of America, by promoting the very American idea that hard work will always lead to success. At the same time, she said, it ignores advantages in education and immigration policies that some Asian American ethnic groups have enjoyed while others have not. It also ignores racism against African Americans.

Does it divide people? Absolutely, which is the intent, Ms Tran said. Does it rely on anti-blackness? Absolutely.

Glenn Mai enjoyed a very comfortable childhood in Dallas, reared by Chinese American immigrant parents who fled the Cultural Revolution and built a thriving technology company. He joined the Cub Scouts and attended an elite private school where he was one of a few Asian Americans. Mr Mais parents had minimal interactions with African Americans, he said, and his mother, in particular, is sort of frightened of them, though he attributes it less to racism than being racially unaware.

He finished college at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1980s with a degree in electrical engineering like his father, before rebelling and heading in another direction. By joining the CIA and later the FBI, Mr Mai believed he could make a difference within the system. As an agent who worked frequently with local law enforcement on cases, he had not witnessed police brutality towards black men and has often felt police are unfairly attacked, he said.

Meanwhile, his sons took different paths. After graduating from Bard College as a theatre major, Charlie Mai embarked on a life as an artist in New York City. He explores themes of race and culture in his sculpture. His younger brother, Henry, majored in sociology, hungrily consuming courses on race and mass incarceration. Both Mai sons have black friends and believe that African Americans face structural barriers that white Americans do not.

Charlie Mai (centre) and Henry Mai (left) pose with their mother, Mary, at their home in Arlington, Virginia. Their father threatened to leave during an argument over the George Floyd protests (Melina Mara/Washington Post)

Growing up in a diverse environment, you learn very quickly that everybodys issues are your issues. If these are people you love, you have to support them, Charlie Mai said.

On 1 June, when Charlie and Henry set out to protest, their father was most upset by his sons plans to break curfew, fearing that they would be swept into rioting and get hurt as night fell. Lawbreaking and violence, he believes, subvert any cause.

Mary Mai, who is Irish American, was more supportive of her sons belief that protests could lead to change. But that afternoon we had the biggest blowup of our familys life, said Mary. F-bombs were being thrown around.

Charlie and Henry left the house to head to the District of Columbia, winding up at Lafayette Square. Inside, Glenn fumed but stayed glued to the news. He watched on TV as federal officers began using tear gas to clear protesters from the square so Mr Trump could have a photo op with a Bible in front of St Johns Church. His sons were towards the back of the crowd, but close enough to witness the chaos and cough at the gas.

Late that night, with Charlie and Henry safely home, Glenn confessed to a slight change of heart.

Recommended Leader of London BLM protests demands meeting with Boris Johnson

Youre right, the social contract has been broken. Ive been wrong, Mary recalled him saying. The government was not protecting the people.

While he still thinks its best to work within the system, Glenn Mai admits that the protests have already forced some societal changes. And the incident in which Buffalo, NY, police forcefully shoved a 75-year-old protester to the ground, causing a head injury, served as a lesson for him on police brutality.

Even so, he plans to spend his retirement birdwatching, not becoming an anti-black activist. To a large extent, its their fight. Its not a fight I choose, he said.

The Mai sons have been giving their father books and articles on race to read, but Charlie predicts a longer road ahead to prompt his father to action. He sees value in their dialogue.

Who are we as a younger generation to ask our parents to take down these shields all at once? Charlie asked. They didnt want to build these defence mechanisms. How can we say were sensitive to these issues if were not sensitive to our own parents?

The Washington Post
A Chinese medical advisor has predicted the number of coronavirus cases in Beijing to have a 'cliff-like' drop this week after authorities imposed draconian measures to cut chains of transmission.

Wu Hao, an infectious disease expert who supervised the anti-coronavirus efforts in Wuhan, also urged the public to get ready to 'co-exist' with COVID-19' long term'.

The Chinese capital city has been ravaged by a new coronavirus outbreak, which is linked to a massive seafood market and has seen over 200 people infected.

Beijing government today claimed the spread of the disease had been contained but warned that the city was still facing a 'severe and complicated' epidemic situation.

Wu Hao, an infectious disease expert who supervised the anti-coronavirus efforts in Wuhan, told China's state TV that the number of Beijing's coronavirus cases would drop sharply with draconian measures underway. Pictured, people line up to board a bus in Beijing on Monday

The city of more than 20 million people reported its first case of a new spike in infections on June 11 after it had registered zero daily cases for nearly two months.

In all, 236 people have been infected in the worst outbreak in Beijing since the virus was identified at a seafood wholesale market in the central city of Wuhan late last year.

Beijing reported on Monday nine new cases had been confirmed the previous day, sharply down from 22 a day earlier.

'If you control the source, and cut the chain of transmission, the number will have a cliff-like drop,' Mr Wu, a member of the expert team from the National Health Commission, told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview aired on Sunday.

As of Saturday, officials had screened about 2.3 million Beijing residents for the novel coronavirus to prevent its spread. Pictured, workers wearing full protective suits attend to locals who had gathered to undergo mass-testing for COVID-19 in Beijing on Monday

Mr Wu, the expert, also urged the public to get ready to 'co-exist' with COVID-19' long term'. Pictured, Beijing residents wearing protective face masks line up to get tested for coronavirus

Millions of people in Beijing have had their daily lives upended by the resurgence of the disease over the past 11 days, with some fearing a city lockdown is imminent.

But Mr Wu said Beijing was not headed for a 'flood-like' lockdown, unlike early efforts in Wuhan when little was known about the virus, adding that lockdown tactics had been more 'precise and effective' this time.

To control the spread of the virus, Beijing has designated four neighbourhoods as high-risk and 39 as medium-risk, as of Monday.

People can leave and enter the medium-risk neighbourhoods, with temperature checks and registration, but apartment blocks with two confirmed cases or more are totally locked down.

To control the spread of the virus, Beijing has designated four neighbourhoods as high-risk and 39 as medium-risk, as of Monday. Pictured, a worker wears a protective suit as he walks by residents while decontaminating the environment to prevent COVID-19 in Beijing on Sunday

People can leave and enter the medium-risk neighbourhoods, with temperature checks and registration, but apartment blocks with two confirmed cases or more are totally locked down

In high-risk neighbourhoods, an entire residential compound is sealed off if there is even one infection there.

Mr Wu also warned citizens to get ready to 'co-exist with the novel coronavirus long term' and treat anti-coronavirus efforts 'as the norm'.

'The fact that an outbreak is contained doesn't mean the virus does not exist. [We] should prevent [it] when necessary,' the expert noted. 'This is why we say we must normalise the efforts to prevent and control [the virus], instead of normalising our life.'

To identify carriers, Beijing has been conducting tests on people it deems are in higher-risk groups such as restaurant workers and food and parcel couriers.

Residents in some low-risk neighbourhoods have also been tested. As of Saturday, officials had screened about 2.3 million Beijing residents for the virus.

Though people are concerned, most are resigned to the need to be on guard for some time.

'We've to live with the virus for the long term before a vaccine is available,' said Bill Yuan, 28, an IT worker.

'There might be a few new infections all the time. If it happens, we've to stay alert for a while and quarantine. Then go back to work when it's gone.'

The Chinese capital city has been ravaged by a new coronavirus outbreak, which is linked to a massive seafood market. Pictured, a vendor walks past closed stalls at a food market in Beijing

Beijing's municipal government said on Monday that authorities had curbed the spread of the virus in the shortest time possible. The above picture shows a closed seafood stall in Beijing

Beijing's municipal government said on Monday that authorities had curbed the spread of the virus in the shortest time possible.

Xu Hejian, a government spokesperson, said at a press conference that officials had identified the reach of the disease in the city and pinned down the critical risk points.

But Mr Xu cautioned: 'The capital's epidemic prevention and control situation is still severe and complicated.'

China's National Health Commission reported a total of 18 new infections on Monday, including 11 native cases and seven imported cases.

Apart from the nine local cases in the capital, two were diagnosed in Hebei Province which neighbours Beijing.
Demi Moore has paid tribute to her ex-husband Bruce Willis in a Father's Day Instagram post.

Moore wrote: "Your kids are so lucky to have you" under a picture of the family gathered together around a table with plates of cake.

Willis and Moore were married from 1987 until 2000 and have three daughters together, Rumer, 31, Scout, 28, and Tallulah, 26.

(Instagram / @buuski ) / Instagram / @buuski

They remain on such good terms that the former couple has even been isolating together in Idaho, joined by Willis' wife of eleven years, Emma Heming Willis, and their two daughters, Evelyn and Mabel.

The blended family has been at the ranch since March, though Heming was initially delayed in joining them as her daughter waited for test results in Los Angeles.

Getty Images

Heming also celebrated her 42nd birthday last Thursday, where she was pictured posing with the family, including Demi and her children.

Heming previously opened up to parenting site The New Potato about life with her husband in LA: "My husband has a few great sayings. We call them Bruce-isms. One that really has resonated with me over time has been 'Dont worry bout a thing.' Im a worrywart by nature, but what it comes down to is worrying doesnt change the outcome. Ive taken a lot off my plate with that advice."
Imagine a clean alternative to fossil fuels, one that leaves no greenhouse gas residues and even, unlike solar and wind renewables, can be used at any moment of the day or night, whatever the weather conditions.

Imagine that using it instead of fossil fuels sharply reins in the harmful emissions raising global temperatures, helping the world to solve the climate crisis.

This is not a fairy story. This gas exists. Its called green hydrogen, and is made by using clean electricity from renewable energy technologies to electrolyse water (H2O), separating the hydrogen atom within it from its molecular twin oxygen.

How green hydrogen could power tomorrow's industry

The catch has always been that the cost of making green hydrogen prices it out of competition with fossil fuels, because, even if it is carbon-free, it is energy-intensive. But that is changing, because, for the past two years, improvements in renewable energy technology have seen renewable electricity costs plummet.

Now, as the world plans economic recovery efforts after the coronavirus pandemic, and trillions of dollars and euro are readied to invest in build-back-better approaches, an increasing number of scientists and policymakers are saying green hydrogens time has come to be brought fully into the energy mix of the future.

Theyre advocating investing in stimulating production, both to tackle the economic fallout of this years pandemic and to build a future without fear of climate cataclysm.

Important emerging elements of clean energy progress  hydrogen electrolysers and lithium-ion batteries  are on the verge of becoming the decades breakout technologies. These technologies should play a key role in bolstering Europes transport and industry as the continent emerges from the crisis and looks to develop new advanced manufacturing for export, the International Energy Agencys executive director Fatih Birol and Frans Timmermans, executive vice-president of the European Commission, wrote in May.

If the EU seizes this opportunity, it will give itself a cutting edge on global markets, Birol and Timmerman concluded.

Their editorial  as well as reported comments by Birol that green hydrogen technology was ready for the big time and that governments should channel investments into the field - came as the European Union prepared to publish its own hydrogen strategy while implementing the European Green Deal plan to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050.

The pace of discussion on green hydrogen has picked up, especially since the outbreak of coronavirus.

Governments including those of Germany, Britain, Australia and Japan are working on or have announced hydrogen strategies. Australia has set aside A$300 million ($191 million) to jumpstart hydrogen projects. Portugal plans a new solar-powered hydrogen plant which will produce hydrogen by electrolysis by 2023. The Netherlands unveiled a hydrogen strategy in late March, outlining plans for 500 megawatts (MW) of green electrolyser capacity by 2025.

We could use these circumstances, where loads of public money are going to be needed into the energy system, to jump forward towards a hydrogen economy, said Diederik Samsom, who heads the European Commissions climate cabinet. This could result in hydrogen use scaling up faster than was expected before the pandemic, he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Most of the hydrogen produced today is not green. The gas is colour-coded according to the way it is produced, says the EBRDs Christian Carraretto.

The hydrogen that the world uses today is made from either coal or natural gas. This hydrogen is carbon-intensive, its not a green fuel. Its called grey hydrogen if it comes from gas, while the hydrogen produced from coal is called black. Then there is blue hydrogen, an upgrade of the grey, where the CO2 emitted is captured upstream, so the system doesnt emit CO2 in the atmosphere.

The European Commission has earmarked clean hydrogen - a loose term which can include gas-based hydrogen, if fitted with technology to capture the resulting emissions, as well as green hydrogen - as a priority area for industry in its Green Deal.

If clean hydrogen does start to play a bigger part in the worlds energy mix, incorporating it will be technically relatively easy, Mr Carraretto said, as the infrastructure already built to carry natural gas can also carry hydrogen.

He said a recent study had shown 70 per cent of Italys gas network would be hydrogen-ready if there were enough hydrogen being produced to be carried down its pipes. It could be used in both homes and industry without radical change.

Clean hydrogen is what the EU think is the solution to deliver on decarbonised fuels. And the reason why its important is that not all economic activities can move to renewables only. There are some sectors that are typically hard to decarbonise - sectors like steel, or chemical industries, or to some extent aviation - which will still use fuels in their systems.

So either they are stuck with the cleanest of the fossil fuels or they switch to decarbonised fuels like hydrogen or biogas. Biogas is a mainstream technology and it hasnt really picked up a lot because there is an issue with availability of organic wastes. So hydrogen is what we see as the most promising option at this moment.

There remains the question of prices. Today, hydrogen made from fossil fuels costs between $1-$1.8/kg. Green hydrogen can cost around $3-$6/kg, making it significantly more expensive than the fossil fuel alternatives.

However, increased demand could reduce the cost of electrolysis. Coupled with falling renewable energy costs, green hydrogen could fall to $1.5/kg by 2050 and possibly sub-$1/kg, making it competitive with natural gas. Higher carbon prices would also encourage the shift.

Mr Carraretto said: Here we are probably in the same situation as we were a decade or two ago with renewable energy, where this solution is still more expensive than the alternatives. But even today its only two or three times more expensive, its not 100 times more expensive, so if things keep going and if there is policy push going forward, our expectation that it will become really cost-competitive soon.

And thats why we see a lot of big players looking at it, pilot projects happening everywhere.

What is also exciting is that with the recent dramatic fall in renewable energy prices - particularly in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries where we work, and potentially with offshore wind being developed in countries from Turkey to Poland and Greece, too - these countries could become sources of production of green hydrogen, with projects we could consider investing in, within a few years, Mr Carraretto added. This is really on the edge of becoming a game-changer.

How green hydrogen could power tomorrow's industry
Software that would easily allow Android users to transfer files between devices, similar to Apples AirDrop, may be launching on multiple platforms.

The feature would allow Android users to share photos, links, and files with other devices.

As reported by 9to5Google, Nearby Sharing is likely to be available on Windows, Mac, Linus and Chrome OS.

It is apparently available in the latest build of Chrome OS Canary, where a description of the feature lists the various operating systems.

Nearby Sharing was originally called Fast Share and had reportedly been in development for over a year.

The feature is expected to run on most, but not all, Android devices and will likely work with PCs with Google Chrome installed.

Nearby Sharing also recently appeared in an Android 11 developer video. Android 11 is Googles next OS for Android, but was delayed due to protests in the United States over the death of George Floyd.

Recommended Android users should uninstall these fraudulent beauty apps

It is likely that the feature will be announced alongside the operating system.

This is not the only change Google is making to its products. Recently, it launched a new curation app called Keen as competition to Pinterest, as well as integrating Meet video calls into the Gmail app.
[June 22, 2020] Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems Market Future Growth, Global Survey, In-depth Analysis, Share, Key Findings, Company Profiles

Global Satellite-based Augmentation Systems Market Research Report - Forecast to 2021  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2021.



Global Satellite-based Augmentation Systems Market  Overview According to a recent study report published by Market Research Future, the global market for satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) will grow at a rapid pace over the forecast period. The market is expected to witness slow but steady growth until 2021, which will be a growing fast at a moderate CAGR during the forecast period (2017 -2021).







The high demand for satellite-based augmentation systems market is due to the growing development of ATC infrastructure, need for authentic and accurate information to avoid errors, and rise in the development of airport construction and modernization, thus increasing the participation of manufacturers. Rapid technology advancement, along with increased focus of OEMs on providing accurate and precise navigation system, is expected to result in an increase in aircraft expenses and add to the growth of the market. However, the cost associated with Air Traffic Management (ATM) infrastructure modernization and retrofitting older aircraft with upgraded systems act as a barrier to the growth of satellite-based augmentation systems market. The revolution of modern electronic systems results in many aircraft manufacturers upgrading technologies with new avionics.



The satellite-based augmentation systems market is completely dependent on the expansion of air passenger traffic. Thus, the increasing or decreasing demand for air passenger traffic directly has an impact on the market. Moreover, other factors responsible for the growth of the satellite-based augmentation systems market are demand for avionics system with gen-next aircraft, demand for accurate flight navigation, capability of handling more air traffic, collision avoidance systems, gyroscopes, and integration of early warning radar. This is the primary factor that drives the growth of the global satellite-based augmentation systems market and has gained prevalence in the recent times, with the usage of best in class technologies in the aircraft industry. Thus, the growth of the satellite-based augmentation systems market is expected to go hand in hand with the growth of investment in the aircraft sector.





The main objective of developing satellite-based augmentation systems is to produce an accuracy of the position of the navigation system, integrity of information, reliability of the system throughout the flight operation, and availability of GPS system. SBAS offers an economic opportunity for airports, while not putting in ground-based navigation aids. SBAS consists of a network of stations to receive and process satellite signals. The SBAS systems consist of Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), and GPS-Aided Geo-Augmentation Navigation (GAGAN), which are designed in compliance with regulatory norms in satellite-based navigation.



Access Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/satellite-based-augmentation-systems-market-1634 Industry/ Innovation/ Related News: February 2017  Lockheed Martin signed a contract with Geoscience Australia to research the development of a satellite-based augmentation system testbed.



October 2016  Thales signed a contract with Korean Aerospace to develop a satellite-based augmentation system for GPS.



October 2014  Raytheon signed a contract with United States Satellite-Based Augmentation System to promote air traffic safety.



Global Satellite-based Augmentation Systems Market  Segmentation The global satellite-based augmentation systems market is segmented into 4 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding; Segmentation by Elements : Comprises SATCOM, Radar, Electric Optic/ Infrared Segmentation by Product : Comprises Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing Segmentation by Regions : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America.



Key Players: Garmin International Inc. (U.S.), Raytheon (U.S.), Rockwell Collins (U.S.), Thales Group (France), Universal Avionics (U.S.), Advanced Navigation and Positioning Corporation (U.S.), Copperchase Ltd. (U.K.), Intelcan Techno systems (Canada), Honeywell International (U.S.), Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Northrop Grumman (U.S.), and Saab AB (Sweden) are some of the prominent players profiled in MRFR Analysis and are at the forefront of competition in the global satellite-based augmentation systems market.



Global Satellite-based Augmentation Systems Market: Regional Analysis Asia Pacific region is dominating the market of the global satellite-based augmentation systems market due to high demand for civil aviation. The market in the Asia Pacific countries is largely driven by new routes, ventures, and business models, which helps in the growth of global satellite-based augmentation systems market.



North America market is referred to as the second-largest satellite-based augmentation market due to factors such as growing investment in airport infrastructure have fuelled the demand for global satellite-based augmentation systems market. As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
President Donald Trump poses a danger for the republic and would be an even greater threat if he wins a second term this fall because he would be unconstrained by future electoral considerations, John R. Bolton, his former national security adviser, said in an interview aired Sunday night.

In one of the most scathing public assessments of a sitting president by such a high-ranking former aide in modern times, Bolton depicted Trump as an erratic and impulsive leader who cares only about his own needs, does not fully understand democracy or the Constitution, is played like a fiddle by Russia and is not fit for office.

The concern I have, speaking as a conservative Republican, is that once the election is over, if the president wins, the political constraint is gone, Bolton told Martha Raddatz of ABC News in his first television interview publicizing his memoir of 17 months as Trumps top security adviser. And because he has no philosophical grounding, theres no telling what will happen in a second term.

Boltons book, The Room Where It Happened, has become the talk of Washington even before its scheduled publication on Tuesday. The Trump administration went to court to try to block its publication, only to be rejected by a federal judge, and the president has been railing about what he considers Boltons betrayal. But the beginning of the book tour means that Trump will be confronted with the portrait laid out in the volume for days or weeks to come.

Bolton, a veteran of three previous Republican administrations, says in the book that the House should have investigated Trump for impeachment not just for his Ukraine scheme but for his willingness to intervene in criminal investigations on behalf of dictators and otherwise seeking foreign help for his reelection campaign.

In the interview with ABC, he went even further by accusing Trump of lying when the president denied linking U.S. security aid to his demand that Ukraine incriminate his Democratic political rivals, and Bolton dismissed the White House defense at the Senate impeachment trial as utter nonsense.

Rather than being deterred by the impeachment trial, he added, Trump became emboldened by his acquittal by the Senate almost entirely along party lines. He didnt learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail  is the election this November, Bolton said.

But even as Bolton said Trump had adopted obstruction of justice as a way of life, as he put it in the book, House Democrats on Sunday eschewed interest in opening new impeachment proceedings against him. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said it would be a waste of time because Senate Republicans were too corrupt to consider Boltons statements.

The Senate Republicans were not interested in any evidence, the chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, said on the CNN program State of the Union. They were corrupt in that respect.

The books revelations have been met with frustration from Capitol Hill Democrats, who were angry that the former national security adviser waited until the release of his book  for which he was reportedly paid $2 million  to accuse Trump of misdeeds that went far beyond those for which he was impeached. At the same time, Republicans dismissed the book as either false or motivated by money.

After Nadlers appearance on CNN, Peter Navarro, Trumps trade adviser, appeared on the program and disputed several claims in Boltons book. He also said the former national security adviser should be prosecuted.

That guy should be turning in his seersucker suit for an orange jumpsuit, Navarro said. John Bolton has put highly classified information sprinkled throughout a very large book. I predict this: He will not only not get the profits from that book, but he risks a jail sentence.

Democratic leaders expressed some interest on Sunday in calling Bolton to testify before Congress. Nadler at first said he was not interested in hearing from Bolton, but later said his committee may call him to hear more about allegations that Trump considered interfering in an investigation of a state-owned Turkish bank.

The president has done a lot of impeachable things, including what Boltons talking about, Nadler said. But we have an election coming up. We know the Republicans in the Senate will not entertain an impeachment in any event. That would at this point be a waste of time and effort.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif. and leader of the House managers who prosecuted the president during the Senate trial, accused Bolton of cowardice and greed but said that he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership would consider their next steps.

We do need, I think, to expose the length and breadth of this presidents depravity and how much it is endangering the country, Schiff said on the NBC program Meet the Press. Those facts are going to need to come out.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., another of the impeachment managers, also criticized Bolton for refusing to testify in the Houses impeachment inquiry.

He is a political opportunist and a profiteer  he had the opportunity to step forward, Jeffries said on the ABC program This Week. And he declined.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said on Sunday that Bolton should have testified under oath in the Houses impeachment inquiry of the president, so that he could have been cross-examined on the explosive details of his memoir.

I do wish Mr. Bolton would have come into the House, under oath, and testified, Scott said on This Week. We would have more information about fact patterns that he suggests are true.

Scott, however, was one of the Senate Republicans who voted against calling Bolton as a witness in the Senate trial. Bolton did not testify during House proceedings, saying he would wait to see how a judge ruled on White House objections. When the Senate took up the case, Bolton volunteered to testify if subpoenaed, but Senate Republicans blocked him and any other witnesses.

On ABC, Bolton defended himself, saying House Democrats mishandled the inquiry by moving too fast and focusing too narrowly on Ukraine, turning the issue into a partisan catfight.

The House Democrats built a cliff, they threw themselves off it and halfway down they looked up and saw me and said, Hey, why dont you come along? Bolton said.

But while he said his testimony would not have made a difference in the outcome, he essentially confirmed the main elements of the Democrats case, saying that Trump explicitly linked the security aid to his demand that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats. Asked if Trump was lying when he denied such a linkage, Bolton said: Yes, he is. And its not the first time either.

Bolton said other officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Attorney General William P. Barr all understood what the president was really doing with Ukraine. And he said the defense teams assertion that Trump was only concerned about corruption in Ukraine was ludicrous.

He wanted a probe of Joe Biden in exchange for delivering the security assistance that was part of the congressional legislation that had been passed several years before, Bolton said. So that in his mind, he was bargaining to get the investigation, using the resources of the federal government, which I found very disturbing, and I found it using national security to advance his own political position.

Bolton said he considered Biden unacceptable and would write in a conservative Republican in November but made clear he hoped Trump would lose. Asked how history will remember Trump, he said: I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didnt plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we cant recall from. We can get over one term. He added, Two terms Im more troubled about.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Aizawl/Kohima, June 22 : A moderate earthquake, measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale -- and the second in 12 hours, shook Mizoram and other adjoining northeastern states bordering Myanmar on Monday, damaging many buildings and important installations, officials said.

According to police, there was no report of loss of life.

However, at least 31 structures, comprising houses, government and non-government buildings, police stations, churches and community halls, developed cracks due to the tremor.

An IMD official said that the tremor hit eastern Mizoram's Champhai area, adjoining Myanmar, and several other parts of the mountainous state at 4.10 a.m. on Monday morning. The quake, that lasted for several seconds, was at 20 km depth.

Mizoram had also experienced earthquakes measuring 5.1 and 5 on the Richter scale on Sunday afternoon (at 4.16 p.m.) and Thursday night respectively.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah talked with Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga and offered the Centre's help in view of the early morning quake.

"Two earthquakes rocked Mizoram within 12 hours. Damage assessment has been undertaken by concerned MLA and district administration. Fortunately, no casualties have been reported so far. Thanking PM and Home Minister for their assurance of support," Zoramthanga said in a tweet.

Mizoram police, quoting the local people, said that the tremors jolted many parts of East Tuipui assembly constituency in Champhai district.

"Local people said an aftershock was experienced after half an hour. More than 31 houses, buildings, church and community halls developed cracks after the tremor," a police official said.

According to the local people, the Monday morning quake seems to be the strongest one in Mizoram in the recent past. The IMD official said that a low intensity quake measuring 2.8 on the Richter scale also shook several parts of Nagaland at 12.40 p.m. on Monday. The depth of the quake was at 6.6 km. There was no report of any damage or casualty in the Nagaland tremor.

Champhai district Deputy Commissioner Maria C.T. Zuali, after a preliminary assessment, said that 31 buildings and important installations including churches, police stations, immigration check posts and water reservoir were damaged under Champhai and Khawbung rural development blocks.

Some roads and tourist lodges were also damaged.

A call centre has been set up at the Deputy Commissioner's office. "Officials have rushed to the concerned villages to assess the damages in the field," the Deputy Commissioner said.

Seismologists consider the mountainous northeast region as the sixth major earthquake-prone belt in the world. In 1897, a Shillong-epicentre quake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale had hit the area. In 1950, an earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale had altered the course of the Brahmaputra river.
Bolton Claims Trump Probably Obstructed Justice by Trying to Intervene in Turkish Bank Probe

Sputnik News

18:26 GMT 21.06.2020(updated 18:41 GMT 21.06.2020)

The former national security advisor, who expressed a willingness to testify in the Democrats' botched Ukrainegate impeachment trial earlier this year, is getting ready to release a new tell-all book filled with a host of juicy new allegations against the president. Trump has called Bolton a "whacko" and a "liar."

John Bolton has accused President Donald Trump of trying to intervene in the Southern District of New York's investigation of Halkbank, a Turkish state-owned bank accused by the Treasury of trying to evade US sanctions against Iran, in late 2018.

"There were any number of conversations between the president and [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey on the subject of Halkbank," Bolton said, speaking to ABC's Martha Raddatz in an interview set to air Sunday night.

"What Erdogan wanted was basically a settlement that would take the pressure off Halkbank. And let's be clear, what Halkbank had done was violate US laws respecting sanctions on Iran. If this had been US financial institutions, we would have toasted them, and quite properly so," the former national security advisor added, suggesting that this wasn't a case of unfair treatment against a foreign financial institution.

"The president said to Erdogan at one point 'look those prosecutors in New York are Obama people. Wait till I get my people in, and then we'll take care of this.' And I thought to myself, and I'm a department of justice alumnus myself  I've never heard any president say anything like that, ever. Ultimately I think Attorney General Barr got the prosecution of Halkbank that they deserved because the Turks wouldn't agree to anything like a reasonable settlement. So it turned out alright, but that's how close we got, and I found that disturbing," Bolton said.

Asked if he felt there was a crime here that could be prosecuted, Bolton said that while he didn't know all the details, "I'll tell you, it did feel like obstruction of justice to meThis idea that you give Erdogan and his family, who use Halkbank like a slush fund, in exchange for, what? Some hope down the road of some other kind of treatment for Trump or the country was very troubling to me."

Bolton, whose upcoming book is already being considered by Democratic lawmakers as an opportunity for a new probe into Trump's potential abuse of office following the collapse of Ukrainegate, has mentioned the Halkbank episode several times in recent months, even as Democratic lawmakers were still seeking to probe him over Trump's alleged illegal attempt to pressure Ukraine into restarting a corruption investigation against the Biden family in exchange for military aid.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the former national security advisor, whom he fired in September 2019 amid numerous disagreements on policy, saying many of the claims made in his upcoming book are false, and that if he had listened to him on foreign policy "we would be in World War Six by now."



 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Residents are urged to clean up their untidy backyards to avoid an unwelcome guest making themselves at home.

Queensland snake catcher Bryan Robinson issued the warning after he was called to a Corinda home in Brisbane's west last Friday to capture a 2.5metre carpet python.

He found the sneaky snake hidden in a pile of discarded timber in the messy yard.

'Spot the snake time! Some suburban yards are just purpose built for snakes,' he later posted on the Snake Catchers Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan and Gold Coast Facebook page.

Can you spot the 2.5 metre carpet python hiding in this Brisbane backyard last week

Many were quick to spot the camouflaged snake blending in with the woodpile.

'A yard like that I bet there's a heap,' one woman commented.

Mr Robinson used last week's call-out to stress the importance of having a well-maintained backyard to give snakes fewer spots to hibernate.

'The cleaner your yard is, the more obvious snakes are,' Mr Robinson told 7news.com.au.

'The whole notion of keeping your yard tidy is about ensuring that snakes don't have as many opportunities within the confines of your premises.

It didn't take long for many on Facebook to spot the snake (circled) lurking in the pile of wood

He added snakes are still 'fairly active' during winter, despite the colder weather.

'Any suburban environment in south-east Queensland is suitable for snakes, for a range of different species, especially carpet pythons,' Mr Robinson said.

Queenslanders are also urged to lock their vehicles after a 2.5 metre coastal carpet python was found curled up behind the steering wheel in Capalaba, south-west of Brisbane last week.
Worlds two biggest nuclear powers discuss arms control in Vienna, eight months before key nuclear weapons pact expires.

The United States and Russia have kicked off two-day arms control talks, eight months before a key nuclear weapons pact is to expire.

Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday met US Special Envoy Marshall Billingslea in Austrias capital, Vienna.

The New START agreement, in force for a decade but due to end in February, is the last remaining nuclear arms control deal between Washington and Moscow.

The two countries are estimated to have about 90 percent of the worlds nuclear weapons. New STARTs looming expiration has evoked concerns about a renewed arms race.

The US has said its bilateral arms control agreements with Russia are outdated and that it wants China to be included in any future agreements on nuclear weapons, even as Beijing has repeatedly said it is not interested in joining.

Billingslea said that China was a no-show at the two-day Vienna talks on Monday, posting a photo on Twitter of Chinese flags at empty chairs at the negotiating table.

Beijing still hiding behind Great Wall of Secrecy on its crash nuclear build-up, and so many other things. We will proceed with Russia, notwithstanding, Billingslea said in a statement.

A Russian security expert, Dmitry Suslov, told state media before Mondays meeting that the US appears unlikely to prolong the New START agreement without bringing China to the table.

Nuclear limits

New START limits the number of nuclear missile launchers to 800 and operational nuclear warheads to 1,550.

I presume Russias position towards prolonging the New START is ambivalent, Russian military expert Pavel Luzin told the DPA news agency.

Russias strategic arms are far fewer than the treatys ceiling, Luzin said, adding that Soviet-era nuclear weapons are being dismantled faster than Russias defence industry could produce new ones.

Moscow is not able to play in a real strategic arms race with the United States, he said.
It was an inauspicious start to whats been billed as the election of a lifetime. Donald Trump aired his grievances at length before a smaller-than-advertised crowd Saturday in Oklahoma. Joe Biden left the Delaware home where hes been cloistered for months for a quick trip across the Pennsylvania border just a few days earlier.

Yet it was a start.

After three months of little public activity, both candidates have launched their general campaigns in earnest. Their advisers have started making big ad buys. The outline of the swing state map has taken shape. And amid widespread civil unrest and an ongoing pandemic, the opening stage of what is likely to become one of the most bitter, intensely personal general election campaigns in contemporary history began to unfold.

Everybodys just ready to start slugging this thing out, said Greg McNeilly, a Republican strategist in Michigan and longtime adviser to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Its going to feel much more like trench warfare, World War I, than anything else  lots of gassing and hand-to-hand combat.

In Tulsa, and in the days beforehand, Trump and his allies signaled the beginning of a scorched earth campaign. Donald Trump Jr. has posted memes portraying Biden  baselessly  as a pedophile. Trumps campaign released an ad on Friday depicting Biden as aged and confused, calling him clearly diminished and lacking mental fortitude. On Saturday, he continued to suggest without evidence that Biden has health issues, saying, Theres something wrong with Biden.

The no-boundaries approach is in keeping with Trumps style. Yet its also a necessity for an unpopular president facing an electoral landscape thats tilted against him. Amid a pandemic that has ravaged the economy and killed about 120,000 Americans, Trump has fallen behind Biden by nearly 9 percentage points in RealClearPolitics national polling, and he lags behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in most swing states. The electoral map has become so treacherous for Trump that his campaign is spending on advertising in states that once seemed safely in his camp, such as Iowa and Ohio.

Story continues

Trumps advisers have long believed he could recover if he could drag Bidens favorability ratings down. Confronting an opponent who is viewed more favorably than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, Trump is laboring not only to depict Biden as mentally unfit  but as an addled tool of the Democratic Partys most extreme fringe.

The effort to yoke a centrist Democrat to an unhinged left was road-tested in Oklahoma, where Trump mocked Biden as a helpless puppet of the radical left. Among the lessons of Tulsa, which will inform countless rallies in the months ahead, was that invoking lightning rod progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez draws a more fervent response than criticizing Biden in isolation  and that linking Biden to that wing of the party is Trumps lodestar.

He believes that he has to push Biden to the left, and I think that's correct strategically, Frank Luntz, the veteran Republican consultant and pollster, said in an email. If Biden is seen as a centrist, he'll have an advantage among swing voters who don't want to support an extremist. But if he's seen as left-wing ideologically or overtly partisan, swing voters will have a problem with him.

For Bidens part, the unofficial election kickoff came just days before Trump spoke in Tulsa, with Biden lacing into Trump over his coronavirus response, then releasing the first major advertising offensive of the general election campaign.

A $15 million, five-week campaign on TV, digital, radio and print, the advertising push will put Biden on the air on national cable and in six battleground states Trump carried in 2016: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.

Were playing offense, buying programs like daytime Fox News and NASCAR to get in front of a large volume of Obama/Trump voters, Patrick Bonsignore, Bidens director of paid media, said in a memo describing the buy.

Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a roundtable on economic reopening with community members, Thursday, June 11, 2020, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Bonsignore said the campaigns spending on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News is designed to take advantage of the increase in viewership across cable news during the coronavirus pandemic.

While Biden is now advertising, there is disagreement among Democrats about how frequently Biden should appear in public, given both public health officials concerns about crowds during a pandemic  and Trumps penchant for self-inflicted wounds.

Every day thats not about Joe Biden is a day that Joe Biden wins, said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. Thats my view. Because if this things a referendum on Trump, hes going to lose.

But Republicans  and Trump himself  will continue to goad him to draw him out. Trumps campaign has been taunting Biden to make more public appearances, a strategy Republicans view as a win-win. If Biden begins to appear in less controlled settings, they are hopeful the events will produce narrative-changing gaffes. If he refuses, they can portray him as fragile and afraid.

Finally, hes getting out of his pajamas and getting into his suits and starting talking, said Bob Jack, chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party. I want Joe talking. I think thats great. He cant string five words together.

In response to Trumps taunts about Bidens vigor, Andrew Bates, a Biden spokesman, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that Trump just triumphantly announced on national TV that during a pandemic he's atrociously mismanaged, he ordered federal officials to slow testing to improve his personal optics at the expense of lives. So yes, let's please talk about mental acuity.

The heightened pushback is another sign that Biden and the Democratic Party are cranking to life in a recognition that the general election has begun. Bidens former rivals have helped him raise money  including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who once swore off high-dollar fundraising events. On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama will host a virtual fundraiser for his former vice president, another indication of the increasing urgency of the contest. Allies also are beginning to organize summer grassroots outreach campaigns  telephonically, if not in person  on his behalf.

Were starting to get ready to mobilize, said Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Despite outraising Trump in May  pulling in nearly $81 million to the $74 million raised by Trump and the Republican National Committee  Biden remains at an overall disadvantage in cash on hand. And Biden is still laboring to connect with young voters , especially those of color. Even a marginal drop-off in turnout in November could alter the dynamics in competitive states.

I think for different reasons neither one can afford to wait, said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean. Trump because hes behind and reeling. Biden because hes been cooped up and knows he still has some negatives and enthusiasm issues and needs to begin to address them.

Biden, Maslin said, cant just show up one day with a running mate.
Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai on Monday said in a statement that the Maha Vikas Aghadi  a three-party coalition government comprising the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress (NCP) and the Congress  has decided to temporarily put on hold the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) worth Rs 5,020 crore recently signed with three Chinese companies.

Desai clarified that the agreement has not been cancelled, as the state government wants the Centre to come up with a clear policy framework following the violent clash between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakhs Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on June 15, which left 20 Indian soldiers, including a Colonel, dead.

The state government had signed 12 MoUs worth Rs 16,300 with major global companies on the same day that the border clashes were reported.

The MoUs with three Chinese firms are worth Rs 5,020 crore, including Hengli Group (Rs 250 crore), Great Wall Motors (Rs 3,770 crore) and PMI Electro Mobility Solutions, a joint venture with Foton (Rs 1,000 crore).

We have decided to put the MoUs signed with the three Chinese firms, worth Rs 5,020 crore, on hold. However, this doesnt mean that they have been cancelled. We will be waiting for a clear policy from the Central government on this issue, Desai said in a statement issued on Monday.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
JACKSON  Food, garbage and vomit were scattered around a dispersed Darby Canyon campsite early June 14 when state wildlife officials arrived to respond to a report of a pre-dawn mountain lion attack.

The supposed cat struck through a tent, raking a sleeping man in the back.

But at the scene, Wyoming Game and Fish Department staffers Mike Boyce and Becca Lyon saw no sign of a cat. They did see ursine spoor, and 50 yards off the campsite found a decomposed deer carcass that had been fed on by a black bear just the night before.

Clearly a bear had been feeding on it recently, Game and Fish spokesman Mark Gocke said, so we decided to set a trap.

Interviewing the 20-something campers who had been awakened, carnivore managers came to the conclusion that the attack wasnt necessarily predatory in nature.

We think that it was a pretty food-conditioned bear and it was probably testing the tent to see if there was food in it, Gocke said. Then it feels a guy, the guy gets startled, the bear gets startled and the guy gets scratched.

The opportunistic animal was gentle enough in its exploration of the slumbering human that it didnt tear through the tent or the mans clothing. Nevertheless, its claws broke skin, causing a minor injury.

The bears interest in the scene was easily explained.

Frankly, it was a pretty messy campsite, Gocke said.

Photos shared by the Caribou-Targhee National Forest show vomit, bags and burnt cans of Bud Light.

There were indications that the bear was already habituated: candy wrappers littered its feces, Gocke said. Lyons dog growled at the scene, suggesting the bruin was lingering nearby, evidently undeterred by all the commotion.

On the night of June 14, the trap didnt do the trick.

But during the daytime June 15, the baited culvert trap held a young female black bear  an animal with a notably blonde-colored coat that may explain the campers confused contention of having seen a lion.

Weighing the circumstances, the carnivore crew made the call to kill the bruin.

It was pretty bold, Gocke said. Clearly it was a human safety threat, and it did injure a person, too. Whether it meant to or not, it did, so it just didnt seem like a bear that we should relocate.

West of the Tetons on the Caribou-Targhee, it is illegal to leave food and garbage scattered around a campsite at night. The national forest, not Game and Fish, enforces the food-storage order, which applies to parts of the Teton Basin, Ashton/Island Park and Dubois ranger districts, and was put in place to prevent conflicts with grizzly bears.

All food and refuse must be acceptably stored during nighttime hours, the order reads, unless it is being prepared for eating, being eaten, being transported, or being prepared for acceptable storage.

Teton Basin District Ranger Jay Pence is taking steps to enforce the law.

I did an incident report and turned it over to law enforcement, Pence told the Jackson Hole Daily.

There are multiple possible citations coming, he said, including for littering and violating the food storage order.

Pence declined to name names in the party, but said theyre local Wydahoans.

They were people who should know better, definitely, he said.

West slope Teton campers could apparently use the reminder. While making the rounds Thursday after speaking with the Jackson Hole Daily, Pence came upon a vacant campsite up Teton Canyon. People were nowhere to be seen, but a campfire still smoldered and out in plain sight atop a cooler were some Peter Pan peanut butter, white bread, and an unclipped bag of sour cream and onion Lays potato chips.

Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 13
Marketers are taking note of consumer behaviour and predicting what the next normal could look like, says Kelly Moses, DAN SSA Regional Communications Manager

Accelerate growth through e-commerce. In Africa, recently surveyed clients believe it is one of their top priorities.



Re-prioritise digital transformation and ensure that creative executions are informed by localised data.



Focus on a rich and connected digital customer experience and a seamless UX and try to bring this into the home and personal spaces, for example virtual vehicle showrooms.



Clearly redefine brand strategies and value propositions.

The move from Level 4 to Level 3 of lockdown in South Africa will create a dramatic shift in operations across local industries. The physical movements of consumers will start changing again and the way they interact with brands will continue to evolve. Lets unpack what the next normal could look like and the major role creativity will play in keeping brands relevant.Posterscope  our location experts  are expecting drastic changes in travel behaviour, which will impact shopping behaviour as detailed in their latest trends report . Heres a quick guide if you dont have the time to read the full report.As South Africans start to travel in and around their cities again, there will be a drastic change in traffic patterns. While commuters and logistics companies have not been travelling the same distances in the initial months of lockdown, this is set to change with schools reopening and more industries and people returning to the workplace. According to Posterscope , the early-morning commute to get to work will become a late-morning drive, with an earlier commute home.Shorter and more local trips will boost business for local malls, convenience stores and smaller shopping centres. Fuel consumption is set to increase when compared with the lockdown period, but will not return to 2019 levels for some time. E-commerce logistics companies may partly fill the fuel- consumption gap as consumers focus on e-commerce and convenience stores that will save them time. Any retail environment that can offer a basket of solutions or utilities will trump destination stores. These behavioural changes will force marketers to step into the next normal with optimism and focus on consumer utility. Now, more than ever, localised, data-driven insights will inform campaigns and executions, ensuring they are relevant and targeted.Another trend that is accelerating is the concept of vehicle sharing, or carpooling. As consumers begin to work in a more flexible way, they will commute less. The need to own multiple vehicles per home will decrease, and the cost of insurance, and running and maintenance costs will deter new-car buyers in future.As Covid-19 moves from the east to the west of the globe, there is a clear trend emerging in home experiences. There is already a growing tendency in most countries to move further from cities and to commute to work less often. International and local air travel will be reduced, and consumers will seek out new online experiences that keep them close to home or in their homes. Whether they use artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), gamification or simple creative executions, these strategies will all form part of the new marketing puzzle. Theres no need for every in-home experience to be led by technology, but it should always focus on utility.Puzzle-buying regained popularity during this pandemic, and Heinz, known for its iconic slow-pouring ketchup, saw an opportunity. The brand cleverly provided ketchup lovers, parents and puzzle lovers with a jigsaw puzzle guaranteed to keep people busy for hours, since it has no picture and the entire puzzle is red.Due to income disparity, and the loss of purchasing power, customers will be more price-sensitive and cautious about spending. The current economic climate has put extreme financial pressure on households, so its no surprise that the base of Maslows hierarchy of needs pyramid (physiological needs like air, water, food and shelter) will become more important than the apex (self-actualisation). If brands want to ensure that their tone speaks to their target audiences most urgent needs, their messaging will have to match that desire.Creative bravery and humour were brilliantly executed with Burger Kings Social Distancing Whopper campaign  with three layers of onions, social distancing isnt a nice-to-have, but a necessity. This display of relevance, and tongue-in-cheek humour, made this brand stand out from the clutter.For our clients, we see an opportunity to:
French forensics experts began a grim search Monday for the remains of a nine-year-old girl who disappeared 17 years ago, after a serial killer recently confessed to her murder. Experts sealed off a former home of killer Michel Fourniret, dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes", in northern France -- more than 200 kilometres from the town east of Paris where Estelle Mouzin disappeared on her way home from school in January 2003. Fourniret was jailed for life in May 2008 for the murder of seven girls and young women, and charged over Mouzin's disappearance last November after his ex-wife contradicted his alibi. Detectives first considered Fourniret a suspect in the girl's disappearance in 2006, after they found a photo of Mouzin on his computer. A white van resembling the one he drove had been spotted in the area where she vanished, in the town of Guermantes, east of Paris. But no DNA evidence was ever found to link him to the case, and Fourniret maintained for years that he was at home in southern Belgium, near the French border, on the day Mouzin disappeared. Then in November last year, Fourniret's former wife Monique Olivier told investigators that a phone call he claimed to have made from his home the day the girl vanished, was actually made by her at his request. - Focus on the cellar - And in March, Fourniret confessed Mouzin's murder to investigating magistrates, without revealing the location of the body. Ex-wife Olivier is also serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 28 years for her role in some of the abductions and killings. On Monday, investigators descended on Fourniret's former house in the Ardennes in northeast France. There were about 50 police officers as well as forensics experts, an archeologist and army engineers, preparing for excavation of the property that has never been searched until now. Investigators are particularly interested in the cellar, covered with concrete by Fourniret, and came armed with radar equipment to scan the ground before they start any digging. They were joined at the scene by advocates for the missing girl's family. Police also cordoned off another former home of Fourniret, in nearby Chateau de Sautou, where the remains of a 12-year-old girl and a 22-year-old woman were found in 2004. Fourniret was found guilty of seven killings committed between 1987 and 2001. He confessed to the kidnapping, rape and murder of his victims and his life sentence carries no possibility of parole. He was also convicted of attacks on three girls who managed to escape. eva-edy-zl-chd-lv-jpa/mlr/sjw/ach Investigators on Monday searched Fourniret's former house in the Ardennes in northeast France. Estelle Mouzin disappeared on her way home from school in January 2003 The house had never been searched before
Hugh Jackman (Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Hugh Jackman is edging closer to playing automotive icon Enzo Ferrari in a new biopic being made by acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann.

According to Deadline, the Heat director's long-in-gestation passion project will be pitched at this year's Cannes Film Festival, taking place virtually this year, where it will be seeking distributors.

Cameras on Ferrari are set to roll in the spring of 2021.

Mann has been working on it for more than two decades, basing the drama on biography Enzo Ferrari  The Man And The Machine by Brock Yates, first published in 1992.

Mann told Deadline: The real power of this piece is in the emotionally charged lives of these people in complex, extreme circumstances. In addition, there is the explosive power and lethal beauty of racing. It has a great drama at its core and thats why Ferrari stayed with me.

Italian entrepreneur and racing driver Enzo Ferrari getting out of a Ferrari car in 1966 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)

It will follow the Italian motor racer turned entrepreneur during the turbulent events of the late 1950s.

Ferrari was facing bankruptcy amid a volatile marriage to wife Laura, as well as struggling with the death of his son Alfredo 'Dino' Ferrari, who had died of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in 1956, aged just 24.

The film also looks at the fierce rivalry between Ferrari and fellow Italian manufacturer Maserati.

Movie director John Frankenheimer, left, and Enzo Ferrari, right, at Monza, 1966. (Credit: AP-PHOTO/Armando Trovati)

Christian Bale was at one time attached to the movie (with Noomi Rapace as Laura Ferrari) but was said to have walked from the role due to the weight gain that was needed for it  though in the years since, he's taken on roles which have required him to significantly bulk out.

However, just last year, Bale did end up encountering Ferrari on screen, played by Remo Girone, in the movie Ford v Ferrari, directed by James Mangold.

That film detailed the attempt by Ford to trounce Ferrari at the Le Mans rally in 1966.
- Ghana's COVID-19 case count has risen to 14,154 according to the June 21, 2020 update

- The total number of recoveries and deaths, however, remain at 10,473 and 85 respectively

- President Akufo-Addo also says government will pay exams fees of all final year students ahead of WASSCE 2020

- Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

President Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday, June 21, 2020, revealed during his 12th COVID-19 address to the nation that Ghanas Coronavirus caseload has shot up to 14,154.

He indicated that this was after some 147 new cases were recorded on Sunday, June 21.

The latest data also showed that the total number of recoveries remain at 10,473 and deaths at 85.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Ghana's death count rise to 85; 514 additional cases recorded

He also revealed in his address that his government will absorb the full examination fees of all final year students sitting for the 2020 West Africa Senior School Certification Examination (WASSCE).

For the first time in our nations history, government will absorb the WASSCE examination fees of the 313,837 students who will sit for the exams.

Meanwhile, all final year SHS students, second-year gold track students will also resume school on Monday, June 22, 2020.

President Akufo-Addo opined that in line with the new protocols to keep the students safe, a maximum of only 25 students will be admitted to a class.

READ ALSO: Anell: Kennedy Agyapong's daughter begs him on Fathers Day

There will be no sporting activities and the wearing of face mask is mandatory for both students, teachers, and non-teaching staff, he said in a televised address.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that a new Executive Instrument (E.I 164) in Ghana has made it compulsory for everyone to wear a face mask in public or risk a maximum of 10-year jail term.

The law, which has been signed by President Akufo-Addo came into force on June 15, 2020.

Those without face mask risk being incarcerated between four and 10 years or will pay a fine of GH12,000 to GH60,000, or both.

The E.I was passed as part of measures to minimise the spread of the COVID-19.

University of Ghana reopens for final year students | #Yencomgh

READ ALSO: List of the 7 NPP parliamentary candidates who went unopposed in the Greater Accra Region

Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
A version of this article appeared on the website COVID-Explained.

Recently, Moderna announced a significant milestone in its quest for a COVID-19 vaccine (more on the particulars of this below). In response, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he expected 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by early 2021. This would be completely transformative. But developing and manufacturing new vaccines typically takes yearsdecades in many cases. Theres reason to hope that a COVID-19 vaccine could come sooner, but as hopeful as anyone, including Fauci, may be, there are still many unknowns.

Advertisement

No one has a crystal ball. But we can help you understand whats happening in COVID-19 vaccine research, what we do know, and why theres so much that we dont.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Even the most innovative COVID-19 vaccine candidates would work on the same basic principles as all vaccinations. To understand that, heres a brief review of some immunology fundamentals. (For more, see this Path of the Virus explainer.)

When your immune system meets a viral threat, it begins fighting with a generic response, which is not specific to any particular virus. But during the first one to two weeks after infection, your adaptive immune cells kick in. These cells learn to recognize specific structures of the virus, called antigens, and train to target the virus once they recognize it. Adaptive immune cells do many things, but one of the major ways they protect you is by producing antibodies. Youve probably heard quite a lot about antibodies lately. Theyre large proteins created to target and stick to the antigens on the virus, and kill it.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Importantly, some adaptive immune cells become memory cells, long-lived cells that remain in your body, ready to quickly ramp up a fight against reinfections of the same pathogen so that your body doesnt have to start from scratch next time. These memory cells, along with antibodies, which also stick around in your body, are key to viral immunity.

Advertisement

Vaccines take advantage of your immune systems memory by simulating an infection in a safe manner so your body will produce memory cells and antibodies that will be ready if an actual infection occurs. To do this, vaccines have to mimic the virus so the immune cells can undergo the learning process.

The most traditional method to train the immune system is with killed or weakened virus; the virus is recognizable enough that the immune system responds, but too weak to make you sick. Measles, polio, and some flu vaccines use weakened or killed viruses. This method is how humans have been making vaccines for the past 100 years, and it works for many diseases. But these vaccines take a lot of effort to manufactureit would be hard to make enough for all 8 billion of us at once.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Other vaccine approaches introduce the antigenthe part of the virus that antibodies targetto your body without the rest of the virus. There are a few versions of these. Viral vector vaccines use a live, genetically engineered virus to introduce viral DNA into our cells, which then hijacks our own cells to produce viral antigens. This is a relatively new methodtwo Ebola vaccines have been developed using viral vectors, but these are the only vaccines that have used this methodand, while promising, it has some limitations. (For example, if youve already been infected with the virus that is used as a vector, this will not work.)

Advertisement

Advertisement

Nucleic acid vaccines work on the same principle, but with a different delivery vehicle. Rather than being delivered by a virus, the antigen-producing snippet of DNA/RNA is snuck in mechanically. One method is an oillike structure that can pass through cell membranes without disrupting them; another, called electroporation, uses electric shocks to briefly open up small holes in our cells, allowing DNA to enter. In either case, once the DNA/RNA is inside, our cells begin reading the instructions and produce antigens.

Advertisement

Advertisement

No vaccines for any diseases have yet been approved with this approach; however, several COVID-19 vaccine candidates using this approach have shown promising results (including the vaccine from Moderna about which Fauci is so optimistic). One of the biggest advantages of nucleic acid vaccines is the impressive speed at which they can be designed, allowing researchers to quickly produce potential vaccine candidates.

Finally, a protein-based vaccine takes a more direct approach, providing your body with the antigen itself. Antigen manufacturing (by a vaccine company rather than by your bodys cells) can be a slower process, and protein-based vaccines also require a component called an adjuvant, which sculpts how your immune system responds to the antigen (i.e., the type of antibodies made and how long your immune system will remember the antigen). Adjuvants are well understood chemicals, but adding additional ingredients means more development challenges. When done well, this approach has been shown to be highly successful. The Hepatitis B vaccine uses this method, as do some flu vaccines.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

However, all of those vaccinesindeed, all vaccines of all kindswere developed more slowly than the COVID vaccine timeline. (For an overview of the usual timeline of vaccine development in the U.S., see here.) Vaccine development and testing usually takes about 10 to 15 years. (For some diseases, like HIV, TB, and malaria, years of development still havent led to effective vaccines.) In the case of COVID-19, the timeline is likely to be dramatically accelerated. The FDA is determining which vaccines can go on to initial clinical trials (without preclinical animal testing) often based on previous safety and efficacy data of the type of vaccine that is being proposed. Additionally, multiple initiatives, including ones from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the NIH, have been launched to further speed up development and access to vaccines.

Advertisement

Currently, there are more than 135 COVID-19 vaccines in development, with 16 of them in human trial phases. (Phase I tests safety and optimal vaccine dosage in a small number of healthy volunteers; Phases II and III test efficacy in larger and larger groups of people, including higher-risk patients. Each phase can take six months or a year, and very few vaccines usually make it through all three successfully.) For a continuously updated tracker of vaccine candidates, check out BioRender, the NIH website, and the New York Times Vaccine Tracker. There are many different groups developing vaccines and it can be difficult to predict which candidates will succeed, as it is common for many vaccines to fail due to problems with safety, efficacy, or other issues. Here are a few candidates that are at the forefront of the clinical trial phases and may be worth watching:

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

China recently announced via social media that a vaccine candidate by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the Beijing Institute of Biological Products may be ready by late 2020 or early 2021, one of the most optimistic predictions yet. These researchers are employing a killed/weakened virus and are currently in Phase II of trials. While this inactivated virus method often provides the most robust immune response (since the virus vaccine better represents the actual SARS-CoV-2), the development process is typically longer than other approaches. Extra care may be needed to verify its safety.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The U.S. company Moderna is developing a nucleic acid vaccine that delivers mRNA instructions for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to our cells. On May 22, it reported results showing that people who were given the vaccine produced antibodies against the virus. This is a huge first step in showing the vaccine could be effective. The results were widely interpreted as positive and sent stock prices surging. Fauci said he regards these results as quite promising and said this candidate could conceivably be ready by the end of the year. However, because the data hasnt been published yet, many researchers are waiting to see the details needed to properly evaluate these claims and this would be the first ever human mRNA vaccine. Moderna has begun Phase II trials in 600 people.

Advertisement

Advertisement

A group at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University in the U.K. is employing a type of adenovirus as a viral vector to make their COVID-19 vaccine. They are currently following up from Phase I trials, which began in April and ended in late May. In preclinical trials, their candidate protected six monkeys from pneumonia, but it is hard to draw strong conclusions from these studies since the monkey model of COVID-19 only replicates mild disease. Before publishing the results from its Phase I study, the Jenner Phase II/III trial has already begun to enroll subjects. In this combination study to test how many doses the vaccine would require (Phase II) and its efficacy in a variety of age groups (Phase III), Oxford plans to enroll over 10,000 individuals. This is the largest human clinical trial to date on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate and it is moving at light speed compared to normal vaccine development.

Advertisement

The speed of vaccine development overall for COVID-19 is unprecedented. Because of the desire to go fast, most of the development has focused on newer technologies, not the traditional weakened virus approach. These newer technologies have to pick a particular antigen to focus on, and all of the candidates in development target the same protein in SARS-CoV-2: the spike protein, or S-protein. The differences across technology are largely in how they deliver instructions to your cells for how to make it.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Weve only known this virus for five months now, and the biomedical community is trying to make a lot of educated guesses based on what weve learned from other coronaviruses. Scientists are developing S-protein based vaccines because research on SARS and MERS suggests that an antibody response to S-protein could be protective, and we know that the S-protein plays a key part in the induction of antibodies. But we never developed a SARS vaccinethe epidemic ended before a vaccine was ready to be testedand we dont have human vaccines for any other coronaviruses. We dont know for sure that a S-protein based vaccines is going to work.

Advertisement

At least some scientists are worried that we have all of our eggs in one S-protein basket, so to speak. We are relying on an assumption that the immune response to the S-protein worksand while this is an assumption based on promising data, it still could be wrong. Some enlightening research published in the last month has shown that the human body forms antibody and T-cells responses not only in response to the S-protein but also to other important proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If we discover that raising a vaccine-mediated immune response to S-protein doesnt provide protection (regardless of the different delivery technologies), research would be set back months, or even years.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Because of this concern, ImmunityBio and NantKwest are developing an adenovirus vector vaccine that incorporates the S-protein and a second protein on surface of the virus, nucleocapsid protein. They arent as far ahead in development as Moderna and the rest, but they are planning a Phase I trial this summer and were selected for Operation Warp Speed for expedited development. Stay tuned this summer and fall to see how these new approaches pan out.

Advertisement

Many different companies are racing toward the same goal through different approaches, which provides some (but not perfect) hedging against failure of a single candidate. A process that usually takes years is being condensed into months. Vaccine companies have partnered with manufacturing companies before theyve seen positive results to ensure high production capabilities.

Advertisement

But as different vaccine candidates are being accelerated through the pipeline, companies and government agencies must still ensure safety in addition to efficacy.

It is important to stress that any predictions about when these vaccines will be ready, not to mention how well they will work, are guesses in the dark. We all want a solid timeline to grasp and hope for, and we just dont know is an unsatisfactory answerbut we really just dont know. Its possible that the successful vaccine candidate has not yet been created. Efficacious vaccines are often not safe. Safe vaccines might not be effective. Vaccines that work in monkeys often dont work at all in humans.

Advertisement

Advertisement

It is also important to note that as the number of COVID-19 cases decreases, efficacy of the various vaccine candidates will be harder to judge because it will be hard to tell if the vaccine is working to protect people whove received it, or if theyre just not being exposed to the virus thanks to social distancing and other efforts to reduce transmission.

Will this extend the timescales of the trials? Will the currently accelerated trials compromise safety? How long will it take to scale up manufacturing capabilities and produce enough doses? The speed of progress is encouraging, but well need more time to answer these questions for certain.

Update, June 22, 2020: This article has been updated to clarify how RNA and DNA vaccines are delivered.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Bengaluru, June 22 : Bucking the daily trend of domestic returnees being the highest number of Covid-19 positive cases in Karnataka, contacts of earlier cases outnumbered returnees yet again in infections as the state reported 249 cases, taking the tally to 9,399, while five persons succumbed to the virus, an official said on Monday.

"New cases reported from Sunday 5 p.m. to Monday 5 p.m., 249," said a health official.

As many as 125 contacts of earlier cases contracted the virus, constituting 50 per cent of the cases.

Unlike before, returnees accounted for only 50 or 20 per cent of the cases, majority of them from Maharashtra.

There were also 11 cases with international travel history to Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sharjah.

Meanwhile, nine people succumbed to the virus, three in Bengaluru Urban and one each from Ramanagara and Ballari.

On Monday, cases spiked in Bengaluru Urban, Kalaburagi, Vijayapura, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Davangere, Uttara Kannada, Bagalkote, Bidar and Chikkamagaluru.

Among the new cases, Bengaluru Urban has contributed 126 cases, followed by Kalaburagi (27), Vijayapura (15), Udupi (14), Dakshina Kannada (12), Davangere (9), Uttara Kannada and Bagalkote (6 each), Bidar (5), Dharwad and Bengaluru Rural (4 each), Ramanagara (3), Chitradurga, Kolar, Kodagu and Tumkur (2 each), Yadgir, Mysuru, Chikkaballapura, Gadag and Koppal (1 each).

As many as 47 patients are suffering from Influenza-like Illness (ILI) and nine from Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI).

On a positive note, 111 people got discharged, raising the total discharges to 5,730.

Currently, Bengaluru Urban is leading the state's Covid-19 burden with 919 active cases, followed by Kalaburagi (484), Yadgir (343), Ballari (327), Dakshina Kannada (185) and Bidar (163).

Covid cases are consistently rising in Bengaluru, reaching up to a whopping 919 active cases.

In all, 5.15 lakh samples have been tested so far, of which 4.93 lakh have returned negative.

Of the 142 deaths, Bengaluru Urban has accounted for 67 deaths, followed by Bidar (15), Kalaburagi (11), Vijayapura and Davangere (7 each) and Dakshina Kannada (6) among others.

Meanwhile, amid rising Covid cases in the city, the health department has designated two stadiums and a spiritual centre as Covid Care Centres (CCC).

"There is a need for enhancing the number of CCCs in and around Bengaluru city and therefore exercising power under Epidemic Diseases Act 1897 and also in view of public interest, the following facilities are hereby designated to function as CCCs," said a health official.

The three facilities are Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar Ashram at Udayapura, Kanteerava Indoor Stadium at Sampangiramanagar and Koramangala Indoor Stadium.

Covid treatment facilities are categorized as CCCs, Dedicated Covid Health Centres (DCHC) and Dedicated Covid Hospitals (DCH).

CCCs deal with asymptomatic cases, DCHCs manage mild to moderate symptomatic Covid patients and DCHs are meant for serious patients.

The Haj Bhavan has also been designated as a CCC which can accommodate up to 500 asymptomatic patients.

The three facilities have to provide infrastructure, staff, resources and others for appropriate management of Covid patients.

"These institutions will abide by the guidelines, protocols and standard operating procedures issued by the government from time to time," he said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Scott Morrisons crusade against compulsory superannuation marks the greatest assault on the living standards of working Australians since John Howards WorkChoices industrial laws took the meat axe to wages and conditions.

Using the bushfire and pandemic as political cover, Morrison is determined to fulfil the Liberal Partys long-held desire to freeze the compulsory super guarantee levy at its current 9.5 per cent rate.

Backbenchers are unlikely to make a push on superannuation without the blessing of the Prime Minister. Credit:Rhett Wyman

If Morrison succeeds, it may boost his popularity among neoliberal zealots. But it will entrench stark inequalities between rich and poor. With the levy frozen at its current rate, a 30-year-old worker earning $40,000 a year will have the equivalent of $10,000 less each year in retirement.

The Liberal Party was softening the electorate up for this before the pandemic struck, commissioning Peter Costellos former chief-of-staff Mike Callaghan to head an inquiry into retirement incomes. Superannuation Assistant Minister Jane Hume was privately telling industry she viewed 10 per cent as a nice round number.
New Delhi:

The 2002 Nitish Katara murder case had shook the nation due to the sheer brutality attached to it. Supreme Court will decide on Monday the quantum of sentence to be awarded to Vikas Yadav, his cousin Vishal and their aide Sukhdev Pehalwan, all of whom were convicted in the case.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan will pronounce the verdict on the appeals filed by Vikas and Vishal against the Delhi High Court order which had enhanced the life term to 25 years in jail without remission and an additional five years for destruction of evidence in the case by terming the murder of Katara as "honour killing".

Yadavs' acquaintance Sukhdev Yadav alias Pehelwan was also awarded an enhanced life sentence of 25 years without remission by the court which held that the crime fell in "rarest of rare category", but saved them from the gallows saying possibility of their reformation and rehabilitation is not "unforseeably foreclosed".

The Supreme Court had on August 17, 2015, upheld the conviction of Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev, saying "only criminals are crying for justice" in this country. While upholding the conviction, the apex court had said that it will separately consider hearing pleas on the limited aspect relating to enhancement of quantum of sentence of the three convicts by the High Court. It had, issued notice to the Delhi government on the scope of punishment and sought the reply within six weeks.

Earlier, the high court had held that the murder of Katara, who was in love with Vikas's sister, was an "honour killing" which was done in a "very carefully planned and premeditated" manner with "extreme vengeance". It had also enhanced the fines imposed on Vikas and Vishal by slapping an amount of Rs 54 lakh each on them, to be deposited in the trial court within six weeks.

Vikas (39), Vishal (37) and Sukhdev (40) were serving life term awarded by the lower court in May 2008 for abducting and killing Katara, a business executive and the son of a railway officer, on the night of February 16-17, 2002, as they opposed the victim's affair with Bharti, daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav.

The high court had on April 2, 2014, upheld the verdict of the lower court in the case by describing the offence as "honour killing" stemming from a "deeply-entrenched belief" in caste system. Katara was abducted and killed by Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev as they did not approve of the victim's affair with Bharti because they belonged to different castes, the court said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The temporary boss of Mothercare is to leave by the end of the month 'to pursue other opportunities'.

Glyn Hughes, previously finance director of Mothercare, had been appointed as interim chief executive at the start of the year.

His sudden departure leaves Mothercare without a chief executive, even on a temporary basis, unless it can find someone at a short notice.

Mothercare said they are making 'good progress' with the search for a new boss

The company, whose UK arm went bust at the end of last year resulting in the closure of all its 79 stores, said the business will be led by the chief operating office and chief financial officer under the watchful eye of the chairman.

'We are making good progress with the search for our new permanent CEO and are now at shortlist stage,' it said.

Mothercare also announced it has now reopened around two-thirds of its partners' stores around the world.

It has also agreed to lease out some of its warehouse in Daventry to another company, and move into a smaller office, saving around 3.5million on an annual basis.

In March, Mothercare sent home its 430 UK employees who were working in Boots and said it had put its franchise deal with the pharmacy on hold.

Back then, it also warned that the coronavirus outbreak was likely to impact its short-term revenue. But added that its experience of going into administration in the UK last year was 'proving invaluable' to deal with the impact of coronavirus on its franchises around the world.

After going bust in the UK, the group re-focused on simply providing branded products to retailers.

Chairman Clive Whiley said: 'Whilst we have not been immune to temporary store closures in almost all of our territories over the period, I am pleased that we are seeing the reopening of our partners' stores.

'At the same time, we continue to take action to reduce our cost base and address legacy issues, helping with our return to being a profitable and sustainable business.

'Finally, I would like to thank Glyn Hughes, both personally and on behalf of the board.'

Shares in Mothercare rose at the open, but were trading 5 per cent lower at 7.60p in mid-morning trading.
India and China are holding military-level talks on Monday to defuse the border tensions. Along with military-level talks, both sides are planning to engage at diplomatic level soon, it has been learnt.

Officials on both sides are working out a schedule for talks and a meeting may take place soon.

Contours of talks are being chalked out and these can take place at multiple levels including Joint Secretary- level. There is still no official word on the proposed meet from both sides.

Meanwhile, Foreign Ministers S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi will be joining virtual Russia, India, China meeting on Tuesday. Russia is hosting the meet and it will be on a multilateral agenda with a focus on COVID-19.

Diplomatic talks are being planned in the backdrop of a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan Valley.

The clash on June 15 happened as a result of an attempt by the Chinese troops to unilaterally change the status quo during de-escalation in eastern Ladakh.

India has said that the situation could have been avoided if the agreement at the higher level been scrupulously followed by the Chinese side.

China and its mouthpiece Global Times have been claiming entire Galwan Valley. India has said that China 's claim on Galwan Valley is exaggerated, untenable and unacceptable.

India lost 20 of its soldiers in the violent face-off in the Galwan Valley and 10 Indian soldiers also were held captive and later released. Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured.

Following the face-off, China's Vice Foreign Minister Luo Zhaohui and Indian Ambassador to China Vikram Misri met in Beijing on June 16.

External Affairs Minister Jaishankar held telephonic talks with Wang on June 17 and conveyed that what happened in Galway was a "pre-mediated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties."

Jaishankar recalled that at the meeting of senior Military Commanders held on June 6, an agreement was reached on de-escalation and disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and ground commanders were meeting regularly to implement this consensus throughout the last week.

Dr Jaishankar said while there was some progress, "the Chinese side sought to erect a structure in Galwan valley on our side of the LAC".

The minister said the two sides should scrupulously and sincerely implement the understanding that was reached by the senior commanders on June 6 and troops of both sides should also abide by the bilateral agreements and protocols.
GREENCASTLE, Pa., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- HomePromise, a VA Mortgage Lender, presents a new type of video documentary series, HomePromise Heroes. The new video series will share the riveting personal stories of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

HomePromise Heroes is a new web documentary that shares the personal stories of the men and women willing to give the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

HomePromise Heroes is proud to honor the men and women who made a promise to protect against all enemies. The video series shows the courage and struggle of military service through the stories of those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Veterans speak freely and unscripted about their experiences, sacrifices, challenges and more.

To view HomePromise Heroes, follow HomePromise on Facebook.

"We wrote a check a blank check for our lives," says Best Selling author, Steven Kuhn in the pilot episode scheduled for release in July 2020. Don't miss the biggest documentary release of the year.

Media Contact:

Liam Michaels

[email protected]

800-975-0640

www.homepromise.com

SOURCE HomePromise Corporation

Related Links

http://www.homepromise.com


A one kilo Swiss gold bar and US dollars gold coins are pictured in Paris on February 20, 2020.

Gold prices climbed 1% on Monday to hit the highest in more than a month, as investors took refuge in the safe-haven metal after an uptick in coronavirus cases roiled hopes for a quick economic recovery.

Spot gold was up 1% at $1,760.55 per ounce. The session high was 1,762.84, highest since May 18. Prices were $4 shy of a 7-1/2 year high of $1,764.55, hit last month.

U.S. gold futures was also 1.3% higher at $1,776.

"There is some flight to safety in gold," said Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at RJO Futures. "Rise in coronavirus cases globally have led gold to break the $1,750 level. If we close above $1,765 today, the $1,800 level is not very far."

Gold, a safe haven during times of economic uncertainty, got a boost after the World Health Organization on Sunday reported a record jump in global infections, with the biggest increases in North and South America.

Two U.S. Federal Reserve officials on Friday warned the unemployment rate could rise again if the disease is not brought under control. Central bank across the globe have taken aggressive stimulus measures and kept interest rates low during the pandemic.

"There seems to be some increase in inflation expectations which is pushing real rates lower and giving some support to the gold price," said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo.

Lower interest rates reduces the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion. The dollar index was down 0.5% at 97.15, making gold cheaper for holders of other currencies.

Meanwhile, SPDR Gold Trust holdings on Friday rose 2% to 1,159.31 tonnes, the highest level since April 2013.

Silver rose 2.1% to $17.97 per ounce, after hitting a more than one week high at $18.01.

Palladium was up 1.1% at$1,932.22, while platinum gained 2.7% to $827.58, hitting more than a week high at $833.67.


New Corporate Branding and Trading Name

Perth, June 22, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Wiluna Mining Corporation Limited ( ASX:WMX )(formerly Blackham Resources Limited) is pleased to announce the adoption of a new brand and identity. The Company will henceforth be trading under the name "Wiluna Mining" and the ASX code "WMX".The Wiluna Mining Operation has a proud 124-year history in which it has produced over 4 million ounces of gold from one the world's greatest gold endowments. While the Board acknowledges this great legacy, and owns the challenges of the operation in recent history, the new identity represents a resolute departure from the past, and importantly, a renewed focus on the future. It announces the Company's bold new strategic direction, corporate purpose and hunger for future growth.Wiluna Mining's Executive Chair Milan Jerkovic said the change represents a new chapter in the historic Wiluna story and supports the Company's strategic transformation initiated last year."Over the past 12 months there has been transformational changes within the Company. We have cleaned up and strengthen our balance sheet including paying off all of our debt, outlined our two Stage development to become a +200kozpa, long life gold producer, signed agreements with two very large groups in Polymetal and Trafigura for 100% of our gold concentrate offtake, received credit approval for a $21 million gold swap financing that can increase to $61 million , attracted some excellent new, international institutional shareholders to our share registry and recruited a number of outstanding new individuals to our management and technical team. We have also implemented a new operating model to set a platform for future growth. We are in a transitional growth phase and that is not without its challenges, however we are resilient, determined and above all committed to our shareholders".He continued, "Wiluna Mining is a growth and under the headframe exploration company which currently produces +60kozpa but is working towards a staged development to produce over 200kozpa of gold in concentrate from our large underground sulphide deposits. As recent drilling has demonstrated, the opportunity at Wiluna to increase that Mineral Resource and reserve through discovery "under the headframe" is significant. We are working hard every day to build a better, more profitable mining business and this tenacity is what Wiluna Mining stands for"."The change to Wiluna Mining is about uniting our Company under a common identity centred on integrity and delivering on our promises with consistent performance. We have a remarkable growth opportunity, we now have the right team in place and we are focused on unearthing the true potential of the Wiluna gold system. Wiluna has the potential scale and geology to become one the largest gold mines in a Tier 1 jurisdiction and the best is yet to come," Jerkovic said.About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd

Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential.
Parents are furious after children as young as seven were forced to learn a disturbing song about 'people dying alone' from COVID-19 .

Year two students, aged between seven and eight, were taught the 'COVID-19 song' at Bogangar Public School in Tweed Heads in northern NSW for a month.

Outraged that children were learning the distressing song, Brenda Steel shared a picture of the lyric sheet to Facebook on Sunday.

'This (the song lyrics) was pulled out of my friend's son's bag. They are learning this for assembly. YEAR 2. This is nothing but mind control to instill fear and conformity,' Ms Steel captioned the post.

Lyrics of a 'COVID-19 song' taught to year two students, aged between seven and eight, at Bogangar Public School in Tweed Heads in northern NSW for a month

The song's morbid lyrics describe 'people dying alone, connected to family only by phone' due to social distancing restrictions.

'News was scary tonight, the future is not so bright. Invisible killer stalking its prey, message was clear, stay home today!' the lyrics read.

'We've been forced into the ring against this pandemic monster thing - officials set out to control, protecting the young and the old.'

After building up fear, the end message of the song is for children to practice social distancing by not congregating and isolating when possible.

Mother Rachel Mathison said she was 'shocked' her year two son Kash was learning the song for a month before she found out.

'It's a very depressing song, there's so much fear in the lyrics,' Ms Mathison told The Daily Telegraph.

'I felt awful when I read it so I can only imagine how an eight-year-old would feel not only reading it, but having to memorise it.'

'The song's made up by the school should now be sent to parents for feedback  it's actually a very sad day when you need to start monitoring the activities that go on at your local school.'

The entrance of Bogangar Public School. Mother Rachel Mathison said she was 'shocked' her year two son Kash learned mature song lyrics for a month before she found out

After considerable backlash from parents, Bogangar Public School Principal Muriel Kelly apologised to parents in a letter.

'It has come to our attention that the Year 2 song students have started learning is a sensitive topic,' Mrs Kelly wrote in the letter.

'The students were entering the Australian Children's Music Foundation singing and songwriting competition.

'To enable this to continue, a new song is being co-written with year 2 under the guidance of their teachers.'
A citizens' climate council initiated by President Emmanuel Macron to discuss new ways to cut carbon emissions has urged the French leader to hold a referendum on making the destruction of nature a crime.

The "ecocide" proposal topped dozens of ideas presented by the 150 randomly picked members of the Citizen's Convention on Climate, along with inscribing the fight against global warming in the French Constitution.

But participants voted against submitting a broader package of measures to the public as it wound up three days of debate during its final session on Sunday.

The move was a rejection of President Macron's suggestion last week that a referendum could be held on the individual measures, which range from improving home insulation to cutting maximum highway speeds to 110 km/h from 130 km/h.

"Let's make this referendum we've decided on the basis for holding all the other discussions," said Hubert, one of the participants, who like the others was identified by his first name only.

Members gathered in separate rooms at the Palais d'Iena in Paris, while others participated by videoconference, to ensure social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak.

Macron formed the council in response to demands for greater "direct democracy" in the wave of the Yellow Vest anti-government protests that rocked the country in 2018 and 2019.

The unexpectedly fierce rebellion was sparked by a planned fuel tax hike aimed at funding the climate-change fight, which critics said unfairly targeted people who have no choice but to rely on their cars.

The council was tasked with finding ways to reduce France's carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030, compared with the levels of 1990 "in a spirit of social justice."

Work began last October, and was expected to wind up earlier this year before meetings were halted during the coronavirus lockdown.

Macron has already said he will announce a "first response" when he meets with the 150 members at the Elysee Palace on June 29th.

(AFP)
Attorneys for ex-police officer Garrett Rolfe are defending his name and disputing the District Attorney's account that he never told Rayshard Brooks he was under arrest before he killed.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said white cop Garrett Rolfe never told Brooks he was under arrest for driving under the influence before they got into a scuffle that resulted in Brooks being fatally shot.

Lawyers Noah H. Pines and Bill Thomas are refuting that statement saying Rolfe did alert Brooks that he was under arrest.

'While we are waiting for the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) to finish its investigation, there are certain allegations made by Paul Howard that are simply not supported by the fats,' they said in a statement Monday, according to CNN.

Lawyers for fired cop Garrett Rolfe (left) are disputing District Attorney Paul Howard's (right) statements in regards the officer's charges. Last week he was hit with 11 charges including felony murder for the killing for Rayshared Brooks at a Wendy's drive-thru in Atlanta on June 12

Cops responded to a call about a person sleeping behind the wheel at a Wendy's drive-thru and found 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks (above) in the car

Speaking on the arrest they said: 'It is clear from the video that Officer Rolfe told Mr. Brooks, "I think youve had too much to be driving. Put your hands behind your back."'

'Clearly this statement is sufficient to inform Mr. Brooks that he is under arrest.'

Pines and Thomas also disputed Howard on statues regarding use of force, statements about whether a Taser is a deadly weapon, and details of the struggle over the Taser between Brooks and the cops.

On June 12 Officer Rolfe and officer Devin Brosnan responded to a Wendys drive-thru lane following a call about someone asleep behind the wheel.

They woke Brooks up and suspected he had been drinking. They had him complete a Breathalyzer test, which he failed. Police tried to handcuff him and a struggle ensued.

Pictured: Police body cam footage from the arrest of Rayshard Brooks on June 12, 2020. Brooks was being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence

Brooks grabbed one of the officers Tasers and ran off and the officers pursued on foot. During the chase Brooks turned and pointed the taser at an officer, prompting Rolfe to shoot him twice in the back.

Last week Rolfe was hit with 11 charges, including felony murder.

Howard also raised charges against Brosnan, who faces an aggravate assault charge for standing on Brooks in the parking lot.

Brooks' case is just the latest in a string of devastating police killings of black people in the US.

Fired officer Garrett Rolfe (left in mugshot) was booked on felony murder and assorted other charges on June 18. Devin Brosnan, who was present but did not fire shots, is seen in a mugshot on Thursday

Protests have unfolded for a month now following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

On Sunday US Rep. Doug Collins called for an independent prosecutor to handle the case, calling the charges against the two officers political.

Howard has denied that his office filed the charges for political gain.

Following Brooks killing in Atlanta, Police Chief Erika Shields stepped down from office.
COVID-19 has been tough for both tenants and landlords, and it is the physical process that has made things challenging for both parties, especially if one wants to vacate the premises or for that matter rent out a new one. The refund of security amount and rent deferment due to the contagion are the biggest areas of concern, especially since most lease agreements do not factor in the virus as a force majeure event.

Of late, there have been a slew of launches of tech interventions to deal with these issues. One of them is the launch of an escrow account that takes care of the know-your-customer process, generates legal documents and also holds the advance and security deposits digitally, not to mention the rent receipt that it generates month-on-month.

This escrow mechanism may become the norm once the governments draft model tenancy act is implemented and will go a long way in pre-empting litigation.

In the event of the escrow account mechanism gaining popularity, one may see legal cases pertaining to real estate dropping from 66 percent to 33 percent as almost half the cases are to do with rental and resale transactions, says Ashwin Chawwla, the founder and CEO of Escrowffrr.

In India, 66 percent of pending court cases in India are to do with real estate matters and the country is globally ranked 163rd in terms of contract enforceability.

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

We are trying to bring in digitization of escrow to democratize the rental process by using technology, he says.

The facility has been launched across nine cities that include Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Jaipur and Indore. The charges are Rs 3,999 for the tenant and Rs 999 for the landlord. The rental documents have an inbuilt COVID-19 protection clause that treats the lockdown period as a force majeure event and makes it clear that no rental would be charged for the period.

The conventional process of renting and vacating a property is full of several bottlenecks and is heavily dependent on multiple physical interventions to close the loop. This, in the current environment where social distancing is the de facto norm, becomes problematic and has led to a slowdown in rental activity across India.

Neo Rent is designed to be the one-stop solution to address all of these challenges. We have crafted this offering by leveraging our unique escrow-based approach to create a holistic trust-based rental transaction suite, catering to the complete rental journey of users, he says.

Here is how it works.

Anyone can register on the platform first  the landlord or the tenant. Post registration, the KYC process is completed seamlessly as the governments Digilocker is integrated into the software. Post which a standardized contract between the two parties are generated.

The user punches in digitally the variable information with regard to the property and the two parties on the platform. These are auto captured in a standard contract which is accessible to both parties on their dashboards, he explains.

For signing the contract, the parties have two options before them. They can either download, print the document physically or e-sign it. There are also payment gateways available for generating the document on the requisite stamp paper.

The next step is to deposit the security deposit and advance rent in the escrow account. Once deposited, the funds get reflected on the dashboard of the two parties.

There is always a time lag between when you sign the contract and when the tenant actually moves into the property. The idea is to provide adequate protection to the tenant on the amount deposited by him till the time he moves in, he says, adding the landlord too has to meet certain milestones such as getting the property cleaned, dressing it up with a fresh coat of paint etc.

Depending on the completion of these terms and conditions the advance deposit in the escrow moves seamlessly to the landlord, he says.

When the tenant finally moves into the property, he instructs that the amount from the escrow account be transferred to the landlord. The same mechanism is utilized every month to transfer rentals and a digitally signed rental receipt is generated.

At the end of the term, if any one party wishes to exit the lease and get back the security deposit or return the deposit, there is a contactless exit plan in place.

By a click of the button a notice is sent to the landlord and as per the terms and conditions of the contract signed by the two parties, the deposit is returned after the landlord has ensured that the property is being returned in the same condition, he says.

The company is also in active discussion with state RERA authorities for use of the escrow mechanism for channel partners.

We intend to create a mechanism that protects their brokerages, he says.

The firm is also in talks with co-working and co-living service providers for embracing the neo-rent technology.

Hello World, a subsidiary of Nestaway Technologies, has launched 360Life - a contactless home-rental solution to ensure safety of its customers. 360Life primarily focuses on three axes of living and comes with multiple tech-enabled features in the co-living space.

The first axis focuses on health and safety protocols, wherein, house hunting is replaced with real time video-based home-tours. It also provides non-sharing private smart-lock enabled rooms, health safety checks for all the tenants and staff. Video chat supported tours help to rent a home safely and remotely without any human contact.

The second axis focuses on home office solutions, making the work from home exprecience for the tenants seamless and efficient at the same time. 360Life provides the tenants with cabinet-cum-work desks, 24*7 uninterrupted power with industry standard WiFi solutions and meeting rooms in the common areas, in case more colleagues want to attend meetings together.

The third axis focuses on the happiness quotient, aiming towards a positive mental health, given the current circumstances, so as to lead a healthy social life. Through 360life we are trying to redefine urban living post COVID-19, by not just providing a private living space which can convert to your private office but a safe living that can also fulfill your social needs. said Jitendra Jagadev, Founder & CEO - Hello World.

Additionally, Hello World is also offering zero lock-in, zero brokerage and instant move-in to all its customers.

NoBroker.com has partnered with SBI to offer flat 300 cash back on maintenance payments of the value of Rs 6000 or above on using SBI credit card. The offer can be availed by residents of societies using NoBrokerHood and Society Connect.

The same offer can also be availed by residents of societies that are not using NoBrokerHood by entering the society details, the bill details and transfer account details on NoBroker Pay to make the payment instantly.

We are committed to bringing digital payments in real estate. People traditionally use cash or cheque for maintenance payment and it used to take 2-7 days for the amount to be reconciled by society. Residents have been struggling with reconciliation issues. By paying through the NoBrokerHood, Nobroker or the SocietyConnect apps, the maintenance payments can be made instantly and seamlessly, said Akhil Gupta, co-founder and CTO of NoBroker.
What The Study Did: Measures implemented in a community in China to restrict the spread of COVID-19 are examined in this case series.

Authors: Wen-Wu Zhang, B.Med., and Qing-Li Dou, Ph.D., of The People's Hospital of Baoan Shenzhen in China, are the corresponding authors.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.12934)

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.2020.12934?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=062220

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.

###
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, the Founder and President of LoveWorld Incorporated, also known as Christ Embassy, says pastors cannot believe in Jesus Christ and be scared of the novel Coronavirus aka Covid-19 claiming lives across the globe.



According to him, he cannot fathom why some Christian leaders would gladly accept guidelines proposed to them by the government to operate amid the Covid-19 pandemic.



Meanwhile, Nigeria has recorded over 20,000 confirmed cases of the Coronavirus, according to a statement put out by the countrys Disease Control Centre but Pastor Chris tagged the numbers as false claims.



In a seven-minute video circulating on social media, these were his words:



They told churches to open and they gave them guidelines but if you read you will know they are not minds that have any science in them.



I asked someone to read and all was just a laughing matter; you couldnt believe educated people drew up those guidelines but I was told church leaders gave those guidelines to government during a consultation.



And these leaders who full of fear and afraid of the virus, dont believe in Jesus Christ.



You cannot believe in Jesus and be afraid of Covid-19. At the healing school, I laid hands on all kinds of diseases including leprosy. Never once did I think I will be infected because the Bible is there. But these people pretending to represent Christians in the government is a shame.



And I think the government is laughing at them. If you are afraid of the virus, your gospel has ended. The moment you give guidelines, you have failed.



Many of those ministers need prayers and we have to pray for these pastors that are scared and that is the reason many churches are shut down.



They are wicked guidelines. If you want to lay hands on the sick you should wear gloves? This is crazy and that holy communion that Jesus told us to take is suspended because of the pandemic? This is crazy.



They need to realize what is going on. I spoke to a group of pastors recently and I told them what they are planning is the ultimate tool for prosecution.



It means those who will follow Christ will be persecuted by the same people who crucified Christ. They have told the government they are ready to supervise which means they have decided they will be spies for the govt.



Ask your pastor if he is in the kind of association. Frankly, I am convinced that those guidelines are unacceptable. In fact, we are going into a period where many governments are going to be sued.



Heres why, because they destroyed business and economies on the basis of false claims. They will be asked for evidence of the actions they took. For some, it will be right now and from the month of June, you will see.





Many people died and many people who were sick of other things were not allowed to be cured because of these actions, he said.













Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Monsoon is likely to hit the national capital by June 25, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. Monsoons are likely to advance to Uttar Pradesh in a few days' time, following which it is likely to reach Noida and Ghaziabad. It is unlikely that the mercury will cross the 40 degree-mark this week.

The IMD officials expect rain showers to continue this week and the maximum temperature to be around 35 degree Celsius during the next three days. According to weather experts, monsoon will arrive 2-3 days earlier in Delhi than its usual date on June 27 due to a cyclonic circulation that developed over West Bengal and moved towards southwest UP on June 19 and June 20. The monsoon is also likely to cover Haryana and Punjab simultaneously.

Pre-monsoon showers have been taking place in parts of western UP, Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana. After temperature breached the 40 degree-mark, Delhi-NCR witnessed thunderstorms accompanied by rains on the weekend.

Meanwhile, heavy rain lashed parts of Delhi and nearby areas on Monday morning. The third consecutive spell of rains in Delhi and Noida brought down the maximum temperature. Due to rain, however, waterlogging was also witnessed in some parts of Delhi and Noida. Heavy waterlogging was witnessed near Lodhi Road, towards INA market from Barapullah today. According to an India Today report, waterlogging was also witnessed outside the ACP office in Noida.

Also read: Fitch revises outlook of SBI, PNB, ICICI Bank to negative; affirms long-term ratings
New Delhi, June 22 : With the Indian Railways hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic as its traffic earnings are down by 58 per cent in the last three months till May, the national transporter has prepared an action plan to reduce expenditure that includes closure of uneconomical branch lines, grounding of diesel locomotives older than 31 years, reducing stationary cost by 50 per cent and others.

The action plan of the railways also plans to control expenditure drastically through various measures including cutting staff cost, reducing ticket counters among others. In a letter to all the zonal railways dated June 19, the Railways Executive Director, Finance (Budget) said that "as you all are aware that Railways have been mandated by the government to meet all of their revenue expenses including pension from own receipts." "The Covid-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown is however likely to adversely impact the budgeted earnings target of the current year. Railways traffic earnings to the end of May have already dropped by 58 per cent over COPPY," it said.

In a 3-page letter to General Managers of all zones and production units on June 19, Railways Financial Commissioner Manjula Rangarajan suggested for exploring new areas of expenditure control and enhancement of earnings. In her letter emphasising on the strategy for freezing of new post creation except for safety related ones and curtailing the staff who are being re-engaged after retirement to save a substantial amount on account of salary bills as many are currently being re-hired across the country in railways.

In her letter, she further stressed the zones to review contracts, reduce energy consumption and cut costs in administrative and other areas. "Review of posts created in the last two years should be done and if recruitment has not been done against those posts, the same may be reviewed for surrendering, rationalisation of manpower in workshops. Time and motion study of workshops and production units for review of allowed time and incentives," the letter said.

The financial commissioner also emphasised that all file work be moved to the digital sphere and advised that all correspondence must be done through secure e-mail. It also instructed the zones to reduce the use of stationery articles, cartridges and other items by at least 50 per cent and review and close all uneconomical branches of the ministry.

The Financial Commissioner described the annual inspection by the General Manager as a "big affair" and said that annual inspections should be a silent and low-key affair with the minimum number of staff required. The letter also said all outsourced activities such as on-board housekeeping, linen management, station cleaning, elevator and escalator manning, station announcement should be reviewed and curtailed and attempts should be made to get them done through corporate social responsibilities.

It also asked the zones to review the annual maintenance contracts with a view of reducing these to bare minimum and analysing the regular or recurring failures to introduce element of penalty for design flaws. The Financial Commissioner also asked the zonal railways to critically review the usage of the high speed diesel oil for other than traction purposes and discouraged. "No running of diesel under wire without approval from the General Manager, non traction energy consumption should be reduced by at least 25 per cent, energy audit of major load centres," the letter read.

The officer stressed on shifting more trains to hotel load with conversion to head on generation to reduce consumption of diesel in power cars and strict monitoring of diesel savings due to this should be done.

To cut on expenditure, the officer said, "Review and closure of uneconomic branch lines to the extent possible." In view of the Covid-19 pandemic threat, the national transporter has suspended passenger, mail and express train services from March 25. The Railways started to operate the Shramik Special trains from May 1 to transport the stranded migrant workers, students, pilgrims and tourists and since then it has operated over 4,450 Shramik Special trains to ferry over 60 lakh people. The Railways also started operations of 15 pairs of special AC trains from May 12 and 200 time tabled trains from June 1.

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The third and final season of Danish drama The Rain will screen in August.

One of the most viewed non-English Netflix originals, it returns for 6 final episodes.

The Rain launched its first season on Netflix in 2018 and has since then excited young fans from all over the world. The apocalyptic series has a strong fan base in its origin country Denmark, but it has also been welcomed by fans from other countries such as Germany, Poland, France, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. No less than 30 million viewers have watched The Rain and today the Danish Netflix Original is still one of the most watched non-English Netflix Originals.

The Rain season 3 will pick up where the second season left off. Years after the rain decimated the population of Scandinavia, Simone and Rasmus find themselves at odds on how to save humanity. Rasmus wants to infect everyone with the same beta version of the virus that turned him into a superhuman, while Simone insists that there must be a cure. Will they manage to put their differences aside in order to do the right thing?

Season 3 stars Alba August (Simone), Lucas Lynggaard Tnnesen (Rasmus), Mikkel Boe Flsgaard (Martin), Sonny Lindberg (Jean), Lukas Lkken (Patrick), Clara Rosager (Sarah), Evin Ahmad (Kira) Nathalie Madueno (Fie), Johannes Kuhnke (Sten). New cast members are Rex Leonard (Daniel), Cecilia Loffredo (Luna), Henrik Birch (Lars) and Annemette Andersen (Trine).

The Rain is a Miso Film production created by Christian Potalivo, Jannik Tai Mosholt and Esben Toft Jacobsen.

Thursday on August 6 on Netflix.
Jean Raspail was born on July 5, 1925, in Chemille-sur-Deme, France, and spent his youth roaming North and South America, often in the footsteps of French explorers of the 17th and 19th centuries. He published his first travelogue, based on a trek from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, in 1952.

He published dozens of travel books and fictional works set in Japan, the French West Indies, the Levant and Latin America. His novel I, Antoine de Tounens, King of Patagonia received the Academie Francaise grand prize in 1981. He was awarded its grand prize for literature, for his body of work, in 2003.

Yet it is The Camp of the Saints, which The Times and others have called a racist novel, that has become most closely associated with him. The novel dehumanizes the migrants, portraying them not as distinct individuals but rather as a mass of microbes, or rats. To let them in would destroy us, the narrator says. To reject them would destroy them.

The migrants occupy houses owned by white citizens, kill factory owners who had hired them, and rape white women and girls. The plot extends beyond France: In London, the white population leaves the city in trains while millions of dark-skinned people camp in the streets. In New York City, the mayor has to share his official residence with black families. In crude, racist terms, the narrator describes how a black flood reaches global Western cities.

Although Mr. Raspail repeatedly denied being a racist, he said he would not change a line of the book. In the magazine Le Point in 2015, he described himself as right-wing, even right-right-wing.

The novel was not markedly successful early on. When it was published in the United States in 1975, a Times review compared reading it to being trapped at a cocktail party with a normallooking fellow who suddenly starts a perfervid racist diatribe.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 15th, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) issued an order regarding the testing of staff and residents at nursing homes statewide.

This order requires the initial and weekly testing of all residents and staff, depending on a nursing home's regional risk level. Testing must be repeated weekly if there are positive cases within the facility, for up to 14 days after the last new positive result.

With the ability to test for 7,000 samples per day, NxGen MDx has both the infrastructure and capacity to test staff and residents for COVID-19 from nursing homes across the state. NxGen is able to provide results quickly--within 24-48 hours--to help facilities prevent an outbreak.

"Residential facilities face unique challenges with COVID-19. Offering surveillance testing is essential in order to contain outbreaks that could potentially become devastating," said Jacqueline Peacock, Director of Laboratory Operations at NxGen MDx.

About NxGen MDx

NxGen MDx LLC is a leading women's health company delivering highly accurate and precise genetic testing. NxGen MDx's history of whole-gene sequencing combined with advanced technology allows us to provide accessible, high-quality testing options to families as they plan for the future. NxGen MDx employs state-of-the-art technology, including rapid molecular diagnostics for infectious disease and genetic screening technology that examines the entire gene rather than parts of the gene, giving women and families a comprehensive assessment of their health. NxGen MDx is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. To learn more, visit the company's website at www.nxgenmdx.com.

Connect with us on:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/nxgenmdx/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/3832246

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nxgenmdxlab/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/nxgenmdx

SOURCE NxGen MDx

Related Links

http://www.nxgenmdx.com


Update June 24: Gardai say the missing person search for Deirdre Kuntz has been stood down following the discovery of a body.

They thanked the public for their help.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - In a Turkish bath in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, attendants wait for their next customers wearing only towels around their waists - and masks and plastic visors on their faces.

As Turkey relaxes measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, it has reopened its famous hammams, or Turkish baths, albeit with preventative measures.

At the 16th century Cemberlitas hammam, customers are required to sanitise their hands as they enter the building and have their temperatures taken with a handheld device.

They are assigned spaces in the changing rooms that keep them apart from other bathers, said Ayna Nurberdiyeva, who works at the hammam.

In the hammam's stone chambers each customer is attended to separately, with the attendant covering them with soap bubbles which they then massage into the body.

Bathers are only allowed to remove their masks when they enter the hammam, said Nurberdiyeva, although some keep them on as a precaution.

The special bath attendants, called "tellak" for men and "natir" for women, wear their masks and visors throughout the session.

Mustafa Keskin, a bather, said he felt safe with the new measures.

"When they take these measures, we don't experience any problems. This is our old culture. They say the virus goes away in the heat of the hammam anyway," he said.

(Reporting by Bulent Usta; Writing by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Mike Collett-White)
FP Trending

Microsoft is expected to launch its foldable smartphone Surface Duo by the end of July 2020 with Android 10. The device would, however, reportedly receive an update for Android 11, few weeks after the launch.

A report by Windows Latest claims that the decision to launch the phone with Android 10 instead of the latest Android 11 has to do with the "updated release timeline" and "possible compatibility problems."

According to a report by PhoneArena, Android 11 is likely to be made official in September and it is around that time that Microsoft Surface Duo users can expect the update.

The report also says that Microsoft's Edge browser and Outlook app will work natively on the dual-screen device.

According to previous reports, Microsoft Surface Duo was first announced in October last year. The tech giant said that the smartphone would sport two 5.6-inch AMOLED screens with 1,800 x 1,350 pixel resolution. The screens are connected together and can rotate 360 degrees.

The Surface Duo will have Microsoft Pen support and provide multi-tasking options to users. The device will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset. It will, however, not support 5G.

The Microsoft Surface Duo is expected to come with 6 GB RAM along with 256 GB of storage.

As for the camera, the Surface Duo will feature a single 11 MP camera sensor on the inside of the device. The smartphone will ship with a 3,460 mAh battery.

The report mentions that the device shown at the time of the announcement did not feature any external cameras.
Hong Kong: National security law fully backed

Secretary for Security John Lee and the heads of six disciplined services departments fully support the legislative work for safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

An official of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) made an explanatory statement at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th NPC on June 18 on a draft law on safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China.

In a statement today, it said Mr Lee, Commissioner of Police Tang Ping-keung, Commissioner of Customs & Excise Hermes Tang, Director of Fire Services Joseph Leung, Commissioner of Correctional Services Woo Ying-ming, Director of Immigration Au Ka-wang and Controller of the Government Flying Service Wu Wai-hung fully support the enactment of the legislation by the central authorities to safeguard national security in the Hong Kong SAR.

Mr Lee will lead the disciplinary forces to discharge their duties, ensuring the effective implementation of the relevant law in Hong Kong for safeguarding national security.

It noted that the Hong Kong SAR Government agrees that, as proposed in the draft law, the Hong Kong SAR should establish a commission for safeguarding national security to be chaired by the Chief Executive, as well as set up dedicated units in the Police Force and the Department of Justice which will shoulder the major responsibilities in implementing the relevant enforcement work. The Security Bureau will render its full support and is undertaking the relevant preparatory work.

The statement pointed out that the enactment of the legislation for the Hong Kong SAR to safeguard national security aims to prevent, curb and sanction criminal acts of secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces which endanger national security.

It will only target an extremely small minority of criminals who endanger national security, while the safety and basic rights of the vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong citizens will be protected, and safeguarding the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.

The draft law requires the protection of the rights of suspects, as well as the legitimate rights enjoyed by members of the public, legal persons or organisations in accordance with the Basic Law.

It stressed that the legislation will not affect the various rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents under the law.

Mr Lee said each country has its national security laws and specific enforcement agencies and it is the duty of every responsible government to have such laws.

Safeguarding national security and the rule of law in Hong Kong is the cornerstone to maintain 'one country, two systems', ensuring the long-term stability and safety of Hong Kong.

People can enjoy a peaceful life, society restores peace, people's livelihood and the economy resume development, and Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability are preserved."

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Puerto Morelos beachgoers do so at their own risk says mayor

Puerto Morelos, Q.R.  The government of Laura Fernandez Pina has placed signs with messages to alert citizens about the risk of going to the destinations beaches at this time, since these can be Covid-19 infection points.

The mayor of Puerto Morelos said that the objective is for citizens to become aware that it is not time to go out and enjoy what is one of the main assets of Puerto Morelos, its beaches, but stressing that on the contrary, it is necessary to stay home.

For this next week, we will continue orange in the state epidemiological light, which indicates that recreation places must remain closed to contain the pandemic due to the new coronavirus SARS CoV-2, she said.

She said that although activities such as tourism and construction have restarted, people who do not belong to these sectors or do not have an urgent need, should not leave home.

The responsibility to take care of ourselves belongs to everyone so as not to regress with the start of the economic recovery of Puerto Morelos, said Laura Fernandez.

Part of the sign reads If you are going to stay and go to the sea it is at your own risk and responsibility

Over the weekend, the tarps were erected on beach accesses with the objective of inhibiting bathers, adding that vehicle filters were placed at the entrance of Bahia Petempich, Crococun and Jose Maria Morelos Avenue, which are the main access points. There, police were inviting people to return home warning them that if they go to the beach, it will be at their own risk as indicated by the tarp warnings placed by city council.

We will insist on the call for citizens to work as a team so that together we can overcome the contingency and thereby shore up the economy of the destination and of the families which have been severely affected, she said.
A merica will go to the polls later this year to vote for the next president of the United States.

Most voters are expected to decide between candidates from the Democrats (the liberal, left-of-centre party) and the Republicans (the conservative, right-of-centre party).

The first candidate to win enough states to get to 270 electoral votes becomes the president.

Now, Democrats are eagerly awaiting the announcement of Joe Biden's potential running mate who will be the vice presidential candidate.

However, Biden has delayed the decision amid worries the process has become "messier than it should be", pitting women - and especially black women - against one another.

Here's what we know so far about the those in the race for VP.

When is the 2020 US Presidential Election?

Senator Kamala Harris (left) and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (right) are both possible choices for Biden's VP / Getty Images

The election is set to take place on November 3, 2020. Presidential elections always take place on the first Tuesday after November 1.

Mr Trump and Mr Biden each need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

While most states have a favourite, in some regions, it is too close to call.

The new president will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

How does the ticket work?

In the United States, political parties nominate one candidate each for President of the United States and for Vice President of the United States.

These candidates attempt to win presidential elections by taking a majority of the electoral vote. The two candidates together are known as a ticket.

Who will Joe Biden choose as his running mate?

Senator Elizabeth Warren is considered to be on the left wing of the Democratic Party / Getty Images

Joe Biden's top priority in selecting a running mate will be to choose somebody who can help unite and energize the Democratic coalition and bring home an electoral victory in November.

However, during the final Democratic primary debate in March, he pledged that if he were to win the party's presidential nomination, he would choose a woman as his running mate.

He is expected to announce his choice in early August, and in the meantime, here are the leading contenders.

Elizabeth Warren

From the ultra-liberal progressive wing of the party, Elizabeth Warren is an outspoken candidate who has allegedly been advising Biden on possible policy moves.

She will appeal to the liberal Democratic base and has proven herself able to lead on institutional changes such as the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Her inclusion would signal Biden's intention to reach out to the party's left wing, and govern as more of a progressive than he alluded to during the campaign.

Kamala Harris

As the only black woman in the Senate, Kamala Harris has charisma and star quality which would make her a powerful presence in nationally-televised debates and combative congressional hearings.

Given the increasing demands for racial justice and inclusion following the wave of black lives matter protests which swept the country, she would appeal to many voters.

So far, the California senator is widely considered the frontrunner, and ran for president last year and was considered a top-tier candidate - although, in the first primary debate last June, she suggested Biden's past views against desegregating schools through mandatory busing was hurtful.

She boasts access to California money, and won praise from a wide range of Democrats for being an outspoken advocate for police reform during the recent mass demonstrations.

Senator Kamala Harris / REUTERS

Gretchen Whitmer

A few months ago she was relatively unknown, but after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the former state legislator became the face of her state's response, and critiqued the federal government's inadequate handling of the crisis.

Her national profile was further boosted when she enacted huge social distancing and business-shutdown measures as Michigan became a top US hotspot of the coronavirus outbreak.

In 2016 Hillary Clinton narrowly lost Michigan to Donald Trump, so if Biden aims to avoid a similar occurnce, he may opt to put her on the ticket.

Karen Bass

Serving as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, the selection of Karen Boss would serve the party's legislative power brokers, including Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Rep, James Clyburn of South Carolina, who are championing her candidacy.

She could rely on the help of incumbent lawmakers representing black communities, where turnout needs to be high in November.

As a late addition to Biden's vice-presidential contender list, she's seen as a broadly acceptable choice who could help Biden bring diversity to the ticket.

Tammy Duckworth

Senator Tammy Duckworth / Getty Images

The junior senator from Illinois has an astounding CV; after losing both her legs when the Army helicopter she was piloting was shot down by insurgents in Iraq, she continued in the military.

She stayed in the military and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel, before becoming an assistant secretary in President Barack Obama's Department of Veteran Affairs.

Tammy Duckworth served in the House of Representatives, and won her Senate seat in 2016; she was the first Thai-American woman elected to Congress, alongside the first double-amputee woman, and in 2018 was the first woman to give birth while serving in the Senate.

Tammy Baldwin

Four years ago Hillary Clinton was scolded for never campaigning in Wisconsin, and losing the seat to Donald Trump - and Democrats have pledged not to repeeat that mistake.

Tammy Baldwin is in her second term as one of Wisconsin's senators, and served in the House of Representatives for 14 years prior to that.

Her selection would be historic, as she would become the first openly gay person to serve on a major party's ticket - just as she became the first openly gay member of the Senate.

Kyrsten Sinema

In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema became the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat in 30 years. She's young and quirky, but perhaps too politically centrist.

If Biden picks her as his running mate, she would make history as the first openly bisexual person on a presidential ticket.

Val Demings

Once a Democractic back-bencher, Val Demings was one of the impeachment managers during Donald Trump's January Senate trial.

Even before the mass protests over the death of George Floyd, the black former chief-of-police from Orlando, Florida, was on the Biden team's radar as a possible vice-presidential pick.

However, she lacks some political experience but could once again show Biden intends to tackle racism and police reform at the top of his agenda.

Michelle Lujan Grisham

New Mexico's first-term governor is an obvious choice if Biden decides he needs to shore up his support among the Hispanic population - one of the fastest-growing segments of the US electorate - who previously voted for liberal champion Bernie Sanders.

The 60-year-old Lujan previously served in Congress and as her state's health secretary.

Congresswoman Stacey Abrams has openly campaigned to be Mr Biden's VP pick / Getty Images for The Hollywood R

Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams is an uncoventional choice as she spent 10 years as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

However, her activism on voting rights was significant for the party, and she was the first black woman to give the Democratic response to Donald Trump's 2019 State of the Union Address.

She also actively campaigned to be Biden's vice-presidential pick.

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is a first-term mayor but she's won praise from Democrats for for waging political battles with the state's Republican governor over when and how to ease business closures and shelter-in-place orders during the coronavirus pandemic.

During the nationwide protests over George Floyd's death, she successfully balanced her official responsibilities, alongside revealing her personal insights as a black mother.

Keisha Lance Bottoms / Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit

Susan Rice

Susan Rice has no experience holding elected office or campaigning in general, and is a relative unknown for most Americans.

However, she served with Biden in the Obama White House as national security adviser after a stint as the US representative to the United Nations.

If she's picked, she could play a central role in a Biden foreign policy team, indictaing that international relations will be a focus for his administration.

Michelle Obama

Former US First Lady Michelle Obama is adored by the American public and would be an obvious continuation of Obama's presidential legacy.

A Biden-Obama ticket would electrify the Democratic base - particularly black voters who turned out in record numbers for Obama-Biden in 2008 and 2012.

Yet she's uninterested in entering politics, so it's unlikely this pairing would materialise.
According to DoubleVerify, the company is now identifying a half-million fraudulent CTV devices per day, a big problem is a space that is so new for many brands and merchants. This spike in fraud is linked to the COVID pandemic because the sudden increase in streaming content as consumers were locked down at home is linked to the sudden spike in fraudulent traffic. Researchers say that between January and April of 2020 there was a 161% increase in fraudulent CTV traffic.

The top tactics these fraudsters are using are spoofing, in which they buy lower-quality CTV inventory and then repackage the ad calls to appear like premium CTV inventory for resale, fraudulent apps, in which fraudsters create and sell their own nefarious apps and release them to app stores, and SSAI fraud, in which fraudsters create servers or buy cloud space to fake information about impressions and traffic.

Through Q1 2020, researchers with DoubleVerify found more than 500 fraudulent apps, more than was found through the entire 2019 calendar year. Other interesting findings from the report include:

a 23% of CTV ad auctions have app names adhering to IAB conventions

a Each app can have up to 15 IDs, many of which can be easily spoofed

a Fraudsters release apps using real content to gain access to legit app stores, then flip the app to defraud marketers of ad spend

More data from DoubleVerify can be accessed here.
Nearly 300 workers of diamond units in Gujarat's Surat city have tested positive for coronavirus in the last 10 days, following which fresh restrictions have been imposed on the industry's operations, an official said on Monday.

As part of the new curbs, three main diamond trading markets will remain shut twice a week, while canteens of all the diamond polishing units will remain closed on all days to contain the spread of coronavirus, he said.

"In the last 10 days, nearly 300 workers of diamond units in the city have tested positive for coronavirus," Surat Municipal Commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani said.

In view of this, representatives of the Surat Diamond Association held a meeting with the civic chief on Monday.

They unanimously agreed to keep the three main diamomd trading hubs in Mahidharpura, Mini Bazar and Choksi Bazar shut on Saturdays and Sundays till the situation improves, Pani told reporters after the meeting.

"If one COVID-19 case emerges in any unit, then that particular floor or section will be shut for a week. If three COVID-19 cases emerge, then the entire unit or factory will be shut for one week. The diamond units have also been asked to close their canteen facilities to minimise human-to-human contact," he said.

The diamond polishing units have also been asked to ensure proper ventilation in their premises for the staff, the official said.

To reduce congestion and contact of employees with each other, the diamond units have been asked to either call workers in shifts everyday or on alternate days, said Pani.

"The diamond association also gave an assurance that all diamond packets will be sanitised to contain the spread of coronavirus. Joint teams of the Surat Diamond Association and the municipal corporation will conduct inspection to make sure the new guidelines are strictly followed," he added.
pig, cow, and bovine grin cheerful, at least on the Logo of Germany's largest Slaughterhouse. However, according to Smile is likely to be in the mood for Tonnies currently anyone, because the family business in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany, with more than 1500 documented cases of a Corona-Hotspot. Thousands of people are under quarantine. A Lockdown for the district is becoming increasingly likely.

The case of Tonnies but it will also be fundamental doubts as to the Act of the slaughterhouse. Especially the poor working conditions of the mainly by choosing contracts of sub-contractors employed Eastern European workers in slaughterhouses in the criticism. Meanwhile, the production is stopped for the time being. Green party leader Anna Lena Baerbock calls for fundamental Changes in the production of meat: "For the cheap meat workers, farmers and animals of an entire Region pay an extremely high price." And many consumers are wondering whether or not you have on the plates Tonnies-Fleisch lands and whether or not it is safe.

How do I know Tonnies products?

The consumer advice centre of North Rhine-Westphalia on their Homepage is clear. Currently, there is no proven case in which a person would be infected by eating food contaminated with the Coronavirus. According to the current state of knowledge, it is "unlikely that food could be a source of infection with the Virus," it says. Also a nutritionist, Sabine Klein, who is at the consumer advice centre NRW for the topic of meat is responsible, declared to the "West German General newspaper": "According to the current state of knowledge, the eating of the flesh of Tonnies is Operated in Rheda-Wiedenbruck safe."

But there are also voices, the estimate of the risk with raw meat are higher. Thus, the epidemiology Professor Timo Ulrichs said the TV channel "RTL": "The danger of a contamination of the surface, including the surfaces of the produced meat is, of course, because you know that the Virus can stay on surfaces longer."

But how customers may realize that meat comes from the slaughterhouse Tonnies? The food expert Bernhard Burdickvon the consumer advice centre of North Rhine-Westphalia, told the German press Agency, products of animal origin must be awarded within the EU, with an identification sign. It shows where the meat was last processed. There are, according to the consumer advice centre NRW three features that lead to the Tonnies group: NW 20202 EC, NW 20028 EC, NW 20045 EG, how Small the "VAZ" told.

Updated Date: 22 June 2020, 17:19
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:08:05|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ISTANBUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- At least five people were killed, and one person was reported as missing in the flash floods in Turkey's northwestern province of Bursa, local media reported on Monday.

The region has been badly affected by heavy rainfall, which caused flash floods since Sunday afternoon, according to the NTV broadcaster.

The rain and floods wreaked havoc in several districts of the city, damaging buildings and cars, blocking roads, NTV added.

Rescue teams have so far found the dead bodies of five people, it said, noting the search and rescue operation, backed by unmanned aerial vehicles, is continuing. Enditem
Secret cameras have caught more than 30,000 drivers using their mobile phones in just over three months, raking in $15.8 million in fines.

Unlike speed cameras, there are no warning signs for the unmarked mobile phone cameras.

The penalty for those caught is five demerit points and a $344 fine, which increases to $457 in a school zone.

New high definition cameras have caught almost 11 million drivers using their mobile phones from March 1 to May 17 this year - with a whopping 5 demerit point penalty plus a $344 fine

Transport for NSW says on its website that 'every cent' from the mobile phone detection cameras goes to a Community Road Safety Fund to be spent on road safety programs such as education in schools, flashing lights in school zones, crash barriers and signage.

However the harshest penalty isn't the money, it's the demerit points.

Drivers caught using their mobile phones lose 5 demerit points, but that increases to 10 demerit points during special double-demerit periods such as the recent Queen's Birthday long weekend.

There are only 13 points on a full unrestricted license and if all are lost within three years, the license is suspended. Green P-platers have only seven points while red P-platers have just four.

Pictured: a driver caught texting during the trial period in December 2019. The high-definition cameras can see right inside your car at high speeds

How the cameras work * The high definition cameras have artificial intelligence to capture what's happening behind the wheel * If the AI thinks it's caught you on your mobile phone, the image is reviewed by a human being * If the reviewing officer agrees, you get sent a penalty notice * Drivers or riders caught get a $344 fine and five demerit points off their license * The fine increases to $457 if you are caught in a school zone * In double demerit periods the penalty increases to 10 demerit points * An unrestricted drivers' license only has 13 points and if they are all lost, you lose your license * You can see your photograph online by typing in your infringement number at the Revenue NSW website. Instructions are on the fine * You can challenge any fine if you think it is in error * The first step can be to write a letter asking for review to Revenue NSW * You can also challenge your fine in court although you could suffer more costs if you lose Advertisement

Figures show the new high definition cameras photographed almost 11 million vehicles in New South Wales from March 1 when they went live to May 17 - despite the coronavirus lockdown.

Transport for NSW deputy secretary Tara McCarthy said one in every 370 drivers - or 0.27 percent - were caught with a mobile phone.

'The rate of mobile phone offences by drivers has fallen steadily since the mobile phone detection cameras were first introduced for a six month pilot in January last year,' she told Daily Mail Australia via email.

The cameras went live on a no-fine trial basis from January to June last year, catching 100,000 drivers out of 8.5 million vehicles checked.

This was an offence rate of 1.22 percent, she said.

Ms McCarthy said the offending rate dropped dramatically during the warning letter period in the three months from December last year, when 10 million drivers were photographed and 33,921 warning letters were issued.

So far 191 drivers caught since March 1 have challenged their fine in court.

Traffic barrister Nic Angelov has previously told Daily Mail Australia that motorists can challenge a fine if they believe the camera is in error, and captured them handling something other than a mobile phone  such as a glasses case or hairbrush.

There are expected to be 45 cameras installed by 2023

'Ultimately it comes down to interpretation of the photograph: is it a mobile phone? Or isn't it?' Mr Angelov said.

The first step is to write a letter to Revenue NSW (formerly the SDRO) which processes fines and fees for more than 250 organisations including police, hospitals and local councils.

Although police are not obligated to provide you with evidence for a traffic offence, Mr Angelov said the photograph of you behind the wheel will be available online as it is for other offences such as red light camera offences.

NSW is the first state to introduce laws to enable camera-based enforcement of illegal mobile phone use.

It is expected that 45 cameras will be installed by 2023 which will photograph about 135 million motorists each year.

Facebook group Police in the Area published a list of camera locations before the Queen's Birthday double-demerit point weekend in June.

The group has since taken the list off its Facebook page, and as some of the cameras were listed as portable, it is not known whether their locations are still accurate.
Moscow, June 22 : Russian President Vladimir Putin has not ruled out that he will run for a new presidential term if such a constitutional amendment is adopted, the media reported.

"I have not made any decision so far. I'm not ruling out that I will stand for (election) if this emerges in the Constitution. We'll see," TASS News Agency quoted the President as saying in a TV interview aired on Sunday.

The Russian leader cautioned officials against searching for a successor to him now, saying that they should rather focus on their work.

"They need to work rather than search for successors," Putin said.

"You know, I'll say absolutely frankly now: if this does not happen (passing a respective constitutional amendment) then in some two years, I know this from my own experience, instead of a normal rhythmical work at many levels of power they will start searching for potential successors." Putin's remarks come ahead of a referendum in Russia on a set of constitutional amendments on July 1.

If passed, it will enable him to participate in the 2024 presidential race.

In January, Putin, who has served as President since 2012, previously holding the position from 1999 until 2008, suggested to introduce a number of amendments to the basic law, reports TASS News Agency.

Following a discussion within the working group, the State Duma (lower house) and the Federation Council (upper house) adopted the final bill on March 11, followed by approval by all regions of Russia.

Putin then signed an order, scheduling the nationwide vote on the amendments for April 22, which was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The amendments will enter force only if approved in the nationwide vote.
SEOUL, KOREA, REPUBLIC OFSouth Korea on Monday urged North Korea to scrap a plan to launch propaganda leaflets across the border, after the North said its ready to float 12 million leaflets in what would be the largest such psychological campaign against its southern rival.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula rose sharply last week, after North Korea destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory in anger over South Korean civilian leafletting against it. North Korea said it will fly propaganda leaflets and take other steps to nullify 2018 deals to ease tensions at the border.

Yoh Sangkey, a spokesman at Seouls Unification Ministry, told reporters that North Korea must suspend its plan to send anti-Seoul leaflets that are not helpful to South-North (Korea) relations at all.

Earlier Monday, North Korea said it had manufactured 12 million propaganda leaflets to be floated toward South Korea aboard 3,000 balloons and other unspecified delivery equipment.

Our plan of distributing the leaflets against the enemy is an eruption of the unquenchable anger of all the people and the whole society, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency said. The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near.

Some observers say ongoing weather conditions arent favourable for North Korea to fly propaganda balloons to South Korea so that it may use drones to launch them. They say this could trigger clashes between the Koreas because South Korea must respond to incoming drones to its territory.

South Korean Defence Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told lawmakers Monday that how his military responds to potential North Korean leafletting depends on what delivery equipment the North would use.

A South Korean activist recently said he would also drop about a million leaflets over the borer around Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War. South Korean officials have said theyll ban civilian activists from launching balloons toward North Korea.

Experts say North Korea is likely using the South Korean civilian leafletting as a chance to boost its internal unity and apply more pressures on Seoul and Washington amid stalled nuclear diplomacy.

In 2018, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to halt any hostile acts against each other along their border, including psychological warfare such as leafletting and propaganda broadcasts. But their agreement didnt clearly say whether civilian leafletting would also be banned, and South Korean activists subsequently kept launching huge balloons carrying leaflets critical of North Koreas nuclear program and human rights record.

North Korea recently released photos showing cigarette butts littered on leaflets with the image of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, which it said would fly south. A message in the leaflets said Moon ruined North-South (Korean) agreements.

North Korea said last week it would send troops to now-shuttered joint co-operation sites on its territory, reinstall guard posts and resume military drills at front-line areas in a violation of separate 2018 deals with South Korea. Jeong said South Korea will take immediate, swift and corresponding steps to any North Korean provocation.

Read more about:
Thank you for tuning in to episode 78 of The CUInsight Experience podcast with your host, Randy Smith, co-founder of CUInsight.com. This episode is brought to you by our friends at PSCU. As the nations premier payments CUSO, PSCU proudly supports the success of more than 1,500 credit unions.

In todays environment of remote work and social change, what is your credit union doing to ensure your members and employees feel welcome, heard, and well taken care of? On this weeks show, Im sitting down with Marsha Majors, President and CEO of US Eagle Federal Credit Union in New Mexico, to learn more about how shes leading her credit union through not only this global pandemic, but also George Floyds death and the social upheaval that has followed in communities across the country.

To that end, we discuss how important it has been for Marsh to continually communicate and reiterate the vision and values of US Eagle Federal Credit Union to her team and members through it all. Marsha also talks about the need to build trust and educate members in this new environment to help them feel safe and ensure a smooth transition to more efficient services channels. We also chat about why she thinks credit unions must be better about advocating for themselves going forward.

Also in the episode, Marsha and I discuss how shes using her position as President and CEO to inspire and mentor young girls and women, and why she chooses to lead by example. Additionally, she shares her useful methodology for making difficult decisions, discusses the mistakes she sees young leaders making today, and details some of the ways her mentors have helped her in her career and how she is paying it forward by mentoring the young people of her community.

In the final portion of our conversation, we learned that Marsha wanted to be a teacher when she was growing up and likes to listen to mellow music. She shares that the COVID-19 crisis has really forced her to stop and smell the roses, and appreciate the people in her life. I hope you enjoy this fantastic conversation!

Find the full show notes on cuinsight.com

Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher

Books mentioned on The CUInsight Experience podcast: Book List

How to find Marsha:

Marsha Majors

MMajors@useagle.org

www.useagle.org

Marsha Majors

LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Show notes from this episode:

A big shout-out to our friends at PSCU, an amazing sponsor of The CUInsight Experience podcast. Thank you!

Check out all the outstanding work that Marsha and her team at US Eagle Federal Credit Union are doing here.

Shout-out: Randys mother

Shout-out: Renee Sattiewhite

Shout-out: Jill Nowacki

Shout-out: Maurice Smith

Shout-out: Global Womens Leadership Network

Album mentioned: Anthology by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly

Album mentioned: The Best of Sade by Sade

Book mentioned: Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard

Book mentioned: Becoming by Michelle Obama

Previous guests mentioned in this episode: Renee Sattiewhite, Jill Nowacki (episodes 4, 18, 37 & 64), Maurice Smith

In This Episode:

[02:16]  Marsha, welcome to the show!

[03:13]  Marsha shares how she provides a safe place for her staff and members during these critical crises.

[06:00]  Will the pandemic change the way members do business with credit unions going forward?

[08:11]  Marsha speaks about how she believes credit unions should advocate for themselves and stay relevant.

[10:11]  Marsha shares how she came up through the ranks in a credit union.

[12:53]  In a year from now, what will you be most proud of that you and your team have accomplished?

[14:43]  Marsha speaks about what inspired her to take the position with US Eagle Federal Credit Union.

[16:05]  Has the inspiration changed since you took the position?

[16:50]  Marsha believes her leadership style is servant leadership, putting people first and leading by example.

[18:35]  As a leader, is there something your team has heard you say so many times they can finish your sentence?

[19:49]  Marsha discusses how she was born with the ability to make hard decisions.

[21:00]  When you become a leader, you have made it, a myth she wants to debunk.

[21:53]  Marsha shares the mistakes she has made and the mistakes she sees young leaders make today.

[22:59]  Stay true to yourself, know your capabilities are pieces of advice she has been given that she still uses.

[23:53]  How has the power of mentorship helped you in your career, and how are you paying it forward?

[24:53]  Marsha shares some recent self-doubt she has had to overcome.

[26:34]  Marsha speaks about some community work her organization has done that makes her smile and feel proud.

[27:40]  Marsha chats about what she does when she has a day off to recharge.

[30:16]  What were you like in high school and do you remember ever getting into memorable trouble?

[31:03]  Marsha says that she wanted to be a teacher when she was growing up.

[32:36]  What is your favorite album of all time?

[33:14]  Is there a book you think everyone should read?

[33:57]  People have become more important and spend time with family.

[34:49]  Marsha shares her final thoughts for the listeners.

[35:38]  Thank you so much for being on the show today!
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said over 500,000 admission spaces were not allocated to candidates, representing 45.48 per cent of the total admission quota, in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

This was contained in JAMBs policy document seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

According to the document, only 612,557 candidates secured admission, out of 1.12 million admission quotas available from the 2019 UTME. The figure represents 54 per cent of the total quota of admission for the year.

The document also showed that the total quota for all tertiary institutions in 2019 was 1, 123,514. Out of which, 612,557 were used and 510, 957 remain unused.

Quota system

The quota system is a selection method (for employment, school admission, among others) that allocates certain percentages based on specific qualitities, needs or profiles such as ethnic or racial background and gender.

This system of university admission was introduced in an attempt to provide admission for candidates into the university using the federal character policy of the federal government.

The quota represents the number of candidates that should be admitted into the tertiary institutions in one academic year from each state.

The system comprises important elements such as academic merit, which is determined by the candidates university matriculation examination scores, and it is allotted 45 per cent.

The second element is educationally disadvantaged states with 20 per cent, the catchment areas with 25 per cent, and 10 per cent to the discretion of Vice-Chancellors.

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is therefore guided by these provisions in the admission process, each year.

Breakdown of the unused admission quota by institutional category

In the 2019 UTME, a quota of 1,123,514 was given to all tertiary institutions, out of which 560,613 was allocated to all degree-awarding institutions, 403,225 was given to all institutions that award National Certificate Examination, 145,394 was given to institutions that award National Diploma, while 14,282 was allocated to National Innovative Diploma (NID) awarding institutions.

Breakdown of the unused admission quota by institutional category

Breakdown of the unused admission quota by institutional category

Out of the 560,613 allocated for the admission of students into Degree Programmes, only 444,947 got admissions. The other 115,666 remained unused.

Also, out of the 403,225 allocated to admit students into NCE, only 69,810 were admitted. 333,415 spaces to admit more candidates remained unused.

Similarly, only 96,423 candidates got admission out of the 145,394 allocation that was given to ND awarding institutions. 48, 971 remained unused.

Finally, only 1,377 candidates also got admissions out of the 14,282 allocation given to NID institutions. A total of 12,905 remained unused.

Top 10 Institutions by admission

According to the document, the 10 leading universities who nearly met their quota are:

1) University of Maiduguri

The University of Maiduguri had 46, 814 number of applications, and a quota of 12,536. The university admitted 12,523.

2) University of Calabar

Advertisements



The University of Calabar had a quota of 12,240 with 44,670 number of applicants. The university admitted 12, 237.

3) University of Benin

The University of Benin had a quota of 13,131 with 78,747 number of applicants. The university admitted only 11, 747.

4) University of Ilorin

The University of Ilorin had a quota 12,227 with 108, 917 applicants. The university admitted 11, 616.

5) University of Lagos

The University of Lagos had a quota 9,663 with 74,725 applicants but it admitted 9,625.

6) University of Port -Harcourt

The University of Port-Harcourt had a quota of 9,181 with 40,285 applicants. The university admitted 9,107.

7) Nnamdi Azikwe University

Nnamdi Azikwe University had a quota of 9,450 with 56,358 applicants. The university admitted only 8,880.

8) University of Nigeria

The University of Nigeria had a quota of 10,500 with 77,325 applications. The university admitted 8,585.

9) Ekiti State University

The Ekiti State University had a quota of 8,123 with 13,248 applications. The university admitted 8,119.

10) Rivers State University

Rivers State University had a quota of 7,850 with 22,582 applicants. The university admitted 7,843.

Reason for the development

The board said meeting the cut off is not enough for admission as students are required to have at least five O Level credits, which must include mathematics and English, in some cases.

The examination board also said apart from over-subscription of some programmes, wrong O Level subject combination, low screening (POST UTME) score, UTME-combination deficiency, non-acceptance of the admission offer, duplication of application, absence from Post- UTME screening, mismatch of catchment institutions and no O Level are other likely reasons candidates were not offered admission.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how two-third of about two million Nigerian candidates who applied for tertiary education in 2019 were not admitted across all the educational institutions in Nigeria.
Former President Robert Kocharian was released from custody at the weekend after paying a record $4.1 million bail set by an Armenian court.

The bulk of the hefty sum was reportedly provided by four wealthy Russian businessmen. Three of them, notably billionaire Samvel Karapetian, are ethnic Armenians.

Vladimir Yevtushenkov, the main shareholder in AFK Sistema, a large Russian corporation, was said to be the fourth major contributor. Kocharian has been a member of Sistemas board of directors since 2009.

Shortly after his release, Kocharian posted on Facebook a photograph of himself standing in the courtyard of his Yerevan house. At home, wrote the 65-year-old ex-president facing coup and corruption charges strongly denied by him.

Kocharian returned home from a Yerevan hospital where underwent surgery in late April. Last month another court allowed him to stay there until the end of the coronavirus pandemic. The director of the Izmirlian Medical Center, Armen Charchian, told RFE/RLs Armenian service that doctors will continue to monitor his condition.

The Court of Appeals decided to grant Kocharian bail on Thursday when it partly overturned a lower courts refusal to free him pending the outcome of his ongoing trial.

Prosecutors said they will appeal against the ruling. They insisted that the Kocharian could obstruct justice and pressure other suspects and witnesses in the case.

Kocharians family and lawyers complained, for their part, about the unprecedented bail amount. His younger son, Levon, said the family cannot afford to make the required payment on its own.

Kocharian, his former chief of staff and two retired army generals went on trial more than a year ago, accused of overthrowing the constitutional order. The ex-president also stands accused of bribery. He rejects all accusations leveled against him as politically motivated.

Kocharian was released from jail for the third time since being first arrested in July 2018. His previous release was ordered in May 2019 by a district court judge who initially presided over the high-profile trial.

The judges decision angered political allies and supporters of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Heeding Pashinians calls, hundreds of them blocked the entrances to court buildings across Armenia in protest.

Pashinian demanded a mandatory vetting of all Armenian judges, saying that many of them remain linked to the countrys corrupt former leadership. Kocharian was arrested again in June 2019.

A close Pashinian associate, Alen Simonian, insisted on Saturday that the authorities are not concerned about Kocharians latest release. He said they only worry about peoples anger over the development.
ARLINGTON, Va., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study by LiveSafe Inc., the leading risk intelligence and safety communications company, provides critical insights into the risks that colleges and universities face as they plan to welcome millions of students back to campus in the middle of the deadly COVID-19 global pandemic.

LiveSafe Inc.

The report, Calculated Risk: Returning to Campus in The Age of COVID-19, reveals major shortfalls in campus safety and COVID-19 prevention plans that have some risk managers nervous about the decision to bring students back to campus as infections and hospitalizations are on the rise in 20 states. Adding to concerns about sustained community spread of the disease is the inability of many universities to conduct adequate testing and enforce new health safety policies.

"With COVID-19 threatening to kill an estimated 200,000 Americans by October, going to college feels more like an unnecessary risk than an endeavor to nurture one's mind," wrote Dan Verton, LiveSafe's Director of Content & Branding and the principal author of the paper. "Despite all of the planning and protective measures put in place across college campuses, allowing students to return is a calculated risk. The price of getting it wrong is contagion and more death."

Calculated Risk explores the capabilities and best practices that have factored into the risk calculations of large, medium and small institutions. It also highlights how the convergence of COVID-19 and nationwide social justice movements have impacted the role of university risk managers and public safety officials.

Getting employees back to the workplace and students back on campus safely requires mobile health screening capabilities, reliable and effective two-way safety communications, and the ability to provide resources in response to rapidly changing health conditions, guidance, and regulations.

Built upon the LiveSafe enterprise risk intelligence and safety communications platform, our WorkSafe back-to-work options and packages enable organizations to detect potential infections, prevent outbreaks, and reduce legal liability, while maintaining the privacy and security of employee health information.

Click here to download your free copy of Calculated Risk: Returning to Campus in The Age of COVID-19 .

Contact: LiveSafe Public Relations

(703) 436-2098 | [email protected]

About LiveSafe, Inc.:

LiveSafe's risk intelligence technology platform surfaces early warning insights and prevents serious safety and security incidents to mitigate operational risks, reduce financial losses, and make places safer for people to work, learn, and live. Follow LiveSafe on Twitter @LiveSafe, and learn more at LiveSafeMobile.com.

Related Files

WorkSafe_Overview(1).pdf

Related Images

image1.jpg

Related Links

Follow Dan Verton

Follow LiveSafe

SOURCE LiveSafe Inc.
Now the cancel police have come for Teddy Roosevelt.

A statue of TR on horseback that has stood at the front of the American Museum of Natural History since 1940 is going to be removed by the museum with the assent of New York City.

The statue portrays two figures beside Roosevelt on foot, a Native American and an African, which is taken to be a statement of racial hierarchy, although the depiction is open to interpretation. Roosevelt is also, of course, getting specifically targeted for his racial views.

There is no doubt that he partook of the prejudices of his time and reflected some of its worst intellectual influences, particularly Social Darwinism. But he was the characteristic American of the early 20th century, who exulted in his country and made enduring contributions to it.

It is for that, that we honor him, and the museum of natural history is one of the obvious places to do it, given that his father was a founding member and TR was a great naturalist and conservationist. Indeed, this is why the New York legislature decided to commemorate Roosevelt at the site in 1920.

Neither conservatives nor progressives can fully embrace TR. Conservatives have no use for the way he lurched to the left after leaving office and championed a progressive vision that would eventually lead to an overweening administrative state. Progressives find his hyper-masculine advocacy of the strenuous life ridiculous and consider him offensive to PC sensibilities on multiple grounds.

And yet, whatever his flaws, Roosevelt unquestionably loved America. His venturesome self-confidence captured the mood of a nation on the verge of greatness. A big-game hunter, boxer, ornithologist, outdoorsman, occasional cowboy, author, and journalist, TR contained multitudes. He led the Rough Riders into battle in the Spanish-American War and wrote about 40 books. He read Tolstoy while chasing down boat thieves out West. One biographer wrote that to be part of Roosevelts entourage was to travel in a carnival led by a conjurer and trailed by an idolatrous throng.

Story continues

The son of a patrician family, he graduated from Harvard and plunged into politics, rising from the New York State Assembly to become New York City police commissioner, then to the highest office in the land at age 42 in 1901 after an assassin killed President William McKinley.

Hes worth honoring for his contributions to preserving natural wonders of the West, if nothing else. A spell in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory as a young man had been formative for him, and he wrote a series of books on ranching and hunting. He didnt lose his taste for outdoor adventure as president. He loved climbing and swimming along Rock Creek in Washington, D.C., warning those he invited along to bring their worst clothes. On a trip to the Oklahoma Territory, he thrashed to death a rattlesnake that lunged at him, using an 18-inch quirt for the task. On a trip to Yellowstone National Park, he desperately wanted to shoot a cougar, courting a public backlash, until friends talked him out of the plan.

The Yellowstone visit was a leg of his famous Great Loop Tour in 1903 to promote his conservation agenda. He toured the park with the renowned naturalist John Burroughs, who said of Roosevelt, Nothing escaped him, from bears to mice, from wild geese to chickadees, from elk to red squirrels; he took it all in. Literally nothing escaped him; at one point, TR jumped from a sled to capture a vole that he thought might be a new species. He stuffed it and sent it to the Smithsonian.

The president gave a speech at the north entrance to the park upon laying the cornerstone for an archway inscribed for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. He called the park a great natural playground and argued, The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give, is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures.

On the south rim of the Grand Canyon, he gave a talk to Arizonans that touched on similar themes:

I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it; not a bit. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children and your childrens children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.

Altogether, Roosevelt had conserved more than 230 million acres by the end of his presidency. He established six national parks, created 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon, set aside 51 federal bird preserves, and designated or expanded 150 national forests.

If he wanted to preserve the wonder of our landscape at home, he wanted to build our power abroad.

TR could be bumptious and militaristic, but he was ultimately a realist in the Hamiltonian tradition. He believed, rightly, that conflict is endemic among nations and that military strength is necessary to deter it or, should it come to that, win it.

He took as his axiom a line of George Washingtons: To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace. The ultimate goal, as he put it in his famous 1901 big stick speech, was that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people.

As president, he enhanced the countrys role on the world stage. He sent the Great White Fleet (surely, another count against him) on its 43,000-mile trip, with 20 globe-spanning ports of call. The voyage is regarded, as an account by naval historians relates, as one of the greatest peacetime achievements of the U.S. Navy.

He brokered the peace in the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first U.S. president to win a Nobel prize.

He negotiated a settlement of a dispute between France and Germany over control of Morocco.

He extended the 1823 Monroe Doctrine from its original formulation that warned against European intervention, adding a corollary that made the United States the policeman of the Western Hemisphere and asserting the right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries so misgoverned that they might invite European meddling.

In 1906, he became the first president to travel out of the country, to visit Panama at the time of the construction of the canal that he had done so much to promote, taking the controls of a steam shovel for a jaunty photograph. The largest building project in U.S. history, the canal linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, boosting commerce and easing American naval operations by cutting the trip from San Francisco to New York by 8,000 miles. It was yet another sign of the arrival of the United States as a world power.

Roosevelt clearly understood the role of America in the 20th century. Whether we wish it or not, he said in his big stick speech, we cannot avoid hereafter having duties to do in the face of other nations. All that we can do is to settle whether we shall perform these duties well or ill.

Mostly, we performed them well, although obviously TRs enemies beg to differ.

They are currently engaged in a ransacking of our cultural landscape. In his conservation work out West, TR believed that this countrys treasures should be held in trust for future generations. The mob targeting him and other worthy men believes no such thing.

This article is drawn from The Case for Nationalism, published by Broadside Books.

More from National Review
These are the chilling images of the room where a disabled woman was trapped for a year, rotting in her own excrement before she died.

Ann Marie Smith, 54, had cerebral palsy and lived alone in her Adelaide home before she died from septic shock, multiple organ failure, severe pressure sores and malnourishment in the the city's Royal Hospital on April 6.

The pictures paint a bleak picture of Ms Smith's life before she died, confined to a chair in a neglected home with minimal furniture.

South Australian police released photos from inside of Ms Smith's home in a public appeal for information on Monday.

Ann Marie Smith, who had cerebral palsy, died in the Royal Hospital, Adelaide, on April 6 from septic shock, multiple organ failure, severe pressure sores and malnourishment

South Australian police released photos from inside of Ms Smith's home where she sat in her final days in a public appeal for information on Monday

Ms Smith's chair has been taken by police for forensic testing but another rattan chair stands in its place on top of towels laid on the floor.

There was also a phone and coffee table with photos and various items next to the chair, presumably so Ms Smith would not have to move around too much.

Major Crime investigating officer, Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Neagle, said photos of the room show that Ms Smith was neglected.

'The state of the house when police arrived, the state of Ann when she was taken to hospital, it was obvious that she'd been neglected,' Mr Neagle told 9News.

This is the second time SA Police called on the public for information about Ms Neagle's case, having received 28 Crime Stoppers calls since last Friday.

Ms Smith's friend, who wished to remain anonymous, said she had a falling out with her last year and hadn't spoken to her since.

'That's been the hardest part, I just feel so guilty, you always think what if?' the friend told 9News.

'She was loved and it hurts to hear comments, (like) "where were her family and friends?" And you do have friends that you don't see all the time.'

The pictures paint a bleak picture of Ms Smith's life before she died, confined to a chair in a neglected home with minimal furniture as she rotted in her excrement

The second appeal for help from police comes after they revealed Ms Smith had her large inheritance eroded from her bank account.

Ms Smith relied on carers to look after her at her Adelaide home under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Major Crime detectives inspecting Ms Smith's finances who assess how she spent her money have found a number of irregularities.

Ms Smith was left an inheritance by her dead parents in 2009.

Police said two loans from small lending companies were taken out in Ms Smith's name over the past six years, which were supposedly obtained for the purpose of travel and to buy a new car totalling $70,000.

But the funds were not used for either of those purposes.

Ms Smith plays with a dog. Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Neagle said it was 'obvious that she'd been neglected' judging by the state of her and her house when she was found

The 54-year-old lived alone in her Adelaide home (pictured) and relied on carers under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

Major Crime investigating officer, Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Neagle, said it was 'most unlikely' Ms Smith would have obtained the loans without assistance from another person due to her physical disability.

'They were significant loans. We know she did not travel or buy a new car after they were taken out, but the money is now gone,' he said.

Police believe the amount of money taken from the inheritance is disproportionate to Ms Smith's lifestyle.

'It is a large amount, a lot of money. That line of inquiry is in its infancy, but an excessive amount of money seems to have been withdrawn in recent years,' Senior Sergeant Neagle said.

'Ann may well have spent some of the money herself, but we are now trying to ascertain how much and if any has been removed unlawfully from her account and where it went.'

There is a possibility that Ms Smith was exploited by unknown individuals who knew her for her generosity.

Detective Superintendent Des Bray said Major Crime Investigators are seeking information on the use of her 1998 Silver Honda Accord Sedan WDR-166

The exploitation comes just a days after police raised more concerns about Ms Smith's missing jewellery and the use of her car which racked up $2,000 in fines.

Detective Superintendent Des Bray said Major Crime Investigators are seeking information on the use of her 1998 Silver Honda Accord Sedan WDR-166.

'We believe Ms Smith's car was used multiple times from 2015 and her death,' Detective Bray said.

Ms Smith did not have a drivers licence and the car was not modified to cater to her needs.

However, the vehicle was registered in her name and was used by an unknown person between 2015 and 2018.

In that period, Ms Smith received a total of four fines in excess of $2,000.

The car was slapped with speeding and traffic fines in August 2015, January 2017 and February 2018.

The fines were paid with funds from Ms Smith's bank account and resulted in her being disqualified for holding or obtaining a driver's licence.

Some of Ms Smith's jewellery (pictured) were reported as missing following her tragic death

Police are also looking for a man who they believe left his car in Ms Smith's carport and used her vehicle for an undisclosed period of time.

They are also seeking further information about a man and woman who visited Ms Smith regularly at her home between in October and November 2018.

'We'd like to know anybody who saw the people attending. Police want to know why they were there. Were they providing care to her?' Detective Bray said.

A total 45 calls have been made to Crime Stoppers from members of the public which have been 'extremely helpful'.

'We thank the community for their interest in this case, the 45 calls so far have been extremely helpful and have opened up further lines of enquiry,' Detective Bray said.

'There's lots of things that have come out in this investigation that I wouldn't think would ever happen you should be treating Annie just like you treat your mum.

'You wouldn't expect any person in 2020 to be neglected in such a way, and secondly you wouldn't expect somebody that requires others for care in their life to be exploited by anybody.'

Police have launched an investigation into Ms Smith's appalling death and her carer, who now faces criminal charges has been sacked

Police have launched an investigation into Ms Smith's appalling death and her carer, who now faces criminal charges has been sacked.

'The matters referred to by Ms Sharkie are similar to matters that the NDIS Commission either has under active investigation, or has taken enforcement or compliance action on,' an NDIS spokesperson said.

'Some of the matters referred to by Ms Sharkie are criminal matters and should be investigated by the appropriate authorities.

'All alleged criminal conduct matters that the NDIS Commission are made aware of are referred to the Police and other appropriate authorities as relevant. The NDIS Commission cannot undertake criminal investigations.'
New Delhi, June 22 : Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday asserted that there are huge opportunities for private businesses in the sector as the national transporter is willing to lease out traffic routes and parcel trains to them.

Citing the example of the national transporter's plan to hand over the services of 150 trains to private operators, he asked the private sector to join hands with the railways.

At an event organised by CII, Goyal, in his address through video conferencing, said: "Private sector can support in million ways... and I am going to lease out new routes." He asked the private players to identify the route where they want to set up a train service.

"If you want, we are willing to co-invest with you in the new lines. We are willing to lease out traffic routes, we are willing to lease out parcel trains. So, there are a lot of opportunities opening up for the private sector," he said.

He also suggested the private sector to look at the option of elevated corridors along the national highways to avoid the delay in the process of land procurement.

Highlighting the achievements of the Railways, Goyal said that on Sunday, the national transporter was able to move about 95 per cent of the freight that it did on June 21 last year.

"We are just 5 per cent down what was on June 21, 2019. If we take June as a whole, we are about eight per cent down, from June 1 to 21 in terms of freight loading," he said.

He also said that by July, Railways would be at par and growth will be witnessed from August-September onwards.

The Minister said that as of Sunday, Indian Railways moved 4,553 'Shramik Special' trains, for migrant labourers, and the number is continuously reducing.

"From May 31 to June 21, it has come down to double digits and yesterday (Sunday), only three trains. So, the demand is over. We have sorted out all those who wanted to go back home," the minister said.

He added that the railways has started 230 trains on regular routes, "they are not going full as people are still hesitant to travel".

Meanwhile, Railway Board Member, Traffic, P. K. Mishra at a press conference said: "During April and May freight loading was subdued due to nationwide lockdown." "But things have improved in June as more than 90 per cent of last year's loading has been achieved and the movement of steel, fertilisers, cement, food grains and other goods is more than last year's corresponding period," he said.

He pointed out that loading of food grains has increased by 94 per cent and it is likely to continue in the coming days. "While the cement loading is 18 per cent more than last year. Loading of coal will also increase and this is expected to be at same level in quarter three and four," he added.
Oh for the good old days of not so long ago. Like this time last year. There was talk aplenty of hotels in Majorca anticipating being unable to achieve good occupancy rates because of the fierce competition from rival destinations. Egypt was doing this, Turkey was doing that. Reports were invariably and incredibly superficial, and when they hit social media, the responses were along the lines of serves them right; prices are too high;

Majorca doesnt welcome tourists any more; the tourist tax is to blame. Etcetera, etcetera. In June last year, the average occupancy rate of hotels in Majorca and the Balearics was the highest in Spain - 81.8%. But this was down from 83% in June 2018, 84.7% in June 2017, and 84.6% in June 2016. It was 2018 when the market really started to correct itself in that tourists who had been borrowed from destinations which had experienced terrorism-related security issues were returning to those destinations. Market correction or not, the mere fact that there was a decrease in occupancy confirmed to those only too willing and ready to attack Majorca that here was evidence of, inter alia, greed and a shooting-in-the-foot.

Not, it has to be said, that one can really blame people for this sort of reaction. Especially not if it is a consequence of reports in which hoteliers themselves lament their declining occupancy and fortunes (both in terms of luck and money). The hotelier lament is one that we have heard many times. During the dark days of financial crisis, for instance, profits didnt go up. They couldnt go up. Occupancy wasnt there, and there were pressures on prices. As the clouds of financial crisis cleared came the unanticipated bonus caused by insecurity in other lands. Occupancy was there, and so were the prices. Fortunes were renewed.

I recall some years ago a very senior figure in the Majorca hotel sector saying something along the lines that if 100% occupancy cant be achieved in the highest months (July and August), something must be wrong. There was something wrong. That statement. There may be times when certain hotels can put up no vacancies signs, but 100% as an across-the-board situation is fanciful. It has never happened, and it never will happen. Look at hotel occupancy stats down the years, and youll realise this is the case. In essence, anything above a general level of 90% for the highest months is pretty good going, this general level applying to individual resorts or Majorca as a whole.

Occupancy, as there hasnt been any for several weeks, will now start to consume media column inches, as will percentages for how many hotels are open or may open. No one can possibly expect occupancy at the levels normally experienced, but what does this really tell us as far as hotel financial performance is concerned?

The other day I was sent a link to an article about the dilemma facing hoteliers this summer. To open or not to open? That is the question. In this article, there were some figures which did make one sit up, but when I started to look elsewhere, I sat back. They were to do with occupancy and break-even. What do you reckon that break-even point is? Forty, fifty per cent? Not according to Melia it isnt. Depending on the category of hotel and its level of service, its between 28% and 35%. Really. That low.

Melia being Melia, i.e. a damn good company, there was certainly no reason to dispute the figures, and when one looks further, there is verification. Another recent article looked at occupancy and break-even. In Europe as a whole, operational break-even is 34.5%. This increases slightly depending on category and service, just as the Melia situation does.

But break-even isnt of course what hotels are about, or any business, come to that, which wants to generate profit and grow. Another source examined the relationship between occupancy and peak profitability. For what were described as upper-scale hotels, this was 84.6%. So-called upper-midscale hotels hit peak profitability at 71.4%. The difference was partly due to factors such as the costs of food and beverage supply: higher quality will mean higher cost.

Operational costs are cited as being the reason why, once a certain level of occupancy is surpassed, profit starts to go down, with this profit only redeemable if prices to customers are increased.

These figures are of course general, and one accepts that hotel business circumstances do vary significantly. Ownership of a hotel, for example, will strip out one very significant cost - the rent - while labour costs in Majorca are higher than elsewhere in Spain because of collective bargaining agreements that are more favourable to workers. The Covid crisis will also have added costs of health security measures. But these figures do, nevertheless, give a rather more complete picture of the realities of occupancy.
The Indian army has changed rules of engagement along the Line of Actual Control with China, empowering field commanders to sanction use of firearms in rare cases, in a departure from the decades-old understanding between the two militaries to not resort to gun power in face-offs.

The announcement came after defence minister Rajnath Singh reviewed the situation in eastern Ladakh at a meeting with the top military brass on Sunday.

At the meeting, the defence minister carried out a comprehensive review of the entire security situation in eastern Ladakh and all other sensitive areas along the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, the sources said.

The meeting was attended by Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh and Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria.

In the meeting on, Singh told the top military officers to maintain a strict vigil on Chinese activities around the land border, the airspace and in strategic sea lanes, the sources said.

Following the Galwan incident, the sources said, Indian troops will no longer be bound by the long-held practice of not using firearms in face-offs.

The Indian Army is likely to convey to the Chinese military about the decision soon.

The armed forces were told to be fully ready to give a befitting reply to any Chinese misadventure, they said adding a "tough" approach is being adopted to guard the border.

The two armies had mutually decided not to resort to use firearms during face-offs in sync with provisions of two agreements on border management.

The agreements were signed in 1996 and 2005.

"Henceforth, our approach will be different. The ground commanders have been given full freedom to take decisions depending on the situation," a top military official said on the condition of anonymity.

India has already mobilised fighter jets and sent thousands of additional troops to forward locations along the border with China after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in a brutal attack by Chinese military in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.

The clash in Galwan Valley, the worst cross-border violence in 45 years, significantly frayed ties between the two countries, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi sending a strong message to China that "India wants peace but if provoked, India is capable of giving a befitting reply".

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on May 5 and 6.

The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

Prior to the clashes, both sides had been asserting that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, it was necessary to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.

Singh's review of the situation in eastern Ladakh came a day before he embarks on a three-day visit to Russia to attend a grand military parade in Moscow to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War.

The government in 2018 enhanced the financial powers of the three vice chiefs from Rs 100 crore to Rs 500 crore, effecting a five-time increase for augmenting procurement of arms and ammunition and upgrade of defence preparedness.
A derrick man secures a length of drill pipe during drilling on a natural gas drill rig near Montrose, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Monday, April 5, 2010.

The U.S. shale industry is about to enter a period of "great compression" as low oil prices hammer the sector, according to a Deloitte study released Monday.

The firm believes that exploration and production companies could write down the value of their assets by as much as $300 billion as they struggle to breakeven in a lower-for-longer oil price environment. Significant impairments are expected in the second quarter. Based on this, the firm envisions a wave of bankruptcies followed by mass consolidation.

"The oil industry is currently experiencing a 'great compression' in which companies' room to maneuver is restricted by low commodity prices, reduced demand, capital constraints, debt loads, and health impacts of COVID-19," the report said. "Unlike in previous downturns, these effects are now simultaneous  creating a higher level risk of technical insolvencies and building intense pressure on the industry."

The coronavirus pandemic sent oil prices tumbling in March and April as billions of people around the world stayed home in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. By some estimates, global fuel demand dropped by a third as businesses shut their doors, cars remained parked and airplanes stayed grounded.

At one point in April, West Texas Intermediate crude plunged into negative territory for the first time as demand remained depressed and oil storage quickly filled.

Since then, the U.S. oil benchmark has gained more than 200% due to production cuts as well as improving demand. Still, on Monday the benchmark traded around $39 per barrel, far below the more than $60 it fetched at the beginning of the year. As recently as 2014, WTI traded above $100.

According to Deloitte, 30% of shale operators are technically insolvent with oil prices at $35 and 20% have "stressed financials."

While some of the $300 billion in write-downs and impairment charges that the firm envisions is due to accounting practices, it's also indicative of the fact that these companies are becoming riskier for equity holders. The charges signify a reduction in future earnings power, and with debt levels staying the same, a company's leverage ratio immediately increases.

"As COVID-19 impacts amplify pressures on shale companies through 2020, a wave of impairments may prompt the deepest consolidation the industry has ever seen over the next six to 12 months," said Duane Dickson, vice chairman at Deloitte.

Whiting Petroleum, once a big player in the Bakken shale region, was the first casualty of the coronavirus-induced drop in oil prices when the company filed for bankruptcy protection on April 1. And others are reportedly on the way.

The impacts will be felt across the oil and gas sector, as well as throughout the financial markets more broadly, Deloitte said.

"The reverberations of the pandemic will extend beyond the US shale industry. Although US shale is less than 10 percent of global oil and gas production, it accounts for 40 percent of the global drilling activity and explains nearly 100 percent of the growth in US midstream and export-oriented refining and petrochemical sectors over the past 10 years. Thus, any major developments in US shales will likely have a domino effect on the global oil and gas industry," the report concluded.
The Venice Commission regrets that a proposal for constitutional amendments was introduced in the Armenian Parliament on the day of the adoption by the Venice Commission of its opinion. This is stated in the Venice Commission opinion on the constitutional amendments in Armenia, and which was issued Monday.

The Commission regrets that a proposal for constitutional amendments was introduced in the Armenian Parliament on the day of the adoption by the Venice Commission of this Opinion, which proposal is not in line with the recommendations in this Opinion, reads point 82 of this opinion.

To note, a meeting of the Council of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia took place this morning, from which the MPs were informed that a special session of the NA was to be convened today at 1pm, during which the main lawthe Constitutionof the country shall be amended.

The respective draft amendmentstabled by the majority My Step faction in parliamentto the Constitution propose that the powers of the Constitutional Court judges of who have been in office for more than 12 years, as well as the term of office of the serving president of the Constitutional Court be terminated, and the next president of the Constitutional Court shall be elected by a new procedure. There are currently three Constitutional Court judges who have been in office for more than 12 years, whereas the current president of the Constitutional Court, Hrayr Tovmasyan, has been in office in this capacity for only two years, and therefore he will remain a member of the Constitutional Court.

The full opinion of the Venice Commission is accessible here.
The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP) is expected to release the results of Class 10 and Class 12 of the UP Board 2020 soon with UP Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma saying on Saturday (June 20) that UP Board 2020 class 10 and class 12 results will be announced at around 12:30 pm on June 27.

The results will be released online at upmsp.edu.in, upresults.nic.in and upmspresults.up.nic.in.

Heres how you can check UP Board Class 10 and Class 12 result 2020 online:

- Candiates can visit the websites - upmsp.edu.in, upresults.nic.in or upmspresults.up.nic.in

- Click on the link that reads UP Board Result 2020 Class 10 or UP Board Result 2020 Class 12

- Key in your roll number and other login in credentials

- Press enter and your result with subject wise score will be displayed on your screen.

- Download it and take a print-out of the results for future reference

Students can also get their results on their mobile phones via SMS. To do so, students who appeared for the class 10 exams will have to go to the message option and type UP10ROLLNUMBER - and send it to 56263.

The students of UP Board Class 12 will have to send the message by typing UP12ROLLNUMBER to on the same number  56263.

A total of 59.6 lakh students have appeared for their UP Board inter and matric exam 2020. As per the rules issued by the board, students will have to secure a minimum of 35 per cent marks to pass a subject examination.

The UP Board Class 10 and Class 12 examinations 2020 were held on March 6, but the evaluation of the answer sheet and the results were delayed due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent country wide lockdown imposed to stop the spread of the virus.
Dmitry Polyanskiy  Russias deputy ambassador to the UN:

Dear Nikki, thank you, now we know who is to blame for American racial mess! US is innocent of any troubles and wrongdoings, all the abhorrent things that we are seing now are due to Russian agents encouragement!What an easy task US officials have  just blame Russians! https://t.co/XIlr4hlWZ7  Dmitry Polyanskiy (@Dpol_un) June 21, 2020

What an easy task US officials have  just blame Russians!

Should Americans ever try self-reflection, they would seriously end up blaming the mirror.

Easy as that: Russia did it

Oops, did that mirror just crack?

WtR
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka held an online meeting on June 14 about the murder of George Floyd in the US, the eruption of international protests against it and the attempts by the ruling classes in every country to establish autocratic methods of rule. Below we publish the main speech delivered by SEP General Secretary Wije Dias, which was simultaneously translated into Tamil.

Today we discuss the political implications of the growing wave of worldwide struggles against the murder of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd in the US and the ruling class preparations for dictatorships internationally. Our experiences in Sri Lanka closely resonate with these world developments.

It was less than a week ago that the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, which already has taken giant strides towards establishing a military-police regime, unleashed a brutal police attack against a protest picket held by the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) against the killing of Floyd.

Wije Dias

The FSP protest was due to be held in front of the American embassy in Colombo. Police, however, had obtained a court order banning the event. When protestors came to the Colombo municipal junction, they were violently attacked by the police. This has deep-going political implications. That is why the SEP did not hesitate in denouncing the police vehemently, despite the unbridgeable political differences we have with that party.

However, at a press conference, Pubudu Jayagoda, the FSP propaganda secretary, referred to the police attack as a joke, saying it was one of all the jokes played by the Rajapakse regime during the past seven months. Far from denouncing the government, Jayagoda simply challenged the cabinet spokesman Bandula Gunawardena to a debate on this issue. In the eyes of working people and youth, such cowardice and shortsightedness can attract only contempt.

There is an ongoing wave of global militant protests and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people against the police killing of Floyd. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), not only supports this mounting protest movement of workers and youth, it has provided the only viable political perspective to achieve the aspirations of those who have come forward in defense of democratic rights.

For days after Floyds killing, the police responsible remained free. The authorities only took action against the killers after the protests erupted. Immediately, black racialists used the situation to claim this as a discriminatory act against blacks, because the police involved were white. They, no doubt, strengthened the hand of the oppressor by helping to demoralise and disorient those people who joined the demonstrations which cut across racial and color differences.

The criminal attempts of the US establishment to let Floyds killers go scot free should not surprise anyone. In Sri Lanka, all factions of the ruling class, and their pseudo-left supporters, have given all the killers in the armed forces complete immunity for the slaughter not of dozens but thousands of innocent Tamils during the 30-year war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Donald Trump responded by ordering the National Guard to suppress protesters with tear gas, batons and live bullets, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. Not only in Sri Lanka but workers and youth all over the world have experienced how the repressive arm of capitalist state does not consider skin colour, race or language when unleashing its murderous repression.

In a statement issued on June 8, the SEP in US stated: One of the most striking features of this development is its leaderless character. Whichever ruling party is currently dominant in any given country, the official attitude toward the growth of social opposition among workers and youth is fundamentally hostile.

This leaderless character of the protests underscores the rightward move of the so-called democrats, trade unions and the lefts under the conditions in which the ruling classes are turning to military-fascist dictatorships. The abdication of these fake leaderships is because they realise that what is at stake in the emerging mass struggles is the capitalist system itself.

People have come into the streets against Floyds killing to express their opposition more broadly to attacks on their living conditions, the gutting of jobs and the annihilation of social rights through austerity measures. This wave of struggles challenges the entire capitalist structure based on private property and its system of nation states.

Under conditions of a protracted breakdown of global capitalism, a decline in economic growth is predicted for all major economies. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is not likely to go away for a decade. The estimated economic contraction in Britain will be 14 percent this year, for Spain 11.6 percent, for France 10.3 percent and for Italy and Germany 9.2 and 6.1 percent respectively.

Countries in South Asia, as well as others in the so-called Third World, will face severe economic declines not seen since the colonial rule of the 1930s. The rhetoric of Rajapakse in Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India about autarkic economic development and self-sufficiency is a hollow rant aimed at hoodwinking the masses. The moves towards dictatorship arise out of this objective crisis of the profit system in every country.

In his The Civil War in France, Karl Marx explained the class character of the capitalist state: [T]here developed in nineteenth century the centralised state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature. With the development of class antagonisms between capital and labor, state power assumed more and more the character of a police force for the suppression of the working class, a machine of class rule [Cited from Lenins The State and Revolution].

The ruling classes have only widened social polarisation during the COVID-19 pandemic. While workers are driven back to work places and will die due to the lack of necessary protection, Trump handed over $US3 trillion to big businesses and banks to cover their losses. The richest one percent of the population in the US is even richer as millions of workers have lost their jobs due to the same coronavirus lockdown.

In Sri Lanka, tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs. At many places, the pandemic has been used to force the workers to work, with the risk to their health and lives, for a meager monthly wage of 14,500 rupees [$US78]. No trade union has uttered a word of protest against these social crimes.

Addressing the millions around the world protesting against police killings, the SEP in its June 8 statement emphasised: The enemy must be properly identified. It is not just a matter of rogue police forces or racist cops. The source of the attack on democratic rights is the financial oligarchy and the social and economic system, capitalism, upon which its wealth and power are based.

Identifying the enemy closes the door on the futile search for lesser-evils within the political establishment, as done by all varieties of reformists and pseudo-lefts. When workers make this identification, they will also see that the capitalist class is an internationally-organised class.

The issue posed by such an understanding is to look for the social force that is capable of the fight against this class. Only genuine Marxism provides the answer. In the Communist Manifesto, drafted by Marx and Engels in 1847, they explained that out of all the social classes that come into struggle against capitalism the working class is the only consistently revolutionary class.

Moreover, Lenin explained: The strength of the proletariat in any capitalist economy is far greater than the proportion it represents in the total population. That is because the proletariat economically dominates the centre and nerve of the entire economic system of capitalism, and also because the proletariat expresses economically and politically the real interests of the overwhelming majority of the working people under capitalism.

The ICFI has insisted, in line with its analysis on the globalisation of world capitalist economy, that the class struggle of the workers not only in content but also in form becomes international in this period. Against the ruling classes internationally, all the oppressed social forces should be mobilised under the leadership of the working class.

The acuteness of the crisis of capitalist rule in Sri Lanka is reflected in the political splits in all four major capitalist partiesthe United National Party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Tamil National Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. New political formations are thrown up under various banners of Balawegayas or forces. The task of all these forces is to prevent the working class from taking the political leadership in rallying all sections of the masses and the oppressed against the Rajapakse regime.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lenin was engaged in an unrelenting struggle for the political independence of the working class against the Narodniks (Populists) in Russia who insisted petty-bourgeois peasant communes were the basis for socialism. Trotsky in his Theory of Permanent Revolution went further and insisted on the hegemonic role of the working class in the revolution and the dictatorship of the working class as the vehicle of international socialism.

Based on these invaluable strategic lessons, the SEP, the Sri Lankan section of the ICFI, fights for the establishment of a workers and peasants government in the form of a socialist republic of Sri Lanka and Eelam as part of the federation of socialist republics of South Asia and internationally.

We now face a situation where the Rajapakse government is accelerating the militarisation of its rule. This raises the necessity to intensify our struggle to educate and mobilise the working people, students and youth, in Sri Lanka and South Asia, on the basis of our international socialist perspective.

In the SEPs election statement we have elaborated these issues. It will be used as a basis for a wide range of political discussions in the coming month as part of our general election campaign.

The SEP has decided to publish four newsletters aimed at workers in the education, health, apparel and immigrant sectors. The campaign for subscribers will be accompanied by steps to build Action Committees of working people and youth to fight to defend basic democratic and social rights. We call on all our listeners to join the SEP and participate in this struggle.
(Natural News) Beijing reported a decline in new coronavirus cases on June 18 as authorities tightened restrictions in the capital in an effort to contain a new outbreak. Health authorities in Beijing logged 21 new coronavirus cases, down from 31 on June 17.

Tianjin and Hebei, both of which border the capital, also reported new coronavirus cases. No new deaths were reported.

A total of 158 people have been infected since last week in the latest outbreak, which is linked to the sprawling Xinfadi market in the citys southwest district. The market has since been shuttered.

People in close contact with those infected were traced to address possible transmission quickly. In addition, authorities ordered anyone who has been near the market, as well as their close contacts, to quarantine for 14 days and get tested twice. The city has also ramped up testing and rolled out measures to prevent and control infections.

Borders close as city declares emergency

Local officials have closed the citys borders to all confirmed cases, suspected cases, patients with fever and close contacts. Both international and domestic travel to and from the capital are barred, and foreign diplomats from abroad are required to self-quarantine for at least two weeks. Beijings two major airports  Beijing Capital and Beijing Daxing  have scrapped over 1,200 flights as of June 17, with other flights rescheduled to later dates.

The city has shuttered all indoor public venues, including clubhouses and party rooms. Authorities have also placed Fengtai district, where the market is located, under lockdown, ordering offices, restaurants, schools and hotels in the area to be shut down. (Related: Chinese authorities hid the fact that medical staff in coronavirus-hit city were infected.)

The Communist Party of China (CPC) has described the situation as extremely grave.

This has truly rung an alarm bell for us, said Cai Qi, a senior member of the CPC, in a meeting of Beijings Communist Party Standing Committee.

Better prepared to handle new cases

Officials in other provinces have similar containment measures in place. For example, local officials in Macau said that people who had traveled to Beijing would be observed in a government facility for symptoms.

We are now responding to outbreaks with a calmer attitude, a senior official in Guangdong told the Financial Times. We have gained some experience and now its just a matter of following procedures: sending out notices, tracking people from high-risk areas and getting companies to pay more attention.

Back in Beijing, the government has placed community workers at gates of residential compounds following the new outbreak. Malls and restaurants in the city have started to require customers to wear masks again, as many residents have stopped wearing them outside.

Economists are closely monitoring the developments in Chinas capital.

In view of the recent Beijing outbreak, we expect Chinas precautionary measures, such as quarantine requirements and travel restrictions, to persist for an extended period, added Serena Zhou, an economist at Mizuho Securities.

The countrys central bank, however, has tightened its monetary stance in recent weeks. According to Yi Gang, governor of the Peoples Bank of China, the countrys financial markets remain stable. The latest outbreak could force policymakers to rethink their stance to stimulate economic growth.

China now has 84,494 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 4,638 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. While cases in Beijing pale in comparison to other cities like Paris or New York, the government has raised its emergency warning to its second-highest level to prevent a crisis in Chinas political hub.

An outbreak in Beijing  the seat of the CPC  not only is embarrassing for the party, according to experts, but it also puts the countrys narrative of having controlled the outbreak into question.

Pandemic.news has more on the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus.

Sources include:

APNews.com

TheEpochTimes.com

FT.com

NYTimes.com

Coronavirus.JHU.edu
Editorial

Slavery is at the heart of Australias foundation

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the incredibly ignorant comment, there was no slavery in Australia, in an attempt to quell political unrest related to Bla(c)k Deaths in Custody. As his comments sparked outrage, Morrison walked back his comments the following day stating that he was referring to how the [NSW] settlement was first established, and that views concerned the forming the New South Wales colony.

However, this isnt entirely true. Australia only formally banned slavery in 1901, but it perpetrated many different forms of slavery, where minorities were exploited and received little to no compensation.

Australia was rife with these practices, and it is hard to think about where to begin given the length of this editorial. However, Morrisons comments highlight a lack of education in Australia around our sordid history and the founding of this country. We had an education system that hid for many generations, the real atrocities that founded this state.

Thus, this editorial will be used to provide a quick rundown of some these heinous events.

In Queensland, South Sea Islanders were transported to Australia as a source of cheap labour for the sugar industry. According to Queensland Historical Atlas, South Sea Islanders were forced, coerced, deceived or persuaded to leave their homes and travel by ship to Queensland. In 1880, the Pacific Labourers Act (Queensland) was passed, which provided a monitoring system for [...] indentured labour. [] Essentially cheap labour was provided by coerced workers who could not resign.

Indigenous pastoral workers all across the country were subjected to slave, or slave-like, conditions. In fact, according to Creative Spirits, after pastoralists successfully opposed a minimum monthly wage for Indigenous workers in Western Australia, one parliamentarian describe[d] the system as another name for slavery.  These workers were woefully underpaid. In 1919, the government claimed these workers were earning sixty-six per cent of a white wage. However, this was never the case. In 1949, records show that they were making thirty-three per cent of a white wage. And this perpetrated well into the twentieth century.

And these practices didnt stop with the 1967 referendum either. Again, quoting from Creative Spirits: [Up until the 1970s] Aboriginal people of all ages were taken from their homes and sent to work on cattle and sheep properties, in kitchens, homesteads, shearing sheds or on the land, all across Australia.

ABC radio interviewed one such woman, Felicity Holt, who was taken from her parents to work as a domestic at sixteen years old. She was enrolled to be a nurse; however, she was removed to work in the kitchen at St Josephs Convent in Dalby. She remembers only receiving a few coins a week and the rest being placed in a trust [account] opened by the Queensland government. Many never saw the money put in those accounts.

This story isnt unique in Australia. Holts account is only one of the thousands that shed light on the systemic injustice faced by Bla(c)k people in Australia. These actions were deliberate, rooted in white supremacy, all enacted to ensure the largest profits possible for white settlers.

Australia was not built by free men. The construction of this state is covered in the blood of thousands Bla(c)k people who were treated like cattle. It is a history that is swept under the rug because it does not comport with the supposed values our liberal democracy pretends to uphold. Instead, Australias history amplifies the stories of the discovery of Australia (with immense revisionism), federation, and our participation in the world wars  all part of the battler legend our nation creates for itself, instead of what the reality is: a colonial outpost designed to enrich European men.
Online application shows in real time whether the disease is spreading faster or slower in over 200 countries and helps evaluate the effectiveness of public policies aimed at containing the pandemic .

Researchers at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) in Aracatuba, Brazil, have developed a computational tool that acts like a "COVID-19 accelerometer," plotting in real time the rate at which growth is accelerating or decelerating in more than 200 countries and territories.

Available free of charge online, the application automatically loads the most recent notified case numbers from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), updated daily, and applies mathematical modeling techniques to diagnose the current stage of the pandemic in each country.

"The application democratizes access to information. Everyone can understand exactly what's happening in their city, state or country. It also helps public administrators and policymakers evaluate whether measures taken to mitigate transmission of the novel coronavirus are having the desired effect," Yuri Tani Utsunomiya told. Utsunomiya is a professor at UNESP's Aracatuba School of Veterinary Medicine (FMVA) and first author of an article published in Frontiers in Medicine showing how the mathematical modeling framework can be used to assess the effects of public health measures.

To explain how an epidemic progresses, Utsunomiya offered an analogy to a fast car. Initially, the disease spreads slowly, and daily cases grow slowly, just as a car takes some time to pick up speed. The rate of growth is called the 'incidence' and is measured by the number of new cases per day. Prevalence is the total number of cases since counting began and can be compared to the distance traveled by this imaginary car.

"Stepping on the throttle makes the number of cases rise rapidly, like a car accelerating and picking up speed. Exponential growth in the number of cases occurs in this second stage of the epidemic. What every country wants is to stop this acceleration and begin to slow transmission. These are two distinct operations," Utsunomiya explained. "The first consists of taking one's foot off the throttle so that the acceleration falls to zero. Incidence peaks as a result. The second operation entails exerting negative acceleration on the disease [stepping on the brake] so that the rate of growth falls to zero. Without velocity, the car stops. This is what we all want. We want COVID-19 to stop spreading."

The COVID-19 accelerometer shows almost in real time whether a country is accelerating or braking, with a degree of imprecision in countries with undernotification of cases.

However, Utsunomiya stressed that the four stages of growth in the epidemic - flow (green), exponential (pink), deceleration (yellow) and stationary (blue) - may not unfold in that order. Even after a period of deceleration or stationary growth, the disease could again start spreading exponentially if control measures are abandoned. Hence, tools that help continuously monitor transmission are important.

"Our analysis of more than 200 countries and territories showed that effective control measures quickly affect the acceleration curve, well before the number of daily cases starts to fall. This behavior of the curve is highly relevant to any assessment of public policy to control the disease," Utsunomiya said.

Sinuous curves

Using official notification data, the application plots incidence - the growth curve everyone wants to flatten so that hospitals are not overwhelmed - and acceleration in real time, and detects transitions between the four stages. This is made possible by two mathematical techniques: moving regression and a hidden Markov model.

"We developed a simple but highly robust method that takes data available from national and international databases to produce precise information on the progress and movement of the pandemic. Of course, the calculations are based on data that essentially depend on diagnosis [testing]," noted Jose Fernando Garcia, a professor at UNESP Jaboticabal and a coauthor of the article.

While the undernotification of cases is a limitation and may create scale distortions, the epidemiological curves produced by the model are sufficiently accurate, according to the researchers.

An analysis of the curves for Brazil at this time shows that no state has thus far succeeded in leaving behind the exponential growth stage, despite quarantine measures and lockdowns. China reached the stationary stage after only six weeks of well-organized social isolation. Australia, New Zealand, Austria and South Korea have now reached the stationary stage. Italy, Spain and Germany are in the deceleration stage, in which the number of new cases falls daily, thanks to the confinement measures taken.

Utsunomiya divides the measures designed to contain the spread of COVID-19 into two categories: suppression, meaning more intense and severe measures aimed at rapidly reversing the growth curve, e.g., lockdown, and mitigation measures aimed at lowering the growth rate, e.g., requiring face masks and discouraging crowds.

"Our study clearly points to the effectiveness of suppression in combating COVID-19," he said. "However, suppressive measures have been criticized for creating social problems and having a profoundly negative effect on the economy. Mitigation has less severe social and economic impacts, but it's also less efficient. There really isn't a silver bullet."

Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP awarded Utsunomiya scholarships in the past to support his PhD research and master's research.

According to Utsunomiya, Japan is one of the only countries that managed to decelerate the growth of new cases with mitigation measures alone. "Comparing strategies across countries requires caution," he said. "The effectiveness of mitigation depends on factors like healthcare infrastructure, the amount and frequency of testing, population density, and the extent to which people in general comply with the recommendations of the health authorities."

###

About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at http://www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at http://www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.
President Donald Trump launched a new conspiracy theory Monday to raise fears about mail-in ballots, this time claiming foreign countries would print up 'millions' of fake ballots to try to shift the outcome of the election.

He also made the claim that the 2020 election would be rigged through foreign interference  at a time he is struggling in the polls.

Trump made the claim on Twitter, days after revealing his fear that losing litigation over expansion of mail ballots was the greatest risk to his campaign. His attorney general has warned that mail ballots  which five states rely on entirely for their elections  'open the floodgates' to fraud.

'RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! ' Trump wrote on Twitter.

President Donald Trump warned that foreign countries would print 'millions' of mail-in ballots in an attempt to influence the election

His all-caps warning came after the Trump campaign was shocked by the poor turnout at Trump's Tulsa rally, after facing a week of concerning national and swing state polls.

Rival Joe Biden now leads Trump by 9.5 percentage points nationally in the RealClearPolitics poll average.

Trump in another tweet referred to mail voting as 'stupid' and pointed to successful elections during two World Wars, when the home-front was basically secure.

'Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!'

Trump wrote Monday morning that foreign nations 'and others' would print 'millions' of ballots

He cited an article about stark claims made by Attorney General Bill Barr claiming mail balloting could lead to fraud

Trump predicted the 2020 election, where his presumed opponent is Joe Biden, 'will be the most RIGGED Election' in the nation's history

Attorney General William Barr warned about mail-in voting Friday

In this May 28, 2020, file photo, Dave Turnier processes mail-in ballots at at the Chester County Voter Services office in West Chester, Pa., prior to the primary election. The civic ritual of casting a ballot has been disrupted by a global pandemic and dramatically animated by social unrest

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, early Sunday, June 21, 2020, after stepping off Marine One as he returns from a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla.

Trump campaign aides were stunned at the empty seats at Trump's Tulsa rally

Soldiers serving overseas sent in ballots by mail, including specially printed federal ballots preserved by the Smithsonian Institution.

Trump also retweeted an article by conservative Breitbart News featuring stark warnings by his attorney general Bill Barr, who said mail-in voting would 'open the floodgates' to fraud.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump both voted by mail, and White House press secretary Keyleigh McEnany also voted by mail, all in Florida, where Trump switched his residency from New York. '

'I am worried about a number of things going into the election. One  the censorship of robust debate, Im also worried about the undermining the public confidence in the integrity of the elections,' Barr told Fox News and Fox Business interviewer Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Friday.

'The thing we have going for us especially when there is intense division in the country is that we have peaceful transfers of power and our way of resolving it is to have an election. But when state governments start adopting these practices like mail in ballots that open the floodgates of potential fraud then peoples confidence in the outcome of the elections is going to be undermined,' he added.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in balloting, which is getting a boost amid the coronavirus pandemic, has seen widespread fraud, although he hasn't cited studies about it.

He warned in an interview published Friday that efforts to open up the vote to more mail-ballots the 'biggest risk' he faces.

'My biggest risk is that we don't win lawsuits,' Trump told Politico.

'We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don't win those lawsuits, I think  I think it puts the election at risk,' Trump said.
SDLP Economy Spokesperson, Sinead McLaughlin MLA made a proposal at the Economy Committee today, that the Economic Advisory Group should have a mandate and focus on addressing regional imbalance.

The Foyle MLA said: Last week, I raised serious concerns when I learnt of the makeup of the Economic Advisory Group. While there is a tremendous wealth of experience on the Group and we will work closely with them, it beggars belief that there are no representatives of trade unions, the social economy or the community and voluntary sector. I was also disappointed when the Minister confirmed, in a written response to me, that the Group would not have a focus on addressing regional imbalance across the North.

Today at the Economy Committee, I proposed that we write to Minister Dodds and ask her to widen representation at this critical Group and add a focus on regional imbalance. Unfortunately, this proposal was defeated but I will continue to make this case at every given opportunity.

We must build back better and chart an economic recovery that is fairer, greener and works for people across the North. A good start would be an Advisory Group that is more reflective of the society we want to build together.
China sent a survey vessel through waters claimed by its maritime sovereignty rival Vietnam this month to warn Hanoi against starting new energy exploration projects and filing any motions in an international court, observers say.

Tracking tools showed Chinas 105-meter-long, 58-person survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 4 moving toward Vietnamese waters on June 14, Radio Free Asia reported. The vessel passed three days later within 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) of Vietnams coast  a countrys normal exclusive economic zone  the report said.

That movement follows the passage of another Chinese vessel near Vietnam in April and a standoff at sea last year.

Chinese Ship Returns Near Vietnam Border Ship could escalate tensions while both nations are dealing with COVID-19

The Chinese government, the most powerful entity in a six-way South China Sea sovereignty dispute that includes Vietnam, hopes its ships discourage Vietnamese leaders from filing for world court arbitration as the Philippines did in 2013, analysts believe.

At the same time, China is warning Vietnam against any new undersea oil or gas exploration projects near a nine-dash line that Beijing uses to demarcate its maritime claims, analysts say.

What I would see as recent moves, including the most recent one, I think is meant to signal to Vietnam to think twice before resorting to all sorts of these means to undermine Chinese interests, and that includes striking up new deals with other energy partners and all that, said Collin Koh, a maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In November a deputy Vietnamese foreign minister cited arbitration and litigation as two possible measures against China.

Three years after Manila sued, a Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against the legal basis for Chinas nine-dash line. China dismissed the ruling but used aid and investment on its own to strengthen relations with rival maritime claimants. Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan also claim all or parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea.

Vietnam and China clashed at sea in 1974, 1988 and 2014, setting Hanoi apart from other sea claimants that seldom spark conflict. The first two incidents were deadly. In 2014 Vietnam charged China with ramming a Vietnamese fishing boat. That incident along with upset over the placement of a Chinese oil rig sparked anti-Chinese rioting in Vietnam.

China, backed by the worlds third strongest military, claims about 90% of the South China Sea, prized for fish, energy and shipping lanes.

China cites historical records to support its drilling, surveillance and island construction within the nine-dash line.

Vietnam and China are both looking for fossil fuel reserves under the seabed. China withdrew its vessels in October last year after four months of patrol near a gas-and-oil tract 352 kilometers southeast of Vietnam.

Other oil explorers should take note of China's survey vessel movement, suggested Euan Graham, senior fellow with the Singapore-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines actively seek undersea fuel, sometimes contracting projects to foreign drillers.

I think its a part of an underlying strategy, which is to intimidate and harass all Southeast Asian exploration activity within the nine-dash line and to a point where it becomes economically unviable for foreign companies and even local companies to exploit, aware that China is going to make life that difficult with them, Graham said.

China may hope to nudge other claimants toward joint energy exploration, he added.

Drilling contractors expect Vietnam to provide security during any projects, Koh said. They could ask Vietnam for a higher contract fee if they fear harassment, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, director of the Center for International Studies director at University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam had no rigs at an exploration tract along the Chinese boats reported mid-June route, Nguyen added. The country hopes to stay low-key for now as the ruling Communist Party prepares for its 2021 national congress, he said. An upset at sea would derail the event agenda.

Vietnam is making a compromise that it doesnt want to confront China for the time being, Nguyen said. In the next year, the Vietnamese Communist Party congress will be convened, so anything thats happening in the South China Sea may have a big impact, so thats the reason why the Vietnamese government wants to put out the tension in the South China Sea.
Paris, France (PANA) - UNESCO is organizing a webinar on Monday on the theme, "What role can African history play in addressing the social and human consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the continent?" The UN body said on its website that the aim is to see how African history can help in analysing the social/societal and human consequences of COVID-19 on the continent and in addressing the challenges posed by this pandemic
India's coronavirus caseload skyrocketed by a record 15,000 yesterday as migrant workers left major cities and returned to rural villages.

The increase of 15,413 cases on Sunday - and a further 14,821 reported today - has brought India's total Covid-19 infections to 425,282.

Sunday's rise was the largest daily increase in cases reported in India so far.

There were 445 new deaths from the disease today, bringing its total death toll to 13,699, India's health ministry reported. A total of 306 new deaths were reported yesterday.

The Indian government has run special trains to return thousands of migrant workers to their native villages in recent weeks.

India's coronavirus caseload skyrocketed by a record 15,000 yesterday as migrant workers left major cities and returned to rural villages

India reported 445 new deaths from coronavirus today. The largest increase came on June 17 where 2,003 deaths were reported. The spike was due to the total deaths being revised because of unspecified accounting 'discrepancies'. It was not immediately clear how many of the deaths occurred that day and how many were from adjustments over a longer period

India's coronavirus caseload skyrocketed by 15,000 yesterday as migrant workers left major cities returned to rural villages. Pictured: Worshippers attend a drive-in mass in Bengaluru, India

Nearly 90 per cent of India's poorest districts have coronavirus cases, though the outbreak remains centred in Delhi, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu states.

These states are home to some of India's major cities including New Delhi and Mumbai.

Infections slowed in China and South Korea, suggesting they are making headway in stemming their newest outbreaks.

Globally, the number of new virus cases has soared in recent days and in Brazil, Iraq, India and the United States, hospitals are scrambling to cope.

Nearly 9 million people have been infected by coronavirus and more than 468,000 people have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Experts say the actual numbers are much higher, given limits to testing and the presumed large share of asymptomatic cases.

In a grim reminder of the pandemic's ubiquitous reach, Philippine officials said Saudi Arabia's king had asked that the remains of 282 Filipino workers who perished in recent months in the oil-rich kingdom be repatriated within three days.

They died of varied causes, but virus restrictions have delayed the repatriations.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the Philippine government asked that a deadline be extended and that the bodies of about 50 Filipinos who died of COVID-19 be buried in Saudi Arabia.

The Philippines has reported more than 30,000 infections and 1,169 deaths, among the highest in southeast Asia, and is struggling to help bring home tens of thousands of Filipinos who have lost their work abroad.

The Indian government has run special trains to return thousands of migrant workers to their native villages in recent weeks. Pictured: Devotees perform socially-distanced rituals during a solar eclipse in Prayagraj, India

In Pakistan, infections are accelerating and hospitals have been forced to turn away patients, with the number of new daily cases as high as 6,800 a day in mid-June.

The government has relaxed pandemic restrictions, seeking to salvage a near-collapsed economy as the number of people living in poverty has risen to 40 per cent, up from 30 per cent of the population of 220 million people.

In Iraq, masked workers were setting up makeshift coronavirus wards in Baghdad's vast exhibition grounds as a long-dreaded spike in infections strained its overstretched hospitals.

Late on Sunday, the World Health Organization reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours.

Brazil tallied 54,771 and the US was next at 36,617, the UN health agency said.

Experts say rising case counts reflect multiple factors including more testing and spreading infections.

More than two-thirds of the new deaths were reported in the Americas.

Still, in east Asia there were signs of progress, as South Korea reported 17 new cases, the first time its daily increase fell to under 20 in nearly a month.

A rise in cases among people arriving from south Asia prompted a halt to new visas for travellers from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Elsewhere in Asia, Beijings increase was in single digits for the first time in eight days. It reported nine cases.

But Australia's Victoria state reported 16 new cases of the coronavirus as it tries to bring an outbreak there under control.

The number of cases there is the highest in two months, accounting for more than 80 per cent of Australia's new cases over the past week.

In the United States, experts say the resurgence in infections there is not a so-called 'second wave' but a continuation of the first wave of outbreaks as the number of cases plateaus.

New cases are dipping in some parts of the country while rising mainly in the south, west and midwest, swamping hospitals in some areas.

In Pakistan, unmasked daily wage workers were seen waiting to be hired by customers in Rawalpindi, Pakistan this month

The coronavirus has killed about 120,000 people nationwide.

More than 30,000 cases were reported on Friday and Saturday, with the daily totals their highest since May 1.

In New York City, the worst affected area so far, efforts to stop the pandemic's spread through contact tracing are being hampered by the reluctance of many people to provide information to tracers.

The New York Times reported only 35 per cent of the 5,347 city residents who tested positive or were presumed positive for Covid-19 in the first two weeks of the contact tracing program gave information about their close contacts.

But Dr. Ted Long, head of New York City'ss new Test and Trace Corps, defended the program, saying 69% of the people who complete an interview provide contacts.

The city will hit a turning point Monday: allowing New Yorkers to dine out for the first time in three months, though only at outdoor tables.

Shops and hair dressers are open - as are children's playgrounds.

Office workers will be allowed to resume their commutes, though many won't yet.
It is hard, on the other hand, to blame the policeman, blank, good-natured, thoughtless, and insuperably innocent, for being such a perfect representative of the people he serves. He, too, believes in good intentions and is astounded and offended when they are not taken for the deed. James Baldwin

James Baldwins 1960 essay Fifth Avenue, Uptown is rich with heartrending ironies and razor-sharp refutations of the usual apologies for racist violence in America. It does not matter, Baldwin argues, whether individuals are good or bad apples in a system designed to enforce segregation, whether by force of law or brute force of will. None of the police commissioners men, writes Baldwin, even with the best will in the world, have any way of understanding the lives led by the people they swagger about in twos and threes controlling.

This brutal ignorance extends widely to radicals, dissidents, peaceful protesters, and hapless bystanders during times of mass political unrest. (As Ed Kilgore points out at New York magazine, the term police riot originated in the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention.) The brutality weve seen visited on elderly white activists, journalists, and even local politicians during recent protests (against brutality) has been a daily reality for millions of black Americans, even Americans as famous as Miles Davis.





In 1959eight days after the release of Kind of Blue and just after recording a broadcast for armed forces radioDavis was harassed and then viciously attacked by the police outside Birdland in Midtown Manhattan. Then he was arrested for resisting arrest and dragged to the police station for booking and further harassment. You can hear the story in a clip above from The Miles Davis Story. Davis himself recounted the event in his autobiography:

I had just finished doing an Armed Forces Day broadcast, you know, Voice of America and all that bullshit. I had just walked this pretty white girl named Judy out to get a cab. She got in the cab, and Im standing there in front of Birdland wringing wet because its a hot, steaming, muggy night in August. This white policeman comes up to me and tells me to move on. I said, Move on, for what? Im working downstairs. Thats my name up there, Miles Davis, and I pointed to my name on the marquee all up in lights. He said, I dont care where you work, I said move on! If you dont move on Im going to arrest you. I just looked at his face real straight and hard, and I didnt move. Then he said, Youre under arrest! He reached for his handcuffs, but he was stepping backI kind of leaned in closer because I wasnt going to give him no distance so he could hit me on the head A crowd had gathered all of a sudden from out of nowhere, and this white detective runs in and BAM! hits me on the head. I never saw him coming. Blood was running down the khaki suit I had on.

Davis, who grew up wealthy in St. Louis, came from vastly different circumstances than Baldwin. He understood the violence of the South, but not of Northern cities. Nonetheless, his experience with the police was identical, whether in Missouri or New York. Now I would have expected this kind of bull about resisting arrest and all back in East St Louis, he wrote, but not here in New York City, which is supposed to be the slickest, hippest city in the world. But then, again, I was surrounded by white folks and I have learned that when that happens, if youre black, there is no justice. None.

He speaks from bitter experience. Davis later sued the NYPD, but his case was dismissed, despite a mountain of evidence in his favour, writes Queens University researcher Mitchell Crouse, including multiple witness statements, photographic evidence, and the fact that at least one of the officers was drunk.

Baldwin and Davis both wrote of what Jamelle Bouie describes in The New York Times as the raw knowledge afforded those who live under constant surveillance and threats of assault, arrest, or murder by agents of the state: African-American observers have never had any illusions about who the police are meant to serve. See the many photographs of a bloody Miles taken during and after his arrest at the 1959 Project.

Related Content:

Miles Davis Iconic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revisit the Album That Changed American Music

Miles Davis Bitches Brew Turns 50: Celebrate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Masterpiece

Miles Davis Dishes Dirt on His Fellow Jazz Musicians: The Trombone Player Should be Shot; That Ornette is F-ing Up the Trumpet

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Nepals parliamentary committee on Sunday has voted in favour of amending the countrys citizenship act that would require seven years threshold for foreign women to get naturalized citizenship after marrying a Nepali citizen.

A meeting of State Affairs and Good Governance Committee on Sunday endorsed the act with majority paving the way to table it on parliament for further discussion.

Last week, the ruling Nepal Communist Party secretariat meeting also had endorsed the proposal with seven years threshold to obtain naturalized citizenship of Nepal after marriage.

Continuing provision of a threshold, the committee has proposed granting residence permit to foreign women married to a Nepali citizen until she will be eligible to obtain naturalized citizenship, the decision published after the meeting states.

Also read: Hong Kongs pro-democracy protesters urge for help

Also read: Demonstration held outside UN office in Geneva to protest Paks treatment of Christians

Foreign women marrying a Nepali national can, however, exercise social, economic and cultural rights during the seven years mandatory threshold, the committee has explained further.

The amendment proposal also has proposed women be allowed to operate businesses, use or sell fixed and moveable assets or get involved in transaction of properties.

The main opposition, the Nepali Congress, on the other hand, has decided on to register a note of dissent over the decision made on by the committee expressing dissatisfaction over the provisions.

Janata Samajbadi Party also has vowed its support to Nepali Congress over the issue.

Also read: Nepal president gives nod to controversial bill on new map

For all the latest World News, download NewsX App
Alt Soul artist Aruba Red released her latest EP track Butterfly, last month accompanied by a stunning video. The video was recorded at her recent debut headline show at St Pancras Old Church, in early March just before the lockdown. It perfectly captures Arubas spellbinding live performance and stage presence, as she sings her healing and uplifting lyrics that bear so much significance for the challenging times we face today. She chats to us about the inspiration behind the track and Music video, how her music has evolved since beginning, how lockdown has been for her and what she wishes to achieve with her music.

Leah Marriott: What inspired the track Butterfly?

Aruba Red: My EP Shadow Work documents a really difficult time in my past, my personal stepping stones to freedom and coming to terms with the aftermath of a decade-long abusive relationship that I had escaped from. Butterfly is the final piece in that chapter and was inspired by my knowing that I had put in so much work into my healing, mental health and moving away from codependency and toxic love addiction. I now understand and know healthy love and that is what Butterfly is a testimony to. I'm singing about my own transformation. I was held in a virtual cage for a long time, separated from my creativity and the essence of my true self. I'm now able to view that part of my life as the chrysalis stage, something that on some level I co-created.

Butterfly is about self-love and positive mental health, about ritual, plant medicine, essential oils and taking responsibility for our own happiness.

LM: How do you hope people feel when listening to the track?

AR: My hope is that Butterfly will be received as a soothing balm, I want people to feel uplifted and held, I envisage the music raising people's spirits and bringing them closer to their own innate healing power.

I wrote this song with my good friend and long-term collaborator Renell Shaw at his home studio and we were just vibing, he played me a sample of David Attenborough talking about the secret life of butterflies and I just wanted to feel free. I hope that everyone who hears this song will feel the positive messages of healthy love and know that they deserve this for themselves also.

LM: What was the inspiration behind the music video for Butterfly?

AR: Just before lockdown on the 11th March, I performed at my debut headline show at St Pancras Old Church, we were so lucky to be able to go ahead and it was such a beautiful night. I had waited for a long time for a booking agent or promoter to come along and eventually I realised that if I wanted to make this happen I had to stop looking externally and just do it myself. I took the plunge and the night was a success! Thankfully we had the foresight to have everything professionally filmed and recorded even though we didn't realise at the time that this was going to be the last live show for a while. The video came out of that night, a nostalgic throwback to just a couple of months ago which now feels like another lifetime when we were free to dance, sing and play together.

My good friend Farrah Drabu of DNR Films did a beautiful montage edit and then another friend WrightyMedia added the gorgeous animated butterflies. I'd never seen a live music video fused with animated lyrics before and I really love what we've created.

LM: How would you describe your sound to entice new listeners?

AR: I create alternative soul music inspired by the themes of healing and transformation.

LM: How has your music evolved since you began recording?

AR: Yes definitely, I used to be a lot more overtly political in my lyrics about global issues of injustice. Those older songs still hold a special place for me but over time I have begun focusing more on the internal revolution that is necessary in terms of mastering our own selves and understanding that the psychology of true change takes place on a personal level before it can ripple outwards.

My music is very autobiographical and as I am moving into a much more positive life experience, my music reflects this journey.

LM: Has lockdown had a positive or negative effect on your creativity?

AR: For me personally lockdown has been a huge journey in itself, so much has happened in such a short time. I was awarded the Doing It Differently Covid-19 grant by the incredible organisation Help Musicians UK and I have been using this time to develop the production of a live visual and audio series using content from the headline show at St Pancras Church. I'm exploring the opportunity to fuse my music with the wellness work I have to offer and this is throwing up some really interesting options that are sparking my creativity in new ways.

Lockdown also inspired me to offer regular live guided meditations on my instagram every Monday at 9pm BST and I have been leading online meditations for other organisations including the shesaid.so network and Point Blank Music school. I've been able to perform live virtually for Lyrix Organix and over 500 pregnant women for Free Birth Society which felt really incredible. I was also asked to write an article on resilience for UK Music. I think human interaction and connection is vital to our survival and am passionate about not letting the "new normal" erode this necessity completely, but I have also been pushing myself to embrace new opportunities and means of creating and building new networks and bridges.

LM: What is the story behind the name 'Aruba Red' and how do you feel it embodies your music?

AR: My sister Kyla chose the name for me, Aruba Red was a legendary female pirate who is said to have sailed the seas with her red hair billowing in the wind. I loved the imagery of this strong Celtic women navigating a male dominated world a few hundred years ago and thought it would be wonderful to evoke her spirit through my music. I also use her character to represent my love of collaboration with the musicians in my network, surviving outside of the mainstream, resilient, sharing resources and musical influences in the spirit of appreciation and mutual exchange.

LM: Do you have any goals outside of music or perhaps things you wish to achieve through the use of music?

AR: I am working towards developing and intertwining my wellness offerings alongside my music and having these compliment and support each other. I want to share my journey in hope that my experiences will continue to motivate me to never stop developing and growing, moving up through the veils of consciousness by working back through layers of trauma and I would love to share this with as many people as possible. I am also currently training to become a radical birth keeper so I can support women and families who are choosing to birth in their full autonomy, something I am hugely passionate about. I gave birth to my son under a full moon in the water at my home and I would love to help awaken this possibility for like-minded mamas-to-be. The opportunity to give birth without medical intervention and medication was a huge catalyst for awakening me to my own power and led me to freedom. Peace on Earth begins with birth.
Houston liquefied natural gas company Cheniere Energy broke an industry barrier after rolling out a modified logo that celebrates gay pride month.

Cheniere debuted a rainbow-flagged modified version of its logo in Thursday evening Facebook post.

"We are a team of unique individuals with distinctive backgrounds and differences," Cheniere officials wrote in the post. "Our respect for these differences gives us perspective and pride. This month, we celebrate our #PRIDE and the message it sends: equality is a fundamental human right; its not an option."

Digital Roughnecks: Oil & gas workforce changes as techs role grows

Cheniere's pride logo is believed by some observers to be a first in the oil and natural gas industry, one that has a reputation of being blue collar and conservative.

The Washington-based LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign maintains an annual corporate equality index where the energy industry ranks among the best and worst companies for equal benefits and protections for employees regardless of their sexual orientation or identity.

Companies such as BP, Chevron, Shell and Air Liquide received top scores of 100 while others such as Enterprise Products Partners, Pioneer Natural Resources and Targa Resources received scores of zero.

More Information Corporate Equality Index The Washington-based LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign maintains an annual corporate equality index where the energy industry ranks among the best and worst companies for equal benefits and protections for employees regardless of their sexual orientation or identity. Air Liquide 100 BASF 100 BP America 100 Chevron 100 ConocoPhillips 100 Dow 100 Marathon Petroleum Corporation 100Phillips 66 95 Exxon Mobil 85 Chesapeake Energy 70 Devon Energy 65 Centerpoint Energy 20 EOG Resources 20 Energy Transfer 20 Halliburton 20 Kinder Morgan 20 Valero Energy Corporation 20 National Oilwell Varco 10 Enterprise Products Partners 0 Pioneer Natural Resources 0 Targa Resources 0 Source: Human Rights Campaing See More Collapse

Fuel Fix: Get daily energy news headlines in your inbox

Rice University Anthropology Professor Brian Riedel, an expert on LGBTQ issues, said "virtue signaling" with a rainbow logo is easy to do on social media but action speak louder than words.

"Don't pinkwash yourself with a log, actually take the time to relate to your employees and customers with the dignity they deserve," Riedel said.

More: Read the latest oil and gas news from HoustonChronicle.com

In addition to equal benefits and protection, companies such Chevron, Phillips 66 and BASF went a step further by sponsoring and organizing floats for the 2019 Pride Houston Parade, an event which drew more than 500,000 people.

Although not among the companies ranked by Human Rights Campaign, Cheniere said it enacted equal employment, anti-discrimination and anti-harassment polices between 2015 and 2017. The company has also made monetary donations to organizations including the Montrose Center, a Houston charity that provides counseling and mental health services to the LGBTQ community.
Basel, Switzerland, June 22, 2020

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that it has received a CHF 5 million milestone payment from its license partner Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE, "Pfizer"). The milestone was triggered by the granting of the marketing authorization for the antifungal Cresemba (isavuconazole) in the Russian Federation.

David Veitch, Chief Executive Officer, said: "We are very pleased that physicians in Russia will soon be able to prescribe Cresemba for their patients with invasive mold infections. This approval is an important milestone in the global commercial roll-out of the brand, as Russia is one of the commercially most important markets outside of China, the EU and the U.S."

In Russia, oral Cresemba is approved in adults for the treatment of invasive aspergillosis and the treatment of mucormycosis in adult patients for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.1 The intravenous formulation is currently being reviewed under a separate marketing authorization application.

In June 2017, Basilea entered into a licensing agreement with Pfizer for isavuconazole in Europe (excluding the Nordics), Russia, Turkey and Israel. The agreement was extended in November 2017 to China, including Hong Kong and Macao, and sixteen countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Under the agreement with Pfizer, Basilea is still eligible for regulatory and sales milestone payments of approximately USD 630 million, in addition to receiving mid-teen royalties on in-market sales of Cresemba.

Cresemba is currently marketed in more than 40 countries, including the United States, most EU member states and several additional countries inside and outside of Europe. For the full-year 2019, total "in-market" sales of Cresemba amounted to approximately 200 million U.S. dollars, which is a more than 30 percent growth year-on-year.2

About Cresemba (isavuconazole)

Isavuconazole is an intravenous (i.v.) and oral azole antifungal, commercialized under the trade name Cresemba. In the 27 European Union member states, as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and the U.K., isavuconazole is approved for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.3 This is also the approved indication for Cresemba in Russia. Cresemba is also approved in the United States and several additional countries in Europe and beyond.4 It has orphan drug designation in the U.S., Europe and Australia for its approved indications. Basilea has entered into several license and distribution agreements for isavuconazole covering the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa region, Canada, Russia, Turkey and Israel.

About Basilea

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, focused on the development of products that address the medical challenges in the therapeutic areas of oncology and infectious diseases. With two commercialized drugs, the company is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.

Disclaimer

This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements, such as "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business, including with respect to the progress, timing and completion of research, development and clinical studies for product candidates. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information, please contact:

Peer Nils Schroder, PhD



Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Phone +41 61 606 1102 E-mail media_relations@basilea.com (mailto:media_relations@basilea.com)

investor_relations@basilea.com (mailto:investor_relations@basilea.com)

This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com.

References

Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, June 2020 IQVIA, December 2019. In-market sales reported as moving annual total (MAT) in U.S. Dollar corrected for currency fluctuations. European Public Assessment Report (EPAR) Cresemba: http://www.ema.europa.eu (http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/EPAR_-_Summary_for_the_public/human/002734/WC500196131.pdf) [Accessed: June 21, 2020] The registration status and approved indications may vary from country to country.

Attachment
Leh:

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is on a two-day visit to Leh and Kargil to interact with a cross-section of people and take their suggestions on resolution of Kashmir issue, said on Monday that the situation is improving in the region. Rajnath will be visiting Kargil on Tuesday.



Asked about his trip to Ladakh, Singh said he has come to understand the problems of the region by interacting with a cross section of people. aWhatever problems the people face here, we will try to resolve them,a he said.



This is the fourth visit of the Home Minister to Jammu and Kashmir ever since the unrest began in the state following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani on July 8.



Singh had led an all-party delegation to Srinagar and Jammu on September 4-5. The leaders of various political leaders met over 400 people who came in 50 different delegations representing various sections of society in Srinagar and Jammu.

Wahan kay haalaat mei sudhaar ho rahe hai: HM Rajnath Singh on #Kashmir pic.twitter.com/yzRgoXiHZy a ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

Earlier, the Home Minister had visited Srinagar on August 24-25 and July 23-24.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The Cork sculptor who created the acclaimed artwork remembering the solidarity shown by the Native American Choctaw people is to create a new piece, honouring the Black activist who helped end racist segregation laws.

Alex Pentek, a Bantry-born sculptor, has been commissioned to create a new public realm artwork in Washington DC, commemorating the work of Charles Hamilton Houston that celebrates his ideals of equality and justice.

Mr Pentek's work, entitled Unity, will see a 16ft Allium flower installed outside the Charles H.Houston elementary school by the end of 2020.

A prominent African-American lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law School, Houston is credited with playing a pivotal role in challenging and ending racist Jim Crow laws, that enforced racial segregation in the US until 1965.

The piece is inspired by Houston's experience as a soldier during World War One, according to Mr Pentek.

"As I learned more about his life researching for this brief, I came across this quote," he said.

He said: 'the hate and scorn showered on negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through the war, I would study law and spend my time fighting for men, who could not strike back'.

"That quote stuck with me. He must have seen untold horrors during the World War as a soldier and then to experience racist behaviour from his fellow soldiers, it must have been a very dark time for him.

"But he held on to his hopes of unity, equality, justice, of integration, and education for all. I wanted to try to capture that hope, as well as that uplifting strength of spirit that he had.

"Allium flowers symbolise unity, as well as remaining true to yourself. The piece also connects the ideas of nature with mathematics, as each flower is based on the icosahedron, a 20-sided shape.

Each petal of the flower is formed from interlocking circles, known as sacred geometry.

The design work for the project will be created in Cork, while the finished fabrication will take place with a local company on-site in Washington.

Alex Pentek said the planned 16ft flower sculpture in Washington connects the ideas of nature with mathematics, as each flower is based on the icosagon, a 20-sided shape.

Mr Pentek works often in the National Sculpture Factory on Albert Road, often working on commissions in the shared studio space. He works closely with fabricators, engineers, and architects to create many of his large-scale pieces.

His work 'Kindred Spirits', a steel tribute to the kindness shown by the Native American Choctaw Nation to Ireland during the Famine, received worldwide acclaim when it was unveiled.

The sculpture in Midleton commemorates how the Choctaw Nation sent relief aid from Oklahoma to the Irish while they themselves were living in poverty.

It consists of nine, 20ft-tall eagle feathers. 'Unity' was commissioned by the Department of General Services Government of the District of Columbia.
The frequent suspension of 2G internet services by authorities in Kashmirs districts during gunfights between terrorists and security forces is causing huge problems for college and university students who nowadays are appearing for their online internal examinations.

The student community of the valley, already bearing the brunt of slow internet speed during the Covid-19 lockdown, is left high and dry by the authorities when they snap mobile internet whenever a gunfight starts in a particular district leaving the examination schedules in disarray.

When Majid Lone, an undergraduate student of Islamia College of Science and Commerce (ICSC) in Srinagar woke up on Sunday, he found there was no internet service on his mobile as an encounter had started in Zadibal area of the city. He got really worried as his internal exam was scheduled to be held online for the day.

When I made some calls I came to know about the encounter and postponement of the exams. This is second time that the exam was postponed. Mobile internet was also suspended in south Kashmir on Thursday and Friday after encounters erupted there, he said.

While three terrorists were killed in Zadibal encounter on Sunday, eight terrorists were killed on Thursday and Friday in two separate gun battles in south Kashmirs Pulwama and Shopian districts. A terrorist was also killed in Kulgam on Saturday. Another encounter erupted in Anantnag on Monday.

The intensity of gun battles has increased in the past few months in Kashmir valley. So far at-least 106 terrorists have been killed this year across the valley of which 36 have been killed in June alone particularly in south Kashmir. More gun battles mean more instances of internet suspension in individual districts which means educational institutes have to either take exams of the affected district afresh or reschedule the whole process.

A computer science student of Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) in Pulwama district said that their internal viva exams were going on online on Thursday when the internet suddenly snapped.

Three students managed to give their viva exams when suddenly the teacher became offline. We were around 80 students waiting for our turns. The whole schedule got disrupted as the internet was restored on Saturday when the exams were held again, she said.

When the lockdown was implemented in mid-March to stop the spread of coronavirus, student communities across the country took advantage of high speed internet to get in touch with their teachers and appeared for online classes. However the student communities in Jammu and Kashmir are an unfortunate lot as first they were cut off for months last year when internet was suspended following the revocation of special status of the region. When the internet was restored in January this year, the authorities decided to ban the high speed internet and allowed only 2G speeds.

IUST student Abrar Ahmad, who is doing his B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering, said that the students of the valley suffer a lot due to internet issues.

Already due to 2G, our online classes were in name only. Now our teachers decided to hold our internal exams online which will help them to asses our performance as proper examinations in the pandemic are very risky. But then day in and day out suspension of mobile internet is making it very cumbersome for the education fraternity, Ahmad said.

On Sunday our exams were scheduled but due to internet suspension that could not be held. Our next paper is on Tuesday, so the university authorities may squeeze in the rescheduled paper a day before or after which makes it very tiresome for us, he said.

When HT attempted to ask governments secretary for higher education Talat Parvez Rohella about the issue, his phone was switched off. Calls to divisional commissioner Kashmir, Pandurang K Pole did not yield any response.
A man who scaled a huge amusement ride at the Jersey Shore on Monday has been charged with trespassing, police said.

Chris Angulo, 45, attached an American flag at the top of the 170-foot Skyscraper ride at Casino Pier and spent about four hours there while authorities made contact with him by phone, Seaside Heights police said.

(Angulo) advised that he wanted an attorney for a recent arrest within another jurisdiction, in addition to assistance with ongoing personal family matters, Seaside Heights spokesman Detective Steven Korman said in an email.

Angulo voluntarily climbed down from the ride after speaking on the phone with Seaside Heights Chief Thomas Boyd.

Police charged Angulo with defiant trespass and he was then transported to Community Medical Center for an evaluation, Korman said.

His first court appearance is scheduled for July 14.

Were trying to talk to him... Were trying to get a hold of him now and trying to get more information, Detective Steve Korman said while on the scene.

Angulo has a history of daredevil stunts.

After Hurricane Sandy, he climbed the sunken Jet Star rollercoaster to place an American flag atop it, Korman said. Last year, Angulo attempted to carve a massive peace sign into a giant ice disk on a Maine River that had drawn attention.

Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on Saturday. Read more

WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Monday the United States has done too good a job on testing for cases of COVID-19, even as his staff insisted the president was only joking when he said over the weekend that he had instructed aides to slow the testing down, please.

The presidents comments at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday brought quick rebukes from the campaign of likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as well as scores of Democratic lawmakers.

In an interview with Scripps for its local TV stations, Trump was asked Monday whether he did indeed tell aides to slow it down. He did not directly answer the question.

If it did slow down, frankly, I think were way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth, Trump said. Weve done too good a job, adding that the reason the United States has more coronavirus cases is that it does more testing.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said any suggestion that testing has been curtailed is not rooted in fact, saying Trump made the slow-it-down comment in jest.

She said that Trumps comments were an effort to criticize the media for its coverage of the coronavirus and its failure to understand that when you test more, you also find more cases.

However, the U.S. is seeing disturbing trends in several benchmarks, including the percentage of tests that prove positive for the virus.

Health officials say that testing in the United States early on was insufficient for optimal containment. In early March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, testified that the nation's testing system was not really geared to what we need right now and added, it is a failing. Lets admit it.

But now, about a half-million people per day are being tested, and the president and his aides have been repeatedly touting the United States as leading the world in testing.

Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada told Vice President Mike Pence in a conference call with governors on Monday that the presidents comments were not helpful and wanted assurances there is not a federal mandate to slow down testing. Pence told Sisolak and other governors on the call that the administration looked forward to continuing to partner with them on testing.

The administration also stressed to governors on the call that states should be focusing resources on hard to test communities and that counties with high positivity rates should be saturated with more testing.

Lawmakers are expected to have several questions about testing and the president's comments on Tuesday when members of the administration's coronavirus task force testify at a House hearing.

The American people are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing when experts say much more is needed," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson called Trumps rally remarks on discouraging testing somewhat of a flippant comment and said its not in line with what hes heard from the administration.

Its clear the national policy is to expand testing, said Hutchinson, a Republican. There again, you have to look at what is the action, what is the true policy versus just what the words are.

The United States has confirmed nearly 2.3 million COVID-19 cases, which represents about a quarter of the worlds cases. More than 120,000 people in the U.S. with COVID-19 have died. The next closest nation is Brazil, with 50,600 deaths.
Scientists have unearthed the first fossils of soft-shelled eggs laid by dinosaurs - two disparate species from Argentina and Mongolia - in a discovery suggesting that the earliest dinosaurs produced such eggs before some lineages turned to hard shells.

The embryo-containing eggs - leathery on the outside rather than hard and calcified like those of birds - belonged to a dinosaur from Patagonia called Mussaurus from about 200 million years ago and one called Protoceratops from the Gobi Desert from about 75 million years ago, researchers said on Wednesday.

It had long been thought that all dinosaurs laid hard-shelled eggs, as modern birds - the descendants of feathered dinosaurs - and crocodilians do. Many turtles, lizards and snakes lay soft-shelled eggs. But relatively few dinosaurs eggs had ever been found, and those belonged to only a handful of dinosaur groups including the meat-eaters.

Finding soft-shelled eggs in such dissimilar species living far apart in time and location indicates, the researchers said, that many lineages including the first dinosaurs to appear 230 million years ago may have laid such eggs. Soft-shelled eggs are not readily preserved as fossils.

Twenty-foot-long (6 meters) Mussaurus was an early member of the sauropod lineage of long-necked plant-eaters. Its 5-inch (13-cm) egg was rather spherical.

Sheep-sized herbivore Protoceratops was a member of the ceratopsian lineage of beaked dinosaurs, many of which had horns though not this one. Its 4-inch (10-cm) eggs were more oblong.

"This gives us a new perspective of the reproductive biology of dinosaurs, indicating that the basal dinosaurs (most primitive forms) were more primitive reptilian in their reproductive habits," said paleontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

"This means that they laid soft-shelled eggs which were probably buried in the sand or in vegetation. It also explains why fossil calcified eggs are only known from a few groups of dinosaurs, and only appear long after the origin of the group."
WASHINGTON  A bipartisan group of lawmakers want to use the billions of dollars the U.S. government is pouring into coronavirus treatment and vaccine development to negotiate down the price of those drugs when and if they reach the market.

Congress has appropriated over $30 billion for pharmaceutical development in response to the coronavirus crisis, in three relief packages passed this spring and that money should come with some price accountability, said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3. She leads the subcommittee overseeing the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), both of which have made grants to companies.

DeLauro and four other House members say that support should buy the taxpayers a say in the prices the companies charge for the vaccines and medical counter-measures financed by the public  and in information about the drugs.

Today we are saying that a public health crisis should not be allowed to become a for-profit bonanza, DeLauro said Monday. Because taxpayers have contributed to this research and development, they should receive in return full transparency into the investments and affordable access to their results.

Congress has also required coronavirus testing and a future vaccine to be covered by public or private insurers without cost-sharing for the patient. The Trump administration recently pledged that any vaccine for coronavirus will be free for vulnerable Americans who cant afford it.

But even with these efforts to prevent vaccine costs from hitting the consumer, sky-high coronavirus drug prices paid by the U.S. government could ultimately mean a bill for taxpayers, while pharmaceutical companies see big payoffs.

The lack of a link between U.S. research support and final consumer prices has long been a source of friction in pharmaceuticals as well as other technology development.

DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, Francis Rooney, R-Fl., and Peter DeFazio, D-Or., introduced legislation Monday to leverage public payments in COVID-19 drugs to make them more affordable for consumers and win information from pharmaceutical companies on drug development costs.

A COVID-19 vaccine  the result of a worldwide race invlving numerous companies, including Paris-based Sanofi at its Protein Sciences unit in Meriden  could bring heated debates over pricing because it would instantly have near universal demand.

Called Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is rushing to help develop, manufacture and distribute 300 million doses of an effective COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021.

BARDA has distributed billions of dollars to companies such as AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi to spur clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines, while HHS has signed contracts worth hundreds of millions with companies that will produce the syringes and vials for vaccines.

NIH has also invested millions in potential treatments for COVID-19, like remdesivir, a drug made by Gilead Sciences that has been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use for hospitalized patients with severe disease.

DeLauro and Doggett pressed HHS in early May for a full accounting of government investments in remdesivir, government ownership of remdesivir patents and federal efforts to scale up production.

If passed, the legislation introduced Monday would prohibit pharmaceutical monopolies on COVID-19 drugs and require the government to mandate reasonable, affordable pricing for any such drug. It would require companies receiving COVID-19 government research funds to publicly report the costs of developing their treatments and how much was paid for by federal dollars.

Another bill would create a database of all financial and non-financial support for pharmaceutical companies, and would require clinical trial data and agreements between the government and manufacturers to be published.

Illustrating just how expensive coronavirus drugs could be, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that analyzes drug pricing, reported if the price of remdesivir was set based on the cost of product, a 10-day course should be about $10. But if the drug were priced based on its effectiveness and demand, it could climb up to $4,500.

Gilead has announced it will donate an initial supply of 1.5 million doses of remdesivir, but after that it will have to put a price tag on the medication. Gilead said in May its investment in remdesivir in 2020 could be up to $1 billion or more, according to public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers in both parties supported the idea of using Congresss buying power through Medicare to try to lower prescription drug prices but were unable to agree on specific legislation to do it. That issue has been debated for more than 20 years.

emilie.munson@hearstdc.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
OccupyGhana has seen the Ghana Health Service (GHS) News Release dated 17 June 2020 in response to our PR dated 15 June 2020 on the above matter. As a sign of good faith, we held back from an immediate robust response, to abide a requested zoom meeting between our leadership and Medical Team on the one hand, and the entire leadership of the Governments COVID-19 team on the other hand, in the evening of 19 June 2020. It was a very engaging meeting.



This PR is to state our position after the GHS News Release and the meeting.



Just to recap, these are the health-related issues we raised in our PR:



1. Is it Government policy to head for herd immunity?

2. Why are ambulances not responding to the several callers?

3. Why is there so much delay in releasing test results?

4. Why has contact tracing reduced?

5. Sanctity of the data.

6. Why is there a shortage of PPE?

7. The holding and treatment centres in the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions (the two epicentres) are full.



1. HERD IMMUNITY?



The GHS News Release did not address this question. But at the meeting we were assured that this was not the Governments intention. Noted.



2. AMBULANCE RESPONSE



The GHS News Release did not address this because, as they confirmed at the meeting, they did not consider this to be within their remit.



But we were concerned that the delays could be due to not enough ambulances having been assigned for COVID-19 related use. However, at the meeting we were assured that our concerns would be addressed. Noted. We will continue to monitor the situation.



3. TEST RESULT DELAYS



In the GHS response, it was claimed that it took 48 hours for most results to be released. That is inaccurate. As was shown at the meeting, currently, some results take as much as seven days. Sometimes it takes much longer to receive results.



We therefore raised further questions on whether the testing centres are optimised to perform? Are all the testing centres running, and if not, why? Do the testing centres have data entry issues? Do the sample collection facilities adequately fill the case forms that accompany all the samples? Is there a high number of mislabelling?



Ultimately, the meeting conceded that there are indeed delays and assured us that a lot was being done to address that. For instance, a barcode labelling system with electronic transmission of test results through the SORMAS app has been introduced.



We will continue to watch this space since reducing the delay in getting test results will reduce anxiety among those who have tested and then dovetail into the discharge strategy so that patients are discharged in good time to make room for others.



4. REDUCED CONTACT TRACING



We were informed that Ghana is no longer doing the enhanced contact tracing that characterised the lockdown, and that the mass contact tracing team has been disbanded.



We disagree, strongly. At the end of the lockdown on 19 April 2020, Ghana had 1,042 positive cases. Currently we have a total of 13,717 positive cases of which 3,558 are active.



We find this new policy bizarre and counterintuitive. We know enhanced tracing has financial implications, but it beggars belief that that would be discontinued when the daily number of new positive cases is increasing. Early detection and treatment are critical to preventing severe and critical cases. We forcefully expressed these concerns and have been assured that they will be addressed. We will continue to advocate for and demand a return to enhanced tracing.



5. DATA SANCTITY



This was the elephant in the room. Our exact words in our 15 June 2020 PR were:



There is cause to suspect that the death numbers are being massaged. We then gave one cause of the suspicion.



Both the GHS News Release and the Government COVID-19 team denied that the data was being massaged, claiming that rather, there had been a delay due to a verification process.



We vehemently disagreed, and we still question the science behind the GHS claim they it is verifying the 'epidemiological condition' of dead COVID-19 cases. We pointed out that this terminology served nothing but confusion, since the verification team in Accra was not doing any retesting or post mortem. Simply there is nothing to verify, outside a simple phone call to the people on the ground.



As we also pointed out, and as the Government COVID-19 team admitted, several of the deaths then not included in the national total, had occurred some two to three weeks before the President recently further eased restrictions. To us, that meant that as at the time the President was taking that decision and announcing it, both he and Ghanaians had been denied the full complement of the data and the true picture. It is entirely possible that had the full information been made available, the Presidents decision and public reaction would have been different. We still consider the excuse of a delay due to a so-called verification, unacceptable and untenable, giving grounds to our expressed suspicion. These delays erode public confidence in the GHS data.



The meeting agreed that it should not take two weeks to verify the data. We were assured that the problem had been resolved and there would be more real-time updates. We will continue to monitor this.



6. PPE AND SAFETY OF HEALTH WORKERS



We informed the meeting that Facilities that we contacted since our PR have indeed been supplied with some items this week. Although there are inadequate stocks of PPE in almost all facilities, we acknowledge efforts being made to improve the situation. We raised further questions on whether the front-liners are receiving their allowances and on time. We were assured that these would be looked into. Noted.



7. HOLDING AND TREATMENT CENTRES AND BED SPACES



There was general acknowledgment, and it was indisputable that the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions holding and treatment centres had run out of spaces, and we expressed our surprise there was an effort to deny that. While it may be true that some 21 centres are lying idle in other areas, we asked if there was a plan to move patients from the epicentres to the idle centres. We were assured that that would be looked into. Noted.



IN CONCLUSION:



We appreciate that the situation with COVID-19 is fluid and changing all the time. We appreciate the hard work that those in charge and in the frontline are doing. We are all concerned about the welfare of our fellow citizens. We appreciate the challenges. But those challenges and the full, unvarnished story must be told plainly and bluntly to the authorities. Those in authority will not and should not be offended by being shown the true picture. We believe that those in authority seek the best for the rest of us, and that showing them exactly what is on the ground, will only make them better.



Once again, although we could not agree on the answers provided and explanations made to all the issues raised, we acknowledge the good faith shown by the GHS and the government team, especially for opening the door for future engagement between them and us.



There surely will be further engagement.



For God and Country



OccupyGhana

Source: OccupyGhana









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
BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government allocated 106.5 billion yuan (about 15 billion U.S. dollars) for cultural and tourism development in 2019, up 14.7 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

A report released by the ministry shows that the per capita expenditure in those sectors was 76.07 yuan, an increase of 14.3 percent over the previous year.

By the end of last year, more than 5.16 million people were employed in cultural and tourism sectors.
A boss who fired a worker's wife after they split up committed the first-known case of marital discrimination in the UK, a tribunal found.

Managing director Graham Ellis fired Kirsty Bacon in 2017 for an alleged IT breach which was never proved.

Jonathan Bacon, who feared his wife was seeing another man, 'pulled his strings' and had a 31,560 dividend withheld.

Managing director Graham Ellis (pictured) fired Kirsty Bacon in 2017 for an alleged IT breach which was never proved

Advanced Fire Solutions, Mr Ellis's firm which has since gone into administration, reported her to the police.

They also asked that she return personal IT equipment, including her computers and an iPhone.

The police said there was no further action to be taken. Mr Ellis and Mr Bacon did not inform Mrs Bacon that she was no longer being investigated for these offences, the tribunal heard in Norwich.

The hearing was told that Mr Ellis sided with Mr Bacon and agreed to exclude and finally dismiss Mrs Bacon.

Mr Ellis also allowed Mr Bacon to use company funds to pay for his divorce proceedings, the tribunal was told.

Jonathan Bacon (pictured), who feared his wife was seeing another man, 'pulled his strings' and had a 31,560 dividend withheld

They also asked that Kirsty Bacon (pictured) return personal IT equipment, including her computers and an iPhone

The panel said: 'It is clear that the claimant was being subjected to less favourable treatment on the grounds of her marital status and Mr Ellis simply has no other explanation for that treatment other than he was siding with Mr Bacon who he no doubt felt was where his future lied within the company rather than that with Mrs Bacon.

'The reason for that treatment was clearly the claimants marital status to Mr Bacon.'

Regarding the reporting of Mrs Bacon for theft, it said: 'Mr Ellis was clearly an active participant in this and the reason for that treatment was the claimants marriage to Mr Bacon which was now in the process of being dissolved.

'Clearly the claimant was being treated less favourably on the grounds of her marital status.'
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Tamilla Mammadova  Trend:

Georgia exported 88,528 tons of copper ores to China in a total amount of $131.1 million from January through May 2020, Trend reports referring to National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

In the reporting period, Georgia exported 1,294 tons of wine of fresh grapes worth $5.01 million to China. Over the same period of 2019, 2,169 tons of wine totaling $7.5 million was exported from Georgia to China.

Meanwhile, 8.6 tons of instruments and appliances used in medicine worth $2.7 million were exported from Georgia to China. This is 22.7 tons less compared to January-May 2019.

During the reporting period, Georgia exported 982.3 tons of ginger, saffron, turmeric, thyme, bay leaves, curry and other spices in the amount of $2.7 million to China. During January-May 2019, export of spices from Georgia to China amounted to 722 tons totaling $1.2 million.

Meanwhile, Georgia exported 9,007 tons precious metal ores and concentrates worth $20.7 million to China.

China ranked third in Georgias commodity circulation during the reporting period.

From January through May 2020, the foreign trade turnover between Georgia and China amounted to more than $443.1 million, which is 10.5 percent of the total trade turnover of Georgia.

During the reporting period, Georgia exported products worth $168.4 million to the Chinese market, which is 16.9 percent of total exports from Georgia.

Meanwhile, China exported products worth $274.7 million to the Georgian market, which comprises 13.6 percent of total import to Georgia.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
Heightened tensions between the Asian neighbours after killing of 20 Indian soldiers draw international concerns.

India and China, two nuclear-armed Asian neighbours, are in a tense diplomatic and military standoff following their first deadly border clash in more than 40 years.

The June 15 incident in the disputed Galwan Valley, an arid Himalayan area along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the two nations, left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China has yet to officially declare its casualties.

Indian and Chinese troops have been engaged in the standoff since early May at several points along the 3,500km (2,200-mile) LAC, most of which remains undemarcated.

The heightened tensions between the worlds two most populous countries have drawn international concerns, with the United Nations urging both sides to exercise maximum restraint.

Here are five things you need to know about the dispute:

What happened on June 15?

The fighting on June 15 was triggered by a disagreement over two Chinese tents and observation towers that Indian officials said had been built on its side of the LAC.

Chinese troops breached the Line to set up temporary structures in the Galwan Valley even after military officials had reached an agreement on June 6 to de-escalate, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told Chinas senior diplomat, Wang Yi, in a phone call.

The problem arose when an Indian patrol visited the area near a ridge to verify a Chinese assertion that its troops had moved back from the LAC, two government sources told Reuters news agency.

The Chinese troops had thinned out, leaving behind two tents and small observation posts, which the Indian party demolished, the sources said.

A large group of Chinese soldiers arrived and confronted the Indian troops. It was not clear what happened next, but the two sides soon clashed, the Chinese soldiers reportedly using iron rods and batons with spikes, killing 20 Indian soldiers and wounding dozens of others.

China has not said anything about any losses in the hand-to-hand combat.

On Sunday, V K Singh, Indian federal minister for roads and transport and a former army chief, claimed China lost at least 40 soldiers in the clash, without providing any evidence.

Chinas state-controlled Global Times said there had been Chinese casualties, but did not elaborate.

Indian army convoy moves along the Srinagar-Leh National highway towards Ladakh [Faisal Khan/Anadolu]

Why did the clash happen?

Experts mainly cite two reasons for the deadliest clash since 1975.

A major reason, according to some experts, is linked to Indias unilateral move last year to repeal Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which had guaranteed a measure of autonomy to the former Jammu and Kashmir state, which also included the disputed areas in Ladakh region.

China, which, like Pakistan, saw Indias move as unilaterally affecting its territory, strongly denounced the move at the UN Security Council last year.

Analysts also believe the current standoff is also a result of Chinas pushback against Indias recent construction of infrastructure in border areas.

India inaugurated the 255km (158-mile) Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) road, built along the LAC, last year. China objected, seeing the move as a threat to its interests in the region.

Chinas economic corridor to Pakistan and Central Asia passes through Karakoram, which is close to Galwan Valley, the site of the June 15 clash. Galwan Valley is close to Aksai Chin Plateau, which is under Chinese control but claimed by India.

According to Happymon Jacob, professor of international relations at New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, China considers the Ladakh region crucial for its access to Central Asia and CPEC project with Pakistan in which they [China] have invested billions of dollars [about $60bn].

Indian Border Security Force soldiers guard a highway leading towards Leh, bordering China, in Gagangir [Tauseef Mustafa/AFP]

What is each side claiming?

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said he was unaware of the specifics but that the Indian army had crossed into Chinese territory in several places in recent days  violating the agreement reached on June 6  and that they should withdraw.

Calling it a deliberate provocation on New Delhis part, Zhao said: The rights and wrongs are very clear and the responsibility rests entirely with the Indian side.

In response, Indias foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava cautioned China against making exaggerated and untenable claims on the sovereignty of the Galwan Valley area.

India says China occupies 38,000 sq km (15,000 square miles) of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau in the Himalayas, with 12,000 Chinese soldiers reportedly pushing across the border.

Last week, Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi categorically refuted claims of Chinas takeover of any Indian territory  his statement contrasting with the governments earlier claims.

Modis denial of a Chinese incursion triggered a controversy, with opposition leaders accusing the government of intelligence failures and asking why the clash happened in the first place.

"Modis remarks will be very helpful to ease the tensions because as the Prime Minister of India, he has removed the moral basis for hardliners to further accuse China" : Global Times https://t.co/2jOOuR53M1  Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) June 22, 2020

Who holds the advantage?

Ashley Tellis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes the latest Chinese advances in the Ladakh region leaves India with painful choices.

Beijing has moved into disputed territories that did not host a continual Chinese presence as recently as January 2020, Tellis wrote on June 4, days before the brawl.

Satellite pictures taken by Earth-imaging company, Planet Labs, in the days leading up to the clash, also suggest increased Chinese activity at the Galwan Valley.

Looking at it in Planet, it looks like China is constructing roads in the valley and possibly damming the river, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Californias Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told Reuters.

There are a tonne of vehicles on both sides [of the LAC]  although there appear to be vastly more on the Chinese side. I count 30-40 Indian vehicles and well over 100 vehicles on the Chinese side.

In addition to its dispute with China, India has found itself at loggerheads with two other neighbours  long-standing rival Pakistan, and Nepal.

Nepal and India have historically enjoyed good ties, but now find themselves engaged in what experts have called a cartographic war over border regions.

Last week, Nepals Parliament approved a new map for the country, which includes land controlled by India.

On the one hand, the major power in the region, China, is against India and on the other hand, smaller neighbours, which have been traditionally very friendly to India, are also negatively disposed to India. I think that is a major policy failure, Jacob told Al Jazeera.





What now?

The reaction in India to Chinese advances has been one of outrage, with citizens and trade associations calling for the Modi-led government to boycott Chinese goods.

Protesters across the country were seen burning Chinese flags and products, while videos on social media showed teenagers destroying their Chinese-made mobile phones.

Beijing is Indias biggest trading partner, with annual bilateral trade worth $92bn. The trade imbalance between the two is significant, and favours China heavily.

In an interview to The Economic Times, Shyam Saran, former Indian foreign secretary, said India should avoid any knee-jerk reactions against China, claiming that it would be impossible for New Delhi to find alternative suppliers in the near future.

Jacob believes India should reach out to Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also known as Quad  an informal strategic forum that includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States  to take on China.

If the USA makes noises in favour of India and strengthens the Quad, it will send a message to China that we will take aggressive steps and will defend our interest, he said.

A trilateral summit between India, China and Russia is scheduled on Tuesday. The virtual meeting, to be attended by Indias foreign minister, is likely to address the border standoff.

Meanwhile, the Indian and Chinese armies are also talking on the LAC to defuse the tensions.
Okpare, 30, is still in training but has been told he will mostly be visiting patients in Harlem, near where he lives. He said he hoped his background as a former podiatry student who is enrolled in New York Universitys School of Global Public Health, as well as his being an immigrant from Nigeria, would help put people at ease.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 6302, commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula (Getty)

The Hubble space telescope has captured incredible images of two planetary nebulae, huge clouds of gas and dust in space, illuminated by blasts from dying stars.

Previous research has suggested that our sun could one day become a planetary nebula in its death throes, billions of years from now.

The new images show two nearby planetary nebulae, NGC 6302, dubbed the Butterfly Nebula, and NGC 7027.

The chaotic blasts of hot gas show that NGC 7027 has recently gone haywire, with a new cloverleaf pattern lit up at its centre, the researchers said.

Read More: Starlink, everything you need to know about the satellite network

The Hubble team writes: As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years.

But near the end of their lives they can turn into crazy whirligigs, puffing off shells and jets of hot gas.

The Hubble images could allow researchers to understand the rapid changes inside the jets and gas bubbles blasting out of the stars at the centre of these nebulas.

These new multi-wavelength Hubble observations provide the most comprehensive view to date of both of these spectacular nebulae, said study leader Joel Kastner, of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

As I was downloading the resulting images, I felt like a kid in a candy store.

Read more: Life on Earth could have arrived on a comet

The images reveal in vivid detail how both nebulae are splitting themselves apart on extremely short timescales, allowing astronomers to see changes over the past couple of decades.

Researchers suspect that at the heart of each nebula were two stars orbiting around each other.

Evidence for such a central dynamic duo comes from the bizarre shapes of these nebulas.

Each has a pinched, dusty waist and polar lobes or outflows, as well as other, more complex symmetrical patterns.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 7027, or the 'Jewel Bug' nebula

NGC 6302, commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula, exhibits a distinct S-shaped pattern seen in reddish-orange in the image.

Story continues

The researchers believe that the S-shaped pattern is created by singly ionised iron atoms, in collisions between different winds inside the nebulae.

"This is very rarely seen in planetary nebulae, said team member Bruce Balick, of the University of Washington in Seattle. Importantly, the iron emission image shows that fast, off-axis winds penetrate far into the nebula like tsunamis, obliterating former clumps in their paths and leaving only long tails of debris.

Hubbles image of NGC 7027 shows it had been slowly puffing away its mass in quiet, spherically symmetric or perhaps spiral patterns for centuries until relatively recently.

Something recently went haywire at the very centre, producing a new cloverleaf pattern, with bullets of material shooting out in specific directions, Kastner said.
Lucknow, June 22 : The Uttar Pradesh Congress, on Monday, launched its 'Pol-Khol' campaign against the Yogi Adityanath government over alleged corruption in the recruitment of assistant teachers in the state and other scams.

UPCC media coordinator Lalan Kumar told IANS on Monday, memorandums were being given from every district to the Governor, through the district magistrates, highlighting the alleged corruption in the recruitment of 69,000 teachers.

He said that Congress all over the state would observe fast on June 25 to protest scams like the one in the animal husbandry department.

He said that the Congress would distribute pamphlets and put up posters highlighting the failures of the Yogi Adityanath government from July 2 to July 12 in every village. From July 14 to July 19, Congress men will put up posters in all villages and cities.

He said, lakhs of posters and pamphlets had already been printed.

"Congress workers will fan out into the urban areas as well as rural interiors during this campaign. They will however, take care to follow safety protocols and maintain social distancing, apart from wearing masks," he said.

The party will simultaneously launch a campaign against the state government on the social media too.

"Corruption has been institutionalised in the state government but no punitive action is being taken by the chief minister, whose ministers are lodging their complaints on his portal," he stated.
Since the vast majority of Internet users are surfing with Google Chrome, the use of a large amount of memory is infamous. That's about to change though, thanks to an unlikely ally - Microsoft Edge.

It is not often that a competing product amplifies one of his rivals. That's what's set to happen in a Chrome update soon to be released, which includes better integrations with Windows 10. The feature comes with the courtesy of an update that will make Edge run better.

ALSO READ: Tab Groups Is The Best Update For Google Chrome In Years! Here's How To Use It!

Giving Chrome the Edge

Thankfully, Google is getting ready to carry out a Chrome update that will make it a bit more RAM friendly. Chrome programmer Bruce Dawson initially added the patch.

Microsoft Edge, which became the default app for all Windows 10 users since upgrading to the latest Windows 10 May 2020 Update, uses the same Chromium technology as Chrome. Its rival will see benefits from Chrome's update as well, albeit only in Windows 10.

"Early internal testing results of devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory-use reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge," said Kim Denny, Microsoft Edge manager, in a recent blog post about the improvements. She explained that part of the update is modernizing the way Windows 10 handles memory.

"Individual device performance will vary based upon configuration and usage, but the lower memory usage is expected to create a better experience," Denny added.

Microsoft had already announced that it will hand out its newly released software to all Windows 10 users via Windows Update. Google also plans to use the same Windows 10 software for its Chrome browser. Although not proven, it would not be shocking to see a similar figure in terms of less RAM use.

Buggy Upgrade

Chrome memory use is expected to decrease, Dawson said on Chrome's bug tracker. Unfortunately, Chrome users still have some waiting to do before sparing the memory of their computers.

While the patch has been successfully integrated into the upcoming version of Chrome, the team is now experiencing "mysterious" bugs. It is in the process of ironing out those issues before carrying out the users' updates.

Notably, the RAM-sparing feature is coming thanks to Microsoft's recent decision to divest its own browser foundation in favor of Google's open-source Chromium platform. The shift has made Edge and Chrome something like cousins. To date, Microsoft has made more than 3,000 contributions to the Chromium codebase.

Windows has released an overhauled Edge in January. The modern, snappy browser should make Chrome users feel at home. Even so, before it can catch up with Google's flagship software, Microsoft does have some work to do.

ALSO READ: Microsoft's New Chromium-Based Edge Browser Leaked Online

Software engineers are currently working on Edge updates and testing until the new version is automatically pushed to users through its Windows Update program.

The upcoming update is fascinating for Chrome users and should make web browsing a little less resource-intensive.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
WASHINGTON - The Trump administration on Monday extended a ban on green cards issued outside the United States until the end of the year and added many temporary work visas to the freeze, including those used heavily by technology companies and multinational corporations.

The administration cast the effort as a way to free up jobs in an economy reeling from the coronavirus. A senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity predicted it will open up to 525,000 jobs for Americans, a claim that was immediately challenged by critics.

The ban, while temporary, represents a cut to legal immigration on a scale that had eluded the administration before the pandemic. Long-term changes that would prevent many asylum seekers from getting work permits and would allocate high-tech worker visas differently are also being sought.

Business groups pressed hard to limit the changes, but got little of what they wanted, marking a victory for immigration hardliners as Trump seeks to further solidify their support ahead of the November election.

The ban on new visas, which takes effect Wednesday, applies to H-1B visas, which are widely used by major American and Indian technology companies, H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers, J-1 visas for cultural exchanges and L-1 visas for managers and other key employees of multinational corporations.

There will be exemptions for food processing workers, which make up about 15% of H-2B visas, the official said. Health care workers assisting with the coronavirus fight will continue to be spared from the green-card freeze, though their exemption will be narrower.

In the administration of our Nations immigration system, we must remain mindful of the impact of foreign workers on the United States labour market, particularly in the current extraordinary environment of high domestic unemployment and depressed demand for labour, Trump wrote in his presidential proclamation.

Trump imposed a 60-day ban on green cards issued abroad in April, which was set to expire Monday. That announcement, which largely targeted family members, drew a surprisingly chilly reception from immigration hardliners, who said the president didnt go far enough.

The new steps to include non-immigrant visas went a long toward appeasing hardliners.

This is a bold move by the Trump administration to protect American jobs, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for restrictions. Not all the items on our checklist of needed actions are included in todays announcement, but the corporate lobbyists who were desperately fighting for exceptions to protect their clients access to cheap foreign labour have largely been rebuffed.

Thomas J. Donohue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerces chief executive officer, said the measures will harm, not help, the American economy.

Putting up a not welcome sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers wont help our country, it will hold us back, he said. Restrictive changes to our nations immigration system will push investment and economic activity abroad, slow growth, and reduce job creation.

BSA, a group that represents major software companies, urged the administration to reconsider, particularly changes to the H-1B program, saying they will hinder economic recovery by making it harder to fill critical positions.

Filling these roles that are more abundant than the number of U.S. employees qualified to fill them means these jobs can be kept in the U.S., the group said. This allows companies based in the U.S. to remain globally competitive, which in turn boosts the U.S. economy, creating jobs for millions of Americans.

The freezes on visas issued abroad are designed to take effect immediately. Other changes, including restrictions on work permits for asylum seekers, will go through a formal rule-making process that takes months.

The administration is proposing a new way of awarding H-1B visas, the official said, awarding them by highest salary instead of by lottery.

H-1B visas are capped at 85,000 a year for people with highly specialized knowledge and minimum of a bachelors degree, often in science, technology, engineering, teaching and accounting. Critics say high-tech companies have used the visas as a tool to outsource jobs to foreigners, replacing Americans.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. was the largest H-1B employer in the 2018 fiscal year, followed by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Ltd., Deloitte Consulting LLP and Microsoft Corp. Other major employers include Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google and Facebook Inc.

The rule against asylum seekers, scheduled to take effect Aug. 25, would make it much more difficult for them to get work permits by, among other things, lengthening the waiting time to apply from 150 days to a year and barring applicants who cross the border illegally.

The 328-page regulation  signed by Chad Mizelle, the Homeland Security Departments acting general counsel, who is considered an ally of White House adviser Stephen Miller  says limiting work permits will remove a major incentive for people to come to the United States for asylum.

It is the latest in a long string of measures that make asylum more difficult to get  almost unattainable, according to some immigrant advocacy groups.

The rule will prevent many refugees from feeding, supporting, and housing themselves and their families, said Eleanor Acer, Human Rights Firsts senior director for refugee protection. Asylum seekers and their families already struggle to survive under existing work authorization wait times. But this rule will make survival impossible for many.

Perhaps the only major consolation for business and academic institutions is the preservation  at least for now  of the Optional Practical Training program that allows college graduates to stay in the United States up to three years after completing study.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego.
The collection she created in collaboration with her sister Kylie Jenner for Kylie Cosmetics was unveiled online Saturday.

And Kendall Jenner took over the official Instagram page for Kylie Cosmetics on Sunday to demo the highly anticipated KENDALL X KYLIE palette for her millions of fans.

In a slew of self portraits, the 24-year-old runway maven modeled the various vibrant eyeshadow looks that fans can recreate with her personalized palette.

Own best advert: Kendall Jenner took over the official Instagram page for Kylie Cosmetics on Sunday to demo the highly anticipated KENDALL X KYLIE palette for her millions of fans

'Kendall loves to play with colors on her eyes so we made sure to add her favorites to the palette,' wrote the Kylie Cosmetics team on a photo of Kendall rocking a serpent green eye.

In a follow-up photo, Kendall donned a lime green top and a pair of dramatic jewel earrings that coordinated with her shadow look.

She paired her bold eye with a glossy nude lip and a generous amount of peach blush.

In order to show the color payoff provided by the purple shadow in the palette, Kendall provided an up-close photo of a look she created using it.

So many options: In a slew of self portraits, the 24-year-old runway maven modeled the various vibrant eyeshadow looks that fans can recreate with her personalized palette

Pop of color: 'Kendall loves to play with colors on her eyes so we made sure to add her favorites to the palette,' wrote the Kylie Cosmetics team on a photo of Kendall rocking a serpent green eye

Kendall's created an array of fake freckles on her complexion by using some of the matte brown shadow from the palette.

The Vogue covergirl brought the heat, when she appeared on Kylie Cosmetics' Instagram Story donning a lid of neon orange shadow and a smokey eyeliner.

To coordinate with the look's rocker vibe, Kendall pulled her brunette tresses back into a slick ponytail and fastened a chainlink choker around her neck.

Pigment: In order to show the color payoff provided by the purple shadow in the palette, Kendall provided an up-close photo of a look she created using it

Graphic: Kendall closed out her KENDALL X KYLIE palette demo by appealing to makeup gurus with a flare for the dramatic

Kendall closed out her KENDALL X KYLIE palette demo by appealing to makeup gurus with a flare for the dramatic.

She showcased a green, graphic eyeliner look that included a straight brush stroke of shadow on her brow bone and a touch of shadow on her inner lash line.

The finale slide on the Kylie Cosmetics Instagram Story displayed the multi-toned eyeshadow palette and noted it's June 26 release date.

KENDALL X KYLIE: The finale slide on the Kylie Cosmetics Instagram Story displayed the multi-toned eyeshadow palette and noted its June 26 release date

To unveil the collection on Saturday, Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off their knockout legs in skimpy bodysuits in a dramatic campaign video.

In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendall slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit.

She crawled and rolled around on a white floor, shooting her best smoldering stare at the camera for the ad.

Looking fab: Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off their knockout legs in skimpy bodysuits as they plugged their new makeup line this Saturday

Working together: The sister-act are releasing a collection called Kendall that is part of part of the international Kylie Cosmetics empire

Sensational: In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendall, 24, slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit

When you got it: In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendall, 24, slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit

Kendall emphasized her knockout legs in black tights and added a glamorous touch to the look with opera gloves that matched her bodysuit.

In one especially sultry shot she could be seen lying back on the floor with her eyes closed and kicking her gams up.

Kendall accentuated her screen siren features with makeup and threw in a splash of glitz with a pair of heart-shaped hoop earrings.

Eventually Kylie arrived in a black full-sleeved bodysuit and a pair of stilettos, crawling toward the camera just as Kendall had.

She and her big sister posed up a storm together for the camera, cuddling up to one another whilst promoting their brand.

Sizzling: She crawled and rolled around on a white floor, shooting her best smoldering stare at the camera for the ad

Posh: Kendall emphasized her knockout legs in black tights and added a glamorous touch to the look with opera gloves that matched her bodysuit

Gorgeous: In one especially sultry shot she could be seen lying back on the floor with her eyes closed and kicking her gams up

Glowing: Kendall accentuated her screen siren features with makeup and threw in a splash of glitz with a pair of heart-shaped hoop earrings

Eventually: Kylie arrived in a black full-sleeved bodysuit and a pair of stilettos, crawling toward the camera just as Kendall had

Family business: She and her big sister posed up a storm together for the camera, cuddling up to one another whilst promoting their brand

Terrific: The bodysuit segments were stylishly intercut with black-and-white footage of the sisters being mobbed by fans and photographers

Old Hollywood vibes: Kendall and Kylie were all dressed up for a chic red carpet event and held their hands up as the shutterbugs snapped away at them

The bodysuit segments were stylishly intercut with black-and-white footage of the sisters being mobbed by fans and photographers.

Kendall and Kylie were all dressed up for a chic red carpet event and held their hands up as the shutterbugs snapped away at them.

Kylie was in a sparkling full-sleeved sequined frock, while Kendall slid into a gleaming bias-cut sleeveless number.

Fashionistas: Kylie was in a sparkling full-sleeved sequined frock, while Kendall slid into a gleaming bias-cut sleeveless number

An intertitle revealed that Kylie and Kendall's new collection is going to be released this coming Friday, June 26.

Kylie wrote on Instagram: 'we have been dreaming this up for quite some time so i hope you guys love it!' referring to Kendall as her 'SOULMATE.'

The two sisters have collaborated on products before, including the Kendall + Kylie clothing line and lifestyle brand, as well as apparel for Pac Sun.

No autographs, please: Kendall made sure to hold the photographers at bay

Togetherness: Kylie wrote on Instagram: 'we have been dreaming this up for quite some time so i hope you guys love it!' referring to Kendall as her 'SOULMATE'

Family business: The two sisters have collaborated on products before, including the Kendall + Kylie clothing line and lifestyle brand, as well as apparel for Pac Sun

Using what she's got: Kendall put her supermodel skills on display in the new ad
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  By, George, this Washingtons headed for prison.

West Brighton resident George Washington has pleaded guilty to an assault charge stemming from an incident last year in which a man was shot in the Berry Houses.

The events unfolded shortly before 6 p.m. on Nov. 20 on the 200 block of Jefferson Street in Dongan Hills, said police.

Washington, then 28, banged on the front door of a fourth-floor apartment, and a woman answered, a criminal complaint said.

The defendant then brandished a gun and fired once, hitting a 40-year-old man in the left cheek, said the complaint.

The victim suffered bleeding and substantial pain, said the complaint.

He was taken to Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze.

Shortly after the shooting, a source told the Advance the victim identified his assailant to police. The man said he was shot during a dispute in his apartment, and the shooter fled, the source said.

The victim said his girlfriend witnessed the incident.

Two young children were inside the apartment at the time, the complaint said.

Washington was arrested three weeks later on Dec. 11.

He was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, attempted assault, burglary, criminal weapon possession, criminal firearm possession and child endangerment.

He pleaded guilty on Thursday to attempted first-degree assault to resolve the case.

In exchange, Washington will be sentenced on Aug. 6 in state Supreme Court, St. George, to five years behind bars and five years post-release supervision.

It was a very reasonable offer for what could have been a very dangerous situation, said defense lawyer Matthew Zuntag.

The defendant has a criminal record.

In June 2016, he was convicted in Manhattan state Supreme Court of burglary and sentenced to five years probation, said the complaint.
The stunning successes of artificial intelligence would not have happened without the availability of massive amounts of data, whether its smart speakers in the home or personalized book recommendations. And the spread of AI into new areas of the economy, such as AI-driven marketing and self driving vehicles, has been driving the collection of ever more data. These large databases are amassing a wide variety of information, some of it sensitive and personally identifiable. All that data in one place makes such databases tempting targets, ratcheting up the risk of privacy breaches.

The general public is largely wary of AIs data-hungry ways. According to a survey by Brookings, 49% of people think AI will reduce privacy. Only 12% think it will have no effect, and a mere 5% think it may make it better.

As cybersecurity and privacy researchers, we believe that the relationship between AI and data privacy is more nuanced. The spread of AI raises a number of privacy concerns, most of which people may not even be aware. But in a twist, AI can also help mitigate many of these privacy problems.

Revealing models

Privacy risks from AI stem not just from the mass collection of personal data, but from the deep neural network models that power most of todays artificial intelligence. Data isnt vulnerable just from database breaches, but from leaks in the models that reveal the data on which they were trained.

Deep neural networks  which are a collection of algorithms designed to spot patterns in data  consist of many layers. In those layers are a large number of nodes called neurons, and neurons from adjacent layers are interconnected. Each node, as well as the links between them, encode certain bits of information. These bits of information are created when a special process scans large amounts of data to train the model.

For example, a facial recognition algorithm may be trained on a series of selfies so it can more accurately predict a persons gender. Such models are very accurate, but they also may store too much information  actually remembering certain faces from the training data. In fact, thats exactly what researchers at Cornell University discovered. Attackers could identify people in training data by probing the deep neural networks that classified the gender of facial images.

Story continues

They also found that even if the original neural network model is not available to attackers, attackers may still be able to tell whether a person is in the training data. They do this by using a set of models that are trained on data similar, but not identical, to the training data. So if a man with a beard was present in the original training data, then a model trained on photos of different bearded men may be able to reveal his identity.

AI to the rescue?

On the other hand, AI can be used to mitigate many privacy problems. According to Verizons 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, about 52% of data breaches involve hacking. Most existing techniques to detect cyberattacks rely on patterns. By studying previous attacks, and identifying how the attackers behavior deviates from the norm, these techniques can flag suspicious activity. Its the sort of thing at which AI excels: studying existing information to recognize similar patterns in new data.

Still, AI is no panacea. Attackers can often modify their behavior to evade detection. Take the following two examples. For one, suppose anti-malware software uses AI techniques to detect a certain malicious program by scanning for a certain sequence of software code. In that case, an attacker can simply shuffle the order the code. In another example, the anti-malware software might first run the suspicious program in a safe environment, called a sandbox, where it can look for any malicious behavior. Here, an attacker can instruct the malware to detect if its being run in a sandbox. If it is, it can behave normally until its released from the sandbox  like a possum playing dead until the threat has passed.

Making AI more privacy friendly

A recent branch of AI research called adversarial learning seeks to improve AI technologies so theyre less susceptible to such evasion attacks. For example, we have done some initial research on how to make it harder for malware, which could be used to violate a persons privacy, to evade detection. One method we came up with was to add uncertainty to the AI models so the attackers cannot accurately predict what the model will do. Will it scan for a certain data sequence? Or will it run the sandbox? Ideally, a malicious piece of software wont know and will unwittingly expose its motives.

Another way we can use AI to improve privacy is by probing the vulnerabilities of deep neural networks. No algorithm is perfect, and these models are vulnerable because they are often very sensitive to small changes in the data they are reading. For example, researchers have shown that a Post-it note added to a stop sign can trick an AI model into thinking it is seeing a speed limit sign instead. Subtle alterations like that take advantage of the way models are trained to reduce error. Those error-reduction techniques open a vulnerability that allows attackers to find the smallest changes that will fool the model.

These vulnerabilities can be used to improve privacy by adding noise to personal data. For example, researchers from Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany have designed clever ways to alter Flickr images to foil facial recognition software. The alterations are incredibly subtle, so much so that theyre undetectable by the human eye.

The third way that AI can help mitigate privacy issues is by preserving data privacy when the models are being built. One promising development is called federated learning, which Google uses in its Gboard smart keyboard to predict which word to type next. Federated learning builds a final deep neural network from data stored on many different devices, such as cellphones, rather than one central data repository. The key benefit of federated learning is that the original data never leaves the local devices. Thus privacy is protected to some degree. Its not a perfect solution, though, because while the local devices complete some of the computations, they do not finish them. The intermediate results could reveal some data about the device and its user.

Federated learning offers a glimpse of a future where AI is more respectful of privacy. We are hopeful that continued research into AI will find more ways it can be part of the solution rather than a source of problems.

[Youre smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversations authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:



Zhiyuan Chen receives funding from National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NIST, US Department of Education, IBM, and TEDCO.

Aryya Gangopadhyay receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and IBM.
MOSCOW  Prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to sentence acclaimed theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov to six years in prison on embezzlement charges he denies.

Prosecutor Mikhail Reznichenko said at the trial as it resumed on June 22 that it had been proven Serebrennikov and other defendants in the case had embezzled almost 129 million rubles (more than $1.86 million).

All of the accused have denied the accusation.

Reznichenko asked the Meshchansky District Court to sentence three other defendants to prison terms of between four years and five years.

The 50-year-old Serebrennikov and the three other persons are accused of embezzling state funds that were granted from 2011 to 2014 to Seventh Studio, a nonprofit organization established by Serebrennikov, for a project called Platforma.

Serebrennikov has taken part in anti-government protests and voiced concern about the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.

His arrest in August 2017 drew international attention and prompted accusations that Russian authorities were targeting cultural figures who are at odds with President Vladimir Putin and his government.

Serebrennikov and two co-defendants -- producer Yury Itin and former Culture Ministry employee Sofia Apfelbaum -- were released from house arrest in April last year, but ordered to remain in Moscow.

The other defendant, Aleksei Malobrodsky, was also barred from leaving Moscow.
A line was crossed, Chicago pastor says after 3-y-o is among 14 killed in single weekend

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

A line was crossed, the pastor of a Chicago church spoke out after the city had its most violent weekend this year with 14 people, including a 3-year-old girl, killed and more than 100 shot.

This is a horrific Fathers Day. This 3-year-old baby lost his life, the Rev. Ira Acree of Greater St. John Bible Church told a group of local residents who had gathered at Chicagos North Central Avenue Sunday afternoon to denounce the shootings, according to Chicago Tribune. I could not pastor this community and not say something.

The crowd comprised of neighbors of 3-year-old Mekhi James, who had been shot dead in the violent spree.

The pastor referred to protests against police brutality over the death of George Floyd. He expressed concerns about the safety of the citys black youth. We say black lives matter, but were here to say black baby lives matter more, he was quoted as saying.

Acree announced that his church will set a $2,500 reward for any information that could lead to the arrest of the person who shot the baby.

A police source was quoted as saying that the babys father may have been the intended target of the shooting.

At least 102 people were shot, 14 fatally, in separate incidents across the city from Friday evening to Monday morning, Chicago Sun-Times reported.

In one incident, a 13-year-old girl was shot while she was inside a home at North LeClaire Avenue, according to Sun-Times Media. She was struck in the neck and pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital.

Two boys, 15 and 16, were also shot while walking in an alley a little after midnight in the West Superior Street area.

Two more teenage boys, ages 16 and 17, were killed in a shooting at South Luella Avenue in South Chicago, CBS Local reported. The boys were in an alley when a man walked up, took out a gun and shot both of them.

These individuals were with their friend. Theyd just gone to a mall. They know the neighborhood. They dont ever go out to the neighborhood because its so dangerous, Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said.

Police released images of the suspect in the South Luella Avenue shooting, saying the gunman was wearing a black Puma hooded sweatshirt and ripped faded jeans. He was wearing one shoe on the left foot and a black sock on his seemingly injured right foot.

Bullets dont just tear apart the things they strike, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a press conference Sunday. Bullets also tear apart families. Bullets destroy neighborhoods, and they ruin any sense of safety in a community.

I put myself in that house, holding that little girl as she struggles to breathe. I put myself in that hospital, clutching a baby with a bullet hole. Tears are a natural reaction to these tragic stories of violence. But we need to do more than just cry. Lets keep violent offenders in jail longer. And lets revamp the home monitoring program. Its not working.

In Chicago, at least 239 people have been killed this year, according to the Tribune.
2 cops deputed for CM Bommai's security held for trying to 'extort' money from drug peddlers

Is there Karnataka weekend lockdowns or night curfew? Here's what minister has to say

Will Karnataka govt lift weekend and night curfew? CM likely to decide today

Karnataka Ministers father admitted after cook tests COVID-19 positive

India

oi-Deepika S

Bengaluru, June 22: Karnataka Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar's father has been admitted to hosital after he complained of high fever and cough on Monday. Reportedly, one of the female cooks at the Minister's residence tested positive for COVID-19.

Keshava Reddy, a former Chikkaballapur Zilla Panchayat president, is the father of Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar.

"My 82 years old father has been admitted in hospital with complaints of fever and cough. He has undergone Covid19 test as well. We anxiously await results. Need your prayers and blessings," tweeted Sudhakar.

India fighting two wars against China, on border and against coronavirus: Kejriwal

Meanwhile, members of Sudhakar's family, including his two children, wife and his father have submitted swab samples for the test. The results are awaited.

Amid spike in COVID cases, Karnataka CM B S Yediyurappa on Monday decided to reinstate a lockdown in some wards of Bengaluru, which have seen a surge in COVID-19 cases.

"Stringent lockdown to be in place in areas like KR Market, Siddapura, VVPuram, Kalasipalya, and surrounding areas. Adjoining streets of positive cases' residences also will be sealed," Karnataka CM Yediyurappa said after a meeting with top government officers in Bengaluru on Monday.

He added that these areas had clusters that reported a big number of cases in the past few days.

The meeting was held in the wake of Bengaluru witnessing a sudden spike in fresh cases and fatalities since June 1.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, June 22, 2020, 18:38 [IST]
In his new book, Bolton says delay in releasing $400m in security assistance for Ukraine last summer was indeed an attempt by the president to get the foreign country to provide damaging material about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former vice president Joe Biden: Getty

A federal judge has denied an attempt by the Trump administration to block the publication of a tell-all book by former national security advisor John Bolton.

The justice department had sought an emergency order to block the release of Mr Boltons forthcoming memoir, which includes revelations about the inner-workings of Donald Trumps White House. In his ruling, Judge Royce C. Lamberth said while Mr Bolton "gambled with the national security of the United States", but added that he would not block publication.

"While Boltons unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy, he wrote.

More follows
Quote by Ratan Tata on impact of coronavirus on Indian Economy is fake

Stop online hate and bullying advises Ratan Tata

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: Veteran industrialist Ratan Tata on Sunday called for stopping online hatred and bullying and instead supporting each other in what has been a "year full of challenges" for everyone.

In a post on social media platform Instagram, Tata said the online community is being hurtful to each other and bringing each other down.

"This year has been full of challenges for everyone, on some level or the other. I see online community being hurtful to each other, bringing each other down, harshly and with quick judgements," the Chairman Emeritus of the Tata group said.

"I believe this year specially calls for all of us to be unified and helpful and is not the time to pull each other down," he added.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

Urging for more sensitivity towards each other, he reiterated the need for "more of kindness and more of understanding and patience than what one sees today." Tata said while his "presence online is limited, but I truly hope it will evolve into a place of empathy and support for everyone, no matter what your cause, rather than hate and bullying."
ISG, a dynamic construction services company, said it has completed Phase One of University of Wollongong Dubais new campus at Dubai Knowledge Park.

The first phase of the new high-specification 200,000-sq-ft, seven-floor campus development has seen ISG hand over levels one, three, four and six to the university.

These key areas house UOWDs renowned English Language Testing System (IELTS) Centre, alongside students lounges, laboratories and lecture theatres, and the universitys leadership, management, and administration offices.

Commencing on site in November 2019, this first phase handover is fully aligned with the fast-track programme, that will see ISG deliver the new campus, ahead of the start of the new academic year in September.

With an absolute focus on the health, safety, and wellbeing of every operative across its sites, and strict compliance with UAE Governments health and safety guidelines, ISG worked diligently to successfully mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on productivity, said the statement.

Comprehensive measures have included the review of safe travel to and from site, one-way site route planning, agile shift patterns and flexing the number of operatives on site to conform with strict social distancing regulations.

ISG has also recruited dedicated occupational health first responders and introduced daily temperature checking of operatives, as part of a robust package of measures to maintain consistently high productivity rates it added.

As one of the regions most innovative contractors, ISG has accelerated the roll out of visualisation technology to reduce the requirement for site visits during the crisis.

Using 360-degree cameras, inspections and validation work have been carried out remotely, increasing efficiencies for operatives and project stakeholders.

Project teams across the territory have also utilised the UAEs official contact-tracing app to allow timely and accurate identification of any infection risks.

Middle East GM Scott McCulloch said: "Celebrating this key programme milestone for the UOWD has extra resonance during this unprecedented global crisis."

"By adopting a smart, agile and above all a robustly safe approach, and working in full collaboration with every project stakeholder, we have collectively risen to the challenge of operating in this new normal and achieved an outstanding result," he noted.

McCulloch said technology had certainly played an important role in maintaining ISG's productivity rates on site, and its strong tech-led credentials have helped it to deploy smart innovations quickly to generate immediate efficiency benefits.

"I would like to thank our outstanding project team for demonstrating the creativity, drive, and professionalism to operate under the most demanding of circumstances. And our client UOWD, Woods Bagot, Cundall, C&B, other project consultants and our valued supply chain partners, who have supported us tremendously, in our strive to deliver this project safely," he added.

Andy Phillips, the chief operating officer of UOWD, said: "We are building the campus of the future with a focus on delivering a first-class education environment that meets the demands of evolving higher education models. Being in Dubai gives us access to some of the most advanced technologies in the world, which have been woven into the fabric of our new building."

"Our campus will have state-of-the-art facilities that will enhance our student experience, support modern teaching methodologies, and cater to the increasing expectations of the new age higher education model," he stated.

Students will benefit from the cutting-edge technologies, modern architecture, and a mix of traditional and innovative learning spaces. We are looking forward to opening our new campus at the start of the Autumn semester, he added.

From the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, ISG and its key stakeholders have been working closely to accommodate the immediate and future potential requirements for social distancing measures on the newly created teaching, social and administrative spaces at the campus.

This collaborative approach has enabled spatial planning revisions to be made and dynamically incorporated into physical spaces with negligible impact to the programme.-TradeArabia News Service
Patagonia has joined companies like REI and The North Face, saying it plans to pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram to show support for a movement called "#StopHateForProfit."

Last week, a group of six organizations called on Facebook advertisers to pause their spending on the social media platform during the month of July. The groups -- the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense -- asked "large Facebook advertisers to show they will not support a company that puts profit over safety."

The groups said this was in response to "Facebook's long history of allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform," adding that the company allowed its platform to be used in "widespread voter suppression efforts, using targeted disinformation aimed at Black voters," and "allowed incitement to violence against protestors fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and many others," among other claims.

In a series of tweets attributed to the company's head of marketing, Cory Bayers, Patagonia said it would "pull all ads on Facebook and Instagram, effective immediately, through at least the end of July, pending meaningful action from the social media giant."

Tweet

"For too long, Facebook has failed to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform," the statement reads in part. "From secure elections to a global pandemic to racial justice, the stakes are too high to sit back and let the company continue to be complicit in spreading disinformation and fomenting fear and hatred."

Patagonia has a history of being vocal in the political sphere. The company sued President Donald Trump a few years ago after rolling back protections on national monuments.

It comes after outdoor recreation retailer The North Face announced its intention to take the call on Friday.

https://twitter.com/thenorthface/status/1273985578564870145?s=20

"We are pausing all domestic paid advertising with Facebook and Instagram through the end of July in an effort to support the implementation of stricter policies to stop racist, violent or hateful content and misinformation from circulating on the Facebook platform specifically," a spokeswoman for The North Face said in an emailed statement. "We hope they will reconsider their policies and will reevaluate our position in the next thirty days."

Later on Friday, outdoor apparel and recreation retailer REI said it was pulling all Facebook and Instagram advertising for the month of July.

https://twitter.com/REI/status/1274110350703554560?s=20

Upwork, a freelancing platform, said in a tweet that it was also pausing its Facebook advertising in July. In an emailed statement, the company said it was pausing advertising on both Facebook and Instagram. "We cannot stand by and be complicit to or complacent about the spread of hate, racism, and misinformation, and that is why we are supporting the Stop Hate for Profit advocacy campaign, which calls for pausing advertising on all Facebook platforms in the month of July."

Tweet

On Monday, the CMO of password management company Dashlane, Joy Howard, said in a blog post that the company would also be stopping all paid and organic posts on Facebook and Instagram through July "at minimum."

"Stepping away from this  even for a month  will be hard for many of us. In the relentless pursuit of scale, most startups lean on performance marketing, falling into the endless cycle of 'scale spend while keeping CPAs flat,'" she writes in a blog post. "This leads to a world where 40 cents of every VC dollar goes to one of Facebook, Amazon, or Google. It's clear our industry's collective addiction to performance marketing has come at the expense of so much more than just R&D or product-market fit, and calls for a course-correction."

Facebook reported in January that it has more than 8 million active advertisers on its platform, which in 2019 generated $69.7 billion in ad revenue.

The pressure for big brands to pause advertising on Facebook isn't just coming from outside groups. Some agencies have encouraged their clients to pause. Last week, ad agency 360i told clients in an email that it supports the July ad boycott, according to The Wall Street Journal. Elijah Harris, senior vice president of paid social at IPG Mediabrands, part of Interpublic Group, also shared a LinkedIn post saying it was "time to hold Facebook's leadership team accountable  Let's use our collective strength to bring them to task."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also weighed in. Last week, she implored advertisers to use their "tremendous leverage" to push companies like Facebook to crack down on disinformation.

In response to the boycotts, Facebook shared a statement from the vice president of its global business group, Carolyn Everson.

"We deeply respect any brand's decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information," she wrote. "Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good."

On Sunday, Facebook published a blog post titled "Actions We're Taking to Advance Racial Justice in Our Company and on Our Platform," discussing what the company says it's doing to review its policies to "build a more inclusive platform." For example, the company says it's "Reviewing potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions."
Congress president Sonia Gandhi urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to provide free food grains for another three months from July in view of the prevailing Covid-19 situation across the country, saying millions of Indians are at risk of slipping into poverty due to the lockdown.

In a letter to the prime minister, she said the provision for supply of 5 kg free food grains per person every month to Antyodaya Anna Yojana and priority households under the National Food Security Act from April-June in addition to regular entitlements was announced at the beginning of the lockdown.

The government also announced free food grains of 5kg per person every month for migrants not covered under any central or state public distribution system (PDS) scheme for May and June, she added.

The union government must consider extending the provision for free food grains for a further period of three months i.e. from July-September 2020. Several States have requested for the same, Gandhi said.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in May announced providing 800,000 tonne of emergency ration for migrants under the Union governments Atma Nirbhar Bharat programme for distribution during May and June.

The Congress chief also urged the Prime Minister to issue temporary ration cards to all poor households who continue to be excluded from the PDS system.

Nearly three months since the country went into a strict lockdown, millions of Indians are at risk of slipping into poverty. The adverse impact on livelihoods has led to chronic food insecurity for both, our urban and rural poor, she wrote in the letter.

In light of the current situation, food entitlements must be expanded to address the hunger crisis facing some of the most vulnerable people in the country, added Gandhi.

She urged the Prime Minister to announce the decision at the earliest.
North Korea is planning to send millions of propaganda leaflets to the South by an aerial armada of balloons.

Pyongyang has previously issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of Seoul over anti-North leaflets which defectors based in the South send across the border - usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.

In retaliation to the leafleting, North Korea destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory last week, sharply increasing animosities on the Korean Peninsula.

Now, it plans to release 12 million leaflets - its largest distribution ever - of its own displaying 'the wrath and hatred of the people from all walks of life' attached to more than 3,000 balloons over the border.

A photo provided by the North Korean government shows officials preparing anti-South Korea propaganda leaflets this week

South Korean army's K-55 self-propelled howitzer tank fires during a military exercise in Paju, near the border with North Korea, today

A propaganda loudspeaker (circled) is reinstalled near a North Korean guardpost inside the Demilitarized Zone

Analysts say Pyonygang has been conducting a series of staged provocations aimed at forcing concessions from Seoul and Washington with nuclear talks at a standstill.

Ostensibly the source of its anger is the leaflets which it says insult the dignity of its leadership - a reference to leader Kim Jong Un.

It is preparing to retaliate with its 'largest-ever distribution of leaflets against the enemy', the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Monday.

North Korea is planning to send millions of propaganda leaflets to the South by an aerial armada of balloons. Pictured: A South Korean army exercise in Paju, South Korea

A self-propelled artillery unit conducts a firing drill at a training range in Paju, South Korea, near to the North Korea border

People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus pray in Chogyesa temple in South Korea today

Altogether '12 million leaflets of all kinds reflective of the wrath and hatred of the people from all walks of life' have been produced, it said, and more than 3,000 balloons prepared to send them far to the south.

'The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near,' it said.

One of the leaflets shown in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried an image of South Korean President Moon Jae-in drinking from a cup and accused him of having 'eaten it all, including the north-south Korea agreement'.

Both Koreas used to regularly send leaflets to the other side, but agreed to stop such propaganda activities - including loudspeaker broadcasts along the frontier - in the Panmunjom Declaration that Moon and Kim signed at their first summit in 2018.

One of the leaflets shown in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried an image of South Korean President Moon Jae-in (pictured) drinking from a cup and accused him of having 'eaten it all, including the north-south Korea agreement'

In a commentary this month, KCNA described leaflet-scattering as 'undisguised psychological warfare' and 'an act of a preemptive attack that precedes a war'.

At times it has led to escalation - in October 2014 the North opened fire on an air balloon carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets, triggering an exchange of shots at the border.

But most South Koreans largely ignore leaflets they find sent by the North.

The flyers often boast of its military prowess or criticise the US and Southern presidents, accompanied by offensive images and language.

A 2016 flyer showed then South Korean president Park Geun-hye, with one eye photoshopped to look bruised and her hair messed up, with the message: 'Idiot president and devil.'

Inter-Korean relations have been in a deep freeze following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over what the nuclear-armed North would be willing to give up in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.

South Koreans pray during a service at the Chogyesa temple in South Korea today

The impoverished country is subject to multiple United Nations Security Council sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.

Moon initially brokered a dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington, but the North now blames him for not persuading the United States to relax sanctions.

Analysts say its actions appear to be carefully calibrated, with Pyongyang drawing out the process by issuing multiple incremental warnings from different official sources - leadership, government departments and the military - ahead of each step it takes.

The North's latest declarations come after Kim Yeon-chul, South Korea's point man for relations with Pyongyang, resigned as unification minister over the heightened tensions.

He expressed hope that his departure 'will be a chance to pause for a bit'.

South Korea has also announced it will ban sending leaflets north - raising concerns over freedom of speech in the democratic country - and has filed a police complaint against two defector groups over the campaigns that have offended Pyongyang.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after Korean War hostilities ended with an armistice in 1953 that was never replaced by a peace treaty.
More and more people are desperate to know if they have already had coronavirus as evidence grows that the vast majority of those infected with Covid-19 have no symptoms at all.

Antibody tests are still held up as our way out of lockdown  at the very least, allowing healthcare workers to assist vulnerable patients, and even cancer patients to undergo treatment.

There are now more than 200 brands of Covid antibody test approved for sale, many of them available over the internet, but as a foolproof way of finding out if youre immune, they may be less than useless.

Antibody tests can be done at home and typically require you to prick a finger to obtain a blood sample, dab it on absorbent fibre and then add a reagent. A few minutes later the test reveals if your blood contains one or two types of Covid-19 antibodies  the result shown as a line in the window

As Good Health has discovered, there is little regulation of the industry churning out these kits and, while some are better than others, none is 100 per cent accurate.

Even the two antibody tests approved for NHS hospital use (made by the drug companies Roche and Abbott), introduced with much fanfare in May, are less accurate than originally claimed, with specialists scathing about the decision to buy millions of them.

One of the leading experts in this area, Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics and head of the test evaluation research group at the University of Birmingham, told Good Health last week: Its a mystery why they [the Government] went with only Roche or Abbott. They are not game-changers. There are other tests that are better than them.

Professor Deeks, who speaks with the authority of having embarked on the first ever worldwide review of antibody tests  looking at the available supporting evidence on their reliability and independent assessment, if any  added emphatically that none of the tests available are good enough for any of us to say for certain whether or not we have already caught the disease  and even if we have, whether we are safe from being infected with it a second time.

Professor Sheila Bird, a biostatistics expert from Edinburgh University, gave evidence to a House of Lords science and technology committee looking at the tests earlier this month. Shes just as critical, pointing out all the evaluations used samples from severely sick hospital patients

The vital need for accurate antibody tests has been highlighted by a new study, which confirms that many people can be infected with Covid but have no symptoms.

When 217 people were cooped up for three weeks on a Covid-infected cruise ship en route for Antarctica in March, uniquely all their samples were genetically analysed.

Around 60 per cent caught Covid, but 80 per cent of those had no symptoms, reported the journal Thorax.

Other studies have suggested that people with this kind of silent infection may not be infectious. But without reliable post-infection antibody tests, we will never know.

Antibody tests look for molecules produced by the immune system to fight off new infection. Their effectiveness is dictated by when exactly a person is tested (with Covid, antibodies are thought to start reliably showing three weeks after infection), the concentration of the test reagent (a chemical that reacts in the presence of antibodies), and whether the individual has actually raised antibodies against the virus.

Virus tip Swap contact lenses for glasses, says optometrist Robert Glass. You will touch your eyes less and the spectacles will act as a physical barrier against the virus. Swap contact lenses for glasses, says optometrist Robert Glass [File photo] Advertisement

Antibody tests can be done at home and typically require you to prick a finger to obtain a blood sample, dab it on absorbent fibre and then add a reagent. A few minutes later the test reveals if your blood contains one or two types of Covid-19 antibodies  the result shown as a line in the window.

I did one of these tests myself to see if the mild symptoms Id had were Covid. This was one of the first tests available in Britain in early April, and it showed I hadnt been exposed to the coronavirus and was apparently at risk  but how do I really know?

Of course, I might be one of those who didnt develop antibodies  up to 8.5 per cent of Covid patients tested negative for antibodies, revealed a recent study from St Georges University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Growing evidence suggests that some people fight Covid off with T-cells, another immune cell, rather than with antibodies.

But the antibody tests are flawed. An international research study led by Edinburgh University (published last week in the journal Public Health) suggests that, although the tests ability to identify the absence of antibodies is probably accurate, their ability to detect their presence is much less certain: 68 per cent of the people told that they have the antibodies wont actually have had the disease.

This is down to the key concepts of a tests sensitivity (how accurate it is in spotting people who do actually have the antibodies) and its specificity (its accuracy spotting people who definitely dont have the antibodies. A 90 per cent specificity and sensitivity means that even just taking a tiny proportion of the population, say 100,000 people, as many as 14,000 would be wrongly diagnosed and told that theyve had Covid, or they havent, when the opposite is true.

Giving false security and reassurance could be harmful for individuals, undermine public confidence and foster further outbreaks, the report in Public Health warns.

The Government has declared that only two drug companies, Roche and Abbott, can supply the tests and they must all be done through hospitals using blood samples taken by a healthcare professional from peoples veins, not just a finger prick.

Roche and Abbotts tests were initially declared 100 per cent accurate but it quickly became apparent they are not.

So which illness is most infectious of all? By Alice Jaffe Ever since the start of the pandemic, the reproduction number (or R0, R nought) of the virus has been at the forefront  as a measure used to justify lockdown and, more recently, critical to its lifting. Last week, the Governments Covid-19 alert level was reduced from four to three as a result of the lowering R0. The R0 is the number of new cases of an infection passed on from one person  for Covid-19 in the UK it was around 2.6 before lockdown, and the latest estimates are that it is now between 0.7 and 0.9 here. But the virus itself hasnt necessarily become less dangerous, as Keith Neal, emeritus professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, explains. The R0 is the number of new cases of an infection passed on from one person  for Covid-19 in the UK it was around 2.6 before lockdown, and the latest estimates are that it is now between 0.7 and 0.9 here The measurement only reflects the transmission of the virus in a susceptible society. This is different from virulence, which is the ability to cause disease, he says. Given the impact of Covid-19, it may come as a surprise that its R0 is lower than for other diseases. Studies suggest the R0 for measles is 12 to 18 and for smallpox 3.5 to 6 (see panel on the right). Professor Neal adds: The R0 will not be the same for each disease in each country, and can be calculated in different ways. Generally, the diseases we have circulating do not have the same mortality rates as the coronavirus. Theres also the ease of stopping diseases  measles is dangerous and hyper-infectious but with a vaccine its no longer a problem. Advertisement

In May, Professor Deeks raised concerns over the methods used for evaluations  he had been asked by the respected Cochrane organisation, a British-based global charity that reviews the claims made for medicines and diagnostic tests, to investigate such tests.

Every week we have been looking at all the publications on Covid testing and all the data, he told Good Health, adding that 54 studies of antibody tests have been published up to the end of April and another 60 studies have been published in May.

Results from the review are expected shortly but are not expected to be promising.

You cant tell diddly-squat about how good the tests are, Professor Deeks says.

There are more than 200 antibody tests on the market. They have CE (European conformity) marks but that only shows compliance with health, safety and environmental standards.

In basic terms, this means only that the tests will not harm consumers. The Roche and Abbott tests simply conform to these standards.

We went to the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics in Geneva because they had the only list of coronavirus tests approved by licensing bodies around Europe but it is not comprehensive, and were only picking up ones that theyve listed, says Professor Deeks.

Only 20  less than 10 per cent of the total [with CE marks]  have published any sort of evaluation from an independent source to show how well they work. The evaluations that have been done dont talk much about the samples [of people or blood], how many patients there were or how many samples per patient were tested.

He is equally scathing about the Roche and Abbott antibody tests, which the Government has agreed to buy, at an estimated cost of tens of millions.

He said a review of Roches evidence showed its test failed to pick up 15 known coronavirus antibody positive samples out of 93, making it only 84 per cent sensitive.

The Abbott test was marginally better and identified 90 out of 96 positive samples, making it 94 per cent sensitive.

Corona clinic : Your Covid questions answered by our top experts Can I microwave a face mask to disinfect it? It IS surprisingly difficult to disinfect something in a microwave because it doesnt heat evenly, says Dr Andrew Preston, a reader in microbial pathogenesis at the University of Bath. There is also the risk that the high heat may damage the mask material, rendering it ineffective. For fabric face coverings, a more efficient way of decontaminating is to put it in the washing machine after use, as detergent is very effective at killing Covid-19. If you are not able to do this, the mask should not be reused. Should I disinfect my car door handles and steering wheel after filling up with petrol? When outside of the home, it is important to be mindful that everything you touch could be contaminated, including petrol pumps, says Dr Preston. Its a good idea to wear the plastic gloves provided by garages, so you dont contaminate your hands with any virus on the pump. Disinfecting your car door handle and steering wheel will remove most virus particles, but every other surface in your car could be contaminated if you touch them. The best precaution is not to touch your face while outside, and to wash your hands as soon as you return home. I suffer from hot flushes because of the menopause. Is there any chance these will trigger the temperature-checking equipment in airports? Its thought that menopause-related hot flushes occur when the bodys temperature sensing goes haywire  possibly because of hormone imbalances, says Dr Preston. Blood flow to the skin increases to help cool down the body, which can result in a measurable difference in skin temperature. Airport checks commonly involve hand-held infrared thermometers, which use skin temperature as a proxy for core body temperature, which rises during infection. It is possible that a hot flush will trigger a higher-than-normal reading. However, hot flushes usually pass, so if your reading is high and you think you had a hot flush, you could ask to be retested once it has passed. As told to Rachel Ellis Advertisement

Professor Sheila Bird, a biostatistics expert from Edinburgh University, gave evidence to a House of Lords science and technology committee looking at the tests earlier this month. Shes just as critical, pointing out all the evaluations used samples from severely sick hospital patients.

We want to know how these tests perform in people who have had a level of the disease that didnt require them to go to hospital, Professor Bird told Good Health. We dont have anywhere in the UK that can offer decent evaluations of tests that we are proposing to use on a large scale, whether its for surveillance or for personal use. The accuracy has to be substantially higher.

The regulator of such devices, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) requested a pause in sales of home-use antibody kits on May 29, while it works out what to do. The agencys own guidelines are vague.

This is not just about idle curiosity. Professor Karol Sikora, dean of Buckingham University medical school, is desperate for a test reliable enough to allow seriously ill cancer patients to resume chemotherapy (which destroys peoples immunity) knowing they are not at risk of contracting the coronavirus.

He fears that antibody tests as they are will not be the solution  while they might give a rough idea of how many people have had the infection, when it comes to an individuals personal need to know, buying all these tests wasnt a good decision.

A spokesman for Abbott insisted its test was able to identify 100 per cent of Covid positive cases and 99.9 per cent of negative cases accurately but said: The sensitivity of the test is affected by whether (and when) a patient develops antibodies, so it is more a question of the patients immune response, not the performance of the test.

Roche said Our test is designed to be used as an aid to identify who has previously been exposed to the virus and has been through a rigorous regulated process.

It is one of the most reliable on the market, reporting 100 per cent sensitivity 14 days post PCR confirmation [ie after a positive test for a current infection] and over 99.8 per cent specificity. This is based on extensive testing and validation, including the measurement of more than 5,200 samples.
In February 2019, police accused Yohavnis Roque of killing his 2-year-old daughter in their Orange County home. Now, his defense attorney is working to try and persuade the state to avoid the death penalty after a doctor said Roque was insane at the time of the incident.

The nation-wide shutdown due to concerns over the coronavirus has impacted the defenses ability to gather information, further delaying a case that likely will not see trial for several years because of its potential for capital punishment, Ryan Gertz said.

The body of Savanna Roque was found around 11 a.m. on Feb. 19, 2019, after the Orange Police Department received a call from a woman screaming that her cousin just killed his daughter in the house next door.

Once on scene in the 500 block of Azalea Avenue, the toddler was found in her bedroom. Police said the child had been bludgeoned with a hammer, and that the suspect was naked and "completely covered in blood.

He has since been in the Orange County Jail in lieu of a $2 million bond.

While Roque awaits trial, Gertz said the prison system is doing the best it can with patients that might suffer from mental disorders, but they are not substitutes for mental health facilities.

He is getting the proper medical treatment, Gertz said of Roque. He is getting medication and he is being seen, but  and this is not a knock on the Orange County Jail  generally, a jailhouse environment is not ideal.

That sentiment is shared by Jefferson County Sheriff Zena Stephens, who said steps have been taken to improve prison conditions for inmates that may have mental health problems.

Every inmate that comes in gets mentally screened immediately because of the Sandra Bland law, Stephens said. When they come through the door, they get seen physically by our medical provider and assessed mentally. If they are determined to be in crisis, we put them in the care of our contract medical provider Everyone gets screened to make sure they are not in crisis and arent suffering from anything that we need to monitor immediately. After we figure that out, we start trying to see if they have any mental health diagnosis or need to be on medications.

Stephens said it is common for inmates to receive a mental health diagnosis for the first time while they are in the jail.

We were dealing with the same folks over and over that were dealing with metal health issues, and there are not enough mental health beds in the state, let alone our local community, she said. Many times, local police agencies are riding around with them trying to figure out where to place them. They end up getting arrested for trespassing or other charges, because there is nowhere else to put them. I believe they dont belong in our jail. If they have committed a crime, that is where they come.

Stephens said while healthcare for inmates that have metal problems have improved, she would like to see more done.

We used to not have medical staff to detox people at the jail, she said. We do now and it prevents police officers from having to take folks every day from the jail to the hospital and spend countless hours waiting for them to be medically cleared or detoxed. What Harris, Travis and Bexar counties are doing is they totally divert people they recognize, or have dealt with and know, have metal illness. They dont bring them to jail, where they can get hurt or lost in the system. They bring them to a building where there are officers and a medical team that starts diverting and treating them for the mental health issues.

While conditions are not ideal, Gertz said the jailhouse services Roque receives are better than nothing.

From my perspective, they are doing the best they can with the resources they have, and he is being cared for better than he was on the outside when he was by himself, he said.

Gertz is now focused on persuading the Orange County District Attorney to not seek the death penalty by putting together a package of medical files and interviews to trace Roques mental health decline. But the nationwide shut down due to concerns over COVID-19 has slowed the attorneys ability to obtain information needed for his presentation to the state.

This is a unique case, Gertz said. Everybody involved knows were not saying some third party is responsible for this. Id be hurrying this up and saying lets go so we can get the right guy. Here, especially when death is on the table, we want to make sure we get them everything and make sure we are detailed.

Gertz said his client has not formally plead not guilty by way of insanity and believes Roque is competent to stand trial as long as he is properly medicated.

Until we get to a trial setting, there is not going to be a formal plea of insanity, which is going to happen regardless if death is on the table or not. It our intention unless something dramatic changes.

chris.moore@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/chris_moore09
Photo: Sean Benham/Flickr

Here's what you need to know about what's happening in Nashville.

Nashville liquor store owner, 88, explains why she shot alleged shoplifter: 'I'm fed up'

Nashville liquor store owner May Boyce, an 88-year-old widow who stands 5-foot-3 and weighs 115 pounds, according to reports, got "fed up" of her store being robbed so she shot an alleged shoplifter.

Read the full story on FOX 29.

Nashville Tennessean to investigate anti-Islam ad claiming the city would be blown up

The advertisement, submitted by an alleged Christian doomsday cult, claimed that the city of Nashville would be blown up by "Islam" on July 18.

Read the full story on The Daily Beast.

Kid Rocks Nashville bar has liquor license suspended for violating coronavirus guidelines

Kid Rock's Big Ass Honky Tonk & Steakhouse served alcohol to drinkers at the bar rather than at tables.

Read the full story on The Daily Beast.

Black women pay for deputy's meal, leave sweet message: 'BLM but so does yours'

Two women paid for a Sumner County deputy's meal at a Nashville restaurant, but a message they sent with the payment made it all the more special.

Read the full story on 10News  ABC San Diego KGTV.

This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Medical materials from China arrive at the Liege airport in Belgium, on March 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a heavy toll on the world, closer cooperation between China and the EU will inject more confidence into reviving the global economy.

BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Amid the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, the upcoming 22nd China-EU leaders' meeting on Monday is expected to boost much-needed confidence in the global fight against the virus and offer more certainty in a time of unprecedented instability.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of China-EU diplomatic relations, and with cooperation and consensus always greater than competition and difference, China and the EU have proven themselves to be long-term, comprehensive strategic partners.

Since the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak, leaders from both sides have maintained close communication and coordination via phone calls, video-conferences and other means.

A woman crosses the border from Italy to Menton, southern France, on June 15, 2020. (Photo by Serge Haouzi/Xinhua)

The frequent exchanges are proof of deep political mutual trust and close strategic coordination between the two sides, which have laid the groundwork for concrete cooperation to tide over the health crisis confronting the world.

The mutual support between China and Europe has set an example for the global epidemic battle.

When the epidemic broke out in China, the EU and several European countries expressed support for China and sent over urgently needed supplies. When the COVID-19 outbreak began in Europe in March, China promptly sent protective supplies and medical teams to Europe.

Following this momentum, Monday's meeting is expected to promote cooperation in the battle against the novel coronavirus in such fields as expertise sharing, as well as vaccine and medicine development.

As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a heavy toll on the world, closer cooperation between China and the EU will inject more confidence into reviving the global economy.

The past few years have witnessed the rise of protectionism and its threat to derail the world economy even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The epidemic has unfortunately generated some talk about "decoupling."

Local people greet members of the third Chinese medical team with an elbow bump instead of a handshake as the medics arrive at Milan Malpensa Airport in Milan, Italy, March 25, 2020.(Xinhua)

As both China and the EU remain firm supporters of an open world economy, a joint declaration by China and the EU to revive their economies will serve as an example for others to follow.

The upcoming China-EU summit also comes at a time when the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the global fight against COVID-19 has been undermined by U.S. withdrawal from the UN agency.

No country is immune to the epidemic, and global cooperation is the only solution to the current health crisis facing humanity.

In the fight against COVID-19, China and the EU have clearly expressed support for the WHO's leading role. The two are staunch advocates of improving the global health system and remain a force against unilateralism.

For forty-five years, a healthy China-EU partnership has been an essential anchor for world stability and development. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has posed tremendous uncertainty, it is more important than ever to keep the China-EU relationship solid. The world depends on it.
Advertisement

Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu opera reopened its doors for the first time in over three months today to hold a concert - exclusively for a quiet, leafy audience of nearly 2,300 house plants.

Organisers said the intention was to reflect on the absurdity of the human condition in the era of the coronavirus, which has stopped people from enjoying performances and opera.

After the concert, which will be live streamed this evening, the plants will be donated to frontline health workers.

'Nature advanced to occupy the spaces we snatched from it,' executive producer Eugenio Ampudio said on stage at an afternoon rehearsal, where 2,292 nursery plants already occupied every seat.

'Can we extend our empathy? Let's begin with art and music, in a great theatre, by inviting nature in,' he added inside the neo-classical venue that is one of Europe's largest.

The 'Concert for the Biocene' was allowed to go ahead following the end of Spain's state of emergency on Sunday. It will feature a string quartet playing Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's 'Chrysanthemum'.

The Liceu said it hoped the show would reaffirm the value of art, music and nature and serve as a roadmap for returning to normal activity after the pandemic.

Spain has been one of the worst-affected nations, with 28,323 deaths and 246,272 cases of the COVID-19 disease so far.

Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu reopened its doors for the first time in over three months today to hold a concert - exclusively for a quiet, leafy audience of nearly 2,300 house plants. Pictured is a rehearsal

Nursery plants are seen placed in people's seats during a rehearsal as Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu opera reopens its doors with a concert for plants

After the concert, which will be live streamed this evening, the plants will be donated to frontline health workers. Spain has been hit hard by the pandemic

The 'Concert for the Biocene' was enabled by the end of Spain's state of emergency on Sunday. The country has one of the highest death rates in Europe

The concert this evening will feature a string quartet (pictured) playing Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's 'Chrysanthemum'

The Liceu said it hoped the show would reaffirm the value of art, music and nature and serve as a roadmap for returning to normal activity after the pandemic

'Nature advanced to occupy the spaces we snatched from it,' executive producer Eugenio Ampudio said on stage at an afternoon rehearsal, where 2,292 nursery plants already occupied every seat

The Uceli Quartet perform for an audience made of plants during a concert created by Spanish artist Eugenio Ampudia and that will be later streamed to mark the reopening of the Liceu Grand Theatre in Barcelona

Spain has been one of the worst-affected nations, with 28,323 deaths and 246,272 cases of the COVID-19 disease so far. Pictured are the plants inside the venue today

Executive producer Eugenio Ampudio speaks about the event today. After the concert the plants will be delivered to healthcare professionals

Musicians from the UceLi Quartet, a string quartet, perform 'Crisantemi' by Puccini for an audience made up of 2,292 plants in Barcelona today
Authorities in a province in Vietnam have locked down an entire neighborhood after two cases of diphtheria were reported there last week, one of whom has already died.

The village has been sealed off since Friday,

Officials in Dak Nong Province, located in the Central Highlands, have blocked a village in Dak Glong District since Friday, Ha Van Hung, deputy director of the provincial Department of Health, said on Monday.

We have fumigated the whole locale and isolated it, Hung said.

We will continue vaccinating 550 people of the village in the next four days so as to suppress the cluster.

Two of the villages children had caught diphtheria, the Dak Nong Center for Disease Control announced, adding that one of them, 9-year-old Sung Thi Hoa, had died of the infection.

Hoa was rushed to Dak Nong General Hospital on Friday, suffering coughing, a sore throat, and shortness of breath.

Her conditions turned critical then so the girl was transferred to the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

But she died on Saturday of malignant diphtheria, causing heart complications, doctors said.

The second patient is Ma Van Thanh, nine, who was in close contact with Hoa, according to the Dak Nong Center for Disease Control. He is in emergency treatment.

Health workers have disinfected all households, a school, and a medical facility in the village, the center said.

Those aged seven to under 40 in the locale will be vaccinated against the disease as a precaution, it added.

Authorities have set up two checkpoints to lock down the village.

This is the second diphtheria cluster to have been detected in Dak Nong this year, deputy director Hung said.

On June 14, health workers found four cases in Krong No and managed to quickly clear the cluster.

Diphtheria is a serious infection caused by strains of bacteria called Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website.

The infection can cause people to get very sick and spread from person to person through respiratory droplets or touching infected open lesions.

Symptoms can include weakness, sore throat, mild fever, and swollen glands in the neck.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
A woman is believed to have died by suicide after finding her husband dead in their house on Sunday morning. Her body was found by her teenage brother who had come to help her when she discovered her husbands body, according to his statement to the police.

The incident comes to light a day after a 23-year-old footwear businessman was found dead in his house. The man is believed to have died by suicide.

The couple had married around a year ago and were having domestic issues, he told the police in his statement.

While the husband worked as a security guard at a society, the woman and her younger brother lived with him in the outhouse of the society, where he worked. The three had been living there since several months.

He is not able to give many details, but he told us that the husband-wife duo were involved in a fight last night (Saturday). After the fight, the husband asked the brother-sister duo to sleep outside, as he wanted to be alone. In the morning, he wakes up at 5am to wash cars in the society. On Sunday as he did not wake up, the woman went in to find him dead inside the house, said police sub-inspector Pradeep Palande of Samarth police station who is investigating the case.

The teenager rushed to Camp area, where the deceased mans elder brother lived, when they discovered the body, according to the police.

When he came back, he says he found his sister dead, said PSI PAlande.

The family members are natives of Nepal. However, the womans parents live in Gujarat.
Communities from around the U.S. and world can now submit new construction and renovation projects in 11 categories this year: 55+, Active Adult, Affordable, Assisted Living, Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC), Hospice, Independent Living, International, Renovation/Repositioning, Skilled Nursing/Post-Acute Care and Standalone Memory Care.

Particularly in light of reduced travel and conference participation this year, The 2020 SHN Architecture & Design Awards is a great way to virtually showcase the latest work of senior housing owners, operators and developers, for a global audience, said George Yedinak, founder of Senior Housing News. Now in its seventh year, we look forward to presenting this annual awards competition, which year after year highlights the latest best-in-class ideas driving the future of senior living design.

Submissions are now open until October 31, 2020. Winners will be announced in December 2020.

A panel of industry experts with backgrounds in development, architecture and interior design will judge the projects, evaluating entries based on design and aesthetic criteria. Not only will judges analyze design elements such as color, light and landscape architecture, they will also consider community functionality by analyzing key features that are critical to property type, such as universal design techniques.

For more information about the awards and this year's competition, visit http://www.shnawards.com.

About the SHN Architecture & Design Awards

The Senior Housing News Architecture & Design Awards recognize cutting-edge design, excellence and innovation in senior living. The annual awards contest celebrates unique projects and companies that are improving the lives of seniors through innovative design. Visit http://www.shnawards.com for more information about this year's contest, as well as past winners.

About Aging Media Network / Senior Housing News

Aging Media Network is an innovative publishing company based in Chicago, Illinois, and is the publisher of Senior Housing News, Reverse Mortgage Daily, Home Health Care News and Skilled Nursing News.

Senior Housing News (SHN) is the leading independent source for news and information covering senior housing and senior living. With a global reach of more than 30,000 industry professionals, SHN boasts an audience that includes senior housing operators, developers, banking institutions, real estate investment trusts, private equity and service providers catering to the industry. Visit http://www.seniorhousingnews.com for more information.
Tens of confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases had been detected among Egyptian high-school students on the first day of their final exams on Sunday, an official said.

More than 650,000 Egyptian students started the end-of-year Thanaweya Amma exams nationwide on Sunday amid heightened precautionary measures to rein in the spread of the coronavirus.

At least three confirmed cases were detected among the students, said Mohamed Dahy, Head of the General Health Insurance Authority.

Those had been in home isolation after they were diagnosed with the respiratory illness that was due to end next week, but they decided to take the exams despite having the option to postpone, Dahy said in TV comments on Monday morning.

Their exams have been postponed to the second round set to begin in August, according to Dahy.

Three other pupils who had come in contact with infected family members also had their exams delayed.

Another 29 students either had to sit their exams in designated isolation rooms at schools or had been transferred to isolation hospitals after showing symptoms, including high temperature.

Infected students or those who have an infected family member are allowed to postpone their exams to the second round without having any marks deducted.

Pupils concerned about their safety also have the option to postpone their exams to the next academic year.



Many parents as well as the Egyptian Doctors Syndicate have called for postponing the exams over concerns about the students safety amid a surge in coronavirus cases. Others called for replacing the exams with an online research system adopted for other school grades.

The education minister had repeatedly said that the major exams, that had already been delayed by two weeks amid virus restrictions, cannot be postponed further, asserting that authorities are taking necessary precautions.

Egypt has suspended school and university classes since March as part of the sweeping anti-virus measures, and introduced a new online research paper system as an alternative to the final exams of most other school grades.

As of Sunday, Egypt had registered 55,233 confirmed coronavirus cases, including 2,193 fatalities.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The newly appointed United Nations Resident Coordinator for Ghana, Mr. Charles Abani has presented his letter of credentials to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Hon. Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, signaling the start of his duty tour in the country.

Mr. Abani, whose appointment took effect in May this year, arrived in the country early June and has since been observing strict protocol in accordance with the Government of Ghana COVID-19 rules.

Hon. Botchwey expressed gratitude to the UN for its support to the Government and people of Ghana towards the achievement of its development goals. She further commended the UN for recognizing the Government of Ghana's COVID-19 response initiatives and lending its support to fight the pandemic in Ghana and globally.

Hon. Botchwey thanked Ms. Sylvia Lopez-Ekra for holding the forte for nearly two years and congratulated her for being a good friend" to the Ministry and to Ghana.

For his part, Mr. Abani noted that I am here to continue the good work of my predecessors to support Ghana make a mark in the world and for its people. He acknowledged Ghana's leadership role on the continent towards the achievement of the SDGs, on gender equality and on its response to kick out COVID-19. I look forward to working closely with all national partners so that together we can attain the better world that we so desire for our people he added.
Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa (FMCSA) has assembled and supplied 50,000 face shields for the United States Department of Defense to shore up its response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the Southern African region.



Source: Dhiren Vanmali and Lana MarksSource: www.quickpic.co.za

How can you help?

This large order was facilitated by the US Embassy in Pretoria, and funded by the US AFRICOM Humanitarian Assistance programme. The face shields will be provided to the South African Military Health Service members who are on the frontlines battling the coronavirus across the country. They will also be supplied to Botswana, Namibia and the Kingdoms of Eswatini and Lesotho."The whole of the United States, from our government to individuals, the philanthropic sector, and US businesses are mobilizing support to fight Covid-19 globally and alongside South Africa," says US Ambassador to South Africa, Lana Marks. "Ford's local production of these face shields is a shining example of an American company pivoting its mission and adjusting its value-added to make an effective and generous contribution to fighting this pandemic in South Africa."The face shields are being produced in a specially prepared and sanitized facility at Ford's Silverton Assembly Plant in Pretoria. All funds received are used to purchase the face shield materials, with Ford sponsoring all of the labour costs for its employees involved in the assembly and packaging of the shields."The donation by Ford Motor Company underscores the immense value that this American company brings to the people of South Africa," adds US Embassy Economic Counsellor, Alan Tousignant. "This is in addition to the significant contributions it continues to make to the country's economic development and prized reputation as an attractive destination for foreign direct investment."Combined with the 50,000 units supplied to the US Department of Defense, Ford has produced over 258,000 face shields to date. This includes almost 140,000 units that Ford has already donated directly to the Department of Health's centralised warehouse and distribution centre in Centurion, as well as direct donations to a variety of hospitals, clinics and humanitarian organisations."As an American company with a heart firmly in South Africa, we are exceptionally proud to be playing a key role in the national response to this Covid-19 pandemic through producing and supplying the face shields to help protect medical and essential services personnel," says Dhiren Vanmali, Ford's Executive Director of Government Affairs for Africa."As much as this crisis has had major economic and health implications for South Africa and the African continent as a whole, it has also seen extraordinary commitment from doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, along with numerous non-profit organisations, companies and individuals, stepping up and going further to support and assist the most vulnerable citizens."The face shields project, which commenced at the beginning of April, has been led by Ockert Berry, VP Operations at FMCSA. "The order from the US Department of Defense, through the US Embassy, has provided a valuable additional boost to our efforts to address the critical shortage of personal protective equipment during this crisis," he says."All of our employees and suppliers involved in the project have demonstrated amazing dedication to the cause, even with the challenging restrictions imposed during the initial five-week lockdown," Berry states. "The confidence and support that the South African government, and now also the US government, has shown for our face shields project give all of us great personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement in having made a difference during these challenging times."Donations to support the production and donation of face shields are welcomed from individuals and businesses. Any donations, big or small, will help protect our valued medical and essential services personnel and limit the spread of Covid-19 to those most at risk.Ford has partnered with the Gift of the Givers Foundation, which has kindly provided the banking facility for all donations, which can be made as follows:Any queries regarding making donations can be e-mailed to: moc.drof@emlaicos , using the reference: Ford SA Covid-19.
where are the runes? Of Odin personally, if you believe the Germanic myths. The father of the gods received visions, which taught him how to carve the acute-angled characters and their magical Power used. The answers of science from the fall of sober, but not necessarily clearer. It is considered certain that the Germans have invented the runes. You used a template, you can also put some. But what it was, opinions are divided on this. The textbooks offer three possibilities: the Greek, the Etruscan or the Latin Alphabet, which all go back to the Phoenician script. Only these three as role models for the runes in question, is after all, the whole world agrees.

The whole world? No! The German scholar, Theo Venn of the University of Munich and his colleague Robert mail hammer from Northwestern University in Sydney are the dissidents of the ruling doctrine. You present a scenario in which the Phoenicians themselves, more specifically, the North African Carthaginians, the obstetrician, the runes were. As you have brought to the writing culture of their highly developed civilization to Germania, describe Venn man and mail hammer in her book, "The Carthaginian North. Semitic influence on early Germanic (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2019).

After the Punic sailed, as the kart were called to Hager from the Romans, to coastal of from about 500 BC to the North sea in what is today Schleswig-Holstein and southern Scandinavia. The are actually the regions where pieces of jewelry, weapons, and stones of the oldest runic inscriptions  names, short messages, spells, or magical formulas were found. Here, Venn man and mail's hammer, you branches, to operate trade with amber, wood and salted fish. It came between them and the Germans to intensive linguistic and cultural contacts. They lasted at least until the destruction of Carthage by the Romans, 146 before Christ.

The Germans in the vicinity of the Carthaginian settlements not only performed the Alphabet. They also learned the Punic language, a variant of the Phoenician, which, like the Arabic and Hebrew to the Semitic language family. At the same time, they borrowed of numerous words into German. Expressions such as "people", "earth", "plow", "kin" or "noble" the result of the Venn man and mail hammer on Semitic roots. Also the Punic grammar should have suppressed the Germanic their mark.

The colonizers, so the theory learned, in turn, Germanic, and turned to him unconsciously, you punisches about ablaut schema. Their Prestige made sure that this "foreigner-Germanic" was finally taken over by the Locals. Under the influence of the Punic time considered verbs of stages, such as the past and the present in the conjugation of the English. Previously, the "aspect, as in the Indo-European languages, otherwise," in the center. It indicates whether an operation is continuously or selectively.

each of The building blocks of your theory Venn man and his students, one of which is Robert mail hammer have developed in the past two decades. The book brings together these facets for the first time, to a total image. It is likely, as previously, the studies on which it is based, the great majority of the German, Scandinavian and indogermani most vigorous opposition cause. The whole of the Carthaginians theory has a flaw. Lack of ironclad evidence. Although there is evidence that Phoenicians expeditions to the British Islands. Travel to Germany, however, are not documented in the written sources nor archaeological evidence.

Updated Date: 21 June 2020, 21:19
Despite a surge in COVID-19 cases, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said Monday that he would not support a return to stay-home orders because of the economic devastation that would result.

Wolff said he was worried by a sharp increase in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and intensive care admissions since the beginning of June and by uncertainty over the future course of the pandemic.

I dont know that anybody really thought it was going to get this bad, Wolff said during an hourlong teleconference with the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board. We dont know where its taking us.

On ExpressNews.com: A timeline of COVID-19 in San Antonio

Despite those concerns, Wolff said he did not foresee a reimposition of the Stay Home, Work Safe orders that shuttered malls, thousands of restaurants and other nonessential businesses across San Antonio in the spring.

He said the economy, both locally and nationwide, is in a serious financial condition, with a federal deficit that is off the charts.

I dont think well go back to that, said Wolff, who has guided the regions response to the coronavirus crisis in close coordination with Mayor Ron Nirenberg. The economic devastation is huge.

Wolff expressed hope that the countys new mandatory mask rule for local businesses, which took effect Monday, would slow the increase in cases and hospitalizations  and provide some economic stability during the pandemic.

The three primary safeguards against the virus  social distancing, sanitation and use of masks or other face coverings in public  can reduce the spread of infections, Wolff said.

Those same practices can empower stores, restaurants and other businesses to operate safely and thereby help keep the economy afloat, he said.

On ExpressNews.com: Despite surge, San Antonio has low COVID-19 death rate by national standards.

I believe if we would do all three of those, I think wed be OK, said Wolff, a former San Antonio mayor, state legislator and grocery store owner who has been county judge since 2002.

Under the countys mask order, which Wolff issued last Wednesday, every business must have a health and safety policy requiring all employees and customers age 10 or older to wear face coverings in situations where keeping 6 feet of separation is not feasible.

The order calls for fines up to $1,000 per violation. Its being enforced by the city of San Antonio and the Bexar County Sheriffs Office. Nirenberg has issued a matching citywide order.

To aid in compliance, the county will give away 1 million masks to businesses, starting Wednesday.

On ExpressNews.com: Wolff finds way around governor on masks

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had warned local authorities in May not to do anything with employers regarding mandatory use of face coverings, Wolff said.

Paxton said a mask requirement would run afoul of Gov. Greg Abbotts emergency coronavirus orders, which encourage the use of masks but prohibit cities and counties from legally mandating them.

But as the number of cases and hospitalizations jumped after Memorial Day, Wolff said he saw an opening in Abbotts latest order. The governor, although he has recommended wearing masks, has opposed a mask mandate as an infringement on individuals freedom.

So Wolff decided to impose a mask requirement on businesses, not on residents directly. Abbott said he would not challenge Bexar Countys new rule, and other Texas counties quickly adopted similar orders.

Health care experts and leaders of some large businesses had reached out to the governor, asking him to allow local authorities to enact mandatory mask rules, Wolff said.

I knew there was a lot of pressure on him, Wolff said.

He said businesses have good reasons to follow the rule: to limit their legal liability and protect their employees.

The county judge said the onus now is on businesses.

I really think the pressure is going to be on them. There will be a few that wont (comply), but I think most will try to do it right, he said.

On ExpressNews.com: 18 hours inside a COVID intensive care unit

Assessing the economic impact of the pandemic, Wolff said he expected the reopening of Six Flags Fiesta Texas and SeaWorld San Antonio to be successful because the two theme parks are voluntarily taking precautions beyond what is required, including screening all customers for high temperatures before entry.

But Wolff predicted that major sporting events and concerts would not resume until 2021.

I think we may be a good year away before people are packed into the arena or the dome or places like that, he said.

Wolff also said he was concerned about the countys ability to staff all the 300-plus voting centers planned for the Nov. 3 general election. He said officials may need to consolidate some voting centers in order to ensure that each one is adequately staffed.

The average age of election judges in Bexar County is 72, and some of them may be worried about exposure to COVID-19, he said  even though the county has set aside $2.1 million for transparent safety shields and personal protective gear at polling sites.

When we get to November, that is a real concern. Its going to be very difficult, Wolff said.

Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. To read more from Scott, become a subscriber. shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
Parents and middle schoolers of the world, there's an important new business you want to know about: "The Baby-Sitters Club"!

The ladies of

All right, so it's not actually a business you can call up for child care (or to become a babysitter yourself), but it is going to make your summertime viewing experience better. "The Baby-Sitters Club" is a charming new TV series coming to Netflix based on the juggernaut of books that were published between 1986 and 2000, and based on a new trailer for the series that dropped on Monday, we're already cheering along.

The series focuses on the friendship and adventures (including those in babysitting) of Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace), Mary Anne Spier (Malia Baker), Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada), Stacey McGill (Shay Rudolph) and Dawn Schafer (Xochitl Gomez), who play middle schoolers who start a babysitting business in the made-up town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut. And bonus: Alicia Silverstone is playing Kristy's single mom!

Alicia Silverstone (as Elizabeth) has a heart-to-heart with her ambitious daughter Kristy (Grace) in

The enterprising young ladies are diverse not only in backgrounds but personalities, and there are plenty of fun moments in there for the older viewers (who won't laugh when the girls buy a classic landline phone for their business and stare at it like it's an alien object from another dimension). Plus, the whole show looks happy and bright and colorful -- while also promising to tackle big lessons, like how you fit your mom's new boyfriend into the family ... and how you get the attention of the boy you like.

And yes, of course there are adorable babies and toddlers to be found everywhere.

The baby-sitters learn a lot of important lessons as they work through middle school, including that they're not just co-workers ... they're BFFs. (Kailey Schwerman/Netflix)

"The Baby-Sitters Club" is based on a series of novels published by creator Ann M. Martin (who's also a producer on the series) and ghostwriters, a franchise that went on to include spinoffs, a 1995 feature film and an HBO series that ran for a few months in 1990. Netflix is the latest outlet to tackle the super-popular franchise, while also making it feel fresh and up-to-date for the new millennium.

The 10 30-minute episodes drop on July 3.
The seventh court hearing in the MH17 trial has started at the Schiphol Judicial Complex in the Netherlands at 10:00 local time, according to an Ukrinform correspondent in The Hague.

Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, relatives of the victims, and journalists are present in the courtroom. Everyone observes mandatory social distancing rules due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The lawyers of one of the four suspects, Oleg Pulatov, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, who expressed a desire to participate in the trial, are speaking now. His interests are represented by lawyers Sabine Ten Doesschate and Boudewijn van Eijck from the Sjocrona Van Stigt law firm.

As reported, the defense will be able to respond to all the evidence presented by Dutch prosecutors at previous hearings.

On June 8, 2020, the second block of court hearings in the MH17 trial began. Prosecutors revealed details of the investigation in the courtroom. In particular, it was noted that there is a witness who saw the Buk missile system and the launch of a missile. The prosecutors also told about studying the operation of Buk missiles, in particular, two types of missiles were tested - 9M38 and 9M28-M1. Intercepted telephone conversations, in which the militants could be identified, were also heard in the courtroom.

The hearing was adjourned for a week, until June 22, 2020, to give the defense time to prepare.

The number of people present in the courtroom is limited due to the coronavirus quarantine restrictions. The livestream of the hearing is available in Dutch and English.

In March this year, the District Court of The Hague began the consideration of the case of the downing of flight MH17 in the sky over Donbas.

On June 19, 2019, the international Joint Investigation Team named four suspects believed to be involved in the transportation and combat use of the Buk missile system, from which MH17 flight had been downed. Three of them are Russians: Igor Girkin (Strelkov), former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service and former so-called defense minister of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic"; Sergey Dubinskiy, general (at the time of downing  colonel) of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and head of the so-called "Main Intelligence Directorate of the Donetsk Peoples Republic"; Oleg Pulatov, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The fourth suspect is Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian civilian, who fought on the side of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic."

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over conflict-hit Donbas in July 2014. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All of them died. The JIT reported that the plane had been shot down from a Buk missile system that belongs to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces stationed in Kursk.

ol
UPPER THUMB  Two new coronavirus-related deaths were reported in Huron County in Mondays state report.

That brings the death toll in the county up to three and they are the first coronavirus deaths since the death of a Harbor Beach man from the virus was reported in early May.

Tuscola County also reported two new cases, bringing its total to 215. No new deaths were reported, with its total remaining at 26.

Sanilac County reported no new changes to its numbers, remaining at 42 cases and five deaths.

Across Michigan, there have been 179 new cases and seven new deaths.

The states total numbers are now at 61,409 cases and 5,853 deaths.

Over the weekend, Huron County reported three new cases of COVID-19, bringing its total case numbers up to 55.

Tuscola and Sanilac counties both reported no new cases or deaths over the weekend, remaining at 213 cases and 26 deaths and 42 cases and five deaths, respectively.

The state ended the weekend with a total of 61,230 confirmed cases and 5,846 deaths.

As of June 19, 49,290 Michiganders have recovered from the virus.

As of June 18, when Huron County had 52 confirmed cases, 45 have recovered. Tuscola County had 212 cases at the same time and 157 of them have recovered.

Ann Hepfer, the health officer for both Huron and Tuscola Counties, said they are aware of an increasing number of positive COVID-19 cases from people that vacationed in the southern United States where the number of infections is increasing. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Great Lakes Bay Health Care are also providing farmers with educational materials and resources in hiring migrant farm laborers at this time.

It is vitally important that you remain diligent in your actions, this means you need to wear your masks in public and practice social distancing, Hepfer said in a press release. Please do not assume that your symptoms of a runny nose, sore throat, or low-grade fever are just your allergies. Do not assume that kids are not infected. It is very important to make sure that you are washing your hands and your childrens hands frequently for 20 seconds and especially before you/they eat.

Today I am warning you not to let your guard down, it is your responsibility to prevent the infection from spreading, Hepfer also said. There are no other tools in our toolbox that will stop the spread of this virus, it is up to all of us to do this. You must take this seriously and act today. This is far from over.

Drive-thru testing is still available in Huron and Tuscola Counties for anyone who wants one, as testing is open to anyone who lives in a rural area with or without symptoms.

Testing in Huron County is at the Great Lakes Bay Health Care Center parking lot in Bad Axe from 10 a.m. to noon on Mondays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, make sure to call ahead to see if they are offering testing then.

Testing in Tuscola County is at the Tuscola County Health Departments parking lot in Caro on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. until further notice. There will be no testing on July 2.

For testing, people need to provide their full names, date of birth, address, telephone number, and insurance information.
 Flash

Several U.S. states have seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases as businesses continue to resume operations across the nation, casting a shadow over the current path to reopening.

The southeastern U.S. state of Florida, for example, reported 4,049 new cases on Saturday, setting a single-day record for the third day in a row, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.

South Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Montana also hit records on the day, according to a report from The New York Times, which noted that California, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon hit records earlier in the week.

As of Sunday afternoon, more than 2.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States, with over 119,800 deaths, according to a data tracking tool developed by Johns Hopkins University.

More than 30,000 new infections were reported across the nation on both Friday and Saturday, indicating a nationwide uptick in COVID-19 cases, despite a downward trend in over 10 states including New York and New Jersey.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Noting that some states could experience exponential growth of COVID-19 cases this weekend, Gottlieb said Texas, Arizona and Florida could be overwhelmed as case numbers continue to surge.

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory," Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, recently told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior United Nations advisor.

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing, or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, U.S. states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a virtual Senate hearing in May that the nation has not put the coronavirus outbreak under total control yet, warning of potential consequences for states that reopen too soon.

An influential COVID-19 model produced by the University of Washington raised its projections Thursday, forecasting more than 200,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by Oct. 1, an increase of 30,000 deaths from its projections in the prior week.

"We're now able to look ahead and see where states need to begin planning for a second wave of COVID-19," said the university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Director Christopher Murray.

"We hope to see our model proven wrong by the swift actions governments and individuals take to reduce transmission," Murray said.

Experts said further improving health and safety measures will be crucial to reducing the risk of widespread resurgence.

"There are blueprints that will allow businesses and schools to open safely. If they follow these blueprints it will be possible to operate safely," Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine with the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, told Xinhua.

"The priorities need to be helping the public understand that the virus is real, the outbreak is real, the deaths are real... and that we do know what works to control SARS-CoV-2," Schooley said.

Noting that it is a mistake that many Americans are not wearing masks, Gottlieb urged the public to wear masks to protect others and themselves and help reopen the economy safely.
To better support its loyal customers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, global technology leader Lenovo is adding another year to its popular 2-year Premium Care warranty solution for select devices in its consumer lineup from July 1 onwards. This means that all new IdeaPad, Yoga, Legion, and IdeaCentre devices are now automatically covered for three years with Premium Cares International Coverage and Local On-site Service, while those with existing warranties may be upgraded to the same.

Bundled for free on select devices starting July 1, 2020

At Lenovo, we are committed to putting our customers first, and this entails not only providing game-changing products but also extending them flexible and affordable technical support and solutions. The pandemic has disrupted day-to-day operations and pushed everyone to set up mobile working arrangements which leads to additional wear and tear to devices. Hopefully, with the added year of maintenance in our Premium Care service, our customers can spend their money on more essential goods in these trying times, said Lenovo Philippines President and General Manager Michael Ngan.

Included among Lenovos robust solutions, Premium Care provides direct and easy connection to real Lenovo technicians, real fast resolution to PC troubles, and holistic comprehensive support even outside of the users home country. Aside from covering the usual store and manufacturer warranty, it possesses the following customer services:



24x7 access to Lenovo technicians via phone, chat, e-mail, and WhatsApp

Comprehensive support for hardware, peripherals, and software

On-site Repair on the next business day

Getting started and How to assistance

Annual PC Health Check

With all of these solutions combined, Lenovo customers are assured of a hassle- and worry-free maintenance experience even in the middle of the pandemic.

New Premium Care bundled for free

The 3-Year Premium Care service is bundled for free upon purchase of IdeaPad, Yoga, and Legion laptops and the IdeaCentre and Legion Tower gaming desktops with Intel Core i5 or i7 and AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 processors. These are:



IdeaPad Slim 5

IdeaPad Gaming 3i

IdeaPad Slim 5i

Legion 5

IdeaPad Flex 5

Legion 5i

IdeaPad Flex 5i

Legion 5pi

Yoga Slim 7

Legion 7i

Yoga Slim 7i

Legion Tower 5i

Yoga C940

IdeaCentre 3

IdeaPad Gaming 3

IdeaCentre Gaming 5i

IdeaCentre AiO 3

Existing warranty extension available

Meanwhile, users who want to extend their existing warranty for other Lenovo devices need to go directly to their nearest Lenovo or Legion Concept Store or any Lenovo authorized reseller and provide information including the model name of the device, its serial number, and the customers name and email address for the registration of the new warranty.

The extension from 2-Year Premium Care to 3-Year Premium Care costs Php5,300. Users are allowed to extend their Premium Care warranty up until six months before the expiration of their outstanding device warranty. Meanwhile, those with devices currently under Lenovos 2-Year Carry-In Warranty can upgrade to the 3-Year Premium Care Warranty solution for Php9,100.

For more information about Lenovos Premium Care warranty solution and tips on how to maintain your devices, contact Lenovo on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lenovophilippines or via WhatsApp at +63 23953354. You can also visit www.lenovo.com/ph/en/premium-care.
Doctors have expressed reservations about issuing Covid-recovery certificates as mandated by the state government  the certificates state that a person does not pose a risk to the community  while discharging them from Covid-19 hospitals. The certificates,the Delhi government says, will help in countering the stigma thats become attached to the disease.

According to the June 15 order by the Delhi government, the certificate must mention, This is to certify that I have examined . He/She has recovered from Covid and does not pose a risk to the community. He/ She is asymptomatic at the time of discharge.

Under the Union health ministrys discharge policy, those with mild to moderate symptoms can be discharged without testing after 10 days of symptoms appearing and/or being symptom free for three days.

How can a doctor certify whether a person is infectious or not without testing them? Although collective evidence from the cases, which have been treated so far, show that after 10 days the virus does not usually transmit the disease, but a microbiologist has to do a test in order to verify this, said Dr Neeraj Gupta from the department of pulmonary medicine at Safdarjung Hospital.

In Delhi, we discharge asymptomatic and mild cases after their test reports come back and advice home isolation. Sometimes people are admitted for a couple of days and then advised home isolation. How can we give these people a certificate that states they are not a risk to the society? asked Dr Mahesh Gupta, a city-based gastroenterologist .

Even for those who stay at the hospital for longer, there is no way health care experts can determine whether or not patients will transmit the infection.

I can say a patient is free of symptoms at the time when he/she was examined. But, how can I say that they pose no risk to the society, especially when we are not even testing them at the time of discharge? The science on whether an asymptomatic person can transmit the infection is still unclear. Governments are going back and forth on what the ideal isolation or quarantine duration should be. In such a scenario, how can I issue such a certificate? asked Delhi-based neurologist Dr Amit Shrivastav. This is a legal document and doctors might be held liable in case even one of the discharged patients passes on the infection to their families or co-workers.

Issuing false medical certificate is an offence under the Delhi Medical Council Act, punishable by striking a doctors name from the states medical register and barring them from practicing medicine for a given period. This is such a novel issue, there is no clarity on the rules about anything. However, if the doctors are following the government guidelines there shouldnt be any reason for taking action against them, said Dr Girish Tyagi, registrar, Delhi Medical Council.

The government hoped that the certificate would reduce stigma against those who recovered from the disease. People living in the same (housing) society and resident welfare associations become apprehensive, after a person living among or near them is discharged from the hospital. The certificate will help ease such situations, Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director of Lok Nayak hospital, said on June 15 when the order was issued.

Some officials also said that the certificate would help facilitate the rail and air travel of recovered patients. This is along the lines of immunity certificate, which the World Health Organisation warned against in April-end stating that there was no evidence to show that people who have recovered are protected from getting the infection a second time. Allowing immunity certificates for easing out of strict social distancing norms might fuel continued spread of the infection, WHO said then.

Contacted, the Delhi government did not comment on the issue.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Please log in to keep reading.

Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever.
In recent weeks, as demonstrations against racism spread across the country, residents in at least 41 U.S. cities and towns became alarmed by rumors that the loose collective of anti-fascist activists known as antifa was headed to their area, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In many cases, they contacted their local law enforcement for help.

In each case, it was for a threat that never appeared.

President Trump has spread some unfounded rumors about antifa to a national audience  including his accusation, without evidence, that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was hospitalized after being knocked down by a police officer could be an antifa provocateur.

But on the local level, the source of the false information has usually been more subtle, and shows the complexity of stunting misinformation online. The bad information often first appears in a Twitter or Facebook post, or a YouTube video there. It is then shared on online spaces like local Facebook groups, the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor and community texting networks. These posts can fall under the radar of the tech companies and online fact checkers.

The dynamic is tricky because many times these local groups dont have much prior awareness of the body of conspiratorial content surrounding some of these topics, said Renee DiResta, a disinformation researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. The first thing they see is a trusted fellow community member giving them a warning.
Ukips new leader says party back on track after post-referendum turmoil

New Ukip leader Freddy Vachha said his party was back in business following years of swapping and changing leaders.

Mr Vachha, in an animated speech made in front of Sir Winston Churchills statue in Parliament Square, said Westminster politicians should be quaking after he vowed to revive the anti-European Union partys fortunes.

He is the sixth person to take the Ukip helm since Nigel Farage stood down following the 2016 referendum result.

Mr Farage has since gone on to form The Brexit Party, which was seen to have played a part in Boris Johnsons landslide general election win last year after choosing to stand candidates down in Conservative-held seats.

Gerrard Batten, the former MEP who was the elected Ukip leader for 14 months up until June 2019, was criticised for taking the party in an anti-Islam direction, appointing right-wing activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser.

Under his leadership, the party lost all its MEPs during the European elections in June 2019.

In December, it was revealed that Mr Battens successor Richard Braine was sued by the party over allegations of data theft.

Mr Vachha, whose beleaguered party pulled in just 22,000 votes during the election in December, admitted Ukip went astray quite a few years ago but said it was now back on track.

UKIP leader Freddy Vachha speaks on George Floyd and the Reading terror attack. pic.twitter.com/Czz91bH6XL  UKIP (@UKIP) June 22, 2020

The 61-year-old said: Were back in business, were a proper mainstream political party.

That shower in Westminster should be quaking in their shoes.

Speaking on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Brexit referendum result, Mr Vachha said it was ridiculous that negotiations with Brussels were still going on.

We are still enmeshed in the EU, still haggling and arguing with them while we should have just left, he told those outside Parliament.

Story continues

As well as growing ultra-hot chillies and breeding koi carp, the former MP candidate lists Nazi Germany and the Belgian Congo holocaust among his hobbies on a CV posted on his Facebook account.

Ukip is on to its sixth leader since Nigel Farage stepped down following the 2016 referendum result (Jonathan Brady/PA)

He also claims to speak American as a language, along with Urdu, Gujarati and French.

Mr Vachha appeared to distance himself from the party direction fostered by Mr Batten.

For many years we too had gone astray, focusing on things that were not very important and some of the things we focused on were just plum wrong, he added.

We return to our libertarian freedom-loving principles. And under my leadership, that is what we will get.
SCIO TWP., MI - Late Friday afternoon, Jarrad Lawlor returned to work to find a colorful change to the white statues hugging the tree line in front of his office. Soon after, he decided to finish the paint job.

The Ann Arbor resident is a financial controller or accountant for Mager Scientific, a metallographic equipment distributor located at 1100 Baker Road in Scio Township near the Dexter city border.
I am not a good person. It is not just a truth that I am comfortable with, it is a truth that I cling to. I never forget it. I avoid being good, even at the cost of people thinking ill of me. I think only about myself, almost all the time. I rarely do things for others, and if I do, it is usually out of decorum or so I can get something in return. I am quick to judge others and scornful in my judgement. I dont care much for the suffering of others. And when I can help, with charity, I dont, because I dont really care.

Dont get me wrong, Im not a bad person. Although I have my sins, Im not violent, I dont steal, I have a conscience. But I am not a good person. And I dont care about George Floyd. I never met him, he meant nothing to me. His death has changed nothing about my life. I had no concern for the life of George Floyd.

Nevertheless, Im going to go out on a limb and say that the people protesting his death dont care about George Floyd either. They too have never met him, and dont really know anything about him.

Geogre Floyd, as depicted at his third nationally-televised funeral, in Houston (YouTube screen grab, cropped)

They, like me, are also human beings; we have the same motivations. Their only concern beyond mine, is that his death supports their political narrative. This is precisely why I dont go to protests. When you start caring about somebody because they support your political worldview, you never admit it to yourself. What a shameful thing to admit, that you use a man, who only concerns you in death, to push an agenda. No, it is much nicer, to instead tell yourself that you are protesting because you care about George Floyd. Better to be caring than callous and opportunistic. This leads you to consider yourself a good and caring person. And it is this belief has terrible consequences.

If you are good, you begin to reason that your political opponents must therefore be evil. This tends to hold true of most people on the political left and some on the right who are too deep in their echo chamber. I am a conservative. I dont think leftists are evil, I just think they see the whole world exactly opposite of how it is. They are well-meaning, but absolutely blind and would ruin everything, yet they seek power. The natural political solution to this problem is to limit the power that the government can have, so that if they get power, they can only ruin a few things. Hence you get a relatively free society where citizens are mostly unmolested by their government. Additionally, since I dont care about the lives of other people, I have no reason to bother them.

However, if you believe yourself to be good and your opponents to be evil people, seeking to do evil things, the natural political solution is to use political power to destroy your opponents and then legislate what you believe to be good. After all, you are good, so all you do is for the good. The outcome is a society where government is all-powerful, always messing up, and always oppressive. This all starts when people start to think of themselves as good.

There is a stereotype that conservatives hate people in general, but love individuals, while leftists love people in general, but hate individuals. Conservatives are seen to be tough on criminals and unsympathetic to the poor, but when you meet them, they tend to be tender, and generous. Leftists are very forgiving and caring towards the poor, but when you meet them, they are often nasty and narrowminded. There is a truth in this stereotype. People who see themselves as good, tend to be on the left, because it is the side that represents care and generosity. A problem of seeing yourself as a good person is that you start to view people in the abstract. To support a worldview where you are good and your opponents are evil, you begin to create abstract categories to separate the two.

The left is the source of the labels that are often thrown around in society, today and throughout history. Proletariat, bourgeoisie, kulak, peasants, capitalists, counter-revolutionary, 1%, racists, LGBTQ, person of color, white-supremacist, Nazi. These labels have never contained a definitive group of people, but rather an abstract stereotype to distinguish the good people, themselves, from the evil people, their political opponents. When you believe that you are good, anybody who opposes you politically, becomes evil, and it becomes very easy to place them into an evil category. Hence, you may notice that some of the above categories housed millions of human beings who were murdered.

We see the same disregard for the individual today. They already throw around their abstract categories. In videos from these protests, opponents are routinely called Nazis and white supremacists, as pejoratives, without evidence. These protests often turn violent, becoming riots or mobs, with civilians being assaulted and having their property destroyed. This doesnt apply to all, or even most of those protesting, yet even the more moderate protesters arent friendly to people of opposite political persuasions. Theyre quick to throw around phrases like, white silence is complicity, and anyone can see that the next step in that logic is, white silence is white-supremacy.

It often comes across in simplistic strawmen, including climate-denier, or you want children to die, so you can keep your guns, or you care more about the economy than peoples lives. These arent political arguments, they are indictments. They are accusations that you are a bad person. After an accusation comes a trial, but a fair trial starts with the presumption of innocence. If the accusers are sure of their goodness, what use is a trial? Thats how you get the show trial or the Maoist struggle session. The person is already guilty. Then comes the punishment, which is where it all gets very ugly. The laws of human behavior dont change. The reign of people who are sure of their own goodness will only ever end one way.

This is why I dont go to protests, sign petitions, go on charity fundraising trips, or virtue-signal outrage on social media. It would only serve to inflate my ego and go to my head, and re-kindle the dangerous idea that Im a good person. We would all be better people if we didnt spend so much of our lives trying to prove our goodness to ourselves and other people. We are all sinners. No person is all good or all bad. The world isnt a Quixotic battle between oppressors and oppressed.

Those who see themselves as good cannot see the world in truth, because they cannot see themselves in truth. They become divorced from reality and start tilting at windmills. We would all do well to be a little less certain in our own righteousness and the purity of our motivations which will lead us to see our opponents as well-meaning, instead of evil. So, next time you are thinking of going to a protest, put your placard down, call a friend who disagrees with you, offer a drink and listen.
President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday was greeted by his supporters with a bit of a whimper. Although his campaign claimed it received more than a million requests for tickets and prepared for arena overflow, fewer than 6,500 supporters came to cheer him on. And, as they tell it, TikTokers and K-pop fans are responsible for the discrepancy.

Soon after the campaign announced the event via Twitter on June 11, K-pop fans began spreading the registration information on social media along with notes encouraging people to sign up without intending to attend.

The next day, a woman identified as MaryJo Laupp posted to TikTok a video in which she said, in part, "I recommend that all of those of us that want to see this 19,000-seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty, go reserve tickets now and leave him standing there alone on the stage." (As of Sunday evening, the video has been seen more than 2 million times.) Soon enough, many young TikTokers were posting their own videos showing them doing just that.

Abigail Reed, a recent high school graduate in Indianapolis who registered for the rally despite no plans to go, said even though the movement "grew pretty large" on TikTok, she still "didn't expect it to be as big as it was." The 18-year-old noticed people on the app submitting multiple requests, trying to inflate the numbers as much as possible.

On June 15, Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that the campaign had received more than a million "requests" to attend the rally. And members of the campaign, including the president himself, repeated the potential "million" number in several media appearances during the lead-up to Saturday.

But according to the Tulsa Fire Marshal's Office, fewer than 6,200 people actually showed up. The New York Times and CNN ran stories largely crediting TikTokers and K-pop fans for the disparity in expectations.

Those eager to insult Trump reveled in the news. In response to a tweet from Parscale blaming "radical protestors" and "a week of apocalyptic media coverage" for the unexpectedly low turnout, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote, "Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID. KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too."

Soon enough, several Twitter trends emerged around the topic. The Trump campaign released a statement about the claims: "Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-pop fans - without contacting the campaign for comment - behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade. Registering for a rally means you've RSVPed with a cell phone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool. These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking."

As the story spread throughout social media, it became slightly twisted. The common refrain shifted from "TikTokers and K-pop fans lead Trump to overestimate his crowd" to "TikTokers and K-pop fans are the reason fewer than 6,200 people showed up to the event." The former assertion is almost certainly true to some degree, but the latter is not only unlikely but probably false.

As a result, the narrative that TikTokers and K-poppers were the sole reason the rally was poorly attended also drew skeptics, who pointed out that the reality probably is much more complicated.

"People didn't attend the rally because people decided not to attend the rally. It had nothing to do with TikTok kids or HR Pufnstuf shenanigans," tweeted "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough. "Enthusiasm for Trump is down and pandemic cases are up. The campaign raised expectations too high and embarrassed themselves."

Writer Parker Malloy also put the blame on the campaign. "You're giving way too much credit to people on social media and not nearly enough blame on Trump's failure of a campaign for this one," she tweeted. "The actual story is that the campaign used to be able to count on massive crowds to show up wherever he went, and figured that this first rally back would be a huge hit. I sincerely doubt they were making decisions based on RSVPs."

Daniel Radosh, a senior writer for "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah," tweeted that "the campaign promoted signing up as a signifier of support, which probably got a lot of Trump supporters to request tickets who never really had the commitment to follow through. The same way people RSVP for Facebook events as a Like."

It's impossible to know - and irresponsible to speculate - exactly how much influence the TikTok and K-pop fan campaigns had on the actual attendance of the event without seeing every single request receipt. But a few factors suggest that the prank may have at least partly conflated the predicted numbers.

Entry was not ticket-based, but first-come, first-serve, so there were infinite "tickets" available. "They emailed their entire campaign list the Tulsa invite, which also helps explain why a million people signed up. People click buttons," former Obama administration official Tim Fullerton told The Washington Post. "As someone who has done this before, it's something that happens."

Instead, Fullerton said, the online movement probably "made it seem like there were more people interested than they thought, which probably means [the Trump campaign] did less to drive people to the event."

The idea of organizing online to overwhelm a system with requests or reviews is nothing new. Fans or detractors have long grouped up to flood IMDb with reviews of movies that haven't yet been released as a means of supporting or diminishing them. K-pop fans recently clogged racist hashtags with GIFs, rendering them useless. And, indeed, Trump's critics have often inundated social media with images of empty seats at his rallies.

What's different now is the use of TikTok, a social media behemoth that skews younger, as an organizing platform. It's dominated by Gen Z in a manner unmatched by other apps - and there can be real power there.

"The bigger story, long-term, is that it's really impressive to see young people using TikTok as an organizing tool. And I do think that we're going to see a lot of that in the lead-up to November. That's a difficult audience to reach, so it could be a powerful tool," Fullerton said.

"They're using their voice in a new and different way and engaging people," he added. "They clearly did something that hadn't been done before."
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0487243f68)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f047c8584f8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0487243f68)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f047c8584f8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04872ebb88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f047c8584f8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f047c8584f8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f04868fd118)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f0487262978)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f0487262978)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
Ariana Martinez - Broward College student and winner of the Armstrong International Internship Grant "I also hope to gain cross-cultural skills that will help me communicate with those who are different from me" - Annie Villalta

5 high achieving students from Broward College (Florida) will complete a 1-month Virtual Internship this summer, after receiving funding from the Armstrong International Internship Grant exclusively offered to Broward College students. The Grant was funded by David Armstrong, former president of Broward College and current board advisor to Virtual Internships. His grant will cover the program fee for the 5 selected recipients to intern with an internationally-based company through Virtual Internships program.

The 5 awarded students include:

Ariana Martinez, a film major

William Zachary Dean, a biology major

Annie Villalta, a rising senior at College Academy High School planning to major in political science or economics

Kyle Ozuna, an international relations major

Gia Marquez, a chemical and biomedical engineering major

Recent Virtual Internship program participants have been placed with global small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and nonprofits, such as Karen Hilltribes Trust - a community-based organization supporting the Karen people of Thailand.

Internships provide students with valuable workplace skills and experience for their future careers, said Armstrong. Through Virtual Internships, these students will also receive global and international business experience that should enhance their world view and career opportunities. The students at Broward College receive an outstanding academic experience, and these diverse grant recipients will no doubt improve their life and work experience through their internships.

Due to COVID-19, 2020 has seen a massive push towards remote working for employees and interns alike. Organizations such as Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook will host thousands of worldwide interns through remote and virtual internships this year.

I feel very honored to have won this scholarship as it helps me participate in a wonderful opportunity to work in the field I eventually want to have a career in, says Martinez of winning the scholarship.

About starting his internship, Ozuna says he is most excited to put into action lessons that I have been taught and apply them into the real world. Also, [Im excited for] the opportunity to be able to step out of my comfort zone to try something new.

I am excited to meet professionals with completely different cultures than myself, to begin to learn how they think. I think meeting people is wonderful, especially people who are so different than I am and who are also professionals within their fields. I think the most exciting part will be making lifelong connections with other respected professionals in my field, says Dean.

When asked what she hopes to accomplish during her internship, Villalta says, I hope to gain work skills that will potentially boost my employability. I also hope to gain cross-cultural skills that will help me communicate with those who are different from me.

Id like to increase my skills in written communication and problem-solving as well as mastering software and platforms relevant to my career field. Be able to adapt and gain an international perspective and most importantly, be able to demonstrate my potential as a Dominican Woman in STEM, says Marquez.

Virtual Internships is grateful for its partnership with Broward College and its fundamental belief in the positive outcomes of academic and professional development programs of international nature. Additionally, we thank David Armstrong for his vision and generous support, allowing more students to have the opportunity to gain professional and international experience.

About Virtual Internships

In addition to these 5 students from Broward College, Virtual Internships will be supporting over 1,000 students from around the world to complete a remote international internship this summer. Students wanting to gain global work experience can complete an internship from the comfort of their own home, working 20-30 hours per week for 1-3 months. Virtual Internships program follows the highly-regarded National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Career Readiness Competencies framework.

High school students can also access the program through Virtual Internships Foundations programming, which is a structured 4-week part-time internship and career-exploration experience. Those interested in learning more can visit Virtual Internships' Website
A delivery worker passes a parcel over a gate in Xicheng district, Beijing, June 17, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

More than 100,000 delivery workers in Beijing are to have received nucleic acid tests by Monday in order to provide safe service for residents amid the city's recent COVID-19 outbreak, right after the e-commerce midyear promotion ended, ushering in a busy period for logistics companies.

Starting from Friday evening, 17 postal service and logistics companies in Beijing have organized for about 103,000 delivery workers to receive nucleic acid testing, the State Post Bureau said on Saturday.

The major online catering platforms also announced plans to get their takeout delivery workers tested.

"Everyone has a responsibility to cooperate and contribute to Beijing's epidemic control and prevention," Wang Hailong, a deliveryman from YTO Express Co, was quoted as saying by China Central Television.

Wang went to a designated testing area in the capital's Shunyi district at 5 pm Friday after he delivered more than 200 packages during the day.

"The test is not just for our own health, but also for the safety of residents in the city," he said. "Under the strict and full protective measures, we will work hard to ensure dependable delivery service for the capital. Compared with doctors and nurses on the front line and social workers in all communities, we are just doing what we should do."

China's e-commerce companies held an annual midyear promotion from June 1 to 18. Many logistics companies now face delivering a massive number of packages.

From June 11 to 20, logistics companies in Beijing collected 68 million packages, up 22.86 percent year-on-year, and delivered 82 million packages, up 25.57 percent year-on-year, according to a report in Beijing Daily.

The State Post Bureau said due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak in the capital, some packages might take longer to arrive.

Logistics companies have taken strict measures, such as temperature monitoring of their staff and regular disinfection, to reduce risks related to the outbreak.

Zhao Xiaomin, a logistics industry expert, suggested that the companies set up emergency response teams to cope with similar incidents in the future, according to a China National Radio report.

So far, no COVID-19 case has been reported in the postal and logistics industry in the city.

A girl has a nucleic acid test at Yuting Park in Beijing's Dongcheng district on Saturday. From June 11 to 20, Beijing reported 227 confirmed domestically transmitted cases. All of these patients were receiving treatment in hospitals. [ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY]

Beijing has been increasing its testing capacity since the epidemic started in January.

Gao Xiaojun, a spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, said 61 hospitals and medical institutions in the city were able to conduct a total of 47,000 daily tests by late April.

By Saturday, up to 124 hospitals and medical institutions in Beijing were able to conduct more than 230,000 tests a day.

Beijing reported 22 new local COVID-19 patients on Saturday, bringing the total of confirmed patients to 227 since the first new local case was reported on June 11.

The youngest of the new patients is 1 year old, and the oldest is 86. The average age is 42, Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sunday.

All the cases are related to the Xinfadi wholesale market in southwest Beijing's Fengtai district.

Eight of the 22 new cases on Saturday are employees of soft-drink and snack-food giant PepsiCo Inc's factory in the capital's Daxing district.

Two of its employees had been to the Xinfadi market, according to the company.

The factory has suspended production, all of its employees have had nucleic acid tests and 480 of them were sent to designated sites for isolated medical observation on Saturday.
Wuhan sends medical teams to aid Beijing amid COVID-19 resurgence, returns kindness

Global Times

By Wang Qi Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 18:38:40

Two months after Beijing's last medical team left Wuhan, Hubei Province, medical teams dispatched by six Wuhan-based hospitals arrived in Beijing on Saturday, supporting China's capital as it gears up testing capacities amid the latest resurgence of coronavirus.

More than 70 medical personnel, averaging 27 years old and most of whom have expertise in medical laboratories, arrived in Beijing, Chinanews.com reported on Sunday, noting that they also carried nucleic acid testing equipment, medicines and protective equipment.

"Our main job is to raise Beijing's nucleic acid testing capability, help local hospitals reach a daily testing volume of 6,000-8,000 people," Ye Guangming, the leader of a medical team from Zhongnan Hospital at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

According to Ye, two Wuhan medical teams will be in charge of one hospital in Beijing, including The Beijing Hospital, which Ye's team assisted, as well as the Peking Union Medical College Hospital and the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.

"The Beijing Hospital is renovating its equipment to transform its pathology laboratory into a nucleic acid testing lab we are expecting to start our work on Monday or Tuesday," said Ye.

Beijing registered 22 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the total number to 227 since a resurgence of infection cases occurred at Xinfadi wholesale market on June 11.

In the past week, the number of people sampled for nucleic acid tests in Beijing has increased from 8,000 to nearly 500,000 per day, with about 2.3 million samples collected as of Saturday, media reported.

Beijing has set up 2,083 testing sites and 7,472 staff members from 59 hospitals, 28 third-party testing institutions and 20 disease control and prevention organs have been mobilized for sampling, media reported. But the task is still challenging for a city of 20 million residents.

"All members of the medical teams from Hubei signed up voluntarily. Beijing supported Wuhan when we were in trouble, and we certainly need to give our hands when Beijing is in need," Ye said.

Beijing dispatched a total of 800 medical staff to aid Wuhan's fight against the virus since January and the last team returned to Beijing on April 15.

"The mutual aid shows our solidarity and courage, and such a country can overcome any difficulty," commented an internet user on Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

By June 1, a total of 35,800 milliliters of plasma donated by about 150 cured patients from Wuhan had been transferred to Beijing, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and cities in Northeast China's Jilin and Harbin provinces to assist the treatment of coronavirus patients, media reported.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






KONGOUSSI, Burkina Faso  Market day was in full swing when soldiers sped into the northern town of Taouremba, firing in the air, as their drone buzzed overhead. They herded the men into the central marketplace, residents said, letting the women run home.

A soldier began reading names from a tablet computer, and those who were called forward were told to strip, then tied up with their own clothes and thrown into a pickup truck. When some men tried to hide in the crowd, two informants in hoods and veils pointed them out. One man was shot on the spot.

Later, according to accounts from witnesses and human rights advocates, the bodies of the 13 abducted villagers were dumped just outside of town.

Over the past four years, Burkina Faso has fallen into chaos, with gunmen robbing, killing and threatening some of the poorest citizens in this landlocked West African nation, and causing 850,000 to flee their homes.
The Thunder Bay Museum will be hosting a travelling quilt exhibit starting Jan. 31. The exhibit, titled Threads of Hope, explores hope, longing and desire for the future of the world. Fibre Art Network artists express world issues through their work in the exhibit. Each artwork is connected 
This years hajj will be restricted to residents in Saudi Arabia, the government of the country said in a statement Monday.

The decision was made to ensure the safety of pilgrims due to the coronavirus pandemic, Riyadhs Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter.

#Statement issued by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah regarding Hajj of 2020 pic.twitter.com/UGCShFZw1n  Foreign Ministry  (@KSAmofaEN) June 22, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In light of continuation of the pandemic and the risks of coronavirus spreading in crowded spaces and large gatherings, and its transmission between countries, and the increase in average infections globally, the foreign ministry wrote.

It has been decided that Hajj for this year (1441 H/ 2020 AD) will be held whereby a very limited number of pilgrims from various nationalities who already reside in Saudi Arabia, would be able to perform it.

COVID-19 disease, a contagious pneumonia-like infection, has infected over 9 million people  half of whom have recovered  and killed about half a million.

The outbreak pushed countries to enforce nationwide lockdown and international travel bans. But even though cases continue to rise in some countries, restrictions have been lifted in some of them.

Saudi Arabia has 50,000 active cases  and has discharged double of that  but has lifted some of the lockdown restrictions it enforced when it broke out in the Asian country.

The countrys government said it is restricting the hajj rites to locals due to the uncertainty that surrounds the spread of the virus and its incurability at the moment.

This decision is taken to ensure Hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective while observing all preventative measures and the necessary social distancing protocols to protect human beings from the risks associated with this pandemic and in accordance with the teachings of lslam in preserving the lives of human beings, it said in its statement.

Hajj is an annual Islamic rite that traditionally draws around 2 million people from around the world, and this years edition is set to hold at the end of July.

At least once in their lifetime, all able-bodied Muslims with financial means are required to perform hajj, the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia which centres around five intense days of worship and rituals in Mecca, the city that houses Kaaba, Islams most sacred site.

Due to the pandemic, some countries like Malaysia and Indonesia had earlier announced that they would not be sending their citizens to the pilgrimage this year.

The pilgrimage has not been cancelled since the founding of the Saudi Kingdom in 1932.

Read the statement by the Saudi government below

In light that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread to more than 180 countries around the world, and that deaths related to COVID-19 have reached almost half a million and over 7 million cases have been confirmed globally,

and in accordance with what has been stressed by the Saudi Ministry of Health regarding the continued risks stemming from this pandemic and the lack of available vaccinations and a cure for those who have been infected by Covid 19 around the world. and to preserve the security of global public health especially in light of the increase in the number of cases in most countries according to reports issued by global health organizations and institutions. and considering the risks of the disease and infections spreading in crowded gatherings where it is difficult to maintain safe social distancing among the individuals gathered.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose top priority is to always enable Muslim pilgrims to perform Hajj and Umrah rites safely and securely and which has been keen since the beginning of the pandemic to take all necessary precautionary measures to protect pilgrims, including by suspending the entry of Umrah pilgrims while ensuring the safety of the pilgrims already present at the holy sites, a decision that has received many approbations from Islamic and international organizations in recognition of its wide contribution to fighting the virus globally and supporting the efforts of health organizations in limiting the spread of the deadly disease,

and in light of continuation of the pandemic and the risks of Coronavirus spreading in crowded spaces and large gatherings, and its transmission between countries, and the increase in average infections globally. it has been decided that Hajj for this year (1441 H/ 2020 AD) will be held whereby a very limited number of pilgrims from various nationalities who already reside in Saudi Arabia, would be able to perform it. This decision is taken to ensure Hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective while observing all preventative measures and the necessary social distancing protocols to protect human beings from the risks associated with this pandemic and in accordance with the teachings of lslam in preserving the lives of human beings.

The government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques is honored to serve millions of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims annually and it confirms that this decision stems from the top priority it accords maintaining the safety of pilgrims on its land until they depart to their home countries.

We ask Allah the Almighty to protect all countries from this pandemic and keep all humans protected and safe.
WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson has described an attack against an elderly woman in Perth as an "extremely serious" crime and says he understands the community's outrage.

"A crime against an elderly woman alone in her own home is almost indescribable," he said as he thanked the officers who arrested the alleged perpetrator within hours of the attack.

"I can understand the community concern, indeed outrage, at this reported crime."

A teenager from Gosnells faced court on Monday accused of attempting to rape the 93-year-old woman in her home.

The man, 18, was arrested by Sex Assault Squad detectives on Sunday.
DETROIT, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Results of the 20th annual North American Automotive OEM - Supplier Working Relations Index (WRI) Study released today by Plante Moran show that of the six major U.S. and Japanese automakers, only Toyota and FCA made any significant improvement in their scores this year.

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Table 1 Figure 6 Figure 7 Table 2

Toyota gained nine points over its 2019 score and was the top performer in all 22 variables on the Working Relations Index. FCA gained 10 points, but is still in a distant fifth place overall. Ford held steady with only a two-point gain. Honda dropped 18 points, GM fell 14 points, and Nissan was off by 8 points and fell to last place.

"With the unprecedented challenges now facing the automotive industry, the OEMs will be leaning more heavily than ever on their suppliers. The study shows that Toyota knows how to work most collaboratively with its suppliers, is well trusted, and therefore is well prepared to face these challenges," said Dave Andrea, Principal in Plante Moran's Strategy and Automotive & Mobility Consulting Practice, which conducted the study.

An eight-year comparison of the OEMs' performance provides additional insight. Toyota's practice of "continuous improvement" has paid off with a 49-point gain since its low point in 2012, while GM improved by 18 points, and Honda, 17 points. But, over the same eight-year period, Ford dropped three points, FCA fell 50 points, and Nissan was down by 66 points.

Since the Working Relations Index was launched in 2002, Toyota has held first place every year except two  2009, 2010  when Honda temporarily took over first place.

The annual Study is conducted by Plante Moran and this year ran from mid-February to mid-April. Respondents represented 841 salespersons from 503 Tier-1 suppliers, representing about 60% of the six OEMs' annual buy.

The study is watched carefully by automakers because their supplier relations rating on the Working Relations Index (WRI) is highly correlated to the benefits that the OEM receives from its suppliers, including better pricing, more investment in innovation and technology, more sharing of technology, and better supplier support, all of which contribute to the OEM's operating profit and competitive strength. Two decades of Working Relations and profit-per-vehicle data back this up and show that strong working relations reduce the cost to OEMs of doing business, help improve efficiency and productivity, and reduce time to market.

"So far this year, the OEMs and their suppliers have gone through some of the toughest economic times in their history," said Andrea. "Operational and financial recovery will be a challenge for everyone. The OEMs' and auto suppliers' finances are stretched to the limit by the cost of restarting production and further threatened by slow sales and fluctuating market demands.

"This means that the OEMs will have to rely even more heavily on their suppliers, and trust, combined with open and honest communication and strong relationships, will be critical to their success. I think it's safe to say that those automakers who already have good relations will have an advantage over those with poor relations."

OEM-SUPPLIER TRUST AND COMMUNICATION IS KEY

The Study has shown the cornerstone of good working relations to be trust and communication, particularly important factors in the current uncertain business environment with billions of dollars and thousands of jobs at stake. Figure 2 shows how suppliers have ranked the six automakers in terms of trust over the past three years. The three-year average of Supplier Trust of OEM shows Toyota and Honda first and second, respectively; GM and Ford rank third and fourth with GM dropping significantly this year; FCA is in fifth place and Nissan, last. Communication is the other side of the same coin.

SUPPLIER BENEFITS vs TRUST & COMMUNICATION

The level of perceived Trust and Communication of OEMs by suppliers when dealing with their customers is directly correlated to benefits the OEMs receive from them. In the Figure 3 chart, note how the Supplier Benefits Index line closely tracks the bars for Trust and Communication bars when overlaid on them.

These two factors also play a major role in which OEM is a Preferred Customer and is the beneficiary of suppliers' investment in new technology, for instance (Fig. 4). Figure 5 shows that Toyota and GM are most preferred, with Honda and Ford tied. FCA is preferred over Nissan which is last.

PURCHASING AREA WRI

The rankings in the overall WRI provide high-level insight, but the study also delves deeply into OEMs' specific purchasing areas. By examining specific Purchasing Areas, management can determine where improvements are needed.

As shown in Table 1, Toyota ranks best in all seven purchasing areas that it was reported in; Ford was highest in EV & Hybrid, without Toyota or Honda. FCA and Nissan ranked lowest. (This year, two new purchasing areas were added: EV & Hybrid Powertrains, and Raw Materials.)

ENGINEERING PERFORMANCE IMPACTS SUPPLIER RELATIONS

"A number of years ago, the OEMs began breaking down the silos in the purchasing, engineering and product development areas to streamline them, improve communication between them and reduce cost and time to market," said Andrea. "So, in addition to providing management a window into purchasing performance, the WRI provides managers the ability to see how effectively these three areas are working together."

For instance, the study asks suppliers to rank the OEMs on the extent of late or excessive engineering changes; whether the supplier is given enough flexibility to meet cost and quality objectives; whether suppliers are receiving conflicting engineering objectives; and if the supplier is involved early enough in OEM product development -- and kept involved throughout the process. All of these are critical issues to OEMs in order to reduce cost, improve quality, and speed time-to-market.

In two measures that capture much of the nuance around this type of friction  engineering causing unnecessary costs (Fig. 6), and purchasing and engineering having conflicting objectives (Fig. 7),  Toyota improved (reverse measure), while FCA remained the same, so it did not detract from its other improvements. Nissan improved, but not enough to offset its declines in other areas.

"These are critical questions that show how important it is that all OEM functions are aligned to take cost and time out of the entire supply chain to deliver not only the OEM's cost objective but help the suppliers' cost and financial performance as well."

CONCLUSION

"Focusing on improving supplier relations across purchasing, engineering and product development, is critical for the automakers right now," said Andrea. "Suppliers contribute 60-70 percent of the value of the vehicle, so it is clearly in the OEMs' best interest to set the goal of becoming the most preferred automaker to do business with  as Toyota obviously has."

For years, Toyota has led the industry in supplier relations. In fact, as Table 2 shows, Toyota was first in all categories this year and continues to improve. It's also the automaker that suppliers prefer to work with, and receives the benefits that go with that preference as well, said Andrea.

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION: Full 18-year WRI graph is available.

About the Working Relations Index Study: Now in its 20th year, the 2020 North American Automotive OEM-Tier 1 Supplier Working Relations Index Study was conducted by Plante Moran from mid-February to mid-April. Respondents are salespersons from Tier-1 suppliers serving the Top 3 Detroit and Top 3 Japanese automakers. The annual study tracks supplier perceptions of working relations with their automaker customers in which they rate them across the eight major purchasing areas broken down into 20 commodity areas. The results of the study are used to calculate the WRI which can then be used to calculate the economic value of working relations based on a proprietary economic model. Respondents represented 841 salespersons from 503 Tier-1 suppliers, representing about 60% of the six OEMs' annual buy. The sales personnel provided data on 2,752 buying situations (e.g., supplying brake systems to FCA US, tires to Toyota, seats to GM). Demographically, the supplier-respondents represent 45 of the Top 50 NA suppliers and 81 of the Top 100 NA suppliers. The study was founded in 2001 by Dr. John Henke, CEO of Planning Perspectives, Inc., and acquired by Plante Moran in 2019.

About Plante Moran: Recognized as a leader in automotive and mobility strategy, Plante Moran is among the nation's largest accounting, tax and consulting firms and provides a full line of services to organizations across many industry segments. In addition to automotive, Plante Moran has depth of expertise in manufacturing and distribution, private equity, Japanese-owned businesses, financial institutions, service, health care, public sector and real estate and construction. Headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, Plante Moran has a staff of more than 3,000 professionals throughout Colorado, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio with international offices in China, Mexico, India and Japan. Plante Moran has been recognized by several organizations, including FORTUNE magazine, as one of the country's best places to work. For more information, visit plantemoran.com.

SOURCE Plante Moran

Related Links

http://plantemoran.com


Darnell Hill, a black man looking at the camera with facial hair and a black jacket

By Cara Anthony

Speak in short sentences. Be clear. Direct but not rude. Stay calm, even if youre shaking inside. Never put your hands in your pockets. Make sure people can always see your hands. Try not to hunch your shoulders. Listen to their directions.

Darnell Hill, a pastor and a mental health caseworker, offers black teenagers these emotional and physical coping strategies every time a black person is fatally shot by a police officer. Thats when parents worries about their sons and daughters intensify.

Theyre hurting, Hill said. Theyre looking for answers.

Hill, who is African American, learned the rules the hard way. When he was 12, he and a group of his friends jumped a fence to go for a swim in a lake. Thats when two officers approached them. One of the cops, a white man, threatened to shoot Hill and everyone else if he ever caught them there again.

Related: Download The Mighty app to connect in real time with people who can relate to what you're going through.

I was so afraid, Hill, now 37, recalled. He made all of us sit down in a line right by the lake.

He still tells himself that the officer didnt mean what he said that day. But Hills tone changes when he thinks about the second time white men threatened him with a gun.

Hill and his family moved to a small, mostly white town in Florida. He rarely left the house at night, but one day when he was a sophomore in high school, his grandmother, who wasnt feeling well, asked him to take their car and drive to a convenience store for ginger ale.

He got lost along the way and asked two white men for directions. Instead of offering help, the men tormented him, Hill said. When he tried to drive away, the men followed him in their vehicle, chasing him around in the dark. He thought surely they would kill him if they caught him.

Related: 10 Ways to Advocate If Your Health Means You Cant Protest

They told me it was [N-word] season, Hill recalled. I was terrified.

Story continues

The traumatic event is hard to talk about, Hill said. His voice still shakes as he describes how the night unfolded. Thats one reason hes helping teenagers unpack their trauma  and guard against experiencing more  as they try to cope with the mental health burden of other peoples racist assumptions.

His unofficial guide to what he calls living while black can be tough to remember under pressure. But Hill said the survival skills feel essential to many who grow up feeling that the color of their skin makes them vulnerable to becoming the next George Floyd, a black man killed in the custody of Minneapolis police on May 25, an event that has prompted civil rights protests around the world.

But well before Floyds death, Hills phone began to ring more. It was the start of the coronavirus pandemic and his young clients from the Hopewell Center, a mental health agency in St. Louis, needed help processing the closing of schools, loss of jobs, social isolation and loss of loved ones. So instead of working from home, Hill put a folding chair in the back of his car and started making house calls. He planted his seat in front yards and sidewalks while his clients stayed on their front porches.

Related: Study Suggests How You View Yourself Is Related to Feelings of Loneliness

The conversations Hill was having grew more complicated, though, after Floyds killing. Two months before Floyds death, Breonna Taylor was killed in Kentucky after officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department entered the black womans apartment dressed in plainclothes. Taylors boyfriend thought the officers were intruders, so he fired a single shot. Officers responded by shooting Taylor at least eight times. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was chased down and fatally shot while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia. Three white men were arrested.

The mental anguish for some black families exploded as they saw these images and stories repeatedly on the news.

When these happen, we have to address them, said Lekesha Davis, vice president of the Hopewell Center. Its having a direct impact on [black families] mental and emotional well-being.

Hill offers coping skills as he makes his rounds every week. His conversations during regular visits now include discussions about police brutality, civil unrest and how to survive. Part of Hills work is teaching the mechanics of navigating everyday encounters  from walking in a public space like a park to being stopped by the police or entering a business.

Dont make any sudden moves. Watch your body language. Dont point your fingers, even if youre mad. Dont clap your hands. Listen. Know the law. But dont say too much. Make eye contact.

While many black families have their own sets of rules, he hopes that following his dos and donts will allow kids to survive as unscathed as possible to realize their life ambitions. Lets just make it home, Hill tells them. We can deal with whats fair or not fair, whats racial or not racial at a later date.

White children and teenagers, meanwhile, arent generally taught these sometimes futile survival skills with the same urgency. Theyre just as unlikely to learn about the systemic racism that continues to create the problems, and almost certainly not what it would take to undo it.

Hill knows his training sessions dont guarantee a win. Hes a husband, father, nonprofit board member and the president of the parent-teacher organization at his youngest childs school. His voice is friendly and his demeanor is calm. Still, sometimes none of that matters when Hill drives in a predominantly white neighborhood. While he knows not all white people stereotype him, he remains aware that his height and weight (hes 5-foot-10 and over 300 pounds) and the color of his skin could turn him into a target  even when hes trying to order lunch.

Its impossible for him to prevent an officer from invading the wrong apartment. He cant teach black boys how to sleep, jog or bird-watch in non-threatening ways. And he cant stop a prejudiced cop from firing shots at an unarmed black man.

Hills just glad he can fill in the gaps when families need him. And he knows it has helped on occasion: A 16-year-old client recently told him hed channeled his advice when he was stopped by two police officers near Ferguson, Missouri. The teenager had been walking around with his lawn mower to make some money cutting grass. On his way home, the officers stopped him and asked why he was outside and how he had obtained the lawn mower. The teen told Hill the next day his advice had helped him stay calm and defuse the situation so he could get home safely.

Another teen Hill has worked with, Isaiah McGee, 18, has aged out of Hopewells youth mental health program, but Hill still checks in with him every other week.

The teen recently graduated from high school and plans to study music in college this fall. Im just trying to make it somewhere in life, McGee said. Leave my thumbprint on the world, become a legend.

Read more stories like this on The Mighty:

How COVID-19 Might Be Causing You to Act Out Unresolved Emotional Issues

Why LGBTQ-Affirming Therapists Are Absolutely Essential

Youll Want to Watch This Upcoming Mental Health Docuseries

We Need to Talk About Mental Illness Discrimination in the Workplace
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 00:21:30|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Photo taken on May 29, 2020 shows the live broadcast of U.S. President Donald Trump speaking at a press conference at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Trump will reportedly sign an executive order to suspend the visas through the end of the year, as the administration is addressing a major economic fallout amid the pandemic.



WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Tump said on Saturday that he will be announcing new visa restrictions in coming days.

"We're going to be announcing something tomorrow or the next day on visas," Trump told Fox News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts in an interview ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The president declined to give any details but acknowledged that there will be some exclusions.

"You need them for big businesses where they have certain people that have been coming in for a long time, but very little exclusion and they're pretty tight," he said. "And we may even go very tight for a period of time."

Roberts tweeted that the restrictions will be imposed on H-1B, H-2B, L-1 and J-1 visas.

H-1B visas are designed for certain skilled workers such as those employed in science, engineering, and information technology fields, while H-2B visas are given to seasonal workers such as hotel and construction staff.

L-1 visas are meant for executives who work for large corporations and J-1 visas are issued to research scholars, professors and other cultural and work-exchange programs.

Trump will reportedly sign an executive order to suspend the visas through the end of the year, as the administration is addressing a major economic fallout, including high unemployment among Americans, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

That would be Trump's latest step to restrict immigration. In April, he temporarily halted the issuance of U.S. green cards to some foreigners.

Trump, who has maintained a hardline stance on immigration and used that to appeal to his voters, has been accused of using the pandemic to promote his political agenda. 
Several US firms have joined a call by activists to halt ad spending on Facebook over concerns the leading social network has fallen short in efforts to crack down on hate speech and incitements to violence.

The sporting goods maker Patagonia added its name to the list Sunday, joining forces with its retail rivals North Face and REI, as well as the freelance staffing agency Upwork.

Patagonia said on Twitter it was joining the Stop the Hate for Profit initiative unveiled by civil rights activists last week, who urged brands to boycott the social media giant claiming it 'promotes hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence'.

'Patagonia is proud to join the Stop Hate for Profit campaign,' the California-based outdoor apparel brand announced Sunday.

'We will pull all ads on Facebook and Instagram, effective immediately, through at least the end of July, pending meaningful action from the social media giant.'

Facebook has come under fire in recent weeks for its refusal to fact-check posts published by President Donald Trump. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of 'refusing to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump's call for violence against protesters'

The sporting goods maker Patagonia added its name to the list Sunday, joining forces with its retail rivals North Face and REI, as well as the freelance staffing agency Upwork

'For too long, Facebook has failed to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform,' a statement from the company reads in part.

'From secure elections to a global pandemic to racial justice, the stakes are too high to sit back and let the company continue to be complicit in spreading disinformation and fomenting fear and hatred.'

Patagonia has a history of not shying away from political discourse. The company sued President Donald Trump in 2017 after he rolled back protections on national monuments.

The #StopHateForProfit appeal was supported by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ColorOfChange, FreePress and the activist group Sleeping Giants.

North Face, also based in California, was the first to join the campaign on Friday, tweeting in response to a boycott call: 'We're in. We're Out,' adding later: 'This includes all Facebook owned properties.'

The company subsequently shared a statement with CNN, which read: 'The North Face is halting all activity and U.S. paid advertising with Facebook until stricter policies are put in place to stop racist, violent or hateful content and misinformation from circulating on the platform'.

The company's commitment to pull their advertising also extends to Instagram - which is owned by Facebook.

CNN reports that the North Face's parent company, VF Corp, has not yet stated whether other brands in its portfolio will also boycott the social media giant.

VF Corp also owns shoe companies Vans and Timberland, and reportedly spent $756 million on advertising in the last year.

Upwork said it was 'hitting pause on hate with no Facebook advertising in July.'

REI also joined over the weekend stating: 'For 82 years, we have put people over profits. We're pulling all Facebook/Instagram advertising for the month of July.'

Facebook vice president Carolyn Everson said in a statement: 'We deeply respect any brand's decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information.

'Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good,' she continued.

The social network last week said it removed ads by Trump's re-election campaign that contained a symbol used in Nazi Germany for political prisoners, a move welcomed by rights activists.

The North Face has become the first major brand to pull advertising from Facebook after civil rights groups urged companies to boycott the social media giant amid claims it 'promotes hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence'

The campaign comes as the social media giant faces growing pressure over its hands-off approach to misinformation and inflammatory posts, including from US President Donald Trump.

'It is clear that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer simply negligent, but in fact, complacent in the spread of misinformation, despite the irreversible damage to our democracy,' the NAACP said in a tweet.

The coalition criticized Zuckerberg's decision late last month to leave up a particularly inflammatory post by the Commander-in-chief, which stated in part: 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts'. Twitter hid the same message behind a warning that said the post 'incited violence'.

Several Facebook employees staged a 'virtual walkout' over Zuckerberg's decision.

The Facebook co-founder then held a conference call with civil rights leaders who condemned him for failing to remove the post.

In a subsequent statement, Rashad Robinson of Color of Change, Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference and Sherrilyn Ifill of LDF said: 'He [Zuckerberg] did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump's call for violence against protesters. Mark is setting a very dangerous precedent for other voices who would say similar harmful things on Facebook.'

Color of Change subsequently joined forces with a number of other civil rights group to launch the '#StopHateforProfit' campaign earlier this week, encouraging companies to pull ads from Facebook.

Other organizations in the campaign include the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Free Press and Common Sense.

On Wednesday, the campaign took out a full page ad in the Los Angeles Times pushing for companies to boycott Facebook. The social media giant reportedly made close to $70 billion in ad revenues last year.

'What would you do with $70billion?' the #StopHateForProfit ad asks.

'We know what Facebook did. They allowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and so many others'.

The ad goes on to accuse Facebook of 'turning a blind eye to voter suppression' and 'amplifying white supremacists'.

The groups took out a full page ad (pictured) in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that's titled: 'What would you do with $70billion?'

Other prominent voices have also hit out at Facebook over the last week.

Among them, was Nancy Pelosi, who said companies could use their 'tremendous leverage' to 'discourage platforms from amplifying dangerous and even life-threatening disinformation'.

On Wednesday, MSNBC star Joe Scarborough launched a withering attack on Facebook accusing the company of 'promoting extremism'.

'I've seen a lot of insincere statements put out. Gonna say Mark Zuckerberg talking about how deeply saddened he was by the things he's seen the president say is near that top of it considering that he makes billions of dollars off of spreading lies and letting people spread lies, hateful lies,' the MSNBC host raged.

Scarborough then brought up the murder of federal officer Damon Gutzwiller, 38, who died in an ambush allegedly started by Air Force sergeant, Steve Carillo, 32, last weekend.

Authorities said Carillo scribbled far-right extremist phrases in blood after he killed a Gutzwiller and wounded two others. Carillo is said to be a part of 'boogaloo', a movement of far-right anti-government extremists.

Facebook has been scrubbing 'boogaloo' and 'Proud Boys' Facebook pages. The company considers both to be hate groups.

Facebook (file image) officials said they had started to initiate a ban against the two groups on May 30 after seeing web traffic which indicated they were planning to disrupt protests sparked by Floyd's death

Joe Scarborough accused Facebook of actively 'promoting extremism' in a fiery monologue Wednesday morning as civil rights groups urged big advertisers to pull spending from the social media giant for its failure to make its platform less hostile

Following Scarborough's monologue, Facebook announced that it removed another 900 social media accounts linked to the Proud Boys and the far-right American Guard after members discussed plans to bring weapons to protests decrying police brutality against black people.

The company announced Tuesday that it recently took down 470 accounts belonging to people affiliated with the Proud Boys and another 430 linked to members of the American Guard.

'In both cases, we saw accounts from both organizations discussing attending protests in various US states with plans to carry weapons but we did not find indications in their on-platform content they planned to actively commit violence,' the company said.

Nearly 200 other accounts linked to the groups were removed late last month.

Facebook officials said they had been monitoring the groups' social media presence and were led to act when they say posts attempting to exploit current George Floyd protests unfolding across the country.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the company reacted to news of The North Face's advertising boycott, stating: 'We deeply respect any brand's decision and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information. Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good.'
- Nigerian scientists have discovered coronavirus vaccine as the world continues to find a vaccine for the deadly disease

- The scientists, under the aegis of COVID-19 Research Group, said N7.8 million was spent on the study that led to the discovery of the vaccine

- It will, however, take a minimum of 18 months for the vaccine to be unveiled to the public

Nigerian universities scientists under the aegis of COVID-19 Research Group say they have discovered COVID-19 vaccine.

The scientists made the disclosure on Friday, June 19, saying the vaccine was being developed locally in Africa for Africans but would also work for other continents when unveiled, The Guardian reports.

Legit.ng gathers that the leader of the team, Dr Oladipo Kolawole, said it would take a minimum of 18 months for the vaccine to be unveiled to the public.

He said this is because a lot of analysis and studies, as well as approvals by medical authorities, were still required.

The scientists, under the aegis of COVID-19 Research Group, N7.8 million was spent on study that led to the discovery of the vaccine. Photo credit: Fortune

Source: UGC

Kolawole said the study, which led to the medical breakthrough, had enjoyed initial funding by the Trinity Immunodeficient Laboratory and Helix Biogen Consult, Ogbomosho, to the tune of about N7.8 million.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that a group of Nigerian Catholic priests developed a supposed cure for the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, a drug called Pax CVD Plus.

The disclosure was made in a statement released and signed by Father Anselm Adodo OSB on Wednesday, April 29, on the official page of the Pax Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories.

The cleric said the drug is solely for the treatment of coronavirus.

Father Anselm said that plant-based drugs are seemingly the best approach for coronavirus because these drugs are easily produced, stored and distributed and can be handled by medical and non-medical personnel as they pose a low contamination risk.

In other news, a Nigerian man identified as Tosin Adesuyi is devoting his time to teach over 400 kids in Kaduna free of charge.

Adesuyi took to his Twitter page to make the disclosure, saying the teaching started under a tree and was later moved to an uncompleted building.

According to him, the school is now building its own structure. Adesuyi shared pictures of his pupils on Twitter and Nigerians took to the comment section to commend him for the good work he is doing.

Coronavirus: Govt is lying to us about the virus | Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
Click here to read the full article.

MILAN  After striking and protesting the companys planned decision to move its headquarters, more than 100 out of 170 employees at the Roberto Cavalli complex outside Florence will not move to Milan and effectively lose their jobs.

The workers have agreed to a preliminary adhesion to a social plan, whereby they will resign and be compensated with eight to 11 months of wages, depending on the years worked at the company.

More from Footwear News

More than 50 employees will move to Milan, in accordance with the national contract.

The Florentine headquarters of the company will disappear, we are losing a huge professional and human patrimony, in addition to a resource for the territory, stated unions Femca Cisl and Filctem Cgil Firenze on Monday. We remain worried about the industrial future of the brand  there are numerous suppliers in Tuscany  and the workers also appear to be concerned, since more than 100 have decided to quit rather than move to the Milan headquarters. The workers have fought as much as they could to convince the company to renounce closing the plant in Sesto Fiorentino, and we thank the local institutions that have been close to us.

The move to Milan is expected to start in September. As reported, the unions see this development as a mass layoff strategy.

Last month, the fashion company declared that the goal was to define the manner and timing of the transfer and we want to do it quickly, in the interest of the employees, noting that the shareholders decision is irrevocable.

The unions have repeatedly voiced concern over the effects that the move would have on the territory, but the company said it continues to be engaged in supporting Tuscany, since a significant part of its suppliers are Tuscan.

Story continues

Cavallis strategic plan is to continue to pursue a mainly commercial vocation, increasingly moreso in the future, and the decision to aggregate all the commercial and administrative functions at the Milan headquarters is for this reason mainly physiological: The city is the point of reference for investors and national and international clients. The company has also said the decision was in line with the current trend of digital transformation, which means we need to move the axis close to the companies that supply these digital services, mainly polarized in the Milanese area.

Roberto Cavalli is owned by the founder and chairman of Damac Properties, Hussain Sajwani, through his private investment company Vision Investments.

Vision Investments, part of the Dico Group, is an evolution of a partnership that was signed in 2017 between Cavalli and the Dico Group for the development of Cavalli interiors for luxury hotels under the Aykon brand. The namesake founder of the brand is no longer involved in the Italian company.

This story was reported by WWD and originally appeared on WWD.com.

Sign up for FN's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis remark on the India-China face-off that no one had intruded into Indian territory was welcomed by Chinese media. It said that it would pave the way for de-escalation, The Hindu has reported. The comment, however, has been criticised by opposition parties in India.

According to the report, the state-run Global Times in China quoted PM Modi as saying no one entered Indian territory nor were Indian posts taken over on the border standoff with China.

With the quote, as per the publication, the Chinese observed that PM Modi was trying to respond to the nationalists and hardliners with tough talk. But, he understands that India cannot have a further conflict with China so he is also making an effort to cool tensions.

In the Global Times report, Lin Minwang - a professor at Fudan Universitys Center for South Asian Studies in Shanghai - said that PM Modis remarks would be very helpful to ease the tensions because, as the prime minister of India, he had removed the moral basis for hardliners to further accuse China.

The professor further told the publication that when India is in conflict with Pakistan or other neighbours, nationalism might drive New Delhi to take actual operations, but when it comes to China, it is a different story, said the report.

The publication quoting Wei Dongxu, a military expert, said that PM Modis comment that the armed forces are being allowed to take necessary steps was a show of strength for domestic audiences to appease the Indian masses and boost the Indian troops morale.

Union Minister and former Army chief General VK Singhs remark that China had lost at least 40 soldiers in the standoff with the Indian Army, was also called an attempt to placate the nationalists by making speculations and satisfy the hardliners by the publication.

Besides Global Times, China Daily also talked about PM Modis remark. In an article, analyst Lan Jianxue of the China Institute of International Studies blamed the the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party pushing forward its ultranationalist Hindutva agendas one after another through aggressive domestic and foreign policies.

Lan recalled PM Modis remarks from 2018 where he said that that there were occasional incidents in the border areas due to differing perceptions about the Line of Actual Control and both countries had managed to resolve those peacefully. It is hoped that India will abide by that statement, said Lan, as per the report.
Srinagar: The family of missing Ph.D. scholar Hilal Ahmad who had gone to the Wangat area of the north Kashmir Ganderbal district on a trek with his friends on June 14 and went mising thereafter, stage a demonstration asking the authorities to help t Image Source: IANS News

Srinagar, June 22 : The family of a missing Ph.D. scholar protested on Monday in Srinagar asking the authorities to help trace their kin.

Hilal Ahmad, a Ph.D. scholar had gone to the Wangat area of the north Kashmir Ganderbal district on a trek with his friends on June 14.

His friends said they decided to trek to the Gangabal mountain lake in the foothills of the Harmukh mountain, but Hilal said he would wait at Naranag (Wangat) for their return.

On return from Gangabal, Hilal's friends said he was found missing from Naranag.

The youth has remained untraced since.

There was a report on Sunday, which said he had been killed with the two other militants gunned down by the security forces in Srinagar city.

The police promptly denied the report, saying that Hilal Ahmad was not among the three militants killed in an encounter in the Gilli Kadal (Zoonimar) area of Srinagar.

The family said the youth is an orphan having lost both parents when he was in class 10.

The relatives have appealed the authorities to trace the youth and help the family come out of the mental agony they are presently undergoing.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Motilal Oswal 's research report on Brigade Enterprises

BRGD has shown continued strength in delivering strong pre-sales volumes of ~1msf in the Residential segment, even in these testing times, as well as in its Leasing portfolio. This makes the company one of the favored plays in the Real Estate space. Leasing remains the cornerstone of the business in the near to long term, while Residential is likely to bounce back in 2HFY21E. Accounting for near-term challenges in Residential and Hospitality, we reduce our TP to INR195. However, reiterate Buy on account of favorable risk-reward.

Outlook

However, we expect momentum to continue in the medium term, driven by a robust line-up of launches across business segments, strong execution capabilities, and the right product mix. Maintain Buy, with TP of INR195.



For all recommendations report, click here

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

Read More
Protesters gathered for an emotional rally Monday outside the Malton apartment building where a 62-year-old man was fatally shot by Peel police officers Saturday following a call for a mental-health crisis.

Hundreds of protesters occupied a major intersection at Derry Road and Goreway Drive as they called for the officer who shot Ejaz Choudry, a father of four, to be fired  and for funds to be divested from policing and redirected to mental health services.

In an interview with the Star, Choudrys nephew Hashim Choudhary (a variation on the spelling of his uncles last name) said his family was outraged and devastated.

He was not a criminal. He was a kind man. He had an episode where he really needed medical help not police, Choudhary said.

Describing him as gentle and devout, Choudhary said his uncle was frail  suffering from chronic lung disease and diabetes. He also lived with schizophrenia, Choudhary said, and on Saturday evening had called a non-emergency number in distress.

He did not call 911, Choudhary said. He just needed to help himself.

Choudrys death is now being investigated by Ontarios independent police watchdog. Special Investigations Unit spokesperson Monica Hudson said she could not comment further while the investigation was ongoing.

Choudrys family is demanding to know why the officers didnt de-escalate the situation before opening fire.

His nephew told the Star he believes the response would one hundred per cent have been different if his uncle was white and not a resident of a low-income neighbourhood.

Those things make a big difference, said Choudhary.

Mondays protest snarled after-work traffic as it moved toward Highway 427. The crowd stopped to pray for Choudry, and family members thanked supporters for coming together to stand up to something they feel is wrong.

Ibrahim Hindy, acting president of the Muslim Council of Peel, said a cellphone video purporting to capture tactical officers on Choudrys balcony demonstrates how badly things were handled.

He believes it shows officers used a ladder to climb up to a second-floor balcony, before breaking down the door and firing weapons in from outside; viewers of the video have said they hear police shouting put the knife down. The images were recorded by a resident in a building across the street and shared with the family, Hindy said.

The mans nephews, who were at the scene, asked officers if they could go to the apartment to help defuse the situation, talk to him, maybe calm him down a little bit, Hindy continued. Police refused, indicating they would deal with him peacefully.

While the SIU is reviewing the shooting, as per protocol when police are involved in a serious injury or death, Choudrys family and the Muslim Council of Peel are calling for an independent inquiry.

In a statement Sunday, the SIU said that at approximately 5 p.m. the previous day, Peel regional police officers responded to a call at 3425 Morning Star Drive, an apartment building near Goreway Drive, to check on the well-being of a man.

Shortly after communication stopped, officers breached the door and entered the unit. An interaction occurred which included officers deploying a conducted energy weapon at the man, as well as firing plastic projectiles from an anti-riot weapon Enfield, a special weapon designed to be less lethal than regular firearms.

When these had no effect, an officer discharged a firearm and the man was struck.

Police first tweeted about the incident on Saturday as a call for an adult male in crisis in residence, saying tactical officers and K9 units were on scene.

Three hours later, police tweeted police had fired shots and man was dead.

The shooting comes at a time of intense focus on how police respond to mental-health crises. The SIU is also investigating how and why Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell from her highrise balcony in Torontos west-end after police responded to a 911 call that she was in mental distress

Choudrys family has started a GoFundMe to support his wife and children. His nephew said Choudry had moved to Canada 30 years ago seeking a better life,

He wanted to live his life for his kids, his nephew said. I cant explain what theyre going through.

Youssef Faqiri, whose brother Soleiman Faqiri suffered from mental health issues and died in detention at Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ont, said Mondays protest was a moment of pain, hope, and compassion that exposed systemic racism in the policing and justice systems.

I can assure you that the Choudry family will never be the same, he said.

The only solace we can take in his death, is using the situation for achieving accountability, for saving another Ejaz Choudry.
Days after a 62-year-old inmate of Mandoli Jail died due to COVID-19, 17 others who shared barrack with him tested positive for the disease on Monday, prison officials said.

The first inmate, Kanwar Singh, lodged in Central Jail number 14, Mandoli, died in his sleep on June 15. His test report for COVID-19 came back positive on Saturday, following which 29 inmates who shared barrack with him were also tested, according to officials.

Singh's is the first case of a Delhi prison inmate dying due to the contagious respiratory disease.

Director General (Prisons) Sandeep Goel said of the 29 inmates who were tested, reports of 17 came back positive on Monday. The remaining 12 inmates have tested negative for the disease.

All the 17 inmates who tested positive have been shifted to a separate barrack in Central Jail number 14 and their health is being closely monitored by the jail doctor. As of now, they are alright, he said.

The 12 inmates who tested negative have also been separately quarantined, he added.

In the wake of an increase in COVID-19 cases in prisons, the officials said, the jail staff and inmates have been briefed to remain extra careful, take all necessary precautions and follow social distancing norms.

Till now, 40 inmates of Delhi Prison have been tested positive for COVID-19, of whom 16 have recovered and one died. As many as 46 prison staff members have also tested positive for the disease. Of these, 12 have recovered so far, according to the officials.

Delhi Prison comprises Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini jails.

Singh was in jail since July 6, 2018. He was lodged in the senior citizens' barrack of Central Jail number 14. He was asymptomatic and the cause of his death was ascertained after a COVID-19 test was conducted on his body, the officials said. He was serving life imprisonment in a 2016 murder case, they said.
Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course could lay off as many as 64 people.

Penn National Gaming filed a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry informing the state that it could lay off up to 64 people at the property in East Hanover Township. Although the layoffs could be permanent, they might not be. Still, the company said legally it had to inform the state and those employees that could be impacted.

After thoroughly reevaluating our business in light of the ongoing pandemic, we wanted to communicate honestly and openly with our team members that it could be some time before all of our remaining properties are open, and that those properties that are open will unfortunately not require the same level of staffing going forward, Eric Schippers, Sr. Vice President of Public Affairs & Government Relations for Penn National Gaming, Inc. said in a statement. " As a result, we informed our team members that their furloughs may be converted to a permanent layoff in the coming weeks or months. We had a legal obligation to send a formal WARN notice to all the team members who could potentially be laid off. To be clear, however, that does not necessarily mean that all those team members will be laid off.

If the layoffs are permanent, the 64 people could be laid off on Sept. 15 or within two weeks of that date.

These layoffs at Penn National Gaming are the unfortunate result of COVID-19 related business circumstances that were sudden, dramatic and beyond our control, the company said in the WARN notice. The impact on our business was not reasonably foreseeable until now. We simply could not foresee, that the initial closures of our properties, that were issued by one or two states for a limited period of time, ultimately spread throughout all the states in which we operate and eventually be extended, interrupting almost all business and travel temporarily. These significant drags on our business will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Finally, we could not have anticipated when our properties would be allowed to reopen and how restrictive the new operating conditions would be, and the negative impact this would have on business volumes.

In March, the company furloughed 26,000 employees at its properties because of state shutdowns due to COVID-19. Hollywood Casino closed that month when Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the closing of all non-essential businesses. The casino reopened on Friday.

Penn National Gaming previously filed a WARN notice with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry informing the state that the company could lay off 233 people at its corporate headquarters at 825 Berkshire Blvd. in Wyomissing and at 3980 Howard Hughes Parkway in Las Vegas, Nevada beginning Aug. 15.

Penn National is based in Wyomissing, Berks County and has more than 40 casinos, off-track wagering facilities and racetracks.

The WARN Act is federal legislation that offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of a covered-business closing and covered-business mass layoff. The company filed the notice with the state around June 12.

Hollywood Casino is located at 777 Hollywood Blvd. in East Hanover Township, Dauphin County.

--Sign up for PennLives newsletters

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.

You can follow Daniel Urie on twitter @DanielUrie2018 and you can like PennLives business page on Facebook at @PennLiveBusiness
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 04:23:01|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

People sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the United States, on June 22, 2020. U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 120,000 on Monday with nearly 2.3 million infections, while new cases continue to increase across the country over three months into the pandemic. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 120,000 on Monday with nearly 2.3 million infections, while new cases continue to increase across the country over three months into the pandemic.

A total of 2,286,457 cases were reported in the country with the fatalities reaching 120,036 as of 12:04 p.m. (1604 GMT) on Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

New York state reported 388,488 cases with 31,125 deaths. Other states with over 5,000 COVID-19 deaths include New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and California, showed the JHU data.

Worldwide, COVID-19 cases topped surpassed 9 million and the death toll from the virus was 469,122.

In the United States, the virus spread has trended downward in some of the hard-hit places including New York City, once the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.

The Big Apple entered phase two of reopening on Monday, during which hair salons, real estate sales, vehicle sales and rentals, some in-store retails are allowed to reopen. Restaurants can serve customers in outdoor space, according to New York state's phased reopening strategy.

However, several U.S. states in the South and Southwest are seeing upticks in their coronavirus case counts.

As of Sunday, the nation's seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases increased more than 24 percent compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of JHU data. Cases were growing by 5 percent or more in 25 states across the United States, including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma.

According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project, hospitalizations from COVID-19 were growing in 14 states as of Sunday.

In Texas, there were 2,913 people hospitalized with COVID-19 based on a seven-day moving average, a 37 percent increase compared to a week ago. Arizona reported 1,702 people hospitalized on a seven-day average, a near 29 percent increase compared to a week ago.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory," Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, recently told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior United Nations advisor.

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, U.S. states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

An influential model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington recently revised its projections, forecasting nearly 170,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States by Oct. 1.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday warned that the world has moved into a "new and dangerous phase" of the global coronavirus pandemic as countries have lifted lockdowns and other measures intended to curb the virus' spread, and several have seen their rates of newly reported cases of the virus accelerate.

"Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible," he said.
University students, as well as staff, are under mounting assault by the Australian government. It is attempting to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to impose a major pro-business slashing and restructuring of higher education.

Last Friday, the government unveiled plans to more than double the fees for humanities and communications students, alongside 28 percent higher fees for law, economics and commerce, putting them all in the highest price band of $14,500 a year.

Students could pay as much as $43,500 for a three-year undergraduate humanities degree, up from $20,400. This would financially punish young people, and mature-aged workers seeking further education, who wish to study potentially intellectually stimulating courses as history, geography, politics, sociology, film studies, behavioural sciences and journalism. Creative arts fees would rise by 13 percent to $7,700 a year.

By this move, the government is seeking to further transform universities into vocational businesses, churning out job-ready graduates to meet the immediate profit-making requirements of employers. Addressing the National Press Club, Education Minister Dan Tehan said the plan would incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices.

This is antithetical to genuine education, which requires critical thinking and the exposure to new ideas. Young people, now facing an unemployment and under-employment level of 48 percent, are being denied the basic right to decent education.

Fees for courses that big business regards as vital, such as science, maths, agriculture, IT, engineering, teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages, would be reduced. But the government funds for most of these degrees would be lowered too, leaving the universities with less money overall and therefore forced to cut costs, including by increasing class sizes. There is no guarantee against students in those courses paying higher fees in the future.

Despite the corporate media fully backing this offensive, there is clearly outraged opposition among young people, including this years school leavers, and university educators, reflected in social media posts and comments published by some media outlets.

One student told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: I am a business/politics (humanities) student. I am the first in my family to attend university, and all this does is make university (for the most part) unattainable. My degree is now going to be on par with the cost of a medical degree  Poorer kids are going to move away from economics, humanities and law.

Another message stated: Truly devastating news. What the world needs now more than ever is for young people to learn to think deeply, critically, and creatively about the complex issues we face as a global community, to challenge the status quo, learn from the past and understand other cultures and points of view.

Tehan denied that students would be priced out of degrees, saying no student pays a single dollar upfront due to the HECS-HELP fees loan scheme. Because of lower income thresholds introduced in 2018, however, graduates must start repaying their fee debts when they earn more than $46,000 annuallyonly about $730 a week after tax.

Many students will be saddled with a life of debt. By January 2019, about 3.2 million graduates had outstanding student loan debts, totalling over $66 billion.

After a three-year funding freeze, Tehan said an extra 39,000 university places for domestic students would be funded by 2023 to cope with the extra demand caused by the collapse of job prospects, but without any overall increase in government funding for universities. The plan would lift student contributions to the overall cost of degrees from 42 percent to 48 percent.

The latest measures will need to be legislated and pass the Senate, where the Liberal-National Coalition government holds only a minority of seats. But no reliance can be placed on the other Senate parties, including Labor and the Greens, which have helped decimate university funding over the past decade.

The government has been emboldened by the role of the university staff and student unions. They have assisted the government and the university managements to inflict the burden of the financial crisis triggered by the pandemic on staff and students.

Because of the loss of international student fees, the 39 public universities expect to lose revenues of $16 billion between June this year and 2023, with up to 30,000 jobs to be eliminated as a result. This is on top of years of multi-billion dollar funding cuts by the current Liberal-National Coalition government and the previous Greens-backed Labor government.

The government has refused to rescue the public universities, while handing JobKeeper wage subsidies to private universities. It has been aided by the fact that as soon as the pandemic began to hit, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) rushed into backroom national talks with the managements, offering wage cuts of up to 15 percent while still agreeing to the destruction of at least 18,000 jobs.

The NTEU thus made clear its commitment to help the managements impose cuts and restructuring on university workers and students. For two months, while the closed-door negotiations continued, the union stifled any struggle against the offensive, permitting hundreds of job cuts, particularly of casual workers.

Since the NTEU-management Job Protection Framework was finally revealed to university workers last month and collapsed in the face of intense opposition, the NTEU and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) have intensified their efforts to inflict similar job- and pay-cutting agreements on university workers at individual universities.

Likewise, the National Union of Students has opposed any mobilisation of students against the attack on jobs and conditions, which also means lower quality education, larger classes and worse services and facilities for students.

This escalating offensive underscores the call issued by the Committee for Public Education (CFPE) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) for a unified struggle by university workers and students for the defence of jobs and conditions and for the right to decent, free and first-class education for all, including international students, and full-time jobs for all university workers.

This will require the formation of democratically elected rank-and-file committees of university workers and students. These must be completely independent of the unions, which have shown they are nothing but political and industrial police forces.

Instead of big business being bailed out with billions of dollars, and billions more being handed to the military, resources must be poured into healthcare and education funding. That means challenging the capitalist profit system and turning to a socialist perspective, based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy.

The author also recommends:

Australian pseudo-left groups protect university union from revolt against pay-cutting plans

[18 June 2020]

Reject Australian universities-NTEU job and pay cuts!

[15 June 2020]

Australian Committee for Public Education holds online forum on COVID-19 and the universities crisis

[19 May 2020]
Pleasant Grove, Utah, June 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortem Technologies, the technical leader for counter drone security and defense solutions, will be holding a free webinar on the topic of countering drone threats on a global scale. In this webinar, Fortems leaders will discuss the security issues caused by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and provide a rundown of the most effective solutions that exist in the market today.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 24, 2020, from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. SGT.

The UAV manufacturing industry has skyrocketed to $4.2 billion in 2020, said Gary Watson, VP of Solutions at Fortem. Providing adequate security to safely remove unwanted drones from a given airspace is more critical in light of this growing market. Ensuring those drones are removed without any collateral damage caused is even more key. Well be providing more details around all that Fortems solution is capable of from a global standpoint in this webinar.

Scott Smith, Fortems Director of Marketing, and Gary Watson, Fortems VP of Solutions, will discuss how the Fortem SkyDome System can elevate existing security to provide complete end-to-end airspace awareness and protection against rogue drones.

Key points they will cover include:

Managing and understanding regulatory issues across Asia

The importance of vertical integration of Fortems solutions - easy integration

Detect and Avoid as well as Urban Air Mobility Facilitation

The power of advanced radar for detection and classification

Counter UAS technology that offers low to no collateral damage and ability to evaluate captured drones

The webinar will be held in English and a slide presentation that can be translated will be available for attendees to download.

Please visit this link to register: https://bit.ly/37mz85J.

About the Fortem SkyDome System and Fortem DroneHunter

The Fortem SkyDome System consists of distributed TrueView radar to detect and identify uncooperative drones, and the Fortem DroneHunter, which is autonomously cued by SkyDome to further evaluate the threatening drone and remove or disable it from a safe location with no collateral damage. The SkyDome System and DroneHunter are the category leader for kinetic, non-lethal C in defending against low flying drones and in protecting critical infrastructure, military bases, borders, and coastal areas from drones that attempt to pass undetected by traditional ground-to-air defenses.

Fortems SkyDome System digitizes, maps, and monitors the airspace so that all objects on the ground and air are accounted for. This makes it possible to identify and mitigate UAS that are not approved for flight and that might interfere with critical communication systems, or that might have nefarious intent. Fortems SkyDome System components make ground and airborne radar and optics seamlessly networkable and the only system that achieves total airspace awareness, security, and defense.

Fortem Technologies landed a multi-million dollar deal with the Pentagons Defence Innovation Unit (DIU), has been tested by NATO for its Defense Against Terrorism Programme of Work, and continues its work with hospitals, airports, and stadiums to provide an end-to-end security solution.





About Fortem Technologies, Inc.

Fortem Technologies is the leader in airspace awareness, safety, and security. Through an advanced ecosystem of distributed radar, AI at-the-edge, deep sensor integration and autonomous drone capture, Fortem monitors, protects and defends the worlds corridors, venues, infrastructures, borders, and regions from dangerous or malicious drone threats. The same ecosystem is accelerating the safety of the worlds airspace for urban air mobility. Based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, the company is privately held and backed by Boeing, Signia Venture Partners, DCVC, Mubadala Investment Company and others. For more information, please visit www.fortemtech.com.
30 children read Sorrow after Departure (Li Sao), one of Qu Yuans masterpieces, in Wuhu, east Chinas Anhui province, on June 21, 2020 as the Dragon Boat Festival draws near. The festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar to remember ancient poet Qu Yuan. It falls on June 25 this year. (Photo/Anhui Daily)

Over 20 children make model dragon boats and zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in a pyramid shape using bamboo or reed leaves) in a museum in Luan, east Chinas Anhui province, on June 21, 2020 as the Dragon Boat Festival draws near. The festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar to remember ancient poet Qu Yuan. It falls on June 25 this year. (Photo/Anhui Daily)

Volunteers help building workers make zongzi at a construction site in Hefei, east Chinas Anhui province, on June 20, 2020 as the Dragon Boat Festival draws near. The festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar to remember ancient poet Qu Yuan. It falls on June 25 this year. (Photo/Anhui Daily)




by Shafique Khokhar

The epidemic is worsening and, like Iranians and other prisoners released from Pakistani prisons, Christians should also be released immediately. The U.S. State Department asks Pakistani government to release the prisoners.

Karachi (AsiaNews) - On June 18, 2020, a protest (pictured) was organized by the National Christian Party in front of the Karachi Press Club, for the immediate release of 24 prisoners accused of blasphemy and held in several prisons of the Punjab province during the pandemic. The demonstration was also against the kidnapping of minority girls and their forced conversions.

Participants held placards and banners calling for the release of the 24 Christians, chanting slogans and asking the government to take the matter seriously.

Shabir Shafqat, the head of the National Christian Party, (in the photo) in his harsh words said that their protest is a slap on the faces of all those leaders who are seated abroad and do politics and speak for the rights of the Christian minority in Pakistan, but they do not raise these issues.

He also said that the epidemic is getting worse and, like the Iranians and other prisoners released from Pakistani prisons, our innocent 24 Christians should also be released immediately. Shabir added that many prisoners have been released for coronavirus, but there is no pity in Pakistan for those in the minority.

During the same protest it was also made known that Shakeel Anjum (a Pakistani American national, journalist and public figure) registered eight detainees for religious blasphemy in Pakistani prisons as religious prisoners. Shakeel also asked the US authorities to take note of the innocent Christians who have been tricked into blasphemy. In this regard, the U.S. Department of State has asked the Pakistani government to release these religious prisoners immediately, due to the coronavirus epidemic.

Pastor David Khushi of the Protestant church of Karachi in his comments asked the authorities and in particular Prime Minister Imran Khan to immediately take note of this problem, and also asked the national and international community to highlight and raise the issues of the innocent accused of blasphemy and of forced marriages and forced conversions of minority girls in Pakistan.

Since 2004, Pakistan has issued at least 4,500 death sentences, an average of one per day and since then Pakistan has executed 515 people, while 4,225 others await execution on death row.

During the first week of June 2020, prisoner rights groups from around the world called for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty during the coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, the Pakistani non-governmental organization, Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), which represents prisoners and the World Coalition against the Death Penalty, called on all countries to end executions because during the pandemic it is impossible to hold fair trials or guarantee a just legal representation.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 03:32:25|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen via video link in Beijing, capital of China, June 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday met via video link with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, China and the European Union (EU) have supported and helped each other, Xi said, noting that China is willing to join hands with the European side to push for a more stable and mature relationship in the post-pandemic era and lift their ties to a new height.

"China wants peace instead of hegemony," said Xi, stressing that China is not only a country with a long history, but also a developing country full of vitality.

"The starting point of all our policies and work is to enable the Chinese people to live a happy life. We will steadfastly follow the path of peaceful development," Xi said, noting that China presents "opportunities, rather than threats."

He went on to say that China is "a partner, not an opponent" to the EU side, as China will continue to deepen reform and expand opening up, which will provide Europe with a new round of cooperation opportunities and development space.

"There is no conflict of fundamental interests between China and Europe. Cooperation far outweighs competition, and consensus far outweighs disagreement," he said, calling on the two sides to respect each other, and seek common ground while reserving differences.

The two sides should continuously enhance mutual understanding and trust, expand common interests in cooperation, solve difficult problems in development, and build a China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership with more global influence.

The world under the impact of the pandemic is undergoing profound changes and facing more unstable and uncertain factors, Xi emphasized, calling for fostering new opportunities in crises and creating new prospects in the face of changing circumstances.

As two major forces, huge markets and great civilizations in the world, what China and the EU advocate and oppose and in what areas they cooperate will have global significance, Xi said.

China and the EU should serve as two major forces to maintain global peace and stability, Xi said, noting that China is willing to communicate with the European side on major issues.

"We believe that the EU will continue to move forward in the direction of unity, stability, openness and prosperity. China is delighted to see that the EU makes a constructive contribution to international peace and stability, and is willing to strengthen strategic cooperation with the EU to jointly cope with global challenges," he said.

Meanwhile, China and the EU should serve as two huge markets that promote global development and prosperity, Xi said.

"Our two major economies should play the role as dual engines of the world economy, drive the recovery of global economy, jointly support a scientific and orderly resumption of work and production, strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination, and keep global industrial and supply chains stable and smooth," Xi said.

The two sides should maintain market openness to each other, accelerate the negotiation of the China-EU investment agreement, strengthen cooperation in the green and digital fields, and develop a partnership in green development, said Xi, calling on the two sides to enhance third-party cooperation in Africa.

In addition, China and Europe should serve as two great civilizations that adhere to multilateralism and help improve global governance, the Chinese president said.

"No matter how the international situation changes, China will take the side of multilateralism and adhere to the global governance concept of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits," Xi said.

Xi said that China appreciates EU's firm adherence to multilateralism, participation in international anti-pandemic cooperation, and increasing investment in the World Health Organization and other international institutions.

He said that China is willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the EU on major international and regional issues, strengthen dialogue and cooperation on global public health governance, and promote the building of a community of health for all.

Xi stressed that he would like to maintain close communication with the two EU leaders, advance a series of major China-EU political agendas, and push bilateral relations to a new level.

The two EU leaders said that the relationship between the EU and China is full of vitality, stressing that only through cooperation can the world cope with global challenges, and only dialogue and consultation can resolve conflicts and eliminate regional instability, as the world is facing great uncertainties.

The EU side is ready to conduct strategic dialogue with China to expand consensus in a candid manner, they noted.

The EU leaders voiced willingness to strengthen cooperation with China on vaccine R&D and work resumption. The EU is ready to expand bilateral trade and push for more progress in cooperation with China in green and low-carbon development, digital economy and other areas, they said.

They said that the EU is willing to reach an investment agreement with China at an early date.

They also expressed willingness to work with China to overcome the impacts of the pandemic as soon as possible and advance world economic recovery.

According to the two EU leaders, the EU is committed to multilateralism, and stands ready to enhance coordination and cooperation with China on public health security, climate change, sustainable development, third-party cooperation in Africa and other major issues within the frameworks of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Group of 20.

The EU will work with China to achieve successful outcomes in major political agendas agreed upon by the two sides, according to the two leaders. Enditem
Customers use their cell phones at a drink shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

Vietnamese worry more about technology taking over their lives than their Thai and Myanmar brethren, a new report says.

The Vietnam Tech Consumer Report 2020 said 66 percent of Vietnamese respondents were worried that technology was taking over their lives, compared to 39 percent in Thailand and 52 percent in Myanmar.

The survey was carried out by research firm InsightAsia and public relations and digital marketing agency Vero in the three countries prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Despite higher concerns over the tech sector impacts on livelihoods than in neighboring countries, 65 percent of Vietnamese respondents also stated that technology has had an overall positive impact on their lives. These benefits ranged from improving work performances and personal relationships to getting more relaxation time and stress relief.

However, half the respondents stated that technological advances were causing them to lose sleep.

Around 33-39 percent, higher than in Thailand and Myanmar, had said they were experiencing more conflicts and feeling disconnected to real life. The figure implies the possibility of a backlash against social media uptrend in Vietnam, the report said.
A NUTRITIONIST and food writer who came up with an idea for a business as part of a university project has won a 5,000 prize to make it a reality.

Joy Skipper, 60, from Stoke Row, is in her first year of a two-year sustainability course at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

She was asked to come up with an idea for a social enterprise and entered herself into the universitys Big Pitch 2020 competition.

She and fellow student Chris Pickard, from Bracknell, pitched Gather and Feed, a website designed to raise public awareness of artisan food and local producers.

A percentage of profits would go to setting up and running community kitchens where volunteers would hold cooking lessons and feed people with surplus food donated from supermarkets.

This was only supposed to be a hypothetical business but now the pair plan to launch it for real later this year.

Miss Skipper said: I am really excited about it as I love using local food and producers.

Covid-19 has shown that people are open to change  everyone was shopping in supermarkets and now suddenly they are going to their local shop. I think we need to keep that going and hopefully we can help.

Miss Skipper has written a number of cookery books and worked with leading chefs, including Gary Rhodes, Michel Roux and Gordon Ramsay.

She normally holds cookery classes at her house but is now doing this online due to the coronavirus pandemic. She also cooks vegetarian meals, which are sold at Stoke Row Stores every Saturday.

She was visiting the Eden Project in Cornwall when she decided she wanted to sign up for the university course.

Miss Skipper said: There are 15 of us on the course and all the other students are in their twenties apart from me and Chris.

He is in his late forties and I am the oldest at 60. He works in the airline industry and has no work at the moment. We got on well together. The great thing about winning was the recognition that all the judges thought it was a great idea and Chris and I have been working like crazy since we won because we thought we should get it going as soon as possible.

We are being thrown in at the deep end because it was just a nice idea in my head but now we need to think it through and neither of us has set up a business before.

We are getting lots of mentoring from the university but it will be a long learning process.

I know a lot about the food industry and I would love to start off by using suppliers around here. We want it to feel like a community effort which we grow together.

We need to make sure we have everything in place but ideally we want to launch it by the autumn.

It might be a bit ambitious, but it seems crazy not to take this opportunity to focus on it.
Two-year old Liberty Mutual Re said it has appointed Scott Mackie to the role of director of Assumed Reinsurance  Property. Mackie will be responsible for managing the underwriting of U.S. property risk and pro-rata business.

Most recently senior property underwriter for Treaty with AXA XL, Mackie has 18 years experience in the reinsurance industry. Following underwriting roles with Wellington Underwriting, Swiss Re and Montpelier, he joined XL Catlin in Boston as Property Facultative senior underwriter in 2010. Six years later, he moved to AXA XL in Stamford as Property Treaty senior underwriter.

Mackie will be based in Stamford, Connecticut and will report to Richard Mairano, Liberty Mutual Res senior vice president of Property Treaty.

Liberty Mutual Re was launched two years ago with the rebranding of reinsurance unit of Liberty Specialty Markets. Liberty Mutual Re is the sole treaty reinsurance business within Liberty Mutual Group

Topics USA Underwriting Reinsurance Property AXA XL
HSR bus drivers are asking the city to hand out free masks to riders in a bid to make pandemic transit safer.

Non-medical masks or face-coverings will be mandatory for most HSR passengers starting Monday  the first step toward restarting front-door boarding and fare payment, likely July 1.

But there are no mask police enforcing the new rule, because the city cannot compel riders to share health information. (People with breathing problems, small children and those who cant take off their own masks are exempt from the rule.)

Thats why bus drivers want a stash of non-medical masks to offer passengers who either forget or cant afford a face-covering, said HSR union head Eric Tuck, who argued such a plan would cost the city pennies a mask.

I think it makes perfect sense to have them available to hand out  and I think they might be needed, said the veteran driver.

Tuck estimated only half of the riders on his Parkdale HSR route wear masks or other face-coverings now. On some routes, he said drivers report usage a low as 30 per cent. We cant force anyone to do anything ... But we can remind people and at least offer them the option, he said.

Public health officials say ongoing research suggests widespread mask-wearing can prevent the spread of COVID-19, particularly by otherwise healthy-looking carriers of the virus.

Right now, strict pandemic distancing rules mean only 10 people can get on a regular city bus and 15 on a longer bendy bus. But the HSR will soon start allowing more passengers  up to two-thirds capacity, or between 20 to 25 people on a regular bus.

Thats important because the strict passenger limits are now resulting in buses flying by waiting riders without stopping. The number of pass-bys has repeatedly spiked above 400 in a single day since lockdown restrictions on businesses started easing in May.

Emergency operations director Paul Johnson said the city is investigating free masks as a potential option.

But dont expect a free face-covering when you board the bus Monday. Even if the idea goes ahead, Johnson said it will take some time to put a safe handout plan into action.
Polls Close In Serbia Election; Vucic's Ruling Party Expected To Hold Power

By RFE/RL's Balkan Service June 21, 2020

BELGRADE Polls closed in Serbia amid a lackluster turnout for a parliamentary election that was expected to tighten the grip on power for President Aleksandar Vucic's ruling party.

The June 21 vote -- Europe's first national election since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered most of the continent saw calls for a boycott ahead of time from an alliance of opposition groups, citing the virus and what it said were unfair conditions.

Pre-election opinion polls showed that Vucic's center-right conservative ruling Serbian Progressive Party, which has led the Balkan state for the past eight years, was expected to secure nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Vucic's coalition partner, the Socialist Party, was predicted to come in second at around 10 percent.

Several right-wing and liberal parties may make it over a 3 percent threshold to enter the 250-seat parliament but are unlikely to provide checks on the ruling party. Some smaller parties are widely believed to be close to the government or controlled by it.

Polling organizers ordered protective measures at more than 8,000 voting stations in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Face masks and hand sanitizers were widely distributed, and voters were urged to respect physical distancing.

Still, many Serbs were expected to skip voting -- partly due to fears of becoming infected.

By early evening, just 41 percent of the country's 6.6 million eligible voters had cast ballots, according to election officials.

"I don't expect anything in particular" from the vote," one Belgrade voter, who gave only his first name, Ivan, told RFE/RL's Balkan Service. "The most important thing is that the people should live better."

Several liberal and right-wing opposition parties under the banner of the Alliance for Serbia called for a boycott, citing what they say is an unfair playing field exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Before the boycott, the alliance polled around 10 percent.

The pandemic has boosted Vucic's popularity, given the relatively few deaths until now and state handouts to soften its economic impact.

According to Johns Hopkins University's global tally of coronavirus cases, Serbia had about 12,000 confirmed cases as of June 21, and just 260 deaths.

"I am very pleased that there were no serious irregularities until noon today, that the elections are being held in a democratic atmosphere, that there are fewer incidents than ever in the multi-party democracy in Serbia," Vucic said after casting his vote.

Restrictions during the state of emergency  which interrupted more than a year of weekly pro-democracy protests -- have hampered opposition campaigning.

Opposition groups also accuse Vucic, who is not himself up for re-election, of using his position as president to promote his party and exerting complete control over the media.

He said the opposition boycott was unlikely to achieve its purpose.

In May, the U.S.-based Freedom House said it no longer considers Serbia a democracy "after years of increasing state capture, abuse of power, and strongman tactics" by Vucic.

The democracy watchdog said in its annual report for 2020 that since the SNS came to power in 2012 it "has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, putting pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations."

Geopolitics In The Spotlight

The new mandate Vucic is expected to win comes amid intensified international efforts to restart dialogue with Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian province whose independence Belgrade does not recognize.

NATO launched a bombing campaign to force Serbian troops out of Kosovo, and in 2008, Kosovo declared independence. Belgrade, Moscow, and a handful of European Union member states refuse to recognize the declaration.

Richard Grenell, the U.S. special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo negotiations, last week said he had received commitments from both Vucic and his Kosovo counterpart, Hashim Thaci, to meet at the White House on June 27.

The White House meeting "opens the door to new economic development and investment'' to pave the way for a political solution, Grenell said.

Three days before the planned White House meeting, Vucic was scheduled to travel to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin.

Serbia has sought European Union membership for years, but talks with the bloc stalled in 2018. Its membership bid is contingent on settling its disputes with Kosovo.

Nearly 3,500 observers were monitoring the vote, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and, for the first time, the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations.

With reporting by Chase Winter, AFP, AP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/serbian- parliamentary-elections-vucic- kosovo-talks/30682230.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






First Solar Inc. FSLR recently unveiled its 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with diversified chemical products manufacturer, Dow Inc. DOW. Per the terms of the deal, 75% of solar energy from First Solars 200 megawatt-ac (MWac) Horizon solar project will be supplied to Dows Texas operations, the largest petrochemical site in the western hemisphere.

First Solars Series 6 photovoltaic (PV) modules will power solar energy generation at the Horizon plant. For First Solar, this PPA reflects the significant demand that its series 6 modules are enjoying, since their inception and further solidifies the companys position as the largest solar module manufacturer within the United States.

Details of the Agreement

The portion of the solar facility covered by the PPA will generate enough electricity to power up to 25,000 average Texas homes, while displacing 147,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. Notably, this PPA reflects Dows commitment to fulfil its recently announced targets to reduce its net annual carbon emissions by 5 million tons by 2030 and eventually achieve carbon neutrality in 2050.

The PPA has also intensified a well-established partnership between First Solar and Dow, considering the fact that First Solars series 6 modules utilize Dows ENGAGE PV Polyolefin Elastomers, which are used as encapsulant films to enhance the modules performance and efficiency. Together, these two state-of-the-art technologies will enhance the solar market of Texas, which is poised to become a nationwide leader in solar energy.

Why Series 6 Module?

With up to six times lower carbon footprint and 24 times lower water impact than conventional crystalline silicon PV panels on a life cycle basis, First Solars series 6 module delivers a superior environmental profile and the lowest carbon solar electricity available. In addition to having the lowest water footprint in the solar industry, First Solar has reduced its manufacturing water intensity per watt produced by 64% since 2009. Moreover, this new technology possesses the capacity to reduce the number of electrical connections and hardware required for solar system installation. These must have boosted the growing demand for this solar product.

Story continues

Global Solar Boom: First Solar & Others

Per a report by Fortune Business Insights, the global solar power market size is projected to reach 4766.8 MW in 2026 from 2019, exhibiting CAGR of 30.7%.

To reap the benefits of this expanding global solar market, First Solar and other solar players are making every possible effort, which is expected to boost their profit. The company ended 2019 with net bookings of 6.1 gigawatts and the current contracted backlog of 12.4 gigawatts. Given the growing demand for solar modules, First Solar expects to increase its nameplate Series 6 manufacturing capacity to 6 GW by 2020 and 8 GW by year-end 2021.

During 2019, ReneSola SOL connected about 60 MW of projects. It aims incremental project pipeline in its core markets of 1GW by the end of 2020.

In 2019, JinkoSolar JKS reported record high solar module shipment of 14.3 GW. For 2020, it projects total solar module shipments of 18-20 GW, indicating an improvement of approximately 35%.

Price Performance & Zacks Rank

In a years time, shares of First Solar have lost 19.9% against the industrys increase of 24.7%.

First Solar currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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.

Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



Renesola Ltd. (SOL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



JinkoSolar Holding Company Limited (JKS) : Free Stock Analysis Report



First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Dow Inc. (DOW) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Two rather easy to miss texts in our Old Testament, when understood in context, indicate divine care for the animals under our care. (Which does not include the squirrels who do not comprehend they are not to climb onto bird feeders or the rabbits who think our vegetable garden is fair game, but I wander from our point.) We are looking at Sandra Richters Stewards of Eden, and this book keeps getting better.

Two texts:

Deut. 5:14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any workyou, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. Deut. 25:4 You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

In the first the great gift of God to Israel was the Sabbath, and is celebrated as such by observant Jews to this day, and that gift included giving ones livestock (Black Sinai goats and Awassi sheep, along with bovine who mostly did the heavy work) a Sabbath as well. The second text permits the beast to eat while it works, and a beast eats plenty especially because it is working. Which means the farmer permits the beast to eat what the family will not.

Contextually, and she has a wonderful footnote explaining it all, Richter contends the average farming family (not along the coast or on the sea of Galilee) went foodless for an equivalent sixty days a year.

Image: Cover Photo

What about factory farming of animals? She knows her stuff here. 74.6 million pigs in the USA are in nothing less than total confinement and under total control and and and. Poultry, too: some for eggs, some for meat. 9.28 billion of the latter, 489 million of the former. Laying hens have 67 square inches of living space. A piece of paper. Genetically altered, too. A bird that lays in its own feces most of its life is what we eat.

We have an economy that has lost humane treatment of animals designed for food.

The whole business of slaughtering yuck.

Good news: people know this and fight. Bad news: corporations win.

Consumerism.

Follow Sandy Richter on FB and you can read her hilarious stories about her chickens. In Santa Barbara CA, to boot.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 06/22/2020



ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS!

Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source!

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

alums Chris Soules and Victoria Fuller are still dating, as they were just spotted having lunch together in Victoria's hometown.Chris, 38, visited Victoria in Virginia Beach, VA, after Victoria, 26, appeared to spend several weeks staying with Chris on his farm in Arlington, IA.Although neither Chris or Victoria posted about their recent outing on Instagram, the Leaping Lizard Cafe restaurant they visited in Virginia Beach posted a photo of the couple having lunch on Friday, June 21."Loved having the cutest Bachelor couple join us for lunch today," the cafe captioned the photo on Instagram. "Thanks for coming."In the picture, Chris, who starred on 's nineteenth season, had his arm around Victoria's back while she embraced him with both arms.Chris was wearing a blue and white striped button down shirt and jeans, and Victoria looked cute in a denim jacket and matching mini skirt.Victoria, who finished Peter Weber 's season in third place, and Chris began self-isolating with each other in late April, after Chris reportedly slid into Victoria's DMs A source told Us Weekly late last month that Victoria and Chris are "exclusively dating." Victoria and Chris have yet to share photos of each other on Instagram, but Victoria did post a picture of herself posing in a beautiful room on April 27 and captioned it, "Farm life."She also tagged her location as Arlington and has posted other photos from inside Chris' house.Victoria and Chris also reportedly posted similar stills from a field in their respective Instagram Stories.Chris told Us in December 2019 that he had "given up" on finding his perfect match."I just think you know when you know, when you find it. I'm getting old enough to kind of learn that it's just about, like, when it's time, it will occur," Chris said, adding that he didn't have a timeline for settling down."As time goes by, I'm healthy, I'm semi-young, and when I meet the right person, it will be the right time."It's possible Victoria and Chris may have bonded over negative press and being involved in controversy.Victoria has been accused of being self-centered and attention-seeking, and while she came across shy and sometimes insecure on 's 24th season, Peter's ex-girlfriend Merissa Pence argued it was all an act.Merissa, who lives in Victoria's Virginia Beach hometown and previously hung out with her considering they have mutual friends, told the magazine that Victoria broke up four marriages by having affairs with the married husbands.Victoria also missed out on gracing the cover of Cosmopolitan's March digital issue because she had Instagram photos showing she had modeled "Marlin Lives Matter" merchandise created by White Marlin Marina, a marina in Maryland.The merchandise promoted conservation awareness of marlin fish in 2016, USA Today reported, but Cosmo's editor-in-chief Jessica Pels said the slogan is "problematic" because she believes it's rooted in racism and her magazine stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.In addition, Victoria was admittedly emotional and dramatic on , and she and Peter bickered more than they got along while dating.As for Chris, the former star was charged with a felony of leaving the scene of a fatal accident in which he had rear-ended a farm tractor with his pickup truck in April 2017 in Iowa, resulting in the death of 66-year-old Kenneth Mosher at the hospital.TMZ had obtained the recording of Chris' 911 call , proving the reality TV star at least checked Mosher's pulse at the scene of the accident and waited for emergency responders to arrive before taking off and avoiding authorities.Prosecutors argued, however, that Chris should only have left the scene to seek necessary aid or report the accident to law enforcement authorities, neither of which he allegedly did.Chris was arrested at his home several hours after the crash, after he allegedly refused to come outside and police were forced to obtain a search warrant, The Des Moines Register previously reported.Chris was released from jail shortly afterwards on $10,000 bond and feared spending up to five years in prison.Chris -- who was not charged with driving under the influence -- entered a not guilty plea in May 2017 to the charge of leaving the scene of the fatal accident.His legal team's motion to dismiss the charge was reportedly denied in January 2018 before being brought to the Iowa Supreme Court, who then declined to hear Soules' appeal in February of that year.Chris subsequently pleaded guilty in November 2018 to a reduced charge of leaving the scene of an accident, according to a local Des Moines news outlet.A judge reportedly approved a plea deal in August 2019 that imposed two years of probation for Chris and a suspended prison term.In addition to starring on , Chris also competed for Andi Dorfman on ette's tenth season as well as Season 20 of Dancing with the Stars and the Food Network's Worst Cooks in America: Celebrity Edition.Interested in more news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP >> Newtown Township will be applying for federal funding to bolster its career firefighting force. And its crossing its fingers and hoping the third times a charm. At its Jan. 12 meeting, the board of supervisors voted unanimously to resubmit its SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to...
The submersible "Deep Sea Warrior", used by Ruoyu Sun's team. Credit: Ruoyu Sun and IDSSE-CAS

Scientists have found that man-made mercury pollution has reached the bottom of the deepest part of the oceanthe Marianas Trench. This has significant implications for how mercury affects the marine environment, and how it may be concentrated in the food chain. The findings, which come from two independent research groups, are presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference.

Mercury is toxic to humans and other animals, and has been implicated in environmental disasters in the past, most famously at Minamata in Japan in the 1950's where it led to birth defects and severe neurological symptoms. It tends to be concentrated in marine organisms, where small amounts are ingested by some species which are in turn eaten by larger species, meaning that harmful levels of mercury can be concentrated in animals that sit higher up in natural food webs through the process of bioaccumulation. As an example, this leads to mercury concentrations in swordfish being x40 that of salmon. Mercury is generally poisonous at high levels and can be especially dangerous to the developing fetus.

Now two groups of scientists are independently reporting that both manmade and natural methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury easily accumulated by animals, has been found in fish and crustaceans in the 11,000m deep Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. This work is being reported at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry conference.

"This is a surprise" said researcher Ruoyu Sun. "Previous research had concluded that methlymercury was mostly produced in the top few hundred meters of the ocean. This would have limited mercury bioaccumulation by ensuring that fish which forage deeper than this would have had limited opportunity to ingest the methylmercury. With this work, we now believe that isn't true".

Dr. Ruoyu Sun, leading a group of researchers from Tianjin University, China, said "During 2016-2017, we deployed sophisticated deep-sea lander vehicles on the seafloor of Mariana and Yap trenches, amongst the most remote and inaccessible locations on Earth, and captured the endemic fauna at 7000-11000 m and collected sediments at 5500-9200 m. We are able to present unequivocal mercury isotope evidence that the mercury in the trench fauna originates exclusively from methylmercury from the upper ocean. We can tell this because of the distinctive isotopic fingerprint which stamps it as coming from the upper ocean."

Independently, a group led by Dr. Joel Blum (University of Michigan) sampled fish and crustaceans from 2 of the deepest Pacific Trenches, the Kermadec trench near New Zealand (which drops to 10000m) and the Marianas Trench off the Philippines. They use mercury isotopic signatures at both locations to show that mercury found in trench species is largely derived from the atmosphere and enters the ocean in rainfall. Joel Blum said:

Hadal snailfish Notoliparis kermadecensis at 7000m in the Kermadec Trench off New Zealand as sampled by Joel Blum's team. Credit: Alan Jamieson

"We know that this mercury is deposited from the atmosphere to the surface ocean and is then transported to the deep ocean in the sinking carcasses of fish and marine mammals as well as in small particles. We identified this by measuring the mercury isotopic composition, which showed that the ocean floor mercury matched that from fish found at around 400-600m depth in the Central Pacific, Some of this mercury is naturally-produced, but it is likely that much of it comes from human activity.

This work shows that human-released mercury has reached and entered foodwebs in even the most remote marine ecosystems on earth. This better understanding of the origin of mercury in the deepest reaches of the ocean will aid in modeling the fate of mercury in the atmosphere and oceans".

Ruoyu Sun commented "Our findings reveal very little methylmercury is produced in the deep oceans, and imply that anthropogenic mercury release at the Earth's surface is much more widespread across deep oceans than was previously thought".

Commenting, Professor Ken Rubin of the Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Hawaii said, "We know that mercury is introduced into the environment from a variety of natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires. However, human activities, such as coal and petroleum burning, mining, and manufacturing, are mainly responsible for mercury deposition to marine environments. We are now learning from these two studies that the effects of this deposition have spread throughout the ocean into the deep sea and the animals that live there, which is yet another indicator of the profound impact of modern human activities on the planet." Professor Rubin was not involved in this work.

Explore further Do elevated mercury levels in the blood increase skin cancer risk?

Provided by Goldschmidt Conference
A power struggle has been raging in Venezuela since Juan Guaido declared himself acting president in January 2019.

US President Donald Trump says he would consider meeting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and indicated he is not entirely confident in the countrys opposition leader.

A power struggle has been raging in Venezuela since Juan Guaido declared himself acting president in January 2019 in a bid to overthrow Maduro, who started a second term following elections boycotted by the opposition and internationally dismissed as fraudulent.

Nearly 60 countries  including the United States  recognised Guaido, but China and Russia backed Maduro  whose regime has been hit by punishing sanctions from Washington.

But despite tensions, Trump told news site Axios he would be open to a meeting.

I would maybe think about that  Maduro would like to meet. And Im never opposed to meetings  you know, rarely opposed to meetings, the president said.

I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, Ive turned them down.

No confidence

Ties between Washington and Maduros socialist government frayed even further in May when Venezuela detained 52 alleged mercenaries, including two retired members of the US military, accusing them of orchestrating a maritime invasion with American support.

Washington denied any involvement.

200620185241903

But despite his governments consistent backing of the opposition leader, Axios reported during the interview Trump indicated he doesnt have much confidence in Guaido.

The president said he was firmly against whats going on in Venezuela, but  referring to the recognition of Guaido  added: I was okay with it  I dont think it was very meaningful one way or the other.

The interview came as the White House was handling the fallout from explosive claims in a book by Trumps former national security adviser John Bolton, who was a key player on many diplomatic fronts.

According to excerpts published by Axios, Bolton wrote that Trump thought Guaido was weak as opposed to Maduro, who was strong.

The president also called Guaido the Beto ORourke of Venezuela, according to the Bolton excerpt, referring to the Democratic presidential candidate who dropped out early in the 2020 US presidential race and was repeatedly mocked by Trump.

Trump slammed Bolton as a nut job who may be the dumbest human being on Earth over his backing of the US-led Iraq war in 2003.
A 14-year-old boy who is believed to be one of Britains youngest ever terror suspects will face trial in September over claims of a bedroom bomb plot.

The teenager, who cannot be identified due to his age, appeared at the Old Bailey this morning via videolink for a preliminary hearing.

It is said he had started constructing an explosive at his home in Eastleigh, Hampshire, using chemicals and shrapnel for the improvised device.

The boy, who converted to Islam this year, is also accused of researching bomb-making online, making videos of explosives, and filming a video expressing his wish to be a martyr.

He was arrested by Hampshire Police on June 12 and charged with preparation of terrorist acts.

The boy wore a grey top for todays court appearance, conducted largely over Skype with just his barrister appearing in the courtroom.

Mr Justice Sweeney remanded him in custody until a trial which is due to start on September 28.

The case will resume with a preliminary hearing on September 2.

No plea was entered to the charge today.
Greece Extends Lockdown on More than 120,000 Migrants, Refugees

By Anthee Carassava June 21, 2020

Even though Greece is slowly but steadily lifting strict COVID-19 restrictions across the country, it is keeping more than 120,000 asylum seekers in lockdown, crammed in overcrowded camps to contain the spread the coronavirus.

The virus has killed 190 people in this relatively infection-free country.

In a terse weekend statement, Greece's Migration and Asylum Ministry said confinement for those in the country's migrant holding centers would be extended through July 5, the second such extension decreed by authorities since they were first imposed in March.

No explanation for the extension was provided by the ministry in the single-sentence announcement it issued late Saturday.

The announcement's timing, hours after 2,000 people rallied in Athens streets for World Refugee Day, demanding an end to the confinement of asylum seekers and improvement in migrants' abysmal living conditions, was controversial.

"While restrictions on freedom of movement to protect public health can be necessary and justified," said Eva Cosse, of the Human Rights Watch in Athens, "they must be based on scientific evidence, neither arbitrary nor discriminatory in their application... respectful of human dignity and subject to review."

"The camp lockdowns do not meet these criteria," Cosse said. "And yet ... these discriminatory lockdowns continue."

A total of 121,000 migrants have been stranded here since a number of Balkan countries sealed their borders in 2015 to stop refugees after more than a million poured in from Turkey, the biggest mass migration since World War II.

While entries have dramatically dropped since then -- none have been recorded since June 8, according to the U.N. refugee agency -- COVID-related containment measures have aggravated already appalling refugee living conditions. As of June 9, a total of 31,203 refugees and migrants were living in five camps on five islands in the Aegean, with a total capacity of 6,095, according to government statistics.

"Even with financial support from the European Commission, Greek authorities have done little to protect camp residents from COVID-19 or mitigate the risk of infection in the facilities," Cosse said.

"They haven't addressed the overcrowding that makes social distancing impossible, the lack of health care, or lack of access to adequate water, sanitation and hygiene products," she said.

Rights groups and the United Nations have expressed concern that the health restrictions were eroding the rights of migrants.

"The Greek government should stop using COVID-19 as an excuse to force people to live in segregated, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. They should be lifted immediately," Cosse said.

The allegations come amid a startling rise in violent attacks in Moria, the country's most dreaded refugee camp, on the island of Lesbos, where the facility's population of 17,000 -- nearly seven times its capacity of about 2,500 -- live in what aid officials describe as a tense and lawless environment with no security or means of escape.

Since the start of the pandemic, five people have been killed and 15 have been wounded in vicious stabbings in the camp, according to Lesbos media and medical officials.

Government officials were not available for confirmation.

Prior to the pandemic, medical officials say, most violence included beatings and minor stabbing. Since the lockdown, though, many cases have turned into brutal chest stabbings -- attacks that resemble what they call "prison or gang-style violence."

In other shows of rising brutality, one victim was raped with a bottle, and the fingers of a young man were cut off.

Unlike the previous leftist government that greeted migrants with open arms, Greece's new, conservative administration has made no secret of its bid to block migrants.

Earlier this year, and after a sudden surge immigrants, leading government officials sanctioned higher security measures along the country's sea and land borders with Turkey against what they called "an enemy invasion."

In a separate message issued in light of Saturday's World Refugee Day, the country's migration ministry said Greece remained at the center of Europe's lingering refugee crisis, "bearing a disproportionate burden."

"The country is safeguarding the rights of those who are really persecuted and operates as a shield of solidarity in the eastern Mediterranean," it added.

This year, 10,095 migrants and refugees have reached Greece, using rickety, rubber rafts to cross the Aegean Sea, mainly from Turkey.

International aid organizations have criticized Greece for conducting illegal migrant pushbacks -- a practice is has consistently denied, blaming Turkey, instead, for allegedly escorting illegal migrants to Greek waters despite a 2016 deal with Europe to help stem the tide of illegal migration in exchange for billions of dollars in urgent aid."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has rebuked its party members who have resorted to violence to express their displeasure post the parliamentary primaries which took place on Saturday.

Reports from various constituencies show NPP supporters of various aspirants engaging in fights or vandalism in disagreement to election results.

One of such involves the youth in Wulensi in the Northern Region burning the party office in the area in protest of the outcome of the elections.

According to the irate youth, the results of the primaries did not reflect the choice of the people.

The NPP, in a statement signed by its National Chairman, Freddie Blay has condemned such acts, describing them as unacceptable.

As a party, let us all endeavour to guard against giving ammunition to our opponents, for vicious and character assassinating attacks. Reported cases of altercations in a few polling stations are unacceptable and the party strongly condemns that. The party is already initiating moves to investigate them thoroughly and if necessary, apply the appropriate sanctions, the statement read.

The party rather asked its members to stay together to plan towards victory in the December polls.

Rather than dividing our ranks, I believe the successful outcome of this Parliamentary Primaries which has been in the spirit of family competition, friendly hostilities and sportsmanship, be used by all aspirants to energize the grassroots, mobilize our supporters for the compilation exercise of the EC's new voters' register and galvanize our energies towards the December polls, it added.

The Chairman further expressed gratitude to all delegates and aspirants for making the exercise in general a success.

Read the full statement below:

On behalf of the National Executive Committee of our party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), I express my sincerest appreciation to all contestants and delegates for their efforts in seeing to the successful organization of the just ended 2020 NPP Parliamentary Primaries conducted in most constituencies where we have NPP members of Parliament. I also thank the officers of the Electoral Commission for yet again rising up to the occasion of supervising the elections in a fair and transparent manner. We equally thank our friends from the media who have given comprehensive coverage and reportage and generated much interest in this year's primaries, even in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. By all standards, the primaries have been a well-conducted and keenly contested one.

The contest has demonstrated the vibrancy and attractiveness of the NPP. As we conclude this phase of our internal parliamentary elections, I will urge all contestants who won to be magnanimous in their victory celebrations and those who lost to be gracious in accepting their loses and personal setbacks, the NPP and our country Ghana remain the ultimate winners. Those who may still have disagreements and complains with the process are encouraged to activate the Party's laid down procedures for redress and reconciliation.

As a party, let us all endeavour to guard against giving ammunition to our opponents, for vicious and character assassinating attacks. Reported cases of Altercations in a few polling stations are unacceptable and the party strongly condemns that. The party is already initiating moves to investigate them thoroughly and if necessary, apply the appropriate sanctions. We must also discourage the unfortunate escalating occurrences of alleged influence peddling and inducements across board, acknowledging that these definitely constitute a threat to Ghana's fledging and young democracy.

Rather than dividing our ranks, I believe the successful outcome of this Parliamentary Primaries which has been in the spirit of family competition, friendly hostilities and sportsmanship, be used by all aspirants to energize the grassroots, mobilize our supporters for the compilation exercise of the EC's new voters' register and galvanize our energies towards the December polls.

Day in day out, the New Patriotic Party continues to set new standards in confronting challenges with the development of our constitutional democracy. Indeed, we have demonstrated beyond doubt, that as a people, we can overcome the limitations this COVID-19 pandemic poses to our society and manage it in a manner that enables us continue to carry out our constitutional privileges, economic activities and social lives.

Just as the President, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo indicated, the NPP cannot let the good people of Ghana down after voting overwhelmingly for the party in the 2016 general elections. The Ghanaian electorates have confidence in the visionary and exemplary leadership of the President and are largely convinced that the New Patriotic Party has what it takes to bring about prosperity and dignity to the good people of Ghana. Therefore, our conduct and activities as party members must be geared towards sustaining that confidence. Obviously, we must acknowledge that the president is delivering well on his mandate, however, we must bear in mind that we are not out of the woods yet. The undoubting task of nation building lies ahead of us and this is inextricably linked to our December 2020 national elections victory.

All in all, I sincerely thank you.

Signed:

Freddie Blay

NPP National Chairman

 citinewsroom
Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump used racist language to describe the coronavirus pandemic at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by terming the virus as the kung flu.

Related: Tulsa braces for Trump's 'wild evening' amid unrest and coronavirus fears

The Covid-19 outbreak began in Wuhan, China, late last year and has since spread around the world, killing tens of thousands of people. Trumps response to the pandemic in the US has been widely criticized as the coronavirus cost more than 100,000 American lives and infected more than two million people.

Trump has repeatedly tried to term Covid-19 as the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus which has prompted outrage from many civil liberties groups, who have warned that such language can inspire racism and violence against Asian Americans.

But in Tulsa Trump appeared to go even further in his use of racist language.

The President uses the term Kung flu pic.twitter.com/yMlGLCRix3  Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) June 21, 2020

It has more names than any disease in history. I can name kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names, he said to cheers from the crowd.

Trump has previously defended his language around linking the virus to China. Speaking at a daily coronavirus task force briefing in March, he said it was not racist at all. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.

In April, the American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director, Cecillia Wang, wrote that attempts to blame China lead to dangerous scapegoating and widespread ignorance, just when accurate public health information is critically needed.

The World Health Organization has also advised against terms that link the virus to China to avoid stigmatization.

At the same rally Trump also used the Spanish word hombre when describing a fictional criminal breaking into a young womans home while she was alone at night. Trump was talking about nationwide protests aimed at defunding the police in the wake of a spate of police killings of Black people.

Story continues

Its one oclock in the morning  a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away, Trump said.

Hombre is the Spanish word for man.

Trump has used the phrase before and in 2015 announced his presidential run by referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists.
JOURNALIST: - Sir, the creation of Ho Chi Minh City into a regional financial center has been under consideration for several years. In the current global scenario, will turmoil in some financial centers in the region, such as in Hong Kong and Shanghai, provide the opportunity for Ho Chi Minh City to be projected as the next new regional financial center?

Dr. VO TRI THANH: - The idea of creating Ho Chi Minh City into a regional financial center was first muted about 20 years ago. But then due to many reasons, including immature planning, the decision was never finalized. Since 2018, this idea has once again been brought up in connection with the creation of creative cities. People have again become to look at HCMC as a possible financial center, and in competition with other centers like Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and whether its suitability is better as a large center or just a functional regional center.

In fact, it is necessary to consider what conditions exist for Ho Chi Minh City to become a flourishing financial center. For instance, will the city become a really livable city after it becomes a financial center and will it then have enough integration of sophisticated transactions in lucrative financial dealings? Also worth considering is how to make it a financial center when our policies on finance and our current monetary system has so many limitations. The Vietnamese currency is not yet a convertible currency and not yet completely liberalized. If I were to judge purely on these limitations, I would say that Ho Chi Minh City is still not qualified enough to be developed into a regional financial center.

In the current international context, building HCMC into a financial center must incorporate new ideas and innovations. Firstly, we must define what we mean by "sufficient conditions", because waiting to be "qualified" in the true sense may never be possible. We must therefore be proactive and consider this a process. The problem is that we dare to decide, dare to do, even dare to bet, but we must see all actual facts first. Secondly, when it comes to the concept of financial centers, it should not be understood that this concept is too comprehensive but should instead be very selective. At forums and seminars, there have been many opinions back and forth on the immediate future of HCMC and possibility as a financial center, but the focus must remain on its existing strengths and current outstanding features.

According to me, HCMC can become a financial center if the highlight is more on "green capital" and "green bonds", because this is the future inevitable trend. Currently, not only HCMC, but the whole country is faced with the issue of sustainable development, and huge environmental risks. Therefore, a big city like HCMC, when it comes to this specific issue, will be quite suitable for moving towards this trend and leave an even bigger imprint for the rest of the world to follow.

My opinion would be to go step by step, solve the many underlying problems and gradually and simultaneously build conditions for the City to become a regional financial center. For example, it is necessary to build HCMC as a place that would be highly livable for future generations. We need to invite a team of senior experts for the development of green dynamic urban areas, and attract capital for sustainable development projects. The City must set priority areas, and embrace every problem, so that more opportunities can be created.

- Sir, what priority areas should be the focus now?

- Technology must remain a development priority, even if it is controversial. Currently, technology is changing so rapidly in the world and many economists are cautious of policy groups related to this issue. However, in many countries, as part of a development strategy, they still choose technology as a priority, because of its wide ranging applicability and affiliation to growth in almost all industries.

The question now arises for Vietnam to choose which technology to focus on more. Some countries in the region such as South Korea consider the smart city as a broad concept, which means not only creating the most livable conditions for people, but also a driving force for creativity, digitalization and high technological development to work in which is also a strong lever of growth for other industries. This is the model HCMC should adopt and follow.

However, whichever field of growth we select, the bottom line is still focused on businesses. We win or lose only because of the condition of our businesses, which must be the dynamism for generations to come. Entrepreneurs are the sounding board and the spirit of entrepreneurship and strong entrepreneurship must be constantly nurtured and encouraged. In general, the private sector in our country is huge in number but poor in standards and quality.

Therefore, a smart city must be a city that can mobilize resources from private enterprises, bring in or create the latest technology, have brand attraction, and gradually have and provide a platform that will dominate a wide distribution network that will be recognized by world class businesses. In all this there must be intense aspiration, determination, professionalism and high competitiveness to meet the best of global standards.

Current research shows that the average life expectancy of 500 of the most prestigious enterprises in the world has decreased from 60 years to just 15 years. This means that if change does not occur or new creativity is not brought in, then even large and well-known business brands will die a premature death. Clearly, a growing fast paced economy must be community centered and become a company centric economy.

- Thank you very much.

Hoang Son (Interviewer)
Amazon bans ads for book on how transgender ideology harms girls, young women

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Online retail giant Amazon has disallowed a publishing house from buying ads to promote a new book critical of transgender ideology that points out its many harms on young girls.

Regnery Publishing, a Washington D.C.-based conservative company that is publishing journalist Abigail Shrier's new book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, announced Sunday that they could not bid on ad space on Amazon to promote the book.

The book, which is set to be released June 30, critically examines from a variety of angles the medical and psychological harms teenage girls and young women experience after adopting a transgender identity and pursuing a pathway of hormonal and surgical transition.

"The cancel culture has made it clear that it despises diversity of opinion, and it will not tolerate science, data, facts, or anything that contradicts the approved narrative," Regnery Publishing said in a statement. "If youre not on board, youll have your head handed to you."

According to Regnery, other resources, products and books that promote transgender ideology are allowed to be "sponsored" on the website.

The online retailer asserted in an email to Regnery that the book "may include ad copy/book content that infers or claims to diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation" and the "campaign will not be allowed to be advertised."

"If you go on Amazon right now and search transgender books, you will find paid advertisements from major publishing houses promoting books on the side of this issue Amazon apparently agrees with, Regnerys Twitter statement reads.

The publishing house argues that the book by Shrier, a journalist who writes for the Wall Street Journal and other prominent media outlets, is being silenced.

"If you search 'transgender' in the books category on the Amazon app right now, you will see a paid ad for LGBT pride month from a prominent publisher and a paid ad for a chest binder, the statement continues. Amazon has told us we are not even allowed to bid on that ad space for Irreversible Damage.

The retail giant reportedly told the publishing house that the book might "not be appropriate for all audiences."

A Regnery spokesperson told The Christian Post in an email Monday that they have appealed to Amazon, but the retail giant has not changed its decision thus far. CP reached out to Amazon for comment. A response is pending.

"As the cancel culture runs rampant  aided and abetted by Big Tech  we will continue to expose hypocrisy, censorship, and bias against our authors when we see it," the Regnery spokesperson said.

Among the other transgender products that Amazon sells on its site are pairs of underwear for men to pretend they have female body parts and a "tomboy trans lesbian" chest binder.

Shrier's book details at length how transgenderism, which is now routinely promoted in therapist offices, schools and the medical establishment, drives young females to alter their bodies with testosterone and surgeries that yield lasting harms.

Until recently, the psychological condition known as gender dysphoria was extremely rare and afflicted mostly boys.

In the past few years, critics have argued that the present transgender "craze" is an internet-fueled social contagion in light of emerging research and the exponential increase in referrals of young people, girls in particular, to gender clinics.

"Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and 'gender-affirming' educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls  including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility," the description of Shrier's book reads on Amazon.com.

The Regnery spokesperson told CP that when the company decided to publish Shriers book, it knew that it would encounter aggressive attempts from the Left to silence it. However, the company did not expect opposition from our own retail partners.

Abigail Shrier's book argues that transgender identification has become one more social contagion among adolescent girls  a dangerous epidemic that, in too many cases, is leading girls to pursue hormones and surgeries that will inflict irreversible damage on their bodies and are likely to end in regret, the Regnery spokesperson stressed. Everyone should be concerned about this kind of harm to young women and want to prevent it. Our goal is to do whatever we can to support Shrier in exposing this issue  with or without Amazons help."

It was reported earlier this month that Amazon banned the Christian conservative activist group Family Research Council from its Amazon Smile program, which enables customers to pick a charity to receive proceeds from their purchases. The conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom was banned from the program in 2018.
UPDATE: Body of missing 22-year-old swimmer is recovered from Delaware River

Authorities are searching for a swimmer who went missing in the Delaware River Sunday.

The United States Coast Guard announced Sunday evening that a 22-year-old man had gone missing near Delanco Sunday afternoon.

The Coast Guards Sector Delaware Bay watchstanders received a report from police in Burlington that the man, who was swimming with friends near a boat ramp near Union and Delaware Avenues, became separated from the group.

The mans friends called for help after seeing he did not resurface from the water. Emergency crews from nearby fire departments, as well as personnel from the Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City and a 29-foot Response Boat-Small boat crew from Coast Guard Station Philadelphia, and New Jersey State Police, began conducting a search, but the man has not yet been found.

The Coast Guard is asking if anyone sees a person in distress to call the Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay command center at 215-271-4940.

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 or send a tip here.

Chris Franklin may be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com.
"The two ministers exchanged views on developments in the region, the foremost of which is the situation in Libya," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez in a statement on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Cairo, June 22 (IANS) Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, where they discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues of mutual concern, Egyptian Foreign Ministry said.

Libya has been engaged in a civil war since the ouster and killing of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The situation escalated in 2014, splitting power between two rival governments with warring forces: the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) based in the capital Tripoli and another in the northeastern city of Tobruk allied with Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA).

Egypt and Russia, along with the United Arab Emirates, support Haftar's LNA, while the GNA is mainly backed by Turkey and Qatar.

Russia is one of the countries that have voiced support for Egypt's recently proposed peace initiative for a political solution to the Libyan crisis.

Shoukry and Lavrov also discussed the development of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the controversial grand hydropower dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River, according to the statement.

--IANS

rt/
By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials will gather this week to discuss whether to give Israel a green light for its plan to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's target date of July 1 approaches.

A senior administration official said on Monday that the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, will be in Washington to meet officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz. President Donald Trump could also join in.

Under Trumps Middle East peace proposal, unveiled in January, it is envisaged that the United States would recognize the Jewish settlements - built on land that the Palestinians seek for a state - as part of Israel.

The proposal would create a Palestinian state as part of a broader peace plan, but impose strict conditions on it. Palestinian leaders have dismissed the initiative entirely.

Encouraged by Trump's push, Netanyahu has set July 1 as the date to launch his project of extending sovereignty over the settlements and the Jordan Valley, hoping for a green light from Washington. Most countries view Israel's settlements on occupied land as illegal, and Palestinian leaders have voiced outrage at the prospect of annexation.

"Ultimately, as the team approaches this thought of annexation, the main thing going through our heads is, 'Does this in fact help advance the cause of peace?' And therefore that is what will help drive a lot of the discussion," the official said.

LIMITED ANNEXATION FIRST?

Among the main options expected to be considered is a step-by-step process in which Israel would initially declare sovereignty over several settlements close to Jerusalem instead of the 30% of the West Bank envisaged in Netanyahus original plan, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The source said the Trump administration has not closed the door to a larger annexation, but fears that allowing Israel to move too fast could kill any hopes of eventually drawing the Palestinians to sit down to discuss Trump's peace plan.

Story continues

There are also concerns about opposition to annexation from Jordan, one of only two countries that have a peace treaty with Israel, as well from Gulf states that have quietly expanded engagement with Israel in recent years.

Washington has also made clear it wants Israels unity government, which has been divided on the issue, to reach a consensus before going ahead with any actions, the source said. Defense Minister Benny Gantz, head of the Blue and White Party, has so far been reluctant to back Likud-leader Netanyahus plan.

Berkowitz has been fielding calls about the Trump plan from European and Arab nations, but the U.S. side has privately expressed frustration that they are not offering constructive ideas on how to amend it, a source familiar with the issue said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
A statue to George Washington in Baltimore was defaced with red paint over the weekend.

The memorial in Druid Hill Park also had the words 'Destroy Racists' and the initials for the Black Lives Matter movement written on the base.

As statues and memorials to the Confederacy have been targeted across the South, protesters have also targeted Founding Fathers who were slaveholders, including Washington.

Police said Sunday morning that they had not received any complaints about the vandalism. Baltimore removed several statues and memorials linked to the Confederacy back in 2017.

Washington, the first US president, owned hundreds of African-descended slaves.

He also had a torturous relationship with Native Americans and a lifelong pursuit of their land.

A statue to George Washington in Baltimore was defaced with red paint over the weekend

Police said Sunday morning that they had not received any complaints about the vandalism. Baltimore removed several statues and memorials linked to the Confederacy back in 2017

The memorial in Druid Hill Park also had the words 'Destroy Racists' and the initials for the Black Lives Matter movement written on the base

Local resident Kimmie Kemler told Fox Baltimore: 'It must be tough if you grew up in this neighborhood or in Druid Hill and every day you see the celebration of George Washington, but at the same time you also see your neighbors being arrested and being killed.

'I'm sure there's dissonant feelings there and there's anger there and it's justified anger.'

A burning American flag was also draped across a Washington statue in Portland, Oregon on Friday. The memorial, which stood on the lawn of the German American Society, had been pulled down by a group of about 30 to 40 protesters.

Footage of the incident, which took place on the eve of Juneteenth, showed the Washington statue draped in a US flag that had been set alight just moments before it was toppled.

The demonstrators placed a sticker on the head of the statue that read 'You are on Native land' and also spray-painted the statue's pedestal with the phrase 'Genocidal colonist'.

It was also tagged with '1619' - a reference to the year when slaves were first brought to America.

A statue of George Washington with a burning American flag draped across it was toppled by protesters in Portland, Oregon on Thursday night

WASHINGTON'S HISTORY WITH SLAVES AND NATIVE AMERICANS George Washington, a founding father and America's first president, was known to have owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations. He also supported measures passed by Congress to protect slavery in a bid to preserve national unity at the time. He later freed his slaves in a 1799 will. Washington also had a torturous relationship with Native Americans. He tried to assimilate them into Anglo-American culture and vowed bloodshed if they refused. He tried to combat resistance from Native Americans with violent conflict. His Indian policy was primarily about acquiring indigenous land and he became known to Native Americans as Town Destroyer. Advertisement

Those responsible draped the fallen statue in a second US flag and also set that alight.

Protesters have been tearing down statues across the country as part of anti-racism demonstrations fueled by George Floyd's death in Minneapolis last month.

That specific George Washington statue dates back to 1926.

Anger over racial injustice has broadened in recent weeks to target founding fathers, colonialists, monarchs and explorers, who in some cases destroyed or enslaved local populations across the world in the European scramble for empire and treasure.

In Washington's case, he was known to have owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations. He also supported measures passed by Congress to protect slavery in a bid to preserve national unity at the time. He later freed his slaves in a 1799 will.

Washington also tried to assimilate Native Americans into Anglo-American culture and vowed bloodshed if they refused.

He tried to combat resistance from Native Americans with violent conflict.

His Indian policy was primarily about acquiring indigenous land and he became known to Native Americans as Town Destroyer.

As recently as last week, California lawmakers decided to remove a Christopher Columbus statue from the state Capitol and concrete barriers were installed around a Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia.

Images from the scene show the statue lying face down on the ground and covered in graffiti that read: 'Genocidal colonist'

The George Washington incident took place on the 21st day of protests in the city. Thousands of protesters have filled the streets of Portland every night for three weeks following Floyd's death

A statue of Thomas Jefferson that was based outside Portland's Jefferson High School was also torn down earlier last week.

The base of the statue had the words 'slave owner' and Floyd's name spray painted across it.

The George Washington incident in Portland took place on the 21st day of protests in the city.

Thousands of protesters have filled the streets of the city every night for three weeks following Floyd's death.

Mayor Ted Wheeler announced this week that Juneteenth will be a paid city holiday starting Friday.

The date of June 19 is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the US.

It comes after a statue of Thomas Jefferson that was based outside Portland's Jefferson High School was torn down earlier this week
Toshiba introduced its 2020-21 range in a first ever nationwide virtual event. The new range launched during the virtual event includes multi-door refrigerator, 2-door refrigerators with top freezer, washer dryers, front-loading and top-loading washing machines, and water purifiers.

Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Pranab Mohanty, Vice President, Toshiba Home Appliance Business said, Toshiba has always been known for providing technologically-advanced high-quality home appliances. The launch of our 2020-21 range of refrigerators, washing machines, washerdryers, and water purifiers is a testament to Toshibas strong commitment to satisfy the varied needs of ourIndian consumers. Currently, these products are manufactured at and sourced from Toshiba global factories. To support our commitment towards the governments Make-in-India mission, we soon plan to manufacture Toshiba brand products in India at the Toshiba Manufacturing Complex located at SUPA Pune.

Governed by the JapaneseTakumi spirit, Toshiba 2020-21 range of home appliances is designed, engineered and manufactured with an uncompromising attention to the details that matter most to people. To complement consumers home decor, the new range perfectly amalgamates design with functionality, giving it a very elegant look and fit with the modern room interiors. Our new range of home appliances is an embodiment of Toshibas meticulous product quality and design, guided by the Japanese Takumi philosophy centered in highest level of craftsmanship, added Mr. Mohanty.

TOSHIBA MULTI-DOOR REFRIGERATOR GR-RF646WE-PGI

The new Multi-door Toshiba refrigerator is one of the most innovative, spacious and technologically advanced refrigerators, designed carefully keeping in mind the Indian consumers storage needs and their evolving lifestyle. The 650 Litre 4-door refrigerator is a masterpiece with a Luxurious Design & Glass Door Finish. It comes with the iconic Convert Zone feature, that offers complete flexibility to the consumers to transform one of the 91 Litre bottom-mounted freezer unit into a mini fridge. With a touch of a button, customers can expand the refrigerators capacity by almost 15%, and adjust temperatures setting from -18c to 7c to store vegetables, fruits, fish and meat within the same space.

There are additional intelligent features to keep the freshness inside the fridge intact for longer like 3 System Cooling that boasts of 3 independent cooling systems delivering fast and efficient cooling to each compartment and avoiding mixing of odor, allowing consumers to avoid cross-contamination of food. The Plasma+ Pure Deodorizer deactivates bacteria, removes bad odor and keep the inner surrounding clean and healthy by purifying the cool air.

Each and every Corner of this masterpiece has been utilized effectively there are 26 Spatial Compartments to cater to everyones storage needs.

Featuring a Smart Digital Touch control to maintain desired temperatures in all compartments and an even cooling all the time, the Toshiba multi-door refrigerator is priced at INR 149,990/- and is available in an elegant Blue Glass finish.

TOSHIBA 2-DOOR REFRIGERATOR GR-AG66INA

Introducing the distinctive Automatic Ice Maker feature in this category, Toshiba 2-Door Refrigerator comes with many innovative features which ensure freshness, convenience and hygiene in the fridge. With Auto Ice Maker Function, consumers can get many ice cubes at once without any hassles. The 661 Litre refrigerator incorporates Cool Air Wrap System that circulates pure and Fresh air to the corners of the fridge using multiple vents. The Ag+ (Silver nano) Crisper contains the Ag+ ions that restricts bacterial growth keeping groceries fresh for a longer period. Toshibas patented LED Hybrid Deodorizer uses two catalysts filters that decompose different types of odor and a LED/UV light to restrain bacteria growth inside the refrigerator, keeping the food items fresh and healthy for longer periods.

The Ultra Fresh Zone in the refrigerator, gives a flexibility of adjusting temperature setting up to -3c, giving an additional advantage of storing food at lower temperature, apart from using it as a normal chiller zone. This elegant looking Model hosts a Touch Control at the freezer Door to make it convenient for consumers to adjust freezer temperature and choose from different modes. Available in Gradient Blue and Black color options, this 661 L model is priced at INR 83,990/-.

The two-door Refrigerator range includes 6 models with 12 variants of SKUs from the capacity 252L to 661L with the price range between INR 27,000/- and INR 85,000/-

All Toshiba refrigerators come with Real INVERTER technology to ensure optimum energy consumption translating into energy savings of 20%, and a 10-year compressor warranty.

TOSHIBA WASHING MACHINES

The 2020-21 range of Toshiba washing machines include 4 top-loading and 6 front-loading SKUs starting from 7kg up to 9Kg ranging between INR 21,000 and INR 80,000/-.

The new Toshiba Washing Machine range adopts safety & humanized design and is aimed to provide exclusive laundry care for your family. The new range also houses the Real INVERTER motor that is quieter, more efficient, durable and more stable than a conventional motor.

Toshiba Front-loading Washing Machine is one of a kind and works by the phenomenon of THE GREAT WAVES technology that uses both Flush Wave and Color Alive that saves time, money and protects your laundry. It gets the washing done in one go for easy and hassle-free lifestyle with both the washer and dryer at same capacity.

The front-loading washing machines are designed with Anti-Bacterial Gasket that avoids damp or unpleasant smell when opening the front load door and prevents formation of molds and mildew on the gasket surface. The Drum Clean feature thoroughly cleans the drum with high temperature water, without using any harsh chemicals. Priced at INR 35,990/- onwards the front-loading washing machine models are available in white and dark grey colors.

The Top-loading washing machines feature No Angular Design  a rounded corner design that prevents accidental injury or scratching during operation. The transparent glass lid with bearing load of 100kg is enhanced with Silk Pattern looks aesthetically pleasing, leaving no water residue on inner lid. The 43-degree Soft Closed Lid design ensures the lid drops down constant slowly and closes safely. The Easy Kit multi-functional detergent box provides separate container for softener, liquid detergent and washing powder, and the siphon cap structure ensures thorough mixing of water and detergent to enhance washing performance significantly.

Using the 3 waterfalls and water flow from 864 water holes, the GREATWAVES function creates three different types of waves  the No Wrap Flow to avoid tangling of laundry, Upper Push Flow to enhance contact surface of laundry in the tub, and Spring Flow to avoid excessive wear of laundry.

TOSHIBA WASHER-DRYER

The 11kg front-load washer-dryer houses Real INVERTER motor, and is powered by the GREATWAVES technology. This model is also designed with Anti-Bacterial Gasket and the Cyclone Mix technology improves washing performance by using an impeller that is implanted in the drawer which increases detergent dissolution by 20%. Priced at INR 79,990/- the washer-dryer also has a LED Drum Light for better viewing of clothes during washing or drying.

TOSHIBA WATER PURIFIERS

Toshiba Water Purifiers range for 2020-21 includes 4 SKUs featuring a UV Shield that kills 99.99% of bacteria in the water using a cold cathode UV lamp, which is a last point purification ensuring purity till last drop; a Smart Interactive Display that informs consumer about filter replacement, water level inside the tank, service reminder and UV function Highlighter; and a Replaceable Tank design with choices of a stainless steel or plastic tank.

The Black Mirror Finish RO+UV variant N1748T1 (K) comes with a Stainless steel tank and White color RO+UV variant N1748T1 (W) with a plastic tank, these models are available at INR 27,990/- and INR 24,990/- respectively, the Green RO series N1748TNF-IND(W) which is suited for low TDS input water retails at INR 23,990/-.

Toshiba also has added new UF + UV variant in its range this year suited for areas where input TDS is upto 250 PPM , this model is priced at INR 14,990/-

The complete Toshiba Water Purifier Range promises purity till last drop.
(Newser)  The Eskimo Pie will have a new name for its second century. Like companies deciding their product names are hurtful, Dreyers Grand Ice Cream's has decided to leave the Eskimo Pie name and marketing campaign in the past, along with the Eskimo character, the New York Times reports. "We are committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality, and recognize the term is inappropriate," the company's marketing chief says. Dreyer's just closed the deal to buy Eskimo Pie from Nestle in January, per Adweek.The company said it will have a new name for its chocolate-wrapped ice cream product by the end of the year and review its other brands to ensure they "reflect our people values."

story continues below

The packaging has changed over the years, of course, but has long included a child with dark hair, wearing mittens and a parka with a fur-lined hood. "Eskimo" often is used in Alaska to refer to all Inuit and Yupik people, but many people in various parts of the world consider it derogatory. It was conferred and used by colonizers in the Arctic and was said to mean "eater of raw meat," as a code for barbarism. The rapid name changes are a switch for the owners of problematic brands. Before the protests for racial equity began, sparked by the death of George Floyd, Adweek points out, some of the companies wouldn't comment on the names or whether they'd be changed. "Eskimo Pie" was trademarked in 1922. The original name was "I-Scream Bar." (Quaker Oats says it's reassessing its brand names.)
A British Airways plane is parked at London City Airport in London. (Tolga AKMEN/AFP)

The gateway to the once-bustling Canary Wharf and City financial districts welcomed a short flight from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.

The small turboprop plane's landing and quick departure for its return leg was the only one scheduled - but officials could hardly sound more pleased.

"This clear early demand from our passengers to get back to flying is really encouraging," airport chief executive Robert Sinclair said.

Initial routes will be domestic because of international travel restrictions and only a handful of destinations will be served in the first weeks.

London businesses are also unhappy with the government's divisive decision to impose 14-day quarantines on most people arriving in Britain.

"Both blanket Foreign Office advice not to travel abroad and the mandatory two-week quarantine for all arrivals into the UK should be limited to the highest risk countries," the London First business lobby said on the airport's website.

Heathrow and London's smaller Gatwick and Stansted airports remained partially open throughout the crisis.

TWO-METRE BATTLE

Britain's official death toll of 42,632 is Europe's highest and third globally behind the United States and Brazil.

But health officials lowered the alert level to three on a five-point scale on Friday - a signal the government needed to take a more business-friendly approach.

British pubs and restaurants are most upset about a requirement for people to stay two metres apart in public.

Business owners complain the restriction means they cannot seat enough people to make a profit.

The measure is also partially blamed for the government's inability to reopen schools before the summer break.

British newspapers and business figures have been waging a war against it for weeks.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson - his approval ratings dropping as the economic toll of the health disaster climbs - is expected on Tuesday to give the formal go-ahead for pubs and restaurants to start seating clients on Jul 4.

Some hair salons have also started taking bookings for July in anticipation.

But most will be watching to see what he has to say about the two-metre requirement - an issue that some critics view as emblematic of Johnson's incongruous response to the crisis.

The Telegraph newspaper said Johnson will announce a "one metre plus" rule that allows people everwhere to stand closer together if they wear masks.

PUBLIC ANGER

"There are all sorts of mitigations that can be put in place to be physically closer than two metres but not have the transmission of the virus or the risk of spreading the coronavirus," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC.

But public frustration at the government's response to the crisis is becoming clear.

A YouGov poll showed Johnson's approval rating slipping into negative territory for the first time since he took over last July.

Surveys show that not everyone wants an immediate end to restrictions, but the list of grievances appears to be on the rise.

"How can it be that it looks like we are going to end up with a higher death toll, a longer lockdown and a worse economic hit? How does that happen?" a Sky News presenter asked Hancock on a popular Sunday politics show.

"Well, there will be a time for this sort of analysis and it's very important in terms of insuring all the lessons are learned," he replied.
Could Kate Ritchie be heading back to Summer Bay?

The former Home and Away star stunned fans this week when she revealed that she would love to return to acting and still misses the TV drama that launched her career.

Speaking to TV Week, the 41-year-old mother-of-one opened up about her desire to get back on set.

Return to Summer Bay? Kate Ritchie told TV Week this week she wants to return to acting and misses Home and Away

'The day I walk back onto a film set will be a very happy one,' she shared.

'I look forward to being part of an ensemble again one day. It's all about finding the right role. Don't worry - I'm still searching.'

Kate said she misses Home and Away, hinting she could one day reprise her role as Sally Fletcher on the long-running Channel Seven soap.

Return to the Bay: Kate said she misses Home and Away, hinting she could possibly reprise her role as Sally Fletcher on the long-running Channel Seven soap

'I will always feel attached to Home and Away,' she gushed.

'Even now, with some distance from those days and having had the chance to develop into my own person without the security blanket of Sally, I still miss it desperately.

Breakout role: The radio presenter began her acting career as a child, scoring the role of Sally at the age of eight. Kate left the show back in 2008, before briefly reprising her role in 2013 for the series' 25th anniversary special

The radio presenter began her acting career as a child, scoring the role of Sally at the age of eight.

Kate left the show back in 2008, before briefly reprising her role in 2013 for the series' 25th anniversary special.

The brunette beauty currently hosts her Nova radio show, Kate, Tim & Marty and has written two children's books.

Career goals: The brunette beauty currently hosts her Nova radio show, Kate, Tim & Marty and has written two children's books

She also shares a five-year-old daughter, Mae, with husband Stuart Webb, 39.

In April, New Idea Magazine reported that the couple had been attending 'counselling' for their issues.

'Stuart has been trying to show Kate that he's a changed man and is serious about getting his life in order,' a 'friend' allegedly told the publication.

Doting mother: The radio presenter shares a five-year-old daughter, Mae, with her husband Stuart Webb

The source claims that the pair have been meeting up to 'work through' things and have made 'great progress so far.'

Kate and Stuart were spotted together in February for their daughter Mae's first day of school.

Just three months earlier the actress reportedly moved out of the family home after police took out an interim AVO on her behalf against the NRL star, following an incident at her house in Randwick.

Making it work: The couple have reportedly been attending 'counselling sessions' for their issues. 'Stuart has been trying to show Kate that he's a changed man and is serious about getting his life in order'

In November, Stuart agreed to a year-long apprehended violence order taken (AVO) taken against him by NSW Police.

The AVO banned him being in Kate's company within 12 hours of drinking alcohol or taking illicit drugs.

Daily Mail Australia confirmed Kate had moved out of the couple's marital home in Sydney's Randwick, in October.
The Los Angeles County sheriff says more law enforcement is needed on the streets, echoing his counterpart in Minneapolis who pushed back on calls to defund departments as Georgia's state legislature moves closer to dissolving local police agencies in the wake of the Ahmaud Arbery shooting.

Calls to cut funding for police and in some cases to abolish departments altogether have grown out of the protest movement that erupted following the police-involved death of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

But senior law enforcement officials say that their agencies are underfunded and that cutting back on the number of police officers on the streets puts communities in danger.

LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told Fox News on Monday that reducing the number of police officers on the streets 'should be the last thing in the world' that residents demand.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva (above) on Monday pushed back on calls to defund the police, saying it would endanger communities across America

'LA County is the largest county in the nation,' Villanueva said.

'We are the most understaffed law enforcement agency in the entire nation with an average of one deputy per 1,000 residents.'

By comparison, Villanueva said that the New York Police Department has four officers per 1,000 residents.

He also sounded a 'note of caution' to those advocating for cutting the number of police officers in large cities.

'Ask the average person who is not involved in the criminal justice system,' he said.

'They're not suspects, formerly incarcerated, currently incarcerated, or relatives of those incarcerated.

'Ask that crowd: the people who do their job day to day, they want to make sure they have that safety net to know that they can get to home from work and back without being hassled, without being burglarized while they are at work, for example.'

Villanueva added: 'Ask people, what about crime? Who's gonna do what?

'They never have a good answer. They talk about this utopian society that doesn't exist.

'If and when we get to that point, I'll be the first to defund us, but we're not there.'

LASD has come under fire in recent days after the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old security guard.

The sister of Andres Guardado has urged officials to further examine the circumstances leading up to her sibling's death in Gardena on Thursday night.

US Representatives Nanette Diaz Barragan and Maxine Waters have joined the Guardado family in calling for an independent investigation.

'Another day and another Black or Brown kid has been shot in the back by police,' the Los Angeles-based democrats said in a joint statement. 'These killings must stop. We demand it. The American people demand it.'

LASD is under fire after the fatal shooting of an Hispanic teen last week. Andres Guardado, 18, was standing outside the autobody shop where he worked in Gardena, in the South Bay region of Los Angeles. His boss told reporters Guardado had a clean record, and that the approaching sheriffs pulled their own guns on the teenager, which scared him into fleeing the scene

Guardado's sister, Jennifer Guardado (above) has urged officials to further examine the circumstances leading up to her sibling's death in Gardena on Thursday night

Relatives of Guardado, embrace as they tour the site of the shooting inside an auto shop in Gardena, California

Andres Guardado, 18, was standing outside the autobody shop where he worked in Gardena, in the South Bay region of Los Angeles, guarding against graffiti taggers on Thursday evening.

The Hispanic teenager allegedly spotted officers patrolling the area just before 6pm, and investigators say they saw him flash a handgun before taking off, police said.

However his boss told reporters Guardado had a clean record, and that the approaching sheriffs pulled their own guns on the teenager, which scared him into fleeing the scene.

Officers began chasing him on foot southbound before a deputy fired a gun 'at least several times', striking Guardado's upper torso and killing him.

County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has also since added his voice to the chorus calling for an independent investigation, requesting that the Office of the Inspector General step in to divulge specifically what happened.

'I firmly believe that an immediate and independent investigation must be conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) into this matter, and I urge the Sheriff's Department to immediately and fully cooperate with this OIG independent investigation,' Ridley-Thomas said in a written statement.

Head of the LA County Sheriff Department's homicide division, Capt. Kent Wegener, says that deputies reported seeing Guardado  who allegedly wasn't wearing a uniform - talking to someone in a car outside of the auto-shop.

Authorities say Guardado 'looked to the deputies' and 'produced a gun' before running away, Wegener said during a news conference Saturday. He added that Guardado was too young to work as a state-licensed security guard at the business.

Andres Guardado, 18 (pictured), from Los Angeles, California, was shot and killed at around 6pm on Thursday evening outside the autobody shop where he was employed

The shooting took place in an alleyway in the back of the building. Guardado was shot in the torso, Wegener said, adding that the medical examiner will perform an autopsy.

Guardado's family, meanwhile, insist the teen was actually shot in the back as he ran.

Investigators said they recovered a modified .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol at the scene. It had no markings or serial number and appeared to have been pieced together from different parts.

The gun had not been fired, the police captain said. Guardado's family have insisted that they do not believe the teenager was armed.

Jennifer Guardado said Friday that her brother did not carry weapons. She says she wants to meet the deputy who shot Guardado and see video footage of what happened.

'They're not going to kill an innocent person and get away with it,' she said. 'There will be justice in this world.'

Villanueva promised to leave 'no stone unturned' in the ongoing investigation. Investigators have taken footage from six or seven exterior cameras from the scene of Thursday's shooting for examination.

'Shootings are thoroughly investigated,' he said Saturday. 'It's a deliberative process that can sometimes be maddeningly slow.'

Villanueva said the shooting underscores why the department needs to get body cameras for all of its uniformed deputies as soon as possible. The department is currently soliciting bids for a company to provide the cameras.

Meanwhile, a bill to let local voters decide whether to abolish the scandal-plagued Glynn County police department has gone to Governor Brian Kemp for his approval or veto, having gained support in the Georgia legislature after the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.

The state House voted 159-3 on Monday to approve Senate Bill 504, creating a nonbinding advisory referendum on whether to abolish the department and hand its law enforcement responsibilities back to the elected county sheriff in unincorporated parts of the coastal Georgia county.

A separate measure that would make the referendum binding passed the House on Friday by a vote of 152-3 and is pending before the Senate.

If that also passes in the waning days of this legislative session, it would fall to Kemp to decide how much power to give the county's voters to decide the issue in November.

Glynn County commissioners oppose both measures, saying two local Republican lawmakers are trying to help their political ally, Sheriff Neal Jump.

The Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill that will allow voters to decide whether to abolish law enforcement agencies in Glynn County over their handling of the investigation into the fatal March shooting of 25-year-old black man Ahmaud Arbery (above)

Arbery was fatally shot on February 23 when a white father and son armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old black man running in their neighborhood.

More than two months passed before Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, were charged with felony murder and aggravated assault.

Arrests came after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local prosecutors.

Efforts to abolish the department had been progressing, albeit more slowly, before Arbery was shot, motivated by a series of scandals.

The police chief and three former high-ranking officers were indicted in March on charges that they ignored an officer consorting with a drug dealer.

A Glynn County narcotics officer was found to have been having sex with two confidential informants.

There have been claims of unjustified shootings by the department's officers.

Glynn County Chairman Mike Browning and most of his fellow commissioners have stood by the department nevertheless.

'To use the death of this young man, to invoke the name of Ahmaud Arbery, who was gunned down while running down a street, to play on the emotions of everyone in the House and the Senate has brought us to a new low in the state of Georgia,' Browning told The Brunswick News.

On Sunday, the Minneapolis police chief said he's not in favor of dismantling the city's embattled police system, despite a City Council move to abolish the force, but conceded, 'We know it's broken. We need to make changes'.

Minneapolis has been the focal point of the Black Lives Matter movement unfolding across the country following the death of Floyd at the hands of a white MPD officer on May 25.

Following the brutal police killing, on June 12 the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution to replace the city's police department with a community-led public safety system.

However, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo doesn't agree with calls to dissolve the MPD.

'Each and every day I hear from community members who rely upon us, who are saying that we cannot afford to take away a public safety mechanism when we still have a lawless society,' he said in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night.

Minneapolis' Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said he does not support dismantling the force in an interview with 60 Minutes aired Sunday night saying: 'Each and every day I hear from community members who rely upon us, who are saying that we cannot afford to take away a public safety mechanism when we still have a lawless society'

'Now, they also say we need good policing. We know it's broken. We need to make changes,' he added.

The groundbreaking move to disband the police department followed the example of other high-profile local agencies including Minneapolis Public Schools, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation and the University of Minnesota from severing ties with the MPD.

Other cities are declaring similar demands to dismantle police systems and create alternative agencies in an effort to eradicate bias in law enforcement and end brutality.

Chief Arradondo said he doesn't see racial animosity within the police force, but is working to address the systemic barriers that exist, including contract talks with the police union.

He said such barriers block cops from being hit with charges of misconduct.

Minneapolis has been the focal point of the Black Lives Matter movement unfolding across the country following the death of black man George Floyd at the hands of a white MPD officer on May 25

Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white cop who has since been arrested, was seen in footage kneeling on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as the victim repeatedly said he could not breathe (incident pictured)

In the case of George Floyd, white officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on Floyd's neck. Arradondo says Chauvin had at least 17 complaints against him, but only received two letters of reprimand.

Host Lesley Stahl asked him: 'Is the bottom line that you cannot weed out the so-called bad apples, and you cannot fully discipline to the extent you want to, because of the union contract?'

He replied: 'It is problematic, absolutely. Yes. And so I cannot in good faith work with a contract that diminishes my authority as chief but also erodes that public trust that our communities need so much right now.'

He said one step he's taken was to walk away from contract talks with the police union the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation because it curtails his authority by allowing officers who were fired or disciplined to get their jobs back in arbitration.

'I, as chief, am stepping away from that. I am taking a deliberate pause,' he sad.

The Minneapolis police department came under intense scrutiny following Floyd's death on May 25.

Arradondo, a 30-year veteran and the first black man to head the mostly white police department, fired the four officers involved in Floyd's death within 24 hours.

From left to right: Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane

For weeks now protests have unfolded across the city that have culminated into clashes with police. Minneapolis police pictured spraying protesters with pepper spray during a protest decrying the death of George Floyd outside of the Third Police Precinct on May 27

A protester is sprayed with pepper spray by a Minneapolis Police officer on May 30 as protesters demonstrate during the fifth day of protests over George Floyd's death

He admitted that police initially released to the press that Floyd resisted arrest and died 'after a medical incident during a police interaction' when in reality he did not resist and fell unconscious under the pressure of Chauvin's unmoving knee.

His death was ruled a homicide caused by 'a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained'.

Speaking on the harrowing video footage of Floyd's death, which was filmed by a 17-year-old, Arradondo became emotional.

'When I saw that video, it was probably in my 30-plus years, the most heart-wrenching, emotional, image that I had ever seen,' he said.

What will Minneapolis look like without a police department? There is no short-term plan to scrap the Minneapolis police department, the city council says. As of Friday, the council have started a year-long process to find recommendations for what will replace it. The replacement is set to be a community-led public safety system that will redirect funds from the department and channel them into community services aimed at preventing crime. Money could be redirected to mental health services, social services, jobs programs, and arts groups. Jobs such as traffic stops, overdose call-outs and mental health calls may be taken away from officers. One recommendation from activists involves a smaller, more-specialized force of 'public servants' who would deal with solving violent crimes. County sheriffs, whose jurisdiction includes Minneapolis, could be used as a stop-gap police force. Advertisement

Even after Floyd's death sparked outrage and passionate protests, another black man was shot by a white officer in Atlanta and 24 hours later the Atlanta police chief resigned, but Chief Arradondo said he never considered leaving his post.

'No. I-- I did not consider stepping down. When George Floyd's death occurred, my minutes and my hours and my days were consumed with-- really trying to-- to keep this city, um, held together.'

While the officers involved in Floyd's death were fired, it took time for them to be hit with charges.

Derek Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder on June 3. He had previously been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

He was arrested on May 29 and is being held at Minnesota Department of Corrections. His bail sits at $1million.

On Wednesday June 3 the three other officers involved - Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane - were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

On Wednesday June 10 Thomas Lane was released from Hennepin County Jail after posting bail. The bail for him and the other officers was set at $1million unconditional or $750,000 with conditions.

He had been on the police force for four days when Floyd died.

On Friday June 19 J. Alexander Kueng was released on $750,000 bail bond.

Now Minneapolis' City Council will now begin a year-long process of engaging 'with every willing community member in Minneapolis' to come up with a new public safety model to replace the MPD.

The resolution states the process will center on 'the voices of Black people, American Indian people, people of color, immigrants, victims of harm, and other stakeholders who have been historically marginalized or under-served by our present system'.

'Together, we will identify what safety looks like for everyone,' the resolution reads.

The council also commissioned a new work group named the Future of Community Safety Work Group to deliver recommendations by July 24 on how to engage with community stakeholders to transform the public safety system.

It will be made up of staff from the Office of Violence Prevention, the Department of Civil Rights, and the City Coordinator's Office, in coordination with the 911 Working Group, the Division of Race and Equity, Neighborhood and Community Relations and other relevant departments.
No fewer than 28 statutory State Executive Committee (SEC) members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State on Monday announced the suspension of Igo Aguma as the partys caretaker chairman.

Former senator representing Rivers East, Andrew Uchendu, made the disclosure in a resolution reached by its members in Port Harcourt.

Mr Uchendu said that former Executive Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Sokonte Davis, had been appointed as new Acting Chairman.

It would be recalled that Mr Aguma was recognised as APCs caretaker committee chairman in Rivers following a Port Harcourt High Court judgement delivered by Justice George Omereji.

The court had also ordered that all statutory SEC members of the party in the state should be part of the caretaker committee.

He expressed worries that Mr Aguma disrespected the court judgment by taking critical decisions concerning the party without the committee members.

READ ALSO:

He constituted himself into a sole administrator, relegating, abandoning and disregarding the committee, and taking critical decisions affecting the party all by himself.

Aguma summoned a virtual meeting of the statutory members of SEC on June 14, he deliberately denied the majority of SEC members the User Identity and password to access the meeting, he said.

Mr Uchendu stated that the judgment of the High Court did not pronounce Mr Aguma a sole administrator of the party in Rivers.

He said that the 28 SEC members out of a total of 38, viewed Mr Agumas actions as a deliberate attempt to fester the crisis in the party.

By that judgment, every statutory member of SEC forms part of the caretaker committee and must be part of the decision making process of the APC in Rivers.

Every decision must be by majority vote after quorum has been formed, he said.

(NAN)
TULSA, Okla. - Nine-year-old Nila Faulk was leaving the Trump rally with her grandparents when chants of "black lives matter" rang out from the street where protesters were blocking traffic. The chants gave way to shrieks and shouts as a white man stepped out of a truck and pepper-sprayed one of the black demonstrators in the face.

As activists separated the two, Nila and her grandparents hurried down the block away from the fracas.

"It's a shame," Ken Bonvillian said, asked how he'd explain to his granddaughter what she saw.

"I'll just tell her it's wrong the way they're doing things," he said of the protesters, whose tactics he viewed as violent. "Violence is not the answer; it's not the way we grew up learning about the history of our country."

For those who protested peacefully, he had more empathy, though Bonvillian doesn't understand why they're at odds with the president.

"They want equality, justice, fairness," he said. "They want to make sure that we have a legacy to pass down to generations to come. And I really do think Trump wants that."

The protests that surrounded the BOK Center where President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally in months Saturday largely avoided violent confrontation. But the frequent verbal clashes with rallygoers were enough to attract the curiosity of juvenile eyes, as children walked hand-in-hand with adult relatives who gave them front row seats to a tumultuous chapter of American history.

Several pro-Trump families echoed Bonvillian's sentiments as they made their way home from the rally or watched the activists protesting systemic racism and police brutality. The demonstrators are misinformed, they told their children; Trump wants the best for all people, including African Americans, several parents said. We don't see color, and they shouldn't either.

Nila clung to her grandparents, adjusting a red, white and blue bonnet once they felt far away enough from threats. Another child sat in his father's lap on a sidewalk bench as they watched protesters armed with pistols in waistbands and holsters verbally spar and occasionally scuffle with Trump supporters, some of them also armed with pistols in waistbands and holsters. A 12-year-old boy helped his father sell versions of the Confederate flag.

Alex Standridge, 12, stood next to her two older siblings, Air Force veterans, as protesters traded insults with MAGA-hatted men.

"I wanna be brave like my brothers," Alex told her father's girlfriend.

They'd arrived at the rally too late to get inside the venue, so they stood in a crowd beyond the outer-gate perimeter and waited to see protesters pass. Richard Standridge, Alex's dad, told her the protesters were yelling at them because he was wearing an American-flag-patterned shirt, the flag her brothers were willing to "die for if they have to."

"She has to pick her side," Standridge said. "I can't pick her side for her. And to do that, she has to be able to see what's going on. That's the best thing we can teach our kids."

What would he tell her about the protesters' goals?

"I don't think they even understand what they want," Standridge said of the protesters, "because black lives do matter. Every life matters. I have lots of white friends and black friends. I'm out in the oil field. We don't see color. You either work, pull your weight, or you go home. There's no color."

Of all his relatives at the rally, Standridge said, "she's going to take the most from this, and it's going to shape her life and how she handles different viewpoints."

Logan Renfro, 13, of Fayetteville, Ark., joined his grandmother Anne Harrison, 57, near a couple of blocks from the BOK Center, where they watched police disperse protesters with pepper projectiles. "I saw one of them holding a shotgun," he beamed, referring to a police officer.

Harrison said the protesting blurred the line between peaceful and violent: "They were parading around fairly peacefully. Their speech wasn't necessarily peaceful."

She and Logan weren't able to get into the rally, she said, after a woman working security told the waiting crowd that volunteers checking temperatures had all gone home and that the gates were closed. So they stuck around the city and watched the crowds and protesters. She told him the best way to learn the truth was to see it for himself.

She added that she planned to tell Logan about how the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats.

"I know that they want equality, and I'm all for that," she said, Logan's hand in hers. "Democrats throughout history have not voted for black lives. The whole KKK came out of the Democratic Party. You cannot say that it's changed. They still use them for their purposes. And their purpose today was pitting them against President Trump, and it breaks my heart, because I value African Americans and they've been done wrong by the Democrats."

Down the block, Chayson Cole, 11, leaned against a brick wall with his mother, April, an Oklahoma State University employee who lives in Sallisaw. She said Chayson had been "cussed out" by a woman in her 30s who accused April of raising Chayson to be a racist.

Chayson, she said, regularly reads print editions of two area newspapers - the Sequoyah County Times from Oklahoma and the Southwest Times Record from Fort Smith, Ark. - and "loves his president."

If Chayson asked what the protesters were seeking, she said, she'd tell him they want to strip funding from the police. As she spoke, the sound of a car peeling out of the intersection sharpened the growing tension.

"And they don't support Trump," April said. "They think he's a racist, they think everyone here is supporting hate and racism. I don't really understand a lot of it. I haven't seen that side of Trump and I don't see that in a lot of people here."

As police cars surged down Boulder with sirens blaring, Joshua Brown, 12, hawked an assortment of flags rising from a cart on the sidewalk with his father, Jeff Brown, 56. One flag depicted Trump as a sleeveless soldier carrying a blazing machine gun, similar to Rambo. Another read, "Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again."

The best seller of the night: an Oklahoma flag with the Osage Nation buffalo-skin shield mashed up with the Confederate flag.

"We're capitalists," Jeff said. "We offend everybody equally."

The elder Brown said he once believed the Confederate flag represented slavery, but his thinking has changed.

"I have since learned a lot of other variations of the history," he said. "I think that it's allowed for people to have their own interpretations from their family and their experience."

He said his son, who is home-schooled, demanded to come to the rally with his father from their home in Albuquerque, N.M., specifically to see the Black Lives Matter protests. Joshua wore a shirt reading "LGBT" with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty above the letter L, a assault-style rifle above the letter G, a glass full of beer above the letter B and a picture of Trump above the letter T.

"But Joshua's going to have to form his own opinions," Brown said. "In our family, we use our brains."
Samantha Armytage returned to Sunrise on Tuesday morning, after announcing her engagement to equestrian businessman Richard Lavender over the weekend.

The 43-year-old proudly showed off her diamond ring, estimated to be worth up to $80,000, before dodging a series of awkward questions about the proposal.

Sam's co-host David 'Kochie' Koch grilled her for details about the engagement and her 'romantic weekend' with Richard, 60, in the NSW Southern Highlands.

What a rock! Sam Armytage returned to Sunrise on Tuesday, after getting engaged to farmer Richard Lavender. The 43-year-old proudly showed off her diamond ring, estimated to be worth up to $80,000, before dodging a series of questions about the proposal

The notoriously private journalist wasn't giving much away, however, and told her colleague his questions were like 'torture'.

The pair acknowledged Sam's engagement at 6am, when Kochie said: 'Thanks for joining us on a very special morning because Sam is back - radiant, gushing, glowing - after a romantic weekend.'

He said the Sunrise team was slowly 'getting to know Rich a bit more', then asked a visibly embarrassed Sam how the couple had met and what Richard did for a living.

Bling! Samantha's engagement ring features a modest-sized cushion cut diamond on a prong setting, with an elegant gold band

She humoured her co-anchor to begin with, telling him she'd met Richard at a party last year, but soon scolded Kochie for being so nosy.

'You know what he does. Why are you asking all these questions? We've known each other for ages!' she said.

Kochie said his questions were for the benefit of viewers, and promised 'more throughout the show' as Sam cringed at the desk.

Despite the grilling, Sam confirmed she was 'thrilled' and 'couldn't be happier' about her engagement.

Later in the broadcast, Sam confirmed that Richard had actually proposed 'a few weeks ago', but she waited until Sunday to announce it.

Nosy! Sam's co-host David 'Kochie' Koch (right) grilled her for details about the engagement and her 'romantic weekend' with Richard, 60, in the NSW Southern Highlands

The horse breeder had popped the question while they were picking firewood and pulling weeds in their paddock, she added.

Rather than ask 'Will you marry me?', Richard had apparently said: 'How about it?'

Sam announced her engagement to Richard in an Instagram post on Sunday. She uploaded two photos of herself posing in the arms of her fiance, with a diamond ring on her wedding finger.

It's official! Sam announced her engagement to Richard in an Instagram post on Sunday. She uploaded two photos of herself posing in the arms of her fiance, with a diamond ring on her wedding finger

'What a year...' she wrote in the caption.

The couple, who reportedly began dating in April 2019, confirmed their romance in an interview with WHO magazine November.

They had sparked engagement rumours in September, when they were spotted shopping for expensive jewellery in Sydney's Double Bay.
LONDON  A new archaeological discovery at the site of an ancient village near Stonehenge promises to offer significant clues about life more than 4,500 years ago in the Neolithic period, and could even write a whole new chapter in the story of the celebrated structures landscape, experts say.

The find also makes the site the largest prehistoric structure in Britain and possibly in Europe, according to Vincent Gaffney, of the University of Bradford, an archaeologist involved in the analysis.

It has completely transformed how we understand this landscape  there is no doubt about it, he said.

Stonehenge, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the English countryside, has long drawn visitors to admire its looming stone slabs, even as its origins and purpose are still being explored.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 14:54:58|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

URUMQI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Muslim religious activities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region remain unaffected by COVID-19, thanks to the region's effective anti-virus measures, said the regional religious affairs bureau.

Religious activities have not been interrupted in the Xinjiang Islamic Institute, and the daily five-time prayer services are held every day. According to the institute, students are required to wear masks and maintain a social distance of over one meter while taking part in the service. Besides, they must undergo temperature screening before entering the service hall.

Hadrejan Abulihamit, a student from Manas county, said they are required to sanitize hands with alcohol before meals and their dormitories are disinfected every day.

Abla Rexit, 75, who used to be an imam at a local mosque in Artux, has chosen to worship at home since the epidemic befell. "I pray every day for my family's health and well-being," he said.

Ruzi Mollak, a farmer in Aksu Prefecture, goes to the mosque near his home every day to make his prayers. He said that the air conditioning makes the mosque cooler than his home.

"Except temperature checks and hand sanitization before entry, everything is as usual," he said.

Mahmut Usman, head of the regional religious affairs bureau, said the regional government has fully implemented epidemic prevention and control measures to ensure safe and orderly religious activities for the public. Enditem
TOP OF THE HOUR:

 No arrests in shooting in Seattle protest zone that killed 1.

 A statue of a Spanish missionary in downtown Los Angeles has been toppled by demonstrators.

 George Washington memorial vandalized in Baltimore.

 Three men in California arrested in investigation of Black Lives Matter sign.

 North Carolina spectators cheer removal of Confederate statue.

___

NEW YORK  The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.

The bronze statue that has stood at the museums Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse.

The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior, de Blasio said in a written statement. The City supports the Museums request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.

The museums president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times that the museums community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.

___

Seattle police on Sunday pursued their investigation into a weekend shooting in a park in the citys protest zone that killed a 19-year-old man and critically injured another person.

No arrests had been made.

An active and ongoing investigation was under way into the shooting, which occurred about 2:30 a.m. Saturday in an area near downtown known as CHOP, for Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, said Detective Mark Jamieson. The suspect or suspects fled the scene, and police asked the public for any information that could identify them.

The zone evolved after weeks of protests in the city over police brutality and racism following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Officers responding to the shooting said they had trouble getting to the scene because they were were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims, according to a police blog.

Video released later Saturday by police appears to show officers arriving at the protest zone saying they want to get to the victim and entering as people yell at them that the victim is already gone. Police mostly retreated from the zone after clashes with protesters, KIRO-TV reported.

Private vehicles took two males with gunshot wounds to Harborview Medical Center, where the 19-year-old man died. A 33-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, remained in critical condition Sunday, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg told KOMO-TV.

___

ROME  Premier Giuseppe Conte says Italy is watching closely, and with concern, as Black Lives Matter protests sweep across American cities, particularly as the U.S. is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Conte was asked at a news conference Sunday to comment on the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman and the protests that have occurred in the aftermath.

Conte said the protests had touched the raw nerve of racial discrimination in American society, while reflecting problems of inequality, suffering and marginalization among certain facets of the population.

He said violent protests are never admissible and that Italy respected the internal matters of its longtime ally. But he said Italy was following closely, and with concern what is happening in the U.S., at a time when our American friends are dealing with a pandemic that is causing so many victims. Italy has had a handful of peaceful rallies in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

___

PORTLAND, Ore.  A peaceful protest in Portland against racial injustice turned violent early Sunday after baton-wielding police used flash-bang grenades to disperse demonstrators throwing bottles, cans and rocks at sheriffs deputies near downtowns Justice Center, police said.

Portland police and Multnomah County sheriffs deputies arrested several people after a group of protesters pulled down a fence cordoning off the center, tossed objects including fireworks at officers and ignored repeated warnings to disperse, police said in a statement. It said some people shined lasers into the eyes of deputies.

Officers used crowd control munitions to clear an area west of the center, which has been a flashpoint for conflicts between demonstrators and police.

The confrontation occurred after protesters demonstrated peacefully for several hours late Saturday in Chapman Square on the Justice Centers west side. Some protesters tried to re-erect parts of the fence torn down by others.

___

LOS ANGELES  A statue of a Spanish missionary in downtown Los Angeles has been toppled by demonstrators.

The Los Angeles Times reports the statue of Father Junipero Serra in Father Serra Park was brought down Saturday by Indigenous activists who shouted and drummed as it flew off its pedestal.

No police were present.

The 18th century Roman Catholic priest founded nine of Californias 21 Spanish missions. Native Americans were forced to stay at those missions after they were converted or face brutal punishment. A statue of Serra was also toppled in San Francisco on Friday while statues on the East Coast honoring Confederates have been pulled down. ___

PINE BLUFF, Ark.  A Confederate statue has been removed from outside the Jefferson County courthouse in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and will be moved to a Confederate cemetery in the city about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Little Rock.

The 20-foot statue of a Confederate infantryman that was first placed outside Pine Bluff High School in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and moved to the courthouse in 1974 was taken down Saturday.

The statue owned by the Confederacy group is being moved as demonstrators have defaced and toppled statues and busts of former U.S. presidents, a Spanish missionary and Confederate figures as protests against police brutality and racism continued across the country.

___

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.  In Americas oldest city, a debate over history is looming, as residents and elected officials join the anguished reckoning over race that is now gripping much of the country.

At the center of the debate in St. Augustine, Florida, is a monument, located in the citys historic central plaza, memorializing dozens of the citys sons who died fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

The towering structure, which was built in 1879, takes the form of an obelisk jutting into a canopy of oak trees. Inscribed on it are the names of the fallen soldiers.

The Rev. Ron Rawls, a pastor at St. Pauls African Methodist Episcopal Church, calls the monument disrespectful and wants it removed. The City Commission is expected to decide whether to heed that call on Monday.

You might call it a memorial, but youre honoring and glorifying people who fought to preserve slavery when our country wanted to go into a better and humane direction, Rawls said. The Confederacy should not be glorified.

Mayor Tracy Upchurch agrees that it is time for the memorial to go, in the wake of demonstrations across the country to protest the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The world changed the day George Floyd died. Were at a pivot point in our nation, said Upchurch, a former state legislator who teaches law and history at Flagler College.

In the weeks after Floyds death, protesters by the hundreds have swarmed the historic city. The memorial has been a key focus of the outrage.

___

WILMINGTON, N.C.  The mayor of a North Carolina city has imposed a curfew in the narrow area surrounding two Confederate monuments to try to thwart any vandalism or destruction.

The curfew in the city of Wilmington applies from 7:30 p.m. through 7 a.m. in the immediate area around two Confederate statues in the city.

The curfew began Saturday night and lasts five nights.

City officials were reacting to the toppling of two Confederate statues Friday night in Raleigh.

___

BALTIMORE  A statue and memorial to George Washington in Baltimore has been vandalized with red paint.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the memorial in Druid Hill Park in northwest Baltimore also had the words Destroy Racists and the initials for the Black Lives Matter movement written on the base.

Police said Sunday morning that they had not received any complaints about the vandalism.

As statues and memorials to the Confederacy have been targeted across the South, protesters have also at times targeted Founding Fathers who were slaveholders, including Washington.

Baltimore removed several statues and memorials linked to the Confederacy back in 2017.

___

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.  Three men, including employees of a sheriffs office and district attorneys office in California, have been arrested for investigation of the vandalism of a Black Lives Matter sign.

The Ventura County Sheriffs Office said late Saturday that a tarp painted with the letters BLM has been repeatedly damaged in Thousand Oaks. The owner of the sign posted an image of one of the incidents on social media, and the office says detectives recognized the suspect as a sheriffs office employee.

The worker was issued a misdemeanor vandalism citation and placed on paid administrative leave. Another person investigated for vandalism to the sign worked for the county district attorneys office.

___

RALEIGH, N.C.  Spectators cheered as work crews finished the job started by protesters Friday night and removed a Confederate statue from the top of a 75-foot monument.

News outlets report that work crews acting on the order of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper removed the statue Sunday morning and began taking down the obelisk on which it stood.

Sundays work follows the removal of two other Confederate statues on the state Capitol grounds in Raleigh on Saturday. Cooper ordered the statues removed after protesters toppled two other Confederate statues Friday night, stringing one up by the neck and hanging it from a light pole.

___

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill.  Residents of a southwestern Illinois community want a statue of the states third governor removed from a public plaza, arguing that he owned slaves and used his power to protect the practice.

The (Edwardsville) Intelligencer reports nearly 500 people have joined a Facebook group supporting petitioning the city to tear down a Ninian Edwards statute and rename the plaza with his moniker.

Edwards died in 1833 and is also the namesake of the community but residents arent pushing to change that. Lifelong Edwardsville resident, Kirk Schlueter, says he thinks it is one way to boost the civil rights movement happening nationwide.

___

More news about the death of George Floyd at https://apnews.com/GeorgeFloyd
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:08:29|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, on Monday sent a congratulatory letter to the China-Arab States Political Parties Dialogue Extraordinary Meeting, expressing the CPC's readiness to intensify strategic communication with political parties of Arab states.

Xi said China and Arab states enjoy an enduring friendship dating back to antiquity. Chinese and Arab peoples, erstwhile close companions along the ancient Silk Road, are working together to advance the Belt and Road cooperation to realize their common aspiration of national prosperity and rejuvenation.

"In the face of the unexpected COVID-19 outbreak, China and Arab states have rendered each other help and fought shoulder to shoulder, opening up a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for China and Arab states," he said in the letter.

"Having gone through this joint fight against the coronavirus, the China-Arab Strategic Partnership now enjoys an even stronger foundation, closer people-to-people friendship and brighter prospects for cooperation," he said.

Xi said the outbreak of COVID-19 has once again laid bare that the humanity share a common future. The CPC and the Chinese government have always put people and their lives first. Through its all-out efforts to save lives, China has scored major strategic achievements in epidemic control.

"China remains ready to strengthen solidarity and cooperation with Arab states and indeed the international community to support the World Health Organization's leading role and work together to build a global community of health for all," Xi said, noting that with openness, transparency and a sense of responsibility, China has pursued and promoted international cooperation in COVID-19 response and has done everything to the best of its ability to support and assist the international fight against the outbreak.

Xi said the China-Arab States Political Parties Dialogue is an important platform for party-to-party exchanges and cooperation between China and Arab states. Confronted with the new situation and new challenges in the wake of COVID-19, the CPC is willing to work side by side with political parties of Arab states to bring into better play the role of this platform through intensified strategic communication and sharing of governance experience against the backdrop of day-to-day epidemic prevention and control.

"In the spirit of mutual respect and mutual learning, we shall work tirelessly toward the building of community with a shared future for China and Arab states in the new era and the great rejuvenation for both the Chinese people and the Arab people," he said in the letter.

The three-day meeting, held through video link, opened Monday evening.

With the theme of jointly building a community with a shared future for China and Arab states in the new era, over 60 leaders of political parties from Arab states attended the meeting, and six leaders of Arab states including Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani addressed the meeting.

The Arab participants expressed their agreement with Xi's positive evaluation of the strategic partnership between China and Arab states, and highly appreciated the Chinese Party and government's adherence to putting people first in the fight against COVID-19 and actively promoting international cooperation on combating the pandemic.

The Arab participants thanked China for its consistent support for Arab countries in defending sovereignty and independence. They held that issues related to Hong Kong and Xinjiang are China's internal affairs, and opposed external forces' interference in China's internal affairs.

The Arab participants expressed their willingness to work with the CPC to strengthen strategic communication and mutual learning, and work together to build a community with a shared future for Arab states and China in the new era. Enditem
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in the Senate subway area of the Capitol before President Donald Trumps State of the Union address in Washington on Feb. 4, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Ernst Bill Would Require Members of Congress to Disclose PPP Loans They or Family Members Get

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is introducing legislation that would require all senators and representatives to disclose any Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans received by a business to which they or a family member are linked.

Its really simple: If youre a member of Congress and you or a family member benefited from the PPP, Americansyour constituentsshould know. This bill provides greater transparency, which ensures accountability, Ernst said June 22 in a statement announcing her proposal.

The Ernst proposalknown as the Transparency Requirements Aimed at Congressional Expenditures (TRACE) Actwould require Members of Congress, spouses of Members of Congress, and employees of Congress to submit a financial disclosure form within 15 days of receiving a loan through the PPP. This information would be made publicly available, she said in the statement.

The PPP has saved countless businesses and the jobs of millions of Americans, but those in Congress who are voting on it, or any issue, where a potential conflict of interest may exist need to be upfront about it. The only reason to oppose this bill is if you have something to hide, Ernst said.

Ernsts proposal follows reports that at least four members of the House of Representatives or their family members are connected to businesses that have received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded PPP loans under the $3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Recovery and Economic Relief Act approved by Congress and signed into law earlier this year.

The Ernst proposal would fill a loophole in new guidelines announced June 19 in which the Small Business Administration (SBA), which administers the PPP program, will disclose details of up to 75 percent of the loans. Depending on the amount of the loan, a members connection to a recipient firm may or may not be disclosed. The Ernst bill makes disclosure mandatory regardless of the amount.

The Iowa Republicans bill is backed by open-government advocates.

Congress has authorized more than $650 billion for PPP since March. While PPP has certainly helped many small businesses around the country, taxpayers supporting this program have a right to know where such an extraordinary amount of money is going, especially if the Members of Congress who voted for the program are benefiting from it, National Taxpayers Union (NTU) Policy and Government Affairs Manager Andrew Lautz said in the Ernst statement.

The NTU urges Congress to pass it as standalone legislation or as part of the next major COVID-19 legislative package, Lautz said.

Taxpayers must be able to follow the money. If Members of Congress vote for subsidies or other aid that they benefit from in their private capacity, then every dime must be disclosed in as real-time as possible. This helps preserve the institutional integrity of Congress, Open The Books CEO and founder Adam Andrzejewski said in the statement.

The NTU focuses on fighting wasteful federal spending and policies, while Open The Books wants all government expenditures available on the internet.

Ernst has become known as the Senates most vocal foe of waste, fraud, and abuse since the retirement in 2014 of Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican whose Dr. No nickname among colleagues reflected his frequent votes in opposition to measures he considered wasteful, unnecessary, or frivolous. Coburn passed away earlier this year after a long battle with cancer.

Ernst regularly announces what she calls Squeal Awards to focus public attention on examples of government waste unearthed by her staff. She is also a co-sponsor of a bipartisan Senate proposal to end U.S. tax dollars being spent in Chinas wet markets such as the one in Wuhan from which the CCP virus is believed to have spread.

Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
When it came to child care, Young Choi and his wife, Samantha DuFlo, had fallen into a predictable routine.

Choi, 47, a barber, would drop off their 18-month-old daughter, River, at day care around 9 a.m. before heading into work. At the end of the day, DuFlo, 36, who owns a physical therapy practice in Baltimore, would pick up their daughter, feed and bathe her, and put her to bed. Her husband usually didnt get home until after 7 p.m., when River was already asleep.

Like many heterosexual couples, they relied on traditional gender roles when dividing their caretaking responsibilities, and most of the tasks, like potty training, meals and laundry, fell to DuFlo.
Asian markets fluctuated Monday as investors kept a nervous eye on a spike in virus infections around the world, while Europe pressed ahead with the easing of lockdown measures. A wall of cash from governments and central banks around the world also continues to provide much-needed support, though observers say an equities rally from their March trough may have been overcooked. After enjoying a broadly positive week, traders were playing it safe in early exchanges as they considered news of a worrying jump in fresh cases in several US states including California, Texas and Florida, while China, Australia and Japan are also battling new outbreaks. That comes after the World Health Organization last week warned of a "new and dangerous phase" of the pandemic, with people tiring of lockdowns despite the disease's accelerating spread. US investors were spooked Friday when Apple said it would shut some stores it had recently reopened because of new cases. At the same time, though, European countries are slowly emerging from their economy-sapping lockdowns, with Spain opening its borders, welcoming flights, while schools, cinemas and theatres reopened in France. "Global stocks are finding support (in) that for now, rising daily COVID-19 cases are staying local and failing to have a global impact. So investors can take some solace in that," said Stephen Innes at AxiCorp. "What is vital for the economy is whether governments reimpose wide-sweeping lockdowns. With the overall count low globally, that's unlikely, whereas proximity or soft lockdowns like in Beijing is more likely." - 'Reality check' - But he did say that the fresh infections are "providing a somber reality check, not only thwarting bullish ambitions, but investors are re-focusing on the negative economic consequences that could linger for some time". In early trade Hong Kong dipped 0.2 percent, with investors apparently unmoved by reports that China will set up a "national security agency" in the city to oversee a controversial security law, which is said to override any existing legislation in the city. The bill has raised fears it will end the financial hub's limited freedoms. Manila and Wellington were each down around 0.5 percent apiece. But Tokyo and Seoul both rose 0.1 percent, while Shanghai gained 0.3 percent and Singapore put on 0.5 percent. There were also gains in Sydney, Taipei and Jakarta. "Shares remain technically overbought and vulnerable to a further correction or period of consolidation, but we continue to see it as a pause in a rising trend," said Shane Oliver at AMP Capital Investors. Oil prices edged up after a healthy advance on Friday, as output cuts by major producers and hopes for rising demand tempered worries over new infections. - Key figures around 0245 GMT - Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 0.1 percent at 22,499.32 (break) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: DOWN 0.2 percent at 24,590.90 Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 2,976.46 West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.3 percent at $39.87 per barrel Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.6 percent at $42.43 per barrel Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1194 from $1.1181 at 2040 GMT on Friday Dollar/yen: UP at 106.91 from 106.84 yen Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2375 from $1.2359 Euro/pound: UP at 90.49 pence from 90.46 pence New York - Dow: DOWN 0.8 percent at 25,871.46 (close) London - FTSE 100: UP 1.1 percent at 6,292.60 (close) France is reopening cinemas and schools as it presses ahead with the easing of lockdown measures, though there are concerns in other countries about a spike in infections
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #25

Posted on 21 June 2020 by John Hartz

Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...

Story of the Week...

Bangladesh Coal Plants Threaten World's Largest Mangrove Forest

Important Coastal Barrier at Risk from Increased Pollution

The Bangladesh government threatens to destroy life-saving forests by building coal-fired power plants. Coal fired plants are a major contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. (Sipa via AP Images)

Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful to strike in the Bay of Bengal in 20 years, made landfall on the India-Bangladesh coast last month. Amphan ripped off roofs, washed away homes, and flooded farms. Crucially, Bangladesh was able to mitigate impact and save lives because of its robust emergency response system with early warnings and mass-evacuations.

But coastal communities were also protected by Bangladeshs natural storm shield: the Sundarbans. A protected World Heritage site, this mangrove forest holds land together with its roots as the tides rise. As climate change increases the intensity of extreme weather events like Amphan, the Sundarbans are at risk when theyre needed most.

But the Bangladesh government threatens to destroy these life-saving forests by building coal-fired power plants that could subject them, and the nearly 2.5 million people who depend on them for their livelihoods, to harmful pollution. And while the mangroves slow climate change by soaking up carbon, coal-fired plants contribute greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming.

Of particular concern is the proposed Rampal Thermal Power Plant, just north of the Sundarbans. Scientists and activists have repeatedly voiced concerns that the plant could spell disaster for the worlds largest mangrove forest. But the government has fought calls to cancel or relocate the project, using tear gas and rubber bullets against protestors and insisting, contrary to scientific evidence, that the plant will do no harm.

Bangladesh Coal Plants Threaten Worlds Largest Mangrove Forest by Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch, June 18, 2020

Click here to access the entire article as originally published on the Human Rights Watch website.

Toon of the Week...

Hat tip to the Stop Climate Science Denial Facebook page.

Climate Feedback Article Review...

Article in The Guardian misleads readers about sensitivity of climate models by narrowly focusing on single study

Article Analyzed: Climate worst-case scenarios may not go far enough, cloud data shows by Jonathan Watts, Environment, Guardian, June 13, 2020

Six scientists analysed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be low.

A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Cherry-picking, Exaggerating, Misleading.

Article in The Guardian misleads readers about sensitivity of climate models by narrowly focusing on single study, Edited by Nikki Forrester, Article Reviews, Climate Feedback, June 18, 2020

Coming Soon on SkS...

Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term (CSLDF)

(CSLDF) Shining a spotlight on translations and our translator teams (Baerbel)

(Baerbel) SkS New Research for Week #25 (Doug Bostrom)

(Doug Bostrom) What Planet of the Humans gets wrong about renewable energy (Dana)

(Dana) IEA: Coronavirus accelerating closure of ageing fossil-fuelled power plants (Josh Gabbatiss)

(Josh Gabbatiss) 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #26 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week...

SkS Week in Review...
A Somali refugee who helped another man rob two people outside a north Queensland bottle shop will not be deported or jailed.

Ali Yussuf Omar, 24, was told he would be allowed to stay in Australia at Townsville District Court on Monday despite pleading guilty to one count of robbery in company.

His co-accused, also 24, told one of the two men the pair robbed he was a cannibal and that he would rape, murder and eat him if he told anyone what had happened.

Two men were robbed outside the Dan Murphy's bottle ship in Garbutt, North Queensland (pictured)

Police arrested Omar in the Dan Murphy's carpark in Garbutt, north Queensland.

He was found not guilty of robbery in company using personal violence for a second robbery in the store just minutes earlier, according to the Townsville Bulletin.

The court heard his co-accused grabbed each of the victims, pinned their forearm to their chest and demanded their wallets and alcohol before making the disturbing threats.

He then handed the stolen items to Omar, whose defence barrister said had been drinking alcohol beforehand.

Omar's co-accused was sentenced in a separate court appearance to 23 months jail but was immediately released on parole having spent 124 days in prison.

Judge Brad Farr said at his sentencing that the robbery and threats has caused severe emotional and psychological trauma to the victim.

On Monday, Townsville District court was told Omar had moved to Australia from Somalia in 2005 and was granted a protection visa.

Omar had applied for citizenship in 2019 and his defence team requested a sentence of under 12 months.

He was sentenced to a 10 month intensive correction order on top of 42 days already spent in custody with Judge Gregory Lynham said he had narrowly avoided being deported.

'You need to wake up to yourself... otherwise you run the risk, that sooner rather than later you will be on a plane heading back to Somalia,' he said.
Brazil has become the second country, after the US, to register more than 50,000 deaths from Covid-19.



The grim milestone comes amid growing political unrest and days after the country confirmed more than one million coronavirus infections.



Experts warn that the peak of the outbreak in Brazil is still weeks away.



The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded the biggest one-day increase in cases, with the Americas responsible for most of the new infections.



Of the 183,000 new cases reported in 24 hours, more than 60% were from North and South America, the agency said.



However, the growing outbreak did not stop thousands of supporters and opponents of Brazils far-right President Jair Bolsonaro from taking to the streets in rival protests on Sunday.



Anti-government demonstrators are calling for Mr. Bolsonaro to be impeached. It follows the arrest on Thursday of a former aide and family friend who is accused of corruption.



His supporters say Congress and the Supreme Court are trying to curb his powers.



Anti-government demonstrators gathered in cities including Sao Paulo

Mr. Bolsonaro has also been heavily criticized for his response to the coronavirus outbreak. He has opposed lockdowns and openly disagreed with advice from his governments own health ministry.



On Sunday, the ministry announced that 641 more deaths had been registered in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 50,617. Over the same period, it also registered more than 17,000 new infections.



Only the US has fared worse, with 2.2 million cases and nearly 120,000 deaths.



Mr. Bolsonaro argues that the economic impact of the measures will be much bigger than the virus itself, a position shared by many. But his overall approach to the crisis has led to the resignation of two doctors as health minister.



There was no national lockdown, but states and cities adopted their own measures. After months of restrictions, some are slowly being lifted, even though infection levels remain high.



There is still concern that the health system will be unable to cope in some places, and that the disease is spreading faster in deprived neighborhoods and remote areas, such as indigenous communities, where access to adequate care is difficult.



Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro also took to the streets in Sao Paulo

As well as the pandemic, Mr. Bolsonaro is facing a growing political crisis. He is under investigation for allegedly trying to interfere with the police for political motives, which he denies, while the Supreme Court is carrying out two separate inquiries into his allies.



On Sunday, police in the capital, Brasilia, kept rival groups apart as they marched outside Congress and the Supreme Court buildings.



Other large gatherings took place in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.







Source: Telegraph.co.uk









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
Improving the relationship between law enforcement and Hoosier communities will be a top priority for the state if the Democratic candidates for Indiana governor and lieutenant governor are elected in November.

Dr. Woody Myers and former Hammond state Rep. Linda Lawson  the first woman to serve on the Hammond police force  today are issuing a six-point plan for reforming Indiana's criminal justice system, following the May 25 police-involved murder of George Floyd in Minnesota and the protests that followed in the Region, state and nation.

Their plan, provided exclusively to The Times ahead of the public release, aims to change how police serve citizens, hold police more accountable, re-prioritize resources by reexamining who gets locked up, and to combat long overlooked racial injustices.

"A lot of what's happening now is going to be painful on all sides, it's not going to be something that's welcome. I think that there's going to be a lot of angst," said Lawson, the Democratic lieutenant governor nominee.

"But I also think that change is good, and it's going to be great for law enforcement in the long-run and it's going to be great for the community.
This is the adorable moment the thought of leaving home for college becomes too much for a five-year-old girl.

Kenzie Lund from Maple Grove, Minnesota, is overcome with tears in the back seat of her mom's car after asking when she will live on her own.

'Well, when you turn 18, you go off to college and live wherever your college is,' her mother Jessica Baker says.

Little Kenzie Lund from Maple Grove, Minnesota, is overcome with tears in the back seat of her mom's car after asking when she will live on her own

The response is not a satisfactory one for Kenzie, who is buckled into her car seat, wearing a cute pair of sunglasses as the car pulls into the family's driveway.

Kenzie, who turned 5 in May, was born with multiple heart conditions and has been through three heart surgeries, the first was needed within hours of her birth.

'What's wrong?' her mother asks. Crying, Kenzie says 'I don't want to go to college.'

'I'll miss my mom and dad,' she is heard saying in between sobs.

'Honey,' her mother says reassuringly. 'You go to college when you are 18.'

'I know but I don't want to,' Kenzie says, still crying. 'Why are you so sad,' Jessica continues.

'Because I just want to stay here,' she says, gulping between sobs.

Kenzie, who is buckled into her car seat, wearing a cute pair of sunglasses as the car pulls into the family's driveway sobs at the prospect of leaving her parents and going to college

'Forever and ever with me?' her mother adds. 'Yeah,' a distraught Kenzie adds.

'Aww, your so sweet, you can stay with me forever and ever,' her mom says.

'But I don't want to go to college,' Kenzie stresses. 'OK,' says her mother

'It truly shows how genuinely sweet and caring she is. Her heart is so very special and made of pure gold,' Jessica Baker said.

Kenzie, who turned 5 in May, was born with multiple heart conditions and has been through three heart surgeries, the first was needed within hours of her birth.

'Kenzie has been through a lot in her life so far. She was born with multiple heart conditions and has been through three heart surgeries along with other surgeries and many months spent in the hospital.

'She has a permanent pacemaker, so she will have more surgeries in the future. She has a world of support and people who love her. We are so lucky,' she added.

Jessica Baker runs a Facebook page called 'Kisses for Kenzie - A Heart Warrior's Journey' in support of her daughter where she posts updates about Kenzie.
Speakers will discuss the best counter-drone solutions for covered assets, government and commercial infrastructure and events. Webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 10 a.m. SGT

Pleasant Grove, Utah, June 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortem Technologies, the technical leader for counter drone security and defense solutions, will be holding a free webinar on the topic of countering drone threats on a global scale. In this webinar, Fortems leaders will discuss the security issues caused by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and provide a rundown of the most effective solutions that exist in the market today.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 24, 2020, from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. SGT.

The UAV manufacturing industry has skyrocketed to $4.2 billion in 2020, said Gary Watson, VP of Solutions at Fortem. Providing adequate security to safely remove unwanted drones from a given airspace is more critical in light of this growing market. Ensuring those drones are removed without any collateral damage caused is even more key. Well be providing more details around all that Fortems solution is capable of from a global standpoint in this webinar.

Scott Smith, Fortems Director of Marketing, and Gary Watson, Fortems VP of Solutions, will discuss how the Fortem SkyDome System can elevate existing security to provide complete end-to-end airspace awareness and protection against rogue drones.

Key points they will cover include:

Managing and understanding regulatory issues across Asia

The importance of vertical integration of Fortems solutions - easy integration

Detect and Avoid as well as Urban Air Mobility Facilitation

The power of advanced radar for detection and classification

Counter UAS technology that offers low to no collateral damage and ability to evaluate captured drones

The webinar will be held in English and a slide presentation that can be translated will be available for attendees to download.

Please visit this link to register: https://bit.ly/37mz85J.

Story continues

About the Fortem SkyDome System and Fortem DroneHunter

The Fortem SkyDome System consists of distributed TrueView radar to detect and identify uncooperative drones, and the Fortem DroneHunter, which is autonomously cued by SkyDome to further evaluate the threatening drone and remove or disable it from a safe location with no collateral damage. The SkyDome System and DroneHunter are the category leader for kinetic, non-lethal C in defending against low flying drones and in protecting critical infrastructure, military bases, borders, and coastal areas from drones that attempt to pass undetected by traditional ground-to-air defenses.

Fortems SkyDome System digitizes, maps, and monitors the airspace so that all objects on the ground and air are accounted for. This makes it possible to identify and mitigate UAS that are not approved for flight and that might interfere with critical communication systems, or that might have nefarious intent. Fortems SkyDome System components make ground and airborne radar and optics seamlessly networkable and the only system that achieves total airspace awareness, security, and defense.

Fortem Technologies landed a multi-million dollar deal with the Pentagons Defence Innovation Unit (DIU), has been tested by NATO for its Defense Against Terrorism Programme of Work, and continues its work with hospitals, airports, and stadiums to provide an end-to-end security solution.





About Fortem Technologies, Inc.

Fortem Technologies is the leader in airspace awareness, safety, and security. Through an advanced ecosystem of distributed radar, AI at-the-edge, deep sensor integration and autonomous drone capture, Fortem monitors, protects and defends the worlds corridors, venues, infrastructures, borders, and regions from dangerous or malicious drone threats. The same ecosystem is accelerating the safety of the worlds airspace for urban air mobility. Based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, the company is privately held and backed by Boeing, Signia Venture Partners, DCVC, Mubadala Investment Company and others. For more information, please visit www.fortemtech.com.

Natalie Schoen

Fortem Technologies

616-799-5151

natalie@bamcommunications.biz


Roshne Balasubramanian By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Its 10 am on a weekday. N Baskar, a 41-year-old autorickshaw driver, receives an SOS call from a city-based animal welfare activist. He swiftly gets into his autorickshaw, checks for all the essentials  rugs, Dettol, phenyl, sanitisers, masks, apron, gloves, a muzzle, some biscuits and water; starts his vehicle and heads to the destination.

A wounded, bleeding and worm-infested street dog bleakly waits for its Khaki-clad saviour. On his arrival, Baskar rushes to the tripawd dog, wraps it in a cloth, places it on a rug in the passenger seat of his autorickshaw and rushes to the hospital.

A few hours later, Baskar steps out of the facility with a seemingly more comfortable-looking, dressed canine. He puts a reflective collar around its neck, bids adieu, hands it over to the activist, cleans his autorickshaw and gears up for the next rescue or a regular savari. For the last three years, Mylapores Baskar Anna has been aiding in the transportation of pets, and rescuing injured animals.

Voice for voiceless

"Ive been an autorickshaw driver for seven years now. Three years ago, I got acquainted with Vinodhini madam, a doctor, who is also an animal welfare activist. She used to and still provides rice, dal, Pedigree, biscuits for dogs; feeds them and is involved in pet rescues. It was through her that I learned how to handle injured pets, especially dogs, and tend to them. Soon, she started giving me leads for pet rescues  one that involved transportation. I was moved after seeing the plight of the injured animals. It ignited a spark, and I decided to dedicate a part of my life to be a voice for them," says the autorickshaw driver, who launched an autorickshaw service for pets  Help Voiceless  on June 1, with the help of wellwishers Vinodhini and Manjula Ganesan, another animal welfare activist.

"Most times, regular autorickshaws and cabs dont take injured, sick animals. So, having one such service was essential in the city. Ive known Baskar for a few months now, and he has been proactive in helping me and several others during rescues. He puts his heart into what he does," shares Manjula, who believes that this service will be a win-win situation for pet parents, activists and Baskar, who has been reeling under a financial crisis.

With the virus-induced lockdown unleashing an economic crisis on people across sectors, autorickshaw drivers like Baskar have also had to bear the brunt. With no regular savaris, and lack of income, paying dues for the autorickshaw, house rent, school fees for his children and everyday survival have become a struggle.

"I used to earn about Rs 800 to Rs 1,500 per day. Now, because of the lockdown, I havent earned anything. My wife works as a cook in two households, and we have been running the family with the income she gets. On June 1, after the announcement of the relaxation, I decided to go by the advice of my wellwishers and started a pet auto service," he says.

Guidance required

While the idea has been well-received by those in the animal-welfare circle, the feasibility of the initiative amid the prolonged-lockdown seems to be riddled with uncertainties. "Since this is a private initiative, I havent been able to procure an e-pass to venture out with my auto to rescue pets during the lockdown. I am looking for some guidance on how to get one," says Baskar, who on average receives two rescue calls a day.

In the last three years, he has rescued and transported over 200 animals in and around the city. "Ive gone as far as Chengalpettu for rescues. I charge only by the meter," shares the good Samaritan, who has also been feeding close to 50 dogs every day at St Marys Road, RK Mutt Road and MRC Nagar. "Vinodhini madam provides me with the staples. I cook and feed the dogs," he says.

During his regular savaris, he ensures to talk about the importance of animals and how one can care for them, with his passengers, provided they are keen on learning more. "Some people like being quiet during the journey while some are curious. After learning about the rescues, some passengers have even been kind to give me money to buy biscuits and staples to feed the street dogs. Every contribution counts," he explains, adding that he sanitises his auto after every rescue.

"The condition of the animals I rescue vary. Some dont have bladder control, some bleed...but they need the same care as humans do. So, I dont flinch while helping them. Instead, I make sure to clean my auto, sanitise and disinfect it after every pet service. I am mindful of the safety of the passengers who might board after the rescue. I always keep my workspace clean," he says.

A father of two sons, Baskar is currently trying to earn enough to pay their school and college tuition fees. "My eldest son has written his class 12 exams, and my youngest is in class 10. I have to start thinking about college fees for my eldest. He dreams of becoming a police officer. The least I can do is enrol him into a good college. But with the income I get, I am lost," he says bleakly.

Despite the hardships, Baskar has ensured he spends quality time with his children while his wife is away at work. "I exercise with them in the morning. Buy newspapers for them to read and make tiffin. I believe in humanity. I have seen so many people come forth to help the voiceless. So my hope for a better future will always be afloat," he shares.

For details and to contribute, visit Facebook page Help Voiceless or call 09445159587
The winning ticket for Saturday's Lotto jackpot was sold in the south side of Cork city.

The National Lottery today confirmed that the winning ticket for Saturdays 6.9 million jackpot was sold on the outskirts of city.

The winner has yet to make contact with Lotto HQ.

The winning numbers were 5, 8, 19, 40, 41, 44 and the bonus was 17.

The shop where the ticket was sold will be announced tomorrow.

Also on Saturday night, players in Co Louth and Co Meath were one number shy of the jackpot and each won just over 33,000.

Elsewhere, the 250,000 Lotto Plus 2 jackpot was won by somebody in Dublin.

This latest Lotto win is the sixth jackpot win this year with over 30 million won in jackpot prizes alone.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the country is fighting two wars against China--one against coronavirus that has come from the neighbouring country and the other on the border.

He said there should be no politics by anyone in fighting these two wars. Kejriwal's remarks come amid criticism of the Centre by the Congress over the situation in eastern Ladakh.

Addressing an online media briefing, the Delhi chief minister said, "Twenty of our brave soldiers did not back down, we will also not retreat and win both wars against China."

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in a violent face-off with Chinese troops on June 15 in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley.

"Today, the country is fighting two wars against China - one against the virus that has come from China and the other on the border," Kejriwal said during the briefing.

On one hand, all doctors and nurses of the country are fighting COVID-19, and on the other hand, soldiers are fighting wars on the border, he said.

"The entire country is standing with doctors and soldiers. We all have to fight these two wars together and there should be no politics and groupism in this," the AAP supremo asserted.

Earlier in the day, senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, the former PM called upon Modi to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, the country recorded 14,821 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, pushing the infection tally to 4,25,282, while the death toll rose to 13,699 with 445 new fatalities, according to the Union health ministry data.
The watchdog that scrutinises the UK's arms exports has not been operating for six months, it has emerged  amid concerns that sales approved by the government are fuelling conflict and repression abroad.

Parliament's Committee on Arms Export Control (CAEC) has not yet been reconstituted after being dissolved ahead of last year's general election, meaning Britain's arms exports are not facing the usual scrutiny.

It comes amid a pending Supreme Court case on arms exports to Saudi Arabia, and a call from MPs and human rights groups to stop selling rubber bullets and tear gas to the US for use against peaceful civil rights protesters.

Britain is the second biggest arms exporter in the world and sells weapons to regimes with poor human rights records, despite government controls on the issuing of licences. But MPs warned they were being "kept in the dark" on the arms trade while campaigners said the lack of scrutiny from parliament would fuel abuses.

In a letter to Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, Labour's shadow minister for peace Fabian Hamilton said that "any government that is serious about ending the use of our weapons against innocent civilians abroad" would ensure the committee was up and running and had the powers it needed.

The committee currently has no chair or membership, and the currently highly bureaucratic procedure for getting it up and running requires the agreement of four other select committees.

The unusual system has caused problem before, with a nine-month gap in sittings in 2015 after the retirement of the then chair Sir John Stanley. That gap came at the height of the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen and delayed a committee investigation into the conflict.

"The Committee must be reformed as soon as possible. UK arms sales are having devastating consequences around the world. Time and again the government has shown that it cannot be trusted to follow its own rules. It has consistently prioritised arms company profits over human rights," said Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

"Right now, the Saudi Air Force is using UK-made fighter jets to drop UK-made bombs over Yemen. Following last year's Court of Appeal ruling we know that that these arms sales were illegal as well as being immoral. Similarly, we know that UK-made tear gas has been used in Hong Kong and exported to police forces across the US.

"This cannot be left another six months. Parliament must be able to effectively scrutinise arms sales and hold the government to account for its role in fuelling and enabling these abuses."

Lisa Nandy, Labour's shadow foreign secretary said: "Its been six months since the General Election and the committee that scrutinises arms exports hasnt yet been re-established. Were calling on government to get it up and running with delay. Our weapons are our responsibility. We must not be kept in the dark any longer."

Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Show all 15 1 /15 Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Kandy Freeman participates in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Hawk Newsome, a Black Lives Matter activist, leads a protest outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Hawk Newsome (C) leads a chant during a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, US. January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower An NYPD officer speaks with a Black Lives Matter leaders during a protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Kandy Freeman participates in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower An NYPD officer speaks with a Black Lives Matter leaders during a protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Carol Garza, a Black Lives Matter supporter, protests outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower A Black Lives Matter supporter protests in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Black Lives Matter activists march in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Black Lives Matter activists march in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Black Lives Matter supporters protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images Black Lives Matter organises march to Trump Tower Black Lives Matter Kandy Freeman marches in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty

Mr Hamilton's letter said: "There are currently many conflicts being fought around the world in which Britain sells arms to one or more of the warring parties, including the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

"Furthermore, the Consolidating EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria states that 'the government will not grant a licence if there is a clear risk that the items might be used for internal repression'. Consequently there is a mount and legitimate concern over a number of existing licences that could allow the potential use of British equipment - such as rubber bullets - in places like Hong Kong, the United States, and other destinations of concern. The CAEC needs to be allowed to scrutinise these licences at the earliest opportunity."
A disgraced former Portuguese police officer has branded the new Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner a 'scapegoat.'

Goncalo Amaral described the 43-year-old German as an 'almost perfect suspect.'

Amaral, who first claimed last April a German paedophile who was in prison would be accused over Maddie's disappearance, told a Portuguese TV interviewer on Sunday night: 'When I spoke last year I was talking about the situation that's happening now.

'It matters little who the paedophile is.'

Disgraced former Portuguese police officer Goncalo Amaral (pictured) described the 43-year-old German Christian Brueckner as an 'almost perfect suspect'

He added: 'He's an almost perfect suspect. All that's lacking for him to become the perfect suspect is that he's dead.'

Asked if he believed Brueckner was the man responsible for Madeleine's disappearance, he added: 'To answer that question it has to be proven first that an abduction took place.'

The ex-cop, who claimed in a 2008 controversial book Madeleine's parents had covered up their daughter's accidental death in their Algarve apartment, went on to repeat his well-known criticism of the British youngster's parents and their Tapas Seven holiday friends.

He accused them of abandoning their children to eat out at night and lying to Portuguese police, and said Madeleine had been left crying for around an hour the night before she vanished on May 3 2007.

Kate and Gerry McCann hold an age-progressed police image of their daughter during a news conference to mark the 5th anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, on May 2, 2012 in London

Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of Madeleine McCann, talking to the press after attending the libel case against Goncalo Amaral at Lisbon's Palace of Justice, Portugal, June 2014

The McCanns began a lengthy legal battle against Amaral in 2008, suing him for defamation after the publication of his book The Truth of The Lie.

But during his half-hour-long interview with Portuguese broadcaster TVI on Sunday, he also accused the authorities of altering photos of the two-tone VW camper van Brueckner was using around the time Madeleine disappeared.

New Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner, 43

The former PJ chief, who was removed as head of the Madeleine McCann inquiry in 2008 after criticising British police officers, showed interviewer Jose Alberto Carvalho photos he said were taken in Portugal of the same vehicle.

One of the photos he produced showed a series of very distinctive Minion-style characters painted on the front and back of the camper van, which in the picture put out by police had no markings on it.

He said: 'It's the same vehicle flagged up in the police appeal.

'I think it's important to ask why the photo put out by the authorities of the van was altered. Would that vehicle have gone unnoticed in Praia da Luz with those markings on it? I don't think so.'

Suggesting the van could have looked very different in 2007 to the way it appeared in the photo put out by British police, he added: 'Is it that the German authorities reached the conclusion that the van wasn't like that when it was being driven in Praia da Luz in 2007? Who said that?

Pressed on what Portuguese police knew about Brueckner's past around the time Madeleine disappeared, he appeared to admit Algarve authorities were aware of his 1994 teenage sexual conviction for molesting a six-year-old girl by confessing: 'At the time all we knew was that this man was a paedophile.'

Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared 13 years ago while on a family holiday in Portugal

He also claimed German authorities wanted to re-examine all the DNA evidence taken from the McCanns' hire car and holiday apartment.

Rubbishing reports a saliva sample had been found on Madeleine's bedspread and could prove key to a conviction now Brueckner had been identified as a new suspect, he said it had been proven it belonged to a baby being fed mother's milk staying in the apartment before the McCanns arrived.

Asked why he thought the German authorities might have interest in coming up with new information which had no real value, Amaral claimed: 'Because it enables them to have jurisdiction over this case.

'I think the Portuguese police and the authorities can do anything here in laboratories that they can do in Germany. '

Amaral's interview was his first since Brueckner's name was made public - and the first time he has spoken about the case since last December when he appeared on Spanish TV.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended the daily lives of Americans, and for many of the country's 70 million grandparents, contact with young grandchildren has been cut off. Older Americans have a higher risk of developing complications from COVID-19, and children may be asymptomatic carriers. So intimate relationships have been frozen in time, leaving grandparents longing for a connection they once took for granted.

"Grandparents are these enormously important attachment figures, says psychiatrist Alan Schlechter, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University Langone Health. Though families worry the separation could weaken the bond between grandparent and grandchild, Schlechter does not see a significant risk. Children are not going to forget loving grandparents, he says. That's not the way human brains work."

The bond may be lasting, but childhood is not. Children grow quickly, and an older grandparent may see the clock ticking. If you're in your 60s, late 70s, and say, When am I going to see my grandchildren again?, that's a legitimate question, says Adi Loebl, a family and geriatric psychiatrist and chief medical officer at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City.

Warnicki, who has hypertension, is worried about the health risk her grandchildren pose to her and her 92-year-old mother, a cancer survivor with hypertension, who is staying with her. So Warnicki sees her grandchildren over Zoom. Her 7-year-old grandson, Sebastian, plays his drums, guitar and keyboard for her over the internet. The videos help, but they're no substitute for babysitting him after school every Friday. We used to do puzzles and games. We used to spin Beyblades [a toy], she says. He misses that kind of closeness.

To keep her grandchildren engaged, she calls them daily, asking pointed questions about their friends and schoolwork. I don't want them to lose that feeling of wanting to be with me and wanting to spend time with me, she says.
YEREVAN.  When discussing the issue of whether or not to apply to the Constitutional Court (CC) on the issue of the draft constitutional amendments, a selection must be made between two values. On the one hand, there is a direct and obvious situation of a conflict of direct and obvious interests. On the other hand, there is an interest in administering justice. Minister of Justice Rustam Badasyan stated this Monday at the special sitting of the National Assembly of Armenia where the bill on the constitutional amendments is being discussed.

"Here we must take into account that the Constitutional Court has the tool of preliminary oversight in terms of amendments to the Constitution, which [the tool] was not limited at all until the latest legislative amendments initiated by the [majority] My Step faction [in parliament]; that is, it was not clear from what point of view the Constitutional Court should assess the contradiction between the constitutional amendments and the Constitution.

The opinion of the Venice Commission on the institution of oversight, in general, is not an accepted tool in the expanse of the Council of Europe, the initial constitutional oversight was again one of the innovations of the constitutional amendments in 2015. I believe we are dealing with a direct situation of conflict of interests, and we must try to resolve this contradiction," the minister stressed.
Xiaomi announced a major milestone for its Redmi 8 series smartphones which now has 19 million shipments globally. The 8 series accomplished this in less than a year thanks to 4 devices in total. The first member to arrive was the Redmi 8A back in September of last year. After that came the vanilla Redmi 8, followed by the 8A Dual and 8A Pro from earlier this year.

The new figures solidify the Redmi 8 series among the best in the entry-level segment. Known for their competitive prices and decent specs, the Redmi 8 models proved a real winner for Xiaomi.

Next in line is the Redmi 9 series which already debuted with the Redmi 9 in Europe earlier this month and is scheduled to arrive in China and more Southeast Asian regions soon. Only time will tell if it can match the success of its predecessors.

Source (in Chinese) | Via
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Many epidemiologists believe that the initial COVID-19 infection rate was undercounted due to testing issues, asymptomatic and alternatively symptomatic individuals, and a failure to identify early cases.

Now, a new study from Penn State estimates that the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have been more than 80 times greater and doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed.

In a paper published today (June 22) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers estimated the detection rate of symptomatic COVID-19 cases using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influenza-like illnesses (ILI) surveillance data over a three week period in March 2020.

"We analyzed each state's ILI cases to estimate the number that could not be attributed to influenza and were in excess of seasonal baseline levels," said Justin Silverman, assistant professor in Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology and Department of Medicine. "When you subtract these out, you're left with what we're calling excess ILI - cases that can't be explained by either influenza or the typical seasonal variation of respiratory pathogens."

The researchers found that the excess ILI showed a nearly perfect correlation with the spread of COVID-19 around the country.

Said Silverman, "This suggests that ILI data is capturing COVID cases, and there appears to be a much greater undiagnosed population than originally thought."

Remarkably, the size of the observed surge of excess ILI corresponds to more than 8.7 million new cases during the last three weeks of March, compared to the roughly 100,000 cases that were officially reported during the same time period.

"At first I couldn't believe our estimates were correct," said Silverman. "But we realized that deaths across the U.S. had been doubling every three days and that our estimate of the infection rate was consistent with three-day doubling since the first observed case was reported in Washington state on January 15."

The researchers also used this process to estimate infection rates for each state, noting that states showing higher per capita rates of infection also had higher per capita rates of a surge in excess ILI. Their estimates showed rates much higher than initially reported but closer to those found once states began completing antibody testing.

In New York, for example, the researchers' model suggested that at least 9% of the state's entire population was infected by the end of March. After the state conducted antibody testing on 3,000 residents, they found a 13.9% infection rate, or 2.7 million New Yorkers.

Excess ILI appears to have peaked in mid-March as, the researchers suggest, fewer patients with mild symptoms sought care and states implemented interventions which led to lower transmission rates. Nearly half of U.S. states were under stay-at-home orders by March 28.

The findings suggest an alternative way of thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Our results suggest that the overwhelming effects of COVID-19 may have less to do with the virus' lethality and more to do with how quickly it was able to spread through communities initially," Silverman explained. "A lower fatality rate coupled with a higher prevalence of disease and rapid growth of regional epidemics provides an alternative explanation of the large number of deaths and overcrowding of hospitals we have seen in certain areas of the world."

###

Other collaborators on the project included Nathaniel Hupert of Cornell University and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and Alex Washburne of Montana State University.
Liang Yanping taught literary criticism at Hubei Universitys School of Chinese language and literature. She defended writer Fang Fang and expressed sorrow over the death of a Hong Kong student.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies)  A professor at Hubei University lost her job and was expelled from the Communist Party for voicing support for Hong Kongs pro-democracy protests and for defending writer Fang Fang Wuhan Diary.

Liang Yanping, 59, taught literary criticism at Hubei Universitys School of Chinese language and literature. Three days ago, the universitys party committee kicked her out of the party for publishing wrong remarks concerning Hong Kong and Japan. The university followed by banning her from teaching and supervising students.

Liangs trouble began in April, when she defended the Wuhan Diary, by novelist Wang Fang, known as Fang Fang, which documented life under strict lockdown in Wuhan caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

In her posts, Fang Fang spares no criticism to the way the government handled the crisis. For this reason, she was branded a "traitor" after news spread that her posts would be published soon in the United States and Germany.

Fang Fang and all those who defended her in some way have been caught up in the wave of nationalism sweeping over China.

As some "keyboard warriors" began looking into Liang's past posts and online writings, they discovered an article in which she expressed grief for a young Hong Kong protester who died during an anti-extradition protest.

In another, she posted a photo of herself in a black mask, which many protesters wore in the former British colony. In one dated 2013, she forwarded posts about China during the Japanese invasion.

For Liang, A normal society without a voice of criticism would be horrifying.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 06:17:17|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

RAMALLAH, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Monday reported a record 168 daily new COVID-19 infections in the West Bank, bringing the total number in the Palestinian territories to 1,196 since the outbreak on March 5.

Meanwhile, five more died from the virus and 597 more have recovered, with 594 still receiving medical care, Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said in a press statement.

Most of the new cases were recorded in the districts of Hebron and Bethlehem, she added.

Al-Kaila called on the Palestinian citizens to abide by the safety and protective measures to avoid the spread of the deadly virus in the West Bank.

In addition, the Monday COVID-19 tests for 270 Palestinian arrivals from Egypt who will be kept in home quarantine for 14 days, turned out all negative, she noted. Enditem
Click here to read the full article.

The LGBTQ community is more skeptical than the total U.S. population when it comes to brands Pride campaigns.

When asked to rate certain kinds of Pride initiatives on a scale of authenticity, LGBTQ consumers in the U.S. were 1.4 times more likely to describe those campaigns as inauthentic compared to other Americans, according to a survey conducted by global data and insights company Dynata on June 12, in combination with DeVries Global. They surveyed a representative sample of 1,000 Americans through Dynatas online platform, including 191 of whom identified as LGBTQ.

According to the LGBTQ respondents, the Pride initiative that resonated the most with them was making donations or partnering with relevant nonprofits, which 34 percent said was inauthentic, and 44 percent called authentic. In other words, LGBTQ people want meaningful action. The kinds of Pride campaigns that brands create can directly impact purchasing decisions, as well. Some 47 percent of LGBTQ respondents indicated they would be more likely to buy from brands if they saw them addressing LGBTQ issues more often, and more than half of these consumers said their decisions hinged on how and when brands got involved in the conversation.

Specifically among LGBTQ respondents, for brands that create gear and merchandise, related to Pride Month, 40 percent of them said it was inauthentic, while 31 percent said it was authentic. Creating ads tailored toward Pride and the LGBTQ community, 42 percent of LGBTQ respondents felt it was inauthentic, while 33 percent called it authentic. For those brands that sponsor a float during Pride marches, 46 percent felt it was inauthentic, while 40 percent said it was authentic, and for those who adopt Pride filters for social media content, 31 percent said it was inauthentic, while 40 percent thought it was authentic. (The differential was undecided.)

Story continues

According to the survey, the total population has a more positive view on some of these Pride initiatives..

Among the total population, of those brands making donations or partnering with relevant nonprofits, 22 percent felt it was inauthentic while 58 percent felt it was authentic; 31 percent found that adopting filters for social media content was inauthentic, while 39 percent felt it was authentic. When it comes to creating gear and merchandise in support of LGBTQ community, 25 percent felt it was inauthentic, while 44 percent felt it was authentic; creating an ad tailored toward Pride and the LGBTQ community, 34 percent thought it was inauthentic and 43 percent felt it was authentic, and sponsoring a float during Pride marches, 34 percent felt it was inauthentic and 43 percent felt it was authentic.

The survey asked the respondents that if they saw brands addressing LGBTQ issues more often, would they be more likely to be loyal to them and buy their products?

According to the LGBTQ population, 21 percent said they would be more likely to support a brand that addressed LGBTQ issues, while 16 percent of the total population said they would. Twenty-four percent of the LGBTQ population said they would be less likely to support brands that address LGBTQ issues frequently while 20 percent of the total population said they would be less likely to support these brands.

Ten percent of the LGBTQ population said addressing LGBTQ issues doesnt affect their behavior, while 22 percent of the total population said it doesnt affect their behavior. Twenty-six percent of the LGBTQ population said they would be more likely to be loyal and buy their products, but it depends on how and when they address LGBTQ issues, while 18 percent of the total population said yes, but it depends on how and when they address LGBTQ issues.

When asked how else does a brands stance on LGBTQ issues affect their purchasing behavior, 20 percent of the LGBTQ population said they seek out more LGBTQ-friendly brands, while 13 percent of the total population said they do.

Some 21 percent of the LGBTQ population said brand support, or lack of support, for LGBTQ doesnt affect their purchasing decisions, while 30 percent of the total population said brand support, or lack of support, for LGBTQ doesnt affect their purchasing decisions.

Seventeen percent of the LGBTQ population said they avoid brands that are not LGBTQ friendly, while 14 percent of the total population said they avoid brands that are not LGBTQ friendly.

In the current environment, respondents were asked what the role of Black Lives Matter should be during Pride 2020 (i.e., through a moment of silence, marching side by side, holding a BLM sign), and 33 percent of the LGBTQ population strongly supported that Black Lives Matter be incorporated into Pride 2020, while 28 percent of the total population agreed. Some 18 percent of the LGBTQ population strongly disagreed that Black Lives Matter be incorporated into Pride 2020, and 16 percent of the total population strongly disagreed that Black Lives Matter should be incorporated into Pride 2020.

Interestingly, 24 percent of the LGBTQ population didnt feel strongly one way or another about Black Lives Matter being incorporated into Pride 2020 and 35 percent of the total population felt the same way.

When asked why respondents disagreed with incorporating Black Lives Matter into Pride 2020, 27 percent believe that Pride deserves its own moment, independent of other current events, while 26 percent believe that Black Lives Matter deserves its own moment, independent of current events. Some 16 percent feel that its disrespectful to the Black community, and 13 percent believe its disrespectful to the LGBTQ community. Thirty-eight percent chose other, which came from respondents who disagreed with Black Lives Matter as a movement.

Some 18 percent of the LGBTQ population would like to see brands address LGBTQ issues as often as possible, while 20 percent of the total population would like to see that. Twenty percent of the LGBTQ population thinks brands should address these LGBTQ issues one to two times a year, while 19 percent of the total population thinks so.

Finally, some 28 percent of the LGBTQ population thinks that brands should never address LGBTQ issues, while 36 percent of the total population thinks similarly.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Australia Cuba Friendship Society Perth rallies against the US blockade on Cuba

Australia Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS) Perth members defied the brutal weather to rally outside the US Consulate in Perth on Wednesday 17th June in demand for the lifting of the US blockade on Cuba.

It is time for global solidarity and not sanctions. While Cuba has sent twenty-eight International Medical brigades to twenty-four countries the Trump Administration has strengthened the blockade placing hardship on Cuba, by blocking medical supplies. Trump in his attack even went as far as trying to persuade countries in need to refuse entry to the Cuban medical brigades. Friends of Cuba around the world, including the ACFS Australian societies, have responded to raise funds to help Cuba during this time in solidarity in support of their selfless dedication to health where it is needed.

The US administration has continued in its coercive measures adding Cuba to the list of countries that do not support its war on terrorism. This unjustified act by the US government is from an administration that at the same time did nothing to prevent, investigate or even make a public announcement on the 30th April terrorist attack on the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington DC.

Globally people are also getting behind the nomination of the Cuban International Medical brigade Henry Reeve for recognition with a Nobel Peace prize. ACFS has endorsed this nomination and encourages all readers and supporters to sign the online petition: www.cubanobel.org

Protestors at the rally managed to spread the word against the inhumane blockade, sharing leaflets. The ACFS branch secretary Elly Hulm made a passionate speech calling for the end of the US blockade and calling on the Australian government to challenge this extraterritorial US assault against the sovereignty of other countries. She called on the United States to respect the vote of the Australian Government that has supported the Cuban motion against the blockade at the UN General Assembly annually since 1996.

The rally called for an end to the criminal blockade on Cuba, the return of Guantanamo Bay and the end of all regime change policies sponsored by the US governments and for respect for Cubas right to self-determination.
This terribly manual process of contact tracing: essentially its a phone tree, and thats where the technology was when people started thinking about it; weve since moved it into the modern age, said Rob Mesirow, a partner in connected solutions at PwC.

In May, PwC introduced a smartphone app for employers that uses Bluetooth signals, Wi-Fi, GPS and other data to track where employees go around the office, who they come into contact with and for how long. The idea is to enable human resources or corporate security managers to quickly access the data in the event of a workplace outbreak and notify employees who may have been exposed.

Microshare, a software company in Philadelphia that uses sensors to monitor environmental factors  like indoor air quality and occupancy  for offices and manufacturing plants, is marketing a different kind of contact-tracing system. It is adapting Bluetooth technology that it originally developed to track the locations of wheelchairs and beds in hospitals for tracking employees.

Employees will wear wristbands or carry credit card-size badges that collect signals about their whereabouts and proximity to one another; that data is sent to devices that transmit it to the cloud. Microshare said employers could also use its system to identify spots where infected workers may have recently gathered, enabling companies to shut down specific areas, rather than an entire building, for deep cleaning.

The badges may appeal to secure facilities or factories where employees are not allowed to bring their personal phones, as well as to people who would rather not have their employers track them on their smartphones.

Asking you to put something on my phone, thats a really slippery slope, said Ron Rock, the chief executive of Microshare. But even employee-tracking wristbands and badges raise questions about increased prying by employers, he said. You start to come up against: Is somebody going to the bathroom too often? Is somebody going to the cafeteria too often? Is somebody smoking too much? Is somebody in parts of the building where they dont belong?
Saudi Arabia said on Monday that it will only allow "very limited numbers" of people to perform the annual hajj this summer due to concerns over the novel coronavirus, AP reports.

Why it matters: The pilgrimage, which is set to occur at the end of July, typically draws around 2 million people from around the world. The Saudi government noted that only people already residing in the country will be authorized to participate.

"This decision was taken to ensure hajj is performed in a safe manner from a public health perspective," government officials said.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islamic faith, and all able-bodied Muslims are required to complete the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime.

Between the lines: Saudi Arabia is a hotbed for the virus in the Middle East, with approximately 161,000 total confirmed cases and more than 1,300 deaths.
Sydney, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on Honk Kong outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Hong-Kong-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses

Hong Kongs small telecom market is among the most highly developed globally. The territorys emphasis on new technologies has seen it provide widescale fibre-based broadband infrastructure, while 5G services have been available since April 2020. Intense competition within a small market has led to consolidation, with the number of MNOs reduced to four, though there is room in the market for several MVNOs as well.

The high mobile subscriber penetration rate reflects the number of tourists visiting Hong Kong, both from overseas and from mainland China, as also the popularity among local residents to have more than one mobile device ad SIM card. Subscriber growth is expected to be steady but relatively low through to 2025, with high penetration offering limits to stronger growth.

Broadband investment was initially focused on DSL and HFC platforms although operators have switched their focus to fibre. This migration has been rendered feasible in Hong Kong given the advantages of the geographically compact territory, the low cost of fibre network deployment, and the relative ease of covering high-density premises.

Demand for broadband is driven by the consumption of bandwidth-intensive online services such as OTT video, music and games; the proliferation of internet connected devices, and the growing use of corporate broadband services including cloud services and software.

Underpinned by widely accessible, fast and affordable fixed and mobile broadband infrastructure, Hong Kong has created a sophisticated digital economy to encourage social inclusion and economic development. Various technologies have been utilised to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of commerce, government services, healthcare, education and utilities.

International internet connectivity continues to grow, driven by Hong Kongs status as an international financial hub.

Supporting the delivery of digital economy services is increasing affordability and sophistication of end user devices and IOT connected sensors as well as continual investment in network infrastructure to connect end-user devices as well as integration of new mobile related technologies designed to improve wireless broadband capacity and service quality.

BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth.

Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report.

The report also covers the responses of the telecom operators as well as government agencies and regulators as they react to the crisis to ensure that citizens can continue to make optimum use of telecom services. This can be reflected in subsidy schemes and the promotion of tele-health and tele-education, among other solutions.

Key Developments

SmarTone launches 5G services;

Government sets subsidy scheme to encourage 5G projects;

Report update includes the regulators market data to April 2020, telcos operating data to Q1 2020, Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector, recent market developments.

Key companies mentioned in this report:

Hong Kong Telecom (HKT), Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong Holdings (Hutchison 3), SmarTone, Vodafone Enterprise Global, China Mobile HK, CITIC Telecom, CSL; Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN); i-Cable, HGC Global Communications.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Hong-Kong-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses
So now you have an Amazon Echo, and have been interacting with it. At this point, it is more or less a glorified bluetooth speaker. There are still a number of things that you can do with the device to improve your experience. We start with relatively simple workshops that add a few functionalities, and move on to more advanced tasks such as creating your own custom skills. While we have chosen very particular end goals for each of these workshops, the same approaches and techniques can be used for a wide number of ideas, or tasks to totally customise and improve the user experience that you have with Alexa on an Echo speaker. These workshops work with any Alexa-enabled speaker.

Pair supported streaming services

Alexa treats the music services available as a skill, and you have to enable the skill once to use the particular streaming service at any time. On the Alexa app, go to Settings > Music > Link New Service > JioSaavn > Enable to Use. You will then need to login in to JioSaavn and Authorize Alexa. Now go to Settings > Music > Default Services and change Default Music Library to JioSaavn. Note that there is no option to change the Default Station in the India region to JioSaavn, and no Artists and Genre Stations option that is available in the US region. According to Amazon, support for custom playlists on JioSaavn is coming soon, but it is possible to request particular artists, genres or tracks. A bonus feature that seems to be made for local consumption is the ability to request songs featuring a particular actor. The same approach can be used to add Hungama or Gaana as default services on Alexa. Alexa does support playback of custom playlists on Hungama, but not on Gaana.

Pair Spotify

Unfortunately, Spotify does not support integration with Amazon Alexa in India yet. It is just simpler to use the Echo as a bluetooth speaker and control the playback from the Spotify app. However, there is a rather painful work around if you really want to do it. On a web browser, go to Amazon.in > Settings > Your Account > Content & Devices > Preferences > Country / Region Settings and change the country from India to US. You will be required to provide a US street address for doing the same. Note that your Kindle account will be transferred to Amazon.com, you will get a prompt that says you have to make future purchases in USD. Dont worry about this for now. Fire up the Alexa app, go to Settings > Music & Podcasts > Link New Service and select Spotify. Now you have to login to Spotify. Go to Settings > Default Services and change Music and Artists and Genre Stations to Spotify. Now you are all good to go, just say Spotify play xyz playlist, and Spotify will start playing the playlist from your library. Make sure to give your playlists easy to understand names for Alexa, so something like fantasy works better than npr 2012. We would not recommend this approach for getting Spotify to work with Alexa though, because although you can easily switch back to India region, it messes up other integrations and custom skills. However, once you have switched back and forth between countries, Amazon saves the address information, so moving between regions is just a matter of a few clicks. Do remember though, you have to use the .com domain to switch to .in and the .in domain to switch to .com. If you actually go through the trouble of switching regions to US, integrating Spotify, and switching back to India region, the Echo remains an option as an available device on the Spotify apps across smartphones, desktop and web, which means there is no need to play via Bluetooth, the device connects to Spotify through WiFi. But, at this point, Alexa still wont play a playlist from Spotify on command. If you are a Spotify subscriber, and want to ask Spotify to support Alexa integration in India, follow this link (https://dgit.in/alxsptfy) and click on Me Too.

Pair calendar with Alexa

Go to Settings > Calendars > Google. Next, sign in with your Google account and you should be done. If you have multiple calendars on the same account, tap on the Google icon again and you will get a list of all available calendars. Uncheck the ones that you do not want Alexa to access. You can ask Alexa to read out upcoming events, or add events to the calendar. Note that any events added to the calendar will be in Alexas copy of the calendar, and will not be added to the Google Calendar, and will not be accessible in the web or app versions of Google Calendar.

A similar procedure can be used to link Microsoft and Apple calendars as well. Note that anyone else who has access to the Echo will also have access to any linked calendars. If multiple people link their calendars to Echo, then Alexa will read out upcoming events from all linked calendars when prompted. Also, Amazon stores a copy of the linked calendar on its own servers, instead of pulling the information from the linked service on demand.

Create your own routine

Creating a routine is the first step towards customising your Alexa experience, and allows you to perform a series of tasks given a particular trigger. Essentially, it is a version of IFTTT for capabilities of the Echo. Go to Settings > Routines. Tap on the + sign and enter a routine name. Lets go with morning briefing. Then tap the + sign next to When this happens, tap on Voice and enter a phrase. Lets go with good morning. Now, tap the + sign next to Add action and select Calendar then Todays Calendar. Add another action, tap on Calendar and select Next Event. Then, add the Weather, News and Traffic options. We suggest you skip the News here because the anchors in most local providers tend to yell at you, which is not really the first tone of voice you want to hear in the morning. Flash Briefing can be customised in the global settings, where you can pick and chain multiple providers depending on your interest areas. So you can add Economic Times, MajorGeeks, and SpeakingTree to the Flash Briefing. You can then drag and drop to reorder all these actions according to your preferences. If you want to start your day with some music, you can add the Music action. Select Morning in the play section, as most services have a morning playlist. Tap on the Timer button and select 30 minutes. Now, choose the device, and tap on Save. Note that the Traffic option will only work if you have set your home and office location in the app. If you have not previously set your home and office addresses, you will get a notification on your Alexa app that allows you to put in these locations. You have successfully configured Alexa for a great way to start off your day. Now, let us create another routine, just for fun, called intruder alert. Tap on When this happens, then on Voice and key in, intruder alert. Now tap on Add action, go to Sounds, then go to Sci-Fi and tap on Red alert. Now choose the device and tap on Save.

Use an IFTTT applet

While skills are one way to increase the capabilities of your Echo, another way is to connect to IFTTT applets. We will be using one here known as call my device, which can be very helpful if you dont know where your phone is. Go to IFTTT on a web browser or the smartphone app, and login. In either case, you need to install the IFTTT app on your smartphone, and login to that as well. If you do not have an account, you can instantly create one using a Facebook or Google account. Search for Alexa and you should see a number of applets. If you are iffy about security, look for the applets officially published by IFTTT. Now, Select Hey Alexa, call my device. Here, you can specify the phrase you want to use for Alexa to trigger the call. This uses two services on IFTTT, Amazon Alexa as well as VoIP Calls. Click on Save. You will be redirected to your Amazon account where you will have to confirm the integration. Once that is done, IFTTT will send a confirmation to your smartphone. You are all done now. Just say Alexa, call my device, and your phone should start ringing. The home screen of the IFTTT app has all the connected services, and you can remove any services that you dont want or are no longer using. Tap on the services, tap on the gear icon, and tap on remove to do so. IFTTT applets can be used to get around all kinds of limitations of Alexa, such as syncing Alexa to-do lists with your device, or adding events to the calendar.

Make your own IFTTT applet

This is a simple applet that we made where you can use a custom phrase to note down the current time in a Google Sheets document. The date and time are added sequentially. Such a setup can be used to track the start and finish timings of gaming sessions, workouts, or just about anything else. Fire up the IFTTT app, and tap on the + icon next to Make your own Applets from Scratch. Now go to This > Say a specific phrase. Enter a phrase, we are going to go with start game. Then tap on Create trigger, and then tap on That. Search for and select Google Sheets and then Add row to spreadsheet. Select the Spreadsheet name. If a spreadsheet of the same name does not exist, a new one will get created. Now note that the formatted row has a TriggeredAt element followed by |||. The TriggeredAt is an ingredient that notes down the current time, and the ||| provides a cell separation. For the purpose of this workshop, we will be adding Start DnD session next to the |||. Now tap on Create Action. A preview of your applet will appear, but you are not done yet. Depending on the screen size of your phone, you may need to scroll down to tap on Finish. Now, repeat the process with another trigger phrase, end game, and add End DnD session after the |||. Now tap on Create Action > Finish. The applet is all set, and you can vocally track the timings of DnD sessions in Google Sheets with a custom voice command to Alexa. A similar approach can be used to create other IFTTT applets. Note that Alexa offers a rather limited set of ingredients, which are variables that can be specified at the time of triggering an action. Google Home supports many more. You can also chain IFTTT triggers, for example, adding a new row to a Google Sheets document can be the if this for another then that. Now let us do something a little more complicated. For the If trigger, select Amazon Alexa and New song played. Then, go to That and select Spotify then tap on Add track to a playlist. In the Artist name field, add ArtistName as an ingredient. Then tap on Create action, and then Finish. Now, every time a track is played on Alexa, through any streaming service, that track is added to a playlist on Spotify.

Change an Alexa response with Blueprints

We are now going to use blueprints.amazon.in to replace particular questions with custom answers. You can set the trigger phrase, as well as the response, and this supersedes all other programming, routines, and skills that Alexa may have. Note that blueprints.amazon.com will allow you to make the skills just as well, but you will frustratingly be unable to use them as long as you are in India. To use custom skills made through blueprints in India, you have to go to the .in address. Essentially, when fiddling around with Alexa, you need to be hyper aware of the domain that you are working on, and the region settings for Alexa. Click on Custom Q&A, from the Featured Blueprints section. Click on Make your Own. Now, just type out the text in the When you say: Alexa, field, as well as the Alexa will say: field. We went with a long-ish response to What are the house rules for Uno? as an example.

Create a skill with Blueprints

There are a number of Blueprints available that will let you customise the experience. The Quiz Blueprint lets you create a question and answer game for up to four friends. Alexa can check for the right answer, and deliver a related fact just afterwards. The Facts skill lets you relay a random fact from a list on any topic, and you can keep adding to the Facts. One Blueprint we found incredibly useful is known as Houseguest. Here, you can add custom items to a list to help someone find their way around the house. One category is known as Where is the Here you can add items such as sandpaper, facewash, helmet and so on, write down the location, and provide additional contextual information if necessary. There is a section for How do I which lets you explain particular tasks, such as locking the door, using the washing machine or clean out the garbage. You can add multiple ways to answer the question to get the same response. You can create as many custom responses as you want. Once you are done, tap on Next: Update Skill. You can also provide contact information for doctors, taxi services and so on in a Contact Info segment. You can then set a custom welcome message, a list of random phrases to greet the guest every time they interact with the Echo, and an Exit or Farewell message when they stop interacting with the Echo. Then, pick a name for the skill, which is the trigger phrase you need to inform your guest about. Click on Create Skill. This process may take up to two minutes. This time period is not there in the previous example of configuring a custom response. Most other Blueprints based Skills however, take some time. Once created, you can add or edit a skill, and delete them if no longer required. Note that Skills created with Blueprints are personal, and available only on your Echo device. You can however, choose to share your skills with friends, or publish them as well.

The Developer Console

Now, we will be publishing our own skill. First, you will need to get an Amazon developer account. To do so, go to developer.amazon.com. You will have to provide a name, which will be the attribution if you publish your skill. The registration process is instant. Go to the Alexa Developer Console, and then click on Create Skill. Create a name for the skill, we are going to go with Indian States in this example. Now, you will have to select a model, which is a more complicated version of Blueprints. One of the simplest models available is the option of creating your own Flash Briefing, but that requires you to configure your own backend. Do note that, you can create and host skills locally, which is great for testing skills. We will be starting with something simpler. Select Custom as the model, and Alexa-Hosted (Node.js) as the backend. This gives you a free Amazon AWS Lambda endpoint, where you can store 5 GB of data, with a 15 GB data cap per month. Now you have to choose a template. From left to right, the templates increase in complexity, starting with a simple Hello World. Select the third one, which is Quiz Game Skill, and click on Choose. Now, you will see an Interaction Model, with an Invocation, as well as Intent and Slot Type sub menus. The Invocation is the phrase that people will use to start this skill. We will go with Indian States quiz here.

Install Notepad++, this is an easier way of editing the code than Amazons Developer console. Now, go to the spreadsheet program of your choice, and make an array that when copy pasted, shows up this line as a single example {StateName: Andhra Pradesh, Abbreviation: AP, Capital: Amaravati, StatehoodYear:2017, StatehoodOrder:26},. Fill out all the data for the states in this format. Once you have put in all the information, copy and paste the array to replace the code between the square brackets of const data = []. Then, find and replace all United States with India. Now, look for fifty states and replace it with twenty eight.

Amazon provides all the resources needed to train yourself to start building skills on the developer subsite. There is a course to familiarise with the Alexa Skills Kit as well as tutorials on the design aspect of skill creation such as Voice UI and monetisation. You also need to add images for function getSmallImage(item) {}, and we used spark.Adobe.com to create these graphics. Note that this skill is going to be publicly deployed, so it is good to make custom graphics. They show up in Echo devices with a touchscreen. Now, find and replace admitted to the Union in with established as a state in. Its as simple as that, we are done. Copy all the text, go back to Alexa Developer Console, and replace all the code in index.js. If you have made any errors in the code, the line will show a red cross. Click on Save, then on Deploy. This will take some time. Now go back to Build and build the model again. Try creating your own unique quiz, or other skill. Once you are done, test the skill using the Test tab. This gives an interface identical to the Echo, and you can create skills even if you do not have an Echo. Once you have verified that it works as expected, you can go ahead and publish it. Click on Distribution, and change the descriptions to remove all traces of US. You also have to make and upload small and large icons. Fill out the Privacy and Compliance information, then choose availability settings. You can choose to release the skill all over the world, or in particular regions only. Now, the skill will get validated through an automated error checking system. Once that is done, click on Run to send the skill for certification. Now go to Certify and Publish, and you should be done. Do not try this with this exact same quiz, as it has been done many times before.
Indian and Chinese troops, on June 15, engaged in their first deadly clashes since 1975, resulting in the martydrom of 20 Indian soldiers, including that of a commanding officer. Sources revealed that at least 45-50 personnel of the Chinese army were killed in the violent clashes which took place in the Galwan valley of Eastern Ladakh.

The standoff between India and China started near Line of Actual Control (LAC) in May after India started construction of new roads on its side of the border. New Delhi's decision to boost up road and other infrastructure near the LAC did not go down well with Beijing and the latter upped the ante by sending more troops at four locations near eastern Ladakh and three in the Galwan Valley and one near Pangong Lake. Responding to Chinese aggression India had also moved an equal number of high-altitude warfare troops to these areas closer to the LAC to prevent intrusion of Chinese forces inside Indian territory. The People's Liberation Army and Indian troops have been locked in an eye-to-eye situation since May in several key areas, including Pangong Tso and Galwan Valley.

Here's a timeline of the stand-off and the ensuing clashes at Galwan Valley:

May 5: Scuffles at Pangong Tso and at Naku La in North Sikkim resulted in significant injuries due to aggression on both sides.

May 6: Objecting to a road being constructed by India, Chinese troops close in on Finger 2 of Pangong Tso and block the forward movement. After the scuffle on May 5, both sides move in additional troops in the region.

May 12: Chinese military helicopters are seen flying close to Line of Actual Control, after which a fleet of Su-30 fighters of the Indian Air Force are sent to carry our sorties. Additional troops rushed to the site.

May 23: Army Chief General Manoj Naravane visits the Leh-based 14 Corps headquarters to review the situation.

May 26: India's top military brass meets PM Modi. The meeting came hours after the top four generals briefed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh about the situation in Pangong Tso lake, Galwan Valley, Demchok and Daulat Beg Oldi where the Indian and Chinese troops were engaged in aggressive posturing for the last 20 days.

May 27: Chinese President Xi Jinping orders the military to scale up the battle preparedness, visualising worst-case scenarios and asked them to resolutely defend the country's sovereignty.

June 1: Beijing says overall situation along the China-India border is stable and controllable. The Chinese keepsa fleet of around 10-12 fighter aircraft stationed near Easter Ladakh and carry out flying activity close to Indian territory.

June 2: Major general-rank officers hold deliberations. Reports suggested the meeting remained "inconclusive".

June 6: In an attempt to diffuse the situation, Indian military delegation headed by the commander of Leh-based 14 Corp Lieutenant General Harinder Singh and China's Major General Liu Lin, Commander of South Xinjiang Military Region hold talks.

June 13: Army Chief General Naravane said the situation along the borders is under control. "I would like to assure everyone that the entire situation along our borders with China is under control. We are having a series of talks which started with corps commander level talks which was followed up with meetings at the local level between commanders of equivalent ranks," he said.

June 15: Army delegations from India and China hold discussions again. Talks take place at two locations along the LAC --- brigadier-ranked officers meet in the Galwan Valley and Colonel-ranked officers in Hot Springs. The engagement between the two sides happens the same evening.

June 16: Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in Ladakh, the army said.
New England states have loosened travel guidelines for each other.

As of July 3, residents of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are able to forgo quarantine and testing protocols when visiting Maine; prior to this date, the state was requiring a two-week isolation period or a negative COVID-19 test in order to visit the state. Similarly, restrictions were lifted for Connecticut residents traveling to Massachusetts on July 1; previously there was a 14-day quarantine request for all out-of-state visitors.

The governors of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York announced mandatory quarantines for out-of-state visitors, but only certain states are subject to the quarantine.

If you are planning a summer road trip, take a look at what each neighboring state is requesting.
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced Monday that it plans to set up a permanent base in the Indian Ocean in order to expand its presence in the international waters, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tasked the IRGC with permanent presence in waters far away from the country, IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri was quoted as saying.

Accordingly, the IRGC is planning to create a permanent base in the Indian Ocean by the end of March 2021, Tangsiri said.

The IRGC commander said that "pirates and some foreign vessels had, in the past, created disturbances for the Iranian trawlers and dhows in the country's southern waters."

"Through its powerful presence in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean, the IRGC will no longer leave any room for such acts of infringement," he noted.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - New Zealand police said Monday they have seized $90 million from Alexander Vinnik, a Russian bitcoin fraud suspect who is in French custody but is also wanted in the United States.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said it had worked closely with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in the case. He said the money likely reflected illicit profits from thousands of victims.

The money is the most ever seized by New Zealand police.

The U.S. has accused Vinnik of laundering billions of dollars through BTC-e, one of the worlds largest digital currency exchanges. His native Russia also wants to put him on trial. Vinnik says he acted as a technical consultant to the BTC-e platform and had no knowledge of any illegal activity.

Vinnik was arrested in the summer of 2017 while on a family holiday in northern Greece, at the request of U.S. authorities.

After a two-year legal tug-of-war, Vinnik was extradited from Greece to France. French officials in January filed preliminary charges of money laundering and extortion against Vinnick.

He denies any wrongdoing and was on hunger strike for 35 days to protest his extradition to France. He wanted to go to Russia instead, where he faces lesser charges. Vinniks lawyer said her client was hospitalized upon arrival in France because of the hunger strike.

Greek authorities had ruled that Vinnik should be extradited first to France, then to the U.S. and finally to Russia.

New Zealand police said Monday they had restrained 140 million New Zealand dollars ($90 million) from Canton Business Corporation and its owner, Vinnik, who were holding funds in a New Zealand company.

New Zealand prides itself on the ease of doing business and setting up companies, although it has sometimes be targeted by criminals from abroad, who create shell companies.

Coster said there was always a risk New Zealand companies would be used in international money laundering.

However, this restraint demonstrates that New Zealand is not, and will not be, a safe haven for the illicit proceeds generated from crime in other parts of the world, Coster said in a statement.

New Zealands companies register indicates Vinnik owned a company called WME Capital Management from 2008 until 2012, although the register doesnt list him as a shareholder in any companies beyond that date.

The money has been frozen by the New Zealand police, who said they planned to apply to the High Court seeking for it to be forfeited.
Why is it hard to convict police officers of homicide? One reason, in the view of a juror in a prominent police case, is authority  officers display it, and jurors, more often than not, defer to it.

Ann Loar Brooks was forewoman of the only jury trial held for a police officer in the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was arrested on a street in Baltimore in April 2015 for allegedly possessing a knife. Some witnesses said an officer knelt on Grays neck and that police threw him headfirst into the back of a patrol van, testimony that the officers denied. When the van reached the police station a half hour later, Gray was removed and taken to a hospital in a coma. He died of spinal cord injuries a week later.

In the trial, Officer William Porter, who was also African American, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and three lesser counts, charges that were eventually dismissed after his jury deadlocked. According to testimony, Porter entered the van at a stop midway through the ride, lifted Gray from the floor where he was lying face-down, put him on a bench and then sat in another section of the van where he could not see Gray.

Gray fell from the bench later in the ride. Prosecutors accused Porter of helping to cause his death by failing to secure him with a seat belt and by not summoning a medic when Gray pleaded with him for help when he first saw the officer. The defense said Gray had banged his own head into a wall of the van.

In some respects, Porters case differed from other high-profile prosecutions of police. There were no videos, as there were in the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis with an officers knee on his neck. Gray was fatally injured outside public view, and the cause, or causes, of his death remain in dispute.

But in the first known public comments by a juror in Porters case, Brooks told The Chronicle that Porters police colleagues played a crucial role for her fellow jurors. Although using seat belts while transporting suspects was common practice among Baltimore police, she said, a series of officers testified in Porters defense that they would not have used a belt on Gray, and would not have stepped above their rank to call for a medic.

When somebody walks into a courtroom dressed in their uniform, they carry a certain weight, said Brooks, who disagreed with jurors who voted to clear Porter. They didnt come in dressed as civilians. They dressed as officers.

She said other jurors found the officers more credible than an expert witness on police conduct, who testified for the prosecution that police must use seat belts to protect passengers in vans in order to comply with standards of reasonable care. In fact, the Baltimore Police Department had ordered its officers to buckle passengers several days before Grays arrest, but Porter testified he had been unaware of the order.

It also made a difference, Brooks said, that Porters response when Gray asked for help was to consult the vans driver, Caesar Goodson, who was in charge of the scene and did not call for a medic. Goodson was later acquitted of murder in a separate trial.

During deliberations, Brooks said, one juror, a firefighter, told the other panel members that he had been taught if the person above you said to do this, thats what you do. ... You never go above your rank.

Brooks said she replied that if I didnt buckle somebody in the back seat of my car and they were injured, I would be held responsible, but the other jurors were apparently unswayed.

The jury  seven blacks and five whites, seven women and five men  deliberated for about 15 hours over three days and then reported that it was deadlocked on all four counts.

Brooks said the final votes were 11-1 for acquittal on involuntary manslaughter; 8-2 for acquittal, with two undecided, on second-degree assault; 7-3 for conviction, with two undecided, on reckless endangerment; and 10-1 for conviction, with one undecided, on misconduct in office.

Brooks said she was the only juror to vote to convict Porter on every charge. She is now writing a book about the trial and planning to move to the Bay Area to join her children.

I dont think justice was done, said Brooks, a white woman who was in her early 60s at the time. To me, what William Porter did in not calling for a medic and in not seat-belting Freddie Gray was a wanton disregard of Freddie Grays life, one definition of manslaughter under the law.

She also got the impression that, to some of her fellow jurors, Freddie Gray was, in their minds, a dangerous drug user from the projects, even though that morning he and his friends were looking for carpentry work.

After the deadlock, Judge Barry Williams declared a mistrial. Goodson and another officer facing trial then opted for non-jury trials before Williams, who heard evidence and acquitted them of all charges. The city prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, then dropped charges against Porter and three others who never went to trial. Baltimore paid $6.4 million to settle a lawsuit by Grays family.

Brooks observations about police testimony are not unique.

Jurors are hesitant to second-guess split-second decisions by officers when they use force, deadly or otherwise, Terry White, a retired Los Angeles deputy district attorney, told The Chronicle. White was the lead prosecutor of four officers charged with using excessive force against black motorist Rodney King, whose beating with clubs and boots in 1991 was recorded in excruciating detail, replayed for the jury and dissected by the officers attorneys.

An all-white, suburban jury acquitted three officers and deadlocked on the fourth in 1992, triggering riots that killed 54 people. In a separate trial, a federal court jury later convicted two of the officers of violating Kings civil rights.

Police can also face a backlash when juror deference seems excessive, said Jim Newton, an author, longtime journalist and UCLA teacher who covered the federal trial in Kings case and O.J. Simpsons trial in 1995 on charges of murdering his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Newton said Simpsons acquittal by a Los Angeles jury came at a time of widespread public sentiment that the first King jury had given officers far too much leeway.

When the defense says Simpson is the victim of sloppy police work and possibly a frame, it didnt sound as outlandish as it might have a few years earlier, Newton said.

Brooks said Porters case was her second homicide trial as a juror. The first, a murder case in 2001, also ended in a hung jury.

I will never be on a jury again, she said.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
More time spent at home means time to seize the everyday and rediscover the joys of your own space. Canadian Tire and Yahoo Canada are proud to help Canadians get there. Were bringing you everything you need for the season, from at-home camping essentials to the coolest backyard must-haves.

Photo via Getty Images

This summer may be different than years past, but Canadians are still looking to spend time outdoors with their family - and whats more Canadian than camping? Luckily, you dont have to stray too far from home for the ultimate family adventure. In fact, you dont have to go further than your own backyard.

With various social distancing and gathering regulations still in place across the country, a backyard camp-out is a fun and safe way to experience the outdoors. Not only is it a fun and relaxing family activity, its also the perfect way to introduce younger children to camping.

Camping is a really great teaching tool, best-selling travel writer Jayne Seagrave told Yahoo Canada. Seagrave, who has written several books including Camping with Kids: The Best Family Campgrounds in B.C. and Alberta, said camping is a practical and economical way to spend quality time together.

Its a chance for kids to learn responsibility, she explained. Going to bed at night being able to look up at the stars, listening to birds and animals. You can recruit children to pitch a tent, it teaches them to cook, and teaches them to be outside.

A backyard campout helps familiarize first-time campers with the experience of sleeping outdoors even if home is only a few feet away. Camping is a great way to foster a positive relationship between your child and nature and provide them with the confidence they need to take on new challenges. Allowing them to pack their own bags, assist in pitching the tent and setting up camp helps develop problem-solving skills and resourcefulness while fostering a positive relationship with the outdoors.

Oh, and did we mention its also a lot of fun?

Story continues

Opting for a backyard camp-out is a great chance for families to leave all of their devices indoors and exercise their bodies and imagination. A night under the stars, gathered around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and telling stories helps create fond memories.

Weve rounded up several tips and tricks to make the most of your backyard camping trip below.

Set Up Your Campsite

Photo via Canadian Tire

Just because youre camping, doesnt mean you need to sacrifice your comfort. Establishing a home-base, even while camping can help put first-time campers at ease. This Woods Klondike Cabin Tent is large enough to comfortably fit six people and colour-coded poles to ensure easy set-up. Set up a functional and livable camp with thanks to the 6ft full front canopy, removable room dividers, ample pockets for storage and large mesh panels to provide simultaneous ventilation and bug protection.

Settling in for bed after a long day of fun can present the most challenges for home sick first time campers. Bringing a favourite blanket, pillow and stuffed animal can help make young campers sleep soundly, as well as a comfortable sleeping bag. Available in single and double sizes, the Coleman Granite Peak Sleeping Bag ensures your family will stay warm on cool summer nights. The lightweight bag is made with ThermoTech insulation material, perfect for temperatures between 4C and 15C.

Make A Comfortable, Relaxing Dining Room

Photo via Canadian Tire

Give every member in the family a designated seat around the fire with these Directors Chair with Table by Woods. Each of these collapsable chairs are made with padding for extra comfort and a mesh pocket with zipper for extra storage. This multipurpose chair features a foldable table and drink holder making enjoying your campside meals easier than ever.

Extra lighting not only helps to create an inviting campside environment but its also practical for meal prep and navigating the unfamiliar campsite after dark. These Montmartre Heavy-Duty Outdoor String Lights by CANVAS allow you and your family to enjoy meals and endless hours of fun after the sun sets. Each 36ft strand contains 15 clear, clear vintage lights to provide an incandescent glow, perfect for outdoor entertaining.

Create A Hassle-Free Cookout

Photo via Getty Images

A campfire is a classic element of a camping trip  but depending on local bylaws, its not always possible to make that happen in your own yard. Luckily, there are still easy ways you can enjoy your favourite treats like Smores and hot dogs safely  as well as go above and beyond with your campside cooking. A portable charcoal BBQ like this one from MASTER Craft lets you get that delicious smokey taste without the hassle of building a fire, and also gives you many more options (hello, steaks!)

Practice Campsite Safety

Photo via Getty Images

Aside from providing additional lighting, every campsite and camper should be well versed in how to use an emergency lantern. Setting campsite rules, preparing campers for potential emergencies (especially when out in nature) and practicing campsite safety is a must for young campers. This collapsable LED lantern has a five hour run time and rechargeable powerbank, so its a great choice for camping at home as well as preventing any trips or stumbles if you have to head back into the house for a forgotten package of graham crackers or a bathroom break.

Make Set-Up And Tear-Down Easy

Photo via Canadian Tire

Whether youre in the backyard now or in the wilderness at another time, camp supplies can take up a lot of space. If youre looking for an easy way to transport snacks, sleeping bags and folding chairs without making multiple trips to the car (or the garage for backyard campers) a folding wagon is a timesaving must-have. The Outbound Portable Folding Wagon can hold up to 150 pounds of gear and has two 360 front wheels, perfect for navigating uneven terrain.

Canadian Tire and Yahoo Canada are helping Canadians seize the everyday this summer, with tips, tricks and everything you need for the season. Click here for more!
She has been holidaying in St Tropez on her father Sir Phillip Green's 118million yacht.

And Chloe Green appeared to be making the most of the sunshine as she took a dip in the sea on Monday with her boyfriend Manuele Thiella.

The Topshop heiress, 29, looked tanned and toned in a pale blue patterned bikini as she sat on the decking of the Lionchase before heading into the water.

Fun: Chloe Green appeared to be making the most of the sunshine on her fathers 118million yacht in St Tropez as she took a dip in the sea on Monday, with her boyfriend Manuele Thiella

Chloe showed off her sun-kissed tan in the tiny two-piece as she joined Manuele, 34, for a swim.

The couple later emerged with a group of friends to head off the yacht and into St Tropez via a speed boat.

The mother-of-one had changed into ripped denim shorts and an oversized shirt, which she wore partially unbuttoned.

Bronzed: Chloe showed off her sun-kissed tan in the tiny two-piece as she joined Manuele for a swim

Living it up: Chloe has been holidaying in St Tropez with friends and her Italian yacht broker boyfriend for a few weeks

Wow: The Topshop heiress, 29, looked tanned and toned in a pale blue patterned bikini as she headed into the water

Refreshing: The television personality showered herself down after the swim

Bikini babe: The blue bikini showed off Chloe's slender physique and long legs

Keeping active: The former Made In Chelsea star looked refreshed after her swim

Millionaire lifestyle: Chloe loves to holiday on her father's yacht every year, and this year was no exception

Love: The businessman has been dating Chloe since 2019 with the pair even spending the festive period together alongside Chloe's mum Tina, 70, and other 'best friends and family'

The lovebirds appeared in high spirits as they chatted to one another on the boat, taking in the breathtaking views as the party headed to a beach bar.

Chloe has been holidaying in St Tropez with friends and her Italian yacht broker boyfriend for a few weeks.

The former Made In Chelsea star was pictured passionately kissing Manuele on board her father Sir Philip Green's 118 million yacht in the South of France earlier this month.

Heading back to the party: Chloe headed up some stairs to join her friends

Out at sea: The couple later emerged with a group of friends to head off the yacht and into St Tropez via a speed boat

Double denim: The mother-of-one had changed into ripped denim shorts and an oversized shirt, which she wore partially unbuttoned

But it won't have been Manuele's first voyage as he's the CEO of company Royal Yacht Brokers, which boasts celebrity clients such as Madonna, Chrissy Teigen and Alicia Vikander.

The businessman has been dating Chloe since 2019 with the pair even spending the festive period together alongside Chloe's mum Tina, 70, and other 'best friends and family.'

A source said: 'Chloe has known Manuele for months and they have always been very close friends.

Holiday of a lifetime: The lovebirds took in the breathtaking views as they headed out for a day trip

Perfect place for romance: The couple enjoyed a swim together before joining their friends for a trip to a beach bar

'They have a lot in common; they're both parents and are from similar worlds, Chloe is very happy with him. He's very much been accepted into her family.'

The couple celebrated Chloe's birthday together in March, with Manuele pictured smiling alongside the heiress and her brother Brandon, 27.

Chloe split from ex-fiance Jeremy Meeks, 36, nicknamed Hot Felon, in June 2019, following a two-year romance.

Soaking up the sun: Manuele displayed his muscular physique in a pair of pink patterned board shorts

It's over: Chloe split from hot felon Jeremy Meeks, who she has a two-year-old son with, in June 2019 following two years of dating

The former Made in Chelsea star shares a two-year-old son, Jayden while Manuele has a daughter from a previous relationship with a former partner.

After her split from hot felon Jeremy, Chloe briefly dated Italian polo captain Rommy Gianni, who she was also spotted kissing on board her dad's super yacht.

Chloe was photographed in Sardina with Rommy last August  just two months after reports of her split from Jeremy.

MailOnline contacted Chloe for comment at the time.
FILE PHOTO: The spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Hamburg

(Reuters) - India's drug regulator has given Hetero Labs and Cipla Ltd the green light to manufacture and market their generic version of Gilead Sciences Inc's experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir, the Indian pharmaceutical companies said on Sunday.

The drug, which will be marketed under the brand name Covifor, will likely be priced at 5,000 to 6,000 rupees ($66-$79) for a 100 milligram dose, Hetero said.

India's Cipla said its generic version of remdesivir will be called Cipremi.

The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) was not immediately available for comment.

Gilead Sciences Inc signed non-exclusive licensing pacts last month with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan to expand the supply of its COVID-19 treatment.

The pacts allow Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd, Cipla, Hetero Labs, Mylan NV and Ferozsons Laboratories Ltd to make and sell the drug in 127 countries.

Indian drugmaker Zydus Cadila said last week it signed a non-exclusive licensing pact with Gilead Sciences to manufacture and market remdesivir.

India reported a record jump in coronavirus infections on Saturday, an increase of 14,516 COVID-19 cases, the health ministry said, taking the total to 395,047 with 12,948 deaths.

(Reporting by Sabahatjahan Contractor in Bengaluru; Editing by David Clarke and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Paris Jackson paid tribute to her cousin, TJ Jackson, on Father's Day, but made no mention of her famous father, the late King Of Pop Michael Jackson.

TJ, who has four children of his own and two stepchildren, has been instrumental in Paris' life and her two siblings, especially since the death of their dad in June 2009.

'Happy fathers day papa t  i love you with all of my heart and i can't even begin to express my gratitude for all you've done. i owe you my life,' she gushed in the caption of a photo of the duo having fun outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.

Family love: Paris Jackson, 22, paid tribute to her cousin TJ Jackson, 41, on Father's Day; the cousins are pictured together during a trip to Paris, France

In the first of two photos, Paris can be seen giving TJ, 41, a loving kiss on the cheek as he flashed a big beaming smile.

She also shared a second photo of herself being playful by sticking out her tongue while walking arm-in-arm with her cousin during their visit to France.

Spreading the fatherly love, TJ also took to Instagram and honored his father, Tito Jackson, 66, who's Michael's older brother and former Jackson 5 bandmate.

'Happy Fathers Day to my pops @poppa3t. I am so thankful for all you've done for me. Enjoy your day. I love you,' he wrote in the caption of a photo taken with his dad, wife and some of their children.

Cheeky: Paris also shared a second photo of herself being playful by sticking out her tongue while walking arm-in-arm with her cousin during their visit to France

Major life impact: TJ has been a father figure for Paris and her brothers Prince and Blanket; TJ was granted co-guardianship of Paris and her brothers Prince and Blanket in 2012

TJ has been a father figure of sorts for Paris and her brothers Prince and Blanket.

When the King Of Pop died, his mother Katherine Jackson was granted custody of all three sibling, which was in accordance to his will.

By 2012, TJ stepped in and was named co-guardian of the three minors with Katherine, according to ABC News.

Just last year, TJ revealed that he took over full guardianship duties when Katherine reached her late eighties during an appearance on the podcast Black Hollywood Live.

Spreading more love: TJ also took to Instagram and honored his dad, Tito Jackson, on Father's Day; Tito, who's Michael's older brother and former Jackson 5 bandmate, is pictured with TJ, his wife and some of their children

While Paris and Prince are now adults at 22 and 23-years old, Blanket only just turned the legal age of 18 this past February.

Paris has been very vocal on social media, and in interviews, about her love and adoration she has for TJ over the years.

Following in the Jackson family business, Paris and her folk band The Soundflowers are set to release their debut EP on June 23.
The state reported 146 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, and two new deaths.

That brings the total to 7,083 confirmed or presumptive cases of the novel coronavirus, and 192 deaths in Oregon.

Officials with the Oregon Health Authority have said theyre concerned about the elevated numbers over the past few weeks. Before June 7, the state had never seen a day with more than 100 new infections since the COVID-19 crisis began. But on 14 of the past 16 days since then, more than 100 new daily cases have been reported. On two of those days, the numbers surpassed 200.

More than one-third of the states cases have been reported since June 7. A report released Friday showed the jump in numbers isnt just due to more testing: The virus also is spreading more.

On Monday, officials said a 68-year-old Lincoln County man who had no underlying medical conditions died last Tuesday in his home. His positive test for the disease came back Wednesday, after he died. Its the first coronavirus fatality in Lincoln County.

This is a very sad day for all of us in the county, Rebecca Austen, the health department director, said in a statement. Our hearts and prayers go out to the family and friends for their loss. This virus is extremely dangerous and despite the inconvenience it has posed for all of us, we cannot take it lightly.

Officials also said a 90-year-old Marion County woman died, but provided no details about when or where she died or if she had underlying conditions. She had tested positive Thursday.

The states 146 new known infections were reported in the following counties: Benton (2), Clackamas (15), Deschutes (4), Douglas (1), Hood River (1), Jackson (1), Jefferson (1), Lane (4), Lincoln (6), Marion (47), Morrow (1), Multnomah (17), Umatilla (11), Union (5), Wasco (1), Washington (27), and Yamhill (2).

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

County case totals: Three counties -- Multnomah, Marion and Washington -- have more than 1,000 known coronavirus cases each. Another nine counties -- Clackamas, Deschutes, Lane, Lincoln, Linn, Polk, Umatilla, Union and, as of Monday, Yamhill -- have reported at least 100 coronavirus cases. Gilliam and Wheeler havent identified any.

Heres the overall count of confirmed and presumptive cases by county: Baker (1), Benton (69), Clackamas (607), Clatsop (46), Columbia (26), Coos (36), Crook (9), Curry (7), Deschutes (147), Douglas (34), Grant (1), Harney (1), Hood River, (88), Jackson (91), Jefferson (79), Josephine (26), Klamath (88), Lake (6), Lane (106), Lincoln (292), Linn (129), Malheur (51), Marion (1,348), Morrow (32), Multnomah (1,849), Polk (130), Sherman (1), Tillamook (6), Umatilla (279), Union (263), Wallowa (8), Wasco (48), Washington (1,078) and Yamhill (101).

Oregons Latino population has been disproportionately hit hard by the coronavirus. Latinos make up 13% of the states population, but represent at least 35% of all positive cases, according to the most recent data available.

Death toll: At least 192 people are known to have died from COVID-19. They are from 15 counties -- 68 people from Multnomah, 35 from Marion, 23 from Clackamas, 20 from Washington, 12 from Polk, nine from Linn, eight from Yamhill, five from Benton, four from Umatilla, three from Lane, and one each from Josephine, Lincoln, Malheur, Morrow and Wasco.

Their ages ranged from 36 to 100. Among them, 110 men and 82 women have died. All but five had underlying medical conditions.

The breakdown of deaths by age: ages 30-39 (1), ages 40-49 (3), ages 50-59 (9), ages 60-69 (39), ages 70-79 (52), ages 80-plus (88).

Senior care homes: Six in 10 of all coronavirus deaths in Oregon  107  are associated with a care center, according to the latest state data released last week. More than 700 senior care home residents, staff, close contacts and others connected to at least 84 nursing, assisted and retirement homes have contracted COVID-19. One care home worker has died.

Outbreaks: The largest outbreak in the state has been at Lighthouse Pentecostal Church in Union County, where is linked to 236 infections, as of last week.

At least 980 coronavirus infections  or nearly 16% of all cases  are linked to workplace outbreaks identified by the Oregon Health Authority. Among them: the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem (176), Pacific Seafood in Newport (145) and Duckwall Fruit in Hood River (61).

Coronavirus map: Track new cases in Oregon and U.S.

Testing: More people than ever before are being tested for the virus in Oregon. It was 27,671 for the week ending Friday. Thats close to 4,800 more tests than the previous week.

But the proportion of tests coming back positive is growing significantly faster than testing. That led state officials in a report released Friday to reach the conclusion that the disease is spreading more.

For the week ending Friday, the percent of positive tests was 4.1%. Thats more than double the positive test rate of 1.6% for the week May 16-22, the first week after many parts of Oregon started reopening. Public health officials think reopening has accelerated the spread of the disease.

This Oregon Health Authority chart shows that the percentage of positive test results has been climbing.

Ages: People in their 20s are getting infected the most. Some experts say a big contributing factor: This group too often appears to be socializing or going out without maintaining proper physical distancing or wearing masks.

In Oregon, 19% of known cases are among people ages 20-29, 18% are 30-39, 17% are 40-49, 15% are 50-59, 10% are 60-69, 7% are 70-79, 7% are 10-19, 5% are 80 or older, and 3% are 0-9.

Gender: 3,637 cases are among women, or approximately 51%, and 3,424, or about 48%, are among men.

Hospitalizations: At least 969 of the states COVID-19 patients, or 14%, have been hospitalized at some point during their illness, according to the health authority.

Most -- at least 712, or 73% -- have been 50 or older.

Currently, 93 people with confirmed coronavirus cases are hospitalized, up one from Friday. Thirty-nine are in intensive care and 24 on ventilators.

Recoveries: About 2,500 people have recovered from the illness, according to the latest published numbers.

Nationwide: Confirmed coronavirus cases stood at more than 2.3 million. The death toll climbed past 120,000.

-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee

Shane Dixon Kavanaugh contributed to this story.

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
(TNS)  Carlisle, Pa., area students were graded on a different kind of curve this spring as COVID-19 forced the local school district to pivot suddenly from in-person to online instruction.The statewide strategy to flatten the rate of infection brought with it opportunities for local teachers to use the pandemic as the backdrop for teachable moments not included in the original lesson plan.We really emphasize the concept of relevance in our curriculum, said Michael Gogoj, a former social studies teacher and current director of curriculum and instruction for the Carlisle Area School District.We want our students to connect to the world outside our walls, he said. Thats the whole point of an education. Im excited to see how our teachers seized the opportunity to bring this global event into their teaching. Thats what we should be doing more in education.In English classes, across all grade levels, students were asked to keep journals to reflect on how COVID-19 is impacting them, Gogoj said. They were encouraged to jot down their feelings and experiences.Turning to math, there were lessons on how to analyze medical statistics and solve algebra problems connected with social distancing.Superintendent Christina Spielbauer cited other examples in a recent email to The Sentinel:In AP American History, students were asked to create a toolkit of sources future historians could use to gather information for an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other activities tied to social studies compared the current crisis to the Spanish flu and included a detailed examination of how the federal government reacted to each crisis. Students were also encouraged to analyze political cartoons of the past and create their own to illustrate current events.In the business academy of the Center for Careers and Technology, YouTube videos were used to get students to think about the effect the pandemic is having on the economy.In a biology class, as part of a unit on population ecology, students were asked to analyze methods to flatten the curve and make a recommendation.In art classes, students used different methods and materials to process their fear and frustrations related to COVID-19. Though the districtwide art show was canceled, there were opportunities for students to display their work virtually through the Susquehanna Art Museum, the Trout Gallery, the Carlisle Arts Learning Center, the Art in the Wild Exhibit in Harrisburg and an online exhibit at Lamberton Middle School.Our faculty did such an amazing job, Gogoj said. Im really proud of their effort to seize the pandemic as a learning tool.
When Sheila Buck left her apartment two blocks from President Donald Trump's rally Saturday, she knew she might provoke some people with her black "I can't breathe" T-shirt. She wound up handcuffed in a jail cell for hours as video of her arrest played on television.

Buck had reserved a ticket to Trump's rally days earlier. She planned to attend to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the risk to her health and safety.

A little after noon on Saturday, she showed her ticket to police and stepped into the outdoor area cordoned off for the event. When knelt down to pray, she was asked to leave. When she refused, she was arrested at the request of the Trump campaign.

"There are some things worth dying for, and I'm tired of seeing what's happening and what's being done to black lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, specifically but in this country," Buck told The Washington Post in an interview after she was released from jail Saturday evening.

During a decade teaching art in predominantly black elementary schools in Tulsa, Buck said, she witnessed many episodes of discrimination directed toward her students. "I have seen how they're treated when I took them on field trips," the 62-year-old Catholic-school art teacher said. "This was a chance for me to have my voice heard."

So on Saturday, Buck put on a black mask to protect herself from the novel coronavirus and draped a black cloth over her head, forming a loose hood she said was intended to look like garb worn by the lead character in HBO's hit show "The Watchmen." (The show is set in Tulsa and tells the story of the city's deadly 1921 massacre of black people through fictional law enforcement characters.)

As she approached the black metal gates surrounding a swath of downtown Tulsa near the BOK Center, where Trump would later speak, Buck said, she told police she had a ticket to the event and held up her phone.

"They said, 'You don't need a ticket, we're letting you in, first come first served.' And so I just walked through the barrier."

She said she knelt down to pray and was approached by uniformed Tulsa police and law enforcement officials who she said appeared to be Secret Service, dressed in plainclothes and wearing ear pieces.

"They said, 'You're not allowed in here,' and I said, 'Yes I am, I have a ticket.' "

Police told her the blocks around the city-owned arena are "like a private home and if you've been asked to leave, you have to leave."

She told police she had as much right to be there, in a public street blocks from her own home, as the president. "I said, 'I live in Tulsa. This is my home. This is my country,' and I was praying . . . and they arrested me, handcuffed me and shoved me away," Buck said. The interaction with police at the scene lasted a few minutes.

Hours after her arrest Saturday, she held out her wrists during an interview with The Post, displaying bruises and scrapes on both arms.

"I have bruises; it looks like I'm even lacerated a bit there," she said. "The police . . . kept saying I deserved it."

Buck was arrested on a complaint of resisting arrest, though prosecutors have not filed formal charges. Buck and her attorney, Dan Smolen, said they plan to pursue a lawsuit against the city and police department for what she views as violations of her First and Fourth amendment rights and against the Trump campaign for false arrest and personal injury.

"They arrested me, a 63-year-old woman!" Buck said, noting that she's still 62, but her birthday is next week. "Give me a break. I was by myself, what am I going to do?"

The arena where Trump spoke is city property managed by ASM Global, a private company that contracts with event operators, including the Trump campaign. City officials referred requests for comment about the arrest to Tulsa police.

Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg said Trump campaign staffers directed police to arrest Buck because the event permit included the city streets surrounding the area.

"Not unlike any other private company, they reserved this area," he said. "The campaign being the event holders, so to speak, they requested that she leave. She refused to do so. Then they called over the officers, and the officers spoke with her for several minutes trying to get her to leave on her own accord."

Meulenberg said he had not seen contract language that allowed the campaign to direct police to arrest citizens but added, "they basically have that area, and they can pick and choose whom they want."

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Buck said she has been outspoken in red-state Oklahoma about her views on Trump since his election.

"I am a rather lone voice with all of my friends, but I am taking a stand against family and against friends. It's the right thing to do."
Hanoi, June 22 : The 36th ASEAN Summit will be held via video conference on June 26, Vietnam News Agency cited the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As the ASEAN's chair in 2020, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will chair the opening session, plenary session and special sessions on woman empowerment in digital era as well as dialogue between leaders of ASEAN countries and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC), among others, according to the report, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Preparatory meetings will be held from June 22 to June 24, including informal ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the 26th ASEAN Coordinating Council which will be under the chair of Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, said the news agency.

Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh will chair the ministerial meeting on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The 36th ASEAN Summit, which had been scheduled to be held in April, has been postponed until the end of June in the context of wide spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the region and the world.
A young 'inspirational' online influencer who became a millionaire at 15 has died in a motorbike accident in Bali.

Russian Anastasia Tropitsel, 18, suffered head injuries when she crashed on her Kawasaki on the Indonesian island.

Her boyfriend Viktor Maydanovich, 30, who was on a bike next to her said she began to 'wobble' at around 60 mph and lost control, colliding with a roadside fence.

Footage shows her last moments just before she set off on the bike as she filmed herself in the vehicle's mirror and the surrounding beach views.

Anastasia had been a blogger since the age of 12 and said how she 'became a millionaire at 15' from her successful internet presence.

Anastasia Tropitsel - a young 'inspirational' online influencer who became a millionaire at 15 -has died in a motorbike accident in Bali

Anastasia had been a blogger since the age of 12 and said how she 'became a millionaire at 15' from her successful internet presence

Just before the accident happened Anastasia took a video of herself in the mirror of her motorbike

She told her million-plus young followers: 'I inspire you to do what you can't.

'I grow your wings and send you to go freelance.'

Tropitsel - whose real name is Anastasia Zubrina - died soon after buying a new Kawasaki Ninja 250 motorbike and immediately following a public row with her doctor father who warned her that her online success story was turning to failure.

She had stayed in Bali for lockdown after a trip to the island to boost her Instagram.

'Your business is collapsing,' he said.

She was enraged when he told her: 'Your team is just having fun at your expense. You do not finish your new projects.

'It is not pleasant to listen to this, but I hope it will be useful.

Her boyfriend Viktor Maydanovich, 30, who was on a bike next to her said she began to 'wobble' at around 60 mph and lost control, colliding with a roadside fence. The couple are pictured together

'You have only fun in mind. You have to hold on to your mind and start working if you want to live well.'

He claimed her boyfriend Maydanovich 'pulls you down' and told her: 'Start working if you want to live well.'

She accused her father of 'burning' her emotionally and betraying her.

Tropitsel - whose real name is Anastasia Zubrina (pictured left and right) - died soon after buying a new Kawasaki Ninja 250 motorbike

Anastasia (pictured) had stayed in Bali for lockdown after a trip to the island to boost her Instagram

Anastasia, 18, regularly updated her Instagram followers on her travels around the world. She is pictured here on a plane

Her blog urged her followers to overcome fear by immersing themselves in whatever causes fear.

In response to her death her boyfriend, from Ukraine, posted: 'My beloved girl is not with us.

'Please, my friends, say your last farewell to her with your good thoughts and meditations. It is very important.

'(Anastasia) was moving at a speed of 80-100 kilometres per hour along a major road, where everybody goes at such a speed.

'She always rode very safely and accurately.

'Then her bike started wobbling.'
The opposition National Democratic Congress has assured that a John Mahama administration will scrap the recent 50% increase in the Communication Service Tax.

At a press briefing addressed by Sammy Gyamfi, the NDCs Communications Officer, said Mr. Mahama is committed to fixing the mess that has been created by the maladministration of the Akufo-Addo government.

The NDC insisted that this maladministration was in all sectors of the nation.

Thus, as part of the NDCs drive to create prosperity and wealth for all Ghanaians, Mr. Mahama according to Mr. Gyamfi will scrap the 50 percent increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data.

This will reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the country, Mr. Gyamfi added.

The Communication Service Tax, also known as the Talk Tax was increased from 6 percent to 9 percent in 2019.

The tax, which was introduced in 2008 is charged on the use of communication services in the country including voice calls.

The increment met some industry players by surprise and was the subject of criticism.

The Chief Executive Officer for the Consumer Protection Agency, Kofi Kapito, described it as a lazy revenue generation approach .

Chief Executive Officer for the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Ken Ashigbey also described the government's decision as surprising.

A member of Parliament's Communications Committee and an NDC MP, Sam Nartey George, also urged Ghanaians to reject the reasons for the recently announced increase in talk tax.

citinewsroom
A Sheriffs Office employee and an investigative assistant with the District Attorneys Office in Ventura County, Calif., were among three people who have been arrested after they were caught on video damaging a roadside Black Lives Matter sign, the authorities said.

The authorities identified the three men after Max Meyers, 19, who hung the sign outside his parents home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., put up a surveillance camera after it was repeatedly damaged.

Secured to a fence along Westlake Boulevard, the sign consisted of sections of brown tarp with the letters BLM painted in white, according to The Thousand Oaks Acorn.

The Ventura County Sheriffs Office said it recognized one of its employees, Darrin Stone, 60, in footage Meyers posted online of a man ripping through the BLM sign with a knife.

Stone has been employed by the Sheriffs Office since 2005, and was assigned most recently as a service technician at the Ventura County Pre-Trial Detention Facility, the department said. Stone, who could not be reached on Sunday, was arrested on Friday and was issued a misdemeanour citation for vandalism, the Sheriffs Office said. He was also placed on paid administrative leave, the department said.

Sheriff Bill Ayub said in a statement that his department will not tolerate unlawful or unethical behaviour.

Im deeply disappointed that one of our employees involved himself in this type of illegal activity, especially when this is an infringement on someones First Amendment right to freedom of speech, he said. We will not tolerate unlawful or unethical behaviour by anyone employed by our agency. We hold our employees to the highest standards, and there will be consequences for this.

Craig Anderson, 59, an investigative assistant with the Ventura County District Attorneys Office, was also arrested and cited for vandalism after he was spotted in video footage cutting and attempting to remove the sign on May 31, the Sheriffs Office said.

The District Attorneys Office said in a statement on Saturday that Anderson had resigned after working in the office for four months. Because of Andersons status as a former employee, the statement said, his misdemeanour citation would be referred to the state Attorney Generals Office. Anderson could not be reached on Sunday.

A third man, Jeffrey Moore, was also arrested and accused of spray-painting the sign on June 11. The Sheriffs Office said it tracked him down using the company name and phone number that were prominently displayed on his work truck.

Meyers, a student at University of California, Santa Barbara, has been staying at home with his parents because of the coronavirus outbreak. He said he put up the sign a few days after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Last year, he put up a sign in the same spot supporting firefighters during the California wildfires. That sign was not damaged and stayed up for more than three months, he said.

I wasnt really convinced that the BLM poster would get the same response, to be honest, Meyers said, but I thought, What the hell? We put up a poster for the first responders. This is 10 times more important than that.

Meyers father, Andy, said it was mind-blowing to learn that two of the people who have been accused of vandalizing his sons sign were Ventura County employees.

To have racism right here in our backyard is so disheartening and disgusting, he said. He added that he was so proud of my son for pushing this forward and doing the right thing.

On Saturday night, the sign was vandalized again, Max Meyers said. However, with the recent publicity the sign has been getting, he said he hoped it would stay up, untouched, as he prepares to return to Santa Barbara in the coming days.

But if I need to, Ill come back from school and put it up, he said.
Trump accelerated his attacks Monday following a bruising weekend for his reelection campaign, when a lower-than-expected turnout at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, left him seething, and as he fights for a second term during the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. The rhetoric, coming as states scramble to adjust voting processes because of the coronavirus pandemic, represents a two-track approach of trying to both block mail-in balloting in advance and setting the stage for challenging the results once its over.
New Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 information surfaced on Twitter. This time around, Ice Universe is bringing the news. As most of you know, that is a well-known tipster, and this information is related to the Galaxy Fold 2 bezels, for the most part.

The Galaxy Fold 2 bezels will be thinner than most people expect

The source claims that the Galaxy Fold 2 bezels will be only 3.8mm thick. The display camera hole, on the other hand, will have a diameter of 4.8mm. Ice Universe also mentioned that the phones inner display will measure 7.7 inches.

Now, a ton of information regarding the Galaxy Fold 2 already surfaced. Weve seen several conflicting reports regarding the size of its inner display. All of those rumors say it will be between 7.5 and 7.7 inches, though.

Advertisement

The outer display is rumored to measure 6.2 inches, however. That means that both displays will be larger than they were on the original Fold. This handset will also have considerably thinner bezels than its predecessor.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 is rumored to include a 120Hz display, well, its inner display is rumored to offer a high refresh rate. The outer display will probably ship with a 60Hz refresh rate.

Samsung will utilize UTG (Ultra Thin Glass) on the inner display, though a plastic film will be applied on top of it once again. You can expect it to offer something similar to the Galaxy Z Flip.

Advertisement

The outer display will be protected by a sheet of Gorilla Glass, of course. Were not sure if Samsung will use Gorilla Glass 5 or 6, though.

The device will not ship with the S Pen, nor support it

The Galaxy Fold 2 will not ship with the S Pen. Hardware limitations are to blame, it seems. That was to be expected, though, as the phone comes with a UTG display, not a regular panel like the Galaxy Note 20.

Some rumors claimed that the S Pen could be a part of the package, but several reliable sources denied that. The Galaxy Fold 2 is expected to launch in August, along with the Galaxy Note 20 series.

Advertisement

Samsung is rumored to host that Unpacked event on August 5. That information has not been confirmed just yet, so theres a chance it will happen later in August.

In addition to the Galaxy Fold 2, and three Galaxy Note 20 handsets, the Galaxy Z Flip 5G will also launch. So, Samsung will essentially announce five flagship phones at the same time.

The Galaxy Fold 2 will probably be fueled by the Snapdragon 865 or 865+. The device will be made out of metal and glass, and include plenty of RAM and storage.
Mukesh Ambani becomes 9th richest in world after RIL share hits fresh high Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani became the ninth richest person in the world after share price of the conglomerate hit Rs 1,800 mark for the first time.

On the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the real-time net worth of Mukesh Ambani climbed to $64.5 billion, a rise of $4.18 billion compared to the previous day.

Ambani has now surpassed Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. and France's Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the wealthiest woman, making him the only Asian tycoon in the exclusive club of world's top 10 richest people. RIL share extended gains in the third consecutive session today to hit an all time high of Rs 1,804 on BSE. The large cap stock gained 2.53% intra day against previous close of Rs 1,759 on Friday.

Market capitalisation of RIL stood at Rs 11.22 lakh crore on BSE. This is the second session in which market cap of RIL has stayed above Rs 11 lakh crore. On Thursday, Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Industries had become net debt-free months ahead of its March 2021 target. After the announcement, market capitalisation of Reliance Industries rose over Rs 11 lakh crore for the first time ever in Friday's trading session.

RIL's market cap rises to a record 8.53% of market value of NSE firms

The rise in share price of Reliance came after RIL announced on Thursday it has raised Rs 1.68 lakh crore in total from a series of investors, including the likes of Facebook Inc, Vista Equity and KKR, and rights issue. Interestingly, the conglomerate was able to raise money for its digital arm amid the Covid-19 led slowdown across the world which forced businesses to close operations.

How Reliance Industries Ltd became net-debt free before the March 2021 target

Jio Platforms raised Rs 1,15,693.95 crore from leading global investors including Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, ADIA, TPG, L Catterton and PIF since April 22.

RIL becomes first Indian firm to cross Rs 11 lakh crore market capitalisation

It also raised funds worth Rs 53,124.2 crore via rights issue concluded recently.
(L) Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on June 17, 2020. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images) (R) Black Lives Matter protesters in Melbourne, Australia, on June 6, 2020. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)

MPs Condemn State Premiers Blaming COVID-19 Spike on Families Over Protesters

Australian State Premier Daniel Andrews is facing scrutiny from Victorias right-leaning Liberal party ministers after he pointed to families as the main reason the state is experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 cases, while not mentioning the impact of recent protests.

In the last week, Victoria has seen the number of cases of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as coronavirus, increase. Andrews announced on June 20 an extension for Victorias state of emergency, scaling back on the previously promised easing of social gathering restrictions.

Victorian Opposition Leader Michael OBrien, who has been critical of the way Andrews has handled the pandemic, expressed dismay that the impact of thousands of people taking to the streets to protest was not mentioned in the premiers announcement.

Expert advice informed Andrews that families having big get-togethers and household transmissions have led to about half of the new CCP virus cases since the end of April.

The states chief health officer, Professor Brett Sutton, said on June 21: We know these restrictions are frustrating, but we cant get complacent and let the virus get away from us.

Its vital we follow these directions to keep our community transmission numbers low and protect more Victorians.

Related Coverage Vic Premier Blames Families for Daily Spikes of CCP Virus Cases, Halts Lifting Restrictions

OBrien said in a media release that Andrews had inadvertently encouraged Victorians to protest two weeks ago by declaring that no fines would be administered for protesters who breached social distancing orders at rallies.

For Andrews to fail to mention the impact of his 10,000 people protest on the spike in COVID-19 cases demonstrates his culpability, OBrien said.

He goes on to highlight that the decision by Andrews to backflip on lifting restrictions will cost jobs and will kill small businesses that will never recover.

It will ruin many families plans to safely gather at home.

So far, there have been 1,836 cases of the CCP virus in Andrewss state, with the majority coming from the capital city of Melbourne and its neighbouring suburbs.

Regional Victoria, where there are hardly any COVID-19 cases, is being unfairly punished by Labors Melbourne-centric focus. There is again a strong case for an easing of restrictions in country Victoria that enables people to safely get back to work, OBrien said.

Victorias Shadow Minister for Police and Community Safety, David Southwick, who slammed Andrews on June 3 for keeping heavy fines in place for having an extra person over for dinner but not for protesting, again raised the consequences of an alleged double-standard.

In a Twitter post criticising the Premier, he cited the protests as being the point where Victorians stopped taking Andrews restriction orders seriously.



While at the same time Daniel Andrews is busy telling off families, he also allows protestors to run amuck without consequences. No wonder people arent listening to him, Southwick said.

Daniel Andrews blames familes for not doing the right thing he doesnt mention protestors. While at the same time Daniel Andrews is busy telling off familes, he also allows protestors to run a muck without consequences. No wonder people arent listening to him. #springst  David Southwick (@SouthwickMP) June 20, 2020

The first leftist Black Lives Matter protests in Victoria occurred on June 6, organised by the Australian Communist Party.

Since June 10, new CCP virus cases in Victoria have overtaken all other states and territories, with 19 recorded on June 22 alone compared to 6 for the rest of the nation.

Victorias second virus wave accounts for 82.4 percent of all new cases nationwide for the week commencing June 21. The volunteer-collated COVID-19 website shows that Victoria has 121 active cases as of June 22.

Police to Enforce Extended State of Emergency

A squad of 500 police officers will enforce the extended restriction measures, a media release announced, with powers to conduct spot checks of venues and homes to ensure compliance with the restrictions put in place to help slow the spread of the CCP virus.

The extension will be in effect until 11:59 p.m. on July 19.

On the spot fines include up to $1,652 (US$1,128) for individuals and up to $9,913 (US$6,783) for businesses.

While many Victorians are doing the right thing, there are still some who are ignoring the restrictions. Victoria Police Minister Lisa Neville said.
Maybe you can make the courage, the Jurgen Holtz had, in one of his last roles. At the Berliner Ensemble, he was 86 years on the stage, and stark naked. The skin, wabblig become from life. Holtz did not deter the. "I have to take the full risk," he said of the "suddeutsche Zeitung" at the time, "it's the only way".

Holtz played the role of the physicist Galileo Galilei. Almost six hours, the staging by Director Frank Castorf took. And Holtz stood a little fragile, but with the massive Text on the stage. Now he has died at the age of 87 years, as the Berliner Ensemble, the German press Agency confirmed on Sunday.

It was just one of the many theatres, where Holtz has occurred. He was born on the 10. August 1932 in Berlin. After school, he opted for the theatre: He studied the art of the stage in Weimar and Leipzig, the first roles he took on at that time in the GDR in Erfurt and Brandenburg an der Havel.

From the GDR in the Federal Republic of Germany

Holtz played at the Berliner volksbuhne and at the Berliner Ensemble, he worked with theatre-makers such as Benno Besson, Einar Schleef, Heiner Muller. In the early 1980s, Holtz left East Germany and traveled in the Federal Republic of Germany. And made a stage career.

For his performance in the Drama "cataract", by Rainald Goetz, Frankfurt/Main, he was awarded the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring. The magazine "Theater heute" made him at that time for the "actor of the year". In films he is seen, for example, in the turn-Comedy "Good Bye, Lenin!" and in Margarethe von Trott's portrait film "Rosa Luxemburg".

the courage he showed in the television. In 1993 he played the main role in the ARD series "Motzki" an uninhibited Complainer, the not came out of the Complain. The series took a satirical German reunification on the grain.

mockery of "Zonendodel"

One of Motzkis sayings: "The whole world is asking: Why not holes in the Zonendodels from your start out?" Was written the series of Wolfgang Menge, who also invented a "grandfather Alfred". Motzki was a tricky role that earned the actor also criticism from some viewers.

Holtz was "a curmudgeon, a fine thoughts, a tiger in the Talk, a king of the monologue available", wrote in 2013 a Jury of the Stiftung Preuische Seehandlung. She spoke to Holtz, at the time, the theatre prize of Berlin for outstanding services to the German theatre. The Berlin Academy of the arts honored him with the Konrad-Wolf-Preis for his life's work.

Updated Date: 21 June 2020, 22:19
PotlatchDeltic Corporation PCH has agreed to divest 72,000 acres in Minnesota to The Conservation Fund for $48 million in cash. This deal  which is expected to close in the second half of 2020  will boost its liquidity position and flexibility.



PotlatchDeltic stated that its Minnesota ownership was 330,000 acres when it started the rural land sale program more than 12 years ago. The timberlands currently owned by the company in Minnesota are heavily weighted to more remote areas, which is perfect for conservation and working forest protection. Almost all of its ownership in the state is now under contract, with a series of closings scheduled to occur through 2022.



This deal will be the catalyst to conserve more than 200,000 acres in the state of Minnesota for various conservation purposes. This includes working forests, protection of important habitats and public access.



Managements outlook for second-quarter 2020 rural land sales activity remains resilient. For the second quarter, PotlatchDeltic expects to sell 5,500 rural acres at an average price of $1,800 per acre, with an average land basis of 30%. It also expects to sell 15 lots at an average price of $90,000 per lot, with an average land basis of 90%. PotlatchDeltic expects to sell 20,000-23,000 acres of rural land and 100-120 Chenal Valley lots in 2020.



Share Price Performance

Shares of PotlatchDeltic  a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company  have gained 44.5% over the past three months compared with the industrys 68.4% growth. That said, slow recovery of the housing market brings hope to timberlands and wood products businesses. Encouragingly, it has a strong liquidity position. Lumber prices have edged modestly higher over the past few weeks. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Although the rapidly evolving market conditions due to the pandemic outbreak have impacted wood product manufacturers like PotlatchDeltic, Weyerhaeuser WY, UFP Industries, Inc. UFPI and Trex Company, Inc. TREX, market pundits are in favor of improvement in the second half of the year. Strong balance sheet and operational agility will help wood product manufacturers to address the rapidly changing market conditions.



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.



Access Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020 today >>



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



Weyerhaeuser Company (WY) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Universal Forest Products, Inc. (UFPI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Trex Company, Inc. (TREX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Potlatch Corporation (PCH) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
THE DIRECTORS of the Great Southern Trail Ltd (GST) have discussed the recent announcement by Limerick City and County Council of a 5 million upgrade for the Greenway and wish to draw public attention to the history of the Coolybrown working farm element of the otherwise broadly welcome proposals.

In a statement, they said the story begins in 2003 with a successful planning application for a 180 square metre slatted unit to be constructed in a Coolybrown farm to the south of the railway.

The application was revised in 2006 to double the size of the unit and this was also approved. In the interim the adjacent old Limerick to Tralee railway corridor had its right of way protected by the Mid-West Regional Authority for recreational and environmental pursuits in 2004.

Therefore, in 2007, when another incarnation of the yet unbuilt slatted unit manifested itself in a planning application, Limerick County Council, referencing the Regional Authority guidelines, wrote to the applicant on July 20 that it was not favourly disposed to the application and advised that it should be relocated to the northern side of the railway where the bulk of the farmlands and buildings were located. The council requested further information.

Surprisingly, having received no new information or proposals (only a regurgitation of the previous 2003 and 2006 files received on July 30) the council approved the application on the following day, said the statement.

These events all pre-dated the 2010 development of the Rathkeale-Ardagh section; all of the works were undertaken by GST.

It was only then that it came to light that the plans approved three years earlier had not been complied with. The slatted unit was now several metres closer to the railway than the planning permission permitted. In fact the cattle were being fed on the CIE railway property.

The overall result of the CIE and council indulgence is that non local users of the Greenway when encountering a narrowing of the railway route and its less than attractive appearance, to their left and to their right, actually believe that they are in a farmyard.

To compound all of the above the councils current plan to use public funds and to detour away from the railway for a length of 800 metres is the final capitulation. It is also a recipe for similar demands on sections yet to be developed.

During the GST twenty-five years of campaigning, developing and managing the Greenway we never entertained requests to deviate from the railway corridor. We viewed it as land held in trust by CIE for the people of Ireland. Our hope now is that wiser counsel will prevail with this ill-advised current proposal being further investigated and resolved in the public interest.

The GST Greenway has the capacity to be a world class facility and of major benefit to locals and visitors alike. The integrity of the entire way without any proposed private diversion is a key element of the facility now and for future generations, concludes the statement.

In reply, the council said they took ownership of the Greenway route from Rathkeale to the Kerry border in 2015.

Since then a large amount of work has been completed to bring the route up to the standard of similar Greenways nationally and internationally, with more than 3 million. These works included the Barnagh Tunnel, improved crossing points, fencing, track surfacing, bridges and signage, along with loops around the three market towns of Rathkeale, Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale.

Just three weeks ago Limerick City and County Council announced a further investment of 5 million for a total upgrade of the surface of the Greenway, said a spokesperson.

In addition to the 5 million, the council pointed to purchasing the old Ardagh and Barnagh Station Houses.

With the agreement of CIE and landowners, the council will in the interests of health and safety construct an 800m diversion of the Greenway around a working farmyard at Coolybrown, Ardagh. No further route diversions are planned along the Greenway. The council has commenced design work on the small number of cattle underpasses necessary to facilitate other farm crossings on the route.

A new re-imagined and enticing Greenway can act as a catalyst for the development of tourism and spin off activities in West Limerick and it is incumbent on everyone now to support the Greenway and support the potential job creation and other economic benefits for the region, especially now in this post-Covid environment which should make the Greenway even more popular, said the spokesperson.
DETROIT, MI  A man was killed and 11 other people wounded in seven separate shootings in Detroit over about an eight-hour span.

According to the Associated Press, a 35-year-old man was found shot at about 6 a.m. Sunday on Detroits east side. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Two men  ages 46 and 45  were wounded about 1:25 a.m. Sunday during a drive-by shooting in southwest Detroit.

A 37-year-old man was in temporary serious condition at a hospital after he was shot about 11:50 p.m. Saturday on the citys west side and a 38-year-old man was shot about 10:42 p.m. on the east side. He also was in temporary serious condition.

Two women and two men between the ages of 30 and 20 were struck by shots on the citys northeast side from a drive-by shooting.

A 45-year-old man was in serious condition and an 18-year-old woman was in critical condition following a shooting about 10:30 p.m. during an alleged dispute on the citys northeast side.

A 37-year-old woman was shot during an argument in a parking lot on the west side.

RELATED:

2 children, 1 man injured in Detroit shooting
Los Angeles Police Department officers stand guard at a downtown subway station in March. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

As calls to defund police have grown into a chorus in the wake of the George Floyd protests, some Los Angeles County activists are turning their attention to the sprawling transit system.

The cost to police the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 1,433-mile service area, including 93 rail stations and nearly 14,000 bus stops, is nearly $650 million over five years.

Activists and community groups argue that, on a system where violent crime is relatively low, the money could be better spent: on free fares, on better and more frequent service, on homeless outreach workers.

"When we ask for these improvements, Metro says money is tight," said Oscar Zarate, an organizer with the community advocacy group SAJE. "We say, 'Well, if the budget is tight, we know where you can look.'"

Since 2017, Metro has split policing duties between the Los Angeles Police Department, which patrols buses, trains and stations in the city of L.A.; the Long Beach police, who work at eight Blue Line stations; and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which patrols the rest of the system. The contracts expire in 2022.

Metro's directors will consider this week whether to move toward a "community-based approach" to policing, including no longer sending sworn officers to respond to nonviolent crimes.

Los Angeles City Councilman and Metro Director Mike Bonin, who introduced the motion, said Thursday that he hears routinely "from young people, particularly young people of color, that they feel that they are treated differently on the system."

Directors will also consider asking Metro officials to evaluate use-of-force policies and to make recommendations on further reform, including spending more on homeless outreach.

The policy would be a first step toward rethinking policing, said Metro Director and county Supervisor Janice Hahn, who introduced the motion. But, she said, Metro will "probably always have a layer of law enforcement or police that may be armed."

Story continues

The push for police reform at Metro comes as other transit agencies in the U.S. have made changes to their policing practices.

Transit officials in Portland, Ore., trimmed the policing budget by $1.8 million. Boston's transit police department banned the use of choke holds. And in Washington, D.C., officials have said they are developing a plan to address systemic racism on the subway, including longstanding complaints that officers checking fares target Black teenagers.

In L.A., police officers patrol the system, work with homeless outreach teams, and help security guards perform fare checks, Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said. Were Metro to make cuts in the future and "remove these elements, we do not see where we could continue to provide these services," he said in an email.

Metro's policing contracts pay for 11 LAPD officers, `11 sheriff's deputies and three Long Beach officers who do homeless outreach, Sotero said. That work represents $18.4 million of the $645.7-million cost.

Metro also spends about $5 million annually for eight teams of social workers who help assist homeless riders. Over a 10-month period ending April 30, they helped 1,645 people find temporary housing, and 250 people move in to permanent housing, Metro said.

A thoughtful rethinking of Metro's police deployment could free up money for a "tremendous increase" in homeless outreach workers, to address the most pressing issue on the system, said Bart Reed, the executive director of the Transit Coalition.

The biggest threat to bus riders is rarely a robbery or a shooting, he said, but someone with a mental illness who is yelling, harassing or attacking the bus driver, other passengers or themselves. The best way to help that person is not by putting them in handcuffs, he said.

The whole city is becoming unglued, and we arent really reacting to help address the worst of the problems," Reed said. "With all that going on, do we need three or four cops standing in a group at the 7th Street Metro station?"

How Metro would address violent crimes such as rape, robbery and assault without a police force is still being discussed, activists said. But, Zarate said, "we cannot let those things stifle our imaginations around what safety can look like."

Metro's decision to hire multiple police agencies followed a blistering audit in 2014 which found that assaults, robberies and other violent crimes had soared while the sheriff's department had sole oversight of the transit system.

Assaults on bus drivers and complaints of sexual harassment were surging, while ridership plummeted. In a survey in 2016, 29% of former riders said they left Metro because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable.

"Weve heard from our transit riders loud and clear that they want and expect improved safety and security on our system," Sotero said in an email.

The new policing contracts nearly doubled the number of armed officers. Metro also spent more than $100 million on private security guards. That approach has led to a nearly 23% decline in reported violent crime between 2015 and 2019, Sotero said.

Metro also shifted fare-checking duties from police officers to Metro guards who issue $75 administrative citations, not misdemeanor charges.

Seeing police officers and fare checkers on the Gold Line "does not imply safety to me," said Leticia Andrade, a Metro rider who lives in Boyle Heights. Fare checkers can single out and harass young Latino and Black riders, she said, and seeing their weapons makes her nervous.

Thurmon Green, 29, a bus rider in Mid-City, said he has seen passengers tense up when an LAPD officer boards. If police have to play a role on transit, he said, "it should be a very, very small one  minuscule."

"The presence of a gun, it transforms the space," Green said. "It does not make people feel safer."
[June 22, 2020] INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Announces Investigation of Cheetah Mobile Inc. (CMCM) on Behalf of Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces an investigation on behalf of Cheetah Mobile Inc. ("Cheetah Mobile" or "the Company") (NYSE: CMCM) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws. On February 21, 2020, the Company disclosed that its Google (News - Alert) Play Store, Google AdMob and Google AdManager accounts were disabled on February 20, 2020 "because some of the Company's apps had not been compliant with Google policies, resulting in certain invalid traffic." On this news, the Company's share price fell $0.61, or nearly 17%, to close at $2.99 per share on February 21, 2020, thereby injuring investors. On June 0, 2020, Cheetah Mobile issued a press release to announce its first quarter 2020 financial results. Therein, the Company reported that revenues for its mobile utility product business "decreased by 62.6% year over year to RMB54.3 million in first quarter of 2020 . . . mainly due to the suspension of the Company's advertising collaborations with Google."



On this news, the Company's share price fell $0.25, or more than 7%, over two consecutive trading sessions to close at $3.10 per share on June 11, 2020, thereby injuring investors further. If you purchased Cheetah Mobile 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/20200622005743/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Mali's beleaguered President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's attempts to soften his iron-fisted image appear to be falling flat as a newly energised opposition intensifies calls for his resignation over continuing bloodshed in the poor Sahel country.

A newly formed opposition coalition of religious leaders, politicians and civil society figures has rallied tens of thousands to take to the streets of Bamako in two demonstrations this month.

Calling itself the "June 5" movement after the date of the first protest, the coalition is channelling deep-seated frustration over jihadist attacks and inter-ethnic violence that have claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes since 2012.

The slow pace of political reforms, a flagging economy, a lack of funding for public services and schools and a widely shared perception of government corruption have also fed anti-Keita sentiment.

This month's protests followed demonstrations in May over the results of March's long-delayed parliamentary elections -- which Keita's party won -- as well as over coronavirus restrictions.

The 75-year-old head of state, who has been in power since 2013, has been able until now to shrug off the criticism of a divided opposition, mainly thanks to support from the international community which sees him as a bulwark against the jihadist threat.

The "strongman" image of the political veteran known as IBK, with his tough line on terrorism and corruption, has been an asset in the past.

Tens of thousands of protestors rallied in Independence Square in Bamako to demand the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. By MICHELE CATTANI (AFP)

But the coronavirus pandemic and the kidnapping of opposition leader Soumaila Cisse by jihadists nearly three months ago have made severe inroads on Keita's standing.

At the head of the June 5 movement is the charismatic Mahmoud Dicko, an imam and Islamic hardliner whose political star is rising in the West African country, described by political scientist Oumar Diakite as a "lifeline" for the opposition.

"IBK will emerge weakened from the crisis," said Diakite, adding that the president "must stay" but will be forced to modify his governing style.

It is a tall order for Keita, who is known for an uncompromising temperament and a preference for strong, centralised power.

'Backroom manoeuvres'

But he seems to be trying on a conciliatory stance, mooting a national unity government in a June 14 address to the nation. "My door is open and my hand is always extended," Keita said.

Mediators from the regional organisation ECOWAS, whose efforts are supported by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, had recommended such a move.

But protest leaders have rejected Keita's offer.

Keita has proposed forming a unity government but his efforts have failed to appease opponents. By MICHELE CATTANI (AFP/File)

"In the current circumstances, no government can solve Mali's problems, not even a government of national unity -- which the June 5 movement has not requested and does not want," the coalition said on Saturday, reiterating their demand for the resignation of Keita and his government.

An ally, Cheick Oumar Gadjigo, said he favoured a unity government, but with Keita at the helm. "IBK has managed crises and I am sure he will find solutions," he said.

A diplomat from a neighbouring country said, for his part: "My feeling is that there are backroom manoeuvres between hawks and doves around the president. I have no doubt he wants dialogue. But part of his entourage wants none of it."

The son of a civil servant, Keita was born in the southern industrial city of Koutiala, the declining heartland of cotton production.

He studied in the former colonial power France and spent more than two decades there before returning to Mali in 1986.

Keita enjoyed a meteoric rise under Alpha Oumar Konare, Mali's first democratically elected president.

He experienced his own landslide defeat in 2007 to Amadou Toumani Toure, before winning the 2013 election after campaigning as a unifying figure in his fractured country, belying his tough-talking reputation. Keita was re-elected in 2018, defeating Cisse.
An Irish policeman in Australia has been hailed a hero on national TV after a daring rescue of a fisherman who was swept to sea by a freak wave.

Dramatic footage captured at the scene shows First Class Constable Rob Gaynor offering a strong hand to haul to safety the 28-year old man who had been clinging to rocks until help arrived

In a heart-stopping moment, Constable Gaynor grabs the wrist of the exhausted fisherman as he slips, saving him from falling back into the deep waters.

Luckily the fisherman's location had been pinpointed by a drone belonging to Perth photographer Anton Wilkinson who had spotted the man in the ocean after he was tossed by a rogue wave off rocks where he had been fishing.

The footage captured by the drone was broadcast on 7 News in Perth after the incident which occurred earlier this month.

Speaking from Western Australia, Constable Gaynor said he knew time was of the essence when responding to the emergency call 10km away from Dunsborough Police Station, where he is based.

"He was out fishing off Sugarloaf Rock and was wearing a life-jacket but the waves are so unpredictable and he was swept into the water," he said

"Luckily it is a local beauty spot which attracts photographers and when I arrived Anton Wilkinson told me about the drone and I asked him if he'd guide me to where the fisherman was.

"It's a bit of a cove, so he was washed off one side and was smashed against the rocks on the other. He was very tired and I didn't know if he would have been able to hold himself up much longer.

"There was a bit of rock hopping, jumping and scrambling down what was a sheer rock face but I managed to find a small foothold and narrow passage to get to him.

"I was offering my hand to him when he slipped and I grabbed his wrist and held him up from falling back into the ocean.

"I don't think we would've had much more time with the conditions and the fact that he was so fatigued," he said

"He had lacerations to his legs from being smashed against the rocks but we quickly got him to an ambulance at the scene. I've talked to him since and he's doing OK."

Thirty-seven-year old Constable Gaynor is originally from Monasterboice in Co Louth where his well-known family and friends were extremely proud of his deed.

The dad of three emigrated to Western Australia 12 years ago and worked as an architect technologist before seeing an advertisement for the police force six years ago and decided to apply.

"I just saw an ad for the police force and decided to go for it. It was always something I wanted to do since I was a kid but didn't have a chance in Ireland so I applied here and haven't looked back once. You are definitely kept on your toes but I love it.

"Every police officer does things each day and you don't know how it affects or changes people's lives in a good way. "

Since the rescue, Rob admits he can't keep up with the messages flooding in from friends and family all around the world.

"There's been a lot of reaction alright and a lot of messages coming in both to me and to my parents Anthony and Bernie at home in Monasterboice. It's been great but I was just doing my job at the end of the day."
KALAMAZOO, MI -- After months isolated from his family, 96-year-old Jimmie Fisher celebrated his recovery from coronavirus by meeting his newest family member.

Sitting in the shade at Park Village Pines, he waved and cooed at his 8-week-old great grandson. His daughter, Kim Love, had orchestrated the family gathering and brought red, white and blue accessories to honor her fathers service in the World War II.

Its about the resilience of a family unit, she said about the occasion.

If youre viewing this story but cannot see the photo gallery above, click here to see all the photos from our visit with Fisher and his family.

As a social worker, Love spends most of her days in and out of assisted living facilities consoling families as their loved ones progress through different stages of life. The coronavirus pandemic was no different, she said.

She had empathy for families who could only wave to loved ones on the other side of the glass. She was living it, too.

Love usually visits her father, Jimmie Fisher, every Thursday with her Pomeranian poodle Louie, she said. Sometimes she and her father work on puzzles, other times they watch TV, but most of the time they just sit and be together.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer banned non-essential visits to hospitals and care facilities on March 14. For months, Love was not able to hold her fathers hand or hug him the way she wanted to.

At home, her husband Kip went to quarantine at their lake house in Minnesota as an extra precaution. Meanwhile, her son Nick and daughter-in-law Rachael were expecting their first baby, and were also quarantined.

On April 26, Rachael gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

Two weeks later, Loves father and the family patriarch, Fisher, was hospitalized at Bronson for COVID-19.

We werent allowed at all [to visit], Love said. That was hard. I cried and cried and cried. But it was like if this is it, this is it. Theres nothing I can do about it.

Doctors gathered family members together during a Zoom conference call with Fisher. Although a bit disoriented, he asked the family, Hows the boy?'

The family held the then two-week-old infant up to the screen. Given his age, Love feared this might be the last time the family would see her father. She took a quick screenshot of the Zoom call for good measure.

At that point, I was told my dad might not make it through the night, she said. I took a snapshot because I thought Ive got to have one more picture of my dad.

Fisher had just recently moved to Michigan to live with the Love family after being in Missouri with other family members for years. Love said the last year and a half has been an unexpected blessing as she grows closer to her dad. He handed over his file of paperwork and photos from his time in the Navy as a radioman in World War II another side of him shes excited to share with family.

Every minute I have with him, its just precious gift, she said. I did not see him. [I didnt expect] getting to know my dad near the end of his life.

After three days in the hospital, Fisher pulled through. He returned to Park Village Pines and spent 10 days in the assisted living facilitys COVID-19 isolation unit.

The weeks apart were hard but it made the gathering on June 18 that much sweeter, Love said.

You lean on each other, she said. Thats what familys do.

Outside on a sunny Thursday afternoon, Fisher met his first great grandson, Malakhai Alexander Ezekiel Love.

Fisher waved at the 8-week-old baby who had just woken up from a nap, greeting everyone with a sleepy smile. Fisher looked at Rachel and remembered their inside joke hes got all ten toes? he quipped.

Hes got all ten toes, she said back.

The family stood for a photo with all four generations.

This is why you get up in the morning, Love said. This is what you live for.

Read more on MLive:

Separated by glass, Kalamazoo couple celebrates 48 years of marriage

Kalamazoo County moves into low risk category for coronavirus

102-year-old WWI services papers from California traced back to Kalamazoo nurse
MADISON, Wis. -- University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have found that a constantly fluctuating environment can enable some species to invade new areas by helping them maintain the genetic diversity they need to settle into their new homes.

And once those invasive species arrive, adaptation can take surprisingly similar paths. Evolution can act on exactly the same genomic regions, even during independent invasions across widely separated populations and on opposite sides of a continent.

The findings could make future encroachments easier to predict, a huge priority since invasive species cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage each year. And as climate change forces more species to move or perish, the ability to predict adaptability could help us understand which organisms will survive.

Writing in Nature Ecology and Evolution on June 22, UW-Madison Professor of Integrative Biology Carol Eunmi Lee and postdoctoral researcher David Stern describe how a small crustacean from salty waters, the copepod Eurytemora affinis, was able to invade the Great Lakes and other freshwater lakes.

In the estuaries that Eurytemora call home, fluctuations in the water's salinity drive a high level of genetic diversity among the copepod population, allowing them to survive changing conditions. When the invaders reach fresh water, that genetic diversity helped them undergo natural selection, flourish and take over.

"Fluctuating conditions in the native range probably provide a major evolutionary force enabling species to invade a new habitat," says Lee. "This is not a principle just for this one copepod, but it probably also explains why a large portion of invasive species in the Great Lakes are coming from brackish water habitats with fluctuating conditions."

Lee and Stern studied Eurytemora populations from two widely separated locations: the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec and the Gulf of Mexico near Texas and Louisiana. Each has gone on to invade freshwater lakes, either the Great Lakes or inland lakes upstream of the Gulf. The researchers sequenced the genomes of hundreds of copepods to investigate how they made the jump from salt water to fresh water.

"We looked for those genetic changes that were the same across these different independent invasion events," says Stern.

Where these two different populations in different locations experienced the same genetic changes, it was evidence of what's known as parallel evolution. In the case of the copepods, the two populations experience 29 times more parallel evolution than expected if it were up to chance alone, at least in places of the genome related to salinity tolerance. That trend also held across broader regions of the genome.

"That was surprising, because the Gulf and Atlantic populations are very different," says Lee. "But they have the same mutations in their native ranges, and then the same mutations independently rose in frequency in the invading populations."

The researchers then investigated how populations of Eurytemora separated by thousands of miles could retain enough genetic similarity to promote this degree of parallel evolution. Lee and Stern found that the genes that underwent parallel evolution had experienced balancing selection at home. Balancing selection promotes the maintenance of diverse alleles -- variants of genes -- to handle different conditions.

For Eurytemora, seasonal changes in salinity have selected for variation in genetic traits that help the crustacean survive a wide range of conditions. When the copepod made it to fresh water, it could rely on that genetic diversity to adapt to its new home.

Most of the genomic regions that changed to adapt to fresh water have unknown functions. But the researchers spotted a string of genes molded by parallel evolution with clear ties to changing salinity. One region with seven copies of an ion transporter, which can control how much sodium is pumped into a cell, had the highest density of parallel evolution in the copepod genomes.

"We expected that ion transporters would play a big role," says Lee. "It's going to be the number one thing that you have to do when you get to fresh water, is start pumping more ions into the cell."

The researchers believe that balancing selection likely explains a number of other invasions, especially in the Great Lakes. Other invaders, like zebra and quagga mussels, also hail from areas that experience fluctuations in salinity. As long as the environment regularly changes on a time scale longer than reproductive cycles and across generations, balancing selection -- and subsequent invasion -- is possible.

"Balancing selection might be a widespread evolutionary force that predisposes certain populations to evolve when they encounter evolutionary environmental change," says Lee.

###

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grants OCE- 1046372 and OCE- 1658517).

Eric Hamilton, (608) 263-1986, eshamilton@wisc.edu

CONTACT: Carol Eunmi Lee, carollee@wisc.edu ; David B. Stern, dbstern3@wisc.edu

DOWNLOAD IMAGES: https://uwmadison.box.com/v/invasive-copepods
Manchester, June 22 : Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville believes constant speculations surrounding midfielder Paul Pogba's future at Old Trafford isn't helping the club on the pitch.

Neville urged Pogba to end such rumours and commit his future to Manchester United. Pogba has been linked with a move away from the club in recent times with Real Madrid and Juventus reportedly ready to acquire his services.

"There's no doubt that a committed Paul Pogba to Manchester United can be a great player," Neville said on his official podcast as per Goal.com. "His assists, his goals, are good. They've been very good in the last couple of seasons.

"He's up there with some of the very best in his position in Europe. It's just the case of settling down.

"Hopefully with the economic problems around Europe, teams won't be able to go out and spend 80, 90 or 100 million on new players, Manchester United will keep him and Paul Pogba will understand that he's staying at Manchester United.

"That's all I've ever asked of Paul Pogba, just commitment. His performances, I've never blamed him for Manchester United's problems over the years," he added.

Neville also stated that Pogba is the only world-class player in the Red Devils' roster currently and if he stays committed to the club then performance of both can improve significantly.

"I do believe he's the one real world-class player - David de Gea I would have said two years ago - in Manchester United's squad.

"He's the one who should be leading from the front, and if there's continuous speculation over his future it isn't helpful, it creates doubt in the dressing room.

"Now, I feel there's a better chance of that team really succeeding, and I think they'll play at Old Trafford on Wednesday night, and there won't be any doubt that he'll play with Bruno Fernandes."
In early May, these states had proposed suspending key labour laws for a period of three years in a bid to attract investments flowing out of China due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Union government had sent its queries, asking to specify which labour laws do the state government plan to suspend through the proposed Ordinance. We have sent our response to the Central government, giving out the ...

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
Coronation Street stars Tina O'Brien and Jack P Shepherd were spotted arriving on set in Manchester for another day of shooting on Monday.

The ITV soap recently resumed filming after production was halted for nearly three months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

They were also joined by co-stars Sally Carman (Abi Franklin), Mikey North (Gary Windass), Joe Duttine (Tim Metcalfe) and Sally Dynevor (Sally Metcalfe).

Back to normal: Coronation Street star Tina O'Brien was spotted arriving on set in Manchester for another day of shooting on Monday

Tina, 36, who plays Sarah Platt, led the soap stars as she arrived first at the Salford studios on Wednesday.

Jack, 32, Tina's on-screen brother who plays David Platt, followed swiftly behind before Sally Carman showed up in her bottle-green Mini Cooper.

Mikey, 33, was spotted being dropped off by his wife, Rachael Isherwood, before Joe and Sally Dynevor also turned up.

The set and studios also had a series of signs enforcing social distancing upon arrival.

Long hiatus: Jack P Shepherd drove into the studios as the ITV soap gradually gets back to business after production was halted for nearly three months due to the coronavirus pandemic

Making a statement: Sally Carman, 39, showed up in her bottle-green Mini Cooper

As the actors return to filming, the plan is to make enough shows to continue airing three episodes a week to ensure the soap remains on-screen in July.

ITV bosses previously confirmed that older cast members will be kept at home during the first few weeks of filming.

Andy Whyment (Kirk) also revealed that kissing scenes will be banned in accordance with new social distancing measures.

The star also shared a picture of new soap scripts to his Instagram, he penned: 'New scripts EXCITED' with smiley faces and a thumbs up emoji.

Carpool lane: Mikey North, 33, was spotted being dropped off by his wife, Rachael Isherwood

Gang back together: Sally Dynevor, 57, also turned up to get back down to business

The new safety measures are in accordance with the recently issued TV production guidelines which will be observed whilst filming the top ITV soap.

Crew have also begun preparations to ensure filming will resume in full on Tuesday at the studios, with recording initially producing three episodes a week.

The new episodes will be scheduled following the installments recorded earlier this year before the coronavirus pandemic halted production in March.

Cast and crew over the age of 70, or with an underlying health condition, will be kept at home during the early stages.

Secret: Andy Whyment (Kirk) shared a picture of new soap scripts to his Instagram on Tuesday, he penned: 'New scripts EXCITED' with smiley faces and a thumbs up emoji

This may be sad news for soap fans, as cast members who fall into that age bracket include William Roache (who plays Ken Barlow), Barbara Knox (Rita Tanner), Sue Nicholls (Audrey Roberts) and Maureen Lipman (Evelyn Plummer).

It has been reported that older stars may still appear via video calls, with a source telling Talk TV according to The Sun: 'Bosses know just how important these characters are to their millions of fans.

'And who wouldn't love to see the likes of Ken, Evelyn and Roy taking part in a Zoom quiz night?

'Or Tracy calling her dad and telling him how much she misses him. There are good ways to do it and that's what they're looking into at the moment.'
Three months ago, Canada began closing its borders to protect itself from COVID-19. Today it needs to plan how to reopen the same borders to protect its economic recovery from the pandemic.

The reason is as simple as it is clear: We need more immigrants. But without a concerted effort on the part of the federal government, we wont satisfy that need.

Ever since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imposed heavy restrictions on travel to Canada back in March, the usual and reliable stream of newcomers has slowed to a trickle. While Ottawa originally hoped to welcome 341,000 new permanent residents to Canada in 2020, well be lucky if half that number arrives. And thats virtually guaranteed to happen if the entry restrictions and the closing of our borders to all but essential travel continue all summer.

Some people may shrug and ask, So what? Extraordinary times demanded extraordinary measures, theyll argue. Under the circumstances, the government was right to severely limit the number of people who entered the country  whether or not they might be infected with COVID-19.

We cant disagree that the government did what it had to do at the time. But with the number of new COVID-19 cases in a gradual tailspin and the country emerging from lockdown, we must look ahead. Our economy is in shambles. The current best-case scenario is for the economy to shrink by 6.8 per cent this year  and that would be its worst performance since 1981.

To be sure, ramping up immigration over the last half of this year and into 2021 might seem counterintuitive. After all, the pandemic cost the jobs of an estimated 3.5 million people and slashed the hours of another 2.5 million. So why bring in hundreds of thousands of newcomers if the jobs arent there?

Theres an overwhelming agreement on the part of economists, however, that this dire hour is the exact moment we need more, not fewer, immigrants.

If we have a prolonged stop (in immigration) that could really hurt us 10 years from now, Andrew Agopsowicz, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets, explains. We need to be thinking about how we can turn our immigration system back on.  Its such an important piece of our growth.

Well second that. For decades, Canadas economy has depended on immigrants to boost output and consumption. Theyre a vital part of our labour force. Many arrive with impressive professional credentials and the kind of work experience our businesses crave.

Others perform jobs native-born Canadians often avoid. Just remember that newcomers make up a high proportion of the personal support workers who have been so essential throughout the pandemic. Immigrants create and sustain employment, too. Because they need a place to live, for instance, they juice our housing sector.

Theres another reason theyre so important. Immigrants tend to be younger than most Canadians. Were a greying nation. As 9 million baby-boomers head into retirement over the next decade, the pressures on our retirement-benefit and health-care systems will mount. New immigrants will willingly share that burden. And so we should value them.

This is not a call to reopen Canadas borders to newcomers prematurely. It is a request for the Trudeau government to make immigration a major part of its recovery plan. Theres a backlog to be cleared and safety measures to be implemented. Potential immigrants might also need reassurances its safe to come here.

But as we rebuild an economy shattered by COVID-19, well need all the hands we can get.
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Voxy has earned the Research-Based Design product certification from Digital Promise, which confirms a link between research on how students learn and Voxy's product's design. The new product certification is intended to serve as a rigorous, reliable signal for consumers, including school administrators, educators, and families, looking for evidence of research-based educational technology products.

"In the aftermath of the pandemic and widespread distance learning, it has never been more important for organizations and schools to quickly and reliably gauge the efficacy of online learning technology," said Katie Nielson, Voxy's Chief Education Officer. "This certification demonstrates Voxy's unique ability to help English language learners (ELLs) succeed in school and after graduation."

Voxy uses machine learning to personalize content and adapt online English language instruction. Its technology was recently evaluated by American Institutes for Research (AIR) in a study that found community college students who used Voxy had larger English language proficiency gains than their peers in the comparison group who used a different software.

"Schools and families want to know which edtech products can actually help students learn," said Karen Cator, president and CEO of Digital Promise. "Digital Promise's Product Certifications are designed to help strengthen consumers' confidence in choosing research-based products, while recognizing product developers doing the important work of incorporating valid research into their designs."

After nearly a decade of edtech marketplace research, Digital Promise recognized that while consumers want to know whether a product will improve learning, there is a strong distrust of product-authored studies. Additionally, edtech efficacy or pilot studies conducted once products were already chosen were found to be largely impacted by contextual factors like educator buy-in or a school's technology infrastructure. Through Product Certifications, consumers can narrow their options as they select products by identifying edtech that is truly based in research about learning before trying it out in their classrooms.

The Research-Based Design product certification uses a competency-based learning framework, developed in consultation with Digital Promise's Learner Variability Project advisory board, expert researchers in the Learning Sciences field, and dozens of educators across the United States. Further detail about its development can be found in Digital Promise's new report, "Designing Edtech that Matters for Learning: Research-Based Design Product Certifications."

All developers, educators, edtech investors, and families are also encouraged to sign the Research-Based Product Promise and demand high-quality, research-driven products that support each unique learner. More information on Digital Promise's product certifications can be found at productcertifications.digitalpromise.org.

About Voxy

Voxy is a digital English training solution that has helped organizations such as Chobani, DirectTV, Queens Public Library, and the University of Maryland deliver personalized language learning at scale. Harnessing the power of AI, Voxy is the most effective tool for driving proficiency gains for English Language Learners (ELLs) in schools, universities, community colleges, corporations, workforce agencies, and more. Voxy's adaptive lessons and live instruction sessions can be accessed round-the-clock on both the web and on any mobile device. Backed by leading investors in education and technology, Voxy is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and Singapore.

About Digital Promise

Digital Promise is a nonprofit organization that builds powerful networks and takes on grand challenges by working at the intersection of researchers, entrepreneurs, and educators. Our vision is that all people, at every stage of their lives, have access to learning experiences that help them acquire the knowledge and skills they need to thrive and continuously learn in an ever-changing world. For more information, visit the Digital Promise website and follow @digitalpromise for updates.

SOURCE Voxy

Related Links

http://www.voxy.com


PARIS (Reuters) - The number of deaths in France from COVID-19 has risen by seven from the previous day to stand at 29,640 said the country's national health service on Sunday.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 284 to 160,377.

France has the fifth-highest coronavirus death toll in the world, although the rate of casualties has dropped sharply over the last two months, allowing the country to gradually reopen its economy.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Edmund Blair)
New Delhi: Amid the recent violent clashes between the Indian Army and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China at the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, videos of Indian and Chinese army soldiers assembling the guns 'singlehanded' and 'blindfolded' have surfaced on social media.

In the two videos, one shows how China's blindfolded PLA troops assemble rifles and pistols in 99 seconds, while the other video shows the Indo-Tibetian Border Police (ITBP) soldiers assembling and disassembling 2 rifles singlehanded in 26 seconds.

The video of ITBP personnel appeared when the Chinese state-run media Global Times posted a video on Twitter saying, "Check out how Chinese soldiers assemble rifles and pistols in 99 seconds while blindfolded."

A 30-second fast-forwarded clip showed the Chinese soldiers assembling rifle and pistols in 99 seconds with their eyes being covered with a black colored eye mask.

Check out how Chinese soldiers assemble rifles and pistols in 99 seconds while blindfolded. pic.twitter.com/WwODsvxNXh  Global Times (@globaltimesnews) June 21, 2020

In reply, a user shared the ITBP clip saying, "Indian army(ITBP)soldiers disassembled and assembled 2guns in 26 sec with single hand.!!"

Indian army(ITBP)soldiers disassembled and assembled 2guns in 26 sec with single hand.!!! pic.twitter.com/D7sPpXCHrZ  DILIPhk& nazarboroxxxxx (@NazarNa37737407) June 21, 2020

The 27-second long video has been viewed by over 3,100 people till the time of filing this copy and has garnered 279 likes and 54 retweets.

From boycotting the Chinese products to bashing the Chinese media on social media platforms, the Indian citizens have been furious over the martyrdom of 20 Indian Army soldiers at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The violent-clashes on the night of June 15 where both the countries suffered casualties have soured relations between the two nations.

According to sources, at least 45-50 Chinese PLA's personnel are believed to be killed by the Indian Army during their violent face-off that reportedly took place for more than 4 hours.

Also see: Indian Army soldiers martyred during Galwan Valley clashes with China

Earlier, the Global Times, wrote on Twitter that if China released the number of casualties, then the Indian government would again come under pressure.

They had tweeted, "The reason why China did not release casualties number is that China also wants to avoid an escalation. If China releases the number which is less than 20, the Indian govt would again come under pressure."

Meanwhile, India and China held another round of Lt General-level talks today in the Moldo-Chushul Valley on the Chinese side to discuss ways to de-escalate tension between the two sides in eastern Ladakh.
Judge rules in favor of churches that left Episcopal Church, defies SC supreme court

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

A South Carolina judge tasked with enforcing a state supreme court ruling against a breakaway Episcopal diocese has issued a ruling that appears to contradict the high courts decision.

In 2017, the state supreme court ruled that the $500 million worth of property of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina belonged to the national denomination rather than the dozens of parishes that broke away from the domination in 2012.

However, South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Edgar Dickson issued an order last Friday contending that each parish owned their properties because they were not held in trust by the Episcopal Church.

Dickson applied neutral principles to the case, arguing that property records determine ownership of a facility.

This is a property matter, and the title holders are the owners of their property as set forth in their deeds. There is no clear, convincing evidence of an expressed or constructive trust applicable to any parish, concluded Dickson.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the thirty-six Plaintiff Parishes be, and hereby are, declared and affirmed as the title owners in fee simple absolute of their respective parish real properties, with improvements thereon and their accompanying personal property.

Dickson cited the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling from 1969 when it weighed a church property dispute between the Presbyterian Church of the United States and two Georgia churches that had withdrawn from the PCUS.

The Georgia Supreme Court initially resolved the controversy by applying a theory of implied trust, whereby the property of a local church affiliated with a hierarchical church organization was deemed to be held in trust for the general church, provided the general church had not substantially abandoned the tenets of faith and practice as they existed at the time of affiliation, Dickson wrote.

However, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed, holding that Georgia courts would have to find some other way of resolving church property disputes that did not draw the state courts into religious controversies.

Dickson stressed that the U.S. Supreme Court did not specify what that method should be, although it noted in passing that there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes, which can be applied without establishing churches to which property is awarded.

Diocesan Chancellor Thomas S. Tisdale Jr. expressed disappointment in the ruling but was also optimistic that the state high court may intervene against the new order.

This is not a final decision; it is yet another step on a long journey to full reconciliation within our Diocese, Tisdale said in a statement.

While we are understandably disappointed that Judge Dickson has not enforced the Supreme Courts decision as directed, we are hopeful that the South Carolina Supreme Court will hear the matter promptly and correct any errors that exist in todays order.

Bishop Mark Lawrence, head of the breakaway group, known as the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, praised the ruling.

We give thanks for this ruling. It is a day to rejoice. It is a day to move forward in Christs mission to the world. Thanks be to God, said Lawrence in a statement.

In November 2012, the majority of the members of the South Carolina diocese voted to leave the national denomination over theological differences and the apparent mistreatment of Bishop Lawrence. They later joined the Anglican Church in North America.

In 2013, litigation began over who rightly owned the diocesan name and property, the breakaway leadership or the continuing Episcopalians who remained with the national denomination. Those loyal to the national denomination had to refer to themselves as The Episcopal Church in South Carolina while the breakaway group retained the name rights.

In August 2017, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled against the breakaway group, largely overturning the lower court decision.

Acting Justice Costa Pleicones wrote the majority opinion. He concluded that the lower court ruling had an "error of law" that produced "a distorted view of the issues in this case."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Kaye G. Hearn argued that The Episcopal Church's hierarchical structure meant that it owned the diocesan properties because the national church ordained the diocesan leaders and must defer to that decision."
The boss of a notorious fuel theft cartel has vowed to seek revenge against the Mexican government and the country's most powerful criminal organization after his mother and sister were arrested during an operation.

The Secretariat of National Defense said state and federal agents captured three family members of Jose Antonio 'El Marro' Yepez, the alleged leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, on Saturday in the central Mexico state of Guanajuato.

According to law enforcement information obtained by Mexican newspaper Milenio, authorities had gotten wind of a building located in San Isidro de Elguera, a rural neighborhood in the municipality of Celaya, where payments were being distributed to cartel workers.

Scroll down for video

Military and police officers arrested 26 people, including the mother, sister and cousin of Jose Antonio 'El Marro' Yepez (pictured) during an operation against the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel on Saturday in Guanajuato, Mexico. Yepez's criminal organization primarily focuses on fuel theft

Pictured from left to right are EL Marro's mother; Maria Ortiz; his sister, Juana Yepez; and his cousin Rosalba. The three women were among 26 individuals who were arrested Saturday by the military and the police due to their alleged ties to El Marro's Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel

A view of a street after alleged members of a gang set fire to vehicles and blocked roads in Celaya as well as other cities in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato following the arrest of a cartel leader's family, including his mother and sister

A burning car is pictured outside a store after an operation by security forces against the leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in Celaya, Mexico, on Saturday

Approximately at 2pm, authorities raided the safe house and apprehended at least 26 people, including Yepez's mother, Maria Ortiz; his sister, Juana Yepez; and his cousin, Rosalba.

All three women were accused of running the finances of Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.

At least a kilo of methamphetamine was also along with several vehicles, firearms and ammunitions. Authorities also confiscated $89,000 that were in possession of El Marro's mother.

In response to the massive detentions, enraged cartel members blocked highways and set cars and trucks ablaze along roads in Celaya and 12 other cities, including Salamanca, Cortazar, Villagran and Dolores Hidalgo, so that El Marro could move around without being detected.

Yepez broke down in tears and threatened further disturbances in a video distributed on social media Saturday.

'They humiliated and did what they want with the family and I am going to be a stone in their shoe,' he said.

A motorist in Guanajuato records a vehicle set on fire as part of a violent response unleashed by members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel

Authorities arrested 26 people linked to the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel during an operation Saturday in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato

The Secretariat of National Defense said the arrests took place at a safe house where alleged cartel members were being paid

In a separate video that was filtered Sunday, he accused Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of aiding the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, considered the nation's most powerful criminal organization and with whom he's been embroiled in an all-out war since 2017.

'They come with the only interest of backing those sons of b******.'

On Monday, Lopez Obrador countered by advising residents not to align themselves with El Marro and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.

'Don't get involved in that,' Lopez Obrador said. 'There is a way to have income with supports that are being channeled. Don't get into protecting criminals. These groups, such as the case of the [gasoline thieves], handle payrolls to weekly deliver support and that is why when there is an arrest, when the National Guard intervenes, they go out and confront them by burning cars.

Yepez also said he had enlisted the services of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's old Sinaloa Cartel in his latest attempt to defeat the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

A sting at a criminal organization's safe house in central Mexico led to the arrest of 26 people Saturday in Celaya, Mexico

A vehicle was set on fire by alleged members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel on Saturday in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato

Since 2017, Jose Antonio 'El Marro' Yepez (left), who commands the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, has been at odds with Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

The gang began by robbing trains and expanded into stealing gasoline from government pipelines, and has branched out into extortion rackets, often clashing with the Jalisco New Generation Carte, which is led by Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera, a one-time ally of El Chapo who is now wanted by the United States.

Analysts say the confrontation is a key reason for a soaring number of homicides in Guanajuato, once one of Mexico's safer states and home to numerous foreign-owned manufacturing plants.

Meanwhile, authorities in the northwestern state of Sonora said a series of clashes in the municipality of Caborca left at least 12 men dead. Officials said they were found with their hands bound and they had been shot.
Capital funding of health care, used to build new hospitals, redesign or upgrade existing facilities and invest in new technologies, has declined in Canada over the last 20 years, according to an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

"Despite increases in total health care spending in Canada, capital investment in Canadian health care has seen a substantial decline in recent years, contributing to Canada's high hospital occupancy rates, hallway health care problem and operating inefficiencies," writes Dr. David Klein, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and St. Michael's Hospital, Unity Health, Toronto, Ontario, with coauthors.

Without adequate capital funding, health care systems are unable to adopt new technologies for diagnosis and patient care or upgrade aging buildings and equipment, which can affect patient care and efficient health care delivery.

"Capital funding to support infrastructure is largely neglected in discussions about annual funding, yet inadequate or uncertain capital investment may threaten the sustainability and equity of the Canadian health care system even more than the variable disbursement of operational funding," says Dr. Klein.

The authors argue that Canada and its provinces and territories should prioritize capital funding by

encouraging innovative funding models, such as public-private partnerships with strong regulatory oversight

pursuing partnerships with strategic investors

improving tax breaks to encourage charitable giving

supporting better tools for decision-making

engaging community stakeholders in capital projects

Expert leadership to oversee investment and project execution is critical.

"More capital alone will not solve the problem," they write. "Capital investment must also be overseen and managed by expert leadership, fairly, transparently and ethically, to protect the public's interest and trust. The challenges underpinning the current level and effectiveness of our health care system will not be solved with one method alone."

###

"Ensuring adequate capital investment in Canadian health care" is published June 22, 2020.
The defense lawyer for prominent tax dodger and one-time fugitive Winston Shrout on Monday urged a judge to reduce his clients 10-year sentence and allow for his immediate release to home confinement, noting Shrout has tested positive for the coronavirus while in federal prison in California.

His crimes were serious but they certainly dont advocate or support what is very realistically a death sentence ,' argued assistant federal public defender Ruben Iniguez. In a nutshell, this hearing concerns this mans life.'

Shrout, a 72-year-old man who suffers from hypertension, heart disease, lung ailments and is overweight, is among the 70 percent of inmates at the Terminal Island federal prison in California who have contracted the virus, according to his lawyer. Eight inmates have already died there, the federal prison with the second-highest death toll in the nation, Iniguez said.

Shrout was sentenced Oct. 22, 2018, after a federal jury in Oregon convicted him of six misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file tax returns and 13 felony counts of producing, presenting and shipping fictitious financial instruments.

Shrout, a sovereign citizen, made and issued more than 300 fake International Bills of Exchange'' on his own behalf and for credit to third parties. The government said Shrout falsely claimed the bills had value and purported that they were worth more than $100 trillion. Shrout also testified at trial that he stopped paying income tax or filing income tax returns well over 20 years ago.'

He was scheduled to start serving his 10-year sentence March 4, 2019, but failed to surrender as promised. He was a fugitive until he was arrested in Arizona on a warrant Nov. 1, 2019.

Federal prosecutor Stuart Wexler said he recognizes that this is an extraordinary time considering the global pandemic, but he argued that Shrout has failed to show extraordinary circumstances that would warrant a 90 percent reduction of his sentence, less than eight months into his sentence.

Shrout has showed no remorse for his crimes and will continue to urge others to pursue the same tax-dodging maneuvers if hes released, Wexler countered.

He did catch coronavirus but medical records show his condition is stable and improving,' Wexler argued. He said Shrout never showed a fever. While his X-rays indicated he had pneumonia, its improving, Wexler said.

The mere fact there is a pandemic in this country is not a sufficiently extraordinary reason to release this defendant,' Wexler said.

Shrouts lawyer said the federal Bureau of Prisons has demonstrably failed to keep inmates safe from infection,' allowing general population dormitories to remain crowded without social-distancing or other safeguards.

Shrout was infected less than two months after he arrived at Terminal Island. He has already tested positive and may become re-infected,' Iniguez said. We simply dont know how that will end up for him. The risk where I sit is too great to gamble on his life.'

A swab was taken on April 23, and the results came back positive two days later. Shrout was quarantined from April 30 to May 2, according to court records.

The fact that he was left in general population for five days after he was known to be positive by the lab,,' and then isolated for a short period before he was placed back into general population, is grossly inadequate,' Iniguez said. Its no surprise the virus is so rampant and killing people in that facility because theyre exposing everybody to it.'

Iniguez said it would be safer for Shrout to return to live in a family trailer in Utah, where hell be quarantined and have medical care if needed from a local Veterans Affairs hospital.

Shrouts lawyer highlighted last months compassionate release of Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump. Manfort, 71, left a low-security prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, on May 13, to return to his home in northern Virginia after requesting that the Bureau of Prisons release him for the remainder of his sentence. He had served about 23 months of his 7  year sentence.

At least 2,471 of the nations 169,000 federal inmates have been released to home confinement since March in an effort to avoid coronavirus infection, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Shrouts medical condition is more severe than Mr. Manfort, yet where is Mr. Manafort? Hes out of custody,' Iniguez said. The BOP didnt have a problem with Mr. Manafort serving such a small part of his sentence. Its nothing short of hypocrisy.'

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones said hed take Shrouts motion for compassionate release under advisement and issue a written ruling.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

Subscribe to Facebook page

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter
A 240-unit affordable housing community is moving into Rio Rancho along US 550, according to a presentation at the Sandoval County Commission meeting May 21.

Eric and Walter Skip Grodahl from DBG Properties LLC presented the project, 550 Paseo Apartments.

They are affordable housing developers who have done six similar projects in New Mexico, Walter Grodahl said. They plan to make 550 Paseo Apartments qualify under affordable housing guidelines.

This presentation informed commissioners of a future decision about the county serving as a conduit for financing, pursuant to IRS requirements. Private activity bonds are also known as conduit bonds, according to the presentation. The bonds are tax-exempt and issued by a local or state government to provide financing for qualified projects.

In this case, DBG Properties is requesting $30 million in private-activity bonds from Sandoval County for the facility construction. The apartment complex would be located along US 550, next to Enchanted Vista Apartments, another affordable housing complex.

Commissioner Katherine Bruch, District 1, said the commission was still reviewing the information.

My thinking generally, philosophically, and I am happy to share that, is I really dont like low-income properties to be in one specific area, she said.

Bruch said she prefers to see complexes like 550 Paseo and Enchanted Vista Apartments spread around the area.

Lower-cost housing is always a benefit to our residents, but we are in an interesting economic situation where we may have a significant amount of properties coming available because of the economic challenge we are in with COVID-19, she said.

Commissioner Michael Meek, District 3, expressed concerns over whether traffic flow near US 550 could be managed.

Other than that, though, I think it is a good opportunity, he said.

He added that as long as demand for policing, education, mail, utilities and other public resources could be met, the project would be a great opportunity.

Since the meeting, county financial advisor Rob Burpo released a comprehensive spreadsheet about the project.

In the spreadsheet, Burpo predicts annual gross receipts tax revenue of $22,500 for the county and $23,625 for the City of Rio Rancho. These figures do not include GRT revenues from utility bills and other monthly or annual expenditures the apartments would be taxed on, according to the report.

The county, the City of Rio Rancho and Town of Bernalillo will benefit from one-time revenues during the construction phase of the project. Materials, labor, equipment rentals, land prep work, etc., will all contribute to the local economies, according to the report.

The report states the project intends to use local vendors.

Because major employers in Rio Rancho, such as Safelite and Convergys call centers, are less than 6 miles away, the project should reduce traffic along US 550, according to the report.

The apartment complex creates the opportunity for employees to live closer to their work and shorten associated travel distances, it said.

There is also a bus stop a quarter of a mile from the site for residents to use public transit.

Project developers will pay for any New Mexico Department of Transportation studies or updates to current studies, according to the report. When studies are released, they will be sent to local governments.

Burpo predicts the project should have a low impact on fire, police and sheriff services due to strong on-site management.

Costs for any additional impact on the departments would be earned from the new tax receipts from residents purchasing in the county and not down in Albuquerque, said the report.

The impact should be low on schools also, according to the report.

With a mix of senior residents occupying one- and two-bedroom apartments and a majority of the complex being one-bedroom apartments, there will be a limited number of two- and three-bedroom apartments that families typically occupy, according to the report.

The target market for 550 Paseo Apartments is families or individuals who make between $14 and $20 per hour. The income limit is $29,040 a year for a household of one, $33,180 for a family of two, up to $44,820 for a family of five.

Meek said the commission is in the preliminary stages of considering the options this project presents. He said a decision about the project wont be made immediately and the public would have a chance to voice their opinion.
A relatively small number of demonstrators gathered in central London on Sunday to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

The gathering on Sunday followed more substantial protests which took place in London and other major UK cities on Saturday - where people marched and carried banners to demonstrate against racism and police brutality.

The marches were part of world wide protests which have been taking place every weekend for the last four weeks in reaction to the death of George Floyd.
Indian companies, government agencies, media houses, and other industries may face cyber attack by Chinese state sponsored hacker groups, according to chatter uncovered by cyber Intelligence firm Cyfirma on the Dark Web (a part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines). The Chinese-backed hacker group may target Indian government websites and corporates in the pharma, smartphone telecom, tyre and construction industries to steal sensitive data, as per the report.

As per Singapore-headquartered cyber security firm, there has been surge in chats in the Chinese hacking community in the last ten days, discussing ways to teach lesson to India, especially media houses which have been critical of Chinese army. This was attributed to the current border tensions between the two countries after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in pre-meditated and planned attack by Chinese soldiers at Galwan Valley in Ladakh on Monday night. This was the biggest military confrontation in over five decades that has significantly escalated the already volatile border standoff between the two countries.

According to the report, leading Indian companies such as Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, L&T, BSNL, ApolloTyres, Micromax and Cipla could be targeted, along with the Defence, Foreign Affairs and Information and Broadcasting ministries.

"What piqued our interest was the list published on these forums. They had names of several Indian companies, media houses, telecom operators and a large tyre company. When we started attributing the handles publishing these lists back to their sources we found that they belonged to two hacking groups, Gothic Panda and Stone Panda, two well known hacking groups with direct affiliation to PLA (People's Liberation Army)," The Economic Times quoted Kumar Ritesh, chairman and CEO of Cyfirma, as saying.

He said that Cyfirma has already informed the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and some companies mentioned in these chats.

Last week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had said that several Australian entities including government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure, were being targeted by sophisticated state-based cyber hacks. He, however, did not give further details.

By Chitranjan Kumar

Also Read: Zoom not a Chinese App, clarifies company

Also Read: Border backlash on trade! Duty hike coming on all Chinese imports except medicines
BJP slams former PM Manmohan Singh; terms his comment as 'No Play-Zone for Politics'

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, June 22: Minutes after former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said that PM Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position, Telangana BJP slammed the former PM for his comments. The BJP believes that National Security is a "No Play-Zone for Politics".

Speaking to OneIndia, Telangana BJP Chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao said, "Former PM Manmohan Singh's statements are visibly political, ill-timed and non-congruent in the present scenario. He should guard his stature as a former head-of-state."

Arvind Kejriwal: We are fighting Chinese Army and virus, we will win against both | Oneindia News

PM must rise to the occasion and ensure justice for martyred soldiers: Manmohan Singh

"Congress party should desist from fishing in troubled waters, especially on developments in the Indo-China border. It's a disservice to the nation to politicise national security issues," the BJP spokesperson said.

He further went to say that at the time when all regional parties are extending solidarity to the central government and Indian Armed Forces, a national party like "Congress" should rise above acting in self interest and for "petty political expediency".

Earlier, former Prime Minister said PM Modi to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity. "To do any less would be a historic betrayal of people's faith," he said in a statement.

Major General level talks between India-China underway at Ladakh

Noting that the country is standing at the historic cross-roads, he said the government's decisions and actions will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us.

"Those who lead us bear the weight of a solemn duty," he said. "And in our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the prime minister. The prime minister must always be mindful of the implications of his words and declarations on our nation's security as also strategic and territorial interests," he said in a statement on the standoff with China in Ladakh.
With indicators now comparable to the lowest points of the financial crisis, consumer and business spending in the months ahead, influenced by government policy, will shape the post-Covid world.

To date, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic has rested almost entirely in the hands of federal governments as they moved unprecedented sums of money to protect their economies and businesses from the worst aspects of the outbreak.

The relationship between public health, consumer confidence and the business community has never been so important.

As we move into the next phase of the reopening of society and the economy, that responsibility will be shared among Government, businesses and ultimately, consumers. Ireland was the fastest-growing economy in Europe for five consecutive years leading into the pandemic and economic growth usually projects strong consumer confidence.

If Ireland is to rebound from the current crisis and regain the optimism that has characterised the economy in recent years it will need the collective response of Government and the spending power of its citizens to reboot the damaged economy.

Though the toll on our society from the Covid-19 pandemic will be hard to forget there are glimmers of hope for how a successful recovery can now be achieved.

With consumer confidence intrinsically linked to their confidence in public health over the coming months, the Government will have a number of difficult decisions to make in relation to the easing of lockdown and reopening of the economy.

But it is important to remember that economic growth depends on the spending of consumers and of businesses - governments alone will not drive the hoped-for resurgence and it will be our responsibility as citizens to show confidence in the sectors of our economy that need it most.

This will require a collective effort to go out for a meal, to buy a lunch from our local cafe and to go to the cinema when they open back again.

Businesses will also have a role to play through their spending, investment and corporate social responsibility programmes. But in some cases, sadly, the income will not be there to play as big a role as they may wish to.

The monthly consumer sentiment index from KBC Bank and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) from March 2020 to April 2020 has seen the largest month-on-month decrease in the history of the survey, dropping from 77.3 in March to 42.6 in April.

Although the month of May saw some signs of recovery with the index rising, the research division of wealth management company Davy was forecasting consumer spending to drop 12.5pc in 2020. The sentiment index will require much more spending from Irish consumers if it is to climb back to the 89.9 recorded in May of 2019.

As Caitriona Allis, head of ACCA Ireland, said: "These figures are of significant concern to us all but they have been the result of the correct decision to prioritise public health. Throughout this pandemic ACCA has been surveying small businesses on a weekly basis and we know from the most recent data that less than half of businesses are confident in cash streams over the next four weeks.

"Now, as we look into the months ahead we will all have a part to play in their recovery and ensure the worst effects of the pandemic are behind us."

Neil Gibson, chief economist at EY, was speaking at a business webinar event hosted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
Cruise Lines International Association, the leading trade organization for the global ocean-going cruise industry, says its member cruise lines have voluntarily extended the suspension of U.S. cruise operations until Sept. 15 amid coronavirus concerns.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "no-sail order" is scheduled to expire on July 24, but no extension has yet been announced. It said in a statement Sunday to USA TODAY that it supports the CLIA's decision to extend the suspension.

"The guest profile on typical cruise ship voyages matches those at greatest risk for severe illness which may require hospitalization and need for respiratory support," read the CDC statement. "Moreover, the population density on cruise ships tends to be higher than most urban settings, and even when populations are reduced, we still observe ongoing spread of COVID-19 illness due to the congregated setting and greater chance of closer physical contact. Sailings without guest passengers and with a markedly reduced crew size since April has continued to prove how difficult it is to control and eradicate COVID infections and outbreaks in the maritime environment."

CLIA's member lines carry 95% of the world's ocean-going cruisers. The new order will apply to all CLIA member ships the CDC order applies to  vessels that can carry 250 or more passengers.

"Although we had hoped that cruise activity in the U.S. could resume as soon as possible after that date, it is increasingly clear that more time will be needed to resolve barriers to resumption in the United States," Bari Golin-Blaugrund, senior director for strategic communications told USA TODAY, noting the organization informed the CDC of its continued voluntary suspension.

The extension comes with a caveat: The suspension will be continually reevaluated as Sept. 15 approaches and may be extended further, Golin-Blaugrund said.

"We want the traveling public to know in no uncertain terms that when we do resume operations in the U.S., it will be with the confidence that we have the necessary protocols and systems in place, and that we have done so with the input of the CDC," she added.

Story continues

Major lines, including Norwegian Cruise Line, have already extended their sailing suspensions well into fall, and Canada issued a ban on cruises in the country's waters through Oct. 31.

The group's global board of directors met on Friday and put the decision to a vote. All members agreed to adhere to the suspension.

The decision leaves nearly three months before major cruise companies, including cruising giant Carnival Corp., can ramp up their operations.

"CLIA cruise line members are using this time to explore new ideas and concepts to further enhance already stringent public health protocols and policies," Golin-Blaugrund said. "Additionally, caring for and repatriating crew members is the No. 1 priority for CLIA cruise line members right now."

Specific plans for the coronavirus and general health onboard are still being developed. Golin-Blaugrund said the industry is taking a "holistic approach."

"One theme that continues to emerge in these conversations is the concept of a 'door to door' strategy, beginning at the time of booking through the return of passengers to their homes," she said.

The industry also is looking to bolster screening protocol, implement additional health and sanitation practices for ships and terminals, and onboard prevention, surveillance and response.

CLIA members are also looking to explore enhanced passenger and crew screening, social distancing, modifying or eliminating buffet dining options, enhanced onboard medical capability, new training for crew members and pre-arranged medical evacuation options with consideration to local healthcare.

Friday, when asked about the no-sail order ahead of CLIA's decision, Caitlin Shockey, spokesperson for the CDC, told USA TODAY the CDC was still monitoring the situation on cruise ships and was reviewing cruise lines' plans.

"At this point in time, we do not have enough information to say when it will be safe for cruise ships to resume sailing."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US cruise ban: Cruises suspended until Sept. 15, industry group says
China has suspended poultry implants from a Tyson Foods facility in Arkansas where more than 200 employees have tested positive for coronavirus.

China's General Administration of Customs office made the announcement on Sunday.

Tyson Foods is looking into the reports. A company spokesman said Sunday that the plant in question is in Springdale, Arkansas. It confirmed to NPR that 227 of its workers there tested positive for coronavirus earlier this month. All but four were asymptomatic.

'At Tyson, we're confident our products are safe and we're hopeful consultations between the U.S. and Chinese governments will resolve this matter,' wrote spokesman Gary Mickelson in an email to The Associated Press.

Tyson Foods is looking into reports that China's customs agency has suspended poultry imports from its plant in Springdale, Arkansas

Tyson Foods said 227 of its workers there tested positive for coronavirus earlier this month. All but four were asymptomatic

'Our top priority is the health and safety of our team members, and we work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service to ensure that we produce all of our food in full compliance with government safety requirements,' the statement added.

Mickelson also noted that all global and U.S. health organizations, in addition to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food.

The announcement out of China on Sunday gave no details of the quantity of meat affected.

On Friday, Tyson Foods announced the results of coronavirus testing at its facilities in Benton and Washington Counties, Arkansas, and said that about 95 percent of employees who ultimately tested positive for the virus didn't show any symptoms. Of the 3,748 employees tested, 481 tested positive for COVID-19, and 455 were asymptomatic.

There have been several other COVID-19 outbreaks at Tyson plants around the United States, including in North Carolina, Nebraska, and Iowa.

In November, China lifted a five-year ban on U.S. poultry. China had blocked U.S. poultry imports a month after an outbreak of avian influenza in December 2014, closing off a market that brought more than $500 million worth of American chicken, turkey and other poultry products in 2013.
Washington: The Trump administration has said that it is designating the US operations of four Chinese media outlets as "foreign missions" in an action that could force some of their journalists to leave the country and further worsen diplomatic relations.

State Department officials said the four organisations were essentially mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party and the government and should not be treated like ordinary foreign media.

Four Chinese media outlets have been designated as propaganda merchants for the Chinese government led by President Xi Jinping. Credit:AP

The move comes as US-China tensions are heightening in the run-up to President Donald Trump's November re-election bid.

The four, which include state-run CCTV, will be required to submit a list of everyone who works for them in the US and any real estate holdings. None are being ordered to leave at this time, but a similar action in February against five other outlets, including Xinhua News Agency, the China Global Television Network and the China Daily, preceded a cap on the number of people who could work for those organisations in the US.
Rodney Ho The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)

Cobra Kai has found a new home  and its Netflix.

The Karate Kid sequel debuted in 2018 on YouTubes premium channel, which has since focused on unscripted programming.

YouTube had committed to only three seasons of the show, which is set in California but shot in metro Atlanta. But the service allowed the production company Sony to pitch the show to other streamers and give it a shot to do more seasons.

Netflix is the biggest subscription streaming home possible for Cobra Kai, which received accolades from critics and likes for capturing the essence of the original films while infusing humor into the mix. In April, Netflix reported 183 million worldwide subscribers.

On the show, the original Karate Kid actors Ralph Macchio (Daniel LaRusso) and William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence), now playing middle-aged parents, resume their decades-old rivalry while overseeing a new generation of younger actors.

The appeal of The Karate Kid saga is timeless, and Cobra Kai picks up right where it left off without missing a beat, said Brian Wright, Netflix vice president for originals, in a press release. The rivalry between Daniel and Johnny is one for the ages, and the show has a ton of heart and is a lot of fun. We cant wait to introduce a new generation of fans to Cobra Kai and are thrilled to be its new home around the world.

The third season has already been shot. Netflix has yet to announce a premiere date, but the first two seasons will debut at some point later this year on the service.

YouTube also let go of another scripted drama shot in Atlanta, Step Up, which starred Ne-Yo. Starz picked up that show, a reimagining of the dance-focused films.

Netflix over the years has picked up several other shows from other services, giving them new life, including Foxs Lucifer, ABCs Designated Survivor and A&Es Longmire.
Puri: The Supreme Court on Monday (June 22) allowed the Puri Rath Yatra with conditions and asked the state government and the Centre to work in tandem. A bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde noted that the state government has the freedom to stop the Rath Yatra, if it observes a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in Puri. The Rath Yatra is scheduled on June 23.

During the hearing, the Chief Justice noted that the court is willing to modify its June 18 order which put a stay on the Rath Yatra in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The court said that the Jagannath Temple management committee and state government can conduct the Rath Yatra in accordance with the guidelines. The court directed the Rath Yatra in a very restricted manner without allowing devotee congregation. The Odisha government agreed to coordinate with the Centre.

The Chief Justice reiterated that the state government is free to stop the festival, if there are signs which endanger public health and safety. "We are only allowing this (Rath Yatra) to be done on certain conditions," said the court.

Recalling its June 18 order, the apex court observed that any spread of COVID-19 due to this will be disastrous since large numbers are involved. "It won't be possible to track everyone after they go back home," added the court.

Reacting to the development, Union Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted, "Today is a special day for all of us, particularly our Odia sisters and brothers as well as devotees of Mahaprabhu Shri Jagannath Ji. The entire nation is delighted by the decision of the Honourable Supreme Court to ensure the Rath Yatra goes on."

"It makes me, as well as crores of devotees across India happy that PM @narendramodi not only understood the sentiment of the devotees but also initiated consultations which ensured that the great traditions of our land are observed.," he wrote in another tweet.

Shortly after the breather given by the Supreme Court, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik called a Rath Yatra preparatory meeting at 5 pm in Bhubaneswar.

During the month of Asadha, usually falling in months of June or July, three heavily built wooden chariots of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra are traditionally pulled by thousands of devotees over a distance of three kilometres twice during the nine-day festival of the Trinity at Puri. This festival is known as Rath Jatra, meaning the journey of the chariots.

The huge wheeled wooden structures are built every year. The chariot for Jagannath is approximately 45 feet high and 35 feet square and takes about 2 months to construct.
We will continue to deal with Chinese PLA in firm, resolute manner: Army chief

India's desire for peace is born out of strength, should not mistaken otherwise: Army Chief Naravane

Won't let any attempt to change status quo along India's border to succeed: Army chief

General Naravane discusses security situation with top commanders of Indian Army

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: Indian Army Chief General M M Naravane is discussing the security situation with the top commanders in the national capital.

All commanders are in the national capital for the second phase of the commanders' conference say Army officials. Meanwhile General Naravane is scheduled to visit Ladakh later this week to take stock of the situation amidst the tensions with China.

Meanwhile, a senior PLA officer said to be a commanding officer died in the battle, which took place at the Galwan Valley.

Chinese Army confirms death of its officer during military level talks with India

This was confirmed by the Chinese side during the military talks that were held with India today. Beijing had not till date put out the number of casualties. While Army sources tell OneIndia that 35 or more may have been killed or injured, Beijing has not put out an official figures as yet.

Arvind Kejriwal: We are fighting Chinese Army and virus, we will win against both | Oneindia News

Meanwhile, Global Times, said that the reason why China did not release casualties number is that China also wants to avoid escalation. If China releases the number which is less than 20, the Indian government would again come under pressure.

Indian officials want to placate nationalists by making speculations on China's casualties to satisfy Indian hardliners, such as speculating that China lost more soldiers than India, the Global Times also said.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, June 22, 2020, 17:02 [IST]
- The Indonesian national flag carrier is planning to stop flight attendants from wearing face masks

- Passengers are complaining that they cannot see crew members' smiles

- The airline has received numerous complaints from passengers

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Garuda Indonesia, the Indonesian national flag carrier, is planning to stop flight attendants from putting on face masks.

The national career is considering such decision because passengers complained that they could not see the cabin crew members' smiles, Pulse reports.

READ ALSO: Daddy Goals: Elikem Kumordzie flaunts his son with Pokello in new video

Reports gathered that the airline received numerous complaints from passengers who said the flights felt less hospitable.

Garuda CEO Irfan Setiaputra said: "Many Garuda customers have complained about the flight attendants wearing masks as [the passengers] cannot see whether or not the [flight attendants] are smiling or frowning."

READ ALSO: Rev Obofour's wife Ciara flaunts all 5 adorable children in new Father's Day photo

Setiaputra, however, said the airline would consider plastic face shields.

The airline boss added: "With this, human interaction on the plane can still occur, although minimized, and everyone can feel safe but also comfortable."

READ ALSO: McBrown shares adorable video of Baby Maxin and father

In other news, 50 Nigerians stranded in Pakistan had arrived in Abuja on Friday, June 19.

The commission made the disclosure via its Twitter page @nidcom_gov on Friday, saying all evacuees were compulsory 14 days self-isolation.

According to NIDCOM, the compulsory self-isolation is being observed according to the new protocol by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

READ ALSO: NPP Primaries: Lil Win sends consolation message to Obour in funny video

Meanwhile, it was reported previously reported that a Nigerian man identified as Adewale Adeniyi inspired many people on LinkedIn with his grass to grace story.

Adeniyi said he worked as a roadside mechanic for six months without being paid during his undergraduate years at the higher institution where he studied engineering.

He said bailing oneself out of the less privileged circle is by showcasing "uncommon knowledge", adding that one becomes irresistible by doing so.

Adeniyi shared a picture in which he was flanked by two roadside mechanics to show his humble beginning.

He said: "I like sharing this picture because it reminds me of a time I worked with roadside mechanics as a University Engineering Student for 6 months and was never paid a kobo. I felt cheated but what I learned was priceless.

"Today I tell my mechanic what to fix and replace. I troubleshoot and do the mental work. I save some cash there."

Traders at the Madina Market share their thoughts on the mandatory wearing of masks | #Yencomgh

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Source: YEN.com.gh
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trumps paltry crowd for his weekend campaign rally in Oklahoma raises new questions about politics in the age of the coronavirus: Maybe pandemic-scarred Americans just arent ready to risk exposure for close-up engagement in the 2020 presidential election.

Only about a third of seats in the 19,000-seat BOK Center were filled for the rally, despite boasts by Trump and his campaign team that they had received more than 1 million ticket requests.

With all 50 states well into reopening their economies, Americans are now creating their own individual risk budgets and calculating what sort of activities are worth hazarding when coronavirus infections are still surging in some areas of the country.

At a moment when many Americans are still weighing the risks and rewards of mundane activities like a meal at a restaurant, a trip to the grocery store or a visit to the salon, the idea of attending a campaign rally  more than four months before Election Day  may seem like an extraneous, if not perilous, activity to some.

There was the presumption that the risk calculus was being made very, very differently by Trump supporters and was broad enough to fill up that arena, said Matt Bennett, executive vice-president at the centre-left Washington think-tank, the Third Way. It just turns out it wasnt.

Trump and his campaign attributed the low attendance to worries about potential violence and media hype about the dangers of the virus. Left-leaning pranksters claimed they were behind many of the more than 1 million requests for tickets, giving Trumps campaign the false sense that the event was going to have a massive overflow crowd.

But the relatively sparse crowd suggests that even in a rock-ribbed Republican state like Oklahoma, Americans of all political stripes still are cautious as they emerge from lockdown.

According to a June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say theyre very worried about themselves or someone in their family being infected with the virus.

But in total, about half of Republicans along with about 8 in 10 Democrats say theyre at least somewhat worried. And about 6 in 10 Americans still favour limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Monday that the president was pleased with the energy of the crowd and stressed that more than 7 million viewers tuned into Fox News to watch. But privately, advisers to the president said he was furious about the low turnout.

The Trump campaign is now conducting a review of what went wrong in Tulsa. Presidential advisers privately expressed some regret at touting the numbers of ticket requests in advance but believed, more than anything, that Trump supporters were scared away by the potential for protests and violence in the area, according to three campaign and White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations publicly.

But they also allowed that they may have overestimated the willingness of even die-hard Trump supporters to attend a largely mask-less, non-socially distanced indoor rally along with thousands of others, the officials said. In particular, campaign staffers noticed a lack of senior citizens and families with young children at the Tulsa rally, and believe they were scared off by fears of the virus as well as possible violence.

Campaign officials stressed that rallies would remain a staple of the presidents reelection strategy but acknowledged the format may need to change slightly in certain states. Discussions were under way about having them in more modest venues or outdoors, perhaps in airplane hangers and amphitheatres, or in smaller cities away from likely protesters.

More steps are likely to be put in place to safeguard the health of both rallygoers and staffers, the officials said. Six campaign staffers and two members of the Secret Service working in advance of the Oklahoma rally tested positive for COVID-19. Contact tracing for those people was underway, the officials said.

Still, campaign officials said Trumps ability to draw thousands of supporters out during a pandemic sets up a favourable contrast with the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice-President Joe Biden.

Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor and Trump supporter, said the president did pretty well in pulling in a crowd considering where Americans comfort level is at the moment. He said campaign officials  including Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale  completely failed managing expectations 101.

I think there is still a lot of uncertainty out there around how reopening is going to go, Eberhart said. This was the first event after several months; I expect the crowds and enthusiasm will return.

In interviews, many of those who attended the Tulsa rally told Associated Press reporters that they had little or no concerns about risking infection. Many said they had put their fate in the hands of God, while others said they believed the media were sensationalizing the risks of infection.

But some rally attendees acknowledged they had a measure of fear of being infected, and a smattering wore face masks.

I want to protect my parents and grandparents, said Chris Rasmusser, 40, a Tulsa attendee who said he wore a mask for part of the time while he was lined up to get into the arena.

Trump and his campaign supporters have belittled Biden as hiding out in his basement since the pandemic upended American life in March. Since then, Biden has relied heavily on virtual town halls and fundraisers from his home in Delaware.

Bidens advisers have pushed back against the criticism -- and hand-wringing from some fellow Democrats -- by making the case that its too dangerous at the moment to engage Americans in traditional campaigning.

Voters dont care about where hes filming from, Biden campaign manager Jen OMalley Dillon said in an interview last month. What they care about is what hes saying and how we connect with them.

___

Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Emily Swanson in Washington and Sean Murphy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, contributed reporting.
A popular nightspot in Minneapolis Uptown neigborhood became a venue of a gun violence that left 11 people wounded and a young man dead early Sunday.

A report from Fox 9 Minneapolis-St.Paul said the random shooting happened shortly after midnight.

The senseless gun violence was said to have started at the 2900 block of Hennepin Avenue South.

Then it made its way to the swanky Metro area, which is a nightlife focal point of retail stores, bars, and restaurants.

Due to the loosening of lockdown restrictions, the city was bustling with people -- a mix of regular patrons and irregulars who wanted to unwind on several businesses that have already reopened.

A witness named Fred Hwang said the shooting began on the sidewalk and then picked its way towards the middle of the street, wherein the shooters continued firing back and forth.

"That's why there's broken glass here and over here and also right next to our building, there's a broken window," he noted.

Only One Killed

Although the 11 shooting survivors had no life-threatening injuries, the young man, who is a father of two, died at the hospital.

He was dentified as Cody Pollard, who has worked as a barber, the CBS Minnesota reported.

Local social crusader KG Wilson has livestreamed on Facebook the aftermath of the shootout.

In the video, many people could be heard screaming as some could be seen lying on the pavement, while bystanders and the police attended to them.

Police Seeks Help

The responding police force suspected that there was more than one assailant involved which they describe as "individuals on foot" as mentioned by the AP News.

Police said the case is still under investigation and the perpetrators are still at large.

However, they said they already have "several leads."

Medaria Arradondo, who is the Minneapolis Police Chief, called the midnight butchery a "tragic and senseless violence" and added that both the FBI and state agencies are also lending their hand, especially with the recent surge of violence in the city.

The local police has already dealt with two other shootings prior to the Uptown random shooting.

In a report from The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Uptown is located just five kilometers near the commercial areas where the George Floyd protests happened.

Even until now, there are still establishments that are boarded-up as a means of protection from the protestors.

Do you want to read more?
(CNN)  Since Beijing revealed plans to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, defenders of the bill have argued that fears of what it could do to the city's political freedoms and civil liberties are overblown.

The law is simply plugging a loophole, they claimed, and is no different to what many other countries have on the books. Local officials and prominent businesses threw their weight behind the bill -- sight unseen -- promising that it would leave the city better off, and in any case, would only affect a handful of people.

On Saturday, China's National People's Congress (NPC), which is expected to pass the law in coming weeks, gave Hong Kong its first glimpse of what it contains. The critics were right to be worried: as drafted, the law would upend the city's prized independent legal system, allowing Beijing to override local laws while enhancing its ability to suppress political opposition.

Most controversially, the law gives Beijing the power to exercise jurisdiction over select criminal cases, raising the prospect that for the first time in Hong Kong's history, suspects could be extradited across the border to face trial, and potentially prison time, in the mainland.

Fears of just that were what drove protests against an extradition bill last year that was proposed by the Hong Kong government. Those protests eventually forced the abandonment of that law, but spiraled into broader anti-government unrest that, Beijing says, required the imposition of the new national security regulations.

Antony Dapiran, a lawyer and political analyst based in Hong Kong, described the new law as a "broad-based power grab by Beijing" over many of the key elements of government and society.

Writing on Twitter, he said the new law "effectively sets up a parallel judiciary (and) takes interpretation and final adjudication power away from Hong Kong courts."

New system

When Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese rule in 1997, the city's common law system remained largely intact. Precedent remained in force, and protections under the new de facto constitution, Basic Law, as well as various international treaties, guaranteed a degree of fairness and freedom not seen in China, where the conviction rate is north of 90%.

While the NPC did gain the ability to "interpret" Basic Law, essentially rewriting it in certain cases, the central government did not have any jurisdiction over individual cases, nor could people be tried for crimes against Beijing that were not illegal in Hong Kong.

The new national security law would change all of that. According to details published over the weekend, Chinese security organs will have the power to "exercise jurisdiction" over national security cases "under specific circumstances," while other prosecutions under the law will be heard by a panel of judges picked by the city's Beijing-appointed leader.

It does not say explicitly whether suspects could face extradition to mainland China under such circumstances.

Though the draft did make reference to upholding the "rule of law" and various civil liberties, it also subordinates existing law to the national security bill, so that where there is a conflict, the national security law prevails. In practice, this could mean that when a national security prosecution contravenes human rights protected under Hong Kong law, those rights are suspended.

Writing after the Saturday announcement, Jerome Cohen, an expert on Chinese law, dismissed the "eye candy" on human rights, pointing out that the "very provisions in the draft (law) would appear to violate those protections."

"The Handover has clearly become the Takeover," Cohen added.

Kevin Yam, a Hong Kong-based solicitor and former convenor of the Progressive Lawyers Group, said the proposed law was not worth legal interpretation, adding "there's nothing to analyze."

"It's just whatever they say it is," he added. "And if they cannot make it whatever they say it is when they want something, they will just change it in whatever way they like."

Judicial maneuvers

While there has been no suggestion of a true public consultation or referendum on the bill, multiple provisions revealed Saturday appeared geared towards allaying Hong Kongers' fears over it, or at least easing its selling to the public.

Such provisions come amid a massive propaganda effort to sell the bill, with posters and adverts promoting it plastering Hong Kong, as well as an apparent push by Beijing for Chinese firms to re-list on the city's stock exchange, boosting the local economy.

In particular, the creation of a panel, nominated by Chief Executive Carrie Lam, to hear national security cases, may have been a sop to those who were expressing alarm at reports the bill would bar foreign-born judges from hearing them. As part of the wider common law system, which also includes the UK, Canada, Australia and a number of other jurisdictions, Hong Kong periodically appoints distinguished "non-permanent" judges to the Court of Final Appeal.

These judges are appointed by the chief executive, but their presence in certain cases has been controversial in China, leading to calls for their removal, or barring them from certain sensitive cases. By giving Lam the power to nominate judges to hear national security cases, the government essentially sidesteps this issue, enabling her to choose those judges deemed most loyal.

The Hong Kong Bar Association has blasted the plans as "extraordinary" and a major blow to judicial independence, pointing out that Lam will be appointing a panel to oversee cases in which she herself is an interested party.

Speaking to local media, Bar Association head Philip Dykes said the law was a "recipe for conflict of interest," and would allow Lam to "cherry-pick" which judges heard the most controversial cases.

Alvin Yeung, an opposition lawmaker and barrister, said the proposal was a "clear departure from common law traditions."

Political prosecutions

Expanding the power of Chinese courts and security services to Hong Kong carries with it even more concerns.

Permitting China's security apparatus to operate in the city raises the specter of extralegal persecution. Dissidents and activists in China are often disappeared by the authorities or threatened with arrest around sensitive events, and many journalists and lawyers are dragged in to "take tea" with the security services, during which they receive thinly-veiled threats about the potential consequences of their work.

Giving Chinese courts jurisdiction "under specific circumstances," meanwhile, will likely guarantee convictions in those cases. China's legal system has been widely criticized for its lack of human rights protections, nakedly political prosecutions, and a nearly universal conviction rate. The country's own national security law has been interpreted broadly in the past to imprison activists, intellectuals and journalists.

Two Canadians prosecuted last week for spying are a pertinent example of this. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in late 2018 shortly after the detention in Canada of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. While China argues there is "solid" evidence against the two men, Canada views the case as "arbitrary" and politically-motivated.

Kovrig and Spavor are also an example of how national security legislation in China differs to that in democratic countries. Canada, for example, has laws against espionage and spying, and people have been prosecuted under them.

The difference is that those laws and the corresponding prosecutions must conform to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the country's bill of rights, and could be struck down were they found by a court to be unconstitutional.

This is not the case in China, and may soon not be the case in Hong Kong, if the proposal for the law goes ahead. While China does mention certain rights in its constitution, these are subordinate to the law, not overriding. Freedom of expression, religion and the press exist in principle, but "may not infringe upon the interests of the State."

Similarly, Hong Kong guarantees rights under Basic Law and through being a signatory to international conventions, but the national security law as drafted would override these protections.

Those who attempt to assert their constitutionally-protected rights in China are often prosecuted on the grounds of national security, such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017 after years in prison on charges of "inciting subversion of state power." Liu's most famous work, Charter 08, of which he was a co-author, called in part for judges to be able to "uphold the authority of the Constitution."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "China revealed some details of Hong Kong's national security law and it's as bad as critics feared."
World War II claimed the lives of almost 10 million Ukrainians.

World War II broke into every Ukrainian home. Our native land was turned into a battlefield between two totalitarian regimes, resulting in deaths of almost 10 million Ukrainians. This is a horrible number, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal posted on Facebook.

On June 22, Ukraine honors the memory of the victims of the war, both soldiers and civilians, he reminded. "It is our duty to remember the heroism and courage of those who went through those dark times and to protect future generations from this calamity. We will definitely drive the enemy out of the Ukrainian land," the Prime Minister added.

Earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that World War II affected every Ukrainian family.

On June 22, Ukraine marks the Day of Sorrow and Remembrance of Victims of War.

On June 22, 1941, despite a secret non-aggression treaty (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939) and close military-economic cooperation between Germany and the USSR, Nazi Germany attacked Soviet troops along the entire border from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The Soviet-German War of 1941-1945 began as an integral but major part of World War II.

ol
The heartbroken granddaughter of a woman who died after contracting coronavirus at Newmarch House is calling for an independent inquiry into the nursing home's handling of the outbreak.

Nineteen people died while 37 residents and 34 staff tested positive for the virus at the Anglicare-run nursing home in Kingswood, in Sydney's west, since going into lockdown in mid-April.

On Monday night's Four Corners, families of the 19 elderly residents who died said their loved ones' final days were lonely and heartbreaking.

Nicole Fahey, whose 76-year-old grandmother Ann Fahey died after contracting COVID-19 at Newmarch House, blasted the nursing home for their lack of care and compassion.

'They're sitting there waiting to die. They're hoping to not move them to hospital. How are they going to survive? Just sit there and get worse? Get them out,' Ms Fahey told the ABC program.

Nicole Fahey, whose 76-year-old grandmother Ann Fahey died at the Anglicare-run home, is calling for an independent inquiry into the facility's handling of the outbreak

Ann Fahey, 76, was found collapsed in her room and was soon tested for COVID-19. She died just hours after being taken to Nepean Hospial's ICU

Ms Fahey said her 'healthy and perfect' grandmother didn't step foot out of her room once the outbreak in April.

'I remember her saying to me 'all I do everyday is long for that door to open and to see a face',' she said.

'That's when it really started to sink in that those residents are not in a good place, there's a virus that's rampant in the home and we can't get them out.

'In the meantime, their mental health was declining.'

Ann was found collapsed in her room and was soon tested for COVID-19.

Ms Fahey said her father accidentally called Newmarch House's reception, where the news was inadvertently broken to him that Ann tested positive.

'Dad said to the nurse 'sorry I've accidentally called you, but while I've got you, how's my mum going?',' Ms Fahey said.

'She responded with 'sorry, haven't they called you yet?... Ann's positive, but I'm not dealing with Ann anymore'.

'That's all we got. We didn't even get a phone call as soon as she was positive after being found on the floor.'

Nineteen people died while 37 residents and 34 staff tested positive for the virus at the nursing home in Kingswood, in Sydney's west, since going into lockdown in mid-April

It's believed the outbreak started after an infected staff member went to work, unaware they had the virus

Ms Fahey said that despite staff trying to do their best, 'it just wasn't good enough'.

Ann was then taken to Nepean Hospital's Intensive Care Unit. She was the only Newmarch House resident to be taken to hospital with COVID-19.

Ms Fahey said her grandmother was only taken to hospital after she inundated the media with her family's heartbreaking story.

But it was too late, and Ann died just hours after arriving in ICU.

'Her lungs were completely ravaged and damaged by COVID to the point where they weren't working either,' Ms Fahey said.

'And we just all stood there and we literally couldn't believe how fast that happened. She was gone. She was having coffees and brunch, like, a few weeks before.

'Any death is horrible, but I think with the poor communication that we had over the last month, there has to be an inquiry. This has to be looked into, because it shouldn't have happened.'

Ms Fahey said the nursing home residents stood a far better chance of surviving if they had simply been taken to hospital, rather than being stuck at the facility.

'Why weren't they at the hospital? Why weren't they all in those ICU rooms? Give them a chance,' she said.

Mary Watson, whose 93-year-old mother Alice Bacon was the final Newmarch House resident person to die from coronavirus, is devastated by the facility's handling of the outbreak.

'She found out that there was a problem when she hadn't received her medication in the early morning and at 10.15am she saw a sign on the door ... it said something about gowning up, it was a caution for the staff,' Ms Watson said.

Mary Watson, whose 93-year-old mother Alice Bacon was the final Newmarch House resident person to die from coronavirus, is devastated by the facility's handling of the outbreak

Ms Watson labelled the treatment of her mum Alice (pictured) as 'horrific'

'But I had to tell my mum that she was positive because she was so distressed about what was happening outside, because she stayed behind that door and she had no knowledge of what was happening on the outside.

'And then all of a sudden the outside came and hit her in the face.'

Ms Watson labelled the treatment of her mum as 'horrific' when speaking to the program in May.

'Frozen sandwiches for lunch again for my mum. She's cold, she can't reach her blanket, she's doing her washing in the bathroom sink. It's just horrific,' Ms Watson said.

'I don't want that to be the last time I see my mum. I want to be able to walk up and wave at the window, at least. I think that would help their mental health.'

Three days before Ms Bacon died, Ms Watson was allowed to visit her mother inside the home.

'It was distressing for all of us to watch her like that. She just kept yelling, it was distressing for all of us,' she said.

'She just kept yelling, 'Get me out of here!' Screaming, holding my hand so tight, squeezing it, yelling at us to get her out of there.

'Then, towards the end, she just sort of threw her hands up in the air and just said, 'Get!' Like we failed her a little bit, I think. Yeah, it was horrific.'

Newmarch House told a number of families hoping to take their loved ones out of the home that NSW Health instructed them not to let any residents leave.

'Getting that staff in there who know what they're doing, who are guaranteed to turn up, that is a day-by-day challenge,' Anglicare Sydney CEO Grant Millard said in May, at the height of the outbreak.

Newmarch House told a number of families hoping to take their loved ones out of the home that NSW Health instructed them not to let any residents leave

'We've reached out to not only our own agency supplies, but eight aged care agencies who do supply staff. We've gone to local hospitals, private hospitals, seeking to get more staff, and it has been a monumental challenge.'

It's believed the outbreak started after an infected staff member went to work, unaware they had the virus.

'This extraordinary challenge also highlighted the compassion and dedication of our staff, some of whom had to self-isolate and others who continued to work in difficult and unprecedented circumstances to maintain the care of all our residents,' an Anglicare spokesman said in a statement on June 15 when the outbreak was declared over.

'While the outbreak is now over, the virus remains active within the community. Anglicare must remain vigilant in screening and infection control at Newmarch House, and across all our other aged care homes.'
Small-scale water bodies with areas less than 0.1 km2, such as natural ponds, constitute the quantitative bulk of global inland water bodies, and are very susceptible to human disturbances and environmental change. In agricultural regions of China, water quality in ponds has deteriorated by high loads of nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural sources. Many natural water bodies and farmlands in rural China have recently been converted into fish farming ponds as part of an economic development strategy. Researchers today still have a limited understanding of how clusters of microorganism (or microbial communities), along with nitrogen and phosphorous fractions in the environment change when a natural pond is converted into a fish farming reserve.

A team of researchers from Huaiyin Normal University and the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning in China has conducted a whole-ecology field experiment in a typically subtropical agricultural watershed in China to examine the microbial diversity of the surrounding area. The data from the study might give how fish farming affects microbial communities and nitrogen and phosphorous fractions in pond ecosystems. The team collected RNA samples from water samples in the pond ecosystem under study over a period of one year. Datasets of 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing experiments were collected and compared with the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous fractions from the corresponding water samples. Bioinformatics analysis was used to analyze the diversity and structure of the microbial communities. The team's experimental results have indicated that the diversity and structure of the microbial communities has significantly changed after the conversion of a selected natural pond ecosystem into an aquacultural site. Dr. Jiangen Zhou, who led the study notes, "Fish farming also had a significant effect on nitrogen levels. Generally, when compared with nitrogen levels in the natural phase, the nitrate contents decreased substantially by 92.8% in the fish farming phase."

The findings have some implications for the environmental health as well as measures required to clean the water in such areas. "Our findings suggest that fish farming may be considered as an effective and ecological way to reduce nitrate pollution in ponds, especially with high nitrate levels," says D. Zhou. However, we should still be alert to the potential risk of environmental pollution of animal parasites or human pathogens caused by fish farming," he adds. Further research on how to cost-effectively and efficiently reduce nitrogen and phosphorous pollution through fish farming will be conducted in pond ecosystems in the future to improve existing knowledge on this area. The research has been published in Current Bioinformatics.

###

For more information on the research, please visit: http://www.eurekaselect.com/node/181193/article/using-bioinformatics-to-quantify-the-variability-and-diversity-of-the-microbial-community-structure-in-pond-ecosystems-of-a-subtropical-catchment
The owner of Eskimo Pie is changing its name and marketing of the nearly century-old chocolate-covered ice cream bar, the latest brand to reckon with racially charged logos and marketing.

We are committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality, and recognize the term is derogatory, said Elizabell Marquez, head of marketing for its parent Dreyers Grand Ice Cream, the U.S. subsidiary for Froneri, in a statement. This move is part of a larger review to ensure our company and brands reflect our people values.

The treat was patented by Christian Kent Nelson of Ohio and his business partner Russell C. Stover in 1922, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Eskimo Pies to drop 'derogatory' name over racial insensitivity https://t.co/SKD0QU3kVd pic.twitter.com/EbWIEIBKqT  New York Post (@nypost) June 19, 2020

Eskimo Pie joins a growing list of brands that are rethinking their marketing in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks triggered by the death of George Floyd. Quaker Oats announced Wednesday that it will retire the Aunt Jemima brand, saying the company recognizes the characters origins are based on a racial stereotype.

Other companies are reviewing their name or logo.

Mars Inc. said its also reviewing its Uncle Bens rice brand. B&G Foods Inc., which makes Cream of Wheat hot cereal, also said this past week it is initiating an immediate review of its packaging. A smiling black chef holding a bowl of cereal has appeared on Cream of Wheat packaging and in ads since at least 1918, according to the companys website.

Chicago-based Conagra Brands, which makes Mrs. Butterworths syrup, said its bottles  which are shaped like a matronly woman  are intended to evoke a loving grandmother. But the company said it can understand that the packaging could be misinterpreted. Critics have long claimed that the bottles design is rooted in the mammy stereotype.
Representative Image

live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Fitch Ratings on June 22 revised the outlook on State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, and six other banks to Negative from Stable in line with rating changes to India's sovereign outlook due to the coronavirus impact.

The rating agency revised the outlook for Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM), SBI, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Baroda (New Zealand), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank while affirming their ratings.

At the same time, Fitch has affirmed IDBI Bank (IDBI) rating, while maintaining the outlook at negative.

"The rating actions follow Fitch's revision of the outlook on the 'BBB-' rating on India to negative from stable on June 18, 2020, due to the impact of the escalating coronavirus pandemic on India's economy," it said in a statement.

Fitch said the ratings of all the nine Indian banks are support-driven and anchored to their respective sovereign country rating. "They are based on Fitch's assessment of high to moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, which takes into account our assessment of the sovereign's ability and propensity to provide extraordinary support."

The negative outlook on India's sovereign rating, it said, reflects an increasing strain on the state's ability to provide extraordinary support, due to the sovereign's limited fiscal space and the significant deterioration in fiscal metrics due to challenges from COVID-19 pandemic.

"The rating action does not affect the banks' Viability Ratings (VRs)," it said. "EXIM does not have a VR as its role as a policy bank makes an assessment of its standalone credit profile less meaningful."

While EXIM is of high strategic and systemic importance due to its unique policy role, SBI is the largest Indian bank with nearly 25 per cent market share in system assets and deposits.

SBI is 57.9 per cent state-owned and has a much broader policy role than peers.

"SBI is highly likely to receive extraordinary state support, if required, due to its very high systemic importance," it said.

For ICICI and AXIS Bank, Fitch said it expects a moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, due to their systemic importance, market position and private ownership.

"The probability of extraordinary state support for the two large private banks will be lower than for large state banks, which are likely to have priority due to the sovereign's constrained finances," the agency said.

The other banks whose outlook was lowered too have "high systemic importance" stemming from their significant market share, majority government ownership and role in policy lending.

On keeping outlook unchanged for IDBI, it said this reflects expectation that the state's propensity to provide extraordinary support to IDBI may diminish following the government's proposal to sell its stake in the bank and dispose of part of its stake in the lender's majority shareholder, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).
The Delhi high court on Monday stayed the first information report (FIR) registered against Sir Ganga Ram Hospital on a complaint by the city government for allegedly violating Covid-19 regulation norms.

The court said that prima facie, there are reasons to stay proceedings in the matter.

Justice C Hari Shankar, who issued the order, said the main petition will be heard and disposed of on August 11. It asked Delhi Police to submit its response to the main plea filed by the hospital, through advocate Rohit Aggarwal, seeking quashing of the FIR.

A detailed judgment would be uploaded on the high courts website.

The plea had contended that the FIR registered on June 5 was vague and didnt show any offence was committed under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The counsel also said the FIR was silent on how disobedience, as alleged by the Delhi government, is causing obstruction, annoyance or injury to any person.

On June 17, the high court had put proceedings on the FIR in abeyance till June 22, while reserving its order on the stay application.

Advocate Rahul Mehra, the standing counsel (criminal) for the Delhi government, had told the court at the last hearing that if prima facie an offence had been committed, the law permits police to register an FIR and investigate. He said the hospital had violated the norms and an offence had been committed.

After hearing lengthy arguments, the court reserved its order and said it would pronounce the judgment on June 22.

The Delhi government had filed the FIR against the medical superintendent of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Rajendra Nagar for not following protocols for testing patients with Covid-19. The FIR was filed on the basis of a complaint by the deputy secretary of Delhis department of health and family welfare, Amit Kumar Pamasi.

The FIR was filed under section 188 of IPC, which allows punishment of one months simple imprisonment and/or a fine of 200 or six months imprisonment and/or a fine of 1,000 if the offence puts someones life at risk. This section of the IPC can be invoked under the Epidemic Diseases Act, which has been in force in Delhi since mid-March as the city battles the pandemic.

On June 3, the hospital was asked by the Delhi government to stop Covid-19 testing, citing violations of ICMR guidelines. However, on June 17, the Delhi government again granted it permission to start testing.
Try to identify a different piece of Lynchburg-area history every week. If you have any mystery pictures of your own (or any old photos of Lyn
New Delhi: Congress and BJP continue to engage in the war of words over India-China face-off as Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala on Monday (June 22) hit back at BJP President JP Nadda over his remarks on ex-PM Manmohan Singh.

Surjewala told Nadda to 'show courage' and ask the Modi government about three things:

1. 2,264 Chinese transgressions since 2015.

2. Martyrdom of 471 jawans & 253 civilians in J&K alone, highest in 30 years.

3. 3,289 ceasefire violations by Pak in 2019 alone, highest in 16 years, up from 583 in 2014.

Dear Sh. Nadda, Pl show the courage to ask Modi Govt about-: 1. 2,264 Chinese transgressions since 2015. 2. Martyrdom of 471 jawans & 253 civilians in J&K alone, highest in 30 years. 3. 3,289 ceasefire violations by Pak in 2019 alone, highest in 16 years, up from 583 in 2014. https://t.co/wrJP0AxrlV  Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) June 22, 2020

The reply comes hours after the BJP President had tweeted that ex-Indian PM Dr Manmohan Singh surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China.

Nadda had written, "One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of Indias land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!"

One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of Indias land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!  Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) June 22, 2020

The war of words between the two parties started after Manmohan Singh's official statement on the Galwan valley classes.

The former PM had said, "We remind the Government that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership. The truth cannot be suppressed by having pliant allies spout comforting but false statements."

This is a moment where we must stand together as a nation and be united in our response to this brazen threat: Press Statement by Former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh pic.twitter.com/qP3hN3Od9D  Congress (@INCIndia) June 22, 2020

Earlier today, Congress senior leader Rahul Gandhi also said that 'hope government will accept ex-PM Singh's advice' in the interest of the country.

"Important advice by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. For the betterment of India, I hope the Prime Minister will accept it politely," Rahul wrote in a tweet.
Encouraging PFS and survival data in ONCOS-102-treated first line patients as 31 patients have now completed 12 months follow-up

Mechanistic evidence of profound immune activation in ONCOS-102-treated patients associated with better clinical outcomes

Immune activation data provides clear scientific rationale for anti-PD1/L1 checkpoint inhibitor combination in upcoming trial in first line mesothelioma

OSLO, Norway, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Targovax ASA (OSE: TRVX), a clinical stage immuno-oncology company developing oncolytic viruses to target hard-to-treat solid tumors, today releases 12-month efficacy and immunological data from the randomized phase I/II trial of ONCOS-102 in combination with standard of care chemotherapy in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM).

The trial is an open label, exploratory phase I/II trial adding ONCOS-102 to standard of care (SoC) chemotherapy (pemetrexed/cisplatin) in first and second (and later) line MPM to assess safety, immune activation and clinical efficacy vs SoC only. In total, 31 patients have been treated in the trial, with 20 patients in the experimental group receiving the ONCOS-102 and SoC combination, and 11 patients in a control group receiving SoC only. The 31 patients have now completed the 12-month follow-up. The first set of data was reported in January 2020, see press release here, with an update in May 2020, see press release here.

The median Progression Free Survival (mPFS) for ONCOS-102 treated first line patients remains at 8.9 months, which is identical to the previously reported early data. mPFS for the control group first line patients treated with SoC chemotherapy only is 7.6 months. The first line mPFS data continues to compare favorably to SoC historical controls, which have shown mPFS of 5.7-7.3 months[1]. As there is now longer follow-up and few censored patients left in the PFS analysis, the updated figures can be considered close to final.

The 12-month survival rate was 64% in the first line ONCOS-102 treated patients, compared to 50% in the first line control group treated with SoC chemotherapy only (median Overall Survival is too early to report). The patients continue to be followed and updated Overall Survival (OS) figures will be published as they mature. This 64% 12-month survival rate is encouraging compared to the control group, but there are few historical control reference points. Recently, at ASCO 2020, results from a first line mesothelioma trial assessing SoC chemotherapy in combination with the anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab showed a 70% 12-month survival rate. This suggests that ONCOS-102 alone plus SoC chemotherapy may already achieve a level of benefit close to that observed with checkpoint inhibition plus SoC chemotherapy. It is expected that addition of checkpoint inhibition to ONCOS-102 and Soc will provide even further clinical benefit due to engagement of distinct and complementary biological mechanisms. As such, Targovax's future clinical development of ONCOS-102 will focus on first line mesothelioma with the triple combination of a checkpoint inhibitor, ONCOS-102 and SoC. A randomized phase II trial is currently being planned in collaboration with a pharma partner.

Tumor biopsy immunohistochemistry and gene expression analyses from the present trial confirm the predicted mode of action of ONCOS-102. Importantly, profound innate and adaptive immune activation is observed in the ONCOS-102 treated patients compared to the control group, and this immune activation is associated with better clinical outcome. The immune activation is hallmarked by an increase in intra-tumoral cytotoxic T-cells and upregulation of adaptive immunity and cytotoxicity related gene expression, in parallel with polarization from M2 to M1 macrophage phenotype and upregulation of PD-L1 expression, indicating that ONCOS-102 is driving a favorable remodeling of the tumor microenvironment. This powerfully demonstrates the immune activation potential of ONCOS-102 far beyond what is achieved by chemotherapy alone and suggests that patients may be effectively sensitized to treatment with an anti-PD1/L1 antagonist, thereby providing strong scientific rationale for the combination of ONCOS-102 and checkpoint inhibition in first line mesothelioma.

Dr. Magnus Jaderberg, Chief Medical Officer of Targovax, said: "We are very pleased to see the encouraging first line PFS data holding up in the 12-month analysis, with early signs of positive survival outcomes. We are particularly excited to observe a broad and profound immune activation in the ONCOS-102 treated patients, which confirms the proposed mode of action. ONCOS-102 treatment clearly drives a favorable remodeling of the tumor microenvironment, and this remodeling is linked to better clinical outcomes. This immune activated tumor micro-environment provides the key scientific rationale and an ideal backdrop for combination treatment with a checkpoint inhibitor. These data set us up perfectly to move forward with a trial combining ONCOS-102 and a checkpoint inhibitor, which we believe will release the full potential of immunotherapy in this hard-to-treat patient population".

For a video presentation of the data, please see links below:

English version Magnus Jaderberg, Chief Medical Officer

Norwegian version Erik Digman Wiklund , Cheif Business Officer

[1] Vogelzang 2003, Ceresoli 2006, Zalcman 2015, Tsao 2019, Scagliotti 2019

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

Renate Birkeli

Investor Relations

Phone: +47-922-61-624

Email: renate.birkeli@targovax.com



Media and IR enquires:

Andreas Tinglum

Corporate Communications (Norway)

Phone: +47-9300-1773

Email: andreas.tinglum@corpcom.no

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/targovax/r/targovax-s-oncos-102-mesothelioma-12-month-data-powerfully-demonstrate-broad-immune-activation-linke,c3138687
Contributed Photo / Monroe Police Department / Contributed Photo

BRIDGEPORT  A Monroe lawyer has filed a federal lawsuit against the Monroe Police Department claiming officers violated his civil rights when they searched his property without a warrant.

Anthony Pantuso III is seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress from the Police Department and town of Monroe.
With permission to reopen on July 6, salons across the country are bracing themselves for a stampede of desperate clients, who have gone months without their usual appointments. Here, three women tell Stephanie Bell how lockdown has made them reflect on the amount of money they spend on beauty treatments.

Grandmother Sharon Ayton (51) works part time as a holistic therapist and lives in Dundonald.

She has been a regular visitor to her local beauty salon for the past 12 years, but during lockdown was surprised to discover that she can carry out some of the treatments at home herself.



Expand Close Sharon Ayton before lockdown / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Sharon Ayton before lockdown

Sharon, who has one daughter, Lisa (24), and two grandchildren, Josh (4) and one-year-old Jacob, has had to shut her business during lockdown, so savings on beauty treatments came in handy to buy essentials.

Her monthly spend included having her hair cut every three weeks at a cost of 30, bikini and eyebrow wax with gel nails at 40 once a month, a 25 monthly facial and a monthly Reiki treatment at 40.

Going without or doing home DIY treatments has been a revelation, she explains.

"I don't think I did spend a massive amount of money before and what I have saved has come in handy as I have not had any income from my business during lockdown.

"I wore my hair very short and would have got it cut every three weeks and because I couldn't get it cut during lockdown, I have been through that pain barrier of growing it and I actually like it longer.

"I definitely won't be getting it cut so often now, just maybe a trim every now and again.

"I will still go for my Reiki treatment every month as it really helps me to rebalance my energies and just feel calmer.

"I used to bite my nails and have been getting gel nails for about five years to stop me doing that.

"My nails are now short again and I've decided I like them short, so that's another thing I won't be doing after lockdown.

"I feel like I've been on a journey because I have also had to shave instead of my monthly wax treatment, which I've had for the past 12 years.

"I think I will continue to get my eyebrows waxed occasionally and maybe a full wax before holidays, but I won't be going every month like I used to."

Sharon says she would never have guessed that after many years of monthly treats, she is even consider doing her own home treatments long term.



Expand Close Fresh thinking: Sharon Ayton / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Fresh thinking: Sharon Ayton

"It has definitely surprised me," she admits. "I would never have left the salon without making my appointments for the following month.

"I don't think I will now be going back monthly.

"I feel appearance is very much ego based.

"I just feel that we are very fixed on what we perceive is perfection and on maintaining a certain standard of appearance when we should be happy with whatever we have got."

What Sharon has saved over 12 weeks...

Hair: 120

Waxing and nails: 120

Reiki treatments: 120

Facials: 75

Total: 435

Ive saved 500 on my hair alone, but Ill be first in the queue when salons reopen

Samara Prentice (36) is an image consultant and lives in Lisburn with her husband, Paul (39), an officer in the NI Fire and Rescue Service and their four children, Jude (8), Ollie (5) and two-year-old twins Jessie and Cole.



Expand Close Samara before lockdown / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Samara before lockdown

During lockdown, she has lived without her regular hair-removing sugaring treatment, blow drying, hair colour, eyebrow tattooing, facials and gel nails.

Samara is eagerly counting the days until salon doors reopen and readily admits that her beauty routine is an expensive indulgence.

"It does make me feel good about myself," she says. "I like to look nice and it is very important in my business as I promote confidence and positive self-image, so I have to have a positive self-image myself.

"If I feel good about myself then I think it makes me a better person and a better mum.

"I did tot up the other night that I had saved about 500 alone just on my hair, which really surprised me, although I did invest about 120 on really good shampoos and serums for lockdown.



Expand Close Samara with husband Paul and children Jude, Ollie, Jessie and Cole / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Samara with husband Paul and children Jude, Ollie, Jessie and Cole

"It is a lot of money, but I feel it is well spent."

As someone who is used to her beauty treatments, going without has been a struggle.

Samara had weekly blow drys at a cost of 20 and missed a cut and colour during lockdown, which usually costs her 140.

"My roots are down to my ears at the minute because I have naturally dark hair and I get it coloured bright blonde," she says.

"I have been tempted to put a toner on it, but I have a few friends who are hairdressers who have warned me against it.

"I miss my weekly blow dry most of all and I will be first in the queue when salons reopen."

The busy mum also gets acrylic nails done every three weeks at a cost of 20, was due a top-up on her eyebrow tattoos during lockdown at a cost of 60 (once a year), has missed two of her regular six weekly facials at 80 each, and has her legs, bikini line and underarms sugared every six weeks at a cost of 60. "I went to pretty drastic measures with my nails," she admits.

"I get gel overlays every six weeks and I bought a heat lamp and gel to try and do my own at home. I've missed my sugaring and my legs were horrendous, so I had to shave them."

Samara has saved close to 1000 on treatments during lockdown.

She adds: "It has been a revelation just how much I spend on hair and beauty treatments. Treatments save me time - my weekly blow dry takes 45 minutes and I don't have to think about my hair until the following week.

"My time is more precious than any money I spend.

"I'm shocked by how much I have saved in lockdown.

"We are in the midst of a self-build, so I'm going to use the money I've saved to buy a chandelier for our front hallway."

What Samara has saved over 12 weeks...

Waxing: 120

Facials: 160

Hair: 500

Eyebrow tattooing: 60

Nail treatments: 80

Total: 920

Im using the money that I have saved to make pamper packs for our vital workers

Denize McKeown has worked most of her career in the beauty business and now runs her own pop-up girlie accessory shop called My Glamorous Friend.



Expand Close Kind acts: Denize McKeown / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Kind acts: Denize McKeown

She lives in Mullusk with her husband, Stephen (49), a graphic designer, and their 15-year-old son, Elliott.

Denize (53) has saved hundreds of pounds on hair and beauty treatments during lockdown and has used the money to carry out random acts of kindness.

She has been putting together pamper packs to give to shop assistants, NHS workers and even postmen and delivery drivers for their wives or mothers.

Denize says seeing how much she has saved on treatments during lockdown has been a bit of a wake-up call and while she will continue some of her grooming treats when salons open, she does plan to cut back.

Her routine involved having her hair washed and blow dried once or twice a week at 15 a time; a manicure with acrylics and gems every three to four weeks at 40; a pedicure every four weeks at 30 and sugaring every six weeks at 60.

"I have missed getting my nails done and have tried to do them myself," she says.

"They were a bit brittle at the start because of all the extensions, but now they are really strong and I have taught myself how to do a manicure, so I probably won't go back to getting acrylics when lockdown is over.

"I love getting a pedicure, it is my time to sit down and have a cup of tea and enjoy some quiet time while someone else pampers me, so I will be looking forward to doing that again."

With thick, long hair, Denize always struggled to blow dry it herself and hasn't washed her own hair in over 10 years.

"I've been wearing my hair up in a high bun during lockdown," she admits. I bought a lovely accessory, which is like a piece of false hair you attach to the bun at 15 which gives it a more glam look.



Expand Close Denize with her husband Stephen and son Elliott / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Denize with her husband Stephen and son Elliott

"I know this sounds terrible, but I don't wash my own hair, so buying shampoo and knowing which one to choose was a real struggle.

"I have been using a mascara wand on my grey roots. I did try one home hair colouring kit, but it was a bit of a disaster and I ended up looking like Mummy Smurf.

"There were holes in the two thumbs of the gloves and I was walking around with black thumbs for three days!

"I know hairdressers hate when you home colour, so hopefully it will be all washed out before the salons reopen.

"I would get my hair blow dried sometimes twice a week and for me, it is a precious hour to get my head showered.

"When you have the same appointment time each week, you meet other clients and you can do a bit of networking and have a bit of fun and banter."

Her sugaring hair removal treatment is also something she has missed and she has also resorted to a DIY shave to keep her body hair at bay.

Denize is well aware that she does invest a lot of money and time in personal grooming, but feels it is money well spent.

"In my industry, part of my job is to look half decent and I feel that I at least try to," she explains. "I don't drink or smoke and so it is my way to spoil myself. It is my pamper treat."

Surprised at the extra money she has in her bank account during lockdown, she has selflessly decided to use what she has saved to treat others.

"I've made up about 60 pamper packs so far to give to nurses and shop assistants and other vital workers," she says.

"I've put hand cream, face cream and make-up in some and I've done some for kids with pencils and things for home schooling and others with biscuits or chocolates. I think it is lovely to get something that is nicely wrapped and I have put labels on them all saying 'Thanks for Being You'.

"I am a giving person by nature and I just think everyone appreciates small gestures and sometimes you don't know the difference a small gesture can make to someone.

"I definitely won't be spending the same money on myself after lockdown.

"I plan to do a sponsored walk the charity 'Mind Yourself Mind Your Head' and will be putting what I save on beauty treatments towards that."

What Denize has saved over 12 weeks...

Blow-dries: 360

Hair colouring: 110

Waxing: 60

Acrylic nails: 160

Pedicures: 90

Total: 780
104 Shot, 14 Dead Over Violent Fathers Day Weekend in Chicago: Police

Chicago police officials reported that 104 people were shot, including 14 deaths, over the Fathers Day weekend from Friday evening to Monday morning.

Its the highest number of gun violence victims to be reported in a single weekend in Chicago this year.

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown lamented the surge in shootings in recent days on Sunday.

Bullets dont just tear apart the things they strike, Brown said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Bullets also tear apart families. Bullets destroy neighborhoods and they ruin any sense of safety in a community.

Brown noted in a press conference that several police officers risked their lives this weekend, adding that some offenders will likely get released from custody after being arrested.

A 3-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy, and a 17-year-old boy were shot and killed over the weekend in separate incidents, authorities said.

No one should be able to walk away from killing a 3-year-old and a 13-year-old without consequences, Brown said, according to NBC Chicago.

The 3-year-old was identified by officials as Mehki James. The boys stepfather, 27, was driving south near North Central Avenue at Huron Street when someone fired shots at his vehicle, killing the boy, according to CBS Chicago.

Tears are a natural reaction to these tragic stories of violence. But we need to do more than just cry, Brown added, CBS Chicago reported. Lets keep violent offenders in jail longer, and lets revamp the home monitoring system. Its not working.

He said the underlying issue is that violent criminals are free on home monitoring, but no one is monitoring them.

Rev. Ira Acree, in a news conference, said that Mekhis death means a line was crossed.

It would be an ultimate contradiction to march for justice for George Floyd and not say a word about a 3-year-old who cant defend himself or speak for himself, he said. Dont miss the point. We say Black lives matter. Black babies lives matter more.

Officials noted that 12 minors were shot over the weekend. That included a 13-year-old girl who was killed by a stray bullet.

The girl was watching television when shots rang out, striking her in the back, Brown was quoted by the CBS affiliate as saying. She died 30 minutes later.

He added: I put myself in that house, holding that little girl as she struggles to breathe. I put myself in that hospital.

The latest fatal shooting was reported in the Lawndale neighborhood on early Monday, officials told the Sun-Times, when a 41-year-old male was shot in the face and died about an hour later at Stroger Hospital. A person of interest was taken into police custody.

Minutes earlier, another man was shot and killed in East Garfield Park. A 30-year-old male was walking outside near the park at around 4 a.m. when someone fired at him from the alley, said police.

Chicagos Fraternal Order of Police has not responded to a request for comment.
Zarif made the comments in a phone call with Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

Iran will send the black boxes from a downed Ukrainian airliner to France, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday, according to the official IRNA news agency.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will send the black box of the Ukrainian airplane to France in the coming few days in order to read its information," Zarif said, according to IRNA, Reuters said.

Zarif made the comments in a phone call with Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. Canada had 57 citizens on board.

Read alsoPS752 downing: Zelensky says Ukraine to seek justice in international courts

Iran shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight on January 8 with a ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people, in what Tehran later acknowledged as a "disastrous mistake" by forces on high alert during a confrontation with the United States.

The fate of the cockpit voice and data "black box" recorders was the subject of an international standoff after the plane was shot down, with Ukraine demanding access.

France's BEA air accident investigation agency is known internationally as one of the leading agencies in the world for reading flight recorders, and black boxes have been sent there in other high profile cases of crashes.

The Ukrainian plane was shot down shortly after take-off in Tehran, when Iran's defences were on high alert, hours after Iran fired at U.S. bases in Iraq in retaliation for a U.S. attack that killed an Iranian commander at Baghdad airport.

Iran says the coronavirus crisis has contributed to delays in a probe by its Air Accident Investigation Board. Iran has been sending mixed messages about where the black boxes may be read.

Last week, Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mohammad Eslami, said the black boxes will be sent to Ukraine.
In his first public comments on the matter, President Trump told Axios that his niece, Mary Trump, is "not allowed" to write her forthcoming book about him because doing so would violate a nondisclosure agreement she signed.

Driving the news: "She's not allowed to write a book," Trump told me. "You know, when we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with  she's got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total ... signed a nondisclosure."

Trump said his niece's nondisclosure agreement with him was a "very powerful one. ... It covers everything."

Between the lines: Trump's comments to Axios confirm a Daily Beast story from last week, which broke the news of the NDA.

The Beast reported: "Mary Trump signed an NDA following a 2001 settlement after litigation disputing Fred Trumps estate, according to people familiar with the matter. That NDA states she is not allowed to publish anything regarding the litigation or her relationship with Donald, Maryanne, and Robert."

"Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Worlds Most Dangerous Man" is slated to be published on July 28. Late on Monday night, following The Daily Beast's story, the publisher of Mary Trump's book, Simon & Schuster, posted the book on Amazon, where it quickly soared up the charts with pre-sale orders.

"In the book, Mary Trump is not only expected to discuss difficult internal family dynamics and offer revelations about a younger Donald Trump; she is also expected to out herself as a primary source behind a Pulitzer-winning New York Times investigation into her uncle's taxes," per The Daily Beast.

Trump suggested to Axios that he and some members of his family were blindsided by the news of the book.

"I have a brother, Robert, very good guy, and he's  he's very angry about it," the president said. "But she signed a nondisclosure agreement and she's obviously not honoring it if she writes a book. It's too bad."

"I have a good relationship with [Mary Trump's] brother. I actually had him  he was in here. He was sitting right in the seat where you are last week, unrelated to that. I didn't even know  maybe two weeks ago. I didn't even know about a book coming out until just the other day."

I asked the president about his niece's allegation that he "dismissed and derided" his father when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's.

"It's totally false; the opposite," Trump said. "Actually, the opposite. I always had a great relationship. I didn't know that she said that. That's a disgraceful thing to say."

Mary Trump did not respond to requests for comment. Simon & Schuster's director of publicity, Julia Prosser, declined to comment.
The cesspool that is the United Nations Human Rights Council has decided that its top official, a Chilean socialist called Michelle Bachelet, shall prepare a report on systemic racism, violations of international human rights law against Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement agencies, especially those incidents that resulted in the death of George Floyd and other Africans and of people of African descent. The systemic racism and human rights violations are assumed. Apparently, Bachelets task is to write these conclusions up.

But Bachelet wont be without a subject to investigate. Assisted by UN appointed independent rights experts and committees, she is to examine government responses to anti-racism peaceful. . .protests, including the alleged use of excessive force against protesters, bystanders and journalists.

Secretary of State Pompeo responded to this move by issuing the following statement called On the Hypocrisy of UN Human Rights Council:

The United Nations Human Rights Council, now comprised of Venezuela and recently, Cuba and China, has long been and remains a haven for dictators and democracies that indulge them. It is a grave disappointment to those genuinely seeking to advance human dignity. Even so, the Councils decision to vote yesterday on a resolution focusing on policing and race in the United States marks a new low. The ongoing civic discourse about the tragic death of George Floyd in the United States is a sign of our democracys strength and maturity. Americans work through difficult societal problems openly, knowing their freedoms are protected by the Constitution and a strong rule of law. We are serious about holding individuals and institutions accountable, and our democracy allows us to do so. The United States works every day with partners around the world who share our commitment to fundamental freedoms. Unfortunately, the Council has once again reaffirmed the wisdom of our decision to withdraw in 2018. If the Council were serious about protecting human rights, there are plenty of legitimate needs for its attention, such as the systemic racial disparities in places like Cuba, China, and Iran. If the Council were honest, it would recognize the strengths of American democracy and urge authoritarian regimes around the world to model American democracy and to hold their nations to the same high standards of accountability and transparency that we Americans apply to ourselves.

I agree with all of this except for the first sentence of the second paragraph. In my view, the discourse about Floyds death is a sign of our democracys foolishness.

An even better sign is the fact that we continue to be the largest donor to the United Nations.
World updates: Coronavirus infections top 8.77 million, deaths surpass 464K

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 7:48 AM

The new coronavirus has so far infected at least 8,770,629 million people and claimed the lives of 464,038 across the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The United States, the world's number one hotspot for the disease, has so far reported 2,255,119 cases of infection and 119,719 related deaths.

Brazil, second only to the US, has recorded over one million cases of COVID-19 and almost 50,000 fatalities.

The following is the latest on the coronavirus pandemic from around the globe:

Brazil's death toll nears 50,000

Brazil registered 1,022 deaths related to COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the Brazilian Health Ministry said on Saturday, taking the overall death toll to 49,976.

A total of 1,032,913 cases have also been confirmed in the Latin American country.

The total number of cases in the Latin American country is now 2,004,019, according to a Reuters tally.

Mexico reports 4,717 new cases, 387 deaths

Mexican health officials reported 4,717 new cases of positive COVID-19 and 387 related deaths.

The figures pushed the total numbers to 175,202 cases and 20,781 deaths.

The government, however, says that the true number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.

South Korea reports 48 new cases

South Korea reported 48 new cases on Sunday, down by 19 from a day earlier, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

Of the new cases, 40 were locally transmitted infections and eight were imported, raising the total caseload to 12,421.

The total death toll remained unchanged at 280.

Australia extends state of emergency in Victoria

Australia's second-most populous state, Victoria, reported a surge in the number of cases on Saturday. It reported 19 new infections on Sunday, the fifth day of double-digit rises.

That prompted authorities to extend the state of emergency in the state by four more weeks, starting Monday.

Victoria has now registered 1,836 total confirmed cases, or a quarter of all the cases in Australia.

China reports 26 new cases, mostly in capital

China, the first-ever hotspot of the new virus, reported 26 new cases for Saturday, down from 27 a day earlier.

Of the new cases, 22 were detected in the capital, Beijing, according to the National Health Commission.

No new deaths were reported in mainland China for the day.

To date, mainland China has confirmed 83,378 cases.

Indian PM urges Yoga, as caseload passes 400K mark

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the world to practice yoga to contain the coronavirus pandemic, as his country crossed the grim milestone of 400,000 cases.

India reported an increase of 14,516 cases on Saturday, according to the Indian Health Ministry, which pushed the total to 410,4517, with 13,254 deaths.

Indonesia reports 862 new cases, 36 deaths

Indonesia reported 862 new cases and 36 more deaths on Sunday.

Health Ministry official Achmad Yurianto said those took the nation's total number of cases to 45,891 and the fatalities to 2,465.

West Bank sees rise in new cases

The Palestinian Authority announced on Saturday that it was temporarily closing the cities of al-Khalil (Hebron) and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, after an increase in infections reported in the two cities.

"The government decided to close the governorate of Hebron to prevent anyone from entering or exiting, with the exception of the transport of merchandise," said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh.

Al-Khalil, which reported 48 new cases on Saturday, would be closed for five days.

Authoritative also reported 23 cases in Nablus, which will be closed for 48 hours.

The figures brought the total number of the cases in the West Bank to 687, with two deaths.

Spain drops 14-day quarantine requirement for Britons

Spain, one of the worst-hit countries in Europe, has now lifted quarantine requirements for British visitors.

Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said the country was "doing this out of the respect for the 400,000 British citizens who have a second residence in Spain."

She said she hoped the UK government would likewise drop the quarantine requirement for Spanish citizens traveling to the kingdom.

Some 250,000 Spaniards have homes in the UK, she said.

Serbians go to polls wearing masks and gloves

People in Serbia have started casting ballots for a new parliament in Europe's first national election since the pandemic hit the world.

The vote, which had been delayed once in April due to the outbreak, is now going ahead with masks and gloves made available at polling stations.

Serbia, which lifted tight lockdown measures in early May, is now reporting a rise in the number of infections. The country has so far reported 12,803 cases and 260 deaths.

Germany reports 687 new cases

In Europe, Germany reported some 687 new cases, bringing the total to 189,822, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.

The institute also reported a death toll of 8,882. On Saturday, the figure had been 8,883. There was no explanation as to why the tally had decreased by one.

Russia reports fewer than 8,000 new cases

Russia on Saturday reported 7,728 cases of the new coronavirus, taking the overall tally to 584,680.

Russia's national coronavirus response center said that 109 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,111.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Himanta Biswa Sarma, the convenor of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led front of anti-Congress forces in the northeast, said on Monday that there is no threat to the N. Biren Singh-led coalition government in Manipur and the ongoing political crisis in the border state would blow over the next two-three days.

The BJP-led coalition in Manipur was reduced to a minority last week after three party MLAs resigned and six other MLAsfour from National Peoples Party (NPP), one from Trinamool Congress (TMC) and an Independent legislator - withdrew support to it.

The situation is more or less under control. We are consulting all our MLAs and things will be resolved nicely. There is nothing to worry, Sarma, a senior minister in Assams BJP-led government, told journalists in Guwahati.

Sarma had played a crucial role in formation of the first BJP-led government in Manipur in 2017 when the party had secured 21 seats in the 60-member house even though the Congress had won 28.

However, it was able to form government with support of other NEDA constituents--NPP, Naga Peoples Front (NPF)and MLAs from TMC, Lok Janshakti Party and an Independent legislator.

On Sunday, Sarma along with NPP national president and CM Sangma had flown to Manipur capital Imphal on a chartered flight to hold discussions and bury the differences among the coalition partners.

All discussions took place in a very positive manner. You will see good results in the next two-three days. Theres absolutely no worry. Ill visit Imphal again on Tuesday, Sarma said.

Speculations have been rife that Singh might step down in a bid to bring back the dissident NPP lawmakers into the coalition government, as they had resigned complaining against the CMs style of functioning.

Sarma, however, rubbished the speculations about the leadership change.

As the Speaker Yumnam Khemchand Singh had disqualified some MLAs, there could be some difference in the architecture of the coalition, but more or less were continuing with the spirit of the NEDA and the NDA. All complaints and grievances will be addressed. Theres no question of any leadership change at this point in time, said Sarma.

The BJPs strength in the assembly has been reduced to 18 after the resignation of three of its MLAs.

However, it still enjoys the support of four NPF MLAs and an LJP legislator, taking the coalitions tally to 23.

Rival Congress , on the other hand, has 20 MLAs and also has the backing of four NPP MLAs and a lawmaker from the TMC and the Independent.

In total, the Congress-led newly formed Secular Progressive Front (SPF) has 26 MLAs.

Manipur Assemblys strength has been reduced to 52 because of a few disqualifications and resignations.

BJPs candidate Sanajaoba Leishemba won the Rajya Sabha election last Friday securing 28 votes to Congress candidate T Mangibabus 24, despite the ruling partys reduced strength, raising hopes of saving the coalition government.

Meanwhile, NPPs legislature party leader L Jayantakumar told journalists in Imphal that despite Himanta Biswa Sarmas attempts at convincing them to return to the BJP-led coalition, they didnt succumb.

Sarma tried his best to convince us but we never succumbed to his pressure. Our national president Conrad Sangma, who was present in the meeting, remained silent as left the decision on the what we should do to the 4 party MLAs, Jayantakumar said during a press interaction of the SPF, which was attended by Congress MLAs as well.

Earlier in the day Chief Minister N Biren Singh met Governor Najma Heptullah. In a tweet, he informed that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the RS elections and other issues of the state.

Why is the BJP running away from a floor test? If NEDA or BJP respects constitution then they should face a floor test in the House, said Manipur Congress spokesperson Ningombam Bupenda Meitei.

The Congress has met the Governor twice in the past few days seeking a floor test to prove majority of the N Biren Singh government.

(With inputs from Sobhapati Samom in Imphal)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc said on Monday it has signed up with NASA to develop a program to promote private missions to the International Space Station, sending the shares of the company up about 10 percent.

As part of its agreement with the Johnson Space Center, the space tourism company will identify entities keen to buy private missions and develop training packages, as well as aid in transportation, on-orbit and ground resources.

The company competes with billionaire-backed ventures such as Amazon.com Inc's Blue Origin that are vying to usher in a new era of space tourism, racing to be the first to offer sub-orbital flights to civilian space travelers.

This is the second agreement between Virgin Galactic and the U.S. space agency. In May, the two sides entered an agreement to develop 'high-Mach' aircraft for potential civilian use.

For NASA, the private partnerships are helping it revive its own human space missions. Last month, Elon Musk's SpaceX ended NASA's nine-year hiatus by delivering two astronauts to the ISS.

The space agency is leaning heavily on private companies built around shared visions for space exploration, as it gears up for a long-term presence on the moon and prepares for a manned mission to Mars.

Shares of the company were up at $16.49 in morning trade.
Nouakchott, Mauritania (PANA) - The repatriation of several hundred Mauritanian nationals, stranded in Morocco and Senegal, following the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) since mid-March, began Sunday and Monday to return to their country, PANA learned from official sources
These two longtime friends and New York City-based media stars have a lot to celebrate these days.

New fathers Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen took the opportunity on Sunday to introduce their children to one another during a virtual chat for Cohen's Watch What Happens Live @Home edition.

Cooper, 53, and Cohen, 52, have a lot in common  not only did the two gay men become fathers around the same time (Cohen welcomed baby Benjamin in February of 2019, while Anderson had baby Wyatt this April), they themselves are also born a year minus a day apart from one another  Anderson on June 3, 1967, and Andy on June 2, 1968.

For Father's Day: New fathers Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen took the opportunity on Sunday to introduce their children to one another during a virtual chat

And on the occasion of Father's Day on Sunday, the fathers had a virtual visit with their children, with Andy enthusing, 'Ben, this is Wyatt Cooper, hes gonna be your good buddy!'

In the beginning of the snippet, Cohen  who is still sporting a healthy head of shaggy quarantine hair  observed, 'Wyatt looks like a mini-you, Anderson!'

Cooper, in turn, remarked that the striped outfit his baby boy was wearing 'looks like a bathing suit from the 1920s.'

Aborbs: Cooper remarked that the striped outfit his baby boy was wearing 'looks like a bathing suit from the 1920s'

Andy repeatedly told his son Benjamin Allen  who sported a mop top much like his dad  that Wyatt's 'gonna be your good buddy,' saying 'were gonna travel together' and mentioning 'Brazil' as a potential option.

'If you like him half as much as I like his daddy, youre gonna be great friends,' the Bravo star sweetly added.

For his part, Anderson is clearly besotted by his baby boy.

A father's love: For his part, Anderson is clearly besotted by his baby boy

'His lower lip trembles every now and then, its very adorable,' he remarked.

Andy also admired his friend's adorable baby, saying, 'Hes got those eyes, hes got those peepers Anderson!'

Anderson announced the birth of his son on CNN in April, and has since appeared with son Wyatt Morgan on the cover of People Magazine.

Dream come true: Anderson announced the birth of his son on CNN in April, and has since appeared with son Wyatt Morgan on the cover of People Magazine
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that President Trump's claim at his rally that he asked officials to slow down coronavirus testing was "tongue-in-cheek," calling it a "light moment."

Why it matters: Trump said as recently as last week that coronavirus testing is "overrated," arguing that it makes the U.S. "look bad" because it leads to a higher number of confirmed cases.

However, the significant spike in cases that's been recorded in recent weeks in states like Arizona, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Florida isn't solely attributable to more testing.

Joe Biden immediately pounced on Trump's comments, releasing a statement that called them "outrageous" and "appalling." "Speed up the testing," Biden tweeted.

The exchange:

NAVARRO: "Come on now, Jake, you know it was tongue-in-cheek. That was tongue-in-cheek, please."

JAKE TAPPER: "I don't know that it was tongue-in-cheek at all. He has said similar things for months."

NAVARRO: "We've got over 30 million people unemployed and we've seen over 100,000 people die because of the China, Wuhan virus. Let's talk about some serious issues, Jake. I don't want to go there."

TAPPER: "I think that testing is a very serious issue. I'm not the one making jokes about it. You're the one that said the president was being tongue-in-cheek."

NAVARRO: "Come on, it was a light moment."

The big picture: Navarro said that "of course" the administration is preparing for a potential second wave of the coronavirus in the fall, arguing, "You prepare for what can possibly happen  I'm not saying it's going to happen, but of course you prepare."

Navarro also claimed, without evidence, that China "created this pandemic," refusing to rule out the claim that the coronavirus was purposely manufactured in a lab. The U.S. intelligence community has said theres enough evidence to conclude that the virus evolved naturally.

said theres enough evidence to conclude that the virus evolved naturally. Navarro later clarified that he meant that the virus was "spawned" in China, and he called the Chinese Communist Party "guilty until proven innocent."

Go deeper: U.S. reports highest number of new coronavirus cases since May 1
Even though the unprecedented outbreak of deadly coronavirus has ruined many travel plans, now many parts of the world have decided to boost their tourism industry by lifting border restrictions. While there are many places that travellers wish to strike-off their list, this hotel with a 360-degree view of Swiss Alps with rooms having no walls should definitely be once in a lifetime kind of experience. What internet users have called stunning are the rooms of Null Stern Hotel in Switzerland that come without any walls, giving the visitors the first-hand experience of luxury amid natures one of the most magnificent regions. Watch some pictures of the open-air hotel:

The hotels name translates to zero stars. While talking to an international media outlet, the co-founder of the hotel, Daniel Charbonnier explained that the name implies on the visitors because the star is not the hotel but each guest. He also said that the reason behind removing all walls from the room is to only leave you and your experience. The Null Stern Hotel was launched back in 2016 and initially after its opening, it was booked throughout the next year. With the increasing demand across the world, reportedly the team has been trying to place many such Null Stern beds on other popular locations in Switzerland.



Read - Ganga Ram Hospital Seeks More Time To Convert Taj Mansingh Hotel Into COVID-19 Facility

Read - 150 Cannery Workers Forced Into Hotel Quarantine Without Pay

Hope to visit

Thousands of people have expressed their wish to visit the open-air hotel among other unique experiences that they have planned while being confined to their homes. One of the internet users commented on the hotels post saying they are hoping to be there this summer and someone else said, this is awesome. One of the netizens even lauded the view that the hotel offers of Swiss Alps and another said it is a part of her bucket list. Many either posted heart emoticons implying they love it or said it is wonderful.

Read - NBA Disney Hotels: Inside The Lavish Gran Destino, Grand Floridian And The Yacht Club

Read - Cancun Hotels Receive First Guests After Virus Closure



Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.
Cipla share price jumped almost 3 percent on June 22 after the country's drug regulator on June 20 gave permission to Hetero and Cipla to manufacture and market antiviral drug remdesivir.

The stock ended at Rs 655.80, up Rs 18.70, or 2.94 percent. It has touched a 52-week high of Rs 696. It traded with volumes of 1,313,721 shares, compared to its five day average of 177,955 shares, an increase of 638.23 percent.

India's Drug Regulator gave permission to Hetero and Cipla to manufacture and market antiviral drug remdesivir for "restricted emergency use" on hospitalised COVID-19 patients, official sources said. This comes a day after the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), considering the emergency and unmet need for medicines in light of the coronavirus outbreak, granted domestic firm Glenmark Pharmaceuticals the permission to manufacture and market favipiravir for "restricted emergency use" in mild to moderate cases.

The Union health ministry, in its 'Clinical Management Protocols for COVID-19', recommended the use of the remdesivir on patients in moderate stage of the disease that is, those on oxygen. The drug has been included as an "investigational therapy" only for restricted emergency use purposes.

Cipla and Hetero Labs have already entered into non-exclusive licensing agreements with US pharma giant Gilead Sciences, which is the patent holder of the drug remdesivir.
Lambert here: I got into permaculture during the last Crash, as a hedge against not being able to buy food, and from there to plants (see, e.g., Michael Pollans The Botany of Desire and IN Defense of Food). So its not surprising to see titles like Meals Matter appearing in the zeitgeist again.

By Michael Symons, a restaurateur who turned to scholarship. His latest book, Meals Matter: A Radical Economics through Gastronomy, is now published by Columbia University Press. Originally published at Open Democracy.

Political leaders and economic commentators pronounced the coronavirus crisis a balancing act between lives (on one hand) and the economy (on the other). To save lives, the economy would have to contract, until it, too, needed saving  when we might have to sacrifice lives.

But what is this singular economy?

Economists model the economy through the price mechanism, and evaluate it through such measures as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Even many economists have grown restive, warning, for example, that the GDP is misleading, and recommend such non-financial indicators as well-being.

The deception goes much deeper. Broadly, the economy puts money in command. Under the guise of the old laissez-faire, then free enterprise, and more recently neoliberal greed is good, money funded its own self-aggrandizement. The resulting ideology handed enormous power to finance and business chiefs  and governments, often on moneys behalf.

As I set out in my new book, Meals Matter: A Radical Economics through Gastronomy, for two centuries, modern economists misappropriated Enlightenment ideas on behalf of money. Their distorted economy might have boosted productivity, but worsened inequality, demoralized democracy, and tipped the natural world towards disaster. Please, no more business as usual.

What is an economy? As those political leaders hobnobbing less with CEOs might readily accept, every economy centres on the distribution of nourishment. An actual economy puts food on the table. Its life-giving, which is why care, health and food workers never stopped being essential.

Back when Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations launched modern economics in 1776, many writers well understood the gastronomic basis of economies. Even Smith argued that, through the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, including the butcher, brewer, and baker, we expect our dinner.

More than that, Enlightenment philosophers recognized five, interconnected economies. Each type of economy supplies sustenance in a distinct way, with money surprisingly inessential. While side-lined by economists, these five are everyday realities for eaters. The lockdown renewed attention to all five, and dramatized the need to rebalance them.

First comes the domestic economy. Societys building-block was the original oikonomia. Such ancient Greek writers as Xenophon instructed on the management of the family home (or oikos). Economics advised on housework, indoors and out. The familys method of sharing food and its labour among themselves was defined by sociologist Max Weber a century ago as communist. Given the history of paternalism, Weber referred to what he called the ideal-type, but, most certainly, no money required.

The virus brought the domestic economy roaring back. Home offices, home schooling, and home cooking all expanded, complete with the widespread rediscovery of sourdough baking. Many predict that, having been rediscovered, this economy might not entirely snap back to the economy. For 51% of respondents of one U.S. survey (late-May 2020), the new normal would include continuing to cook more often at home. Together with more people preferring to work from there, cooking might now not go the way of home sewing  from commonplace to minority hobby.

In Adam Smiths day, Enlightenment intellectuals were preoccupied with the political economy (from polis, the ancient Greek for city). This is a town, nation or similar conceived as a great household. Some central authority accepts responsibility for the distribution of nourishment, acquired through a community-wide division of labor. This method is food redistribution (although the term has come to mean transferring resources from the rich to the poor, or vice versa).

Since their earliest examples, temples and courts coordinated wide gathering and serving of food, centred on often ostentatious-seeming sacrifices and banquets. With increasing sophistication, redistribution seemed less directly nutritional. In a decisive development, authorities adopted money taxation and disbursement as an intermediary. As philosopher Thomas Hobbes pointed out in 1651, money became a more transportable and less perishable food substitute, which circulated like blood around the body politic, for conversion back to nourishment, when required.

Dramatized by the storming of the Bastille on 14 July, 1789, the French Revolution was meant to democratize the monarchs role as baker-king, including Versailles banquets. On the Revolutions first anniversary, General Lafayette supervised endless tables under Parisian trees for 22,000 provincial representatives, followed by 5,000 of the poor. However, attempts at literal feasting in the streets demonstrated the sophistication already attained by supply chains.

The modern banquet is an intricate affair, almost lost to view. Yet the coronavirus has brought this political economy to the fore, with governments directing social distancing, shifting resources to health, boosting emergency food and survival incomes, and also spending to save the economy.

When Hobbes imagined the political economy as a giant Leviathan with a crowed head over an agricultural nation, he saw a body politic, drawing an analogy with the human physiology. The terms physiology and economy were virtually interchangeable at the time. French economistes would gain the nick-name physiocrats, for example. Furthermore, Enlightenment intellectuals spoke of the person as an animal economy. Each of us can be viewed as an economy, centred on nutrient flows.

Liberal thinking emerged with Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson arguing every individuals equal need, enforced by nature, for self-preservation, primarily through nutrition, and best served through a commonwealth of mutual support. They established a near-sacred right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The liberal response to the pandemic has underlined this social contracted care for the individual. By contrast, more authoritarian leaders have downplayed individual health for the sake of the economy. With the decline in the neoliberal promotion of liberty, rightwing leaders are increasingly inclined to identify the economy with the nation.

Typically of Enlightenment economists, Francois Quesnay was a medical professional  he was Madame de Pompadours physician. By 1747, when writing on the animal economy, he found parallels in the social distribution of primary production, notably the buying and selling of grain. Quesnay decided that, like the body, the market economy was preferably left to work naturally. Rather than the baker-king controlling prices, Quesnay saw benefits in market exchange. French economistes had a huge influence on Adam Smith, when he socialized with them while living in Paris during early free-market experimentation.

With the nineteenth-century rise of corporate capitalism, Smiths early supporters promoted the markets invisible hand as superior to any other economic coordinator, notably as much more efficient than democracy. They advocated liberty for money, while ignoring equality, life and happiness. Dropping political from their name, they imperiously proclaimed themselves economists.

Later in the nineteenth century, marginalist economists used the mathematical calculus to describe the behaviour of market prices, so mesmerizingly that they thought they studied nothing short of the economy. John Maynard Keynes became synonymous with some pushback within the ranks. However, again with the Ronald Reagan/Margaret Thatcher era, neoliberal leaders obeyed economists fundamentals to restore supreme freedom to money.

Significantly, the virus exposed the hollowness of demands for small government. With budget deficits of lesser concern, given obvious government support for the economy, many citizens hope that democratic power might more forcefully save a fifth economy, the most essential of all.

The coronavirus starkly reminded that all economies depend on the intricate web of nutrient flows of the natural economy. Charles Darwin still used that term, natural economy, in his Origin of the Species in 1859 (German zoologist Ernst Haeckel introduced ecology ten years later). Undeniably, moneys ceaseless push for so-called growth has trampled on actual growth.

In summary, the present tumultuous rebalancing has demonstrated the market economy to be poorly-equipped to cope with viral attacks on the animal economy, leading to renewed reliance on the domestic economy, while governments at local, national and global levels have reasserted the political economy. Finally, as players at all levels must surely soon accept, the overall, natural economy must return urgently to prominence, or were all shut down.
U.S. Army soldier Ethan Melzer has been charged with terrorism offenses after allegedly sending information on his unit to the neo-Nazi group O9A in the hopes of facilitating a "mass casualty" attack on his fellow soldiers, the Justice Department announced Monday.

What they're saying: "Melzer allegedly attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully revealing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group," said acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss

"As alleged, Melzer was motivated by racism and hatred as he attempted to carry out this ultimate act of betrayal," Strauss added.

What we know: Melzer joined the Army in 2018 and joined O9A in 2019, according to DOJ. O9A is known to actively support white supremacy and anti-semitism, and expresses admiration for Nazis and Islamic jihadists.

The soldier acknowledged in written communities that he could die in a potential attack on his unit, but stated, "who gives a [f*ck] ... it would be another war ... I wouldve died successfully ... cause [] another 10 year war in the Middle East would definitely leave a mark."

Melzer openly called himself a traitor in a voluntary FBI interview and said he intended for the attack to kill as many of his fellow service members as possible.

Read the full complaint.
The newspaper reported that the 2019 law is the result of an effort spurred by lawmakers and the family of Laura Wallen, who was allegedly killed by the father of her unborn son in 2017. The man who was charged in her death killed himself while awaiting trial in 2018.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  While playing with face apps can be fun, a cyber security expert warns of some risks that come with uploading personal data onto the internet.

Philippine Institute for Cyber Security chairman and founder Angel Redoble told CNN Philippines that information collected when using these popular applications can be uploaded on servers outside of the country.

"If you're concerned that your face, with your name, with your other information is uploaded into somebody else's server, then that means that particular person can actually create a clone of you, someone that looks like you with your name on it and I'm sure your birthday is available somewhere," Redoble said in an interview.

"With this information, somebody can create an identity out of your being, and it can be used for fraudulent transactions. That's the worse-case scenario," he added.

This week, FaceApp again trended among mobile users because of a feature that allows users to see what they might look like as the opposite sex.

While Redoble agreed that using the app can be fun, he pointed out that these kinds of applications gather information that can be misused or abused by other people.

"This is very dangerous because you're not only creating a woman or a man version out of yourself, you are actually uploading it somewhere and giving someone unlimited access to your personal information," Redoble said.

"In the end, especially if it was used for some cybercrime or fraudulent transactions, I would have to prove that I was compromised or my information was stolen and that might be a difficult thing for me to do," he added.

Another cybersecurity issue netizens have to deal with now are fake accounts making use of their name and photos and posting them on social media.

When asked how secure the Philippine cyberspace is today, Redoble said work is being done to improve it but that individuals must also do their part to protect themselves.

"What the service providers and the government [are] doing is really improving the cyber security posture of the Philippine cyberspace," Redoble said. "The other part of it is what the other users need to contribute as well because there are security aspects that the users need to do themselves."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 06:00:12|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

CAIRO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Monday reported 2,573 new COVID-19 infections while Turkey confirmed 1,212 new ones, as much of the Middle East region is on high alert for the looming resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic amid the gradual ease of anti-coronavirus restrictions across the region.

In Iran, the hardest hit country in the Middle East, the overall number of the novel coronavirus cases has grown to 207,525, while the pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 9,742 Iranians, up by 119 in the past 24 hours, according to Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education.

She said the provinces of Khuzestan, East Azarbaijan, Hormozgan and Kermanshah remain as the high-risk region over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Turkey has so far confirmed a total of 188,897 coronavirus cases in the country, with daily new infections kept at more than 1,000 since June 13.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Monday that 24 more patients died from the virus, taking the death toll to 4,974, while 1,293 patients recovered in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of recoveries to 161,533.

Earlier in the day, Turkey started to impose fines of up to 900 liras (131 U.S. dollars) on those who don't wear face masks in public places as part of the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The measure will cover outdoor spaces as well as shops and restaurants in 81 provinces of Turkey.

With no tangible sign of slowdown in the pandemic, Saudi Arabia registered on Monday 3,393 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the kingdom to 161,005, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The Saudi Ministry of Health also reported 40 more deaths and 4,045 new recovered cases, increasing the death toll to 1,307 and the total recoveries to 105,175.

The Saudi authorities also announced a decision to allow a limited number of pilgrims to perform Hajj in the kingdom this season over the coronavirus concerns.

Qatar's Health Ministry on Monday announced 1,034 new infections of COVID-19, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 88,403.

The ministry attributed the increase in coronavirus infections to gatherings and visits as well as ignoring the preventive measures such as staying at home and social distancing.

Egypt reported on Monday 1,576 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total cases registered in the country since mid-February to 56,809, said the health ministry.

Meanwhile, 85 COVID-19 patients died from the coronavirus, raising the death toll to 2,278, while 397 more patients were completely cured, increasing the total recoveries in the country to 15,133, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said in a statement.

Egypt will resume air traffic at all airports from July 1 as the country prepares for the return of foreign tourism, after more than three months of international flight suspension over the coronavirus concerns.

As the first among the Gulf countries to report COVID-19 cases, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday announced 378 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 45,303.

The UAE health ministry also confirmed one more fatality from the virus, pushing up the country's death toll to 303.

In Kuwait, 641 new COVID-19 cases and four more deaths were reported on Monday, raising the tally of infections to 40,291 and the death toll to 330.

On June 18, Kuwait decided to ease the restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the COVID-19, such as shortening the curfew hours and lifting the lockdown on some areas.

The Israeli Coronavirus Cabinet decided to impose a heavier fine for not wearing a face mask in public places, as part of the efforts to deal with the recent rise in COVID-19 morbidity, the prime minister's office said Monday.

The cabinet also suggested a scenario of a second outbreak with 2,000 ventilated COVID-19 patients and 2,000 other ventilated patients suffering from other diseases, in order to guide the government regarding its preparations and procurement of the healthcare equipment.

Israel reported on Monday 304 new coronavirus cases, the highest since April 23, bringing the total number in the country to 21,082.

In Iraq, Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi said on Monday that the country is nearing the peak of the COVID-19 infections, after "the past few days have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of infections."

Iraq reported 1,808 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections to 32,676.

A total of 195 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Morocco on Monday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the North African country to 10,172.

In Lebanon and Tunisia, the number of COVID-19 cases on Monday rose by 16 and two respectively to 1,603 and 1,159.

War-torn Yemen recorded on Monday 26 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the provinces controlled by the government, bringing the total number to 967. Enditem
The Taliban killed at least 291 Afghan security personnel over the past week, a top government official said Monday, accusing the insurgents of unleashing a wave of violence ahead of potential talks.

The past week was the "deadliest" in the country's 19 years of conflict, said Javid Faisal, spokesman for the National Security Council, even as the insurgents dismissed the latest figures.

The Taliban carried out 422 attacks in 32 provinces in the past week, killing 291 security force personnel and wounding 550 others, Faisal said on Twitter.

"Taliban's commitment to reduce violence is meaningless, and their actions inconsistent with their rhetoric on peace," he said.

The Taliban rejected the latest government figures.

"The enemy aims to hurt the peace process and intra-Afghan talks by releasing such false reports," Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's spokesman in Afghanistan, told AFP.

"We did have some attacks last week, but they were mostly in defence."

Violence had dropped across much of Afghanistan since the Taliban announced a three-day ceasefire on May 24 to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday, but officials have accused the insurgents of stepping up attacks in recent weeks.

The latest government accusations come as Kabul and Taliban have signalled that they were getting closer to launching much-delayed peace talks.

President Ashraf Ghani has vowed to complete a Taliban prisoner release that is a key condition to beginning the peace negotiations with the insurgents aimed at ending nearly two decades of war.

The authorities have already released about 3,000 Taliban prisoners, and plan to further free 2,000 as stipulated in the insurgents' deal with Washington signed in February.

The Taliban have said they are ready for peace talks but only after the release of the remaining 2,000 insurgents.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A prominent Russian opposition figure who vanished before surfacing in police custody has been sentenced to fifteen days in jail on "hooliganism" charges.

Pyotr Verzilov, occasional manager of punk collective Pussy Riot and publisher of the independent MediaZona publication, appeared in court on Monday afternoon following the altogether bizarre run of events. The activist revealed he was arrested at his home on Sunday morning, interrogated for 13 hours before being abruptly released. On leaving the police station in the evening, he claims he was attacked by an unidentified man, and a few moments later arrested again by police for "swearing in a public place."

The activist described the turn as a "classic provocation" and said there was no mention of the strange assailant in forty pages of case notes presented to the judge.

Verzilov disappeared early on Sunday morning after messaging colleagues to say his apartment door was being forced open. A short while later, his landlord arrived at his Moscow home to find that locks on the door had been destroyed, with no one inside. Neighbours reported seeing approximately 10 men attempting to gain entry to the apartment.

At this point, friends and colleagues claimed to have no idea of his whereabouts. Shortly after midday, a pro-Kremlin social media network published a photo that seemed to show Verzilov in his home, looking through documents, with an unidentified man sitting alongside him. A doctor dropped by to see Verzilov, but he didnt want to open the door, the caption read, timestamped 1.15pm.

It would be several more hours before Verzilov surfaced. When he did, the activist published a video revealing he had been arrested and interrogated about last summer's protests against gerrymandering in Moscow city elections. Verzilov insisted he was in Estonia at a summer camp at the time in question.

Some early news reports suggested the activist had been detained over plans to initiate a "Tiananmen Square" style protest by standing in front of a tank during Wednesday's WW2 Victory Day parade. This does not appear to have been the case.

Over many years Verzilov has delighted in irritating the Kremlin and Russias conservative wing.

Before Pussy Riot, he was part of the Voina art group that drew a large phallus on a retractable bridge facing the St Petersburg headquarters of Russias security agency. In another performance, he took part in an orgy in Moscows Biological Museum.

Together with other members of Pussy Riot, Verzilov helped found MediaZona, a website focused on law, order, rights, and abuses thereof. In recent years, the platform has stood out for brave investigations into the darkest areas of Russian state and society.

In September 2018, Verzilov was taken seriously ill in Moscow in unexplained circumstances. He was evacuated to Berlin, where doctors confirmed his symptoms were consistent with poisoning. Russian authorities have so far failed to open a criminal case into the apparent attack.



This article was updated on 22 June to reflect Verzilov's sentence and the fact he is no longer missing
(Natural News) He also faces an investigation by campus administrators

Charles Negy, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida who tweeted about black privilege, is facing an aggressive campaign to get him terminated from his job after a few of his tweets were deemed racist by students and administrators.

(Article by Misty Severi republished from TheCollegeFix.com)

He now also faces allegations of classroom discrimination.

The outrage caused by his tweets in early June led to the hashtag #UCFfirehim to trend and made national headlines. A petition demanding he be fired has more than 30,000 signatures.

A protest Saturday in front of his home drew carfuls of students and prompted police protection, according to the professor.

The cars drove by with a megaphone shouting Black Lives Matter and Negy must resign while blowing their horns nonstop, Negy told The College Fix in an email Monday. That went [on] for 30 minutes. Thats not protesting. Thats bullying, harassment, and intimidation. That occurred after they had spent three hours on foot at the entrance of my neighborhood.

He said several sheriffs were called out to protect his house.

Another protest against Negy took place Sunday at UCF, the Orlando Sentinel reports, noting the protesters  comprised mostly of students and alumni  held signs that read: If UCF Keeps Racist Teachers, Then UCF=Racist, UCF Fire Negy. He is leaving a negative impact on your institution, and Dont Let Racists Teach.

Negy has taught at the University of Central Florida for 22 years. He earned tenure in 2001. He is author of the recent book: White Shaming: Bullying Based on Prejudice, Virtue-signaling, and Ignorance.

The recent tweets in question, which came during a time when the nation was gripped with racial tension and protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer, asserted the existence of black privilege and asked the question of whether systemic racism would still be claimed if African Americans acted in the same manner as Asian Americans.

If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming systematic racism exists? he wrote on Twitter.

In another tweet, he wrote, Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, theyre missing out on much needed feedback.

Although he said he stands by his tweets, both tweets have since been deleted by Negy because he said he was receiving hundreds of hate responses per day and removing them helped taper that down.

As for the universitys probe, Negy told The Fix on Monday he has not been contacted by his superiors yet and as far as he knows is still scheduled to teach this fall.

In defense of his tweets, Negy said he teaches a cross-cultural psychology class that examines some of the questions he asked.

Most of what I cover (in the course) is neutral, but I do reserve a section at the end of each group where I address challenges or problems that disproportionately affect the group being discussed, Negy said. No matter how gentle I try to address some of those challenges, people from all groups, including Whites, occasionally are offended. But the purpose of a university is to explore and debate ideaseven ideas that make some people uncomfortable; even ideas that some people find offensive.

Negy added that Twitter is different because there is limited space to raise questions or debate a topic.

The first tweet was a sincere question: When or how will we know when the U.S. has eradicated systemic racism? What is the marker we will use for declaring systemic racism no longer exists? Negy said. In regards to me having used Asian Americans as the comparative group, why cant we compare other groups with Asian Americans? Why are Whites always the gold standard by which we compare everyone?

Regarding his other controversial tweet on black privilege, Negy said it was in response to an article someone else had written that he thought made valid points.

Perhaps I should not have used the word privilege. I could have said there are advantages to being a minority in the U.S. But wed simply be playing a game of words. The point is still the same, there are benefits/advantages/privileges to being black in the U.S., Negy said.

The fact that people feel the need to protect African Americans from scrutiny and will vilify anyone who doesthat is a privilege. All groups are of equal value and worth. African Americans are our equals. This country belongs to them as much as it does to any other group. But they are not above scrutiny.

UCF President Alexander Cartwright told students at a town hall meeting June 4 that Negys tweets do not represent the universitys values and officials are conducting an investigation into Negy, according to a transcript of the town hall provided to The College Fix by college spokeswoman Heather Smith.

Cartwright said during the town hall that campus leaders are acutely aware of the offensive and hurtful Twitter posts that professor Charles Negy has shared on his personal page. These posts do not reflect the values of UCF, and I strongly condemn these racist and abhorrent posts.

I promise you this is a matter that has our full attention, and we have launched an inquiry to quickly  but fully  evaluate this situation.

The universitys leadership also issued a joint statement June 4 to students via email that expressed disapproval of Negys tweets.

At all times, we uphold the principles of academic freedom, but we have a responsibility to denounce intolerance, the statement read. Everyone has the right to their personal beliefs, but no university employee may mistreat or discriminate against students in their classes or in any other setting. No student should fear they will be treated differently because of others personal biases.

Negy told The College Fix he does not believe the university has the right to police what professors tweet on their personal accounts.

In a sane world, when folks began to complain about my tweets, the university administration would have said, He expressed his views. Now you express yours. Go discuss. But we no longer live in a sane world, at least not in the U.S. or in Western Europe, Negy said. White liberals shake in their boots over anyone calling them racist, so they overcompensate by displaying in a variety of ways that they are anti-racist.

Allegations of racism in the classroom have also surfaced against Negy, which he fully denies.

I absolutely have never mistreated any student in any way, shape, or fashion based on any irrational reason (including students race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), Negy told The Fix. Ive read some complaints online, so I dont know if theyre truly being lodged. But what Ive read are complete lies.

For example, he said the allegation that he has lowered students grades on exams because they are black is easy to refute. He said his classes typically have 100 to 400 students and a paid graduate teaching assistant usually manages the multiple-choice scantron tests.

The GTAs collect the scantrons, run them through a machine, and input students grades electronically. I never touch the scantrons really, Negy said.

As for the petition that called on the university to fire Negy, it cites his abhorrent racist comments he has made and continues to make on his personal Twitter account.

In addition to racism, Negy has engaged in perverse transphobia and sexism on his account, which is just as reprehensible. While he has a right to free speech, he does not have a right to dehumanize students of color and other minority groups, which is a regular occurance in his classroom. By allowing him to continue in his position, UCF would simply be empowering another cog in the machine of systemic racism, the petition states.

Read more at: TheCollegeFix.com
The COBAS 6800 machine, capable of conducting up to 1,500 tests per day, would help ramp up a testing facility in Patna.

A sophisticated COVID-19 testing machine has been installed by the ICMR at the Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (RMRIMS) here for carrying out faster testing of samples.

The COBAS 6800 machine, capable of conducting up to 1,500 tests per day, would help ramp up a testing facility in Patna, a top official of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said in a press release.

The machine, enabled with robotics, minimises the chance of contamination as well as the risk of infection to healthcare workers since it can be operated remotely with limited human intervention.

"This is the first facility of its kind in Bihar and will help in capacity building of COVID-19 diagnostic laboratory in the institute," Prof Balram Bhargava, Director General, ICMR, said in the release.

The move will help increase the testing capacity in Bihar, which needs testing in high numbers as migrants are coming to the state from different parts of the country, said Bhargava.

At present the RMRIMS is testing around 2,000 samples per day with the help of 4 RT-PCR machines, with 25 people working 24 x 7 in three shifts.

After the COVID-19 spread is controlled, the machine can also be used to detect other pathogens such as viral hepatitis B and C, HIV, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), cytomegalovirus (CMV), chlamydia, Neisseria and dengue, the release said.

The RMRIMS, so far, has tested close to 65,000 samples.
SACRAMENTO  Even before the coronavirus pandemic, it wasnt clear how California would pay for its dream of running 220-mph bullet trains from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Now, the project is as close to the precipice as its ever been. The California High-Speed Rail Authority faces two new threats: Its largest source of funding is evaporating and state legislators have attempted to derail the agencys plans en masse.

The culmination of woes has cast new doubt on the viability of the rail plan and Gov. Gavin Newsoms strategy to focus on building the systems Central Valley segment first.

The way this project has been managed is embarrassing, to say the least, Assemblyman Jim Frazier, a North Bay Democrat who chairs the Transportation Committee, told legislators during a June 11 vote to challenge the plan.

I personally have lost all confidence in this group to develop and deliver what they promised, he said.

In an unprecedented move, a bipartisan majority of the Assembly rebuked the agencys plans for the Central Valley segment. The move, led by Frazier and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, was cosponsored by 63 of 80 members.

The resolution demanded the High-Speed Rail Authority not award contracts to build the Central Valley track and electrical grid until the Legislature signs off on funding.

It is an unelected body, which has taken little input from us, obliging us to vote for dollars that will continue to dog us for the next 30 years, said Rendon, a Democrat from Lakewood (Los Angeles County).

But the authority plans to push ahead this fall with awarding those contracts, including a 30-year maintenance deal. It will ask legislators to approve $4.2 billion in funding, the remainder of its voter-approved bonds, early next year.

Brian Annis, the authoritys chief financial officer, said the agency looks forward to a discussion next year with state lawmakers about its bond funding. He said it would be wrong to halt construction now, because the project would create jobs amid the pandemic-caused recession.

The case gets stronger for high-speed rail for many reasons, Annis said. We are supporting thousands of jobs in many areas around the state.

The state broke ground on the Central Valley segment in 2015, and work is under way on about 30 construction sites, including overpasses and raised grading separations. No track has been laid.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego, hasnt called for diverting money from the project. However, she has been skeptical about starting construction, as Newsom and the authority proposed.

I want to see high-speed rail move forward only in a way that is responsible and in keeping with what we told the voters we would do, Atkins said in a statement.

At its core, the dispute reflects legislators skepticism over Newsoms plan to start with a 171-mile stretch through orchards and fields between Merced and Bakersfield.

Todd Trumbull

The authority originally planned to also build inward from the Bay Area and Los Angeles, including a line from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley. The vision: Bullet trains would zip between the disparate regions, linking the high-paying jobs on the coast with the affordable housing of the states interior.

Supporters say the states new vision abandons that goal of leveling inequities between the two Californias: its wealthy, cosmopolitan coast and a lagging agricultural interior.

Newsom stunned many legislators and rail advocates during his first State of the State speech last year, when he announced he would focus only on the Central Valley segment. He suggested the plan for a full San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long.

The governor later backpedaled, saying that he still would like to connect the states largest metro areas, though there is currently no money for it. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

Labor unions have been among the projects most vocal backers, saying it would provide trade jobs and help a region left behind by the Los Angeles and Bay Area economies.

We should not forget that this type of project is exactly what workers in the construction industry need from their government in times of recession, like times we find ourselves in now, said Jeremy Smith of the State Building and Construction Trades Council.

Some legislators say that in the absence of a robust statewide plan, the high-speed rail money would be better spent on commuter rail projects in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Last year, Rendon pushed for diverting billions from the Central Valley segment.

There are legal arguments that both approaches ignore the sentiment of California voters, who approved a $10 billion bond in 2008, largely for the construction of San Francisco-to-Los Angeles tracks.

Trains originally were supposed to start running this year. Now the agency hopes the Central Valley line will open in 2029, followed by the longer line in 2033. Segments to connect San Diego and Sacramento would come years later.

The project has faced broad ridicule over soaring costs, its budget ballooning from $33 billion to $80 billion, as well as repeated construction delays and a slew of land-acquisition lawsuits.

Quentin Kopp, a retired state senator and former chairman of the High-Speed Rail Authority board, said hes not surprised legislators have revolted, arguing that the project is no longer what he and other proponents of the 2008 bond pitched to voters.

It is a disgraceful joke, Kopp said of the agency. They dont deserve a penny because they are fooling California voting taxpayers.

A growing chorus of lawmakers has called for cutting funding entirely. State Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from Bieber (Lassen County), said economic challenges brought on by the pandemic are likely the death knell for the bullet train.

The project is way underfunded and were never going to be able to finish it, he said. Sometimes youve got to cut your losses, and its time to cut our losses.

The largest source of high-speed rail funding, revenue from the states cap-and-trade program, has plummeted as fewer businesses are buying emission credits during the economic recession and stay-at-home restrictions.

The agency typically receives at least $125 million per quarter from the auction of cap-and-trade credits. The last auction, in May, brought in $6 million.

If revenue remains low, it could upend an already shaky financial plan. The authority needs between $500 million and $750 million in cap-and-trade revenue every year through 2030 to complete the first segment.

Annis, the agencys CFO, said it has plenty of cash on hand and the ability to borrow money, through bonds, to avoid immediate disruptions. He said he expects cap-and-trade auction revenue to rebound.

Meanwhile, federal threats to revoke funding for the project are another problem for the rail agency.

The Trump administration canceled a $929 million grant for the project last year, arguing the state had missed required benchmarks. California officials said the move was politically motivated and are fighting for the money in court.

Dan Richard, a former chairman of the Rail Authority Board who resigned last year, said legislators must focus on the projects long-term potential to reimagine transportation and connect the state.

He suggested that with a presidential election on the horizon, high-speed rails financial woes could be temporary.

Joe Biden is a train guy, Richard said of the presumptive Democratic nominee. If these guys can hold on until the cavalry comes over the hill, that would be good.

Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner
(TNS) - Nearly two years after one of the deadliest corporate crimes in California history  a utility-sparked wildfire that killed scores of people and destroyed the city of Paradise in rural Butte County  state and federal officials have staked out differing positions on how to prevent history from repeating itself.Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Public Utilities Commission created a new division to monitor wildfire safety plans from California utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric, whose equipment and negligence ignited the Camp fire in November 2018.They restructured their oversight and enforcement process, requiring PG&E to meet a series of safety metrics beyond what was already required and they reasserted regulators ability to impose penalties for non-compliance.They also did away with a century-old rule requiring utilities to demonstrate that they acted prudently before they can pass along wildfire damages to ratepayers.Most notable for customers of San Diego Gas & Electric, Newsom created a new multibillion-dollar fund, largely paid for by customers of SDG&E and other power companies to cover claims for wildfires that have not yet happened.Strengthening our states wildfire prevention, preparedness and mitigation efforts will continue to be a top priority for my administration and our work with the legislature, Newsom said last summer, when he signed the bill that will cost ratepayers an extra $900 million each year for 15 years.Nowhere in Newsoms wildfire-prevention efforts is PG&E being required to proactively comply with safety regulations the company skirted before the Camp fire  or other deadly fires it caused in recent years.Instead, that strategy is being pursued by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the five-year probation sentence PG&E received after being convicted of six felonies related to a pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people a decade ago.On April 29, Alsup amended the utilitys probation conditions to include a requirement that it hire additional tree-trimmers to make sure vegetation is at least four feet from power lines. He also ordered the company to create an inventory of its aging equipment so executives can better determine when it might break down or cause new fires.PG&E remains years away from compliance with California law and with its own wildfire mitigation plan, the judge wrote. Twenty-two thousand trees identified by PG&E as hazardous remain unworked.Alsup made it clear he does not trust PG&E to comply with state regulations governing utility equipment maintenance and the clearance rules for energized power lines.If there ever was a corporation that deserved to go to prison, its PG&E, he said at a hearing last month. And the number of people it killed in California. And the judge whos overseeing this probation has got to take the public interest and the safety, the safety of the people of California into account.Utility lawyers attacked Alsups order on two fronts. On May 13, they appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and filed a separate motion with Alsup to reconsider his orders.The reconsideration is warranted because the Order rests on clear error and fails to consider relevant facts and law, the lawyers wrote. The imposition of the Courts untested conditions will interfere with the ongoing work underway at PG&E to mitigate wildfire risk.PG&E said it recognizes the growing threat of wildfires in its service area and is working diligently to reduce those risks, but the extra steps are likely to hurt prevention efforts.The new conditions are substantively unreasonable because they interfere with Californias regulatory regime, utility lawyers argued. And the conditions, even if they could be met, would not improve safety and may well increase wildfire risk.Neither the Governors Office nor the Public Utilities Commission would answer questions about the judges order or say whether they agreed with the ruling.Newsoms press office issued a statement last week saying the governor has demanded a fundamental transformation of PG&E so it can provide safe, reliable, affordable and clean power.The state has and will continue to hold PG&E accountable, and significant progress has been made to pave the way for transformation of this utility so it works in the best interest of Californians, and continues to invest in the safety of our state and our resources, spokeswoman Vicky Waters wrote.Spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said the commissions new Wildfire Safety Division began conducting field inspections last month, including more than 250 reviews of PG&Es compliance activities related to General Order 95, the primary state regulation dictating equipment maintenance and utility operating standards.The division expects to complete more than 2,000 inspection activities statewide before the end of 2020, she said.Prosper also provided a copy of the commissions June 11 comments to the court, urging Alsup not to interfere with the states regulatory authority.Derailment of PG&Es focus on the CPUCs integrated plans to mitigate wildfires, and tension that PG&E might face if having to choose between a federal court order and the CPUCs orders, would ill serve public safety and impose additional costs on ratepayers without a public vetting, commission lawyers told the judge.The health, safety, and well-being of Californians will be best served if the CPUC is permitted the flexibility to exercise its broad ratemaking, health and safety authority with wide discretion on wildfire mitigation.Even so, the commission was not equipped to evaluate the utilities mitigation plans without outside help. Last year, regulators requested and received $8.6 million in taxpayer funds to hire a consulting firm to do the work.CPUC does not have staff to develop a Wildfire Mitigation Plan evaluation framework and is therefore requiring a contractor to provide policy consultants to assist with this process, the commission wrote in its funding request.By January 2019, PG&E was confronting billions of dollars in damage claims from victims of the Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed 18,000 homes and other buildings. The utility sought protection from people filing claims and other creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.Newsom had just been sworn in as Californias 40th governor, and stakeholders  from labor and business leaders to environmental and clean-energy groups  all wanted to know how he planned to respond.The governor set up a strike team to confront the growing wildfire threat and help PG&E out of bankruptcy court.After a series of private meetings, the strike team issued a series of recommendations that became draft legislation. Assembly Bill 1054 raced through the statehouse in less than two weeks, and Newsom signed it into law last July.For the first time in California history, the bill called on consumers to pay into a special fund  not to finance new utility equipment or stricter tree-trimming practices  but to pay future damages for future wildfires.Those actions did not prevent the next utility-caused wildfires. PG&E equipment ignited the Kincade fire in October, burning 77,000 acres and more than 400 homes and business in Sonoma County.Earlier this month, the Public Utilities Commission approved new wildfire mitigation plans submitted by PG&E, SDG&E and other utilities.Todays actions will increase accountability, reporting, and public safety, Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen said after the June 11 vote. Utilities will have to report how they are prioritizing investments to get the most risk reduction per dollar spent.But former utilities commission member Catherine Sandoval, now a law professor at Santa Clara University, said the plan submitted by PG&E was deficient.She said in a commission filing that the PG&E plan lacks detail, fails to adequately consider fire risks and does not show PG&E has learned any lessons from its own lapses in management or those made by other utilities after their equipment caused wildfires.PG&Es lack of analytical foundation and explanation pervades its WMP, Sandoval wrote, referring to its wildfire mitigation plan.She also said the commissions new Wildfire Safety Division was not doing enough to prevent fires.The condition WSD proposes to address this deficiency does not specifically require PG&E to examine and explain factors such as equipment age or the interrelationship between drivers of PG&E equipment failure, wrote Sandoval, who sat on the California Public Utilities Commission from 2011 to 2017.One condition in the San Bruno probation case required PG&E to obey all laws  a condition CEO Bill Johnson admitted was violated when on behalf of the utility he confessed to 84 counts of felony involuntary manslaughter as a result of the Camp fire.During an emotional two-day hearing last week, relatives of fire victims told the court how the tragedy had affected them.Jesus Fernandez was my father and best friend, Zachary Fernandez said Wednesday in a statement read by prosecutors who said because the surviving son could not bear to read it himself. He will always be in my memory, and a day does not go by that I dont think about him.Late last week, PG&E was sentenced to pay $4 million in fines and court costs.The impact of 84 new criminal convictions is unclear. PG&E was already on probation when the Camp fire started  and in 2017, when the utility caused a spate of wildfires that ravaged Napa and Sonoma counties.Months after those fires, which killed more than two dozen people and leveled 6,000-plus homes, PG&E assured the public in a news release that it had developed a comprehensive community wildfire safety program to prevent power line fires in the future.Our system and our mindset need to be laser-focused on working together to help prevent devastating wildfires like the ones in the North Bay in October, PG&E executive Pat Hogan said in March 2018, eight months before the Camp fire. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, which is what the community wildfire safety program is all about.The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer group, said Californias governor and the federal judge both have roles to play in preventing utility-caused wildfires.All the mitigation plans in the world wont make a difference if PG&E continues to operate its system negligently, TURN spokeswoman Mindy Spatt said. And the commissions recent approval of a six-step process for revoking PG&Es license is a few steps too many.Spatt said Alsup must find a way to stop PG&E from continuing the reckless behavior that led to more than 100 deaths in recent years.PG&Es resistance to the judges orders is gravely concerning, Spatt said. While the company claims it wants to do everything possible to reform and put safety first, it is obviously not willing to put its money where its mouth is.The nations largest utility is expected to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of the month in a complicated deal that restructures company leadership and transfers billions of dollars in stock to fire victims. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said Friday he would approve the deal.Alsup is expected to rule on PG&Es request to modify his order in coming days or weeks.2020 The San Diego Union-TribuneVisit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribu
AHCA Board of Governors Appoints New Members, Elects Executive Committee Liaison <p> The American Health Care Association (AHCA) announced today two new members of the AHCA 2021-2022 Board of Governors and named the AHCA 2021-2022 Board of Governor Executive Committee Liaison.</p><p><img src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/2022/NormanRokeach.jpg" alt="Norman Rokeach" class="ms-rtePosition-1" style="margin:5px;width:96px;height:96px;" /><strong>Norman Rokeach,</strong> president and founder of Marquis Limited, was elected to fill through October 2022 the unexpired At-Large seat that was vacated by Chris Wright of iCare Health Network when he was elected as AHCA Board Secretary/Treasurer on October 13, 2021.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><img src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/2022/NateSchema.jpg" alt="" style="margin:5px;width:0px;" /><img src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/2022/NateSchema.jpg" alt="Nate Schema" class="ms-rtePosition-1" style="margin:5px;width:96px;height:96px;" /><strong>Nate Schema,</strong> new president and CEO of The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, was elected to fill through October 2022 the unexpired Not-for-Profit seat that was vacated by Randy Bury when he retired as president and CEO of The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society on December 31, 2021.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><img src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/2022/SarahSchumann.jpg" alt="Sarah Schumann" class="ms-rtePosition-1" style="margin:5px;width:96px;height:95px;" /><strong>Sarah Schumann,</strong> vice president of operations for Brookside Inn, and currently serving as an AHCA Board At-large Representative, was elected to serve as AHCAs Executive Committee Liaison for a one year term effective November 2021.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>We are incredibly fortunate to have Sarah, Norman, and Nate step into these important leadership roles, said AHCA President and CEO Mark Parkinson. We are grateful for all of their time and years of expertise. I look forward to working together with them to continue to shape the future of care for our nations most vulnerable population.</p><p>Based in Woburn, Massachusetts, Rokeach has developed and refined innovative approaches to long term care for over 22 years. As president and founder of Marquis Limited, he represents the fourth generation of a family of long term care providers, with 46 facilities, in seven states under his leadership.</p><p>Schemas longstanding career with the Society began in 2006 as an administrator-in-training in Mountain Lake, Minnesota. He was a nursing home administrator at multiple Society locations, and held positions as associate director of operations, regional executive director of operations and most recently, vice president of operations. </p><p>Members of the AHCA Board of Governors are elected by the Associations governing body, the Council of States, at AHCAs Annual Convention & Expo. </p><p>Read more about <a href="https://www.ahcancal.org/News-and-Communications/Press-Releases/Pages/AHCANCAL-Elects-Board-of-Governors%2c-Directors-at-Annual-Convention.aspx" target="_blank">AHCAs 2021-2022 Board of Governors.</a></p><p><br></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://ahcancal.org/" target="_blank"><img src="/SiteCollectionImages/logos/ahca_ncal_cobrand.jpg" class="ms-rtePosition-4" alt="" style="margin:5px;width:250px;height:25px;" /></a><br></p> 2022-01-19T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/boardroom.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> Quality AHCA announced two new members of the AHCA 2021-2022 Board of Governors and named the AHCA 2021-2022 Board of Governor Executive Committee Liaison.

Delivering Trauma Informed Care is Vital in Long Term Care <p><span class="rollup-image"></span>Trauma Informed Care (TIC) is an approach to care that requires specific staff competency and a system of care delivery that provides the necessary support to care for nursing facility and assisted living residents who may suffer from trauma.</p><div aria-labelledby="ctl00_PlaceHolderMain_ctl01_label" style="display:inline;"><div>TIC also is a regulatory requirement for skilled nursing facilities. At least eight CMS F-tags cover various aspects of TIC making compliance with this critical form of care vital to nursing facility survey success and quality care. </div></div><span class="rollup-image"></span><p></p><div aria-labelledby="ctl00_PlaceHolderMain_ctl02_label" style="display:inline;"><div>The recently released <a href="https://educate.ahcancal.org/products/trauma-informed-care-training#tab-product_tab_overview" data-feathr-click-track="true" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:underline;">Trauma Informed Care Training</a> contains simple foundational steps and practical recommendations for implementing a TIC program that can help improve resident outcomes. Individuals will learn how to screen and assess for trauma and incorporate TIC into the discharge process. There also is a focus on building awareness of TIC among staff to help them deliver appropriate care and deliver meaningful activities and other services from a TIC perspective.</div><div><br></div><div>This nine-module online course was developed through a joint collaboration between AHCA/NCAL and the American Association of Post-Acute Care Nursing (AAPACN). The training is designed to educate long term care providers and nurses about how to implement TIC in their facilities with staff who are appropriately trained and competent to care for residents who are at risk for re-traumatization. </div><div><br></div><div>TIC is an important aspect of care given that 62 percent of adults have had at least one traumatic event and 25 percent have had three or more traumatic events. </div><div><br></div><div>The cost of the program is $350 for AHCA/NCAL members and $650 for non-members. The program is approved for 5.75 NAB CEs for administrators and 5.10 AANC continuing education hours for nurses.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Members will need to login to <em>ahcancalED </em>with their AHCA/NCAL usernames and passwords to <a href="https://educate.ahcancal.org/products/trauma-informed-care-training#tab-product_tab_overview" data-feathr-click-track="true" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:underline;">register for the course</a><span style="font-size:11pt;">.</span><span style="font-size:11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size:11pt;">For assistance obtaining usernames and passwords, members should e-mail <a href="mailto:educate@ahca.org" data-feathr-click-track="true" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:underline;">educate@ahca.org</a> with their name and facility contact information. <br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:11pt;"><br></span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:11pt;"><a href="https://ahcancal.org/" target="_blank"><img src="/SiteCollectionImages/logos/ahca_ncal_cobrand.jpg" alt="" style="margin:5px;width:250px;height:30px;" /></a><br></span></div></div> 2022-01-12T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/senior_hands_cane.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> Caregiving;Workforce Trauma Informed Care (TIC) is an approach to care that requires specific staff competency and a system of care delivery that provides the necessary support to care for nursing facility and assisted living residents who may suffer from trauma.

AHCA/NCAL's Parkinson Named "Most Influential" <p>Mark Parkinson, president and chief executive officer of American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) is one of Modern Healthcares <a href="https://www.modernhealthcare.com/awards/2021-most-influential-healthcare-mark-parkinson" data-feathr-click-track="true" target="_blank">100 Most Influential People in Healthcare</a> for 2021. This is Parkinsons second consecutive year on the list.</p><p>Parkinson was recognized for his efforts leading the charge to fund and protect the 14,000 skilled-nursing facilities and assisted-living centers his organization represents during the pandemic.</p><p>A quote from Parkinson was featured in the piece:</p><blockquote><p><span class="ms-rteStyle-Emphasis"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-2">The key is for leadership to not panic. Instead, we need to assess the real damage, what can be done to repair it and develop a plan to move forward. Leaders who articulate that plan, work it and stay steady while reassuring their team that there is a way out will shine during a crisis.</span></span></p></blockquote><p>Parkinson was previously the governor of Kansas as well as owner/operator of multiple long term care facilities. He also appeared on the list in 2015.</p> 2022-01-10T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/MPark_convention.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> Quality Parkinson named to top list for 2021.

Deadline Approaching for National Quality Award Applications <p style="text-align:center;"><strong><img src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/QualityAward1_logos.jpg" alt="" style="margin:5px;width:526px;height:423px;" /><br><br></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong class="ms-rteThemeForeColor-9-0"><a href="https://www.ahcancal.org/Quality/National-Quality-Award-Program/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">Application Deadline: Thursday, January 27, 2022</a></strong></p><div>The National Quality Award application deadline is quickly approaching. If applicants have not done so already, Quality Award staff encourage providers to download and review the following essential resources to help submit an application before the deadline on Thursday, January 27, 2022, by 8 p.m. Eastern. </div><div><br></div><h2 style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://www.ahcancal.org/Quality/National-Quality-Award-Program/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank"><strong class="ms-rteForeColor-2" style="font-size:20pt;">APPLY TODAY!</strong></a></h2><p><br></p><p>The following resources are available on the <a href="https://www.ahcancal.org/Quality/National-Quality-Award-Program/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">National Quality Award website</a>.</p><ul><li><strong>Month-by-Month Action Plan & Key Dates</strong> - Bronze, Silver, Gold</li></ul><p><em>A month-by-month break down of where applicants should be in the application process. </em><br></p><ul><li><strong>Criteria Video Series</strong> - Bronze, Silver, Gold</li></ul><p><em>Short videos, each covering an individual question or category in the Criteria to help applicants work through the application. </em></p><p></p><ul><li><strong>Quality Award Survey Requirements</strong></li></ul><p><em>These survey requirements provide SNF applicants information on whether they currently meet the survey requirements to receive a Quality Award. A full description of the survey requirements at each level is available in the application packet.</em></p><p></p><ul><li><strong>Silver and Gold Scoring Calibration Guidelines </strong></li></ul><p><em>Only for Silver and Gold applicants, the scoring guidelines are tools that Examiners utilize to score the applications. Applicants can use these to understand the demands of the various scoring ranges. <br></em></p><p><br></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://ahcancal.org/"><img src="/SiteCollectionImages/logos/ahca_ncal_cobrand.jpg" alt="" style="margin:5px;width:250px;height:30px;" /></a><br></p> 2022-01-07T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/QualityAward_logos.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> Quality Awards Quality Award deadline is Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022. Review the resources to help submit an application before the deadline.

AHCA, NCAL Release Statement on Vaccine Mandate Injunction <p>The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) have released the following statement regarding the United States District Court in the Western District of Louisiana issuing a nationwide injunction on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. <br></p><p>The statement is attributable to Mark Parkinson, AHCA/NCAL president and chief executive officer. <br></p><p>We appreciate the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Louisiana issuing this injunction. We have always supported vaccinating as many residents and staff as possible. However, we are deeply concerned that the current mandate issued by CMS will cause nursing homes to lose staff at a time when we are already grappling with a historic labor crisis, Parkinson said.</p><p>We continue to urge CMS to allow a regular testing option for unvaccinated staff and, therefore, support any legal remedy or CMS action that would bring about this solution. <br></p><p>There are currently four active cases regarding the CMS interim final rule staff vaccine mandate: the Louisiana litigation, which was filed by a 14-state group, the Missouri litigation filed by 10 states, and individual cases filed by the states of Florida and Texas. Floridas request for a preliminary injunction was denied by the District Court last week and is being appealed. A hearing in the Texas case is scheduled for Dec. 2.</p><p>While the interim final rule is, as of Dec. 1, prevented in all states from going into effect, Medicare providers should continue to prepare to have policies and procedures ready so that if the governments arguments prevail, they can be quickly implemented, AHCA/NCAL said. As employers, providers should consider what policy they want to have in place until a government mandate requires it, which is not certain, the association said.<br></p> 2021-12-01T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/0220_News1.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> COVID-19;Policy Association supports vaccination for nursing homes, but fears critical loss of staff members under current mandate.

Roy Christensen, A Man For The Ages <p>Roy Christensen, a major innovator and 58-year veteran in the long term care profession, died peacefully on Nov. 11, 2021, at the age of 87.</p><p>Christensen, along with his son, Christopher, founded the health care company Ensign Group Inc. in 1999, and he served as a member and chairman of its Board of Directors until 2019, when he became chairman emeritus and director. Ensign Group Inc. is the parent company of the Ensign group of 245 companies that invest in and provide skilled nursing, senior living, and rehabilitative care services in 12+ states.</p><p>Its difficult to sum up the influence Roy had on our industry and the little company we started 22 years ago, said Christopher Christensen, Ensigns executive chairman. He truly was a pioneer and a visionary who has impacted so many that knew him and even more that did not.</p><p>At the core of Ensigns vision was achieving a culture of leadership and values in individual facilities that would better serve patients and their families, Christopher said. His father was especially honored when he talked about all of the thousands of co-founders and heroes that strive every day to carry out this collective mission, he said. Words cant describe how much he was loved and will be missed.</p><p>Barry Port, Ensigns chief executive officer (CEO), added, Roy once told me that his involvement in helping to form this Ensign family was one of the crowning achievements of his entire life. Roys place in the culture of Ensign is irreplaceable, but our entire company is joined together in our determination to honor his legacy.</p><p>Prior to founding Ensign, Christensen was founder and chairman of Beverly Enterprises in 1963, which grew to be the largest nursing home company in the country, with more than 1,000 facilities. He also served as chairman and CEO of GranCare, which later merged into Mariner Post-Acute Network. In 1994 he founded Covenant Care, another successful long term care company.</p><p>In the course of his long career, Christensen also taught at Brigham Young University and served as a member of President Nixons Advisory Task Force on Medicare and Medicaid. He spent four years as a member of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfares Advisory Task Force.</p><p>Roy Christensen was an absolute giant in the long term care industry, said Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living. In developing Ensign with Christopher, he proved that a very large company can provide exceptional care to residents and create phenomenal jobs for employees. The lessons of Ensign will survive for many years.<br></p> 2021-11-22T05:00:00Z <img alt="" src="/Breaking-News/PublishingImages/740%20x%20740/Roy%20Chirstensen%20head%20shot.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> Management An eminent entrepreneur in long term care is remembered for the gift he left behind.
A man who was wrongly branded an illegal immigrant amid the Windrush scandal told he would be 'dressed and ready' to be deported everyday at 6am for 18-months.

Michael Braithwaite, 68, arrived in London from Barbados as a child in 1961 but two years ago lost his job as a special needs teaching assistant, which he'd had for 15-years, for not having up-to-date identity documentation.

The father-of-three, who now campaigns for victims of the Windrush scandal, appeared on This Morning where he spoke of the 'nightmares' and 'sleepless nights' he suffered after being wrongly accused.

He risked being sent back to a country where he had 'nothing' waiting for him, and said that for 18-months he would be dressed and ready at 6am for a knock on his door, telling him he was to be deported.

Michael Braithwaite, 68, arrived in London from Barbados as a child in 1961 but two years ago lost his job for not having an up-to-date identity documentation. He is pictured on This Morning today

Michael (pictured far left) was part of a group who last week delivered a petition to Downing Street signed by 130,000 people calling for action surrounding the Windrush Scandal last week

'I had nightmares', said Michael. 'The doorbell would ring and I would be down at the front door, thinking I was going to be taken away.

'I was informed they turn up at six in the morning, I was always dressed and ready waiting for that moment to come.

'18 months, I didn't sleep. I don't suffer with anxiety but at some point I started thinking, "This is my fault, how can it be anyone else's? How can anyone put me in this position?".'

Michael said being branded an illegal immigrant made him feel like a 'criminal' in his own country, and said he couldn't even speak to his family because his 'self worth had gone.'

He told hosts Philip Schofield and Davina McCall (pictured) of the 'nightmares' and 'sleepless nights' he would suffer after being wrongly accused

He told that for 18-months he would be dressed and ready at 6AM for a knock on his door telling him he was to be deported

He said: 'I was in a void, I felt like a criminal. I felt my self-worth had gone, my state of mind, I became very silent.

'I wouldn't even talk to my family. I thought it was my fault. For someone to tell you you have no worth, you don't belong here - this is my country.'

Michael - who has lived in the UK since childhood - also told that celebrating British culture was 'part of his heritage'.

Last week, Windrush victims called on the government to speed up compensation and begin to implement recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned review

The report singled out for criticism the Government's 'hostile-environment' policy, which was brought in by the then home secretary, Theresa May, in 2012

He said: 'In the Caribbean, we lived a British life. We celebrated the Queen, we honoured being part of the British empire.

'We went to church, it was part of our structure, it was part of our heritage, celebrating the Queen. For someone to take that, you may as well take all of myself.'

When asked what would have been waiting for him in Barbados had he been deported, he said: 'Nothing at all. My family members were gone or had died.

'There was nothing there for me to relate to, I had nothing left in that part of the world.

'In my community I worked with a lot of children and the parents helped fundraise. I was so grateful for that. In that time of stress where do you turn to?'

When asked what would have been waiting for him in Barbados had he been deported, he said: ' Nothing at all. My family members were gone or had died'

Michael was part of a group who last week delivered a petition to Downing Street signed by 130,000 people calling on the government to speed up compensation and begin to implement recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned review.

Earlier this year, an official inquiry into the treatment of the Windrush generation ripped into the Home Office over 'appalling' failures that led to legal British residents being deported and made destitute .

The report - titled Windrush Lessons Learned Review - singled out for criticism the Government's 'hostile-environment' policy, which was brought in by the then home secretary, Theresa May, in 2012.

It was meant to crack down on illegal migrants, but caused 'profound' problems for legal migrants from the Windrush generation, who arrived in Britain from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Harry and Meghan have continued to use their former coronet logo. (Getty Images)

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan may be settling into a new life in Los Angeles, but they are still keeping up to date with the charities they supported in the UK.

As well as video messages and calls, the royal couple has been sending letters to charities thanking them for their work in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the letters have come in for criticism from some royal watchers, particularly those who think the couple should change the monogram symbol at the top of their letters.

Harry and Meghan have their first initials interwoven in a monogram which sits as the header on their letters, with a crown on top.

Some think the couple should get rid of the crown now that they have stepped back as senior royals.

One joked: Must have leftover stationary. [sic]

Another said: They need to take that crown out of that M logo.

One said: No royalty-no crown!

Harry and Meghan use a coronet because he is the son of the Heir Apparent. (Getty Images)

However, the couple appears to be allowed to use the coronet on the top of their monogram despite agreeing to drop their HRH stylings.

In May 2018, the Royal Family announced a new coat of arms had been created for Meghan, and that a coronet had been assigned to her.

At the time, a press release explained: It is the Coronet laid down by a Royal Warrant of 1917 for the sons and daughters of the Heir Apparent. It is composed of two crosses patee, four fleurs-de-lys and two strawberry leaves.

Harrys position as a son of the Heir Apparent has not changed as he stepped back, so the coronet will still be assigned to them both.

Re: The use of Coronet in ones monogram



Sarah & Diana continued to use coronet in their monograms after their divorce, even though both lost their HRH style. pic.twitter.com/pzQmYZjOQ7  Gert's Royals (@Gertsroyals) June 21, 2020

Read more: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archewell trademark application is too vague

Story continues

Royal blogger Gerts Royals, a site which regularly writes to royals around the world, pointed out that Harry and Meghan are not the only royals to drop duties and continue using a coronet.

The blogger directed people to letters from Harrys mother, Diana, and Sarah, the Duchess of York, who both lost their HRH stylings after their divorces from Princes Charles and Andrew respectively.

Despite those divorces and the stripping of their stylings, the letters from Diana and Sarah continued to use coronets.

Princess Beatrice & Eugenie use the coronets of the children of the son of the sovereign in their monograms. Although for Eugenie & Jacks joint monogram does not use a coronet as he is not a Royal. pic.twitter.com/Q0KUd5zZE9  Gert's Royals (@Gertsroyals) June 21, 2020

And Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who are Prince Andrews children, also use coronets in their letterheads.

The sisters have never been working royals, and dont carry out duties on behalf of the crown.

Interestingly, Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank, dont have a crown on their joint monogram.

However this is likely to be because Eugenie was not given a new title by the Queen on her wedding day, as she is a woman, and they are only bestowed on male heirs.

A 2nd reply from Duchess Sarah for the Christmas Letter I sent. This one thanking me for the congratulations on Princess Beatrice's engagement I had mentioned in my Christmas Letter. https://t.co/ZdYUGrPF4i pic.twitter.com/CPXK3cKNMs  Gert's Royal Replies (@GertsReplies) March 24, 2020

Read more: Why are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepping back as senior royals?

It does appear that Sarah Ferguson has stopped using the same monogram now, as newer replies from her feature an S design without a coronet on top.

Harry and Meghan no longer use the Sussex Royal brand, and mothballed the corresponding Instagram account at the end of March when they stepped back.

However with the launch of their new organisation, Archewell, on hold, the couple could opt to swap their royal emblem once it is up and running.

Until then, they are likely to keep using the former logo by which we recognise their correspondence.
By Akbar Mammadov

Azerbaijan has experienced a sharp decline in the number of incoming tourists since March due to the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic, the State Statistics Committee reported on June 22.

According to the report, in January-May 2020, 563,900 foreigners and stateless persons visited Azerbaijan from 152 countries, thus the countrys tourism shrunk by 1.9 times compared to the same period in 2019.

Majority of the tourists were from Russia (30.2 percent) and Georgia (27.3 percent) in January-May 2020.

Some 13.2 percent of the visitors came from Turkey, 6.7 percent from Iran, 2.2 percent from India, 2.1 percent from Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, 1.4 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 1.3 percent in Pakistan, Kuwait and Kazakhstan, 1.1 percent in Turkmenistan, 0.9 percent in Iraq and the United Kingdom, 0.8 percent from Uzbekistan; 0.7 percent were citizens of Israel, 6.4 percent were citizens of other countries, and 0.1 percent were stateless persons.

As to the gender of the visitors, 75.1 percent of the visitors were men, while 24.9 percent were women.

In January-May this year, the number of visitors from China decreased by 5.5 times, from South Korea - 4,4 times, from the United Arab Emirates - 4.1 times, from Poland - 3.8 times, from Japan - 3.7 times, from the UK - 3.5 times, from Canada and Israel - 3.3 times, from Hungary - 3.2 times, from the United States and France - 3.1 times, whereas from rom Germany and the Netherlands - 3.0 times, from Italy - 2.9 times, Malaysia and Turkmenistan -2.7 times.

Overall, the number of arrivals from EU member countries decreased by 3.4 times, amounting to 16.2 thousand people, while the figure from Gulf countries decreased by 2.2 times to 75.3 thousand people, from CIS countries decreased by 1.9 times to 205.4 thousand people.

Some 66.9 percent of foreigners and stateless persons came to Azerbaijan by rail and road, whereas 31.6 percent of them arrived by air and 1.5 percent by sea.

As to the number of Azerbaijani citizens visiting abroad, the figure decreased by 2.2 times, amounting 958.8 thousand people. Some 33.5 percent of the country's citizens visited Iran, 29.7 percent Georgia, 20.4 percent the Russian Federation, 9.6 percent Turkey and 6.8 percent other countries. In addition, 69.3 percent of those who left were men and 30.7 percent were women.

During this period, the number of Azerbaijani citizens traveling to Iran decreased by 2.5 times, to Turkey by 2.2 times, to Georgia by 2.0 times, and the number of those traveling to the Russian Federation declined by 1.9 times

Thus, in January-April 2020, 82.0 percent of the citizens of Azerbaijan who visited foreign countries used railways and automobiles, while 16.4 percent and 1.6 percent of them traveled by air and sea, respectively.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
In a series of tweets, Jane Manchun Wong has demonstrated a number of new features that will be coming to Google Maps soon. The first of these is one that allows you to share your route with Uber drivers in order to get more accurate fees. The other is a feature entitled Connections to Public Transit to help users better plan their routes.

This comes shortly after Google Maps introduced other new feature to the app over recent weeks. These included the ability to be notified about crowds on public transport.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, this was an important new feature. Additionally, Google Maps finally began supporting YouTube Music.

Advertisement

New UI features for Google Maps

Included in this connections to public transit function is a firs-mile option as reported by 9to5. The idea here is for users to pick what transport they would use for the first mile of their journey.

Then what mode they would like to use for the remainder. This is designed mainly for commuters who perhaps live a small distance away from a bus or train station.

The new feature would allow them to use Google Maps to calculate the best routes which encompass their need to travel by two different methods. The different modes of transport offered as part of this feature include car, bike, rickshaw, motorcycle, or a ride-sharing service such as Uber or Lyft.

Advertisement

On top of this feature, Google is working on ways to integrate ride-sharing apps into its functionality. The tweet shows just Uber as an example. However, presumably, other services will be included as the updates are rolled out.

The idea behind this new feature is to allow users to share their route on their ride-sharing app. This, in turn, would provide immediate and accurate fare from within Google Maps itself.

This is in itself not a major change to the app. However, this is one one that could potentially be very useful to the user.

Advertisement

As part of this new update, Google will also be working on tighter integration with Bay Wheels, a bike-sharing service in San Francisco. Clearly the aim here is to try and best link up with as many ride-sharing apps as possible in order to best provide for all users.

Overall, these updates are in no way ground-breaking. However, they do appear to be sensible, intuitive and serve a useful purpose to the users.

Being able to use the first-mile function will be of great use to commuters. Additionally, integration with ride-sharing apps will be of benefit to both companies and the user as well.
There is no end to the exceptional people who have gone above and beyond for their community during the Covid crisis.

Entries continue to flood in for our Spirit of Northern Ireland Covid-19 Heroes awards and this week we are delighted to put the spotlight on three more finalists who have fulfilled vital roles during the pandemic.

Dr Martin Duffy





Expand Close Dr Martin Duffy Consultant Anaesthia ICU with his Spirit of Northern Ireland COVID heroes award. Picture: Colm O'Reilly / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Dr Martin Duffy Consultant Anaesthia ICU with his Spirit of Northern Ireland COVID heroes award. Picture: Colm O'Reilly





Dr Duffy is a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care in the Mater Hospital in Belfast who was transferred early on in the pandemic to work with his team in the new Nightingale hospital.

It has been a challenging and emotive time for this experienced medic, with long hours spent away from his young family.

His wife Claire is also a consultant in the Northern Trust and the couple, who live in Lisburn, have two girls, Emma (13) and Sarah (10).

Dr Duffy says: "When the Mater Hospital was designated as the Covid centre for Belfast, we felt apprehensive and anxious about the impact of this devastating disease. Within the hospital I encountered fantastic work from medical, nursing and other health professionals addressing the needs of patients, while looking out for each other.

"It has been a time of profound pressure on our systems and the combined efforts of our colleagues have been fantastic.

"The focus of my work has been intensive care during Covid where it is our privilege to care for those patients who represent the most sick in the hospital.

"Within ICU we would consider all of our patients as the most seriously impacted. In general the group of patients with Covid were very seriously ill and required more intense therapy for a longer time compared to our usual experience.

"It was not unusual for patients to require organ support for several weeks. We are still learning about this disease and the consequences for patients who have recovered. Our thoughts remain with the families of those who succumbed to Covid-19 despite the ongoing efforts of our healthcare colleagues locally and globally."

Haydn Hassard



Expand Close Spirit of Northern Ireland winner with Haydn Hassard and Ulster Bank Personal Banking Mandy Cudlip at Springhill Retail Park, Bangor Branch. Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Spirit of Northern Ireland winner with Haydn Hassard and Ulster Bank Personal Banking Mandy Cudlip at Springhill Retail Park, Bangor Branch.





Haydn was nominated by his neighbours in Seahaven Residential Park in Groomsport, Co Down.

The 65-year-old stepped up to the mark at the first sign of the pandemic, setting up a team of volunteers so that everyone in the community had a point of contact for shopping and other needs.

As the average age of this retirement community is 75, the majority of residents have had to self-isolate.

Haydn and his residents' committee have not only delivered food parcels but set up online groups to keep community spirit alive. He also contacted local shops and arranged for food deliveries, and has spent two hours each day walking around the park ensuring everyone has what they need.

Modest about his role, he says: "It really was a team effort. I knew a lot of the people who live here would be vulnerable and would need support, and everyone stepped up to the plate to help.

"One of the biggest things was communication and we set up a WhatsApp group which has 170 people in it and it soon developed into them sharing yarns and jokes, and it proved a real lifeline."

After a very successful social distancing VE Day celebration with music generously supplied by Third Source in Belfast, Haydn is now hoping to have the company back for a "coming out of lockdown party".

And true to his nature, he aims to use his 150 shopping vouchers received for being one of our award heroes to buy food for the celebration.

Aideen Hughes

Expand Close Aideen Hughes pictured with Mark Linton, branch manager of Ulster Bank at Culmore Road in Derry. Picture by Trevor McBride / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Aideen Hughes pictured with Mark Linton, branch manager of Ulster Bank at Culmore Road in Derry. Picture by Trevor McBride





Limavady Grammar School music teacher Aideen (51) sprung into action during lockdown to help those working in vital services.

After raising over 3,000 to buy fabric, she coordinated over 20 volunteers to make and distribute masks, face visors, scrubs and scrub bags.

In total the team provided over 300 sets of scrubs, more than 2,000 masks and 40 face visors with cartoons for staff working in the local children's ward.

She says: "I would send out baby blankets and clothes to Greece for refugees and have a Facebook group who help make the blankets. I quickly turned it into a scrub and mask group.

"People have been really great volunteering to help and thankfully things have eased now and there are not as many requests.

"To be able to do something you know will make a difference is not just practical and helpful but good for your own wellbeing."
The Indian Army has changed its rules of engagement on the Line of Actual Control with China, which will allow field commanders to order troops to use firearms under "extraordinary" circumstances. This follows the violent clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers on June 15, when 20 soldiers, including 16 Bihars commanding officer Col. Santosh Babu, were killed.

Sources said the Chinese were informed about the change in the rules of engagement and that India will respond forcefully to any violence. Earlier, under the 1996 India-China agreement, Army and ITBP jawans did not carry loaded guns during patrolling and gun barrels were pointed downwards. Now commanders can use any weapon as they see fit during any aggression by Chinese troops.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday met CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat and the Army,

Air Force and Navy chiefs to review situation along the LAC as the situation in Ladakh remained tense. Hardening its stance, India has given its armed forces deployed at the LAC full freedom, said sources. The armed forces have been asked to maintain strict vigil on all Chinese activities around the land border, airspace and in strategic sea lanes, and to adopt a tough line in tackling any Chinese misadventure.

Mr Singh, who will leave for Moscow on Monday, also discussed the arms and

ammunition requirements of the Indian forces. Mr Singh will attend the victory parade on June 24 marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II. A Chinese defence team will also visit Russia, and both Indian and Chinese soldiers will join the parade. Mr Singh is also expected to discuss defence purchases with Russia.

A PTI report, meanwhile, said the vice-chiefs of the three services have been given financial powers upto Rs 500 crores per project to acquire critical ammunition and weapons that will be needed if an all-out or limited conflict breaks out.

The Ladakh situation remains tense after the June 15 clash. Union minister and

former Army chief Gen. V.K. Singh said Saturday that more than double Chinese

soldiers were also killed. He also said India too had returned the Chinese soldiers who crossed over to the Indian side.
Anusha Ravi By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Following the spike in the number of COVID-19 cases especially in marketplaces and wards attached to them, the Karnataka government has decided to seal these hotspot clusters and adjoining streets.

Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday held an emergency meeting to monitor the spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in the state and specifically Bengaluru where the decision was taken to seal marketplaces like Kalasipalya, KR Market, Chamarajpete and Chikpete till June 31.

"Many wards in Chamarajapet, Chikpete and Kalasipalya, especially near the marketplaces, are reporting more cases. We have noticed that these are the sources of the infection. Officials will issue orders to seal them," said R Ashoka, Revenue Minister.

"The number of cases is increasing in Bengaluru at an alarming rate. Stringent lockdown measures need to be implemented. COVID-19 should be contained without affecting economic activity in Bengaluru which resumed recently," Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa is said to have told officials.

At the high level meeting where Deputy Chief Minister Dr CN Ashwathnarayana, Revenue Minister R Ashoka, Home Minister Basavraj Bommai, Chief Secretary Vijaya Bhaskar and other senior officials of other departments were present, it was also decided to rope in beds at private hospitals for COVID-19 treatment. "Real time updates on beds available hospital-wise should be given to the war room for immediate assistance. The government will cap prices for COVID-19 treatment in private hospitals," Ashoka said.

Home minister Basavraj Bommai said that a request to prioritise police personnel and frontline COVID-19 warriors for testing and treatment has been made to the Chief Minister.

"We have sought a dedicated lab to test samples from the police department and COVID-19 warriors. The state government has also decided to set up fever clinics at each ward level and appoint officials and volunteers at ward level to monitor those under home quarantine and sealed down localities. "Those who jump quarantine will be booked. Officials have been asked to file criminal cases if need be," Ashoka added.
Visa (NYSE: V) today announced a global commitment to elevate 50 million small and micro businesses (SMBs) worldwide in an effort to get local communities back to business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Visa is introducing a range of locally designed programs and solutions to enable SMBs to drive efficiency and sales through acceptance of digital payments, building online businesses and incentivizing neighborhood support. As part of the global commitment, Visa also formed the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute (VEEI) focused on economic and societal issues, including pandemic challenges SMBs face and closing racial and gender opportunity gaps.

Small businesses will play a vital role in helping communities around the world recover  they account for more than half of global employment and yet, are among the most affected by the pandemic. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, 43% of SMBs say they only have money to last six months1 and less than half of SMBs have any online business2.

In addition to the economic impact, COVID-19 is accelerating the use of digital commerce experiences, from people seeking new ways to pay that do not involve touching a terminal to a boom in eCommerce, as stay-home orders result in shopping online instead of in-store. How much people spend online is also increasing globally, with spend per active card-not-present cardholder up by over 25% in April, compared to January3.

Small businesses on the frontlines of the global economy deserve extraordinary support in this extraordinary time, said Al Kelly, CEO and chairman of Visa. We are putting our network to work to help 50 million businesses globally not only survive, but also to thrive, along with the communities they serve.

To help small businesses, Visa is focusing initially on four strategic areas to promote digital commerce and economic growth, with plans to continue to create products and services as the needs of entrepreneurs change over time. These areas include:

Empowering digital-first businesses: Visa has built localized online resource centers  now available in more than 20 countries providing tools, partner offers and information on how to start, run and grow digital-first small businesses. Across European markets, Visa is investing to increase the number of digital payment acceptance devices within shops by more than 50%. In the U.S., Visa is expanding its partnership with IFundWomen providing grants and digital training to U.S.-based Black women-owned small businesses.

Visa has built localized online resource centers  now available in more than 20 countries providing tools, partner offers and information on how to start, run and grow digital-first small businesses. Across European markets, Visa is investing to increase the number of digital payment acceptance devices within shops by more than 50%. In the U.S., Visa is expanding its partnership with IFundWomen providing grants and digital training to U.S.-based Black women-owned small businesses. Encouraging digital payments: Major shifts in consumer behavior have occurred around the globe, including the overarching need for a touchless experience at the point-of-sale as 90% of shoppers are hesitant to shop in-store due to coronavirus. 4 Deploying easy to adopt contactless payment technology  rapidly, and at scale  is critical to enabling faster, more secure commerce. Visa is working with a range of partners to increase the number of locations where consumers can tap their contactless card or mobile phone. Starting in July, Visa street teams will visit merchants to provide back to business kits with new point-of-sale materials, branding, educational resources and special offers. The program will kick off in the 50 largest U.S. cities and expand globally to 15 countries including Singapore, Italy, and South Africa.

Major shifts in consumer behavior have occurred around the globe, including the overarching need for a touchless experience at the point-of-sale as 90% of shoppers are hesitant to shop in-store due to coronavirus. Deploying easy to adopt contactless payment technology  rapidly, and at scale  is critical to enabling faster, more secure commerce. Visa is working with a range of partners to increase the number of locations where consumers can tap their contactless card or mobile phone. Starting in July, Visa street teams will visit merchants to provide back to business kits with new point-of-sale materials, branding, educational resources and special offers. The program will kick off in the 50 largest U.S. cities and expand globally to 15 countries including Singapore, Italy, and South Africa. Incentivizing neighborhood support: Visa partnerships encourage consumers to shop local and remind them that where you shop matters. The Visa Back to Business Project  an online tool that helps consumers identify businesses that may be open in the wake of the pandemic or a natural disaster  is now live in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., and further expanding globally. In Europe and across Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, Visa has launched new SMB initiatives that champion and enable entrepreneurs while encouraging consumers to support small businesses. Visa is teaming up with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, and restaurant delivery companies, including Deliveroo, to reward consumers for spending their money locally.

Visa partnerships encourage consumers to shop local and remind them that where you shop matters. The Visa Back to Business Project  an online tool that helps consumers identify businesses that may be open in the wake of the pandemic or a natural disaster  is now live in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., and further expanding globally. In Europe and across Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, Visa has launched new SMB initiatives that champion and enable entrepreneurs while encouraging consumers to support small businesses. Visa is teaming up with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, and restaurant delivery companies, including Deliveroo, to reward consumers for spending their money locally. Developing positioning and policy: In addition to the initiatives Visa is undertaking, the company today announced the formation of the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute. This new institute comprised of Visa experts and partners will help address underlying problems and provide insights for SMB growth and closing racial/gender gaps. Key projects in the next six months will address topics including post-crisis recovery and resilience, urban mobility, closing equality opportunity gaps and insights into the gig economy.

Todays announcement follows a global commitment from the Visa Foundation, announced in April, to provide $210 million in COVID-19 relief funding to address the longer-term needs of the small and micro business community over the next five years.

As the trusted engine of commerce, Visa is committed to leveraging its global network of networks to help the world adapt, rebuild and get everyone back to business.

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the worlds leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The companys relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device, for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit About Visa, visa.com/blog and @VisaNews.

1 U.S. Chamber of Commerce & MetLife Special Report on Coronavirus and Small Business, April 3, 2020

2Visa Digital Transformation of SMBs, 2018

3 Visa data, April 2020

4Retail Systems Research Consumer Report, March 2020

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005135/en/
[June 22, 2020] Border Security Market Report Application Analysis, Size, Trend, Analysis -2023

Border Security Market  Overview The global market for border security is increasing at a rapid pace. According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global market of border security will grow at a rapid pace over the forecast period. The market is forecasted to witness a slow but steady growth by 2023, which will be a surplus growth at a moderate CAGR during the projected period (2017 -2023).







A sudden rise in terrorist activities across the world has forced nations to rethink on protection of the national boundaries. Security systems are equipped with different types of cameras, such as pan, tilt, and zoom cameras, which are connected to internet, to gives access to the information from required locations by wired or wireless connectivity. Aspects, such as rising tension across borders and growing terrorism, are expected to gear up the market growth over the forecast period The security systems offer various benefits such as keeping accounts for information, suburban areas & enable nations against terrorism & investigation activities in commercial, external threats at different locations. The acceptance of these systems is considerably high in the military sector. Reason behind this is the rise in threat of terrorism and cross-border interventions.



Technological upgradation in the system has facilitated surveillance at remote and critical locations from the precision point of view. This has further increased the implementation rate of advanced security systems with larger product features and improved performance with respect to border security. The security market is predicted to grow in the domain of government & law enforcement area due to the increased crime rates across the globe.





The problem of border protection was at lesser side, especially in the European Continent until a few years back. The Schengen agreement allowed free movement amongst the members of the European Union, which had allowed for less investment in the border protection measures. The rise of ISIS and the never-ending inflow of immigrants has forced the members of the European Union to strengthen their border security devices.



North America controls the market in terms of revenue generation. The operations in Syria and Libya against terrorist outfits are prompting the U.S. to use advanced border security system technology.



The Asia Pacific border security system market is segmented into countries such as China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Asia Pacific region will also see major activity in the border protection space. The conflict in the South China Sea has forced the nations such as Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan to reinforce the border security processes against the Chinese. South Korea and Japan will be employing various features to counter the threats from North Korea and China respectively. The European market along with the Asia Pacific region will be as a result the fastest growing market in the forecast period.



India remains the essential country in terms of border disputes in the Asia Pacific. Traditional conflict with Pakistan and impact of repeated terrorist activities emerging from the latter has compelled India to invest heavily in border infrastructure and surveillance. Moreover, territorial disputes with China along the Himalayan ranges have also resulted in increased investments by the Indian Government in the recent years. Persistent impact of immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar has raised interior security concerns among the law implementation forces in the country, leading the Government to establish border enclosures and improved surveillance capabilities along the borders.



Industry/ Innovation/ Related News: April 2018: Indian Government had started new project to protect Indias borders with Bangladesh and Pakistan. The smart fence system was a project that was implemented by the Border Security Forces (BSF) to close the susceptible gaps along Indias border with Pakistan and Bangladesh.



April 2018: The Defence Department of U.S. had improved its support to the Department of Homeland Security to protect the U.S. border with Mexico.



Key Players: Lockheed Martin Corporation (U.S.), Raytheon company (U.S.), Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.), Thales SA (France), BAE Systems Plc (U.K), FLIR systems, Inc. (U.S.), and Elbit systems Ltd. (Israel), Cobham plc (U.K), DRS Technologies (U.S.), General Atomics (U.S.), and others are some of the prominent players profiled in MRFR Analysis and are at the forefront of competition in the global border security market.



Border Security Market  Segmentation The global border security market is segmented in to 3 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding; Segmentation by Platform : Ground, Aerial, Naval Segmentation by System : Laser, Radar, Camera, Wide Band Wireless Communication, Perimeter Intrusion, Unmanned Vehicles, C2C, Biometric Systems and Others Segmentation by Regions : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America.



Access Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/border-security-market-1662 As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Recent trends in Covid-19 data appear to show little signs of slowing, as a number of states continued to report a rise in new cases and hospitalizations. The World Health Organization reported record rises in several countries, and denied claims that increased testing is the sole driver behind higher case numbers. 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 U.S. team. Global cases: More than 9.0 million

Global deaths: At least 472,171

U.S. cases: More than 2.3 million

U.S. deaths: At least 120,402 The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

South Africa's president warns on forthcoming budget

11:00 a.m. London time: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that "difficult decisions and difficult days lie ahead" as the country tries to deal with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. In an address to the nation Monday, Ramaphosa highlighted that businesses in all sectors had announced job cuts or total closures as a result of losses incurred since the nation implemented strict lockdown measures on March 26. Aware of the economic toll being wreaked by the lockdowns, the government has begun lifting restrictions, but South Africa now has 101,590 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the most on the continent, with 1,991 deaths as of Tuesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University.  Elliot Smith

Euro zone downturn eases significantly in June

09:30 a.m. London time: The downturn in the euro zone continued to ease in June, according to data from IHS Markit Tuesday, giving the latest indication of the region's economic health as it emerges from the pandemic. Flash purchasing manager's index (PMI) data, that measures activity in both the services and manufacturing sector in the euro zone, came in at 47.5 in June, up from a final reading of 31.9 in May. The 50-point mark separates contraction from expansion. Economists polled by Reuters had expected the flash June PMI to come in at 42.4. The 15.6-point rise was by far the largest in the survey history with the exception of May's record increase, IHS Markit said.  Holly Ellyatt

Chinese firm gets approval to begin human testing for potential vaccine

1:05 p.m. (Singapore time)  China approved a vaccine candidate co-developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical  a business unit of the publicly listed Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products  and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Reuters reported. The approval would allow the firm to begin clinical trials. Chinese researchers and companies are testing six experimental shots in humans, and more than a dozen vaccines are in different stages of clinical trials globally, according to Reuters.  Saheli Roy Choudhury

New York City ER doctor says he hopes America learned from city's outbreak

6:48 p.m. ET  Dr. Craig Spencer, of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told CNBC he hopes Americans learn from New York City's coronavirus outbreak. "I think that people here remember how bad it was, really just a month, two months, ago and we don't want to go through that again," Spencer said on "Closing Bell," while referencing how many New Yorkers he saw wearing face coverings on the subway. "We're hoping that everyone around the country learns the lessons that we, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way," added Spencer, who survived Ebola in 2014 after contracting it while working in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. Kevin Stankiewicz

Trump to halt entry of certain foreign workers, opening up an estimated 525,000 jobs, official says

6:30 p.m. ET  President Donald Trump will suspend H-1B and other types of visas for certain foreign workers through the end of the year, a senior administration official said, according to Reuters. The official said the move will open up 525,000 jobs for American workers, Reuters reported. Major tech companies and other businesses oppose the move, arguing that the halt would stifle the economy as the U.S. recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the news service. Trump's proclamation is not likely to have a large immediate effect, Reuters said, because many U.S. consulates remain closed for most routine visa processing. Michelle Gao, Reuters

California sees rising case numbers

5:30 p.m. ET  California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is still caught in the first wave of the coronavirus and that he expects cases to continue rising. The state reported 46,735 coronavirus cases over the past 14 days, representing 36% of California's total cases. "The positivity rate had been stable, but now it's going slightly up," Newsom said at a press briefing. Although more people are being tested in California, that doesn't provide the full explanation behind the rising case numbers, according to Newsom. He said the state is prepared to absorb further increases in positive cases in terms of providing hospital beds and care, and that he has mitigation strategies if the pandemic worsens in California. Newsom also gave an update on the state's challenging jobs situation. He said California has distributed $34.3 billion since March 15 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. "That's not something the state has ever had to do in the past," he said. Hannah Miller

Texas governor warns tougher actions will be required if cases, hospitalizations continue spiking

Diane, a nurse from Houston, Texas, sunbathes at the beach next to her husband, both wearing facemasks, in Miami Beach, Florida on June 16, 2020. Eva Marie Uzcategui | AFP via Getty Images

5:05 p.m. ET  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that "additional measures are going to be necessary" and the state will have to take "tougher actions" if daily coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to climb at current rates into July. On June 12, Abbott said that there's "no real need to ratchet back the reopening of businesses in the state." Texas has since reported days of record hospitalizations and daily increases in Covid-19 cases. "If we were to experience another doubling of those numbers over the next month, that would mean we're in an urgent situation where tougher actions will be required to make sure that we do contain the spread of Covid-19," he said. As of Sunday, there's been a seven-day average of 2,913 people currently hospitalized in Texas with Covid-19, a 37% increase compared with a week ago, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project. The state's seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases has increased more than 86% compared with a week ago, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Noah Higgins-Dunn

Contact tracing 'will save lives' if the U.S. builds it

Dr. Daniel Kombert, medical director for the Care Logistics Center and the director for the Clinical Command Center, middle, works with other medical professionals as they answer calls and track data at the Hartford HealthCare COVID-19 Command Center in Newington, Conn., on March 10, 2020. Kassi Jackson | Hartford Courant | Tribune News Service via Getty Images

4:30 p.m. ET  Contact tracing, in which trained health officials contact infected people to investigate the source of an outbreak and alert potentially exposed people, is one of the few proven tactics the U.S. has to combat the coronavirus.



In lieu of federal leadership, the effort has been largely relegated to often underfunded health departments that are struggling to meet the unprecedented demand placed on them by the coronavirus pandemic. [Contact tracing] is a standard tool and it really works, but when it's not in place, or in the case of when you start trying to implement it after the virus is quite literally already spreading in your community, it's almost impossible to catch up," said Dr. Karen Smith, former director of the California Department of Public Health. Here's how various cities and counties are ramping up their contact tracing programs. Will Feuer

San Francisco pushes for accelerated reopening

A pedestrian walks by a retail store that has reopened on June 16, 2020 in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

4 p.m. ET  San Francisco officials have requested state approval to accelerate the city's reopening as soon as next weeks, Mayor London Breed announced. Citing improvement of key health indicators such as daily new cases and hospital capacity, Breed said the city hopes to allow more businesses to reopen on June 29. She added that if the health indicators hold steady and the state approves the plans, zoos, outdoor swimming pools, outdoor bars, hair salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, nail salons and museums will be allowed to reopen. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said in a statement that cases of Covid-19 are expected to rise as the city moves deeper into reopening. "To keep that increase manageable and sustain our commitment to protecting the people most vulnerable to the virus, everyone in San Francisco must continue to take the precautions that save lives," he said. Will Feuer

Consumers are more cautious about dining out than they were in April

3:45 p.m. ET  More consumers are eating restaurant meals, but a survey says one in three does not expect to be comfortable eating in a restaurant until next year. That compares to 20% in a similar Bank of America survey in April. BofA surveyed 1,000 people on June 18. Just 48% of the respondents said they would go to a restaurant before Labor Day, down from 58% in April. About a quarter said they have no intentions of eating at a restaurant versus 8% or 9% who did not dine out before the virus-related state shutdowns. Patti Domm

Los Angeles International trials fever-screening cameras

Passengers arrive at LAX from Shanghai, China, after a positive case of the coronavirus was announced in the Orange County suburb of Los Angeles, California, January 26, 2020. Ringo Chiu | Reuters

3:20 p.m. ET  Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday will start trials of temperature-screening cameras, the latest effort by airports to weed out travelers who may have Covid-19. The cameras will be set up in both departure and arrival areas at Tom Bradley International Terminal and the trials will be voluntary, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. Departing passengers will be told by staff that they should not travel if they register temperatures of over 100.4 degrees. Arriving travelers will be referred to staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention if they register temperatures that high. Airports and airlines are scrambling to come up with ways to root out potential cases of Covid-19 and ease travelers fears about flying during the pandemic, which has sent demand down to the lowest levels in more than five decades. Air travel demand has rebounded from lows hit in April, it's still off around 80% from a year ago. Leslie Josephs

Apple announces hand-washing feature in new iOS

2:47 p.m. ET  Apple introduced features to encourage mask-wearing and hand-washing as part of its latest software for iPhones, Watches and other gadgets. The company at its Worldwide Developers Conference introduced a new feature for Apple Watch to help guide people to wash their hands, and its popular memoji can now be updated to include a cloth covering. The hand-washing follows Samsung's lead, and it works by providing a countdown timer to make sure that users are scrubbing their hands for at least 20 seconds. Christina Farr

WHO says global case uptick not a 'testing phenomenon'

2:09 p.m. ET  While some countries are testing more, it is not the sole reason reported coronavirus cases are reaching record numbers, the World Health Organization said, adding hospitalizations and deaths are rising as well. "We do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon," said Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program. "There definitely is a shift in the sense that the virus is now very well established on a global level," he added. In recent weeks in the U.S., some state and federal leaders have downplayed the recent rise in cases and hospitalizations, tying it to an increase in testing. On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he asked officials to "slow the testing down," reiterating his claims that more testing was the reason the U.S. has the most cases in the world. Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

2021 Golden Globes postponed

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, winner of Best Performance By An Actress In a Television Series - Musical or Comedy, poses in the press room during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 05, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. Daniele Venturelli | WireImage

1:30 p.m. ET The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has postponed the 2021 Golden Globes ceremony amid growing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. The event will now take place Feb. 28, 2021. Actors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are still slated to host the event, which will air live on NBC. The HFPA said it will provide further details about eligibility, voting and nomination announcements in the coming weeks. The Academy Awards, the Creative Arts Emmys and the Tony Awards have also been affected by Covid-19. The Primetime Emmys are still slated to take place Sept. 20, but the Television Academy is still trying to determine how to host the event safely. Sarah Whitten

Google's U.S. ad revenue will drop for the first time ever, as the pandemic delivers blow to businesses

12:55 p.m. ET  Google's U.S. advertising revenue will see its first-ever decline this year, according to research firm eMarketer, which began modeling the business in 2008. The new report shows the extent to which even Google's robust digital ad business has likely suffered during the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken an especially hard toll on some of the platform's biggest advertisers in the travel industry. While advertising on YouTube is expected to grow, it won't make up for Google's expected 7.2% drop in net U.S. search ad revenue this year, according to eMarketer. The model also signals that Google's digital advertising rivals may be able to close in on the company's No. 1 spot in share of digital ad spend in the U.S. Both Facebook and Amazon are expected to continue growing their U.S. advertising revenue this year, though at slower rates than in previous years. Facebook and Amazon's ad businesses have less exposure to the travel industry than Google, which could help them weather the crisis. Lauren Feiner

Disneyland Paris will reopen on July 15

Disney character Mickey Mouse is seen above the entrance at Disneyland Paris during the 25th anniversary of the park, in Marne-la-Vallee, near Paris, France. Benoit Tessier | Reuters

12:30 p.m. ET  Disney's Paris-based theme park will reopen July 15, the company said. The park will limit attendance, increase cleaning and require social distancing and face coverings. The company said that more than 2,000 sanitizing and hand-washing stations will be available throughout Disneyland Paris on opening day. Cast members will also undergo new health and safety training prior to the parks reopening and will encourage guests to social distance and use contactless payments when possible. Single rider and Fast Pass services will temporarily be suspended on attractions and traditional meet-and-greets will not be available. Guests will see characters from Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel around the park and will be able to take photos with them. However, close interactions, including hugs, are temporarily suspended. Sarah Whitten

Hospitalizations grow in Arizona, Texas as cases continue to increase across the U.S.

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

11:46 a.m. ET  As of Sunday, the nation's seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases increased more than 24% compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. Cases are growing by 5% or more in 25 states across the U.S., including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, hospitalizations from Covid-19 were growing in 14 states as of Sunday. In Texas, there have been 2,913 people currently hospitalized with Covid-19 based on a seven-day moving average, a 37% increase compared to a week ago. Arizona reported 1,702 people currently hospitalized on a seven-day average, a near 29% increase compared to a week ago. Noah Higgins-Dunn

Trump economic advisor Kudlow says a second wave 'isn't coming'

Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, June 15, 2020. Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

10:56 a.m. ET  President Donald Trump's chief economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said a second wave of the coronavirus "isn't coming" and he characterized reports of new cases in a handful of U.S. states as isolated hot spots. Kudlow's remarks to CNBC came after the U.S. reported more than 30,000 new infections on Friday and Saturday, the highest daily totals since May 1. Peter Navarro, one of Trump's top trade advisors, said Sunday that the White House is, in fact, preparing for another wave of the disease. Kudlow also said Monday that House, Senate and White House leaders will likely have another economic stimulus package in the weeks following Congress's July recess. Thomas Franck

Existing home sales plummet in May from coronavirus effect

10:52 a.m. ET  As the coronavirus pandemic continues to make an impact on the economy, existing home sales dropped 9.7% in May from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 3.91 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Annually, sales are down 26.6%, the largest annual decline since 1982, CNBC's Diana Olick reports. But realtors believe this could likely be the bottom point for home sales as the economy recovers. "Well into the month of June, I think people are much more relaxed, knowing that there is a massive stimulus package in the economy," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors. "I am very confident that this will be the cyclical low point. Buyers are coming back and listings are coming back." Suzanne Blake

Northeast unlikely to see spike despite reopening, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says

Scott Gottlieb, former Commissioner of the FDA Adam Jeffery | CNBC

10:34 a.m. ET  With New York City moving its next phase of reopening, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb says the city and region are unlikely to see a major spike in new cases. Some states mostly in the South and West that reopened early  before they had driven spread down to a contained level and before they had the necessary testing and tracing infrastructure in place  have seen major resurgences in infection over the past couple of weeks. "We'll see an increase in cases, but we're reopening against a much different backdrop," Gottlieb said on "Squawk Box." "So I wouldn't expect to see the big increases that they're seeing in the Southeast and the South here when we reopen." Gottlieb said that because so many people were initially infected in New York City and the tri-state region, a large portion of the population likely has some level of immunity against the virus already. That will help limit spread, Gottlieb added. William Feuer Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic-testing start-up Tempus and biotech company Illumina.

Minnesota Timberwolves want to increase social awareness with NBA jersey patch opening

10:27 a.m. ET  The Minnesota Timberwolves' season is officially ended, and the team is now looking to turn the page on the 2019-20 season, and the transition will include a change to the team jerseys. The Timberwolves' NBA jersey patch partnership with tech company Fitbit has expired, and the team is looking to add a new corporate sponsor that aligns with its renewed mission of combating racism and social inequality. Timberwolves COO Ryan Tanke told CNBC the club is seeking a company that will help "create impact in our community" and "be a champion for social advancement" as the Minnesota community continues to heal following the death of George Floyd. The Timberwolves have been one of the most hit organizations throughout the sports industry since March 12, when sports halted due to Covid-19. Timberwolves star center Karl-Anthony Towns' mother, Jacqueline, died on April 13 due to Covid-19. Tanke said both events are "critically important," adding Floyd's murder "unlocked for us this chance to be a vocal leader with Minneapolis being the epicenter of this." Jabari Young

Gilead to test easier-to-administer form of coronavirus drug

10:17 a.m. ET  Gilead Sciences announced it is looking to test an inhaled version of remdesivir, the antiviral drug that has shown to be modestly beneficial for people hospitalized with Covid-19. Remdesivir is administered intravenously. The company told investors earlier this year that it was looking to develop easier-to-administer versions of the drug, including an inhaled version. It will administer the drug through a nebulizer, a delivery device that can turn liquid medicines into mist. The drug can't be administered in pill form because its chemical makeup would impact the liver, the company noted. The company will screen healthy volunteers this week for the early-stage trial and hope to begin studies in patients with Covid-19 in August. Berkeley Lovelace, Jr.

Grocery stores look to robots, salad kiosks and more to revive prepared food

Texas grocer Central Market turned salad bars and hot bars into packaged food displays during the pandemic. Source: Central Market

8:53 a.m. ET  The idea of sharing a serving spoon with strangers at a salad bar or hot bar has quickly fallen from favor during the pandemic, and grocers are looking for new ways to revive prepared food. At Publix, an employee in a mask and gloves dishes out each item at the former self-serve food bars. Wegmans moved hummus and olives behind the cheese counter. And at H-E-B, some coolers carry packaged entrees from local restaurants. For some companies, the decline of the salad bar has created new opportunities. California-based Chowbotics is selling its foodservice robot, which can hold up to 22 ingredients, to grocers. Restaurant franchise Saladworks recently signed a deal to open staffed salad kiosks inside of more grocery stores. Melissa Repko

U.K. downgrades coronavirus threat level

8:20 a.m. ET  Chief medical officers in the U.K. lowered the nation's threat level around Covid-19 from "high or rising exponentially" to a benchmark of "general circulation," Reuters reported. Health officials noted that the pandemic is far from over and that localized outbreaks are likely to continue, Reuters reported, but cited the steady decrease in Covid-19 cases in making the change. The U.K. had been under threat level four, "transmission is high or rising exponentially," since mid-May. The U.K. is one of the hardest hit countries in the world with more than 50,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to official data. Alex Harring

Infection found at PepsiCo China factory, spurring production suspension

8:10 a.m.  PepsiCo China is halting production at one of its factories in Beijing in the Daxing district after at least one employee tested positive for Covid-19, the company said Sunday, according to Reuters. PepsiCo China director of corporate affairs Fan Zhimin said operations halted as soon as the first case was confirmed on June 15, Reuters reports. Pang Xinghuo, a senior official for the Beijing disease control authority, said eight people at the Daxing factory tested positive, the news service said. Suzanne Blake

South Korea fears it is battling 'second wave'

South Korean soldiers wearing protective gear spray disinfectant on the street to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, at a residential area in Seoul on March 9, 2020. Jung Yeon-Je | AFP | Getty Images

7:26 a.m. ET  Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time on Monday that the country is experiencing a "second wave" of coronavirus infections around the capital Seoul. On Monday, the director of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Jeong Eun-kyeong said a holiday in early May marked the beginning of a "second wave" of cases in the greater Seoul area, Reuters reported. "In the metropolitan area, we believe that the first wave was from March to April as well as February to March," Jeong said at a news briefing, according to Reuters. "Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on." South Korea has 12,438 confirmed cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University, and has reported 280 deaths. Holly Ellyatt

WHO reports record single-day spike in cases globally

Gravediggers carry the coffin of Avelino Fernandes Filho, 74, during his funeral who passed away from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 18, 2020. Ricardo Moraes | Reuters
A shift in the priorities of white Americans regarding racial equality, race scholars said, is critical to achieving it. In the first two weeks of coast-to-coast protests, support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased by nearly as much as it had the previous two years, according to Civiqs, an online research firm. Just over half of American voters support the movement, and in dozens of towns that held protests, the population was almost exclusively white.

This is the first time that I think a lot of us have felt that the battle is legitimately joined, the author Ta-Nehisi Coates said on The Ezra Klein Show last week. Significant swaths of people in nonblack communities, Mr. Coates said, have come to perceive something of the deep pain and suffering experienced by black Americans. I think thats different.

One source of angst for white Americans who say they want to dismantle racism, though, is not knowing precisely where to start. They worry about sounding racist and not sounding sufficiently anti-racist. Some have made misguided offers of cash to black acquaintances who feel condescended to. Others have formed anti-racist study groups with other white people  but worry that those, too, are lacking.

Ill be thinking, Constantly acknowledging racism right now, its so draining, said Erin Lunsford, 29, of Richmond, Va., who has engaged in dozens of conversations regarding defunding the police, a popular policy proposal among anti-racism activists that she initially rejected. And then Im like, Imagine being a black person doing that your whole life.

In the month since Mr. Floyds death, a museum on the courthouse square in Sumner, Miss., dedicated to Emmett Till, whose horrific 1955 murder helped to galvanize the civil rights movement, has received 10 times the usual number of calls. Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission  which founded the museum  said the callers were white Americans wanting to contribute to preservation projects or to help develop curriculum. Dozens more downloaded a smartphone app that guides users on a virtual tour of civil rights history.

Since the first week of protests, Akbar Watson, the owner of a black bookstore in Boynton Beach, Fla., has been slammed with book sales and requests from customers as far away as California and Maine. One day, he said, he sold 40 books before lunch. Another day, a woman in Ohio purchased 34 black childrens books for her daughters school classroom. And for the first time in his 28 years in business, he has sold out of books about racial inequalities.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday defended President Donald Trump's use of the racist term 'Kung flu' to describe the coronavirus, arguing he was merely pointing to its origins in China.

The president has referred to COVID-19 as the 'China virus' and the 'Wuhan virus,' to describe the disease first detected in China's Wuhan providence. But, at his campaign rally in Tulsa on Saturday, he added a new term to the mix: 'kung flu.'

'The president does not believe that it is offensive to note that this virus came from China,' McEnany said when asked about his use of the term.

McEnany was asked several times during her 20 minute briefing about Trump's use of the term and whether he considers it a racist phrase.

'The president doesn't,' she said. 'What the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China.'

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended President Donald Trump's use of the racist term 'Kung flu' to describe the coronavirus

President Donald Trump said at his rally in Tulsa on Saturday night of the coroanvirus: 'It has more names than any disease in history. I can name kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names'

She went on to say the president was pushing back against theories China has offered about the origins of COVID-19, including a conspiracy theory that American military members brought it when they were in the Wuhan area for the World Military Games in October 2019.

Scientists believe the virus made the jump from animals to humans at Wuhan's wet markets, which sell a variety of exotic animal meat.

'It's a fair thing to point out as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history,' McEnany said. 'To ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers. This is what China is trying to do. President Trump is trying to say no, China, I will label this virus for its place of origin.'

The president, speaking in Tulsa, Oklahoma at his first rally in three months on Saturday night, said of the virus: 'It has more names than any disease in history. I can name kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names.'

Trump's own adviser, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, in March called the term 'wrong and highly offensive' when CBS reporter Weijia Jiang, who is Chinese American, said in March an administration official used the term when speaking to her.

Jiang was at Monday's briefing and asked McEnany what message Trump's use of the term sent to Asian Americans, who find 'kung flu' deeply offensive.

'The president has said it is important that we protect our Asian community in the U.S. and around the world.

'They are amazing people and the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way, shape or form.

'They are working closely with us to get rid of it and we will prevail together and it is very important. If not a discussions about Asian-Americans, who the president values and prizes as citizens of this great country. It's an indictment of China for letting this virus get here,' McEnany said.

She also ignored a question on whether Trump and Conway disagree on the term.

But she did attack the media, pointing out several news organizations have used the terms 'Chinese coronavirus' and 'Wuhan coronavirus.'

'I would also point out that the media blames President Trump for using the term China virus and Wuhan virus when they themselves are viewed these very terms,' she said.

'The media is trying to play games with the terminology of this virus where the focus should be on the fact that China left us out of our country,' she added. 'While the media wants to focus on nomenclature, the president is going to focus on action.'

Trump's own adviser, Kellyanne Conway, in March called the term 'kung flu' virus 'highly offensive'

CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reported in March that a White House official referred to coronavirus as 'kung flu' to her face

President Trump was criticized for calling COVID-19 the 'China virus' after there was an increase in attacks on Asian Americans.

He told reporters earlier this year that he used the description because the virus originated in the Wuhan province of China.

'It's not racist at all. It comes from China, that's why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate,' he said.

The media has not used the term 'kung flu' and McEnany ignored questions about the racist origins of the phrase, saying of Trump: 'He is linking it to its place of origin.'

And she was clear President Trump does not regret using the term.

'The president never regrets putting the onus back on China, pointing out that China is responsible for this and in the process standing up for U.S. troops who are being blamed by China and a campaign of misinformation,' she said.

Trump's offensive term for the virus wasn't his only comment from Saturday's rally that his staff had to defend.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that President Trump was being 'tongue-in-cheek' when he claimed during his rally that he told his administration to cut down on coronavirus testing so U.S. numbers would artificial be decreased.

During an interview with CNN's State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Navarro about the moment the president said during his rally Saturday night: 'I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'

'C'mon now, Jake, that was tongue-in-cheek,' the Navarro repeatedly told Tapper.

'I don't know that it was tongue-in-cheek at all,' the host pushed back. 'He has said similar things for months.'

Navarro, who claimed talking about coronavirus is 'not in my lane,' insisted that Tapper instead ask him about 'serious issues.'

'I think testing is a very serious issue. I'm not the one making jokes about it,' Tapper asserted.

'Come on. It was a light moment,' Navarro shot back.

White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro claimed Sunday morning that Donald Trump was being 'tongue-in-cheek' when he claimed he told his people to 'slow down' testing to artificially lower U.S. coronavirus numbers

'I don't know that it was tongue-in-cheek at all,' Tapper pushed back. 'I think testing is a very serious issue. I'm not the one making jokes about it,' he said when Navarro said it was a 'light' moment

Donald Trump told the crowd at his comeback rally on Saturday night that he told his administration to slow down testing so the number of confirmed cases would be lowered

Trump told a cheering crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma during his comeback rally Saturday night that he directed his administration to slow down testing for coronavirus.

He claimed the success in testing capabilities and availability is a 'double-edged sword' that has led to more cases being discovered than any other country is reporting.

During the rally, Trump said the U.S. has now tested 25 million people  far more than other countries.

The 'bad part,' Trump said, is that widespread testing leads to logging more cases of the virus.

'When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please,' the president said.

A White House official later told reporters after the rally that Trump was just joking and made the comment in jest.

'He was obviously kidding. We are leading the world in testing and have conducted 25 million + in testing,' the official said.

When asked about the moment, Navarro dismissed that the president was being serious.

Tapper countered: 'I'm not sure that a deadly pandemic, where almost 120,000 Americans died, is really a good subject for a 'light moment.''

But Navarro said the president was taking those deaths 'absolutely seriously.'

President Donald Trump looked fatigued as he touched back down on the South Lawn of the White House early Sunday, returning from his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a red MAGA hat in hand

'There's still space,' the Trump campaign texted supporters who signed up for the Tulsa rally as the center was filled with empty blue seats

McEnany also said Trump took the number of coronavirus deaths seriously, saying his comment on testing was directed to the media.

'The president was trying to expose what the media, oftentimes does is they ignore the fact that the United States has more cases because we have more testing. We are leading the world in testing, and he was pointing that out that it's a fact that the media readily ignores,' she said at her briefing on Monday.

'It was a comment that he made in jest. It's comment that he made in passing,' she added.

Trump's rally, which was supposed to reset his campaign as he trailed Joe Biden in the polls and saw his approval ratings dip for his handling of the coroanvirus and race relations, instead became a point of controversy even before it began.

Originally scheduled for Friday, which was Juneteenth, officials pushed it back a day after the date conflict was pointed out along with Tulsa's setting as one of the worst race riots in history, where more than 300 people died.

Plus a total of eight member of the advance team tested positive for COVID-19.

'After another round of testing for campaign staff in Tulsa, two additional members of the advance team tested positive for the coronavirus,' Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told DailyMail.com. 'These staff members attended the rally but were wearing masks during the entire event.'

Upon receiving the news of more positive tests 'the campaign immediately activated established quarantine and contact tracing protocols,' Murtaugh added.

Additionally, the rally was so sparsely attended that plans for President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to address an overflow crowd at an outdoor stage were scrapped on Saturday afternoon when it was apparent such crowds were not going to appear.

Inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center, only 6,2000 people showed up, according to Tulsa officials, leaving rows of empty blue seats to greet the president when he took the stage.

Trump's campaign has privately admitted that as many as 300,000 of the people who signed up for Saturday's rally were online tricksters as the president's fury mounted over the lack of attendance.

Trump and his campaign manager Brad Parscale bragged that one million tickets had been requested.

After going through the signups, the campaign determined that around 300,000 were fake, Politico reported, and, after analyzing the data further, determined that between 200,000 and 300,000 people lived in driving distance.

The worst case scenario was that 60,000 people would show up.

Their estimates were off by thousands and a furious Trump yelled at his staff backstage at the BOK Center before he went out to address the supporters who did show up.

Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican Party, argued on Monday that the 6,200 attendance number was wrong and that the number of people in the arena was at least doubled that.

'I talked of the campaign this morning, and they said it was double that at least,' she told Fox News. 'I do think there was a little chaos in Tulsa and they disperse the crowds early that people in the front row who were camping out were forced to leave early.'

She attributed the low attendance to Sunday being Father's Day.

'You had it being on Father's Day weekend, people who were scared about violence and coronavirus but people showed up and having 11 million people watch online shows that enthusiasm exists,' she said.

And White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump wasn't angry at the crowd size.

'The president was not angry at all, the president was quite energized, I was with him after the rally, it was a huge success, his speech got rave reviews. He was in great spirits on Marine One,' she told Fox News Monday morning.

'He was in very good spirits,' she added.

Furious President Donald Trump yelled at staff backstage over the low turnout at his much-hyped rally in Tulsa on Saturday before he went out to address supporters

The President tees off at the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, Sunday

President Trump's campaign denies claims that teens on social media and K-pop fans reserved the bulk of tickets for the rally in Tulsa on Saturday. The upper section of the BOK Center is partially empty during the event (above)

President Trump (left) was reportedly 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd size in Tulsa on Saturday, though it appears that campaign manager Brad Parscale's (right) job is safe for now

But, on Saturday night, Looking at row after row of empty blue seats, Trump was stunned and vented his frustration to his aides, The New York Times reported, although Parscale was not present for the tongue-lashing.

There are no further campaign rallies scheduled. President Trump had said his campaign was planning events in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas - but nothing has been announced.

The president, who has no public events on his schedule for Monday, will be in Arizona on Tuesday to visit the border and address an assembly of youth. He'll also travel to Wisconsin on Thursday to the Fincantieri Mariette Marine.

In a statement, the Trump campaign blamed the 'fake news media' for 'warning people away from the rally' over COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice around the country.

'Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what they're talking about or how our rallies work,' Parscale wrote.

'Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans - without contacting the campaign for comment - behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.'

Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump campaign, tweeted on Sunday: 'Trolls thinking they hacked rally tix don't know how this works.

'Lame trick tried many times. We weed out bogus RSVPs with fake phone#s. All rallies are general admission. Real factor was media-stoked fear. Most media didn't bother to ask us anyway.'

The president and his team had a variety of reasons for the lack of a crowd, including media reports on the rising number of coronavirus cases in Oklahoma and protesters outside of arena, claiming they blocked the security lines so people could not get inside.

'I have been watching the fake news for weeks now. And everything is negative,' Trump said in his remarks.

'We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things. But I really do appreciate it,' he told those who showed up.

'You saw these thugs that came along,' Trump complained of the peaceful demonstrators outside the BOK Center, many of whom wore 'Black Lives Matters' t-shirts.
One of the biggest scandals in Keeping Up with the Kardashians history was the cheating love triangle between Khloe Kardashian, her then-boyfriend (and father to her baby) Tristan Thompson, and Kylie Jenners former best friend, Jordyn Woods. The scandal blew up the entire family and fans heatedly got involved on one side or the other.

The Kardashians are no strangers to crazy rumors and scandals, but this affair between Thompson and Woods was one of the rumors that fans most didnt want to believe was true. Lets recap what happened, and get into why fans were so reluctant to believe this affair really happened.

Jordyn Woods | Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Crazy rumors about the Kardashian family that turned out to be true

Recently, KUWTK fans heatedly discussed on Reddit about crazy rumors that theyd heard about the Kardashians that turned out to be true. The scandal involving Thompson cheating on Khloe Kardashian is far from the only crazy rumor about the family that fans didnt believe was true. Before we recap the affair, lets talk about some of the other scandals that the Kardashian family has faced.

One member said that Caitlyn Jenners gender transition was, for them, the craziest Kardashian rumor that turned out to be true. I honestly thought the tabloids were lying about it, until she came forward & confirmed it, they commented. A few others agreed: I remember watching the 20/20 and thinking she was gonna deny it all. And then she confirmed it  it was shocking!!! someone else added.

Another event that fans couldnt believe was true was that Kim Kardashian West got robbed at gunpoint in Paris. Even more shocking was hearing that she was actually bound and gagged. Thats f***ing terrifying, a fan commented. Its not hard to see why that event would have been hard for most fans to believe! Its also confusing to me, still, that people dont believe it happened or was for publicity/insurance fraud, another user added, providing some insight into the non-believers at the time.

The Kardashian-Thompson-Woods cheating scandal

RELATED: Khloe Kardashian Still Under Fire For How She Treated Jordyn Woods

These were all shocking events, but something that fans really didnt want to believe was that Thompson actually cheated on Khloe Kardashian, again, with her sister Kylie Jenners best friend, Jordyn Woods.



Lets revisit what happened. On February 17, 2019, when he was still with Kardashian and she had recently given birth to their daughter True, Thompson was spotted cozying up to Woods, who was Kylie Jenners BFF at the time. They were even caught entering a hotel together, and Woods was observed leaving early the next morning. It seemed pretty obvious what was going on.

Although Thompson, at first, denied the entire thing, his credibility was shot due to the fact that hed already been caught cheating twice, on camera, while Kardashian was pregnant. As expected, Thompson later came clean to Kardashian and admitted that hed cheated on her with Woods. This caused huge drama between Woods and the Kardashian family, unsurprisingly.

Fans didnt want to believe that the drama was real

On the same Reddit thread mentioned above, a few other people said that for them, the craziest Kardashian family rumor that actually turned out to be true was this cheating scandal between Thompson and Woods.

One fan expressed their shock and disappointment that the rumor turned out to be true. I knew Tristan was capable of some bulls**t (cheating right before Khloe gave birth), but I never wouldve thought Jordan would have anything to do w/ this, someone commented, adding: It came out of left field for me. She was so tight w/ the family, & she was Kylies best friend. It was just so crazy! Sometimes real life is the crazier than any fake rumor, especially if youre a Kardashian!
India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

India logs over 3.17 lakh new Covid cases in last 24 hours; daily positivity rate up at 16.41 per cent

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

New Delhi, Aug 27: Three months after the stand-off at the Galwan valley, a survey was conducted on India-China relationship by the Chinese mouthpiece, Global Times, and the results show that the Chinese citizens are not happy with the actions of their leaders.

In this survey, it has been revealed that the Chinese citizens like India with more than 50 per cent holding a favorable impression of China. Almost 51 per cent respondents appreciate the Modi government.

Newest First Oldest First For India, the LAC runs along 16 districts across one union territory (Ladakh) and four states (Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh). Chinas biggest tech company Huawei is trying to woo India by running big advertisements on all leading dailies of India. More than 30 per cent feel the ties will improve, and almost nine per cent of the respondents said they see improvement in the short term, while 25 per cent feel things will improve in the long term. Nearly 70 per cent believe the anti-China sentiment in India is excessive. As efforts are on to de-escalate ongoing tension at Line of Actual Control, China on Wednesday said that it sees India as a partner instead of a rival and an opportunity instead of a threat. Relations between India and China have been tense after Indian troops clashed with PLA soldiers at Galwan Valley on June 15 leading to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, although Chinese troops also suffered casualties but China's foreign ministry has refused to divulge figures. Chinese ambassador to India Sun Weidong speaking at the China-India Youth webinar said that China sees India as a "partner instead of a rival and an opportunity instead of a threat." Darcha is 147 kilometres from Manali and lies on the highway to Leh after Jispa and Keylong across Rohtang La. The Darcha-Padum-Nimu route requires only a single 4.5 km tunnel through the 16,570 feet Shingo La between Darcha and Padum to ensure that the road is closed only for two months in winter. According to military commanders, the need to build the third axis was felt as tunnelling would be required under four more high mountain passes on the existing Manali-Leh route if the road has to be kept open throughout the year. In an effort to ensure that the project meets its two-year deadline, Gadkaris ministry has proposed that the task to build the tunnel should be given to the company that constructed the 9.02 km tunnel at Rohtang La on the condition that it meets the timeline. The project, which has been in the pipeline for a decade, is scheduled to be completed by the defence ministry within two years. Officials said the third route requires upgrading the Darcha-Padum-Nimu trekking route into a metalled road and building a 4.5 kilometre tunnel under Shingo La on the Darcha-Padum route. New Delhi perceives Beijings reluctance to disengage despite reminders as an effort to set a new normal at the border. The defence ministrys road project is being given its hardest push by road and highways minister Nitin Gadkari and his colleague Gen VK Singh after China provoked a standoff along the Line of Actual Control in East Ladakh and started mobilising troops in depth areas. Senior military commanders said the third route to feed Ladakh by road is urgently needed given how Pakistan and its all-weather friend, China were eyeing the Siachen Glacier and Daulat Beg Oldie. Nimu is 35 kilometres from Leh town and headquarters of XIV Corps responsible for the defence of East Ladakh and Siachen Glacier. Indias national security planners are pushing hard to complete an all-weather strategic route to Ladakh that will link Darcha in Himachal Pradesh to Nimu via Padum in Kargils Zanskar valley, people familiar with the matter said The Chinese ambassador also said that they will encourage language learning and communication. With the help of Indian colleges and universities, Chinese colleges and universities carry out the study of Hindi, Tamil and Bengali. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India 70 years ago, Sun said, bilateral relations have withstood tests and become more resilient. He said Chinas President Xi Jinping has said that Beijing will neither import foreign models of development, nor export the Chinese model and ask other countries to copy its practice. On a question on support to Indians aspiring to learn Chinese language, Sun said a strong team of Chinese teachers will help cultivate more Indian students who understand Chinese and love Chinese culture. China and India, neighboring countries, should live in peace and avoid conflicts, he said. Sun said that in order to achieve development goals, both countries need a peaceful and favourable external environment. In the webinar, Sun said, As two rising major neighbours, China and India should abandon the old mindset of drawing lines by ideology, and get rid of the old game of ones gain is anothers loss and zero-sum game. The CMC, which is the overall high command of the Chinese military is headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. On August 14, Misri met Maj. Gen. Ci Guowei, Director of the Office of International Military Cooperation of Chinas Central Military Commission, (CMC) and briefed him about Indias stance vis-a-vis the situation on the borders in eastern Ladakh Union Territory. On August 14, Misri met Maj. Gen. Ci Guowei, Director of the Office of International Military Cooperation of Chinas Central Military Commission, (CMC) and briefed him about Indias stance vis-a-vis the situation on the borders in eastern Ladakh Union Territory. In recent weeks, Misri met a senior official of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and senior General of Chinese military and briefed them on Indias stance on the situation at the borders in eastern Ladakh Union Territory. Indian Embassy officials told PTI here that the closed-door meeting was part of the continuing outreach activities with all shades of Chinese opinion on the state of relations between the two countries. The Indian Army officer killed the clash was the commanding officer of a battalion at Galwan. There was no firing. Apparently the two sides clashed with stones and rods. There are various accounts on the number of casualties on the Chinese side. Some accounts suggest 5, while the others say it is 3. However there is no official word on the same. The visit by Army Chief General M M Naravane to Pathankot has been cancelled. National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said if the Chinese can "shoot dead" three Indian soldiers during the 'de-escalation process', one can imagine how serious the situation must have been in the first place. Earlier in the day, the Indian Army said an officer and two soldiers were killed in a violent confrontation with Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on Monday. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will be discussing the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a short while from now. Singh has already met Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, the three service chiefs and External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar. We will eventually learn about the details of what happened in Ladakh. That is our right. But right now, we must grieve with & stand by the families of our martyred soldiers. And stand solidly in support of our armed forces.  anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) June 16, 2020 Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra's tweet: Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh has briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation along the Line of Actual Control. Mehbooba Mufti took to Twitter to say that the nation wants to know why there is no talk of retaliation. Taking to Twitter, Mufti wrote,''Seems like China has hijacked the aggressive ghar main ghuske marengay militaristic approach. Nation deserves to know why there is no talk of retaliation to avenge the death of three Indian army personnel!.'' Congrress leader Shashi Tharoor: The tragic news from Ladakh is shocking & calls for resolute handling by our Govt. Meanwhile, let us bow our heads in tribute to the three martyrs who gave their lives to protect India, and honour those who serve on our borders every day, risking their lives for our nation. Both sides have been ascertaining that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, it is important to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas. China has lodged solemn representations and protests to India. Here, we are sternly demanding India to earnestly abide by the relevant agreement and strictly restrain their frontline troops. They should not cross the borderlines says Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh has met with External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar and Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat and discussed the situation along the LAC. Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said that China has lodged solemn representations and protests to India. Here, we are sternly demanding India to earnestly abide by the relevant agreement and strictly restrain their frontline troops. They should not cross the borderlines, Lijian said. "Chinese side also suffered casualties in the Galwan Valley physical clash", tweets Editor In Chief of Chinese Newspaper Global Times The happening in the #Galwanvalley is a continuation of violations by China. It is time now that the country stands up to these incursions. Our soldiers are not fair game that every few days officers and men are being killed and injured defending our borders. (1/2)  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) June 16, 2020 Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said the happening in Galwan Valley is a continuation of violations by China and added that it is time now that India stood up to these incursions. The talks are being held between Major General Abhijit Bapat, the commander of the Karu based HQ3 Infantry Division and his Chinese counterpart. The talks are being held at the site of the clash. Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav took to Twitter and wrote, "Received the report of a commanding officer and two soldiers of Indian Army being killed in a 'violent face-off' with Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh. Heartfelt condolences." He also said that he expects a clarification on the ground reality of situation.   



  UPA                LAC   



               ?



               



      ?  Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) June 16, 2020 Congress leader Kapil Sibal slammed the Union government for failing to respond to Chinese action in Ladakh. He also took pot shot on Prime Minister's 56-inch chest. Indian troops seriously violated consensus of the two sides by illegally crossing the border twice and carrying out provocative attacks on Chinese soldiers. This resulted in serious physical clashes, Chinas Global Times said while quoting foreign minister, Wang Yi. Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda on Tuesday termed as 'disturbing' the violent clash between Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan Valley and said the government should offer a clearer picture to the nation on the border issue. He sought to know as to how Indian soldiers lost their lives during a de-escalation process and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh should come out with a clearer picture. "Saddened by the news of the martyrdom of our boys in the Galwan Valley. I salute their indomitable courage, selflessness and sacrifice," said VK Singh. The editor of Global Times posted on Twitter,  based on what I know, Chinese side also suffered casualties in the Galwan Valley physical clash. I want to tell the Indian side, dont be arrogant and misread Chinas restraint as being weak. China doesnt want to have a clash with India, but we dont fear it. The talks between the two sides are still continuing and efforts are on to defuse tensions between India and China after a violent clash occurred. The situation still remains fluid in Ladakh. Hectic talks are on to defuse the tensions along the Line of Actual Control. The Congress has termed as "shocking" and "unacceptable" the death of an Indian Army officer and two soldiers in a violent face-off with the Chinese troops, and asked Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to confirm the development. "Shocking, Unbelievable and Unacceptable! Will the Raksha Mantri confirm," Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said on Twitter. Saddened by the news of the martyrdom of our boys in the Galwan Valley. I salute their indomitable courage, selflessness & sacrifice.



Jai Hind!!  Vijay Kumar Singh (@Gen_VKSingh) June 16, 2020 Saddened by the news of the martyrdom of our boys in the Galwan Valley. I salute their indomitable courage, selflessness and sacrifice, Union Minister, General V K Singh said. AIMIM chief and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi took to Twitter to condemn the killings of three Indian army personnel. "India stands with the 3 brave martyrs who were killed by China today in Galwan. My thoughts are with families of Colonel & 2 brave soldiers. The commanding officer was leading from the front. The government must avenge these killings & ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain," Owaisi tweeted.
The police in the city's northeastern ward of Gwangjin said they had arrested the man in his 50s after the Seoul Eastern District Court issued a warrant sought by the police on Saturday.



A man was arrested for physically assaulting a bus driver who demanded the man wear a face mask to ride the bus, police said Monday, in the first arrest case for a violation of mandatory mask use against COVID-19.



The police in the city's northeastern ward of Gwangjin said they had arrested the man in his 50s after the Seoul Eastern District Court issued a warrant sought by the police on Saturday.



According to police, the man attacked and verbally insulted the bus driver and also attacked a fellow bus rider who tried to stop him on Thursday.



It marked the first case in which a violator of a mask use policy for public transportation was arrested. The policy was introduced last month to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.






Albuquerque police say two men are facing charges after officers reportedly saw one of them shooting out of a vehicle, into the air, as they drove by Roosevelt Park after a Juneteenth celebration on Saturday.

Michael Kirkwood, 35, is facing one count of shooting at or from a vehicle. Elgin King, 36, is facing charges including possession of a firearm by a felon, resisting an officer, leaving the scene of a crash and possession of an imitation controlled substance with intent to distribute.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, police saw the passenger of a red SUV shout at people who were leaving the park. The vehicle returned, this time Kirkwood was hanging out of the sunroof. An officer wrote that he saw flashes and heard what he believed were gunshots, which appeared to have been fired by Kirkwood.

Police say they followed the vehicle, which stopped at a liquor store before continuing on. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, which continued driving until it crashed near 6th Street and the Interstate 40 frontage road.

Elgin fled, but police caught him about a block away, according to the complaint. Police say he resisted arrest, and was tased.

An Albuquerque Police Department spokesman said in a news release Sunday that Elgin was on the departments Metro 15 list.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:12:28|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TUNIS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Tunisian President Kais Saied visits France on Monday for a two-day state visit at the invitation of his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.

According to a statement released by the Tunisian presidency, the visit will be an opportunity to consolidate and further develop bilateral relations.

"The two heads of state will also exchange views on subjects of common interest," reads the statement.

Saied was accompanied by a high-level delegation, including the minister of foreign affairs and finance minister. Enditem
The decision has come one month after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a discussion to upgrade their bilateral relations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a bid to woo Bangladesh, China has provided a huge trade boost to the country by announcing tariff exemption for 97 percent of Bangladeshi products effective from 1 July.

The decision has come one month after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a discussion to upgrade their bilateral relations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh announced on Friday that 97 percent of items would be exempted from Chinese tariffs.

As part of the government's economic diplomacy and the outcome of the exchange of letters between Bangladesh and China, Tariff Commission of the Chinese State Council issued a notice recently on granting zero treatment to 97 percent of tariff products of Bangladesh, the Dhaka Tribune reported, quoting the ministry's statement.

With this announcement, a total of 8,256 Bangladeshi products will come under the 97 percent of products that would be exempted from the tariff.

Currently, 3095 Bangladeshi products enjoy duty-free access to the Chinese market under the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA). With the new announcement, 97 percent of Bangladeshi products will join this zero-tariff club from July 1 that raised the numbers of Bangladeshi products with zero duty access to the Chinese market to 8,256, the report said.

During the Asian-African Conference which took place this week in Indonesia, Chinese President Xi announced that China will grant duty-free market access for Least Developed Countries (LDC) 97 percent of the tariff lines within a year. This beneficial market access scheme will be applied only for imports from LDCs that have diplomatic relations with China.

China's tariff exemption is expected to help Bangladesh cushion the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An 18-year-old boy has admitted to killing a 13-year-old girl in a forest in the south-central Vietnamese province of Phu Yen.

Colonel Luong Tan Dinh, chief of staff of the provincial Department of Police, confirmed on Sunday that officers had launched an investigation into the death of D.T.K.H., 13.

Pham Kim Phe, the 18-year-old suspect, is currently in police custody, Col. Dinh added.

According to preliminary reports, H. went missing on the night of June 17.

Earlier that night, H. went out with two other girls and four boys for some snacks.

At around 11:00 pm, H.s older sister received a phone call from the victim, who said help me before hanging up.

The sister tried to call back but no one picked up the phone.

H.'s family reported the case to police officers on the following day.

On Sunday morning, H.s body was found near An Hai Bridge in An Ninh Dong Commune, located in Tuy An District in Phu Yen.

Police officers have questioned many of H.s friends, including the group whom she went out with on June 17.

Phe, who was among the four boys, was thus taken into custody after preliminary questioning revealed some suspicious details.

At the police station, Phe said he was in charge of taking H. home that night.

However, the suspect decided to take the victim to a forest in An Ninh Dong Commune and killed her.

Police are continuing to investigate to verify his statement.

Officers already finished carrying out an autopsy and handed over H.s body to her family.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Prosecutor seeks 6 years for theater director Serebrennikov in $2 mln embezzlement case

 RAPSI

13:01 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  A prosecutor on Monday demanded a 6-year jail sentence and an 800,000-ruble fine for the Gogol Center theater director Kirill Serebrennikov in a case over embezzlement of 129 million rubles (about $2 million) of budget funds allocated for the theater project Platforma, RAPSI reported from a courtroom.

Moreover, the prosecutor asked the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow to sentence ex- Gogol Center theater manager Alexey Malobrodsky to 5 years in penal colony with a 300,000-ruble fine, ex-head of Seventh Studio stage company Yury Itin and ex-official of Russias Culture Ministry and current director of the Russian Academic Youth Theater Sophia Apfelbaum to 4 years behind bars with a 200,000-ruble fine each.

In late 2019, the court commissioned the third complex financial and economic, and art valuation examination. A previous evaluation in 2018 failed to establish a fact of embezzlement. According to the results of the third examination, over 129 million rubles were embezzled from the arts project Platforma.

Ex-chief accountant of Seventh Studio Nina Maslyayava is tried separately. She admitted guilt in full.

Other defendants pleaded not guilty calling charges against them pointless and absurd. Moreover, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky lay the blame on Maslyayeva.

One more defendant, producer Yekaterina Voronova has been put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia.

According to investigators, defendants in the case stole 133 of 214 million rubles ($3.3 million) of budget funds allocated to the Seventh Studio company in 2011-2014 for development and popularization of contemporary art in Russia as part of the project Platforma.

Serebrennikov was arrested in late August 2017 and then placed under house arrest. In early November, Moscows Basmanny District Court seized assets belonging to Serebrennikov including apartment, car, and money in the amount of more than 360,000 rubles ($5,300), over 60,000, and $4,000.

Investigators believe that he was an organizer of the budget money embezzlement. He allegedly created Seventh Studio stage company to actualize Platforma project for promotion of art and called alleged accomplices into the organization.




Haiti - News : Zapping...





The Prime Minister impatient

"No one can tell me when the pandemic will end and that is a problem. I can't hold a country that way and wait for the end of covid-19. We must learn to live with the disease as do other countries, including the United States, where the numbers are no longer spoken. They adapted. We too have to adapt,e said the Prime Minister recently.



Covid 19 : The Minister of the Interior on the ground

Sunday, Audain Fils Bernadel the Minister of the Interior and Territorial Collectivities, accompanied by an imposing delegation visited the communes of Croix des Bouquets, Ganthier and Tomazeau in order to sensitize the inhabitants to protect themselves against Covid pandemic 19.



Gonave : delivery of medical materials and equipment

Health institutions on Gonave Island received a shipment of medical supplies and equipment from the Ministry of Public Health on Sunday. This cargo included oxygen cylinders with regulators, complete medical beds, gloves, N95 masks, surgical masks, overshoes, personal protective equipment and alcohol.



UNESCO : Compas Music and Dance candidacy

"The UNESCO Office in Haiti has taken note of Haiti's desire to submit to the Organization the application of Compass music and dance to the Representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," said Pilar Alvarez-Laso, UNESCO Representative in Haiti.



Continuation of distribution of food kits

The Economic and Social Assistance Fund (FAES) supported by agents of the National Police of Haiti, representatives of the Departmental Delegation of the West and other public entities went mainly to Brothers, Fatima, Head of water, Meyotte, Malique, Place Saint Pierre, Peguy-ville and Delmas 7 in order to distribute door-to-door food kits to vulnerable people in difficult situations.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















By Express News Service

CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has issued notices to both the Central and State governments on a petition challenging seizure of a cotton seeds consignment on the grounds of transportation violating Covid-19 guidelines. In the interim, the Court has directed for release of the seized cotton seeds. The Court issued the notices on the petition filed by Sukun Seeds Pvt Ltd (SSPL).

The company had dispatched the cotton seeds from Ahmedabad to Titlagarh on an order placed by a Patnagarh-based trader. The State Agriculture department officials had reportedly seized 5,000 packets of cotton seeds weighing 22.5 quintal worth `36.5 lakh from Titlagarh railway station on May 17. SSPL stated that the seeds were transported from Ahmedabad to Titilagarh under valid permission for the purpose of farming and agriculture. Unless the seized seeds are released forthwith, the same will lose its quality for being used for farming, the company had pleaded.

While issuing the notices returnable within three weeks, Justice KR Mohapatra said on perusal of the Covid-19 lockdown guidelines issued by the Central and State governments, it appears that nowhere the transportation of materials for the purpose of farming and agriculture has been restricted.
The governor of Kebbi, Atiku Bagudu, earlier on Monday, led some governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.

As speculated, the meeting which also had the Jigawa State governor, Abubakar Badaru, and Plateau State, Simon Lalong, revolved around the multiple challenges threatening to severe the party.

This was disclosed to journalists by Mr Bagudu shortly after the meeting which held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, barely 24 hours after a separate meeting between Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Mr Buhari.

Almost at the same time that the president was in a meeting with the governors, scores of youth who identified themselves as members of party stormed the partys secretariat to protest ask for the dissolution of the APC National Working Committee.

They faulted the body as being the cause of the problems ravaging the party.

This happened in the same premises where the South-south vice-chairman of the party, Hilliard Eta, led NWC members inaugurated Worgu Boms to replace Victor Giadom, as partys acting Deputy National Secretary.

This was done in the absence of journalists.

Buhari/governors meeting

Commenting on the outcome of their meeting with Mr Buhari and the aforementioned incidents, the Kebbi governor who doubles as chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), identified those events as tenets of democratic system.

He registered the forums readiness to comply by all steps to unify and bring about peaceful resolution in our party.

READ ALSO:

He also ascribed Mr Buharis silence in face of the party crisis to the latters respect for constitutionalism and due process.

So, young people expressing their views by demonstrating, members of the party challenging court processes shows that the people are free to express their views. And dissent is not to be suppressed. What is important is that all will be taken on board in arriving at a conclusion that will be to the satisfaction of most party members and indeed Nigerians.

At all times Mr. President has shown that he is a democrat, he is not running the party. Yes, he is the party leader, he allows party organs to do and decide what should be done.

He is very hesitant to use his standing even as party leader, talk less of his authority as Mr. President of the country to direct things, but at all times, he has been alive to the issue and like I said earlier, I believe with the encouragement he gave us this morning, with the level of details he has about all what is happening and the number of people he has listened to and heard, Mr Bagudu told state house correspondents after the Monday meeting.

He also noted the possibility of the party calling a meeting of the partys National Executive Council (NEC) very soon if necessary to resolve the lingering issues within the party.
A new field hospital in eastern Morocco will from Sunday receive around 700 COVID-19 patients following a sharp spike in infections in the kingdom, the government said.

Morocco reported a record single-day rise in novel coronavirus cases on Friday after an outbreak was detected in fruit packing plants in eastern Kenitra province, prompting Rabat to tighten restrictions in the region.

The North African kingdom reported more than 500 cases on Friday, mainly in Kenitra, having recorded on average fewer than 100 new COVID-19 infections daily since confirming its first cases in early March.

Authorities closed facilities, tested workers and launched an investigation to "establish responsibility" for the outbreak, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said, as cited by official news agency MAP.

The field hospital will receive from Sunday "around 700 registered cases", he added.

Strawberry fields in Kenitra -- usually busy with workers harvesting at this time of year -- were deserted at the weekend, an AFP photographer said.

Several towns in the region were placed under quarantine and screenings were carried out among residents, who were asked to go out only in cases of "extreme necessity".

A dozen ambulances were stationed in Moulay Bousselham, one of the quarantined towns, ready to be dispatched to pick up confirmed cases.

Morocco, with a population of 34 million, has reported just over 9,800 cases and 213 deaths from the novel coronavirus.

On June 9, authorities announced a gradual lifting of restrictions in force since mid-March, though measures remain in place in major cities and a public health state of emergency has been extended until July 10.

Wearing masks in public is obligatory, gatherings are prohibited and mosques, cinemas and theatres are closed, while restaurants and cafes are open but limited to take-away orders.

The kingdom's borders remain closed "until further notice".
This is the moment a black woman is berated by an angry white man who she claims accused her of selling drugs out of a stolen car.

Nakida Clarke, from Houston, Texas, shared footage of her encounter with the middle-aged man who flew into a foul-mouthed rage when she parked outside his house.

Despite the video clearly showing ease of access, the man exploded at her for 'blocking his mailbox' and stood in front of her vehicle so she could not leave.

With her restless young son in the back, Clarke tries to remain calm as the resident brands her 'dead meat' and spiels off threats of court and even jail.

But she later made her true feelings known in a lengthy Facebook post after arriving back home and discovering her car had been daubed with the word 'stolen'.

The clip has been viewed more than 60,000 times, with some branding the man a 'male Karen'.

The term Karen has entered phraseology as a describer for an entitled and privileged woman.

Nakida Clarke, from Houston, Texas, shared footage of her encounter with the middle-aged man who flew into a foul-mouthed rage when she parked outside his house. Sshe later made her true feelings known in a lengthy Facebook post after arriving back home and discovering her car had been daubed with the word 'stolen'

She wrote: ' This is why the world is in the state it's in! Because of people like this!

'I parked around the corner because there wasn't any parking at my complex. He goes out his way to call the dealership I purchased my car from and ask them to call me and tell me I am blocking his mail box and he can't get his mail (clearly I am not blocking this man's mail box and he can clearly fit in the space to get his mail).

'He proceeds to tell me that I can't afford this car and that I'm selling drugs out of it, and it's stolen! WOW!

'As if I don't work hard for the shit that I have but after the one look this is the stigma he placed upon me.'

She went on that she waited for the police, who she claims told the man she was entitled to park where she did.

Despite the video clearly showing ease of access, the man exploded at her for 'blocking his mailbox' and stood in front of her vehicle so she could not leave

When she eventually managed to drive away and get home, she realised the word 'stolen' had been scrawled across her number plate, posting a photo on social media.

Clarke said the encounter was 'so sad' but she could not do anything but 'sit back and laugh'.

Her video shows the man accusing of her assault for running over her foot after Clarke tried to edge her car forward while pleading with him to step away from the vehicle.

It is unclear if her tyre touched touched his leg, but the man erupts: 'Look at look, look at this! You just hit me! That is assault!... You are dead meat! You are dead!
[June 22, 2020] Immuta Launches Native Offering for Databricks With Enhanced Security and Collaboration Features

Immuta, the automated data governance company, today announced an enhanced platform integration with Databricks, the data and AI company. Immuta for Databricks - a new, native offering for Databricks customers - enhances data engineering productivity and data security by automating fine-grained access control and privacy protection natively within Databricks and Delta Lake. Immuta's latest release unlocks new data science opportunities and outcomes, simplifies regulatory compliance, and further enhances security and privacy controls. "Databricks provides unmatched scalability, flexibility, cost savings, and performance. However, strict data protection rules and regulations create compliance and technical limitations when it comes to utilizing protected data for analytics and data science," said Steve Touw, CTO, Immuta. "Data teams are exposed to new levels of risk, making it challenging to manage and prepare sensitive data for data scientists to access in a compliant, self-service way, but also for those same analysts to securely share and publish their work. The latest Immuta for Databricks enhances automation capabilities required to overcome these challenges." With today's release, Immuta for Databricks now provides secure data collaboration for analysts and data scientists; advanced anonymization techniques; and simplified compliance with data privacy regulations like the CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, and COPPA. Immuta for Databricks will be demonstrated at this week's virtual Spark + AI Summit 2020. The company will also host customer sessions on Wednesday, June 24th at 11:30am PDT with Artis Consultingand Thursday, June 25th at 11:30am PDT with WorldQuant Predictive.



Key features and benefits of the latest Immuta for Databricks release include: Secure data collaboration: Protecting "gold" tables, ready for analytics and ML use, with fine-grained controls is only the start of protecting your data. When data analysts create new products via feature engineering or transformations (views, tables), writing those products out can cause data leaks because the analysts may be able to see more than other analysts that can see their output. Leveraging Immuta's patented approach to equalizing permissions across users to prevent data leakage, data teams can now create projects in Immuta with appropriate WRITE access to publish derivative work for secure data collaboration on a Databricks cluster.

Protecting "gold" tables, ready for analytics and ML use, with fine-grained controls is only the start of protecting your data. When data analysts create new products via feature engineering or transformations (views, tables), writing those products out can cause data leaks because the analysts may be able to see more than other analysts that can see their output. Leveraging Immuta's patented approach to equalizing permissions across users to prevent data leakage, data teams can now create projects in Immuta with appropriate WRITE access to publish derivative work for secure data collaboration on a Databricks cluster. Advanced privacy : Privacy-enhanced analysis of sensitive data is a notoriously complex task. It often involves the risky and time-consuming implementation of difficult-to-understand-and-debug statistical techniques, data-specific code, and complex ELT processes. The latest Immuta for Databricks can dynamically apply randomized response to achieve local differential privacy at the column level, without writing a single line of code. Local differential privacy, like its close relative differential privacy, places mathematically guaranteed limits on an attacker's ability to exploit sensitive data in attempts to draw harmful conclusions about individual data subjects.

: Privacy-enhanced analysis of sensitive data is a notoriously complex task. It often involves the risky and time-consuming implementation of difficult-to-understand-and-debug statistical techniques, data-specific code, and complex ELT processes. The latest Immuta for Databricks can dynamically apply randomized response to achieve local differential privacy at the column level, without writing a single line of code. Local differential privacy, like its close relative differential privacy, places mathematically guaranteed limits on an attacker's ability to exploit sensitive data in attempts to draw harmful conclusions about individual data subjects. Simplified compliance with data privacy regulations: While Immuta pioneered the intuitive, no-code Policy Builder to support data privacy regulations, Immuta for Databricks enhances the ability for data governance and compliance teams to automate the manual processes required for compliance with the CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, COPPA and other regulations. "At Databricks, we are committed to providing data teams control over sensitive data as they scale their business analytics and machine learning projects," said Michael Hoff, SVP Business Development and Partners at Databricks. "Immuta's new features broaden our native integration by simplifying regulatory compliance, offering advanced anonymization techniques, and allowing data scientists to publish derivative work with automated security and privacy protections."

Additional Resources: To learn more about Immuta's participation at and to register for opportunities at the Spark + AI Summit 2020, visit here.

To try Immuta for Databricks free for 14 days, visit here. About Immuta Immuta was founded in 2015 based on a mission within the U.S. Intelligence Community to build a platform that accelerates self-service access to and control of sensitive data. The Immuta Automated Data Governance platform creates trust across data engineering, security, legal, compliance, and business teams so they can work together to ensure timely access to critical data with minimal risk, while adhering to global data privacy regulations including the GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA. Immuta's automated, scalable, no-code approach makes it easy for users to access the data they need, when they need it, while protecting sensitive information and ensuring customer privacy. Selected by Fast Company as one of the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies, Immuta is headquartered in Boston, MA with offices in College Park, MD and Columbus, OH. Learn more at www.immuta.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005454/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Every June, members of the LGBT+ community celebrate Pride month in honour of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

Typically, the month-long celebration is marked with parades and other celebrations, which attract millions of people in support of the LGBT community annually.

As awareness around the LGBT community has grown, so have the words used to describe different sexualities - with the language surrounding the spectrum of sexuality constantly evolving.

In recent years, the queer community has most commonly been referred to as the LGBT or LGBTQ community.

The acronym is also seen with a + sign at the end, which has its own significance.

Recommended How to get involved with Pride this year

Although not everyone in the queer community chooses to subscribe to specific labels, this is the most commonly used list of terms to refer to non-hetero sexualities.

LGBT is an initialism for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The acronym, which is often used as a blanket term to refer to the queer community, first became popular in the 1980s when it replaced the term gay to reference all those who do not identify as heterosexual.

It has since grown to LGBTTQQIAAP, to encompass numerous other sexual and gender identities.

What do the additional letters mean?

As understanding about sexuality and sexual identity has grown, a fifth letter has been added to the acronym with increasing frequency.

The Q often placed at the end of LGBT refers to queer or questioning, according to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.

Previously, Cleo Anderson, an employee of the LGBT rights group GLAAD told USAToday: Queer is anything that exists outside of the dominant narrative. Queer means that you are one of those letters [LGBT], but you could be all of those letters and not knowing is okay.

Anderson also said the Q is useful because it can be used to convey the nuances of race and culture and how that intersects with an individuals gender identity and sexual orientation.

The acronym has also expanded to include an I and an A at the end, making it LGBTQIA.

New York celebrates Pride on Stonewall anniversary: In pictures







15 show all New York celebrates Pride on Stonewall anniversary: In pictures



























1/15 People dressed as flamingoes take part in the New York Pride March on June 30 Getty

2/15 People on stilts march in the New York Pride Parade on June 30 Reuters

3/15 People stand at the roadside during the New York Pride March on June 30 Getty

4/15 A participant wears a hat depicting the Stonewall Inn during the New York Pride March on June 30 AFP/Getty

5/15 Acitvists march in the New York Pride March on June 30 Reuters

6/15 People take part in the New York Pride Parade on June 30 Getty

7/15 A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty takes part in the New York Pride March on June 30 Getty

8/15 People take part in the New York Pride Parade on June 30 Getty

9/15 Marchers kiss during the New York Pride March on June 30 Reuters

10/15 A marcher wears a Mueller report during the New York Pride March on June 30 Reuters

11/15 A couple kiss during the New York Pride March on June 30 AFP/Getty

12/15 A couple kiss during the New York Pride March on June 30 Getty

13/15 An infant dressed as a unicorn takes part in the New York Pride March on June 30 AFP/Getty

14/15 A person waves a rainbow flag in the New York Pride Parade on June 30 AFP/Getty

15/15 People carry a rainbow flag in the New York Pride Parade on June 30 Getty

According to the LGBT youth support group OK2BME, the I stands for intersex.

Intersex is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary, according to Planned Parenthood.

The A on the end of the acronym also has multiple meanings, used to represent those who identify as asexual, those who are agender, and those who identify as allies of the LGBT community.

What does the plus sign stand for?

As noted by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center (LGBTQIARC) at the University of California at Davis, which has built a glossary, there are numerous other letters and terms in use by the LGBT community as well.

To represent those who do not identify with one of the letters in the acronym, such as those who identify as pansexual, a plus sign is often used.

The plus sign also represents the experiences and realities of those who identify as members of the LGBT community.

Speaking to Elite Daily, Louis Ortiz-Fonesca, Senior Program Manager for LGBTQ Heath and Rights with Advocates for Youth, said: I explain it by simply saying that the plus is an inclusive and intentional way of representing different identities and experiences.

As the LGBT community continues to fight for representation and equal rights 50 years on from the first pride march, it is important to acknowledge the different sexualities, groups and identities represented in the continually evolving acronym.

While many pride celebrations have been cancelled this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, there are still ways to support and celebrate the LGBT community.
By Bahk Eun-ji



Incheon International Airport Corporation said Monday that it has decided to directly hire some 1,900 irregular employees that perform security screening work.







Incheon International Airport /Korea Times file
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 00:21:30|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Guests visit China's first high-speed maglev train testing prototype in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, on May 23, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

QINGDAO, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Performance checks of China's domestically-developed prototype magnetic-levitation train, with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour, began in Shanghai Sunday.

The testing prototype, which has only one car, can check and optimize the key technologies and core system components of the high-speed maglev system and lay a technological basis for the forthcoming engineering prototype, according to CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., the train maker headquartered in eastern China's Shandong Province.

During Sunday's first trial-run on a maglev test line, more than 200 components, including working conditions of turnouts, small curves and ramps, were analyzed, the company said.

The prototype magnetic-levitation train was manufactured in the company's production line in the city of Qingdao, Shandong, in May.

Ding Sansan, head of the research and development team and deputy chief engineer of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., said that preliminarily checks have found the vehicle stable. "All key technical indexes met the design requirements and expectations," said Ding.

Guests visit China's first high-speed maglev train testing prototype in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, on May 23, 2019.(Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

He said that high-speed maglev transportation is a coupling system of four major parts: vehicles, traction power system, operation control communication and line tracking. Through the prototype test, the interface relationship of a high-speed maglev system under dynamic conditions can be preliminarily verified, providing support for the verification and optimization of the system's performance and its core components.

The company said the research and development of a five-car engineering prototype of the high-speed maglev are going smoothly. It is scheduled to roll off the production line in 2020.

Maglev trains generate less noise due to the absence of wheel-rail friction. Besides, their minimum turning radius is only half that of a subway, allowing it to better bypass buildings in route planning. 
The search for missing toddler William Tyrrell resumed Monday with authorities and sniffer dogs scouring bushland near a saw mill and train tracks close to where a convicted paedophile lived.

Riot police, SES crews and sniffer dogs searched the bush around a large rural property on Miles Drive in Herons Creek on the NSW Central Coast on Monday.

They searched an area near an old saw mill where convicted paedophile Frank Abbott, 79, lived in a caravan at the time of William's disappearance.

The location is an 11-minute drive south of Kendall, where the three-year-old went missing from his foster grandmother's home on Benaroon Drive in September 2014.

Police and emergency workers talk while searching bushland. They searched bush around a large rural property on Miles Drive in Herons Creek on the NSW Central Coast on Monday

William Tyrrell (pictured), three, went missing from his foster grandmother's home on Benaroon Drive in Kendall on the NSW mid north coast in September 2014

Police and SES volunteers also cut through bush near an old train line in Walkers Creek using brush cutters and spades during Monday's search party.

At one point, the searchers formed a line and walked across a field to make sure that no stone was left unturned.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said they will be 'conducting further searches under a coronial order'.

'NSW Police is committed to finding William Tyrrell, with the Homicide Squad's Strike Force Rossann continuing to conduct inquiries into the circumstances surrounding his disappearance,' she said.

Police searched an area near an old saw mill where where convicted paedophile Frank Abbott (pictured), 79, lived in a caravan at the time of William's disappearance

Police and SES volunteers formed a line and walked across a field to make sure that no stone was left unturned

Nearby the search area was the Parish family property, where Abbott was staying at the time William vanished from nearby Kendall.

Abbott had on several occasions claimed to have knowledge of William's whereabouts, according to property owner Daniela Parish.

He was arrested in February and is in custody at Cessnock jail, where he remains a person of interest in the William Tyrrell case.

The 79-year-old was previously arrested in 1994 over the death of Helen Harrison, 17, who's body was found in a shallow grave in the Hawkesbury region in 1968.

Abbott was trialled twice but never convicted. The first jury could not reach a verdict and the second acquitted him.

The bushland search for William (pictured) comes after a dying man claimed to have picked up Abbott and William and driven them 300km north of Kendall

The bushland search for William comes after a dying man claimed to have picked up Abbott and Tyrrell and driven them 300km north of Kendall.

Ray Porter made the confession about his knowledge of William's disappearance to a carer at a NSW mid-north coast aged care faciliy in April last year.

Mr Porter died last year but his carer Kirston Okpegbue told the court about his confession during the NSW Coronial Inquest in March.

He claimed to have picked up Abbott and Tyrrell from behind a shed at Kendall School before driving them north, according to Ms Okpegbue.
Two-year-old Aniah McCloud wanted to go with her father Stefon McCloud to get pies on Friday night.

McCloud, 39, with permission from Aniahs mother, 26-year-old Melinda Jaggernauth, placed his daughter in his white Nissan B15 at about 7.15 p.m. and went to a parlour less than 100 feet from her home at Upper Fairley Street, Tunapuna.
ASHLAND, Wis., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Author Karen East has published her suspenseful science fiction book that follows a 30-year-old newspaper reporter as she navigates a stifling, dystopian future in which a powerful, corporate government strictly controls personal freedoms.



Set in the U.S. in the middle of the 21st century, Sanctuary imagines a nation that, because of greed and technological dependence, has fallen into a desolate state of disrepair. The War on Terror has raged on for decades, and major corporations have both the government and economy wrapped around their finger. With environmental laws relaxed at the behest of these corporations, pollution has gone unchecked, and civilians must don face coverings to shield themselves from the resulting toxic conditions. The countrys borders are closed, and travel outside ones neighborhood is viewed with suspicion.



Protagonist Janet Ryan works as a reporter for the Minneapolis Herald, diligently churning out stories pre-packaged for her by the government. One day, Janet crosses paths with an old friend who introduces her to a group of people who are rightly skeptical of the governments actions. She travels to Northern Wisconsin and encounters an elderly woman who sought asylum on an Ojibwe reservation, where the community lives happily without technology or competition. Meanwhile, Janets visitations to the reservation  which are illegal  are closely monitored and tracked by the government.



Dedicated to those who live on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation in Northern Wisconsin, East drew on her 19 years of experience working with American Indian tribes in the Midwest to compare the dominant culture with that of the Ojibwe people in Sanctuary. Through this, she hopes to provide the public with credible facts about their customs and debunk common and often destructive myths and assumptions.



Ultimately, Sanctuary depicts a spiritually bankrupt, money-hungry world and one womans daring adventure to escape it and find a new way of life.



Sanctuary

By Karen East

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8478-6 (softcover); 978-1-4808-8479-3 (e-book)

Available through Archway Publishing, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon



About the author



Karen East is a retired marriage and family therapist. East has two children, a grandson, and four great-granddaughters. She currently resides in Northern Wisconsin.



Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kinds, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit www.archwaypublishing.com or call 888-242-5904.

Attachment
3 Singaporeans/Permanent Residents among 262 new COVID-19 cases on June 21, including one NTU student

Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 262 new cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore as of 12pm on Sunday, June 21, bringing the national total to 42,095.

Majority of the new cases continue to be among foreign workers residing in dormitories.

Photo courtesy: Facebook/Lawrence Wong

In a press statement, MOH said there were ten cases in the local community. Three of them were Singaporeans/Permanent Residents, another three were Work Pass holders, and the remaining four were Work Permit holders.

Among the three Singaporean/Permanent Resident cases, one was tested as part of proactive screening of students at Institutes of Higher Learning who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection (ARI) at first presentation to a doctor.

He is a student at Nanyang Technological University, but has not gone to the university since early April 2020.

The remaining two cases had been detected due to our proactive surveillance of persons working or living at dormitories, even though they are asymptomatic.
A 13-year-old Dublin boy has appeared in court accused of torturing a hedgehog to death in a 35-minute attack.

The boy, who cannot be named because he is a minor, was charged with animal cruelty offences in connection with the incident on the grounds of a Dublin school on a night last September.

He also faces unrelated theft and public order charges.

The teenager, who was accompanied to court by his father and his solicitor Brian Keenan, was remanded on bail today after he appeared at the Dublin Childrens Court.

The teenager was granted legal aid and ordered to appear again in July when he will be expected to formally indicate how he is going to plead.

A forensic psychologists report on him is being prepared.

Garda Gemma Twohig told Judge Treasa Kelly the boy made no reply when she charged him with injuring a protected wild animal, and causing or permitting unnecessary suffering endangering the health and welfare of an animal.

The charges were contrary to the Wildlife Act and the Animal Health and Welfare Act.

The Director of Public Prosecutions recommended the case should be dealt with in the childrens court, not in the circuit court which has tougher sentencing powers.

Mr Keenan asked the judge to rule on the teens trial venue and he added that because of his age the defence was anxious to get the case moved on as quickly as possible.

In an outline of the allegations, Garda Twohig said it was alleged the boy killed the hedgehog on the grounds of a school and there was CCTV of the incident.

It was alleged the boy was identified from the footage. He was co-operative and made admissions when interviewed.

She said, this attack was quite lengthy, lasting 35 minutes.

Judge Kelly accepted jurisdiction.

Mr Keenan said he was going to obtain a report from a forensic psychology service. The teenager has also been engaging well in a bail supervision scheme, the solicitor said.

The boy, who did not address the court, nodded when Judge Kelly urged him to continue co-operating with the scheme and to work to get good reports.

His father told the judge his son was coming on very well and he said there is a big change in him, he is trying to get himself together, doing very well for the last six of seven months.

The boy also faces charges for possessing a brand new stolen motorbike and theft of a small amount of cash, on dates in October. He is also accused of two public order offences on two dates earlier last year when he was aged 12 years. He has not yet indicated how he will plead to these charges either.

Disclosure of evidence was ordered.
Four teenagers have been charged for allegedly kidnapping a 13-year-old boy and locking him in the boot of a stolen Uber car for five hours.

The 13-year-old boy was allegedly put into the boot of a white Kia Cerato on Cormorant Street at Inala, south of Brisbane, about 2.45pm Saturday.

The four teenagers, aged 16 and 17, allegedly did not release him until 7.30pm that night when they were 20km away from where he was taken.

A member of the public reported the number plate to police who went searching for the car.

Four teenagers have been charged for allegedly kidnapping a 13-year-old boy and locking him in the boot of a stolen Uber car for five hours

A member of the public reported the number plate to police who went searching for the car (pictured)

It was reported stolen from a North Toowoomba address on Friday.

Police allege the car was involved in a fuel drive off at a service station in Forest Lakes about 4.45pm Saturday, with the boy allegedly still in the boot.

The boy was allegedly released at the intersection of Scenic Road and Greenhill Road in Redbank Plains at 7.30pm that the driver and three passengers.

The four teens allegedly ditched the car at the intersection before fleeing on foot in an opposite direction to the 13-year-old.

The boy was uninjured and found by officers who had been searching for the car.

Police said the group of teenagers were tracked by helicopter and arrested in a nearby park.

All four boys are from Ipswich and Toowoomba and have been charged with a total of 22 offences.

The 13-year-old boy was allegedly put into the boot of a white Kia Cerato on Cormorant Street (pictured)at Inala, south of Brisbane, about 2.45pm Saturday

The 16-year-old boy from Goodna was charged with one count each of deprivation of liberty, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, attempted unlawful entry of a motor vehicle, stealing, robbery and receiving stolen property.

A 16-year-old boy from Keinton was charged with one count each of deprivation of liberty, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, attempted unlawful entry of a motor vehicle, stealing, robbery.

A 16-year-old from Redbank Plains was charged with one count each of deprivation of liberty, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, stealing and attempted unlawful entry of a motor vehicle.

The car (pictured) was reported stolen from a North Toowoomba address on Friday

A 17-year-old Harristown boy has been charged with one count each of deprivation of liberty, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, attempted unlawful entry of a motor vehicle, stealing, robbery and receiving stolen property.

Police are investigating the incident and are seeking assistance from anyone who may have seen car in the 72 hours before it was found.

It is a white Kia Cerato with registration 913 YPU and had an Uber sticker on the back.

All four teenagers are expected to front Richlands Childrens Court on Monday.
China on Monday declined to comment on Union Minister and former Indian Army chief Gen (retd) V K Singhs remarks that more than 40 Chinese soldiers were killed in the Galwan Valley clash in eastern Ladakh, saying it has no information to release on the issue.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, during a media briefing here, reiterated that China and India are in communication with each other to resolve the situation on the ground through diplomatic and military channels.

Asked about the remarks of Singh, he said: I have no information to release on that. Ever since the clash on June 15 at the Galwan Valley between the Indian and Chinese troops, Beijing has consistently declined to reveal the details of the casualties on its side, while the official media editorials have said that China too suffered casualties.

Commenting on the current India-China border standoff, Singh on Saturday told a news channel that If we lost 20 soldiers, more than double the number were killed on their [Chinese] side.

Meanwhile, India and China are holding another round of Lt General-level talks on Monday to discuss ways to de-escalate tension between the two sides in eastern Ladakh, official sources in New Delhi said.

The high-level talks came a week after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in the violent clash between the two sides in the Galwan Valley, significantly escalating the already volatile situation in the region.

The first round of Lt Gen-level talks were held on June 6 during which both sides decided to disengage in all the sensitive areas.

The India-China border dispute covers the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet, while India contests it.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 13:10:01|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- China's national observatory on Monday renewed a yellow alert for rainstorms across vast stretches of the country for the next 24 hours.

From Monday morning to Tuesday morning, heavy rain and rainstorms are expected in the regions of Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Zhejiang, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin, the National Meteorological Center said.

Some of these regions will see up to 60 mm of hourly precipitation accompanied by thunderstorms and strong winds, the center said, warning that some regions in the provinces of Hubei and Hunan will experience downpours with up to 150 mm of daily rainfall.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

Local authorities should take necessary precautions against possible flooding, landslides and mudslides caused by heavy rain and halt outdoor operations in hazardous areas, the national observatory said. Enditem
The Road to 270 is a weekly column leading up to the presidential election. Each installment is dedicated to understanding one states political landscape and how that might influence which party will win its electoral votes in 2020. Well do these roughly in order of expected competitiveness, moving toward the most intensely contested battlegrounds as election day nears.

The Road to 270 will be published every Monday. The column is written by Drew Savicki, a 270toWin elections and politics contributor. Contact Drew via email or on Twitter @DrewSav.

Indiana has produced six Vice Presidents: from Schuyler Colfax, who held office when much of the Postbellum South was still under military rule, to the current incumbent, Mike Pence. Though it was often competitive at lower levels, the Hoosier State has voted blue for president just five times since 1900. Outside the major metro areas, industrial towns dot the landscape. Home to the nation's third largest Amish population, Indiana has gained a reputation for its social conservatism.

2008: Barack Obama does the impossible

In 2008, Indiana was considered among the most Republican states in presidential races -- as the only state in the Great Lakes region that wouldnt support Bill Clinton in the 1990s, it had last voted Democratic for president in 1964. Still, Barack Obama, who perhaps had an extra dose of Midwestern appeal as the senator from next-door Illinois, contested it. The Obama campaign ultimately spent $17 million on the state and visited it eight times during the course of the 2008 campaign. After John Kerry lost the state by 21% in 2004, Obama carried it by 1% -- outside of his native Hawaii, Indiana was the state that swung most to Obama.

Since every county got more Democratic from 2004 to 2008, looking at the swing -- or the outright change in the margins -- isn't terribly instructive. Instead, let's look at what some call the trend' or change in the deviation. Essentially what this measures is the change in how each county voted vs the change in the statewide margin. For example let's look at Marion County (Indianapolis). In 2004, it voted 23% more Democratic than the state as whole but in 2008 it voted 28 points left of the state so that means it shifted five points towards Democrats. There's no perfect measure to accurately capture the swing but this is an alternative way to look at the change.

Southern Indianas shift is notable. Strictly speaking, none of Indiana is located in Appalachia, but its southern portion would, culturally, fit right in. All but two counties along the Kentucky border trended rightward from 2004. Though it accelerated in 2016, the decline in Democratic performance in the south could be seen pre-Trump. The suburban shift can also be seen here, with Obama's gains in the northern Indianapolis suburbs, as well as Allen County (Fort Wayne). Some of the more usually Democratic counties -- like Lake in the northwest, situated near Chicago -- trended rightward simply because there wasn't much room for Obama to grow the margins.

In their post-2008 book How Barack Obama Won, Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser claim that the foundation of Obamas Hoosier State upset was in the May primary. By the time Indiana voted in May, the Democratic primary was a true two-way race between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Though Obama came up slightly short to Clinton, his campaign made serious investments in their state apparatus -- this would be useful to him in the fall.

Congressional Politics

The 2010s have seen an almost complete turnover in the state's congressional delegation. In 2012, the late Sen. Dick Lugar -- a veteran Republican moderate, whom Obama even cites as a mentor -- lost renomination to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party-backed candidate. In the general election, Mourdock made some controversial comments on abortion that were eerily similar to those from fellow GOP Senate nominee Todd Akin, over in Missouri (we recently profiled Missouri and mentioned Akins race). Democrats ran Rep. Joe Donnelly, a moderate Blue Dog from the South Bend area. Though the Obama campaign ignored the state in 2012, ultimately losing it by 10%, Donnelly won 50%-44%.

Like Missouri's Sen. Claire McCaskill, Donnelly had Republicans gunning for him in 2018. Early in the cycle, the Republican primary seemed like a contest between sitting congressmen Luke Messer and Todd Rokita, while former State Rep. Mike Braun looked like a third wheel. Still, as the two congressmen turned their fire on each other, Braun seized an opportunity to contrast himself with his opponents. A businessman, Braun struck a populist chord by painting his opponents as typical politicians -- in this popular ad, he featured cardboard cutouts of the two. It worked: Braun won the primary with a 41% plurality, as the other two split the remainder of the vote about evenly. In the end, despite his moderate profile, Donnelly lost 51%-45% -- basically the same margin McCaskill lost by that year, as well.

Indiana's two most recent Senate races highlight the changes in the states coalitions well. In 2016, Sen. Dan Coats (R) retired and Rep. Todd Young kept the seat for the GOP. Democrats ran former Sen. Evan Bayh, who held that seat before Coats. His father, Birch Bayh, was an iconic liberal senator, but Evan made his name as more of a centrist -- as governor from 1989 to 1997, he passed tax cuts. Bayh was last on the ballot in 2004, a less partisan time when the GOP didnt seriously target him. He was also considered as a possible running mate for both Obama and Clinton in 2008. Much changed in the intervening years, though. Bayh lost by 10% in 2016, but two years later, Donnelly couldnt match his performance in most rural areas.

As Democratic margins in western and southwestern Indiana dropped, the Indianapolis metro area shifted leftward. Democrats were buoyed this year by the retirement of Rep. Susan Brooks (R) from the 5th Congressional District, which encompasses Indianapolis's northern suburbs. In 2016, Sen. Young carried the 5th district by 12 points but in 2018, Donnelly carried the 5th district by half a percentage point.

Upon Brookss retirement, Sabatos Crystal Ball moved the race from Safe Republican to Leans Republican. Although the district went for Trump by 12% in 2016, it is a well-educated and high income suburban seat. In the primaries, Democrats nominated former State Rep. Christina Hale while Republicans chose State Sen. Victoria Spartz. Republicans have the advantage in the district but dont be surprised to see a close race in November.

The Dean of Indiana's Congressional delegation is Rep. Pete Visclosky (D) from the state's 1st District. A union-friendly Democrat known for his support of the steel industry, Visclosky has represented IN-1 since 1985. Visclosky came to Congress by primarying Rep. Katie Hall in 1984 and, although he has faced some ethics issues over the years, he remains quite popular. His 28% win in 2018 was bigger than Obama's 2008 margin in the district. In 2019, Visclosky surprisingly announced his retirement and he endorsed North Township Trustee Frank Mrvan. Comprising the northwestern corner of Indiana, the 1st District has trended rightward bit but, as the nominee, Mrvan is not expected to face any issues winning the seat. Sabatos Crystal Ball rates the race as Safe Democratic.

A particularly consequential Senate race in Indiana history was 1980. Sen. Birch Bayh (D) was seeking a fourth term that year against two-term Republican Rep. Dan Quayle. During his time in the Senate, Bayh authored what would become the Twenty-Fifth (concerning presidential succession) and Twenty-Sixth (setting now minimum age to vote at 18) Amendments. Since the days of the Founding Fathers, no other legislator has written multiple constitutional amendments. More liberal than his states partisanship would suggest, Bayh cobbled together a string of three close wins. In Bayhs last successful reelection, 1974, he faced then-Indianapolis Mayor Dick Lugar (Lugar would win the states other seat in 1976).

In 1980, Ronald Regan carried Indiana by 18%, and swept Quayle into office, who was just 33 at the time. In describing Indianas two senators, the 1982 edition of the Almanac of American Politics summed up: if Lugar was the kind of class intellectual and valedictorian, Quayle was the class athlete and student body president. In 1988, running as the GOP nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush was seeking to shore up his credibility among the right and chose Sen. Quayle as his running mate. Prone to gaffes, Quayle has not held office since his single term as Vice President. His launched a campaign for President in 2000 but it went nowhere, as he was overshadowed by bigger names like Sen. John McCain and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

State level politics

Indiana used to elect Democratic governors with some regularity but the state's increasing Republican tilt in the 2000s marked the end of era for Indiana Democrats dominance of the governorship. Republicans control all statewide offices in the Hoosier State and benefit from having gubernatorial races in presidential cycles -- a dynamic that helped Republicans in 2016. In 2012, popular Gov. Mitch Daniels was term limited and was succeeded by then Rep. Mike Pence (R). The Democratic nominee was former Indiana House Speaker John Gregg. Gregg, a Democrat from southwestern Indiana, was the states longest serving Democratic Speaker of the House. Pence won, but the margin was less than 3%.

A darling of the Tea Party, Pence governed as a staunch fiscal and social conservative. In 2015, one of his signature pieces of legislation as Governor was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which basically states the government cannot infringe on ones right to practice their religion unless it can prove it has a reason to do so. A law hailed by the religious right, it was met with an immediate firestorm of criticism from LGBT rights and business groups. Various organizations and figures boycotted the state as a result of the bill. Pence initially stood behind the bill but as the national outrage persisted, he backed some changes to it.

In 2016, as Pence was gearing up for what looked like a rematch against Gregg, Donald Trump, then the presumptive GOP nominee, tapped him to join the national ticket. Pence's Lt. Governor, Eric Holcomb, was chosen by Indiana Republicans as the replacement nominee. As a more generic Republican and a fresher face, Holcomb was elected in his own right by a decent six point margin. Now Governor, Holcomb is not expected to face much of a challenge. He has boasted generally solid approval ratings and Democrats lack any real bench in this red state. Thus forecasters like Sabato's Crystal Ball rate the gubernatorial race as 'Safe Republican.' In a telling sign of the state's partisanship, then South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sought the Democratic nomination for President in 2020 rather than run for Governor.

One downballot race to keep an eye on this year is the race for Attorney General. Incumbent Attorney General Curtis Hill (R) was elected in 2016 and has faced numerous accusations of sexual misconduct. Gov. Holcomb and many other Republicans called on him to resign in the summer of 2018 but Hill has resisted such calls. In May of this year, the Indiana Supreme Court found that he "committed acts of misdemeanor battery, conduct that under the circumstances of this case violated Indiana Professional Conduct Rules..." and ordered the suspension of his law license for 30 days.

In Indiana, the nominations for certain offices, such as Attorney General, are decided via party conventions rather than primaries. Hill faces three challengers for renomination: Decatur County Attorney Nate Harter, former Rep. Todd Rokita, and Indianapolis attorney John Westercamp. Due to the ongoing pandemic, ballots will be submitted via mail and the results will be announced in several weeks. Democrats had a convention of their own and nominated former Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel. Given the red lean of the state, Democrats are hoping Hill wins renomination as that would clearly give them their best shot at winning the office.

With their supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature likely to hold, Republicans will have full control of redistricting in 2021. They could try to crack the two Democratic-held districts by diluting their voters among the neighboring districts. As the GOPs hold on the suburban IN-5 has grown somewhat shaky, shoring up that seat will also likely be a priority for legislative Republicans.

Presidential outlook

Indiana Polls >>

As it moved back into the red column after 2008, Obamas win in Indiana is looking like a fluke. With no Senate race there this year and IN-5 looking like the only competitive House race, national Democrats dont have much reason to invest in the state. In the southwest, Vigo County (home to the city of Terre Haute) is one of the nations bellwether counties: its picked the winner of every presidential election since 1956. This fall, that streak may end. In 2016, Trump carried it by a robust 55%-40% vote and in 2018 Sen. Donnelly carried it by just 1%. It seems likely that even if Trump is ousted, hell hold Vigo County.

Next Week: Oregon


SAN DIEGO and KRAKOW, Poland, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CodeScan, a Salesforce Strategic ISV Partner, announced today its new partnership with PolSource S.A. The "global boutique" Salesforce consulting partner has delivered success to a large portfolio of internationally well-known brands.

"PolSource has been with us from the beginning. They identify the benefit of quality gates and enforcing code standards during our mutual projects. We are excited to take our partnership into the next level to help our developers develop smarter and faster," says Lior Kuyer, CodeScan CEO.

CodeScan

PolSource, a Salesforce partner, is a system integrator that provides consulting services and shapes strategies for clients using the Salesforce platform. Providing continuous code quality and security, CodeScan offers end-to-end static code analysis solutions. Dedicated to the Salesforce platform, CodeScan provides high-end solutions with 500+ security and quality rules for Apex, Visualforce, Lightning, and Metadata. With direct Salesforce integration and CI/CD Pipeline, it was inevitable that PolSource and CodeScan would join in this symbiotic partnership.

Together, both companies can offer agile solutions to its customers so that they can move quickly while saving on major investments. Not only will Salesforce clients receive intelligent solutions for their Salesforce needs, but they will receive continuous, predictable, stable, and manageable code quality with access to repeatable deployment while maintaining low technical debt.

"We love the team at CodeScan," says PolSource VP of Customer Solutions Trey Roldan. "Not only do they have the largest ruleset for Salesforce - they are the best partner out there for quality and security on the Salesforce platform. We're excited to show customers how DevOps and CodeScan can interlock to deliver the best functionality possible."

With this partnership, there is an additional suite of DevOps offerings available. This includes PolSource's pre-existing partnership with Copado, the recognized leader for Salesforce DevOps implementation. Built 100% natively on the Salesforce platform, Copado's release management enables faster, error-free releases with continuous integration and delivery of technologies.

As an initial offering, these three leading Salesforce partners are launching the DevOps TrueNorth Package. It is a complete Salesforce DevOps health check, which will evaluate the current situation of a company's DevOps architecture and compare it to industry best practices. Guided by PolSource using CodeScan Static Code Analysis Technology, it's the ideal package for any company looking to reduce current technical debt and avoid new technical debt in the future. For more information, click here.

Click here to learn more about the PolSource + CodeScan take on DevOps.

About CodeScan

CodeScan empowers Salesforce dev teams at all levels with coding tools that help them develop faster, better, cleaner, and more efficiently. CodeScan is the leading end-to-end static code analysis solution, with the largest ruleset (350+) in the Salesforce ecosystem. Located in San Diego, California, CodeScan is a Salesforce Strategic ISV partner with the largest Salesforce ruleset, and a 4.9 rating on the Salesforce AppExchange.

About PolSource

PolSource is a Salesforce Platinum Partner with hundreds of experienced, certified Salesforce experts. We provide proven results with consulting, delivery, and success teams throughout the Americas, UK&I, Benelux, and Nordics. Our industry-specific accelerators deliver rapid transformation, and measurable outcomes across retail and consumer goods, manufacturing, automotive, and technology companies, to name a few.

To sign up for the webinar, please visit https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hbqHQ4I-Ta-UAyJhTT8j1g.

Media Contact:

Rebecca Jacobs

Email: [email protected]

Related Images

codescan-polsource-announce.jpg

CodeScan & PolSource Announce Partnership

Related Links

CodeScan Website

PolSource Website

SOURCE CodeScan
Iranian woman released from prison says regime is detaining 15 other Christians

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Iranian Christian convert and human rights activist Mary Mohammadi, who spent 46 days in a detention center and a prison for protesting against the government, says the Islamic country has detained 15 other Christians in overcrowded and unsanitary prisons.

In her first interview since being granted a temporary release from prison on Feb. 26, Mohammadi spoke to VOA Persian recently, saying her domestic contacts had informed her that at least 15 Christians were in detention in Irans prisons as of June 11.

She said at least 20 other Iranian Christians had been released on bail while awaiting trial.

Mohammadi was arrested on Jan. 12 and later sentenced to three months in prison and torture for protesting the governments downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane earlier that month.

At the National Prayer Breakfast gathering in February in Washington, President Donald Trump had expressed concern about her detention. Mary was seized and imprisoned in Iran because she converted to Christianity and shared the Gospel with others, Trump said.

In April, the 21-year-old took to social media to provide a case update for her followers. After suffering many types of torture and 46 days in jail in the terrible conditions of Vozara detention and Qarchak [womens] Prison, I have been sentenced to 3 months and 1 day in prison and 10 lashes, Mohammadi wrote on Instagram.

Mohammadi also wrote that she had been sentenced because she had protested against the slaughter of human beings and because she had shown sympathy for the families of those who perished on the Ukraine airline crash.

She added that her sentence had been suspended for one year depending on her conduct. She also contended that there was never any evidence against her.

So I ought to have been acquitted, but instead I was sentenced not only to imprisonment but also flogging, she wrote. And of course, even before the verdict was handed down, I was forced to endure all kinds of torture, none of which is sanctioned by law, and which ought to be considered crimes in themselves.

Mohammadi was arrested also in 2017 during a raid on an underground house church meeting and later sentenced to six months in prison. She served her time in the womens ward of Evin prison.

She wrote an open letter to Irans Minister of Intelligence Mahmoud Alavi last May, accusing him of targeting Christians and violating the constitution, HRANA reported at the time.

In her letter, Mohammadi also questioned why Christian converts in Iran must refrain from talking about their faith while Muslims are free to discuss their faith in public settings.

Open Doors USAs 2020 World Watch List ranks Iran as the ninth worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution. Iran has for years also been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for engaging in egregious religious freedom abuses.

Under Irans Islamic law, Christian converts face severe persecution from the government. Its illegal for Christians to share their faith with non-Christians. And Christian converts who attend underground house churches risk arrest and torture and many converts are forced to keep their faith a secret.

However, the underground church in Iran has continued to grow. Open Doors estimates that there are more than 800,000 Christians in the Shia-dominated country.
By Trend

Qatar Airways plans to resume regular flights to Georgia from July 1, Trend reports referring to Georgian media.

Qatar Airways will operate Doha-Tbilisi-Doha airline with a frequency of 3 times a week.

Qatar Airways has been operating in the Georgian market since February 2012. Summing up the five-year activity of the airline in Georgia, the regional director of Qatar Airways in Eastern Europe Giovanni Simonini, called this period successful and fruitful.

Qatar Airways is on the list of seven airlines with the highest five-star rating, according to the British agency Skytrax.

Qatar Airways covers more than 140 destinations worldwide. At the same time, the company has one of the most modern fleets consisting of 158 aircraft.

Meanwhile, Georgian Airways will operate flights on Tbilisi-Batumi-Tbilisi air line on June 26-28.

However, it is not possible to purchase a ticket on the airline's website at this time, nor is the ticket price visible.




More 2020 seniors of Hamilton County Schools will have a head start on their next step in college as the class once again significantly increased the amount of scholarship offers received this year. The Class of 2020 had over $121 million in scholarship offers from colleges and universities, which has steadily increased, moving up from $31 million just two years ago. The total scholarship dollars at this point for the Class of 2020 are $121,773,278.60, with scholarship offers still coming in for graduating seniors.

Officials said, "It is graduation week in Hamilton County Schools and a great week to celebrate scholarships earned by this years seniors. Reaching graduation day is an important milestone for high school teens, but it is also a starting point for the rest of a graduates life."



Five schools topped $10 million in scholarships this year with the Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts, in the Rock Point Learning Community leading the way with $16,625,096. Ooltewah High School, in the Harrison Bay Learning Community, saw graduates received $14,768,484 million in scholarship offers this year, East Hamilton High, in the Missionary Ridge Learning Community, had more than $14,485,110, Soddy Daisy High, of the North River Learning Community, more than $12.5 million, and Signal Mountain High, in the Rock Point Learning Community, more than $10.2 million in scholarship offers.



Two schools were just below $10 million in scholarships with seniors of East Ridge High, in the Missionary Ridge Learning Community, earning offers of more than $9.9 million and Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, in the Rock Point Learning Community, receiving over $9.6 million.



Nine additional high schools recorded over $1 million in scholarships. Hixson High had $7.5 million; Central High, $5 million; Red Bank High, $4.8 million; STEM School Chattanooga, $4 million; Sale Creek High, $4 million; Brainerd High, $1.9 million; Tyner Academy, $1.6 million; Collegiate High, $1.2 million; and Lookout Valley High, $1.1 million. Howard High just missed the 1 million mark at $900,000.



The addition of college and career advisors for the 2019-2020 school year played a significant role in the increase of scholarships. The district added 18 full-time advisor positions and a lead advisor support position along with three part-time professionals assisting high school students. Hamilton County Schools has also support team members at every high school this summer, helping the Class of 2020 in all things college and career, from financial aid to transcripts.



The increased accessibility to professionals to assist our seniors in the scholarship application process had everything to do with the $28 million increase in scholarships we saw this year, said Sarah Malone, lead college and career advisor for Hamilton County Schools. Even with a pandemic closure, our advisors diligently worked with every senior to promote and support the Class of 2020.



Officials said, "One way the district gauges how well we helped to find the 'best college fit' for seniors is the number of post secondary institutions graduates apply to attend. The number increased from 557 in 2019 to 617, an 11 percent increase for the year. Just as the number of colleges to which seniors apply is significant, the acceptance of students at the college level is also an indicator. The acceptance rate rose from 34 percent in 2019 to 44 percent in 2020. Also, the number of graduates indicating they plan to enroll in college after graduation more than doubled in 2020 from 1,001 last year to 2,059 this year."



Recent examples of senior success stories include Alaina Washington, a graduate of Ooltewah High School, who was recently named a Haslam Scholar at the University of Tennessee. She is one of only 15 incoming freshmen to earn the award. Ms. Washington will receive a scholarship to cover tuition, fees, room and board, stipends to pursue additional experiential learning opportunities and a fully-funded study abroad program. Ms. Washington was president of her Ooltewah Science Olympiad team, co-president of the Model United Nations club, a drum major in the marching band, and secretary of the National Honor Society chapter. A Girl Scout since kindergarten, Ms. Washington earned the Gold Award, advocating for scoliosis awareness in underrepresented community groups. She played flute in the All-State East Honor Band. Ms. Washington plans to major in industrial engineering.



Maggie Wilkinson, a senior at the Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts, is a 2020 U.S. Presidential Scholar. Ms. Wilkinson was awarded the honor because of her demonstrated excellence in creative arts. Johns Hopkins University, Brown University, Dartmouth University and Princeton University accepted her for admission, but Ms. Wilkinson selected Princeton. She plans to continue her study of creative writing and English at Princeton University this fall.



DayOnna Carson, a senior at Central High School, is a first-generation college student and has been accepted to numerous colleges, including Harvard University, Wesleyan University, Sewanee University, Washington University, Williams College and Swarthmore College. She is also a Gates Scholarship finalist. Ms. Carson will attend Harvard University in the fall to pursue law.



Additional opportunities to take advanced courses, earn college credit in dual enrollment, participate in Future Ready Institutes and learn advanced concepts in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) courses are part of the success story for graduates of Hamilton County Schools. The action area Future Ready Students in the Future Ready 2023 five-year action plan includes how the district will address better preparing graduates for success after high school. There is also a Focus Five performance target in the plan that includes additional AP and dual enrollment opportunities. The increased opportunity for teens to take advanced courses allows graduates to walk across the stage prepared for success.



Preparing graduates for success after high school is vital for the future of our graduates, their families, and the community, said Dr. Bryan Johnson, superintendent of Hamilton County Schools. These students have put in the hard work in the classroom, on the playing field, or in artistic development to make scholarships possible, and our teachers, advisers, and counselors help them select course work that is challenging to give them better opportunities.



Graduations will be held this Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the Class of 2020. The graduation ceremonies were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Delhi government on Monday issued an order which directed the district administration to come up with a revised plan for containment zones in the city by June 26  an exercise for which the government has sought help of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The order, issued by Dr Nutan Mundeja, the director general of health services in Delhi, on Monday asked the district administration to implement a revised covid response plan, which brings into effect a list of recommendations by Union home minister Amit Shah, who chaired a meeting on Covid-19 strategy on Sunday with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal.

In the meeting, Shah had recommended the Delhi government to come up with a fresh strategy for the containment zones by Monday  a date that was later modified in the order to June 26  in light of the fact that over Friday and Saturday, Delhi accounted for around 24% of the total number of fresh cases and 25% of deaths in the country, senior government officials said.

It was observed in the meeting that a fresh plan for containment zones was required since the city was reporting such a high number of cases. The home minister had also asked the Delhi government to set up district-level teams by Tuesday, to implement the fresh delineation exercise by Friday (June 26) and complete health survey of all individuals residing in containment zones by June 30. These dates find mention in Mondays order without any change.

The divisional commissioner will prepare the plan in consultation with NCDC, said a senior government official who did not want to be identified.NCDC is an institute for research on epidemiology and control of communicable diseases.

The official further said, District teams are ready for implementation of the new guidelines. The final plan will be ready by June 26 (Friday) and it will be implemented on the same day if needed. That way, we will not miss the deadline in terms of implementation. The deadline for the survey also remains unaffected. The order was drafted after consultation with members of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA).

The DDMA is chaired by Baijal and the chief minister is the vice-chairman.

As on Monday, Delhi had 261 containment zones  with the highest number of them in southwest Delhi (39) and the lowest in northeast Delhi (3).

Earlier on Monday, suggestions were sought from the district magistrates in all 11 revenue districts of the Capital, and several of them have recommended that the strategy of fresh delineation should apply to the new containment zones and the existing ones should be left untouched for effective monitoring, said a second senior official who is privy to the details of a government meeting held on Monday.

Jugal Kishore, head of community medicine department in Safdarjung Hospital, said: It is good that the government will consult the NCDC. The institute is better equipped with the knowledge of managing Covid cases. Containment zone demarcation strategy is a dynamic process and the requirements keep changing from time to time. The aim is to maintain an equilibrium between containing the disease by causing minimum inconvenience to people. This demands a scientific approach.

The director general of health services has also directed the Delhi government to strengthen district level surveillance teams and oversight system by roping in district commissioners of police, the commissioner of the concerned municipal body and epidemiologists registered with the government; to strengthen the surveillance and contact tracing activities; to use input of Aarogya Setu app and the Itihaas app, which was developed by the Union ministry of electronics and information technology.

The government has been asked to conduct sero-survey of 20,000 individuals between June 27 and July 10 to gauge the burden of the disease; to engage civil society groups in the process and take adequate measures to protect transmission of Covid among healthcare workers. The district administration has been told to prepare a plan for house-to-house screening exercise to be conducted in the entire city (outside containment zones) by July 7. It also stated that cluster cases in highly dense areas will be sent to covid care centres.
CINCINNATI, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ohio National Financial Services announced today that Moodys Investors Service has affirmed its ratings for the financial strength of The Ohio National Life Insurance Company and Ohio National Life Assurance Corporation at A3. The outlook remains negative.



In its announcement, Moodys highlights that, The ratings affirmation of Ohio National and its core life insurance subsidiaries is based on the steps the company has taken to improve its credit profile. It goes on to note:

The company has improved the tenor of its debt ladder through a January 2020 refinancing of a 2022 term loan which reduced near term liquidity risk, raised statutory capital through the sale of a non-core block of life insurance and annuity business, advanced its strategy to grow its protection oriented business, and is actively managing the exposure in its retained VA GMIB block and hedging strategy which reduces its exposure to a downside scenario.

Ohio National continues to maintain a high level of capital adequacy as measured by the combined Company Action Level Risk Based Capital (CAL RBC) ratio of approximately 453% at March 31, 2020 to proactively manage the risk associated with its variable annuity block.

Ohio National also maintains a large block of whole life business, a positive from a product risk perspective, an aligned variable cost distribution, and a consistent record of prudent underwriting that has contributed to a productive and growing life insurance business.

We are pleased that Moodys highlights our high level of capital adequacy and improved credit profile, noted Gary T. Doc Huffman, CLU, ChFC, Ohio National chairman and chief executive officer. We are successfully executing our strategy, all while maintaining our long-standing financial strength, and we continue to focus on serving our policyholders first.



Moodys outlook for Ohio National reflects their view of the impact of the external environment and our ability to grow the company and manage our annuity risk. In April 2020, Moodys changed the US life insurance industry outlook to negative. Stated in Moodys release, The coronavirus-related economic downturn is creating a severe and extensive credit shock across many sectors, regions and markets including the life insurance industry.

The A3 rating is Moodys seventh-highest rating on a 21-part scale. According to Moodys, insurers rated A3 are "upper-medium grade and are subject to low credit risk.

About Ohio National Financial Services

Since 1909, Ohio National has been committed to helping individuals, families and businesses protect what matters most. Through our network of financial professionals across 49 states (all except New York), the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and through affiliated operations in South America, we provide the insurance products that help our policyholders achieve financial security and independence. As of December 31, 2019, its affiliated companies have $40.5 billion total assets under management. Products are issued by The Ohio National Life Insurance Company and Ohio National Life Assurance Corporation. Please explore ohionational.com for more information and for the latest company updates, connect with Ohio National on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Andy Haskin

513.794.6693 office

513.608.3763 mobile

andy_haskin@ohionational.com


Al-Shabab Attacks in Somalia Kill 7

By Harun Maruf June 21, 2020

At least seven people were killed in two separate attacks by the al-Shabab militant group in Somalia in the last 24 hours.

The deadliest attack took place in the town of Wanlaweyn, 90 kilometers west of Mogadishu, when an improvised explosive device planted near the home of a military officer exploded on Saturday evening. Moments later a second explosion went off as people gathered at the scene of the first explosion.

Five people were killed including the wife of the military officer who was not at home at the time.

Deputy Governor of Lower Shabelle region Ahmed Yusuf confirmed the death of the officer's wife to VOA Somali.

"The wife of the officer has died, may Allah give him strength," he said. "Her elder son is among the wounded."

Yusuf said several suspects were arrested and investigation is ongoing.

Separately, a suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint outside a military base in the town of Ba'adweyne, 170 kilometers southeast of Galkayo town in central Somalia, early on Sunday morning. Residents told VOA Somali that two soldiers were killed, although military officials deny any of them were hurt.

The commander of the 21st Division of the Somali National Army General Abdiaziz Abdullahi Hogollof told VOA Somali that the soldiers at the entrance of the base were ready and prevented the explosive-laden car from penetrating.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Mukhtar Mohamed Atosh and Abdiwahid Moallim Ishaq contributed to this report.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






New Delhi, June 22 : Pakistan is using its diplomatic missions, particularly in London to "fund and foment" anti-India hate campaigns. The role of the Pakistan High Commission in London, primarily of a colonel rank officer of Pakistan Army posted as an advisor there, has come to light, a report of the Indian intelligence agency reveals.

The colonel is assigned the task of re-uniting splinter groups of pro-Khalistan Sikhs, operating from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe.

At the behest of Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the colonel has been instrumental in funding Khalistan groups, including Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) which has an office in London.

India's premier anti-terror agency NIA has found the ISI's role in execution of a series of drone operated arms dropping incidents inside Indian territory through a pro-Khalistan terror kingpin Gurmeet Singh Bagga.

Reports say that Bagga, based in Germany's Hamburg, has links with Khalistani militants operating from Britain and the US including Gurpatwant Singh Pannu of SFJ.

The colonel, who works under a senior official of Pakistan Navy posted at High Commission, has been a key person in organising several anti-India protests at the Indian High Commission office in London.

ISI-backed Khalistani groups have attacked several Indians outside the Indian High Commission office, near Bush House in London in March 2019. Later it was found that SFJ organised the attack with help of the Overseas Pakistani Welfare Council, backed by the ISI and the Pakistan High Commission.

Pannu and his close aides have been frequent visitors to the Pakistan High Commission, located at Lowndes Square.

As per Intelligence reports, several meetings of SFJ office bearers and the Colonel rank officer have been held at this office in past one year relating to anti-India campaign "Referendum 2020" in a bid to garner support of the Sikh diaspora in US, Canada and Europe. However, the ISI's plot to rekindle the Khalistan movement has not been supported by Sikhs around the world.

This is not for the first time, that misuse of its diplomatic missions by Pakistan have come to fore. The ISI has been misusing diplomatic missions in Nepal, Bangladesh and a few Middle East countries for pushing an anti-India agenda including trafficking of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN).

Last year, a huge FICN racket was unearthed in Kathmandu, where three Pakistan nationals, who have links in the Pakistan Embassy in Nepal, were arrested. In Bangladesh, the Pakistan High Commission's Second Secretary, Farina Arshad was expelled after her links with a terror outfit came to light, a few years ago. Report says Arshad, operating on behalf of ISI, was also involved in sheltering smuggling gangs involved in pushing FICN into India.

Sources in the Indian intelligence agency said that in wake of escalating Sino-Indian tension over border issues, ISI has been pro-actively backing Khalistani groups to foment anti-India campaigns. The ISI has also set up an office for SFJ in Karachi to facilitate its activities relating to Referendum 2020. The Indian government has banned SFJ for its anti-India hate campaign and sheltering people involved in terror attacks in India.
RTHK: EU chiefs tell Xi of national security law concern

European Union chiefs expressed their "great concerns" about the proposed security law for Hong Kong during a video summit on Monday with China's president and premier.

"We expressed our great concerns about the proposed national security law for Hong Kong," European Council President Charles Michel said after the talks, adding that the bloc called on Beijing to ensure political pluralism, democratic standards and human rights in Hong Kong.

Michel also said China needed to engage in WTO reform and open up its market to the EU more to rebalance what he said was their uneven trading relationship. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
(Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. is retreating from the $77 billion mobile gaming arena after disappointing results deflated once-lofty ambitions, ending a multiyear effort just as the market goes through an unprecedented Covid-era boom.

President Shuntaro Furukawa proclaimed two years ago that smartphone games would be a $1 billion business with growth potential, building on his predecessors promise that Nintendo would release two to three mobile titles each year. That spurred hopes among investors that the gaming powerhouse could carve out a substantial slice of the market. In May, however, the president adopted a markedly different tune, saying We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market.

Nintendos shares slid 4% the day after that remark. Close observers might have sensed Nintendo was growing disillusioned with the mobile realm even earlier. Its smartphone games project was born out of necessity to shore up the bottom line amid the Wii Us failure. Now, riding a surge in Switch popularity and investor confidence, the Kyoto-based company appears to have reassessed the mobile business and narrowed its focus to its own console ecosystem.

In the period from February through May, when other studios were posting record earnings alongside Covid-19 lockdowns, Sensor Tower data showed marquee Nintendo titles like Super Mario Run plummeting by double digits. At the same time, Nintendos own Animal Crossing: New Horizons had just become the quintessential haven from virus anxiety, powering the Switch console to new heights of popularity and pushing the companys share price to a twelve-year high last week.

Mobile games are expected to make $77.2 billion this year, which would account for half of the overall video game industrys sales, according to research from Newzoo. But since the release of Mario Kart Tour in fall 2019, Nintendos mobile pipeline is empty, said Serkan Toto, a mobile games consultant in Tokyo. In a sense, Nintendos enormous success on console reduced the need and the pressure to put resources into mobile.

Story continues

Most of the top-ranked mobile games adopt a freemium model wherein playing is free but gamers are pushed to spend on upgrades or mighty weapons to advance. That approach is coming under scrutiny with regulators clamping down on exploitative freemium mechanics that force players to pay to win. In Japan especially, gacha -- a lottery system where gamers pay in hopes of scoring rare loot -- invited controversy because of its addictive aspects.

Fearing that it would harm the brand equity of its franchises, Nintendo asked its mobile development partners not to force players to spend a lot in games, according to people at those companies, who asked not to be identified as the matter is private. A Nintendo spokesperson declined to comment.

Read more: $6,065 Hunt for Blonde Avatar Shows Dark Side of Japan Gaming

Nintendo has tested various revenue models for its smartphone games, including one-time purchases for Super Mario Run and subscriptions for Mario Kart Tour. Both apps have fallen short of market expectations in terms of revenue, according to Kazunori Ito of Morningstar Research.

Read more: Nintendo Falls on Dour Forecast Despite Strong Switch Sales

For the current fiscal year ending in March, Nintendo said it would focus on already-released mobile apps and doesnt foresee revenue from that business rising much. The company earned 51 billion yen from smartphone games and other licensing in fiscal 2019, up just 11% from the year-earlier period and still only half of the way to the objective that its president had once set.

Nintendo hasnt announced what apps it will release next, but the chief of its mobile development partner, DeNA Co. President Isao Moriyasu, has said not to expect new apps from it until near the end of the current fiscal year. That suggests a long wait until Nintendos next smartphone game.

Ace Research Institute analyst Hideki Yasuda said that, in Japan especially, gacha remains the only lucrative business model in mobile games. But even if Nintendo were willing to go down that path, it would be unsuccessful, he added.

You need an active long-running franchise with hundreds of attractive characters to make a good gacha game and then youd need to keep adding new characters each month to retain players, Yasuda said. Fire Emblem is the only Nintendo franchise capable of doing that.

Read more: Profits Are Peaking for the Worlds Most Lucrative Mobile Games

Nintendos peers offer clues as to why cracking the smartphone market isnt always straightforward.

Square Enix Holdings Co., whose Dragon Quest Walk has grown into a huge hit, has taken another route to maximizing game revenue. The publisher monetizes its franchises by making them popular on high-definition home consoles first and then steering players to smartphone apps and having them spend money there -- not just once, but repeatedly. It has so far released more than a dozen Dragon Quest mobile apps and more than three dozen Final Fantasy games for phones, showing the scale of investment required. Both franchises have legions of characters and by releasing multiple titles from each set of lore, the company prompts players to keep spending to obtain their favorite heroes for each game.

Nintendos Animal Crossing mobile app saw a 45% uptick in earnings as the Switch game was released, per Sensor Towers data, but the company doesnt find the Square Enix model appealing. Unlike game studios who have to pay a platform fee whether on console or mobile, Nintendo has a strong incentive to focus all gamer spending on its own platform, where it doesnt have to share revenue. Its goal is to send customers from smartphones to consoles, not the other way around.

Sony Corp.s PlayStation unit has also struggled to penetrate the mobile gaming arena. It has a smartphone division called ForwardWorks Corp., which has released eight games mostly based on inactive PlayStation franchises that have failed to gain traction without cross-promotion.

Nintendos dimmed enthusiasm for smartphone games is driven not only by disappointing revenues and unsatisfying monetization options but also by the limitations of the platform. The company believes its franchises shine brightest when coupled with designed-by-Nintendo controllers and its never been fully comfortable with the touchscreen-only interface of a phone.

New smartphone games will come, but its very likely these will be just alibi releases to appease shareholders, said Toto.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
New Delhi: BJP president JP Nadda on Monday (June 22) hit out at the Congress saying that they should stop compromising on national security and India`s territorial integrity as it would be the biggest disservice to the armed forces and asked not to buckle down.

Hitting out at the senior Congress leader for issuing a statement that said that the Prime Minister must be mindful of the implications of his words, Nadda claimed that during the UPA's tenure, Singh as the Prime Minister abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometre of Indian land to China. He also alleged that Singh presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013.

The statement by BJP chief comes a day after former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the death of 20 Indian soldiers ni a face-off with Chinese's People`s Liberation Army (PLA) in Ladakh's Galwan Valley. Following Singh's criticism of PM Modi, a war of words erupted between the ruling BJP and the Congress over the Galan Valley crisis.

Slamming Congress for insulting the armed forces, Nadda questioned the party of raising doubt on the valour of the forces by asking for proofs of Balakor air strike in 2019 and Uri surgical strike in 2017.

Taking to Twitter on Monday, Nadda wrote, "Dear Dr. Singh and Congress party, please stop insulting our forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes. Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times. It's never too late to improve."

Soon after Nadda`s remarks, Congress national spokesperson and national media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala slammed the BJP chief and said, "Dear Nadda and the BJP, stop compromising on national security and India`s territorial integrity. "This would be the biggest disservice to our armed forces and our 20 martyrs. Don`t buckle down, have the strength to rise to the occasion. We`ll give the government every support," Surjewala said in a tweet.

Earlier in the day, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi also said that 'hope government will accept ex-PM Singh's advice' in the interest of the country. "Important advice by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. For the betterment of India, I hope the Prime Minister will accept it politely," he said in a tweet.

The ward of words erupted between Congress and BJP after Manmohan Singh in a statement launched a scathing attack on PM Modi saying 'disinformation' on the Chinese transgression will be a 'betrayal' to the sacrifice made by the Indian soldiers at the LAC and it was neither a 'substitute for diplomacy' nor 'decisive leadership'.
In a revealing new episode of Red Table Talk, Will Smith opened up to wife Jada Pinkett Smith about parenting and his own troubled relationship with his father. (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Will Smith is reflecting on his experience being a parent.

In a new Fathers Day episode of Red Table Talk with wife Jada Pinkett Smith, the 51-year-old actor sat down to discuss his failures and struggles as a dad, saying he believes "Im a way better father than I am husband."

After getting married at age 24 to first wife Sheree Zampino, Smith soon became a father to son Trey, now 27. It was then that he began to comprehend the real weight of parenting.

Read more: Will Smith to star in slave drama based on historical picture

I brought him home, we put him in the bassinet, it was like stark terror, said Smith. Im totally responsible for this life. I couldnt stop going and checking. I just cried so hard. I knew I didnt know nothing. Its on me now. It hit me how fragile parenting is. In that moment, I could see all the spectacular lessons my father had instilled in me, and I was like, theres no way. Im not that good.

When Trey was just 2 years old, Smith and Zampino split up. Though hes expressed guilt over the divorce, Pinkett Smith, whom he married in 1997, noted, just because a man might not be the best husband doesnt mean hes not a good father.

With Sheree and with Trey, that was a really difficult time. Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life. Divorce was the ultimate failure for me, Smith said. Ive been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I dont think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my 2-year-old sons mother. Sheree and I ran into that  if a mans not a great husband, then he loses his parental rights. Im a way better father than I am a husband. In that process, you start fighting for your rights, and the kid is in the middle.

Due to his own troubled relationship with his father, Smith knew he needed to control his own frustrations during the divorce.

Because of my own experience of seeing Daddy-O punch my mother, I knew my kids would never see me do anything violent toward their mother, said Smith. But in the first couple years of Treys life, because Sheree and I were divorced, I think my desire to never have my son see me in that way made me more absent as a father. I wanted to create enough distance. We not gonna be cursing, fighting.

Story continues

Will Smith, second from left, Jaden Smith, left, Jada Pinkett Smith and Trey Smith, right, attend the premiere of "Gemini Man," at the TCL Chinese Theater on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Phil McCarten/Invision/AP)

Despite their early struggles, it was then that Smith turned to his own father for support. Following his dads advice that youll never win if you fight a kids mother, Smith chose to surrender. When hes 13, hes going to come look for you, his father told him. And sure enough, As soon as Trey was ready, he came looking for his father, Smith recalled.

Now 27, son Trey is counted as one of Smiths closest friends and confidantes. Back in 2018, Smith took to social media to discuss his own relationship with his oldest son.

It has not always been like this between Trey & I, he wrote in an Instagram post. We STRUGGLED FOR YEARS after my divorce from his mother. He felt betrayed & abandoned. It is a wild blessing to recover & restore a loving relationship with my beautiful son!

I love doing a lot of things. I love being an actor, I love putting stuff out in the world. I love husband and wife relating. But parenting is something really rewarding and challenging about delivering human beings to the world, Smith told Pinkett Smith during his Red Table Talk appearance.

And to themselves, she added.

Parenting daughter Willow, 19, also introduced Smith to a new set of challenges. At just 9 years old, Willow rose to fame with her hit single Whip My Hair. The family soon set out on tour with Justin Bieber, but Willow quickly decided she no longer was interested in touring.

Read more: Bad Boys 4 in development confirms producer

[Willow] had committed to these 30 days on [the] Whip My Hair [tour]. We were in Dublin, Ireland, and she did her fourth or fifth show, and came off stage and was like, Im ready to go, Daddy. She was ready to go home, and I was like, Well no, you cant go home, baby. You committed to 30 days. You cant go home. She kept asking, Daddy, it doesnt matter how I feel? And I was like, Yes baby, it does matter how you feel, but you have to finish what you started. And she was like, But Im finished.

As a form of protest against her dad, Willow shaved her head.

It was so devastating to me when she shaved her head bald, Smith admitted. Her record is Whip My Hair. Im like, thats a protest against me.

Willow Smith and Will Smith attend the premiere of Disney's "Aladdin" on May 21, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

It was his experience with Willow that Smith said introduced me to feelings.

I would say that Whip My Hair thing put a pause button on my overt parenting. I stopped, and I just started watching my kids, and with Willow, I started to see that there was a higher value in talking to her about how she feels about the situation versus how to fix the situation, and it became the new thought process for me, he said.

Pinkett then surprised Smith with a series of videos made by his three kids, including 21-year-old son Jaden.

Happy Fathers Day, my guy, Trey told the camera. I love you beyond life. I am truly thankful for our relationship. Every step of the way, the journey has been magnificent. I wouldnt change anything.

Pinkett Smith closed out the episode by tearfully telling Smith, we appreciate you, and I just want to say thank you for everything. Youre really a great father. I really appreciate the parenting partnership.

Theres no rules. Everybody wants rules. Its more art than it is science, Smith responded. And I love what we painting.
Non-essential retail in Wrexham starts to reopen as some lockdown measures in Wales are eased

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jun 22nd, 2020

Non-essential retail across Wrexham has reopened its doors to shoppers this morning for the first time since March.

From today  91 days after they were forced to close  non-essential shops in Wales have been allowed to reopen as part of another another cautious step towards the new normal.

Retailers can resume trading if they have taken all reasonable measures to comply with the physical distancing duty in Welsh law to reduce the spread of coronavirus and protect shop workers and shoppers.

In Wrexham the town centre team and Lead Member for Economic Regeneration, councillor Terry Evans, have been out overseeing the roll out of the pandemic response in the town.

Amanda Davies from Wrexham Councils town centre team told us the council are taking a range of steps to help businesses reopen, including bilingual signage asking people to keep their distance, changing Bank Street to a new one way system, and various barriers in place to enable the outdoor market to take place safely.

The onus is now on the people of Wrexham to use the public realm and shops safely, as the council were keen to stress they can only advise people of the social distancing guidelines.

Local police also joined in with that messaging, saying If you are visiting the Town Centre today then please stay safe and observe the 2m distance rule using the hashtags #wearewrexham #Towncentremanagementteam #protectNHS

Not all shops have fully reopened, with the likes of Next, Primark, McDonalds and Debenhams set to reopen later in the week.

Some of the shops that have reopened  such as Waterstones  have markings outside where people can queue and keep their distance. Signage asking people to keep their distance at the Monday Market is also in place.

Using card payments and also perspex screens are also part of the new normal.

Therell also be click and collect parking on High Street and town centre car parking in council owned car parks remains free until the end of September.

Cllr Evans said: This is excellent news for our traders who have been understandably worried about their businesses since they were shutdown in March.

It means they can once again open for business and we have been planning for this event over the past few weeks.

However, we have to bear in mind the guidelines that are still in place as no-one in Wrexham, or in Wales, can travel over 5 miles for non-essential travel which means numbers visiting are not expected to be extremely high in the first couple of weeks.

This will give traders time to adjust to their new safe way of trading and be ready for when the 5 mile restriction is lifted which is expected to be in July.

We also all have to bear in mind that the Coronavirus pandemic is not over yet and may not be for some considerable time so plans will be reviewed regularly amended where required to ensure public health is not compromised whilst visiting the town centre.

The plans put in place take into account the safety of both staff and customers which remains a priority and weve been working with stores to make sure this can happen.

The town centre will also look different and a one way system will be put into place on Bank Street as social distancing cannot take place in such a narrow street.

I would like to thank our traders and our own staff who have worked extremely hard to make sure the town centre opens safely for visitors and staff alike.

The Council are also looking at re-opening public toilets which will adhere to the guidelines.

Indoor retail spaces owned by the council, including the General and Butchers Markets and Ty Pawb are also set to reopen soon.

You can view a quick video of the town centre reopening for business this morning, below:

A quick wizz around Wrexham town centre  new one way system, stickers on the floor, wardens and signage in place. Council town centre team have been busy! Onus now on you to play your part in socially distancing and staying safe. pic.twitter.com/uuupNlPeNE  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) June 22, 2020

Top pic: The town centre team, some of whom will be working as wardens, along with Lead Member Terry Evans and Rebeccah Lowry, Head of Regeneration for Wrexham Council.
President Trump tweeted Monday that he would only meet with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro "to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power."

Why it matters: The president's comments represent a backtrack from his interview with Axios' Jonathan Swan last week, where he set no such precondition for a Maduro meeting and suggested he's had second thoughts about his decision to recognize Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate leader.

Trump told Swan: "I would maybe think about that. ... Maduro would like to meet. And I'm never opposed to meetings  you know, rarely opposed to meetings. I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I've turned them down."

"I would maybe think about that. ... Maduro would like to meet. And I'm never opposed to meetings  you know, rarely opposed to meetings. I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I've turned them down." Trump tweeted: "Unlike the radical left, I will ALWAYS stand against socialism and with the people of Venezuela. My Admin has always stood on the side of FREEDOM and LIBERTY and against the oppressive Maduro regime! I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!"

The big picture: Trump's comments during his interview with Axios drew ire from top lawmakers and other officials in South Florida, per CBS Miami.
The kitchenware startup Our Place feels custom-built for this wake-me-when-it's-over moment. While consumers shrink from stores, the company is a pure e-commerce play. At a time when food preparation is therapy and distant family a hole in people's hearts, Our Place targets home cooks and radiates nostalgia for tradition. The brand is enthusiastically multicultural, perfect for a crisis whose unofficial rallying cry is "We are in this together."

So while other startups are madly pivoting, Shiza Shahid and her husband, Amir Tehrani, have changed theirs very little. The 12-employee, Los Angeles-based business, which launched in September and became profitable in April, is on track to do $20 million in revenue in 2020. Sales are climbing more than 50 percent every month.

"Our message from the beginning was make something with your hands with people you love," says Shahid about Our Place. "Now that message is resonating. But I wish it hadn't happened that way."

This is the first for-profit company for Shahid, who in 2013 co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Our Place broke through last year with its first product, the Always Pan, a $145 multifunctional cookware item that, in April, Oprah Winfrey anointed one of her Favorite Things.

At first Shahid, Tehrani, and a third partner, Zach Rosner, did not recognize how important cooking would become during the pandemic. But as people shifted from hoarding Doritos to auditioning banana bread recipes, Our Place's social media community switched into high gear. The company, which in nine months has amassed 60,000 Instagram followers and has a large and engaged email list, responded with more content for and about first-time cooks, trying to instill confidence.

One early adopter is Adrianne Benzion, a Los Angeles-based art director for an advertising agency. Benzion bought an Always Pan soon after its debut and uses it every day. "I can cook eggs in the morning. I can make ice cream in it," she says. "If I want to have a chill night, I can grab some dumplings from Trader Joe's, throw them in the steamer basket, and then dump them in the pan." Benzion followed her purchase of the pan with an Our Place cleaver and the company's dishes, bowls, and glassware.

From activist to entrepreneur

Shahid grew up in Pakistan, and became an activist and volunteer, leading protests and donation drives to benefit victims of natural disasters. She won a scholarship to Stanford, where she studied international relations. While there, she saw a YouTube video of Yousafzai, whose school had been shut down by the Taliban, and created a summer camp for the budding education activist and 26 of her classmates. "I wanted to become a bridge for these girls who were struggling to have their voices and stories heard," she says.

In 2012, Yousafzai, then 15, was shot during an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Shahid was in Dubai at the time, working for McKinsey & Company. She hurried to Yousafzai's side and began managing the onslaught of media attention. Three months later, they formed the Malala Fund to help 130 million girls around the world get educations.

But Shahid felt torn between the non- and for-profit worlds. At Stanford, she had first heard the term "entrepreneur," which did not exist in her native Urdu. She loved the idea of enacting social change through startups. In 2017, she left her CEO role at the Malala Fund to start NOW Ventures, an angel fund investing in mission-driven startups. (NOW Ventures remains active; Shahid continues to invest.) Two years later came Our Place.

In 2016, Shahid married Tehrani, an Iranian immigrant and consumer-products entrepreneur, who had grown up helping out at his family's housewares company. In their Los Angeles home, the couple enjoyed throwing dinner parties, but Shahid found contemporary kitchenware brands' huge cookware sets to be overwhelming. The couple spent two years making sketches and working with product designers to create the Always Pan.

Shahid and Tehrani raised $4 million from investors, including Will Smith's Dreamers VC fund and the venture arm of FabFitFun. They set up manufacturing at a woman-owned factory in China. Intent on sustainability, they designed packaging that allowed products to be mailed in a single box, to reduce the carbon footprint.

Inside the global kitchen

Our Place's signature product is multifunctional. Its brand is multicultural. Shahid and Tehrani were fans of Anthony Bourdain, whose visits to home cooks during a 2014 trip to Iran, Shahid says, "showed their culture in a humanizing way for the first time."

Like Bourdain, Our Place's founders wanted to explore how cooks around the world express culture and meaning with food. And they wanted to help immigrants recreate flavors and traditions that would mentally transport them across thousands of miles to their mothers' kitchens.

Toward that end, Our Place plans to create products around two-to-four home-cooking traditions each year. It will then partner with immigrants in those communities to tell the stories of their traditions. Where possible, the company will manufacture products in the countries they represent.

The first multicultural collection focused on the Lunar New Year. The founders began by interviewing Chinese Americans to understand how they cook and set tables for that celebration. Based on their research, they created a version of the Always Pan in bright red with a bamboo steamer and cooking chopsticks; a cleaver; and two platters designed by a Chinese American illustrator as a playful riff on the familiar Chinese blue-and-white porcelain pattern. Marketing for the collection is rich with photographs and interviews with Chinese American artists, home cooks, and chefs.

The founders had intended next to release a collection themed around Eid al-Fitre, a holiday in late May that marks the end of Ramadan. The idea was to send photographers to capture family celebrations in a variety of Muslim households and to compile a vivid chronicle for their website and social media. But family gatherings--not to mention professional photo shoots of family gatherings--aren't currently feasible.
Jean Kennedy Smiths death moved me more than I expected and brought back a mix of memories. I was part of Ms. Smiths Very Special Arts team in the late 1980s, experiencing the truth of a quote in the June 19 front-page obituary, An architect of peace in Northern Ireland, that she was not kind to the people that worked for her. Once while sitting next to her on a flight, after shed blown off another meeting of VSA international delegates in Denmark, she told me: Your problem is that you are too nice. You dont have to be nice when youre pushing a great idea. I thought to myself, sure, if your name is Kennedy, maybe you dont have to be nice. But nice or not, Ms. Smith made a huge difference to people with disabilities in the field of arts and education. She could have coasted through life but instead chose to push a great idea.
The Armenian parliament has adopted proposed changes to the constitution that would lead to the removal of Constitutional Court judges, potentially opening the door for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to exert more influence over the South Caucasian nation.



A total of 89 members of the National Assembly -- all affiliated with the ruling My Step bloc -- backed the draft constitutional amendments in the first and second readings on June 22.



The votes were boycotted by the two opposition parties represented in the 132-seat legislature -- the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) and the Bright Armenia Party (LHK).



The draft changes, unveiled last week by the My Step bloc of Pashinian, would lead to the immediate dismissal of three of the nine Constitutional Court members.



It would also require the court to elect a new chairman.



The current court chairman, Hrayr Tovmasian, and six other judges have been under strong government pressure to step down over the past year.



Pashinian has accused them of maintaining close ties to the countrys former government and impeding his judicial reforms. The seven judges have refused to quit.

12-Year Term Limit

Tovmasian and opposition figures dismissed Pashinians claims and in turn accused the prime minister of seeking to take control of the Constitutional Court.



Under the proposed amendments, the current and future Constitutional Court judges would be barred from serving more than 12 years.



The 12-year term limit was already included in the constitution which took effect in April 2018, but it didnt apply to the judges already serving.

WATCH: Fight Breaks Out In Armenian Parliament



The draft changes approved by parliament would eliminate a clause in the amended constitution allowing these judges to retain their positions until reaching retirement age.



The move would trigger the immediate resignation of three judges who had taken the bench in the mid-1990s. Two other Constitutional Court members would have to resign in 2022. Tovmasian would have to quit as court chairman but would remain one of the nine justices.



In an opinion made public on June 22, the Venice Commission largely backed the proposed changes to the constitution, but said it regrets that the proposed amendments do not provide for a transitional period that would allow for a gradual change in the composition of the court in order to avoid any abrupt and immediate change endangering the independence of this institution.



The Strasbourg-based Venice Commission also said that My Step should not rush to have Tovmasian replaced by another Constitutional Court chairman.
Another big acquisition out of Israel this week points to how bigger tech companies are using the economic slowdown to focus on their longer-term strategies and shore up assets to support that. Today Microsoft announced that it would be acquiring CyberX, a security startup that focuses specifically on detecting, stopping, and predicting security breaches on internet of things networks and the networks of large industrial organizations. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed -- we're asking still -- but sources say that it's in the region of $165 million.

"CyberX will complement the existing Azure IoT security capabilities, and extends to existing devices including those used in industrial IoT, Operational Technology and infrastructure scenarios" said Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, CVP, CTO, Cloud + AI Security, and Sam George, CVP, Cloud + AI Azure IoT in a blog post. "With CyberX, customers can discover their existing IoT assets, and both manage and improve the security posture of those devices."

The deal caps off months of speculation that Microsoft would acquire the company. The reports started back in February, then went quiet, and then started to reappear again in May. Between then and now, the rumoured price also went up to $165 million from $150 million, which may have meant that the delay in closing the deal hinged on the valuation (or simply went up as others started to look at the company).

Microsoft's interest in the company touches on two key areas that the company has been working on building up over the last several years: IT services for large enterprises, and cybersecurity -- specifically cybersecurity leveraging AI to identify and tackle next-generation challenges.

The two have a large overlap in the form of CyberX, which works with major energy utilities, telecoms carriers, chemical producers and other industrial companies that utilise a lot of "unmanned" machines managed across sprawling networks for essential services: it applies behavioural analytics and other AI-based techniques to continuously monitor network activity and detect anomalies that could indicate breaches.

Story continues

Microsoft's also betting big on IoT: it's invested $5 billion into the area in the last couple of years on a wider platform for building -- and critically for Azure operating -- IoT solutions as part of its larger enterprise push. Security has to be a major cornerstone of that, with too many examples racking up of flaws in poorly built or maintained systems proving to be doorways into wider vulnerabilities across entire networks.

It looks like the whole company, including the founders, will be joining Microsoft with this deal.

Nir and I founded CyberX with the goal of delivering a scalable solution that would be easy to deploy and reduce risk for enterprises worldwide, said Omer Schneider, co-founder and CEO of CyberX, in a blog post announcing the deal. Were thankful to our loyal customers and partners as well as to our dedicated employees whose innovation and hard work made it possible for us to reach this important milestone, and also to our investors for their ongoing support.

By joining forces with Microsoft, we will rapidly scale our business and technology to securely enable digital transformation for many more organizations, add Nir Giller, co-founder, GM International, and CTO of CyberX. Together, CyberX and Microsoft provide an unbeatable solution for gaining visibility and a holistic understanding of risk for all IoT and OT devices in your enterprise.

CyberX offers various tools to customers to help better manage the IoT networks (and specifically industrial IoT networks) they have in place, in particular around the concept of "digital transformation" and customers not just upgrading systems but getting a better grip on what they already have.

Among the functionality will be letting end users identify and connect with existing IoT assets across wider physical footprints (like factory floors); and then also identifying security issues and fix them within those footprints.

The idea will also be to use this as a springboard to upsell to other Microsoft services, for example Azure Sentinel to have a wider picture of how and where the IoT systems might interconnect with a company's wider IT network -- visibility that's important for being able to identify vulnerabilities and their consequences.

As with Intel and its May acquisition of Israeli mapping startup Moovit (which it acquired just weeks ago for $900 million), Microsoft already had a relationship with CyberX: most recently, the two announced a deal in March of this year to integrate Microsoft's Azure cloud platform into the CyberX ecosystem, so that CyberX customers using Azure could continue to have those services covered by CyberX's security systems, along with the rest of their on-premises network activity.

Unlike Intel's strategic relationship, it appears that Microsoft was not among CyberX's investors: the startup had raised just under $48 million from backers that included Norwest Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Flint Capital, Glilot and OurCrowd, as well as individuals like Facebook's Stan Chudnovsky and Gigi Levy-Weiss.

More generally, Microsoft's been a prolific investor and acquirer in Israel, and recent cybersecurity-specific M&A have included purchasing Aorato, Adallom, Secure Islands and Hexadite.

On the enterprise front, it's also been making acquisitions big and small, with the most recently before this being the acquisition of a small outfit in the US called ADRM that had built extensive data-modelling maps for different industries (some 75 in all), useful for helping businesses visualise how and where data moves and where tech or human investments might be necessary within an organization. It, too, is becoming a part of the Azure machine.
Analysts say North Korea has been conducting a series of staged provocations aimed at forcing sanctions concessions.

North Korea said on Monday that it had readied thousands of balloons and millions of leaflets in preparation for retaliatory punishment against South Korea.

The detail, in a state media report, came a day after North Korea said it was preparing to begin an anti-South Korea leaflet campaign following a series of vitriolic condemnations of Seoul because of anti-North Korea leaflets floated across the border.

Defectors in South Korea send such leaflets which criticise North Koreas leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions. The messages are usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.

Analysts have said North Korea has been conducting a series of staged provocations aimed at forcing concessions from Seoul and Washington.

The preparations for the largest-ever distribution of leaflets against the enemy are almost complete, a report by the Korean Central News Agency said.





Publishing and printing institutions at all levels in the capital city have turned out 12 million leaflets of all kinds reflective of the wrath and hatred of the people from all walks of life, it said.

Talks stalled

More than 3,000 balloons of various types, capable of scattering leaflets deep inside south Korea, have been prepared, along with other means of distribution, KCNA added.

Inter-Korean relations have been frozen for months, following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over sanctions relief.

Nuclear-armed and impoverished North Korea is subject to multiple United Nations Security Council sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.

South Koreas President Moon Jae-in initially brokered a dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington, but North Korea now blames him for not doing enough to persuade the US to ease sanctions.

South Korea has to face the music. Only when it experiences how painful and how irritating it is to dispose of leaflets and waste, it will shake off its bad habit, KCNA said.

The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near.

Last Tuesday, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, triggering broad international condemnation.

It has also threatened to bolster its military presence in and around the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

North Korea is planning a large-scale military parade to mark Octobers 75th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers Party at which it could showcase its latest missile development, Yonhap News agency reported citing the Defence Ministry in Seoul.

Members of the North Korean defector group Kuensaem fill empty plastic bottles with rice and masks, during preparations for an event to send the bottles towards North Korea [Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

The ministry said new buildings were under construction at the Mirim airfield in Pyongyang.

Seouls unification ministry has called North Koreas leaflet plans very regrettable and urged Pyongyang to withdraw.

South Korea has also warned of a thorough crackdown against activists sending anti-North Korea leaflets. It filed a police complaint against two defector groups over the messages that have offended Pyongyang.

The two Koreas remain technically at war. The Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, but it has never been replaced by a peace treaty.
A Louisiana lawmakers effort to eliminate police officers wide immunity from lawsuits and allow people injured by law enforcement to sue for damages in civil court was shelved by Republicans on a state House committee.

The House civil law committee voted 9-7 against House Bill 51 from Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Baton Rouge Democrat. More than a dozen black lawmakers stood together in the hearing to support Jordans bill. After the vote, some left the room in tears.

Jordan sought to strip the wide-ranging immunity, called qualified immunity, available to law enforcement officers as a defense against damage claims for wrongful death or injury. Backers of Jordans proposal said the immunity is so sweeping its nearly impossible to hold officers accountable for excessive force when prosecutors refuse to bring criminal charges.

It denies the opportunity for justice to victims whose rights have been violated, and it exacerbates the crisis of confidence in government, Jordan said.

The vote fell largely along party lines, with Republicans objecting to the bill and Democrats in support. Two GOP lawmakers  Reps. Richard Nelson of Mandeville and Thomas Pressly of Shreveport  joined Democrats in backing the measure.

Opponents said legal avenues exist to prosecute police for inappropriate behavior and excessive force. The Louisiana Sheriffs Association said the measure would open all law enforcement officers to frivolous lawsuits, make it harder to combat crime and discourage people from wanting to wear a uniform. Several law enforcement agencies objected to the bill.

Im concerned that law enforcement officers would be hesitant to do their duty for fear of lawsuits, said St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne.

Jordan introduced the bill after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which has sparked broad discussions of policing methods, the nations approach to public safety and the protections extended to law enforcement.

Floyd, an African American man, died after a white police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed mans neck for several minutes even as he pleaded for air.

Several supporters of Jordans proposal described accusations of police misconduct in Louisiana and around the country, with no punishment for the officers.

Qualified immunity is what allows bad actors to escape consequences  and, frankly, I think it dishonors those officers who undertake their duties with professionalism and care, said Chris Kaiser, the advocacy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

Pineville Republican Rep. Mike Johnson said that while the wide-ranging immunity can keep police from facing large monetary judgments for excessive force, he said current law doesnt in any way prevent a bad actor from being punished in criminal court.

Rep. Valarie Hodges, a Denham Springs Republican, pointed to the murder charge against Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into Floyds neck. She said that shows law enforcement can be prosecuted. But she also spoke of her nephew, a state trooper who died in a police chase.

There are some law enforcement officers who are very bad and need to be dismissed. They need to be put in jail, Hodges said. But she added: We dont want to vilify everyone.

Supporters of the bill said excessive force cases are rarely prosecuted. They argued seeking redress in civil courts with large damage awards could offer a way to push officers who use excessive force out of work, creating a financial disincentive to keep them employed.

Since a 1982 court ruling, it has been practically impossible to sue a police officer even when the court admits they violated the constitution, U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, a New Orleans Democrat, said in a letter to the committee that Jordan read aloud.

Shannon Dirmann, with the sheriffs association, said police reform is needed but the legislation was the wrong approach.

Were ready to come to the table to talk about meaningful police accountability, she said.

Associations for district attorneys, state troopers and chiefs of police opposed the bill  but didnt speak.

In an emotional closing speech before the committee rejected his bill, Jordan said he fears the way police will interact with his children and the children of other black lawmakers. He pointed to the group of African American legislators assembled and asked the committee: When you had the chance to do something, what did you do?

Separately, lawmakers are considering creation of a task force to make recommendations about police training, racial bias recognition and deescalation tactics.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation Louisiana Law Enforcement
CAIRO (Reuters) - Dubai will allow foreign visitors to enter from July 7, while foreigners with residency visas will be able to enter from June 22, the Dubai Media Office said on Sunday. It said those entering would have to present certificates to show they had recently tested negative for the coronavirus or would undergo tests on arrival at Dubai airports.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Dubai will allow foreign visitors to enter from July 7, while foreigners with residency visas will be able to enter from June 22, the Dubai Media Office said on Sunday.

It said those entering would have to present certificates to show they had recently tested negative for the coronavirus or would undergo tests on arrival at Dubai airports. Citizens and residents would be permitted to travel abroad from June 23.

(Reporting by Samar Hassan; Editing by Edmund Blair)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
(CNN)  They've helped South Korean stars dominate charts and break records on social media.

Now, some K-pop fans are claiming another victory: helping foil United States President Donald Trump's return to the campaign trail.

Ahead of his Saturday night rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump bragged that he had about 1 million RSVPs. But when the arena didn't even reach its 19,000-person capacity, many people online were quick to give K-pop fans and TikTok users at least partial credit for the low turnout.

Prior to the rally, people on social media platforms TikTok and Twitter encouraged people to register to attend Trump's event -- and not attend. One video, with more than 300,000 views, called on fans of South Korean mega group BTS in particular to join the trolling campaign.

Following the rally, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, telling him he had been "rocked" by teens on TikTok flooding the Trump campaign with fake ticket reservations. "Kpop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too," she added.

It's not clear how much of a role the social media campaign -- or K-pop fans -- had in the low turnout. Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale told CNN Sunday that "leftists and online trolls" who thought they had impacted rally attendance "don't know what they're talking about or how our rallies work." He added bogus numbers had been weeded out, saying "these phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking."

But the fact that K-pop fans may have been involved shouldn't come as a surprise -- it's part of a long history of social activism and charity work led by online devotees.

In the past month alone, K-pop fans have used their vast social media networks to effect change. Earlier this month, K-pop fans drowned out racist voices by posting images of K-pop groups using anti-Black hashtags, such as #WhiteLivesMatter.

After the Dallas Police Department asked people on Twitter to submit video of "illegal activity from the protests" to its IWatch Dallas app, K-pop fans flooded the app with fancams -- or clips of K-pop idols -- prompting the app to crash.

And after popular boy band BTS donated $1 million to support the Black Lives Matter movement, BTS fan-based charity fundraising group "One In An ARMY" helped raise another $1 million for the cause.

"Given the diversity of ARMY (the name of BTS' fandom) and their oft-expressed strong desire to help others, it's unsurprising that ARMY wanted to support the Black Lives Matter movement," the group said in statement at the time.

Why K-pop fandoms become activists

To the uninitiated, good causes and K-pop might seem like an unlikely marriage.

But K-pop fans have been doing good work for the community for decades, said CedarBough Saeji, a visiting assistant professor in Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington.

In the world of K-pop, music stars are known as idols, and are expected to set an example of how to act in society. They inspire passionate fandoms -- and in the past, some idols would receive thousands of gifts a day from their ardent fans, Saeji said.

Around two decades ago, K-pop groups began asking their fans to stop sending gifts and instead give to charity, she said.

Since then, K-pop fandoms in South Korea have done volunteer work and donated to charity in their idol's name. Super Junior's fans donated bags of rice to the Salvation Army, for instance, while Block B fans raised money to build a well in Cambodia, CNN affiliate SBS reported.

This all had the effect of making the idol in question look like they were contributing to society -- and portraying fans as more than obsessive devotees.

"Fans practice such activities not only for local charities, but also as a way of promoting their stars," Sun Jung, from the National University of Singapore, wrote in a 2012 research paper. She noted that, while K-pop fandoms can "create a nuisance" online, they can also lead to new forms of social activism.

Even now, members of BTS's ARMY are told not to give any gifts to the pop stars, aside from handwritten letters. At BTS concerts, there are often bins for donating goods to local charities, Saeji said.

And as K-pop has gone global, international fanbases have continued that spirit of donating or doing good work in their idol's name.

In March 2018, BTS fan Erika Overton, a Brooklyn native in her late 30s, co-founded One In An ARMY, a fan collective which partners with non-profits to encourage the fandom to make small donations to a chosen cause.

According to its website the group has helped raise money to fund meals for Syrian refugees and formula for babies in Venezuela.

Last year, Overton told CNN that she saw supporting projects to help those in need as a natural extension of being a BTS fan.

"They put a lot of effort into giving us of themselves and their music and their sincerity ... the ARMY really wants to give back in their name."

How K-pop activism works

While there are some groups -- such as One In An ARMY -- which come together for social causes, much of the work K-pop fans do isn't through an organized chain of command.

K-pop fandoms unite organically to get their idol's name to trend on Twitter on their birthday, or stream their favorite band's songs and videos as many times as possible so they get to the top of the music charts. The go-to space tends to be Twitter, meaning fans understand how to use algorithms to achieve their goals.

It's not a big leap to use that same process of organizing online for social issues.

"It is literally just people who are in contact with people through social media," Saeji says. "This is happening naturally."

In the US, K-pop fans tend to be outward-looking and progressive, and many are people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, Saeji said. Given that, it's not surprising that K-pop fandoms would be active in their support of Black Lives Matter -- or opposing Trump.

The real takeaway from K-pop fans' recent successes isn't necessarily the power of K-pop fandoms, but the power of young people, says Saeji.

"Young people today know how to organize online," she said. "They do have political opinions and they are interested in politics and making political change."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "K-pop fans are being credited with helping disrupt Trump's rally. Here's why that shouldn't be a surprise"
SOUTHFIELD, Mich., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationally known trial lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, along with Jon Marko has filed today a $100 Million Dollar lawsuit against Sequel Youth Services and Lakeside for Children, among others, as a result of the suffocation death of Cornelius Frederick, age 16 on May 1, 2020 (25 days before George Floyd's death),

The suit alleges that Cornelius was suffocated by a staff member, who placed his body weight on Cornelius' back and chest for 10 minutes, restricting the child's ability to breathe. As a result, Cornelius suffocated, and his brain suffered massive anoxic (lack of oxygen) damage.

Fieger stated:

"The State of Michigan has pulled the facility license. Governor Whitmer has recognized that Cornelius' death was 'senseless, intolerable, and heart breaking'.

The white attorney for the Defendants has a video of Cornelius' killing and has refused to provide it to the family.

I will not rest until the death of Cornelius and other victimized children are vindicated at the bar of justice. The protection of our most vulnerable must be a top priority. Black lives matter. Black children matter."

Fieger stated that the Defendant Sequel runs a series of youth facilities in other States, and has been previously cited for misconduct involving children. Fieger urged the Kalamazoo Prosecutor and Attorney General, Dana Nessel, to bring charges against those responsible for Cornelius death.

The suit was filed today in the Kalamazoo County Circuit Court.

SOURCE Fieger Law
While Lebanon seems more than ever affected by the consequences of the tug-of-war between the United States and Iran, especially with the enforcement of the US Caesar Act against the Syrian regime, Washington is preparing to release 13 Lebanese nationals held on its territory on various charges. Among them is businessman Kassem Tajeddine, accused by Washington of being a major financial contributor to Hezbollah. Arrested in 2017 while in Morocco, Tajeddine was sentenced to five years in prison and a $50 million fine.

Information about his release, confirmed by security sources, came as a surprise to political circles, which fail to interpret the significance of this move in such an explosive and tense context. For some, it is a simple routine procedure that has no hidden diplomatic or political message. For others, on the contrary, it is yet another example of the policy followed by the US ad-ministration, which perfectly uses the carrot and the stick to bring its opponents, or even its en-emies, to the negotiating table, but under a balance of power that must be in Washingtons fa-vor.

In any case, barring unforeseen circumstances, 13 Lebanese detained in the US are expected to return to Lebanon in July. Most of them have been charged with collaborating with Hezbollah or for crimes related to money laundering.

The move was definitely not a sign of openness on the part of the US administration towards the so-called resistance camp, Western diplomatic sources said. Nor does it indicate a willing-ness on the part of the United States to alleviate the impact of the Caesar Act on Lebanon.

However, to a seasoned Lebanese diplomat, it fits perfectly within the policy of the current US administration, for which all means are good to push its enemies to the negotiating table. According to the diplomat, the Caesar Act is hence only a means of pushing both Lebanon and Iraq, as well as probably the Syrian regimes current allies, Iran and Russia, to a dialogue designed to adopt exceptions to avoid the complete suffocation of the countries affected by the new US law.

The current dialogue between the US administration and the Baghdad government on the with-drawal of US troops from Iraq must be closely monitored, according to the diplomat. The US intention to withdraw from Iraq was announced following a decision to this effect by the Iraqi Parliament in the wake of the assassination in early January of General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

But both sides wanted the dialogue to take place discreetly and away from popular pressures or developments on the ground. In any case, the Lebanese diplomat noted that if an agreement is reached between Baghdad and Washington on a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, it will inevitably have an impact on the situation in Syria. This will be especially true in Syria's northern region where fighting continues among various parties with interests that are at the same time domestic, regional and international, the diplomat added. In this context, the Ameri-cans dont want a possible withdrawal of their troops to constitute a blow to their interests and those of their allies in the region. Here lies the importance for Washington to conduct a dia-logue in a position of strength, with strong negotiation cards.

It is also in this context that the diplomat explained the US increased pressure on Lebanon which targets all sectors at the same time: the closure of illegal crossing routes between Lebanon and Syria under the pretext of stopping smuggling between the two countries, the US dollar crisis on domestic markets, the attempt to include the implementation of UN Security Resolu-tion 1559 and Hezbollahs disarmament in the demands of the popular protests, repeated street clashes and threats of internal discord, the socioeconomic crisis coupled with a political crisis, etc...

Suddenly, all problems exploded at the same time. This certainly shows how rotten the public institutions are and also the fragility of the sectors that were thought to be strong, such as the banking industry. But, according to the diplomat, this explosive situation at all levels might not be fortuitous; it would be a matter of pushing the Lebanese to the limit so that they negotiate in a position of weakness. However, it is also not a question of bringing about total collapse because, in this case, the situation may get out of control. According to this logic, it would be good to send, from time to time, small positive signals.





(This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour on the 19th of June)






Subscriber content preview

States are trying to strike a balance between containing the new coronavirus and encouraging out-of-state visitors to come spend their cash.



By DAVID SHARP

Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine  Homebound travelers desperate to venture out for the first time since the pandemic are confronting a vacation landscape this summer that may require coronavirus tests for the family and even quarantines.

States from Maine to Hawaii are trying to strike a balance between containing the new coronavirus and encouraging out-of-state visitors to spend their cash on hotels, restaurants and other businesses.





. . .
The Henry Ford, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and WDIV-Local 4 present Salute to America, a TV only event to kick off the Fourth of July weekend. For the first time in its 28-year run, Salute to America concerts will not be held in Greenfield Village during the Fourth of July weekend.

This long-running signature event typically brings together sold-out crowds and two great Detroit-area cultural institutions for what has become a cherished holiday tradition with the community. The extraordinary outdoor Independence Day concert experience would normally come to life complete with patriotic music, national performers including the United States Army Field Bands and Choirs, cannons and a fireworks finale.

This year, WDIV-Local 4 will produce an hour-long primetime program filled with all the music and fanfare for which the Salute to America concerts are known and loved. The live concerts are not taking place due to restrictions on public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The televised special will remain proudly supported by the events long-time sponsors Bank of America and Ford Motor Company.

Jason Carr and Tati Amare of WDIV-Local 4s Live in the D will host the special from Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford. Music will include encore performances drawn from the orchestras extensive DSO Replay archive recorded at Orchestra Hall prior to the pandemic. Conductors Leonard Slatkin and Michael Francis lead performances of John Williams Liberty Fanfare, Tchaikovskys 1812 Overture, and The Star-Spangled Banner.

In addition, a DSO brass quintet will be featured in a newly recorded segment at Greenfield Village. Viewers will also learn how the July 4th holiday was celebrated during Americas centennial, as well as get an up close look at an authentic muzzle-loading Napoleanic-era cannon used during the 1812 Overture.

The United States Army Field Band and Soldiers Chorus, regular guests at Salute to America concerts, will perform its Armed Forces Salute, traditionally presented at the event in recognition to veterans and active-duty military for service to their country.

Detroit musician and The Voice contestant Beth Griffith-Manley will sing America the Beautiful to honor this unique moment of American history.

Salute to America will premiere on WDIV-Local 4 on July 3 at 8:00 p.m.

####

About WDIV-Local 4

Local 4 News is currently the No. 1 newscast at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 11 p.m. in Nielsen ratings for the Detroit television market. WDIV is the No. 1 NBC affiliate in the top 20 LPM markets. In addition, Local 4's ClickOnDetroit.com is a top breaking news and weather website and the No. 1 news website in Metro Detroit according to ComScore.

About the DSO

The most accessible orchestra on the planet, the acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra is known for trailblazing performances, collaborations with the worlds foremost musical artists, and a deep connection to its city. In January 2020, Italian conductor Jader Bignamini was named the DSOs next music director to commence with the 2020-2021 season. Making its home at historic Orchestra Hall within the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, the DSO offers a performance schedule that features Classical, PNC Pops, Paradise Jazz, William Davidson Neighborhood Concerts, and Young Peoples Family Concert series. A dedication to broadcast innovation began in 1922, when the DSO became the first orchestra in the world to present a radio broadcast and continues today with the free Live from Orchestra Hall webcast series, the on-demand archive DSO Replay, and Classroom Edition webcasts for schoolchildren.

About The Henry Ford

Located in Dearborn, Michigan, The Henry Ford, a globally-recognized destination, fosters inspiration and learning from hands-on encounters with artifacts that represent the most comprehensive collection anywhere focusing on innovation, ingenuity and resourcefulness in America. Its unique venues include Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Greenfield Village, Ford Rouge Factory Tour, Benson Ford Research Center and Henry Ford Academy, a public charter high school. Together with its online presence at thehenryford.org, its national television series, The Henry Fords Innovation Nation and Invention Convention Worldwide, the growing affiliation of organizations fostering innovation, invention and entrepreneurship in K-12 students, The Henry Ford inspires individuals to unlock their potential and help shape a better future.


Borsa Italiana non ha responsabilita per il contenuto del sito a cui sta per accedere e non ha responsabilita per le informazioni contenute.

Accedendo a questo link, Borsa Italiana non intende sollecitare acquisti o offerte in alcun paese da parte di nessuno.

Sarai automaticamente diretto al link in cinque secondi.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 06/22/2020



ADVERTISEMENT

COLT AND JESS

ADVERTISEMENT

PAUL AND KARINE

ADVERTISEMENT

KALANI AND ASUELU

ADVERTISEMENT

ANDREI AND ELIZABETH

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

LARISSA

ADVERTISEMENT

ANGELA AND MICHAEL

ADVERTISEMENT

TANIA AND SYNGIN

ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

: Happily Ever After? featured Angela Deem discovering she can't get pregnant on her own and could have cancer in her uterus, Colt Johnson and Jess Caroline fighting, Paul Staehle and Karine Martins planning to move to America, and Elizabeth Potthast breaking down over tension between Andrei Castravet and her family during Sunday night's episode on TLC.: Happily Ever After?'s fifth season also features Michael Ilesanmi , Larissa Dos Santos Lima, Tania Maduro Asuelu Pulaa , and Kalani Faagata Happily Ever After? documents couples -- engaged, married or divorced -- navigating life, hardships, family, children and unexpected obstacles.The new season is sure to feature cultural differences, in-law arguments, scandals, confrontations and tears.Below is the latest on each couple or cast members, according to the second episode of : Happily Ever After?'s fifth season.Colt said Jess was upset with him during his first night in Chicago because he was keeping her a secret from his mother Debbie but once they got to his hotel room, she was fine and they had sex, which Colt called "great."The next morning, however, Colt noted things were awkward with Jess, and she asked him to tell his mother about her soon.Jess didn't want this to ruin her time with Colt because she wanted sex, but Colt insisted he wasn't ashamed of her -- he just didn't want Debbie to worry about him, especially since he was dating "another Brazilian" after Larissa.Jess then took Colt sightseeing in Chicago and said she was glad that Colt was her boyfriend. Jess revealed to Colt she had dated six or seven men in her seven months in the United States, and Colt was admittedly jealous of her previous suitors."I like sex with Colt because I am the boss in the bedroom," Jess told the cameras with a laugh.Colt said Jess didn't know a lot about Larissa and he didn't want his past to make him look bad. But Colt spilled out that Larissa had been arrested three times in her past for domestic violence because she "couldn't control her anger and I was so miserable.""Ultimately, I think she just wanted to use me. She wanted to come to America and live her life," Colt shared."Whoa, I'm so sorry," Jess told Colt, before calling him "a good guy."Jess acknowledged they both had stories in their past but Colt was finally free, and Colt said it "meant the world" to him that Jess was so sweet and supportive. He didn't want to do anything that was going to jeopardize his new relationship.Later on, Colt met a group of Jess' friends at a bar and Jess openly discussed how sex with Colt was good. The girls were concerned when they discovered Colt still lives with his mother at age 34 and thought it was weird, but Colt said he takes care of Debbie.Colt told the group he and Larissa fought a lot and got a divorce, which was a problem he hoped to avoid with Jess."So far so good!" Colt told the ladies, before Jess assured her pals that Colt said he wouldn't hurt her.But Jess revealed to her friends Colt had a friend named Vanessa "from the gym" who called him all the time. Colt said he met Vanessa online and she was "just a friend." Vanessa apparently helped him through his divorce with Larissa, but Jess had a problem with it.Colt told Jess that he was going to stop talking to Vanessa, but in reality, he had no plans to stop and claimed he felt bad about lying to his new girlfriend.Colt asked about Jess' past and secrets she might have been keeping, but the girls told Colt to trust Jess because she's a great girl. Colt felt Jess might've been hiding something, and then the pair disagreed over how to spend Colt's last night in Chicago.Colt told Jess that he wanted to spend the night together alone, but Jess wanted to go out with her girlfriends and party. Colt asked Jess to go back to the hotel with him, and Jess' friends called Colt "controlling" and didn't like how he was trying to tell her what to do.Since this was Colt's first time in Chicago, Jess decided to go back to the hotel with him. Jess' friends believed Jess was making a mistake by being with Colt, but Colt felt great and bragged to the cameras, "I win!"Colt was done with "caving in" to make women happy, saying that approach had failed with Larissa.Jess was realizing she and Colt had lifestyle differences because she loved to party but Colt preferred staying home, playing video games and watching cartoons. Jess asked Colt to respect their differences, but Colt said, "There has to be a limit. You and I come first, always. That's how a relationship works.""I think Colt's cool, but Colt is boring and no respect women," Jess said in a confessional, with English being her second language. "Maybe now I understand why no work, [Colt's] relationship with Larissa."The couple argued on the way back to Colt's hotel, and Colt said he didn't think it was controlling that he wanted to spend time with his new girlfriend when he had flown to see her. Colt acknowledged he had just gotten out of a "crazy" relationship and wasn't trying to enter a new one.Paul, a 35-year-old from Louisville, KY, and Karine, a 23-year-old from Tonantins, Brazil, met on a dating app and talked for over a year before Paul finally flew to Brazil to meet her in person. The pair fell in love, got engaged and got married in Brazil.The couple had been married for two years by the time this spin off filmed and were shown packing their suitcases.Paul and Karine, who have a son Pierre, had been in Brazil for over a year and originally planned to live there permanently, but Paul said they had hit some roadblocks and were "barely getting by" in Karine's home country.Paul and Karine therefore planned to move to the United States so Paul could get a job, make more money and better provide for his family. But Paul admitted his relationship with Karine was a roller coaster and they've gone through many ups and downs together.Throughout all their fighting, it seemed Pierre kept Paul and Karine together because Karine viewed her husband as a good father."It took a lot, but I was able to sponsor Karine on a CR-1 visa, which is a spousal visa and allows Karine to apply and get a two-year Green Card before she even enters America," Paul told the cameras. "She already has her Green Card approved; she is a complete permanent resident.A lot of people thought Karine was using Paul when they got together, but Paul said Karine was actually dead set on living in Brazil and wanted to visit America as more of a trial. Karine was upset about having to leave her family in Brazil for so long, but she was also excited for a new adventure.Karine told Paul it wouldn't be a problem if Paul lives and works in America while she stays in Brazil with their son. Paul hoped it wasn't going to come down to that, but he felt a lot of pressure to make things work in the United States and step up for his family.Paul then FaceTimed with his mother and asked if he, Karine and the baby could stay with her for a little bit upon their arrival into America. Paul's mother said "no" because he needed to be responsible and would probably never leave if his family moved in with her.Paul's mother said she'd help him find a job and get on his own two feet, but she wasn't about to give him any handouts. Paul feared Karine would want to leave him alone in America if he couldn't make her happy and feel secure in a place to live.Karine then said goodbye to her mother Gracilene, saying she was nervous about her upcoming trip to the United States. Karine had hope Paul would dedicate his time to making her feel comfortable and welcome in America.Karine revealed she and Paul bought one-way tickets to the United States and their plan was to live there long-term, which made Gracilene cry because her daughter had never left Brazil before.Gracilene was well aware Karine and Paul fought all the time, so she was worried about Paul treating her daughter right. Karine had faith, however, in Paul and that he could provide their family a better life.Asuelu was shown playing volleyball with his friends although Kalani and her father wanted him to stay home more with his two sons. Asuelu told his pals that Kalani was really stressed out at home and it was hard to live an American life.Asuelu grew up with his mother cleaning the house, doing laundry and cooking, and so it was unusual for him that Kalani often complained about her situation. In Samoa, Asuelu said he did "manly things" around the house, like finding coconuts or working with animals.Asuelu missed his family and hoped he could bring his kids to Samoa soon to connect them to his culture and relatives; however, Asuelu didn't have the money to bring a traditional gift with him since he only worked part-time.Asuelu knew a trip to Samoa was going to be very expensive, but he told the cameras it was "very important" for him to travel back home soon.Asuelu came home with flowers and chocolates for his wife, and he apparently planned a romantic date for her so they could spend some time away from the house.Asuelu drove Kalani to a place where they would throw axes, and Kalani wasn't thrilled about this so-called romantic date. Asuelu was disappointed Kalani only seemed "40 percent excited" about the activity, but she ended up having a lot of fun, although she had anticipated a movie and nice dinner out.During their outing, Asuelu revealed he missed his family back home and would like to visit them in Samoa. Asuelu hoped Kalani and the kids would join him, but Kalani said the cost of plane tickets alone would be $3,000, which wasn't a smart move financially.Kalani was supportive of Asuelu making the trip alone, but she wanted to keep their money in the bank since Asuelu was only working part-time. Kalani also didn't have the best relationship with Asuelu's family, saying they always asked for money when they called.Kalani told the cameras she'd buy Asuelu's family a pig but not a cow.Asuelu offered to help take care of the kids during their trip, but Kalani warned him she'd turn around and fly back to the United States without him if Asuelu didn't live up to her expectations and help her in Samoa.Andrei was still insisting they have a wedding in Moldova in a matter of weeks, but Elizabeth and her family were "really upset" -- which Andrei called "bitching" -- because they were told the plan last minute and weren't prepared to suddenly travel to a different country, especially since Elizabeth's sisters have young children as well.Elizabeth wondered if Andrei dropped a bomb on her family because, deep down, he didn't want them to go to his wedding. Andrei said that wasn't the case, but Elizabeth wasn't sure why Andrei would push a wedding with no notice for her loved ones.Andrei didn't think it would be a big deal for Elizabeth's family to take five days out of their "fabulous life in Florida" for their second wedding, but he admitted he wouldn't be hurt if none of them showed up.However, Andrei did apologize to Elizabeth for bringing up the situation at her father's birthday party given it was the wrong time to have such a serious chat.Elizabeth agreed to have the wedding, and then Andrei noted, "Your dad is going to pay for it."Elizabeth was then shown having a pool day with her sister Becky and sister-in-law Megan, and the girls couldn't believe they were rushing around adjusting their schedules when Elizabeth and Andrei didn't even have firm plans in place for a wedding in Moldova.Elizabeth confessed the situation wasn't fair for her family, and Becky pointed out Moldova is "corrupt," "dangerous" and "the scariest place ever" to visit based on what she and Megan had read on the Internet.Elizabeth said such comments about Moldova's crime were "ignorant."Elizabeth's family became angry when they discovered Andrei wanted Elizabeth's dad Chuck to pay for the wedding. Elizabeth figured Chuck would say "no" and she'd have to find a way to afford the wedding on her own. Elizabeth, once again, felt "stuck in the middle" between her husband and family, and she said "it sucks."Afterward, Elizabeth visited her father and confessed to Chuck that Andrei was excited about the wedding and had gotten a little ahead of himself. Elizabeth explained she and Andrei couldn't baptize their baby until they had a wedding in Moldova in Andrei's church.Chuck expressed his concern over Elizabeth's financial situation and asked how she and Andrei planned to pay for the wedding, and Elizabeth replied, "We were actually planning to ask you to pay.""I knew it! I'm not surprised that he expects me to pay for the wedding; I'm surprised that you didn't say to him, 'If you expect my dad to pay for the wedding, then we need to talk to him.' You are taking me for granted," Chuck told Elizabeth.Chuck wished Andrei had approached him personally and asked to pay for the wedding he wanted in Moldova, and then Elizabeth broke down into tears."The relationship between Andrei and my dad has never been good, and I'm always caught in the middle. I really think asking my dad for this money will create even more tension between him and Andrei. I feel like all the weight is on my shoulders, and it doesn't feel good inside," Elizabeth told the cameras.Elizabeth told Chuck there was a lot happening all at once, and when Chuck saw his daughter got emotional, he dropped his defenses. Chuck promised Elizabeth that he'd be there for her and also pay for her wedding."I'm saying 'yes' because I want to see you happy," Chuck sweetly told his daughter.Chuck's reaction made Elizabeth so happy and relieved, but she hoped Andrei would appreciate the gesture as well. Elizabeth then returned home and told Andrei the good news, and Andrei's immediate reaction was basically, "How much [is he willing to spend]?"Elizabeth didn't like how Andrei assumed her father was going to pay no matter what, and to make matters worse, Andrei was anticipating a $15,000-40,000 wedding. Elizabeth told Andrei to get together with Chuck and thank him.Larissa was working on herself and her confidence after her divorce from Colt, and so she and her friends decided to take a pole-dancing class. Larissa wanted to feel and look sexier, but she insisted she's conservative and was raised Catholic.However, Larissa wanted to show a new side of herself and said, "Maybe I should get a job as a stripper. Why not?!"Larissa joked she should just be a lesbian because tall, skinny, handsome, smart, and semi-young men are hard to find. Larissa joked Colt did not meet that description, and then her friend Hannah suggested Larissa go on a blind date with a guy she knew."He's super funny but with a twist... He's really into wine, fancy stuff, and he's had multiple businesses," Hannah said."I want!" Larissa responded.Hannah therefore said she'd set up a date, and Larissa hoped this guy was going to be a hot and great American.Angela, 54, was shown going to the gynecologist to find out whether the period she finally had after three years could help her get pregnant and have a baby with Michael. She felt "overwhelmed" thinking and talking about fertility.Angela's doctor, Dr. Carmela Pettigrew, warned her the bleeding could be the result of a problem, not an actual period, and that the "one egg" a doctor in Nigeria had previously spotted could actually be an ovarian cyst."Do you think that it could happen?" Angela asked."Honestly, at age 54, it will be much more difficult physically," Dr. Pettigrew admitted.While doing an ultrasound, Dr. Pettigrew told Angela that she did not have an ovarian cyst but she appeared to have a fibroid tumor that could grow larger in the uterus.In addition, the doctor so no signs of Angela having any eggs."So the chances of you getting pregnant on your own are essentially zero," Dr. Pettigrew told Angela."I feel devastated... That could really ruin our relationship," Angela told the cameras.However, Angela learned she could get pregnant with an egg donor and in vitro fertilization. But first, Angela, whose uterus was enlarged, needed an endometrial biopsy to make sure she wasn't growing cancerous cells in her uterus.Angela thought her biggest worry was not being able to have a baby for Michael, but now she feared having cancer, and she acknowledged that was a "terrifying" thought.Angela eventually talked to her mother about her struggle, and her mother, who had pneumonia, wasn't doing very well. Angela's mom gave her blessing for Angela to marry Michael in Nigeria, and Angela cried over the idea of her mother missing her wedding.A part of Angela feared, however, her mother wouldn't be alive once she gets back. Angela was so emotional, recognizing her mother loved her and put her first.Tania and Syngin said married life was going "good" as they ice skated together, although Tania had her foot in a cast following a car accident in which she hit a person in front of her and "spun out." Tania said she was going straight at a green light while the car in front of her was trying to take a turn.Tania apparently broke a toe bone and said life had been "tough" but that Syngin was taking care of her.Tania and Syngin had met in a bar in South Africa during a spontaneous trip, and Tania said it was "lust at first sight" but she fell in love with him after four days. What they thought was going to be a one-night stand turned into Syngin moving to America on a K-1 visa.After moving into a shed behind Tania's mother's house and getting through several big fights over starting a family and Tania saying Syngin's not her soul mate, the pair went through with getting married.After their wedding, Tania and Syngin apparently considered moving away from Connecticut since Syngin would prefer a warmer climate and being near the beach, but then the accident happened. Since Tania has health care in Connecticut, she wanted to stay at home in order to continue her physical therapy.However, the couple found a new place, a house, to move into, and Syngin joked he and Tania would have multiple rooms in which to have sex.Tania, who had to stop bartending temporarily because of her foot, got Syngin's work permit expedited, and so Tania said they'd be fine as long as Syngin could find a job and make money for them.Tania thought her accident happened for a reason and so she and Syngin were meant to stick around in Connecticut for a while, but Tania's mother was worried all of the responsibility was going to fall on Syngin's shoulders.Syngin knew their financial situation was going to put a lot of pressure on him and their relationship.Later on, Tania and Syngin discussed Syngin's career as a bartender, and Tania pointed out Syngin drank before and after work, and so she worried he'd get drunk too often. Tania said Syngin lost his motorcycle before and made mistakes while drinking.Tania admitted Syngin's drinking "raised a lot of red flags" with her and it was one of her biggest issues with her husband. Syngin, however, snapped, "If I want to have a beer, I'll have a beer!... But I'm not going to sabotage my chance of working in the states."Tania said she didn't want to be let down, but Syngin made it known he wasn't going to screw up. Syngin said he wanted his wife to trust him and take him seriously.Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage!
LAS VEGAS  At the MGMs Bellagio hotel and casino, patrons are welcomed with branded pouches stocked with hand sanitizer, face masks and a stylus they can use to push elevator buttons. At the Cosmopolitans elevated pool, an L.C.D. screen flashes the message, Face masks are the new tan lines.

In typical Las Vegas style, the hospitality industry is going overboard to make sure visitors feel safe, and to make the precautions the pandemic requires feel luxurious.

Visitors can check in using their phones and take advantage of hand- washing stations. On the gambling floors, chips, cards and dice are disinfected between players. Hotel rooms are being deep-cleaned. Most properties have made their hygiene plans  pages upon pages of procedures, including frequent sanitation of high-traffic surfaces and public areas  available to the public.

After 78 days of mandatory closures, it was a relief to see the Las Vegas Strip pulse back to life this month. At the height of the shutdown, hotel occupancy in Nevada sank to 3 percent. At one point, 28 percent of Nevadans were out of work, the highest state unemployment rate ever recorded.
Dr. Adams, an Arlington resident, was born in Missoula, Mont. He served 20 years in the Air Force, and his assignments included DARPA, where he was a program manager and deputy director of its information processing techniques office. As a program manager, his family said, he supported work for a method of digital, packetized voice compression to transmit voice over the Internet. The technology was piloted in the 1970s on the Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet.
The Maharashtra government said on Monday that there will be status quo with regard to MoUs signed with three Chinese companies last week. The projected investment in the state is almost Rs 5,000 crore. They have not been cancelled. But future directions on them are awaited, Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai said.

"Status quo will be maintained on the MOUs with the Chinese companies for the moment. This does not mean that they have been rescinded or cancelled. In fact, further developments on the same are awaited," he further clarified.

His office had stated, earlier in the day, that the investments have been frozen. Even at that time, it was clarified that the deals weren't cancelled.

The relationship between India and China has come under severe strain following a violent face-off between the troops of the two countries in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, in which 20 Indian Army personnel were martyred.

On June 15, as a part of Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0, the state government had signed MoUs worth Rs 16,000 crore, hours before the face-off took place. The deals were signed with companies from 12 different countries, of which three were Chinese.

There will be status quo with regard to the MoUs signed with Hengli Engineering, PMI Electro Mobility Solutions JV with Photon and Great Wall Motors, according to the statement.

"The Maharashtra government is awaiting clear policy directions from the Union Government, on these three projects collectively worth Rs 5,020 crore, in the wake of the changed environment in India," he said.

The three Chinese companies were to invest in projects in Talegaon, an industrial hub in Pune district, an official statement had said earlier.

According to the statement, Hengli Engineering was to invest Rs 250 crore and PMI Rs 1,000 crore in the auto sector.

The Great Wall Motors was to set up an automobile company with an investment of Rs 3,770 crore.

With PTI inputs
Trump's remarks reek of complete misunderstanding of an effective response, say experts, while White House officials rush to clarify that the President was "joking".

Donald Trumps remark, during his first Presidential campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma amid the coronavirus pandemic, that he had asked officials to slow the testing down has sparked criticism from experts and his own staffers.

Looking at it as a scoreboard is the wrong way to think about it, The Washington Post quoted Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, as saying. To think of it as something you can manipulate or slow down based on what the numbers look like speaks to a complete misunderstanding of what an infectious-disease response should be.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned Trumps remarks in a statement Sunday. She said that the American people are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing.

Testing, tracing, treatment and social distancing are the only tools we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but President Trump orders his Administration to slow down the testing that saves lives, Pelosi said in a statement.

Also read: Ahead of Trump rally in Tulsa, 6 campaign staffers test positive for Covid-19

Also read: China creating wedge in US-Europe relations, undoing free world progress: Mike Pompeo

While, his chief trade adviser Peter Navarro has called Trumps comments tongue-in-cheek, another White House official has said that Trump was joking.

While addressing the thin crowd on Saturday (local time), Trump had said, Heres the bad part  when you do testing to that extent, youre going to find more people; youre going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please.

According to Trump, 25 million people have been tested for COVID-19 in the US, which is why the total number of confirmed cases in the country is high.

According to the latest data by the Johns Hopkins University, the total number of coronavirus cases in US stands at 2,279,879 and a total of 119,969 people have succumbed to the disease so far.

Also read: Global Covid-19 count crosses 8.7 million: WHO

For all the latest World News, download NewsX App
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.  Before the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Peter Tsai was far from a household name. Even though he was well-respected as a materials scientist and inventor, very few people had heard of him.

Until now.

COVID-19 had dragged one of Tsai's inventions into the spotlight. He is the creator of the filter material inside most disposable N95 respirators. As the pandemic worsened, health care workers nationwide needed the masks to stay safe, which means there were shortages and massive price markups.

The shortage was so dire that it brought Tsai out of retirement to dive headfirst into solving the crisis.

Since mid-March, Tsai has been a worldwide force on two fronts: finding new ways to sterilize disposable respirators for reuse and rapidly scaling up their production.

My invention is just an ordinary invention, says Peter Tsai, inventor of the N95 filtration material.

My invention is just an ordinary invention, the 68-year-old said humbly in an interview with Knox News. But because of the need for the respirators, people think it is very important.

Tsais invention is not new. He filed the first patent for the filtration technology back in 1995. His invention gives the masks' filter fabric a permanent electrostatic charge by exposing it to a halo of electricity. Scientists call this an electrical corona. Tsai named his process coronal charging.

The irony of the name is not lost on Tsai.

I use coronal charging to fight coronavirus, he joked.

Tsai has had a long career in textile manufacturing and engineering. He graduated from what is now National Taipei University of Technology in 1975. He worked for several years in manufacturing before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s to earn a doctorate in materials science at the University of Kansas.

During his research career at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Tsai developed his filtration technology further while pursuing other projects. He holds 12 U.S. patents in filtration technology and other areas.

While his material and production processes made a huge difference in the world, it wasnt front-page news. He retired in late 2019. Then you know what happened this year.

Story continues

I felt very stressed in the very beginning, he said. I got a lot of pressure and a lot of questions.

He knew the kinds of stress the respirators could tolerate, and he published these thoughts in the Journal of Emergency Medicine in a special emergency article. He turned his home into a lab and published more results.

One group donated an ozone machine commonly used in hospital sterilization to see if that would work. Tsai boiled and steamed masks. He borrowed a neighbors oven to see if masks could be safely heated using common kitchen appliances. He exposed respirators to sunlight. The masks were then tested again to see if they lost filtration power.

Ozone was a no-go because it ruined elastic or rubber ear loops. Wet heat had to be applied carefully to avoid deforming the masks. Home ovens heated too unevenly and inaccurately. Alcohol ruined the filters. Other techniques, like dry heat and hydrogen peroxide, seemed more promising.

But Tsai couldnt fully test every technique, nor could he validate that it killed viruses. This worried him.

I started wondering whether people were using my methods without validation, Tsai said. If it does not really sterilize the mask and people reuse them, then we would have a lot of trouble.

He reached out to other scientists and got in touch with a team at the University of Tennessee Medical Center to validate his approaches. N95DECON, an interdisciplinary research group, also got in touch. It ran its own tests to validate some of his suggestions in addition to others.

N95DECON recommends versions of some of Tsais initial approaches for sterilization. Its validation studies cite communications with Tsai and the experiments of over a hundred N95DECON members. Their results echo some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggestions for mask sterilization.

But reusing masks is only half the battle.

The world faces a crucial supply shortage. Few domestic suppliers make N95 filtration material. Half the worlds N95 masks are manufactured in China. The Food and Drug Administration recently deauthorized many models of N95 masks from being reused.

Unbeknownst to Tsai, Oak Ridge National Lab was gearing up to try to address the problem.

We have a lab-wide initiative effort on COVID-19, said Dr. Merlin Theodore, director of the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility at ORNL. She explained that the facility was struggling to come up with a way to convert its machines to make the filter fabric and was looking to enlist local experts.

Dr. Lonnie Love, a lead scientist in ORNLs COVID manufacturing task force, remembered Tsai but couldnt put his finger on why.

He remembered the name and couldnt remember why so he asked his wife, Theodore said. As it turns out, Tsai was neighbors with Loves mother-in-law. After that, they quickly made contact.

He came that very same week, fully suited up. He brought his own equipment, Theodore said. He reminded me of someone going to war.

With Tsais expertise, the team at ORNL was able to quickly convert its carbon fiber processing facility into a filtration cloth facility. Within a week it was able to produce filter cloth. Theodore says its impossible to say how much time Tsais involvement saved.

Just imagine the amount of experiments youd have to run to determine a process that works, Theodore said. That can average from months to years. But we didnt have to because he had already done all the experiments.

The ORNL facility can produce enough material for roughly 9,000 masks per hour. It's shipping the material to academic and national labs for research purposes. Theodore explained that for the market, ORNL worked with industry partners to get the fiber technology into domestic manufacturers' hands quickly.

A spokesperson for ORNL confirmed that it had assisted a filtration material manufacturer based out of Cookeville, Cummins, with the installation of equipment to produce Tsai's filter technology.

Tsai said this was far from the only consulting work he had been doing. He said hed been doing pro-bono consulting work and research around the clock.

Theodore said Tsai vigorously tried to turn down payment for his work with ORNL but had to be paid per ORNL policy. Tsai said that being helpful during this time was all that mattered to him.

This is an opportunity for me to contribute to the community, he said. If I can do this, it will be a good memory for the rest of my life.

The work has not been without its toll. Tsai said that since the start of the pandemic, he had lost 10 pounds, but he was optimistic.

Someone said I should get a Nobel Prize, Tsai joked. But what I deserve is a No Belly prize.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: N95 filter inventor became a hero amid the coronavirus pandemic
Pediatric Surgeon at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, Ankush Gosain, MD, PhD, recently received an R01 award of more than $2 million from the National Institutes of Health for his project "Dysbiosis in Hirschsprung-Associated Enterocolitis Pathogenesis."

"This research builds on more than a decade of work supported by the NIH, multiple societies and the generous support from Le Bonheur and the Children's Foundation Research Institute," said Gosain.

The objectives of the research project are to establish a causative relationship between dysbiosis - imbalance of the gut microbiome - and Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis (HAEC) and identify which bacteria are the main drivers of HAEC. Gosain will also test therapeutic targets and examine how neurotransmitters made by bacteria influence the motility of the intestine.

"Our goal is to reach a deeper understanding of the pathophysiology of Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis as well as the identification of novel treatments and prevention of the disease," said Gosain.

Gosain's lab is the only NIH-funded lab in the country to study HAEC.

Hirschsprung disease (HSCR) is a result of the incomplete development of the enteric nervous system, or the "brain of the gut," which controls motility, water and nutrient absorption and local blood flow. HAEC is a life-threatening complication of HSCR. It effects 30-60% of infants with the disease and is the leading cause of death among these infants.

The cause of HAEC is unknown. Because of this, treatment is limited to targeting acute symptoms rather than the underlying cause. Gosain says the long term goal of his laboratory is to define why and how HAEC develops to prevent and treat it at the source.

The gut microbiome is made of helpful and harmful bacteria. Dysbiosis results when something happens to upset the normal balance of bacteria leading to loss of beneficial bacteria, increased harmful bacteria and decreased overall diversity of bacteria. All of these can be found in patients with HAEC.

Gosain and his lab want to determine if these changes are a result of HAEC, a cause or a little bit of both.

"Previous studies support this central hypothesis that dysbiotic microbiota drives the development of Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis," said Gosain.

Using a mouse model, Gosain will use fecal microbiota transplant to prove this hypothesis. Other goals of the project include determining why HAEC has impaired production and secretion of IgA - the primary antibody targeting bacteria in the gut - and how alterations in bacteria contribute to intestinal stasis.

Gosain is associate professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and director of the Pediatric Surgery Research Laboratory at the Children's Foundation Research Institute at Le Bonheur.

###

About Le Bonheur Children's:

Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., treats children through community programs, regional clinics and a 255-bed state-of-the-art hospital. Le Bonheur serves as a primary teaching affiliate for the University Tennessee Health Science Center and trains more than 350 pediatricians and specialists each year. Nationally recognized, Le Bonheur is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a Best Children's Hospital.

For more information, please call (901) 287-6030 or visit lebonheur.org. Connect with us at facebook.com/lebonheurchildrens, twitter.com/lebonheurchild or on Instagram at lebonheurchildrens.

About University of Tennessee Health Science Center:

As Tennessee's only public, statewide, academic health system, the mission of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is to bring the benefits of the health sciences to the achievement and maintenance of human health through education, research, clinical care, and public service, with a focus on the citizens of Tennessee and the region. The main campus in Memphis includes six colleges: Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. UTHSC also educates and trains medicine, pharmacy, and/or health professions students, as well as medical residents and fellows, at major sites in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville. For more information, visit http://www.uthsc.edu. Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/uthsc, on Twitter: twitter.com/uthsc and on Instagram: instagram.com/uthsc.
Photo: (Photo : Instagram/laurafahrenthold)

Laura Fahrenthold brings her two daughters, Nell and Susannah, to travel across the US, sprinkling her late husband's ashes all over the places.

How it all started

The mother of two shared that everything started when she was at a campground in Portland, Oregon, in 2010. She had to pee in the middle of the night, and because she was terrified, she brought her late husband's ashes with her. She tripped, and the ashes spilled and dusted her all over.

The 46-year-old mother took a leave from her city government job and brought her daughters camping across the country. She brought her husband's ashes because she was afraid to leave them at home. There were no intentions of buying an RV at first, but she bought one and traveled 31,152 miles spreading Pittman's ashes across America.

She journaled all their adventures in 2018 in "The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles."

Mark Pittman's death

Mark Pittman, Fahrenthold's late husband, was an investigative journalist for Bloomberg News. On November 25, 2009, he was 52 years old when he died of a massive heart attack at their home in Yonkers, New York.

Their daughters were eight and ten when they saw the incident. Fahrenthold said that she felt like someone ripped their life apart when her husband died, and her two kids were looking at her. The mother and her children were all traumatized, and she just wanted to get "the hell out of" there.

Fahrenthold taught her daughters resiliency

Fahrenthold was afraid that her husband's death would define her daughter's lives, causing them to have problems witnessing something like that at a very young age. She wanted to build their other muscles to become stronger and self-reliant.

She taught her daughters how to read a map, go fishing, change a tire, and blow through blades of grass to whistle. They climbed mountains, went water rafting, and built a campfire. She wanted to build her children up to have experiences bigger than their dad's death.

The sprinkling of her husband's ashes

The mother of two did not know how her daughters would react to the idea of the sprinkling of their dad's ashes. They first sprinkled the ashes on a treetop until it became a sort of a game to her children. Nell said that it was like having "mini funerals."

They did it in Niagara Falls, Graceland, and the Grand Canyon. They also went picnicking in Newark, Ohio, because that's where Fahrenthold and Pittman had their picnic wedding. After a few weeks of pitching tents and a mudslide, she bought a beat-up RV using the money her mother wired her.

During summers and school holidays over the next five years, the trio traveled all over America and Canada. Pittman's wife admitted having sprinkled her husband everywhere they went. She wanted wherever her daughters would be as they grew up, their father would always be there.

Fahrenthold wanted to honor her husband as an investigative journalist. Her husband did his best to let the Americans know about the truth. She said that Pittman was a bootstrap guy from a blue-collar family.

The trio made its final stop in 2015. It released Pittman in his boyhood home in Kansas and to the sunflower field where he proposed to Fahrenthold.

Another plot twist

Fahrenthold found a folder at home that says, "Mark's Writings." Pittman wrote about a motorcycle trip to a Hopi Mesa Indian reservation. The trio also went there because the mother felt compelled to.

During their trips, Fahrenthold was terrified a lot of times, but people always helped them. She has raised her daughters to be independent because she was afraid of what might happen to them if she suddenly dies.

Nell, 20, is now studying as a photographer at FIT, while Susanna, 19, is an EMT, teachers sailing, and navigation for Tall Ships America. Fahrenthold is currently working on her new book, "The Airbnb Chronicles." There, she talks about her adventures renting out her home.

See also other related stories:

Father and Three-Year-Old Son Miraculously Survived Being Crushed by Massive Tree

Rayshard Brooks' Children Receives Scholarships to Georgia College

Officer Bravely Jumped Off Cliff to Save Two-Year-Old Twins [Father Drove Them to Fall]
22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Court of Appeal today, Monday, June 22 dismissed an appeal by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), which challenged the jurisdiction of the High Court hearing the suit filed by GN Savings and Loans over the revocation of the latters license.

BoG had argued that the High Court had no jurisdiction to hear the complaint challenging the revocation of GN Savings and Loans' license.

It argued that the only lawful forum for resolving the GN Savings concerns is the Ghana Arbitration Centre.

However, the High Court dismissed its application in December 2019; compelling the BoG to seek redress at the Court of Appeal.

Dismissal

Ruling on BoG's appeal today, the Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the application and directed the apex bank to go back to the High Court and justify the revocation of the license of GN Savings.

Lawyer for GN Savings, Justice Srem-Sai, expressed concern about BoG's legal gymnastics, which he said are all aimed at stalling the case and thereby perverting the course of justice.

The court was presided over by Justice Ackah Yensu with Justices L.L. Mensah and Anthtony Oppong.

Background

In October 2019, BoG and the Attorney-General raised a preliminary legal objection to the case brought by the Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and two other shareholders of GN Savings and Loans Limited.

In the objection, the BoG and the Attorney-General argued that the High Court has no jurisdiction to hear the complaint which is challenging the revocation of GN Saving' licence.

According to the Attorney-General and the Bank of Ghana's lawyers, the only lawful forum for resolving the Applicants' concerns is the Ghana Arbitration Centre.

This argument was opposed by Mr. Srem-Sai.

In December 2019, the Presiding High Court judge, Justice Gifty Adjei-Addo, dismissed the legal objection as frivolous and without merit.

She then ordered the BoG, the Attorney-General and the Receiver of GN Savings to file their defences by January 17, 2020.

The BoG and the Attorney-General failed to file their defence on January 17, 2020 as directed by the court.

Rather, BoG appealed the High Court's decision. It also filed an application at the High Court for a stay of the High Court's proceedings pending the determination of the appeal.

Lawyers for Dr. Nduom again opposed the application for stay of proceedings, arguing that it was a mere ploy to delay the proceedings as the BoG has not demonstrated that some exceptional circumstances exist to justify a stay.

The application for stay of proceedings was accordingly dismissed as without merit.

By this time the case had reached mid-March 2020.

Further Orders

The trial judge, then ordered all the parties to file their defences and closing address by April 13, 2020, but the BoG and Attorney-General failed to do so.

While still yet to file a defence to the substantive case in the High Court, the lawyers for the BoG rather appealed to the Court of Appeal against the High Court's ruling which dismissed their application for stay of proceedings.

While all this was going on, the lawyers of the Bank of Ghana had not taken any steps to prosecute their first appeal.

For example, they failed to attend the High Court Registrar's summons to settle the records of appeal. They also failed to satisfy the conditions of appeal which was served on them way back in February 2020.

Fed up with the delays and evasiveness of the Bank of Ghana's lawyers, the High Court Registrar wrote to the Court of Appeal Registrar and recommended that the Court of Appeal should strike out the entire appeal for abuse of the court process.

According to Dr. Nduom, the government and state agencies, as of August 14, 2018, owed the company over GHS 600 million.

 citinewsroom
Sheltering in place doesn't mean you can't go visiting. You can drop in on fictional characters trapped in isolated houses in out-of-the-way places. No social distancing is required, and you'll sympathize when they feel the walls closing in.

Lucy Foley's crime novels are compared to Agatha Christie's locked room mysteries in which murder suspects are trapped at the scene of the crime. The atmospheric "The Guest List" (William Morrow, $27.99, out now) is set on a craggy island off the west coast of Ireland where family and friends gather for the Instagram-ready wedding of Julia Keegan and Will Slater. The island can only be accessed by boat, so when a member of the wedding party turns up dead, the guests can't retreat to the mainland.

Foley ramps up the tension by dappling the island with peat-sucking bogs, a foreboding mansion called Folly and a claustrophobic cave. The groom's school friends add a "Lord of the Flies" vibe to the story. No one may have come to the island intending to murder, but this destination wedding spirals into mayhem when it's slowly revealed that most everyone in attendance is capable of becoming a lusting-for-revenge killer.

Inspired by author Anna Downes's experience as a live-in housekeeper on a remote French estate, "The Safe Place" (Minotaur, $26.99, July 14) becomes anything but for Emily Proudman. The aspiring London actress loses her job and her apartment but is saved from ruin when her wealthy ex-boss offers her a position as a companion for his wife, Nina, and daughter, Aurelia, who are living on a gated property in rural France. At first, Emily is enamored of Nina and the luxurious villa, but she soon realizes what we already know: Life in lockdown is a long way from paradise.

Downes keeps the sense of foreboding building as Emily realizes a deadly secret that Nina is hiding. Emily is a compelling character who arrives in France scatterbrained and immature but finds the inner strength to save herself and solve a missing person case that has snowballed into a global obsession.

"The Vacation" (St. Martin's, $28.99, July 21), T.M. Logan's latest nail-biter, is reminiscent of "Suspicion," Alfred Hitchcock's atmospheric film about a wife who suspects her husband of wrongdoing.

Set on a ritzy estate in the south of France, the book involves a gathering of four college friends and their families that is supposed to be a joyous reunion. Good times devolve into misery after Kate, a crime analyst for the Metropolitan Police, finds suspicious texts on her husband's cellphone.

To Kate they indicate her husband is having an affair with either Rowan, Izzy or Jennifer, the three friends with whom they are vacationing. When one of them is found dead, Kate is determined to ferret out the truth about her husband and the victim. "The Vacation" is a virtual holiday, but it comes with a warning. Quarantine is bad enough without entertaining assumptions about the people in your isolation bubble.

"The Girls Weekend" (Crooked Lane, $26.99, Aug. 11) by Jody Gehrman is a brooding meditation on how friendships buckle when we resent other people's success, what Gehrman refers to as the "Comparison Olympics." Rich celebrity author Sadie MacTavish invites her closest college friends to a reunion of the "Fearless Five" on her estate in the San Juan Islands north of Puget Sound.

After a night of drugs and drinking, June, Kimiko, Em and Amy wake with amnesia and killer hangovers. Sadie is missing, and the women suspect they were dosed with a date rape drug to wipe out their memories. As in any locked room mystery, the four women and Sadie's husband all have reasons to wish her dead. Great dialogue and strong, relatable characters give this novel extra bounce that keeps the pages turning.

We are haunted by uncertainty as we isolate, so imagine what it might be like to live in a house filled with the ghosts of murder victims. Maggie Holt sets out to discover whether the rural Vermont mansion she and her parents fled 25 years before is actually haunted in Riley Sager's propulsive thriller "Home Before Dark" (Dutton, $27, June 30). Maggie's father, Ewan, wrote "House of Horrors," a nonfiction blockbuster about the three weeks his family spent in the house when Maggie was 5. Its premise is that the house is cursed, but Maggie doesn't believe in ghosts.

Two narratives run through this compelling tale: chapters from Ewan's book and Maggie's search for the truth. There are truly horrifying scenes (beware if you're afraid of snakes) and plenty of unexplained happenings. Maggie soon learns what we already know: Real life is scarier than ghost stories.

---

Memmott is a writer in Austin.
Last week I reviewed why natural childbirth philosophy is fundamentally and ineradicably racist. I quoted Rachelle Chadwick (Bodies that Birth: Vitalizing Birth Politics) in exploring an imagined racial dichotomy in birth where indigenous women of color are fantasized as primitive and animal-like and thus primed to give birth (and breastfeed) easily and without pain or the need for medical assistance 

The philosophy of natural childbirth is also deeply classist. It reflects the cultural preoccupations of privileged Western white women and entirely ignores the ugly, deadly realities of maternity care for poor women.

Chadwick has a lot to say on this topic, too, and Im impressed with her framing of this issue, too. Despite being immersed in obstetrics for the past 35 years, this framing is new to me, though it provides an explanation for a widely known phenomenon  the terrible infant and maternal mortality rates of poor women.

Simply put, while the privileged white women of the natural childbirth movement have been obsessing over being subjected to the medical gaze of increased monitoring and risk mitigation, poor women (particularly poor women of color) have been suffering from their invisibility under the medical gaze.

Thats because, as Chadwick notes:

Problematically, studies of risk and birth have been overwhelmingly based on the perspectives of privileged women  There has been little examination of risk and birth from the perspectives of marginalized women 

Chadwick directly addresses this serious oversight.

Far from being subject to increased monitoring and surveillance, low-income women were often subject to biomedical invisibilization during labor/birth in which they disappeared, were forgotten and disregarded, and fell outside of the medical gaze. Monitoring, machines and interventions were often missing and many women were left to labor alone with no medical assistance or pain relief.

As a result:

[W]hile the biomedical definition of birth as a risky event requiring medical care/intervention framed womens experiences and narratives of birth across diverse sociomaterialities, biomedical risk was enacted differently according to positions of privilege/marginalization.

Privileged women worry about medicalization of birth, though even those who choose homebirth and freebirth assume that their choice to forgo medicalization is made safe by their easy access to high tech care should they need it.

Therefore:

The enactment of largely middle-class notions of natural birth or planned homebirth are thus founded on privileged access to resources and the ready availability of medical care and technocratic interventions on demand.

Poor women  in both high resource as well as low resource settings  have a very different experience of risk.

While privileged women were concerned with the risk of losing control and made birth choices accordingly, worries about control did not appear in the stories of low-income women For [low-income] women, entangled within a different set of risk politics, a key concern in relation to birth was not loss of control but lack of care.

Chadwick is writing about South Africa but her observations apply to most industrialized countries:

In public sector [maternity facilities] however, the biomedical risk economy is structured very differently and in some settings is marked by the absence of technological monitoring and machinery, indifferent care and a lack of surveillance. In these contexts, womens laboring bodies are often rendered invisible and fall outside of biomedical optics.

Privileged women and poor women have very different experiences of maternity care:

While women utilizing the private medical sector are usually highly monitored throughout their pregnancies, poor pregnant women are generally not subject to the same degree of high-tech monitoring and risk management.

It is not surprising then that poor women suffer much higher rates of infant and maternal mortality. They and their babies are dying from a lack of the very technology that privileged women disdain.

For privileged, Western white women:

[P]regnancy and birth often became an identity-making process in which a range of technologies and practices (3D sonograms, sonograms, acupuncture, pregnancy yoga, amniocentesis, hypno-birthing) were used as technologies of the self to craft selves and identities.

Poor women, in contrast, are desperately hoping they and their babies survive.

Natural childbirth advocacy ignores these women. Indeed, to the extent that most midwives, doulas and natural childbirth advocates acknowledge the high infant and maternal mortality rates of poor women, it is purely instrumental. They mobilize these tragedies to argue  grotesquely  that poor women need more midwives and doulas when they really need more perinatologists and ICUs.

Processes whereby black and poor laboring bodies are rendered invisible and left to fall outside of normative modes of biomedical risk management (in some public sector contexts) speak to wider forms of societal power in which some lives are valued (and must be protected) and others are not.

As Chadwick notes:
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

The global digital map market size is estimated to reach USD 16.15 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 13.0% from 2020 to 2027, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to witness significant rise in demand from navigational application developers and Geographical Information System (GIS) providers, driven by a growing end-user base. The prolific rise in the number of smartphone and internet users has further augmented market growth. Moreover, growth in the number of connected and semi-autonomous cars and anticipated developments in self-driving and navigation technology, among others is expected to drive the demand for digital maps.

Digital cartography has been gaining increasing attention in recent years owing to a rapid growth in demand for geospatial information. Applications such as smart parking, location, traffic and congestion intelligence, and logistics management need routing and congestion updates in real time. As digital cartography has been developing at a rapid rate, it can support these applications with data feeds and information. In addition, the increasing number of businesses that are using location-based services for marketing and advertising is also estimated to accelerate the demand in the forthcoming years.

Digital mapping is also finding renewed demand in the government and public sector as the demand for environmental and topographical information systems is on the rise. Furthermore, the need to maintain an updated information system for law enforcement officials, defense forces, and local governing bodies in light of recent manmade and natural threats is anticipated to propel the demand for maps. Smooth interaction between maps and information systems is one of the most important criteria for product success in the market owing to which vendors are expected to focus more on data integration over the forecast period. As the digital map industry matures, key players are anticipated to indulge in mergers and acquisitions in order to keep abreast of the market developments and maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Access Research Report of Digital Map Market@

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/digital-map-market

Further key findings from the study suggest:

Digital orthophotography type is anticipated to emerge as the fastest-growing segment over the forecast period owing to the growth of image-processing, data analysis technology, and the increasing applications in multiple end-use segments such as automotive and mobile devices

Management services segment is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period due to the growing demand for development, deployment, and integration of advanced digital maps for business analysis and earth mapping

Automotive end-use segment is expected to witness the highest growth over the forecast period owing to the increasing collaborations and partnerships between automotive manufacturers, in-dash navigation system providers, and digital map data providers for integration of advanced real-time navigation systems

Revenue generation models are estimated to differ considerably in the forthcoming years with some vendors opting for revenue generation from data and information sales, while others opting for location-based services. There is also a high probability of vertical integration in the industry

Developing regions are expected to witness exploration activities, whereas developed countries would witness a growth in demand for real-time data and information. Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing regional segment due to the growth in the number of smartphone users as well as the number of vehicles. Recent technological developments and rising demand for smartphones are the factors expected to have a profound effect on the Personal Navigation Devices (PND) market

The key digital map market participants include, ESRI, Inc.; Google, Inc.; DigitalGlobe, Inc.; Apple Inc.; HERE Holding Corporation; Getmapping PLC; Micello, Inc.; and TomTom International B.V.

Grand View Research has segmented the global digital map market based on type, usage, service, end use, and region:

Digital Map Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

GIS

LiDAR

Digital Orthophotography

Aerial Photography

Others

Digital Map Usage Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Indoor

Outdoor

Digital Map Service Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Consulting

Development

Management Data Management Tracking & Analysis



Digital Map End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Automotive Non-Autonomous Semi-Autonomous

Military & Defense

Mobile Devices Smartphones/Tablets GPS

Enterprise Solutions

Government & Public Sector

Digital Map Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

North America US. Canada Mexico

Europe UK. Germany France

Asia Pacific China India Japan

South America Brazil

MEA

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.
P olice are hunting two women who fled after a car crashed through the wall of a children's nursery in Sussex.

The grey Vauxhall Zafira smashed through a fence before hitting the building in Park Road, Burgess Hill, at 1.55pm on June 13.

A picture of the aftermath of the incident shows a gaping hole in the side of the nursery and the broken fence underneath the car.

The nursery in West Sussex was closed at the time and no one was injured.

Police are now appealing for the public's help in identifying two women as they search for the culprits.

The two occupants of the car  both women wearing white dresses with bold flowers on them  made off from the scene, Sussex Police said on Monday.

Anyone with dash-cam, CCTV or video footage which could assist in identifying the two women involved is asked to email collision.appeal@sussex.pnn.police.uk quoting serial 734 of 13/06.
Children, many of them younger than 13, come to the United States from all over the world seeking safety. Our anti-trafficking law requires that, once the Border Patrol apprehends a child, they must be transferred to the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and placed in a shelter where they can recover enough to tell their story, have the opportunity to ask for protection, and be placed with family members in the United States while they go through immigration proceedings.

Our government is returning children targeted by gangs right back to their tormentors, abused children to their abusers. Ive worked with unaccompanied children for 16 years. It takes time to unravel these childrens stories, to figure out what, if anything they have to return to.

Once, my group was assigned to work with a 16-year-old girl from Haiti who was pregnant. One of our French-speaking volunteers met with her for months before she felt comfortable enough to share her story about walking home from school one day and being grabbed and blindfolded by a gang of men who raped her. She became pregnant as a result and felt so ashamed that it took her months to talk about it with her volunteer advocate.

In another case, a teenage boy from Guatemala, who spoke an indigenous language and understood very little Spanish, was brought to the United States by a coyote. He was placed in protective custody and was assigned a child advocate.

It took nearly a year for the advocate to determine that he had been forced to work in cornfields for six days a week, from sunup to sundown. He wasnt allowed to attend school. His advocate made the case that it was not in his best interests to be sent back. He was granted asylum and is now enrolled in community college.
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on Monday said that the forty-third Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the members of the company will be held on July 15. The meeting is scheduled at 2 PM on the day via video conferencing or other audio-visual means in accordance with the relevant circulars issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), RIL said in the exchange filing.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led RIL also said that it has fixed July 8 as the "Cut-off Date" for determining the members eligible to vote on the resolutions set out in the notice of the AGM or to attend the AGM.

RIL also has fixed July 3 as the "Record Date" for determining the members eligible to receive dividend for FY20. "The dividend, if declared at the AGM, will be paid within a week from the conclusion of the AGM," it added.

Meanwhile, RIL today became the first Indian company to touch a market capitalisation of $150 billion buoyed by a steady rally in its share price. RIL's valuation zoomed Rs 28,248.97 crore to Rs 11,43,667 crore ($150 billion) on the BSE in the early trade.

RIL's market valuation crossed Rs 11 lakh crore in the previous session as its share price rallied over 6 per cent after chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani announced that his oil-to-telecom conglomerate had become net debt-free. Ambani announced that RIL has become net debt-free after raising a record Rs 1.69 lakh crore from global investors and a rights issue in under two months.

Also read: Mukesh Ambani becomes 9th richest person after RIL share hits fresh high

Also read: Petrol price nears Rs 80 in Delhi, diesel at all-time high
Two of the nations most influential experts on the coronavirus pandemic, both based in Texas, are calling for an independent, nonpartisan investigation of the U.S. response to the novel coronavirus.

We must prevent this from happening again, said Gerald Parker, who directs the pandemic and biosecurity program at Texas A&Ms Bush School of Public Service. This is not going to be our last pandemic.

Peter Hotez, a Houston-based vaccine researcher and frequent commentator on cable news, noted that the current virus, SARS-CoV-2, is the third coronavirus to pose a major health threat in the last 20 years. And given that outbreaks had already wreaked havoc in China and Europe, U.S. public health systems were notably slow to respond.

What hurt Wuhan was what hurt New York City, said Hotez, which is that virus transmission went on for six weeks before there was any public health intervention.

In a videotaped interview with John Sharp, chancellor of The Texas A&M University System, Parker suggested an investigation modeled on the nonpartisan 9/11 Commission.

Democrats in Washington, D.C., including the chairmen of both the House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees, have pushed to create such a commission modeled on the bipartisan effort that followed 9/11. Democrats have also set up an oversight subcommittee in the House to investigate the Trump administrations handling of trillions in coronavirus relief funding.

But Republicans have resisted such calls so far. House Republicans voted against the creation of the House oversight committee, arguing it was an attempt by Democrats to dig up dirt on the president. Republicans have instead largely focused on Chinas handling of the outbreak and whether there was a cover-up by the Chinese government, an effort led by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican whose district stretches from Austin to Houston.

McCaul said in a May interview with Hearst Newspapers that he believes Congress could do both.

I think they think maybe if we focus on China or the Communist Party, we may be taking our eye off  they want to focus on the president, McCaul said at the time. I think you can probably do both.

Pandemic preparation used to be a nonpartisan issue, said Parker, who under President George W. Bush served on the large team that prepared the United States first pandemic security plan. I wouldnt be surprised if a COVID Commission came to a similar conclusion as the 9/11 Commission: that we suffered a failure of imagination.

He noted that, as with the coronavirus, the nations security experts knew that terrorism posed a major threat long before that threat hit home with the September 2001 attack. In the late 90s, while in the Army, Parker studied terrorism in the Department of Defenses war college. There was chatter about it, he remembers. There were several major studies about how to reorganize departments to better defend ourselves.

Similarly, he said, U.S. defense officials have long considered pandemics as major threats to national security. This should not have been a surprise, he said. This was not a black swan event.

Hotez, who also participated in the interview with Sharp, said later that he feared a congressional panel would become a political circus. Instead he proposed a review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Among the questions Hotez wants answered: How, for the whole month of February, did the U.S. miss evidence that the virus was already here? Given the crowding and high number of underlying conditions in low-income neighborhoods, what was done to prepare African-American and Hispanic communities in the early days? Why didnt the CDC have a centralized epidemiological model, including models of cities and metropolitan areas? And how can the U.S. prepare for future epidemics?

lisa.gray@chron.com
Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the City of New York // Wikimedia Commons

PIXEL to the PEOPLE // Shutterstock

U.S. Department of State // Flickr

MECOSTA COUNTY  Following back-to-back days of confirmed coronavirus cases, health officials reported no new cases Monday for Mecosta County.

The District Health Department No. 10 confirmed one case in Mecosta County on both Saturday and Sunday. Following Mondays report, the county remains at 26 confirmed cases. Two deaths  an 82-year-old man and a woman in her 60s  have previously been reported.

Osceola Countys total remains at 21 confirmed cases with zero deaths, according to Michigan.gov.

The DHD No. 10 serves residents in Mecosta, Crawford, Kalkaska, Lake, Manistee, Mason, Missaukee, Newaygo, Oceana and Wexford counties.

This is Mondays breakdown of coronavirus numbers in the health departments jurisdiction:

Cumulative total:

 516 positive COVID-19 cases in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction.

 62 positive cases in Crawford County

 19 positive cases in Kalkaska County

 6 positive cases in Lake County

 14 positive cases in Manistee County

 35 positive cases in Mason County

 18 positive cases in Missaukee County

 137 positive cases in Newaygo County

 183 positive cases in Oceana County

 16 positive cases in Wexford County

Deaths:

 16 deaths from COVID-19 in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction. Deaths are included in the positive cases listed above.

 5 deaths in Crawford County

 2 deaths in Kalkaska County

 1 death in Missaukee County

 3 deaths in Oceana County

 3 deaths in Wexford County

Recoveries:

 307 recoveries from from COVID-19 in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction (based on whether individuals are still alive 30 days past the confirmed date).

 53 recoveries in Crawford County

 16 recoveries in Kalkaska County

 5 recoveries in Lake County

 11 recoveries in Manistee County

 31 recoveries in Mason County

 17 recoveries in Mecosta County

 15 recoveries in Missaukee County

 79 recoveries in Newaygo County

 71 recoveries in Oceana County

 9 recoveries in Wexford County

As of Monday, there are 61,409 confirmed cases and 5,853 confirmed deaths in Michigan.

Health officials said it is critical for people to continue taking the following steps:

 Wear face coverings in public.

 Stay home when sick.

 Covering coughs and sneezes.

 Socially distance at least 6 feet from non-household members.

 Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.

 Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom, before eating and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing.

 Routinely clean frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning wipe or spray.
Sushant Singh Rajput's untimely demise has left everyone in a state of shock and grief. The actor died by suicide on June 14, and even after more than a week, people still haven't come to terms with it. The supremely talented actor began his career on television and successfully forayed into films.

Sushant may have left for his heavenly abode but his fans continue to share pictures and videos related to the late actor on social media. Now, a video of Sushant's close friend, actress Kriti Sanon hailing Sushant's acting talent has emerged online.

The video, which is from the episode of last year's Koffee With Karan, sees Kriti Sanon and Kartik Aaryan as the guests. During the rapid fire segment, Karan Johar asks Kriti to rank the following actors based on their acting abilities-- Kartik Aaryan, Sushant Singh Rajput, Ayushmann Khurrana, Tiger Shroff and Varun Dhawan. The Raabta actress ranks Sushant highest in the list, followed by Varun, Kartik, Ayushmann and Tiger.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Prushti Janani (@prushtijanani) on Jun 19, 2020 at 3:20am PDT

Kriti and Sushant worked together in Dinesh Vijan's Raabta. In an emotional Instagram note shared by her last week, Kriti had written, Sush.. I knew that your brilliant mind was your best friend and your worst enemy.. but it has broken me completely to know that you had a moment in your life where Dying felt easier or better than Living. I so wish you had people around you to get you pass THAT moment, i wish you hadnt pushed the ones who loved you away.. i wish i could have fixed that something which was broken inside you..I couldnt.. I wish so so many things....A part of my heart has gone with you.. and a part will always keep you alive..Never stopped praying for your happiness and never will.

Kriti, along with actors Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Vivek Oberoi and other members of the film industry such as Abhishek Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey, Dinesh Vijan, attended Sushants funeral in Mumbai on June 15.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine considers that the idea of Russian lawmakers to overturn the condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact seems strange, maybe even tragicomic and forecasts the stormy reaction of the Ukrainian society if this idea is implemented.

Currently, it is unknown how this idea will be implemented in the State Duma. If it becomes a fait accompli, I think there will be very fierce reaction, not only from the Foreign Ministry, but from the society, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, and our politicians, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Vasyl Bodnar said in an interview with Ukrinform.

He noted that it seems strange, maybe even tragicomic, to overturn the condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which actually gave the green light to World War II.

In this context, Bodnar reminded that Russia had already changed the end date of World War II, stubbornly tried to hold the parade despite the pandemic peak, although May 9 is long gone, reiterated an old Soviet statement that the Soviet Union was allegedly defending itself, not attacking, although the opposite had been impartially proven.

Russians say that the West revises history. But they themselves had previously published all the evidence of Soviet Unions aggressive policy! The agreement between Stalin and Hitler on the division of Poland and spheres of influence is confirmed by archival materials. It was such a real politics based on the imperial ambitions of each of those tyrants. And now Putin's Russia whitewashes these facts and blames all the rest for the outbreak of World War II, but not Stalin! the deputy foreign minister said.

On December 24, 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the Political and Legal Assessment of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact" condemning the signing of the "secret additional protocol" of August 23, 1939 and other secret agreements with Germany. At the end of May 2020, Alexei Zhuravlyov, a member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, submitted a bill to the lower house of parliament proposing to overturn the resolution of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. On June 9, the Duma's committee on foreign affairs approved the bill and submitted it for further consideration.

ol
By Ayya Lmahamad

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sent an air plane with 11 tons of medical supplies to Azerbaijan to support the country's efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus infection, UAE local media reported on June 21.

The aid will help about 11,000 health workers who work in this direction.

Commenting on the dispatch of aid, UAE Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohammed Ahmed Hamel Al Qubaisi stressed that relations between UAE and Azerbaijan are actively developing in many areas.

Relations between the UAE and Azerbaijan are progressing significantly in many areas. This is supported by the shared vision of the leadership of the two countries in strengthening ties of friendship, understanding, and mutual support on many regional and international issues of common concern and in various international fora, he said.

The Ambassador added that the dispatch of medical aid aircraft is a testament to the UAE leaderships supportive approach to friendly countries in various circumstances, particularly in light of the challenges the world is facing now to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
With a deep sense of the history of modern nursing and an understanding of the profession's importance during this critical moment, Sally Decker's recent recognition as a statewide lifetime achievement award recipient was especially meaningful to the well-decorated Saginaw Valley State University educator.

"This is both the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale and the time of a pandemic," Decker said. "The world is recognizing the knowledge and compassion of nurses and all other members of the healthcare team, and all of them deserve this award. I am especially honored to receive the award at this point in history."

The SVSU professor of nursing received the lifetime achievement honor from the American Nurses Association-Michigan.

"We all recognize the need to nurture and educate the next generation to be able to care for and protect the vulnerable," she said. "I appreciate all of the support and encouragement I have received from professors, colleagues, and healthcare team members over the years."

The award is a well-deserved honor for Decker, her colleagues say.

"She has been unwavering in her lifelong commitment and dedication to the nursing profession and to nursing education," said Karen Brown-Fackler, an SVSU associate professor of nursing.

"Sally is a continuous learner. She not only stays current in the content of her own courses; she sends other faculty articles related to courses that they teach as well. Although she is the most senior faculty member in the department, she often accepts the biggest work load with the most course preparations."

The lifetime achievement award is the latest validation of Decker's decades-long dedication to providing nursing education to others. Decker received SVSU's highest faculty honors, winning the Landee Award for Teaching Excellence in 2002 and the Warrick Award for Excellence in Research in 1991. In 2018, she was the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholar award, which provided her the opportunity to instruct faculty members at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland on how best to utilize simulation technology in nursing education.

Decker began her professional life practicing nursing while serving her country. As a captain in the U.S. Army, she served first as a staff nurse and later as head nurse at the U.S. Army Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg in North Carolina after earning her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Maryland in 1972.

She joined the ranks of higher education in 1978 as a research assistant and nurse clinician at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Decker earned a master's degree in nursing from the institution. She also received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1990.

She joined SVSU's faculty in 1980.

Her four decades at the campus have been defined in part by her passion for bringing a global perspective of nursing to her students. She has led SVSU students on study abroad experiences in England, Australia and Nepal. Those experiences focused on the differences in health care in different nations and cultures.

Her academic interests extend to providing education to her peers overseas. One month before the pandemic reached Michigan, Decker in February 2020 traveled to Trinity and St. James Hospital in Dublin to participate in a research project relating to interprofessional learning.

One of her current research interests was inspired by knowledge gained during her experience as a Fulbright Scholar in Dublin. Decker is researching how changes in the levels of moisture beneath the skin can indicate the need for medical intervention to prevent pressure ulcers.

Another focus of interest in Decker's professional life involves the simulation technology-based education she introduced to her peers in Dublin. She was the first member of SVSU's faculty to earn certification in simulation-based education.

Decker over the years has played a leading role in developing SVSU curriculum for nursing education courses, colleagues say. Those academic programs include both a bachelor's and master's degree-level nursing program, a doctor of nursing practice program as well as an initiative tailored specifically for providing working registered nurses with a bachelor's degree in nursing.

- Processed by Victoria Ritter, vritter@mdn.net
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is open to creating a travel bubble with neighbouring New South Wales following an alarming spike in coronavirus cases in Victoria.

Ms Palaszczuk stressed this was not her preferred option and hoped Victoria was able to control the outbreak to allow Queensland to open its borders next month as planned.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has concerns about a second wave. Credit:Dan Peled/AAP

Victoria recorded 44 new cases of coronavirus at the weekend, linked to known outbreaks and people in hotel quarantine.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles had previously flagged the possibility of opening Queensland's borders to states with low levels of active cases, such as NSW.
Americas Cultural Revolution By Dr. Robert Owens

In the 1960s Mao Zedong, the worlds greatest mass murderer and the insane megalomaniac known to his enslaved people as the Great Helmsman decided that his Revolution was no longer pure enough. To accomplish his purge, he unleashed the Cultural Revolution on the defenseless people of Communist China. Waving the Little Red Book of Maos sayings, the Chinese version of Antifa surged through the streets. They attacked anyone not completely onboard with the destruction of Chinese culture. The traditions, beliefs, sacred memorials, art, literature, and monuments of the past were all marked for the trash heap of history. Many of those who became and are now the Heroes of the Revolution were then the victims of the out of control street gangs authorized by Mao to turn the very society he himself had created since the communist conquest of China in 1949 upside down and inside out. Even Deng Xiaoping was forced to renounce his infatuation with the idea of using free markets to lift China out of poverty. Deng went on to become the father of the current Chinese resurgence once Mao died and his cultural thugs lost power. Today we are witnessing an American Cultural Revolution. Led by black shirted thugs and financed by socialist billionaires. These self-proclaimed voices of the people are attempting to erase our history, regiment our thoughts, and seize control of the country. They are doing this all in the name of social justice, racial equality, and a smug belief that they will be the ones who finally make the unworkable policies of socialism work. The list of targets in this cultural revolution keeps growing from idiocy to absurdity: Leaders of the Revolution are calling for the removal of the Washington and the Jefferson Monuments.

The leaders of NASCAR have banned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia which is usually misnamed the Confederate flag.

A&E has canceled its flagship series and one of the highest-rated shows on basic cable, Live PD.

A week after Live P.D. was pulled in the wake of George Floyds death, the reality series hiatus has been made permanent.

Carrying the flag of revolutionary change into the realm of the surreal according to the New York Times the all-powerful Black Lives Matter movement is targeting Paw Patrol, the popular childrens cartoon on the Nick Jr. channel, because it shows a positive view of police.

Comrade Pelosi wants 11 Confederate statues removed from the Capitol ignoring the fact that Congress authorized the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1864 to allow each state to donate two statues of notable citizens illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services for display in the Capitol.

The leaders of the Progressive Democrats who are desperately trying to run in front of the parade of revolution they have helped to unleash kneel to the power of the Black Lives Matter movement right in the Capitol building itself.

A wild mob of revolutionaries, that the democrats who identify as journalists call protesters, topple a statue of 15th Century explorer Christopher Columbus in St. Paul, Minnesota, outside the states Capitol building.

Other detachments of the black shirted left tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Virginias state capital using ropes to topple the monument before burning an American flag atop it and dragging it into a nearby lake.

In Boston, a statue of the 15th Century explorer was beheaded overnight. And then there is a move aimed at destroying any semblance of a peaceful society and the ability to defend such a society. While the Black Lives Matter movement leads a national Defund the Police campaign, other alt-left-wing groups are also demanding Congress cut off federal grant money for local law enforcement. The usual suspects, the bewildering maze of social justice and open borders lobbying organizations, many linked to billionaire angel of everything anti-American, George Soros, demand that the federal government end all funding of police in the United States. This type of rhetoric and the policies or lack thereof that the Alt-woke swamp creatures are instituting inevitably leads to situations such as that which is unfolding in Seattle. Where protesters have cordoned off several blocks of the city, declaring it a cop-free zone and Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, have released a long list of demands, including abolition of the Seattle Police Department and prisons, amnesty for all illegal migrants, and free health care and college for all, especially for blacks as a form of reparations. Seattles newly formed Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is reminiscent of the Paris Commune. After Emperor Napoleon III was captured by the Prussians in 1871 the Second French Empire collapsed into the Third Republic. Though their government accepted defeat the people of Paris did not. Instead they took over the city, imprisoned the mayor and other officials and declared Paris a free commune based on Marxist principles. They held out for seventy days of chaos and tyranny waving red flags and introducing the world to the rule of political correctness. If anyone spoke out for free speech or private property they were shouted down, beat down, locked up, or put away. The insurrectionists, who called themselves Communards, set up barricades in the streets and burned public buildings. They held out for seventy days. During what is called The Bloody Week government troops smashed resistance and retook the city. Approximately 20,000 insurrectionists died along with about 750 soldiers. Lets pray the return of civil government to the heart of Seattle will not be as bloody or as long awaited. The Antifa terrorists are reportedly seeking armed volunteers to take turns manning barricades and holding the ground the protesters have seized within Seattle city limits. The Washington state revolutionaries have issued a manifesto. It begins by saying, This document is to represent the black voices who spoke in victory at the top of 12th & Pine after 9 days of peaceful protest while under constant nightly attack from the Seattle Police Department. These are words from that night, June 8th, 2020. And closes with these words, Although we have liberated Free Capitol Hill in the name of the people of Seattle, we must not forget that we stand on land already once stolen from the Duwamish People, the first people of Seattle, and whose brother, John T. Williams of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe up north was murdered by the Seattle Police Department 10 years ago. What do the Seattle police have to say about this take over? Seattle Police Officers Guild President Michael Solan stated that a fringe is stealing the peaceful protest message for justice for George Floyd. Solan went on to say, The city has lost all the political will to enforce the rule of law. There is an unreasonable, activist fringe that is unfortunately stealing the peaceful protest message for justice for George Floyd, and then now, they are occupying over a six-block area of the city of Seattle. It is absolutely unreasonable activism. And we are pulling our hair out. Because we are true public safety professionals that took an oath of service. And we are holding our elected leaders responsible for this travesty on the overall, amazing Seattle community that are law-abiding citizens, that are yearning for police officer, public safety services. He also added, There is a tug-of-war at city hall for control, and police are stuck in the middle, and now look what happened. Weve lost a precinct. Now, whats next? Are we going to lose another precinct? The city council has removed our ability to have less lethal munitions for us to properly protect those facilities and protect ourselves. That has now been taken away. So, whats left? How are we supposed to defend the rest of those precincts? If we want to maintain a civil society as opposed to either a civil war or a revolutionary reign of terror we have to do whatever we have to do to maintain order in the face of dedicated revolutionaries or we will have anarchy at best or regime change at worst. During a portion of an interview with the Fox News Channel released on Thursday, President Trump stated that he wouldnt allow Seattle to be occupied and If we have to go in, were going to go in. Trump also urged Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) to use the National Guard but stated that one way or the other, its going to get done. These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News at the White House that President Donald Trump would send federal troops to free parts of Seattle only as a last resort. McEnany also said President Trump preferred local leaders doing their job to defend their streets according to the Constitution and that, The presidents message is that he will secure the streets in this country. The Press Secretary went on to say, ANTIFA will be stopped under the leadership of President Trump from wreaking havoc and burning down buildings and injuring 750 law enforcement officers and destroying 150 federal buildings. Later President Trump tweeted, Radical Left Governor Jay Inslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. Trump said, If there were more toughness, you wouldnt have the kind of devastation that you had in Minneapolis and in Seattle. I mean, lets see whats going on in Seattle. But I will tell you if they dont straighten that situation out, were going to straighten it out. He added, What I mean is very simple, were not going to let Seattle be occupied by anarchists.  If we have to go in, were going to go in. The governors either going to do it, let the governor do it, hes got great National Guard troops, hell  he can do it. But one way or the other, its going to get done. These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city. And what is the reaction of the democrats who identify as journalists to the revolt in Seattle? Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics, observed, Media bias is not just in the stories that get covered, but the ones that dont. He went on to cite, Total blackout on the insanity in Seattle on major news websites: ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, as cases in point. The cultural revolution of the Great Helmsman failed. It destroyed a generation of people. When the hand of the great destroyer finally slipped from the helm China repudiated his economic policies and went in the exact opposite direction. What will be the end of our cultural revolution? Coming as it does after decades of cultural warfare this may be a climatic battle, a Gettysburg moment for America as we have known it, playing out right in front of the cameras. What it all comes down to is this: these protests have become a rebellion. Do you know what we historians call a rebellion that succeeds? We call it a revolution. Know what we call one that fails? We call it a revolt. It will be for Historians of the future to describe what this will become. If the majority wont stand firm for what we believe we will fall hard for what a violent minority wants. At which point we may well end up singing with the late Phil Ochs: In tattered tuxedos they face the new heroes And crawl about in confusion. All the hands raised They stand there amazed At the shattering of their own illusions. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  2020 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home
Dark Mode for Google Maps has been expected since mid-2019 and has yet to arrive. But it may have just made its first appearance in the dedicated Google app on Android.

First spotted by AndroidPolice, the dedicated dark mode appears to do exactly what it does elsewhere in Google Maps. Namely, it replaces white and light-colored hues with darker gray tones. In Maps, that means that the background areas of the map, typically a light gray color, are replaced by a deep dark gray. Lighter gray hues replace the white that typically denotes roads.

Other UI elements are switched up also. Highways and freeways take on a slightly darkened yellow look. The green used for parks and forested areas is far less vibrant and the same follows for blue tones used for waterways. The darkening impacts all colors, in fact, but doesnt seem to result in any color swaps. So users should still be able to very easily interact with and read the map.

Advertisement

Where can Dark Mode for Google Maps be found?

As indicated above, the new Dark Mode for Google Maps doesnt actually appear in the app itself. At least not yet. Instead, it appears to rely on the user having set a system-wide dark mode and a second app. For clarity, thats the system-wide dark theme found in Settings. Conversely, it may also be possible to just turn on Dark Mode for the secondary app in question.

That app, of course, is the dedicated Google app. To turn on dark theming in that app, users need to navigate to the app itself. Then, users will need to select the More tab at the bottom to reveal deeper settings. From there, Settings must be chosen, followed by General.

Scrolling down in General settings will reveal an option titled Theme. Typically thats set to System default by default. A tap on Theme loads up a button-selection menu and choosing Dark will switch over, just as with other Google apps.

Advertisement

Once thats loaded up, the only step required to see Dark Mode maps in the Google app is a search. Going back to the home screen and typing in Sprint, as in the image above, will load up a selectable map of search results. Tapping that expands it to the full screen.

This isnt quite what everybody is waiting for but it should arrive soon

Now, chances are that this isnt even the final variant of Dark Mode for Google Maps. The variant showcased in the Google app and in searches elsewhere tends to be stripped of key UI, for example. Those elements will be changed up too, in keeping with the theme. But there is a good case to be made that whats being viewed here is foundational to how it will appear.

Namely, Google has increasingly been launching Dark Mode support in more apps. G Suite apps are among the most recent to see the change. But thats also come to Google Earth recently as well  at least, as spotted in a teardown.

Advertisement

With Googles dark mode theming now being spotted in the Google App  explicitly for maps  it stands to reason that app is almost ready to go too. At the very least, Google is ramping up these changes and mapping data-related apps seem to be in the crosshairs for the near future.
The Delhi High Court Monday sought response of the owner of a private school on a plea by the Delhi Police challenging bail granted to him in a case related to communal violence in north-east Delhi during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in February.

Faisal Farooq, owner of Rajdhani School in Shiv Vihar locality was among the 18 arrested, for alleged involvement in burning and damaging the property of adjacent DRP Convent School.

Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, also directed that till further order, if the respondent/accused (Farooq), pursuant to order dated June 20 (of trial court) is still in custody, he shall not be released.

The high court listed the matter for further hearing on Tuesday and said the copy of the order be communicated to the concerned judge and jail superintendent concerned through phone, mail or any other mode for information and compliance.

The police, in the petition filed through advocates Amit Mahajan and Rajat Nair, have challenged the trial courts June 20 order granting bail to Farooq on the ground that it was prima facie not established that he was present at the spot at the time of incident.

The hearing also saw exchange of words between Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Delhi government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra who submitted that the Central Government has no power to file this petition against the June 20 order of the trial court.

The Solicitor General submitted that he has received instructions from the Central Government to file this petition and to appear before the court. However, this fact was disputed by Mehra.

The high court noted in its order, At this stage, the Solicitor General submits that in this situation, out of disgust, he seeks permission to withdraw his name from the present petition. Needless to state that it is upto the Solicitor General to appear in any matter or not unless specifically directed by the court.

The matter was passed over for a while and after the hearing resumed, Additional Solicitor General Aman Lekhi appeared in place of the Solicitor General and prosecutor Amit Chadha appeared in place of Mehra, who was in another court.

Prosecutor Chadha submitted that the controversy raised in the petition shall be resolved during the course of the day and jointly sought adjournment for Tuesday.

The Delhi Police had on June 3 filed a charge sheet before the court against Farooq and 17 others in the incident in which the building of a private school was burnt down in North East Delhi.

The trial court, in its bail order, had noted that the charge sheet filed against him in the case was bereft of material showing his alleged links with Popular Front of India, Pinjra Tod group and Muslim clerics.

The trial court has said the accused would be released from the jail on furnishing a bail bond of Rs 50,000 along with two sureties of like amount.

It had directed Farooq to surrender his passport and should not leave the National Capital Region without permission of the court and should mark his attendance on every alternate Wednesday at the concerned police station. It also asked him not to tamper with evidence or influence the witnesses.

The Crime Branch of Delhi police had filed the charge sheet against the accused for allegedly conspiring with Popular Front of India, Pinjra Tod group, Jamia Coordination Committee and Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz for creating riots, in and around his school.

It has also been alleged that protestors against the CAA had received funds from PFI, formed in 2006 in Kerala as a successor to the National Democratic Front (NDF).

Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage) was founded in 2015 with an aim to make hostels and paying guest accommodations less restrictive for women students.

In 2015, Jamia Millia Islamia University had issued a notice restricting female students from staying out after 8 pm. When the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) questioned the Jamia administration on it, a group of women students decided to protest against the restrictions not only in Jamia but other universities in Delhi.

Later named as Pinjra Tod, the group mobilised people around several issues faced by female residents of hostels and PGs.
Much as in her YouTube series, Graslie serves not as expert but inquisitor and, when necessary, explainer. A range of experts passes through the show, and the host is there to dig alongside them or dig into what they know. She did more than 50 interviews, she said, while traveling with her crew some 6000 miles over eight weeks.

"The reason we wanted to talk with so many different people is to show that there's many different entry points into the field of paleontology," Graslie said. "You don't just have to be a scientist in order to make a meaningful contribution. So we talked with landowners. We talked with two different tribal communities. We talked with universities, community colleges, amateurs  just paleo nerds, illustrators, artists. We talked with anybody who we could find to ask them how paleontology and studying the fossil record had shaped them and their identity  because that's kind of what the show is about, how my identity has been shaped by my proximity to this part of the world."
NSW residents have been urged to reconsider visiting Melbourne amid an outbreak of new mystery community-acquired cases of coronavirus.

While the border between NSW and Victoria will remain open, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian backed Victorian calls for residents in those hotspots not to travel interstate.

In Victoria 16 new cases have been confirmed, including two cases linked to an outbreak from an H&M store at Northland Shopping Centre in Melbourne's north, and two in teachers from Albanvale Primary School. Six of the new cases have no known sources.

"Nobody from NSW should be travelling to those hotspots at this present time, and people should consider whether they should be travelling to Melbourne at this point in time, whilst community transmission is where it is, Ms Berejiklian said on Monday morning. "You should not be travelling to those hotspots at all.
An Army jawan was killed on Monday in unprovoked Pakistani firing along the Line of Control in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, raising the number of soldiers who fell to cross-border firing this month to four, officials said.

Pakistan Army and Rangers personnel also targeted forward areas and posts along the LoC in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch and along the International Border in Hiranagar sector in Kathua district, prompting strong retaliation by the Indian forces, the officials said.

"Pakistan army resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation along the LoC in Nowshera sector of Rajouri, causing critical injuries to Havildar Dipak Karki who later succumbed to his injuries," Jammu-based Army PRO Lt Col Devender Anand said.

He said the firing from across the border in the sector started at 5.30 am and was responded effectively by the Indian Army.

However, it was not immediately clear if there was any casualties on the Pakistani side in the retaliatory action, the officer said.

Havildar Karki was a brave, highly motivated and a sincere soldier. The nation will always remain indebted to him for his supreme sacrifice and devotion to duty, Lt Col Anand said.

He is the fourth Army personnel to be killed in Pakistani firing along the LoC in Rajouri and Poonch this month.

Two soldiers were killed in Pakistani firing in Rajouri district on June 4 and 10, while another soldier fell to cross-border firing in Poonch on June 14.

There has been a spurt in Pakistani shelling along the border in Jammu and Kashmir this year with over 2,027 cases of violation of a ceasefire agreement being reported till June 10.

Pakistan Army personnel also targeted forward areas in Krishnagati sector in Poonch district, the army spokesman said.

"At about 0330 hours today, Pak army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by firing of small arms and intense shelling with mortars along LoC in Krishnagati Sector in Poonch district," the spokesman said.

A police official said heavy cross-border shelling was going on in both the sectors when last reports were received.

Along the International Border, Pakistani Rangers engaged in heavy firing on forward posts and villages in the Karol Matrai area of Hiranagar sector in Kathua district, he said.

He said the unprovoked firing from Pakistan started around 1 am and the Border Security Force gave a befitting retaliation.

The exchange of fire between the two sides continued till 3.50 am, the official said.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Changes to the composition of Germanys top court are likely to make it less confrontational towards the European Central Bank following a ruling about bond purchases that sent shockwaves around Europe, according to two sources close to the court.

In its ruling last month, the Constitutional Court gave the ECB three months to justify bond purchases under its flagship stimulus programme or lose the Bundesbank as a participant, raising questions about the future of the euro.

Berlin is likely to have the final say on whether the ECBs justification is sufficient and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Monday there would soon be a resolution to the ruling.

This is not a drama without resolution. We will soon see there will be a resolution without drama, Scholz told a finance conference in Frankfurt, by videolink from Berlin.

The plaintiffs behind the case have signalled they could bring fresh legal action against new ECB stimulus plans, which could lead to more market turmoil. However, there was a changing of the guard at the German court Karlsruhe on Monday.

A key change is a new judge appointed to a bench widely seen to have a narrow Eurosceptic majority: Astrid Wallrabenstein, who was nominated by the pro-European Greens and has suggested there should be a thaw in relations with the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which cleared the ECBs plan.

She takes the place on the bench vacated by Andreas Vosskuhle, president of the court whose term has expired and is leaving. His role as president goes to Stephan Harbarth, a conservative lawmaker from 2009-2018.

She is a lot more Europe-friendly than Vosskuhle, said the first source, a constitutional law professor who is well connected at the court and knows Wallrabenstein. So my forecast is that in future, such decisions like that on the ECB will no longer be taken.

Wallrabensteins appointment could help pave the way towards a more conciliatory tone from the court, which experts say has a history of provoking crises before softening its stance.

Typically what happens is the court does something that make people think its overreached and then they back off a bit, said Justin Collings, historian of the German constitutional court at Brigham Young University in Utah.

A spokesman for the court said he could not speculate on the direction of forthcoming decisions from the court in view of the personnel changes and each decision was taken on its own merit and by a group of eight judges in confidence.

MORE THAN A MATCH

The constitutional court is divided into two senates, each with eight judges, which handle different cases. Wallrabenstein will join the second senate, which made the May 5 ruling on the ECBs bond purchases.

Although the second senate voted 7-1 to pass the ruling, they aim for consensus. The arrival of Wallrabenstein promises to shift the balance, at least over time, said the second source, who is close to the court, noting that she is the first judge on the second senate to be nominated by the Greens.

Every new justice changes something. In a group of eight people, one new person will make a difference, said the source. There may well be more vigorous discussions.

The law professor who knows the Karlsruhe judges said the dynamic on the second senate has been strongly shaped by the interplay of Vosskuhle and (Peter) Huber, a conservative who described the May 5 ruling as imperative.

Of Wallrabenstein, the professor added: She wont go looking for open conflict, but she has good arguments and is more than a match for Huber.

Wallrabenstein has shown she is prepared to take a stand.

In 2014, as a lawyer, she represented a - failed - case at the Karlsruhe court to have former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden heard by an investigating committee in Berlin.

She has already suggested a softer approach in relations with the ECJ, which cleared the ECBs stimulus plan in 2018. The Karlsruhe judges decided they were not bound by that ruling, saying the European court had failed to scrutinise the ECBs actions to the point of making its own verdict meaningless.

The tone has become harsher lately, Wallrabenstein said late last month of relations between the courts. Just carrying on like this perhaps becomes a bit difficult now.

Contacted by Reuters at the weekend, Wallrabenstein declined to comment further.

However, she was quoted by Germanys Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung weekly as saying she hoped that things would move in the right direction, adding it was now about how to carry on after an argument and say: Forget it, lets move on.

CONUNDRUM FOR BERLIN

The German court has said its May ruling did not apply to new ECB measures, leaving room for a fresh challenge.

However, while the plaintiffs behind the original case have signalled they could bring new legal action, the second source told Reuters that the Karlsruhe court felt it had made its point with the May 5 ruling.

Nonetheless, the May 5 decision still poses a conundrum for Berlin, which is bound to respect the Karlsruhe court, but at the same time, does not want to erode the independence of the ECB, whose unprecedented stimulus has kept the euro zone intact.

ECB watchers see two potential exit routes: either the Bundesbank or the European Parliament, which has the right to question the ECB, seeks a clarification about the bond purchases from the euro zone central bank.

Berlin must then either accept or reject the justification. Rejection would require the Bundesbank to pull out of the scheme, and put a question mark over Germanys role in the euro.
As summer gets underway in earnest and most schools let out, the nations 14,000 school systems are now full-bore preparing for the 2020-21 school year and trying to square all the uncertainties that the novel coronavirus pandemic has thrown up.

One by one, the major professional associations that serve teachers and leaders are now releasing guidance for districts beginning this Herculean task.

Theyre excellent resources for superintendents, principals, and other district leaders, all much more detailed than anything state agencies are putting out.

The challenge is figuring out which guide will be most helpful for your needs at this moment.

Enter Education Weeks new Guide to the Guides. We hope this will give you some starting points for the challenging deliberations and decisions to come.

In addition, Education Week has begun its own series, How We Go Back to School, which includes some downloadable resources sure to help you begin the conversation with your leadership teams, principals, and staffall coupled with our trademark analytical journalism. See part one of that series here .

And now, heres our curated list.

National Education Association: All Hands On Deck: Initial Guidance Regarding Reopening School Buldings . Released week of June 14.

This guide from the largest of the two national teachers unions is based around four principles. In addition to focusing on teachers concerns, like ensuring theyre supported as they continue to teach in remote settings, the guide is notable for its focus on the on-the-ground role education support personnel play in schools: ESPs often have the language skills to most effectively communicate with English-language learners and their families. They also are more likely to live in the community served by the school in which they work. Without these language skills, home/school communication would be difficult or impossible and diverse cultural norms would not be accommodated in school planning, the guide notes.

It also contains a helpful list of references to other resources from social-emotional learning organizations, social-justice groups, and recommendations crafted by some of the NEAs state affiliates.



Best for: Understanding teachers, paraprofessionals, and ESPs particular concerns about returning to school.

AASA, The School Superintendents Association: Guidelines for Reopening Schools . Released June 18.

The AASAs recommendations grew out of its recovery task force, a group of superintendents from around the country that began convening weekly in April. This comprehensive, 50-page single-spaced guide is organized around 10 guiding principles, including ensuring access to technology; changes to human resources management and contracts; transforming teaching, learning, and assessment; and anticipating budget and fiscal management issues, among others. Each of those 10 issues is explored in depth in sub-sections with specific action steps to take. The guide is also available online .



Under building an equitable technology infrastructure, for example, the guide recommends distributing Chromebooks and other digital devices, but also lists steps districts can take to reinforce routines, build a sense of remote classroom community, and engage in student-to-student discussions.

Like the NEA guide, the AASA emphasizes that decisions shouldnt just be about recovery but also about putting new structures in place to make schools more responsive to student needs and more equitable. Notably, it endorses the expansion of trauma-informed and trauma-skilled schooling. It also endorses a movement towards more personalization, differentiated learning, and student-directed learning, ideas whose efficacy remain much debated in K-12 circles.



Best for: A soup-to-nuts checklist of considerations.

Southern Regional Education Board: Playbook in Progress: K-12 Education Recovery. Released beginning June 8.

SREBs guide grew out of a task force it began in mid-April, representing two members appointed by the K-12 schools chiefs in each of its 16 states.

This guide, which is rolling out in stages, currently offers recommendations in governance and operations, and health and safety, with several subtopics nested beneath. Its online and interactive, so you can click accordion-style on the topics that most interest you. In coming weeks, SREB will add additional areas, including instruction, addressing learning loss, and assessment. Helpfully, some of the sub-topics show what supports those states are building in for districts. Under the mental-health portion of its health section, for example, the guide recommends that districts turn to community partners to support emerging needs and then details structures that Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Kentucky have put in place at the state level



Best for: Knowing what supports schools in one of the 16 member states will receive. Planning for operations right now and turning to instruction in a few weeks.

ERS (Education Resource Strategies): Decision Points for Covid Comeback Models. Revised June 18.

This guide is focused primarily on the kind of instructional delivery approach districts must weigh for the 2020-21 school year (traditional in-person, remote learning, or a blended approach) It does not address some of the other key considerations (transportation, social-emotional learning). The group has also released a calculator tool so districts can plug in some numbers to help them as they weigh the costs of the three different approaches. Separately, ERS also has a brief on the fiscal implications for the school year, including cost comparisons from four large urban districts.



Best for: Weighing the tradeoffs of in-person, remote, or hybrid schooling. Estimating costs of some scenarios.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and several partners: Providing Effective and Equitable Digital Learning for All Students . Released June 9.

This guide offers three major recommendations for improving districts digital offerings during remote learning, especially for keeping it active and engaging, rather than passive. (The guide does not address other re-opening needs.) Each recommendation is arranged as a series of question prompts and contains links to resources. A helpful appendix outlines case studies of exemplary districts and charters that have made progress on the digital divide.



Best for: Considering digital needs and teaching methods.

American Federal of Teachers. A Plan To Safely Reopen Americas Schools and Communities. Released April 29.

This guide from the AFT outlines takes a broad lens on what will need to happen for the safe re-opening of K-12 schools, colleges, and hospitals. Its notable for its emphasis on collective bargaining as a tool in the process, noting that workers can bargain the need to be consulted as part of re-opening plans: The surest way to protect workers in these instances is to put these protections into collective bargaining agreements, it notes. It also outlines federal investments the union would like to see, including $175 billion in additional education stabilization funds for K-12 and higher ed., as well as increases in Medicaid and food stamp spending.



Best for: Big-picture overview of re-opening of K-12 schools, universities, and health facilities.

Do you have another guide youd like us to include? Please send it to Education Week: lmaxwell@educationweek.org or ssawchuk@educationweek.org

Image credit: iStock/Getty Images Plus
NEW YORK - Presidential politics move fast. What were watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:

Days to next set of primaries (New York and Kentucky): 1

Days to general election: 134

___

THE NARRATIVE

President Donald Trumps campaign relaunch is off to a rocky start, and his Republican critics are getting louder as coronavirus infections continue to surge.

There were thousands of empty seats at the Oklahoma arena where Trump hosted his comeback rally on Saturday, an embarrassing development at an event designed to showcase the Republican presidents strength. Aides were scrambling to explain away the poor optics as they juggled damaging headlines on other fronts.

Former Trump national security adviser John Boltons much-anticipated book will be formally released this week. Bolton becomes the latest in a long line of former Trump aides to raise dire warnings about the presidents job performance. At the same time, the president is trying to distance himself from Attorney General William Barrs firing of the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who was forced out in the midst of investigating Trumps allies.

As Trump navigates continued chaos, voters in New York and Kentucky head to the polls on Tuesday in another set of primary elections that will test the nations ability to host fair elections in the age of the coronavirus.

___

THE BIG QUESTIONS

What happened in Tulsa?

The political world was genuinely surprised to see thousands of empty seats at Trumps comeback rally in Oklahoma over the weekend. Critics often question the presidents grasp of policy, his discipline and his character, but before Tulsa, few people questioned his ability to pack an arena.

Was the relatively low turnout simply an anomaly caused by fears of protests, the pandemic or social media trolls? Or was it a legitimate sign that the energy behind Trumps reelection is fading?

For a president obsessed with crowd size, this is clearly an embarrassing development that will linger into the week, even if Joe Biden might well have struggled to draw a crowd like Trump did. And perhaps more importantly, the finger-pointing inside Trumps campaign will intensify ahead of a possible staff shakeup.

Will voting problems continue?

Primary voters across New York and Kentucky offer another high-profile test Tuesday for the nations election system amid continued coronavirus concerns. After a series of disturbing recent trends in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, election experts are worried.

Georgia voters waited as long as five hours to cast ballots earlier in the month, a problem that disproportionately affected voters of colour. And a surge in mail balloting created days-long delays in reporting final results in Pennsylvania, among other states.

Trump and Biden face no real opposition this week, so well be paying particular attention to a handful of key Democratic congressional primaries. In Kentucky, Democrats will decide if establishment favourite Amy McGrath or underdog progressive state Rep. Charles Booker takes on Mitch McConnell this fall. And in New York, former school principal Jamaal Bowman has a legitimate chance to defeat 16-term incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel.

Has Democratic overconfidence become a problem?

As Trumps chaotic presidency continues, Democrats are increasingly under pressure to guard against overconfidence. Thats easier said than done, especially as Trumps own advisers privately worry about his reelection prospects and a stream of public polls raise the prospect of a Biden victory.

Bidens numbers may be strong more than four months out, but its easy to forget that he struggled badly to energize voters in early primary contests. And few progressive activists seem genuinely excited about his candidacy.

Bidens campaign and its allies will have their hands full in the coming weeks and months maintaining a real sense of urgency in its supporters. History suggests that fear of Trump alone is not enough.

How much damage will Bolton do?

While the most damning details have already been reported, Boltons book, The Room Where It Happened, is scheduled for formal release on Tuesday. That means Trump is far from past the negative attention related to the book, which he ensured would remain a bestseller by suing unsuccessfully to block its publication.

Bolton, who worked alongside Trump in the White House for nearly a year and a half, has already called the president unfit for office. He tops a remarkable list of people who have worked closely with Trump and raised similar concerns.

In recent weeks alone, former Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis called Trump a threat to the Constitution; Trumps longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly agreed; and one of the administrations highest ranking African Americans, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, resigned to protest Trumps stance on racial justice.

Will Trumps attacks on Bidens mental capacity work?

Lest anyone think some things might be off limits in 2020, the Trump campaign ramped up its attacks on Bidens age, health and mental capacity last week by launching a website suggesting hes barely there. Among a series of the gaffe-prone Bidens career lowlights, the site notes that Biden forgot when he had a brain aneurysm: Both of his brain aneurysms were in 1988.

Trumps campaign is well aware that Biden has siphoned away some of his support among older Americans, a trend that could prove extremely detrimental for Trump in several states come November, especially in Florida. Is this the kind of message that might help Trump win back older voters? One thing is clear: The deeply personal attack has become a pillar of Trumps 2020 strategy, and the presidents team has the money and the willingness to take it as far as it needs to.

___

THE FINAL THOUGHT

As bad as it looks for Trumps reelection right now, 134 days is a lifetime in presidential politics. His team has only begun to spend its tremendous resources to persuade swing state voters, the candidates have yet to debate and Bidens flaws arent going away.

___

2020 Watch runs every Monday and provides a look at the week ahead in the 2020 election.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, Ground Game.
South Africa: Rand Water clarifies water tank prices

Rand Water has expressed concern about inflated prices that are being thrown around in the media, overstating the suppliers costs for water tankers.

According to Rand Water, they have partnered with the Department of Basic Educations national return to school programme to ensure safe and clean water for those school communities in need, as the nation battles with Coronavirus, which has claimed close to 2 000 lives in the country.

We were appointed as the implementing agent, after an implementation protocol between ourselves and the Departments of Basic Education (DBE) and Water and Sanitation (DWS) was finalised on 13 May 2020, the water utility explained.

Rand Water said the implementation protocol is per the Intergovernmental Relations Act, 2005 (Act No 13 of 2005).

We have noted with concern the misinformation quoted in media articles, as well as on social media platforms exaggerating the supplier costs for water tanks used during the intervention, Rand Water said.

In addition, Rand Water said all the service providers contracted as part of this intervention are accredited vendors registered on the National Treasurys Central Supplier Database (CSD).

The CSD is a database of organisations, institutions and individuals, who can provide goods and services to government. It is the single source of key supplier information for organs of State since April 2016 and it provides consolidated, accurate, up-to-date, complete and verified supplier information to procuring organs of State, the water utility said.

All the costs for the successful implementation of the intervention fall within the market price range for the equipment and installation costs utilised for the intervention, Rand Water said.

According to Rand Water, the cost for the supply of a 5 000 litre tank ranged between R4 500 and R5 400.

Meanwhile, the cost for the supply of a 10 000 litre tank ranged between R9 000 and R10 800.

The Implementation Protocol has a contractual value of R600 million to be payable by the DBE to Rand Water. To date, the DBE has transferred an amount of R200 million to Rand Water.

Rand Water said according to the agreement between parties, their role is to supply and install water tanks and provide water-cutting services to the respective schools during the declared national disaster period.

An important second phase of the intervention is the construction of sustainable water sources for the schools through borehole drilling and pumping, as well as the establishment of reticulation systems to the closest source of water, wherever possible.

There was also a social media post on Twitter claiming the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education purchased water tankers for R170 000 each. The department in the province has since disputed it.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
KANSAS CITY, Mo., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Raymond "Ray" B. Luhnow Jr., the second president of Burns & McDonnell, died June 6 at the age of 97.

Luhnow had an illustrious career at Burns & McDonnell, joining the firm in 1946 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was instrumental in developing a significant presence for the firm on the East Coast during the 1960s and leading the firm after it was purchased by Armco Steel in the 1970s. He retired in 1982, after 36 years with Burns & McDonnell, serving the last eight years as president.

Ray Luhnow, the second president at Burns & McDonnell, had an illustrious career at the firm, joining in 1946 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He retired in 1982, after 36 years at Burns & McDonnell, serving the last eight years as president.

"Ray successfully led Burns & McDonnell through challenging years under Armco Steel, diversified the firm's services and doubled the number of employees from 650 to 1,300," says Ray Kowalik, chairman and CEO of Burns & McDonnell. "A man of high integrity, his optimism and versatility as an engineer, businessman and leader have left a lasting impression on Burns & McDonnell and who we are today."

Luhnow graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1944 and received a Master of Business Administration from the University of Missouri in 1964.

From 1943-1946, he served in the United States Naval Reserve as an Engineering Officer (Lieutenant Junior Grade) in the Pacific aboard the USS Sanborn and USS Chestnut, operating their steam and diesel plants during World War II.

Luhnow joined Burns & McDonnell on Aug. 1, 1946. Robert (Bob) H. McDonnell, the first president of Burns & McDonnell and son of co-founder Robert E. McDonnell, personally hired and recruited him. His areas of specialty as a design engineer were in waterworks, power plants, sewage plants, airports and industrial facilities.

In 1964, Luhnow was made a partner. He established the New York office of Burns & McDonnell in 1966. In 1971, he was made administrative vice president and, in 1973, was elected executive vice president. He was selected as president the following year.

In 2008, Luhnow was recognized with the Burns & McDonnell Clinton S. Burns Award  one of the highest honors the firm bestows upon an employee  for his significant contributions to technical excellence and leadership.

For photos and support materials, please visit our MEDIA KIT.

About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies bringing together an unmatched team of 7,600 engineers, construction professionals, architects, planners, technologists and scientists to design and build our critical infrastructure. With an integrated construction and design mindset, we offer full-service capabilities with more than 55 offices, globally. Founded in 1898, Burns & McDonnell is a 100% employee-owned company and proud to be on Fortune's 2020 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. Learn how we are on call through it all.

Contact: Kristi Widmar, Burns & McDonnell

816-448-7379

[email protected]

SOURCE Burns & McDonnell

Related Links

http://www.burnsmcd.com


Turkish Air Raids Displace Iraqi Assyrians Again

Over the weekend, the Turkish Air Force continued bombing NW Iraq, reportedly displacing many and killing up to five civilians. Turkey claims that some members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) are based in this area and that they were the target. However, several of the impacted villages are also home to Christian communities.

Hundreds of Christian families who fled Mosul and the Nineveh Plains during the 2014 ISIS attacks now live in Zakho, one of the areas targeted by Turkey's raids. Many of these Christians have been displaced once again. Chaldean Patriarch Sako, born in Zakho, expressed his concern toward Erdogan's imposition on Iraqi land, noting that Iraq cannot face a war with Turkey right now. Baghdad called on Erdogan to end the attacks, but Erdogan insists they will fight the PKK wherever they are.

The Assyrian Observatory for Human Rights spoke out against the attacks, calling for protection of these Iraqi civilians and condemning Turkey's irresponsible operations. These raids confirm the exponential growth of Turkey's geopolitical-military activism and should raise concern among the international community. ICC's assistance work has included repairing Christian homes targeted in past raids but change needs to be affected on a much greater level.
Tay Guan Hin joins BBDO Singapore to lead the creative team and forward the work after founding and heading the creative at TGH Collective for the last 2 years.

A renowned figure in the creative world known for matching flawless execution with inspiring creative ideas. Guan Hin boasts over 28 years of advertising experience in APAC, solving business challenges with his creative work. He joins BBDO at a critical time, with huge growth potential as businesses begin to reopen in Singapore, as they implement phase 2 following the circuit breaker. BBDO Singapore is focusing on the future of The Work. The Work. The Work. and embracing the opportunities of the new normal. With a strong network across Asia, BBDO benefits from having a resource treasure chest of creative and strategic talent across the region Guan Hin will now be a part of.

Guan commented, While everyone is going back to work, I am looking ahead to Forward The Work. While I enjoyed my journey in TGH Collective, joining one of the most creative networks in the world is not an opportunity to be missed. I'm excited to start a new narrative. To create innovative solutions that will solve the client's business effectively through the strength of BBDO Asia's network by being a member of their Creative Council.

Guan will be leading the BBDO Singapore creative team from what is the regions Headquarters, he joins the management team including Nick Morrell, Managing Director BBDO Singapore and Andy Wilson, Head of Strategy BBDO Asia who together, will leverage the potential of the network both locally and regionally. As Singapore comes out of lockdown and starts living a new normal BBDO Singapore is looking to future success by forwarding the way they think and forwarding the work, BBDO is ready and planning, for what is to come in Singapore and across the region.

I am absolutely thrilled Guan Hin is joining us, said Nick Morrell, Managing Director BBDO Singapore. Ive admired both his work and his commitment to raising the quality of Singapores creative output for some time now and cant wait to start working together, he added.

Prior to founding TGH Collective, Guan worked in several creative hot shops, as Regional CCO at JWT and at a number of 4A agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett. An adman at heart, he is no stranger to the advertising world and looks forward to returning. In his work, Guan builds on insightful creativity, always considering digital, innovative engagement and virtual storytelling. In recognition for this immense contribution to the industry, Guan has received over 300 creative awards (international, regional and local), and was the first Asian in SEA to receive the honour to be the Cannes Lions, Jury President.

Although always developing our skillsets and capabilities across numerous areas of our business, the one constant is our belief in creativity and the competitive advantage it provides. Jean-Paul Burge, CEO BBDO Asia commented, Guan Hin, is a tremendous creative with an impressive and long-standing reputation that is more than well deserved. Im delighted to have someone of his calibre leading the Singapore office and am certain he will make a positive and rapid creative impact on our work and its effectiveness both in Singapore and beyond.

Guan Hin also regularly shares his experiences and knowledge at events, including, TEDx, Spikes Asia, AdStar, Adfest, Brand Magic Summit, One Show and Cannes Lions. Additionally, he is passionate about mentoring and nurturing young creatives, which he will continue to do at BBDO. Guan not only founded the first student awards in Singapore, but he has also trained students at the One Show China.

Read More
Latinos in our region and throughout the United States are celebrating the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that rejected President Donald Trumps efforts to end protections under the eight-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program.

The program allows children of undocumented immigrants brought to this country to remain, pursue education and work legally.

Leaders of CASA, an organization advocating for immigrants and DACA recipients, joins PennLives Facebook Live at noon Monday to discuss repercussions of the Supreme Courts ruling and to talk about Latino participation in the Black Lives Matter protests.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Trump Administrations challenge to the protections for 650,000 young immigrants. For now, they dont have to worry about being expelled, but the president has vowed to fight on and seems determined to do away with DACA.

More than 5,000 people in Pennsylvania could be affected by the outcome of the battle over DACA. Many people protected by DACA are working in key professions, including healthcare. Had they been deported, officials say, the state would have felt its negative impact, especially as it needs all hands on deck to fight the coronavirus.

Bring your questions and comments to todays Facebook Live discussion.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. You deserve the best. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.

And please subscribe to Battleground PA to stay abreast of the issues in the 2020 elections!
Teenager Harry Dunn is unable to walk and gets around by shuffling on his bottom or using a walking frame. The 16-year-old communicates by grunting and gets his parents attention by pulling on their clothes or nudging them with his head.

Harry was born with Angelman syndrome  a complex genetic disorder that primarily affects the nervous system  and has epilepsy.

Brad and Fiona Dunn with their boys Lachie, Campbell, Joel and Harry. Credit:Lauren Pilat

Like other children with Angelman, who are lovingly referred to as happy puppets, Harry is a happy teenager who has a big smile and cheeky laugh.

His younger brother Campbell, 8, communicates by flicking his fingers and making noises. He loves playing on an iPhone or iPad and is fascinated by maps.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Chinas blame narrative continues, says India initiated Galwan clash

India initiated the violent clash in eastern Ladakh last week, China said on Monday continuing to blame New Delhi for the face-off in Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh, which left 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops dead in a vicious hand-to-hand brawl on the night of June 15. Read more

On Rath Yatra, Supreme Court says will let temple committee, Odisha govt decide

Modifying its earlier order, the Supreme Court on Monday said it is up to the temple authorities and Odisha government to decide on the annual Rath Yatra in the state. The Yatra is scheduled to begin on June 23, this leaves the state government with half a day to come up with a plan. Read more

Vu Cinema 32-inch, 32-inch smart TVs launched in India: Check price, specs

Vu on Monday launched two new smart TVs in India under its Vu Cinema Smart TV series. The latest Vu Cinema TV comes in 32-inch and 43-inch sizes. Read more

Virat Kohli or Steve Smith? David Warner gives an interesting answer

It is hard to dodge the Virat Kohli vs Steve Smith debate. Despite there being the likes of Kane Williamson, Joe Root, and Babar Azam, the battle for the best has somewhat come down between Virat Kohli and Steve Smith. Read more

Amazon Primes new meme confirms Gulabo Sitabos Begum is a full-on savage

Fatima Begum, a fictional character from the new dramedy film Gulabo Sitabo, just took a DNA test. Turns out shes 100% bad and boujee. Though Begum genuinely didnt, this recent meme posted from Amazon Prime Indias official Instagram account may have you think so. Read more

Amrish Puris 88th birth anniversary: The iconic villains best onscreen avatars

The only thing cinema enthusiasts love more than a good looking, virtuous hero, is a great villain bubbling with vicious schemes. Someone who can make an impact on them despite playing the part of the antagonist. Read more

Shiva Linga found amid coral rocks in Rameswaram, devotees flock to site

A Shiva Linga was found amid coral rocks in Tamil Nadus Rameswaram. It was found at the eastern shore of Ramanathaswamy Temple. Read more
Washington DC: An Afghan Sikh was abducted from the Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan four days ago, the community living in the United States has confirmed.

The man, Nidhan Singh, hails from Tsamkani district in the Paktia province and was employed as a gursewak (helper) at the local gurdwara.

Post his abduction, the Afghan Sikh community in the United States has urged the Government of India to help in the resettlement of Sikhs living in Afghanistan .

They have appealed to India to make special arrangements under the Vande Bharat Mission to provide a safe haven for more than 600 Sikhs.

I have spoken to Sikh member of Parliament Narinder Singh and he has confirmed that officials in the Afghan government have promised to help and find Nidhan, Paramjit Singh Bedi, the chairman of the Afghan Sikh community in New Jersey said.

Narinder Singh has also reached out to Taliban leaders and has been assured that all efforts will be made to ensure his release, Bedi said.

Bedi and other community members will send written appeals to former diplomat and Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri, the external affairs minister S Jaishankar and the Indian envoy to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Worried for the lives of the Sikh minorities living in Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni, the Sikh community, has been constantly seeking support from India.

Encouraged by steps taken by the Indian government, leaders of the Afghan Sikh community leaders have made several appeals to India to accommodate the Sikhs and Hindus from Afghanistan and grant them legal entry with long-term residency multiple-entry visa.

The community leaders living in the United States said it is imperative to alleviate the dire situation of religious minorities in Afghanistan who look to India as the only safe haven in the region.

FEWER THAN 100 FAMILIES LEFT

In May, expressing concern over the safety and security of religious minorities in Afghanistan, 26 US Congressmen urged secretary of state Mike Pompeo to take steps to facilitate the safe and expeditious relocation of members of the Sikh and Hindu communities trapped in the war-torn country.

In a letter on May 4, Congressman John Garamendi, co-chair of the Sikh Caucus, and 25 others stated that the Sikh community continues to be under grave threat from Islamic State terrorist attacks directed at Sikhs.

Once a thriving community of nearly 2.5 lakh people, the Sikh and Hindu communities in Afghanistan has endured years of discrimination and violence from extremists, and the community is now estimated to comprise fewer than 100 families across the country, the letter said.
Software developed by an Israeli technology company was used by Moroccan authorities to spy on a journalist, Amnesty International said Monday.

The London-based rights group alleged that Omar Radis phone was subjected to a series of attacks using a sophisticated new technique that installed NSO Groups Pegasus software on his device without him knowing.

According to Amnesty International, which conducted a forensic analysis on Radis phone, the software gives the attacker full access to the phones camera, microphone and data, including emails and messages.

For network injections, the attacker requires either physical proximity to the targets or access over mobile networks in the country that only a government could authorize, a further indication that the Moroccan authorities were responsible for the attack against Omar Radi, the group said in a statement.

In March, a court in Morocco handed the independent journalist a four-month suspended jail sentence and fine over his Twitter post in April 2019 that insulted a judge who dealt heavy penalties to anti-government protesters. The award-winning journalist is among a number of critical voices who rights groups say have been targeted in the kingdoms gradual crackdown on the news media.

Amnesty International said the attacks on Radis phone coincided with the period when Moroccon authorities were repeatedly harassing him. One alleged attack occurred days after NSO Group vowed it would prevent governments from using its products to carry out human rights abuses.

While it was undertaking a PR offensive to whitewash its image, its tools were enabling the unlawful surveillance of Omar Radi, Danna Ingleton, deputy director of Amnesty Tech, said in a statement. Even after being presented with chilling evidence of its spyware being used to track activists in Morocco, it appears that NSO chose to keep the Moroccan government on as a customer," Ingleton added.

NSO Group told Agence France-Presse that it was deeply troubled by the allegations and would "initiate an investigation if warranted.
CONTACT: Pamela D. Wilson 303-810-1816

Email: Inquiry_For_Pamela@pameladwilson.com

Golden, Colorado  June 22, 2020

The Caring Generation Radio What Do Caregivers Need Most?

Golden CO- Caregiving expert Pamela D. Wilson hosts The Caring Generation family talk radio program for caregivers and aging adults this coming Wednesday, June 24, on the Bold Brave Media Network. The program airs live at 9 p.m. EST. The Caring Generation aired initially from 2009 to 2011 on 630 KHOW-AM in Denver, Colorado.

On this talk radio program for caregivers and aging adults, Wilson shares ideas that answer the question of what do caregivers need most? Caregivers who participate in online support groups share concerns about a wide range of caregiving issues, from managing emotions to how to perform personal care tasks.

While caregiving situations share many similarities, each case has its complexities. Son and daughter caregivers approach caregiving roles differently than mom or dad, who are spousal caregivers. Caregivers from different generationsbaby boomers to millennialsapproach caregiving differently.

Even with these differences, similarities exist. Caregivers want to be understood and to find positive ways to manage unexpected change. Losing patience with elderly parents is a concern. Join Pamela Wilson and invite the entire family to learn the answers to what do caregivers need most?

Preventing Life-Threatening Wounds in the Elderly

Wilson's guest for this program is John Prince from National Wound Care, who shares tips for caregivers about preventing skin issues and wounds when caring for elderly parents. John is a self-proclaimed farm boy who grew up in Southern Illinois. From a young age with a sincere desire to help those in need, he started his healthcare career in 1984, working for Medicare. In 1991 John started his first company, RespiraCare, and in 1993, John started National Wound Care as his passion for healing patients with chronic wounds was born.

Through the years, John and National Wound Care have been blessed to provide healing to hundreds of thousands of chronic wound patients. Early on, John realized that patients and their families deal with pain, confusion, and anger; they want to understand what is happening with care issues. John's passion is to listen to each patient and their family members that stem from his belief that listening and patient education is the foundation of healing.

The Caregiving Education Gap

Thirty percent of the workforce is caring for elderly parents and supporting a healthy parent caring for a sick spouse. Caregiving education, training, and support is the path forward to getting the proper care for loved ones. Wilson offers a free webinar for human resource professionals to educate about the importance of supporting working caregivers.

Learning to be proactive about health and well-being is a choice. Important aspects of health, well-being, and caregiving are not taught in schools. This caregiving education gap results in stress and frustration for adults who age, are diagnosed with chronic disease, and require help and support from adult children or other family members.

Join Pamela on The Caring Generation to learn the answers to these and other questions about caring for elderly loved ones. The Caring Generation radio program airs live at 6 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Mountain, 8 p.m. Central, and 9 p.m. Eastern every Wednesday night. Replays of the weekly programs are available in podcast format with transcripts on Pamela's website and all major podcast sites. More information about onsite and online video conferencing, keynote speaking events, and online education and support are available on Wilson's website.

#
[June 22, 2020] World Bank critical of Tajikistan's telecom sector

Sydney, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on Tajikistan outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Tajikistan-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses Of all the former Soviet republics, Tajikistans telecommunications infrastructure was arguably the least developed. With a telecom network that was near total collapse, the government had the daunting task of bringing it up to modern standards. Despite the launch of 4G/LTE services, the overall the telecom sector has continued to struggle. Tajikistan still has one of the lowest fixed-line penetrations in the Asian region and one of the lowest broadband levels of broadband penetration. Tajikistans mobile sector has been on a strong growth path for over a decade. It continues to be the standout feature of the countrys telecom industry. However, as the market has moved closer to a saturation phase there has been an inevitable reduction in the growth rate and. only moderate growth is predicted over the next five years. There are five major operators in the market: Tcell, Babilon Mobile, MegaFon, ZET Mobile (registered as Tacom) and TK Mobile. Tcell has the largest overall market share, followed by Babilon Mobile, Megafon, ZET Mobile and TK Mobile. Fixed broadband penetration in Tajikistan remainsextremely low, mainly due to a limited number of fixed lines as well as the dominance of the mobile platform. Market penetration has only grown marginally over the last five years from a very small base. Over the next five years growth is expected to continue but overall market penetration will remain extremely low.



Tajikistan has seen a strong increase in mobile broadband penetration over the past four years, though the market is still at an early stage of development and penetration remains relatively low compared to other Asian nations. Steady growth is predicted over the next five years, supported by the rising number of mobile subscribers, and increasingly faster speeds offered by the mobile operators as they roll out their 4G networks. Tariffs should improve due to strong competition, though the regulator has imposed SMP conditions on all operators, which makes it difficult for them to adjust tariffs to suit market conditions. BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth. Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report. The report also covers the responses of the telecom operators as well as government agencies and regulators as they react to the crisis to ensure that citizens can continue to make optimum use of telecom services. This can be reflected in subsidy schemes and the promotion of tele-health and tele-education, among other solutions. Key developments: Government orders mandatory registration of all mobile devices;

MegaFon Tajikistan launches 5G network in Dushanbe;

ZET Mobile sets up LTE-based smart city concept in Dushanbe;

Telecom sector continues to struggle, with one of the lowest internet data rates globally;

Report update includes an assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector. Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Tajikistan-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses Nicolas Bombourg [email protected] Oceania Office +61 280 767 665 Europe Office +44 207 097 1241

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Panaji, June 22 : Goa on Monday reported its first coronavirus death when an 85-year-old man died at the Covid-19 hospital in South Goa district.

Earlier on Monday, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane told reporters that the victim was an 85-year-old woman, but later tweeted to clarify that the deceased was a male patient.

"Deeply saddened to inform that a 85-year-old man, from Morlem in Sattari, who had tested positive, has succumbed to COVID19. My heartfelt condolence to the family," Rane tweeted.

Morlem is a remote village located at the foothills of the Western Ghats.
Indigenous jet trainer one of most advanced: Taiwanese analyst

ROC Central News Agency

06/21/2020 07:32 PM

Taipei, June 21 (CNA) Taiwan's first indigenous advanced jet trainer (AJT), the Brave Eagle, is considered one of the most advanced fifth-generation trainer aircraft in the world, a Taiwanese defense analyst said Sunday, ahead of the AJT's inaugural flight the next day.

"This is due to its advanced digital hardware and flight simulation software," Su Tzu-yun (), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told CNA.

The inaugural flight of the Brave Eagle is scheduled for June 22 at Ching Chuan Kang air base in Taichung, with President Tsai Ing-wen () expected to attend, according to military sources.

The Brave Eagle is equipped with a fully digitized cockpit and its software is capable of simulating both the flight of an AJT and a lead-in fighter trainer capable of firing missiles, he added.

The new designs and technologies used in the Brave Eagle enable it to calibrate its training courses more precisely, making it more capable than China's JL-10, JL-9 and JL-9G, even though they are are considered in the same class by some military analysts, Su added.

The manufacture of the Brave Eagle, dubbed project XAT-5, was launched by the government-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. (AIDC) in 2017 with a budget of NT$66.8 billion (US$2.23 billion).

According to the AIDC, all the software programs needed by the Brave Eagle are fully developed by local teams, allowing for easier upgrades in the future. In terms of structure, the plane is made using composite materials for a lighter and stronger body, and has larger landing gear for a more stable ground run.

Its first official test flight was conducted on June 10, 2020 at the Ching Chuan Kang base, eight months after the prototype was unveiled.

The AIDC plans to begin mass production of the Brave Eagle in March 2022, with the aim of delivering 66 units by 2026 to replace the country's aging AT-3 and F-5 trainer aircraft, which have served the military for over three decades.

Meanwhile, according to retired Air Force Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Chang Yen-ting (), the Brave Eagle is capable of providing air support against hostile targets at sea and on land due to its ability to carry missiles and bombs.

Aside from that, the birth of the Brave Eagle is expected to simplify the pilot training process and save on training costs, Chang said.

Benefiting from its fully digitized cockpit, pilots who complete their training in the Brave Eagle can seamlessly switch to training for the F-16Vs, 66 of which Taiwan has purchased from the United States and are expected to be delivered in batches from 2023, Chang said.

(By Matt Yu and Emerson Lim)

Enditem/J



NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Plan for general strike in Hong Kong falls through

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 7:02 AM

A general strike in opposition to a new national security law in Hong Kong has failed to garner support in an unofficial referendum in the Chinese city.

Organizers said on Saturday that the walkout was backed by 8,943 students and trade unionists in a city-wide poll, by far falling short of the 60,000 signatures required for a general strike to go ahead.

The unions represented almost two dozen industries, including aviation, transport, construction, technology, and tourism.

China approved the new security law for the semi-autonomous Hong Kong late last month.

The new law would criminalize sedition, secession, and subversion against the mainland. It would also pave the way for Chinese national security institutions to operate in the city for the first time since 1997, when Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule.

Western countries have harshly criticized the law, claiming that it would undermine the city's autonomy and the "one country, two systems" principle, which was established in 1997.

China has rejected the criticism as blatant interference in its domestic affairs.

Beijing insists that the new law does not pose a threat to Hong Kong's autonomy and the interests of foreign investors, noting that it is merely meant to prevent violence, which was rampant during anti-government protests there last year.

China: Harboring Hong Kong rioters will harm Taiwan

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has denounced plans by Taiwan to help Hong Kongers planning on fleeing to the island, which is self-ruled but similarly falls under Chinese sovereignty.

In a statement late on Friday, China's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office said that offering protection to rioters from Hong Kong would be interference in the city's affairs and would only harm Taiwanese people.

"Providing shelter for and taking onto the island the rioters and elements who bring chaos to Hong Kong will only continue bring harm to Taiwan's people," it said.

Plots by forces who advocate independence for Hong Kong and Taiwan and plan to split the nation will never succeed, the office added.

Hong Kong had been rocked by turbulent protests since June last year, when the government of the semi-autonomous territory proposed a bill that would have reformed the city's extradition law. The bill was later withdrawn, but protests continued and took on violent forms.

They largely subsided when the coronavirus pandemic began, but the introduction of the new law has rekindled the protests.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 23)  President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu on Monday to lead the COVID-19 fight in Cebu City, as the city grapples with a spike of virus infections during the past week.

In his weekly address to the nation, Duterte emphasized he needed a particular person to contain the spread of the virus in Cebu City.

"If you solve the problem locally amongst the officials there, theres bound to be a derailment in the programs of government because they would start to blame each other and nobody would try to introduce novel ideas or even to implement one that is already," said Duterte in his speech.

Cebu City is now the leading city in the country with the most number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The Cebu City Health Department reported Tuesday afternoon 30 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 4,479. Of this number, 2,213 are considered active cases.

Some 31 more people have recovered, while seven more succumbed to the disease in Cebu City, it added.

The current situation convinced Duterte to re-order the enhanced community quarantine setting in Cebu City last week.

Cimatu was re-appointed in the same position by Duterte in October 2016, before he was chosen to lead the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in May 2017.

All he have to do is just to advise Manila that these things are being done, these things are not yet done, and these things must be done, said the President.

Duterte also instructed Cimatu to establish an emergency operations center in Cebu City to support local officials in looking to the health situation in the area.

Cimatu, who is present in the weekly Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) meeting, accepted the responsibility given to him by the President.

I fully accept your challenge you gave. Just like the orders you gave to me before, to Boracay, we changed the cesspool image of Boracay to what it is now, said Cimatu, referring to his role in leading the cleanup of the world-famous Boracay Island in 2018.

National Task Force on COVID-19 Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. expressed his support in the appointment of Cimatu and vowed to help him in averting the spread of COVID-19 in Cebu City.

Hes the one who orders us to arrest the Abu Sayyaf. He is a great leader, said Galvez, also a former military general like Cimatu, in the meeting with Duterte.

The President said he will visit Cebu City to express his displeasure with the "hardheaded" residents.

"Kayong mga taga-Cebu ganun rin eh. Bakit marami? Because you were too confident and too complacent about it. Parang binalewala ninyo, ayan dumating," he said.

In an interview with CNN Philippines last week, Cebu City Mayor Edgar Labella insisted the spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases in the city was due to the intensified mass testing efforts in their area.

He added that around 25,000 Cebu City residents were tested of COVID-19 and emphasized 80 to 90 percent of the positive patients are asymptomatic.

It is our moral and legal duty to really test, trace, isolate, and treat. Thats why we have this number, said Labella.

But in a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, Labella admitted they did see a surge of COVID-19 cases after the city declared general community quarantine.

"We still continue to do mass testing, especially now that we were given 1,000 test kits by the Department of Health," Labella said.

"Based on the assessment, there was a backlog that was made part of the data that was given," he added.

Labella also announced Tuesday the approval of a supplemental budget amounting to 500 million to provide aid to residents of Cebu City, which is again under enhanced community quarantine.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has attended the inauguration of the newly built above-ground pedestrian crossing in Neapol Street, Khatai district, Baku.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Azerbaijan Highway State Agency Saleh Mammadov informed the head of state of the work done.

Story will be updated.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom provided an update on the coronavirus pandemic Monday, delivering a clear message that new cases are increasing and people need to wear their masks.

As of Sunday, the state has reported 46,735 cases since mid-March. Newsom noted that in the past two weeks alone, the state has seen 35.6% of all cases thus far.

"Those that suggest we're out of the woods, those that suggest this somehow is going to disappear, these numbers tell a very, very different and sobering story," Newsom said."We're not out of the first wave."

The number of people tested in the state has gone up significantly with a record number of 92,000 tests implemented Sunday and more than 3 million tests conducted since mid-March. And while the increase in tests translates to more cases, the state's positivity rate  the number of people who have tested positive divided by the total number of tests administered  has gone up. The rate went from from 4.5% last Monday to 4.8% today. This is still below the 8% threshold that Newsom said last week indicated when the situation is considered more severe and worrisome.

Hospitalizations have also gone up 16% in the past two weeks and ICU patients are up 11%. "Despite an increase in the number of hospitalizations and ICU patients, our hospital capacity remains stable and is much better than where we were months ago," Newsom said.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly notes in some counties seeing more significant increases in cases, the uptick isn't only the result of increased testing. The state is working with 11 counties with concerning increases, including Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Stanislaus counties. Last week the number of counties under surveillance was 13.

Newsom reiterated the need for residents to follow the statewide mask order to stop the spike in cases.

He explained breathing sends droplets 4.5 feet, coughing 6 feet and sneezes as much as 26 feet.

Newsom issued a mask order last week requiring face coverings in common and public indoor spaces and outdoors when physical distancing is not possible. (Read more about the order on SFGATE.)

Newsom ended his Monday press briefing by encouraging residents to listen to their local health directors and follow their county health orders.

"We are a very resourced state," the governor said. "We are in a much better position than we have ever been to tackle this pandemic, mark my words, we are in a much better position across the spectrum than we have been in many, many months. But the numbers are increasing as we reopen the economy. And as we reopen all I ask is that we are more vigilant than we have been, even perhaps than we were a few weeks ago. We need to get out of this first wave and prepare for a second wave and get through this together, and get those immunizations out and well get back to a more resilient mindset and a more robust and abundant California."

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:

Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here.

Amy Graff is SFGATE's news editor. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.
New York

President Donald Trump's return to the campaign trail was designed to show strength and enthusiasm heading into the critical final months before an election that will decide whether he remains in the White House.

Instead, his weekend rally in Oklahoma highlighted growing vulnerabilities and crystallized a divisive re-election message that largely ignores broad swaths of voters  independents, suburban women and people of color  who could play a crucial role in choosing Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The lower-than-expected turnout at the comeback rally, in particular, left Trump fuming.

"There's really only one strategy left for him, and that is to propel that rage and anger and try to split the society and see if he can have a tribal leadership win here," former Trump adviser-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

The president did not offer even a token reference to national unity in remarks that spanned more than an hour and 40 minutes at his self-described campaign relaunch as the nation grappled with surging coronavirus infections, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression and sweeping civil unrest.

Nor did Trump mention George Floyd, the African-American man whose death while in the custody of Minnesota police late last month sparked a national uprising over police brutality. But he did add new fuel to the nation's culture wars, defending Confederate statues while making racist references to the coronavirus, which originated in China and which he called "kung flu." He also said Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, "would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came, Somalia."

Trump won the presidency in 2016 with a similar red-meat message aimed largely at energizing conservatives and white working-class men. But less than four months before early voting begins in some states, there are signs that independents and educated voters  particularly suburban women  have turned against him. Republican strategists increasingly believe that only a dramatic turnaround in the economy can revive his re-election aspirations.

"It's bad," said Republican operative Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic. "There's literally nothing to run on. The only thing he can say is that Biden is worse."

But the day after Trump's Tulsa rally, the president's message was almost an afterthought as aides tried to explain away a smaller-than-expected crowd that left the president outraged.

The campaign had been betting big on Tulsa.

Trump's political team spent days proclaiming that more than 1 million people had requested tickets. They also ignored health warnings from the White House coronavirus task force and Oklahoma officials, eager to host an event that would help him move past the civil rights protests and the coronavirus itself.

His first rally in 110 days was meant to be a defiant display of political force to help energize Trump's spirits, try out some attacks on Biden and serve as a powerful symbol of American's reopening.

Instead, the city fire marshal's office reported a crowd of just fewer than 6,200 in the 19,000-seat BOK Center, and at least six staff members who helped set up the event tested positive for the coronavirus. The vast majority of the attendees, including Trump, did not wear face masks as recommended by the Trump administration's health experts.

After the rally, the president berated aides over the turnout. He fumed that he had been led to believe he would see huge crowds in deep-red Oklahoma, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

There was no sign of an imminent staff shakeup, but members of Trump's inner circle angrily questioned how campaign manager Brad Parscale and other senior aides could so wildly overpromise and underdeliver, according to the officials.

Publicly, Trump's team scrambled to blame the crowd size on media coverage and protesters outside the venue, but the small crowds of pre-rally demonstrators were largely peaceful. Tulsa police reported just one arrest Saturday afternoon.

It's unclear when Trump will hold his next rally.

Before Oklahoma, the campaign had planned to finalize and announce its next rally this week. Trump is already scheduled to make appearances Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Wisconsin. Both are major general election battlegrounds.

At least one swing state governor, meanwhile, says Trump would not be welcome to host a rally in her state amid the pandemic.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said she "would think very seriously about" trying to block Trump from hosting a rally there if he wanted to.

"We know that congregating without masks, especially at an indoor facility, is the worst thing to do in the midst of a global pandemic," Whitmer said in an interview before the Oklahoma event, conceding that she wasn't aware of the specific legal tools she had available to block a prospective Trump rally. "I just know we have limitations on the number of people that can gather and that we're taking this seriously."

Biden's campaign, meanwhile, seized on a fresh opportunity to poke at the incumbent president, suggesting that Trump "was already in a tailspin" because of his mismanagement of the pandemic and civil rights protests.

"Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him," Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said.
Three fighters killed by Indian forces in Kashmir days after deadly clashes

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 2:48 PM

At least three pro-independence fighters have been killed in an encounter with government forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir, just two days after a deadly shootout in the same area of the restive disputed Himalayan valley.

Indian police said Sunday that the fighters were killed in a firefight in the heart of the restive Kashmir's main city of Srinagar.

A home was also destroyed during the clash in the Zoonimar area of the densely populated old city of Srinagar.

The latest encounter comes two days after eight fighters died in another gun battle in the old city.

Such armed encounters are frequent in the Himalayan region, which is disputed by India and Pakistan.

Just over a month ago, the son of a top pro-independence leader and his associate were killed in the city. The May incident  a day-long firefight that saw 15 homes blown up by the Indian soldiers was the first armed encounter between fighters and government forces in Srinagar in two years.

At least 100 pro-independence fighters and about two dozen soldiers have died this year during outbreaks of violence in the part of Kashmir controlled by New Delhi, and along the de facto border dividing the disputed Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.

Tensions remain high in Kashmir against the backdrop of New Delhi's revocation of the region's semi-autonomous status last year.

In August 2019, the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the semi-autonomous status of its Jammu and Kashmir state, and imposed a months-long curfew that cut off communications and restricted movement.

Despite India's efforts to restore normalcy in Kashmir, the region remains tense as people are reluctant to accept India's move to put the region under its direct control.

Senior officials in New Delhi accuse neighboring Pakistan for orchestrating attacks against Indian troops in the disputed region, a charge Pakistan denies.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






(Photo : Arthur Edelman on Unsplash) Nextdoor Accused Wih Racism, Forcing the App to Ditched its 'Forward to Police' Feature (Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @JohnTory) Nextdoor Accused Wih Racism, Forcing the App to Ditched its 'Forward to Police' Feature

Facing rampant accusations of racial profiling, Nextdoor had no choice but to ditch its "Forward to Police" feature. According to Gizmodo's latest report, the popular's app's "Forward to Police" feature, a widely planned function that faced years of criticism for allegedly facilitating racial profiling, was removed this week.

Also Read: Network Analytics Functions You Should Be Taking Advantage of Today

In the app, Nextdoor users can post information about suspicious activities and suspected crime in their community, acting as a sort of unofficial neighborhood watch by using the popular app's "Crime and Safety" category.

Users are allowed by the "Forward to Police" feature to re-send these posts to local police departments who are registered on the platform.

According to The Root's 2019 report, widespread complaints about people of color being reported as suspicious are at a disproportionately higher rate on the Nextdoor app. Concerns about racial profiling have hounded the popular app since the feature was released in 2016 since these alerts are all unverified and self-reported.

Nextdoor accused of racism

Nextdoor was finally pushed to ditch the feature completely by the surge of people protesting Black Lives Matter in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck to restrain him.

Since most of the population has been stuck at home under shelter-in-place orders, the platform's growth increased in recent months, which also fueled the decision of the social media app.

The founder of Nextdoor, Prakash Janakiraman, said that during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the app's user engagement increased by 80%. The app's data userbase also beat the 10-million mark.

"As part of our anti-racism work and our efforts to make Nextdoor a place where all neighbors feel welcome, we have been examining all aspects of our product," said the company in a blog post.

"After speaking with members and public agency partners, it is clear that the Forward to Police feature does not meet the needs of our members and only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies chose to use the tool," added Nextdoor.

However, the report stated that the rising issue will not be the reason for the app's relationship with law enforcement to end. Nextdoor's feature that lets users directly message police authorities and several features that allow users to share information with participating police departments will remain in the app. Its police efforts, including partnering directly with departments to neighborhoods' geo-targeted messages and enlisting officers to promote the app, has recently expanded.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
South Sudan was never going to be ready for COVID-19. Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system.

Now some workers at the country's only lab testing for the virus have been infected, along with more than 50 healthworkers.

Some people have died waiting for rapid-response teams to arrive.

It began with a dry cough, weakness and back pain.

For Reagan Taban Augustino, part of South Sudan's small corps of healthworkers trained in treating COVID-19 patients, there was little doubt what he had.

Days later, hardly able to breathe, the 33-year-old doctor discovered just how poorly equipped his country is for the coronavirus pandemic.

None of the public facilities he tried in the capital, Juba, had oxygen supplies available until he reached South Sudan's only permanent infectious disease unit, which has fewer than 100 beds for a country of 12 million people.

It took more than an hour to admit him.

"I was almost dying at the gate," he told The Associated Press from the unit last week.

The pandemic is now accelerating in Africa, the World Health Organization has said.

While the continent had more time than Europe and the United States to prepare before its first case was confirmed on February 14, experts feared many of its health systems would eventually become overwhelmed.

South Sudan, a nation with more military generals than doctors, never had a fighting chance.

Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system, and today non-governmental organisations provide the majority of care.

Nearly half of the population was hungry before the pandemic.

Deadly insecurity continues, and a locust outbreak arrived just weeks before the virus.

When world leaders talk about the pandemic not being over until it's over everywhere, they are talking about places like South Sudan.

The United Nations has said the country's outbreak is growing rapidly, with nearly 1,900 cases, including more than 50 health workers infected, more than 30 deaths and no way to know the true number of infections.

At South Sudan's only laboratory that tests for the virus, supervisor Simon Deng Nyichar said the team of 16 works up to 16-hour days slogging through a backlog of more than 5,000 tests.

Around 9,000 samples have been tested since early April, when the country became one of the last in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case.

With materials in short supply, testing is largely limited to people with symptoms of COVID-19.

It can take weeks to receive results.

Three lab workers have been infected and recovered, Nyichar told the AP.

"Even half of us get infection, we will continue doing our work, because we are saving the nation."

With the long hours, they work in pairs to stay sharp.

While they're aware of the dangers, South Sudan's population at large still takes convincing.

The government's loosening of lockdown measures last month was "perceived as an indication that the disease is not in South Sudan," the Health Ministry said.

Bars, restaurants and shops are open after people said they feared hunger more than the disease.

Some people have died waiting for rapid-response teams to arrive, the ministry said.

And this month it stopped issuing "COVID-19 negativity certificates," citing the peddling of fake ones  especially around Juba International Airport.

Meanwhile the virus has spread into more rural areas, including one of the United Nations-run camps upcountry where more than 150,000 civilians still shelter after South Sudan's civil war ended in 2018.

There's been an increase in deaths related to respiratory tract infections at that camp in Bentiu, WHO official Wamala Joseph told reporters last week, though it's not clear whether they were from the virus.

Testing is difficult as all samples must be flown to the capital.

Three of the six camps have no virus screening at the gate, according to a U.N. migration agency document dated this month.

One camp has no facility to isolate the sick, and another will only have one when a generator is installed.

Meanwhile "our hospitals are full," Wolde-Gabriel Saugeron, who leads the International Committee of the Red Cross' team in Bor, wrote last week.

"COVID-19 means that we need to create more space between our hospital beds, which has reduced the number of people we can accommodate in our wards by 30%."

The pandemic is also worsening what was already a major problem in South Sudan: hunger.

Most border crossings are closed, and food prices in the markets have shot up.

Now the rain season has started, making transport and storage more difficult.

More than 1.5 million people in South Sudan are newly vulnerable, including the urban poor who had not been receiving aid before, the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

BJP chief Nadda lash out at Manmohan Singh for his remarks on Ladakh face-off

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Jagat Prakash Nadda lashed out at former prime minister Manmohan Singh for his statement on the Ladakh face-off. Read more

Allow Rath Yatra without public participation: Supreme Court hears plea

The Supreme Court is hearing a bunch of petitions seeking modification in its order in which it had stayed Lord Jagannaths famous Rath Yatra in Odisha. Read more

Covid-19: First death in Delhi jail, Kanwar Yatra 2020 cancelled

Hindustan Times National Political Editor, Sunetra Choudhury brings you the top stories you need to know. Sunetra talks about the number of covid-19 cases in India, 50K death in last 24 hours in Brazil, Kanwar Yatra 2020 cancelled by UP, Haryana, UK Governments, first death in Delhi jail and more. Watch to know more

Mount Everest, Northern Lights, Avatar Mountains: Best trips to take from your home with these virtual tours

Are you bored in the house and in the house bored during this never-ending lockdown? Lets face it, we all miss the freedom of being able to go outside whenever it suits us. But dont let the lockdown rain on your parade of adventure. Read more

Always be prepaved! tweets Mumbai Police. Confused about what they mean? Check out this tweet

Mumbai Police should get an A+ for creativity and if you have any doubts, just look at their tweets. The posts are quirky and interesting, and the best part is that they always have a message. Their latest post is no different. Read more

YouTuber makes minor tweaks in 2020 MacBook Airs thermal design, gets 14% better performance

If theres anything Apples MacBook Air laptop is known for in the industry, its for the thin profile and staying under room temperature almost all the time. However, a popular YouTuber Linus Tech Tips may have found a flaw in the MacBook Air 2020, fixing which will increase the performance by 14%. Read more

Sachin wanted to concentrate on batting: How Sourav Ganguly was appointed India captain, former selector explains

Former BCCI chairman of selectors Chandu Borde has revealed how Sachin Tendulkars reluctance in continuing as captain of the Indian cricket team paved the way for Sourav Gangulys appointment as their new leader. Read more
Avengers star Mark Ruffalo has predicted climate change will lead to mass civil disobedience similar to the protests organised by the Black Live Matters movement.

Speaking at an online event organised by Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, the Hulk actor drew comparisons between recent protests in the US following the murder of George Floyd and the climate action movement.

All the energy that youre seeing coming out of the racism movement in the United States, its the same energy that the climate change movement has so its all hand in hand, he said.

I promise you that in the next coming years there will be action, whether its massive civil disobedience or its political action, there will be action and it will only continue to grow as peoples lives become more and more endangered and imperilled, he added.

Read More

Mr Ruffalo was speaking after endorsing the programme for government the Green Party negotiated with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

The Hollywood environmental campaigner said the deal agreed between the three parties was a monumental achievement as it will lead to a ban on the importation of fracked gas into Ireland.

I have been advocating for ten years with Americans who have been poisoned by fracking, many who live in the areas that would supply Ireland with fracked gas, he said.

Im thankful that U.S. anti-fracking activists contacted Green Party leaders to support the Programme for Government and that I can lend my support in this critical moment. The result of this decision will impact the health and human rights of many Americans for decades to come, he added.

Speaking during the online seminar, he said the Greens historic election result was a comma on a movement that is only gaining steam and only gaining more and more power every single day, he added.

Mr Ruffalo said we are already in grave danger and we cannot discount the impact climate change will have on our lives in the coming years.

He said climate actions taken in the US under President Donald Trump are more promising than those taken by his predecessor Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, the deputy leader of the Green Party has called out "the elephant in the room" Leo Varadkar, whose comments on Shannon LNG, she said, have cast doubts over deals made in the programme for government.

Catherine Martin said that comments made last weekend by an Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, however, undermined the deal, which was a critical element of government formation negotiations for her party.

"I have to call out the elephant in the room tonight, which is of course the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar," she said.

"His comments over the weekend have been really unhelpful to this entire process."

Speaking to Fine Gael members in a Facebook Live event on Sunday, Mr Varadkar said that the government will not be helping the Shannon LNG project, but suggested it may still become reality as the private company may still pursue it.

The removal of support for the terminal which would have processed fracked gas he described as "a bitter pill to swallow".

Ms Martin, who was the lead negotiator for the Green Party in government formation and the drafting of the programme for government, admitted that Mr Varadkar's comments made her feel "uneasy" about the commitments made by Fine Gael as part of those negotiations.

"The other two parties we negotiated this deal with were not comfortable with the wording but we sought and got, eventually into the programme for government," she said.

"We fought hard, and we got it there and the three parties to agree this, so unfortunately comments and media appearances by various elected members of these parties over recent days cast doubt over the strength of the agreed wording on the LNG, so it just goes to show there's a resistance there all along the way, even though we have in the program for government.

"To be honest, their comments made me feel uneasy too."
Scout Willis was glimpsed this Father's Day stepping out in her mask to pick up some groceries in Los Angeles.

The 28-year-old daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore slipped into a purple polka-dot dress redolent of the 1950s.

Her stylish short-sleeved ensemble featured a soft collar, and she complemented the look with a pair of black loafers.

On the move: Scout Willis was glimpsed this Father's Day stepping out in her mask to pick up some groceries in Los Angeles

Bruce and Demi, who also have two other daughters called Rumer, 31, and Tallulah, 26, have been divorced since 2000.

However they have stayed friendly and in fact even turned heads by going into self-isolation together in Idaho with their daughters amid the coronavirus pandemic.

They were since joined by Bruce's current wife Emma Heming with whom he shares his daughters Mabel, eight, and Evelyn, six.

Scout marked Father's Day by posting an Instagram album showing Bruce posing with her, Rumer and Tallulah when they were children.

Out and about: The 28-year-old daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore slipped into a purple polka-dot dress redolent of the 1950s

'My papa doesnt even really understand what social media is so i wont address this to him, but damn I love and appreciate this man!!' she wrote.

Meanwhile Demi posted an Instagram picture showing herself in Idaho with a group of loved ones including Bruce, Emma, Rumer, Tallulah, Mabel and Evelyn.

Scout appeared on the Dopey self-help podcast and late April and revealed why Emma had waited to join the rest of the group in Idaho.

'My stepmom was going to come up here too with my little sisters. [But] my younger sister [who has] never gotten a talk about not f***ing with hypodermic needles. she found [needles at a park and] she actually tried to poke her shoe with it and poked her foot,' Scout revealed.

So sweet: Scout marked Father's Day by posting an Instagram album showing Bruce posing with her, Rumer and Tallulah when they were children

Family matters: 'My papa doesnt even really understand what social media is so i wont address this to him, but damn I love and appreciate this man!!' she wrote

'So my stepmom had to be in LA waiting to, like, get the results for taking her to the doctor. My dad came up here early and then travel got crazy and my stepmom stayed in LA with my little sisters.'

She said during that podcast episode, according to Us Weekly: 'Its been really funny having both my parents at the this house where they, like, raised us,.'

Scout, who like her parents and sisters is sober, shared: 'Its kind of divine time to just hang out with them.  Im very grateful to be with my family.'
[June 22, 2020] Low-Cost Satellite Market Share, Growth, Segments, Competitor Landscape, Key Players, Trends And Forecasts 2025

Low-Cost Satellite Market Is Estimated To Register A CAGR Of Approximately 8% During The Forecast Period Of 2018 To 2023.



Market Highlights The usage of small and low-cost satellites are paving the way for asuccessful and cost-effective makeover of the domain of satellite systems. A number of companies such as Lockheed Martin Corporation, Planet Labs, OneWeb, and SpaceX are primarily focusing on the launch of small and lightweight satellite systems, in order to reduce the costs associated with the satellite launch. As a result, in the recent years, a large number of small and low-cost satellites placed in the lower and higher orbits in the space. Many of the developing nations have also shown a keen interest in the utilization of satellites such as CubeSats (U-class spacecraft). These satellites use enhanced electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems to obtain images of Earth.







In the recent years, there have been some major developments of small and low-cost satellite systems, which drive the market growth. Some of them have been mentioned below: In November 2016, Scotland-based Clyde Space signed a contract with Canada-based Kepler Communications, to manufacture two nanosatellites. These satellites would provide enhanced telecommunications network across Canada.



In September 2016, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, signed a contract worth $20 million with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), to provide small satellites for earth observation (EO) missions in the LEO.





The global low-cost satellite market has been segmented by satellite type, function, end-user, and region. On the basis of satellite type, the low-cost satellite market is divided into nano-, micro-, and others. In 2017, the micro satellite segment dominated the global market and it is expected that the nano satellite segment would witness the fastest market growth, during the forecast period. This is primarily because of the large number of micro satellites being launched in the recent years, by a number of countries. Similarly, in an attempt to reduce the satellite launch costs, extensive investments are being done on the nano satellite systems. On the basis of function, the low-cost satellite market is divided into communication, imaging, and others. In 2017, the communication segment dominated the global market and is also expected to witness the fastest growth, during the forecast period.



This is primarily due to the rapid advancements in high-speed communication technologies along with the introduction of the 5G technology. On the basis of end-user, the low-cost satellite market is divided into commercial and military. In 2017, the commercial segment dominated the global market and it is expected that the military segment would witness the fastest growth, during the forecast period. This is primarily due to the increasing commercial applications through the satellite services in the recent years such as earth observation, meteorology, scientific research & exploration, and mapping & navigation, among others.



Browse Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/low-cost-satellite-market-7136 As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A Beidou navigation satellite was successfully launched by a long March 3b carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan province on November 5, 2019.

China is gearing up to send the last satellite to space, a move that will complete a global navigation network and wean the country off U.S. technology in this area.

It's a significant development because it will ensure China's military systems will remain online in the event of a conflict with the U.S., but it's also part of Beijing's push to increase its technological influence overseas, experts told CNBC.

China's network, known as Beidou, consists of 30 satellites which are key for navigation or even messaging. It's a rival to the U.S. government-owned Global Positioning System (GPS).

"The (Chinese) military now has a system it can use independent of the U.S. GPS system," Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, told CNBC.

The fear is that if there was a sustained conflict between the U.S. and China, GPS  or the satellite-based navigation system  could be cut off from the Chinese.

"The most profound impact is that it is now independent. It (China) has now got a system that is resilient and can be used in times of conflict," Christopher Newman, professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in the U.K., told CNBC.

China was set to launch the last satellite this week but it was postponed because of "technical issues," according to Beidou's official website.
Rape suspects in Akwa Ibom may face up to life imprisonment following the signing of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law , VAPP...

Rape suspects in Akwa Ibom may face up to life imprisonment following the signing of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law , VAPPL, 2020 by Udom Emmanuel, the governor.





The law empowers judges to hand down life imprisonment to anyone convicted of rape in the state.





Speaking after the bill was assented to by the governor, Glory Edet, commissioner for agriculture and women affairs, described VAPPL as a sledge hammer for rapists and perpetrators of gender-based violence.





I think this is one of the best things that has happened to protect the female gender and as the commissioner overseeing women matters , I believe the women of Akwa Ibom, the children and even our men are happy because this law will really teach defaulters a lesson, she said.

This law allows for the implementation of a lot of things we were praying for and prescribes stiffer punishment for violators of the Childs Right Act , perpetrators of violence against citizens of both gender. Before now violators of the female gender had some years to spend in prison but VAPPL recommends life imprisonment to really deal with the offenders and discourage the spate of violence in our society.





Edet said sensitisation and awareness campaign on the new law will soon kick start.





Also speaking, Uwemedimo Nwoko, the state attorney-general and commissioner for justice, said the law also provides 14 years imprisonment for perpetrators of gender-based violence and any kind of sexual offence other than rape.






By Han Phoumin





Residents in many of the ASEAN's most polluted cities have been delighted to observe significant decreases in pollution levels as a result of COVID-19 lockdown measures that have disrupted the economy and thus many pollution-causing activities.



However, as governments begin lifting restrictions and business activities return, so too will the demand for energy. Economic recovery could see the levels of CO2 emissions bouncing back very quickly.



Indeed, global data from late May shows an all-time high for levels of CO2 as countries start reopening their economies. However, with all the tragedy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps there can be a silver lining in terms of how we navigate ASEAN's energy transition if we can embrace renewable energy and clean technologies.



COVID-19 seems to be accelerating the adoption of several pre-pandemic trends like digitization and robotics. Perhaps decarbonization can be another.



The post-COVID-19 economic recovery will drive increased energy demand. ASEAN's energy mix greatly relies on fossil fuels which are a significant source of emissions. To ensure the region's energy sustainability, development and healthy environment, this rapid increase in demand will need coordinated management and appropriate energy supply infrastructure and investment.



Investment in renewable energy and clean technologies still faces instability and high costs. Thus, energy policy targets and clean technologies' penetration into energy systems will need to be promoted by ASEAN leaders. Investments into low-carbon technologies and renewables are key to managing the energy transition toward cleaner use of energy and addressing emissions.



The ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) Phase 2, which is under preparation for endorsement at the ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting in 2020, will set key energy policy targets and will have significant policy implications for energy infrastructure-related investment in the region.



Key targets include the revision of the new energy efficiency and conservation target from 30 percent energy intensity reduction by 2025 (based on 2005 levels) to more ambitious levels  with a likely new target of 35-40 percent reductions  and will involve expansion of energy efficiency measures for transport and industries.



APAEC Phase 2 will also establish a new sub-target for the share of renewables in installed power capacity which will complement the existing target of 23 percent share of renewables in the total primary energy supply by 2025.



In addition, APAEC Phase 2 will include policy measures to pursue smart grids and renewable energy grid integration, and measures to address emerging and alternative technologies such as hydrogen, energy storage, bioenergy, nuclear energy, climate change and decarbonization, energy investment and financing and private sector participation.



However, ASEAN will need to do more to lay out a clear energy transition strategy to deal with the mix of fossil fuels and new and clean technologies.



While economic growth has increased the affordability of renewable energy around the world, many emerging economies are still at the early stages of development and may not have sufficient funds. For ASEAN members who can afford more investment in renewable energy, an important concern is the need for electricity storage and smart grids to support higher renewable penetration levels into the electricity sector.



Smart grid technologies are already making significant contributions to electricity grids in some developed countries of the OECD. However, these technologies are undergoing continual refinement and hence are vulnerable to potential technical and non-technical risks.



Renewable energy growth will thus be constrained by infrastructure development as well as by the evolution of technology including the capacity to assess and predict the availability of renewable energy sources. These capacities offer additional benefits, notably the promise of higher reliability and overall electrical system efficiency.



In terms of the global climate narrative, renewable energy provides a promising prospect for the world's energy sector. ASEAN countries would be wise to follow the same trend as the rest of the world and expand their renewable energy industries.



Due to technological advance, the great growth potential of renewable energy in the future will come from wind, solar and biofuel power which will be increasingly competitive with traditional fossil fuels.



Among the ASEAN economies, there is also ample scope for growth in hydroelectricity, particularly in relatively less developed economies such as Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. In several ASEAN countries, there is also potential for growth in geothermal energy.



The largest reduction of CO2 emissions is expected in the power sector, as a result of introducing renewable energy as much as possible.



To realize high penetration of renewables in the power system, requires a huge investment in power system integration through the Internet of Things (IoT) which enables coordinating the balance between (1) distributed power generation (e.g. wind power plants, mega-solar photovoltaic plants, rooftop solar power systems on buildings), (2) market systems, (3) demand response technologies and (4) information technology (IT, i.e. data acquisition and communication).



Coordinated power system integration through IoT is known as a "smart grid system." Smart grid systems consist of complex arrangements of infrastructure and digital technologies whose functions depend on many interconnected elements. As the European Union has achieved a high penetration of renewables using the smart grid system, ASEAN may have much to learn from them.



To leap from the current energy system to a future cleaner energy system, ASEAN will need to consider the role of the cleaner use of fossil fuel and the innovative technologies that can reduce CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions.



Given that the energy sector accounts for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, urgent steps are needed to decarbonize the energy sector through development of a low-carbon economy which requires the rapid deployment of clean fossil fuel technologies, renewable energy development and a doubling of energy efficiency.



Taking the opportunity of COVID-19, ASEAN's leaders will need to act boldly to increase renewable energy investment and clean technologies into the energy mix to formulate energy policies such as removal of fossil fuel subsidies that discourage investment in renewables.



If ASEAN leaders are complacent or lack bold actions, energy consumption and the resultant emissions are likely to surpass pre-pandemic levels. Thus, it is very important for leaders in ASEAN to act now for energy policy changes toward more renewables and clean technology investment for decarbonizing the emissions.





Han Phoumin is senior energy economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). The views expressed in the above article are the author's personal and do not reflect ERIA's position.






Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 19:23:36|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ULAN BATOR, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The municipal government of Mongolia's capital here on Monday reopened museums and libraries across the city, relaxing the COVID-19 restrictions imposed in late February.

"In order to support the capital city's economy, we have reopened service organizations in stages. This time, we decided to open 11 libraries and 12 museums across the capital city from today," Sainbuyan Amarsaikhan, mayor of Ulan Bator, told a press conference.

The organizations are not allowed to serve customers if their employees are not wearing masks.

Ulan Bator, home to more than half of the country's population of 3.2 million, is the most densely populated city in Mongolia.

As of Monday, Mongolia has confirmed 213 COVID-19 patients, according to the country's National Center for Communicable Disease.

No local transmissions or deaths have been reported in the country so far. Enditem
Experts from the United States still dominate the ranking with 616 U.S. computer scientists comprising 61.6% of the list

Guide2Research, a leading research portal for computer science, released the latest edition of their annual ranking for top scientists specializing in computer science. The ranking aims to introduce the leaders in the field of computer science to the academic community and provide more exposure to the contributions of these influential scientists.

Over 6,000 scientist profiles were analyzed in this years Guide2Research ranking edition. Each position on the list was based on Google Scholars H-index value. Only those with an H-index >= 40 were shortlisted for the report.

Guide2Research also applied a second verification process of manually assessing the scientists publications on DBLP, making sure that they actually authored a significant number of publications related to computer science. Lastly, the awards and fellowships of each scientist were also taken into consideration.

The recognition and acknowledgment of contributions made by leading scientists devoting tremendous efforts to disseminate their knowledge are pivotal to the advancement of science and prosperity in our world as a better place, noted Professor Imed Bouchrika, a computer scientist and the lead author of the Guide2Research report.

The detailed Guide2Research ranking for top computer scientists is available on the portals website.

Below are the key findings deduced from the resulting top computer scientists ranking:



Experts from the United States still dominate the ranking with 616 U.S. computer scientists comprising 61.6% of the list.

Other countries that are prominent in the ranking are the United Kingdom with 55 scientists on the list, Germany with 38, Canada with 37, and Switzerland with 34.

Asia sees a significant increase as the total number of scientists from the continent climbs up to 55 scientists from just 37 in 2018.

There are also countries that saw a decrease in the number of leading experts. These are Germany (from 44 scientists in 2018 to 38 in 2020) and France (from 17 down to 14 scientists).

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is hailed as the educational institution with the most number of leading computer science experts. Forty-four (4.4%) of the scientists on the list currently work at the MIT. Last year the leading research institution was Stanford University.

As for private companies, Google (17 scientists represented) and Microsoft (12 scientists represented) still lead the ranking.

The lists top 1% has an average H-index of 167.

The United States still dominates the ranking with 616 U.S. computer scientists included in the list. The top 1% is also composed mostly of U.S. scholars. Eight out of ten are from the United States and the other two are from Canada. The position of the United States as the leading country has not changed since 2018.

A separate Guide2Research U.S. ranking for top computer scientists is also available.

Following the USA is the United Kingdom, which is represented by 55 scientists. Germany is next with 38 scientists, while Canada has 37 scientists. Switzerland closely follows with 34 scientists.

Asia showed the most noticeable increase in the number of representing scientists. From just 37 in 2018, the continent now has 55 scientists ranked.

In Guide2Researchs 2020 ranking, the MIT emerged as the institution with the most number of ranked scientists (44 in all). The position used to be held by Stanford University in 2019.

Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University is the only institution with more than one scholar in the top 1% of the ranking.

Out of the 14 institutions with the most number of scientists on the list, 14 are in the U.S and the other three are in Europe.

The ranking is led by Professor Anil Jain of Michigan State University. He has been on top of the list for three consecutive editions. Known for his influential work in biometrics, Professor Jain has an H-index of 188.

Europes top scientist is University of Oxfords Professor Andrew Zisserman who ranks 11 on the list.

Asian scientists are led by Professor Guanrong Chen of the University of Hong Kong, with a world ranking of 16 and H-index of 149.

------------------------

About Guide2Research

Guide2Research is a leading computer science research portal. Its mission is to guide graduate students, professors, and research fellows with their studies and research by providing up-to-date information on international conferences and publications. Guide2Research publishes an annual ranking of the worlds leading scientists and scholars in the field of electronics and computer science.
Germany stood by its 9 billion ($15 billion) bailout plan for Lufthansa, daring the airline's disgruntled top shareholder to knock it down at a pivotal vote this week.

With Lufthansa fighting for survival after the coronavirus outbreak punctured a decades-long global travel boom, billionaire Heinz-Hermann Thiele is threatening to block the rescue plan - which would dilute his 15.5 per cent holding and influence - at a shareholder meeting scheduled for Thursday (Frankfurt time).

Germany's third-richest man Heinz Hermann Thiele is threatening to block the rescue plan. Credit:Bloomberg

But with the government signalling it's unwilling to alter the package, the onus is on the 79-year-old investor to decide whether to support a deal he considers faulty or potentially trigger its rejection. The alternative would lead Lufthansa into uncharted waters, forced to reconfigure its survival plan with cash reserves running low and the threat of insolvency looming.

The government stands firm on the agreed package, which will be the basis for the shareholder vote, German economy ministry spokesman Korbinian Wagner said. The German government explained the terms of the rescue to Thiele in a meeting attended by Lufthansa chief executive officer Carsten Spohr and the two ministers who brokered the bailout, according to a state official. The parties didn't discuss what would happen if the package wasn't approved by shareholders, the official said.
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Mazars USA LLP, a leading accounting, tax, and consulting firm, announced that Ian Duncan has joined the firm as Chief Marketing Officer, based out of the New York office.

Mazars USA Chairman and CEO Victor Wahba commented, "Ian's 25 plus years of experience delivering transformative marketing solutions to organizations around the world will be of immense value as we continue to pursue our strategic growth plans. His multinational career and expertise in taking globally-recognized organizations to the next level will be an important step in positioning Mazars USA for the future."

Prior to joining Mazars USA, Ian was the Global Brand Leader for PwC where he led the worldwide brand transformation greatly contributing to significant growth in enterprise brand value.

Said Ian, "I'm excited to be joining Mazars USA and look forward to executing on the next stages of its growth strategy. I believe that Mazars is uniquely placed to deliver differentiated value in the US market, including leveraging its truly integrated global platform."

Originally a UK national, Ian holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the Essex University and a Master's Degree in Marketing from Northumbria University Business School.

For media inquiries, contact:

Mazars USA | Beth More, 732-205-2012 | [email protected]

Makovsky | Joshua Goldman-Brown, Anne Hart | [email protected]

About Mazars USA

Mazars USA LLP is a high-performing accounting, tax and consulting firm with significant national presence in strategic U.S. geographies. Since 1921, our dedicated professionals have leveraged technical industry expertise to develop customized solutions for clients, create value, and Optimize their performance. We offer a broad array of industry specialists providing services to growth-oriented enterprises and individuals. As the independent US member firm of Mazars Group, we deliver seamless access to the expertise of 24,000 professionals in 90+ countries. At local and global levels, we are proud of our value-added services, building lasting relationships with our clients and communities. For more information, visit us at www.mazarsusa.com.

SOURCE Mazars USA LLP

Related Links

www.mazarsusa.com


[June 22, 2020] Coro Global Completes OTCQB Uplisting

Coro Global Inc. (OTCQB: CGLO), a fintech company focused on using distributed ledger technology to facilitate global payments, including payments made in physical gold, today announces its successful uplisting from OTC Pink to OTCQB. The uplisting was completed last week. "We are proud to meet the enhanced public company requirements to be an OTCQB listed company," said Chief Executive Officer Mark Goode. For the last two and a half years, Coro has been building out its technology and pursuing Federal and State licensure in the U.S. The company's wholly owned operating subsidiary Coro Corp was registered as a money services business by FinCEN, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury, on March 26th of last year. On March 18th of this year, Coro Corp received its first state money transmitter license by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation. The company intends to pursue licensure throughout each state in the U.S. as well as the territory of Puerto Rico by year's end. The company i preparing the release of its Coro mobile payment app and will soon be providing Floridians with the ability to send, receive, and exchange U.S. dollars and gold. The company believes that as gold continues to march towards new highs, the demand for using gold as currency in everyday transactions is increasing. The company believes Coro will democratize access to gold as a currency, using distributed ledger technology to modernize its use in a safe and convenient manner directly from any smartphone.



About Coro Global Inc. Coro Global Inc. is a Miami, Florida-based fintech company that is creating a new financial payment system where gold can be used as currency in everyday transactions. Coro's platform is powered by cutting edge Distributed Ledger Technology allowing users to send and receive global payments and exchange currency, including gold, faster, cheaper, and more securely.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Matters discussed in this press release contain forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "may," "intend," "expect" and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed, or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations of the Company and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. These include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties associated with our history of losses and our need to raise additional financing, the acceptance of our products and technology in the marketplace, our ability to demonstrate the commercial viability of our products and technology and our need to increase the size of our organization. Further information on the Company's risk factors is contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason except as may be required under applicable law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005110/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The South African Police Service (SAPS) has an array of weapons which help to control crowds when protests turn violent.

While the right to protest is protected by South Africas Constitution, these events can often get out of hand and threaten the safety of bystanders and participants.

In these cases, South African police may use riot control weapons and tactics to disperse crowds in a non-lethal manner.

These can include everything from rubber bullets and stun grenades to pepper spray and tear gas, and are usually aimed at forcing crowds to disperse without harming any protestors.

The philosophy behind riot control is to calm down crowds and encourage them to disband, with violence only being used as a last resort.

Protests can occasionally break the ground rules set out by police or infringe on the security of the area, which would warrant intervention by police officers.

Like any other police force in the world, the SAPS occasionally intervene and clash with protesters, using weapons such as rubber bullets, water cannons, tear gas, and stun grenades to control crowds, limit damage to infrastructure, and protect other citizens and businesses.

MyBroadband spoke to South African Gunowners Association (SAGA) president John Welch to learn more about the weapons used by South African police when responding to violent protests.

Rubber bullets

Rubber bullets or balls are made from hard-rubber compounds or silicone and measure 20mm in diameter. One or two are placed in a shell which is launched from a pump-action shotgun at about 400 feet per second.

Larger ones (37mm or 40mm) can be discharged from single-shot grenade launchers, although these are normally only used to launch tear gas, pepper powder, or less-lethal shock grenades.

Both rubber and silicone balls will hit you with enough force to cause a bruise or contusion if fired from the recommended 20m, Welch noted.

The flight of the balls may be very erratic, especially in the two-ball variety, and at 30m the chances are that one ball may hit your target while the other ball misses or hits someone else, he said.

The police officers also need to be careful when discharging such rubber-shot since they may bounce back and hit friendly forces should they strike a wall or rocks.

Your typical scenario where rubber balls will be used is where the police have issued warnings and even used water cannon, pepper powder, CS gas (tear-gas), or stun grenades with little or no effect, Welch explained.

Should the perpetrators continue to cause a threat, which must be evaluated (carefully but quickly) by the officer in charge, they may give the instruction to discharge rubber balls with shotguns.

Stun grenades

Stun grenades are metal cylinders with holes in the side. They contain a small amount of explosive material that will cause a loud bang or double-bang when detonated.

The explosion itself is contained and thus, unlike in the case of a fragmentation grenade, will not explode outward. The energy itself is released through the holes in the side of the cylinder, Welch explained.

The bangs are loud, measuring in the region of 140 decibels and are intended to disorientate or disperse crowds without causing serious damage.

One must carefully understand the deployment, since people soon realise that they cause no damage thus they do not disperse. This then may lead to the use of further force, which one actually wants to avert, Welch explained.

It is possible that if the explosion occurs immediately next to your ear it may cause permanent damage  it is like a rifle being discharged immediately next to your ear. The bang possibly is loud enough to damage an eardrum, although it is hardly likely.

Tear gas

Tear gas or CS gas is a lachrymator that causes great irritation and watery eyes. The irritation disorients people, making it easier for the police to arrest them.

It is typically dispersed from an aerosol canister that can be thrown by an official or launched by a 37mm or 40mm M76 grenade launcher, Welch said.

The gas contains a chemical substance that irritates the eyes and all places where a person has sweat or is wet.

Permanent damage to eyes is somewhat doubtful, although for people with very sensitive eyes, I shall not rule it out, Welch noted.

Although it is a very effective way to disperse a crowd, it is seldom used since the gas is extremely wind-sensitive, which could cause friendly forces to suffer too.

Welch said there has been a move away from CS gas, although it may still be used.

He explained that teargas is prohibited for common use by the Teargas Act of 1964 and only the military and police may still be using it.

In the past, the Minister of Justice could authorise private security companies to use it but currently, pepper powder or spray is very effective and you do not require anyones permission to possess it, Welch said.

Water cannons

As the name suggests, water cannons blow water or water-based solutions in a single direction.

The water may in certain cases be mixed with pepper powder for greater effect, or colourant could be added to help with the identification of perpetrators in the short term.

Water cannons are typically mounted on soft-armoured vehicles which hold police officers and the tanks that store the liquid.

The vehicle must be powerful enough to carry the water tanks, bearing in mind that the weight of the water and that half-empty water tanks, when shaking, cause serious instability, Welch said.

The cannon shoots the liquid in a single stream at a pressure of 10 bar, although this level largely depends on the manufacturer and required specifications.

I have seen real-life use of water cannons in France, America, and South Africa. In the former two countries, the flow of water is powerful enough to force you backwards, depending on where exactly the stream hits you, Welch noted.

If you hit the person with a stream of water fairly low on the torso it may lift him and through him backwards.

However, Welch said the idea and intention should never be to injure people but to deter them from breaching a certain perimeter or area.

It may also serve as a diversion for the arresting officers to get close to the perpetrators, who might, at that time, be temporarily disorientated, he explained.

Sonic weapons

A more modern weapon that has been employed in the United States is the long-range acoustic device (LRAD) which transmits sound waves that irritate human ears and usually cause such discomfort that people cannot continue with their activity.

LRADs employed as anti-protest equipment produce sound waves at around 80Hz.

While there is no confirmed use of the devices in South Africa, they were previously spotted on police vehicles during the height of the Fees Must Fall protests in 2015.

This was after a report had surfaced that SAPS had made a request to parliaments portfolio committee for the funding of one fixed and 11 portable acoustic devices.

Welch noted these devices have a limited range and will probably not cause permanent damage to the ears unless a person has a serious ear disease or extremely sensitive ears.
Iran parliament: IAEA resolution proof of structural discrimination within UN nuclear watchdog

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 10:50 AM

The majority of lawmakers at the Iranian parliament have denounced an anti-Iran resolution recently passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, saying the document is another indication of "structural discrimination" within the UN atomic watchdog.

In a statement read out on Sunday by Ali Karimi Firouzjaee, a member of the parliament's presiding board, 240 MPs argued that the IAEA resolution -- introduced by the three European signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, namely France, Germany, and Britain -- explicitly demonstrated the trio's "excessive demands."

The Islamic Republic has voluntarily implemented the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and allowed the IAEA to conduct the most rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites in the history of the Vienna-based agency, read the statement.

The lawmakers further complained about the hypocrisy of the European trio, saying they devised "the illegal anti-Iran resolution" contrary to their claims to remain committed to the Iran deal and to make efforts to salvage the deal.

The IAEA resolution clearly indicates, the MPs warned, that the three European states "have once again fallen into the trap of the United States and the Zionist regime, and joined forces with them in the failed US project of exerting maximum pressure against Iran, hence dealing another blow to international multilateralism."

Passed by a 25-2 margin with seven abstentions, the IAEA resolution called on Iran to "fully cooperate" with the IAEA and "satisfy the Agency's requests without any further delay," including by providing "prompt" access to two nuclear sites.

Tehran has rejected allegations of non-cooperation with the IAEA, arguing that the mentioned sites are totally irrelevant to its current nuclear program, and that the agency's insistence on inspecting the two locations comes on the basis of fabricated information provided by Israel.

"Iran's parliament strongly condemns the IAEA Board of Governors' resolution, which was adopted against Iran's national interests based on a proposal by three European countries, Britain, France and Germany, under pressure from the US regime and the fake Zionist regime on June 19, 2020," the statement read, adding that the resolution was "another sign of structural discrimination within the IAEA."

The Iranian lawmakers also expressed their gratitude to China and Russia for voicing their opposition to the biased resolution, which they called "an obvious attempt at political extortion."

"In addition to expressing gratitude to the states that did not support the move, the parliament considers the non-binding resolution another sign of the culture dominating the IAEA, which allows nuclear-armed member states not honoring their own NPT commitments to block other states' access to peaceful nuclear technology."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






TOM BRENNER, STF / NYT

Supporters of Donald Trump have been confronted with criticism of our president ever since he announced his candidacy for this office, but the charges leveled by his former national security adviser are different. John Bolton is no liberal, and in fact he had been one of the most hawkish voices on Fox News before Trump picked him for this important job. The picture he paints of Trump in his new book, The Room Where It Happened, is truly disturbing.

Bolton says the president is shockingly ignorant of basic facts that high school students should know  whether Great Britain had nuclear weapons (it has, for decades) or whether Finland was part of Russia (its an independent country). He says Trump has few core beliefs and made major decisions based on hunches or emotion  or which foreign dictator flattered him the most.
A more recent publication of this set of statistics is available. Latest publication: International trade in goods and services 2021, 3rd quarter

Published: 22 June 2020

Travel decreased remarkably in the first quarter of 2020

Service exports fell by 5 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the corresponding quarter in 2019. Service imports decreased by 2 per cent. Exports of services amounted to EUR 6.8 billion and imports to EUR 7.8 billion. Service exports and imports decreased particularly due to decrease in travel and transport services. The data appear from Statistics Finland's statistics on international trade in goods and services, which are part of balance of payments .

Figure 1. Imports and exports of services quarterly

The combined exports of goods and services in balance of payments terms decreased by 10 per cent and imports fell by 4 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the corresponding quarter in 2019. In balance of payments terms, goods exports grew by 12 per cent and goods imports fell by 5 per cent.

The levels in customs terms and in balance of payments terms can differ, because goods trade in customs terms includes flows of goods where ownership does not change. In contrast, goods trade in balance of payments terms is based on change of ownership. In addition to the changes made to the customs data, goods trade in balance of payments terms includes sales and purchases from abroad to abroad.

Decrease in service exports centres on travel and transport

Both travel abroad from Finland and to Finland decreased in the first quarter of 2020 from one year back. The value of travel expenditure abroad from Finland, which is included in the statistics as travel imports, decreased by 9 per cent. Travel to Finland (included as travel exports), in turn, decreased by 16 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 year-on-year.

However, more travel services are still imported than exported. Finland received income from travel services to the value of EUR 704 million in the first quarter of 2020. Expenditure abroad from Finland amounted to around EUR 1.0 billion. Travel exports include such as the goods and services consumed by a person having travelled to Finland either for a leisure or business trip for under one year.

Measured in euros, service exports decreased most due to transport services, which decreased by 19 per cent (EUR 188 million) compared to the corresponding quarter last year. Transport exports include such as income from freight and passenger transport and postal and courier services to Finland.

Other service items decreasing service exports were manufacturing services and other business services. Exports of manufacturing services decreased by 18 per cent. In turn, exports of other business services were decreased by 11 per cent. Decrease from the first quarter of the previous year came particularly from the sub-item belonging to other business services: technical, trade-related, and other business services.

The decrease in service imports was, however, curbed by increased exports of one service item. Exports of telecommunications, computer and information services (ICT services) were increased by 15 per cent (EUR 343 million) on the corresponding quarter of the year before.

Figure 2. Exports of services by service item

The United States were Finlands most important country of exports for services

Services were exported most to the United States in the first quarter of 2020. The United States accounted for 14 per cent of Finlands service exports. Service exports to the United States grew by 16 per cent year-on-year while exports of goods decreased by 26 per cent. The United States share of Finlands exports of goods decreased by 2 percentage points while service exports grew by three percentage points year-on-year. The Euro areas share of Finlands service exports decreased by 5 percentage points. The decrease in exports of goods was more moderate, 1 percentage points.

The United States share of imports of goods remained the same year-on-year while the share of service imports grew by 1 percentage point. The Euro areas share of imports of goods grew by 1 percentage point and the share of service imports remained the same.

International trade in services with Sweden in deficit

After the United States, services were particularly exported to Sweden, where 13 per cent fewer services were exported in the first quarter of 2020 than in the first quarter of 2019. In other turn, service imports from Sweden grew by 2 per cent. Service trade to Sweden is still in deficit: service imports from Sweden amounted to nearly EUR 0.3 billion more than service exports to Sweden. The exports of goods amounted to EUR 1.7 billion. Service exports to Sweden decreased by 15 per cent year-on-year.

Service exports to Germany decreased by 22 per cent while exports of goods decreased by 30 per cent. Germanys share of Finlands service exports was 8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020. Germany's share of service exports from Finland to Europe was 13 per cent. In exports of goods, these shares were approximately the same: 9 and 13 per cent.

Services imported from Great Britain exceeded service exports. Service imports decreased by 4 per cent while service exports increased by 13 per cent. Service exports to Russia decreased by 12 per cent and the level of service imports decreased 20 per cent compared to last years quarter. Service exports to China decreased by 12 per cent and service imports by 7 per cent, compared to the beginning of year 2019.

Figure 3. Exports of goods and services in balance of payments terms by area

Statistics on international trade

The statistics on international trade in goods and services are part of balance of payments . The statistics comprise breakdowns of goods and services on a more detailed level. The guidelines and recommendations of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6) applied to balance of payments are consistent with the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010). National Accounts are published on quarterly and annual levels . Finnish Customs publishes data on goods trade across borders. Goods trade published by Finnish Customs is used as source data for the statistics on international trade in goods and services. Removals and additions caused by definitions are made to them to achieve goods trade in balance of payments terms.

Finnish Customs statistical service, tilastot@tulli.fi, +358 29 552 335.

Source: International trade in goods and services 2018, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Tommi Kaatrasalo 029 551 3320, Nina Hiltunen 029 551 3089, globalisaatio.tilastot@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jan Nokkala

Publication in pdf-format (268.6 kB)

Updated 22.6.2020

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): International trade in goods and services [e-publication].

ISSN=2343-4244. 1st quarter 2020. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 22.1.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/tpulk/2020/01/tpulk_2020_01_2020-06-22_tie_001_en.html
Those who returned from Pakistan are Air Adviser Group Capt Manu Midha, Second Secretary S Shiv Kumar and staff members Pankaj, Selvadhas Paul and Dwimu Brahma.

Attari: Five officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, including the two who were arrested and later released in an alleged hit-and-run case there, returned to the country through the Attari-Wagah border on Monday, officials said.

According to them, those who returned are Air Adviser Group Capt Manu Midha, Second Secretary S Shiv Kumar and staff members Pankaj, Selvadhas Paul and Dwimu Brahma.

Dwimu and Selvadhas were arrested on 15 June in Pakistan in the alleged hit-and-run incident. Both were later released.

After the incident, India had summoned the charge d' affaires of the Pakistan High Commission, lodging a protest over the "abduction and torture" of two officials of the Indian mission in Islamabad.

The five officials travelled to the Wagah check-post in a car. They underwent thermal screening and preliminary medical check-up before proceeding to Delhi, the officials said.
(CNN)  Racism in Britain may attract less global attention than in the United States, but it is no less present -- and Black Britons say it is past time for the country to face up to its colonial history and act to stamp out racial inequalities.

The police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis sparked global protests over police brutality and racial inequality despite an ongoing pandemic which has had a disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities in the UK and US.

In Britain, where public trust in institutions has been eroded by examples of systemic racism over decades, thousands have turned out to join Black Lives Matter protests despite pleas from the government for people to stay home.

And an exclusive CNN/Savanta ComRes poll reveals a divided nation, where Black people are twice as likely as White people to say they have not been treated with respect by police. Black people are also about twice as likely as White people to say UK police are institutionally racist -- among White people, just over a quarter believe it.

Exposing further division, nearly two in three Black people say the UK has not done enough to address historical racial injustice, twice the proportion of White people who say that.

The CNN poll has been released as the UK marks Windrush Day, introduced in 2018 to celebrate the arrival on June 22, 1948 of the Empire Windrush. The ship carried the first large group of Commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean to Britain -- at the invitation of the government -- to rebuild the country after World War II.

But the Windrush generation and their children say they continue to suffer as a result of policies pursued by Conservative governments. Some lost their jobs, while others were evicted from their homes or faced deportation after decades living in Britain legally.

Glenda Caesar, who traveled with her parents from Dominica to Britain as a baby in 1961, says she suddenly lost her job as an administrator with the National Health Service in 2009 as she was unable to provide the necessary documentation. She fell into debt, unable to pay her bills without a wage, and nearly lost her home, she said.

A decade on, now aged 58, she has been unable to find another job despite being given British citizenship shortly after her plight was highlighted in the media. Her son, who was born in Britain in 1988, was also given citizenship.

"I was fighting for myself and for my son at the time -- that was the thing that hurt me the most," she told CNN. "Why should I have to fight for his right to be in this country when he was born here?"

Caesar, who spoke at protests this month in the east London neighborhood of Hackney where she lives and the Essex town of Southend, has, however, been heartened by the number, diversity and youth of the demonstrators she's seen.

"I think it's good for the world because now people are understanding what us, as a community, what we've been saying for a very long time. Where we haven't had the justice that we've always been searching for but now everybody has come together," she said.

She thinks others are now ready to stand up for what they believe in. "If we see a young Black man being surrounded by police and they are arresting him, people are now stepping forward and asking what's going on," she said. "If we turn our backs it could be another George Floyd and I think we've had enough. I feel safe -- semi-safe -- with my grandchildren growing up because at least I feel people will be looking after them."

But she is less positive about the outcome for her and others caught up in the Windrush scandal, saying "we are still waiting" to be properly compensated despite the government apologizing for its actions.

She was offered a payout of a little over 22,000 ($27,200) in December under the government's Windrush Compensation Scheme but -- despite her continued difficult financial circumstances -- turned it down as she felt it was insultingly low.

"So far 12,000 people have been given documentation to confirm their status, more compensation payments are being made every week and in the case of Ms. Caesar we are working with her representatives to review and resolve her claim," a Home Office spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.

"The Home Secretary has been clear that the mistreatment of the Windrush generation by successive governments was completely unacceptable and she will right those wrongs."

CNN's poll found that 55% of Black people do not trust the government not to repeat something like the Windrush scandal again, while a majority say the Conservative Party is institutionally racist. CNN has sought comment from the Conservative Party and the government on the poll results.

Policing has long been the sharpest focal point for concerns over racial injustice in the UK. The government-mandated Macpherson inquiry in 1999, into the botched investigation of the murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was killed in a racist attack by White youths in 1993, found that London's Metropolitan Police was "institutionally racist." The current Met Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, insisted in 2019 that the "toxic" label no longer applied to the force.

But despite changes sparked by the Lawrence case and landmark Macpherson inquiry, Black people and other ethnic minorities in Britain are still disproportionately represented when it comes to police checks (known as stop and search), imprisonment, and deaths in custody. 

According to UK government figures, between April 2018 and March 2019, White people were subjected to stop and search at a rate of 4 per 1,000, compared to Black people who were stopped and searched at a rate of 38 per 1,000.

Black Britons say their own experiences, and those of others in their communities, highlight disparities in treatment and fuel distrust.

Five Black British friends gained global fame after a picture of one of them carrying an injured White man to safety from the middle of the crush of a violent London protest went viral. Clashes broke out as far-right groups targeted Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The White man was later confirmed to be a former police officer.

Patrick Hutchinson, the Black man who carried him from the scene, said he helped the injured demonstrator because he did not want the main message of the protests to be overshadowed by one moment of violence.

In an interview some days later, he told CNN he believed the police to be institutionally racist.

"There may be individuals within the system who are trying to do a good job but as a collective they are racist," he said.

Pierre Noah, another of the five friends, said the situation with regards to policing in Britain was "a mess" and that everyone, from the top down to the grassroots, needed to be educated on the issue.

"Do we feel protected by police? Not at all. I don't think the police are quite sure how to approach our community," he said. "They haven't been educated enough how to deal with us in the community."

"From when I was young to the kids now, honestly, from my heart, every day I pray for them. It's gone backwards. It's worse and it shouldn't be the case."

Asked what he thought the police see when they look at him, Hutchinson replied: "Color, race. Color -- first thing they notice and that should be the last thing they notice."

In response to the protests, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised a review of racial inequality in Britain. But critics say he could instead implement the recommendations made in numerous past reports going back decades.

Opposition Labour Party politician David Lammy, who published a comprehensive review of racial inequality in the criminal justice system in 2017, told Johnson he "needs to stop the dither and the delay," tweeting, "Young and old, black and white, rich and poor, the country is crying out for action."

Nurse and entrepreneur Neomi Bennett, from London, was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to nursing in 2018 and met with the Prime Minister in January this year. But she too says she has been impacted by her encounters with Britain's justice system.

The Guardian newspaper detailed Thursday how police officers approached Bennett one night in April 2019 in southwest London as she was in her car, saying her front windows were tinted too dark. She says she was too intimidated and scared to get out of the vehicle as repeatedly instructed. After several minutes of increasingly heated exchanges, she was pulled from the car and ended up under arrest and in a police cell overnight.

Bennett, 47, was found guilty in September of resisting and obstructing the police, but her conviction was overturned last month after she lodged an appeal which was not contested. She now intends to pursue a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police for wrongful arrest, among other charges.

"I think that the police approached me because they saw a couple of Black people sitting in a car. I believe I was racially profiled," she told CNN.

A Metropolitan Police statement said the force had received a number of complaints relating to this incident, one of which remained under assessment.

"A complaint regarding discriminatory behavior, incivility, neglect of duty and use of force found no case to answer for. The complainant appealed this decision via the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and they decided the appeal was not upheld. Due to the current complaint, we cannot go into any more detail at this time."

Bennett said seeing what happened to George Floyd had pushed her to go public despite the acute embarrassment she says she feels about her own experience.

"When I watched that, I was in tears, I was beside myself, because it was so reminiscent of that time in the cell, the power that the authorities have got," she said.

"As a Black woman in this country, if you say 'it's a race thing' or if you say 'it's because I'm Black' you are instantly shut down and told you have a chip on your shoulder. When this happened, it was too clear."

Her grandparents were part of the Windrush generation, arriving in Britain from Jamaica in the 1960s to give their family greater opportunities.

"I am so grateful for that and I've never taken my Britishness for granted," she said. "I'm proud to be British, but to be constantly faced with these microaggressions and then spend the night in a cell, it was like 'I cannot keep it to myself anymore.'"

Bennett also worries for her two sons, one 24 and the other 29, both of whom have recently been stopped by police, she said.

The nurse, who suffered racial abuse while growing up in London, hopes the protests will mark a pivotal moment. "It just feels like the racism has reached a tipping point in regards to the injustices that we are seeing play out before us in front of our eyes," she said.

"It seems like for a Black person in the UK, life is constant fighting. There are so many barriers, if you want to achieve anything you have to fight."

So what does Britain need to do to change?

CNN's poll has shown how sharply the nation is divided along race lines, whether it comes to policing, representation or history.

Protesters' demands for statues commemorating people who profited from the slave trade to be toppled have highlighted a wider issue: that too little is done to educate many Britons about their nation's colonial past.

CNN's polling found Black people are twice as likely to support the removal of those statues as White people.

"I don't believe we should have slave owners looking over us because that's why we are in this position right now. Why would we idolize slave owners?" Caesar said.

"We need to start putting Black history on the curriculum so children who are growing up don't need to ask us awkward questions. They already know about the Tudors and so on -- they need to know about our history as well." She believes more training for police on the subject would improve relations too.

Many believe there also needs to be greater representation of minorities in the cultural environment shaping people's everyday lives.

Black people are more than twice as likely as White people to say there is too little representation of Black people in film and television, according to CNN's poll, with two-thirds of Black people saying that and a quarter of White people.

Filmmaker Menelik Shabazz, who was born in Barbados and moved to Britain at the age of five, said the current moment could give new energy to those calling for greater representation but cautioned that previous initiatives over the four decades he has spent in the industry had resulted in little change.

Shabazz, whose 1981 debut "Burning an Illusion" was only the second feature film by a Black director produced in the UK, encountered so many obstacles in finding funding for other film and TV projects that for years he turned his focus elsewhere, including establishing Black Filmmaker Magazine.

He believes there is too little diversity in senior ranks, which helps perpetuate racial stereotypes, such as portraying young Black men in relation to crime.

Shabazz spoke to CNN from Harare, Zimbabwe, where the 66-year-old now plans to spend more time than in England.

"It's a signature of my tiredness at having to keep fighting, having these battles and having to get these things done, and when your vision and your world isn't seen as important or significant," he said of the move.

"The way in which the media presents Black people informs the wider society, and it then plays out in day-to-day situations with Black men in particular -- women too, of course, but Black men are at the front end in so many ways. You have to look at what is in the media, what is the education narrative that's in schools, in terms of colonial empire. It's a sense that our story has no value, so we can then be manipulated and ignored -- and the Windrush scandal is another example of that scenario."

Piers Harrison-Reid, a nurse and performance poet based in the east of England, wrote a poem for CNN to mark this moment.

"And if we aren't heard with a knee, or with a raised fist, how else can we resist?

"I think the greatest trick racism ever pulled, was convincing England it doesn't exist."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "'The greatest trick racism ever pulled was convincing England it doesn't exist'."
STAY AT HOME.

The all-caps banner headline in the March 17 San Francisco Chronicle said it all. Officials were telling nearly 7 million people to shelter in place immediately in a desperate effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus. All nonessential businesses had to close.

Overnight, the Bay Area was transformed. From Union Square to the Googleplex, from Sather Gate to Santana Row, places that ordinarily bustled with activity became virtual ghost towns.

Schools and child care centers shut down. Tens of thousands of stores, restaurants, cafes, salons, gyms, doctors and dentists offices, and more closed their doors.

As the region shuddered to a halt, the economic impacts were felt immediately.

For hundreds of thousands of workers in service industries, travel and tourism, retail, personal services and more, there was no work  and no income. Meanwhile, many white-collar employees continued their work lives in front of screens at home, in between supervising their children. That dichotomy exacerbated the regions growing income inequality, starkly underscoring differences between haves and have-nots.

John Blanchard

John Blanchard

Layoffs and furloughs skyrocketed. Even people who kept their jobs often had hours and wages reduced. By mid-May, more than 1 out of every 8 workers in the nine counties were unemployed. Some had gotten their jobs back  at least temporarily  thanks to a federal initiative, the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans to businesses to keep or rehire workers.

Many laid-off workers, already living paycheck to paycheck, struggled to keep food on the table. Food banks around the region scrambled to set up new drive-through distribution centers, which drew hundreds of families.

The California Employment Development Department, which handles unemployment benefits, was overwhelmed. Laid-off workers spent hours trying to get through to its log-jammed call centers and website. Federal money allowed the agency to add thousands more workers; its still hiring and training them.

John Blanchard

Rents and home prices fell from stratospheric heights. But with the cuts in paychecks, the regions housing affordability crisis saw no real improvement.

Both local and state authorities temporarily froze foreclosures and evictions, but rents would still come due eventually. That reality may have spurred the startling 7.5% of San Francisco renters who have broken their leases since stay-at-home started.

Data underscore that people truly did stay at home. Ridership on BART, buses and trains plummeted, as did car traffic and ride-hailing. Lanes were eerily empty on the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge.

Quite simply, most people in the nine Bay Area counties stopped leaving their home during (shelter in place), reducing total street activity by as much as 90% by early April, said Laura Schewel, CEO of StreetLight Data, a San Francisco transportation analytics company. Bay Area residents also sheltered in place to a greater degree than virtually anywhere in the nation, except Seattle and New York.

John Blanchard

John Blanchard

John Blanchard

There was a silver lining. Pollution fell, with far fewer emissions from cars, planes and industry. A Stanford study said the Earth will see a 7% decrease in carbon dioxide emissions this year.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

But what happens now with global warming is an open question.

The positive trend could be maintained, if we continue to reduce car commutes and increase walking and biking, she said. However, it could also be far worse in terms of carbon and congestion if we start driving instead of utilizing transit or other shared options.

Small businesses, the lifeblood of Main Street, saw years of hard work wiped out.

John Blanchard

The hardest-hit industries and businesses tend to be low margin, said Daniel Sternberg, head of data science at Gusto, a San Francisco company that helps small businesses handle payrolls, benefits and human resources. Such firms are really fragile. Many are run by sole proprietors who have little in the way of a safety net.

Its too soon to say how many shuttered businesses will never reopen, but the prospects for many are daunting. Among retailers, the shutdown accelerated the trend toward online shopping. While Amazon.com saw Bay Area sales soar 86% since Dec. 31, major brick-and-mortar chains like J. Crew, Neiman Marcus and JCPenney filed for Chapter 11. Reorganization through bankruptcy, though, may not work for small boutiques.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Southern Company Gas has named Bryan Batson executive vice president of external affairs and chief external and public affairs officer, following eight years of service as president of its subsidiaries Atlanta Gas Light and Chattanooga Gas. Pedro Cherry, currently executive vice president of customer service and operations at Southern Company Gas sister company Georgia Power, will succeed Mr. Batson as president and CEO of Atlanta Gas Light and Chattanooga Gas. Both changes will be effective Aug. 1.

In his new role, Mr. Batson will oversee external affairs, corporate communications, marketing, customer service, community relations, economic development and environmental affairs at Southern Company Gas. Additionally, he will serve as president of the Southern Company Gas Charitable Foundation, which donates millions of dollars in grants annually to nonprofits focused on the environment, economic development, energy assistance, the arts and education. He will also continue to serve on the Southern Company Gas Management Council.

Bryans leadership has seen our company through years of growth and change, and as our industry evolves, his trusted counsel will continue to ensure we can rise to whatever challenges the future may bring, said Kim Greene, Southern Company Gas chairman, president and chief executive officer. His deep roots in the energy industry will prove invaluable as we seek to further engage with our customers and communities.

Mr. Batson has more than 36 years of experience with Southern Company Gas and has held several leadership positions in commercial operations, regulatory affairs, external affairs, engineering and field operations. Under Mr. Batsons leadership, both Atlanta Gas Light and Chattanooga Gas helped herald in unprecedented periods of development in their service territories, successfully growing their infrastructure to accommodate rising demand, enhancing customer service offerings and increasing access to clean fuel for the transportation industry, said officials.

A leader engaged in communities across Georgia, Mr. Batson will continue to serve on the boards of directors for Central Atlanta Progress, the Georgia Nature Conservancy, the Regional Business Coalition of Metropolitan Atlanta, the Council for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. He also serves as chairman of the Georgia Chamber Energy and Natural Resources Policy Committee, is a member of the Technical College System of Georgia board of trustees and sits on the Atlanta Committee for Progress Community and Governmental Affairs Advisory Council. A registered professional engineer and a graduate of Leadership Atlanta and Leadership Georgia, Mr. Batson earned a bachelors degree in civil engineering from Clemson University and a masters degree in technology management from Mercer University.

Mr. Cherry, in his new role, will oversee all aspects of the companys southern operations, bringing clean, safe, reliable and affordable gas to approximately 1.6 million customers in Georgia and Tennessee. In addition, he will join the Southern Company Gas Management Council and the board of directors for the Southern Company Gas Charitable Foundation.

I am pleased to welcome Pedro into the fold, said Ms. Greene. Our customers demands continue to grow and evolve, and his diverse set of experiences will be invaluable as we seek to enhance our customer service offerings, drive innovation and maintain safety across our Southern territories.

Mr. Cherry joined Southern Company in 1997 after working as an engineer and business analyst for Carolina Power and Light Corporation, and he has held roles of increasing responsibility in finance, community and economic development, sales, customer service, operations and external affairs. In his most recent role, Mr. Cherry led more than 5,000 employees in Georgia Powers Customer Service and Operations organization, directing customer service, power delivery, sales and marketing, corporate services and regional external affairs for the companys 2.6 million customers.

Mr. Cherry, a CFA Charterholder, is a member of the CFA Institute, 100 Black Men of Atlanta and Auburns Alumni Engineering Council, and he serves on the boards of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Leadership Atlanta, Zoo Atlanta and the Georgia Tourism Foundation. Additionally, he sits on the Clark Atlanta University board of trustees, the advisory board of the North Georgia Division of Synovus and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce board of governors.

Mr. Cherry is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta, Leadership Georgia and the Atlanta Regional Commissions Regional Leadership Institute. He holds a bachelors degree in industrial engineering and a masters in business administration, focused on finance and operations management, from Auburn University.




New Delhi: Nearly two months after the demise of Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, his wife Sutapa Sikdar on Sunday shared a picture of lotuses blooming in a field and remembered how he had nurtured those flowers. Sutapa shared a picture of the blooming lotuses on Facebook and reminisced how the `Hindi Medium` actor had brought them in bottles and planted them in the field.

"The lotuses remember you, Irrfan, you took so much pain to bring them into life in bottles and create a place for them to bloom here. #rains #naturelove #alluniverseisone," she wrote in the caption.

The internationally renowned actor Irrfan Khan died in April this year at Mumbai`s Kokilaben Hospital while battling a rare kind of cancer.

The 53-year-old actor was last seen on screen in `Angrezi Medium`. He was not a part of the film`s promotions owing to his ill health.

With critically acclaimed films like `The Lunchbox,` `The Namesake` and `Paan Singh Tomar` to his credit, Irrfan was regarded as one of the finest actors in Hindi cinema.
These Confederate monuments have served as prolific messengers, blatantly spewing white supremacy in a way many who cling to the values of the Old South might not be comfortable doing publicly. It was more effective to allow the 60-foot-tall monument with a bronze image of Lee sitting on his horse say what needed to be said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 04:54:01|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned about the safety of more than 4 million civilians in northwest Syria following reports of weekend bombardments, his spokesman said on Monday.

Between Friday and Sunday, artillery shelling impacted 11 communities in Hama, northern Aleppo, and Idlib governorates, while airstrikes reportedly affected three communities in southern Idlib and northern Hama governorates, said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman.

Of the nearly 1 million people in northwest Syria who fled their homes between December and early March, some 840,000 of them reportedly are still displaced in the northern parts of Idlib Governorate and in northern Aleppo Governorate, he said. The overwhelming majority of them are women and children.

"We continue to urge all parties, and those with influence over the parties, to ensure the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, in line with their obligations under international humanitarian law," Dujarric told correspondents in a regular briefing, in which he gave an update on the pandemic in the country.

"Humanitarian colleagues there report 15 new COVID-19 cases have now been confirmed by the government, bringing the number of cases identified by authorities to 219, including 83 recoveries and seven deaths," he said.

"The UN remains concerned by the economic impact of the pandemic on millions of women, children and men across Syria, whose health care system has been decimated by almost a decade of war," the spokesman said.

Asked if the number of COVID-19 cases seemed low for a country of about 17 million people, the spokesman said, "In parts of Syria where security is an issue -- that are in conflict -- I think it would not be surprising if we had under-reporting of cases given the impact of the conflict in Syria on the health care system." Enditem
COVID-READY offers an e-learning module helping to train employees. (Photo: Hotel Resilient)

With hotels reopening after the corona lockdown, there is a lot to consider for them to protect their guests and employees as well as possible. Hotel Resilient, a spin-off from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), supports hotels around the world with its free "COVID-READY" offers. It includes hygiene and protection standards, self-audit software, an e-learning module and the possibility of certification. In mid-June, Hotel Resilients COVID-READY program has been launched in cooperation with 75 hotels in Phuket/Thailand.



The COVID-19 pandemic poses a major challenge for every country in the world. Tourism is one of the hardest hit sectors in this crisis. Travel restrictions and infection control measures led to a drastic decline in bookings; many hotels had to close temporarily. But even after the measures are relaxed, it will still be a while before tourism can return to business as usual. Travelers will remain cautious and prefer accommodations with convincing hygiene and protection concepts. Hotel Resilient, a KIT spin-off, supports large and small hotels around the world with their new "COVID-READY" offers, aiming to protect guests and employees as well as possible.



Modules: standards, software, e-learning and certification

"COVID-READY offers a comprehensive package including several modules, i. e. standards, software, e-learning and certification," explains Dr. Bijan Khazai, CEO of Hotel Resilient. "All content is free and openly accessible for hotels." The standards consist of 50 steps that cover the prevention and management of SARS-CoV-2 infections in all areas - from safe hygiene to enhanced cleaning to physical distancing to COVID-19 response strategies to new protocols signage and response plans for accommodation services and amenities such as hotel restaurants, gyms and spas.

Using the self-audit software, hotels can assess to what extent they already meet the required standards and what they can do to further improve their concepts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The e-learning module enables companies to train their employees accordingly. Furthermore, hotels can apply for a COVID-READY certification to demonstrate that they meet the standards. The latest scientific findings, international guidelines and best practices from the industry went into the development of COVID-READY. "Hotel Resilient has drawn on its extensive experience in risk-based evaluation and adapted it to COVID-19," says Khazai. In mid-June, COVID-READY has been launched in cooperation with 75 hotels in Phuket / Thailand. Hotel Resilient is already working with the tourism authorities in the Philippines, Palestine, Ecuador and Panama to support hotels in these destinations.



About Hotel Resilient

Hotel Resilient, a subsidiary of the company Risklayer, and has emerged from KIT's CEDIM - Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology. The initiative had its beginnings in a KIT as research project through a large consortium science and industry partners, and funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Bijan Khazai led a group of scientists and practitioners in developing international standards for hotels for disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change. A grant from the EXIST funding program by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy allowed Hotel Resilient to complete these standards and to develop software modules and training tools contribution to disaster resilient tourism. From this, not only the companies themselves, but also the regions and their residents will benefit.



For further information please see https://hotelresilient.org

Being The Research University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,600 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 23,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.
India can potentially reduce its yawning trade deficit with China by $8.4 billion that is equivalent to 17.3 per cent of its overall deficit in the current fiscal alone, an analysis by eigth-year old credit ratings agency Acuite Ratings and Research ltd has said.

This could be achieved by reducing imports by at least a quarter in 40 sub-sectors like chemicals, automotive components, bicycles parts, agro based items, handicrafts, drug formulations, cosmetics, consumer electronics and leather-based goods. This would not require any significant additional investments by the domestic industry, the agency said.

"Collectively, these sectors contribute to $33.6 billion worth of imports. Without any significant additional investments, the domestic manufacturing sector can substitute 25 per cent of the total imports from these specified sectors under consideration in the first phase, thereby enabling India to reduce $8.4 billion worth of trade deficit in a single year," said Suman Chowdhury, chief analytical officer, Acuite Ratings and Research.

India's bilateral trade with China stood at $81.86 billion in fiscal 2020 while trade deficit stood at $48.66 billion. China was by far the biggest importer of goods for India at $65.26 billion.

"While the imports from China have moderately declined by 15 per cent since FY18 due to imposition of anti-dumping duties on some products, the dependence of the domestic economy on Chinese imports remains high with direct contribution to over 30 per cent of India's aggregate trade deficit," Chowdhury added. "Over the past three decades, India's exports to China grew at a CAGR of 30 per cent, but its imports expanded at 47 per cent, leading to lower capacity utilisation of domestic players in a few sectors. We can consider certain measures to reduce the dependence gradually which will also have a positive impact on the Indian economy."

Substituting imported goods from China by locally manufactured products will have a positive cascading effect on the economy as equivalent quantum of revenues would not only be added to the turnover of domestic enterprises including MSMEs but also likely to translate to benefits through forward and backward linkages, better economies of scale along with cost competitiveness and importantly, enhancing the scope of employment generation, the agency said.

In the chemical industry for example, India stands to save an import bill of nearly $3 billion by opting for locally made chemicals even after excluding specialised chemicals where manufacturing capability is yet to develop. India is the world's sixth largest chemical manufacturer but the annual chemical and polymer imports are still substantial in the vicinity of over $12 billion.

Similarly, the agency said the once fledgling domestic cycle and cycle parts industry needs to be revived to bring down import worth $100 million every year from China. Recently, homegrown bicycle major Atlas Cycle shuttered its last factory in Sahibabad in the outskirts of Delhi due to lack of business viability.

"We believe that Indian industry has the wherewithal to successfully safeguard its interests and reduce India's dependency on China albeit in phases," said Sankar Chakraborti, Chief Executive Officer, Acuite Ratings & Research. "With a strategic intent and highly calibrated approach from both the government and industry, Indian economy can see a new narrative that can not only reduce its trade deficit but also kickstart the long-awaited cycle of fresh private sector investments."

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
This is the amazing moment a man shows how his 'partially artificial' heart can be seen beating through a scar left on his chest from surgery.

Phil Pankau, 36, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, films his chest revealing the beating motion created by a mechanical valve.

Footage shows Mr Pankau bare-chested with a pink scar running down the middle of his upper body as he explains the procedure he underwent to have the partially artificial heart fitted.

Phil Pankau from Cheyenne Wyoming, films his chest revealing the beating motion

'I underwent the surgery at 16 (I'm 36 now) to replace a bicuspid aortic valve that was causing a heart murmur and when that quite literally disintegrated at age 31. I had a mechanical aortic valve and an artificial aortic root put in.'

'That causes the heart to beat harder than normal (which causes me to feel it pounding constantly and hear the valve tick) which you can see all the time through my chest scar,' Mr Pankau said.

The actual cause of bicuspid aortic valve disease is not completely clear.

It is known that the two-leaflet valve develops in the early stages of pregnancy, and the defect is present at birth.
Washington, June 22 : Two persons were shot dead and 12 others injured at an impromptu block party on Monday in Charlotte, the largest city in the US state of North Carolina, officials said.

"Several shooters discharged dozens of shots into the crowd," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a statement, Xinhua reported.

Among the 12 injured, seven were hurt in the party shooting, while five others were hit by vehicles afterwards, according to the police.
Tens of thousands demonstrated at Independence Square in central Bamako, the Malian capital, on Friday to demand the immediate resignation of French-backed president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (known as IBK). It was the second mass protest for the removal of Keita this month, after tens of thousands demonstrated on June 5.

The protests have been called by the official bourgeois opposition coalition, which has named itself the June 5 Movement: Rally of Patriotic Forces, many of whose leading figures are either former government figures or supporters. The widespread and growing demand for the removal of the government in the population, however, is driven by anger over rising inequality exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the decline of social services, corruption and the governments role in sectarian killings and extrajudicial executions by security forces backed by the French-led occupation. IBK became president in 2013 and is closely associated with the French intervention in the country.

The protesters carried signs including IBK resign, The dictator will not stay, as well as banners calling for the release of political prisoners, more money for education and an end to the coronavirus. A protester, Diawara Issaka, told Le Monde: We should not be here, because there is the coronavirus. The president has promised a mask for every Malian, but no one here has received one; he is a liar. So we have come here to challenge this lie like all the others. A group of protesters with him added: We have had enough of it. We, heads of family, have not received wages for three months.

The protest in Bamako on Friday

So far 109 deaths have been confirmed in Mali and 1,933 cases of coronavirus.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters, who responded by erecting barricades to prevent the security forces from advancing.

The government had ordered the reopening of schools on June 2 despite the pandemic, but thousands of teachers boycotted school and refused to turn up. They demanded not only measures to protect teachers from the pandemic but also wage increases that had been formally announced by the government four years ago but never provided. According to the teachers unions, only 35 percent of public schools opened on June 2.

President Keita offered this week to form a government of national unity incorporating leading members of the opposition, and also pledged to provide the promised wage increases to teachers, in an attempt to defuse the growing movement. The official opposition has refused Keitas offer and on Friday reiterated its appeal for him to resign.

The leading figure in the official opposition is Islamist cleric Mahmoud Dicko. Dicko has been a leading figure in the regime for many years. Between 2008 and 2019 he led the Islamic High Council, and he supported Keitas election in 2013. In September 2019 he created an opposition movement amid rising opposition to the French occupation and to the Keita government in the population. An adherent of conservative Wahabi Islam, he had also served as an interlocutor between the government and Islamic insurgent forces.

On June 9, French media reported that Dicko had met with a group of unnamed international officials, including representatives of the United Nations in Mali (MINUSMA), from the Economic Community of the States of West Africa, and the African Union.

The French government has not made any public statements either supporting or opposing the protests against Keita. But there is no doubt that it is actively intervening to ensure the continued defence of French imperialist interests in the geo-strategically important Sahel region.

France intervened in Mali in January 2013, against separatist and Islamist forces who came from Libya in the aftermath of NATOs regime-change war in that country in 2011. It has maintained more than 4,000 troops in Mali, increased to more than 5,100 since the beginning of the year, as part of an international coalition that includes Germany, Canada, the US and the so-called G5 force of troops from Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Mali is Africas third-largest gold producer after Ghana (which is located to Malis south) and South Africa. It also borders Niger, where France has stationed military forces including drone bases and from where it sources the majority of its uranium supplies required for nuclear power production in France.

In February, the Macron administration announced a significant escalation in the intervention, increasing the number of French troops in Operation Barkhane from 4,500 to 5,100, some of them being deployed to fight directly alongside the G5 troops.

The stepping up of the French intervention went hand-in-hand with a surge in the number of ethnic massacres and extrajudicial killings and war crimes reported by human rights groups. The French-backed government and G5 security forces are widely reported to be supporting ethnic Dogon militia in massacres of Muslim Fulaini communities, on the grounds that they are suspected of supporting Islamist forces. On March 23, 2019, a Dogon militia massacred 160 Fulani villagers, which triggered a reprisal attack killing at least 95.

A recent Amnesty International report provides evidence that the G5 security forces operating side-by-side with French soldiers are guilty of extra-judicial executions and war crimes.

Entitled Human rights violations by security forces in the Sahel, it reports at least 199 such incidents in just three months between February and April 2020, immediately after the expansion of the French-led intervention.

It cites the example of a reprisal attack carried out by security forces against an entire town following the killing of 20 soldiers on January 26 by Islamist groups. Malian soldiers intervened one week later in the town Kogoni-Peuhl on February 3, killing one herder and arresting two others. A witness stated, When the soldiers arrived, they started shooting. Many villagers fled, those close to the mosque sounded the alarm and many others fled to the bush.

In another incident, on February 7, in the village of Massabougou, security forces combed houses, arrested 22 people, and executed eight on site. A witness stated: They arrive around 5pm shooting in the air, and arresting villagers. Many people fled or stayed in their houses after the soldiers arrived. They combed the houses, extra-judicially executed eight villagers and took the rest with them when they left.
RADNOR, Pa., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

Richard Di Donato, Individually and On

Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated,



Plaintiff, v.



Insys Therapeutics, Inc.; Michael L. Babich;

Darryl S. Baker; and John N. Kapoor,



Defendants.

No. 16-cv-00302-NVW



CLASS ACTION

SUMMARY NOTICE OF (I) PROPOSED SETTLEMENT WITH DEFENDANT

DARRYL S. BAKER; (II) SETTLEMENT FAIRNESS HEARING; AND

(III) MOTION FOR LITIGATION EXPENSES

TO: All persons and entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Insys Therapeutics, Inc. ("Insys") common stock during the period from March 3, 2015, through January 25, 2016, and were damaged thereby ("Class"). Certain persons and entities are excluded from the Class as set forth in detail in the Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement between Lead Plaintiff and Defendant Darryl S. Baker dated May 22, 2020 ("Stipulation"), and the Settlement Notice described below.

PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY;

YOUR RIGHTS WILL BE AFFECTED BY A

CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT PENDING IN THIS COURT.

YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED, pursuant to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and an Order of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona ("Court"), that the Court-appointed Lead Plaintiff and Class Representative Clark Miller ("Class Representative"), on behalf of himself and the Court-certified Class in the above-captioned securities class action ("Action"), has reached a proposed settlement of the Action with defendant Darryl S. Baker (the "Settling Defendant"), for $2,000,000 in cash that, if approved, will resolve all claims in the Action against the Settling Defendant only. Please Note : This settlement does not resolve any of the claims asserted against the other defendants in the Action and those claims are still being litigated.

A hearing will be held on September 23, 2020, at 1:30 p.m., before the Honorable Neil V. Wake at the Sandra Day O'Connor United States Courthouse, 401 W. Washington St., Phoenix, AZ 85003, Courtroom 401, to determine whether: (i) the proposed Settlement of the Action with the Settling Defendant should be approved as fair, reasonable, and adequate; (ii) the Action should be dismissed with prejudice against the Settling Defendant, and the releases specified and described in the Stipulation (and in the Settlement Notice described below) should be entered; (iii) the proposed Plan of Allocation should be approved as fair and reasonable; and (iv) Class Counsel's motion for litigation expenses should be approved.

If you are a member of the Class, your rights will be affected by the pending Action and the Settlement of the Action with the Settling Defendant, and you may be entitled to share in the Settlement Fund. This notice provides only a summary of the information contained in the detailed Notice of (I) Proposed Settlement with Defendant Darryl S. Baker; (II) Settlement Fairness Hearing; and (III) Motion for Litigation Expenses ("Settlement Notice"). You may obtain a copy of the Settlement Notice, along with the Claim Form, on the website for the Action, www.InsysRXSecuritiesLitigation.com. You may also obtain a copy of the Settlement Notice and the Claim Form by writing to the Claims Administrator at Insys Therapeutics, Inc. Securities Litigation, c/o A.B. Data, Ltd., P.O. Box 170999, Milwaukee, WI 53217; by calling toll free 1-866-905-8102; or by sending an email to [email protected]

If you are a member of the Class, in order to be eligible to receive a payment under the proposed Settlement with the Settling Defendant, you must submit a Claim Form postmarked (if mailed), or online, no later than September 12, 2020 , in accordance with the instructions set forth in the Claim Form. If you are a Class Member and do not submit a proper Claim Form, you will not be eligible to share in the distribution of the net proceeds of the Settlement of the Action with the Settling Defendant, but you will nevertheless be bound by any releases, judgments, or orders entered by the Court in the Action.

Any objections to the proposed Settlement of the Action with the Settling Defendant, the proposed Plan of Allocation, and/or Class Counsel's motion for litigation expenses, must be filed with the Court and delivered to Class Counsel and Settling Defendant's Counsel such that they are received no later than September 2 , 2020 , in accordance with the instructions set forth in the Settlement Notice. As this Class was previously certified and, in connection therewith, Class Members had the opportunity to exclude themselves from the Class, the Court has exercised its discretion not to allow a second opportunity for exclusion in connection with the settlement proceedings.

PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT, THE CLERK'S OFFICE, THE SETTLING DEFENDANT, OR SETTLING DEFENDANT'S COUNSEL REGARDING THIS NOTICE. All questions about this notice, the Settlement of the Action with the Settling Defendant, or your eligibility to participate in the Settlement with the Settling Defendant should be directed to the Claims Administrator or Class Counsel.

Requests for the Settlement Notice and Claim Form should be made to the Claims Administrator:

Insys Therapeutics, Inc. Securities Litigation

c/o A.B. Data, Ltd.

P.O. Box 170999

Milwaukee, WI 53217



1-866-905-8102

[email protected]

www.InsysRXSecuritiesLitigation.com

All other inquiries should be made to Class Counsel:

KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER

& CHECK, LLP

Johnston de F. Whitman, Jr., Esq.

280 King of Prussia Road

Radnor, PA 19087

Telephone: (610) 667-7706

Facsimile: (610) 667-7056

-and-

Jennifer L. Joost, Esq.

One Sansome Street, Suite 1850

San Francisco, CA 94104

Telephone: (415) 400-3000

Facsimile: (415) 400-3001

[email protected]

www.ktmc.com

DATED: June 22, 2020 BY ORDER OF THE COURT

United States District Court

District of Arizona

SOURCE Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP

Related Links

http://www.ktmc.com


Libya's GNA Says Sisi's Offer to Train, Equip Local Tribes Amounts to Declaration of War

Sputnik News

18:12 GMT 21.06.2020(updated 18:27 GMT 21.06.2020)

CAIRO (Sputnik) - Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA), one of the country's two rival political administrations, released a statement on Sunday rejecting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi's offer to provide Libyan tribes with military help and amounting it to a declaration of war.

"The Libyan state recalls that interference in its domestic affairs and attacks on its sovereignty, whether via statements of certain states in media, as in the case with Sisi, or via support of revolutionaries and groupings is rejected, reproached and considered an aggressive and rude intervention and amounts as well to the declaration of war," the GNA press service said a statement obtained by Sputnik.

In its statement, the GNA established itself as the only legitimate representative of the Libyan state with the exclusive authority to "determine the form and type of agreements and alliances."

On Saturday, Sisi said that Egypt had an internationally legitimate right to intervene in Libya and told the army to be prepared to fight abroad, should the need arise. The Egyptian president also said that the Libyan east-based House of Representatives was the only legitimately elected one among Libya's power entities and offered to help Libyan tribes resist foreign intervention by training and equipping them.

The UN-backed Libyan government further called upon the international community to take responsibility for the present escalation, warning that any interference in Libya's domestic affairs would lead to "unprecedented destabilization of the region."

Since the onset of Libya's political disarray in 2011, the GNA has established itself as the power pole in the country's west with the centre in Tripoli, while the rival Libyan National Army (LNA) took control over the east with the centre in Tobruk, where the House of Representatives has also settled.

On 6 June, Sisi had a meeting with LNA commander Khalifa Haftar, and, following the meeting, announced the so-called Cairo Initiative which set conditions of a political settlement and stipulated that Libyan warring parties ceasefire on 8 June. The initiative was supported by Russia, the United States and several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while Turkey and the GNA rejected it.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Eldar Janashvili  Trend:

Currently, the banks do not apply any new rules regarding the implementation of foreign currency exchange transactions, Trend reports on June 22 referring to the Azerbaijan Banks Association.

In this regard, no document on the new procedures has been received from the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, the association added.

The banks, amid the relevant restrictions within the quarantine regime in the country, continued to uninterruptedly serve the citizens following the recommendations of the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers, while some newspapers and social networks spread rumors on new restrictions by the banks regarding currency operations within the new requirements of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, the association said.

Presently, in accordance with the measures taken to combat the shadow economy and ensure transparency, the banks fully ensure the implementation of functions assigned to them upon the current legislation, the association said.

"Our citizens, following the requirements of the quarantine regime established by the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers, may use the currency exchange operations in any bank within the current legislation fully, without any additional restrictions and obstacles," the association said.
The Hamilton film trailer has been released online.

Disney is bringing the beloved musical to screens a year earlier than planned following a deal reportedly worth $75m (58m).

Filmed in New Yorks Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2016 over the course of three performances, the film will feature the original Broadway cast.

Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton tells the true story of the American revolution and the invention of the US financial system, seen through the eyes of ambitious politician and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

In the musicals original run, the role of Hamilton was filled by Miranda himself. Other cast members included Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr and Phillippa Soo.

You all have that friend that is like, I saw it with the original cast, said Miranda in an interview with Variety. Were stealing that brag from everyone because youre all going to see it with the original cast.

The show first won acclaim for its fusion of hip-hop and pop showtunes, its racially diverse casting, and its educational merit. Hamilton transferred to Londons West End in 2017, earning even more plaudits.

The film was originally scheduled to be released in cinemas on 15 October 2021, but will now be unveiled via Disney+ on 3 July.

Disney brought the release forward in an attempt to lift peoples spirits amid the pandemic.
Back in February 2019 I wrote you a letter to warn you of the possible threat to our democracy, by our recently elected populist president.

Unfortunately, what I predicted is now a reality. Our president is openly against the separation of power between three branches of government, as we all witnessed this past February when he militarized our Congress. Since then, he has violated any kind of human rights and established military blockades in several cities, with army and police behind his back, ignoring our Congress, Supreme Court and General Attorney.

You should also be aware of our presidents allegiance with the MS, and other gangs, evidently following presidential orders under a dark agreement. Also to worry, is another creepy allegiance with drug cartels, possibly giving their northbound operations a safe haven in our nation.

To make matters worse, our presidents handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous. A complete lack of cooperation with medical experts; a sad division with the private sector; physical absence from ground zero; childish behavior; unilateral, improvised, useless and expensive decisions and decrees, and a total absence of transparency.

All this is happening under the blind eye of Ronald Douglas Johnson, your current ambassador, always smiling next to our president, never raising a flag against clear violations of our democracy and human rights: founding principles of your nation, and under constant threat in ours. We sincerely hope there is no obscure agreement with your Embassy as well.

Please be aware that if El Salvador falls into the populist trap, following the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan disasters, no wall will be able to stop the Salvadorian exodus into your nation. I strongly suggest your government takes immediate definite actions in order to prevent this flow, and help us safeguard our democracy, starting with the nomination of a stronger ambassador, or the return of Jean Elizabeth Manes, your former representative in our country.

Do not forget the China threat. Dont be fooled by our presidents profile picture on Twitter, with your flag in the background. Once his dictatorship in the making falls into place, an agreement to sell our nation to Xi Jinping could threaten your national security.

We also need a strong ambassador for the sake of transparency. Never in our history, have we had a president with so many billions of debt under his belt. Mauricio Funes, former president under political asylum in Nicaragua, is accused of a $350 million embezzlement. Antonio Saca, another former president, is in prison for another $350 million default. Nayib Bukele has access to $3,000 million, with no expense justification whatsoever, all under your current ambassadors nose.

Yes, we are on the brink of disaster, but with your help, we can save democracy and turn the tide. Improve education and health care, restart our economy and generate opportunities for all.

Too much Salvadorian blood has fallen for the sake of democracy. We do not need populist presidents and weak ambassadors; we do not need corruption and hate; what we need is transparency hard work, and to remain faithful to our founding principles: GOD, UNION and LIBERTY, waving in our nations flag.

Please help us Make El Salvador Great Again.

Yours truly,

Jose Afane MD.
Ukraine is doing its best to ensure that a Normandy meeting could take place soon.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine has used the Minsk platform to call for a ceasefire in Russia-occupied Donbas amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"We've appealed through the Minsk platform to call for a ceasefire. Much more important challenges exist today. Consultations are being held on this issue now. We spoke with Germany and France about this  those were the first countries where we had the first international visits of delegations after the announcement of the quarantine. This suggests that for us it is very important," he told The Globe and Mail in an interview the Ukrainian version of which was shared by the press service of the Office of the President.

Read alsoZelensky says he had no time to choose "to trust or not to trust" Putin

"Now we have changed the approach to the Minsk process, our delegation [in the Trilateral Contact Group] includes people who not only listen and speak, but also make decisions, because they are civil servants at the level of the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, the level of deputy ministers of our government," he said.

He assured that the Ukrainian side was doing everything to ensure that a meeting in the Normandy format could take place in the coming months.

"With regard to assistance, we are sending humanitarian convoys to the other side, humanitarian supplies from the Red Cross [the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC] as well. Unfortunately, that side does not listen to and does not open access for most cars of OSCE representatives. However, as you said, we still believe (in peace through diplomacy)," he said.

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on June 1 that Russia could not be returned to the G7 until Ukraine's territorial integrity has completely been restored. We are grateful for this support. Pressure on Russia should be put by the entire world  otherwise there will be no result," Zelensky added.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  After years of failed attempts, advocates for nursing home residents this year won approval of legislation that allows families to install surveillance cameras in residents rooms.

The measure, backers say, will help prevent abuse or neglect and aid investigations into misconduct at long-term care facilities, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

It allows people to peek into what is going on each and every day, said Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE, a Creve Coeur-based nonprofit that pushed the legislation with support from AARP and the Missouri Coalition for Quality Care.

The passage is also timely, they said, after recent reports revealed COVID-19 swept through dozens of Missouri nursing homes and residential care facilities, killing at least 300 people and infecting more than 1,400 others.

But to win passage, backers of the camera bill had to compromise with the Missouri Health Care Association, or MHCA, the states chief nursing home industry group.

The MHCA had long lobbied against the video camera measure, citing concerns any footage could be released out of context and violate residents and employees privacy. But this year, the issue gained traction after COVID-19 closed facilities to visitors, said Rep. Andrew McDaniel, R-Deering, who has sponsored similar legislation since 2015.

To compromise, the bill now prohibits footage from being released without permission from both the resident or the residents family and the nursing home operator, with an exception for officials investigating abuse or neglect.

McDaniel said getting the bill passed was a struggle, given the industrys early opposition. They werent really happy, but they ultimately saw this coming and wanted to get ahead of it, he said.

Ann Bickel, vice president of the Missouri Coalition for Quality Care and a former legislative aide, said it was a miracle the bill passed the Legislature because the industry has had great influence in Jefferson City. They have for many years.

With 15 lobbyists, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, the MHCA is one of the most politically engaged industry groups in the state. A review of campaign finance records shows the organization, as well as some of its biggest members, have been generous contributors to many of the states top leaders.

Among them: Gov. Mike Parson, who on Dec. 11 attended a St. Louis fundraiser that generated more than $145,000 from 31 donations from the nursing home industry for his political action committee, Uniting Missouri. Afterward, Parson traveled to Washington, D.C., on a plane belonging Rick DeStefane, owner of Reliant Care, which operates 22 facilities across Missouri.

Parson has until mid-July to sign the bill.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers have moved to shield businesses including the nursing home industry from COVID-related lawsuits.

Moore, the VOYCE executive director, said while the highly contagious virus caught nursing homes off guard, it has also spotlighted long-standing issues within the industry: staffing shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment, and poor communication with residents and families, issues that may have contributed to the virus spread.

A lot of the things that are happening with COVID are worse versions of things that are happening . when you talk about staffing shortages, communication problems . none of this is new, Moore said.

Though legislation limiting COVID-19-related lawsuits against nursing homes and other businesses died in May at the end of the annual legislative session, Parson signaled at a news conference this month the topic would be on the agenda of any special session he might call later this year.

Im not interested in a bunch of people taking advantage of the good, hardworking people trying to do a job, the Republican said at a news conference. If we have a special session, that will be part of the discussion.

Parson also has insisted the December fundraiser didnt influence his thinking on whether to limit lawsuits against nursing homes.

No, it has nothing to do with that, he said.

Donations

While Parson has been a prominent beneficiary of nursing home industry support, hes hardly the only one. Others have included State Auditor Nicole Galloway, who is Parsons likely Democratic opponent in the November election, former Govs. Eric Greitens and Jay Nixon, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, House Speaker Elijah Haahr, House Majority Leader Rob Vescovo, former Attorney General Chris Koster, Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, and Rep. Cody Smith, chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee.

Parson got his first contribution in 2009 when he was running for state senator. In that year, he received $3,000 from the then newly formed Long Term Care Leadership PAC, which received $85,000 from the MHCA. The treasurer of the LTCL PAC formed the Missouri Health Care Association PAC in 2011, which in that year received $287,500 from the MHCA and made more than 160 contributions to political campaigns totaling $240,881.90.

From 2015 through 2018, the Missouri Health Care Association PAC gave a total of $423,743 to dozens of candidates and committees, including its only contribution in 2018: $1,000 to Parsons campaign.

Two PACs formed in 2017, DSV and RQC, have made similar donations to dozens of candidates. Both PACs are largely funded by the MHCA, as well as a handful of nursing homes and attorneys contributing $300 or less. Last year, RQC PAC made 48 contributions totaling $84,950, to recipients including Uniting Missouri and American Dream. DSV made 39 contributions totaling $67,600 to many of the same candidates.

The two PACs each contributed $5,000 to Uniting Missouri at the Dec. 11 fundraiser.

While the PACs have given to Republican candidates in greater amounts, theyve also supported Democrats. Galloway for Missouri, for example, received $2,500 from the MHCA PAC in 2016; RQC gave $1,000 to Galloway in 2017; and the DSV PAC contributed $2,600 in 2018.

MHCA reported spending $329,767 in nondeductible lobbying expenditures in 2017, according to federal tax filings of the most recent year in which tax filings were available. The association also listed $39,772 in legislative expenses. The group spent $296,357 on lobbying efforts in 2016.

Another industry group, the Missouri Assisted Living Association, also operates three PACS _ the Missouri Assisted Living PAC, Residential Care Facility PAC, and the MO Residential Care-PAC _ that also similarly made contributions. Those three PACs have given a total $29,525 since 2017, including $3,000 to the campaign accounts of Parson and $1,000 to Kehoe.

Among other influential nursing home industry donors are a handful of businessmen who own some of the largest nursing home chains in the country.

For example, DeStefane, the nursing home owner who flew Parson to Washington, personally gave Uniting Missouri $4,000 at the fundraiser. He also donated $2,600 to Parsons campaign in 2018 and gave $5,000 to Kehoes American Dream PAC in October of last year.

He has previously given thousands to other candidates personally or through Reliant Care and other businesses he owns.

DeStefane was a longtime business partner of Joseph Shepard, the husband of former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and a former co-owner in Reliant Care. The Reliant network of nursing homes reports annual revenue of $200 million, according to DeStefanes personal website.

In 2017, Reliant paid $8.3 million to settle claims of Medicare fraud. Two of the companys St. Louis area nursing homes were recently targeted by protesting workers represented by the Service Employees International Union after they were forced to quarantine for two weeks without sick pay after testing positive for COVID-19 at the homes.

Another major political donor is Health Systems Inc. owned by James Lincoln. Through Health Systems, Lincoln has given since 2016 a total of $444,500 to candidates and political action committees, including $25,000 in 2019 to American Dream. In 2014, Lincolns RehabCare Group, which included Health Systems Inc., paid $30 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging it paid kickbacks to gain access to Medicare and Medicaid patients in Missouri nursing homes.

A Post-Dispatch investigation on May 10 detailed how COVID-19 swept through a Franklin County nursing home the company owns, killing residents and infecting dozens of others, as employees working overtime hours scrambled to contain the virus.

Another company, Northport Health Services Missouri LLC _ also making contributions as NHS Management _ has donated thousands to Parson and currently high-ranking Republicans, including $10,000 at the Uniting Missouri fundraiser in December, as well as previous Democratic candidates for statewide office including Koster and Nixon. The company, owned by Norman Estes, owns 50 nursing homes across four states, including Missouri.

Haahr, the House speaker, acknowledged the industrys contributions but denied they have influenced legislation.

Theyre a fairly organized organization, Haahr said of MHCA. I think the nursing homes are as organized as any of the other groups in the Capitol. . They certainly have a pretty robust individual organization.

He said, No ones donations to me impact how I handle their legislation.

Former Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, said the industrys No. 1 issue is maintaining an adequate Medicaid reimbursement rate for nursing homes.

Its very influential, Engler said. The nursing homes are organized about as well as any industry because they know that they have things that affect them, especially the (Medicaid) reimbursement rate.

My parents were in nursing home for years, Engler said. I get it. If they have to cut down the number of staff and stuff, then my parents get worse care. You know, so you want them to be profitable so the cares there but not real profitable so that theyre making huge amounts of money.

Agenda

The MHCA, which represents more than 300 residential care facilities in the states, defends its active courtship of state lawmakers, saying the industry represents an essential part of the overall health care system _ something the pandemic helped underscore.

This truly is an `all hands on deck situation, Nikki Strong, the groups executive director, said in a lengthy email. We cannot beat this virus alone. Its time to rally around our seniors and our health care heroes who work in long term care facilities.

Long-term care facilities have taken every precaution against the virus, but it has spread through asymptomatic staff taking close care of a vulnerable population, Strong said, pointing to recent analysis by Harvard Medical School and Brown University that determined a homes location and size are predictors of an outbreak, and not homes quality ratings.

Even before COVID-19, nursing homes in the state have been operating on a razor thin profit margin, and fighting COVID-19 has only increased costs, costing the industry an estimated revenue loss of up to 23%, Strong said.

The MHCA did not oppose the camera bill this year, but assisted the sponsor in dealing with the many technical and legal issues including federal patient privacy laws, Strong said.

The MHCA did not organize the December fundraiser Parson attended, Strong said. But the MHCA actively lobbies and supports campaigns of those persons who support our members and the residents, be they elderly, disabled, behavioral or veterans, she said.

We want to bring a pragmatic approach to ensuring each of these Missourians have access in their community to quality long-term care services. There are many competing interests at the state Capitol, and most of them are well-intentioned; however, we believe caring for these senior, disabled and behaviorally disordered citizens should be very high on the list, and look for legislators who share that vision.

Immunity

Brett Emison, president of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, which opposes sweeping COVID-19-related litigation restrictions, said his group understood the need for narrowly tailored protections for workers on the front line of a pandemic that we havent seen before.

But what we dont want to see is (protection for) a nursing home that may have been chronically understaffed, inefficient in the care that they were giving, that was exposed when this virus hit and suffered just tragic, tragic consequences for its residents and their families, he said.

But Strong worries that nursing homes, which have already been roiled by the pandemic, will become convenient targets for trial lawyers.

It is disgusting to hear some of their rhetoric since COVID-19, Strong said in a lengthy statement. I am not suggesting that a provider that didnt provide adequate care shouldnt be held accountable. Our front-line health care providers are heroes who are working around-the-clock to protect Missouris most vulnerable from this virus.

Sen. Scott Sifton, a Democrat who supports some limits on coronavirus-related litigation, said MHCA contributions to his campaign account dont color his thinking on issues that affect the industry.

On the industrys political contributions to dozens of candidates, Sifton said, It shows engagement in the discussion of policy by some, but youre not going to hear me suggest that theres untoward influence or anything improper about the industry advocating for its point of view on things.

Sometimes they get their way, and sometimes they dont, he said. Sometimes they should and sometimes they shouldnt.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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
LONDON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The world's most popular single toy, celebrating 40 years since it became a global phenomenon, is inviting fans to participate in the world's 'most viewers for a Rubik's Cube solving lesson live stream on YouTube' on Thursday June 25 2020. The free to enter digital event will be hosted by the renowned speedcuber, Maryland USA-based Keaton Ellis, aged 22, who will host the event on Rubik's YouTube channel .

Rubik's brand CEO, Christoph Bettin, speaking from the London headquarters said, "While the Rubik's Cube is phenomenally popular, played by more than one billion people, we know that many struggle to solve the puzzle, so we want to change this conundrum. What better than to have a top speedcuber give a live lesson online where anyone can participate. The fact that we are likely to break a Guinness World Records title too is an added bonus."

Those wishing to join in the fun are encouraged to join the live stream on Rubik's Youtube channel where they will see details of the live digital event taking place at 8:00 PM UK-time on Thursday June 25. Participants can register here for an event reminder.

The event is aimed at complete beginners but participants are encouraged to look at the solution guides that can also be downloaded from the Rubik's website .

Christoph Bettin added, "There were 9,024 new 'how to do the Rubik's Cube' tutorials posted on YouTube between June 1 2019 and May 31 2020. In addition, there has been exceptional interest in solving the cube during the lockdown period as the popularity in puzzles generally has soared."

To Participate

Join the live stream on Rubik's YouTube Channel here .

If you would like a reminder, you can register here in advance. Please visit the Rubik's website (www.rubiks.com) for further information.

The event will take place globally at 8:00PM (UK time) on Thursday June 25 2020 and is free for all participants.

Local times:

UK - 8pm // ET - 3pm // CT - 2pm // PT - 12pm // Germany, France, Netherlands (CET) - 9pm

Rubik's website and social links:

Rubik's Website: https://www.rubiks.com

Rubik's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubiks_official

Rubik's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rubiks_official/

Rubik's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RubiksTV

Rubik's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rubiksofficial

About Rubik's

What started out as a puzzle created by Professor Erno Rubik to teach architectural students has evolved into the world's most successful single toy, perceived globally as an art form and also an iconic symbol of intelligence and problem solving.

In 1980, the Rubik's Cube was officially introduced to the world. Now in its 40th anniversary and led by CEO Christoph Bettin, 450 million Cubes have been sold to date with 2020 set to be a breakthrough year with over 20 million Rubik's products expected to be sold globally. Adding to the excitement of the anniversary year, Rubik's has formed several partnerships to create brand new and unique Rubik's themed games and puzzles. These include Etch-A-Sketch, The Op, Perplexus, DeKryptic and Marvin's Magic.

Within the USA, You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube program typically places cubes into the hands of half a million students every year, helping them learn critical STEM and STEAM concepts.

About Guinness World Records

Guinness World Records (https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/) inspires people - individuals, families, schools, teams, groups, companies and communities - of any age, in any city or country.

The organisation believes that inspiration comes from reading, watching, listening to and participating in record-breaking.

The people at Guinness World Records don't define or recognise success in a conventional or limited way and therefore draws upon the entire range of superlatives to help people realise their potential and to re-examine the world.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1193995/Rubiks_Cube_Guinness_World_Record.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1193996/Rubiks_Logo.jpg
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Bagus Aditya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020

President Joko Jokowi Widodo said in May that the COVID-19 curve must be flattened by any means necessary so the economy could restart in June. Still, the economy is not likely to snap back the minute businesses start reopening. Many corporations will hold on to their capital and decline to invest in their business lines for fear of a second crisis.

Meanwhile, the government is trying to offer reassurances that the omnibus bill on job creation, currently under deliberation at the House of Representatives, will help make things much easier for businesses and by default, will boost investment.

But it is not clear how quickly the House can approve this bill, as the nation and the government are preoccupied with the war on COVID-19. The House is now in recess and its next session starts in mid-June.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
* Number of COVID-19 cases in Latam surge * Brazil's Bovespa down 1.3%, Mexico's IPC off 0.7% * Mexico's peso, Brazil real up as dollar weakens * "Best of Latam FX rally" likely run its course - JP Morgan (Recasts throughout, updates prices) By Susan Mathew June 22 (Reuters) - Key Latin American stock indexes fell on Monday as the surging number of new COVID-19 cases in the region sparked fears of further lockdowns that could deepen economic pain. Taking no solace from the rise on Wall Street, Brazil's Bovespa index broke a four-session winning streak, down 1.3%, while main stock indexes in Mexico and Chile both lost more than 0.7%. Argentine stocks fell for a fourth session in five. More than a quarter of the 183,000 new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide on Sunday were from Brazil, the World Health Organization said. Brazil is the second worst-hit country after the United States, and has frequently over the last month recorded more than 1,000 deaths a day. Coronavirus-related deaths in Mexico have exceeded 20,000, while Chile, the world's largest copper producer, has ramped up safety measures at some of its biggest copper mines as the country logged nearly 247,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,502 deaths due to COVID-19. Chile's peso traded flat on Monday despite a rise in copper prices. A weak dollar aided gains in other Latam currencies with Mexico's peso up 0.8%, while Brazil's real firmed 1% after ending Friday with its biggest weekly loss since late April. FX strategists at JP Morgan said "the best of the Latam FX rally has likely run its course." "Signs of a second wave makes us more nervous that Latam can continue to enjoy its balance of payments sweet spot for much longer. We therefore expect a much bumpier third quarter that will need a much more tactical approach," they said in a note. Problems in Brazil such as political uncertainty, continued concerns over fiscal needs and the scope for more policy rate cuts than priced by the markets should again start to dominate price action for the currency, the JP Morgan strategists said. MSCI's index of Latin American currencies is down about 18% this year, having recovered about 10% from year-lows hit in May. Its stocks counterpart has gained around 42% since March lows, but still remains down about 33% for the year. Later this week, investors will be watching a central bank meeting in Mexico. A Reuters poll expects the bank to cut its key rate by 50 basis points to 5.00% as it attempts to help the economy out of a health crisis-induced recession. Colombian markets were closed for a local holiday. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1930 GMT: Stock indexes Latest Daily % change MSCI Emerging Markets 999.88 -0.15 MSCI LatAm 1937.13 -0.15 Brazil Bovespa 95359.32 -1.26 Mexico IPC 38125.24 -0.73 Chile IPSA 3993.92 -0.82 Argentina MerVal 40116.05 -2.04 Currencies Latest Daily % change Brazil real 5.2670 0.94 Mexico peso 22.4860 0.65 Chile peso 816.5 -0.13 Peru sol 3.505 -0.12 Argentina peso 69.9700 -0.24 (interbank) (Reporting by Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Some 146 persons who tested positive for COVID-19 in the Central Region have fully recovered.

Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Akosua Owusu-Sarpong, briefing stakeholders on the status of the disease in the Region, said 9,570 of the 11,754 specimen sent to the various testing centres came out negative.

Results for the remaining were yet to be ready, she told the meeting, attended by metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, heads of senior and basic schools, regional and district health directors, the police and heads of department and agencies.

It was to establish a clear cut operational instructions for the re-opening of basic and senior high schools.

Dr Owusu-Sarpong said the patients were being treatment at designated health facilities including the Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital, Trauma Specialist Hospital at Winneba, and the Ajumako Hospital.

The rest are the Dunkwa-On-Offin Hospital, Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, and Pentecost Convention Centre. Others are also being treated at home.

The Cape Coast Metropolis has the highest number of confirmed cases of 169, followed by KEEA  104, Mfantseman  74, and Awutu Senya East  67.

The Assin North has eight, Gomoa East  six, Ajumako  22, Agona West  six, Gomoa West-22, Ekumfi-five, Agona East  six, Twifo Atimokwa-11, Upper Denkyira East-27, AOB  four, Assin Fosu  33, Assin South  four and Gomoa Central  two.

Dr Owusu-Sarpong said the Directorate continued to receive personal protective equipment from the Government and other benevolent organisations and individuals, which they distribute to the various health facilities.

She said the GHS would continue to engage the various stakeholders in ensuring that the safety protocols were adhered to through radio discussions and community information centres among other mediums.

Dr Owusu-Sarpong said the GHS had begun engagement with District Directors of Education and schools on the measures to be instituted before re-opening.

She said all senior high schools had been linked to specific health institutions with nurses to monitor their activities for quick intervention if the need arose.

She called for enhanced routine surveillance in the schools to swiftly handle any suspected case.

She noted that many people did not wear nose masks when in public and cautioned that the only way to prevent getting infected was to adhere strictly to the protocols.
Bogota:

Colombian voters delivered a huge setback to President Juan Manuel Santos by rejecting a peace deal with leftist rebels by thin margin in a national referendum. The referendum has enhanced President Santoss problems as he had vowed to keep a cease fire in place and push ahead on his campaign of peace to end a half-century of war.

With more than 99 percent of polling stations reporting, 50.2 percent of ballots opposed the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia while 49.8 percent favored it  a difference of less than 57,000 votes out of a total of 13 million. Pre-election polls had predicted the "yes" vote would win by an almost two-to-one margin. "I won't give up. I'll continue search for peace until the last moment of my mandate," Santos said yesterday in a televised address recognizing his defeat.

He ordered his negotiators to return to Cuba on Monday to consult with FARC leaders who were awaiting results on the communist island. He also promised to listen to opponents in a bid to save  and strengthen  the deal, which he said is Colombia's best chance for ending a conflict that has killed 220,000 people and driven almost 8 million people from their homes.

The shock outcome, comparable to Britain's decision to leave the European Union in the Brexit vote, opens an uncertain outlook for the peace accord that was signed less than a week ago by Santos and the FARC in a ceremony attended by heads of state, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Opposition to the accord, led by influential former President Alvaro Uribe, argued that the government was appeasing the FARC and setting a bad example that criminal gangs would seize on. If the "no" vote prevailed, Uribe said, the government should return to the negotiating table. But that is an option that Santos has previously ruled out. Early in the day, FARC leaders, including Timochenko and Ivan Marquez, sat in leather recliners at Club Havana, once Cuba's most exclusive beach club, watching the referendum results on a flat-screen TV.

Initially the atmosphere was festive, with the guerrillas laughing and joking while snacking on cheese-and-olive hors d'oeuvres, smoking cigars and visiting an open bar. But the mood soured as results began to come in, and the rebel commanders talked in hushed tones on cellphones, conferred quietly and asked journalists to leave the room.

"The FARC deeply regret that the destructive power of those who sow hatred and revenge have influenced the Colombian people's opinion," Timochenko told reporters later. He said the rebel group's commitment to peace remains intact. "The FARC reiterates its desire for peace and our willingness to use only words as a weapon for building the future."

The highly polarized campaign exposed how steep a challenge the government would face implementing the 297-page accord and bringing about real reconciliation. Colombians overwhelmingly loathe the FARC, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group, and many considered provisions in the accord that would spare the rebels jail time an insult to victims of the long-running conflict.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
(TNS) - Orange Countys new emergency management division chief has her work cut out for her.Lauraleigh Avery accepted the position on Monday at a time when COVID-19 cases are on the rise and the 2020 hurricane season is predicted to be an above-average year for tropical activity.This is going to be a unique year, said Avery.Shes the first woman to ever assume the role in Orange County and the first certified member to be promoted to the rank.Averys role as the emergency management chief might be akin to being a tight rope walker balancing possible tropical storm threats with the reality and implications COVID-19 presents.The 2020 hurricane season is predicted to have above average tropical activity this year between August and September. On top of that, COVID-19 cases in Orange County have surged in growth over the last two weeks.Clearly, handling the COVID outbreak on top of our hurricane activation is one of the most unique challenges. We are pushing the message to wear masks. Thats one of the challenges were having now. I think the quicker we get a handle on wearing those masks the better we will be positioned for hurricane season.Wearing masks isnt just a message Avery and Orange County are sending the public, but also Oranges employees as protecting its emergency personnel is one of its top priorities.COVID-19 has already spread among crucial workers who would be working in the event of a storm.Last week, the worlds of hurricane season and coronavirus collided at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Aircraft Operation Center where five members of its hurricane hunters team tested positive for COVID-19.For safety reasons, hurricane hunters are not required to wear face masks on the aircraft in the event that an oxygen mask is needed. Although it is unclear if the workers contracted the virus from a flight mission.Closer to home, the Orlando Fire Department had 28 firefighters test positive for COVID-19, and another 87 of its 560 member staff remain on the recommended two-week quarantine.Keeping personnel safe in the event of a disaster is as important as keeping the public safe. COVID-19 didnt change that, but it provided another hurtle. The Federal Emergency Management Agency published guidelines ahead of hurricane season to assist county leaders with how they can maximize safety standards among its personnel and citizens.Orange County has taken a number of steps in compliance with FEMAs guidelines in mobilizing its Emergency Operations Center, which is traditionally located at the Orange County Fire Rescue administration building and acts as a central nerve for Orange County officials, first responders, engineers and other community resource leaders in the event of a disaster. Community resource representatives include power companies, public transportation, theme parks, hotels and social services.The center operates in a large room, big enough for dozens of representatives working in close proximity to each other for fast communication, but with COVID-19 ramping up in Central Florida the idea of many people working closely together presents a danger.The hot topic is social distancing, Avery said.Most agencies would send four to six people to operate at the EOC. This year, only one representative will be allowed, and anyone who can work from home will be asked to work in Oranges new virtual platform where fast communication can be maintained.Emergency personnel will be required to answer a series of questions asserting their positive health as well as a temperature check every day before working.Since the start of COVID-19 Orange County has purchased and stockpiled millions of masks to keep its employees and first responders safe but also is working to distribute those masks to residents who are without.We are constantly looking at connecting people with masks and messaging that our guys are wearing masks at all times, Avery said. The last thing we want is for COVID-19 to be running rampant while a hurricane is coming. The only way we keep that under control is if everyone keeps wearing their masks.Coronavirus concerns and guidelines have also forced emergency planners to consider the extra time required in evacuating an area in the path of a storm full of residents with special needs such as an independent living facility.Safety guidelines have also required Orange to double its prepared shelter options while keeping up with social distancing.We have 42 schools in Orange County that can be used if needed. Were already prepared to double the amount of schools we usually used, Avery said. Were limiting the amount of people we would otherwise put in one room, so of course were going to need more buildings should we need more room.Orange County will also be using available hotels should a large enough storm move toward Florida. In previous storms hotels have been traditionally used as shelters for those evacuating from coastal areas.One side effect of coronavirus that could potentially affect residents during hurricane season was the cancellation of the annual hurricane expo where hurricane information guides and weather radios are distributed.So instead, OCFR firefighters while out on call ask residents if theyre in need of a guide or radio and distribute it to them personally. Orange County crisis councilors are distributing weather radios, as well. The county has distributed 1,000 radios already.Orange is also trying to notify resident of its OCFL Alert app which is a subscription-based app notifier that provides emergency information specific to a users neighborhood or area. The app has 20,000 subscribers, but the county is looking to increase the user base further is year, Avery said.Alerts could range from a boil water notice to a curfew or an incoming hurricane, Avery said. We have a great community with strong partners, and we have a responsive alert system. There are so many avenues of information. We are strong here. Whether its a hurricane or COVID-19, we see the best of people during these times, and well get through it.2020 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)Visit The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) at www.OrlandoSentinel.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
FCC Blocks Chinese-Language Radio Station Amid Propaganda Concerns

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 22 ordered a Mexico-based radio station with ties to a pro-Beijing media outlet to stop beaming its broadcasts of Chinese-language programming into the United States.

The FCC denied a license to AM radio station XEWW 690, based in Baja California Norte, Mexico, to broadcast programs into the United States due to its failure to disclose ties to an affiliate of Phoenix TV, a pro-Beijing media outlet. The radio station is owned by H&H Group USA, a New York firm with links to Phoenix TV. The latter is a Hong Kong-based broadcaster that is owned by a former Chinese military officer and has close ties to Beijing officials.

The U.S. agency gave the radio station 48 hours to halt its broadcasts.

The decision came after critics sounded the alarm that the programming could allow Beijing to air propaganda to Southern Californias Chinese community.

An FCC spokesperson said that in its application, the radio station failed to mention Phoenix Radio, Phoenix TVs radio affiliate, which has an extensive role in the operation of the California studio where the programming is made. Phoenix Radio is partially owned by two entities with Chinese government ownership: Extra Steps Investment Limited and China Wise International Limited, the FCC said.

FCC allowed the applicantswhich are the previous and current owners of the radio station, GLR Southern California and H&H Group USAto revise their application to include Phoenix Radio, and resubmit.

Phoenix TV gained a measure of attention earlier this year when President Donald Trump, during an April press briefing about the pandemic, asked a reporter from the outlet to state whether she works for a media company owned by China. The reporter, Youyou Wang, said she worked for an independent media company in Hong Kong.

While Phoenix TV is based in Hong Kong, its private in name only. Sarah Cook, a China expert at human rights group Freedom House, told the U.S. Congress in May 2017 testimony that Phoenix TV was an example of a Chinese propaganda outlet not directly owned by the Beijing government.

A 2019 report by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University said Phoenix TV is fully controlled by [the] Chinese government.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) applauded the FCCs decision, saying that Phoenix TV was waging information warfare from a radio station across the border in Mexico.

Todays decision sends an important message to the world that the U.S. will not allow China to exploit FCC loopholes and spread its propaganda over our airwaves, Cruz said in a statement. More importantly, this decision is a critical step in countering the Chinese Communist Partys efforts to control what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think.

The senator introduced a proposal last month that seeks to plug a loophole exploited by Beijing to air propaganda into the United States from radio stations in Mexico and Canada.
The travel industry was bumped off an Icarus-like perch early this year. So hard was the fall, the only words that have offered jetsetters much hope since March are the following: travel bubble.

From talk of a Trans-Tasman agreement with New Zealand to a Trans-Pacific bubble with idyllic pacific islands, not to mention the invitation extended by Greece, Australia  judging by some headlines  had its pick of half the world.

Unfortunately, last week, Qantas decision to scrap international flights (except New Zealand) until late October, and comments made by the head of Australias largest travel company on Today, cut the legs off Australians hopes for international leisure travel to return before Christmas.

However, one group of Flyabouts have just been thrown a lifeline; essential business travellers. As Scott Morrison confirmed on Thursday on 2GB Radio, although Australias borders will remain shut until at least mid-September and likely into 2021, theres at least one type of traveller who will be allowed to come and go.

I think there will be the opportunity for Australians to engage in essential business travel, he said.

Morrison also pointed out there was already some leeway for business travellers at the moment, provided the quarantine arrangements are put in place when they return, but suggested it could soon become even easier.

We are just looking to be as practical as we can about this and open up the economy as much as possible because that is what is going to get the jobs back.

He also said a small group of international students will be allowed to test Australias quarantine measures in July.

The situation for leisure travellers, on the other hand, remains bleak. As we reported last week, when the National Press Club asked coalition Senator Simon Birmingham about when overseas trips would be an option again for pleasure, he suggested it is more likely than not Australians will be banned from overseas travel until 2021.

I hope that we can look eventually at some of those countries who have similar successes in suppressing the spread of COVID to Australia and New Zealand, and in working  with those countries, he said.

But I do, sadly, think that in terms of open tourist-related travel in or out of Australia, that remains quite some distance off, just because of the practicalities of the volumes that are involved and the need for us to first and foremost keep putting health first.

Asked if he was really talking about a travel ban until 2021, Senator Birmingham replied: Honestly, I think that is more likely the case.

Read Next
ALBANY  Some Capital Region hospitals have begun to lift visitor restrictions while others are holding off after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced last week that hospital visits could resume with certain precautions in place.

Albany Medical Center, St. Peter's Health Partners, Ellis Medicine in Schenectady, Glens Falls Hospital and St. Marys Healthcare in Amsterdam have since loosened restrictions, allowing one visitor daily during a four-hour window in the afternoon and evening. A single visitor is also allowed during the intake and discharge process for patients undergoing same-day procedures.

Visitors must be 18 or older and undergo symptom and temperature checks upon arrival. Once inside, they must wear a mask and practice hand hygiene. Additional personal protective equipment may be required if the patient has a known or suspected infection such as COVID-19 that is easily spread.

We understand the separation of patients and their loved ones during this unprecedented time has caused significant stress and anxiety, for both patients and for our colleagues," said Michael Finegan, president of acute care for St. Peter's. "We remain committed to ensuring a secure environment of care for all, and look forward to welcoming visitors back to our facilities in a responsible, safe manner.

The loosened restrictions come more than three months after many hospitals imposed strict visitation rules to combat the spread of COVID-19 and two months after the state outright suspended most visits. Compassionate exceptions were and still are allowed for patients near the end of life as well as laboring mothers, sick and injured children, and individuals with developmental disabilities.

Latest coronavirus-related cancellations, postponements

The latest coronavirus numbers in NY

Sign up for the Times Union coronavirus newsletter

Visiting hours Find your hospital's newly expanded visitation hours, along with a link to their full policies, below: Albany Medical Center: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details)

4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details) Ellis Medicine: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. or any time for emergency department patients. (More details)

4 p.m.-8 p.m. or any time for emergency department patients. (More details) Glens Falls Hospital: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details)

4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details) St. Mary's Healthcare: 1 p.m.-5 p.m. for Guy Park Hospital location; 3-7 p.m. for Acute Rehabilitation Unit on the Memorial Campus (More details)

1 p.m.-5 p.m. for Guy Park Hospital location; 3-7 p.m. for Acute Rehabilitation Unit on the Memorial Campus (More details) St. Peter's Hospital: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details)

4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details) Samaritan Hospital: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details)

4 p.m.-8 p.m. (More details) Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital: Visitation is by appointment only, between the hours of 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., by calling 518-382-4500. (More details) See More Collapse

Full coronavirus coverage

In May, as it became clear coronavirus cases had peaked statewide and were on the decline, Cuomo  noting the psychological distress many patients and loved ones felt as a result of no-visitor policy  announced he was implementing a pilot program that would test out expanded visitations at 21 participating hospitals statewide. Albany Med was among those participants, and allowed a single visitor between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m. so long as they underwent symptom screening, temperature checks, wore PPE and stayed in the patients room for the entirety of the visit.

Last week, Cuomo announced the pilot had been successful and said hospitals could begin allowing visitors under similar precautions starting June 19.

In guidance issued to hospitals last week, the state Department of Health said the facilities must notify the department at least 48 hours before resuming visitation and submit a plan for communicating their new visitor policy to patients.

Hospitals may decide when to initiate expanded visitation based on their current volume of COVID patients, staffing to screen visitors, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other resources, the department wrote.

Still, not every hospital has decided to resume visitations right away.

Nathan Littauer Hospital in Gloversville noted on its website that the expanded visitation is voluntary for hospitals, and said it has made the decision to delay opening up general visitation.
The Supreme Court order permitting the Jagannath Rath Yatra to take place has been welcomed by the Odisha government. This has been a modification of their initial stay order on the yatra in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Government of Odisha welcomes the decision to allow Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri, said the state Agricultural Minister Arun Kumar Sahoo on Monday adding that all measures will be taken to ensure safe yatra in the view of COVID-19 pandemic. On behalf of devotees of Lord Jagannath, the Government of Odisha welcomes this decision of Supreme Court.

All guidelines will be followed strictly. The state government will work with the Centre in this regard. It is our duty to look after how Rath Yatra can be conducted peacefully and safely. The state government will take all measures, Sahoo told ANI.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court on Monday modified its earlier order and allowed the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra in Odishas Puri to be held with the coordination of the temple committee, State and Central government without compromising with the health issue pertaining to COVID-19.

Also Read: India China standoff: Rahul Gandhi targets Centre again, asks why China is praising PM Modi

Also Read: BMC launches Mission Zero to combat Covid-19 in Mumbai

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde said that the apex court is only considering conducting the yatra in Puri and not anywhere else in Odisha. The apex court had earlier stayed the annual Rath Yatra at Jagannath Temple in Puri, which is slated to be held on June 23, and all activities related to the gathering in view of the coronavirus pandemic this year.

The top court today pronounced the order after hearing a batch of intervention applications seeking modification of its earlier order of staying the annual Rath Yatra at Jagannath Temple in Odishas Puri in view of COVID-19 pandemic.Supreme Court, while disposing of the pleas filed in the matter, noted that the State can stop the yatra or festivities if they feel it is going out of hand and added that it was aware of the situation and has passed the order accordingly.

Also Read: India China border issue: Rajnath Singh likely to seek Su-30 fighter jets, T-90 tanks, warships urgently from Russia

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Ahead of Fridays governorship primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo, a frontline aspirant of the party, Gideon Ikhine, has stepped down from the race for Governor Godwin Obaseki.

Mr Ikhine announced his decision to step down for the governor on Monday at a ceremony in Benin City, the state capital.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Obaseki, state party chairman, Tony Aziegbemi, and other party leaders from across the state were in attendance.

Announcing the decision, the aspirant said there was no progress without a sacrifice, adding that the governors defection to the party was Gods great answer to the party and his aspiration.

He noted that two persons could have the same vision but the means of approaching them different.

Mr Ikhine stressed that he was not actually stepping down, but stepping behind the man who would lead the party to glory come Sept. 19.

READ ALSO:

He said he and his supporters had resolved to work with the governor to ensure that a better tomorrow is achieved in the state.

Responding, Mr Obaseki said with the political situation in the state, history was being made in the country.

He noted that 21 years later in the present republic, democracy was taking a new turn as intellectuals were coming into the political process to redirect political processes and situations in the state.

READ ALSO:

The governor said he joined the PDP because he realised that PDP was Edo and Edo was PDP.

He commended the aspirant for reconciling with the party by identifying the lapses in Edo PDP and ensuring that the lapses were addressed.

Mr Obaseki noted that governance ought to be about the people and not about a few individuals.

He stressed that deceit could not be part of political structure, but about leadership.

(NAN)
A universal basic income (UBI) has long been mooted as a solution to robots taking all the jobs. Now its supporters have seized on the Government's pandemic payment scheme as evidence that we're finally ready to embrace the notion of free money for everyone - a fixed income provided by the State to all of us. No strings attached.

Our maybe government is seriously flirting with the idea. The programme for government agreed between Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Greens says: "[We will] request the Low Pay Commission to examine universal basic income, informed by a review of previous international pilots, and resulting in a universal basic income pilot in the lifetime of the government."

Lots of people are saying that UBI's day has come ever since Leo Varadkar announced that the original emergency Covid payment of 203 was being raised to 350 on March 24. It was interesting, at least, to see how much politicians think it costs to be alive and not working in this little country of ours.

The swift raising of the emergency payment showed a realisation that most people would simply find it very hard to live on the regular dole payment that we all know wouldn't cover anything close to the median rent or mortgage in a country that was shutting down and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers. But those extraordinary circumstances were always going to be temporary, and when the crisis ends, so does the payment. That's a far cry from the UBI, which is not only permanent, but also is designed to remove any obligation to look for a job.

Still UBI remains one of the burgeoning policy ideas on the modern left. It's popular among tech futurists and billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Supporters say that UBI will help ensure a more equal future, and it might sound like a dream come true for us millennials who have nothing saved for retirement (what retirement?), will never own a house and are trapped in a gig economy with no security.

Upsides to a UBI include the creation of a universal income floor to replace our social protection system with its numerous means tested programmes. However, one of the biggest downsides is also that UBI isn't means tested so that a billionaire in Ballsbridge gets the same amount as a single mom of five.

It is also extraordinarily expensive to start paying a living wage to all of Ireland and would require a massive rise in taxes to fund it. That brings us to one of the other major downsides - very high taxes. And no government should forget that if you jack up taxes the people will only try to avoid or evade them. The Laffer curve is true. If the tax rate is zero, no tax is collected. But if the tax rate is 100pc, no tax is collected either.

Results have varied from mixed to very bad in the few UBI pilot studies that have been done. A recent trial in Finland saw the government guarantee a basic income to a randomly selected group of people who were unemployed. Twelve thousand Finns were paid 560 a month. They didn't have to prove they were looking for work, and if they did find a job they still got the UBI money too.

Sadly, the trial found that while it created happier Finns, the income didn't boost employment levels. So, we learned that if the government covers essential living costs, leaving us free to decide if we want to work in order to have a better lifestyle, we don't work. Far too many of us would opt to be funemployed if we weren't going to imminently starve.

With a terrible snowballing recession from business failures and sickness waiting on the other side of lockdown, nobody can be blamed for searching frantically for solutions. But the fact is that if we were to take on UBI, we would have to offset its massive costs by basically abolishing all other welfare benefits and tax allowances. Then we'd all have the same amount of money in our pocket as we do now.

We have serious problems with income inequality and poverty here. Even back in the halcyon days of 2018, 37pc of all households in Ireland said they would be unable to meet an unexpected financial expense, defined as an emergency bill of up to 1,000, like replacing a fridge or repairing a broken down car. The CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions for 2018 found that 111,000 people living in poverty have jobs - the "working poor".

And don't forget about the Irish women doing 38 million hours of unpaid care work every week.

We need more and better quality public services that are free for those who need them. Healthcare, childcare and education are obvious examples, but transport, housing and social care are important too. When the bills for the past few months are finally paid there'll be precious little left in the Leinster House piggy bank to fund these basic services, so let's not fritter it away on unicorns.

A weekly handout doesn't promote economic equality. And Ireland shouldn't settle for hush money when we really need well funded public services.
Sudan on Sunday warned against escalation and urged further negotiations with Egypt and Ethiopia over Addis Ababa's controversial dam on the Nile.

Tensions are running high between the three countries after recent talks failed to produce a deal on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

"We do not want escalation. Negotiations are the only solution," Sudan's irrigation and water resources minister, Yasser Abbas, told reporters on Sunday.

"Signing an agreement is a prerequisite for us before filling the dam. Sudan has the right to demand it," he said.

Ethiopia has declared plans to start filling the dam next month, regardless of whether a deal has been reached.

Egypt, which views the massive hydro-electric barrage as an existential threat, on Friday urged the United Nations Security Council to intervene in the dispute, citing Ethiopia's "non-positive stances".

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in a televised address that his country had remained committed to a political solution.

"When we resorted to the Security Council... it stemmed from our keenness to take the diplomatic and political path until the end," he said.

Cairo fears the dam could severely reduce its water supply from the Nile, which provides nearly 97 percent of Egypt's freshwater needs.

Addis Ababa says the dam is indispensable for its development and insists Egypt's water share will not be affected.

The Nile is a lifeline supplying both water and electricity to the 10 countries it traverses.

Egypt says the dam threatens the Nile's flow, most of which originates in the Blue Nile, with damaging implications for its food supply and economy.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday used the Ladakh face-off incident to say that people of the country will win the two wars against China - at the border and against the virus which originated there.

We are fighting two wars against China - at the border and against the virus which came from China. Our 20 brave soldiers didnt back down. Even we wont retreat and win both the wars, he said on Twitter in Hindi.

The entire country stands together with our doctors and soldiers who are fighting on the two fronts. There should be no politics on this, he said in an accompanying video message.

          -             20               https://t.co/DaBag9jkIk  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) June 22, 2020

The statement comes as the national capital is battling a huge spike in the number of Covid-19 cases. The Centre has taken up the matter and the two governments have held a series of meetings on the issue.

The Centre and the Delhi government agreed on Sunday to revamp the action plan to control the spread of the coronavirus disease in the national capital. The focus is now on more effective containment and widening of detecting infections. The government has decided to increase surveillance at the ground.

The coronavirus cases in Delhi neared the 60,000-mark on Sunday with 3,000 more people testing positive. It was the third day on the trot that over 3,000 fresh cases have been reported. On Saturday, Delhi had witnessed 3,630 cases, the highest single-day spike here. On Friday, the number was 3,137.

A crucial meet of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) will be held on Monday.

Kejriwal, meanwhile, presented the Covid-19 situation in the national capital in a video address on Monday where he said that the testing for the coronavirus disease has been increased three times.

Kejriwal said that all those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure oxygen levels every few hours.

At present, Delhi has nearly 25,000 active cases of coronavirus while around 33,000 people have recovered from the contagion.

Around 6,000 people are currently in hospitals getting treated for coronavirus while nearly 12,000 are under home quarantine and getting treated for Covid-19.
I dont have any doubts about what the policy is but . . . I sort of, you know, understood what they were getting at, Rubio said in an interview. Its been the policy of the U.S. to facilitate a transition if its peaceful and possible. Whats not on the table, never has been and  Im pretty confident, as long as Donald Trump is president, will not be  is a negotiation on Maduro . . . his regime staying in power.
TALLADEGA, Ala. - A noose was found in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at the NASCAR race in Alabama on Sunday, less than two weeks after he successfully pushed the stock car racing series to ban the Confederate flag at its tracks and facilities.

NASCAR said it had launched an immediate investigation and will do everything possible to find out who was responsible and eliminate them from the sport.

We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act, the series said in a statement. As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all.

Wallace is the only fulltime Black driver in NASCARs elite Cup Series. On Twitter, he said the the despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and ow persistent we must be in the fight against racism.

As my mother told me today, They are just trying to scare you, he wrote.  This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.

The noose was discovered on the same day NASCARs fledgling flag ban faced its biggest challenge. The ban took effect before last weeks race near Miami, but there were only about 1,000 military members admitted into that race.

At Talladega, in the heart of the South, as many as 5,000 fans were allowed in, even though rain postponed the race until Monday and visitors were barred from the infield.

There werent any immediate reports of how many flags were confiscated or taken down at the track, if any  but the flag was present nearby. There were informal protests Saturday and Sunday alike, with cars and pickup trucks driving along nearby roads flying the flag and parading past the entrance to the superspeedway. A small plane flew overhead pulling a banner with the flag and the words Defund NASCAR.

NASCAR did not acknowledged the plane, though executive Steve ODonnell tweeted a picture of black and white hands shaking with the words: You wont see a photo of a jackass flying a flag over the track here...but you will see this. Rapper Ice Cube tweeted about the plane saying, (Expletive) him NASCAR, you got new fans in this household.

Wallace, a 26-year-old Alabama native who drives the No. 43 for Richard Petty Motorsports, said he has found support among fellow drivers for his stance on the flag. He noted that after the noose announcement.

Over the last several weeks, I have been overwhelmed by the support from people across the NASCAR industry including other drivers and tea members in the garage, he said. Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real chance and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate.

Wallaces 2013 victory in a Truck Series race was only the second in a NASCAR national series by an Black driver (Wendell Scott, 1963) and helped push him into the Cup Series, where he drives for Hall of Famer Richard Petty and is forced to scramble for sponsorship dollars.

NASCAR has spent years trying to distance itself from the Confederate flag, long a part of its moonshine-running roots from the its founding more than 70 years ago. Five years ago, former chairman Brian France tried to ban flying the flags at tracks, a proposal that was not enforced and was largely ignored.

This year was different and it was Wallace who led the charge. Over the past month as the nation has been roiled by social unrest largely tied to the death of George Floyd, Wallace wore a black T-shirt with the words I Cant Breathe at one race and had a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme at another.

Wallace, whose father is white, was not always outspoken about racism; even after Floyd was killed last month while in police custody in Minneapolis, he was not the first driver to speak out for racial equality. He has said he began to find his public voice on racism after watching video in May of Ahmaud Arberys fatal shooting in Georgia. He said he now recognizes he must not let his platform as a prominent driver go to waste.

NBA star LeBron James tweeted his support to Wallace, calling the noose sickening!

 Know you dont stand alone! Im right here with you as well as every other athlete, James wrote. I just want to continue to say how proud I am of you for continuing to take a stand for change here in America and sports!

Talladega is one of the more raucous stops on the NASCAR schedule, but the coronavirus pandemic prompted the series, like all sports, to ban or sharply limit fans for months. The scene this weekend was a dramatic departure from the Talladega norm with plenty of room for social distancing and fans asked to wear masks.

Its weird. Its eerie, said David Radvansky, 32, from suburban Atlanta, who brought his wife and boys, 3 and 6.

Radvansky, who started coming to Talladega in the 1990s when his father parked cars at races, applauded NASCARs decision to ban the Confederate flag.

I dont think theres a place for it in NASCAR, to be honest with you, the 32-year-old said. That doesnt sit well with all the good ole boys but it is what it is.

Directly across from the track, Ed Suggs merchandise tent was flying Confederate flags prominently in a display alongside Trump 2020 banners and an American flag.

Theyre doing very well, said Sugg, a Helena, Alabama, resident who has been selling an array of wares at NASCAR races for 21 years. People are disappointed that NASCAR has taken that stance. Its been around for as long as all of us have been.

I dont think anybody really connects it to any kind of racism or anything, he said. Its just a Southern thing. Its transparent. Its just a heritage thing.
Sunday Briefing: Fedor Holz Wins Summer Series High Roller

June 22, 2020

The final events of the PokerStars Summer Series took place this weekend and they threw up some fantastic results. A couple of the tournaments, including the Main Event, are still running due to being two-day events, but some of the worlds best players got their hands on a title and a significant chunk of change.

Summer Series 167: $5,200 NLHE [8-Max, High Roller], $500K Gtd

Fedor CrownUpGuy Holz is so good at poker he can win a $5,200 buy-in online event whilst retired. Is there anything this man cant do? Holz bulldozed his way through 148-opponents to bet the lions share of the $745,000 prize pool.

It appears that being based in Austria was a prerequisite for reaching the final table of this event because three of the eight finalists are registered as playing from Austria. All three of those players finished in the top five.

Russian sensation Artur mararthur Martirosian was the first finalist to lose their stack. He banked $26,055 for his eighth-place exit. British star Conor 1_conor_b_1 Beresford saw his tournament end in seventh-place for $33,656 before Lithuanias Gediminas Gedis92 Uselis fell by the wayside in sixth for a $43,476 addition to his bankroll.

nailuj90 crashed out in fifth and turned their $5,200 into $56,161 before Hungarian grinder Laszlo omaha4rollz Bujtas helped himself to the $72,547 fourth-place prize.

WATnlos scooped the final five-figure prize, namely $93,714, when their tournament ended abruptly in third, which left Joao Naza114 Vieira and Holz to fight it out one-on-one for the title. Holz claimed the victory and the $156,377 top prize, leaving Vieira to net $121,057.

Place Player Country Prize 1 Fedor CrownUpGuy Holz Austria $156,377 2 Joao Naza114 Vieira Netherlands $121,057 3 WATnlos Austria $93,714 4 Laszlo omaha4rollz Bujtas Hungary $72,547 5 nailuj90 Austria $56,161 6 Gediminas Gedis92 Uselis Lithuania $43,476 7 Conor 1_conor_b_1 Beresford United Kingdom $33,656 8 Artur mararthur Martirosian Russia $26,055

High Roller Club: $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up [8-Max], $100K Gtd

There was another superstar at the top of the payout table in the High Roller Club: $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up [8-Max] event, Ole wizowizo Schemion being that man.

Schemion topped a field of 110 entrants to scoop the $25,347 top prize. Victory wasnt an easy task, it never is in these tournaments, with several of the worlds best players navigating themselves in the top 13 spots where the $110,000 prize pool was distributed.

The likes of Sami Lrslzk Kelopuro, Pablo pabritz Brito Silva, and Andras probirs Nemeth all reached the money but fell before the final table.

Such luminaries as Bruno great dant Volkmann, Niklas Lena900 Astedt and Joni bustoville Jouhkimainen were at the final table but ultimately fell short, the latter exiting in third for a $14,964 score.

Place Player Country Prize 1 Ole wizowizo Schemion Austria $25,347 2 drupa-lucker Russia $19,476 3 Joni bustoville Jouhkimainen Finland $14,964 4 starswins :) Denmark $11,498 5 Niklas Lena900 Astedt Sweden $8,835 6 Viktor papan9_p$ Ustimov Russia $6,788 7 Bruno great dant Volkmann Brazil $5,216 8 jwall888 Canada $4,007

Some of the other notable victories at PokerStars on June 21 included:

Wazaahun  first-place in the $109 Sunday Million for $117,425

vasiokkk91  first-place in the Summer Series 142: $109 NLHE Sunday Warm-Up for $48,217

giftyra  first-place in the $2,100 Sunday High Roller For $39,235

Thomas WushuTM Muehloecker  first-place in the $1,050 Sunday Cooldown for $35,102*

Anton anteen Bertilsson  first-place in the Summer Series 147: $215 PLO 6-Max for $24,251

Parker tonkaaa Talbot  first-place in the $215 Sunday Supersonic for $22,699

Viktor papan9_p$ Ustimov  first-place in the Bigger $109 for $14,745

PokerStars Home Games now available on mobile!

It was a big day for Michael Addamo over at partypoker as he won two High Roller Club events for more than $600,000! Addamos first victory came in the $25,500 buy-in Main Event, which saw 39 players compete for a share of $1 million.

Addamo navigated his way through a star-studded final table where only the top five finishers received a slice of the seven-figure prize pool. Sergi Reixach was the unfortunate soul who burst the bubble, paving the way for a $62,000 min-cash for the remaining players.

Timothy Adams was the man who secured this sum and he was soon joined on the rail by Juan Pardo, and Pascal Lefrancois, the latter netting a $165,000 prize.

Heads-up pitted Slovenias Rok Gostisa and Addamo against each other in a fight for a huge top prize. Addamo held a massive chip lead and finished the one-on-one battle in a single hand. This resulted in the Aussie star banking $407,500 and Gostisa collecting the $265,000 runner-up prize.

Addamo went on to win the $10,300 buy-in High Roller Club Mix-Max 2nd Chance for another $204,000. He topped a field of 51 grinders to complete a stellar day. Reixach, bubble boy in the Main Event, finished second here for $130,531 to make amends for his previous shortfall.

partypoker is a happy hunting ground for Jon Van Fleet. He won the inaugural MILLIONS Online a couple of years ago and has secured several major tournament titles since. His latest triumph came in the $5,200 Big Game, which saw its $1 million guaranteed surpassed by $37,530.

Van Fleet got his hands on the $211,552 top prize after besting a final table that housed the likes of Mark Radoja, Pascal Lefrancois, Sami Kelopuro, Jans Arends, Team partypokers Kristen Bicknell, and runner-up Laszlo Bujtas. What a great result.

Check out the $100M Gtd WPT Online World Championship schedule

The biggest prize at GGPoker on June 21 went to the United Kingdoms MickeyM who won the High Roller MILLION$ $2M Gtd event for a whopping $285.986. Some 674 players made it through to Day 2 and MickeyM outlasted them all.

The top four finishers all won more than $100,000 each! Albanias NeverGambol fell in fourth for $103,588 with Cirquit of Sweden banking $145,319 for their third-place finish. The runner-up was SACKMAN69 of Canada who turned their $500 into an impressive $203,861.

Check out these other notable victories from GGPoker:

AAAAkid  first-place in the High Rollers Blade Mulligan for $116,403

Chad Evelsage  first-place in the High Rollers Big Game Hunter for $108,168*

Ami Barer  first-place in the High Rollers Blade Closer for $95,537

Farrid Jattin  first-place in the High Rollers Blade PLO $5K for $88,945

Timothy Adams  first-place in the High Rollers Blade opener for $79,845

BleyBley  first-place in the GGMasters for $71,974

YallaHabibi  first-place in the Bounty Hunters Main Event for $65,035*

Will you win one of the 54 WSOP bracelets at GGPoker this summer?
The government on Monday said it has placed an import order for five atomizer kits with GPS tracker from the UK that will be fitted into helicopters for aerial spray of pesticides to control the crop-threatening locust swarms in northern India.

Of the five, two kits will be available in September and the remaining three kits after one month of their successful testing, it said in a statement.

"These kits will be fitted into helicopters of the Indian Air Force (as agreed by them) and will be used for air operations for control of desert locusts," the agriculture ministry said.

Stepping up efforts to control locust swarms, the government has already imported 15 sprayers from the UK-based company Micron for locust control. The government had placed an order for 60 sprayers. The remaining equipment is also scheduled in due course, it said.

The supply order has also been issued for purchase of 55 additional vehicles to strengthen the control capacity. Out of these, 33 vehicles have been delivered and deployed in locust control operations, it added.

Apart from tractors and fire brigade vehicles, the government said even drones are being explored for effective control of locusts in inaccessible areas and on top of tall trees.

Already five companies have started work in Barmer, Jaisalmer, Phalodi, Bikaner and Nagaur areas, and so far 12 drones have been deployed, it said.

So far, the government said it took measures to control locust swarms in 1.14 lakh hectare area in seven states so far, out of which the control operation is in full swing mainly in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

The locust swarms, the crop-threatening migratory pest, were reported in Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Two locust swarms from the India-Pakistan border areas are reported, one each in Bikaner and Sriganganagar district, Rajasthan. And, the control operation is going on against these swarms, it said.

About 62 spray equipment are being used for the control of locust swarms, while 200 employees of the Locust Warning Organisation (LWO) are deployed for survey and control work, it said.

A control room has been established in all 10 locust circle offices and also at LWO, Jodhpur. Even beyond the Scheduled Desert Area, temporary base camps are set up, at Jaipur, Ajmer, Dausa and Chittorgarh in Rajasthan; Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh; and at Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, for effective control of desert locust, it said.

According to the ministry, the swarms of immature pink locusts with intermittent population of maturing yellow adults are currently active in Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Sri Ganganagar, Jaipur, Nagaur, and Ajmer districts of Rajasthan, Panna district of Madhya Pradesh and Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

"The immature locust is active and mobile, making it difficult to control the swarm at one location, due to which it takes four to five days to control at different locations to completely eliminate the locust population in one place. The yellow, mature adults appear tending to copulate in some areas," it said.

The situation is monitored constantly by higher authorities and needful is being done on priority basis, it added.
A Syrian doctor living in Germany has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out crimes against humanity at a prison in his war-torn country of origin, prosecutors said Monday.

The suspect, identified as Alaa M., is accused of having tortured a detainee  in at least two cases at a prison run by Syrian intelligence services in the city of Homs in 2011, said German federal prosecutors in a statement.

Alaa M. was called to the assistance of a man who had suffered an epileptic fit after being detained for taking part in a protest, the statement said.

He then proceeded to beat the man with a plastic pipe. Even after he had gone down, Alaa M. continued the beatings and additionally kicked the victim, the statement said.

The next day, Alaa M. and another doctor are said to have subjected the victim to further beatings. He later died, though the cause of death is unclear.

Alaa M. left Syria in mid-2015 and moved to Germany, where he also practised as a doctor.

Syrias civil war, which started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced nearly half the countrys pre-conflict population.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group estimates that at least 100,000 people have died from torture or as a result of horrific conditions in government prisons.

In April, the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assads regime opened in Germany.

The two defendants are being tried on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity.

Germany has taken in more than 700,000 Syrian refugees since the start of the conflict.
Amid the rising coronavirus COVID-19 cases in Delhi, the Centre on Sunday (June 21) asked the Delhi government to delineate all containment zones afresh and enumerate all households even outside containment zones. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has also asked the Delhi goverment to conduct a serological survey among 20,000 people in the national capital and associate every district in Delhi with a big hospital.

The MHA passed the instructions to Delhi government during a meeting chaired by the Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah at North Block. The meeting was attended by the Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan, Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, among others.

During the meeting, the Union Home Minister also instructed the Delhi government to send a detailed report to the Centre on every Covid death in the city. According to MHA, the instructions were given by Shah on the basis of report submitted by a committee led by NITI Aayog member Dr V K Paul.

The Home Minister instructed that the Delhi government must assess every Covid death as to when the patient reached the hospital and from where. If the deceased was earlier in home isolation, whether he/she was brought to the hospital in time must be a key enquiry. Every death must be reported to the Centre, an MHA statement said.

The statement added that Aam Aadmi Party-led government in Delhi has been instructed that all coronavirus positive cases must first go to COVID-19 centres and tose individuals who have proper home isolation arrangements do not suffer any co-morbidities should be allowed to stay in home isolation.

The MHA also instructed to delineate 242 containment zones in the Delhi afresh and monitor activities within these zones strictly.

It was also informed that a serological survey will be conducted across Delhi between June 27 and July 7 in which sample testing of 20,000 people will be done. This will help with a comprehensive assessment of the spread of infection in Delhi and assist future planning, the MHA said in its statement.
Pope Francis has called for the coronavirus crisis to lead to less hypocrisy in politics.

The pontiff said the Covid-19 outbreak has exposed divisions in society and that there is a need for less consumption and more help for the poor.

In an interview he contributed to a BBC 'Rethink' set of talks about what should happen in the wake of the disease, he said: 'This crisis is affecting us all, rich and poor alike.

'And putting a spotlight on hypocrisy.

Pope Francisf says the coronavirus pandemic has exposed divisions in society and that there is a need for less consumption and more help for the poor

'I am worried by the hypocrisy of certain political personalities who speak of facing up to the crisis.

'Of the problem of hunger in the world, but who in the meantime manufacture weapons.

'This is a time to be converted from this kind of function of hypocrisy. It's a time for integrity.'

The Pope said the rate of consumption needs to be slowed.

'Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity,' he said.

'Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world.

'We need to reconnect with our real surroundings. This is the opportunity for conversion.

Pope Francis addresses doctors and nurses from the coronavirus-ravaged Lombardy region, at the Vatican on Saturday, June 20

'I see early signs of an economy that is more human. But let us not lose our memory once all this is past, let us not file it away and go back to where we were.'

The Pope called for a different attitude to the poor.

'This is the moment to see the poor. Jesus says we will have the poor with us always, and it's true. They are a reality we cannot deny. But the poor are hidden, because poverty is bashful.

'There is such a large number of people who are on the margins. And we don't see them, because poverty is bashful. They have become part of the landscape; they are things.

'We can't settle for a welfare policy such as we have for rescued animals, which is how the poor are often treated.'

The Pope's contribution to the BBC project was provided by the Vatican in the form of an interview with with his biographer, Austen Ivereigh.
As states lift some restrictions designed to protect public health against furthering the spread of COVID-19, people across the country are wondering how to safely engage in activities this summer such as gathering with friends, traveling and going to the beach. Individual actions can help protect public health, including those most vulnerable, and Albert Rizzo, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of the American Lung Association, offers guidance to stay safe in common summertime scenarios.

Following Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention guidance and staying up-to-date on current local public health guidance from state departments of public health are critical. If you are part of a vulnerable group, such as older adults or if youre living with a lung disease including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma or lung cancer, you should continue to exercise higher levels of caution, even if local laws have become more relaxed.

Regardless of your location, it is important to continue social distancing, wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, avoid touching your face and wear a mask that covers the mouth and nose. This is how you can protect both yourself and those most vulnerable in our communities and families. Albert Rizzo, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of the American Lung Association

Travel

This summer, if youre eager to get outside of the house, the American Lung Association recommends exploring a new, local neighborhood rather than venturing far from your home.

While some countries are reopening their borders, the U.S. State Department still advises citizens to avoid all international travel due to COVID-19 with a Level 4 Global Health Advisory, the highest alert that can be issued. As for travel within the United States, while several states have significantly eased coronavirus restrictions, it is best to remain vigilant.

Everyone can still enjoy the summer months with thoughtful planning around vacations and travel, Rizzo said. Consider social distancing when planning travel, such as driving rather than flying if the reason for travel is not urgent. If you choose to stay at a hotel this summer, avoid congregating in communal spaces and keep activities outdoors.

It is important to consult state and local laws before moving forward with any type of gathering, as guidance continues to change rapidly.

If you are in a high-risk group, consider creating your own staycation. For example, have a socially distanced, travel-themed party in your backyard with a few close contacts.

Outdoor gatherings

Outdoor areas are generally safer than indoor ones. This does not mean that transmission is completely stopped outside; however, there is better ventilation, more direct sunlight, and more room for people to space out, which can help reduce transmission.

Maintaining strong social ties is beneficial for mental health, so gathering safely is encouraged, Rizzo said. It's better to go for a socially distanced outdoor walk or picnic than to gather indoors. Children can go on a bike ride together or play cornhole rather than playing contact games or sports.

While local officials continue to issue guidance around the size of outdoor gatherings, the Lung Association recommends keeping gatherings to 10 people or less, while remaining six feet apart.

Beaches and public pools

In addition to sunscreen and a towel, make sure to remember your face mask if youre headed to the beach or a public pool. According to the CDC, there is no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 can be spread to people through the water in pools, hot tubs, or water playgrounds. While a mask is not recommended in the water, it is advised to wear one when sunbathing, using a public restroom or walking along the shore at a popular beach.

Before you go to a beach or pool, the Lung Association recommends calling ahead and choosing a location where capacity is limited and social distancing is being observed. Continue to monitor the situation and be prepared to leave if social distancing is not respected. Albert Rizzo, M.D.

Enjoy summer safely

Exercising, spending time in nature and interacting with friends and family are important for overall health. If summertime activities are done with caution, it is possible to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

Rizzo suggests that if you have any questions about specific activities youd like to do, talk to your doctor to come up with a plan.
By PTI

AHMEDABAD: Veteran Gujarat politician Shankersinh Vaghela on Monday resigned from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), unhappy over his removal as president of the state party unit and cross-voting by the lone NCP MLA in the recently-held Rajya Sabha elections.

Vaghela has tendered his resignation as a national general secretary as well as a primary member of the Sharad Pawar-led party.

He had joined the NCP only in 2019, two years after quitting the Congress.

Issuing a video message after his resignation, Vaghela expressed his displeasure about lone NCP MLA Kandhal Jadeja defying the party whip and indulging in cross-voting during the June 19 Rajya Sabha polls for four seats.

The BJP had won three of the four seats while the Congress, which was hit by resignations of eight MLAs, could bag only one seat while its other candidate lost narrowly.

Such acts by an MLA of the party have disappointed me and other workers of the party, Vaghela said.

The NCP on Monday issued a show-cause notice to Jadeja for defying the party whip by not voting for a Congress candidate.

In his resignation letter to Pawar, Vaghela stated that he was unhappy with the NCP since his removal as president of the Gujarat unit a week before the Rajya Sabha elections.

He was replaced with Jayant Patel, his predecessor.

The 79-year-old veteran and former chief minister said he will honour wish of his supporters, and will remain active in public life.

Vaghela had hopped parties in his long political career. He had been with the BJP since the Jan Sangh days.

He became chief minister after splitting the BJP in 1996. In 1997, he merged his party with the Congress.

He quit the Congress after engineering defection in the party rank ahead of Rajya Sabha polls in 2017.
Three Militants Killed in Encounter with Security Forces in Kashmir's Capital City

Sputnik News

08:27 GMT 21.06.2020

New Delhi (Sputnik): Indian security forces had stepped up anti-militancy operations in Kashmir during the lockdown since 25 March. According to Kashmir police, 31 militants were killed in encounters during the month of June alone in operations in south Kashmir's twin districts of Shopian and Pulwama.

Three militants were killed in a gun battle with security forces in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, on Sunday morning. Police said, during a search operation in the Zadibal area, that the militants had opened fire on the search party. According to Kashmir police, the search operation is still going on and further details have yet to arrive.

Police had said, during a national coronavirus lockdown which has lasted three months, that 78 militants have been killed by security forces. Violence in Kashmir region had gone done after New Delhi stripped the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the past few months have witnessed a rise in gun battles between militants and security forces, allegedly as well as infiltration bids across the Line of Control  India's de facto border with Pakistan.

Kashmir has been a bone of contention between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan since they gained freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. New Delhi blames Islamabad for providing moral and material support to militant groups. Pakistan had officially announced its support for the people of Kashmir, where India had amended Article 370 of the Constitution to change the status of the region.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






The Delhi government on Sunday directed all district magistrates to ensure that the daily reported cases of coronavirus are verified within 24 hours and scale up their operations by constituting additional surveillance teams if needed

New Delhi: The Delhi government on Sunday directed all district magistrates to ensure that the daily reported cases of coronavirus are verified within 24 hours and scale up their operations by constituting additional surveillance teams if needed.

The Delhi government had on Saturday issued a revised order stating that coronavirus patients who do not have any comorbidities or require hospitalisation could opt for home isolation.

In a State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) meeting on Saturday, it was decided that the home quarantine system will continue. The decision came a day after LG Anil Baijal ordered mandatory five-day quarantine for all COVID-19 patients.

"All individuals who are positive will be referred to the COVID care centres for assessment of clinical conditions, severity of illness and presence of co-morbidities," the Delhi government order said.

In the order issued on Sunday, the government said, "All District Magistrates are directed to implement the decision of the SDMA, in letter and spirit with immediate effect through CDMO's, District Surveillance officer and all other resources available at their disposal. District Magistrates are required to ensure that all daily reported positive cases are physically verified immediately but not later than 24 hours."

"They may scale up their operations by constituting additional surveillance teams, engaging additional manpower and requisitioning additional resources proper implementation and daily reporting," it stated.
Click here to read the full article.

LONDON  The Hut Group is pumping up its white label tech business, inking a string of deals worth more than 100 million pounds to develop e-commerce sites for brands including Elemis, Burts Bees, Nuxe and By Terry.

The Manchester, England-based group said Monday that THG Ingenuity, its technology services division, has been partnering with a string of independent brands and beauty companies, such as PZ Cussons and Revolution Beauty, to build and operate their direct-to-consumer sites internationally.

THG, the owner of e-tailer Lookfantastic, Espa and Illamasqua, among other names, said it was signing these deals in order to help beauty brands large and small meet the growing online consumer demand, which has accelerated during coronavirus lockdown.

Matthew Moulding, THGs founder and chief executive officer, said the consumer shift to online continues at pace, and direct-to-consumer operations have become a necessity for beauty brands to generate sustainable long-term growth.

He said THG Ingenuitys proprietary technology helps brands to accelerate international expansion and to launch, market and fulfill their product offerings quickly. THG also offers trading and performance marketing analytics to brands so they can optimize their performance. Brands have access to, and full ownership of, all of the data gathered by THG.

THG said the partnership with PZ Cussons Beauty will see three of PZs consumer brands, St. Tropez, Sanctuary Spa and Fudge professional launch e-commerce sites in under six weeks.

It will continue the Burts Bees European e-commerce rollout, which began with a U.K. site launch in May, and launch an online business in the U.S. for Nuxe. THG will open further sites across America and Asia-Pacific for Nuxe.

THG will also be working with By Terry on brand development and strategy, content and packaging, direct-to-consumer and managed services in trade and performance marketing.

Story continues

THG allows partner brands tap into its end-to-end, proprietary direct-to-consumer technology platform; its international fulfillment and payments infrastructure; and its hosting, translations, brand development and creative content services.

It also offers its partners a pipeline of innovation and tools aimed at capturing and converting customer attention. The company said it recently filed a patent for its Foundation Finder Technology, which allows consumers to color-match from home using THGs own color card, machine learning and computer vision technology.

THG Ingenuity already counts Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Johnson & Johnson and Nintendo among the clients that use its tech and e-commerce solutions.

Similar to Farfetch, THG has an international infrastructure that includes digital content studios and event spaces, and in-house consultative and management services across trading, marketing and brand strategy.

In addition, it takes care of warehousing and fulfillment with the aim of operating and scaling retail brands. THG now operates more than 200 localized web sites and retails goods in 169 countries.

In the year to Dec. 31, the group saw sales increase by 24 percent to 1.14 billion pounds, with 66 percent of sales generated internationally. More than half of THGs sales come from its own brand products.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Brasilia, June 22 : Brazil has become the second country, after the US, to register more than 50,000 COVID-19 deaths, which came amid growing political unrest and just days after the country confirmed more than 1 million coronavirus cases.

As of Monday, Brazil registered 50,591 fatalities, with a total of 1,083,341 coronavirus cases, also the second in the world after the US, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

On Sunday, Brazil's Health Ministry announced that 641 more deaths had been registered in the past 24 hours. In the same period, it also registered more than 17,000 new infections, reports the BBC.

Brazil has recently been recording about 1,000 deaths a day, although figures at weekends tend to be lower.

Many experts believe the lack of testing nationally - some of them say the level is 20 times less than needed - suggests the overall figures could be considerably higher.

Regionally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that, of the 183,000 new cases reported globally in 24 hours, more than 60 per cent were from North and South America.

Mexico, Peru and Chile have been particularly badly hit, aside from the US, and on Sunday Argentina passed 1,000 deaths.

Latin America and the Caribbean now have more than 2 million infections.

Despite the threat of the virus, thousands of supporters and opponents of Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took to the streets in rival demonstrations on Sunday in the cities of Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Bolsonaro's decision to oppose COVID-19 lockdowns and focus on the economy has been hugely divisive, said the BBC report.

He has openly disagreed with advice from his own health ministry, arguing that the economic impact of lockdowns would be more detrimental than the health impact of the virus itself, and he retains strong backing from his supporters.

Two health ministers - both doctors - have resigned as deaths and infections have surged.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
COLUMBIA  Fully funding police body cameras, ending the practice of putting untrained officers on patrol and setting statewide standards for police tactics are part of a law enforcement reform package announced Monday by South Carolina's Republican senators.

The list of reforms follows weeks of protests across the nation after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died as a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

In South Carolina, protests for racial justice and inclusiveness have been peaceful since the first weekend, when rioters caused mayhem in Columbia and Charleston.

"I think we were all disturbed and, quite frankly, angry about the killing of George Floyd. Since that time period we have all done a lot of listening," said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey.

Calls by some protesters to "defund the police" will go nowhere in South Carolina. But there are changes that should be made on the state level to improve law enforcement, the Edgefield Republican said.

The SC LEADS Act, which stands for Law Enforcement Accountability, Duty and Standards, attempts to address gaps in policing that will have the biggest impact quickly  with the goal to both save lives and restore trust between law enforcement and the public, Massey said.

Noting the effort must be bipartisan, Massey said some of the bill's ideas are borrowed from Democrats.

"We started off with a much longer list. ... What weve tried to do is narrow this down, some of the things we think are most impactful," he said. "Were not interested in window dressing. We want to use the momentum that we have to accomplish some of those meaningful changes."

That includes funding a law that lawmakers boasted five years ago would bring transparency to violent encounters between officers and suspects, then didn't fulfill the pledge.

In 2015, two months after a bystander's video showed a white North Charleston police officer fatally shooting a fleeing Black man, Walter Scott, legislators passed a law encouraging officers to wear body cameras. While the law required state and local law enforcement agencies to adopt policies on body cameras, it specified they don't have to follow those rules until the agencies receive "full funding," meaning enough money to equip every uniformed officer.

It's led to random use of body cameras statewide, much like a 1998 law that required the videotaping of drunken driving arrests. The law made the Department of Public Safety responsible for equipping vehicles through collected fees, but 22 years later, it's unclear whether all patrol cars have video capabilities. Some of what exists may be obsolete.

Senators said the state must ensure every law enforcement agency is outfitted with both body cameras and dash-cam video equipment. How many law enforcement agencies lack body cameras is unknown, but senators estimate needing to buy $10 million worth of cameras, plus fund video storage. The state has awarded $13 million to agencies through grant applications over the last four years.

While South Carolina was among the first states to pass a body camera law, "we still have a long way to go," said Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Summerville.

Senators also want a clear set of standards statewide on officer tactics, including when police can use deadly force, a ban on chokeholds to subdue a suspect and protocols for pursuing a suspect in a vehicle. Under the GOP proposal, the Law Enforcement Training Council would set the minimum standards that each agency must adopt or face loss of money and disbandment.

Of the 315 law enforcement agencies statewide, 37 percent have 10 or fewer officers. Only 60 are state or nationally accredited, senators said.

Other parts of the plan involve no longer letting officers patrol by themselves for up to a year without training, making officers responsible for intervening when they see a colleague doing something wrong  or risk losing certification and getting charged with misconduct  and putting the State Law Enforcement Division in charge of investigating officers who kill or seriously injure someone.

The bill would also strengthen the state's ability to get rid of officers who are "problem children." Reports of misconduct to the Criminal Justice Academy are supposed to prevent people who shouldn't be officers from floating from one agency to another, but investigations can get tossed if the reporting agency doesn't cooperate and send a representative to a hearing on the complaint. The bill would mandate cooperation and attendance, said Sen. Greg Hembree, a former prosecutor.

The announcement comes a day before legislators return to Columbia to allocate the first chunk of $1.9 billion sent to South Carolina through the federal CARES Act to reimburse state and local governments for COVID-19 related expenses.

It marks their first time back in session in six weeks. They're not expected to debate anything else.

The police reform bill can't be debated on the Senate floor until after the regular session starts in January. But senators expect to hold committee meetings in the off-session. Outreach could include notifying people about hearings through local churches, Massey said.

People are protesting at least partly because they feel they haven't been heard, he said. "We want them to be heard."

Meanwhile, across the state in North Charleston, the conversation focused on a federal effort to reform policing nationwide.

Massey said he's proud that a South Carolinian is leading that charge.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., discussed the details of his GOP-led Justice Act, a 106-page package that centers on three areas: police reform, accountability and transparency.

The legislation also seeks to make lynching a federal crime and would create commissions to study and offer solutions to a broader range of challenges facing Black men and boys and the criminal justice system as a whole.

"We are doing the job that the American people should want us to do, which is to simply create an environment where officers are safer and the suspects are too," Scott said.

He also noted that resources for police will be imperative, especially when it comes to training.

Gov. Henry McMaster introduced Scott with high praise.

"What he has done is convinced others in Washington to join with him in introducing the Justice Act, which goes a long way to recognizing best practices around the country, many of which we already have in South Carolina," the governor said.

The nearly 40-minute press conference, however, was as much an effort by law enforcement to explain their own policing practices as it was a public show of praise for Scott's federal effort.

Caitlin Byrd contributed to this report.
The stepdaughter of mass killer Robert Long has revealed how he terrorised their family, including strangling her and her mother.

Long killed 15 backpackers by setting fire to the Palace Backpackers hostel in Childers, 300km north of Brisbane, on June 23, 2000 - exactly 20 years ago.

Long's stepdaughter Lauren Campbell, 34, said on Tuesday that her stepfather's violent abuse of herself and her family still haunts her to this day.

'Robert Paul Long is my Freddy Krueger. He is the one who gets me in my sleep and even when I'm not asleep,' Ms Long told The Courier Mail.

Freddy Kreuger is a fictional serial killer who wears a gloved hand with razors to kill victims in their dreams in the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film series.

The stepdaughter of mass killer Robert Paul Long (pictured) has detailed how he terrorised her family, including strangling her and her mother

Long killed 15 backpackers by setting fire to the Palace Backpackers hostel (pictured) in Childers, 300km north of Brisbane, on June 23, 2000 - exactly 20 years ago

Ms Campbell said Long would often torment her family before the Childers fire.

Long choked Ms Campbell's mother Christine while she was heavily pregnant with their daughter at least once before she gave birth in 1992, according to Ms Campbell.

Ms Campbell said Long wrapped his hands around her throat for 30 seconds, leaving her with finger marks and bruising after she tried to pull him off from strangling her mother in January 1993.

When Ms Campbell was six, Long broke into her home, fought another man, knocked over and stomped on Ms Campbell's mother and picked up Ms Campbell, took her outside and choked her on the lawn.

'He had me on the lawn there and he just started strangling me,' Ms Campbell said.

'He never said anything during the attack. I was in a bit of a daze. I don't even know who interrupted us.'

Long's ex-partner and mother of his daughter Christine Campbell (pictured) was regularly choked and strangled by her ex-husband, according to one of her daughters

Ms Campbell likened her father to fictional serial killer Freddy Kreuger (pictured), who uses a gloved hand with razors to kill his victims in their dreams in the Nightmare on Elm Street series

Long was arrested shortly after and Ms Campbell was found to be bleeding from a wound under her nose with a large bruise on her shoulder.

Ms Campbell said Long slashing his wrists in horrific acts of self harm was a common sight for her during her childhood.

The last time Ms Campbell spoke to her stepfather was on a night when their caravan set on fire in Darwin in 1997.

Ms Campbell and her mother believe Long set the caravan on fire but he was never charged over the incident.

The stepdaughter is now pleading with the parole board to keep Long in prison after serving his minimum term.

The drifter, now 56, lit the fire in a bin in the lounge of the hostel (pictured) while 88 people were inside, having spoken earlier that evening of his desire to 'bash' a backpacker

Long received a life sentence with a 20-year non-parole period for killing 15 backpackers after starting a fire in the Palace Backpackers hostel in 2000.

The drifter, now 56, lit the fire in a bin in the lounge of the hostel just after midnight while 88 people were inside, having spoken earlier that evening of his desire to 'bash' a backpacker.

He was convicted in 2002 of killing 15 people, but found guilty of murdering only two of the victims - Australian twins Stacey and Kelly Slarke.

Long has now served his minimum term and could be back on the streets in just weeks if an application for parole is granted.

Sisters Lauren Lewicki and Kate Smith, who were among 69 others to survive the inferno, said they will never stop fighting for Long to be kept behind bars.

'We just 100 per cent believe the punishment doesn't the crime. It's shocking that he could be out. It makes us really worried,' the sisters, who now live near Perth, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'How can you justify killing 15 people and attempting to murder 69 people? It just doesn't fit.'

Sisters Lauren Lewicki (pictured, left) and Kate Smith (right), who were among 69 others to survive the inferno, said they will never stop fighting for Long to be kept behind bars

Ms Lewicki, Ms Smith and other survivors made submissions to the parole board, who will decide if Long will walk free.

The sisters said Long deserves to stay in prison and die behind bars.

'We'll never stop fighting. What about those parents who will never see their children again? We'd never get over it if we didn't do everything we could to keep him locked away,' Ms Lewicki said.

The fire also killed seven backpackers from Britain, two from the Netherlands, another Australian and one each from Ireland, South Korea and Japan.

The regional mayor of Isis Shire - which covered Childers at the time - said he hoped Long could stay behind bars for the rest of his life.

'It's not something you expect to happen particularly in a small country town like this but it keeps bringing back the fact that without Robert Long, this would have never have happened,' former mayor Bill Trevor said.

A fireman is pictured running from the scene of the fire (pictured) in the early hours of June 23, 2000

A painting of the 15 young backpackers who died in the fire which was unveiled in the restored Childers Palace Memorial (pictured)

'l'll truly never understand how someone could do what Robert Long did and particularly wait downstairs to make sure the place was on fire.

'It's one of the most despicable acts that I think another can do to a human being.'

Long had fled the scene of the fire but five days later was tracked down by police - who he lunged at with a knife.

An officer shot him in the ear - at which point the murderer mistakenly said: 'I'm dying anyway, I started the fire.'

His confession was scrawled down on a $10 note by a police officer as he had nothing else to hand.

A prominent lawyer said police only levelled two murder charges against Long in case he was acquitted - at which point he could then be charged with murdering the other victims.

The attorney-general called for Long to spend a minimum of 25 years in jail but the appeal was refused.

Christine Campbell, Long's ex-partner and mother of his daughter, said she was abused and stalked by the 'psychopath' for years.

'It's like putting a caged lion, and he's locked up, and when he gets released, he will do it again,' Ms Campbell told A Current Affair.

The gutted interior of the Childers hostel (pictured). Long is eligible for parole almost two decades after he torched the 100-year-old building

Ms Campbell said Long is 'jealous of everyone and everything,' and called for him to never be released.

'He should stay in jail for the rest of his life, that's what I think should happen, and never, ever get out... to prevent him from doing anything else, because he will,' she said.

Survivor Richard Tempest was inside the Palace Backpackers during the inferno, and was forced to crawl on his stomach through thick black smoke to escape.

Mr Tempest believes Long should be hit with additional murder and attempted murder charges for the other 13 lives.

'15 young lives in their twenties and thirties, you know travelling and working, just having fun and having their life experiences, and they're just taken away. How can somebody just do that?' he said.

'What about the other 13? You have done 20 years, life, for those two, start the next sentence now for the next 13, and the attempted of 70.'
Credit: Joana Carvalho, 2020

A group of scientists from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC), led by Luis Moita, discovered that a hormone that has been pointed out as a treatment for obesity reduces the resistance to infection caused by bacteria and is a risk factor for sepsis. The work developed in collaboration with researchers from France, Germany and South Korea was recently published in the scientific journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Sepsis is a potentially fatal illness that derives from a deregulated response of an organism to an infection, leading to organ malfunction. A study recently published in the scientific journal The Lancet estimated that in 2017 sepsis affected 49 million people and 11 million people worldwide have died. With the aim of expanding knowledge about this disease, Luis Moita's team at IGC investigated whether the hormone known as GDF15 (growth and differentiation factor 15) could play a role in sepsis. This hormone has the specificity of being widely studied by several laboratories and pharmaceuticals as a treatment for obesity.

"We've discovered a critical effect of GDF15 on infection, which is relevant because this hormone increases in many common diseases, like obesity, and pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases," explains Luis Moita.

IGC researchers measured GDF15 levels in blood samples from patients with sepsis, under treatment in intensive care units, and compared these levels with the ones of healthy individuals and of patients diagnosed with appendicitis. Results have shown that sepsis patients had increased levels of GDF15 when compared with the other groups, and that the high levels of the hormone were correlated with mortality.

The research proceeded with the study in mice that didn't had the GDF15 gene. The results obtained revealed that mice survived better to a bacterial abdominal infection that resembles sepsis in human patients, suggesting that the hormone plays a role in sepsis. Subsequently researchers studied what was causing the increased survival rate in mice that didn't had GDF15. They noted that these mice were able to substantially recruit more white blood cells for the abdomen, specially neutrophils, better controlling locally the infection and preventing it from spreading rapidly to the rest of body.

"At a time when many pharmaceutical companies and groups are considering using GDF15 as a complementary therapy for obesity, it's important to have in mind that this therapeutic strategy could increase the risk of severe infection, including sepsis," Luis Moita warns.

Regarding the results of this research work, IGC researcher says that "they raise the possibility that the inhibition of GDF15's action, perhaps using a blocking monoclonal antibody, could work as a new complementary therapy for sepsis, helping to control severe local infections and preventing it to become systemic and life-threatening."

Finding new therapeutic strategies to fight sepsis is essential for saving lives.

Explore further How do humans survive infections? Study pinpoints the role of a key hormone
To the Times:

I wanted to let go of The Crusade to Erase, Christine Flowers most recent distortion of fact and logic, but it wasnt possible. There is just so much wrong in that one piece that it demands a response.

Flowers is suggesting that removal of a statue of Frank Rizzo on Thomas Paine Plaza (of all places) is somehow a destruction of history. It is not. Zenos Frudakis, the creator of the statue, expressed his relief that it came down, noting that statues are just symbols. Actual history resides in documents from the past, including peoples words and descriptions of their actions. That is the real stuff of the past, and no one is suggesting that the historical records of Frank Rizzos career be destroyed.

It is the total disconnect between Rizzos disgraceful record and a celebratory, hero-like bronze image that led to the statues removal. It was the city governments agreement with protesters that the statue symbolized Philadelphias hypocrisy: Calling itself the city of brotherly love and then celebrating a man who was anything but loving toward any brothers who did not agree with him.

Christine Flowers tried to use George Orwells words against the protesters, but by inviting us to think about Orwell and his book 1984, Flowers actually reminds us that Rizzo was precisely the sort of unlawful autocrat who Orwell was warning against.

In June, 1973, the United States District Court in Pennsylvania ruled, in Farber v. Rizzo, that Philadelphias mayor had willfully ignored a legal restraining order and ignored the Constitutional right to free speech and free assembly when he set police wielding truncheons on a crowd of citizens peacefully protesting the Vietnam War on, yes, Independence Mall. He wanted the space cleared because President Nixon, master practitioner of racial division, was making an appearance in Rizzos town. Sound familiar? Of course it does. President Trump denied in an interview with FOX News that he was quoting a racist southern sheriff in saying when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Oh, no, he told the interviewer; he was quoting Mayor Rizzo, who he admires as a tough leader.

Flowers offered not one scintilla of actual historical evidence that Rizzo was a mayor who helped make Philadelphia a great city. She claims the statue should stand because Rizzo was the only Italian Catholic to hold the most important seat in municipal politics. Removal of the statue was, she says, an implicit attack on my mothers heritage. Really? Havent Italian Americans spent decades trying to erase the stereotype of Italians as violent? You really want to wrap your arms around a mayor who, literally, packed a truncheon in his tuxedo cummberbund, just to show how tough he was? Thats the guy whose bronze body and Mussolini-style raised arm you want as the symbol of Italian American history? Please, Ms. Flowers, look deeper into that history.

Italian-American politicians were not always hostile to black people. Indeed, Italians were not always Italians. In the early decades of the 20th century, when shared poverty often meant shared neighborhoods, African Americans lived next to immigrants who thought of themselves as Sicilian, Lombardi, Tuscani  not as Italians. These peoples from the factionalized region called Italy were mistreated in those years of massive emigration to the U.S. They were called awful names, accused of importing organized crime  the much-feared, mythical Black Hand  and, most importantly, were distrusted for their darker skin.

Some racist leaders asked if people from Italy were really white. The practical answer was: Yes. They were white because they always had the right to vote, could marry any white person they wanted to marry, were not segregated from other whites in the military, and could move to a white, middle-class neighborhood if they had the money. In that way, Italians were able to follow a different path than blacks, a path out of poverty and segregation. Ironically, it was the need to coalesce to resist prejudice that caused immigrants children to think of themselves as one ethnicity: Italian.

Still, Italians racial equality was sufficiently in doubt that a very strict quota on Italian immigration was part of the deeply racist legislation of 1924 which sought to protect America for white people. Heres where Italian American political history  not the culture  took a strategic turn toward aligning with white supremacy. During the decades when Italian Americans had to face the racial insult of being virtually excluded as immigrants, their political leaders had a choice to make: Continue to be supporters of blacks at the workplace and in public life or demonstrate their whiteness by joining the racist mainstream? They chose the latter, time and again, in city after city. In neighborhoods, labor unions, and political organizations Italian Americans assured their status as white people by aligning with whiteness. When Frank Rizzo told his supporters to vote white, that call carried a long historical tail of anger that Italians whiteness was ever questioned in immigration law.

No, Ms. Flowers, taking down Frank Rizzos statue is not an act of erasing our institutional history. No one is throwing out the records of Rizzos administration or the books (celebratory and critical) that have been written about him. Taking down the statue means facing history and deciding that Philadelphia, home of the Declaration of Independence, the City of Brotherly Love, does not want to celebrate, on Thomas Paine Plaza, a man who violated the principles put forth by William Penn, Thomas Paine, and so many historical figures in our Museum of the American Revolution.

As for forcing a private business owner to paint over the mural of Rizzo  yes, you have a point there. Attacking private property is not consistent with our principles of free speech. Maybe the whole column should have focused on that? But suggesting you might start a campaign to remove the Paul Robeson mural proves you are missing the whole point: This is not about removing images of those we disagree with. It is about removing celebrations of men who have used force and violence to enslave black people and threaten Americans right to free speech and free assembly.

Victoria Brown, Havertown
New York, June 22 : Democratic Party's former Vice President Joe Biden is holding his lead over US President Donald Trump in opinion polls and even increasing it in some as the COVID-19 pandemic and the national movement against police brutality against African Americans and racism challenge the incumbent's leadership.

The latest Fox News poll taken showed Biden, who is assured of his party's nomination to take on Trump in the November 3 election, ahead by 12 per cent -- 50 to 38 per cent. The poll was taken June 13 to 16.

But his lead was two per cent less than a CNN poll taken from June 2 to 5 that showed Biden ahead by 14 per cent -- 55 to 41 per cent.

The Quinnipiac poll taken around the same time as the Fox News poll showed only an eight per cent lead for Biden and an Economist/YouGov poll, also around the same period, had Biden leading by nine per cent.

However, the RealClear Politics averages of several polls showed Biden's leads over Trump steadily increasing from 6.8 per cent on June 1 to 9.5 per cent on Friday.

In terms of optics, Trump had a setback over the weekend with his campaign reboot rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, did not draw the expected crowd of supporters raising questions about the depth of his support.

The 19,000-seat stadium for his first campaign rally since March was not filled and organisers cancelled an outdoor rally because not enough people turned up.

It was not clear if it was a diminution of supporters as several media critical of Trump reported that the Chinese social media, TikTok, was used to sabotage the turnout for the Trump rally.

These media reports said that a campaign on TikTok had Trump opponents signing up for the rally in large numbers to keep out his supporters.

After getting tickets they did not attend the rally, depriving some Trump supporters of attendance.

The leftist Democratic House of Representatives member, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes, admitted the role of the Chinese-owned social media, tweeting to a Trump campaign official, "Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok." The incident draws attention to the possibility of China influencing the presidential election through its social media assets as Russia had in 2016, but using US socialAmedia.

Biden has been holding a lead, starting September 4, when the RealClear Politics charting of the aggregation of Trump versus Biden polls starts with a 9.9 per cent lead for the Democrat, and his lowest lead was down to 4 per cent in mid-January.

Among individual polls, one by CNN in mid-January and another by Public Policy Polling in late March had shown Biden with a 17 per cent lead.

Democratic Party leaders have warned against complacency citing the 2016 experience when the party's candidate Hillary Clinton lost after leading in polls and in popular votes because of the way the US election system is set up.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who is from Biden's home state of Delaware, told Politico, "I think the easiest way to ensure Trump's reelection is to be overconfident. Too many Democrats are looking at national polls and finding them encouraging." "Too many Democrats assumed that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in and didn't vote or didn't work," he added.

Another sign of potential trouble for Trump is Biden's lead Trump in four swing states which the president had carried in 2016.

The states, which are called battleground states because neither party locks down the voting, play an important role in the election's final outcome.

Trump has a slender 0.6 per cent lead in only one, North Carolina.

The battleground states have a crucial role because popularity in opinion polls or even votes polled nationally do not always translate into an election victory as the president is elected indirectly through the electoral college made up of delegates representing the presidential candidates whom the voters elect in reality.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton received 2.1 per cent more votes nationally than Trump, but was defeated because in the electoral college Trump had 304 electors to her 227.

It operates like Indian parliamentary elections where the number of Lok Sabha seats do not accurately reflect the popular votes because of how the supporters of various parties are unevenly distributed.

In yet another warning sign for Trump, his overall job approval rate is a negative 12.4 per cent -- 55.3 per cent disapproving to 42. 9 per cent approving -- and even lower at a negative 13.3 per cent on his handling the COVID-19 pandemic, according to RealClear Politics averages.

Two factors that could play an important role in the outcome of the election are the anti-police brutality and anti-racism protests sweeping the US and the COVID-19 pandemic and both parties are counting on them.

Democrats expect both to help Biden, the protests energising the party base and the pandemic raising questions about Trump's competence.

Republicans count on the fallout of the anti-racism protests helping Trump due to surging crime and demands to remove memorials for the nation's founding fathers like George Washington because they had owned slaves.

Trump said at his Saturday rally, "The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrating our monuments, our beautiful monuments, tear down our statues." Trump backers also hope that re-opening the economy as COVID-19 restrictions are loosened without infections reaching the catastrophic levels seen in mid-April and progress is made on a vaccine,Aas the president hopes.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
NAWANSHAHR:Five cases were positive, including four from Canada, Delhi, Bihar and UP

Today, after five patients recovered, the total number of active cases was 10

Out of 416 samples' results received in the district late last night and this evening, 411 were found negative while four persons, one each from Canada, Delhi, Bihar and UP and a woman from the district, were found positive. At the same time after the discharge of five patients from the district on their recovery from the hospital, the total number of active cases in the district has come down to 10.

Giving this information, Civil Surgeon Dr. Rajinder Bhatia said that out of these positive cases, Harkanwal Singh (24), a resident of Mehtapur, had returned from Canada on June 14 and was kept in a state isolation facility at KC College. Similarly, Davinder Kumar, 60, of ward no 15, Balachaur, returned from Delhi on June 15 and was confined to his home. Of the other three, Bineshwar Mehto was in touch with another migrant Amarnath, who tested positive a few days ago and is from Bihar. He was living at a tubewell room outside the village in Ratanda. The second case is that of Narendra, who was a contact of a Punjab police official found positive a few days back. Similarly, the third case is that of Amandeep Kumar, who came from UP to Rail Majra.

He said that with these five new cases, 123 positive cases have been reported in the district so far while 20 cases pertaining to other districts / states were different and were not included in the district by the government.

According to Bhatia, so far 7840 samples have been taken in the district out of which results of 324 are yet to be received while 7081 have been found negative.
Synopsis:

This Article will talk about the international legal grounds pertaining to the detainment of the Indian Army Soldiers by the Chinese Army after the clash that took place between the two nations in the Galwan valley in the Ladakh region. The article will discuss whether the international law allow this detainment by the Chinese Army or if they will be held liable for this.

India is already in mid of a Pandemic which has caused huge damage to the life and economy of India with the total number of coronavirus Cases reaching 400,560 and the death toll stands at 13,021. While India is dealing with this situation, another situation has arisen in the Ladakh region of the contested border known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China. Tense military face offs between the armies of both the countries have been taking place since April in the Galwan valley and along the Pangong lake located in Ladakh region. In a major setback to India, it was reported that 20 Indian soldiers were killed on 15th of June in a savagery border clash with the Peoples Liberation Army in the Galwan valley.As a matter of shock, it was reported that 10 Indian Soldiers have been detained by the Chinese Army who were refusing to set them free.

This border skirmish between China and India is not the first time that China has adopted an increasingly forceful approach in asserting territorial claims along Indias periphery. When the Chinese President Xi Jinping visited India in 2014, Chinese soldiers entered into Indian claimed territoryin Ladakh without authorization.

Agreement between India and China:

China and India have signed border agreements in 1993, 1996 and 2005, which law down the activities which arenot allowed, and which are allowed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the 2 nations.The LAC is a notional line that runs for 4,000km from the high Himalayas in the west to the extreme east of India. It is an unmapped, contested territorial demarcation which awaits political resolution. India and China have claim lines along this mountainousLine of Actual Control and bothhave actively asserted their presence through their border patrols. An uneasy but relatively stable status quo has prevailed since 1993, when the two nations signed off on a peace and tranquillity agreement.

The first agreement was signed in September 1993 to maintain peace along the LAC and reduce aggression both the sides.It is based on five principles:

mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each others internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, and with a view to maintaining peace and tranquillity in areas along the line of actual control in the India-China border areas.

To avoid a full-scale war between the 2 nations and achieve the goals set in the first agreementthe detailed protocols were defined in the second agreement signed in1996. This agreement bars the soldiers from both the nations from using firearms on each other. Section (1) of Article VI of this agreement states that neither side can open fire guns or use explosives within two kilometres of the LAC. It cannot be said that the Chinese sides violated the agreement as they didnt fire shots but used weapons like stones, sticks studded with nails and wrapped with barbed wire. Indian soldiers respecting the agreement were not carrying any firearms with them.

Can China detain those Indian Soldiers?

International humanitarian law aims at limiting the effects of armed conflict for humanitarian reasons. Under International humanitarian law war crimes means:

Members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention. Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. Taking of hostages.

India and China are parties to other treaties as well regarding the exchange of detainees. India has an Agreement on Repatriation of Detainees with Bangladesh and Pakistan. Signed in 1974, this was to make further progress in the process of reconciliation and normalisation among the countries of the sub-continent. China too in 1995, welcomed the agreements on the exchange of detainees and prisoners of war during a debate in the UN Security Council on the situation in Tajikistan and along the Tajik-Afghan border.

According to Article VI and VIII under the 1996 Agreement on the Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field along the LAC in the India-China Border Areas, in case the personnel of one side in the border areas cross over to the other side then,

The side having discovered it should promptly contact and notify the other side. The personnel crossing over to the other side shouldtake measures to return to their own side. The side where the personnel fallsshall provide all possible assistance to him and ensure their earliest possible return.

In this case, Chinarefusal to release the captured Indian soldiers after the skirmish that took place in Galwanwas a departure from the precedents as in 2013, when a Chinese officer fell off a cliffafter a standoff, he was rescued and handed over by the Indian Army to the Chinese army as per the per border patrolling protocol.

Conclusion:

The situation between India and China regarding the detainees softened only after external affairs ministers of both the nations spoke to each other. The photographs of the captive Indian soldiers were displayed at the major general level meetings which helped to secure the release of the personnels.As told by the sources, the soldiers were not mistreated by the Chinese staff.



Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"





Join our Telegram group

Join our Whatsapp group

"Loved reading this piece by Archit Uniyal Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"

Tags : others
The Luminaries

Rating:

Lost Pyramids Of The Aztecs

Rating:

Flashback, as a method of bridging time and filling the viewer in on a narrative, can be a highly effective method in film.

If overused though, it can be frustrating, confusing and downright annoying.

In new BBC drama The Luminaries, the time-jump trick was constantly employed to the point where it started to fry your brain.

The first of six episodes opened with Anna Wetherell (played by Eve Hewson) running along a beach in the dead of night.

Eve Hewson, as Anna, wasnt called upon to do much more than stare and pout in the opening episode

Her clothes were in rags, a man lay dead, and what appeared to be liquid gold, rather than blood, was oozing from her wounds.

Nine months prior to that, Anna, a bold Irish woman travelling alone to New Zealand to seek her fortune at the height of the gold rush, stood on the deck of a boat where she met prospector Emery Staines (Himesh Patel). He invited her to meet for a drink at his hotel after their arrival. She never showed.

Instead, she hurried to her own lodgings but on the way encountered Lydia Wells (Eva Green), a bewitching brothel owner and fortune teller who stole Annas purse knowing it would mean she had no choice but to work for her as a prostitute.

Nine months prior to that, Anna, a bold Irish woman travelling alone to New Zealand to seek her fortune at the height of the gold rush, stood on the deck of a boat where she met prospector Emery Staines (Himesh Patel)

Based on the Man Booker Prize- winning novel, author Eleanor Catton adapted her work for TV and made drastic changes from what was a complicated, 832-page oeuvre divided into 12 parts and centred around signs of the zodiac and celestial charts.

If the plan was to make it easier to follow, then it failed. The mystery and mysticism that dominated the book had been chipped away but there was still too much unfathomable talk about astral twins and cosmic fingerprints.

Hewson, as Anna, wasnt called upon to do much more than stare and pout in the opening episode, and if Emery Staines really was  as we were led to believe  her astral twin, her soulmate and her destiny, then there was precious little chemistry between them in the one scene they shared.

The excitement of the gold rush, the dangerous characters it attracted and the hot, dusty, dirty towns they inhabited were all conveyed well.

Shot on location in New Zealand, the scenery was beautiful, its just a shame that the story was an unfathomable mess.

By contrast, trying to work out how on earth the Aztecs built pyramids 700 years ago with no metal tools, horses or wheeled vehicles was a doddle.

In part one of Lost Pyramids Of The Aztecs (Channel 4), American archaeologist David Walton wanted to know how this ancient civilisation had managed to build an entire city (in what is now modern-day Mexico City) with a 60-metre high pyramid  Templo Mayor  at its centre.

They may have been primitive and brutal, but the Aztecs engineering skills were extraordinary, and so Walton and Mexican archaeologist Lucas Cantu set about attempting to build a replica pyramid of their own  albeit a scaled-down version.

With no alphabet, the Aztecs made incredibly detailed drawings that showed every aspect of their life, from what they wore and ate to how they carved stone and carried it.

In part one of Lost Pyramids Of The Aztecs (Channel 4), American archaeologist David Walton wanted to know how this ancient civilisation had managed to build an entire city (in what is now modern-day Mexico City) with a 60-metre high pyramid  Templo Mayor  at its centre

Volcanic rocks were quarried using chisels made from rock and glass and the huge slabs were lugged in baskets by porters who walked for days carrying the 40kg or so stones.

David and Lucas had to cheat and use metal tools in order to lay the foundations and first layer of their pyramid, which they were rather chuffed with.

I think the Aztecs would be pleased, said David. I think (if the drawings were any indication), theyd have sliced his heart out and offered it to the Gods.

Quiz answer of the week: General knowledge wasnt the strong suit of the pair who failed to win the jackpot on Strike It Lucky, revived in Alan Carrs Epic Gameshow

They thought taramasalata was a type of spider.
By Trend

Qatar Airways plans to resume regular flights to Georgia from July 1, Trend reports referring to Georgian media.

Qatar Airways will operate Doha-Tbilisi-Doha airline with a frequency of 3 times a week.

Qatar Airways has been operating in the Georgian market since February 2012. Summing up the five-year activity of the airline in Georgia, the regional director of Qatar Airways in Eastern Europe Giovanni Simonini, called this period successful and fruitful.

Qatar Airways is on the list of seven airlines with the highest five-star rating, according to the British agency Skytrax.

Qatar Airways covers more than 140 destinations worldwide. At the same time, the company has one of the most modern fleets consisting of 158 aircraft.

Meanwhile, Georgian Airways will operate flights on Tbilisi-Batumi-Tbilisi air line on June 26-28.

However, it is not possible to purchase a ticket on the airline's website at this time, nor is the ticket price visible.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
The Department of State Service, (DSS) today arraigned a 48-years-old man, Joshua Sayo in court for defaming Osun State House of Assembly Speaker, Timothy Owoeye on Facebook.

The Prosecutor, B.O Nweke told the court that the accused person committed the offence on 19th of June, 2020 in Osogbo.

The prosecutor said that the accused person did defame OSHA Speaker by publishing contemptuous pictures and words on Facebook account against him knowing to be false.

The prosecutor stated that the offence committed by the accused person was contrary to Section 374(1)b & 374 and punishable under Section 375 of the Criminal Code Cap 34, Vol. 2 Laws of Osun State of Nigeria, 2002.

The accused person pleaded not guilty of the offence levelled against him.

The Defense Counsel, Ibraheem A Imran applied for the bail of the accused person in the most liberal term.

The Magistrate, Modupe Awodele granted the bail of the accused person in the sum of N 100,000 with 2 sureties in like sum.

The case is adjourned till 14th of July, 2020 for hearing.
According to the National Forecasting Centre/Regional Meteorological Centre, New Delhi of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Northern Limit of Monsoon (NLM) continues to pass through Kandla, Ahmedabad, Indore, Raisen, Khajuraho, Fatehpur and Bahraich. A cyclonic circulation extending upto mid-tropospheric level lies over north interior Odisha & neighbourhood. A trough runs from north Punjab to northwest Bay of Bengal in the lower tropospheric levels and it is likely to shift southwards during next 3 days. As a result, strengthening of easterly wind and high moisture feeding form the Bay of Bengal is very likely over north India during same period.

Conditions are becoming favorable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh and some parts of Uttarakhand around 23rd June; into entire Western Himalayan Region, Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi, most parts of Punjab, remaining parts of Arabian Sea, Gujarat state, Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh and some parts of Rajasthan during 24th & 25th June. Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall very likely to continue over northeast India during next 5 days and over East & adjoining central India during next 2-3 days. Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall activity with isolated heavy to very heavy falls also very likely over Western Himalayan Region, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh &Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and East Rajasthan from 23rd June onwards.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish-backed militants persecuting Christians, Yazidis after US troop pullback: USCIRF

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

A religious freedom scholar told the United States' top religious freedom panel that the U.S. troop pullback in northeastern Syria has created a vacuum that has allowed Turkish forces and affiliated opposition groups to carry out war crimes against Christians and other religious minorities.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom held a hearing last week focusing on the opportunities and challenges related to religious freedom in northeast Syria amid the Turkish occupation and President Donald Trumps decision to pull back U.S. troops in the region.

It is the same region where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria held territory and severely persecuted religious minorities until the jihadis were pushed out by Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and coalition partners in 2017.

But since early 2018, operations by the Turkish military and Turkish-backed Islamic militant groups have taken over areas that were once under the control of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and have reportedly killed, abducted and persecuted civilians. The offensive has led to the displacement of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

It was in the northeastern pocket of Kobane that Syrian Democratic Forces staged what began as a last stand but with the support of U.S. military and a committed multinational force became a four-year effort to turn back and eventually defeat ISIS, USCIRF Chairman Tony Perkins said at the beginning of the hearing.

It was also in this part of Syria that those same democratic forces and their supporters forged a unique initiative to introduce local governance autonomous from the Assad regime based on principles of inclusion, diverse representation and personal freedoms, including religious freedom, that aligns more closely with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights than anything else in that region.

But in October 2019 after a phone conversation with Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military would pull back its troops in advance of a Turkish offensive against SDF-controlled areas. Critics feared the move was an abandonment of allies in the fight to defeat the Islamic State.

The Turkish offensive caused thousands to flee from their homes. Because it is led by Kurdish fighters, Turkey has considered the U.S.-backed SDF to be a terrorist group and accuses it of being aligned with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

I visited northeast Syria in late 2019 where I was able to see for myself the devastation brought upon the Christian villages near the area Turkey had invaded, USCIRF Vice-Chair Nadine Maenza said. I met with religious and community leaders and heard about the remarkable religious freedom conditions under the autonomous administration and how that is now nonexistent in the area Turkey occupies.

Turkey is now threatening the crucial population centers of Kobane and Qamishli even as it has used the worlds complete inattention to forcefully repopulate abandoned towns with refugees from other parts of Syria, just as it had done in Afrin [in February 2018], she added. [These] are actions that Genocide Watch has just indicated are war crimes fitting the legal definition of crimes against humanity.

Amy Austin Holmes, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a professor at the American University in Cairo, told the panel that Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities that have existed in the region for centuries are again facing existential threats.

Holmes noted that some of the fighters in the Turkish-backed militias are former members of the Islamic State.

They have been killed, disappeared, kidnapped, raped, detained, subjected to forced religious conversions and held for ransom until their families pay exorbitant sums of money to secure their release, Holmes explained. They have been forcibly displaced and driven from their homes. Their places of worship have been defaced, destroyed and looted. Even their cemeteries have been demolished and vandalized. The international community has failed to take action.

Holmes, who is also a visiting scholar at the Middle East Initiative of Harvard University, explained that the partial withdrawal of U.S. forces in October 2019 created a vacuum allowing these crimes to take place.

Christian and Yazidi organizations warned that this would happen before the Turkish intervention, she said.

Holmes said that since the Turkish occupation of Afrin in early 2018, all 23 Yazidi villages and all 19 Yazidi shrines have come under Turkish control, many of which have been defaced or looted. Yazidis are a religious minority community, thousands of who faced some of the most atrocious killings and enslavements under the Islamic State.

She said that an estimated 90% of the Yazidi population has fled from Afrin, saying that some estimates suggest that what was once a population of 20,000 to 30,000 Yazidis in Afrin is now down to 2,000-3,000.

Kurds and Yazidis have been kidnapped by Turkish-back militias who charge large ransoms from their families for release, she noted.

This is a way to engage in ethnic cleansing and demographic change without actually killing people because they cannot afford to pay this ransom, Holmes said.

As a result of the Turkish intervention last October as part of its Operation Peace Spring, Holmes said that at least 137 Christian families were displaced.

I also provided a list in my written testimony of those Christians who been displaced and the villages from which they have been forcibly displaced, she said. The second deadliest site of the Armenian genocide  is under the control of Turkey and Islamist militias.

Holmes explained that the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, in areas it controls, is attempting to dismantle the laws that guarantee religious equality, religious freedom and gender equality that were created by the autonomous administration.

This includes attempts to force Yazidis, in particular, to renounce their religion and convert to Islam. This includes signs that have been placed in Afrin  that demand that women wear a veil. Women have been arrested by Turkish-backed militias in Afrin and elsewhere who travel without a male relative. This is the same policy that ISIS enforced on women in areas that ISIS used to control. They required that Muslim women if they wanted to leave their homes, had to travel with a male guardian.

Holmes further warned that there are 35 Assyrian Christian villages within less than six miles of the front lines of the Turkish intervention.

The Syrian Democratic Forces are the only armed group in Syria that has a policy of not discriminating on the basis of religion, ethnicity or gender, Holmes argued. My survey data shows that the SDF has incorporated members of all religious groups, of all ethnic groups. Arabs from every major and minor tribe in Syria have members how joined the SDF.

In her remarks, Maenza, a longtime speaker, writer and advocate, warned that the U.S. troop drawback in northeast Syria signaled tacit approval for Turkey to cross the border.

In December, former deputy assistant secretary for Department of Defense policy in the Middle East told Foreign Policy magazine, Looking back at it, one could say we helped facilitate the military incursion because essentially, we helped the Turks do reconnaissance. And since the SDF were with us, they believed they werent going to be attacked and disabled several of their defensive positions.

USCIRF, an independent council that advises the federal government and Congress on issues of religious freedom, recommends that the U.S. government exert significant pressure on Turkey to provide a timeline for its withdrawal from Syria.

USCIRF also recommends that the U.S. increase its engagement with and assistance to the autonomous administration in northeast Syria and called on the U.S. government to exempt the autonomous region from sanctions as well as work with nongovernmental organization and international partners to fund and develop local programs that promote religious tolerance, human rights and alleviate sectarian tensions.

On Friday, USCIRF condemned Turkeys latest round of airstrikes and ground operations near civilian areas in northern Iraq and called for an immediate end to these actions.

Turkeys operations in Iraq and northeastern Syria make it clear that regional ambitions  not domestic security  are driving its actions today, and it cannot be allowed to do so with impunity, Perkins said in a statement. We call upon the administration to utilize all diplomatic and economic leverage to protect vulnerable religious minorities in northern Iraq  as well as neighboring northeastern Syria  from Turkeys indiscriminate military operations.
The body was found on the fourth floor.

The death toll from an explosion at a residential building in the Pozniaky area in Kyiv's Darnytsky district on the morning of Sunday, June 21, has risen to four after one more body was found under the debris.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said the body had been found on the fourth floor, the press service of Kyiv City State Administration reported.

"An operation is under way to retrieve the body of a man killed in the explosion of the building in Pozniaky," he said. "Another resident of the same building is still missing."

Read alsoUp to three people could be left trapped under wreckage after Kyiv house gas blast (Photo, video)

As UNIAN reported, several apartments in a nine-storied apartment block at 1/5 Solomii Krushelnytskoi Street in Kyiv's Darnytsky district were damaged by an explosion at about 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 21. The explosion destroyed interfloor structures between the fourth and eighth floors.

A leak of household gas is reportedly the cause behind the incident.

More than 100 people lived in the destroyed part of the building, they were evacuated.

The incident is being investigated under Part 2 of Article 270 (violation of fire safety requirements established by law) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Police conducted searches at the gas distribution company and all utilities firms that service the apartment block.

As of Monday morning, the casualties included three dead people, five were injured, and another three were rescued.
BRUSSELS  The European Union pleaded with Chinese leaders at a summit meeting Monday to put more effort into lagging negotiations on an investment and trade deal, an issue that has increasingly vexed the 27-member bloc. But the plea seemed likely to go unanswered by China, which has tightened control over its domestic economy and turned more combative in relations with Western powers.

Chinas sensitivity about the source of the coronavirus, its moves against Hong Kong and its aggressive diplomacy toward European governments colored the atmosphere of the summit meeting. The videoconference setting reduced the ability to negotiate or pass quiet messages.

So the meeting, already postponed from late March, was never likely to produce a breakthrough on stymied efforts to conclude an investment treaty. While expectations were low for the talks, the first for the new European leaders, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel, they were still seen as frustrating.

The Europeans first had discussions with Premier Li Keqiang, then with President Xi Jinping, Chinas paramount leader.
Indian drug making company Hetero Drugs on Sunday received approval from the Drug Controller-General of India (DCGI) approval to manufacture and sell the generic version of Gileads Remdesivir for COVID-19 treatment in the country, a report in Moneycontrol said.

The drug will be launched under the brand name COVIFOR and will be available in 100 mg vials (injectable) and will be sold for Rs 5,000- Rs 6,000 per vial.

Another Indian drug maker, Cipla, who has also launched the drug, however, is yet to formally disclose the price. BDR Pharmaceuticals, Cipla's partner is the one that handles active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and Sovereign Pharma for formulation.

Gilead also has a voluntary non-exclusive license with Jubilant Life Sciences to manufacture and market Remdesivir in 127 countries, including India.

Bandi Vamsi Krishna, Managing Director of Hetero Group, in an interview to Moneycontrol, says the company responding to pandemics with drugs isnt new. During the peak of the H1N1 (Swine flu) pandemic, Hetero emerged first in the manufacture and supply of Oseltamivir, the antiviral that was effective in the treatment and prevention of flu.

Gilead Sciences came out with the Oseltamivir, but it Swiss firm Roche a license to distribute the drug in India. Roche had sub-licensed the manufacturing rights to Hetero for distribution in India. However, Hetero did not get a huge advantage as Roches patent application for India was rejected, and other Indian manufacturers were allowed to come up with their generic versions of the drug. Roche could have gone with any other company, but why Hetero?

Bandi Parthasaradhi Reddy had said that at the time of the H1N1 outbreak, Roche was looking for a potential partner in India and Hetero was ready with the process and technology to manufacture the drug that helped to speed up the deal.

Hetero was able to come out ahead in the competition because it had chemistry skills, agility, ability to backward-integrate and produce at scale. The drugmaker's broad portfolio includes treatments for cardiovascular, oncology and neurology but antiviral is its forte.

Sources said that the group has a turnover of close to $2 billion, making it one of the largest privately held company in India.

The COVID-19 pandemic also saw a similar story panning out, but with a different, more complex drug.

When in January, reports started to appear about the use of Gileads experimental drug Remdesivir on COVID-19 patients in China, Hetero plunged in immediately to develop the drug. Gilead signed voluntary licensing deal with Hetero and other companies only in the second week of May.

Bandi Vamsi Krishna, son of Parthasaradhi Reddy said since the product was new, there were difficulties to identify basic materials for it and the company had to make its own. And since the demand was quick, the company had to arrange for everything in a very small time.

Vamsi Krishna said that making Remdesivir involves a set of 24 processes and adds that the company intents to make the drug accessible and affordable in India.

"We have thought of pricing the drug between Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,000. We have just set a price because we are the first to market. As and when demand rises, prices will come down," he said.

A report by WHO has stated estimated that 20 per cent of COVID-19 patients will need oxygen, and a majority of them will need Remdesivir.

India has so far reported 426,910 COVID-19 cases, of which 8,944 patients have died. Active COVID-19 cases are about 175,955. Taking into account 20 percent, India has around 30,000 patients who would need Remdesivir. That's a Rs 90 crore market, and it is expanding as COVID-19 cases in India are rising with each passing day.

Vamsi Krishna says that due to all the other countries hit their peak before Remdesivir came on the market, there was not much time to use the drug. But in India's case, the drug can be used in the treatmen.

He says although the current demand for the drug is from Maharashtra and Delhi, other states have also enquired about it. Vamsi Krishna says the company will work to get the product to all centres by July.

Apart from distributing, Hetero may possibly supply Remdesivir to other companies with license.
[June 22, 2020] Telecom Analytics Market Size Worth $10.7 Billion by 2027 | CAGR: 14.5%: Grand View Research, Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The global telecom analytics market size is projected to reach USD 10.7 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 14.5% during the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Telecom analytics offers business intelligence solutions to the evolving telecommunications sector and also aids in identifying the present situation of the company with respect to its market opposition by identifying progressive trends and predicted parameters. Key suggestions from the report: The cloud segment is expected to witness a CAGR exceeding 15.0% over the forecast period. Owing to low investment cost, scalability, and agility offered by cloud deployment model, the segment is expected to witness significant growth

The solution accounted for over 65.0% of the global market share in 2019, and the segment is expected to witness considerable growth over the coming years. Moreover, the segment is anticipated to continue its dominance as the fastest growing segment during the forecast period

Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at a fastest pace expanding at a CAGR exceeding 15.0% over the forecast period, which is accredited to the increasing investments in advanced technologies such as IoT and Big Data in the developing countries including India , and China . Read 110 page research report with ToC on "Telecom Analytics Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Component (Solutions, Services), By Application, By Deployment Model (On-premise, Cloud), By Organization Size, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2020 - 2027" at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/telecom-analytics-market Increasing use of descriptive and diagnostic analytics to enhance business functions is one of the major factors fueling the growth of the market globally. Big data has become a ubiquitous part of telecom industry because of the huge amount of data being generated every minute through the connected world. About 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created every day. The enhanced networks coupled with the proliferation of smart devices has facilitated the telecom operators to gain access to a multitude of information about their customers' preferences and behavior. This, in turn is expected to bolster market growth over the forecast period. Telecom analytics possesses an ability to formulate strategies associated with cross-sell and up-sell and service and solution plans, thereby helping companies in the sector to obtain value from network resources. In addition, systematic computational analysis of data in the industry is also being leveraged to discover new routes of innovation and build better investor relations. Additionally, systematic computational analysis of data in the telecom industry brings importance in decision making, provides more accurate and actionable insights, ensures competitive benefit to the companies involved, and enable them to plan more efficient cost structure. A massive amount of unstructured data is formed from connected and communication devices, and social media. When this data is converted into a structured data, telecom service providers take out insights about their customer preferences and choices which in turn help them to figure out a customer profile and produce more targeted offers.



Accordingly, the ability of enterprises to capitalize on the potential of systematic computational analysis of data for the industry is expected to drive the growth of the market. While data analytics companies are experiencing growth, there is a massive shortage of talent. The telecom industry requires skilled data scientists who can understand the technology as well as the business objective of a telecom operator. Data scientists and analytics experts are highly in demand. Hiring new experts or training the existing workforce can cost the organization considerably, and the process of acquiring skills related to systematic computational analysis of data takes significant amount of time, which thereby pose a huge challenge. As a result, this very reason is one of the major factors expected to hinder the growth of the market during the forecast period. Grand View Research has segmented the global telecom analytics market on the basis of component, deployment model, application, organization size, and region:

Telecom Analytics Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Solutions



Network Analytics



Customer Analytics



Subscriber Analytics



Location Analytics



Price Analytics



Service Analytics



Others



Services

Telecom Analytics Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Customer Management



Sales and Marketing Management



Network Management



Risk and Compliance Management



Workforce Management



Others

Telecom Analytics Deployment Model Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

On-premise



Cloud

Telecom Analytics Organization Size Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

Small and Mid-sized Enterprises



Large Enterprises

Telecom Analytics Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



U.K.





Germany





France



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan



Latin America



Brazil





Mexico



Middle East & Africa

& List of Key players of Telecom Analytics Market

Adobe Systems Incorporated



Alteryx, Inc.



Cisco Systems, Inc.



Dell EMC



Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP



Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.



International Business Machines Corporation



Microsoft Corporation



MicroStrategy Incorporated



OpenText Corporation



Oracle Corporation



Panaroma



SAP SE



SAS Institute Inc.



Sisense Inc.



Subex Limited



Tableau Software



Teradata Corporation



TIBCO Software Inc.



Wipro Limited Find more research reports on Communications Infrastructure Industry, by Grand View Research: Data Center Transfer Switches And Switchgears Market To avoid power disruption in the data center operations along with the need to control the electrical supply in the data centers is anticipated to drive the market over the forecast period.

5G Testing Equipment Market Network connectivity remains a rapidly evolving space from 2G to 3G, 4G, and currently 5G. Several industry verticals are aggressively dedicated to technological morphosis to enhance their operational efficiency and productivity in order to sustain in an intensely competitive environment.

Millimeter Wave Sensors & Modules Market Increasing research and development activities in the millimeter wave technology and constantly increasing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications are anticipated to propel the market growth. Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports About Grand View Research Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead. Contact: Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: +1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/661327/Grand_View_Research_Logo.jpg

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
SUDBURY, MA  July 4 events across the country will look different this year thanks to the coronavirus. Many cities and towns have been forced to cancel the annual Independence Day events, including Sudbury.

Sudbury canceled the traditional July 4 parade back in May, buy the town's parade committee is expecting to host one in 2021. Natick and Milford have also canceled parades and other July 4 festivities.

"After much discussion, the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and the Parade Committee have decided that this is the right thing to do," the town said on May 14. "Bottom line is this is a public health decision. Large scale crowds and social distancing will be near impossible to avoid. Our main priority is to keep the parade participants and attendees safe."

There is one local event to watch: Although the Boston July 4 Fireworks show was canceled, the iconic Boston Pops will still hold a musical performance online. The event will air on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and Boston's WHDH-TV at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 4. Boston Pops Salute to Our Heroes will also be available to live stream at Bloomberg.com.

Worcester will also host an event online July 1 beginning at 7 p.m. featuring performances. That city's July 4 fireworks and accompanying festivities have been canceled.

Due to the pandemic, counties or cities may adjust or cancel events at the last minute. Check your event before you go. Know of other events in the area? Post them on the Patch calendar or share details on our free Neighbor Post feature.

Check out this roundup of everything from barbecue essentials to patriotic table decor to be sure your July 4 is the best in the USA.

This article originally appeared on the Sudbury Patch
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:20:33|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

COLOMBO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan Police on Monday said they had arrested over 20,000 people within the past 14 days, suspected of various crimes including the possession of drugs, firearms, and explosives, during a special nationwide raid.

Accordingly, the police said 3,551 suspects were arrested with heroin, 2,609 suspects were arrested with cannabis and 260 suspects were arrested with Ice drugs in the raid conducted between June 6 to June 20.

A further 52 suspects were arrested over the possession of weapons and firearms. Among the weapons seized were 18 pistols, 12-bore firearms, 18 repeaters, 24 locally made weapons and three swords, five other weapons, and 36 live ammunition.

Six suspects were also arrested with detonators and explosives.

Thousands were also arrested over brewing illicit liquor and others who had warrants issued against them. Enditem
City police are warning the public about a new scam in the area.

A woman received a Facebook message in May stating she had won $25,000, and to text a number in response.

She was told she would win $25,000 for every $500 she paid out, so she paid the scammer $1,000, at which point she was told she had to pay $1,500 for documents and fees. She made the payment with gift cards but was told later that the cards were invalid, so she paid in digital currency. In all, she lost $11,000 to the scam before her bank spotted the activity and urged her to call police.

We remind residents to be extremely vigilant when receiving a text, phone call or email claiming you have won a prize, states a city police press release. Remember, if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Always be aware of upfront fees. Many prize scams request you to pay fees in advance of claiming the prize. Further, there are no prize fees or taxes in Canada. If you won it, its free.
Regretting the death of Jean Kennedy Smith, US Ambassador to Ireland from 1993 for five years, who died last Wednesday in Manhattan aged 92, President Michael D Higgins said she would "be forever remembered as the diplomat who had a sense of history and of what had influenced the Irish in the United States".

The problem was that her sense of Irish history owed a great deal to her Brit-hating brother Ted and her great friend Tim Pat Coogan.

And according to Mr Coogan, Father Alec Reid, the Redemptorist priest from Clonard Monastery, became a key confidant.

Father Reid famously said that the Northern Ireland nationalist community were treated "almost like animals by the unionist community".

In the words of Shane Paul O'Doherty, who has written excoriatingly in his always fascinating irishpeaceprocess blog, like his Clonard friend Father Gerry Reynolds, Father Reid "had bought into the IRA's legitimacy arguments lock, stock and car bomb".

Mr Coogan claims Father Reid called Mrs Kennedy Smith the "speir bhean", a mythical beautiful woman, who in poetry personified Ireland, and as ambassador she certainly appeared to wish to do that.

In fact at all times she acted as an ambassador from Irish republicanism to the United States rather than United States ambassador to Ireland.

She was, said Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, a "valuable conduit to the White House and the US Congress".

She had been a well-known socialite and effective philanthropist when she was made ambassador, but as the New York Times obituary put it: "She knew little about diplomacy, Irish politics with the intricacies of the sectarian violence known as the Troubles."

She got the job because President Bill Clinton owed Edward Kennedy a favour. Irish nationalists were, of course, thrilled with her appointment. Such is the devotion to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy that mosaics of him and 1916 leader Patrick Pearse pray on either side of a representation of the risen Christ in Galway Cathedral.

"An activist diplomat," Higgins explained approvingly, for he is in the same mould, Kennedy Smith "was not afraid to break with convention or explore the limits of her mandate".

Smith therefore defied the State Department and the US ambassador in London by visiting Northern Ireland without permission and repeatedly meeting Gerry Adams, and with her brother's help, persuading Clinton to give Adams a US visa for the first time in 1994.

Seen by permanent staff as a bully, when two senior staff members of her embassy recorded their disagreement with her policy on the grounds her activities were harmful to American interests, she dismissed them.

All this caused ructions with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, but Smith sailed on unperturbed as Adams developed a massive fan base in America.

Depending on your point of view, this is variously seen as a positive step in the peace process, or yet another stepping stone on the path of appeasement of terrorism.

Mr Coogan exulted that "the White House acquired a patina of green. The relationship turned out to be 22 carat shamrock". Irish politicians who care about democracy and the rule of law and see how respectability has helped Sinn Fein prosper on both sides of the border might secretly agree with the latter view. When Kennedy Smith left the post in 1998 she was made an honorary citizen of Ireland.

At the time she said: "I was a cog, really, in the machine that was moving. I was fortunate to be here to perhaps add momentum to what was happening."

"She has left her mark on our history, our peace process and her legacy lives on across Ireland," said Ms McDonald.

Perhaps she should be immortalised in a mosaic in Clonard Monastery, praying opposite Martin McGuinness.
Trump says he asked health officials to slow down COVID-19 testing

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 5:14 AM

President Donald Trump has in what appears to be a shocking admission said he encouraged US health officials to slow down coronavirus testing to prevent the number of cases being discovered from rising.

"Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases," Trump said during his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally on Saturday night.

"So I said to my people 'slow the testing down.' They test and they test," he told the crowd. He added testing was a "double-edged sword."

The Republican president, on numerous occasions, has falsely claimed that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by increased diagnostic tests.

The US, where the virus has affected more than 2,330,500 and killed over 121,900 so far, has conducted over 25 million tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita.

Trump also joked that public health officials are conducting so many tests "that people don't even know what's going on."

"We got another one over here," he said, pointing into the crowd. "The young man is 10 years old. He's got the sniffles. He'll recover in about 15 minutes. That's a case!"

Despite such remarks, it was still unclear from Trump's tone if he was playing a joke to the crowd, which cheered as he spoke, or if he was being serious.

However, a White House official told AFP that Trump "was clearly speaking in jest to call out the media's absurd coverage. We are leading the world in testing."

Meanwhile, the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic organizations are now racing to get Trump's comment in as many ads as possible, a Biden aide and operatives from multiple Democratic super PACs told CNN.

Coronavirus cases have increased dramatically in several US states, including Oklahoma, which prompted local health officials to ask Trump to postpone the rally over fears that it would contribute to the spread.

Six members of an advance team working in Tulsa ahead of the rally tested positive for the virus, the Trump campaign said just hours before the president took the stage.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

Trend:

Azerbaijan, as responsible member of the international community, supports the peaceful resolution of Jammu and Kashmir issue in accordance with the norms and principles of international law and the relevant UNSC resolutions, as well as with full respect to the international humanitarian law, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov said, Trend reports citing the MFA.

Mammadyarov made the remark at an online meeting on the Jammu and Kashmir issue of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group.

There is an obvious need to continue efforts that will finally lead to the sustainable solution of the issue. Peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues related to the Jammu and Kashmir issue, is of particular importance also in terms of ensuring peace and security in the wider South Asian region, noted the minister.

As member of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, Azerbaijan considers this format to be an important and useful mechanism to review the state of implementation by OIC Member States of their obligations deriving from respective OIC decisions, the FM added.

Azerbaijan will continue its active engagement in the work of the Contact Group with a firm conviction that peace and security will soon be established in the region, Mammadyarov said.

As it is known, as the result of military aggression by Armenia, 20 percent of Azerbaijans territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions have been occupied as well as almost one millions of people have become refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Numerous historical, cultural and religious monuments in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan have been brutally destroyed including a vast number of artifacts of Azerbaijani historic and Islamic heritage, the minister said.

While the Government of Azerbaijan remains committed to the peaceful settlement of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of the norms and principles of international law, and relevant UNSC and OIC resolutions it retain legitimate right to use all means necessary to restore its territorial integrity and sovereignty in full, noted Mammadyarov.

In conclusion, I would like to underline that under challenging conditions of COVID-19 pandemic the international community should be particularly keen to withstand any efforts by those who aim to utilize current state of world affairs for further consolidation of the results of aggression and occupation. In this regard unity and joint action of the OIC is of utmost importance in strengthening our solidarity thus increasing our cumulative strength in both mitigating the serious damages being incurred by pandemic and protecting international peace and security, the FM added.
Given his expertise, it comes as little surprise that current events have made University of Maryland sociologist Rashawn Ray a media and policy star. He specializes in studying why both police and disease are more likely to treat African Americans more harshly than whites.

The 39-year-old African American professor and researcher has recently given a flood of national and local television interviews. He has advised lawmakers in Congress, Annapolis and the Maryland suburbs.

What is perhaps more surprising is Ray's evenhanded position on how best to reform policing. On one hand, he says strict accountability measures, especially financial penalties, are needed to combat what he calls police forces' systemic racism. He specifically debunks the theory that police abuses arise only from a few "bad apples."

But Ray also has sympathy for the officers themselves, whom he calls "overworked, overstressed and underpaid."

He says reforms need to include reduced workloads and increased psychological help for officers. He recommends giving them housing subsidies so they can rely less on second jobs and overtime, and afford to live in the communities where they work.

"When people are overstressed and underpaid, they aren't mentally fit; they don't make good decisions," he said. "Their implicit biases, their stereotypes, go on steroids."

Ray's reform agenda is based on policing data that he has collected over a decade. He began such study while teaching at the University of California at Berkeley and continued when he moved to College Park in 2012. He is on sabbatical from U-Md. to be a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

At U-Md., Ray founded the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR), where he is executive director, with a mission to conduct research that will influence public policy. He and his LASSR colleagues have conducted 300 interviews with officers and 100 civilians in 10 police departments in the Washington region and elsewhere around the country. They have also worked with the Department of Homeland Security and the military.

Ray has overseen "implicit bias" training programs conducted with about 2,500 officers to teach them to recognize their own racial prejudices. But he concluded that the courses were not as effective as hoped.

"We're sitting in a classroom and I'm telling them a bunch of stuff, [and] rarely do any of them think, 'This is me,' " he said.

As a result, Ray created a more sophisticated course - using virtual reality equipment - to put officers in simulated incidents where they have to make decisions. These include situations such as a traffic stop, convenience store robbery, domestic dispute, and encountering a suspicious person on the street who may be armed.

The effort has occasionally faced resistance. Dozens of Prince George's County, Md., officers walked out in protest while Ray was conducting a bias training lesson two years ago. Ray said that incident reflected a problematic culture highlighted Thursday with release of a damning report on racial discrimination within the Prince George's department. Police Chief Hank Stawinski resigned later the same day.

Ray grew up in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where his great-uncle was the first black police chief. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. from the University of Indiana. He later married his high school sweetheart, and the couple live in Prince George's with sons ages 8 and 9.

Ray's interest in police interactions with African Americans originated in his public health research while teaching at Berkeley. While studying obesity, he found that black men living in white neighborhoods were significantly less likely to be physically active.

"They would be exercising, jogging down the street, and someone would call the police on them," he said. The insight anticipated the recent killing of Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery.

Earlier this year, before the policing debate exploded, Ray was writing about racial disparities in the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In a Brookings article, Ray said that black Americans were contracting the virus and dying from it at higher rates than whites because they live in underserved neighborhoods, are more numerous in "essential" low-wage jobs where they are exposed to the virus, and experience higher pollution.

To address the problem, his recommendations included putting more testing centers in black neighborhoods. In an interview, he praised Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan for opening an early testing center at FedEx Field in Landover, which is convenient to many African Americans in predominantly black Prince George's.

Ray also called for paid leave and hazard pay for essential workers. He said his proposals should apply not only to African Americans, but also to "low-income workers and people living in rural areas with limited health-care access."

More recently, Ray has discussed police reform with congressional leaders including Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Reps. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

Regarding calls to "defund the police," Ray favors reallocating some funding from law enforcement to social services so police don't have to deal with matters that would be better handled by, say, a mental health specialist.

"About 90 percent of calls [for] service have nothing to do with anything violent, things like potholes or a cat being up in a tree," Ray said. Police "have so much to do that they can't concentrate on key cases like murder, sexual assaults, robbery," he said.

In his writings and speaking engagements, Ray offers a four-point agenda for police reform:

- Strengthen internal accountability. A top priority for Ray is forcing police agencies to bear the cost of legal settlements with victims of officers' abuse. Such payments can reach into the millions of dollars, but typically are funded from the general budgets of cities, counties or states. That means there's no financial incentive for police chiefs to crack down on misconduct.

"It doesn't come out of the police department budget. They don't suffer any penalty," Ray said.

He also wants more protections for "good apple" police, who call out misconduct by fellow officers.

"There are so many officers I've interviewed who have blown the whistle, and then they get vilified for it," Ray said.

- Prevent "bad apples" from moving to new jobs. Ray supports the Trump administration's recent proposal to create a federal database to track police found culpable of misconduct, so they can't get jobs elsewhere.

But he thinks the plan doesn't go far enough, because it doesn't address the payouts issue or the need to weaken civil immunity policies that protect police against lawsuits.

- Reduce police workloads. "Officers whom I study, they're working 60, 80, 100 hours a week," Ray said. "You can't function like that."

- Increase pay or provide housing subsidies so officers can forge positive connections with the neighborhoods where they work.

"If you want them to live in the community, shop in the community, go to church in the community, then they have to have more money to do it," he said.

It's vital to improve officers' working conditions, at the same time that you make them more accountable, Ray said: "You can't just make reform changes without including the people at the center, who are going to be the ones most impacted."
In western Odisha's Jharsuguda, birthday and wedding anniversary gatherings proved costly as a super-spreader passed on Covid-19 to 17 persons present at the celebrations.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, officials found that out of the 25 cases of coronavirus detected in Jharsuguda till June 20, 17 came from three families who breached quarantine guidelines.

The district collector of Jharsuguda, Saroj Kumar Samal told HT that all the 17 had been present at the birthday and wedding anniversary festivity, where a Covid-19 positive woman, was also in attendance.

The collector said that a woman who had recently come back from Gurgaon with her spouse and son had tested positive on June 14. The woman who was lodging at her uncle's home in Jharsuguda's OMP locality was to remain in isolation for 14 days, but she hosted a birthday celebration for her son while being in quarantine, where her neighbours were present.

The collector added that the woman went on to attend a wedding anniversary party in her locality, infecting 17 persons.

Notably, the woman held her son's birthday party despite the area, where was residing in, being declared a containment zone.

We have lodged a complaint against the heads of the two families under Section 15 of the Disaster Management Act and Sections 296, 271 and 188 of IPC," the district collector was quoted as saying by the publication.

He said that the persons were not adhering to home quarantine rules in spite of repeated warnings and added that the district was in a better situation before this incident had surfaced.

Odisha on Sunday recorded the highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases with 304 more people testing positive for the disease while two patients succumbed to the highly infectious virus taking the state's death toll to 14, a health department official told news agency PTI.

With 304 fresh cases, the state's total COVID-19 cases climbed to 5,160, the official said, adding that as many as 186 patients during the day also recovered from the viral infection.

The number of recoveries has risen to 3,720 which is 70.09 per cent of the total infections in the state, the official added.
In May, scientists started noticing that the SARS-CoV-2 genome was mutating, fearing that it evolved into a more dominant form. However, coronavirus was once described as an 'aggressive tiger,' but now has become milder, and 'could go away completely without a vaccine.'

Professor Matteo Bassetti, a top Italian doctor, has observed that the virus may have become weaker as people overcome infections today that previous patients had died from. He even believes that the virus could disappear without scientists being able to develop a vaccine if coronavirus continues to weakenand eventually dies out on its own.

He said, 'it was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now it's like a wild cat.' Even those about 75 years old are having better odds of beating the virus and breathing without a machine he said. 'The same patients would have died in two or three days before.'

In March, Italy's daily death count surpassed the peak numbers of Wuhan's daily rate. Without mass testing available at that time, Dr. Bassetti. Due to a delayed nationwide lockdown and high concentration of older populations, who are more vulnerable to the virus, he said that the 40,000 cases at the time 'could actually be 100 times higher.'

Genetic Mutation

As an expert in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases, Dr. Bassetti says that it's possible that the recent genetic mutations of the virus are less lethal due to better treatment, physical distancing practices, and more frequent sanitation of public places. It's also possible, he claims, is that people's lungs aren't as damaged by the new mutation as the earlier genomes of SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Bassetti's clinical impression is that the virus' severity has changed because patients in March and April really struggled with COVID-19 symptoms, like developing pneumonia and needing oxygen and ventilation. In the past month, he said that this patter changed. 'There could be a lower viral load in the respiratory tract, probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically.'

Read Also: Coronavirus Remains Infectious in Both Mucus and Sputum for Over 12 Hours Even in Warm Temperatures: Study

Optimistic Claims

The Italian doctor's claims have been criticized by other medical experts, especially with no scientific evidence of these optimistic beliefs. In regard to SARS-CoV-2's genetic mutation, virologist Angela Rasmussen said, 'We have seen in other virus epidemics, such as the Ebola epidemic, that there are these mutations that seem to persist and become the dominant form of the virus.'

Dr. Rasmussen said that no evidence supports the idea of coronavirus losing potency as there is still a number of daily cases everywhere. Less transmission due to physical distancing and other lockdown regulations does not equate to less virulence.

Dr. Oscar MacLean from the University of Glasgow said that besides a lack of scientific evidence, Bassetti's claims 'seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds.' Most of the coronavirus mutations had been rare and most likely did not change the virus' nature, Dr. MacLean explained.

Theoretically, a weaker version of the virus through genetic mutation is possible, yet it should be verified before the public, anecdotal claims, added the doctor. 'Without significantly stronger evidence, no one should unnecessarily downplay the danger this highly virulent virus poses, and risk the ongoing society-wide response.'

Read Also: Coronavirus Has Gone Through 6 Mutations Since January Suggesting Vaccine Development May Become a Cyclical Work: Study
Kraviss most recent trial victory came in another such case, the November conviction of Stone, a political confidant of President Trump and GOP consultant. A jury found Stone guilty of lying to Congress in a House investigation of the Trump campaigns efforts in 2016 to learn of Democratic emails hacked by Russia and leaked by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Barr in February overruled front-line prosecutors and softened their sentencing recommendation, prompting all four to quit the case. Kravis was the only one who resigned from the department entirely.
A window of a shop for shoes is destroyed at the Koenigstrasse in Stuttgart, Germany, on June 21, 2020. (Christoph Schmidt/dpa via AP)

Drug Check in Germany Sparks Attacks on Police, Vandalism

FRANKFURT, GermanyPolice in the German city of Stuttgart said on June 21 that 24 people were arrested and 19 police officers injured after a check for drugs sparked attacks on officers and police vehicles followed by widespread vandalism of storefronts in the city center. Police said several hundred people were involved.

The disturbance started after officers stopped a 17-year-old on suspicion of drug possession as several hundred people partied outside around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. Bystanders started throwing stones and bottles, and smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to police.

Police said 40 businesses were vandalized and nine of them had been looted, while 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers brought the situation under control around 4 a.m.

Only one of the injured officers was seriously hurt enough to be considered unable to work, police said.

Police officials said at a news conference that the violence had no apparent political motivation. They said the teen suspect initially stopped was a German citizen. Of the two dozen people arrested, half held German passports and half were citizens of other countries.

Stuttgart Mayor Fritz Kuhn, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, called the attacks on police unacceptable. He said that more people were on the street on Saturday night because many clubs and discos remain closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak and that the party scene in a central park had drawn people from the surrounding area.

One cause was likely alcohol, another the addiction to social media film clips, Kuhn said.

Cellphone video purporting to be of the events circulated widely on social media. Police asked witnesses to upload videos that could provide evidence to assist their investigation.
VPLS, a technology solutions provider offering edge to the cloud services, announces today that CRN a brand of The Channel Company, has named VPLS to its 2020 Solution Provider 500 list. CRNs Solution Provider 500 list serves as the industrys benchmark for recognizing the top-performing technology integrators, strategic service providers, and IT consultants, and as a valuable resource for technology vendors looking to partner with top solution providers. This marks the second consecutive year that VPLS has been recognized on the Solutions Provider 500 list. In February 2020, VPLS was also named to the CRN 2020 Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 list in the Elite 150 category (#145).

CRNs Solution Provider 500 list showcases the top IT channel partner organizations across North America, said Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company. This year, companies on this list represent a combined revenue of $393 billion, a data point that underscores the impact and influence these solution providers have on the IT industry. On behalf of The Channel Company, Id like to congratulate these companies for their outstanding contributions to the growth and success of our industry.

We are honored to once again be acknowledged as a top Solution Provider, stated John Minnix, VP of Sales and Marketing at VPLS. VPLS is dedicated to our role as a strategic partner for our clients, helping to assess, integrate, and execute IT solutions that will drive business growth. As a partner, were also committed to expanding our team and portfolio to provide support for all areas of our clients IT needs, from the cloud to the edge.

VPLSs recognition on CRNs Solution Provider 500 list reflects our continued investment in technology, customer service, and most importantly, our clients, said Arman Khalili, CEO of VPLS. I applaud our dedicated team and employees for continuing to build strong partnerships and client relationships during these challenging times.

VPLS was recently part of a merger that included Evocative Data Centers and VPLS Solutions. The new combined entity now operates under VPLS and represents an expanded portfolio of services that includes data centers, colocation, network services, hosting, cloud services, professional services, managed services, and value-added reseller partner status for brands like HPE, Fortinet, and Veeam.

About VPLS

VPLS understands the technology and IT challenges that businesses and teams face in todays competitive global environment. Trusted by more than 7,000 enterprise clients worldwide, VPLS is a leading provider of cloud, colocation, hosting, backup and DRaaS, data center, and security solutions. With this robust portfolio of IT solutions and a team of industry experts, VPLS partners with businesses to solve their most complex technology challenges. From the Cloud to the Edge, VPLS is your IT partner.

Our carrier-neutral data centers are HIPAA, IDS, ISAE, SSAE, SOC2, and PCI DSS compliant, and supported by a global network backbone with over 400 Gbps of transit capacity, making VPLS the ideal on-ramp to the internet and public clouds like Amazon, Azure, Google and Oracle. VPLSs network and security operations centers in Reston, VA; Los Angeles, CA; Orange, CA; and Bangkok, Thailand provide 24/7 managed service support offering help desk, managed server, managed security, managed switch, and managed wireless services.

VPLSs team of solution technologists, with over 200 IT certifications and growing, strategically partner with brands like Cisco, Dell, Extreme, Fortinet, HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Ruckus, and Supermicro, to deliver the ideal hardware and software for your IT environment.

Learn more about VPLS at http://www.vpls.com.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases is now considering the possibility of allowing the entry of foreign nationals looking to return to the Philippines for work or as permanent residents, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Monday.

Roque said a number of foreign embassies have requested to allow more international flights to Manila despite travel restrictions so that they can allow their nationals to fly to the country, prompting the task force to consider the appeal.

"Sinisimulan nang pag-usapan 'yan sa IATF kasi may mga request kami from embassies na payagan 'yung mga foreign employees ng mga flagship projects [The IATF has started talks regarding this because we've been receiving requests from embassies to allow foreign employees working in flagship projects]," Roque said in his Malacanang briefing.

Also being considered in todays IATF meeting are holders of work visas, as well as those declared as permanent residents of the country such as retirees and special investors.

No commercial international flights have been allowed since mid-March, when President Rodrigo Duterte placed the entire Luzon under enhanced community quarantine. However, chartered flights have been arranged to bring home overseas Filipino workers displaced from their jobs abroad.

The Cabinet official did not name the embassies that made the requests.

A number of big-ticket construction projects in the government's pipeline are funded by Japan, China, and South Korea.

Roque said the government was willing to spend to ferry home other displaced Filipinos abroad, but said that lockdowns in foreign states also prohibited them from doing so.

"Walang Pilipino na nagnanais umuwi na hindi makakauwi [No Filipino who wants to fly home will not be able to come home]," he said.

Some 54,000 OFWs have been flown home in the past three months, according to the Labor Department.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:03:55|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

- The capital city of Beijing has adopted a more targeted approach to tackle the resurgence of the novel coronavirus outbreak in order to balance epidemic containment with normalization of life.



- Instead of classifying the COVID-19 risk based on districts, Beijing categorized the risks in subdistricts and townships.

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The capital city of Beijing has adopted a more targeted approach to tackle the resurgence of the novel coronavirus outbreak in order to balance epidemic containment with normalization of life.



From June 11 to 21, Beijing reported 236 confirmed domestically-transmitted cases. Starting June 16, the national capital city upgraded the posture of emergency response to COVID-19 from level III to II.

Instead of classifying the COVID-19 risk based on districts, Beijing categorized the risks in subdistricts and townships and accordingly adjusted the classification. A subdistrict is an urban administrative division one level lower than a district and consists of several residential communities or neighborhoods. Beijing has more than 300 subdistricts and townships.

As of 3:00 p.m. Sunday, the city had listed 37 subdistricts and townships as medium-risk zones and four as high-risk ones.

RAISING THE GUARD

Most of the latest COVID-19 cases reported in Beijing were related to Xinfadi, a large wholesale market for fruits, vegetables, and meat catering to the demand of the national capital city of more than 21 million.

To contain the spread of the disease, Beijing has been undertaking extensive testing of people who had been to the market, and implemented strict community control measures in surrounding areas.

People queue up to receive test at a temporary nucleic acid testing site in Fengtai District of Beijing, capital of China, June 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

Since June 13, people working in the market, residents of nearby communities, and people who visited the facility have been identified to undergo nucleic acid tests.

In the Xincun neighborhood of Huaxiang Township, the first area to be classified as high-risk in this outbreak, health authorities set up a temporary nucleic acid sampling station along a closed road section overnight on June 14.

Residential communities identified people who had been to the market or their close contacts to take designated buses to the site for undergoing tests and returning home, according to Guo Qiang, head of the Xincun community health service center.

Beijing has launched a citywide campaign to trace people who visited the market since May 30 via door-to-door inquiries, calls, social media platforms, and other methods.

A medical worker collects throat swab of a resident at a sampling site in Fengtai District of Beijing, capital of China, June 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

As of Saturday, nearly 2.3 million people in the city had been sampled for nucleic acid tests, according to local authorities.

The city has also prioritized testing for employees of restaurants, grocery stores, wholesale markets, and courier and food delivery, according to the municipal government.

To cope with the surging demand for tests, Beijing more than doubled its daily nucleic acid testing capacity in a few days, bringing it to 230,000 from 100,000 as of Saturday.

MITIGATING IMPACTS

China's State Council on April 22 called for adjusting and optimizing standards for classifying epidemic risks to reflect threat levels in a more targeted way and adapt to the demands of regular epidemic prevention and control.

Risk levels affect the control measures applied to business operations and the flow of people. For example, those from medium- and high-risk areas are not allowed to leave Beijing.

Supermonkey, a gym chain, had suspended operations at an outlet in Xicheng District, where the outbreak was more severe, while keeping four stores in Chaoyang District open as of Saturday.

Sessions at some of the gym's outlets were fully booked Saturday.

In another gym chain, Keepland, in Shuangjing of Chaoyang District, classes were held as usual Friday, as students were reminded to keep one-meter distance, take their temperatures, and register personal information.

Volunteer Wang Yue (R) checks a resident's body temperature at the entrance of a community in Haidian District in Beijing, capital of China, June 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

"This outbreak did not affect our businesses much," said Fang Fang, who works at a beauty salon in the Fangzhuang residential community in southern Beijing, a low-risk area.

The salon recently received a steady number of around 40 people daily and Fang served five customers Friday, a good footfall for a weekday, she said.

Like in other stores, customers follow a strict procedure of taking temperatures, showing health codes on their phones, and filling up necessary contact information. Disinfectants are placed right near the entrance.

"The situation now is better than in the first quarter, when the novel coronavirus epidemic first began," Fang said. "And we have also gotten used to regularly disinfecting the area multiple times daily."

(Report by Peng Peigen, Ni Yuanjin, Tu Ming, Wang Xiaojie, Xie Hao, and Wang Junlu; video reporter: Ma Xiaodong; video editor: Zhou Sa'ang)


Do you have questions about your PCS entitlements? The money -- how much it is and how to get it -- that comes with a permanent change of station (PCS) move can be confusing. Here are some answers to the most common PCS money questions.

Do we still get full per diem if we stay with friends and family?

"Per diem" is a fancy phrase for the money you get paid for each allotted official travel day. It is paid per-person on your PCS orders, which is typically based off who is registered as your service member's dependent in Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). It is designed to cover lodging, meals and incidentals. It's paid whether you use all of it or not.

If you stay in an expensive hotel or several rooms because your family is too big for one room, and you go over this amount, you will pay the difference. If you stay in a really cheap hotel and the cost is under this amount, you pocket the difference. So, if you don't stay in a hotel at all but choose to camp, stay with friends or sleep in your car (do not recommend) you still get the full per diem for that day.

The Joint Travel Regulation (JTR) lays out all the details for PCSing, including per diem rates. How per diem is calculated is based on location. Make sure to also note that the percentages for dependents vary based on age.

If we take less or more time than they allot us, is that ok?

You may have heard you have a certain number of days to get from Location A to Location B and wondered what that actually means.

First, let's look at the math and the JTR. The rules in the JTR allot 350 miles a day, which comes out to about six hours of driving, as a travel day. If the remainder of the miles are more than 50 (after dividing your total mileage by 350) you'll be allotted one extra day. This means if traveling from Marine Corps Camp Pendleton, California to Norfolk, Virginia, you'd be traveling 2,745 miles and allotted eight days.

You can take less time to get there or, as long as your service members orders reflect extra leave time, more. The per diem payment, however, is calculated based on that JTR rule, so whatever it says is how you'll get paid for your travel. Since that hypothetical trip is eight days, you'll get eight days worth of per diem. If you take 10 days, you'll need to make that money stretch or come out of pocket. If you take five, you'll have extra.

What if I want to fly instead of drive with my service member?

This may be a less common question, but once you learn about this, it's hard to ignore. Here's the deal. The per diem rate is for people driving. If the service member is traveling alone, they mark "unaccompanied" on the voucher.

But then what happens with travel allowances for his or her dependents?

Dependents are authorized to travel via "common carrier," which includes airlines, according to the JTR. They will be reimbursed for the ticket and per diem. But that per diem is based on the travel time, which for most people flying within the U.S. is one day. As for the plane ticket, it will only be reimbursed up to what the government would have paid for the ticket, and it must be with one of the airlines that are part of the Pentagons City Pair Program. The best way to learn more about that is to check with your local transportation office prior to purchasing tickets.

The per diem for those dependents traveling without their service member is 100% per diem for one dependent, 75% for those over 12 and 50% for those under 12, provided they are all traveling together.

Will the military ship my car?

Whether or not the military will pay to move a vehicle is among the commonly asked questions around PCSing -- especially for families who have more than one vehicle.

The answer is almost always "no," but there are exceptions.

The first is when moving OCONUS, including to Hawaii, Alaska or other non-contiguous areas of the U.S. In that case the military will pay to ship one vehicle.

The second exception is for those in the Navy who are doing a home port move. If you have 12 months or more on your contract and you are PCSing due to a home port move, the military will ship one of your vehicles to your new home port. If you have other questions about whether you qualify for vehicle shipment, check with your service member's local transportation office and their orders.

Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life

For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, subscribe to Military.com and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox.

--Rebecca Alwine can be reached at rebecca.alwine@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebecca_alwine.
Lucifer's fifth season finally has its Netflix launch date.

The series - which will air in two batches of eight episodes - will return to the streaming site on August 21, delighting fans who have been desperate to see what will happen next, since it last aired in 2019.

Netflix announced the air date, along with the following statement: 'In the stunning fifth season, the stakes are higher than ever!

Hotting up! Lucifer's fifth season finally has its Netflix launch date

'Secrets will be revealed, beloved characters will die, and well finally get an answer to the question, "Will they or wont they?"'

Season 5 was commissioned by the network after Fox cancelled the dark thriller at the end of its third run.

It was renewed by Netflix for a fourth season, after which it was green lit to continue on with a fifth and final run.

But fans are speculating that bosses could have changed their minds, and that there will be a sixth, after excitable enthusiasts noted that Netflix has not touted season 5 as the last - whipping up much of a frenzy as a result.

Returning soon: The series will air in two batches of eight episodes and return to the streaming site on August 21

Netflix announced the airdate, along with the following statement: 'In the stunning fifth season, the stakes are higher than ever!'

Star of the show, Tom Ellis, who plays the title role, reportedly struggled to negotiate a deal in off-screen discussions about the series' move to Netflix, seemingly ruling out any further episodes after season 5.

Yet earlier this month things were said to have been ironed out, leaving the prospect of a season 6 highly likely, according to reports.

It's been suggested that the future all rests on how season 5 is received on Netflix, with the streaming service holding the power as to whether or not the story will carry on.

After transferring to Netflix, the show became the number one binged show on the site for eight weeks, despite Fox getting rid of it thanks to 'bad ratings'.

Star of the show: Tom Ellis, who plays the title role, reportedly struggled to negotiate a deal in off-screen discussions about the series' move to Netflix, seemingly ruling out any further episodes after season 5

To be continued: The series follows fallen angel Lucifer Morningstar who becomes sick of ruling Hell and so returns to Earth

Fans were mortified when the show was initially axed from Fox, with a final episode shelved.

Much to the relief of avid Lucifer enthusiasts, Fox decided to air it after all. Season 4 then followed on Netflix in 2019.

The series follows fallen angel Lucifer Morningstar who becomes sick of ruling Hell and so returns to Earth.

Ending up in Los Angeles, he begins running a nightclub and ends up becoming a consultant to the LAPD, all the while battling a series of seraphic threats that descend upon the city.

Lucifer Season 5's first eight episodes will land on August 21 on Netflix.
Two brothers found a way round a coronavrius ban on riding pillion - by attaching a wooden sleigh to the back of their motorcycle. The bizarre wooden attachment carried the rider's brother so they can 'legally' ride to work together in the town of Cainta in Rizal province, the Philippines. Onlooker Elland Terante said he was on his way to deliver his customer's food when he noticed the strange vehicle on June 13. He said: "I think there is nothing wrong if you are riding with a relative. If you are cautious and aware of the safety measures against coronavirus, you will not get infected easily." Riding pillion in the Philippines is not yet allowed under the Covid-19 preventive guidelines. The Department of Transportation undersecretary Artemio Tuazon said the ban is part of the agency's guidelines for social distancing. He said: "People are very close physically during backrides. There is a high chance for the virus to be transferred."
A Libyan asylum seeker currently in custody in relation to the knife rampage in a British park that killed three people was known to the MI5 intelligence service, UK media reports said on Monday.

Khairi Saadallah, 25, has been arrested under the UKs Terrorism Act after the deadly incident in a busy park in the southern English city of Reading on Saturday evening was declared a terrorist attack by counter-terror officials.

It has now emerged that the refugee, who arrived in Britain from war-torn Libya in 2012, had been on the radar of security spies as they monitored him for suspected extremist activities.

Security sources told the BBC that the suspect came to the attention of the security services in 2019 after they received information he had aspirations to travel abroad  potentially for terrorism.

When the information was further investigated, as the first stage of looking into a potential lead, no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified. No case file was opened which would have made him a target for further investigation, the sources were quoted as saying.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has held discussions with security officials following the attack, said that if there are lessons that we need to learn about how we handle such cases, how we handle the events leading up to such cases then we will learn those lessons.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has said that "people are united in their grief" following the attack, and that he wants to speak to the prime minister to discuss how to "learn from this".

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel is expected to update MPs in relation to the terror attack in the House of Commons later on Monday.

Two of the three victims of the terror attack have been identified as 36-year-old school teacher James Furlong and 39-year-old Joe Ritchie-Bennett, an American citizen living in the UK.

"I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those killed. To our great sorrow, this includes an American citizen. Our thoughts are with all those affected," US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson said in a statement.

James Furlong taught history, government and politics at The Holt School in Wokingham, eight miles from where he was stabbed in Reading, Berkshire.

"He was the best son, brother, uncle and partner you could wish for. We are thankful for the memories he gave us all. We will never forget him and he will live in our hearts forever," Furlongs parents said in a statement.

A minutes silence was observed in Reading in memory of those killed in the attack on Monday morning. Former pupils and current students of secondary school teacher Furlong are also planning to light candles and lay flowers at a church near the school later.

Saadallah is from Reading and was arrested initially on suspicion of murder before being re-arrested on Sunday under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Under the Act, police have the power to detain him without charge for up to 14 days. PTI AK ZH
He has been isolating at home with his girlfriend Tisha Merry and his daughter Sienna-Rae, who he co-parents with ex-wife Lucy-Jo Hudson.

And Coronation Street's Alan Halsall was feeling sentimental as he shared a touching video with his six-year-old daughter to mark Father's Day on Sunday.

The soap star joined in on a TikTok trend where families recreate their childhood photographs.

Adorable: Coronation Street's Alan Halsall recreated an old photo with his six-year-old daughter Sienna-Rae on Sunday

Reposting the video on Instagram, the Tyrone Dobbs star, 37, picked up Sienna-Rae and kissed her on the cheek.

The clip then cut to a photo taken shortly after his daughter was born with the pair in the same positions.

Alan shared the adorable video with the caption: 'There's a girl who stole my heart at 02:56am on the 07/09/2013......that girl calls me Daddy .'

Throwback: The clip then cut to a snap taken shortly after the soap star's daughter was born in 2019

He then added the hashtags: '#fathersday #daddysgirl #daddydaughter #ilovemydaughter #tiktok #imjustakidchallenge #imjustakid .'

The post comes after Alan seemed to take a thinly-veiled swipe at his ex-wife on Instagram as well as her boyfriend.

Hollyoaks star Lucy-Jo, 36, recently claimed Alan 'must have regretted' his hastily-deleted Instagram rant at her boyfriend Lewis Devine, but the Coronation Street stalwart has since insisted he has 'no regrets' in a cryptic social media post.

Special relationship: The actor shared the post to mark Father's Day on Sunday and has been spending lockdown with his daughter

Speaking in an interview with OK! in April, Lucy broke her silence on the incident and reckons that her ex, 37, had misgivings over what he said.

She told the publication: 'I had literally just given birth to Carter when he posted that so I didnt see it and my head was elsewhere. He quickly deleted it so he must have regretted it.

'I didnt bother bringing it up with him. Lew and I were both too focused on Carter so it just didnt get our attention.'

Breaking her silence: It comes after Alan's ex-wife Lucy-Jo Hudson spoke out about co-parenting with the actor, after he appeared to take a swipe at her and boyfriend Lewis Devine

Lucy-Jo also opened up about co-parenting with Alan, stating it can 'challenging' as they clash over their parenting styles.

The soap actress also opened up about co-parenting with Alan, stating it can 'challenging' as they clash over their parenting styles.

She added: 'The thing is, everybody who has a blended family knows its not easy. You cant pretend that it is. And me and Alan sometimes have different views on raising Sienna so trying to co-parent can be challenging. Its probably like that for a lot of blended families.'

Furious: In February, the Coronation Street actor seemingly lashed out at his ex-wife Lucy-Jo's beau after he referred to the former couple's daughter Sienna-Rae as his own

Alan seemingly lashed out at his ex-wife Lucy-Jo's boyfriend Lewis after he called the actor's daughter his own.

The Tyrone Dobbs actor appeared to make a remark in response to Lewis' gushing post following the birth of his and Lucy-Jo's son Carter in February.

Amid his excitement at becoming a new dad, Lewis heaped praise on Lucy-Jo and Alan's six-year-old girl Sienna, with part of his statement reading: 'Our Sienna is delighted and is already making the best big sister, just like I knew she would!'

In a now-deleted Instagram post viewed by The Sun, Alan didn't appear to take too kindly to Lewis' use of the word 'our' and seemed to hit back at his ex's new beau.

He wrote: 'You're welcome to keep the lying cheating one & call her your own! But not my daughter.'

Lucy-Jo split from Alan in May 2018, after nearly nine years of marriage; it was revealed that she'd embarked on a relationship with Lewis just two months later.
Islamabad:

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said on Monday that the National Security Advisors of both India and Pakistan have spoken over phone and are all set to reduce tensions on the Line of Control (LOC). The statement comes in the aftermath of India's successful surgical strikes which had heightened tensions amidst the nations.

Aziz confirmed that a contact was established between India's NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Nasir Janjua after recent tension between the two countries on the Line of Control (LoC). Aziz said they agreed to reduce tensions on LoC.

"Pakistan wants to reduce tensions on LoC and focus on Kashmir," Geo News quoted Aziz as saying. He said that India wants to divert worlds attention from Occupied Kashmir by escalating tensions.

Last week the Indian Army said it had carried out surgical strikes on multiple terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control or LoC in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, inflicting heavy casualties on terrorists waiting to sneak into India. The surgical strikes came days after Pakistani terrorists had attacked an Army camp in Kashmir's Uri, killing 19 soldiers.

Pakistan has denied that the surgical strikes took place on Thursday, calling it "cross-border" firing. Talking about Sharif's recent US visit, Aziz said that the Prime Minister had explained to the world leaders that incidents of border tensions would continue between both countries without the resolution of Kashmir dispute.

Also read: Baramulla army camp attacked; Defence Minister chairs high level meet with Army, Air Force and Navy Chiefs; search operation called off

Also read: Pakistan flies in international media to debunk Indias claim of Surgical Strikes

Also read: 6,490 people sign petition asking UK Govt to condemn Pakistan for providing safe haven to terrorists

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
On June 22, 2020, the Australian Minister of Defence has announced that the Royal Australian Navys latest upgrade of the Mark 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) has reached a major milestone by achieving Initial Operating Capability. Delivered on schedule, the upgraded capability is being progressively rolled out until late 2023 across Navys Destroyers, Amphibious Ships and new Supply Class Tankers.

On June 22, 2020, the Australian Minister of Defence has announced that the Royal Australian Navys latest upgrade of the Mark 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) has reached a major milestone by achieving Initial Operating Capability. Delivered on schedule, the upgraded capability is being progressively rolled out until late 2023 across Navys Destroyers, Amphibious Ships and new Supply Class Tankers.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

The Ticonderoga-class guided missile-cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) fires its Phalanx close-in weapons system during a live-fire exercise March 16, 2020. (Picture source U.S. Navy)

Australian Minister for Defence, Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC said the upgraded system delivers improved lethality and a broader range of protection for Navy ships in fast-moving combat situations.

The first system, which incorporates the upgrade to Block 1B Baseline 2 of the Phalanx system, has already been installed into HMAS Sydney which will ensure she enters service as Australias most potent and capable warship, Minister Reynolds said.

The system significantly boosts HMAS Sydneys self defence capability, providing new generation technology to Navy vessels and ensuring the highest levels of protection from modern systems.

Achieving this important milestone reflects Australias world-class shipbuilding capability and demonstrates the success of the Morrison Governments Naval Shipbuilding Plan.

The upgraded system will create opportunities for Australian businesses to benefit from the Morrison Governments investment in a sovereign shipbuilding capability.

The second unit of the upgraded system was delivered in 2019 and will be used to provide comprehensive training in Australia, supported by local industry and increasing self-reliance in the training pipeline.

The MK 15 Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) consists of a radar-guided 20 mm Vulcan cannon mounted on a swiveling base. It is used on ships to provide close defense system against airborne threats such as anti-ship missiles and helicopters. The Phalanx is in service by the United States Navy and the naval forces of 15 other countries.

Phalanx production started in 1978 with the Block 0 configuration and was first installed in 1980 on the USS Coral Sea. The Block 1 configuration was installed on USS Wisconsin in 1988. The first Block 1B installation was aboard USS Underwood (FFG-36) in 1999. The Phalanx program has had an active and continuous production, upgrade and overhaul program since 1978.

The MK 15 PHALANX CIWS Block 1B Baseline 2 upgrades will provide enhanced electro-optical and radiofrequency close-in detection, tracking and engagement capabilities over the Australian existing MK 15 PHALANX systems while improving CIWS supportability, maintainability, and interoperability with U.S. systems.



The HMAS Sydney is a new destroyer of the Australian that was commissioned in May 2020. It is the last of the three ships of the Hobart Class guided missile destroyers. Her sister ships are HMAS Hobart (III) and HMAS Brisbane (III). HMAS Sydney is based on the Navantia designed F100 frigate and is equipped with the Aegis Combat System. The ship is armed with one Phalanx CIWS as well as other armaments including air defense missile, anti-ship missiles, Mk 45 gun, torpedoes and M242 Bushmaster cannons.
BERWYN, Pa., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Triumph Group [NYSE: TGI] announced that its Triumph Systems & Support business unit has been awarded a five-year contract from Bell Textron, Inc. for the supply of mechanical flight controls for multiple commercial helicopter platforms, including the Bell 429, Bell 412 and Bell 407. The contract is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) award that will commence this year. Triumph is a long-standing supplier of safe and reliable high-performance mechanical flight control products to Bell supporting both their commercial and military programs.

"We are pleased that Bell continues to value the quality and performance of Triumph's mechanical flight controls, and we look forward to furthering our support of their very successful rotary-wing platforms," said Ian Reason, President of Triumph Systems & Support  Mechanical Solutions. "This contract helps solidify our position as a major supplier to Bell and reinforces our commitment to building lasting partnerships with our customers so we can deliver the best solutions to meet their needs."

Work will be performed at Triumph's Mechanical Solutions facilities in North Wales, Pennsylvania and Shelbyville, Indiana through 2024. Triumph Mechanical Solutions supports multiple rotary-wing platforms with highly effective mechanical control solutions that are also used in larger commercial aircraft, maritime and military land vehicle applications.

"The ability to leverage and adapt our highly engineered aerospace applications to other markets where quality, reliability and value are also key drivers, is a real strength of Triumph Mechanical Solutions," continued Reason. "This provides opportunities for further growth of our business."

Triumph Group, Inc., headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, designs, engineers, manufactures, repairs and overhauls a broad portfolio of aerospace and defense systems, components and structures. The company serves the global aviation industry, including original equipment manufacturers and the full spectrum of military and commercial aircraft operators.

More information about Triumph can be found on the company's website at www.triumphgroup.com.

SOURCE Triumph Group

Related Links

www.triumphgroup.com


(Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @LaRazon_mix) Ansel Ergot Denies Rape Accusations After Trending on Twitter: Here are More Details (Photo : Screenshot from Instagram post of @hogswartland) Ansel Ergot Denies Rape Accusations After Trending on Twitter: Here are More Details

Baby Driver actor Ansel Elgort denies the accusation of sexually assaulting a young woman, a 17-year-old girl after a Twitter post went viral. He is currently the latest celebrity who is in the spotlight after finding himself amid sexual assault accusations.

According to Fox News' latest report, a detailed story of an encounter with the actor who is now 26 years old, was shared from a now-deleted Twitter account on Friday, June 19. The post allegedly accused the actor of sexually assaulting a young woman who was 17 years old.

According to Newsweek's previous report, Ansel Elgort got also faced another issue after some Twitter users tried to cancel the 26-year-old actor over claims that he used the N-word in the past. However, the report stated that the claims were still unverified.

The report also stated that the allegations are still unclear if it involves the young actor. It was stated that there are no proof of any wrongdoing provided by the post, and the actor was not explicitly identified. But, Twitter users still started a trending wave of controversy about the allegations, saying that Ansel Ergot should be canceled, although there is no strong evidence of the accusations.

Ansel Elgort denies rape accusations

"So when it happened instead of asking me if I wanted to stop having sex knowing it was my first time and I was sobbing in pain, and I didn't want to do it the only words that came out of his mouth were 'we need to break you in," said the Twitter post according to Fox News.

"I WASN'T there at that moment, mentally. I disassociated myself and just felt like my mind was gone I was in shock," added the post.

The report stated that the woman said that the incident happened in Elgort's 20s and the messages on Snapchat were dated 2014.

"He made me think this is how sex was supposed to be. I WAS SO YOUNG AND HE KNEW THAT," the woman said. She also claimed that the actor told him that she was going to be a beautiful woman once she gets older.

The actor was also accused of asking the 17-year-old woman to send nude pictures of her and also asking her to have a threesome with one of her underage friends. She currently suffers from panic attacks and PTSD after the incident, the report claimed.



On Saturday, June 20, the actor posted a statement on social media that denies the accusations.

"I cannot claim to understand Gabby's feelings, but her description of events is simply not what happened. I have never and would never assault anyone," said Elgort.

He also said that in 2014, he had a brief, legal, and completely consensual relationship with the woman, but wasn't able to handle the breakup well. Elgort claimed that his actions were cruel and immature after he stopped replying to her messages.



Also Read: [BREAKING] Ansel Elgort Isn't Just an Assaulter; He's Also a Racist, Accuses Report

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Britney Spears is a pop legend who rose to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s with hit songs like Baby One More Time, Oops! I Did It Again, and Toxic. She has been called the Princess of Pop, and she has even influenced many female artists of the next generation.

Although Spears often made news in the mid-2000s for some erratic behavior, she has since bounced back and proven herself as a caring mom for her two sons.

Given her amazing career, fans have been calling on the state of Louisiana to honor Spears in a big and surprising way.

Britney Spears | VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

Britney Spears is from Kentwood, Louisiana

Spears was born in McComb, Mississippi, but grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana. She had a Southern upbringing that included a lot of religious influence, and Spears even got her start singing in a church choir.

Friends and family members in Kentwood also recall Spears often put on shows and performed for an audience, as shared by Spears mom, Lynne, in the 2000 book Heart to Heart.

Lynne understood that her daughter could have a shot at a life outside of their small town, but others in Kentwood were skeptical. One resident told Splinter News in 2016: We just couldnt believe that Lynne was gonna take that girl all the way up to New York City. It seemed too ridiculous.

Of course, the decision paid off well for Spears. After studying performance art in New York City, Spears ended up joining the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club, where she gained notoriety. This led her to have her own solo music career, and the rest is history.

Today, Kentwood has a small museum dedicated to Spears and very much prides itself on being her hometown.

Fans want Confederate statues in Louisiana to be replaced with Spears

RELATED: Britney Spears Family Is Worried After She Burned Down Home Gym

Having Kentwood honor Spears is not enough for fans, however. They believe Louisiana should also do something to honor one of the biggest stars from its state.

Amidst the recent call for removal of Confederate statues across the country, fans are bringing back a petition that urges Louisiana to replace those statues with Spears monuments instead. The petition is addressed to Governor John Bel Edwards as well as the Louisiana State Senate.

Not only has Britney proven her talent, but shes proven her strength of character by not only overcoming highly publicized mental breakdown, but by continuously working towards improving herself. Shes an inspiration to millions, the petition read.

It also went on to list a few charitable contributions Spears has made throughout her career, including her efforts to help victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Louisiana floods.

One fan said: Britney Spears is a musical legend and has been always been an active ally for the LGBT and POC communities. She also has influenced countless people in the music industry.

Not every star continues to care for their home state as she has, another person wrote. Shes a good ambassador for Louisiana tourism too.

Spears has been supporting the BLM protests

RELATED: Britney Spears Calls Justin Timberlake a Genius, Says We Had One of the Worlds Biggest Breakups

Its not clear how Spears is feeling about the call to erect statues in her honor, but she has been showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Earlier this month, she wrote on Instagram: What the world needs now is love.. my heart breaks for my friends in the black community. and for everything going on in our country. Right now I think we all should do what we can to listen. learn do better. and use our voices for good.
White House aide Kellyanne Conway appears to have condemned the term "Kung Flu" a little more than three months before her boss, President Donald Trump, used the term at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The exchange is perhaps a reminder that - so far as his staff is concerned - the rules do not apply to Mr Trump.

The video of Ms Conway condemning the term "Kung Flu" - a racist term referencing the fact that the coronavirus originated in China - is from 18 March and involved a heated exchange between her, PBS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and at least one other reporter.

In the video, the reporter asks Ms Conway about rumours that White House staffers were referring to the coronavirus as the "Kung Flu." Ms Conway baulks at the accusation and asks the reporter to step in front of the cameras and to say the names of the individuals being accused of making the remarks.

Ms Alcindor can then be heard off-screen from the other side of the press gaggle pushing Ms Conway to answer the original question and make a statement on the term.

Recommended Trump held off sanctions on China concentration camps over trade deal

"Yamiche, I'm not dealing in hypotheticals, of course it's wrong," Ms Conway said.

Ms Conway continues to challenge the original reporter to say the names of the individuals they were asking about, at one point referring to the phrase "Kung Flu" as "very offensive."

Despite being a "very offensive" term, Mr Trump appeared to have no issue using it at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday. While Mr Trump was complaining about getting "hit left and right" with criticisms, he became distracted and began complaining that the coronavirus had too many names.

"I can name Kung Flu, I can name 19 different versions of names," Mr Trump said. "Many call it a virus, which it is, many call it a flu, what difference? I think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name."

Mr Trump's latest apologist, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, defended the president, claiming the phrase is simply a way of denoting the virus's origin, and that it contains no racial component.

"It's a fair thing to point out as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history to ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers. President Trump is trying to say 'no, China, I will label this virus for its place of origin,'" Ms McEnany said.

The Trump administration's strategy since late March has been to portray the US's continued struggle to effectively respond to the virus as the fault of China, despite almost every other major developed country on the planet managing to bend the curve.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded fellow G8 delegates refer to the virus as the "Wuhan virus" at a virtual summit earlier this year and alleged that China's distribution of medical equipment and PPE to other countries battling the pandemic was simply the country grasping for positive PR.

Mr Trump wasn't the only one to use the racist phrase. His son, Donald Trump Jr, also referred to the coronavirus as the "Kung Flu."

A little more than a week after Ms Conway said the term was offensive, Don Jr shared a video on his Instagram page in which a doctored version of the final fight scene in "The Karate Kid" portrays Mr Trump beating up the coronavirus and China.

"Hahahaha 'The Kung-Flu kid,'" he wrote.
The office of President Moon Jae-in on Monday dismissed former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton's major written account of summit-level consultations on North Korea last year as "distorted." Yonhap



The office of President Moon Jae-in on Monday dismissed former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton's major written account of summit-level consultations on North Korea last year as "distorted."



Chung Eui-yong, director of national security at Cheong Wa Dae, said in a statement that much of it reflects what Bolton had seen from his "own viewpoint," not "accurate facts."



Chung also accused Bolton of unilaterally disclosing details of diplomatic consultations based on trust among relevant governments.



Cheong Wa Dae said it delivered Chung's position to the U.S. National Security Council on Sunday.



It represented Cheong Wa Dae's first official response to a flood of news reports on Bolton's upcoming memoir, entitled "The Room Where It Happened."



'Trump, Kim didn't want Moon at Panmunjom meeting'



U.S. President Donald Trump did not want South Korean President Moon Jae-in to join him during his third meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at Panmunjom in June 2019, but at Moon's insistence, he eventually agreed, according to Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton.



In his upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," set to be published Tuesday, Bolton wrote that Moon came to Washington on April 11, 2019, to discuss the aftermath of the failed Hanoi summit two months earlier between Trump and Kim.



Moon suggested Trump and Kim meet again at Panmunjom, inside the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas, or on a U.S. naval vessel, because he wanted "something dramatic to generate momentum for what he thought could be the summit of the century," according to Bolton.



"Trump cut through the monologue, which was fortunate, because he had seemed to be falling asleep, stressing that he appreciated Moon's ideas, but underlining that his desire was for the next summit to produce an actual agreement," the former adviser recalled. "Meeting once without a deal was not a problem, but no one wanted to walk away twice."



Bolton claimed that Moon was still worried about form rather than substance, "but what was really uppermost for him was stressing he was available to join Kim and Trump."






22.06.2020 LISTEN

The Attorney General (AG) is seeking to back the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in a suit challenging the continuous commemoration of the 31st December 1981 coup d'etat that toppled the Administration of Dr. Hilla Limann.

Constitutional law advocate and Professor of Accounting, Stephen Kwaku Asare is in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the annual celebration or commemoration of an event he argues is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution.

He is ultimately asking the Apex Court to direct the NDC to cease and desist from holding the annual ceremonies.

At its last hearing on Wednesday, June 17, 2020, the Supreme Court directed the Attorney General to immediately file legal arguments on the matter.

In a proposed statement of claim filed by the Attorney General, signed by Chief State Attorney, Grace M-Ewoal, and sighted by Citi News, the Attorney-General argues that, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare has no case.

In a what could best be described as an AG's push for a technical knock-out, the AG wants the Court to believe and to rule that Professor Asare failed to demonstrate how the NDC's annual celebration or commemoration of the 31st December Coup d'etat offends the 1992 Constitution as such warrants the Court's orders.

The Attorney General, according to the sighted proposed statement of claim, will also be arguing that the use of public space which is funded or maintained with the public funds to commemorate the event defeats the purpose of the decision in NPP v. Attorney-General which seeks to bar the use of public funds in the celebration of the event.

Meanwhile, the Attorney-General has asked the Court for more time to enable it file its Statement of Case.

In an application to the Court, the Attorney General in acknowledging the failure to file within the stipulated fourteen-day period says it was borne out of administrative lapses and not disrespect to the Court.

 citinewsroom
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Jagat Prakash Nadda lashed out at former prime minister Manmohan Singh for his statement on the Ladakh face-off.

Dr Singh called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the government to ensure justice for the 20 soldiers. To do any less would be a historic betrayal of the peoples faith, he said in a statement.

Nadda hit back saying Dr Singh belongs to a party which time and again has belittled our forces.

Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese! During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our forces, Nadda said on Twitter.

Dr. Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which:



Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese!



During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight.



Time and again belittles our forces.  Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) June 22, 2020

He went on: One only wishes that Dr Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of Indias land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!

Dr Manmohan Singh can certainly share his wisdom on many subjects but the responsibilities of the office of the Prime Minister isnt one of them. UPA personified systematic institutional erosion of that office, combined with disrespect for our armed forces. NDA has reversed that! the BJP chief said in his third tweet.

And finally, he said: Dear Dr Singh and Congress Party, please stop insulting our forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes. Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times. Its never too late to improve.

Dear Dr. Singh and Congress Party,



Please stop insulting our forces repeatedly, questioning their valour. You did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes.



Please understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.



Its never too late to improve.  Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) June 22, 2020

In his first remarks since the face-off on June 15, Dr Singh had said that China is brazenly and illegally seeking to claim parts of Indian territory by committing multiple incursions from April onwards.

We cannot and will not be cowed down by threats and intimidation nor permit a compromise with our territorial integrity, he said.

Dr Singhs statement furthers the attack launched by the Congress party since the June 15 skirmish. It has questioned if the Chinese have captured parts of Indian territory.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said at an all-party meeting called on the issue that there are no Chinese troops on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and no Indian posts have been captured.
The ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a jewel of Peruvian tourism, will not reopen in July as originally scheduled due to concerns over the coronavirus, local media reported Sunday. The Machu Picchu management group, UGM, made the decision based on reports from authorities in the Cusco region, where the citadel is located. "It has been decided that it will not be opened on July 1," Machu Picchu district mayor Darwin Baca, a UGM member, told reporters. An official reopening date has not yet been set. Baca indicated that a series of health measures, such as testing, are still pending in the area. Machu Picchu unions have since Monday protested the reopening, saying that allowing tourists in the region would cause a spike in infections. Peruvian officials announced last week that the citadel would be allowed to reopen to a sharply reduced number of daily visitors: only 675 per day, one-quarter the usual number. Guides would lead tours of only seven visitors, and people would be required to wear masks. The planned July reopening was linked to a lifting of national confinement measures in place since March 16, Cusco regional governor Paul Benavente said. Airports in Peru remain closed, and many shops are shuttered. But despite some of Latin America's earliest and most stringent measures, the country has logged the second-highest number of cases in the region, at 250,000, along with nearly 8,000 deaths.
Ecobank Ghana Limited is adapting to the new normal and they are excited to announce Ecobank Live, a new live stream series on Facebook and YouTube.



Powered by Ecobank Ghana, these sessions are aimed at engaging customers and the public on a regular basis using our social media channels.



The first Ecobank Live Event will kick-off in Ghana with the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), an entity of the Africa Union on Tuesday June 23, 2020 at 10am GMT. The event will focus on COVID  19 and its impact.



Speakers for the event will be Dr John Nkengasong, Director - Africa CDC and Mr. Daniel Sackey, MD  Ecobank Ghana, and the event moderator will be Bernardino Avle, Host of The Citi Breakfast Show - Citi FM.



You are invited to join this first session where we will answer your questions and provide you with information on how to stay safe through the COVID-19 pandemic.



You can ask your questions in advance by using the hashtag #AskEcobankGH



Facebook: @ecobankghanalimited



Twitter: @ecobankghanalimited



YouTube: @ecobanktv









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
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on June 22, 2020

2020/06/22

CCTV: US Secretary of State Pompeo attended the Virtual Copenhagen Democracy Summit on June 19. He criticized China on a series of China-related issues. I wonder if you have a comment?

Zhao Lijian: Mr. Pompeo once again leveled wanton criticism against China and attempted to sow discord between other countries and China. We are firmly opposed to this.

His remarks concerning China run counter to plain facts and basic norms governing international relations. They only serve to further expose his deep-seated Cold War mentality and ideological bias. The Chinese people have long seen through this. People won't buy a word he said.

We urge him to correct his mistake, stop spreading political virus, and work to promote instead of undermining China-US cooperation.

Macau Monthly: The decision on China's participation in the Arms Trade Treaty was approved at the recently concluded 19th Plenary Session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: The NPC Standing Committee's decision on joining the Arms Trade Treaty was recently approved at the 19th Plenary Session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee, which means the domestic legal procedures for China's participation in the Treaty have basically completed. After finishing all legal procedures, China will submit the instrument of accession through diplomatic channels as soon as possible, which shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

China attaches high importance to the problems caused by illicit transfer and abuse of conventional arms. We support the purposes and goals of the Treaty, and agree with the idea to take necessary measures to regulate international arms trade and combat illicit arms transfer.

As a country in regular arms trade, China always strictly regulates export of military articles and has put in place a full-fledged policy and legal system of export control, with policies and management measures meeting or in some areas even exceeding ATT requirements. It is worth pointing out that China only allows export to sovereign states, not non-state actors. This fully demonstrates its high sense of responsibility. China calls on all parties to strictly regulate export of military items, disallow export to non-state actors, stop interfering in sovereign nations' internal affairs through arms export, and earnestly uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

Accession to the ATT is another important step China has taken in supporting multilateralism and advancing the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. It will produce a positive effect in enhancing the treaty's universality and efficacy. China will continue its tireless efforts to safeguard and promote regional and global peace and stability.

Feature Story News: Why is it that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been denied consular visits as has been repeatedly suggested by the Canadian side?

Zhao Lijian: China has made its position clear. The relevant Chinese authorities have suspended consular visits to the detainees in the midst of the epidemic. This is not specifically targeted at Canadian citizens in custody.

The Paper: In response to China's public prosecution against Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau said on June 19 that he was "very disappointed" and it was "a real shame" China did not appear to understand that governments in Canada could not interfere in the justice system. Canada will continue to put pressure on the Chinese government to cease the arbitrary detention of these two Canadian citizens who are being held for no other reason than the Chinese government is disappointed with the independent proceedings of the Canadian judiciary. Besides, some Canadian media believe China's prosecution against Kovrig and Spavor is a retaliation for Meng Wanzhou. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: The recent erroneous comments from the Canadian side clearly reveal the double standards pursued by Canada in so-called "judicial independence" issues. The two Canadians were arrested and prosecuted by the Chinese competent authorities in accordance with law for suspected crimes undermining China's national security; this is not "arbitrary" detention at all. The Chinese judicial organs handle cases independently and guarantee the lawful rights of those Canadian nationals according to law. We urge the Canadian leader to respect rule of law and China's judicial sovereignty, and stop making irresponsible remarks.

The Meng Wanzhou incident is in essence different from the cases of the two Canadians. Anyone without bias can see that it is a serious political incident. The US aims to oppress Huawei and other Chinese hi-tech companies, and Canada is its accomplice. We strongly urge Canada to redress its mistakes, release Meng Wanzhou and ensure her safe return home as soon as possible.

CCTV4: On June 19, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors voted to adopt a resolution on verifying Iran's compliance with its safeguards obligations. China and Russia voted against it. I wonder if you have a comment?

Zhao Lijian: China supports the IAEA in playing its role in an objective, professional and neutral manner in verifying Iran's compliance with its safeguards obligations. We are against politicizing its work. The IAEA explicitly states that the safeguards issue is neither urgent nor poses a proliferation risk. The Iranian side also expressed its clear wish to resolve issues through dialogue with the agency. Under such circumstances, China does not approve of actions that artificially exacerbate tensions and escalate the situation. We hope relevant parties will remain calm, exercise restraint, and support Iran and the IAEA in resolving differences through dialogue and cooperation.

On the Iranian nuclear issue, China's unwavering aim is to uphold the JCPOA, multilateralism, peace and stability in the Middle East, and the international order based on international law. We stand ready to work closely with relevant sides for the political and diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear issues.

Feature Story News: Canada will soon make a decision on whether to ban Huawei from its 5G network. If it does so, what consequences can Canada expect? Can I clarify the question I made earlier? Is there a reason why video consular calls have been denied to Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor?

Zhao Lijian: On your first question, China's position on the issue of 5G technology is clear and consistent. The Chinese government always encourages Chinese companies to do business overseas in accordance with international rules and host country laws. In the meantime, we hope relevant countries will provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies operating there.

On your second question, relevant Chinese authorities manage the detainees in accordance with laws and regulations.

Kyodo News: Japan's Ishigaki city assembly adopted a bill to change the so-called "administrative designation" of Diaoyu Dao. Does China have any comment on that move?

Zhao Lijian: Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory, and China is determined and resolved in safeguarding its territorial sovereignty. Japan's adoption of the so-called name-changing bill is serious provocation against China's territorial sovereignty, which is illegal, null and void. It cannot change the fact whatsoever that Diaoyu Dao belongs to China. We firmly oppose this move taken by Japan. We have lodged stern representations with Japan through diplomatic channels and we reserve the right to make further responses.

AFP: We want to ask about President Trump who referred to the coronavirus pandemic as "Kong Fu virus" at a recent campaign rally in Oklahoma. Does China have any response to his remarks?

Zhao Lijian: We noted relevant remarks. WHO and the international community are unequivocally opposed to linking the virus to specific countries and regions as well as stigmatization. China firmly opposes any remarks that use the issue of the origin of virus to stigmatize others.

We have noted that many insightful people in the US have publicly condemned the use of the epidemic to stigmatize others and make racist remarks.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun: According to The Economist, China is getting more likely to establish an ADIZ in the South China Sea. Could you confirm if it's true?

Zhao Lijian: I'm not sure what the source of this report is, but I'd like to stress that every country has the right to establish an ADIZ and to decide whether to establish an ADIZ based on the intensity of the threats it faces in air defense security.

In the light of the air security threats China faces above relevant waters of the South China Sea, China will carefully and prudently study the relevant issue taking into account all factors.

CCTV4: On June 19, Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and the UK published a statement on the JCPOA. Does China have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: We noted the E3 foreign ministers' statement on the JCPOA.

China believes that upholding and implementing the JCPOA is the only right way to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently wrote to UN Secretary-General and the rotating president of the Security Council to stress that the JCPOA, endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2231, is an important outcome of multilateral diplomacy and a key element in international nuclear non-proliferation system. China firmly upholds the authority of the Security Council resolution and the efficacy of the JCPOA. All provisions in Resolution 2231 should be earnestly carried out. Iran's reduction of compliance is a result of the US maximum pressure. We urge the US to abandon unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction", and return to the right track of observing the JCPOA and the Security Council resolution. In the meantime, all parties to the JCPOA should take concrete measures to restore the balance of rights and obligations under the Agreement. As a quitter from the Agreement, the US has no right to ask the Security Council to launch the snapback mechanism that allows the re-imposition of sanctions.

We noticed that the E3 foreign ministers reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the JCPOA and implementing the Security Council Resolution 2231. They believe that the strategy of maximum pressure will not effectively address shared concerns about Iran's nuclear program. As any unilateral attempt to trigger UN sanctions snapback would have serious adverse consequences in the UNSC, they would not support such a decision which would be incompatible with current efforts to preserve the JCPOA.

China will work with the E3 and the larger international community to stick to the JCPOA and Security Council resolution, uphold multilateralism, and work for the political and diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue. In the meantime, we will resolutely safeguard our own legitimate rights and interests.

Reuters: Can you confirm how many casualties has China suffered in the clash at the Galwan Valley?

Zhao Lijian: China and India are resolving the issue on the ground through military and diplomatic channels. I have no information to offer.
New Delhi/UNI: If a war does break out between India and China, an 'exited' Pakistan could jump into the fray as well with the 'tacit' support of Nepal-hence, India should develop a multi-pronged strategy to counter the ' caucus.'

This was observed here on Monday by experts, belonging to Defence and other major fields, amid reports of External Affairs Minister level meeting between India and China on Tuesday to discuss the Ladakh situation.

" Pakistani guns and morter opened up on Kupwara soon after the Galwan valley killings and most Indian strategists and politicians tend to see the military threat from Pakistan in isolation," the experts said.

They said there is a power differential between India and the China-Pakistan axis, and to address this, India cannot afford to be isolated and should get into closer security alignments with the US and other major Western powers , including Russia.

Mentioning about Nepal's 'encouragement' to any such 'misadventure," they pointed out that residents of Uttarakhand villages bordering Nepal that can catch the frequency of radio stations in the neighbouring country are being treated to a sudden surfeit of anti-India songs that call for return of areas in "Uttarakhand that have been included in Kathmandu's new map.
HARRISBURG, Pa. - The Trump administration has taken the final step to allow rail shipments of liquefied natural gas, a new front in the movement of energy products that had been opposed by environmental groups and 15 states.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration published the rule late last week for shipments of the flammable and odourless liquid known as LNG.

The departments new rule carefully lays out key operational safeguards to provide for the safe transportation of LNG by rail to more parts of the country where this energy source is needed, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

The rule comes amid foundering prices for natural gas in the U.S., as court and regulatory battles over pipeline projects have slowed movement of the nations world-leading gas production to markets.

The rule requires enhancements  including a thicker outer tank made of steel with a greater puncture resistance  to the approved tank car design that, for decades, has been approved for shipments of other flammable cryogenic materials, such as liquid ethylene and liquid ethane. The rule takes effect in 30 days after it was published.

Previously, federal hazardous materials regulations allow shipments of LNG by truck, but not by rail, except for with a special permit.

The Sierra Club accused the Trump administration of selling the country out to the fossil fuel industry for dangerous shipments that will travel past homes, schools, businesses and environmentally sensitive areas.

This new rule has major impacts on rail safety because the dangers of a possible derailment, spill, or explosion would be catastrophic, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said in a statement. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Some of New Jerseys train tracks, he said, are a century old or more and arent designed to handle such dangerous cargo, Tittel said.

The protesting states included Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the Trump administration issued a special permit in December to ship LNG by rail from northern Pennsylvanias Marcellus Shale natural gas fields to a yet-to-be-built storage terminal at a former explosives plant in New Jersey, along the Delaware River near Philadelphia.

From there, the LNG is expected to be exported to foreign markets for electricity production, although the applicant, a subsidiary of New Fortress Energy, has told federal regulators that some domestic industrial use is possible.

The states had argued that the trains will share tracks with passenger trains and travel through congested areas.

Other objecting states were California, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

The new rule was first proposed in October and comes after President Donald Trumps executive order last year that, in addition to seeking to speed up oil and gas pipeline projects, directed the transportation secretary to propose a rule allowing LNG to be shipped by rail.

An industry trade group representing major freight railroads in North America also had sought the new rule.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter
ZAMBOANGA CITY  Eight villages in the southern Philippine province of Sulu are now free from the influence of the pro-ISIS group Abu Sayyaf...
Distance learning is not going to go awaylikewise, the increased use of technology is not going to go away, Guermeur says

Schools across the county have had to learn on the fly how to implement remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic.(1) In facing numerous immediate challenges that could have been otherwise overwhelming, districts have sought assistance in striving to finish this school year on a high note while planning for a fall session that may also rely on distance learning. Many schools were caught during the health crisis having to pivot very quickly, says Sky Cassidy, CEO of MountainTop Data a leader in data intelligence. They needed to come up with a plan quickly to prepare for properly educating children.

Helping school districts successfully shift to remote learning is exactly what MountainTop Datas client, Metadot, does. Metadot, with it Mojo Helpdesk software, a ticket management system, assists schools and educators in managing help requests. Distance learning has been around for some timehowever, at the K-12 level, most schools simply did not have plans in place to deal with the quick onset of COVID-19, according to Daniel Guermeurfounder and CEO of Metadot.

Distance learning is not going to go awaylikewise, the increased use of technology is not going to go away, Guermeur says. More applications, more software, more tools are going to become even more prevalent moving forward. There will be a need for IT that will manage assets and support customers. We think solutions like ours will see a higher need, even as schools return to what had been business as usual.

MountainTop Datas assistance in providing data and email campaign management for Metadot has allowed the company to get its laser-focused messaging in front of the right target audiences, which gives school districts the help they need to navigate from crisis mode into as smooth an operation as possiblefrom making sure every student has reliable internet access to reimagining lesson plans that work in the classroom to plans that resonate on a students laptop screen. In partnership with MountainTop Data, Metadot is able to engage with schools who need to support students and staff who operate outside of their normal routines.

Technology plays a key role in facilitating learning," Guermeur says. New protocols, new technology, new software. The number of requests to the IT departments increased rapidly. Many of them would have been brought to their knees without a ticketing system. It is very easy to deploy (with Google Suite or ClassLink) so they can connect together with everyone. The product works with both these technologies. They are a great fit for public and private school systems.

While many districts have IT, they might not have a help desk or ticket management system. When teachers use data to drive their decisions and plans, its been proven that they are able to respond to problems more effectively, construct new teaching methods and advance skill sets faster.(2) Current studies indicate that teachers in schools with data-focused programs think using data improves instruction significantly. In the current climate of remote learningmeaning data is even more important. COVID-19 has posed various challenges for students all across the globe, such as not having reliable internet connections or in affecting their ability to comprehend lessons presented remotely.(3) Backed by MountainTop Data, Metadot is striving to reach as many schools as possible.

While they were tackling distance learning, schools may not have had the time to put together a program, Cassidy says. Now is the time that schools need to have a solid plan to manage logistical issues before schools starts this fall. Metadot's ticket management platform provides an easy to use and affordable solution and needed a way to reach out and engage with school IT and help desk personnel. Many industries have a sudden need to get their message in front of a different audience they all require clean data and targeted data.

About MountainTop Data:

Headquartered in Los Angeles, MountainTop Data has been providing data services for B2B marketing for nearly two decades. With an unrelenting commitment to quality, they were the first company to guarantee the accuracy of their licensed data and business emails. They provide marketing lists, data cleaning, data appending, and data maintenance services. Their data services have been used by some of the worlds biggest brands across a multitude of various industries, from multi-national telecommunication companies to office technology, to PR firms and more. For more information, visit http://www.mountaintopdata.com.

About Mojo Helpdesk:

Over 10 years ago, Metadot, Mojos parent company, needed a help desk so we could provide our customers with personal and dynamic technical support. We couldnt find a help desk software that met our needs, so we built it. Customers liked it so much we decided to transform it into a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. Today, thousands of businesses with only a few to thousands of agents use Mojo Helpdesk to serve their customers and employees. For more information, visit http://www.mojohelpdesk.com.

1. Castelo, Micah. Factors to consider when preparing for E-learning edtechmagazine.com, March 25, 2020, edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2020/03/factors-consider-when-preparing-e-learning-perfcon

2. Holley, Mark. The Benefits of Data Driven Education methodschools.org, Nov. 21, 2017, methodschools.org/blog/the-benefits-of-data-driven-education#:~:text=When%20teachers%20use%20data%20to,using%20data%20improves%20instruction%20significantly

3. Herold, Benjamin. The Disparities in Remote Learning Under Coronavirus (in Charts) Education Week, April 10, 2020, edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/04/10/the-disparities-in-remote-learning-under-coronavirus.html

# # #
Mumbai: Maharashtra minister for environment and tourism has opposed the Central governments proposal to conduct coal mining at a site near Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in the states Chandrapur district.

Aaditya Thackeray has written to Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) Prakash Javadekar, urging him to withdraw the proposal forthwith while flagging concern that allowing mining activities at the proposed site would cause devastation to TATR.

Were aware that such a move will spell ecological disaster in TATR. Then, whats the point in spending our time and resources on such a project? he asked.

Bander coal block, located close to TATR, is one of the 41 mining sites in the country for which the Centre has invited bids for an auction.

Thackeray said similar auctions were cancelled twice in the past in 1999 and 2001.

He cited that then MoEFCC Jairam Ramesh had ordered a survey and had concluded 10 years ago that the site was not suitable for mining activities.

Thackeray also requested Javadekar to conduct a fresh survey for the Bander coal block site.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Summer is (finally) in the air as the UK prepares for a period of very warm weather, with temperatures expected to hit 30C in some areas on Sunday.

But while the sunshine is more than welcome after torrential downpours and some flash flooding in recent weeks, the Met Offices pollen forecast predicts mostly high or very high levels of pollen across large swathes of the country from today  which does not bode well for hay fever sufferers.

And as all remaining social restrictions are set to lift from 19 July, everyone must stay alert to any potential symptoms of illness - so how can hay fever sufferers ensure they distinguish between their allergy and potential Covid-19?

With the appearance of the sun, weve also had a huge surge in springtime pollen, causing many of us to question whether our symptoms are hay fever or coronavirus, states the London Doctors Clinic.

If youre not sure what your symptoms are showing it can be a cause of concern during these unsettling times.

Heres how to tell the difference.

What are the main symptoms of hay fever?

The main symptoms of hay fever, the NHS outlines, are:

Sneezing and coughing

A runny or blocked nose

Itchy, red or watery eyes

Itchy throat, mouth, nose and ears

Loss of smell

Pain around your temples and forehead

Headache

Earache

Feeling tired

Hay fever doesnt cause a high temperature and most people dont feel unwell, says Marc Donovan, chief pharmacist at Boots.

The NHS adds that hay fever symptoms may last for weeks or months.

In some people, hay fever can trigger allergic asthma, causing a tight chest and difficulty breathing, Allergy UK states.

If an individual has hay fever and asthma, they may also experience a tight feeling in their chest and shortness of breath, in addition to wheezing and coughing.

How are they different to coronavirus symptoms?

The main symptoms of Covid-19 are a high temperature, a new, continuous cough and loss or changed sense of taste and smell, the NHS outlines.

If you have a high temperature, this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature), the health service explains.

If you have a new continuous cough, this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or three or more coughing episodes in 24 hours.

Hay fever and coronavirus symptoms infographic (Boots)

If you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual, the NHS adds.

The London Doctors Clinic outlines that other symptoms of the coronavirus may include:

Tiredness

Aches and pains

A sore throat

Shortness of breath

Some people have reported diarrhoea, nausea and a runny nose but this is rare

What can you do to ease hay fever symptoms?

You can ease your hay fever symptoms by taking measures such as putting Vaseline around your nostrils to trap pollen, wearing wraparound sunglasses when youre outside to stop pollen from getting into your eyes and showering and changing your clothes when you come inside to wash the pollen off, the NHS states.

It is also advisable to stay inside and keeping your windows and doors shut as much as possible.

A pharmacist may also be able to advise you on what products may help you, such as antihistamine tablets or nasal sprays.

Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Show all 15 1 /15 Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A rose is delivered by drone to a woman on Mother's Day in Jounieh, Lebanon AFP/Getty Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Women dance on their balcony as a radio station plays music for a flash mob to raise spirits in Rome Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A skeleton stands on a balcony in Frankfurt, Germany AP Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies The film Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna is projected on a building in Rome AP Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A woman uses a basket tied to a rope to pull a delivery of groceries up to her balcony in Naples, Italy EPA Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies DJ Francesco Cellini plays for his neighbours from the rooftop terrace of his flat block in Rome Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A woman gestures from her balcony in Barcelona EPA Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Cellist Karina Nunez performs for her neighbours at the balcony of her flat in Panama City Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies DJ Nash Petrovic live streams a set from his roof in Brooklyn Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies People applaud medical workers from their balconies in Modiin, Israel Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A Brooklyn resident relaxes in a hammock hung on their balcony Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Residents toast during a "safe distance" aperitif time between neighbours in Anderlecht, Belgium Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies Musician Adam Moser plays for neighbours from his balcony in Budapest, Hungary Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A man and his son on their balcony in Brooklyn Reuters Coronavirus culture from rooftops, windows and balconies A man sits alone on a roof terrace in Rome Reuters

What should you do if you display signs of Covid-19?

If you experience symptoms that you think may indicate you have the coronavirus, you should use the NHSs online 111 service to find out what you should do next.

It is important not to leave your home if you have a high temperature or a new, continuous cough.

To protect others, do not go to places like a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital. Stay at home, the NHS says.

The organisation adds that you should only call 111 if you cannot get help through the online service.
A year since Myanmar authorities ordered telecommunication companies to cease internet services in conflict areas of Rakhine and Chin States, a lack of information during the Covid-19 pandemic is deadly. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins 111 press freedom groups calling on the government to restore internet access and telecommunications.

Protest asking for an end to conflict in Chin and Rakhine State in Yangon. Credit: SAI AUNG MAIN / AFP

The network shutdown began on June 21, 2019, following an order to all mobile phone operators from the Myanmar Ministry of Transport and Communications to temporarily stop mobile internet traffic in nine townships of Rakhine and Chin States. Rakhine and Chin states is marred by the ongoing conflicts between Myanmars military and the Arakan Army, an armed group fighting for greater autonomy. Rakhine state captured the worlds attention in August 2017 with a military crackdown resulting in more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing the country to Bangladesh.

The government partially lifted the restriction in four townships in Rakhine and one in Chin on August 31, 2019, however, these were reinstated in February 2020 as a security requirement. On May 2, authorities lifted restrictions in Maungdaw township, leaving eight other townships without internet.

Independent United Nations, human rights experts, voiced grave concerns for the internet shutdown impacting over a million people in Rakhine state, threatening the safety of civilians, freedom of expression, right to information, participation, association, and assembly. The government defends its actions, believing it is necessary for peace between the military and the armed group.

The sign-on coordinated by Free Expression Myanmar call(s) on the government to:

Immediately reinstate access to the internet in the remaining eight townships in Rakhine and Chin States

Review Articles 77 and 78 and other Articles of the 2013 Telecommunication Law, and amend them to be in line with human rights standards

Refrain from restricting internet access and bandwidth restrictions in the future, either in these currently affected areas or elsewhere in Myanmar, including in other conflict areas, and during periods of elections.

The IFJ said: Widespread self-censorship and physical attacks on journalists have followed the shutdown in Rakhine and Chin states. The restricted access to information severely threatens the lives and freedoms of people in conflict situations. The IFJ condemns the disproportionate response and continued shutdown of internet and telecommunications, urging the government to reinstate access immediately.
TDT | Manama

The National Communication Centre (NCC) organised a field visit for journalists yesterday to the Crown Prince Center for Training and Medical Research (CTMR), the first simulation-based medical facility in the Kingdom of Bahrain. They were given a tour of the facilitys rooms, equipped with the latest medical robots, screens that display electrocardiograms, measure pulse oxygenation, blood pressure, arterial waves, pulmonary artery waves, and anaesthesia gas.

Journalists also collected information about the advanced training, medical services and research methods that are used at the centre. The highest quality standards in simulation-based education are maintained at the centre, using the latest technologies and the best learning methods in the region. Journalists explored the simulation labs where new doctors train for 50 hours before performing operations on the ground.

They also noted that every room is equipped with cameras and audio devices, allowing direct worldwide broadcast and tele-medical review as well. CTMR director, Brigadier Dr Khalid Abdulghaffar Abdulla appreciated the NCCs role in highlighting the national efforts to combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

The director emphasised the Royal Medical Services commandant, Major General Professor Shaikh Khalid bin Ali Al-Khalifas vision for the Crown Princes centre. That is, the centres dedication to provide high-quality simulation-based medical education with the aim of raising the level of knowledge and skills of health professionals. Thus, ensuring their excellence.
Homicide detectives will probe the death of an "easy-going" father-of-two who died on his way to hospital two days after being assaulted while camping in regional Victoria.

David Crouch, from Springvale in Melbourne's south-east, packed up his caravan on June 15 and travelled 125 kilometres to Toorongo Falls, near Noojee in the Yarra Ranges National Park, for a solo camping trip.

The 49-year-old Springvale man who died on Sunday.

On Friday night he struck up a friendship with a man from Langwarrin at the campground and they had a few drinks together.

Late on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday, police say an altercation took place between Mr Crouch and a group of other campers.
Addressing a teleconference of the IAEA Board of Governors from June 15 to 19, Dung welcomed the IAEAs building of the Zoonotic Disease Integrated Action Project.

He expressed his belief that the project would help member nations develop nuclear technology so as to better manage pandemic threats such as COVID-19.

He told participants that Vietnam gained initial success in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, confirming 334 cases of infection by June 16 with zero fatalities.

The ambassador took the occasion to thank the IAEA for supporting Vietnam in applying RT-PCR, a nuclear-derived method, to detect the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as well as financial and technical contributions from such countries as the UK, the US, Japan, Canada, and Norway to help the agency provide its support.

During the teleconference, delegates discussed the main issues in the IAEAs operations, such as its nuclear technical cooperation programmes with members and the enforcement of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Safeguards Agreements between the IAEA and Iran, Syria, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The Board of Governors is one of the two policy-making bodies of the IAEA, along with the annual General Conference of IAEA Member States.

The 35-strong board examines and makes recommendations to the General Conference on IAEAs financial statements, programmes, and budget. It considers applications for membership and approves safeguards agreements and the publication of the IAEAs safety standards. It also appoints a Director General of the IAEA, with the approval of the General Conference.

Vietnam has been elected to the IAEA Board of Governors many times and was Chair of the Board in 2013-2014.
Canadian banks can weather a likely recession through their cross-border businesses and risk management, according to a recent analysis by rating agency KBRA.

Major Canadian banks have a high degree of resilience against the economic slowdown from COVID-19 and oil price pressure, even as these factors exacerbate the elevated level of household indebtedness, KBRA said in a research note. In addition, the distinct structure of the countrys mortgage market and extensive insurance provided by CMHC and private mortgage insurers go a long way toward insulating the banking system from rising risks in the housing market.

This is helped by the fact that insured mortgages do not account for the majority of Canadas total outstanding household debt  25.7% this year, per Bank of Canada data.
Veteran Gujarat politician Shankersinh Vaghela on Monday resigned from the Nationalist Congress Party, unhappy over his removal as president of the state party unit and cross-voting by the lone NCP MLA in the recently-held Rajya Sabha elections.

IMAGE: Shankersinh Vaghela. Photograph: PTI Photo

Vaghela has tendered his resignation as a national general secretary as well as a primary member of the Sharad Pawar-led party.

He had joined the NCP only in 2019, two years after quitting the Congress.

Issuing a video message after his resignation, Vaghela expressed his displeasure about lone NCP MLA Kandhal Jadeja defying the party whip and indulging in cross-voting during the June 19 Rajya Sabha polls for four seats.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had won three of the four seats while the Congress, which was hit by resignations of eight MLAs, could bag only one seat while its other candidate lost narrowly.

Such acts by an MLA of the party have disappointed me and other workers of the party, Vaghela said.

The NCP on Monday issued a show cause notice to Jadeja for defying the party whip by not voting for a Congress candidate.

In his resignation letter to Pawar, Vaghela stated that he was unhappy with the NCP since his removal as president of the Gujarat unit a week before the Rajya Sabha elections.

He was replaced with Jayant Patel, his predecessor.

The 79-year-old veteran and former chief minister said he will honour wish of his supporters, and will remain active in public life.

Vaghela had hopped parties in his long political career.

He had been with the BJP since the Jan Sangh days.

He became chief minister after splitting the BJP in 1996. In 1997, he merged his party with the Congress.

He quit the Congress after engineering a defection in the party rank ahead of Rajya Sabha polls in 2017.
New Delhi: Gold prices in the national capital fell Rs 85 to Rs 48,811 per 10 gram on Monday amid rupee appreciation, according to HDFC Securities.

In the previous trade, the precious metal had closed at Rs 48,896 per 10 gram.

Silver, however, rose Rs 144 to Rs 49,880 per kg from Rs 49,736 per kg in the previous trade.

"Spot gold prices for 24 karat in Delhi were trading down by Rs 85 amid rupee appreciation," HDFC Securities Senior Analyst (Commodities) Tapan Patel said.

The rupee on Monday appreciated 17 paise to close at 76.03 (provisional) against the US dollar in line with positive equity markets amid sustained foreign fund inflows.

Gold prices in the international market were trading higher at USD 1,746 per ounce and silver at USD 17.83 per ounce.

"Gold prices extended gains on Monday on worries over rising coronavirus cases and fear of slow economic recovery. The growing virus cases across the world has turned global investors cautious on riskier assets," he added.
By Ron Pizarie

I was a union president for nine years at the former ITT Electron Tube Division manufacturing plant in Palmer Towsnhip. Our product was mostly military defense systems.

It distresses me to see police unions being bad-mouthed for representing accused officers. The fact is, union members pay dues for representation by their union. Even if the illegal, improper action is documented by video, the union has an obligation  not to act as judge and jury, but as defense attorney, if the accused files a grievance. That is an important distinction. Some contracts have mandatory representation even if the member does not file a grievance. Some stipulate a specific time frame for a grievance to be filed.

The union is not unlike a defense attorney appointed by the government or hired by the defendant. The unions job is to make sure the accused gets a fair and impartial hearing. Indeed, if the union didnt represent a grievant, it could be sued for not representing a dues-paying member.

I had a number of termination cases. Some were resolved internally, some went to arbitration. Some were won, some were lost by the union.

Unions are also blamed for contract language which seems to favor the union member. This happens with school teachers all the time. But everyone must realize that every word in a union contract was agreed to by both parties in negotiations.

While homeowners complain about teacher pensions and other perks, they usually blame the union and not the school board negotiators who have the responsibility of protecting the wallets of the taxpayers. When school board representatives agreed to large pension plans, they ignored the fact that taxpayers would eventually have to pay for them, meaning school taxes would have to be increased. But its much more convenient to blame the greedy teachers than school board negotiators who blindly agreed to the union demands. An analogy is the pet owner who continually overfeeds his dog. When the vet bills come due, he blames the dog for being fat and not himself.

In any contract negotiation the union has only the threat of a strike if an agreement cannot be reached. They dont have a gun to the head of negotiators. And when union members strike, they no longer have a contract; they can be permanently replaced at the discretion of management, without appeal, and probably denied unemployment benefits. Some states have a cooling off period of a few weeks before termination can be enforced.

So, in these horrible situations, with obvious police brutality against blacks in particular  and the perpetrators looking guilty of varying degrees of murder  please dont blame the unions for representing the accused. The same thing occurs every day in criminal courts, in cases that are just as horrible or worse. But in the end, justice is usually served and the system works.

Ron Pizarie lives in East Allen Township.
A church in a small eastern Oregon county linked to the states largest coronavirus outbreak held worship services in the weeks before hundreds fell ill.

At least 236 coronavirus cases are tied to Lighthouse Pentecostal Church, near La Grande in Union County. The number of cases in Union County increased tenfold, from 22 to 240, in three days after the outbreak came to light. The outbreak led Union County to voluntarily return to Phase 1 of Gov. Kate Browns phased reopening plan  the county had been at Phase 2 when the outbreak happened. There are now 258 coronavirus cases in the county of 27,000 people.
Two Laois charities have received donations as part of Aldis Community Grants Programme across the last 12 months. The programme has seen Aldi donate a total of 1000 to the two charities who provide vital services and make a huge difference within their community.

Cara Rescue Dogs and the Portarlington Community Centre each benefitted from a 500 donation from one of Aldis two Laois stores.

Aldis Community Grants programme helps fund local charities and organisations that contribute vital work and services in their local communities. Each local charity supported is chosen by Aldi employees, enabling them to help the local good causes they are passionate about.

Over 250,000 has been donated to more than 340 different local charities across Ireland since the programme began four years ago. To mark its 20th anniversary in Ireland in 2019, Aldi staff across its Naas and Mitchelstown regions also voted for two charities, The Society of Saint Vincent De Paul and Pieta House Cork, to receive a further 5,000 in Aldi vouchers late last year.

Commenting, John Curtin, Group Buying Director, Aldi Ireland said: At Aldi supporting the local communities that our stores serve is hugely important. Each charity selected as part of our Community Grants Programme offers fantastic services to those in need. Their dedicated staff and volunteers offer their time and care and now, more than ever, it is vital that we support them.

Our local store staff are an integral part of the selection process for the donations, meaning they are passionate about the charities chosen in their local community.
The airline plans to restart the first passenger flights from the UK in July. (PA)

Virgin Atlantic has announced plans to restart passenger flights to 17 additional destinations from August 2020.

The move comes after plans to restart the first passenger flights from London Heathrow to Los Angeles, New York JFK, and Hong Kong from 20 July were unveiled by the airline.

The 17 additional destinations include Barbados, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, and Lagos as well as several US airports including San Francisco, Miami, and Atlanta.

The airline said measures would be put in place at the airport and onboard to ensure the health and safety of customers and staff.

These include enhanced cleaning practices at check in, boarding gates and onboard including the use of electrostatic spraying of high-grade disinfectant, observing social distancing wherever possible, and offering a simplified hot food service

Each passenger will receive a personal health pack containing medical grade face masks that are required to be worn onboard, surface wipes and hand gel.

READ MORE: Virgin Atlantic to slash more than 3,000 jobs

Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer, Virgin Atlantic said: We are monitoring external conditions extremely closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14 day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK.

We know that as the COVID-19 crisis subsides, air travel will be a vital enabler of the UKs economic recovery. Therefore, we are calling for UK government to continually review its quarantine measures and instead look at a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, including air bridges, which will support a successful and safe restart of international air travel for passengers and businesses.

The airline has continued to operate cargo-only flights to help keep global supply chains running and transport essential supplies around the world. Throughout June, the airline plans to operate more than 600 cargo-only services, serving destinations including Delhi, Chicago, Brussels, Johannesburg, Lagos and Miami.

Story continues

Virgin Atlantic is also partnering with the Department for Health and the NHS, working with them on 17 cargo charters per week from Shanghai and Beijing throughout June and July, bringing in medical supplies frontline staff in the UK urgently need to care for coronavirus patients.

READ MORE: UK tourists allowed to visit Spain without quarantine

So far, Virgin Atlantic has brought over 44 million items of PPE from China to the UK, according to the airline.

In May the airline announced plans to slash 3,150 jobs across its workforce due to the coronavirus crisis.

The company, majority owned by Virgin tycoon Richard Branson, warned a recovery in air travel could take up to three years, with travel fears and lockdowns hammering passenger numbers.
If the Covid-19 situation prevails till next years Mahakumbh in Haridwar then only three saints each from all the 13 Akhadas will be allowed to take a holy dip (Shahi Snaan) for symbolic participation in Mahakumbh, Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said on Monday.

CM Rawat shared the information with the media following a meeting with the prominent saints of Akhil Bhartiya Akhada Parishad to discuss the issues pertaining to next years Mahakumbh in the holy city of Haridwar in the Himalayan state. The meeting was held with the saint community representatives on Sunday evening in Dehradun.

Rawat said, During the meeting, we had discussed the issues related to organising the Mahakumbh amid the ongoing pandemic. With the consent of all the saints, it was agreed that there may be some restrictions during the mega event in case the pandemic situation prevails. However, it would be organised as per the auspicious dates only, no change in them.

Also read: Movie shooting in Himalayan state amid Covid-19 outbreak? Follow Uttarakhand govts SOP

Mahakumbh is organised after every 12 years in four places of the country as per Hindu tradition including, Haridwar, Ujjain, Allahabad and Nasik. The Haridwar Mahakumbh will start from mid-January till April next year. The state government had been expecting at least 15 crore people from all over the world to attend the four-month-long event.

Revealing further details of the meeting, Rawat said, During the meeting, it was also decided that if there is no change in the pandemic situation till the Mahakumbh, then three saints each from all 13 Akhadas will take a symbolic holy dip during the first Shahi Snaan (royal bath) on March 11 which is the most auspicious of all holy baths during Mahakumbh.

However, before that, a final decision would be taken after a discussion with the saints. Everything will be decided with their consent only, he said.

Meanwhile, the officials of Akhil Bhartiya Akhada Parishad have also said that it will abide by any decision taken by the government in consultation with the saints considering the pandemic.

Mahant Hari Giri Maharaj, general secretary Akhada Parishad said, We will follow whatever decision is taken by the government as it is important to take care of the health and safety of the saint community during the mega event in view of the pandemic.
A man who was seen in a disturbing surveillance video getting fatally shot in the neck while washing his car on a Brooklyn street this weekend has been identified as a 35-year-old clothing designer and graffiti artist.

Family members said Kenneth Singleton was an East New York-based entrepreneur who ran his own streetwear label.

Singleton, a father-of-one, was known in the community and on social media by his graffiti tag, Foot 4 Mayor.

Kenneth Singleton, 35, a clothing designer and graffiti artist from Brooklyn's East New York, has been identified as the man who was shot dead while washing his car on Saturday

Singleton's shooting was caught on surveillance video showing a man walking up to him and shooting him in the neck (pictured)

According to the NYPD, Singleton was kneeling on the ground washing his Chrysler sedan in front of his home on Milford Street in the East New York section of Brooklyn at around 11am on Saturday when a man walked up behind him and shot him multiple times from point-blank range.

Surveillance video taken from the scene shows Singleton crouching for a moment, then collapsing to the sidewalk as his killer flees.

The victim was wounded in the neck and died of his injuries at Brookdale University Medical Center.

'It aint suppose to happen to him,' his uncle told the New York Daily News. 'He was an extremely good gentleman, he had a son, he was out here doing videos, doing his own thing. He was good kid.'

The gunman quickly fled on foot after killing the 35-year-old in Brooklyn

Shocking video footage released by the NYPD of the killing shows the unidentified suspect casually walking along the street before he veers toward his victim and shoots him

After Singelton fell to the ground, the suspect appears to walk closer to fire another round

Singleton had a sizable following on Instagram, where he used to promote his clothes.

Many commenters mourned the designer's passing and praised him for doing good deeds for his community, including hosting a Thanksgiving feast for the needy and buying school supplies for low-income children.

Others, however, criticized the graffiti artist for tagging homes and businesses.

NYPD said a suspect or motive has also not yet been identified. No arrests have been made as of late Monday morning.

Singleton was an East New York-based entrepreneur who ran his own streetwear label. Singleton, a father-of-one, was known in the community by his graffiti tag, Foot 4 Mayor

The 35-year-old designer and artist leaves behind a sic-year-old son

Earlier today, police officers from the 75th Precinct responded to a call of a male shot in front of 334 Milford Street. When they arrived, they discovered a 35-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the neck, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison.

As you can see in the video, the victim was washing his car when the unidentified suspect approached him from behind and shot him, he added.

In the video released by NYPD of the death, the suspect is shown walking along the street where the victim is washing his car.

His head and face appear covered by a large-brimmed hat as he swings up to the right-hand side of the victim, who does not seem to notice his presence.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison called for information in the suspect

He added that the victim was washing his car when the shooting happened

The shooting happened here at 334 Milford Street at around 11am on Saturday morning

The suspect can be seen firing one shot which causes Singleton to fall lower down on his knees.

He then takes a step closer and seems to fire a second shot causing the man to collapse and knock over the bucket of water he was using as the suspect instantly flees on foot.

Singleton was among at least 22 people who were shot over a two-day span in New York City, according to the NYPD.

ABC 7 NY reported that since last Monday, there were 51 shootings reported, at least three of them resulting in fatalities, including two in East New York and one in Manhattan.

Anyone with information pertaining to the suspects identity is asked to call NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
A New Appointment At IRGC May Signal Concern Over Unrest In Iran

Morad Vaisibiame June 21, 2020

IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami has appointed Brigadier General Hossein Nejat as his deputy commander in charge of Sarallah, the most important security command in Tehran.

In theory, Sarallah is under the direct command of the IRGC's commander in chief. But as he is too busy fulfilling his other responsibilities, he delegates his authority to a deputy commander. Therefore, Hossein Nejat is effectively the commander of Sarallah in Tehran.

But why this appointment is significant? Sarallah is the Iranian capital's most important security headquarters and is tasked with protecting the capital and important government institutions in the city against any threats including riots, widespread anti-government protests or military threats against the government such as a coup.

This makes Sarallah the most important one of the IRGC's ten regional security headquarters spread around the country.

Three provincial garrisons, Mohammad Rasoulallah in the greater Tehran, Sayed ol-Shohada in the Province of Tehran, and Imam Hassan in the neighboring Alborz Province as well as hundreds of Basij militia bases, the 27th Division in Tehran and the 10th Division in Karaj, and if needed, the entire police force in Tehran and Alborz Provinces also come under Sarallah's command to eliminate possible threats and suppress protests.

In the past, Sarallah has been the most important tool used in suppressing major anti-government protests in 2009, 2018 and 2019 in Tehran and the small towns surrounding the capital.

Sarallah's new commander Hossein Nejat, is one of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's most trusted officers. He has previously served for 10 years (2000 - 2010) as the commander of the IRGC's Vali Amr Unit which is Khamenei's own special guard.

Hossein Nejat, whose real name is Mohammad Hossein Zibaee Nejad, has been serving with the IRGC for 40 years now. He has worked for many years with former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezai at the IRGC's intelligence unit.

During the war with Iraq in the 1980s, Nejat was the counter-intelligence chief of Khatam ol-Anbia, Iran's most important headquarters during the war.

After playing a key part as a senior commander in suppressing the 2009 protests in Tehran, he was appointed as one of the commanders of The Muslim Combatants Association, an affiliate of the IRGC with branches all over Iran. He has also been a key element in holding the large Arba'in rallies in Iraq, which is an annual tour de force event showcasing Iran's and IRGC's power in Iraq and the region.

In 2016, Nejat was appointed as a senior deputy to IRGC Intelligence Chief Hossein Taeb and remained in that position until spring 2019. During this period the IRGC Intelligence Organization became more and more powerful and closer to Khamenei's office with its power gradually overshadowing the might of the Ministry of Intelligence.

Following the latest changes in the structure of IRGC's command network in 2019, Nejat moved on to become IRGC's deputy commander for cultural affairs. And now he has been appointed as the commander of Sarallah Headquarters.

As well as being a confidante of Ayatollah Khamenei, Nejat maintains close ties with his politically active son Mojtaba, a possible candidate to succeed Khamenei as the Islamic Republic's next Supreme Leader.

Nejat is actually a member of a whole network of IRGC commanders who are close to Mojtaba Khamenei. The network is better known as Habib battalion named after a similar unit in the Iran-Iraq war where Mojtaba served as a young man. The network is a circle of hardliner and most aggressive members of the Islamic Republic's security and intelligence forces, as far as critics and dissidents are concerned. One of its members is the highly influential and powerful IRGC Intelligence Chief Hossein Taeb.

Many of the members of this network now hold the most important military, intelligence and security positions in the Islamic Republic. If we assume that Khamenei's concern about a new round of major protests like the ones in 2018 and 2019, especially in light of his concerns regarding succession are the two main preoccupations of the government in Iran, then we can better understand various measures such as Nejat appointment. He and others trusted by and obedient to Khamenei are prepared to suppress the people, and are appointed to top political, military and security positions.

The Islamic Republic fears that the current economic crisis might lead to more widespread protests and urban riots in the future. Therefore, it is appointing its most trusted and oppressive commanders and officials on top of important military, security and intelligence institutions. These measures show that Khamenei is preparing to hand over power to the next leader. At the same time it reveals the Islamic Republic's serious concern about recurring major anti-government protests at the time of Khamenei's death that could endanger the Islamic Republic's stability and even its existence.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/a-new- appointment-at-irgc-may-signal-concern -of-unrest-in-iran/30682662.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Police officers and investigators inspect a vehicle involved at the crash site inside Melbourne's Burnley Tunnel on March 23, 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. (David Caird-Pool/Getty Images)

Runaway Hit-Run Driver Missing in India

A man who fled to India 11 years ago while on bail for killing a student in a Melbourne car crash has reportedly gone missing ahead of an extradition hearing.

Puneet Puneet was on bail in Victoria awaiting his sentencing over the 2008 death of 19-year-old pedestrian Dean Hofstee in Melbourne when he fled on a friends passport.

The Australian government has been pursuing him through the Indian justice system ever since.

But now Puneets family reportedly claims hes gone missing ahead of another court hearing in the long-running extradition case.

Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said the state had made urgent representations to the Commonwealth government to express our deep concern and to try to verify Puneets whereabouts.

We will continue to work closely with them and relevant authorities to ensure Mr Puneet is found and extradited back to Victoria as quickly as possible, she said in a statement.

Puneet Puneet hit and killed a student while drunkenly speeding along Southbank. He pleaded guilty to culpable driving but then fled Australia while on bail. But the cowardly killer drivers father says his son is the real victim.https://t.co/TcTCyBYQZ2  Herald Sun (@theheraldsun) May 29, 2019

Mr Puneet needs to return to Victoria to face the consequences of his actions, and we wont rest until justice is served.

Puneet was a 19-year-old a learner driver at the time of the drunken crash on City Road at Southbank.

Puneet was arrested by Indian police on his wedding day in 2013.

The case has already been through numerous delays in India, in part due to Puneets frequent absences and the legal tactics of his defence team.

The prosecution has accused Puneets lawyers of deliberately delaying the trial by either feigning his illness or making far-fetched claims about their clients physical or mental health.

Puneets family has told police he is missing and reportedly said he had sold his car and disappeared with the cash.

AAP rang Puneets father on two numbers given by local police only to find both numbers switched off.

A Punjab lawyer who did not want to be named but who is familiar with extradition cases told AAP the latest twist in the Puneet case may only be a pause in the extradition proceedings.

After all, all his father has done is file a missing persons case with the police.

He might turn up, he might have gone somewhere on his own in a disturbed state, he might return. It might be a deliberate delaying tactic, the lawyer said.

But the fact is that the police will surely trace him sooner or later.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic the courts in India are closed and only hearing urgent matters online. No date has been set for Puneets next hearing.

By Benita Kolovos
Notorious New Zealand bikie gang the Mongrel Mob have branched out across Queensland to hide their criminal activity.

The outlaw motorcycle gang focused on their development in Eagleby, south Brisbane, before infiltrating surrounding suburbs, a police report has revealed.

Leaked intelligence detailed how the Mongrel Mob moved into suburbs around the northern Gold Coast to avoid police detection, The Courier Mail reported.

Infamous New Zealand motorcycle gang the Mongrel Mob (pictured) have branched out across Queensland after establishing a base at Eagleby in south Brisbane

Leaked police intelligence detailed how the Mongrel Mob have a strong presence in the Gold Coast. Pictured: Police seized Mongrel Mob possessions in the Gold Coast last October

'Since the primary establishment of the group, members/associates are continuing to move out of Eagleby to other suburbs within the Logan District, including suburbs within neighbouring districts,' the report said.

The 'intelligence brief' explained the bikie gang's movement had disrupted police surveillance on the Mongrel Mob.

'With the gradual move of Mongrel Mob participants away from the suburb of Eagleby, there have been limited police interactions and intelligence reporting around their activities.

'It is likely the collective movement by members/associates from Eagleby to other suburbs is to try and limit future detection of their activities by police and to expand their influence in the areas they move to,' the brief read.

Mongrel Mob members have reportedly been growing a presence among young New Zealanders on the Gold Coast for years.

The gang first launched a Gold Coast chapter in 2016, but were then outlawed in Queensland in 2018.

The leaked report revealed how the Mongrel Mob (gang clothing pictured) infiltrated surrounding suburbs in order to avoid their criminal activity being detected by police

The Mongrel Mob (pictured) allegedly launched a Gold Coast chapter in 2016 before the gang was outlawed in Queensland in 2018

The brief noted the Mongrel Mob were also establishing relationships with other motorcycle gangs in Queensland's southeast region.

THE MONGREL MOB The Mongrel Mob was established in 1962 and is one of New Zealand's largest gangs They have more than 1,000 members and are known for organised crime, drug and weapon trafficking, assault, robbery and murder There have been several public clashes between the Mongrel Mob and their main rival the Black Power gang The Mongrel Mob symbol is a bulldog and their colours are red and black The gang first expanded into Australia during the 2000s Advertisement

The report even showed how the closure of traditional clubhouses had failed to stop the gang from conducting business.

Police Minister Mark Ryan explained Queensland Police were 'taking tough action' against motorcycle gang members.

'Queensland has the toughest anti-organised crime legislation in Australia.

'I'm advised by police there are currently no active bikie clubhouses known to Queensland Police.

'Police are arresting bikies and disrupting their organisations. The results prove that,' he said in a statement.

A Queensland Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia: 'Specialist units within the State Crime Commands Organised Crime Gangs Group work with local police taking action at every opportunity and use every legal mechanism available to dismantle and disrupt illegal and anti-social behaviour associated with these gangs.'

The Mongrel Mob is one of the largest gangs in New Zealand and was established in 1962.

Their gang symbol is a bulldog and their colours are predominately red and black.

The gang has more than 1,000 members and is known for organised crime including drug and weapon trafficking, assault, murder and robbery.

Their main rival is the Black Power gang and there have been several violent clashes between the two groups.
ONTARIO  Summer school means something special for hundreds of bilingual Ontario students, many with family ties to Mexico: the chance to learn about Mexicos culture and heritage to strengthen their sense of identity.

Thats because, for years, the district has relied on bicultural bilingual teachers from Mexico who travel to this small town on the Idaho border to bring Mexico to students whove only heard about the place their parents or grandparents and generations before them called home.

Summer school kicked off on Monday in Ontario, but for students, their parents and their teachers, the 2020 version just wont be the same.

Distance learning that has been required since mid-March in place of face-to-face teaching due to COVID-19 will continue throughout the summer. And the novel coronavirus also means that there will be no binational teachers in their community, something that many students, teachers and community members look forward to every year.

Ontario School Districts summer school program is run by its migrant education department. The elementary school version is available for all migrant students  defined in federal law as those in families who have moved between school districts in the past three years due to agricultural work -- and a certain number of other high-need students selected by their teachers.

The middle school program is open to all students in grades six through eight, and the high school program is for migrant students and English language learners.

In all, according to migrant program director Anabel Ortiz-Chavolla, summer school serves about 800 of Ontarios 2,300 students.

The 2020 school year would have been the eighth year of the binational teacher program. The exchange program is an initiative of the Ontario districts migrant education department and is funded through the U.S. Department of Education and the Ministry of Education in Mexico.

Ontario Highs parent involvement coordinator, Teresa Figueroa, in 2019 called the binational teacher program a cornerstones of Ontarios summer school program.

That year, the district welcomed Marisol Ortega and Noemi Espinoza from Jalisco, Mexico, to teach the elementary school students. Ortega specializes in teaching dance to young children and Espinoza is an art teacher. Ortega taught at Alameda Elementary School and Espinoza was at May Roberts Elementary School.

We are here to share our culture, Mexican culture, Ortega said after a parent night held at Ontario High School. Some of the kids can speak Spanish. But some of them come from Mexican families, like third generation, so now they dont speak any Spanish or they dont know about Mexican culture. So thats why we are here to share this.

The students of Ortegas class performed multiple classic Mexican dances for the audience that night, while Espinoza hosted a booth with face painting and a display of the work that the students had done that summer.

Figueroa, the parent involvement coordinator, said many of the families whose children take part in the summer program are so busy working that some parents miss out on teaching their children about their culture.

Some of them are second generation and, because they were born here, they dont really know that cultural part of their life, you know, like the dances, Figueroa said. Some kids might not get that from their family, so to get that piece from one of the teachers, its great.

Ortiz-Chavolla said the district surveys summer school families after every year and the response to the binational teacher program is always the same.

The parents are always overwhelmingly positive about, and grateful about, the opportunity for their student to be immersed into the language, in the culture and whatever skills that particular instructor brought with them.

Two of those students were Natalia and Isaiah Larios, who were in Ortegas dance class last summer. According to their mother, Hilda Arreola, the two really enjoyed it.

It was honestly really nice, Arreola said. It brings different types of cultures from different countries to the students.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Binational teachers Marisol Ortega, right, and Noemi Espinoza paint the faces of two summer school students during the parent night at Ontario High School in July 2019. (Photo by Nik Streng / The Argus Observer)

IMPACT HARD TO PUT IN WORDS

The impact of losing the binational teachers this year is hard to put into words, Ortiz-Chavolla said.

I dont think you can quantify it, said Ortiz-Chavolla, who also came from a migrant family in Payette, Idaho. It has deep roots, and families that are immigrant families, they might now have the time to really teach about their background to their children, and theyre growing up in a different country. They might not have the time or the resources or even the knowledge to know how to.

Ortiz-Chavolla said the migrant program considered injecting more Mexican culture into its homegrown summer school curriculum to make up for the loss of the binational teachers, but program officials were too far along in the planning process to add it.

She said that since they dont know what the binational teachers would have specifically focused on this summer, they were unsure what to add.

We were already almost done with all our planning and our packets are all figured in. Our supplies were all bought and ready to be distributed, Ortiz-Chavolla said. We didnt have enough time to order everything and get it here on time.

This summer, Natalia and Isaiah Larios are at home, taking a mixture of math and reading with a little bit of art, Arreola said.

Ortiz-Chavolla said one of the selling points of distance learning this summer is projects that are being hand-delivered to students homes to keep them busy.

Were still going to be doing the basic reading and math skills throughout, Ortiz-Chavolla said. But were going to be infusing the activities with more hands-on projects.

So the one difference between the regular year and summer is, instead of just delivering the packets for those students who dont have a computer, well also deliver a kit every week that includes all of the supplies that they will need for their projects that week.

Ortiz-Chavolla said the drop-off boxes include a wide range of materials, including items like paper, scissors and clay. It also gives members of the migrant education program the opportunity to check in on the students every week.

Note: Interviews with Marisol Ortega and Noemi Espinoza were translated by Teresa Figueroa. The interview with Hilda Arreola was translated by Cecilia Escobedo.

-Nik Streng; niklass@argusobserver.com

This article is the result of a partnership among Oregon news outlets The Oregonian/OregonLive, Oregon Public Broadcasting, The Bulletin, The Ontario Argus Observer and the Medford Mail Tribune, designed to give Oregonians a broader and deeper look at Oregon students and the public education system amid the pandemics unprecedented impacts on schools.

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government should present 100 new projects in the capital construction sector, trying to create jobs for its citizens in Armenia during the current coronavirus pandemic so that they will not depart to foreign countries for work, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at online briefing today, in response to the question of ARMENPRESS.

Numerous Armenian citizens were unable to visit the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union for a seasonal work due to the closure of borders. Asked whether this issue has been discussed with the partners, when it would be possible to restore the regular passenger flows between Armenia and the EAEU states, in particular Russia, the PM said: It depends on the coronavirus situation not only in Armenia, but also in Russia. But our main plan is to try to create jobs for our citizens in Armenia so that they will have a chance to work here, rather than outside Armenia.

The PM said the government must present 100 new projects in the capital construction sector, tenders over some of these projects are already taking place. He expressed hope that this plan will be implemented in an effective way, and Armenians departing for a seasonal work will have a chance to work in their homeland. In any case, this is our best desire, I hope we will be able to fulfill this goal at least to a great extent, he added.

Reporting by Anna Grigoryan; Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Holyyyy - that's a lotta cash.

From Monika Barton of Newshub:

Kurt Cobain's MTV Unplugged guitar has shattered records, selling for a staggering seven-figure sum at auction.

The Nirvana rocker's 1959 Martin D-18E electric-acoustic guitar, which he strummed during the group's historic TV gig in 1993 - five months before his death, has set new memorabilia records after going under the hammer for over $6 million (approx NZ$9.3 million) at a Julien's Auctions Music Icons event over the weekend.

It has become the most expensive guitar and Nirvana item ever sold at auction.

The buyer was Peter Freedman, the founder of RODE Microphones, who attended the live auction in Beverly Hills. He plans to exhibit the instrument as part of a worldwide tour, with all proceeds benefiting the performing arts.

"When I heard that this iconic guitar was up for auction I immediately knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure it and use it as a vehicle to spotlight the struggles that those in the performing arts are facing and have always faced," the new owner explains.

"Nirvana's Unplugged is one of my favourite records of all time, and easily one of the best live performances ever captured on film. They were a huge influence on me."
Slate is making its essential coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism.

The federal governments response to the coronavirus crisis kept Americas poverty rate from risingand might have actually lowered iteven as the country lost a historic number of jobs, according to a pair of new studies out this week.

The researchfirst reported by the New York Timesis the latest evidence that the massive cash aid programs Congress created in March to deal with the economic turmoil of the pandemic have managed to keep even poorer families financially secure so far during the crisis. Despite unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression, personal incomes rose to an all-time high in April, thanks primarily to the direct cash payments to families and $600-per-week enhanced jobless benefits that lawmakers included in the CARES Act. Research released last week showed that, among lower-income Americans, consumer spending bounced back to normal by May, suggesting that aid was reaching the neediest families.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

The new papers offer the clearest proof yet that Congress effort to get money into families hands so they could support themselves while businesses shut down was widely successful. The government only reports the official poverty rate once a year. But in one of the studies, professors from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame used federal survey data to estimate the rates monthly changes through this past May. They found that poverty declined by 2.3 percentage points, from 10.9 percent in the months leading to the shutdowns to 8.6 percent in the last couple of months.

Advertisement

Advertisement

In the second study, a group of researchers from Columbia University projected that the cash aid in the CARES Act could keep the annual poverty rate relatively steady at 12.7 percent, compared to 12.5 percent before the pandemic, though the exact figure could go a bit lower or higher depending on how many Americans are ultimately able to access aid (they based their analysis on a government measure known as the Supplemental Poverty Rate, which takes more factors into account than the official poverty rate).

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

These findings require a big asterisk, however. As Zach Parolin, one of the Columbia reports authors, told me, the poverty rate would likely rise much higher than their study projects if millions of Americans continue to lose their jobs after July, when the enhanced unemployment are set to expire. And though they might not technically be in poverty, many out-of-work Americans could still find themselves short on income in the second half of the year.

Advertisement

Advertisement

And thats really the key thing to keep in mind about the governments coronavirus relief efforts so far. At this point, it seems clear that the government did a pretty good job preventing suffering during the downturn by giving people money. It wasnt perfect: Some people have had to wait months to get their jobless benefits, for instance, which is likely part of why weve seen measures of food insecurity rise and long lines at emergency food banks. Many hard-hit workers, especially the undocumented, have been cut out of the aid programs entirely. But overall, it seems like the government has gotten cash to many of the people whove needed it most, despite our janky, often infuriating administrative systems that require people to deal with crashing websites and wait on hold for hours if they want to talk with a human being.

The question is what happens next. Cash aid has kept poverty in check. But Congress has yet to decide whether it will renew its enhanced unemployment program past July. If it doesnt, we could see much more severe deprivation. We know that giving people money succeeded for the past three months. The question is whether Washington will stick with whats worked.
KAMPALA  The Ministry of Heath says 4 Ugandans out of 2224 samples analysed on Sunday June 21 have returned positive for coronavirus. Two of the confirmed cases are truck drivers who arrived from South Sudan via Elegu border and Kenya via Malaba points of entry.

The other two cases include contacts and alerts to previously confirmed cases. The two cases were identified from Amuru and Kyotera districts.

To date, the ministry says, there 256 active cases in admission including143 Ugandans and 113 foreign truck drivers.

Uganda has registered a total of 631 coronavirus recoveries and to date, no coronavirus related death has been recorded.

President Yoweri Museveni will tonight address the country before the currently extended lockdown ends on June 25.

The President is expected to announce lifting further lifting of the lockdown as the country works to stop the spread of coronavirus.

To date, Boda bodas, churches, bars, night clubs, gyms and saunas are facing an extended lockdown of the next 21 days in a bid to avoid further spread of coronavirus.

A new study by scientists at Makerere University College of Natural Sciences last week recommended that government extends the Covid-19 lockdown up to October.

The scientists said rushing to release more than 75 per cent of the population from lockdown before the said time would cost the country more than 10,000 infections, something that is unmanageable given the fragile health system.

They also said the move could set the second and more disastrous wave of the pandemic in the country.

Related
Editors Guild of India

June 19, 2020

The Editors Guild of India is deeply concerned over the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) at Varanasias Ramnagar police station against Scroll Executive Editor Supriya Sharma and its Chief Editor over a report published from Varanasias Domari village. The FIR was filed on June 13 under Sections 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerAous to life) and 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as also under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (SC/ST Act). This followed a complaint by Mala Devi, who was quoted by Supriya Sharma in her report, published on Scroll.in on June 8.

The Guild has also noted the reported statement from Scroll.in saying that it stood by the article in question. The statement also clarified that it had interviewed Mala Devi in Domari village, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, on June 5, 2020 and that her statements had been reported accurately in the article titled, aIn Varanasi village adopted by Prime Minister Modi, people went hungry during the lockdown.a

In view of the categorical statement from Scroll.in, the Guild is of the view that the use of the various Sections of the IPC and the SC/ST Act are an overreaction and will seriously undermine freedom of the media. The use of criminal provisions of the law against journalists has now become an unhealthy and despicable trend that has no place in any vibrant democracy. It needs to be resisted as well as eliminated. The Guild respects all laws of the land as also the right of Mala Devi to defend herself against any acts of injustice. But it also finds the flagrant misuse of such laws unjustifiable and reprehensible. Worse, the increasing frequency of such misuse of laws by the authorities is tantamount to shooting the messenger and destroying a key pillar of Indiaas democracy.

Shekhar Gupta, President

AK Bhattacharya, General Secretary

Sheela Bhatt, Treasurer
Both of Stormont's Green MLAs have rejected a draft programme for government in the Republic that the party has signed up to.

Clare Bailey, its leader in Northern Ireland, and North Down MLA Rachel Woods have now confirmed they will vote against the blueprint agreed with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail last week.

Read More

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has rejected Ms Bailey's call for him to renegotiate the draft deal.

Ms Woods is the latest party representative to speak out, alongside TDs Francis Duffy, Patrick Costello and Neasa Hourigan, as well as Dublin City councillor and party chair Hazel Chu.

Ms Woods said yesterday: "I believe that we can build back better from Covid-19.

"I also believe that a better deal is possible, one that will bring positive change and a just transition to a fairer society and low carbon economy.

"That's why I'm voting no to this programme for government."

Ms Bailey had originally abstained from a vote among the Green parliamentary team last week, but has now added her name to a statement opposing the chance to enter a coalition.

The statement reads: "As Green Party elected representatives and members from across this island, we believe that this draft programme for government represents an unjust recovery. That's why we will vote no on this draft programme for government.

"This offer of government represents one of the most fiscally conservative arrangements in a generation.

"Regressive taxation in the form of carbon and sugar taxes are included, while corporation tax and the top rate of income tax remain unchanged.

"It's a deal that was negotiated in good faith but fails to deliver on our promise to tackle homelessness and provide better healthcare. It sets out an inadequate and vague pathway towards climate action.

"A better deal is possible - voting no on this programme for government is a step towards securing that better deal.

"Transformative change was called for by the electorate earlier this year. That call must be answered by not only the Green Party, but every party that promised positive change."

Writing in this paper, Ms Bailey said the deal did not deliver "a just transition to a fairer society and a low carbon economy" and called for parties that had promised change earlier this year "to step up and deliver".

Belfast councillors Anthony Flynn and Brian Smyth also voiced their opposition.

Mr Flynn said: "I spoke about the lack of action on tackling cruel and inhumane greyhound industry in RoI as well as hare coursing and other animal welfare issues, Brexit and austerity.

"I cannot support an unjust transition, we can do better."

Mr Smyth added: "Climate justice and social justice are one. As a qualified youth worker I can't support something that reduces the opportunity of young people. Green politics should be that hand reaching into the darkness to bring those up into the light and to deliver a fairer society."

Of the three possible coalition partners, the Greens require the biggest endorsement from their membership to proceed.

At least two-thirds of members registered to vote must back the deal ahead of next Friday.

Here, only 195 out of an estimated 650 party members have registered to vote.

Mr Ryan said he believed it was possible to address the climate and biodiversity crisis in government, while also addressing issues such as housing and health.

He admitted the deal was not perfect, but he said it was important to get the best deal for the country and not just for the party.

Mr Ryan also warned uncertainty would follow if the coalition deal was not passed.
File image of India's Akash surface-to-air missile

Indian armed forces have deployed air defence systems in the Ladakh area amid escalating border tension with China. According to reports, defence forces have deployed surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems in eastern Ladakh to counter a potential aerial threat from the Chinese Air Force and possible violation of Indian air space.

New Delhi is building up military strength in the area after the violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan valley on the night of June 15-16. Twenty Indian soldiers, including an officer, were killed in the clash. While the Chinese side is also believed to have had casualties, the number remains unclear.

India has already mobilised fighter jets and sent thousands of additional Army troops to forward locations along the border with China.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has reportedly moved a sizeable number of its frontline Sukhoi 30-MKI, Jaguar, Mirage 2000 aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to several key airbases including Leh and Srinagar in the last five days.

According to another report in The Economic Times, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who is currently visiting Russia, is likely to push for faster delivery of the S-400 Triumf anti-missile system.

Russia is believed to have delayed delivery of the $5.4-billion system to December 2021 amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the report adds.

Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria on June 20 said the IAF is "well prepared" and "suitably deployed" to counter any security challenge along the border with China and even hinted that his force has flown combat air patrols in the Ladakh region as part of heightened preparedness.

India and China are holding another round of Lt. General-level talks on June 22 to discuss ways to de-escalate tension between the two sides. The talks were scheduled to happen at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Chushul sector.

The Indian delegation at the talks is being led by 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen. Harinder Singh.

The first round of Lt Gen-level talks was held on June 6 during which both sides decided to "disengage" in all the sensitive areas.

(With inputs from PTI)
J.L. Babcock's Marriage Quest

A fortune made in wool brought him proposals from around the country.

by Dave McCormick

From the June, 2020 issue

Upon the death of his uncle, Luther James, in 1889, James L. Babcock became Ann Arbor's most eligible bachelor. He was thrust into this role due to the stipulations in his uncle's will: If he married within five years on James's death, Babcock would receive $500,000, but he'd forfeit the windfall if he remained a bachelor. Apparently, James realized he didn't want his nephew to remain unwed and miserable like him.



When the terms of the will became known, Babcock was inundated with proposals from a bevy of young women and widows. Once the national press got the story, letters came to Ann Arbor from thousands of miles away and even from across oceans--so many that Babcock hired a secretary to respond to them all. But would he marry in time to secure his inheritance?



---



As the story was told in the Toronto Republican, Babcock had previously fallen in love with a beautiful young woman. The wedding date was set, but, according to the newspaper, Babcock's "dream of happiness was doomed." Evidently, James had voiced his opposition to the marriage, and Babcock had yielded to his uncle's wishes and called off the engagement. Some thought James's peculiar bequest was intended as partial restitution.



It certainly increased his options. Babcock reportedly received hundreds of letters, many with photographs enclosed. According to the Pittsburg Dispatch, they were postmarked from just about every state and territory in the U.S. Although the correspondence was from women of all ages, the paper reported, the largest group of correspondents was aged sixteen to twenty. Massachusetts was the state with the most sent by "old maids"--a category that at the time included women thirty-five to forty-five. Babcock told the Chicago Tribune that he even received two cables from Nottingham, England--the senders apparently were worried he might accept a proposal before their letters would arrive by steamer.



The Pittsburg Dispatch edition divided the letters into four categories: the gay and jocular; the serious and plaintive;

...continued below...

the businesslike and emphatic; and the sentimental and advisory, like the one that urged him, "For pity's sake ... don't marry one of those women who think only of money."In an odd turn of events, according to the Waukesha, Wisconsin,Babcock received a number of letters from men, requesting the privilege of carrying on any superfluous correspondence he might have. Apparently, Babcock did refer some women to these men, but the women refused to hold correspondence with "second hand" parties. Like a contemporary Powerball winner, he also heard from men offering high returns on pie-in-the-sky investments or requesting loans, while others were not averse to downright begging.---James's wealth came from the wool trade. One hundred fifty years ago, sheep were grazing on hillsides in most farms in the county, and their wool was a hot commodity. According to Anne Rueter's article in the June 1983 Observer, in 1870 alone 188,000 local sheep produced one million pounds of wool, most of which was shipped from Chelsea to textile mills throughout the country. By the 1890s, wool was processed locally in six water-powered and one steam-powered factory. Production peaked in 1894, when 1.34 million pounds of wool was produced.Babcock worked in the business and seems to have been financially secure even without his inheritance. In 1890, he acquired the 1858 Italianate Wells House at 208 North Division St. for nearly $10,000. According to Samuel Beakes's 1906the property "was surrounded by beautiful and extensive grounds, richly adorned with flowers and ornamental trees and situated in one of the most delightful portions of the town."This brick structure with "pressed metal pilasters at the corners" was built in 1858, as a two-story home for Dr. Ebenezer Wells, a physician who became mayor of Ann Arbor during the Civil War. Wells also was the president of the First National Bank, the first in Michigan chartered under the National Bank Act of 1863. An "elaborately carved Italianate-style entry porch" set the tone for the house.---Babcock's peculiar quandary was fodder for the local newspapers. Two newspapers especially involved with the story were theand theA February 1989 article inreported howeditor Junius E. Beal cited an article in theheaded "A Man Who Must Marry." A reporter for that paper had cooled his heels for more than a half-hour at a Chicago hotel, waiting to put questions to "Mr. C.E. (sic) Babcock, a young gentleman from Ann Arbor who, suddenly sprung into publicity, on account of his Uncle's will, which left him $500,000 on condition that he marry within five years." The reporter described Babcock as "young, handsome, engaging in manners; indeed, quite a matrimonial catch."In his following week's edition, Beal informed his readers that the wrong man had been interviewed. C.E. Babcock was not J.L. Babcock but was in fact, a student at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Beta Theta Phi fraternity. Beal sent in a stringer for the sole purpose of embarrassing his rival when it picked up the Chicago story.James's will specified that each of his two sisters, and several other nieces and nephews, would receive $5,000. If Babcock did not fulfill the caveat in the will, they would share the windfall that otherwise would have gone to him.---In the end, Babcock did marry, with a year to spare. But he need not to have read all those letters. On September 30, 1892, thereported his wedding two days earlier to Miss Ella Stanley Butler of Waukesha, Wisconsin.Butler had been right there, under his nose, for years: Babcock had long vacationed during the summers in Waukesha with his uncle, mother, and aunt. On those visits he would see Butler, but there was no hint of romantic interest on either side. The story is that he'd understood she was betrothed to another man; when he found that this was not the case, the pair soon married.In 1894, after receiving his inheritance, the couple completely refashioned the Wells house to reflect their personal taste. Embossed wall coverings made of leather were brought in from Europe for the reception rooms; the carvings, mirrors, and marble were also imported. The Babcock coat of arms is commemorated in stained glass in the windows on the north side of a rear addition; other windows and doors featured refined beveled and etched glass.After Babcock died in 1910, a third story was added to the Wells-Babcock house, and the mansion and carriage house were converted to multifamily use. Today the house sits within the Division Street Historic District. [Originally published in June, 2020.]
Tehran Ships Food To Venezuela To Establish Country's First Iranian Supermarket

06/22/20

Source: RFE/RL

An Iranian cargo ship was expected to dock in Venezuela on June 21 with food that will stock the first Iranian supermarket in the South American country, Iran's embassy in Caracas said. The delivery marks "another success in friendly and fraternal relations between two countries," officials at the embassy announced in a tweet on June 20, which provided no further details.

The food shipment comes after Iran supplied 1.5 million barrels of fuel to Venezuela last month, helping to alleviate a shortage amid a collapse of refinery operations and tightening sanctions by the United States.

Venezuela, once South America's top oil-producer, is suffering from a gasoline shortage amid a deep economic crisis.

Iran also provided Venezuela with key ingredients needed to restart refineries and resume producing its own gasoline.

Both Iran and Venezuela are under U.S. sanctions, and Washington has warned governments, seaports, shippers, and insurers that they could face measures if they aid the tankers.

President Donald Trump softened his tone toward Venezuela slightly in an interview last week in which he said he would consider meeting Maduro.

"I would maybe think about that," Trump said in the interview on June 19 with the news website Axios.

He expressed an openness to meeting Maduro once before, in 2018, and the Venezuelan leader also made overtures for talks, but nothing materialized and the United States instead added extensive sanctions that have added to the South American country's economic woes.

He also indicated waning confidence in Juan Guaido, who was recognized by the United States and other Western countries as the legitimate leader of Venezuela in January 2019 after what most consider a sham election that kept Maduro in power.

While the United States has maintained pressure on the Maduro regime, largely through sanctions, Maduro has retained the support of the military as well as the backing of Russia, Cuba, China, and Iran.

Maduro earlier this month said he would visit Iran shortly to sign cooperation agreements in energy and other sectors after Iran sent the oil, which arrived in five tankers.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and Axios
Editor's Note: Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news stories and expert opinions that moved the precious metals and financial markets. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) Venezuela's central bank is suing the Bank of England (BoE) to get access to its London-stored gold that is worth more than $1 billion.

The legal proceedings began Monday with the lawyer representing the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro calling on the London court to distinguish between the law and politics.

One must be careful to disentangle the law from the politics, Bloomberg News reported lawyer Nick Vineall as saying at a hearing on Monday. Its vital to remember that recognition of a government doesnt imply approval. Conversely, approval in a political sense does not imply recognition.

Maduro is arguing that Venezuela needs its BoE-stored gold to help fight the economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak. The Venezuelan central bank has been asking for the gold to be sent to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which is helping the country with the coronavirus crisis.

Vineall has proceeded to argue that Maduros government is the one in charge of appointing officials, collecting taxes, setting budgets, which make Maduro the official head of government. This statement comes as many countries, including the U.S., are refusing to recognize Maduro as the official leader of Venezuela.

Venezuelas BoE-stored gold has been in a legal limbo since the U.K. central bank denied Maduros request to withdraw the gold.

The leader of the Venezuelan opposition Juan Guaido, who is being backed by the U.S. and more than 50 other countries, has also laid claim to the gold in question.

At the end of May, the BoE said it wanted to delay court proceedings to permit Mr. Guaido to intervene and to lay claim to the central banks gold.

According to the BoE, it was caught in the middle, Bloomberg reported in May.

The regrettable, irregular, and unrealistic approach adopted by the Maduro Board in these proceedings leaves the BOE unacceptably exposed, said the BoE attorney Brian Kennelly.

In response, the judge has adjourned the hearing for a week back in May.

The hearings have began this week after the Venezuelan central bank sued the BoE in a British commercial court in May. The ruling is not expected until August or September. The judge presiding over the case is Justice Nigel Teare.

The opposition has claimed that Maduro will use the gold to pay off his foreign allies. A claim that is being denied by the Maduro administration and the lawyer.

In the meantime, Maduros government has sold 30 tonnes of gold from its reserves to foreign buyers over the last two years in order to get their hands on much needed cash, Reuters reported.
A couple has created a 'gourmet' three-course meal after spending less than $40 at Aldi - complete with a $12 bottle of French Champagne.

The woman, from Adelaide, and her husband decided to set themselves a challenge to get all their entree, main and dessert from the budget supermarket store.

For a dinner for two, they served up chicken and leek pies oozing with Camembert sauce ($4.49) as a starter and enjoyed salmon wellingtons with cheese and spinach sauce wrapped in a crispy puff pastry ($5.49) and potato gratin ($3.69) as the main.

Complementing their date night meal with a $12 bottle of French Champagne, the pair tucked into a baked custard Danish ($3.99) with a dollop of double cream ($3.69) for dessert.

A couple has created a 'gourmet' three-course meal after spending less than $40 at Aldi - complete with a $12 bottle of French Champagne, salmon wellingtons with cheese and spinach sauce wrapped in a crispy puff pastry ($5.49) and potato gratin ($3.69)

For a dinner for two, they served up chicken and leek pies oozing with Camembert sauce

Woman's three-course meal and snack from Aldi Chicken & leek in Camembert sauce pies 2-pack: $4.49 Salmon wellingtons 2-pack: $5.49 Spinach & ricotta potato gratin 4-pack: $3.69 Custard Danish 4-pack: $3.99 Double cream: $3.69 Chilli chocolate bars: $6 for two Veuve Amiot Brut French Champagne: $12 Total cost: $39.35 Advertisement

'A joint decision to pop to Aldi and get some gourmet and decadent tasty food to compliment the french champagne Veuve Amiot Brut on special for $12 - so the search and hunt began,' she said in a Facebook group.

'We chose for entree the chicken, leek and Camembert pies, then the Salmon wellingtons plus the spinach and ricotta gratin and then the Custard Danish, plus two bars of chilli chocolate for munching on watching NCIS.'

Their three-course meal and snack came to a total of just $39.35.

'You cant get that at a restaurant or a hotel - and all products were not below 88 per cent Australia made,' she added.

The pair tucked into custard Danish ($3.99) with a dollop of double cream ($3.69) for dessert

Many people were impressed with her affordable menu, while others said the salmon wellingtons are 'beautiful'.

'Wow you've been all around the world and only went to Aldi, well done,' one said, while another added: 'Going to treat my husband and I to this through the week. Looks delicious.'

Other shoppers raved about the custard Danish, with many saying it's their 'absolute favourite' dessert in their home.

'That Danish is my absolute fave! Unfortunately it doesn't serve four in my household, I tend to eat it all to myself. I told my kids it had alcohol in it so they have never bothered with it,' one mother said, laughing.

Another said: 'The custard Danish is a very popular one in our house! So good!'
President Trump dodged questions Monday over whether he really did ask White House officials to slow down coronavirus testing in order for the U.S. to have lower case numbers.

The president was twice asked about the comment that he made at Saturday night's political rally in Tulsa by broadcast journalist Joe St. George during an interview at the White House Monday.

'We do more testing than any country in the world by far,' Trump said when first asked about it. 'If it did slow down, frankly I think we're way ahead of ourselves if you want to know the truth,' the president responded when St. George posed the query again.

In a new interview with broadcast journalst Joe St. George, President Trump dodged questions about whether he was being serious when he told a crowd Saturday that he had asked officials to slow down coronavirus testing

Since Trump made the comments at Saturday's Tulsa rally, aides to the president have characterized them as 'tongue-in-cheek'

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday that President Trump made the comments 'in jest'

At the Oklahoma rally, Trump told the crowd, 'I said to my people, "Slow the testing down, please."'

Since then, White House officials have characterized the president's comments as 'tongue-in-cheek.'

At Monday's White House briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said 'he has not directed that' when asked if the president tried to stall COVID-19 testing.

'Any suggestion that testing has been curtailed is not rooted in fact,' she said.

She added that 26.7 million coronavirus tests have now been administered.

'The president was trying to expose what the media oftentimes does is they ignore the fact that the United States has more cases because we have more testing,' she explained. 'We are leading the world on testing.'

'It was a comment that he made in jest. It was a comment that he made in passing,' she added.

McEnany was then asked if the president should be making jokes about the coronavirus when more than 122,000 Americans have died.

'He was not joking about coronavirus, I just said he was joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact that when you test more you'll also find more cases,' she replied.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins followed up by asking McEnany why - during his interview today with St. George - didn't the president say he was being tongue-in-cheek.

'The president instead used that opportunity to extoll the fact that we've done more than 25 million tests,' McEnany said.

The press secretary also denied that the White House was holding up Congressionally allocated funds for more testing.

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee ranking member Patty Murray sent out a press release accusing the administration of sitting on $14 billion that was appropriated by Congress for testing and contact tracing.

Schumer and Murray had sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar the day before.

'While it has been months since these funds were first appropriated, the Administration has failed to disburse significant amounts of this funding, leaving communities without the resources they need to address the significant challenges presented by the virus,' they wrote.

'The United States is at a critical juncture in its fight against COVID-19, and now is the time for an aggressive and fast response,' the letter continued. 'This Administration will put our country at grave risk if it tries to declare an early victory, leave lifesaving work undone, and leave resources our communities desperately need sitting untouched.'
Shares of most information technology (IT) companies were trading flat with negative bias on Monday as investors turned cautious after the US President Donald Trump said late on Saturday he would announce new restrictions on visas within a couple of days to block the entry of certain foreign workers and protect Americans struggling with a job market devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Were going to be announcing something tomorrow or the next day on the visas, he told Fox News Channel.

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
A moratorium on evictions that New York State imposed during the coronavirus pandemic expired over the weekend, raising fears that tens of thousands of residents struggling in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression will be called into housing courts, which reopened on Monday.

Housing rights groups estimate that in the coming days, 50,000 to 60,000 cases could be filed in New York Citys housing courts. In addition, thousands of cases that were already in progress but were paused in March can now resume.

The number of eviction cases expected to be filed reflects the typical caseload in a three-month period, which was the length of the moratorium. But it does not take into account the fallout from the more than one million city residents who have lost their jobs or were furloughed in recent months and whose federal stimulus payments of an extra $600 per week will soon run out, housing advocates say.

A second order issued by the state that shields tenants directly affected by the pandemic expires in late August and could produce an even bigger wave of eviction cases.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission over the weekend suspended alcohol permits at a dozen bars, including two in the Houston area, as part of a statewide crackdown to enforcement Gov. Greg Abbott's COVID-19 business restrictions.

Handlebar Houston and Barge 295 in Seabrook were issued 30-day permit suspensions for not implementing proper protocols to slow the spread of the virus, the agency announced Sunday. Abbott has required bars to remain at 50 percent capacity and restaurants at 75 percent as part of the state's COVID-19 response. The businesses also must ensure proper social distancing of at least 6 feet between groups.
By Elida Moreno

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Panamanian authorities this week finalised the exhumation of 19 bodies in a private cemetery in Panama City as part of a search for victims of the 1989 invasion by the United States, Panamanian judicial authorities said.

The bodies were exhumed from the Jardin de Paz cemetery in the capital, where they were buried 30 years ago after initially being dumped in mass graves during the December 1989 to January 1990 invasion. Some bodies remain unidentified.

The corpses were dug up at a site holding about 100 graves of those died during the U.S. military operation that led to the deaths of at least 500 Panamanians and marked the end of the dictatorship of General Manuel Noriega.

About 300 civilians died in the assault, according to official estimates. Only 23 American soldiers lost their lives.

But human rights organizations have long estimated the true number of Panamanian victims could be higher, prompting the government of Juan Carlos Varela to establish a commission to investigate the death toll.

"We have been working for 30 years to make sure (the dead) have some inner peace," said Trinidad Ayola, president of an association that has worked with authorities to identify the victims.

A total of 19 corpses have been exhumed, the Public Ministry told Reuters. "Seventy seven graves have been pending in the field for exhumation," it added.

The invasion is an open wound for many Panamanians who each year commemorate the event and have called for Dec. 20 to be declared a day of national mourning.

(Additional reporting by Abraham Teran; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Sandra Maler)
People who are cursing their hay fever right now may want to think again. A growing body of evidence suggests that everyday allergies could actually offer some protection against Covid-19.

Given that the virus affects the lungs, you might think those with allergy and asthma would be among the worst affected.

Indeed, researchers and doctors sifting through the statistics expected the same thing.

The numbers of allergy and asthma patients who were severely affected by Covid-19 were lower than in the general population [File photo]

But when data started emerging about cases in the U.S. and China, we werent seeing what we expected, says Dr Samantha Walker, a specialist in allergy and immunology who is director of research and innovation at the Asthma UK and British Lung Foundation Partnership.

In fact, the numbers of allergy and asthma patients who were severely affected by Covid-19 were lower than in the general population.

It led us to ask if something about the treatment used by people with these conditions is affecting their response to the virus, says Dr Walker.

Or does something about the immune system of those with asthma and allergy protect against the virus?

Medicines that may halt the virus By Sophie Goodchild The news last week that dexamethasone, a widely used steroid, can help save Covid patients lives, highlighted the potential benefits of so-called re-purposed drugs  using current treatments to treat this new infection. Here are some of the promising latest treatments... Ibuprofen Early in the pandemic, ibuprofen was linked to a raised risk of complications in patients with Covid, but the World Health Organisation has concluded there is no evidence to support that. Now the Liberate trial  led by Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust and Kings College London  is investigating the painkillers anti-inflammatory properties. The drug works by blocking the hormones (prostaglandins) the body releases to fight illness, and which can trigger acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)  a condition associated with Covid-19. Early in the pandemic, ibuprofen was linked to a raised risk of complications in patients with Covid, but the World Health Organisation has concluded there is no evidence to support that [File photo] Heparin A common blood thinner, heparin inhibits the ability of the body to form clots by preventing threads that allow blood cells to clump. Preliminary research suggests this stroke-buster may also stop the virus, by disarming the tiny spikes on its surface  the virus uses these to bind to a receptor (ACE2) on the surface of cells to enter them. The Accord programme  set up by the Governments Covid-19 taskforce in 30 UK hospitals  is trialling heparin in a spray. Bemcentinib Already being tested as a cancer treatment, this daily pill has been shown to stop the virus multiplying. A trial at University Hospital Southampton is testing its ability to stop the virus replicating by preventing it binding to AXL kinase, a protein that helps cells multiply. Zilucoplan This drug is being tested for the autoimmune condition myasthenia gravis (a rare condition that causes muscle weakness). Experiments in mice have shown respiratory failure caused by acute injury to the lungs from viral infection can be prevented by the drug  it works by disrupting the bodys inflammatory response, by blocking c5, a protein involved in inflammation. Zilucoplan is being trialled in patients to preserve lung function. MEDI3506 This injectable drug, already being trialled for skin disorders and lung conditions, is also being tested against the dangerous inflammation triggered by coronavirus. MEDI3506 targets a protein (interleukin-33) implicated in exaggerated immune response to the virus, and which causes fever and organ damage. Advertisement

If we can find out the reason, it would be a significant breakthrough.

Looking at the data from China, the reason scientists were so excited by the findings becomes clear.

Five per cent of the population in China has allergy-based asthma, so the expectation would be for at least 5 per cent of those hospitalised with Covid-19 to have asthma.

But a paper published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in April found that fewer than 1 per cent of those hospitalised with Covid-19 had the lung condition. Similar trends have also been seen in the U.S.

Another paper, published in the same journal in April by U.S. and UK researchers, found that cells in the lungs of children and adults with allergic rhinitis (cold-like symptoms such as a runny nose caused by an allergy) and allergic asthma (asthma triggered by exposure to things such as cats, dust or pollen) have lower numbers of ACE2 receptors.

Significantly, these are the proteins that Covid-19 uses to enter the cells in our bodies.

We know some of the conditions associated with increased Covid-19 risk [such as type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure] are associated with higher expression [numbers] of the ACE2 receptor, so we questioned whether asthma or respiratory allergies might be associated with lower expression  and it was, the papers lead author Dr Daniel J. Jackson, a specialist in allergy and immunology at the University of Wisconsin in the U.S., told Good Health.

Exactly why those with an allergy might have fewer ACE2 receptors isnt known, but Dr Jackson says its known that IL-13, an allergic cytokine [chemical messenger] lowers ACE2 expression, but theres likely to be other mechanisms at play.

The research was on a small scale  with a trial involving 365 children and adults  so further work is needed to investigate the possible protection these allergies provide.

However, there may be other factors that work to the benefit of those with allergies.

The most common medications used to prevent and treat asthma  such as steroids and airway-dilating medicines including budesonide and salbutamol inhalers  may also help reduce the risk of a serious Covid-19 infection.

In a paper published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine last month, researchers said: In in-vitro [laboratory work in a dish rather than a live organism] models, inhaled corticosteroids alone or in combination with bronchodilators have been shown to suppress coronavirus replication and cytokine production. In other words, these drugs appear to stop the virus multiplying.

The effect on cytokines could also be significant. These are molecules that tell the infection-fighting cells of your immune system when they are needed and direct them where they need to go.

Covid-19 can trigger excessive production of cytokines, which is what makes the infection particularly dangerous.

Known as a cytokine storm, the sudden release of lots of cytokines causes excess inflammation in the body that can lead to organ damage. But IL-13, a cytokine linked to asthma, may have a protective effect.

However, Professor Ian Hall, a specialist in respiratory medicine at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, thinks there may be another reason Covid-19 cases have been lower in those with allergies or allergic asthma.

He says his asthma patients are very worried about the threat of Covid-19 and are sticking carefully to shielding rules.

The lower incidence of cases may be simply because asthma patients are not exposing themselves to risk, he adds.

He also points out that a large analysis of more than 16,000 UK patients published online on the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (part of the University of Oxford) website showed a slightly different pattern.

Here, 12 per cent of the population have asthma; but those with asthma accounted for 14 per cent of patients hospitalised with Covid-19.

So what does this mean if you do have asthma or allergies?

Well, if there is a protective effect its only in asthma triggered by allergy. While this is very common (80 per cent of asthma cases are associated with an allergy, according to Asthma UK), not everyone with asthma has this.

The type of treatment you take for asthma might also play a role. Those with severe asthma might use different types of medication, such as oral steroids or biologics [drugs that act directly on the inflammation that causes asthma symptoms], which can compromise immunity and put you at higher risk, says Professor Hall.

While Dr Walker is very excited by the possibilities shown by the research, she advises caution.

Virus tip If you are struggling to sleep at night, stick to a schedule during the day, says sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley. It may well be different from before, but the brain craves routine. Advertisement

None of the studies so far prove there is definite protection from Covid-19 for those with asthma; they just give us something very interesting to investigate further, she says.

Advice, therefore, doesnt change. If you have asthma, keep using your medication. If you also suffer with allergies, keep taking your antihistamines or nasal steroids.

Wear a mask when out of the house, wash your hands regularly, and if its suggested that you shield, then you should.

The asthma, allergy and Covid-19 relationship can also be complicated because the symptoms such as a cough and breathlessness can be common with all three conditions.

But fever, fatigue and loss of sense of taste or smell are associated with Covid-19, so if you experience these you should get tested, says Dr Walker.
San Francisco, June 22 : Elon Musk on Monday announced to hold annual Tesla shareholder meeting and Battery Day in Fremont, California on September 15.

Musk last week announced to postpone the shareholder meeting as well as Battery Day scheduled for July 7 at Tesla's Fremont factory owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Tentative date for Tesla Shareholder Meeting & Battery Day is Sept 15. Will include tour of cell production system," he tweeted.

The 'Battery Day' is set to tell more about the automaker's latest development in battery technology. Last month, Musk updated Tesla's upcoming event to add that it will focus just on batteries and not powertrain, reports Electrek.

In another tweet, he said Tesla is considering adding cross-traffic warnings when the vehicle makes a reverse.

"Thanks Elon! Definitely a feature that continues to make Tesla vehicles the safest cars you can buy," commented one follower.

Amid pressure from workers, Musk also announced that Juneteenth is "henceforth considered a US holiday at Tesla & SpaceX".

In a follow-up tweet, Musk clarified that this will "require the use of a paid-time-off day," like other holidays at the company.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

United Kingdom and Uzbekistan have great opportunities to develop relationship in trade and investment, to build stronger ties between two parliaments, to work together towards green economy, kick-start the use of renewable energies, and tackle climate change ahead of United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021 (COP26), Foreign & Commonwealth Office of United Kingdom told Trend in an interview.

The UK works closely with Uzbekistan on many areas of mutual interest including: media freedom and human rights; trade and business relationships; education and tourism, said the office. "The signing of Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 2019 between UK and Uzbekistan demonstrates the strength of ties and shared commitment to the growth of relationship between the countries."

We welcome and support President Mirziyoyevs ambitious reform program - including economic liberalization, human rights and political reform  which has made it possible for the UK to step up our engagement and develop a strong partnership with Uzbekistan, said the office, adding that British companies operating in Uzbekistan are mostly involved in the service sector i.e. consultancy, education, engineering services and professional services.

But there are many developing opportunities for British companies in sectors such as healthcare, the digital economy, the development of the financial and banking sector, developing capital markets and establishing more education facilities. UK Embassy in Tashkent helps to identify and share these opportunities with UK companies on a regular basis, and organizes trade missions to help UK companies learn more about opportunities in Uzbekistan, and establish networks with the relevant ministries and companies, said the office.

Foreign & Commonwealth Office of United Kingdom also said that the UK is ready to support Uzbekistan in its bid to join the WTO.

Joining the WTO would help open access to world markets, promote competition in the domestic market, lower trade barriers and help encourage investment in Uzbekistan, said spokesperson.

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
Shen Yueyue, Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, joins a symposium with representatives of the women's federations at all levels in Southeast China's Fujian Province on June 11. [For Women of China]

Shen Yueyue, Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) and President of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), joined a symposium with representatives of the women's federations at all levels in Southeast China's Fujian Province on June 11, to study and discuss measures to implement the spirit of the important speeches delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping. The participants also discussed how to unite and lead women to contribute to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Stressing the people-centered development philosophy, Shen called for giving full play to the role of women's federations in guiding, serving and contacting women, in boosting economic and social development, maintaining overall social stability, promoting national reunification, and making greater contributions to achieving the first Centenary Goal as scheduled.

Representatives of presidents, part-time vice-presidents and members of the executive committees

of the women's federations at all levels in Fujian Province and heads of the Women's Micro Homes spoke at the symposium.

Shen spoke highly of the new achievements made by the women's federations when hearing that the provincial women's federation plans to build or extend five kindergartens, and establish more Women's Micro Homes in new sectors, new social classes and new groups, especially in the enterprises where most employees are women.

Shen Yueyue, Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the All-China Women's Federation, delivers a speech at the symposium in Southeast China's Fujian Province, on June 11. [For Women of China]

Shen urged the women's federations at all levels to mobilize women to continue to participate in regular epidemic prevention and control work and patriotic health campaigns, including organizing activities of creating beautiful homes, promoting garbage sorting and women's health lectures, in a bid to create a clean and healthy living environment for women, children and families.

The women's federations should strive for supportive policies for industries where many women are employed, such as commerce, catering, culture and tourism, hand knitting, housekeeping services and rural e-commerce, and help them keep a stable payroll and promote production and sales.

Shen required greater efforts in helping the women's enterprises solve their problems and supporting female college students to find jobs or start their own businesses, so more women are able to get jobs and obtain income.

Enhanced efforts should also be made to ensure a decisive victory in poverty alleviation, combine poverty alleviation with rural revitalization, and actively participate in the anti-poverty cooperation and pairing-up assistance between the eastern and the western regions, helping more impoverished women find ways to live better lives and become rich.

Shen also stressed family work and the importance of moral education, giving full play to the role of family, family education and traditions in social governance at primary level.

Women's federations were also urged to care for and assist impoverished women, disabled women and left-behind women, publicize the Civil Code to women and families, and cooperate with relevant departments to deal with the cases which involve discrimination against women in employment, disputes over marriage and family property rights, domestic violence or sexual assault against girls, striving to protect women and children and offer them better services.

Shen also called for better work on promoting women's exchanges across the Straits and on deepening reform of women's federations.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)
A boy growing his hair for cultural reasons is fighting his final battle to keep his long locks before getting expelled from a strict Christian school.

Cyrus Taniela, 5, and his family have gone to a tribunal after the Australian Christian College Moreton, near Brisbane, told him his hair needed to be 'neat and tidy'.

He was told to cut it or he would be unenrolled by his private Brisbane school, the tribunal was told as it began on Monday.

School officials claim Cyrus' hair is breaking uniform rules, which requires boys' hair to be neat, tidy and not hanging over their faces.

His mother, Wendy, from Samoa, took the matter to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, saying her son's hair was being grown ahead of a traditional haircutting ceremony as practiced by his Cook Islander father.

A Queensland family says they were told Cyrus Taniela (pictured) had to abide by school rules and cut his hair during his first week of prep

The hearing is expected to focus on whether the school breached Australia's anti-discrimination laws and if it is lawful to exclude Cyrus if he does not cut his hair.

'The nub of it is will he be unenrolled if he does not cut his hair,' the Taniela family's lawyer Chris McGrath said.

The tribunal has been told it is Cook Islands custom for the eldest son of a family not to have his hair cut before he comes of age.

Cook Islands elder Nga Toka says such ceremonies are usually prayer-filled events with lots of singing and dancing.

The child's hair is tied with ribbons and the community is called on by a pastor administering blessings to help cut it, she said.

Cyrus (pictured, left) and his sister (right) both attended school in Brisbane, but strict rules about boys' hair have led to a tribunal

The Taniela family has decided this will happen on Cyrus's seventh birthday, in about 14 months.

Cyrus was initially sent to school with his hair in a bun but the Taniela family was told this was also against the school's rules.

Ms Taniela then sent him to class with his hair in a braid but the school also objected to this, the court heard.

Despite this, the school has agreed to allow Cyrus to continue attending pending a decision by the tribunal.

Jason (pictured, left) and Wendy (right) Taniela, Cyrus' parents, are seen leaving the hearing in Brisbane

The school's lawyer, Christopher Murdoch, has asked Ms Taniela why her family had not brought the ceremony forward.

'When it comes to this kind of ceremony it is almost like organising a wedding,' she said.

She said aunties needed time to sew a traditional blanket, which takes longer than 12 months to complete.

Mr Murdoch also asked how many haircutting ceremonies she had attended or blankets Ms Taniela had sewn, implying the traditions were not commonplace.

Ms Taniela told him none, as she is Samoan and this is a Cook Islands tradition based on Cyrus's father's family's beliefs.

Ms Taniela (pictured, with Cyrus) explained it was tradition in the Cook Islands for boys to grow their hair before transitioning towards manhood

Questions were also asked about why Ms Taniela and her husband, Jason, had not read the school's uniform policy thoroughly before sending Cyrus to the school, where his sister was already enrolled.

'Like any parent always rushing ... I signed the form and sent it through so we could get him onto the campus,' Ms Taniela said.

The tribunal has heard Cyrus's haircutting ceremony was initially planned to be an intimate affair with only 50 to 100 immediate family members attending.

But the school's actions and resulting media attention now meant many more people wanted to attend and it would take longer to organise.

The tribunal is expected to make a decision before semester two begins in July.
Vladimir Putin said hell consider running for a fifth presidential term in 2024, arguing that the hunt for any successor risks paralyzing Russias government as the next election nears.

I dont rule out such a possibility, if the necessary amendment to the constitution is approved, Putin said in a Rossiya 1 television documentary broadcast late Sunday. I havent made up my mind yet.

On July 1, Russians will vote on the most sweeping changes to the nations constitution since it was adopted almost 30 years ago. One of the amendments would allow Putin, 67, to reset his term limit to zero even though hes already served four, and to helm the country for two more six-year terms when his current one expires in 2024. In power since 2000, Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin.

Without that amendment, I can tell you from my own experience that in about two years, instead of the regular rhythmic work on many levels of government, youd have eyes shifting around hunting for possible successors, Putin said. Its necessary to work, not look for successors.

A top ally of the Russian president, Andrei Klishas, a senior lawmaker who helped to steer the constitutional overhaul, said that Russians should stop thinking about who will rule after Putin leaves office.

They should get used to the idea that everything will remain the same, that the president can be re-elected if people support these changes to the Constitution, Klishas said in an interview with RBC newspaper published Monday. This amendment allows us to put aside the issue of successors, transfer of power and so on.

Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Monday denied the presidents comment meant the political system he built was incapable of functioning in the event of a change of leadership. But he said speculation over potential successors is a characteristic of our national bureaucracy.

For the moment, Putins main goal is to avoid becoming a lame duck in the final years of his current mandate, said Leonid Davydov, a political analyst at the Foundation for Civil Society Development in Moscow. But there is little doubt that the Russian president will choose to run again for election, he said.

In the same state-TV interview Sunday, Putin also harshly criticized neighbouring states for absorbing traditional Russian historic territories on independence in 1991 that they had acquired during the existence of the Soviet Union.

These states should have left with what they arrived, rather than taking with them presents from the Russian people, he said.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine, restoring control over the peninsula that had been Russian until 1954, doesnt have any territorial claims on its neighbors, Peskov told reporters Monday on a conference call, in response to a question about this comment.
Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday said that he had never been as "hopeful and confident" on Air India's divestment or disinvestment as he was now. Addressing a press conference here, Puri said, "I have never been as hopeful and confident on Air India's divestment or disinvestment whatever you choose, as I am now.

I have always said that Air India is a first-class asset. It has excellent engineers, excellent pilots, covering various destinations be it the evacuation of people from Wuhan, Air India has been at the heart of ...
New Delhi, June 22 : The Congress has hit back at BJP president J.P. Nadda who accused former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of surrendering Indian territory to China. The Congress challenged Nadda to raise questions about Chinese transgressions during the BJP rule.

Launching a scathing attack on the BJP president, Randeep Surjewala, chief spokesperson of the Congress, said, "Dear Sh. Nadda, Please show courage to ask Modi government about 2,264 Chinese transgressions since 2015, martyrdom of 471 jawans & 253 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir alone, highest in 30 years." The Congress said there were 3,289 ceasefire violations by Pakistan in 2019 alone, the highest in 16 years, up from 583 in 2014.

"Stop compromising on 'National Security' & India's 'Territorial Integrity'. This would be the biggest disservice to our Armed Forces & our 20 martyrs." added Surjewala.

Nadda attacked former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after he criticised Modi over his statement on China. "One only wishes that Dr Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!" said Nadda.

While attacking Manmohan Singh, Nadda also hit out at the Congress, saying "Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese!" "During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our force," Nadda had said.

Latest updates on Howdy Modi Houston
Ever since Rana Daggubati confirmed his relationship with Miheeka Bajaj, Baahubali fans are eagerly waiting for his wedding. As per previous reports, Rana and Miheeka are all set to get married in August 2020, and it's going to be one of the biggest events in the Telugu film industry. Interestingly, the wedding preparations have already started and fans are keen to know the venue of the grand wedding.

And guess what, the royal venue of Rana Daggubati and Miheeka Bajaj has been revealed! According to a report published in a leading portal, the Daggubatis and Bajajs have confirmed the wedding venue. Rana and Miheeka's wedding will reportedly take place at Taj Falaknuma Palace, the most luxurious hotel in Hyderabad which is the former palace of the Nizam and was built in 1894. However, the official confirmation about the venue is yet to come.

Rana Daggubati's father and producer Suresh Babu earlier wanted to host his son's wedding at Ramanaidu Studios in Nanakramguda. He wanted to keep Rana and Miheeka's wedding a private affair and away from the media glare. But now, the families have decided to change the location to make it grand and royal. Notably, only family members and important guests will be invited to the wedding.

For those who are unversed, Rana Daggubati and Miheeka Bajaj kept their relationship secret for a long time. While confirming his relationship with Miheeka, Rana shared a photo with her on Instagram and wrote, "And she said Yes #MiheekaBajaj."

On May 20, the couple had a roka ceremony, where Rana and Miheeka's family members formally met each other. The function was attended by stars like Venkatesh Daggubati, Samantha Akkineni and Naga Chaitanya. Now, after the wedding venue's revelation, fans can't keep calm for their favourite actor's wedding.

Also Read : Rana Daggubati's Hyderabad House Pics: Here's Where The Baahubali Star Will Welcome Miheeka Bajaj

On a professional note, Rana Daggubati will next be seen in a trilingual film, Aranya, releasing in Tamil and Hindi. The release of the film postponed due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Rana is also a part of Venu Udugula's directorial Virata Parvam, in which he will be seen opposite Sai Pallavi.

Also Read : It's Official! Rana Daggubati To Tie The Knot With Miheeka Bajaj On August 8
WOODRIDGE, Ill., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Globe Union Industrial Corporation, Gerber Plumbing Fixtures' parent company, is pleased to announce an agreement in principle for the creation of a new joint venture with Thai-Kin Co., Ltd, an industry-leading manufacturer of bath and furniture accessories. This joint venture will eventually result in the formation of a new entity focused on the development and manufacturing of kitchen and bathroom faucets, based out of Chonburi, Thailand; the current home of Thai-Kin.

"Globe Union is excited to be partnering with Thai-Kin and looks forward to realizing the synergies created from this joint venture to develop and offer a broader portfolio of products to our partners," shared Todd Talbot, Globe Union's CEO.

Combining the vast experiences of Globe Union within the faucet industry, with the equally impressive background Thai-Kin shares in the bath accessories market, both companies are poised to create a new global leader in faucet production, while complementing their own independent and successful businesses.

Arthur Hsu, Thai-Kin Chairman, expressed, "Thai-Kin looks forward to building our relationship with Globe Union. This opportunity presents great growth potential for both companies, but is more importantly reflective of our shared commitment to creating value for customers."

While details on how the businesses will transact and a timeline for production of faucets in Chonburi are still being finalized, the companies expect the joint venture to begin shipping product in 2021. Additionally, each business will continue to separately maintain their current established manufacturing operations around the world.

About Globe Union Industrial Corporation:

Headquartered in Taichung, Taiwan, Globe Union is a worldwide leader in kitchen and bathroom plumbing products. More than 6,000 employees are part of the Globe Union family, and the company owns and operates 21 locations around the world. Globe Union has five key brands, including Gerber Plumbing Fixtures. Globe Union's commitment to excellence is embodied by offering customers the best possible value for the highest standards of product design and manufacture. The harmony between the Globe Union and Gerber missions ensures that we consistently deliver on our promises.

About Gerber Plumbing Fixtures:

For nearly a century, Gerber has manufactured tried and true, high-quality kitchen and bathroom plumbing products. Each team member in the Gerber family delivers on our commitment to providing dependability reflected in both our products and customer care throughout North America. We earn the trust of trade professionals and homeowners alike who find value in products that have both style and substance  performing without exception for years to come, all while being surprisingly affordable. Gerber's comprehensive offering of plumbing solutions is created with the entire experience in mind, from easy installation to reliable everyday use, and is supported by Gerber's industry-leading warranties. As a partner in the U.S. EPA WaterSense Program, Gerber is committed to protecting the environment through resource conservation, and creating high-efficiency and eco-friendly products.

Media Contact:

Gabby Murrow, Marketing Communications Manager

[email protected]

(630) 754-0185

SOURCE Gerber Plumbing Fixtures LLC

Related Links

https://www.gerberonline.com/


White House ex-advisor John Bolton said the meeting of US and North Korean leaders is a strategic mistake. His remarks came in an interview with ABC.

Speaking about the first meeting of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018, Bolton noted that Trump was interested in how many reporters would attend his press conference.

"When we were in Singapore for the first summit, one of the things he said over and over again-- was to ask how many press people were gonna be present for his final press conference. And I think the final number, it was a very large number-- as it should have been, 400, 500.

By the time we left Singapore, he was at 2,000. And I think that number went up from there. That's what he was focused on. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity -- first time an American president has met with the leader of North Korea.

And he got enormous attention from it. I thought it was a strategic mistake. The U.S. itself got nothing from that. Donald Trump got a lot. The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator. And didn't accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their nuclear weapons program.

To be clear, I don't think North Korea is ever gonna voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program. They have tried this line for onto 30 years now. And one successive American administration after another has fallen for it. I quote in the book a speech Winston Churchill gave in the House of Commons in the 1930s.

It's a very dark quotation, where he says, "People simply will not take the steps that are necessary when the threat is small, and the risk is low. And they wait and they wait until the threat is large and the risk is high." And Churchill talked about the confirmed unteachability of mankind. That's what we saw in the Trump administration Korea policy," Bolton noted.

Bolton was fired from his post last September. His book 'The Room Where it Happened' is set to be published on June 23.
Minister Kim Yen-chul submits his resignation after escalation of threats and the bombing of the inter-Korean relations office in Kaesong. Seoul's difficult role as mediator between Pyongyang and Washington, but also between China and the USA.

Seoul (AsiaNews) - President Moon Jae-in accepted the resignation of Kim Unified Minister Kim Yeon-chul this morning. Kim asked to leave after North Korea blew up the North-South liaison office in Kaesong and after heavy threats towards Seoul and Washington.

Kim was appointed minister in April last year, just as relations between the North and the United States were beginning to run aground. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with US President Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019, but failed to obtain the lifting or suspension of international sanctions imposed because of his country's nuclear and missile programs. Washington set North Korean disarmament as a precondition and this has not occurred.

Meanwhile, in addition to the bombing of Kaesong, the North has sworn that it will suspend all communications between both governments and the military, also abandoning an agreement signed in 2018 to reduce conventional threats. This means that from now on skirmishes, small clashes and (sometimes) killings on land and sea borders are possible.

This has resulted in the ratcheting of tension in the South, with a corresponding dip in popularity for Moon, who had made detente policy with the North one of the pillars of his government.

The opposition has often criticized him for being too optimistic. Several groups of North Korean refugees, linked to the opposition, continued to provoke the North with the launch of air balloons containing critical flyers of Kim Jong-un's regime and leadership. The latest threats against the South in recent days appear to be motivated by these flyers. Seoul has often blocked the launch of balloons, but has always said that it cannot block them entirely because the authors exercise their right of freedom of expression.

In the North Korean crisis, the Moon Jae-in government has found itself mediating between the North, the US and Beijing. Many analysts maintain that Kim Jong-un wants guarantees of survival in order to dialogue and that his regime uses threats to force opponents to compromise. But there are also analysts who attribute the responsibility for Pyongyang's "harshening" towards the US to China and that it is an attempt by Beijing to force Washington to dialogue with China itself.
HARRISBURG, Pa., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, June 19, 2020, Patricia (Patti) Husic, President & CEO of Centric Bank and Centric Financial Corporation (OTC: CFCX), hosted Administrator Jovita Carranza, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, for a Women-Owned Small Business Roundtable at Cornerstone Coffeehouse, Camp Hill, Pa. In a continued advocacy tour on behalf of America's 30 million small businesses, Administrator Carranza discussed the impact of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) on local small businesses and met with Harrisburg region small business owners and their employees. The PPP is a federal loan forgiveness program created to help employers to sustain their businesses and retain their employees in the economic upset of COVID-19.

Attendees and panelists came together to share their stories at Cornerstone Coffeehouse, 2133 Market Street, Camp Hill, Pa. Special guests included Patti Husic, President & CEO of Centric Bank; SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza; U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia; Darmayne Robertson, Owner, Sweet Confections Cakes Inc.; Jenine Diaz, President, Diaz Transcription Services; Jessica Meyers, CEO, JEM Group LLC; Anne Deeter Gallaher, Owner & CEO, Deeter Gallaher Group LLC; and Sue Pera, Owner, Cornerstone Coffeehouse.

"As one of the largest PPP providers in our region, it was a privilege for Centric Bank to welcome Administrator Carranza to central Pennsylvania. In a time when local small business owners are collectively facing the greatest challenge in a generationthe health and economic crisis of Coronavirusthe roundtable invited leaders across all industries to share the stories of Pennsylvania small business owners," says Husic. "The focus was our business owners' triumphs and goals, and how the SBA Lending Program has helped them sustain their businesses and keep their people employed."

"It is so important that the SBA hear directly from small businesses and the local lenders who served as our partners in deploying emergency relief funding through the federal forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans," said SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza. "More than 4.6 million small businesses and non-profits have already accessed PPP loans, and we are encouraging any others needing this emergency funding relief to apply through a participating lender before the deadline on June 30, 2020. Together with lenders, the SBA has been working around the clock to provide timely resources to small businesses so they may rebound safely and bring more needed prosperity to their local communities."

Centric Bank Answers the Call: Paycheck Protection Program

Processed and funded 1,600 PPP applications for a total of $215 million , retaining over 22,000 jobs in Pennsylvania ;

, retaining over 22,000 jobs in ; Serving customers and non-customers, more than 55% of PPP loans were awarded to non-customers in the suburban Philadelphia region;

region; In Cumberland and Dauphin counties, Pa., 32% of PPP loans funded women-owned and woman-as-an-owner businesses;

and counties, Pa., 32% of PPP loans funded women-owned and woman-as-an-owner businesses; PPP Command Center built in less than 48 hours.

"Through the SBA Program, Centric Bank has been able to help solve the most pressing business problems presented by COVID-19," says Husic. "In a world where the work we do and the people we help are powerful markers of our identity, Centric Bank is turning possibilities into livelihoods."

For more information, follow @CentricBank on Twitter or @Centric_Bank on Instagram for highlights of the roundtable event.

ABOUT CENTRIC FINANCIAL CORPORATION AND CENTRIC BANK

An American Banker 2019 and 2018 Best Banks to Work For, three-time American Banker Most Powerful Women in Banking Top Team, three-time Best Places to Work, and Top 50 Fastest-Growing Companies for six years, Centric Bank is headquartered in south central Pennsylvania with assets of $1.01 billion and is a leader in organic loan growth. A locally owned, locally loaned community bank, Centric Bank provides highly competitive and pro-growth financial services to businesses, professionals, individuals, families, and to the health care and dental industries with the Doctor Centric Bank Division. Centric Bank is a Top 10 SBA 7(a) Lender in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Founded in 2007, Pennsylvania-based Centric Bank has financial centers located in Harrisburg, Hershey, Mechanicsburg, Camp Hill, Doylestown, and Devon, loan production offices in Devon and Lancaster, and an Operations and Executive Office campus in Hampden Township, Cumberland County. To learn more about Centric Bank, call 717.657.7727 or visit CentricBank.com. Connect with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Centric Financial Corporation is traded over the counter (OTC-Pink) with the ticker symbol CFCX.

ABOUT THE U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov .

Contact: Anne Deeter Gallaher

Tel. 717-580-4856

[email protected]

SOURCE Centric Financial Corporation, Inc.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Berlin, Germany  Mon, June 22, 2020 08:40 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066090dd6 2 People Pope,Benedict,Pope-Benedict,Vatican Free

Former pope Benedict XVI will return to the Vatican on Monday from Germany, where he is visiting his sick brother, the Regensburg bishopric said.

"Return trip is planned for Monday," said the bishopric in the Bavarian city on its website, giving no further details.

Benedict's trip to Germany on Thursday was his first voyage out of Italy since his shock resignation in 2013.

The unexpected visit was made necessary by the deteriorating health of Benedict's 96-year-old brother Georg Ratzinger.

The only other time 93-year-old Benedict has left the Vatican since his resignation was a visit to the Castel Gandolfo papal palace outside Rome.

He was last in Germany in 2011.

Besides spending time with his brother, the pope emeritus also visited his parents' graves as well as the house he used to live in the district of Pentling.

Benedict, seen as a traditionalist in the Catholic Church, stunned the world when he became the first pope in 600 years to resign, citing health reasons.

The former pontiff, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, now lives in a small former monastery inside the Vatican.

Benedict has largely stayed out of the public eye since standing down and being replaced by reformist Pope Francis.

His trip comes just days after numerous EU countries reopened their borders to Europeans as coronavirus lockdowns are eased.

Given his own frail health, Benedict was travelling with a doctor and a nurse, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters in Rome.

Both Benedict and his brother Georg were ordained priests on the same day in June 1951.

Georg Ratzinger went on to conduct the thousand-year-old Regensburg cathedral choir, known as the Regensburger Domspatzen.

But the renowned choir fell under the shadow of the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal after a 2017 report found that more than 500 choir boys suffered sexual or physical abuse at the institute from 1945 to the early 1990s.

The report criticized senior Church figures for failing to do enough to prevent the abuse, including Georg Ratzinger who led the choir from 1964 to 1994.

Ratzinger has said he knew nothing about the abuse and violence at the school.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be mindful of the implication of his words and not allow China to misuse them, said former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday, referring to the military clash between the two countries in Ladakh. "We stand at historic crossroads, our government's decisions and action will have serious bearings on how the future generations perceive us.

Those who lead us bear the weight of solemn responsibility. In our democracy that responsibility rests with the office of the Prime Minister," Manmohan said in a statement. "This is a ...
The addition of the third airport. It is very clear that it is needed. You see the fulfillment centers coming up. We see traffic coming up. We have great intermodal. We have great transportation through here and Amazon is going to continue to build out the platform throughout the south suburban region, he said.
Apple will be hosting its first-ever digital version of the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) today. This is the 31st version of the conference, but for the first time, it will be an online-only event due to the coronavirus pandemic. As usual, The event will kick off with a keynote speech at 10:00AM PDT (10:30PM IST).

How to Watch Livestream?

The WWDC 2020, as mentioned above, will be an online-only event scheduled for 10:00AM PDT (10:30PM IST). Apart from Apples website the event will be livestreamed on YouTube as well. One can also head to the Apple Developer website or app and if you happen to have an Apple TV you can use the Events app to watch the event live.

Post the main keynote, Apple will also be hosting the Platforms State of the Union session that will start at 2PM PDT (June 23, 2:30AM IST). If you are interested, you will have to head to the Apple Developer website or Apple Developer app to watch these sessions. The WWDC 2020 will run virtually through till June 26, and there are more than 100 engineering sessions lined up. These will also be available for access on the Apple Developer website and Apple Developer app.

What to Expect?

There is a lot to expect from this virtual version of WWDC 2020. The biggest one could be the fact that iOS will now be called iPhoneOS, which kind of makes sense, considering the iPad and Apple Watch have their own dedicated platforms. The update, which theoretically is iOS 14, should be a considerable upgrade over iOS 13. We could see a new design language for iOS and expect under-the-hood updates for improved stability and better performance. There has been speculation of the addition of full-fledged widgets for the home screen, as well as the functionality that allows users to set third-party apps as defaults. Other potential features could include offline Siri functionality. iMessage getting more functionality and much more. We could also see a bigger push into AR for the iPhone as it is expected to integrate LiDAR technology just like the recent iPad Pro.

A big pivot for Apple this year could be the shift to ARM chipsets instead of Intel. There have been various reports around the custom-designed ARM processors. The project is codenamed Kalamata and it is expected the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which also makes chips for the Apple iPhone and iPad, will be making the new Mac processors as well. These will be based on the A14 chip that is expected to power the next iPhone which could give Apple a massive advantage in terms of bringing the marriage of hardware and software even closer together. Surprisingly there were absolutely no speculations or leaks about what the next macOS will be like, or what it will be called.

Other big announcements that you can expect from WWDC 2020 could be bundled subscriptions. Right now, you pay separately for Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+ and so on. A single subscription bundle, with perhaps the option of also sharing with families, could just be the convenience users need. Also, expected updates for watchOS, tvOS for the Apple TV and more.
Two major development projects in Phillipsburg took small but significant steps forward last week.

One is the transformative redevelopment of the land along the Delaware River. The other is the rehabilitation and renovation of the municipal complex at 675 Corliss Ave. that has been vacated due to mold and asbestos.
Car carrying bride and bridegroom carried away in the river, people of the village saved their lives. Image Source: IANS News

Car carrying bride and bridegroom carried away in the river, people of the village saved their lives. Image Source: IANS News

Palamu : , June 22 (IANS) Presence of mind on part of villagers helped save the lives of a newly-wed couple and four others after the car they were travelling in to the grooms village fell off a bridge into the swollen Malay river in Palamu district, police said on Monday.

Police said the incident occurred near Khamdih village in Satbarwa block on Saturday evening. Apart from the car driver, three children were among the rescued.

As a group of villagers jumped into the waters, others tied the car with ropes in order to pull it the partially submerged car back to the river bank. The car had floated downstream for half a km before villagers could rescue its occupants near Navatoli village.

The rescue efforts went on for around an hours from 6.30 pm, police added.

Police identified the groom as Vijay Singh of Rajhara village in Leslieganj police station area and his bride as Khusboo of Mile Matlong village in Latehar district.

Vijay praised the efforts of the villagers in rescuing them in the nick of time. Villagers
A 26-year-old Florida man fatally shot his best friend while showing off his gun when they were playing video games, because his friend said, What, are you going to shoot me?

Shea Harkins, 26, of Palm Harbor, Florida, was arrested and charged with one count of manslaughter following the incident which happened last Thursday.

The Pinellas County Sheriffs Office said in a news release that Harkins best friend, Sean Cook, 26, of Clearwater, Florida, had gone to Harkins home that night.

The pair were playing video games together in Harkins room when, at about 7.48pm, Harkins went to get a Colt M4 rifle that he had been customizing prior to Cooks arrival at his home.



While being interviewed after the incident, Harkins told police that he had jokingly pointed the rifle at Cook, who casually asked What, are you going to shoot me?

Police said that Harkins then admitted that he pulled the trigger, thinking the weapon wasnt loaded, WFLA reported.

Unfortunately, there was a bullet in the chamber. When Harkins pulled the trigger, the bullet hit Cook in the chest.

First responders transported Cook to the hospital. He was pronounced dead at 8.55pm.

Harkins was arrested at about 2am Friday and released after posting $10,000 bail, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Police are still investigating the incident.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
TEL AVIV, Israel, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Enlight Renewable Energy (TASE: ENLT) announce it had completed the project financing for the 312 MW Gecama wind farm in Spain with two of Spain's five biggest banks, Banco de Sabadell and Bankia, which specialize in financing renewable energy projects.

The project, scheduled to reach commercial operation in 2022, is expected to generate average annual revenues of EUR 60 million, provide clean energy to approximately 260,000 Spanish households and prevent emissions of approximately 150,000 tons of CO2 annually.

The senior debt, which will account for 50% of the total project cost, estimated at EUR 320 million, is provided to the project company as a non-recourse loan. The senior debt will be repaid over the first 14 years as of commercial operation date.

Enlight will hold 72% ownership of the project company and will provide the project company with EUR 115 million, with the rest of the capital being completed by the remaining project partners, Phoenix and Menora Mivtachim.

The agreement enables the project company to sell electricity on a full merchant basis.

Roger Font, head of Project Finance at Banco Sabadell:

"It has been an honor and a great opportunity to work with Enlight and the other parties involved in the financing of one of the largest merchant projects in Europe. The experience and track record of Enlight has been one of the key success factors in this project as well as the characteristics of the plants which demonstrates that the wind sector is capable of competing with other technologies without any governmental subsidies."

Jorg Hahn, Head of Structure Finance, Capital Markets Bankia:

"As a leading bank in financing renewable energy projects, it is a great satisfaction for Bankia having reached an agreement with Enlight to finance the construction, commissioning and operation of one of the largest wind farms in Spain owned by its subsidiary GECAMA, which will contribute to improving the energy mix of the country"

Project's development and construction agreements:

The company signed a wind turbine supply and installation agreement with Nordex SE, which will supply turbines with a total capacity of about 312 megawatts. In addition, the company signed a 20-year full-service agreement with Nordex, which will be responsible for sourcing and supplying of all spare parts and maintenance services.

The company has also entered an agreement with Elecnor, one of the main global corporations in development and operation of infrastructure projects. Elecnor will construct the civil and electrical infrastructure for the project

Enlight advisors in the Gecama project are Clifford Chance and Cuatrecasas (legal advisory), ATI Consultants (engineering advisory), Deloitte (financial advisory), Neolas Ingenieria (development advisory) and FRC (insurance advisory).

The lender's advisors in the funding process are Watson Farley & Williams (legal advisory), DNV GL (technical advisory) and Marsh (insurance advisors).

Enlight Renewable Energy, founded in 2008, trades on the Tel-Aviv-125 Index. With 98% of its shares held by the public, Enlight is a leading company in the development, financing, construction, and operations of renewable energy generation projects. The company has operations in Israel and Europe with a diversified portfolio of income-generating projects that total over 750 megawatts. An additional 575 megawatts are in advanced stages towards construction, and 2,000 megawatts more are in initial development stages. Enlight enjoys consistent growth in revenues from long term electricity sales of its yielding assets, and in parallel increasing its diversification to additional markets and clean energy segments.

For additional information:

Neta Schoener, Scherf Communications, +972-50-7202718, [email protected]

SOURCE Enlight Renewable Energy
President Donald Trump and several staff members stood backstage and gazed at the empty Bank of Oklahoma Center in horror.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had canceled plans at the last minute to speak at an outdoor overflow rally that was almost entirely empty, despite claims of nearly 1 million people registering for tickets to attend the event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the presidents false boast of never having an empty seat at one of his events.

The president, who had been warned aboard Air Force One that the crowds at the arena were smaller than expected, was stunned, and he yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium, according to four people familiar with what took place. Brad Parscale, the campaign manager who had put the event together, was not present.

Pence spoke just after 6:30 p.m. in Tulsa and then left, the cue for Trump to come on. But there was a delay. Trumps deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, peeked out from behind black curtains to scan the fan-free seats in the top rows.

Trump eventually entered the arena for a meandering performance in which he excoriated the fake news for reporting on health concerns before his event, used racist language to describe the coronavirus as the Kung Flu and spent more than 15 minutes explaining away an unflattering video clip of him gingerly descending a ramp after his commencement speech at West Point.

By the end of the rally, Trumps mood had improved, advisers said. But after he left the stage, the fight seemed to have left him, at least temporarily. Leaving the arena, he wasnt yelling. Instead, he was mostly muted.

When he landed back at the White House and walked off Marine One, his tie hung untied around his neck. He waved to reporters, with a defeated expression on his face, holding a crumpled red campaign hat in one hand.

Exactly what went wrong was still being dissected on Sunday. But a broad group of advisers and associates acknowledged to one another that Trump had not been able to will public opinion away from fears about the spread of the coronavirus in an indoor space. And they conceded that myriad polls showing Trumps eroded standing were not fake, and that he might be on course to lose to former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in November.

Jared Kushner, the presidents senior adviser and son-in-law who serves as the de facto campaign manager, and who was involved in the decision to choose Tulsa as the host city, was not among the group of advisers with the president at the event. But he will be among those to whom the president turns to figure out what rallies look like going forward.

In a statement, Parscale, the campaign manager who many advisers singled out for the overhyped numbers, claimed the reports about TikTok users and Korean pop music fans foiling attendance at the rally were inaccurate, and even raised the possibility of not allowing the news media to attend events in the future.

Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work, Parscale said. Registering for a rally means youve RSVPd with a cellphone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool.

Instead, he blamed the news media for the low turnout.

The fact is that a weeks worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protesters, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally, he said.

Campaign officials on Sunday privately admitted that many people who had signed up to attend the event were not supporters but online tricksters. One campaign adviser claimed that troll data was still useful, claiming it would help the campaign avoid the same pitfall in the future.

The adviser said that the data could be put into the system to tighten up the formula used to determine projected attendance for rallies.

In an interview, Parscale said the empty arena was not his fault, and that local law enforcement in Tulsa had overreacted, making it difficult for supporters to gain entry. He claimed to have thousands of emails from supporters who tried to get into the Bank of Oklahoma Center and were turned away, but he did not share those messages or names of supporters.

And he shrugged off the rumors about his demise, claiming he had been fired 85 weeks in a row.

But unlike most situations in which Trumps advisers have tried to keep certain information from him  such as the fact that Biden outraised him in the month of May  or put a rosy sheen on it, the president saw for himself the empty seats in Oklahoma.

Several White House officials called the rally a disaster, and an unforced error that heightened tensions among some of the presidents government advisers and his campaign aides. Whats more, Trumps White House advisers had repeatedly cautioned campaign aides against announcing an added appearance at an outdoor space, advice that was ignored as Parscale and campaign surrogates talked about it publicly.

The event does not portend additional large Trump rallies this summer, people familiar with the discussions said. The campaign had hoped to use the Tulsa event as a reset after the presidents slide in the polls in the wake of his administrations failures responding to the coronavirus, and after his stoking of racial tensions amid nationwide protests over police brutality prompted by the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

For days before the rally, Trump was giddy about his first arena outing since March 2, telling one interviewer after another how big it would be based on the numbers that Parscale had cited publicly.

Parscale and others believed the event would demonstrate a real pent-up demand for Trumps appearances  one the campaign has insisted exists. But some advisers privately questioned the data even before the event, and they feared the Tulsa rally was setting the team up for failure.

Now, some White House officials said the campaign was being dishonest about what had gone wrong, and they conceded that many of the presidents older supporters had decided attending the rally was too risky amid coronavirus fears that Trump has repeatedly played down.

Veteran campaign hands in both major political parties were highly skeptical of the Trump operations claims that 1 million people had signed up even before the rally.

Outside advisers to the president said his team was fielding calls from nervous donors and Republican lawmakers, who were asking whether the poorly attended rally indicated problems that were too big to fix with just over four months until Election Day.

It also was not clear if there would be a personnel switch because of the disastrous optics, but some officials recalled what happened in 2017, after an event in Arizona that did not go as Trump had hoped. George Gigicos, one of the original campaign hands and his rally organizer, was fired by the president.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Egyptian president warned of direct intervention in Libya, citing the need to protect Egypts porous border.

Libyas UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) has denounced Egypts warning of military intervention in Libya, labelling it a declaration of war.

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi warned that if pro-GNA forces advanced on the strategic city of Sirte  some 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of the capital Tripoli  it could provoke a direct intervention by Cairo.

He also ordered the Egyptian army to be ready to carry out missions inside or outside of the country to protect its national security amid tensions over Turkeys intervention in Libya.

In response, the GNA said in a statement that Egypts move was a hostile act and direct interference, and amounts to a declaration of war.

The statement comes on the eve of a virtual meeting of Arab League foreign ministers on Libya, in which the GNA declined to participate.

For the Libyan state, interference in its internal affairs, attacks on its sovereignty, whether by declarations  like those of the Egyptian president or by support for putschists, militias and mercenaries, is unacceptable, the GNA said.

It said it was open to all impartial mediation  under the aegis of the UN but rejected unilateral or extrajudicial initiatives.

Oil-rich Libya has been mired in chaos since a NATO-backed 2011 uprising toppled longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the Tripoli-based GNA against renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, who claims legitimacy from an eastern-based elected parliament.

Haftar has been trying unsuccessfully to seize the capital since April 2019, with support from Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

200621063004748

Since the start of June, increased Turkish support has enabled pro-GNA forces to take control of northwest Libya, ending Haftars assault on Tripoli.

The GNA advance is now halted outside the coastal city of Sirte, a strategic access point to Libyas key oil fields which remains under Haftars control.

Sirte and Al-Jufra to the south represent a red line, el-Sisi said in a television broadcast on Saturday, citing the need to protect Egypts porous border.

If this line is crossed, Egyptian forces will directly intervene in Libya, el-Sisi said.

All of Libya is a red line, the GNA responded. Whatever the dispute between Libyans, we will not allow our people to be insulted or threatened.

But the speaker of Libyas eastern-based parliament, Aguila Saleh, defended el-Sisis declaration, saying in a Sunday statement that the Egyptian president was responding to our appeal to the Egyptian parliament last January in which Saleh called for Egyptian intervention in Libya.

And on Sunday, the Jordanian foreign ministry issued a statement saying Amman supports Cairo against any threat to the security and stability of Egypt.

It came after the foreign ministers of both countries discussed the Libya conflict over the phone.
Photo by Jessica Kelly

With dining rules coming back to "normal," the prospect of drinking a flavorful summer cocktail -- on a patio or at your own home -- brings a little joy, especially in New York, with a harsh winter in our rear view and months of self-isolating other than going to the grocery store. When you finally take a sip of that first cocktail, brought to you by an actual person, sucking in all the flavors of fresh herbs, seasonal fruits, and ice cold spirits you finally think OK, now its summer.

Hamlet & Ghost just launched a menu consisting of individual spring and summer cocktails to enjoy on their new patio seating (first come first serve). Sonia Castellani, a bartender and one of two bar managers at the Saratoga Springs spot, said the customer-favorite Frozen Gin Fizz is here to stay. They have a weekly rotating second flavor as well. If youre still uneasy about dining in, they still bottle individual cocktails, like their floral Lavender Pimms Cup with cane sugar lavender bitters. Their spring menu features cocktails that range from foamy and fruity to nutty and smoky. Their honeydew daiquiri, a softer take on the usual strawberry daiquiri, is made with lime, white rum, and a little smoky spritz. Their Pistachio Caipirinha combines pistachio, vanilla, lime and cachaca, a rum made from sugar cane.
Officials at a Chinese province have reportedly culled more than 1.6 tonnes of farm-bred bamboo rats in one go after the government banned the eating and trading of wild animals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chinese bamboo rats, which are linked to coronavirus, have been a sought-after food source in the country for centuries and hailed for their 'nutritional value'.

Forestry workers at Hubei Province, the former epicentre of the outbreak, buried more than 900 bamboo rats alive on Friday after seizing them from a local farmer, according to a report.

Officials at the Xian'an District Forest Bureau of Xianning in Hubei buried more than 900 bamboo rats alive to crack down on the wild animal trade, according to a local report

The report said that specialist workers had dug a deep pit in the mountains far from sources of drinking water before placing the live creatures inside and scattering lime powder over them

In February, China's central government issued a temporary ban on all trade and consumption of wild animals - a practice believed responsible for the global crisis.

The government of Hubei, where the coronavirus was first detected, passed a law in March to ban the eating of wild animals completely, including those bred or raised by people.

The culling was carried out by the Xian'an District Forest Bureau of Xianning, a city of around 2.5million people in Hubei, reported Xianning Television and Radio Station on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.

Chinese farmers were rearing about 25 million bamboo rats when the government launched a temporary ban on the trading and consumption of wild animals in February in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The picture shows a farmer in Guizhou holding two bamboo rats in 2012

A picture on Mr Zhushu, a forum for bamboo rat breeders, lists 30 ways to cook the rats' meat. One of them (pictured), sliced boiled bamboo rat, is presented in the shape of a rodent

All of the bamboo rats, amounting 916 in total, were said to belong to the same breeder, who ran one of the biggest bamboo rat farms in the area.

The report said that specialist workers had dug a deep pit in the mountains far from sources of drinking water before placing the live creatures inside.

Footage shows lime powder was scattered on the rats before they were buried to reduce the impact on the local environment.

Apart from the bamboo rats, the local forest bureau culled seven porcupines weighing a total of 140 kilograms (308 pounds), 1,605 kilograms (3,538 pounds) of snakes and four kilograms (8.8 pounds) of snake eggs.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, the meat of bamboo rats can detoxify one's body and improve the functions of one's stomach and spleen. Others believe it can 'beautify' the diners. The picture from December, 2012, shows a bamboo rat on a farm in Guizhou Province

Although the exact source of the virus remains unclear, Dr Zhong Nanshan, China's leading epidemiologist, claimed in January that the epidemic might be linked to the eating of bamboo rats or badgers. A farmer in China's Guizhou Province is pictured holding a bamboo rat in 2012

Chinese bamboo rats, or 'zhu shu' in Mandarin, are known for their portly figure and fat cheeks.

A wild rodent species feeding on bamboo, these huge rats can weigh up to five kilograms (11 pounds) and grow to 45 centimetres (17 inches) long.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, their meat can detoxify one's body and improve the functions of one's stomach and spleen.

Bamboo bats can fetch up to 1,000 yuan (113) per pair alive or 280 yuan (31) per kilo grilled, according to Mr Zhushu, an internet forum for bamboo rat breeders.

On one page, the forum lists 30 different ways to cook bamboo rat meat, from grilling and roasting to pan-frying and simmering into a soup.

Since the coronavirus pandemic emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, experts have been trying to identify the source of the pathogen, and many believe it came from wild animals sold as food.

Chinese bamboo rats, or 'zhu shu' in Mandarin, are known for their portly figure and fat cheeks

Although the exact source of the virus remains unclear, Dr Zhong Nanshan, China's leading epidemiologist, claimed in January that the outbreak might be linked to the eating of bamboo rats or badgers.

Other experts have named bats, snakes or pangolins as the likely source.

As of February, there were an estimated 25 million bamboo rats on various Chinese farms, mostly in southern parts of the country, such as Guangxi and Guangdong where locals welcome exotic meat.

In Guangxi, a largely agricultural province with around 50 million people, more than 100,000 people were raising roughly 18 million bamboo rats, a local official told China News Weekly.
Mr Ratan Tata is one of the countrys most-loved and admired personalities for a reason. Not only does Mr Tata possess remarkable business foresight, the visionary leader and generous philanthropist is also a great human being whose persona hasnt been corrupted by fame or success.

 Twitter Vijay Thapak

He is a carrier of a great legacy and one of the most prominent faces when it comes to pathbreaking Indian industrialists, and yet the 82-year-old continues to lead his life by never cutting corners when it comes to upholding ideals.



Mr Ratan Tata is proof that a dignified approach to life and being an empathetic, kind gentleman need not be restricted just to real life but can be passed on to the virtual world as well.

And here are 5 times he proved it:

1. When He Urged His Followers To Be Empathetic & Stop Online Hate

 Twitter Ratan Tata

Mr Tata created a buzz online, recently, after he shared an impassioned message calling for a stop on online hate and virtual bullying.



He called out peoples apathy for hurting each other and passing judgements during these times of crisis.

Calling for more kindness, sensitivity and patience, Mr Tata urged people to give empathy a chance instead of hate.

His comments only show that a true gentleman does not only care about his own people, but also those who make his community and look up to him.

By guiding people to a better outlook, Mr Tata has proven that goodness and positivity can also be made viral online.

2. When He Showed Kindness To The Woman Who Called Him Chhotu

 BCCL

Mr Tatas one million followers milestone on Instagram became big news for more than one reason. Remember the uproar which had followed Mr Tatas official announcement and thank you note on Instagram when a follower congratulated Mr Tata and called him chhotu?



Well, when the online trolls began lashing out at the woman for her choice of words, Mr Tatas response to the comment won a million hearts.

With the utmost kindness, Mr Tata replied to the comment and said, There is a child in each one of us. Please treat this young lady with respect.

 BCCL

Well, if that isnt the most polished, gentleman-like behaviour we dont know what is.



3. When He Busted Fake News About Himself

 Facebook Ratan Naval Tata

In April this year, while the entire country was troubled by the dwindling state of the world economy and the Coronavirus outbreak in India, Mr Ratan Tata, like the responsible citizen that he is, took it upon himself to shed light on another ailment attacking the countrys well-being - fake news - and cautioned people against being a part of it.



The Chairman Emeritus of the Tata Group bust fake news about himself which was widely being circulated on social media platforms. The post, containing a picture of him along with a motivational quote which the picture alleged were Mr Tatas own opinion on Indias economy and whats in store for us in the future, caught his attention.

Despite the quote not being harmful or misleading, Mr Tata took to his Twitter account to clarify that, This post has neither been said, nor written by me. I urge you to verify media circulated on WhatsApp and social platforms. If I have something to say, I will say it on my official channels. Hope you are safe and do take care.

This post has neither been said, nor written by me. I urge you to verify media circulated on WhatsApp and social platforms. If I have something to say, I will say it on my official channels. Hope you are safe and do take care. pic.twitter.com/RNVL40aRTB  Ratan N. Tata (@RNTata2000) April 11, 2020

4. When He Publicly Shared His Take On Nepotism & How It Affected Him

 BCCL

During his interview with Humans of Bombay in February this year, Mr Tata revealed that when JRD Tata decided to step down from his position as the Group Chairman, and the Chairman of Tata Industries as well as Tata Sons in 1991, he was met with vicious criticism.



And since there were no other aspirants for that position other than Mr Ratan Tata, there was quite a vocal set of issues, of him having made the wrong decision...the criticism was personal -- JRD got clubbed with nepotism and I was branded as the wrong choice.

However, like the confident and honest man that he has always been, Mr Tata took it all with a pinch of salt and did what he had to do to uphold JRD Tatas hopes for himself. Id been through this before, so I did what I knew best -- maintained a dignified silence and focused on proving myself. Read about his entire experience here.

5. Times He Looked Out For Abandoned/ Needy Animals

 Flickr

Caring for fellow humans and extending a helping hand isnt the only thing Mr Tata feels strongly about. He is equally passionate about the lives of animals and the voiceless.



From speaking up about the atrocities they face, to finding forever homes for abandoned or needy dogs, Mr Tata tries his best to do his bit when it comes to raising awareness and making a difference in their lives.

He supports many animal shelters and NGOs apart from personally urging people to adopt strays and abandoned pets.

Thats what a true gentleman looks like, doesnt it?
Chaos and conflict roiled the Mediterranean in the first century B.C. Against a backdrop of famine, disease and the assassinations of Julius Caesar and other political leaders, the Roman Republic collapsed, and the Roman Empire rose in its place. Tumultuous social unrest no doubt contributed to that transition  politics can unhinge a society. But so can something arguably more powerful.

Scientists on Monday announced evidence that a volcanic eruption in the remote Aleutian Islands, 6,000 miles away from the Italian peninsula, contributed to the demise of the Roman Republic. That eruption  and others before it and since  played a role in changing the course of history.

In recent years, geoscientists, historians and archaeologists have joined forces to investigate the societal impacts of large volcanic eruptions. They rely on an amalgam of records  including ice cores, historical chronicles and climate modeling  to pinpoint how volcanism affected civilizations ranging from the Roman Republic to Ptolemaic Egypt to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Theres nuance to this kind of work, said Joseph Manning, a historian at Yale University who has studied the falls of Egyptian dynasties. Its not a volcano erupts and a society goes to hell. But the challenge is worth it, he said. We hope in the end that we get better history out of it, but also a better understanding of whats happening to the Earth right now.
Avengers star Mark Ruffalo has come out in support of the Green Party entering into government with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

Mr Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk in the Hollywood movie franchise, said the deal agreed between the three parties was a monumental achievement as it will lead to a ban on the importation of fracked gas.

In a statement, the actor said: I have been advocating for ten years with Americans who have been poisoned by fracking, many who live in the areas that would supply Ireland with fracked gas.

Im thankful that U.S. anti-fracking activists contacted Green Party leaders to support the Programme for Government and that I can lend my support in this critical moment. The result of this decision will impact the health and human rights of many Americans for decades to come.

Mr Ruffalo will join Green Party leader Eamon Ryan and deputy leader Catherine Martin for an online event to discuss the deal.
The Delhi Police on Monday submitted before the High Court that student activist Safoora Zargar, who was arrested in a case related to northeast Delhi violence, created turmoil and imperiled national security.

Delhi Police made the submissions in a status report sought by Delhi High Court on a bail plea filed by Zargar, a student at Jamia Millia Islamia University, who is booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the matter.

In its status report, Delhi Police said that the accused was part of the conspiratorial design to not only cause disaffection but also the use of any means to cause death and injury to persons.

The matter is slated to come up for hearing before Delhi High Court later today.

The applicant/ accused was not only disposed towards creating turmoil to severely undermine public order and imperil national security but erode and frustrate the civil compact which holds our polity together, the status report said.

It said that the case against the Zargar is clearly made out from the statements recorded, which are corroborated not only by her own admissions but extensive documentary evidence which has been collected by the investigating agency so far, pointing towards potential serious leads that are also under investigation.

The applicant/ accused combined with the other accused weaved a web of actions animated by an unlawful object of creating terror and disaffection. And notwithstanding her maintaining stealth and secrecy about her real designs the available circumstantial evidence clearly demonstrates that a protestation of innocence is phony, her actions are neither licit nor legitimate and she is clearly culpable of criminal wrongs or grave magnitude deserving no indulgence from this court, the status report said.

It is also extremely crucial to note here that direct evidence is not always available of a conspiratorial design and mere absence of a contemporaneous record does not even remotely suggest the absence of a case against the applicant/ accused because she stands clearly implicated by the evidence which stands unearthed by the investigation which is continuing even now and further trails of criminality is being unearthed, it added.

The status report said that there is substantial cause for the arrest of the applicant and added that there are grave and compelling reasons that she remains in custody.

Unless evidence in rebuttal is presented (which can only be at trial) she cannot claim to be innocent of the acquisition made against her, as alleged or otherwise, in her petition, Delhi Police said in the status report.

Safoora Zargar had moved the High Court challenging an order of a trial court in Delhi, which had dismissed her bail application.

In the mid of February, the accused had allegedly planned to observe protests in various parts of north-east Delhi. She also took part in a protest and blocked a road near a Jafrabad metro station.

Later, violence had broken out between groups supporting and opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which led to the deaths of at least 53 people.
On the morning of June 21, a powerful explosion damaged several apartments in a multi-storey building in Kyiv's Darnytsky district.

The explosion destroyed interfloor structures between the fourth and eighth floors. The explosion killed three people; the fate of three more is still unknown.

Ukrinform posted a video from the scene.

Tents have been set up for the victims. Some 21 residents were evacuated from the building.

As soon as people are allowed to take their stuff, the apartments will be sealed off. In total, about 100 people are to be resettled.

The Prosecutor's Office of Kyiv opened a criminal proceeding under Part 2 of Article 270 (violation of fire safety requirements established by law) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The national police conduct urgent searches in the gas distribution company and all utilities that provided services to the building where the explosion occurred.

About 100 tonnes of building structures have already been removed from the explosion site.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal took personal control of the investigation into the explosion in the building.

ish
Chinese mission slams European Parliament's resolution on Hong Kong

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:32, June 21, 2020

The Chinese mission to the European Union (EU) on Friday said it is gravely concerned about and firmly opposed to a European Parliament resolution which makes unwarranted criticism against the formulation of the national security legislation in Hong Kong by China's National People's Congress (NPC).

The mission has lodged stern representations with the EU, a spokesperson of the Chinese mission said, adding that Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China and the legislation for safeguarding national security in Hong Kong is entirely China's internal affair.

The spokesperson said safeguarding national security is an essential prerequisite for a country's survival and development and it is the core element of national sovereignty.

No countries in the world, including those in Europe, would allow for any legal gaps in terms of national security, nor would any country allow any acts that endanger national security on its own territory, the spokesperson said.

The NPC decision is a necessary step taken to close the legal loopholes regarding national security in Hong Kong. It is fully constitutional, legal, justifiable and reasonable, the spokesperson stressed.

"The European Parliament is apparently applying double standards by adopting the resolution, which we would never accept," the spokesperson said.

The national security legislation will not change Hong Kong's capitalist system, its high degree of autonomy under the Basic Law, or Hong Kong residents' lifestyle, the spokesperson said, adding the legislation will only improve Hong Kong's legal system, bring more social stability in the long run and contribute to the sound implementation of the "one country, two systems."

The spokesperson said the Sino-British Joint Declaration is essentially about the resumption of exercise of sovereignty by China over Hong Kong. With the return of Hong Kong in 1997, UK-related obligations under the declaration had all been fulfilled, while the legal basis for the governance of Hong Kong by the Chinese government is the Constitution of China and the Basic Law of Hong Kong, the spokesperson said.

None of the paragraphs in the declaration give any country or organization any right to interfere in Hong Kong affairs, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the legislation only targets acts of separatism, subversion, and terrorism that seriously undermine national security as well as foreign and external interference in Hong Kong affairs.

It will not impinge on and would rather better protect the legitimate rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents, the spokesperson said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Cairo, June 22 : Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, where they discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues of mutual concern, Egyptian Foreign Ministry said.

"The two ministers exchanged views on developments in the region, the foremost of which is the situation in Libya," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez in a statement on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Libya has been engaged in a civil war since the ouster and killing of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The situation escalated in 2014, splitting power between two rival governments with warring forces: the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) based in the capital Tripoli and another in the northeastern city of Tobruk allied with Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA).

Egypt and Russia, along with the United Arab Emirates, support Haftar's LNA, while the GNA is mainly backed by Turkey and Qatar.

Russia is one of the countries that have voiced support for Egypt's recently proposed peace initiative for a political solution to the Libyan crisis.

Shoukry and Lavrov also discussed the development of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the controversial grand hydropower dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River, according to the statement.
A traveler wearing a protective mask walks past an American Airlines Group Inc. plane tail fin at Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia.

American Airlines said on Sunday it plans to secure $3.5 billion in new financing, to improve the airline's liquidity as it grapples with travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus.

The company plans to raise $1.5 billion by selling shares and convertible senior notes due 2025, the airline said in a statement.

Additionally, the airline said it will offer $1.5 billion in senior secured notes and that it intends to enter into a new $500 million term loan facility due 2024.

The company expects to use the net proceeds from the stock and convertible notes offerings for general corporate purposes and to enhance its liquidity position, the airline added.

The stock and convertible notes offerings, first reported by Bloomberg News, include a 30-day option for the underwriters to purchase up to $112.5 million of additional common shares and up to $112.5 million of additional convertible notes respectively, the company said.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BofA Securities and JP Morgan will be acting as representatives for the underwriters.

American Airlines and Delta Air Lines said last week that a modest recovery in demand was helping to slow daily cash burn rates in June after the U.S. government reported record low passenger numbers in April amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Kathleen and Russel Sion on the front steps of Caroldale Learning Community school in Carson, where they first met as children. Their wedding, like many others, was postponed because of the coronavirus. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

It takes enormous effort to arrange a big wedding  to find the perfect spot to say "I do," to settle the guest list, the music, the food.

This spring, countless couples saw that work swept away when the coronavirus nixed gathering in crowds.

QueJonne and David Cross of South L.A. were just a few days away from the sparkly, elegant Sunday evening they'd planned when Californians got the March 19 order to stay home.

"It wasn't just us. Everyone was losing something," QueJonne said of the moment, in the middle of her Las Vegas bachelorette party, when they were forced to put off their 350-guest celebration.

QueJonne Cross, foreground, and David Cross Jr., background, quietly got married before 20 guests instead of the 350 they had planned for. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Still, she said, they feel blessed to have quietly gotten married before about 20 loved ones in their church on that day  and to have their health and each other.

Russel and Kathleen Sion celebrate those last small wonders daily  especially now, when his work in particular carries great risk.

A respiratory therapist at a downtown hospital, he has treated many coronavirus patients, helping to intubate them and manage their care. He has stood at the heads of their beds as they cough. A colleague he's close to had to be intubated, but thankfully recovered. Other patients haven't.

Kathleen is a nurse practitioner at a family medicine clinic, where she's also been in contact with those with COVID-19.

The couple met in school when they were 8 and dated briefly at 13.

April was to be their perfect month  with celebrations each Friday. First their fifth anniversary, then his 29th birthday, then hers, then the wedding. They'd planned their vows to focus on becoming a family, for Russel's 10-year-old son Jayden.

The big April 24 wedding had to wait. But on April 23, the pair went to the parking lot of the Honda Center for a civil ceremony  via walkie-talkie.

It wasn't the stuff of all their dreams, but their biggest was to be married. Now they are.

Jonathan Gryn and Debbie Rey signed their wedding license, but postponed festivities planned for guests in San Juan Capistrano. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

So are Debbie and Jonathan Gryn of Huntington Beach, who signed their marriage license on their March 27 wedding date. Postponed: the picture-perfect San Juan Capistrano venue, the Italian buffet, the deejay.

Story continues

They broke that news to their 130 guests in a photo, writing a tentative late July date on the surgical masks they posed in. In that moment, said Debbie, "we felt this weight lifted off our shoulders."

In the end, so did Martha Suarez Ballesteros, who had been anxious about her April 17 wedding near Puerto Vallarta. She hates being in the spotlight, she said, and had tried to get Frank Sanchez to elope.

Then, in late March, their wedding planner called to describe the mass exodus of tourists.

Martha Suarez Ballesteros is excited about her wedding near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, tentatively rescheduled for next April. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Somehow rescheduling for next April eased Martha's jitters, she said. "Now I'm excited, whereas before I was nervous."

Meray and Rafi Halajian got married May 16  their planned date, at their planned church. Just 10 relatives could be there out of 500 guests, though they livestreamed the ceremony.

Rafi was looking forward to the reunion of 28 first cousins. His parents, in Armenia, couldn't be there.

"We're waiting for the dust to settle," he said, before they replan the big party. For now, they're simply happy.

On the couch in Rafi's Glendale condo recently, Meray realized, "I didn't have to go home, I was already home." It felt wonderful.
"This is a huge milestone in ADLINKs journey to develop cutting edge technologies for self-driving cars."

ADLINK Technology Inc., a global leader in edge computing with a mission to affect positive change in society and industry by connecting people, places and things with AI, has partnered with Tier IV and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to help enable autonomous driving for all. The alliance will focus on jointly developing intelligent transportation and traffic management systems based on Autoware, open-source self-driving technology. The alliance plans on developing Proof of Concept (PoC) field tests on public roads with local government, starting in Taiwan, and will continue to expand Autoware research, knowledge and ecosystems.

This is a huge milestone in ADLINKs journey to develop cutting edge technologies for self-driving cars, said Eric Kao, General Manager of ADLINKs Networking, Communication & Public Sector business unit. By combining the leading domain expertise of Tier IV and ITRI with our extensive know-how in AIoT, edge computing and defense-grade reliability and ruggedness, this strategic partnership will allow us to jointly develop game-changing solutions for the autonomous vehicle market.

Autoware is a complete open-source software stack for self-driving technology currently used by more than 200 organizations including the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), automotive manufacturers and start-ups. The alliance among ADLINK, Tier IV and ITRI aims to create more synergy between corporate development and academic research for autonomous vehicles and self-driving accessibility.

Operational design domain (ODD), open-source technology and ecosystem are key to building successful autonomous vehicles and related systems. Were excited to have ADLINK and ITRIs partnership in expanding Autoware, said Shinpei Kato, Founder and CTO of Tier IV and Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation.

ITRI has been developing autonomous driving technology and collaborating with industrial partners for local field trial applications sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taiwan. This alliance is a great opportunity to extend our business and technology partnership with Tier IV and ADLINK worldwide, said Dr. Tzi-Cker Chiueh, ITRIs Vice President and General Director of Information and Communications Research Laboratories.

With a focus on open-source technology the new alliance will combine edge AI, self-driving software and industrial research to collaborate on Proof of Concepts (POCs) with local government for field tests on public roads. Starting in Taiwan, ADLINK, Tier IV and ITRI hope to expand Autoware adoption, research and development to make autonomous for all a reality.

For media inquiries kindly contact branding@adlinktech.com

About ADLINK Technology Inc.

ADLINK Technology is a global leader in edge computing. Our mission is to affect positive change in society and industry by connecting people, places and things with AI. The company offerings include robust boards, real-time data acquisition solutions and application enablement for AIoT. ADLINK serves vertical markets including manufacturing, communications, healthcare, aerospace, defense, energy, infotainment and transportation. ADLINK is a Premier Member of the Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance, a partner of NVIDIA, and a contributor to standards initiatives such as Eclipse, OCP, OMG and ROS2 TSC. ADLINK is ISO-9001, ISO-14001, ISO-13485 and TL9000 certified and is publicly traded on TAIEX (Stock Code: 6166). Learn more at http://www.adlinktech.com.

About Tier IV, Inc.

Tier IV, a deep-tech startup based in Japan, is dedicated to providing shared technology to build safe intelligent vehicles that will enable as many individuals and organizations as possible to remove barriers of time and space, leading to a better society in which all people benefit from making autonomous vehicles a reality. Founded in December 2015, Tier IV has led the development of the world's first open-source software for autonomous driving, also known as Autoware, and applied it for proof of concept of last-mile driverless mobility and logistics. Tier IV and its global partners continue to provide turn-key solutions to deploy Autoware-based products and commercialize autonomous vehicles all over the world. Learn more at https://tier4.jp/en/.

About Industrial Technology Institute

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the worlds leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. It focuses on the fields of Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment.

Over the years, ITRI has incubated over 280 innovative companies, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote opportunities for international cooperation around the world. For more information, please visit https://www.itri.org/eng.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners in the U.S. and other countries.
Boris Johnson is set to announce an 'expansion of social bubbles' tomorrow allowing families to reunite

Advertisement

Nicola Sturgeon tore into Boris Johnson today over his plans to ease the lockdown still further in England, branding him 'reckless.

Scotland's First Minister said it was 'tempting' to try to rush to get the nation 'back to normal' but suggested that the move should not be rushed amid new spikes in cases in some countries.

She made the waning as the UK's death toll fell to just 15 - the lowest level since mid-March.

Mr Johnson is preparing to announce a dramatic easing of lockdown this week, with a meeting of the Cabinet to rubber-stamp it tomorrow.

The PM is expected to announce an expansion of social 'bubbles' where people are allowed to mix freely, as he moves England into a new phase of coronavirus recovery.

The changes will be unveiled tomorrow along with a reduction in the two-metre social distancing rule, which businesses insist is crucial to breathe new life back into the tanking economy.

But there are big questions over how the new system will work, amid claims that just two households might be allowed to form 'bubbles'. That could leave families forced to make agonising choices between sets of grandparents, friends and relatives.

'The virus hasn't gone away, there are already countries - China and Germany for example - that are right now dealing with spikes in cases as a result of significant outbreaks. And health officials in South Korea have said they think the country is now experiencing a second wave,' Ms Sturgeon told a media briefing this afternoon.

'I know that when numbers of cases and deaths here are continuing to fall it is very tempting for all of us to think it is all over and we should just now quickly get back to normal.

'We are trying to get back to normal and we want to do that as quickly as possible, but let me reiterate my strong view that acting recklessly now would be a serious mistake.

'We must continue to be cautious and all of us must continue to adhere strictly to the public health advice. That will help us continue progress and avoid a resurgence of the virus now.

'But it will also hopefully put us in a much stronger position ahead of the winter months to come.'

In other major developments today:

Around four in 10 young people who say coronavirus has affected their wellbeing believe the lockdown has made their mental health worse, according to new analysis from the Office for National Statistics;

The government could have effectively gone bust if the Bank of England had not stepped in to bail it out at the start of the crisis, governor Andrew Bailey has revealed;

Ms Sturgeon has suggested the Scottish government is considering stepping in to take a stake in businesses that might otherwise go under due to coronavirus;

Spain appealed for British tourists to visit, with a minister insisting the country was now a 'particularly' safe place and that holidays will not be 'radically' affected by temperature checks and health forms;

Three quarters of Britons want Boris Johnson and senior ministers to take a pay cut in solidarity with millions of workers hammered by the coronavirus lockdown;

Scotland's First Minister said it was 'tempting' to try to rush to get the nation 'back to normal' but suggested that the move should not be rushed amid new spikes in cases in some countries

Health Secretary Matt Hancock this evening said the Government was being 'guided by the science' in easing the lockdown restrictions

The government released the latest slides tonight showing the status of the battle against coronavirus in the UK

What changes is the PM expected to make tomorrow? Boris Johnson is widely expected to announce a raft of easements to the lockdown restrictions tomorrow. They would come into effect from July 4 - in less than a fortnight. They are believed to include: Two-metre rule relaxed

Expansion of support 'bubbles' to allow two households where both have more than one person in them to mingle indoors.

Pubs, bars and restaurants reopen

Barbers and hairdressers are able to reopen Advertisement

Downing Street has warned that Mr Johnson will not hesitate to put the 'handbrake' on again if infections start to surge - amid worrying signs that Germany is experiencing another flare-up.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock this evening said the Government was being 'guided by the science' in easing the lockdown restrictions.

Dr Jenny Harries said even as the rules were relaxed people still needed to follow social distancing, including regular handwashing and good respiratory hygiene.

'There is a critical point here that says just because life is feeling a bit more back to normal don't suddenly jump to where you were this time last year. We need to learn to go forward with restrictions in our lives,' she told the No 10 briefing.

She said that the consensus among members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies was that the R number remained below one.

'The advice that is given is already coming from a consensus of scientists. They give that advice and the politicians act on that advice. The consensus as of last week was that our R remains between 0.7 and 0.9,' she said.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland is allowing six people to meet indoors from tomorrow, after a slump in the number of cases suggested lockdown can be unwound faster there.

Current guidelines in England allow for groups of up to six to meet in the open air, while staying over two metres apart.

Only those living together, or who have chosen to expand their 'support bubble' to include another person who lives alone, can touch or be closer than two metres.

Mr Johnson has been meeting his closest ministers, advisers, and medical and science chiefs to thrash out the new arrangements today. They will then be signed off by Cabinet tomorrow before the premier unveils them in the House of Commons.

Six people are allowed to gather indoors in NI after cases dive Up to six people can gather indoors in Northern Ireland from tomorrow, under changes agreed at Stormont. A meeting of the executive approved the step after the virus was suppressed faster than expected. On Saturday, Northern Ireland's heath trust labs reported no new confirmed cases of coronavirus for the first time since lockdown. The daily update from the Department of Health revealed there were no positive results in the 995 tests analysed in their labs through Friday. There was one coronavirus-linked death announced on Saturday and none yesterday. First Minister Arlene Foster told the daily briefing: 'It is recommended that social distancing should still be maintained along with other mitigations such as ventilation and good hand hygiene. 'This was the one relaxation remaining outstanding from the initial stage of our recovery plan and I know many of you have been desperate in recent weeks to visit your family and friends inside their homes.' Earlier this month, ministers approved the creation of indoor social bubbles involving one person living on their own and another household, without the need for social distancing restrictions. While a move to allow six people to gather indoors would allow for multiple people from different households to meet inside, it is set to have some social distancing guidance attached. Advertisement

According to The Telegraph, two potential options are on the table.

One would involve two household being able to form a bubble, with no limit on the total numbers inside it. That would potentially mean only one set of grandparents.

Another possibility could be to allow households to merge, but impose a ceiling on the number of people. However, that could be regarded as unfair by larger families, who would be more severely constrained in expanding their group.

A senior government source said: 'There will be an expansion of social bubbles, but the details are still being finalised.'

Another government source told The Telegraph: 'The question with bubbles has always been how you help families reunite to the maximum possible extent without too much risk.

'The scientists' main concern has always been infections spreading from one household to another, which is why this is one of the more difficult decisions we have to take.'

Ministers hope the announcement tomorrow will mark another step towards normalising the country, with pubs and restaurants due to reopen from July 4.

But they are also at pains to stress that the crisis is not over by any means.

Security minister James Brokenshire said a sharp increase in the R virus reproduction rate in Germany showed the dangers.

'It is concerning to see the situation in Germany and it's why we are informed in our actions by experience from around the world, why the chief scientific officer, the chief medical officer, speak to their counterparts in different parts of the world to ensure that we are applying the best learning and the best experience in informing our next steps,' he said.

The Department of Health announced 15 more people had died from coronavirus, taking the total to 42,647.

It is the lowest daily rise in deaths since March 15, but there is often a lag over weekends.

The Government figures do not include all deaths involving Covid-19 across the UK, which are thought to have passed 53,500. Scotland recorded no new deaths.

Dr Zeshan Qureshi, lead author of a report on social distancing for Oxford University's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was scientific uncertainty around relaxing the two-metre rule.

His team has looked at every study published up to June 17 on Covid-19 and social distancing. 'This one to two-metre distancing, it's not based on data that we are getting from coronavirus,' he said.

'It is based on historic data, decades and decades old that has been applied to coronavirus in good faith.

UK announces 15 Covid deaths - the lowest level since mid-March The UK today announced just 15 more Covid-19 deaths in the lowest daily toll since 10 days before lockdown was introduced, as the outbreak that once terrorized the nation continues to fizzle out and the Prime Minister prepares to unveil a major loosening of social distancing rules tomorrow. Department of Health statistics show 42,647 Britons have now died after testing positive for the coronavirus in all settings, including hospitals and care homes  but the actual number of fatalities has already topped 50,000 when all suspected fatalities are taken into account. And official statistics show just 958 more cases of the disease were diagnosed, in the lowest 24-hour jump since Boris Johnson imposed the draconian restrictions to halt the outbreak on March 23 (967). The increase in deaths is the smallest one-day rise since March 13, when just one fatality was announced. Fifteen Covid-19 deaths were also registered across all settings in Britain two days later on March 15. Scotland has now recorded zero deaths on six occasions in June, including no victims for the last two days. While Northern Ireland has had no deaths on 11 separate days, with three in a row up to today. The East of England also recorded no victims to their count today. Separate analysis today showed more than 100 NHS trusts in England have now gone 48 hours without recording a single Covid-19 death  the equivalent of almost 80 per cent of all hospitals. Although the number of deaths is always lower on Sundays and Mondays because of weekend delays to records, experts are convinced the virus is fading in the UK. Advertisement

'It is based on very old, outdated models of droplet transmission, which assume that large droplets are the route in which infections are transmitted.'

He said more modern studies had shown those droplets are on a 'spectrum' and smaller droplets can project up to eight metres.

He said it was possible the virus could be transmitted much further than two metres between people.

'We don't know what a toxic dose of coronavirus is... we don't know it's safe to relax what we're doing already,' he said.

He added that any relaxation of current measures should be done with very 'close monitoring' of the consequences.

There is evidence that 'more social distancing is better than less social distancing', he added.

When asked if the two-metre social distancing rule is going to be reduced, Security Minister James Brokenshire told BBC Breakfast: 'There has been a great deal of work that's been taking place at pace over the last number of days, informed by the science, informed by experience from around the world as well, as to how we can appropriately look at easements and appropriately also reflect on the two-metre rule as well.'

He added the international experience and understanding of the virus had evolved in recent weeks and the decision would be informed by 'the best, most up to date science' and medical experience.

Speaking yesterday Mr Johnson insisted coronavirus is 'increasingly under control' as he prepares to unveil a new 'one metre plus' rule - with caveats such as the need for facemasks - and give Britons the green light for holidays and haircuts.

He stressed he is 'sticking like glue' to the roadmap that from July 4 will permit hairdressers in England to roll up the shutters.

The UK holiday season is also expected to start within a fortnight when Mr Johnson gives permission for hotels and vacation parks to reopen.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing another huge package of tax cuts and spending to revive UK plc after lockdown. VAT is set to be slashed as part of efforts to prop up struggling businesses and stave off mass unemployment.

Chief whip Mark Spencer (left) and No10 aide Dominic Cummings (right) were both in Downing Street today as the new social distancing rules are hammered out

Just 15 coronavirus deaths were announced in the UK today - the lowest figure recorded since the middle of March

Sun-seekers gathered outside the Ship Inn in Folkestone, Kent on Sunday as England prepares for lockdown rules to be eased

People might need to register for pubs People might need to register before going to the pub and order drinks using an app, Matt Hancock said Sunday. The Health Secretary confirmed the options are being considered as ways to make it 'safe' to reopen the hospitality industry. Mr Hancock insisted that the government is 'on plan' to get more sectors of the economy up and running on July 4. Boris Johnson is expected to announce this week that the two-metre social distancing rule is being halved. But he made clear that there is little chance of bars and restaurants getting back to business as usual any time soon. Asked on Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme whether drinkers will need to register before going to the pub, and order using an app, Mr Hancock said: 'That is the sort of thing that we are looking at for how do you make it safe to open things... I wouldn't rule it out.' The step - previously taken in countries such as New Zealand - would allow for easier tracing of customers if someone who went to the venue is found to have been infected. Advertisement

Tory former chancellor Ken Clarke told the BBC: 'I think coming out of the lockdown, sorting out the mess, including the recession after the coronavirus, is going to be even more difficult than going into it in the first place.'

Asked if a short-term cut in VAT was needed, Mr Clarke said: 'I think that's arguable.

'I would accept that. I think that might well be a sensible thing to do.

'But, again, as with furloughing, with a strict time limit.

'Because one of the things we are going to have to do is raise some taxation to pay for the much more interventionist things... the Government is going to have to do.'

Labour ex-chancellor Alistair Darling said he would support a VAT cut, stating: 'Yes, I did that 10 years ago and it was part of a package of measures.'

Speaking in No10 yesterday, Mr Johnson said: 'The disease is increasingly under control and I just want people to reflect on that important fact.

'It's going down, we are getting it down. 'So, of course, as we make that progress it will be possible to open up more and you will be hearing more about what we want to do with not just non-essential retail but with the hospitality sector from July 4 and we're sticking absolutely like glue to the road map to the plan that I set out on May 10.

'But it's very important we don't lose our vice-like grip on the disease; we've got to keep it on the floor where we've got it.

'On the progress on social distancing, watch this space and you won't have much more to wait now. You'll certainly be hearing more this week.'

Large groups gather in Liverpool city centre to drink takeaway alcohol on Sunday afternoon, sitting on the pavements

People were enjoying themselves on the promenade in Folkestone in Kent yesterday while the restrictions are still place

Thirsty Britons queue for takeaway drinks at the Ship Inn in Folksestone on another sunny Sunday afternoon

People were also out drinking in Liverpool City centre on Sunday as the summer weather continued to brighten spirits

Speaking in No10 on Sunday, Boris Johnson said: 'The disease is increasingly under control and I just want people to reflect on that important fact.'

Bournemouth beach was busy on Sunday ahead of lockdown easing as people took advantage of the warm weather

This next phase of lockdown loosening will also permit hairdressers to roll up the shutters on July 4  subject to the wearing of face masks - in a boost for thousands of barbers and millions of shaggy-haired Britons in need of a trim. Pictured: Gatsby and Miller salon in Amersham demonstrates how it will operates when clear to reopen

The reproduction rate - the average number of people each Covid-19 patient infects - is still between 0.7 and 0.9 across the UK, meaning the virus is firmly in retreat. Separate data released for the first time also claimed the UK's current growth rate - how the number of new daily cases is changing day-by-day - could be as low as minus 4 per cent. If the rate becomes greater than zero, the disease could once again spiral out of control

How could the 'one metre plus' rule work? An announcement of the two-metre social distancing rule is expected to be relaxed this week. UK Hospitality has suggested that halving the minimum gap could double the capacity of businesses to operate, while a loosening will also be welcomed by aviation and the tourism industry. But the government has made clear that other precautions will be needed, with inside spaces required to be well ventilated and thoroughly cleaned. Although few hard details are known, here is how the new arrangements could work in difference settings. PUBS Drinkers would be expected to give their contact details in a register, so that they can be traced if it emerges later that someone infected was in the venue. Customers could be advised to order using an app, stand as far apart as possible, face away from each other where they can, and prefer outside spaces. RESTAURANTS Tables could be closer together than two metres as long as people can face away from each other, and there may be advice for 'side-sitting' when people are dining together. Rules could be slacker for those who dine outside. Disposable cutlery might be needed in many restaurants, and there will be thorough cleaning in between guests. Booking is likely to be compulsory in formal settings. TRAINS AND PLANES Face coverings have already been made compulsory on public transport, with passengers who break the rules risking fines. Reducing the minimum distance will increase the potential for trains, Tube and buses to run at higher capacity - allowing more people to go back to work. Airlines will also benefit from lowering the spacing requirement, which they had warned could make it economically impossible to run flights. Face coverings will again be relied on to help reduce the risk of transmission, along with temperature checks. There is the possibility that some seating could be reconfigured to limit how many people face each other, and screens could also be deployed. SHOPS Perspex screens, face coverings and 'quarantine' for goods handled by customers are already being used to reduce the potential for spread. But cutting the social distancing will benefit smaller shops in particular, and help boost footfall. More people will be allowed in shops at once. It is also possible that browsing could be time limited to curb the length of exposure - which along with distance is a key component in spreading the virus. Advertisement

As the rate of infection continues to wane, scientists have rubber-stamped the reopening salons as safe, in a change of tack cheered by the nation's 30,000 hairdressers.

However, Downing Street is facing a Tory revolt over plans to change Sunday trading rules in order to boost the economic recovery.

Asked whether the proposals had been ditched, the PM's spokesman said: 'We have said we will keep measures such as extending Sunday trading hours under review as they can support shops with social distancing and allow shoppers to buy food and other items more conveniently.'

Asked if the suggested plans were now on the 'back burner', the No 10 spokesman added: 'There is a Covid Bill which will look at new ways of working as the country recovers from the disruption caused by coronavirus and which is intended to help businesses through the summer months, in particular.

'I would expect that Bill to be introduced this week.'

He continued: 'In terms of what is in the Bill, it is right that that will go to Parliament first but, as I say, at the heart of it will be legislation to enable businesses to adjust to new ways of working and to help them to capitalise on the summer months.

'It will look to support business to implement safer ways of working to manage the ongoing risks of coronavirus and in particular the need for social distancing.'

The UK's threat level was downgraded on Friday after scientists confirmed that the epidemic is shrinking by four per cent every day, and the reproduction R rate remained below one. Britain can also now test everyone showing symptoms.

As ministers' attention turns from wrestling down the virus to rescuing the economy, they are poised to revise the two-metre rule down to 'one-metre-plus'.

The halving permits will be contingent on other precautions such as meeting outside and with a face covering.

Mr Johnson's relaxation of the draconian restrictions will provide a lifeline to the beleaguered holiday industry, which will open for business also on July 4 - America's Independence Day.

But it is understood that while hotels and bed and breakfasts will be allowed to open then, tourist sites with shared facilities, such as campsites, will have to wait longer before being given the green light.

The encouraging signs have fed a growing clamour from the tourism industry for a clear date from which it can start accepting bookings again  and clear guidance about how it will have to operate.

Millions of families are desperately waiting to find out whether they will be able to enjoy a summer holiday after spending three months in lockdown, while holiday bosses say that the limbo has cost them billions of pounds in lost revenue.

Ministers are also negotiating 'air bridges' with up ten countries, including France and Spain, to allow Britons to go abroad without being subject to the Government's controversial 14-day quarantine when they return.

A scheme to test arrivals at airports for the virus is also being piloted, which could also help end blanket restrictions.

Meanwhile, new data showed the reopening of non-essential retailers, including clothes shops and department stores, in England led to a 51 per cent surge in customers heading to the high street.

Between Monday June 15 and Sunday June 21 the number of shoppers was up compared with the week before but remain at historic lows, according to Springboard.

Across all UK retail destinations, footfall was up 45 per cent despite Wales and Scotland keeping non-essential stores closed.

Footfall numbers were up just 8.5 per cent and 11.5 per cent in those countries respectively.

Splitting out the data, it showed high streets and shopping centres in England saw the biggest uptick in shoppers, both up 51 per cent during the week compared with a week earlier but retail parks saw a slower rise, up 32.7 per cent.

But compared with a year ago, footfall in England is still down 47.7 per cent.

In Wales it is down 68.8 per cent and Scotland down 66.5 per cent.

The data also found each day of the week saw an increased number of shoppers as more customers felt safe heading to stores, apart from Thursday when there was heavy rain.

Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said: 'The opening of non-essential retail in England on Monday June 15 had a substantial impact on footfall across all retail destinations.

'The overall result for the UK was subdued by Scotland and Wales where retail reopening is yet to happen.

'We anticipate an additional uplift to come when retail in these areas of the UK also reopens and the hospitality and entertainment industry is given the green light to resume trading in the coming weeks.'

The improvements on England's high streets were not matched by London's West End, however, with footfall remaining down 80.8 per cent.
Section 1 Content

ACE's second report on recovering from the 2015 racial crisis at the University of MissouriColumbia explores how the institution has been successful in increasing its capacity for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the last five years, and how the campus community has responded. Leaders at all campuses can learn from the report's frameworks to address DEI capacity and put its lessons into action as students, faculty, administrators, and staff reckon with issues of racial justice and institutional histories with race and racism.

Leading After a Racial Crisis: Weaving a Campus Tapestry of Diversity and Inclusion," details what researchers found when they returned to the University of Missouri to see the progress since the first ACE report, published in 2018. This latest report was spearheaded by ACE's Vice President for Research Lorelle Espinosa and co-authored by Adrianna Kezar of the University of Southern California, and Sharon Fries-Britt of the University of Maryland, College Park.

The report documents the activities that have helped Missouri make progress, including its Inclusive Excellence Framework, leadership training, and resource investment in DEI work at all four University of Missouri campuses, in addition to engagement with the local community. These improvements have upgraded the university's assessed capacity to effectively respond to diversity, equity, and inclusion issues such as racial unrest from low" in 2015 to moderate" as of 2019.

As is the case for universities across the country, challenges remain. The university community members at once praise the direction, are fatigued by it, and continue to expect greater progress. This fragmentation of perspectives, tensions, and emotions is not unique, as many others are also working to recover from racial crises.

With this in mind, the authors present what they term the Weaver Leader" frameworkidentified as leaders who are able to engage with different parties, connect them, and help to bring together ideas, beliefs, activities, and feelings. These individuals are focused on communicating, relationship building, and setting expectations. The tapestry" that campus weavers create can add texture from all segments of the campus community to weave an authentic and truthful story that represents both positive and negative experiences, while finding the strength and beauty in the unique pattern that emerges."

The authors conclude that now is the time for institutions to work on addressing racial climate, before a crisis occurs.

Read the full paper here.




Teams of Russian and Lithuanian medics have arrived in Armenia to help their Armenian colleagues increasingly struggling to cope with the coronavirus crisis.

The Armenian Ministry of Health released on Monday photographs of the first group of Russian doctors who arrived in Yerevan on Sunday.

It said that they are among about 50 healthcare workers in Russia who have expressed readiness to treat COVID-19 patients kept in Armenian hospitals. The arrival of the next group is expected in early July, the ministry added in a statement.

About a dozen other medics arrived in Armenia from Lithuania on Friday night. The Lithuanian Embassy in Yerevan said their two-week mission is financed by the European Union and Swedens government. The Lithuanian medics were deployed to two Yerevan-based hospitals that were reconfigured in April to treat only people infected with the coronavirus.

The Russian and Lithuanian teams also brought with them medical equipment and supplies donated to the Armenian health authorities.

Seven other, French doctors travelled to Armenia on June 14 on a similar 10-day mission supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development. They are expected to be replaced by another French medical team later this week.

Armenia is one of the worst hit countries in the region, having registered 20,588 coronavirus cases as of Monday morning. The authorities in the country of about 3 million have reported the deaths of 477 people infected with COVID-19. They say that 117 of those deaths were primarily caused by other, pre-existing diseases.

The COVID-19 pandemic is putting a growing strain on Armenias underfunded healthcare system. Health Minister Arsen Torosian warned last week that Armenian hospitals are struggling to keep up with the continuing spread of the disease.

Torosian argued that the number of new coronavirus infections is growing faster than that of new hospital beds made available for COVID-19 patients. In particular, he said, although the total number of intensive-care beds has risen by over 30 percent in the last two weeks virtually all of them are occupied now.
Grant slung his arms across the exposed breasts of Cindy's corpse on the road

Cindy's clothing had been pushed up around her neck and down to her ankles

Grant had given a lift to Cindy and her cousin Mona, 16, in December 1987

A 15-year-old indigenous girl was molested as she lay dying after a car crash in a historic child sex abuse case that saw her assaulter walk free.

Alexander Ian Grant, then 40, had given a lift to Cindy Smith, 15, and her cousin Mona, 16, in Bourke in regional New South Wales in December 1987.

After his ute crashed, Grant sexually assaulted Cindy while Mona was left partially scalped and laying in dirt metres away.

Cindy's body was laid out on a tarpaulin and her clothing had been pushed up around her neck and down to her ankles, The Australian reported.

Grant slung his arms across the exposed breasts of Cindy's corpse.

Two witnesses who first came across scene found Cindy's near-naked body lying next to Grant with her legs together.

But the first police officer to arrive afterwards found the girl's legs had been moved - presumably by Grant - to expose her genitals.

Alexander Ian Grant, then 40, had given a lift to Cindy Smith, 15, and her cousin Mona, 16, in Bourke in regional New South Wales in December 1987. After his ute crashed, he sexually assaulted Cindy

In March this year, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller (pictured) sent a letter to Attorney-General Mark Speakman stating that two independent inquiries found the police handling to be 'adequate'

Cindy's mother and Bourke indigenous elder Dawn Smith said the Director of Public Prosecutions' decision to drop a sexual offence charge against Grant was 'disappointing'.

Three years after the incident, a charge against Grant of 'offer indignity to a dead human body' was dropped just days out from his District Court trial.

Cindy's grieving family weren't aware of the controversial decision, which was one of the reasons he avoided time behind bars.

Last year the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions apologised for failing to inform the family of the withdrawal of charges, but maintained it made the correct legal decision.

'I have not been able to identify any error in the ultimate decision that was made or this office's consideration of the relevant legal issues,' NSW Public Prosecutions, Huw Baker SC, told the family in a letter from last November.

The interfere with corpse charged was dropped because a coroner couldn't determine the exact time Cindy died, and may have been alive when she was assaulted.

Ms Smith's lawyers have called on the ODPP to reassess its response.

'What was important was the evidence, accepted by the magistrate, that Cindy was dead when she was found by two independent witnesses, and that an alleged offence (moving her legs to expose her genitals) took place after that,' Principal solicitor George Newhouse from the National Justice Project said.

The family is now demanding an inquest into Cindy's death, with her mother arguing the case would have been treated differently if she was white.

'If they had been white girls, it would have been a big issue. It would have been in the paper, there would have been big talk,' Ms Smith said.

Grant's 1990 acquittal attracted no media attention. Ms Smith took off her shoe and threw it at the all-white jury following the verdict.

A high powered legal team got Grant off the charges of culpable driving causing death, arguing that Mona was behind the wheel when the car crashed.

The family is now demanding an inquest into Cindy's death, with her mother arguing the case would have been treated differently if she was white. Pictured: Bourke Police Station

But Grant had previously told police he was the one driving prior to the crash, before changing the version of events.

Investigators failed to test the ute's steering wheel for Mona's fingerprints.

Grant also never faced charges of perverting the course of justice despite having the steering wheel removed from the wreckage a day after the crash.

In March this year, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller sent a letter to Attorney-General Mark Speakman stating that two independent inquiries found the police handling to be 'adequate'.

Mr Fuller said that because Grant is now dead, an inquest into the girls' deaths 'will adduce new or additional information'.

Mona's sister Fiona Smith said the police commissioner's letters angered her.

'I didn't like what I read in the letters. I don't agree with it and neither does [Mona's mother]. 'It's like they're ducking and weaving and no one wants to take responsibility,' she said.
Actor and dancer Lauren Gottlieb on Monday shared screengrabs of old WhatsApp conversations she had with actor Sushant Singh Rajput, in which he encouraged her to pursue her dreams in Bollywood, and learn from his example.

If an average looking boy with average talent and strong prejudice can make it, trust me anything is possible, he told her in 2016, just before the release of MS Dhoni: The Untold Story. Sushant also said that he isnt being modest, but believes that the reason why hes considered a good actor is that most others around him are mediocre.

Sharing the screengrabs on Instagram, Lauren wrote in her caption, Today, I finally brought myself to look at my WhatsApp messages with Sushant over the years. I came across one conversation that broke my heart all over again, as it was filled with so much love, kindness, and true support for one anothers dreams!

She continued, I felt a deep connection with Sushant as we were both outsiders and I looked up to him tremendously! I wanted to share this chat we had to remind everyone to walk, talk, and treat EVERYONE with this great amount of LOVE and SUPPORT as HE shared!!! Im seeing so much hate going around. I do not want to tell anyone how to grieve, my process this week looked pretty ugly, BUT I think one of the BEST ways to honor his legacy is to BE THE BRIGHT, BEAUTIFUL, LOVING LIGHT that he exuded each and every day. The world is a better place because of Sushants humble heart. Lets keep sharing his magic and be kind to one another.

Also read: Saif Ali Khan admits to being privileged, says its common in India for good actors to not get opportunities

Sushant died by suicide last week, at the age of 34. He was suffering from depression. On Monday, Sushants family held a prayer meet for him in Patna. In pictures and videos doing the rounds online, a framed photograph of the late actor is seen adorned with flowers.

If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist. Helplines: Aasra: 022 2754 6669; Sneha India Foundation: +914424640050 and Sanjivini: 011-24311918

Follow @htshowbiz for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
FORT WORTH, Texas, June 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) (the Company) today announced proposed underwritten public offerings of $750,000,000 of shares of its common stock (the Common Stock and, such offering, the Common Stock Offering) and $750,000,000 aggregate principal amount of its convertible senior notes due 2025 (the Convertible Notes and such offering, the Convertible Notes Offering).



The Company intends to grant the underwriters of the offerings a 30-day option to purchase, in whole or in part, up to $112,500,000 of additional shares of Common Stock in the Common Stock Offering and a 30-day option to purchase, in whole or in part, up to $112,500,000 aggregate principal amount of additional Convertible Notes in the Convertible Notes Offering, in each case solely to cover over-allotments, if any. The Company expects to use the net proceeds from the Common Stock Offering and the Convertible Notes Offering for general corporate purposes and to enhance the Companys liquidity position. The closing of neither the Common Stock Offering nor the Convertible Notes Offering is conditioned upon the closing of the other offering.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Citigroup, BofA Securities and J.P. Morgan are acting as the joint active book-runners and as representatives of the underwriters for the Common Stock Offering and the Convertible Notes Offering. The Company has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus) with the SEC as well as preliminary prospectus supplements with respect to each of the offerings to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the applicable preliminary prospectus supplement and the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents the Company has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the Company and these offerings. You may get these documents free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the Company, any underwriter or any dealer participating in the applicable offering will arrange to send you the applicable preliminary prospectus supplement (or, when available, the applicable final prospectus supplement) and the accompanying prospectus upon request to: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, or by telephone at (866) 471-2526 or by email at prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; Citigroup, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by telephone at (800) 831-9146; BofA Securities, 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 J.P. Morgan, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Ave., Edgewood, NY 11717, Attn: Prospectus Department, or by telephone at: (866) 803-9204, or by email at: prospectus-eq_fi@jpmchase.com.

Story continues

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the shares of Common Stock or the Convertible Notes or any other securities and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration and qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain of the statements contained or referred to herein, including those regarding the proposed offerings, should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as may, will, expect, intend, anticipate, believe, estimate, plan, project, could, should, would, continue, seek, target, guidance, outlook, if current trends continue, optimistic, forecast and other similar words. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the Companys plans, objectives, expectations, intentions, estimates and strategies for the future, and other statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the Companys current objectives, beliefs and expectations, and they are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and financial position and timing of certain events to differ materially from the information in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those set forth herein as well as in American Airlines Group Inc.s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2020 (especially in Part I, Item 2. Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and Part II, Item 1A. Risk Factors), and other risks and uncertainties listed from time to time in the Companys other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak to economic conditions and the travel industry in general and the financial position and operating results of the Company in particular have been material, are changing rapidly, and cannot be predicted. Additionally, there may be other factors of which the Company is not currently aware that may affect matters discussed in the forward-looking statements and may also cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. The Company does not assume any obligation to publicly update or supplement any forward-looking statement to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting these forward-looking statements other than as required by law. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof or as of the dates indicated in the statement.

Investor Relations

investor.relations@aa.com
Mukesh Ambani has becomes the 9th richest person in the world. With this, the shares of Reliance Ltd. have also seen an increase of 18% since the start of the year and are still rising.

Mukesh Ambani has become the 9th richest person in the world, surpassing American Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. and French Francoise Bettencourt Meyers (the worlds richest woman). His company Reliance Ltd. has reached a total valuation of 11.44 lakh crore ($150 billion), propelling his own net worth to $64 billion, which was just around $50 billion in March this year. With a rise in his position from 11th to the 9th, Mukesh Ambani has become the only Asian man to join in the exclusive club of top 10 wealthiest people.

Around 1.7 lac crore ($22 billion) has been invested in Reliance in less than two months. With a surge in investments, Mukesh Ambani is most likely to be able to pay off Reliances debts worth $41 billion by the next fiscal year, i.e. 30 March 2021, way earlier. Also in India, there is a high scope of Jio capturing 48 percent of Indias mobile subscriber market share by the year 2025, predicts Bernstein.

The shares of Reliance Ltd. have seen an increase of 18% since the start of the year and are still rising. Other companies such as Facebook, Sony, Aramco, and the Saudi Arabian sovereign fund have invested in the company as well. The amount invested in Jio from the start of the year to now is more than the amount invested in all the other global telecom companies combined.

Also read: Reliance raises over Rs 168,818 crore in 58 days, becomes debt-free

Also read: India Ideas Summit 2020 to be held virtually on July 21-22

While the economy of India has seen a down turn due to coronavirus pandemic, Reliance continues to grow primarily due to its shift towards the digital world with Jio predicted to become the companys biggest revenue earner by 2021. As other companies (and even Reliances units) that are based on physical products, continue to suffer the economic consequences of coronavirus. Reliances Jio has been on the advance towards taking over the Indian telecom market.

Also read: Disinformation not a substitute for leadership, Manomohan Singh slams govt on China

For all the latest Business News, download NewsX App
The story, though, thrilled me. There were one-eyed monsters and beautiful witches who cast spells on handsome adventurers, tense escapes from temptresses with the power to make someone dive into the ocean to certain death. And behind the hero, helping and advising him, was a woman, a goddess with shining eyes, defined by something much more than her beauty. She was just, powerful, brilliant  a superhero.
In this article GOOGL

Confluent CFO Steffan Tomlinson Steffan Tomlinson

Two months after raising venture financing at a $4.5 billion valuation, software vendor Confluent is taking its next step toward the public markets. The company said Monday that it hired Steffan Tomlinson from Google's cloud division as its chief financial officer. Tomlinson has spent more than 25 years working in finance at tech companies, including taking Palo Alto Networks public in 2012, and guiding Aruba Networks through its 2007 IPO. He was hired by Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat to run finance at Google Cloud in April 2019. Confluent, founded six years ago, is one of the many subscription software businesses that have powered through the Covid-19 crisis, proving its value as most of its customers' employees are working remotely. Companies including RBC, HomeAway and Bosch use Confluent's so-called event streaming software to pull together siloed data from various business units into a single pipeline so employees can make quick decisions and provide concise information to customers. Tomlinson said he met Confluent CEO Jay Kreps last year. They reconnected in recent months, as Kreps was looking for a CFO to help take the business to the next stage. Tomlinson said it was the perfect time for him to make the move. "What I look for in a company is the journey they're on," Tomlinson said in an interview. "Clearly, Confluent is a late-stage, privately held company. We look at an IPO as one step along the journey of creating value and having a durable growth model."

With publicly traded cloud software companies like Zoom, Twilio and Okta soaring in value and many venture-backed software start-ups seeing continued growth, a number of companies are looking to potentially go public this year, despite the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Snowflake and Asana have both confidentially filed paperwork for the market debuts. Confluent is more likely to hit the public market in 2021, in part to give Tomlinson enough time to grasp the business and prepare the story for investors, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the plans are private. Kreps said that no timeline for an IPO has been set. The company, based a few miles from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, built its technology using the Apache Kafka open-source platform, which Kreps helped develop in his previous role at LinkedIn. Confluent hasn't disclosed financial figures, but said annual recurring revenue almost doubled in 2019, and its employee base topped 1,000, across 20 offices worldwide. Confluent lets customers run the technology in their own data centers or in the cloud through partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The company said cloud revenue surged more than 450% last year, and Kreps said there's no sign of it slowing. "It's the fastest-growing part of the business by a lot," Kreps said. When the coronavirus hit, "we were unsure whether migration to cloud would speed up or slow down for us," he said. The open-source business model, which allows companies to build and commercialize proprietary technology on top of free software, has spawned a number of successful public companies in recent years, including Elastic and MuleSoft, which Salesforce purchased for $6.5 billion in 2018. In addition to the Tomlinson announcement, Confluent said MuleSoft ex-CEO Greg Schott, who left Salesforce this year, is joining the board. Meanwhile, Cheryl Dalrymple, who had been Confluent's CFO, is staying on as chief people officer and head of corporate development.

A direct listing candidate?

Confluent is clearly marching toward the public market, but how it gets there has yet to be determined. Venture firm Benchmark is one of the company's biggest backers. Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, has become a vocal critic of the traditional IPO, arguing that it hands over too much underpriced stock to bankers and new investors. Gurley has been encouraging companies to follow the lead of Spotify and Slack and pursue direct listings, giving existing investors the chance to sell stock to the public at a market clearing price.

Eric Vishria, the Benchmark partner who sits on Confluent's board, said the direct listing is definitely an approach that Confluent, and many others pursuing the public market, should consider. "They all should be direct listing candidates," Vishria told CNBC. The company raised $250 million in April, in a round led by Coatue Management, alleviating the pressing need for cash as part of an IPO. Kreps said that he and Tomlinson haven't even discussed yet whether an IPO or direct listing will be the preferred route. "Intellectually, it makes a ton of sense," Kreps said, regarding a direct listing. "The track record is awfully short." WATCH: The rise of open-source software
Sydney, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on Turkey outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Turkey-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses

4G LTE networks are already well established across Turkey and provide a population network coverage of over 93%, with many base stations upgraded to 4.5G.

Deployment of fibre-based broadband networks are also well underway in Turkey and while DSL services are still the leading fixed broadband access method - it will eventually lose its dominance due to the rapid growth in fibre subscriptions.

Turkeys fixed and mobile infrastructure will help to underpin its Smart City initiatives, which have become a key area of focus for the future. Turkey recently released its National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan which will run for 3 years, between 2020-2023

BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth.

Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report.

Key developments:

Turkey has been identified as one of the key markets for mobile subscriber growth through to 2025 in the MENA region.

There are opportunities for substantial growth of both mobile and fixed broadband subscribers in Turkey.

The Ministry of Treasury and Finance approved the acquisition of a 55% share of Turk Telekom by a group of creditor banks in August 2018. In September 2019 the banks further announced they had appointed Morgan and Banks to sell their majority share.

Turkey has excellent international telecoms infrastructure with links to many cable networks due to its geographic location between Europe and Asia.

This report includes assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector.

Companies mentioned in this report include:

Turk Telekom, Turkcell, Vodafone Turkey, Turksat, Superonline, Millenicom.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Turkey-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses
[June 22, 2020] Paytronix Helps Restaurants Offer a True Touchless Experience with Contactless Dining

NEWTON, Mass., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paytronix Systems, Inc., the most advanced digital guest experience platform , today announced the availability of Paytronix Contactless Dining, a mobile offering that enables restaurants to offer guests a true restaurant experience, from menu selection through ordering and payments, without requiring a physical interaction. Paytronix Contactless Dining is the only solution on the market that enables guests to order multiple courses electronically, open tabs for drinks, and then finalize the experience with a single payment.

Designed from the ground up for the unique challenges facing the restaurant industry in a post-pandemic world, Contactless Dining is built on a mobile web platform and connects directly into the restaurants POS system. Customers use their mobile device to view menus, order courses, and have food delivered directly to their table. In just a few months the restaurant industry has gone through remarkable change, and the challenges today are vastly different than they were just a few months ago, said Paytronix CEO Andrew Robbins. Paytronix Contactless Dining offers table-service restaurants a dine-in solution that helps them offer a touchless guest-friendly restaurant experience. The payment experience is on the guests terms when they are ready to leave, and we keep payment transaction costs low with a single transaction covering both the tab and the tip. A better guest experience with lower transaction fees Contactless Dining also enables guests to open tabs, place orders in a similar flowto the pre-COVID dining experience; guests can order drinks, followed by apps, entrees, and then desserts, make special requests, and finalize the visit with a single payment. Other solutions require each order to close out with a payment, thereby cluttering the ordering process for guests and increasing transaction fees for restaurants.



Paytronix focuses on creating great guest experiences, said Tim Ridgely, head of development for Contactless Dining. When it comes to on-premises dining, guests want the freedom to peruse a menu, order what they want when they want it, open tabs, and ultimately, pay for that experience at the end. Contactless Dining offers an intuitive interface that provides restaurants with multiple options for identifying table locations, including manual customer entry and scannable QR codes. It also integrates with Apple Pay so guests have complete control over their payment options.

With the guests mobile device and Contactless Dining they can: View Menus -- Guests experience the latest menu options, mouth-watering images, accurate pricing, and availability of items, all in a mobile-optimized digital environment.

Place Orders -- As guests progress through their dining experience, they can add items to their check at any time, just like flagging down a server to ask for another helping of fries. As items are selected, they are transferred to the POS and then the KDS for order preparation.

Pay for orders -- Guests have a variety of payment options including Apple Pay, eliminating the need for physical credit card handling. Plus, the guest can leave as soon as they close their check without waiting for servers to complete the engagement. Contactless Dining is available today. For more information visit http://www.paytronix.com/contactless or call (617) 649-3300, ext. 5. About Paytronix Systems, Inc.

Based in Newton, Massachusetts, Paytronix is a provider of SaaS customer experience management (CXM) solutions for restaurants and convenience stores . Through its innovative software design and integrations with more than 30 widely used point-of-sale systems, Paytronix empowers more than 400 brands across 30,000 locations, giving them the flexibility to deliver unique, revenue-enhancing guest experiences. Through one-to-one engagement with more than 285 million guests via Order & Delivery, Loyalty, CRM, and Stored Value, Paytronix generates Big Data consumer insights that motivate increased visits and spend. For more information, visit www.paytronix.com . Media Contact:

Chuck Tanowitz

Paytronix Systems, Inc.

[email protected]

617-871-2319

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Some 1,572 citizens have been fined for violating the strict quarantine regime that entered force on June 21, main traffic police department under the Ministry of Interior reported on June 22.

All 1,572 were fined according to Article 211.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences. Of them 1,440 were drivers who failed to follow the quarantine regime requirements and 132 were citizens not using facial masks in the public transport.

The fines are due to the special quarantine regime that will be in force from June 21 to 06:00 on July 5 in the territories of Baku, Ganja, Sumgayit, Lankaran, Yevlakh, Masalli, Jalilabad and Absheron region. Residents are required to obtain SMS permits before leaving their place of residence during the two-week strict lockdown.

In the meantime, 5,000 citizens who had sought to leave the territories of Baku, Sumgayit and Absheron region have been stopped, head of public relations department of the main state police department Kamran Aliyev said at the briefing of Operational Headquarters on June 21.

He noted that out of these 5,000 cars, 4,000 were returned in the direction of Baku, and 1,000 in the direction of the regions.

Furthermore, he urged citizens to obtain a pass to go to other cities of the country by calling the Ministry of Internal Affairs hotline.

Earlier it was reported that 635 drivers were fined during June 14-16 lockdown, as well as 2,524 drivers were fined during June 6-7 lockdown.

Azerbaijan first introduced quarantine regime on March 24, and on June 18 decision was taken to extend special quarantine regime until August 1.

Moreover, on June 18, Cabinet of Ministers announced decision to impose a two-week strict quarantine regime.

Under the new lockdown rule, citizens are allowed to leave their place of residence only after obtaining SMS permissions.

Operation of shopping centers, restaurants, cafes, beauty salons, as well as museums, exhibition halls, sport and beaches was also suspended until July 5.
Justin Haley (11) leads the pack in front of empty stands at the start of a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega Ala., Saturday, June 20, 2020. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

After lightning, thunderstorms and showers threatened the track and stands, the Geico 500 NASCAR race has been rescheduled.

The race, which was originally scheduled for 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, June 21, has been moved to the same time on Monday, June 22. NASCAR made the announcement on Twitter Sunday evening.

NEWS: Today's race has been postponed due to inclement weather at @TalladegaSuperS.



The #GEICO500 will move to Monday, June 22 at 3 PM ET/12 PM PT on FOX. pic.twitter.com/0EImRDvGNz  NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 21, 2020

Despite the weather concerns, NASCAR attempted to go through with the race at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, using Air Titans in an attempt to dry the track before ultimately making the decision to hold the race Monday.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

The Talladega Superspeedway posted on Twitter that fans will still be able to enter on Monday with their original ticket. Fans who are not able to attend the new date can visit this website for more information regarding weather protection.

This is not the first time the race had been postponed, either. While it was originally scheduled to take place in April, it ended up being one of eight races this spring to be either postponed or cancelled due to COVID-19, USA Today reported.

The Geico 500 is set to be the first NASCAR race open to fans since the start of the pandemic, allowing up to 5,000 guests. Previously, 1,000 South Florida service members were authorized to attend the Dixie Vodka 400 race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Story continues

Drew Dollar (15) passes Ryan Repko (20) to win the NASCAR ARCA auto race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega Ala., Saturday June 20, 2020 (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

According to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan DePodwin, the thunderstorm moved into the area about one hour before the race was scheduled to start. The biggest threat the storm brought was lightning, which he said was the initial cause of delay.

"Being in an open area such as a grandstand during a thunderstorm is not a safe place," he said.

Even after the thunderstorm moved away from the track, showers remained in the area keeping the track wet, which is what led to the decision to move the date of the race.

On Monday, however, fans and drivers may not have much better luck. DePodwin said the threat of thunderstorms will remain on Monday and a second delay or reschedule is possible.

"Fans attending should keep an eye to the sky and radar, as well as drink plenty of fluids with AccuWeather RealFeel Temperatures climbing into the 90s," DePodwin said.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
Eight students and teachers protesting outside the Delhi Universitys Arts Faculty against the varsity administrations decision to conduct online open book exams were detained on Monday, police said.

They were taken to Maurice Nagar police station and released after some time, they said.

A group of around 10 protesters had gathered outside the Arts Faculty. They carried placards reading Say No to Online Exams and DU Against OBE.

A senior police officer said eight protesters were detained and later released. They were taken to the Maurice Nagar police station in North district.

Prasenjeet Kumar, president of Left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA), said the students and teachers were detained but were released after being made to sign an undertaking that they wont violate the prohibitory orders imposed in the city under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

Delhi University is conducting online open book exams in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

Students and teachers have been opposing the move citing lack of internet connectivity at many places, among other issues.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 00:01:08|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic casts his ballot at a polling station in Belgrade, Serbia on June 21, 2020. Serbians started casting ballots on Sunday in the first national elections in the European continent since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ruling Progressives and Socialists as the only party targeting double-digit results. (Photo by Predrag Milosavljevic/Xinhua)

Members of election committees across 8,253 polling stations are obliged to wear masks and gloves in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19, while voters are free to choose whether to use prevention or not.

BELGRADE, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Serbians started casting ballots on Sunday in the first national elections in the European continent since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ruling Progressives and Socialists as the only party targeting double-digit results.

Regular parliamentary elections in Serbia, along with provincial elections in Vojvodina Province and local elections opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m.

Members of election committees across 8,253 polling stations are obliged to wear masks and gloves in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19, while voters are free to choose whether to use prevention or not.

Although the country has been daily confirming almost 100 new COVID-19 patients, health authorities assured Saturday that there is no reason to worry that the election process could complicate the epidemiological situation, advising voters to keep one-meter distance and spend less than 15 minutes inside the polling station.

Political parties and other entities submitted 21 lists which will compete to pass the 3 percent threshold, fill 250 MP seats and propose a new prime minister and government.

A man casts his ballot at a polling station in Belgrade, Serbia on June 21, 2020. Serbians started casting ballots on Sunday in the first national elections in the European continent since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ruling Progressives and Socialists as the only party targeting double-digit results. (Photo by Predrag Milosavljevic/Xinhua)

Most opinion polls agree that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) led by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic with nearly 60 percent support, and their ruling coalition partner Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) of Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic with over 12 percent support are looking to surpass their results from the 2016 elections.

The SNS-SPS coalition has been in power in Serbia since 2012, pursuing membership in the European Union (EU).

In total, 6,584,376 people are eligible to vote at the 12th parliamentary elections since the establishment of the multi-party system in Serbia, which were previously scheduled for April 26 but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Besides 3,341 domestic observers, the election process is monitored by 111 international observers, including the eight-strong mission of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and six-strong mission of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organization (ENEMO).

Serbia's Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) is obliged to deliver final results within 96 hours once voting ends, while preliminary results will be published hours after polling stations close. 
Mwende Ngao is a creative entrepreneur who has carved a niche as a digital content creator, writer, blogger filmmaker and podcaster. She is also the lead editor at Zeda Magazine, an online lifestyle magazine for the youthful African woman.

What drove you to blogging?

It was actually a natural progression from using Facebook notes about a decade ago. I used to write long notes and with time I discovered blogging.

I had a random blog on blogspot for a while before I switched to my own domain, mwendengao.com, about six years ago.

So, it was mostly personal essays and creative writing before I started on what I mostly do now; lifestyle and cultural content.

Tell us about your new podcast, Mwende Says.

I have wanted to start a podcast for a few years now, but never quite had the time.

The Covid-19 period gave me time to work on things Id left on the back burner and that included my podcast.

I wanted to find a home to expand my thoughts outside of the blog and social media. It tackles all things life; from mental health to menstrual wellness and travel.

Its a weekly podcast, so its been quite a challenge to keep at it, but Im proud to be two months in and consistent.

How would you describe your style?

Afro-Parisian Chic. I like a style that looks effortless; one that doesnt seem as if youre trying too hard.

I focus on statement pieces such as bold jackets and blazers and a wardrobe with versatile pieces including dresses, blouses and pants that can be mixed and matched to produce a variety of looks.

I add a touch of African style elements into my looks through accessories, prints or hair, and keep my make-up natural, but with my signature red lip.

What five curvy girl essentials would you recommend?

Great underwear, flattering dresses, a good pair of jeans, jackets and coats and heels.

Whats your take on the Buy Kenya Build Kenya initiative in regards to fashion?

Its a good initiative. Theres a huge opportunity here to build the fashion industry.

There are a growing number of Kenyan brands that have quality clothes I shop from including IKOJN and Wangari Mathenge, and Im excited to see the possibilities.

I look forward to the cost of production going down so that more Kenyans can afford Kenyan brands.

Whats your latest beauty discovery?

My beauty regiment, which is actually pretty simple. I just have cleanser, toner, moisturiser, sunscreen, masks and serums.

Make-up is pretty natural with just a little concealer, mascara and a bold red or nude lip.

Your biggest wardrobe malfunction would be?

Thankfully nothing major. I was at a black tie event once and one of my heels just came off.

I had to hobble to the reception of the hotel and they were kind enough to look for superglue and help reattach the heel. That managed to get me through the rest of the evening.

Whats your most surreal fashion experience so far?

I had a great time shopping my look and getting ready for the Moet party in 2019. The reception was great and I definitely nailed it!

Your most comfortable indoor looks are?

I love deras and satin pajama sets. Im also wearing tracksuits, joggers and cute tees.

Who do you consider the greatest fashion icon?

Rihanna is the standard for millennial fashion icon. Her style is daring and memorable.

One should shop for whats trendy or what works best for them?

Start with what works for you and what you like before you look at whats on trend. Trends come and go, but if you focus on creating your perfect personal style, youll be nailing it every time.

Courtesy: Spice
It is sad that this is an election year. Our media are typically slanted towards the political left. We see what is happening in Seattle. The mayors office has abandoned her number one job as mayor, protect the citizens of Seattle. The governor seems to be oblivious of what is going on in his largest city. Over the weekend a 19-year-old man was shot and killed, and police had trouble getting to the scene.

Frankly, I am amazed that the police even care with how their city has treated them. Not all police are bad, but they do need oversight that is not political gamesmanship. Sadly this is the case in too many of our large cities. Even our little city of Bethlehem has had its issues. Thankfully nothing on the scale of the stupidity we see in Seattle.

But where is the press? CNN and MSNBC seem to be encouraging this lawless action. Even the New York Times seems to be encouraging the elimination of police. How did we get here? It is clear to me that the ban guns thing is now a thing of the past since our fair media apparently support vigilante protection.

Gregory Labelle

Bethlehem
By PTI

AHMEDABAD: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Gujarat on Monday issued a show-cause notice to its lone MLA Kandhal Jadeja for defying the party whip and cross-voting in the recently-concluded Rajya Sabha elections.

Though Jadeja was directed to cast his vote for a Congress candidate in the June 19 elections to four seats, he apparently voted for a BJP nominee.

The NCP directed Jadeja, who represents Kutiyana seat in Porbandar district, to explain his stand within the next seven days.

"Though you were asked to vote for a Congress candidate and a whip was also issued for the same by the party, you indulged in indiscipline and defied the whip. You are supposed to submit your explanation in seven days. Action will be taken as per the explanation furnished by you," stated the notice signed by Gujarat NCP unit president Jayant Patel.

Jadeja, whose party shares power with the Congress in Maharashtra and a constituent of the UPA bloc, had been openly saying that he would vote for the BJP in the elections to the Upper House of Parliament.

He had also voted for a BJP candidate against the party whip in the 2017 Rajya Sabha elections when Ahmed Patel of the Congress was in the fray.

In the June 19 elections, all three candidates of the BJP- Abhay Bhardwaj, Ramilaben Bara and Narhari Amin- got elected to Rajya Sabha.

The Congress could ensure victory of only one of its two candidates, Shaktisinh Gohil, while Bharatsinh Solanki lost as he failed to garner enough votes.

The situation would have been different for the Congress if eight of its MLAs had not resigned after the announcement of the Rajya Sabha polls.

Gohil of Congress got 36 votes and Solanki got 30 votes plus some 1.99-second preference votes which added up to 31.9.

While 170 out of the total 172 MLAs exercised their franchise, two Bharatiya Tribal Party MLAs did not turn up to vote.

In the 182-member House, whose effective strength stood at 172 due to resignation of eight MLAs of the Congress and two vacancies caused by court cases, the ruling BJP has 103 members and the Congress 65.
A Florida man has been arrested after deputies say he shot and killed his wife and grown son, and fired on his other son, before confessing to the double murder.

A sister of the suspect, identified as 59-year-old Smith Rivera, a married father-of three, told local media outlets that her brother has been depressed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Orange County Sheriff's deputies responded to a home in the 11600 block of Darlington Drive after receiving a call about a shooting at 1.15am on Sunday.

Smith Rivera, 59 (left), has been charged with allegedly shooting and killing his wife, Jodi, and their 21-year-old son, Matthew (right)

Deputies arrived at the family's home in Orlando on Sunday to find the mother and son dead

At the residence they discovered the bodies of Rivera's wife, 57-year-old Jodi Rivera, and the couple's 21-year-old son, Matthew Rivera. Both had been shot to death.

According to an arrest affidavit cited by ClickOrlando, while deputies were gathering evidence at the scene, a white Kia Soul pulled up to the house.

Smith Rivera emerged from the vehicle and told the deputies, 'I shot my wife.'

The man was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder, according to news outlets.

The arrest report said Rivera also fired a gun at a third person, believed to be one of his two other sons, who was able to escape unharmed.

Mayra Berriel, Smith's sister, told WESH-TV her brother had been drinking and struggled to cope with his depression brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Rivera returned to the crime scene and told deputies, 'I shot my wife.' One of the couple's three sons wrote on Facebook the 56-year-old woman was a cancer survivor

Deputies collected multiple spent shell casings inside the family's home and in a driveway, and seized a box of ammunition that was found inside a bathroom where Smith was seen entering armed with a gun.

According to her Facebook page, Jodi Rivera worked as a realtor. Her final post from April 2 was a photo of herself with the caption: 'staying home, saving lives.'

Smith Rivera's sister said her brother has a problem with alcohol and that he has been depressed because of COVID-19

Her son Matthew was a student at Southwestern University. One of his two surviving brothers paid tribute to him on Facebook, writing: 'Love you Matthew, you were always the best one of us!'

Jodi and Smith Rivera's other son also took to Facebook to mourn the deaths of his family members, revealing that his mother was a breast cancer survivor.

'Mom I will be everything I promised you and much more ... I love you so so so much,' the young man wrote in an anguished post on Monday.

Online records indicate that Smith Rivera has a prior criminal record dating back to at least 2009, which includes an August 2017 arrest on charges of battery, disorderly intoxication and threatening a public servant.
Eight children have drowned in a river in south-western China after one of them fell in it by accident and the others jumped in to help, according to state media.

The victims, all primary school pupils, had gone to play at a beach by themselves on Sunday on the Fu River, reported state broadcaster CCTV citing local officials.

Their bodies have been discovered after rescuers searched for the youngsters overnight.

Footage shows rescuers searching for the missing children on the Fu River in south-western China's Chongqing as onlookers observed the operation. Their bodies have been recovered

CCTV footage shows rescue workers continuing to look for the children after night fall in Chongqing. The section of the river is said to be about two to 15 metres (6.6 to 49 feet) deep

The children came from Mixin, a town near Sichuan province on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing, the CCTV report said.

It is believed they fell into the river at some point in the afternoon. The section of the Fu River is said to be about two to 15 metres (6.6 to 49 feet) deep.

Authorities of Mixin town claimed that they had dispatched rescue teams to the Fu River by 3:30pm after receiving reports of someone falling into the river.

Officials told CCTV that all victims studied in the Mixin Town Primary School and had gone out together to play on a 'wide beach' by the Fu River.

More than 200 rescuers were sent to the scene, and the rescue efforts lasted overnight. Seven bodies had been recovered by 6:30am today, and the last one was found as of 7:30am, CCTV said.

An image made from a CCTV news clip shows rescue workers searching along a river in Chongqing on Monday after eight children fell into the waters while playing on their own

Rescuers (pictured) worked overnight before recovering all eight bodies as of this morning

One of the videos released by the state-run station shows rescuers preparing rafts as they got ready to search for the children.

Another clip shows workers continuing to look for the victims after nightfall.

Regional news outlet Litchi News said the victims included one boy and seven girls, citing officials.

Heavy rain had been forecast for the area, but it wasn't clear if the weather was a factor.

The local government said they were dealing with the aftermath of the incident.
San Francisco (AFP) - Apple said Monday it would build its own chips to power its Mac computers to create a "common architecture" that allows the devices to run the same apps as those on the iPhone and iPad.

The news came at the annual Apple developer conference -- a virtual event due to the coronavirus pandemic -- where the tech giant announced a series of product updates including details of its upcoming iOS 14 software powering its popular handsets.

The new "Apple silicon" initiative ends a longstanding partnership with chipmaker Intel and enables the computers to run the same apps as those on iPhones.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the move represents "a huge leap forward for the Mac," which would get a more powerful and energy-efficient system that operates more like Apple's mobile devices.

Cook said the first of the new Mac computers will be shipping by the end of the year and that the change would help lead to "a common architecture for all of our products."

This means developers can more easily create services which can run across the range of Apple products and devices, the company said.

"Apple has made an important point that by designing their own silicon it has helped them keep pushing performance in ways merchant silicon vendors can't," said Ben Bajarin, analyst at Creative Strategies.

- New look on iPhone -

Apple also offered a first look at its iOS 14 for the iPhone which gives a new look to its home screen and allows users to more easily manage their apps.

The new operating system will organize apps into a cleaner "app library" with the most frequently used ones prominently featured.

The update "transforms the most iconic elements of the iPhone experience, starting with the biggest update we've ever made to the home screen," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering.

Apple said the software would include a "digital car key" allowing the iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock and start a car. The virtual key for compatible car models can be shared using messages, or disabled if a device is lost.

Story continues

Apple said iOS 14 would also include a translate feature for 11 languages powered by its Siri digital assistant and allow for "app clips" or fragments of apps that can be quickly downloaded and used for transactions at partner merchants and services.

A revamped Apple Maps app will for the first time include directions for bicycles, a feature which has been available for years on Google Maps.

Updated software for the Apple Watch, known as watchOS7, will include a series of health and fitness features including improved sleep tracking and automatic handwashing detection to help users clean their hands for the 20 seconds recommended by health officials to help prevent virus spreading.

Apple announced its upcoming Mac operating system will be known as "Big Sur" with more immersive features and improved privacy.

The updated iPadOS14 will add new features for the Apple Pencil which can be used on the tablets.
We are guided by the institutional approach, not the personal one. This is what deputy, Chair of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly of Armenia Vladimir Vardanyan told reporters today, touching upon the My Step factions constitutional amendments bill.

The parliament is discussing the issue of neither Hrayr Tovmasyan nor any other judge. It is discussing the institutional approach. I wont give any names. If anyone tries to view this as a personal approach, it is more than absurd because we are only guided by the logic that the dispute over the Constitutional Court is at the institutional level, he said.

The Armenian parliament passed, in the second and final reading, the draft amendments to the Constitution. A total of 89 MPs voted for the bill.

The opposition Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia factions were not participating in the sitting.

According to the said amendments, the Constitutional Court judges who have been in office for 12 years and more shall be removed from office, while the current president of the court, Hrayr Tovmasyan, will continue to be a judge of the court, but no longer as its president.

Earlier, the Venice Commission said in a statement it regrets that a proposal for constitutional amendments was introduced in the Armenian Parliament on the day of the adoption by the Venice Commission of its opinion.

According to Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric, "the constitutional crisis in Armenia can be solved with the Venice Commissions guidance."

"I invite all authorities to be guided by the Venice Commission recommendations to overcome the constitutional crisis through smooth implementation of the relevant provisions of the 2015 Constitution and in accordance with Council of Europe standards," she concluded.
By Trend

Latvia is interested in attracting investments from Azerbaijan in transport and logistics sector, Dainis Garan?s, Ambassador of Latvia to Azerbaijan told Trend.

"We are interested in attracting investments from Azerbaijan in the transport and logistics sector, which would be mutually beneficial. There are good opportunities to develop the transit potential of our countries by cooperating in the Eurasian transport networks and using both rail and air transport," he said.

Garan?s pointed out that Latvia and Azerbaijan have a great potential for cooperation, which is still not fully used.

"It is important to develop cooperation in various fields. Entrepreneurs from both countries will have to look for new forms of cooperation. For facilitating bilateral trade, it might be necessary to assist businesses in finding new partners," said the ambassador.

He went on to add that one of the highest priorities is cooperation in the education field.

"Latvia is interested to develop direct contacts between educational and research institutions of both countries, promoting the mobility of students, researchers and academic staff, exchange of information and experience, as well as implementation of joint projects. We support cooperation between higher education and research institutions of both countries within the framework of the EU programs "Erasmus+" and "Horizon 2020" as well as other future initiatives. As a practical example of direct contacts development, I can mention the videoconference "Customs and Border Management at the Current Pandemic Times: Main Challenges and Opportunities" which took place on 8th of May and was organized jointly by the Azerbaijan Customs Academy and the International Business and Customs Institute of Riga Technical University," said Garan?s.

He noted that after the epidemiological situation improvement, the two countries will work to further develop co-operation in the field of tourism.

"For the people of Azerbaijan it could interesting to open the eco and health tourism opportunities offered by Latvia," said the envoy.
President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Trump Defends CCP Virus Testing Comment at Oklahoma Rally

President Donald Trump responded to criticism of his comments at Saturdays Tulsa rally about asking officials to ease back on COVID-19 testing because an increase in testing leads to an increase in cases.

Trump apparently joked to a crowd that hell direct my people to curb testing while touting the White Houses response to the crisis caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, or novel coronavirus. He said that as the United States has increased the number of tests, a higher number of cases are being reported.

His aides, including trade adviser Peter Navarro, said that his comments were meant as a joke, or tongue in cheek.

The president, meanwhile, wrote on Twitter that our Coronavirus testing is so much greater (25 million tests) and so much more advanced, that it makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally, than other countries, adding that my message on that is very clear!

During the rally, Trump changed the tone of his voice and started waving his arms around, suggesting that he was being sarcastic.

You know, testing is a double-edged sword. Weve tested now 25 million people, Trump said. Heres the bad part. When you test when you do testing, to that extent, youre going to find more people. Youre gonna find more cases.

He added: So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please. They test and they test. We had tests that people dont know whats going on.  We got another one over here. The young mans 10 years old. Hes got the sniffles. Hell recover in about 15 minutes. Thats a case.

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

It does not appear that Trump has issued an order of any kind to stop testing.

Top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, criticized his remark.

The Presidents efforts to slow down desperately needed testing to hide the true extent of the virus mean more Americans will lose their lives, Pelosi said in a statement on Sunday. Biden made a similar comment on Twitter.

The Tulsa Fire Department told news outlets on Sunday that about 6,200 people attended the Trump rally on Saturday, which was fewer than anticipated.

Trumps 2020 manager Brad Parscale, on Twitter, wrote that radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with  supporters at the rally.

Parscale told Fox News that claims social media users on Twitter and TikTok interfered with the rally are false.

Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work, he said Sunday. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop [Korean pop music] fanswithout contacting the campaign for commentbehaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.
A shoplifter who went on a five-month theft spree in stores around Dublin has been jailed.

Paul Nolan (42) was given a 15-month sentence after he "hit" several major outlets while addicted to drugs.

The accused, from Arklow, Co Wicklow, but of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to stealing from shops including Debenhams, TK Maxx and Boots.

Dublin District Court heard that in one incident he went to Debenhams, Henry Street, last October 22 and left without paying for goods.

He absconded before being apprehended at Liffey Street.

Nolan was aggressive towards security staff, unsteady on his feet and slurring his words and became abusive to gardai. He was restrained and arrested.

Unhelpful

On October 26, gardai saw him acting suspiciously on Moore Street, trying to remove security tags from gift sets.

He said he bought them for 40, but they had a sticker price of nearly 85 each.

A pre-sentence probation report was before the court, and defence solicitor Tracy Horan said this was "most unhelpful".

She added that there was no structure when Nolan was released from prison and it was a "revolving door".

Judge Paula Murphy said the accused was up on 16 charges that "can only be described as a spree of offending that occurred over a five-week period", and Boots, Debenhams and TK Maxx were "hit on a number of occasions".

She said Nolan had shown "minimum motivation" in dealing with the Probation Service.
Toronto:

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has expressed confidence that any economic impact arising from recent tensions with Pakistan and incidents like the surgical strikes undertaken by Indian special forces will be extremely marginal.



Addressing a gathering at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management, Jaitley said that any impact that had been felt on the markets and the rupee had been temporary, and that foreign direct investment into India continues to increase.



Even recently, when the news came that India had made certain surgical strikes at the launch pads where the terrorists used to cross into Indian boundaries, there was obviously a certain amount of speculation as far as the markets were concerned. The impact was not what it would have been years ago, he said.



Economic impact arising from recent tensions will be extremely marginal, he said.

Also Read: India, Canada committed to deepen economic and strategic partnership, says Arun Jaitley



Tensions heightened between India and Pakistan last week after Indian Army carried out surgical strikes on seven terror launch pads across the LoC in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, inflicting heavy casualties on terrorists waiting to sneak into India.



The surgical strikes came days after Pakistani terrorists stormed an Army camp in Kashmirs Uri, killing 19 soldiers.Pakistan has denied Indias claim of surgical strikes and termed it as cross-border firing.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Indigenous WA producer, Taryne Pinky Laffar has launched her own production company P!nk Pepper.

P!nk Pepper will specialise in the development and production of Indigenous and diverse content, casting Indigenous and diverse talent. Laffar will also continue as a freelance producer, writer, director, mentor and workshop facilitator.

Debut project, Our Law, premieres at 8:30pm tonight on Karla Grants Presents on NITV. The doco follows Noongar police officers, Senior Sergeant Revis Ryder and Sergeant Wendy Kelly, as they police one of the most remote beats in the world, Warakurna  home to an Indigenous community still practicing the lore of one of the worlds oldest living cultures.

The film will expand to full 6-part documentary series, Our Law: The Series. Following development investment from Screen Australia the series will profile Indigenous Police Officers and the communities they police across WA.

Further project are detailed below.

Old Mate  Pink Pepper in association with Galactic Baby Old Mate is a comedy web series co-created by and starring acclaimed actor, Clarence Ryan (KGB, Stateless, Wrong Kind of Black) about a 47,000-year-old Indigenous Australian superhero played by Clarence. The series will show audiences a glimpse at modern Australia through the eyes of the nations oldest man, who has literally seen it all. Joining Taryne and Clarence is Executive Producer, Lauren Elliott, co-creator Renato Fabretti and Writer / Script Coordinator, Clare Toonen. The team are currently developing the series with development investment from Screenwest.

Since meeting Taryne in 2018, Ive been consistently impressed with her drive, passion and tenacity. Shes one of a kind and were so lucky to have her here in the Western Australian film industry. It was a pleasure producing KGB together last year, and Im so glad Pink Pepper and Galactic Baby have teamed up to develop Old Mate. said Lauren Elliott, Galactic Baby.

Red  Pink Pepper in association with Ramu Productions and Brown Sugar Apple Grunt Red is an 8-part scripted anthology series Taryne is developing alongside Broome-based producer, Jodie Bell and eight Western Australian Indigenous female writer/directors. Red will follow the innovative format developed by New Zealand producers Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton with their films Waru and Vai, which successfully launched Maori and Pacific filmmakers internationally. The anthology of eight short films will each explore the impact of missing Indigenous women from a Western Australian female Aboriginal perspective and will combine to form an 80-minute feature film.

The opportunity to work with Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton and produce a film of this format is ground-breaking in Western Australia. We are thrilled to tell a compelling story on a subject that until recently has been taboo territory. said producers Taryne Laffar and Jodie Bell.

Tata Detective  Pink Pepper in association with Magpie Pictures Tata Detective is a 6-part TV drama series created by Taryne, which has recently secured development funding from Screen Australia. Taryne will be working with writers Beck Cole and Dot West, Kelly Lefever as Script Consultant and Lois Randall of Magpie Pictures as Co-Producer. Set in Broome, Western Australia, the series follows feisty and gregarious Indigenous-gallery-owner-turned-culture-detective, Muriel Hunter. Muriel uses her wit, charm and influence to take down the underbelly of the arts world in her Kimberleys homeland and finds herself caught between fighting for justice and protecting her family.

Im excited to be collaborating with Pink Pepper to co-produce Tata Detective  this highly original project feels like a perfect fit, bringing together the deep experience that Taryne and I share in arts and cultural development, as well as screen production. Pink Pepper is about to make a colourful splash on the Australian screen industry landscape  congratulations and chookas PP! said Lois Randall, Magpie Pictures.

Tarynes background and track record in the Western Australian screen industry is as diverse as her development slate. In 2019, she was the Producers Attachment on Season 2 of the critically- acclaimed ABC drama series, Mystery Road, learning the ropes from Producer Greer Simpkin from Bunya Productions. She was the also the Series Producer of ABC iView Indigenous comedy series, KGB, working alongside Executive Producer, Lauren Elliott from Galactic Baby.

Her filmmaking credits include Our Law, KGB, Rainforest WarriorZ, BINGO!, Rubeun Yorkshire, Beccy Garlett, Taj Jamieson, On Country Kitchen and Who Paintin Dis Wandjina? and her casting credits include Go, A Few Less Men, Mad Bastards, Stone Bros, The Circuit, Bran Nue Dae, Jandamarras War and Yagan.

In 2018, Taryne was the recipient of Screenwests year-long Spark initiative and in 2019, she was 1 of 16 Australian producers selected for Screen Producers Association (SPA) prestigious Ones to Watch program where she took out the $15,000 SBS First Glance development deal. Also in 2019, she was 1 of 10 producers selected for Screen Australias Indigenous Producer Program and was 1 of 11 creatives chosen for Screen Australias Developing the Developer. In 2020, she was hand- picked by Screen Australia to co-facilitate the No Ordinary Black Indigenous short film initiative, alongside Charlotte Seymour (Other Peoples Problems).

Its been a privilege to have supported Tarynes successful career, especially through such impactful initiatives as the Screenwest Spark Initiative, which has propelled her onto her current innovative successful trajectory. Taryne continuously pushes the boundaries within her slate of projects, resulting in impactful, thought-provoking, strong Indigenous-led stories. Tarynes dedication, think-outside-the-box business approach and unwavering passion shines through every project she produces. Im more than proud of what Taryne has achieved thus far in her career, and Im excited to see what will be produced by the Pink Pepper team into the future! said Screenwest Indigenous Manager, Devina McPherson.

Taryne descends from the Bardi and Jabbir Jabbir nations in Western Australia and Pink Peppers mission is to create exceptional Indigenous-Australian film and television. Pink Pepper dedicated to working with Indigenous storytellers and creatives to produce a dynamic slate of Indigenous-led screen content across documentary and drama for Australia and the world. Taryne has been developing an exciting new slate and has already attracted development funding for a number of factual and scripted projects.
Two young Ohio sisters who family members say shared an incredibly close bond were killed last week after a brick pillar holding up their hammock collapsed.

Scout, 14, and Chasey Scaravilli, 12, were remembered Saturday at a Celebration of Life event, just about one week after the tragic accident occurred at their home in Cleveland Heights, NBC affiliate WKYC reported.

I got a lot of love from them and I smothered them with kisses to a fault. But they are going to be with me forever, dad JJ Scaravilli told the outlet.

Scout and Chasey were lying in a hammock that was tied to a tree and a brick pillar when the pillar collapsed on them around 7:45 p.m. local time on June 14, Fox affiliate WJW reported.

They were freed from beneath the bricks and transported to a local hospital, but died several hours later, according to Cleveland Heights Police, who did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.

RELATED VIDEO: Minnesota Mom Left Paralyzed After Tree Fell on Her During Freak Hammock Accident

Minnesota Mom Left Paralyzed After Tree Fell on Her During Freak Hammock Accident

A Minnesota woman was left paralyzed after a falling tree broke her neck as she lounged in a hammock with her boyfriend

I dont blame anybody, I dont blame myself, I dont blame those girls, JJ Scaravilli told WKYC. I looked at it 100 times. I never thought a brick pillar would come down like that  it was never in my mind.

Scout was a rising ninth-grader, while Chasey was going to be in seventh grade, according to Hathaway Brown, the all-girls private school they attended in Shaker Heights.

The entire HB community is saddened by the loss of the Scaravilli sisters; they will be greatly missed by so many friends, classmates, and teachers. Our thoughts and prayers are dedicated to their family, Head of School Fran Bisselle said in a statement.

RELATED: 7-Year-Old Girl Swinging in Hammock Killed When Tree Uproots: It Is a 'Tragic Accident'

Story continues

In their joint obituary, the girls were remembered by family members for their tight bond and differing  but equally special  personalities.

Mom Heidi described Scout as selfless and like a second mother to Chasey, who was a quick-witted firecracker.

[Scout] always saw the best in everyone and gave us encouragement. She was the one who brought us all together, her parents said.

RELATED: Tennessee Teen, 15, Tragically Killed in Freak Accident While on a Missionary Trip to Mexico

Chasey, meanwhile, had a clever sassiness, a creative and magical soul and a knack for getting what she wanted.

They were charming. They were sweet. They were powerful. They were adored, said dad JJ.

In addition to their parents, the sisters also leave behind twin younger sisters, Coco and Cassidy.
There has been a sudden spike in coronavirus cases and fatalities in Bangalore in the last week. Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa in response has directed officials to implement strict lockdown measures in several parts of the city.

"Stringent lockdown to be in place in areas like KR Market, Siddapura, VVPuram, Kalasipalya, and surrounding areas. Adjoining streets of positive cases' residences also will be sealed," Karnataka CM Yediyurappa said on Monday after a meeting with top government officers in Bengaluru.

Yediyurappa also said that these areas have several clusters of COVID-19 leading to a large number of cases being reported from these areas in the past few days.

According to the Karnataka Health Department, the number of cases in the city rose from 690 on June 14 to 1,272 on June 21, which amounts to more than 200% increase in cases in just a week. A similar trend was present in the number of COVID-19 fatalities which rose

from 32 to 64 during the same period.

"As the number of cases is increasing in Bengaluru at an alarming rate, this (the spread of the infection) can be contained only if preventive measures are implemented strictly," Yediyurappa added.

To increase the early detection of rate of cases, the CM had earlier ordered officials to set up fever clinics across 198 wards of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palika (BBMP).

The Chief Minister has also asked officials to file FIRs against people found violating quarantine measures. He has asked all officers to take stringent action and not be lenient with violators.

The administration has also been ordered to fix rates of COVID-19 treatment in private hospitals and medical colleges empanelled by the government.

Among 518 such hospitals identified across the state, 44 are in the capital city Bangalore alone.

Meanwhile, India has so far reported 1,74,387 active cases of coronavirus (as of 8 am, June 22), according to the Health Ministry. Total deaths stood at 13,699. As many as 2,37,195 patients have been cured or discharged and 1 migrated.

Also Read: Reliance Industries 1st Indian company to hit $150 billion market cap; Mukesh Ambani in world's top 10 richest

Also Read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
Berlin: President Aleksandar Vucic's nearly complete control over the Serbian state was bolstered on Sunday after his party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections boycotted by most of the opposition in protest at his autocratic policies.

Vucic was not personally up for reelection, but his political coalition, the nationalist Serbian Progressive Party, was projected to win more than 60 per cent of seats in parliament, according to initial results.

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic casts his ballot in Belgrade. Credit:AP

This puts the party on the threshold of a "supermajority," which, if secured, would allow its lawmakers to change the constitution without the support of any other political faction.

The result could also give Vucic greater leeway to forge a peace agreement with Kosovo, the former Serbian province that broke from Belgrade in 1999, helped by a US-led bombing campaign, but whose sovereignty Serbia has never officially recognised.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has put on hold three major agreements signed with Chinese companies at the recently concluded Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 investor meet, officials said. The proposed projects entail investments of around Rs 5,000 crore in the state.

"We have taken this decision in consultation with the Central government. These agreements were signed prior to the development on the Indo-China border and killing of 20 Indian soldiers," Industry Minister Subhash Desai said.

He added that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has advised the state government against signing any further agreements with Chinese companies.

It may be recalled that at the online Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 meet, the state government signed agreements worth over Rs 16,000 crore with global companies including Chinese groups.

They include a Rs 3,770-crore MoU with the Great Wall Motors to set up an automobile manufacturing unit in Pune` Talegaon and a Rs 1,000-crore in partnership with Foton (China) and PMI Electro Mobility.

Besides, Henglu Engineering made a commitment of Rs 250-crore for the expansion plans at its unit Phase II in Pune.

Apart from China, the state signed around nine other MoUs with companies from the US, South Korea, Singapore and various domestic entities, with huge employment generation potential.
Microsoft announced an expedited shutdown of its Twitch competitor Mixer which will close up shop next month.

Microsoft says that it's closing Mixer on July 22nd and will transition all of its partners to Facebook Gaming immediately.

According to the company, its decision was fueled by a lack of demand for the service, especially in the face of competitors like Amazon's Twitch and YouTube.

Microsoft's xCloud is the company's first-ever game-streaming service and started its testing phase in the US, UK, and Korea lat year

'We started pretty far behind, in terms of where Mixers monthly active viewers were compared to some of the big players out there,' Phil Spencer, Microsofts head of gaming, told The Verge.

'I think the Mixer community is really going to benefit from the broad audience that Facebook has through their properties, and the abilities to reach gamers in a very seamless way through the social platform Facebook has.'

Microsoft will transition users and partners over the next several weeks and customers with credit or outstanding Mixer subscriptions will be credited with Xbox gift cards.

In addition to lack of demand, The Verge notes that Microsoft's decision to partner with Facebook Gaming is likely strategic.

The move could help set up Microsoft's cloud gaming service, xCloud find an audience by offering xCloud games through the platform.

In an expansion of a beta test for Microsoft's cloud-based game streaming earlier this year, users on iOS can play Xbox games that are traditionally only available on their home consoles using their iPhones and iPads.

As noted by The Verge, the introduction of xCloud to the iOS ecosystem is the first time a cloud gaming service has appeared on the operating system since OnLive, an app-base cloud gaming service, nearly 10 years ago.

It's not clear exactly when xCloud will be available on Facebook Gaming, but the service is expected to launch in full later this year.
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.

If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .

Support our mission and join our community now.
Oralia Loza, Ph.D., public health sciences associate professor at The University of Texas at El Paso, and the Borderland Rainbow Center (BRC) have collaborated on a survey that examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the LGBTQ+ population in Texas.

Led by Phillip W. Schnarrs, Ph.D., at The University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School, the survey involved a statewide coalition of community and research partners, including UTEP and El Paso's BRC, to better understand the needs, concerns and challenges of LGBTQ+ Texans and their allies during the coronavirus outbreak.

Preliminary results from this first-of-its-kind survey found that gender diverse people and queer people of color are experiencing a number of disparities. They include higher rates of COVID-19, more difficulty accessing a variety of services, and higher rates of anxiety and depression, as well as high unemployment compared with white participants.

The results, which are broken down by race, ethnicity and gender identity, are available here. Researchers plan to release the findings by individual Texas counties later this year.

"The purpose of the study is two-fold," said Loza, who collaborated with the BRC to include representation from El Paso in the survey data. She is currently translating the survey and preliminary findings of the study into Spanish. "One is to understand what are the needs of the LGBTQ population in our community because it has never been assessed before, especially statewide. But also, community organizations such as the BRC can use that data to show evidence of the need to advocate for those services. Other community organizations also can use the data to generate findings that are specific to the work they do. If their focus is mental health, they can look at the mental health data and report the needs for their city."

The survey, which launched May 4, 2020, will continue to recruit participants until July 30, 2020. To date, researchers have gathered data from 1,000 LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies, including 111 respondents from El Paso. The survey is available here.

Researchers said the data collected will be given back to community partners to use for future planning, as well as the development and delivery of programs to support LGBTQ+ individuals and allies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

###
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:57:52|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

RAMALLAH, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Monday said that it is preparing to present a draft resolution against the Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization Saeb Erekat told the Voice of Palestine radio that the upcoming UNSC will discuss the developments in the Palestinian territories, especially the Israeli annexation plan.

"The meeting will be held at the level of ministers and is very important in the efforts to present a draft resolution to the UN Security Council, despite the United States veto," said Erekat.

"We have an unprecedented support of 192 member states out of 194 members of the United Nations General Assembly, that reject the Israeli move," he added.

He noted that a memorandum endorsed by at least 150 United States Congressmen will be issued in the coming hours declaring their rejection to the Israeli annexation.

Last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas instructed Palestinian representative to the United Nations Riyad Mansour to call for a meeting for foreign ministers during the United Nations Security Council convention on June 24 in order to discuss Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously promoted July 1 as the date to begin annexation of the West Bank's Jordan Valley and the lands to the north of the Dead Sea and apply Israeli civil law on Israeli settlements built in the West Bank. However, due to internal complications, Netanyahu has yet to announce specific plans for the move.

The annexation plan is part of U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan revealed earlier this year.

Israel captured the West Bank territories during the 1967 Middle East war. According to various UN resolutions, Israeli settlement activity is considered illegal. Enditem
Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.

Even his worst detractors cant accuse State Bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar of being economical with optimism.

So, when the head of the countrys largest bank says, I have money, but there are no takers of the money, the signal is loud and clear: Indias bank credit market is in the midst of one of its worst crisis.

Due to low credit offtake, banks are straddled with huge liquidity, on which they have to pay interest to the depositors, but cant earn interest by deploying loans, their core business.

That explains Kumars desperation.

Speaking at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry this month, he said, I hear a lot about risk aversion (among bankers). But isnt there risk aversion among borrowers also ?

Thats a valid question as Indias bankers have been under fire for supposedly lazy banking.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows credit growth has fallen 50 per cent to barely 6 per cent year-on-year.

And the prediction is dire.

Ratings agency CRISIL estimates credit growth for the fiscal year could be 0-1 per cent, about 800 basis points lower than the pre-pandemic estimate of 8-9 per cent.

Demand slide

CRISIL senior director Krishnan Sitaraman says this crisis is unprecedented and so will its economic fallout be - such as lower capex demand as well as lower discretionary spends, to name some - which will slow down credit offtake significantly across segments in the current fiscal year.

"The corporate loan portfolio is expected to be the worst-hit.

Some signs are visible. The latest data shows the lockdown led to a 55.5 per cent contraction in the index of the industrial production (IIP) in April, the worst among the G-20 countries.

While ratings agencies and bankers seem confident that credit demand will be thin, fresh demand could come from the agriculture sector and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) are slowly coming back as the markets turn risk-averse.

Perhaps these are the reasons why some bankers retain their optimism.

There is demand in sectors like MSMEs and NBFCs.

"In the agriculture sector also, we are seeing demand due to a good harvest.

"I believe overall demand will pick up gradually, says A K Goel, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of UCO Bank.

The banks disbursements are 30-40 per cent of the sanctioned limit.

S Harisankar, MD and CEO of Punjab & Sind Bank, says credit demand is low but with the gradual lifting of lockdown, some improvement is visible.

The existing demand is from MSMEs, he says.

But progress has been slow. Against the earmarked Rs 1,200 crore for MSMEs, the bank so far has been able to disburse about Rs 150 crore.

This is partly because banks themselves are changing their eligibility norms for customers, especially for the retail segment.

NPAs: Future tense

Credit growth is one part of the challenge.

A related issue is Indian banks staring at a potentially huge pile-up of bad loans once the moratorium period is over and borrowers need to square off their dues.

Job losses and salary cuts will hurt retail borrowers, but firms will be affected equally because they have seen their businesses coming to a standstill in the more than two months of lockdown.

Some analysts suggest if banks are not careful, gross non-performing assets could double from the existing about 9.3 per cent of the loan book.

For example, Ananth Narayan, senior India analyst of Observatory Group, estimates the true level of gross NPAs could rise to 18-20 per cent of advances as falling GDP growth and lockdown would put at risk an additional 28-30 per cent of advances across various impacted sectors.

On the base case scenario, ratings agency ICRA sees gross NPAs rising to 11.3-11.6 per cent by March 2021.

India Ratings sees slippages of up to Rs 5.5 trillion in the country in 2020-21.

Companies may account for Rs 3.4 trillion of this and non-companies, comprising retail, farming, and MSMEs, about Rs 2.1 trillion, India Ratings estimates.

But it is important to see what would lead to such a situation.

Suresh Khatanhar, deputy managing director, IDBI Bank, says the bank has revisited the existing norms for borrowers in the retail segment.

The scores have been tightened, and the loan-to-value (LTV) ratios reviewed.

Several bankers say if a person has availed of a moratorium, that automatically works as the red flag for the bank.

Although the customers credit history is not affected, the banks may not be willing to give them fresh loans.

Banks have reduced credit-card limits, and private ones in most instances have taken away the cash withdrawal facility using credit cards.

Khatanhar says the banks are turning cautious in giving loans to people in particular industries such as airlines, tourism, and hospitality.

The exposure can be taken only for those with high credit scores.

Moratorium dynamics

Those who have availed the moratorium could potentially see the accrued interests attracting further interests, the picture on which would get clear after the crucial Supreme Court judgment due on the issue, but those that have not availed the moratorium will also find it difficult to service loans.

It is in fact, a vicious circle, something that will affect each and everyone in the cycle, picking up banks in the end.

Since 70 per cent of the banking in the country is controlled by public sector banks, the government will get affected too.

As corollary, defaults would rise, and restructuring requests would zoom.

It would be interesting then to see if banks would want to drag the defaulters to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for insolvency proceedings.

If they do, experts say, there will be two likely outcomes.

One, there wont be enough buyers for the stressed assets and resolution is nearly impossible, and second, the banks ultimately will have to take a huge haircut on almost all stressed loans.

This will be crystalizing losses in bank books, which would need to be buffered by aggressive recapitalisation by the government.

Banks don't seem fully prepared as none have started the process of identifying potential borrowers needing restructuring, or are proactively engaging with them, said Abizer Diwanji, head of financial services EY.

NCLT is not going to be the answer for banks, but a good one-time restructuring (OTS) will be required and the RBI will allow such OTS, Diwanji said.

It is difficult to estimate the portion of the whole banking sector book undergoing through a moratorium exercise.

For SBI, 23 per cent of the book, or Rs 5.57 trillion, is under moratorium.

About 22 per cent of the banks customers availed moratorium.

The moratorium ends in August, and the impact on the banks profitability will be available only in the September quarter.

The banks are already cutting rates aggressively, but the deposit rates have not come down as much. If the banks have to forego moratorium interests, then deposit rate cuts would be sharper, bankers say.

SBI has lowered its retail loan rate by as much as 115 basis points, the deposit rates have fallen about half of that.

Capital concerns

Banks will not be able to bear the fall in profitability without getting adequate capital.

Credit Suisse expects the banking sector will need $20 billion in capital in the next one year, of which $13 billion worth should come from the government to state owned banks towards recapitalisation.

India Ratings expects the capital requirement under the benign provision regime for public sector banks (PSB) would range from Rs 30,000 crore to Rs 55,000 crore.

However, if the accelerated provisioning regime is reinstated, then the capital requirement could further increase up to Rs 40,000 crore just to maintain Tier 1, or core capital of banks at 10 per cent, which is 50 basis points higher than regulatory requirement that comes into action after September this year.

With thin capital cushions and expected increase in stress on asset quality and profitability, we expect PSBs to require Rs 45,000-82,500 crore of capital even under a scenario of low credit growth of 3-4 per cent during FY2021," says Anil Gupta, sector head (financial sector ratings), ICRA Ratings.

What next

The massive capitalisation exercise would mean that the government will go for further consolidation, says an analyst.

This will help the government save money by making good banks take the burden of capital starved banks.

If this strategy is not possible, the government will try to privatise the banks at a faster clip, to save capitalisation cost, the analyst says requesting anonymity.

Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.

In the coming months, key cost ratios of banks are expected to be stressed, which will compel banks to rethink their fixed cost strategy," says PWC in a report.

This may prompt banks to shift to an asset-lite operating model, in which there could be consolidation of footprint and optimisation of real estate, remote workforce support, outsourcing non-value-add or specialist services.

But that could be true for nimble foreign and private banks, but it may be easy for public sector banks who still connect with their customers through brick and mortar branches.

SBIs Kumar said in a post-results media call that credit growth will likely be around 7.5 per cent in the financial year ended 2021, down from its earlier projected growth of 12 per cent.

The June quarter would not be a great quarter for loan recovery, but that would pick up from September, Kumar said.

The bank however, doesnt see slippages beyond 2 per cent, but a firm view on this could be arrived after the moratorium period is over.

SBIs slippage ratio was 2.16 per cent for fiscal 19-20.

It is reasonable to assume that there might be some spike in NPA.

"Much will depend upon the cash flows. We are hand-holding companies so that they dont slip into NPA, adds Harishankar of Punjab and Sind Bank.
Naver, Kakao increasing clout in finance on regulatory loopholes



By Kim Bo-eun





Controversy is growing over the entry of big tech companies, such as Naver and Kakao, into the financial sector, as they are not subject to the same regulations as financial firms.



Banks and other financial services firms are crying foul over a "double standard" that they claim is providing regulatory loopholes for the tech giants to more easily expand their presence in the industry by capitalizing on their platforms and technologies.



Naver and Kakao have begun to establish financial businesses. Naver earlier this month launched a cash management account service together with securities firm Mirae Asset Daewoo. The tech company established Naver Financial as a subsidiary last year, after seeing its online payment service grow.



Kakao has set up an internet bank and also has Kakao Pay, a financial platform based on mobile money transfers. Kakao Pay has acquired an insurtech firm, and is taking steps to establish a separate digital non-life insurer. Kakao Pay also launched a brokerage as a subsidiary, after taking over Baro Investment & Securities.



Financial firms are worried as the tech companies have immense potential in the financial sector considering brand awareness, capital and massive amounts of data from their e-commerce platforms. Naver Shopping has grown into Korea's largest e-commerce platform with 30 million users as of the third quarter of last year. Kakao Commerce has seen annual transactions grow to several trillions of won.



The rapid growth of the companies' online payment and money transfer services is attributed to Naver and Kakao's respective dominance as the No. 1 web portal and mobile messenger service providers.



The firms also pose a threat as they hold an advantage in developing innovative technology-based services.



Financial firms are unhappy about the situation as tech companies are subject to lighter regulations even if they offer financial services.



They contend the government has been too lax in regulating big tech companies, because they have prioritized fostering innovative technology and services.



Banks and financial companies are subject to various regulations in the areas of capital requirement, financial soundness and majority shareholders' qualification.



In contrast, if tech giants engage in the electronic banking business, they are controlled by specific laws governing e-transactions which provide leeway for them to get around these stricter regulations.



Naver is seen to have held back from launching an internet bank, despite widespread expectations, as internet banks face more regulations than companies offering financial services as non-bank entities.



"Basically, tech companies are offering partial financial services, which frees them from the regulations imposed on the financial sector," a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance said.



"The same regulations are meant to be imposed on the same sort of business, but currently there are blind spots that have not been addressed, which makes the situation unfair."



The financial authorities have conceded that incentives have been offered for tech companies to foster the fintech industry, but added that attempts will be made to address complaints.



"Up until now the competition was within the finance sector or between firms such as banks, securities firms and insurers. In the future we will see territorial disputes between financial firms and big tech companies," Financial Services Commission Chairman Eun Sung-soo said during a recent media briefing.



"Rather than excluding one side, we will introduce policies intended to reduce risk and create a level playing field."



The FSC is in the process of revising existing regulations, a source said Monday.



The KIF research fellow said, "The lack of regulations may not stand out in the beginning, but will likely become an issue as the scale of their financial businesses grow."



"Regulations are necessary because they exist for the purpose of maintaining financial stability and protecting customers," he said.


Much of what we know about the coronavirus has been revealed by testing: who has it, how widespread it is and where hot spots are. And testing enables contact tracing, a crucial public health tool that helps prevent small clusters of cases from becoming large outbreaks.

Yet our understanding of the pandemic and how best to control it is hamstrung by the fundamental limitations of testing.

Only a fraction of those believed to be infected with the virus have had their diagnosis confirmed by testing. Testing cannot catch all asymptomatic cases, since many people without symptoms never seek testing unless they work in high-risk locations like hospitals, nursing homes or prisons, where employees are tested regularly. And both kinds of tests  diagnostic, which determines if someone is infected with the virus, and antibody, which verifies a past infection  are fallible, with research showing some problems with false negatives and false positives.

Weve come a long way with testing since the beginning of shelter-in-place 100 days ago, when California lagged behind other populous states in per capita testing. But there is still much left to do across the state. Here are four milestones weve reached, and four obstacles we still have to overcome.

Achievements

1. Anyone can get tested, symptoms or not. Back in mid-March, when shelter-in-place began, hospitals denied testing to many patients  even those with telltale symptoms of COVID-19, such as fever and shortness of breath  because of a severe shortage of tests nationwide. Health care providers and health officials worked furiously to erect drive-through testing sites in parking lots, event centers, fire stations, stadiums and, eventually, pharmacies. What began as just a handful of testing sites has grown to several hundred. And many state- and county-run sites now offer free tests for residents.

2. The state goal of 60,000 daily tests? Were there. To understand how far the coronavirus has spread in a community, every day there needs to be 150 tests conducted for every 100,000 people, say Harvard researchers. In California, thats about 60,000 a day. In late March, that was hard. The state went from conducting only a few thousand tests a day at that time to an average of about 70,000 a day now, according to a seven-day average of daily testing figures provided each day by the state public health department. Most people can also get tested relatively quickly, though not all can be tested at their own health care provider.

3. Some runaway contagions were averted. Testing and contact tracing have been used to identify and prevent some flareups of positive cases from becoming widespread, although most Bay Area counties have yet to hire as many contact tracers as they would like. At Laguna Honda, the first skilled nursing facility in San Francisco to test all residents and staff, testing identified four people who were positive for the virus in May. Health officials then tested the people those four had contact with and identified an additional four cases. Similarly, in April, after city officials identified two people who tested positive at San Franciscos largest homeless shelter, contact tracing and widespread testing identified 93 other homeless people who tested positive.

4. People can get test results quickly. In the early days of shelter in place, labs processed coronavirus tests so slowly that people had to wait up to 10 days to learn whether they had the virus. But Californias enormous backlog of pending tests was cleared at the end of April. Now most people learn their results within days.

Hurdles still to overcome

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.

1. Too few tests in nursing homes. Older residents are more likely than younger, healthier people to become very ill or die if they contract the virus. About 50% of the states deaths from COVID-19 involve residents and workers at nursing homes and other residential care facilities for the elderly. And while a few California counties, including San Francisco, recently began requiring nursing homes to test all residents and staff, the vast majority have not. As of June 17, just 21% of the states 1,223 nursing homes  256 sites  had submitted the results of baseline testing for their residents and workers, according to the state department of public health, which requires all such facilities to complete baseline testing by the end of June.

2. Limits to testing technology. A diagnostic test can capture only one moment in time, and its difficult to pinpoint the perfect time to test. Some people test negative, then positive, then negative  all within a few days. This is because virus levels fluctuate throughout the course of infection. Getting tested too early, before the virus is circulating at levels high enough to be detected in a test, can generate a false negative result.

3. Antibody testing obstacles. Antibody tests are supposed to reveal whether a person has been exposed to the coronavirus. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cracked down on sales of shoddy tests, some still have accuracy issues. They also cant reveal whether a person is immune to reinfection.

4. Public data on testing is insufficient and inconsistent. The daily testing numbers reported by the state dont include where tests are being done, or demographic information on who is being tested. The lack of details makes it difficult for the public to easily understand whether certain groups are being missed. County-level testing data is also inconsistent between jurisdictions.

Catherine Ho and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com, cdizikes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho, @CDizikes
The aftermath of the border skirmish between India and China in Ladakh is continuing to have an effect on telecommunications, with Chinese app vendors coming under attack from Indian consumers and uncertainty being expressed about operator contracts with Huawei and ZTE.

Mobile apps supported by Chinese investment  Paytm, Ola, Zomato, MakeMyTrip and others  are experiencing hostile comments from Indian contributors to review boards on Google Play and, in some cases being uninstalled by end users. There was in fact a free app called Remove China Apps available on Google Play until it was itself removed from the store.

One brand that may suffer more than most, not least due to its high visibility, is TikTok, and owner ByteDances India-focused app Helo. TikTok has been under attack for some while over alleged anti-India content, censorship, inappropriate videos and unacknowledged payment for content, along with owner ByteDances close relationship with the Chinese government. This all began a while before the Ladakh controversy, though that cannot have helped.

On the smartphone side, which is dominated by Chinese-backed names like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo, things may be less problematic for Chinese companies. Such brands together have a market share of close to three quarters. They also focus on  and dominate  the affordable smartphone market, so a consumer rush for other brands is unlikely. However, online retailer Flipkart is planning a summer sale this week, which should indicate whether, and how, the smartphone market is going to be affected.

However, if anti-Chinese sentiment spreads to network kit suppliers, things could get very difficult  and not just for Chinese vendors. Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, for instance, could have to find $600-650 million and $300 million respectively to pay Huawei and ZTE if the Indian government decided that existing equipment contracts had to be cancelled.

Both operators could also face potential penalties in case of premature cancellation of existing managed services and asset maintenance contracts with the two Chinese vendors. But the situation could get very serious if ZTE and Huawei chose to push for early settlement of their dues  especially given Vodafone Ideas financial difficulties after last years Supreme Court decision landed it with around $7billion of outstanding AGR dues to pay.
With 3 divisions forming an arc, India ready to respond to Chinese aggression

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: With Apache helicopters, Sukhoi fighters and tanks being added along the Line of Actual Control, the three divisions now form an arc and are ready to respond.

The Indian positions at Galwan, Hot Springs, Koyul, Fukche, Murgo, Depsong and Demchok face threats from the Chinese and hence the deployment has been enhanced.

Meanwhile, the Indian agencies have sounded a high alert after it was noticed that China had deployed additional fighter jets, attack choppers and bombers at Hotan, Ngyari and Shigatse.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

Both the Indian and Chinese armies have been fully deployed, the air bases activated and the navy has been placed on standby. Sources tell OneIndia that the situation is very tense, although there has been no escalation following the June 15 violent brawl.

Also Read:

In response to the mighty build up by the Chinese, the Indian Army positions too have been beefed up. The Air Force of both countries also continue to keep a surveillance watch on each other, the source cited above said.

On the other hand, the Air Force also moved its critical frontline assets including the Sukhoi 20 MKI, Mirage 2000 and Jaguar fighter aircraft fleet to the advanced positions where there can fly at a very short notice.

Further, the Chinooks helicopters have been deployed in and around the Leh airbase to provide the capability of rapid troops transportation and inter-valley troop transfer, in case any situation emerges. The American Apache attack choppers have also been deployed close to the areas where operations by ground troops are taking place at the moment.

With both armies not thinking in terms of disengagement, the situation is very tense.

While there has been a bit of cooling down of the situation, the official cited above said that complete disengagement will take a longer time.
North should honor inter-Korean agreement



North Korea has rejected Seoul's request to drop its threat to send propaganda leaflets arcoss the border into South Korea. On Saturday, Pyongyang vowed to make good on the threat in retaliation to anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent into the North by North Korean defectors.



The propagation of the leaflets has emerged as a thorny issue which Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, cited as a reason for the cutting off of all communication lines with the South. It also provided Pyongyang with an excuse to demolish the inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Gaeseong, June 16.



It is somewhat understandable that the North has been enraged by the defectors' leaflets aimed at denigrating Kim Jong-un and his regime. Pyongyang argues that Seoul has violated the 2018 inter-Korean summit agreement which calls for both sides to stop sending propaganda leaflets across the border. The Moon Jae-in government invited its criticism for not "cracking down" properly on defectors and other activists sending leaflets into the North.



Seoul, however, has begun to take steps to legislate a ban on all such activities after Pyongyang strongly protested and then conducted provocations against the South this month. The government has also filed a criminal complaint against two defector groups for sending leaflets into the North.



In this regard, Pyongyang needs to recognize Seoul's efforts. One of two groups has agreed to accept the ban on sending the leaflets, although the other has yet to follow suit. The authorities should double down on persuading it to stop flying leaflets into North Korea.



Despite this, Pyongyang shows no sign of backing down. This is evident, considering a report by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, Saturday. It reads: "Publishing and printing institutions at all levels in the capital city have turned out 12 million leaflets of all kinds reflective of the wrath and hatred of the people from all walks of life." The agency disclosed the leaflets full of derision and insults targeting President Moon Jae-in.



As the South's Ministry of Unification pointed out, the North may risk violating the summit agreement on banning all hostile activities if it turns its threat into action. It is wrong for the North to describe the agreement as a "dead document," rejecting the South's call for restraint.



Regrettably, Pyongyang is trying to escalate tensions on the peninsula with harsher rhetoric and military threats against the South. After blowing up the liaison office, the North sent troops into the Demilitarized Zone, the joint industrial park in Gaeseong, and the Mount Geumgang tourism resort.



The distribution of leaflets is a conventional method of psychological warfare; but it could lead to an actual military clash  although accidental  in border areas. Under all circumstances, the two sides should avoid any such clash that might have unpredictable consequences. The North should abide by the inter-Korean agreement to de-escalate tensions, promote reconciliation and move toward peace.




The Madras High Court on Monday acquitted the prime accused and modified the death sentence awarded to five others in 2016 honour killing of a 22-year old man in full public view in Tamil Nadu's Tirupur district.

The court's order comes more than two and a half years after a lower court convicted and awarded death sentences to all eleven accused in the case.

Passing orders on appeals, a division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar acquitted B Chinnaswamy, father of Kausalya, whose husband Shankar was hacked to death in front of her in Udumlapet town and relieved him from all charges including that of criminal conspiracy.

Speaking to reporters, Kausalya said the verdict shocked and disappointed her at the same time. She went on to draw a narrative around a series of verdicts on the case. "First, Annalakshmi was freed. Now, Chinnasamy's sentence has been commuted. the others have got their death sentences turned into life sentences. The appeal against the judgement in Annalakshmi's case has been set aside..."

She also said the high court's decision to put out the verdict at this time, when the country is battling a public health emergency, raised many questions.

The High Court also confirmed the acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others.

The court also ordered release of all those acquitted who are presently under incarceration if their custody is not required in connection with any other case.

On December 12, 2017 the Tirupur district sessions court sentenced six people, including Chinnaswamy to death for the murder. The other accused were also ordered death penalties after varied jail terms.

Speaking to CNN News18, a lawyer who had appeared for Chinnasamy said that the "conspiracy and instigation by him (Chinnasamy) to the assailants who perpetrated the crime has not been properly established by the prosecution." According to the lawyer, the role of the mother (Annalakshmi) was not accepted even at the trial court. Now, at the Madras High Court, the father's role was not established in court. "The instigation could have been by anyone... so conspiracy theory is broken.."

In the annals of Tamil Nadu's caste history, the Kausalya-Sankar murder remains a gory flash point.

Sankar, a Dalit and native of Kumaralingam near Udumalpet, fell in love with non-dalit Kausalya, while they were studying in a private engineering college in Pollachi.

They got married against the wishes of her parents following which the family alleged hatched a conspiracy to eliminate them.

On March 13, 2016, a three-member gang hacked Sankar to death. Kausalya also suffered injuries in the attack.

Of the 11 accused, six were sentenced to death. Three others, including her mother, maternal uncle and a 16-year old relative were acquitted of all charges while two others got lesser sentences.

Challenging the death sentence awarded to them, Kausalya's father Chinnasamy and the other moved the appeal.

Similarly, the investigation officer also moved appeal against acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others by the trial court.

The bench sentenced the five other accused to life imprisonment for a minimum of 25 years without any right to remission.

Chinnaswamy and the others had been sentenced to death by a lower court in connection with the horrific daylight killing which was caught on camera and evoked public outrage.
Residents spent more than three months with significant restrictions on movement and were now facing the challenge of controlling new outbreaks, reports Efe news.

Madrid, June 22 (IANS) Spain entered the "new normal" on Monday after 98 days under a state of alarm due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Train and bus stations had more passengers on Monday and services have been increased compared to last week, when many limitations had been lifted, but have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

All business activities have been allowed to restart in a bid to boost the country's economy, with a particular focus on tourism just in time for the beginning of the summer season.

The sector is one of the foundations of the Spanish economy and responsible for more than 12 per cent of the national GDP.

Spain reopened its borders with other countries in the Schengen zone on Sunday, apart from Portugal where travellers will have to wait until July 1 to cross the frontier without a two-week quarantine period.

Visitors have started to arrive from overseas and scores of flights have brought hundreds of international travellers.

Around 100 international flights landed in Spanish airports on Sunday, with the highest numbers in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as another 250 domestic flights.

Travel between Spain's provinces is also allowed again which will give a boost to domestic tourism.

Spain was the second-most visited country for holidaymakers last year and authorities in coastal areas have been preparing beaches for the first foreign visitors in more than three months.

Health officials have highlighted the importance of maintaining precautionary measures, such as the use of masks, which are still mandatory on public transport and in places where it is not possible to maintain a minimum distance of 1.5 metres.

"We have to remember that the virus is still with us, we have controlled it but we have not defeated it," Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Monday in a radio interview.

The pandemic has caused 28,323 deaths and 246,272 confirmed cases in Spain, according to official data.

--IANS

ksk/
Advertisement

The Almajiri system of learning is an age long system of education founded under the Islamic civilization all the way from Timbuktu in Mali to Kano and other places in Nigeria. The centuries old system has produced renown scholars that have left benchmarks in the history of knowledge, Islamic revivalism and propagation.

The influence of this system of education has even founded the Hausa alphabets called Ajami in which several Hausa literary works have been produced and a lot of people have become literate and could read and write as a result.

The history of colonialism in northern Nigeria has depicted the region as civilized even before the advent of the colonial masters in the region. There was a perfectly civilized social, economic, political as well as judicial system in existence while below the Niger, colonized regions were struggling to learn how to read and write in the language of the colonialists that introduced them to civilization and some good social order which they lacked before.

Advertisement

The colonialist were surprised to have met the level of civilization in which the northern part was existing as influenced by the Almajiri system of education under which judges, teachers, administrators and royal security were produced.

The intention of the colonialists was to dominate and take over the region and place the people under a system that will make them submissive to them. They deliberately introduced their own system of learning that never gave a place or any form of consideration to the Islamic system they met on ground. The Almajiri system was left to the mercy of the people while the new system of education introduced by colonial masters was catered for by the authorities.

Begging and living in abject poverty, hunger and lack of hygiene was never part of that system of Almajiri education. In fact Islamic centres that ran the Almajiri system in the past have been rich and independent. They had enough food to even feed wayfarers passing by. They ran big farms and owned large warehouses where they stored such food for the entire year. They never engaged in begging but rather they fed the needy. It was the negligence it suffered as a result of colonialism that gave birth to that ugly face seen in the Almajiri system today. On the other hand the colonial system became stronger and became the rout to power, modernization and good living.

As the Almajiri system of learning was left to itself, it turned into something entirely different from what it should be. Children were seen to be left without parental care, guidance, moral training and good hygiene. Despite these, they still strive to acquire the Islamic knowledge. Tens of thousands of memorizers of the holy Quran have been produced, experts in jurisprudence, philosophy, logic, history, syntax and a lot of other classic forms of knowledge have all been produced by the Almajiri system of learning.

The Almajiri system is not an omen, nor is it an agent of underdevelopment. It is rather a rich heritage that should be catered for and set on the right pedestal. Those negative aspects acquired by the Almajiri system due to neglect, that include among others, street begging, lack of hygiene, child molestation and susceptibility to insecurity are the only things that need to be removed from it and it will regain its prestige.

Those negative things founded over time in the Almajiri system by the colonial intervention in its historical growth are the only things that need to be scrapped and the system will move on perfectly.

The authorities should introduce standards to enhance the Almajiri system of learning that should include standard curriculum of learning, healthcare delivery, dormitory system good funding, standard staffing and even certification in selected fields. If well kept and formalized, even UNESCO will not resist giving recognition to it. Because there are systems of learning in the Middle East that are part of the peoples heritage that are accepted and recognized by UNESCO because they are preserved and developed.

Against this background, the reform being introduced by the Kano state governor Abdullahi Ganduje could be seen to be in line with this concept. Children are returned to their parents to cater for them and live under their care while they attend school, street begging by Almajiri is banned, modern curricular are introduced in the system, dormitories are built and staff are paid to teach. This is a very big and important step towards preserving the Almajiri heritage. This will definitely reform the system and restore its prestige.

It is not impossible to get this done. We have seen special systems of education introduced and funded by the Nigerian government in different times. The Almajiri system of education, as a heritage of the north should be preserved and protected and be an optional form of education for the teeming populace. These steps of reform and modernization introduced by governor Abdullahi Ganduje should be projected and implemented by all states concerned. But it is abstract and incoherent to say you have completely banned the system of education that founded your past and gave you an identity through history.

Indeed Ganduje should be hailed for this perfect initiative of reforming the Almajiri system of learning for indeed it is but a positive and necessary milestone.
Dunedin (New Zealand) 22 June 2020 (SPS)- New Zealander protestors decided to block entrance to Ravensdown Fertilizer company Monday morning, to protest against the company illegal import of blood phosphate from occupied Western Sahara.

The group indicated in its communication to Media that supporters of Western Sahara braved a frosty morning to close down the Ravensdown fertiliser plant in Dunedin, New Zealand. The blockade lasted for 5 hours and no fertiliser trucks entered or left the site during that time.

The protestors are members of Environmental Justice Otepoti, who are calling on Ravensdown to end their support for the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara especially as a humanitarian aid crisis unfolds in the Saharawi refugee camps, because of the shortages in humanitarian aid affected by the international pandemic of Covid-a9.

The protestors further indicated that Ravensdown led us to believe that they had plans to find an alternate source of phosphate. We were disappointed to hear that a new shipment of phosphate from Western Sahara is due to arrive in Otepoti Dunedin, and that CEO Greg Campbell intentionally lied to us.

The group recalled that the people of Western Sahara have called for New Zealand to take action and stop buying blood phosphate. We are here today to make sure their voices are harder to ignore. Environmental Justice Otepoti supports the right of the Saharawi people to self determination and to return to their homeland.

The call of the people is for Ravensdown and Ballance to stop importing phosphate from OCP until the people of Western Sahara are able to have a referendum for their independence, the protestors stressed.

Ravensdown and Balance are 2 of only 3 companies that still import blood phosphate from the Moroccan regime, which is illegally occupying Western Sahara since 1975 and committing all sorts of human rights abuses and atrocities against the Saharawi citizens under its military occupation.

The protestors considered that by continuing to purchase this stolen phosphate Ravensdown and Balance are complicit in funding the military occupation of Western Sahara, and the separation of Saharawi people from their indigenous homelands spokesperson Abby Spilg-Harris voices.

The protestors accused Ravensdown to be fully aware that they are supporting human rights violations. There is a crisis in the camps, and the money paid for phosphate is ending up in the hands of war mongers when the rightful owners are suffering. We think that is unacceptable. 6.25 million is the value of the phosphate stolen from the Saharawi people that is aboard this coming ship. 6.25 million is also the estimated amount of money needed to feed and support Saharawi people in the refugee camps which have been left without additional international aid due to COVID, the group of protestors emphasized.

Ravensdown falsely claim indigenous Saharawi people benefit from Morocco selling their resources. The 170,000 Saharawi refugees living outside of their homelands arguably highlights such claims as grossly false, the statement concluded. (SPS)

090/500/60 (SPS)
The government is being urged to break the deadlock preventing severely epileptic children from accessing medical cannabis on the NHS.

Doctors have been legally allowed to prescribe cannabis-derived medicines to some patients since 2018, following a campaign by families, including the parents of Alfie Dingley, who had up to 150 seizures per week prior to receiving the treatment.

But 18 months on, the 8-year-old remains one of just two children prescribed medical cannabis oil on the NHS, with other families forced to resort to fundraising to pay for the medicine privately.

Campaigners say NHS doctors are reluctant to prescribe medicinal cannabis, citing lack of guidance and funding issues, leaving parents struggling to pay costs of up to 2,000 a month. These financial pressures have been compounded by the coronavirus crisis.

Hannah Deacon, Alfie's mother, described the failure to offer wider access to NHS treatment as "a national disgrace" and said many families were "at their wits end".

In a letter to home secretary Priti Patel, she said: "For vulnerable families and their suffering children, this optimism has now been replaced by abject despondency.

"To the best of my knowledge access to medical cannabis on the NHS is totally blocked, forcing families to fund raise to pay thousands of pounds a month for a medicine that is legal here.

"It also means that the health of patients is under threat. Covid-19 has merely exacerbated these health and economic inequalities."

Ms Deacon told The Independent that the government and the NHS were "failing to take responsibility for the failing of this policy" and said ministers were too afraid to confront ignorance around the use of cannabis.

"It's a well intentioned policy that has gone spectacularly wrong," she said.

"Lack of decisions around this policy are putting children and their families in very serious situations. Even more so with the arrival of coronavirus, which has caused a huge amount of problems for these families as well."

Ms Deacon, from Kenilworth, Warwickshire, said her son's life had been transformed by the treatment, which also saved the NHS money as he was no longer being regularly hospitalised after seizures.

She called for the NHS to foot the bill for patients to be treated in private clinics, or risk a "two-tier system where people who can afford it can pay for it and people that cannot, can't".

Alex Norris, the shadow public health minister, told The Independent: "I welcomed it when the government accepted the therapeutic use of cannabis but it's not right that getting close to two years later, many patients report that they are still unable to obtain a prescription on the NHS and families are having to pay thousands of pounds a month to private healthcare providers for treatment.

"This creates an unjust two-tier system where those who can pay get access to vital medication and those who cannot pay go without."

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London. PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images

Tory MP Sir Mike Penning, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Access to Medical Cannabis Under Prescription, questioned why severely ill children were being left to suffer large seizures when there was a treatment available.

"Everyone knows Matt Hancock has a lot on but this situation has been dragging on since long before Covid," he said.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: We sympathise with those patients dealing so courageously with challenging conditions.

Since the law changed, two cannabis-based medicines have been made available for prescribing on the NHS for patients with multiple sclerosis or hard to treat epilepsies, where clinically appropriate. This follows clear demonstrated evidence of their safety, clinical and cost effectiveness. We have also changed how we regulate imports to improve supply and reduce costs.

However, more evidence is needed to routinely prescribe and fund other treatments on the NHS. We continue to work with the health system, industry and researchers to improve the evidence base and identify what more we can do to minimise the cost of these medicines for patients, NHS or private.
US President Donald Trumps re-election campaign team has denied the claims that K-pop fans and TikTok users were behind the low turnout for Oklahoma rally. Teenagers across the United States are said to have pranked Trumps campaign team by booking tickets for the rally with no intention to turn up so as to produce empty seats.

Former Republic strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted said that his 16-year-old daughter and her friends in Utah had hundreds of tickets. House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also took a jibe after the low turnout rally saying the team got fooled by TikTok users who tricked them into believing a turnout of over a million people by making fake bookings.

Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID



Shout out to Zoomers. Yall make me so proud.  https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

Brad Parscale, Trumps 2020 campaign manager, said in a statement that the real reason behind the low turnout was fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter protests. He said that recent images of American cities on fire had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally.

Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work, he added.

Read: Donald Trump Says He Held Off Sanctions On China Over Uighur Muslims Due To Trade Talks

'Lame attempt'

Parscale hit out at reporters for gleefully writing about TikTok users and K-Pop fans without contacting the campaign for a comment, adding that they behaved unprofessionally. He claimed that the campaign team had already weeded out bogus tens of thousands numbers at the Tulsa rally in calculating possible attendee pool.

These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking. What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admission - entry is on a first-come-first-served basis and prior registration is not required, he said.

Read: Trump Greeted By Empty Seats At Tulsa Rally, Critics Say 'rolled By American Teens'

Read: Trump Says He Would Consider Meeting Venezuela's Maduro After Failing To Oust Him
Debonair Song Joong Ki is back with his most recent 25-cut pictorial and a video released under his new agency's, HISTORY D&C, YouTube channel.



In the interview that took place after the shoot, the superstar shared honest stories about his life.

When he was asked about what he's up to these days, Song Joong Ki shared, "For such a long time, this time I'm just living a very normal life. I enjoyed reading, watching movies, doing dishes, and other stuff at home."



Song Joong Ki has been staying away from the spotlight since his high-profile divorce, to the extent that any news that comes out about him would feed his fans with new content. The actor also opened up about how he balances his career as an actor and his private life.

"Often, every morning, I do the same routine. I exercise pilates early in the morning. Before, I started for rehabilitation purposes when I hurt my knee. When I did my pilates practice every morning, my mind is getting clearer, and I like it," he said.

When the video and pictures from the photoshoot were posted, people talked about his now-seemingly plump face. Many were curious if he gained weight or did something with it.

To this, Song Joong Ki commented, "I tried and practiced intermittent fasting for about a month because I didn't want to age further. It wasn't that easy, so I gave up before I hit one month."

Giving a sense into how much he is putting effort into staying fit, he commented with sincerity from his voice, "I work very hard to strike a balance between the two. I want to be an actor who always honestly expresses himself."

Song Joong Ki's upcoming movies, "Bogota" and "Space Sweepers," both have been pushed back because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans are also looking forward to another season of "Arthdal Chronicles." Recently, the production has been postponed with indefinite status.

Earlier, a rumor broke out that he has a new girlfriend, but his agency debunked it. HISTORY D&C and his rumored sweetheart's law firm also threatened to take legal action if misinformation continues, given that the lady's identity and personal details circulated online.

Song Joong Ki's full photo spread and interview are available in "Hi_High."

In the meantime, check out the trailer below for his upcoming movie "Space Sweepers."


As a young journalist starting out many years ago, I was proud to join a profession where so many men and women had distinguished themselves through honest, thorough investigations, entertaining features, and excellence in writing. But for a long while, Ive been depressed to see much of the press openly working as political operatives. Objectivity in reporting was always impossible, but at least it used to be discussed as a goal. Now journalists boast of their advocacy journalism for an increasingly leftist agenda.

Former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg chronicled the medias slanting of the news in the first of his bestselling books, Bias. A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (2002) and has continued to document the trend ever since. Now that bias has swung to the radical left, the media increasingly damage their own credibility. Even Rolling Stone -- which abhors the president -- has published a piece titled, The American Press Is Destroying Itself by Matt Taibbi. It begins: It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. Its become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

Taibbi condemns the shaming, threats and intimidation that are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony. Taibbi has nailed it. Journalists who enjoy unfettered and constitutionally protected rights to say or write nearly anything they want in this country, and who predicted that Trump would silence them, now work to wrest rights of free speech from others. Failure to toe the line results in sudden job expulsions, coerced apologies for wrong statements, redefinitions of language, threats to ruin businesses and reputations, and campaigns to quash dissenting voices. Respected students of history rightly see echoes of the early days of Communism in these tactics.

Casualties are piling up like homeless tents under freeway underpasses. NBC appealed to Google to deplatform a tiny, mainstream conservative website, the Federalist, over allegedly problematic language, in effect trying to shut it down. NBCs Verification Center falsely claimed that Google had demonetized the website, and to survive Big Brother, the Federalist has had to disable comments for the moment.

The New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for publishing an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R), who argued for bringing in the U.S. military to restore order in cities where the police were overwhelmed. (George H.W. Bush deployed troops in Los Angeles to tamp down riots following the Rodney King court verdict.)

NYT reporters threw tantrums, claiming the op-ed endangered the lives of black coworkers. Incredibly, the papers management rewarded the tantrums by taking a knee. Is it time the paper updated its motto for accuracy? How about, Just the views we like to print?

In a domino effect, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, resigned under pressure for the headline, Buildings Matter, Too, on an article that suggested that buildings damaged by violence could leave a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia. Editors at the website Refinery29 and Bon Appetit magazine resigned over sudden allegations of racism.

Bon voyage, comrades. See you at the reeducation camp.

The medias open agenda to change society in a hard-left direction has led them to junk the high standards we were taught in J-school. Pay close attention when you read or listen to the news. What questions are reporters asking, and what arent they asking? Who are they interviewing? Who are they ignoring on the other side? What books with social and political agendas are reviewed, and which are ignored?

Note the headline, Atlanta police killed a Black man for being drunk at Wendys, (L.A. Times, June 16) regarding the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, in which the Times acts as judge and jury in the case, ignoring the twenty-six minutes the officers spent talking to Brooks calmly before deciding they needed to arrest him, barely mentioning Brooks resisting arrest and grabbing an officers taser.

Ask yourselves why journalists curiosity stops short of any self-evaluation, such as admitting that they all rushed to affirm the Russian collusion theory, now thoroughly discredited.

A long-term study titled "The American Journalist in the Digital Age" revealed that in 1971, Republicans represented 25.7% of all journalists, Democrats, 35.5%; and Independents, 32.5%. By 2014, the year of the last survey, only 7.1% of journalists identified as Republican, and Democrats outnumbering them four to one. So much for diversity in the newsroom.

In Ethics of the Fathers, a classic Jewish text on the human condition, it says, Who is wise? One who learns from everyone. A timely lesson for those in the media today.

Judy Gruens latest book is The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith.
Veterans such as Salmon native Ansley James "Jim" Simer returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Simer will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Military and U-Haul Service

Simer was born in March 1926 near Salmon, Idaho, to Burt and Emma Simer. He was one of 11 children. His father was a prospector who supported the family during the Great Depression by placer mining for gold.

In 1940, the family moved to Portland, Ore. By the time he was 14, Simer was going to school during the day and working in the Portland shipyards as a welder at night.

Simer joined the Army in September 1944. He served as a combat infantryman with the 41st Infantry Division. Nicknamed the "Jungleers," the 41st participated in the New Guinea, Southern Philippines and Papuan campaigns. Simer's unit fought in the Leyte and Luzon campaigns to liberate the Philippines.

As the first scout for his platoon, Simer was injured in the Battle of Luzon and was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valor. He also received the Philippine Liberation Medal (one bronze star), the Asiatic Pacific Service Medal and the Victory Medal. He was honorably discharged in November 1946.

After the war, Simer worked on a large wheat farm in Oregon for several years before returning to the shipyards. In 1960, he joined U-Haul as an area field manager, servicing U-Haul dealerships in Eastern Oregon. Simer joined the crew at the Southgate Rental Equipment Repair Shop as a trailer repairman in 1969 and was promoted to the role of lead repairman in 1971. In 1977, Simer was named repair shop president. He held that position until his retirement in 1988.

Simer passed away in 2013.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Simer is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Jim.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


Former national security advisor John Bolton told ABC News he hopes history will remember President Trump "as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from."

Details: In an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, broadcast Sunday night, Bolton said, "We can get over one term  I have absolute confidence, even if it's not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November. Two terms, I'm more troubled about." But he made clear he would not vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

"I don't think he's a conservative Republican. I'm not going to vote for him in November  certainly not going to vote for Joe Biden either," Bolton said, per ABC News. "I'm going to figure out a conservative Republican to vote in."

Of note: The interview was broadcast soon after a spokesperson for Bolton, whose scathing memoir about his time in the Trump White House will be published on Tuesday, issued a statement denying a Daily Telegraph report that the former national security adviser planned to vote for Biden.

Context: After the Telegraph reported on Sunday afternoon that Bolton told the paper he would vote for Biden, Bolton spokesperson Sarah Tinsley said in a statement to Axios, "This statement is incorrect. The Ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden.

"He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican. Let there be no doubt  he will not be voting for Trump or Biden."

Background: The Telegraph wrote in a story touting its exclusive interview with Bolton:

As a lifelong Republican who has held high office in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, John Bolton, Donald Trumps former National Security Advisor, is not someone who normally considers voting Democrat.

Yet, such is the strength of the 71-year-old Washington veterans disaffection with Mr Trumps presidency, that this is precisely how he intends to cast his vote in Novembers U.S. presidential election. Rather than voting for the president he served for 17 months as National Security Advisor until his resignation last year, Mr Bolton says he intends to vote for Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate.

What he said: "In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton," Bolton reportedly told the Telegraph. "Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again. My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back."

"The president does not have a philosophical grounding or strategy, he continued. He does not know the difference between the national interest of the U.S., and the interests of Donald Trump. There is confusion over the national interest and his personal interest, which is very dangerous for the country."

"When you are in a senior position you have an obligation to tell the truth, he added. "I was concerned after 17 months in the administration that he (Mr Trump) did not have the requisite competence to be president, and the American people need to know about that."

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include Bolton's ABC interview and to reflect that a Bolton spokesperson denied telling The Telegraph that he will vote for Biden in November.

Go deeper: John Bolton: Trump directly linked Ukraine aid to Biden investigation
The so-called Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 recently signed into law by the U.S. deliberately defames the human right conditions in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, slanders the autonomous regions achievements in counter-terrorism and de-radicalization, and grossly interferes in Chinas domestic affairs.

It once again exposed the double-standards and hypocrisy of the American human rights. To protect human rights is not the aim of the U.S., but a disguise for the White House to undermine Chinas stability and development. Under the banner of human right protection, the U.S. is indeed seeking for hegemony.

Xinjiang is a major battlefield of China regarding counter-terrorism and de-radicalization. The essence of Xinjiang-related issues is not about human rights, ethnicity, or religion, but about combating terrorism and de-radicalization.

From the 1990s to the end of 2016, thousands of violent terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, inflicting heavy casualties and property losses and greatly impeding the economic development and social progress of the autonomous region.

Its a consensus now that without secure and stable social environment, the rights to life and subsistence of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang will be endangered, let alone other rights and interests.

The rights to life, health and development are the most basic human rights. Counter-terrorism and de-radicalization are a common responsibility of the international society, and also a necessary approach to safeguard human rights. Over the years, multiple countries and regions have actively explored the ways to combat and prevent terrorism and extremism based on their own conditions.

Learning the international experience on counter-terrorism and starting from its own conditions, China has been making intensive counterterrorism and de-radicalization efforts. Upholding the principle of fighting and preventing terrorism at the same time, the autonomous region has been taking aggressive action against violent terrorist crimes, and at the same time, addressing the problem at its source. It has been making every effort to protect the fundamental human rights of citizens from violation by terrorism and extremism. Specific measures include improving public wellbeing, promoting knowledge of the law through education, and offering education and aid through vocational education and training centers in accordance with the law. The country has laid a solid foundation for Xinjiangs social stability and lasting peace.

Specifically, the vocational education and training centers established in recent years have effectively curbed the breeding and spread of terrorism and extremism, as well as the frequent occurrences of terrorist activities, helping the autonomous region achieve important phased victory in counter-terrorism and de-radicalization.

Over the past three years, there has not been a single violent terrorist case in Xinjiang. Peace and harmony have returned, and local people have a much stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness and security. The counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts aims to eliminate the tumors that impede people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang from achieving a better life, and have led to social harmony and stability, as well as healthy development in the autonomous region.

Rumors are dispelled by truths and lies are laid bare by facts. Compared with the hearsay and distortion in the so-called Act, those who have actually visited Xinjiang have more say on the autonomous regions real conditions.

Since the end of 2018, over 1,000 people, including foreign diplomatic envoys to China from nearly 100 countries and regions, UN officials, Geneva-based senior diplomats of various countries, as well as more than 70 groups (or delegations) from political parties, civil society organizations, news media, and religious organizations of various countries have visited Xinjiangs vocational education and training centers. They believe that the vocational education and training centers are in keeping with the purposes and principles of the UN to combat terrorism and safeguard basic human rights, and have found experience of counterterrorism and de-radicalization for the international society. They hold that the successful example of China is worth learning from.

Terrorism and extremism are a common enemy of the human society. Therefore, the efforts to combat them made by countries shall be free from double-standards, and must not be distorted in a way that goes against international justice and human conscience.

The U.S. is also a victim to terrorism, and shall understand and support Chinas counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts. However, it is repeatedly interfering in Chinas domestic affairs and viciously attacking Chinas efforts in this regard in the name of human right protection, which certainly triggers the strong indignation and opposition of the Chinese people.

The U.S. had better reflect on its own institutional problems of human rights, and not make troubles under the banner of human right protection. If it keeps going toward the wrong direction, what lie ahead will only be discredit and self-damage.
ANN ARBOR, MI - A man has been arrested in connection with last weeks non-fatal shooting in Ann Arbor of a woman, police said.

Eric Tyronne Gibbons, a 35-year-old Ann Arbor man, was charged Sunday, June 21 on four charges, including assault with intent to murder, assault with a deadly weapons and felony possession of a firearm and ammunition, according to an Ann Arbor Police Department release.

Officers responded to a shots fired report at 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17 in the 2900 block of Packard Street, police said. After investigation, police determined Gibbons and the 24-year-old female victim attended the same house party in Ann Arbor prior to the shooting.

The woman suffered non-life threatening injuries and was expected to recover on the night of the shooting, police said.

Woman shot near Ann Arbor business, male suspect at large, police say

Gibbons stayed at a hotel in the days following the shooting, which is where police tracked and arrested him on Friday, June 19, the release stated. Gibbons fled the hotel on foot, and Ann Arbor police were able to apprehend him with help with Michigan State and Pittsfield Township police, the release stated.

Police recovered a weapon and linked it to Gibbons and the shooting, the release stated. Gibbons is lodged at the Washtenaw County Jail awaiting a scheduled court hearing.

Read more from The Ann Arbor News:

Two motorcyclists injured avoiding fallen debris on Milan area highway

Motorcycle crash leaves 1 in critical condition in Ann Arbor area, officials say

Fire destroys Northfield Township home, falling debris injures firefighter
Bexar County officials reported 538 new coronavirus cases Sunday  the largest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic  and one new death.

The number of patients in San Antonio-area hospitals and in intensive care units also continued to rise, deepening concern that the hospital system could be overwhelmed.

The newly confirmed cases brought Bexar Countys total to 6,882, the Metropolitan Health District reported.

The countys death toll from the virus, which began spreading in the community in March, now stands at 97. The latest victim was a Hispanic man in his 50s. Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the man had no underlying health conditions.

Enter to win: Were giving away a $75 gift card and relaxing recliner

Nirenberg, reacting to the latest numbers, renewed his appeal to San Antonians to practice social distancing and wear masks when in public.

Dont use the states reopening plan as an excuse to throw house parties or hold extensive gatherings, Nirenberg said in a tweet. We have yet to discover a COVID-19 cure or vaccine. Wearing a mask seems so simple, but it can save lives.

Metro Health statistics for the month of June depict a steep climb in infections and hospitalizations.

A total of 406 COVID-positive patients were in area hospitals Sunday evening, the public health agency reported. That was 70 more than on Saturday and more than four times as many as on June 1, when hospitals were treating just 93 coronavirus patients.

Of those currently hospitalized, 133 were in intensive care Sunday, up from 111 the day before and just 39 at the beginning of the month.

Sixty-four patients were on ventilators, compared with 49 on Saturday. On June 1, there were 20.
Bono's daughter Eve Hewson has admitted having a famous father helped her 'get in the door' of the acting world - but it later became 'a hindrance'.

The actress, 28, said that while some of her drama school friends struggled to get an agent or an audition, she has never had the same experience because of her family connections.

The screen star claimed filmmakers and fellow actors often 'can't separate you from your father or see you as an individual' and conceded that most have 'very low expectations' of her skills.

Fame game: Bono's daughter Eve Hewson (pictured in February) has admitted having a famous father helped her 'get in the door' of the acting world - but it later became 'a hindrance'

Speaking in an interview with this week's Radio Times, she said: 'In the beginning, I think it was easier for me to get in the door. Some of the friends I went to Tisch with are the most talented actors but have found it difficult to get an audition.

'That's never been a problem for me, and I think that's because of my family. That's not the way the system should work, of course, but if the door is open, walk through the door.

'It can then become a bit of a hindrance, because they can't separate you from your father or see you as an individual.

'Often, they have very low expectations, and they really don't think you're going to be good. And then you are quite good, and they are quite surprised.'

She said: The actress, 28, said while some of her drama school friends struggled to get an audition, she has never had the same experience because of her family (pictured in 2013)

Eve also revealed her plan to get back to work in March went quickly downhill when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

The Bridge Of Spies and Robin Hood actress was in New York when the rapid spread of Covid-19 turned into a pandemic.

She decided to flea the country and return to Ireland on March 16 - the day when the US government announced a ban on all non-US citizens travelling in from Europe, the UK and Ireland.

She said: 'I have never loved a city more than New York, I've lived there for 10 years and it's my favourite city in the world so it's a very strange thing that I can't get back there at the moment.'

Tough: The screen star claimed filmmakers and fellow actors often 'can't separate you from your father or see you as an individual' (pictured in This Must Be The Place in 2011)

Eve is currently spending lockdown at her hometown of Dublin and is living with her entire family.

The actress has said it's been lovely to be able to spend lots of time with her siblings, Jordan, 31, Elijah, 20, and John, 19, without the distractions of normal life.

And her family being made up of creatives has helped keep them all entertained. Her sister, Jordan, is a poet and her brother is a musician.

Her mother, Ali, is an activist and businesswoman while her father, Paul, is better known as Bono from U2.

Eve had to spend six months filming in New Zealand as she starred in her first BBC drama, The Luminaries - playing Anna Wetherell.

So she is particularly enjoying time with her family because no one was able to fly and visit her during that time of filming.

Big break: Eve shot to fame after starring in Bridge of Spies as Tom Hank's daughter (pictured)

Anna Wetherell is the heroine of the six-part period drama adapted from the Man Booker prize-winning novel by Eleanor Catton.

Six years ago she played nurse Lucy Elkins in the HBO series The Knick opposite Clive Owen as a drug-addicted Dr John Thackery. Eve also played Tom Hanks's daughter in Bridge of Spies in 2015.

But Eve admits that she didn't always know she wanted to be an actor.

She said: 'I was a really bad student. I was one of those kids who was like, ''I'm not going to apply myself, this is all bulls**t, why am I here?"

'I got to go away on my own to North Carolina to film while everyone else was in school, that was when I realised this was what I wanted to do.'

Away from home: The actress last year had to spend six months filming in New Zealand as she starred in her first BBC drama, The Luminaries - playing Anna Wetherell

Opening up: Eve made the comments in a tell-all interview with the Radio Times

However, although her parents were supportive of her ambitions, they still had doubts about her success.

The pair tried to prepare their daughter for the inevitable rejection every actor must face but when Eve moved to New York at the age of 18 to study drama at Tisch School of the Arts, her parents relocated for a while too.

One she finished drama school she first starred in Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place alongside Sean Penn and Frances McDormand.

She then played James Gandolfini's daughter in Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said.

More recently, she starred in a psychological miniseries for Netflix - Behind Her Eyes and the film Tesla with Ethan Hawke.
Carlsbad Current-Argus

Ninety-four parcels of federal public land in New Mexico and West Texas that were offered in the Bureau of Land Managements May oil and gas lease sale postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic were added to the BLMs August lease sale in addition to 19 more parcels in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

The new parcels included two in Eddy County on 680 acres and seven in Lea County on 2,082 acres.

A previously offered 40-acre parcel in Eddy County was dropped from the August sale.

In Oklahoma, a 16.5-acre parcel was offered in Blaine County, along with a 58.6-acre parcel in Dewey County and a 29.7-acre parcel in Ellis County.

In Texas, five parcels were offered in Washington County for a total of about 321 acres, along with a 105-acre parcel in Lee County, and a 71-acre parcel in Denton County.

BLM Public Affairs Specialist Allison Sandoval said the 94 parcels postponed from the May sale would be offered during the Aug. 26-27 lease sale, but protests would only be accepted for the new 19 parcels as the process was already completed for the May sale before it was postponed.

The protest period for the upcoming sale was scheduled from June 22 to July 1.

In that sale, five parcels of land were offered in Eddy County on about 3,500 acres of public land, with 10 offered in Lea County on about 4,100 acres and another single parcel in Wise County, Texas on 31 acres.

About 80% of the sale was for parcels in Chaves County, to the north of Lea and Eddy, with 79 parcels nominated on 37,000 acres of public land.

Parcels previously nominated in the San Juan Basin in northwest New Mexico were removed from the sale, records show.

Environmentalists called on the BLM to block all lease sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, which continued to spread throughout New Mexico as of Tuesday when the August sale was announced.

On Tuesday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced 88 new positive cases of the disease, with five in Lea County, one new case in Eddy and no new cases in Chaves County where the states nominated parcels for the sale were located.

In total, the three counties included in the sale, Eddy, Lea and Chaves, had 48, 49 and 59 cases respectively, records show  significantly less than 2,129 in San Juan County and 2,949 in McKinley County which are both in northwest New Mexico and near the San Juan Basin.

Miya King-Flaherty, oil and gas organizer with the Rio Grand Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the August lease sale should be postponed along with the May sale, amid historically low oil prices brought on by the pandemic.

The price of oil plummeted below $0 per barrel for the first time in history in April, recovering slightly in the following months, but had yet to cross the $50 per barrel threshold most operators need to break even on oil production.

This administration has absolutely no good reason or justification for moving forward with the August lease sale when prices are at historic lows and operators are shutting in wells and seeking royalty relief, King-Flaherty said.

She also called on the BLM to allow public comment on all the parcels offered in the August sale, including those postponed from the May sale that already underwent a previous public comment and protest period.

Furthermore, its absolutely egregious that the Bureau of Land Management is sneaking through parcels from the postponed May lease into August and silencing the public from further commenting on them, King-Flaherty said.

The public should have every right to comment on public lands that are to be sacrificed for oil and gas development that is harming our public health and our communities.

James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children said lease sales were inappropriate during the pandemic, and the low price of oil could cause operators to bid lower on land to be used for oil and gas development.

Moving forward with oil and gas lease sales in the middle of this pandemic  when the oil market is crashing, and communities are focused on the health and safety of their loved ones  is misguided, dangerous, and just flat wrong, Jimenez said.

It is irresponsible for the Trump administration to lease New Mexicos public lands for below-market value when the industry is actively suspending operations and New Mexico workers and families are suffering.
It didnt take long to eliminate most traces of President Donald Trumps high-profile rally and its counter protests from downtown Tulsa this weekend.

Cleanup crews began collecting trash and removing barriers surrounding the BOK Center around 10 p.m. Saturday night  not long after Trumps departure from the arena.

By Sunday afternoon, employees from All-Star Disaster Restoration had packed up an estimated 17,000 feet of pedestrian barricades that was used for the rally. Company co-owner Nathan Butterfield said the larger barriers encompassing the blocks around the BOK Center should be removed by Monday morning, calling the task a different kind of beast.

Many local businesses also remained boarded up Sunday. Other than that, downtown pretty much was back to normal  or at least as normal as its been since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

While downtown has quieted in the aftermath of the Trump rally, social media has not.

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum took to Facebook and Twitter on Sunday morning to applaud Trump supporters and counter protesters for their civility.
[June 22, 2020] Lightyear Capital Announces Majority Investment in HPOne

Lightyear Capital LLC ("Lightyear"), a New York-based private equity firm focused on financial services, announced today that investment funds affiliated with Lightyear have agreed to acquire an indirect controlling stake in Health Plan One, Inc. ("HPOne" or the "Company"), a leading technology-enabled platform and online marketplace delivering end-to-end, direct-to-consumer enrollment solutions focused exclusively on the high-growth Medicare insurance market. Lightyear's affiliated investment funds are purchasing equity from Peloton Equity and other individual investors. Such investors, along with HPOne's senior management team, will remain shareholders in the Company. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in July 2020, subject to regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of closing conditions. Founded in 2006 by Chief Executive Officer Bill Stapleton, HPOne is a fast-growing, independent digital insurance broker headquartered in Trumbull, Connecticut. Using proprietary technology solutions coupled with deep industry knowledge, the Company provides an online marketplace for consumers purchasing Medicare plans, along with a range of outsourced sales, marketing, and contact services for national and regional health plans including MedicareUSA.com, the Company's online Medicare enrollment portal. HPOne's core differentiation is its exclusive focus on the Medicare health insurance industry, bringing innovative and performance-based solutions that benefit from the increasing digitization of insurance distribution. With state-of-the-art online marketing, multiple US-based contact centers, expertise in home-based workforce management, and an experienced management team, HPOne provides consumers with online tools to compare and purchase Medicare plans and its clients with the solutions they need to profitably grow and manage their businesses.



Jim Foreman, Senior Advisor to investment funds affiliated with Lightyear and a former Executive Committee member at both Aetna and Willis Towers Watson, will join HPOne as Chairman. Foreman stated, "I am thrilled to be working with Bill and his management team as we continue to partner with health plans and build a best-in-class consumer experience in purchasing healthcare. There are a number of important tailwinds that we believe will propel the business forward: the transition from 'feet on the street' traditional brokers in a post-COVID-19 environment, the public policy interest in delivering Medicare solutions to a wider group of Americans, and the benefits of an enhanced commitment to and investment in data analytics."

"The investment in HPOne reflects years of active efforts to identify and pursue digital insurance distribution companies, particularly those serving the rapidly growing Medicare market," said Mark F. Vassallo, Managing Partner of Lightyear. "We believe Bill and his team have built an impressive platform to connect health insurance carriers directly with consumers in a $9.1 billion market, which we estimate is growing 11 percent per year. We look forward to working with them as they execute on their growth plans." Lightyear and its affiliated investment funds have significant experience owning companies that operate at the intersection of healthcare and financial services, including realized investments in Alegeus Technologies Holding Corp., a market leader in consumer-directed healthcare solutions, and Paradigm Management Services, LLC, the largest nationwide provider of outsourced catastrophic workers' compensation case management services for insurance companies and self-insured employers. Lightyear's affiliated investment funds' current investment in Datalot Holdings, L.P. ("Datalot") highlights the digital transformation across financial services, as Datalot is a leading provider of mobile and web marketing technology solutions for the insurance industry. About Lightyear Capital LLC Founded in 2000, Lightyear is a financial services-focused private equity firm based in New York. Through its affiliated private equity funds, Lightyear makes primarily control investments in North America-based, middle-market companies associated with financial services, including asset management and wealth management, banks and brokerage, commercial and consumer finance, financial technology, healthcare financial services, insurance, and tech-enabled business services. Lightyear brings focus and discipline to its investment process, as well as operating, transaction and strategic management experience, along with significant contacts and resources beyond capital. For more information, please visit www.lycap.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005149/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A 70-year-old man succumbed to Covid-19 at SPS Hospital here on Monday.

The victim, Joginder Singh of Shivpuri, was rushed to the hospital on June 19 with symptoms of shortness of breath. He was provided ventilator support but his condition continued to deteriorate, said medical superintendent Dr Rajiv Kundra.

The patient was suffering from comorbidities, including hypertension, diabetes and renal failure, said Dr Kundra.

So far, 560 Covid-19 cases have been reported from the city, of which 156 patients were from other districts and states.

A total of 15 people have succumbed to the disease, of which 13 were from outside the district.

SIX POLICE PERSONNEL HOSPITALISED

Six police personnel, including a woman constable, an additional station house officer and two assistant sub-inspectors, were among the 44 persons to test positive for Covid-19 here on Sunday.

Additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP) Dr Sachin Gupta, who is also the nodal officer for Covid-19, said, Assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Raghbir Singh, 53, posted at Sahnewal police station; Amandeep Singh, 32, a Munshi at Sahnewal police station; ASI Surinderpal, 49, a constable; Kulwant Singh, 49, and Shimlapuri police woman constable Sushmarani were hospitalised after their reports came in.

COVID-19 PATIENT ESCAPES

The health department faced resistance when they arrived to pick up people who had tested Covid-19 positive in Prem Nagar on Sunday evening.

Three patients refused to go to the hospital. After the police were called in two agreed to visit the hospital while the third patient escaped.
The house was formerly occupied by Dale Andrew Code, 37, who was convicted of forgery in November last year and is now serving a 10-year goal sentence.

One of the forged $10 notes discovered in 1967. Credit:Paul Murray

Forged $10 notes with a face value of thousands of dollars were found, burnt and charred, in a chimney in a house in Monomeith Crescent, Mount Waverley, yesterday.

First published in The Age on June 24, 1968

A police search at the house yesterday failed to find the counterfeit plates, which have been hunted throughout Australia.

Detective First Constable L. Craig, of Russell Street, said last night a more intensive search would be made today.

The plates were used to print forgeries with a face value of $1 million. The fake bills flooded Australia in late 1966 and early last year.

The charred notes were found by Mr. Kevin Walker, who has rented the house for the past 13 months.

Mr. Walker said his briquette heater had not been functioning properly all winter, so he decided to find out why.
Then-candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Henderson, Nev., in 2016. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

President Trump on Monday expanded a measure restricting visas to the United States to target many more temporary foreign workers, limiting immigrants from coming to the country for employment in industries including technology, academia, hotels and construction.

The order primarily affects H-1B visas, broadly set out for high-skilled workers; H-2B visas, for seasonal employees; L-1 visas, for corporate executives; and J-1 visas, for scholars and exchange programs, restricting new authorizations through Dec. 31. The new measure takes effect Wednesday.

Yet it also comes with broad exemptions, such as for many potential agricultural, healthcare and food industry workers. It does not change the status of immigrants already in the U.S.

In the order, Trump wrote that admitting workers to the country within the targeted visa categories "poses a risk of displacing and disadvantaging United States workers during the current recovery" and "would be detrimental to the interests of the United States."

Amid his administrations struggle to respond to the coronavirus, Trump has cited high unemployment as the primary motivation for moves to restrict immigration, such as a bar on most new green card applicants that will also be extended.

Administration officials estimated the move would "protect" more than 500,000 jobs. Yet neither the president in the order itself nor senior officials who described the measure on a Monday press call provided much evidence to back the claim that immigrants have taken jobs from Americans out of work in those fields because of the virus. The latest measure would mostly target nonimmigrant visa categories.

Doug Rand, a former Obama administration official who is a cofounder of Boundless Immigration, said Trump officials have been ratcheting up work visa restrictions from the administrations outset, when unemployment was low.

The pandemic is just a pretext, he said.

Underscoring often chaotic policymaking, one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the order would exempt au pairs. Yet the text of the order released hours later included au pairs in the restrictions, along with interns, teachers and camp counselors.

Story continues

Based on fiscal 2019 data, the proposed measure  if kept in place for a year  could affect more than 550,000 potential immigrant workers, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the nonpartisan American Immigration Council.

At the end of April, Trump signed a proclamation that restricted some new entrants from entering the country for 60 days who did not already have visas or other travel documents but included carve-outs for several categories of foreign workers and employers, as well as their spouses and children.

After coming under pressure from business interests , who argued work authorizations for immigrants in fields such as agriculture and health were crucial to the coronavirus response, the president instead issued in April a dramatically scaled-back memorandum than what he initially described as an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!

But after announcing the restrictions, which primarily targeted potential green card applicants, Trump also faced criticism from immigration restrictionists, including in his own White House, who motivate his political base.

Amending it or extending it, that we can do at the appropriate time, Trump said in April, previewing Mondays changes. But its now signed.

Research shows immigrants strengthen the economy and typically dont compete with U.S.-born workers for jobs or lower their wages. Most employment-based immigration to the U.S. already requires a labor market test to demonstrate theres no available U.S. citizen to fill the position, and many of the affected industries, as well as Trump officials themselves, have advocated for more immigration, not less .

"Under ordinary circumstances, properly administered temporary worker programs can provide benefits to the economy," the Monday order acknowledged.

H-1B visas, for example, allow companies to hire workers with specialized skills that the American labor force cannot provide  and in recent years, about three-quarters of the annual supply of 85,000 H-1B visas have gone to workers in the technology industry.

In 2019, Amazon led the nation in approved H-1B visas with 3,026, followed by Google with 2,678 and the outsourcing firm Tata with 1,733, and Facebook, IBM, Intel and Apple also rank among the top 10 H-1B employers.

Workers who receive H-1B visas are often paid less than their naturalized colleagues, and a 10,000-person survey conducted by the tech website OneZero in February found that many were left feeling trapped by an immigration program that linked their ability to work to sponsorship by their current employer.

That hasnt curbed demand, from both individual applicants and sponsoring companies. Multiple studies have found that the American supply of IT workers is not enough to fill all the jobs being created by the countrys ever-growing technology sector.

But the Trump administration has made the application process more difficult. Since 2018, the rate of H-1B applications accepted has dipped, from a consistent acceptance rate above 90% from 2015 to 2017 to below 85% in the last two years, and many applicants report that the process has become more difficult to navigate.

At the same time, amid the coronavirus crisis, the Trump administration has also touted making it easier for agricultural workers to come from Central America to the United States to work in an industry it deemed essential to the coronavirus response. These workers would continue to be largely exempted from the latest restrictions.

As the administration urges a reopening of the U.S. economy and states start to ease coronavirus restrictions, its increasingly unclear how the latest measure and other prior steps to stem immigration are connected to public health.

Even before the emergence of the coronavirus, anti-immigration hard-liners such as White House advisor Stephen Miller sought to use public health to bar migrants .

Now, immigration to the United States has ground to a near-complete stop, primarily stemming from a March order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that border authorities have cited to rapidly expel tens of thousands of migrants without due process , including asylum seekers and unaccompanied children. That order has been extended indefinitely, and Canada and Mexico have agreed to continue border closures barring nonessential travel through July.

Andrea Flores, deputy director of immigration policy for the ACLU, which has challenged these restrictions in court, said Monday of the latest proposals, This is not a COVID-19 response or an economic response."

Its the exploitation of a pandemic to institute divisive policies and reshape immigration law, while superseding Congress, she said in a statement.

The administration has also threatened to shut down U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security Department agency that administers the legal immigration system and many of the affected visas, citing a $1.2-billion shortfall, despite pausing most of the programs the fee-based agency manages.

And officials issued new regulations to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to work  or win asylum in the first place, though only a fraction of applicants ultimately do.

If immigration to the U.S. had not essentially been paused, the restrictions on green card applications would affect a large number of people  more than 350,000 if the ban remained in place for a full year, according to some analysts. More than 1 million foreign nationals obtained lawful permanent residence last fiscal year, about 45% of whom entered as new arrivals, according to the Homeland Security Departments statistics.

As he gears up for his 2020 reelection bid, Trump has been increasingly frustrated by the broad perception that his administration has poorly handled the coronavirus response, and that he has not been able to fulfill the promises of his 2016 presidential campaign on signature issues such as immigration and the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Tuesday, after a Saturday rally in Tulsa, Okla., that fell far short of expectations, the president heads to Yuma, Ariz., to mark the completion of 200 miles of new wall along the southwest border with Mexico, according to a Department of Homeland Security release.

The departments latest border wall status report shows that after nearly four years and some $15 billion in federal funding directed to the effort, despite completing projects to replace outdated and dilapidated fencing, in total, only about 3 miles of new border wall system constructed in locations where no barriers previously existed."

Staff writer Samuel Dean in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
A woman who went mute for two months after a mystery brain injury has finally got her voice back - but now speaks with four different accents.

Doctors were perplexed after countless tests failed to explain why Emily Egan, 31, of Bournemouth, lost the ability to speak in January.

After two months of communicating through an app that read her texts in a computerised voice, Emily's own voice came back, but sounded nothing like before. Instead, she spoke with different accents, ranging from Polish to Russian, French or Italian.

She was eventually diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome, a rare disorder caused by brain damage. The Essex-born woman said she was left exhausted after weeks of confusion and slurred speech.

She revealed she had to quit her job due to the fact stressful situations made her speech worse, and was even called a 'foreigner' by racist strangers, who said people like her had brought coronavirus into the country.

Emily Egan, 31, from Bournemouth, revealed she was mute for month after losing her voice in January. She said that when she was finally able to speak again, she spoke in four different accents

Medics initially suspected a stroke, but it was ruled out and they believe her speech disorder was caused by brain damage - but don't yet know what caused it

Emily said: 'This whole experience has been exhausting and totally overwhelming.

'It's not just my accent that has changed - I don't speak or think in the same way as before this, and I can't construct sentences like I used to.

'I write differently now, my whole vocabulary has changed, and my English has gotten worse despite living in the UK all of my life.

Emily revealed the condition caused her to speak in broken English, even though she was born in Essex. She added strangers had abused her because of her accent, calling her a 'foreigner' and blaming her for bringing coronavirus into the country

What is Foreign accent syndrome This extremely rare condition has affected only 100 people worldwide since it first came to light in 1907. It can occur after a trauma affect the part of the brain that controls our speech. Strokes, traumatic brain injuries, brain lesions or aneurysms can cause the condition to occur. Multiple sclerosis (MS), a central nervous system condition, is also named among the condition that can cause this particular syndrome. Symptoms can cause people to speak their native language with an accent, as if they were a person who had learned it as a second language. Speech therapy and treating the underlying cause of the disorder can offer some form of treatment Source: healthline.com Advertisement

'My dad has said that I don't sound like me any moret, in that he'd never imagine me wording things like I do now.

'I've even experienced abuse from strangers who think I am foreign. I had a man shout at me in the supermarket saying foreigners like me are the reason we have coronavirus.

'It's changed my life completely.'

In January 2020, Emily had been suffering from headaches for two weeks before her voice suddenly deepened while she was working at the children's home she managed in Bournemouth.

Her speech rapidly became slow and slurred - a key indication of a stroke - so Emily was rushed to hospital where she underwent extensive CT and MRI scans.

Doctors ruled out a stroke, but were left confused when Emily lost the ability to speak completely during her hospital stay.

The Bournemouth-based woman said the condition had left her exhausted and unable to work, as stress caused her condition to worsen

She was discharged to a neurologist after three weeks in hospital but still without a voice, and communicated solely through an app on her phone.

She said: 'I knew a bit of basic sign language because I needed it for work years ago, but I just used my hands to express what I wanted to say.

'I had to use a "text to speak" app on my iPhone which sounded like Stephen Hawkins and it just wasn't me.

'Adjusting to communicating like this was so hard, I felt like a completely different person.'

Emily and her partner Bradleigh, 27, had booked a holiday to Thailand before she fell ill. and her neurologist encouraged her to take the trip and try to relax as much as possible.

Five days into her holiday in March 2020, Emily slowly began to speak again but with great difficulty and she said she 'sounded deaf.'

Emily said she struggled with her new voice, which sounds nothing like she was used to. She mostly speak with a Russian or Polish accent

Emily showing her throat, covered in red patches. She revealed she was now learning to accept her new voice

Her voice slowly grew stronger as the days passed but Emily was shocked when she realised she had developed an Eastern European accent.

She was finally diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome in March 2020 and now her voice rapidly changes between Polish, Russian, French and Italian.

Emily said: 'I'm an Essex girl normally - my accent was really strong and my voice was very high pitched and really recognisable, people always knew it was me calling.

'On holiday, I started making sounds like a deaf person trying to talk - it is thought that the neuropathways had started to open as my body had completely relaxed.

'By the time I was home, the words were sounding like a foreign language.

Since her diagnosis, Emily has been having private vocal therapy once a week over Zoom but there is no indication if she will ever regain her normal accent

'I was so thrilled when my voice started coming back but now I don't even recognise the voice that comes out of my mouth, it doesn't sound like me.

'I actually used to be so good at putting on accents for my friends before this and I've even had people ask if I'm putting it on - as if I could keep it up this long!'

Since her diagnosis, Emily has been having private vocal therapy once a week over Zoom but there is no indication if she will ever regain her normal accent.

Her extremely rare condition has sent her body into shut down, leaving her exhausted and she experienced left side weakness two weeks ago.

Again a symptom of a stroke, Emily was rushed to hospital and has now been diagnosed with a functional neurological disorder as well.

Her left arm and hand are now paralysed but doctors hope she will regain feeling and movement with time and physical therapy.

Emily said: 'I'm only 31 years old and I am shocked at how much my life has changed in a matter of months.

'I've had to stop working because my job is quite stressful and the doctors have said stress will only make my condition worse.

'The hardest thing for me is learning that this voice is ok. I have to learn to accept that it's ok for me to not be able to get the words out straight away, it'll come eventually.

Her extremely rare condition has sent her body into shut down, leaving her exhausted and she experienced left side weakness two weeks ago. She has since then been diagnosed with a neurological disorder as well

'I just have to stop getting so frustrated with myself so am practicing holistic approaches to calm and clear my mind with my therapist, as when I get frustrated, everything goes, there's no speech, and it's back to square one.

'I am learning that when I'm tired, my speech goes or my accent changes - it will deepen and go slow, and for the last week, it's been predominantly Russian.

'Doctors can't predict what will happen with my voice. It's just a matter of taking every day as it comes, so I'm just trying to stay positive and hopeful.

'I'd never heard of either of these really rare conditions and now I've been diagnosed with both, it has just been a total whirlwind.'
Pence was last in Wisconsin in April for a tour of GE Healthcare, where he touted the company's work to build ventilators to treat patients with COVID-19. Pence was also in Wisconsin for a school choice rally in the state Capitol in January. He also joined Trump for the Milwaukee rally.
New York: Joel Schumacher, the flamboyant journeyman director who dressed New York department store windows before shepherding the Brat Pack to the big screen in St Elmo's Fire and steering the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, has died. He was 80.

A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died on Monday in New York after a year-long battle with cancer.

Director Joel Schumacher, pictured in 2011. Credit:AP

A native New Yorker, Schumacher was first a sensation in the fashion world after attending Parsons School of Design and decorating Henri Bendel's windows. As a director, he established himself as a filmmaker of great flare, if not often good reviews, in a string of mainstream films in the '80s and '90s.

The success of his first film, St Elmo's Fire, with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, not only helped make a name for the Brat Pack but made Schumacher in demand in Hollywood. He followed it up with the 1987 vampire horror comedy The Lost Boys.
Gardai who rushed to the scene of a domestic dispute between two brothers were later told the brothers were unwilling to make statements of complaint against each other.

However, because of the seriousness of the incident the brothers were prosecuted for engaging in an affray.

The incident at the centre of the case occurred back on March 19 2017 and at Cork Circuit Criminal Court the two brothers were given suspended jail terms.

The pair had to be separated from attacking each other by gardai at their family home on the night in question.

Shane ODriscoll, 27, and John ODriscoll, 21, both pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal to committing affray at Millstreet Road, Macroom on March 19 2017, in that they used or threatened to use unlawful violence towards the other in such a manner that would lead the other person to fear for their safety.

Detective Garda Pat Prendergast told how gardai received a phone call from their father, William, at 4.40am that morning calling for an ambulance at his family home. Det. Garda Prendergast and Garda Brian Ahern arrived at the house to meet John ODriscoll outside the house who told them that he had stabbed his brother, Shane, who was inside the house.

Shane emerged from the house and struck John ODriscoll with a claw hammer on the back of the head and was very aggressive towards both his father and the gardai, Det. Garda Prendergast testified.

Det. Garda Prendergast said that Shane ODriscoll had a stab wound to his back while John ODriscoll had a wound to the back of his head but neither suffered serious or permanent injury in the incident.

He said that Shane ODriscoll had 31 previous convictions including one for assault causing harm while John ODriscoll had six previous convictions including for public order and unlawful taking of a car.

They had both gone for treatment for alcohol addiction issues in November 2019 and since they completed this course and returned to Macroom to live with their father, they had not come to the attention of gardai.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain said that in the circumstances, including the fact that they had been of good behaviour since returning home post-treatment he believed the appropriate sentence was 18 months suspended for both men.
HOUSTON, June 22 (Reuters) - Engineering and construction firm KBR Inc will exit most of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) construction and other energy projects, it told investors and employees, as customers pull back on energy investments.

The company will refocus on government contracts and technology businesses, Chief Executive Stuart Bradie wrote to employees on Monday. It will "no longer engage in lump sum, blue collar construction services," saying the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decision to leave fixed-contract energy projects.

KBR held contracts for engineering and construction services for several LNG projects, including at Freeport LNG in Texas, Pieridae Energy Ltd's proposed Goldboro LNG facility in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Glenfarne Group's Magnolia LNG project in Louisiana.

Freeport LNG has delayed its project to 2021 and planned to seek new bids for construction, spokeswoman Heather Browne said. Pieridae and Glenfarne did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

KBR declined to discuss potential impairments on its current LNG projects, but pointed to an investor webcast last Tuesday that said it expected the energy business to be "marginally profitable" this year. It will disclose more details with second-quarter results next month, an executive said in the webcast.

About 85% of the company's forecast earnings for 2020 are expected to derive from government business, up from about 11% in 2015, Bradie told investors during the call.

The changes will mean "significant realignment in some offices, a smaller office footprint as we transform to the new structure and the new way of working, and the exiting of certain markets/geographies and offices," the email said. (Reporting by Jennifer Hiller in Houston; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Three people were killed and 11 others seriously wounded after multiple people fired into a large crowd at Juneteenth celebrations in North Carolina Sunday night.

Police say Kelly Miller, 29, died at the scene. Christopher Antonio Gleaton, 28, was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital. Officials later named 39-year-old Jamaa Keon Cassell as the third victim.

Six people were shot and five more were injured when they were hit by cars while running from the gunfire at the 'impromptu block party' in Charlotte.

Multiple gunmen fired more than 100 bullets into a crowd of 400, according to law enforcement. Miller and Gleaton died from gunshot wounds; it is not yet clear how Cassell died.

At least six of the 11 people hospitalized have life threatening injuries, The Charlotte Observer reports.

Maliyah Cook, a witness and relative of one of the victims, said the mood of the crowd leading up to the shooting had been calm. Suddenly, she heard gunshots.

'I really feel like it was a good party. I don't know what happened,' Cook said. 'It came out the blue.' As Cook was running, she said she looked down to see her cousin Kelly Miller, fatally wounded in the middle of the street.

Cops arrived at the scene on Beatties Ford Road in northern Charlotte to find hundreds of people in the street

One woman was pronounced dead at the scene, a second victim died later at the hospital

Cops say they arrived on Beatties Ford Road in northern Charlotte to find hundreds of people in the street. They described the incident as a 'mass casualty' and a 'very, very chaotic scene'.

In a statement law enforcement said: 'We're talking about 400 people in one spot, not one witness, not one.'

Police say they were first called to reports of a pedestrian hit by a car.

As over a dozen emergency services swooped on the scene, several shots were fired, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Johnny Jennings said.

Jennings said there was evidence of multiple shooters, but no one was in custody as of Monday morning.

Police said in a statement: 'Preliminary information gathered during the investigation indicates that several shooters discharged dozens of shots in to the crowd who had been gathered in the area.'

One eyewitness told WCNC: 'I heard about 60 or 70 shots, sounded like, people were running everywhere, cars were leaving.

'It's just sad someone took something that was an event that was supposed to be an event and turned it into a massacre, a nightmare for families. People lost their loved ones, people out here in the streets dead. Charlotte's better than this.'

Another onlooker added: 'To be honest, it had to be over 15 or 20 people shooting.

'Shots were coming from the left, right, front and back. They were coming from everything. Nobody knew which way to run or which way to go.'

Five were hit by cars while running from the gunfire, which scattered the large crowds around midnight at an 'impromptu block party' in Charlotte (scene pictured)

Police said there was evidence of multiple shooters, but no one was in custody as of Monday morning

Police say they were first called to reports of a pedestrian hit by a car. As over a dozen emergency services swooped on the scene, several shots were fired, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Johnny Jennings said

Shocking video from a witness shows party-goers running down the street after hearing gunfire.

As a police vehicle races to the scene with sirens blaring, a burst of pops ring out.

Screaming, the crowd sprints down the street while the gunfire persists. The witness dives into his car and says 'crazy'.

Juneteenth, for which celebrations started Friday, commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 years ago.
Two young Vietnamese representatives, Nguyen Phuong Thao and Le Anh Tien, will join 18 peers from other ASEAN countries to meet with ASEAN leaders at this weeks 36th ASEAN Summit.

Nguyen Phuong Thao (L) and Le Anh Tien (R) will meet with ASEAN leaders at upcoming summit.

The summit, to be held online on June 26, will offer regional young people the chance to exchange views with ASEAN leaders on a number of burning issues facing the grouping, including voluntary activities, starts-up, and essential skills in Industry 4.0.

Thao, 20, first rose to prominence as an outstanding Vietnamese youth in 2018 when she achieved a gold medal in the International Biology Olympiad after scoring 98.13 out of a total of 100 points.

For her achievement, she went on to receive a third-class Labour Order and a Certificate of Merit granted by the State President.

Meanwhile, Tien, 30, is a founder and CEO of Chatbot Vietnam Technology Joint Stock Company, a firms which runs Bot Ban Hang, a chatbot platform that is used by sellers and advertisers throughout Vietnam.

Since its inception, thousands of firms have gone on to install the platform with some 10 million users in the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, as well as locally in Vietnam.

When participating in the meeting, Tien has set a target of sharing some of the difficulties that starts-up face with young people in the Southeast Asian region, together with solving some of the challenges and improving links among the youth.

The meeting and sidelines events will be jointly organised on June 25-26 by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee, together with the National Committee on Youth of Vietnam. VOV
Dr. Zilla Limann, daughter of Ghana's late former President Hilla Limann, has expressed sorrow over her father's legacy stressing Ghanaians have ''under-appreciated'' him.



Dr. Hilla Limann was President from 24th September 1979 and was overthrown in 1981 when former President Jerry John Rawlings staged a coup d'etat.



Dr. Limann is said to have re-contested the Presidential seat in 1992 but wasn't elected.



He was the only President of the 3rd Republic of Ghana.



Speaking in an exclusive interview with Nkonkonsa.com, the daughter of the late President explained why her father's legacy is not remembered in the country.



Dr. Zilla Limann believed her dad is not acknowledged in the history books of Ghana's heroes because the Rawlings' regime did everything in their power to wipe away Limann's track record.



To her, although she was very young when her father was ousted from power, she however remembers her father's vision for Ghana.



''...for what he stood for, he said his ideology is Ghana. So, for him, anything Ghana; it didn't matter what it was. It was Ghana and that is how he thought and that is what was his vision...And he actually did quite a bit in his time [you know]. So, he took over at a very turbulent time when the economy was really bad. And, in his time...in the 2 years that he was there, he did quite a bit and he was able to start turning around the economy.''



She is therefore downhearted that her father's sacrifices for a country he strongly believed in have all gone down the drain.



''I think he's very much under-appreciated and that's also because the knowledge is so limited. They don't seem to know much about my dad and what he did. Even me, I think I don't even know enough because I wasn't old enough...But knowing what I know now, he was very under-appreciated but then I found out later on that, after the coup happened, it appears there was a deliberate attempt to wipe off everything he did...So even looking for stuff on him is very hard. It's very, very hard finding things about my dad. I guess because it was a coup. They sort of wiped out a lot of things.



Watch the full interbelow:





Source: Eugene Osafo-Nkansah/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
She parted ways with her husband Flavio Briatore in 2018 following nine years of marriage.

And Elisabetta Gregoraci showed the 70-year-old what he was missing as she showcased her stunning figure on the beach on Sunday.

The Italian model, 40, looked stunning in a multicoloured bikini at Forte dei Marmi near Lucca in northern Tuscany.

Beach goddess: Elisabetta Gregoraci, 40, showed off her enviable figure at the beach on Sunday

The TV personality was every inch the beach goddess as she let her raven tresses hang loose while relaxing on the sand.

The Wonderbra model accessorised with a pair of angular sunglasses and friendship bracelets for the beach trip in the sun.

She later paddled in the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea and caught the eye among the other beachgoers.

Stunning: The Italian Wonderbra model paddled in the waves at the Forte dei Marmi beach in Tuscany

Soaking in the sun: The TV personality was every inch the beach goddess as she let her raven tresses hang loose while relaxing on a sun lounger

Elisabetta and Flavio married in star-studded ceremony in Rome in 2008, before welcoming their son Falco two years later.

In 2018, reports began to emerge that the couple were in the process of getting divorced after they were photographed at a law firm in Milan just before Christmas in 2017.

According to the divorce papers seen by Italian weekly magazine Oggi, Elisabetta would remain in the couple's Monaco home and also be paid 'abundant' maintenance.

Glowing: Elisabetta and Flavio married in star-studded ceremony in Rome in 2008, before welcoming their son Falco two years later

Catching rays: The 40-year-old looked stunning in the multicoloured printed two-piece bikini

Neither party has commented on the divorce.

Flavio, who was born in Verzuolo near Cuneo, Italy, rose to fame as the managing director and principal of Renault's Formula One team.

However in 2008 he was sacked from his F1 position and given a lifetime ban from events with FIA following his involvement in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix 'crashgate' saga.

However in 2013, the FIA decided to lift Flavio's liftetime ban.

The businessman was previously in a relationship with model Heidi Klum however the pair split when Flavio was seen kissing another woman.

He and Heidi share 15-year-old daughter Helene 'Leni' Samuel.
[June 22, 2020] First Trust Lists June Series of the Target Outcome ETFs

First Trust Advisors L.P. ("First Trust") a leading exchange-traded fund ("ETF") provider and asset manager, announced today that it launched the June Series of the Target (News - Alert) Outcome ETFs. The FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Buffer ETF - June (Cboe: FJUN) and the FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF - June (Cboe: DJUN) (collectively, the "funds") seek an outcome that provides investors with returns (before fees and expenses) that match the price return of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust ("SPY" or "underlying ETF"), up to a predetermined upside cap, while providing a buffer against potential SPY losses. The funds are managed and sub-advised by Cboe Vest Financial LLC ("Cboe Vest") using a "target outcome strategy" or pre-determined target investment outcome. Below are the outcome period values for the June Series of the Target Outcome ETFs:







Ticker Cap* Buffer Target Outcome Period FJUN 16.87% (Net) 17.72% (Gross) 10%** 6/22/2020 - 6/18/2021 DJUN 9.43% (Net) 10.28% (Gross) 25%*** 6/22/2020 - 6/18/2021

*The upside caps shown are for the Target Outcome Period from 6/22/2020 - 6/18/2021. The gross cap is before fees, expenses and taxes. The net cap is after fees and expenses, excluding brokerage commissions, trading fees, taxes and extraordinary expenses not included in the funds' management fee. The upside cap is set by a fund on inception date of the Target Outcome Period and is dependent upon market conditions at the time. The cap investors will experience may be different than what is illustrated herein. **FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Buffer ETF seeks to shield investors from the first 10% of losses, before fees and expenses. ***FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF seeks to shield investors against losses from -5% to -30%, over the outcome period. If an investor purchases shares after the first day of the Target Outcome Period, they will likely have a different return potential than an investor who purchased shares at the start of the Target Outcome Period and the buffer the funds seek may not be available. The funds have a perpetual structure meaning that a new Target Outcome Period begins, and the cap and buffer are reset, annually at the end of each Target Outcome Period. However, the funds may be held indefinitely, providing investors a buy and hold investment opportunity. We believe a buffer against a level of losses can help investors stay invested during volatile times. The funds offer a way to gain access to outcome-based investing-specifically to buffer against a level of downside risk while allowing growth to a maximum cap- eliminating bank credit risk, in a convenient, flexible investment vehicle. Karan Sood and Howard Rubin, of Cboe Vest, will serve as a portfolio managers for the funds. The portfolio managers are jointly and primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of the funds. For more information about First Trust, please contact Ryan Issakainen at (630) 765-8689 or [email protected]. About First Trust First Trust is a federally registered investment advisor and serves as the funds' investment advisor. First Trust and its affiliate First Trust Portfolios L.P. ("FTP"), a FINRA registered broker-dealer, are privately held companies that provide a variety of investment services. First Trust has collective assets under management or supervision of approximately $135 billion as of May 31, 2020 through unit investment trusts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, mutual funds and separate managed accounts. First Trust is the supervisor of the First Trust unit investment trusts, while FTP is the sponsor. FTP is also a distributor of mutual fund shares and exchange-traded fund creation units. First Trust and FTP are based in Wheaton, Illinois. For more information, visit www.ftportfolios.com. About Cboe Vest: Cboe Vest is the creator of Target Outcome Investments, which strive to buffer losses, amplify gains or provide consistent income to a diverse spectrum of investors. Today, Cboe Vest's Target Outcome StrategiesTM are available in mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), unit investment trusts (UITs), collective investment trusts (CITs), and customizable managed accounts / sub-advisory services. For more information about Cboe Vest and the evolution of Target Outcome Investments, visit www.cboevest.com or contact Linda Werner at [email protected] or 703-864-5483. ### You should consider the funds' investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses carefully before investing. Contact First Trust Portfolios L.P. at 1-800-621-1675 or visit www.ftportfolios.com to obtain a prospectus or summary prospectus which contains this and other information about the funds. The prospectus or summary prospectus should be read carefully before investing. ETF Characteristics The funds list and principally trade their shares on Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. Investors buying or selling fund shares on the secondary market may incur customary brokerage commissions. Market prices may differ to some degree from the net asset value of the shares. Investors who sell fund shares may receive less than the share's net asset value. Shares may be sold throughout the day on the exchange through any brokerage account. However, unlike mutual funds, shares may only be redeemed directly from the funds by authorized participants, in very large creation/redemption units. If the funds' authorized participants are unable to proceed with creation/redemption orders and no other authorized participant is able to step forward to create or redeem, fund shares may trade at a discount to the funds' net asset value and possibly face delisting. Risk Considerations The funds have characteristics unlike many other traditional investment products and may not be appropriate for all investors. The funds' shares will change in value, and you could lose money by investing in the funds. One of the principal risks of investing in the funds is market risk. Market risk is the risk that a particular security owned by the funds, fund shares or securities in general may fall in value. The outbreak of the respiratory disease designated as COVID-19 in December 2019 has caused significant volatility and declines in global financial markets, which have caused losses for investors. The impact of this COVID-19 pandemic may be short term or may last for an extended period of time, and in either case could result in a substantial economic downturn or recession. In managing the funds' investment portfolios, the advisor will apply investment techniques and risk analyses that may not have the desired result. There can be no assurance that the funds' investment objectives will be achieved. A fund may be a constituent of one or more indices which could greatly affect a fund's trading activity, size and volatility. The use of options and other derivatives can lead to losses because of adverse movements in the price or value of the underlying asset, index or rate, which may be magnified by certain features of the derivatives. If the reference asset experiences gains during a target outcome period, the funds will not participate in those gains beyond the cap. In the event an investor purchases fund shares after the first day of a target outcome period and the funds have risen in value to a level near to the cap, there may be little or no ability for that investor to experience an investment gain on their fund shares. The funds may invest in FLEX Options that reference an ETF, which subjects the funds to certain of the risks of owning shares of an ETF as well as the types of instruments in which the reference ETF invests. Because the funds may hold FLEX Options that reference the index and/or reference ETFs, the funds have exposure to the equity securities markets. The FLEX Options held by the funds will be exercisable at the strike price only on their expiration date. Prior to the expiration date, the value of the FLEX Options will be determined based upon market quotations or other recognized pricing methods. There can be no guarantee that a liquid secondary trading market will exist for the FLEX Options and FLEX options may be less liquid than exchange-traded options. The funds' investment strategy is designed to deliver returns that match the reference asset if a fund's shares are bought on the day on which the fund enters into the FLEX Options (i.e., the first day of a target outcome period) and held for the entire target outcome period, subject to a pre-determined cap, or until those FLEX Options expire at the end of the target outcome period. If an investor does not hold its fund shares for an entire target outcome period, the returns realized by that investor may not match those a fund seeks to achieve. In the event an investor purchases fund shares after the first day of a target outcome period or sells shares prior to the expiration of the target outcome period, the value of that investor's investment in fund shares may not be buffered against a decline in the value of the reference asset and may not participate in a gain in the value of the reference asset up to the cap for the investor's investment period. A new cap is established at the beginning of each target outcome period and is dependent on prevailing market conditions. As a result, the cap may rise or fall from one target outcome period to the next and is unlikely to remain the same for consecutive target outcome periods. The funds may, under certain circumstances, effect a significant portion of creations and redemptions for cash rather than in-kind securities. As a result, the funds may be less tax-efficient. High portfolio turnover may cause a fund's performance to be less than expected. A fund may be subject to the risk that a counterparty will not fulfill its obligations which may result in significant financial loss to a fund. As the use of Internet technology has become more prevalent in the course of business, the funds have become more susceptible to potential operational risks through breaches in cyber security. The funds currently have fewer assets than larger funds, and like other relatively new funds, large inflows and outflows may impact the funds' market exposure for limited periods of time. The funds intend to qualify as "regulated investment companies" ("RICs"), however, the federal income tax treatment of certain aspects of the proposed operations of the funds are not entirely clear. If, in any year, the funds fail to qualify as RICs under the applicable tax laws, the funds would be taxed as ordinary corporations. The funds are classified as "non-diversified" and may invest a relatively high percentage of its assets in a limited number of issuers. As a result, the funds may be more susceptible to a single adverse economic or regulatory occurrence affecting one or more of these issuers, experience increased volatility and be highly concentrated in certain issuers. First Trust Advisors L.P. is the adviser to the funds. First Trust Advisors L.P. is an affiliate of First Trust Portfolios L.P., the funds' distributor. The information presented is not intended to constitute an investment recommendation for, or advice to, any specific person. By providing this information, First Trust is not undertaking to give advice in any fiduciary capacity within the meaning of ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code or any other regulatory framework. Financial professionals are responsible for evaluating investment risks independently and for exercising independent judgment in determining whether investments are appropriate for their clients. Cboe is a registered trademark of Cboe Exchange, Inc., which has been licensed for use in the name of the funds. The funds are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or marketed by Cboe Exchange, Inc. or any of its affiliates ("Cboe") or their respective third-party providers, and Cboe and its third-party providers make no representation regarding the advisability of investing in the funds and shall have no liability whatsoever in connection with the funds. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005402/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Trump Energized, Not Angry After Tulsa Rally: Press Secretary

President Donald Trump wasnt angry that there were a number of empty seats at his first campaign rally in months over the weekend, said the White House press secretary on Monday.

He was in a great mood, Kayleigh McEnany said in an interview. It was a great night and there was a lot to celebrate.

She dismissed reports citing anonymous sources that Trump was furious with the empty seats at the BOK Arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump wasnt angry at all and was quite energized, she told Fox News.

The president is in his best mood when he gets to speak directly to the American people because thats what he loves, McEnany said.

Her comments came after news outlets such as MSNBC and CNN highlighted the partially empty arena. The Trump campaign had announced beforehand that the arena was likely going to be filled.

I was with him after the rally, it was a huge success, McEnany added to the broadcaster. His speech got rave reviews.

The Trump campaign downplayed reports that teenage activists on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and Twitter tried to sabotage the rally by registering to attend it but didnt show up.

Supporters of President Donald Trump gather to enter a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A spokesperson for the Tulsa Fire Department told news outlets on Sunday that over 6,000 people attended the rally. The arena has a capacity of about 19,000. Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, dont know what theyre talking about or how our rallies work, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said on Sunday. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop [Korean pop music] fanswithout contacting the campaign for commentbehaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.

Parscale added: Registering for a rally means youve RSVPed with a cellphone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool. These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking. What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admissionentry is on a first-come-first-served basis and prior registration is not required.

Trump is scheduled to make appearances Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Wisconsin, which are both considered major general election battlegrounds.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat and Trump critic, said she would think very seriously about trying to block Trump from hosting a rally in the state, according to The Associated Press.
June 22 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The Canadian government is in discussions with U.S. President Donald Trump's administration about the U.S. threat to impose travel bans and other sanctions on staff members of the International Criminal Court, potentially including dozens of Canadians and their families. https://tgam.ca/2Z02liO

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the international community must maintain pressure on Moscow to return the land it seized from Ukraine in 2014 and thanked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for rejecting U.S. push to readmit Russia into the G7. https://tgam.ca/3fS3JLz

The police watchdog in Canadian's Ontario is investigating an incident after a regional police officer shot and killed a 62-year-old man with schizophrenia. https://tgam.ca/2YW7WH8

NATIONAL POST

Canada's chief public health officer said the surge of new COVID-19 cases in several U.S. states should be a warning to Canada, but not a cause for alarm. https://bit.ly/2AZ37EP (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)
BOISE  A coalition of organizations  including the John Birch Society and Health Freedom Idaho, an anti-vaccination group  are organizing what they are calling a special session of the Legislature Tuesday.

Its unclear how many legislators will show and whether legislators can even convene a special session in the first place.

But the events, which include a Statehouse rally Tuesday morning, underscore the tensions between Gov. Brad Little and some fellow Republicans in the Legislature, stemming from Littles response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Littles critics say the governor has acted capriciously, by ordering churches and some businesses to close during a statewide stay-at-home order. They say he is sidestepping the Legislature by appropriating $1.25 billion in federal coronavirus stimulus dollars and using a coronavirus disaster emergency to grab additional power at the expense of the Legislature.

The governor is unconstitutionally appropriating tax dollars and suspending and re-writing Idaho laws with no accountability, Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, said in a Sunday email to constituents. To be clear, these actions are not only unconstitutional, they are reckless and un-American.

Lets look at some legal and practical questions.

Will Tuesdays special session really be a session at all?

The state Constitution calls for annual legislative sessions each January, and special sessions at other times when convened by the governor. And in a recent opinion  posted on Health Freedom Idahos own website  Attorney General Lawrence Wasdens office says the Legislature has no authority to call itself into session.

Still, supporters of Tuesdays session cite a section of the Constitution that gives the Legislature the power to act in periods of emergency resulting from disasters caused by enemy attack or in periods of emergency resulting from the imminent threat of such disasters. They also cite state law allowing the Legislature to convene 90 days following the inception of an attack.

Little declared a statewide coronavirus emergency on March 13, and proclaimed an extreme emergency on March 25.

Can legislators actually do any work Tuesday?

Look for legislators to try to rescind Littles March 13 emergency declaration. State law allows legislators to terminate a state of disaster emergency at any time.

But in order to do that, of course, the Legislature has to actually be in session. Which ties back to the question of whether Tuesdays session will actually be a session.

So how many legislators will actually show up?

Sarah Clendenon of Health Freedom Idaho says she isnt even sure.

I am also hearing that many (legislators) feel they cannot publicly announce they will attend because of backlash from House and Senate leadership, she said in an email Monday. There is very strong language being used, especially from Senate leadership, to dissuade members from attending and conducting the peoples business.

Clendenon maintains that the legislators will be able to conduct business, no matter how few or how many of them show. The state codes language pertaining to an enemy attack also allows legislators to waive requirements for a quorum.

What else is on Tuesdays schedule?

Organizers have planned an 8 a.m. rally on the Statehouse steps. If the event goes on as planned, it would run in conflict with directives from local health officials. On Monday afternoon, Central District Health tightened restrictions in Ada County, in an attempt to curb a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in the county. One restriction covers public gatherings of more than 50 people.

According to Health Freedom Idahos Facebook page, more than 100 people plan to attend the rally  well in excess of Central District Health guidelines.

Legislators have scheduled a news conference for 12 noon.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 1 Angry 4
Police in Arkansas say a man shot dead his wife and their family dog, before turning the gun on himself in what is being investigated as a murder-suicide.

The suspected shooter in the killings that took place in Little Rock on Saturday has been identified as 68-year-old Jeffrey Reynolds.

According to investigators, Reynolds shot and killed his wife, 67-year-old Gayle Reynolds, before turning the gun on himself.

Police in Little Rock, Arkansas, say Jeffrey Reynolds, 68, shot and killed his wife, Gayle, 67, and then the family dog before turning the gun on himself

Gayle Reynolds' stepfather called the police on Saturday afternoon after entering the couple's home and finding their lifeless bodies

Officers responded to the family's home in the 19000 block of Summershade Drive at around 1pm after receiving a 911 call from Gayle's stepfather, saying he had entered the couple's home and found their bodies, according to Arkansas Online.

When police went inside the residence, they discovered the husband and wife dead from gunshot wounds, along with their pet dog, THV11 reported.

Authorities said based on preliminary evidence recovered at the scene and interviews with neighbors, Gayle's death was ruled a homicide and the death of Jeffery was by suicide.

Police spokesman Eric Barnes said it is believed Jeffrey shot and killed his wife following a domestic argument.

Autopsies will be performed on the husband and wife to determine the exact causes of death.

Animal control officers had removed the corpse of the family's slain dog.
ALBANY  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is "seriously considering" a quarantine for out-of-state travelers visiting New York, he said in a series of cable television interviews on Monday.

The governor doubled down on the suggestion he first brought up last week, contemplating an isolation period for visitors coming from states where coronavirus cases are on the rise, including Florida and Texas. Cuomo touted New York's turnaround from the state with the worst infection rate to one of the best in the country and worried aloud that an influx of travelers from other states could harm New York's progress.

He said he is in talks with Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Ned Lamont of Connecticut  where coronavirus cases have also declined in recent weeks  about possibly coordinating regional rules for out-of-state travelers.

"It's more effective if we act as a regional collaboration, and I'm talking to them about putting in guidelines so we don't have people coming from these other states," Cuomo said in a Monday morning interview on MSNBC.

Latest coronavirus-related cancellations, postponements

The latest coronavirus numbers in NY

Sign up for the Times Union coronavirus newsletter

Full coronavirus coverage

In a CNN interview minutes later, Cuomo clarified that he would not target specific states, but possibly a general group of those areas "with the highest transmission rate." The governor had previously criticized other states, including Florida and Rhode Island, that sought to quarantine New Yorkers who visited those states when the infection rate in New York was at its highest levels.

In March, Florida began requiring New Yorkers to self-isolate for 14 days after arriving in the Sunshine State. The same month, Rhode Island also issued a 14-day quarantine order for New York travelers, enforced as authorities stopped cars to question drivers with New York license plates and knocked on doors in search of visitors.

The latter order had caused a massive clash with Cuomo's office, as the governor threatened to sue Rhode Island for singling out New York. It was later walked back.

"What they were talking about back then was Rhode Island targeting just New Yorkers," Cuomo said on CNN Monday. "They pull you over by your license plate, which I thought was absurd. Florida did put in a quarantine, which I think was more political than anything else, but now we have a very real problem."

New York's coronavirus cases have continued to decline, with just 10 deaths on Sunday  the lowest one-day total since March 21, Cuomo's office said in a Monday release. Less than 1 percent of diagnostic tests returned positive.
Veterans such as Stella native and longtime Tucson resident Francis T. Wolfe returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Wolfe, a U-Haul vendor whose successful affiliation with the Company spanned four decades, will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

The Bushmasters

Wolfe was born June 5, 1921, to Clifford and Henrietta Wolfe. When he was 8, the family moved to Oklahoma City. Wolfe graduated from Northeast High School in 1939. He attended Oklahoma City University for one year before enlisting in the Army in February 1941 as a combat infantryman.

Wolfe served with the 158th Regimental Combat Team, which became famous for its jungle-fighting skills. The 158th was sent into areas where the Japanese were offering the most resistance. The team took the name of "Bushmasters" after the deadly snake by the same name.

General Douglas MacArthur personally selected the Bushmasters to be part of his command in the Southwest Pacific. MacArthur stated: "No greater fighting combat team has ever been deployed for battle."

Wolfe fought in the Bismarck-Archipelago, New Guinea and Luzon Campaigns. He was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Service Ribbon (three bronze service stars); the Philippine Liberation Ribbon; and a Bronze Star for his service in the legendary 158th. He was honorably discharged in August 1945 as a first sergeant.

Tucson Ties and U-Haul

After the war, Wolfe moved his family to Tucson, Ariz., in 1949. He was a leader in the field of outdoor advertising, and owner and manager of Arizona Neon for 22 years. He was owner and manager of the Pearson's Sign Company facility in Tucson from the early 1970s until his death in November 1999.

In the 1960s, Wolfe was instrumental in the creation, design and construction of some of the country's best-known advertisements. Among those was the innovative mounting of a rotating U-Haul trailer on a pole in the back of a U-Haul pickup truck, and the design of the iconic U-Haul modular sign. This launched a mutually beneficial vendor relationship with U-Haul that lasted for the remainder of his life.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Wolfe is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Francis.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:



Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


South Korea on Monday urged North Korea to scrap a plan to launch propaganda leaflets across the border, after the North said its ready to float 12 million leaflets in what would be the largest such psychological campaign against its southern rival.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula rose sharply last week, after North Korea destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory in anger over South Korean civilian leafleting against it. North Korea said it will fly propaganda leaflets and take other steps to nullify 2018 deals that were meant to ease military tensions at the border.

Yoh Sangkey, a spokesman at Seouls Unification Ministry, told reporters that North Korea must suspend its plan to send anti-Seoul leaflets that are not helpful to South-North (Korea) relations at all. Earlier Monday, North Korea said it had manufactured 12 million propaganda leaflets to be floated toward South Korea aboard 3,000 balloons and other unspecified delivery equipment.

Our plan of distributing the leaflets against the enemy is an eruption of the unquenchable anger of all the people and the whole society, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency said. The time for retaliatory punishment is drawing near. Some observers say ongoing weather conditions arent favorable for North Korea to fly balloons into the South so it may use drones to deliver the leaflets. They say this could trigger clashes between the Koreas because South Korea must respond to incoming drones to its territory.

A South Korean activist recently said he would also drop about a million leaflets over the border around Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War. South Korean officials have said theyll ban civilian activists from launching balloons toward North Korea.

Experts say North Korea is likely focusing on the South Korean civilian leafleting to boost its internal unity and apply more pressures on Seoul and Washington amid stalled nuclear diplomacy.
A mother swan had apparently died of a broken heart after violent teens used bricks to crush her unhatched eggs. The group of yobs committed the horrific act last month in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

Heartbroken mother

Earlier this week, the mother swan died shortly after the father of the eggs vanished, as reported by Daily Mail.

On May 20, witnesses saw the teenage group hurling bricks and rocks targeting the swans' nest found along Manchester Canal in Kearsley.

The teenage thugs were allegedly aiming for the island where the animals made their nest and had hit three of the six eggs.

Observers reported that the father of the eggs fled the nest after the group drove him away two weeks ago and has not returned. After the attacks, moorhens and other animals harassed the mother swan.

Earlier this week, wildlife activists found the mother swan dead inside her nest. Activist Sam Woodrow expressed his sadness and disappointment with the ordeal.

According to Mirror UK, the Swan Sanctuary said that if a swan's mate disappears or loses its life, the surviving partner will experience a grieving process similar to humans and either stay where it is, find a new home, or find a flock it can join.

Woodrow believes the mother swan experienced a broken heart after her mate was forced away and her eggs crushed, which resulted in her death.

One social user posted the news on the platform, sharing how difficult it was to spread the regretful event. The user, Michael Mason, had kept the public updated on the development of the incident through social media and how the events unfolded, as reported by Lad Bible.

Also Read: Suspect Poisons 8 Homeless People, Including Children and Elderly to "Watch Their Reaction"

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) expressed their thoughts on the sad incident with the swan. He announced that they are currently conducting an investigation and urges the public to share any information they may have to help bring justice to the animals.

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 writes the protection for swans, their nests, and their eggs, as reported by Cambridge News.

Another depressing incident

Met Police conducted an investigation earlier this month after a jogger allegedly kicked a cygnet that had just hatched from its egg on June 8 in Richmond Park found in southwest London.

The young animal was brought to a sanctuary found in Shepperton, Surrey, but later lost its life after two days.

Police officers suspected the perpetrator to have kicked the cygnet when it blocked his path, leaving the animal with brain damage.

Details of the suspect reveal he was around 60 years old and stood at approximately 5ft 6in wearing black running shorts along with a vest at the time of the incident.

The RSPCA investigated a previous incident where a woman allegedly choked a swan to death inside a public park.

Police officers who responded to the scene found the body of an adult swan lying lifeless on a pathway. The officers then took statements from two witnesses in the area.

Related Article: Woman Shot Dead, Man Injured Due to Altercation Over Dog Poop

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
By Trend

Kazakhstan has delivered humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Humanitarian cargo delivered in 46 wagons in compliance with all sanitary and epidemiological standards, included 1,900 tons of flour, 500 tons of pasta, 4,000 liters of sunflower oil and 200,000 cans of condensed milk.

These items will be distributed by the Afghanistans government among the countrys regions.

Kazakhstan and Afghanistan made the decision on allocation of humanitarian aid on May 15, 2020.

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.

Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic across the globe Kazakhstan has numerous times allocated humanitarian aid to its neighbors.

Earlier this year Kazakhstan has sent humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of provided support to countries during the COVID-19 outbreak.

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 17,732 cases. This includes 10,962 people who recovered from the coronavirus, and 120 patients who passed away.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
At its virtual WWDC keynote today, Apple unveiled a ton of updates for iOS 14, watchOS, AirPods and iPads, but the company also had news to share for its laptop products. Were not just talking about the much-anticipated adoption of Apples own processors for Macs, either. Today, Apple announced that the next version of its desktop software will be macOS Big Sur, and it introduces a new design and major updates to important apps, said Craig Federighi.

Design changes begin with what Apple is calling the biggest upgrade since the introduction of Mac OS X. Theres now a customizable Start page, with a refined app dock and Finder to make better use of screen space. The Mail app has colors in the navigation interface again, while Photos will feature an updated sidebar. The gallery in Photos is also backed by Metal so animations show up quickly. The Menu bar is translucent now, and will take on the color of your background. You can also customize the Menu bar to give yourself one-click access to Do Not Disturb by dragging and dropping it in from the settings.

Gallery: macOS Big Sur | 12 Photos





















/12 Gallery: macOS Big Sur | 12 Photos





















/12

The Notifications Center has also been updated to feature better organization, and you can add widgets of various sizes to the panel, too. Apples also added an iOS-like Control Center to macOS, making it more similar to the phone.

One of the apps getting big updates on macOS is Messages, which will add direct in-line replies and group updates like its iOS counterpart. Itll also get a powerful Search function, which has been redesigned to organize your results into file types and matching terms. Youll be able to customize your Memoji on the Mac and see animations like confetti rain across the window.

Maps is also getting revamped for Big Sur, adding new features like indoor navigation for locations like airports and shopping malls, as well as the ability to view and create shareable Guides. Itll also let you save spots you want to remember, and share them with your iPhone.

WWDC Screenshot

As we saw from recent leaks, Apple is also bringing the biggest update to Safari since it was first introduced, according to Federighi. Safari will support extensions and these will surface on the App Store for easier discovery. Each installed extension will have a button that shows up next to the URL box. You can also customize the browser with your own photos as background, and a home page with sections like your reading list and iCloud Tabs, as well as any extensions youve downloaded.

There are similar privacy updates in Safari that Apple announced earlier during the show, which let you have finer control over how long websites and extensions have access to your data. A new Privacy Report shows up when you press the Shield icon next to the URL bar to show you what trackers are on the page, too. Tabs are also becoming easier to navigate, with more of them showing onscreen at once and displaying favicons by default. When you hover your cursor over a tab, a preview thumbnail will show up so you can be visually reminded of whats on that page.

Safari will also have built-in translation, similar to what Chrome already offers. When Safari detects that the website youre looking at is not in your default language, a button will pop-up to translate that text. This feature will work with seven languages for now, including Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, English and Brazilian Portugese.

WWDC Screenshot

The macOS updates represent some of the biggest changes to Apples desktop OS yet, and though we still dont know exactly when it will roll out, Mac users could have a lot to look forward to when it arrives.
Stocks to watch today: Here is a list of top stocks that are likely to be in focus in Monday's trading session based on latest developments. Investors are also awaiting March quarter earnings that are scheduled to be released today. Companies set to announce their earnings are Dhanlaxmi Bank, GTL, Kirloskar Industries, Info Edge, NDTV, Onmobile Global and Skipper among others.

Key highlights on share market; check the latest stock market news

-On Friday, Sensex ended 523 points higher at 34,731 and Nifty ended 152 points higher to 10,244.

-On the currency front, Rupee, the local currency, ended 6 paise lower at 76.20 per US dollar on Friday as against the last closing of 76.14 per dollar.

-On a net basis, FIIs bought Rs 1,237 crore while DIIs sold Rs 880.66 cr ore worth in equities on Friday

Share Market Update: Sensex up 280 points, Nifty at 10,365; Dhanlaxmi Bank, Apollo Hospitals results today

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals: Company said it has launched an antiviral drug Favipiravir for the treatment of mild to moderate covid-19 patients.

Cipla: The drug company and Hetero have received an emergency marketing approval for Remdesivir for the treatment of severe Covid-19 patients from the drug controller of India.

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC): Company said its board has approved raising funds up to Rs 14,000 crore.

Deepak Nitrite: Company said ICRA has re-affirmed its long term rating of Line of credit at AA- and short term rating at A1+.

HDFC Bank: Company said its board has approved proposal to raise up to Rs 50,000 crore in the next twelve months by issuing various debt securities.

Oil India: The Pollution Control Board, Assam (PCBA) has served a closure notice to state owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) to shut down all production along with drilling operations at its Baghjan oilfield in Tinsukia district of Assam.

Piramal Enterprises: Company's subsidiary has entered into a pact with G&W Laboratories Inc to acquire its solid oral dosage drug product manufacturing facility at Sellersville in US for $17.5 million ( Rs 130 crore).

Ashok Leyland: Company said its board has approved raising of Rs 200 crore through issuance of securities on a private placement basis.

Tata Motors: Company announced that it will focus on micro-segments with relatively higher growth prospects in FY21 and is currently preparing to ramp up BS-VI production at its five plants across the country.

Bajaj Electricals: The company posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 81 lakh in the March quarter, hit by de-growth of the EPC segment. It had logged a net profit of Rs 23.08 crore in the corresponding January-March quarter a year ago.

Cadila Healthcare: The drug maker reported a 14.82 per cent decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 391.90 crore for the quarter ended March 31 .

LIC Housing Finance: Company reported a 40% decline in its net profit to Rs 421.43 crore for the quarter ended March 2020 as against Rs 693.58 crore in the year-ago period. Company's revenue came at Rs 4,920.2 crore in FY 20 as against Rs 4,657.92 crore YoY.

Kirloskar Oil Engines: Company's net profit stood at Rs 52.69 crore as compared to Rs 90.44 crore in a year ago period. Its revenue stood at Rs 826.80 crore in FY 20 as against Rs 965.41 crore in FY19.

Novartis India: Comapny's net profit came in at Rs 6.78 crore for the March quarter as compared to Rs 19.53 crore in a year ago period. Its revenue stood at Rs 93.7 crore in FY20 as compared to versus Rs 110.38 crore in FY19.

Ramco Systems: Company reported a net loss at Rs 5.85 crore versus net profit of Rs 8.7 crore in a year ago period. Company's revenue stood at Rs 132.87 crore in FY20 as against Rs 141.44 crore in FY19 YoY.

Dalmia Bharat Sugar: Company's profit stood at Rs 61.95 crore in March quarter as compared to Rs 43.3 crore in a year ago period. Company's revenue came in at Rs 550 crore in FY20 as against Rs 568.94 crore in FY19 YoY.

Earnings today: Dhanlaxmi Bank, GTL, Kirloskar Industries, Info Edge (India), NDTV, Onmobile Global and Skipper among others will announce their March quarter earnings today.
The Queensland Government has announced a $267m stimulus package geared towards boosting the construction industry as the state ramps up its COVID-19 recovery efforts.

As a part of the package, a $100m cash grant has been allocated to the Works for Tradies program, which supports the construction of social housing across the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Wide Bay, Moreton Bay, Toowoomba, and Ipswich areas by the end of next year.

Regional Queenslanders purchasing a newly constructed home will also receive a $5,000 grant as part of an additional $106m stimulus. The cash grant is on top of the existing $15,000 available to all Queensland first-home buyers of properties valued at less than $750,000.

A further $10m has been allotted to seniors and people with disability, who are eligible for grants of up to $5,000 to renovate and repair their homes.

The government has also set aside $50m for minor building projects in South-East Queensland and $1.175m for upgrading technical and further education (TAFE) campuses to support tradies in training.

The stimulus package were announcing will keep our tradies on the tools and the building supply chain moving, while supporting first home buyers and responding to homelessness impacts from COVID-19, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

Together, the measures in this package will deliver jobs for electricians, plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, concreters and landscapers, as well as a wealth of new opportunities for local businesses that support their work.

Queensland Housing and Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni expected 500 projects to commence by the end of September and a further 500 by the end of the year. An additional 1,000 projects were expected to start by the end of June 2021.

Weve worked closely with the construction and housing support industries to identify these opportunities and we are looking forward to continuing this positive engagement as the pipeline of works rolls out, he said.
Islamabad, June 22 : A provisional inquiry report on the May 22 crash of a Pakistan International AirAlines (PIA) flight in Karachi will be place before Parliament on MonAday as promised by federal Minister for AviaAtion Ghulam Sarwar Khan.

Responding to the opposition members' speeches in the National Assembly on the crash, Khan had said that he would present the provisional investigation report on the incident before the house on June 22., reports Dawn news The PIA Lahore-Karachi flight PK-8303 carrying 99 passengers had crashed in a residential area near Karachi airport minutes before landing.

Two passengers had miraculously survived in the accident.

Soon after the crash, the federal government had appointed a team headed by Air Commodore Mohammad Usman Ghani to investigate the plane crash.

Besides, the Airbus company had sent an 11-member team to Pakistan for technical assistance to the local investigators.

The opposition parties, however, had rejected the inquiry committee questioning the inclusion of the representative of the Civil Aviation Authority in it.

Meanwhile, the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) have been been decoded in France and a report has been handed over the inquiry committee, Dawn news said in the report.

The Airbus company through a tweet said that "both recorders FDR and CVR provided valuable information for the investigation".

The National Assembly and the Senate will resume their sittings on Monday after a two-day recess for continuing general discussion on the federal budget for 2020-21 presented by the government on June 12.
Ben Margot / Associated Press 2004

Eight games out of first in mid-May of 2004, the Giants moved past the Dodgers for the top spot in the NL West with an 11-5 victory over Los Angeles on the shores of McCovey Cove on June 22.

Third baseman Edgardo Alfonzo drove in six of the 11 San Francisco runs. He broke a 5-5 tie with a two-run single in the seventh, then provided the clinching hit with a two-out, three-run double in the eighth. This victory, which improved the Giants record to 39-32, marked the midpoint of a seven-game winning streak. That streak included a four-game sweep of the Dodgers.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  Some 300 modern jeepneys operated on 15 routes in Metro Manila starting Monday as the region enters its 22nd day under a relaxed general community quarantine (GCQ).

Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) technical division head Joel Bolano said a total of 308 modern jeeps ran in the first day of the Department of Transportations second phase of public transport system revival in GCQ areas.

The 15 routes that were made available to the modern jeepneys since yesterday were:

1. Novaliches  Malinta via Paso de Blas

2. Bagumbayan Taguig  Pasig via San Joaquin

3. Fort Bonifacio Gate 3  Guadalupe-Market Market-ABC Loop Service

4. Pandacan  Leon Guinto

5. Quezon Avenue  LRT 5th Avenue Station

6. Cubao (Diamond)  Roces Super Palengke

7. EDSA Buendia-Mandaluyong City Hall via Jupiter, Rockwell

8. Divisoria-Gasak via H. Lopez

9. Punta-Quiapo via Sta. Ana

10. Boni Pinatubo  Stop and Shop, vice versa

11. Boni Robinsons Complex-Kalentong/JRC vice versa

12. Nichols-Vito Cruz

13. Filinvest City Loop

14. Alabang Town Center (ATC)-Ayala Alabang Village

15. Vito Cruz Taft Avenue-PITX Loop Service

This is only the first part of the second phase of reopening public transport in Metro Manila. More routes are set to be opened within the week.

Nine routes to be opened on June 24, Wednesday:

1. Bagong Silang - SM Fairview

2. Malanday - Divisoria via M.H. del Pilar

3. Parang, Marikina  Cubao

4. Eastwood, Libis - Capitol Commons

5. Gasak - Recto via Dagat-dagatan

6. PITX  Lawton

7. Alabang  Zapote

8. PITX  Nichols

9. PITX - SM Southmall

Ten routes to be opened on June 26, Friday:

1. Quirino Highway - UP Town Center

2. SM Fairview - Commonwealth via Regalado Ave.

3. QMC Loop

4. Tikling - Binangonan

5. Antipolo - Pasig via East Bank Road

6. Rosario - Pinagbuhatan Pasig

7. West Avenue - P. Noval via Del Monte

8. Binan - Balibago via Manila South Road

9. Tramo - Sucat

10. San Isidro - Congressional Junction Dasmarinas

Despite the gradual increase in number of available public transportation, modern jeeps can ferry only up to 20 to 50 percent of passenger capacity to ensure the one-meter physical distance rule. Passengers must be seated one seat apart and no standing passengers will be allowed. Seats to be occupied by passengers must be properly marked in the vehicle.

The minimum fare for both non-air-conditioned and air-conditioned public utility jeepneys remains 11 for the first four kilometers. However, non-air-conditioned units shall collect 1.50 for every succeeding kilometer, while air-conditioned jeeps will charge 1.80 instead.

Jeepney operators must also provide their vehicles means for cashless fare payments such as electronic systems like GCash, Paymaya, and Squidpay, particularly if these don't have machines where passengers can tap their Beep cards.

Modern jeepneys must also be equipped with GNSS (global navigation satellite system) or GPS (global positioning system) for easier contact tracing efforts.

UV Express units are expected to be allowed to ply the roads once after all modern jeepney routes are opened. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Monday said at least 55,000 traditional jeepney drivers remain at the bottom of the public transport "hierarchy."

"Hihintayin ang full deployment ng modern PUV bago ang UV Express. Once fully deployed at kulang pa rin ang supply, we will consider deploying trad jeepneys," he said in a media briefing.

Bolano assured there will be additional operating modern jeepney units this week to augment the commuter demand in Metro Manila.

The LTFRB official also guaranteed that traditional jeepneys and UV express vans will be allowed to ply the roads before the month ends.

We are still arranging the guidelines on the operation of traditional jeepneys and UV vans because we need to be careful in fully resuming the public transport system in Metro Manila given that we are still in GCQ, Bolano told CNN Philippines Rico Hizon.

Meanwhile, the operations of provincial buses remain suspended.

National Center for Commuter Safety and Protection Chairperson Elvira Medina said the mass transportation landscape has been completely reshaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, but transport groups are ready to comply and help the government come up with guidelines that will ensure the safety of the drivers and the riding public.

"There are now moves towards that direction in order to see that all our commuters still be safe, more especially in the Metro as most of the commuters are in. As I've been saying before, these are birth pains, we are still working also with government in order to straighten up the glitches," she told CNN Philippines on Monday.

Mass transportation had been suspended for more than two months since Luzon and other parts of the country were placed under enhanced community quarantine in mid-March to curb the spread of COVID-19. In the first phase of reopening mass transport in Metro Manila, only trains, augmentation buses, taxis, Transport Network Vehicle Service like Grab, shuttle services, point-to-point buses and bicycles were allowed to return to roads to ferry passengers from June 1 to 21.
By Ted Hesson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will expand an existing visa ban to include certain non-immigrant work visas as part of a move to protect U.S

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will expand an existing visa ban to include certain non-immigrant work visas as part of a move to protect U.S. workers amid the economic devastation tied to the coronavirus pandemic, a senior administration official said on Monday.

Trump will block the entry of foreign workers on H-1B visas for skilled workers and L-1 visas for workers being transferred within a company through the end of the year, the official said. The president will also block seasonal workers on H-2B visas, with an exception for workers in the food service industry.

The move comes despite opposition from businesses who depend on foreign workers, including major tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business association, which have said it will stifle the economic recovery. Critics of the measure say Trump is using the pandemic to enact his longstanding goal to limit immigration into the United States.

The immediate effects of the proclamation will likely be limited, as U.S. consulates around the world remain closed for most routine visa processing due to the pandemic.

Trump is running for re-election on Nov. 3 and has made his tough immigration stance a central pitch to voters, although the coronavirus, faltering economy and recent nationwide protests over police brutality have overshadowed that issue in recent months.

The visa suspension is the latest step by Trump to restrict immigration in response to the pandemic and economic fallout.

Trump also will renew an April proclamation that temporarily blocks some foreigners from permanent residence in the United States, the senior administration official said on Monday.

Trump rolled out new health-focused rules in March that allow for the rapid deportation of immigrants caught at the border and virtually cut off access to the U.S. asylum system.

At the same time, he announced the land borders with Canada and Mexico would be closed to non-essential crossings, a measure that has been extended several times.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Steve Holland; Editing by Sandra Maler and Grant McCool)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
[June 22, 2020] American Equity Launches Destinations Fixed Index Annuity with New Index

American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company, a leading underwriter of fixed index annuities, announced the launch of a new growth-focused fixed index annuity. The Destinations annuity is a first of its kind for the company, offering multiple allocation options including a new volatility-controlled index developed with Bank of America, the BofA Destinations Index, which is exclusive to this product. "We are excited to collaborate with Bank of America, a leading global financial institution, and to give clients a new strategic growth option for their retirement savings," said American Equity Chief Executive Officer Anant Bhalla. "The BofA Destinations IndexTM is a rules-based strategy, and combines three assets using two time-tested investment principles - balanced risk and momentum," noted Will Holligan, head of Americas Insurance Solutions for Bank of America. "By balancing risk and then seeking returns, this index aims to provide stable returns in many market environments. We are looking forward to working with American Equity to introduce this innovative solution throughout the U.S." In addition to the traditional benefits fixed index annuities deliver, such as principal protection and tax-deferral, the Destinations annuity provides new interest growth opportunities based, in part, on the performance of a selection of indices, using a variety of crediting strategies. There are two index crediting strategies available that are linked to the exclusive BofA Destinations IndexTM, a trackable index which combines U.S. equities, U.S. Treasuries and the Gold Index with the goals of managing volatility and delivering stability in many market conditions. The Destinations annuity is a 10-year-term product. ABOUT AMERICAN EQUITY American EquityInvestment Life Insurance Company is a full-service underwriter of fixed annuity products, with a primary emphasis on the sale of index annuities. Headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company is committed to providing products with integrity, as well as superior service to the agents it partners with and their policyholders. For more information, please visit www.american-equity.com.



ABOUT BANK OF AMERICA Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 66 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,300 retail financial centers, including approximately 3,000 lending centers, 2,700 financial centers with a Consumer Investment Financial Solutions Advisor and approximately 2,100 business centers; approximately 16,900 ATMs; and award-winning digital banking with approximately 39 million active users, including approximately 30 million mobile users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business owners through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and approximately 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The BofA Destinations Index (the "Index") has been created and is owned by BofA Securities, Inc. and its Affiliates (collectively, "BofAS") and the Index has been licensed to American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company ("American Equity"). Neither American Equity nor any fixed index annuity ("Product") is sponsored, operated, endorsed, sold or promoted by BofAS. Obligations to make payments under any Products are solely the obligation of American Equity pursuant to the term of the contract between American Equity and a purchaser, and are not the responsibility of BofAS. BofAS indices and related information, the name "BofAS", and related trademarks, are intellectual property licensed from BofAS, and may not be copied, used, or distributed without BofAS' prior written approval. The Products have not been passed on as to their legality or suitability, and are not regulated, issued, endorsed, sold, guaranteed, or promoted by BofAS. BOFAS MAKES NO WARRANTIES AND BEARS NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE INDICES, ANY RELATED INFORMATION, ITS TRADEMARKS, OR THE PRODUCT(S) (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, THEIR QUALITY, ACCURACY, SUITABILITY AND/OR COMPLETENESS). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005666/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
SAN JOSE, Calif., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyla today announced that its new comprehensive platform for COVID-19 testing of employees is available for companies of all sizes throughout California. Through a suite of technology apps, Kyla offers weekly on-site testing for all employees and daily symptom monitoring of employees' condition, with doctors reviewing these daily updates and providing telemedicine counseling, evaluation and work clearance via the Kyla Chat tool to closely monitor potential cases. Weekly drive up and onsite testing are also incorporated into the COVID-19 testing procedures for all employees. If an infection does crop up, the outbreak is controlled through contact tracing as well as telemedicine counseling with physicians, which is available 9am to 9pm until employees have a clean bill of health.

Kyla is the only fully integrated platform which includes an app, dashboard and live testing for COVID-19. Companies looking to reopen safely are turning to Kyla to ensure they are covered from COVID-19 outbreaks.

With the nation's workforce gearing up for a return to working onsite, higher safety standards to ensure the safety of employees, their families, and the public in general are companies' number-one priority. Kyla's client roster is expanding daily and includes various companies and educational institutions, including Off the Grid, AP-Tech, Alameda County Community Food Bank, Hydraflow and others. These are companies whose very existence is based upon providing a safe environment for their customers and employees.

"Weekly COVID-19 testing is vital to managing outbreaks and potential spread of the coronavirus in the workplace," said Garick Hismatullin, CEO of Kyla. "We bring mobile-testing teams into our clients' parking lots to ensure the safety of their employees while also making the whole process as convenient as possible."

Medical experts say infected individuals are contagious within three days after being infected, and it could take up to 12 days to show any symptoms. This underlies the significance of maintaining vigilant testing procedures, according to Hismatullin, since over 25% of people infected don't show any symptoms.

Kyla's COVID-19 testing includes the initial testing of all employees as well as weekly testing thereafter. Employees also must submit to a daily, non-invasive symptom check facilitated through the app's dashboard. Kyla provides CDC recommended molecular tests which are FDA and EUA approved. Infected employees are connected to doctors to receive virtual treatment. Physicians oversee the treatment and recovery of affected patients and sign off on their ability to return to work. Employers have access to all pertinent data through a dedicated Kyla dashboard.

Based in Fullerton California, Hydraflow is an Orange County business with over 300 employees that implemented Kyla. "As we celebrate over 50 years of providing engineered aerospace and defense systems components, we continue to prioritize the well-being of our employees," says Sarah Harris, Human Resource Manager for Hydraflow. "Kyla is a critical part of our compliance procedures, now and in the future."

Kyla works closely with Action Health to offer both telemedicine and hands-on traditional medical services. The program overlaps the best of virtual and real-world medical services. Kyla's comprehensive COVID-19 solution is affordable, with a flat fee of only $9.99 per employee per month. A lower cost per employee is available for businesses with more than 250 staffers. The fee includes access to the Kyla app and its technology suite; COVID-19-related medical services are billed to healthcare insurance firms that cover all costs. The service will be available soon in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas.

About Kyla

Kyla is the only comprehensive platform that blends onsite weekly testing for COVID-19 with an employee mobile app and employer dashboard. The result is stronger compliance with health guidelines, a healthier workforce and greater employee confidence. Learn more at www.kyla.com .

Media Contact:

Amy Flores

Firecracker PR

[email protected]

1-888-317-4687 ext. 706

SOURCE Kyla
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) says the amount of money and material gifted that exchanged hands in full glare of the public in the just ended New Patriotic Party (NPP) Primaries is an evident of the corruption and thievery in the Akufo-Addo government.

The NPP party went to the polls last Saturday, June 20 to elect parliamentary candidates for the 2020 General Elections.

On the day of the primaries, there were rampant sharing of money and gifts in full glare of the public to influence the delegates.

Having observed with keen interest, the NDC says the election was characterized by obscene violence, and showboating as they further stress that the unprecedented levels of vote-buying are evidence of the corruption associated with the Nana Addo-led government.

As you may be aware, the entire primaries was conducted in an environment where those who could afford the biggest pecuniary or monetary inducements, carried the day. Huge amounts of money (in some cases, GHS6,000, GHS5,000, GHS3,000) exchanged hands in the full glare of the media, while material gifts such as refrigerators, flat screen Televisions, motorbikes, tricycles and other valuables were distributed to bribe and induce party delegates.

How a party, which few years ago, toured the world with a cup in hand begging for money, can afford this level of ostentation three and half years after coming into office, speaks volumes of the endemic corruption and thievery that has engulfed the Akufo-Addo government, National Communication Officer for the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi said at a press conference today.

The main opposition party insists that the results of the NPPs primaries, where over 40 incumbent MPs lost their seats, reflect the dissatisfaction of NPP supporters and Ghanaians at large, due to the abysmal performance of the Akufo Addo government.

The NDC is urging Ghanaians to vote for change in the upcoming 2020 General Election as they note that John Dramani Mahama is the leader the country needs.

Read the full press statement from the NDC below:

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE 4TH EDITION OF THE WEEKLY PRESS BRIEFING OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS, BY COMRADE SAMMY GYAMFI, NATIONAL COMMUNICATION OFFICER.

Date: Monday, 22nd June, 2020.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE NDC ON THE FALLOUTS FROM THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY (NPP) PARLIAMENTARY PRIMARIES HELD OVER THE WEEKEND.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the media, I welcome you once again to another edition of the NDCs weekly press briefing.

Today, we shall share with you our observations on the just-ended Parliamentary primaries of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which took place over the weekend and which was characterized by obscene violence, and unprecedented levels of vote-buying and showboating.

As you may be aware, the entire primaries was conducted in an environment where those who could afford the biggest pecuniary or monetary inducements, carried the day. Huge amounts of money (in some cases, GHS6,000, GHS5,000, GHS3,000) exchanged hands in the full glare of the media, while material gifts such as refrigerators, flat screen Televisions, motorbikes, tricycles and other valuables were distributed to bribe and induce party delegates.

How a party, which few years ago, toured the world with a cup in hand begging for money, can afford this level of ostentation three and half years after coming into office, speaks volumes of the endemic corruption and thievery that has engulfed the Akufo-Addo government.

Another disturbing feature of the NPPs parliamentary primaries was violence, which took center stage throughout the country. Some contestants unleashed hoodlums belonging to the numerous vigilante groups affiliated to the NPP against their opponents. We also saw the use of state security to bully and brutalize opponents and in some areas, party members engaged in free-for-all exchange of blows, in confirmation of the violent reputation that the NPP has become known for under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo. It is this same culture of violence, thuggery and lawlessness, that led to the unlawful, callous and senseless demolishing and destruction of properties belonging the Nigerian High Commission in Accra this weekend, in violation of international law.

Friends from the media, even though the practice of vote-buying and electoral violence is not a new phenomenon in our body politics per se, the high level of violence, vote-buying and the wanton display of opulence we witnessed during the just-ended parliamentary primaries of the NPP, is nothing like we have seen in the history of this country, and must give every democracy-loving Ghanaian genuine cause for concern.

Even more bizarre and worrying, were reports by you in the media of how social distancing, wearing of face masks and other critical COVID-19 preventive protocols were defied and thrown to the dogs, as delegates congregated in their hundreds, mingled and interacted, including wild jubilations, in the full glare of the Police.

It is sad, cruel and reprehensible for President Akufo Addo who promulgated the law (E.I 64), which has led to the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of Pastors and other Ghanaians, to turn around and supervise the flagrant violation of the same law by his party officials and members with impunity as we saw on display during the NPPs Parliamentary primaries. This is unacceptable and abominable, particularly at a time church and mosque gatherings have been restricted to a maximum of 100 attendees and a duration of one (1) hour, and at a time, Ghanaians who are found not to be wearing face masks are being subjected to all manner of degrading and inhumane treatment.

The recklessness and lawlessness displayed by the NPP during their just-ended Parliamentary Primaries, coupled with the selective application of the law on COVID-19 preventive protocols by our law enforcement agencies, make the imprisonment of pastors and Ghanaians who were convicted for breaching public gathering restrictions under E.I 64, totally unjustifiable and unfair.

Actions they say, speak louder than words. The flagrant violation of COVID-19 precautionary protocols provided under E.I 64 by officials and members of the NPP and the Presidents tacit approval of same, make nonsense of our collective fight against the dreaded coronavirus pandemic and shows that President Akufo Addo and the NPP are not committed to Ghanas COVID fight.

Friends from the media, we must hasten to add, that the results that emerged out of the NPPs primaries, where as many as over 40 incumbent MPs lost their seats, reflects the dissatisfaction of NPP supporters and Ghanaians at large, with the abysmal performance of the Akufo Addo government.

In all, over 40 incumbent MPs, including eleven (11) Parliamentary Select Committee Chairmen, four (4) Parliamentary Select Committee Vice Chairmen, two (2) Regional Ministers, one (1) Minister of State and three (3) Deputy Ministers of State, lost their seats. The defeat of so many incumbents, especially those in Parliamentary leadership, shows that the NPP delegates voted for change and passed an overwhelming vote of no confidence in their own government.

Our checks have revealed that many first-time MPs lost their seats because no developmental projects have been undertaken in their constituencies in the last three and half years. This is a clear indication that even NPP supporters are generally unhappy with the abysmal performance of their own government, and have invited the rest of Ghanaians to reject this nonperforming, nepotistic and corrupt Akufo-Addo government.

It is pretty obvious, even to the uninitiated, that but for the undemocratic imposition of some 65 incumbent Members of Parliament by the powers that be in the NPP, the situation would have been worse.

We in the NDC are not surprised at the turn of events, because we have always known that President Akufo-Addo and his corrupt government have underperformed, having fulfilled just 14% of their 631 manifesto promises, and are only marking time to an overwhelming rejection by the Ghanaian electorate on 7th December, 2020.

WHY GHANA NEEDS JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA AS PRESIDENT NOW

Having registered the above sentiments, I wish to share with you, why President John Dramani Mahama is the leader that Ghana needs now.

Distinguished friends from the media, even though there has been, and continues to be hopelessness, lawlessness and absolute impunity in the last three and half years under the vindictive and nonperforming Akufo-Addo government; there is hope for a better, inclusive and prosperous Ghana.

This hope is anchored on the return of the visionary, trustworthy and humble John Dramani Mahama to the Jubilee House on 7th January, 2021, to rescue our beloved country from the hands of the vindictive, corrupt and nepotistic Akufo-Addo government and restore the nation back to the path of true progress and development.

H.E John Dramani Mahama is committed to fixing the mess that has been created by the maladministration of the Akufo-Addo government in all sectors of the nation and deliver the transformational leadership that is needed to create prosperity and wealth for all Ghanaians.

As he has announced through his digital conversations with the nation in the last few months, President Mahama when elected shall:

1. Pay all customers of the collapsed financial institutions whose monies are locked-up in full and restore indigenous Ghanaian participation in the financial sector.

2. Reduce the size of government by at least forty (40) ministers to reduce government expenditure and channel those resources into the productive sectors of the economy for the benefit of Ghanaians.

3. Provide free Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) from the second cycle to Tertiary level to build the human resource base of the nation for industrial development, entrepreneurship and job creation.

4. Institute a National Apprenticeship Program in line with his vision of rapid industrialization and job creation for the country.

5. Scrap the 50% increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data. This will reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the country.

6. Construct a regional hospital for each of the six (6) newly-created regions and the Western Region to improve access to quality and efficient health care delivery.

7. Provide districts without hospitals with fully-equipped modern health facilities.

8. Take healthcare to the doorsteps of the people by building a first of its kind Onipa Nua Hospital Ship and deploy it to provide medical services to the inaccessible riverine and fishing communities on the inland Volta water ways. Additionally, the next Mahama government will rehabilitate the Onuador mobile vans that have been abandoned by the Akufo-Addo government and procure more, to provide medical outreach services in underserved and hard to reach areas in all the 16 regions of the country.

9. Construct two (2) new international-standard Infectious Diseases Centers and two (2) additional international research centers.

10. Abolish the dreaded double-track system of secondary education through an emergency and massive infrastructure drive. This will ensure a conducive environment and one-track qualitative learning experience for SHS students.

11. Establish University Campuses in each of the six (6) newly-created regions.

12. Abolish the mandatory national service and obnoxious licensure exams for teacher trainees and restore the automatic employment of teacher trainee graduates. Let me state unequivocally, that no teacher trainee graduate, will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government. Additionally, the promotion and welfare of teachers will be prioritized by the next Mahama government.

13. Restore the automatic employment of Nursing Trainee graduates. Again let me state unequivocally, that no nursing trainee graduate will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government.

14. Restore the distribution of free cocoa fertilizer and chemicals to cocoa farmers to boost cocoa yield and improve the welfare of cocoa farmers.

15. Complete the Eastern Corridor roads, dualise the Aflao, Cape Coast and Kumasi roads among others.

16. Complete all abandoned or uncompleted hospital and health projects, educational projects, road projects and other infrastructural projects in the country.

17. Punish corruption and end the practice of nepotism.

18. Train, remunerate and empower assembly members to be responsible for the local level registration of births and deaths in their electoral areas, to improve the national population register.

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, these are but a few of the policy alternatives which have been announced by the flag-bearer of the NDC, H.E John Dramani Mahama.

It is worth noting, that we shall be outdooring our manifesto for the 2020 general elections in August. But even before that, the flag-bearer and leader of the NDC will in the coming days announce some big-ticket policies which are central to his transformational vision for this country. This will include a major and comprehensive job creation policy he intends to undertake, to create millions of permanent and dignifying jobs for the teeming unemployed youth when he assumes the reins of power in 2021.

CONCLUSION

The point has to be made, that the 2020 general elections is a referendum on the performance of President Akufo-Addo who has failed woefully to deliver on his numerous campaign promises to Ghanaians, having fulfilled only 14% of the 631 promises in the 2016 manifesto of the NPP.

The comfort and transformation Ghanaians were promised by President Akufo-Addo and the NPP have become a pipe dream. Today, cost of living is so high and unbearable for the vast majority of Ghanaians due to the bad governance of President Akufo Addo.

The free fall of the Ghana cedi continues unabated and businesses continue to collapse leading to job losses.

Whiles Ghanaians continue to suffer, corruption continues to thrive under President Akufo-Addo, who despite promising to fight same, has turned himself into an enabler and promoter of corruption, for which reason he has earned for himself the unenviable Chief corruption clearing agent accolade.

President Akufo Addo has normalized nepotism and has continuously demonstrated little care for the welfare of Ghanaians. He has proven to be dishonest, corrupt and inept, for which reason he must be shown the exit come December 7, 2020.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ghana needs a visionary, trustworthy and humble leader to ensure development, progress and prosperity for all and not a select few. And that leader, is none other than H.E John Dramani Mahama.

Thank you for your attention.

Signed.

Comrade Sammy Gyamfi

(National Communication Officer)
Mary Lou McDonald will "pick up the phone" and engage with parties of the left, should the programme for government be rejected by either Fianna Fail, Fine Gael or the Green Party.

The Sinn Fein leader is ready to engage with "pro-change" parties, according to her housing spokesperson Eoin O Broin.

Mr O Broin said today that the idea that there is no alternative to the proposed government was "deeply dishonest way to characterise what is happening" designed to pressure party members into "accepting a bad deal".

Mr O Broin said that in the event of the deal being rejected, his party leader would attempt to form a government.

"There is an alternative if this deal is rejected on Friday. That is that Mary Lou McDonald, in the first instance will pick up the phone and engage with pro-change parties to try to put together an alternative programme for government.

"It is our view that this could be done very quickly and is the right thing to do."

The parties of the left had worked on a programme for government before the Covid-19 emergency had broken out, but the decision by the Greens to enter talks with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael on government formation saw this end.

Renewed public remarks about restarting talks did not yield a document. A coalition of Sinn Fein, the Greens, Labour, Solidarity-PBP and the Social Democrats would yield just 67 seats, 13 shy of a majority.

Mr O Broin said that if those parties coalesce, "it would be up to Fine Gael and Fianna Fail" to decide if they would support a government either from opposition or through confidence and supply.

He said that he disagreed with Green Party leader Eamon Ryan that the proposed programme is a "left-wing" document.

"We could have a programme for government for change. But this document is more of the same."

Mr O Broin said that the Green Party's use of actor Mark Ruffalo to support the climate parts of the deal may not decide the vote.

"I'm hearing that the Green vote could be very tight. Whether or not a Hollywood actor - and a very genuine campaigner - will have any sway, I don't know."
HOUSTON -- (June 22, 2020) -- Rice University engineers have created a light-powered catalyst that can break the strong chemical bonds in fluorocarbons, a group of synthetic materials that includes persistent environmental pollutants.

In a study published this month in Nature Catalysis, Rice nanophotonics pioneer Naomi Halas and collaborators at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Princeton University showed that tiny spheres of aluminum dotted with specks of palladium could break carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds via a catalytic process known as hydrodefluorination in which a fluorine atom is replaced by an atom of hydrogen.

The strength and stability of C-F bonds are behind some of the 20th century's most recognizable chemical brands, including Teflon, Freon and Scotchgard. But the strength of those bonds can be problematic when fluorocarbons get into the air, soil and water. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, for example, were banned by international treaty in the 1980s after they were found to be destroying Earth's protective ozone layer, and other fluorocarbons were on the list of "forever chemicals" targeted by a 2001 treaty.

"The hardest part about remediating any of the fluorine-containing compounds is breaking the C-F bond; it requires a lot of energy," said Halas, an engineer and chemist whose Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) specializes in creating and studying nanoparticles that interact with light.

Over the past five years, Halas and colleagues have pioneered methods for making "antenna-reactor" catalysts that spur or speed up chemical reactions. While catalysts are widely used in industry, they are typically used in energy-intensive processes that require high temperature, high pressure or both. For example, a mesh of catalytic material is inserted into a high-pressure vessel at a chemical plant, and natural gas or another fossil fuel is burned to heat the gas or liquid that's flowed through the mesh. LANP's antenna-reactors dramatically improve energy efficiency by capturing light energy and inserting it directly at the point of the catalytic reaction.

In the Nature Catalysis study, the energy-capturing antenna is an aluminum particle smaller than a living cell, and the reactors are islands of palladium scattered across the aluminum surface. The energy-saving feature of antenna-reactor catalysts is perhaps best illustrated by another of Halas' previous successes: solar steam. In 2012, her team showed its energy-harvesting particles could instantly vaporize water molecules near their surface, meaning Halas and colleagues could make steam without boiling water. To drive home the point, they showed they could make steam from ice-cold water.

The antenna-reactor catalyst design allows Halas' team to mix and match metals that are best suited for capturing light and catalyzing reactions in a particular context. The work is part of the green chemistry movement toward cleaner, more efficient chemical processes, and LANP has previously demonstrated catalysts for producing ethylene and syngas and for splitting ammonia to produce hydrogen fuel.

Study lead author Hossein Robatjazi, a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSB who earned his Ph.D. from Rice in 2019, conducted the bulk of the research during his graduate studies in Halas' lab. He said the project also shows the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration.

"I finished the experiments last year, but our experimental results had some interesting features, changes to the reaction kinetics under illumination, that raised an important but interesting question: What role does light play to promote the C-F breaking chemistry?" he said.

The answers came after Robatjazi arrived for his postdoctoral experience at UCSB. He was tasked with developing a microkinetics model, and a combination of insights from the model and from theoretical calculations performed by collaborators at Princeton helped explain the puzzling results.

"With this model, we used the perspective from surface science in traditional catalysis to uniquely link the experimental results to changes to the reaction pathway and reactivity under the light," he said.

The demonstration experiments on fluoromethane could be just the beginning for the C-F breaking catalyst.

"This general reaction may be useful for remediating many other types of fluorinated molecules," Halas said.

###

Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Rice's Brown School of Engineering, director of Rice's Smalley-Curl Institute and a professor of chemistry, bioengineering, physics and astronomy, and materials science and nanoengineering.

Additional co-authors include Ming Zhang, Linan Zhou and Peter Nordlander, all of Rice; Junwei Lucas Bao, formerly of Princeton University and now at Boston College; Emily Carter, formerly of Princeton and now at UCLA; and Phillip Christopher of UCSB.

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (MURI FA9550-15-1-0022), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-16-1-0042), the Welch Foundation (C-1220 and C-1222) and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

Links and resources:

The DOI of the Nature Catalysis paper is: 10.1038/s41929-020-0466-5

A copy of the paper is available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-020-0466-5

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/06/0622_BREAKING-fig-lg.jpg

CAPTION: An artist's illustration of the light-activated antenna-reactor catalyst Rice University engineers designed to break carbon-fluorine bonds in fluorocarbons. The aluminum portion of the particle (white and pink) captures energy from light (green), activating islands of palladium catalysts (red). In the inset, fluoromethane molecules (top) comprised of one carbon atom (black), three hydrogen atoms (grey) and one fluorine atom (light blue) react with deuterium (yellow) molecules near the palladium surface (black), cleaving the carbon-fluorine bond to produce deuterium fluoride (right) and monodeuterated methane (bottom). (Image courtesy of H. Robatjazi/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/06/0622_BREAKING-hr-lg.jpg

CAPTION: Hossein Robatjazi is a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (Photo courtesy of H. Robatjazi/UCSB)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/01/0108_SYNGAS-nh30-lg.jpg

CAPTION: Rice University's Naomi Halas is an engineer, chemist and pioneer in the field of light-activated nanomaterials. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
Photo: iStock

Here's the most recent top news you may have missed in Raleigh. Governor orders removal of 3 Confederate monuments from Capitol grounds Read the full story on ABC11 WTVD. 2 shot within hours downtown Read the full story on WNCN. Police seek public's assistance in assault investigation Read the full story on WRAL TV. This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.

Crews in downtown Raleigh removed the Daughters of the Confederacy and Henry Lawson Wyatt monuments. This follows the partial toppling of the Confederate monument outside the Capitol on Friday evening.

Raleigh police are investigating a shooting in downtown Sunday evening that happened a mile away and just hours after another shooting.
A father-of-two was killed in a horror road crash just days after he quit a dream job and moved back to Britain in order to be with his family

Paramedic James Burton, 38, from Chester, had worked with the Abu Dhabi National Ambulance Service in the United Arab Emirates since 2014 but returned to the UK last year to be with his wife and two children.

Just three days into his new job as an agency worker ferrying patients across the UK, Mr Burton was feared to have fallen asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover Discovery as he drove home after a 250 mile round trip.

He ploughed into the back of an HGV parked in a lay-by on the westbound carriageway of the A55 near Chester and died at the scene from multiple injuries.

Just two hours before the 6.05am tragedy on November 12 last year Mr Burton had contacted a friend from the A1 near Middlesborough saying he was tired and needed a coffee.

Father-of-two James Burton, 38, from Chester, was driving home when his Land Rover Discovery ploughed into the back of an HGV

An inquest heard Mr Burton had previously worked for North West Ambulance Service but moved with his family 4,500 miles away to the UAE in 2014 so he could take up a job with the Abu Dhabi National Ambulance Service.

While they had enjoyed their stay in the UAE, Mr Burton's wife Sandra moved back to the UK in 2016 with the children so her eldest daughter could study for her GCSEs.

In a statement to the Warrington hearing Mrs Burton, a school administrator, said: 'James remained in Abu Dhabi out of commitment to his job but from the first day he was missing all of us. He did not want to be in the Middle East but he stuck at it to give the family a better life.

'We would always be Skyping and texting. We talked lots about all sorts but it was a constant theme that James really did not like being apart from the family.

'I kept James positive and his chin up. He would come home from time to time spending up to five weeks at a time. This was quality time, we had such lovely times doing things that we loved.

'In early 2019 James passed his postgraduate in Medical Education from Stafford University and in the summer we decided James should return to Chester and take on agency work. He handed his notice in and on 5 November he flew back into Manchester Airport. James was ecstatic to be home and to be with the family.'

While back in the UK, Mr Burton was able to get a job picking up patients from various locations and began his first shift on November 9.

Mrs Burton continued: 'He worked Sunday night from 9.30pm-3.30 again transporting a patient.

'On Monday 11 November he woke about lunchtime which was normal as he was used to spending night shifts on a small amount of sleep. We spent the afternoon together doing family things around the house there was nothing out of the ordinary.

'At about 9.30pm James left for work and was really happy to be home in Chester. At about 10.10pm I phoned and asked if he was OK and he replied and joked a little about me asking but said he was fine and would take care.

'At 10.46pm he sent me a message to say he was off to Middlesbrough from Manchester Airport.

'At 7.31am the next day I sent James a message saying ''hi babe are you OK?'' James was no stranger to working shifts and coped well with sleep patterns. The road travelled by James was familiar to him and had travelled along there many times and knew it well.'

The Land Rover Discovery being driven by Mr Burton crashed into a HGV parked in a lay-by on the westbound carriageway of the A55 near Chester

She added: James was a very caring and fun-loving person who would do anything for anybody. He loved his family very much. He always wanted to help people and worked long hours to make ends meet but continued to love his role.

'He had a really friendly manner and couldn't help himself when somebody asked for help. I lost count of the number of times James received letters of appreciation from people he had helped.'

A statement from paramedic Stephen Punter, who works in the UAE, said: 'James was ecstatic about moving back to the UK and couldn't wait to get home to his family. On 11 November we had been in contact by phone messaging which carried on until about 10.45pm UAE time when I went to bed- which is four hours ahead of UK time.

'There was a voice message at 4am UK time where James said he was on the A1, his eyes were tired and that he needed a coffee, expecting to get back to base for 5.30am UK time and hopefully home for 6am.

'Although I replied to James at 4.54 UAE time he did not reply further but I did not think it was unusual as I thought he may have been driving home.'

Meanwhile a statement from paramedic Radoslaw Juras read: 'James was a really nice person. Even though I felt completely safe travelling and working with James, having since thought about our conversation about his work intentions and the interviews he was having I think he may have just had too much going on and not had enough sleep.

'I was very much looking forward to the next time we would with together and found it very difficult to understand how the collision could have happened.'

The inquest heard the driver of the stationary Volvo LGV truck and trailer was asleep in his cab but was woken up by the force of the impact which so severe he was thrown from his bunk.

A collision investigation report by forensic collision investigator PC Michael Thompson said: 'It cannot be ascertained why the Land Rover Discovery left the carriageway and entered the lay-by and collided with the truck. There was no evidence of Mr Burton applying emergency braking.

'Mr Burton was on his way home after working a night shift which involved driving long distances for a number of hours. Fatigue is a likely contributing factor in the collision.'

Recording a conclusion of road traffic collision, Coroner Heath Westerman said: 'This was a very, very tragic and deeply upsetting incident involving a much loved family man and a very valuable member of the community.'
Mi Tierra Cafe and Bakery temporarily closed its doors last Friday after a staff member tested positive for COVID-19.

In a social media post, the Cortez family who owns the San Antonio staple said the employee was at work on June 15, prompting the closure the next day, out of an abundance of caution.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

The post emphasized that the safety and well-being of their guests and staff is top priority.

Mi Tierra closed Friday and reopened Saturday morning after the restaurant was sanitized and officials could contact-trace the team members that may need testing.

They did not say what the employees job position is.

The Cortez family said their daily temperature checking and completion of a daily COVID-19 health survey is what helped make it an isolated issue.

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Todays archive page is from Dec. 19, 1960.

A&P advertises its Christmas turkey options.

The ad reads: Make it the merriest! Make it the tastiest!

The supermarket is selling ready-to-cook turkeys priced at 39 cents a pound for birds sized at 18 pounds and over. For turkeys that are under 18 pounds, the price is 47 cents a pound.

A&P locations are open late on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, according to the ad.

If you have trouble viewing the page below, click here to enlarge it.
The Libyan proxy war over the control of the country's oil and gas reserves could intensify if Russia and Turkey do not make a deal on the future of the strategically important city of Sirte.

The Moscow-backed Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Ankara-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) are actively preparing for a battle that could be a turning point in this phase of the conflict.

The two nations are not the only foreign powers involved in the Libyan civil war. Libya is a de facto partitioned country where the LNA, backed by Russia, Greece, Egypt, France, and the United Arab Emirates, controls most of the Libyan territory, including the majority of oilfields and gas reservoirs.

The GNA, which is the U.N.-recognized government, is backed by Turkey, Italy, and Qatar. Its forces recently made significant progress by regaining areas south and east of the capital, Tripoli.

The two sides are expected to get involved in fierce fighting for control over the oil-rich province of Sirte, which is the route that one has to control to dominate the ports of Sidra, Ras Lanuf, Marsa al-Brega and Zuwetina, where 11 oil pipelines and three gas conduits reach the Mediterranean coast.

There is still hope to avoid such a bloody scenario. Russia and Turkey are reportedly negotiating the control over the area, although the countries' Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Mevlut Cavusoglu recently postponed their meeting.

For all actors involved in the Libya's civil war, Sirte seems to be a "red line," which means that it will not be easy to make a compromise. When it comes to Russia, it might be willing to "sacrifice" Sirte in an exchange for Turkey's concessions in Syria, where Ankara backs various jihadi factions against Moscow's client, Bashar al-Assad. However, the involvement of countries such as Egypt, Greece, and France, among others, further complicates situation in Libya.

In November 2019, Ankara signed a maritime delimitation agreement with Libya's internationally recognized government (GNA) in an attempt to gain control over the energy-rich area of the eastern Mediterranean. Opposing the deal, Greece said any such accord would be geographically absurd, as it ignores the presence of the Greek island of Crete between the coasts of Turkey and Libya. The maritime agreement is expected to enormously benefit Turkish offshore gas interests. Although the deal has already sparked a backlash from Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt as it attempts to grant Turkey rights to natural gas in territorial waters claimed by those nations, it is extremely unlikely that any of these countries will fight a direct war against Turkey. Instead, they will likely keep supporting their proxies in Libya in an attempt to prevent Turkey-backed forces from capturing Sirte.

The United States recently accused Russia of delivering fighter jets to LNA, which is something the Kremlin denies as it tries to camouflage its actions in Libya, the same way it hides its involvement in the Donbass conflict.

Unlike Moscow, Ankara openly supports its proxies in the North African country. The Turkey-backed GNA currently controls a relatively small portion of the Libyan territory along the Mediterranean, but since Turkey plans to set up permanent military bases in Tripolitania, the situation on the ground can change in the foreseeable future, which is something that worries neighboring Egypt.

It is worth noting that Turkey supports various Islamic organizations, including those affiliated with al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned after the army overthrew the then president, Mohamed Morsi. If Ankara sets up a permanent military base in Libya, that could mean a surge in the development of radical Islamist organizations in the North African country. In other words, Egypt could face waves of destabilization, and Turkey would assure its geo-economic interests in the region, primarily though control of natural resources. That way, Turkey would be able to extract natural gas directly from the Mediterranean Sea instead of buying it from Russia. That is the key point of confrontation between Moscow and Ankara in Libya.

Finally, the very fact that Russia and Turkey tend to make a deal over Libya's natural resources poses a serious threat to NATO and its reputation.

It is worth mentioning that there are members of the alliance on both sides in this proxy war. Turkey and Italy support GNA, while France and Greece back LNA. Since 2011, military contingents of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy have been operating in Libya. Later, in one form or another, Greece and Turkey joined the actions in the North African nation.

Naturally, in spite of empty phrases about bringing freedom and democracy to Libya, all these countries tend to achieve their own military-political and economic goals in the region at the expense of NATO and third countries. Russia is no exception. Besides arms trade, the Kremlin's primary goal is to spoil Turkish business in the Mediterranean and keep Ankara dependent on Russian energy.

Quite aware of that, Turkey will either make a deal with Russia, or it will encourage its proxies in Libya to capture Sirte, which will provide Ankara a stronger negotiation position. In any case, the future of this oil-rich city could indicate future zones of influence in war-weary Libya.

Nikola Mikovic is a geopolitical analyst based in Europe and a contributor to Tsarizm, Weekly Blitz, and Global Comment.

Image credit: Kremlin.ru.
New York, June 22 : Elon Musk, please take note. Billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic on Monday announced the signing of an agreement with NASA to encourage commercial participation in orbital human spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS).

Building on its commercial spaceflight training experience, Virgin Galactic said it believes it can provide an "unparalleled, personalised customer experience for orbital space travel".

The company said that these trips may not be limited to people for space tourism purposes only.

Private astronaut experiences could range from private citizen expeditions to government-enabled scientific research missions, Virgin Galactic said, adding that the next generation of space traveller is interested in a variety of space experiences.

Under this Space Act Agreement agreement, Virgin Galactic will develop a new private orbital astronaut readiness programme.

This programme will include identifying candidates interested in purchasing private astronaut missions to the ISS, the procurement of transportation to the ISS, on-orbit resources, and ground resources.

Supporting and coordinating the use of ISS resources will be an important point of integration required for each private astronaut mission.

"We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight programme, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies," George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said in a statement.

"Based on the unsurpassed levels of spaceflight customer commitments we have secured to date, we are proud to share that insight in helping to grow another market for the new space economy. We want to bring the planetary perspective to many thousands of people." NASA is seeing greater demand for use of the ISS for scientific and technological research and development, commercial activity, and international collaboration.

As part of this partnership, NASA will leverage Virgin Galactic's commercial expertise and industry knowledge.

Virgin Galactic will also contribute end-to-end programme management and integrated astronaut training packages for private passengers, tailored to meet the needs for a commercial orbital space flight experience.

The space tourism company has already developed a customised Future Astronaut Readiness programme for its customers flying out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic's existing space experiences could play an important role in the training for orbital travel, allowing passengers to become familiar with the environment in space, such as gravitational forces and zero gravity.

Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic's home base, will be utilized for some elements of the training programme, using the facilities designed for private astronaut training, the company said.
New Delhi:

Three civil defence volunteers were injured in a clash with residents of a containment zone in West Delhis Naraina on Sunday afternoon over distribution of food packets, the police said after registering a first information report (FIR) and arresting a man.

Deepak Purohit, the deputy commissioner of police (west), said while a quarrel over serving of food is said to be the reason for the violence. The police also received complaints from some residents that the quarrel began after the volunteers were accused of selectively letting out some people from the sealed zone.

DCP Purohit said the clash happened around 12.15 pm on Sunday while food packets were being distributed to the needy in the containment zone.

According to the volunteers, some residents demanded non-vegetarian food, which wasnt available. The volunteers then said they should be allowed to leave the containment zone. That led to a group of 10-12 residents turning violent, the officer said.

They allegedly tore off a tin sheet meant to seal entry and exit points of the containment zone and beat up the volunteers.

Three volunteers were injured in the incident. They are out of danger, the officer said.

The police registered a case of assault and disobeying an order given by a public servant. One of the alleged attackers, Sampurnanand Bharti, was arrested from the spot itself after the volunteers called the police for help.

Bhartis mother and another woman were involved in the attack. We will arrest them also soon, the DCP said.
Rahul Gandhi has attacked the Centre yet again on Monday for its response on India China border issue. This time, the Congress leader has questioned why China is praising PM Modi during this conflict.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday again targetted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his statement that Chinese troops did not intrude into the Indian territory and asked why is China praising PM Modi during this conflict? Sharing a newspaper article on Twitter which quotes Communist party-run Global Times, the Congress leader wrote: China killed our soldiers. China took our land. Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict?

Earlier, on Sunday, Gandhi had called PM Modi Surender Modi. Sharing an international dailys article titled Indias appeasement policy toward China unravels on Twitter, the Congress leader wrote: Narendra Modi Is actually Surender Modi. The Congress leaders reaction seemingly comes in response to the Prime Ministers statement in the all-party meeting on Friday wherein he said that neither is anyone inside our territory nor have any of our posts been captured.

The central government had on Sunday said that attempts are being made in to give mischievous interpretation to remarks of the Prime Minister at the all-party meeting, countering Rahul Gandhis claim that India surrendered to the Chinese aggression.

China killed our soldiers.

China took our land. Then, why is China praising Mr Modi during this conflict? pic.twitter.com/iNV8c1cmal  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 22, 2020

Also Read: BMC launches Mission Zero to combat Covid-19 in Mumbai

Also Read: India China border issue: Rajnath Singh likely to seek Su-30 fighter jets, T-90 tanks, warships urgently from Russia

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, after an all-party meeting on Friday about the LAC row with China, said that Chinese troops did not intrude into the Indian territory. The Central government, in a statement, said that the Prime Minister was clear that India would respond firmly to any attempts to transgress the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Twenty Indian soldiers lost their lives in the face-off in Galwan Valley on June 15-16. It happened as a result of an attempt by the Chinese troops to unilaterally change the status quo during the de-escalation in eastern Ladakh.

Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured in the violent clash.

Also Read: Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana cannot start in West Bengal until TMC is in power: BJPs Rahul Sinha

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Dr. Daniel Kombert, medical director for the Care Logistics Center and the director for the Clinical Command Center, middle, works with other medical professionals as they answer calls and track data at the Hartford HealthCare COVID-19 Command Center in Newington, Conn., on March 10, 2020. Kassi Jackson | Hartford Courant | Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Kimberly Jocelyn graduated from college last month as millions across the country sheltered in place to avoid the coronavirus pandemic. Looking for a pandemic-friendly way to connect with her community, she applied to be a New York City contact tracer. After a FaceTime interview with New York City Health + Hospitals' test and trace corps and a six-hour online course through Johns Hopkins University, Jocelyn joined the city's team of roughly 3,500 in the effort to contact those who have tested positive for Covid-19 and identify who they might have exposed to the virus. The work is crucial to cutting off chains of infection before they balloon into outbreaks. Along with social distancing and mask wearing, contact tracing is one of the only proven strategies in containing the coronavirus. It's also difficult work, Jocelyn said, and it's nonstop. "My first call was with someone who was confused about how they contracted the virus," she said, adding that it takes compassion and patience to do the job well. "We're here to provide information about Covid, understand how they contracted Covid, and also to understand how they are, to see if they need any resources." Jocelyn, who's now a supervisor of about 15 other tracers, said ideally, a tracer comes out of one of those conversations with contact information for family members, co-workers and anyone else who might have been exposed. Throughout a given day, a tracer on her team will contact between 30 and 50 people, tracking the virus around the city and trying to corner it off into identified chains of people. The strategy is no silver bullet, public health specialists say, but it's an age-old, proven method of containing the most contagious of infectious diseases. It has been and is still used across the world to contain viruses from measles to sexually transmitted infections. World Health Organization officials have repeatedly called on countries to scale up their contact-tracing infrastructure along with the ability to test broadly for the coronavirus. The White House advised states not to reopen until they had built the infrastructure to conduct contact tracing. That means hiring and training thousands of people in some cases, though the federal government did not specify what a robust tracing infrastructure would look like. Now, as states across the U.S. push forward with reopening, stretched health departments are scrambling to build tracing systems on an unprecedented scale. Tracing specialists who spoke with CNBC said they're concerned that the systems in place are not enough and that reopening has been too aggressive.

'Impossible to catch up'

"If you're not doing mitigation, so closing things down, implementing social distancing, once you stop doing that, the only tool you have to keep people from transmitting to each other is contact tracing, isolation and quarantine," said Dr. Karen Smith, former director of the California Department of Public Health. "It's the only tool you've got and it's a tool that works really well when adequately staffed."

Jessica Osorio at Contra Costa Health Services in a video conference with health officials on Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Martinez, Calif. Osorio heads the coronavirus contact tracing program there. Santiago Mejia | The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Smith got her start in public health as a tuberculosis control officer, she said, so she understands the investment that goes into a large contact-tracing effort. She's been involved with the efforts to ramp up coronavirus contact tracing in Napa, Santa Clara and Mendocino counties in California, she said, adding that departments generally waited until cases began to level off in California around late May to estimate what the necessary magnitude of contact tracing would be. Counties began to hire from within the local health departments first until it became clear more boots on the ground would be necessary, Smith added. Santa Clara County has now scaled up to 296 tracers, she said, and Mendocino County, which is more rural, has 25. Napa County has 21, she said, but has plans to grow to 35. Most counties in California began to reopen before they had the necessary infrastructure in place, such as staff and also technology, she said, adding that local health departments, suffering from more than a decade of budget cuts, are running on outdated systems that will hinder their tracing efforts. "[Contact tracing] is a standard tool and it really works, but when it's not in place, or in the case of when you start trying to implement it after the virus is quite literally already spreading in your community, it's almost impossible to catch up," Smith said.

$3.6 billion investment

"Ideally, when we started reopening, it would have been great if we had asked states for contact tracing," said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Some states did tie regional reopenings to contact-tracing metrics. New York, for example, required that regions have 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents to begin to reopen. If applied nationwide, that would mean about 100,000 contact tracers. Infectious disease specialists from Johns Hopkins University and ASTHO proposed a plan in early April to ramp up a national test and trace effort. It would require a workforce of 100,000 people, the proposal said, and cost $3.6 billion. Plescia added that some researchers have called for up to 300,000 national tracers. Instead, the CDC allocated $631 million from the $2 trillion CARES Act to 64 jurisdictions for the effort.

Washington state National Guardsmen take part in a training session to support contact tracing efforts to help slow the spread of Covid, Tumwater, Washington, May 20, 2020. Jason Redmond | Reuters

Rather than developing a coordinated national tracing plan, which countries like Germany have done, the CDC has sought instead to support local efforts. Last week, the agency published a downloadable spreadsheet to help local health departments calculate how many tracers they might need based on population and current level of spread. And earlier this month, the CDC released an infographic defining its expectations for local departments and calling on them to "scale up and train a large case investigation and contact tracer workforce." That guidance came well after every state began to reopen, and many have already begun to see an increase in cases. Arizona, for example, began to reopen on May 15 and has since seen a spike in cases and some hospitals are nearing capacity. The CDC did not provide comment in time for publication.

Robo-calls in Arizona

"The stay-at-home order ended before the counties had hired the necessary number of contact tracers and got their administrative procedures together," said Will Humble, former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. "That put the counties in a position where the stay-at-home order was lifted and a rebound in cases came before they were able to get their capacity up." Cases began to rise in Arizona after Memorial Day weekend. On Wednesday, Gov. Doug Ducey reversed his previous stance that the state would continue to reopen and could handle any uptick in cases. In his updated guidance, Ducey placed an emphasis on the role of contact tracing and he announced the state is deploying 300 National Guardsmen to assist counties with contact tracing.

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

"[Contact tracing] is going to help to contain new infections and to prevent and slow the transmission of coronavirus in our communities," he said at a news briefing, adding that it's one of the "core state preparedness" criteria laid out by the White House. But in Maricopa County, where the virus has hit hardest in Arizona, the county health department has so far hired 82 tracers, spokesperson Fields Moseley told CNBC, and intends to hire 20 more. That would work out to be just more than 2 tracers per 100,000 residents in the county. It's not just about the number of tracers, Smith of California explained, but it's also about having a trained workforce that understands the epidemiology of the virus. As health departments scramble to ramp up, many are hiring people who have no familiarity with epidemiology nor contact tracing. Maricopa County, for example, has recruited students from local universities and Americorp volunteers to supplement the 82 Department of Public Health employees involved in the effort, Moseley said. "Everyone is aware the number of cases increased far beyond expectations in the past two weeks," Moseley said. "Public Health is evaluating adding more employees and incorporating technology such as robo-calls and text messaging for low-risk positive cases, while focusing human resources on those cases that are most at-risk of serious complications."

Labor intensive

Effective contact tracing is not just about the number of tracers, but it's also important that the staff have a nuanced understanding of the local outbreak and their role in it, said Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University and instructor of the school's new six-hour online contact-tracing course. New York state, among jurisdictions, has used Gurley's course to quickly train inexperienced contact tracers. The course gives students a rundown of what's known about the virus: how long a person can be presymptomatic, when is someone no longer infectious, what qualifies as a close contact and more. While the course is helping to train a workforce on a scale that epidemiologists hoped would never be needed and never prepared for, Gurley said that ideally, contact tracing is done by classically trained epidemiologists with an intimate understanding of infectious diseases. "It's hard to imagine that there were many health departments that had enough contact tracers at the beginning of this." she told CNBC. "Our public health system is chronically and severely underfunded, so most places need more and maybe a lot more [tracers]. But if you've got a smaller team and they're all really highly skilled, very good at what they do, and they've been doing it a long time, maybe you need fewer." Nonetheless, anything helps curb the spread of the virus, Gurley said, adding that her colleagues at Johns Hopkins are working on a model to quantify the impact of tracing programs so local health officials can see the difference they're making. As researchers learn more about how the virus spreads and that information is passed down to the growing workforce of rookie tracers, Gurley said she's optimistic such programs will become increasingly fundamental to the country's response. "I think that there's still often an under-appreciation of how difficult this work is and really what we're up against, frankly," she said. "This isn't something that is just a fire drill and then in a couple months it can be over. You really have to invest in these programs, and follow them closely and get them working well and keep after it with the hard slog required to make them worthwhile. We are in this for the long haul"

Isolation hotels

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today a purposed plan to convert dormitories and a hotel into temporary hospital rooms like the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge. Justin Heiman | Getty Images

Contact tracers do more than identify people who might be spreading the virus. They are also expected to help patients and potentially exposed people navigate the illness. Jackie Bray, deputy executive director of the NYC Test and Trace Corps, said tracers in New York are trained to inform contacts about options such as free meal delivery while they're isolating and financial counseling if they're unable to work from home. "It's testing, tracing and isolating, or testing, tracing and, what we call here in New York, safely separating," she said. "They come as a package." The city has leased several hotels, now empty because the pandemic has restricted travel, to offer as temporary housing for potentially exposed individuals who live in crowded homes, Bray said. While about 20% of contacts accept some kind of support from the agency, Bray said only a few dozen have accepted the offer to move into one of the leased hotels at this early juncture in the program. As New York City continues to ramp up its tracing efforts and the public adjusts to it, Bray said she hopes they continue to get more participation from the community and believes that other parts of the country should take note of the work they've done so far. "Invest in your testing infrastructure. Invest in contact tracing, but don't forget that they're both a means to an end. And the goal is isolation," she said of what other municipalities can learn from New York.

Tech 'can't replace' tracers

Countries like South Korea and Singapore made contact tracing famous when they used it to contain the first infections early in their outbreaks. Health officials in those countries were able to quickly roll it out with the help of surveillance technology, including credit card transactions and location-tracking data. Some companies, including Google and Apple, have spearheaded efforts to implement tracing technology that can help the U.S. to replicate successes seen in Asia. But such technology is unlikely to be widely adopted in the U.S., due to concerns over privacy and government intrusion, Smith from California said. Smith has been working with the counties she's involved with to consider how tech could help ramp up the local tracing efforts. Apple and Google's initiative would share anonymized location-tracking data with apps set up by public health departments that can alert users if they've come into contact with someone who tested positive. Smith said there could be some use for a program like that, but much more helpful would be equipping underfunded local health departments with simple data entry systems to help track who's infected and their contacts. She added that some health departments around the country have yet to digitize and build out their systems. "[Tech] can help, but it can't replace," she said.

The Care19 mobile app, which the governors of North Dakota and South Dakota have asked residents to download to assist in contact tracing during the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is seen on a phone, April 24, 2020. Dave Paresh | Reuters

'Will save lives'
[June 22, 2020] Accenture and Sopra Steria to Help French Insurance Group Covea Transform Its Finance Function

Accenture (News - Alert) (NYSE: ACN) and Sopra Steria are helping Covea, France's largest property and casualty insurer, with its finance transformation program as part of a four-year joint agreement. The program aims to modernize and simplify the insurance group's finance function across its three notable brands - MAAF, MMA and GMF. Together, Accenture and Sopra Steria will help Covea converge three separate accounting systems into one integrated platform, which will better integrate with other systems across the business and improve the user experience for finance employees. Phases of this program include deploying advanced technology tools and data models; standardizing processes; and implementing new budget-tracking software. This will enable Covea to transform other parts of its business more effectively with a consolidated accounting platform that improves visibility and integrates with other operational processes. The platform will be developed on SAP (News - Alert) S/4HANA and also uses the Accenture Finance Transformation Solution, which improves financial reporting and enables consistent data models for accounting and consolidating financial results. The solution provides pre-configured templates for standard accounting processes for faster implementation time at a lower cost. Covea will also use Axway Accounting Integration Suite (AI Suite), which helps streamline data integration from multiple accounting systems into the new platform. The AI Suite also includes transformation rules designed in compliance with Covea's specific policies, handles exceptions and generates audit trails ensuring that all data delivered can be justified. "This innovative project is an integral part of our ongoing transformation initiative," said Aude Messin, Covea's director of finance transformation. "We are proud to drive this change with our finance team and are committed to unifying and modernizing our finance landscape with SAP S/4HANA and Axway applications, with which Accenture and Sopra Steria have specificexpertise."



Laurent Gaultier, who leads Accenture's Insurance practice in France, said, "Insurers are contending with significant changes to their accounting practices, with disruption from new technologies. We are thrilled to be helping Covea work toward a new vision for their finance function, building a core platform to help them achieve more innovation across the organization and ultimately build a business for the future." Guillaume Steyer, director of Insurance for Sopra Steria's Insurance and Social Protection practice, said, "Our priority is to facilitate the convergence of the three brands by supporting Covea's strategic and business departments. Thanks to our end-to-end offering, we have all the assets required to ensure the success of this project by combining our consulting teams' approach with our expertise in Axway's AI Suite solution for accounting integration projects."

About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services in strategy and consulting, interactive, technology and operations, with digital capabilities across all of these services. We combine unmatched experience and specialized capabilities across more than 40 industries - powered by the world's largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. With 509,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture brings continuous innovation to help clients improve their performance and create lasting value across their enterprises. Visit us at www.accenture.com. About Covea Covea is a French mutual insurance group leader in the property and casualty market. It protects one in three households in France, and its 21,000 employees are committed to serving more than 11.5 million policyholders. With its three brands MAAF, MMA and GMF, Covea is a solid and dynamic financial player. In 2018, its earned premiums amounted to 16.9 billion euros and equity was 15.2 billion euros. The Covea group generates 2 billion euros of earned premiums internationally. Read more at covea.eu About Sopra Steria Sopra Steria, a European leader in consulting, digital services and software development, helps its clients drive their digital transformation to obtain tangible and sustainable benefits. It provides end-to-end solutions to make large companies and organisations more competitive by combining in-depth knowledge of a wide range of business sectors and innovative technologies with a fully collaborative approach. Sopra Steria places people at the heart of everything it does and is committed to making the most of digital technology to build a positive future for its clients. With 46,000 employees in 25 countries, the Group generated revenue of 4.4 billion in 2019. Read more at www.soprasteria.com  2020 SAP SE. All rights reserved. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005079/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The novel coronavirus found in Beijing's recent outbreak at Xinfadi market has come from Europe, but it is older than Europe's most recent virus, said Chinese health officials.

Although the coronavirus found in Beijing's Xinfadi market has come from Europe, it differs with their current outbreak, as it is older than the current European coronavirus, according to preliminary research results, said Zhang Yong, assistant director of National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the website of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

"The large amounts of samples found in Xinfadi wholesale market indicate that the virus has been around for some time. If it had only just arrived in the city for a short period of time, there may not have been so many positive samples found; however, we need more data before making an informed decision about its origin," Zhang said.

Genomic epidemiology is the one of the main methods used to determine the lifespan of the virus. "We need to first sequence the whole genome, before putting all the different viruses together to see which virus has more mutations; that is, those with more mutations normally suggest an updated virus, whereas those with less mutations closer to the original virus, and they are much older, circulating for a longer period of time compared to recently discovered viruses," Liu said, adding that some calculation also needs to be completed using mathematical models.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Tuesday that the Beijing's recent outbreak probably did not occur in late May or early June, but it probably started spreading a month earlier.

"In this specific outbreak, many asymptomatic or mild cases were detected, and that is why the environment has such a large amount of recorded samples," said Gao.

In fact, the novel coronavirus will spread more easily in dark, humid, and polluted environments, which may catch some residents unexpected. If locals at the wholesale markets had been infected, it would have likely been exposed to many people very quickly, Gao added.

In regard to the virus' first transmission into the country, there are several possibilities being discussed. "For example, the virus may have remained in imported frozen foods, and did not mutate due to frozen environment throughout the entire storage and transportation period, from overseas all the way to China," Zhang said.

It is also possible that the virus may have been lurking in dark, humid environments, which have not been properly disinfected and sterilized, before it was then exposed to local residents, causing its slow evolution. "In the end, what we see is that this virus is closer to the old European virus," Zhang said.

Epidemiological investigation and big data may find connections between cases, but it may also fail to determine which individuals have been spreading the virus. "We hope that through laboratory tests and genome sequence analysis, that we can learn the transmission routes," Zhang said.

The Institute is taking the lead in establishing a nationwide virus monitoring and tracing system based on the entire viral genome, so as to deal with the current problems surrounded with virus traceability, which is a matter deeply related to national security, Zhang said

Chinese scientists are working day and night to find out exactly how did the virus from Europe arrive at Beijing's Xinfadi market.
On the night of June 15, Reyhaneh Ameri, a 22-year-old Iranian woman living with her parents in the Kerman province of south-central Iran, came home late, enraging her father. Ameri was a young, fashionable woman who, like many her age, liked to go out and socialize, which included socializing with men. Her conservative father had hated it. The following day, when Ameri was home alone with her father, he attacked her with an iron bar, put her bleeding body in a car and left her in a nearby village. She died in pain two hours later.

Ameri's death marks the third honor killing in Iran in the span of a single month. The first case of Romina Ashrafi sent shock waves through the country, leading to public outcry and calls for government and legislative action. Ashrafi was just 14 years old when she ran away from home in Irans Gilan province with her much older adult boyfriend. When police found the couple, Ashrafi pleaded not to be sent home, telling the police she feared for her life. The police did not listen, and after forcibly returning her to her parents house, Ashrafi's father decapitated her with a sickle.

Ashrafi's horror story led to government officials, including the countrys Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, calling for harsher punishment for perpetrators of honor killings, who currently receive three- to 10-year prison sentences instead of the death penalty that would be otherwise mandatory for homicide. President Hassan Rouhani and other officials emphatically called on the parliament to expedite passing two laws that could help reduce honor killings: the Law to Protect Children and Juveniles, and the Bill to Protect Women.

Indeed, these laws are very much needed. But laws alone are not enough. Honor killings in Iran result from a complex web of social norms, policy failings and law. If Iran wants to address this crime, it needs a broader approach. When laws are passed, they must be enforced, which is not always the case with human rights reforms in Iran. Most importantly, there must be an aggressive effort to change the practices of police and government agencies and cultural notions of male guardianship and social reputation.

After Ashrafi's death, the parliament passed the Law to Protect Children and Juveniles. The law had been pending for over a decade. The Guardian Council, a 12-member body of clerics and jurists, must approve all laws passed by the parliament to ensure they are in keeping with Irans Constitution and Islamic jurisprudence. Over a period of a year, the Guardian Council had reportedly weakened the bill in many ways and rejected it twice after it was passed by parliament because they believed it compromised the authority of parents over their children. But in the current political moment, the Guardian Council allowed the bill through.

The law, while weakened, is still a positive development. Among its many provisions is Article 17, which makes it a crime for any state authorities charged with protecting children to fail to intervene in cases when a teenager or child is at risk of violence.

Another key provision of the law grants courts more power to deprive abusive fathers of guardianship rights. This change is essential because Irans form of paternal guardianship grants fathers near absolute dominion over their children, especially their daughters. In case of the death of the child, it is the father that legally owns the blood-retribution (a form of life for a life punishment), leading many men to believe it is not a crime for them to kill their children. This sense of entitlement was displayed in 2002 in the city of Ahvaz when Maryam, just 7 years old, was decapitated by her father when he became suspicious that she had been raped by her uncle. While being arrested, Maryams father was still holding her severed head and reportedly said, "Just let me be! It was my own child, and I cut off her head. I own her blood rights, and there is no one else pressing any charges.

Often in honor killings, there is a pattern of abuse that predates the murder. The Law to Protect Children could be used to strip fathers of control over their daughters and dismiss their sense of legal entitlement before things reach a point of no return.

The Bill to Protect Women has languished without a vote for years, but in the wake of these tragedies, the time to pass it is now. The bill would reportedly create harsher prison terms (longer than 10 years) for the killing of a female family member. The law stops short of the death penalty, which is a positive given Irans troubling history with it. More importantly, the Bill to Protect Women would also put in additional safeguards, such as a procedure for women to report being at risk of violence and more state-run womens shelters. Ameri's family members have said that her father was abusive for years, but her mother was too afraid to leave. If Ameri's mother would have had access to a women's shelter, Ameri might still be alive today.

With these laws in place, Iran needs to better train its police forces and relevant agencies to deal with cases of honor killings and domestic and child abuse.

The state must also make an effort to change the underlying social norms around guardianship and family reputation that fuel these crimes. Perpetrators of honor killings are driven by a sense of fear over "what others might say" about their unmarried daughters potential involvement in sexual acts. Indeed, male family members in Iran are repeatedly told they have to protect the reputation of themselves and their families by safeguarding the sexual "purity" of the women in their families. When they feel they have been unsuccessful in shielding the women, some resort to violence, and as fathers are given a sense of ownership over their daughters, these acts seem justified in the eyes of perpetrators. As such, Irans education system, media and religious institutions must all be marshaled to combat these notions of paternal ownership, female purity and social reputation.



These three killings were a wake-up call for the Islamic Republic, and if the government is willing to invest in fighting honor killings on all fronts, then Ameri's and Ashrafi's horrific deaths will be given some meaning.
New Delhi: A Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) unit commanding officer (CO) was among scores of Chinese soldiers killed in the June 15 Galwan Valley clash with Indian troops along the contested Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. The Chinese commanders death was confirmed to the Indian side through diplomatic and military channels last week, said one of the persons cited above, asking not to be named.

China has not said anything about any losses it suffered in the hand-to-hand combat. At a regular briefing on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry stalled a query on the number of casualties the PLA suffered.

The brutal clash at Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh resulted in 20 Indian deaths, including that of a CO. The Chinese army possibly suffered more than twice the casualties, Union minister General V K Singh (retd) said on Saturday.

It was the first such clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers along the contested LAC in 45 years.

The Chinese COs body was among the bodies exchanged by the two sides after the clash was over on June 16, said another person cited above.

The moment Indian soldiers realised that their CO, Colonel B Santosh Babu, had fallen, they fought against the Chinese soldiers with all their might and killed 16 of them and inflicted life-threatening injuries on scores of others in a fearsome counter-attack.

The seven-hour face-off involved three staggered clashes and saw the Indian soldiers put up a fierce fight against Chinese troops, who had been pulled out of another sector and freshly deployed on the disputed border to carry out the premeditated attack, as reported by HT on Monday. The Indian and Chinese COs were killed in the second and the most fierce round of fighting.

The clash involved 600 soldiers from both sides, with the Indians badly outnumbered.

Details from the debriefing of Indian soldiers involved in the skirmish revealed the heroism of the Indian troops, who fought off numerically superior rivals and the tactics of the Chinese soldiers.

The Indian soldiers were carrying weapons and ammunition. But they did not open fire as they were following border agreements between the two countries, the government said last week. The clarification came following a political controversy over whether the Indian soldiers were carrying weapons that could have been used to defend themselves.

INDEPENDENT COMMENT
India is playing the role as the "pharmacy of the world" during the COVID-19 pandemic with its vast experience and deep knowledge in medicine, setting the tone for many regional and global initiatives, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Secretary-General Vladimir Norov has said.

India has so far supplied medicines to 133 countries in the fight against COVID-19, which shows India's generosity, despite the fact that the country's government has taken urgent measures to prevent and treat the disease on a national scale, Mr Norov told news agency PTI in an interview.

This is a worthy and responsible example of the behaviour of a major power, and at the same time demonstrates the complementarity and mutual support of the SCO member states, he said. India last week overwhelmingly won the election to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for a non-permanent seat. Commenting on India's election to the UNSC, Mr Norov, who visited New Delhi in January this year and held extensive talks with the top Indian leadership, said that the country''s entry into the powerful UN organ is more than symbolic.

"This is more than symbolic now as India secures its non-permanent membership in the UN Security Council for the period of 2021-2022. "I am sure that highly qualified scientists and medical professionals in India will take an active part in the efforts of the world community to study and research the coronavirus pandemic and develop a vaccine," Mr Norov said.

"India plays the role of the 'pharmacy of the world' and in terms of a pandemic it is crucial in a global context," he said. Beijing-headquartered SCO is an eight-member economic and security bloc. India and Pakistan were admitted into the grouping in 2017. Its founding members include China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"India today sets the tone in many regional and global initiatives. It has a good reason for this: it relies on its vast experience and deep knowledge in the field of medicine and health management, including the production of high quality, affordable medicines, equipment and vaccines," said Mr Norov, the former foreign minister of Uzbekistan. "India has become the world's largest producer of generic medicines, accounting for 20 per cent of the total global production, and meeting 62 per cent of the global demand for vaccines," he said.

Mr Norov said that taking into account India's commitment to international cooperation and solidarity, as well as its positive contribution to supporting the world's most important institutions of cooperation, he gives it a priority in efforts to reach a consensus on the central role of the UN and the World Health Organization (WHO). He said that India has also played an active role in providing assistance to many countries, including the SCO member states, in the supply of medicines and essential drugs.

With India's accession into the SCO as a full member, new opportunities for further development and deepening of full-scale cooperation have opened up, the Secretary-General of the grouping said. "India's policy and practice in the international arena in the context of the coronavirus pandemic have fully proved the correctness of the course outlined by Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi at the Bishkek Summit in 2019 - the priority of cooperation in the field of health," he said.

Mr Norov also made a special mention of PM Modi's proposals to evolve a common vision for strengthening healthy cooperation in the region. "At the last SCO Summit, PM Modi made a number of proposals to activate key areas of interaction. He noted that there should be a common vision of strengthening healthy cooperation in our region.

"In his opinion, the letters that add up as the word HEALTH can be a great format for collaboration: H- Healthcare cooperation, E- Economic cooperation, A- Alternative energy sources, L- Literature and culture, T- Terrorism free society, H- Humanitarian cooperation," he said. India has far-reaching broad plans to increase the role and authority of the SCO in the international arena, Mr Norov added.

Also read: Coronavirus: Delhi govt directs DMs to ensure verification of cases within 24 hours
By James McQueeny

The name Nick Acocella, who passed away this weekend at the age of 77, would not be that recognizable to most New Jerseyans.

The notable exceptions would be politicians in Hudson County, in the halls of the Statehouse in Trenton and within city halls and county administration buildings across New Jersey.

For decades, Acocella cranked out his subscription-based, weekly publication called Politifax with updates, exposes and his weekly political winners and losers.

The name dates itself to when fax machines were considered high-tech, something he never was, as witnessed by the fact he never changed the name of the publication when fax machines all but disappeared.

No, Acocella was what I would call a know tech guy, someone who knew more than anyone active in New Jersey journalism when it came to the high-speed processing of politics.

In a TV piece a few years ago, I compared him to the iconoclastic national journalist I.F. Stone. Both men were honest, intellectually, personally, professionally and politically.

Neither particularly lusted for the spotlight, or fortune, in particular, working alone as they did in humble surroundings; Acocella from his Hoboken apartment in a closet of his living room that was converted into what he laughingly called his office that was created simply by wedging a computer terminal into it.

James Carville once told me he never thought politics could be more vicious than what he experienced in his native Louisiana  until he ran a race with me in New Jersey and I ran right outta here.

It was within this milieu that a gruffy Acocella crafted his art.

He likened his style to an umpire who once said, I call em as I see em.

If Carvilles description of politics statewide was apt, it would vastly have understated the way it was in Hudson County, long the Chechnya of New Jersey politics, and where Acocella cut his political and journalistic teeth.

As a rookie reporter in 1970 for The Hudson Dispatch, Acocella tracked me down, pulled me aside and brusquely challenged me before we had even shook hands. Have you been corrupted yet?

Acocella was a smallish figure, and always wore a black beret in staid Hudson. At that time, he was running a reform slate to replace a corrupt town slate of commissioners in the hometown of his heart, West New York.

With the fortuitous help of criminal indictments handed down by the U.S. Attorneys Office, Acocellas ticket swept the incumbents out of office.

With that journalistic combat as a prelude, he was Kevlared up to enter political journalism with Politifax, and well he did for New Jersey.

James McQueeny is the former White House bureau chief for The Star-Ledger.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
(GETTY)

Canopy Growth (WEED.TO)(CGC) sees the addressable legal cannabis market expanding to nearly $70 billion globally by 2023, up from almost $10 billion today.

Canada is expected to be about four times the size that it was in 2019. U.S. CBD, six times. In Germany, about 10 times . . . by the time we get to 2023, Canopys chief executive officer David Klein said during the companys virtual investor day on Monday. Our goal is to hold a leading share position in each of these markets.

Canopy expects the United States, Canada and Germany to account for 90 per cent of the global market in three years. Since taking over the CEO job in January, Klein has narrowed the companys global focus to those three countries amid a sweeping overhaul of the cannabis giant. He sees growth in the companys core markets reaching $22 billion by 2023, with $60 billion to be unlocked if cannabis sales are permissible under U.S. federal law.

He told Yahoo Finance Canada earlier this month that he sees that happening in 2022, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, allowing Canopy to enter the worlds largest pot market through its deal to acquire Acreage Holdings (ACRG-U.CN).

While shut out of selling THC cannabis stateside, Canopy has focused on building a consumer base through its CBD brand launched in late 2019 called First & Free, as well as sports drinks and skin care products through its BioSteel and This Works subsidiaries.

Klein said the U.S. CBD market is currently worth $3 billion annually, and is expected to hit $10 billion by 2023. He notes U.S. CBD is currently a cluttered and confusing space with more than 2,700 brands in the market, and 94 per cent of companies realizing sales of less than a million annually.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) ban on marketing the non-intoxicating cannabis compound as a food additive or dietary supplement has been a roadblock for the CBD category.

Klein said Canopy is acting as a voice for our industry on Capitol Hill, actively sharing CBD research with the FDA, and holding ongoing discussions with political leaders to see it classified as a dietary supplement.

Story continues

Canopy plans to roll out 40 plus CBD products for the U.S. market spanning gummies, vapes and beverages. A line by Martha Stewart is expected in the fall, with a focus on humans, and later pets.

Our aspirations in the U.S. CBD market is based upon our expectation that by full-year 2023 the market would be a $10 billion market at retail. The FDA would have clarified CBD regulations, opening a pathway to broader distribution and product formats, and wed be on the way to becoming a leading CBD supplier to large format retailers, Klein said.

"We intend to make a lot of noise in the U.S.," Klein said.

Turning to Canada, Canopy recently saw its share of its home recreational market slip. Canopy has about 15 per cent of the Canadian recreational pot market, down from about 20 per cent from the beginning of the year, according to analyst estimates.

Chief product officer Rade Kovacevic said Canopy still holds a top three market share position in most province and territories.

Klein said the company is taking steps to address the Smiths Falls, Ont.-based pot giants waning dominance.

The plan involves greater focus on the popular lower-priced cannabis category, improved quality, and promotion of its cannabis 2.0 offerings like beverages, vapes and chocolates. Canopy will also cull underperforming items from its portfolio.

Roughly 30 per cent of our SKUs have accounted for 80 per cent of our Canada recreational shipments. Simply put, we had too many low-velocity SKUs through our supply chain taking away resources from executing on the supply of high-velocity SKUs, said Kovacevic.

Weve missed opportunities to capture $20 million in sales in Q4 alone due to product availability issues.

Newly hired chief insights officer Chris Edwards said Canopy is looking to those outside the current crop of cannabis consumers to fuel future growth. According to his figures over the last 12 months, only a quarter of the potential market has consumed cannabis, 37 per cent of which bought through legal channels.

There are different barriers that need to be overcome to get them to consume our products, he said. Product innovation that doesnt require inhalation is a huge opportunity. Our beverage portfolio has products with rapid onset and no calories and sugar.

Canopy said it has shipped over 530,000 beverage units since the first products hit the Canadian market in the spring.

In the German medical market, Canopy expects 2023 sales of close to $2 billion. The company acquired German-based cannabinoid firm C3 in 2019 to tap into growing adoption of medical cannabis therapies in Europes largest medical market.

Theres only a couple hundred million dollars in sales today, Edwards said. Its going to be well north of a couple of billion dollars. So were very bullish on the German market long term.

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.
The Industrial Property Forum 2020

At the Industrial Property Forum on June 19 in Hanoi, Pham Minh Phuong, director of Hai Duong Industrial Zones Management Board, said that industrial property in Vietnam has become "hotter" thanks to free trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). Most industrial zones are of a small scale, so large land areas need to be cleared for lease in the time coming.

Vietnams industrial property sector is preparing to welcome giants. This is a chance for industrial property developers to prepare and build to become the best destination for investment, said Phuong.

He also highlighted that industrial property is different from housing because developers have to pour a great deal of funds into infrastructure, factories, while returns trickle in slowly and operators are hard-pressed to fill up their properties quickly to start generating revenue.

In order to overcome this challenge, policies related to industrial property should be changed to select businesses that have enough financial capacity to implement clearance very quickly to be able to seize the most opportunities coming Vietnam's way.

Meanwhile, Tran Quoc Trung, vice director general of the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Department of Economic Zones Management said that in addition to increasing the number and improving the scale, industrial zones should be developed sustainably in parallel with promoting the strength of their locality, boosting linkages among regions and clusters.

Trung highlighted the role of key industrial zones, which are leading the development of the industry. Besides, it is necessary to develop small- and medium-sized economic zones in rural and mountainous areas to reduce pressure on transportation, urban, environment, and social infrastructure, as well as narrow the socio-economic development gap between urban and rural areas. "However, the efficiency of land usage must be good, and economic zones should not be built on highly productive agricultural land," said Trung.

Especially, economic zones should be developed in-depth to enhance quality and performance by technology, improving added value, diversifying co-operation and investment methods, and encouraging the private sector to build and develop economic zones.

In order to realise these things, Trung said that they need to perfect the legal framework related to economic zones, innovate management, and apply new economic zone models.

Notably, KTG Industrial, a subsidiary of Khai Toan Group (KTG), was highly praised at the forum for its new type of factory which was born through the integration of ready-built factories, warehouses, and 4.0 technology, creating a digital convergence among industry, business, functionality, and process.

"The 4.0 ecosystem in KTGs industrial property includes imaging technology, facilities, services, and management to improve performance and protect the environment that meets all the targets that authorities highlight and go toward, as well as suit the current context of the pandemic," Dang Trong Duc said.

However, the price of industrial property is said to be rising high. "They are offering up to $150 per square metre while $100 was deemed expensive before," Do Nhat Hoang, director general of the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Foreign Investment Agency said, forecasting that this will affect occupancy rates at industrial zones. Hoang also highlighted the need to prepare enough land supply at an affordable price to welcome overseas giants.

Pham Minh Phuong from Hai Duong Industrial Zones said that industrial zones need to complete a long and complicated process to extend area or add new industrial zones to the master plans, including three submissions to the prime minister and four rounds of collecting comments from ministries and agencies. This process takes one or two years at least.

As of the end of May, 2020, there were 561 economic zones based on a total of 201,000ha, equivalent to 0.6 per cent of the country's total area. Of this, 374 economic zones were built on 114,400ha and 259 ones were under construction or in the land clearance stage on 86,600ha.
For the third week in row, multiracial protests against police violence have continued across the United States in large cities as well as rural communities. Initially triggered by the release of a cellphone video depicting the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25, demonstrations against police violence have taken on an international character, with thousands continuing to march in London and Paris over the weekend.

On Sunday hundreds of protesters in Washington, D.C. briefly shut down a highway that led to the US capital. In Columbus, Ohio, at the behest of Democratic party Mayor Andrew Ginther, Columbus police were given the green light Sunday afternoon to assault and teargas peaceful protesters.

In a video posted by NBC journalist Eric Halperin, Columbus police are shown ramming protesters with their bicycles and pepper spraying them. Ginther justified the brutality on Twitter writing that in order to keep the streets open and protect residents from lawlessness ... increased enforcement today has been necessary.

In New York City over 10,000 cyclists took over Manhattan streets Saturday afternoon, riding a 20-mile loop from Times Square to Harlem and down a car-free West Side Highway to Battery Park, chanting the names of George Floyd and 26 year-old Louisville EMT Breonna Taylor, murdered in her sleep by police during an early morning no-knock raid on March 13, 2020.

Meanwhile, at a half-full arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saturday night, President Donald Trump briefly railed against the protesters outside the venue branding them very bad people and thugs. In response to Trumps characterization of the protesters Tulsa police were forced to admit that while there were thousands of people protesting outside the arena, Overwhelmingly these encounters have been peaceful with everyone attempting to share their views.

Over the weekend, two shootings, one in Minneapolis, the other in Seattle, have been hyped by the bourgeois press to paint the movement against police violence as more dangerous and violent than the police themselves.

In Minneapolis, one person is dead and eleven more were injured following an early Sunday morning shooting on the 2900 block of Hennepin Avenue South. Police have yet to release a description of the alleged shooters and no one has been arrested at this time.

Fred Hwang, a manager at Hoban Korean BBQ, who was working the front door when he heard the shots ring out at roughly 12:25 a.m., saw two groups of people firing at each other. Hwang helped usher people into the restaurant to avoid the gunfire as they waited for over 30 minutes for police to arrive.

In Seattle a 19-year-old man is dead and another critically injured after an argument escalated Saturday morning shooting in the area of downtown known as CHAZ for Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Police have stated that they were unable to assist after being, met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims. Video evidence filmed by protesters shows that police were allowed to enter the zone after the shooting and state investigators were in the zone gathering shell casings Saturday morning.

In Los Angeles, a rally for the recently murdered Andres Guardado exceeded expectations with thousands participating Sunday afternoon. The march began at 1 p.m. with roughly 100 people, but by the time the march reached the front of the Los Angeles County Compton Sheriff's (LASD) office, which was surrounded by riot police, the crowd had swelled into the thousands.

It has been over 72 hours since police gunned down the 18-year-old Guardado, who was working as a security guard at the Freeway auto body shop located on the 400 block of Redondo Beach Blvd. According to Captain Kent Wegener of the LASD, deputies were observing Guardado, who allegedly spotted the deputies looking at him. Upon seeing the police, Guardado supposedly produced a gun before running away from the police. Wegener stated that after a short foot-pursuit an as-yet unnamed deputy fired six shots into Guardado, killing him. No deputies were injured.

Police have stated they recovered a gun at the scene that had an illegal large capacity magazine and was devoid of any serial numbers of identifying marks. No video footage or pictures have been produced to corroborate the police allegations. The police have yet to state why they were observing Guardado to begin with, as there had been no calls placed for police assistance at that address.

Andrew Henney, the owner of the body shop, described Guardado as a good friend and disputed the police retelling of events. In a video interview with Memo Torres of LA Taco, Henney states that Guardado, was standing near the curb ... talking to two girls and then the police approached him and right away drew their guns, pointing them at him, and he got scared and he ran.

Gesturing down the alley, Henney states he saw Guardado, on his knees with his hands behind his head, thats when the cops shot him. In a separate interview with CBS KCAL Henney noted that Guardado had a clean background and everything. Theres no reason."

Henney also questioned police reports that Guardado was armed, I dont think so, I never knew him to be armed, he wasnt a gang member, he had never been so much as arrested, he was the coolest kid.

Notably, which has gone unreported in mainstream versions of the events, Henney states that investigators Thursday night locked down his store and proceeded to break and confiscate several security cameras Henney had installed at the shop. Police also took his DVR, all before obtaining a warrant, which Henney noted police produced several hours later.

Guardados cousin, Celina Avarca, in an interview with CBS, also disputed police accounts of Guardado being armed:Id never heard or seen him have any kind of weapons, Avarca said. He never talked about them. Avarca also said her cousin was working two jobs and was in the process of applying to school to become a nurse

Jennifer Guardado, the slain mans older sister, also speaking to CBS, noted the bright future the family saw for Andres, He was gonna make it in life. He was gonna make it and become a good, professional man in life, but they took that away from my family and me.

My parents are completely destroyed. Were all dead already inside.

I lost a part of me, its empty, and Im never gonna have him back, his sister added. Im never gonna see him, hes never gonna talk to me, Im just, I cant, I just cant believe this happened to my brother. It really hurts me.

In an interview with author Julissa Natzely Arce Raya, Guardados father, Cristobal, who works in the restaurant industry, noted that his son recently started the job to help his father pay for the bills: He told me he wanted to help me. But this didnt help me. He just came to meet his death.

He had just graduated high school. He didnt deserve this. El era un buen hijo. (He was a good son.)

Guardado was the second man shot to death by LA County sheriffs in a 48-hour period. Terron Jammal Boone, half-brother to Robert Fuller, who was found dead hanging from a tree last week in Southern California, was shot multiple times by deputies after an alleged traffic stop turned violent last Wednesday.

As was the case with Guardado, none of the detectives, deputies, or police cruisers were equipped with cameras.
New Delhi: The Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) is set to release the result of class 10, 12 board results next month. Nearly, 6.21 lakh students appeared for the board exams this year. Once declared the result will be available on jac.nic.in, jacresults.com, jac.jharkhand.gov.in and jharresults.nic.in.

The evaluation process of the class 10 exam is completed and that of the class 12 exam is likely to get over by the first week of July.

The JAC class 10 exams was conducted from February 11 till February 28. The results were expected to be announced by the first week of May which got delayed due to the sudden outbreak of coronavirus across the country.

The students can also get their results on their mobile phones via SMS.

Last year, the state had recorded a 70.77 passing percentage, with 1,67,916 out of the 4,41,605 securing first division marks.
Story Highlights Reports of feeling anger rose from 25% to 38%, then fell back to 27%

Fewer Americans reported enjoyment or happiness in early June

Surge-and-decline pattern in negative emotions seen among all party groups

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the first week of June, more Americans reported experiencing negative emotions -- and fewer reported experiencing positive emotions -- than in the week prior. By the second week of June, the percentages reporting those same emotions returned to their former levels.

Line graph. Between late May and early June, Americans were more likely to report feeling anger, sadness, worry and stress, and less likely to report feeling enjoyment and happiness. But in the second week of June, those emotions reverted back to the levels they were at in late May.

Reports of feeling anger changed more than any emotion, rising from 25% in the last week of May to 38% in the first week of June, before falling back to 27% the following week. There was a nearly double-digit increase in the percentage of Americans feeling sadness, with smaller increases for worry and stress.

Slightly fewer Americans said they felt happiness and enjoyment -- the two positive emotions Gallup is tracking -- during the first week of June than in the prior week. But like the negative emotions, the proportions of Americans feeling happiness and enjoyment are back to where they had been.

The first week of June was an eventful one in the U.S., as millions of Americans protested racial injustice in the U.S. after the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis, who was killed while in police custody. Those protests were largely peaceful, but some did result in looting or destruction of property. The Trump administration's response to the protests was widely criticized.

These results are part of Gallup's ongoing COVID-19 tracking survey and based on interviews with weekly random samples of Gallup's probability-based panel.

Americans remain less likely to say they are experiencing worry and stress, and more likely to say they have felt happiness and enjoyment, than in late March and early April, when most Americans were living under stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. U.S. adults are about as likely now as they were earlier in the COVID-19 crisis to say they feel anger and sadness.

Surge-and-Decline Pattern Seen Among All Key Subgroups

During the week of June 1-7, members of key subgroups, including by party identification, age, race and education, tended to show increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions, with those effects subsiding partially or completely the week of June 8-14.

For example, there were double-digit increases in the percentage of Democrats, independents and Republicans who reported feeling anger between late May and early June. Democrats (43%) were the most likely of those groups to say they were angry, followed by independents (37%) and Republicans (32%).

In the second week of June, all party groups showed declines in reports of anger, although Republicans were still more likely to report feeling anger (28%) than they were during the last week of May. Democrats and independents were back to the prior levels.

This general pattern among the party groups was also seen in other emotions measured. One notable exception is that Republicans' reports of positive emotions were steady across the three weeks.

Changes in Emotions Experienced, by Political Party Identification Did you experience the following feelings during A LOT OF THE DAY yesterday? May 25-31 June 1-7 June 8-14 % % % Democrats Anger 29 43 29 Sadness 39 49 37 Worry 57 60 55 Stress 56 63 56 Enjoyment 63 58 63 Happiness 67 62 65 Independents Anger 26 37 23 Sadness 25 35 26 Worry 44 49 42 Stress 56 55 51 Enjoyment 71 61 74 Happiness 71 69 75 Republicans Anger 20 32 28 Sadness 20 26 24 Worry 34 39 38 Stress 42 44 42 Enjoyment 76 74 75 Happiness 80 79 80 Gallup Panel, 2020

White people and nonwhite people showed similar increases on most of the emotions, including anger. Nonwhite people had a slightly greater increase in reports of sadness than white people. Both groups' percentages are largely back to where they were in late May, but nonwhite people's reports of positive emotions stayed lower in the second week of June.

Changes in Emotions Experienced, by Racial Group Did you experience the following feelings during A LOT OF THE DAY yesterday? May 25-31 June 1-7 June 8-14 % % % Non-Hispanic White Anger 24 37 28 Sadness 27 35 29 Worry 46 50 46 Stress 51 55 50 Enjoyment 69 64 72 Happiness 74 71 76 Nonwhite Anger 29 43 26 Sadness 34 46 33 Worry 48 52 48 Stress 52 55 51 Enjoyment 69 62 64 Happiness 67 65 64 Gallup Panel, 2020

Bottom Line

Nearly a month after Floyd's death, Americans continue to protest racial injustice. Congress and the president have taken some initial steps to address police actions that have been factors in the recent deaths of black people. The incidents have certainly raised awareness of and sensitivity to matters of race.

The effect of the events of late May and early June on Americans have been borne out in public opinion surveys, including a sharp drop in President Donald Trump's job approval rating and satisfaction with the country more generally. And Americans were more inclined to experience strong negative emotions during that period, though those effects seem to have been short-lived.

The sharp increase in anger and sadness during the first week in June contrasts with similar increases in stress and worry in March, during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak and associated social isolation policies. These results illustrate the different circumstances under which negative emotions are experienced on a daily basis.

Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.
Reports from Iran say that that the value of Iranian currency rial has fallen to a record low June 22, as the U.S. dollar traded at the open markets in Tehran for 200,000 rials or even more.

This could be the biggest devaluation of Iran's national money since records have started.

However, while some Iranian websites have said that the rate of exchange for the U.S. dollar was 199,900 rials for a few hours on Monday morning 22 June, the decline in the value of rial has been continuing throughout the day.

Meanwhile, the rate of exchange for euro set a new record of 224,000 rials on Monday. At the same time, the value of a standard gold coin went as high as 844,000,000 rials and reaching the 900,000,000 peak around mid-day.

Iranians on social media have been posting sarcastic comments in criticism of the government all Monday. @Mohsen Ahmadian wrote on Twitter: "What is more frightening than the 200,000 rials per dollar rate, is that we are going to feel happy after the rate comes down to 180,000 rials."

Another Twitter user writing under the alias @Patrick_jane77 wrote: "The bazaar in Tehran is half closed. Many shops do not sell anything and even refuse to quote the prices of what they sell. Those who give you a quote, make it known that prices are valid for only one hour. Or they quote prices in dollars. And still some idiots believe that the country will progress under the Islamic Republic."

And @Drx66q1 asked: "Where the hell is the man who said the United States cannot do a damn thing?" This is a slogan that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei likes to repeat now and then.

Meanwhile, @mojaban posted a picture of the 1979 Iranian revolutionaries whose revolution was hijacked by the mullahs and said: "We owe the 200,000 rials per dollar exchange rate to you."

Monday morning, the governor of the Central bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnasser Hemmati and the Minister of Economy Farhad Dezhpasand were summoned to the Iranian Parliament (Majles) to explain the situation.

Hemmati attributed the most recent decline in the value of the Iranian currency to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, as well as the recent IAEA board of governor's resolution against Iran. However, he promised that the economy would recover soon, but did not say how.

Still many Iranians believe that the government is manipulating the exchange rate, by devaluating its own currency to earn money when sells dollars and euros to bridge its budget shortfall.

The rise in the price of gold and the rates of exchange gained a new momentum following the IAEA resolution about punitive measures against Tehran. Prices had already been on the rise for several weeks but the new development regarding Iran's nuclear program led to a major surge as economists had predicted earlier.

Hemmati had tried to rule out the prediction and wrote in a commentary that the CBI will provide the foreign currency needed by businesses at the right price. He warned that "the psychological atmosphere created by the IAEA resolution should not lead people in the market to take it as a wrong signal."

At the same time, it appears that Iran is facing a decline in its foreign currency reserves. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that Iran's foreign currency reserves will fall to $85 billion this year with a $19.4 billion decline. The IMF further predicted that the figure will reach $69 billion next year with a further 16 percent fall.

On Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani promised to reveal the identity of those who have taken foreign currency at a preferential rate from the government but have not returned what they owed to the banking system.

He also attributed the situation of foreign exchange in Iran to the coronavirus pandemic and the obstacles in repatriating Iran's oil money from other countries.

The United States left the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Tehran and implemented a maximum pressure policy against Iran, accusing it of destabilizing the region, supporting terrorism, and developing ballistic missiles.

Subsequently, according to Iranian Vice-President Es'haq Jahangiri Iran's oil revenues dropped from $100 billion to $8 billion last year. Meanwhile, Iran's non-oil exports declined by 35 percent in the winter of 2018 and another 48 percent during the winter of 2019.

Jahangiri criticized U.S. sanctions last week as the biggest cause of Iran's economic problems. Nevertheless, a few days later he promised to the Prime Minister of Syria to send even more resources.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates its 150th year anniversary

On Christmas-day in seventy-six,

Our ragged troops with bayonets fixed,

For Trenton marched away.

The Delaware see! the boats below!

The light obscured by hail and snow!

But no signs of dismay.

Battle of Trenton by an anonymous 19th-century poet

Washington Crossing the Delaware hangs nobly in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It illustrates General Washingtons voyage in Durham boats crossing the Delaware River to the Battle of Trenton on the night of Christs day of birth, Christmas 1776. This surprise attack was a major turning point in the Revolutionary War and became the generals most celebrated victory.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, by Emanuel Leutze. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Public Domain)

A photograph of two groups admiring Washington Crossing the Delaware welcomes you online to the exhibition Making The Met, 18702020, the centerpiece of The Mets 150th-anniversary celebration. The photograph displays the museums timeless appeal: The left half of the image in black and white shows a historical photo of a 19th-century or early 20th-century family; the right half in color shows a contemporary group of adults.

In the iconic painting, Most of the men in this dramatic scene, engage in a turbulent contest, attempting to keep their boats moving forward against ice and wind. The disarray of soldiers serves as a foil for the tall and stalwart General Washington who gazes steadily toward the far shore. His concentration and his will seem to provide the very motivating force for the unlikely enterprise, the online audio guide explains.

In fact, the courage, confidence, and perseverance that Washington exudes in this painting seems appropriately reflective of The Mets own birth 150 years ago.

When the Museum was founded by an intrepid group of New Yorkers in 1870, we had nothing besides our newly minted charter: not one piece of art, and no building to put it in, states the online post On Our 150th Anniversary, We Reflect on The Met Community by the museum president and CEO Daniel H. Weiss and director Max Hollein. The founders believed that our burgeoning city should have a museum equal to the great collections of Europe. Thanks to their determination and early vision, today we are the worlds largest art museum, spanning five thousand years of art history, and we welcome seven million visitors a year.

Built with a bold pioneering spirit, The Met has been a bastion of innovation, cultural preservation, and enrichment for 15 decades. For example, Bashford Dean, the founding curator of the Department of Arms and Armor, crafted a stronger, life-saving helmet for the U.S. War Department after a large number of serious head injuries occurred in World War I. More recently, after 9/11, in a touching display, the museum honored the New York City Fire Department and its fallen firefighters by exhibiting their sign-out boards.

Through it all, art has provided us joy, comfort, and inspiration, and helped us to foster understanding and compassion, enlightening the lives of our local and global audiences even in the most difficult of circumstances, Weiss and Hollein write.

Beautiful Yet Broken

As one of its many captivating exhibits to celebrate this momentous year, The Met has produced a video series called Met Stories, sharing some of its patrons unexpected and compelling anecdotes. In episode five, Catharsis, retired Marine Lt. Col. and author Michael Zacchea unveils how he has coped with the brutal realities of war that followed him home from the Middle East.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. and author Michael Zacchea appears in a four-minute video telling how The Metropolitan Museum of Art is helping him recover from post-traumatic stress syndrome. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Deployed for the Iraq War in 2004, Zacchea was the first U.S. military adviser to train and lead an Iraqi army battalion into combat.

I tried to meet them where they were in their own cultural terms, he says in the four-minute episode. I built very profound friendships with the Iraqis, and Im very, very aware that the relationships I built saved my life.

In the second battle of Fallujah, a rocket-propelled grenade impacted a rock wall right behind him, breaking his right shoulder. He also suffered traumatic brain injury and bled internally for weeks, even after he returned home to New York City.

Sometimes I couldnt tell if I was in Iraq or in the United States; thats post-traumatic stress. I was really messed up. I was really lost and I needed a lot of help, he says.

In college, one of his majors had been classical civilization, so Zacchea started revisiting the Greek and Roman wings of The Met, seeking solace. There he learned a story about the great ancient Greek warrior Ajax who, upon returning home, killed 600 oxen, mistaking them for Trojans.

Oh, now this is what Im experiencing. You interpret all of your inputs as threats, and so you respond neurologically like youre in combat because thats what keeps you alive, he says. I started coming to The Met to the classical section, and it started rebuilding me spiritually. This is a truth about the human experience of war and war trauma. I could come here and see mirrored in the broken statues, my own body. Its almost like Im experiencing catharsis. The sculptures are beautiful, but theyre still broken.

Like Washingtons own resilient, contagious spirit sailing across the Delaware, The Met has long helped fortify its local, national, and international patrons through the timeless power of art, culture, and wisdom.

Now, brothers of the patriot bands,

Lets sing deliverance from the hands

Of arbitrary sway.

And as our life is but a span,

Lets touch the tankard while we can,

In memory of that day.

Battle of Trenton by Anonymous

J.H. White is an arts, culture, and mens fashion journalist living in New York.
MURDER victim Patricia OConnors heartbroken son has said he will never forgive those involved in her horrific killing and the "callous" cover-up that followed.

Richard OConnor said he was devastated, disgusted and deceived and asked how people he called family could do such an unspeakable act.

Patricias sisters and brothers said they were sickened by the spiteful lies that had been told about her by the accused.

Emotional victim impact evidence was heard at the Central Criminal Court as Kieran Greene was jailed for life today for murdering Patricia, his partners mother.

Greene (35) killed her at the family home they shared at the house at Mountainview Park, Rathfarnham at May 29, 2017.

He buried her body in a shallow grave in Co Wexford before digging it up days later and dismembering it, dumping the pieces in the Wicklow mountains.

Expand Close Kieran Greene / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Kieran Greene

The father-of-three had pleaded not guilty but was convicted by unanimous verdict of a jury following a seven week trial that ended in February.

Greene, dressed in a light grey tracksuit and wearing a blue face mask sat in the dock and did not react as Mr Justice Paul McDermott sentenced him today.

The sentence was backdated to June 2017, when he went into custody.

Greene was one of five people charged over Patricias death. The judge deferred the co-accused's sentences to Friday.

Patricia's daughter Louise (41) and granddaughter Stephanie O'Connor (22) and Louises ex-partner Keith Johnston (43) had denied impeding Greene's prosecution but were found guilty along with Greene.

Before the trial started, the fifth accused, Patricias husband Gus OConnor (76) admitted falsely reporting she was missing on June 1, 2017 when he knew she was dead.

The four each face a maximum potential sentence of 10 years in prison.

In a victim impact statement on behalf of Patricias 10 siblings, her sister Colette Barry said they were still in disbelief at her cruel and brutal murder.

We were all sickened to find out who was involved in her murder, she said.

The lies that were told, the cruel cover up of her murder, it has been shocking and utterly disgusting to sit throughout the seven-week trial to see all of their faces with no emotion of any kind.

We were deeply hurt by how Patricias character was so cruelly tarnished by their spiteful lies.

"The people who truly knew her, her sisters, brothers, friends, work colleagues, her neighbours will defend her kind, caring, loving nature, a jolly woman who sang out loud as she went about her day," Ms Barry said.

"They can never take those precious memories away from us. We are still trying to come to terms with the brutal and violent way her life came to a very sad end. Trisha, we love you always."

Richard O'Connor then took the stand to read his statement.

Devastated, heartbroken, disgusted and deceived, these are only a few words to describe how Ive felt about the murder of my mam since May 29, 2017, he said.

My ability to trust in people has changed. To process the amount of lies told to me by those who were my close family has led to many sleepless nights.

The constant questions I ask myself, could I have prevented this? Why didnt I see the deceit around me? How could people I called family do such an unspeakable act?

"The revelation of how my mam was murdered, the brutality of the act, the cold-hearted way in which she was dismembered, the disgusting way it was covered up and then to find out who was involved, will stay with me for the rest of my life," Mr O'Connor continued.

"The memories of my childhood home destroyed and the anxiety I felt entering the house again after I had found out what had happened still and probably will always affect me. No son should ever have to hear how his mams life ended in such a brutal and horrific way.

"Throughout the trial, my mam was portrayed in such a despicable way, trying to make out that she was a horrible person, which I, her family and friends know she was not. I have been contacted by people who used to work with my mam and they have told me how they were horrified at the lies told about her.

"My mam was only 61, she was healthy and full of life. To have her taken away from me so cruelly when she had so much life left to live has left me totally devastated. My mam was a kind, caring and loving person, always willing to help with anything.

I think about her all the time, her love of gardening, art, baking and nature and how she cant continue to pass on her love and knowledge of this to my children. My children have lost their nana far too early, not due to ill health but due to the disgusting acts and lies of others.

"My mam had wanted to take a class, learn a new skill but instead she found herself drained financially, unable to focus on what she wanted or needed," Mr O'Connor said.

"I ask myself why do parents feel obliged to help their adult children even though it causes tension and distress? Why did my mam have to die due to the utter selfishness and laziness of others?

"I think about my mams funeral and this upsets me beyond belief. There were some people there that shouldnt have been, quietly moving through the funeral, saying horrible things about my mam, trying to disgrace her name even at her funeral, its just unbelievable. I plan on honouring my mam properly with those who loved her once all this is over.

"The support of my wife and children have got me through these last three years of turmoil. The trial was emotionally and physically draining, even though I was not allowed to sit in the court for the majority of it.

I put all of my trust in the gardai, the DPP, the courts and ultimately the jury, who I hoped could find the truth in all of this. I have now come to the conclusion that I will never know the full truth. I thank everyone involved in getting justice for my mam, for their excellent work and sacrifice. I thank the families, army and gardai who found my mam, a horror I wouldnt wish on anyone.

I think of the impact on the innocent people involved: my family, my children, my other nieces and nephews. I know my children and family have been told the truth as best I can, but I wonder were my nieces and nephews given the same opportunity to know what really happened.

Im at a loss to understand why after my mams murder they tried to destroy her character. Photographs in the house were destroyed, trying to erase her memory. I now hold dear the few photographs I have of my mam," Mr O'Connor continued in his victim impact statement.

Throughout the trial and even now no compassion, no care, no real emotion, no remorse has been shown or spoken by those involved. I never got to say goodbye to my mam, never got to see her face one last time.

That was taken from me and I will never forgive any of them for that. I hope that the sentencing given reflects the part each person had in this terrible crime, not only the actual act but the callous way in which it was covered up."
What The Studies Did: These studies looked at changes in the rate of traffic fatalities in states that have legalized the use of recreational cannabis.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

Authors: Julian Santaella-Tenorio, Dr.P.H., of the New York University School of Medicine, is the corresponding author of the original investigation.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1757)

Authors: Russell S. Kamer, M.D., of New York Medical College in White Plains, New York, is the corresponding author of the research letter.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1769)

Editor's Note: Please see the articles for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

# # #

The full studies and commentary are linked to this news release.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article by Santaella-Tenorio and colleagues This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1757?guestAccessKey=2e788cd9-d78f-43ac-97d1-121a639e2fdc&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=062220

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article by Kamer and colleagues This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1769?guestAccessKey=55702ba9-61c9-42de-8639-11dfa70b0fa6&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=062220

###
Rights advocates urge MPs to reject bill on use of national parks for business purposes

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

14:06 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  Russias Presidential Human Rights Council has urged the State Duma to reject a bill envisaging that the status of land plots in national parks could be changed. The rights activists believe if approved the document in its present version will bring destruction of special protection national territories, according to the advisory body's press service.

The Council paid special attention to the allegedly most threatened parks citing those in Moscow, Komi Republic, Samara region and some others, among them those protected by international conventions.

The bill in question envisages that the government is to be empowered to change borders of national parks; it allows altering the status of any plot of land in their territories so it could be used for business purposes.

Since recently, massive efforts aimed to weaken legal protection of national parks and change the status of pieces of their territories so they could be used for business purposes have been being registered , the member of Russias Presidential Human Rights Council Sergey Tsyplenkov says, alleging that the new bill has been submitted to pave way for commercial projects in national parks.

The civic society is seriously concerned with attempts to take lands of national parks, according to Tsyplenkov. Thus, more than 150,000 people have signed an appeal to the President demanding to withdraw plans to use the lands of a national park in the Komi Republic for extraction of mineral resources; the Presidential Administration confirmed that the use of the land for these purposes was against the legislation in force. In another move 220,000 signatures were collected in protest against construction of a highway across a national park in Moscow.

The Council believes the bill, if approved, is to result in violation of ecological rights of citizens.

Chair of the Council Valery Fadeyev has urged Chair of the lower house of Russias Parliament Vyacheslav Volodin to exclude the provisions concerning land taking in national parks from the document.
Donald Trump is backing rookie Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to boot Democratic establishment stalwart Chuck Schumer from the Senate.

The president was referencing an article about how the far-left squad member could launch a primary challenge in 2022, tweeting: 'Actually, that would be a big improvement - and she would win!'

Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is being put forward by the socialist wing of the party to take up Bernie Sanders' mantle and lead a charge against Senate Minority Leader Schumer.

Sunday's Washington Times article had referenced a recent tweet by a senior Sanders presidential campaign staffer which said AOC was an obvious pick.

Donald Trump is backing rookie Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 30, to boot Democratic establishment stalwart Chuck Schumer, 69, from the Senate

David Sirota wrote: 'Just going to say something out loud that should be obvious: The fastest way to speed up the process of changing the corrupt, do-nothing, status-quo-protecting culture of the national Democratic Party is for @AOC to defeat @ChuckSchumer in a Democratic primary in 2022.'

The Times' article said that the sacking of Rep. Joe Crowley and the possibility that Rep. Eliot Engel might be thrown from the New York Democratic primary this week could clear the way for AOC.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Trump's praise for AOC comes just a few days after his rally in Tulsa, during which he told the diminished crowd: 'She's (Ocasio-Cortez) got no sense, no credentials... a little charisma, not much.'

AOC, a frequent social media sparring partner of the president's, tweeted in response: 'Ah yes - in fact, I'm so uncharismatic and untalented that the President of the United States has dedicated time at multiple rallies over two years to talk about me, a first term member of Congress [hair flick emoji].'

The youngest woman ever elected to Congress also ripped into the president's attendance figures at the 19,000 BOK Center on Saturday night after 6,200 showed up.

'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID,' she tweeted on Saturday.

'KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too,' AOC added.

President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign rally at BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday

TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music have taken credit for inflating attendance expectations at a less-than-full arena in Oklahoma, Trump's first rally in months.

CNN had reported Tuesday that a TikTok video posted by Mary Jo Laupp, who uses the hashtag #TikTokGrandma, was helping lead the charge. The video now has more than 700,000 likes.

Two K-pop fans who spoke to Reuters in Skype and phone interviews on Sunday said they had each registered for two spots, not using their real names and numbers.
Haryana government has decided to set up a bottled mineral drinking water plant under the brand name Haryana Fresh, an official spokesperson said on Monday.

The public health engineering department will set up this project and chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has directed the department to chalk out the modalities for setting up the plant.

Initially, the bottled mineral water from the plant would be made available to the government institutions. Later, mineral water reverse osmosis (RO) plants would be set up in the educational institutions to provide clean and fresh drinking water to the students.

This decision was taken in the meeting of water supply and sewerage board of public health engineering department held under the chairmanship of the chief minister here.

It was also decided that the first rural sewerage system under the Mahagram scheme will be inaugurated in Sotai village in Faridabad on August 15.

Khattar said to provide clean and adequate drinking water facility to the people was among the top priorities of the state government.

Directing the department to ensure that there was no shortage of drinking water supply in urban and rural areas, especially during the summer season, he also sought the detailed plan prepared by the department for the drinking water supply in different areas of the state.

In the meeting, the board also approved Rs 1,314 crore for the improvement of drinking water supply facilities, sewerage system in rural and urban areas and storm water drainage facilities in urban areas, besides allocating funds for 5,185 ongoing schemes and 595 new schemes.

Of about 30.73 lakh rural households in the state, functional household tap connection (FHTC) has been provided to 23.73 lakh households.

Haryana is aiming to cover 100% eligible rural households with FHTCs by 2022, well before the national target of 2024. A sum of Rs 265 crore has been allotted under the Central Plan.

PORTAL FOR SAFAI KARAMCHARIS

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday launched a new portal for resolving the grievances and complaints of safai karamcharis (sanitation workers).

Vice-chairperson of Haryana State Commission for Safai Karamcharis, Krishan Kumar, said the new software has been designed and developed to help the workers register their grievances and problems online at www.hscsk.org.in.
We are always concerned when we have people staying in tents outside  it is not safe, Turnage said in the statement. It is also a serious concern if they are staying in tents in the middle of the road. Therefore, today, we deployed our interagency team to talk with the people staying on H Street and, eventually, to remove the tents.
Indoor dining, nail salons and tattoo parlors can all reopen, under certain restrictions, as Massachusetts enters another step in the reopening plan amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. Charlie Bakers reopening plan is being rolled out in four phases. The second phase has two steps, the second of which goes into effect beginning Monday, June 22.

The major announcement in the second step of Phase 2 is that indoor dining - although with several restrictions - will be allowed.

#COVID19MA public health metrics continue to improve. As a result, today we announced that under Phase 2 of our reopening plan, additional businesses + activities may reopen Monday June 22 including indoor dining, additional personal services and more.



 https://t.co/E1GLRHscXZ pic.twitter.com/xSIlRs63W3  Charlie Baker (@MassGovernor) June 19, 2020

For indoor dining, tables will need to be placed at least 6 feet away from each other unless the tables are separated by a some of barrier. Tables may only have groups of up to six people.

All patrons will need to wear a mask while waiting to be seated. Restaurants cannot hand out reusable menus and must either give out single-use paper menus or use a chalkboard or online menu to display items.

Restaurants are being encouraged to use call-ahead seating or reservations.

If a restaurant has a COVID-19 case, it will have to close temporarily.

The second step of Phase 2 also allows for offices to raise occupancy limits from 25 percent to 50 percent. State officials are still encouraging employers to let employees work remotely especially in the Boston area.

Bakers office issued a list of close-contact businesses that may reopen Monday, June 22:

Hair removal services, including laser services, depilatory salons, waxing services, threading, and electrolysis services

Massage, body treatments, eastern treatment, energy therapies and other body work therapies

Skin care services; including peels, facials, serums, Botox and filler

Nail care services; including nail salons

Other hair services; including hair replacement services, scalp treating services

Makeup salons

Makeup application services

Personal trainers provided that in Phase 2 any indoor personal training service is limited to appointment-only training with only one customer (or two from the same household) allowed in the facility at a time

Tanning salons including other businesses that provide spray tanning and tanning beds

Tattoo, piercing, and body art services

Barbershops and hair salons were allowed to reopen in Phase 1 but the restrictions on those businesses were eased a little. Those businesses can now offer services such as manicures and bread trimmings.

The close-contact businesses still have several requirements to follow. Customers can only be accepted on an appointment-only basis, waiting rooms must remain closed, workplace hours and shifts must be adjusted to minimize contact across workers and reduce congestion and face masks must be worn by employees and customers.

More on the guidelines can be found here.

Dressing rooms inside retail stores can now open but only on an appointment basis only.

The Baker administration will now collect at least two weeks of indoor dining data before deciding if the state will move into Phase 3. The third phase would allow museums, gyms and casino floors to reopen under certain conditions.

Each phase lasts at least three weeks, depending on what the states COVID-19 data shows.

Related Content:
Strictly Come Dancing's Anton Du Beke has said it would be "difficult" to quarantine away from wife Hannah and their two children for the new series.

The professional dancer told Hello! magazine that plans to film the programme amid the coronavirus pandemic could see contestants spend up to a month in a hotel together away from their relatives.

'Potentially, we will end up in a hotel for a couple of weeks or a month,' Du Beke said. 'That's what has been spoken about and has been provisionally pencilled in.

Concern: Strictly Come Dancing's Anton Du Beke has said it would be "difficult" to quarantine away from his family for the new series

'Everything else is contingencies but we're waiting for instructions and the situation is massively fluid at the moment so we will see what happens.'

He added: 'It will be lovely to be with my Strictly family - they are terrific and I love them all - but without Hannah and the children will be difficult, especially after having all this time together.

'I'm hoping we're not going to have to do it but we will wait and see.'

Read all about it: The full interview is in Hello! and is out now

The dancer added that he has loved spending time with Hannah and children Henrietta and George during the lockdown.

'I am absolutely loving every single second of it,' he said.

Earlier this month, Du Beke's son had to be rushed to hospital for an operation.

He told Hello! that doctors had said to him that his son needed to go straight to hospital, where he stayed for two nights after he developed an abscess on his leg.

'Hannah was there the first day and night, then I took over,' he said.

'The general anaesthetic part was scary but George was amazing and so calm.

'The doctors thought he was an absolute superstar. They are very happy with his recovery.'

The full interview is in Hello! and is out now.
President Trump at Tulsas BOK Center, which can seat 19,000, but didnt on Saturday night.

How did Joe Biden become an L.G.B.T.Q. ally?

Joe Biden is not typically thought of as a progressive agitator, but in recent years he has accrued a reputation as something of a champion of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

That wasnt always so: As Adam Nagourney and Thomas Kaplan write in a new article, Biden typically voted with most fellow Democrats during his decades in the Senate, which sometimes meant casting votes that now appear retrograde in todays Democratic Party.

Adam agreed to answer a few questions for us about how Bidens positions have evolved  and what gay-rights activists expect from a possible Biden administration.

Hi, Adam. If you were to look only at Joe Bidens Senate record, you wouldnt get the sense that he was a big leader on L.G.B.T.Q. issues. But in recent years he has often been ahead of the Democratic Party consensus. How do you explain that shift?
Bashar Assad Marks 20-Year Anniversary as President, but Syrian War Shows No Signs of Dying Down

Sputnik News

12:25 GMT 21.06.2020

When Bashar al-Assad became president of Syria, he managed to implement a number of economic reforms that promised his country a brighter future. However, amid the 2011 Arab Spring, Islamic extremists put Syria's very existence on the line, and he's been fighting to preserve his nation ever since.

Now fighting for his survival, the leader is facing a number of challenges that threaten his rule, one of which is Washington's wide-ranging sanctions.

When Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for three decades, died in 2000, his son Bashar found himself in the position of the country's president several months after his father's burial.

But he was not his father "natural heir". Initially that job was secured for his elder brother Bassel, who had a relevant military background, but after the latter died in a car accident in 1994, the family had to find an alternative.

Consequently, Bashar was recalled from London, where he practised ophthalmology, and enrolled into a military academy in the Syrian city of Homs, where he mastered all the ins and outs of his new job, moving quickly through the ranks and becoming a colonel in just five years. The "training period" was over when his father passed away.

Coming to Power

Soon after, the Syrian parliament lowered the minimum age for a presidential candidate from the original 40 to 34 so that Bashar could be eligible for the office.

In July, after a referendum, Bashar was chosen for a seven-year term, receiving 97 percent of the votes, becoming Syria's president and commander-in-chief, as well as the leader of the Ba'ath party.

For many, his coming to power was viewed as a ray of hope. Unlike his father, who had ruled the country with an iron fist, Bashar was considered a young and educated leader, who would be able to transform Syria; this is exactly what he attempted to do during his first years in office.

Hope for a Better Future

To start off, he connected his country to the internet and introduced cell phones and satellite television -- things that Syrian society had had no access to in the past.

He also invested in higher education, making sure universities remained free for everyone eligible and establishing a number of private institutions.

On the financial front, the new leader opened six new banks, established a stock exchange and reformed taxation. Later on, he opened the commodities market to Syrian and foreign investors, eased the government's control of trade and steered the country towards a free market economy despite the fact that it contradicted the principles of his Ba'ath party, which had traditionally been associated with socialism.

However, that was not enough to get Syria out of the economic abyss the country was in. The situation started to worsen in 2003, when the US and its allies invaded Iraq, prompting an influx of Iraqi refugees seeking asylum.

Assad gave the green-light to accommodate the refugees, but Washington interpreted the move as a sign of support for Iraq's former ruler Saddam Hussein, who had been the head of his country's own Ba'ath party, and imposed a number of sanctions on Damascus, shaking the already faltering Syrian economy.

To make matters worse, problems arose on the political front. In 2005, after Syria withdrew from Lebanon, ending its 30 year long occupation of the neighbouring country, opposition forces including Islamists, Marxists, liberals, and Arab and Kurdish nationalists started gaining momentum.

Putting their differences aside, in 2005 they organised the largest gathering in the history of the Ba'ath party in Syria, where they pressed for reforms and democratic change.

Their unity didn't last long, and one year down the line, that coalition broke into groups. Each pursued its own agenda, they shared the goal of opposing what they considered a repressive regime.

Never-ending War

Then in 2011 came the Arab Spring that toppled governments in North African countries. Opposition groups saw it as an opportunity to get rid of Assad. Thousands took to the streets, demanding reforms and calling on the government to resign.

Assad was determined to stay, saying he was fulfilling the will of the people who wanted to see him remain in power - a move that prompted elements within Assad's military forces to pick up arms against the long-term ruler.

Those who defected from the Syrian military formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which aimed at toppling Assad and establishing a Muslim yet secular democracy like Turkey.

But soon it turned out that the FSA was largely divided, something that prevented them from securing large territorial gains despite support from Turkey, Qatar and several western states.

As the war dragged on, the FSA splintered into competing factions along sectarian lines, and reports emerged that more and more foreign fighters were arriving in the war-stricken country, cementing their presence in the area, particularly militant Islamists.

Assad, however, wouldn't capitulate. He enjoyed the support of minorities who feared his ouster would lead to the creation of a hardline Islamic state, with all the dire consequences such a move would entail. These included his fellow Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam that controlled Syria's military; it also included the country's Christians, who play a dominant role in the economy; Assad managed to stay afloat despite challenges.

The help of Iran and Russia also played a pivotal role in keeping Assad in power. Moscow was eager to protect its key ally in the region, partly because it was important to curb the global spread of Islamic terror groups, whose radical activity could spill over into Russia and its Eurasian Economic Union allies.

For Iran, the war in Syria carried a broader meaning. By establishing a Shiite axis with Syria, Iraq and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, the alliance challenged the West, specifically Washington, and sent waves of panic through Israel, which remained mostly concerned about the growing influence of Iran on its doorstep.

It was for this reason that throughout the years, Iran has allegedly invested some $30 billion into bolstering President Assad, sending not only military personnel and ammunition but also cash to allow his economy to stay afloat amid Western sanctions.

While that strategy showed results, reports now suggest that Assad's position has become shaky again.

Several days ago, Washington announced the implementation of its 'Caesar Act' that imposed a series of wide-ranging US sanctions against President Assad and those who surround him; whereas Israeli media reported that the minorities who backed Assad in the past have started to show him their teeth.

The Alawites have been angered by their deteriorating economic conditions, whereas the Druze have expressed their dissatisfaction with Iranian troops active in their territory, as well as his lack of retaliatory action after Daesh kidnapped and enslaved several Druze women.

And while the future looks bleak for Assad, he still plans to run in the presidential race set for next year, hoping that his third term in office will finally bring the resolution of the nine-year-old war.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Spain Reopens Its Borders as State of Emergency Comes to an End

MADRIDPassengers wearing masks and wheeling suitcases arrived at Madrids main airport and French people crossed the border to buy bargain alcohol and tobacco on June 21 as Spain opened its borders to most European countries and ended a state of emergency imposed to contain COVID-19.

Spains borders are now open to all European Union countries except Portugal, as well as Schengen area members outside the bloc and Britain, in a much-needed boost to the countrys tourism industry, which accounts for more than 12 percent of the economy.

British tourists will be allowed in without having to quarantine, Spain said on June 20, even though they will still be subject to 14 days of isolation upon their return.

Spaniards were also allowed to move freely around the country from June 21, and many were expected to visit friends, relatives, and second homes in other regions. Since March 14, people have had to remain in their own provinces.

People will still have to wear masks in public when social distancing measures cannot be observed.

At Madrids international Adolfo Suarez-Barajas airport, there was a sense of relief among passengers, many of whom were traveling to see loved ones after months apart.

My situation is a little complicated because my wife lives in Italy and I live in Spain so we havent seen each other for four months, said Alberto Bos, who was flying to Milan.

All arriving passengers will be required to have their temperatures taken, submit information about their points of origin, and provide their whereabouts in Spain in case they need to be traced.

Spains border with neighboring Portugal will reopen on July 1 at Lisbons request.

Stickers on the floor of the arrivals hall made sure that anyone waiting for passengers complied with social distancing measures.

But there was only a trickle of travelers at Madrid-Barajas Airport, which on a normal June day would be bustling.

This freedom that we now have, not having to justify our journey to see our family and friends, this was something that we were really looking forward to, Pedro Delgado, 23, said after arriving from Spains Canary Islands.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged people to take maximum precautions: The virus can return and it can hit us again in a second wave, and we have to do whatever we can to avoid that at all cost.

Back to Normal

People with suitcases boarded trains at Madrids Atocha station heading for coastal Valencia, after months confined to Madrid, more than 186 miles from the seaside.

Meanwhile, French people crossed the border to queue for relatively cheaper tobacco and alcohol in the northern city of Irun.

Today, its all getting a bit back to normal. Its good for the shops, for the economy, for everything, said shop owner Luis Mancho.

Some 1,500 German tourists touched down in Mallorca early last week as part of a pilot scheme to establish a travel corridor between the two areas, ahead of the lifting of restrictions on June 21.

We will allow British visitors to enter Spain just like the rest of the European Union or Schengen area from 21 June freely and without the need for the quarantine, foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told BBC News on June 20.

Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said Spain was ready to welcome tourists in an interview with newspaper ABC on June 21 but added the country has to work to get that message out.

We have to build trust, she said. Translate to travelers, Spaniards, and foreigners, that the country is a safe destination.

Spain, which has recorded more than 245,000 CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus cases and 28,000 deaths, has been easing its lockdown restrictions in recent weeks.

UK to Announce New Social Distancing Rule

But Britains own quarantine measures, requiring a two-week period of self-isolation for most people entering the country, could put off potential travelers. Britain is due to review its quarantine rule on June 29, three weeks after it was introduced.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce a new one meter plus social distancing rule to reopen UK, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported late on June 20.

The announcement, to be made on June 23, will apply to all venues including offices, schools, and pubs, the paper reported, adding that it will take effect from July 4.

The move will allow people to remain a meter away from others if they take additional measures to protect themselves, such as wearing a mask, according to the report.

Earlier on June 20, culture minister Oliver Dowden said that Britains government will announce in the coming days whether it will reduce its two-meter social distancing rule for England.

In England, lockdown restrictions prevented druids, pagans, and party-goers on June 21 from watching the sunrise at the ancient circle of Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. English Heritage, which runs the site, live-streamed it instead. A few people gathered outside the fence.

You cant cancel the sunrise, Arthur Pendragon told the BBC.

By Guillermo Martinez & Jessica Jones
The Maharashtra government has put three agreements worth over Rs 5,000 crore signed with Chinese companies on hold. The agreements were signed with the Chinese companies at the recent Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 investor meet. The development has come amid calls to boycott Chinese products in the wake of the India-China border clash that led to the death of 20 jawans.

Industry Minister Subhash Desai said that the decision was taken after consultation with the Union government. "These were signed prior to the killing of 20 Indian soldiers on the Indo-China border. The ministry of external affairs has advised not to sign any further agreements with Chinese companies," said Desai, as mentioned in a report in Times of India.

The online conference that was held last Monday was attended by Chinese ambassador Sun Weidong. One of the companies to have signed an agreement was Great Wall Motors. GWM inked a Rs 3,770 crore MoU to set up an automobile plant in Talegaon near Pune. PMI Electro Mobility in a joint venture with Foton (China) announced that it would set up a Rs 1,000-crore unit that would also create 1,500 jobs. A Rs 250-crore investment was committed by Hengli Engineering as part of its Phase II expansion at Talegaon.

The Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 event was organised by the state government to restart the economy after the coronavirus pandemic. As per the daily, 12 agreements were signed by companies from Singapore, South Korea, and US. The other nine MoUs are also being processed, as stated by Desai.

GWM had planned to set up a highly-automated plant in Talegaon with advanced robotics technology integrated in many parts of the process, as stated by Parker Shi, managing director of GWM's Indian subsidiary. Shi said that they are committed to $1 billion or Rs 7,600 crore of investment in India in a phased manner. Manufacturing of world-class intelligent and premium products, creation of over 3,000 jobs, R&D centre and building a supply chain were all part of the plan.

Also read: India-China clash: 'PM must be mindful of implications of his words,' says Manmohan Singh

Also read: India-China standoff: Diplomatic talks for de-escalation to begin this week
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The first regional MLS in the New York metro area, OneKey MLS, which went live for Realtors in March, is pleased to announce the launch of its new consumer search website - OneKeyMLS.com. The new listing search portal offers consumers 40,000 listings and some 500 communities throughout the New York metropolitan area, making it the largest selection of for sale and lease listings from Realtors in New York State.

OneKeyMLS.com offers robust property search tools in 21 languages. Consumers are able to save searches and listings, and can share their favorites with friends and family. Every user can sign up to receive alerts on new listings, open houses and saved searches.

"OneKey MLS was created to not only provide Realtors access to innovative tools that will help them do better business, but to also make the property buying or leasing process easier for consumers," said Jim Speer, CEO of OneKey MLS. "We are thrilled to reach this next milestone in our rollout and look forward to consumers making OneKeyMLS.com the one site they use to find their new home."

The easy-to-use platform features an intuitive, map-based search, beautiful images and in-depth property remarks so consumers can learn all there is to know about each listing. Listings are accompanied by information about nearby properties and recent sales in the area as well as extensive demographic, school and lifestyle data from more than 100 sources. Since the site is updated every five minutes straight from the MLS, consumers can be assured that every listing is always accurate and timely.

"Since OneKey MLS was formed, we have been committed to offering Realtors and consumers alike the most accurate listing data available," said Richard Haggerty, president of OneKey MLS and CEO of Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors, Inc. "We have worked tirelessly to create a platform that will become the most trusted real estate resource in New York and we look forward to consumers being able to experience it."

Recognizing that real estate is about more than a transaction, for both consumers and brokers/agents, OneKey MLS goes beyond reliable, up-to-date property listings. The platform gives real estate professionals and their clients unprecedented access to properties on the MLS from Montauk to Manhattan, to the Lower Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains.

For more information, or to begin searching listings, visit OneKeyMLS.com.

Contact: Kayleigh Lentz, [email protected]

SOURCE OneKey(TM) MLS
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the formation of support bubbles as part of the easing of lockdown, bringing widespread cheer.

It means people living alone can join with another household, going inside their home and even staying overnight.

For thousands it signalled the return of what many missed most during isolation  human contact, though we must still socially distance from friends and family who are not part of our bubble.

Physical contact activates receptors in the skin that are connected to the brain, helping to create a psychological bond with others [File photo]

While digital gatherings have kept lines of communication open, they are no match for physical presence. Touch is known to stimulate the release of oxytocin, the cuddle hormone released by the brain into the bloodstream during social behaviours.

Women produce oxytocin during labour, it helps them bond with their babies, and adults release it during sex. Physical contact activates receptors in the skin that are connected to the brain, helping to create a psychological bond with others.

The benefits of such physical contact start very early in life, according to a 2013 study from scientists at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who found that babies who experienced skin contact with their mothers every few hours during the first weeks of life were still benefiting ten years later.

Researchers compared two groups of premature babies  one set cuddled often by their mothers after delivery, the other kept in incubators to protect their skin and reduce their risk of infection.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the formation of support bubbles as part of the easing of lockdown, bringing widespread cheer. It means people living alone can join with another household, going inside their home and even staying overnight

Throughout their early years, both groups had regular tests to measure their rates of development.

By age ten the cuddled infants had advantages over those kept in incubators; they were quicker to learn new skills, had better sleeping patterns and were less likely to display physical responses to stress.

Scientists think this early contact helps the prefrontal cortex  a part of the brain involved in behaviour  to develop more rapidly throughout life.

In adults, there are clear medical benefits gained from a hug.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina measured blood pressure in women as they made a speech about a situation that angered them. Some had a hug from their partner beforehand and the rest did not. The results showed the hugged women experienced smaller spikes in blood pressure while speaking than those deprived of physical contact.

Blood tests also showed oxytocin levels rose after the hug; numerous studies have found this hormone can dampen blood pressure by slowing the heart rate.

Research from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. shows touch can also strengthen the immune system by reducing anxiety and stress and therefore lowering the risk of catching colds.

But some of the most intriguing research is in the area of pain relief  a huge body of evidence suggests touch can soothe pain, reduce inflammation and even help heal wounds. In a 2018 study at the University of Haifa, in Israel, scientists exposed female volunteers to mild pain by touching their arms with a hot metal rod.

In one experiment, their partner stood close without making skin contact. In a second test, their loved one held their hand. The results revealed having a partner in close proximity made no difference, but when a loved one touched their skin, volunteers pain scores fell by almost half.

The scientists said this love-induced analgesia, or pain relief, was for many patients as effective as over-the-counter painkillers.

Touch is vital when it comes to pain and recovering from illness, says Dr Cliff Weston, a clinical psychologist at Humber NHS Foundation Trust.

We know people who are lonely or socially isolated tend to feel more pain.

Scientists think this early contact helps the prefrontal cortex  a part of the brain involved in behaviour  to develop more rapidly throughout life. In adults, there are clear medical benefits gained from a hug [File photo]

But whats actually overriding pain sensations when we feel the touch of someone close? The answer may come from a 2018 study at the University of Colorado, where researchers analysed the vital signs of stressed patients and their partners when they were holding hands, sitting close but not touching, or in separate rooms.

The results showed breathing, heart rate and brain waves differed between them when there was no touching. But when they held hands, all three became aligned.

Scientists think this synchronisation may trigger the release of signals from the brain that reduce pain. Its already known that showing empathy can ease suffering and this may be an extension.

Our bodies also react differently depending on the type of contact, according to a 2018 study from the Touch Research Institute in Miami. When a loved one strokes our skin, it can stimulate heart rate and generate beta brain waves  the kind that dominate when we are alert.

But gentle pressure has the opposite effect  slowing the heart and creating more theta brain waves, associated with relaxation.

Professor Michael Banissy, a psychologist from Goldsmiths, University of London, says: It plays a fundamental role in our development. A hug can reduce our stress levels and a simple touch on the arm can change how we interact with other people.
Participants of a workshop co-hosted by the Embassy of Germany in Korea and Fraunhofer Representative Office Korea join a video discussion at InterContinental Seoul COEX in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul, June 17. / Courtesy of Embassy of Germany



By Yi Whan-woo



The Embassy of Germany in Korea, together with the Seoul branch of Europe's largest applied science research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, hosted a workshop last week to discuss how the two countries can foster cooperation on research and development for vaccines and pharmaceuticals.



The workshop at InterContinental Seoul COEX in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul, June 17, came amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing need for international cooperation on R&D for vaccines and pharmaceuticals.

Germany and Korea, according to the embassy, are "known worldwide" for competitive products and innovative technologies by offering "a particularly good environment for pharmaceutical research and development."



And the participants, many from firms and research institutions, shared their expertise and knowledge, introduced innovative technological developments in their respective countries and explored potential research and business cooperation during the workshop, titled "Vaccine and pharmaceutical research and development activities in Germany and Korea."



Among the participants were Sebastian Ulbert from Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology, Susanne Bailer from Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology, SK Bioscience Executive Vice President Justis Taejun Cho and Celltrion Vice President Lee Soo-young, as well as representatives from International Vaccine Institute and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute.



To help those who joined from Germany, the discussion was available both via video and on-site.



Ulbert talked about cost-efficient techniques for attenuating pathogens for inactivate vaccine production.



Bailer presented her innovative research on virus-based therapies and technologies.



Cho talked about SK Bioscience being a global innovator in vaccine production.



Lee shared the latest developments of Celltrion's therapeutic antibody treatment against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.



"The global COVID-19 pandemic is taking a toll on day-to-day life, on people's health, on businesses, on the domestic economy and on global trade. This crisis demonstrates once again how crucial international cooperation in the field of vaccine and pharmaceutical research and development is to our collective health and prosperity, also beyond the end of the COVID-19 pandemic," the embassy said, adding this was also the outcome of the workshop.

On a separate occasion, the Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KGCCI) held its 39th annual general meeting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seoul, June 18.



Led by President and CEO Barbara Zollmann, the KGCCI is noted with two chairmen and two vice chairmen as part of efforts to underline the organization's bilateral character.



During the general meeting, Kim Hyo-joon, chairman of BMW Group Korea, was re-elected as the chairman for the Korean side. Peter Tiedemann, president and representative director of Carl Zeiss, was newly elected to lead the German side.



"We will further strengthen the business and friendly relations between Korea and Germany and build advanced systems in both countries that can create various social values not only in scientific technology but also in culture including our Ausbildung program," Kim said in his acceptance speech.



Tiedemann underlined in his acceptance speech that Korea and Germany are looking back on a historically special partnership.



"In crisis times, when fear closes doors and borders, it is more important than ever to keep this partnership alive and keep the ease of business going, as this is of mutual benefit," he said. "It is my personal objective as German chairman of the KGCCI to work in this direction."



The chamber elected new vice chairmen  with BASF Company Representative Director and Chairman Kim Young-yull for the Korean side and ElringKlinger Korea General Manager and Representative Director Stefan Spreu for the German side.



Zollmann congratulated them and shared her wishes for successful cooperation on behalf of Korean-German business interests and friendship.


In my younger days, I led a couple of long-range patrols along the McMahon Line. One patrol was to go to Khang La, located on the watershed. We were late and lost a lot of daylight hours, but we pressed on to finish our task. We then strayed across the line by almost a kilometre. With no Chinese troops in sight, we divided our patrol into two teams and located Khang La only the next morning. As a young subaltern, this was my introduction to the Line of Actual Control (LAC). I later commanded the division on LAC in Arunachal Pradesh and then 14 Corps in Ladakh a few years ago. I have flown over the Galwan Valley several times. The ridge lines on the watershed are a maze with hardly any posts close to the line or any demarcation.

The current boundary, LAC between India and China in eastern Ladakh, is an outcome of bloody battles fought in 1962 between the two countries in this most rugged and inhospitable of terrains. These battles were fought in October-November at Daulat Begh Oldi (DBO), Galwan, and Hot Springs, areas astride Pangong Tso lake, Razangla and Demchok. Due to severely low temperatures and high casualties, these battles came to a halt and the Chinese withdrew to their bases. Similarly, the Indian Army also moved back to nearby bases. Since then, both militaries are present there in the absence of a formal political boundary settlement. Twenty-two rounds of boundary talks have taken place between the two nations, without any worthwhile outcome. India continues to claim the entire Aksai Chin and China claims areas along a line, best described by India as the line of Chinese perception.

The British left these boundaries un-demarcated. Its maps showed several lines, one running along the Kun-lun mountains, referred to as the Johnson-Ardagh line showing Aksai Chin as a territory within Jammu and Kashmir. Another is marked closer to the Karakoram Range described as the Macartney-MacDonald line and yet another line further west is called the Foreign Office Line. Post-Independence, these were left to the interpretation of stakeholders such as the rulers of Jammu and Kashmir, Tibet and the Indian and Chinese governments. Haphazard historical records, differing perceptions, and the machinations of cunning political leaders, left these lines to be deciphered by experts from both sides, albeit unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, the militaries of both sides have been left to hold ground that is divided by this history.

While India published its map in 1954, with the international border (IB) showing Aksai Chin as Indian territory, the Chinese built the western highway through Aksai Chin in 1955 linking Tibet with Kashgarh and Xingjiang. With Indias claims as they stand, the Chinese would have considered it prudent to secure the area west of this sensitive highway. This was to be best achieved by dominating the ridge lines that run along the Karakoram Range between the watersheds of the Chip-Chap river and Galwan river, and then, moving further south-east along the ridge lines west of the Chang Chenmo Range. The Chinese concept of defending these areas is to keep the Indian forces at a stand-off distance from this highway. With the increasing ranges of artillery and surveillance resources, China seems desperate to push its claim lines further to the west. The Indian Army has a clear mandate to prevent any encroachment and alteration of LAC by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), not allowing the Chinese to unilaterally change the status of the boundary. The expression LAC was first used by Chinese Prime Minister Chou en-Lai himself in a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1959.

Today, the boundary in eastern Ladakh is over 800km with LAC being approximately 550km. Chinese patrols ensure they keep the passes off the watershed under domination so as not to allow the Indian troops to occupy the ground beyond. They continue to build tracks that generally emanate from the western highway and progressively move westward towards LAC to dominate the passes or crossing points. Hot Springs and Galwan are areas where both sides have been making roads and tracks. The Chinese have an advantage of terrain which is more open, plain and served by the western highway. Chinese patrols are fresh when they reach points of patrolling, often using centrally-heated vehicles.

LAC has neither been surveyed nor marked on the ground. It is a line drawn with a thick pen on the map. This could translate into anything like 100 metres on the ground. A tent pitched a few metres this way or that way along this line can create trouble. However, the tents that the PLA erected along LAC was from where it can see straight into the Galwan Nala, leading to the sensitive Indian Darbuk-Shyok-DBO road and, therefore, unacceptable to India, just as the PLA is sensitive to Indian domination of the western highway. Since 1993, many agreements have been signed between the two countries to resolve such matters peacefully and according to laid-out protocols. The agreement of 1996 mentions that military means shall not be used while dealing with such border situations.

In the absence of any boundary settlement, both sides have come face-to-face several times resulting in clashes, with recent ones being in 2013 at Depsang, Demckok and Chumar in eastern Ladakh. The incident at Galwan is a flashpoint of the worst kind in recent times. It can have serious ramifications when both nations have large conventional forces backed by nuclear weapons. Can the two countries afford to go to war that too when the world is reeling from the coronavirus pandemic? Why China would choose to display such belligerence at this time is open to a larger debate.

Lt Gen PJS Pannu is former Ladakh Corps Commander and deputy chief, Integrated Defence Staff

The views expressed are personal
Irish firms suffer the highest median cost in Europe from cyber-attacks, at almost 92,000, a major new survey claims.

Cyber incidents and breaches cost sampled Irish companies 113m over a six month period, with one unnamed Irish company suffering total cyber losses of 17.8m.

The results form part of a Europe-wide study by Hiscox Insurance, with 125 of 335 Irish companies surveyed found to have suffered a cyber-attack in that period.

The report also claims that 6.5pc of Irish firms paid a ransom following a ransomware attack.

The most heavily targeted sectors were financial services, manufacturing and technology, media and telecoms with 44pc of firms in each sector reporting at least one incident or breach.

On average, Irish businesses spent 13pc of their IT budget on cyber security, the report found. However, 18pc of businesses said they didnt know if they had experienced a cyber event, with 5pc admitting that they do not back up critical data.

In all, cyber losses among the surveyed 5,569 businesses across Europe which were targeted by cyber-attacks have risen nearly six-fold, from a median of 8,900 per firm to 50,732.

Its the first time that the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report has included Irish data. The report also surveyed a representative sample of private and public sector organisations in the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Each firm was assessed on its cyber security strategy and execution and ranked accordingly.

The survey claims that Ireland tops the table for the percentage of companies expressing confidence in their IT and security readiness (70pc and 66pc respectively). Irish firms are also most likely to have a standalone cyber insurance policy (38pc), according to the report.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday tweeted that around 9,440 Covid-19 patients have been cured in the last 24 hours. A total of 2,37,195 patients have been cured of the disease so far.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Monday shared ten best practices in a bid to bolster Indias efforts against Covid-19 pandemic. The first step says that testing has to be extensive since it is the most powerful tool to defeat Covid-19. Global and Indian success stories have strategies grounded in a robust testing mechanism, it said.

Citing the example of New Zealand, Kant said that country ramped up its diagnostic testing and was able to eliminate the virus and added that the success of Indian states like Kerala and Karnataka can be attributed to their willingness and resolve to test more.

Second, he said that contact tracing has to be rigorous. The example of South Korea shows that a robust contact-tracing strategy is a must. In New Zealand, an innovative model encourages people to scan QR codes placed at different locations to create a repository of their movement.

Also Read: Mizoram earthquake: CM Zoramthanga says no casualties reported

Also Read: Days after Galwan clash, India-China hold corps commander level talks

445 deaths and spike of 14,821 new #COVID19 positive cases reported in India in last 24 hrs.

Positive cases in India stand at 4,25,282 including 1,74,387 active cases, 2,37,196 cured/discharged/migrated & 13699 deaths: Ministry of Health pic.twitter.com/ucmSdlZRjI  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

The third practice that Kant advocates is the effective and timely treatment to ensure a high recovery rate, saying that it can be achieved through timely reporting of symptoms, early identification and admission of high-risk individuals.

The fourth is institutional quarantine  the virus has to be tackled at the source and countries that were able to proactively impose quarantine on incoming passengers at airports are better off today, he said.

The fifth practice should be stringent employment of containment measure. Lockdowns cannot be a permanent solution and this is where stringent containment comes into the picture, he added.

The sixth measure stressed that the maximum use of data analytics and to bring data transparency to draw meaningful insights to help guide strategies.

Seventh is the leverage technology. Manual interventions have to be supplemented by cutting-edge technologies that should form the backbone of efforts, he said.

Moreover, enforcement plays a major role in ensuring that rules that have been instituted to curb the spread of the virus are observed strictly.

The ninth practice is online training and protocols that help impart knowledge to frontline workers to ensures that they are aware of the necessary protocols, emerging trends and relevant best practices in areas.

Lastly, Kant said that public adherence and community participation is a must since efforts of the government are futile unless observed by citizens.

With 9,440 COVID-19 patients cured in the last 24 hours, the COVID-19 recovery rate of India has increased to 55.77 per cent, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday.

During the last 24 hours, a total of 9,440 COVID-19 patients have been cured. A total of 2,37,195 patients have been cured of COVID-19 so far. The recovery rate is 55.77 per cent among COVID-19 patients, the Ministry tweeted.

It said that the total number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 62,808.

Presently, there are 1,74,387 active COVID-19 cases and all are under active medical supervision, the Ministry said.

India also continues to widen the gap between recovered and active COVID-19 cases. COVID cases per lakh population is 30.04 while the global average is more than its triple at 114.67. India has one of the lowest COVID cases per lakh population in the world, the Ministry said in a series of tweet.

The recovery rate is 55.77% among #COVID19 patients: Ministry of Health https://t.co/LfHFc41Qgy  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

Also Read: In the Covid-19 time  AP CM Jagan Mohan Reddys govt welfare programmes

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
In Houston ISD, a 14-year-old student was restrained, handcuffed and pepper-sprayed by a campus police officer after throwing a single food item at lunch. In the Katy school district, a 17-year-old special needs student was shot with a stun gun six times after leaving a classroom where she was being bullied.

In Dallas, a school police officer used a Taser on and handcuffed a 7-year-old who has ADHD and a mood disorder because the boy was banging his head against a wall in class.

If these were your children, would you accept that kind of treatment? Would you condone any student being treated as a criminal for classroom misconduct?

Likely not. None of us should.

Yet, as the number of on-campus school police has ballooned in the push to fortify schools against mass shootings and other violence, such incidents have become all too common. In the late 1970s, only 1 percent of schools had a police officer stationed on campus. By 2013, that had jumped to 70 percent.

At the same time, millions of students attend schools where there are no counselors, nurses, social workers or psychologists, a 2019 report from the American Civil Liberties Union found. In addition, 90 percent of schools with mental health professionals fail to meet the recommended minimum student-to-staff ratio.

The heavy presence of school-based law enforcement too often leads to violent interactions with police and arrests of students for disciplinary infractions. Black and brown children and those with disabilities are most at risk of being funneled into prison pipeline for simply misbehaving in class.

That creates an environment where it is easier for kids to get arrested than to get help. Thats not education. Its an assembly line for the carceral system.

Thats why, as America grapples with the issues of overpolicing and police brutality, school districts should heed the growing demand to divest from police departments. Around the country, several major school systems, including Denver, Minneapolis, Portland and Oakland, have announced plans to suspend or phase police out of schools.

In Houston, a group of five social justice organizations sent a letter to HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan urging the district to do the same.

Were trying to educate them on the potential to reimagine school culture and school safety, Sarah Guidry, executive director of the Earl Carl Institute at Texas Southern University, told the editorial board.

HISD spent roughly $24 million from its nearly $2 billion general fund on security and monitoring services, which include 200 police officers, vehicles and crossing guards, state records show. The combined annual salary for HISD police was about $11 million as of early 2020, payroll records show. Earlier this month, the board approved an additional $3.5 million in raises for 2020-21.

Imagine if the district used some of those millions to hire instead more counselors or wraparound specialists. HISD now has one counselor for every 900 students, and about 150 wraparound specialists in a district of more than 200,000 students.

The expansion of school police has been accompanied by an assumption that the more police, the safer students are. In fact, having police on campus may make schools less safe. A 2018 report by the Advancement Project documented more than 60 incidents of police brutality in schools over eight years.

Many students of color and those with disabilities often are more afraid of going to school because of the police presence than of a possible school shooting, Guidry said.

No child should be scared to go to school. Rather than calling a police officer, teachers and administrators can use restorative justice practices, wraparound services and other nonpunitive measures to deal with behavior issues. Instead of a first resort, calling police to deal with students should be a last resort.

HISD Board President Sue Deigaard has named a committee to review the districts police policies and practices. She also scheduled a Sept. 1 board workshop regarding district police.

We applaud those first steps. It is time for HISD, and other districts, to reevaluate their relationship with police  and focus on providing services that support, rather than punish, children.
The three New York City Police officers involved in the Shake Shack 'poisoned' milkshake scandal never actually got sick, but police exaggerated the incident and launched an investigation as the union tweeted cops are 'under attack'.

On June 15 three officers, who were based in the Bronx but on protest duty in Lower Manhattan, ordered milkshakes from Shake Shack but found they smelled and tasted odd and they suspected they had bleach in them.

However, those officers never felt sick and threw the drinks away.

Yet the mishap escalated into a crime scene investigation where caution tape was put up, evidence was collected, and the Detective's Endowment Association claimed the cops were 'intentionally poisoned'.

The NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association tweeted that 'NYC police officers cannot even take a meal without coming under attack'.

Now City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Councilman Ritchie Torress are demanding a probe into the unions 'inflammatory' behavior.

The June 15 NYPD Shake Shack milkshake mishap has been revealed to be a faked scandal where the department launched an investigation and rushed the three officers involved to the hospital, even though they weren't actually ill. A cop pictured at the Shake shack scene above

Three officers on protest duty were hospitalized after buying drinks that reportedly tasted like bleach. However, Shake Shack did not know cops had ordered those items because they ordered online and when the cops complained, they received an apology and food vouchers. Yet their supervisor still launched an investigation (cops on scene with evidence above)

NYPD pictured at the scene of the Shake Shack incident speaking with press after the unions tweeted out that the officers were 'intentionally poisoned' and 'under attack'

Now City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (left) and Councilman Ritchie Torres (right) are demanding a probe into the unions' 'inflammatory' behavior

The incident took place as George Floyd protests and demonstrations decrying police brutality and racism took over the streets of the city, resulting in scuffles with officers.

More than 350 officers have been injured during ongoing protests in New York City.

However, new facts prove that the Shake Shack workers had no way of knowing their customers were police officers, because they ordered their threats via mobile app around 7.30pm and ordered three shakes across two separate orders.

A female officer purchased a strawberry shake from the restaurant on Broadway and Fulton Street and her two male colleagues grabbed cherry and vanilla drinks from the eatery.

When they tasted their drinks and found something was off, they threw them in the trash and alerted a manager, who apologized and gave them vouchers for free food or a drink, which they accepted, according to the New York Post.

But the evening took a dramatic turn when the officers reported the incident to their sergeant.

The supervisor responded by calling in the Emergency Service Unit to set up a crime scene and search for evidence by 9.20pm, about two hours after they got their orders.

The cops were rushed to Bellevue Hospital and where examined and released despite not ever feeling sick or exhibiting any symptoms.

At the same time a lietenant from the Bronx sent out an email to the unions stating that six cops 'started throwing up after drinking beverages they got from shake shack on 200 Broadway.'

The NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association tweeted about the alleged poisoning saying that 'NYC police officers cannot even take a meal without coming under attack'

The Detective's Endowment Association said the cops were 'intentionally poisoned'

The Detectives' Endowment Association walked back on its earlier claim that the officers were intentionally poisoned saying the bleach smell was cleaning solution that accidentally made its way into the officers' shakes

'When NYC police officers cannot even take meal without coming under attack, it is clear that environment in which we work has deteriorated to a critical level,' Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch tweeted following the Monday incident

Despite the escalated tensions around the drink mishap, detectives closed the case quickly after interviewing five employees and reviewing surveillance footage that showed the shakes were made normally.

The culprit was found to be residual milkstone remover, which is used to clean the milkshake machines, left inside the device.

But the incendiary messages sent out by the Detectives Endowment Association and Police Benevolent Association had already done its damage after the case was closed as #BoycottShakeShack started to trend on Twitter.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison announced early Tuesday June 16 there was 'no criminality' by Shake Shack's employees in the milkshake incident

On June 16 the chain said it was 'relieved to hear the officers are all okay' and it was 'working hard to get the full picture'

The next day Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison clarified on Twitter that there was 'no criminality' in the incident.

The unions later deleted their tweets and privately blamed the lieutenant who first raised the alarm.

A review of the Shake Shack incident is also ongoing, the NYPD says.

Now New York officials are demanding a probe into the union's exaggeration of the incident and their incendiary, misleading posts online.

The probe and incident come as the NYPD has faced major scrutiny from the public and calls for reform, which Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo have already jumpstarted from launching a police disciplinary database and banning police chokeholds across the state.
Graduate Students United (GSU), the aspiring union of graduate teaching and research assistants at the University of Chicago, announced June 9 that its members had voted to end their affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The break is the result of the AFTs failure to gain recognition for the GSU over a ten-year period, and disputes with the AFT over the collection of dues and how the money is spent

This case is only the latest in a series of bitter experiences grad students all across the country have had with AFT and other trade unions, which have claimed to represent them, only to cut deals with universities and state and local officials to maintain the poverty wages, substandard medical coverage and intense exploitation of teaching and research assistants.

In a statement released on GSUs website and shared on their social media platforms, the graduate union leadership wrote, We are excited to announce that our membership has voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the American Federations of Teachers (AFT) and to proceed as an independent union.

University of Chicago (Photo: Wikipedia)

The statement explains that in January 2020 AFT had dropped its decade-long campaign with the GSU to seek official recognition as a union with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after a new rule was passed classifying graduate student relations to private universities like the University of Chicago as educational rather than an employer-employee relationship.

GSU began its relationship with the AFT in 2010. Since then the GSU has been involved in futile attempts to pressure the university administration and the NLRB to recognize it as the legally sanctioned bargaining unit for grad students. Under the Obama administration, the NLRB had overturned a Bush-era Brown University precedent and held that Columbia University grad student workers were statutory employees who could unionize.

Although the AFT promoted illusions in Obamas NLRB, it took no action and a vote on union recognition was not scheduled until mid-2017, after Trump became president. On the eve of the vote, the university filed an appeal to halt the election, maintaining its position that grad students were not employees and therefore did not qualify for union representation.

The NLRB did not rule before the vote took place in mid-2017. Although grad students voted 1,103479 to unionize, with the appeal still pending, the vote was not legally binding, and the university refused to bargain with the GSU. In February 2018, the AFT-GSU withdrew its case fearing the Trump-appointed NLRB would reimpose the ruling that UC grad students had no right to unionize, setting a precedent that would block other unionizing efforts.

The last thing the AFT and its multi-millionaire president, Randi Weingarten, wanted was a serious fight by grad students against private universities and the Democratic Party. Instead, the AFT sought backroom talks, which no doubt included offers of sweetheart contracts, to get university officials to voluntarily agree to negotiate. In June 2019, the AFT-GSU called a three-day strike to allow grad students to blow off steam. The strike was isolated by the Chicago unions, including the AFT-aligned Chicago Teachers Union.

After the failure of the NLRB recognition campaign, the AFT decided to downgrade GSUs status. It was instructed to join AFT Academics (AFTA), an associate membership program linked to AFT with dramatically less resources for graduate workers to organize. To add insult to injury, GSU members would be required to pay mandatory dues to AFTA.

In response the GSU wrote that this would go against our promise to membership that we would never pay mandatory dues until we had a contract. Up to this point union dues had been voluntary. According to the GSU statement, during discussion with Richelle Fiore, director of AFTA, GSU members were told that AFTA had no plan for their organization and they could not promise that dues would be used to advance the work of GSU at the University of Chicago. In addition, GSU writes that in every discussion held with graduate workers from other universities who are currently affiliated with AFTA they were urged not to join citing AFTAs obstruction and hindering of campus action and lack of financial and organizational support.

Under these conditions, the GSU leaders found themselves compelled to call for a vote on AFT disaffiliation or risk losing control of their membership. Even then, GSU dragged the process out another six months before rank-and-file grad students voted. GSU members were presented with two option: re-affiliation with AFT through the AFT Academics program or proceeding as an independent union. According to the GSU, members voted overwhelmingly in favor of moving forward as an independent union, a decision we take very seriously.

The orientation of the GSU leadershipwhich includes members from the Democratic Socialists of America and other pseudo-left organizationsis not towards any genuine independent action by grad students, let alone broader sections of the working class. Instead, after promoting illusions in the AFT for years, they are now encouraging illusions in other unions, including the Service Employees International Union and even the United Auto Workers union, which is currently engulfed in federal investigation over union officials taking bribes in exchange for signing sellout contracts.

In the recent University of California wildcat strike, graduate students were forced to rebel against the UAW, which signed a contract with wages so low they could not afford rent. The UAW, however, has reasserted its control and strangled the fight.

The UAW did the same thing to Harvard grad students, shutting down its strike against the Ivy League school with no contract and no agreement on the central demands of striking grad students.

For years, outfits like the DSA and pseudo-left organizations have claimed that the election of supposedly militant leaders committed to social justice to top union positions would transform the unions into fighting organizations. While this has certainly opened up many career opportunities for members of the DSA, the now-defunct International Socialist Organization (ISO) and similar organizations, it has done nothing to transform the anti-working class character of the unions.

Nowhere has this been shown more clearly than in the Chicago Teachers Union, led by former ISO leader Jesse Sharkey, which has colluded with the Democratic Party in the closing of scores of schools, the layoff of thousands of teachers and the acceleration of the privatization of public education.

The decades-long degeneration of the unions and their transformation into open instruments of the employers and the austerity program of both parties goes beyond the question of corrupt leaderships. Instead, the corrupt leaders have evolved organically from the pro-capitalist and nationalist program of the unions and their decades of collusion with the Democratic Party in the destruction of the jobs and social rights of the working class.

Grad students at the University of Chicago certainly need organization to collectively assert their rights. The average yearly pay of a U of C graduate worker is roughly $30,000, with many making less. Students are forced to pay grad fees and health insurance, which eat up much of their income. The Student Life fee costs $1,209 per year, while U of C health insurance costs $4,398 annually. Most students are burdened with large student loan debts.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) call for graduate students to form their own rank-and-file committees, independent of all of the pro-capitalist unions. The sanctioning of these committees will depend not on the rulings of the NLRB but the authority and active support they win among student workers based on their program and commitment to fight for the interests of grad students.

This means rejecting the austerity demands by university officials and state and local Democrats and Republicans, which will only intensify as a result of the pandemic-fueled economic and social crisis. Rank-and-file committees will begin with what is necessary for grad studentsdecent wages, full health care coverage, control over working conditions and hours and the elimination of student debtregardless of what the authorities say is affordable.

Graduates must link their struggle with the undergraduates and together turn to the working class. The graduate student rank-and-file committees will build connections with Amazon workers, autoworkers, nurses, teachers and the countless other workers who are in struggle against the homicidal return to work policy amid a pandemic, and austerity, even as Trump and both corporate-controlled parties hand over trillions to prop up the stock markets and corporate America.

The struggle over day-to-day working conditions, including the right to a safe and secure job, must be fused with a political counteroffensive by the whole working class against the capitalist system and for a radical redistribution of wealth and the socialist reorganization of the economy to meet human need, not private profit.

Students and workers at the University of Chicago and elsewhere who want more information on building rank-and-file committees and linking this to a political struggle for socialism should contact and join the IYSSE and the Socialist Equality Party.
- An officer of the Ghana Immigration Service has met his untimely death whilst chasing a suspected smuggler

- The incident is reported to have occurred in Kuyuli in the Northern Region

- He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Tamale Teaching Hospital

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Information reaching YEN.com.gh indicates that an officer of the Ghana Immigration Service has met his untimely death whilst chasing a suspected smuggler.

The incident is reported to have occurred in Kuyuli in the Northern Region which is known to have an unapproved route from Tatale into Togo.

According to a statement sighted by YEN.com.gh, the GIS stated that the deceased officer and one other officer were scheduled for night patrols before the incident took place.

Ghana Immigration Service press release Source: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Another staff of Despite Media has just died

The officer in a critical condition from the same crash which occurred on Sunday evening is currently on admission at the Tamale Teaching Hospital.

Both of the officers were rushed to the Tamale Teaching hospital, where one was pronounced dead on arrival.

The GIS has, however, stated that the people of Kuyuli are noted for their notoriety in smuggling activities and have therefore issued strong warnings to them.

READ ALSO: 66% of Ghanaians say Mahama is better at keeping campaign promises than Nana Addo

In other news, another staff of Despite Media has passed.

The name of the staff has been given as Mr. Daniel Adjei Peprah, popularly known as Nana Adjei Sikapa.

He was a newscaster at Peace FM, one of the stations under the Despite Media Group.

According to reports, he passed away after battling a short illness.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Ghanas caseload now 14,154 with 85 deaths

University of Ghana reopens for final year students | #Yencomgh

Have national and human interest issues to discuss?

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome.

Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Jaipur, June 22 : The CPI(M) on Monday suspended its party MLA in Rajasthan Balwan Poonia for one year with immediate effect citing indiscipline during the Rajya Sabha polls as the main reason for taking the action.

In a party press release, state secretary Amra Ram said that the MLA has also been given a show cause notice and seven days time to submit his explanation on the same.

"The action has been taken after discussing the matter with party leaders against the indiscipline shown by the MLA in the recent Rajya Sabha polls," he added.

Official sources said that Poonia did cast the vote without seeking permission from party leaders. However, another party MLA Girdharilal Mahiya did not come to cast his vote citing health reasons.

Rajya Sabha polls were held on June 19 in which CPI(M) MLA Poonia voted in favour of the Congress.

The Congress won two seats while the BJP grabbed one seat in the elections after MLAs from both parties were sent for camping in plush resorts to avoid poaching.
New Delhi: In a scathing counter-attack on Manmohan Singh, BJP president J P Nadda said on Monday that he as prime minister "abjectly surrendered" hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China and presided over 600 incursions made by the neighbouring country between 2010 and 2013.

In a series of tweets after Singh took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his handling of the ongoing stand-off with China, Nadda said the senior Congress leader and his party should stop "insulting" our forces repeatedly and questioning their valour.

They did this post the air strikes and surgical strikes, the BJP president said, asking the Congress to understand the true meaning of national unity, especially in such times.

"Dr Manmohan Singh belongs to the same party which: Helplessly surrendered over 43,000 KM of Indian territory to the Chinese! During the UPA years saw abject strategic and territorial surrender without a fight. Time and again belittles our forces.

"One only wishes that Dr. Singh was as worried about Chinese designs when, as PM, he abjectly surrendered hundreds of square kilometres of India's land to China. He presided over 600 incursions made by China between 2010 to 2013!" Nadda tweeted.

In his first remarks on the Ladakh face-off, the former prime minister said Modi must be mindful of the implications of his words and cannot allow China to use them as a vindication of its position.

Noting that disinformation is no substitute for diplomacy or decisive leadership, Singh called upon the prime minister to ensure justice for soldiers who died defending India's territorial integrity.

Hitting back, Nadda said Singh's statement is mere "wordplay". Sadly, the conduct and actions of top leaders of the Congress party will not make any Indian believe such statements, he added.

Remember, this is the same Congress that always questions and demoralises our armed forces, he said.

"India fully trusts and supports PM Narendra Modi. 130 crore Indians have seen his administrative experience in some of the most testing times, particularly how he has always put the well-being of the nation over and above everything else," he said.

Nadda said Singh rightly calls for unity. He then added that these strong words on paper fall flat when people see exactly who is vitiating the atmosphere of unity. 'Hope Dr. Singh is able to prevail on his own party at least," he said.
In the case of shootings between warring gangs in the North of Mexico at least twelve people have been killed. Alleged gang members had fired at the weekend in the town of Heroica Caborca in the state of Sonora, with large-caliber weapons on the houses, cars and a petrol station, reported the newspaper "Milenio" on Sunday. The activist Adrian LeBaron published on Twitter a Video, to see many corpses on the edge of a country road. Then, units of the armed forces, the national guard and the police had been in the Region moved, according to the Ministry of public security.

In the center of Mexico, the security forces under the anti-trust Santa Rosa de Lima and arrested 26 alleged members. Including three were women who took care of the finances of the criminal syndicate, such as the Ministry of defence announced on Sunday. According to media reports, it was the mother, the sister, and a cousin of the cartel boss Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, alias "El Marro". Published a Video in social networks, in which he thanked his supporters and with an escalation of violence threatened.

fighter of the cartel subsequently erected barricades and set cars on fire to cause Chaos and to hinder the police operation. The group from the state of Guanajuato is involved mainly in petrol theft, and fights with the powerful crime syndicate Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion control in the Region.

Updated Date: 21 June 2020, 20:19
Hollowell died at the scene, according to the coroners office. Police said two passengers were airlifted from a landing zone established in the Shelton Fireworks parking lot on U.S. 20. The driver was transported to Porter Regional Hospital but was later airlifted to a Chicago hospital due to her injuries. Their conditions were not immediately known.
As surprising as it sounds, netizens have come up with several memes to propagate their message that they are boycotting Khans i.e., Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan for dominating the film industry. It all happened in the wake of Sushant Singh Rajput's sudden demise. The actor died by suicide on June 14. Soon after his death, netizens started wondering on social media platforms why a talented actor like Sushant has to give up on his life in such a drastic way. Many netizens also shared the reports of how a few production houses had banned Sushant from working with them and that might have left the actor depressed.

Salman Khan Shamed By Sona Mohapatra Yet Again! This Time For His Tweet On Sushant Singh Rajput

Amid all the conspiracy theories and nepotism debate, netizens are also trending the hashtag #BoycottKhans on Twitter. While some are lashing out at the Khans in anger, some are boycotting them while sharing memes. Have a look at the viral memes below..

#BoycottKhans

People after realising celebrities are nothing without them



Public to khans: pic.twitter.com/KdG08S09on  Rutik (@Rutik_ghadge_) June 22, 2020

#BoycottKhans is trending



Meanwhile Srk whose movies are already not doing well pic.twitter.com/uRfvy1daAu   (@rpallawi_) June 22, 2020

Twitteratis: #BoycottKhans

*Le SRK, whose movies are already not doing well from the past few years: pic.twitter.com/x87DAwE9FA  Shivangi (@kamedy_kween) June 22, 2020

Seeing this trend on twitter now Khan gang#BoycottKhans pic.twitter.com/A9oKO8cVMo  Barun Rajbhar (@roybarunji) June 22, 2020

#BoycottKhans is trending everywhere but deep down we all know that pic.twitter.com/oXXSOQIThj  Sociopath Memer (@sociopath_ladka) June 22, 2020

How Khans hiding themselves After seeing this Trend #BoycottKhans pic.twitter.com/zSrozViwA5  ROFL_Madhav  (@MadhavSingh_93) June 22, 2020

On a related note, on Saturday night, Salman reacted to the backlash received from Sushant's fans on Twitter and urged his fans not to abuse or fight with Sushant's fans.

He tweeted, "A request to all my fans to stand with sushant's fans n not to go by the language n the curses used but to go with the emotion behind it. Pls support n stand by his family n fans as the loss of a loved one is extremely painful."

Worried about your mental well-being or of someone you know? Help is just a call away. Reach out to the nearest mental health specialist at COOJ Mental Health Foundation (COOJ)- 0832-2252525, Parivarthan- +91 7676 602 602, Connecting Trust- +91 992 200 1122/+91-992 200 4305 or Sahai- 080-25497777/ SAHAIHELPLINE@GMAIL.COM
As the Boston City Council looks to soon approve its fiscal year 2021 budget, Mayor Marty Walsh noted the community may face a prolonged recession due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In an interview Sunday with WBZ political analyst Jon Keller, Walsh said the future of Bostons budget and the states budget will depend on the status of the COVID-19 public health crisis, which has caused countless businesses to go under and millions of people to file for unemployment.

Officials are looking to reopen businesses and kickstart the local and regional economies as Massachusetts has seen a decrease in new daily coronavirus diagnoses and deaths in the past two months. Officials are still wary, though, of a second COVID-19 spike that may slow down financial recovery from the pandemic.

If there is an uptick in cases, then municipal and state economies may continue to struggle, according to Walsh. He and others are hoping for what is called a v-shaped financial recovery, a term that means a sharp fall in economic activity followed by a dramatic rise.

Walsh noted that the uncertainty and the unpredictability of this virus is very concerning and that he is not optimistic about a quick financial recovery.

We have to manage our budget very carefully, because if we dont have a v, in the way you explained it, coming out of this recession quickly, this means we have a prolonged recession, Walsh told Keller. If we have a prolonged recession, then that doesnt just affect this fiscal year, it affects the next two and three down the road, where new investments will not happen and its very difficult and you cant force it.

Although the mayor warned of potentially severe financial consequences for the city if the public health crisis ramps up again, an analysis from Bloomberg ranked both Boston and Worcester in the top 10 of 100 metropolitan areas in the United States set for growth moving forward after the pandemic.

Walsh noted that lawmakers have still been forced to cut $65 million out of the citys budget.

The decrease follows calls from city councilors in the community for a 10% reduction in the Boston Police Departments budget as well as its overtime funds after nationwide protests demanding an overhaul of law enforcement in the U.S.

After officially declaring racism a public health emergency on June 13, Walsh announced he would be transferring $3 million from the citys police department to the Boston Public Health Commission to assess the impacts of discrimination on residents.

Some Boston city councilors want to move as much as $300 million to a variety of social programs, though, the Boston Herald reported.

In his interview with WBZ, the Boston mayor recognized there have been a lot of requests in the last three weeks to put more money toward city programming. He said if the community does not go into a recession as the year continues, officials will be able to fund some of these programs.

Weve cut $65 million out of our budget, Walsh told Keller. The budget thats in front of the city council on Wednesday is a budget that is a strong, responsible budget. We make investments in housing. We create the first-ever voucher program. We also make investments in education. But theres a lot of programs in there that are not going to get [fully] funded, and these are difficult decisions.

Bostons fiscal 2021 budget, unlike other communities, does not call for any layoffs or furloughs of city employees, Walsh said.

For six years, the mayor claimed, the citys budget has included incredible investments and has maintained an AAA bond rating. This is the first year during Walshs tenure as mayor, he said, the community has a seen a budget decrease.

Another factor to consider when predicting the financial future of the city, Walsh said, is state revenue. If the commonwealth does not recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, then revenue from the state will be less, which will impact schools and local aid in Boston.

In its updated economic outlook released in late May, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a leading Beacon Hill watchdog organization, already predicted the state could face a roughly $6 billion budget shortfall this year.

We have to be very cognizant and pay very much attention as we move forward here, Walsh said.

The mayor added that some states that shut down due to the pandemic and later reopened saw another spike in coronavirus cases.

While Massachusetts has not seen a second uptick in confirmed COVID-19 patients and hospitalizations since April, the prospect of another coronavirus surge puts Boston in a really difficult situation, according to Walsh.

Im not as optimistic about a quick rebound and recovery, he said. Weve already seen several restaurants in Boston shut their doors down. Theyve lost business for three-and-a-half months. Theyre not reopening, because of coronavirus.

Thats the restaurant industry, he added. You can go across the board - our hospital industry, our tourism. All of those are different areas. Tourism is a big, big economic boost for the city of Boston. Theyre not coming back.

Health care providers and institutions of higher education have also taken a big hit during the pandemic, the mayor noted.

Theres questions about, are our students coming back. They are about 150,000, 200,000. Theyre a big boom for our economy, he said. Theres a lot of unanswered questions right now, so I think even in light of everything going on, we have to be responsible. The taxpayers of Boston demand that we be responsible.

Related Content:
COLUMBIA, S.C.  South Carolinas hard-hit hospitality industry in May clawed back some of the jobs lost amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as businesses across the state continue to reopen  and new COVID-19 case numbers continue to soar.

On Friday, South Carolinas Department of Employment and Workforce announced that the states jobless rate for the month of May stood at 12.5%, a slight improvement over a record-setting revised April rate of 12.8%. At that point, the coronavirus had wiped out nearly half of the states restaurant tourism and other hospitality jobs, with officials estimating overall annual revenue from the $24 billion tourism industry would be cut in half for 2020.

Many of Mays gains came in the hospitality sector, which posted more than 36,000 new jobs. Trade, education and health services and businesses services showed nearly 25,000 jobs gained over the month.

Compared to a year ago, state officials said, South Carolinas economy has lost 193,000 seasonally adjusted non-agricultural jobs. Only one industry  construction  showed any gains from May 2019, in the form of 300 positions.

Employment and Workforce director Dan Ellzey pointed out that the May labor survey was conducted during the same week Gov. Henry McMaster allowed restaurants in the state to re-open, a move that accounted for many of the hospitality job gains.

We have a long way to go until our state can reclaim its previously historic low unemployment rate, but with the hard working people who make up this state, we know that when opportunity presents itself, they will be eager to rejoin the workforce and help be the necessary catalyst in rebooting our economy, Ellzey said.

That economic reboot has been a priority for McMaster, who was one of the last governors in the country to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, and among the first to allow businesses to begin reopening. Last week, the governor said he would not close down the state again, noting the economic damage already caused by shutdowns and emphasizing a need for personal responsibility in terms of following hygiene and social distancing recommendations.

We cannot keep businesses closed forever, McMaster said then. What it boils down to is, we must be careful individually.

Another recovery effort centers on plans for reopening schools in the fall. On Friday, members of a special committee tasked with studying that process discussed recommendations including placing a nurse in every school, hiring additional counselors and new cleaning protocols.

The group also noted possible changes including extending the school day, turning off water fountains and changing hallway traffic patterns to reduce or eliminate two-way traffic.

The discussion comes amid a record-setting week for new COVID-19 cases in South Carolina. On Friday, state health officials announced an additional 1,081 people had tested positive for coronavirus  a new single-day record  for a total number of more than 22,600 across the state, resulting in 639 deaths.

We understand that what were continuing to ask of everyone is not easy and that many are tired of hearing the same warnings and of taking the same daily precautions, but this virus does not take a day off, state epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell said Thursday, in a renewed plea that the public be more stringent about wearing masks and following social distancing guidance. Every day that we dont all do our part, we are extending the duration of illnesses, missed work, hospitalizations and deaths in our state.

About the photo: Servers wearing masks wait on customers on the deck of Dead Dog Saloon in Murrells Inlet, S.C. Rules for outdoor dining in South Carolina amid the coronavirus were relaxed on Monday. May 4, 2020. (Jason Lee/The Sun News via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Independence Day 2020 is Saturday, July 4.

Its a patriotic holiday, and also a day where people like to be out and about, whether it be for cookouts, pool parties or fireworks. Problem is, this year thats easier said than done.

The CDC recommends wearing non-medical face masks or coverings when leaving the house to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. In New Jersey, its required when going into a store.

But, that doesnt mean you cant show some American pride at the same time in the form of a patriotic face covering.

Even New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has one.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy during a coronavirus press briefing in May. (Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) APAP

Heres a roundup of places where you can buy patriotic-themed face coverings. Be sure to check the shipping date.

TheFlagShirt.com is selling American flag printed face coverings starting at $9.99. A portion of each face covering sale will go to the First Responders Childrens Foundation.

Old Navy has an Americana face mask three-pack for $7.50. There is also a kids version for the same price.

FOCO has patriotic styles for $10. You can shop the entire collection here.

Amazon is selling multiple face masks and coverings with patriotic styles including American flag and bald eagle prints.

Zazzle has a lot of different patriotic-themed options, as well, starting at $12.95.

And, you can find plenty of patriotic styles, along with Jersey-themed styles, at Redbubble. All styles are designed by independent artists.

RELATED STORIES ABOUT RETAIL:

U.S. retail sales: See how major chains have been impacted by coronavirus

Floor & Decor superstore opens at Elizabeth Center, replacing vacant Toys 'R' Us

Amazons best-selling list now includes section just for face masks

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Nicolette Accardi can be reached at naccardi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter: @N_Accardi. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
Putting a value on Wirecard is a stab in the dark, even though it has customers and a platform that works, say experts.

Wirecards confirmation that $2.1bn it had booked in its accounts likely never existed raises questions over whether the company is able to survive as a going concern or can be broken up and sold.

At a stroke, the acknowledgement wiped out a decade of reported cash flows and corroborated earlier reports that Wirecard  a digital payment processor and financial services provider based in Germany  relied on obscure third-party partners for much of its reported profits, according to financial analysts and forensic accountants.

Putting a value on Wirecard amounts to a complete stab in the dark, even if it does have customers and a technology platform that works, according to industry experts. For competitors, there is no compelling reason to scoop up any viable parts of Wirecards operations because it would be easier to grab its customers, they said.

We are unable to quantify the true profile of the business with conviction, said Robert Lamb, an equity research analyst at Citi who has suspended his target price for Wirecard stock.

Even if Wirecard can navigate the current turmoil, it will be hard to restore confidence, added Lamb. That would require it to be rebranded and a new management team to be drafted in  both unlikely to happen soon, he said. The fintech company replaced its chief executive last week with James Freis, an ex-compliance officer at Germanys stock exchange.

Moodys on Monday withdrew its rating on Wirecard  cut to junk only last Friday after CEO Markus Braun quit  citing insufficient independently verifiable information.

Shares in Wirecard, a one-time German financial technology star, fell 39 percent on Monday, bringing cumulative losses since Thursday to 85 percent. Its only listed bond, due in 2024, was last bid down nine cents on the euro at 26 cents.

Bigger hole

In the absence of credible accounts, analysts look to cash. Here, an earlier hole of one billion euros found by accounting firm KPMG in a special audit has grown to 1.9 billion euros ($2.1bn) for 2019, according to in-house auditor EY, after balances reported in the Philippines were exposed as fictitious.

Neil Campling at Mirabaud Securities  the only analyst to have had a price target of zero for Wirecard  sees no way back. He sees the firm at imminent risk of having its licences revoked by Visa and Mastercard, whose payments it processes.

Mastercard declined to comment to Reuters news agency, while Visa did not respond to a request for comment.

They have no business if Visa and Mastercard revoke their licences, which I expect to happen, Campling told Reuters. Customers, the few that are real, will seek alternative payment providers.

Campling sees no equity breakup value due to the prior claims of debt holders and litigation risks. It is beyond salvageable in my view, he said.

Richard Sbaschnig, a forensic accountant at CFRA, said it was in the interest of creditor banks not to force Wirecard into bankruptcy because that would destroy any residual value left in customer relationships and payment contracts.

The banks could be better off giving the company more time and see if parts of the company can be sold or operated profitably to repay them, he added.

The problem is that there are no obvious acquirers among Wirecards competitors.

Dutch payments platform Adyen has a strong business among large corporates, but prefers to steer clear of the struggling airlines sector  a core clientele of Wirecard.

We view Adyen as very well-positioned to capture existing Wirecard customers that could seek to leave Wirecard, said Julian Serafini, an equity research analyst at Jefferies, adding that Adyen has long preferred organic growth to acquisitions.

Frances Worldline, meanwhile, would also likely find it easier to scoop up Wirecard customers in Europe, and would have little interest in Wirecards Asian interests, analysts said.

A deal involving Italy-based rival Nexi would make little sense as it has no ambitions to expand abroad, they added.

Adyen declined to comment while Worldline and Nexi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former news columnist Margaret Wente has resigned as a member of Massey Colleges Quadrangle Society after the school said it would review her appointment.

The review was launched after Alissa Trotz, an associate professor of women and gender studies and Caribbean studies, resigned on June 18 as a member of Massey Colleges Governance and Nominating Committee.

Trotz said she was dismayed to discover that Wente, formerly of the Globe and Mail, had been appointed a 2020-21 senior member of Massey College.

Margaret Wente is someone who has demonstrated consistent and outright hostility to questions of equity, women and gender studies and anti-racism, and moreover someone who has demonstrated such a glaring lack of professional integrity, Trotzs resignation letter reads.

In a statement released by Massey College in response to Trotzs resignation, Principal Nathalie Des Rosiers said the school would review Wentes writings and conduct to assess whether they are consistent with the colleges values.

On Monday, in another statement, the college said they received a resignation letter from Wente. She was one of nearly four dozen people named a senior member of the schools Quadrangle Society.

In her resignation letter, which Wente emailed to the Star, she called the accusations false and outrageous.

I do not wish to be a member of the Quadrangle Society. The accusations against me are false and outrageous. My record speaks for itself, the email read.

Wente, who spent decades writing for The Globe and Mail before taking a buyout in 2019, has been the subject of controversy due to columns in which shes plagiarized material or promoted pseudo-science claiming genetic racial differences.

Wente wrote a column in 2014 with the headline, What if race is more than a social construct? where she wrote positively about a book that claims that societal outcomes are influenced by genetic racial differences, a claim that goes against the scientific consensus.

In 2012, The Globe and Mail disciplined Wente after she was found to have copied sentences in a 2009 column from another column in the Ottawa Citizen.

The Globe and Mail also apologized in 2016 after Wente was found to have copied sentences in two more of her columns.

Des Rosiers told the Star that the nominating committee was not aware of the controversies involving Wente, until Trotzs letter of resignation.

Correction - June 24, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Margaret Wente resigned from a senior fellowship position at Massey College.

With files from Jacob Lorinc and Tom Yun.

David Venn is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @davidvenn_
BRIDGEPORT  Lawyers for the city and two hopeful candidates for state representative for Bridgeport held a second video status conference on Monday.

But with an Aug. 11 deadline for a primary, both sides are hamstrung by limitations created by the pandemic.

Former state Rep. Robert Keeley and city activist Wanda Simmons are suing Patricia Howard, the citys Democratic Registrar of Voters, in an effort to get on the ballot for state representative of the 127th and 128th congressional districts respectively.

Both had been rejected, despite their petitions, because they dont live in the districts.

Alex Taubes, who represents Keeley and Simmons, and Deputy City Attorney John Bohannon Jr. held a video conference Monday afternoon with Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens.

Among the issues scheduled to be discussed was inviting the secretary of the state into the case  both sides support that  and certain evidentiary issues that likely will require a hearing in court.

Taubes claims while Howard was following a state law passed in 2013 when she rejected Keeley and Simmons petitions, the state constitution only requires a candidate to live in the district after the election.

The registrar initially told Bob and Wanda they could accept their petitions and they relied on the registrars word. This bait and switch is a denial of their due process of law, Taubes said.

Bohannon contends that neither Howard nor anyone else in her office told Keeley and Simmons they would accept their petitions.

It is likely the issue would have to be heard in open court with witnesses but at this point, because of COVID-19, no such hearings are being held.

In the meantime, both sides were ordered by the judge to file their legal arguments by the beginning of next week.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Brazil on Sunday said it had registered more than 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus outbreak as well as about one million infections, as the second worst-affected country in the world struggles to control the disease.

The Ministry of Health reported 641 new deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the toll to 50,617, with 1,085,038 recorded infections.

Brazil is the second most-affected country behind the United States, which accounts for nearly 120,000 deaths and more than 2.2 million cases.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who has famously compared the virus to a "little flu," has clashed with state and local authorities over their use of stay-at-home measures and business closures to contain it.

The far-right leader argues the economic impact of such measures risks being worse than the virus itself.

The spread of COVID-19 is accelerating in Latin America, with Mexico, Peru and Chile all hard-hit.

Mexico has recorded 170,000 cases and 20,349 deaths.

Peru passed 8,000 deaths on Sunday as it prepares to reopen shopping malls on Monday after 99 days of confinement.

Argentina on Sunday passed 1,000 deaths, underscoring the region's woes.

Chile nearly doubled its reported coronavirus death toll Saturday to 7,144 under a new tallying method that includes probable fatalities from COVID-19.

Experts say under-testing means the real numbers are probably much higher.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2020 AFP
Sanyam Lodha, an Independent member of the Rajasthan Assembly (MLA), has submitted a breach of privilege motion in the assembly against Satish Poonia, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and an MLA, for allegedly tarnishing the image of 23 lawmakers.

Poonia has alleged in a newspaper article that 23 MLAs were offered bribes by the ruling Congress to vote in favour of their candidates in the Rajya Sabha (RS) polls for the three vacant seats that were held last Friday.

Lodha referred to Poonias article and wrote to Rajasthan Assembly Speaker CP Joshi.

Im an MLA and keen to uphold the integrity and prestige of the institution. A blatant attempt has been made by Satish Poonia to tarnish the image of members of the legislative assembly by casting aspersions against 23 lawmakers, the letter stated.

Poonia has raised the allegations that the state government has offered mines, plots, and cash to 23 MLAs for casting their votes in favour of the Congress candidates in the RS elections, it said.

The image of the institution has been tarnished and also its members by raising allegations without substantiating them with any proof. The conduct of Poonia is a breach of privilege of the House and its members, it added.

Poonia has reacted to Lodhas remarks.

It is propaganda, as Lodha has a habit to hanker after publicity. He is working as a Congress agent. Even chief minister Ashok Gehlot had earlier alleged that Rs 35 crore was being offered to MLAs for casting their votes for RS polls. Whatever Ive said has a basis. We will fight against the privilege motion, he said.

The ruling Congress won two RS seats, while the BJP wrested one.

The Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly and also enjoys the support of 18 other lawmakers, including 13 Independents.

The BJP s strength in the assembly is 72 MLAs and also has the backing of three members of its ally, Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP), founded by Hanuman Beniwal two years ago.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
David Ettinger, PA-C

U.S. Dermatology Partners Georgetown is excited to welcome David Ettinger, PA-C. Born and raised in the state of Washington, David relocated after high school and has lived in California, Arizona, and South America. He attended Northern Arizona University to obtain his Bachelor of Science before earning his Master of Physician Assistant Studies at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

Since graduating, David Ettinger has worked in dermatology and craniofacial reconstructive plastic surgery with a focus in pediatrics. He loves dermatology and helping others feel more comfortable in their skin and providing relief to those struggling with various skin conditions.

He has participated in clinical research trials for psoriasis and Spray-on Skin to determine their efficacy and safety in the pediatric population. It has been wonderful to be part of the process to find new ways to treat and provide relief to those suffering, says David, a member of the Society of Dermatology Physician Assistants (SDPA).

As a physician assistant with several years of dermatology experience, David will treat patients with medical dermatology concerns such as acne treatment, psoriasis, rosacea, and eczema. He welcomes both adult and pediatric patients at our Georgetown, Texas dermatology clinic.

David Ettinger feels lucky to be raising 3 energetic, loving children alongside his wife. They enjoy spending time on the lake, exercising, and watching their children participate in their weekend sporting events.

U.S. Dermatology Partners Georgetown has been serving the dermatology needs of Georgetown and the Central Texas community since 2003. Founded by Dr. Kevin Miller, the Georgetown dermatology group includes Board-Certified Dermatologists, Dr. Monica Madray, Dr. Elizabeth Morris, Dr. Weilan Johnson, Fellowship-Trained Mohs Surgeon, Dr. Nicholas Snavely, Certified Physician Assistant David Ettinger, PA-C, and Licensed Aesthetician Corey Stoever, LA.

The state-of-the-art dermatology office was expanded in 2011 to meet the growing patient demand. U.S. Dermatology Partners Georgetown offers a full suite of clinical and surgical services, including Mohs surgery for the treatment of skin cancer. The providers treat conditions like acne, psoriasis and eczema to relieve or improve symptoms that limit your comfort, health and enjoyment. We provide specialized, highly effective treatments for a variety of skin cancers to restore and extend the quality of your life. The providers, who are parents of young children, feel comfortable treating patients of all ages, from the very young to the retirees of the Sun City community.

For more information or to schedule a new appointment, please contact the office at (512) 819-9910.

About U.S. Dermatology Partners

As one of the largest physician-owned dermatology practices in the country, U.S. Dermatology Partners patients not only have access to general medical, surgical, and cosmetic skin treatments through its coordinated care network, but also benefit from the practices strong dermatology subspecialty thought leaders and medical advisory board. To be the best partners to its patients, U.S. Dermatology Partners is fervently focused on providing the highest level of patient-first care, and its team, therefore, includes recognized national leaders in areas such as clinical research, psoriasis, and Mohs Surgery. To learn more, visit usdermatologypartners.com.
Priests at all Char Dham shrines in Uttarakahand will soon start protests against the state governments decision to set up the Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board, the Devbhoomi Tirtha Purohit Haqhakudhari Mahapanchayat, an association of priests of all the four shrines said Monday.

A priest from the Kedarnath shrine already began a solo protest 10 days ago, sitting bare-chested in cold conditions outside the shrine.

The Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board was formed last December to manage 51 temples including the Char Dham shrines. The priest community had opposed the move and alleged that they were kept in the dark about the law. They alleged that the government took such a step to sideline them and ensure full government control of temple related issues.

In December last year, the Uttarakhand state assembly had passed the Char Dham Shrine Management Board Bill with a small change in its name by replacing the word Shrine with Devasthanam on the last day of the winter session.

Santosh Trivedi, the priest sits outside the Kedarnath temple and meditates as a sign of protest, demanding that the Board should be suspended. The portals of the shrine opened on April 29 this year. The priest community in the state feels that the state government is only eyeing the funds generated by the temples.

Vinod Shukla, president of Kedarnath Tirtha Purohit Mahasabha, a priests body of the shrine said, Santosh Trivedi, the tirtha purohit of Kedarnath has been protesting since June 12 against the formation of the Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board. As a sign of protest, Trivedi meditates thrice a day outside the shrine when prayers are being offered.

Prayers are offered thrice at the shrine which takes approximately four hours.

Brijesh Sati, spokesperson of Devbhoomi Tirtha Purohit Haqhakudhari Mahapanchayat, a priests body of all the Char Dham shrines said protests against the board will soon start at other shrines also.

The priests of shrines like Gangotri, Yamunotri and Badrinath are discussing on how to step up the protests and soon they will start at those shrines also, said Sati.

The priests have not accepted the formation of the Board and have been protesting since November before it was formed.

Ravinath Raman, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board said the priests can protest, but the Board is a government body formed through an Act.

It is their democratic right to protest, so we cannot say anything about this. The Board is a government body made through an Act, so we cannot comment. said Raman.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
OTTAWA  Alberta has been testing far more asymptomatic people for COVID-19 than Manitoba, on a proportional basis. But a local expert says those testing rates likely reflect each provinces needs.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Alberta has been testing far more asymptomatic people for COVID-19 than Manitoba, on a proportional basis. But a local expert says those testing rates likely reflect each provinces needs.

A Free Press survey of testing data shows that all three Prairie provinces are testing for the coronavirus far below their capacity, likely in an effort to save resources for a second wave. In Manitoba, officials also point to the unreliability of test results among asymptomatic people.

Since the start of the pandemic until June 16, Alberta had tested 28,156 asymptomatic people with no known COVID-19 exposure, both at targeted locations and part of population monitoring.

The province could not say how many of those tests occurred after June 2, when Alberta expanded testing from select risk groups to anyone wishing to be tested.

Manitoba allowed asymptomatic people to get tested as of May 20. The province has targeted truckers returning from outside of Manitoba and people admitted to hospital for reasons other than COVID-19, to see if undetected community spread is underway.

Manitoba had done 4,700 tests on those two target groups as of June 16. The province did not provide data on how many asymptomatic people had gone to a testing centre on their own accord, and received a test.

On May 25, Saskatchewan expanded testing to anyone working outside their home who wants one, after weeks of restricting tests to only people with symptoms. Like Alberta, Saskatchewan still requires people to get a referral to have a test done.

A Saskatchewan spokeswoman said that province had referred more than 1,500 asymptomatic people for testing as of June 17, but did not know how many had been done.

Saskatchewan has said it can complete 1,500 tests per day, but is doing about one-third of that. The province has prepared a mobile facility to test at factories and other high-density workplaces, though it appears it wont be pressed into service unless there is an outbreak.

Alberta is on track to be able to test 16,000 people in a day, though its currently testing between one-third and one-half that amount.

Manitoba plans to be able to test 3,000 people per day by the end of the summer, because of its partnership with private lab Dynacare. But it hasnt yet done 900 tests in a single day, and often completes half that number.

Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitobas chief public health officer, has played down the idea of testing a lot of people who dont have symptoms, because results can come up negative even though they have the virus, only to have symptoms appear a day later.

The Prairie provinces are similar to the rest of Canada and other countries, according to an extensive June 2 analysis of how jurisdictions decide which asymptomatic people to test.

The review by McMaster Universitys Health Forum found that as of two weeks ago, most provinces were limiting testing of asymptomatic people to those who had contact with a positive COVID-19 case, residents and staff of long-term care facilities or jails, and those being admitted to hospitals.

Literature correlated by the Hamilton university shows almost every jurisdiction focuses asymptomatic testing on high-risk groups.

Countries hailed for widespread testing, such as Germany and South Korea, conduct aggressive contact-tracing and testing of people possibly exposed to an infected person, instead of widespread public testing, the analysis found.

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.

Weighted by population, Alberta has tested almost twice as many asymptomatic citizens as Manitoba, though Alberta has had more recent outbreaks of COVID-19 than Manitoba.

Meanwhile, Manitobas asymptomatic testing rate is, per capita, 2.5 times higher than that of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Yoav Keynan, a microbiology professor at the University of Manitoba, said it doesnt make sense to do widespread testing of asymptomatic people when there isnt a lot of community spread.

"It depends on where the epidemic is in that jurisdiction" Keynan said. "There are costs in terms of operating a system of intensive testing, in terms of personnel and reagent. You basically have to balance exhausting resources that youre going to need if youre going to have more cases  for testing that has very low yields."

For example, Albertas more than 28,000 asymptomatic tests discovered just 10 cases of COVID-19 out of the provinces 7,530 cases, as of June 16.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Suppose President Donald Trump decided to create a nationwide right to carry guns openly. He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws, and that a new Trump permit would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions.

Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency. And, moreover, even if courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to keep enforcing the program for another year or two.

That incredible outcome is essentially what happened with the Supreme Court decision last week in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (the latter being my employer, I might add). Regents blocked President Trumps repeal of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which halted the deportation of aliens brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and a parallel 2014 program that suspended the removal of their parents (DAPA). Until the Trump administration goes through the laborious result of enacting a new regulation to undo DACA and DAPA, approximately 6 million aliens can remain in the U.S. in defiance of federal immigration statutes.

While supporters of broader, more humane immigration policies (among whom I count myself) may have welcomed the result, they may well regret the Courts disruption of executive power. President Barack Obama could issue his extralegal visa programs for children and their parents aliens by simple executive fiat, according to Chief Justice John Roberts and four liberal Justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan), but President Trump had to pretend the order was legal and use the slow Administrative Procedure Act to reverse them. Even if it is illegal for DHS to extend work authorization and other benefits to DACA recipients, Roberts found, DACA could not be rescinded in full without any consideration whatsoever of a non-deportation policy other than on the ground of its illegality.

Story continues

According to Chief Justice Roberts, the Constitution makes it easy for presidents to violate the law, but reversing such violations difficult  especially for their successors.

Such a rule upends the text, structure, and history of the Constitution, which generally prevents the occupants of a branch of government (who are temporary, after all) from binding their successors. The Constitution, for example, contains no system for undoing a statute. When Congress wants to repeal a law, it must pass a new law through the same process of bicameralism (House and Senate approval) and presentment (presidential signature). The Supreme Court effectively repeals past opinions simply by overruling the earlier case, though the Constitution does not expressly provide for such reversals. Brown v. Board of Education famously overruled Plessy v. Fergusons rule of separate-but-equal. When a president wants to repeal an executive order, all he need do is issue a new executive order. When agencies want to reverse a regulation, they must resort to the same sluggish method of notice-and-comment rulemaking.

If anything, constitutional law grants presidents the power to reverse the acts of their predecessors even faster. Although Article II of the Constitution requires cabinet officers to undergo both presidential nomination and Senate advice and consent, practices from the earliest years of the Republic as well as Supreme Court precedents recognize the executive right to fire them unilaterally. A president similarly can terminate treaties, as Trump recently did with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement with Russia, even though treaties must also receive Senate approval.

Recognizing a plenary power to reverse previous presidential acts, contrary to the Supreme Courts DACA rule, comports best with the purposes behind the creation of the executive branch. The Framers created an independent executive branch that could act unilaterally and with dispatch because the presidents swift action was desirable in the execution of his constitutional and statutory responsibilities. They wanted each president to be fully accountable to the electorate for his actions without any diffusion of responsibility. The same reasons that support unitary executive action in the first instance support its potential unilateral reversal. A president may need to reverse his predecessors decisions quickly to protect national security or take advantage of a great opportunity.

The Framers careful protection against arbitrary government would be turned on its head if one president could insulate his unilateral policies against reversal by a subsequent president  for then the constitutional difficulty of enacting a statutory override would further entrench a tyrannical executive policy against electoral or statutory change.

It is important to understand that this principle applies even more strongly in the case of illegal presidential action. The Constitution vests in the president the responsibility to take Care that the Laws be faithfully Executed. The highest form of the law of the land is the Constitution. Under this duty, the president cannot enforce an executive order that violates the Constitution  here, the vesting of the power over immigration in Congress. Upon taking office, for example, President Thomas Jefferson immediately ended all prosecutions under the 1798 Sedition Act, which had made criticism of the government a crime, and pardoned those convicted under it.

This allocation of the power to execute the Constitution to the president reveals the perversity of Chief Justice Robertss opinion in Regents. It forces President Trump to enforce an executive program that he believes violates the Constitution and federal immigration law, and hence it forces President Trump to violate the Constitution. This is doubly perverse because Trump supports a legislative solution that would allow DACA and DAPA beneficiaries to remain in the country. Nevertheless, Trump reversed DACA and DAPA because President Obama had no constitutional authority to impose the two policies.

The Obama administration claimed that it could still establish DACA and DAPA as a matter of prosecutorial discretion. The constitutional obligation that presidents enforce the law also includes their right, due to limited resources and time, to set enforcement priorities. Prosecutors cannot bring cases for every violation of every federal law at all times. But Obamas claim flew in the face of the Constitution by claiming that he could bring the enforcement of a federal law  here the removal provision of the immigration laws  completely down to zero.

If that were true, President Trump could simply restore the preexisting enforcement levels as a matter of his own exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Each new presidents right to reverse the exercises of executive power by his predecessors means that no level of enforcement can bind any future administrations. If Obama were indeed free to set immigration removal levels to 50 percent of past cases, or even zero, Trump had the constitutional right to restore removals to those that prevailed under the Bush administration.

Trumps rationale was correct: President Obama had no constitutional authority to refuse to enforce the immigration laws against whole classes of aliens, amounting to 50 percent of the possible removal cases. As the Court in Regents concedes, he had intruded on Congresss constitutional prerogative to set immigration levels and to establish visa categories. As the lower courts had found, President Obama failed to live up to his constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. In such a situation, the Constitution compelled Trump to restore immigration enforcement to pre-DACA and pre-DAPA levels. By ignoring these aspects of the Constitution and presidential power, the Regents Court may have inflicted a harm on the nation that goes far beyond immigration law.

More from National Review
US President Donald Trump will expand an existing visa ban to include certain non-immigrant work visas as part of a move to protect US workers amid the economic devastation tied to the coronavirus pandemic, a senior administration official said on Monday. Trump will block the entry of foreign workers on H-1B visas for skilled workers and L-1 visas for workers being transferred within a company through the end of the year, the official said. The president will also block seasonal workers on H-2B visas, with an exception for workers in the food service industry. The move comes ...
WASHINGTON, DC, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) announced the deployment of $10 million in CARES Act funding to the network of MBDA Business Centers and national minority chambers of commerce. The grants will be used for education, training, and advising small and minority business enterprises in their recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

The Trump Administration is committed to helping minority businesses access the resources they need to rebound from unexpected challenges and allow distressed communities to thrive through private investment and federal support, said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. These CARES Act grants, in addition to the nearly 9,000 Opportunity Zones across the country, ensure that minority-owned businesses have focused support in addressing critical funding, contracting, and operational needs in the unique circumstances resulting from COVID-19.

MBDA recognizes that minority communities and businesses have been particularly hurt and continue to face enormous challenges due to COVID-19, said David J. Byrd, MBDA National Director. Many of these small businesses now, more than ever, need access to the available resources from the federal government. Our network of MBDA Business Centers and national minority chambers of commerce have been on the front lines. The CARES Act funding will help them implement programs that will assist more minority businesses in preventing, preparing for, and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CARES Act funding was distributed to existing MBDA Business Centers and national minority chambers of commerce who have the infrastructure to provide national coverage and the capacity to implement nationwide programs that reach large quantities of minority business enterprises.

Funding is provided for a 12-month period from June 1, 2020 through May 31, 2021. For additional information on MBDA and CARES Act funding, visit www.mbda.gov.

CARES Act awards were made to the following organizations:

Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Inc. (Phoenix, AZ)

Asian, Inc. (San Jose, CA)

Asociacion Productos De Puerto Rico, Inc. (Puerto Rico)

Business Outreach Center Network, Inc. (New York, NY)

Caldwell & Associates, Inc. (Baltimore, MD)

California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce (Sacramento, CA)

Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. (Washington, DC)

Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. (Chicago, IL)

Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. (St. Louis, MO)

City of Tacoma (Tacoma, WA)

Dallas/Fort Worth Minority Supplier Development Council (Dallas, TX)

DESA, Inc. (Columbia, SC)

El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (El Paso, TX)

Georgia Tech Research Corporation (Atlanta, GA)

M. Gill & Associates, Inc. (Miami, FL)

Metropolitan Economic Development Association (Minneapolis, MN)

Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. (Detroit, MI)

Mid-South Minority Council TADP Inc. (Memphis, TN)

National Business League

National Urban League

Rocky Mountain Minority Supplier Development Council (Denver, CO)

So. Cal. Corporate Growth Partners (Pasadena, CA)

South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation (South Bronx, NY)

The Enterprise Center, Inc. (Philadelphia, PA)

The National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship

The University of Texas at San Antonio (San Antonio, TX)

United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

University of Hawaii Systems (Honolulu, HI)

USBC Community Economic Development Corporation

About the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency (www.mbda.gov) is the only federal agency solely dedicated to fostering the growth and global competitiveness of U.S. minority business enterprises. MBDA programs are focused on economic empowerment and leading minority business enterprises through business transformation. For 50 years, MBDA has helped minority-owned firms get access to capital, contracts, build scale and capacity, and expand into new markets.

###
A British pilot, Vietnams most critically endangered novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient, has been moved out of the intensive care unit (ICU) at a Ho Chi Minh City hospital and is now able to arm-wrestle with his doctor in the institutions physical rehabilitation ward.

The Briton was transferred from the ICU to the physical rehabilitation unit of Cho Ray Hospital on Sunday.

Doctors are now focused on helping the patient fully restore his physical function.

He is now able to practice walking with medical staffs help, brush his own teeth, talk, and smile.

He also arm-wrestled with Dr. Tran Thanh Linh, deputy head of the ICU ward, on Sunday.

The patient is expected to be discharged from the hospital and return to his home country soon.

The 43-year-old man, a Vietnam Airlines pilot, was confirmed as the countrys COVID-19 patient No. 91 following his diagnosis in mid-March.

He was admitted to the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases on March 18 with damaged lungs.

His conditions became worse and worse then, with the pilot being on the verge of death many times.

But medical workers refused to let him die, trying every possible way to keep him alive, even with life support outside his body, known as the ECMO technique.

Their efforts paid off as he was then cleared of the coronavirus, though his lungs were badly damaged.

He was transferred to Cho Ray Hospital in the same city on May 22 in a coma.

The sole purpose of the hospital transfer was for doctors to perform a lung transplant on the Briton, which was believed to be the only way to save him at the time, said Dr. Phan Thi Xuan, head of Cho Ray Hospitals ICU ward.

It would be much better if he was able to keep his lungs as a transplant could be very risky. Doctors decided to use three types of medicine at the same time to treat his lung infection and gradually lower the doses of sedative and muscle relaxant, Xuan elaborated.

The treatment proved effective as the patients lung capacity improved from only 10 percent in mid-May to 90 percent as of last week.

On June 3, doctors gave the green light to disconnect the patient from ECMO life support, which he had been on for nearly 60 days.

He was taken off his ventilator on June 13, and stopped taking antibiotics used to treat other bacterial infections on June 15.

The patients insurance company confirmed on Monday it had paid approximately VND3.5 billion (US$150,600) for his medical treatment at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases from March 18 to May 22.

Vietnams COVID-19 tally stood at 349, with 327 having recovered as of Monday morning, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

The country has not reported any community infections in the past 67 days.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
London: One of the world leaders working closely with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on containing the coronavirus pandemic has cast doubt on using nationwide lockdowns and mass border closures to combat a second wave of the deadly disease, amid early signs from Victoria and China of a resurgence in cases.

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz  a rising star of conservative politics whose response to the outbreak has been credited with avoiding thousands of deaths  said draconian measures used to stamp out the virus might only be a one-off move because leaders were now better prepared to react and the public more alert to the health risk.

"If there is a second wave, our situation would be very different than in February and March," said the 33-year-old Kurz.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been meeting regularly with Prime Minister Scott Morrison during the coronavirus pandemic. Credit:APA

He also stressed Europe was not interested in waging a "blame game" against Beijing but endorsed Mr Morrison's campaign for an independent inquiry into the pandemic, as fresh evidence emerged revealing the virus was spreading in northern Italy months earlier than first thought.
China released a sweeping blueprint on Saturday to tighten its control over Hong Kong, revealing plans to establish a security agency in the territory to help Beijing extinguish challenges to its power after months of unrest

China released a sweeping blueprint on Saturday to tighten its control over Hong Kong, revealing plans to establish a security agency in the territory to help Beijing extinguish challenges to its power after months of unrest.

The planned national security law for Hong Kong also gives the territorys chief official, who must answer to Beijing, the power to appoint which judges will hear such security cases, eroding the autonomy of the citys independent judiciary.

The announcement drew immediate protests from Opposition leaders who warned that it would imperil the rule of law in Hong Kong, a global financial centre with greater freedoms than in mainland China.

The proposed law is a pillar of President Xi Jinpings push to subdue political strife in Hong Kong, the sole part of China that has loudly defied his drive to entrench authoritarian control. Opposition from the United States, Britain and other Western countries appears unlikely to derail that effort.

The details released by the official Xinhua News Agency on Saturday suggested that the law would greatly magnify the Chinese governments ability to extinguish political opposition in Hong Kong, which sustained months-long street protests there last year that often flared into clashes with the police. The law would also allow Beijing to override the citys local laws.

This is a dramatic change in the administration of justice in Hong Kong, and it gives central authorities control over Hong Kong that was never anticipated when Britain returned the territory to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, said Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow.

Defying some expectations in Hong Kong, Chinese lawmakers  meeting as the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee  did not vote to approve the law Saturday. Even so, Chinese news media and law experts have said that the government is eager to bring the law into force quickly.

Hong Kongs opposition politicians said the law would seriously erode the citys cherished judicial independence and rights to protest and free speech. Chinese security forces already operate secretively in Hong Kong, but the new law would expand and formalise their presence.

This will hollow out Hong Kong, as far as I could see. This new law can simply mean anything Beijing wants it to mean, said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker in the Hong Kong legislature. Beijing used to be quite insistent about judicial independence in Hong Kong, she said. Now they are taking off even that facade.

The announcement of such far-reaching changes may reignite the huge street marches seen in Hong Kong last year, which demonstrated the breadth of anti-government sentiment. They have since dwindled in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and increased police pressure, and so far, both the virus and tougher policing appear to have sapped the willingness of residents to take to the streets again.

Tam Yiu-chung, a Hong Kong member of the Chinese legislatures top committee, told reporters that the authorities in Beijing would only directly intervene in exceptional circumstances, such as if unrest turned into war or otherwise went completely out of control.

In the wake of months-long protests in Hong Kong last year over a proposed extradition bill, Chinese Communist Party leaders in October demanded steps to safeguard national security in the territory, which retained its own legal system after its return to Chinese sovereignty.

Last month, the full, annual session of the National Peoples Congress, Chinas party-controlled legislature, nearly unanimously passed a resolution that authorised its Standing Committee to impose the security legislation on Hong Kong.

The Xinhua statement said that basic civil liberties like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly will be protected. Critics have scoffed.

The terms that are being identified as crimes are vague terms, Michael C Davis, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong who is a research scholar at Columbia University, said in a telephone interview. Theres a legal morass here that means, essentially, the chances that a court can push back are slim.

The explanation of the national security law for Hong Kong included other key points:

 The legislation will order the Hong Kong government to strengthen oversight and management of schools and associations in national security matters, suggesting the law could be used to try to stifle campus unrest.

 The law will require Hong Kong to establish its own national security commission, in parallel to the central governments security apparatus, and Beijing will assign at least one adviser.

 China will establish its own national security arm in Hong Kong, separate from the territorys own security commission, to collect and analyse intelligence and handle certain cases.

 The national security law must always prevail if it comes into conflict with local Hong Kong laws.

The official explanation says that the Chinese national security office stationed in Hong Kong will have jurisdiction in a tiny number of cases. But it does not detail which cases. Nor does it say whether crime suspects could face extradition to mainland China.

Tian Feilong, an associate professor of law at Beihang University in Beijing who studies Hong Kong, said that extradition to China would probably be unnecessary given the options that would be available in the territory.

The Hong Kong local legal organs will have jurisdiction over more than 99 percent of cases, Tian said in a telephone interview.

Security agents sent by Beijing would step in, he said, when the local police force is unable to collect the necessary intelligence and handle more difficult cases.

Lau Siu-kai, vice-chairman of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, a body that advises Beijing, said that the new law showed respect for Hong Kongs common-law tradition and the independence of its judiciary.

Beijing is willing to entrust Hong Kong with the authority and powers to deal with national security, Lau said, while adding that, Of course, Beijing will reserve some powers.

There is virtually no doubt that the Chinese lawmakers  hand-picked by the party  will ultimately approve the legislation. Chinese rules say that draft laws should be discussed at three, perhaps two, lawmakers sessions before a vote. This was only the first time the lawmakers had discussed the proposed security law.

Lau said that the legislation would be completed and put into law no later than the end of July. The Xinhua statement did not specify a schedule.

The official statement released Saturday said the proposed law would define crimes of separatism, subversion, terrorism and colluding with foreign powers, but did not provide details. Tam, the lawmaker from Hong Kong, told reporters that offenders could face up to 10 years in prison.

The provision on collusion  added since the outlines of the law were released in late May  could be used to arrest and convict Hong Kong residents for working with foreign governments and groups, said Davis, the scholar at Columbia University.

Collusion with foreigners can then be obviously targeting the locals who are going to Washington and London to seek support for their causes, Davis said by telephone.

Legal experts had been calling for weeks for the Chinese government to release a draft text of the law for them to analyse, so that they could offer suggestions on how to reconcile it with Hong Kongs existing laws.

But Beijing officials have been leery of releasing any draft, which would allow pro-democracy opponents of the legislation to assail particular details and demand revisions.

Many experts say China will bring the national security legislation into force before September, when Hong Kong holds elections for its Legislative Council.

Existing rules ensure that the council is dominated by lawmakers loyal to Beijing, but a minority of pro-democracy lawmakers has kept a foothold in it. Politicians in Hong Kong from both pro- and anti-government camps have said that the security law might be used to disqualify some opposition candidates from running in the elections.

On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signalled that the Donald Trump administration would use the September elections to judge whether and by how much to reduce Hong Kongs special access to US markets. He and other administration officials have said that the planned security legislation shows that China no longer respects Hong Kongs autonomy.

The Chinese government and officials in Hong Kong have asserted that the national security law enjoys broad support in the city, a position that pro-democracy politicians and protesters have derided.

On Saturday, 30 unions and a student group held what they described as a referendum to gauge their members support for a strike in opposition to the law. The unions represented accountants, retail employees, civil servants and bartenders, among other workers.

Organisers set up polling stations across Hong Kong in what was partly an attempt to muster a show of numerical force.

Alex Tsui, the head of a union of hotel workers, said the vote was meant to challenge the governments claim that the national security legislation was widely popular.

Its not, but how can we prove it? By voting, he said.

Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher and Elaine Yu c.2020 The New York Times Company
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he would not visit Moscow to attend the Victory Parade, even if Russia invited him.

"No, I wouldn't go. It seems to me, there hasn't been any official invitation," Zelensky said in a Skype-interview with The Globe and Mail.
(Newser)  Another White House memoir is surfacing, and this time John Bolton is on the receiving end of criticism. In an excerpt of Speaking for Myself obtained by Axios, former press chief Sarah Sanders calls Bolton "a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything." She uses an anecdote from President Trump's visit to London last year to illustrate the point. A team from the White House "loaded onto a small black bus" en route to the US ambassador's residence, but "Bolton apparently felt too important to travel with the rest of us," she writes. "We waited and watched as Bolton sped by and left us in the dust. The discussion on the bus quickly moved ... to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis."

story continues below

Sanders makes a point to note that Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin was on the small bus. Later, at the ambassador's residence, Sanders writes that chief of staff Mick Mulvaney unloaded on Bolton, calling him a "f------ self-righteous, self-centered son of a b----!" The explosion "was the culmination of months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team," writes Sanders. In response to all this, an adviser to Bolton says all travel arrangements on the trip were arranged by the Secret Service, not by the former national security adviser. Also on Monday, Trump continued his own criticism of Bolton, again calling him a "wacko" and saying he turned out to be "grossly incompetent" and a "liar." (Trump won't be getting Bolton's vote in November, but neither will Joe Biden.)
Amid the tense border situation between India and China, both sides have decided to hold a diplomatic-level talk for de-escalation and disengagement in Galwan Valley.

Sources told India Today TV, "India-China military and diplomatic talks are scheduled to take place during the week to facilitate mutual withdrawal of forces".

Indian and Chinese militaries had a violent face-off on the night of June 15 that resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. As per US intelligence reports, the Chinese side suffered 35 casualties.

Also read: India-China border row: Govt grants emergency funds to armed forces for war preparedness

The situation in eastern Ladakh had started deteriorating after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers clashed on May 5 and 6. The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9. Prior to the clashes, both sides had asserted that it was necessary to maintain peace in the border areas.

At present, Indian and Chinese armies have been on a six-week standoff in several areas of eastern Ladakh.

Also read: Chinese soldiers' dead bodies were lying all over near Galwan river, India handed them back to China

Meanwhile, engagements between India and China will continue at the military level. On June 6, military talks happened between the two countries at the Moldo border personnel meeting point on the Chinese side, opposite Chushul in India. Commander of the 14 Corps, Lt General Harinder Singh led the Indian delegation, and his counterpart Major General Lin Liu was tasked with presenting China's side of the equation, according to the channel.

Additionally, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Chinese foreign ministry also issued their respective official statements. EAM Dr S Jaishankar spoke to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on call on June 16 to discuss the violent face-off.

In fact, Jaishankar is scheduled to participate in the Russia-India-China (RIC) Foreign Ministers' virtual meet on June 23. Also, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will be attending Russia's Victory Day Parade on June 24 where a delegation from China will also be present.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine update: Chinese researchers begin phase 2 of human trials

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the government granted the three services (Army, Navy, and Air force) emergency financial powers of up to Rs 500 crore per procurement project to buy ammunition and weapons in view of the escalating border standoff with China. The India Army as well as the IAF are ramping up their operational capabilities along the LAC to effectively deal with any Chinese misadventure.

In addition to his, the Indian Army has also changed its rule of engagement on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which would allow the use of firearms under "extraordinary" conditions.
BERLIN  A Syrian doctor living in Germany has been arrested on accusations that he tortured a detainee in a secret military prison in his home country, the latest example of efforts to hold accountable former Syrian officials who entered Germany as refugees.

The doctor, Alaa Mousa, is expected to face charges of crimes against humanity and causing grievous bodily harm in a prison where he worked in 2011, the federal prosecutor said. He is the third former Syrian official to be arrested in Germany on such charges, the prosecutor added. The other two went on trial in April.

The German authorities have been criticized for insufficiently vetting the more than one million migrants who entered the country during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, many of them from Syria. While most of the Syrians were fleeing the government of President Bashar al-Assad, others had served in his military and security services.

Dr. Mousa, who was arrested on Friday, arrived in Germany in 2015 and appears to have passed the countrys strict re-certification procedure to be allowed to practice medicine.
German tower block residents have clashed with police in a failed attempt to escape quarantine as the country battles a new spike in coronavirus cases.

The violence erupted after 200 residents tried to charge through a metal barrier keeping 700 people trapped in their apartment buildings in Gottingen.

Eight police officers were hurt as residents threw stones and bottles during the clashes on Saturday, and one man was arrested last night.

The complex was put in lockdown on Thursday after two people were found to be infected, and 120 people had tested positive by Friday.

Authorities have since employed translators and sent out texts in German and Romanian to try and persuade residents that the lockdown is necessary.

A handful of new clusters including the one in Gottingen have sent Germany's closely-watched R rate soaring from 0.86 to 2.88 in just three days, and the number of new cases rose from week to week for the first time since March.

Tower block residents in the German city of Gottingen clashed with police in a failed attempt to escape quarantine as the country battles a new spike in coronavirus cases

Eight police officers were hurt as residents threw stones and bottles during the clashes on Saturday, and one man was arrested last night

According to regional broadcaster NDR, around 200 of the 700 tower block residents had tried to break through the barrier during Saturday's clashes.

Footage which circulated on social media showed some of the protesters throwing a crowd control barrier at police during the scuffle.

Gottingen police chief Uwe Luehrig said police had responded with pepper spray after they came under attack with stones and bottles.

One person was arrested on Sunday evening after police recognised him as one of the rioters, authorities revealed today.

There was no further violence on Sunday, and some residents will be allowed to venture outside in groups of three if they test negative for coronavirus.

Anyone leaving the building would have to sign in and out and wear a face covering on their travels.

Authorities say they now want to provide more information to tower block residents, some of whom appeared not to know why they were in lockdown. Some of the residents are Romanian speakers.

A stone is thrown at police officers standing in front of the residential complex which was put in quarantine after an outbreak of coronavirus cases

Police forces wearing full protective suits prepare to enter the high-rise apartment building, as tensions between residents and authorities rise

Some of the apartments in the tower block are only 200 sq ft large and there are dozens of children living in precarious conditions, authorities say.

Officials say they are providing food and groceries for free during the lockdown and making medical care available.

Germany has been generally praised for its handling of the pandemic, keeping the death rate well below that in Britain, Spain, Italy or France.

However, the number of new cases rose to 3,553 last week compared to 2,290 the week before - ending 10 straight weeks of decline.

The R rate, which shows how many people each virus patient is infecting, leaped from 0.86 on Thursday to 2.88 yesterday.

A figure above 1 means that the number of cases will grow over time, while a rate below 1 means that the outbreak is in decline.

Angela Merkel has previously warned that Germany's hospitals could be overwhelmed if the rate hovers even slightly above 1.

Health officials say the R rate is more vulnerable to lurching around at the moment because the numbers are still low overall.

The complex was put in lockdown on Thursday after two people were found to be infected, and 120 people had tested positive by Friday.

Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term

The largest of the new clusters is linked to a slaughterhouse in North Rhine-Westphalia, where more than 1,300 out of 7,000 workers have tested positive.

The leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, has said he 'cannot rule out a blanket lockdown' in Germany's most populous state.

North Rhine-Westphalia accounted for more than half of the 537 new cases announced today, according to the Robert Koch diseases institute (RKI).

Officials in the state have already 7,000 people under quarantine and closed kindergartens and schools close to the abbatoir.

Elsewhere in Germany, further outbreaks have been detected in the cities of Magdeburg, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and in the Berlin district of Neukolln.

The weekly figure of 3,553 cases is still well below the number seen at the height of the crisis, when 39,167 new cases were added in the week beginning on March 30.

In addition, the latest spike has not yet made any noticeable impression on Germany's death figures, which remain relatively low.

The RKI reported only three new deaths today and the total for the last week was only 96, compared to 119 the week before.

Germany has recorded a total of 190,359 cases and 8,885 deaths since the pandemic began.
A woman who died from COVID-19 after disembarking the Ruby Princess cruise ship was told she only had the flu and had 'nothing to worry about', an inquiry has been told.

Lesley Bacon was first struck down with 'horrendous pain' in her left leg on March 12 and attended the ship's medical clinic feeling less well four days later.

Brian Bacon was told his wife had the flu and would be kept in the vessel's clinic overnight.

The ill-fated Ruby Princess (pictured) docked in Wollongong in April. Passenger Lesley Bacon was told she had the flu and was kept in the ship's medical clinic. She later died of COVID-19

Josephine Roope on Monday recounted the timeline of her friend Mrs Bacon's demise, to an inquiry examining the ship's arrival in Sydney on March 19.

Despite returning a negative flu test, Mrs Bacon remained in the clinic until the end of the cruise.

Ms Roope said she was informed by cruise ship senior doctor, Ilse von Watzdorf 'it was only the flu, nothing to worry about'.

She said she asked twice on March 18 and again on March 19 what was wrong with her friend.

Josephine Roope told the inquiry that the ship's senior doctor had told her Mrs Bacon 'only had the flu', when she asked twice what was wrong with her friend

Mrs Bacon was one of two passengers taken by ambulance to Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She died a few days later.

Ms Roope herself has never experienced any symptoms and on the advice of NSW Health has not been tested for the virus.

Earlier on Monday the inquiry heard from David Annesley who was also deterred from virus testing by the state's health authorities.

Mr Annesley developed mild symptoms after picking up his mother-in-law Helen Rhodes from the Ruby Princess at Circular Quay on March 19.

Ms Rhodes tested positive to COVID-19 on the afternoon of March 23 after Mr Annesley tried earlier that morning to be tested.

'Until your mother tests positive, there's no need for you to come in,' was the message from health authorities as recounted by Mr Annesley.

Ruby Princess senior doctor Ilse Von Watzdorf is pictured giving evidence at the Special Commission of Inquiry intoth Ruby Princess cruise ship

He was allowed to be tested the next day and produced a positive result.

Avid cruiser Lynda De Lamotte recounted the peculiar 2am arrival time of the Ruby Princess which left hundreds of passengers swarming on the dock in close proximity.

'We were given a different reason as to why we were docking at two o'clock in the morning,' Ms De Lamotte said.

'What reason was that?' counsel assisting the inquiry Richard Beasley SC asked.

Crew members of the Ruby Princess cruise ship pictured leaving the vessel on April 21, 2020, at Port Kembla, NSW, following the coronavirus outbreak onboard

'The dock had become available to disembark and so they (Princess Cruises) were going to come in early and we thought that was unusual because we'd never come in at night time before ... there'd be no taxi or anything at that short notice,' Ms De Lamotte replied.

She tested positive on March 26 to COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. She only found out about the positive cases after watching the news on TV.

She told the inquiry she had no issues getting tested even though she displayed no symptoms and even asked health authorities if they had the 'right people'.

More than 20 coronavirus deaths across Australia have been linked to passengers who disembarked the Ruby Princess when it arrived in Circular Quay on March 19.

The inquiry continues on Tuesday with more evidence from the ship's passengers.
The Paramount Chief (Omanhene) of Badu Traditional Council, Nana Yiadom Boakye II, has described the stance of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the compilation of a new voter register as an act of hypocrisy that demonstrates inconsistencies.

According to the Paramount Chief, the position that the EC can only compile the register of voters once at the inception of the Constitution and not on multiple occasions is an interpretation by the party to serve its 'parochial interest' and not a proper appreciation of the 1992 Constitution.

Nana Yiadom Boakye II, made the call when he was addressing the regional party executives of the governing New Patriotic Party in the Bono Region at his palace at Badu in the Tain District on Tuesday, June 16, 2020.

The hierarchy of the New Patriotic Party in the Bono Region led by Kwame Baffoe Abronye DC is embarking on a 3-day sensitisation visit to the various Paramount Chiefs (Nananom) in the region over the new voter's registration exercise.

The Paramount Chief said Aseidu Nketia and the NDC are deliberately causing confusion over the compilation of new voters' register with constant shifting of their argument which is pure demonstration of hypocrisy and inconsistencies on their part.

The Chief said the deliberate attacks on the EC are an attempt to subject the Commission to public ridicule indicating that the EC should always be guided by their professional principles and not to be swayed by any political party propaganda.

Chairman Abronye in his remarks said the new voter's register will not disenfranchise any qualified voter.

He stressed that the compilation of a new register is a constitutional mandate which needs to uphold.

He urges Ghanaians not to fall to the lies and propaganda of the opposition NDC over the new voters' register.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 10 people from northern Michigans Grand Traverse Bay after their boat began sinking, plunging the boats passengers into the chilly waters, officials said.

The Coast Guard said it dispatched a rescue boat and a helicopter to the scene Friday afternoon after its command center in Sault Ste. Marie received a distress call from a 30-foot vessel that was taking on water in the bay along Lake Michigan, north of Traverse City.

A crew arrived about 20 minutes later and began transferring passengers from the distressed boat to a Good Samaritan vessel. As the crew was transferring the 10 passengers, the distressed boat began to sink rapidly, forcing everyone into the water

A Coast Guard rescue swimmer rescued the 10 people with the help of the Good Samaritan, who transported them to shore after their vessel sank in about 250 feet of water.

The Coast Guard said the sunken boat had a gasoline capacity of 75 gallons, but there were no signs of pollution on the bay following its sinking.

Coast Guard officials said boaters embarking for their first excursions as the boating season begins should check their boat to make sure they have proper safety gear, including life jackets, and an operable VHF radio.

In this case, the mariner was able to use a VHF radio to communicate to us that they needed help, which allowed the Coast Guard and other boaters to get on scene quickly, Commander Amy Florentino, deputy sector commander, said in a statement.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Michigan
Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead writer of the 1619 Project, apologized for promoting the online conspiracy theory that government agents are setting off fireworks in Brooklyn and Queens to disorient and destabilize the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

I should not have retweeted that tweet thread. I was curious about what other people thought of it as I have seen lots of comments on the unusual nature of fireworks this year, but I did not make that clear, Hannah-Jones told National Review in an email. That was an irresponsible use of my platform and beneath my own standards, which is why I deleted my Tweet.

In the since-deleted tweet, Hannah-Jones urged her followers to read this  a statement which she now acknowledges read as if I was endorsing the theory. Last month, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her lead essay in the Timess 1619 project, despite criticisms from prominent historians.

The apparent endorsement appeared above a viral thread composed by Brooklyn author Robert Jones Jr., who claimed that the noticeable uptick in firework shows in Brooklyn and Queens were part of a coordinated attack on Black and Brown communities by government forces.

There is NO WAY IN THE WORLD that young Black and Brown people would otherwise have access to these PROFESSIONAL fireworks, Jones Jr. said. These are Macys July 4th/New Years-level displays and sonic booms reserved generally for the wealthiest people and institutions.

Explaining his rationale, Jones Jr. said that the situation marked the first wave before whatever the next stage of the attack is.

This could also be the police attempting to retaliate against our calls to defund/abolish the police by creating the circumstances for a continuous public nuisance and then purposely failing to respond to it, he hypothesized.

The NYPD did not return a request for comment. In a story on the fireworks surge last week, the Times reported that an officer who answered the phone at the 32nd Precinct in Harlem revealed the police were being inundated with complaints about fireworks.

Story continues

Jones Jr. also tweeted a side-by-side photo comparison of firefighters and an unknown man in a black t-shirt and yellow backpack selling fireworks and alcohol, asking if the gear in these photos look similar.

Famdoes the gear in these photos look similar to you? pic.twitter.com/cuQBiHUBpn  Son of Baldwin (Robert Jones, Jr.) (@SonofBaldwin) June 20, 2020

While the New York Post reported last week that FDNY firefighters in Brooklyn were setting off fireworks  an incident captured on video that the FDNY is currently investigating  there is no evidence to support the claim that authorities are behind the widespread use of fireworks.

New York Citys 311 call system recorded 1,737 complaints about fireworks during the first half of June, compared to only 21 in the same period last year, while May saw a 920 percent year-over-year increase in complaints.

American Pyrotechnics Association executive director Julie Heckman told Slate that, despite the coronavirus pandemic and mass cancellations of Fourth of July shows, the industry was expecting a banner year in sales. Retailers have started to get creative to boost business, including the implementation of online sales  a new feature that was unavailable in past years  he explained.

Were experiencing a tale of two cities, Heckman added in an interview with Time. The display side is on life support, but its been quite surprising to see this early activity on the retail side.

Steve Pelkey, owner and CEO of Atlas Fireworks, a family-owned New England company, revealed that since he began selling fireworks online during the pandemic, he is up 28 percent compared to 2019, with online retail accounting for nearly one-quarter of Atlas gross revenue this year.

Usually theres one week before July 4th where its like a mad rush, but that level of activity is happening now. Anthony LoBianco, who runs Intergalactic Fireworks in Pennsylvania, explained. Everyone is buying radically: theyre bored, and they have nothing to do at night. Fireworks fill in that little void instead of sitting at home and watching TV.

More from National Review
An Indian Army soldier was killed on Monday as Pakistan resorted to heavy cross-border shelling during the ongoing ceasefire violation at the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

Havildar Dipak Karki was the fourth soldier to die on the LoC since June 5.

A defence spokesperson said Pakistan violated the ceasefire in several sectors in Poonch and Rajouri districts earlier on Monday.

The ceasefire agreement was violated by Pakistan in Nowshera sector of Rajouri at about 5:30am, the spokesperson added.

Lt Col Devender Anand, the armys spokesperson, said Indian troops responded strongly to the enemy fire in Nowshera and that Havildar Karki was critically injured in the incident and later succumbed to his injuries.

Havildar Dipak Karki was a brave, highly motivated and sincere soldier. The nation will always remain indebted to him for his supreme sacrifice and devotion to duty, he added.

Havaldar P Mathiazhagan had also fallen to Pakistani firing in Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district on June 4 and Naik Gurcharan Singh lost his life in a similar incident on June 10 in Tarkundi sector that runs along Rajouri and Poonch districts.

A 29-year-old sepoy, Lungambui Abonmei, died in Pakistani shelling in Poonch district on June 14.

Pakistan army had also violated the ceasefire in Poonchs Krishna Ghati at around 3:30am on Monday.

Pakistan initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by firing with small arms and shelling with mortars along LoC in Krishna Ghati Sector The Indian Army retaliated befittingly, the spokesperson said.

Pakistans army has violated the ceasefire more than 1,400 times this year. Last year, there were 3,168 ceasefire violations and 1,629 in 2018.
Construction output in Ireland is expected to suffer a contraction that would surpass any single-year decline during the financial crisis, according to figures from industry forecaster Euroconstruct. (stock photo)

Construction output in Ireland is expected to suffer a contraction that would surpass any single-year decline during the financial crisis, according to figures from industry forecaster Euroconstruct.

New figures show output in the sector is expected to fall by 37.7% this year.

According to stockbroker Davy, this would be worse than the most significant fall during the financial crisis of 33.6% in 2009. Expectations regarding the fall are the worst in Europe, though reflect the UK figures, where a fall in output of 33.4% is expected.

According to Annette Hughes, a director at EYDKM Economic Advisory, a member of Euroconstruct which compiled the figures for Ireland, the drop in output is expected due to the shutdown of construction sites after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic here. She believes on-site health guidelines may also affect productivity.

"The Covid-19 global pandemic stopped the construction sector in its tracks on March 28. There is no clear visibility as to how the Covid-19 pandemic will materialise over the coming months or as to its duration."
After 'Chinese Virus,' US President Donald Trump now called the new novel coronavirus pandemic, which has swept across the globe, the 'Kung Flu.'

The first case of coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China and has been largely speculated to have originated from a wet-seafood market in the same city. However, as the pandemic spread to other countries, the United States of America has been the most affected - both in highest number of fatalities, as well as the maximum number of positive cases.

In a re-election campaign rally in Tulsa, Trump said that COVID-19 is a disease which has more names than any other disease in history.

"I can name - Kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names. Many calls it a virus, which it is. Many calls it a flu. What difference. I think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name," said Trump.

Trump's new name for the virus is a play on the ancient martial arts practice, Kung Fu.

Soon after, on Indian Twitter, many put out their racist comments. They seem to agree with Trump, resorting to calling China the same name.

#KungFluvirus even became a Twitter trend in India.

China is such a country that has given a lot of misery to the world. No doubt #COVID19Pandemic was a strategically plan of China to become a superpower. #Kungfluvirus  Sarada Prasad Das (@AmSaradaPrasad) June 22, 2020

#Kungfluvirus this name seems fit and reasonable  Nitin Jain (@NitinJa88956270) June 22, 2020

#globaltimesnews is superspreader #Kungfluvirus attitude revealed through Cheque book diplomatic corruption strategy of entering into anti national MOUs with different political parties across world ofcourse included our #ChinaCongress #SoniaGandhi @INCIndia @republic @TimesNow https://t.co/gtiMd9DQjc  sreenivas (@sreeniv51294598) June 22, 2020

#Kungfluvirus It's vital fr t world to be united. Stand solidarity with India, stop Chines to ruin the world pic.twitter.com/JJoEVY3SNE  Sanjay tripathi (@Sanjayt03407382) June 22, 2020

I feel better to pronounce #Kungfluvirus not corona  pic.twitter.com/m4r0OEWx34  Rajeev Jaiswal (@rj_actionreplay) June 22, 2020

The maximum number of the people using the hashtag were however, in replies to Global Times' tweets, on India-China relations after the clash at Galwan Valley. Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the Chinese Communist Party.

We don't need china, we will teach you lesson soon#Kungfluvirus only belongs to you  Keval Adhyaru (@AdhyaruKeval) June 22, 2020

3 years back one of my Chinese friend told me when he was in India, that we Indians are blessed as patriotic but back in #China they are forced to do so if not then they are gone to grave. This is the truth of China, dooms day is not far off. #ChinaWingsClipped #Kungfluvirus    (@ayshwarya_raja) June 22, 2020

On June 15th, at least 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in violent face-off with China in Ladakh's Galwan Valley.

This was the biggest confrontation between the two militaries after their 1967 clashes in Nathu La in 1967 when India lost around 80 soldiers while more than 300 Chinese army personnel were killed.

After the brief border war in 1962 and have not been able to settle their border despite two decades of talks. Both claim thousands of kilometres of territory and patrols along the undemarcated Line of Actual Control - the de-facto border - often run into each other, leading to tensions.
Fonterra farmers producing sustainable, high quality milk will be eligible for a new payment, as Fonterra announces important changes to the way it pays farmers for their milk.

From 1 June 2021, Fonterra is introducing a Co-operative Difference Payment of up to 10 cents per kilogram of milk solids (kgMS) if the farm meets the Co-ops on-farm sustainability and value targets. Its part of the Co-ops strategy to add value to New Zealand milk and responds to increasing demand from customers here and around the world for sustainably-produced dairy. The payment will be funded out of the Farmgate Milk Price.

The total Farmgate Milk Price will remain the same across the Co-operative, but the amount that each individual farm is paid will vary depending on their contribution under The Co-operative Difference, in addition to the other variables, like fat and protein, which affect the amount thats paid, says Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell.

Weve always paid our farmers based on the value that milk provides to the Co-operative. The reality is that the drivers of value are changing, and we need to reflect that. Our customers want to know that the products they are buying are not only safe, but also produced sustainably.

This payment helps us meet the changing needs of our customers, so they continue to choose our milk and enjoy dairy as a sustainable and nutritious choice.

We want to deliver the innovation, sustainability and efficiency needed to make the most difference to our strategy and our bottom line. It makes sense to financially reward those farmers who go the extra mile to help our Co-op differentiate its milk.

Last year Fonterra launched The Co-operative Difference  a straight-forward framework to help farmers produce high-quality, sustainable milk and prepare for any changes needed in the future.

The payment will replace the Farm Source Reward Dollars farmers currently earn through The Co-operative Difference and will work on a tiered system. The more a farmer achieves in The Co-operative Difference programme, the higher the payment will be. The precise payment structure will be confirmed over the next few months following discussions with farmers but will be no more than 10 cents per kgMS.

Nestles Robert Erhard says, At Nestle how milk is produced matters. Now more than ever, people expect farmers to act as good stewards of the land  safeguarding the climate, enhancing animal welfare and carefully managing water and the health of soils.

Farmers put in a lot of effort to produce the best quality milk possible. Over recent years, large numbers of farmers have spent a significant amount of time and money to improve their local environment and waterways to make their farms sustainable for the future. Its great to see these farmers distinguished and rewarded for their efforts to produce and deliver a product that Fonterra can capture the highest value from. Through The Co-operative Difference, we can get better, together, says Northland dairy farmer Terence Brocx.

Weve created this with our Co-operative principles in mind. All farmers can participate in The Co-operative Difference and well keep supporting them through Farm Source, says Mr Hurrell.

We want farmers looking to the future, and The Co-operative Difference encourages them to continue to focus on the things that will create the highest value milk. This helps us create higher value products that stand out in the global market for their New Zealand-ness and the sustainable way theyre produced.

Key details:

 Introducing The Co-operative Difference payment for farms that meet Fonterras The Co-operative Difference targets, including on-farm sustainability and milk quality targets.

 Effective from next season, from 1 June 2021.

 Current Farm Source Rewards Dollars in The Co-operative Difference will be replaced with a c/kgMS payment.

 The amount and targets will be set annually by the Fonterra Board.

 The payment will work on a tiered achievement system. The more a farmer completes in The Co-operative Difference, the higher the payment theyll receive.

 The payment wont be more than 10 cents per kgMS for the first season commencing 1 June 2021. Fonterra will work with farmers on the framework over the next few months to achieve the right balance.

 The total amount available to be paid to farmers does not change, but a proportion of the Farmgate Milk Price will be available to be redistributed between farmers to better reflect the value of the milk from individual farms.

 Based on achievement under The Co-operative Difference framework.

 It will be a simple and low cost approach but with robust and straight-forward verification.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Updates Market on FY22 Guidance

My Food Bag Group Limited (NZX: MFB) Q3 FY22 Trading Update

ikeGPS Group Limited (NZX: IKE) signs $0.9m deal with tier-1 electric utility

Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) Update on Tonga Volcanic Eruption and Tsunami Event

21st January 2022 Morning Report

Trade Window Holdings Limited (NZX: TWL) TradeWindow and Mastercard teams up

Genesis Energy Limited (NZX: GNE) FY22 Q2 Performance Report

Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Seeka announces dividend of 13 cents per share

20th January 2022 Morning Report

Z Energy Limited (NZX: ZEL) Q3FY33 Operating Data


A John Dramani Mahama government will pay depositors whose monies have been locked up following the banking sector clean up, the Communications Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi has said.

Speaking at the NDC's Weekly Press Briefing today, Monday, June 22, 2020, Mr. Gyamfi said, if John Mahama wins the 2020 polls, he will make the payments in full.

His Excellency John Dramani Mahama is committed to fixing the mess that has been created by the mild administration of President Akufo-Addo in all sectors of the nation and in all facets of our lives. He is committed to delivering transformational leadership needed to create prosperity and wealth for all.

As he has announced through his digital conversations with the nation in the last few months, [former] President Mahama when elected shall pay all customers of the collapsed financial institutions whose monies are locked up in full and restore indigenous Ghanaian participation in the financial sector, he said.

Mr. Mahama himself has also promised that his government will refund depositors' funds in the shortest possible time should he be elected president in the 2020 presidential polls.

We believe that we do owe depositors. When I come into government, we will make sure we will pay depositors their monies within the shortest possible time, he said. Banking crisis

The financial sector cleanup commenced by the Akufo-Addo administration in August 2017 led to the collapse of nine universal banks, 347 microfinance companies, 39 microcredit companies or money lenders, 15 savings and loans companies, eight finance house companies, and two non-bank financial institutions.

Most recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the revocation of licenses of 53 Fund Management Companies .

The total estimated cost of the state's fiscal intervention , excluding interest payments, from 2017 to 2019 was pegged at GHS16.4 billion.

The collapse of the institutions left clients in distress as many of the customers have been struggling to retrieve their savings and investments.

 citinewsroom
UPDATED 2:38 p.m.

By the numbers, Washington County is one of the most ethnically diverse places in Oregon. But its still 65% white.

On Wednesday, several community leaders sent a letter to Washington County commissioners, asking them to think about how that reality has harmed people of color, especially when it comes to law enforcement. In the letter, the leaders asked county commissioners to scrutinize the way the sheriffs office is funded and make some changes going forward.

Black Lives Matter, read the opening lines of the Community Reinvestment Proposal. If we were to look at the policies and funding practices of Washington County, we would not see things that reflect that statement.

The letter said Washington Countys budget has prioritized funding law enforcement instead of bolstering the many communities of color that live in the county.

We know that this place was never built for us, but we will fight for a country that is far more inclusive than it has been historically, the letter said.

The letter comes amid weeks of global protests to call for systemic criminal justice reforms. It followed a march from the Washington County Courthouse to the sheriffs office headquarters in Hillsboro to protest police violence against people of color and the lack of action by county officials after the 2018 attack of Albert Molina, a Latino inmate, by sheriffs deputy Rian Alden at the county jail. Several community leaders also spoke at the event Wednesday, including representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Causa Oregon and ACLU Oregon. Molinas mother, Esther Summerville, also addressed the crowd.

The letter, signed by the leaders of seven organizations that represent multiple communities of color, called for the county to stop funding the sheriffs office until theyve taken two steps: first, launching a full outside investigation into why Aldens attack on Molina was not properly investigated when it happened. Second, the signees called for developing a civil rights committee made up of community members that can review police accountability and report directly to the commission. The first step of that committee, the letter said, should be to review the funding, policies and practices of using body cameras, and whether the sheriffs office should continue to use them.

Seemab Hussaini, CAIR-Oregons vice chair, said he hopes to see those changes made immediately.

Theres zero reason for incrementalism, he said. Thats a cloak in disguise for unwillingness to advance communities of color, Black and Indigenous people.

County spokesman Philip Bransford said the board of commissioners had not yet had time to review the letter, and that they couldnt discuss the lawsuit against Alden, because the county has been named as a defendant.

The letter said the countys handling of Molinas case revealed several failures: the deputies around Alden did not stop him, the sheriffs office did not publicly disclose the video of his attack, Alden kept his job and the two outside police departments that investigated the case did not request Molinas medical record, which showed that he suffered a skull fracture, as well as many other injuries, from the assault. The letter also notes that the district attorneys office declined to prosecute it at the time, and only reopened the case after a racist email from Alden surfaced this year.

Hussaini questioned whether prosecutors would have restarted the case if the email had not surfaced.

This assault wasnt just by the deputy himself, Hussaini said. Silence is violence.

Sheriff Pat Garrett has offered few comments about Alden since the video was released. In a letter sent June 16 to county commissioners, mayors of Washington County cities and state lawmakers, Garrett said he understood the concerns about Aldens actions land with him.

In hindsight, I believe that we did not address that issue in an appropriate manner after the decision not to prosecute, he wrote.

Garrett also said the sheriffs office was working with an outside expert to evaluate its use of force policy, training and internal review processes.

Aldens attorney, Dan Thenell, said he too is unhappy with how the sheriffs and the district attorneys offices are handling the case  but for a different reason.

This case was fully investigated, not only internally, but by two detectives from Multnomah County and Oregon State Police, Thenell said Friday. Multiple senior prosecutors reviewed this and agreed there was not a crime that occurred. The sheriff himself supported what Rian did in the situation two years ago.

Thenell said he felt the sheriffs and DAs office were only reopening the case now because of public pressure from the nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, stemming from the killing of George Floyd, who died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nearly 9 minutes.

I think for everybody to turn on Rian in June of 2020 when they all supported him in 2018 when it wasnt so politically favorable to prosecute police officers is just disingenuous, Thenell said.

Thenell said he can understand how someone with no police or use of force training could be concerned by watching the portion of the video where Alden slams Molina against the wall, but said he doesnt think the video tells the full story.

The letter from community groups to county officials raised the question of whether capturing police actions on camera is an effective use of county dollars or an effective way to reduce police brutality.

The letter pointed out that while body cameras are touted as a tool for police accountability, they have no proven impact on decreasing police misconduct, and are primarily used as a surveillance tool that harm already marginalized communities.

We know that footage was crucial in holding the officers accountable for killing Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, the letter said. We also know that (body cameras) did not stop his killers from killing him.

The letter also noted that while the department had video footage of Molinas assault as soon as it happened, no one was charged for two years.

Hussaini said he was encouraged by his conversation with commissioners when he attended a recent board of commissioners meeting, where the commissioners approved a budget that increased police spending.

Hussaini said that he and other community leaders are in the process of setting up more meetings with county commissioners.

Im hoping well have the opportunity to continue to extend ourselves, Hussaini said. Theres an education gap, which they recognized. When Commissioner (Roy) Rogers spoke up about the budget on Tuesday, his concern was that he needs to understand more about our concern for how inconsequential body cams could be.

The county commissioners sent out a statement on Thursday saying they had voted unanimously to fund body cameras, with authorization to spend that money after it has met with communities of color to discuss the impact of body cameras on historically marginalized groups.

Hussaini said one of his goals in meeting with county commissioners was to link the conversations about racial tension with those about demilitarizing the police.

Were going to be talking more and more as time goes by about what it looks like to defund structures, he said. And gaining an understanding of how we got a militarized police.

He said that as communities of color have grown, police have become more militarized. Instead, he said, county leaders should be investing that money into other areas that strengthen those communities.

This is an attainable society, he said. We dont want defunding to be an idea that comes across as anarchy, because it isnt.

Garrett also addressed police militarization in his letter. He referred to a January incident in a Hillsboro apartment complex, where a person randomly began shooting a semiautomatic rifle, and deputies took an armored vehicle to the scene.

It makes sense to retain these vehicles in their role as a rescue vehicle or to help stop a dangerous threat like an active shooter, he said.

Hussaini said the groups are not necessarily calling for Garrett to resign  but it depends on the most expedient way that the department can make progress.

I believe in engaging the sheriff, he said. I want him to speak to it. It doesnt matter who is there. They need to be answerable and commit to providing true answers to what happened over the last two years. Rian Alden  it doesnt end there. It never does.

Updated to include comments from Washington County Board of Commissioners.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 20:22:49|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

TOKYO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The disapproval rating for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet rose to its highest point since the launch of his second administration in December 2012, a nationwide poll showed Monday.

According to the survey conducted by Japan's public broadcaster NHK between Friday and Sunday of people aged 18 or older, the disapproval rating for Abe's Cabinet rose 4 points to 49 percent, while the approval rate dropped one point from last month to 36 percent.

Of those who support of Abe's Cabinet, 58 percent said the administration "seems better than other alternatives," while 19 percent said it represents political parties they support.

Of those who disapprove the Cabinet, 44 percent said they don't trust Abe, while 27 percent said they don't expect much from the Cabinet's policies, NHK's poll showed.

As regards the COVID-19 pandemic, 22 percent of respondents said that they are worried very much and 53 percent said they are worried to some extent.

On the government's response to the outbreak, 51 percent gave a positive assessment, while 47 percent had a negative view.

In addition, 86 percent said they are concerned over a possible second wave of infections, according to the survey.
Amber Heard's bruises during his relationship with Johnny Depp were her biggest proof of domestic abuse. However, a witness said it was not the actor who caused them.

Previously, Heard provided "evidence" to support her domestic violence accusation against Depp. In her court filings, she included photos of her bruises on her face and scars on her arms and claimed that Depp caused all of them.

The "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" actor has since denied the aforementioned abuse and said that it was Heard who abused him numerous times during their marriage.

A few months after the photos of the "Aquaman" star emerged, concierge Trinity Esparza quashed the claims and said that Heard got them while her ex-husband was out of the country.

As reported by The Mirror, Esparza saw the hand marks on Heard's neck two weeks after the "Pirates of the Caribbean" actor allegedly threw a phone at her on May 21, 2016.

She added that she also saw a mark on the left side of the actress' face, opposing Heard's previous claim that it was the right side of her face which had been hurt.

"She dropped her keys down the elevator chute," Esparza said, revealing how Heard obtained the marks. "She had bruises on her neck and a Band-Aid."

Esparza is the head concierge at Los Angeles' Eastern Columbia building, where Depp owns multiple units and where Heard used to stay.

According to Mirror, Depp's legal team will also use Esparza's statement in his libel suit against News U.K. after The Sun labeled him a "wife beater."

Meanwhile, Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman said that Esparza's deposition proves that the actor never harmed his ex-wife.

"It turns out, Amber Heard actually was damaged in June 2016, with finger shaped marks on her throat, bandaged arm and a bruised left eye," Waldman shared. "The one person we know did not do it is Johnny Depp, who had been on tour and out of the country for [two] weeks."

What's The Latest In The Suit

While the coronavirus pandemic has not been eased down yet, the "Lone Ranger" star is expected to continue his libel suit a couple of weeks from now. Depp reportedly arrived in London on Saturday, but he is required to undergo a two-week quarantine period first to ensure everyone's safety.

As for Heard, she recently lost a bunch of important individuals while preparing for her next trial.

Recently, "Time's Up" co-founder Roberta Kaplan and the other lawyers handling Heard's case left her legal team, as stated in new legal documents obtained by The Blast.

"The undersigned moves for entry of an order permitting Robert Kaplan, John Quinn, Julie Fink, Davida Brook to withdraw as counsel of record for Defendant Amber Laura Heard," the document read.

The team's departure came after Heard's makeup artist, Melanie Inglessis, refused to give a live remote testimony about her 2019 declaration.

READ MORE: Amber Heard In A Threesome? Johnny Depp Accuses Ex-Wife Of Three-Way Affair!
Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release

SubCategory Select Sub-Category
Antibiotics discovered at The University of Queensland will be fast-tracked under an US$11 million international research deal

Antibiotics discovered at The University of Queensland will be fast-tracked under an US$11 million international research deal.

An agreement with CARB-X, a global non-profit partnership funding the world's largest antibacterial development pipeline, initially provides UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) with up to US$3.83 million to develop a new antibiotic, and a further US$A7.03 million as project milestones are passed.

Project leader Professor Matt Cooper said the new antibiotic, Octapeptin-X (OPX), would target the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria that evade all current therapies.

"Much of the world's current focus is rightly on COVID-19, but superbugs remain a serious and constant threat to global human health," Professor Cooper said.

UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Hj said it was gratifying UQ was the first Australian organisation that CARB-X had chosen to support.

"We are determined to make a difference to the global antibiotic resistance problem - another example of fundamental research under way at UQ changing the world and saving lives," Professor Hj said.

"The funding cements the Institute for Molecular Bioscience as the leading place for antibiotic discovery and development in Australia, and one of the leading centres globally.

"The drug discovery capabilities of the Centre for Superbug Solutions, teamed with vital support from CARB-X, will equip us to tackle this challenge and improve outcomes for people with drug-resistant infections in the future.

Centre Director Dr Mark Blaskovich said extensively drug-resistant bacteria strains were on the rise, killing about 700,000 people worldwide annually.

"Commonly these bacteria cause pneumonia, urinary tract and wound infections," he said.

"Our current antibiotics are increasingly ineffective against them, leaving patients with no alternatives."

The project's lead chemist, Dr Karl Hansford, said use of polymyxin - a last-line antibiotic which has severe side-effects - had surged in recent years as doctors struggled to treat superbug infections.

"The CARB-X funding will enable us to develop Octapeptin-X (OPX) as a safe treatment for drug-resistant infections deemed untreatable by these conventional therapies," Dr Hansford said.

"We've demonstrated that OPX antibiotics exert a unique killing action distinct from other antibiotics."

###

Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) is a global partnership dedicated to accelerating early development antibacterial R&D to address the rising threat of drug-resistant bacteria.

It supports the world's largest and most innovative pipeline of preclinical products against drug-resistant infections.

It is led by Boston University and funding is provided by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Wellcome Trust, a global charity based in the UK working to improve health globally, Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the UK Department of Health and Social Care's Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund (GAMRIF), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and with in-kind support from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Image: https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/s/Lu3C9ZXYI6zjGAx
Below is the full statement by President Akufo-Addo on covid19 update 12.

Fellow Ghanaians, good evening.

It has been three and a half months since we begun our fight to defeat the Coronavirus pandemic in the country. It has, so far, been a co-ordinated and enhanced response, with tracing, testing, isolating, treating, and the maintenance of the relevant social distancing and hygiene protocols being the weapons we continue to employ to help contain the spread of the virus.

We are all agreed that this novel disease has thrust the whole world into unknown and unchartered territory, and we are having to learn as we go along. As part of the phased approach to return our lives, safely, back to normal, final year students in our tertiary institutions returned to school on Monday, 15th June, to prepare for and sit their exit examinations.

One week on, it has proved to be a relatively smooth exercise, with very few hitches recorded. I thank, in particular, the Vice Chancellors and other heads of our tertiary institutions for the support and co-operation offered Government towards its success. Indeed, decisions, like those being taken by the leadership of Sunyani Technical University, in the Bono Region, to sanction students, lecturers and non-teaching staff, who flout the COVID-19 protocols, reinforce the collective determination of the majority of Ghanaians to defeat the virus.

From tomorrow, Monday, 22nd June, the next batch of students, who will be going back to school, are final year senior high school students (SHS 3), and second year Gold Track students. On Thursday, I held consultations with members of both the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), and the Association of Principals of Technical Institutes (APTI), to agree on the modalities for the return of the students. Despite the short notice for the meeting, I was happy to see the impressive turnout of their executives from all parts of the country, and I am grateful for the wholehearted co-operation they pledged to Government.

Like their seniors at the University, SHS 3 students will be in school for a total of six (6) weeks, before sitting for the WASSCE exams over a period of two (2) weeks. SHS 2 Gold Track students, who are returning to complete their first semester like their Green Track colleagues have done, will be in school for six (6) weeks, before going on vacation.

All one thousand, one hundred and sixty-seven (1,167) Senior High Schools in the country have been fumigated and disinfected. Each student, teaching and non-teaching staff, invigilator and school administrator, numbering some eight hundred thousand (800,000), will be provided with three (3) pieces of reusable face masks, i.e. two (2) being provided tomorrow, and the third within a fortnight. Nonetheless, I encourage parents to provide their wards and children with at least one (1) face covering on their way to school. A total of eighteen thousand (18,000) Veronica Buckets, eight hundred thousand (800,000) pieces of two hundred millilitre sanitizers, thirty-six thousand (36,000) rolls of tissue paper, thirty-six thousand (36,000) gallons of liquid soap, and seven thousand, two hundred (7,200) thermometer guns have been distributed.

A maximum of twenty-five students will be permitted in each class. All day students in schools with boarding houses will be resident in these boarding houses, whilst day students, in schools without boarding facilities, will commute from home, and will be required to adhere to enhanced hygiene protocols; eating in dining halls will be in appropriate numbers; and no visitors to the schools will be allowed. There will be no mass gatherings and no sporting activities. Religious activities, under the new protocols, will be permitted. Social distancing and the wearing of face masks are obligatory in our schools.

One dormitory block in each senior high school is to be used as an isolation centre, in the event of a student falling sick. Again, each SHS has been mapped to a health facility, and care will be provided to the sick by nurses assigned to these schools.

Through the National Food and Buffer Stock Company, enough food supplies have been distributed to all schools. Government is also making available three hundred and fifty (350) buses and eight hundred and forty (840) pickup vehicles to senior high schools that did not receive vehicles in 2016. For the first time in our nation's history, Government will absorb the WASSCE examination fees of the three hundred and thirteen thousand, eight hundred and thirty-seven (313,837) SHS 3 students who will sit for the exam. GH75.4 million will be spent on this.

These SHS 3 students, also referred to by some as the 'Akufo-Addo graduates', are the first group of beneficiaries of Government's Free Senior High School policy to sit the WASSCE exams. 1.2 million children, the highest such enrolment in our nation's history, because of this policy, are currently in senior high schools. Let us pause for a moment to consider what would have happened to the four hundred thousand (400,000) more students, who have entered Senior High School between 2017 and 2019, without this policy in place.

We introduced Free SHS because history, and the experiences of developed nations, have shown that the most efficient way to empower the population, and, thereby, guarantee the future of the nation, is by investing in education and skills training of the youth. This is because it is the people of Ghana, Ghanaians like you and I, and especially the youth of today, who are going to build Ghana. Without an educated populace, it will be difficult to transition from the status of a developing to a developed nation. Summing it up, that most noble Ghanaian, James Kwegyir Aggrey, said, a hundred years ago, and I quote, I want all my people, my country women and men to be educated , and thus render Africa indispensable in intellectual, spiritual and commercial products of the world.

I take this opportunity to assure all parents and guardians that Government is determined to protect the lives of the eight hundred thousand (800,000) students, teachers and non-teaching staff, who will be returning to school from tomorrow. I will be the last person to put the lives of the 'Akufo-Addo graduates' at risk. It bears repeating that they must all adhere strictly to enhanced personal hygiene and social distancing protocols, regularly wash their hands with soap under running water, refrain from shaking hands, and wear masks to protect themselves and others. These rules apply to all of us.

Fellow Ghanaians, the experts told us right at the beginning of this pandemic that, whether the virus spreads or not, is dependent on our individual behaviour. Someone put it graphically that the virus has not got feet, and cannot move by itself, and that we, humans, spread it. The large majority of us continue to adhere to the protocols. Unfortunately, there are some who do not; others have slackened; and an unacceptably significant number have refused to obey them altogether. In such an atmosphere, if we do not take care, the virus will continue to spread, which will lead to intolerable pressure on our health facilities and care givers. Each one of us must be part of the fight to stop the spread of the virus.

Our approach to dealing with the virus, as I have always said, will be informed by the evolving science and data. At the outset of the pandemic, the scientific community and the World Health Organisation (WHO), on 12th January, 2020, recommended two main criteria for declaring someone who has tested positive as having recovered from the disease. The first is that you no longer have symptoms, and the second is that you are no longer capable of infecting others. Initially, the scientific thinking was that, as long you continue to test positive, you are capable of infecting others. Hence, the requirement for the two consecutive, negative tests before you are declared as having recovered. This was the science that informed the guidelines that Ghana has, so far, followed. However, there is now new evidence which states that, after ten (10) to fourteen (14) days, a person, with no symptoms, is unlikely to transmit the virus to others, even if the person continues to test positive. It is on this basis that WHO has updated its guidelines, as published per its Clinical Management of COVID-19 Interim Guidance, of 27th May, 2020, as part of the clinical care pathway of a COVID-19 patient. According to WHO, asymptomatic patients, i.e. those who have tested positive for the virus, but are not exhibiting any symptoms after fourteen (14) days, are not likely to be infectious, and, therefore, are unlikely to be able to transmit the virus to another person. After three (3) weeks of analysing and studying this update and recommendation, and situating it in the Ghanaian context, in line with the admonition by WHO to Member States, this new patient discharge/recovery policy has now been adopted by Ghana, as have some countries in the European Union, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and in Dubai.

As at Saturday, 20th June, the total number of positives, cumulatively, stands at fourteen thousand, and one hundred and fifty-four (14,154), out of the two hundred and seventy thousand, three hundred (270,300) tests conducted. Under the revised policy, five thousand, nine hundred and twenty-five (5,925) persons have recovered and been discharged. This brings the total number of recoveries to ten thousand, four hundred and seventy-three (10,473). The number of active cases is, thus, three thousand, five hundred and ninety-six (3,596). In our hospitals and isolation centres, we currently have twenty-four (24) persons severely ill, six (6) persons critically ill, with four (4) persons on ventilators. Eighty-five (85) persons have, regrettably, died.

This increased number of persons being discharged from our isolation and treatment centres brings in its wake yet another issue that we have to deal with  stigmatisation. It is obvious that stigmatisation is adding further dimensions to the already difficult problem of the pandemic. Part of the reason for the spread of the virus is the reluctance of some persons to admit they have tested positive, and go into quarantine for fear of being stigmatised, and, in the process, continue to be agents of the spread of the virus. Persons, who test positive for the virus, once they recover, do not pose any danger whatsoever to anyone, because the scientists tell us that they can no longer spread the virus. As I have said before, there is nothing shameful about contracting the virus, and, consequently, we do not have to lose our sense of community because of this pandemic.

Fellow Ghanaians, in line with our policy of providing optimal care for the sick, and reducing COVID-19 related deaths, Government continues to mobilise holding-bay, quarantine, isolation and treatment centres across the country. I thank the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) for their admirable, civic gesture of making available their facility in Ejisu in the Ashanti Region; and the Catholic Bishops Conference for agreeing to the use of their facilities across the country as isolation centres in the fight against COVID-19. These are timely offers, which will ensure that our overall healthcare systems are not unduly burdened and overrun. Such institutions deserve the sincere appreciation of the entire nation, as does the gesture of the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, who has offered his 70-bed hospital in Toase, in the Ashanti Region, as a COVID-19 treatment centre.

As I indicated in my address to the nation last week, the great majority of cases are in the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions. For these two regions, I have approved further investment in the following areas:

 additional ICU bed facilities in Greater Accra Region;

 a new treatment centre for Ashanti Region;

 additional laboratories to strengthen clinical care to allow for real time results;

 more medicines, consumables and equipment; and

 formal arrangements for a pool of specialist health professionals to complement the respective resident multi-disciplinary health teams at various treatment centres.

We continue to be indebted to our health workers, and express sorrow over the deaths of Dr. Harry Owusu Boateng, a paediatrician at the SDA Hospital in Kwadaso, Kumasi, and Sophia Addo, a nurse with the Ghana Manganese Company Hospital in Tarkwa, who both died in the line of duty. May their souls rest in peace. I also urge the media to continue the positive work of public education they have been engaged in, especially, now, as restrictions are being systematically eased.

Before I conclude, let me remind all Ghanaians, once again, that the wearing of masks is mandatory. Leaving our homes without a face mask, a face covering, or a face shield on is an offence. The Police will conduct random checks in the enforcement of this directive. If you are arrested by the police defying this directive, your sanction could be severe. So, please, let us, at all times, wear our masks. I appeal to each and every one of you to take this as a personal challenge, and help rid Ghana of the virus.

Even though, we now have a better understanding of the dynamism of the virus in our country; even though the majority of people who contract the virus do not show any symptoms at all; and even though Ghanaians are not dying in the hundreds and thousands that were originally anticipated, we cannot afford to be complacent, and let our guard down. Let us remain focused, and adhere to the enhanced hygiene, social distancing and mask-wearing protocols, that have, and must, become part and parcel of our daily lives for the foreseeable future. We can do it, if we work at it.

Let me, in conclusion, wish the 'Akufo-Addo graduates', the SHS 3 students, and their seniors in Universities, the best of luck in their forthcoming examinations, which will be conducted in safety. Ghana needs them all for her progress.

May God bless us all, and our homeland Ghana, and make her great and strong.

I thank you for your attention.
BANGOR TWP, MI  An off-duty Indiana firefighter helped save a womans life Sunday afternoon at Bay City State Park.

The incident began around 1 p.m. Sunday, June 21, when first responders were called out for a medical emergency at the location off State Park Drive along the Saginaw Bay.

Prior to their arrival, Bangor Township Fire Chief Rob Glenn said an off-duty Fort Wayne firefighter and a firefighter-in-training out of Howell in Livingston County jumped into action.

They initiated CPR, said Glenn, as the woman had experienced a cardiac event.

The Indiana firefighter had been on vacation and was headed back home when he stopped off at the park.

Bangor Township firefighters responded and used an automated external defibrillator on the woman and were able to resuscitate her.

It took a team effort to get the woman off the beach, Glenn said, with a Gator utility vehicle used to get a stretcher to the beach.

The stretcher was placed in the back of a pickup truck from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to get the woman off the beach and into the awaiting ambulance.

She was transported to a local hospital for treatment.

The system doesnt always work that well and yesterday it did, said Glenn of the efforts. Having some trained firefighters hands there made the difference.
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Chinese officials made clear in the days following the arrests of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor that their imprisonments were linked with Canadas having detained high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou days earlier.

Trudeau was rebutting a spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry who said earlier Monday that his country does not arbitrarily detain people, and that Trudeaus earlier remarks linking the cases were irresponsible.

Trudeau doubled down, saying Chinese officials highlighted an obvious link between the arrests of the two Canadians and the RCMPs arrest of Meng at the Vancouver airport in response to an extradition request from the United States. Meng was arrested on Dec. 1, 2018 and Kovrig and Spavor were taken into custody nine days later.

They made those links from the very beginning, and continue to put political pressure on Canada through that detention, Trudeau said Monday.

It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government, and we deplore it, and have from the very beginning.

Trudeau thanked allies, including the United States, that have criticized China for using arbitrary detentions as a means to political ends. He said Canada and its allies around the world remain united against this Chinese practice.

Earlier Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China to release the Canadians, saying they face groundless charges of spying.

The European Union said its leadership also raised its concerns over the continued arbitrary detention of Kovrig and Spavor during a virtual bilateral summit with China Monday.

Trudeau also had a call with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission on Monday. A summary of their conversation provided by the Prime Ministers Office said Trudeau thanked her for the EUs expressions of concern for the two Canadians.

Chinese authorities announced the charges against Kovrig and Spavor on Friday, after the two had spent more than 550 days in prison without access to lawyers or family.

Since January, China has prevented Canadian diplomats from visiting Kovrig and Spavor, citing COVID-19 restrictions.

Trudeau rejected suggestions that Canada should intervene to resolve the Meng case in an attempt to free Kovrig and Spavor.

We continue to stand up both for the independence of our judicial system and Canadian interests and values, the prime minister said. We work behind the scenes and in public to ensure that everyone understands we will continue to work extremely hard to get these Canadians home.

Garnett Genuis, the Conservative critic on Canada-China Relations, was critical of former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley and Eddie Goldenberg, a former aide to ex-prime minister Jean Chretien, for advocating for a prisoner exchange to free Kovrig and Spavor.

Conservatives continue to call on Justin Trudeau to respect the independence of Canadas judicial system and reject this position by senior Liberal insiders, said Genuis.

Pompeo said the U.S. is deeply concerned by Chinas decision to formally charge Kovrig and Spavor.

These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless. The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada, Pompeo said in a statement on Monday.

Additionally, we echo Canadas call for immediate consular access to its two citizens, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, as China has prohibited such access for almost six months, and the world has no knowledge of the two Canadians condition.

Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, is living in a luxury Vancouver home while her extradition case wends its way through a British Columbia court.

The United States wants to prosecute Meng for fraud, alleging she lied to banks about her companys connections with Iran, which could possibly violate U.S. sanctions.

Last month, the B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled the allegations against Meng could constitute a crime in Canada, which is necessary for an extradition. That meant Mengs case remains before the court, unresolved.

Last week, Mengs lawyers accused the Americans of misleading the B.C. court and said they are seeking a stay in the proceedings.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2020.
Irish beef is to be sold to retail in the Philippines for the first time this week.

The beef, which is organic is being supplied by Good Herdsmen, ABPs Organic Division, is now being sold by Healthy Options the country's largest organic health foods retailer, which has 33 stores across the Philippines, including 24 in the capital Manila.

The striploin, ribeye and T-bone cuts are being marketed as hormone-free, raised on family farms, with farm to table traceability.

Commenting on the deal Malcolm Leoi, Bord Bias Market Specialist for South East Asia said "The Philippines offers significant growth potential for Irish beef, and heading up this EU campaign is recognition of Ireland as an exporting country with a strong history of promoting and supplying quality beef that is sustainably produced.

Irish beef is the perfect fit for Healthy Options with its focus on health and sustainability-conscious consumers in the Philippines. This partnership will also raise awareness of the premium nature of grass-fed Irish beef, sourced from Quality Assured farms, and fully traceability from farm to fork.

In 2018 Bord Bia won an EU contract to promote pork and beef on behalf of EU in the Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea. As a result, Irish beef is currently featuring as part of a three-year EU campaign where 3.9 million is being spent on the promotion of beef and pork in these countries. The Philippines is currently Irelands third-largest Asian export destination for food and drink by value, after mainland China and Japan.



Malcolm Leoi added "The campaign is important because it gives Irish exporters access to food buyers in these priority markets who know about the high production standards in the EU but may not have discovered the additional assurances Ireland can give around sustainability with our Origin Green programme.
Jerry Lieb of Jacksonville loved being a cop, and for the past 30 years he has dedicated his professional life to helping the men and women in law enforcement as part of the Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council, the states largest police labor union.

I remember thinking when I was a police officer, oh man, this job has ruined me, I dont know what else I could ever do, Lieb said, but when I went to the Labor Council, I was still with police officers almost every day, so I never felt like I really left the job.

The 73-year-old Lieb is the field supervisor of the FOP Labor Councils Springfield office and is responsible for more than 250 police and sheriffs departments contracts for much of downstate Illinois. He handles 25 of those contracts himself, and has five field representatives and five attorneys who work with him on contract negotiations and support, critical incidents, grievances and labor-management meetings.

We have really accomplished major improvements in police officers working conditions, the pay for the job they do and the dangers they face, Lieb said. There have been a lot of law changes that have affected collective bargaining and law enforcement in the last 30 years.

Lieb began his lifelong career in law enforcement in 1976 when he was hired by the Morgan County Sheriffs Department following an Illinois College internship there. He spent 14 years with the department, most as a detective sergeant, and worked on many high-profile cases, including two death penalty murder cases, one of which was featured in True Detective magazine.

Lieb helped to charter an FOP fraternal lodge at the sheriffs department in 1982 and was the lodge president from 1983 until he left the department in 1990. When state legislation was passed in 1986 that gave police officers collective bargaining rights, Lieb took on a challenge that paved the way to his current career.

Police collective bargaining was in its infancy and we had to do our own contract language, then the FOP Labor Council rep would come to the negotiation session and represent us, Lieb said. I had to pretty much write our own first contract, so when I was drafting our second agreement several years later, the Labor Council offered me a job because they liked the way I wrote it.

Lieb takes pride in the way that the FOP Labor Council approaches the relationship between law enforcement officers and municipalities.

We are a professional organization and our goal is to establish a good working relationship with the employer, Lieb said. We are not like the old image of Jimmy Hoffa with a pickax handle, threatening to stop all of the trucks coming into town.

The employer is not always wrong, Lieb said.

I have probably settled more discipline cases over the years by talking and being reasonable rather than going to arbitration and that saves the employer thousands of dollars, he said.

With all of the attention focused in recent years on incidents involving police officers, Lieb said its important to realize that its in everybodys best interests to maintain high levels of professionalism among all officers.

I still remind sheriffs and chiefs that they are the ones responsible for hiring, employing and training officers, Lieb said.

Much of police work involves being in confrontational situations with citizens. Nobody wants to get that $100 ticket, Lieb said. Absent a contract, if police officers write the wrong guy a ticket, management could say dont let the door hit you on the way out.

One of Liebs proudest memories from his three decades at the FOP Labor Council involved a popular police sergeant who was put on five months administrative leave by his jealous chief over a false complaint. Lieb and his team were able to prove the complaint was false, and when the chief called a hearing anyway to try to get rid of the sergeant, more than 300 people showed up at the hearing to support him. The crowd burst into cheers when the sergeant was exonerated, Lieb said.

Lieb is also vice chairman of the FOP State Lodge board of trustees. The State Lodge and its associated local lodges, like the one Lieb founded in Morgan County in 1982, are the fraternal membership counterpart to the the Labor Council. FOP lodges are able to raise money for and support many causes that improve the lives of those in law enforcement and the citizens they serve.

Lieb helped to develop the FOP State Lodge Disaster Response Unit, a trailer outfitted with emergency supplies that can be sent to assist officers and their neighbors who are hit with natural or man-made disasters.

If something happens that impacts an officer, like a tornado strikes his home, officers dont have the option of saying boss I cant come in, I have to take care of my family, Lieb said. But somebody has to help them, their families and their neighborhoods. We also include a chaplain because if you lose your home youre going to need counseling.

Lieb also assists with the FOP State Lodges Project Blue Life, a police shooting situation simulator for civilians that was debuted last year for the Jacksonville Citizens Police Academy. The realistic video simulator puts civilians into split-second, shoot-dont shoot scenarios that let people realize the life and death decisions that police officers can face every day.

Lieb was elected chairman this year of the Illinois FOP Foundation, which raises tax deductible funds to help the families of officers who die in the line of duty. He is also the chairman of the FOP State Lodge Award Committee that recognizes officers across the state for extraordinary valor, life-saving and meritorious actions. Lieb keeps close tabs on what his award committee members are doing, except for one notable exception.

Committee members surprised me with a new award that recognizes the support that spouses give to law enforcement officers, and they called it the Chardy Lieb Memorial Award in memory of Liebs wife of 35 years who died of cancer in 2016, Lieb said.

I was just thunderstruck, he said. You hate to cry in front of the other guys, but I was so amazingly touched at the kind of respect that was afforded to my wife.

.

If you have a suggestion about someone who should be profiled, send their name and any contact information available to communitynews@myjournalcourier.com.
The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the SME Support Japan organisation introduced J-GoodTech, a Japanese online business matching platform, to Vietnamese enterprises on June 19.

J-GoodTech website

J-GoodTech is an online platform connecting business between Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with partners.

The platform currently has 17,000 Japanese SMEs as members and more than 7,000 businesses from other Asian countries.

J-GoodTech members are businesses operating in many fields and categories, such as electronics, machinery, metals, food, distribution, logistics and B2B services.

Vietnamese enterprises participating in the platform can connect, share information on their businesses, products, cooperation needs, as well as learn similar information from other members.

From that, Vietnamese firms can associate businesses, consume products, and co-operate in production.

Nguyen Van Hai, head of the foreign affairs department under the VCCI, said that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries had applied import and export restriction policies and implemented strict medical quarantine measures.

This has made business matching and partner and customer searching with the outside markets of both Vietnamese and Japanese businesses in the traditional form difficult, said Hai.

In that context, taking advantage of digital technology to connect businesses via online trade was a very useful solution, he added.

SME Support Japan will also hold a free online business matching event to support business cooperation between Vietnamese and Japanese businesses from July 13-17 through the online platform Microsoft Teams.

Vietnamese businesses only need to register fully-authenticated information, and use mobile phones or personal computers and laptops to participate in the matching./.VNA
Newark, NJ, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As per the report published by Fior Markets, the global sodium hypophosphite market is expected to grow from USD 669 million in 2019 to USD 1,021.2 million by 2027, at a CAGR of 5.43% during the forecast period 2020-2027.

The sodium hypophosphite market is experiencing huge growth from the past few years. The increase is mainly due to the rising application of sodium hypophosphite in the various end-use industries. It has been widely used for water treatment in industrial applications. The growing discharge of industrial wastewater in water bodies has been increasing. Thus, there is a raising need for wastewater management. This water can affect human health as well as aquatic animals. Therefore, there is a rising need for sodium hypophosphite for wastewater treatment.

Sodium hypophosphite used as a catalyst, reducing agent, and stabilizer as well as chemical intermediate in the many end user industries. This material appears as white crystals and has no odour. Sodium hypophosphite easily absorbs the moisture from the air and soluble in the water. Sodium hypophosphite has a large commercial consumption and has various industrial usages. It should be kept away from oxidizing material, in a dry and cool place. It is majorly used in electroless nickel plating.

Global sodium hypophosphite market is increasing rapidly, owing to the increasing need for the sodium hypophosphite in the various end-use industries. There has been a rapid rise in the use of sodium hypophosphite in the electrical and automotive industries. Furthermore, increasing applications of sodium hypophosphite in the food industry is anticipated to offer various growth opportunities for the key vendors in the upcoming years. Furthermore, increasing industrialization in developing regions such as the Asia Pacific and South America, further propelling the growth of the market. However, the rise in the fluctuation in the raw material prices may hamper the growth of the market over the forecast period. High availability of alternatives in the market also hinders the growth of sodium hypophosphite market in the upcoming years.

DOWNLOAD FREE SAMPLE REPORT AT https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/418364/request-sample

Key players operating in the global sodium hypophosphite market Jiangsu Kangxiang Industrial Group Co. Ltd., Jiangxi Fuerxin Pharmaceutical & Chemical Co. Ltd., Solvay, Zhejiang Zengxin Chemistry Co. Ltd., Hubei Lianxing Chemical Co. Ltd., Hubei Xingfa Chemicals Group Co. Ltd., Arkema, and Changshu New-Tech Chemicals Co., Ltd among others. To gain the significant market share in the global sodium hypophosphite market, the key players are now focusing on adopting the strategies such as product innovations, mergers & acquisitions, recent developments, joint venture, collaborations, and partnership.

The industrial-grade sodium hypophosphite segment dominated the global sodium hypophosphite market and held the market share of 65.23% in the year 2019

The type segment includes electronic grade and industrial grade. The industrial-grade sodium hypophosphite segment dominated the global sodium hypophosphite market and held the market share of 65.23% in the year 2019. The industrial-grade sodium hypophosphite si being widely used in the various end-use industries. For instance, it is extensively used as a reducing agent, to reduce the metal ion content in industrial waste before being discharged in water.



The reducing agent segment accounted for the major market share of 35.26% in the year 2019

The application segment includes reducing agents, chemical intermediates, flame retardants, analytical reagents, polymer catalysts ion exchange resins and others. The reducing agent segment accounted for the major market share of 35.26% in the year 2019. The sodium hypophosphite is capable of reducing the nickel ions on the metal substrate as well as plastic substrates.

Browse full report with TOC at https://www.fiormarkets.com/report/sodium-hypophosphite-market-by-type-electronic-grade-and-418364.html

The electronic sector is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR of 6.5% over the forecast period

The end-user segment classified into electronics, automotive & transportation, petroleum, building & construction, pharmacy, chemicals, and others. The electronic sector is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR of 6.5% over the forecast period. Increasing adoption of the sodium hypophosphite in the electronics industry is one of the key factor fuelling the growth of the market over the forecast period.



Regional Segment Analysis of the Sodium Hypophosphite Market

North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico)

Europe (Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Spain, Rest of the Europe)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan India, Rest of APAC)

South America (Brazil and Rest of South America)

Middle East and Africa (UAE, South Africa, Rest of MEA)

On the basis of geography, the global sodium hypophosphite market classified into North America, Europe, South America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific region dominated the global sodium hypophosphite market and held the major market share of 44.25% in the year 2019. The growth is mainly due to increasing automotive industry in the Asia Pacific region. Many global automotive companies are focusing on the entering into the region, due to cheap manufacturing cost and availability of the labours. In addition to this, growing industrialization in the countries such as India, China, Indonesia, and Thailand, also boosting the demand for the sodium hypophosphite in the Asia Pacific region. Furthermore, presence of key companies of the sodium hypophosphite in China, boosting the growth of the market. On the other hand, North America region is estimated to grow at the heights CAGR of 6.1% over the forecast period. This is mainly attributed to the increasing demand for the sodium hypophosphite in the various end use industries.

Request for Customization: https://www.fiormarkets.com/enquiry/request-customization/418364

About the report:

The global sodium hypophosphite market is analysed on the basis of value (USD Million), volume (K Tons), export (K Tons), and import (K Tons). All the segments have been analyzed on global, regional and country basis. The study includes the analysis of more than 30 countries for each segment. The report offers in-depth analysis of driving factors, opportunities, restraints, and challenges for gaining the key insight of the market. The study includes porters five forces model, attractiveness analysis, raw material analysis, and competitor position grid analysis.

For Instant Purchase: https://www.fiormarkets.com/checkout.html?reportid=418364&type=single

Customization of the Report:

The report can be customized as per client requirements. For further queries, you can contact us on sales@fiormarkets.com or +1-201-465-4211. Our executives will be pleased to understand your requirements and offer you the best-suited reports.

About Fior Markets

Fior Markets is a futuristic market intelligence company, helping customers flourish their business strategies and make better decisions using actionable intelligence. With transparent information pool, we meet clients objectives, commitments on high standard and targeting possible prospects for SWOT analysis and market research reports. Fior Markets deploys a wide range of regional and global market intelligence research reports including industries like technology, pharmaceutical, consumer goods, food and beverages, chemicals, media, materials and many others. Our Strategic Intelligence capabilities are purposely planned to boost your business extension and elucidate the vigor of diverse industry. We hold distinguished units of highly expert analysts and consultants according to their respective domains. The global market research reports we provide involve both qualitative and quantitative analysis of current market scenario as per the geographical regions segregated and comprehensive performance in different regions with global approach. In addition, our syndicated research reports offer a packaged guide to keep companies abreast of the upcoming major restyle in their domains. Fior Markets facilitates clients with research analysis that are customized to their exact requirements, specifications and challenges, whether it is comprehensive desk research, survey work, composition of multiple methods, in-detailed interviewing or competitive intelligence. Our research experts are experienced in matching the exact personnel and methodology to your business need.

Contact Us

Avinash D

Head of Business Development

Phone: +1-201-465-4211

Email: sales@fiormarkets.com

Web: www.fiormarkets.com





















To Read Top Industries Reports, Visit our Affiliated Website: https://researchstore.biz



Related Reports

Paint Protection Films Market - https://www.fiormarkets.com/report/paint-protection-films-market-by-application-electrical-418362.html

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Market - https://www.fiormarkets.com/report/polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-market-by-product-instruments-418363.html

Anti-Counterfeit Packaging Market - https://www.fiormarkets.com/report/anti-counterfeit-packaging-market-by-technology-barcode-rfid-taggants-418369.html

Industrial Gloves Market - https://www.fiormarkets.com/report/industrial-gloves-market-by-application-machinery-and-equipment-418390.html
Among the options being weighed are discounts on existing rentals, short-term deferrals, and 50 per cent waivers.

Top mall developers in India, such as Inorbit, Phoenix, and Brigade, are reworking their rental agreements with retailers as the two sides resolve their differences amid the reopening of malls in most cities.

Executives at these firms have told Business Standard that among the options being weighed are discounts on existing rentals, short-term deferrals, and 50 per cent waivers.

Shishir Shrivastava, managing director at Phoenix Mills, which has malls across the country, said it had worked out a three-month rent deferral programme for its tenants.

We are talking to retailers on a one-on-one basis. We are not taking the path of complete waivers.

"But we are taking note of what retailers are telling us and are looking at a mutually acceptable solution, Srivastava said.

Rajneesh Mahajan, chief executive officer at Inorbit Malls, said the company was giving a 50 per cent discount on rent to tenants from April to August.

Rahul Malhotra, marketing head at Brigade Group, which owns the Orion Mall in Bengaluru, said the company had agreed to give a rent waiver of 50 per cent to retailers during the lockdown months.

The move to get back to the negotiating table comes after big players such as DLF in the north and the Prestige group in the south waived fixed rent for the lockdown period, saying retailers were partners for whom they were sympathetic.

We have all been faced with a cessation of revenues whilst our financial obligations to external shareholders have remained. We have worked on a rental programme that will support our rental partners to restart their business, DLF Promenade Limited said in a letter last week.

The DLF group operates DLF Avenue Mall, Mall of India, and DLF Promenade, among others.

Prestige, on the other hand, said rent waivers would be extended on the fulfilment of certain conditions, including the absence of any outstanding dues by its retail partners.

"The fact that mall owners are open to talking to retailers today is a good sign. One month ago that wasn't even happening," said Lalit Agarwal, chairman and managing director, V-Mart Retail.

"Both retailers and mall owners have to co-exist. The attention now has to shift to get business going so that every one in the value chain benefits at the end of the day," he said.

Future Retail's joint managing director, Rakesh Biyani, has said attention has to move to demand creation.

"I have always said there has to be collaboration between the two sides.

"Now that it is happening, the needle has to move to assure consumers that it is safe for them to shop at stores," he said.

A study by the Shopping Centres Association of India says small towns have been more receptive to mall reopenings, which started from June 8, as against larger cities.

For instance, Centre Square Mall in Kochi saw a 65 per cent return in footfalls, with people buying groceries and apparels, while Kolkata-based Ambuja Neotia Groups malls showed an uptick in sales of computers, phones, and sporting accessories from Adidas and Reebok.

Pacific Mall in New Delhi has seen 78 per cent of its retailers open doors, with sales surging for Apple products and Zaras apparels.

Most retailers expect a revival in business in smaller towns than big cities.

"The existing trend suggests that smaller towns have been far more amenable to adjusting to the new normal than larger cities," said Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak.

"The larger cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Pune are also grappling with more Covid-19 cases, which to some extent has hit shopping," he said.

The Unlock 1.0 programme will see more retail outlets including multiplexes open in its second and third phases which will kick in next month.
She has businesswoman of the family, earning millions from her cosmetics line.

Yet Kylie Jenner proved to be a woman of many talents as she showcased her modelling skills while joining sister Kendall in promotional photographs for their makeup collaboration.

Although she was in the presence of a supermodel, Kylie, 22, was able to hold her own as she posed for a striking shot with Kendall, 24.

Double trouble: Kylie Jenner proved to be a woman of many talents as she showcased her modelling skills while joining sister Kendall in photographs for their makeup collaboration

The pair have been delighting fans all weekend with snaps from the shoot, which promotes a collection called Kendall that is part of part of the international Kylie Cosmetics empire.

In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendal slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit.

She crawled and rolled around on a white floor, shooting her best smoldering stare at the camera for the ad.

Looking fab: Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off their knockout legs in skimpy bodysuits as they plugged their new makeup line this Saturday

Working together: The sister-act are releasing a collection called Kendall that is part of part of the international Kylie Cosmetics empire

Sensational: In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendall, 24, slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit

When you got it: In their sizzling new ad, posted to Insta Stories, Kendall slid her supermodel figure into a skintight nude and black bodysuit

Sizzling: She crawled and rolled around on a white floor, shooting her best smoldering stare at the camera for the ad

Posh: Kendall emphasized her knockout legs in black tights and added a glamorous touch to the look with opera gloves that matched her bodysuit

Kendall emphasized her knockout legs in black tights and added a glamorous touch to the look with opera gloves that matched her bodysuit.

In one especially sultry shot she could be seen lying back on the floor with her eyes closed and kicking her gams up.

Kendall accentuated her screen siren features with makeup and threw in a splash of glitz with a pair of heart-shaped hoop earrings.

Gorgeous: In one especially sultry shot she could be seen lying back on the floor with her eyes closed and kicking her gams up

Glowing: Kendall accentuated her screen siren features with makeup and threw in a splash of glitz with a pair of heart-shaped hoop earrings

Eventually: Kylie arrived in a black full-sleeved bodysuit and a pair of stilettos, crawling toward the camera just as Kendall had

Family business: She and her big sister posed up a storm together for the camera, cuddling up to one another whilst promoting their brand

Terrific: The bodysuit segments were stylishly intercut with black-and-white footage of the sisters being mobbed by fans and photographers

Old Hollywood vibes: Kendall and Kylie were all dressed up for a chic red carpet event and held their hands up as the shutterbugs snapped away at them

Eventually Kylie arrived in a black full-sleeved bodysuit and a pair of stilettos, crawling toward the camera just as Kendall had.

She and her big sister posed up a storm together for the camera, cuddling up to one another whilst promoting their brand.

The bodysuit segments were stylishly intercut with black-and-white footage of the sisters being mobbed by fans and photographers.

Kendall and Kylie were all dressed up for a chic red carpet event and held their hands up as the shutterbugs snapped away at them.

Kylie was in a sparkling full-sleeved sequined frock, while Kendall slid into a gleaming bias-cut sleeveless number.

Fashionistas: Kylie was in a sparkling full-sleeved sequined frock, while Kendall slid into a gleaming bias-cut sleeveless number

An intertitle revealed that Kylie and Kendall's new collection is going to be released this coming Friday, June 26.

Kylie wrote on Instagram: 'we have been dreaming this up for quite some time so i hope you guys love it!' referring to Kendall as her 'SOULMATE.'

The two sisters have collaborated on products before, including the Kendall + Kylie clothing line and lifestyle brand, as well as apparel for Pac Sun.

No autographs, please: Kendall made sure to hold the photographers at bay

Togetherness: Kylie wrote on Instagram: 'we have been dreaming this up for quite some time so i hope you guys love it!' referring to Kendall as her 'SOULMATE'

Family business: The two sisters have collaborated on products before, including the Kendall + Kylie clothing line and lifestyle brand, as well as apparel for Pac Sun
Will Ghana Ever Have Anything Credible and Unanimously Accepted by All Parties in Ghana? In fact, the essence of democracy has been defeated and now turns into the same fears that people use to have against military rules. Following the inception of democracy in Ghana for the fourth republic has also brought about hullabaloos, disrespect, vulgar expressions, impunity to our Ghanaian cultures, and very high polarization of everything including the canker of corruption and bribery practices. It is sad to see the youth of today joined political parties to showcase their intelligence but which are a detriment to the current affairs and future growth of Ghana.

This is because it appears everybody started everything at a youthful age but those days from President Nkrumah up to President Jerry John Rawlings times, we saw how at least young people were being groomed with respect and dignity. But the same cannot be said when one look at the current practices of the youth from the fourth republic.

Some of the youth of today in politics are not groomed like those days, it is like open door entry, hence they exercise a lot of arrogance and disrespect to the elderly in society and in their parties because they feel too busy and too important since they have people praising them wrongly instead of correcting them. For instance, if you are a young man and joined politics what shows that you should exhibit arrogance, loudmouth, disrespect to the elderly and clergymen or most leaders in society?

As Ghana propagate itself of democracy it must first change institutional structures in which students organisations operates without allowing them to have that totalitarian authority within the national institutions. Students organisations must be put under the institution's administrations to constantly guide and direct the activities of students. Students are basically admitted to learn and be taught rightfully and not wrongly by the same institutional policies teaching them how to influence and be influence by corrupt practices.

The trend is that any bad practice a student learns in school follows them out into the public life and hence, such practices will be perpetuated wherever they find themselves. This is the kind of canker our institutions seem to be building into the public sectors of Ghana and that does not help. Ghana is too big than an individual or few and so any one person with an exception is not enough for us to pride ourselves with. It is only when the majority of Ghanaians are doing well in many sectors in practice but not a few. If some young people wrongly have the impression that the way to do politics in Ghana is by insulting people and show casing arrogance, no, some of us are not trained like that.

The Ghana that I envisage is to exercise youthful democracy that will exhibit intelligence with true patriotism and respect in society by training those who follow them. Aside from that, the cheap and loose airwave stations must be properly directed to do their business and politics but not wrongly teaching the young ones as if it is an intelligence to sit on an airwaves station and shout and insult people. Such bad practices must stop if not how can we be respected by outsiders?

Even the journalist must change their ways since many of them have lost credibility and practice because they play double or many games in the political terrain in Ghana. Hence, their messages or write-ups are like water passing through, nobody want to read or believe them again because of their own inconsistencies in practice towards political leniency.

With regards to the constant voter registration disagreements in Ghana goes to prove that we are not a serious nation because from the onset since technology is in abundance we should have done the needful by employing good technology into our systems and stop spending money on registration of voters all the time A poor mans country and we do things as if we have everything in abundance. It appears governments never understand cutting down cost but what politically will suite them is what they pursue. This is unfortunate to the democracy we practice. Hence, Ghana is like a treadmill economy.

As a country the first thing we should have taken seriously is the locations of citizens and their possible addresses which this current government has tried to do with Ghanapost but with wrong processes and strategies. In Ghana, all citizens data and history must be captured into a master national database which I think National Identification Authority (NIA) is trying to do as Ghana Card but also wrong processes and strategies. Because of bad mindset of political parties in power they always turn to produce witchcraft policies that are not strategic for the acceptance by all. I have the conviction that it is not everything that Parliament passes that represent the general acceptance of Ghanaians since at times there are no public knowledge of some Legislative Instruments (LIs) and policies they passed. The educated politicians as MPs and Ministers must up their games seriously for the growth of this country.

The reasons why we constantly have disagreements against voter register by Electoral Commission (EC) is that we dont plan for the country as a whole but for a political party in power which alone is bad and unfortunate to the democracy we practice. If not for political expediency by all the parties that have been in power in the fourth republic we would not have back and forth issues of voter register all the time.

It is also because clearly the parties dont want to help the country as a whole but only for their political parties in power, period. Hence the issue of patriotism and nationalism is not present in Ghana at the moment with all the political parties, which is why we find it difficult to work in unity as a nation. We started democracy on a wrongful foundation and therefore something must change in the constitution to give everybody including the political parties the confidence to feel that Ghanaians are one and that policies or strategies must benefit the masses and not only political party in power. The absence of the latter is the main reason why there is always contention between political parties and EC.

Hence, for us to have a credible voter register first we must have good systems in place, that is, a master database with proper citizens location and possible addresses and history which EC and any other organization can dwell on for their verifications of citizenship and eligibility. Aside from the voter registration system there must be new registrations ongoing at any time a citizen feels qualified to register by walking into the EC offices or through an enabled online system on EC official website for new registrants.

Let's stop messing up the society by not educating those who dont understand or know nothing about technology to rather seem to be making decisions and pronouncements which I think it is wrong because everything about ECs work has to do with expert knowledge in management techniques for efficiency including technology in modern trends of data related issues.

So, people must be educated first before they get involved in voter register matters, Ghana already started everything on a wrongful foundation and we need to correct that as people going forward. For me organizing voter registration all the time is a misplaced priority in a poor country. It must not be about political parties but the nation's growth from strength to strength.

Therefore, EC must be more professional and work as a publicly independently institution and making rules and policies that favours or represent Ghanaians. EC must prove that they are not condoning from this notion that in the eyes of Ghanaians that they work for any government in power.

This means the constitution must also be amended to make the EC's work and decisions unilateral. If the majority of Ghanaians sees ECs work as professional and represents the people, no amount of opposition or disagreement will surface. Since the fourth republic, the EC has not been in tune yet and so more room for improvement. All must help them to do good for the country.

For instance, lets see how voter registers are done in some of the advanced countries like the UK and America as a contrast to our Ghanaian system.

According to Wikipedia.org's official website, it stated that Electoral rolls which have various names used by different countries such as United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Australia but not in all jurisdictions are required to have voter registration before voting especially North Dakota State in the USA. That in most jurisdictions they close updating of electoral rolls for up to some period such as before 14 or 28 days to election.

But some USA jurisdiction allow voters registration at the same time as and when they are going to the polling station to cast their vote. Australia for instance closes their voter rolls registration 7 days after an election is called rather than the election day itself. Wikipedia also stated that since 2016, many African countries and Latin America uses a technology call biometric for their electoral rolls but the question is, is there management efficiency?

More so, according to ICO.org.uk official website, stated that individual electoral register was first introduced in Scotland, England, and Wales in 2014 which replaced the traditional electoral arrangements by which only one person in each household used to register everyone in the house to vote which has the individual requirement to register.

It also stated that people living in England, Wales and Scotland will also be able to register online for the first time. This means individual now have the sole responsibility to register and vote. According to USA.gov has information on how to register and vote depending on the State voter registration rules. It also states that if one moved or changed name or want to update their political party affiliation, then the person needs to update their voter registration.

Wikipedia also has it that voter registration in the United States is required for voting in the Federal, State, and local elections and the only exception is North Dakota, they do not require registration. That voter registration takes place at both county and states levels and that many states sets from 2 to 4 weeks as a cutoff date for ending registration before election whereas some have Election day or same-day voter registration or update to vote by citizens. In the UK according to Wikipedia, a person can register at any time of the year and the voters only need to have a fixed address. If a voter has no address, they can register by completing a declaration of a local connection form.

Therefore, after you read the latter contrast and above submissions, Will Ghana Ever Have Anything Credible and Unanimously Accepted by All Parties in Ghana?

To conclude, Educated Ghanaians and Educated government, MPs and Ministers must take the poor who are uneducated in the English language very serious because the difference is that they cannot speak or write English and therefore they cannot debate seriously on national issues because of English Language. We are all strangers in our mother land, Ghana.

Since we have very high number of people who cannot read and write but are potential voters then I suggest that EC must have two registers for elections, that is, one for the English educated ones and the other for the Local people after all, when put the two together then the highest percentage is the winner of the election. The constitution must be changed, it does not portray who we are and so we will always have difficulties and problems with it because we are made to believe it is democracy but it is something else.

And again, to have management efficiency with voter registration issues then the law or policy that states equal right to vote does not imply equal vote means equal decision making. This is because an educated voter decision to vote is not the same as the local people who cannot read or write. Hence, if voting means decision making for the county then we are using wrong systems and policies and that is why we have many problems. It must be changed as I have submitted.

Thank you.

AK Adam

[email protected]
ATLANTA, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Power, a leading U.S. wholesale energy provider and subsidiary of Southern Company, today announced that the 200-megawatt (MW) Reading Wind Facility in Osage and Lyon Counties, Kansas, is now operational.

This project, Southern Power's eleventh wind facility, is the first to be validated as a carbon offset project under the Verified Carbon Standard Program through an agreement with Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL).

This initiative, which is expected to annually offset more than 10 percent of Royal Caribbean's emissions, is the latest addition to that company's extensive sustainability efforts, which include programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through innovations at sea and in port.

"Reading Wind Facility is our first wind project in the state of Kansas, and we are pleased to see this project achieve commercial operation," said Southern Power President Bill Grantham. "The addition of this facility showcases our commitment to the development of wind energy and is an excellent addition to our growing renewable fleet."

The carbon offsets generated by the Reading Wind Facility are being sold to Royal Caribbean under a 12-year power purchase agreement. These carbon offsets are certified with Verra using the Verified Carbon Standard Program, the world's most widely used voluntary greenhouse gas program.

Reading Wind Facility consists of 62 wind turbines manufactured by Siemens Gamesa. Siemens Gamesa is responsible for the annual maintenance service plan and providing qualified personnel to support the 20-year Long Term Program (LTP) that covers all up-tower maintenance. Southern Power will perform the balance of onsite plant operations and maintenance. Southern Power's Remote Operation Center is responsible for 24-hour monitoring and responding to Southwest Power Pool operational instruction.

Southern Power acquired Reading Wind Facility in August 2018. Renewable Energy Systems (RES) served as the developer and constructor of the site, which created 200 jobs at peak construction.

Southern Power's wind portfolio consists of more than 2,100 MW of wind generation. Southern Power's wind facilities are a part of the company's 4,510-MW renewable fleet, which consists of 41 solar and wind facilities operating or under construction.

About Southern Power

Southern Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, is a leading U.S. wholesale energy provider meeting the electricity needs of municipalities, electric cooperatives, investor-owned utilities and other energy customers. Southern Power and its subsidiaries, some of which are owned in part with various partners, own or operate 50 facilities operating or under development in 13 states with more than 11,920 MW of generating capacity in Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.

About Southern Company

Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is a leading energy company serving 9 million customers through its subsidiaries. The company provides clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy through electric operating companies in three states, natural gas distribution companies in four states, a competitive generation company serving wholesale customers across America, a leading distributed energy infrastructure company, a fiber optics network and telecommunications services. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and affordable prices below the national average. For more than a century, we have been building the future of energy and developing the full portfolio of energy resources, including carbon-free nuclear, advanced carbon capture technologies, natural gas, renewables, energy efficiency and storage technology. Through an industry-leading commitment to innovation and a low-carbon future, Southern Company and its subsidiaries develop the customized energy solutions our customers and communities require to drive growth and prosperity. Our uncompromising values ensure we put the needs of those we serve at the center of everything we do and govern our business to the benefit of our world. Our corporate culture and hiring practices have been recognized nationally by the U.S. Department of Defense, G.I. Jobs magazine, DiversityInc, Black Enterprise, Forbes and the Women's Choice Award. To learn more, visit www.southerncompany.com.

SOURCE Southern Power
ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jun, 2020 ) :Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Andleeb Abbas Monday said the Pakistan Tehreek i Insaf government was establishing five mother and child specialist hospitals in different remote areas of the country.

Participating in budget debate in the National Assembly, she said, "For the first time in the history of the country five mother and child specialist hospitals are being established in the country. The hospitals are being established in the remote areas of the country to provide best health facilities to people." She said unfortunately, no hospital was made by the PML-N and PPP governments for children in their respective tenures.

She said the PTI government had increased the number of ventilators in the country to 6000, adding 28,000 doctors and nursing staff had been appointed on merit in the various hospitals by the government last year.

Enough funds had been allocated for the education sector, she added.

She claimed that despite coronavirus the country's economy was in stable condition.

She said former rulers had spent billions of rupees on their private visits abroad.

She said foreign direct investment had increased due to policies of the government of Imran Khan, adding current account deficit had also been decreased by the government. "This is remarkable achievement of the government, " she added.

Andleeb said the government had added 250000 new tax payers.

She said the budget for Ehsaas Programme had been increased to Rs 208 billion from the existing Rs187 billion, and the amount will be spent on vulnerable segments of society in a transparent way.

She said the world institutions were hailing the improvements made by Pakistan in business sentiment and macroeconomic policy making since the 2018 general elections.

Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) MNA Barjees Tahir disagreed with the view that the government had announced a tax free budget.

He asked the government to effectively project the Kashmir issue at all the international forums. He said that Kashmir issue must be resolved as per the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

Barjees emphasized the need for construction of Diamer Basha Dam saying it was important for the future of Pakistan. He said India should stop human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan Peoples Party MNA Hina Rabbani Khar said the government had missed all of its economic targets. She said the government had no clear policy on coronavirus.

She was critical of the government for slashing the budget of the Higher Education Commission.

The PPP leader claimed that unemployment had increased in the country. She asked the government to enhance the salaries of the government employees.

Makdoom Zain Qureshi said unfortunately the opposition members had not given any positive recommendations during their budget speeches.

He said the world was following the smart lockdown policy of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government, while opposition was just doing politics on the budget.

No new tax had been imposed in budget, he added.

He said the PML-N government had left behind a circular debt of Rs 1200 billion, adding the government had paid tax refunds to exporters which were deferred by the PML-N government.

The PTI leader said the PML-N government during its tenure had given fake figures in the budget, while the steps taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan had improved the economy.

He said remittances from abroad had also increased during 18 months of PTI government and no borrowing had been made from commercial banks. Current account deficit had also been decreased, he continued.

He said that Rs 1240 billion had been given under Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme. Rs 190 billion had been allocated for COVID-19 in the budget.

He said that risk allowance had been approved for doctors, paramedics and nurses performing their duties round the clock to defeat the coronavirus.

Testing capacity for coronavirus had also been increased, he informed.

He said Rs 30 billion had been allocated for the construction industry. Rs 290 billion emergency programme was launched by the PM, he said adding the government had allocated billions of rupees for the construction of dams.

He said despite difficult times, the government had enhanced allocations for social safety nets. He said it was a fact that no new tax was imposed in the budget while current account deficit had been reduced by 73 percent. He said remittances and tax collection also witnessed increase before the breakout of COVID-19 Ali Nawaz Awan said no new tax had been imposed in the budget. He said that the government wanted across the board accountability.

He said during the tenure of PML-N government exports decreased.

He said the economy of the country was in bad shape during the PML-N government. All the government entities including PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills were in losses. He said no suggestions had been given by the opposition members for improving the budget.

He said the PPP was in the government for the last 13 years, but no mega development projects had been announced by it for the people of Sindh.

He said the people of Sindh were facing water shortage, adding wheat had been stolen in the Sindh province. He said that the country could not afford complete lockdown.

He said when the economic condition will improve, salaries of the government employees will be increased.

Pakistan Peoples Party MNA Abdul Qadir Patel said that no new hospitals had been established in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that the PTI government had also missed tax collection target.

He informed that allocation was increased for health and education sectors in the budget by the PPP government in Sindh. He said the Sindh government of PPP increased salaries of the government employees by 10 percent.
One of the worlds leading tourist destinations and air hubs will reopen to visitors from 7 July  but with strict new rules.

Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates suddenly closed to travellers on 25 March, with flights abruptly halted.

Now the emirates Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management says that residents can start returning home from today.

Citizens and residents will be permitted to travel overseas from tomorrow, provided the destination countries agree to receive them. And tourists are allowed back in from the first Tuesday in July.

But all arrivals will be required to produce a medical certificate showing a negative Covid-19 test result within the past four days  or undergo a mandatory PCR test at the Dubai airports.

Anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 will be isolated at an institutional facility provided by the government for 14 days at their own expense.

Beaches reopened in Dubai at the weekend, with strict social-distancing measures.

Beach-goers are required to maintain a distance of two metres between one another, along with their sun-beds, while there should be a gap of four metres between two groups of people and their sun-beds on the beach, says Dubais Department of Tourism.

Dubai previously welcomed around 1.5 million British tourists each year. Millions more change planes in the city, which is the hub for Emirates. After the UAEs skies were abruptly closed, tens of thousands of UK travellers were stranded abroad.

Every new arrival to Dubai will have their temperature taken on arrival.

The average temperature in Dubai in July is 41C (106F).
Monica Iparrea was starting to feel almost normal when the threat of the novel coronavirus took hold.

On March 23, a date that had been marked on her calendar for months, Iparrea, who lives in southwest Houston near Pearland, completed her last round of chemotherapy and was looking forward to celebrating with her husband and two teenage children.

This was going to be it, said Iparrea, 41, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2019. When I walked out of my last chemo  I could breathe a little easier. I was so happy  I was done with it.

In Pearland, Inez Avilez, 49 was planning the next battle in her own fight against breast cancer, undergoing rounds of chemo and waiiting to have a mastectomy.

REVERSING COURSE: TMC leaders: COVID-19 surge is not eclipsing Houston hospital capacity

Meanwhile, the world was changing around them. After the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was shut down March 11 as a precaution against the novel coronavirus pandemic, government officials urged people to stay home and away from social gatherings to help slow the transfer of the virus.

For the last year I had been social distancing because of my (compromised) immune system, and my anxiety is through the roof, Iparrea said. I learned something when I was going through cancer  the uncertainty is always there.

Inez Avilez and Iparrea are still home, and the pandemic threat is still very real to them.

More Information Following a temporary closure due to COVID-19-mandated shutdown in March, The Rose has reopened with modified patient volume intake and the following safety protocol measures intact: The Rose is scheduling patients to allow proper time for cleaning and social distancing. Patients are asked to wait in their vehicles until called to enter the facility with one patient at a time allowed into the lobby. Each patient is screened when an appointment is confirmed. Each patient's temperature is checked upon entering and asked screening questions recommended by the CDC. Examination areas are cleaned after each patient before services. All staff in direct contact with patients are wearing PPE, including face shields, gloves, protective gowns and masks. All patients are required to wear a face mask before entering the building. To make an appointment, contact The Rose at 281-484-4708. For more information, visit https://www.therose.org/appointments/ The Rose is located at 12700 N Featherwood Dr #260, in Houston; for more information, visit https://www.therose.org/covid19/ Hours: 7 a.m.-5p.m. See More Collapse

I think it was too early, Avilez said of the reopening.

COVID-19 is particularly threatening to those with compromised immunity systems, like the elderly and those with other underlying health issues such as heart and lung problems.

Im feeling really nervous

For Avilez and Iparrea, COVID-19 is an added complication in the recovery process.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: After a difficult diagnosis, Heights woman pushes her limits - one pedal at a time

Now that the rest of the world is going back to being out and opening everything back up, Im feeling really nervous and worried that this will create that second wave theyre predicting, Iparrea said.

Both Iparrea and Avilez have teenage children who live with them and work at essential jobs that regularly put them at risk.

Every time they walk in the door, I get a little nervous, said Iparrea.

Iparrea and Avilez worry that for many, the risks are not apparent enough.

A lot of people are being careless, theyre not taking it seriously enough and it pisses me off, Alvila said.My daughter works at H-E-B, my son is taking precautions because of my mom and when they do go out, they are careful.

My kids have matured a lot; theyve had time to adjust to the personal situation. Extended family bring meals, gifts, but they drive up and have to wave from the car, and Im just here alone.

Only God knows when that will be

When both women see people complaining on social media about not being able to do the things theyre used to  like going shopping and attending family events, they can relate, but theyve developed different perspectives.

For Iparrea, getting a cancer diagnosis was hard. Having her head shaved when she started losing her hair was emotionally wrenching, and so was missing most of her daughters senior year because of chemo treatments.

RENEW HOUSTON: Get the latest wellness news delivered to your inbox

There was a time I would look in the mirror, and I didnt recognize myself, it was hard physically, but it was harder emotionally, she said. I didnt like it, but I did it, and I think its hard for some people because theyre not sick. Unfortunately, I dont really have a choice. I have to be patient until my immune system is normal and this pandemic is under some sort of control, only God knows when that will be.

Avilez likes people and loves family gatherings, but like Iparrea, has had to rethink her own needs.

Avilez two children wear gloves and masks and wash hands constantly at work. When they come home, they are extra cautious around their mom. Not everyone, Avilez said, is as careful. She is aware that many customers do not wear masks or practice proper social distancing even as health officials urge them to do so.

Avilez, was diagnosed in late 2019 at The Rose and started chemo in early December, but she had already a bad year, losing both her sister and father.

Avilez worked at Whataburger. Before the pandemic shut everything down, she was still working a few times a week while going through chemo but stopped because of COVID-19.

Work gave me independence, dignity and gave me a way to get away from my cancer struggle, she said.

Like Iparrea, Avilez saw the online complaints from people quarantining at home, and it frustrated her.

On Facebook  I have a friend who complains about her kids being at home  and Im just like, Stop saying things like that  get up and make beans!  there are kids living in bad homes and now they cant go to school. I cant deal with people complaining, she said. People are not satisfied, were never satisfied.

Dorothy Gibbons, co-founder of The Rose in Houston, said cancer patients remain vulnerable to risks during the pandemic.

Though businesses are re-opening and people are slowly returning to their day-to-day activities, COVID-19 is still a risk for all of us, especially cancer patients, Gibbons said. We are taking the necessary precautions to make sure our patients who are being diagnosed are being safely navigated into treatment. But its also imperative to remember that it is up to all of us as a community to help keep them safe from the virus.

Avilez lives with her husband of 30 years and her children on an acre parcel. When shes not drained from chemo, she walks to the mailbox, sits on her porch and feeds and talks to her horses.

Cancer, said Avilez, has a way of stripping away the little concerns, the petty grievances.

My (point of view) is that theres a reason for this, she said. The world was going so fast, God put a pause on the world and united us in different ways. It makes me appreciate things more. I used to be judgmental, but guess what? You cannot talk for other people  I was always the one who wanted to be right. but you have to change your way of thinking. You have to stop and enjoy the day and let God decide what tomorrow brings.

Iparrea is optimistic and finds solace in journaling. In May, she celebrated the end of her radiation treatments with her husband and children with snow cones.

Cancer, she said, can be an isolating experience, and the pandemic was a kind of equalizer, forcing most people to press reset and put more consideration into things too often taken for granted.

For a while there, the whole world got a small taste of having to live in a bubble and being confined to your home with the fear and uncertainty of whats to come, Iparrea said.

Now, she said, she hopes they keep people like her and Avilez in mind as they try to regain some normalcy.

It had kind of felt like the world joined me for a brief minute, but as life goes back to normal for everyone, I remain in this quarantine with the same constant fears, she said.

yorozco@hcnonline.com
Trump calls shooting of Rayshard Brooks terrible situation but you cant resist officer

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

President Donald Trump called the controversial police shooting in Atlanta of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black father, a terrible situation Wednesday but said he shouldnt have resisted arrest.

I thought it was a terrible situation but you cant resist a police officer, and, you know, if you have a disagreement, you have to take it up after the fact, Trump said in an interview on Hannity.

It was a very sad  very, very sad  thing. You take a look, it was out of control. The whole situation was out of control, the president said.

Officials report that shortly after 10:30 p.m. last Friday, Atlanta police officers Devin Brosnan and Garrett Rolfe responded to a complaint that a man, later identified as Brooks, was asleep in his car and obstructing other vehicles in the drive-through lane of a Wendys restaurant on University Avenue in southwest Atlanta.

The officers gave Brooks a sobriety test, which he failed. When the officers tried to arrest him, Brooks resisted and a struggle ensued. One of the officers fired a Taser but Brooks grabbed it before trying to run away. The officers pursued Brooks on foot, and during the chase, Brooks turned and pointed the Taser at the officer. The officer fired his weapon, striking Brooks.

Video images show Brooks was shot twice in the back as he fled.

Rolfe, the officer who fatally shot Brooks, has been fired and faces 11 charges, including felony murder, while Brosnan is facing three charges, including aggravated assault. The charges against the officers have been denounced by officials from the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which is the union representing Atlanta officers.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it's still continuing its investigation and "was not consulted on the charges filed" by the DA.

Brooks death, which took place just three weeks after the death of George Floyd, sparked fresh protests in Atlanta throughout last weekend, including one on Saturday night in which protesters burned down the Wendys restaurant where he was killed. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms called Brooks shooting an unjustified use of deadly force.

In his interview with Hannity, Trump highlighted what Rolfe's lawyer said.

I heard today, and just got a report, that the police officers lawyer said that he heard a sound like a gun, like a gunshot, and he saw a flash in front of him, Trump said. So thats an interesting  you know, dont know that I would have necessarily believed that. But I will tell you, thats a very interesting thing, and maybe thats so. Theyre going to have to find out.

A report from the Daily Mail said Brooks was trying to avoid getting arrested again because he was on probation and could have been sent back to prison again for a DUI. His probation was connected to convictions related to an August 2014 case in which he pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, battery-simple/family violence, simple battery and felony cruelty/cruelty to children.

He was sentenced to seven years, with one year in prison and six on probation. He was sent back to prison for 12 months in July 2016 after he violated the terms of his probation. Last December, a warrant was issued for his arrest after he visited Ohio without informing his probation officer.

Brooks wife, Tomika Miller, described him as a devoted husband and loving father to their three daughters and his stepson.

Earlier this year in February, Brooks talked about his struggles with the criminal justice system and how it made it difficult for him to live and support his family, in an interview with Reconnect.

I just feel like some of the system could, you know, look at us as individuals. We do have lives, you know, was just a mistake we made and, you know, not just do us as if we are animals, you know, lock us away, he said.
Ramping up domestic vaccine production, not right to speak of outside supply now: MEA

EAM dials envoys in US & Canada after 4 Indian nationals freeze to death along US-Canada border

India missions told to resume visa processing services

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, June 22: The Ministry of External Affairs has told the diplomatic missions in India to resume visa processing services, in view of the lifting of the lockdown.

The decision comes at a time, when the government is contemplating resumption of international travel from next month. However, this is subject to the pandemic situation.

Rajnath Singh in Russia: Tension with China to figure in defence minister talks | Oneindia News

The ministry is receiving a num per of requests from the Indian nationals, trade bodies and other organisations regarding the difficulties being faced by bona fide Indian nationals in obtaining visas foreign countries due to the continued suspension of such services by some diplomatic missions to India. Several of them intend to travel to foreign countries for various reasons, the letter by the MEA said.

Trump mulls suspending H-1B visas amid massive unemployment: Report

"We can start regular international flights when our domestic traffic reaches about 50-60 per cent & other countries open up to international traffic without present conditionalities. Once the situation evolves in that direction we will consider a calibrated opening," Civil Aviation Minister, Hardeep Puri had said on June 20.
The deputy commander of the Army's III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas, turned to Facebook recently to plead for information about a female soldier from his command who has been missing since April.

Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt's post about Pfc. Vanessa Guillen came hours after post officials announced that skeletal remains found Friday in Killeen, Texas, had been positively identified as those of Pvt. Gregory Morales, another Hood soldier who went missing in August.

Read Next: About 45 People Treated for Chlorine Gas, Smoke Exposure After Fire at Kadena Air Base Hazmat Site

Investigators from Army Criminal Investigation Command suspect foul play in Morales' death but at this point have no credible information that it is in any way connected to Guillen's disappearance, according to CID officials.

Guillen, a member of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment at Hood, was last seen at her place of duty around noon April 22, Efflandt said.

"We want to bring Vanessa home as efficiently and as rapidly as possible and, toward that end, I am asking for your assistance," a sullen-looking Efflandt said in the Facebook post. "Somebody, some person out there, has the piece of information we need to bring Vanessa home.

"We will continue to search for our missing member of our Army family," he added. "If you're the person that has the information we need, I ask you please call 254-495-7767."

Meanwhile, the Army is offering up to $25,000 to anyone with credible information concerning the circumstances surrounding Morales' death, according to the news release.

Morales, a 24-year-old native of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, entered the Army in June 2015 as a motor transport operator and had been assigned to the 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, since November 2016.

Morales' awards and decorations include two Army Achievement Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Korea Defense Service Medal, Overseas Service Ribbon, Driver and Mechanics Badge, and Army Service Ribbon.

"The First Team is saddened by the news of the passing of PV2 Gregory Morales. His life was taken too soon, and we appreciate his service to our nation," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Broadwater, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, said in the release.

Morales' remains were discovered in a field near the 3200 block of Florence Road on Friday morning after CID special agents received information about the location of the body, according to the release. He was positively identified using dental records with the assistance of the U.S. Army Dental Corps.

An autopsy is scheduled to determine the cause and manner of death, the release states.

Morales was last seen driving his personally owned vehicle in Killeen on the night of Aug. 19, 2019, according to the release. Also known as Gregory Wedel, he was out-processing from the Army and was scheduled to be discharged within a couple of days when he disappeared, according to the release. Wedel was his last name before he took his wife's name after their marriage.

Army investigators found Morales' vehicle in January after his family saw on CARFAX that someone in the Dallas area had tried to take it in for an inspection, Fox News reported.

"We just want to thank whoever gave the tip to CID that led to him being found," Morales' mother, Kim Wedel, told Fox. "While the news was not unexpected, it is still very hard to process this."

The reward for information into the disappearance of Guillen has grown to $50,000. CID is also offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to Houston native's whereabouts. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a leading civil rights organization for Latinos, recently announced an additional $25,000 reward is being offered for information about her case, CBS News reported.

Guillen, a small arms/artillery repair specialist, was last seen in the parking lot of the Regimental Engineer Squadron Headquarters at Fort Hood. Guillen's identification card, wallet and the keys to her car and base apartment were later found in the armory room where she had been earlier in the day, according to Army officials.

CID officials could not release any further information on either case, but they are "actively pursuing leads," CID spokesman Chris Grey told Military.com.

"They are top priority cases right now, and we are going to solve both of them," he said.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

Related: Dozens Gather at Fort Hood to Demand Answers in Missing Soldier Case
An Air India pilot was found Covid-19 positive after landing a flight in Sydney from Delhi, senior airline officials said on Monday. The pilot tested positive on Saturday, they said. "The pilot was tested on June 16 and was found negative. That is why, as per the rules, he was rostered for the Delhi-Sydney flight of June 20.

Before the flight, his sample was taken again. He was found positive after landing the flight in Sydney," officials said. The pilot and his two cockpit crew have been put in quarantine in Sydney, they said, adding the cabin crew or passengers have ...
Tassem BHPian



Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Bangalore Posts: 581 Thanked: 1,185 Times

View My Garage





Armor All Tire Foam is magic!



https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1



Just spray on and carry on with your life. Come back in about 15 min to find a properly black tyre. This doesn't shine. It makes the tyre look like it was when you bought it. A deep, black matte finish. If there is a ton of dirt, mud etc. on your tyre, just brush it off and then spray. I do this after an offroad session in my truck. But for my car, no need to wipe or anything cause it's all dust n grime, not mud.



Bonus: You can spray it on your wheels to remove stubborn grime. Again, just spray and leave it be.



Caution: Take care that you don't spray on your brakes. This is the main reason they advise not to use it on bike tyres. Some people use it to clean their engine bays as well. I haven't.



P.S: If you're a fan of shiny slick tyres, use this to clean, then follow up with a tyre shine of your choice.



I've recommended this to a lot of my friends, not one came back disappointed.



Quote: momsonlydriver Originally Posted by Can someone provide a name for wheel cleaner? Like a spray that has to be left for sometime that will loosen up the dirt. A jet spray washing off all the dirt with no act of scrubbing. Is Turtle providing any such product? Not a turtle product, but for your question, I'll do you one better. Buy this:Just spray on and carry on with your life. Come back in about 15 min to find a properly black tyre. This doesn't shine. It makes the tyre look like it was when you bought it. A deep, black matte finish. If there is a ton of dirt, mud etc. on your tyre, just brush it off and then spray. I do this after an offroad session in my truck. But for my car, no need to wipe or anything cause it's all dust n grime, not mud.Bonus: You can spray it on your wheels to remove stubborn grime. Again, just spray and leave it be.Caution: Take care that you don't spray on your brakes. This is the main reason they advise not to use it on bike tyres. Some people use it to clean their engine bays as well. I haven't.P.S: If you're a fan of shiny slick tyres, use this to clean, then follow up with a tyre shine of your choice.I've recommended this to a lot of my friends, not one came back disappointed.
This week, Ferrari and Red Bull will prepare on track for next weekend's return to Formula 1 action after the long 'corona crisis' shutdown.

Italian reports say Ferrari will run a two-year-old car on June 23 at Mugello, the circuit it owns and is slated to host a race one week after Monza.

And Dr Helmut Marko told Osterreich that Red Bull's test action will take place on Thursday at Silverstone with a 100km 'filming day'.

As for his recent comments about Renault testing at the Red Bull Ring last week, Marko said: "They used a two year old car but with new engines.

"I was impressed with their reliability, but I'm more interested in whether Renault really needed to be rented the Red Bull Ring for testing."

Marko also said he is proud to have played a major role in organising the first two 'ghost races' scheduled for Austria.

Asked what he would tell his critics, the Austrian said: "That you need to be persistent and always check what is possible and what is not.

"We decided to try, and the federal government helped us. We are incredibly proud to be the pioneers. The rest of the tracks followed our example."

Finally, Marko was asked about last week's controversy in which Lewis Hamilton slammed him on social media but then deleted the message and apologised.

"Lewis simply read fake news," he said.

"I didn't say anything like that. All I said was that Max (Verstappen) is fully focused on Formula 1, and that perhaps this will give him an advantage."

(GMM)
Harris County leaders and the governor are urging residents to wear masks as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to grow.

On Sunday, Texas had its sixth-highest single-day increase in novel coronavirus cases while Harris County reached 21,053 cases, according to the Houston Chronicle data team.

OUTBREAK: Harris County investigates COVID-19 deaths at Humble nursing home

Cases also continue to rise in the five Harris County zip codes that comprise the Lake Houston area.

The deaths have grown from 26 to 38 since June 12 in the Lake Houston area. And as of Monday, June 22, there was a total of 807 confirmed cases, up from 655 confirmed cases on June 12, according to data from Harris County Public Health. Divided by zip code, there were 256 confirmed cases in 77396, 189 confirmed cases in 77346, 263 confirmed cases in 77338, 81 confirmed cases in 77339 and 18 confirmed cases in 77345.

Meanwhile, Harris County Judge Lina Hildago is trying to get residents to help flatten the curve by requiring business patrons to wear masks beginning today. The ordinance was conceived after eight straight days of record hospitalizations. The order from Hildago, which expires on June 30, requires all customers over the age of 10 wear a face covering with a few exceptions, such as eating at restaurants or visiting the bank.

More Information Data on the coronavirus as of June 22 from Harris County Public Health can be viewed by zipcode. These zipcodes cover the Lake Houston area. 77396 256 confirmed cases 106 active cases 148 recovered cases 2 Deaths 77346 189 confirmed cases 65 active cases 123 recovered cases 1 Death 77338 263 confirmed cases 108 active cases 135 recovered cases 20 Deaths 77339 81 confirmed cases 54 active cases 18 recovered cases 9 Deaths 77345 18 confirmed cases 13 active cases 5 recovered cases 0 Deaths See More Collapse

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Gov. Abbott warns of record-breaking 5,000 new COVID-19 infections for Texas

Governor Greg Abbott emphasized personal responsibility in terms of preventing the spread of the coronavirus last week as numbers began to rise, which he echoed again today. He urged residents to wear face coverings, but stopped short of a mandate.

Experts have signaled that Houston may be the next national epicenter for the coronavirus, if the city cant slow the spread.

We must find ways to return to our daily routines while finding ways to coexist with COVID-19, Abbott said, adding, If you are at risk or sick, you should stay at home. You should wear a face mask when you go out.

WHERE TO APPLY: Harris County opens COVID-19 relief fund

It is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to wash hands with soap frequently for at least 20 seconds and to physically distance when around others. It is also recommended to wear a mask covering the nose and mouth as well as covering coughs and sneezes to prevent any potential spread of the virus. Clean and disinfect surfaces daily or when they get dirty and monitor your health for any symptoms, according to the CDC.

Lake Houston area testing sites

The Texas Division of Emergency Management will have a coronavirus testing facility open from June 23-27 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. by appointment only at the Kingwood Community Center, 4102 Rustic Woods, Kingwood. To make an appointment, visit www.txcovidtest.org or call 512-883-2400. Testing was canceled on June 22 due to weather conditions, according to Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martins office, but was scheduled to continue through the week.

Walmart also continues to provide COVID-19 testing near the Fall Creek subdivision, at 9235 North Sam Houston Parkway E., Humble on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7-9 a.m. and in Kingwood at 2165 Northpark Drive Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. free of cost. Appointments are required and can be made online at www.DoINeedaCOVID19test.com for Fall Creek or www.MyQuestCOVIDTest.com for Kingwood.

For more information on the coronavirus, visit Harris County Public Healths website.

savannah.mehrtens@chron.com
(Newser)  The US has relinquished its crown for having the world's fastest computer to a surprise challenger: Japan. It's the first time in nine years that Japan has risen to No. 1 ahead of either the US or China, reports Kyodo News. The ranking is bestowed twice a year, in June and November, by the international group TOP500. The winning computer is named Fugaku, after Mt. Fuji, and is the brainchild of the company Fujitsu and a Japanese government research institute known as Riken, per the Nikkei Asian Review.

story continues below

So how fast is it? The answer is a little hard to fathom. Fugaku can perform more than 415 quadrillion computations per second, making it nearly three times faster than the second-place finisher, IBM's Summit system. In the lingo of these supercomputers, Fugaku is listed at 415 petaflops, compared to Summit's 148 petaflops. In the next year or so, supercomputers are expected to be operating in terms of "exaflops," meaning thousands of petaflops. CNET notes that Fugaku uses processors in the same family as those Apple will use in the upcoming generation of Macs. (Read more supercomputer stories.)
On 20 November last year, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month

On 20 November last year, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month. It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed, the report said.

That was it.

Nothing else has emerged since.

Not the date, not who arranged the menu, the venue, the seating, not the full guest list.

And not whether some kind of deal got done between two of the most powerful men in the world.

The news cycle moved on, and the dinner became one of the unsolved mysteries of American power.

But I was able to pry some of those details loose last week from White House officials along with current and former senior Facebook employees and people they speak to. Most said they would only talk on the condition their names not be used, since the company is not eager to call attention to Zuckerbergs relationship with the president.

Their accounts painted a picture of an unusual gathering  something in between a high-stakes State dinner between the leaders of uneasily allied superpowers and the awkward rehearsal dinner before a marriage that has both families a little rattled.

Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pulled together the dinner on 22 October on short notice after he learned that Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, would be in Washington for a cryptocurrency hearing on Capitol Hill, a person familiar with the planning said. The dinner, the person said, took place in the Blue Room on the first floor of the White House. The guest list included Thiel, a Trump supporter, and his husband, Matt Danzeisen; Melania Trump; Kushner; and Ivanka Trump. The president, a person who has spoken to Zuckerberg said, did most of the talking. The atmosphere was convivial, another person who got an account of the dinner said. Trump likes billionaires and likes people who are useful to him, and Zuckerberg right now is both.

But looming over the private dinner is a question: Did Trump and Zuckerberg reach some kind of accommodation? Zuckerberg needs, and appears to be getting, a pass both on angry tweets from the president and the serious threats of lawsuits and regulation that face other big tech companies. Trump needs access to Facebooks advertising platform and its viral power.

Both men are getting what they want, and its fair to wonder whether this is a mere alignment of interests or something more.

I believe they have a deal, said Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who is now a fierce critic, who added that it was probably implied rather than explicit.

Marks deal with Trump is highly utilitarian, he said. Its basically about getting free rein and protection from regulation. Trump needs Facebooks thumb on the scale to win this election.

Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a new nonprofit group pushing Facebook to tighten controls on its platform, suggested that the two men have a tacit nonaggression pact. Trump can rage at Big Tech and Mark can say hes disgusted by Trumps posts, but at the end of the day the status quo serves both of their interests, Lehrich said.

Officials at Facebook and in the administration scoff at the notion that there is some kind of secret pact. And its hard to imagine that anyone  certainly not Zuckerberg  would be dumb enough to make a secret deal with a president known for keeping neither secrets nor deals.

Trump and Zuckerberg had met just once before the dinner, an Oval Office encounter last September. Afterwards, the president boasted about his giant following on the platform. But October was a hot political month at Facebook: Zuckerberg was in an open battle with a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was threatening to break up Facebook and whom he called an existential threat to the company. The morning of their dinner, a top British official demanded answers on why Facebook would tolerate false political advertising.

Zuckerberg, a Facebook executive said, seems to view Trump as a peer. By contrast, he told amused top aides at one of his regular Monday meetings in March that Kushner was calling him so often about help with the administrations coronavirus response that he couldnt keep up, two people familiar with the meeting said. (Mark does not think of himself as a peer to this president or any president, a Facebook spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said, adding that Zuckerberg had initiated the conversation with Kushner about the coronavirus response.)

Zuckerberg has played the high-stakes and unpredictable politics of the Trump years as well as any other corporate executive. And a week before the dinner last October, he made clear in a speech that his interests and the presidents aligned: Zuckerberg would reject a growing movement to limit the false or inflammatory statements of the American president.

I dont think its right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy, he said in the address at Georgetown University on 17 October. We dont do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.

Trump, for his part, has been notably softer on Facebook than on Amazon, Google, Twitter or Netflix at a moment when his regulatory apparatus often focuses on the political enemies he identifies in tweets.

Still Facebook, like other tech giants, finds itself in a political bind: Democrats hate and distrust them because they spread right-wing misinformation and helped elect Donald Trump; Republicans hate and distrust them because theyre run by California liberals and delete some right-wing speech. But Facebook has avoided that trap deftly over the last three and a half years, by moving faster and more earnestly than its competitors to mollify conservatives.

Facebook has always had a keener ear to the Right side of Washington than much of Silicon Valley, directed in part by Joel Kaplan, a Zuckerberg friend and former Bush administration official who is Facebooks vice-president of global public policy. But it began focusing intently on winning over the conservative media in the spring of 2016, when Gizmodo alleged that the content moderation on the short-lived Trending Topics product on Facebook suppressed conservative news. A right-wing apparatus that had spent decades claiming bias in the media turned its sights on the tech giant. And Zuckerberg gave them the response theyd always hoped for  he shut down the product, welcomed his critics to meetings and signalled that he shared their concerns.

The next year, Trump continued to push the norms of truth and civility, and the social media platforms began reckoning with their broader misinformation and harassment problem. That set him on an inevitable  and to his supporters, welcome  collision course with the new gatekeepers. Trumps dependence on Facebook as an advertising vehicle  he spent $44 million on the platform in 2016, and is expected to far exceed that this year  means that he needs the company as much as it needs him. And, as Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and Cecilia Kang reported in May, Zuckerberg increasingly embodies his company.

So Zuckerbergs warm relationship with the president and his family is a victory for the companys internal policy team led by Kaplan. But the company, people involved in its political strategy say, has been having an internal debate over balancing the reality of Republican control of regulatory agencies with the fact that Democrats are far more likely, in the long run, to actually push through new oversight or try to break up the company by forcing the sale of Instagram or WhatsApp. The balance, in the Trump years, has shifted right. Sheryl Sandberg, a leading Democrat and Zuckerbergs powerful deputy, has seen her connections with Democrats fray as the company defies them and her power in the company fades as well.

Trumps administration has reciprocated. The Justice Department is currently conducting antitrust investigations of the tech giants. But while Google and Amazon face mature investigations, the Facebook inquiry is not real at all, a person who has been briefed on the investigation said. And Facebook has acted like a company with no worries in Washington. It has continued to acquire companies, as Isaac reported last week, and moved to allow users to send messages between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram  a merging of the services that could further fuel monopoly concerns. (Facebooks view is that its far less dominant in any market than the other big tech companies and has less to worry about than Google or Amazon.)

The summer of 2020 is one of those moments when corporate Washington starts to panic. What had looked like deft Trump-era politics now looks like exposure and risk. Top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi  who was infuriated when a distorted video of her went viral  have singled out Facebook as a bad actor. Trump is, at the moment, viewed by Washingtons insider class as likely to lose in November, though Biden poses less of a threat to Facebook than Warren would have.

While executives across Facebook insist that Zuckerbergs position on free speech on the platform is a matter of long-term planning and principle, not political expediency, his political team also recognizes that they are badly out of position for a Democratic administration. And in recent days, Facebook has been eager to show its independence from the White House. The company has been unhesitatingly enforcing existing policy against Trumps posts, and has been quick to point it out to the media, as it did last Thursday, when a Trump ad used a symbol associated with Nazi Germany.

Zuckerberg has not budged, however, on his core insistence that Trump should be able to say what he wants on the platform, and most of what he wants in ads  including false statements, as long as they arent misleading on specific, narrow topics, like the census. But he did reportedly tell Trump that he objected, personally, to Trumps warning that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. And he and Chan wrote to scientists funded by their non-profit organisation that they were deeply shaken and disgusted by [Trumps] divisive and incendiary rhetoric.

Those gestures may have appeased Facebooks workforce, but theyve gone largely unnoticed in Washington.

All the big companies tacked to the right after Trump won, and Facebook probably moved farther than the others, said Nu Wexler, a Democrat who worked in policy communications for Facebook in Washington. But the politics of tech are changing, and companies should be worried about Democrats as well. The days of just keeping the president happy are over.

Ben Smith c.2020 The New York Times Company
Radi, who works for the LeDesk media outlet, was arrested by Moroccan authorities in December 2019. He was charged with insulting a public servant for a tweet he posted that criticized a judge who had convicted 43 people and sentenced them up to 20 years in prison for their participation in a 2017 protest in the northern Rif region. Radi was convicted of the charge and given a four-month suspended sentence. Morocco, a monarchy with an elected legislature, has in recent years increasingly cracked down on speech, independent media and protests.
New Delhi, June 22 : A four-day-old order issued by South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) "replacing 32 MCD school teachers with sanitation workers" was for "House to House survey" for identification, testing of COVID suspects and not for sanitation work, the Commissioner who signed the order told IANS.

The order, issued on June 19, triggered controversy and Assistant Commissioner Manish Kumar Meena had to reissue the order with "clarification" on the next day. The officer is deployed with SDMC's Najafgarh Zone.

"The order did not mean that government teachers will work in place of sanitation workers," Meena told IANS on phone clarifying the matter.

On June 19, Meena issued an order which directed to "place 32 teachers in place of sanitation workers at the disposal of medical officers incharge for their further duties".

In the order, the sanitation workers deputed in the New Delhi district were directed to report back to their concerned ward incharges (SI/ASIs) with immediate effect.

It was requested that their attendance may be provided to the department by 16th of every month so that their salary bills may be processed timely.

But the order created controversy as the duty of teachers was not clarified in it giving the wrong impression that they will have to engage in the job done by sanitation workers.

As the order copy was also marked to the District Magistrate of New Delhi District (Chairman DDMA), Deputy Commissioner Najafgarh and other concerned officers, the matter sought quick reaction.

On June 20, Meena came with another order with "clarification" to the previous order referring that "the 32 MCD school teachers are attached with DDMA (Delhi Disaster Management Authority) New Delhi district to carry out 'House to House survey' for identification, testing of COVID suspects and isolation of positive cases as per the request received from DDMA New Delhi".

"The MCD school teachers are advised to work under command and control of DDMA till further orders." While talking to IANS, Meena said he issued the June 19 order as there was a demand from the New Delhi district for a team to visit dispensaries and houses to get the exact number of COVID-19 patients in Mahipalpur, Samalkha and other areas.

"It was clearly mentioned in the demand that the sanitation workers are not educated enough and the New Delhi District needed other MCD employees who can handle such works properly. As government teachers are already engaged in distributing food and other works, it was decided to send them for the job and they were replaced with 32 sanitation workers," Meena said.

Earlier, the SDMC had sent around 1,240 corona warriors from our department to different areas on request of District Magistrate during lockdown 2.0, he said.

A team of 40 foot warriors, including beat constable from Delhi Police, Block Level Officer (BLO) and an Asha worker with a sanitation worker, was availed during the lockdown to the District Magistrate.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Two trains nearly crashed into each other near a London Underground station on Sunday night after one went the wrong way up the track.

Transport for London (TfL) confirmed that a Chiltern Railways service nearly collided with another train at 9.50pm last night near Chalfont & Latimer station in Buckinghamshire.

An image from the scene shows the two trains lying just feet apart, with train engineers and guards monitoring the incident at the station.

NEW: Photo shows how close the 2 trains on the Met line were to a collision. @chilternrailway train went the wrong way up the line damaging points and track. @raibgovuk investigating. pic.twitter.com/PCl3lkg69o  Tom Edwards (@BBCTomEdwards) June 22, 2020

There have been no reported casualties from the incident so far, but the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) are investigating what happened.

A TfL spokesperson said: 'We apologise to customers disrupted by the closure of the Metropolitan line between Chalfont & Latimer and Chesham.

Transport for London confirmed that two trains nearly crashed into each other near Chalfont & Latimer station near Buckinghamshire. The station receives both London Underground and Chiltern Railways services

The incident was described as very serious and the trains were only separated by two metres on the track

'This is the result of an incident involving a Chiltern Railways train near Chalfont & Latimer station last night.

'We are working with Chiltern Railways to determine exactly what happened, and our engineers will repair the railway to return it to service as quickly as possible.'

Chalfont & Latimer station serves both the Metropolitan line on the London Underground and Chiltern Railways trains between London Marylebone and Aylesbury.

A Chiltern Railways spokesperson said: 'We have an excellent safety record and are working with the Rail Accident Investigation Branch to understand the causes of this incident.

'We apologise for the disruption caused to customers using Chiltern Railways and London Underground services in the area.'

TfL say that the Metropolitan line is currently suspended between Rickmansworth and Chesham.
The Office of the Prosecutor General is failing to comply with the ruling of Kyiv's Pechersk district court to close the case against Oleg Bakhmatyuk and his company.

The businessman appealed to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova demanding that the case, whose resumption was found unlawful in court, be closed, as reported by Ukrainian News.

On June 5, 2020, Kyiv's Pechersk district court ruled the decision of former Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko to resume the case against former Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Oleksandr Pysaruk and businessman Oleg Bakhmatyuk was unlawful. By its judgment, the court ordered that the prosecutor general immediately repeal Kasko's decision. However, the Office of the Prosecutor General is not complying with the court judgment. In an open appeal to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, Bakhmatyuk said a delay in the implementation of a lawful court judgment may testify to a politicized matter, recalling Venediktova's public promise to be equidistant from politics and adhere to the rule of law.

Bakhmatyuk in his appeal recalled the court had clearly indicated a number of gross violations of law and ordered the prosecutor general to cancel the unlawful decision to resume the criminal case against him and his company: "On June 5 this year, Kyiv's Pechersk district court put an end to our eight-month-long fight for justice in a trumped-up case that was illegally initiated by former Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko." He said the company had become a hostage to the personal revenge of [Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine] Artem Sytnyk and a hostage to conspiracy of former officials [Head of the President's Office] Andriy Bohdan and Vitaliy Kasko: "They resumed the criminal case, which had already been investigated by law enforcement agencies and decided to close the case. The legality and validity of the decision of the law enforcement body to close the case were confirmed by the prosecutor general of Ukraine and the court."

Bakhmatyuk says 16 days have passed since the court ruling was made, but the relevant decision of the Office of the Prosecutor General never appeared, although the Office of the Prosecutor General has always complied with court judgments in all other cases. "It seems to us the delay in the enforcement of the court judgment may politicized rather than being about protecting the law. We would really like to be wrong. Indeed, in an interview you said that you are 'equidistant from politics and that the Office of the Prosecutor General does not play along with anyone,' and during your address to the Verkhovna Rada you promised to stand by the principles of the rule of law," said Bakhmatyuk. "The obligation to enforce a court judgment is precisely one of the basic principles of the rule of law. And the fate of the company, which, in conditions of unprecedented pressure, an economic crisis and pandemic, keeps working, creating a Ukrainian product and paying taxes, depends on this."

As reported earlier, on May 13, the Office of the Prosecutor General registered a criminal case into the possible interference in the activities of the former prosecutor general by former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This was done in pursuance of the ruling of Kyiv's Pechersk district court. On June 17, the Office of the Prosecutor General opened criminal proceedings into a Moscow trip by representatives of the Opposition Platform  For Life parliamentary faction following the ruling of the Pechersk district court.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-21 23:49:58|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

NEW YORK, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Nine people were shot and injured in a shooting incident at a large gathering Saturday night in Syracuse in New York state, local authorities said.

Local police officers received a call just before 9 p.m. about a stolen vehicle at a parking lot near downtown. Upon arrival, they saw hundreds of people from a prior gathering running and yelling about a shooting a moment ago, according to the Syracuse Police Department's post on Facebook.

Nine people were injured and were taken to the hospital. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the head and in critical condition by Sunday morning, while other victims were expected to survive, said the department.

The gathering seemed like some kind of celebration, said the police. The nature of the celebration is not yet clear.

At a press conference early Sunday, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said he believed no city permits were granted to the gathering.

Large gatherings are currently banned across New York state due to COVID-19.

No one was immediately taken into custody and police do not have any suspect information, said Syracuse Police Chief Kenton Buckner. Enditem
Challenger is asking shareholders to tip in up to $300 million in new equity so it can withstand any further market volatility, and pounce on investment opportunities that it says have emerged after the pandemic market sell-off.

The annuities provider also became the latest financial services company to say it was not planning to declare a final dividend in September, citing economic uncertainty and market volatility.

Challenger chief executive Richard Howes said the raising would give it flexibility to take advantage of opportunities with attractive returns. Credit:James Brickwood

Challenger shares were put in a trading halt on Monday, as it announced an institutional placement of $270 million and a share purchase plan worth up to $30 million.

The fully underwritten placement is being conducted at an 8.1 per cent discount to the stock's latest traded price, with the company selling new shares equal to about 9 per cent of its shares on issue.
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Patient Access Solutions Market Size, Share, key Trends, Top Leaders and Analyzed information by Global Patient Access Solutions Market  Service (Support & Maintenance and Implementation), Software (Eligibility Verification Software and Medical Necessity Management Software,), End User & RegionGlobal Forecast till 2024

Patient access solutions can be used by patients to gain access to their records, prescriptions, reports, and bills in a centralized location. The software helps in identification, management, and collection of data. The global patient access solutions market report by Market Research Future (MRFR) uses industry insights accumulated from experts by analysts for the compilation of pertinent drivers and challenges in a comprehensive manner.

Market Overview

The global patient access solutions market is predicted to accrue revenues at a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period (2019-2024). The market can thrive by minimizing the amount of staff required for management of patient data. The increase in healthcare expenditure by nations globally can drive the adoption rate by hospital chains globally and provide the market a much-needed boost. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total healthcare expenditure was reported to be USD 831.5 billion.

Technological advances in software which have culminated in accuracy, portability, and affordability can ramp up the adoption rate significantly. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the software to assist patients in their search can bode well for the global Patient Access Solutions Industry Growth. Additional functions of health economics management and patient record management, as well as integration of real-time management models, can influence the growth patterns of the market.

Segmentation

The global patient access solutions market is segmented by delivery mode, software, service, and end-user.

By delivery mode, it is segmented into on-premise solutions and web & cloud-based solutions.

By software, it is segmented into eligibility verification software, pre-certification & authorization software, payment estimation software, medical necessity management software, medical claims payment processing software, claims denial & appeal management software, and others.

By service, it is segmented into training & education, support & maintenance, and implementation.

By end-user, it is segmented into laboratories & research institutes, hospitals & clinics, and healthcare providers.

Regional Analysis

The Middle East & Africa (MEA), Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and North America are the main regions considered during the compilation of the market report.

The Americas accounted for the lions share of the market due to presence of well-established hospital chains, reputed personnel, sophisticated infrastructure, and high healthcare expenditure.

Europe accounted for the second-largest market share due to increased support for research and development. Furthermore, the integration of the latest technology as well as upgradation of current equipment can drive the global patient access solutions market demand till 2023. Investment of capital as well as the large healthcare expenditure allocated for the well-being of patients can augur favorably for the market in the region.

The APAC region is estimated to grow at a robust pace due to rapidly growing economies as well as the large patient pool. Awareness among patients of mobile applications as well as large disposable income levels has led to the integration of the latest automated solution at major hospitals. This can prove fruitful for the market looking to expand in the region. Furthermore, the improving economies other than large ones of China and India can be lucrative areas for investment.

Competition Outlook

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Optum, TeleTracking Technologies, Inc., TransUnion LLC, SCI Solutions, Inc., GAFFEY Healthcare, Experian Information Solutions, Inc., Genentech USA, Inc., PokitDok, Inc, nThrive, Inc, Stericycle Inc, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Availity, LLC, UNITED BIOSOURCE LLC, KYRUUS, Cerner Corporation, MEDHOST, and FormFast are prominent names in the global patient access solutions market.

Industry News

Patient Access Solutions, Inc., has decided to try out a new strategy of acquiring local clinics in order to expand its services. It will establish Integrated Health Centers in its place and focus on patient care.

Table Of Contents:

Chapter 1. Report Prologue

Chapter 2. Market Introduction

2.1 Definition

2.2 Scope Of The Study

2.2.1 Research Objective

2.2.2 Assumptions

2.2.3 Limitations

Chapter 3. Research Methodology

3.1 Overview

3.2 Primary Research

3.3 Secondary Research

3.4 Market Size Estimation

Chapter 4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.2 Restraints

4.3 Opportunities

Continued

OBTAIN RESEARCH REPORT DETAILS WITH TOC @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/patient-access-solutions-market-7811

Related News

Population Health Management Market

Rheumatoid arthritis Market

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.
The Akwa Ibom State government said it has sealed off the headquarters of the popular pentecostal church, Christ Embassy, in Uyo.

The Secretary to the Akwa Ibom State Government, Emmanuel Ekuwem, said the churchs pastors and members attacked and brutalised COVID-19 monitoring team who were at the church on Sunday to monitor compliance with the guidelines and protocols adopted to prevent community spread of coronavirus in the state.

The monitoring team comprises government officials and officials of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

In response to this act of lawlessness by that church and in order to avoid the risk of community transmission of COVID-19 in Akwa Ibom State, the Christ Embassy Church building and premises are hereby sealed up with immediate effect till further notice, Mr Ekuwem said in the statement.

The suspected pastors and relevant members of the church will be made to face the wrath of the law, he added.

Denial

Christ Embassy has, however, refuted the claims made by the Akwa Ibom government.

The government, the church said in a statement, acted based on tissues of lies and absolute falsehood that only occurred in the figment of the imaginations of those peddling same.

The statement, signed by Kelvin James, a pastor, said the church was already done with its Sunday service when the monitoring team arrived, and that a church worker who filmed the arrival of the team was assaulted and a church camera confiscated from him.

The church said it adhered to the guidelines by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control in its Sunday service.

One of their pastors, it said, has been detained by the police on the instruction of the Akwa Ibom government.

Christ Embassy said the crisis was instigated against it because of its refusal to be a member of CAN.

While we are not against the state government carrying out its statutory duties, we state with all amount of humility that Christ Embassy Church has existed in our dear state for over twenty five years without any issue with any of the past governments or any association, rather we have contributed immensely to the development of the state through our several people oriented projects and word based ministry.

We have been partners in development with the Akwa Ibom State Government and chosen to remain bipartisan at all times.

We totally condemn the closing down of our Church and detention of our Pastor, Pastor Emmanuel Effiong, who has been detained by the Commissioner of Police, without giving us the right to fair hearing and state that this action is borne out of malice, deep seated hatred and calculated attempt to malign the Church for disassociating herself from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

We call on the Akwa Ibom State Government to unconditionally release Pastor Emmanuel Effiong, the church camera which captured a true reflection of what transpired today and withdraw the order closing our Church, Mr James said, in the statement.

The churchs founder, Chris Oyakhilome, has been one of the vocal Nigerian clerics who have kicked against the stringent restrictions placed by the authorities on worship centres in the wake of the pandemic and also criticised church response.

He recently attracted criticisms when he linked the controversial 5G technology to COVID-19.
DPRK ready to distribute leaflets over DMZ into S.Korea: media

Global Times

Source:Xinhua Published: 2020/6/21 17:13:40

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is ready to distribute large quantities of leaflets to South Korea in retaliation for the latter's hurting of its leadership and insulting of the Korean people, state media here said Saturday.

"The struggle has turned into the one for distributing leaflets to the south in denunciation of the heinous perpetrators," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

The DPRK has been lashing out at South Korea in recent weeks as Seoul failed to stop "defectors" from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the DPRK. Pyongyang has already cut off all communication lines with Seoul and even blown off their joint liaison office.

"The enraged people across the country are actively pushing forward with the preparations for launching a large-scale distribution of leaflets to pour the leaflets of punishment upon those in South Korea," the report said.

Earlier this week, a DPRK military spokesman said the DPRK army plans to redeploy troops into the previously-demilitarized zones in the border areas and support the scattering of leaflets into South Korea with military force.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UNICEF has extended $17 million in aid to Egypt to help support the Egyptian governments efforts in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al Mashat announced on Monday.

Al-Mashat made the statements in a videoconference held with the UNICEF Representative in Egypt Bruno Maes to discuss ongoing and future cooperation in countering the COVID-19 crisis as well as the protection of children and womens empowerment.

Maes, whose post in Egypt ends within two weeks, said that the country has made several achievements and implemented reforms with regards to protecting children, which has resulted in reducing the child mortality rate and expanding access to education.

He added that UNICEF has provided Egypt with $100 million to aid in the healthcare and social protection of children and women, including in the neediest areas in North Sinai.

Maes also said that UNICEF intends to fulfill a request by Egypts International Cooperation Ministry to provide medical supplies over the coming period, praising the ministrys international partnership strategy (P&P&P) that aims at developing the cooperation spheres between the two parties in the future.

UNICEFs work in Egypt concentrates on boosting sustainable development with multidimensional equity for children and embodying the fair chance for every child principle.

In line with national priorities, UNICEFs work in Egypt focuses on early childhood development bridging the first 1,000 days through the first years of formal education, as a key means by which multiple threats to children may be addressed through cross-sectoral linkages, according to UNICEF.

The expected results of UNICEFs work in Egypt will contribute to national efforts and priorities and the 2030 National Sustainable Development Strategy; as well as the United Nations Partnership for Development Framework (UNPDF 2018-2022), according to UNICEF.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Just before the lockdown was announced, Prabhas and the entire team of his much-awaited 20th film had returned from the picturesque Eurasian country of Georgia in March. As per the latest reports, Prabhas20 team will once again head back to Georgia later this year.

Apparently, Prabhas20 team had planned a 2 month-long schedule in Italy and Austria initially. But due to the humongous destruction caused by Coronavirus in Europe, especially in Italy, the makers have now decided to shift the schedule to Georgia where the COVID-19 cases are far lesser.

Firstly, the team will wrap up a crucial schedule in a specially erected set in Hyderabad and the Georgian schedule will take place towards the end of this year.

Articles that might interest you:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:53:15|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

LOS ANGELES, June 21 (Xinhua) -- More than 40 California deaths are waiting for a decision by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether to test for COVID-19, and any positive finding among them "could dramatically rewrite the narrative of COVID-19" in the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

According to the report, a cluster of mysterious respiratory deaths, as early as last December, is "under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected."

The report cited Jeremiah DeLap's experience as an example. The 39-year-old man died on Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents.

His mother Maribeth Cortez described that DeLap was found dead in bed hours later after saying that he was having trouble breathing, and that when he passed away, his lungs were filled with fluid and his body was still burning from fever.

Cortez was quoted as saying everybody that knows DeLap suspected that he died of COVID-19, but there is no accurate answer so far.

Los Angeles County and its neighboring Orange County each has nine of the suspected cases, the report said, adding that Kern County had identified two deaths that might suggest COVID-19, both of young women, and one of whom died Dec. 21.

Data from Kern County Public Health Services Department showed that the first confirmed infection case of COVID-19 in the county was announced on March 17 and the first death occurred on March 27.

On April 14, interviewed by local news website www.bakersfield.com, Omni Family Health physician and associate medical director Grace Tidwell said the moderate curve of infection cases in the county could mean the social distancing is working or it could indicate that COVID-19 was there "way earlier than we knew, and we have some immunity acquired already." Enditem
Deaf or hard of hearing people in Vermont now have a new way of communicating with police officers when they are pulled over.

Hard of hearing Vermont residents will now be able to carry a 4 x 9 card with a very clear heading in bold stating I am deaf or hard of hearing. Once handed, a police officer can see some easily quick communication tips encouraging them to make eye contact, speak slowly, repeat or rephrase if needed, and be patient. The card has other sections that have icons for what the officer wants too (license, registration, insurance, etc.) and violations the person has been pulled over for (speeding, seatbelt, and several others). There is also a help section that can be used by the driver to indicate what they need help for.

These cards become critical in ensuring communication goes as smoothly as possible between a law enforcement officer and a deaf driver. Even slight miscommunication could cause frustrations and may lead to some escalation that could have been easily avoided in the first place.

The visor card can be requested on the Vermont DMVs website.See what the card looks like below, and check out the source link for more details.

Are there other scenarios where you think these cards can be helpful for deaf people?

Source: DMV Vermont
Jamaal Henderson with ACT UP Philadelphia opened the rally against the funding of Philadelphia police in place of communities. The rally was held at the Octavius Valentine Catto statue on the south side of City Hall, Philadelphia, on Tuesday, June 16, 2020. Read more

As leaders of the Octavius V. Catto Memorial Fund, we have been moved to see A Quest For Parity, the memorial dedicated to Catto at City Hall, become a beacon for civic reflection as our city confronts its racial challenges in the wake of George Floyds death.

The memorial is more than simply a tribute to an extraordinary individual; it is a symbol of an aspirational America. It has, in effect, become ground zero for peaceful prayer and thoughtful dialogue among Philadelphians about our citys future. Few know the many contours of his story and the importance of understanding that Cattos work remains unfinished.

Catto was murdered on South Street at the age of 32. Catto and his compatriots were indeed like the many young peaceful protesters today, seeking to have America live up to the founding ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence. In fact, Catto frequently referenced the declaration in his oratory, and he spoke about how Black lives mattered and deserved the same civil rights as whites.

During his short lifetime, he witnessed many injustices against Black people, including violence, segregation in housing, the lack of decent education, and the absence of access to public accommodations. He lived and taught school in the 7th Ward, the heart of Philadelphias Black and immigrant communities, located between Spruce and South Streets from Seventh Street to the Schuylkill. African Americans were crowded into marginal housing and living with minimal incomes due to the lack of meaningful employment opportunities.

Nonetheless, Catto was an optimist and dedicated his life to breaking down barriers of social injustice, pushing the boundaries of social constraints, and working with other African Americans and white abolitionist and unionist leaders across the country to change forever the meaning of the United States Constitution.

Cattos greatest legacy is his work toward the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which reframed what it means to be an American, and laid the foundation for the work of those who came after him. Among them: Ida B. Wells, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr. Historian Eric Foner calls these amendments Americas Second Founding, and it is these fundamental changes in America that inspired the French to give our nation the Statue of Liberty.

After the completion of Branly Cadets stunning Octavius V. Catto Memorial, championed for decades by Mayor Jim Kenney, the Memorial Fund introduced an educational outreach program. We partnered with cultural institutions and the Philadelphia School Districts Curriculum Office, with support from Philadelphia corporations and foundations, to train a cross section of educators to teach over 11,000 students about Catto and the meaning of his life and legacy. This initiative engaged teachers in addressing how their own perceptions on race impacted their teaching. It also focused on students views on race from lived experiences, and civic conversations through their study of the racial violence that ended Cattos life. For the future, we envision an expanded educational initiative, at all levels, as we continue to seek financial support for ongoing programming.

As we think about next steps for building a stronger community in Philadelphia, it is our duty to mold articulate and vigilant citizens for our future. We must strive to enable more young people to learn about Octavius V. Catto, and how they can complete his unfinished revolution.

Carol Clark Lawrence, James B. Straw, and V. Chapman-Smith are leaders of the Octavius V. Catto Memorial Fund.
About 4,500 basic schools in the Greater Accra Region are expected to be disinfected by Zoomlion Ghana Limited.

The exercise, which will cover both public and private basic schools, began on Monday in the Ablekuma North Municipal Assembly of the Greater Accra Region.

General Manager, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Greater Accra Region, Ernest Morgan Arthur, made the disclosure while speaking to a cross-section of journalists at the Odorkor Cluster of Schools in the Ablekuma North Municipal Assembly where the exercise started off.

The schools included Odorkor Maclean Basic, Odorkor 4&7 Basic, Odorkor 8 KG & Primary and Odorkor 1 & 5 Primary & Junior High School (JHS). Private schools that benefited from the exercise included Christ Ebenezer Preparatory & JHS, SDA School among others.

The exercise formed part of measures by the central government to keep environs of basic schools safe and also protect the final-year JHS pupils who are scheduled to report on Monday, June 29, from the Covid-19 disease.

According to Mr Arthur, Zoomlion would need the full cooperation of the heads of the schools. That, he said, would facilitate their work.

He went on to assure that all the 4,500 schools would be disinfected before the date of reopeningJune 29.

On how they were going about the exercise, Mr Arthur said they had a team of workers who move ahead and sweep the classrooms and the offices among others before the disinfection is done.

"...because of the closure of schools for that long period, most of the schools' compounds and facilities have become dirty. So, what we do first, is that we have Zoomlion workers moving ahead of the disinfection crews to sweep and clean the schools. And after that the disinfection teams come in and do the disinfection," the Greater Accra Zoomlion GM explained.

He also added that his outfit had disinfection crews who would be deployed to schools in various municipalities in the region to undertake the exercise.

At Christ Ebenezer Preparatory & JHS, the General Manager, Mrs. Rita Ofosu, Yeboah, expressed her schools gratitude to the government and Zoomlion for the exercise.

This exercise is a step in the right direction because it is part of measures outlined by the government to contain the virus, she said.

She revealed that her school had already held a meeting with parents of pupils of JHS and drummed home their responsibilities to their children in these new normal times.

on our part, we have bought the thermometer gun which would be used to take the temperatures of the final-year JHS pupils on a daily basis, she said.

Though the school started some e-learning for the pupils, Mrs Ofosu Yeboah indicated that the patronage was low, which did not help much.

We are also expecting some Veronica buckets and other Covid-19 items from the government, and we have been assured that we will receive them before next week, she added.

On the social distancing protocol, the GM of Christ Ebenezer Preparatory & JHS was quick to assert that that would not be a problem, explaining that the school had spacious classrooms to accommodate the 30 pupils in a classroom.

A teacher in charge of the JHS Department of SDA School, Theo Mensah, commended government for including private schools in the exercise.

We have already met with parents of the final-year pupils and educated them on the Covid-19 preventive protocols. That is not all; we have also resolved to educate the pupils when they report back to school and to ensure that we all adhere to the Covid-19 safety protocols, he noted.

For his part, a teacher at Odorkor 7 Basic School, Abdul-Wahab Haruna, stressed that the exercise would help keep safe the schools environment.

However, he added that it was imperative that both teachers and the pupils observe the safety protocols for our own safety and that of our loved ones.

Zoomlion also had crews in the Weija-Gbawe Municipality, where some clusters of schools including the Mallam Cluster of Schools were disinfected.
"From the Rockies to the Badlands, it's not hard to see why visitors are drawn to Alberta. Yet tourism and those whose livelihoods depend on it have been hit hard by COVID-19, and we're here for them. This investment will help more Albertans discover the wonders of their own backyard, while supporting local jobs in tourism. Our message to Alberta tourism is clear: we've been here for you with immediate measures, we're here for you now as our economy reopens and we'll get through this together. We're working with you to support good jobs and help tourism bounce back stronger than ever."

The Honourable Melanie Joly, MP for Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada

"Tourism has been hit hard by COVID-19. The tourism industry is the fourth largest employment sector in the province, it's a key contributor to our economy, and it creates jobs and revenue that so many communities across our province depend on. Travel Alberta is taking action to address important needs, support destination management organizations and tourism businesses, and accelerate our tourism industry's recovery."

The Honourable Tanya Fir, MLA for Calgary-Peigan and Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism

"In a recent COVID-19 industry assessment survey conducted by Travel Alberta, tourism partners clearly told us which support systems will have the greatest impact in helping them remain viable and adapt to the changes resulting from COVID-19, including operational funding and marketing support. These programs help address these needs and are critically important to the rebuild of Alberta's tourism industry and visitor economy."

Linda Southern-Heathcott, chair, Travel Alberta Board of Directors

"Tourism will play a vital role in restarting Alberta's economy and we are pleased to see these federal and provincial funding programs tailored to address local industry needs. These investments will go a long way toward helping regional destination organizations and small- and medium-sized businesses in every corner of the province remain viable and support their re-opening and local marketing efforts to drive desperately-needed cash flow and get Albertans back to work."

Alida Visbach, board chair, Tourism Industry Association of Alberta

About Travel Alberta

Travel Alberta is the destination development and promotion organization of the Government of Alberta. We promote Alberta as a desirable place to travel, work, live, play, invest and learn. Working with businesses throughout the province, we capitalize on Alberta's breathtaking landscapes and world-class hospitality to develop memorable experiences for visitors to enjoy, in all regions, in all seasons. Our work directly and indirectly benefits our province, driving visitation and revenue, diversifying the economy, providing jobs, encouraging economic investment and enhancing quality of life for Albertans and their communities.

Established as a Crown corporation on April 1, 2009, we operate under the authority of the Travel Alberta Act within the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism.

To learn more about Travel Alberta's strategy and programs visit industry.travelalberta.com.

@TravelAlbertaCo

Travel Alberta on LinkedIn

#TourismWorks

SOURCE Travel Alberta

For further information: Media contact: Deborah Spence, Manager, Stakeholder Engagement, E: [email protected], C: 403-616-9752

Related Links

www.travelalberta.com


Youd think that any American president would be delighted to welcome hard-working and ambitious young adults clamoring to join the American family. But President Donald J. Trump has been openly hostile to black and brown people he could paint as other  dangerous, lazy, lawless, un-American.

Resurrecting the rage, resentment and racism of George Wallace for an era in which immigration has changed the nations demographics, Trump has created concentration camps at the southern border, bottlenecked asylum requests and deported people for traffic offenses. He has even gone after the young adults known as Dreamers, mostly darker-skinned residents who are citizens in every way but the most technical: They werent born here.

Happily, in another stunning defeat for the Trump administration, the U.S. Supreme Court has halted the presidents attempt to deport them to countries they dont remember, to cultures they dont consider their own, to communities in which they could not speak the language. Thats a triumph not only for the 700,000 or so who can continue to pursue their dreams, but also for the rest of us. They make the nation stronger.

According to one study, more than 90% of Dreamers have jobs. Many have gone to college, majoring in fields from early childhood education to computer science. By some estimates, upward of 25,000 of them are employed in health care, where workers are desperately needed. Nearly a thousand are veterans or currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Yet, they are still in limbo since the Supreme Courts ruling merely stays Trumps hand for now. That means Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, should come out campaigning hard on immigration reform in general  and keeping the Dreamers in particular. Even in this deeply polarized era, polls show broad bipartisan support for allowing the Dreamers to stay.

President Barack Obama enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program after he could not persuade a GOP-controlled U.S. Senate to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The rules for eligibility are stringent. When the program was started in 2012, it required that Dreamers must have come to the U.S. before their 16th birthday.

They had to have high school diplomas, be enrolled in school or be veterans. They could not have criminal records. The program doesnt provide a path to citizenship or permanent residential status, but it defers deportation and allows its beneficiaries to gain a social security card and a drivers license so they can work, drive and travel without fear.

Still, Trumpists detest the program. Jeff Sessions, who wants to curb even legal immigration, attacked DACA when he was attorney general. The president himself once tweeted: Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from angels. Some are very tough, hardened criminals  a malicious falsehood.

As Obama belatedly came to understand, a Republican Party that had long been complicit in illegal immigration  if not exactly welcoming toward brown newcomers  had turned belligerent toward the undocumented.

The Republican Party spent decades pandering to white Americans who were uncomfortable with the changes wrought by the civil rights movement, courting a racially resentful cadre of white voters with code words and stereotypes, and placating those voters by pretending to elevate their interests. By the dawn of the 21st century, the party had caved to its most racist elements. The GOP relies on the votes of a hardy band of haters who dont believe that Mexicans or Guatemalans or Haitians or Ghanaians belong here.

Those xenophobic Republicans clearly are not troubled by white immigrants, considering that Trump is married to one. First Lady Melania Trump was born in Slovenia and moved to the United States in 1996. (She is the second immigrant to whom Trump has been married. His first wife, Ivana Trump, emigrated from Czechoslovakia.) Furthermore, Melania Trump brought her parents over by taking advantage of rules that allow naturalized adults to sponsor residency for family members  the chain migration that Trump has decried publicly.

If Trump were a pragmatic politician, hed drop his opposition to the Dreamers. But his presidency has been built on racial resentment, and he can hardly change course now. Thats all the more reason for immigrants and their advocates to help defeat him in November.

Email Cynthia Tucker at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com
Telkom has released its annual results for the financial year ended 31 March 2020, showing significant growth for its mobile division while also reflecting a significant drop in fixed-line customers.

The group reported a 66.4% decline in headline earnings per share to 208.1 cents per share,

Telkom said that basic earnings per share decreased by 78.4% to 121.1 cents per share, impacted by the once-off costs of voluntary severance and early retirement packages, COVID-19, and a higher effective tax rate.

The company said that COVID-19 impacted the South African economy and subsequently its operations during the last two weeks of its financial year.

This year also concludes a challenging decade of depressed economic growth, currency volatility, technology disruption, increasing competition and regulatory uncertainty  none of which Telkom has been spared from, Telkom said.

Telkoms group revenue grew by 3% to R43 billion despite a 22.2% decline in fixed voice revenue.

The mobile business remains a strong growth driver for the company, with service revenue increasing by 54.4% compared to the same period last year.

Telkom said that this makes it the fastest-growing mobile business in South Africa with 12 million subscribers.

This was underpinned by our ongoing network investment and successful broadband-led propositions, which continue to resonate well with customers, Telkom said.

Despite ongoing competitive threats with changes implemented by our competitors in the mobile space, our broadband-led propositions are market-leading, being best in class for value and effective pricing.

Revenue contribution and EBITDA

Telkoms mobile business saw an EBITDA margin improvement from 1.4% to 14.9% over the past three years. The mobile EBITDA margin for the year ended 31 March 2020 is 18.6%.

BCX contributed positively to Telkom group revenue, which was supported by Telkoms drive to grow its intellectual property.

Property division Gyro also contributed positively to group revenue thanks to an increase in demand for external leases within its mast and tower portfolio.

Over time, as the revenue mix evolves, we expect the contribution from the fixed voice revenue to reduce and the contribution from the mobile business, with improved EBITDA to increase and offset the impact of fixed voice on group EBITDA, Telkom said.

Until the inflection point, management will focus on sustainable cost management to protect the profitability of the business.

Telkom also said that while it offered voluntary early retirement and severance packages to 2,271 employees  75% of which were accepted  there were no retrenchments at the company during the financial year.

Subscriber numbers

Telkom recorded a 19% year-on-year decline in fixed broadband subscribers, continuing the trend of DSL and FTTH subscribers leaving the company for other providers.

Mobile broadband subscribers grew by an impressive 28% over the past year, reaching 8.2 million.

Active mobile users increased by 23.9% to 12 million, with 20.8% and 36.8% growth in the prepaid and postpaid segments respectively.

Telkom said that looking forward, it will focus significantly on cost savings, which will include a restructuring programme to protect the profitability of the business.
By PTI

JAIPUR: The Communist Party of India (M) in Rajasthan on Monday suspended its MLA Balwan Poonia from the party for a year for disobeying party directions in the recent Rajya Sabha polls in the state.

In the RS elections on three seats from the state, Congress' KC Venugopal and Neeraj Dangi, and BJP's Rajendra Gehlot won, while the BJP's second candidate Onkar Singh Lakhawat lost.

The CPI (M) had asked its both MLAs -- Balwan Poonia and Girdhari Lal -- to vote against the BJP during the June 19 polls only if there are chances of the victory of its second candidate, CPI (M) sources said on Monday.

But our MLA Balwan Poonia cast his vote though it was apparent that both Congress candidates are going to win comfortably and BJP's extra candidate is going to lose. In such a situation, there are was no need for Poonia to cast his vote, a party source said.

READ| Privilege motion moved against Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia

Poonia, the MLA from Bhardra (Hanumangarh) constituency, voted in support of the Congress candidate, while Girdhari Lal did not cast his vote.

"Despite knowing well that they do not have the numbers to win a second seat, the BJP fielded an extra candidate. We had asked our MLAs not to vote for any party unless the second BJP candidate seemed to be in the competition," the source said.

Poonia has been suspended from the party for one year on charges of disobeying party directions, the source added.

"A showcause notice has been issued to him, seeking explanation in seven days," the sources told PTI.

When contacted, Poonia said he will submit his reply to the party.

"The party has suspended me for one year and has sought explanation which I will submit. They have found my conduct as disobeying. The Congress had sought my support against the BJP so I voted. How would I know in advance that how much votes BJP's second candidate is going to get?" he said.

As many as 198 MLAs out of 200 had cast their votes. Apart from Girdhari Lal, Congress' Bhanwar Lal Meghwal, who is hospitalised, did not cast vote.

Of the 198, Congress party's both the candidates got 123 votes in all and the BJP candidates got 74 votes.

One vote of BJP got rejected. The Congress, which has 107 MLAs, got the support of all 13 independents and the legislators of other parties including one of CPI (M) MLA, while the BJP has 72 MLA and support of three Rashtriya Loktantrik Party MLAs.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:59:39|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

ISLAMABAD, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan has allowed the private sector to import wheat to meet local demand and control prices of wheat and flour in the local market and in an effort to prepare for a possible low wheat yield, according the finance ministry here on Monday.

The import of the major food staple of the country will ensure its availability at affordable price across the country throughout the year, a statement released by the ministry said, adding that the government will initially let the private sector import the wheat, and if the demand is not met, it will buy the grain from international market itself.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, in a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee, said that the government will not restrict the import of wheat to any limit by the private sector, but it will monitor the situation on monthly basis to ensure availability of wheat and flour.

Quoting representatives of private sector wheat importers, local media reported that they are interested to import 2.5 million tons of wheat during the next two months as presently the price of wheat in international market is low as compared to the rest of the year.

Wheat is a main summer crop of Pakistan. According to the country's Ministry of National Food Security and Research, the country's annual wheat requirement is 27.47 million tons, but the crop production this year was less than 25 million tons due to multiple factors including locust attacks, untimely heavy rains and infestation of fungal disease yellow rust.

Earlier this year, the country faced an acute wheat shortage, which resulted in rise in the price of flour, making it unaffordable for low-income group. The government later imported the grain to make it available in the local market at affordable price. Enditem
Syracuse, N.Y.  Syracuse officials are fighting a federal effort to rescind a 40-year-old ruling aimed at diversifying the citys police and fire departments.

Mayor Ben Walsh wants to preserve the citys consent decree, a 1980 agreement with the federal government that gives the city more authority to hire Black and female cops and firefighters.
06/22/2020

Photo (c) sankai - Getty Images

On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported the biggest increase in coronavirus cases within a 24-hour period. The organization said there were more than 183,000 new cases worldwide, which topped the previous record of 181,232 on June 18.

The biggest surge was in Brazil, with nearly 55,000 new COVID-19 infections. The U.S. followed, with more than 36,000 new cases reported Sunday. In India, more than 15,000 new cases were tallied, the WHO said.

By region, the U.S. saw the largest increases across the West and South. Arizona reported over 3,100 new infections and 26 deaths, and Nevada reported a new high of 445 cases.

Contributing factors

Overall, the World Health Organization has reported 8,708,008 cases across the globe. The U.S. has the highest number of reported infections at over 2.2 million. Health experts say the latest tally reflects an increase in testing as well as an increase in infections.

Amid concerns of a second wave, the WHO and other health officials are encouraging the public to remain vigilant with safety precautions.

The virus can return and it can hit us again in a second wave, and we have to do whatever we can to avoid that at all cost, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a statement.

Last week, former FDA head Dr. Scott Gottlieb said widespread testing and contact tracing -- particularly in areas seeing spikes in cases -- will be crucial to mitigating the spread of the virus.

Were not going to be able to shut down the country again this summer. Were probably not going to be able to shut down the country again this fall, he said. And so were going to need to try to isolate the sources of these outbreaks and take targeted steps. If we cant do that, these will get out of control.

Trump wants to slow the testing down

At a campaign rally over the weekend, President Trump said the U.S. has tested 25 million people. The bad part, he said, was that widespread testing tends to turn up more cases.

When you do testing to that extent, youre going to find more people, youre going to find more cases, Trump said. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please. They test and they test.

Likely Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden, accused Trump of putting politics ahead of the safety and economic well-being of the American people.

This virus has killed nearly 120,000 Americans and cost tens of millions their jobs, in large part because this president could not and would not mobilize testing as quickly as we needed it, Biden said in a statement. To hear him say tonight that he has ordered testing slowed  a transparent attempt to make the numbers look better  is appalling.
South Africa: President concerned about constitutionality of performers bill

President Cyril Ramaphosa has referred the Copyright Amendment Bill and the Performers Protection Amendment Bill to the National Assembly, because of his reservations on the constitutionality of the legislation passed by Parliament.

The President has, in correspondence to the Speaker of the National Assembly, acknowledged the noble objectives of the amendments but also indicated to the Speaker that the Presidency has received a number of submissions opposing the signing into law of the two Bills, the Presidency said on Monday.

The Bills were referred to the President for assent and signing into law, however the President is concerned that the legislation is open to constitutional challenge.

Among other provisions, the Copyright Amendment Bill seeks to accommodate visually impaired and otherwise print-disabled persons by introducing exceptions to the exclusive rights of authors or their assignees preventing the reproduction or copying of their work in any manner or form.

Proponents of the exception contend that without such exception, visually impaired persons will have limited access to copyright literary works, as such works cannot be transcribed to braille and other formats for people who are print-disabled.



Educators and librarians also seek greater and easier access to works of all kinds. The broadening of access to content is aimed at increasing access to information and facilitating freedom of expression, the Presidency said.

The President has expressed concern that both Bills have incorrectly tagged Section 75 Bills in terms of the constitutionally prescribed process for Parliaments processing of legislation. Section 75 Bills are Bills that do not affect the provinces.



However, the President is of the view that the Bills concerned are in fact Section 76 Bills, given that they affect cultural matters and trade  namely trade in copyright - in which provinces exercise competence, the Presidency said.

According to the Presidency, the Performers Protection Amendment Bill affects performances and performers of traditional works, including cultural expressions or knowledge, and the rights of these performances.

It also regulates the manner in which such performances are made and shared.



The Copyright Bill in turn affects cultural matters including indigenous work with an indigenous or traditional origin that is created by persons who are or were members of an indigenous community and whose work is regarded as part of the heritage of such a community, the Presidency said.



In terms of Schedule 4 of the Constitution, cultural matters and traditional leadership are among matters listed as affecting provinces and which have to be dealt with in Section 76 Bills.



The President also has reservations that several sections of the Copyright Amendment Bill may constitute retrospective and arbitrary deprivations of property in that copyright owners will be entitled to a lesser share of the fruits of their property than was previously the case, the Presidency said.

In addition, the President submits that the uncertainty created this provisions unlimited retrospective operation is unlikely to survive constitutional challenge.



President Ramaphosa is concerned as well that substantial amendments affected to various sections of the Bill  including Section 12A which deals with the fair use of a work or performance of a work  were not subjected to public comment before the final version of the Bill was published.



Other reservations cited by the President include copyright exceptions provide for in the Copyright Bill that may constitute arbitrary deprivation of property; may violate the right to freedom of trade, occupation and profession, and may be in conflict with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Treaty and the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty, both of which South Africa subscribes to, the Presidency said.



The Presidency said the President believes that if these exceptions and limitations run the risk of constitutional challenges, they require reconsideration by the National Assembly.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-06-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The number of deaths due to Covid-19 in Maharashtra has crossed the 6,000-mark even as the case fatality rate (CFR) remained high at 4.67%, much above the national rate of 3.23%.

The CFR in Maharashtra has risen over the past few weeks, up from 3.25% on May 25 and 3.37% on May 31, when the state government had vowed to bring it down to below 3%.

Maharashtras cumulative number of Covid-19 cases on Sunday evening stood at 132,07 and the death toll touched 6,170. Mumbai alone accounted for 66,488 cases and 3,671 deaths.

The state governments recent exercise of reconciliation last week led to the addition of 1,328 cases on June 16, resulting in a sudden spike in CFR to 4.8%, up from 3.79% the day before.

A total of 862 cases were added in Mumbai alone after the reconciliation, leading to a spurt in the citys CFR, which stood at 5.52% on Sunday. Similarly, a few other districts, including Aurangabad, Solapur and Jalgaon, have high CFRs and this has forced the state machinery to concentrate on reducing the rate.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray directed district authorities on Friday to constitute task forces of expert doctors from the private sector to keep the CFR in check. The state task force of 11 doctors from leading private hospitals in Mumbai too decided to concentrate on reducing the CFR.

For the next two weeks, we are concentrating on reducing deaths in the state. We are ready for the rising case load and the health infrastructure has been augmented by the government after the task force insisted upon it. Our decisions of introducing plasma therapy and using tocilizumab medicine have paid off well. Now, we have demanded the use of remdesivir medicine  said Sanjay Oak, who heads the task force of 11 doctors constituted by the government for the clinical management of critically ill patients.

Oak said the task force expects an undulating pattern of cases and there will be ups and downs for the next few days, before the numbers start subsiding.

The state government has been highlighting the improvement in the doubling rate and betterment in the recovery rate, but the rise in CFR has proved worrisome for authorities.

The district collectors and civic authorities have been directed to go in for aggressive tracing of suspected contacts and their testing. They have been asked to concentrate on vulnerable people and their clusters to keep deaths in check. They have been asked to trace more than 10 people against every positive patient to contain the spread, said a state official who declined to be named.

The state recovery rate is currently 49.78%. The doubling rate improved to 25.9 days on June 16, up from 3.5 days on March 31 and 10.2 days on April 30 and 20.1 days on May 31, the state health department said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
China's top legislature reviews draft law on safeguarding national security in HKSAR

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:25, June 21, 2020

China's top legislature reviewed a draft law on safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People's Republic of China.

The draft law was submitted for deliberation at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) from Thursday to Saturday.

Entrusted by the Council of Chairpersons of the NPC Standing Committee, an official with the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee explained the draft law to the session Thursday.

With 66 articles, the draft law has six chapters, namely the general principles; the HKSAR's duties and institutions of safeguarding national security; crimes and penalties; jurisdiction over national security cases, application of laws and procedures; institutions of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR for safeguarding national security; and supplementary provisions.

Establishing and improving at the national level the legal system and enforcement mechanisms for the HKSAR to safeguard national security is a major measure to uphold and improve the system of "one country, two systems," said Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, at the closing meeting of the session.

It is also a fundamental solution to maintain long-term prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and ensure the steady and sustained development of the cause of "one country, two systems," Li said.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT, HKSAR

The Central People's Government shoulders the fundamental responsibility for national security affairs related to the HKSAR, while the HKSAR bears the constitutional responsibility of safeguarding national security and shall fulfill its obligations, according to the draft.

The executive organs, legislature and judiciary of the HKSAR shall, in accordance with relevant laws, effectively prevent, stop and punish acts and activities that endanger national security, says the draft.

Safeguarding China's sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity is the common obligation of all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, it says.

Any institution, organization, or individual in the HKSAR shall abide by this law and other HKSAR laws on safeguarding national security, and shall not engage in any activity that jeopardizes national security, the draft reads.

Any HKSAR resident standing for election or taking up any position of public office shall sign documents to confirm or swear to uphold the HKSAR Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the HKSAR, it says.

The HKSAR is required to step up efforts to safeguard national security and prevent terrorist activities.

In safeguarding national security, the HKSAR shall uphold the principle of the rule of law, according to which the HKSAR shall respect and protect human rights, and anyone shall be presumed innocent until convicted by the judicial organs, according to the draft law.

HKSAR TO ESTABLISH NATIONAL SECURITY COMMISSION

The draft requires the HKSAR to establish a commission of safeguarding national security which shall be supervised by and accountable to the Central People's Government.

The HKSAR commission of safeguarding national security shall be chaired by the Chief Executive and establish the post of the national security adviser, who shall be appointed by the Central People's Government, it says.

The draft makes stipulations on what constitutes four categories of crimes that threaten national security and their corresponding penalties, including secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.

Except in specific circumstances, the HKSAR shall exercise jurisdiction over criminal cases stipulated in this law, the draft says.

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT TO SET UP NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICE IN HKSAR

The draft law provides that the Central People's Government shall establish an office of safeguarding national security in the HKSAR.

The office is obligated to analyze and appraise national security situation in the HKSAR, and provide comments and suggestions for major strategies and policies in this regard.

The office is required to supervise, guide, coordinate with and support the HKSAR in performing its duties on safeguarding national security.

It shall also collect and analyze intelligence information concerning national security, and deal with criminal cases concerning national security in accordance with the law.

The office and related organs of the central authorities may exercise jurisdiction over a tiny number of criminal cases that jeopardize national security under specific circumstances, which is an important manifestation of the central government's overall jurisdiction over the HKSAR, the official explained while briefing lawmakers.

The provisions of this law shall prevail when local laws of the HKSAR are inconsistent with this law, the draft says, adding the power of interpretation of this law shall be vested in the NPC Standing Committee.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






New Delhi:

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday convened a high level security meeting with Army Chief Dalbir Singh, Air Force Chief Arup Raha and Navy Chief Sunil Lanba to discuss the security situation after the suicide attack on BSF and 46 Rashtriya Rifle camp in Baramulla district in Kashmir late on Sunday night.

Earlier, Home Minister Rajnath Singh offered his condolences on the death of one BSF Jawan, who lost his life in the attack on Army and BSF camp in Baramulla late o Sunday night. The Home Minister expressed solidarity with his family and ensured that best health care will be provided to another jawan who was injured in the same attack. According to reports, Singh has discussed and reviewed security situation with NSA Ajit Doval.

One BSF jawan was killed while another injured when terrorists on Sunday night carried out a fidayeen (suicide) attack on a BSF and adjoining army camps in Baramulla, barely four days after the Indian Special Forces smashed seven terror launch pads during a surgical strike across the Line of Control (LoC).



The terrorist, who gained entry into the 46 RR camp through an adjoining BSF camp, fired indiscriminately and lobbed grenades as well. During the firing, two BSF jawans were injured who were rushed to the nearby hospital, officials said, adding one of the personnel succumbed to injuries at the operation table.

If Pakistan continues with conspiracies, India will give them a befitting reply again: Manohar Parrikar



The spokesman for Srinagar-based XV corps Col Rajesh Kalia said terrorists fired at an army camp at Jabanzpora in Baramulla and the firing was still on.

The skies in Baramulla, 54 kms from here, saw illuminators being fired by the army to locate the terrorists who had sneaked into the 46 battalion of Rashtriya Rifles.

Rashtriya Rifles: Know more about counter insurgency force of the Indian army



Sources said there was some firing from adjacent houses located near the camp, which is located on the banks of river Jhelum.



However, the official Twitter handle of Udhampur-based Northern Command said Baramulla Incident situation contained and under control.

#WATCH Baramulla attack: situation contained and under control, says Army (visuals deferred) pic.twitter.com/VDsaz4fOot  ANI (@ANI_news) October 2, 2016

The attack comes despite intelligence inputs about possible terrorist attacks on security installations in Jammu and Kashmir after the Indian army carried out surgical strikes on September 29.



Sundays strike comes exactly a fortnight after terrorists struck at army brigade headquarters at Uri, 102 kms from site of recent attacks killing 19 soldiers. (With input from Agencies)

Pakistani training camps shifted deeper into crowded areas post surgical strikes by Indian Army

Here are the live updates:



Srinagar (J&K): Gun salutes being paid to BSF jawan Nitin, who lost his life in #BaramulaAttack pic.twitter.com/4MzX1VDSY1  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

Srinagar (J&K): Wreath-laying ceremony of BSF jawan Nitin who lost his life in #BaramulaAttack pic.twitter.com/nZ8HznBpj5  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

Srinagar (J&K): Wreath-laying ceremony of BSF jawan Nitin who lost his life in #BaramulaAttack pic.twitter.com/UqO9kCJi8u  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

Delhi: NSA Ajit Doval and Chinese Ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui leave after their meeting at South Block ends pic.twitter.com/OTNWPBTipU  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

Delhi: NSA Ajit Doval leaves after meeting PM Narendra Modi at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg pic.twitter.com/FHCCH3bZXd  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

#Ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Shahapur sector of Poonch (J&K)

#Terrorists used civilians as shield, says Baramulla SSP



#Terrorists managed to escape as it was dark & army couldn't retaliate effectively due to apprehension of civilian casualty: SSP Baramulla

#There was fire fight that went on for some time, Terrorists were not able to sneak in the camp. Search ops called off: SSP, Baramulla



They used civilians as shield as it was a civilian area, we could not retaliate properly and they fled: Imtiaz Hussain, SSP, #Baramulla pic.twitter.com/ua3v7luROF  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016

#Baramulla Attack: Situation under control, search operation continues (Visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/iO8SvUyrfw  ANI (@ANI_news) October 3, 2016



#Martyred BSF jawan Nitin was from Etawah in UP, he was 24 years old

#Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar chairs high level security meet, Army Chief Dalbir Singh, Air Force Chief Arup Raha and Navy Chief Sunil Lanba present

#Terrorists tried to enter the camp but our forces retaliated and the terrorists fled, search ops continue: IG BSF(Kashmir) Vikas Chandra

#Injured BSF jawan is out of danger, is admitted to RR camp hospital.

#BSF opened fire after suspected infiltration at Chakri post of Gurdaspur(Punjab) sector: Anil Paliwal,IG BSF (Live updates on Gurdaspur firing)

#Firing on BSF Chakri post in Gurdaspur(Punjab) during early hours of Monday. More details awaited.

#Sartaj Aziz says Pak NSA Nasir Janjua & Indian NSA Ajit Doval agreed to reduce tensions on LoC: Pakistan media

#Foreign Affairs Advisor to Pak PM, Sartaj Aziz says Pak NSA Nasir Janjua and Indian NSA Ajit Doval made contact after recent tensions:Pak media

#Home Minister Rajnath Singh discusses and reviews security situation with NSA Ajit Doval

#HM Rajnath Singh also offered condolences on the death of a jawan and expressed solidarity with his family

#HM Rajnath Singh speaks to DG BSF, asks him to provide best medical facilities to the injured jawan

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
PM Modi (India Government Press Information Bureau via AP)

Let's keep practising yoga and create a healthier planet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday responding to various world leaders, international organisations and personalities who took part in International Day of Yoga events across the world. Responding to a tweet by the United Nations, he said that world over, people have marked Yoga Day with immense fervour.

In line with this year's theme, people have marked Yoga Day at home and with their families, the prime minister said

"Let's keep practising Yoga and create a healthier planet," Modi posted on Twitter.

The UN had earlier in the day said that yoga can be a powerful tool to help people deal with the stress and isolation faced by many amid COVID-19.

"It's also an effective way to maintain physical well-being," the world body had said.

Modi said he was delighted to see Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa's passion towards yoga.

"Thankful to the people of Sri Lanka for embracing yoga. The benefits are many," the prime minister said.

In another tweet, he thanked Bhutan Prime Minister Lotay Tshering and the people of Bhutan for their enthusiasm towards yoga.

"Fully agree on the physical, mental and emotional benefits of Yoga," he said.

Earlier, Tshering had said it was rejuvenating to pause and celebrate a day that expounded meaning of emotional, mental and physical wellbeing during the pandemic.

Modi also thanked Sophie Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for her support for yoga.

"Mrs Trudeau's words will go a long way in popularising Yoga globally," Modi said.

In a video message, Sophie Trudeau had said that yoga is a great gift of ancient wisdom and Canada has adopted it as a means of achieving health.

Yoga Day went digital for the first time since June 21, 2015, when it began to be celebrated annually across the world, coinciding with the Summer Solstice each year.

On December 11, 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared June 21 as 'International Day of Yoga'.
New Delhi, June 22 : Amid intense Chinese propaganda and 'wolf warriors' aggressive approach to cover up its culpability in spreading coronavirus pandemic, the world powers are joining hands to counter China which is increasingly trying to divert attention by implementing its expansionist design from land to maritime domain.

The Galwan incident is just one such example of its policy of intimidation and aggressive move in maritime has already come as a warning signal for the neighbours. The fact cannot be ignored that China's aggressive nationalism and military expansionism are a reality, engendered by policies fashioned by hardline Communist Party of China (CPC) leaders.

"These policies have resulted in a perception that Beijing respects no laws except those created by itself; it respects no one's property rights if it can find a way to steal it; it respects no boundary or border if it sees a way to acquire territory or resources for itself through intimidation and bullying," said a top government officer.

This attitude is illustrated in the maritime sphere by its self-proclaimed expansive 'nine-dash line' to claim the South China Sea (SCS). The manner in which China ignored an international tribunal verdict that rejected its claims to exclusive jurisdiction in South China Sea displays an arrogance that will win few friends.

"One can only feel sympathy for the Chinese people who only want peace and stability, but have been held to ransom by expansionist policies of the Party," the officer said.

These actions by Communist Party of China have prompted leading maritime powers, including France, UK, Australia, US, South Korea and Japan to enhance cooperation towards ensuring freedom of navigation and inclusive rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.

More countries are likely to join these efforts to help sustain multilateral cooperation at the regional level required for, in the words of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, "a common rules-based order for the region" that "must equally apply to all individually, as well as to the global commons".

"The irredentist behaviour of the Communist Party of China has been a key consideration in India's recent maritime engagements," said a top Indian intelligence officer.

The Sino-Indian defence relationship has now transitioned from a largely continental-based interaction confined to the disputed land border, to an increasingly maritime-based one. China's recent actions along India's Line of Actual Control is clearly meant to remind India that it has a confrontational neighbour on its northern borders.

This will definitely make India align with major regional and global powers in developing a balancing posture towards China. India has done exceedingly well in these engagements, helped by a visionary 'forward-leaning' maritime posture at the doctrinal level.

The clarion call of Prime Minister Modi to outline Security And Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) contrasts starkly with the Communist Party of China's habit of predatory trade practices that gobble up land, resources and in a way forces smaller states to become subservient to the CPC's machinations.

Indian Ocean Region countries see India as a benign resident naval power who means no ill-will or intent to deprive their political, economic or military freedoms. Other maritime nations such as Singapore, Australia, Japan, France and the USA seek India's greater participation in ensuring stability and security in the Indo-Pacific.

Recently France has called for creation of a "Paris-New Delhi-Canberra" axis and just last week, India also successfully conducted a 'virtual dialogue' with Australia in which a key deliverable was a 'Mutual Logistics Support Agreement' that will be mutually beneficial.

The reason for India's continued success in developing these maritime alliances is the result of its demonstrated status as a responsible power; by promoting greater transparency about its military modernisation efforts and reaffirming the absence of territorial ambitions at the cost of smaller neighbours.

India has been recognised as the preferred regional stakeholder in multilateral efforts for upholding international law, especially in relation to freedom of navigation and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific.

This is a signal to Beijing that its belligerence will not be ignored and that entry to the high table will be denied if the current attitude continues.

Communist Party of China leaders would do well to keep in mind that New Delhi has not only become more willing to articulate India's maritime interests in the light of China's unpredictable behaviour, but is also being driven to increasingly align with extra-regional powers - which is not in China's long-term interests.

China must realise that the world is uniting to defeat its unwarranted aggression and intimidation policy. The so-called glory days of "wolf warriors" are over and cooperative spirit could be the only face-saver for China at the moment.

(Sumit Kumar Singh can be reached at sumit.k@ians.in)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With Staten Island houses of worship permitted to start in-person services this week, you should plan to get there early because only 25% capacity is allowed.

Houses of worship say they will strictly enforce the capacity limits in Phases 2 of reopening following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which starts Monday.

The synagogues are taking this very seriously, said Mendy Mirocznik, president of the Council of Jewish Organizations (COJO).

The guidelines and recommendations based upon age and health considerations must be paramount. ... We are very thankful the cases are down and the curve is flat. ...It appears under control. We dont want to ruin that, and we want to continue that positive effect. We will follow the guidelines and play it safe and hopefully, slowly we will be able to expand [capacity] even more, he added.

MASKS REQUIRED

Some houses of worship require masks to be worn throughout the service.

For example, at Our Lady Help of Christians in Tottenville, masks will be required, and social distancing will be maintained at all times, according to the churchs website.

MARKED PEWS, HAND SANITIZER AND SEPARATE ENTRANCES

And depending on your individual church or synagogue, there are other rules in place as these religious institutions open.

For example, at Blessed Sacrament Church in West Brighton, only 125 people will be allowed in the church at one time for social distancing. Mass will also be offered in the gym for additional seating. Automatic hand sanitizers will be available at the entrance, and pews will be sanitized after each mass. Every other pew will be marked off for social distancing, according to the churchs website.

Similarly, Sacred Heart Church in West Brighton will reopen on Monday with a 105 person limit at each mass, wedding or baptism. Safety protocols include social distancing, mask requirements and hand sanitizer will be available, according to the churchs website.

St. Patricks Church in Richmond will require social distancing, masks will be required and there will only be one entrance into the church through the main doors, according to the churchs website.

EPISCOPAL CHURCHES

The Episcopal Diocese of New York will open its churches on July 1, according to dioceseny.org.

After July 1, state guidelines will determine the number of people allowed to gather for in-person worship. Masks, hand sanitizer, and social distancing will be required at houses of worship, according to the website.

Its recommended you check your individual house of worship for guidelines.
The United States and Russia held talks in Vienna on Monday on their only remaining major nuclear weapons accord with little prospect of imminent agreement, as critics questioned whether either side saw value in arms control. US President Donald Trump has previously insisted China should be involved in discussions to extend New START, the treaty that limits US and Russian nuclear warheads, because he says Beijing has had a free pass to develop weapon systems. The current treaty limits each side to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads. China has shown no interest, giving Washington more cause for complaint -- although critics say the US finds it a useful stick to beat its growing rival. After a full day of talks at the Niederoesterreich Palace in the Austrian capital, the Russian foreign ministry said only that "discussions on prospects for arms control continued, including the question of extending the New Start treaty and maintaining stability". US envoy to the talks Marshall Billingslea said on Monday evening that the talks had been "very positive". There had been "detailed discussions" on a "full range of nuclear topics", he tweeted, without going into detail. Billingslea added that there was "agreement in principle" between the two sides on holding a second round of talks. Daryl Kimball of the Washington-based Arms Control Association said before the talks that the Trump administration's focus on China showed that it was not serious about an accord. "The only conclusion I can come to is that... the Trump administration (does) not intend to extend New START and is seeking to display China's disinterest in trilateral arms control talks as a cynical excuse to allow New START to expire," Kimball said. Trump has already scrapped several treaties with Russia -- on overflights and on intermediate-range nuclear forces. Billingslea and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov headed the delegations discussing the future of New START, which was agreed in 2010 and expires in February 2021. That leaves very little time to renew a complex deal, let alone negotiate a new treaty involving China, especially with a November presidential election looming. - 'Performance art' - Shortly before talks began, Billingslea once again raised the issue of what he called China's "no-show" by tweeting a picture of an empty negotiating table decked with Chinese flags. "Beijing still hiding behind #GreatWallofSecrecy on its crash nuclear build-up, and so many other things," Billingslea said in his tweet. China's mission in Vienna responded by ridiculing the tweet as "performance art". China's nuclear arsenal is rapidly expanding but is still far smaller than those of the US and Russia. The current deadlock over New START and the demise of other nuclear arms control treaties "suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the USA might be coming to an end", said Shannon Kile of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to the institute's latest research, Russia has 6,375 nuclear warheads, including those that are not deployed, and the United States has 5,800. China comes a distant third with 320 warheads. Song Zhongping, a defence analyst in Beijing, said 2,000 warheads would be an ideal arsenal for China, whose main concern is to counter the United States. "China will never participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations between the US and Russia," he said. "The nuclear disarmament talks proposed by the US are only a trap." Russian political analyst Fyodor Lukyanov said there was no reason to expect progress in Vienna. "The Trump administration has rejected nearly all the restraints linked to the treaties agreed in the past," Lukyanov said. "There is nothing to suggest that this treaty will be the exception." An extension of New START would be "really welcome", Beatrice Fihn of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said on Monday. However she warned that "we need to be sure that they don't lower our expectations so much that simply not unravelling a treaty is considered amazing progress". The New START nuclear disarmament treaty between Russia and the United States is set to expire in February 2021 Major nuclear treaties between the US and Russia Analysts suspect the United States is running out the clock on the New START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia has 6,375 nuclear warheads and the United States has 5,800 Trump has already scrapped several treaties with Russia
Elderly Brits could wear ribbons to show they are social distancing when lockdown measures are eased, according to a top government scientist.

Professor Calum Semple, who sits on Number 10's SAGE panel, said it would signal to other people to stay away as life slowly gets back to normal.

It comes as Boris Johnson is set to cut the two-metre social distancing rule in half to kick-start the economy, which has been crippled by Covid-19.

Professor Semple, a specialist in child health and outbreak medicine at Liverpool Liverpool, acknowledged some Brits will still need to keep their distance.

Professor Calum Semple suggested ribbons may identify people who are social distancing

In an interview with BBC 5 Live yesterday, he said: 'I could see a position where we need as a society to respect social distancing greater in those that are elderly and more vulnerable, and potentially people might even conceive of wearing a ribbon or something on their lapel, or a badge, that just indicates that they would prefer that their social distance was respected.'

Countries including Singapore and Denmark already follow the official World Health Organization (WHO) guidance of one metre.

And England are due to follow from July 4 for open spaces like shops, restaurants, schools, offices, factories and parks.

Professor Semple also warned against travelling abroad this summer, despite the government introducing 14-day quarantine periods for incoming travellers.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is likely to announce a change to the current two metre rule

What is the science behind two-metre social distancing rule? The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a one metre distance between two people from separate households. The reason for this, as stated on its website, is that: 'When someone coughs, sneezes, or speaks they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person has the disease.' But other countries have taken advice from their own health experts and social distancing varies from two metres (in the UK) down to one metre (in France) The two metre rule can be traced back to research in the 1930s that showed droplets of liquid from coughs or sneezes would land within a one-two metre range. Social distancing varies between different countries: TWO METRES: UK, Switzerland, US, Spain, Italy 1.5 METRES: Germany, Poland, Netherlands ONE METRE: Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland SO, WHAT HAVE THE STUDIES SHOWN? ONE METRE Number 10's chief scientific adviser - Sir Patrick Vallance - has said that the one metre rule is up to 30 times more risky than the two metre rule. He told MPs earlier this month the risk of spending a minute next to a Covid-19 patient for two minutes was 'about the same' as being within a metre of a Covid-19 case for six seconds. The latest evidence, published in The Lancet, found there was roughly a 2.6 per cent chance of catching the virus when one metre from a Covid patient. But doubling the gap cut the risk to only 1.3 per cent. TWO METRE One of the top scientific advisers to the British Government said the two metre social distancing rule is based on 'very fragile' evidence. Professor Robert Dingwall, a member of Nervtag, referred to it as a 'rule of thumb' rather than a scientifically proven measure. Other experts have said the distance may be a non-scientific estimate that just caught on in countries around the world. IS TWO METRES ENOUGH? The UK's coronavirus social distancing limit is four times too short and the gap should be 26 feet, said experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in March. They found viral droplets expelled in coughs and sneezes can travel in a moist, warm atmosphere at speeds of between 33 and 100ft per second. This creates a cloud in the atmosphere that can span approximately 23ft to 27ft (seven metres to eight metres) to neighbouring people, the team said. Another study by scientists in Cyprus, published a fortnight ago, added to the evidence when it found the two-metre rule may not be far enough. Researchers found even in winds of two miles per hour (mph) - the speed needed for smoke to drift - saliva can travel 18 feet in just five seconds. And scientists from the universities of California Santa Barbara and Stanford last week said the two metre rule may have to be trebled when winter strikes. They found droplets that carry SARS-CoV-2 - the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 - can travel up to 20feet (six metres) in cold and humid areas. Advertisement

He added: 'What has changed in the last three weeks is that we are now seeing lower levels of Covid activity throughout the whole of the UK.

'Whereas, three weeks ago we were still seeing some fairly high activity in the North West particularly and in our nursing homes and hospitals.

'Whereas three weeks later, it's a long time in an outbreak, the number of cases are coming down quite dramaticallythey're not as low as we'd like [them]to be.

'But it's low enough where we can start to think about a bit of a nuanced approach to releasing regulations.

'We still have a problem with some hospital-acquired cases and nursing home acquired cases but on the whole the number of cases in the community is fewer.'

Professor Semple said two metres 'is definitely safer' than one but some restrictions can afford to be released 'if there are fewer cases in the community'.

It comes as it was reported today that millions of grandparents may get to squeeze their grandchildren again soon with Boris Johnson set to announce the expansion of household bubbles on Tuesday.

Current guidelines allow for groups of up to six to meet in the open air, while staying over two meters apart.

Only those living together, or who have chosen to expand their 'support bubble' to include one other nominated person from another household, can touch or be closer than two meters.

This has caused tough choices for parents forced to decide which grandparent their children can visit. However this could soon be alleviated if an eased policy is approved, such as an unlimited merging of two households within a bubble.

A senior government source told The Telegraph: 'There will be an expansion of social bubbles, but the details are still being finalised.'

Another possibility could be to allow households to merge with a limited number of people from more than two different households, to ensure families are not forced to choose which set of grandparents get their hugs.

Another government source told The Telegraph: 'The question with bubbles has always been how you help families reunite to the maximum possible extent without too much risk.

'The scientists' main concern has always been infections spreading from one household to another, which is why this is one of the more difficult decisions we have to take.'

Tuesday's announcement is expected to be another step towards the eventual easing of lockdown, with pubs and restaurants also expected to reopen by July 4.

Speaking yesterday Boris Johnson insisted coronavirus is 'increasingly under control' as he prepares to unveil a new 'one metre plus' rule within days and give Britons the green light for holidays and haircuts.

The PM said there is 'not much more to wait now' for movement on lockdown as he looks certain to halve the social distance in a crunch speech on Tuesday - with the caveat that other precautions such as face masks must play a bigger role.

He stressed he is 'sticking like glue' to the roadmap that from July 4 will permit hairdressers in England to roll up the shutters.

The UK holiday season is also expected to start within a fortnight when Mr Johnson gives permission for hotels and vacation parks to reopen.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing another huge package of tax cuts and spending to revive UK plc after lockdown.

VAT is set to be slashed as part of efforts to prop up struggling businesses and stave off mass unemployment.

Speaking in No10 on Sunday, Mr Johnson said: 'The disease is increasingly under control and I just want people to reflect on that important fact.

'It's going down, we are getting it down. 'So, of course, as we make that progress it will be possible to open up more and you will be hearing more about what we want to do with not just non-essential retail but with the hospitality sector from July 4 and we're sticking absolutely like glue to the road map to the plan that I set out on May 10.

'But it's very important we don't lose our vice-like grip on the disease; we've got to keep it on the floor where we've got it.

'On the progress on social distancing, watch this space and you won't have much more to wait now. You'll certainly be hearing more this week.'
The majority of farmers in Scotland are sceptical or pessimistic towards the outcome for Scottish agriculture post-Brexit, a new survey finds.

The survey, by Scotlands Rural College (SRUC) and the James Hutton Institute on behalf of the Scottish government, questioned 2,500 farmers.

It found that around three-quarters of Scottish farmers have a sceptical or pessimistic view of the farming industry post-Brexit.

Just over a quarter (26 percent) of the sample were positive to the post-withdrawal landscape, though the remainder were less positive.

Around 37 percent of respondents stated negative views towards the outcome for a post-withdrawal Scottish agriculture.

The remaining 37 percent stated more neutral views, but also had concerns around any future planning for the farm business.

The three main types of farmer identified in the survey were optimists, who mostly agreed with statements around more opportunities and more willingness to invest for future returns.

Pessimists were identified with more negative statements towards the financial implications of Brexit.

And neutrals had less agreement with these negative statements but were mostly concerned around the complexities of Brexit to engage with any future planning.

The analysis also found differences in the farm population which drive these outlooks. Specifically, farmers with higher levels of education were more likely to be actively preparing for Brexit compared to others.

Farms in Less Favoured Area regions, and those in the Highland and Islands, were more likely to hold more negative views towards Brexit than those outside these areas.

Professor Andrew Barnes from SRUC, who conducted the research, said the survey showed a 'large amount of stasis' in the industry 'driven by the uncertainties around Brexit and wider trading conditions'.

Ultimately, the concern is that this leads to a decline in investment and has consequent impacts on productivity and growth in the future," he said.

"Making a business more resilient to change, as weve seen in the recent Covid-19 outbreak, is essential to ensuring sustainability for our own agricultural industry.

Dr Lee-Ann Sutherland, a research leader at the James Hutton Institute, said the research showed that although some farmers were optimistic, the majority saw major risks associated with Brexit.

The biggest issue is uncertainty: farming is a long-term business, with many path dependencies," Dr Sutherland said.

"It can take years to shift a farms trajectory. Brexit makes it difficult for farmers to plan, which impedes their ability to move their farms forward.

Increasing the certainties around how Brexit will impact on commodity prices, subsidies available and other economic conditions is essential to enabling Scottish farmers to develop their businesses.
Members of the European Parliament have sent an open letter to the Prime Minister of Ukraine and the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine regarding the environmental protection problems.

The document was signed by 26 MEPs, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

We, members of the European Parliament express our deep concerns regarding three major problems prevalent in Ukraines environmental policy. These problems include the environmental cost of the timber industry, the flawed execution of the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and the lack of safety of environmental activists. Providing home to some of the last old-growth and primeval forests in Europe, the preservation of Ukraines ecosystems is of global significance and must be a priority of the political agenda, reads the letter, posted by Viola von Cramon-Taubadel on her parliamentary page.

In particular, it is noted that deforestation and illegal logging continue to pose a major threat to Ukraines ecosystems and forest landscapes. According to estimates by the British NGO EarthSight published in 2018, 40% of the Ukrainian wood exported to the EU is harvested or traded illegally.

In addition, the MEPs emphasize that although the Law on EIA was adopted in 2017, the implementation still entails a multitude of loopholes despite fact that the implementation of the EIA is a key requirement of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

The members of the European Parliament expressed concern about the fact that environmental NGOs and activists are repeatedly confronted with massive threats and legal harassments as a result of their work against illegal logging and environmental pollution.

We call on the Ukrainian government and lawmakers to urgently correct the shortcomings of the Law on EIA and to develop measures in order to fulfil a fundamental requirement of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Moreover, we highly recommend you to develop a legal framework in order to guarantee the security of environmental activists, journalists and civil society organizations, reads the letter.

ol
GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Acquire Land in Malta, NY, Positioning its Advanced Manufacturing Facility for Future Growth

Land purchase option increases Fab 8 footprint for future development to support growing client and U.S. government technology development needs

Malta, NY, June 22, 2020  GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world's leading specialty foundry and the leading U.S. pure-play manufacturer of semiconductors, today announced it has secured a purchase option agreement for approximately 66 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to its most advanced manufacturing facility, Fab 8, in Malta, N.Y., near the Luther Forest Technology Campus (LFTC).

The land parcel is located at the southeast end of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Saratoga Technology + Energy Park (STEP) campus, adjacent to Stonebreak Road Extension, between GFs Fab 8 facility and Hermes Road. Exercising the option to purchase the land and commencement of development to expand GFs Fab 8 facility will be subject to zoning regulations and client demand. The parcel is being sold at Fair Market Value, with a purchase price determined by an independent appraiser.

Amid growing consensus in our nation's capital for investment in semiconductor manufacturing, it's more important than ever that we are ready to fast track our growth plans at GLOBALFOUNDRIES most advanced manufacturing facility in the U.S.," said Ron Sampson, senior vice president and general manager of U.S. Fab Operations at GF. With this agreement option, we now have additional flexibility to expand our footprint and position Fab 8 for future growth in Saratoga County and New York State, while strengthening U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing."

"GLOBALFOUNDRIES continues to demonstrate its commitment to economic growth in Saratoga County and Upstate New York," said Darren OConnor, Malta's Town Supervisor. "I am pleased to hear that this latest step will enable future growth opportunities for GLOBALFOUNDRIES for years to come.

GF employs nearly 3,000 people and has invested over $13 billion in Fab 8, its most advanced manufacturing facility in upstate New York. The company recently announced it is bringing its most advanced Fab 8 facility in upstate New York into compliance with both the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) standards and the highly restrictive Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

About GF

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the worlds leading specialty foundry. GF delivers differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable its clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit www.globalfoundries.com.






Just under 60,000 in funding has been allocated to enhance facilities in urban and rural communities across Kilkenny, according to Fine Gael TD, John Paul Phelan.

Deputy Phelan said the Community Enhancement Programme [CEP] provides capital grants to community groups to improve amenities in disadvantaged areas.

Deputy Phelan added: The CEP provides vital support to community groups in order to help them improve their facilities. Im delighted to announce that 58,150 has been granted to Kilkenny and 56,628 to Carlow.

It supports small-scale funding for projects which range from purchasing lawnmowers and IT equipment to minor renovations to buildings. Ultimately the Programme responds to local needs and therefore it also provides some funding towards larger projects where needed.

We depend hugely on these community groups in Kilkenny and Carlow and I hope that this funding will help them to continue the important work that they carry out within our society.

I urge communities throughout Kilkenny and Carlow to familiarise themselves with the CEP and to apply for funding if they feel that it can be of local benefit.

The CEP is administered by Local Community Development Committees in Kilkenny and Carlow County Council Details on how to apply will be available from each LCDC shortly, Deputy Phelan concluded.

Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring, said: Since I first launched the CEP in 2018, it has funded over 5,000 projects in urban and rural communities throughout Ireland.

While the CEP will be similar to last year, the LCDC in each area will have flexibility to use some or all of this funding for COVID-19 related expenditure by community groups, where this is a priority in individual local authority areas. This is in addition to other funding announced recently by my Department, such as the 2.5m COVID-19 Emergency fund and the 35m Stability Fund.

In order to allow flexibility, the Department is not setting a national closing date, but will allow each LCDC to set its own, to best suit its area. The Department will require that all closing dates are no later September 30. Groups should check with their LCDC for further details.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he opposed removing the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City's American Museum of Natural History.

The move was announced by the museum on Sunday and comes amid anti-racism protests across the United States and the world after the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody on May 25 in the United States.

The statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side. It stands prominently on a plinth outside the museum's main entrance, overlooking Central Park.

Roosevelt, a Republican like Trump, was U.S. president from 1901-1909. Known for his exuberant and daring manner, he carried out antitrust, conservationist and "Square Deal" reforms, and, critics said, took an interventionist approach to foreign policy, including projecting U.S. naval power around the world.

Many critics have said the Roosevelt statue symbolizes racial discrimination and colonial expansion.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city was in favor of the request from the museum to remove the statue because it "depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior."

"Ridiculous, don't do it," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.

In the ongoing ant-racism demonstrations, protesters across the United States and around the world have demanded that authorities take down monuments honoring pro-slavery Confederate figures and the architects of Europe's colonies.

"Simply put, the time has come to move it," the museum's president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times.

She said the museum's decision was based on the statue itself, along with its "hierarchical composition", and not on Roosevelt. Futter said the museum continues to honor Roosevelt as "a pioneering conservationist".

Roosevelt's face is also one of the four presidents - along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln - whose faces are cast in 60-foot-high granite sculptures at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

Trump has blasted the anti-racism protests, saying demonstrators have behaved badly.

"The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments - our beautiful monuments - tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We're not conforming", the U.S. president told supporters at a rally last week.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


it is now sixteen years of Jorg Ahrnt held in the library of the German Archaeological Institute in Tehran for the first time, drawings of the archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879 to 1948) in the hands. This impressed him, the artist from Frankfurt, close to private and artistic ties to the Iranian culture, whether their accuracy and expressive power is very. At the time, he could not have guessed that he would employ eleven years later, in more detail, the excavator of Persepolis, and its research. As he from the great-nephew of the diplomat and resistance fighter of the 20th century. July 1944, Friedrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, of an exchange of letters from the years 1924 to 1939, between the then German Ambassador in Tehran and the excavator of the Persian king's residences in Pasargadai and Persepolis learned, was Ahrnt noisy.

In the result of in-depth Ahrnt in the correspondence. A letter found especially from 22. In September 1932, his interest. There Herzfeld reported on the archaeological investigation of an unfinished tomb at Persepolis, the bottom of which recalled the famous tomb of Cyrus II (to 590/580 to 530 BC): "The unfinished tomb, we have taken a huge effort apart and are now in the process of rebuilding it. The finds were objects of a strange HOCKER burial with a Pot, so old, under the Foundation and a large Golden whorl or something like that. Sorry, there are no documents. The archaeological past of Iran is quite knowledgeable, was Ahrnt is right to question why he had heard of this tomb from the time of the Achaemenid Empire, still nothing, and proceeded to the search.

Updated Date: 22 June 2020, 14:19
(CNN)  First came public statements against racism and in support of Black Lives Matter from a wide range of companies. Then came large corporate donations to organizations promoting racial equity.

But now, weeks after George Floyd's death sparked a national movement for racial justice, many companies are turning their focus inward and taking actions aimed at addressing their own issues with systemic racism.

This has taken the form of everything from companies making Juneteenth a company holiday to tech leaders placing a moratorium on facial recognition sales to police departments.

Still, Corporate America has a long way to go.

Today, only four CEOs in the Fortune 500 are Black. Black professionals in 2018 held just 3.3% of all executive or senior leadership roles, according to the most recent US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data. In 2019, more than a third of S&P 500 companies did not have any Black board members, according to Black Enterprise's Power in the Boardroom report.

Changing these numbers goes beyond doing the right thing  it helps companies better innovate and compete as US demographics and consumer habits change.

"Corporate America is talking the talk," Former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons told CNN last week. "And it's been a little bit of walking the walk, but not that much. This inflection point we're at, now the corporations and Corporate America is stepping up and saying: 'Wait a minute, we've got to get real about looking after our employee base and our communities.'"

Here are some of the ways Corporate America has taken such action over the past two weeks.

Rebranding

It's 2020 and a handful of major companies are finally acknowledging and ending the use of brand mascots with racist origins. Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben's, Mrs. Buttersworth and Cream of Wheat all announced marketing changes in light of the anti-racist movement sweeping the country.

Many of these companies had resisted changing their branding for decades. But changing consumer sentiment and the power of social media call-outs finally forced a change, Allen Adamson, co-founder of brand consulting firm Metaforce, told CNN Business' Chauncey Alcorn.

Problematic branding exists outside the breakfast food aisle, too. Will the Washington Redskins or Chiquita Brands' "Miss Chiquita," both of which have faced similar criticism, be next?

C-Suite shake-ups

A number of big name leaders have stepped down or been pushed out of their positions in recent weeks, as companies grapple with failures to foster diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Top editors at Bon Appetit and Refinery29 stepped down earlier this month after facing claims of racism. The CEO and founder of The Wing, Audrey Gelman, also resigned this month following allegations of racist incidents and a walkout by employees.

CrossFit's CEO Greg Glassman retired from his leadership role following intense backlash from gym owners and athletes over the company's lack of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and after comments he made on a call with gym owners that CrossFit leadership was "not mourning for George Floyd" surfaced.

Crisis Text Line CEO Nancy Lublin was also ousted amid allegations of inappropriate conduct. Staffers of the nonprofit had recently staged a virtual walkout, demanding its board and leadership take steps to create an "anti-racist" organization.

Hiring initiatives

Adidas said earlier this month it plans to fill a minimum of 30% of new positions in North America with Black or Latinx people, one of several racial equity-related initiatives the company announced. Adidas also said it will announce an additional "target aimed at increasing representation of Black and Latinx people within our workforce in North America."

Adidas has declined to say what percentage of its workforce in North America is currently composed of Black employees.

It's one of a number of companies aiming to diversify their workforces.

However, some Adidas employees say the sportswear giant needs to do more. A group of Adidas employees wrote to executives this week asking them to investigate whether the company's HR chief has responded appropriately to racial issues. They also want Adidas to create an anonymous platform where employees can report instances of racism and discrimination.

Harnessing purchasing power

Sephora became the first major retailer to take the 15% Pledge, saying it will dedicate 15% of its store shelf space to products from Black-owned businesses.

The pledge calls on America's big box retailers such as Target and Whole Foods to include more products from Black-owned businesses in their inventories.

Walker & Companies founder Tristan Walker says American companies have been ignoring people of color for too long, and they're missing out on a major business opportunity.

"We have an audience that has not been served in over 100 years as well as they deserve to be ... If the majority of the world represents this audience, why aren't you serving them?" he said in an interview with CNN Business' Rachel Crane.

What's next?

Many believe that one of the biggest catalysts for change would be to increase representation on corporate boards.

"Can you just make the boards more diverse? Now. This is something that is doable," former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns told CNN's Poppy Harlow this week. "There are African American men and women, and women, who actually are capable and willing to serve on boards ... That diversification helps to diversify the thought, diversify the language, diversify the culture, everything about the company."

Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian demonstrated how this could work. Ohanian, a White man, resigned from the company's board and asked to be replaced with a more diverse candidate. Several days later, Reddit named Michael Seibel, CEO of Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator, as the first Black board member in the company's history.

Darrin Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, suggested that investors pressure companies to diversify their boards.

"The real solution is going to come when we have investors and asset managers say to companies: 'We expect your boards to be diverse,'" Walker told CNN this week.

This story was first published on CNN.com 'In the face of a cultural reckoning, it turns out massive corporations can move fast and fix things'
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 00:33:20|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

GABORONE, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by the highly contagious Coronavirus, has spurred the transition of traditional media to digital journalism in Botswana, two leading media bodies observed. While analyzing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the local media during a live broadcast via the country's national television, Botswana Television on Monday, both Botswana Media and Allied Workers Union (BOMAWU) and Botswana Editors Forum (BEF) representatives shared the same sentiment.

Spencer Mogapi, the chairperson of the BEF, said most media houses in the southern African country started digital platforms in order to keep the pace with the flow of information about the spread and transmission of the pandemic in the country.

"Most newsrooms in Botswana took a deliberate decision to go digital which is the future of the media industry after the pandemic COVID-19," said Mogapi.

Mogapi said the digitalization of the local media industry helped a lot in curbing the spread of "fake news" as the both the public and private media decided to work in unison "in disseminating the correct and authentic information not competing as is the norm.

Philemon Mmeso, the president of BOMAWU, said the pandemic has given local journalists to understand and recognize the importance of moving away from print publications to online publications.

"A strong online presence may secure more readers and in turn more advertisers and thus more revenue in a more challenging economic climate," said Mmeso.

A digital edition online is an electronic version of the newspaper, which appears in a form similar to the print version and can be downloaded from the newspaper's website to ease the transition for older readers. Enditem
Exclusive: After BP takes a hit, investors widen climate change campaign FILE PHOTO: Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at Sarasin & Partners, poses for a photograph at their office in London

By Matthew Green and Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors managing 1.8 trillion ($2.2 trillion) in assets are widening a campaign pressing oil majors to better reflect climate risks in their accounting, and will soon target other businesses with heavy fossil fuel exposure, the group said on Monday.

The investors believe their campaign is working, noting the "hugely important" news of BP joining other oil majors in lowering the value of its assets amid a global transition to cleaner energy, said Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at asset manager Sarasin & Partners.

"The question all company directors and their shareholders now need urgently answered is, 'Where else might company positions be overstated?'" the group of more than 20 leading funds said in a joint statement seen by Reuters.

BP declined to comment on the campaign.

The investor group can't be certain whether its efforts played into BP's decision to reduce the value of its assets by up to $17.5 billion, announced on June 15.

But they have already begun lobbying building materials company CRH and plan to write to Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto, which supplies the steel industry. Along with cement, steel is a major source of greenhouse gases.

"We will be rolling out similar engagements with other fossil fuel-dependent companies," Landell-Mills, who is coordinating the campaign, told Reuters in an interview.

The investors were also planning to include European and U.S. banks financing fossil fuel projects, Landell-Mills added.

Rio Tinto and CRH declined to comment.

Early last year, the investors began lobbying the Big Four accounting firms - EY, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG - to do more to ensure climate-related risks are adequately reflected in company financial statements they audit.

The campaign is one of a number of efforts by investors to push companies on environmental policies, amid concerns many businesses are both contributing to the planet's warming while also failing to take full stock of the risks they face.

Story continues

Major fund managers including BlackRock have issued increasingly strident public statements about climate change, while other investors have threatened to pull money out of Brazil unless Amazon deforestation is curbed.

The campaign led by Sarasin & Partners emphasizes the legal duty companies have to ensure their financial statements fully reflect how government moves to ratchet up climate action and the falling costs of renewable energy are likely to affect future profitability.

"It's a very serious thing from their perspective," said Landell-Mills. "This is a matter of ensuring there is no misrepresentation going on."

Accounting for potential future losses can weaken a company's balance sheet, making it harder to finance new investment in carbon-intensive activities such as oil exploration, the investors argue.

The coalition includes Sarasin & Partners, M&G Investments, Jupiter Asset Management, NN Investment Partners and pension funds such as the Brunel Pension Partnership and Denmark's PKA.

"POTENTIALLY OVERSTATING"

Although it was difficult to independently assess the impact of the campaign, Landell-Mills pointed to a series of moves that align with the investors' demands in letters https://sarasinandpartners.com/stewardship-post/paris-aligned-accounting-is-vital-to-deliver-climate-promises sent to BP, Anglo-Dutch major Shell and France's Total in November.

In the letters, seen by Reuters, the investors questioned whether the companies' oil price assumptions, which form the bedrock of their accounts, were aligned with the 2015 Paris climate accord, which implies sharp cuts in fossil fuel use.

Before BP's writedown, the group's letter to the British oil major said: "We have concerns that, at present, BP's accounts may be overlooking material climate considerations, and consequently potentially overstating both performance and capital." The same language was used with Shell and Total.

Total did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. Shell said it had "comprehensively responded" to similar demands by the investor group, and included climate risks in its accounts. "Since that time, Shell has also published an ambition to be a net zero energy company by 2050, or sooner," Shell said in an email to Reuters on Sunday.

Last week, BP cut its benchmark Brent oil price forecasts to an average of $55 a barrel until 2050, from $70, saying it expects a collapse in oil demand during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate a low-carbon transition.

BP also said it would have to review some plans for early stage oil and gas exploration projects.

Meanwhile, Shell also lowered its long-term Brent crude expectations to $60 a barrel, from the 2018 price of $70, in its 2019 annual report published in March. Total also reduced its price assumptions at about the same time.

While majors often adjust price assumptions, the investors noted that Shell's auditor's report contained substantially more references to climate risks than the previous year.

"It's tip of the iceberg," Landell-Mills said. "And investors will have to understand that they (oil majors) are not going to be able to pay dividends like they did before."

($1 = 0.8102 pounds)

(Reporting by Matthew Green Simon Jessop; Additional reporting by Zandi Shabalala in London; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lincoln Feast)
In this Sept. 30, 2019, file photo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton gestures while speakings at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo)

Bolton Says He Wont Vote for Biden as He Calls Democrats Almost as Bad as Trump

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said he wont vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden after saying he thinks President Donald Trumps administration isnt conservative.

Bolton, who makes a number of unsubstantiated claims against Trump in his new book, served in the administration for nearly a year and a half, only leaving when he was fired.

Many of the allegations leaked to media outlets and others were detailed by Bolton in an interview with ABC News that was finally broadcast in full on Sunday.

Congressional Democrats are weighing up whether to try to get Bolton testify about the claims, even as they criticize him for not appearing voluntarily before the House of Representatives during the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for instance, said Bolton was arrogant, alleging he chose loyalty over patriotism by not testifying.

Bolton hit back in the ABC interview, saying he was fully prepared to testify but never received a subpoena.

I think the way the House advocates of impeachment proceeded was badly wrong. I think it was impeachment malpractice. I think they were determined because of their own political objectives to conduct an impeachment proceeding that was very narrowly focused on Ukraine, and that went very, very quickly, he said.

House impeachment managers Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Val Demmings (D-Fla.) look on as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) speaks during a press conference after the Senate adjourned for the day during the Senate impeachment trial at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 28, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

House Democrats didnt wanna mess up the Democratic presidential nomination, he charged, adding, I find that conduct almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump.

Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House but acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate earlier this year.

I think the House Democrats built a cliff, they threw themselves off of it. And halfway down, they looked up and saw me, and said, Hey, why dont you come along?' Bolton said. Impeachment and removal wouldnt work unless Democrats sought and received cooperation from Republican lawmakers, he added.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was the only Republican to vote to impeach or convict Trump.

Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks about the unrest across the country from Philadelphia City Hall in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 2, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

A UK paper, The Telegraph, published a story quoting Bolton as saying he plans to support Biden.

But Bolton said he doesnt plan to vote for the president or his presumed challenger.

Im gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in, he said.

In a separate statement, a Bolton spokeswoman told news outlets: The Ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden.

He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican. Let there be no doubthe will not be voting for Trump or Biden, she added.
In the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter protests around the world, founder and CEO of Uoma Beauty Sharon Chuter demanded that the beauty industry #PullUpOrShutUp by sharing their gender and racial demographics to reveal the number of Black employees they have at corporate and executive levels. Bringing this closer to our shores, it is without doubt that the inclusion and representation of Black people in corporate South Africa continues to be an urgent matter that needs to be addressed. So, before a company affirms that Black lives matter, let's talk about what that actually means.

Khanyisa Nomoyi

There is no transformation and inclusion without justice

Black lives matter always and in all ways

Marginalisation where Blackness and disability intersects

Do away with dehumanising, marginalising systems

Matters of social justice, inclusion and representation are business matters. It is no longer acceptable for the private sector to be silent and ignorant when it comes to the consistently shifting social and political landscape. It is imperative for business to engage, reflect and take meaningful action on issues pertaining to global politics. These shifts speak to the very essence of transformation work where the business sector is required to take seriously discrimination, bias and unbalanced power dynamics across organisational levels. Lending support to the hashtags through public statements and supporting BLM activists and organisations is no longer sufficient.Companies have the additional responsibility to prioritise Black lives within their business operations and act to justly transform the business sector across South Africa.The issue has never been about diversity. People have always existed in difference of experiences, positionality, power and social capital. Corporate South Africas task is two-fold: an urgent response to addressing power imbalances within companies and a meaningful understanding of how Black employees exist in multitudinous ways which inform how they navigate workplace dynamics and structures.To affirm the importance of Black lives, companies have to reflect on existing leadership structures and the lack of representation of Black women in those spaces. Beyond inclusion, Black people often step into executive positions and have to endure hostile environments which shove their ideas, innovations and presence to the margins. These spaces further marginalise them through silence and maintaining barriers which make it difficult for upcoming Black staff to aspire to these positions of seniority and leadership.Black lives matter includes the prioritisation of safety for Black LGBTQIAP+ employees and ensuring that companies have sufficient supportive policies and protective mechanisms. It means a company which posits care for its employees as a core value, must consistently demonstrate tangible support and recognition for Black employees within these communities.Black lives matter includes closing the pay gap. It means wages and salaries that translate to a sustainable livelihood for support staff, interns, graduates, junior- and mid-level employees. And in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it requires companies to guard against the disproportional and negative impact this will have on Black employees.The lives of Black employees living with disabilities matter and need to be reflected beyond non-discrimination policies. Taking intersectionality seriously requires business to understand the layered experiences of employees in accessing and growing within companies. Access means more than infrastructural changes  it invests in the upward mobility of employees by reimagining different ways of working. Companies need to undergo the necessary changes to further understand the marginalisation experienced by people where their Blackness and disability intersects.Black lives matter in company hiring and procurement processes. The presence of Black staff should not be confined to adhering to BEE requirements. Companies need to interrogate procurement processes which alienate and exclude Black-owned and -led businesses. All these actions require the private sector to undergo urgent transformation which prioritises Black expertise and experiences in business through meaningful approaches geared towards progression and innovations within the sector.Corporate South Africa must pull up  both with the numbers and the actions needed to accelerate transformation across the sector. The assertion of #BlackLivesMatter through branding and marketing is not meant to be a self-aggrandising exercise for corporates where Black employees continue to be marginalised. To say Black lives matter, business must act and create cultures that are conducive to the growth and inclusion of Black people within their organisations. Black lives matter serves as a global rallying call that demands all spheres of society to take seriously the expansiveness of Black people and the need to do away with dehumanising and marginalising systems. And that includes the workplace.
I wrote this: This citys murder factory churns out names, nothing else. Those names turn up in the newspaper and on TV, in sympathetic or outraged social media posts and on the tongues of politicians. And they mean nothing. If they did  if all the names over all these years ever meant anything  Takiya might still be an 11-year-old girl playing with friends. Lavontay might still be breathing and bringing the kind of joy to the world that a 2-year-old can, with only a laugh. Kanari might still be a little girl with a future.
Bouraoui convicted on six counts, including insulting the president and insulting Islam.

An Algerian court has sentenced prominent anti-government activist Amira Bouraoui to a year in prison amid a growing climate of repression, one of her lawyers said.

Bouraoui, a 44-year-old gynaecologist, is a prominent activist in the Hirak protest movement that secured the resignation of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika last April.

The mother-of-two was convicted on six counts, including insulting Islam, insulting President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and incitement to violate lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

She was also accused of inciting illegal protests, and publishing fake news.

Prosecutors had sought 18 months imprisonment.

This conviction is unjust, there is no evidence. We are going to appeal, her lawyer, Mustapha Bouchachi, told AFP news agency.

These kind of lawsuits, which have been going on for months, wont calm the political situation. Its not the best way to open up towards society, activists and this peaceful revolution, he added, referring to the Hirak movement.

Bouraoui was arrested at her home on Wednesday.

A former activist with the Barakat or Thats Enough! movement, she came to prominence in 2014 when she opposed Bouteflika running for a fourth term.

Algerian authorities have arrested and prosecuted numerous activists in an apparent bid to prevent protests from resuming when the coronavirus lockdown is lifted.

Most prosecutions are being carried out under a new penal code passed hastily on April 22 amid the public health crisis.

The recent wave of arrests and prosecutions led some opposition activists to say the current rights situation is worse than during Bouteflikas rule, particularly with regard to freedom of the press.

The North African country has gradually been relaxing its coronavirus lockdown measures since June 7.

Even though large gatherings have been forbidden since mid-March, hundreds of protesters turned out on Friday to resume the weekly protests that marked the political scene before the virus lockdown  particularly in the northwest Kabylie region, according to local sources.

Authorities arrested nearly 500 people across the country during Fridays demonstrations, though most were subsequently released, said Said Salhi, vice president of the Algerian Human Rights League (LADDH).

Of approximately 100 held on Friday, nearly 20 were remanded in custody on Sunday. The rest were either convicted and sentenced or freed pending trial.

Before the latest wave of arrests, the National Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners (CNLD) said some 60 people linked to the Hirak movement were in detention.

The movement started in February 2019, calling for an overhaul of Algerias political system, demands that continued after Bouteflika resigned.
Director and Editor-in-Chief Claude Karger confirmed that this was no easy decision to take.

President Kik Schneider and Director and Editor-in-Chief Claude Karger communicated on Monday that the final print edition of Luxembourg's daily "Letzebuerger Journal" will be published on 31 December of this year.

The newspaper will switch to full digital in 2021.

"Letzebuerger Journal" had already reduced its daily newspaper from six times per week to five.

The Luxembourgish daily will focus on its digital presence for now one. Readers' habits have changed over time, thus forcing the paper to rethink its strategy.

The corona crisis had confirmed that print papers were no longer sustainable financially, the press release read.

1 January 2021 is thus a new era for the newspaper, which was founded in 1948. A periodical print publication, however, will remain.
Imagine being told to report to work in a pandemic. Your child has been home from a school that is closed and plans for affordable summer camps remain uncertain. The only emergency child care center currently available is brand new to you and your child. You need to buy your own masks at a time when millions of other people are as well. When you get to work you realize it isnt as hygienic as the state called for, but you dont want to say anything because you need your paycheck during a recession.

If we dont get these simple yet central elements correct, we will not see the economic recovery we want or maintain the public health environment we need.

Workplace transmission of COVID-19 likely played a substantial role in the spread of the disease during the early stages of the outbreak, according to new research by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. These workplaces were mostly occupations outside of health care.

As the Baker administration continues with phased reopening, several critical elements are needed to address the safety and daily needs of Massachusetts residents during reopening. The state Senate has started a series of listening sessions related to reopening. They are an opportunity to learn if more is needed now, which emergency actions could usefully stay beyond the state of emergency, and what needs adjustment in the new normal. Three areas are particularly critical: child care; personal protective equipment; and safe working environments.

The concern I hear about most is child care. With schools closed and summer programs facing serious challenges, child care is a big factor as families decide whether to return to the workplace.

In the commonwealth, we do not treat or publicly fund child care like the necessity it is. In fact, Massachusetts is one of the least affordable state for child care. The average cost for care of an infant is $20,125 annually and $18,586 for toddlers, according to a report by Eye on Early Education.

Beyond affordability, the viability of our child care system is at risk due to COVID-19. As necessary health-care guidelines limit group sizes and increase staff ratios, business models that rely on maximizing the number of children in a program may not work. The pandemic could result in the closure of 30% of U.S. child care centers for good, a recent Business Insider report estimated.

Securing Personal Protective Equipment was once exclusively a concern for health-care providers. Shortages were rampant as the state government worked to procure 1.7 million pieces of PPE for frontline workers in Massachusetts alone. Massachusetts was outbid or had supplies seized by the federal government. Imagine the race to procure PPE while demand and prices surge as more than 4 million Massachusetts workers reenter the workplace. If supplies run short or if hygiene protections are insufficient in the workplace, the current framework unfairly places responsibility on workers to raise concerns about their boss with local boards of health and the departments of Public Health and Labor Standards. Workers could be forced to choose between potential retaliation if they speak up or continued potential exposure if they keep their mouth closed.

The states response to each of these must be forward leaning and swift.

First, fixing our child care system will require a complete overhaul. In the meantime, to protect parents from losing a job due to a lack of child care for the duration of the COVID-19 state of emergency I have filed a bill called The Parent Protection Act. The bill not only protects a parents job, it encourages businesses to make reasonable accommodations to allow parents to continue work from home when feasible, consider flexible work hours and provide on-site child care.

Second, Massachusetts can support the procurement of PPE by establishing a bulk purchasing program that keeps prices reasonable and ensures availability across the commonwealth. Without legislative action our state could experience the same outbidding process and local sources will almost certainly be outbid for the PPE needed to reopen safely.

Finally, workers who feel they are being put in danger need a streamlined process to voice concerns without fear of retaliation. Attorney General Maura Healey has established a hotline for workers concerned with the condition of their workplace during the phased reopening. It is time to create a permanent ombudsperson for worker protection in the attorney generals office.

A phased reopening that ensures safety and encourages participation in the workforce requires deliberately removing obstacles that workers currently confront.

Adam Hinds is state senator for the Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin & Hampden district and is the Senate presidents designee on reopening and recovery.
India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (Wikipedia)

The official spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are fulminating in television debates screaming, The Chinese backstabbed India. They are aghast at the killings of Indian soldiers by the Peoples Liberation Army, and pointing out that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who broke bread with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mamallapuram and was serenaded on the banks of Sabarmati river with folk music and showered petals, betrayed Modi.

Instead of calm analysis to find out what triggered the surprise Chinese attack, they are becoming delusional. This kind of naivete from self-styled 'strategists' of think tanks who advise the government in dealing with realpolitik and strategic matters with a country like China is dangerous to national security as we have seen now in Ladakh. Soldiers, including a commanding officer, were gruesomely killed. Entrenchments happened inside the Indian territory at various points along the LAC in Ladakh and Naku la in Sikkim.

Journalist Harish Khare called it 'failure of imagination' on the part of Modi, just as the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru failed to imagine that China would attack India in 1962. It was not failure of imagination but failure of 'intelligence' now and in 1962, according to many apolitical defence analysts.

Nehru, who is blamed by Modi and his party for all of India's present-day ills, though far-fetched, certainly must take the blame for getting carried away by the euphoria of Chini-India bhai bhai, falling to the beguiling charm of Zhou En Lai even as Chairman Mao was building its war machine to invade India in 1962. The Chinese overran the unprepared and unsuspecting Indian Army, resulting in loss of territory in Arunachal and Aksaichin in Ladakh and heavy casualties. Indians thought then, just as now, that China was treacherous. Nehru, a broken man, admitted to this before his death.

Similarities between now and 1962

There are many parallels between 1962 and today. Nehru pursued what was known as an aggressive Forward Policy and the Indian military carried out frequent probes deep behind Chinese posts that were picketed North of the McMohan line, even though India and Tibet considered that as the official border since 1914 when it was signed. Nehru being a historian believed that the ancient border ran along the ridges and peaks North of the MC Mohan Line. Tibet was then independent.

Nehru also angered the Chinese with his open espousal of the Tibetan cause and gave refuge to the Dalai Lama and his followers. He gave permission to raise a secretive Tibetan Border Force that recruited Tibetans for surveillance of the borders but China perceived it as Indian attempts to undermine and subvert Chinese rule in Tibet.

While Nehru did all this, perplexingly he refused to increase the defence budget, for military spending and prepare for a possible war despite advice from many military commanders because he was unrealistic and wedded to a pacifist policy, while his critics called him naive, lacking in statecraft. Nehrus focus was also more on large dams and steel plants and building institutions while he discounted Chinese threats. When India sent its troops in 1961 to Goa, then still a Portuguese colony and evicted the Portuguese, many Congress leaders including the then home minister Lal Bahadur Shastri boasted in Parliament that China will be taught a similar lesson if it does not vacate Aksaichin on its own. While Nehru and Zhou Enlai were both still trying to resolve the border disputes through dialogue, all these pinpricks and threats, and inciting Tibet against China, enraged Mao who felt Nehru was acting two-faced.

Same mistakes as in the past

Increasingly isolated from both Russia and the US, China planned meticulously and gathered all resources for a massive invasion to put a stop to perceived imperialist ambitions of India which Mao felt was inching closer to the US. Beijing invaded India in October 1962 on two fronts more than 2,000 km apart in Ladakh and Arunachal, then known as NEFA. Similar sentiments as now, of betrayal by China, were expressed by followers of Nehru who were woolly-headed sentimentalists when it came to dealing with the emerging new world order. So, after constantly ridiculing Nehru for the 1962 disaster, how did the present government making its brand of muscular nationalism its war cry at every opportunity commit the same blunders that independent Indias first prime minister did?

Even as Nehru was increasingly promoting non-alignment on the international arena and the philosophy of Panchsheel with Zhou Enlai prior to 1962, China had made its intentions clear about its military build-up and ambitions of being a military power after it was increasingly bullied both by the US and Russia, the two superpowers. In his address to the Chinese Communist Party Politiburo in 1956, Chairman Mao said:

"... Not only are we going to have more airplanes and artillery, but also the atomic bomb. In today's world, if we don't want to be bullied, we have to have this thing."

Both Nehru and his cohorts then and the government and its advisors now failed to read China correctly. Nehru was warned by astute analysts and military commanders about China's cloak-and-dagger methods. And reputed military analysts have been writing reams about the Chinese hegemonic designs and massive infrastructure build-up and helipads, airfields and fortifications all along the Tibetan border from Ladakh and Sikkim to Arunachal since the last three decades, and of late have been warning of heavy mobilisation of troops, armour and artillery which have been ignored by both the UPA and the NDA led by the BJP.

Two salient parts

There are clearly two aspects to all this. Prudent diplomatic and geopolitical policies on the one hand and military capabilities and related strategy and tactics on the other have to be pursued together. Both have bearing and influence on one another. Did Modi make the same mistakes Nehru did? Many retired military analysts such as Lt Gen HS Panag and Brahma Chelany think so.

While Modi's diplomatic initiatives with China were bold and laudable and his personal meetings with Xi were the right initiatives, India should have kept its eyes peeled on the massive Chinese build-up along the LAC and matched it, even as he hugged and broke bread with Xi in an atmosphere of disarming bonhomie. There's a method in the madness why China attacked the Indian troops now.

MK Narayanan, former head of IB and NSA during the UPA rule, who attended the border dispute dialogues from 2010 to 2015 as a Special Representative, said "Almost all India-China border agreements are premised on the presumed neutrality of both countries.... this sentiment was an ever-present reality during all border discussions."

It's implicit and obvious that if India wishes to resolve border disputes amicably with China, India cannot align itself with the US in matters that are inimical to China's interests. Modi rushed to placate Trump and eagerly sided with the US in many conflicts of interest between US and China and even adopted a belligerent policy that was decidedly against China's interests by joining the QUAD the alliance of the US, Australia, Japan and India to deter Chinese expansionist activities in the South China Sea and Far East.

Xi must have seen this as running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. This decidedly angered Xi because of India's pro-US stance, even as it was negotiating and trying to resolve border issues.

The New York Times in an elaborate article published on June 16 attributed the trigger among other things to Home Minister Amit Shah (just as the home minister of Nehru in 1961) triumphantly proclaiming in Parliament last year soon after abrogating Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, that India will not only repossess POK (Pak-Occupied Kashmir) from Pakistan but also wrest back Aksaichin from China and would 'sacrifice life for this'.

If India expects China to be not hypocritical, China too will not accept double-dealing by IndiaModi embracing Xi here and hugging Trump over a deal that threatens China is not seen by Xi as acts of good faith. The long and short of this is , political grandstanding in geopolitics must be tempered by deep analysis taking into account the fallout on bilateral issues with neighbours, especially someone as wily and belligerent as China and must be accompanied by shrewd assessment of enemy's capabilities, designs and actions on our borders. To be non-aligned may be more prudent till India becomes a military and economic power house.

Many highly decorated retired army generals have pointed out that though successive governments have been tardy and have failed in building adequate armament capabilities of the three forces in step with China, which has a military edge over India, India has acquired over the years, despite the foregoing handicaps, formidable capabilities in a conventional war with China. In mountain warfare, its viewed by analysts even among many in the West as the best in the world and theres wide consensus that India has an edge over China in the Himalayan high-altitude mountains if a full-scale war breaks out.

And the terrain is to Indias advantage. CNN analyst Brad Lendon in an article of June 18 reported: "Conventional wisdom has it that China holds a significant military advantage over India, but recent studies from the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Boston and the Center for a New American Security in Washington suggest India maintains an edge in high-altitude mountainous environments, such as the one where the 2020 face-off is taking place."

In any full-fledged war, (though it should be avoided unless thrust on you ) local populations matter. Let us bear in mind that the entire border with China is with Tibet, an annexed territory and in any warfare China has to contend with a Tibetan population, which is inimical to it and is seeking to free itself from China and will back India. Indian troops are one of the best-trained and motivated in the world and have over 200 years of war experience from Mesopotamia, Afghan wars, the first and second World Wars (two million Indian soldiers took part) and have fought fierce battles and won high praise.

All these should put China on the back foot regardless of its posturing. And on a previous occasion in 1967 when the Chinese crossed the borders at Nathu La and Cho La in Sikkim they were punished with heavy retaliation by Indian army, which was led by Gen. Sagat Singh. The Chinese withdrew after losing 340 soldiers. But I wish to emphasise that even if we did not have these advantages, the way to deal with a bully is not the way India has chosen. Appeasement of a bully only emboldens him.

A wake-up call

The moot point is, the Operations Manuals and Guidelines for military commanders on the field, at all levels of command are very clearly defined and laid out and they are given sufficient leeway and are expected to use their discretion in repulsing the enemy incursions by choosing appropriate timely tactical responses. They are also required to keep their higher command in the loop.

The problem arises when there is ambiguity in enunciating a clear strategy at the political level and when theres prevarication and pussyfooting by political leadership, taking away the discretion of army commanders on the field to act decisively when enemy encroaches on your territory. The army commanders cannot suo moto invade a neighbouring country but they are not expected to seek permission from higher authorities to repel enemy incursion into Indian territory. That will be abdicating their core responsibility.

When the enemy crosses the border deliberately or tries to entrench itself , there has to be instant violent retaliation. As the legendary General George Patton said, in such matters, "A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan next week."

This hard punch in the face from China is a good wake-up call to the country. Three-and-a-half decades have been wasted by political parties losing themselves in the morass of venal politics of minority appeasement, corruption, horse-trading, communal majoritarian politics, dynastic politics and blind hero worship and completely skewed priorities with poor governance, while China has diligently focussed on becoming an economic and military superpower and has steadfastly built a formidable military support infrastructure all along our border.

Our soldiers are intrepid and fierce warriors but has the government measured up to them by providing the adequate wherewithal to fight an enemy on two fronts - Pakistan and China? Its time now to focus all our energy on building a robust economy, which is a pre-requisite to a robust military.

GR Gopinath is the founder of Air Deccan. He served on the Chinese front in Cho La and Indo-Bangla War 1971.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about negative side effects of incorrectly taking the steroid pill dexamethasone, which has recently been touted to help patients recover from the coronavirus.

Last week, a United Kingdom-based trial investigating potential COVID-19 treatments announced that taking in low doses for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation.

The regulator reminded in a June 19 advisory that dexamethasone is a drug which requires a doctor's prescription for purchase, adding that it cannot be sold online and taken for home or self-medication.

The FDA said improper use of the medicine could lead to harmful side effects, which include a weaker immunity system in fending off infections, ulcer or bleeding inside the stomach, weaker bones, muscular weakness, and the slow recovery of wounds. The drug could also lead to stunted growth of babies and children, swollen feet and other body parts, diabetes, or hypertension.

Being a steroid drug, a sudden disruption in intake could also lead to withdrawal symptoms such as lower blood pressure, shock, or even a coma, according to the advisory issued by FDA Director General Rolando Enrique "Eric" Domingo.

RELATED: Dexamethasone not a game changer, but a step forward to treat patients with respiratory problems  medical expert

The Department of Health previously expressed concern that this discovery might lead people to think that dexamethasone is a magic pill for COVID-19, with agency Spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire noting that the research findings need to be peer reviewed first to check if these are "acceptable" to the scientific community.

The health official reiterated that there is still no proven cure for and vaccine against the disease. Still, the DOH acknowledged that this may be a "breakthrough" in the global fight against COVID-19.

The country now has confirmed 30,052 infections, along with 1,169 deaths and 7,893 recoveries as of Sunday afternoon.
Luck and timing: How B.C. has managed to avoid the worst-case COVID-19 scenario

The day that 60-year-old Cathy Novak got the call from public health authorities on Vancouver Island saying she tested positive for COVID-19, restaurants across British Columbia were already closing after a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people was implemented.

That was March 16.

Five days later, 10 deaths in the province were linked to the novel coronavirus, and Novak, a part-time dental hygienist who attended an international industry conference in Vancouver in early March that drew thousands of people, was struggling to breathe as she lay in an ambulance on her way to a hospital in Victoria.

"At that point, I was feeling a bit hopeless," Novak said as she struggled to hold back tears in an interview with CBC News in her backyard in Victoria.

"I don't know if I am coming back home."

Within a few hours of arriving at the hospital her husband, John McAllister, learned she was placed on a ventilator.

"That was when the doctor told me that if we waited any longer, even one more day, it might have been too late," he said.

WATCH | Vancouver Island resident describes her experience:

Shutting down spring break

In mid-March, with cases of COVID-19 rising rapidly and with outbreaks in multiple long-term care homes, it appeared that B.C. was poised to be hit particularly hard by the global pandemic.

However, in the months since, the province has been praised for flattening the curve ahead of other regions.

B.C. recorded Canada's first COVID-19 death on March 8  at the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver.

The current COVID death rate in the province is approximately 33 deaths per million people  one of the lowest among large jurisdictions in Canada, the U.S. and western Europe.

Officials and health experts credit its success to a combination of sound decision-making and good fortune.

Ben Nelms/CBC

"Part of it was timing, part of it was luck, and part of it was embracing what we needed to do and doing it together," said Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.'s provincial health officer, in an interview with CBC News.

Story continues

The timing of B.C.'s March break, which began on March 16, was fortuitous.

Unlike in Quebec, where spring break came at the start of the month, when school let out in B.C., health officials were already advising Canadians to cancel all non-essential trips out of the country.

It was a different message in Ontario however, which had March break at the same time as Premier Doug Ford on March 12 told a press conference: "I just want the families and their children to have a good time. Go away, have a good time, enjoy yourselves, and we're going to be monitoring the situation."

The government announced the same day that schools would be closed for two weeks following the break.

Beyond the timing of holiday travel, public-health experts say the close co-ordination between the province's health authorities, as well as its management of long-term care homes, were factors in reducing transmission.

Care-home changes

"Initially, there was some fear experienced by the staff, by some residents and families," said Dr. Michael Schwandt, a medical health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health.

In the beginning, health-care workers were on the lookout for the typical cough and fever, but Schwandt said that by mid-March, the health region's testing strategy for care facilities was much broader and included testing people who were dizzy, confused and had unexplained falls.

On March 27, the province issued an order to limit the movement of staff between care homes and announced that wages would be standardized so workers who typically do shifts at multiple facilities wouldn't face financial hardship. The province estimates that move is costing about $10 million a month.

"That would have had a very significant damping effect on preventing this wildfire from hopping from one long-term care home to another," said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.

While B.C.'s order came about three weeks ahead of Ontario's decision to restrict staff movement, it still took months to implement as care-homes had to sort out staffing schedules and wage structures

Gradually over the past two and a half months, B.C's 501 care facilities have moved to single site staffing, with the process completed June 18.

B.C. was also among the provinces that weren't dependent on the federal procurement program for personal protective equipment but was able to source and import gloves, masks, gowns and respirators through its own supply-chain management system.

Glen Kugelstadt/CBC

Health officer in front of response

Throughout the public-health emergency, Dr. Bonnie Henry has been out front, updating the public on provincial transmission, as well as closures, restrictions and other safety precautions.

Furness said that has helped instill confidence and credibility.

"If I could put us in a time machine, and I could send Ontario back to early March, I would have an effective expert owning the podium and doing the communication,'' he said, referring to the fact that Ontario's premier has handled the majority of the briefings in his province.

While B.C. has been praised for its handling of the pandemic, and marked its first week with no COVID-19 deaths since March this Friday, Henry said she doesn't feel that she can slow down and take a breath.

There have been more than 45 outbreaks at care facilities in the province, including during the week of June 15.

WATCH | There's more work to be done, says Dr. Bonnie Henry:

"We can never get it perfectly right," Henry said.

"It is really hard to look back right now, because we still have a lot of ways to go until we are out of this crisis."

B.C. has one of the lowest testing rates in Canada and has chosen to recommend testing only for people with symptoms. That is a much different strategy than next door in Alberta, which has a slightly higher death rate than B.C.'s but where testing is available to anyone.

Henry said a priority for the fall, when health experts say Canada will likely see a second wave of COVID-19, is to enhance contact tracing by making the system for monitoring people who test positive more rapid and efficient.

Complacency concern

For Novak, it has now been more than two months since she was discharged from the hospital, and she is still gradually recovering. She was on the ventilator for 12 days and didn't realize how long she had been in a coma until a nurse told her a few days after she regained consciousness.

"I couldn't sleep that night. I did a lot of reflecting and feeling lucky to be alive," she said.

But when Novak was discharged in mid-April, her body was weakened. She was unable to even open a can of pop, and she found herself irritable and frustrated in those first few weeks.

She said she's grateful for the care she received but is surprised at how little contact she has had from public health workers to check in on her progress.

"That has probably been the difficult part because we don't have a GP, and I feel like I don't really have the followup I thought I would have," she said.

Novak and her husband are sticking close to home and say they will likely be the last people out mingling, because they aren't sure whether he ever contracted the virus.

"We are definitely worried about people getting complacent," she said.

"Hopefully, I will never get it again, but there are other people you could pass it on to, so that's still a danger."
This year I was invited to speak at FOSS4G, the premier conference for open source geospatial tech. Then, of course, everything happened and the conference isnt. Its a pity  I was really excited for it and very thankful that the organizers were willing to take a chance on me, despite my several years of remove from the industry. I had chosen a topic thats near to my heart and also might benefit from a little distance. Not being one to leave scraps on the shop floor, here are some of the ideas: on ethics in geospatial software.

The only new market is ads

Part of the optimism of the early 2010s in geo was the sense that we might uncover new markets: that the old markets of oil & gas, real estate, military, and government could be supplemented by something new. Maybe individual farmers would benefit from real-time data, or social apps like Foursquare would be map-first. There had to be money somewhere.

Ten years later, the only new market is advertising. Google Maps became a platform for advertising. Everyone else learned that passive location tracking (telemetry) was a nice complement to their consumer behavioral analysis.

With the exception of high-end niches like hiking maps, consumer geospatial is an ad-supported industry. You can argue about whether ads can be ethical, but theres little debate that they currently arent: targeted advertising is currently as personal and invasive as is legally allowed, and the USA sets almost no limit. All of the data that is collected and anonymized by ad-tech is potentially re-identifiable, as I wrote in 2018, and geospatial is even more-so than most forms.

Its hard to overstate the influence of intelligence & oil in geo

I admire Christophers openness about this, and have a few minor stories of my own. Heres one of them.

In 2011, I worked on a specification called MBTiles, which stored image files of parts of a map - map tiles - in an SQLite database, which could conveniently be stored as a single file. Basically the problem we were trying to solve was that FAT filesystems had problems storing thousands of files and that writing thousands of files to a disk or transferring them across the web had really high overhead. So we just wanted one file that we could use without unzipping or unpacking: hence, MBTiles. It was a silly solution to a silly problem and it succeeded because we didnt overthink it.

A little while later, the OGC reached out about standardizing MBTiles, or something like it. It was the latter: they wanted something a lot more complicated. I, at 24 and with a serious disdain for meetings, was included in the meetings. The whole direction of the project, what would become GeoPackage, was really hard to follow: the web apps and open source tools that I could imagine had no need for a lot of the things that were passed down as requirements from the people who were footing the bill.

Eventually, there was a proposal for a certain table to be included with some XML data indicating cloud cover, with a PDF linked from some military site. Then folks started referring to imagery from the bird. I was around then I realized we were designing a format for imagery to be sent from drones to soldiers.

A bunch of readers probably called that one. Looking at the list of OGC members, you can see the military industrial complex in full force: weve got the Army, Lockheed, the Australian DoD, DHS, the NGA, and a whole lot of awkwardly-named defense contractors. There are plenty of open secrets about satellite companies with  50% revenue from defense and agencies running private copies of OpenStreetMap technology to manage their data.

Oil & defense, of course, havent just been consuming software or taking advantage of our hard work. Our system of projections & datums is largely thanks to oil money - originally the European Petroleum Survey Group - the EPSG in EPSG, and now the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers. Without In-Q-Tel, theres no Keyhole, so no Google Earth or KML. Without dependable intelligence contracts, who knows if Maxars constellation of satellites would exist. Or GPS.

But the fact that these interests were so involved in the modernization of the field and are now the largest and most profitable contracts to win shouldnt be reason to accept them indefinitely.

Doing things is possible

I think that this is bad: that the military-industrial complex is either straightforwardly bad, or at least not good enough that you should donate your time to them. But we all have been donating our time to them, via open source software.

There are ways to change the status quo. Consider ethos licensing, which has been extremely divisive. But do yourself a favor by reading lawyers instead of commenters: Heather Meekers skeptical take and Kyle Mitchells more positive one. Ethos licensing is a way of using the power of copyright to do more than just protect your rights or give them away: its the idea that you could prevent human rights abusers from using your work via legal means.

It probably wont work, at least how you would hope. Were in the age of legal realism, in which power and money matters more than the letter of the law. And you probably shouldnt call it open source because the OSI, the organization that controls the term (somehow?) says that ethos licensing isnt open source. But using an exotic license would work in the case of large companies which have explicit lists of allowed & banned licenses, like Google.

Theres a lot more

This is the facet of ethics in geo thats been on my mind recently, alongside the pressing need to recreate from the ground up the American police system. But there is so much more and I dont want to give some blase read critical theory take here. For starters, theres the representation problem in which maps only show legal and political boundaries and make it easy to forget recently-murdered native peoples. And the terrifying ease of re-identification of most anonymous datasets, something that only a handful of experts know how to resolve.

How about you?

I want to be clear about who this is for. Some folks are working for ethically fishy organizations trying to make them better, and some might be right. Some people need to hold down a steady job because they have a family and a mortgage. Some people just love writing code that will be useful to others.

When I was working in geo, I mainly fit into that last bit: fortunate enough to know I could be making a little more if I risked my ethics but that I didnt need it. The folks in that situation are the ones I judge the most, who are the most similar to me, the ones who have lots of options and knowingly take the one where youre making the world worse. Why?

For the rest of us, the folks who work on open source software or for companies that make software, the question gets harder. Without ethos licensing, anyone can use the things I write. And while once I wondered who would benefit from that technology, now I know: journalists, sure, and neat startups, and some commercial software outfits.

But theres no question of whether parts of the military and the oil industry use open source geospatial software, they do. We can only wonder whether the most reprehensible parts, like Border Patrol, an organization that had one officer or agent arrested per day from 2005 to 2012, are also using it. Our complicity is limited: without intention, sure, but no longer without knowledge. And until we figure out ethos licensing or something similar, theres no way to stop it.
USS Roosevelt, USS Nimitz Carriers Conduct Joint Drills in Pacific in Show of Force to China

Sputnik News

15:47 GMT 21.06.2020

The US deployed three aircraft carrier strike groups, or over one quarter of its active duty carrier fleet, to the Pacific last week amid escalating tensions with Beijing over Taiwan, Hong Kong, coronavirus and China's entrenchment in the South China Sea.

The USS Roosevelt and USS Nimitz' led carrier strike groups began joint flight operation drills in the Philippine Sea on Sunday, with the Navy reporting that the exercises are aimed at "demonstrating the United States' unique capability to operate multiple carrier strike groups in close proximity."

"This is a great opportunity for us to train together in a complex scenario," Rear Adm. Dough Verissimo, commander of the Roosevelt-led strike group was quoted as saying. "By working together in this environment, we're improving our tactical skills and readiness in the face of an increasingly pressurized region and COVID-19."

In addition to the aerial drills, the strike groups are expected to practice air defence, surveillance, replenishment at sea, long-range offensive strikes, and coordinated naval maneuvers.

Rear Adm. James Kirk, commander of the Nimitz' led strike group, said the joint operations "demonstrate the resilience and readiness of our naval force and are a powerful message of our commitment to regional security and stability as we protect the critically important rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea for the benefit of all nations."

The Roosevelt and the Nimitz and their support ships joined the USS Ronald Reagan strike group operating off Japan for a Pacific deployment last week, with the heavily armed naval groups deployed to send a message to China about the US's continued 'leadership' in the region.

Verissimo called the joint deployment "a great opportunity for us to train on how we would operate multiple carrier strike groups in a contested environment."

"US aircraft carriers possess flexibility, endurance, firepower, maneuverability and capability unmatched in the history of warfare," he added.

In addition to carriers and their air wings, the drills involve eight other warships, including guided missile cruisers and guided missile destroyers.

China Warns of 'Countermeasures'

Last week, China warned that it would deploy "countermeasures" to the US carrier deployment, with the Global Times newspaper pointing to the People's Liberation Army's possession of several classes of 'carrier-killing' weapons including the DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles. If deployed along China's coast, the DF-26 is capable of reaching as far as Guam. Both missiles fly toward their targets at extremely high speeds, making them very difficult to intercept, even by US carrier strike groups' extensive, multilayered air defence systems.

The simultaneous deployment of three carriers to the Pacific is the first show of force of its kind in nearly three years, and comes amid another escalation of US-China tensions earlier this month after Taiwan's defence ministry allowed a US Navy C-40A Clipper cargo aircraft to fly the span of the island on its way from Okinawa to Thailand. China, which classified Taiwan as its rightful territory, called the incident "provocative." The incident was just the latest amid a long line of grievances between Washington and Beijing including the origins of the coronavirus, a trade dispute worth hundreds of billions of dollars, technological competition, arms control issues, Hong Kong protests, the South China Sea dispute, and more.

On Thursday, President Trump reiterated that the US maintains "a policy option" under which Washington could completely break off ties with Beijing after being challenged on the issue by US trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer, who told Congress Wednesday that a "decoupling" of the two economic powers would be impossible.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Woodworking is a lifelong passion that took form during Greg McGavran's childhood, when he helped his father, a surgeon, build handmade toys. Now, as the founder of Vision Wood (6010 Magazine St., 504-265-8983; www.visionwood.com).

McGavran's favorite activity has brought him into numerous New Orleans homes, venues and restaurants  and even to Hollywood and beyond.

Without wood, New Orleans would not be New Orleans, McGavran says. Drive down St. Charles [Avenue] or most any street. What you see is wood exemplified  and not only the exterior of homes. The shade of the parks and our streets  imagine them without trees.

In high school, he honed his skills in wood shop classes, and after he finished college, he opened the hardwood flooring company Custom Wood Floors with his uncle in 1981. He then switched gears and opened Firebird Industries in Harahan in the 90s, before becoming an agent and importer. Vision Wood began to take shape just three years ago.

I was walking down Magazine Street in 2017 and [the building] was available for rent," he says. "I spent the next two years designing and creating the gallery and the business.

Vision Wood now has a local following and an international customer base. Equal parts art gallery and resource library, it provides a community space where curious browsers can peruse the creativity and mastery that goes into woodworking.

The showroom provides a presentation of wood as art by way of products in flooring, decking, paneling and furniture. Components of every piece were constructed in the space, where viewers also can discover artistic expressions in tables, benches, desks, vanities, mirrors, frames and sculptures.

We hope our clients, first and foremost, smile [to know] that wood can be so good," McGavran says. "Its a wonderful expression of all things wood  we want all to come in and enjoy.

When Vision Wood opened its doors, he thought the space would simply cater to wood enthusiasts, but it has been so well-received that clients have also booked it as a venue for birthday celebrations, corporate events and engagement parties.

For potential and returning customers interested in purchasing products, all of the wood shown in the gallery is available in small swatch samples. Clients can take them home to see what matches or complements their cabinets, baseboards and color schemes. Then, they can collaborate with the Vision Wood staff members, who answer questions, solve any problems and create custom designs.

The first thing clients usually look for is color, McGavran says  and mostly, the colors featured in the gallery are from natural woods. From there, clients select the format and grade of wood and figure out what works best with their budget.

The challenge that we have in the gallery is that we look too good and clients think we will be the most expensive, McGavran says. Then they are surprised when we are the most affordable and the highest value.

Vision Wood says they can out-compete pricing at chain stores because they manufacture and import the materials themselves.

Vision Wood also sources its materials from sustainably managed forests and other areas. And some of their most popular products are reclaimed from existing structures. We are part of a life cycle of the trees and forests, McGavran says. True wood is environmental  it is the most natural material available with the exception of air, water and sunlight.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vision Wood team has remained intact and even expanded its staff at the end of March even as stay at home orders remained in place. The business has made adjustments during mandated shutdowns to accommodate physical distancing measures implemented by officials.

Cool summer: How to beat the heat in New Orleans this season. Read the full edition of Gambit online The weather is getting hot and New Orleanians are looking for ways to beat the heat. It's officially summer  but there's still a pandemic going on.

For example, the business sent potential clients wood samples through UPS and FedEx, the gallery was open by appointment only, and the staff made house calls. Vision Wood is now open regular hours, after New Orleans moved into Phase 2 earlier this month. Visitors to the shop must wear masks.

Vision Wood's work also is displayed at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Sazerac House and Justine restaurant. The company also has tackled some big projects around the country, including installation of wood flooring at Netflix's sprawling headquarters in Los Angeles. McGavran says Vision Wood also will provide custom work for Apple's new media office, also in Los Angeles.

For McGavran, dedication to his craft comes from a belief that wood is an essential part of life.

Wood is literally everywhere and so ubiquitous," he says. "You cannot live without wood. Toilet paper, boxes for shipping and U.S. [Postal Service] would not exist without wood. Dont take wood for granted. We hope to share, so that [everyone] can just gain some gratitude and appreciation for all the good things wood offers.
America must assess the utility of its military power and be willing to rely more heavily on its diplomatic, economic, and other capabilities to shape a better future that preserves the peace, and advances prosperity and human well-being.
Mumbai, June 22 : The director duo of Devanshu Kumar and Satyanshu Singh, who recently garnered some praise for their digital film "Chintu Ka Birthday", seem to have a problem with certain aspects of Hollywood maverick Quentin Tarantinos cinema -- particularly his propensity to project evil with swagger.

"When you see 'Chintu Ka Birthday', you see how we have exaggerated goodness, the positive side of life even at a war-zone. I always questioned in my mind and I want to ask you, when we exaggerated evil on screen, when we watch world cinema -- especially films of Quentin Tarantino -- we glorify the exaggeration of evil, right? The audience take that as 'cool'. It gets celebrated in the film festival circuit. Critics and intellectuals call such film 'edgy' and audience search for such film to watch and call them 'edgy', 'grappling' films," Devanshu told IANS.

Satyanshu added: "Now I want to cite an example. When Sooraj Barjatiya glorifies and exaggerates the happy, positive and good deeds of characters in his story, why do we look down upon him, or his kind of films? We do not take such films seriously, why? We should not be ashamed of exaggerating the good side of human beings, because only that side can keep us afloat, especially in a crisis." "Chintu Ka Birthday" is the story of a little boy played by child-actor Vedant Chibber. The film released on the OTT platform ZEE5 also features Vinay Pathak, Tillotama Shome, and Seema Pahwa.

Lately, several crime thrillers and revenge stories on various digital platforms have depicted graphic violence on screen. The director duo feels that in the troublesome time that we are living in, we should rather summon the good in us.

Satyanshu said: "I think there is enough and more potential in every human being to be a superhuman, to do things that are next to impossible. But in order to awaken that superhuman you have to summon the good in you. We have to remember that we are capable of extremely shameful deeds as humans. We are also equally capable of putting out a God-like act. What I am trying to say is, we have the choice. We cannot say no to the dark side in us, we have to accept that. But at the same time, we can convince ourselves to bring out the good side and ask the devil inside us to stay quiet." About the inception of "Chintu Ka Birthday", Satyanshu said, "The whole idea is to tell a simple human story and set it in an extraordinary situation where it looks impossible. Our story was a story of a birthday celebration of a little boy, set in an Iraq war zone. It started with the impossibility of it. You normally cannot make people laugh when you set a story in a war zone. That element of impossibility drove us to make the film."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Los Angeles, June 22 : Actress Amanda Seyfried says she is optimistic about returning for a third "Mama Mia!" film.

She was part of the 2008 release, "Mama Mia!", and its 2018 sequel, "Mama Mia! Here We Go Again".

Seyfried said that she would do a third film 'in a heartbeat' in an interview with Collider, reports dailymail.co.uk.

"Listen, every single person in that movie would say yes in a heartbeat because we want to hang out with each other," she said.

"That's what we talked about last time, like did we ever think that we'd end up here again on an island in Croatia? So yeah, I wish there was a 'Mamma Mia 3'," she added.

She is worried that there might not be enough new musical material to use even if they lock a good script, and cast members returned.

'I'll tell you what -- I've said it before and I'll say it again and I hope I'm wrong again. I don't think there are enough ABBA songs to make a third movie.We'd have to use Super Trooper again and we'd have to use Mamma Mia again and have to use them in a different way," she said.

Seyfried feels "Mama Mia! Here We Go Again" was a success with critics when the original film only received mixed reviews.

"Like the first story had to match the stage show. So it was like, they were kind of stuck. With the second story, it could have been anything. Having Meryl's character die kind of gave us so many good storylines. It was kind of a genius idea because you're like, no, we don't want to lose her. But at the same time, look at what you can do, you can go back. And Lily James can play young Meryl. It was just perfect. It was so well written," she explained.
Local pastors and community leaders gathered at the historic Bull Swamp Baptist Church on Friday to celebrate Juneteenth with an outdoor prayer service for love and hope.

Minister Esther Huggins, associate minister at Bull Swamp, said it was important for the community to get together at such an historical site in Orangeburg.

Nearly 300 years ago, and some believe even longer, slaves would steal away to hold worship services in a brush or bush harbor near the Bull Swamp, Huggins said. They prayed for the day that they could worship openly.

She described the night of Dec. 31, 1862 when slaves gathered for a Watch Night to pray as they awaited word that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

When the document was signed on Jan. 1, 1863, prayers were answered and the word spread, Huggins said. There were no cell phones, no internet, no Facebook, no Twitter, Instagram or other means of social media.

She said it would be another two and a half years, on June 19, 1865, when slaves in Texas would learn of their freedom and celebrated it as Freedom Day.

On this occasion, today, we pray for the community, we pray for youth, we pray for men, we pray for women, we pray for children, we pray for salvation, we pray for all of Gods people, Huggins said.

Deacon Wilfred Pace, who is on the Deacon Board at Bull Swamp, described the significance of the Bull Swamp land as the site where slaves were about to purchase land on June 3, 1867.

Only about three to four years after slavery, they accumulated enough money to buy land, Pace said. It only tells me that whatever your mind can conceive, if you have faith in God, and walk by faith, he will supply all your needs according to his riches in heaven.

A building on the land was used to educate their children, now known as The Old Bull Swamp School.

In 1959, when the building was returned to the Bull Swamp community from the Orangeburg School Board, the trustees planned to turn the building into a community center.

Pace hopes the congregation and community are able to pick up the mantle and take it even higher.

This is a historical site in the Orangeburg community, he said.

Pace said they have found enough records and look to have Bull Swamp placed on the National Historic Register.

Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, attended the event and prayed for the restoration of love and determination.

We all can make a difference if we are committed to do so, Govan said. Give us a mind to work.

Govan asked for people to have encouragement and strength to be able to stand for justice.

The Rev. Joyce Colter, associate minister at Bull Swamp Baptist Church, asked the community to continue to pray.

It will take the almighty God to clear it and get us back on track, Colter said. We have to repent of our sins, fall on our knees and pray, and things will be better.

The Rev. James Cromartie, pastor of Olive Grove Baptist Church, said it will take action as well and hopes to see strength, inspiration and encouragement.

Awaken us God, that we wont be a church of people of passive Christianity, Cromartie said. Give us a heart for action.

The Rev. Sarah Priester, co-pastor at St. Paul Baptist Church, gave a prayer for women.

Stand in the gap for every woman that is in Orangeburg County, Priester said. You are an amazing treasure.

Youre going to affect change everywhere you step, she said.

Apostle Alphonso Myers, associate minister at Bull Swamp Baptist Church, encouraged everyone to come together regardless of race or stature.

Out of the community comes about unity, Myers said. Where theres unity, theres strength.

Love 6 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
Contact Energy (Contact CEN.NZ) recently completed a $40 million appraisal of the Tauhara geothermal field near Taupo.

Contact CEO Mike Fuge said he was pleased with the progress to date. The results from the four wells drilled in the appraisal campaign confirm what we already knew: Tauhara is a world-class renewable geothermal project, all the more attractive because of its very low associated CO2 emissions. It will play an important role in New Zealands transition to a low-carbon future. To put things in perspective, coal-fired generation emits 18 times more carbon than is expected from the Tauhara project, and gas-fired generation from a peaker emits eight times more.

In addition to building our understanding of the resource, we have already secured the equivalent of 75MW of high-temperature production fluid which is a fantastic place to be at this stage of the project.

After an exhaustive competitive tender, Contact has also selected Sumitomo Corporation (Sumitomo) as the preferred construction partner for a 150MW power station development at Tauhara and an early works contract has been signed. Sumitomo is an engineering, procurement and construction contractor, headquartered in Japan, and has successfully delivered geothermal projects in New Zealand and several other countries.

Sumitomo has partnered with New Zealand construction company Naylor Love for the civil engineering components of the project, and with Fuji Electric for the supply of the steam turbine.

Mr Fuge said the early works contract enabled Sumitomo to commence plant design and advance its site investigation and execution planning. It also provides the contractual basis to procure long-lead time turbine and generator components. The Tauhara development is now technically shovel-ready and only subject to a final investment decision as soon as market conditions allow.

If Tauhara proceeds, we expect to make an additional investment in the order of $600m. This means it remains New Zealands cheapest and most attractive baseload renewable electricity generation project, and it will deliver substantial economic benefits and jobs in the central North Island.

Source: Contact Energy (Contact CEN.NZ)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Updates Market on FY22 Guidance

My Food Bag Group Limited (NZX: MFB) Q3 FY22 Trading Update

ikeGPS Group Limited (NZX: IKE) signs $0.9m deal with tier-1 electric utility

Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) Update on Tonga Volcanic Eruption and Tsunami Event

21st January 2022 Morning Report

Trade Window Holdings Limited (NZX: TWL) TradeWindow and Mastercard teams up

Genesis Energy Limited (NZX: GNE) FY22 Q2 Performance Report

Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Seeka announces dividend of 13 cents per share

20th January 2022 Morning Report

Z Energy Limited (NZX: ZEL) Q3FY33 Operating Data


The upturn in Bharti Airtels financial fortunes continues, with a major sale netting it close to $46 million.

The companys Mauritius-based arm, Network i2i, has sold its 2.3 per cent stake in Helios Towers for about $45.86 million. Helios Towers describes itself as a leading telecom tower infrastructure company enabling mobile operators to roll out and enhance coverage in high-growth markets. It has a strong presence in a number of African countries.

While Bharti Airtel has not confirmed its plans, speculation in the Indian press is that the proceeds of the sale will be used to cut Airtels debt, which press reports put at approximately $11.65 billion (excluding lease obligations) in the quarter ending in March.

As one of the two operators hardest hit by AGR dues, alongside Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel has done a number of deals that will help to reduce its exposure. It has made it clear, however, that is not keen to pay its outstanding debt all at once, hoping instead for a 20-year payback period.

Bharti Airtel raised about $1.15 billion last month when a 2.75 per cent stake in the operator was sold to multiple global investors. Other deals in recent months include a perpetual bonds issue, which has raised $250 million, and the raising of $750 million through subordinated perpetual security bonds issued by Network i2i Limited.
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Chinese officials made clear in the days following the arrests of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor that their imprisonments were linked with Canada's having detained high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou days earlier.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this June 11, 2020, file photo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at the State Department in Washington. Pompeo is calling on China to release two Canadian men that he says face "groundless" charges of spying. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Yuri Gripas/Pool via AP

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Chinese officials made clear in the days following the arrests of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor that their imprisonments were linked with Canada's having detained high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou days earlier.

Trudeau was rebutting a spokesman for China's foreign ministry who said earlier Monday that his country does not arbitrarily detain people, and that Trudeau's earlier remarks linking the cases were "irresponsible."

Trudeau doubled down, saying Chinese officials highlighted an "obvious link" between the arrests of the two Canadians and the RCMP's arrest of Meng at the Vancouver airport in response to an extradition request from the United States. Meng was arrested on Dec. 1, 2018 and Kovrig and Spavor were taken into custody nine days later.

"They made those links from the very beginning, and continue to put political pressure on Canada through that detention," Trudeau said Monday.

"It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government, and we deplore it, and have from the very beginning."

Trudeau thanked allies, including the United States, that have criticized China for "using arbitrary detentions as a means to political ends." He said Canada and its allies "around the world" remain united against this Chinese practice.

Earlier Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China to release the Canadians, saying they face "groundless" charges of spying.

The European Union said its leadership also raised its concerns over "the continued arbitrary detention" of Kovrig and Spavor during a virtual bilateral summit with China Monday.

Trudeau also had a call with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission on Monday. A summary of their conversation provided by the Prime Minister's Office said Trudeau thanked her for the EU's "expressions of concern" for the two Canadians.

Chinese authorities announced the charges against Kovrig and Spavor on Friday, after the two had spent more than 550 days in prison without access to lawyers or family.

Since January, China has prevented Canadian diplomats from visiting Kovrig and Spavor, citing COVID-19 restrictions.

Trudeau rejected suggestions that Canada should intervene to resolve the Meng case in an attempt to free Kovrig and Spavor.

"We continue to stand up both for the independence of our judicial system and Canadian interests and values," the prime minister said. "We work behind the scenes and in public to ensure that everyone understands we will continue to work extremely hard to get these Canadians home."

Garnett Genuis, the Conservative critic on Canada-China Relations, was critical of former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley and Eddie Goldenberg, a former aide to ex-prime minister Jean Chretien, for advocating for a prisoner exchange to free Kovrig and Spavor.

"Conservatives continue to call on Justin Trudeau to respect the independence of Canada's judicial system and reject this position by senior Liberal insiders," said Genuis.

Pompeo said the U.S. is deeply concerned by China's decision to formally charge Kovrig and Spavor.

"These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless. The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada," Pompeo said in a statement on Monday.

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.

"Additionally, we echo Canada's call for immediate consular access to its two citizens, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, as China has prohibited such access for almost six months, and the world has no knowledge of the two Canadians' condition."

Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, is living in a luxury Vancouver home while her extradition case wends its way through a British Columbia court.

The United States wants to prosecute Meng for fraud, alleging she lied to banks about her company's connections with Iran, which could possibly violate U.S. sanctions.

Last month, the B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled the allegations against Meng could constitute a crime in Canada, which is necessary for an extradition. That meant Meng's case remains before the court, unresolved.

Last week, Meng's lawyers accused the Americans of misleading the B.C. court and said they are seeking a stay in the proceedings.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2020.
President Donald Trump speaks during his first re-election campaign rally in several months in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. on June 20, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

Trump to Suspend H-1B Work Visas Through End of Year

WASHINGTON-President Donald Trump will expand an existing visa ban to include certain non-immigrant work visas as part of a move to protect U.S. workers amid the economic devastation tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior administration official said on Monday.

Trump will block the entry of foreign workers on H-1B visas for skilled workers and L-1 visas for workers being transferred within a company through the end of the year, the official said. The president will also block seasonal workers on H-2B visas, with an exception for workers in the food service industry.

The move comes despite opposition from businesses who depend on foreign workers, including major tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nations largest business association, which have said it will stifle the economic recovery.

The immediate effects of the proclamation will likely be limited, as U.S. consulates around the world remain closed for most routine visa processing due to the pandemic.

The visa suspension is the latest step by Trump to restrict immigration in response to the pandemic and economic fallout.

Trump also will renew an April proclamation that temporarily blocks some foreigners from permanent residence in the United States, the senior administration official said on Monday.

Trump rolled out new health-focused rules in March that allow for the rapid deportation of immigrants caught at the border and virtually cut off access to the U.S. asylum system.

At the same time, he announced the land borders with Canada and Mexico would be closed to non-essential crossings, a measure that has been extended several times.

By Ted Hesson and Steve Holland
The UN's top rights body on Monday ordered a fact-finding mission to Libya to document violations committed since 2016 as International Criminal Court prosecutors said mass graves discovered there may constitute war crimes. Oil-rich Libya has been torn by conflict, drawing in militias, jihadists and mercenaries, since the 2011 toppling and killing of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a Western-backed uprising. Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the UN-recognised Tripoli government against eastern commander Khalifa Haftar with both sides backed by rival foreign powers. The UN Human Rights Council adopted by consensus the resolution strongly condemning all acts of violence in Libya and urging UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to "dispatch a fact-finding mission" to the country. The resolution expressed concern at reports of "torture, sexual and gender-based violence and harsh conditions in prisons and detention centres." The fact-finding mission experts will "document alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by all parties in Libya since the beginning of 2016," the text said. Tamim Baiou, Libya's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told the council shortly before the resolution was adopted by consensus that he hoped it would mark "a turning point for a better future for Libya." The resolution put forward in March by a group of African countries, but the UN's top rights body was forced to suspend its main annual session for three months due to the coronavirus crisis, postponing a vote by the 47-member council until Monday. The council's 43rd session resumed last week after Switzerland relaxed the measures imposed to halt the spread of COVID-19, and concluded Monday with the Libya resolution. - 'Long overdue' Rights groups hailed Monday's resolution. "We welcome the establishment of the fact-finding mission as an important and long overdue step towards ending the rampant impunity that has for years fuelled by the horrific crimes committed in Libya," Heba Morayef, head of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa operations, said in a statement. Hundreds have been killed and some 200,000 people were displaced in Libya since the latest escalation, that began in April 2019, when Haftar's forces, backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, began an onslaught against Tripoli. But then Tripoli's Government of National Accord, with stepped-up support from Turkey, has pushed back and launched a counter-offensive that has reclaimed all of northwestern Libya. "The establishment of a fact-finding mission into abuses in Libya is a wake-up call to warlords and armed groups that they could be held accountable for serious crimes committed by their rank and file," Human Rights Watch's Eric Goldstein said. - Mass graves - The withdrawal of Haftar's forces earlier this month allowed for the discovery of eight suspected mass graves, prompting rights groups to urge that they be investigated for war crimes. International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement Monday that she would "not hesitate" to enlarge her investigation following the discovery of the mass graves, which she said "may constitute evidence of war crimes or crimes against humanity." Envoy Baiou insisted that GNA had showed that "impunity will no longer be tolerated" in Libya. Tripoli hoped, he said, that the resolution indicated "the international community holds the same threshold for those countries who contributed to this situation in Libya." Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the UN-recognised Tripoli government against eastern commander Khalifa Haftar with both sides backed by rival foreign powers Map showing the positions of forces fighting in Libya
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2020 / Derivatives exchange Bybit has added a fiat onramp that enables users to purchase cryptocurrency with credit and debit card, or a bank transfer. The fiat-crypto facility has been implemented with the support of payment providers Banxa and Xanpool. It means that Bybit users can now purchase BTC or ETH using Visa or Mastercard. Other debit and credit cards are also supported as well as the ability to purchase crypto via bank transfer.

The introduction of a fiat gateway means that Bybit users can start trading more quickly and can deposit funds directly into their account without needing to route them via third party platforms. As a result, traders will be able to capitalize on market moves faster, enabling them to optimize the size and timing of the positions they open.

Among the fiat currencies supported are USD, AUD, CAD, EUR, SGD and GBP.

The complete list is available on https://www.bybit.com/buy-crypto

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said: "Adding fiat-crypto support is another major milestone in our roadmap, and a major coup for Bybit traders who have been patiently waiting for this day to arrive. Thanks to our payment partners Banxa and Xanpool, Bybit users can now frictionlessly purchase crypto with credit or debit card at some of the most competitive rates on the market."

Holger Arians, Banxa CEO added: "We are excited to be launching Banxa's fiat onramp service on Bybit's trading platform. In partnering with Bybit, we are giving people around the world equal and easy access to digital currencies, so that they can enjoy a superior trading experience on Bybit's platform"

"XanPool is excited to be partnering with great companies like Bybit." concluded XanPool CEO, Jeffery Liu. "Our initial fiat gateway partnership is only the beginning of what will become a long and fruitful partnership into other business areas as well."

To mark the integration of its fiat-crypto gateway, Bybit has launched a promotion in which users will receive a $10 BTC bonus for every $100 of BTC or ETH they purchase. Up to $50 of BTC per user can be earned for the duration of the promotion, which runs from June 22 - July 22.

Story continues

About Bybit

Bybit is a global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange established in March 2018 and registered in the BVI. It is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Bybit has a global user base comprising everyone from individual retail clients to professional derivatives traders.

Bybit's technology team includes experts from numerous leading companies such as Morgan Stanley, Tencent, Ping' an Bank, and Nuoya Fortune. The exchange offers traders a matching engine capable of 100,000 transactions per second with no downtime. Bybit is committed to creating a fair, transparent, and efficient trading environment for all.

For more information please visit: https://www.bybit.com/

For updates, follow Bybit's social platforms on Twitter and Telegram.

Contact:

Dan Edelstein

pr@marketacross.com

+972-545-464-238

SOURCE: Bybit





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/594647/Bybit-Launches-Fiat-Gateway-Users-Can-Now-Buy-Crypto-With-Over-20-Fiat-Currencies




June 11

At approximately 2:58 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the 3700 block of Tangley in reference to a burglary of a motor vehicle that had already occurred. The complainant said that an unknown subject had entered his unsecured vehicle without consent.

June 12

At approximately 7:16 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the Police station Lobby in regards to found property report. The property was discovered by a resident in the 6300 block of Mercer and was entered into the West University Place Evidence room for safe keeping.

At approximately 6:45 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the 3800 block of Coleridge St. in regards to a civil dispute. The officer met with both parties and they agreed they would exchange property tomorrow (6/13/2020). A police information report was generated.

At approximately 9:33 p.m., an officer observed a vehicle being operated with a defective tail light along with a defective license plate light in the 6300 block of Buffalo Speedway. A traffic stop was conducted in the 3100 block of Bissonnet and a Probable Cause Search was conducted. Upon further investigation, the occupants were found to be in possession of drug paraphernalia and an open alcoholic container. The driver along with the passenger were cited and released from the scene without incident.

June 13

At approximately 6:35 a.m., an officer was dispatched to the 2700 block of Barbara, in regards to a Burglary of a Motor Vehicle, which had already occurred. The victim stated an unknown person rummaged through one of his vehicles and attempted to open a second vehicle. Information was gathered and a report was generated.

At approximately 11:43 a.m., an officer was dispatched to the West University Place Police Department in regards to a Burglary of a Motor Vehicle that had already occurred. It was reported that an unknown person had entered the victims unsecured vehicles without the victims consent. A BMV report was generated.

At approximately 3:07 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the West University Place Police Department in regards to a Burglary of a Motor Vehicle that had already occurred. It was reported that an unknown person had entered the victims unsecured vehicle without the victims consent. A BMV report was generated.

June 15

An officer was dispatched to the police station lobby, 3800 University Blvd., in regards to a fraud that already occurred. Upon arrival, it was discovered on 6/4/2020 the victim mailed a check at the U.S. Postal Service for a utility bill. On 6/13/2020 the victim noticed through on-line banking the check for the utility bill had been altered and cashed at an unknown location by an unknown suspect(s).

At approximately 2:45 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the police department lobby, 3800 University, for a report of a fraud. The reporting person said that unknown persons forged a deed document for a new construction the reporting person owns in the 2600 block of Barbara Lane.

At 5:10 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the 4100 block of Law in regards to a burglary of a motor vehicle that already occurred. Upon arrival and through investigation, it was discovered an unknown suspect(s) entered an unsecured vehicle and took items without consent. The incident occurred approximately between 4:07 and 4:45 p.m.

At approximately 10:14 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the 6300 block of Rutgers in regards to found property. An officer arrived and took possession of the bike for safekeeping.

June 16

At 1 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the West University Place Police Department in reference to a theft case. The victim, via phone, said an unknown person(s) stole a package off of her front porch on 6/14/2020 sometime between 1:26 and 2:10 p.m.

June 17

At approximately 2:32 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the West University Place Police Department in regards to a report of identity theft. The victim stated that his personal information was used by an unknown person to open multiple fraudulent accounts without his consent. An identity theft report was generated.

June 18

At approximately 8:19 a.m., an officer was dispatched to the West University Place Police Department in regards to a theft that had already occurred. It was reported that an unknown person/s had entered a secured job site and removed items without the owners consent. A theft report was generated.
It is clear this is not just about physical safety; its also about psychological safety, Jackson said. I think the way we start to address that is, first, we have to deal with the root cause, which is the relationship between, in particular, Black students and police. What better way to strengthen that relationship than to have them know police officers through their school, in some cases in their families, and I would even dare to say that they become police officers. Were not going to disrupt or change the system from the outside.
Most of the officers and staff of the Bangladesh high commission in New Delhi have been asked to work from home after one staff member tested positive for Covid-19.

The Bangladeshi mission in New Delhi has strengthened precautionary measures on the advice of local authorities. The staff member who tested positive lives with his family within the missions premises in Chanakyapuri.

People familiar with developments said two members of the family of the staff member had also tested positive. This is possibly the first case of a staff member of a foreign mission testing positive for Covid-19, they said on condition of anonymity.

We advised most of the officers and other members of staff to work from home and come to office if necessary, following related safety measures, Bangladesh high commissioner Mohammad Imran was quoted as saying by state-run BSS news agency.

Asked about media reports that the mission had been closed for 10 days for sanitizing the premises, Imran said: The office is open and all regular routine activities are going on.

Imran said all the missions communication channels are open for people to communicate with officials. He advised service seekers to contact the high commission via email and other methods and to avoiding physically coming to the mission.

In cases of emergency, one can visit the high commission with prior appointment, he added.
The difference is very clear that Cat Filters are made better to exceed industry standards, says Chandra Ramamoorthy, Director of Product Support Operations. Take advantage of this limited-time offer to get Cat Filters with the same high quality at a discounted price.

Hawthorne Cat, the exclusive Cat construction equipment dealer in San Diego, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Pacific Region, offers new Cat Filters special for online orders at Parts.Cat.Com. It is the fastest, easiest, and most reliable place to purchase Cat Filters, and ordering on your tablet or smartphone has never been more convenient.

Now through July 31, 2020, place your Cat Filters order online at Parts.Cat.Com* to receive 30% off. Plus, use our limited-time promo code FILTER2020 for an additional 10% off. Customers will also receive a 30% discount on all Cat Filters orders placed via telephone, email or walk-in at a local branch.

While other brands may fit your machine, only Cat Filters deliver the best protection for your engine, hydraulic, and transmission systems. Cat Filters consistently achieve a quality that is unmatched by competitive filters.

The difference is very clear that Cat Filters are made better to exceed industry standards, says Chandra Ramamoorthy, Director of Product Support Operations. Take advantage of this limited-time offer to get Cat Filters with the same high quality at a discounted price.

For more information, contact our Parts Counter at the following locations:

San Diego Parts | 858.674.7100 | hmcpartssales@hawthornecat.com

Hawaii Parts | 800.787.3252 | waipahuparts@hawthornecat.com

*Visit https://www.hawthornecat.com/cat-filters-discount for complete offer details.

About Hawthorne Cat

Hawthorne Cat is the authorized dealer for Cat construction and power equipment in San Diego, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa. Hawthorne sells, rents, provides parts and service, training, and emission solutions to various industries including general building construction, landscaping, marine, paving, and power generation. For more on Hawthorne Cat, visit https://www.hawthornecat.com/.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

We can now conclude that the COVID-19 related morbidity among children during the two most intense months of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Stockholm was low, despite the strategy to keep preschools and primary schools open.

A total of 63 children tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 while admitted to one of the pediatric hospitals in Stockholm during the period from 13th March to 14th May. Almost half of the children had COVID-19 as their primary diagnosis, of which all recovered without any complications. Fourteen children presented with other conditions where the SARS-CoV-2 infection may have contributed to the child's need for hospital care while 19 children were admitted due to non-infectious reasons and were found to be positive in routine testing.

A handful of children required oxygen therapy and one child with an underlying condition required a short period of intensive care. One child with complex underlying disease died after arriving at the hospital with cardiac arrest. The child subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV 2 but the relevance for the outcome is unclear since other pathogens were also identified in post-mortem testing.

Overall, pediatric COVID-19 patients accounted for only 0.7% of all COVID-19 admissions in the region. Two children with possible SARS-CoV-2 related hyper-inflammation were successfully treated during the period. However, it is yet too early to assess whether the national strategy with open schools has affected the incidence of this condition and this will need to be evaluated continually.

More information: Helena Hildenwall et al. Pediatric COVID19 admissions in a region with open schools during the two first months of the pandemic, Acta Pediatrica (2020). Helena Hildenwall et al. Pediatric COVID19 admissions in a region with open schools during the two first months of the pandemic,(2020). DOI: 10.1111/apa.15432
By Kim Bo-eun





Shinhan Financial Group said Monday it will set up a new digital committee that will discuss business opportunities as part of the government's "digital new deal" policy.







The Moon Jae-in administration is pushing forward with the project to create jobs and boost Korea's competitiveness as a digital-based economy by expanding related infrastructure such as 5G networks and others incorporating new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI).







Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung will head the new committee, and the CEOs of seven of Shinhan's units will be members  these include the bank, card firm, brokerage and life insurance affiliates.







Shinhan said the digital committee will seek to accelerate the group's data business and expand investment for programs fostering startups.







In addition, 10 of Shinhan's affiliates will take part in a system under which CEOs will play a leading role in incorporating AI, big data, cloud and blockchain into their digital transformation processes. For example, Shinhan Bank CEO Jin Ok-dong will be tasked to ensure that AI capabilities are developed for the bank's digital transformation.







Shinhan said it will also develop a pan-group program to foster digital talent. The group said courses will include digital finance, AI and blockchain.







Finally, Shinhan said it will expand the "Shinhan Digital Innovation Institute," its R&D center.







The group said it will execute 35 follow-up tasks derived from a series of meetings on digitization held in recent months.







Shinhan plans to set up a system that will track the group's developments in digitization, and boost communication and cooperation between group units in these efforts.







"We have set up a mechanism that will drive Shinhan's digital transformation on the basis of discussions that took place in the series of meetings on digitization," an official said.







"Based on this project, we plan to offer differentiated value to customers, launch innovative products and services and lead in digital finance."


Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Iran will send the black box of the Ukrainian plane to France, Trend reports citing IRNA.

Zarif made the remarks in a phone conversation with his Canadian counterpart Francois-Philippe Champagne.

He added that the decision had earlier been made and it will be implemented soon.

Zarif said that Iran is ready to solve legal issues, to compensate losses on the victims of the accident and to compensate for the Ukrainian plane losses but Ukraine has not introduced any delegation yet.

On January 8, 2020, a Ukrainian Boeing 737 passenger plane was accidentally shot down by two Iranian missiles near Tehran.

It happened after the US heightened tensions in Western Asia by assassinating Iran's anti-terrorist commander Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, and Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) reacted to them by hitting the US' Ain al-Assad airbase in Iraq

The commander of Aerospace Force of the IRGC Brigadier-General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh admitted full responsibility for the tragic air disaster.
US President Donald Trump signed the Uygur bill on Wednesday, claiming to protect human rights in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region thousands of miles away from the White House. Wednesday is the last day before the legislation takes effect automatically. On the same day, China's State Councilor Yang Jiechi and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met in Hawaii as tensions escalated between the two countries.

A lively food market in Xinjiang. Photo by Cui Meng / Global Times

The bill will add difficulty to the strained China-US ties. Trump purposely picked the date for the bilateral talk, initially hoping to impose pressure and trade for more bargaining chips. The move also showed that the US would not change its tough policies toward China, experts said.

The Uygur bill, which was first put forward by Senator Marco Rubio, was passed by the US Senate and House of Representatives on May 14 and 27, respectively. According to information from the website of the US Congress, the legislation was presented to Trump on June 8.

The legislation requires the US government to impose more pressure on China over Xinjiang issues and offer a report to Congress within 180 days of its enactment to list Chinese officials to be sanctioned by the US.

Trump signed the bill the last day before it automatically becomes law and wanted to use the slow action of the Uygur bill as a bargaining chip against China along with other anti-China cards, including the Phase I trade deal to contain China, Zhu Ying, deputy director of the Human Rights Institute at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.

Trump signed the Uygur bill without any ceremony, issuing a statement in which he said a sanctions provision intruded on executive authority and he would regard it as non-binding, US media reported.

Zhu said that these details showed that Trump is trying to find a balance with the US Congress - he had to sign the bipartisan bill, but also wants to cool tensions with China.

Jia Chunyang, an expert from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times that there should be no dirty tricks when one side is sincere in seeking to alleviate tensions and hold bilateral talks, while Americans think another way - they fight while seeking cooperation when it fits their interests.

Signing the bill on the same day the bilateral talks take place shows that the US wants to send a signal to China that it will continue putting pressure on China on issues of human rights and religious freedom. It also reveals the US malicious attempt to play Xinjiang topics to contain China.

"These sinister tricks make us doubt its sincerity in seeking to improve China-US ties and will also affect cooperation in other fields," Jia said.

Amid the US' latest race-centered conflicts and massive campaign that renewed the centuries-old racial problems in the country, different institutes, experts and people living in Xinjiang say US finger pointing at China for so-called human rights issues is particularly ironic.

China urged the US to immediately correct its mistake and stop using the Xinjiang-related act to harm China's interests and interfere in its internal affairs. Otherwise, China will take countermeasures and the US must bear all the consequences, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The Xinjiang regional People's Congress said in a statement the same day that the law is a piece of waste paper and will be thrown in the garbage. The US has stood on the opposite side of the 1.4 million Chinese people and the justice and conscientiousness of human beings.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of China's top legislature, the National People's Congress, released a statement on Thursday condemning US violations of China's domestic affairs and international laws.

"Xinjiang has not experienced any terrorist attacks for more than three years, which is good for 25 million residents in Xinjiang. This is the best way to respect human rights!"

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference said in a statement on Thursday that US attempts to use human rights as an excuse to pamper terrorist forces, put pressure on China and destroy the Xinjiang region's stability will fail.

Outside pressure would only make the Chinese people united, and no force can stop the national rejuvenation, the statement said.

Amid nationwide protests and the spread of COVID-19, the US insisted on passing its Uygur bill, a move that experts said aims to divert public attention.

Wang Jiang, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Law under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the so-called overwhelming vote on the Uygur bill in the Senate and the House may be because many politicians are "kidnapped" by so-called political correctness. Although the Uygur bill was passed, the majority of US politicians may have little knowledge of Xinjiang.

Wang said that some US politicians have played anti-China pioneers by utilizing Xinjiang in an attempt to seek personal political gain. He noted that some US politicians have been misled and engulfed by misinformation spread by anti-China media or "East Turkistan" separatists in the US.

Zhu said that interfering in China's domestic affairs has become an established strategy of the Trump administration and US politicians. Since 2017, 21 bills have been put forward in the US on China's core interests in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And all the bills have been based on lies and groundless accusations.

Racial discrimination in the US has become the biggest shame and failure in the history of human rights, experts say. The US should reflect on its own problems so that its current crisis does not become another stain on its history, Zhu said.

Turkish journalist Erkin Oncan told the Global Times that the US has always tried to destabilize independent countries using "human rights and freedom." The US and its politicians do not care about the people of Xinjiang, and their purpose in passing the Uygur bill is to weaken and contain China.

The US is a country where racism, xenophobia and far-right views are widespread. When millions in the US protest racism, politicians accuse others of "violating human rights." That is ironic and reveals the hypocrisy of US politicians, he said.

Overseas separatists and "East Turkistan" forces may consider the passage of the Uygur bill as a "phased victory," but nothing good will come of this. Although the legislation has been enacted, to what extent it will be implemented remains unknown. China will also complete its legislation on safeguarding national security, and will not stop cracking down on separatism, terrorism and extremism.
In his new role, Batson will oversee external affairs, corporate communications, marketing, customer service, community relations, economic development and environmental affairs at Southern Company Gas. Additionally, he will serve as president of the Southern Company Gas Charitable Foundation, which donates millions of dollars in grants annually to nonprofits focused on the environment, economic development, energy assistance, the arts and education. He will also continue to serve on the Southern Company Gas Management Council.

"Bryan's leadership has seen our company through years of growth and change, and as our industry evolves, his trusted counsel will continue to ensure we can rise to whatever challenges the future may bring," said Kim Greene, Southern Company Gas chairman, president and chief executive officer. "His deep roots in the energy industry will prove invaluable as we seek to further engage with our customers and communities."

Batson has more than 36 years of experience with Southern Company Gas and has held several leadership positions in commercial operations, regulatory affairs, external affairs, engineering and field operations. Under Batson's leadership, both Atlanta Gas Light and Chattanooga Gas helped herald in unprecedented periods of development in their service territories, successfully growing their infrastructure to accommodate rising demand, enhancing customer service offerings and increasing access to clean fuel for the transportation industry.

A leader closely engaged in communities across Georgia, Batson will continue to serve on the boards of directors for Central Atlanta Progress, the Georgia Nature Conservancy, the Regional Business Coalition of Metropolitan Atlanta, the Council for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. He also serves as chairman of the Georgia Chamber Energy and Natural Resources Policy Committee, is a member of the Technical College System of Georgia board of trustees and sits on the Atlanta Committee for Progress Community and Governmental Affairs Advisory Council. A registered professional engineer and a graduate of Leadership Atlanta and Leadership Georgia, Batson earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Clemson University and a master's degree in technology management from Mercer University.

Cherry, in his new role, will oversee all aspects of the company's southern operations, bringing clean, safe, reliable and affordable gas to approximately 1.6 million customers in Georgia and Tennessee. In addition, he will join the Southern Company Gas Management Council and the board of directors for the Southern Company Gas Charitable Foundation.

"I am pleased to welcome Pedro into the fold," said Greene. "Our customers' demands continue to grow and evolve, and his diverse set of experiences will be invaluable as we seek to enhance our customer service offerings, drive innovation and maintain safety across our Southern territories."

Cherry joined Southern Company in 1997 after working as an engineer and business analyst for Carolina Power and Light Corporation, and he has held roles of increasing responsibility in finance, community and economic development, sales, customer service, operations and external affairs. In his most recent role, Cherry led more than 5,000 employees in Georgia Power's Customer Service and Operations organization, directing customer service, power delivery, sales and marketing, corporate services and regional external affairs for the company's 2.6 million customers.

Cherry, a CFA Charterholder, is a member of the CFA Institute, 100 Black Men of Atlanta and Auburn's Alumni Engineering Council, and he serves on the boards of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Leadership Atlanta, Zoo Atlanta and the Georgia Tourism Foundation. Additionally, he sits on the Clark Atlanta University board of trustees, the advisory board of the North Georgia Division of Synovus and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce board of governors.

Cherry is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta, Leadership Georgia and the Atlanta Regional Commission's Regional Leadership Institute. He holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and a master's in business administration, focused on finance and operations management, from Auburn University.

About Southern Company Gas

Southern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE:SO), America's premier energy company. Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.2 million natural gas utility customers through its regulated distribution companies in four states and approximately 700,000 retail customers through its companies that market natural gas. Other nonutility businesses include investments in interstate pipelines, asset management for natural gas wholesale customers and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit southerncompanygas.com.

About Atlanta Gas Light

Atlanta Gas Light is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Atlanta Gas Light provides natural gas delivery service to more than 1.6 million customers in Georgia. In operation since 1856, the company is one of the oldest corporations in the state. For more information, visit atlantagaslight.com.

About Chattanooga Gas

Chattanooga Gas is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Chattanooga Gas provides retail natural gas sales and transportation services to approximately 66,000 customers in Hamilton and Bradley counties in southeast Tennessee. The Chattanooga Gas service area includes the communities of Chattanooga, Cleveland, Red Bank, East Ridge, Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain. For more information, please see chattanoogagas.com.

SOURCE Southern Company Gas
The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the Delhi government why it was not allowing private labs or private hospitals dealing with Covid-19 patients to conduct rapid antigen tests, which might ease their work, while also observing that the government had failed to meet its own target of conducting 22,000 rapid antigen tests in 11 districts of the city every day.

A bench of justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad said that it was abysmal for the government to set such estimates after the Delhi government additional standing counsel Satyakam said that they had targeted conducting 22,000 rapid antigen tests per day (2,000 tests in each of the 11 districts), only in the containment zones.

Advocate Satyakam, the additional standing counsel of the Delhi government, told the court that on June 18, a total of 15,012 samples were collected in Delhi, of which 7,040 samples were tested through the rapid antigen detection test and 7,972 through the RT-PCR test. He submitted that as on June 21, 13,345 samples were collected, of which 9,356 samples were tested through the rapid antigen test and 3,989 samples through the RT-PCR test.

To this, the court said, This is even less than 50% of the estimated amount. Your estimates should be reasonable. Why cant you allow antigen testing in all private places?

Rakesh Malhotra, the advocate for the petitioner, also submitted that patients coming to the emergency department should also be tested using the antigen method.

The counsel for the Delhi government sought time from the court stating that the new testing procedure has been started on a trial basis and a weeks time be given to understand its functioning.

The court was hearing a plea filed by a lawyer, Sanjeev Sharma, through his counsel Rakesh Malhotra, who contended that there have been several instances where non-Covid patients needing surgery or other procedures were asked to undergo testing, but the hospital concerned did not conduct the test since they did not have the governments permission.

The government also filed a status report in the matter addressing several issues raised by some private labs. In the report, it said that Sir Ganga Ram Hospital insisted on being treated differently while blaming the hospital for its non-registration on the RT-PCR portal.

the government said that the reason for the hospitals non-registration on the RT-PCR portal was that the hospital had issues with human resources as its employees were not able to report for work due to travel restrictions imposed by neighbouring states.

It was sheer reluctance on the part of the hospital to follow guidelines; in fact, they stopped processing samples only after an FIR was filed, and not after the notice dated June 3. The hospital, curiously, wanted an exception by virtue of being a big hospital while advocating that the rules be followed by small labs. The hospital only relented after the government was forced to take stringent measures in the form of an FIR, the government told the court.

The government report said that it was compelled to take action and after adequate assurance and action, the lab has been permitted to process samples.

A similar order in respect of other labs were remedied within three days but for this establishment, because it insisted on being treated differently. It is submitted that the action taken by the government was imperative as it is the duty of the government to ensure compliance of the rules and guidelines[sic], the report read.

The Delhi government also told the court that private labs in the city had promised to test 7,220 samples per day, however, they have been testing only 2,030 samples per day. On the last date of hearing (June 19), the court had asked the committee constituted by lieutenant governer Anil Baijal to look into the grievances of the private labs.

The court directed that fresh affidavits be filed by the concerned authorities and posted the matter for hearing on June 25.
New Delhi: The Chinese Foreign Ministry has refrained from revealing the exact number of casualties China's People's Liberation Army suffered during the border clash with Indian troops last week. "Don't have any information to add on the number of casualties faced in Galwan faceoff," the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, during a media briefing in Beijing, reiterated that China and India are in communication with each other to resolve the situation on the ground through diplomatic and military channels. He, however, refused to comment on Union Minister and former Indian Army chief Gen (retd) VK Singh's remarks that more than 40 Chinese soldiers were killed in the Galwan Valley clash in eastern Ladakh. "I have no information to release on that," he said.

On the other hand, Chinese state-run media Global Times, though admitting to casualties, wrote on Twitter that if China released the number then the Indian government would again come under pressure. "The reason why China did not release casualties number is that China also wants to avoid an escalation. If China releases the number which is less than 20, the Indian govt would again come under pressure," the tweet read.

It also added that Indian officials are giving wrong numbers just to satisfy hardliners by claiming that China lost more soldiers than India.

Ever since the clash on June 15 at the Galwan Valley between the Indian and Chinese troops, Beijing has consistently declined to reveal the details of the casualties on its side, while the official media editorials have said that China too suffered casualties.

At least 45-50 personnel of the Chinese army are believed to be killed in the violent face-off with Indian Army troops in the Galwan valley. According to sources, the confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley on the intervening night of June 15-16 took place for more than 4 hours, in which both sides suffered casualties.

It further claimed that the 3 Medium Regiment of Indian Army had captured a Chinese colonel during the clash, who was later released by the Indian forces.

In the meantime, India and China are holding another round of Lt General-level talks on June 22 in the Moldo-Chushul Valley on the Chinese side to discuss ways to de-escalate tension between the two sides in eastern Ladakh.

The high-level talks came a week after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in the violent clash between the two sides in the Galwan Valley, significantly escalating the already volatile situation in the region. The first round of Lt Gen-level talks were held on June 6 during which both sides decided to disengage in all the sensitive areas.
Despite the rise of ETFs with much lower fees, the Canadian mutual fund industry is still a very lucrative business for the banks and other investment houses who sell them.

As of the end of April, the industry had $1.54 trillion in assets under management and Royal Bank, the countrys largest bank, booked mutual fund revenue of $3.6 billion in 2019. That translates to about eight per cent of the banks total revenue and about 14 per cent of the banks noninterest income.

While the increasing popularity of ETFs over the past decade helped somewhat in reducing fund fees, the average annual Management Expense Ratio (MER), or total fees, across all funds in Canada is still higher than two per cent. In fact, Canadian investors probably pay some of the highest mutual fund fees in the world.

That two per cent may not seem like a lot, but once annual compounding is taken into account the impact over time is dramatic.

Suppose that you are 45 years old and you inherited $150,000. You wish to invest the money for your retirement, for a period of 25 years.

If you use a low-cost equity Vanguard ETF with an MER of only 0.06 per cent and if your portfolio generated annual returns of six per cent (similar to the historical performance of the TSX 60), your investment would be worth $635,000 at maturity after fees.

If, on the other hand, you opted for CIBCs Canadian Equity Fund, which has MER of 2.2 per cent, assuming the same six per cent annual returns, your wealth at maturity after fees would be only $381,000.

You read that right. The additional 2.14 per cent in annual fees translates to a reduction of future wealth of $254,000.

Among asset managers who run large private accounts, the picture isnt much different. The standard practice in the industry is that revenue is generated as a function of Assets Under Management (AUM) and it is rare to find a money manager who would tie compensation to performance.

When a fund managers compensation is equal to some percentage multiplied by AUM, his or her strongest incentive is to increase the flow of cash to the fund  the incentive to increase performance is secondary at best.

To be a successful asset manager one needs to have great marketing skills and good connections. If youre a bank, the job is even easier as you have a captive audience of customers who do their everyday banking in your branches.

In any case, it seems like a talent for picking winning stocks is just nice to have in the industry and the data confirms that. It was recently estimated that when measured over a period of 15 years, 92 per cent of active fund managers in the U.S. trail the S&P 500.

But outside of the big banks, it is possible to find funds with a different approach. One example is Steadyhand, based in Vancouver, B.C., which oversees $900 million in assets and practises an active management strategy for all of its funds.

Steadyhand uses a simple fee schedule that is about 40 per cent lower than the industry average. It offers additional discounts for large accounts and for loyal customers, which may reduce fees further.

Salman Ahmed, a portfolio manager with Steadyhand, said in a phone interview that the average commission customers pay for its actively managed funds is just 0.96 per cent. And thats it, there are no additional hidden fees, he says.

Beyond fair and competitive fees, another approach that can work for financial customers is a pay-for-performance fee schedule. The practice, which is standard among hedge funds but very rare among mutual funds, was implemented a few years ago by Wall Street veteran Peter Kraus, who launched Aperture Investors.

Aperture uses performance-linked fee structures. It charges a low basic fee, competitive with that of passive ETFs in the same category when performance is at or below its stated benchmark. But when it outperforms, each strategy is charged a performance-linked fee of 30 per cent on returns generated in excess of the stated benchmark.

Personally, I am a big fan of this approach as it aligns the portfolio managers objectives with those of the clients. But when I asked Ahmed whether Steadyhand is considering implementing such a fee structure, he said that while the concept of performance-linked fee is interesting, its implementation gets complex and, without full transparency, isnt always in favour of the client. The time horizon of the investment is also difficult to define, especially when your fund has a low turnover rate and is investing for the long run.

The Canadian mutual fund landscape is one where too many investors are paying excessive fees for underperforming funds. Given that, it may be a good idea for the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to step up its game on the topic.

As part of a financial literacy campaign, a beware of high MERs campaign could bring to the attention of investors the fact that many overpay their fund managers.

You should also do your homework and look into that important MER number. If its around 2 per cent, youre probably paying too much. Ask a financial adviser or a planner you trust to recommend a few funds with low MERs.

Its a simple question that could have a big impact on how comfortable you are when you retire.
New Delhi, June 22 : A Delhi court on Monday granted 30-day interim bail to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator Prakash Jarwal, lodged in a jail for the past 42 days in connection with a doctor's alleged suicide.

The MLA has been asked to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 with one surety of the like amount.

Granting the bail Special Judge Sanjay Bansal noted, "His father has tested Covid-19 positive and wife is also showing symptoms. There are minor children of applicants who will definitely need care and protection, if something wrong happens with the wife. The severity of the Covid-19 pandemic can't be underestimated." The judge said allegations of him influencing witnesses while out on bail could be ruled out as they were against co-accused Harish Jarwal.

But the court asked him not to try to contact or influence any witness, not tamper with the evidence, join the investigation when called and share his mobile number with the investigation officer.

Jarwal, who represents the Deoli Assembly constituency, was arrested on May 9 in connection with a case of alleged suicide of a doctor in Durga Vihar of South Delhi on April 18.

In his suicide note, the 52-year-old doctor held Jarwal responsible for taking the extreme step.

According to the Delhi Police, Jarwal and the deceased were involved in the business of water supply with the Delhi Jal Board since 2007.

The police said the deceased in his suicide note said Jarwal and his associates used to extort money from him for running water tankers in the Dwarka area.
Q I am a woman in my forties. Since I had children, I have noticed that, even though I know it is nonsense and no way to live, I am very concerned about what other people think. I also compare myself and my children to others all the time. I don't understand why I am so bothered. My head knows that it is no way to live but I can't seem to shake this way of thinking. I am happy with my life and I adore my kids. Why am I doing this and how can I stop?

A It's hard to stand by as you berate yourself over what you feel you shouldn't feel, even though you do feel this way. Rather than digging deep, you bury the feeling of being 'less than' mixed with the inner conflict of feeling frustrated that you do feel that way. This is the first thing you can do; stop chastising and minimising your own feelings.

If your feelings could talk, what would they say? Why the lack of compassion? Who has judged you or minimised your feelings before? When others tell you that you shouldn't feel the way you do, it can blunt out the very message your emotions are trying to bring to your attention in the first place.

I hear frustration and disappointment. Who are you measuring yourself against?

Comparing ourselves is so common; the term 'social comparison theory' was coined in 1954 by Leon Festinger exploring why and how we bench who we are, by comparing ourselves to others. You are not in this alone, everyone assesses themselves in relation to others and - as is often the case in understanding why we behave or think in certain ways - its origins stem from a survive-and-thrive mentality model.

How does this show up in your everyday world? in these two specific ways:

1. Upward social comparison (comparing yourself to others who you feel are better than you)

2. Downward social comparison (comparing yourself, thinking you are better or more proficient)

These natural and normal human comparisons have been super-charged online in what Susan Fiske calls 'envy up, scorn down'. This could form part of your psychological toolbox in terms of how to manage comparing yourself going forward. Be mindful of what you are consuming online; you may need to edit some accounts if they are leaving you feeling down about yourself.

Read More

Identify who your 'comparison targets' are. Are they other mothers? And as an extension of that, their children in comparison to yours? Motherhood can be quite the competitive and comparative game. With this knowledge, please give yourself a break, all I ask is to add in one question: 'are these thoughts of comparison making me feel better or worse about myself?'

Like so many thoughts and feelings in life, the goal isn't to get rid of social comparison, but to catch yourself gently with compassion just before it turns into a downward spiral.

Keep reminding yourself that what you see in those public faces with whom you are comparing yourself with may look like a perfect life, but all may not be as it appears, as they are normal human beings as well.

Check in with your self-esteem.

 Have you experienced this in other social groups before?

 At home, school, with friends or at work?

 Have you noticed any particular themes or triggers?

 Have you identified some actionables that you would like to try next?

 Can you accept that this is a skill that you don't have, yet, not yet or never?

 Is it a motivator or de-motivator to learn and grow that specific skill?

Recognising someone else's skills or aptitudes that you admire can create positive social contagion. The Dutch, who we could all learn from in terms of being happier, have a term for benign envy; they call benijden.

Bring kindness to your normal 'benijden'; note when you are seeking external validation. Self-esteem is an internal job that you need to keep working on. Write a list of all the skills you have as a mother, write out each of your children's unique strengths that you admire. Your child may not be playing classical violin but they may have an incredible sense of humour and huge heart. Sometimes the vital life skills such as kindness and generosity of spirit aren't valued as they are more difficult to measure or get a certificate for, that can be posted.

Cultivating a stable sense of who you are, what you value and recognise the good in your life is a helpful daily tool to negate the natural but unhelpful response of thinking the grass is comparatively greener. One of the biggest life perks of my job is the constant reminder that what we see publicly is not always the full picture.

So even though the person may look like they have it all or easy, trust me when I say, everyone has their own fears, worries and insecurities. If I could add one more truth it is this, people you would never imagine are also worried about what you think of them.

Keep connecting in a real way with people who nourish you. Check when your mood changes and why .Know when upward social comparison is motivating and inspires you to make changes that you would like to make and identify what leaves you feeling cold.

If you have a query for this page, allisonk@independent.ie
(If the city figures look different to you, thats because the state has a different way of counting confirmed virus cases. The city counts a positive test on the day the test was taken. The state counts a new case on the day test results come back, which can sometimes be several days after a test was taken. But even looking at it that way, the trends still hold, with average case counts dropping in half from the first day of the protests through Friday.)
A medical worker performs Covid-19 tests on several samples of suspected infection cases in a laboratory in Nghe An Province, April 2020. Photo by VnExpress.

A student repatriated from the U.K. is free of Covid-19, bringing Vietnams active cases down to 21, the Health Ministry said Monday.

The 22-year-old resident of Hanoi had returned to Ho Chi Minh Citys Tan Son Nhat airport on Vietnam Airlines repatriation flight VN50 on June 4. He tested positive for the novel coronavirus on June 5 and was treated at the city's Cu Chi field hospital.

He has tested Covid-19 negative several times before the confirmation of his recovery.

Meanwhile, Vietnams most critical Covid-19 patient, a 43-year-old British pilot being treated at HCMCs Cho Ray Hospital, will need another 2-3 weeks at least before he can move around safely, doctors said during a prognosis discussion Monday afternoon.

The 43-year-old British pilot drinks water with a straw in HCMC's Cho Ray Hospital. Photo courtesy of the Cho Ray Hospital.

With unstinting efforts by Vietnamese doctors, the pilot has staged a "miraculous" recovery, regaining consciousness after being comatose on life support for more than two months. On Monday, he is able to breathe and eat on his own.

He had been moved to the Cho Ray hospital after recovering from the Covid-19 infection. He is undergoing physical and psychological therapy, having his nutrition intake increased and remains under close medical observation.

While the patient, who has been hospitalized for more than three months, can be discharged from the ICU, plans to take him back home to the U.K. can only be implemented once all safety requirements regarding his health, transportation and reception in the U.K. are met, Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son has said.

Vietnam recorded no new Covid-19 cases Monday. The country has so far confirmed 349 infections of which 328 have recovered. The nation has recorded no community transmission of the virus for over two months.
Pixabay

Moscow/Sputnik: North Korea has printed 12 million leaflets intended to be distributed in South Korea as part of an information campaign against Seoul, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reports.

Special equipment will be prepared in order to spread the leaflets, including over 3,000 air balloons of various types, KCNA said on Monday, adding that printing houses in North Korea are accelerating preparations for the printing of an additional several million leaflets.

North Korea understands that the spread of leaflets is a violation of the inter-Korean agreement but it does not intend to change its plan at a time when relations between the North and the South had already been destroyed, KCNA cited a spokesperson of United Front Department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of North Korea as saying on Sunday.

On Saturday, KCNA reported that North Korea had started to prepare leaflets for an information campaign against South Korea. Students of all universities were standing ready to distribute the leaflets, when the border area was opened and they got access to it, KCNA said, adding that Pyongyang had once again accused Seoul of failing to support the reconciliation process, adding that the South Korean authorities would face horrible times soon.

Seoul had promised to take some urgent measures to ease tensions with Pyongyang and to stop South Korean activists from sending leaflets to North Korea.

Tensions in the region spiked after North Korea cut off communications with its southern neighbor and blew up the joint liaison office in the border town of Kaesong in response to a long-time campaign of certain groups in South Korea that have been sending leaflets across the border from the South, criticizing the policies of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

On Wednesday, North Koreas General Staff said that it would redeploy troops to Kaesong and the Mount Kumgang joint tourist zone on the east coast, as well as restore guard posts in the demilitarized zone, which were removed after the inter-Korean summit in 2018.


Chinese cuisine in India is a mere adaptation of Chinese cooking with an Indian tadka added to it

Indians have given the Chinese food a rather elaborate twist of their own by creating dishes packed with spicy flavours  even if only by mixing soy sauce, chilli sauce, tomato ketchup and Schezwan sauce.

In other words, Chinese cuisine in India is a mere adaptation of Chinese cooking with an Indian tadka added to it. Paneer turned into Sichuan paneer, potato wedges tweaked into chilli potato, rich in curry leaves, noodles with all Indian vegetables and paneer, chili chicken made in Punjabi-style  the list goes on. Surely, by no means will a Chinese recognise any of these dishes as theirs.

So how is one expected to take up Union Minister Athawales call to boycott something that is as Indian as our version of the Chinese cuisine?

Celebrity Chef Ranveer Brar explains, What we know as Chinese food in India is not Chinese food. It is good that is made with Indian ingredients using products that are actually made in India and it is more Indian than Chinese.

A lot of the dishes, actually 80 percent of the dishes, that are on Chinese restaurant menus is Indian, as we know them as Indian Chinese restaurant. They dont even exist in China. So, it is our food that is developed over a 150 years in India started from Tangram and is now popular in India as Indo-Chinese food. I think this structure, paradigm doesnt hold true for food atleast Chinese food.

Over the last two centuries, food has evolved and outgrown its original, points out chef Varun Inamdar. We call it Chindian and Desi Chinese, which says it all. We, generically, do not like the original Chinese because our palates have grown over manchurian, chowmein, lollypop, schezwan chutney and fried noodles, he says.

Whatever is happening at our borders is a geopolitical issue and must not be clubbed with any other sentiments because that packs a lot of risk in tow, including human, cultural and economic. Therefore, a blanket-ban on Chinese restaurants in India comes at an overhauling price of infrastructure and labour. It is not so easy and not the most recommended idea of showing Nationalism, Varun points out.

The Indo-Chinese wok

Fusion 9s Shankar Krishnamurthy rightly points out how food has no boundaries. Its the most basic thing that has brought the world closer since the evolution of mankind, he adds.

For time immemorial, man has travelled the globe and adapted to new foods that locally existed. Hence, this argument of boycotting a certain type of cuisine does not hold water. All said and done, we have set ourselves on a path to encourage local farmers to bring in local produce, and run our menus and do food accordingly, even in the oriental fashion. Thats purely beneficial for the local ecosystem.

While talking to us, Bunty Bajaj, a jewellery designer in the city, also reiterated how Chinese cuisine is a staple in almost every Indian household.

It must have evolved from China, but today it is as Indian as daal-chaawal. I think it is ridiculous for politicians to ask their people to ban Chinese food or restaurants. Indian Chinese food is not Chinese food. It is an Indian version of elements taken from Chinese ingredients, states Bunty.

She adds, Plus, all the restaurants that have been shut for so many months need to survive too, so asking people to boycott those would be heartless.
YOU ASK, THEY ANSWER: Questions have been pouring in during the pandemic shutdown, and traffic experts have been busy researching the answers. Lets get right to it.

MORE TRAMWAY ON THE WAY: K. M. Ortiz asks by email why the repaving of Tramway, I-40 to Montgomery, stopped short of the Montgomery intersection? The intersection is in dire need of repaving, and the striping is nonexistent.

I travel north on Tramway and turn west on to Montgomery every day. I use the inside turn bay, and every time, the car in the right turn bay takes the corner too sharp, forcing me in to the median. When will the lane markers through the intersection be repainted?

Kimberly Gallegos, who handles information for the New Mexico Department of Transportations District 3 Office, says the project on Tramway is in progress and has not been finished yet. It will resume at the end of June and has an estimated completion date of late July or early August and will extend all the way to the county line. The repaved section was striped a couple of days ago, and striping will be done as reasonable segments of this project are completed.

SB I-25 EXIT NEEDS NEW SIGN: Bruce Nesbit emails, The sign for exit 231 on I-25 southbound needs to be redone. It indicates that both right lanes are exit only, but only the far right lane is exit only and the other lane can continue straight.

Gallegos says she will inform our sign crew about the sign at exit 231 and have it corrected. Please thank the writer for making us aware of this issue!

A FLASHING YELLOW PRIMER: Cheryl Haaker emails that after the June 16 column mentioned flashing yellow left arrows being installed at intersections shed like a rundown of what that means. Im familiar with solid yellow left arrows, which mean get out of the intersection ASAP, and which follow the green arrow. When the yellow is flashing, what does that signify? Is it any different from a simple green light, where you can take a left if its safe?

Thats pretty much what it is. Johnny Chandler at Albuquerques Department of Municipal Development shared a graphic showing left arrows like this: steady red, stop and wait; steady yellow, stop if you can do so safely; flashing yellow, proceed after yielding to oncoming traffic and pedestrians; and steady green, proceed with turn.

YOU STILL STOP ON RED, RIGHT? Parker Sando asks for a reality check if Im remembering my drivers training wrong. When I pull up to a red light at an intersection and Im going to make a right turn I always stop, look both ways, then start up again and turn right. All over the city, but particularly in the North Valley, Im driving behind drivers who pull up to the red light, maybe slow down a bit, but just make their right hand turn without stopping at all. That is still wrong driving isnt it?

It is. N.M. Statute 66-7-105 C on red signals says, in part, Vehicular traffic facing the signal shall stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if there is no crosswalk, then before entering the intersection, and may turn right after standing until the intersection may be entered safely, provided that such vehicular traffic shall yield the right of way to all pedestrians and vehicles lawfully in or approaching the intersection.

And reader Pat Sanche shares that a good spot for the next flashing yellow would be Coors and Iliff.

TAKE A RIDE ON US: Thats what NMDOT, Bernalillo County, the city of Albuquerque, Cumulus radio stations and Uber want folks who have imbibed to do as restaurants and breweries reopen, according to a NMDOT news release.

Through the end of the month, those who have had one too many for the road in the Albuquerque area will get an Uber credit of up to $10. The release says theres funding to cover 3,000 rides.

Just use the Uber app and code SUMMER2020. Tips are not included and refunds are not provided for trips that cost less than the $10 credit. All riders are required to wear masks.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or 7777 Jefferson NE, Albuquerque, N.M., 87109.
The John C. Calhoun Monument towers over Marion Square 115 feet high. While it may have taken decades to build, there's one largely forgotten episode of history where the statue was temporarily derailed by a 19-year-old Charleston woman who ran away with its funds.

In the 1850s, just as white Charleston residents began fundraising for the monument, Ada Agnes Jane McElhenney  who was related to Calhoun by marriage  left Charleston with the money, delaying the plans for her relative's memorial.

McElhenney, who would later go by Ada Clare, slipped away from the city with the funds her grandfather, the wealthy planter Hugh Wilson, had raised for the monument. According to a biography of Clare titled "Queen of Bohemia" by Gloria Goldblatt, Clare took at least several hundred dollars, perhaps much more.

To compare, $500 in 1854 would be equivalent to about $16,000 today. The monument erected in 1887 cost $44,000, or slightly over $1 million today.

Clare's theft would have been a substantial blow to early fundraising. It took more than 30 years to eventually complete the project.

Clare took the money to finance her new life in New York City. An 1854 diary entry notes that Clare's grandfather said she had gone to New York in a steamer against her family's will, having "appropriated" the funds of the monument.

She claimed she would pay interest on it, according to the biography.

In New York, Clare became a writer and an actress and was friends with the poet Walt Whitman. Over the next two decades, she advocated women's rights and free love, bore a child out of wedlock and eventually died at age 39 after being bitten by a rabid dog.

Charleston has forgotten Ada Clare because she wasn't the typical Southern belle, historian Harlan Greene said. He serves as the special collections scholar in residence at the College of Charleston, and he encouraged Goldblatt decades ago to work on Clare's biography.

It was white Charleston women who finally erected Calhoun's monument. They called themselves the Ladies' Calhoun Monument Association, and a plaque at the base of the monument honors those women more than it mentions Calhoun.

"This monument was erected by the women of South Carolina," the plaque reads. Many lines are devoted to the treasurer, Mrs. M.A. Snowden.

"No one seemed to know, though the information was there all the time, that it was one woman in Charleston, atypical and who horrified the city, who kept Calhoun off his pedestal, so to speak," Greene said. "Ada Clare refusing to get on a pedestal kept Calhoun off his ... for a while.

"For a city so proud of its past, so few people actually know it," Greene said.

Once Calhoun was on his pedestal, it was the city's African American community that sabotaged the monument. By 1896, the statue was placed on a much higher pedestal to make it fully out of reach of its detractors.

As City Council members prepare to vote Tuesday whether to remove the statue, a largely unprecedented move in the state, many have questioned exactly what history the memorial represents. The controversy over its potential removal has divided the city.

For many in and outside of the Black community, the statue symbolizes a history of white supremacy. Calhoun is a former vice president who advocated for slavery as a "positive good" and fought hard to preserve the country's racial hierarchy.

Others support keeping the statue up, pointing to Calhoun's legacy as one of the most famous South Carolinians and most prominent national politicians of the day.

On Tuesday, 170 years after Calhoun's death, 166 years after Clare stole the monument's funds and 124 years after a statue was placed higher to keep it safe from angry residents, City Council will decide whether that memorial, and what it stands for, will come down for good.
The armys top brass on Monday made a detailed assessment of the ground situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, where Indian and Chinese forces have significantly beefed up their deployments in the extended region on both sides of the contested border, two senior officers said on the condition of anonymity.

The developments along the LAC and the armys operational readiness to handle any situation were discussed in detail at the army commanders conference, chaired by army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane, the first officer said.

The situation along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan also came up during the discussions, amid concerns that the western neighbour could try to take advantage of the tensions along the northern borders with China, the second officer said.

Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane will visit Leh on Tuesday for a security review of the Ladakh sector, amid rising tensions between India and China along the LAC. Senior officers will brief him on the latest developments along the disputed border. This will be his second visit to the Ladakh sector after the border standoff began in early May. He had earlier visited Leh on May 22.

While the conference was pre-scheduled, it is being held at a time when the Indian and Chinese armies have marshalled thousands of soldiers on their respective sides of the LAC and the military build up consists of fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, artillery guns and missile systems, he said.

The conference will conclude on Tuesday. It was the second phase of the conference --- the first was held in Delhi on May 27-29.

The top commanders met a day after defence minister Rajnath Singh made a detailed assessment of the situation at the disputed border and was briefed by the military brass about the preparations of the armed forces and their readiness to respond to any provocative actions by the Chinese forces.

Singh left for Russia on Monday where he will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu and the spike in border tensions with China will figure in the talks. Singh will be participating in the Victory Day parade in Moscow on June 24.

Tensions between India and China have surged after the Galwan Valley brawl on June 15 that resulted in 20 Indian deaths, including that of a commanding officer, and the Chinese army possibly suffered more than twice as many casualties, which also included a commanding officer, said another officer.

With uncertainty looming along the LAC, the government has given financial powers worth 500 crore per project to the armed forces to fast-track the purchase of critical weapons and ammunition to deal with any kind of scenario. Similar financial powers were bestowed on the military after the 2016 Uri terror attack and the 2019 Balakot air strikes to plug gaps in capabilities.
Thomas has apologised and demonstrated his capacity to change, Madhok says - and that's where people should focus. "Outright cancelling people is not necessarily helpful, particularly if they are wanting to grow. But I think it's really important that there is some sort of level of accountability where people are making themselves available for feedback and not being too precious about it." The old clip of Thomas was unearthed after he suggested on Twitter that we should rename Coon cheese, given it's also a derogatory term for Aboriginal Australians. Depending on who you talk to, the pile-on either demonstrated Thomas' hypocrisy or the left's capacity to turn on itself, or both. "We keep getting sidetracked by these types of things and no one's doing anything about deaths in custody," says fellow comedian Rhys Nicholson, who describes himself as "definitely on the left but not as left as I thought I was". "It's a tale as old as time," he says. "We see someone trying to do the right thing but getting it wrong and we try and cancel them. And we also see someone doing something very wrong and we cancel them with the same kind of whipping." "There's a sweet spot before cancel culture": comedian Rhys Nicholson. Credit:Simon Schluter

Like Madhok, Nicholson argues "there's a sweet spot before cancel culture which is not cancelling them but [saying] everyone has to be held up to account". Just as left-wing activists can appreciate the limits of their approach, conservatives concede some things should be erased from history. For example, Canavan says Western Australia's King Leopold Ranges, named after the Belgian slave trader, should clearly be given a new title, as should places such as Black Gin Creek in his state of Queensland. "If a name is clearly derogatory and formulated with what would appear to be some degree of mal-intent, that should be removed," he says. But symbols of Australia's own colonisation are different; they have become lightning rods in the culture wars. Last week in Sydney, Greens staffer Xiaoran Shi and her friend Charmaine Morrison-Mills were charged with vandalising a statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park. They are accused of spray-painting "no pride in genocide" and "sovereignty never ceded" on the monument. Shi, 28, has a long history of activism. As one of the editors of Sydney University's student paper Honi Soit, Shi helped produce a famous 2013 cover featuring 18 vaginas with their labia censored. Her boss, Greens upper house member David Shoebridge, is standing by her  which earned him a parliamentary censure motion supported by the government, Labor and One Nation. NSW Police guard a statue of Captain James Cook during a Black Lives Matter protest. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

On Thursday night, a 51-year-old man was arrested and charged after officers found him allegedly trying to tape a sign to the same statue. Madhok says she would like to see many of Australia's statues replaced because she does not want to glorify anyone complicit in genocide. But "it's not something that I would spend significant time and money and resourcing campaigning on ... if it were to change, I think that would be great." Madhok and Canavan draw the line in very different places, but they speak to the same point: you have to pick your battles, based not just on what is the most important but what you can win. "I think having debates about cheese or about beer can sometimes distract from the issues at hand," says Madhok. "Black Lives Matter movements are not calling for name changes or things like that."

Loading Canavan puts it somewhat more starkly. "The people that genuinely want to fix things up are being done a great disservice by the overreach into much more mundane examples," he says. Adults don't want to be lectured on what they should approve or condemn, Canavan says. "Cancel culture infantilises people ... I think it's out of control and it's not widely supported. If we're going to allow hard core porn on the internet I think we can allow Gone With the Wind." Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, Australia's first female Muslim senator, begs to differ. She says it's good for people to reflect on how deficits in arts and culture, such as a lack of diversity, can harm the community. She does not believe there are people too small, or too irrelevant, to be cancelled. "The arbiters of what matters and what doesn't matter are the people who have been targeted," Faruqi says. "People who are not affected at all by racism or marginalisation really cannot be the ones who decide who gets a platform and who doesn't."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 18:19:23|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

by Xinhua writer Lu Jiafei

BEIJING, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The 22nd China-European Union (EU) leaders' meeting, the first official meeting between Chinese leaders and the new EU leaders, will be held via video link later on Monday.

The meeting comes at a crucial juncture as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose a serious threat to global public health security and economic stability. Against such a backdrop, enhanced cooperation between China and the EU, two major economies, is needed more than ever.

One major area the two sides can and should step up cooperation in is the arduous fight against the deadly pathogen. At the moment, China has largely brought the coronavirus outbreak under control, and the epidemic situation in Europe is improving.

With their combined experience of battling the coronavirus and curing the infected, China and the EU can join hands to help those countries that are still grappling with the pandemic and promote a more effective global response to this unprecedented health crisis.

Vaccines are the ultimate weapon against the virus. By working together more closely, the two sides can pool more of their medical resources and research power so that an effective vaccine can be available as soon as possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed some of the deep-seated problems besetting global health governance, which is being further constrained as Washington is threatening to quit the World Health Organization (WHO). Beijing and Brussels should continue to support the indispensible role of the WHO in the ongoing pandemic battle, and improve the global health governance in preparation for future health crises.

One other key area the two sides should step up collaboration in is free trade, and both sides should help stabilize global supply chains and join others around the world in bringing about recovery of the global economy.

China and the EU have long shared a broad consensus on strengthening practical cooperation in such fields as the economy, trade and investment. The China-Europe freight trains, the number of which hit a new high of 1,033 in May, was up 43 percent year on year; this is also a stellar example of how China and Europe can stand together in the face of the coronavirus challenge.

Closer bilateral cooperation will send a strong message to the world in support of free trade and an open world economy in an age when protectionism seems to be gaining momentum.

Meanwhile, despite the COVID-19 disruptions, China and the EU, which account for one third of global gross domestic product, remain committed to concluding a comprehensive bilateral investment agreement this year.

A timely conclusion of the China-EU investment treaty is of great importance for both sides to harness the complementarity of their respective economies and help them play a vital role in stabilizing the global supply chains and reviving the world economy.

Ultimately, Beijing and Brussels need to combine their forces to fend off protectionism and uphold multilateralism in this increasingly interconnected world.

In the past few years, China and the EU have proven themselves to be persistent defenders of the rules-based multilateral system. They should use this leaders' meeting as an opportunity to strongly endorse multilateralism.

The world has been grappling with the formidable challenges of uncertainty and chaos even before the COVID-19 outbreak as the spectres of protectionism and unilateralism have been rearing their ugly heads across the globe. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the temptation of beggar-thy-neighbor policies threatens to further derail global cooperation on critical issues such as climate change.

The COVID-19 crisis should be regarded as a sobering reminder that global crises need global solutions, not a short-sighted excuse to retreat into one's own borders and resort to economic nationalism and protectionism.

The world has been caught off guard by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, countries around the world should work together to overcome this global health crisis, and not be crushed by it. This is the task that both China and the EU now face. Enditem
Switch the Market flag

Open the menu and switch the

Market flag for targeted data from your country of choice.

for targeted data from your country of choice.
A temperature of 38C (100.4F) has been recorded in a Siberian town in what is thought to be a new record high for the Arctic circle.

A weather station in Verkhoyansk logged the temperature on Saturday. If verified, it will overtake an Arctic record set more than a century at Fort Yukon, Alaska, where a temperature of 37.7C (100F) was documented in 1915.

The previous record for the Russian weather station was 37.3C (99.1F), set in July 1988.

The likely new record high comes amid deepening horror at the impact of the unfolding climate crisis, which has already seen a heatwave hit the Arctic unusually early in the year and zombie fires, which have lasted the winter, rekindling and causing enormous forest and peat blazes.

In May, Arctic temperatures reached record highs for spring, with some parts of Siberia recording highs of over 20C, which scientists warned had kick-started an earlier annual melting season.

Whats happening in Siberia this year is nothing short of remarkable, said Jeff Berardelli, a CBS News meteorologist. He said the new record in Verkhoyansk was the kind of weather we expect by 2100, 80 years early.

For perspective Miami has only reached 100 degrees once on record," he added.

Verkhoyansk, in northeast Russia, holds the Guinness world record for the widest temperature range on Earth. Its record low, logged in in February 1892, is -67.8C coldest; some 105.8C less than its new extreme high.

The United Nations said Saturday's extraordinary heat was "17C hotter than normal for 20 June".

"Global hating is accelerating, and some parts of the world are heating a lot faster than others," it said in a tweet. The #RaceToZero emissions is a race for survival.

The rapidly warming temperatures in the Arctic and the resultant lack of snow and ice over land and sea are believed to be part of a vicious circle in which the uncovered earth and oceans absorb more heat than when theyre under their highly-reflective winter cloak.

This exacerbates warming, which can have unexpected consequences. One reason the number of fires in Arctic environments may be increasing is that the warming climate is leading to more frequent lightning strikes. This provides the ignition which is then fuelled by the warmer, drier material on the ground.
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) is pleased to announce the hire of Shawn Brosnan as the Director of Special Programs. Starting June 24th, Shawn will join Lara Miller, Counsel & VP of Corporate Strategy, in the expansion of the IACC-Amazon initiative. Launched in 2018, the IACC-Amazon Program is a unique voluntary collaboration that provides streamlined, meaningful engagement between IACC members and Amazon. Brands are given an expedited path for enforcement issue resolution, a real-time feedback mechanism that drives long term solutions, and valuable information to bolster their internal investigative efforts.

"Shawn brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the team. His appointment is the latest step in the IACC'S comprehensive industry leading strategy of building bridges between different sectors and industries in the fight against fakes," said IACC'S President Bob Barchiesi. "The internet has become a major enabler in the sale of online counterfeit products, providing criminals with access to a global market. No one company, government or association can do it alone. It takes committed partners from all sectors working together and learning from each other to stand a chance against these sophisticated counterfeit criminal networks."

Shawn has spent much of his career with Liz Claiborne and later Kate Spade where his portfolio included overseeing all aspects of their Global Security and Brand Protection. He has successfully managed $5M+ global security budget, including expenses for physical security, brand protection, executive protection, travel security, loss prevention, safety, and investigations for corporate and retail locations in the Americas, APAC and EMEA. Further, he developed and implemented comprehensive, multi-brand Global Brand Protection & Enforcement program resulting in increased enforcement, awareness, training, law enforcement & Customs cooperation, and an overall reduction in available counterfeit products leading to increased authentic sales. The program resulted in $1.5M savings in the first year.

"Shawn's brand-side experience and operational expertise will tremendously reinforce the IACC-Amazon Program's ability to serve the wider rights-holder community as it continues to expand," Ms. Miller noted. "We're absolutely thrilled to welcome him to the team and confident that his hands-on involvement will add significant value to this important project."

"As a long-time member and former board of director, I have seen the tremendous growth of the IACC over the years. I am excited to join the leading anti-counterfeiting organization in the world and to contribute to its innovative, collaborative programs," said Mr. Brosnan. "I look forward to working with the IACC team, our brand members and our partner to grow and build on the success of the IACC-Amazon Program."

About IACC

The IACC (www.iacc.org) is a Washington, DC-based not-for-profit organization representing the interests of companies concerned with trademark counterfeiting and intellectual property theft. The IACC membership include many of the world's best-known brands across all product sectors. The IACC has played a leading role in the development of cross-industry voluntary agreements, to address the illicit trafficking of counterfeit and pirated goods online, including its IACC MarketSafe and RogueBlock initiatives.

SOURCE International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition

Related Links

http://www.iacc.org


When COVID-19 first started spreading in the U.S., there was a big push for people to be as safe as possible to help protect their older, more vulnerable loved ones. But, while older adults are still more likely to develop serious complications from COVID-19, new data show that coronavirus cases are skewing younger across the South.

In Florida, a state that has been particularly hit hard with COVID-19 cases, Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a Saturday press conference that the vast majority of new cases are among young people. Were seeing it spread in 20- and 30-year-olds faster than we would like to see, so we really want to send a message of doubling down on what weve been preaching since the start ... in terms of social distancing, DeSantis said, per the Orlando Sentinel.

In Mississippi, a spike in new COVID-19 cases has been linked to fraternity rush parties that are in direct violation of Gov. Tate Reeves executive order. More than 160 students at the University of Mississippi tested positive for COVID-19 since June 1, according to the Oxford Eagle. Eighty-one percent of the new coronavirus cases in Oxford, Miss., where the University of Mississippi is located, are in people between the ages of 18 and 24, NBC News reported.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said during a press conference last week that younger people are disproportionately being diagnosed with COVID-19. There are certain counties where a majority of the people who are tested positive in that county are under the age of 30," Abbott said, per The Texas Tribune.

The data seems a little confusing, but public health experts say they arent shocked. Heres what could behind the surge in cases among young people.

Why are more young people being diagnosed with COVID-19?

There are likely a few things at play here. A big one is that younger people dont seem as nervous about the virus as their older counterparts, Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells Yahoo Life. As social distancing regulations are relaxed, the people who are most likely to return to normal activities are going to be young people who have less risk factors for severe disease, he says. In general, young people have not been as attentive to wearing masks and social distancing, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. We have seen younger people be more careless about this than being careful, he adds.

Story continues

In Texas, Gov. Abbott particularly called out Memorial Day festivities and gatherings as likely sparking the surge of cases, along with young people visiting bars.

But its not just about younger people being less worried about the virus. We now have much better testing capabilities, Adalja says. Early on, we werent testing mild cases. Now, were more likely to offer testing and to have all symptomatic cases diagnosed.

Contact tracing  the practice of contacting people who have been in close contact with an infected person  may also be working in these areas, leading to an increase in testing and new diagnoses, Adalja says.

"Some people who need to be tested before they go back to work are now getting tested," he says. "As part of that, younger people who have mild symptoms or no symptoms may get diagnosed without realizing they were infected."

Why is this so significant?

While many of these cases in younger people are minor or even asymptomatic, those people can still go on to infect more vulnerable people in their lives. Young adults likely are as vulnerable to infection with SARS-CoV-2  the virus that causes COVID-19  yet are much less prone to develop symptoms or severe complications of COVD-19 compared to older adults, Glenn Fennelly, an infectious disease expert and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School, tells Yahoo Life. Many may have minimal or no symptoms and are likely to feel less ill overall than are older adults. Because of this, younger people with SARS-CoV-2 infection are less likely to stay at home, and are more likely to interact physically with groups of friends compared to older adults.

Theres often more opportunity for younger people to spread the infection, Fennelly says. If they are in a crowd while they are in the phase of illness when they are on the cusp of developing symptoms  which often coincides with peak levels of viral shedding  they become, in effect, a super spreader of COVID-19, and may infect a large number of others with whom they have contact.

Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, a medical epidemiologist with COVID Exit Strategy and former Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the Emergency Response and Recovery Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is concerned that groups of younger people who may have gotten infected while not social distancing may also be less cautious around vulnerable family members.

Some people who need to be tested before they go back to work are now getting tested, he says. As part of that, younger people who have mild symptoms or no symptoms may get diagnosed without realizing they were infected.

Schaffner agrees, calling the latest data on infections in young people ominous.

Younger people are not only spread it amongst themselves but can bring it home to older family members and relatives, he says. Those people are more likely to have chronic underlying health conditions and develop severe cases of COVID.

Adalja agrees. Its usually considered better that young people are getting infected but the virus wont necessarily always stay in that demographic, he says. And, if those younger people infect their older counterparts, it can lead to more hospitalizations  the data may not show it yet. It can take some time for this to spill into hospitals, Adalja says. Thats concerning, given that intensive care unit availability is already low in Alabama, Florida, and Texas, per data from the COVID-19 tracking website COVID Exit Strategy.

This underscores the need for contact tracing to be in place, Adalja says. Having people be rapidly diagnosed and isolated can help prevent these chains of transmission from occurring.

The data may even lead to tighter restrictions on everyday life for everyone else, Dr. Richard Watkins, an infectious disease physician in Akron, Ohio, and a professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, tells Yahoo Life. This increases the chance that a second shut-down will be necessary, he says.

The challenge for public health officials, Shahpar says, is to engage this demographic to reinforce the things we already know we need to do to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

What can people do to stay safe?

Even though regulations have loosened in many states, Schaffner says this is a good reminder that people should still continue to follow proven methods to lower their risk of contracting COVID-19, including practicing social distancing, wearing a mask when social distancing isnt possible, avoiding large groups whenever possible, and washing hands regularly.

Fennelly doubles down on the mask recommendation. In order to stay safe, we must all understand one simple message: You wear a mask to protect me against COVID-19. If we all wear masks, we will beat this, he says. However, over a dozen U.S. states still do not require masking in public, and there is no federal requirement to do so despite burgeoning COVID-19 hospitalization rates.

Overall, experts stress the importance of understanding that COVID-19 is a threat to everyone, regardless of their age or the weather. There was a hope among many of us that COVID might not be transmitted as readily in the summer. This, apparently, is not the case, he says. COVID-19 doesn't care what you look like, where you live, or how old you are, Watkins says. It wants to infect you.

For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

Read more from Yahoo Life

Want daily lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Lifes newsletter.
One person was killed and 14 passengers were injured when a bus collided with truck on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. The accident took place at about 2 am on Monday, the police said.

The accident took place as the truck lost balance and came on the wrong side of the road, crossing the divider, the police further said. The injured are being treated at SN Hospital in Agra.

The accident took place at 2 am on Monday when the truck was coming from Lucknow towards Agra. It appears that driver either slept while driving or for other reason could not control the truck which struck the divider and came on wrong side - on road towards Lucknow - and turned turtle. A bus coming from Delhi and heading towards Lucknow collided with the truck, said Pradeep Kumar, the in-charge of Doki police station in Agra district.

The person who was killed is either the driver or the cleaner of the truck. About 14 passengers of the bus got injured when it turned and fell towards railing alongside the ExpreswWay, said Kumar.

Out of the 14 injured, six were admitted at emergency ward of SN Medical College and Hospital of Agra and are under treatment. Two of them had major injuries and were out of danger. The dead body from the truck was removed and sent for post-mortem, he added.

The police added that the truck has been removed and road cleared for traffic movement.

Since the lockdown relaxations have come into force, traffic has increased on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway and this was the third accident in three consecutive days on 302 kilometre long road.

On Saturday, five members of a family were killed when their car rammed into truck near Naseerpur village in Firozabad district.

On Sunday, a private bus from Gorakhpur heading towards Jaipur collided with the railing on the side of the Expressway leaving four injured.

On Monday, a truck driver was killed when a bus collided with it in Doki area of Agra.
The lack of global leadership and unity to fight the coronavirus is a bigger threat that the outbreak itself, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday, adding that politicisation of the pandemic had made it worse.

He did not elaborate but the WHO has been criticised by some members states, especially the United States which says it was too weak, too slow and too "China-centric" in tackling the disease.

Other members have called for a review into the pandemic, with Australia urging the WHO to have more powers, enabling it to respond more quickly to a health crisis.

"The world is in desperate need of national unity and global solidarity. The politicisation of the pandemic has exacerbated it," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual health forum organised by the World Government Summit, an event organised by Dubai.

"...The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself, it's the lack of global solidarity and global leadership."

He said some parts of international health regulations needed to be strengthened to make them "more fit for purpose".

He did not say which parts, only that they needed "coordinated, predictable, transparent, broad-based and flexible funding" to be fully implemented.

He also said all countries must make universal healthcare a priority, warning the world had learnt the hard way that strong healthcare systems were "the foundation of global health security and of social and economic development".

The WHO on Friday warned the pandemic was accelerating, as global infections rose above 8.3 million people with 453,834 deaths.

Norway's health minister, Bent Hoeie, cautioned that the outbreak was "far from over".
Update: Baby goats returned home, teens agree to do farm chores as punishment

Two children are upset after learning from their mother that the baby goats they helped name and care for were stolen.

Police are investigating after six baby goats were reported stolen from MOO-ville Creamery, 5875 S M-66, in Nashville, according to the business.

Lindsey Westendorp takes care of the animals for the petting farm. On the morning of Monday, June 22, she said she went out to feed them their bottles and found out six of the eight baby goats were gone.

Her children, ages 2 and 7, have helped care for the goats.

Theyre down here every day with me, Westendorp said. They helped me raise these baby goats from day one and raised their parents, too.

So its not just breaking my heart, its breaking my childrens hearts too.

Two of the goats, Pepsi and Peanut, were her sons goats for 4-H, she said. Others names include Taco, Nibbles and Fluffy, she said. They were all two months old or younger, she said.

Its really hard for me to understand what happened but its really hard to explain that to a 7-year-old and a 2-year old why the baby goats are gone, she said while holding back tears Monday.

A security camera recorded someone at the location where they shouldnt have been, Westendorp said, and it was given to the Barry County Sheriffs Office for the investigation.

Westendorp said the goats need special care. She said she hopes whoever made the poor choice to take them will return them.

Theyre very friendly and very trusting, which probably made it that much easier for the people to to snag them, Westendorp said. But aside from being tore up about them being missing, Im worried for how theyre being cared for right now. They need milk, theyre very fragile at this age they get sick very easily. I just worry that whoever decided to take them doesnt know how to care for them.

We just want them back, she said.

A post about the baby goat theft reached more than 8,000 shares in the first five hours.

Read more:

Dog stolen in home invasion, police say

Cat swiped from Grand Rapids store, police asking for public tips

3 sheep stolen in Southwest Michigan, police say

Family of missing pet pigs wants answers after receiving ominous note in mailbox
Aliya Vance, a public safety officer at La Salle University, has another title with the university: graduate. She got her bachelor's in social work in May and is among millions of older adults who continued to persevere and get their degrees. Read more

For 13 years, Aliya Vance has worked as a public safety officer and dispatcher at La Salle University with whats been a lifelong mission: helping others.

Now, she has another La Salle title, too: graduate.

Vance, a native of Philadelphia, received her bachelors in social work last month. She donned her cap and gown and watched commencement virtually, like other graduates.

It was still emotional, said Vance, 45. I made it!

Vance is among 7.4 million students 25 years or older attending the nations colleges, about 37% of the nearly 20 million total, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Many of them, in addition to their course work, must juggle full-time jobs and raising children.

That burden has become even more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some parents had to supervise school-age children taking classes online for the first time and deal with health and financial fallout of the virus.

But balance has always been an issue for adult students, and their resiliency has helped them to weather the pandemic well, said Christine Kelleher Palus, dean of Villanova Universitys College of Professional Studies, which enrolls more than 200 adult students.

The adult student population could grow as larger numbers of unemployed seek new careers through education.

We know that people are often motivated to seek out education during times of economic challenge, Palus said. I think this experience will be no different in that regard.

 READ MORE: Death of a classmate, coronavirus, job loss: These CCP nursing grads have overcome a lot

Sometimes those whom adult students most hope to inspire are their own children.

I didnt want them to ever think it was too late to do anything, Vance said.

Kellie Miles, who got her bachelors in interdisciplinary studies in leadership from Villanova in May, had similar motivations. In 2015, she watched her son struggling academically in high school and losing focus.

Its time for me to go back to school as an example for my son, thought Miles, 40, of Phoenixville.

She wanted her son to see that if she could persevere in school while working full time in project management for an investment company and raising a family, he could make it through high school.

Years earlier, after graduating from high school in Philadelphia, she waited before enrolling in college. She started at Community College of Philadelphia in 1999 and again at Peirce College in 2002, stopping both times for family reasons. In 2015, she began again at Strayer, then transferred to Villanova a year later.

There were days she never went to bed, working until 4 a.m. to get class work done, she said.

I had to continue to have that fight and that drive to say this time around, Im going to finish, she said. I have to show my son that he, too, can do this.

 READ MORE: Let the virtual graduations commence: Coronavirus has pushed ceremonies online

After the pandemic hit, the stress was greater, she said. She had to help her second-grader navigate online class, while her own class schedule became harder to manage, with professors wanting to have meetings during the work day.

Its really challenging, extra draining, she said, because when youre home, you cant go anywhere to get any relief.

Now, she hopes to use her degree to build her womens Christian club into a nonprofit business.

Her son, meanwhile, got through high school and attends Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a public technical school in Lancaster.

Vance, also a Philadelphia School District graduate who lives in the Northeast, became a single parent after high school. Over the years, she worked various jobs including as a commercial driver before landing the La Salle job in 2007.

Her job includes responding to emergencies, monitoring security cameras, and fielding calls for safety escorts and from parents who cant reach their children and want a check conducted. Sometimes, her work means saving lives: Last year, a call came in about a food service worker who had collapsed. She dispatched officers, but rather than wait for an assessment, she immediately called 911, which proved critical. The employee recovered and a few of her professors who know the employee passed on a thank-you note.

Shortly after starting work at La Salle, she began taking classes, just one or two at a time in the evenings after work. Her tuition was covered by La Salle, a benefit of employment.

 READ MORE: A journey years in the making: Mom and daughter graduate from Penn together

Most classmates didnt know she was an employee, she said. Some professors knew. There were times things were said in class about public safety after an incident, she said.

To me, it was a benefit to know what we could do better, she said.

Two years ago, her son, Kamil, now 25, got his bachelors in criminal justice at La Salle, the same year she got her associates in liberal arts. It was a highlight for both of them, she said.

She plans to pursue her masters online at Rutgers and continue working at La Salle until she finds something in her field. The university has become like family, she said. Her favorite place on campus is the leafy quad with big chairs.

Vance writes poetry under the name Unique and self-published a book of her poems, Walk With Me, which is on the shelf at La Salles Connelly Library.

She hopes to become a licensed clinical social worker.

I just have great empathy for people and their situations, she said.

Until then, shell enjoy her dual role at La Salle: Im not just an employee. Im an alumna!
[June 21, 2020] Kantar Brand Growth Lab is developing Quantum Machine Learning solutions in Singapore

As part of AI/ML advancement in Singapore , Kantar was granted a patent in the Quantum Machine Learning field in Singapore .

Kantar Brand Growth Lab continues experimenting in the Quantum Machine Learning field. SINGAPORE, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kantar, the world's leading data, insights and consulting company, announced today the first patent on Quantum Machine Learning as part of AI/ML advancement in Singapore. With the continuous support and partnership of Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB), Kantar established its Brand Growth Lab in Singapore in 2018 to develop AI/ML solutions. The Lab, an advanced analytics hub, is dedicated to discovering new ways to leverage big data to drive strategic decision-making for business. Kantar awarded patent in the Quantum AI field On January 2nd of this year, Kantar was granted its first patent by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore for a method of optimising AI/ML predictions from a classical data feed with a hybrid simulator generated from classical and quantum model structures. Some of the other organizations with a patented invention in the Quantum technology field in Singapore are Oxford University Innovation, D-Wave, IBM and Google. "Quantum technology will revolutionize Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This patent indicates our commitment to lead in this field. We are proud to have been awarded this patent as it demonstrates our advancement in the field of data sciene," commented Hernan Sanchez, Managing Director, Kantar Brand Growth Lab.



Kantar Brand Growth Lab experiments in the Quantum Machine Learning field In collaboration with Professor Angelakis, Principal Investigator and the leader of the Quantum Simulation and Computation Group at the National University of Singapore's Centre of Quantum Technologies, two quantum experiments using real consumer behavioral data from Kantar's panels were conducted during the last 6 months.

Experiment 1: Customer segmentation using quantum machine learning In the first experiment, the goal was to develop quantum-inspired machine learning segmentation algorithm that exploits the concept of quantum interference and work in the classical hardware to improve the results of the current machine learning approach. Comparing the traditional technique with a quantum and a quantum genetic algorithm developed for this experiment, we observed that the Quantum versions showed better results. Experiment 2: Customer Segmentation based on Media consumption patterns using an IBM quantum computer The objective of this experiment was to establish the feasibility of using a quantum computer to address a real-life segmentation problem. The quantum algorithm was run using 2 qubits on the IBM's 5-qubit quantum computer. 4 relevant consumer segments were identified. Next steps in our research will be about proving the superiority of the quantum approach and explore the potential of more advanced quantum hardware. "In the field of Data Science, it is always crucial to be aware of the new techniques and methodologies in order to stay relevant and have that competitive edge. By venturing into Quantum field early and experimenting with different Quantum machine learning techniques, we hope to have an early mover advantage that could bring great business value in the long run," commented Shilpa Jain, Principal Data Scientist, Kantar Brand Growth Lab. "With the support of EDB, the Lab keeps on researching and developing advanced analytics solutions to help institutions and corporations maximize the productivity of their efforts. The post COVID-19 economy requires a new level of innovation and in today's data-driven economy, AI will play a key role," added Yee Mei Chan, co-managing director of the Kantar Brand Growth Lab. About Kantar Kantar is the world's leading evidence-based insights and consulting company. We have a complete, unique and rounded understanding of how people think, feel and act; globally and locally in over 90 markets. By combining the deep expertise of our people, our data resources and benchmarks, our innovative analytics and technology, we help our clients understand people and inspire growth. Further information about Kantar can be found at www.kantar.com Twitter: Facebook: LinkedIn Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190611/2492962-1logo SOURCE Kantar

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
The new coronavirus may kill the budget airfare.

The pandemic has slammed the airline industry harder than most, almost eliminating discretionary travel. Globally, carriers have placed 16,184 of their 29,324 aircraft in storage, according to the International Air Transport Association, the industrys trade group.

Airlines have canceled 7.5 million flights, witnessed a $434 billion drop in revenue, and will likely suffer losses of $83 billion this year, the association reports.

Unfortunately, airlines may be the last to make a come back as people avoid confined spaces where they may contract COVID-19. Despite the claims by Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly that Politifact ruled false, an airplane is not as safe as an environment as youre going to find.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Coronavirus costing oil and gas $1.8 trillion in 2020

As an avid traveler, I desperately miss flying across the planet and immersing myself in other cultures. But like most people, I will likely wait to develop immunity or get a vaccine before I start flying again. By then, though, the problem will be cost.

The folks sitting in business class at the front of the plane are who make discount air travel in the back of the aircraft possible. The only reason Delta can charge $500 for a roundtrip to London is that the business traveler is paying $2,000.

Executives, though, are not flying nearly as much. No industry is holding big conferences or conventions, and most offices are either closed or not allowing visitors. If a CEO or board members are not legally obligated to go someplace physically, they are sitting behind a webcam.

Mark Manduca, an airline analyst at Citi bank, told the CNBC television news channel that corporate travel in 2020 could end up 25 percent lower than in 2019. Mandatory quarantines and a move to teleconferencing will suppress business travel for months if not years as companies reduce risk and save money.

Given the fact that a 1 percent movement in corporate travel volumes impact airline profitability by 10 percent, its not a crazy supposition to assume that the airline industry will struggle actually to get profitable again, he added.

An analysis by Brian Pierce, chief economist at IATA, found that despite low fuel prices, most airlines need to fill 75 percent of available seats to make money on a flight. Only four out of 122 airlines are profitable if they follow the COVID-19 guideline of leaving a third of seats empty.

Unless they raise prices. In North America, airlines would need to raise prices 43 percent to break even while practicing social distancing, while Asian-Pacific airlines would need to hike fares 54 percent, IATA found.

Fewer flights and higher prices are bad news for more than just customers. While the federal government has given the industry $25 billion to keep airline employees working through September, CEOs are already announcing plans for layoffs on Oct. 1.

United Airlines will cut 13 corporate officer positions this month and may reduce management and administrative staff by 30 percent later this year, according to the Reuters news agency. Uniteds new CEO, Scott Kirby, has said he will renegotiate contracts with unions to bring lower wages.

Southwest Airlines is offering voluntary buyouts or reduced-pay to avoid layoffs. An estimated 120,000 airline employees, about 30 percent of the industry, have accepted some sort of furlough in return for reduced pay.

Airlines will undoubtedly shrink in the face of less demand for their services. But there is a vicious cycle to reducing flights, raising prices and therefore accommodating fewer customers who can afford to pay higher fares.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: June will be Americas most important test in fight against COVID-19

The overall economy profoundly impacts airline revenues. High unemployment, slow economic growth and lack of consumer confidence conspire to keep people off planes and at home. Twenty million people on unemployment are not booking beach vacations right now.

The only bright spot on the horizon appears to be holiday travel in November and December. After months of staying at home, Americans are booking flights to see family or get a great deal on a resort vacation.

COVID-19, though, will ultimately determine our vacation plans. A second spike of new cases in the fall, which many epidemiologists are predicting, will send people scrambling back into their homes. If that happens, many airlines may find themselves reorganizing their debts in court.

The airline business, and I may be wrong, and I hope Im wrong, changed in a major way, celebrity investor Warren Buffett said after dumping his airline stocks last month. We like those airlines, but the world has changed  and I dont know how its changed.

Neither does anyone else, but I am sad to say that affordable air travel may become a thing of the past.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
Accra, Ghana (PANA) - Final year Senior High School students and the second batch of second year students in Ghana return to school on Monday in the second step of a phased reopening of schools in the West African country
Penneys, Brown Thomas and H&M were among the dozens of retail brands to lobby senior government ministers for a 12-month commercial rates cut, warning that without "urgent and decisive action", retail businesses would close.

The group also called for a 50% commercial rates cut for the six months after the rate-free period "to allow businesses to restore their financial security".

A letter sent to Eoghan Murphy, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, and Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was signed by the Retailers Rates Action Group, which counts Penneys, Brown Thomas, H&M, JD Sports, Easons, B&Q and Burger King among its members.

Other high street brands to sign the letter included Arnotts, Caffe Nero, Clarks, Costa Coffee, Decathlon, Dixons Carphone, Holland & Barrett, Iceland, KFC, Lush, New Look, Regatta Outdoors, River Island, Schuh and Tommy Hilfiger. Some 51 retailers backed the call.

It is estimated the cancellation of all local authority rates for retail businesses for a 12-month period would cost the exchequer more than 730 million.

The letter, released to the Irish Examiner under a Freedom of Information request, was sent on March 19, the day after Penneys and Brown Thomas closed due to Covid-19, and just days before the likes of Costa Coffee and Burger King followed suit.

It pointed to a British government decision to suspend rates for 12 months from mid-March and said the same was needed to safeguard Irish retail.

"We, of course, fully support the Government regarding the actions you are taking to ensure the safety of the Irish public. However, one of the unavoidable consequences of these actions, is the substantial disruption and decline in the Irish retail sector, with many retailers already having had to close nationwide," the group said.

"Since the imposition of the social distancing measures, without the normal level of footfall throughout the country, turnover in our stores has plummeted to incredibly low and unsustainable levels. Yet at the same time, we are essentially being made to pay rates liabilities, as if these were normal market conditions.

"Quite simply, unless the Government takes immediate action to help the retail sector through this crisis, there is likely to be a considerably smaller sector left at the end of the pandemic."

The day after the letter was sent, the ministers allowed local authorities to defer commercial rates for a three-month period.

Doing so recognised "unprecedented challenges", Mr Donohoe said at the time.
VANCOUVER, BC, June 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Lida Resources Inc. (CSE: LIDA) ("Lida" or the "Company") is Canadian exploration company that is currently targeting exploration in Peru and commenced trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") on May 28 , 2020 under the symbol LID. (Symbol change to "LIDA" effective June 4, 2020)

To help our new and existing investors better understand existing operations and future objectives, Lida CEO, Leonard De Melt, is pleased to provide the following corporate updates. The San Vincente Property is the Company's principle property and the main focus for the Company.

San Vicente Property

The San Vicente Property ("Property") is located approximately 120 kilometers east of the coastal city of Trujillo, Peru in the district of Agallpampa, Province of Otuzco. The Property is located in the occidental part of the Tertiary Volcanic Belt of the Western Cordillera and is underlain by rocks of the Calipuy Formation, a precious and base metals metallotects formation found in Peru. The Calipuy Formation is the product of post tectonic volcanism in the Cordillera region.

Lida has acquired the San Vicente mine which was in production of gold and silver concentrate until 2011.

Lida has an agreement in place with the local community ("San Vicente Bajo La Union") for surface rights of 2,500 metres surrounding the mine opening and is in discussions to obtain further surface rights. The agreement gives Lida a permit for surface use for a period of 20 years. The rest of the surface rights are held by the communities of San Vicente Bajo La Union and San Vicente Alto La Union. The majority of the ground in the Concession is controlled by San Vicente Bajo La Union. Lida

To date, exploration at the San Vicente Property has consisted of surface and underground mapping, mining exploration drives along structures and channel sampling of exploration drives. The surface and underground mapping conducted on the Property by the previous owner produced 187 samples from 66 channels, identifying three (3) mineralized structures. The Corporation will strive to supplement the activities conducted by previous owner with the planned Stage One activities in order to further evaluate the San Vicente Property.

Plans Going Forward.

Lida is presently reviewing numerous additional concessions in Peru. The Peruvian Government commenced a four-month amnesty period beginning January 15, 2020 allowing new and existing mining operations another opportunity to register with the Ministry of Energy and Mines, to demonstrate their compliance with environmental and safety regulations and remit taxes on sales of extracted minerals. As indicated, this represented a renewed window of opportunity within the mining sector to potentially increase the market supply of mineral rich material.

The initial results from re-opening the formalization process have been positive as the number of miners registered has grown 22% to an estimated 66,000 in March 2020, from approximately 54,000 as of January 2020. Lida is reviewing this opportunity and plans to potentially buy a number of these mines.

Stage One work on the San Vicente Property will be divided into two parts, with the first part consisting of initial evaluation, survey of the Property, map out surface, infrastructure and improve local access roads and the second part consisting of detail surface and geological mapping, Geophysics, channel sampling and drilling. The estimated budget for completing both parts of Stage One is $250,000 to $300,000, with an expected time frame of 4 months

Management Team

Leonard De Melt, ASCT, BA, HdM, CEO

Len De Melt has nearly 30 years of project management and mine development experience that he brings to the Company. He is a Certified Engineering Technologist from the Haileybury School of Mines and also hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Management. He has held management positions with 12 mining companies internationally. He has worked with many teams that have resulted in numerous mines and great discoveries, primarily focused in Peru for over 25 years. Len is tri-lingual and feel very comfortable working in South America. He was one of the founders of Norsemont which was sold to Hudbay for $xxx million and resulted in the Constancia Mine, Hudbay's biggest mine in Peru. He was also the President of Vena Resources when it was sold to Glencore, and the subject property become the Azul Cocha Mine in Central Peru.

Geoffrey Balderson, CFO

Geoffrey Balderson is the President of Harmony Corporate Services Ltd., a company that provides corporate, secretarial, bookkeeping, accounting and filing services to public companies or companies that are working on going public. In addition, Mr. Balderson has been an officer and director of several TSX Venture Exchange listed companies over the past 12 years. Prior to that he was an investment advisor at Union Securities and Georgia Pacific Securities Corp. Mr. Balderson holds a Sales and Marketing Diploma from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

Andrew von Kursell, Director

Mr. von Kursell has been involved in mining operations in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uganda and China. Mr. von Kursell is a Professional Engineer, registered in BC, Ontario, Life Member in Nova Scotia and retired in Yukon. He earned a Bachelor of Mining Engineering degree from McGill University.

Patrick Morris, Director

Patrick Morris is an entrepreneur and capital markets executive with over 15 years of experience. In addition, Mr. Morris co-created and co-produced Canada's first nationally syndicated radio show about growth stock opportunities, which was broadcast on 14 of the top-rated news talk stations across Canada.

Erick Underwood, Director

Mr. Underwood has over 25 years of experience in corporate development, business planning and analysis, treasury and accounting for the mining industry including 14 years while being based in Chile and Peru. Mr. Underwood holds a CPA, CMA professional designation from CPA Ontario. Mr. Underwood holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Management of University of Toronto, a Graduate Diploma in Management from McGill University and a B. Comm. (Finance & International Business) from McGill University.

About Lida Resources Inc.

Lida acquires properties by staking initial mineral claims, negotiating for permits from government authorities, acquiring mineral claims or permits from existing holders, entering into option agreements to acquire interests in mineral claims or purchasing companies with mineral claims or permits. On these properties, the Company explores for minerals on its own or in joint ventures with others. Exploration for metals usually includes surface sampling, airborne and/or ground geophysical surveys and drilling. The Company is not limited to any particular metal or region, but the corporate focus is on precious and base metals in South America, specifically Peru, as at the date hereof.

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION DISCLAIMER

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward looking information, including but not limited to, expansion of operations. Forward looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward looking information. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward looking information as a result of competitive factors and competition for investment opportunities, challenges relating to operations in international markets, transaction execution risk, changes to the Company's strategic growth plans, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable based on current expectations and potential investment pipeline, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward looking information should not be unduly relied upon. Any forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the Company's expectations as of the date hereof, and is subject to change after such date. 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, except as required by applicable securities legislation.

SOURCE Lida Resources Inc
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued his first significant COVID-19 shutdown order on March 16. The order was subsequently continued and extended on March 25 with the ensuing loss of some 795,00 jobs. I wondered if Walz took any account of the economic devastation he was causing before he promulgated his shutdown orders.

On April 23 I submitted a Minnesota Data Practices Act request to Governor Walz seeking all economic data and economic analysis submitted to you in connection with each of the executive orders you have promulgated in connection with COVID-19, specifically including analysis of anticipated job losses.

Walz slow walked his response to my Data Practices Act request and you can see why. It is stunning. Consisting of three documents produced by email as PDF attachments this past Friday, its too small to call it a Friday afternoon document dump. Its a Friday afternoon document trickle. The documents are dated respectively April 3 (six pages), April 17 (six pages), and May 27 (a two-page memo To whom it may concern summarizing the April 3 and April 17 memos).

The April 3 memo is posted below. Coming after Walzs original shutdown orders, it came too late to influence the decision making behind them. It projected that 805,656 Minnesotans may end up not working if Stay at Home is extended in its current form. We are now in a modified version of Walzs original shutdown orders, but with 795,000 lost jobs to date this memo has proved uncannily accurate.

Kevin Roche comments here. Kevin makes this point in bold: [N]ote that for all [Walzs] yammering about systemic racism and the need for equity, there was zero consideration of the impact on minority businesses.

Kevin has coincidentally just posted his evaluation of the the supposedly fine-tuned Minnesota Model (now in version 3.0) behind Walzs shutdown orders in The Minnesota Model Output. Kevins post includes graphic representations comparing the model with reality. Kevin writes:

The Governor kept talking, until a couple of weeks ago, about climbing the curve, and you see that in these charts. But look at the lower linethat is the actual, there is nothing approaching the projections and it just keeps getting further and further away. He isnt talking about the model any more, for obvious reasons. Now [according to Walz et al.] it is just one data point. That is is the exact opposite of his use of the model when he was issuing his extreme shutdowns. This is embarrassing for all of us, that we didnt push back collectively on this horrendous mistake. And it is pathetic that he has never once acknowledged how far off the models were.

In short, the Minnesota Model formerly touted by Governor Walz has proved a joke. The April 3 analysis of projected job losses, however, seems to have hit a bingo. Its a shame no one was paying attention then  or now. The Minnesota media remain recumbent and comatose.

Responsive Data 1 by Scott Johnson on Scribd
GENEVA, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Friday adopted a consensus resolution strongly condemning the continuing racially discriminatory and violent practices perpetrated by law enforcement agencies against Africans and people of African descent.

The resolution, in particular, denounced police brutality that led to the deaths of U.S. citizen George Floyd in Minneapolis and other people of African descent.

It is ironic that the United States, which has an ingrained habit of finger-pointing at other countries over so-called human rights issues, is now in the hot seat.

For the first time in history, the UNHRC held an urgent debate regarding racism and called an urgent meeting to discuss the human rights issue in the United States.

Many participants believe Floyd's tragic killing has crossed the bottom line of humanity and exposed chronic and deeply-rooted racial discrimination in the United States.

The nationwide protests over Floyd's death demonstrate that more and more people cannot brush aside the growing social injustice in the United States and are crying for change.

However, Washington has been quite unwilling to face up to this human rights issue and cure the malady in a systematic fashion.

In 2016, the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent from the UNHRC said in its U.S. country report that killings of unarmed African Americans by police were "only the tip of the iceberg in what is a pervasive racial bias in the justice system."

In two universal periodic reviews -- a process which involves a review of the human rights records of all UN member states -- of the United States over the past decade, concerns have been expressed about racial discrimination, impunity, disregard for life and brutality.

However, Uncle Sam turned a deaf ear to such criticisms while the situation worsened in the country.

"The anger we have seen in the U.S., erupting as COVID-19 exposes glaring inequalities in society, shows why far-reaching reforms and inclusive dialogue are needed there to break the cycle of impunity for unlawful killings by police and racial bias in policing," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said earlier in June.

The frustration and discontent of the American public stem from increasing social fragmentation in the country. Americans are becoming more divided economically, socially and racially, but Washington is doing little to change things and meet the basic needs of its citizens.

The United States likes to lecture other countries on human rights issues, but regrettably fails to address its disturbing human rights problems at home.

What has happened in the past month in the United States has further exposed the hypocrisy of U.S. politicians over human rights issues. They call violent demonstrations elsewhere "a beautiful sight to behold" and normal law enforcement as "abuse of power," nevertheless turning a blind eye to its own problems. Their double standards on human rights have been laid bare.

George Floyd's tragic death has sparked anger, disappointment and protests across the United States and around the world. It is high time that Washington listened to the calls of the people and the international community, reflected on its double standards, and took action to address its own problems.
OTTAWA  Allegations about President Donald Trump in a new book by former White House official John Bolton could be a factor in Huawei executive Meng Wanzhous fight to avoid extradition from Canada to the United States.

Passages from the book penned by Bolton, Trumps former national security adviser, are likely to be explored as a way to boost arguments of political involvement in the case of the Chinese telecom giants chief financial officer, according to legal experts and a source familiar with her defense. Of particular interest are moments in which Bolton says Trump linked the case to a potential U.S. trade deal with China.

Bolton writes in the book that Trump viewed concerns raised by his advisers about Huawei and the ZTE telecom firm being national security threats as an opportunity to make personal gestures to" Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In 2018, for example, he reversed penalties that [Wilbur] Ross and the Commerce Department had imposed on ZTE, Bolton wrote in his tell-all memoir titled The Room Where it Happened, which is scheduled for release Tuesday.

In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in the trade deal  which, of course, was primarily about getting Trump re-elected in 2020.

Mengs case has wedged middle-power Canada into the wider clash between two heavyweights: China and the U.S. Her arrest has angered Beijing, which has called Canada an accomplice in a "grave political incident," halted some key Canadian agricultural exports and detained two Canadians who were formally charged last week with spying.

Meng was arrested by Canadian police in December 2018 on an extradition warrant from the U.S. Her case, which is being heard by a Vancouver court and could take years, is based on fraud charges connected to her alleged violation of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Mengs case is due back in court Tuesday.

The source said the new information in Boltons book will be explored and could be used by Mengs defense team to bolster arguments that Trumps musings after her arrest about a U.S. trade deal with China has tainted her extradition case with politics.

Story continues

During a 2018 interview, Trump said he would be willing to intervene in Mengs case if it would help the U.S. land a trade deal with China or serve other American national security interests.

The source said they believe the allegations in Boltons book make the U.S. extradition request more problematic, but they added it remains to be seen if and how the defense could even use the new details in the courtroom. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter in public.

Trump blasted Boltons book last week on Twitter as pure fiction and a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. On Saturday, a federal judge denied the Trump administration's request to prevent its release.

Donald Bayne, an Ottawa lawyer with extensive experience with extradition cases, said in an interview that hes sure Mengs legal team will explore using Boltons book in court.

"As a defense lawyer you dont close off avenues, you explore them  everything you can to assist your client, said Bayne, who represents the family of Michael Kovrig, one of the two Canadians charged in China with spying.

Kovrig and Michael Spavor are being held behind bars in China, where they haven't had access to consular services for months and have had almost no contact with their families.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called their detentions arbitrary and has pushed for their release. Hes also sought help from the international community  including from the Trump administration  to put pressure on China.

Bayne said he thinks Boltons allegations pose evidentiary problems. They include how much weight a judge will give to a statement without the witness present, the fact that Bolton cannot easily be compelled to testify in Canada because hes an American and bringing him into the case would cause a stir, and that the passage is based on one person saying he heard another person say it.

If its merely a hearsay assertion it might be given very little weight, he said.

Whereas Trumps public pronouncements as the president of the U.S. do form a strong basis for a Sec. 7 abuse of process application to stay the proceedings because the criminal process of extradition is being used for political purposes to extract or extort a better trade deal politically.

Bayne argues Trumps own public statements appear to be a very viable abuse of process application.

U.S. lawyer Tim OToole, a member at the law firm Miller & Chevalier, said in an interview that Boltons allegations enhance claims of a political trade off  the charges against Huawei, and presumably Meng, in exchange for favorable treatment from China on other matters.

This adds, I think, almost a direct political component to the equation that I havent seen there before, said OToole.

Last month, a British Columbia judge threw out Mengs request to be discharged from the process after ruling the case against her satisfied the double criminality test, which says countries may only hand over someone on an allegation that is a criminal offense in their own jurisdiction.

Meng's lawyers are expected to argue she was a victim of an abuse of process by authorities and political interference over Trump's remarks.

Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada's ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016, said in an interview that the excerpts from Boltons book made it clear to him that Mengs arrest was political.

Its a confirmation and that will make China repeat that Canada is doing the bidding of the U.S., all this is political and that we should release Ms. Meng, Saint-Jacques said.

But for Canada the rule of law is important and we have to abide by the extradition treaty and hope that the U.S. will also do the same.
La Crema, a wine producer located in Californias Sonoma County, celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. Its original name, La Crema Vinera, means best of the vine, which is where the producer has set its bar through these past four decades.

The family-owned and family-operated winery focuses exclusively on cool-climate appellations. Over the last 30 years it has sourced the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay it uses in its extensive line of wines from grape-growing regions in California and Oregon, including Russian River, Sonoma Coast and Willamette Valley. Were continually exploring these very special regions passionate in our belief that they make uniquely expressive and elegant wines, the winery says on its website, which also includes a page that details its history.

Its primary tasting room is located in a renovated circa-1900 barn on the property formerly owned by Richard and Saralee McClelland Kunde, who for years provided high-quality Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for La Cremas wines. They sold the property to La Crema in 2013. Today, the hospitality center in Windsor, called the Estate at Saralees Vineyard, looks out on the rolling hills of vines. That is complemented by the La Crema Tasting Lounge located in downtown Healdsburg.

La Cremas 2019 Pinot Noir rose was sourced primarily from the Panorama vineyard along with four other distinct vineyard sites spread out across the Monterey appellation, this rose captures the diverse flavor characteristics of the Monterey AVA, according to promotional materials on the wine. Harvested in early September 2019, the grapes were pressed and fermented in stainless steel tanks at cool temperatures to preserve their fresh fruit characteristics. The finished wine was left on lees for two to three months before being blended and bottled.

Craig McAllister has been the head winemaker at La Crema since 2017 after years of other winemaking stops that took him from his native New Zealand to Australia, Chile and Cyprus. He brought his talents to La Crema in 2007. According to his notes on the 2019 vintage of rose: The Monterey rose presents aromas of strawberry, white raspberry, and mandarin orange followed by flavors of cran-raspberry, blood orange and flinty minerality. On the palate, the 2019 vintage is delicate, crisp, and vibrant.

Jen Walsh, who works alongside McAllister at La Crema, grew up in the Baltimore area and attended Pitt. Thanks to her jobs in several restaurants, she began developing an interest in wine, according to the bio on the La Crema website. For a time she worked at Elk Run Winery in central Maryland, assisting in the vineyard and in the winemaking process. She earned her masters in viticulture and enology from the University of California Davis.

She describes her most transformative experience as working at Domaine Marquis dAngerville in Volnay, Burgundy, where she was awarded a Tastevin scholarship. Before joining the La Crema team in 2017, Walsh was the associate winemaker at Benovia Winery in Californias Russian River Valley, where she worked with a number of heritage Pinot Noir clones from different terroirs to craft distinctive single-vineyard wines. Before that, she worked at several other wineries throughout Napa and Sonoma.

Here are some of her thoughts on her craft and the wines at La Crema.

Before joining the La Crema team in 2017, Jen Walsh was the associate winemaker at Benovia Winery in California's Russian River Valley. While there, she worked with a number of heritage Pinot Noir clones from different terroirs to craft distinctive single-vineyard wines. Before that, she enhanced her craft at several other wineries throughout Napa and Sonoma.

Q, As you see it, whats the goal of any rose and why does the 2019 hit the mark?

A, Rose, like the Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs I make for La Crema, are meant to evoke a sense of place while maintaining elegance and balance. When making rose, I employ a similar winemaking approach that I use when making white wines  limited tannin and almost no skin contact. The Monterey rose is fermented in stainless steel to retain the bright fruit notes, and the Saralees Vineyard rose incorporates some neutral barrel for texture. Both are fermented to dryness and do not go through malolactic fermentation to preserve bright, juicy acidity.

Q, Do you have any different perspective on roses now than when you started?

A, When I began, I thought roses were a bit of an afterthought or not to be taken that seriously. Now, I craft them with a great deal of intention and planning.

Q, I know Elk Run has made Pinot Noir. What do you like most about working with the grape?

A. This grape can be very challenging, I like that. I also love how it reflects the terroir so clearly, I can pour a glass and be transported to where the grapes are grown.

Q, What do you know now as a winemaker that maybe you didnt when you started, and what or who drew you into that as a career?

A, Its like anything I suppose, the more you study something the less you know. What I really have learned and believe is that great wines are made in the vineyard. I just try to have a light touch.

Q, What is it about cool-climate grapes that interests you?

A, Cool-climate growing retains the acidity and allows for longer hang time. Grapes can have more complex aroma and flavors.

Q, Can I assume that, from a work experience, not much has changed for you the past 3 months?

A, Our work continues at the winery. We are practicing social distancing and maintaining safe practices as directed. Otherwise, our work is much the same. These days we are working on our Pinot and Chardonnay blends from the 2019 vintage and spending quite a bit of time out in the vineyards.

--

Other recent regional wine stories on PennLive

JUSTIN Vineyards & Winerys rose, made in a Provencal style, is a perfect apertif

East Coast wineries planted a mix of vines this spring, from Chardonnay to Petit Verdot

Nissley Vineyards cancels regions oldest summer concert series

Lancaster County winery adds second curbside location for pickup, expands its vineyard

One of Pa.s two oldest wineries continues to evolve while keeping its long-time customers happy

Briar Valley Winery sold to owners of a Westmoreland County producer

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
A garda pulled his gun on a man who was covered in blood and coming at him with a large carving knife on a busy Dublin street, a court has heard.

Ross Maher (22) was topless and covered in blood when he swung the kitchen knife several times at gardai and refused their repeated commands to drop it, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today.

Gardai had been called to Ross Street near Christchurch Cathedral at around 4pm on May 23 last year following reports of a drunk topless man wielding a knife. Several bystanders were present at the time.

Sergeant Niall Godfrey told Fiona Crawford BL, prosecuting, that Maher refused several commands to drop the knife and continued walking towards the officers while brandishing it.

You made the decision your life and the life of your colleagues and members of the public was in danger and you drew your official firearm, Ms Crawford said. Sgt Godfrey agreed.

Maher still refused to drop the knife, but his father then intervened and begged him to put the weapon down. Sgt Godfrey used his pepper spray on Maher, causing him to finally drop the knife.

He was arrested and taken to St James's Hospital for treatment.

He pleaded guilty to one count of possessing a large carving knife in the course of a dispute. He has no previous convictions.

The court heard Maher, with an address in Emmet Court, Inchicore, had been drinking and taking pills on the day in question.

He got into a physical fight with his brother in the park near their father's flat. During the dispute, Maher ran into his dad's flat and grabbed the knife before re-emerging with it.

The knife was 12 inches long with a seven inch blade, the court heard.

Following this incident, Maher went into rehabilitation and is now drug-free, Keith Spencer BL, defending, told the court. His father tragically took his own life last November, the court heard.

Sgt Godfrey liaised with Maher in the wake of the tragedy and said Maher apologised to him for the events of the summer and was a different person. He held the family together during the funeral and is now closer than ever to his brother, the court heard.

The court heard Maher has applied to join the army and is worried a criminal conviction might affect his chances.

Judge Karen O'Connor said that while it was a serious piece of offending, she believed Maher's actions were a once-off moment in his life.

She said she would defer his sentence under the Probation Act and she ordered him to be of good behaviour in the meantime.

Maher's case will return to court for finalisation on November 9.
Toxic man-made mercury pollution has been discovered in the deepest part of the ocean, in the Marianas Trench  more than six miles below the surface.

Researchers from China and the US used submarine robots to identify mercury in the fish and crustaceans living in the deepest part of the western Pacific Ocean.



Mercury enters the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, mining and manufacturing. It can then be transported into the oceans via rainfall.

The liquid metal  which was once used in thermometers before being banned  is highly toxic and can be ingested via polluted seafood.

One of the research teams, from the US, sampled fish and crustaceans from both the Marianas trench off of the Philippines and the Kermadec trench near New Zealand, which reaches around 6.2 miles below the water's surface. Pictured, snailfish in the Kermadec trench

'This is a surprise. Previous research had concluded methyl-mercury was mostly produced in the top few hundred metres of the ocean,' said paper author and environmental scientist Ruoyu Sun of China's Tianjin University.

'This would have limited mercury bio-accumulation by ensuring fish which forage deeper than this would have had limited opportunity to ingest the methyl-mercury. With this work, we now believe that isn't true.'

Mercury in the ocean ends up becoming methyl-mercury  its organic form  which is more dangerous as it can easily concentrate during its journey up the food chain in a process which experts refer to as 'bio-accumulation'.

This process creates toxic food for fish, which in turn are eaten by larger fish that then grow increasingly toxic, and so on  until they end up on our dinner plates.

Mercury has been implicated in environmental disasters and is particularly hazardous to developing fetuses. At Minamata in Japan in the 1950's, for example, it led to birth defects and severe neurological symptoms.

Now this dangerous pollutant has been discovered in the Marianas Trench and the Yap Trench  beyond New Zealand  at 6.84 and 5.3 miles deep, respectively.

'During 2016-2017, we deployed sophisticated deep-sea lander vehicles on the seafloor of Mariana and Yap trenches, amongst the most remote and inaccessible locations on Earth,' Dr Sun explained.

The landers, he added, 'captured the endemic fauna at 7,00011,000 metres [4.36.8 miles deep] and collected sediments at 5,5009,200 metres [3.45.7 miles deep].'

'We are able to present unequivocal mercury isotope evidence the mercury in the trench fauna originates exclusively from methyl-mercury from the upper ocean,' Dr Sun continued.

'We can tell this because of the distinctive isotopic fingerprint which stamps it as coming from the upper ocean.'

'Our findings reveal very little methyl-mercury is produced in the deep oceans and imply anthropogenic [man-made] mercury release at the Earth's surface is much more widespread across deep oceans than was previously thought.'

During 2016-2017, we deployed sophisticated deep-sea lander vehicles on the seafloor of Mariana and Yap trenches, amongst the most remote and inaccessible locations on Earth,' Dr Sun explained. 'We are able to present unequivocal mercury isotope evidence the mercury in the trench fauna originates exclusively from methyl-mercury from the upper ocean'

Another team, from the US, also sampled fish and crustaceans from both the Marianas trench off of the Philippines and the Kermadec trench near New Zealand, which reaches around 6.2 miles below the water's surface.

Chemical analyses showed that mercury found in the deep-sea species the live in these trenches was largely derived from the atmosphere  and entered the ocean by means of rainfall.

'We know this mercury is deposited from the atmosphere to the surface ocean and is then transported to the deep ocean in the sinking carcasses of fish and marine mammals, as well as in small particles,' said expedition leader Joel Blum.

'We identified this by measuring the mercury isotopic composition, which showed that the ocean floor mercury matched that from fish found at around 400-600 metres [1,3121969 feet] depth in the Central Pacific.'

'Some of this mercury is naturally-produced  but it's likely much of it comes from human activity,' the University of Michigan environmental scientist added.

Chinese researchers have detected mercury pollution in the Marianas Trench and the Yap Trench  beyond New Zealand  at 6.84 and 5.3 miles deep, respectively. Another team, from the US, also found the toxic metal fish and crustaceans from both the Marianas trench and the Kermadec trench, which reaches around 6.2 miles below the water's surface

'We know mercury is introduced into the environment from a variety of natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires,' said University of Hawaii at Manoa earth scientist Ken Rubin, who was not involved in the present study.

'However, human activities  such as coal and petroleum burning, mining and manufacturing  are mainly responsible for mercury deposition to marine environments.'

'We are now learning from these two studies the effects of this deposition have spread throughout the ocean into the deep sea and the animals that live there.

This he added, 'is yet another indicator of the profound impact of modern human activities on the planet.'

The full findings of the study were presented at the 2020 Goldschmidt geochemistry conference, which is being held virtually from June 2126.

Last weekend Kelly Walsh  son of ocean explorer Don Walsh  descended to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

He made the dive on Saturday, 60 years after his father made history doing the same making Kelly Walsh only the twelfth person to visit the trench floor.
TMALL ApparelConsumer Operations Best Service Partner In partnership with TMALL, transcosmos China will build a consumer database system, consumer operation services, and a marketing system focused on "people, goods, and occasion." We leverage TMALL's GROW model to help brands grow their "people, goods, and sales" in a highly competitive market.

transcosmos inc. is proud to announce that Shanghai transcosmos Marketing Services Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Shanghai, China; CEO: Eijiro Yamashita; transcosmos China), its wholly-owned subsidiary, was awarded "TMALL Apparel Q1 2020 Consumer Operations Best Service Partner" in the GROW Project for TMALL Apparel Category in April, 2020, The project is initiated by TMALL, the largest online marketplace in China in February, 2020.. transcosmos China was awarded for its success in helping the captain (the top brands) in the apparel category on TMALL achieve growth by leveraging TMALL Big Data ad GROW (*1) 2.0.

(*1) "GROW" is an analytics model advocated by TMALL. The model consists of four elements, namely, Gain, Retain, bOOst and Widen that are essential for any product category to achieve sustainable growth.

"TMALL GROW Project for the Apparel Category" began in February, 2020. TMALL service partners who make entrants to this project go through the TMALL Apparel Business Division's series of screening and evaluation processes. The goal of the project is to select and grow Independent Service Vendors (ISV) who are equipped with capabilities for market research, strategic consulting, ad delivery, data utilization, creative content, and unified management of omni-channel member. Through the development of ISV service ecosystem (*2), TMALL assists brands in achieving their digital strategies. More specifically, by utilizing the marketing tools listed below via the ISV service ecosystem, the TMALL Apparel Business Division helps the Apparel Category Captain perform consumer-centric market analysis and campaign initiatives in an optimum way.



Alibaba Databank (an integrated database owned by Alibaba Group)

Strategy Center (a strategy development tool that consists of optimization features for industry data, customer segmentation, user insight and tracking)

Membership operation platform (a tool which enables each company to manage their own registered members)

Shengyi Canmou (a tool that optimizes product keywords, and enables companies to track sales data, in-store customer behavior, and access counts)

(*2) Under the ISV service ecosystem, selected service partners assist brands' digitalization with their abilities for digitalization and for utilizing the Alibaba data tools.

transcosmos China assists brands not only with its knowledge in utilizing GROW but also with its abundant experience and expertise in e-commerce operations as a TMALL partner. In addition, the company has been awarded for partnership contracts with many top brands such as cobbe (Chinese houseware brand) and TATA (Chinese shoe brand) in open competitive biddings. transcosmos China will assist those partner brands in achieving successful growth through the GROW Project.

In partnership with TMALL, transcosmos China will continually deliver consumer-centric operations services powered by data to many more companies based on GROW 2.0. Through industry and consumer data analysis, transcosmos China will build a consumer database system, consumer operation services and a marketing system that are focused on "people, goods and occasion." At the same time, the company assists brands in expanding their product sales and developing their growth strategy in the industry by leveling the GROW model. Ultimately, transcosmos China will help brands grow their "people, goods and sales" in a highly competitive market.

Since transcosmos China launched its operations in Shanghai as a digital transformation partner for businesses in 2006, the company has continued expanding its business, and now has 10 service bases in seven cities in China. transcosmos China offers extensive services such as contact center services, new retail services and digital marketing services for over 70 Chinese and global brands. The company launched its e-commerce business in 2009. Now, in partnership with platforms such as TMALL, JD, and WeChat, transcosmos China offers a variety of services that include e-commerce store/website development & operations, sales channel development, online and offline data integration, system development, consumer operations, and integrated marketing services in the new retail industry (including cross-border e-commerce) to clients in diverse industries including the 3C Industry (Computer, Communications, and Consumer Electronics), apparel, baby care, toy, sports, beverage, musical instruments, homewares, home theater/audio equipment and more.

transcosmos is a trademark or registered trademark of transcosmos inc. In Japan and other countries.

Other company names and product or services names used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies.

About transcosmos inc.

transcosmos launched its operations in 1966. Since then, we have combined superior "people" with up-to-date "technology" to enhance the competitive strength of our clients by providing them with superior and valuable services. transcosmos currently offers services that support clients' business processes focusing on both sales expansion and cost optimization through our 168 bases across 30 countries/regions with a focus on Asia, while continuously pursuing Operational Excellence. Furthermore, following the expansion of e-commerce market on the global scale, transcosmos provides a comprehensive One-Stop Global E-Commerce services to deliver our clients' excellent products and services in 48 countries/regions around the globe. transcosmos aims to be the "Global Digital Transformation Partner" of our clients, supporting the clients' transformation by leveraging digital technology, responding to the ever-changing business environment.

https://www.trans-cosmos.co.jp/english/
German payments company Wirecard was hit by a scandal after it said that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) had been missing from its accounts.

Wirecard Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Markus Braun resigned on June 18 after the search for the missing money had hit a dead end in the Philippines, and James Freis was appointed as an interim CEO.

The company said it was working on a deal with its creditors. Wirecard is also exploring measures such as cost reductions, restructuring, disposal or termination of business units, Reuters reported.

Wirecard is staring at a cash crunch since it has outstanding loans worth $2 billion.

Here is a look at the what has happened so far:

When did the crisis begin?

Wirecard, once considered a success story in Germany's technology space, announced that the amount was missing on June 18 after EY had refused to sign off the company's accounts.

The missing money accounted for roughly one-fourth of the company's balance sheet.

The company subsequently withdrew its full-year 2019 and first quarter 2020 financial results.

Two Philippine banks, BPI and BDO, said Wirecard was not a client of theirs and alleged that documents had been falsified, Reuters reported.

On June 21, the central bank of Philippines said none of the missing money had entered the country's financial system. Wirecard then made a statement saying there was likelihood that the missing money did not exist.

How did the Wirecard stock react after the news?

The Wirecard stock has lost 85 percent since June 17, the day before the news of the missing money was made public, Bloomberg reported.

The company lost nearly 90 percent of its market value in less than a week, the report added.

Moody's cut Wirecard's rating to junk after the news of the missing money.

"The downgrade of Wirecard's ratings and review for further downgrade reflect the accounting irregularities and related implications on the company's liquidity and financial profile following its failure to publish the already postponed audited consolidated accounts for 2019," Moody's said on June 19.

What was the German government's response?

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, on June 22, said regulatory authorities did their job.

"I think the supervisory institutions worked very hard and they did their job - this is what we see today," Scholz said, as quoted by Reuters
NEW HAVEN  The statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square was splattered with red paint Saturday night, during a small protest where there were no arrests.

Capt Anthony Duff, spokesperson for the Police Department, said the city Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees was called in to clean it up.

He said officers responded to a protest that began to form in Wooster Square Park around 6:30 p.m. with 20 to 30 people surrounding the statue.

Duff said an unknown person threw red paint on the statue. The small crowd dispersed shortly afterwards without incident, the captain reported. The vandalism is under investigation.

Vandalism is occurring around the country with calls to remove images of Columbus as a colonizer with a record of genocide, enslavement of the Taino people in the Caribbean and more.

In New Haven, Wilbur Cross High School junior Rhea McTiernan Huge, circulated one petition, asking for the removal, to which she attached her historical sources. That was signed by 667 residents. A second similar petition got 2,041 signatures.

An open letter was submitted to the press with the names of Wooster Square residents or former residents and the presidents of two cultural societies recommending that it be moved as part of a coalition. The agreement got high praise from parts of the New Haven community, including Mayor Justin Elicker.

The statue, which in recent years has been a target of vandalism, is a representation of injustice and as a reminder of the mistreatment of immigrants and people of color going back to the founding of our nation, according to the letter, which wants to replace Columbus with something that better reflects the values of the multi-ethnic community.

In the midst of this historic moment, the most important thing each of us can do is listen, the letter says. We should listen first and foremost to those people who have been personally impacted by systemic and historic racism in our country, and especially in our criminal justice system. We should listen broadly about their life experiences and treatment, and also more specifically about what steps must be taken to fully meet this moment so that we can build a better and fairer society.

Frank Gargano, president of the Saint Andrew the Apostle Society and Paul J. Criscuolo, president, St. Catello Society, said they both agreed on the need to move the statue to keep it safe and to protect the neighborhood, but said they were not aware of the language referencing genocide.

I agreed to it for safety reasons and to avoid any more vandalism. I did not agreed with them because I feel Columbus committed those atrocities. I want to make that perfectly clear because a lot of my members got back to me and said I had no business saying that, Gargano said.

They felt it should have been voted on, Gargano said.

It wasnt presented to me the proper way, Gargano said. I naively agreed to it for what I felt were the right reasons, not because I agreed with the 16-year-old girl or anyone else who feels Columbus was a murderer and committed those atrocities.

He said he answered an email from a Wooster Square leader and agreed to lend his name.  ... if I had ever read an article saying I was agreeing to Columbus being all those bad things that everybody said, I never would have done that, Gargano said.

Criscuolo said he was representing himself, not the St. Catello Society, and he did not see the final language.

Like Gargano, he said he was interested in protecting the statue and avoiding confrontation or violence.

Those were the only two reasons I signed on, Criscuolo said.

My members were very upset, he said. I have been in contact with all of them. It put me in kind of a spot, Criscuolo said.

The Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees and has approved moving the statue within 60 days.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.coml 203-641-2577.
By PTI

BAHRAICH: Three people were injured after a petty fight among children snowballed into a clash between members of two communities in Gadwa area here, police said on Monday.

The quarrel started over some petty issue between children on Sunday afternoon but it escalated when adults from the two sides joined the fight, SHO of Ramgaon police station Abhay Singh said.

During the clash, three people were injured and a shop was vandalised, he said.

After getting information, police reached the spot and brought the situation under control, Singh said.

The injured persons were identified as Dileep, Rajendra and Kailash Chauhan, police said.

An FIR was registered against 14 people and of them, four were arrested, they said.

The SHO said additional police force has been deployed in the area as a precautionary measure.

Singh said investigation into the matter was underway and video footage of the incident would be analysed.
Between Sunday night and Monday morning, the doctor on duty at the emergency ward of the 200-bed ESI Hospital in northwest Delhis Rohini Sector 15 attended patients outside in the open compound. The senior resident had set up his desk, chair and a bed outside the emergency wing, even as it rained, as a mark of protest against the inadequate facilities at the hospital, including a non-functional air conditioning system and unhygienic conditions in the duty room.

Doctors in the emergency wing, which receives at least 70-80 patients throughout the day, say it is unbearable to sit in the stuffy room in hot and humid conditions for 13-14 hours with the personal protective equipment (PPE) coveralls on. They have been working in such conditions for almost three months now.

The hospital is not a dedicated Covid-19 facility but has two isolation wards for suspected and stable cases to observe and test them. If patients test positive or develop any kind of complication, they are referred to Covid-19 hospitals or other Covid-19 care facilities depending on the case.

I moved my workstation outside when I could no longer breathe properly inside the room. Doctors on duty can fall unconscious in such circumstances. Besides attending to emergency patients and taking rounds, we are required to check on patients in Covid-19 isolation wards. We have to make notes, take samples, make files and discharge reports of patients sitting in the duty room, which has no ventilation and is poorly kept, Dr Shashank Srivastava, who sat outside through the night until his shift got over at 9.30am on Monday, said.

Even as it rained heavily in the morning, Srivastava saw 8-10 patients. I made sure they stood under the roof and I checked them right outside the emergency entry. Two of them came with Covid-like symptoms. Only after that the hospital administration asked me to move inside and assured me theyd look into the issues, Srivastava said.

Another senior resident doctor, who did not wish to be named, said that since April, they have been requesting the hospital administration to at least fix the air-conditioner but to no avail. It is just not humanly possible to wear the PPE kit for so long and sit in that room without falling sick. Also, there is a staff crunch and work hours tend to get stretched. Having proper ventilation and clean surroundings is the least we could ask for, he said.

Against the sanctioned strength of 8-9 senior residents to be posted in the emergency wing, only three doctors are there at present, the doctor quoted above said. There were five doctors until earlier this month, after which two moved out to join services elsewhere. Now, there are only three of us, while there are no junior residents, he said.

The doctors said they will continue to work outside if their issues are not addressed at the earliest.

According to officials in the hospital administration, the medical superintendent met emergency doctors on Monday morning and assured them they would address the issues at the soonest.

However, the medical superintendent did not respond for comment despite repeated calls and texts.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
- Kenyans on Sunday took to social media with great memories of their fathers as they were growing up

- Hundreds of sweet message and memories were shared with Kenyans appreciating dads for the roles they played in their lives

-The world celebrates Father's Day on Sunday, June 21

Have you ever thought of honouring your father or even buying them a gift? Well, there is no other better time to do so other than Sunday, June 21.

Kenyans from all walks of life have pitched camp on social media with sweet messages to their fathers as the world celebrates Father's Day.

READ ALSO: Viongozi kutoka Magharibi washikilia watazidi kuwa na msimamo mmoja hadi debeni 2022

Father's Day is meant to honour fathers for their roles in bringing up their children. Photo Nation

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Law Society of Kenya sues State over Uhuru's Executive order: "It's unconstitutional"

A number of posts on social media were nothing more than a clear image of the values and teachings that fathers should instill in their children as they grow up.

Even those whose fathers had passed on were not left behind as they also shared with the world the sweet memories about the men who contributed so much in their upbringing.

Below are some of the messages that were sampled from social media:

Messages of Happy Father's Day as shared by Kenyans on social media. Photo: TUKO.co.ke

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Anne Waiguru arms herself with files stacked in boxes ahead of impeachment defence in Senate

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
By Alasdair Pal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India reported a record number of new coronavirus cases on Monday and a death toll of more than 400 people in the past 24 hours as foreign embassies warned their citizens in the country that hospitals might not have beds for them.

The 15,000 new cases brought India's total to more than 425,000, behind only the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to data from the federal health ministry.

Nearly 14,000 people have now died from the disease caused by the virus since the first case in India in January.

The death toll in India remains low when compared to countries with similar numbers of cases but public health experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a rise in cases.

The German embassy sent messages to its citizens living in New Delhi warning them that there was "little to no chance" of admission to hospital for treatment for coronavirus as well as other intensive care needs.

The message was not an order to evacuate the country but to consider whether India remained safe depending on individual circumstances, a diplomat said.

The German advisory follows Ireland in suggesting that its citizens leave India due to the availability of hospital beds.

A dashboard run by the Delhi state government showed more than 7,000 hospital beds were available for coronavirus patients on Monday, though most of those were in a handful of government hospitals. Patients looking for beds have questioned the accuracy of the data.

Despite the peak of infections projected to be weeks if not months away Prime Minister Narendra Modi relaxed most curbs of a near three-month lockdown on June 8 in order to ease economic pain.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in New Delhi; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
By Trend

Iran Air managed to establish a new flight to Europe by launching operations on the route between Tehran and Manchester (UK), Trend reports referring to the company's Public Relation Department.

The flights will be operated every week on Saturdays.

Currently, Iran Air flights to more than seven European destinations including Milan, Stockholm, London, Madrid and Dusseldorf. The coronavirus outbreak has partially halted Iran Air's plan to expand the geography of the flights, said the report.

The first Iran Air's flight from Tehran to Manchester will be performed on July 4.

The plane will leave Tehran on 5:55 am on Saturday and the return flight from Manchester to Tehran will be on the same day at 10:30 local time. Airbus A330 will serve the route.

Iran Air is the flag carrier of Iran and it is the oldest airline in the Middle East.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:21:29|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

by Abdul Haleem

KABUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The signing of a bill by the United States on China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has interfered in China's internal affairs, said an Afghan expert in an interview with Xinhua on Friday.

No country has the right to interfere in other's internal affairs, said Shamsul Haq Arianfar, the author of multiple books.

"If America supports the rights of minorities in China, first she (America) should ensure the rights of minorities within its territory," said Arianfar, who is also a former Afghan government official.

The killing of a black man by a white police officer in the United States recently, which has sparked massive demonstrations in the country and many other cities across the world, could be a proof of the existence of racial discrimination in the United States, he said.

"It is a breach of international law to interfere in other country's internal affairs and the United States can't be exempted," Arianfar said.

Any country, big or small, has the right to introduce reforms within its territory to safeguard its sovereignty, to choose the path for its development and to make decisions for ensuring its national interests, the expert said.

Xinjiang, like other parts of China, has seen development and has not reported terrorist incidents in recent years due to the essential steps taken by China's central government, said Arianfar, who visited China in the past years and toured some Chinese cities.

Arianfar said that people in China enjoy a peaceful and prosperous life.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday said the so-called "Uygur Human Rights Act of 2020" deliberately denigrates the human rights conditions in China's Xinjiang, viciously attacks the Chinese government's Xinjiang policy, blatantly violates international law and basic norms in international relations, and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. Enditem
Back in the good old days (aka life before lockdown) visiting a barbershop was a simple task  a privilege we often took for granted. Thanks to the current health crisis, this easy task of visiting your barber also comes with a rulebook. But while we are prepared to follow all the rules to T, it has not been easy for the barber community to jump back to work after more than 2 months of no income flow.

Gillette India

As we unlock our cities and open our businesses (with safety restrictions in place), barbers like many other daily wage earners still have no respite. Business for them is not as per usual. Some are the sole bread earners in their family and this lockdown has cost them dearly. Unfortunately, in these unprecedented times and the new normal coming in place, our marginalized Barber community needs our helping hand and Gillette aims to do just that.

To help ease the life of thousands of barbers, Gillette, Indias leading male grooming brand, has launched the initiative, Barber Suraksha Programme, as a show of solidarity with the barber community of India.





Gillette is providing support to the barber community to help them slowly kick-start their business with the following:

Suraksha Education

A series of educative videos on health, hygiene and social distancing awareness in the community. With grooming expert Aalim Hakim, the videos consist of quick on the go content, on how to keep their barbershops and equipment sanitized, along with ensuring rules laid down by the government are followed in the shop.

Suraksha insurance

Most importantly the programme covers barbers with customized insurance that ensures they insured against Covid-19.

Suraksha kit

A back to business kit that has sanitizing equipment, essentials and products to bring relief to barbers when they open shop for business.

Gillette India

It is not only important to equip yourself with sanitizing equipment, but also necessary to use it in the correct way. Thats one of the biggest reasons why Gillette India is also focusing on educating the barber community about the must-follow safety norms to ensure employee and client safety. From sanitizing their shops to providing them with new grooming equipment (razors, scissors, PPE gears), Gillette is doing their bit for the barber community. This initiative to give back to the community is a heartwarming gesture from the grooming giant.

Missing your visits to the barbershop? Spare a thought for them and help spread the word by enrolling more barbers by logging on to the Baber Suraksha website and urging them to send a message along with their name. The Gillette team will connect with him at the earliest and help them bounce back with renewed confidence and safety.
New Zealand Ambassador to Vietnam Wendy Matthews talks with customer at zero-dong supermarket. (Photo: New Zealand Embassy)

The shop, lasting for two days over the weekend, is a joint-initiative between the New Zealand Embassy in Vietnam, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) and the International Labour Organisation in Vietnam (ILO).

Each customer who visits the zero-dong supermarket, operated by the Trade Union of Thang Long Industrial Zone, is allowed to choose a package of groceries worth around 200,000 VND for free. Items on the shelf included essential goods such as rice, eggs, cereals, vegetables, noodles, and protective products like face masks, and hand sanitiser.

This initiative, funded by the New Zealand embassy, aims to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 among 1,500 workers in Dong Anh district of Hanoi, whose jobs and incomes have been adversely impacted by COVID-19.

This project demonstrates the strong partnership between New Zealand and Vietnam, said Ambassador Wendy Matthews at the opening ceremony.

This project is a practical initiative to help ease the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Thang Long workers and their families."

Vietnam and New Zealand are celebrating 45 years of diplomatic relations this year. Over that time New Zealand has worked closely with Vietnam to develop shared prosperity and stability, drawing on the best of New Zealands knowledge and skills.
A day after review meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday briefed the Delhiites about the situation of novel coronavirus- Covid-19 in the national capital. Of the 25,000 active Covid-19 cases, around 12,000 are in home isolation. Around 18,000 tests are being conducted on a daily basis.

He announced that all the patients under home isolation would be given oximeters, which will help them access their oxygen level. Every district would also be provided access to oxygen concentrators. In case, the oxygen level of a particular patients drops, they can call on the helpline number and a team will reach out to me. If needed, the patient will be shifted to the hospital.

He further added that India is fighting two wars against China- coronavirus pandemic and at the border. Urging that there should be no politicisation on this matter and everyone should unite in the fight, he emphasised that just like 20 soldiers did not back down, we wont retreat and win both the wars.

All those under home-isolation will be provided with pulse oximeters to measure your oxygen levels every few hours. Once you are well, you can return it to the govt: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/fz0qv563qo  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

#WATCH Our country is fighting 2 wars against China  one at border & another against virus from China. We have to remain united to fight both, none of these should be politicised. Our brave soldiers didn't back down, even we won't retreat until we win: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/9MxI6h5Ahp  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

India witnessed a spike of 14,821 new cases and 445 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total number of cases in India has reached 4,25,282, including 1,74,387 active cases, 2,37,196 cured/discharged/migrated cases and 13699 deaths. In Delhi, the total number of cases have neared 60K mark, including 24,558 active cases, 33013 cured/discharged/migrated cases and 2175 deaths.

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
A billionaire boy from Queens might be the best shot for Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez to buy the Mets.

Mike Repole, whose company birthed BodyArmor and Vitaminwater, had joined the star-studded duo as a general partner, according to Darren Rovell of of The Action Newtork.

NJ BETTING: NO DEPOSIT POKER BONUSES

Rodriguez, a retired Yankees slugger, and Lopez, one of the worlds biggest pop stars, are engaged and have been working to buy the team from the Wilpons for a while.

Here are some quick facts about Repole:

Hes been interested in owning at least part of the Mets for years. Heres what he told The New York Times Joe Drape in 2011: It definitely is something that interests me, definitely something that intrigues me, and I want to have a meeting with them. I have no idea what theyre thinking, no idea what their terms are or if SNY is part of the deal. Its way too early to speculate whats going to happen, but Im interested.' At the time, he added that he had looked into buying the Mets before, but informally.

The 51-year-old was born in Middle Village Queens. He went to St. Johns University.

In 1999, Repole co-founded Energy Brands, also known as Glaceau, which crated Smartwater and Vitaminwater. David Wright , the Mets beloved third baseman, has been a spokesman for the company.

He was a chairman for Pirates Booty for years.

He owned Repole Stable, a horse racing operation. One of his best horses, Uncle Mo, was named the American Championion Two-Year-Old in 2010 and it sired Nyquist, which won the Kentucky Derby. Vino Rosso, another of Repoles horses, won the Breeders Cup Classic last year.

Hes married and has a daughter.

About a week ago, the New York Post reported that Lopez and Rodriguez could have a mystery bidder in place to help them.

Via the Post: The Galatioto Sports Partners investment bank is working with two investors who are considering investing up to a combined $250 million with A-Rod and J.Lo for their Mets bid, a source close to the situation said. ... Galatioto Sports is a leading investment bank that represented the 76ers in their 2011 sale to private equity billionaire Josh Harris, who is now bidding for the Mets. ... This interest should help J-Rod arrange backing for their bid, along with whatever money JPMorgan arranges.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
Brussels, 22 June 2020 (SPS) - The European Conference of Support and Solidarity with the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO) announced the organization on Wednesday of a political symposium entitled Settlement of conflict in Western Sahara: One year after the resignation of UN envoy Horst Kohler, to shed light on the latest developments in the Sahrawi issues.



According to the agenda, the video conference symposium will see the participation of the Sahrawi ambassador for Europe and European Union Oubi Bouchraya al-Bachir, EUCOCOs chairman Pierre Gallan, head of the Algerian committee for solidarity with the Sahrawi people (CNASPS) Said Ayachi, Polisario Fronts lawyer at the European courts Gilles Dover and former representative of UN secretary general to Western Sahara Francesco Bastagli.



Head of the European Parliamentary intergroup Peace for the Sahrawi people Joachim Schuster, as well as university lecturers from Spain and Nigeria will also take part in the conference.



In a statement to the press, Oubi Bouchraya said that this symposium is an initiative of the European Movement of solidarity and international sympathizers with the Sahrawi cause to express their rejection of the absence of real willingness of the Security Council. (SPS)



062/SPS/APS
Putin Signals Possibility Of Seeking Reelection If Russians Back Constitutional Change

By Mike Eckel June 21, 2020

President Vladimir Putin has said that he would consider standing for election again if Russian voters approve a controversial constitutional amendment in a vote scheduled for next month.

Putin's comments, broadcast on state-run TV on June 21, were the strongest indications to date of his intentions, and come just 10 days before the July 1 national vote.

"I have not made any decisions yet," he said in comments excerpted by Russian news agencies. "I am not ruling out the possibility of running for office if the option appears in the constitution. We'll see."

Putin also suggested that finding a successor would potentially be a distraction if he chose not to run again. That's a hint that the Kremlin either fears a succession struggle among rival factions were Putin to yield the post, or that in the Kremlin's eyes there is no political figure capable of consolidating power.

"If this doesn't happen, then in about two years -- and I know this from personal experience -- the normal rhythm of work of many parts of government will be replaced by a search for possible successors," he was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti.

In January, after months of hints from Kremlin-allied officials, Putin called for amending the constitution, to reshuffle the center of power-making in Moscow. But it wasn't until March when he specifically backed a proposal to amend the constitution in order to give him possibility of staying on beyond the end of his current six-year term, which ends in 2024.

If approved by voters, and Putin does seek reelection, the change would mean Putin, now 67, could be in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

First elected in 2000, Putin served two, four-year terms, then stepped aside and yielded the post to his protege, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev served just one, four-year term, before Putin returned to the post in 2012, under new rules that allowed him to serve two, new, six-year terms.

Since winning his most recent election in 2018, Russia watchers and Kremlinologists have watched closely for signals from Putin, who has no real political rivals. His popularity has slipped in recent years, amid economic problems and the coronavirus pandemic, but polls regularly show him as the country's most popular political figure.

The Kremlin had hoped to hold the vote on April 22, but the sweeping restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus forced its postponement until July 1.

The amendment that would give Putin the option to stay for two more six-year terms will be on the ballot along with others that are seen as an appeal to nationalist sentiments and nostalgic voters.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin- signals-possibility-of-seeking -re-election-if-russians-back- constitutional-change/30682787.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






She recently revealed she nearly gave up on breastfeeding due to how sore her 'cracked, bleeding nipples' were during her first days of motherhood, but has since resorted to using nipple shields to nurse her daughter without pain.

And Millie Mackintosh cut a casual figure as she stepped out with Sienna Grace, two months, in the sunshine in London on Monday morning.

The former Made In Chelsea star, 30, highlighted her incredible postpartum figure in a black nursing top as she enjoyed a brisk walk for her daily workout.

Mommy and me: Millie Mackintosh cut a casual figure as she stepped out with Sienna Grace, two months, in the sunshine in London on Monday morning

Opting for comfort, the media personality teamed her vest with black running tights.

The reality star maintained her sporty display as she strolled along the streets of the English capital in monochrome trainers by Nike.

New mum Millie injected some of her typical glamour into her dressed-down appearance as she shielded her eyes from the sun in cat-eye frame shades and listened to music through her Apple AirPods.

Radiant: The former Made In Chelsea star, 30, highlighted her incredible postpartum figure in a nursing top as she enjoyed a brisk walk for her daily workout

Candid: Millie recently revealed she nearly gave up on breastfeeding due to how sore her 'cracked, bleeding nipples' were during her first days of motherhood

Off she goes: Opting for comfort, the media personality teamed her black vest with running tights

Relaxed: The reality star maintained her sporty display as she strolled along the streets of the English capital in monochrome trainers by Nike

Showcasing her naturally clear complexion, the blonde beauty went make-up free and wore her tresses in a straight fashion.

Earlier in the day, Millie took to Instagram to share a sweet image of herself nursing daughter Sienna as she reflected on her challenging experience with breastfeeding, which left her 'crying in pain' and worsened her anxiety.

After seeking advice on social networking app Peanut, the blogger said she now feeds her baby girl using 'life-saving' nipples shields and encouraged fellow parents to share their stories and tips in a bid to help others.

Protection with style: The new mum injected some of her typical glamour into her dressed-down appearance as she shielded her eyes from the sun in cat-eye frame shades

Radiant: Showcasing her naturally clear complexion, the blonde beauty went make-up free and wore her tresses in a straight fashion

Keeping safe: The TV star pushed the pram along while sporting a wrist strap

Stunning weather: Millie soaked up the sun during her refreshing outing

First-time mum: The London native has been getting to grips with parenthood ever since welcoming her first child last month

Just the two of us: Millie walked past local shops as she enjoyed some quality time with Sienna

The Made author, who shares Sienna with husband Hugo Taylor, looked radiant in the image as she breastfed her newborn through her white, non-wired nursing bra.

In a lengthy caption, Millie said that while her child is now a 'good eater', adjusting to being a mother was 'tough'.

She detailed: Let's talk about breastfeeding  I found it really tough at the beginning. Although Sienna now latches on easily and is a good eater, it definitely didn't start that way.

'The first few days I had blistered, cracked nipples and the pain was so intense, I really didnt know how I was going to carry on.'

Tender moments: Earlier in the day, Millie took to Instagram to share a sweet image of herself nursing daughter Sienna

'I was left crying with how sore my cracked, bleeding nipples were': After seeking advice on social networking app Peanut, the blogger said she now feeds her baby using nipple shields

The blonde beauty spent 'hours online trying to find the best professional advice' on 'anything that would make the pain and dread stop' as she 'desperately' wanted to continue to breastfeed.

Explaining the effect of painful experience on her mental health, she said: 'I found myself totally overwhelmed with all the conflicting advice which only made my anxiety worse.'

Millie was later advised to check out the Peanut app, where she sought guidance from a help group specifically catered to breastfeeding.

Praising the women from the fertility and motherhood platform, she gushed: 'They were so kind and encouraged me to trust my own instincts and do what feels right for me.

New parents: The Made author shares Sienna with her husband Hugo Taylor (pictured last month)

'There really is no other advice that compares to other mums who have been in exactly the same situation because they have a wealth of knowledge and suggestions.

'I found so many great tips about feeding from one or both boobs for each feed, the best time of day to pump, which supplements help regulate your flow, what foods to eat or avoid, how to use nipple shields, different feeding routines and schedules etc.

'The support and advice I have received from the women on @peanut has been invaluable and made me feel less alone (I know Im not but breastfeeding can convince you otherwise!)'

The social media influencer also revealed caring for Sienna has resulted in a 'sky high' appetite, eating cold meals with one hand, and accidentally spilling food on herself and her baby.

Getting into the swing of things: The TV star said that while her child is now a 'good eater', adjusting to being a mother was 'tough' (pictured last week)

Insisting the trials and tribulations are outweighed by the positives, Millie added: 'Despite the blood, sweat, tears, and feeling like Im leaking milk through countless outfits

'Its all worth it when I look down and see Sienna's tiny hand wrapped around my finger, watching her grow stronger every day. My heart melts when she gives the gift of a little smile.

'Motherhood really is a journey, and that's why sharing stories & tips is so important. I encourage any mothers, expectant mothers and those trying to conceive to join the app. It's the support system we all need. #peanutapp #ad.'

The TV star elaborated on her ordeal in a separate video uploaded to her Instagram Stories, where she credited nipple shields for alleviating the pain of breastfeeding 'instantly'.

'It's all worth it': Millie insisted the trials and tribulations are outweighed by the joys of parenthood

'Life savers!' The blonde elaborated on her ordeal in a video uploaded to her Instagram Stories, where she credited nipple shields for alleviating the pain of breastfeeding 'instantly'

She said: 'Just following on from my post, I wanted to share a bit more. For me, the first five days were really challenging. I was having cracked bleeding nipples, it was super stressful.'

Claiming Sienna could pick up on her hardship, Millie shared: 'Every time I had to feed her I thought I couldn't go through the pain again. I was crying with how sore it was. It really stressed me out and I think Sienna was picking up on that.

'I was really close to giving up, but what I found really helpful is connecting to other mums on Peanut on the breastfeeding groups, and they recommended I try nipple shields. Instantly there was no pain, so that's been an absolute life saver for me.'

Perfect trio: On Sunday, Millie helped sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo, 34, celebrate his first Father's Day

Urging other new mothers to 'not be afraid of asking for help', the London native ended her post: 'I definitely think connecting with other mothers made me feel a lot better about lots of queries and questions I had. I really recommend checking Peanut and I hope it helps you too.'

On Sunday, Millie helped sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo, 34, celebrate his first Father's Day.

The couple couldn't contain their glee as the online sensation posed for a smiling selfie with her other half, while carrying her little one on her front.

Millie and Hugo tied the knot in an elaborate ceremony at Whithurst Park in West Sussex two years ago.
- Angel Locsin has constantly received praise as one of the simplest and humblest celebrities in Philippine show business

- She showed those traits once again in an episode of the new ABS-CBN program, Iba Yan

- The heartwarming episode feature Angel preparing food with a couple of fishermen

- The Kapamilya superstar also dined and bonded with the fishermen and some of their family members

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

Angel Locsin is known as one of the simplest and humblest celebrities in Philippine show business.

KAMI learned that she showed those traits once again in an episode of the new ABS-CBN program, Iba Yan.

Some of the most heartwarming moments of the episode feature Angel preparing food with a couple of fishermen.

The famous actress also dined and bonded with the fishermen and some of their family members.

Angel was visibly emotional while hearing about the difficulties being faced by the simple family.

PAY ATTENTION: Shop with KAMI! The best offers and discounts on the market, product reviews and feedback

PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

KAMI previously reported that Angel went viral after getting caught on camera riding a tricycle.

Angel Locsin is a famous actress and endorser in the Philippines, best known for her portrayal of the superhero Darna. She is also known as one of the most charitable celebrities in the country. The actress is currently engaged to her partner, Neil Arce.

Please like and share our amazing Facebook posts to support the KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinions about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts and views on different matters!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Talks with US 'strictly forbidden': Iran's parliament speaker

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 10:03 AM

Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf says negotiations with the US are "harmful and strictly forbidden," stressing that resistance is the only way to protect the country's rights and dignity.

Addressing an open session of parliament on Sunday, Qalibaf stressed that any dialog should take place from the position of power by relying on the strong will of the Iranian people.

"The fact is we are not against diplomacy and talks, but we believe that negotiations with the US are absolutely harmful and forbidden," he said.

His remarks came in the wake of an anti-Iran resolution passed by the Board of Governors at the UN's nuclear agency on Friday, which brought the US closer to its goal of killing a 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran.

"In the past few days, Western countries especially the US and some European countries once again showed their unreliable and hostile nature to the Iranian nation and proved for the umpteenth time that to protect the rights and dignity of the Iranian nation and guarantee its progress, there is no way other than smart resistance and revolutionary wisdom," Qalibaf said.

The Trump administration exited the nuclear deal in 2018. While the Europeans vowed to salvage it, they did little against repeated US measures which reduced Iran's benefits from the agreement to almost nothing.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump repeated his call for a new deal with Iran, hypothesizing that Tehran was waiting to see him lose the election.

"But when I win, you're going to pay a much higher price than if you made a deal now," he was quoted as saying in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The US is currently working to extend a UN-imposed arms embargo due to expire in October under Tehran's nuclear deal.

As signatories of the nuclear deal, the Europeans have said since the US has already withdrawn from the agreement with Iran, it can't now use its former membership of the pact to try to impose a permanent arms embargo on the Islamic Republic.

However, the Friday resolution drafted by France, Britain and Germany, calling on Tehran to provide inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with access to two sites in Iran, increased the Islamic Republic distrust of the bloc.

The sites in question are not directly relevant to Iran's current nuclear program. Moreover, the IAEA has said it still has the access it needs to inspect Iran's declared nuclear facilities, as per its mandate under the nuclear deal.

Iranian officials say the agency's request to visit the two sites is based on fabricated information supplied by Israel and pressure from the US government.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, said on Saturday that the EU and the IAEA have been caught in a "trap set by the US and Israeli regimes".

The new resolution "will neither encourage Iran to grant access to the Agency based on fabricated and unfounded allegations, nor will it force Iran to come down from its principal positions," he said.

Qalibaf echoed the position on Sunday, stressing that "by no means and under no circumstances, the Agency will be allowed to violate the legal frameworks".

From now on, the speaker said, "negotiations with European countries should be conducted with the utmost distrust".

Negotiations with the IAEA should be subject to Iran's confidence in the agency's independence from the imperial powers, Qalibaf said.

"Negotiations with other countries should be arranged based on the degree they support the Iranian nation's rights in sensitive junctures," he added.

Russia and China, both of which had spoken out against the prospect of a resolution, voted against it. Azerbaijan, India, Mongolia, Niger, Pakistan, South Africa, and Thailand did not support the resolution either.

Qalibaf said most of the countries which voted for the resolution were under heavy pressure from the United States.

Such resolutions, he added, are meant to deprive Iran of its self-sufficiency drive and resistance and push it into "the corridor of negotiations and renewed pressure."

"By doing the US bid in presenting the resolution on Friday, the Europeans showed that they are no less than the Americans in their hostility towards Iran," Qalibaf said.

The countries behind the resolution are responsible for any possible tensions in Iran's ties with the IAEA and should accept the consequences, he added.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Even if the borders to France are now open again: not to Go to Poitiers! Let it out, around an arc of the drum, passing showers on the way to the Atlantic ocean, with a good Conscience, just straight to it. It's not worth it. There is nothing to see except an old, dark Cathedral, a couple of unhewn blocks of stone from the prehistoric era, and a plaque in memory of a battle in the 8. Century, is said to have beaten back, at the time of Charles Martel, the Muslims. Meanwhile, the importance of the battle of historians is in doubt. That evening the country was saved, to believe only a couple of Identitarian, the scrabbling on the roof of the local mosque with placards on which is written: "Gauls are awake, You are here home".

Simon Strauss

editor in the features section.

F. A. Z. Facebook

One of those here temporarily at home, is Michel Foucault. The famous philosopher and sociologist, was born here and went during the Second world war in Poitiers to the school, then fled but soon to Paris and never returned again. If you spike French the word Poitiers, then you are forgiven, mostly the mouth and easily say enerviert: Ah oui, le Futuroscope. At least once in his life, every French student and his class has been forced to visit in the sad leisure Park in front of the gates of Poitiers, where the old and the new "technologies of the future" will be presented. Among the main attractions of the "Futuro scopes" IMAX-cinemas, water games and a 48-metre-high observation tower  well, does that not sound like a fun afternoon?

Poitiers is situated in the middle of France, but his heart is not beating here. The Best thing you can say about Poitiers, is that it is located with the train just two hours from Paris. And that the Internet connections are usually stable. That Poitiers has more students per inhabitant than any other French University city is right. However, most of them leave the province of the nest at the weekend to wash with their parents in the surrounding villages of Laundry, and can cook for. The sound of rickety rolling suitcases roars to the poor Erasmus students, had to spend a half a year, his life long in the ears. All in All, therefore, the opposite of Savoir-vivre and lavender-tale coziness. Of course: here you can open a bottle of red wine and a piece of cheese on the Clain place  the river is here, really, "Clain", but to be honest, it's not worth It. You prefer to stay in Paris. Or in Tours. And then drive directly to La Rochelle. Or to Bordeaux. In any case: do not Drive to Poitiers!

Updated Date: 22 June 2020, 18:19
Director Joel Schumacher, known for helming hit movies including The Lost Boys and two installments of the Batman franchise, has died. He was 80.

A representative for Schumacher said he was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Schumacher, who grew up in Queens, started out as a window dresser at Bendels and became a costume designer on films, working with Woody Allen on the 1973 movie Sleeper.

He went on to write screenplays for films including The Wiz (1978). Schumachers first feature films as a director were The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), starring Lily Tomlin, and D.C. Cab (1983), starring Mr. T.

Schumacher followed that up by writing and directing the classic St. Elmos Fire (1985) with Brat Pack actors Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson, and directing the moody teen vampire movie The Lost Boys (1987) with Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Dianne Wiest and Corey Feldman.

Joel Schumacher on what makes a "good" director. pic.twitter.com/Wftj1ifhgD  Blank Check Podcast (@blankcheckpod) June 22, 2020

The directors take on Batman  he gave the batsuit nipples  was not as well received. He followed Batman Forever (1995) up with Batman & Robin (1997), a movie that was widely panned. (Schumacher later apologized to fans of the Caped Crusader.)

In the 90s, Schumacher also directed Flatliners (1990), Dying Young (1991), Falling Down 1993), The Client (1994) and A Time to Kill (1996), films based on John Grisham novels, as well as 8MM (1999) with Nicolas Cage and Flawless (1999) with Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. His early-aughts films include Tigerland (2000), Phone Booth (2002), Veronica Guerin (2003) and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).

I met him on the set of the ill-fated Batman & Robin and he couldnt have been nicer or more hospitable (and the man looooved to gossip), director Kevin Smith, who grew up in Highlands, tweeted Monday. The Incredible Shrinking Woman was an early cable TV classic for me and I loved St Elmos Fire, The Client and Flawless.

Former House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon collaborated with Schumacher when the director helmed episodes of the Netflix series early in its run.

I was lucky enough to work with Joel Schumacher, Willimon tweeted. Smart, funny, talented. A true iconoclast. And he could hold court and tell a story like no other. RIP Joel.

Grease up, throw on some jeans and pour one out for Joel Schumacher pic.twitter.com/nI9Qw0gXZQ  Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) June 22, 2020

RIP Joel Schumacher. Director of the best movie ever  pic.twitter.com/n9eZ4nXUKY  Jane  (@babyjane75) June 22, 2020

While Joel Schumacher got a lot of flak for Batman and Robin he directed some of my favorite films, and the guy had range. It's not every day someone can go from St. Elmo's Fire to Falling Down or Batman and Robin to 8mm. pic.twitter.com/PA3x96PZHv  Larry King (@larrykingundead) June 22, 2020

#PhoneBooth, my favorite movie directed by Joel Schumacher. pic.twitter.com/YTQE4ZtI4m  Stephane Celerier (@stephanecel) June 22, 2020

THE LOST BOYS. FLATLINERS. BATMAN FOREVER. PHONE BOOTH. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Joel Schumacher, 1939-2020. pic.twitter.com/ov2m0V22F6  Alamo Drafthouse (@alamodrafthouse) June 22, 2020

I wanted a very sexy, very sensual, very body-hugging suit. It's my Gotham City, and if I want Batman to have nipples, he's going to have nipples!

- Joel Schumacher pic.twitter.com/RzthwBIrAp  van Ross Katz (@evanrosskatz) June 22, 2020

Joel Schumacher's aesthetic sensibility got me obsessed with mise-en-scene as a teenager before I knew what that term even meant, I still constantly return to his movies because they just look + feel so RIGHT, RIP to an absolute real one. pic.twitter.com/1TGCpIyQJU  Kate Hagen (@thathagengrrl) June 22, 2020

RIP, joel schumacher. an '80s & '90s icon. yes, his batman movies were derided upon their release, but with time, I think we can look upon them with a certain sort of campy delight. plus, st. elmo's fire! so melodramatic! the lost boys! so delightful! schumacher got it, man. pic.twitter.com/E0eEafgqXS   roxana |  zivar |  hadadi (@roxana_hadadi) June 22, 2020

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Send a coronavirus tip here.
State Sen. Velmanette Montgomerys retirement has set off an intense open primary competition to replace her, with a chain reaction filtering down to an Assembly race. In both Montgomerys 25th Senate District and the partially overlapping 56th Assembly District in Brooklyn, the establishment-backed candidates are facing at least one challenge from the left. And, in a year in which turnout may go up because of easier access to absentee ballots or it may go down because fear of contracting the coronavirus keeps voters away from the polls, any outcome seems possible.

In the state Senate race, Montgomery has endorsed as her replacement Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright, who chairs the state Legislatures Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus. Wright is backed by a number of other elected officials, including Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, who chairs the Kings County Democratic Party. But Wright is facing two well-organized contenders: Jabari Brisport, a public school teacher and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Jason Salmon, a former staffer to Montgomery.

As is the case in many competitive primaries this year, the establishment candidate has a solidly liberal voting record. Even some of the progressive proposals pushed by Wright and her opponents are similar. Both Wright and Salmon, for example, want to bring back the Mitchell-Lama program to create more affordable homeownership opportunities. In a recent campaign email, Wright boasts of her 100% ratings from environmental advocacy organizations and her work on the negotiation team for landmark criminal justice reforms.

Nonetheless, fault lines can be detected among the candidates, reflecting the demographic and ideological diversity within the overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic district.

The 25th state Senate district is shaped like a sideways L. It stretches from Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy through Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. Then it turns south and encompasses a snippet of northwestern Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Gowanus and onward into Red Hook and Sunset Park. It was clearly designed to be predominantly Black and Latino. Due to gentrification, it is now 46% Black, 27% white and 17% Hispanic. And while it still has a poverty rate of over 21%, it also has slightly higher median household incomes and education levels than the boroughwide totals.

In light of that, it is tempting to lump this primary in with races in other gentrifying districts, such as the contest in Western Queens between Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas and DSA-backed Zohran Mamdani, in which left-wing newcomers to the district challenge a mainstream Democrat from the pre-gentrified community. But neither Salmon nor Brisport are new arrivals. Brisport is Black and grew up on a block in Prospect Heights that lies just barely outside of the district. (He recently moved to Bed-Stuy.) Salmon grew up in the district, in Fort Greene, and is half-Black and half-white.

But to win, they both must appeal to the same kind of whitecollar progressive voters who backed 2018 upset winners such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state Sen. Julia Salazar who were powered to victory by high support and turnout in their districts mostgentrified precincts.

While Brisport and Salmon are in the same lane, they occupy different portions of it. Think of the progressive candidates as two distinct groups: the young politicos and the insurgent leftists.

The young politicos, despite being first-time candidates, have previously worked in Democratic politics or in government. While they have progressive policy platforms and they challenge incumbents from the left, they are essentially just the new generation of liberal reform Democrats. Several state senators who unseated former members of the Independent Democratic Conference, including Alessandria Biaggi, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, are in this group.

Then there are the radical insurgents, such as Ocasio-Cortez and Salazar, both of whom are DSA members and whose more limited prior political experience consisted mainly of more outside-the-system activism, such as Ocasio-Cortezs volunteering for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign and Salazars work for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, also known as JFREJ. In this years presidential primary, Biaggi endorsed U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, while Ocasio-Cortez and Salazar backed Sanders.

Salmons biography has elements of both categories. Like an insurgent, he left a career as a musician to get involved in politics, focused on police reform, after a childhood friend died in a police-involved incident in 2014, and he worked alongside Salazar at JFREJ as a liaison to the Communities United for Police Reform coalition. But, like a young politico, he then served Montgomery as a community liaison. His sister-in-law is Audrey Gelman, the well-connected co-founder of The Wing, a women-focused co-working space, and a former campaign aide for City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Bisport, a DSA member, is undoubtedly a leftist insurgent. He received the DSAs endorsement and also ran for New York City Council as a Green Party candidate in 2017. He has never worked professionally in politics or activism, though he said he has helped to organize rallies and marches on issues such as police reform and same-sex marriage. After seeing Julia Salazar getting elected as a socialist, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I saw there was a place for socialist voices  and a place to advocate for those policies  inside the Democratic Party, he told City & State, when asked why he switched his party affiliation.

Both Brisport and Salmon are running on a range of progressive policy proposals and democratic reforms, including same-day voter registration and vote-by-mail. And both say the recently passed police reforms, such as increasing transparency on police disciplinary records and outlawing chokeholds, dont go far enough. I know (Wrights) patting herself for the legislation that just passed, Brisport said. Those are pretty milquetoast reforms that we should have had years ago. We need also defunding the police and decarceration.

Salmon also supports defunding the police. Its a shame when nurses dont have PPE  and Ive been out on the street every night (at the recent protests), and Im looking at full militarized gear, Salmon said.

Another division Brisport highlights with Wright is his staunch opposition to charter schools. We have a pretty sharp difference on charter schools: I support a moratorium on them, (Wright) doesn't. She supports charter schools, Brisport said. As a public school teacher, I have a strong belief that charter schools harm public schools by competing for funding and space.

Wright, however, notes that charter schools are public schools, as they are free to attend. In response to Brisports criticism, Wright touted her endorsement from the United Federation of Teachers. Tremaine supports all public schools in the district, her spokesman Bob Liff wrote in an email. The most important thing is the kids.

While Salmon and some progressive housing activists allege that Wright was reluctant to back pro-tenant rent regulations that passed last year, she voted for all for the measures that passed. Wright hasnt yet taken a stance on Salazars good cause eviction bill, essentially a proposal for universal rent regulation, which never came to a vote and which both Salmon and Brisport endorse.

There were a bunch of housing organizations protesting outside her office, Salmon said, referring to the months before the rent regulations were passed. We shouldnt have to push our electeds to do the right thing. You wont have to push me to defend tenants.

Salmon and Brisport both also say they wont take donations from real estate and fossil fuel executives or political action committees, whereas Wright doesnt reject any donations categorically but says that she has never received money from real estate interests. While both Salmon and Brisport call for more aggressive action to combat climate change, including divesting pension funds from fossil fuels, Salmon is for a fee on climate pollution to raise funds for clean energy investment, whereas Brisport is concerned about the potential for the cost to be passed on to consumers.

Although her rivals say they will do a better job of protecting residents' ability to stay put, Wright argues that her greater experience in working in the district makes her better qualified for the promotion. Im the candidate that has a record of investment and commitment in our community, long before I ever held an elected position, Wright said. I spent 14 years on our community board. Ive invested in the community by opening a coffee shop and operating it for nine years. I was able to hire people in the community, people who were formerly incarcerated, people who never had a job.

But to her opponents, a long record in local politics isnt necessarily an asset and may even be detrimental. Theres also qualifications of lived experience, Brisport said. We desperately need people who are not just career politicians, former lawyers and business people.  As a teacher, I see how were failing our students in terms of housing, in terms of policing. I can see it holistically.

And Salmon observes that the areas current crop of elected officials havent been able to stop local housing prices from skyrocketing. Weve had the same power structure in Central Brooklyn for a very long time, and gentrification has really happened in the last 20-30 years, Salmon said. It's very hard for me to believe that the same power structure thats backing Tremaine Wright is going to do anything different now to bring equity to our communities.

However, Salmon, whose family has been in Bed-Stuy for three generations, also argues that his campaign is distinguished from Brisports by its greater degree of engagement with long-time area residents. I registered with a lot of people I grew up with to vote, Salmon said. In implicit contrast with the mostly white and college-educated DSA, Salmon added: Were not just a movement of one type of person: Youre going to see formerly incarcerated individuals, youre going to see teachers, youre going to see Black seniors.

If Salmon does build that broader coalition, it could give him an edge. But hell also need to do well among the progressive activist crowd. He and Brisport are competing for those votes and, while neither has dominated among them, Brisport enjoys the advantage of the DSAs national network. Both candidates have received endorsements from unions and progressive advocacy organizations, although Brisport has also secured the backing of bold-faced names such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

When deciding who to support in the race, the membership of Brooklyn-based grassroots progressive group Indivisible Nation BK was almost evenly divided between the two candidates. Although the groups endorsement ultimately went to Brisport, many of its members are volunteering for Salmon. Its hard not to see how Brisport and Salmon dont split the progressive reformer vote, Doug Forand, an experienced Democratic campaign consultant, told City & State. In a normal year, that would give Tremaine an edge. But were seeing absentee ballots skew younger, which usually means more progressive reformery.

Both Brisport and Salmon have raised impressive sums for first-time candidates. As of the most recent filing period, 11 days before the June 23 primary, Brisport has brought in $249,536, with $105,966 on hand, while Salmon has raised $172,817, with $28,082 on hand. Wright has $90,964 on hand, despite raising only $74,784 since launching her campaign, in part because she got in the race later, and she has $43,075 transferred from her previous campaign committee that was raising money for reelection to the Assembly. On Tuesday, according to a Brisport campaign email, the candidate set a new record for the most donors by a New York State Legislature campaign, with over 6,500 donors.

Wright said she has been consumed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic with delivering constituent services and that she has deemphasized campaigning. I didn't spend the height of the COVID(-19) period fundraising, she said. We decided to halt some fundraising activities and focused more on resources and relief for the community.

In terms of public policy response to the crisis, Wright is mainly concerned with creating new jobs, perhaps by building affordable housing, to combat the economic fallout of the lockdown. We need a WPA-style work program to bring people relief, so they are stabilized, she said, referring to the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration that built major public infrastructure.

With Wright not running for reelection to the Assembly, a similar race is unfolding to replace her. Wright is backing Stefani Zinerman, a Black lifelong Brooklynite, to replace her in the Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy seat. Zinerman has worked for the New York City Council and for state Sen. Montgomery.

Like Wright, Zinerman has an agenda that would easily qualify as progressive by mainstream national standards. She supports the New York Health Act, which would create a statewide public health insurance program for all New Yorkers. We have to have a moral budget, Zinerman said. A moral budget, for me, means everybody has health care and that we build a sustainable housing model.

Zinerman is running against Justin Cohen, a community organizer, who says he was motivated to run because among the organizations he works with opposing police violence, the consensus was that we needed a radical decarceration and police abolition lens in Albany.

Whereas the larger state Senate district incorporates areas that have become largely white and affluent in recent decades, the 56th Assembly District remains majority-Black, with a higher rate of poverty and lower median household income than Brooklyn as a whole. Nonetheless, it too is feeling the pressure of gentrification, as brownstones in the area sell for millions of dollars.

Ironically, Cohen  a white man from suburban New Jersey who has lived in the district since 2015, and previously between 2005 and 2007  positions himself as an opponent of gentrification. For instance, he has worked with the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network, which advocates for tighter rent regulations and more affordable housing. I'm not the perfect messenger for the issues I work on, Cohen conceded in an interview with City & State. But theres a difference between being a gentrifier and a neighbor. My theory of how social change happens is through coalitions of people across racial and economic lines.

To combat rising housing costs, Cohen calls for universal rent control and a tax on vacant properties such as pieds-a-terre and units being held off the market. Zinerman, however, notes that universal rent control would prevent elderly owners of two- and three-unit houses from raising rents on their tenants, which could make it difficult for them to keep up with bills such as rising property taxes.

Cohen and Zinerman also differ on policing. Whereas Cohen advocates police abolition, Zinerman says that is not a priority for most in the district. I have done, and this community has done, a hell of a job ensuring that the people who police this community are respectful, said Zinerman. I do not want someone coming and conflating what happens on a national level with what is going on in our community. I respectfully say to the young man who is running: Please learn this community. He has come to this community with a radical lens, is applying to a government job and hes never been to a community board meeting. Cohen says thats untrue: He lives in Community Board 8 and frequently attends its meetings and meetings for Community Board 3 as well.

Still, the underlying distinction  one of radical activist politics versus more traditional political pathways  remains apparent. Normally, historically, the traditional route would more likely be the path to success. But these days, the old rules of politics may not apply. As Forand said, Its a weird year.

With reporting from Jeff Coltin.
Fund managers with more than US$2.2 trillion in combined managed assets have urged companies with exposure to fossil fuels to take note of BPs colossal asset write-down and properly account for climate change risks in their price assumptions and asset valuations.

The question all company directors and their shareholders now need urgently answered is where else might company positions be overstated. And this question is not only pertinent to oil and gas companies, but any company that depends on fossil fuels to deliver future profits, wrote Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at asset manager Sarasin & Partners.

The asset manager is one of the two dozen signatories to the investor statement urging companies to align their accounting to the Paris climate goals.

We will be rolling out similar engagements with other fossil fuel-dependent companies, Landell-Mills, told Reuters in an interview published on Monday. The investors plan to campaign for climate risk-aligned accounting with miners such as Rio Tinto and banks in Europe and the United States that finance fossil fuel projects, she added.

Related: Oil Markets May Not Fully Recover Until 2022

Last week, BP warned investors that it would book pre-tax writeoffs on assets and exploration to the tune of US$16-21 billion in its second-quarter results as it revised down its long-term oil price assumption and launched a review into its exploration plans. Post-tax impairments and writeoffs will be in the range of US$13 billion to US $17.5 billion, BP said.

This move by BP should be commended. It is hugely important, not just to BP shareholders who now have greater clarity over climate risks embedded in the business, but it has far-reaching implications for the worlds ability to deliver on its commitment to the Paris Agreement, the investors said on Monday.

The investor group of more than 20 asset managers called on company directors and auditors to act sooner rather than later to ensure Paris-aligned accounts that deliver a sustainable planet.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is significantly ramping up many of its services as part of Phase 2 of the states coronavirus reopening plan.

On Sunday, the MBTA resumed regular weekday services on the Blue Line and increased operations on the Red, Orange, Green and Mattapan lines. Regular weekday services for nearly 60 bus routes also increased, according to a statement from the authority.

Commuter rail trips and all MBTA ferries were expected to resume Monday as well with limited weekday services, the statement said.

As the commonwealth continues its reopening phases and we begin boosting service for all modes, we will continue to protect the riding public and our workforce through enhanced safety protocols, MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak wrote in a statement. Thank you to MBTA riders for their patience during these challenging times and for wearing face coverings while using the system.

I also want to reiterate my deep appreciation to our frontline workforce, who have come to work every day throughout the pandemic in order to provide essential transit services.

The MBTA noted in early June that ridership continues to remain at only a fraction of its pre-pandemic levels. The number of passengers using the authoritys services and undesirable crowding will be closely monitored, according to the agencys statement.

Last week, the MBTA announced it would be launching a new tool to help riders track overcrowding for nine bus routes across the transit system. The information is expected to be posted on digital signs and accessed within the agencys smartphone application, the Transit App.

Crowding threshold standards have been temporarily lowered for each bus and subway fleet in accordance with social distancing measures, according to the MBTA.

The agency is also continuing to disinfect touch points in high-traffic facilities twice a day. Handrails, fare gates and fare vending machines in subway stations are being cleaned once every four hours. The MBTA said it would hire additional vendors to aid in the efforts as well.

While service is increasing significantly, providing safe transit during the coronavirus pandemic is a shared responsibility among the MBTA, its customers, employers, and cities and towns, MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack said in a statement.

As the COVID-19 public health crisis ramped up in the U.S. in mid-March, the MBTA modified its operations to resemble its Saturday schedules for most modes of transportation. Ferry services were temporarily cancelled to help slow the spread of the virus, according to the agency.

Now, at the start of the second part of Phase 2 of the states reopening plan, the MBTA - along with a slew of businesses - will begin to resume many of their operations.

Starting Sunday, weekday services were added to more than 50 high-demand bus routes, including Routes 1, 22, 23, 28, 57, 66, 111, 116, 117 and dozens more. Bus routes will also continue run their regular schedules on Saturdays and Sundays.

Route 39 will also operate with 60-foot buses all day for additional capacity. Routes that were previously not operating but are now resuming services include Routes 19 and 245, which serve key medical and hospital areas.

Face coverings will be required on buses, trains and ferries, and dispatchers will be allowed to make adjustments to alleviate crowding.

The MBTA will operate a full complement of buses, including 30% reserved to be deployed where there is increased demand for service. Crowding will be closely monitored with these flexible buses deployed as needed, the agency wrote in its statement. All available buses will operate with service concentrated on about 80% of bus routes.

Limited ferry services to Hingham, Hull and Charlestown will also resume on weekdays at about 75% of normal schedules. Weekend ferry service remain suspended, the MBTA said.

All commuter rail lines will operate with increased weekday service as well, with the Fairmount Line beginning full service schedules. Regular midday trains are expected to operate again too, and the number of trains during morning and evening peak periods will be increased.

More information on the MBTAs adjusted services can be found on the agencys website.

Related Content:
Press Release

June 22, 2020 IMEE: INVESTIGATE CALL CENTERS EXPLOITING FILIPINO WORKERS DURING PANDEMIC Senator Imee Marcos has called on the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to investigate cases of worker abuse arising from flexible work arrangements amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor advisories issued in March and May require employee consultation before flexible work arrangements can be adopted, but Marcos said company managers were being accused of deciding on their own to withhold compensation especially of Filipino employees or to make them shoulder operational costs so that further losses in corporate income can be reduced. Complaints reaching Marcos's office, mostly from call center employees, include non-payment of salaries in the past 60 to 90 days, denial of separation benefits for those laid off, unreimbursed costs for electricity and wifi access of night-shift employees working from home, extended home-based work shifts with no extra pay if system tools break down, and forced leave on maternity credits without assurance of being rehired. "The complaints are not just coming out of smaller call centers but also from top-listed companies that were earning billions in annual income. One even reportedly cut its workforce to less than half," Marcos said. "As stated in Labor advisories 9 and 17 this year, flexible work arrangements should go through employee consultation and be reported by companies to the nearest DOLE office with jurisdiction over the workplace. Companies must also provide adequate support for those working from home, according to number 17, which also echoes the Labor Code on separation pay and benefits," Marcos explained. Marcos urged the DOLE to monitor corporate compliance more closely, "since labor abuse during the pandemic may be more widespread than just within the BPO industry." "BPO's must take care of their employees in anticipation of a bounce-back in business post-COVID, as companies in other sectors will turn to outsourcing services to cut costs," Marcos said. Marcos added that Labor secretary Silvestre Bello said Sunday that the BPO industry was showing signs of a resurgence amid the pandemic and would be providing 6,000 more jobs in the near term. The BPO industry's contribution to the country's economy has grown from a mere 0.7% of gross domestic product in 2000 to an estimated 12% last year. The Philippines overtook India in 2017 as the main destination for BPO services with a workforce of 1.4 million, a figure that was projected to reach 2.5 million this year, based on industry growth trending at about 20% annually before the pandemic.
An international team of scientists and historians has found evidence connecting an unexplained period of extreme cold in ancient Rome with an unlikely source: a massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano, located on the opposite side of the Earth.

Around the time of Julius Caesar's death in 44 BCE, written sources describe a period of unusually cold climate, crop failures, famine, disease, and unrest in the Mediterranean Region -impacts that ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Historians have long suspected a volcano to be the cause, but have been unable to pinpoint where or when such an eruption had occurred, or how severe it was.

In a new study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a research team led by Joe McConnell, Ph.D. of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev. uses an analysis of tephra (volcanic ash) found in Arctic ice cores to link the period of unexplained extreme climate in the Mediterranean with the caldera-forming eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE.

"To find evidence that a volcano on other side of the earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating," McConnell said. "It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."

The discovery was initially made last year in DRI's Ice Core Laboratory, when McConnell and Swiss researcher Michael Sigl, Ph.D. from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern happened upon an unusually well preserved layer of tephra in an ice core sample and decided to investigate.

New measurements were made on ice cores from Greenland and Russia, some of which were drilled in the 1990s and archived in the U.S., Denmark, and Germany. Using these and earlier measurements, they were able to clearly delineate two distinct eruptions - a powerful but short-lived, relatively localized event in early 45 BCE, and a much larger and more widespread event in early 43 BCE with volcanic fallout that lasted more than two years in all the ice core records.

The researchers then conducted a geochemical analysis of the tephra samples from the second eruption found in the ice, matching the tiny shards with those of the Okmok II eruption in Alaska - one of the largest eruptions of the past 2,500 years.

"The tephra match doesn't get any better," said tephra specialist Gill Plunkett, Ph.D. from Queen's University Belfast. "We compared the chemical fingerprint of the tephra found in the ice with tephra from volcanoes thought to have erupted about that time and it was very clear that the source of the 43 BCE fallout in the ice was the Okmok II eruption."

Working with colleagues from the U.K., Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Alaska, and Yale University in Connecticut, the team of historians and scientists gathered supporting evidence from around the globe, including tree-ring-based climate records from Scandinavia, Austria and California's White Mountains, and climate records from a speleothem (cave formations) from Shihua Cave in northeast China. They then used Earth system modeling to develop a more complete understanding of the timing and magnitude of volcanism during this period and its effects on climate and history.

According to their findings, the two years following the Okmok II eruption were some of the coldest in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 2,500 years, and the decade that followed was the fourth coldest. Climate models suggest that seasonally averaged temperatures may have been as much as 7oC (13oF) below normal during the summer and autumn that followed the 43 BCE eruption of Okmok, with summer precipitation of 50 to 120 percent above normal throughout Southern Europe, and autumn precipitation reaching as high as 400 percent of normal.

"In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period," said classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson, D.Phil. of the University of Oxford. "These findings lend credibility to reports of cold, famine, food shortage and disease described by ancient sources."

"Particularly striking was the severity of the Nile flood failure at the time of the Okmok eruption, and the famine and disease that was reported in Egyptian sources," added Yale University historian Joe Manning, Ph.D. "The climate effects were a severe shock to an already stressed society at a pivotal moment in history."

Volcanic activity also helps to explain certain unusual atmospheric phenomena that were described by ancient Mediterranean sources around the time of Caesar's assassination and interpreted as signs or omens - things like solar halos, the sun darkening in the sky, or three suns appearing in the sky (a phenomenon now known as a parahelia, or 'sun dog'). However, many of these observations took place prior to the eruption of Okmok II in 43 BCE, and are likely related to a smaller eruption of Mt. Etna in 44 BCE.

Although the study authors acknowledge that many different factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom, they believe that the climate effects of the Okmok II eruption played an undeniably large role - and that their discovery helps to fill a knowledge gap about this period of history that has long puzzled archaeologists and ancient historians.

"People have been speculating about this for many years, so it's exciting to be able to provide some answers," McConnell said.

###

About the Desert Research Institute

The Desert Research Institute (DRI) is a recognized world leader in basic and applied interdisciplinary research. Committed to scientific excellence and integrity, DRI faculty, students, and staff have developed scientific knowledge and innovative technologies in research projects around the globe. Since 1959, DRI's research has advanced scientific knowledge, supported Nevada's diversifying economy, provided science-based educational opportunities, and informed policy makers, business leaders, and community members. With campuses in Reno and Las Vegas, DRI serves as the non-profit research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. For more information, visit http://www.dri.edu.
Mekong Delta effectively curbs impacts of drought, saline intrusion

The Mekong Delta has experienced the most severe drought and saline intrusion ever in the dry season 2019-2020 but the negative impacts on agricultural production and daily life were minimised significantly thanks to effective measures, a top official has said.









Tanks of water from Sai Gon Water Supply Company are carried to the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre to supply for people who face water shortages due to drought and saline intrusion. (Photo: VNA)

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong made the statement at a meeting held in the Mekong Delta province of Long An on June 20 about drought and saline intrusion prevention and control.



He said that thanks to what had been done to fight drought and salinity intrusion in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam could learn good lessons for dealing with the extreme weather in the future.



Cuong applauded the timely forecasting of salinity intrusion that helped agencies and farmers restructure agricultural production to match available water volume.



The Government, ministries and agencies effectively instructed localities and agencies to develop plans to tackle drought, saltwater intrusion and water shortages.



This year, we identified challenges posed by droughts and saltwater intrusion to the Mekong Delta early, Cuong said, adding that as soon as September 2019, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc met with leaders of 13 Mekong Delta localities to discuss the issue.



The minister recalled the saline intrusion in 2016 which was described as the worst in the region in 100 years which offered both authorities and people experiences to better deal with this years incidents.



Saline intrusion in 2016 lasted about two months, and only two communes in Ben Tre province were not affected while this year, the saline intrusion has already lasted five months and the whole Mekong Delta region has been submerged under water.



Groups of measures were taken, he said, adding that works to store water and prevent saline intrusion were built and completed on time.



Cultivation areas were zoned, reduced and crops and cultivation times were changed so the areas affected by drought or saline intrusion was reduced.



The dredging of canals, ponds or wells and the construction of dams, pumping stations to control saline intrusion helped save nearly 400,000 ha of farming land.



Cuong said because people were equipped with a better understanding of the risks, development and impacts of saline intrusion, they became more active in responding and strictly followed agencies recommendations.



People stored water during the previous rainy season and in areas that faced water shortages, water was carried to every household, he said.



According to the Directorate of Water Resources, the dry season 2019-2020 hit the Mekong Delta region in the middle of November 2019, about a month earlier than in previous years, while it lasted twice as long as the dry season in 2016.



According to the Cultivation Department under the MARD, saline intrusion directly hit 10 out of 13 Mekong Delta localities.



About 41,900 ha or 2.7 percent of the total winter-spring rice crop in the region was damaged by the saline intrusion, of which, Tra Vinh lost 14,300ha, Tien Giang 4,500ha, Soc Trang 4,100ha, Kien Giang 1,600ha, Long An 800ha and Ca Mau 600ha.



The lost crops were mainly planted after December 2019 as farmers did not take the advice of agencies.



About 6,650ha of orchards were affected by the droughts and saline intrusion. More than 1,240ha of other crops were affected.



About 8,715ha of aquaculture production including fish and shrimp were affected, mostly in the provinces of Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Ca Mau, Bac Lieu and Kien Giang.



About 96,000 households had their water supply disrupted during the dry season due to droughts and saline water. Meanwhile, droughts and saline intrusion in the dry season 2015-2016 caused water shortages for about 210,000 households in the region though it lasted about two months.
New Delhi, June 22 : Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) national president Chirag Paswan has demanded a fair probe into the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who committed suicide on June 14 at his Bandra residence in Mumbai. Actor-turned-politician Chirag Paswan wrote to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday, stating that the late actor was the pride of Bihar and the entire state is seeking justice for him.

Referring to his telephonic conversation with Thackeray a day earlier, Chirag Paswan said, "On behalf of every Bihari, I urge you to conduct a fair inquiry into the matter so that no talented person is victimized in future due to factionalism and nepotism in Bollywood." The LJP president said that Sushant's kin have pointed to a conspiracy behind his suicide and they believe that he was a victim of the factionalism that flourishes in the Indian film industry.

Chirag Paswan said, "Being close to the family of Sushant Singh, I know for sure that he was a hardworking and talented person with a clean heart." Meanwhile, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari on Monday met the family members of Sushant Singh in Patna. Tiwari, after offering condolences, demanded a CBI probe into the death of Sushant Singh.

Tiwari said the entire film world is shocked by the death of a promising actor. Many questions have arisen over his death.

He said, "A small town actor makes a mark in Bollywood. He faced many crises there. We have all faced these problems. There should be a high-level investigation of what happened to Sushant, who were the people who led him to take such an extreme step, so that such incidents do not happen in future." Tiwari demanded a CBI inquiry and said that the Maharashtra government should take steps for this.

Sushant Singh was found hanging at his Bandra residence by his maid on June 14.

Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Close

(Photo : 7 Forgotten Heroes Who Deeply Impacted American History)

Martin Luther King Jr. Abraham Lincoln. Neil Armstrong. These are American heroes that have famously impacted our lives. The one who had a dream, the one who wanted freedom for all, and the one that took one giant leap for mankind. What about the educators, warriors, and change-makers who evolved, progressed, and converted our freedoms and justice? Many unsung heroes deeply impacted American history.

Students often forget names of American heroes taught in history classes and often confuse timelines. That's because history, as a subject, requires the memorization of dates and events. If you are a student struggling with history, it's best you supplement your study with an online history course. Most online tutors and courses use animation and visualization to help you retain. There are even services that can provide history homework help and explain topics and historical events when you are away from school.

In a bid to jog your memory, here are 7 heroes from American history who are not that well-known.

Educators

1. Anne Sullivan

Born Johanna Manfield Sullivan in 1866, Anne is an American educator who is famous for her life-time instructor and companionship for Helen Keller. After graduating valedictorian at The Perkins School for the Blind with a "Duty bids us go forth into active life...cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly", she was sent to educate a seven-year-old blind and deaf Helen Keller. Through her passion and flexible teaching style, she accomplished teaching this disabled young child 575 new vocabulary words, mathematics, and the Braille system within six months of strict instruction. Because of her educational progressivism, she was awarded multiple university fellowships, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and was the main character in William Gibson's television show, feature film, and Broadway drama The Miracle Worker.

2. Horace Mann

Horace Mann is known as a Massachusetts lawyer, Congressman, Senator, and most importantly, "The Father of American Education". Mann was an education reformer furthering the training of teachers and bettering the universal public education system. His leadership in overhauling then evolving the public education system advanced and benefited mankind. On a visit to Europe, he admired the German and Prussian established but controversial educational principles focusing on quality, professional (mostly female) educators and a "normal", public school system that is maintained by a free society.

Warriors

3. James Armistead

James Armistead plays an unlikely part in the beloved Broadway musical Hamilton. He was an African American slave-turned-spy during the American Revolutionary War. He reported to Marquis de Lafayette and Lord Charles Cornwallis about the actions of the British and especially Benedict Arnold while feeding false information to the British. His service to the United States Continental Army prepared them for the American success of the Battle of Yorktown. African American slaves could substitute their army service for their liberty, however, he was an American spy, not a soldier. On January 7, 1787, he was emancipated with General Lafayette's testimonial due to his abhorrence of slavery. James added Lafayette to his name.

4. "The Heroes of United Flight 93"

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four American aircrafts, including the United Airlines Flight 93. After three aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Flight 93 was hijacked and rerouted to crash into the United States Capitol Building. Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, and Todd Beamer were four of the passengers who ensured that United Airlines Flight 93 was the only hijacked aircraft to not hit its intended target on September 11th. Their passenger revolt led to the plane crash in an empty field in Stonycreek, Pennsylvania. Todd Beamer's last words "Let's roll!" became a national catchphrase. Paul Greengrass filmed the 2006 Academy award-nominated film United 93. Vice President Dick Cheney memorialized 40 heroic passengers with the statement: "I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane."

5. Sybil (Sibbell) Ludington

Celebrated as the heroine of the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington rode her horse Star for 40 miles to alert militia from Putnam County, New York to Danbury, Connecticut on the night of April 26, 1777. Her ride came two years after Paul Revere's and was almost twice as much as his ride to warn American militia. She is honored by memorial statues, books, and the U.S. Bicentennial Stamp in 1975.

Change-Makers

6. Maria W. Stewart

In the 19th century, Maria Stewart was the first American-born woman to publicly lecture to mixed audiences. After her husband's death as a British P.O.W., death of her inspiration, abolitionist David Walker, and when white executors of her husband's will stole her inheritance, she was convinced that she must be a "warrior for God and freedom." She became active in progressive circles, a major influencer in The New England Anti-Slavery Society, an activist who openly opposed racism and sexism through her lectures, and a writer of reformist articles in The Liberator. Her work would inspire future women political influencers, such as Susan B. Anthony.

7. Patsy Mink

Patsy T. Mink was the first woman of color and Asian descent in Congress. Before winning the seat, this third-generation Japanese American experienced opposition throughout her life but achieved so much. She was valedictorian at her high school and then was rejected by 12 medical schools. She attended the University of Chicago Law School but was not able to take the bar examination. Even after she won her case to take the bar examination, no one would employ her in the public or private sectors.

She opened a law practice, won Hawaiian territorial congresswoman and territorial senator, and then won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 terms, as the first woman of color, first Asian-American, and first Hawaiian Congresswoman. As a politician, she fought against sexist statutes, segregation policies, discriminatory customs against women opposing the Supreme Court. For the rest of her life whether as a politician, lawyer, or citizen, Patsy Mink always fought for the rights of women, children, immigrants, and minorities.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
The family of a 62-year-old man who died after being shot by police west of Toronto over the weekend called for a public inquiry into the death, citing a lack of faith in the province's police watchdog to conduct a fair investigation.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hashim Choudhary addresses the media in front of the apartment building where his uncle, Ejaz Choudry, a 62-year-old man who family members said was experiencing a schizophrenic episode, was shot by Peel Police and died at the scene the previous night, in Mississauga, Ont., Sunday, June 21, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Galit Rodan

The family of a 62-year-old man who died after being shot by police west of Toronto over the weekend called for a public inquiry into the death, citing a lack of faith in the province's police watchdog to conduct a fair investigation.

Hasim Choudry, the man's nephew, argued police in Mississauga, Ont., used excessive force in shooting his uncle, who he said was suffering from a schizophrenic episode and had threatened to hurt himself.

"We don't want an investigation with the police and the (Special Investigations Unit)," a visibly emotional Choudry said on Sunday. "We want a public inquiry with politicians involved to help bring this to justice. This is cruel and injustice to the limit."

The incident began at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Peel Regional Police said, when officers were called to the man's home because he was in crisis due to a medical condition for which he reportedly was not taking his medication.

Police said officers believed the man had access to weapons and entered the home after he stopped communicating, leading to an "interaction" where police fired a stun gun, plastic bullets and a gun.

The SIU has launched an investigation, and has already indentified one officer as its subject, with nine others who witnessed the shooting.

Nine investigators have been assigned to Saturday's incident, and the SIU said a police-issued firearm, a stun gun, an anti-riot gun and a knife were found at the scene.

The Muslim Council of Peel, which spoke alongside the family at a Sunday press conference, identified the deceased as Ejaz Choudry.

Family members said they asked police to allow them to try to calm their uncle down, but were told by officers to be patient.

The family also said that officers were shouting at Ejaz Choudry in English, which he didn't understand.

"Anyone in distress knows that ... when anyone you know that really cares about you comes and tells you 'hey its going to be OK,' it makes a difference," said Hassan Choudry, another of his nephews. "None of us were able to go up there and say, 'uncle, you're going to be OK.'"

Family members said officers were shouting to Ejaz from the front door when they saw more officers enter the apartment from the back at around 8:30 p.m. They said they heard multiple shots ring out shortly after.

Ibrahim Hindy, president of the Muslim Council of Peel, told the press conference that police didn't do enough to de-escalate the situation.

"It's clear from everything that the family has already shared, from the eyewitness reports, from the video evidence that we have, that the senseless acts of Peel police yesterday was wildly excessive," Hindy said. "It's Father's Day and he's been robbed from being with his children."

Hindy said he had no faith in an investigation by the SIU and called on political leaders to get involved.

Later on Sunday, crowds of people marched through the streets of Mississauga to protest the police's actions. Eventually, Peel police said, they occupied an intersection near where Choudry lived, setting up tents and chairs in the street.

Choudry's death comes a month after the high-profile police-involved death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black woman who fell from her balcony and died after Toronto police responded to a mental health call.

The death prompted thousands of people to protest against racism and use of force by police in Toronto and across Canada.

The SIU continues to investigate both incidents.

Elsewhere in Canada, the police watchdog in Quebec is investigating after a 51-year-old man died during a police intervention in Montreal on Saturday.

Investigators said officers used pepper spray to subdue the man and handcuffed him after a chase, but noticed after that he'd lost consciousness and didn't have a pulse.

And in nearby Oakville, Ont., an officer was suspended this weekend in relation to an online video that appears to show a cop pushing a man to the ground.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020.
The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi says a John Dramani Mahama government will ensure corrupt officials face the law if he is voted back to office as President in the 2020 general elections.

At the 4th edition of the weekly press briefing of the NDC by Sammy Gyamfi today, he noted that endemic corruption and thievery has engulfed the Akufo-Addo government.

According to him, this accusation has been proven in the just ended NPP Primaries which was held on Saturday, June 22, 2020, where aspirants reportedly shared money and material gifts to delegates to influence voting.

We in the NDC are not surprised at the turn of events, because we have always known that President Akufo-Addo and his corrupt government have underperformed, having fulfilled just 14% of their 631 manifesto promises, and are only marking time to an overwhelming rejection by the Ghanaian electorate on 7th December 2020," Sammy Gyamfi stated.

According to him, Ghanaians are provoked by the crass incompetence of the Akufo-Addo government to vote for the NDC as the best alternative.

He indicated that Ghana is in the hands of the wrong political party and it is time Ghanaians go back for former President John Dramani Mahama.

Defending why the former President is the best man to occupy the seat of the presidency, Sammy Gyamfi says he has resolved to "punish corruption and end the practice of nepotism", a practice that is synonymous to the NPP government.

The National Communications Officer further stressed that Mahama will complete all uncompleted hospital and health projects, educational projects, road projects and other infrastructural projects abandoned by the government.

He added that the former President if voted into power will scrap the 50% increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data.

Read full statement below:

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE 4TH EDITION OF THE WEEKLY PRESS BRIEFING OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS, BY COMRADE SAMMY GYAMFI, NATIONAL COMMUNICATION OFFICER.

Date: Monday, 22nd June, 2020.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE NDC ON THE FALLOUTS FROM THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY (NPP) PARLIAMENTARY PRIMARIES HELD OVER THE WEEKEND.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the media, I welcome you once again to another edition of the NDCs weekly press briefing.

Today, we shall share with you our observations on the just-ended Parliamentary primaries of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which took place over the weekend and which was characterized by obscene violence, and unprecedented levels of vote-buying and showboating.

As you may be aware, the entire primaries was conducted in an environment where those who could afford the biggest pecuniary or monetary inducements, carried the day. Huge amounts of money (in some cases, GHS6,000, GHS5,000, GHS3,000) exchanged hands in the full glare of the media, while material gifts such as refrigerators, flat screen Televisions, motorbikes, tricycles and other valuables were distributed to bribe and induce party delegates.

How a party, which few years ago, toured the world with a cup in hand begging for money, can afford this level of ostentation three and half years after coming into office, speaks volumes of the endemic corruption and thievery that has engulfed the Akufo-Addo government.

Another disturbing feature of the NPPs parliamentary primaries was violence, which took center stage throughout the country. Some contestants unleashed hoodlums belonging to the numerous vigilante groups affiliated to the NPP against their opponents. We also saw the use of state security to bully and brutalize opponents and in some areas, party members engaged in free-for-all exchange of blows, in confirmation of the violent reputation that the NPP has become known for under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo. It is this same culture of violence, thuggery and lawlessness, that led to the unlawful, callous and senseless demolishing and destruction of properties belonging the Nigerian High Commission in Accra this weekend, in violation of international law.

Friends from the media, even though the practice of vote-buying and electoral violence is not a new phenomenon in our body politics per se, the high level of violence, vote-buying and the wanton display of opulence we witnessed during the just-ended parliamentary primaries of the NPP, is nothing like we have seen in the history of this country, and must give every democracy-loving Ghanaian genuine cause for concern.

Even more bizarre and worrying, were reports by you in the media of how social distancing, wearing of face masks and other critical COVID-19 preventive protocols were defied and thrown to the dogs, as delegates congregated in their hundreds, mingled and interacted, including wild jubilations, in the full glare of the Police.

It is sad, cruel and reprehensible for President Akufo Addo who promulgated the law (E.I 64), which has led to the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of Pastors and other Ghanaians, to turn around and supervise the flagrant violation of the same law by his party officials and members with impunity as we saw on display during the NPPs Parliamentary primaries. This is unacceptable and abominable, particularly at a time church and mosque gatherings have been restricted to a maximum of 100 attendees and a duration of one (1) hour, and at a time, Ghanaians who are found not to be wearing face masks are being subjected to all manner of degrading and inhumane treatment.

The recklessness and lawlessness displayed by the NPP during their just-ended Parliamentary Primaries, coupled with the selective application of the law on COVID-19 preventive protocols by our law enforcement agencies, make the imprisonment of pastors and Ghanaians who were convicted for breaching public gathering restrictions under E.I 64, totally unjustifiable and unfair.

Actions they say, speak louder than words. The flagrant violation of COVID-19 precautionary protocols provided under E.I 64 by officials and members of the NPP and the Presidents tacit approval of same, make nonsense of our collective fight against the dreaded coronavirus pandemic and shows that President Akufo Addo and the NPP are not committed to Ghanas COVID fight.

Friends from the media, we must hasten to add, that the results that emerged out of the NPPs primaries, where as many as over 40 incumbent MPs lost their seats, reflects the dissatisfaction of NPP supporters and Ghanaians at large, with the abysmal performance of the Akufo Addo government.

In all, over 40 incumbent MPs, including eleven (11) Parliamentary Select Committee Chairmen, four (4) Parliamentary Select Committee Vice Chairmen, two (2) Regional Ministers, one (1) Minister of State and three (3) Deputy Ministers of State, lost their seats. The defeat of so many incumbents, especially those in Parliamentary leadership, shows that the NPP delegates voted for change and passed an overwhelming vote of no confidence in their own government.

Our checks have revealed that many first-time MPs lost their seats because no developmental projects have been undertaken in their constituencies in the last three and half years. This is a clear indication that even NPP supporters are generally unhappy with the abysmal performance of their own government, and have invited the rest of Ghanaians to reject this nonperforming, nepotistic and corrupt Akufo-Addo government.

It is pretty obvious, even to the uninitiated, that but for the undemocratic imposition of some 65 incumbent Members of Parliament by the powers that be in the NPP, the situation would have been worse.

We in the NDC are not surprised at the turn of events, because we have always known that President Akufo-Addo and his corrupt government have underperformed, having fulfilled just 14% of their 631 manifesto promises, and are only marking time to an overwhelming rejection by the Ghanaian electorate on 7th December, 2020.

WHY GHANA NEEDS JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA AS PRESIDENT NOW

Having registered the above sentiments, I wish to share with you, why President John Dramani Mahama is the leader that Ghana needs now.

Distinguished friends from the media, even though there has been, and continues to be hopelessness, lawlessness and absolute impunity in the last three and half years under the vindictive and nonperforming Akufo-Addo government; there is hope for a better, inclusive and prosperous Ghana.

This hope is anchored on the return of the visionary, trustworthy and humble John Dramani Mahama to the Jubilee House on 7th January, 2021, to rescue our beloved country from the hands of the vindictive, corrupt and nepotistic Akufo-Addo government and restore the nation back to the path of true progress and development.

H.E John Dramani Mahama is committed to fixing the mess that has been created by the maladministration of the Akufo-Addo government in all sectors of the nation and deliver the transformational leadership that is needed to create prosperity and wealth for all Ghanaians.

As he has announced through his digital conversations with the nation in the last few months, President Mahama when elected shall:

1. Pay all customers of the collapsed financial institutions whose monies are locked-up in full and restore indigenous Ghanaian participation in the financial sector.

2. Reduce the size of government by at least forty (40) ministers to reduce government expenditure and channel those resources into the productive sectors of the economy for the benefit of Ghanaians.

3. Provide free Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) from the second cycle to Tertiary level to build the human resource base of the nation for industrial development, entrepreneurship and job creation.

4. Institute a National Apprenticeship Program in line with his vision of rapid industrialization and job creation for the country.

5. Scrap the 50% increment in the Communication Service Tax to reduce the cost of telephoning and data. This will reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the country.

6. Construct a regional hospital for each of the six (6) newly-created regions and the Western Region to improve access to quality and efficient health care delivery.

7. Provide districts without hospitals with fully-equipped modern health facilities.

8. Take healthcare to the doorsteps of the people by building a first of its kind Onipa Nua Hospital Ship and deploy it to provide medical services to the inaccessible riverine and fishing communities on the inland Volta water ways. Additionally, the next Mahama government will rehabilitate the Onuador mobile vans that have been abandoned by the Akufo-Addo government and procure more, to provide medical outreach services in underserved and hard to reach areas in all the 16 regions of the country.

9. Construct two (2) new international-standard Infectious Diseases Centers and two (2) additional international research centers.

10. Abolish the dreaded double-track system of secondary education through an emergency and massive infrastructure drive. This will ensure a conducive environment and one-track qualitative learning experience for SHS students.

11. Establish University Campuses in each of the six (6) newly-created regions.

12. Abolish the mandatory national service and obnoxious licensure exams for teacher trainees and restore the automatic employment of teacher trainee graduates. Let me state unequivocally, that no teacher trainee graduate, will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government. Additionally, the promotion and welfare of teachers will be prioritized by the next Mahama government.

13. Restore the automatic employment of Nursing Trainee graduates. Again let me state unequivocally, that no nursing trainee graduate will be denied posting or employment under the next Mahama government.

14. Restore the distribution of free cocoa fertilizer and chemicals to cocoa farmers to boost cocoa yield and improve the welfare of cocoa farmers.

15. Complete the Eastern Corridor roads, dualise the Aflao, Cape Coast and Kumasi roads among others.

16. Complete all abandoned or uncompleted hospital and health projects, educational projects, road projects and other infrastructural projects in the country.

17. Punish corruption and end the practice of nepotism.

18. Train, remunerate and empower assembly members to be responsible for the local level registration of births and deaths in their electoral areas, to improve the national population register.

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, these are but a few of the policy alternatives which have been announced by the flag-bearer of the NDC, H.E John Dramani Mahama.

It is worth noting, that we shall be outdooring our manifesto for the 2020 general elections in August. But even before that, the flag-bearer and leader of the NDC will in the coming days announce some big-ticket policies which are central to his transformational vision for this country. This will include a major and comprehensive job creation policy he intends to undertake, to create millions of permanent and dignifying jobs for the teeming unemployed youth when he assumes the reins of power in 2021.

CONCLUSION

The point has to be made, that the 2020 general elections is a referendum on the performance of President Akufo-Addo who has failed woefully to deliver on his numerous campaign promises to Ghanaians, having fulfilled only 14% of the 631 promises in the 2016 manifesto of the NPP.

The comfort and transformation Ghanaians were promised by President Akufo-Addo and the NPP have become a pipe dream. Today, cost of living is so high and unbearable for the vast majority of Ghanaians due to the bad governance of President Akufo Addo.

The free fall of the Ghana cedi continues unabated and businesses continue to collapse leading to job losses.

Whiles Ghanaians continue to suffer, corruption continues to thrive under President Akufo-Addo, who despite promising to fight same, has turned himself into an enabler and promoter of corruption, for which reason he has earned for himself the unenviable Chief corruption clearing agent accolade.

President Akufo Addo has normalized nepotism and has continuously demonstrated little care for the welfare of Ghanaians. He has proven to be dishonest, corrupt and inept, for which reason he must be shown the exit come December 7, 2020.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ghana needs a visionary, trustworthy and humble leader to ensure development, progress and prosperity for all and not a select few. And that leader, is none other than H.E John Dramani Mahama.

Thank you for your attention.

Signed.

Comrade Sammy Gyamfi

(National Communication Officer)
The broad leaves and delicate purple flowers floating on the Euphrates look breathtaking -- but they are suffocating the waterways of Iraq, celebrated as the "land of the two rivers". The water hyacinth, nicknamed the "Nile flower" in Iraq, is an invasive plant native to South America's Amazon basin that has ravaged ecosystems across the world, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria. The fast-spreading pest poses a special risk in Iraq, one of the world's hottest countries that is already suffering from regular droughts and shrinking water resources due to overuse, pollution and upstream river dams. The exotic flower was introduced to Iraq just two decades ago as a decorative plant, but now the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers are being choked by its rapid spread. Its glossy leaves form a thick cover, absorbing up to five litres (1.3 gallons) of water per plant a day and blocking sunlight and oxygen vital to the aquatic life below. That has made the hyacinth a formidable floral foe for Iraq's fishermen, who sell hauls of river carp in local markets to those cooking "masgouf", a national delicacy. Because of the infestation, carp are dying and fishing nets get caught in the tangle of flat leaves, roots and flowers that also hampers boat travel. "Our livelihoods are gone, all because of this Nile flower," said Jallab al-Sharifi, a fisherman in the southern province of Dhi Qar who makes his living on the Euphrates. Another fisherman east of Baghdad who works the Tigris said his haul had dropped by as much as half. - Harvests at risk - The hyacinths have also impacted Iraqi farmers who already struggle with low water levels due to a series of dams built further upstream in Turkey and Iran. The thick floating vegetation draws down water levels and clogs irrigation channels leading to agricultural fields. "During this harvest, our vegetable sales in the local market were down by a third," said Ahmed Yasser, a farmer in a village near Kut, east of Baghdad. The hyacinth causes another type of pressure -- a 100 square metre (1,000 square feet) patch can weigh up to five tons, putting major strain on dilapidated riverside infrastructure, Iraqi officials warn. In the village of al-Badaa, the thick columns of a brick bridge that once spanned a wide stretch of the Euphrates are now covered by hyacinths. A dam further upstream encloses a swamp-like patch of land also covered by the plant. If the flowers are not removed, "the bridge and dam of al-Badaa will collapse," said Jalil al-Abboudi, the village sheikh. "And if they collapse, the whole water supply system will collapse." That would deprive vast regions -- all the way to Iraq's southernmost province of Basra -- of the fragile water resources their ecosystems and economies rely on. Iraq's oil-dependent economy is already projected to shrink by nearly 10 percent this year, according to the World Bank. And a health crisis sparked by a shortage of safe drinking water in the south hospitalised some 100,000 people in 2018. - 'Spreads like wildfire' - Locals blame authorities for what they say have been years of neglect and insufficient maintenance. "The lack of action by the ministry of water resources, and the fact that there have been no renovations of infrastructure, caused an invasion that reached potable water reserves," said Abboudi. But Saleh Hadi, head of research at Dhi Qar's agriculture directorate, insisted the ministry was well aware of the dangers and working hard to mitigate them. "The ministry of water resources is working to combat this plant mechanically by uprooting it from irrigation channels," he told AFP. The perennial predicament has been made even worse this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Under normal conditions, Iraqi villagers along the banks of the Euphrates pluck out the plants by hand instead of using a chemical agent that would destroy the delicate ecosystem. But this year, a countrywide lockdown imposed to stem COVID-19 infections has allowed the hyacinth to spread mostly unhampered. Some vigilantes, however, are defying the curfew to fight the parasitic flower which they see as a bigger threat to their livelihoods than the pandemic. While villagers are sneaking out to uproot the plants by hand, Mohammed Kuwaysh, an environmental activist and member of a farming cooperative, is thinking even bigger. His collective raised about $800 from local farmers to equip small speedboats to clear waterways by cutting hyacinths en masse. "The government isn't listening, which allowed this flower to spread like wildfire," Kuwaysh said. The water hyacinth -- nicknamed the "Nile flower" in Iraq -- is an invasive plant native to South America's Amazon basin that has ravaged ecosystems across the world, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria Because of the infestation, carp are dying below the surface, and the tangle of flat leaves, roots and flowers gets caught in fishing nets and hampers boat travel The fast-spreading pest poses a special risk in Iraq, one of the world's hottest countries that is already suffering from regular droughts and shrinking water resources due to overuse, pollution and upstream river dams A boat removes Eichhornia crassipes, commonly known as water hyacinth, from the surface of the Euphrates river Iraqi villagers usually pluck out the plants by hand. But this year, a lockdown imposed to stem COVID-19 infections has allowed the hyacinth to spread mostly unhampered
TAIZHOU, China, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Favipiravir is a broad-spectrum antiviral agent that inhibits the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of RNA viruses. It has efficacy against a range of RNA viruses, including Ebola, influenza and COVID-19. No evident adverse reactions have been found since it came into the market. Unlike traditional antiviral drugs, Favipiravir can directly prevent the virus from replicating itself in cells, with a mechanism of action similar to Remdesivir.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Chinese and Japanese governments have strongly recommended use of Favipiravir to treat the disease. Currently, over 100 countries have included Favipiravir as part of their treatments. Originally developed by Toyama Chemical Co., Ltd., Favipiravir was approved as strategic stockpile as a countermeasure for virus in Japan. In 2016, the patent of Favipiravir was exclusively franchised to Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (HISUN), which cooperated with CMAM to develop Favipiravir tablets. The finished drug was approved rapidly in February 2020.

Data from Favipiravir's clinical tests published by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China at an official press conference indicated Favipiravir has shown good clinical efficacy against the disease, and the tablet form makes it easily accessible. Once Favipiravir was launched in the Chinese market, it was included into the Major Anti-pandemic Materials by China's State Council, and the Chinese government has unified the allocation of Favipiravir supplies. All Favipiravir tablets in China are manufactured by HISUN. As the situation with the disease is improving, the medication has been sold through omni-channel across China. It has also been used to support over 30 countries and regions in battling COVID-19. Favipiravir's outstanding contribution in fighting COVID-19 has earned its producer, HISUN, the honorary title of "Ordnance Factory" responding to the COVID-19 crisis by the Chinese State Council.

Know more about Favipiravir: http://www.hisunpharm.com/en/favipiravir.php [http://www.hisunpharm.com/en/favipiravir.php].

Video -- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1194238/Hisun_Pharm_Favipir... [https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1194238/Hisun_Pharm_Favipir...]

Contact:Ms. Li Huimin Mobile: +86-13718025966 Email: hisun-haisheng@hisunpharm.com[mailto:hisun-haisheng@hisunpharm.com] Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/huimin.li.315080 [http://www.facebook.com/huimin.li.315080] Twitter: @HuiminLi12 [https://twitter.com/HuiminLi12]YouTube: https://youtu.be/xnO2gmBUVP4 [https://youtu.be/xnO2gmBUVP4]

Web site: http://www.hisunpharm.com/en/
The Keilor Downs cluster has been traced back to at least 13 cases with teenagers and children among those infected. Loading The catalyst for spread has been attributed to family gatherings where social distancing measures were not upheld, authorities say. A GP working across three medical clinics scattered across Melbourne has been linked to 12 cases, including members of his own family. The asymptomatic doctor worked at Lilydale Medical Clinic on June 11 and at both the Croydon Family Practice and Cedars Medical Clinic in Coburg on June 9. A cluster originally linked back to a patient at Monash Health accounts for seven recent cases, including a healthcare worker, authorities have since declared it a family-based outbreak concentrated in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs.

The biggest cluster, however, has called into question the health department's own handling of the matter, Two large clusters among at least five security guards at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Melbourne's CBD and the Rydges on Swanston hotel in Carlton have accounted for 33 cases. A drive-through testing station. Credit:Getty Images The security guards are contractors with a labour hire firm, contracted by the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor returned overseas travellers in quarantine at the hotels. The source of these two outbreaks is the subject of an ongoing investigation, however, it is suspected a contractor may have picked it up from a traveller, before spreading the virus among colleagues through a lack of social distancing.

University of Melbourne professor of epidemiology Tony Blakely said there were a number of possible explanations behind Victoria's jump in cases while other states have had few new infections, including mounting evidence of people flouting quarantine rules. There may have been a super-spreader who unknowingly fuelled transmission within their own family, colleagues and the wider community, Professor Blakely said. "Maybe one of those security guards might have been what we call a 'super-spreader' and he has passed it on to10 people and that was enough to tip the balance," he said. "But we may never know this." Professor Blakely warned further outbreaks were likely and were a sign of the "suppression world" in which Victorians were living because the state had been unable to eliminate the virus to date. Premier Daniel Andrews has blamed the surge in cases on families breaching restrictions, by visiting family members or going to work after testing positive to the deadly virus.

More than half of the new cases since the end of April had come from family-to-family transmission. But Professor Blakely said the government must also sort out its own quarantine practices with family clusters linked to a spate of cases among security guards at quarantine hotels, where lax hygiene has been blamed for the outbreak. One hotel leaking out cases is maybe just bad luck, but two? This is not good, he said. This is a government run quarantine situation which is leaking out cases through security guards. It is interesting that Daniel Andrews focused on the people not behaving or sticking to quarantine, but actually there is just as much sorting out to do from the government side of how they are running their quarantine hotels. In the last three days alone, community transmission in Victoria has soared by 30 cases, the biggest jump recorded since the peak of the pandemic in April. A case is classed as community transmission if the person who tested positive is not a returned overseas traveller or a close contact of an existing case.
"Bradford White is looking to a new generation of leadership to guide the company as the ways in which water and space heating products are bought and sold evolve," McGoldrick said. "Traditional distribution channels are being challenged by online sales and some national retailers are making a concerted effort to become the supplier of choice to our contractor customers. In this environment, it's crucial that we have a sales team that can respond in a flexible manner to a changing market and that has dedicated itself to being close to our customers."

A graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore, Kozak joined Burnham Boilers (now U.S. Boiler Co.) in 1993 and worked in sales and product management. He joined Bradford White in 2007 as a regional sales manager in the southeast and progressed to director of sales for the Eastern U.S. and now vice president of sales for the U.S.

Kozak has been actively involved in regional American Supply Association organizations, including the Southern Wholesalers Association and on several committees for the North Central Wholesalers Association.

Kozak will oversee both the sales management and business development teams.

Eynon joined U.S. Boiler Co. in 2003 after graduating from Millersville University in Millersville, Pa. He took on increasingly responsible roles at U.S. Boiler, as a sales representative, national accounts manager, district manager, and regional manager. Eynon joined Bradford White as a regional sales manager in 2012, and quickly advanced as director of national accounts, senior director - business development and sales operations, and now vice president of sales operations.

Eynon is currently serving on The Southern Wholesalers Association Leadership Development Council and the American Supply Association's Plumbing Division Executive Council and also remains affiliated with the Mechanical Contractors Association of America and ASA Emerging Leaders.

In his new role, Eynon will manage internal sales, customer service, strategic pricing and sales analysis, omni channel strategy, corporate training and all customer facing operations.

"The appointments of Matt and Greg, who have spent their careers developing close working relationships with both wholesalers and contractors, will help Bradford White be successful in evolving ways of going to market," McGoldrick concluded. "We are dedicated to providing both Matt and Greg all of the resources that they will need to keep Bradford White the leading supplier of water and space heating products in the industry."

To learn more about Bradford White Water Heaters, please visit https://www.bradfordwhite.com/ or call (215) 641-9400.

About Bradford White Corporation

Bradford White Corp. is a full-line manufacturer of residential, commercial and industrial products for water heating, space heating, combination heating and storage applications. The company maintains headquarters in Ambler, PA and has manufacturing facilities in Middleville, MI; Niles, MI; and Rochester, NH; and distribution and training centers in Halton Hills, ON Canada. For more information, visit www.bradfordwhitecorporation.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

(865) 977-1973

[email protected]

SOURCE Bradford White Corporation

Related Links

http://www.bradfordwhitecorporation.com


By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday extended the interim bail of 2,961 undertrial prisoners by 45 days to de-congest jails during the coronavirus pandemic.

A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh passed the order in view of a high-power committee's recommendation that it would be dangerous to send the prisoners back to jail as the risk still remains high.

The court said the interim bail of these undertrials is extended by 45 days from the date of expiry of the relief on the same terms and conditions and listed the matter for further hearing on August 4.

The committee, headed by Justice Hima Kohli, in its June 20 meeting said since there was no certainty when the threat of pandemic shall be over and requirement of social distancing no longer necessary, the interim bail of under-trial prisoners (UTPs) needs to be extended for a further period of 45 days from the date their respective interim bail is expiring.

During the hearing, Delhi government standing counsel Rahul Mehra and advocate Chaitanya Gosain, appearing for the prison authorities, said they have no objection to the extension of bail.

"Accordingly, it is ordered that the interim bails for a period of 45 days granted to 2,961 UTPs, in view of the recommendations of HPC are hereby extended by another period of 45 days from the date of their respective expiry of interim bails on the same terms and conditions," the bench said.

It also directed the Director General (Prisons) to ensure that the order was conveyed to all 2,961 under-trial prisoners (UTPs) by telephone and other available modes.

During the hearing,Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DSLSA) member secretary Kanwal Jeet Arora submitted that the situation was the same and it was not possible to take the undertrials back in jail at this time and urged the court to further extend the relief period.

Director General (Prisons) Sandeep Goel said before the process of de-congesting jails began, there were 18,000 inmates in jail against the holding capacity of 10,000.

After decongestion, though the jails population is still more than the holding capacity but it has reduced to 13,677 which is a great relief.

The committee, which was formed on the order of the Supreme Court to lay down guidelines to decongest jails and prevent spread of the coronavirus, was also of the view that moving a separate application on behalf of each of the 2,961 UTPs would be "cumbersome" and lead to wastage of judicial time.

Therefore, it had recommended that the high court be requested to pass a judicial order to extend the interim bail of the prisoners by 45 days.

The matter was placed before Chief Justice D N Patel, who on May 7 issued verbal directions to set up the bench on Saturday, May 9.
Malawians set to return to the polls after prolonged uncertainty following annulment of 2019 vote over irregularities.

Security was tight on Malawis Judgement Day.

Jumping into a small fleet of armoured military vehicles under an overcast February sky, Healey Potani and his four fellow judges were ferried to the nations High Court in Lilongwe.

Across the country, shops and offices were shut as citizens anxiously awaited the judges ruling on whether to annul last years disputed elections.

Tensions had been running high since the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) declared incumbent President Peter Mutharika the narrow winner of a May 2019 vote despite cries of foul play. Calling the results daylight robbery, two opposition parties petitioned the constitutional court to review the election as the dispute spilled on to the streets.

Judge Ivy Kamanga (3rd L), arriving at the court on February 3 [File: Amos Gumulira/AFP]

Broadcast live in both English and Chichewa, the months-long court proceedings gripped Malawi. February 3 was Judgement Day, and the nation was on tenterhooks as Potani began shortly after 9am to deliver the courts 500-page ruling.

It would take more than 10 hours to read it in full, but the judges early on detailed a laundry list of gross irregularities, including the widespread use of the infamous Tipp-Ex correction fluid on ballot papers to alter figures. Glued to their radios, Malawians heard that the MECs actions demonstrated incompetence and greatly undermined the integrity of the elections.

A new vote should be held within 150 days, the judges unanimously ordered, sparking mass celebrations by opposition supporters.

Mutharika slammed the verdict as a serious miscarriage of justice and, along with the MEC, filed an appeal. But on May 8, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier ruling, setting the stage for Malawians to return to the polls again on Tuesday to pick their next president.

Opposition supporters in Lilongwe celebrate the constitutional courts ruling on February 3 [File: Thoko Chikondi/AP Photo]

In last years nullified vote, the 79-year-old incumbent  an academic and brother of former president, the late Bingu wa Mutharika  was handed a second term in office with 38.57 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of his main challenger, Lazarus Chakwera, at 35.41 percent.

Winners, 1994-2014 1994  Bakili Muluzi, 47pc

1999  Bakili Muluzi, 52pc

2004  Bingu wa Mutharika, 36pc

2009  Bingu wa Mutharika, 66pc

2014  Peter Mutharika, 36pc (Source: IPOR)

This time, however, merely garnering the most votes will not be enough. In their landmark ruling, the five-judge panel stipulated that a presidential candidate must secure an absolute majority to be declared the winner.

This is a game-changer.

It is clear that no political party, as contested during the 2019 elections, would get the 50 percent plus one vote  so alliances have become the most obvious alternative, said Jimmy Kainja, lecturer in media, communication and cultural studies at the University of Malawi.

The two parties behind last years legal challenge, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), headed by Chakwera, and the United Transformation Movement (UTM), announced in March that they would team up in the election re-run.

Chakwera, a 65-year-old pastor turned politician, was chosen to lead the newly formed Tonse Alliance, which also includes several smaller parties. His running mate is Saulos Chilima, UTM leader and Mutharikas former deputy who finished third in last years poll. Combined, the pairs official 2019 vote tally surges to almost 56 percent, well above the threshold that guarantees an outright win.

For its part, Mutharikas governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) joined forces with the United Democratic Front (UDF), led by Atupele Muluzi, the son of former President Bakili Muluzi. If they repeat last years electoral performance, the joint DPP-UFF ticket would gather a little more than 43 percent.

Tonse Alliance leader Lazarus Chakwera at his final rally on June 20 [Amos Gumulira/AFP]

Unsurprisingly, analysts say Mutharika has tried to stall the electoral process.

200616081832038

Since the courts decision in February, he has refused to sign bills that would have paved the way for the fresh vote, and he sought to reverse the adoption of the 50 percent +1 electoral rule. He also appointed a new commission just 16 days before this weeks vote and left two commission members in place despite the fact they were deemed incompetent by the courts and parliament.

I strongly believe that he thought through various machinations at his disposal he would be able to frustrate the elections and hang on to power, said Blessings Chinsinga, professor of political economy at Chancellor College, University of Malawi.

Mutharika insists he was legitimately elected and has cast himself as a victim of a judicial coup detat. But having lost nearly all of his recent court battles, the former law professor and his circle have repeatedly expressed anger at the judiciary. And on June 12, Mutharika upped the ante by attempting to forcibly retire one of the Supreme Court justices.

The move against Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda was halted by a High Court injunction, but not before drawing widespread condemnation that saw judicial staff, lawyers and academics take to the streets of major cities in protest.

Chinsinga called the pressure on Nyirenda an attempt to undermine the independence of the judiciary so that it no longer functions as the bulwark of Malawis democracy.

The judiciary perhaps remains the only institution that has not been captured by the politicians. It has always saved Malawis fragile democratic project from collapsing at critical times when politicians have engineered or schemed measures to undercut its vibrance.

Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda (L) next to Peter Mutharika at the incumbent presidents swearing-in ceremony on May 28, 2019 [File: Amos Gumulira/AFP]

A country of some 18 million people, Malawi heads into its second election in 13 months with the economy  heavily dependent on donor funds and exports of tea and tobacco  struggling under the pressure of prolonged political uncertainty and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier in June, the finance minister warned that this unexpected double threat has caused severe disruptions to the countrys economic spine and could result in its GDP shrinking this year by as much as 3.8 percent.

This comes as a staggering 85 percent of Malawians think the country is headed in the wrong direction and almost three out of four describe their living conditions as being very/fairly bad, according to a pre-election poll.

Their main concern? Getting food on the table.

Malawians want the government to be responsive to their needs, top of which is addressing the perennial challenge of hunger and food shortages, said Boniface Dulani, research director at the Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR), which carried out the survey.

Other issues include better management of the economy, reducing poverty and unemployment, and eliminating corruption.

Crucially, the IPOR poll also found that 51 percent of the 1,346 respondents would vote for the Tonse Alliance in Tuesdays rerun, against 33 percent for the DPP/UDF coalition, and 0.2 percent for the third candidate, Peter Kuwani. Ten percent of respondents said they were undecided.

To maintain momentum and avoid a possible runoff, opposition leaders Chakwera and Chilima have crisscrossed the landlocked country in recent weeks, wooing supporters with pledges of creating one million jobs for young people and rolling out a universal subsidy on fertiliser.

In contrast, Mutharika has been a reluctant campaigner who has essentially delegated the canvassing to his running mate, Muluzi, according to Chinsinga.

200409085324155

In his rare appearances on the campaign trail, Mutharika has repeated last years pledge to transform Malawi, one of the worlds poorest countries, into Singapore over the next five years. Countering the key messages of the opposition has also been central to the DPP-UDF alliances electioneering, including promises to extend the fertiliser subsidy programme and promote infrastructure development.

Both camps, and especially the opposition alliance, have sought to mobilise support by staging lively campaign rallies in defiance of a ban on large gatherings during the coronavirus crisis.

To date, Malawi has registered 730 confirmed COVID-19 infections, including 11 related deaths and 258 recoveries.

An attempt by the government to implement a full lockdown was blocked in April by the courts in response to a legal challenge by the Malawi Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC), the civil society group that also spearheaded the protests in the wake of last years vote.

The social-distancing measures put in place were seen as the governments plot to stop the opposition campaigning, since the fresh presidential election was going ahead despite the coronavirus, said Kainja.





And now, observers expect a large turnout on Tuesday, saying the publics faith in the electoral process has been buoyed by the independent stance of the judiciary and the resignation last month of embattled former MEC chair, Justice Jane Ansah, a main demand of the HRDC-led protests.

According to the recent IPOR poll, nine out 10 Malawians are ready to cast their ballots in the rerun despite the lack of major electoral reforms and a series of outstanding logistical challenges.

200331113621406

Dulani, who is also a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Malawi, said the MEC, under the leadership of its new head, Justice Chifundo Kachale, has demonstrated that it is committed to going ahead with holding the election and has worked hard to allay peoples fears of another compromised election.

Whoever wins will face the daunting task of healing divisions in a country emerging from a bruising year of nearly constant and sometimes violent demonstrations.

But history will be on their side. Ever since its shift from one-party rule to multi-party democracy in 1994, Malawi has had generally smooth transitions of power.

The weeks leading up to this years vote have also been largely been peaceful, even though the campaign has been punctuated by sporadic acts of violence  especially when the main candidates appeared in rival strongholds.

Looking ahead, analysts said they were optimistic there would not be widespread and long-lasting unrest  so long as the results truly reflect the will of the electorate.

Malawians, Chinsinga said, are crying [out] for a government that would demonstrate capacity to take decisive and focused steps that would ultimately change the fortunes of the country.

Most now just want to vote and move on with their lives, added Kainja.

Malawi has effectively been in elections mode since mid-2018, and in the past 12 months there has been a lot of political uncertainty, said Kainja. To effectively govern and deal with the challenges facing the country, including COVID-19, Malawi needs a government that has the legitimacy of the Malawians and it is trusted.
Nigeria Police really need to do a lot in terms of a well-respected police force that will not be just a stooge to anybody irrespective of your age or your position. They must discharge their professional ethics.
Phased reopening in U.S. states doesnt necessarily mean that all Americans are suddenly back on their financial feet with enough funds to pay their mortgages--a situation prompting the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) this week to extend the foreclosure and eviction moratorium, which was set to expire at the end of this month.

The new moratorium for borrowers with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac runs until at least the end of August, and applies to enterprise-backed, single-family mortgages only.

"During this national health emergency, no one should worry about losing their home," FHFA Mark Calabria said in a statement.

About 8.8% of mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now in forbearance.

In the past three months, more than 46 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance. Even though the new unemployment claims are slowing down in the past couple of weeks, the unemployment rate is still over 16% nationally, with some states facing unemployment rates in excess of 20%.

This is the second time the FHFA has extended the moratorium since it was first established in March.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which was passed in March, allows for a three to six-month delay in mortgage payments.

Currently, 4.6 million homeowners are in forbearance plans, which allows them to delay their monthly payments for at least three months. That represents 8.7% of all active mortgages. Even more harrowing, those loans represent more than $1 trillion in unpaid principal.

Requests to delay mortgage payments skyrocketed in April. At the end of March, there were more than 200,000 requests, while in the first week of May, that number jumped to more than 700,000.

However, as more people return work and states pursue phased reopenings, the number of borrowers seeking relief on their mortgage payments has fallen for the third straight week. Black Knight, a mortgage data and technology firm, reported that the numbers are down by 57,000 from last week and by 158,000 from the peak week, in late May.

But that is only one side of the story.

Forbearances of loans that are not backed by government agencies are on the rise. The total forbearances of such loans--held either held by banks, private-label securities and other non-agency investors--rose by 6,000 last week.

According to a survey by Apartment List, 30% of Americans missed their housing payments in June--a percentage that includes both mortgage and rent payments.

Thats up from 24% who missed their payments just two months earlier in April and about on par with the 31% who missed payments in May. The survey found that of those who have yet to make their June housing payment, one-third have made a partial payment and two-thirds have made no payment at all.

37 percent of renters (and 26 percent of homeowners) are at least somewhat concerned that in the next six months they will face eviction or foreclosure, the survey said.

Last month, Columbia University released troubling findings showing that 800,000 Americans could be experiencing homelessness by the end of the summer. The researchers estimate that homelessness could increase by between 40% and 45% this year over where it was in January 2019.

By Charles Benavidez for Safehaven.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:
Britain observes Windrush Day on Monday, a celebration of the contribution of first-generation migrants, especially those with an Afro-Caribbean background, to British life. This year, it comes amid a broader reckoning on institutional racism, kicked off by the killing of George Floyd.

The day is named after the Empire Windrush, a ship that docked near London in 1948 carrying the first cohort of migrants from the Caribbean who had been invited by the government to relocate to Britain to help fill a labour shortage after World War II.

But Windrush Day was not widely celebrated until 2018, in the wake of a scandal about institutional racism in the British government and its deadly outcomes for Black people from the Windrush generation. This year, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a surge in support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.K., Windrush Day is being marked amid an even broader social reckoning over structural racism around the world.

The moment is a fertile one in Britain. In response to Floyds murder, thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters marched in cities across the U.K. in early June. Several statues of slave traders and colonialists were removed, including one of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, which protesters toppled and threw into the citys harbor. Others were removed by local councils and private landowners.

As well as educational events being held in schools, towns and cities across the U.K. to mark Windrush Day on Monday, Hackney council in east London announced it would erect two sculptures honoring the Windrush generation in the ethnically diverse borough.

Heres what to know.

Who are the Windrush Generation?

The Windrush generation is a term used to describe the people who arrived on the Empire Windrush and other boats after it, part of a wave of migrants who would help to rebuild, and reshape, the United Kingdom after World War II.

Story continues

In 1948, as the British Empire was being dismantled, Parliament passed a law giving residents of the Commonwealth (Britains former colonies) the right to live and work in the U.K.

The Empire Windrush arriving at Tibury Docks in Essex, 22 June 1948. | SSPL via Getty ImagesSSPL/NMeM/Daily Herald Archive

The hundreds of thousands who arrived before immigration rules were tightened in 1971 helped to fill a labor shortage, rebuilding the countrys war damage, helping staff its new National Health Service, and facilitating economic growth as bus drivers, factory hands, entrepreneurs and more.

But they encountered a country that largely still subscribed to ideas of imperial greatness, even as the Empire was falling apart and the Windrush generation (themselves descendants of slaves) brought added perspectives of colonial subjugation. Many were the victims of racism on British streets. And their presence in Britain brought a political backlash, with one rightwing politician making a famous speech in 1968 decrying how white people had supposedly been made strangers in their own country by the Commonwealth migrants and new legislation banning racial discrimination.

What is the Windrush scandal?

Many of the Windrush generation, and their descendents, still suffer from systemic racism in the U.K., which is part of the reason Windrush Day is celebrated today.

That systemic racism was exemplified by the Windrush scandal in 2018, when the British government was revealed to have wrongly deported at least 83 members of the Windrush generation, and wrongly prevented many more from accessing state assistance, because of the hostile environment policy designed by the ruling right-wing Conservative Party to make life in Britain as difficult as possible for illegal migrants.

Members of the Windrush generation were in the country legally, but many did not have the papers to prove it because such identification was never necessary until the government tightened the rules. In many cases, people were not informed the rules had changed until they received a letter telling them to leave the country. In 2018, the government confirmed at least 11 people who had been wrongly deported had since died. Others were denied potentially life-saving medical treatment because they could not provide the right documents.

An independent parliament-commissioned enquiry into the Windrush scandal found in March 2020 that the Home Office, which is responsible for immigration and border security, acted with an institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation in the years leading up to 2018, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.

The Home Secretary at the time, Amber Rudd, resigned in 2018 at the height of the scandal. However then-Prime Minister Theresa May, who had been Home Secretary between 2010 and 2016 and originally designed the hostile environment policy, stayed in her post.

What is Windrush Day?

Windrush Day was first celebrated the year of the Windrush scandal, in 2018, as part of a campaign by community organizer Patrick Vernon to bring to greater attention the Windrush Generations contributions to British life.

A Windrush Day will allow communities up and down the country to recognise and honour the enormous contribution of those who stepped ashore at Tilbury Docks 70 years ago, said Communities Minister Lord Bourne in 2018. It will keep their legacy alive for future generations, ensuring that we all celebrate the diversity of Britains history. In 2019 the government announced it would make up to 500,000 ($622,000) per year available to community groups for celebrations and educational resources.

However despite government support, many organizers say the government is still failing to tackle structural racism or atone for its mistakes. The Home Office set up a scheme in 2019 to compensate victims of the Windrush scandal. According to official figures, just 5% of claimants have been paid so far, with 362,996 ($452,000) paid out to 60 people over the course of a year.
The fall-out from Donald Trumps embarrassing rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has prompted one major question: Did teenagers, TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music troll the president of the United States?

For more than a week before Mr Trumps first campaign rally in three months, these tech-savvy groups opposing the president mobilised to reserve tickets for an event they had no intention of attending.

While it is unlikely they were responsible for the low turn-out, their antics may have inflated the campaigns expectations for attendance numbers that led to Saturdays disappointing show.

My 16-year-old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by Americas teens, veteran Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted on Saturday.

My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by Americas teens. @realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team. @ProjectLincoln https://t.co/VM5elZ57Qp  Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2020

The tweet garnered more than 100,000 likes and many responses from people who say they or their children did the same.

On Sunday, Mr Schmidt called the rally an unmitigated disaster  days after Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale tweeted that more than a million people requested tickets for the rally through Mr Trumps campaign website.

Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for Trumps Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, said the turn-out was a sign of weakening voter support.

Story continues

Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him, he said.

In a statement, the Trump campaign blamed the fake news media for warning people away from the rally over Covid-19 and protests against racial injustice around the country.

On Sunday, it was possible to sign up to stream a recap of the Tulsa event later in the day through Mr Trumps website. It requested a name, email address and phone number. There was no age verification in the signup process, though the site required a PIN to verify phone numbers.

Inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa, where Mr Trump thundered that the silent majority is stronger than ever before, numerous seats were empty.

While city officials had expected a crowd of at least 100,000 people, the Tulsa fire marshals office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the arena.

Social media users who have followed recent events might not be surprised by the way young people, and some older people, mobilised to troll the president.

They did it not just on TikTok but also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. K-Pop fans  who have a massive, coordinated online community and a cutting sense of humour  have become an unexpected ally to American Black Lives Matter protesters.

In recent weeks, they have been re-purposing their usual platforms and hashtags from promoting their favourite stars to backing the Black Lives Matter movement.

President Donald Trump supporters listen to Trump speak during the rally (Evan Vucci/AP)

Many of the early social media messages urging people to sign up for tickets mentioned the rally had originally been scheduled for Friday, June 19, which is Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Furthermore, Tulsa was the scene in 1921 of one of the most severe white-on-Black attacks in American history.

Mr Schmidt said he was not surprised. Todays teens, after all, grew up with phones and have absolutely mastered them, he said.

They were aware, were the first generation to have remote Zoom classes, and had a subversive sense of humour having come of age in a world of online trolls and memes, Mr Schmidt said.

Like salmon in the river, they participate politically through the methods and means of their lives, Mr Schmidt said.

Mr Trump, looking glum on arrival back at the White House in the early hours of Sunday, was said to have been furious with the low turn-out (Patrick Semansky/AP)

That said, the original idea for the mass ticket troll may have come not from a teen but from an Iowa woman.

The politics site Iowa Starting Line found that a TikTok video posted on June 11 by Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother from Fort Dodge, Iowa, suggesting people book free tickets to make sure there are empty seats.

Ms Laupps video, which also tells viewers how to stop receiving texts from the Trump campaign after they provide their phone number, has had more than 700,000 likes.

It was also possible to sign up for the rally using a fake or temporary phone number from Google Voice, for instance.

However, as Mr Parscale himself pointed out in a June 14 tweet, the ticket signups were not simply about drawing people to the rally.

He called it the Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x  meaning the hundreds of thousands of emails and phone numbers the campaign now has in its possession to use for microtargeting advertisements and to reach potential voters.

Still, it is possible that many of the emails are fake and that the ticket holders have no intention of voting for Mr Trump in November.
We are extremely excited about joining the milliCare family, and the opportunity to bring such a strong brand with an exceptional service and product line back to the Metroplex.

milliCare Floor & Textile Care returns to Dallas/Fort Worth this month with the opening of milliCare by Lonestar Facility Solutions. Robert and Dia Pace, the new franchise owners, have over a decade of experience in franchise ownership. We are extremely excited about joining the milliCare family, and the opportunity to bring such a strong brand with an exceptional service and product line back to the Metroplex, said Robert Pace.

Its great to have milliCare back in the D/FW market, said Steve Willis, milliCares managing director, who also lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. So many past customers have patiently waited for the milliCare level of service they had grown accustomed to and I feel certain that milliCare by Lonestar Facility Solutions will exceed their expectations.

Robert attended new franchise training at the milliCare headquarters in Spartanburg, South Carolina earlier this year, prior to coronavirus travel advisories. As an essential business, Robert and Dia look forward to providing vital services to area businesses to ensure healthier facilities.

Robert and Dias past franchising experience in the B2B service industry will certainly allow them to provide the highest level of service and professionalism milliCare is known for. Im excited for the rapid expansion taking place in D/FW and Texas and glad that Robert and Dia are part of that, said Willis.

About milliCare:

milliCare Floor & Textile Care has been a trusted, strategic partner for consistent, specialty floor and textile care for more than 20 years. From its dry-centered method for carpet cleaning to restorative tile and grout care, milliCare employs a holistic, customized approach thats both environmentally responsible and effective. Committed to creating healthy work environments, the global milliCare network partners with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, hospitals, airports, hotels and other commercial facilities. For more information, please visit http://www.milliCare.com. For franchise information, please visit http://www.milliCareFranchise.com.
At first, Bailey Garretson just thought she was hearing fireworks.

The young Clarkson woman didnt know an accident had occurred at County Road F and U.S. Highway 77.

Then Garretson and her mom, Darla, saw smoke.

And the smoke got darker.

As they neared the intersection, Bailey said they could see a semi-trailer truck on fire in the middle of the roadway. First-responders hadnt yet arrived when Darla stopped her SUV and Bailey jumped out to see if she could help.

On Monday, the Nebraska State Patrol was continuing to investigate a crash that involved a semi hauling fireworks and an SUV, south of Uehling.

The accident, which occurred at about 11 a.m. Saturday, left three people injured. When troopers arrived at the scene, the semi was fully engulfed in flames with fireworks exploding inside the trailer.

Witnesses had been able to get people involved in the crash out of their vehicles, the NSP said.

Trevor and Carolyn Janke of Elkhorn, who were in the SUV, a Toyota Highlander, were transported by rescue vehicles to Methodist Fremont Health. Trevor Janke, 31, was flown to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for additional treatment, the NSP reported.

The semi driver, Steven Allen, 57, of El Paso, Texas, was treated at the scene.

After the crash, Darwin Philips and James Schwartztrauber, both of Lincoln, ran to the wreckage.

Via Facebook, Philips said the semi driver jumped out of the flaming cab and started screaming that he had explosives in the trailer, which turned out to be fireworks. Philips said fuel was everywhere under the SUV and he and Schwartztrauber pulled Trevorwhom he described as unresponsivefrom the vehicle. They took him across the roadway.

Philips told the Fremont Tribune that he and Schwartztrauber declined to be interviewed. Theyve spoken with family members and an accident victim.

They all have expressed their gratitude and it was more than they needed to do, Philips said. We wish the couple a speedy and full recovery.

Bailey and Scribner resident Darla Garretson had been eastbound on County Road F when the accident happened.

Another semi-trailer truck, also eastbound, was in front of them, Bailey said.

Bailey said the Jankes had been pulled out of the SUV and were on the northwest corner of the intersection, when she reached the scene.

About the time I asked Carolyn if she was OK, the fireworks started going off in the trailer, Garretson said.

She decided to get them further away from the scene.

I had mom pull her vehicle up closer, around that truck and trailer that was parked (on County Road F), and helped Carolyn and Trevor to the other end of the car so they were away from the fireworks, Bailey said. We helped them to sit down and Carolyn drank a little bit of water.

They encouraged Carolyn to keep talking to Trevor and keep him responding to her. Bailey said Trevor had cuts on his face. He had a cut on the back of his head.

By that point, the fireworks were loud.

Once we were sure they (the Jankes) were settled down and OK, (Carolyn) got a phone call from her mom and I answered it for her. I gave the phone back to her so her mom could hear her voice, Garretson said.

Law enforcement, including the Dodge County Sheriffs Department, and rescue squad personnel began arriving at the scene and the Jankes were taken to Fremont.

No other accident details were available from the State Patrol due to the continuing investigation.

Baileywho turned 21 years old on Mondaysaid she and Carolyn have talked almost daily since the accident.

Shes been thanking me and his family, his sister, especially, has been thanking me and everybody else, Bailey Garretson said. I tell them, Youre welcome, but my No. 1 thought isif I were ever in a situation like that, I would hope somebody would stop and do the same thing for me. I cant imagine how scary it would be to be in a situation like that without help.

Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong has vowed never to pay the tuition fee of his daughter Anell Agyapong again regardless of the number of apologies she renders.



His comment comes barely a day after Anell begged him for forgiveness.



Shes begging me to pay her tuition fees again or what? Do you know the number of times Ive forgiven her? Ive just not made it public, he said in his preliminary statement on Atinka TV, Monday.



It would be recalled that the legislator in a live radio interview made some wild and unexpected revelations about his daughter who, according to him, dropped out of school and has been disowned.



He is quoted to have said that Anell Agyapong had become a drug addict and a prostitute.



What hurts me about this whole thing is that during that semester, I had already paid $42,000 within three weeks into the semester, she said she wont continue the schooling. When her Chinese roommate went to check on her, she told me my daughter had sniffed several hounds of cocaine. Shes with the whites who sleep with her because of her addiction."



But mother of Anell Agyapong, Moira Dawson-Williams who was unimpressed with the Assin Central lawmakers outburst also in a Facebook live denied some accusations that were levelled against her daughter.



She threatened to curse Kennedy Agyapong and his generation and also expose him for disgracing her daughter. Ms Dawson-Williams said, "...Ken Agyapong, I don't want anything from you. I just want you to go back to your cubicle at Oman FM, and use that your same tongue and eat back your words else I will come back online and curse your children...exact words you used I'll use it for your children...I know about at least one of your daughters, who live in your house at New Jersey and sniffs that white substance..."



Unenthused about the media banter between her parents, Anell Agyapong on the occasion of Fathers Day has, in an attempt to reach her fathers heart, posted an emotional message pleading for his forgiveness.



While admitting her wrongs, Anell wrote in a Facebook post that her waywardness has tarnished her fathers images in ways she did not intend and as it stands, she has turned over a new leaf.



Her message read in part: My waywardness has become the cause of your ridicule, which can tarnish your integrity and image, and I implore your forgiveness. I've made better choices now and will continue toHappy Father's Day."



But the legislator in response said if the apology is bait, he will not fall for it.



I dont understand what forgiveness means. What is forgiveness? Let people learn from their mistakes. If she has realized how the world, she has a life to live. What else? If its about me paying the tuition fee, I wont. Id rather use the money on a prostitute who has HIV/AIDS and contract the disease than pay her tuition fee. Because before I die of AIDS, Id have satisfaction, he remarked.

Source: Ghanaweb









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
Newly released records from New York City's police watchdog agency on Monday show Daniel Pantaleo, the officer fired for the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, was the subject of seven misconduct complaints in the years prior

Newly released records from New York City's police watchdog agency show Daniel Pantaleo, the officer fired for the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, was the subject of seven misconduct complaints in the years prior.

Pantaleo's complaint history was disclosed on Monday following a recent change in state law that makes police disciplinary files public.

The records show Pantaleo was the subject of seven misconduct complaints prior to Garner's death, according to his file from the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Pantaleo's complaint history was first revealed by the now-defunct website Think Progress in 2017 amid a legal dispute over whether the records could be made public.

At the time, state law shielded police personnel files from disclosure. A review board investigator resigned after being identified as the leaker.

The cloak-and-dagger approach to the records changed this month when state lawmakers, spurred by protests over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, changed a law that for decades had blocked police disciplinary records from public disclosure.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board moved quickly to respond to requests for the newly available records.

The agency on Monday also provided complaint histories for several other officers recently accused of misconduct, including one charged with assault for shoving a female protester and another who body slammed a man during a social distancing arrest.

Daniel Pantaleo: Chokehold death of Eric Garner

In Pantaleo's case, the allegations were substantiated in two of the seven cases reported to the review board.

He was docked two vacation days as punishment for a June 2012 stop and frisk incident, according to the records.

Another substantiated complaint to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, stemming from a December 2011 vehicle search, ended with Pantaleo ordered to receive additional training.

Pantaleo's lawyer declined comment.

The review board's records do not necessarily reflect all disciplinary matters involving Pantaleo or other officers.

Pantaleo was fired last August, more than five years after Garner's death, following the recommendation of the administrative judge who presided over his department disciplinary trial

Bystander video showed Pantaleo, who is white, wrapping his arm around the neck of Garner, who is black, for about seven seconds as they struggled against a glass storefront window and fell to a Staten Island sidewalk

The NYPD, which also investigates complaints through its internal affairs bureau, has yet to respond to a request for its disciplinary records.

Then-police commissioner James O'Neill fired Pantaleo last August, more than five years after Garner's death, following the recommendation of the administrative judge who presided over his department disciplinary trial.

Bystander video showed Pantaleo, who is white, wrapping his arm around the neck of Garner, who is black, for about seven seconds as they struggled against a glass storefront window and fell to a Staten Island sidewalk.

Officers were trying to arrest Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes.

Garner's dying gasps of 'I can't breathe' have again become a rallying cry among police reform activists after Floyd echoed those words as a Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into his neck, leading to his death last month.

Pantaleo, who joined the force in 2006, wasn't the subject of a review board complaint until 2009 over an unsubstantiated allegation that he refused to obtain medical treatment for someone.

The last complaint prior to Garner's death was an unsubstantiated use of force claim in March 2013.

Vincent D'Andraia: Charged with shoving George Floyd protester

NYPD Officer Vincent D'Andraia who was charged with assault after a bystander recorded him violently shoving a female protester to the ground in Brooklyn on May 29

The 28-year-old pleaded not guilty to assault, criminal mischief, harassment and menacing over the incident in Brooklyn last month during which he was filmed violently shoving 20-year-old Dounya Zayer

Among the other records released included that of Officer Vincent D'Andraia who was charged with assault after a bystander recorded him violently shoving a female protester to the ground in Brooklyn on May 29.

D'Andraia had five complaints in his five years on the force, according to the records.

The review board substantiated just one of them, stemming from a frisking incident last year, and recommended he receive additional training.

The 28-year-old pleaded not guilty to assault, criminal mischief, harassment and menacing over the incident in Brooklyn last month during which he was filmed violently shoving 20-year-old Dounya Zayer.

The woman was hospitalized after hitting her head on the pavement in the altercation.

Francisco Garcia: Body-slammed man in social distancing arrest

NYPD Officer Francisco Garcia faces disciplinary charges after a violent arrest during social distancing enforcement on May 2

Meanwhile, Officer Francisco Garcia, who faces disciplinary charges after a violent arrest during social distancing enforcement on May 2, was the subject of complaints in four prior cases, none of which resulted in discipline.

A complaint last December that Garcia used offensive, gender-related language was closed because of pending litigation.

Garcia was stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty after video emerged showing him beating up a man over an alleged social distancing violation in East Village last month.

At the time, several plainclothes officers had broken up a group of people ignoring social distancing orders and dragged a man to the ground to arrest him.

Two minutes after the arrest bystanders began to shout and decry the force used by police, prompting Garcia to threaten the crowd with a stun gun and shout 'Get back. Get the f**k back'.
A local court has convicted serial killer ''Cyanide'' Mohan, holding him guilty in the rape and murder of a young woman from Kasaragod in Kerala in 2009. This is the 20th and last of the murder cases registered against the criminal, who has killed several women using cyanide after befriending and raping them.

Mangaluru: A local court has convicted serial killer ''Cyanide'' Mohan, holding him guilty in the rape and murder of a young woman from Kasaragod in Kerala in 2009. This is the 20th and last of the murder cases registered against the criminal, who has killed several women using cyanide after befriending and raping them.

The quantum of punishment is expected to be pronounced on 24 June. Earlier, he had been awarded death sentence in five cases and life imprisonment in three cases. Two of the death penalties were later commuted to life imprisonment.

The prosecution case was that the 25-year-old victim, who was working as a cook in a ladies hostel in Kasaragod, got acquainted with Mohan in 2009. He visited her house thrice and promised to marry her.

On 8 July 2009, the woman had left her house, saying she was going to a temple at Sullia. Mohan took her to Bengaluru and when the family members called him about her, informed them that they had got married and would return home soon.

He had taken the woman to a lodge near the bus stand. She had a physical relationship with him and before leaving the next day, was asked to leave her jewelry in the room. They went to the bus stand where he gave her a cyanide-laced tablet, making her believe that it is a contraceptive pill and left the place, the prosecution said.

The woman consumed the tablet and collapsed near the toilet of the bus stand. She was rushed to a hospital by a constable but was declared dead on arrival. A case of unnatural death was then registered.

After Mohan was arrested in October 2009, the victim's sister, seeing his pictures, identified him and filed a complaint, following which the criminal investigation department took up the probe.

Public prosecutor Judith O M Crasta had argued the case earlier, which was taken over later by Jayaram Shetty.
Germany stood by its 9 billion-euro ($10 billion) bailout plan for Deutsche Lufthansa AG, daring the airline's disgruntled top shareholder to shoot it down at a pivotal vote this week.

With Lufthansa fighting for survival after the coronavirus outbreak punctured a decades-long global travel boom, billionaire Heinz-Hermann Thiele is threatening to block the rescue plan -- which would dilute his 15.5% holding and influence -- at a shareholder meeting scheduled for Thursday.

But with the government signaling it's unwilling to alter the package, the onus is on the 79-year-old investor to decide whether to support a deal he considers faulty or potentially trigger its rejection. The alternative would lead Lufthansa into uncharted waters, forced to reconfigure its survival plan with cash reserves running low and the threat of insolvency looming.

The government stands firm on the agreed package, which will be the basis for the shareholder vote, German economy ministry spokesman Korbinian Wagner said Monday. The German government explained the terms of the rescue to Thiele in a meeting attended by Lufthansa Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr and the two ministers who brokered the bailout, according to a state official. The parties didn't discuss what would happen if the package wasn't approved by shareholders, the official said.

"Now the shareholder meeting must decide," Wagner said at the government's daily press conference in Berlin Monday.

Lufthansa shares traded 3% lower at 3:07 p.m. in Frankfurt, after tumbling as much as 9%. Its bonds sank to three-month low.

"We face a fateful week for our Lufthansa," Spohr said Sunday in a letter to employees seen by Bloomberg, warning that it's not at all certain the bailout package will gain approval at the extraordinary general meeting.

The carrier's chances of securing backing for the proposal suffered a blow after only 38% of shareholders registered to vote by a deadline over the weekend.

That means Lufthansa's management must secure two-thirds of votes to win the day, rather than a simple majority. That also means Thiele effectively has a blocking minority, assuming he registered. The airline declined to confirm.

Germany's third-richest man has expressed dissatisfaction with the rescue, saying the state is profiteering, and was expected to press Finance Minister Olaf Scholz for last-minute changes, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing a private meeting.

Terms of the package of loans and equity investment call for Lufthansa to issue a 20% stake to the government in Berlin at the nominal price of 2.56 euros per share, a change that needs to be approved at the online EGM.

"The federal government should confine itself to the financial aid packages, which are fundamentally very positive, and should not grow into the role of a return-oriented investor," Thiele told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper last week.

It was unlikely that the government would give ground before the vote, as Scholz articulated earlier, having rejected other scenarios as unacceptable or impossible to deliver in time to meet Lufthansa's cash requirements, one of the people said.

Analysts at Citibank Inc. see three scenarios for Lufthansa this week.

One would see the vote pass with Thiele's support. The second envisages a failure of the deal, with the government then withdrawing its offer of a 20% stake, a relatively minor part of the deal in terms of the cash it would give to the carrier. The third scenario would see Thiele scupper the deal and then expand his holding as the share price fell.

Lufthansa on Monday fell out of Germany's bluechip DAX index after its share-price decline this year. The decision to remove the airline was taken by Deutsche Boerse earlier this month.

Monday also marks Lufthansa's self-imposed deadline for an agreement with unions on as many as 22,000 job cuts, though the sides may agree to a limited cost-reduction package to buy time as talks continue.

The group's board is separately due to meet with Brussels Airlines, having threatened to put the unit into bankruptcy or up for sale if it fails to secure a bailout from Belgium to match rescues for Swiss and Austrian divisions. It wasn't clear if the meeting would go ahead given the circumstances.

Whether Thiele, a former army tank commander, is prepared to put his 750 million-euro stake at risk isn't clear. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has said previously that the airline will be saved at any cost -- perhaps giving the investor hope that Germany would ultimately revisit the basis of the bailout if left with no other choice.

Spohr said in his letter that Lufthansa is preparing for all scenarios, including ways to avoid grounding its jets and continuing communications with the German government should the vote be lost.

"The aim of the board, obviously, is to avoid an insolvency and all the consequences that would bring," he said.
Carlos Javier Sanchez / For The Express News

A barbecue plate sale is planned for Sunday to help fund funeral expenses for Destiny Rodriguez, a mother of four who was hit and killed by a suspected drunk driver on June 13

Rodriguez was driving near Martin Luther King Boulevard and South Walters around 5:30 p.m., when she was struck by a yellow Hummer at the intersection. She died at the scene. Police said Leonel Martinez, the 38-year-old driver, and his passenger fled the scene on foot.
Public roads could be used as a space for cafes, restaurants and bars to operate outdoors to help hospitality sector reopen

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jun 22nd, 2020

Wrexham Council could be at the forefront of applying for grants from Welsh Government that could see the town centre remodelled to help the hospitality sector reopen in a safer manner at some point in the future.

On Friday the First Minister Mark Drakeford spoke about the hospitality industry in Wales, and why no changes had been made to open it up, or even signal reopening: It is important to say again to people, theres only so much headroom we have at any one of these three week reviews. If we do more than we have announced, the risk that the virus would spread in Wales, again would be significant. Thats why weve gone to the maximum of our capacity, and that does not include being able to say to hospitality we are yet in a position where it can plan to reopen.

We will use the three weeks to talk carefully with the hospitality industry, to see what prospects there may beyond this three week review, but weve used every bit of headroom we have to lift as many restrictions as we can, to give as many messages as we can to those parts of our economy that can safely reopen in the next three weeks and the plan to do that.

Hospitality is not yet in that position. We will use the time to talk carefully with that industry and when it is safe to do so, but not before, we will have plans to reopen that part of our economy as well.

We will continue to discuss if it is possible to reopen some parts of that industry in the outdoors. It may be possible to do that before we could open parts of that industry where people would be asked to congregate inside with all the additional risks.

The sector has had some targeted support with business rates grant funding of 25,000 for eligible businesses, along with HMRC relaxing rules on cellar destruction. That is alongside wider business support offered via the Economic Resilience Fund (ERF), the furlough scheme, and either Bounce Back Loans or Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

Some in the hospitality sector have expressed concerns that the furlough scheme is set to scale back, alongside the prospect of no reopening dates being known. Once some pubs, bars and restaurants reopen they may not be able to do so under normal full capacity due to social distancing. One local hospitality business owner told Wrexham.com they did not want to reopen too quickly, but with August 1st around the corner they feel there is not much choice if the business was going to survive and jobs retained.

Another explained how the initial 25,000 business rates grant had help cover the first couple of months lockdown, however the prospect of reopening at a reduced capacity funded by loans is not a long term sustainable prospect for a business. They explained how kitting out the business to reopen safely could take several thousand pounds alone, with the prospect of a maximum of 25% capacity.

We put these points to the Minister for Economy Ken Skates, and asked if there were any plans for non-loan based further funding for the hospitality sector.

The Minister said,

Through the second phase of the ERF there are grants available, and were also going to be using the remaining money from the ERF in late summer and autumn to help any businesses that are still finding that restrictions are impacting on their ability to operate. We will also be using that final phase of the ERF to help businesses grow out of Coronavirus as well.

You make a really important point about physical adaptations that may be made to businesses, we are regularly impressing upon the UK Government the need to make funding available for businesses to carry out adaptations that may be required.

Were looking at how we can support local authorities and town councils in adapting the public realm. So one idea for example, is that we provide the funding to local authorities and town councils can bid into it to repurpose high streets and town centres, essentially use public roads as a space for cafes, restaurants and bars to operate outdoors. So were going to be inviting bids from local authorities for that money, and a number of local authorities are already working on pretty comprehensive plans for repurpose in town and city space.

In terms of hospitality in the timeframe of what First Minister said, discussions with hospitality will intensify, particularly with those that are looking to be able to operate in a way that allows for safe patronage using outdoor space.

So we havent set the timeframe yet for the further three week point, which would take us to July 30th, what we said is we want those discussions to take place at maximum pace, and for rapid review of what can be done, to be completed as soon as possible because we recognise that theres a window of opportunity for the hospitality sector to benefit from, and that window is going to get narrower as we move towards the end of the summer.

The Minister was asked if there could be a date before the next regular review update point, and he said, Weve always said that whilst we have the regular review dates that doesnt stop us from easing restrictions and taking decisions provided that it wont adversely impact on our ability to deal with the virus. Thats why the First Minister was keen to press the point that those discussions are going to commence immediately. So theyre going to take place in parallel with the work on reshaping town and city centers as well to to accommodate more external space for for cafes, bars and restaurants.
TDT | Manama

Minister of Labor and Social Development, Jameel Humaidan, yesterday announced the launch of a BE initiative on the occasion of World Sickle Cell Awareness Day. The event held virtually organised by the Bahrain Sickle Cell Society was held in the presence of Minister of Health, Faika Bint Saeed Al-Saleh.

Labour Minister thanked Bahrain Sickle Cell Society Chairman Zakariya Ibrahim Al-Kadhem and other board members for the Be-This-Year initiative. Sickle cell disease (SCD), which is a group of blood disorders that affect a persons red blood cells, is a genetic condition that is passed on from parents.

The disorder causes normal round and flexible blood cells to become stiff and sickle-shaped, which in turn stops the blood cells and the oxygen they carry from moving freely around the body
CHICAGO, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Foremost Travel & Tours has created Agency Backup, a turn-key solution to offer travel agencies owners support for key business functions.

Virtual Office Support Experienced Resources

Foremost Travel & Tours president Lynn Farrell has been operating a travel agency for nearly 30 years. She has created a team of experts who have critical knowledge of the travel industry in a variety of disciplines including booking leisure and corporate travel, accounting, marketing and web support. Through Agency Backup these resources are now available to travel agency owners as a way to keep these crucial functions going without the need to retain full-time staff. For a low monthly membership, a travel agency owner will have access to whichever area of their business they need support at a set hourly rate. The Agency Backup team already has experience in working with the major systems and platforms in the travel industry including Apollo, Clientbase, Signature Marketing and more. So training is minimal. This allows the owner to off load the burden of certain areas of their business and focus on the areas where they feel they are needed most.

How to Get Started

For a travel agency owner to get started, they simply need to fill out a form on the Agency Backup website

Details

Agency Backup offers a monthly membership to travel agency owners. Besides the membership the travel agency owner pays the designated hourly rate depending on the service they need.

About Foremost Travel & Tours

Foremost Travel & Tours (who also owns Windy City Travel and Travelomi) is a full-service travel agency located in Chicago. The company has been in business since 1963. The team of travel specialists are renowned for providing personalized service for corporate and leisure travel needs. For more information go to: https://agencybackup.com

Contact:

Lynn Farrell

312-334-7878

[email protected]

SOURCE Foremost Travel & Tours

Related Links

https://agencybackup.com


Dozens of baby crocodiles worth up to $20,000 have been stolen from a popular wildlife park.

Professor Grahame Webb, owner of Crocodylus Park in Darwin, said 59 hatchlings measuring up to 50cm were stolen from his breeding ponds in early May.

He had been breeding the crocs as part of an experiment and losing them cost Prof Webb between $15,000 and $20,000.

Professor Grahame Webb, owner of Crocodylus Park in Darwin, said 59 hatchlings (baby crocodiles at the park pictured) measuring up to 50cm were stolen from his breeding ponds

The incident was reported to police who are investigating but there are currently no leads, NT News reports.

Prof Webb said the thieves clearly had no respect for property and said barbed wire did not stop them.

'Are we supposed to put razor wire around everything, spend hundreds of thousands on CCTV or employ someone to sit there 24 hours a day?' he said.

This is not the first time the park has been hit by thieves, with some people going far enough to cut holes in the chain fence.

Prof Webb said he thinks the most recent theft was done over multiple visits during a two week period.

The two week period ended when he reported the theft to police on May 19.

'All their food is monitored, and that's what we couldn't work out, the food was increasing in the other pens and the food consumption (in this pen) went up and then it stopped and it went up and then it stopped,' he said.

The baby crocodiles were up to 50cm long and had been stolen over a period of two weeks

Prof Webb said he thinks the most recent theft was done over multiple visits during a two week period

When he noticed the food inconsistencies Prof Webb counted the baby crocs to find 59 had gone missing.

The crocodiles had only hatched last year and were growing 'really fast'.

Prof Webb had been conducting an experiment on the cage design to reduce crocodiles attacking each other, but it has been ruined by the theft.

He is under the assumption a local may know what has happened to the crocs.

'It's cost us lots of money over the years, it's been hundreds and hundreds of crocs, somebody out there knows,' he said.

This is not the first time the park has been hit by thieves with some people going far enough to cut holes in the chain fence

NT Police told Daily Mail Australia the report was made about 2pm on May 19.

'The report stated 59 crocodiles hatchlings went missing from two pens,' a spokesperson said.

'Police investigated however no arrests or charges have been made at this time. The complainant has been advised of the outcome.'

Police do not believe the alleged theft was part of a bigger operation.

Anyone with information is urged to contact police on 131 444 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

Trend:

President of the Republic of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski has congratulated Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Your Excellency, on the occasion of the National Holiday of the Republic of Azerbaijan, I have a special honor and pleasure, on behalf of the citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia and on my personal behalf, to extend to you heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for prosperity of your country, President Pendarovski said.

At the same time, I would like to take this solemn opportunity to express my hope for further development of the relations and deepening of the cooperation between North Macedonia and Azerbaijan, in all areas of mutual interest, the president said. Your Excellency, please accept the assurances of my highest consideration.
IRVINE, Calif., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Launching his channel as a hobby on YouTube in 2006, today Philip DeFranco is one of the foremost authorities for news and pop culture commentary in the digital media space. His YouTube Channel currently has 6.41 million subscribers, while the content receives 19.4 million views per month. DeFranco's expanded social media presence also has significant reach with 673k followers on Instagram, 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 1.2 million followers on Twitter. Building on his YouTube success where The Philip DeFranco Show won many Streamy Awards, DeFranco launched Rogue Rocket, a production company and website specializing in news and pop culture for the digital viewer. The Los Angeles Times has described DeFranco as "the Walter Cronkite for the YouTube generation who generates hundreds of headlines in under 10 minutes." DeFranco's global fanfare has earned him coveted positions such as host of the 25th Anniversary of Discovery Channel's Shark Week and as a commentator in a Google Hangout where he discussed gun laws with Vice President Joe Biden and Guy Kawasaki. His most recent brand expansion venture was the launch of a direct to consumer men's hair care line called Beautiful Bastard in 2019.

"It was a no-brainer to partner with Mike and his team. They have a proven track record both in our space and elevating homegrown successes beyond their usual limits. I'm incredibly excited." Philip DeFranco

"Elevated success happens when two industry leaders collaborate in pursuit of a common goal. The combination of talent between new media thought leader Philip DeFranco and the business team behind Semaphore Licensing Solutions will be viewed as a monumental moment in the expansion of opportunity for new media stars." -Michael Bienstock, Founder and CEO, Semaphore Licensing Solutions

About Semaphore  A Family of Companies:

Founded in 2002, Semaphore offers a diverse suite of services including accounting, tax preparation, payroll, insurance, brand and licensing management. Serving clients across the globe, the firm has become the in-demand provider of choice for those who value a service driven approach, fueled by integrity. Semaphore's headquarters is located in Irvine, California where their team of seasoned professionals strive to see their clients thrive.

Learn more: SemaphoreLicensingSolutions.com

Contact: Paula Steurer

Sterling Public Relations

949-200-6566

[email protected]

SOURCE Semaphore

Related Links

http://SemaphoreLicensingSolutions.com


There are too few positions available for junior doctors in hospitals, who should at least be offered temporary locum work, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.

The IMO has highlighted a lack of placements for junior doctors in July when rotations across Irish hospitals take place.

A survey of 233 junior or Non Consultant Hospital Doctors (NCHDs) last week found many were struggling to secure posts in July, in particular senior house officers (SHOs) who have completed their studies and internship.

The situation has been compounded by Covid-19, which saw many young doctors returning home and also limited travel opportunities for trainee doctors looking to get experience abroad.

One junior doctor told the Irish Examiner there were 15 applicants for every SHO post and that she had to make alternative plans in the absence of a job.

Sarah (not real name) recently finished her internship year at a major Dublin teaching hospital, where she worked extra nights and weekends throughout the Covid-19 crisis.

A third of trainee doctors, she said, worked more than 60 hours per week because the health system was at breaking point.

In the next month Sarah, who is in her mid-20s, will be a fully registered doctor but she will not be taking up an SHO post.

I applied for two jobs and got interviews but there were more than 15 people competing for each post and that would be a lot higher than normal, Sarah explained.

My plan was always to work and stay in Ireland. Its disheartening there is nothing available, she said.

Sarah has made peace with her new plans to study further and do some agency work: A lot of people like me have applied for masters programmes now because there were no jobs available.

The scarcity of junior doctor posts has also impacted on her wider circle of friends, she said: I have friends that came back from Australia and not only did they not have jobs in July but they lost their jobs because they were no longer needed. Its quite insulting to them.

Many would not step up again if a second Covid-19 wave struck the country.

Sarah said:

I dont think anyone would be willing to come back because theyve seen how everybody was treated the first time.

In a statement issued to the Irish Examiner, the IMO said difficulties securing placements in July highlighted a complete lack of proper manpower planning in the health service.

Unfortunately, it appears that the State expects that many doctors will emigrate or leave the Register on an annual basis, and we are seeing the repercussions of that short-sightedness now, with too few positions available for our medical workforce when so many have answered Irelands call during the Covid-19 pandemic and come home to help, the IMO statement said.

The IMO said all junior doctors must be offered temporary locum work to alleviate the pressure on overworked doctors.

They said: The irony is that our health system as a whole is staffed with far too few overworked doctors who could benefit hugely from the expertise of this cohort, all of whom must be offered temporary locum work at the very least by the State so that patients can be offered the best care.

We desperately need a long-term plan to build a resilient, well-staffed health system so that doctors know that they are truly valued in Ireland, the IMO added.
A Federal Capital Territory High Court has ordered the unconditional release of the Spokesperson of the Coalition of United Political Party (CUPP), Ikenga Ugochinyere.

The judge, Othman Musa, said it was an affront to the court for law enforcement agents not to obey the same law while carrying out their responsibilities.

He re-affirmed an earlier order restraining the police from arresting and detaining him pending the determination of the substantive suit.

Counsel to Ugochinyere, Chibuzor Ezike, had in an ex parte motion, prayed the court for an order of unconditional release of his client who had been in police custody since last week.

Mr Ezike said, We are praying the court for an order of this court for the unconditional release of the applicant who has been in detention since last week.

READ ALSO:

We have it in good authority that the applicant will be arraigned this morning by the police.

The judge, after listening to the applicants client, ruled that the order praying the court for unconditional release is hereby granted.

The earlier order restraining the respondents from arresting, detaining the applicant in any manner is hereby re-affirmed.

(NAN)
Statement of Sen. Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan, president of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, on centennial birthday of Jovito Salonga

Ka Jovy represents the enduring LP tradition of service and love of country: Pangilinan

"A century ago today, the true patriot and statesman Ka Jovy Salonga was born.

We are blessed to have lived in his time -- including the years he served as leader of the Liberal Party -- guided by his wisdom, selflessness, and love for country.

Ka Jovy has endured many battles that maimed his body, but not his spirit. He has confronted the plagues of dictatorship, corruption, and economic crisis, and he carried on.

How fascinating it would have been if the gentle sage and fighter that is Ka Jovy were here, amid a pandemic endangering the people's health and livelihood, and an anti-terrorism bill threatening their rights.

Birthdays are for celebration of life, struggles, and triumphs. We are grateful for the encounters and lessons we had with Ka Jovy in his lifetime. We are fired up to carry his work forward."
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning Americans to stop using certain hand sanitizers because they may be toxic.

All nine products are manufactured by Mexico-based Eskbiochem SA de CV and contain varying amounts of methanol.

Methanol is a type of alcohol that can be poisonous if it is absorbed through the skin or ingested.

The FDA says that exposure to methanol-based hand sanitizer can cause side effects such as nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system or even death.

The FDA warned Americans not to use nine hand sanitizers made by Mexico-based company Eskbiochem SA de CV (left and right) Health officials say the products contain methanol, a type of alcohol that can be toxic if it is absorbed through the skin or ingested

'Methanol is not an acceptable ingredient for hand sanitizers and should not be used due to its toxic effects,' the FDA said in a letter published last week.

'Consumers who have been exposed to hand sanitizer containing methanol should seek immediate treatment, which is critical for potential reversal of toxic effects of methanol poisoning.'

In its warning, the FDA listed the following nine products:

All-Clean Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-002-01)

Esk Biochem Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-007-01)

CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 75% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-008-04)

Lavar 70 Gel Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-006-01)

The Good Gel Antibacterial Gel Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-010-10)

CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 80% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-005-03)

CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 75% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-009-01)

CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 80% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-003-01)

Saniderm Advanced Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-001-01)

The FDA said tests found that the CleanCare No Germ line contained 28 percent methanol while Lavar Gel contained 81 percent of the toxic chemical.

'Although all persons using these products on their hands are at risk, young children who accidentally ingest these products and adolescents and adults who drink these products as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute, are most at risk for methanol poisoning,' the federal health agency said.

Methanol poisonings are not common, but they do occur. In 2013, more than 1,700 cases occurred in the US.

In January 2016, two Tennessee high school students died after ingesting a mixture of Mountain Dew and methanol, believed to have come from racing fuel.

Additionally, in April 2018, a Massachusetts man died after consuming alcohol that was contaminated with methanol.

On June 17, the FDA said it advised Eskbiochem to take its hand sanitizer products off of shelves. As of June 22, the company has not done so yet.

Eskbiochem did not immediately reply to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

The FDA recommends that the general public wash their hands with soap and warm or hot water for at least 20 seconds.

If soap and water isn't available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests using hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent ethanol.
(EDITORS NOTE: Check out our two special graduation sections that will appear in the Staten Island Advance on June 21 and June 28. The sections will contain letters from Island celebrities wishing the graduates well, senior profiles, feature stories and lots of photos like the ones seen below. Parents and grandparents wanting to take out an ad for that special graduate are asked to call 917-525-9362. Ads are only available for the June 28th section.)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Not many 17-year-olds are as well-traveled as Staten Island Academys Emmeline Caplan.

Not many HS graduates will be attending universities in other countries, either.

Caplan, a dual-citizen of the United States and Canada, was born in London, England, and will be attending the University of Toronto in Canada this fall.

She briefly lived in Ontario, Canada, where she has family, and Washington state before relocating to New York.

Nevertheless, Toronto marks a new territory for her to conquer.

Im really excited to explore a new city, said Caplan. I love New York, but Im ready for a new scene, new adventures, and new people with different backgrounds.

Ive learned that home isnt where your house is, but where your friends are, she added.

College attending: Trinity College at the University of Toronto.

Favorite subject: I enjoyed taking AP Computer Science for two years as it helped me think creatively, logically, and mathematically. I had to apply different approaches to problem-solving and it was always satisfying to find the solution.

Extracurricular activities: Volleyball co-captain, lacrosse, founder of the Dance Club, choir, acted in school plays and musicals, science club.

One shining HS moment: Performing the leading role, Marian Paroo, in our schools production of The Music Man this year. After receiving an amazing applause from the audience, the greatest feeling was going backstage to have all my fellow cast-mates congratulate me as well. Their unwavering and unconditional love and support will always be cherished.

Something you might not know about me: Ever since a young age, I have enjoyed fashion designing and sketching designs. On the margins of my notebooks, I would make little doodles when an idea came to mind and then sketch them in detail later.
Kwame Despite is not a new name in Ghana. He has made headlines both in Africa and internationally as a result of his vast wealth. The renowned and successful businessman is also popular for owning some of the fanciest and luxurious cars in the country. He is the CEO and chairman of the Despite Group of Companies.

Image: instagram.com, @dj_blinkzz

Source: UGC

Born on February 2, 1962, in Agona Wiamoase in the heart of the Ashanti Region, the business mogul has managed to make a name for himself. His story is a clear depiction of rags to riches as he has worked hard to become successful today. After many challenges in Ghana, he and some friends left for Lagos, Nigeria to seek greener pastures. He returned in 1983 after political tension forced him and many other refugees out of the country. Most people know him as one of the richest people in Ghana; there are other interesting facts about him unknown to most people. Grab a seat and read on.

How did Kwame Despite become rich?

The businessman started businesses that have become successful over many years.

10 quick facts you didn't know about Kwame Despite

Here are 10 facts you probably did not know about Kwame Despite:

1. He is one of the wealthiest men despite not being highly educated

The businessman has managed to amass so much wealth even though he was not highly educated.

2. He is not from a wealthy background

The great man was born in a small town near Agona in the Ashanti region. He came from a humble background and had to fend for himself while still young. Interestingly, he did not let poverty and lack of opportunity deter him from dreaming big and becoming successful.

3. He left his home country for Nigeria for greener pastures

After facing many challenges in Ghana as a young man, he and some of his friends left the country for Lagos, Nigeria, to pursue greener pastures. Unfortunately, in 1983, he and others were deported back to the country by the Nigerian government. At this point, all he had to his name was a chain-saw machine and a trident cassette player.

He decided to commence lumbering, and in the process, his chain saw got damaged. He did not give up but left for Accra and re-started his cassette selling business, which grew to become a successful music production shop.

4. He is a humble man

Image: facebook.com, @Kwame Despite

Source: UGC

The entrepreneur is known to be quite humble, despite all his riches. He is not an outspoken man, but during the few times he has spoken in the media, it is quite evident. The business mogul never takes credit for his wealth, but instead credits his workers.

5. The successful businessman started as a petty trader

There is no easy path to success, and true to this, Kwame has had to face challenges along the way. He started out selling music cassettes, feeding bottles, among many other items. This is a clear depiction of starting small and growing into multi-million businesses.

6. He has an honorary doctorate

He was honored with a Doctorate Degree of Human Resource on April 28, 2013, by Canterbury University in England. This was a result of his continuous and exceptional contribution to the provision of job opportunities, innovation, and promotion of the Ghanaian culture.

7. His eldest son, Kennedy Osei, is the General Manager of his conglomerate

Image: instagram.com, @ghanafuodotcom

Source: UGC

Kwame Despite son known as Kennedy Osei is the General Manager of the mogul's Group of Companies. His son holds a BSc in Business Administration from the University of Ghana, and an MS in Economics from the University of Birmingham. He is also the MD of Golden Crystal Lodge. In February this year, Kennedy tied the knot in a lavish ceremony to the love of his life, Tracy Ameyaw. Some of those in attendance included his father, mother, and Kwame Despite brother, among many others.

8. He is married

Osei Kwame Despite wife is known as Aunty Ewuruma, who is his second wife. Kennedy Osei's mother was the mogul's first wife. He has other sons with his second wife.

9. He has a fine taste for the finer things in life especially cars

The business mogul has a soft spot for not just any car, but exotic cars. Some of his car collections include the new Brabus.

10. He owns major companies which are under the Despite Group of Companies which include;

Best Point Savings & Loans Limited

Special Investment Company Limited

Radio Stations  Peace FM, Okay FM, Asomdwie FM, Neat FM, and Hello FM.

TV station  UTV

Despite Music Production Limited

Despite Digital Limited  Peacefmonline.com

Neat Foods Company Limited

Atona Foods Ltd

Special Ice Company Limited (Water Bottling Company)

U2 Company Limited

READ ALSO: Adesua Etomi bio: age, husband, movies, kids, net worth

How much is Kwame Despite worth?

The businessman is estimated to have a net worth of about $150 million. His wealth is a result of his multiple successful businesses across the country.

What work does Kwame Despite do?

He is the chairman of the Despite Group of Companies, which incorporates various successful businesses.

READ ALSO: Mary Njoku bio: age, net worth, husband, pictures, movies

Is Kwame Despite the richest man in Ghana?

Currently, the richest man in Ghana is Charles Ampofo. He is estimated to have a net worth of about $1.46 billion.

Kwame Despite is a respected philanthropist and businessman in Ghana. His great contribution to the country's economy is evident and admirable by many. He has proven over time that hard work, passion, and zeal is key to success.

READ ALSO: Aliko Dangote: 10 interesting facts about Africa's richest man

Source: YEN.com.gh
China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday to stop making irresponsible remarks after he said Beijings decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his countrys arrest of a Chinese tech executive.

The spying charges are completely different from the case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, a foreign ministry spokesman said. Meng was arrested on US charges connected to possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in what was widely seen as an attempt to Canada after Mengs December 2018 arrest in Vancouver. Charges against them were announced Friday after a Canadian judge ruled Mengs extradition case can proceed to its next stage, moving her closer to being handed over to American authorities.

Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, said Chinese authorities directly linked the cases of Kovrig and Spavor with Meng. He called on Beijing to end their arbitrary detention. There is no such thing as arbitrary detention, said the ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

China urges the relevant Canadian leader to earnestly respect the spirit of the rule of law, respect Chinas judicial sovereignty and stop making irresponsible remarks, Zhao said.

Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd. and the daughter of its founder, is accused of lying to banks in Hong Kong about Huaweis dealings with Iran in possible violation of US sanctions.

Mengs case is a seriously political incident and part of US efforts to suppress Chinese high-tech enterprises and Huawei, Zhao said. He said Canada played the role of an accomplice. We strongly urge Canada to correct its mistakes as soon as possible, immediately release Meng Wanzhou and ensure her safe return to home, said Zhao.

Meng is living in a mansion she owns in Vancouver, where she reportedly is working on a graduate degree. Kovrig and Spavor are being held at an undisclosed location and have been denied access to lawyers or family members.

China has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of Canadian canola.

Zhao said visits by foreign diplomats to prisoners were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Perhaps youd like a cold IPA with your hoagie?

Thats an option at two pioneering Wawa stores in Delaware County.

Convenience store chains  notably Wawa and Sheetz  are beginning to add alcohol sales to their stores as newcomers threaten to upend the boozy status quo.

In Pennsylvania, traditional convenience stores now must contend with such booze-friendly companies as goPuff, the Philadelphia-based food-delivery startup that has disrupted the idea of who sells alcohol and how customers can get it. And reflecting the shift in industry norms, Pennsylvanias notoriously stringent alcohol sale laws, overseen by the Liquor Control Board, have eased somewhat.

Weve seen an increasing number of convenience stores applying for and receiving liquor licenses, Shawn Kelly, a spokesperson for the PLCB, said Friday.

Wawa, created and headquartered in Delaware County, declines to say much about its involvement with liquor. But it won its first Pennsylvania license to sell beer in 2019. It now offers beer at the two Delaware County stores and has requests pending with Pennsylvania liquor officials to expand such sales to three more stores, including one in Philadelphia.

It already has been selling alcohol products at more than 100 company locations in other states.

Convenience stores in Pennsylvania may sell beer to-go provided they have the right license from the PLCB. Wine sales require an expanded permit and allow a customer to buy up to three liters of wine at a time. The liquor board is the wholesale distributor of alcohol to the commonwealths convenience stores.

The chain that has most doggedly pushed to expand its footprint in Pennsylvania alcohol sales is Sheetz, based in Altoona. It has bid often in PLCB auctions that sell restaurants expired liquor licenses, which can be reactivated once transferred to a new owner.

At times, the chain has splurged by picking up multiple license at one shot. In 2017, for instance, it was the highest bidder for 17 Pennsylvania licenses during one auction. A few month later, it picked up 11 more. Since then, its purchases have slowed considerably.

The chain, not an active presence in the Philadelphia region, now has stores in five other states besides Pennsylvania. It has more than 600 stores across the nation, and sells beer at 223 out of its 279 locations in the commonwealth.

The legacy chains drive to sell alcohol pales compared to start-ups such as the relatively new goPuff, founded in 2013 by two Drexel University graduates, Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev.

 READ MORE: Philadelphia start-up GoPuff, founded by Drexel grads, raises $1 billion

GoPuff, which delivers beer and everyday essentials  and convenience store food  directly to customers, now operates in 500 cities, including Philadelphia, according to its website.

Last year, goPuff, which delivers beer in the Philadelphia area but not wine, received a massive infusion of $750 million from SoftBank Vision Fund, a subsidiary of the Tokyo-based SoftBank Group, which is partly funded by the Saudi Arabian government.

SoftBank Vision Fund has promised that goPuff could receive an additional $250 million.

The growth of once unconventional alcohol sales has forced brick-and-mortar convenience stores to modernize in part by adding frothy options.

Currently, Wawa awaits a response from the LCB for a liquor license it recently applied for its store at 1139 Horsham Rd. in Ambler. Liquor licenses are also pending for a store at 9101 Frankford Ave. in Philadelphia and 296 Route 940 in Tobyhanna Township, a small community in the Poconos.

The liquor board issued its first Wawa license to the store at 721 Naamans Creek Rd. in Chadds Ford on April 24, 2019. The following December, the board issued another license to the companys store at 1073 Baltimore Pike in Middletown Township, Delaware County.

John Stanton, a professor of food marketing at St. Josephs University, said Wawa was a leader in business innovation.

Wawas in a position that if they fail, they can pull out and get another [new product] right behind it, he said.

In recent years, Wawa has often been the top bidder  though not the most frequent bidder  in LCB auctions for expired liquor licenses.

Licenses dont come cheap. PLCB records show Wawa spent as much as $186,000 for one license and almost that much for another.

Stanton, who has taught marketing at St. Josephs for 33 years after a 25-year period of consulting work for Wawa, said the chain is merely pushing Pennsylvania to join a practice that is routine elsewhere.

People come to Pennsylvania and cant even believe they cant buy alcohol in convenience stores, he said. Traditional convenience stores  Wawa is by far the most visible in Pennsylvania  is just taking a step in the direction everyone is moving.
The Maharashtra Police have registered 133,730 offences and arrested 27,446 people for violating the Covid-19 lockdown since restrictions on movements were imposed across the nation to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

The state police also seized 83,970 vehicles and collected 8.41 crore in fines from offenders.

While strictly implementing the lockdown, the police came face to face with many citizens who didnt follow the rules and several places in Maharashtra witnessed clashes between police and citizens. In such situations, police carried out what officials said were mild baton charges, and many police personnel were wounded.

Assistant inspector general of police (law and order) Vinayak Deshmukh said on Monday that were 277 instances of police parties being attacked since the lockdown began, in which 858 personnel were injured.

Police believe citizens have now become aware of the pandemic and are alerting authorities if they see any person violating the lockdown as such actions raise the possibility of the disease spreading. As a result, there has been a steady rise in the number of Covid-19-related calls on the police helpline number 100.

Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh tweeted on Monday that 104,040 calls had been received at the state police control room.

Police say they are keeping a close eye on those who are venturing out despite being placed in home quarantine by the local administration. A total of 6,26,353 people have been quarantined across Maharashtra and 793 of them were found violating the quarantine.

Meanwhile, one more policeman from Mumbai has died of Covid-19, taking the death toll among Maharashtra Police personnel to 49. The death toll among police personnel in Mumbai has risen to 33.

The policeman who died was identified as constable Pradip Quashid, 53. He was attached to the protection and security branch. Quashid was a resident of Gurgaon and had tested positive for Covid-19 on June 17.

He was initially treated at J J Hospital, and was recently shifted to St Georges Hospital. He was put on ventilator after developing serious breathing problems but succumbed to the disease on Sunday night. Quashid was survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

Deputy commissioner of police (protection) Prashant Kadam confirmed the death.

So far, 4,048 police personnel in the state have been infected with the virus, mainly while on duty in high-risk containment zones. Most of these personnel are from Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nasik, Nagpur and Malegaon and SRPF.

To de-stress policemen, SRPF personnel were deployed in urban areas where the maximum number of Covid-19 cases were reported. They were moved to these places to assist local police in enforcing the lockdown.

However, many SRPF personnel also got infected. On Sunday, SRPF reported its first casualty - a company commander who died in Mumbai. So far, a total of 741 SRPF personnel have tested positive for Covid-19, and 648 of them have been discharged from hospital after recovering.

Vinakay Deshmukh said many of the infected police personnel have recovered and only around 1,000 are active now. Most of these policemen are from Mumbai Police.

Deshmukh said the police department has successfully cut the spread of Covid-19 among police personnel through multiple preventive and precautionary measures. Police personnel are now aware and more concerned about their personal safety.
South sensation Vijay Deverakonda was shooting for his upcoming, pan-India movie with director Puri Jagannadh and actress Ananya Panday when the coronavirus spread halted production related work and shooting indefinitely. Now, Vijay has been quarantining at his home for close to three months with his family and also donating towards Covid-19 relief work.

Read: Fighter Will See Vijay Deverakonda in Completely Different Avatar, Says Ananya Panday

On the occasion of Father's Day, on Sunday, Vijay shared a candid picture with his dad as they both relax on a couch. In the image, Vijay also revealed his lockdown beard, which he cannot otherwise keep because of professional commitments.

However, the macho Telugu star's new French beard was not liked by many fans and they mocked him on social media.

Here's how Vijay's new look is inspiring fans to make memes of the actor.

Follow @News18Movies for more
Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton speaks at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit April 17, 2015 in Nashua, New Hampshire. The Summit brought together local and national Republicans and was attended by all the Republicans candidates as well as those eyeing a run for the nomination.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

Former national security adviser John Bolton will not be voting for President Donald Trump nor Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election, his spokesperson told Axios.

The Daily Telegraph published an interview with the lifelong Republican on Sunday and said that Bolton revealed his intention to vote for Biden come November.

Bolton's spokesperson refuted the Telegraph's claim, saying: "He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican. Let there be no doubt  he will not be voting for Trump or Biden."

Bolton's explosive memoir about his time in the Trump administration is set to be released on June 23, though the White House has aggressively tried to block its publication.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Former national security adviser John Bolton, who has come back into the spotlight ahead of the release of his bombshell new book "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," will not be voting for President Donald Trump nor Joe Biden in the upcoming election.

A spokesperson for Bolton's campaign told Axios that Bolton would not vote for either candidate after the Daily Telegraph published an interview with the lifelong Republican on Sunday.

The Telegraph wrote in its exclusive interview that Bolton said that "he intends to vote for Joe Biden."

"In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton," Bolton told the Telegraph. "Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again."

"My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back," he added.

Bolton's spokesperson Sarah Tinsley said in a statement to Axios that Bolton does not plan to vote for either candidate come November.

"The Ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden," Tinsley said. "He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican. Let there be no doubt  he will not be voting for Trump or Biden."

Story continues

Bolton's explosive memoir about his time in the Trump administration is set to be released on June 23, though the White House has aggressively tried to block its publication.

Last week, the Justice Department sued Bolton to block the book, accusing Bolton of breaching his contract and compromising national security. The DOJ, supported by top Trump intelligence officials, also filed for an emergency restraining order to halt the book's release and called for the hearing to take place on Friday.

On Saturday, a federal judge denied the Trump administration's request, saying that while Bolton "gambled with the national security of the United States," the US government "has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, signaled he may halt or reverse the state's economic reopening if the covid-19 contagion continues to expand at what he called an "unacceptable rate."

Citing a doubling in the positive-test rate to almost 9%, as well as surges in new cases and hospitalizations, Abbott on Monday urged residents of the second-most populous U.S. state to voluntarily wear masks and take other precautions.

Abbott's remarks underscore a political quandary in Republican-led states that were among the vanguard in reopening across the U.S. While covid-19 cases are rising, and events like President Donald Trump's weekend rally in Oklahoma sow additional concern about more infections, the GOP governors' all-in embrace of ending lockdowns makes it difficult to start reapplying restrictions to public life.

The outbreak is accelerating at "an unacceptable rate and it must be corralled," Abbott said during a media briefing. "If those spikes continue, additional measures are going to be necessary."

Abbott said he's stopping short of decreeing unspecified "stronger measures" because hospitals still have ample bed capacity for covid-19 patients. But if positivity rates and hospitalizations should double in the next few weeks, the situation would be "urgent" enough for him to reconsider.

"Closing down Texas again will always be the last option," Abbott said.

Texas's positive-test rate climbed to 8.94% on June 19, the highest since April 21, according to state health department data. Hospitalizations have more than doubled this month to 3,409 as of Sunday, the most recent data available.

Although Abbott focused on voluntary measures he urged individuals to take -- such as avoiding crowds when possible -- he said state regulators have begun shutting taverns that weren't enforcing social distancing. County leaders in several of the state's biggest metropolitan areas recently began mandating that businesses require customers to mask up.
STAMFORD  Consumer financial-services firm Synchrony announced that it will contribute $5 million through its foundation to community-development organizations to support small businesses affected by the coronavirus crisis.

The Synchrony Foundations commitment includes a $2 million grant to Local Initiatives Support Corp., which will provide emergency grants of up to $10,000 to small businesses  particularly those owned by minorities, women and veterans in underserved communities.

Stamford-based Synchrony, the No. 170 company on this years Fortune 500 list, plans to commit the remaining $3 million to local organizations to support the recovery of small businesses during the next three years.

For nearly 90 years, helping Americas small businesses has been a core part of our DNA and today, we are accelerating our efforts to ensure that small stays strong, Neeraj Mehta, CEO of Synchronys Payment Solutions business, said in a statement. We are heartbroken over the multiple crises that have recently hit small businesses across the country. At Synchrony, we realized we needed to do even more to support one another during this time and stand united in support of humanity.

In addition, Synchrony said it will help connect small businesses with sources of support, including expert advice on topics such as digital marketing and building customer loyalty and research and analysis on market trends.

At the same time, the company has rolled out a digital resource center, Synchrony Connect for Small Business, intended to make it easier for small businesses to get support and advice.

Today, Synchrony partners with nearly 1 million small businesses, including those in the home, health care, retail, and auto industries.

Among other recent philanthropic efforts, the Synchrony Foundation announced in March a $5 million commitment to support hunger-relief organizations and other nonprofits in response to the pandemic.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; Twitter: @paulschott
Trump called his sign-waving supporters "warriors" and declared that "the silent majority is stronger than ever before." He boasted about his conservative judicial appointees, low taxes, the booming stock market, the wall under construction on the southern border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants and adding to the U.S. military budget.

He railed against his Democratic opponent in the November national election, former Vice President Joe Biden, attacked "radical left" protesters demonstrating in recent weeks against police abuses in the U.S., and blamed China for the spread of what he called the "kung flu," his derisive term for the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 120,000 people in the U.S. and infected more than 2.2 million.

An outdoor rally for an overflow crowd was called off because few were there, while the arena's upper gallery was largely empty. For the cheering supporters who did show up, Trump gave them what they came to hear: nearly two hours of red-meat political taunts.

The 19,000-seat BOK Center arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, appeared to be a bit more than half full Saturday night, even though the president's campaign last week boasted that a million people had registered to attend. The Trump campaign said about 12,000 people passed through metal detectors at the entrances.

U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign on Sunday brushed off the underwhelming size of the crowd at his first political rally in three months, blaming "fake news media" reports of the threat of coronavirus infections and the possibility of protests for keeping people away.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale on Sunday said the crowd size was kept down by several factors. "A week's worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protesters, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally," he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued warnings that large gatherings such as Trump's rally are possible breeding grounds for the spread of the coronavirus. The Trump campaign checked the temperatures of rally-goers and handed out face masks to everyone, although it did not require anyone to wear one.

As news cameras scanned the crowd, only a small portion of those watching the rally appeared to be wearing a mask. Parscale said protesters "even blocked entrances to the rally at times," although media reporters on the scene said they saw few protesters and that people who wanted to attend the rally appeared to walk in unimpeded.

Parscale dismissed reports that TikTok and K-Pop fans had flummoxed the Trump campaign by registering for tickets to the rally, to make it appear there would be a huge crowd, with no intention of attending.

The campaign manager said, "We constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool. These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking." He added, "For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting, but typical. And it makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they don't do their full jobs as professionals."

Trump campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp told "Fox News Sunday" that despite the Tulsa crowd size, 5.3 million people watched on Trump campaign digital channels, giving the rally a much broader reach than might have appeared from the telecast of the event.

Biden's campaign scoffed at the size of the Tulsa crowd, saying, "Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him."

National polls show Biden pulling out to an average lead of 9.5 percentage points over Trump less than five months before the election, according to a compilation of polls by Real Clear Politics. Biden has shunned any political rallies, giving television interviews from his home in the eastern state of Delaware and making a few appearances in nearby Philadelphia for speeches before small gatherings. He has not held a news conference in nearly three months.
The NEO N610 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s SSD features latest 3D TLC NAND and a 4-channel controller IC, which increases the amount of data that can be transmitted at any given time. Different from other KLEVV 2.5" SSDs, NEO N610 provides an embedded DRAM buffer that enhances runtime performance while also extends the lifespan of the drive. It comes further equipped with a powerful LDPC ECC engine, an intelligent SLC caching algorithm, S.M.A.R.T. (self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology), over-provisioning, bad block management, and Global Wear Leveling technology. All of which combine to optimize performance, durability, reliability, and data integrity. The new NEO N610 SATA SSD comes in three capacities: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, while delivering sequential read/write speeds of up to 560/520 MB/s, catering to customers with varied efficiency needs.

CRAS C710 M.2 NVMe SSD: Built for Gamers & Enthusiasts

Also offered in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB using 3D TLC NAND, the CRAS C710 M.2 NVMe SSD adopts PCIe Gen3 x4 interface supported by NVMe 1.3 technology. Which provides a sequential read speed of up to 2100 MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 1650 MB/s, while retaining legacy technology to ensure stable performance even at high processing speeds, making it ideal for gaming or image processing. Optimized technologies include a thermal throttling algorithm to protect SSD integrity, SRAM error detection and correction, and CRC parity for end-to-end data path protection. In addition, the CRAS C710 shares all the essential functions that make KLEVV drives reliable, such as LDPC ECC technology, SLC caching, S.M.A.R.T. and Global Wear Leveling.

Responding to the Market with Additional Data Backup Software for Peace of Mind

By making customer service a top priority, Both CRAS C710 & NEO N610 have gone through KLEVV's rigorous in-house examination process, and come with a five-year limited warranty as standard. Further to that, KLEVV has improved user experience by providing complimentary Acronis True Image HD 2018 software activation key, which gives users full disk-image backup access and universal restore functions for a seamless data transfer experience. Additional Acronis Active Protection function against ransomware is also available to help protect valuable data from this nefarious & modern data threat.

KLEVV products are distributed by EVETECH (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa. All lineups are available at EVETECH's online and offline stores.

Find out more about the full range of Essencore/KLEVV products at: http://www.essencore.com/ and http://www.klevv.com.

About Essencore

Established in 2014, Essencore Limited, a company founded by a group of key figures from the major memory IDMs, aims to become the world's top vendor of DRAM modules and NAND flash application products. The company started with one goal: to "Change the world and be a leader in semiconductor distribution". The business strategies of Essencore is to adopt the newest technologies to differentiate ourselves in front of customers from competitors, deliver dedicated Memory products, and offer various product portfolio for customer's competition readiness. For more information, please visit www.essencore.com.

About KLEVV

KLEVV, is a premium brand of Essencore, the major Module and NAND Flash application product vendor. The KLEVV range includes gaming memory modules, microSDs, USB flash drives, and solid state drives. KLEVV is committed to delivering world-class products with first-rate quality. All products are designed in South Korea, home of the world's top two largest memory IDMs. KLEVV memory has been recognized by Germany's Red Dot Design Award in 2015 and 2019. For more information, please visit www.klevv.com.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1142413/NEO_N610_PR_2.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1142414/CRAS_C710_PR_1.jpg

Related Links

http://www.essencore.com



SOURCE Essencore
Health officials in Marin County urged employers and residents on Monday to continue taking precautionary measures against the coronavirus after 43 employees at a waste management company tested positive.

The Marin Sanitary Service employees who tested positive, most of whom were asymptomatic, were among 288 tested after the countys contact tracing investigators started communicating with those close contacts to the first confirmed case, Dr. Lisa Santora, the countys deputy health officer, said in a statement. Three more employees were confirmed to have the virus.

An assessment of the facility last week led county health officials to identify heightened risk of transmission during break and lunch hours, when some employees did not maintain physical distance from each other and some were found not wearing face coverings, Santora said.

She called the actions consistent with other worksite outbreaks. The waste company was increasing infection prevention, such as adding another handwashing station.

County health officials and Kaiser Permanente also plan to return to the facility this week to offer more information about the virus.

With easing of shelter-in-place restrictions, COVID-19 activity will continue to increase countywide, which increases the probability of outbreaks in congregate facilities and worksites, Santora said. This outbreak along with other worksite outbreaks shows the importance of staying vigilant throughout our day by limited social activity; maintaining social distancing; covering faces; and washing hands frequently.

Patty Garbarino, president of Marin Sanitary Service, said the employees who tested positive worked on a sorting line that pulls recyclable material. County health officials decided to test all 288 employees after the company became a hot spot by virtue of rapidly growing numbers.

None of the employees who have the virus interacted with the public and none have been hospitalized, Garbarino said.

The first case among employees was confirmed June 6, and company executives started recording a new case each day until mid-June when officials started confirming several cases daily, Garbarino said.

The outbreak appears to be the result of mid-March shelter-in-place restrictions being loosened in late May, along with the Memorial Day weekend and people becoming more complacent about wearing masks and other personal protective equipment, Garbarino said. County health officials told the company they are monitoring a possible trend of outbreaks in the Bay Area.

It was just a perfect storm. They called us the first wave, Garbarino said.

She emphasized the importance of wearing a face mask and praised Gov. Gavin Newsoms order last week that requires all Californians to wear a mask outside of their homes.

I think the important thing is that everyone remain calm and that we are all absolutely emphatic about wearing our masks, Garbarino said. Its all about mask wearing, and we cant relax on that.

The outbreak appeared to be among the first at a Bay Area waste management company.

One employee at San Franciscos Recology has tested positive out of 1,100 workers, company spokesman Robert Reed said. The worker was part of a crew that collects trash and recycling in the citys Financial District. Another Recology employee, who does not work in the trash and recycling units, also tested positive.

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 company has installed handwashing stations, staggered start times for drivers and implemented social distancing protocols at recycling plants in efforts to prevent any such outbreak, Reed said. But as long as the virus lingers, the company will remain cautious.

Weve embraced many safety protocols. We were taking additional steps very early on, even in February we ordered a lot of additional (personal protective equipment) and we made safety protocols to protect against the virus the focus of our safety meetings, Reed said. Were remaining very diligent. Were taking this very seriously.

Laine Hendricks, a Marin County spokeswoman, said officials have observed minor outbreaks of at least three cases at grocery stores, as well as some gatherings that are not workplaces, such as a party and a sleepover.

We understand there is this desire after 100-plus days of shelter in place to want to reconnect with people, she said. But, yeah, people are diving right back into what was normal. Its risky to rush back into normal in a COVID-present environment.

Solano County has not seen outbreaks in any waste management facilities, said Bela Matyas, the countys health officer.

Im concerned about workplace outbreaks in an workplace setting where people are in close physical proximity for long periods of time without proper protection. he said, noting that waste management facilities fall into that category.

Alejandro Serrano and Anna Kramer are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com, anna.kramer@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @serrano_alej @anna_c_kramer
P rotests by campaigners opposed to the high-speed rail line HS2 are costing millions of pounds in delays and security costs, it emerged today.

A lawyer representing HS2 told Judge David Holland about relentless incidents targeting a stretch of the planned line running through a woodland area in west London.

Barrister Tom Roscoe said the costs of delay and security were in the region of 16 million.

Judge Holland made an order banning unlawful protest activities in and around a construction site in Hillingdon in May 2019.

HS2 want further orders preventing unlawful protest / Reuters

But Mr Roscoe said protest had continued.

He said HS2 bosses wanted further orders preventing unlawful protest on land in their possession.

The judge is expected to consider making further orders at a hearing in the near future.

Mr Roscoe gave detail of costs at a preliminary virtual, hearing on Monday.

The campigners lawyer said there was 'huge' public opposition / Reuters

The big problem is the sheer number of these incidents, said Mr Roscoe. It is relentless.

He said the consequences were very serious and added: The delay and additional security costs caused by these protests is in the region of 16 million.

A barrister representing a campaigner involved told the judge that describing HS2 as controversial was an understatement.

Sailesh Mehta said there was huge public opposition.
245 Shares Share

Two years ago, my wife and I spent our 20th wedding anniversary in Charleston, SC, a city steeped in national history, both good and bad. Nothing could be more iconic of good history than Fort Sumter, and nothing more iconic of bad history than the Old Slave Market on Chalmers Street. We learned a great deal about how our country grappled with its shortcomings. The Great American Experiment, through blood and war and the suffering of many, resulted in a more just society. I am glad both of these historic structures still exist.

In Charleston, I also learned about my family history, both good and bad. My namesake, General Andrew Pickens, was a hero of the American Revolution in South Carolina. My direct ancestor, the generals brother, was a captain in the Revolutionary War and died fighting for this country. This is good history. These two men did something historically important. Something good. They were not perfect. They were slave owners, but despite that, many of their actions were good and foundational to the United States. A more distant relative, Francis Pickens, was the governor of South Carolina when South Carolina seceded from the union during the Civil War. I wasnt offended and did not feel guilty hearing this. I was not part of that mans life. But as history goes, his was clearly not the just side. Good and bad, this was all part of my family history, but it does not define me.

History cannot be changed and should not be erased. The First Amendment was placed first for a reason. It is the bedrock of our nations ability to overcome despots like Hitler and to abolish slavery. However, it comes at a price. You may hear things you dont like or make you uncomfortable. You may see statues or places like the Old Slave Market that offend you because of what they represent. But you also see works of art like the Declaration of Independence. You cannot have one without the other. To limit speech or erase history because you do not personally like it, or because it doesnt fit your narrative is a step towards liberal and/or conservative fascism. Personal liberty is sacrificed.

Seeing statues fall, books being burned, buildings defaced because of the name of the building, does offend me. To do so as a mob outside of legal avenues is oppressive. It offends the deep-seated value I see in the power of history, good and bad, to help form a more just society. The cancel culture seems bent on violently erasing parts of history that it deems repugnant, but fails to recognize that open free discussions about those less just times or imperfect people can add to our learning and healing. My voice should not be silenced. I should not be considered an ally or an enemy based on reasonable but different views I hold than you do. Open discourse between individuals about history and its very complex characters should be welcomed. We individually should not be seen as all good or all bad. Nor should our country.

Learning from our history and evolving does define us and our country. The United States has been making this journey for almost 250 years. It has been a beautiful and, at times, a horrible thing to watch. But atrocities from our countrys past do not define what we are today. Individually and as a country, we are a mix of good and bad. Do not judge groups by the actions of a few. Do not erase history because we do not like what we see. Do not discount the United States because it has shortcomings. Engage each other. We are all in this together, and, just like the police, each of us individually, the constitution and our country, we are a mix of good and bad. The key is trying to get better without sacrificing who you are or the liberty of others. And always remember, we are fortunate to live in a very unique and wonderful country where we have the freedom to speak our minds.

Andrew Pickens is an emergency physician. This article originally appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Just about the time when millions of devotees were about to suffer a collective heartbreak over the grim prospect of Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath and his siblings not happening this year, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon allowed the juggernaut of the three deities to roll on the Grand Road of Puri.

Reversing its June 18 order - where the court halted the yatra citing public health and citizens safety amid a raging coronavirus pandemic - the apex court on Monday allowed the festival minus devotees, who have always been inseparable part of its tradition since centuries, following a change in the stand of the Odisha government.

Todays order was as dramatic as the state governments initial stand on not letting it happen due to the coronavirus and then doing a complete volte face in the face of public outcry. On social media, the top courts decision is being hailed as the wish of the Lord prevailing over everyone.

While hectic preparations are on to hold the Rath Yatra at Puri on June 23 without the presence of any devotees, the play of politics behind the entire event may be too glaring to miss. While the Odisha BJP unit has been uncharacteristically silent over the Rath Yatra issue, union home minister Amit Shah on Monday indicated that PM Modi nudged him to hold consultations with the Shankaracharya and the King of Puri.

PM Narendra Modi not only understood the sentiments of devotees but also initiated consultations. Last evening, as per the instructions of the PM, I spoke to Gajapati Maharaj Ji (the king of Puri) and the respected Shankaracharya ji of Puri and sought their views on the Yatra.

This morning, on PMs instructions, I also spoke to the Solicitor General. It makes me, as well as crores of devotees across India happy that PM not only understood the sentiment of the devotees but also initiated consultations which ensured that the great traditions of our land are observed, tweeted Shah in Odia.

The home ministers tweet that his government facilitated placing the matter in front of a vacation bench of the Supreme Court is an indication of the importance that the party places on Odisha.

Though the state elections in Odisha are four years away and the panchayat polls more than one and half years away, the Naveen Patnaik governments flip-flop over Rath Yatra gave the opportunity to BJP to make some more inroads into the mind of Odia electorate.

The party over the last few years has been unsuccessfully trying to appropriate the Jagannath culture and blend it into their overall Hindutva campaign.

Puri has been central to its overall political theme. Last year, the BJP was toying with the idea of letting Modi fight from the Puri Lok Sabha constituency but later allowed its national spokesperson Sambit Patra to contest the seat. Patra lost the seat to BJDs lawyer-turned-politician Pinaki Mishra by a whisker.

In early February, a month before Covid-19 lockdown started, home minister Shah in a political rally in Bhubaneswar spoke how Odisha is like his second home as Lord Jagannath has kept showering his blessings on both Gujarat and Odisha.

Political analysts said the BJP first tested the waters last month when the ministry of home affairs allowed construction of the three chariots on Grand Road at a time when a strict national lockdown was in place that prohibited any construction activity.

By allowing construction of the chariots, the Centre wanted to show that it never came in the way of the Rath Yatra, the biggest festival of Odisha, even during the time of a pandemic. It ensured that the BJD would never be able to accuse it of holding up the festival, said Gyana Ranjan Swain, political science professor of Ravenshaw University in Cuttack.

Though it was expected that the Patnaik government would be able to hold the festival minus devotees, the plan began to go awry by May-end when suddenly the number of Covid-19 cases in the state saw a steep rise in numbers due to the influx of migrant workers.

From less than 15 districts by May first week, the entire state of Odisha was soon in the clutches of the pandemic by May end making things difficult for the government. The rising number of cases outside the quarantine centres too fuelled the fears of local transmission of the virus. The officials were decidedly nervous over the possibility of a full scale community transmission once lakhs of devotees thronged the temple town of Puri on the day of Rath Yatra.

So when a little-known NGO went to the Supreme Court, allegedly with some backing from sections of government seeking stay on Rath Yatra due to the pandemic, the Patnaik government played along and reeled out figures of a million devotees congregating in Puri.

With SC halting the Yatra on June 18, the BJD did not account for the massive outrage among lakhs of devotees as well as the temple priests who felt shortchanged by the government. Many felt the government could have told the apex court that it can organise the Rath Yatra the way it conducted the Snana Purnima festival, an important festival preceding the car festival, in the first week of June.

The BJPs image as a saviour of the biggest festival of Odisha may have come unexpectedly, but it nicely fits into its grand scheme of things it has for Odisha. By helping the juggernaut to roll on June 23, the party perhaps thinks its own caravan in Odisha would get a push.
michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[music]

Todays Senate primary in Kentucky has been transformed by the outcry over police brutality. Jonathan Martin, on what the election can tell us about the future of Democratic politics. Its Tuesday, June 23. Jonathan, tell me about todays Senate race in Kentucky.

jonathan martin

Well, this is the Democratic primary to take on Senator Mitch McConnell, who, of course, is the majority leader of the Senate. And, for a long time, it seemed like his Democratic opponent was going to be Amy McGrath 

archived recording (amy mcgrath) Im Amy McGrath, and I love our country. I spent 20 years as a U.S. Marine, flew 89 combat missions bombing Al Queda and the Taliban.

jonathan martin

 who came to some fame nationally in her 2018 House race on the basis of her resume.

archived recording (amy mcgrath) I was the first woman marine to fly in an F18 in combat, and I got to land on aircraft carriers.

jonathan martin

She was a Marine pilot, and entered the House race talking a lot about her military experience 

archived recording (amy mcgrath) This is my new mission  to take on a Congress full of career politicians who treat the people of Kentucky like theyre disposable.

jonathan martin

 and almost immediately gained this national profile.

archived recording (amy mcgrath) Some are telling me a Democrat cant win that battle in Kentucky, that we cant take back our country for my kids and yours. Well see about that.

jonathan martin

But she was not a terribly good candidate, it turns out.

archived recording This is a disappointment to Democrats. It comes from state to Kentucky. Amy McGrath, the former Marine combat pilot, defeated by the four-term incumbent, Andy Barr.

jonathan martin

She was running in a pretty difficult seat for a Democrat.

archived recording But this is a district that Trump won by 15 points. Her opponent, Andy Barr, looks like will get that fourth term.

jonathan martin

And she lost what was otherwise a great year for Democrats. But Chuck Schumer, who runs the Senate Democratic caucus, and effectively runs recruitment of Senate Democratic candidates, figured that she had one very important asset that could help him in 2020. She raised a lot of money and built a large list of national donors in 2018.

michael barbaro

Hm. And so, as this Senate  not House race  gets underway this year, Im guessing Chuck Schumer decides to look to Amy McGrath once again.

jonathan martin

Exactly. Because the idea was not necessarily to beat Mitch McConnell, but to at least keep the race competitive, keep McConnell pinned down in Kentucky, keep him focused on raising money for his own re-election, and perhaps siphon some national G.O.P. money that would otherwise go to different states, and have it go to Kentucky. So that was Schumers thinking.

archived recording (chuck schumer) Look, Amy McGrath is our candidate. Shes a strong candidate.

jonathan martin

And he looked at McGrath and saw her money potential, saw the sort of breadth of her national donor list, and said 

archived recording (chuck schumer) Shes giving McConnell a run for his money. The Republican super PAC put $10 million dollars into Kentucky. Shes doing very well.

jonathan martin

 this is who I want to be our nominee against McConnell. And Im going to make sure that she does not have any kind of a consequential primary to speak of.

michael barbaro

So he wants to clear a path for her to become the nominee.

jonathan martin

Right. Schumer wants to clear the field. He wants McGrath to be their candidate. He doesnt want to deal with drama in the primary. He just wants to have her raising money, putting up enormous numbers to spook McConnell, and divert McConnells attention back to his own home state and his own re-election. So it does seem like, for some time, that McGrath is not going to have a terribly competitive primary. And so while McGrath seems to be full steam ahead towards the general election, with not much of a primary to speak of, she is banking money at an extraordinary rate. She has raised over $40 million, which is more money than a lot of Senate candidates raise in an entire campaign, let alone a primary.

michael barbaro

Yeah. Thats a lot of money. So as far as everybody is concerned, especially back in Washington, Amy McGrath is on a glide path to the nomination.

jonathan martin

Exactly right. And then something happens.

[music]

archived recording We turn now to a deadly police-involved shooting in Louisville. The victim was an E.M.T. Her family claims she was executed by police, as officers served a search warrant in the middle of the night.

jonathan martin

On March 13, shortly after midnight, Louisville police officers used a battering ram to enter the apartment of Breonna Taylor, who was a 26-year-old African-American emergency room tech, and shot her eight times while she was in bed in her own apartment.

archived recording 1 So they just went into her apartment looking for a suspect, whom we now understand was already in police custody. This is not unique to Louisville. archived recording 2 We need answers. We need answers, because this should have never happened.

jonathan martin

And this killing of Miss Taylor by Louisville police sparked an outcry in the state 

archived recording We have right to live while black!

jonathan martin

 that is then amplified, sadly, by the killing in late May of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

archived recording 1 (CHANTING) George Floyd! archived recording 2 Say his name! archived recording 3 George Floyd! archived recording 4 Say her name! archived recording 5 Breonna Taylor! archived recording 6 Say her name! archived recording 7 Breonna Taylor! archived recording 8 Say her name! archived recording 9 Breonna Taylor!

michael barbaro

And how does that begin to impact this Senate race?

jonathan martin

The activism in the aftermath of the killing of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd is extremely intense in Kentucky, and especially in Louisville. The demonstrations are nightly. There are clashes with police. And there is a candidate who is running from Louisville. Hes an African-American, and his candidacy is now starting to get more attention.

archived recording (charles booker) [APPLAUSE] I stand before you as your brother, as your cousin, as your neighbor, as your fellow good troublemaker. My name is Charles Booker. [CHEERING]

jonathan martin

35-year-old state representative named Charles Booker.

archived recording (charles booker) Im state representative for the 43rd District, which we are standing in. And if you are not from the 43rd District, I represent you anyway. [CHEERING]

jonathan martin

So he represents what he likes to say is the poorest zip code in all of Kentucky.

archived recording (charles booker) No one pays attention to my neighborhood. In the West end of Louisville, with roughly 75,000 people, we have just a couple of grocery stores, a handful of dollar stores, because they prey on us.

jonathan martin

He is from the West End of Louisville, black neighborhood.

archived recording (charles booker) And if you need to use public transportation to get to the hospital, it can take you a couple of hours. Jobs have left.

jonathan martin

And he is someone who is running as a progressive, and had been running as a progressive 

archived recording (charles booker) Our platform is about ending structural inequity, and ending generational poverty.

jonathan martin

 talking about issues like the Green New Deal, like single-payer health care, but hadnt gotten a lot of attention in large part because he hadnt raised much money. And McGrath had raised so much cash.

michael barbaro

Right.

jonathan martin

But after the killing of Taylor and then Floyd 

archived recording (charles booker) We are crying out for Brianna Taylor, and were crying out for ourselves.

jonathan martin

 once these demonstrations get going, there is now suddenly more attention to Booker. Because he is a state lawmaker who is in these protests.

archived recording (charles booker) When Breonna died, when she was killed  archived recording (protestor) Murdered! archived recording (charles booker)  a part of us was killed, as well. archived recording (protestor) Yes!

jonathan martin

He is getting tear gassed in the streets of Louisville. And he is seeing this up front. He is experiencing this himself, day in, day out in his hometown. He is effectively a Black Lives Matter candidate.

archived recording (charles booker) But if you look like me, if you look like him, if you look like him, if you look like her, you may be seen as a deadly weapon before being seen as a human being. archived recording Yes! archived recording (charles booker) It aint right, and its hurting all of us.

michael barbaro

And so what happens to Bookers candidacy as these protests intensify in Louisville, and all over the country?

jonathan martin

Well, the two largest papers in the state, The Courier-Journal in Louisville and Lexington Herald-Leader, taking note of this fraught moment of racial politics, endorse Booker and state that hes the best candidate for these times. So that helps to give him traction. And then, in addition to getting that key local support, hes getting the attention from national progressive leaders. Bernie Sanders offers his endorsement. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez gets behind his candidacy. And thats putting him on the sort of national progressive radar screen, if you will.

michael barbaro

So Jonathan, as Booker is, from everything youre describing, catching fire, what is the partys anointed candidate, Amy McGrath, doing in response?

jonathan martin

Well, she is talking about these demonstrations and about the killing of George Floyd a little bit more, in recognition that she cant take the primary for granted. But Amy McGrath is not a natural politician. This was part of her struggle in 2018. And it does not go perfectly when she tries to engage these issues. In fact, in a debate shes asked the question about 

archived recording Have you been on the ground in Louisville with the protesters the last three days or in Lexington or elsewhere, Miss McGrath?

jonathan martin

 have you been to any of the protests. And she answers pretty awkwardly.

archived recording (amy mcgrath) I have not. archived recording And, why? archived recording (amy mcgrath) Well, Ive been with my family and Ive had some family things going on this past weekend. But Ive been following the news and making sure that  you know, I think  were in the middle of a pandemic.

[music]

michael barbaro

So suddenly, Amy McGraths politics of moderation and her distance from these protests are seeming quite out of sync with the moment.

jonathan martin

Right. And, more to the point, Booker is very much tapping into the moment. This is suddenly a competitive primary. Amy McGrath has had to spend an enormous amount of money on ads in the last couple of weeks to sustain her advantage  money that I think she and national Democrats thought that they would use against McConnell. And Booker has made this more of a competitive race going into the primary Tuesday.

michael barbaro

And so what is Bookers surge here? What does that mean for Democratic Party leaders back in Washington, who bet so heavily on Amy McGrath?

jonathan martin

So Booker illustrates that the intensity, the activism that were seeing on the streets of America in the last few weeks, is now at the door front of the Democratic Party. And Democrats are eager to harness this energy and activism, especially when it comes to organizing against President Trump and Republicans this fall. But when it comes to their own races, their own primaries, their own party, its more complicated. So this does also represent a challenge to Democratic leaders.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Jonathan, how is it a challenge for Democratic Party leaders to have a candidate like Booker doing really well? Because on the surface it seems like a hotly contested Democratic primary that raises lots of attention, raises lots of money, that thats a good thing for the party.

jonathan martin

Well, it creates a challenge, because Chuck Schumer has gotten used to being able to dictate primaries in the Senate races basically every two years. But its not just about Schumer. This is about the Democratic Partys leadership being able to keep its grip on who the nominees are going to be, where the money is going to go. And this is a real challenge to that power, that grip on the party.

michael barbaro

And why does that grip matter if it may be out of sync with what Democratic primary voters want?

jonathan martin

Well, because leaders like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi believe that to keep or gain majorities they have to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters, and that that means nominating some candidates who are more moderate depending upon the state or the district that theyre running in.

michael barbaro

And Booker does not fit that mold.

jonathan martin

Exactly. Leaders like Schumer are skeptical that a candidate of Bookers liberal politics could win the race in a place like Kentucky, where Trump won by 30 points four years ago. But I think to get closer to the bone here, if Schumer is not able to control the outcomes of these Democratic primaries, and hes got people in his caucus, potentially, who are not loyal to him, who won despite his intervention, then thats going to create vote counting headaches for him. And looking at the map right now, his majority is probably going to be, if there is one, a seat or two. Its not going to be that extensive. So every vote counts. So hes thinking about, who am I going to have in my caucus? Whos going to be reliable? Whos going to be less so? And so thats where this matters.

michael barbaro

This reminds me a little bit of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dealt with, with the election of the squad, among whom is Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democrats who tugged the entire body at times to the left in ways that House leadership wasnt perhaps ready for.

jonathan martin

But its even more delicate in the case of Schumer because of math, because the Senate is going to be so closely divided next year. And if Democrats have a majority, itll be a narrow one. Think about it. Pelosi in the House  she won 40 seats in 2018. They had a pretty robust majority. So you could lose a handful of progressives, like the squad, and basically cater to your more moderate Democrats, because those are the ones that had numbers. This is just a more sort of delicate situation because the Senate is on a knifes edge.

michael barbaro

Jonathan, were talking about this race in Kentucky as if it is very high stakes for Chuck Schumer. But how much does this race, in particular, really matter?

jonathan martin

So this less about eventually beating McConnell, which is going to be a tall order in Kentucky, then it is about whats happening in the Democratic Party. And its not just in Kentucky. Also on Tuesday, there is a competitive primary featuring Eliot Engel, whos the long-serving chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whos facing a primary from an African-American, Jamaal Bowman. In Virginia, a fairly conservative district, there is also an African-American running in that primary. So what Im really interested in watching these primaries unfold is can progressives gather strength, organize and sort of overcome the establishment candidates in some of these races? But also, is 2020 going to be for black candidates what 2018 was for a lot of women, which is sort of capturing the energy of the moment? And I think thats going to be one of the most fascinating things to watch on Tuesday, is can black candidates like Jamaal Bowman in New York, like Booker in Kentucky  can they build these multi-racial coalitions, capitalizing on this extraordinary moment of race in America?

michael barbaro

Jonathan, it would seem counterproductive, not to mention perhaps hypocritical, for the Democratic leadership to stand in the way of such a change within their party, that you described. I mean, the party said it welcomed all these progressive women in 2018. And wouldnt it want to welcome and celebrate African-American progressive candidates in this coming election cycle?

jonathan martin

Well, heres the catch. A lot of the women in 2018  the Democrats embraced  were more moderate. You know, the squad got the attention. But a lot of the women who ran and won in 2018, who were not as well known, are much more centrist in their political orientation. I think the difference here is twofold. First of all, I think there is concern that some of their politics are too progressive for their states or districts. And I think in the case of Engel, of Congressman Engel, its just a matter of protecting incumbents. Thats a longstanding rule in both parties, that they support incumbents. So Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo feel obliged to support a longtime ally, somebody whos up for re-election.

michael barbaro

Right. They dont want to lose loyal votes, longtime allies. That all makes sense for the leadership, in theory. But isnt the greater risk for Democratic leaders, on a really practical level, that they are missing this moment? They are not getting behind candidates. And they risk losing touch with this very powerful constituency that seems to be ascendant within the party.

jonathan martin

Right! The left would say, this is what the moment is, and this is about the country now needs and demands. Given the virus, given issues of racial injustice, given the economic collapse, the moment cries out for real substantive sweeping policy changes in America, and that if you dont abide that, if you dont recognize that, then youre out of touch as a Democratic leader. And I think this conversation  this tension between the left and the center in the Democratic party, I think, is really going to come to the fore.

michael barbaro

And in that version of this, Jonathan, what becomes of some of these Democratic leaders who we started this conversation focusing on, like a Senator Schumer?

jonathan martin

Well, they have to adapt to the moment. And if they dont, then theyre going to pay a political price in their own party. And they risk losing control of their own partys nominating process, because they would further feed this energy on the left, and risk having their own colleagues lose primaries. And, yes, even perhaps in Schumers case, they would risk their own seats.

[music]

You know, Ive spent a lot of time talking to candidates. And they often try to hedge or they often try to trim their answers to reflect the states that theyre running in. But that was not the case when I talked to Booker.

jonathan martin Amy McGrath, your opponent, your primary opponent  do you think that she would lose to McConnell in the fall? charles booker Of course.

jonathan martin

He was very straightforward about the fact that he believes the moderate approach, trying to not be seen as too ideological, was a loser in Kentucky.

charles booker Its the same playbook that loses every time. And its this political B.S. that says, the only way you can beat them is just raise a whole lot of money. jonathan martin Right. charles booker Flood the airwaves. Dont talk about real issues. Dont talk about poverty. Just play the political game and youll peel off some conservative voters. That never works.

jonathan martin

He said weve tried that before. He said, weve seen that playbook used time and time again. And people are not going to fall for that bullshit again.

charles booker These arent issues that Im choosing out of political expediency. This is out of survival. We need the Green New Deal, because we need a cleaner environment. We need sustainable jobs. We need more investment in infrastructure.

jonathan martin

They want somebody whos going to be true to themselves, who is not going to try to sort of hammer or hedge. And he didnt mince any words.

jonathan martin But, Charles, what are you going to save the day after the primary when Schumer calls you on the phone says, if you want the money, you want our help, you got to ease off on some of that stuff? charles booker Well, were beating the status quo in the primary, and so I think that conversation will go a little bit different.

michael barbaro

Jonathan, thank you very much.

jonathan martin

Thank you.

[music]

michael barbaro

Polls in Kentucky opened at 6:00 a.m. today. Thousands of Democrats cast mail-in ballots, some of them weeks ago, before the race had tightened. Long lines are expected for those who plan to vote in person. A single polling place has been designated for Louisville, Bookers hometown, and a city of 600,000. Well be right back.

[music]

Heres what else you need to know today. On Monday, President Trump signed a sweeping executive order that bars many foreign workers from receiving visas through the end of the year, preventing those workers from filling more than half a million jobs. The White House said that the restriction on several different kinds of work visas would protect U.S. jobs in the midst of an economic crisis. But the move is opposed by many businesses, from tech firms to manufacturers, who say that it will hamper their ability to fill key jobs that Americans cant or wont do. And 

archived recording (tedros adhanom ghebreyesus) Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It seems that almost every day we reach a new and grim record. Yesterday, more than 183,000 new cases of Covid were reported to W.H.O., easily the most in a single day so far.

michael barbaro

 in a press conference on Monday, the World Health Organization warned that global infections from the coronavirus keep reaching record highs, fueled by the rise of cases in India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil, which has become the second country after the U.S. to report more than 50,000 deaths from the virus.

archived recording (tedros adhanom ghebreyesus) Some countries that have successfully suppressed transmission are now seeing an upswing in cases as they reopen their societies and economies.

michael barbaro

The United States now accounts for 20 percent of total new infections worldwide. Two states have reported more than 100,000 cases each over the past 14 days, Florida and Texas, where the governor, Greg Abbott, called the data, quote, unacceptable 

archived recording (greg abbott) I know that some people feel that wearing a mask is inconvenient or that it is like an infringement of freedom. But I also know that wearing a mask will help us to keep Texas open.

michael barbaro

 and urged residents to maintain precautions to avoid another lockdown.

archived recording (greg abbott) Because not taking action to slow the spread will cause Covid to spread even worse, risking peoples lives and ultimately leading to the closure of more businesses.

[music]

michael barbaro
Members of the public lined up in the rain Monday as they waited for a chance to say a brief goodbye to Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot by a former Atlanta police officer in a Wendys parking lot.

People filtered through quietly, masked and socially distant, to pay homage to Brooks as he lay in his casket at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Rain came down on those who waited outside at about 3 p.m., just as the 4-hour public viewing began. Brooks widow, Tomika Miller, arrived in all white at the famed Atlanta church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor.

Some of the mourners who walked in to see Brooks before he was put to rest wore shirts and masks in support of Black Lives Matter as violinist Richmond Punch played songs such as Rise Up by Andra Day.

Image: Public viewing for Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta (Elijah Nouvelage / Reuters)

A closed funeral will be held for Brooks on Tuesday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. King, is expected to speak.

Brooks died on June 12 when Atlanta officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan answered a call about a man sleeping in his car at a Wendys drive-thru. Authorities said that Brooks, who failed a field sobriety test at the Wendys, was also wanted in a suspected DUI incident.

Body and dash-camera video shows all three men having a conversation for about 25 minutes. According to the footage, Brooks told the officers that he visited his mother's gravesite earlier in the day and went out drinking with a friend who dropped him off at Wendy's because he was hungry.

Brooks said he could not remember how many drinks he had as the officers questioned him. At one point, he asked if he could walk home.

"I just dont want to be in violation of anybody," Brooks said, "Let me go, I'm ready to go."

Brooks resisted as they attempted to arrest him and a struggle ensued between him and the former officers, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting.

Story continues

Brooks was able to get one of the officer's stun guns and video showed him appearing to run away with the stun gun in his hand, GBI Director Vic Reynolds said following the deadly arrest.

Brooks, 27, died after he was shot twice in the back, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office, which ruled Brooks death a homicide.

Protests erupted in Atlanta as Brooks' name joined a list of Black Americans who have died at the hands of police in recent months. Demonstrators demanded justice for Brooks as they had for George Floyd, who died in a deadly arrest last month in Minneapolis, and Breonna Taylor, who was killed in a police raid at her Louisville home in March.

Rolfe was fired from the department within the 24 hours following the shooting, on the same day Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned over the incident. Brosnan, who did not use his gun, was placed on administrative leave.

Rolfe now faces charges that include felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage to property and violation of oath. Brosnan was charged with one count of aggravated assault and two counts of violation of oath.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced the charges last week, where he noted that Brooks "never presented himself as a threat" and appeared "almost jovial."

An attorney for Rolfe said in a statement Wednesday that the shooting was justified and that Rolfe feared for his life, as well as the lives of the other people in the parking lot, when he fired his weapon.

Attorneys for Brosnan said that the officer did not know Rolfe was going to place Brooks under arrest. In a press release on Wednesday, the attorneys said Brooks took Brosnan's stun gun from him and used it against the officer.
LOS ANGELESLate last year, AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels reached a $450,000 cash settlement with the city of Columbus, Ohio, over her improper 2018 arrest at a strip club there. Very quickly after the settlement announcement, both Donald Trump and Daniels former lawyer Michael Avenatti filed with the court to take what they said were unpaid legal fees out of that sum.

Earlier this month, however, a federal judge slapped down both Trump and Avenatti, ruling that the city may finally cut Daniels a check for the $450K, and that she may keep it, according to a Law.com report.

In Trumps case, a federal judge in 2018 threw out a defamation lawsuit filed by Avenatti and Daniels, saying that Daniels would be required to cover nearly $300,000 in Trumps legal fees as a result of the dismissal.

But federal Judge Michael Watson of the Southern District of Ohio ruled that Trump had no legal claim on Daniels Columbus settlement cash, because the federal judge in California who ruled on the defamation lawsuit never issued a final judgment on the fees.

Daniels current lawyer, Clark Brewster, told Law.com that Trump and his attorneys apparently dont know the difference [between] what a judgment is or not, based on pretty simply black letter law.

As for Avenatti, he sued Daniels shortly after the settlement over her July 2018 arrest was announced, claiming that she owes him millions in unpaid legal fees  though he also acknowledged that his agreement with her signed in February of 2018 required only a $100 up-front payment.

Watson turned away Avenattis attempted claim to seize Daniels settlement cash, saying in his ruling that the now-disgraced lawyer fails to cite to any legal support justifying his request.

But even after her court victory, Daniels made news again this past weekend, claiming via her Twitter account that a child predator had attempted to abduct her daughter.

Daniels wrote that when she attempted to report the attempted kidnapping, police refused to take her report because she lacked valid ID  though she presented a passport.

I shouldn't need any ID to report a child predator, she wrote. They were immensely unhelpful and 24 hours later NO UPDATE.

Photo by Inside Edition YouTube Screen Capture
South African universities have been instructed to ban smoking from all of their campuses and residences, according to a notice issued by the University of Pretoria.

In accordance with a notice received from the Department of Higher Education and in line with the directives from the National Command Council, smoking is prohibited on all University of Pretoria campuses and facilities for as long as the ban on the sale of cigarettes is in force, said Rikus Delport, spokesperson for the University of Pretoria.

A University of Pretoria email seen by MyBroadband warns that students or staff caught smoking at any university facility will face disciplinary action.

We take the health and well-being of our students and staff seriously and we urge everyone to comply with the precautions that were put in place on our campuses and in our residences, the email states.

MyBroadband asked the Department of Higher Education and Training, Science, and Innovation whether universities have been directed to ban smoking on campus and at residences.

A spokesperson for the department provided the following statement: In terms of the NCC Regulations, cigarettes are prohibited under level 3.

Department of Higher Education spokesperson has previously confirmed that smoking at universities and TVET colleges would be prohibited for the duration of South Africas ban on tobacco products.

Ban on sale of tobacco products

When South Africa began its COVID-19 lockdown on 27 March, the National Coronavirus Command Council banned the sale of tobacco products along with alcohol and other non-essential goods.

The government extended the lockdown and implemented its risk-adjusted strategy for economic activity with five COVID-19 alert levels, but did not allow citizens to restock on items deemed non-essential, including cigarettes and alcohol.

Even after the move to alert level 3, which allowed alcohol to be sold for home consumption, the sale of tobacco products remains banned.

If you are convicted of selling cigarettes during the lockdown, you face a possible fine, imprisonment for up to six months, or both.

The Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association (FITA) and British American Tobacco South Africa have taken legal action against the cigarette ban imposed by the government.

Among the concerns raised is that the continued ban on smoking has allowed the trade of illegal cigarettes to flourish in South Africa. They argue that the ban has not encouraged people to quit smoking, but to buy unregulated, untaxed cigarettes at inflated prices from illicit traders.

In response to Parliamentary questions, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the decision to prohibit the sale of cigarettes was based on a variety of factors.

At this stage, it is difficult to determine when the ban on the sale of tobacco and related products will be lifted, he said.

Ramaphosa said that this decision would depend on factors including the progression of the disease in South Africa, the readiness of local health systems, and the evolving knowledge on the nature and impact of the virus itself.
President Nana Akufo-Addo has issued a warning to Ghanaians to stop stigmatizing Coronavirus (COVID-19) patients or recovered persons.



The President, in his 12th update on COVID-19, expressed disgust over the behaviour of some citizens towards people who get infected by the virus.



"It is obvious that stigmatisation is adding further dimensions to the already difficult problem of the pandemic. Part of the reason for the spread of the virus is the reluctance of some persons to admit they have tested positive, and go into quarantine for fear of being stigmatised, and, in the process, continue to be agents of the spread of the virus."



President Akufo-Addo informed the nation that persons who recover from the disease do not pose any threat to human health neither should it be a shame for any person to contract the disease.



"Persons, who test positive for the virus, once they recover, do not pose any danger whatsoever to anyone, because the scientists tell us that they can no longer spread the virus. As I have said before, there is nothing shameful about contracting the virus," he asserted.



He therefore advised all Ghanaians "not have to lose our sense of community because of this pandemic".



Source: 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
Chinas Shandong Gold to Pay Premium in Takeover of Australian Gold Mining Firm

Perth-based mining firm Cardinal Resources is entertaining a takeover bid by one of Chinas largest, state-owned gold mining firms.

Shares in the ASX-listed Cardinal Resources surged after the announcement on June 18, which will see Shandong Gold buy 100 percent of the company in an all-cash offer.

The offer from Shandong, at 60 cents per share, beats out a previous offer from Russian firm Nord Gold.

The Chinese mining giant will be paying a premium on Cardinals average share price, which was valued at 46 cents per share on June 18.

The board of directors of Cardinal Resources have unanimously recommended the shareholders accept the bid.

CEO Archie Koimtsidis said the board negotiated what it believed was a strong offer for our shareholders and one which delivers a significant premium to Cardinals market price, at a time of considerable volatility and uncertainty in global markets.

I am pleased that Shandong Gold is committed to getting on with development of Namdini to establish the first long-life gold mine in the Upper East Region of Ghana, bringing many significant and long-lasting benefits to the local community and Ghana, he said in the announcement.

Cardinal has two gold mining projects in Ghana, West Africa.

The bid is subject to approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board, as well as regulatory bodies in China.

The entity buying Cardinal Resources is the Hong Kong-listed Shandong Gold, which is 48 percent owned by Shandong Group based in northeast China.

In turn, the group is controlled by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, a commission tasked with controlling Chinas near-100 mammoth sized state-owned enterprises.

State-owned enterprises (SOE) are tied with the ideological needs of the Chinese Communist Party and have been at the forefront of its Belt and Road Initiative.

According to the Chinese Regulation of Party Organisations in SOEs, the enterprises must implement Chinese leader Xi Jinpings socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics and uphold the partys leadership and strengthen party building.

Charles Burton, an associate professor of political science at Brock University, said SOEs are actors whose primary mandate is to further the interests of the Chinese strategic and military apparatus.

They are designed to realize the overall interests of the Chinese state and are therefore able to draw on all of the resources of the Chinese state, including military intelligence or other resources  he added.

Federal Member of Parliament, George Christensen told The Epoch Times that China-based companies were bound by the rules of a brutal regime meaning businesses, both state-owned and private, have to dance to its tune.

Shandong Golds proposed takeover of a gold mine in Canadas north in May is currently under review by the Canadian federal government.

The purchase of gold producing assets is not as heavily scrutinised compared to rare earth minerals given gold is a more widely traded commodity.
(Natural News) A little more than eight years ago, The New York Times published an article about a study warning that tasers pose risks to heart, the headline now reads  the original headline in a Google search said tasers can kill. But following the recent death of Rayshard Brooks, who grabbed a police officers taser and threatened him with it, the Times is now suggesting that tasers are basically harmless.

In the piece from eight years ago, as well as in numerous others posted since then and before, the Times tried to spin the narrative that tasers are so dangerous and deadly that cops should not be allowed to have them. It was nothing but doom and gloom about the use of tasers, in other words. But the moment that Brooks, a black man, grabbed one and pointed it at cops, resulting in them shooting him out of self-defense, the narrative has suddenly shifted to suggest that tasers are basically harmless toys.

Rather than tell the full and true story about how Brooks grabbed what the Times in 2012 had described as a deadly weapon, the Times in 2020 told a sob story about how Brooks became yet another African-American man to die at the hands of the police, failing to explain with accuracy that Brooks had threatened the officers who had been dealing civilly with him using a taser he grabbed off of one of their uniforms.

Amazingly, the Times in 2020 is trying to argue that the officers being threatened should have known that the taser in Brooks hand was suddenly no longer a deadly threat the moment that a second officer is present as backup, which was the case at the time. In other words, the Times reporting of the Brooks incident insinuates that the taser itself was not a threat, and that the only real threat was if Brooks had incapacitated one of the officers for long enough to grab his actual gun.

Use of force should be proportional to the threat, the Times in 2020 is reporting, the implication being that a taser is not deadly while a firearm is deadly. However, as far as we can tell, the Times never retracted its earlier articles, including the one from 2012, claiming that tasers are so deadly that officers should not be allowed to use them. So, which is it?

A taser is apparently a harmless squirt gun whenever a black hand is holding it

What America is once again witnessing is doublespeak by the mainstream media for the purpose of fueling confusion, division and ultimately, hatred. Whenever there is an opportunity to frame white people as abusers and killers of black people, the narrative shifts from whatever it was before to accommodate that agenda, which is exactly what is happening with this latest police killing.

It would seem as though, at least to the Times, tasers are only deadly when white people are holding them. When black people are holding tasers, these weapons are not much different than a squirt gun in terms of the threat involved. And if a white police officer dares to defend himself from a crazed black man threatening to shoot him with a taser, then this is just more evidence of systemic racism, according to the Times, and a reason to defund the police.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about how the abolish police agenda is also part of the abolish the Second Amendment agenda:

You can also keep up with the latest news about mainstream media propaganda fueling racial division in America by checking out Propaganda.news.

Sources for this article include:

NYTimes.com

NYTimes.com

NaturalNews.com
The United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents about 1.3 million laborers in grocery stores, meatpacking, retail and other sectors, estimates that 29,000 of its members have contracted the coronavirus and 225 have died from Covid-19.

Even before the pandemic, OSHA was too overwhelmed to meet its mandate. Its current number of inspectors, about 860 to cover the whole nation, is 240 fewer than it had in 1975. The agency has conducted 5,000 fewer inspections per year on average than it did during the prior two presidential administrations, according to data from the National Employment Law Project, a labor-friendly nonprofit. Nearly half of OSHAs leadership positions remain unfilled, according to the projects data.

The need for enforceable rules specific to the coronavirus has taken on greater urgency as states move to fully reopen. In its lawsuit, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had argued infections and death among workers will rise if the agency doesnt draw up emergency temporary standards. And indeed, Texas and Florida, populous states that were early to open, have had a record number of new positive virus cases in recent days. Without a federal standard, city officials in Texas are pleading with Gov. Greg Abbott for the authority to mandate face masks in public settings.

Schools and summer camps, too, will begin opening up over the next few months with no clear mandates on how to ensure safety, needlessly putting workers, children and their families at greater risk.

Congress has done little to help businesses with clarity or workers with protections. When the House passed its latest stimulus package linked to the crisis, it included requirements that OSHA adopt an emergency standard for enforcing safety measures related to Covid-19. But the Senate has not voted on that bill, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell holds out for special legal protections for businesses that could otherwise be sued for failing to provide safe workplaces. That means, in its current form, the stimulus bill looks likely to fail, further delaying worker protections.

The coronavirus crisis has put more than 30 million Americans out of work. The lucky ones who are still on the job or who can hope to return to one soon deserve to know that the federal government wants to protect their health as much as their bosses economic well-being. OSHA can help.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
On this evening's installment of the RTE Crimecall programme, presenter Sharon Ni Bheolain will speak with Detective Sergeant Shane McCartan, as Gardai appeal for information on the 2018 murder of Dublin man Eric Fowler.

The programme will include CCTV footage of Eric Fowlers last known movements on the day of his murder, as well as footage of the car that was used by suspects.
State-owned steel giant Baowu is leading a consortium of steelmakers seeking to revive a long-stalled iron ore project in Guinea, taking over from Chalco as it seeks to secure supply of the main raw material used in steel production.

China Baowu Steel Group Corp. Ltd. is hoping to develop the Simandou iron mine in the West African nation after acquiring shares of the project held by Aluminum Corp. of China (Chalco) in cooperation with other steelmakers, Caixin has learned, although no details of the share purchase have yet been disclosed.

Multiple sources have told Caixin that Baowu is seeking to raise some $6 billion for a fund to develop the mine, persuading other major Chinese steel companies to co-invest in the project. But the fund will only provide a small portion of the money needed, as Baowu estimates getting Simandou up and running could require more than $15 billion all told after factoring in the necessary infrastructure build-out, such as a cross-country railroad and deep-water port.

Located in the mountains of southeastern Guinea, Simandou holds more than 8.6 billion tons of iron ore reserves, according to Guineas National Institute of Statistics, considered to be the worlds largest and highest-quality untapped reserve. Some industry insiders expect it could produce up to 150 million tons of iron ore per year, or about 14% of Chinas 1.07 billion tons of iron ore imports in 2019.

Mining rights have been split into four blocks, none of which have yet been developed. The first two are owned by SMB-Winning, a consortium backed by Singaporean and Chinese companies. Chalco owns 44.65% of blocks three and four of the project, with Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto holding the remainder.

Given the huge investment needed to develop overseas iron mines, teaming up with other miners can help spread risk, Wang Juan, CFO of a Baowus listed arm, said in a quarterly earnings call earlier this year.

Steel companies like Shougang Group Co. Ltd. and China Minmetals Corp. have engaged in the talks, and Baowu says it also welcomes overseas partnerships.

The move comes after prices of iron ore recovered to pre-coronavirus levels of $90 in May, now hovering at $100 per ton. China imports buys about 68% of the worlds supply of the critical steel ingredient, with over 80% dependence on imports.

The most painful thing for Chinas steel industry is the rise in iron ore prices, Baowu Chairman Chen Derong said at an industry association meeting in January. The average production cost for international iron ore miners was around $40 per ton last year, while the purchase price for imported iron ore in China more than doubled to $90 per ton, he said. Chen said he expects the landed cost of Simandou iron ore to settle at around $40 per ton.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Rio Tinto is a Brazilian company. It is Anglo-Australian.

Contact reporter Lu Yutong (yutonglu@caixin.com)
THE WOODLANDS, Texas, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN) today reaffirmed its overall general outlook for the second quarter 2020 and announced that overall sales for the quarter are expected to be down between approximately 30 to 35 percent versus last year. Huntsman noted that the sales trends showed improvement from April to May, and it expects to see this continued improvement through June. Results in its Polyurethanes division are expected to be modestly better than expected as trends in China and in U.S. construction, including spray foam, are better than originally anticipated. The better-than-expected results in Polyurethanes are being mostly offset by weaker-than-anticipated results in Huntsman's Textiles Effects division due largely to the prolonged impact of mandated shutdowns in key textile manufacturing regions, and the expected recovery in the industry may not begin until the third quarter due to the continued lockdowns. Huntsman anticipates that adjusted EBITDA in its Textiles Effects division will likely be slightly negative for the second quarter. Huntsman expects that results in the Performance Products division will be in-line with the prior outlook, but the results in the Advanced Materials division may fall a little short of expectations as a result of a deeper trough in Aerospace, Europe, and India than anticipated at the time of its last quarterly earnings call.

Huntsman Corporation will hold a conference call on Tuesday, July 28, 2020, at 10:00 a.m. ET to discuss its second quarter 2020 financial results, which will be released at approximately 6:00 a.m. ET that day.

Webcast link: https://78449.themediaframe.com/dataconf/productusers/hun/mediaframe/38928/indexl.html

Participant dial-in numbers: Domestic callers: (877) 402-8037 International callers: (201) 378-4913

The conference call will be accompanied by presentation slides that will be accessible via the webcast link and Huntsman's investor relations website, ir.huntsman.com. Upon conclusion of the call, the webcast replay will be accessible via Huntsman's website.

About Huntsman:

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and specialty chemicals with 2019 revenues of approximately $7 billion. Our chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. We operate more than 70 manufacturing, R&D and operations facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 9,000 associates within our four distinct business divisions. For more information about Huntsman, please visit the company's website at www.huntsman.com.

Social Media:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Huntsman_Corp

Facebook: www.facebook.com/huntsmancorp

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/huntsman

Forward-Looking Statements:

Certain information in this release constitutes 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. These statements are based on management's current beliefs and expectations. The forward-looking statements in this release are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances and involve risks and uncertainties that may affect the company's operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors as discussed under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Huntsman companies' filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Significant risks and uncertainties may relate to, but are not limited to, volatile global economic conditions, cyclical and volatile product markets, disruptions in production at manufacturing facilities, reorganization or restructuring of Huntsman's operations, including any delay of, or other negative developments affecting the ability to implement cost reductions, timing of proposed transactions, and manufacturing optimization improvements in Huntsman businesses and realize anticipated cost savings, and other financial, economic, competitive, environmental, political, legal, regulatory and technological factors. The company assumes no obligation to provide revisions to any forward-looking statements should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by applicable laws.

SOURCE Huntsman Corporation

Related Links

http://www.huntsman.com


When they ignored the police appeal, the owner of the house was asked to make one last attempt to persuade the militants to surrender

Three militants believed to be the cadres of Jammu and Kashmir chapter of the Islamic State (ISJK) were killed in a gunfight with security forces here on Sunday.

The police officials said that one of the slain militants was involved in the sneak attack carried out by motorbike-borne gunmen in Ahmed Nagar, Pandach area on the peripheries of Srinagar on May 20, leaving two Border Security Force (BSF) jawans Rana Mandal and Zia ul-Haq dead. They said that the SLR rifle snatched from one of the slain BSF men was recovered from the encounter site on Sunday.

The house in Pozwalpora locality of Srinagars Zonimar area in which the militant trio was holed up was damaged in the security forces final assault.

Before the combat started early Sunday, the police officials made an appeal to the militants to lay down their arms through public address system. When they ignored it, the owner of the house was asked to make one last attempt to persuade the militants to surrender.

In a video clip, the man (name withheld) can be heard pleading before the militants trapped in his house, Please, have mercy on me and my family. Ive a large family to look after. My daughters wedding is scheduled for next month. My brothers, for Gods sake...have mercy on me and my family. Please, surrender. I had told you last night (about possibility of the security forces tracking them down) but you didnt listen to me. They (security forces) conceded my request to give you one more opportunity to surrender. If you dont do that they will torch my home. I have no money to rebuild it. Please, come out and surrender to save my home.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range), Vijay Kumar, said that repeated attempts were made to persuade the militants to surrender, but they rejected the offer. Yet the J&K Police and security forces showed patience and exercised utmost restraint, thereby ensuring a clean operation with no collateral damage in an otherwise highly congested and densely populated area of Srinagar City, he said.

The police identified the slain militants as Shakoor Farooq Langoo, a resident of Srinagars Bharthana area, and Shahid Ahmad Bhat of Semthan village of Bijbehara area in southern Anantnag district. The identification of the other killed terrorist is yet to be ascertained. All the killed terrorists were affiliated with proscribed terror outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and ISJK, a statement issued by the police here said. Local sources said that the third slain militant could be Mohsin Aslam Khanwan, also a local militants and resident of Srinagars Anchar, Soura area.

The officials said that a cordon-and-search operation was launched by the J&K polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group and the Central Reserve Police Force in Zonimar area at dawn on Sunday on specific input generated by local police regarding the presence of militants in the area. During the search operation, the hiding terrorists were repeatedly appealed to surrender through their families and the community members of the area but instead they started firing indiscriminately upon search party, which was retaliated leading to an encounter, the police said.

Mobile internet services were snapped in entire Srinagar district soon after the security forces launched the search operation in Zonimar area.

On Saturday evening, one militant identified by the police as Pakistani national Tayab Waleed alias Imran Bhai alias Gazi Baba, and reportedly affiliated with Jaish-e-Muhammad was killed in a gunfight in apple orchards in southern Kulgam district.

The police sources here said the fighting broke out between gunmen and the security forces in orchards outside Lokhdipora village in Nehama area of Kulgam after the latter laid siege to these on learning about the presence of militants.

This was the 9th encounter between the militants and security forces in South Kashmir in past three weeks. As many as 28 militants were gunned down in these clashes.

The Army had on Friday claimed that it sees a palpable change on ground after each operation carried out against separatist militants in J&K and said the endeavour made together with local police and other security forces to bring peace is revealing glaring feats.

With every operation that is being concluded we are moving on the path of peace. I can feel it on ground theres a palpable difference that at the end of every operation the next operation is taking place under much cleaner circumstances, the commander of Srinagar-based 15 Corps Lt. Gen. Baggavalli Somashekhar Raju told reporters here after eight militants were killed in two separate fire fights with security forces in south Kashmirs twin districts of Shopian and Pulwama Thursday through Friday.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands:--- CCRIF paid the Government of Guatemala approximately US$3.6 million under its excess rainfall (XSR) parametric insurance policy for nine days of rain that occurred during Tropical Storms Amanda and Cristobal. The policy was triggered by rains that started on May 31.

Amanda, which originated in the Pacific Ocean, initially made landfall on Guatemalas Pacific coast on May 31, causing flooding and landslides. This tropical storm dissipated but the remnants reorganized to become Tropical Storm Cristobal, the third storm in the Atlantic Basin, on June 1  a rare cross-over tropical cyclone with origins in the Pacific Basin. Amanda and Cristobal led to over a week of devastating rainfall across parts of Central America.

Guatemala became a member of CCRIF in 2019 and is receiving a payout within its first year of joining the Facility. This payment is being made under Guatemalas policy for 2019/20. The new policy year started on June 1, 2020, for which Guatemala has renewed its excess rainfall coverage.

CCRIF currently has 22 member governments of which three are from Central America  Nicaragua, Panama, and Guatemala. Since its inception in 2007, CCRIF has made a total of 43 payouts for 21 events (earthquakes, tropical cyclones, and excess rainfall events) to 14 member governments totalling US$155.8 million. CCRIFs payouts are made within 14 days of an event, allowing governments to begin to address their most pressing needs and close the liquidity gap.

In the 2019/20 policy year, CCRIF made five payouts as follows: two to The Bahamas totalling US$12.8 million following Hurricane Dorian, which battered the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama in September 2019; one to Trinidad and Tobago totalling US$362,982 for its excess rainfall policy, which was triggered due to rainfall associated with Tropical Cyclone Karen in October 2019; one payout of US$203,136 to Belize also due to rains from Amanda and Cristobal; and the current payout to Guatemala.

These rapid payouts are possible because the insurance policies that CCRIF sells are parametric as opposed to indemnity insurance  otherwise referred to as traditional insurance. Parametric insurance products are insurance contracts that make payments based on the intensity of an event (for example, hurricane wind speed, earthquake intensity, or volume of rainfall) and the amount of loss calculated in a pre-agreed model caused by these events. Therefore, payouts can be made very quickly after a hazard event, as parametric insurance does not require an on-the-ground assessment of individual losses after an event before a payment can be made  a process that can take months for a claim to be settled.

CCRIF extends sympathies to the governments and people of Guatemala  and all Central American countries that were impacted by these events  for the loss of life and impacts on communities and livelihoods caused by these storms.

In 2015, CCRIF signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Council of Ministers of Finance of Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic (COSEFIN) to enable Central American countries to join the Facility. Nicaragua was the first Central American country to join and has been a member of CCRIF since 2015. Since joining CCRIF, the Government of Nicaragua has received two payouts totalling US$1.6 million under its earthquake and tropical cyclone policies.

CCRIF provides parametric insurance coverage to the two regions  the Caribbean and Central America  through different segregated portfolios or cells. CCRIF aggregates disaster risks within the two regions but keep the risks segregated across regions, achieving the kind of risk diversification and spreading within each zone that members are not able to attain on their own and reducing costs by sharing operational services between both regions.

Empirical evidence based on studies undertaken by the World Bank illustrates that insurance obtained through CCRIF could be as low as half the cost of coverage a member country could obtain by approaching the reinsurance market on its own. The Facility provides parametric insurance policies for tropical cyclones, excess rainfall, earthquakes, and fisheries to 19 Caribbean and 3 Central American governments and is always encouraging new countries to join.
A video of a black Baton Rouge activist eviscerating a white school board member for online shopping during a meeting about renaming a school named after slave owner Robert E. Lee has gone viral.

Gary Chambers, who was a candidate for the Louisiana state senate last year, tore into Connie Bernard at the meeting on Thursday.

He'd taken a photograph of Connie online shopping on her laptop while others spoke.

She'd defended the school's name despite Lee's history as a prolific slave-owner, and told people to 'learn more about him'.

Chambers said when he got to the microphone: 'I had intended to get up here and talk about how racist Robert E. Lee was, but I'm gonna talk about you, Connie.

'Sitting over there shopping while we're talking about Robert E. Lee.

'This is a picture of you shopping while we're talking about racism in history in this country ... Because you don't give a damn and it's clear.'

Bernard got up and left the room without saying anything.

Gary Chambers, who was a candidate for the Louisiana state senate last year, called on Connie Bernard to resign at a school board meeting last Thursday

Chambers tore into Bernard, saying: 'Clearly, you don't give a damn'

Bernard has said she wasn't shopping while listening to the debate but taking notes and reading online comments

In his speech, Chambers fumed: '[You're] sitting over there shopping while we're talking about Robert E. Lee.

Since you don't know history sister, let me tell you what my ancestors said.

'Robert E Lee was a brutal slave master. Not only did he say, whoop the slaves, he said lay it on them hard.

'He said put brine on them so it'll burn them. You sit your arrogant self in here, sit on there shopping, while the pain and the hurt of the people of this community is on display.

'Because you don't give a damn. You should resign. You should walk out of here and resign and never come back. You are the example of racism in this community.

'You are horrible. Now to the rest of the board, you have an obligation to the people of this community.'

Bernard had argued: 'I would hope that they would learn a little bit more about General Lee, because General Lee inherited a large plantation and he was tasked with the job of doing something with those people who lived in bondage to that plantation, the slaves, and he freed them.'

In fact, Lee and his wife inherited 189 slaves in 1857 when her father died.

The school board unanimously approved that the name of the school be changed despite Bernard's comments.

Chambers appeared on MSNBC on Monday to say he still thinks Bernard should resign

On Monday, Chambers appeared on MSNBC where he said the video showed how black voices were ignored by white people in power.

'What you saw in that video is really a reflection of what black America is dealing with.

'You have black folks speaking up passionately about what they feel while you have a school board member, a representative of the public, who is sitting there scrolling on the internet while people are expressing their concerns.

'We wonder why buildings burn... when we come before you, you scroll on the internet. The state before you, Louisiana is ranked number 50 in the nation.

'When you look at Republican policies failing us day in and day out and you look at a Republican sitting there, while we're talking about a critical issue, and ignoring us, it's heartbreaking and I think that's why it has resonated with so many people,' he said.

Board Vice President Tramelle Howard told Bernard at the meeting: 'The comments you made were extremely tone deaf to our collective community, extremely tone deaf to the students of our district, and I would be remiss if I did not stand up and stand against that.

'I understand where you were coming from in trying to recognize history but it's just wrong, totally wrong. This man was a murderer, he was a racist and a bigot.'

In 2016, the school board had voted to remove 'Robert E.' from the school's name while maintaining 'Lee.'

Bernard was one of five board members who voted to maintain the name at that time, which was attributed to the strongly held feelings of her constituents.

Bernard has since changed her tune, telling WBRZ: 'My comments last week about the naming of Lee High School were insensitive, have caused pain for others, and have led people to believe I am an enemy of people of color, and I am deeply sorry.

'I condemn racial injustice in any form.

'I promise to be part of the solution and to listen to the concerns of all members of our community. I stand with you, in love and respect.'

Thursday's vote paves the way for a special committee, made up of pupils, local people and staff, to convene and select alternative names.

The school board are seeking to have a new name by July 16.
The death has taken place of the wife of a Garda who was almost killed but suffered life-changing injuries after being blown up by the IRA on the Laois/Offaly border the 1970s at the height of The Troubles.

Betty Peters, (nee Kennedy) passed away at the Sue Ryder Centre, Portlaoise, June 19 peacefully, surrounded by her loving family.

Betty, who hailed from Moneygall in Co Offaly, was predeceased by her husband Tom and son Dick. She was loving mother to Elma and Breidette (O'Donnell) and cherished grandmother to Ellen, Eva and Luke. Deeply regretted and sadly missed by her loving family, son in law Paul, brothers Phillip and Eamonn, sister Anne Holohan, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

A teacher by profession, the deceased lived or many years as carer to her husband Tom a former Garda Detective in Portlaoise. The Kilkenny native was one of five gardai blown up by an IRA gang in 1976. Garda Malachy Clerkin was killed in the attack.

Det Peters suffered lifelong injuries in the bomb on the Laois Offaly border near Portarlington in Garryhinch. From then until his death in October 2018, Betty remained with Tom helping him recover from, and live his injuries, while they reared a family of three children at their home on the Stradbally Road in Portlaoise. Tom lost his sight and hearing and suffered other injuries.

Betty was with Tom and their family and his surviving colleagues in Templemore in 2017 when the bravery shown by the gardai was finally recognised when they were awarded with the Scott Medal for bravery - the highest honour that can be bestowed on gardai by the Irish State.

Gerry Bohan, Peter Clerkin representing Michael Clerkin, Ben Thornton and Jim Cannon were also awarded medals at the Scott Medal presentation in the Garda College, Templemore on the same day.

The men were called to Garryhinch after Portlaoise Garda Station received a message that the home of then Laois Offaly TD Oliver J Flanagan was about to be attacked by the IRA.

Laois Offaly TD and Minister for Justice and Equality paid tribute.

"It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of my neighbour Betty Peters. Betty was a kind & generous woman who lovingly looked after her husband Tom for 40 years following the injuries he sustained in an IRA bomb attack in Garryhinch.

"Betty remained of positive disposition in the face of much adversity & sorrow. I offer my deepest sympathy to Elma & Breidette," he said.

Laois Offaly Division Garda Chief Superintendent John Scanlon passed on his condolences to Betty's family as did many others including Tom Phelan on behalf of members Garda Siochana Retired Members Association.

Given the exceptional climate and to protect the welfare of everyone who knew her, a private funeral, with immediate family only, will take place, at 12 noon on Monday in SS Peter and Paul's Church, Portlaoise.

It will be streamed on the webcam; http://www.portlaoiseparish.ie/web-cam/

Burial afterwards in SS Peter and Pauls Cemetery, Portlaoise.
As the boycott calls against China get louder, the Maharashtra government on Monday has put three major agreements worth Rs 5000 crore with China-based companies on hold.

Amid boycott calls against Chinese products after Galwan clash, in which 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives, the Maharashtra government has put 3 major agreements worth Rs 5000 crore with 3 China-based companies on hold for now. These agreements carry huge employment potential. The 3 projects were to plough money in Talegaon district of Maharashtra. The agreements were signed during the Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 initiative recently.

During the Magnetic Maharashtra 2.0 meet, the Thackeray-led government signed many agreements worth over Rs 16,000 crore with international companies. Among these global companies, the state government also signed agreements with 3 China-based companies, which included a Rs 3,770 crore memorandum (MoU) with Great Wall Motors (GWM) to set up an automobile plant in Talegaon.

Another agreement was signed with PMI Electro Mobility in a joint venture with Chinas Foton. The agreement was expected to create 1,500 jobs in the state. The third agreement was made with Hengli Engineering, which was going to generate 150 jobs by investing Rs 240 crore in the state, as a part of its phase II expansion at Talegaon.

Also read: I am proud of my privilege: Sonam Kapoor to trolls

Also read: I dont care, says Sonakshi Sinha on quitting twitter

The government of Maharashtra announced their decision of putting the agreements with China-based companies on hold, a day after its coalition partner Congress told CM Thackeray to cancel the agreement that was signed with Chinese company Great Wall Motors (GWM). States Industry minister Subhash Desai said that the decision has been taken in consultation with the Centre. The agreements with China-based companies were signed prior to the LAC standoff.

India wants peace but that doesnt mean we are weak. Chinas nature is betrayal. India is mazboot, not majboor, said Maharashtras CM and Shiv Senas chief Uddhav Thackeray. Displaying faith in Modi government, he said that our government has the ability to give a befitting reply.

Also read: Mizoram earthquake: CM Zoramthanga says no casualties reported

For all the latest Business News, download NewsX App
Health insurer Florida Blue, its philanthropic arm Florida Blue Foundation, and GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation, parent to a family of healthcare companies, have announced $25 million in investments over five years to organizations focused on diversity, inclusion, and health equity. The commitment coincided with the launch of GuideWells Equity Alliance, an initiative focused on addressing systemic racism and the resulting health disparities for Black Americans.

We are at a turning point in the historical fight for equal justice, opportunity and better healthcare for Black people, said Pat Garaghty, president and CEO of GuideWell and Florida Blue. We cannot fulfill our mission of helping people and communities achieve better health without doing the urgent and necessary work to end systemic racism. Equity Alliance represents our long-term commitment and responsibility to accelerate support of our Black employees, members and communities. We have a long history of standing up for social and racial equality, but we need to do more. Our strength lies in our diversity and ability to solve problems together. We will make financial and operational investments to foster unity and an equal playing field and create a meaningful and lasting impact in the communities we serve.
The Bihar regiment has made a significant contribution in safeguarding India from its enemy, its acts of immense courage and valour have added glory in the pages of Indian army. The regiment fought bravely in the recent clash with China's Peoples Liberation Army at the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, losing 12 soldiers including the Commanding Officer of its 16th Battalion Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu.

The regiment has several achievements and victories in the battlefield against its name and has been at the forefront of many successful military operations.

Here's a look at the history of Bihar regiment.

The Bihar Regiment was raised by the British East India Company as the Bengal Native Infantry. In fact, the British were so impressed with the valour and tenacity of the Bihari soldiers that in 1758 when Lord Robert Clive became the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency, the 34th Sepoy Battalion was raised entirely with soldiers recruited from Bhojpur district of Bihar. The other areas from where the soldiers were primarily recruited included Shahabad and Munger districts of present-day Bihar.

These troops scored spectacular victories during Buxar, Karnatic and Maratha Wars. They even proved their worth overseas at Malaya, Sumatra and Egypt.

But the Bihari troops also showed their fearless attitude and strict principles by being the first to revolt against the introduction of greased cartridges and preferred being blown by the guns than lose their faith during India's First War of Independence (1857).

Fearing their war-waging capabilities and the damage they caused during the 1857 First War of Independence, the British disbanded all 18 Bihar battalions and all the recruitment from the state was stopped.



Babu Kunwar Singh and Birsa Munda are the two legendary figures of the independence struggle. While Babu Kunwar Singh was one of the heroes of 1857, Birsa Munda, from the Munda tribe of present-day Jharkhand, gave a tough time to the British.

Large-scale recruitment of soldiers from Bihar started once again during the Second World War and they joined the 19th Hyderabad Regiment. 1 Bihar Regiment was raised on September 15, 1941, and owes its origin to the 11/19 Hyderabad Regiment.

The Bihar Regimental Crest contains three-headed lions of Ashoka. The crest was selected by the then Officiating Commanding Officer 1st Bihar Battalion Captain M Habibullah Khan Khattak in 1941.

Battle Honours

The Battalion was awarded two 'Battle Honours' during World War II namely 'Haka' and 'Gangaw' and was also bestowed with the 'Theatre Honour' of Burma. 2 Bihar also fought with distinction in Malaya as part of the `ZIPPER FORCE' under Lieutenant Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Sant Singh.

The regiment also participated in the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971 and accomplished the assigned tasks in a commendable manner. The 1st Battalion, Bihar Regiment took part in Operation Vijay during the 1999 Kargil War against Pakistan. 1 Bihar recaptured Jubar Hill and Tharu from the Pakistanis and was honoured with Chief of the Army Staff Unit Citation, Battle Honour Batalik and Theatre Honour Kargil.

Several battalions of Bihar Regiment have taken part in United Nation Peace Missions including 1 Bihar in Somalia (1993-1994). Troops of 10 Bihar, 5 Bihar and 14 Bihar been part of United Nation peacekeeping operations in Congo in 2004, 2009 and 2014 respectively.

Bihar Regiment also has four Rashtriya Rifles battalions (4RR, 24RR, 47RR, 63RR) which is among the highest number of such units among all regiments of the Indian Army.

One of the highly decorated regiments of the Indian Army, soldiers of Bihar Regiment have won the following awards till date (June 22, 2020):

Pre-Independence

(i) Distinguished Service Order (DSO ) - 7

(ii) Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) - 8

(iii) Military Cross (MC) - 5

(iv) Order of British India (OBI) - 6

(v) Military Medal (MM) - 9

Post Independence

(i) Ashoka Chakra (AC) - 7

(ii) Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) - 35

(iii) Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) - 9

(iv) Kirti Chakra (KC) - 21

(v) Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM ) - 49

(vi) Vir Chakra (VrC ) - 49

(vii) Shaurya Chakra (SC) - 70

(viii) Yudh Seva Medal (YSM) - 9

(ix) Sena Medal (SM)- 448

(x) Jivan Rakshak Padak - 7

(xi) Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) - 42

(xii) Mention in Despatches - 45

10 Bihar's Lieutenant Colonel Harsh Uday Singh Gaur was awarded the Ashok Chakra in 1994 while Lieutenant Colonel Shanti Swaroop Rana (Posthumous) of 3 Bihar received it in 1997 for anti-terror operations in Baramulla and Kupwara districts respectively. 12 Bihar's Captain Gurjinder Singh Suri (Posthumous) was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra in 1999 for his gallant action in repulsing an attack by Pakistani soldiers and then chasing and eliminating several enemy soldiers. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan (parent unit 7 BIHAR) was awarded the Ashoka Chakra (Posthumously) for his gallant action during the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 by Pakistani terrorists.

Other Vir Chakra awardees include Colonel M Ravi, 10 Bihar, 1971 East Pakistan (Later Bangladesh), Lieutenant Colonel PC. Sawhney, 10 Bihar, 1971 East Pakistan (Later Bangladesh), Major (Later Major General) DP Singh, 10 Bihar, 1971 East Pakistan (Later Bangladesh), Major Harpal Singh Grewal (Posthumous), 8 Bihar, 1971 East Pakistan (Later Bangladesh), Subedar Ghama Oraon, 1 Bihar, Sri Lanka, Colonel PK Sinha, 15 Bihar, Sri Lanka, Naik Shatrughan Singh, 1 Bihar, Batalik sector, Kargil War (1999) and Major (Later Colonel) KPR Hari, 1 Bihar, Batalik sector, Kargil War (1999).
Strengths The best performing precious metal for the week was silver, up 0.83 percent as hedge funds boost their net long position to a 14-week high. Swiss exports of gold to the U.S. hit another high in May to 126.6 tons. ETFs added 27,739 troy ounces of gold to their holdings on Thursday, marking the sixth straight day of inflows. Bloomberg notes that total gold held by ETFs rose 22 percent this year to 100.9 million ounces.



Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month price forecast for gold to $2,000 an ounce. Analysts including Mikhail Sprogis said in a note that gold investment demand tends to grow into the early stage of economic recovery, driven by continued debasement concerns and lower real rates. The bank added that it estimates fear-driven demand for bullion has boosted prices by 18 percent this year.



Gold has traded in a narrow range for the past month. The two biggest factors for the metal are comments from the Fed and COVID-19. The yellow metal has held its gains for the year on the wave of unprecedented stimulus to support the economy and concerns of the number of virus infections rising. Gold then had a surprise rally on Friday and finished the week back in the $1,755 range.

Weaknesses The worst performing precious metal for the week was palladium, down 1.08 percent, despite the positive news that it should remain in deficit this year. Traders were rotating positions to silver with expectations that industrial uses for palladium will still be soft in the near term.



Although gold and silver are in favor with ETF investors, money managers net long positions in Comex futures and options for the metals are down by more than 50 percent this year, according to Bloomberg. Commerzbank AG says gold positions have fallen for five of the past six weeks, which explains why prices are stuck in a range despite strong demand from ETFs.



Gold retreated early in the week after the U.S. dollar strengthened on concern that a second wave of COVID-19 infections could hurt the economic recovery. Equities fell on Monday on news that Beijing reported new virus cases. The sell-off happening in other assets is rubbing off on gold as well, Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, director of Commtrendz Risk Management Services, told Bloomberg. Opportunities Anglo American Platinum CEO Natascha Viljoen said the palladium market should remain in deficit in 2021 and sees a small deficit for this year. The metal producer also said it is targeting 70 percent of output capacity by the end of June with potential for that to rise to 90 percent in the second half of this year.



Cardinal Resources announced that it has entered into an agreement with Shandong Gold where Shandong will acquire 100 percent of the issued and outstanding shares in Cardinal in cash. K92 Mining provided an update on operations amid the COVID-19 state of emergency in Papua New Guinea. The miner said its gold production is one track to exceed production in the first quarter, despite lower running time due to shutdowns.



Advisors to the worlds wealthiest are urging them to hold more gold in their portfolio. Reuters reports that some private banks are now channeling up to 10 percent of client portfolios into gold as central bank stimulus reduces bond yields. Nine private banks spoken to by Reuters said they had advised clients to increase their allocation to the yellow metal. Threats A growing worry in the economy is that job losses could become permanent from the coronavirus effects. Bloomberg Economics research highlights that about 50 percent of job losses came from the lockdown and weak demand, 30 percent from the reallocation shock and 20 percent from high unemployment benefits encouraging workers to stay home. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Neel Kashkari commented that his base case is that a second wave of virus comes this fall and the unemployment rate could go higher.



Evercore ISI research showed that total macro risk has climbed to a new all-time high in its 14-year model. The research says, volatility associated with changes in S&P correlation now accounts for more than half of total macro risk, followed by the risk influence of credit spreads and the U.S. dollar.



Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham said in an interview on CNBC this week that the U.S. stock market is in a bubble and that investing in the market now is simply playing with fire. Bloomberg notes that the S&P 500 index has risen almost 40 percent from its March 23 low. Grantham added that it is a rally without precedent  the fastest in this time ever and the only one in the history books that takes place against a background of undeniable economic problems. By Frank E. Holmes Contributing to kitco.com Follow @bulldogholmes www.goldnewsletter.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
A patient who met many of the published safety guidelines for chloroquine therapy against COVID-19 was observed to have a very abnormal ECG pattern after treatment began, leading to multiple episodes of torsade de pointes (TdP), a life-threatening arrhythmia in which the lower chambers of the heart beat out of sync with the upper chambers. Her condition was resolved after chloroquine was discontinued, investigators report in Heart Rhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society, the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society, and the Pediatric & Congenital Electrophysiology Society, published by Elsevier.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are commonly used to treat malaria and some rheumatic diseases. Their use as a treatment for COVID-19 has been widely debated in medical journals and the popular press. The authors of this case report present the first description of TdP due to chloroquine treatment in a patient with COVID-19.

Lead investigator Yishay Szekely, MD, Department of Cardiology, Sourasky Tel Aviv Medical Center and Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, observes, "On the one hand, these drugs are known to cause prolongation of a specific ECG interval called QT interval. On the other hand, there is no evidence of sudden, unexplained death when they are used to treat malaria. And by the same token, neither the American nor the European rheumatology societies recommend electrocardiographic (ECG) surveillance for patients who receive long-term treatment with hydroxychloroquine."

The patient, an 84 year-old women with a history of breast cancer and controlled hypertension was admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. Her medications included letrozole, prescribed for breast cancer, and memantine, prescribed for Alzheimer's disease. An ECG found her corrected QT (QTc) interval was 462 milliseconds, borderline high but still below the 500-millisecond limit suggested by safety guidelines for chloroquine treatment. Her condition worsened and chloroquine therapy was introduced. After five days of treatment, there was no change to her clinical status, however, a follow-up ECG showed signs of an extremely elongated QTc interval of 627 milliseconds. Chloroquine was discontinued, as were other drugs known or suspected of causing QT-prolongation, including memantine and letrozole.

The patient was placed on a continuous ECG monitor and given potassium supplements to prevent arrhythmias. Six hours later episodes of TdP were noted on her ECG. She received treatment that led to an immediate resolution of the ventricular arrhythmias, and her QT interval gradually normalized. She was released after two weeks.

Dr. Szekely notes that the memantine the patient was taking likely contributed to the proarrhythmic effects of chloroquine. However, her QTc interval spiked only after chloroquine was introduced. "This clearly points to chloroquine as the culprit drug of her TdP." The breast cancer medication letrozole is actually considered safer from a QT interval point of view than other medications used to treat breast cancer.

"Chloroquine therapy is not free of risk in patients with COVID-19, particularly in those with high risk features for QT prolongation and TdP," says Dr. Szekely. "Given its questionable efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19 and risk of QT interval prolongation and torsade de pointes, chloroquine treatment must be considered thoroughly and reviewed on a regular basis."
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Market Segmentation:

The report on Bio-Based Pet Market Revenue by Market Research Future (MRFR) includes a detailed analysis of various types of Raw Materials Used, Applications of Bio-Based PET, as well as specific regional analysis. The raw materials studied in the report include sugar, corn, and molasses. Alternatively, the applications of Bio-Based PET products, as included in the report are bottles, automotive, electronics, and consumer goods. Bio-Based PET is expected to garner the highest demand for the manufacture of bottles during the forecast period.

Industry Update:

September 2018: PepsiCo formed a partnership with NaturALL Bottle Alliance to develop packaging made from 100% sustainable and renewable sources. This partnership was established with the intention of creating beverage bottles that have a lower carbon footprint. Following this, the Alliance aims to make 95% Bio-Based PET bottles.

Key Players:

Some of the prominent market vendors present in the Global Bio-Based PET Market include Braskem (Brazil), Gevo, Inc. (U.S.), TEIJIN LIMITED (Japan), Anellotech, Inc. (U.S.), TORAY INDUSTRIES, INC. (Japan), Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (Thailand), M&G Chemicals (Italy), NatureWorks LLC (U.S.), Novamont S.p.A (Italy), Plastipak Holdings, Inc. (U.S.), Amyris (U.S.), and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (Japan).

Global Bio-Based PET Market Overview:

Bio-Based Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is produced from ethylene glycol that is obtained from plants. These plant sources include non-toxicity, recyclability, reduced carbon footprint, and a high resistance to shattering. Market Research Future (MRFR) has reported that the Global Bio-Based PET Market is anticipated to expand at a significant rate through the conjecture period.

Attributable factors to the ascension of the Bio-Based PET Market include the increasing adoption of environment-friendly products to curb climate change and its impact on human health and the fluctuating cost of petroleum-based products. The hazardous nature of traditional plastics is pushing governments all over the world to introduce stringent regulations to curb carbon emissions and the usage of harmful plastic products. This is also estimated to provide momentum to the upscaling of the Global Bio-Based PET Market.

Get Free Sample @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5823

Moreover, rising demand for eco-friendly packaging in several end-use industries is leading to a surge in the consumption of Bio-Based PET products. Such industries include automotive, food & beverages, electrical & electronics, as well as consumer appliances. Such an upsurge in demand for Bio-Based PET products is expected to contribute significantly to market growth. Additionally, technological developments have allowed the production of 100% Bio-Based PET. For instance, the Plant PET Technology Collaborative (PTC) by Virent, Inc uses paraxylene using beet sugar instead of fossil fuels. These technological developments are anticipated to promote higher adoption of Bio-Based PET products, fueling growth in the market.

Detailed Regional Analysis:

MRFR has analyzed the Global Bio-Based PET Market for different regions for providing specific insights to its clientele. These regions include Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Among these five regions, North America is leading the Global Bio-Based PET Market during the assessment period. Elevated consumption of polyethylene terephthalate for the manufacturing of bottles and other consumer goods is contributing to the burgeoning of the Bio-Based PET Market in North America. The U.S. is expected to spearhead the country-specific Bio-Based PET Market in the region. This can be attributed to the mounting demand for the same from the automotive sector residing in the country. Similarly, Canada is anticipated to consume higher Bio-Based PET to satiate the increasing demand from the countrys automotive industry.

Asia Pacific is assessed to witness the fastest CAGR in Bio-Based PET consumption. Raw material availability, lower cost of production, and rapid industrialization of the region are factors causative of accelerated growth in the region. Additionally, the production and exportation of consumer goods and automotive in various emerging economies such as India and China are anticipated to contribute to the augmentation of the market.

Europes Bio-Based PET Market is expected to ascend at a significant rate. This can be owed to the elevating demand for Bio-Based PET from automotive industries residing in the UK, France, and Germany.

Alternatively, the demand for Bio-Based PET in the Middle East & Africa is primarily driven by the growing environment safety issues and rapid industrialization witnessed by the region.

COVID-19 Study in Detail:

Impact of COVID-19 on Iso-Propyl Alcohol Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-iso-propyl-alcohol-industry

Impact of COVID-19 on Steel Extruded Products Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-steel-extruded-products-market

Corona virus Outbreak and Plastic Films Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-plastic-films-market

NOTE: Our teams of researchers are studying COVID-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering COVID-19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details.

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.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.

Contact:

Market Research Future

+1 646 845 9312

Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:54:01|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SHANGHAI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai will firmly support the development of foreign enterprises in the city, local authorities said at the International Business Leaders' Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai (IBLAC) convened recently online.

During this significant event, Shanghai authorities discussed the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic and global economic recovery with 24 council members from 15 cities across Asia, Europe and America.

According to Shanghai authorities, with the epidemic largely under control, the citys economy continues to rebound and may even see a positive trend.

Shanghai will continue to enhance its opening-up efforts to create a favorable environment for foreign investors.

Local authorities also invited all council members to take part in the third China International Import Expo scheduled in November this year.

The IBLAC, initiated in 1989, is an international think tank of global entrepreneurs. Enditem
Governors under the platform of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) on Monday met with President Muhammadu Buhari over the crisis rocking the party.

Speaking on the outcome of the meeting, Kebbi state governor, Atiku Bagudu disclosed that the governors have presented their positions to Buhari as the leader of the Party.

Conclusively, he revealed that Buhari has assured them that anomaly would soon return to the Party.

He said, The reason for our visit is to discuss with him as our party leader, as the leader that millions of Nigerians trust, to discuss party issues and the position of the Progressive Governors to support all steps to unify and bring about a peaceful resolution in our party, the All Progressives Congress.

Advertisement

Read Also: APC Knocks Fayose Over Attack On Buhari

Mr President listened attentively and discussed as a father, as a party leader and he gave us all the assurance we needed to know that resolution of contentious issues will soon be arrived at.

I think our party, the All Progressives Congress is a party that believes in dialogue and contentious issues arise when you are dialoguing and we will recall that because of the sanctity, which President Buhari attaches to constitutionalism, we held our national convention literally at the same time we are holding primaries because Mr. President has always said that we told Nigerians that our party is going to be a party of due process and we will do that no matter the challenge of the moment.

So, young people express their views by demonstrating, members of the party challenging court processes shows that the people are free to express their views. And dissent is not to be suppressed. What is important is that all will be taken on board in arriving at a conclusion that will be to the satisfaction of most party members and indeed Nigerians.

At all times Mr. President has shown that he is a democrat, he is not running the party. Yes, he is the party leader, he allows party organs to do and decide what should be done. He is very hesitant to use his standing even as party leader, talk less of his authority as Mr. President of the country to direct things, but at all times, he has been alive to the issue and like I said earlier, I believe with the encouragement he gave us this morning, with the level of details he has about all what is happening and the number of people he has listened to and heard, I believe that whatever needs to be done, including the possibility of calling any organ of the party that is necessary for the resolution of lingering issues, will be done immediately.

Let me again warn that the party is never a perfect assembly. There will always be issues and that is why we talk, but yes certainly, organs of the party need to meet and Mr. President, without directing, is always supporting the necessity of party organs meeting appropriately, he said.
Nicola Robinson, the wife of controversial celebrity chef Pete Evans, enjoys a 'clean' and 'pristine' life free of toxic chemicals.

And the 42-year-old former model has seemingly been able to maintain a polished appearance despite swearing off Botox and fillers three years ago.

She shared a rare selfie to Instagram on Sunday, in which she displayed a noticeably taut complexion and plump lips.

All natural: Nicola Robinson, the wife of controversial celebrity chef Pete Evans, displayed a noticeably taut complexion and plump lips in a selfie shared to Instagram on Sunday

Meditation lover Nicola's Instagram profile is usually lined with photos of her horses and healthy food - so it's no surprise that her latest selfie caught fans' attention.

The reformed party girl decided to embrace a more natural life after marrying Pete in 2016, and the following year claimed to be free of Botox and fillers on an episode of Channel Seven's Sunday Night.

Speaking of the cosmetic procedures, Nicola said at the time: 'Botox is definitely an extremely well-studied product and I'm sure it's got its uses in medicine for people who have issues and I have no judgement of women that choose to use it.

'No judgement whatsoever. I've been there I know where that comes from.'

The way she way: The reformed party girl, 42, decided to embrace a more natural life after marrying Pete in 2016, and the following year claimed to be free of Botox and fillers. Pictured on the runway on September 25, 2009 in Auckland

In 2017, Nicola spoke of getting her 'toxic' breast implants removed, claiming her previously inflated bust had left her feeling 'ashamed'.

'I was just so ashamed of myself,' Nicola told Sunday Night. 'I didn't like how they felt, I didn't like how they looked. They were making me sick.'

Meanwhile, Nicola's husband, Pete, is set to open his new 'healing clinic' in Byron Bay next month - despite having no medical qualifications.

The anti-vaxxer, 47, announced the news on Facebook last week, and also hinted at franchise opportunities by offering fans a chance to open their own clinic if they 'stay tuned for more information'.

Time to say goodbye: In 2017, Nicola spoke of getting her 'toxic' breast implants removed, claiming her previously inflated bust had left her feeling 'ashamed'. Pictured with Pete

Zen: Meditation lover Nicola's Instagram profile is usually lined with photos of her horses and healthy food - so it's no surprise that her latest selfie caught fans' attention

After being dropped from Channel Seven earlier this year following a spate of controversial conspiracy theories, Pete relocated to Australia's hippy capital of Byron Bay, where locals are more likely to be receptive to his pseudoscientific ideas.

And in four weeks' time, he is set to open the doors to his new clinic, which is located in the Habitat retail precinct off Bayshore Drive.

'Four weeks until we open our very first clinic. Stay tuned for more information and how you can open your own too for anyone interested. Please follow @evolvehealthlabs too ,' Pete said in his Facebook announcement.

The 'doctor' will see you now: Meanwhile, Nicola's husband Pete, 47, is set to open his new 'healing clinic' in Byron Bay next month - despite having no medical qualifications

According to Evolve Health Labs' Instagram account, the clinic will offer 'transformational practises' such as 'cold and conscious breath-work' and 'cryotherapy'.

Despite sharing misleading information about immunisation over the years, Pete has insisted he is not an 'anti-vaxxer' but 'pro-choice for medical freedom'.

Vaccinations are a simple, safe and effective way of protecting people against harmful diseases before they come into contact with them.

The jabs protect individuals and others in the community, by reducing the spread of preventable diseases.

Anti-vaxxers spread false and dangerous theories, including the fraudulent claim that vaccines cause autism, which is based on a completely discredited 1998 medical report that saw the author struck from the medical register.

Before vaccination campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough killed thousands of children, whereas today in Australia, dying from one of these is extremely rare.

Upcoming: The anti-vaxxer announced the news on his Facebook page last week, while also offering his fans a chance to open their own clinic if they 'stayed tuned for more information'

New venture: In four weeks time, he will open the doors to his new clinic, which is located in the Habitat retail precinct off Bayshore Drive, Byron Bay - the hippy capital of Australia

The announcement of Pete's new 'healing clinic' comes after he revealed he had purchased a home device to 'mitigate' the supposedly harmful effects of 5G.

After courting controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic by railing against the new mobile technology, the avid conspiracy theorist said this week his 'biology of beliefs' had forced him to 'err on the side of the caution'.

Discussing the matter with Jason Reynolds on his Evolve podcast, the former My Kitchen Rules star admitted he was aware his new purchase could just have a placebo effect, but he felt it was better to be 'safe than sorry'.

'I bought it because I wouldn't say I have a state of fear of 5G, but maybe it's better to be safe than sorry? And maybe this device that I've ordered could help mitigate it,' he said.

Just days ago, Pete urged Black Lives Matters protesters to tear down 5G cell towers instead of colonial statues following a series of unfounded rants about how high-speed Internet spreads coronavirus.

'Better to be safe than sorry!' This comes after Pete revealed he had purchased a home device to 'mitigate' the supposedly harmful effects of 5G

Speaking about his bizarre new purchase on his podcast, Pete said: 'I just got a delivery today of a home device that potentially can help mitigate it [5G].'

Noting that he wasn't completely sold on the product, he added: 'Because of the biology of my beliefs, it's good to know I have that in my home.

'Even though it might have a placebo effect, it could put me into a state of calmness and not worrying about 5G. The jury's out to a degree, but I'm on the side of caution.'

Pete has previously suggested the technology is involved in the spread of coronavirus - despite the federal government declaring 5G safe and scientists saying its radiation is incapable of penetrating human tissue.

There is zero evidence 5G towers negatively impact the immune system or help spread coronavirus.

But in a post on his Instagram Stories on Monday afternoon, the divisive chef shared a meme calling on those defacing historic statues as part of the Black Lives Matter movement to instead focus their energy on destroying 5G infrastructure.

Fake science: The avid conspiracy theorist (pictured on My Kitchen Rules in 2019 with Manu Feildel, left, and Colin Fassnidge, right) said his 'biology of beliefs' had forced him to 'err on the side of the caution'

'Caution': Discussing the matter on his Evolve podcast, the former Channel Seven star said he was aware his new purchase could have nothing more than a placebo effect

'Instead of tearing down old statues, if you could tear down those 5G towers that'd be great,' the meme referencing a scene from the 1999 movie Office Space read.

The meme referred to the vandalism of historic statues globally amid race-related protests in recent weeks - allegedly including the Captain Cook statue in Sydney's Hyde Park in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The post is the latest of a series of bizarre social media posts by the chef - who earlier this month endorsed US President Donald Trump's threat to use the military against Black Lives Matter protesters following the death of African-American man George Floyd.

Divisive: In a post on his Instagram Stories on Monday, the chef shared a meme encouraging Black Lives Matters protesters to divert their attention to destroying 5G towers

Mr Floyd died in the custody of four Minneapolis policemen - with officer Derek Chauvin charged with his murder after footage of him kneeling on Mr Floyd's throat for almost nine minutes went viral.

The footage sparked outrage across the world and led to riots across the U.S., which Pete said he believed was part of a media conspiracy staged by 'the elite' to distract citizens from the coronavirus pandemic.

In late May, Pete also threw his support behind a controversial protest against 5G and mandatory vaccinations, sharing a poster for the 'peaceful protest walk' to Facebook.

World events: A Black Lives Matter protester pictured in Sydney on June 6

Pictured: Conspiracy theorists campaigning against 5G technology in Australia

'Wish I could join you all today. These are happening around Australia. Please film it for your record,' he wrote.

He was released from his contract at Seven following a spate of controversial and often dangerous statements - mostly relating to coronavirus conspiracy theories.

Pete was also fined $25,200 by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in April for promoting a lamp he claimed could help treat coronavirus.

Pictured: Police stand guard at a statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park during a protest rally against Aboriginal deaths on June 12
SPRINGFIELD  Wayne Hooker said Monday that hardships posed by the coronavirus pandemic played a major role in his decision to close his popular Chef Waynes Big Mamou restaurant, a mainstay on Liberty Street since the mid-1990s.

It hurts me to my heart, Hooker said Monday during a telephone interview. This is my baby. But I guess Its just time.

He added: I say getting out while youre ahead is not considered quitting.

Earlier in the morning, Hooker had written a Facebook post confirming the news that was already circulating on social media. He said he plans to retire July 1, but will continue to operate his Chef Waynes Big Mamou Cajun on the Go kiosk on Worthington Street.

Hooker said his age, 65, and some physical challenges with his knees and hands were the top reasons for retiring and closing the Big Mamou. But the impact of the coronavirus, which shuttered restaurant dining rooms across the state in March, was a major factor in his decision to close the restaurant after 25 years in business, he said.

Now you take in the climate thats going on now with the virus, and the restrictions and stuff, Hooker said. I cant survive on a partial dining room. And even if it opens up at full capacity, youre still going to have those people who have the corona anxieties and dont want to be in crowds.

Massachusetts restaurants were given a green light to reopen for indoor dining Monday, under significant restrictions. For example, tables must be spaced six feet apart  a particular challenge at Big Mamou, where a small dining room would make it possible to only operate a few tables.

The Big Mamou offered take-out meals during the shutdown of restaurant dining rooms and was doing fairly well, Hooker said, aided by a city Prime the Pump grant that was federally funded, and by state-provided personal protective equipment.

But reopening fully was unfeasible, he said. The restaurants dining room will not reopen, and the business will continue as takeout only until it closes.

I could not remain open at minimum capacity and survive, Hooker said. I would go backwards. Im not going to go backwards.

Hooker, who lives on Mattoon Street in Springfield, said he is proud of the business and the relationships he built over the years.

He has worked since he was 12 years old, never collecting unemployment, he said.

Four employees filed for unemployment during the shutdown, and six more will lose their jobs when the restaurant closes, Hooker said.

Hooker married Lisa Wyatt at the end of May, and she will run the takeout kiosk on Worthington Street with a co-manager. Hooker said he will help out with that business at times.

Hooker was renting the Big Mamou location in a small strip of storefronts and restaurants on lower Liberty Street, across from the U.S. post office, and does not know what will happen with the site.

Before the pandemic hit Hooker was considering a relocation to the Skyplex building at Stearns Square. He had been working with some younger partners who would run it, but the plan fizzled when they backed out, he said.

Hooker praised the help he received from City Hall and the Springfield Business Improvement District.

I would just like to thank everybody for a wonderful 25 years, Hooker said.

Hooker opened a second Big Mamou location in the Hampshire County town of Williamsburg in 2008; that location closed several years ago.
Fitch Ratings on Monday said it has revised the outlook to negative from stable of nine Indian banks, including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, following lowering of India's sovereign rating outlook due to impact of coronavirus pandemic on the economy.

The rating agency revised the outlook for Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM), SBI, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Baroda (New Zealand), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank while affirming their ratings.

At the same time, Fitch has affirmed IDBI Bank Ltd's (IDBI) rating, while maintaining the outlook at negative.

"The rating actions follow Fitch's revision of the outlook on the 'BBB-' rating on India to negative from stable on June 18, 2020 due to the impact of the escalating coronavirus pandemic on India's economy," it said in a statement.

Fitch said the ratings of all the nine Indian banks are support-driven and anchored to their respective sovereign country rating. "They are based on Fitch's assessment of high to moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, which takes into account our assessment of the sovereign's ability and propensity to provide extraordinary support."

The negative outlook on India's sovereign rating, it said, reflects an increasing strain on the state's ability to provide extraordinary support, due to the sovereign's limited fiscal space and the significant deterioration in fiscal metrics due to challenges from COVID-19 pandemic.

"The rating action does not affect the banks' Viability Ratings (VRs)," it said. "EXIM does not have a VR as its role as a policy bank makes an assessment of its standalone credit profile less meaningful."

While EXIM is of high strategic and systemic importance due to its unique policy role, SBI is the largest Indian bank with nearly 25 per cent market share in system assets and deposits.

SBI is 57.9 per cent state-owned and has a much broader policy role than peers.

"SBI is highly likely to receive extraordinary state support, if required, due to its very high systemic importance," it said.

For ICICI and AXIS Bank, Fitch said it expects a moderate probability of extraordinary state support for these banks, due to their systemic importance, market position and private ownership.

"The probability of extraordinary state support for the two large private banks will be lower than for large state banks, which are likely to have priority due to the sovereign's constrained finances," the agency said.

The other banks whose outlook was lowered too have "high systemic importance" stemming from their significant market share, majority government ownership and role in policy lending.

On keeping outlook unchanged for IDBI, it said this reflects expectation that the state's propensity to provide extraordinary support to IDBI may diminish following the government's proposal to sell its stake in the bank and dispose of part of its stake in the lender's majority shareholder, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).
Back in the days when getting online meant connecting a Windows PC to the internet, antivirus protection was foremost in our minds. The very idea on sliding that ethernet cable into position without suitable protection would have been as dangerous and irresponsible as  well, you can come up with your own comparison.

These days, we are far more blase, using our mobile devices to get online and feeling far removed from the world of malware. Unfortunately, however, mobile viruses do exist, and as the world becomes mobile-first, it is inevitable that the hackers will do likewise. The data protection and cybersecurity experts are reporting a growing number of viruses aimed specifically at exploiting Android vulnerabilities. Strandhogg 2.0 has the potential to be the most dangerous yet.

Significant risk

Advertisement

The vulnerability was announced in Androids May security update. It can affect any Android device except those that are running Android 10. Data analysts estimate that only around 16 percent of Android users are doing so, and there are believed to be more than two billion Android devices in use. That means the total number of vulnerable devices is well over a billion and could even be north of 1.5 billion.

The bug is more than an inconvenience. It hides in plain sight, disguising itself as other legitimate apps that are already installed on the phone and asking the user to enter security credentials. It can also siphon personal information from other app permissions.

Hard to detect

Advertisement

The vulnerability was detected by Promon, the Norwegian cybersecurity firm that blew the whistle on the original Strandhogg vulnerability last year. The good news is that Promon has found no evidence that Strandhogg 2.0 has been exploited in active hacking campaigns. A Google spokesperson said they too have seen nothing to suggest active exploitation.

However, Promon caveated its comments with the warning that there is no obvious way to detect an attack. Strandhogg 2.0 requires no external configuration, as it simply reflects legitimate apps, leaving no traceable markers or suspicious-looking code. It can attack almost any app, and due to its stealth and potential for mischief-making, Promon delayed going public about it until Google had come up with a solution.

How to protect yourself

Advertisement

If you own one of the estimated 1.6 billion devices running Android 9.0 or earlier, you need to be concerned about Strandhogg 2.0. There is positive news in as much as protecting yourself from the vulnerability is not a complicated task.

The simplest way is by updating your operating system to Android 10. This is not, of course, going to be possible on every device. When Google released its monthly security update in May, it did more than warn against the critical vulnerability. It also included a patch that will protect the device and make it invulnerable to Strandhogg 2.0 in the same way as those running Android 10. Just keep in mind that many older phones will not install the update automatically will need user intervention.
Two new cases have also been linked to the H&M store in Northland Shopping Centre, bringing the total number of cases linked to that outbreak to four. A toddler has also tested positive, with the Great Beginnings Nursery in Reservoir, in the city's north, shutdown for deep cleaning. Australia's top medical officials have also called for a lockdown of six Melbourne local government areas identified as coronavirus hotspots, as Victoria experiences an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee said in a statement on Sunday night that it "strongly discourages" travel to and from Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin for non-essential reasons until the Victorian government can suppress the spread of community transmission in those municipalities. Loading There are 125 active cases of COVID-19 in Victoria. There are nine people in hospital, including two in intensive care. Ms Mikakos said the government had not ruled out imposing stay-at-home restrictions on the six local government areas. "We've had stay-at-home directions in the past which limited the types of reasons that you could leave your home to medical care, going to work and going to school," she said.

"We don't want to be in that situation. If people in those hotspot areas particularly limit their movements in the next few weeks, we can assess the situation and see if that makes a difference." Loading Ms Mikakos said widespread testing, including for people without symptoms at Keilor Downs College and Albanvale Primary School would commence from Monday. A team of 50 health officials would also be doorknocking, starting with the Brimbank and Cardinia council areas, to increase community engagement in hotspots areas, she said. "We are very concerned about the level of transmission in those particular locations," Ms Mikakos said.

"I want to stress, just because you don't live in a local government hotspot area does not mean that your area is without risk, and everybody should still be complying very closely with all of the public health advice." Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton would not rule out Victoria going back into lockdown if cases continued to soar, saying there was "no silver bullet" solution. "This is a long battle and a complex one and there is no single silver bullet, it is re-emerging because people are not doing things as stringently as they might have done a month, two months ago," Professor Sutton said. He stressed that the Black Lives Matter protest did not appear to significantly contribute to the spread.

The increasing threat of a second wave of infections prompted Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to tighten restrictions around family gatherings at the weekend, limiting gatherings in homes to a maximum of five guests on top of the residents who already live there. Victoria Police will also ramp up patrols of coronavirus hotspots and impose tougher enforcement of restrictions as fears of a second wave continue to grow and the state government extends its state of emergency for another month. Mr Andrews blamed the concerning surge in cases on families deliberately flouting the rules, including some Victorians who were visiting family members or going to work even after testing positive to the deadly virus. Criticism, however, is mounting over the department's handling of quarantine hotels housing returned travellers and their role in fuelling the spread, with some family clusters linked to a spate of cases among security guards at quarantine hotels, including the CBD's Stamford Plaza, where lax hygiene has been blamed for the outbreak.

More than half of the new cases since the end of April have come from family-to-family transmission, with some family clusters blowing out to more than a dozen people, Mr Andrews said. Holidaymakers have also been warned against congregating in large groups and travelling with other families amid an increase in coronavirus cases for the sixth day in a row. South Australia on Monday said it will send a team of contact tracing experts to Victoria where there's been a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.

South Australia's Health Minister Stephen Wade says the three SA officials will travel to Melbourne on Tuesday and spend three weeks there supporting local health officials. Loading "Victoria has had a significant surge and there have been more than 116 cases identified in the last seven days and 75 per cent of those have been the result of community transmission," Mr Wade said. "It's very clear that as they continue to investigate those cases, they will need to get in early and to get in early you need to have the public health specialists who can interview the particular cases and trace their close contacts." Premier Steven Marshall said local officials were "very hopeful" that Victoria would get on top of the current spike in coronavirus infections and it was in the national interest for it to reduce the number of new cases.

"The entire country is on Victoria's side," he said. But Mr Marshall also cautioned that what had happened in Victoria was worrying and could impact on SA's decision to reopen all its borders from July 20. The federal government said on Sunday it was prepared to help Victoria with more resources should it be required, particularly through contact tracing and greater enforcement of hotel quarantine protocols. Outgoing Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said the reason Melbourne was emerging as the coronavirus capital of the country was due to community spread. "The reason it's a problem in Melbourne is there is that low-lying community transmission levels," he told ABC radio on Monday.
President Donald Trump stops to speak to the media in the rain on the South Lawn of the White House as he prepares to depart aboard Marine One for a rally in Tulsa, Okla., in Washington on June 20, 2020. (Pete Marovich/Getty Images)

Trump: Niece Not Allowed to Write Book Due to Nondisclosure Agreement

Mary Trump, the presidents niece, wrote a book titled: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Worlds Most Dangerous Man and is slated to be published on July 28.

She isnt allowed to write a book because she signed a nondisclosure agreement, President Donald Trump said in an interview with Axios.

Shes not allowed to write a book, Trump said. You know, when we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship withshes got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total  signed a nondisclosure.

The agreement is very powerful and covers everything, the president added.

A full transcript of the interview wasnt released, nor was any audio or video.

The White House didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that neither she nor the president has seen the book.

So Im not going to sit here and speculate about what it may say or what it may not say, she said.

Simon & Schuster, which is publishing Mary Trumps book, didnt respond to an inquiry.

According to the books description, Mary Trump paints a revelatory, authoritative portrait of Trump and the toxic family that made him.

Simon & Schuster describes Trumps niece as a trained clinical psychologist, with a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies. The presidents only niece, she lives with her daughter in New York.

Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick, the description states.

She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insiders perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the worlds most powerful and dysfunctional families.

Simon & Schuster is also publishing a book from Trumps former national security adviser, John Bolton. That book is due out this week after a judge declined to block its release.

A number of top administration officials, and South Korea, have challenged claims made by Bolton.

In a statement released Monday, South Koreas national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said the book does not reflect accurate facts and substantially distorts facts.

Unilaterally publishing consultations made based on mutual trust violates the basic principles of diplomacy and could severely damage future negotiations, he added.
After the Supreme Courts decision to allow the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to continue, many DACA recipients celebrated and breathed a sigh of relief, as the uncertainty of their future had been in the hands of the nine judges.

Laredoan and one of the thousands of DACA recipients, Seven Flores is more optimistic, but still wary of the coming years. He said that the optimism stems from how the decision was handed down by a conservative majority.

Yes, I am a little more optimistic given how low the probabilities were of DACA staying, Flores said. If we look carefully about how the decision was made, it doesnt necessarily mean that the Supreme Courts said that DACA was legal. What they said (was) that the way Trump ended DACA was not legal or the correct way of doing it.

During the initial year of the Trump presidency, Flores said that he and other DACA recipients were living in a climate of fear and anxiety after hearing that the program was being ended.

We came out of the shadows, as they say. We gave all our fingerprints and our names, Flores said in a 2017 San Antonio Express-News story. Im also afraid for my parents, because we gave them our addresses.

READ MORE: Cuellar and DACA recipients share views

On Friday, Donald Trump tweeted that the administration would submit new paperwork to fulfill the Supreme Courts rulings. Flores believes that using a new argument or ending it differently would sway the Supreme Court to ending the program. Regardless, the new decision is expected to meet heavy opposition by DACA affiliates and Democrats.

The tweet is an additional worry as many DACA recipients are not only struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also juggling their careers as well. Flores is currently a teacher, so he meets with his students online and conducts the usual lesson plans and gradings. The SCOTUS decision could have easily taken his job, his home and his life away, he said.

Whether it is to help people or help the economy, DACA recipients are there, he said. And not only do they do that, and they pay taxes, but they hardly receive any benefits in return.

Despite the challenges, he said that his education and career were important, as it was the very reason that they were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents.

The vast majority of almost every single one of us pursued an education partly because that was the dream of our parents, partly because we wanted to, but also partly because thats an expectation for DACA recipients  to be in higher education or to have joined the military in the past. And of course, to be working in this country and paying taxes.

READ MORE: Laredo siblings share how DACA helped their lives

He emphasized that despite not being able to receive federal assistance of any kind, DACA recipients are also expected to pay their share of taxes. This doubly affects students as they are unable to receive federal financial aid and, in some cases, must pay out-of-state tuition.

Flores studied psychology and minored in biology at TAMIU. In 2017, the university sent out a statement saying, We will continue to foster a safe, welcoming learning environment for students from diverse backgrounds seeking to expand their opportunities through education.

On Thursday, TAMIU President Pablo Arenaz said that the decision was a victory for the TAMIU students, and removed the heavy toll of the pending decision off their shoulders.

Flores said he was always involved in his community. He tutored, was a volunteer at MOVE Texas and is a former congressional intern with Rep. Henry Cuellar. While he studied or worked, every two years he would have to reinstate his DACA status, and there was always a risk of deportation if it was not reinstated on time.

He spoke about an incident that postponed his DACA renewal that left him vulnerable to deportation and fearful until his status was renewed. Those fears are what follow DACA recipients and Flores hope people understand what is at stake. He also wants to dispel the misconceptions that DACA recipients are on welfare, supported by taxpayers, are criminals or all came in as adults.

Flores is not alone in supporting the continuation of DACA and in being cautious. The Laredo Immigrant Alliance issued a press release stating that vigilance is needed for the Trump administrations second attempt. While they are happy with the decision, they will continue to have their platicas series that will focus on inter-generational stories about Laredo lives.
Over 10 U.S. states, as marked on the American Map with blurry red spots, have seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases during this week, as businesses continue to resume operations across the nation. (Xinhua)

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," says Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration.

WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Several U.S. states have seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases as businesses continue to resume operations across the nation, casting a shadow over the current path to reopening.

The southeastern U.S. state of Florida, for example, reported 4,049 new cases on Saturday, setting a single-day record for the third day in a row, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.

South Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Montana also hit records on the day, according to a report from The New York Times, which noted that California, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Oregon hit records earlier in the week.

As of Sunday afternoon, more than 2.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States, with over 119,800 deaths, according to a data tracking tool developed by Johns Hopkins University.

More than 30,000 new infections were reported across the nation on both Friday and Saturday, indicating a nationwide uptick in COVID-19 cases, despite a downward trend in over 10 states including New York and New Jersey.

"We're seeing a resurgence in the south and the southeast, they really never got rid of their epidemics," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Noting that some states could experience exponential growth of COVID-19 cases this weekend, Gottlieb said Texas, Arizona and Florida could be overwhelmed as case numbers continue to surge.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of Columbia University's Earth Institute, speaks during a press conference on the Deep Decarbonization Pathway Project (DDPP) interim report, at the UN headquarters in New York, on July 8, 2014. (Xinhua/Niu Xiaolei)

Calling the situation "very unsatisfactory," Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economics professor at Columbia University, recently told Xinhua that as the virus continues to spread rapidly, the federal government has "basically lost interest" in controlling the virus.

"The results are likely to be very bad: a big resurgence of disease and deaths," said Sachs, also a senior United Nations advisor.

Public health experts believe that states' hasty efforts to reopen their economies, weeks of nationwide protests over the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, as well as some Americans' unwillingness to practice social distancing, or wear a mask, have all contributed to the recent surge in cases.

Since late April, U.S. states, facing record unemployment, have gradually started to reopen their economies, despite not seeing a significant downward trend in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a virtual Senate hearing in May that the nation has not put the coronavirus outbreak under total control yet, warning of potential consequences for states that reopen too soon.

The total U.S. deaths will reach 201,129 on October 1, 2020, according to the projection made through the COVID-19 model produced by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). (Xinhua)

An influential COVID-19 model produced by the University of Washington raised its projections Thursday, forecasting more than 200,000 Americans could die of COVID-19 by Oct. 1, an increase of 30,000 deaths from its projections in the prior week.

"We're now able to look ahead and see where states need to begin planning for a second wave of COVID-19," said the university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Director Christopher Murray.

"We hope to see our model proven wrong by the swift actions governments and individuals take to reduce transmission," Murray said.

Experts said further improving health and safety measures will be crucial to reducing the risk of widespread resurgence.

"There are blueprints that will allow businesses and schools to open safely. If they follow these blueprints it will be possible to operate safely," Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine with the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, told Xinhua.

"The priorities need to be helping the public understand that the virus is real, the outbreak is real, the deaths are real... and that we do know what works to control SARS-CoV-2," Schooley said.

Noting that it is a mistake that many Americans are not wearing masks, Gottlieb urged the pubic to wear masks to protect others and themselves and help reopen the economy safely.
The San Antonio Fire Department was called twice Monday to an abandoned house on the North Side.

The first call, for a suspicious odor at 11:39 a.m., drew a HAZMAT unit to the 400 block of Robinhood Place. The team investigated the property but did not find anything and left the scene.

At 2:48 p.m., firefighters responded to the same address following reports that the house had caught fire. They found an unoccupied home on fire with flames and black smoke billowing from the roof.

Firefighters were soon hosing down the smoldering husk of the house. The property had no known occupants and no firefighters were injured.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

Although investigators were on scene, they had to wait until the remnants cooled to enter because the houses history posed a danger, spokesperson Woody Woodward said.

San Antonio police had been called to the home for illegal activities, possibly including drug manufacturing, in the past.

Arson will be investigating. Its definitely suspicious, Woodward said.

But theyre assuring me it has nothing to do with the initial call for HAZMAT for suspicious odors. That was likely due to the condition of the property and various activities that may or may not have been taking place.

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said the city had condemned the property but the occupants kept returning to the house.

That is a meth house, the neighbor said.

Some of the surrounding houses were evacuated as a precaution while firefighters worked to put out the fire.

The house was determined to be a total loss.
Government refutes alleged claims of prohibiting use of Chinese apps. Fact Check: A viral message doing the rounds of the internet and Whatsapp. List includes apps like TikTok, CamScanner, Club Factory and more

A viral message doing the rounds of the internet and WhatsApp groups, claiming the Indian government has officially prohibited some Chinese Applications from being listed in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store has been discredited by the PIB (Press Information Bureau) Fact Check wing.

The message looks like an official order from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) that refers to an alleged letter of instructions by MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) and lists out 14 mobile apps that are to be de-listed from the app stores of Google and Apple. However, the government has refuted this viral message and said that it hasnt issued any such order or instruction.

Claim: A viral message of an order allegedly from NIC claims that @GoI_Meity has prohibited some apps from being made available on App Stores. #PIBFactCheck: The Order is #Fake. No such instruction has been given by @GoI_MeitY or NIC. pic.twitter.com/Dt7rMR7nIz  PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) June 19, 2020

Has the Indian government prohibited the use of apps with Chinese origin?

The alleged order directs the Regional Executive and representatives of both Google and Apple India to restrict a total of 14 apps from their respective app stores. The list includes apps like TikTok, Club Factory, Clash of Kings, CamScanner, Game of Sultans, LiveMed, Bigo Live, Vigo Video, BeautyPlus, Mobile Legends, Shein, Romwe, AppLock and VMate.

A tweet from the official PIB Fact Check handle has discredited the order, claiming it to be fake. Amidst the anti-China sentiments, such messages are doing the rounds on the internet and even on WhatsApp groups in order to influence people to take action on the purported Chinese based apps. Well advise our readers to take such messages with a pinch of salt unless you can verify the source or it comes through an official stream.

Recently, the Indian Intelligence Agencies allegedly sent a list of 52 apps to the Indian government suggesting it to issue an official advisory against the use of these apps. The agencies have cited security and privacy concerns over the use of these Android and iOS apps in India. However, the government hasnt issued any official notification against the use of any of these apps and neither has it instructed app stores to de-list these alleged Chinese origin apps.
The first portion of the recordings was released on May 19, 2020.

Ukrainian Member of Parliament Andriy Derkach has released new records of conversations in December 2016 between the then U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and the fifth Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, who allegedly thanked the CIA for handling fugitive MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko.

Derkach claims this version of the events is clearly seen from the tapes, according to Ukraine's news outlet Glavred.

Read alsoAnother treason case opened against Poroshenko amid audio recording leak  media

What is more, the recordings reportedly include a conversation where Poroshenko seems to be extremely worried about Onyshchenko's interrogation by the FBI about high-ranking corrupt officials of Ukraine.

Poroshenko told Biden that he would like to know what the fugitive MP would talk about with U.S. law enforcement agencies. Biden in response reassured him that the FBI had already talked with him and would not dig into the case further.

Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) late in late May 2020 opened a criminal case probing into the wiretapping of conversations between Poroshenko and Biden.

Derkach released the first portion of Poroshenko-Biden recordings on May 19, 2020.
After 99 days under the state of alarm, Spain's borders with the European Union (including the UK, but not Portugal) reopened on Sunday, bringing with it the arrival of foreign tourists, vital to the Costa del Sol's economy.

On Sunday about thirty flights went in and out of Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport, half of which were international - a far cry from the around 400 regularly seen at this time last year.

The first two arrived within 15 minutes of each other: the first, from Dusseldorf (Germany) at 10.15am, and the second at 10.30am from Eindhoven (the Netherlands).

Residential tourists

Neither flight was full: "Fifty per cent more or less", explained Herman Jacobs, a Belgian who has a company and a house in Alcaucin. He loves "the tranquility" of rural life in Spain and couldn't wait any longer to return.

Nor could Jose Luis Sedan, from Cordoba, and Maria Drue, from Germany. "We live in Germany but we have a house in Cordoba and since we retired we've been spending a few months in Spain with the family every year. We wanted to come in May but we haven't been able to until now", he explained. "Are we scared? Not at all."

The planes that landed on the Costa del Sol on Sunday were mostly occupied by residential tourists and people travelling for family, work or business reasons. All travellers arriving from abroad reported having to have their temperature checked and filling out a questionnaire which asked if they had had coronavirus and to provide contact details.

Hope for July

Sunday was the first, major step towards getting the destination back on track. Despite the low numbers, the airport's management expects that 75 per cent of the routes operated last summer (235) will return for July, albeit with fewer daily connections - some 100 flights a day.

Police direct tourists to the taxi rank. / Nito Salas

For the period until then, though, airport bosses are reluctant to predict flight volume, given the recent unpredictable nature of airlines' decisions.

However, as flight and passenger numbers increase, the airport's shops, bars, restaurants and other services, all currently closed, will gradually reopen.

Returning airlines

Several operators have committed to the destination from July. Ryanair, the leading airline in terms of passenger numbers at Malaga Airport, plans to run 69 routes between Malaga and Europe this summer. Norwegian will resume its routes from Malaga to Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm, while Air France will return to Malaga Airport from 5 July.

Easyjet and KLM also plan to return: the first will connect the Costa del Sol with 17 European destinations and the second will offer eight weekly flights to Amsterdam

Jet2.com, the airport's fifth largest operator, will link nine British cities from 1 July. Lufthansa has also included Malaga in its first plans to resume flights, as have Brussels Airlines and Alitalia.

For its part, Air Nostrum has scheduled three weekly connection to Nice from 17 July to 13 September.
(CNN)  Fiji is planning to create a travel bubble with Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific island's leader said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Josaia "Frank" Voreqe Bainimarama told parliament his plan for a "post-Covid society" included a slow resumption of the tourism industry the country relies heavily on.

"While Australia and New Zealand work out their trans-Tasman bubble, Fiji's equal -- or arguably, greater -- success against the virus puts us in a position to take the lead in the Pacific," Bainimarama said.

"We're working on our own bubble  a Bula Bubble  between Fiji, New Zealand and Australia."

Bula is a greeting that means hello or welcome in Fijian.

Fiji recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus on March 19. There have been only 18 recorded cases and zero deaths, according to data from the World Health Organization, and no new cases have been diagnosed since April.

In a typical year, tourism is responsible for 40 per cent of Fiji's gross national product (GDP), and Australia and New Zealand are its two biggest markets.

Prime Ministers Scott Morrison (of Australia) and Jacinda Ardern (of New Zealand) have yet to comment on the Fijian proposal.

How would it work?

Under Bainimarama's plan, visitors from Australia and New Zealand would either need to show proof of a completed two-week quarantine in their home country immediately before travel, or complete one in an approved hotel or government facility  at their own cost  upon arrival at Nadi International Airport, Fiji's primary transit hub.

Arriving passengers will also have to present a negative coronavirus test, completed no more than 48 hours before their flight.

Bainimarama referred to arrival channels for these approved travelers as VIP lanes -- with VIP, in this case, standing for "vacation in paradise."

Fiji Airways, the national flag carrier airline, and the national tourism body, Tourism Fiji, will be the government's primary partners in the project, he said. A list of approved hotels for quarantining has not yet been released.

Bainimarama said he also hopes to open a Pacific pathways program to visitors from Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tonga, with possible inclusions of Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, if the initial stages are successful.

Visitors hoping to come to Fiji by sea instead of air can enter Fijian waters, if they meet certain criteria.

Those on personal vessels who can show proof they have been at sea for at least 14 days will be tested for coronavirus upon arrival, while those who have not been will need to quarantine while docked in Fiji at their own expense.

Visitors are responsible for paying for their coronavirus tests.

Cruise ships, however, are banned indefinitely.

No time frame has been establish for the Bula Bubble and, while a "trans-Tasman travel bubble" that would permit leisure tourism between Australia and New Zealand was first discussed in May, no firm plans have yet been announced.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: Refuting the allegations of irregularities in laterite mining in Vanthada village of Prathipadu mandal in East Godavari district, Minister for Mines and Minerals Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy has said there is no truth in the charges. Addressing mediapersons on Sunday, the minister said a total of nine leases for laterite mining were issued in Lingampally Reserve Forest, Vanthada, Alladara, Konda Thimmapuram villages and eight of them were issued to Andru Minerals on December 4, 2013, while one lease was issued to Kude Lakshmi on May 28, 2014.

For Andru Minerals, lease was issued to A Srinivas, V Veerraju, M Venkatarajani, A Usha Rani, M Venakteswara Rao, APK Satyavathi, A Ramesh Babu and A Sujatha. It was all forest land and the lease period is up to December 3, 2033. Patta land was leased to Kude Lakshmi and the lease period is up to May 12, 2034, he said. According to the minister, till July 2019, the laterite mineral mined was below one crore tonnes. As on today, the amount of mineral mined in the eight leases issued to Andru Minerals is around 25 to 30 lakh metric tonnes and 1 to 1.5 lakh tonnes in the patta land leased to Kude Lakshmi. Value of one tonne of laterite is Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,150 per tonne and in one year, eight lakh to 10 lakh tonnes is used, mainly by cement factories.

As there was no chemical analysis performed on the mineral to determine whether it is laterite, aluminium laterite or bauxite, we have sent the mineral samples for chemical analysis. If it was bauxite, the Government of India had to auction it for issuing mining leases. So to get clarity on the issue, it was sent for chemical analysis. The reason for the lack of mining activity between July 2019 and May 2020 was that mineral was sent for chemical analysis, he explained. Peddireddy said once the chemical analysis report came and it was found that the ore was aluminium laterite, legal opinion was sought as to whether the State can issue the lease or it had to be referred to the Centre.

Getting clarity that the State is within its rights to issue mining lease, all the nine lease holders were allowed to resume mining, he clarified. When the facts are such, baseless allegations are being levelled against us. In fact, all those nine leases for 20 years were issued by the N Kiran Kumar Reddy government in the undivided AP. In our government, not a single lease or permit has been cancelled so far. There is no truth in the claims that 20 lakh MT of ore is mined per year and Rs 180 crore is misappropriated, he said.

Capital decision after situation back to normal

Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy clarified that the decision on three capitals  executive capital in Visakhapatnam, judiciary capital in Kurnool and legislative capital in Amaravati  will be taken at the right time and not now. As experts opine that COVID-19 cases might double or triple by July, focus is on restoration of normalcy. Once the situation is back to normal, the issue will be discussed. In the Governors Address during the budget session, the capital issue was already mentioned, he said
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday affirmed the Securities and Exchange Commission's ability to force defendants to forfeit money acquired through investor fraud, but placed new limits on the practice.

In an 8-1 decision written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court said the money must be for the benefit of investors and cannot exceed the actual profits that came from the wrongdoing. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying the law does not give authority to the SEC for the practice, which is called disgorgement.

The commission typically wins more than a billion dollars a year in disgorgement orders from federal courts. They are distinct from fines, which the SEC uses to punish wrongdoing.

After blockbuster decisions last week regarding federal protection for LGBTQ workers and the program shielding undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, Liu v. SEC was the only decision announced by the justices Monday, and it is unclear whether more will be released later this week.

It was an indication that the Supreme Court's term may run longer than its usual conclusion at the end of June.

An extension would be the result both of the coronavirus pandemic that disrupted the court's schedule and the difficulty of resolving the controversial cases that the court accepted this term.

The social distancing required by the pandemic caused the court to cancel oral arguments in its grand courtroom in March and April, which typically is the last month for oral arguments. Instead, the justices held arguments via telephone in May. None of the 10 cases heard that month have been decided.

There are 14 remaining cases overall, and they are among the term's most controversial.

Among them are President Donald Trump's legal battles to keep his personal financial records from Congress and a New York prosecutor and a restrictive Louisiana abortion law that could close down all but one clinic in the state. In addition, the court took cases on whether some religiously affiliated organizations must provide contraceptive care to female employees because of the Affordable Care Act and whether presidential electors can be forced to abide by the popular vote in their states.

The Liu case involved a scheme to defraud foreign nationals concocted by Charles Liu and his wife Xin (Lisa) Wang, who solicited nearly $27 million.

The money was supposed to go toward the construction of a cancer-treatment center, which was never built. The foreign nationals were drawn to the proposal because of a government program that permits noncitizens to apply for permanent residence in the United States by making significant investments in approved commercial enterprises.

A district court agreed with the SEC on disgorgement of the full amount that Liu and Wang had raised from investors, minus about $250,000 left in the corporate account.

Liu argued that was too much and that Congress had not authorized the disgorgement practice.

Only Thomas agreed with the latter argument. But the rest of the court agreed that the amount was too great.

"Congress prohibited the SEC from seeking an equitable remedy in excess of a defendant's net profits from wrongdoing," Sotomayor wrote.

Her opinion sends the case back to lower courts to set the proper amount and decide other issues.
An in-flight catering service is now selling 'gourmet' airline meals for as little as $2 each because no one is flying.

Gate Gourmet, one of the world's biggest airline catering companies, has been supplying meals to international airlines flying to and from Australia since 2002.

But the supplier has since opened its doors to the public after the travel industry was forced to cancel flights indefinitely to minimise the spread of COVID-19.

Customers can now order from an assortment of economy class meals, including vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, which are cooked by professional chefs.

An in-flight catering service is now selling 'gourmet' airline meals to Australians, with prices starting from $2 each. Top left to right: Egg omelette, stir fry noodles and roast beef with vegetables. Bottom left to right: Lasagna, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and beef massaman curry with jasmine rice

Gate Gourmet, one of the world's biggest airline catering companies, has been supplying meals to international airlines flying to and from Australia since 2002 (left: chicken with roast potatoes and peas and right: Stir fry beef noodles with Asian greens)

For just $20, shoppers can get a breakfast pack with 10 assorted meals ranging from scrambled eggs and ratatouille to french toast with berries.

Customers can order a mixed combo pack for just $40, which includes 20 different meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If you want to skip breakfast, there's a mixed lunch and dinner pack with 10 assorted meals for just $25, which includes chicken and mushroom stew, rigatoni pesto pumpkin, beef massaman curry with jasmine rice, lasagne and more.

All meals come in a microwave and oven safe packaging, ready to heat and eat within two to five minutes. To bake in an oven, simply defrost and bake for 20 minutes at 160 degrees.

To place an order, customers must pick up their meals from a Gate Gourmet outlet in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth - as delivery is not available.

The frozen meals are only available for pick-up from the listed locations in the drop-down menu in the order form online - and the dishes are assorted at random and special requests cannot be packed.

'As we do not normally sell to the general public, please adhere to your pick-up time chosen on checkout,' the website said.

Customers can now order from an assortment of economy class meals, including vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, which are cooked by professional chefs (left: curry with rice and right: scrambled eggs with mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes)

All meals come in a microwave and oven safe packaging, ready to heat and eat within minutes

One customer shared a picture of her 'gourmet' egg omelette with spinach and tomatoes

Many have shared their glowing reviews online after ordering the airline meals online, with some saying it's perfect for feeding a family on a budget.

'It's a fantastic offer - I've bought 20 meals for $50 (lunch and dinner pack). Great to keep in the freezer for a quick lunch or alternative to a takeaway dinner. And helps support the tourism industry,' one woman said in a Facebook group.

Another said: 'Nice packaging... good food... I ordered $40 breakfast, lunch and dinner option. Thanks for the offer.'

Others asked whether the meals tasted 'good', to which one responded: 'I am a travel agent, fortunate to have travelled a bit, and I personally quite enjoy airplane food. Definitely great flavours.'

To make an order, please visit the website.
Britains biggest holiday company has cancelled the vast majority of its packages for July.

Tui will resume operations on 11 July  so long as the government relaxes its warning against all but essential travel abroad and eases the quarantine rules for returning holidaymakers.

But just 8,300 customers will travel with the company in the three weeks to the end of July. This represents only 4 per cent of the original planned capacity, with fewer than 400 passengers on a typical day.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Tui carried an average of 74,000 travellers daily in its worldwide operations.

The holiday firm is hoping to increase to 50 per cent of holidays in August.

Initially, Tui will use only three airports in the UK: Gatwick, Birmingham and Manchester.

Only eight destinations will be served, all of them islands: four in Spain and four in Greece.

The Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza will be first to welcome Tui holidaymakers, with simultaneous departures at 6.40am on 11 July from Birmingham to Palma and Gatwick to Ibiza.

The Canary Islands of Lanzarote and Tenerife are the other two Spanish destinations.

Spain opened its frontiers to British holidaymakers on Sunday.

Greece has yet to reveal its plans for UK travellers from July onwards, but Tui expects to offer holidays to the islands of Corfu, Crete, Kos and Rhodes.

Andrew Flintham, managing director for Tui UK & Ireland, said: With all of the uncertainty over the last few months, weve left announcing our planned summer holiday programme as late as possible so that we could offer those who want to travel the option to do so, while providing them with as much reassurance and certainty as possible.

While we are still waiting for the government to change its advice for travel, weve worked hard to ensure this can happen safely.

While things might look a little different across the flying and holiday experience, Im confident that most of the things we all love to enjoy on holidays, will still be there for us to enjoy.

Package holidays in particular probably have the best chance of providing the reassurance customers need, because quality control is assured from departure, through to the experience in-destination to the return trip home.

Hundreds of thousands of Tui customers with bookings from other airports or to other destinations in July will be contacted in departure date order to be offered a full cash refund or the chance to rebook.

The company is allowing anyone booked up to 31 August to postpone their trip without penalty.

Jet2 Holidays, Tuis nearest rival, is planning a much wider range of packages to run from 15 July, with departures from many UK airports to Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being urged to bring forward the government's planned personal income tax cuts to deliver a much-needed boost to the post-pandemic economy as the Reserve Bank warns the coronavirus will cast a shadow for years.

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said the economy needed a boost to private demand and that would be best served by bringing forward the tax cuts, legislated to start from mid-2022, which would deliver a $14 billion annual boost.

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans has urged the Morrison government to bring forward its legislated tax cuts to deliver a boost to the economy. Credit:Michel O'Sullivan

Mr Frydenberg has pushed back the budget to October, with the government already warning it will show a record deficit after a huge shortfall in the current financial year. At the end of April, the budget was showing a deficit of $40 billion.

There are growing fears the economy could slow through the December quarter as key government support, including the $70 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy program, is withdrawn.
On May 31, he got an alert from his alarm company that the store was broken into. He arrived and saw three or four people running away from the store. A window was smashed, and nearly all of his prescription drugs were gone. Much of his over-the-counter merchandise was also stolen, leaving his stores green shelves empty even a week after the looting.
"Since 1786, seven generations of our family have been proudly brewing beer right here in Canada. But this isn't about us or our story. This is about something bigger. It's about pride in Canadian beer," said Andrew Molson. "With Canada Day around the corner, there's no better time to celebrate our country while bringing Canadian people, communities, and brewers together over something we can all love: our beer."

In select cities where it is possible to do so, just in time for Canada Day, Molson will extend the ultimate Canadian gesture by opening up its case to other brands for the first time to create the most Canadian Case of beer ever. Available for sale in limited quantities, this Canadian Case will be a variety pack featuring Canadian-founded brews, standing together, label to label, in celebration of our country's great beer.

"Molson has a proud history of bringing people together, no matter where in the country they call home," said Joy Ghosh, Marketing Director for the Molson family of brands. "We will champion fellow Canadian beer brands founded in this great nation, to recall the pride for our brews and inspire Canadians to #MakeitCanadian on their next beer run." adds Ghosh.

As Canada's oldest brewery, Molson wants to tie back to the company's values of building and nurturing communities inspired by their founder, John Molson. So, they will be donating $5 for every special-edition case printed (up to $25,000) to a local charity supporting people and communities in need of a helping-hand in this particularly difficult year of 2020.

What would be in your ultimate Canadian Case of beer? Build your own virtual version online at www.TheCanadianCase.ca or learn where you can buy the Canadian Case. Molson wants to hear from you! Tag @Molson_Canadian on Twitter or @MolsonCanadian on Instagram to tell them if there is a particular Canadian-founded beer brand you think should be part of the campaign.

About Molson Canadian

The Molson brewery is the oldest operating brewery in Canada and in all of North America. It was founded in 1786 when John Molson didn't just thirst for a better beer, but to build a better community for all. Molson Canadian and the Molson family of brands continue his legacy today by finding ways to bring people together over common passions and a love of beer. Molson Canadian was founded and continues to be brewed in Canada today, with over 2,000 Canadian employees, across 5 breweries in Toronto (Ontario), Montreal (Quebec), Chilliwack (British Columbia), St. John's (Newfoundland), and Moncton (New Brunswick), and uses some of the finest Canadian ingredients.

Molson Canadian is a hallmark brand of the Molson Coors Beverage Company, a company formed from an equal-parts merger between the Molson and Coors families in 2005. Molson Coors Beverage Company is a publicly traded company that operates through Molson Coors North America and Molson Coors Europe, and is traded on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges. To learn more about Molson Coors Beverage Company, visit www.molsoncoors.com .

SOURCE Molson Canadian

For further information: Media only: Natalie Gardner, Citizen Relations, 416-803-6399, [email protected]
by Frederick DSouza

About 25 million migrant workers have left the cities for their rural villages, where all cannot find work. The pandemic could create 354 million new poor people. The Church should organise people so that they can participate in decision-making processes.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  Fr Frederick DSouza is an economist and former director of Caritas India. For him, agriculture will not be able to absorb millions of migrant workers who left urban areas because of the COVID-19 to return to their rural places of origin. In addition to economic problems, the pandemic will increase social discrimination. However, the crisis could be an opportunity in disguise to create an egalitarian society in India. Fr D'Souzas analysis follows.

We, the urban dwellers have been enjoying the roads, flyovers, stadiums, and metros among many other advantages, all these years. We wake up every morning to see someone bring to our doorstep milk, newspaper, vegetables and many other necessities of life. These city makers who built the luxury apartments in which we live, the schools for our children, the hospitals for our treatment are migrant labourers. In the last few days, we have seen the images of thousands of migrant labourers and their children going back home with their meagre belongings; in some cases, elderly and the infirm as well. Some did not make it were killed by speeding vehicles; others were run over by trains; some died of heat and exhaustion.

It is estimated that 25 million migrant labourers from 64 districts, predominantly from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha are returning to rural areas.The strong push factors like unemployment and underemployment that contributed their migration into the cities are forgotten as they face a sense of insecurity, disowned by the very city they built. While they were in the city, they no doubt were able to earn money and support the education of the children back home, care and support the treatment of their aged parents, pay for house repairs and the wedding of their daughters. While a typical worker in rural areas earns Rs41,000 per year, the same worker can earn Rs98,000 per year in a city. Obviously, the pull factors were equally strong, as most investments and infrastructure creation took place in urban areas, making it attractive because of better job opportunities.

India however lives in her villages: 70% of the population lives in the villages. The huge influx of people back to the villages will further burden the economy, which was already under stress due to underemployment and unemployment. There has been decline in the investment in the agricultural sector over the years. Some other policies like demonetisation and gradual shift from agriculture to manufacturing production played a role; the transition was taking its time to settle. Under these scenarios, the scope of absorbing returning migrant labourers will be very difficult, giving rise to a huge new poverty. It is said that the 71% of the total work force in India is in rural areas. One can only imagine the problem adding so many millions of them over and above them. The rural economy is predominantly agriculturally based and by its very nature lacks diversification, and so cannot absorb the new influx of labour. Though there is manufacturing and construction activities in the rural economy, they are too small to absorb the newly arrived labour.

While we all agree that there will be a new poverty, the debate is how many and how to count them. the International Labour Organisation claims (April 2020) that about 400 million workers from Indias informal sector are likely to be pushed deeper into poverty due to Covid- 19.[1] Many people in the cities, urban areas and semi-urban areas, who worked in the informal sectors, on a daily wage basis, or contractual basis, will lose their jobs. Some may lose permanently as they may not be able to resume their services. In a cash dependent economy like in urban areas, its very important to have cash in hand for survival. Poverty will be visible in both urban and rural areas. Drawing on the study by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) and Planning Commission data, Financial Express analysed and concluded that, in summary, we can infer that due to covid-19, (i) poverty will grow with India adding about 354 million more poor people and (ii) inequality will worsen.[2]

The consequences of this newly added poverty will be manifold. There will be serious implications on the education and health of the new poor. Children in urban areas pulled out of schools and taken back to the villages will seek admissions in the rural hinterlands. Migrants who lived in the cities, who got used to comparatively better medical facilities will now find it extremely difficult to access treatment in rural areas. The rise in unemployment means more and more people approaching money lenders in agriculture and fulfilling other social and economic obligations. One can only anticipate a rise in violence, of petty crimes due to various reasons. We can expect a lot of land-related disputes and crimes; family-related issues like domestic violence, violence against women and children and human trafficking could be all on the rise.

There is fear of social stigma at least in initial stages that the returnees are carriers of the virus. This will add to the problems of existing social discrimination like caste system among people. There are reports of people being looked at suspiciously and denied access to villages and places of job opportunities.

The Government of India has announced many schemes for the different sectors in order to reach out to the poor. The government is going to spend 35 billion Indian rupees on food alone, which is a very welcome move. There is plan to register the migrant workers for various schemes and minimum wages. Direct bank transfers to farmers have been put in place. While all this is very good, we need to actually see how the people benefit from these schemes. It is too early to comment now.

The Church is always conscious of her diakonia, her call to serve. During the pandemic and the lockdown, the Church in India has served millions in an unprecedented way. From opening of health and other facilities for treatment and quarantine to working as frontline workers providing food and survival kits to migrants and needy families, the church has done it. From the parish level to the national level, everybody was on the lookout to reach out. However, the mission is far from over because the worse is yet to come. We confront two issues: to get over the pandemic as soon as possible and work on the economic recovery. The Church should play a role in both.

As I write this, I hear the news that migrant labourers are arriving back in Punjab. The states of Punjab and Haryana are Indias wheat and rice granaries. Migrant labourers are the backbone of food production in these states. The good news is that migrant labourers have arrived this time to much better working conditions. They were taken by bus from Bihar for almost double the wages like Rs. 4,000/ to 4,200/per hectare of sowing, which was less than half previously. In other words, migrant labourers will eventually go in search of these jobs as there will be excess labour in the villages. Both the push and the pull factors may work in different ways, but will be there. So, the Church can play the role of organising people, raising awareness, creating different fora for better and just wages. The movement of people even within the country for labour needs regulation. Creating accountability at different levels and creating access to resources and entitlements should be the distinct role of the Church.

Generating livelihoods, whether in rural or urban areas, is of paramount importance. Gainful employment for the poor, whether through self-employment or daily wage earning in an informal sector, any activity that brings cash for the poor, is required. It is cash that ultimately gives them purchasing power. In other words, there is lot of scope for skill development, training, and credit to create alternatives. All this should be regenerated on new terms and conditions based on the principle of equity and fair redistribution of resources. What was happening prior to COVID-19 was far from normal; it was injustice and oppression that was normalised or rather made to feel that it was normal. This has come as an opportunity in disguise to create an egalitarian society. The Church should take her social teachings seriously and work on them.

Agriculture plays a vital role in Indian economy, contributing 17% of the total GDP. The Church promotes sustainable agriculture, which in itself is very good, but without fora for producers to take care of the post production, issues like storage and price control, and dialogue between consumers and producers, it has little result.

The establishment and control of supply chain and prices by the poor is an urgent need. These measures will absorb more labour in the rural areas and largely minimise the push factors in the villages. Migrant labourers who just returned or are on their way back home, are bringing a lot of skills, which should be retained in the rural areas as much as possible.

The Church needs to be out there to organise people at various levels so that they can effectively participate in the various decision-making processes that affect their lives.

[1] Shweta Saini, COVID-19 may double poverty in India, in Financial Express, 30 April 2020 (https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/covid-19-may-double-poverty-in-india/1943736/). Retrieved on 22 June 2020.

[2] Ibid.
NEW YORK  Black Roman Catholics are hearing their churchs leaders calling for racial justice once again after the killing of George Floyd, but this time theyre demanding not just words but action.

As protests against racism and police brutality continue nationwide, there are rising calls for huge new investment in Catholic schools serving Black communities; a commitment to teach the complex history of Black Catholics; and a mobilization to combat racism with the same zeal the church shows in opposing abortion.

As a church, were very good with words. The church has made clear it stands against racism, said the Rev. Mario Powell, a Black priest who heads a Jesuit middle school in Brooklyn.

Whats profoundly different this time is folks arent looking for more words  theyre looking for actual change, he said.

Noting that hundreds of Catholic inner-city schools have closed in recent decades, hes among those urging church leaders to make the necessary spending to reverse that. He also said all Catholic schools should teach the history of Black Catholics in America.

Its a history of discrimination and oppression, said Powell, 38. Its also a very rich history that should be celebrated, of a population that has overcome a lot.

In 2018, after what it called an accumulation of episodes of violence and animosity with racial and xenophobic overtones, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter condemning racism and vowing to combat it. Numerous bishops issued similar statements following Floyds death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer.

Professor Shannen Dee Williams, a Black Catholic who teaches history at Villanova University, argued in a June 15 article in the National Catholic Reporter that such responses are insufficient.

The recent statements fall way short when it comes to acknowledging the churchs role in the contemporary crisis and direct complicity in the sins of anti-Black racism, slavery and segregation, she wrote, noting that the church was a major slaveholder in several states and engaged in segregation of parishes, schools, hospitals, convents and seminaries for decades after emancipation.

In an interview, Williams said the U.S. church hierarchy should formally apologize.

We want them to own up to that history, and then atone for it, she said.

The same day her article appeared, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., the highest-ranking Black leader in the U.S. church, joined eight fellow bishops from his region in acknowledging the churchs sins and failings on racial justice.

Prayer and dialogue, alone, are not enough. We must act to bring about true change, their statement said, calling for greater equality in health care, education, housing and criminal justice.

Black Catholics somewhat marginal place in the U.S. church is illustrated by statistics compiled by the national bishops conference.

According to the conference, there are about 3 million African American Catholics, roughly 4% of the nations 69 million Catholics. But there are just 250 Black priests, or less than 1% of the total of 36,500, along with eight active Black bishops out of more than 250, or about 3.2%.

Some are calling on church leaders to engage more energetically with youth at the forefront of the protest movement.

Earlier this month scores of young Black Catholics staged a march in Louisville, Kentucky, to protest racial injustice and also signaling they want their local church leadership to do more.

One of the speakers, retired priest John Judie, included the church in a list of institutions that have favored white people over Black people.

In an interview, Judie said some young people in the archdiocese are uncertain about their place.

When is the leadership going to sit down with the young adults who organized that protest and listen to what drove them to do this? Judie said. So far, Im not seeing it happen.

Thats a notion shared by Ansel Augustine, who was a youth minister at his parish in New Orleans as it rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

We see our youth and young adults leading these movements, putting their faith into action, said Augustine, now executive director of cultural diversity for the Washington archdiocese. Now is the time to empower them, to listen to what these young prophets are saying.

Ralph McCloud, who directs the anti-poverty program of the national bishops conference, said such steps are under way.

Weve begun with the listening sessions, hearing the very painful stories of people whove been victims of racism within the church and without, McCloud said.

We need to broaden the conversation and see whos missing at the table, he added. With African American Catholics, our numbers are so low that we get overlooked, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally.

Back in 2014, Augustine wrote an article for the Catholic media outlet Busted Halo asking why the fight against racism seemed to be a lesser priority for the U.S. Catholic leadership than the anti-abortion cause. Augustine took note when those remarks were echoed by Pope Francis earlier this month.

We cannot close our eyes to any form of racism or exclusion, while pretending to defend the sacredness of every human life, the pontiff said.

Gregory, the Washington archbishop, echoed the idea that racial justice should be part of pro-life advocacy.

Birth is only the first moment of a persons human dignity, which is never lost throughout the journey of life, he said via email.

That message heartens people like Loralean Jordan, a parishioner of the predominantly Black congregation of the Church of Saint Peter Claver in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Black Lives Matter should be a pro-life issue, getting the same amount of resources and same amount of zeal as the pro-life movement, she said.

She would like to see the church help coordinate a national anti-racism march and direct all U.S. priests to mark the feast day of Peter Claver, the 17th-century patron saint of enslaved people, by preaching about racial injustice.

-

Corrects: This story was first published on June 21, 2020. It was updated on June 22, 2020, to correct Ansel Augustines title in his Catholic parish in New Orleans in 2005. Augustine was a youth minister, but he was not a priest.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

___
Sedco Capital, a global Shariah-compliant asset manager, has successfully sold its Germany-based a multi-let office property, ABC West, for 52.9 million ($59 million) realising an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 30% for its investors. It had bought the property for 29.4 million in 2017.

ABC West is a 13,723 sqm of office space located in Frankfurt and was managed by GLL Real Estate Partners GmbH, a European real estate asset manager.

With more than 485 million of investments made in European real estate, Sedco Capitals International Real Estate team actively manages a diverse portfolio of properties that consists of industrial, healthcare, retail, and office buildings, spanning across the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy.

CEO Samer Abu Aker said: "Despite the challenging global market conditions, our International Real Estate team continues to make significant strides in cementing Sedco Capitals solid track record and global reputation as a value enhancing real estate investor."

"This is a testament of our ability to leverage our market expertise and strong network of international partners which enables us to identify both attractive real estate investment opportunities and sell at a favorable price, remarked Aker.

"Looking ahead, we will continue to identify investment opportunities that fit within the framework of our ethical investment principles and will capitalize on our relationships to generate the highest possible risk adjusted return for our investors," he added.

Aly Meghani, Head of International Real Estate at Sedco Capital, said: "We are proud of having successfully executed our value-add business plan for ABC West, delivering strong outperformance despite prevailing uncertain macroeconomic conditions."

"We remain disciplined in our search for compelling investment opportunities in Europe, which will further our commitment to keeping our investors interest at the heart of every calculated decision we make," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The tsetse fly occurs in large regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The flies feed on human and animal blood, transmitting trypanosoma in the process - small, single-cell organisms that use the flies as intermediate host and cause a dangerous inflammation of the lymph and nervous system in both animals and humans. There is no vaccination for this sleeping sickness; untreated, it usually ends in death. In agriculture, particularly cattle breeding, sleeping sickness - or trypanosomiasis - causes enormous damages in the form of sick and dead animals.

In addition to the use of insecticides, the insects are also caught in traps. The attractants used include substances that also occur in cattle urine and which attract tsetse flies. These substances (3-ethylphenol and 3-propylphenol, or 3-EP and 3-PP for short) are synthesized out of oil derivatives or also extracts from cashew nut shells through chemical processes. However, both processes are complex and neither practical nor affordable for rural communities in Africa.

In the LOEWE collaborative research project MegaSyn, molecular biologists at Goethe University have now succeeded in producing 3-EP and 3-PP in genetically modified brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). They used a yeast strain into which they had previously introduced a new metabolic pathway, and changed its sugar metabolism. This enabled the yeasts to produce similarly high concentrations of 3-EP and 3-PP as those which occur in cow urine.

Doctoral student Julia Hitschler from the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at Goethe University explains: "Our yeasts could ideally grow in Africa in nutrient solutions on the basis of plant waste products, food rests or fodder rests. This would make production of the attractant almost cost-free. We are currently looking for partners to help us test our yeasts locally and provide them to the local population."

The potential for the new yeasts go beyond the tsetse attractants, add Professor Eckhard Boles, who heads the project. In the future, other substances that have been previously won through oil or coal could be produced through the new yeasts: "Our yeasts could be developed to produce other alkylphenols besides 3-EP and 3-PP. These alkylphenols could be used for the production of lubricant additives or surface-active substances in cleaning agents."

###

Publication: Julia Hitschler, Martin Grininger, Eckhard Boles: Substrate promiscuity of polyketide synthase enables production of tsetse fly attractants 3-ethylphenol and 3-propylphenol by engineering precursor supply in yeast. Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66997-5

Further information:

Prof. Dr. Eckhard Boles

Institute for Molecular Biosciences

Goethe University Frankfurt

Tel: +49 69 798 29513

e.boles@bio.uni-frankfurt.de

http://www.bio.uni-frankfurt.de/boles

Current news about science, teaching, and society can be found on GOETHE-UNI online

Goethe University is a research-oriented university in the European financial centre Frankfurt am Main. The university was founded in 1914 through private funding, primarily from Jewish sponsors, and has since produced pioneering achievements in the areas of social sciences, sociology and economics, medicine, quantum physics, brain research, and labour law. It gained a unique level of autonomy on 1 January 2008 by returning to its historic roots as a "foundation university". Today, it is one of the three largest universities in Germany. Together with the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Mainz, it is a partner in the inter-state strategic Rhine-Main University Alliance. Internet: http://www.goethe-universitaet.de

Publisher: The President of Goethe University Editor: Dr. Markus Bernards, Science Editor, PR & Communication Department, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Tel: -49 (0) 69 798-12498, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, bernards@em.uni-frankfurt.de
As a Twitter follower of Nigel Farage  I like to hear challenging voices from outside my bubble, you know  I shouldnt have been surprised to see him pop up on Saturday. Yet I was. These days hes usually to be found looking grim and windswept on the south cost of England, on one of his (illegal) twitchy illegal migrant-spotting expeditions that seem to be for him what ornithology is to other men: an irresistible urge to get out the binoculars, rush to the coast and self-identify some rare type of visitor to our shores.

Not this weekend. Farage was in some obviously glam sun blessed corner far away, beaming, thumbs-up: In the USA, only twenty four hours from Tulsa, he exclaimed on Twitter. Thanks to a recent lockdown quiz question, Id learned that Tulsa is in Oklahoma  and that meant 24 hours from a Trump rally.

Farage had, of course, defied the British Foreign Office advice not to travel abroad during the coronavirus pandemic unless it is essential. He could, I suppose, claim it was a humanitarian mercy dash to cheer his old buddy up. And that appeared to work, because the United States government had relaxed its own travel restrictions to let this particular migrant in because it was considered in the "national interest"  which, in this case, means trying to put a smile on the face of Donald Grump.

I suspect that the leader of the Brexit Party wont be bothering with a 14-day quarantine when he gets back to the UK either, though I understand Oklahoma is not yet cironavirus-free. It wouldnt be a great look for Farage, to find himself the asymptomatic super spreader at the source of the second wave.

But its no longer like the old days now. Back in 2016, when The Donald was running for president, Farage and the Brexit referendum win used to be hailed as the heralds of radical change. Nigel was invited to turn up and do a turn. After Trump won, he and the other self-styled bad boys of Brexit were photographed in the golden womb of the Trump Tower. Why, the US president even suggested that his pal be appointed HM Ambassador to Washington DC.

Heady days, but long gone. Now even Trump himself cant fill a stadium, Farage wasnt even a warm-up routine (he was relegated to a panel appearance), and the polls suggest that Trump is about to be trounced by sleepy Joe Biden, whos even older than he is. Nigels mate will, before long, no longer be the most powerful man in the world but a washed up reality tv star, a political aberration with a reputation in the toilet.

Still, Trump has the fame and fortune to look after himself. What can possibly be next for Farage?

Despite playing a reasonably canny game before the last election, the Conservatives didnt need him and he is not holding the balance of power in the House of Commons. Brexit is done. His long-held dream of a grand coalition of the Conservatives, Brexit Party (originally as Ukip) and the DUP is over. He is as far away from power and influence now as he was when he first lost his deposit in a British parliamentary contest (Eastleigh by-election 1994; 1.7 per cent of the poll). Hes even lost his shock jock gig on LBC Radio.

Given that Boris Johnsons government seem to be cheerfully leading us into a no-deal Brexit on World Trade Organisation terms, Farage cannot realistically cry betrayal. Brexit has made him jobless.

Or maybe not. Dont think weve heard the last of him. Like Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain, Tony Benn and Aneurin Bevan, Farage is one of the very few figures who never became prime minister (or any of the other great offices of state) but left his mark and altered British society. Like it or not, Brexit would never have happened without him.

Farage has political gifts. My worry is that they will now be deployed in an even more pernicious direction. Already, he is back pushing the immigration issue with his gimmicky trips around the channel. Recently, he used his limited access to media to invite the former Aussie premier Tony Abbott to explain how Australias navy stopped their rickety migrant boats (by turning them round, with force).

Brexit will not, and never would, stop the pressure of migration from outside the EU. Ministers want a Australian-style points system, which could mean high migration; Farage now wants an Australian-style gunboat system.

Sooner or later the coronavirus pandemic will pass, and a more normal politics will return. After Brexit, Britain  with a badly damaged economy, high unemployment and a sense of bewilderment  will provide the ideal incubation conditions for a new, dangerous Farageism.
President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated fellow citizens on the joyous and historic occasion as Nigeria becomes Wild Polio Virus Free.

Mr Buhari also appreciated all partners, local and international, for their relentless efforts in ensuring the clean health bill.

The president made his feelings known in a statement released by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, in Abuja an Sunday.

According to the president, this achievement reflects the resilient spirit of Nigerians, particularly the capacity of hardworking men and women in the health industry, who drew resources and support from multiple sectors to deal a final blow to the deadly virus.

He said: This achievement is not only one of the great successes of this generation of Nigerians but also one of the obvious dividends of this administration, which is consistent with our progressive investment in the health of our people since 2015.

This landmark achievement is also a promise kept to all Nigerians. As you will recall that in August 2015, barely three months after we assumed office, I promised Nigerians that: My government shall provide the necessary resources and commitment required to strengthen the health system, routine immunisation and ensure the country is certified Polio free.

The president noted that in 2016, the country suffered a major setback in the polio eradication efforts with the outbreak of the Wild Polio Virus in Borno, after about two years without any case.

Mr Buhari recalled that he promptly directed the immediate release of N9.8 billion to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) to contain the outbreak.

Subsequently, we have been meeting all our financial obligations to bilateral and multilateral agreements, and also provided the moral support and leadership required at all levels to motivate the men and women in the frontline of polio eradication.

In addition, we sincerely appreciate our donors and development partners who stood by the country during those trying times, he added.

According to him, this achievement is a hard-won battle spanning over three decades of hard work and dedication by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

He also lauded the Federal, States and Local Governments, polio eradication team at all levels, the nation donors and development partners, both local and international for their contributions in achieving this feat.

As we recall, the polio eradication structures were used when Nigeria successfully eradicated Ebola Virus Disease within the shortest possible time in 2014.

I am glad that these same human, material and technological resources have been deployed to steadily increase Routine Immunisation coverage and are being organised to implement the fight against community transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This big battle would not have been won without the support of our donors and development partners.

These include Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Aliko Dangote Foundation, Rotary International, United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USAID, Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and European Union.

The president also acknowledged the contributions of the Global Health Canada, German Development Bank (KfW), WHO, UNICEF, Nigeria Governors Forum, Polio Survivors Group, the media, faith-based and other non-governmental organisations.

Besides, he noted the immense contribution of traditional and religious leaders who mobilised communities to accept immunisation and other government programmes.

The final theatre of the polio eradication fight was particularly championed by the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee on Polio Eradication and Primary Health Care (NTLC) under the guidance of His Highness, Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Saad Abubakar, and strategic leadership of late Shehu of Bama, Alhaji Kyari Ibn Umar El-Kanemi.

We thank you all for the leadership and partnership over the years, the president said.

(NAN)
[June 22, 2020] Companies Urged to Fortify Supply Chains from Climate Change Disruption

The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) and HSBC released a new report today urging companies to prepare supply chains for the risk of climate change disruptions that threaten to raise costs and jeopardize their ability to meet customer needs. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005392/en/ Co-authored by Dr. Christy Slay, TSC Director of Technical Alignment and Dr. Kevin Dooley, TSC Chief Scientist and faculty at Arizona State University (ASU), with funding and support from the HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance, Improving Supply Chain Resilience to Manage Climate Change Risks warns that climate change will result in more extreme weather events and continued sea-level rise continue to disrupt supply chains configurations with increasing more frequency. Supply chain disruptions from climate change can increase the cost or lower the quality or quantity of supplies provided to a manufacturing by its suppliers. Dooley states, "We all see the myriad of supply chain disruptions occurring during the current coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately this prefaces the types of challenges that supply chains will face in the future from increasing climate change. Now is the time to create more supply chain resilience." "As companies worldwide are in the midst of dealing with COVID-19's impact on their business operations and their supply chains, current events put in sharp relief the impact of supply chain disruptions on a global scale," said Patricia Gomes, Regional Head of Global Trade and Receivable Finance (GTRF). "We're helping our customers think holistically about supply chain risks, and this report provides valuable insight into planning for, and mitigating disruptions caused y, climate change."



The whitepaper also found that: Climate change risks may also force more investor attention on a company's supply chain related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To better plan for the future, companies need to incorporate climate change into a broader supply chain risk management strategy.

Bridging and buffering are strategies to enhance a company's ability to withstand risk events and protect against inevitable failures and supply disruptions. Risk events include increased cost, lower quality supply, and delayed supply, where a disruption can delay delivering goods or services to a company's own customers.

Companies that address resiliency can be more attractive to employees, customers, and investors. The authors include a supply chain climate resiliency questionnaire for those wanting to do a quick assessment of a company's supply chain resiliency or discuss with managers. TSC is a global organization propelling the consumer goods industry forward to create more sustainability products through science-based assessments and solutions. In order to create change on a global scale, in an increasingly volatile world, TSC incentivizes and supports manufacturers and their suppliers to adopt new practices and design more sustainable products. Their full impact report is available here.

The HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance provides thought leadership about transforming the real economy and strengthening the financial system response to climate change. HSBC's in-house think tank, the Centre generates and promotes publicly available reports that support the climate change ambitions of key stakeholders including industry, financial regulators, governments and financial institutions. Note to editors: About HSBC HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of the HSBC Group, is headquartered in London. HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 64 countries and territories in our geographical regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa. With assets of US$2,918bn at 31 March 2020, HSBC is one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations. About TSC The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) is a global non-profit organization transforming the consumer goods industry to deliver more sustainable consumer products. We work to enable a world where people can lead fulfilled lives in a way that decouples their impacts on people and the planet. Our members and partners include manufacturers, retailers, suppliers, service providers, NGOs, civil society organizations, governmental agencies and academics. TSC convenes our diverse stakeholders to work collaboratively to build science-based decision tools and solutions that address sustainability issues that are materially important throughout a product's supply chain and lifecycle. TSC also offers a portfolio of services to help drive effective improvement and implementation. Formed in 2009, TSC is jointly administered by Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas and has a European office at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. For more information visit www.sustainabilityconsortium.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005392/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
New Delhi, June 22 (IANS) Pakistan is using its diplomatic missions, particularly in London to "fund and foment" anti-India hate campaigns. The role of the Pakistan High Commission in London, primarily of a colonel rank officer of Pakistan Army posted as an advisor there, has come to light, a report of the Indian intelligence agency reveals.

The colonel is assigned the task of re-uniting splinter groups of pro-Khalistan Sikhs, operating from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe.

At the behest of Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the colonel has been instrumental in funding Khalistan groups, including Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) which has an office in London.

India's premier anti-terror agency NIA has found the ISI's role in execution of a series of drone operated arms dropping incidents inside Indian territory through a pro-Khalistan terror kingpin Gurmeet Singh Bagga.

Reports say that Bagga, based in Germany's Hamburg, has links with Khalistani militants operating from Britain and the US including Gurpatwant Singh Pannu of SFJ.

The colonel, who works under a senior official of Pakistan Navy posted at High Commission, has been a key person in organising several anti-India protests at the Indian High Commission office in London.

ISI-backed Khalistani groups have attacked several Indians outside the Indian High Commission office, near Bush House in London in March 2019. Later it was found that SFJ organised the attack with help of the Overseas Pakistani Welfare Council, backed by the ISI and the Pakistan High Commission.

Pannu and his close aides have been frequent visitors to the Pakistan High Commission, located at Lowndes Square.

As per Intelligence reports, several meetings of SFJ office bearers and the Colonel rank officer have been held at this office in past one year relating to anti-India campaign "Referendum 2020" in a bid to garner support of the Sikh diaspora in US, Canada and Europe. However, the ISI's plot to rekindle the Khalistan movement has not been supported by Sikhs around the world.

This is not for the first time, that misuse of its diplomatic missions by Pakistan have come to fore. The ISI has been misusing diplomatic missions in Nepal, Bangladesh and a few Middle East countries for pushing an anti-India agenda including trafficking of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN).

Last year, a huge FICN racket was unearthed in Kathmandu, where three Pakistan nationals, who have links in the Pakistan Embassy in Nepal, were arrested. In Bangladesh, the Pakistan High Commission's Second Secretary, Farina Arshad was expelled after her links with a terror outfit came to light, a few years ago. Report says Arshad, operating on behalf of ISI, was also involved in sheltering smuggling gangs involved in pushing FICN into India.

Sources in the Indian intelligence agency said that in wake of escalating Sino-Indian tension over border issues, ISI has been pro-actively backing Khalistani groups to foment anti-India campaigns. The ISI has also set up an office for SFJ in Karachi to facilitate its activities relating to Referendum 2020. The Indian government has banned SFJ for its anti-India hate campaign and sheltering people involved in terror attacks in India.

--IANS

ds/vd
The Trump campaign on Sunday sought to blame concerns about protesters for the lower-than-expected turnout at the president's rally in Tulsa, Okla., even though the campaign itself had raised expectations about attendance by touting the number of people who had signed up for tickets online.

Reporters on site also saw little evidence of attendees being blocked from going to the event.

In the days leading up to Saturday night's rally - President Donald Trump's first since March - the president's re-election campaign repeatedly touted figures suggesting that as many as 1 million people had signed up to attend. But the crowd did not fill the 19,000-seat BOK Center, with swaths of upper-level seating empty, and plans for a presidential speech in an outdoor overflow area were abruptly canceled as few attendees filled the space.

There were just under 6,200 people in the arena, the Tulsa Fire Marshal's Office said Sunday. Trump's campaign rallies have typically attracted more than 10,000 people, and some have drawn two or three times that many - although the president has a habit of inflating his crowd numbers to cast his popularity as even greater.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp argued that turnout was lower than expected because Trump supporters were afraid of protests outside the venue turning violent.

People were concerned about the demonstrations, Schlapp said, "and so, we saw that have an impact in terms of people coming to the rally." Pressed by host Chris Wallace on the fact that the Trump campaign itself had raised expectations about high attendance numbers, Schlapp replied, "There were people and families that couldn't bring their children because of concerns of the protesters."

Schlapp also emphasized that the online reach of the event was "far and wide," saying that more than 5.3 million people viewed it on the campaign's digital media channels. The White House similarly fell back on claims about online viewership in January 2017 when faced with questions about the low crowd numbers for Trump's inauguration.

Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, issued a statement Sunday morning pushing back against reports that some TikTok users and K-pop fans had sought to sabotage the rally by reserving tickets they didn't plan to use.

The campaign had weeded out "tens of thousands" of bogus cellphone numbers ahead of the rally, Parscale said, but "these phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking" for possible crowd size.

"The fact is that a week's worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protestors, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally," Parscale said. He added that the episode "makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they don't do their full jobs as professionals."

Outside the rally venue Saturday night, one group of protesters blocked one of three entrances for about 15 minutes - but by that point, most people had already entered the arena's outer perimeter.

By the time Trump took the stage, there had been tense verbal confrontations outside but no reports of violence. Civilians carrying military-style rifles and pistols wandered amid the crowds, claiming they wanted to keep people safe, while Tulsa police and National Guard troops restrained and separated opposing sides.

On the flight to Tulsa, Trump was unhappy with television images of the sparse crowds and vacant seats. He continued to fume aboard Air Force One on the way back to Washington and on Sunday, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The president complained that his aides should have known about the efforts to embarrass him, and he argued that potential attendees were further scared away by his campaign's public confirmation that six members of the advance team tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the officials said.

Parscale encouraged Trump aides and allies to push back hard against the crowd size narrative late Saturday and early Sunday. But several advisers blamed Parscale for setting up such high expectations for the rally, and some Republicans mused about the campaign manager's future.

Said one Republican with direct knowledge of the president's thinking: "We won't really know how safe Brad is until we see how long this goes on for in the news cycle."

Democrats on Sunday criticized the Trump campaign's decision to hold the rally amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some noted that the sign-up page for the rally contained a disclaimer noting that attendees "voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19" and agree not to hold the campaign or venue liable should they get sick.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to former vice president Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, said Trump's "debacle of a rally last night will long be remembered."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates also skewered the president over his rally turnout.

"Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him," Bates said in a statement.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, accused the Trump campaign Sunday of showing "no concern for what it means for people to be gathering in large numbers."

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," she called the rally an embarrassment and said she hoped the lower-than-expected turnout was a "preview for November."

"Finally, people are recognizing that this man is a danger to our country, a danger to our democracy and that he should not be the president of the United States of America. . . . I just hope that this is a good sign that the country is moving on from him," Bottoms said.

Some administration officials on Sunday defended the Trump campaign's decision to hold a rally during the pandemic.

"I think what we saw, particularly in Tulsa, when you talk about the president's rally, is a state in a Phase 3 reopening. And so activities like this are allowed," acting secretary of homeland security Chad Wolf said during an interview on NBC News's "Meet the Press." Wolf added that it was "a personal choice that people are making on the face coverings and where you are within that phase."

Oklahoma has recorded a rising number of coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with more than 10,000 cases and at least 368 deaths as of Sunday morning. There had also been a spike in cases in Tulsa, which led the local health department director to initially ask that the rally be postponed.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court denied a request that everyone attending the indoor rally wear a mask, and few at the event in the evening appeared to be wearing them.

The lackluster showing undercuts one of Trump's favorite lines and political strengths: that he gets the biggest crowds of any politician.

Explaining why he would not accept a socially distanced Republican National Convention, Trump told North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, last month: "Since the day I came down the escalator, I've never had an empty seat."

- - -

The Washington Post's Robert Klemko and Adam Taylor contributed to this report.
Press Release

22 June 2020

London, UK - Holiday hotspot Egypt, is the latest in a line of popular destinations around the world to sign up to the world's first ever global safety and hygiene stamp, launched recently by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).

Advertisements

The growing list of endorsements have come from many major holiday and city destinations around the world such as Aruba, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Vienna, among many others.

WTTC, which represents the global Travel & Tourism private sector, designed the special Safe Travels stamp to enable travellers to identify destinations and businesses around the world which adopted its health and hygiene global standardised protocols - so consumers and holidaymakers can experience 'Safe Travels'.

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) embraced the WTTC Safe Travels stamp, which have the safety and hygiene of travellers as its top priority.

Gloria Guevara, WTTC President & CEO, said: "We are delighted to see major countries and destinations such as Egypt and Slovenia joining the growing list of global destinations adopting our private sector protocols.

"This not only shows the success of the WTTC Safe Travel stamp, but also demonstrates its importance to travellers and those who work in the sector.





"The stamp is critical to re-establish consumer confidence in Travel & Tourism and ensure travellers can rest assured that enhanced standards of hygiene are in place.

"As WTTC health and hygiene protocols, affecting hotels, restaurants, airports, cruise lines, tour operators, restaurants, outdoor shopping, and transportation are implemented, so the list of destinations recognising the new stamp continues to grow.

"We thank these destination countries and cities for working with WTTC to ensure a speedy recovery of the sector. We look forward to welcoming many more destinations as countries around the world begin to lift travel restrictions which will see people travelling again."

Since the launch of the WTTC Safe Travels stamp, destination countries, cities and hotspots around the world such as Turkey, Bulgaria, Mauritius, Panama, Portugal, and the Mexican State of Jalisco, have now adopted WTTC's new protocols.

Dr Khaled El-Enany, Egypt Minister of Tourism and Antiquities,said: "I am pleased with the decision issued today by the WTTC to grant Egypt its Safe Travels stamp. This is a milestone in our bilateral cooperation with WTTC. This decision reflects Egypt's commitment to the safe resumption of inbound tourism with strict comprehensive hygiene safety measures starting July 1, 2020, to its superb, sunny and healthy beaches.

"We are looking forward to welcoming guests to Egypt's resorts in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Coast."

Ivan Eskildsen, Panama Minister of Tourism, said: "As the hub of the Americas, restoring confidence for travellers and tourists, will be a key factor for the reactivation of our industry and our economy.

"The WTTC Safe Travels stamp is a great way of building trust, aligning the protocols we have developed with our Ministry of Health with WTTC standards, so that travellers can have a safe journey through our country."

Ivan Liptuga, President, National Tourism Organization of Ukraine, said: "We commend WTTC for the strong initiative to design Safe Travels protocols for every link in the tourism value chain. One of NTO Ukraine's core activities is quality management and the implementation of international standards in the sustainable development of tourism in Ukrainian destinations.

"The implementation of WTTC protocols and the distribution of a Safe Travel Stamp is vital for strengthening health and safety standards and also a great marketing tool which strengthens confidence and differentiates socially responsible businesses from others."

Msc. Maja Pak, Director General of the Slovenian Tourist Board, said: "The Slovenian Tourist Board is proud that Slovenia is one of the first countries in the world with recognised Safe Travels Protocols approved by the World Travel & Tourism Council. Our instant reaction will help the tourism recover as soon as possible, and our common efforts with all the stakeholders have resulted in the GREEN & SAFE label, which represents Slovenia's commitment to responsible, green, and safe tourism."

WTTC recently launched a range of worldwide measures as part of its Safe Travels protocols, providing consistency and guidance to travel providers and travellers about the new approach to health, hygiene, deep cleansing and physical distancing, in the 'new normal' of COVID-19 world.

The protocols were devised following the experience of WTTC members dealing with COVID19 and based on guidelines from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

According to WTTC's 2020 Economic Impact Report, during 2019, Travel & Tourism was responsible for one in 10 jobs (330 million total), making a 10.3% contribution to global GDP and generating one in four of all new jobs.
Daylen McLee felt the crash in his house, ran outside, and saw a police cruiser and another vehicle had collided.

And police in Fayette County are now crediting McLee with saving the officers life.

Daylen actually said, Im not going to let him die, Uniontown City Police Lieutenant Thomas Kolencik told WTAE. Theres just no words to describe, you know.

The crash occurred Sunday in Uniontown, injuring Officer Jay Hanley, according to reports.

Police say Hanley was responding to assist two other police officers on another call when the crash, involving another vehicle, occurred, according to reports.

"We felt it in the house and my sister came screaming that two cars hit each other and one was a cop," McLee told WTAE.

He ran outside to help. When McLee got to the police cruiser, the officer told him his leg was injured and did not want to me moved.

Then we started to see the flames start to come inside of the car from the bottom and I knew we had to get him out, McLee said, according to reports. Another officer tried to assist me and I just ripped the door open and we started dragging him across the street before the car ignited or anything serious like that.

Hanley was flown to the hospital and underwent surgery for an injured leg, and the driver of the second vehicle was able to walk to an ambulance and is expected to recover, reports indicate.

The Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the crash.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
New Bill Ending Closures Enables Latvia Picks Up Where It Left Off

Published June 22, 2020 by Lee R

The emergence of Latvia is underway again, and soon to bear fruits.

Before Covid-19, the Republic of Latvia was establsishing itself as one of iGamings darling emerging economies.

The Bill of Liberation

Let the emergence resume, as of June 9: the Latvian Parliament Saeima has passed a bill ending the state of emergency that had shut down legal gambling in the jurisdiction.

The Closure

The resumption dates to March 22, when a bill was passed banning all land-based gambling in Latvia due to the pandemic--with iGaming explicitly added to the prohibitions on 6 April.

Opposing iGaming Shutdowns

At the time, Latvia-licensed operators argued that shutdowns of online gaming sites during the pandemic would merely drive players to unlicensed sites for illegal play.

Opening Things Up

Now, it appears the emerging republic can put those troubles in the rear view: Saeimas new bill ends the state of emergency today (5 June), paving the way for land-based and online sites to open.

Lingering iGaming Opposition

The resolution did not come without a final wave of resistance: New Conservative Party deputies Krisjanis Feldmans, Linda Ozola and Gatis Eglitis proposed an amendment to the new bill extending the suspension of retail gambling.

Final Clearance

The NCP was staved off by the Latvian Gaming Business Association, who assured that retail gambling locations had sufficient protections in place to ensure safety against both the virus and problem gambling that were already in place before the pandemic struck.

Latvias Forward Thinking

The Association further unveiled a progressive multi-point Action Plan to prevent the spread of the virus, including limits of one person per 4 square metres; full disinfection of gaming machines and surfaces; ventilation of premises no more than every four hours; spacing of seats between gaming machines 2m apart and further unspecified enhanced customer monitoring measures.

Outlook

With such a progressive agenda and clearance to resume iGaming, emerging Latvia could provide some superior performance data quite soon, with the chance to establish a leadership role in the industrys recovery from the pandemic.
Museum of Natural History to Remove Roosevelt Statue

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt by the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City will be removed, the city announced on June 21.

In a statement Sunday evening, New York City Mayor, Democrat Bill de Blasio, said the request to remove the bronze statue of the former president was made by the museum.

The statue, which is owned by the city and has presided over the museums Central Park West entrance since 1940, depicts Roosevelt on horseback while flanked by a Native American man and an African man.

The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior, de Blasio said in a statement.

The City supports the Museums request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue, he said.

The Equestrian Statue in front of the Museum has long been controversial for the racial hierarchy it depicts. The Museum has asked that it be moved. More: https://t.co/3hgIWe0fqu pic.twitter.com/m99Bl1EEFT  American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH) June 21, 2020

The move follows waves of protests across the United States over the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. He died after a city police officer knelt on his neck for nearly eight minutes.

Statues have been toppled and vandalized across multiple states, with opponents of Confederate memorials decrying them as an affront to African-Americans and the ideals of racial equality.

Supporters of keeping the statues meanwhile argue they represent an important part of history or that any actions to remove or move statues should go through a round of consultation.

In a statement on its website, the Museum of Natural History said that the statue of the 26th president was unveiled to celebrate Roosevelt as a devoted naturalist and author of works on natural history.

Roosevelts father was one of the Museums founders, and the Museum is proud of its historic association with the Roosevelt family, the museum said. At the same time, the statue itself communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing.

Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd, the museums president, Ellen V. Futter, told The New York Times on Sunday.

We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism, she added of the museums view. Simply put, the time has come to move it.

The equestrian statue was previously vandalized in October 2017 by a group who identified themselves as members of the Monument Removal Brigade. They called for its removal as the statue could be seen an emblem of patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism.

Theodore Roosevelt Memorial outside the American Museum of Natural History. (American Museum of Natural History)

It is not yet clear what will happen to the bronze statue or when it will be removed.

Forceful Toppling of Statues

President Donald Trump on Saturday denounced the forceful toppling of statues of American historical figures nationwide by rioters, describing the actions as a cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion that violates everything we hold dear as Americans.

They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place, the president said before a crowd at his reelection campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahomathe first since March, when the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic put a halt to all in-person campaign events.

Though its unclear who exactly is behind each monuments desecration, Attorney General William Barr said recently that the Department of Justice had evidence that Antifa and other similar groups have hijacked initially peaceful protests triggered recently by Floyds death.

The president said at the rally that an unhinged left-wing mob is attempting to vandalize our history  tear down our statues, and punish, cancel, and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control.

Were not conforming, he said.

Theodore Roosevelt IV, Roosevelts great-grandson and a museum trustee, welcomed the decision to remove the statue.

The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice, he told New York Times. The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelts legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.

Bowen Xiao contributed to this report.
Prithviraj Sukumaran, the popular actor-filmmaker is all set to join hands with director-producer Aashiq Abu for the first time in his career. Interestingly, the duo is joining hands for the upcoming period drama, which has been titled as Vaariyamkunnan. The project, which will feature Prithviraj Sukumaran in the titular role, is directed by Aashiq Abu.

The announcement of Vaariyamkunnan came out as a great surprise for both the fans of Prithviraj and Aashiq, as the duo has never hinted about working together earlier. With this highly anticipated project, the long-time dream of the cine-goers to witness the association of Aadujeevitham actor and Virus director has finally come true.

Prithviraj, who is totally excited about the project, took to his official social media pages to make the big announcement. 'He stood up against an empire that ruled a quarter of the world. Etched out his own country with an army that waged a never before war against the British. Though history was burned and buried, the legend lived on! The legend of a leader, a soldier, a patriot. A film on the man who became the face of the 1921 Malabar revolution. #Vaariyamkunnan.

Filming begins in 2021. On the 100th anniversary.', wrote the actor on his post.

As per the reports, Prithviraj is appearing as the historical character Vaariyamkunnathu Kunjahammad Haji, the founder of 'Malayalarajyam' state, in the big-budget venture. Vaariyamkunnan, which will start rolling in 2021, is jointly penned by Unda fame writer Harshad and Rameez. Muhsin Parari, the renowned scenarios is co-directing the movie along with director Aashiq Abu.

Shyju Khalid is the director of photography. Saiju Sreedharan handles the editing, while Jyothish Shankar handles the art direction. Sameera Saneesh will design the costumes for the project. Benny Kattappana is the production controller. Vaariyamkunnan is produced Zikander and Moideen, under the banners Compass Movies LTD and OPM Cinemas.

Also Read:

Prithviraj Sukumaran Receives A Special Present From Daughter Alankrita On Father's Day!

Prithviraj Sukumaran Pens Heartfelt Note For His Late Friend And Ayyappanum Koshiyum Director Sachy
SILVER SPRING, Md. - An internet registrar is threatening to delist a website that is a leading promoter of white nationalist and anti-immigration views, a move that could make the site accessible only to diehard users willing to use a special browser to find it on the dark web.

Network Solutions parent company, Web.com Group, notified a civil rights group on Friday that it has taken steps to terminate the companys account for VDARE.com, which would make it unreachable on the public internet unless it can find another provider willing to register the domain name.

VDARE remained online Monday. The website has until Thursday to transfer the domain before Network Solutions may delete its services, a parent company lawyer said in a letter to a VDARE attorney last week.

In April and in May, the head of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sent letters urging Network Solutions to drop VDARE. Kristen Clarke, the Washington, D.C.-based groups president and executive director, wrote that VDARE peddles anti-immigrant and anti-Black hate, spreads misinformation about the coronavirus and encourages violence against migrants.

This is part of our ongoing work to confront the ways in which hate activity festers online, Clarke said Monday. We know that many white supremacists and extremists are not organizing in basements. They are using these platforms and websites to spread their dangerous ideologies, target victims and incite violence.

In Fridays response to Clarke, a company attorney said VDAREs content does not represent the values of our organization and violates its Acceptable Use Policy. The policy bars customers from using its domains to display bigotry, racism, discrimination, or hatred in any manner whatsoever, the same company attorney said in a letter to a VDARE lawyer last week.

VDARE founder and editor Peter Brimelow said his sites content hasnt changed in the 20 years that it has been a Network Solutions customer.

Censorship is just intensifying, he wrote in an email on Monday. Were still working on a replacement, but there is certainly a chance well have to go dark for at least a couple of days. And anyway we have no confidence that any US-based site will stand up to the PC lynch mob for long.

Many websites that publish white nationalist, white supremacist or anti-Semitic material have struggled to stay online or been booted off mainstream internet platforms, often after violent attacks by far-right extremists.

Google and GoDaddy yanked The Daily Stormers web address after the neo-Nazi websites founder, Andrew Anglin, published a post mocking the woman killed when a man drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Social media platform Gab, where the suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre spewed anti-Semitic messages before the 2018 shooting rampage, was briefly knocked offline after registrar GoDaddy and others dropped the site. Gab returned after a Seattle-based company, Epik, agreed to register it.

Users spewed anonymous hate on 8chan, an online message boar d, until a string of mass shootings by gunmen who posted manifestos on the site led to it getting forced offline in August 2019. The disruption ended when the imageboard relaunched in November under the new name 8kun.

This isnt the first time VDARE has been dropped by a technology company. Facebook announced last month that it removed accounts linked to VDARE and other groups, including pages devoted to the QAnon far-right conspiracy theory.

Brimelow sued The New York Times Company in January, claiming the newspaper defamed him by referring to him as an open white nationalist. The suit seeks at least $5 million in damages.

Last Thursday, newspaper lawyers urged a federal court in New York to throw out the lawsuit, accusing Brimelow of playing word games about how his fringe views should be characterized.

Brimelow has promoted theories at the heart of white nationalism and white supremacy, including that certain races are predisposed to commit crime and that IQ is linked to race, they wrote.

Brimelow has denied that his website is white nationalist but acknowledged it publishes works by writers who fit that description in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites.

Brimelow also operates a Connecticut-based non-profit, VDARE Foundation, which raised more than $1.8 million in tax-exempt gifts, grants and contributions between 2014 and 2018, according to an IRS tax filing.

___

AP Technology writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Boston.
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Market Segmentation:

The Segments of the Global Transparent Plastics Market Revenue based on Type, are Rigid and Flexible.

The Different Types of polymer identified in this MRFR report are polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PC), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), and others.

The important End-Users assessed for a detailed segmental analysis of the Global Transparent Plastics Market are building & construction, packaging, electrical & electronics, consumer goods, automotive, and others.

Competitive Dashboard:

DowDuPont (U.S.), BASF SE (Germany), and Evonik Industries (Germany) are some of the noted participants of the Global Transparent Plastics Market expected to contribute substantially to its development in the upcoming years. Other key players profiled for the share analysis of the market are LyondellBasell Industries Holdings B.V. (Netherlands), Covestro AG (Germany), INEOS (U.K), LANXESS (Germany), PPG Industries, Inc. (U.S.), TEIJIN LIMITED (Japan), Asahi Kasei Corporation (Japan), Denka Company Limited (Japan), LG Chem (South Korea), Trinseo (U.S.), SABIC (Saudi Arabia), and Eastman Chemical Company (U.S).

The market is anticipated to remain highly lucrative in the years to come. Some of the key trends supporting the growth of the market participants are mergers & acquisitions, facility expansion, research & development, partnerships, etc. Case to the point is, in February 2019, the U.S. based Aurora Plastics has completed the upgradation and expansion of its Texas compounding facility.

In March 2019, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation based out of Japan, has announced the acquisition of Welset Plast Extrusions Private Limiteds PVC compound business in India.

Get Free Sample @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/6077

Market Synopsis:

The properties of Transparent Plastics that are expected to facilitate the generation of demand over the next few years are resistance to corrosion and chemicals, low thermal conductivity, durability, micro-organisms repelling, etc. Global Transparent Plastics Market has been studied in details by Market Research Future in its latest report. It unveils that the market is projected to exhibit a healthy CAGR over the assessment period 2018 to 2023.

The growth of the market is expected to be driven primarily by the demand for packaging in the food industry. Also, the product has penetrated the booming industries such as pharmaceuticals, automotive, consumer goods, electrical & electronics, etc. This, in turn, is poised to catalyze expansion of the Transparent Plastics Market in the years to come.

Regional Analysis:

For an in-depth geographic assessment of the Global Transparent Plastics Market, it has been segmented into five regions namely Latin America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), Europe, and North America. Asia Pacific is assessed to be dictating the growth of the global market in 2016. It has been projected that the regional segment is likely to retain its forefront position in the global marketplace over the next couple of years. Rapid industrialization being observed in the region has led to exponential developments in the end-user industries such as automotive, consumer goods, packaging, etc. This, in turn, is likely to fuel demand for Transparent Plastics, thus, expediting the expansion of the regional market. In addition, the rising standards of living, in conjunction with the increasing purchasing power of the population, is also poised to catapult the Transparent Plastics Market in the region on an upward trajectory.

North America, which was the second leading regional market in 2016, is prognosticated to expand at a substantial pace in the forthcoming years. The growth can be ascribed to rising demand from the food packaging industry. In addition, the investments injected for revamping the construction industry is further expected to accelerate revenue generation for the participants of the Transparent Plastics Market in the upcoming years. Europe is forecasted to exhibit a similar growth trend in the nearby future. The key players in the Transparent Plastics Market in the region are expected to capitalize on the increasing demand from the automotive industry.

COVID-19 Study in Detail:

COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Bio-Based Chemicals Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-bio-based-chemicals-market

COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Surfactant Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-surfactant-market

Impact of COVID-19 on Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate Market @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-recycled-polyethylene-terephthalate-market

NOTE: Our teams of researchers are studying COVID-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering COVID-19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details.

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.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.

Contact:

Market Research Future

+1 646 845 9312

Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
The United States and Russia meet Monday in Vienna for talks on their last major nuclear weapons agreement against a backdrop of growing tensions and differences over whether they see any value in arms control at all.

US President Donald Trump insists that China should be involved in the talks on New START, the treaty that caps US and Russian nuclear warheads, because he says up until now Beijing has had a free pass to do as it likes in developing weapon systems.

China has shown no sign of being interested, giving Washington fresh cause for complaint, although critics say the US finds that a useful stick with which to beat its growing rival.

The delegations made no statement when they arrived at 8:30am (0630 GMT) at the Niederoesterreich Palace in the Austrian capital where the talks are taking place.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the insistence on including China showed the Trump administration was not serious about an accord.

"The only conclusion I can come to is that... the Trump administration (does) not intend to extend New START and is seeking to display China's disinterest in trilateral arms control talks as a cynical excuse to allow New START to expire," Kimball said.

Trump has already scrapped several treaties with Russia -- on overflights and on intermediate-range nuclear forces.

US ambassador Marshall Billingslea and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov are nonetheless to discuss the future of the New START treaty, which was agreed in 2010 and expires in February 2021.

That leaves very little time to renew a complex deal, let alone negotiate a new treaty involving China, especially with a November presidential election looming.

The current treaty limits each side to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads.

- End of agreements? -

China's nuclear arsenal is rapidly expanding but is still far smaller than those of the US and Russia.

Speaking over the weekend, Ryabkov played down prospects when he said that while it would be "correct and logical" to agree an extension, the future of the world was not solely dependent on it.

The deadlock over New START and the demise of other nuclear arms control treaties "suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the USA might be coming to an end," said Shannon Kile of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

According to the institute's latest research, Russia has 6,375 nuclear warheads, including those that are not deployed, and the United States has 5,800.

China comes a distant third with 320 warheads.

Song Zhongping, a defence analyst in Beijing, said 2,000 warheads would be an ideal arsenal for China, whose main concern is to counter the United States.

"China will never participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations between the US and Russia," he said.

"The nuclear disarmament talks proposed by the US are only a trap."

Russian political analyst Fyodor Lukyanov said there was no reason to expect any progress in Vienna.

"The Trump administration has rejected nearly all the restraints linked to the treaties agreed in the past," Lukyanov said.

"There is nothing to suggest that this treaty will be the exception."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Alaska's Umnak Island in the Aleutians showing the huge, 10-km wide caldera (upper right) largely created by the 43 BCE Okmok II eruption at the dawn of the Roman Empire. Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager image from May 3, 2014. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

An international team of scientists and historians has found evidence connecting an unexplained period of extreme cold in ancient Rome with an unlikely source: a massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano, located on the opposite side of the Earth.

Around the time of Julius Caesar's death in 44 BCE, written sources describe a period of unusually cold climate, crop failures, famine, disease, and unrest in the Mediterranean Region -impacts that ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Historians have long suspected a volcano to be the cause, but have been unable to pinpoint where or when such an eruption had occurred, or how severe it was.

In a new study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a research team led by Joe McConnell, Ph.D. of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev. uses an analysis of tephra (volcanic ash) found in Arctic ice cores to link the period of unexplained extreme climate in the Mediterranean with the caldera-forming eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE.

"To find evidence that a volcano on other side of the earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating," McConnell said. "It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."

The discovery was initially made last year in DRI's Ice Core Laboratory, when McConnell and Swiss researcher Michael Sigl, Ph.D. from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern happened upon an unusually well preserved layer of tephra in an ice core sample and decided to investigate.

Animated timeline showing European summer temperatures and volcanic sulphur and ash levels in relation to the Okmok II Eruption and significant historic events of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom from 59 to 20 BCE. Credit: DRI

New measurements were made on ice cores from Greenland and Russia, some of which were drilled in the 1990s and archived in the U.S., Denmark, and Germany. Using these and earlier measurements, they were able to clearly delineate two distinct eruptionsa powerful but short-lived, relatively localized event in early 45 BCE, and a much larger and more widespread event in early 43 BCE with volcanic fallout that lasted more than two years in all the ice core records.

The researchers then conducted a geochemical analysis of the tephra samples from the second eruption found in the ice, matching the tiny shards with those of the Okmok II eruption in Alaskaone of the largest eruptions of the past 2,500 years.

"The tephra match doesn't get any better," said tephra specialist Gill Plunkett, Ph.D. from Queen's University Belfast. "We compared the chemical fingerprint of the tephra found in the ice with tephra from volcanoes thought to have erupted about that time and it was very clear that the source of the 43 BCE fallout in the ice was the Okmok II eruption."

Working with colleagues from the U.K., Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Alaska, and Yale University in Connecticut, the team of historians and scientists gathered supporting evidence from around the globe, including tree-ring-based climate records from Scandinavia, Austria and California's White Mountains, and climate records from a speleothem (cave formations) from Shihua Cave in northeast China. They then used Earth system modeling to develop a more complete understanding of the timing and magnitude of volcanism during this period and its effects on climate and history.

According to their findings, the two years following the Okmok II eruption were some of the coldest in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 2,500 years, and the decade that followed was the fourth coldest. Climate models suggest that seasonally averaged temperatures may have been as much as 7oC (13oF) below normal during the summer and autumn that followed the 43 BCE eruption of Okmok, with summer precipitation of 50 to 120 percent above normal throughout Southern Europe, and autumn precipitation reaching as high as 400 percent of normal.

Detailed records of past explosive volcanic eruptions are archived in the Greenland ice sheet and accessed through deep-drilling operations. Credit: Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

"In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period," said classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson, D.Phil. of the University of Oxford. "These findings lend credibility to reports of cold, famine, food shortage and disease described by ancient sources."

"Particularly striking was the severity of the Nile flood failure at the time of the Okmok eruption, and the famine and disease that was reported in Egyptian sources," added Yale University historian Joe Manning, Ph.D. "The climate effects were a severe shock to an already stressed society at a pivotal moment in history."

Volcanic activity also helps to explain certain unusual atmospheric phenomena that were described by ancient Mediterranean sources around the time of Caesar's assassination and interpreted as signs or omensthings like solar halos, the sun darkening in the sky, or three suns appearing in the sky (a phenomenon now known as a parahelia, or 'sun dog'). However, many of these observations took place prior to the eruption of Okmok II in 43 BCE, and are likely related to a smaller eruption of Mt. Etna in 44 BCE.

Although the study authors acknowledge that many different factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom, they believe that the climate effects of the Okmok II eruption played an undeniably large roleand that their discovery helps to fill a knowledge gap about this period of history that has long puzzled archaeologists and ancient historians.

"People have been speculating about this for many years, so it's exciting to be able to provide some answers," McConnell said.

Explore further Water plus magma = increased explosivity

More information: Joseph R. McConnell el al., "Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom," PNAS (2020). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Joseph R. McConnell el al., "Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska's Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom,"(2020). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2002722117
There are several ways to reduce the risks of controlled human infection trials for COVID-19 vaccines, but they all come with drawbacks. A common technique in human challenge trials is to develop an attenuated strain of disease-causing virus so that if the participants get sick, they have less risk of serious illness. But in the high-stakes race for a COVID-19 vaccine, would a vaccine that stops a weakened virus still perform against the wild strain?

There are groups working on an attenuated form that would be attractive for these kinds of studies, said Hutch vaccine researcher Kublin. Id be more intent on entertaining these kinds of studies should we overcome those hurdles.

Kublin has carried out malaria human challenge trials with the naturally occurring pathogen that can cause death, but he had at his disposal medicines that could cure the disease in participants as soon as signs of infection emerged. There are no such rescue medicines available for COVID-19 trials.

As we currently entertain these challenge studies we are focused on the potential benefits, but there are also risks and consequences, and I am afraid that currently there is just too much uncertainty about them to make an informed decision, Kublin said.

Reducing the risks in human challenge trials

The most obvious way to reduce risk in a COVID-19 challenge trial is to limit participants to young adults, who for unknown reasons are statistically far less likely to die from this new disease. If such trials are launched, they would likely target healthy adults aged 20-29, whose risk of death in the pandemic has been 0.03%, comparable to that of donating a kidney. But will a vaccine that protects young people in a challenge study still protect senior citizens, who are most at risk for death?

Ethicists say it is important for volunteers in these trials to recognize the risks are real. For example, most vaccines that reach clinical trials fail. That means participants should not assume it is going to work. And in these carefully designed trials that infect volunteers with a live virus, they have an equal chance of receiving a potentially ineffective vaccine or a surely useless placebo.

Even though the fatality rate for COVID-19 among young people is low, it is not zero, said Dr. Ben Wilfond, director of the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Childrens Research Institute. Young volunteers should also be aware of recent research showing that those who survive serious bouts with COVID-19 may suffer long-term neurological or cardiac deficits.

Professor Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago, said that she believes controlled human infection trials can be designed to limit risk and provide significant social benefit to justify them.

Lets suppose we have a new vaccine this fall, but it is not perfect. It is not safe enough, or doesnt work in certain populations, or is very expensive. Wed want to quickly prepare another one. A challenge study could be one way to bridge the data to the next trial, she said.

Shah is the lead author of an influential article in Science, published in May, which laid out a framework for ethical challenge trials for COVID-19. The authors even addressed the question of whether volunteers should be paid, as is standard in most such trials  not in gold as in Walter Reeds day, but in dollars. To compensate for their time in quarantine, it could amount to several thousand dollars, they wrote.

Participants should be compensated for their time and effort, rather than being asked to subsidize the research. Fortunately, available data suggest that payment doesnt compromise the ability to understand risks, Shah said.

Ethicists such as Shah, and clinical trial researchers like Kublin at Fred Hutch, will be watching carefully as new studies provide added information about the biology and epidemiology of COVID-19.

How our research community balances these complex equations of risk and benefit, timing and projected societal costs, will determine when and how these challenge studies begin  and end, Kublin said.
To explore the mindset of the current left and, to be honest, to poke holes in intellectual bubbles they created for themselves, I became a member of several progressive groups. Among them, there was Libertarians vs. Anarchists. They position themselves as a debating group that is open to various views. The other day, I noted their great enthusiasm regarding the toppling of Washington's and Jefferson's monuments. Never mind the legacy of the Declaration and the republic these men were responsible for  the most advanced liberty system ever available at that time and a long time after; after all, they had been damned slaveholders, hadn't they? In fulfillment of their righteous indignation, I suggested that they go to Chattanooga, Tenn., to smash a statue of John Ross (17901866), the principal chief of the Cherokee Indians prominent in Jacksonian America's politics and a slaveholder who owned more that 100 black slaves. Unlike Jefferson, who was ambivalent about the institution of slavery, we know that Ross along with the rest of the rich Cherokee never thought about freeing his slaves, although he was a Freemason and considered himself a good Christian. Moreover, he took along that "human cargo" with him on the "Trail of Tears" (1838) to Oklahoma after white settlers seized Cherokee lands in Georgia and Tennessee and forced Ross's people to the west. To be fair, we do know that under the influence of his Quaker wife, Ross treated his human property "nicely." Lewis Ross, his brother, expecting that there would be a high demand for slaves in the new Indian territory in Oklahoma, purchased 500 more men and women on the eve of the "Trail of Tears."

I need to give credit to the members of the group. They did tolerate me for a while when, responding to the worldwide hype over the "holy Floyd" case, I confronted them by describing an identical (and more vicious) case that happened in Texas in 2016: Tony Timpa, a white, erratically behaving schizophrenic, was suffocated to death by white and a Hispanic police officers in exactly the same manner as George Floyd. I posed the following question for the members of the group: why was not Timpa blessed with a golden coffin? Why did not we have for him weeping crowds and thousands of woke pilgrims streaming to the murder site-turned-shrine to be healed, blessed, and saved? Where were kneeling police officers to wash the feet of Timpa's close and distant relatives? And, finally, why did not we see in 2016 mass pogroms, lootings, and burning that, I guess, we now routinely expect on such occasions?

The anarchists and socialist libertarians at first did try to debate me on this case. Yet, quickly their patience was exhausted. As soon as I posted the picture of the John Ross statue and invited them to topple this object whose very existence should be offensive to the proud descendants of slaves, they silently and completely removed me from the group along with that and all my previous postings. That was how I failed in my "dirty" attempt to penalize the long gone slaveholder who happened to belong to the "noble" race and spoiled the nice progressive feast that was directed against the long-gone slaveholders of the "evil" race.

Andre Van Doren, Ph.D. is a humanities scholar who writes for Notes of Liberty. You can reach him at borismoriarti@gmail.com.
Dharamshala: The number of Covid-19 cases in Himachal Pradesh breached the 700 mark after 28 more people tested positive, officials said on Monday.

The states tally has now reached 701 of which 265 are active cases.

Sixteen cases were reported from Hamirpur district, nine from Una and three from Kangra.

In all, 45 people tested positive for the contagion by Sunday night, the highest single day spike after May 21 when 42 cases were reported in the state.

70 ACTIVE CASES IN HAMIRPUR

Hamirpur chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Archana Soni said that five cases each were reported from Nadaun and Tauni Devi medical block.

Three cases each have been reported in Barsar and Bhoranj blocks, she said. With this, the total tally in the district has climbed to 182. There are 70 active cases, while 111 people have been cured.

SIX OF FAMILY TEST POSITIVE IN UNA

Six members of a family were among the nine people who tested positive in Una district. Deputy commissioner Sandeep Kumar said that a 54-year-old woman, her son, her daughter-in-law and two grand-daughters aged one and four years had tested positive. The family had returned from Sonepat in Haryana.

Apart from the family, one case each has been reported from Haroli and Bangana sub divisions and Una town.

THREE TEST POSITIVE IN KANGRA

Three people, including a 15-year-old boy, tested positive in Kangra district. Deputy commissioner Rakesh Kumar Prajapati said that a 41-year-old man is among the patients. His wife and daughter have already tested positive. The 15-year-old boy is the son of a positive patient. The third patient is a 38-year-old man. All three have returned from Delhi.

700 CASES IN 94 DAYS

Himachal breached the 700-mark on 94th day of reporting its first case, which was detected on March 20. It took just two days for the tally to reach 700 from 600steepest spike of 100 cases. The 600-mark was reached on Friday June 19.

The first 100 cases were reported in 61 days. The corona positive count reached 200 in 65 days; 300 in 71 days and 400 in 79 days.

There are 265 active cases in the state, while 417 patients have recovered; eleven migrated to other states and six succumbed to the contagion.

Sixteen patients were discharged on Monday.

Till date, Himachal Pradesh has recorded 701 cases.

Kangra is the worst-hit district with 184 cases, followed by Hamirpur with 182 cases. Una has recorded a total of 89 cases, Solan 77 cases, Chamba 44, Bilaspur and Sirmaur 32 each, Shimla 30, Mandi 23, Kullu five, and Kinnaur three cases. Eleven of the 12 districts in Himachal are affected by Covid-19. Lahaul-Spiti is the only corona-free district so far.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The protein structure facilitates viral entry into host cells making it a key target for vaccine and antiviral drug development, according to the researchers

The virus SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the known cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The "spike" or S protein facilitates viral entry into host cells.

Now a group of researchers from Seoul National University in South Korea, University of Cambridge in UK, and Lehigh University in USA, have worked together to produce the first open-source all-atom models of a full-length S protein. The researchers say this is of particular importance because the S protein plays a central role in viral entry into cells, making it a main target for vaccine and antiviral drug development.

The details can be found in a paper , "Developing a Fully-glycosylated Full-length SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Model in a Viral Membrane" just published online in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

This video demo illustrates how to build this membrane system from their SARS-CoV-2 S protein models. The model-building program is open access and can be found from the home page of CHARMM-GUI by clicking on the COVID-19 Archive link , or by clicking the archive link in the header, then the COVID-19 Proteins link in the left sidebar.

Developed by Wonpil Im , a professor in Lehigh University's Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Department, CHARMM-GUI (GUI = graphical user interface) is a program that simulates complex biomolecular systems simply, precisely and quickly. Im describes it as a "computational microscope" that enables scientists to understand molecular-level interactions that cannot be observed any other way. More information about CHARMM-GUI can be found in this video .

"Our models are the first fully-glycosylated full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein models that are available to other scientists," says Im. "I was fortunate to collaborate with Dr. Chaok Seok from Seoul National University in Korea and Dr. Tristan Croll from University of Cambridge in the U.K. Our team spent days and nights to build these models very carefully from the known cryo-EM structure portions. Modeling was very challenging because there were many regions where simple modeling failed to provide high-quality models."

Scientists can use the models to conduct innovative and novel simulation research for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, according to Im.

The S protein structure was determined with cryo-EM with the RBD up (PDB ID: 6VSB), and with the RBD down (PDB ID: 6VXX). But, this model has many missing residues. So, they first modeled the missing amino acid residues, and then other missing domains. In addition, they modeled all potential glycans (or carbohydrates) attached to the S protein. These glycans prevent antibody recognition, which makes it difficult to develop a vaccine. They also built a viral membrane system of an S protein for molecular dynamics simulation.

###
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tucsons lodging industry was reaching new heights. After eight years of growth spurred in part by large-scale expansion at Raytheon, the relocation of Caterpillar and Hexagon to Tucsons revitalizing downtown, and growth at the University of Arizona, performance had reached a new peak.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22) Health experts have yet to see a recent significant decrease in the coronavirus infectivity rate in the country, a special adviser to the COVID-19 task force said Monday.

Dr. Ted Herbosa urged Filipinos to continue practicing strict health protocols despite eased quarantine restrictions saying this will help in lowering the virus reproductive number or R naught, which is currently hovering around the value of 1.

We still havent really lowered the reproductive number We want it to be less than one maybe 0.5 or even 0. So thats the target to go to, Herbosa said in an interview with CNN Philippines The Source.

The reproductive number is an epidemiologic metric used to describe the contagiousness or transmission potential of infectious agents, according to the United States National Center for Biotechnology Information.

This represents the number of people who may be infected by a confirmed case. Ideally, this should be one or less, as anything higher means there is still significant community transmission, medical experts have warned.

The same data was utilized by a group of researchers from the University of the Philippines, which calculated a possible spike to 40,000 COVID-19 infections nationwide by the end of June.

Over the weekend, confirmed cases in the country have breached the 30,000 mark.

Important to look at trends

While some netizens sounded the alarm over the continuous spike in infections, Herbosa said it is also essential to look into the trends saying the country has been seeing lower COVID-19 positivity rate.

Its very scary, no  that the Department of Health reports a daily number, but thats a raw number. Epidemiologists will look at the trends; what is more important is the trend, Herbosa added.

He also brushed off concerns on the rise of fresh cases in DOHs daily bulletins as he attributed the development to heightened testing capacity and decreasing backlogs. Fresh cases pertain to those whose test results were released within the last three days.

RELATED: Reports on fresh, late COVID-19 cases to stay for now as PH clears backlogs  DOH

Moving forward, Herbosa added the country also needs to dive into meticulous contact tracing, citing Vietnams COVID-19 response model. He stressed this will be the key in curbing the spread of the viral disease.
As New Jersey expands its plans to reopen, workers across the state are being called back to work by their employers.

Some are also being asked to sign liability waivers, saying they will not hold their employers responsible if the worker gets infected with COVID-19 on the job.

Can workers be forced to sign such a form?

An employer in New Jersey cant have his employees waive their right to workers compensation, said Charles Sullivan, law professor and an associate dean at Seton Hall Law School.

At the same time, he said, it would be very difficult  if not impossible  to prove that a worker contracted COVID at work rather than while commuting or at the grocery store or elsewhere, he said.

Of course, none of this means that employers wont ask for waivers, just that theyre not effective, Sullivan said. But its dangerous to do so  or at least to fire a worker who wont sign one given CEPA and related rights.

CEPA, short for the Conscientious Employee Protection Act, is a broad law that prohibits employers from retaliating against an employee who objects to, or refuses to participate in any activity, policy or practice which the employee reasonably believes is incompatible with a clear mandate of public policy concerning the public health

There is a bill (S2380) pending in the state legislature that would make it easier for essential workers in New Jersey who contract the coronavirus to qualify for workers compensation.

It would remove the requirement that workers deemed essential during the pandemic and who become sick prove they contracted the virus at work.

If passed, the change would be retroactive to March 9.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

Sullivan said the challenge with workers compensation now is that a worker would be asked how they contracted the virus, and thats something that would be tough to prove for most people.

Still, Sullivan calls any kind of employer COVID waiver a useless document because workers compensation is a public policy mandate and its designed to protect the health of workers.

He said he doesnt see it worth fighting over on the part of the employee unless the employee wants to get into a push comes to shove situation. Hes in a good position legally.

Sullivan said he wouldnt tell a client of his to trade a job for a lawsuit, unless its a matter of principle and he didnt want to work because he was afraid of COVID-19.

He said if an employee was fired because he refused to sign the document, the worker would probably have a claim.

The easy thing is to sign it and if you develop COVID-19, take it to court, he said.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Reuters) San Sebastian, Spain  Mon, June 22, 2020 09:55 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066096cf3 2 Sports soccer,Real-Madrid,La-Liga,competitions Free

Real Madrid took control of the Spanish title race by beating Real Sociedad 2-1 away on Sunday to move top of La Liga above Barcelona after a second-half high on controversy.

Madrid captain Sergio Ramos broke the deadlock in the 50th minute by converting a penalty after Vinicius Jr went to ground in the area following contact from Sociedad's Diego Llorente.

Sociedad thought they had levelled with a strike from Adnan Januzaj from outside the box but the goal was ruled out after a VAR review showed Mikel Merino obstructing the view of Madrid keeper Thibaut Courtois without touching the ball.

Their sense of injustice deepened a minute later when Karim Benzema doubled Madrid's lead in the 71st after controlling the ball with the top of his arm although Merino ensured an exciting finish by lashing in off the crossbar in the 83rd minute.

However, Zinedine Zidane's side clung on for the win to move level with Barca on 65 points after 30 games but climbed above the Catalans, who were held 0-0 at Sevilla on Friday, due to a superior head-to-head record. Sociedad are sixth on 47.

Madrid's trip to San Sebastian was full of intrigue after Barca failed to beat Sevilla and the Catalan side's defender Gerard Pique said the title was now Madrid's for the taking.

He appeared to suggest decisions had gone Madrid's way in their 3-0 win over Valencia last Thursday.

Zidane's team had benefitted from a Valencia goal that was chalked off for an offside against a player who had not touched the ball and there was a tangible sense of deja-vu when Januzaj's equaliser was ruled out due to Merino's position.

"We're angry with everything but mainly with the way we lost, because the little details and the big moments went against us," said Merino.

"I was at least five metres from Courtois when I was flagged offside. I don't know if the same thing would have happened had it been in the other area but the flag went up and we feel that we have been wronged."

Madrid midfielder Federico Valverde, however, felt the three points were deserved.

"In my opinion we were the superior team against a very tough opponent, we knew how to cope with them and how to hold on to our lead," said the Uruguayan.

"We're so happy because it was such a hard game and when you win a game like that you should enjoy it."
Vaping nicotine in Australia is set to end as the government moves to ban the importation of most e-cigarettes into the country.

From July 1, it will be illegal to import e-cigarettes and refills containing nicotine liquids or salts.

E-cigarette users and retailers had turned to buying the products from overseas after their sale in Australia was previously banned.

'The Minister for Health, the Hon Greg Hunt MP, requested the Department of Health to work with the Australian Border Force on a new approach to regulating e-cigarettes containing vaporiser nicotine,' the government's Office of Drug Control said in a statement.

From July 1, it will be illegal to import e-cigarettes and refills containing nicotine liquids or salts into Australia (stock image)

People turned to buying e-cigarettes (pictured) from overseas after their sale was banned in each state and territory

Under the new regulations, Individuals would need to visit a doctor and be issued a prescription to purchase their nicotine containing e-cigarettes or refills.

Even valid prescription holders would still be prohibited from purchasing the devices from overseas themselves.

Vaporisers and refills containing nicotine would have to be imported by doctors or medical suppliers via a courier or cargo service with express permission from the Department of Health.

Importing the equipment through international mail would not be allowed.

The ban on importing nicotine e-cigarettes and refills would be in line with existing bans on their sale in each state and territory.

The prohibition would last for 12 months while the government conducts a public consultation on the regulation of nicotine products by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The regulation would see nicotine products added to the Poisons Standard making them prohibited permanently with the exception of tobacco cigarettes and products used to quit smoking such as gums and patches.

A decision by the Therapeutic Goods Administration is expected in early 2021.
22 Jun 2020, 1:04 PM

UCO Bank teams up with four insurers to sell their products

State-run UCO Bank tied up with four insurers to offer various insurance products to its customers through its network of branches across the country. The lender teamed up with SBI Life Insurance Company, the Oriental Insurance Company and Religare Health Insurance Company, Star Health and Allied Insurance Company for selling their products. With these new partnerships, the lender will now be offering a much wider range of insurance products, UCO Bank MD and CEO Atul Kumar Goel said.

Coronavirus: Vigorous contact tracing, surveillance, fines part of Delhi's new containment strategy

With 58,746 cases of coronavirus in the national capital, the Centre along with the Delhi government has agreed to ramp up containment strategy. Mapping of all containment zones, vigorous contact tracing of positive cases, rapid antibody testing to gauge the prevalence of the disease, intensifying social distancing and surveillance at the ground level are among the key measures discussed at the high-level committee meeting called by Union Home Minster Amit Shah on Sunday.

India-China standoff: Diplomatic talks for de-escalation to begin this week

Amid the tense border situation between India and China, both sides have decided to hold a diplomatic-level talk for de-escalation and disengagement in Galwan Valley. Sources told India Today TV, "India-China military and diplomatic talks are scheduled to take place during the week to facilitate mutual withdrawal of forces".

Govt says no order to ban Chinese apps like TikTok and others from Google Play, App Store

The Indian Press Information Bureau's twitter account has posted about yet another fake news forward doing the rounds online. This time it seems to be a doctored government order instructing tech companies to restrict the functioning of a few China-made smartphone applications in India. The government has clarified that the order is fake and no such instructions have been issued to Google or Apple.

Mukesh Ambani becomes 9th richest person after RIL share hits fresh high

China reported 18 new coronavirus cases for June 21, 9 of which were in the capital Beijing, the National Health Commission said on Monday.

This compared with 26 confirmed cases a day earlier, 22 of which were in Beijing. Local authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.

Petrol prices near Rs 80 in Delhi, diesel at Rs 78,85; hike of around Rs 9 in 16 days

Petrol and diesel prices have increased for the 16th consecutive day. There has been an increase of 33 paise for petrol and 58 paise for diesel on Monday. Prices for petrol have increased by Rs 8.30 and Rs 9.22 in 16 consecutive hikes.The increase in the rates of petrol and diesel varies across India depending on local taxes and VAT.

Coronavirus: WHO reports highest single-day spike of 183,020 cases; total tally 8.7 mn

The World Health Organization on Sunday reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours. The UN health agency said Brazil led the way with 54,771 cases tallied and the U.S. next at 36,617. Over 15,400 came in in India. Experts said rising case counts can reflect multiple factors including more widespread testing as well as broader infection.

Petrol price nears Rs 80 in Delhi, diesel at all-time high
Ms. OMalley Dillon also wrote that Mr. Biden was committed to debating Mr. Trump on Sept. 29, Oct. 15, and Oct. 22, and that his yet-to-be-selected running mate would take part in the vice-presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 7.

Our position is straightforward and clear: Joe Biden will accept the Commissions debates, on the Commissions dates, under the Commissions established format and the Commissions independent choice of moderators, Ms. OMalley Dillon said in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. Donald Trump and Mike Pence should do the same.

Any debate proposals in lieu of that are just an effort to change the subject, avoid debates, or create a distracting debate about debates, she added.

The details of the letter were first reported by The Washington Post.

The letter came four days after The Times reported that top aides to Mr. Trump had held an online meeting with officials overseeing the debates, in which they pushed for a fourth debate between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden and argued that the events should take place sooner than planned in order to accommodate voters wishing to cast their ballots early. (Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly and falsely claimed that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.)

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trumps personal lawyer, was in the meeting and also proposed a system allowing both campaigns to recommend a set number of moderators and then strike some of them from their opponents lists until an agreement was reached.

In her letter, Ms. OMalley Dillon noted that the Trump campaigns position was a shift from months earlier, when the presidents advisers were discussing whether Mr. Trump would take part in debates sponsored by the commission at all. The Trump position seems to be saying that he will debate if he can pick the moderators, she wrote.

The commission, which has produced the general election debates since the 1988 campaign, typically spends months negotiating the details with representatives for the candidates. The group did not respond to a request for comment.
The Charger Blog

Grace Hancox '20, '21 M.S., who recently earned her bachelors degree in forensic science, reflects on the opportunities she had as an undergraduate and looks forward to joining the Universitys graduate degree program in chemistry. By Renee Chmiel, Office of Marketing and Communications

Grace Hancox 20, 21 M.S.

When Grace Hancox 20, 21 M.S. was in high school, her family hosted exchange students, and she studied in France. From her first days as a Charger, she had her sights on another experience abroad.

A forensic science major, she accomplished that goal when she and several of her classmates spent part of last summer studying in Ireland and Northern Ireland with Claire Glynn, Ph.D., an assistant professor of forensic science and a native of Ireland.

"Im thankful the University offers shorter summer study abroad sessions so that everyone truly has the chance to go abroad," she said. "One of my top memories as a Charger was my experience studying in Ireland. I gained so much from that experience, and I learned so much."

"I feel that the opportunities Ive had have given me a glimpse into my future and, thus, have better prepared me for success." Grace Hancox '20, '21 M.S.

Hancox and her classmates stayed with families in Wexford, Ireland, where they gained hands-on experience in forensic archaeology at the Irish Archaeology Field School. They also immersed themselves in Irish culture and visited labs in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

"I am so grateful to have gotten this chance to study abroad because it gave me a chance to learn about unique forensic specialties," she said. "It was really interesting to learn about the operations of forensics labs in Ireland and Northern Ireland and to compare them to what I had learned about forensics labs in the United States."

Hancox visited Hook Lighthouse in Wexford, Ireland.

During her internship with the United States Postal Inspection Service Forensic Laboratory Services in Dulles, Virginia, she conducted research focused on a new method for determining the legitimacy of stamps and/or money orders, toured federal crime labs, and explored potential career opportunities. Her experience enabled her to learn about the casework of each of the units within the lab.

I had an absolutely amazing time at my internship and I am forever grateful for the great experience that I had, she said. I got to see real-life applications of what I had been learning in my classes and lab courses.

Hancox will be continuing her career at the University of New Haven this fall. During her senior year, she joined the Universitys 4+1 program, which will enable her to earn her masters degree in chemistry in one year.

During my four years at the University, I have had opportunities to excel and become a better version of myself, she said.

An active member of the University community, Hancox served as a laboratory assistant and lecture assistant in the Universitys chemistry department, as well as a teaching assistant. She held leadership positions in several student organizations, including the Forensic Science Student Association.

I have grown into much more of a leader than I could have ever imagined, she said. I feel that the opportunities Ive had have given me a glimpse into my future and, thus, have better prepared me for success.
Stella Moris, the fiance of Julian Assange and mother of his two young children, issued a powerful call last night for the Australian government to secure the WikiLeaks founders freedom and prevent his extradition to the US, where he faces life imprisonment for exposing American war crimes.

Moris was featured on Channel Nines 60 Minutes program. The 24-minute segment provided an objective account of Assanges decade-long arbitrary detention, first in Ecuadors London embassy where he was a political refugee, and since April 2019 in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.

The program, presented by Tara Brown, was the first substantive examination of Assanges plight by the Australian media since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Despite the fact that he is an Australian journalist being persecuted by the most powerful governments in the world for his publishing activities, corporate media outlets have maintained an effective D-notice on Assange for more than three months. This has dovetailed with the refusal of the Australian government, the Labor opposition and all of the official parties to defend the WikiLeaks founder.

Stella Moris on "60 Minutes" (Screenshot, Nine Media)

Moris warned that Assanges incarceration in Belmarsh, which she noted has been dubbed the UKs Guantanamo Bay, is exacerbating physical and psychological health issues stemming from his protracted persecution.

Hes very unwell and Im very concerned for his ability to survive this, she said. Now hes in the UKs worst prison. Its a high-security prison. One in five prisoners are murderers. He shouldnt be there. Hes not a criminal, hes not a dangerous person, hes a gentle intellectual thinker and a journalist. Those people are not the people who belong in prison.

Moris stated that she was very worried about Assanges circumstances. She has been unable to visit him since February, as a result of coronavirus lockdown measures. Despite widespread infections throughout the British penitentiary system, including in Belmarsh, and Assanges vulnerability to the virus as a result of a chronic lung condition, he has been refused bail.

If youre separated from your family and youre alone in a tiny, dark room for 23-hours a day, with no control over your surroundings, I think people can imagine what that is like, Moris said.

Brown stated that in such circumstances, most people would probably go mad. Moris responded: I think any person would get very severely depressed and he is very depressed. 60 Minutes showed Moris and her two young children speaking with Assange on the phone. The older of the two asked Assange when he was coming home.

Moris, a 37-year-old lawyer, recounted the circumstances of her relationship with Assange. They had grown close when she was working on his legal cases after he had successfully sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.

When the couples two children were born in 2017 and 2018, the new Ecuadorian government had initiated closer relations with the US and was increasingly hostile to Assange. UC Global, a Spanish firm contracted to manage the embassys security, was surveilling every aspect of Assanges life and was passing the material gathered to the US Central Intelligence Agency.

When she fell pregnant, Moris informed Assange by writing the news on a piece of paper. They were fearful that any conversation about their personal life would be picked up by the audio recording devices placed throughout the embassy by UC Global. Moris sought to hide her pregnancies from the embassy staff and after the children were born, a friend of Assange pretended to be their father and brought them to the embassy.

The real issue was I thought that our family would be targeted by the same people that were trying to harm Julian, Moris stated. The program featured news clips of senior US government figures denouncing Assange in hysterical terms and calling for him to be silenced. Moris noted that UC Global had considered stealing the diaper of one of her children to confirm his paternity, and had even discussed plans to kill Assange or allow American agents to kidnap him.

Moris commented that it would be difficult for many people to appreciate the lawlessness that had characterised Assanges persecution. Theres incredible criminality that has been going on in order to gather information about Julians lawyers, and his family, and journalists who were visiting him, she said. Ive been in a permanent state of fear for years and now its slowly playing out.

Significantly, the politically-motivated character of Swedish sexual misconduct allegations against Assange was made clear in the program. The allegations were concocted by that countrys police and judiciary, in the midst of a frenzied US campaign against WikiLeaks exposure of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brown noted that Assange had never been charged with a crime in Sweden, and that the Swedish investigation had been dropped. Australian independent parliamentarian Andrew Wilkie pointed out that documents had shown that the British government used the allegations to enforce Assanges arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian embassy. The British authorities had been aware that the Swedish claims were a smokescreen for plans to dispatch Assange to his US persecutors.

The program concluded with an appeal from Moris to the Australian government. She said: I want people to understand that were being punished as a family. Its not just Julian in the prison. The kids are being deprived of their father. I need Julian and he needs me.

Moris declared: Id like to ask [Australian Prime Minister] Scott Morison to do everything he can to get Julian back to his family. If Australia doesnt step in Im very fearful this wrong wont be righted. Its a nightmare.

Tellingly, Brown stated that Morison, Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Christian Porter refused to be interviewed.

This was in line with the ten-year collaboration of Australian governments in the US-led vendetta against Assange. Beginning with the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard, they have rejected calls to defend the WikiLeaks founder, instead participating in the campaign against him.

The official hostility to Assange is bound up with the Australian ruling elites unconditional support for the US military alliance and all of American imperialisms illegal wars and military preparations and dovetails with a domestic assault on democratic rights, including attacks on press freedom and laws increasing punishments for whistleblowers. It is facilitated by the refusal of the Greens, the pseudo-left groups and the unions to mount any campaign for Assanges rights.

This underscores the fact that the fight for Assanges freedom and for the defence of all civil liberties requires the mobilisation of the working class. The international protests over recent weeks against police violence have demonstrated the objective basis for building such a movement.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 12:16:13|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

HONG KONG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- "During the post COVID-19 recovery, when consumers pay more attention to how to keep fit and enhance immunity, our products will see a surge in the market need," said New Zealand honey factory owner John Qin.

After being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Asia-Pacific region for months, while the situation is still grim in some countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, some other countries have embraced a flattened curve of infected cases or no case at all after a long period of lockdown, and are more than eager to loosen the grip to revitalize their depressed economies.

"PRODUCTION & DEMAND PICK UP"

As New Zealand's new COVID-19 cases become rare in recent days, it moved to COVID-19 Alert Level 1 at 11:59 p.m. local time on June 8, with life and economy back to normal except continuing to impose border controls.

"At Level 1 we become one of the most open economies in the world and now we must seize our advantage of going hard and early to beat COVID-19 and use the same focus and determination we applied to our health response to rebuild our economy," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Qin, a Chinese New Zealander who owns a honey factory in Auckland for more than 20 years, was relieved to hear the news. Every year, he exports high quality New Zealand honey products to the United States, Europe, China and Japan, except for this year, as his business has been badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, both in market demand and production.

"Honey is a seasonal output. We were in lockdown just when it was usually the busiest season. Therefore the production was impacted. Market demand also fell dramatically as the world went into quarantine mode," said John.

With the ease of restrictions, Qin sees light at the end of the tunnel. "Production and demand have just picked up recently," he explained. "Our business may not earn much profit this year. But I guess it will still slightly above breakeven."

Nevertheless, Qin is confident that his business will catch up the momentum quickly as there is an increasing demand from China for high quality and nutritious food products that New Zealand can fill the gap.

He is now busily preparing to work with Chinese big brands to explore online market opportunities for his products. "I feel positive to the future business forecast. That's why I'm investing in online marketing."

"WELCOME BACK!"

"Thank you so much for picking me up and taking me back to Colombo to work again. My family and I are so happy to earn a full salary." On June 12, Thalpege Ranjith Premadasa, an administrative manager of Tri-Zen Residential Development Project constructed by China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited, received several similar phone calls in the morning.

The Sri Lankan government started to impose a national curfew on March 20, closing down construction and suspending projects. Ranjith, along with his fellow workers, had to go back home and waited for further notice. "Many of my coworkers told me that without a job, they were facing heavy financial burden and hope to go back to work soon," he told Xinhua.

That's why when the Sri Lankan government decided to allow the capital of Colombo to gradually restore economic activities on May 11, Ranjith immediately returned to the company and made a plan to send out buses to Trincomalee, Kandy, Batticaloa and other places to pick up the workers back to Colombo.

On May 27, Ranjith, together with a few colleagues, fully equipped with masks, sanitizer, rubber gloves and infrared thermometers, embarked a seven-hour journey on a company bus to Trincomalee to get the workers.

After all the workers got their body temperatures taken, Ranjith distributed masks and gloves and went through the anti-COVID-19 protocol with the workers over and over again before they got on board the bus.

As soon as they arrived at the company, all workers had a nucleic acid testing. It was until results showed that all the workers tested negative for COVID-19, did Ranjith breathe a sigh of relief.

By now, more than 50 workers have been taken back to work in Colombo by the tailored bus service. For Ranjith, seeing the big smiles on the workers' faces makes him most happy.

"I FEEL COOL & REFRESHED"

On June 10, at a barbershop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a local resident who identified himself as Mr. Tee had his hair cut for the first time in three months. "I felt cool and refreshed," he said.

Tee said he was not concerned about the risk since the barbershop has followed the government's Standard Operating Procedure. "They have done the disinfection, have my temperature taken and put the disposable protective cloth on me, so I feel pretty safe," he said.

The barber, who identified himself as Raj, said more than 30 customers had come as of noon. "We have closed for a long time, so many people come today," he said, admitting that it is not easy to work with gloves and mask on.

Malaysia's barbershops and hair salons opened their doors to the public on June 10, the first time after nearly three months as the government is easing more restrictive measures against COVID-19.

Local media reported that some shops have been booked for two weeks and some major chains are receiving an overwhelming response.

However, both the customers and their hairstylists need to get used to the strict measures and conditions set by the Malaysian government to prevent a spike in new cases.

Barbers, hairstylists, and beauticians are required to wear face masks, face shields, and gloves. Customers are required to have their temperatures checked, their contacts recorded and put on face masks. Many barbers and beauty salons only provide haircut service for the moment.

"I LEARNED SOME LESSONS"

March is the grape-picking season in south Australia, when COVID-19 restrictions were announced.

"We began harvesting fruit earlier than usual in 2020 and yields were down on average," said Jarrad White, founder of the Australian Premium Wine Group.

Then the lockdown came, forcing the vineyard to make certain adjustments to keep the vintage going, including social distancing among grape pickers, frequent disinfection of hand rails, pumps, control screens and other equipment, and asking employees to work at home.

On May 8, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a three-step plan to ease COVID-19 restrictions. With employees coming back to work and market demand recovering, White's business is gradually picking up and getting back to normal.

However, the two-month lockdown is not entirely bad news for the wine-maker. White's company learned to diversify sale channels to increase sale, such as online sales and delivery, phone call booking and joining retail apps.

It also paid more attention and gave support to its distributors via marketing strategies, financial aid and technical support to maintain loyalty.

"Most importantly, my company team learned to care each other and support each other during the hard days," said White.

He admitted that the company and its employees may face recession of incomes this year due to the COVID-10 pandemic and the lockdown, but "we believe our excellent quality, thoughtful service and consistent spirits will welcome the booming next year." Enditem

(Xinhua reporters Lu Huaiqian from Wellington, Tang Lu from Colombo, Bai Xu from Canberra, Lin Hao from Kuala Lumpur also contributed to the story.)
New Delhi:

Solutions of all the problems that the world is facing lies in Buddhism, Union Minister Mahesh Sharma on Monday said as he inaugurated the five-day 'International Buddhist Conclave'. Over 285 participants from 39 counties are participating in the fifth edition of the event.

"Out of eight important religious places related to Budhhism, seven lies in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accorded a top priority to Buddhism...It is reflected from the participation of more than 285 people from 39 countries in this conclave. It is remarkable and means a lot to us," Sharma said while addressing the conclave.

Indicating at various conflicts that the world is facing, he said, "Solution of all the problems that the world is facing lies in Budhdism". Addessing the conclave, Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament Karu Jayasuriya recognised India as a "land of Buddha" and said the country is the most important tourist destination among the Lankans.

Tourism Ministry is organising the fifth edition of the conclave with a view to showcase Buddhist heritage and pilgrimage sites in the country to attract tourists from overseas country. ASEAN countries are a major source places for India from Buddhist tourism point of view. A large number of monks and mediapersons from these countries are participating in the conclave.

The Conclave would include presentations, panel discussions, business-to-business meetings between domestic and international tour operators and state governments. The participants would also be visiting important Buddhist sites in and around Varanasi, Sarnath and Bodhgaya.

Indian government has sanctioned about Rs 300 crore for development of Bhuddhist circuit which includes Rs 94 for construction of a cultural centre at Bodhgaya in Bihar. Other Buddhists sites are located at Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. India, the birthplace of Buddhism, has a very rich Buddhist Heritage with several important sites associated with the life of Buddha which are essential pilgrimage centresfor followers of the religion the world over.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
As part effort to ensure that Nigeria is food sufficient, the Nigerian Army Farms and Ranches Limited (NAFARL) and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development are set to collaborate towards achieving food security and boosting agribusiness development in Nigeria.

This was disclosed in a statement on Sunday by the office of the Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono.

Mr Nanono, who received the delegation of the Nigerian Army Farms and Ranches Limited led by the Executive Director, Maina Kadai, a Brigadier General, who paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja, welcomed the idea, saying it will help to boost the agricultural sector.

The minister noted that a strong collaboration with the agency would reinforce the ministrys drive of achieving sustained food sufficiency for the nation as they jointly agreed to embark on the same policy of mechanisation, research and development of improved seeds, the training of extension services workers across the country and food processing.

Mr Nanono explained the role of research institutes in ensuring improved seedlings, which will result in bumper harvest, adding that it would also increase agricultural products, create jobs and boost agribusiness development in the nation.

He stated that the mechanization programme would commence before the end of the year in 634 local government areas in Nigeria and will be private sector driven.

Mr Nanono expressed satisfaction with NAFARLs acceptance to key into the ministrys programme, especially mechanization and extension services.

According to him, the Army has proven that it is not only involved in protecting the territorial integrity of the country and fighting wars to secure its citizens but also active in the area of food security as it finds time to invest in the agricultural policies that is geared towards feeding the nation, creating jobs and enhancing the nations economy by generating revenue.

In his remarks, the Executive Director, Nigeria Army Farms and Ranches Limited, Mr Kadai, said NAFARLs current structure is designed to broaden its scope and mandate to cover ranching and agriculture to support the FGs Policy on food security as well as generate revenue for the Nigerian Army (NA), feed the entire Army Corps and contribute to the national GDP.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for Nigeria, Sabo Nanono

While displaying a range of farm products from their farms inclusive of rice, beans, Mr Kadai also displayed some processed products such as bean and cassava flour among others promising that NAFARL will join hands with the Ministry to embark on massive commercial farming that will not only feed the Army and other armed forces but feed the nation and export products to feed Africa and the world so as to boost the nations revenue base.

He further said that NAFARL is the premier and only NA agricultural establishment and also builds capacities of staff for the efficient employment of modern agricultural techniques in conformity with global best practices.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered toll booths nationwide to switch to automated non-stop toll collection no later than December 31 this year.

Hanoi-Bac Giang Expressway has two lanes of non-stop toll collection and started the system in 2017.

Toll booths will be suspended if they have already installed non-stop system but have not switched to automated collection by the end of this year, he said in a recently-issued decision which will take effect from August 1.

In order to pay a toll through the automated system, automobile owners will be granted free e-tags before December 31.

Owners will have to pay service fees for e-tags from December 31.

The tags are required to be placed on the front window of the automobile, and when the vehicle passes a toll collection lane, a Radio Frequency Identification system installed at the toll station will activate a camera to photograph the vehicles plate number while reading the e-tag.

The e-tags will be issued by vehicle registration centres or service providers' authorised branches.

The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defence shall co-ordinate with the Ministry of Transport and service providers to issue e-tags for vehicles in the fields of security and defence.

Automobile owners can pay the fee directly at the bank, through their bank accounts or choose other types of payment.

Depending on the conditions of each toll booth, State agencies are granted authority to maintain one mixed lane, apply for both non-stop and one-stop toll collection and decide the time when one-stop collection will be switched to non-stop.

In case automobile owners do not have enough money in their accounts to pay for non-stop collection, they can move to the mixed lane and pay through the one-stop collection system.

The service providers will hand over the toll to investors after expenses on non-stop fee collection are cleared. Each handover should not be more than 24 hours apart, except for special negotiations.

The investors and service providers have to obey the laws on paying taxes.

PM Phuc asked for efficiency, openness and transparency in automated non-stop fee collection at toll booths with payback periods of less than three years.

According to the PMs new decision, the automated non-stop toll collection system must be designed, installed and built in a synchronous manner throughout the country, ensuring rapid, accurate, efficient and safe operation.

Investors are allowed to design, invest in construction as well as renovate, maintain the system at toll booths to connect them with data centres of service providers.

The investment and maintenance must be approved by State agencies. VNS
Premier Mark McGowan has detailed the next step of the roadmap out of COVID-19 restrictions, with the state moving into phase 4 from Saturday, June 27.

Phase 4 will be in place for three weeks, with phases 5 and 6 also added to the plan. Phase 5 will be introduced on Saturday, July 18, after careful monitoring of the impact of phase 4 on the community, the Premier said.

Phase 4 restrictions will mean:

All existing gathering limits, and 100/300 rule will be gone,

The 2-square-metre physical distancing rule will continue at venues that hold more than 500 people,

Seated food requirements gone,

No more patron registers at hospitality businesses,

Many more events permitted, except for large-scale music festivals,

Gyms able to operate unstaffed, but regular cleaning must be maintained,

Casino gaming floor to reopen with some operating conditions,

Major sport and entertainment venues to operate at 50 per cent capacity crowds.

"Our island-within-an-island strategy has proved to be effective," Mr McGowan said.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
The funds are expected to be used for the economic recovery.

Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled

The controversial bank levy, doubled and prolonged indefinitely by the previous ruling coalition in December 2019, will be replaced with a different scheme.

Instead of paying 0.4 percent of banks liabilities, banks will now be more active in restoring the countrys economy after the coronavirus crisis, as stems from a joint agreement signed by the representatives of the Finance Ministry and the banks in Slovakia on June 22.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Although the banks have already paid approximately 150 million annually on the levy introduced in 2012, the funds could not be used for the economy.

Related article

Related article Banks paid the new bank levy but are ready to challenge it in court Read more

Based on the current agreement, 1 billion will be taken from the frozen money and invested in the Development Fund for Slovakia, said PM Igor Matovic (OLaNO), as quoted by the SITA newswire. These funds can be used in various state projects, such as the construction of hospitals, construction of rental housing and others.

At the same time, the banks have committed themselves to investing 0.5 billion a year in loans for government projects and an additional 1 billion a year in loans to people and companies, SITA reported.

Healthy banking sector important
Cronkite News

PHOENIX  With COVID-19 taking an especially heavy toll on Native Americans, tribal leaders and mental health experts have stepped up efforts to address the emotional suffering brought on by ongoing lockdowns and so much loss.

Please stay connected with relatives and neighbors by phone or video chat and remind them that they have support, Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer said recently , imploring Navajos to take care of their mental well-being as well as their physical health.

If you are feeling stress or anxious, take the time to take a deep breath, stretch, or pray, he said. Exercise by working out or by doing household chores and avoid unhealthy foods and drinks. We must protect ourselves and others.

More than 320 COVID-19 deaths have been reported on the vast Navajo Reservation, which lies mostly in Arizona but also covers parts of western New Mexico and southern Utah.

Supporting Black Lives Matter Posted by Native Wellness Institute on Saturday, June 6, 2020

Native Wellness Institute: Supporting Black Lives Matter

The tribe has the highest per capita rate of cases in the country: 6,747, as of Wednesday, among the 173,000 people who live on the reservation. That rate tops hard-hit New York and New Jersey, according to data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Earlier this week, in response to an increase in COVID-19 cases in areas near the reservation, the Navajo Nation reinstituted a 57-hour weekend curfew beginning at 8 p.m. Friday and running until 5 a.m. Monday. The order includes a second lockdown from June 26 through June 29.

Overall, according to the Indian Health Service, more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among U.S. tribal communities, whose residents tend to have more underlying health problems and less access to clean water and good medical care.

American Indians and Alaska Natives also suffer from higher rates of mental and behavioral health problems, and experts worry that social isolation and other effects of the pandemic could increase psychological distress or prevent those suffering from addiction from receiving life-saving medication.

Native Wellness Institute: Traditional Storytelling with Gene Tagaban

The Native Wellness Institute, based in Oregon, is among the groups responding to these concerns. On April 25, it launched an online Power Hour to bring healing and wellness to Native Americans through programs that embody the teachings and traditions of their ancestors.

The daily Power Hour takes place at noon Pacific time via Facebook Live , and sessions have included lessons on self-care, resiliency and activism.

Among those presenting have been Native storyteller Gene Tagaban , who is Cherokee, Tlingit and Filipino; wellness trainer Theda New Breast , a member of the Blackfeet Nation; and motivational speaker and comedian Kasey Nicholson of the Fort Belknap Indian Community. A recent session focused on the Black Lives Matter movement  a livestream that garnered more than 7,000 views.

We knew that an already traumatized people were going to be retraumatized, so we wanted to create that safe and brave space to best give what we knew we had, project coordinator Shalene Joseph said. We have a ton of trainers and people reaching out saying, I have something to say.

Mental health in the era of COVID-19 has been a point of concern for medical professionals such as Harvard Health Blog contributors Debi LePlante and Howard Shaffer, who note a connection between social isolation and emotional stress but also a connection between social isolation and drug or alcohol addiction relapse.

This means that during this unprecedented period of social distancing, we have to identify ways of connecting with others to garner and give support without being in their physical presence, write LePlante and Shaffer, both professors of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

According to federal reports, psychological distress among American Indians and Alaska Natives is 1.5 times higher than among the general population, and significant mental health concerns include substance use disorder, suicide, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Native Americans also have the highest suicide rates in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

LorenAshley Buford of Arizona heads the Healing Indigenous Lives Initiative , which has been holding online meetings to provide support to those in need during the pandemic.

Happy Monday! We are just 3 days away from the 2020 UNITY Virtual Conference. In case you missed it, we released the UNITY Native American Teen t-shirt design yesterday. Details on ordering will be released soon. #NativeYouth #unity2020 pic.twitter.com/IEBZWkzgjm  UNITY | Native Youth (@UNITYInc76) June 22, 2020

Bufords umbrella organization, UNITY  United National Indian Tribal Youth  encouraged her to create an initiative to help youth struggling with delinquency, high dropout rates  or substance abuse and suicide prevention, she said.

Buford asked young people who experienced these issues to become peer guides for others by sharing their techniques for self-love.

During one recent virtual meeting, peer guide Santana Bartholomew talked about living through the lockdown in the Pueblo of Pojoaque in New Mexico.

Anyone who knows me well probably knows that Im going a little bit insane, because Im used to being super busy, she said.

The topic of the meeting was Culture as Prevention, which Bartholomew said is at the heart of how Native Americans live their lives.

Culture is made up of our customs, traditions, values system.  My culture means still getting to bed at a decent time even though I dont have to be up early, waking up at a decent time, reading some scripture, Bartholomew said.

Comedy is Healing - Kasey Nicholson, M.S., Comedian, Motivational Speaker and Wellness Facilitator. Enjoy! Posted by Native Wellness Institute on Saturday, April 4, 2020 Native Wellness Institute: Comedy is Healing

She described getting up with her son, making him breakfast, keeping the house clean and always getting in a workout  all to prevent the feelings of hopelessness and loneliness that accompany extended periods of isolation.

Theres a lot of fear going around, but looking at the positives of the situation is the way to go, Bartholomew said. Dont be afraid to reach out. Were so lucky we have this awesome technology to keep us connected.

In a webinar held by the National Indian Health Board, Glorinda Segay of the Navajo Department of Health encouraged Native Americans to pursue self-love and forgiveness to combat feelings of hopelessness that may be prevalent as the pandemic wears on.

People need to consider being more gentle with themselves through reassurance and prayers, Segay said, and forgive themselves for making mistakes while adjusting to the new norm.

Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News . It is published via a Creative Commons license . Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

Join the Conversation
Several companies have tried taking on and overtaking Google as the worlds most popular search engine. While most of them failed, some like Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo still exist. Adding to the list of companies making an attempt to be an alternative to Google Search, or perhaps even replace, is Neeva - a search engine developed by an Indian-American ex-Google executive.

The two biggest highlights of Neeva, a search engine company developed by Shridhar Ramaswamy, the former head of Googles $115 billion ad business, are privacy and ad-free search experience.

Ramaswamy told The New York Times that the reason he had left Google in 2018 was because of the search engines revenue model that prioritised ads and pushed useful search results down the page. Add to it the cost of user privacy to keep a track on what ads people were seeing.

Neeva is a search engine that will look up information on the web as well as personalised files. The search rankings will be powered by Microsoft Bing, weather information from weather.com, stock data from Intrinio, maps from Apple.

When users link their Google, Microsoft Office or Dropbox account, Neeva sifts through personal files, as well as the public internet, for the right answers. The search results will become more personalised over time, based on various factors like contacts, the retailers you ordered from, the newsletters you receive from several publications, etc.

Unlike Google, Neeva will not show ads on the search results page nor collect or profit from user data. The company will instead charge a subscription fee from users.

Whether you are looking for general information, or something deeply personallike an important email, a calendar invite, or a copy of your passportyou can be certain that your information is your own, and not sold on to advertisers as a means of targeting you with their ads, Neeva stated in its blog post.

This could be a challenge for a company, which essentially does not have any proof-of-concept on its search results. To tackle this initial hurdle, Neeva will be free for users until the end of the year. Post, the company aims at charging users less than $10 subscription fee each month and hopes to bring the price down as more users get on board.

Neeva may be a Google search alternative to those who are willing to pay to protect their privacy on the web. The company has managed to raise $37.5 million and has 25 employees.

Will the company be able to get enough subscriptions to survive and compete against the likes of Google? Only time will tell.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 12:14:52|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

MEXICO CITY, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Mexico City resident Lorena Hernandez admitted she was hesitant about using her ride-hailing app to summon a car for a recent trip to the outskirts of the capital amid the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

But her fears subsided soon when she was assured of the precautions taken by her driver and DiDi, the Chinese ride-hailing company that rolled out the app on mobile devices, she said.

"What seemed most important to me was that the application itself provides hygiene recommendations for boarding the car, as well as the steps the driver has to take," said Hernandez, a 37-year-old professional.

"When I boarded the car, the driver told me about the hygiene measures and the recommendations for a safe ride, such as avoiding talking to the driver, using antibacterial gel and keeping a safe distance," she added.

Throughout the ride, she carefully complied with the measures DiDi recommended at a time when COVID-19 cases kept rising, said Hernandez.

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, better known as DiDi, has earmarked 150 million pesos (about 6.6 million U.S. dollars) to implement infection prevention measures in Mexico.

The company, which began operating in Mexico in 2018, has installed plastic barriers inside vehicles, supplied drivers and delivery partners with sanitizers and other hygienic goods, and created a support fund for them.

It has also provided free DiDi Food deliveries and discounts in conjunction with restaurants and launched the "DiDi Hero" program, which offers certified healthcare workers rides at half price.

Its protection strategies are in place in cities with a large presence of global Chinese firms, including Mexico's three largest cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara in the west and Monterrey in the north.

"It is important ... for people to contribute (to combating the virus) by staying at home," said Juan Andres Panama, director of operations at DiDi Mexico.

The Mexican government declared a health emergency on March 30 that stressed staying at home as non-essential businesses were closed or scaled back.

In mid-March, DiDi announced 10 fundamental steps to adapt its services to the health crisis in the country, based on the experience it has accumulated in fighting the pandemic in other parts of the world.

Rogelio Rosales, a 49-year-old mechanical engineer, turned to DiDi last week to go from the central Roma district of Mexico City to Cristo Rey, a neighborhood approximately 6.5 km west of the capital.

"My driver was wearing a face mask during the whole ride trip, and I was very happy about that because I went to visit my almost 90-year-old mother," Rosales told Xinhua.

"Not only was the service excellent, but what made it even better was that the fare was very low as well, something that helps in these times of (economic) paralysis," he said.

Mexico has reported over 20,700 deaths from COVID-19 and more than 175,200 cases of infections since the virus was first detected in the country on Feb. 28. Enditem
A royal princess of the British royal family was put in great danger after receiving multiple death threats from a man who illegally entered her residence.

Amid all the current struggles the royal family is facing, another major problem occured after Princess Anne received death threats from a man named James Ballinger.

According to The Telegraph, Cheltenham magistrates found out that Ballinger made a series of 999 calls to police on February 27. He warned everyone that time that he was going to Princess Anne's home at Gatcombe Park in the Cotswolds to stab the Princess Royal and "anybody else who was there."

Cathy Thornton, the prosecutor assigned on the case, said that the man told the call handler that Princess Anne was "controlling his mind by moving his satellites."

It was only earlier this week when the court revealed that later that day, at 3:15 pm, Ballinger was found by royal protection officers entering the grounds of the royal princess' homes. He was reportedly unarmed.

As soon as he got arrested, he admitted to the officers that he has mental health issues. He also expressed his hope that his time behind bars would provide him the help that he needs.

However, while he was still on bail and waiting for the court appearance, Thornton said that he called 999 and said that he was having thoughts of stabbing Princess Anne again.

He stated to the handler once more that the Princess Royal was "moving his satellites, which was affecting his well-being" -- the same statement he made in February.

After half an hour, he was arrested at his home. He appeared before the court the following day through a video link from the Gloucestershire Police custody unit.

"He does not remember making the original call to the police in February," Lee Mott, the defending lawyer, said. "When the 999 call was played back to him he agreed that the voice was his and that he had said some horrible things. He said he was sorry he had threatened Princess Anne."

Meanwhile, Ballinger admitted that he made a malicious communication on Feb. 27 and created numerous phone calls to the police control room which "conveyed a threat and caused distress to the call handler."

He also received a similar charge of making a "grossly offensive, menacing, and malicious" call on June 17.

Because of those incidents, Andrew Hill, chairman of the magistrates, sentenced Ballinger to a 12-month community order. This includes attending a program to help him with his alcohol and mental health problems, as well as a six-day rehabilitation activity.

Hill also imposed a six-month exclusion order banning Ballinger from entering Gatcombe Park.

Though such royal family news is something that the monarchy should be alarmed about, the spokesman for Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the issue.

It was not the first time Princess Anne experienced a life-threatening situation. In 1974, the then 23-year-old royal was the target of a kidnap attempt after she attended a charity event on Pall Mall with her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips.

A man named Ian Ball forced the couple's car to stop by blocking their way before he pulled a handgun and attempted to attack Princess Anne. He shot the royal's chauffeur, security officer, and a tabloid journalist who tried to help the Princess Royal. The attack only stopped when a passing boxer punched the suspect in the head.

READ MORE: Queen Devastation: Queen Elizabeth II Breaks Down With HEARTBREAKING News
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. will walk into its annual development conference facing one of the biggest backlashes from its giant community of creators since the App Store started almost 12 years ago.

The third-party developers fuel a services business that generated more than $46 billion for Apple in its last fiscal year, almost 18% of the iPhone makers total revenue. Some of the groups anger was sparked by the rejection this week of a popular email app, and comes as Apple needs to sell developers on building apps for the companys latest platforms, including a wholesale shift of the underpinnings of the Mac.

Hanging over the Worldwide Development Conference, which begins Monday, is the recent announcement by European regulators of an investigation that could fundamentally change the way Apple and developers make money from the App Store.

The past week started with the Cupertino, California-based company touting that the App Store generated $519 billion in revenue for the global economy last year. It ended with the rejection of the Hey email app, in part, because the developer wont give Apple a cut of the subscription revenue.

We thought Apple realized that developers made the platform, but this incident has explicitly made clear that Apple sees developers as a source of revenue only, said Aaron Vegh, a longtime software developer. And thats a difficult pill to swallow. He noted that the action of the past week would be front of mind at the conference.

In a letter rejecting the latest software for the email app, Apple said the developer, Basecamp, hadnt created revenue for the App Store in eight years. It reads as you have no value to us unless youre earning us tons of cash, Marc Edwards, an experienced App Store developer, wrote on Twitter. Apple generally requires developers to use its App Store payment service, which takes a cut of 15% to 30% of most app subscriptions and in-app purchases.

Other developers said that Apples slice of their revenue is the cost of doing business and they are happy to let the company handle app promotion and credit card processing. Some said the past weeks events wouldnt affect their relationship. Ive had Apple capriciously reject my apps for over a decade now, David Barnard, developer advocate at RevenueCat, said. At some point you just come to accept the fact that Apple is a for-profit company doing everything they can to maximize shareholder value.

Story continues

In a statement, Apple said it developed the App Store with two goals in mind: that it be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for entrepreneurs and developers. Were deeply proud of the countless developers whove innovated and found success through our platform. The company added that 84% of apps are free and dont provide Apple a share of revenue.

Apples dealings with developers also are under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers. In an interview Friday on Bloomberg Television, Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island and chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, called the App Store policies highway robbery and said the company demands a ransom from developers, referring to the 30% revenue share. He said the chief executive officers of the major technology companies including Apple would be asked to testify before Congress. Thus far, Apple has declined to make CEO Tim Cook available.

Still, Apple needs the backing of the developer community for the changes expected to be unveiled at the conference.

The company plans to announce a transition from Macs based on Intel Corp. chips to computers running its own processors. The shift will force developers to update their apps to support the hardware, which could be a lengthy process. Apple also wants the latest iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad software features to excite developers into building fresh apps for the devices.

While the App Store generates revenue, its almost 2 million apps also give consumers reasons to buy Apples hardware, which still make the company the vast majority of its money.

Besides the major Mac chip transition, look for an update to the macOS operating system that improves porting iOS updates to the computers. Last year, the company started letting users move iPad apps to Macs, and earlier this year, let developers begin selling merged iPad and Mac apps while only charging consumers once.

Apple plans minor upgrades for the Apple TV set-top boxs software with a new version of the hardware in the works for as soon as later this year, while the Apple Watch is expected to get new faces, a mode for kids and, most notably, a new sleep tracking app. Bloomberg News reported in 2019 that Apple expected to add sleep tracking to the Apple Watch this year.

The company also plans updates to the HomePod speaker, including adding the ability to use third-party music services such as those offered by Spotify Technologies SA. And it is working on a new smaller HomePod for later this year.

For the iPhone and iPad, Apple is expected to announce several new features, including the ability for the iPhone to serve as a car key, a new feature that works like Google Translate, upgraded tools for the developers to build augmented reality apps and updates to the Podcast service. Apple has also weighed opening up iOS further to third-party apps, letting users change their default mail app and web browser.

Perhaps most important to iPhone and iPad users who quickly upgraded to iOS 13 last year, Apple has revamped its software testing process with plans to improve software quality and reduce bugs.

The software updates will set the stage for a range of new hardware devices also launching this year, including a new Apple Watch, four redesigned iPhones, the new HomePod and Apple TV box, as well as updates to the iMac and MacBook Pro. The company also plans its first pair of over-ear headphones as well as an accessory for finding physical objects, which will integrate with the new software.

For Apple engineers, putting together this coming weeks conference has been a challenge. Covid-19 related precautions have made the event Apples first to be held wholly online and most engineers developed their products and planned the gathering from their homes.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term.

The figure on Sunday marks an increase from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said.

A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected. A rate of less than one is needed to gradually contain the disease.

The number, a sharp increase from 1.06 on Friday, is based on RKI's moving 4-day average data, which reflects infection rates one to two weeks ago.

Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate has jumped to 2.88, taking infections above the level needed to contain it over the longer term

A reproduction rate, or 'R', of 2.88 means that out of 100 people who contracted the virus, a further 288 other people will get infected. A rate of less than one is needed to gradually contain the disease. Above, people enjoy the Summer Solstice at Mauerpark in Berlin

RKI said outbreaks have been reported in nursing homes and hospitals, institutions for asylum seekers and refugees, in meat processing plants and logistics companies, among seasonal harvest workers and in connection with religious events and family gatherings.

Based an a 7-day average, the reproduction rate jumped to 2.03, RKI statistics from Sunday showed.

In total, 189,822 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and 8,882 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported, RKI said.

It is crucial that countries around the world keep their R rates below one in order for the pandemic to come under control.

In the UK the R is believed to be between 0.7 and 0.9, with it highest in London and the Midlands where it could be up to 1.

Germany has been hailed for getting its Covid-19 epidemic under control faster and with fewer deaths than many comparable countries, but suffered a disaster last week when more than 1,000 employees at a slaughterhouse caught the virus.

The country also recorded its highest rise in cases for more than a month on Friday, with 770 people testing positive, taking the total to almost 190,000.

The German military has had to set up a coronavirus testing facility at the Tonnies meat factory in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck, western Germany, where more than 1,000 staff have now tested positive for Covid-19

Police vans are pictured outside the headquarters of Tonnies in Germany - hundreds of staff working for the meat-packing company have caught the coronavirus last week

The Robert Koch Institut (RKI) attributed the rising R to a number of local outbreaks.

The most high-profile of these has been a surge in cases at a slaughterhouse run by the company Tonnies in Rheda-Wiedenbruck in the northwest, near Dortmund.

At least 1,029 staff there have now tested positive for Covid-19, Deutsche-Welle reported, and the military has had to set up a testing facility on-site.

Officials in the North Rhine-Westphalia region said they have also seen outbreaks in logistics centres, refugee centres, church communities and after family parties.

Scientists have reassured, however, that the R value becomes less important when overall numbers of cases are low.

If there are fewer people infected it is more likely that a sudden outburst of cases will make the R look higher than it is because of one 'super-spreading' event.

This does not mean that the outbreak is out of control, as long as the R can be returned to normal soon.

The RKI said: 'Since case numbers in Germany are generally low, these outbreaks have a relatively strong influence on the value of the reproduction number.

WHAT IS THE R NUMBER? AND HOW IS IT CALCULATED? WHAT IS R0? Every infectious disease is given a reproduction number, which is known as R0 - pronounced 'R nought'. It is a value that represents how many people one sick person will, on average, infect. WHAT IS THE R0 FOR COVID-19? The R0 value for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was estimated by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team to be 2.4 in the UK before lockdown started. But some experts analysing outbreaks across the world have estimated it could be closer to the 6.6 mark. Estimates of the R0 vary because the true size of the pandemic remains a mystery, and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment. It will spread faster in a densely-populated city where people travel on the subway than it will in a rural community where people drive everywhere. HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO OTHER VIRUSES? It is thought to be at least 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 12 to 18 if left uncontrolled. Widespread vaccination keeps it suppressed in most developed countries. Chickenpox's R0 is estimated to be between 10 and 12, while seasonal flu has a value of around 1.5. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A LOW R0? The higher the R0 value, the harder it is for health officials control the spread of the disease. A number lower than one means the outbreak will run out of steam and be forced to an end. This is because the infectious disease will quickly run out of new victims to strike. HOW IS IT CALCULATED? Experts use multiple sources to get this information, including NHS hospital admissions, death figures and behavioural contact surveys which ask people how much contact they are having with others. Using mathematical modelling, scientists are then able to calculate the virus' spread. But a lag in the time it takes for coronavirus patients to fall unwell and die mean R predictions are always roughly three weeks behind. Advertisement

'A nationwide increase in case numbers is not anticipated.'

When smoothed for short-term effects, the RKI estimated the country's true reproduction rate was 1.55, up from 1.17 on Friday.

On Friday the RKI reported Germany's highest daily increase in coronavirus cases in a month when it listed 770 new confirmed cases, taking the country's total to 188,534.

A flurry of positive tests from the slaughterhouse outbreak contributed to the biggest daily increase since May 20.

The German government has stuck to its course of gradually reopening the country while seeking to clamp down swiftly on localised outbreaks.

A free app launched on Tuesday to help trace people who may have been exposed to the virus has already been downloaded 9.6million times in Germany, which has a population of 83million.

In Britain, the coronavirus's R rate is still on the brink of spiralling out of control in three regions of England.

SAGE scientists estimate the R to be hovering close to the dreaded number of one in London, the North West and the Midlands, despite being lower for the UK as a whole.

But scientists told MailOnline that using the R to assess the UK's crisis is becoming less useful because of falling prevalence of the disease in the community.

The R is thought to be between 0.8 and 1.0 in the Midlands, the highest of any region in Britain, and slightly lower in London and the North West, where estimates put it in the range of 0.7 and 1.0.

Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, said the fewer infected patients there are, the greater the margin for error when estimating the R value, especially when looking at specific areas of the UK.

For example, if there are only 10 cases and one of them infects three people, it would push the R rate up significantly and skew the average.

Professor Heneghan told MailOnline: 'There is a problem with using the R rate now, as infection comes down to very low levels.

'The R will fluctuate, so you would expect the R to become a less accurate measurement of the epidemic.

'No-one will get a handle on the R rate when 80 per cent of people are asymptomatic and the virus is circulating at such low levels.

'What really matters is looking at data such as hospital admissions, 999 calls, GP consultation rates and NHS 111 interactions. And when we look at these, all of them are reassuringly coming down.'

Britain's 'Covid-alert' level was downgraded on Friday from level four to level three after scientists confirmed that the epidemic is shrinking by four per cent every day.

Government scientists published growth rate data for the first time on Friday. Until now, SAGE had only provided details on the R rate - the average number of people an infected person is likely to pass the virus on to.

For the UK as a whole, the current growth rate is minus 4 per cent to minus 2 per cent and the estimate of the reproduction number, referred to as R, remains at 0.7 to 0.9.

The growth rate reflects how quickly the number of infections is changing day by day, and, as the number of infections decreases, is another way of keeping track of the virus.

If the growth rate is greater than zero, and therefore positive, then the disease will grow, and if the growth rate is less than zero, then the disease will shrink.

It is an approximation of the change in the number of infections each day, and the size of the growth rate indicates the speed of change.

It takes into account various data sources, including government-run Covid-19 surveillance testing schemes. For example, a growth rate of 5 per cent is faster than a growth rate of 1 per cent, while a disease with a growth rate of minus 4 per cent will be shrinking faster than a disease with growth rate of minus 1 per cent.

The coronavirus reproduction 'R' rate - the average number of people each patient infects - is still hovering around the dreaded level of one in three regions in England. Rising above one would cause infections to grow exponentially

R estimates - which are at least three weeks behind - do not indicate how quickly an epidemic is changing and different diseases with the same R can result in epidemics that grow at very different speeds.

Growth rates provide different information from R estimates, by suggesting the size and speed of change, whereas the R value only gives data on the direction of change.

To calculate R, information on the time it takes for one set of people in an infected group to infect a new set of people in the next group is needed.

However, the growth rate is estimated using a range of data similar to R, but it does not depend on the 'generation time' and so requires fewer assumptions to estimate.

Neither measure - R or growth rate - is better than the other but each provides information that is useful in monitoring the spread of a disease. Experts say each should be considered alongside other measures of the spread of disease.
John Bolton slammed Democrats for conducting a partisan impeachment, saying they were 'almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to' President Trump.

In an interview with ABC News, Bolton defended his decision not to testify before Congress during the impeachment proceedings.

He writes in his new book that the Democratic-led House of Representatives committed malpractice by tailoring impeachment exclusively to Ukraine.

The House impeached the president after it was alleged that Trump sought to withhold aid from Ukraine unless the government in Kyiv investigated Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

As Barack Obama's vice president, Biden was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine. The president and his supporters allege that Hunter Biden obtained a position on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm because of his father's standing.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton (left) defended his decision not to testify before Congress during impeachment proceedings, saying that the Democrats were 'almost as bad as and somewhat equivalent to' President Trump (right)

Bolton writes in his new book that the Democratic-led House of Representatives committed malpractice by tailoring impeachment exclusively to Ukraine. The image above shows House Rep. Adam Schiff, a House impeachment manager, speaking during closing arguments in the impeachment trial against Trump at the Senate in Washington, DC, on February 3

"Minds were made up on Capitol Hill."



John Bolton defends his decision not to testify during the impeachment trial, telling @martharaddatz, "It would not have made a difference." https://t.co/jiL4cpAnp7 pic.twitter.com/P3z87I43AM  ABC News (@ABC) June 22, 2020

Trump became just the third president in history to be impeached, though he was acquitted by the Senate, which has a majority of Republicans.

The House Intelligence Committee sought to bring Bolton in for testimony during its impeachment probe into Trump's conduct toward Ukraine, but he didn't participate, to the consternation of some Democrats who said he was saving material for his book.

When asked why he didn't testify, Bolton said the process in the House was too partisan.

'I was fully prepared [to testify] - if I got a subpoena like everybody else who testified got a subpoena,' Bolton said.

'I think the way the House advocates of impeachment proceeded was badly wrong.

'I think it was impeachment malpractice. I think they were determined because of their own political objectives to conduct an impeachment proceeding that was very narrowly focused on Ukraine, and that went very, very quickly.'

Bolton accused Democrats of managing the impeachment so as not to 'mess up the Democratic presidential nomination.'

'Now, I find that conduct almost as bad and somewhat equivalent to Trump,' Bolton said.

'That they're torqueing one of the gravest constitutional responsibilities the House of Representatives has, the power of impeachment, around their presidential nomination schedule.'

Bolton added: 'And they failed utterly to accomplish what they wanted. In fact, they made things worse.

'Because their strategy fitted with the Trump political strategy.

'Keep it narrow, and move it fast. So what did they do? The House advocates said, 'We have proven Trump is impeached forever, and that he'd learn a lesson from it.'

When asked if Trump learned his lesson after impeachment, Bolton said: 'It's absolutely 180 degrees the opposite of the truth.

Bolton is promoting his new memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which tells of his time as Trump's national security adviser

'Because he was acquitted in the Senate. He didn't learn lessons from it, other than that he could get away with it, which leaves only the last guardrail - is the election this November.

'I think the House Democrats built a cliff, they threw themselves off of it. And halfway down, they looked up and saw me, and said, 'Hey, why don't you come along?''

In the interview, Bolton said he will not vote for either his former boss, Trump, or Biden this November.

Bolton, who was fired last year as Trump's national security adviser, gave a scathing assessment of the president in his new memoir, The Room Where It Happened.

'I don't think he's fit for office,' Bolton told ABC News on Sunday.

'I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.'

Bolton, a lifelong Republican who has served in the White House for three GOP administrations, dismissed Trump as a true member of the party.

'I don't think he's a conservative Republican. I'm not gonna vote for him in November,' Bolton said.

'Certainly not gonna vote for Joe Biden either.

'I'm gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in.

'But this comes back to the point of why I wrote the book.'

Earlier on Sunday, Bolton denied a report that he plans to vote for Biden.

Bolton gave an interview with The Daily Telegraph on Sunday in which he said he had no plans to vote for Trump in November.

But a spokesperson for Bolton told Axios that the newspaper incorrectly reported that the lifelong Republican hawk would cast a ballot for the Democrat, Biden.

'This statement is incorrect. The Ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden,' Bolton spokesperson Sarah Tinsley said in a statement to Axios.

'He has consistently said in recent days he will be writing in the name of a conservative Republican.

'Let there be no doubt - he will not be voting for Trump or Biden.'

The Telegraph quoted Bolton as saying: 'In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton.

'Now, having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again.

'My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back.'

Bolton continued: 'The president does not have a philosophical grounding or strategy.

'He does not know the difference between the national interest of the US, and the interests of Donald Trump.

'There is confusion over the national interest and his personal interest, which is very dangerous for the country.'

'When you are in a senior position you have an obligation to tell the truth,' he added.

'I was concerned after 17 months in the administration that he (Mr Trump) did not have the requisite competence to be president, and the American people need to know about that.'

In his interview with ABC News, Bolton warned that Trump poses a 'danger for the republic' and his re-election would put the country in even greater peril since he wouldn't be constrained by electoral considerations in a second term.

Trump's former national security adviser said the president has little regard for facts and that his decisions aren't rooted in 'philosophy, grand strategy, or policy' but are solely geared toward his own political future.

Bolton denied a report that he intends to vote for Joe Biden (above)

When asked how history will remember Trump, Bolton said: 'I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from.

'We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence - even if it's not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November.

'Two terms, I'm more troubled about.

'But I'm really troubled about the absence as well of a viable national security wing in the Democratic Party.

'So this is an election for me of a choice of two unacceptable alternatives. And it's not one I relish.'

Bolton said that Trump's behavior 'shows a pattern quite contrary to the image he would like to convey, of a decisive president who knows something about what he's doing.

'There really isn't any guiding principle - that I was able to discern other than - what's good for Donald Trump's reelection,' Bolton said.

'Now, look, you can't take the politics out of politics. It plays a role in every aspect of decision making in the executive branch.

'But there's no coherent basis, no strategy, no philosophy.

'And decisions are made in a very scatter shot fashion, especially in the potentially mortal field of national security policy.

'This is a danger for the republic.'
China Halts Some US Poultry Imports Amid Virus Fears

By VOA News June 21, 2020

Beijing announced Sunday it was halting poultry imports from a plant in the United States where employees have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The plant is located in Springdale, Arkansas, and owned by American poultry company Tyson.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company was looking into the issue.

"It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, USDA and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food," he told Reuters in an email.

China also stopped importing pork products from a German company, Toennies, last week after an outbreak of the coronavirus was reported there, affecting hundreds of workers.

China increased its scrutiny of the foods it imports since a cluster of coronavirus cases was linked to a wholesale food market in the capital more than a week ago.

Beijing is under a partial lockdown as a new wave of COVID-19 infections has been confirmed and has stepped up scrutiny of imported products.

In November of 2019, China ended a five-year ban on U.S. poultry imports.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Kolkata, June 22 : The Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government has called for an all-party meeting at the state secretariat Nabanna on Wednesday to review the Covid-19 pandemic across the state.

State Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay said on Monday that the state government would make a presentation in the all-party meeting, explaining the steps taken by the health department so far to battle out the health and hygiene crisis.

Bandhopadhyay also said that West Bengal has witnessed a downward graph in the number of Covid-19 infections.

"Currently there are only 5,093 active coronavirus cases across the state. As many as 8,297 corona patients have already been discharged. The discharge ratio in Bengal stands at about 60 per cent now, which is much higher than the national average of 55.48 per cent," he said.

The Home Secretary said that over 4 lakh Covid-19 tests have already been conducted in various laboratories so far across the state. "This is a very positive development and the CM wants people to know that the Covid graph is slowly getting flattened," he added.

"We will take part in the all-party meeting. On one hand, we, the Opposition parties, will criticise the government in areas where they have failed, but on the other we will play a responsible role for the interest of Bengal and its people as far as the Covid-19 pandemic is concerned," said Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sujan Chakraborty.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
On Monday, June 22, at 1600, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency will host an online conference on the subject: "Economy of Ukraine between Future and Past: Innovative Power Economy or Coal Preferences." Participants include Deputy Director of the Situations Modeling Agency Oleksiy Holobutsky and Director of Situations Modeling Agency Vitaliy Bala (8/5a Reitarska Street). The broadcast will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. Admission requires press accreditation.
NEW HAVEN  A federal court jury has found a Westport investment firm guilty of defrauding clients.

The jury in March found that Westport Capital Markets, LLC, a Connecticut-based investment advisory firm, and its owner, Christopher E. McClure, defrauded their advisory clients by repeatedly purchasing securities that generated significant undisclosed compensation, enriching themselves at their clients expense.

Westport Capital Markets has its office at 257 Riverside Ave. in Westport. It was prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

McClure could not be reached for comment.

A federal judge previously ruled Westport Capital and McClure failed to disclose their conflicts of interest and that Westport Capital made, and McClure aided and abetted, unauthorized principal transactions.

Investment advisers cannot mislead their clients about conflicts of interest, said Adam Aderton, co-chief of the SECs Asset Management Unit. The jury verdict underscores the well-settled principle that investment advisers must provide accurate information so that their clients can make informed decisions.
In the last 24 hours, 88 new positive cases were found in the state police force and one succumbed to the disease

The Maharashtra police continues to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic as the number of police personnel tested positive for coronavirus goes beyond 4,000 on Sunday. Of them, 47 policemen have succumbed to the deadly virus so far.

In the last 24 hours, 88 new positive cases were found in the state police force and one succumbed to the disease. The total number of Covid-19 cases in the department has now reached 4,048.

State home minister Anil Deshmukh tweeted, 4,048 police personnel have tested positive for Covid-19. Of these 3,000 have recovered and 47 have tragically succumbed. According to police officials, the number of active cases in the state police force now stands at 1,001, comprising 118 officers and 883 personnel.

Maharashtra is Indias worst Covid-19 affected state with more than 1.3 lakh positive cases. The prolonged pandemic has left the state police force overworked as well as overstressed.

With many police personnel testing positive for coronavirus, Maharashtra had asked for 20 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) from the Centre to provide relief to the state police force. However, 32 companies of the Central Reserve Police Force have already been deployed in the state.

In view of rising deaths, the Maharashtra police have also asked their personnel who are above 55 years of age to go on leave as a precautionary measure. Besides, police personnel in the age group of 50 to 55 have been put on low-risk normal duty.

The state has registered several cases of assault on policemen while enforcing the guidelines to contain the spread of the virus. As per the official data, 275 incidents of assault on cops have been recorded since March 22, 2020 and 854 accused have been arrested for attacking cops. In addition to this, 86 policemen have been injured in the attack by anti-social elements while performing their duties.
New York City's effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus through contact tracing has been hampered by the reluctance of many people who are infected with the virus to provide information to tracers, according to a report in The New York Times.

The Times report said just 35% of the 5,347 city residents who tested positive or were presumed positive for COVID-19 in the first two weeks of the contact tracing program gave information about their close contacts.

Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University, called the 35% rate for eliciting contacts very bad.

For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day," Halkitis told the Times.

Dr. Ted Long, head of New York Citys new Test and Trace Corps, defended the program Sunday and said 69% of the people who complete an interview provide contacts. We think thats a strong start but we also do want to get that number up, Long told The Associated Press.

Long said the 35% figure cited by the Times represents a percentage everyone who the tracers reached, and some of those people, including some who have not had COVID-19 symptoms for weeks, don't have relevant contacts to provide.

Long said he believes the program, which started June 1, will be more successful when tracers start going to peoples homes in the next week or two rather than relying on the phone.

New York City has made huge strides in containing the outbreak since the coronavirus shutdown started in March, with more than 320 new cases reported on Thursday, down from several thousand a day during the peak. But officials say the contact tracing effort is crucial to preventing a resurgence as the city enters the second phase of easing coronavirus restrictions on Monday, including outdoor dining at restaurants and in-store retail shopping.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he expects as many as 300,000 more people to return to their jobs during Phase 2.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed that the city is on track to start Phase 2 of reopening on Monday and said in a news release that 15 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 across the state on Saturday. That is the state's lowest death toll since the early days of the outbreak in March.
The pile of distressed debt in emerging markets that ballooned in March is quickly shrinking, suggesting to some investors that fears of a wave of corporate collapses are overblown.

Despite warnings that default rates will rise to double digits, investors have turned more bullish on the riskiest debt sold by companies in markets from Latin America to China, resulting in falling levels of distressed debt.

Since peaking on March 19 at $121.6 billion, the pool of high-yield, emerging-market corporate debt trading at distressed levels has shriveled to $28.6 billion, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The spread between high-yield bonds and a broader index of developing-nation debt has tightened 140 basis points over that time.

"The level of hysteria we saw in March for corporates was somewhat unprecedented," said Steve Cook, co-head of emerging markets fixed income at PineBridge Investments, which has $96.2 billion in assets under management. "There will be some weak links, but to say that you're going to see 10% to 12% default rates, we don't see it."

PineBridge expects the default rate for those corporates to reach 3% to 4% by the end of the year, he said.

A global recession caused by the coronavirus lockdown and worsened by a crash in oil prices has heightened the risks corporations won't be able to meet obligations. Moody's Investors Service said this week it expects the default rate to at least triple by the end of the year for speculative-grade companies in Latin America and that it may top 10%. The ratings firm previously said as much as 13.7% of speculative-grade corporate bonds in emerging markets will sour in the year to March 2021. The rate at the end of March was 2.2%.

Yet, high-yield, developing-market debt has gained 15% so far in the quarter starting in April, compared to 12% for high-yield U.S. corporate debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To be sure, the downturn has taken a toll on the government debt side of emerging markets, with countries including Argentina, Ecuador and Lebanon already defaulting.

The situation is not entirely rosy for companies either, especially if economies recover more slowly than expected. Yet, many corporations went into the downturn with relatively strong balance sheets and have benefited as governments poured stimulus into banking systems and, in some cases, instituted moratoriums on principal and interest payments, said Omotunde Lawal, head of emerging market corporate debt at London-based Barings U.K. Ltd.

Lawal expects a legion of companies to start to benefit when economies do reopen, earning just enough revenue to meet obligations, but not enough to continue cutting debt levels.

"Balance sheets will be weaker and we'll see a growth of zombie corporates," she said. Many companies will "muddle through with a slower path to deleveraging, but it will not cause a spike in defaults."

With many sectors continuing to suffer, notes sold by companies such as Brazilian air carrier Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA and Chinese property manager China Evergrande Group are still distressed. But the rally has pushed down yields for many bonds that were distressed in March, such as debt from companies as varied as Chilean mobile services company WOM to Mexican concrete giant Cemex SA, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Companies across the globe have piled into debt markets since the financial crisis, with the total stock of outstanding bonds reaching $2.4 trillion this year, a four-fold increase from 2009, according to JPMorgan data.

The sheer size of the universe of such debt means even if defaults start to rise, the percentage is unlikely to hit double digits as it did during the financial crisis, PineBridge's Cook said.

"We need to be careful not to compare it to the financial crisis," he said.
A Nollywood actor, Hanks Anuku, has refuted the second death rumour being peddled in one month.

The actor had shared a similar video on his Facebook page on June 6 after rumours of his death became rife on social media.

The development comes days after Nollywood actor, Olu Jacobs, was rumoured dead.

The Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), however, quashed the claims of Olu Jacobs death, stating that the veteran actor is alive, very hale and hearty.

Hanks Anuku, 59, was obviously upset about the misinformation which he said is being peddled by poisonous press vipers.

The actor, who is currently based in Delta State, said this in a video shared on his Instagram page on Monday.

Anuku also called on the public to disregard the rumours about his death, adding that those wishing him evil would be clothed with evil.

READ ALSO:

He said, I am Hank Anuku Nollywood actor and Im alive. My haters are deadJesus Christ is my deliverer and he liveth. Poisonous press vipers on the prowl but they shall be perplexed and disappointed in Jesuss name. Amen. I love you fans.

Born on August 27, 1960, the movie star has featured in several Nollywood thrillers, including Face of a Murderer, Broad Daylight, and Men on Hard Way.

He was introduced to Nollywood by Regina Askia and his first movie role was in The Skeleton.

Since then, he has featured in over 50 films.
The stage is set, the lines are drawn, the stakes are high and Donald Trump is losing it.

His mismanagement of the pandemic and the civil unrest gripping the United States have cost him dearly. He is trailing behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls by a double-digit margin. If the US elections were held today, he would lose bigly, and that is just driving him crazy.

Trump is down but not out. He is nearing the tipping point but not there yet.

He has lost the economic and political gains which he hoped to use to launch his campaign. And it would be improbable if not impossible for him to overcome the recession and public anger before the November elections.

So he has resorted to psychology, embarking on a public relations offensive to deflect criticism and alter public perception in his favour, focusing on a small segment of the electorate in the swing states, which he hopes will help him repeat his 2016 victory.

Back then Trump had a number of perceived psychological advantages in the electorate over Hillary Clinton, some quite silly considering the stakes.

According to some psychologists, being the taller candidate and being seen as an alpha male may have given Trump some advantage over Clinton.

Indeed, some 80 million people watched as the 6-foot-3 (1.9m) celebrity towered over Clinton during the 2016 debates and threatened to lock her up. His name appearing first on the ballots in the key swing states may have also helped.

But today, these instinctive psychological advantages are neither relevant nor sufficient, and Trump must come up with a new strategy to restore public confidence in him in a time of crisis.

Restoring confidence

In an attempt to appear in control during a national health disaster, Trump has tried to change the publics psychology by anointing himself a war president to fight the pandemic.

He has also referred to himself as the law and order president during the civil unrest, advocating military intervention and putting Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of the US armed forces in charge.

He even played Gods special messenger during the early days of the civil unrest, brandishing a copy of the Bible he had not read in front of a church he had not attended to defend a faith which was not under threat.

To no avail.

Public anger continues to simmer. The pandemic has taken the lives of 120,000 Americans and rising. The economy is in the deepest recession since World War I, and society is in turmoil. Even religious leaders are not buying into his insecure machismo.

So what began as a bleeding of support a few months ago has now turned into serious haemorrhaging.

That is why Trump has been so eager to get back on the campaign trail. He feels he has a connection with the crowd which can help him pull his presidency from the jaws of disaster.

He has had a unique understanding of power and its psychology since before he went in to politics. He is ready to go to the mat to get what he wants.

So he set off on a crusade to break the Democrats fighting spirit and to win back hearts and minds, the hearts of conservatives and the minds of independents.

First stop, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Psychological warfare

Trump began his first rally since the pandemic by serving red meat to the Red state, which voted overwhelmingly Republican in 2016.

He started with a perilous populist appeal, calling his supporters warriors and warning of some very bad people outside  doing bad things.

With no economic or political case to make, he ignored the civil unrest, joked about the deadly pandemic, and denied the deep recession, as AJ+s Tony Karon aptly remarked.

Trump slammed the shameless hypocrite, sleepy Joe Biden, warning if he is elected president, our country would be destroyed.

And he dissed the radical left Democrats, especially hate-filled, America-bashing Ilhan Omar and socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

He also demonised the negative, radical, fake news media, and the subversive radical left that holds Biden hostage.

Trump aims to go as far as it takes to shock and awe until he overwhelms his detractors and beats them into submission.

But in Tulsa, the reality proved more complicated.

The promised large crowds did not materialise and the relatively poor attendance of his much-publicised rally turned the hype into humiliation.

Contrary to Trumps assertions, fewer than 200 protesters were seen in Tulsa that day and they by far were not the main deterrent for prospective attendees.

Clearly, many of his supporters are not dying to hear his grievances and falsehoods during the pandemic.

Clearly, his tireless repetition of smears and satire is no longer as entertaining to his core supporters.

Clearly, he is losing control over his emotions and his tone, and the more he loses it, the more he loses support.

As people lose confidence in the president, so do the antsy and opportunistic political elites.

An increasing number of Republicans, including former generals and aides, are deserting his sinking ship; some out of fear for the party, not to mention the countrys future in case of a Trump second term. Some reckon he poses a danger to the Republic.

This leaves the incumbent president no choice but to double down on incitement against his opponents, before defections snowball.

The question is, what will Trump do if he loses the psychological warfare? Or, rather how far will he go to get re-elected?

For psychology goes in both directions, and Trump sounds increasingly paranoid about liberal institutions conspiring against him, about the media, the courts, and the deep state bureaucracy besieging him.

He has even asked his followers if they also had the impression the Supreme Court doesnt like [him].

Objectively speaking, being paranoid does not mean no one is actually colluding or conspiring against Trump or clamouring for his downfall.

That is why those celebrating his defeat prematurely should beware of his determination to do anything to win.

A desperate and humiliated Trump may do just about anything.

The stage is indeed set and the fault lines are drawn, for national elections and for a national showdown.
When strangers catch sight of three Australian cattle dogs wearing goggles on hiking trails, they usually laugh and try to take a photo. Sometimes theyll ask their handler, Tim Livesey, how he trained them to wear the shades. But occasionally people argue with him that dogs dont need eye protection.

So Livesey keeps a quiver of witty replies ready when someone demands, Why are you doing that to your dogs?

They are self-conscious of their eye color.

They need prescription doggles to read the map so they don't get lost.

To fit in with the cool crowd.

Just like Bruce Wayne, to hide their true identity so they can lead a normal life when out on the town!

Three dogs wearing goggles pose by a waterfall (Tim Livesey)

The true story of the dogs is heartwarming. All three animals had rough beginnings. Bella, 7, was abandoned in a cardboard box with the rest of her litter. Bolt, 2, was born with a broken tail, so he had no value for his breeder. Bonnie, 3, is deaf, and her owner didnt want her anymore.

When Livesey learned the deaf cattle dog needed a new home, he drove with Bella and Bolt to meet her in New Mexico on leap day earlier this year. The fact that Bonnie had also been born with a broken tail seemed like a sign.

So did her response to him.

Right when I met her, she immediately tried to jump up into my arms  just leaped up at me into my arms, he told TODAY. Shes a real sweet dog.

Three cattle dogs, two wearing goggles, gaze into the future. (Tim Livesey)

Bella and Bolt got along great with the new member of their pack and soon became not just friends, but protectors.

Less than two months after she joined the family, Bonnie had stopped to sniff a bush during an off-leash hike. Bolt looked back to check on her and suddenly let loose a ferocious bark. Bella raced after him as they charged toward Bonnie  to chase off the coyote sneaking up behind her.

Bonnie had no idea the coyote was there, Livesey said. He took off running. I called the dogs back and everything was fine. I was like, 'OK, theyre her protection ears.'

Three Australian cattle dogs pose on the top of an old car. (Tim Livesey)

Now Beauties and the Bolt, as theyre known on Instagram, are Liveseys constant companions on adventures near (and not so near) their home in Henderson, Nevada. Through patience and positive reinforcement training, the 43-year-old, who works in information technology, helped each dog learn to accept the goggles that protect their eyes from cactus spines and ultraviolet rays from the sun.

Story continues

Every morning they take about a 7-mile walk near their home, plus evening hikes at least once a weeknight. Weekends are for longer treks, such as summiting Charleston Peak on southern Nevadas highest mountain at 11,916 feet.

Tim Livesey holds three fingers with three dogs on a mountain peak. (Courtesy of Tim Livesey)

Bonnie tried camping in a tent for the first time recently and loved it. After a hike, she curled up on Liveseys sleeping bag and slept soundly through the night  unlike Bella and Bolt, whose heads kept popping up to monitor outside sounds.

Bonnie just sleeps through the whole night because she cant hear any critters or the wind blowing through the trees or anything like that, he said. She adjusts very well because she cant hear.

As a safety precaution, Bonnie wears a vibrating collar with a remote control in case Livesey needs to get her attention when not leashed. Her pink collar and leash read Im deaf, and her vest says Deaf Puppy so that well-meaning strangers dont startle her by petting her from behind.

A dog wears a

Additionally, Livesey trains all his dogs to understand verbal cues as well as hand signals. (He noted its a useful practice since any dog can experience hearing or vision loss with age.) Bonnie was easy to train; since shes deaf, shes attentive and makes frequent eye contact.

Livesey has zero regrets about adopting a deaf dog. In fact, his advice to anyone considering adopting one is simple: Do it.
PITTSBURGH, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- While automatic clothes dryers are an effective phase of the laundry process, an inventor from Revere, Mass., was concerned with their expense. So he came up with a lower-cost alternative.

He developed DRY RACK ON THE HEAT to provide an eco-friendly way to dry clothes on laundry day. As such, it conserves time, effort and electric or gas energy. Thus, it eliminates the need to use an automatic clothes dryer or the cost of laundromat dryer fees. This lightweight, compact and portable unit is also easy to assemble, use, fold and store. In addition, consumers will appreciate how convenient, effective and affordably priced it is.

The inventor's personal financial concerns inspired the idea. "I wanted an economical way to dry my clothes," he said, "and realized this method would be less expensive than using a commercial dryer."

The original design was submitted to the Boston sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 18-BMA-5469, 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


File image(Image Source: Reuters)

India has recorded over 4.25 lakh cases of the novel coronavirus and 13,699 deaths, according to the Union Health Ministry's latest update.

Of these, 1,74,387 are active cases while 2,37,195 have recovered.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of infections, followed by Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Globally, the number of cases are approaching 9 million and over 4.6 lakh deaths have been reported due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Here are all the latest updates:

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

>> Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami has tested negative for coronavirus, Health Minister C Vijayabaskar said.

>> Scientists in India, for the first time, detected genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater.

>> The Union Health Ministry said that India's COVID-19 cases per lakh population among lowest in world.

>> Delhi surpassed Tamil Nadu in the number of COVID-19 cases, becoming the second worst-hit in India.

>> Reversing its earlier order, Supreme Court allowed the historic Rath Yatra to be conducted in Puri, Odisha with certain restrictions.

>> Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain was shifted to General Ward following improvement in his health condition. The AAP leader's oxygen support was also removed. He had tested positive for COVID-19 on June 17.

>> News agency AFP reported that Disneyland Paris will gradually start reopening from July 15.

>> Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate jumped to 2.88 yesterday, up from 1.79 a day earlier, health authorities said, a rate that shows infections are rising above the level needed to contain the disease over the longer term.

>> Thailand marked 28 days since recording any domestic transmissions. The country now hopes to ease some coronavirus restrictions on foreigners entering the country.
REGINAHundreds of workers at Reginas Co-op oil refinery complex will be returning to work after ratification of a tentative contract.

The agreement brings an ends to a six-month labour dispute that began after refinery owner Federated Co-operatives Ltd. locked out more than 700 workers last December following a strike vote.

The company says the new contract is a seven-year deal and that employees will return to work in the coming weeks.

Unifor Local 594 had encouraged members to vote in favour of the deal, which the union says maintained the defined pension plan.

It says the new collective agreement also includes wage improvements that meet the standards agreed to by Unifors energy sector unions.

For weeks, union members and the Saskatchewan NDP had called on Premier Scott Moe to intervene and end the dispute by legislating binding arbitration.

The company says the labour disruption was difficult for everyone and the deal reflects the fiscal realities for refineries.
Somrita Ghosh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: With the Delhi government on Saturday issuing an order fixing the cost of a Covid-19 isolation bed in any private hospital in Delhi between the range of Rs 8,000-Rs Rs 10,000 and an ICU bed with a ventilator at Rs 15,000-Rs 18,000 per day, private hospitals believe that the decision may not be financially sustainable for them.

The order by the Delhi Health Department said that the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) had accepted the recommendations of the high-powered committee, set up by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

While Fortis Healthcare fully supports the need for transparency of pricing, it is important to ensure there is no compromise in the quality of care or the safety of healthcare professionals. We, therefore, request the committee to review the recommendations so that hospitals are in a position to provide quality care and yet sustain costs to function at optimum capacity, the hospital chain said in a statement.

FICCI members accept the governments decision on the cost of Covid treatment in Delhi, though it may not be financially sustainable. The hospitals in the private sector, that were already financially fragile over the past few years, have been stressed further with the unplanned investments for Covid-19 preparedness and response; and have seen their revenues topple due to 60-80% decline in patient footfalls, leading to estimated operational losses of Rs 4,500 crores per month (at 50% revenues and 35% occupancy levels). Despite our repeated appeals, there has been no financial support forthcoming from the government, said Dr Alok Roy, Chair-FICCI Health Services Committee and Chairman, Medica Group of Hospitals.

For setting a realistic price following a consultative approach is important that will take in consideration the views of all the relevant stakeholders to know the ground realities or should be made in discussion with IMA and such medical bodies, stated Dr HS Chhabra, Medical Director, Indian Spinal Injuries Center.
SeaAhead, Inc. and the New England Aquarium have announced the launch of the BlueSwell Incubator Program (BlueSwell), New England's first dedicated, comprehensive early-stage bluetech incubator. BlueSwell is designed to support the creation and growth of startups with solutions that have the potential for significant impact on ocean sustainability and global resilience.

BlueSwell will catalyze new business creation by providing a direct (non-dilutive) grant of $35,000 to founders with a new ocean-related technology or business model innovation. Areas of particular opportunity for entrepreneurs include offshore renewable energy, sustainable seafood, maritime decarbonization, marine pollution, and resilient waterfronts. The program builds on New England's diverse and unique ocean-related capabilities to provide a support infrastructure for new businesses, including direct access to leaders and experts from industry, academia, government, and ocean conservation. The BlueSwell program includes a tailored 20-week curriculum, mentorship from SeaAhead and the Aquarium's research arm, the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, an extended network of advisors, and coworking for the length of the program.

The BlueSwell Program will be located at the SeaAhead Bluetech Innovation Hub at CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center) Boston. The Bluetech Innovation Hub opened in 2019 as the first ocean-focused coworking space in Boston, with the goal of connecting the venture ecosystem in Boston's urban core with relevant industry and ocean-related research institutions throughout New England. CIC has a strong track record of helping to grow new economic clusters in Greater Boston and recognized early the potential this sector has to drive economic growth in the region.

The New England Aquarium's 50-year history as a regional leader in global ocean conservation reflects its mission to be a catalyst for global change through public engagement, innovative scientific research, and advocacy. "Human use of our ocean is vital to global health and the economy, including food and energy security, commerce, and the climate crisis," said Dr. John Mandelman, Vice President and Chief Scientist at the New England Aquarium. "At the same time, this must be done responsibly and collaboratively, and an influx of new methods and technologies are helping to pave the way. The Northeast region contains both a thriving innovation landscape and robust set of ocean experts and assets, and through this program, we aim to combine these elements to foster sustainable, balanced, and equitable use of the ocean."

SeaAhead's Executive Director, Alissa Peterson, added, "Emerging businesses require a community to invest in their success--including mentorship, seed capital, and access to government, university, and corporate resources. Through BlueSwell we will support a diverse group of new bluetech founders as they bring their technologies out of the lab. The program will provide a critical bridge for new venture ideation tied to ocean sustainability, building the skills and knowledge base required for founders to raise commercial capital to support their growing startups."

The BlueSwell program is free to the selected entrepreneurs, which is made possible by sponsoring foundations, companies and individuals that prioritize the ocean as a source of solutions, including Giant Shoulders and Goodwin Proctor.

Applications opened for the program on June 18, 2020 and will close on August 9, 2020. A webinar will be held on Friday, June 26 at 10 a.m. ET to review the program and applications. Please see the website for more information.

###

About SeaAhead:

SeaAhead is a benefit corporation, founded in Boston, with the mission of supporting venture innovation for the ocean. We are creating a bluetech startup platform, helping to build companies through our BlueSwell incubator, facilitating investments through the Blue Angels and catalyzing a bluetech cluster in the Northeast. Our ecosystem includes technologists, scientists, startups, foundations, corporations, governments and other ocean stakeholders that are coming together to create impact in areas including greener shipping and ports, aquaculture and fishery processes, offshore alternative energy and resilient waterfronts. SeaAhead's bluetech mandate also includes scalable solutions to marine debris and ocean-centric approaches to the challenges of climate change.

About New England Aquarium

The New England Aquarium is a global leader in marine science and conservation. With more than 1.3 million visitors a year, the Aquarium is one of the premier visitor attractions in Boston and a major public education resource for the region. Building on the Aquarium's 50-year legacy of protecting the blue planet and advocating for vital and vibrant oceans, the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, established in 2016, leads the way in cutting-edge applied marine research and data-driven conservation, offering practical solutions to mitigate human impacts on our ocean.

About CIC

CIC is a global leader in building and operating innovation communities. Founded in 1999 in Cambridge, MA, CIC is one of the first companies worldwide to create a workplace community for innovators and entrepreneurs. CIC's mission is to find solutions that fix the world's problems. As of 2020, CIC has approximately 1.2M square feet (110K m2) open and in development in nine cities. The company has supported over 6,500 startup and technology companies, and over $8 billion has been invested in companies that began within CIC spaces. The company has cofounded a number of mission-aligned organizations including Venture Cafe, District Hall, Impact Hub Boston, LabCentral, and MassRobotics. Over the next ten years, CIC plans to grow its network of innovation hubs to create positive impact in 50 leading cities around the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 04:03:22|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

CAIRO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said on Monday that it will provide loans worth 200 million U.S. dollars for the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) to facilitate trade and help Egyptian companies impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a statement by EBRD, a loan worth 100 million dollars will be provided to enable the NBE to offer short-term loans to the country's private small and medium-sized companies facing liquidity problems caused by the pandemic crisis.

Meanwhile, the EBRD will also raise the trade finance limit for the Egypt national bank by 100 million dollars to 300 million dollars, to meet the demand for import and export transactions.

As the largest commercial bank in Egypt, the NBE is committed to reducing the economic and financial impact of the coronavirus on the Egyptian economy, said Hisham Okasha, chairman of the NBE in a statement.

The EBRD has invested nearly 7.3 billion dollars in 115 projects in Egypt since 2012. Enditem
According to federal court documents, Rainone became an informant for the feds in 1989 after he thought Patrick was setting him up to be killed. He was taken into witness protection, but he later refused to cooperate with authorities after an explosive device damaged his mothers porch, according to court records.
2 Lawsuits, Scandals, and Native American Appropriation

Fenn's buried treasure has, almost from the very start, raised some eyebrows. For starters, and much like that Kim Kardashian photo from a few years ago, the size of the booty was kind of bonkers. And any time you've got money heavy enough to slow a person down, real or otherwise, people are going to take that shit seriously.

In December of last year, Fenn was sued for $1.5 million by a man from Colorado who claimed that Fenn had "deprived him of the treasure through fraudulent statements and misleading clues." Others have also alleged that Fenn was "deliberately" diverting folks from the treasure chest's location. An Arizona man, meanwhile, recently filed a complaint stating that he had "solved the quest," and that Fenn's ability to actually "give title" to a treasure abandoned in the wilderness was, to use the legal term, horseshit.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

That same Arizona man also raised some doubts as to the veracity of the treasure's recent discovery. " just got served with my lawsuit," he told the Santa Fe New Mexican, "and now we have this press release" announcing that the chest had been found. And Fenn's not the only one getting sued over his fortune. A real estate attorney in Chicago alleges that she, too, solved the quest, only to get hacked and beaten to the chest by her alleged hacker. She's filed a formal injunction to stop the unnamed defendant from claiming the treasure.

That, of course, is to say nothing of the fact that, like Indiana Jones before him, Fenn has allegedly made a living stealing historical artifacts from indigenous communities for his own personal gain. He's been accused of raiding the San Lazaro pueblo and hindering the anthropological research being done there. He also had his home searched by federal investigators looking for Native American artifacts said to have been illegally procured -- an accusation which Fenn denies. But, let's be real, the United States government hasn't exactly been great about caring about the things taken from the indigenous peoples of this country. In fact, the feds only seem to get involved in returning artifacts when shit's real bad, so ...
China's customs authority said on Sunday it had suspended imports of poultry products from a plant owned by US-based meat processor Tyson Inc that has been hit by the novel coronavirus.

The General Administration of Customs said on its website it had decided on the suspension after the company confirmed a cluster of coronavirus cases at the plant, which is located in Springdale, Arizona.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company was looking into the issue, adding Tyson works closely with US authorities to ensure its food is produced in full compliance with government safety requirements.

"It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, USDA and the US Food & Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food," he told Reuters in an email.

China also suspended pork products from German pork processor Toennies last week following a coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of its workers.

China has stepped up its oversight of imported foods after a new cluster of coronavirus cases were linked to a sprawling wholesale food market in the capital just over a week ago.

Beijing began testing meat, seafood and fresh produce for the coronavirus last week and some ports were opening all containers of meat to carry out coronavirus tests.

On Friday, customs asked food exporters to sign a declaration that their produce is not contaminated by the virus.

Imports of US poultry have surged since China ended an almost five-year ban on the trade in November 2019.
Rupam (name changed) is 25 years old and has insulin-dependent diabetes. He looks after his chronic disease with utmost caution in spite of holding a busy corporate job. A few days ago, he came down with a sore throat and was advised to take a Covid test. The test results were positive and Rupam had Covid-19. He consulted his doctor, who, after examining him and getting some tests done, advised him to stay in isolation at home in his own apartment.

He returned to his apartment complex in a plush Salt Lake neighbourhood in Kolkata to find his neighbours of many years up in arms about his illness. The secretary of the Residents Association ordered him to leave immediately and not infect others with his disgusting disease. No amount of explanations and corroborations of the advice by the doctor would dissuade the neighbours, some of whom addressed Rupam as a nongra bodmash (dirty scoundrel).

Rupam was forced to check-in into to a nearby corporate hospital at a considerable cost and was allowed back by his neighbours ten days later, after he showed them his Covid-negative certificate. Throughout the entire course of the illness, he had been completely asymptomatic. The agony that Rupam and his family endured was totally unnecessary as the government guidelines clearly legislate for home-isolation whenever possible, in people who are fairly asymptomatic. This is supposed to be done after medical assessment and certification. It is completely safe and risk-free.

Each day, hundreds of people all across India are ostracised by their neighbours, relatives and acquaintances, even if they are suspected of harbouring the dreaded coronavirus. (Representative photo: Reuters)

Rupam is not unique in any way. Each day, hundreds of people all across India are ostracised by their neighbours, relatives and acquaintances, even if they are suspected of harbouring the dreaded coronavirus. In many instances, healthcare workers who have literally put their lives on the line for the nation have been prevented from entering their own homes by unsympathetic landlords and neighbours alike.

Though Covid is infectious, 80 to 90 out of every 100 people infected will not even realise that they have had an infection. Even if they do, it will be a mild flu-like illness and chances of death or severe illness is very low. But, there is a strong potential for the contagion to spread rapidly and infect many people at the same time, potentially inflicting a logistical nightmare for healthcare systems across the world. This is what necessitated the lockdown  not only in India, but across the world. At no time was there any intention of the authorities or governments to generate a mass panic  a fear of death and disease among the populace.

Prevention by means of social distancing, wearing masks and hand-washing is definitely recommended and will prevent infection in most instances. But no authority in this world has recommended ostracisation and stigmatisation of the sick.

The stigmatisation of the disease has its roots in ancient times when patients suffering from leprosy were socially ostracised and literally left to die. In spite of significant social, economic and scientific changes that have evolved through centuries, it appears certain base human instincts have not improved. The stigmatisation of the ill remains as ingloriously present amongst the human race today as it was thousands of years ago.

This current crisis related to Covid-19 may well have been catalysed by the hyperbolic media repeatedly and vehemently highlighting the rising number of cases or the constant flooding of misinformation through WhatsApp University or in all likelihood, a combination of both. Nonetheless, the stigma associated with Covid ramifies into a huge source of inconvenience and agony for a significant number of people.

Research across the globe has convincingly demonstrated that stigmatisation due to infectious diseases leads to adverse outcomes both for the person stigmatised as well as the society as a whole. For these reasons, enlightened public health interventions have sought to neutralise stigma even as they manage to care for patients, patient families, and the communities to which the afflicted belong.

Non-pharmacological methods to prevent disease spread have proven to be largely effective, with India showing a drop in active cases of Covid-19 and a low death rate. In addition, education and strict implementation of guidelines banning social ostracisation and stigmatisation of those affected or likely to be affected will definitely improve the health outcomes in Covid for Indians.

In that way, many like Rupam will be spared the ignominy of being turned out of their own homes.

Also Read: Covid-19 will find a cure. Stigma will not
TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP)  A noose was found in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at the NASCAR race in Alabama on Sunday, less than two weeks after he successfully pushed the stock car racing series to ban the Confederate flag at its tracks and facilities.

NASCAR said it had launched an immediate investigation and will do everything possible to find out who was responsible and eliminate them from the sport.

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS: Rep. Jackson Lee calls for federal probe into recent hangings in Houston area

We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act, the series said in a statement. "As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all.

Wallace is the only fulltime Black driver in NASCAR's elite Cup Series. On Twitter, he said the the despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and ow persistent we must be in the fight against racism.

As my mother told me today, They are just trying to scare you,' he wrote.  This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.

The noose was discovered on the same day NASCAR's fledgling flag ban faced its biggest challenge. The ban took effect before last week's race near Miami, but there were only about 1,000 military members admitted into that race.

At Talladega, in the heart of the South, as many as 5,000 fans were allowed in, even though rain postponed the race until Monday and visitors were barred from the infield.

There weren't any immediate reports of how many flags were confiscated or taken down at the track, if any  but the flag was present nearby. There were informal protests Saturday and Sunday alike, with cars and pickup trucks driving along nearby roads flying the flag and parading past the entrance to the superspeedway. A small plane flew overhead pulling a banner with the flag and the words Defund NASCAR.

STATUES REMOVED: Houston's past and remaining tributes to the Confederacy

NASCAR did not acknowledge the plane, though executive Steve ODonnell tweeted a picture of black and white hands shaking with the words: You wont see a photo of a jackass flying a flag over the track here...but you will see this. Rapper Ice Cube tweeted about the plane saying, (Expletive) him NASCAR, you got new fans in this household.

Wallace, a 26-year-old Alabama native who drives the No. 43 for Richard Petty Motorsports, said he has found support among fellow drivers for his stance on the flag. He noted that after the noose announcement.

Over the last several weeks, I have been overwhelmed by the support from people across the NASCAR industry including other drivers and tea members in the garage, he said. Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real chance and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate.

Wallaces 2013 victory in a Truck Series race was only the second in a NASCAR national series by an Black driver (Wendell Scott, 1963) and helped push him into the Cup Series, where he drives for Hall of Famer Richard Petty and is forced to scramble for sponsorship dollars.

NASCAR has spent years trying to distance itself from the Confederate flag, long a part of its moonshine-running roots from the its founding more than 70 years ago. Five years ago, former chairman Brian France tried to ban flying the flags at tracks, a proposal that was not enforced and was largely ignored.

This year was different and it was Wallace who led the charge. Over the past month as the nation has been roiled by social unrest largely tied to the death of George Floyd, Wallace wore a black T-shirt with the words I Cant Breathe at one race and had a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme at another.

Wallace, whose father is white, was not always outspoken about racism; even after Floyd was killed last month while in police custody in Minneapolis, he was not the first driver to speak out for racial equality. He has said he began to find his public voice on racism after watching video in May of Ahmaud Arberys fatal shooting in Georgia. He said he now recognizes he must not let his platform as a prominent driver go to waste.

NBA star LeBron James tweeted his support to Wallace, calling the noose sickening!

 Know you dont stand alone! Im right here with you as well as every other athlete, James wrote. I just want to continue to say how proud I am of you for continuing to take a stand for change here in America and sports!

Talladega is one of the more raucous stops on the NASCAR schedule, but the coronavirus pandemic prompted the series, like all sports, to ban or sharply limit fans for months. The scene this weekend was a dramatic departure from the Talladega norm with plenty of room for social distancing and fans asked to wear masks.

Its weird. Its eerie, said David Radvansky, 32, from suburban Atlanta, who brought his wife and boys, 3 and 6.

Radvansky, who started coming to Talladega in the 1990s when his father parked cars at races, applauded NASCARs decision to ban the Confederate flag.

I dont think theres a place for it in NASCAR, to be honest with you, the 32-year-old said. That doesnt sit well with all the good ole boys but it is what it is.

Directly across from the track, Ed Suggs merchandise tent was flying Confederate flags prominently in a display alongside Trump 2020 banners and an American flag.

Theyre doing very well, said Sugg, a Helena, Alabama, resident who has been selling an array of wares at NASCAR races for 21 years. People are disappointed that NASCAR has taken that stance. Its been around for as long as all of us have been.

I dont think anybody really connects it to any kind of racism or anything," he said. "Its just a Southern thing. Its transparent. Its just a heritage thing.
ALBANY  Legislation that would offer retirement buyouts to state and other government workers is generating a lot of discussion in New York's workforce, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration has not said whether the incentives will be used to reduce a more than $10 billion deficit.

In response to questions from the Times Union on Monday, the Public Employees Federation issued a statement noting that Cuomo has "not weighed into this discussion yet."

The New York state staffing levels are already far too low for us to be overly excited that these levels would drop even more, but (we are) always glad for our members who can take advantage of an early retirement incentive," PEF President Wayne Spence said. "With years of NYS budget and staffing cuts, our members have been doing the work of two to three people during that same period and certainly deserve to retire early, if (that incentive is) made available."

In some agencies and departments, workers are reporting that managers have floated the prospect of early retirement incentives being offered by September, which is what the legislation calls for. But those bills, in the Senate and Assembly, are stalled at the committee level and have not received public support from the majority leaders.

The legislation would also propose early retirement incentives be offered to school districts and local government entities that elect to participate in the program.

"In light of COVID-19 and its impact on revenues both at the state level as well as the local government level, it is becoming increasingly apparent that all options need to be on the table for reducing the other side of the balance sheet, which is expenses," said Assemblyman John McDonald, D-Cohoes, a co-sponsor of the Assembly's bill. "Retirement incentives may be an item to consider to help lower expenses  however, those who elect to pursue this incentive, if approved, need to look closely at what expenses will be reduced and compare that to the experience that may leave government service."

The Cuomo administration may be waiting to see whether a gridlocked Congress will pass legislation providing potentially billions of dollars in aid to New York and other states that were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Still, New York already had been facing a more than $6 billion deficit before the virus struck the state in early March.

According to PEF, certain members or specific titles designated by management would be eligible for up to three years of additional service credit for an early retirement  with one month of extra service up to an additional 36 months of pension credit. It would also allow eligible members who are age 55 and have 25 or more years of service (rather than 30 years) to be eligible to retire without penalty during the time period they are offered.

PEF contends New York agencies are already operating at staffing levels below what are needed.

"This workforce planning flaw has been exposed by the COVID-19 crisis where the state  through the services rendered by our members  has demonstrated how important having government capacity is in times of crisis," Spence's statement reads. "PEF members have been asked to perform herculean tasks without appropriate human or financial support. The state workforce is stretched way too thin."

There are exceptions to the buyout offers in the legislation, including any reduction in services that are "required or mandated to protect and care for clients of the state or a participating employer or to assure public health and safety," or that would "endanger the health or safety of employees of the state or a participating employer."

Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the state Budget Division, said buyouts are "not being considered at this time."

Cuomo said last month he is hopeful the state can avoid layoffs or furloughs, at a time when more than 30 percent of the state's workforce have been doing their jobs from home during the pandemic, including many with diminished workloads.

At the end of March, Cuomo's administration deferred for three months the 2 percent raises that roughly 80,000 state workers had been scheduled to receive. The state also has declined to renew numerous service contracts and implemented a hiring freeze.

Figures provided to the Times Union by Cuomo's office had indicated that 59 agencies, departments, offices and commissions had 36,178 people working remotely out of 119,135 workers.

Sen. James Skoufis, D-Woodbury, said he has not seen "a careful analysis of up-front costs a buyout would require versus the savings it would yield."

Skoufis said that type of analysis is a "necessary first step."

"More urgently, it underscores the need for the federal government to do their damn job and provide state governments  and the essential workers they fund  with long-overdue relief," Skoufis said. "Many people are predicting a second wave of the virus, but are overlooking a second wave of the recession if untold thousands of essential workers need to be laid off because the federal government failed to act."
The number of years before there will be a COVID-19 vaccine for everybody in the world, as predicted by Dr. David Nabarro, the WHOs special envoy. I would love it to be proved wrong. ( AP News  June 22, 2020)
A morning commuter walks in front of the China Central Television (CCTV) building on a sunny day Dec. 2, 2015, after a fresh cold front cleared the smog that was blanketing Beijing. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj)

US Designates 4 Additional Chinese State-Run Outlets as Foreign Missions

The U.S. State Department on June 22 designated four additional Chinese state-run media outlets as foreign missions, a move that would identify them as propaganda organs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The designation, which raises restrictions on the outlets U.S. operations, applies to: China Central Television, Chinas state broadcaster; China News Service, one of the regimes largest news outlets, which is run by the CCPs United Front Work Department; the Peoples Daily, the official mouthpiece of the CCP; and the Global Times, an affiliate of Peoples Daily.

While Western media are beholden to the truth, PRC [Peoples Republic of China] media are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokesperson, said in a statement.

The announcement means there are now nine Chinese state-media outlets labeled as foreign missions in the United States, as five outlets were designated in February. The designation means the outlets will be treated as foreign embassies or other diplomatic missions, and thus be required to register their employees and U.S. properties with the state department.

Ortagus added that the decision doesnt affect what the media may publish in the United States.

It simply recognizes them for what they are, she said, adding that the move increases transparency relating to the CCP and PRC governments media activities in the United States.

The action comes as the Trump administration hardens its stance toward the Chinese regime, particularly in response to Beijings coverup of the pandemic and its move to tighten its grip on Hong Kong.

In the past month, Chinese state media have reveled in the unrest across the United States following the police custody death of Minnesota man George Floyd, in what observers have said forms part of a propaganda effort to undermine the credibility of the United States and of democratic governance in general. While these race-related protests have received considerable coverage in mainland China, topics deemed sensitive by the regime such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the persecution of religious groups and ethnic minorities are heavily censored.

Ortagus said the CCP has over the past decade exerted more control over Chinese state-run media, citing remarks made by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2016 while visiting the offices of state-run outlets. Xi said, Party-owned media must  embody the partys will, safeguard the partys authority, [and] their actions must be highly consistent with the party.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said previously that actions targeting Chinese state-run outlets are part of the Trump administrations efforts to establish a long-overdue level playing field in its relationship with the regime.

It is our hope that this action will spur Beijing to adopt a more fair and reciprocal approach to U.S. and other foreign press in China, he said.

In February, the administration said it would treat five Chinese state-run outlets with U.S. operations the same as embassies: Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corp., and Hai Tian Development USA, Inc.

In March, Washington said it was slashing the number of Chinese staff allowed to work at U.S. offices of those outlets from 160 to 100, as an act of reciprocity against Beijings continued use of intimidation to silence members of a free and independent press.

In retaliation, Beijing said it was revoking accreditations of American correspondents with The New York Times, News Corps Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, whose visas are due to expire by the end of 2020.

Reuters contributed to this report.
They blocked traffic on Main Street, danced in a downpour and chanted that Black lives matter.

Six hours later, close to 100 students, former students and supporters erupted in cheers downtown after listening to the school board vote to end a controversial police liaison program in Hamilton public schools.

They blocked traffic on Main Street, danced in a downpour and chanted that Black lives matter. Six hours later, close to 100 students, former students and supporters erupted in cheers downtown after listening to the school board vote to end a controversial police liaison program in Hamilton public schools.

We made history, shouted a dancing Greg Dongen, a member of a coalition of Black and racialized residents calling for police to be defunded  and in this case, for cops to be pulled out of local schools.

The protest started Monday before 5 p.m. with a march down Main Street East that quickly took over the intersection of Main and Bay Street, forcing police to divert car traffic.

Protest participants then staged a sit-in on Main Street near city hall as they awaited a debate on whether to end a contentious police liaison program in schools that some Black students have said makes them feel fearful or unfairly targeted.

Dozens of demonstrators danced in a heavy downpour Monday evening before settling in to listen to most of a six-hour meeting over a set of loudspeakers.

We want a full termination of this program, said coalition member and student Gachi Issa. Our voices, our stories, our experiences should be taken into account.

The program sends 11 officers into close to 200 high school and elementary schools across the public board.

The board had previously voted to review the program, but decided Monday to terminate and review issues with the 25-year partnership with an eye to developing unspecified alternatives.

The end of the proactive program does not mean police will stop going into schools for legislatively mandated functions like training for emergencies, noted Sharon Stephanian, superintendent of equity and well-being.

But the vote means proactive policing efforts inside schools, including presentations on drugs and sexting, ceremonial activities and outreach and mediation efforts will stop  at least for now.

Some board members expressed hope a different partnership with police could be explored in future, while others opposed the termination.

But trustee Cam Galindo  who earned a cheer by voting to end the program by phone while standing at the downtown protest  said the school board has more than two decades to fix the program. Enough is enough, he said.
Vineet Upadhyay By

Express News Service

DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand High Court on Monday directed the government to submit a status report within two days about mid-day meal and related allowances provided to children studying in state government schools after a PIL was filed alleging irregularities in the scheme.

"The honorable court has directed the state government to submit status report till June 24 about the scheme and its implementation in the state across all 13 districts," said Sanjay Rawat, one of the petitioners and resident of Nainital district.

Earlier, on March 20, a letter was addressed to all state governments and Union Territories by Ministry of Human Resource Development, (MHRD) instructing for food allowances while the schools remain closed due to coronavirus pandemic.

The rules and regulations of the mid-day meal scheme state that if mid-day meals are not provided by schools either due to non-availability of grains, cost constraints, fuel or any other reason, the state government has to pay adequate food security allowance.

Last month, The New Indian Express had reported that around 1.38 lakh students of government schools in Uttarakhand did not receive food amidst ongoing lockdown during April and May under the scheme.

MHRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank's Parliamentary constituency of Haridwar infact, topped the list with many such cases where only 1,22,405 students out of 1,53,006 students enrolled in 1,073 government schools were provided food allowances, leaving more than 36,500 children bereft of any benefits.

The documents also revealed that Uttarakhand government provided ration to children only on 48 out of 66 working days between March 13 to May 17, 2020.

Food was provided to students on 14 days in March, 21 days in April and 13 days in May.


In a significant development, scientists from IIT Gandhinagar detected genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater, paving way for the use of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for real-time surveillance of COVID-19 in India. The WBE approach aims to understand the extent of the disease outbreak in a certain area by measuring the level of the genetic material of the virus in untreated wastewater. In the study conducted by the Indian scientists, samples of wastewater from the Old Pirana Waste Water Treatment Plant in Ahmedabad collected on May 8 and May 27 were examined.

This plant receives up to 106 million litres per day of influent from the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital which is treating COVID-19 patients. An important finding was that all the three SARS-CoV-2 genes- ORF1ab, N and S were found in the wastewater. The scientists also noted that no gene was found in the effluent leaving the plant after treatment. Moreover, they concluded that the genetic material of the virus detected on May 27 was almost 10 times more than that detected on May 8. This broadly corresponded with the trajectory of the growth of COVID-19 cases in Ahmedabad during this period.

Read: Coronavirus Live Updates: India's Cases Soar To 4.25 Lakh; Recovery Improves To 55.77%

Study garners praise

According to the researchers, this study aims at assisting policymakers to formulate or upgrade novel coronavirus surveillance to have a clear picture of a certain phase of the pandemic. They argued that WBE had proved to be an effective tool during polio and Hepatitis A outbreak. The aforesaid study has garnered praise from researchers across the world. For instance, Prosun Bhattacharya of Swedens KTH Royal Institute of Technology opined that WBE could be very impactful as it provides correct information about the catchment area and the number of people residing in the vicinity. Similarly, Associate Professor Kyle Bibby, who heads the Global Collaboration on WBE described the study as a "highly valuable contribution" to global SARS-CoV-2 surveillance research efforts.

Read: Spike In COVID-19 Cases In Bengaluru: CM Directs Strict Enforcement Of Lockdown Measures

COVID-19 crisis in India

Currently, there are 4,25,282 confirmed novel coronavirus cases in India out of which 2,37,196 patients have recovered while 13,699 fatalities have been reported. As per the WHO Situation Report 153 dated June 21, 2020, India's cases per lakh population are 30.04 as against the global average of 114.67. 1,43,267 samples were tested were in the last 24 hours. So far, 69,50,493 samples have been tested for the novel coronavirus in 723 government labs and 262 private labs. With 9,440 patients recovering from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, India's recovery rate surged to 55.77%. At present, there are 1,74,387 active cases in the country.

Read: Delhi Govt To Give Pulse Oximeters To Those In Home Isolation: CM Kejriwal

Read: COVID-19: Delhi HC Extends By 45 Days Interim Bail Of 2,961 Under-trial Prisoners

(Image credits: PTI)
Donald Trump has claimed his niece is not allowed to publish her upcoming new book about the president, citing a reported nondisclosure agreement she signed over 20 years ago after suing him and his siblings.

The president spoke out about Mary Trumps forthcoming book, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Worlds Most Dangerous Man, in an interview with Axios published on Sunday.

Shes not allowed to write a book, Mr Trump said about his niece. You know, when we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with  shes got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total ... signed a nondisclosure.

The new book, which was scheduled for release in late July, was expected to detail how the president and his siblings allegedly used tax dodges and loopholes while securing $413m from their fathers business empire after his death. Ms Trump was also expected to our herself as a major source in the New York Times investigation about the presidents financial and tax controversies.

Ms Trump sued the president in 2000, arguing that he and his siblings cut off medical coverage to her nephew after he was born with a rare neurological disorder, despite their father having allocated funds in his estate to cover the familys health insurance.

She slammed the president in an interview at the time, saying he and his siblings should have been ashamed of themselves while adding: Im sure they are not.

Mr Trump claimed the nondisclosure agreement his niece signed was a very powerful one that covers everything and would effectively restrict her from publishing the upcoming work.

The president also alleged he and his family members were shocked to find out Ms Trump was set to release a book.

I have a brother, Robert, very good guy, and hes  hes very angry about it, he said. But she signed a nondisclosure agreement and shes obviously not honouring it if she writes a book. Its too bad.

According to Axios, the book will also reveal how Mr Trump allegedly dismissed and derided his father after he began falling ill due to Alzheimers. The president rejected those claims, claiming he always had a great relationship with his father.

He added: Thats a disgraceful thing to say.

The book was set for release just before the Republican National Convention. It has already topped the charts on Amazon, where it was available for pre-sale orders.
MOSCOW  The longtime authoritarian leader of Belarus, under threat like never before ahead of what was supposed to be just another rigged election, is taking a surprising new tack that he hopes will win him sympathy in the West: blaming Russian election meddling.

In power for 26 years, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, sometimes called Europes last dictator, has become so unsettled by a surge of discontent and support for prospective rivals in the August 9 election that he has turned his propaganda machine on Moscow, long his closest ally and principal benefactor.

Once praised by a large segment of the population for keeping Belarus stable and avoiding the turmoil and mass unemployment seen across much of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, Mr. Lukashenko has recently faced a groundswell of criticism at home, particularly over his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, as relations with Moscow have soured and those with Washington have improved.

For years he has manipulated the rivalry between East and West to keep himself in power. Speaking on Friday during a meeting with economic officials in Minsk, Belaruss capital, Mr. Lukashenko claimed that he had thwarted a plot to foment revolution with the arrest a day earlier of Viktor Babariko, a would-be election rival and the former head of a Russian-owned bank.
The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) says it will hold its 11th teleconference on Wednesday to review the grievances of the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).

This was contained in a statement issued by the Head, Media and Public Affairs of the forum, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, in Abuja on Monday.

Mr Bello-Barkindo said the review had become necessary after brokering the suspension of industrial action by NARD, in order to ensure that doctors returned to work and provide services under a convivial working atmosphere.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NARD had, on Sunday, announced the suspension of its two weeks industrial action, after a meeting initiated by the leadership of the NGF with the executives of the association.

Mr Bello-Barkindo said that the meeting, expected to be joined by all the 36 governors at 2 pm., had other critical issues listed on its agenda.

According to the invitation issued by the Director-General of the forum, Mr Asishana Okauru on Monday, several crucial national issues will be addressed by the governors, prominent among which are health, economy and infrastructure.

Also expected to feature at the NGF meeting is a presentation on the update of the COVID-19 strategic plan by the Health Minister, Dr Osagie Ohanire.

Another update on the NGFs committee of governors mandated by the forum to interface with the Presidential Task Force on the COVID-19 pandemic, headed by Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, Governor of Delta State, will also be brought before the forum for review.

Recall that governors have been in the forefront of the struggle to get Nigeria off the global polio map, which finally materialised a couple of weeks ago.

The report will be placed before them at the meeting to accord them the chance to adopt new strategies of maintaining the polio-free status of the country, he said.

READ ALSO:

On the economy, Mr Bello-Barkindo said that the governors would be looking at the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) deductions and refunds as well as the ongoing restructuring of state loans.

He added that the governors would also deliberate on the hanging infrastructure refunds to five states, namely Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross-Rivers, Ondo and Osun.

He said the National Economic Council (NEC) agenda will also be brought for consideration, along with Gov. Nasiru el-Rufais committees report to the NEC, which the governors will ratify before its presentation before NEC.

Mr Bello-Barkindo said that the World Bank would also feature prominently at the teleconference, as the States Financial Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme, would request the consent of the governors to launch a new e-procurement initiative.

He said the SFTAS is being driven by Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State and Yue Man Lee of the World Bank.

He said other briefs would revolve around the World Bank Cares Initiative, while an update would be tabled around the request for additional financing that states had been seeking from the bank.

(NAN)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-21 23:48:16|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIRUT, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's number of COVID-19 infections increased on Sunday by 51 cases to 1,587 while the death toll remained 32, the National News Agency reported.

The number of infected residents reached 19 while cases among arrivals reached 32.

The health ministry has, on many occasions, urged people to take proper precautionary measures to better contain the virus.

Lebanon has been fighting against COVID-19 since Feb. 21.

The country has received several donations from different countries for the fight against COVID-19.

The latest foreign support received by Lebanon for the fight against the pandemic was from China last week which offered 17,500 masks, 1,500 protective gears, 1,320 goggles and 1,000 shoes covers to Lebanese public hospitals. Enditem
The owner of a Belfast comic book shop has said he is delighted to be reopening his doors.

While shops in the rest of the city have been reopening in recent weeks, Coffee and Heroes was among those in Smithfield Market allowed to reopen on Monday as lockdown restrictions are eased.

Coffee and Heroes is in Smithfield Market (Liam McBurney/PA)

We were slightly behind the rest of the city centre, just with Smithfield being a market place and extra procedures had to be put in place in the communal walkway area, he told the PA news agency.

Mr Taylor said his business was able to do some trade during the coronavirus lockdown, delivering new comics as they were released.

The way the comic industry works is that there are weekly releases, so we have a lot of regular customers who would get the new releases every Wednesday, he said.

Social distancing is in place inside the store (Liam McBurney/PA)

There was definitely a hit to the business but the council were very good, we had a couple of rent-free months in Smithfield. While obviously the income wasnt as good as before, the outgoings were not as large either.

I think in the first week of lockdown, like most people, we felt a little sorry for ourselves but once you realise it is out of your control, you figure out a way of making it work so that all that hard work in setting it up doesnt go to waste.

The shop, which has been open since 2017, has introduced social distancing measures, however Mr Taylor said he expects people to initially be wary about returning to shops.

But we have had a really good steady flow of customers today and lots of well wishes on social media, people planning to come in through the week so it has been a very positive response, he said.

We have a relatively larger unit so we can take up to four or five people at any one time and still maintain the two-metre distance.

All coffees are take away now and we have measured out sections of the store so there should only be one person in each area, a one-way system, hand sanitiser, and we have disposable gloves if people want to use those while browsing.
Interior enthusiasts looking to restyle their home can head into Kmart for the latest collection as the budget retailer drops even more products in stores.

New homeware items have been released online every day for the past week, with the low-end department chain wowing shoppers with its range of 'luxury items for less'.

The latest buys include a $35 corner ladder bookshelf, a $19 open wardrobe with shelves, a $59 rattan sideboard, and a $7 jewellery box.

Kmart for the latest collection as the budget retailer drops more products in stores - including a $35 ladder bookshelf, $35 trolley or side drawer, $29 artificial native plant, $59 rattan sideboard, $7 jewellery box and a $7.50 bamboo foldable shelf

Organise spice jars, sauces and other cooking essentials with a $7.50 bamboo 'small' foldable shelf or a small-sized $15 pantry shelf.

Display books or decor items with a versatile $35 four-tier ladder bookshelf, or re-organise clothes, shoes and accessories with a $19 open wardrobe with shelves.

One of the most beautiful items from the line include a $59 rattan sideboard that's perfect for adding a 'rustic charm' to your living space or bedroom.

Keep your bathroom essentials neatly organised with a $35 three-drawer trolley or a $49 trolley featuring wheels and 10 pull-out drawers with handles.

Create storage and a display space with a $35 side drawer or bring home a $10 set of three painted vases - perfect for displaying fresh flowers or artificial ones.

There's also a huge rattan-look range, including a $10 tote basket, $7 vanity tray, $10 waste bin and a $12 toilet roll holder with lid.

Last week, Kmart Australia sent shoppers into a spin after dropping another collection of chic yet affordable homewares for less than $50

Deals include a $29 hallway table, a $29 bedside drawer and a $30 three-tier kitchen trolley

Shoppers can get a range of printed canisters from $4, a $10 1L tea pot and a $7.50 woven pot

Spruce up your living space with a $29 hallway table or add a touch of sophistication to your bedroom with a $29 beside table with drawer that's perfect for storing your everyday essentials or other knick-knacks.

Add an aura of freshness or greenery to your living room or front yard with a $29 modular plant stand, a $5.50 arch vase, a $12 etched pot or a $10 shallow planter.

Store your go-to kitchen essentials like coffee, herbs or condiments in the beautiful range of printed canisters, with prices starting from as little as $4.

For a sleek and minimalistic look, the $39 entertainment unit will go perfect in the corner of your house, or display your book collection on the $45 ladder bookshelf.

A $39 'rattan' side table, a tan ottoman, a chic storage box, a hallway table, a stylish lamp and a comfy bean bag are among the latest homeware buys to hit Kmart shelves

Other items on include a $4 lemon canister (left), $10 clock and $9 artificial Hydrangea (right)

Some of the best deals include a $10 greenhouse egg for growing saplings (left) and a jewellery tray with mirror (right)

The retailer also launched a $15 glass jewellery cabinet , $15 mirror with jewellery tray, a $49 chair , $19 bamboo bread bin, $20 arch mirror and a $26 tee pee with leaf prints

New items include an $8 rose cushion, a $15 essential oil box and a $12 tapered basket

To update your indoor space, there's a $3.50 ceramic cactus, a $7.50 shell-shaped plant pot, a $10 dotted ceramic vase, or a $3 trinket tray.

Display your love for animals a $19 koala framed canvas, or add a touch of class to your living space with a $13 flowers in a vase framed print.

Brighten up a room with a $49 multiple light floor lamp, or keep your kitchen space clutter free with a $30 three-tier kitchen trolley that's a space-saving solution.
Investigators believe the cyber group consisted of at least 15 active members.

The SBU Security Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv region has exposed a group engaged in systemic cybercrime. Perpetrators would steal money from their victims' bank cards by penetrating the banking system network.

Investigators believe the cyber group consisted of at least 15 active members.

Hackers employed malware to steal personal data from electronic bank accounts in the U.S., Europe, Ukraine. "Through electronic payment services, including Russian ones that have been banned in Ukraine, they would transfer the stolen money to their own accounts in Ukrainian and Russian banks," according to the SBU's press center.

Read alsoNumber of cyber attacks on Ukraine's government agencies grows by 56% within week

As part of the criminal proceedings initiated by the SBU, law enforcers raided 16 sites in Kharkiv, including the suspects' homes and their office.

Over 40 pieces of computer equipment carrying photos and details of foreign bank cards and evidence of malware use were found during searches. Cash and valuables worth over UAH 12 million (US$449,102) was seized.

Further investigation is underway.
Bexar County officials reported 538 new coronavirus cases Sunday  the largest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic  and one new death.

The number of patients in San Antonio-area hospitals and in intensive care units also continued to rise, deepening concern that the hospital system could be overwhelmed.

The newly confirmed cases brought Bexar Countys total to 6,882, the Metropolitan Health District reported.

The countys death toll from the virus, which began spreading in the community in March, now stands at 97. The latest victim was a Hispanic man in his 50s. Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the man had no underlying health conditions.

Nirenberg, reacting to the latest numbers, renewed his appeal to San Antonians to practice social distancing and wear masks when in public.

Dont use the states reopening plan as an excuse to throw house parties or hold extensive gatherings, Nirenberg said in a tweet. We have yet to discover a COVID-19 cure or vaccine. Wearing a mask seems so simple, but it can save lives.

Metro Health statistics for the month of June depict a steep climb in infections and hospitalizations.

A total of 406 COVID-positive patients were in area hospitals Sunday evening, the public health agency reported. That was 70 more than on Saturday and more than four times as many as on June 1, when hospitals were treating just 93 coronavirus patients.

Of those currently hospitalized, 133 were in intensive care Sunday, up from 111 the day before and just 39 at the beginning of the month.

Sixty-four patients were on ventilators, compared with 49 on Saturday. On June 1, there were 20.

Officials at UT Health San Antonio said recently that their computer models suggest the number of COVID-19 patients in the regions hospitals could nearly double within two weeks and grow tenfold by August.

The worrisome forecasts prompted UT Health to launch a public education campaign called We Can Stop the Spread. The initiative urges residents to redouble efforts to wash hands meticulously, wear masks in public, avoid touching ones face, eyes or nose, and steer clear of crowded places  especially indoor environments.

Statistics released Sunday by Metro Health suggested hospitals were not yet under serious stress. Of the regions 4,707 staffed hospital beds, 28 percent were available for new patients, Metro Health reported. Seventy-six percent of ventilators were available.

On ExpressNews.com: 18 hours in a COVID intensive care unit

Early in the pandemic, it took more than a month for Bexar County to break 1,000 cases. Recently, it took only five days  from June 12 to last Wednesday  to add that many.

Officials say the scale of the increase took them by surprise.

Last week, Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff signed emergency orders mandating that businesses require employees and visitors to wear face coverings or masks, beginning today.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 22, 2020 - 15:13 | All, Japan

Arrested former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai has admitted to handing out cash to local lawmakers and supporters but denied any intention to buy votes for his wife's election campaign last summer, sources familiar with the matter said Monday.

Kawai, 57, known for having had close ties with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and his lawmaker wife Anri, 46, were arrested last Thursday on suspicion of giving 25.7 million yen ($240,000) in cash to 94 local politicians and supporters to reward them for their efforts to secure votes for her in the House of Councillors election last July.

The sources also said lists used to record about 100 cash payment recipients are believed to have been made by Shinsuke Takaya, 44, a former close aide of Katsuyuki Kawai. Takaya is currently on trial for bribing election campaigners.

The lists were confiscated by Hiroshima prosecutors from the couple's home in January. Of the 94 people who allegedly received cash, around 40 were Hiroshima prefectural assembly members and other local politicians, according to the sources.

The prosecutors have found Katsuyuki Kawai led the election campaign on behalf of his wife and decided recipients of cash handouts, according to the sources. The Kawais have denied the allegations.

Takaya primarily worked at Katsuyuki Kawai's office in Tokyo as a state-paid secretary, but quit after being indicted in March for paying on 14 occasions a total of around 2.04 million yen to 14 campaign staff of Anri Kawai between July 19 and 23 last year, exceeding the daily legal cap of 15,000 yen per person.

During Anri Kawai's election campaign in the Hiroshima constituency, Takaya was in charge of media relations and helping aides of Abe, who visited the district to make a speech in support of her. She secured a seat in the race.

Katsuyuki Kawai, a House of Representatives member, served as Abe's special adviser for foreign affairs and briefly assumed the post of justice minister after the upper house election.

Related coverage:

Ex-minister's arrest pushes support for Abe's Cabinet lower

Arrested lawmakers may have paid 30 mil. yen in vote buying scandal

FOCUS: Japan PM Abe faces turning point amid COVID-19, scandals
Angelina Jolies family has been a topic of fascination for many people around the world. She is known for having both adopted and biological children, and the actress has been credited with helping to de-stigmatize the process of adopting kids.

However, the process of adoption has the potential to bring in a few complications to a family. Jolie recently revealed she almost did not adopt her second son, Pax, for an interesting reason. Read on below to find out what made Jolie initially hesitant and how she overcame that.

Angelina Jolie and Pax Jolie-Pitt | Kevork Djansezian/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

How many adopted children does Angelina Jolie have?

Jolie shares six children with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt. Three of the couples children are adopted, and three are biological.

Jolie adopted her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia in 2002. At the time, Jolie was his sole parent, but when she began dating Pitt in 2006, he became the young boys parent as well.

Jolies second child is Zahara from Ethiopia, whom she adopted in 2005.

Then, her second son, Pax, joined the family in 2007 from an orphanage in Vietnam.

Jolie and Pitts biological children are Shiloh (b. 2006) as well as twins Knox and Vivienne (b. 2008).

Why Jolie almost did not adopt her son Pax

Angelina Jolie gives update on quarantine with her kids: 'We're all locked in'https://t.co/zfa1RdFKAI  TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 27, 2020

RELATED: Angelina Jolie Reveals the Real Reason She Divorced Brad Pitt

Although Jolies kids all seem like one happy family, the actress recently revealed to Vogue that Pax almost did not join them. This is because he came from Vietnam, a country that was once at war with Cambodia, where Maddox is from.

Jolie shared: I did originally think not to adopt from Vietnam because Mad was Cambodian and the two countries have a complex history.

However, she changed her mind when she thought about the bigger picture.

I was reading a book on human rights and found myself staring at an image of a Vietnamese fighter held captive by Americans. I thought of my own country and our involvement in south-east Asia, Jolie said. I thought of focusing on a future where we were all family. I am very blessed to have been allowed to be their mom. I am grateful every day.

Jolie says adoption and orphanage are not taboo words in her household

RELATED: Angelina Jolie: Why She Loves Taking Her Kids With Her When Filming Movies

Jolies family is definitely very different from most other families in America. As such, there are unique situations she and her children have learned to navigate.

For Jolie, the best policy is to be open about everything. She does not try to hide the fact that some of her kids joined their family by adoption and others by birth.

Each is a beautiful way of becoming family, Jolie said. What is important is to speak with openness about all of it and to share. Adoption and orphanage are positive words in our home. With my adopted children, I cant speak of pregnancy, but I speak with much detail and love about the journey to find them and what it was like to look in their eyes for the first time.

Additionally, Jolie emphasized the importance of making sure her adopted children stay in touch with their respective homelands.

Jolie explained: They must never lose touch with where they came from. They have roots that you do not. Honour them. Learn from them. Its the most amazing journey to share. They are not entering your world, you are entering each others worlds.
 Read the full article on Motorious

Ride a true American classic motorcycle.

There are a lot of good reasons to buy a classic motorcycle, from the simplistic riding experience to the unique artisan features you dont find on modern bikes. Of the classic American brands, one of the most beloved today is Indian. When you look at this old Indian Chief it isnt difficult to understand why that is.

Photo credit: Speed Digital

Overall, the shape of this Chief is a work of art. Skirted front and rear fenders, a big circular headlight, Indian marker light on the front fender, chrome crash bars, and simple, clean looks contribute to the classiness. This is the kind of motorcycle you want to take for a ride on an historic road like Route 66 because it just feels right.

As you can clearly see from the photos, this Indian Chief has been fully restored by James Soleberg at Ace Motors in Middletown, Ohio. Silky-smooth navy blue paint contrasts nicely with the brightwork, while the frame is painted black for an appropriately understated vibe. Being a rich dark brown leather with lighter brown stitching, the saddle looks quite inviting and even features an embossed Indian logo.

Even the smallest details have been addressed on this Indian. For example, the OE white face speedometer features the blue lettering and logo in pristine condition, so its easy to reference while rolling down the highway.

Shown on the odometer are just three miles since everything was completed, so you wont find wear and tear from this thing. In fact, break-in instructions for this Indian are included for the next owner. The dealer says its a numbers-matching bike, so you can enter it into shows or keep it securely stashed in your garage to be proudly displayed, because this is one impressive ride.

Even if you already have a nice collection of vintage motorcycles and cars, this 1948 Indian Chief will really punch things up a level or two. This is the kind of classic bike people will stare at in admiration. To make it yours, get in touch with Sunnyside Classics.

Sign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Brazil has become the second country in the world to pass one million confirmed coronavirus cases.

The grim milestone was reached on Friday after a record daily rise of 54,771, suggesting the ravaged country has not even reached the peak yet.

Deaths in the country also rose by 1,206, taking the official tally to 48,954, although the true figure is feared to be far higher.

There is no widespread testing programme in the country with the true figure of cases thought to be as many as ten times higher.



Second only to the United States in both cases and deaths, Brazil confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus on February 26.

The virus has spread relentlessly across the continent-sized country, eroding support for right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and raising fears of economic collapse.

Brazil had reported 1,032,913 confirmed cases on Friday, with and is likely to surpass 50,000 deaths on Saturday, although weekend reporting can be lower.

Even so, the true extent of the outbreak far exceeds the official figures, according to many experts, who cite a lack of widespread testing.

That number of 1 million is much less than the real number of people who have been infected, because there is under-reporting of a magnitude of five to 10 times, said Alexandre Naime Barbosa, a medical professor at the Sao Paulo State University.

The true number is probably at least 3 million and could even be as high as 10 million people.

COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, arrived in Brazil via wealthy tourists returning from Europe to major southeastern cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and has spread deep into the interior, reaching 82% of Brazils municipalities, Health Ministry data showed.

The country still has had no permanent health minister after losing two since April, following clashes with the president.

Bolsonaro has shunned social distancing, calling it a job-killing measure more dangerous than the virus itself.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Over thousands of men stand a few meters away from Line of Actual Control against Chinese People's Liberation Army even as corps commanders of two countries' military meet at Moldo on Monday to resolve the border issue and ease tension in Eastern Ladakh.

This is the second such meeting after the first one on June 6 happened to defuse the tensions.

The meeting between 14 Corps commander Lieutenant General Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District chief Major General Liu Lin is happening on the lines of the one they held at the Chushul-Moldo border personnel meeting (BPM) point in eastern Ladakh on June 6.

The talks will continue, however, sources said: "The pull back or disengagement as of now looks unlikely."

The volatile ground situation in Ladakh and Pangong Tso is likely to be another flashpoint after Galwan Valley patrolling point 14 where a barbaric attack was carried on Indian troops by Chinese army. Ferocious build up at the Line of Actual Control has started backed by artillery and tanks in the depth areas.

At Pangong Tso, there is an attempt by the PLA to alter the Line of Actual Control unilaterally.

The prolonged camping and a heavy presence of Chinese troops in Pangong Lake at a point which has been under Indian control has emerged to be the biggest roadblock for a possible resolution to the ongoing tussle between India and China at the Line of Actual Control.



India has also ramped up preparations on its side along the 826-km front of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh. Photo: Khalid Anzar

The Chinese have built defences in several parts between Finger 4 and 8 that have been grey zones in the past. The Chinese action in Pangong Lake is seen as an attempt to change the status quo.

has also enhanced deployment at Hot Springs, Demchok, Koyul, Fukche, Depsang, Murgo, and Galwan.

After the June 15 violent clash in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and Chinese also suffered casualties, nothing has changed and things continue to be tense in Galwan and Pangong Tso region.

In the midst of the growing tension, India is exploring all possible military options as a response if the Chinese aggression continues.

India has also ramped up preparations on its side along the 826-km front of the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Indian has also found that China has deployed fighter jets, bombers and helicopters at four bases close to the LAC. It has been noticed at Hotan in Xinjiang, Ngyari and Shigatse.

There has also been Chinese PLA movement at Nyingchi, north of Arunachal Pradesh.

India too has strategically deployed its air fighters which are ready to take on Chinese aircrafts anytime.
Over 20 passengers of the Dehradun Jan Shatabdi Express have been quarantined after a co-passenger received a text message, while still on board the train on Sunday, that his COVID-19 test has returned positive officials said.

The man immediately informed COVID control room authorities that he had tested positive, scaring his co-passengers who overheard him saying this on phone, they said.

The 48-year-old man, who works at a battery making factory in Noida, boarded the Dehradun-bound train from Ghaziabad on Sunday afternoon despite the fact that his COVID-19 test report was awaited, Haridwar GRP Station House Officer (SHO) Anuj Singh said on Monday.

The man hails from Shyampur in Uttarakhand's Rishikesh town.

The passenger, who was travelling on board the Jan Shatabdi Express, had received a text message telling him that he had tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, a Northern Railway spokesperson said.

The man was admitted to the isolation ward of the Mela Hospital in Haridwar after he deboarded the train, Haridwar Chief Medical Officer Saroj Naithani said.

Twenty-two of his co-passengers are in institutional quarantine in the town, she said.

Northern Railway spokesperson Deepak Kumar, however, said, "He (the man) has been sent to a hospital while 19 others have been sent to a quarantine facility."

After the man got the message, he informed the control room through a toll-free number that he had tested COVID-19 positive. He made the call when the train was nearing Roorkee in Haridwar district.

Officials said that the man was asymptomatic.

The railways has asked authorities in Ghaziabad as to how a person who had given his sample for testing was allowed to board a train.

The man's samples were taken for testing at the factory in Noida and ideally he should have been restricted from any travel and kept in quarantine till his reports arrived, the officials said.

SHO Singh said it is being investigated as to how the man whose swab samples had been sent for testing from Noida two days back was allowed by his company to travel and how he boarded the train.
According to London macroeconomic analysts, Hungary will be among the emerging economies in Europe where the value of gross domestic product will reach the pre-COVID levels by the end of next year, writes conservative economics daily Vilaggazdasag.

Emerging markets economists at the London analytics division of Morgan Stanleys global financial services group said in a new forecast unveiled on June 16 that the Czech Republic is expected to experience the deepest recession among Central European EU states this year.



They expect to see a 7.8% decline in the Czech economy in 2020 as a whole. According to the companys forecast, GDP will fall by 6.7% in Hungary and 5% in Poland this year.



At the same time, Morgan Stanley expects Hungarys gross domestic product to bounce back and grow by 4.6% next year, vg.hu adds.
Good news for employees who work in Luxembourg but live in Belgium: they will be able to work from home until 31 August without being double-taxed.

Luxembourg's Minister of Finance Pierre Gramegna welcomed the new agreement. According to the minister, the extension of the homeworking scheme for Belgian cross-border workers will have a positive impact both on Luxembourg-based companies and their employees.

Cross-border workers benefit from greater flexibility and safety as they can continue working from the safe confines of their homes without being taxed in Belgium, Gramegna said. The minister thanked the Belgian authorities for their cooperation.
Advertisement

Part palace, part rock column  behold one of the world's most spectacular constructions.

Yemen's Dar al-Hajar  or 'stone house'  is a former royal residence that seems to grow out of the rock pinnacle upon which it's perched.

As these pictures show, the five-storey building looks incredible from every angle. No wonder it appears on a Yemeni banknote (the 500 rials one).

This amazing picture of Dar al-Hajar was taken by Rod Waddington and uploaded to his Flickr account. He describes Yemen as 'one of the most beautiful countries'. Published here courtesy of creative commons licensing

Jaw-dropping: Dar al-Hajar  or 'stone house' - looks incredible from every angle

The setting is also mesmerising.

The palace sits around nine miles from the capital, Sana'a, in the other-worldly Wadi Dhahr Valley.

Dar al-Hajar dates back to the 1920s, constructed as a summer residence for Islamic spiritual leader and Yemeni monarch Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin.

The palace sits around nine miles from the capital, Sana'a, in the other-worldly Wadi Dhahr Valley

Pictured on the left is one of the staircases inside the palace. The building is easy on the eye, but built to withstand attacks

But it was erected on top of a structure built on the rock column in 1786 by Islamic scholar Imam Mansour Ali Bin Mehdi Abbas.

Inside there are multiple guest rooms, kitchens, storage areas and tranquil courtyards.

It's certainly easy on the eye, though designed to withstand attack.

Dar al-Hajar was erected on top of a structure built on a rock spire in 1786 by Islamic scholar Imam Mansour Ali Bin Mehdi Abbas

This breathtaking image of the stone house palace was taken by Flickr user 'Dan' and published here courtesy of creative commons licensing

Dar al-Hajar dates back to the 1920s, constructed as a summer residence for Islamic spiritual leader and Yemeni monarch Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin. This image shows a view from the palace

The palace contains multiple guest rooms, kitchens, storage areas and tranquil courtyards

In the end, Imam Yahya didn't have much time to enjoy life at Dar al-Hajar as his grandson assassinated him during a coup in Yemen in 1948

One of many amazing views from the palace

According to thevintagenews.com it's 'built like a fortress, with shooting emplacements to defend the place from attackers and its own water supply from deep below the rock', meaning it could 'easily have withstood a siege'.

In the end, Imam Yahya didn't have much time to enjoy life at Dar al-Hajar as his grandson assassinated him during a coup in Yemen in 1948.

But the palace did remain in the ownership of the Yemeni royal family until the country's 1962 revolution.

Now it's a museum, with visitors able to tour the rooms and explore the labyrinth of staircases.

Tourists who have paid a visit to the palace have sung its praises on Tripadvisor.

One user, 63jonesthecat, said: 'Fantastic place. I went to Yemen for a month and it is one of the best things I have seen in my life.'

Another, Dr.abdulqawi, added: 'It's a wonderful experience to see this old Yemeni palace and understand more about the local life and culture.'

While deasb wrote: 'It is nothing like you have ever seen before. Must visit. And the view is exquisite.'

Unfortunately, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against all travel to Yemen.

But that doesn't stop us admiring its treasures from afar.

For more, watch this Unesco YouTube video, which takes viewers on a through-the-keyhole exploration of Dar al-Hajar.

Tourists who have paid a visit to the palace have sung its praises on Tripadvisor

One visitor said that the palace is a 'must visit' and that the 'view is exquisite'

The palace remained in the ownership of the Yemeni royal family until the country's 1962 revolution
(Natural News) A shocking report from the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security warns that China now has control of a 3-pronged high tech weapon system could easily take down the US power grid.

The 3-prong weapon system includes technology stolen from the U.S., and encompasses a network of satellites, high speed missiles and super-electromagnetic pulse weapons. These weapons are designed to melt down the entire U.S. electric grid, stifling communications system and crippling aircraft carrier groups. The author of the report, Peter Pry, is the executive director of the task force, a long time researcher in EMP weapon systems. An EMP is a high energy, short duration discharge of radiofrequency energy that can disable electromechanical devices.

China Peoples Liberation Army lays out plan to take out US power grid

According to Chinas Peoples Liberation Army textbook, the communist country has already laid out a plan to use high-altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons to carry out a surprise Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S. The weapons can be launched from land, ships and satellites, strategically targeting the U.S. power grid and communication systems.

The textbook calls on China to focus on using their breakthroughs in electromagnetic pulse to equip China without delay with equivalent deterrence that will enable it to stand up to the military powers in the information age and neutralize and check the deterrence of Western powers, including the United States.

Pry has warned Washington officials that China could attack using EMP weapons by simply detonating a nuclear device at high altitude over the country. The Trump administration has taken these national security concerns seriously and delivered an executive order titled, Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulse.

This executive order advances increased resilience to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) events by directing better data gathering, testing, and private-sector coordination to implement protective measures, the White House reported.

An EMP attack could take down financial transactions, crashing the markets. Transportation of food and common household goods would come to a halt, as communications dissipated. Tens of millions of people would be left without electricity and jobs. In the past three months, panic buying and now looting has become major socioeconomic issues. Now imagine the electricity grid going down in a blink and how quickly panic would ensue.

Following an EMP attack on the East Coast, there would be widespread hunger, coupled with desperation and violence, rippling out from major cities. According to Prys report, this could leave up to 90 percent of the population dead within a year. At this point, China could easily invade the US with foot soldiers and completely take over the country.

U.S. power grid and infrastructure more vulnerable than ever

The US electric grid is more vulnerable today than it was decades ago. Most electrical systems were once electromechanical and were not as sensitive to EMP. Todays electrical systems are run by microprocessors/computers, which are highly sensitive to EMP.

According to the report: Significant public and private action is needed to prepare for and recover from a catastrophic outage that could leave the large parts of the nation without power for weeks or months, and cause service failures in other sections  including water and wastewater, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services  that are critical.

The Military Cyber Professional association has been warning about an EMP threat, too. According to the association, an amateur or terrorist organization could readily shut down the electric grid and collapse U.S. infrastructure by deploying a poor mans EMP nuke which could be something as simple as a Tesla coil or a Marx generator.

The US is at the mercy of China and their vast arsenal of nuclear space weapons. China could equip ICBMs and IRBMs with specialized warheads, to quickly sweep the skies of U.S. satellites, even at the risk of losing PRC satellites. These satellites could quickly be replaced with a barrage of new Chinese satellites that could force U.S. military operations into surrender.

Sources include:

WND.com

NaturalNews.com
Veterans such as Philadelphia native Nelson M. Miller Jr. returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Miller will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

Military Service

Miller was born in July 1926 to Nelson and Henrietta Miller. He attended Northeast High School in Philadelphia, graduating in 1944. Miller enlisted in the Navy that July.

Serving as a boatswain's mate on a Landing Craft Support, Miller and his crewmates aboard the USS LCS(L)(3)-43 were an advance unit in the consolidation and capture of Southern Philippines. They were also in the Borneo Campaigns in 1945, knocking out enemy gun emplacements, minesweeping and underwater demolition.

Miller was honorably discharged in July 1946. He later volunteered to serve in Korea, onboard the USS Boxer (CV-21).

Miller was awarded the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation; the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four Battle Stars; the Philippine Liberation Medal with one Battle Star; the American Campaign Medal; the China Service Medal; the National Defense Service Medal; the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation; the Korean Service Medal with one Silver Battle Star; and the Navy Occupation Service Medal.

Engineer Extraordinaire

After the Korean War, Miller was trained by his father as a draftsman and tool designer, and worked for his stepbrother William Jewel in that occupation.

In 1960, Miller joined U-Haul. He served for more than 28 years as an industrial engineer and production-process engineer at U-Haul manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, where he designed U-Haul equipment and parts.

Miller, who will celebrate his 94th birthday next month, has three children: Andrew (Sandy), Edward (Jessica) and Kimberly (Greg). He has seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His late wife was Elinor Miller.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Miller is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Nelson.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


Marburg oncologist Professor Dr. Andreas Neubauer initiated the use of a cancer drug in a COVID-19 patient. Credit: Torsten Fricke/German Jose Carreras Leukemia Foundation

Although the spreading SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus usually causes only mild respiratory symptoms, the COVID-19 disease progresses so severely in around five percent of those affected that acute respiratory distress can occur. "The mortality rate in these cases is high," says Dr. Thomas Wiesmann, who attended the patient along with the intensive care team in the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care at Marburg University Hospital.

The patient is a 65-year-old woman without pre-existing conditions who was admitted to the hospital for progressive shortness of breath and fever. Her shortness of breath worsened so rapidly that she had to be intubated to receive artificial ventilation three hours after admission. A standard molecular genetic test confirmed she was infected with SARS-CoV-2. The patient's overall prognosis was assessed as very poor due to extensive organ damage.

"We knew from Chinese publications that patients with a severe and even fatal course of the disease are characterized by a so-called cytokine storm," Neubauer says. "During a cytokine storm, the body is flooded with substances that stimulate the immune system." This overreaction of the body's own defense system damages the tissuemaking it all the easier for the invading virus to spread.

Neubauer suspected that the patient might respond to ruxolitinib, a drug originally used in cancer treatment. It inhibits enzymes in the body involved in excessive inflammatory reactions. "We suggested to our colleagues who were treating the patients that the cancer drug might be able to prevent the life-threatening effects brought on by the inflammatory damage to lung tissue," Neubauer says.

"We were faced with a difficult decision," adds Professor Dr. Hinnerk Wulf, Director of the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care. "It was uncertain whether the theory would also work in practice; after all, the experimental treatment was also associated with a risk." In fact, the condition of the Marburg University Medicine patient did improve after she received ruxolitinib. The treatment team noted clinical stabilization as well as rapid improvement in respiration and heart function.

"This course of treatment was remarkable compared to that in other patients," Wiesmann emphasizes. The patient was gradually weaned from the ventilator starting on the tenth day of her hospital stay. Virus replication was also reduced during the administration of the cancer drug.

Apparently, the success of the treatment was not an isolated case. The team in Marburg also administered the cancer drug to several other patients to control a severe course of the disease. "It turned out well in the end for all patients who received the cancer drug for longer than one week," Neubauer explains. A team lead by Professor Dr. Paul Graf La Rosee at Schwarzwald-Baar Hospital has also reported the successful use of the immune inhibitor, although in less severe cases.

"The time between onset of ruxolitinib administration and improvement of health is so short that it is reasonable to assume that the drug ruxolitinib contributed to the favorable clinical course," Neubauer explains. Based on the success of the treatment, the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices has approved a clinical trial that will test the effect of the administration of ruxolitinib in additional COVID-19 patients.

Explore further Research points to treatment for COVID-19 cytokine storms

More information: Andreas Neubauer et al, Ruxolitinib for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), Leukemia (2020). Journal information: Leukemia Andreas Neubauer et al, Ruxolitinib for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS),(2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41375-020-0907-9

Provided by Philipps-Universitat Marburg
The Goa government has postponed until after July 15 a decision on reopening of schools in the state and will instead encourage teachers to hold classes online for students in order to keep them engaged, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced.

Sawant, who insisted that the online classes were not compulsory and that the syllabus would be mandatorily covered in face to face classes as well, said that the government would later decide on curtailing holidays to ensure that the syllabus can be completed once schools reopen.

The state has trained around 11,000 school teachers in giving classes online, which they are now expected to use in the coming weeks as they await the reopening of schools.

We dont have 100% connectivity and not all parents and children have smartphones. So we have said it is not compulsory for online education. No student will miss out because he doesnt have connectivity or a smartphone and parents should not deliberately go out to buy smartphones, Sawant said.

But he said that the online classes would commence so that teachers can try to keep students engaged.

At a meeting of officials from the education department, the chief minister who is also the education minister and representatives of the headmasters association which was held on Monday, the Goa government has also decided to make it mandatory for teachers to attend school since all other government servants have begun attending office.

Teachers will have to compulsorily attend school. If government servants are attending office, then why not teachers? Sawant said.

The Goa government has also decided to automatically promote all students from classes IX and XI who were initially scheduled to answer supplementary examinations if they needed to be promoted to the next class.

The Central government too has not taken a decision to allow the reopening of schools across the country as cases mount. Guidelines issued under Unlock 1.0 have made it clear that the reopening of schools isnt an allowed activity.
Panaji, June 22 : A temple in the coastal village of Arambol in North Goa, which is a popular beach destination for Russian tourists, has banned the presence of women and drinking of alcohol near a pond, claiming religious rites are performed at the site.

Images of the signboard, which says "Please note: Alcohol & Ladies are not allowed here - Courtesy Arambol village panchayat, Rashtroli Devasthan, Korkhanwada, Arambol" have gone viral since Sunday.

Manisha Korkhankar sarpanch of the Arambol village panchayat said that signage had been put up by the temple committee. "Since it is a holy place, women who have periods are not allowed. And alcohol drinking is anyway not allowed," Korkhankar told reporters here, adding that there were some complaints about people drinking alcohol in close proximity of the temple pond.

The temple is a short distance away from Armabol beach, which is a sought after beach resort location especially for Russian tourists as well as domestic tourists from Maharashtra. Korkhankar also said, that the signage had also been put up as a caution in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We do not want too many people to come here in these times, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. It will be taken off after the pandemic passes," she said.
London, June 22 : In the fight against the global Covid-19 pandemic, borders have been closed and a lack of local production has led to soaring prices in some countries, which is a wake-up call to strengthen the global food system during the lockdowns, according to a new report.

The World Food Programme has warned that by the end of this year, an additional 130 million people could face famine.

"Although harvests have been successful and food reserves are available, global food supply chain interruptions led to food shortages in some places because of lockdown measures," said Franziska Gaupp, a researcher from Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Products cannot be moved from farms to markets. Food is rotting in the fields as transport disruptions have made it impossible to move food from the farm to the consumer.

"At the same time, many people have lost their incomes and food has become unaffordable to them," Gaupp added.

In South Sudan, for example, wheat prices have increased 62 per cent since February 2020. Difficult access to food, and related stress could then lead to food riots and collective violence.

According to Gaupp, a systems approach is needed to address the challenges of a globally interconnected, complex food system.

"Systemic risk and systemic opportunities need to be incorporated into food-related policies. It is important to highlight that the threat to food security is not just a result of potential disruptions of production, but also shocks to distribution as well as shortfalls of the consumers' income," he suggested.

Covid-19 has shown how interconnected our world is, and how a simultaneous shock - such as a pandemic - also affects our food system.

There is enough for everyone, however, some countries are panic buying, and some are banning exports.

"This is why the whole supply and demand system is experiencing challenges, leading to more difficult access to food, especially in poorer countries," she emphasized.

There will likely be more shocks hitting our global food system in the future.

"We need global collaboration and transdisciplinary approaches to ensure that the food chains function even in moments of crises to prevent price spikes and to provide all people with safe access to food," Gaupp suggested.
[June 22, 2020] SkyWater Appoints Industry Veteran John P. Kent as Executive Vice President, Technology Development and Design Enablement

SkyWater Technology, the innovator's trusted foundry partner, today announced that John P. Kent has been appointed as Executive Vice President, Technology Development and Design Enablement to further establish SkyWater as the technology authority for relevant process R&D innovation and the realization of those technologies into comprehensive semiconductor manufacturing platforms. Kent will apply his deep industry knowledge and experience to lead SkyWater's technical vision and strategy for developing the technologies that enable customers to achieve successful silicon in current and future designs. Kent's 40 plus years of experience in the semiconductor industry include demonstrated successes in technology development, operations, and leadership positions. He has managed effective technical organizations and critical resources across multiple geographies. He joins SkyWater from GLOBALFOUNDRIES where he served as Vice President, Foundry IP; Customer Design Enablement in Malta, New York. Kent and his team developed and enabled critical IP for several of GLOBALFOUNDRIES' technology offerings. "John is joining our team at an exciting time as we continue to expand our technology roadmaps and design enablement capabilities and partnerships to help drive the compny to the next level," said Thomas Sonderman, SkyWater President. "John's extensive industry experience and proven success in technology development will enhance our position in the industry as a Technology Foundry - seamlessly blending process R&D with scalable high-volume manufacturing of advanced technologies in the same world-class U.S facility."



According to Kent, "I'm thrilled to become part of SkyWater's leadership team to help evolve the company's technology innovation and continue building its market partner ecosystem. By combining SkyWater's process technology expertise with its customer's own device/application expertise in a secure IP environment, the company is in a unique position to offer defense and commercial customers something they can't find elsewhere." Prior to GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Kent's industry experience includes executive level positions with KLA-Tencor in the Wafer Inspection Group, and technology development leadership positions at Rambus and AMIS (now ON (News - Alert) Semiconductor). Previously, for over two decades he held a variety of positions at IBM Microelectronics with responsibilities for the development of planar metallization/insulator technologies; deep-UV and i-line lithography and DRAM process development. Mid-career, he was responsible for DRAM / embedded DRAM and memory yield, design & product engineering with his teams. Kent holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University and is a Senior Grade member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AiChE) as well as a Senior Member of IEEE (News - Alert).

About SkyWater Technology SkyWater is the only U.S.-owned and U.S.-based pure play semiconductor foundry and is a DoD-accredited Trusted supplier, specializing in custom design and development services, design IP, and volume manufacturing for integrated circuits and micro devices. Through its Technology Foundry model, SkyWater's world-class operations and unique processing capabilities enable mixed-signal CMOS, power, rad-hard and ROIC solutions. SkyWater's Innovation Engineering Services empower development of superconducting and 3D ICs, along with carbon nanotube, photonic and MEMS devices. The company serves customers in growing markets such as aerospace & defense, automotive, biomedical, cloud & computing, consumer, industrial, and IoT. For more information, please visit: www.skywatertechnology.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005572/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A Taylor resident is among 19 people in the metro Detroit area who have been indicted by a federal grand jury for their alleged roles in a conspiracy to illegally distribute prescription drugs.

The charges were announced June 11 by federal officials after FBI and other agents raided more than a dozen facilities  mostly clinics and pharmacies  in the metro Detroit area, an FBI spokeswoman confirmed.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Brandy McMillion and Mitra Jafary-Hariri.

Officials allege that medical professionals wrote illegal prescriptions for fake patients who had no legitimate medical need for the drugs.

Taylor resident Robert King, 38, is alleged to have been a patient recruiter in the scheme.

All of the defendants are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, and distributing, controlled substances. Several face additional counts of unlawful distribution of controlled substances.

Overall, more than 1.9 million dosages of Schedule II controlled substances were prescribed as part of the conspiracy, officials allege, with a street value of more than $41 million. Among the drugs listed were Oxycodone, Oxymorphone, Oxycodone-Acetaminophen (Percocet), Hydrocodone and Hydrocodone-Acetaminophen.

Prescription drugs are supposed to go to people who truly need them, not to fake patients or people selling drugs on the streets, said Matthew Schneider, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. We are focusing on charging doctors, pharmacists and the networks that add to the opioid crisis, and this case is unfortunately yet another example of the serious problem facing Michigan.

According to the 44-count unsealed indictment, John Henry Rankin, III, of Detroit and owner of New Vision Rehab and Preferred Rehab clinics, provided money and other illegal benefits to multiple doctors and nurse practitioners to persuade them to write prescriptions for bogus patients who did not have a legitimate medical need for the drugs. Rankin also provided money to an unlicensed medical professional who posed as a physician and issued pre-signed controlled substance prescriptions in the names of other providers, according to the indictment.

Prescriptions were presented to multiple pharmacies in the area, officials allege. The pharmacies allegedly dispensed more than 58,725 dosage units of Schedule II controlled substances prescribed by the medical professionals named in the indictment.

Pharmacist Ali Sabbagh of nearby Dearborn Heights is also named in the indictment. The 36-year-old worked at Franklin Healthmart in Southfield.

Some pharmacists billed insurers for dispensing medications that were not medically necessary and at other times pharmacists accepted cash from recruiters for filling and dispensing medications, according to the indictment.

Search warrants executed on June 11 were conducted by agents from the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, assigned to a task force that targets individuals suspected of contributing to the nations opioid crisis.

These enforcement actions and others like them around the country demonstrate our commitment to prosecuting licensed professionals who flood communities with addictive legal drugs for their own personal benefit, said Keith Martin, special agent in charge of the DEAs Detroit Field Division.

Also named in the indictment were Dr. Beth Carter 56, of Southfield; Dr. Robert Kenewell, 52, of Auburn Hills; Dr. Jason Brunt, 50, of Clawson and Dr. John Swan, 30, of St. Clair Shores; nurse practitioner Jean Pinkard, 63, of Farmington Hills, nurse practitioner Toni Green, 58, of St. Clair Shores; pharmacist Adeniyi Adepoju, 61, of Warren; pharmacist Maksudali Saiyad, 65, of Troy; Pharmacy owner Virendra Gaidhane, 49, of Troy; pharmacy technician Dewayne Bason, 28, of Detroit, Jermaine Hamblin, 36 of Roseville; Sonya Mitchell, 50, of Southfield; and Lavar Carter, 56, of Southfield; Robert Lee Dower, Jr., 49, of Eastpointe and Denise Sailes, 51, of Detroit.

The opioid epidemic continues to have a harmful impact on many people across this country, said Lamont Pugh III, special agent in charge of the U.S. Health & Human Services, Office of Inspector General of the Chicago region. Medical professionals who choose to participate in schemes as alleged in this indictment only exacerbate the problem. The OIG will continue to dedicate and prioritize resources to the investigation of allegations of this nature in an effort to ensure the health and safety of patients and taxpayer dollars.
The street protesters at Whole Foods at 929 South St. in Philadelphia on Sunday tried discouraging shoppers from going inside. Read more

Dozens of protesters crowded the sidewalk in front of Whole Foods Market on South Street on Sunday afternoon, demanding that the company allow employees to wear clothes and accessories emblazoned with the words Black Lives Matter.

The protest came days after employees at stores in multiple states reported that management asked them to leave the premises when they showed up wearing Black Lives Matter face masks and pins. Protesters at the South Philadelphia store on Sunday said that several employees there were sent home for the same reason last week.

And one former employee of the store at Ninth and South Streets who was fired believes it happened two weeks ago for making and sharing posts on social media that criticized the stores management for providing food to police during recent protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Megan Murray, 22, worked at the store for almost two years but said management did not give a reason for the firing. I was told it was a major infraction, Murray said.

A Whole Foods spokesperson said Murrays firing was not retaliatory, but stemmed from posts on social media that were deemed threatening.

The Team Member was presented with evidence that showed clear violation of our policies against behavior and language that is threatening, vulgar and obscene towards a Team Member and was separated as a result, the statement said. (Murrays) actions were specifically directed towards an individual in the workplace and perceived as a safety threat. They were brought to our attention by fellow store Team Members.

Murray denied threatening anyone at Whole Foods. The threat here was PR blowback, Murray said.

 READ MORE: Whole Foods and other retailers have ended hazard pay for workers even as coronavirus remains a threat

The group of protesters on Sunday, which included some current and former employees, picketed for more than an hour, chanting, waving signs, and attempting to talk shoppers out of patronizing Whole Foods. Some said Whole Foods wanted the benefits of appearing inclusive and supportive, by posting that Racism has no place here on the website and handing out T-shirts labeling their staffers heroes, but that such gestures were at odds with the reality of a company that ended hazard pay amid a pandemic and has been accused of employing aggressive anti-union tactics.

Go across the street to the Acme! one protester urged a young woman who was about to enter the store on Sunday, as cars drove by, honking their support. Its unionized!

Whole Foods is the latest major company to draw backlash over Black Lives Matter. Earlier this month, some called for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks after BuzzFeed News reported that the coffee chain would not allow employees to wear Black Lives Matter apparel. Last week, the company reversed that position and announced it would make 250,000 shirts with Black Lives Matter and No Justice, No Peace designs to give to workers.

On Sunday, a spokesperson from Whole Foods said the companys dress code prohibits clothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not company-related.

Murray said that in the days after widespread protests erupted across the city this month, employees of the South Philadelphia store learned that management gave free food to the police officers at the local station, which shares a building and garage with the store.

 READ MORE: Starbucks tells its employees not to show support for Black Lives Matter at work. Really? | Elizabeth Wellington

The Whole Foods spokesperson said that the giveaway consisted of prepared food that would have gone to waste when the store was evacuated on June 1. But it angered some staffers, Murray said, and several posted about it on social media, urging members of the public to call the store and voice their opinions.

Murray was fired soon after members of Whole Foods asset protection team interviewed Murray, and asked questions about the posts.

Murray and the other protesters said they want the stores manager to be transferred, and for the company to allow all employees to display their support for the movement.
New Delhi: Maulana Saad Khandalvi  the controversial Muslim cleric who has been named in the FIR lodged over the religious congregation in Nizamuddin Markaz, has still not been arrested by the Delhi Police. According to reports, the Delhi Police is waiting for a green signal from the Home Ministry to take any legal action on Maulana Saad.

According to sources, about 16 minors from several countries had also participated in the Nizamuddin religious congregation held in March this year, at a time when the government had enforced a ban on any event with more than 50 participants.

Reports said that the event also saw the participation of 16 foreign minors, between the age group of 15-18 years, among thousands of attendees. At least minors were from Nepal, three from Malaysia and the remaining others from Kazakhstan. The government is yet to take a final call on the minor foreign nationals who took part in the event; whereas the police also did not file any chargesheet against them.

The Delhi Police had reportedly written to Home Ministry in this regard; however, a reply from MHA or the Foreign Ministry is still awaited. The foreign Jamaati minors were sent to centres in the national capital after a Delhi court's order.

It is to be noted that despite repeated notices from the Delhi Police's Crime Branch, Maulana Saad is yet to submit his coronavirus COVID-19 test. Security agencies are in constant touch with Maulana Saad.

Earlier, the Delhi Police had said that Maulana Saad was deliberately delaying the COVID-19 test in order to escape police action. The Crime Branch of Delhi Police also asked Saad to produce several official documents, including the source of funding to the Markaz.

Replying to police's notice, Saads advocate said that they have filed a reply to the notice issued to them and sought more time to produce documents as 'offices and departments are closed due to lockdown'.

It may be recalled that Delhi Police had registered an FIR against Maulana Saad and others under the Epidemic Act 1897 in connection with the event held at Nizamuddin Markaz despite the coronavirus COVID-19 threat. Nizamuddin Markaz later emerged as a COVID-19 hotspot as several attendees of the Jamaat congregation were tested positive for coronavirus.

At least 9,000 people had participated in the religious congregation at Tablighi Jamaats headquarters at Nizamuddin in the national capital in March.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who made a killing this year by nailing the market bottom, on Monday disclosed plans for an initial public offering of a $4 billion blank check company, which may target so-called "Mature Unicorns."

The new investment vehicle named Pershing Square Tontine Holdings plans to offer 150 million shares at $20 apiece, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.



Ackman's hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital, will invest a minimum of $1 billion in the blank check company, while having the option to bring the total value to $6.45 billion, the filing said.

Blank check companies are usually formed to raise funds through an IPO to finance a merger or acquisition, typically within two years. Ackman's new company will target "Mature Unicorns," the filing said, referring to those more developed privately financed companies valued at more than $1 billion. Ackman's new company likely will target one of those rare companies.

"Over the past decade, numerous high-quality, venture-backed businesses have achieved significant scale, market share, competitive dominance and cash flow  we call these companies 'Mature Unicorns,'" the filing said.

In addition to mature unicorns, the blank check company may also target, high-quality IPO candidates, private equity portfolio companies and family owned companies, according to the filing. "We also believe that the economic and market dislocation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has created market conditions and a resulting set of investment opportunities in four principal areas that we intend to pursue," the company said.

Ackman believes the economic and market disruption resulting from the coronavirus pandemic has created a favorable opportunity for his firm.

"The recent dislocations in both the stock market and private growth equity markets, combined with a number of high-profile private investment failures and disappointing IPO outcomes, have substantially reduced the amount of private funding available for these companies, while demands for liquidity from their investors have increased," it said.

The company expects the stock to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the 52nd day following the filing. Citigroup, Jefferies and UBS Investment Bank are the joint book-running managers.
The concept of social justice entails equity in the allocation of resources, fairness, and respect for diversity. It calls also for the eradication of existing forms of social oppression. That is to say, social justice means the redistribution of resources from those who have unjustly turned them to their own property to those who justly own and deserve them.

To add to the above, and in the context of the prevailing situation in Sierra Leone, social justice means creating and ensuring the process of a truly democratic culture, whereby citizens are free to participate in peace consolidation and decision-making process. For democracy to prevail and not a mockery, this forum argues that the redistribution of resources amongst all citizens and citizens participation in the decision-making process can automatically ensue social justice and participatory democracy.

Equality on the other hand is defined in terms of equality of the burdens, the advantages, and the opportunities of citizenship. To say that social justice is linked to equality is the obvious. It comes to say therefore that, a violation of social justice ultimately breeds inequality.

The English definition of equality means fairness, equity, or the equitable. The problem of this definition is that equitable does not mean to give people the same portions, but rather to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each. In the French language, culture and literature, egalite means all citizens are equal to each other. This forum prefers the French definition of equality to the English vocabulary.

The Voice Of Justice forum may not be an ardent supporter of constitutional President Julius Maada Bio and his elected government. Voice Of Justice forum like any other sane-thinking Sierra Leonean believes majority of Sierra Leonean electorates have placed their trust in constitutional President Bio in the hope that he understands the complex issues on the ground and has the magic wand to bail Sierra Leone out of the current precipice.

The peaceful democratic change of government under which the bulk of the citizenry were relegated to unnecessarily and needlessly burdened for over two decades after the end of a fratricidal brutal war in 2002, with its attendant yoke of pervasive corruption and reckless spending, mismanagement of abundant natural resources, party political bigotry, rude tribalism, cronyism and unlimited social vices and degeneracy, is worth emulating by other African countries.

The peaceful and democratic transformation of society, as we did in Sierra Leone in 2018 elections serve as a beacon of hope for citizens of the Economic Community of West Africans States (ECOWAS). The same also can be said that a lack of transparency, probity, accountability and violations of human rights of Sierra Leoneans, including the right to form and register political parties are the greatest challenges facing the Bio administration in Freetown. This forum believes that constitutional President Maada Bio will translate the wise decision of the Sierra Leonean voters to become a sigh of relief that, they have elected a President who can restore the lost dignity, integrity, incorruptibility, probity and accountability in the country.

This forum believes that God Almighty Allah will come to the aid of Sierra Leoneans, because God only works through men. Much as this forum believes that constitutional President Bio is Gods chosen man for this hour, we pray that God will use the President to bring comfort to all Sierra Leoneans, and salvage the ravaged system left behind by his predecessors.

APPEAL TO PRESIDENT JULIUS MAADA BIO:

1. Mr. President, Voice Of Justice appeals to you to have a second look at the structure and composition of your government, to inculcate patriotic and forward-thinking Sierra Leoneans, no matter which tribe, religion or region they belong. To actualize your vision of New Direction, we appeal to you to go for the good Sierra Leoneans in the premise that only the good can work towards your dream of a New Sierra Leone.

2, Mr. President, the opportunity has been created for you to have your name written in gold as the leader who restored the constitutional human rights and democratic freedoms of Sierra Leoneans, which were not visible in the country before your election in 2018. We urge you to intervene in the registration of political parties in the country, to ensure that all political parties that have been documented in the Sierra Leone gazette and have fulfilled all constitutional requirements to be issued with their final political party registration certificates, without any further delay, if you are to win the hearts and mind of the international community, particularly donors and development partners.

3. Mr. President, you can make Sierra Leone the Anthems of Civilization and Food Basket of Africa, again. By pursuing these goals, you will have to let the public know what is going on in the government through media outlets. Let the media cover everything that the government is doing that is not of security risk, but let Sierra Leoneans know the due process that is been taken to execute all government policies. This will help to let Sierra Leoneans know that your government is open and transparent.

4. Mr. President, you told us that you are not a President for a political party, or tribe or region, but President for all Sierra Leoneans. This is a welcome statement and we commend you for that. You already showed by example that you have what it takes to rebrand the image of Sierra Leone, by not shaking anyone in the Sierra Leone Civil Service, except on retirement and your recent appointment of a Northerner to the post of Chief of Defence Staff. Please we need you to feather your inclusive appointments based on Sierra Leone first above all other interests.

5. Mr. President, let this beautiful words in the Holy Bible be your guide: For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your fathers house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Esther 4:14

Long live the unity of Sierra Leone!

Solidarity with the poor masses of our people!!

Sender:

Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh

Group Administrator
Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential.
Authorities in Shanghai have formally arrested a lawyer-turned-citizen journalist who reported on the emerging coronavirus epidemic in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.



Zhang Zhan, who lives in Shanghai but who traveled to Wuhan in early February, was taken away from Wuhan's Caiguang Hotel near Hankou railway station on the night of May 14.



She was held by police near her home in Shanghai's Pudong district on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



Zhang was then formally arrested on that charge on June 19 on the orders of the Pudong state prosecutor, RFA has learned. She is currently being held in the Pudong Detention Center.



Repeated calls to Zhang's mother rang unanswered on Monday.



But a friend of Zhang's surnamed Zhu said she had denied the charges when she met with her defense attorney two weeks earlier.



"Zhang Zhan has been formally arrested for picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," Zhu said. "Shortly after Zhang Zhan was detained, a lawyer went to Pudong Detention Center to meet with her, and she told him she was pleading not guilty."



Zhu said Zhang's mother had received a notification of her daughter's arrest, but was too frightened to talk to journalists following heavy pressure from state security police, and hadn't publicized the arrest details.



Zhu said her friend had traveled to Wuhan after lockdown began purely to report on the situation there.



"She found a way to get into Wuhan after the city was locked down," Zhu said. "That was such a big risk to take; she has an extraordinary spirit not available to most people, to the extent that she was willing to risk arrest, and even her life."



'She is very strong-minded'



An overseas-based friend of Zhang's surnamed Lang said he was sad to learn of her arrest.



"I had been expecting it, though, because this isn't her first rodeo," he said. "She was previously detained for supporting the anti-extradition movement [in Hong Kong]."



"I am worried about her, because she is a practicing Christian with a strong tendency towards martyrdom," he said. "She is very strong-minded."



Zhang, 40, was detained by police in Shanghai in September 2019 for holding up an umbrella in solidarity with the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement on the streets of Shanghai, and demanding an end to Communist Party rule.



She was released after 65 days in detention, during which time she went on hunger strike twice.



Zhang moved to Shanghai from the northern province of Shaanxi in 2010, and formerly worked as a lawyer before official retaliation took away her license to practice.



In Zhang's last YouTube video posted on May 13, she had reported on the impact of a huge fall in passenger numbers on the livelihoods of Wuhan's taxi drivers, as well as loss of employment in the wake of the lockdown among the city's residents.



She also spoke out against the intimidation of local people by the urban management police, or chengguan, and about a sense of despair at life in China.



Thousands targeted for speaking out



The Chinese government has targeted thousands of people for speaking out about the coronavirus epidemic in the country since it began in late December in the central city of Wuhan.



After President Xi Jinping said he would lead "a people's war" on the epidemic on Jan. 20, police handled 5,111 cases of "fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information," according to a Feb. 21 statement from the ministry of public security.



Between Jan. 1 and March 26, nearly 900 internet users were penalized by police for their online speech or info-sharing about the coronavirus epidemic, across almost every province, region, and municipality in China.



Charges used to question, detain, and arrest people included "rumor-mongering," "fabricating false information," sowing panic, disturbing public order, and "breach of privacy."



Cases in which people were accused of "spreading misinformation" or "disrupting public order" accounted for more than 96 percent of cases, according to the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network.



CHRD said on Monday it has documented "a dozen cases" of detainees or prisoners of conscience being denied access to their lawyers and families, including virtual meetings, on coronavirus grounds.



The group called on the government to stop using the pandemic as a pretext to restrict people's rights.



"In some instances, Chinese officials have stated that the suspensions are indefinite or until the pandemic is over, even if lockdown restrictions elsewhere have already begun to be lifted and authorities have declared that public health milestones have been met," CHRD said in a statement on its website.



Among those affected are ailing citizen journalist and rights activist Huang Qi, veteran dissident Qin Yongmin, Tibetan activist and businessman Tashi Wangchuk, and activist Chen Jianfang.



Detained lawyers Hao Jinsong and Li Yuhan have also been denied meetings with their defense lawyers, as have detained activists Liu Jinxing, Shen Liangqing, Xie Wenfei, Xu Kun, and Zhang Baocheng, CHRD said.



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Lok-to for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
MUMBAI, India, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Cipla Limited (BSE: 500087) (NSE: CIPLA EQ), hereinafter referred to as "Cipla"), today announced the launch of remdesivir under its brand name CIPREMI. The U.S. FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Gilead Sciences Inc. for emergency use of remdesivir for the treatment of hospitalized 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients. It is the only U.S. FDA approved Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) treatment for adult and paediatric patients hospitalized with suspected or laboratory confirmed COVID-19 infection. In May, Gilead Sciences Inc. extended a voluntary non-exclusive license to Cipla to manufacture and market Cipla's generic version of remedisvir called CIPREMI.

Cipla has been granted regulatory approval by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for restricted emergency use in the country as part of the accelerated approval process considering the urgent and unmet medical need. As part of a risk management plan, Cipla will provide training on use of the drug, informed patient consent documents, conduct post marketing surveillance as well as conduct a Phase IV clinical trial on Indian patients.

According to a preliminary report from the ACTT-1 (Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial 1) study1, a randomized clinical trial conducted with remdesivir in 1063 patients over 60 centres across U.S., Europe and Asia demonstrated a faster time to clinical recovery in hospitalised patients as compared to placebo. Most of these patients were on oxygen therapy of which some were receiving high flow oxygen or non-invasive ventilation, and some were on a mechanical ventilator. The mortality rates in the study were 7.1% in those given remdesivir and 11.9% in those who were given placebo.

As part of its efforts to enable speedy and equitable access to this treatment and in anticipation of demand, Cipla will be commercialising remdesivir through its own facilities and partnered sites. The drug will be supplied through Government and open market channels, to ensure equitable distribution.

Commenting on the launch, Mr. Umang Vohra (MD and Global CEO, Cipla Limited) said, "Cipla appreciates the strong partnership with Gilead to bring remdesivir to patients in India. We have been deeply invested in exploring all possible avenues to save millions of lives impacted by COVID-19 pandemic, and this launch is a significant milestone in that direction. We will continue to collaborate with all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem towards providing access to such promising treatments in furtherance with our belief that no patient should be denied access to life-saving treatments."

1Source: New Eng J MED 2020, Published on May 22, 2020

About Cipla :

Established in 1935, Cipla is a global pharmaceutical company focused on agile and sustainable growth, complex generics, and deepening portfolio in our home markets of India, South Africa, North America, and key regulated and emerging markets. Our strengths in the respiratory, anti-retroviral, urology, cardiology, anti-infective and CNS segments are well-known. Our 46 manufacturing sites around the world produce 50+ dosage forms and 1,500+ products using cutting-edge technology platforms to cater to our 80+ markets. Cipla is ranked 3rd largest in pharma in India (IQVIA MAT May'20), 3rd largest in the pharma private market in South Africa (IQVIA MAT May'20), and is among the most dispensed generic players in the U.S. For over eight decades, making a difference to patients has inspired every aspect of Cipla's work. Our paradigm- changing offer of a triple anti-retroviral therapy in HIV/AIDS at less than a dollar a day in Africa in 2001 is widely acknowledged as having contributed to bringing inclusiveness, accessibility and affordability to the centre of the HIV movement. A responsible corporate citizen, Cipla's humanitarian approach to healthcare in pursuit of its purpose of 'Caring for Life' and deep-rooted community links wherever it is present make it a partner of choice to global health bodies, peers and all stakeholders. For more, please visit www.cipla.com , or click on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

For queries, please contact: Corporate Communications Investor Relations Heena Kanal Naveen Bansal E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Cipla
President Akufo-Addo says his government will be distributing 350 buses and 840 vehicles to some Senior High Schools (SHS) in the country.

This forms part of plans to alleviate the conditions of the Free SHS policy, especially now that final year students are returning to school on June 23 to prepare for the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

Schools were asked to reopen two weeks ago for final year students after a phased easing of restrictions was announced based on the improved management of the coronavirus in Ghana.

In a national address on Sunday, June 21, President Akufo-Addo disclosed plans the government have made towards ensuring the safety and comfort of the students returning to school.

Through the National Food and Buffer Stock Company, enough food supplies have been distributed to all schools. Government is also making available 350 buses and 840 pickup vehicles to Senior High Schools that did not receive vehicles in 2016. For the first time in our nation's history, Government will absorb the WASSCE examination fees of the 313,837 SHS 3 students who will sit for the exam. GH75.4 million will be spent on this.

The President had earlier hinted of plans to distribute these vehicles to the various schools while speaking at the 70th-anniversary celebration of Prempeh College on Saturday, 30th November 2019.

He also indicated that the government had commenced the construction of 962 structures, comprising classrooms, dining halls, assembly halls, sanitary facilities, and dormitories, in Senior High Schools across the country.

WASSCE during COVID-19

The 2020 WASSCE in Ghana will take place from August 3, 2020, after six weeks of studies, starting from Monday, June 22.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) which conducts the WASSCE concurrently in anglophone West Africa; Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Liberia announced on March 20, 2020 that it was indefinitely suspending the annual exam due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, upon discussions with Ghana following the country's decision to ease COVID-19 restrictions and allow final year students return to school, it was agreed that the exams will be held independently for Ghana.

---citinewsroom
The issues in the cannabis sector far predate the current economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year or so, marijuana companies have generally reported underwhelming financial results, much to the dismay of pot investors who had high hopes for the industry. Over the trailing twelve-month period, the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF (OTC:HMLSF) -- an industry benchmark -- is down by 61.3%, compared to a 4.9% rise for the S&P 500.

Naturally, there are plenty of cannabis stocks investors ought to avoid, but there are also some pot companies worth investing in today. Let's discuss two cannabis companies, one of which is a buy, and one of which isn't worth your money.

The stock to buy

Trulieve Cannabis (OTC:TCNNF) is a vertically integrated multi-state operator with a particular focus on the cannabis market in Florida. Trulieve's strategy to hone in on one market (for the most part) is in sharp contrast with that of some of its rivals -- such as Curaleaf Holdings (OTC:CURLF) and others -- which have sought to build wide presences across several U.S. states. However, Trulieve's results speak for themselves, at least so far. Unlike most of its peers in the cannabis industry, Trulieve has been able to record consistent profits. During the first quarter, the company recorded revenue of $96.1 million, representing a 21% sequential increase and a 116% year over year increase.

Trulieve's net income for the quarter came in at about $14 million, although that was a slight decline from the $14.7 million it recorded during the prior-year quarter; Trulieve ended the quarter with 47 dispensaries in the sunshine state. It is also worth noting that as of March 31, the company was responsible for more than 50% of all the cannabis flower sales in Florida, which is a testament to Trulieve's strong presence in this market.

Looking forward, Trulieve is the best way to profit from the potentially lucrative cannabis market in Florida. The U.S. cannabis market will grow rapidly over the next few years, with Florida -- one of the world's largest medical-only cannabis markets -- set to exceed the $2 billion mark in spending by 2024, according to the research firm BDS Analytics. Note that in 2019, total spending on cannabis products in Florida was a little over $650 million. In other words, this market will grow significantly over the next few years.

Further, the ongoing crisis has done little to slow down this trend. Cannabis sales in Florida (and elsewhere, for that matter) briefly increased recently, especially as social distancing measures began to take form. This could be one of the reasons why Trulieve has performed well on the stock market year to date. And given the company's leading position in the sunshine state -- and the favorable trends we will likely see in the coming years -- I expect Trulieve to continue outperforming the market in the long run.

The stock to avoid

Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQ:ACB) has been making a lot of noise. Last month, the Edmonton, Canada-based company released surprisingly strong Q3 2020 financial results. Perhaps the biggest surprise in the company's quarterly update was its top line. During the quarter, Aurora Cannabis recorded total net revenue of CA$75.5 million, representing a 35% sequential increase. Also, the company's operating expenses decreased by about 26% sequentially to roughly CA$111 million, and Aurora Cannabis' net loss of CA$137.4 million was significantly lower than the gigantic CA$1.3 billion it recorded during the second quarter. Another recent bit of good news for Aurora Cannabis was the acquisition of Reliva, a U.S. retail cannabidiol (CBD) brands; the acquisition closed on May. 28.

As part of the deal, Reliva's members received about $40 million worth of Aurora Cannabis' shares, and pending performance-related milestone, they could receive an additional $45 million of Aurora Cannabis' shares (or cash) over the next two years. The opportunity within the U.S. CBD market could be exciting for Aurora, and the company's latest financial results were certainly a step in the right direction. However, I still think it is best to avoid buying shares of Aurora, at least for now.

Here are two reasons why. First, thanks to a slew of acquisitions, Aurora has an abnormal amount of goodwill on its balance sheet. As of March 31, the company had about CA$2.4 billion in goodwill, which comes out to a little more than half its total assets. Of course, Aurora hoped to conquer the industry thanks to these acquisitions, but its reckless spending has yet to bear fruit. And what's more, investors can expect significant writedowns for the pot grower in the future. Second, unlike some of its peers in the cannabis industry, Aurora has yet to find a partner with deep pockets.

The company has already made it a habit to resort to dilutive forms of financing, and without the help of a partner, it will likely continue to do so. It's worth noting that the company famously brought billionaire Nelson Peltz as a strategic advisor to help it secure a partner. But more than a year later, it still hasn't happened. These issues (and others) will continue to plague Aurora for the foreseeable future, and while I'm hopeful the company will eventually turn things around, I think investors should stay away from this cannabis stock for now.
A Northern Ireland author's latest thriller has been snapped up by Universal Pictures in a seven-figure movie deal.

Uber driver turned award-winning writer Adrian McKinty (52) will see The Chain, which tells the story of a mother's quest to track down her kidnapped daughter, adapted for the silver screen.

Baby Driver director Edgar Wright will direct, while Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle and X-Men: First Class) is writing the script.

Working Titles Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan will produce alongside Complete Fictions Nira Park and Wright, and The Story Factorys Shane Salerno.

Paramount had also been interested in the novel and had been in talks before it was published last July by LittleBrown/Mulholland, but the deal never crossed the finish line.

Shipyard worker's son McKinty was born in Belfast and grew up in Carrickfergus during the Troubles before going on to Warwick and Oxford universities.

The Chain was celebrate by legendary horror writer Stephen King.

"This nightmarish story is incredibly propulsive and original. You won't shake it for a long time," he said.

It has been published in 41 countries and became a bestseller in 20 of them, as well as making 25 'best of the year' lists. The paperback has yet to drop as the hardback is continuing to sell well.

McKinty's 2003 debut novel, Dead I Well May Be, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2004.

Expand Close The Chain / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The Chain

He wrote several more books over two decades while working in various jobs including as an Uber driver to make ends meet.

After falling on hard times and getting evicted, McKinty wrote a forlorn letter to Don Winslow, author of bestsellers including The Cartel and The Force, saying how much of a fan he was and expressing his regret at not hitting the big time as a writer.

A one-time struggling author himself, Winslow replied and referred McKinty to American screenwriter and producer Shane Salerno who had helped him become a success.

New York city-based McKinty was persuaded by both Salerno and Winslow not to abandon his literary career.

The resulting book is The Chain which Winslow dubbed "Jaws for parents".

He added: "It belongs in the elite company of world-class thrillers like Gone Girl and The Silence of the Lambs."

At the time of the best-selling novels publication, McKinty said: "My story is a story of never giving up, It's a story about writers helping fellow writers.

"I hope it inspires other writers who may be thinking about quitting, to never give up.

"I never imagined any of this could happen, but I hoped it would. I had hope. I am so grateful and I hope my story inspires others."
She has been locked down with her husband and their two sons.

Yet Caprice Bourret ventured out on Monday as she headed back to work after her boys returned to school.

Ensuring all eyes would be on her for the outing, the 48-year-old model donned a vibrant pink midi dress for her morning of meetings with her bedding brand partners, J Rosenthal.

Back at it: She has been locked down with her husband and their two sons. Yet Caprice Bourret ventured out on Monday as she headed back to work after her boys returned to school

Putting her sensational curves on display, Caprice dazzled in the figure-hugging garment, that featured sexy cut out detailing under the bust.

She boosted her frame with a pair of towering high black stilettos and accessorised with a large patent handbag.

Caprice's outing came as a source told MailOnline: 'Now the boys are back at school Caprice said it feels really great to be back at work.

'It has been tough having a slower pace of life over the past few months as Caprice is always on the go and she is very entrepreneurial.'

Dressed to impress: Ensuring all eyes would be on her for the outing, the 48-year-old model donned a vibrant pink midi dress for her morning of meetings

Caprice has spent lockdown at her London home with her millionaire husband, Ty Comfort, and six-year-old sons, Jett and Jax.

She was recently shocked to learn that she tested negative for coronavirus antibodies, despite her family contracting the virus.

A source told MailOnline: 'Caprice had her household tested for antibodies, and everyone apart from Caprice herself had tested positive for previously having had the virus.

'It was a bit of a shock for her as she took care of everyone and even kissed her husband when he was contagious.'

Pretty in pink: Putting her sensational curves on display, Caprice dazzled in the figure-hugging garment, that featured sexy cut out detailing under the bust

Blonde bombshell: She boosted her frame with a pair of towering high black stilettos and accessorised with a large patent handbag

Unusual: Caprice was recently shocked to learn that she tested negative for coronavirus antibodies, despite her family contracting the virus

They added: 'She is so happy the boys are back at school. She said that she is not made for home schooling in any shape or form.

'She is pleased they have their routine back and the boys couldn't be happier to be with there friends and teachers again.

'She has tried to keep on top of their studies but let's be honest no one is as good as a trained teacher.

'She is not anxious about them returning to school because studies show that children are not really affected by Covid-19.'
GrowTal logo GrowTal is the new go-to marketplace for hiring remote top marketing experts in the most simplified way. GrowTal is designed to connect companies with top marketing talent without the need for costly recruiting efforts or the risk and commitment that comes with traditional hiring practices.

After being in stealth mode since the middle of last year, GrowTal today announced the launch of its new talent marketplace for finding and hiring marketing experts in the most seamless way possible. As a matchmaker, GrowTal brings together talented marketing experts, who are looking to be fairly compensated for their ability to contribute to an organization independently, and companies, who have an immediate need but do not want to invest in hiring in-house.

About a year ago, I noticed two trends. The first was that many companies like the idea of hiring in-house marketing expertise over agencies. Many companies are not willing to make the investment that it takes to successfully build the marketing function in house, but a growing number of companies are. The second was that many talented marketers were choosing to go independent. They realize that working for yourself often pays better than working for someone else and provides a much better work-life balance. This was the epiphany that made me realize that there was a need for a matchmaker between marketing experts and companies, and thus GrowTal was born, said Bryan Karas, Founder, GrowTal.

Some of the brands GrowTal marketers have worked with include Square, Shutterfly, Headspace, Grove Collaborative, Redfin, Personal Capital, Uber, Imperfect Foods.

The GrowTal talent marketplace platform is seamless at its core. For both marketers and companies, its three easy steps:

For marketers:

1. Apply: The marketing expert tells GrowTal about their experience and expertise.

2. Interview: The marketing expert will be screened and interviewed by a growth marketer. Only the top candidates qualify.

3. Get Matched: GrowTal will match you with a company that needs your unique skillset.

For companies:

1. Two-minute questionnaire: Tell GrowTal about your company.

2. Handpicked marketer: GrowTal identifies the best marketer for the company in under 48 hours.

3. Risk-free trial period: If the company is not satisfied with the match GrowTal will then find a new marketer, immediately.

The need for a new talent marketplace that caters specifically to the marketing industry is even greater in the wake of COVID-19. For the marketing industry, the numbers are bleak. Every major holding company has implemented or is planning to achieve a series of cost-cutting measures in a bid to self-preserve. According to Forrester, ad agencies will be forced to shed more than 50,000 jobs through 2021 as a result of COVID-19. The Forrester report also predicts that agencies will see two years of negative growthincluding a decline of 30% for 2020 and 20% for 2021.

And due to an increase in freelancers and contractors, some experts argue that these workers are indeed a force in the new economy. A Toptal survey pointed out that 90% of companies depend on freelancers to augment their professional workforce.

With each passing day, thousands of marketing workers continue to lose their employment due to being furloughed or laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. GrowTal serves as a bridge for these newly unemployed workers and for companies that are looking for talented marketing support. Unlike other freelance marketplaces that are vast and one big pool of freelance projects, GrowTal focuses solely on marketing experts and responsibilities.

Karas continued, Marketers need to feel empowered to find the new opportunities that they can be well compensated for their expertise, even if from home. And companies need to have the empowerment to build and maintain a remote flexible workforce without the obligations that come with full-time commitments. If you are an expert marketer who is looking to be well compensated for your ability to independently contribute to an organization, then GrowTal is the platform for you. If you are a company that is looking to hire remote top-notch marketing experts with flexible hours and/or terms, then GrowTal is the platform for you.

About GrowTal

GrowTal is the new go-to marketplace for hiring remote top marketing experts in the most simplified way. GrowTal is designed to connect companies with top marketing talent without the need for costly recruiting efforts or the risk and commitment that comes with traditional hiring practices. The GrowTal platform finds, evaluates, and connects independent contractors who provide marketing and other professional services with clients and organizations seeking their expertise.

Founded in 2019, GrowTal is led by its founder Bryan Karas, a former Facebook executive and current CEO of digital marketing agency Playbook Media. GrowTal is headquartered in San Francisco and is backed by private investors. For more information, visit GrowTal.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modis June 19 statement before an assembly of senior Opposition leaders on the subject of intensive Chinese military activity in our border areas was a deep disappointment to the country, its clarification the following day by the Prime Ministers Office was worse.

It was deeply dismaying. It appeared to be saying the same thing as the Chinese.

In effect, it mocked the death of Indias 20 soldiers who fell on June 15 trying to push the Chinese military out from the Galwan River valley in eastern Ladakh, although this could not have been Mr Modis intention.

The PM spoke after his colleagues from the Opposition parties had spoken and was gracious enough to acknowledge their sentiment in standing four square behind the country and its armed forces, but he delivered a shock when he said categorically and explicitly that the Chinese had not entered the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control or occupied any Indian posts.

If this was the case, then whats been all the hullabaloo about in Indias military and political circles of late? What was the need for the tension-filled hours long talk between the commander of Indias Ladakh-based 14 Corps and his Chinese counterpart on June 6?

Why did the Indian readout of the conversation between our external affairs minister and his Chinese counterpart speak of Chinese intrusion without any hedging? Indeed, why the need of the MEA to urge the Chinese to return to status quo ante in Ladakh?

It is a no-brainer that Mr Modis remarks to Opposition leaders are severely at odds with the MEA statement and the external affairs ministers observations. In that case, should heads roll in the MEA?

More dramatically, should heads roll in the countrys higher military command since the top brass too has been committed to facts on the ground and the pith of its observations to the media have shown concern about Chinas military incursion into the Galwan river valley as well as in the Fingers area of Pangong Lake?

If heads should roll in these precincts, what is the offence that should be attributed to them? Being at odds with the understanding of the PM? Did the national security advisor, who now carries a cabinet rank, and the newly-appointed Chief of Defence Staff, shape the PMs appreciation, or did they not?

These are subjects of critical importance for our national life and are best thrashed out in Parliament at the earliest, and not spun around and rung dry for crass propaganda on friendly television channels, in supine sections of the media, and by the vicious battalions of the ruling partys social media warriors.

It was indeed sad to see the PMO clarification of the PMs original statement speak of mischievous elements in characterising those in the Opposition who were surprised by the PMs original narrative.

The clarification strained itself to persuade the country that Mr Modis words had been in the context of the death of our jawans and an officer in the Galwan riverbed alone.

However, they succeeded in leaving the frightening impression that our soldiers had intruded into Chinas area (since the PM had said the Chinese had not come into our side). Evidently, the running of the PMO leaves much to be desired.
India has the upper hand in military deployments along its border with China, says a recent Harvard University assessment. If the Chinese attacked, co-author Frank ODonnell of the US Naval War College told HT, due to the larger permanent military presence of Indian forces vis-a-vis Chinese forces along the border areas, India would eventually be able to force China back across the LAC, although casualties would be extremely high on both sides. One unknown in such a conflict would be Chinas ability to use cyberattacks to disable Indian communications and logistics.

Over the past dozen years India has not only closed the gap with China in this military theatre, it may now have a slender superiority. Indian officials largely concur with this view though prefer to stress India does not enjoy a position of complete dominance. Chinese military assessments began recognizing this problem from the mid-2000s and this may have contributed its border belligerence.

Also read: India deploys specialised mountain forces to check Chinas LAC transgressions

India and China have a similar number of soldiers along the border, a little over 200,000 each, but a portion of Chinese troops are reserved for the Russian border and handling insurgents in Tibet and Xinjiang. India holds a slight edge in fighter aircraft numbers but, more importantly, its Su-30s are superior to any Chinese fighters in the area and its base network allows it to better survive the missile exchanges that would follow. India has more and better aircraft along the border, more experienced air crews, as well as a resilient basing position, says ODonnell.

China is regularly operating with a permanent Indian conventional force advantage along its border areas, says the report. It notes this is not typically acknowledged in Indian debates and optimists regarding the military balance against China were a minority in India.

For decades, going by the Peoples Liberation Armys journal, Science of Military Strategy, India was rated only as Chinas number four external security concern. This has begun to change. The China National Defence Daily by 2013 spoke of Indias surge of forces along the border. A 2017 Nanfang Daily survey of Chinese strategic thinkers said some were worrying that the defensive strategy of the Indian Army has shifted . . . toward the offensive. Two Chinese experts on territorial issues warned in 2014 that keeping our militarys advantage in the Sino-Indian border area is not only a national defense requirement, but also to prevent China from being disadvantaged in border negotiations. There is more literature in the Chinese language about India catching up in terms of military infrastructure and force deployment after the Doklam crisis, says General G. L. Narasimhan Rao, head of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary China.

Also read: Situation along LAC tense with full army deployment

India is far from being in a position of military preponderance. Indian defence officials point to the touch and go nature of the mountain environment means a numerical advantage in men and aircraft can be wiped out by inclement weather. China keeps most of its military firepower along its Pacific coast and would almost certainly redeploy to go for a round two, warns ODonnell. M. Taylor Fravel, an MIT professor who has written on Chinas border policies, says that China has just over 10 percent of its ground forces [in its western theatre], a very large part of the country, and not even all these troops are focused on India. But because China does not want to deploy a large fraction of its forces in Tibet or Xinjiang, he added, I think this disparity in the local balance makes China especially sensitive to changes that improves Indias position. Did Indias steady military improvement trigger Beijing is harder to ascertain. ODonnell thinks Chinas greater border aggression is a general trend evident in its behaviour with all its neighbours and not just about India.
NEW YORK and LONDON, June 22 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CVC Credit Partners ("CVC Credit") is pleased to announce that it has provided a $92 million multicurrency first lien credit facility to Calibre Scientific, the life sciences and diagnostics business owned by StoneCalibre. Funding provided by CVC Credit will be used to refinance the existing debt facility and to support the company's global acquisition strategy. Baird Global Investment Banking served as the exclusive debt advisor for the transaction.

Founded in 2013, Calibre Scientific is a diversified global developer, manufacturer and distributor of consumable products in the life sciences and diagnostics markets. Since inception, the business has continually expanded through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, and today has a broad portfolio of more than 3,000 products, which it sells into over 100 countries worldwide. Calibre Scientific's 6,000+ customers include blue-chip biopharmaceutical companies, leading academic institutions and diagnostics companies.

Dr. Benjamin Travis, CEO of Calibre Scientific, commented: "We are happy to have completed the refinancing of the business and secured financing to continue to execute our acquisition growth strategy. This strong foundation will allow us to progress with our next phase of development."

Brian Wall, Founder and CEO of StoneCalibre, added: "We are pleased to bring CVC Credit Partners onboard. Their ability to quickly understand the dynamics of the market and Calibre Scientific's operating model was impressive, while their experience in supporting international growth strategies convinced us that they will have a key role to play going forward."

Andrew Eversfield, Director of CVC Credit Partners' U.S. Private Debt business, said: "We're excited to support a company delivering high societal impact and one whose mission is as critical as ever. Calibre Scientific is an established player in a growing market. It has a broad portfolio of leading brands and a loyal and highly diverse customer base. We look forward to partnering with StoneCalibre and helping to write future chapters of the Calibre Scientific story."

About CVC Credit Partners

CVC Credit Partners is the credit management business of CVC. CVC Credit Partners is a global credit asset manager with offices in the U.S. and Europe, 60 investment professionals and US$26 billion assets under management, as at 31 March 2020.

CVC Credit Partners seeks to generate for its investors positive absolute returns and attractive risk-adjusted returns on capital throughout the credit cycle.

CVC Credit Partners has built a diverse platform which creates significant synergies across its three investment strategies: Performing Credit, Credit Opportunities & Special Situations and Private Debt. For further information about CVC Credit Partners please visit: www.cvc.com/credit.

About Calibre Scientific

Calibre Scientific is a diversified global provider of life science reagents, tools, instruments, and other consumables to the lab research, diagnostics, industrial and biopharmaceutical communities. The Company is committed to pushing the boundaries of science and innovation through internal expertise combined with strategic acquisitions that help deliver a differentiated and comprehensive set of products, services and support to our customers. Calibre Scientific represents a portfolio of niche life science companies, across various key verticals, that have an unrivaled ability to address the unique challenges of their respective markets. Through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth our global reach extends into over 100 countries, empowering customers all over the world. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Calibre Scientific continues to grow across a wide array of verticals and geographies, further diversifying its product offering and global footprint to laboratories around the world. For more information, visit www.calibrescientific.com.

About StoneCalibre

Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, StoneCalibre is a privately funded investment firm specializing in the acquisition of lower middle market companies. Founded by Brian Wall in 2012, StoneCalibre is focused on making investments in both special situations and quality long-term capital investment opportunities. For more information please visit our website at www.stonecalibre.com.

SOURCE CVC Capital Partners
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 23:29:17|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

CHANGSHA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- A medical team selected by central China's Hunan Province has returned home after helping fight the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea.

Following a 14-day quarantine period in Sanya, Hainan Province, the team, consisting of 12 experts with experience in COVID-19 prevention, control and treatment, arrived at Changsha, capital of Hunan, on Monday.

Designated by the National Health Commission, the team flew directly to Zimbabwe with medical supplies donated by the provincial government on May 11, kicking off a one-month medical-aid trip to Africa.

Zhu Yimin, deputy director of the provincial health commission and head of the team, said the experts are from respiratory departments, infectious disease departments, and the fields of intensive medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, infection control, public health and nursing.

Zhu said they visited relevant medical and testing institutions in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea to share China's experience in fighting against the epidemic.

The team cooperated with local medical workers on treatment plans and guided local laboratories to improve their nucleic acid testing capability. The team also submitted a professional and guiding proposal for COVID-19 prevention and control, according to Zhu. Enditem
New Delhi:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who in recent times has refused to make his tax records public, declared a USD 916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns.

A leading US daily claimed in a startling report that suggested the billionaire could have legally avoided paying taxes for up to 18 years.

In an investigative report, The New York Times said Trump in 1995 showed a gross income tax loss of USD 915.7 million. "The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan," the report said.

The Trump campaign, responding to the news report, said his income tax returns was obtained illegally by the Times and attacked the daily as "an extension of the Clinton Campaign, the Democratic Party and their global special interests." "What is happening now with the FBI and DOJ (Department of Justice) on Hillary Clinton's emails and illegal server, including her many lies and her lies to Congress are worse than what took place in the administration of Richard Nixon - and far more illegal," it said.

"Mr Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for president and he is the only one that knows how to fix it," the campaign added. The campaign, however, did not address the tax issues raised by the report.

The Times claimed that tax experts hired by it to analyse Trump's 1995 records said tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed him to use his USD 916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period. "Although Mr Trump's taxable income in subsequent years is as yet unknown, a USD 916 million loss in 1995 would have been large enough to wipe out more than USD 50 million a year in taxable income over 18 years," the report said.

Trump has refused to disclose his tax records - something US presidential candidates traditionally do in the interest of transparency. He has said his taxes are under federal audit. But many voters have demanded that the 70-year-old tycoon make his tax records public and gradually the issue has taken the central stage in the presidential contest.

At the first of the three scheduled presidential debates last Monday, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raised the issue of his tax records, Trump retorted by saying "I will release my tax returns, against my lawyer's wishes, when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted."

The Trump Campaign has also said that the Republican nominee has shown "incredible skills" in building his business and those were "the skills we need to rebuild this country." "Hillary Clinton is a corrupt public official who violated federal law, Donald Trump is an extraordinarily successful private businessman who followed the law and created tens of thousands of jobs for Americans," it claimed.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Private bus and tourist taxi operators have been hit hard by the coronavirus lockdown. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: Around 20 lakh people have lost employment and an equal number are staring at job losses as private bus and tourist taxi operators have been hit hard by the coronavirus lockdown, according to the Bus & Car Operators Confederation of India (BOCI).

BOCI, which claims to represent 20,000 operators with 15 lakh buses and maxi-cabs and 11 lakh tourist taxis providing direct employment to 1 crore people, said these private operators need government support in the form of waiver of taxes and interest on loans as many of them are facing closure.

"During lockdown 95 per cent of our vehicles were off road. Very few buses operated for company contracts, while some were used for transporting migrant labourers," BOCI President Prasanna Patwardhan told PTI.

With no business, the members are struggling to pay salaries and wages to employees, he added.

"At least out of the 1 crore people, 30-40 lakh people will lose their jobs, 15-20 lakh people have already lost their jobs. Balance they will also lose their jobs," Patwardhan said while seeking government support for the private bus and cab operators.

"From September onwards, once the (RBI order on loan) moratorium is over and when operators will not be able to pay their EMIs, that is the time when it is going to hit the hardest," he added.

Seeking government support, he said,"Our demand is to waive off motor vehicle taxes and give concessions on diesel, while removing toll taxes for inter-city travel."

Besides, since many of the vehicles have been idle in the last three months, he said, "For the lockdown period our insurance policy should get extended, at least by three months. Insurance is quite expensive, unlike before. For buses it can be between Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh a year."

Patwardhan also sought government intervention for waiver of interest on vehicle loans, saying, "Banks should waive off that interest for at least three months or six months. They should not levy any interest during the moratorium period."

From September, when the EMI payments are to restart, "businesses are not going to start immediately and come back to normal. So rescheduling of loans is also equally important. They should give us a 'ballooning kind' of EMI wherein the initial EMI is less and going forward that EMI will go up," he said.

Even for existing loans, he said the tenure should be extended by a year and operators should not be burdened with the same kind of EMIs paid last year.

Apart from these, he said BOCI's long-pending demand of "one nation, one tax one permit" should also be considered.

"This is the time we should make some structural reforms," Patwardhan said.

As per BOCI, while the government has taken steps to support the economy through various schemes, these have not addressed the public transport sector.

The nationwide lockdown has made a serious financial impact on most passenger transport companies.

Additionally, Patwardhan said the uncertainty of timelines for resumption of operations, guidelines and impact of social distancing have led to acute anxiety among the operators.
Axone review: Food for Thought!

Axone

Source: SIFY By: Shrikanth Venkatesh Critic's Rating: 3/5 Monday 22 June 2020

Movie Title Axone review: Food for Thought! Director Nicholas Kharkongor

Star Cast Sayani Gupta, Lin Laishram, Rohan Joshi

One could say that the timing of the release of Axone (Hindi) on Netflix couldnt be better. At a time when frequent reports emerge in the media (mainstream and social), of Indian citizens of North-Eastern nativity facing racism and persecution tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, this film delves deep into the lives of these people and makes a case for how they are no different from any of us.

Axone essentially follows the story of three women hailing from the North-East, but currently residing together in Delhi. Upasana (Sayani Gupta), Chanbi (the brilliant Lin Laishram) and Minam (Asenla Jamir) are best friends and flat mates. Like other fellow immigrants, they too harbour dreams of a better life and career prospects in the countrys sprawling capital city. What sets their situation apart from other immigrants though, is the constant persecution and sly racism that gets thrown their way on a daily basis.

Its morning, and you are still so sleepy your eyes havent opened fully yet, their bitter land lady remarks to them first thing in the morning.

My young son wants to know how you manage to see the whole picture, with eyes this narrow enquires another woman, with a fake bearing of innocence in her tone.

Are you from China? - another generic slur.

Even Shiv, their landlords son, who ultimately turns out to be a helpful friend cant help make sexist remarks before offering assistance. Ill do this for you, but can you get me a girlfriend from the North-East? he asks Upasana and her friends, without an inkling of shame.

The worst part about all these slurs is that these people seem to have taken it in their stride and learnt to live along. This has led them to form a cocoon, a community of their own within their locality, and they hardly interact or attempt to forge friendships outside of it. In fact, the toll on some is far greater than on others who have learnt to cope. Take the character of Bendang for instance, a musician and Chanbis boyfriend. A video of him facing a racial attack and getting beaten up in a market area went viral on social media. This sent him spiraling into deep depression and anxiety, post which he is shown locking himself up inside his own home for days together.

In the midst of all this unpleasantness, there is now a moment to celebrate for this community too. Minam is getting married and the function is set to happen inside their own apartment (you wonder how and theres a twist here in the end, but watch the film to find out for yourself)! They have a problem though. As per tradition, they need to prepare a dish called Axone for the ceremony, and it emanates a really foul smell while it gets cooked. This is obviously a nuisance factor for their already obnoxious neighbours, who deny permission both to conduct the wedding and to cook the dish within the premises.

This leads Upasana and her friends on a goose chase, to find a kitchen where the cooking of this dish would be permitted, in the couple of hours that are still left for the wedding. During this process, we also get to know more about the dynamics within their group. We learn that Upasanas boy-friend Zorem was Minams ex-lover and due to this, he harbours mixed feelings about helping out on Minams wedding day.

We also learn another interesting dynamic about Upasana herself. She is technically not from the North-East, and is in fact a Nepali. Due to this, she faces passive persecution within her own community of friends and not all of them accept her as their own. But when someone is finally required to step up and prepare the elusive Axone, it is fittingly Upasana who volunteers and helps out!

There is also a parallel comedy track of sorts following the character of Shiv and his misadventures in trying to help Upasana and her friends. Some of these scenes are mildly irritating but one of them is really hilarious and had me in splits. This involves a pediatrician who apparently never has use for a BP machine. Ask him why, and he says Bachche tension lete nahin hain, sirf dete hain (kids dont take tension, only give tension)!

Axone is a heart-warming film that is to the point and also entertains at the same time. As mentioned before, it attaches high social relevance to itself due to the times we live in today, where movements like #BlackLivesMatter have spread rapidly around the world, condemning racial discrimination in any form. I was lucky enough to have had the chance to travel to the North-East as a teenager, and the only thing I remember from the trip is the overflowing affection and friendliness that greeted us everywhere we went. Axone is that communitys friendly way of telling us, that if we couldnt even bear the smell of their favourite dish getting cooked, its our own hearts that are actually rotten!

Shrikanth is a Chartered Accountant, who keenly follows and writes about cinema when he is not crunching numbers or balancing ledgers! You can find more of his work at Non Linear Plot

Also read:

Eeb Allay Ooo: A brilliant social satire

V1 Murder Case: An Interesting Study of Genre Subversion

Paatal Lok: A brave, engrossing thriller

Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal: An ode to Mani Ratnam's Thiruda Thiruda

Oh My Kadavule: A fitting tribute to Gautham Menon

Nerkonda Paarvai: A study in Pink

Death and the Kazhugu franchise

Iru Dhuruvam: A Tamil web series that stands out in many ways
The West Bengal government has convened an all-party meeting on Wednesday to discuss the coronavirus situation in the state, a senior minister said. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will preside over the meeting, which is likely to be attended by leaders of all political parties having representation in the state assembly, the minister said on Monday.

The meeting will be held at the state secretariat Nabanna on Wednesday afternoon.

Speaker Biman Banerjee will also be present in the meeting, he said.

"Apart from the coronavirus-related situation, discussions will also be held on the lockdown in the state. Some political parties have been asking for an all-party meet, so it has been decided to hold one such meet where exchange of views can take place," he added.

The West Bengal government had convened a similar meeting to hold discussions on the pandemic in March just after the nationwide lockdown began.

Total 555 people infected by the coronavirus died in the state till Sunday, while the positive case tally reached 13,531, according to the health department.

The state government has been facing flak from the opposition over the alleged mishandling of the outbreak, which the ruling party has rubbished as baseless.
Relatives of the victims of the Stardust nightclub disaster have made fresh calls on the incoming government to finally fund an inquest into the tragedy.

A group representing the victims' families have stated that political leaders have previously committed to ensuring that there is no delay in establishing an investigation.

The disaster saw 48 people lose their lives in a fire at the former venue, in Artane in Dublin, during a Valentine's night disco 39 years ago.

Families say they have had no communication on the matter, and they want to know that they have the support of the incoming government, and the new Taoiseach.

Survivor and spokesperson for the relatives, Antoinette Keegan, has said that they have waited long enough.

"Nobody is telling us anything, and this is a long-standing issue. So, we're looking for confirmation from the Taoiseach, that this is not going to be ignored this time, that it will be put into place, and that the victims that perished in the Stardust disaster, will get truth and justice, because that's what we've been waiting for, for so long."

The Stardust Victims' Committee have long been calling for funding into an inquest, with Keegan speaking in January on the imperative for families to gain closure, as the fortieth anniversary approaches.
Seoul, June 22 : South Korea said Monday that it plans to launch a 1 trillion-won ($825 million) fund and sharply cut red tape in order to help local players better compete with global media giants like Netflix and YouTube.

Under the plan, the local media market will be valued at 10 trillion won by 2022, and its exports will top 13.4 trillion won, according to the ICT Strategy Council.

The fund and eased regulations will help local players better respond to the fast-changing business environment, the council said.

The regulator will scrap ceilings on market share for system operators (SO) and internet protocol television (IPTV) services, and it plans to introduce a notification system for broadcasting fees as an alternative to the current system of state approval only.

Local video streaming service providers will also be allowed to rate content, reports Yonhap news agency.

The 1 trillion-won fund will be spent to create high quality content, as well as make greater use of artificial intelligence in the creation of media materials.

By 2022, some 41,000 public WiFi networks will be available at community centers and various other public places, according to the council.
Photo: stock.adobe.com

When I wrote my last column, we had just learned that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) had announced changes to their policies. In a nutshell, the three changes are:

Lowering debt service ratios used to qualify insured mortgages

Increasing the minimum credit score required

Eliminating the borrowed down payment program

These changes are significant because clients who put down less than 20 per cent when they purchase a home must qualify for default insurance, which is what CMHC provides.

There are two other companies that provide mortgage default insurance: Genworth and Canada Guaranty. Both Genworth and Canada Guaranty have announced that they would not be changing their policies at the current time.

Since CMHC announced its policy changes, we have had bulletins from multiple lenders outlining how they will be handling new applications. Lenders have the ability to choose which company they use, so for the time being it is business as usual for clients that require slightly higher ratios.

Ive had conversations about this rule change with most of my clients that are actively house shopping. Ive also informally polled a few other brokers and friends as to their thoughts on tighter qualification guidelines.

My clients in northern B.C., for the most part, will be less impacted by a tightening of mortgage rules. On average, incomes are higher and home prices are proportionately lower.

In the Okanagan, I am glad that we still have Genworth and Canada Guaranty as options because I see more clients needing to purchase homes that put them at the top of their debt servicing.

This disparity has led to some rather thought-provoking conversations.

Its all well and good to tell clients what the maximum mortgage amount they qualify for is. It's quite another to tell them what their actual mortgage payment will be at that price point.

When working with clients on a pre-qualification and rate hold, we discuss what their new payment will be. One of the tips Ive shared is trying to tuck that amount away monthly into a savings account for four to six months to see if the higher shelter payment truly works for the clients.

Those conversations were often the springboard into discussions of how differently people handle their finances.

Some people will turn a nickle over half a dozen times before parting with it, while others are more about immediate gratification. Ive seen clients who are making less income scratch and save to put together a down payment and seen others who make significant income unable to save what they need to buy a home.

The last few months have given us a glimpse into how we will make it through unexpected financial crises.

In one of my columns I talked about how changing habits like buying daily coffees can really impact our savings accounts. As I am starting to slide back into old habits I can definitely see the change in my account.

How does this all tie together?

Smaller mortgages would (in theory) mean that people are better able to save and have adequate resources available to carry them through income interruptions. Smaller payments would (in theory) mean people could potentially tough it out a little longer than if responsible for larger payments.

From a professional perspective, I am glad that Genworth and Canada Guaranty have decided not to follow CMHCs changes. I wont be surprised to see them change down the road.

In the meantime, while chatting with clients about their pre-qualification amounts I am also discussing the ratio changes and how those changes would directly impact them if for some reason we needed to use CMHC for their default insurance.

Being over-extended and feeling stressed about finances all the time is not a fun way to live. If you are thinking about buying a home (particularly if that home is a mobile / manufactured home) over the next few months, make sure you connect with your mortgage person to see if you may be impacted by the CMHC changes.

On a more positive note, it feels like more people are out and about buying homes. Lenders have had a few months to adjust to new protocols for their employees.

Starting to feel like it is back to mortgages as usual.
[June 22, 2020] KBRA Assigns Ratings to Olympic Bancorp, Inc.

Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigns a senior unsecured debt rating of BBB, a subordinated debt rating of BBB-, and a short-term debt rating of K3 for Port Orchard, Washington based Olympic Bancorp, Inc. ("OBI", "Olympic" or "the company"). In addition, KBRA assigns deposit and senior unsecured debt ratings of BBB+, a subordinated debt rating of BBB, and short-term deposit and debt ratings of K2 for Kitsap Bank, the lead subsidiary. The Outlook for all long-term ratings is Stable. Olympic's ratings are supported by solid operating performance, driven principally by a favorable core net interest margin that benefits from significantly better than peer deposit costs (0.12% in 1Q20), as well as negligible credit costs. The company's ROA tracking above 1% reflects a competitive dynamic driven by a balanced synergy between its enviable funding costs and comparatively higher yielding assets. Further, Olympic's financial soundness is illustrated by its performance through the cycle, having been amongst a select group of banks that did not participate in TARP. The company's ratings are constrained by a spread-reliant revenue stream with fee income sources generally contributing less than 20% of total revenues. Additionally, the company's efficiency measure (in the low-70% range) appears higher-than-peer, largely stemming from its high touch service model, though partially attributable to relatively limited scale. That said, the company continues to focus on expense control. Also, the aggregate CRE exposure remains elevated, though manageable. Further, KBRA considers the company's credit culture as conservative, with effective risk management practices in place that have supported solid long-term asset quality performance, executed by a seasoned management team. Olympic operates in a geographically narrow and economically uniform footprint that limits the company's organic loan growth opportunities in some respects, while increasing the institution's susceptibility to a regional economic downturn. KBRA continues to monitor the potential direct and indirect effects of the coronavirus on the banking sector. Please refer to our publication U.S. Bank 1Q 2020 Ratings Compendium for our latest thoughts.



The ratings are based on KBRA's Bank & Bank Holding Company Global Rating Methodology published on October 16, 2019. Click here to view the report. To access ratings and relevant documents, click here.

Disclosures Further information on key credit considerations, sensitivity analyses that consider what factors can affect these credit ratings and how they could lead to an upgrade or a downgrade, and ESG factors (where they are a key driver behind the change to the credit rating or rating outlook) can be found in the full rating report referenced above. A description of all substantially material sources that were used to prepare the credit rating and information on the methodology (inclusive of any material models and sensitivity analyses of the relevant key rating assumptions, as applicable) used in determining the credit rating is available in the U.S. Information Disclosure Form located here. Information on the meaning of each rating category can be located here. Further disclosures relating to this rating action are available in the U.S. Information Disclosure Form referenced above. Additional information regarding KBRA policies, methodologies, rating scales and disclosures are available at www.kbra.com. About KBRA KBRA is a full-service credit rating agency registered as an NRSRO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, KBRA is designated as a designated rating organization by the Ontario Securities Commission for issuers of asset-backed securities to file a short form prospectus or shelf prospectus. KBRA is also recognized by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners as a Credit Rating Provider and is a certified Credit Rating Agency (CRA) with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Kroll Bond Rating Agency Europe Limited is registered with ESMA as a CRA. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005704/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Two of the experts behind Australias COVID-19 strategy say Victoria should consider a hard lockdown of up to eight weeks or brace for continual outbreaks and last-minute changes to restrictions until a vaccine is created.

As the state experiences a rise in cases out of step with the rest of Australia, with 117 new cases recorded in the seven days to last Sunday, experts who prepared a special government report say they were not surprised by Victorias decision not to proceed with a planned relaxation of restrictions.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Credit:Getty Images

In April a team of 100 experts, at the request of the federal government, proposed two strategies to recover from the coronavirus pandemic: suppression of the virus with restrictions gradually eased sooner, or a hard lockdown until late June to attempt to elimination the virus. The national cabinet chose the former, with the hope that it might result in elimination.

At the weekend, Victoria became the first state to reintroduce some restrictions.
The number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases across the country per day has reached more than 26,000, up from about 21,000 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over 120,000 deaths in the U.S. have been blamed on the virus, the highest death toll in the world.
A trainee accountant at one of the world's biggest firms was sacked after accusing her boss of 'mansplaining' when he asked her to wear smarter clothes to work.

Zhihui Lu, 26, joined KPMG as an audit assistant in 2015 after graduating from Durham with a degree in accounting and finance - but within two years bosses were raising concerns about her performance as well as her erratic behaviour.

On one occasion Miss Lu asked manager Matt Brunton 'who was he as a man to be telling her what she can and cannot wear?' after she turned up at the firm's Canary Wharf office in London wearing jeans and a jumper.

In a 'loud and aggressive tirade' she then asked whether he thought her bra was appropriate and tried to show him her bra strap, an East London tribunal was told.

The 'completely inappropriate' outburst was just one of a number of incidents of misconduct that led to Miss Lu being fired after just three years at the accounting giant, the panel heard.

After being taken on as a graduate trainee she was accused of being overly aggressive, emotional and rude and was repeatedly warned about her behaviour.

Miss Lu was suspended and eventually sacked in November 2018 for gross misconduct, and she took the firm to tribunal claiming they had discriminated against her.

But the panel sided with KPMG and dismissed her claims for unfair dismissal, harassment, and disability and race discrimination entirely.

Zhihui Lu joined KPMG as an audit assistant in 2015 after graduating from Durham with a degree in accounting and finance - but within two years bosses were raising concerns about her performance as well as her erratic behaviour

The panel heard Miss Lu had ignored requests to stop taking too much food for herself from lunches laid on for staff and on one occasion turned up with containers so she could remove as much as possible.

She also refused to sit on the same floor as the rest of the Insurance team, commandeering a meeting room five floors below in which she installed a rice cooker.

She repeatedly referred to a senior member of the firm as 'the bald partner' despite knowing his name, and told a female colleague she 'looked terrible' at work, the panel was told.

Since leaving the company Miss Lu uploaded a YouTube video parody of PewDiePie's song 'Congratulations'.

In the PewDiePie version, the popular YouTuber sarcastically congratulates rival channel T-Series for taking his spot as the number one content creator on the site.

In Ms Lu's parody, she congratulates KPMG in a similarly sarcastic manner and accuses the company of starting by selling 'dirt cheap services' and having 'a billion Caucasians' - with the original song playing in the background.

She posted the lyrics to her parody in the description of her video.

They read: 'Ayy congratulations, to your corporation, guess to beat one SG gal you need a billion Caucasians. Yeah, you did it very nice, and all it took was a massive corporate entity with every law firm in the big smoke.'

One verse's lyrics are written: 'KPMD can eat a stickytofu! (Still not defamation) Suck my ducking SG noodles! (Still not defamation) Did you know that KPMDians don't even have poo-poo in their brains? That's a blatant racist lie. Yeah, but still not defamation!'

On one occasion Miss Lu asked manager Matt Brunton 'who was he as a man to be telling her what she can and cannot wear?' after she turned up at the firm's Canary Wharf office in London wearing jeans and a jumper

The tribunal heard Miss Lu responded to the news that she had missed out on a position she had been after by telling a senior manager she would have done better if she had slept with one of the firm's male partners.

On one occasion her managers at KPMG became so concerned about Miss Lu's mental health when they could not get hold of her one evening that they rang the police to check at her home that she was alright, an intervention that she later bitterly complained about.

In fact - as Miss Lu later admitted - she was out at the opera.

In the autumn of 2017 she went off sick from work having been diagnosed with stress and depression.

When she returned to work the following February at the firm's Canary Wharf office she prompted fresh concerns including over her choice of clothing.

The tribunal heard that Mr Brunton, a senior manager at the company, emailed her to ask her to dress more smartly.

'I noted you were in the office this afternoon in casual clothing,' he wrote. 'This is not appropriate attire for the office during working hours. Please ensure you are in the office in appropriate work attire going forward'.

The hearing was told this prompted Miss Lu to launch 'a loud and aggressive tirade against him' demanding to know 'if the bra she was wearing that day was appropriate, and trying him to show him her bra strap'.

She asked him 'Who was he as a man to be telling her what she can and cannot wear?' and then 'stormed off', the tribunal heard.

On one occasion Miss Lu asked manager Matt Brunton 'who was he as a man to be telling her what she can and cannot wear?' after she turned up at the firm's Canary Wharf office in London wearing jeans and a jumper

Miss Lu had said: 'I do not appreciate mansplaining on dress codes. Bras are clothing. My work wardrobe does not support such weather...May I know if I am able to expense winter clothing...to ensure that I dress to your desired taste?'

Mr Brunton emailed again to warn her, saying: 'I do not expect to see you in the office in casual clothing, such as jeans and trainers, during normal working hours.

'The firm expects employees to wear smart, business casual clothing - it does not support a policy of ''dress down''.'

Miss Lu replied: 'I do not appreciate mansplaining on dress codes. Bras are clothing. My work wardrobe does not support such weather...May I know if I am able to expense winter clothing...to ensure that I dress to your desired taste?'

Several weeks later, Miss Lu got into another argument after she was spotted helping herself to large amounts of food at a work lunch.

'She attended with a number of containers to put food into and made several visits taking away food in containers on each occasion,' the tribunal heard.

'Despite being asked not to take the food, she did not stop. On at least one occasion that day she was very rude to staff stating she was going to take the food notwithstanding their protestations.'

Miss Lu's bosses became so concerned at her behaviour that they asked her not to come in to the office until she could prove she was fit to work.
OTTAWA - The Mexican government says it will resume sending farm workers to Canada after securing promises for more inspections and oversight to curb outbreaks of COVID-19.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Temporary foreign workers from Mexico plant strawberries on a farm in Mirabel, Que., Wednesday, May 6, 2020. The Mexican government says it will resume sending farm workers to Canada after securing a promise of better working conditions to curb outbreaks of COVID-19. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

OTTAWA - The Mexican government says it will resume sending farm workers to Canada after securing promises for more inspections and oversight to curb outbreaks of COVID-19.

At least two Mexican men have died and hundreds more have fallen ill with COVID-19 in recent weeks on farms across the country.

The situation led Mexico to temporarily stop allowing workers to leave for Canada, sending shock waves through the agricultural sector, which is highly dependent on foreign labour.

But the Mexican government says it has now struck a deal with the federal Liberal government that will lead to improvements in the temporary foreign worker program.

In a press release late Sunday, Mexico says Canada has committed to increased inspections, as well as more support for Mexican officials and workers to identify and report unsafe working conditions.

A working group will also be set up with Mexican and Canadian government officials to deal with the issue.

In a letter to Mexico's ambassador to Canada, sent Friday, federal employment minister Carla Qualtrough says Canada is committed to ensuring the safety of people crucial to Canada's food security.

A copy of the letter was obtained by The Canadian Press.

It lays out some of the detailed options under consideration by the federal government, including assessments of farms where there have been outbreaks to see what instructions need to be improved, as well as increased inspections on farms where new clusters of COVID-19 infection emerge.

The federal government also promises to reach out to employers to make sure they are following all the rules that have been put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 on farms.

"In cases of significant non-compliance by employers of temporary foreign workers, strict sanctions will be applied," the letter says.

A spokesperson for Qualtrough said the government had no further comment and would let the letter speak for itself.

There are no timelines attached to the Liberal government's commitments, but the letter describes them as "short-term measures," and promises the government is exploring other options.

In their press release, the Mexican government said they appreciate that Canada was willing to work with them to find solutions, and the deal is evidence of the strong bilateral relationship between the two countries.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020.
LANSING, MI  Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has asked a judge to order that Enbridge stop all flow through its Line 5 crossing under the Mackinac straits pending review of newly disclosed damage to the controversial pipeline.

Nessel filed injunction and restraining order requests in Ingham County Circuit Court on Monday, June 22 after Enbridge resumed partial Line 5 operation this weekend. Enbridge shut the line down last week after finding significant damage caused by an anchor support.

Pipeline maintenance workers found the damage on Thursday. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asked Enbridge to keep the entire crossing shuttered until the damage could be investigated and reviewed by the state. Instead, Enbridge turned the undamaged part back on Saturday.

The pipeline splits into dual 20-inch crossings at Point La Barbe before ducking underwater. It rejoins at the companys McGulpin Point station. The damage is to the east leg.

To date, Enbridge has provided no explanation of what caused this damage and a woefully insufficient explanation of the current condition and safety of the pipeline as a result of this damage, Nessel said. We cannot rely on Enbridge to act in the best interests of the people of this state, so I am compelled to ask the court to order them to.

Whitmer issued a statement backing up Nessels action.

Enbridge resumed operation of the pipeline without any explanation of the cause for the damage to the pipeline structure or plan to prevent it from happening again. Moreover, Enbridge has not timely complied with the states request for full and complete information and resumed operation without even consultation, Whitmer said. This brazen disregard for the people of Michigan and the safety and well-being of our Great Lakes is unacceptable.

On Saturday, Enbridge said it inspected the pipelines west leg with a remote vehicle and found no damage to that side of the dual line. It resumed operation on that portion, citing approval to do so by the federal Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

Enbridge released a letter from CEO Al Monaco to Whitmer, in which the damage is attributed to a screw anchor assembly on the east leg that had shifted from its original position.

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy called Nessels new filings legally unsupportable, unnecessary, and (they) will be vigorously opposed.

Nessel said Enbridge provided some information about the damage on Monday, which her office described as brief reports of a few pages, which contained little content, few pictures, and left several critical questions unanswered, including the cause of the damage.

Nessel has asked Ingham Judge James Jamo to force Enbridge to turn over all information it has about the nature, extent and causes of the newly discovered damage. She requested operations of the pipeline be suspended until the state conducts a full review of the information provided with the assistance of independent experts.

The motions were made in a pending case in which Nessel has already been attempting to shut down Line 5, arguing the pipelines 1953 easement violates Michigans public trust doctrine and it should be considered an environmental hazard.

The damaged support lies 150 feet away from spots on the pipeline where protective coating had worn away and bare metal was exposed. That damage was discovered May 26, according to Whitmers office. The new damage was disclosed the same day Enbridge was fined $6.7 million by federal regulators over safety issues in its Lakehead Pipeline System, of which Line 5 is a part.

Enbridge is seeking construction permits from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this year to build a $500 million tunnel under the straits to house a replacement for the aging dual oil lines. Line 5 moves about 540,000 barrels-per-day of light crude oil and and natural gas liquids.

The 2018 deal Enbridge struck with former Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, to enable tunnel construction was upheld by his appointees on the Michigan Court of Appeals this month.

Democrats and environmental groups oppose the tunnel project out of concern that fossil fuel infrastructure contributes to climate change and Line 5 might burst before it is replaced. Those groups called for the temporary shut down to made permanent over the weekend and issued swift statements supporting Nessels action Monday.

In her injunction request, Nessel calls Enbridges damage report merely the latest in a troubling pattern of events in which the pipelines have been damaged, often without explanation, and without immediate detection or prevention by Enbridge. In 2017, Enbridge disclosed several areas of bare metal on the line larger than dinner plates the company had known about for three years. In 2018, Line 5 was struck by an anchor; a near-miss that dented the line but did not cause a spill. The strike did, however, rupture another companys power cable that leaked 600 gallons of dielectric fluid.

At present, no one is able to say whether this second impact was caused by an anchor strike or some other source, which itself is troubling, she wrote. A preliminary injunction is necessary to ensure that Enbridge is not the only party with access to the facts, and that an independent review verifies Enbridges conclusions.

Related stories:

Michigan seeks more info about Line 5 tunnel alternatives

Enbridge seeks tunnel permits amid pandemic

Protective coating on Line 5 pipeline worn away again
Bhopal, June 23 : An Air India flight AI-637 from Mumbai to Bhopal developed a technical snag in gear while landing at Bhopal's Raja Bhoj Airport on Monday night.

"There was some technical snag in the landing gear, but it landed safely," an airline official said.

The snag delayed the onward flight to Hyderabad and back to Mumbai by over two-and-a-half hours, the official said.

At around 9.40 p.m. on Monday, the flight left for Hyderabad with nearly 45 passengers including some for Mumbai. The official clarified that the flight has not made an emergency landing.
Apollo Tyres Ltd is quoting at Rs 111.6, up 2.39% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The stock is down 44.05% in last one year as compared to a 11.57% fall in NIFTY and a 14.17% fall in the Nifty Auto index.

Apollo Tyres Ltd rose for a third straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 111.6, up 2.39% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 0.99% on the day, quoting at 10346.3. The Sensex is at 35087.82, up 1.03%. Apollo Tyres Ltd has added around 20.84% in last one month.

Meanwhile, Nifty Auto index of which Apollo Tyres Ltd is a constituent, has added around 14.84% in last one month and is currently quoting at 6634.5, up 1.33% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 77.29 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 111.8 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark June futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 111.65, up 2.2% on the day. Apollo Tyres Ltd is down 44.05% in last one year as compared to a 11.57% fall in NIFTY and a 14.17% fall in the Nifty Auto index.

The PE of the stock is 12.25 based on TTM earnings ending March 20.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  President Rodrigo Duterte submitted his latest report to Congress on Monday, addressing challenges in aid distribution for families and workers in need, as well as efforts being done to ease travel woes.

Duterte's 13th report was released Monday evening, and acknowledged difficulties which have hampered the delivery of emergency cash aid in April.

According to the report, there were five major factors in the delay:

- continuous requests from local government units (LGU) to include or specify a number of sectors in the list of beneficiaries to the extent that some refuse to help the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and expressed unwillingness to receive funds and implement the social amelioration program

- continuous requests from LGUs to increase the number of beneficiaries in a sector, and to download additional funds for families who are not in the existing lists

- harassment, threats, and insults received by DSWD and LGU personnel

- exposure of some DSWD and LGU personnel to COVID-19 positive individuals leading to quarantine measures

- postponement of payouts due to increasing number of infected and exposed individuals in the community

The report said the average waiting time before cash aid reaches beneficiaries is from four to seven days depending on the number of recipients, however this was extended because of the mentioned challenges.

The same bottlenecks in the implementation were considered in the drafting...of the guidelines for the implementation of the SAPs for the second tranche.

Speaking to CNN Philippines on Monday, DSWD spokesperson Irene Dumlao said that 1.3 million beneficiaries have received cash aid in the second tranche of SAP which started last week.

Dumlao said the beneficiaries are from identified enhanced community quarantine areas.

These areas are in the National Capital Region, Region III (Central Luzon) except for Aurora province, Region IV-A (Calabarzon), Benguet province, Iloilo province, Pangasinan province, Cebu province, Bacolod City, Davao City, Zamboanga City, and Albay province.

The deadline for aid distribution was initially set for June 23, but was moved to June 25.

Dumlao said DSWD officials are discussing what could be done in case the deadline is not met, but said the department was doing its best to distribute aid in the quickest and most efficient way possible.

Easing of transportation woes

The President's latest report also includes measures which the government is taking to give commuters more options to get to their destinations, especially since more industries are being allowed to open as more areas have eased into general community quarantine.

Among the methods implemented by the Department of Transportation (DOTr) is the use of cashless transactions to limit human-to-human interactions.

The consolidation of bus franchises and rationalization of bus routes will also be in place in Metro Manila. A bus augmentation program has been made available for passengers using the MRT-3.

The DOTr along with the Metro Manila Development Authority and Department of Public Works and Highways has also started the construction of protected bike lanes along EDSA to give cyclists the option to use this type of transportation without compromising their safety.
Azerbaijan attaches great importance to cooperation with the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, Azerbaijani Minister of Finance Samir Sharifov said.

He made this remark during the 22nd annual meeting of the governing board of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, held in the format of videoconference on June 18.

Minister highly appreciated the banks activities and achievements in 2019, noting that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to cooperation with BSTDB.

Moreover, he stated that banks country strategy for Azerbaijan for 2019-2022 has made an important contribution to the development of this cooperation.

Sharifov highly appreciated the fact that last year BSTDB was the first international financial institution in the country that placed securities in local currency, and stressed that as founding country Azerbaijan will continue to support banks activities.

Emphasizing that the coronavirus pandemic has created new problems for all countries Sharifov stressed the need to amend the "Medium-Term Strategy and Business Plan for 2019-2022" adopted by the bank last year in line with these problems.

Furthermore, he informed that comprehensive preventive measures have been taken under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev to prevent the coronavirus pandemic, protect public health and ensure economic stability by quickly responding to the threats of pandemic and global crisis.

Additionally, during the videoconference the banks financial and audit reports for 2019 were approved and it was decided to use the net profit earned in 2019 to increase the banks capital

The meeting was also devoted to support member countries in overcoming the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the bank's budget for 2020, the results of the country's strategies, further expansion of existing opportunities and capacities in banking and business among member countries, more active lending to small and medium enterprises.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank is an international interstate financial and credit organization that was established in 1999 by member states of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization - Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Greece and Ukraine.

BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation, participates in lending to projects in the public and private sectors in member countries, opens credit lines, provides investment and guarantees, and finances trade.
India on Monday condemned the abduction of a Sikh community leader in Afghanistan and said the targeting and persecution of minorities by terrorists at the behest of their external supporters is a matter of concern.

Nedan Singh was kidnapped by unidentified persons in Tsamkani district of Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan last week. He was employed as a helper at a gurdwara.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, We strongly condemn the abduction of Mr Nedan Singh, a leader of the Hindu and Sikh community of Afghanistan by terrorists.

The targeting and persecution of minority community members by terrorists at the behest of their external supporters is a matter of grave concern.

Srivastava didnt name any country for being behind the abduction though his remarks pointed the finger at Pakistan, which has long been accused by India of backing terror groups active in Afghanistan.

India is in touch with the government of Afghanistan for ensuring the safety, security and well-being of the minority community in Afghanistan. We hope that the government of Afghanistan would be able to secure safe and early release of Mr Nedan Singh, Srivastava added.

The abduction comes months after nearly 30 members of the Sikh minority were killed in a terror attack on a place of worship in Kabul on March 25. That attack was claimed by the Islamic State though officials have said the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba were linked to the deadly assault.

Afghanistans Sikh minority has dwindled to a few hundred families after being targeted by the Taliban and other groups in recent decades.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Zelensky stressed that Ukrainians and Canadians are united by long historical relations.

Visa liberalization on the part of Canada would be an important step for Ukraine in strengthening relations between the two countries, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

"Our people need to feel equally free, simple, open  both Canadians in Ukraine and Ukrainians in Canada. That is why we are talking about liberalization. It seems to me that [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin [Trudeau] supports this direction, and I want to bring this moment closer step by step," the president said, according to his press office.

Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that economic relations between Ukraine and Canada develop in real steps, not in words. In particular, this concerns the solution of problems of the Canadian company Black Iron, which wanted to invest in a mining and processing plant in Kryvyi Rih.

"I know this very well, because I am from Kryvyi Rih and this is the investment in my hometown. This problem has been 'hanging' for 10 years, but it is such a big investor. The size of the investment is $1.1 billion. They could not enter Ukraine," the president said.

According to the head of state, now this issue is almost resolved.

"It will be a very big cooperation. After all, this is more than a billion of investment in Ukraine, it is very important for Canada, for Black Iron, and it is important for us," Zelensky stressed.

Read alsoZelensky sees all countries seeking seat on UNSC for 2021-2022 as Ukraine's partners

The president also noted that Ukraine and Canada were united by a great tragedy  the downing in Iran in January 2020 of a passenger liner operated by Ukraine International Airlines.

"Different things in life unite. Unfortunately, tragedies as well. At the time, we were working with Justin. We had a lot of communication, and we were able together with American partners to make Iran admit that they are guilty of this tragedy. Now the investigation continues. At that time, the Prime Minister and I talked several times, at some point it was several times a week, and we solved really important problems," the President said.

Zelensky stressed that Ukrainians and Canadians are united by long historical relations. He thanked the representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada who collected humanitarian aid for Ukraine at the beginning of the war in 2014.

"I think that it is in such difficult times that this closeness, which is at the genetic level between countries and nations, is manifested," the president said.
For America's first 200 or so years, corporations wanted to operate free of government restraints, believing that those restraints interfered with profits and innovation. In the last two decades, though, guided by a massive influx of mid- and upper-level employees steeped in college Marxism, corporate America has decided that the government is its best friend and is working in concert with the media and the Black Lives Matter movement to squeeze ordinary Americans. J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, expanded on this profound and un-American problem in a conversation with Tucker Carlson.

One of the modern left's most spectacular tricks has been to make people believe that the Nazis were "right-wing." They were, in fact, left-wing, and their political system was a form of crony socialism.

The Nazi party's full name was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party." Where Nazi Germany differed from a hardcore communist country was that the government didn't nationalize the means of production. It allowed businesses to stay in private hands  as long as they were ultimately subordinate to the state.

The socialist system the Nazis used is "fascism." The fascist form of socialism originated in 1920s Italy under Benito Mussolini. Mussolini defined socialist fascism as "all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

The reason leftists got away with re-defining Nazism as an ideology allied with liberty-oriented conservatism, rather than socialist Democrats, is that Hitler eventually attacked the Soviet Union. The Democrat party syllogism is that, if communism is "left" and Hitler went to war against the communists, then fascism must be "right," and "right-wing" politics must, therefore, be evil. The reality is quite different.

Hitler hated communism, not because it was the opposite of his fascist socialism, but because it was too similar. Both systems agreed that the government should control the economy and how people thought and acted. Had Hitler avoided his monomaniacal nationalism and race-based insanity, which led to world war and genocide, Nazism would have been just another oppressive government in a world filled with totalitarian systems.

In America, we're seeing our own version of big businesses allying with the party of total government because they see it as a way to increase profits. That's where the J.D. Vance interview comes in:

In the interview, Vance points out that big businesses, thanks to their manic virtue-signaling, have been squarely behind the riots. (The same analysis, by the way, applies to the lockdowns, which have devastated small businesses, while strengthening the big ones.)

If you think about a business, black-owned or white-owned, that was destroyed in a riot over the last few weeks, who gets richer from that? We know that Amazon has a little bit more market share. And so Jeff Bezos makes a little bit more money. If you think about what prevents new businesses from coming online and competing with those mega-corporations that rule our financial world, well, every time a small business gets denied for a loan, every time a small business goes out of business, that's obviously good for the folks who run our corporate culture. And at the end of the day, what are we not talking about right now that we should be talking about? We're not talking about the opioid epidemic, which kills 70,000 people still in this country. We're not talking about concentrated financial power, which is the biggest problem that white and black middle-class Americans face today.

America's biggest corporations are siding with the party of big government because, as the Nazi-era companies discovered in the 1930s, having the government send customers your way, and squish your competition, is a much easier way to guarantee profits than to have to rely on the free market. We saw this trend develop during the Obama administration when it was picking winners and losers with the stimulus (remember Solyndra?) and attacking businesses it deemed politically troublesome.

This government-partnership profit motive syncs well with the current mid- and upper-level management in American corporations: people who graduated from colleges that have become harder left with every passing day. Upper-level managers who graduated from college in the 1970s and 1980s are supervising radicalized recent college grads who are aggressively pushing the corporate culture to the left. The younger generation still wants the profits, but its values are in alignment with the equally radicalized Democrat party. Fascism is the perfect fit.

Trump has been trying to defeat this trend by cutting regulations and encouraging businesses to break free of government. However, leftists in the media and politics, driven both by their leftist ideology and their indebtedness to the communist Chinese, have been pushing hard in the other direction.

Just to make things a little more unnerving for you, this time around, unlike the last time around (from 2008 through 2012), the Democrats have managed to throw violent racist animosity into the mix. It's up to the Normal Americans (as Kurt Schlichter calls us) to start supporting small businesses and not big corporations, and to pull together as one people, regardless of race, rather than allowing this generation's leftists to use racial scapegoating as a path to tyrannical political power. As we know, that path never ends well for anybody.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, June 22, 2020 19:15 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a40660bf70b 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,novel-coronavirus,wedding,wedding-ceremony,KUA,Semarang,Central-Java Free

A couple in Semarang, Central Java, have lost family members to COVID-19 days after their wedding ceremony.

Semarang mayor Hendrar Prihadi said the wedding had not adhered to the health protocols issued by the Religious Affairs Ministry.

"The wedding ceremony took place four days ago. It was not carried out according to health protocols as the bride and groom invited more than 30 people," Hendrar said on Saturday as quoted by kompas.com.

On June 10, the Religious Affairs Ministry issued a circular allowing Muslims to hold wedding vow exchange ceremonies  a legal requirement to register a marriage  outside of local religious affairs offices (KUA) as the government eased COVID-19 restrictions.

Read also: From raincoats to video calls, COVID-19 adds unusual wrinkle to typical Indonesian weddings

The letter said couples were allowed to hold the ceremony at their home, at a mosque or in a meeting hall. However, a maximum of 10 people would be allowed to attend such ceremonies at home or at the KUA office. Ceremonies at mosques and in meeting halls would be limited to 20 percent of the spaces capacity, though not exceeding 30 people.

Hendrar said that after the wedding, the bride and groom's family members started to get sick one by one and that some had succumbed to their illnesses.

"I heard the groom's mother passed away, the father is also sick and is in critical condition. The bride's sibling passed away too," he said.

"Initial testing of nine people revealed that five people had COVID-19. However, we found many more family members with COVID-19 after we conducted contact tracing," Hendrar said, adding that some of the mosques staff members had also contracted the disease.

Read also: Indonesian couples hold off wedding plans for better days ... after COVID-19

He said the wedding had contributed to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Semarang.

Semarang had recorded 554 cases of COVID-19 with 112 fatalities as of Monday according to data from the city health agency.

The figure had jumped 136 percent from last Monday, when the city had recorded 234 confirmed cases of COVID-19. (nal)
Happy belated Fathers Day to all the dads out there. If you missed some of the features we published about fathers this weekend, you can find a few of them here:

 Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

Over the last couple of weeks, a Philadelphia Police supervisor has been receiving messages from younger Black police officers. They almost all follow the same theme. Heres one she shared with my colleagues Samantha Melamed and Dylan Purcell: Were not OK. Blue doesnt acknowledge us because were Black, and Black doesnt acknowledge us because were blue.

As protesters marched through the city decrying the police killings of unarmed Black people, Black officers feel caught in the middle, dealing with the justified anger of the Black community and the realities of working as a police officer.

Some of the citys 2,040 Black officers say the protests have heightened tensions within the department, which has a long history of racism and is currently fighting several discrimination lawsuits.

They make up a high school class unlike any other. The Class of 2020 came of age during a pandemic and a clamoring for racial justice. Here are the stories of 12 of those grads, sharing their hopes, dreams, and the lessons they have taken from a senior year no one could have seen coming.

What you need to know today

Through your eyes | #OurPhilly

Hows this for a Rocky quote to get your Monday going? Thanks for sharing, @jawn_photography.

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

Then George Floyds murder tripped a wire in my system. A wire that was disconnected for so long, I had forgotten how to feel something that came to the surface all at once: rage. Forty-two years of rage. Im sick of being reminded that we are different. And I cant breathe, either. I guess I am an angry Black woman, after all. And Im not hiding it.  writes Bethany Watson-Ostrowski, the owner of a multicultural catering and event planning company who also works for Vector Group Consulting, about her efforts to not be an angry Black woman in the suburbs and how thats now changed.

The mothers whose sons have died behind bars hope the public outcry for police reform reaches prisons, writes columnist Helen Ubinas.

Columnist Maria Panaritis writes about a 43-year-old father who kept flashing back to memories of his teachers in Upper Darby while watching his own children go through live-streamed education during the coronavirus pandemic.

What were reading

Billy Penn writes about when Rittenhouse Square was Phillys Gayborhood.

WIRED reports on an ingenious plan to make sure that the economy is protected from pandemics.

The XFLs season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, eventually leading to it all crashing down. ESPN reports how the demise of the XFL will impact the future of spring football.

Your Daily Dose of | A cellists tribute

At the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art earlier this month, Aijee Evans offered a tribute. Inspired by the shooting death of an 18-year-old who played the cello in West Philadelphia, Evans performed with her own cello. It felt like the world had stopped, Evans said to my colleague Brandon T. Harden. I felt all the emotions and wanted to put all of it into the music.

On Juneteenth, Evans performed at City Hall. And watch a video of that performance here.
The SeaBee Project will develop infrastructure, tools, and techniques to help map and study the Norwegian coastline in unprecedented detail

OSLO/ARENDAL, Norway - The new SeaBee project, funded by a NOK 60 million grant from the Research Council of Norway, is poised to help map the Norwegian coastline at a much more detailed level than ever before, while putting Norway at the forefront of drone research and monitoring infrastructure. Using drones, machine learning, and novel cloud storage solutions, SeaBee will develop a national centre for state-of-the-art environmental research, mapping, and monitoring of the nation's coasts. This will enable a much easier and cost-efficient operation than current day standards, facilitating research on changes in the coastline and its biodiversity.

"SeaBee brings together aerial drones and other high-tech tools to create an efficient, cutting-edge system for mapping the Norwegian coastline. This project will establish Norway as an international leader in drone research", says Kasper Hancke, senior researcher at NIVA and head of the SeaBee project.

The Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) is leading the SeaBee project, funded by the Research Council of Norway. Partners include research institutions, and businesses: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) , Norwegian Computing Center (NR), Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (HI), GRID-Arendal, Andya Space Center (ASC), and Spectrofly A/S.

"The Research Council of Norway is proud to fund this beyond-state-of-the-art drone-based infrastructure project, which will support the country's industry and research communities, enable better environmental protection, and enhance Norway's reputation as hub for innovation", says John-Arne Rttingen, chief executive of the Research Council of Norway.

During its initial five-year phase, SeaBee will build capacity and infrastructure in Norway for using drones in coastal and aquatic research and in mapping and monitoring of habitats, animal communities, water quality, and anthropogenic impacts. Work is now underway on the project, which will be centred in Oslo and Trondheim.

A key outcome of the SeaBee project will be improved understanding and management of Norway's coastal environment. By fitting sophisticated environmental sensors to small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), SeaBee will enable collection of high-resolution data at a large scale. With drones that fly 100 metres above ground, scientists can capture images with 1,000 times finer resolution than satellite images. SeaBee will also automate data collection and analysis, making the process more efficient and less costly. Data from the project will be shared broadly to benefit coastal industries, policymakers, environmental managers, researchers, and students.

This week, the official kick-off meeting is taking place both virtually and at Oscarsborg Fortress in Oslo. To celebrate the launch of the project, a contest will award a new drone for the best photograph featuring the name "SeaBee" portrayed in Norwegian nature.

For more information on the project, visit seabee.no

###
When Dr. Craig Spencer got on the New York City subway Monday morning following an overnight hospital shift, the emergency room doctor said all the people he saw were wearing masks.

"I think that people here remember how bad it was, really just a month, two months, ago and we don't want to go through that again," Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, said Monday on CNBC's "Closing Bell."

"We're hoping that everyone around the country learns the lessons that we unfortunately had to learn the hard way," Spencer said, as New York City enters the second phase of its coronavirus reopening while other states across the U.S. see a spike in cases.

New York City, the epicenter of the country's outbreak, has seen its daily count of Covid-19 cases fall dramatically from its late May and early April levels, when more than 5,000 new infections were frequently being reported each day. Daily cases have been under 400 for over a week, according to the city's health department.

Yet other parts of the country, such as Texas, Arizona and Florida, are seeing a rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks  some of which is due to increased testing capacity. But more than a dozen states are seeing a rise in coronavirus-linked hospitalizations, a metric that is less sensitive to the availability of testing, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project.

Spencer said he is observing positive signs in New York City's fight against Covid-19. "It's actually not so common that we're seeing Covid patients now in the emergency department," he said. "We're coming back to some type of normal in our emergency department."

But Spencer said he is worried by the increases in other parts of the U.S., where the landscape in some places is different from New York City's. The persistent existence of community transmission, particularly now in the warmer months, puts the U.S. in a precarious position entering the fall, he said.

"I'm quite concerned that we had this peak, that we've started to trend down and now we're going right back up again," said Spencer, who survived Ebola in 2014 after contracting it while working in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders.

"We all thought that the summer was going to be relatively lower spread, people would be outside. Most of these viruses decrease transmission in the summer. But we're going up, which I think sets the stage for a really bad fall and winter if we don't get this under control soon."
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Anchorage municipal officials said they are considering spending up to $22.5 million to buy property that would be converted to shelters and service sites.

The proposed ordinance for the purchases would use federal coronavirus relief funding designated for the municipality.

The properties under consideration include the Beans Cafe food service and shelter and a former Alaska Club building for use as engagement centres for homeless residents.

The city is also considering buying a Best Western/Golden Lion Inn for a treatment facility and an Americas Best Value Inn & Suites for housing and for resource distribution.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said Friday that the public would be involved throughout the process to address longstanding community problems.

There are hard choices in front of us, Berkowitz said. One of the choices we can make is doing nothing. But doing nothing at this point is a deliberative choice.

Berkowitzs chief of staff, Jason Bockenstedt, said the Americas Best Value property in Spenard has 100 rooms that could accommodate unsheltered residents and provide office space for social service agency workers.

The property would provide what Bockenstedt called bridge housing.

Bridge housing offers temporary accommodations while tenants search for permanent homes and address other life issues, often with the help of case managers.

The former Alaska Club building near the Old Seward Highway could accommodate up to 125 people in an overnight shelter in addition to serving as a daytime engagement centre, said Chris Schutte, Anchorage economic and community development director.

The coronavirus health emergency initially shifted the citys homeless shelter system away from the Brother Francis Shelter and Beans Cafe.

The city opened two sporting arenas as mass shelters to allow social distancing between cots. The Ben Boeke Ice Arena has since ended shelter services while the adjacent Sullivan Arena continues to accommodate up to 377 people.

For most people, the 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.
Afghanistan's interim foreign minister met with his Iranian counterpart on June 21 in Tehran as tensions persist between the two neighbors after the deaths in May of Afghan migrants at the border.

Iran's state news agency IRNA published a photo on June 21 of the meeting between Afghanistan's Mohammad Hanif Atmar and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, both wearing face masks.

The two-day visit aims to discuss "recent unfortunate events (and) find solutions to avoid them happening again," Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry wrote on June 20 on Twitter, without elaborating.

Atmar heads "a high-level delegation including Afghan political, economic and security officials," IRNA said, citing a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry released earlier.

The visit follows controversy over the May deaths of several Afghan migrants who were allegedly forced into a river by Iranian border guards and drowned.

Afghan officials claim the migrants died while they were illegally crossing into neighboring Iran from Herat Province.

Eighteen bodies, some bearing signs of torture and beatings, were recovered from the Harirud River while other migrants were reported missing in an incident that sparked anger and protests in Afghanistan.

One Afghan official said 55 migrants were forced into the river.

Iranian authorities have dismissed the claims, saying the incident occurred inside Afghanistan's territory.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered an investigation of the drownings, a move welcomed by the United States at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.

The meeting also comes after an incident earlier this month in the central Iranian city of Yazd in which three Afghans died and several others were injured after a car chase with police, Iranian media reported.

According to one Iranian official, the driver of the vehicle "defied police instructions and failed to stop at a checkpoint."

According to UN refugee agency UNHCR, around 3.5 million Afghans, including almost 1 million refugees, live in Iran.

Tens of thousands returned to Afghanistan after the start of the novel coronavirus outbreak, but as restrictions have eased in hard-hit Iran, many are again seeking work there.
New Jersey racetracks can reopen on July 2, the same day Atlantic Citys casino gaming halls can start taking in-person bets, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday as he further loosens restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Murphy said casinos and racetracks can reopen at 25% capacity Thursday, July 2, during his daily press briefing in Trenton. The racetracks can take bets in-person at their sportsbooks and lounges, as long as they follow gathering limits, he said.

The announcements come as New Jersey continues with Stage 2 of its reopening plan. July 2 will also bring indoor dining at 25% capacity. The current limit for in-door gatherings is 100 people.

As we move forward, we fully anticipate being able to increase the indoor number as we feel it is safe to do so, he said.

Murphy announced 27 new deaths and 359 new cases of the coronavirus Monday, bringing the states total to 12,896 deaths and 169,415 cases.

The state has slowly reopened nonessential businesses in recent weeks, beginning mostly with outdoor activities, which have lower risks of transmitting the virus. But Monday marked a shift as Murphy allowed hair salons and personal-care businesses to reopen. He has said malls can reopen next Monday.

Murphy said he will release more safety guidance for casinos, racetracks and indoor dining this week.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Amanda Hoover may be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj.
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday put the Chandigarh administration on notice after a plea was received from the citys private schools, challenging UTs move to allow schools to only charge tuition fee during the lockdown.

The high court bench of justice BS Walia has sought response from UT by July 1. The plea has been filed by Independent Schools Association Chandigarh, a body of 78 private schools of the city.

The body has sought quashing of the notification issued on June 3 by the UT adviser to the administrator under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, directing schools to collect only monthly tuition fee from students till further orders, without increasing it for the academic year 2020-21.

The schools were also directed to neither stop payment nor reduce the monthly salary of the teaching and non-teaching staff.

The association told the court that to ensure the students did not suffer, they had been making painstaking efforts in providing education and holding classes online. The members said the UTs orders were without competence, as though the fees could be regulated, the UT had no legislative power under the 2005 Act and the Punjab Regulation of Fee of Unaided Educational Institutions Act, 2016, directing schools to not increase the fee.

The schools said that the fee regulatory body was a lawfully created entity, and in case of violations, it was the body that must act against the violator, and not the education department, the court was told.
(Newser)  A long-standing statue of Teddy Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is coming down. This time, it's because the museum itself made the request of the city, reports the New York Times. The bronze statue, in place since 1940, depicts Roosevelt on horseback, with a Native American standing on one side of him and an African man on the other. The museum requested the move because the statue "explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior," says Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement, per ABC7. The city agreed, though there's no word yet on when it will come down. Museum officials stressed that they still celebrate Roosevelt himself as a conservationisttheir problem is with the statue. Roosevelt's family agrees.

story continues below

The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice, says Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the 26th president and a museum trustee. The statue "does not reflect Theodore Roosevelts legacy," he adds. "It is time to move the statue and move forward. The statue has been the target of protests and vandalism in recent years, and a museum press release notes that it "communicates a racial hierarchy that the museum and members of the public have long found disturbing." In the George Floyd protests, statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, along with Confederate leaders, have been pulled down. And in New Jersey, Monmouth University is removing Woodrow Wilson's name from its Great Hall, reports CNN. (Read more Teddy Roosevelt stories.)
A Siberian town is believed to have recorded the highest known Arctic temperature on record.

Verkhoyansk, which sits just inside the Arctic Circle, reported readings showing its temperature equal to that of Florida on June 20, with the mercury rising to 38C (100.4F).

The town, which sits 3,000 miles east of Moscow, has one of the world's most diverse climates, recording lows below -51C (-60F) and summer highs of around 20C.

But scientists had predicted the region would not see temperatures this high until the end of the century.

American weatherman for news channel CBS, Jeff Beradelli, highlighted the reading on Twitter, writing: "Likely the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic happened today.

"What's happening in Siberia this year is nothing short of remarkable. For perspective, Miami has only reached 100F (38C) once on record."

Records of Arctic temperatures began in 1885.

Experts said this weekend they believe the spike in temperature was caused by a combination of "zombie" wildfires - sparked by the embers of previous fires submerged in the ground - and a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification" which is caused by man-made carbon emissions.

The summer of 2019 saw the region's worst fires on record.

The Arctic Circle has seen a 50 per cent reduction in sea ice volume over the past four decades, and the town is not the first to see record temperatures. In 2019 the town of Markusvinsa in northern Sweden saw a reading of 34.8C.

Many reports in recent years have also warned that permafrost in Siberia is in danger of melting, which would release plumes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and potentially unearth long-forgotten diseases.
The agriculture ministry has devised measures to turn Vietnam into one of the worlds most 15 developed countries in terms of agriculture by 2030, and among the top 10 farm produce processing hubs.

browser not support iframe.

This is the goal set in the Prime Ministers Directive No. 25/CT-TTg on several tasks and solutions for developing agro-forestry-fishery processing and agricultural mechanisation.

Talking to the Vietnam News Agency, Nguyen Quoc Toan, Director of the Agro Processing and Market Development Authority (AgroTrade) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), said over the last 10 years, the processing industry has posted a considerable growth rate of 5-7 percent annually, helping to raise agricultural exports to 41.2 billion USD in 2019  ranking 15th in the world and second in Southeast Asia.

There are 7,500 businesses involved in agricultural processing across the country at present.

However, he noted, to achieve the target set in the directive, the processing industry must optimise local comparative advantages and tap into potential to make breakthrough development.

Firstly, processing facilities should be relocated to concentrated material supplying areas. Clusters of processing and sale facilities need to be developed in the localities and areas with large agricultural output, favourable conditions in terms of transports, logistics and workforce, and potential to become growth engines of their regions like the Mekong Delta, southeastern and northwestern regions.

The sector will also increase the proportion of intensive processing that generates high added value, Toan said.

Secondly, an open and optimal business climate will be created to facilitate investment in agricultural processing and mechanisation, the official noted, adding that the ministry will continue abolishing unnecessary administrative procedures and business conditions while perfecting specific investment attraction policies for each region.

Thirdly, international-level enterprises with high competitiveness will be developed to lead the domestic processing industry. Small- and medium-sized firms also need to be fostered to boost the purchase of raw farm produce, according to him.

Fourthly, the agricultural sector will step up developing science-technology and human resources, he went on, elaborating that more advanced and environmentally friendly technologies will be applied, and mechanical engineering companies will be encouraged to help with agricultural mechanisation, thereby forming smart farming models.

The MARD will also work with other ministries and sectors to develop human resources to prepare high-quality personnel for operating major processing plants, Toan added./.VNA
Time Span

Age and Author

Similar Stories

Role of Eve

Cause of Controversy

The Book of Genesis is the first book in the Bible, and Christians believe that it describes the creation of the world. It is one of the most often read and referenced books in the Bible. It is also one of the best known books. Even non-Christians are usually familiar with at least some of the stories out of Genesis. Noahs Ark; Cain and Able; and Adam, Eve and the Serpent have found their way into common vernacular. Hes a snake is, after all, a common insult for someone who is deceitful, and people of many religions may laugh about needing to build an ark when there has been a great deal of rain.The fame of Genesis, however, does not mean that people know everything there is to know about this ancient text. In fact, Genesis fame may keep some people from digging deeper into this portion of Scripture. The book is so well known that people mistakenly assume there is nothing new to discover about Genesis. Here are five things you didnt know about Genesis.The Book of Genesis begins with the creation of Heaven and Earth, the sun, moon, stars and life. It ends, however, with the death of Joseph. This means that Genesis covers nearly 2,300 years of Biblical history, the most of any book of the Bible by far. To put it in perspective, all the other books in the Bible, from Exodus through Revelation, cover just over 1,800 years.The many centuries that Genesis covers are not spread out evenly through the book. Genesis 1 through Genesis 11 covers roughly 2,000 years, the vast majority of which takes place in the Fertile Crescent. The remaining 300 years are covered by Genesis 12 through Genesis 50 and take place in Israel and Egypt.The age and authorship of Bible books is almost always being debated. Christians do not always agree on when Bible books were written and neither do religious scholars. The two groups rarely see eye to eye with each other on this either. There is usually, however, some form of consensus. Christians may agree on a rough timeline while religious scholars disagree. No group, however, can agree on when Genesis was written. Christian tradition often says that the Book of Genesis was written by Moses at roughly 1450 B.C., but others claim the book is even older. Religious scholars cannot come to a consensus either. Most scholars reject that Genesis was written by Moses, but many do hold that the book was written by figures that appear in the Bible. Two common theories for the origins of the Book of Genesis are that the book was written by either the Biblical prophet Ezra in the fifth century B.C. or by a member of King Solomons court in the 10th century B.C. if not by Solomon himself.These, however, are not the only theories researchers have about Genesis. Some people believe that Genesis was written at the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century. This would mean that Genesis would have been written at roughly the same time as religious scholars believe that Exodus was written. Unfortunately, there is no proof of Genesis age. Some of the oldest fragments of the text were found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but these only date to around 100 B.C., and most people, Christians and scholars, believe the text is far older than that.There are number of stories in Genesis that resemble myths from other cultures. Creation accounts and flood myths, for example, are found in hundreds of cultures across the globe and across time. No culture, however, has mythology as similar to Genesis as ancient Mesopotamia. The Enuma Elish is the most intact version of the Babylonian creation myth, and much of it sounds very similar to Genesis. In fact, some translations are nearly word for word copies of each other. Atrahasis is another ancient Mesopotamian myth and closely mirrors Noahs Ark. Like in the tale of Noahs Ark, a great flood is sent to wipe out humanity. A good man, Atrahasis, is warned of the coming disaster by the god Enki, and he builds an ark to survive the flood. Atrahasis brings his family and two of every animal onto the ark and so saves life.Christians have built up quite a bit of animosity toward the first woman. She is often seen as the original temptress, the reason for the fall of humanity and the birth of the original sin. Eve, however, falls victim to the common idea that a person does not need to continue studying what they already know. Christians know that Eve was a seductress who listened to the Devils lies. As such, they do not need to dig deeper into Eves story. This is unfortunate because Eve is not responsible for half of what Christians heap on her shoulders.The book of Genesis has two subtly different tales of Eden, but neither one holds Eve alone responsible for the original sin because Adam is with Eve when she is tempted by the serpent. The Book of Genesis says that When the woman saw that the tree was good for foodshe took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband who was with her. Adam was with Eve when the serpent spun its fabulous lie. He stood beside her and listened to the Devil, the same as Eve.Adam could have told Eve not to listen. He could have refused the fruit. Instead, Adam is just as entranced by the snakes lies as Eve. She simply happens to be the one standing closer to the tree and able to reach the fruit easier. Eve does not seduce Adam into taking the fruit. He shares it with her willingly.Few books have caused as much controversy as the Book of Genesis. Christians and atheists have pitted the creation account in Genesis directly against Darwins theory of evolution like a pair of fighting dogs. This mutual animosity has led to battles over what to teach in schools, name calling and court cases, one of which made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. It is also at the root of the erroneous assumption that science and religion are mutually exclusive.Christians and non-Christians alike may be familiar with the stories in the Book of Genesis, but that does not mean people know everything there is to know about this ancient text. After all, people never stop learning, and even in the most famous books, there is always something new to be learned.
Virgin Australia's administrator Deloitte has received binding bids from Bain Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners and now has one week to decide which has the best plan to relaunch Australia's bankrupt second airline.

Joint administrator Vaughan Strawbridge also revealed that the Foreign Investment Review Board had signed off on the two American private equity firms' bids, which came in on Monday.

Deloitte has one week to decide which bid is the strongest. Credit:AAP

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of the federal government on this front, he said in a statement.

Mr Strawbridge made no mention, however, of an eleventh-hour intervention by Virgin bondholders who are preparing an alternative proposal that would see the owners of $2 billion of bonds swap that debt for equity in a relaunched airline. Virgin collapsed in April with debts of $6.8 billion.
REGINA - The Saskatchewan government says it's disappointed the RCMP has declined to participate in a new measure aimed at preventing people from becoming victims of domestic violence.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/6/2020 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., on Friday April 13, 2018. The Saskatchewan government says the RCMP has declined to participate in a new measure aimed at protecting potential victims from domestic violence. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

REGINA - The Saskatchewan government says it's disappointed the RCMP has declined to participate in a new measure aimed at preventing people from becoming victims of domestic violence.

The province said legislation, dubbed Clare's Law, will come into effect next week allowing police services to warn someone about a partner's abusive past. Partners will be able to request this information from police and officers will also be permitted to share it with someone they deem to be at risk.

But the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice said the RCMP, which handles policing in most of rural Saskatchewan, won't be participating.

Justice Minister Don Morgan wrote a letter to the federal minister of public safety expressing his disappointment and asking Ottawa review the decision.

He said representatives from the RCMP have been involved in developing the legislation for a year and it wasn't until last week government officials were informed of the national force's position.

"We were caught off guard," Morgan said on Monday. "We don't know what their issue is. But I wish they would have raised it a year ago."

In a news release, the Saskatchewan RCMP said it continues to be supportive of the new law, but identified early on that there could be some problems for the force.

"Unlike municipal police services, the RCMP is subject to federal privacy legislation," the RCMP said. "The RCMP is continuing to look into the matter, and considering how best it can support Clare's Law objectives within its obligations under the federal Privacy Act."

The legislation is modelled after Clare's Law in the United Kingdom, which was developed after Clare Wood was murdered by a partner who police knew had a violent record.

Saskatchewan struggles with high rates of interpersonal violence. Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador have also introduced similar legislation.

Jo-Anne Dusel, executive director of the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan, said the law is intended for people at the beginning of a relationship who see red flags or hear concerns about their new partner's reputation.

Dusel, who worked on how Clare's Law could be implemented in Saskatchewan, said the RCMP's decision could create barriers for people living in rural areas.

Those living in rural communities already face higher rates of intimate partner violence and homicide, as well less access to shelters, she said.

"I understand that the RCMP is under a lot of pressure right now with other things that they are being questioned on including systematic racism, including their response to the Nova Scotia killer," Dusel said.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

"Turning down an opportunity to support individuals at-risk to share vital information that can be used for safety planning is the wrong decision."

Without RCMP participation, Dusel said municipal police services could face pressure responding to rural requests.

Dusel's association will be part of the committee that is to recommend to police whether a disclosure should be made, but police services will retain the ultimate authority around releasing any information.

She said the information could include someone's prior violent convictions or past police reports when officers responded to a disturbance, but no charges were filed.

The at-risk individual would have to sign a confidentiality agreement to only use the information for their own safety, and the information will only be communicated verbally, said Dusel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2020
People wait to get registered for the COVID-19 test at DRR Municipal Indoor Stadium in Vijayawada. (PTI)

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh continued to register a surge of Covid-19 positive cases with 477 fresh cases registered in past 24 hours on Sunday.

According to the health bulletin released by the health department as many as 24,451 samples were tested in the last 24 hours and 477 persons tested positive, taking the overall tally to 8,929. There were five deaths with three in Krishna district and one each at Kurnool and Chittoor districts increasing the toll to 106.

Of the 8,929 cases, 7,059 belong to the State, 1,540 from other States and 330 foreign returnees. As many as 4,516 are active positive cases and 4,307 have been discharged.

Hotbed Kurnool has reported 1,294 positive cases, followed by Krishna district (1,048) and Anantapur district (800).

Meanwhile, in the latest days count, 70 cases were in East Godavari district increasing its tally to 555 in which 258 are active cases. Around 66 cases were from Krishna district with its overall figure touching 1,048 and 559 being active cases.

As many as 58 cases were registered in Kadapa district with the figure going up to 388 and of which 246 are active cases. Five cases pertained to West Godavari district taking its total to 550. There are 440 active cases.

With 47 fresh cases apiece the figure in Kurnool touched 1,294 (528 active) while in Chittoor the total positive cases are 562 of which 284 are active cases.

In Visakhapatnam, 39 positive cases were registered thereby increasing the total to 300. There are 126 active cases. In Guntur there were 26 new cases, increasing the total 768 (256 active).

Nellore district registered 12 cases increasing the tally to 471 (224 active) while in Anantapur, 11mew cases took the figure to 800 (506 active).

Six positive cases were registered in Vizianagaram district increasing the total to 84 (53 active) while it was five new cases in Prakasam district taking the tally to 180 (83 active cases). There was no new case in Srikakulam district.

The positive cases of those returning from other States touched 1,540 (639 active) while with four new cases the figure of foreign returnees stands at 330 (278 active). The highest number of 293 positive cases pertains to Kuwait returnees.
RIVERSIDE  The mother who disappeared June 11 with her two young children has violated a Northumberland County court order by leaving Riverside, borough police say.

A judge on June 11 granted Sawsan Hadidi granted custody of the children with the provision she live at a residence in the 600 block of 11th Street in Riverside.

She and the children Danny, 4, and Dana, 3 months, disappeared about 4 p.m. the same day, Riverside police said.

They obtained an arrest warrant last week for Hadidi, 39, on charges of interference with the custody of children, endangering the welfare of children and concealment of the whereabouts of children.

According to their affidavit, Hadidi told the woman with whom she was approved to live that she was going to meet her Children and Youth Services caseworker but never returned.

She was seen the next afternoon taking items from a home in Shamokin from which the children had been removed May 29 but she was gone by the time police said they were notified.

Attempts were made to track Hadidi through her cell phone but they said she had turned it off June 11.

It was turned on for three minutes about 4:15 p.m. the following day and the phone was tracked through southern Pennsylvania and into Maryland, police said.

Hadidi is believed to be driving a purple 2012 Toyota Scion with Virginia registration UUA4239.

Children and Youth Services director Katrina Gownley said privacy issues prevent her from discussing the case or saying why the children had been removed from the home in Shamokin.

Riverside police have enlisted the assistance of federal marshals and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in an effort to locate Hadidi and her children.

Anyone with information on them is asked to call Riverside police at 570-275-4305. Callers who get the answering machine may either leave a message or call the communications center at 570-784-6300.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
The Supreme Court on Monday has allowed the Jagannath temple committee, state and central government to go ahead with the conduct of Rath Yatra 2020 in Odisha's Puri.

The Supreme Court on Monday modified its earlier order and allowed the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra in Odishas Puri to be held with the coordination of the Temple committee, State and Central government without compromising with the health issue pertaining to COVID-19. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde said that the apex court is only considering conducting the yatra in Puri and not anywhere else in Odisha.

SC had earlier stayed the annual Rath Yatra at Jagannath Temple in Puri, which is slated to be held on June 23, and all activities related to the gathering in view of the coronavirus pandemic this year. The top court today pronounced the order after hearing a batch of intervention applications seeking modification of its earlier order of staying the annual Rath Yatra at Jagannath Temple in Odishas Puri in view of COVID-19 pandemic.

The apex court, while disposing of the pleas filed in the matter, noted that the State can stop the yatra or festivities if they feel it is going out of hand and added that it was aware of the situation and has passed the order accordingly. Speaking to ANI, petitioners lawyer Pranay Kumar Mohapatra had earlier said that the pleas sought directions to allows holding of Yatra only at Puri, subject to some restrictions.

Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik will chair the Rath Yatra preparatory meeting at 5 pm today in Bhubaneswar. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/cYyY355LdR  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

Supreme Court has allowed Rath Yatra to be conducted in Puri, Odisha with certain restrictions. https://t.co/MhteNWUapm  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

Also Read: NDMA warns of floods in Bihar and Assam

Also Read: Maharashtra puts agreements worth Rs 5000 crore with Chinese companies on hold

According to Mohapatra, the plea said that Rath Yatra should be allowed to be held in Puri on its scheduled time and the entire district should be shut down completely.

People should not be allowed to participate in the Rath Yatra and the temple area should be barricaded around 3 kilometres. Odisha government has already conducted COVID-19 tests on 1,172 sevayats, which have come negative, he added. Mohapatra said that if the Rath Yatra is conducted by sevayats, there are fewer chances of coronavirus spread during the religious programme.

Also Read: NITI Aayog lists ten practices to combat Covid-19, recovery rate now at 55.7%

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Jay R. Jordan

A Houston firefighter is hospitalized in the ICU with COVID-19, the Houston Professional Firefighters Association said Sunday.

A crew member at the firefighter's station also tested positive, through it's unclear whether the crew member was also hospitalized.
New York's top federal prosecutor was fired two days after he refused to sign a Department of Justice letter critical of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for enforcing coronavirus lockdown rules that barred religious gatherings, but allowed 'Black Lives Matter' protests to occur.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Geoffrey Berman, who was removed from his position as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on Saturday, had objected to sending the letter Thursday, fearing it would strain relations between his office and the city.

On Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr abuptly announced plans to replace Berman, whose office was investigating President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

It was unclear what role, if any, the letter incident played into Barr's decision to remove Berman, The Journal said, though two sources told the newspaper that Berman's refusal aggravated Barr, who already viewed Berman as someone who was difficult to work with.

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was fired on Saturday, two days after he refused to sign a Department of Justice letter critical of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

Justice Department officials wanted Geoffrey Berman to sign on to a letter that criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio (pictured) for enforcing lockdown rules that barred religious gatherings, but allowed 'Black Lives Matter' protests to take place

Geoffrey Berman is photographed on Saturday, the day he agreed to resign so the Trump administration could appoint SEC Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to the top SDNY role

Geoffrey Berman was investigating Rudy Guiliani (left), the former New York City mayor and a personal lawyer to President Trump (right)

Some Democrats have called for the impeachment of Attorney General Bill Barr over Berman's ouster

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants an investigation into the removal of Geoffrey Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote a letter Monday to the Department of Justice's Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility head Jeffrey Ragsdale asking for a joint probe into Geoffrey Berman's ouster

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that President Trump was only involved in Berman's firing in a 'sign-off capacity'

Berman didn't go quietly when Barr sent out a press release saying Berman was 'stepping down,' in order to clear the way for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to take the top SDNY role.

Berman issued his own press release saying he refused to resign.

Only after Barr backtracked from his plan to handpick the acting U.S. attorney, allowing Berman's deputy Audrey Strauss to take the reins, did Berman agree to step down Saturday.

At Monday's White House press briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president was only involved in Berman's firing in a 'sign-off capacity.'

'Barr was working on a smooth transition and when Berman chose to repond in the way that he did [Barr] came to the president and the president agreed and fired this individual, Mr. Berman,' she told reporters.

She argued that the decision was more about keeping Clayton in government than getting rid of Berman, though didn't give an explanation for why Berman couldn't stay on while Clayton goes through his Senate confirmation.

A copy of the letter Berman refused to sign was made public by the Department of Justice Monday evening.

The letter, written to de Blasio on Friday and signed by Eric Dreiband, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, blasted the mayor for treating religious gatherings and 'Black Lives Matter' protests differently.

'In light of your support for and participation in recent protests in New York City, the message to the public from New York Citys government appears to favor certain secular gatherings and disfavor religious gatherings,' the letter read.

In an initial draft, Dreiband requests that de Blasio work with Berman on the city's COVID-19 policies, according to The New York Daily News, but the version released Monday scrubbed the reference of the now-fired U.S. attorney.

Dreiband and U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider put out a statement Monday and linked to the edited letter claiming de Blasio demonstrated 'a troubling preference for certain First Amendment rights over others.'

The mayor's spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein called the tactic 'dishonest even for the Trump Administration.'

Democrats have criticized the administration's handling of Berman's removal.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shared a letter Monday that he wrote to the Department of Justice's Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility head Jeffrey Ragsdale asking for a joint probe into Berman's ouster.

The top Senate Democrat wrote a letter Monday to'I ask that you review the reason for the removal of the U.S. Attorney Berman and whether he was removed for partisan political purposes, to influence an investigation or prosecution, or to retaliate for his actions in any specific investigation or prosecution,' Schumer wrote in the letter.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor in Trump's impeachment, told NBC's 'Meet the Press' the motivation for firing Berman was suspect, 'given the pattern and practice of both the president in seeking to use the justice system to reward friends, punish enemies, protect people he likes, and Bill Barr's willingness to carry that water for the president.'

Some Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have called for Barr's impeachment.

Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman who helped lead the Trump impeachment hearings last year, told CNN's 'State of the Union' that the Republican-led Senate would block any effort to sanction Barr.

'He certainly deserves impeachment. But again, that's a waste of time because the Republicans in the Senate won't look at that,' Nadler said.

The Senate, where Republicans hold 53 of 100 seats, would never vote for that so the Democrat-led House would have to pursue alternative measures, Nadler said, citing his proposal to cut $50 million in funding from Barr's personal budget.

Schumer's plan follows the mold of investigations that took place in 2006, during President George W. Bush's time in office, when a number of U.S. attorneys were removed.

'As the Attorney General was not truthful when he initially represented that U.S. Attorney Berman was "stepping down," this corrupt firing cannot be explained by cause and gives the impression that the President interfered in ongoing criminal investigations into himself and his associates,' Schumer wrote in the letter to Horowitz and Ragsdale.

'To help restore confidence in and prevent further abuses to the administration of justice, the American people deserve to know the truth,' Schumer said.
Indias ancient practice to maintain holistic health, Yoga today has made deep inroads throughout the world and even gained recognition from the UN General Assembly as International Yoga Day in 2014. Under the Narendra Modi Government, Yoga has gained further prominence.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the nation-wide lockdown has brought the focus on physical and mental well-being as well as building ones immunity. With gyms, fitness clubs and wellness spas shut down to prevent the virus from spreading, practicing Yoga at home is on the rise. Numerous celebrities sharing their Yoga routines on their social media handles has also added to its popularity. Reports show that videos related to health, Yoga and wellness have gained the highest traction during the lockdown period.

Social media influencers like Zareen Khan, an Indian mother who has become an inspiration with more than 29k views, and celebrities like Aashka Goradia, who has over 79k views on her videos, have come to the spotlight to promote yoga and fitness content.

Health and fitness related content has become very popular in companies such as Cult.Fit, Sarva Yoga, The Shilpa Shetty App, who have started their own business modules where they give solutions and ideas related to health & fitness and yoga to customers.

Sarva Yoga was launched with the value proposition of content being holistic and available in multiple languages by some really good instructors. It started with physical studios and went on to an App, which has now come to the forefront during this period. The app offers live and interactive virtual classes and a mechanism that gives users real-time feedback on their postures. Sarvesh Shashi, Founder, Sarva Yoga, said, During the lockdown period, traction for content aimed at weight loss, muscle toning and core conditioning has been the biggest motivator for our audience weight loss through yoga. We are also seeing 91 per cent of traction for live classes on App, but our Mind content has a better traction that any other content on the app.

In order to meet this demand, the brand has increased content creation during the lockdown and is actively ramping up spends towards building more content for music driven mindfulness as well as live sessions, not just for yoga workouts but also other aspects of wellness.

Similarly, Cure.fit/ Cult.fit, another company in the space of fitness and health, has also seen a traction of 7 per cent week-on-week in the number of followers on Instagram, with an average engagement of 3-4 per cent. To meet the demand, they pivoted to digital offerings quite fast, which enabled people to continue their fitness journeys without any interruptions by introducing celebrity-guided fitness classes on their app. In a bid to bringing fresh content across all formats, the company has roped in new celebrity faces as well.

Fitternity, an online fitness and wellness destination with a user base of 11 Million+ users across India, has seen an upsurge in the number of times a user works out during a week. Rajvee Gandhi, Senior Brand Manager, Fitternity observes, "earlier, it was observed that a user would workout 4 times a month but the number has now increased to 3-4 times a week, which is a positive sign towards inculcating fitness in their daily routine."

The platform has taken various strategic steps in order to keep their online offerings relevant and market them effectively by providing snackable fitness and wellness content on various brand communication platforms such as social media (Instagram, Facebook, etc), emailers, articles and more. They launched Fit-TV, a premium virtual fitness video streaming platform, providing users a series of workout videos by top celebrity trainers and fitness coaches in the country.

They have also expanded into wellness offerings, including diet consultation with mental coaching and meditation, and brought fitness and wellness classes to consumers at their homes and provided maximum flexibility.

Gandhi says, "a good number of users are availing OnePass Virtual, a digital version of Fitternitys prime product, OnePass. OnePass Virtual allows unlimited usage of Fitternity livestream classes and Fit-TV and offers users the flexibility of experiencing different classes as per their preference."

She adds, "The consumer response towards the new offerings has been highly encouraging and validating. Fitternity has witnessed an average of 7/10 users praising their interaction with the trainers on livestream sessions and narrating how it made their experience very similar to taking an actual physical class. Over 85% of users have expressed heartfelt appreciation towards Fitternity Livestream."

Initially, Fitternity created two business models that catered to the user needs of two unique segments - New World User (flexi-membership users) & Old World User (traditional gym membership users). Due to such dynamic needs of the consumer, Fitternity has been constantly working on its business models to devise enhanced fitness solutions.

Recently launched The Shilpa Shetty App has also seen increase in the number of subscriptions and engagement time. The App has claimed a significant jump in the number of daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU) during the lockdown. We are churning out programmes from our existing videos with help of experts. We are also focusing more on the needs of our consumers and hence, there is a lot of importance given to meditation, relaxation of mind, calming stress, sleep and anxiety management, along with quick, easy and short duration programmes to lose weight and tone the body, a company spokesperson said.

While influencers and yoga content creation houses are seeing a lot of traction with their content, are brands, too, keen on entering the yoga space? Fastrack is one such brand which started promoting home workout fitness and yoga as soon as the lockdown began. Ayushman Chiranewala, Marketing Head, Fastrack, claimed, Fastrack has seen about 60 per cent of engagement level going up on social platforms around fitness and health related activities. To meet the demand, they brought very unique and interesting content such as Flex with Reflex, where they invited friends to work out together virtually.

In a brief interaction with Adgully, Tarun Bhagat, Director, Marketing Hydration and Cola, PepsiCo India, speaks about the growing stress on fitness and wellbeing and what it means for brands.

What kind of engagement are you seeing with fitness & wellbeing content during the lockdown?

The global health challenge has forced people the world over to question what normal is, and what their individual priorities are in this new world. Fitness and wellbeing have taken precedence over everything else.

However, the nationwide lockdown has led to consumers find new ways to remain fit. Digital has been one of the most convenient platforms for people to get access to relevant fitness and wellbeing content during the last few months, and there has been a significant increase in consumption of the same. Majority of searches in the past few months have been about how to keep up your fitness/ well-being routines in the absence of gyms, extensive equipment, or even additional members present alongside.

We have seen brands, as well as sources of authority step up and create content that helps people keep up with their wellbeing and fitness goals, all in the comfort of their homes.

Have you experimented with branded content in the space of fitness/ health/ wellbeing and what did it accomplish for the brand?

Gatorade recently released a video with brand ambassador PV Sindhu, which encourages people who are at home to stay fit and invest in themselves. The video is a twist on our Nothing Beats Gatorade philosophy and encourages people to not just Work-From-Home, but also embrace the concept of Work-Out-From-Home as part of their daily routine. In the film, Sindhu is seen motivating consumers to exercise and stay fit while sweating it out, even as doors to normal places of exercise remain shut.

The digital forward campaign helped us reiterate the message that individual health should not take a backseat and people should try and take out time to work out from home and give due importance to their personal fitness. The video saw tremendous positive feedback with a reach of over 16 million.

In the new normal, do you see increase in adoption of fitness products/ solutions that can be delivered at home?

Physical and mental wellbeing is paramount, especially during times like these to ensure positivity and productivity. This is where virtual fitness regimes step in. As we embrace the new normal, consumers are more likely to stay indoors as much as they can and turn to experts online to help with their fitness regimes. We do anticipate an increase in interest for in-home health and fitness products as well as app subscriptions which aid the process of consumers well-being.
Passengers wearing face masks arrive at the Hankou railway station in Wuhan, China, on April 11, 2020. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese Authorities Arrest Citizen Journalist for Reporting About CCP Virus in Wuhan

Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who traveled to Wuhan to report on the outbreak of the CCP virus, was recently arrested, becoming the fourth known independent journalist to be silenced by authorities for attempting to document the effects of the pandemic.

Zhangs arrest was reported on June 20 by Weiquanwang, a Chinese website devoted to news about human rights activists. It stated that local authorities arrested Zhang on June 19, after the prosecutors office in Pudong, a district in Shanghai, approved her arrest on the charge of picking quarrels and provoking trouble.

It added that Zhang was being held at the Pudong New District detention center. Zhangs arrest also was reported by U.S.-based rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).

A month earlier, Zhang had gone missing. The police bureau in Pudong said in a May 15 notice that she was being detained, according to CHRD.

Paris-based nonprofit Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that as of May 26, she was still being detained in Shanghai.

Zhang, a Pudong resident, was a human rights lawyer until her license was revoked by local authorities after she had participated in a petition drive in 2017 that sought amendments on a local administrative law on lawyers.

After arriving in Wuhan in early February, Zhang became a video journalist, posting reports on her WeChat account, Twitter, and YouTube.

On May 13, Zhang posted a YouTube video in which she spoke in front of the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan. In the video, she criticized the local governments plan to roll out virus testing at $180 yuan (about $25) per person as too high a price, noting that locals had been under lockdown for months.

She added that while human rights have been trampled during the outbreak, people would likely be willing to foot the bill in hopes of proving they were virus free. In order to pass security checkpoints in many cities, citizens must present a mobile-app-generated code that proves they are virus-free.

She also called out intimidation tactics adopted by Wuhan authorities to try to control the spread of the virus, saying they were a sorrow of the country.

A day later, she went missing.

Rights groups had expressed their concern about Zhangs detention.

China professes pride in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but appears deathly afraid of allowing independent journalists like Zhang Zhan to freely tell the story of what is happening, Steven Butler, Committee to Protect Journalists Asian Program coordinator, said in a statement.

Chinese authorities should free Zhang immediately and allow her to continue the important work of documenting the impact of the disease.

RSF stated that the whereabouts of two independent journalists, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin, remain unknown, after they were both arrested in early February in Wuhan.

Another citizen journalist, Li Zehua, resurfaced in late April, posting a YouTube video saying he had been forcibly quarantined; he had gone missing for almost two months.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said she's received threats since March. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

As local health officers have been thrust into the spotlight amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number have become the focus of personal attacks, including Los Angeles County's Barbara Ferrer.

On Monday, as Los Angeles County announced it would reduce news briefings on the virus to once a week, Ferrer revealed details of written attacks and physical threats she has received over the last three months in response to the countys stay-at-home orders.

The death threats began last month, she said. During a public briefing streamed on the countys Facebook page, the health director said that her husband, children and colleagues noticed that someone had posted a message in the comments section that casually suggested she should be shot.

Ferrer did not say what prompted the threat or when the message was posted. But on May 13  the day she suggested during a Board of Supervisors meeting that the county would not fully reopen until Fourth of July weekend, setting off a torrent of complaints  more than 1,000 comments were posted on the briefing's video.

One person said Ferrer needs to stick her wet finger in a light socket, and another accused a different commenter of threatening to kill health officials, though that post appears to have since been deleted.

Public health officials throughout the state have received such threats and have been targeted because of restrictions implemented to slow the spread of the virus.

Ferrer said attacks against her have been received via email, public posting and letters since March, when the county enacted its safer-at-home order. She said that's one reason why she's handled the coronavirus briefings on her own: to shield the extraordinary team at L.A. County Public Health from these attacks.

It is deeply worrisome to imagine that our hardworking infectious disease physicians, nurses, epidemiologists and environmental health specialists or any of our other team members would have to face this level of hatred, she said in a statement.

Story continues

In L.A. County, the number of COVID-19 infections has surged past 86,000 and the death toll is more than 3,100. The county makes up the bulk of the states total number of infections and deaths.

We did not create this virus, Ferrer said about herself and the other health officials who have been setting the counties' reopening rules.

In Contra Costa County, Public Health Officer Chris Farnitano said in a podcast hosted by state Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) that he knows of several health officers across the state who are receiving additional security following threats.

We have stepped up security at our office and around my home, Farnitano said on Pans podcast, "Putting the Public Into Health," which was posted Monday. Its troubling.

Anti-mask activists have twice protested outside Farnitanos home in recent weeks.

My predecessor who had been in the role for 30 years expressed how he had never faced anything similar to this, Farnitano said. This is not something we expect as health officials trying to just make decisions for the publics health benefit.

In noting the continued fight against the outbreak, Ferrer reminded residents that face coverings are one of the best tools available.

A statewide requirement was set Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a week after Orange County rescinded its face mask order. That decision came after the county's health officer resigned following attacks and death threats similar to what Ferrer has received.

Ferrer said decisions have been driven by data, not politics.

As public health officials, we try hard not to be influenced by partisan politics or public sentiment  we must follow the science in order to save lives," she said. "And the science says if we dont change the way we go about our daily routines, we could pay for it with our lives or the lives of others around us.

Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
Valuable pay data just for Canadian Insurance Companies The 2020 Canadian Insurance Industry Compensation Survey will provide confidential, real-world comparisons to others in the market.

D. G. McDermott Associates (DGM.com) announces the second annual Canadian Insurance Compensation Survey, which will provide valuable pay data and analyses specific to insurance companies in the Canadian provinces.

Companies in this industry have not had sources for reliable, unbiased third-party salary and incentives data to help them benchmark their compensation plans against other firms. Most of the data available does not address compensation for jobs specific to Canadian insurance companies, says Don McDermott, owner and principal of D.G. McDermott Associates, a Red Bank, NJ, management consulting firm. The 2020 Canadian Insurance Compensation Survey is the first tailored for these companies and will provide confidential, real-world comparisons to others in the market.

The survey is sponsored by Victor Canada, a subsidiary of Marsh and McLennan companies. Participation is free and all participants receive a customized report covering Managerial, Professional and Support roles comparing their firms data to the other participating Canadian insurance companies. Comparisons cover base pay, commission and bonus data, and long-term incentives.

Enrollment is open until August 7, 2020.

Those interested in the survey can learn more and register for the survey at 2020 Canadian Insurance Compensation Survey or by calling D.G. McDermott Associates at 732.842.8634.

About D.G. McDermott Associates

Founded in 1985, D.G. McDermott Associates, LLC, is a management consulting firm that provides practical human resources and executive compensation programs to public, private and non-profit firms. The company is known for thinking outside the box and creating solutions that work in the todays challenging economy. McDermott Associates is based in Red Bank, New Jersey, and has served clients in the financial services, health care, durable and nondurable goods industries, as well as utilities and non-profits. For more information, visit dgm.com or call 732.842.8634.
Capitalism, Socialism and Productivity

The trade union movement claims that wages should be increased to enable the workers to gain some benefit from the increase in the productivity of their labour.

Recently the waterside workers claimed 7 [pounds] an hour increase because of increased productivity, and other unions have made similar demands.

Such demands are entirely just (and indeed very moderate), for increased productivity is a result of new processes, between techniques and increased skills  all of which come from the labour of workers by hand and brain.

The sixty rich monopoly families who own Australia certainly make no contribution to increased productivity for they do not labour at all.

Yet they get most of the fruits of the increase, worsen the relative position of the workers, and are responsible for callously sacking thousands of workers made redundant by mechanisation and automation.

We illustrate as follows the movement of wages and profits with changes in productivity: 

Suppose the net value each year in manufacturing industries is 2,000 million of which 1,000 million goes in wages and 1,000 million in profits.

If productivity increases by two per cent (agreed by all as a conservative figure) the net value created becomes 2,040 million.

Wages could be increased four per cent to 1,040 million, leaving profits undiminished at the enormous figure of 1,000 million.

If wages are increased by two per cent they would take 1,020 million, leaving 1,020 million for profits.

If wages increased by one per cent they would take 1,010 million as against 1,030 million for profits.

If wages are frozen they remain at 1,000 million, while profits increase to 1,040 million. The workers share declines from fifty per cent to forty-nine per cent, the bosses increases to fifty-one per cent.

That is what is actually happening  on the grand scale.

In 1961-62 the new value created in manufacturing was 2,200 million of which the workers received in wages fifty-two per cent  ten years before however the workers received sixty per cent of the new value added!

The relative position of the workers has declined enormously because the monopolies have taken practically all the benefits of increased productivity in the last ten years.

The present just claim of the trade unions, which will still only partially restore the previous position, is however quite different from tying of wages to a productivity index as favoured by employers and the D.L.P.

This means committing the workers to the system of monopoly capitalism forever. For even if the relative position of the workers were restored to what it was ten years ago  which would mean a bigger increase than now claimed what worker would accept the conditions of 1952 as the highest possible goal at which to aim?

Tying wages to productivity would also mean tying wages to the ups and downs of the capitalist economy. Undercapacity operation is a normal feature of monopoly capitalism, but periodically it increases greatly due to recurring recessions.

Workers are sacked in large numbers during these recessions, so there are many workers without wages at all. But also, with the increased undercapacity operation productivity would fall (through no fault of the worker) and their wages would correspondingly fall.

This the boss tries to achieve in any case, utilising the over-supply on the labour market, but this meets with powerful resistance from the organised workers. If the T.U. movement agreed to wages being tied to a productivity index they would fall automatically which would be equivalent to the trade unions agreeing voluntarily that the workers should bear the burden of recession.

Stirring contrast

Under socialism the situation is entirely different. Instead of the division of the product according to a class struggle between capitalists and workers, in which the capitalists are in the box seat because they own the means of production, socialism can plan production and distribution in the interests of the working people.

In fact where the people own the enterprises social benefits claim about seventy-five per cent of the new value in production, while the remainder (apart from defence and administration) goes to a massive expansion of production such as capitalism cannot match.

This means a far greater increase in productivity (100 per cent increase in productivity is planned in the Soviet Union in the next ten years), which enables a very rapid and planned rise in living standards.

The rapid expansion according to plan, together with reduction in hours, means that there is no problem of recessions or so-called technological unemployment which is becoming chronic in all capitalist countries. In the United States for example there are four to five million unemployed even at the peak of prosperity, and 30 to 40 million live permanently below subsidence level.

Unions role

Furthermore in socialist countries workers and their trade unions have a direct and decisive say in matters from which they are entirely excluded under capitalism.

For example in the socialist countries the trade unions are consulted at all levels  national bodies and factory organisation on production plans, introduction of new machinery, and changed methods of production.

The Governments economic plans and budget are submitted to the trade unions and their opinions and proposals carry great weight with the Government and Ministers.

In Australia the unions and workers views are not sought and when submitted they are ignored.

Wage rates  time wages, piece work rates and bonus  are determined entirely in agreement with the unions.

In Australia Arbitration tribunals can even wipe out unions from proceedings in relation to awards.

On February 4 this year the NSW Industrial Commission at the request of the B.H.P. suspended hearing claims by four unions for a new award. This says nothing off the other powers exercised over unions by the compulsory arbitration system.

ACTUs goal

In socialist countries a worker cannot be dismissed without permission of the union.

Victimisation and wholesale trampling of workers is practised in Australia under the legalised right of bosses to hire and fire.

In socialist countries the Government hands over to the union the large sums allocated for social services and the unions directly administer the social service laws.

Since trade unions in those countries are organised on an industry basis and have their trade union committees in the work places the workers themselves participate directly in these activities associated with production, wage rates, and social services.

Fighting now to win higher wages and the right to work, the Australian trade union movement should also have its eye fixed on the socialist goal.

This goal is the objective of the A.C.T.U

This article originally appeared in Tribune February, 1964.
Germany, Brazil and the United States are among the nations grappling with a recent spike in coronavirus cases as the World Health Organization reported the highest one-day increase in cases globally on Sunday.

Despite a successful streak in containing the spread of the virus in Germany, an outbreak among workers at the Toennies meat processing plant in Gutersloh, has led to at least 1,331 new cases of the virus, officials said on Monday. At least 7,000 employees and their families connected with the plant were forced to quarantine in an effort to prevent further spread.

As of Monday, Germany had seen 190,359 cases and 8,885 deaths  lower numbers than seen elsewhere in Europe. But the recent increase means the virus reproduction rate for the country has jumped to 2.88  well above the containment level of under 1.

Meanwhile, at least 2.2 million people have been infected in the U.S., while over 120,000 people have been killed, according to NBC News' tracking.

The latest national hotspots for the virus have shifted from the original epicenter in the Northeast, particularly New York City. Instead, the highest infection rates are now being detected in southern and western states including Oregon and Oklahoma.

Despite the grim figures, President Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that testing should be slowed down to reduce the number of new cases being detected  a remark the White House later described as a joke.

Brazil passed 1 million coronavirus cases over the weekend and its death toll reached 50,591, according to Johns Hopkins University's tracker.

Image: Aubrey Burgess reacts to getting swabbed for a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test at a testing site set up at an event to mark Juneteenth in Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado (Kevin Mohatt / Reuters)

An additional 23,171 people who were not officially diagnosed with the coronavirus died from respiratory infections between Jan. 1 and June 6, according to Fiocruz, one of Brazils state-run health research institutes. However, experts believe most of them died from COVID-19.

Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases is nearing 9 million while the death toll has exceeded 468,000. The WHO warned that the pandemic appears to be accelerating with more than 183,000 new cases in 24 hours on Sunday.

Story continues

In China, which first detected the virus in December, the latest outbreak of new cases appears to be coming under control. Beijing reported a cluster of new cases connected to the Xinfadi market in the city's southwestern Fengtai district earlier this month.

Image: Parents and children arrive at the Jules Julien elementary school in Toulouse, southern France, on June 22, 2020 following the reopening of schools (Lionel Bonaventure / AFP - Getty Images)

The outbreak resulted in a total of 236 cases confirmed between June 11 to 21, prompting the closure of schools and strict restrictions on movement in the Chinese capital  although the measures were not as strict as those imposed on Wuhan where the virus originated. On Sunday, the daily increase in new cases went down to single digits with just nine infections confirmed.

France was among the countries easing restrictions as its coronavirus cases continue to fall. Restaurants, cafes and bars could finally open their doors in Paris on Monday while many children returned to schools and kindergartens.

More than 197,000 cases have been detected in France since the pandemic began, leading to 30,000 deaths. Last week, President Emmanuel Macron warned that while the country is reopening, people should uphold social distancing measures and be prepared for a second wave of the virus in the fall.

Reuters contributed to this report.
On Sunday, the New York Police Department suspended one of their police officers after footage showed him choking a black man during an arrest. The encounter caught on video from a cellphone camera showed the officer seemingly placing the victim in a chokehold, days after the technique had been made illegal.

Immediate actions

The black man, Ricky Bellevue, 35 years old, was being cared for inside a hospital in Queens on the evening of Sunday, said the executive director of Queens Defenders, Lori Zeno, who is also representing the victim, as reported by The New York Times.

In a tweet on Sunday evening, Dermot F. Shea, the New York Police Commissioner, wrote that after they have conducted an immediate investigation, they have suspended the officer seen choking the black man without pay.

Shea also revealed that while the full investigation is being conducted, they found it necessary to take quick actions. The commissioner also said they would be transparent with all the details of the incident as more information comes to light.

Before officials announced the suspension of the police officer, the department publicly released more than 30 minutes of footage from the involved officers' body cameras during the arrest. The videos show Bellevue being accompanied by two other men before the incident turned violent.

Officials announced that before the event at approximately 8:45 a.m., they received reports of complaints of a man making loud noises and yelling at people walking in Rockaway Park.

The three men were taunting the officers before Bellueve reaches his hand into a trash can and threatens the officers by saying "You scared, you scared?" as reported by the NY Daily News. One officer responded by quickly tackling Bellevue to the ground.

Also Read: One Officer Connected to Breonna Taylor Killing Fired

Defending his fellowmen

With his body camera still recording, the officer who put the victim in a chokehold, David Afanador, tried to explain the situation to a woman at the scene.

Afanador revealed that the three men were openly taunting and threatening the officers and did not respond with violence and that the situation changed when one of the men tried to grab something from the trash can.

According to NBC News, several dozen protesters stood outside of the 100th Precinct at around 4:00 p.m. to call out against the officer's actions during the arrest.

Zeno announced that Bellevue lost consciousness due to the chokehold and went limp as seen in the video. When she saw him in the Precinct, he had blood on his head, and his wrists were swollen.

She added, "He was on such a hard chokehold that he couldn't speak to say he couldn't breathe."

Authorities had known the victim to be suffering from bipolar disorder and claimed the other two men with him were under alcoholic influence.

The New York State law had banned chokeholds from police encounters since it was passed two weeks ago. It also applies to any technique that blocks a person's ability to breathe.

Related Article: 19-Year-Old Dies in Shooting Incident at 'Cop-Free' Zone in Seattle

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Near the end of May, Huawei opened up pre-orders for the P40 Pro+ in China, which proved that a global release was imminent. That's exactly what was announced today, with Huawei Malaysia confirming that the device will be available in Malaysia on 26 June 2020 for RM4999.

As a refresher, the Huawei P40 Pro+ is Huawei's top-of-the-line for its P series this year. It comes packed with the Kirin 990 5G chipset, 8GB of RAM, and a large 512GB of internal storage. Also, it comes with a 4200mAh battery that can be charged via the 40W fast-charger, with support for 40W wireless charging too. Another impressive tech specs would be the 6.58-inch display, which has a max resolution of 1200 x 2640, support for HDR10, and has a max refresh rate of 90Hz.

Being a Huawei P series device, one of the major highlights for this smartphone is the rear cameras. The P40 Pro+ has 5 cameras at the back, consisting of a 50MP main camera, 40MP ultra-wide camera, 8MP telephoto camera, 8MP Periscope camera, and a depth sensor. As for the front, there's a 32MP selfie camera with an IR-powered depth sensor.

In conjunction with the launch later this month, Huawei Malaysia will include freebies worth a total of RM1300, all of which are listed on the online store. You can't pre-order it at the moment, but we'll keep an eye out of further updates on that. For more news like this, do stay tuned to TechNave.com.
German payments firm says it has withdrawn its full-year 2019 and first-quarter 2020 results after accounting scandal.

Scandal-hit German payments firm Wirecard AG said on Monday that 1.9 billion euros ($2.13bn)  about a quarter of its assets  that auditor EY has been unable to account for likely did not exist in the first place.

The company, whose stock price has plummeted 75 percent since EY refused to sign off its 2019 accounts last week, also said it has withdrawn its preliminary 2019 and first-quarter 2020 financial results as well as forecasts.

The Management Board of Wirecard assesses on the basis of further examination that there is a prevailing likelihood that the bank trust account balances in the amount of 1.9 billion EUR do not exist, the company said in a statement.

The development comes after Chief Executive Officer Markus Braun quit on Friday, with the company scrambling to secure a financial lifeline from its banks while its search for the money hit a dead end in the Philippines.

The Philippines central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, said none of the money appeared to have entered the country, after Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and BDO Unibank Inc said documents purporting to show Wirecard had deposited funds with them were false. Both said Wirecard was not a client.

BPI, however, told the Reuters news agency it had suspended an assistant manager whose signature appeared on one of the fraudulent documents. BDO told the central bank one of its marketing officers appeared to have fabricated a bank certificate.

The central bank is actually doing its own investigation, Bangko Sentral Governor Benjamin Diokno told channel ANC on Monday. To the extent we are very strict on knowing our clients, I think we should also be strict in knowing the officers of the bank.

Victim

Munich-based Wirecard has been lauded as a home-grown financial technology success and was propelled into Germanys blue-chip DAX stock index in 2018 at the expense of Commerzbank AG.

On Thursday, it said auditor EY refused to sign off its 2019 accounts as it was unable to confirm the existence of 1.9 billion euros in cash balances in trust accounts, representing about a quarter of Wirecards balance sheet.

EY had regularly approved Wirecards accounts in recent years, and its refusal to sign off for 2019 confirmed failings found in an external investigation by KPMG in April, which in turn followed probing reports by the Financial Times.

Wirecard, which has been a target of investors questioning its financials, on Friday said it might be the victim of fraud of considerable proportions.

On Monday, it said it is examining a range of measures to ensure continued operations, including cost reduction, restructuring, disposal or termination of business units.
3 1 of 3 Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Show More Show Less 3 of 3





NEW HAVEN - Police have identified the victim in Saturday homicide as Luis Nelson Perez, 27, of Naugatuck.

Capt. Anthony Duff said New Haven Police are continuing the investigation of the homicide on Elliot Street between Sylvan Avenue and Davenport Avenue in the Hill neighborhood.
A pilot who crashed his ultralight plane into the roof of an empty building in the town of Lee in Oneida County earlier today is in stable condition, with leg injuries, New York State Police said today.

Ronald S. Richards Jr., 66, of Blossvale was operating the single-engine plane when his engine appeared to fail, causing him to crash into the small building at E. Centro International Air Park in the town of Lee, police said.

The accident occurred shortly before 8:30 a.m. at 4931 Lee Valley Road, troopers said.

Richards was transported via Mercy Flight to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse.

The investigation is continuing.
Insiders and Existing Shareholders Have Committed the Majority of the New Capital

A Portion of the Proceeds Will be Used to Acquire a Pennsylvania Grower-Processor Permit Holder

BOCA RATON, Fla., June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jushi Holdings Inc. (Jushi or the Company) (JUSH.CN) (JUSHF), a globally-focused, multi-state cannabis and hemp operator, today announced the receipt of binding subscriptions totaling approximately US$15.25 million for the issuance of 10% senior secured notes ("Notes") and warrants to acquire subordinate voting share (the "Warrants" and collectively, the "Offering"), of which $12.35 million has been received.1 The Company also received non-binding indications of interest for up to an additional US$10 million of financing. The Offering is expected to close on or before the date that the previously announced acquisition of a Pennsylvania grower-processor permit holder is completed. The Company intends to use US$15 million of the proceeds from the Offering to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

The Company expects all funds from the subscriptions to be received on or before July 11, 2020. All Notes will mature on January 15, 2023 and will bear interest of 10.0% per annum payable in cash quarterly. Jushi's obligations under the Notes are secured by the assets of Jushi and certain of its subsidiaries (subject to certain exclusions) and are also guaranteed by certain subsidiaries of the Company and rank pari passu with the currently outstanding 10% senior secured notes of the Company. In connection with the Offering, the purchasers of the Notes will also receive Warrants to acquire subordinate voting shares of the Company at 75% coverage with an expiry date of December 23, 2024, at an exercise price equal to US$1.25 (~CAD$1.70 as of 6/19/20). The Warrants contain a cash-less exercise (net settlement) option available 12 months after issuance.

Jushi Chairman & CEO Jim Cacioppo subscribed for US$1.5 million of the Notes with other insiders subscribing for US$3.35 million of the Notes.

Story continues

In connection with the Offering, the Company formed a special committee of independent directors of the board of directors of the Company (the "Special Committee"), comprised of Stephen Monroe and Peter Adderton, to set, review, negotiate and approve of the terms of the Offering. The Special Committee engaged AltaCorp Capital Inc. to provide its opinion that the terms of the Offering were fair, from a financial perspective, to the Company.

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of the Notes in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale is unlawful.

________________________



1$8.3 million in subscriptions have closed

About Jushi Holdings Inc.

We are a globally focused cannabis and hemp company led by an industry-leading management team. In the United States, Jushi is focused on building a multi-state portfolio of branded cannabis and hemp-derived assets through opportunistic acquisitions, distressed workouts and competitive applications. Jushi strives to maximize shareholder value while delivering high-quality products across all levels of the cannabis and hemp ecosystem. For more information please visit www.jushico.com or our social media channels, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and may also contain statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current conditions, but instead represent only the Companys beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Companys control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, will continue, will occur or will be achieved. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained herein may include, but are not limited to, information concerning the expectations regarding Jushi, or the ability of Jushi to successfully achieve business objectives, and expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors.

By identifying such information and statements in this manner, the Company is alerting the reader that such information and statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such information and statements. In addition, in connection with the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made certain assumptions. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information and statements are the following: the ability of Jushi to successfully achieve business objectives, including with regulatory bodies, employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; changes in applicable laws; and compliance with extensive government regulation, as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in the Companys Annual Information Form dated June 1, 2020 and other filings with securities and regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.

Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking information and statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

Investor Relations Contact:

Michael Perlman

Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury

561-453-1308

Investors@jushico.com

Media Contact:

Ellen Mellody

MATTIO Communications

570-209-2947

Ellen@Mattio.com


A renowned leaker on Weibo reported that both Huawei and Xiaomi would use ultra-thin glass for their future foldable phones. Samsung first included this feature in its Galaxy Z Flip, which is a flagship in the emerging market of folding smartphones.

The Weibo tipster added that the two Chinese manufacturers would also use ultra-thin glass for future smartphones with surrounded screens, too, which refer to curved displays, besides foldable ones, as said on Weibo, via AndroidAuthority.

The Benefits of Ultra-thin Glass

The example of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is excellent to assess the benefits of ultra-thin glass over plastic-based screens. Primary, the material ensures increased durability of the screen. As the name says, the material is much thinner in comparison with the classic glass, but that does not mean its also more breakable.

Advertisement

Even more, ultra-thin glass also comes with increased flexibility, which is an excellent feature for foldable phones. As per the most recent news, Xiaomi and Huawei now want to take advantage of the material with their future devices. Accordingly, we should expect foldable Chinese smartphones at a higher quality.

The Future Huawei and Xiaomi Foldable Phones

Mate X and Mate XS are the foldable phones from Huawei. They are pretty reliable devices with high-end specs acceptable durability. The company, however, doesnt want to lag behind its competitors. Accordingly, as reported, Huawei plans using ultra-thin glass in its future smartphones.

At the moment, Xiaomi has no foldable phone in the market. The company plans to release one soon, given that it already came up with a prototype. The Mi Mix Alpha concept that Xiaomi presented in 2019 came with a wrapped screen that goes around the device. For something like that, the protective screen is much resilient than ultra-thin glass. But, for its future foldable phones, the Chinese manufactures would use ultra-thin glass, as per the latest leak.

Advertisement

At the moment, Samsung is the leader of folding smartphones in terms of features, durability, and specs. Dont get it wrong, though, because the foldable phones from the South Korean tech giant also present issues. More companies in this market increase the competitivity, and that can only lead to improvement.

But the future looks bright in this emerging market since more and more companies will compete between them to bring more reliable devices. Ultra-thin glass is the best one to use on foldable phones, and Huawei and Xiaomi might also use it for their future devices, according to the latest leak.
Harish Murali By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: A division bench of the Madras High Court on Monday set aside the death sentence awarded to five convicts including the father of Kausalya in the sensational 2016 Udumalapet Shankar honour killing case by modifying it to a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years without any right for remission.

A division bench comprising justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar in its 327-page judgement ordered for the acquittal of the father B Chinnasamy by dropping all the charges against him and called for his immediate release from the Coimbatore prison.

The court also confirmed the acquittal of Kausalya's mother and two others by the Tiruppur district court.

Speaking to TNIE, Udumalai Shankar's younger brother Yuvaraj said, I am feeling very sad about verdict.

When my parents were informed about the murder of my elder brother Shankar in March 2016, they were shocked and no consolation could resolve their pain. When the verdict about the death sentence was announced, they were somewhat satisfied. But, today's verdict was a shocking blow, as the prime conspirators were released. As it is a clear case of honour killing, we feel very sad and disappointed, he added.

It is to be recalled that Kausalya, who belongs to the socially dominant Thevar community, had married Shankar, a Dalit youth of Udumalpet in Tirupur district, in 2015. On March 13, 2016, the couple was brutally attacked by a three-member gang near Udumalpet town bus stand. Shankar, only 22 at the time, succumbed to his injuries while 19-year-old Kausalya survived.

On December 12, 2017, the Tiruppur district sessions court sentenced six people including Chinnasamy, the father of Kausalya to capital punishment for murdering Shankar.

Of the 11 accused, six were sentenced to death. Three others, including her mother Annalakshmi, maternal uncle Pandi Thurai and a 16-year-old relative, were acquitted of all charges. Two other accused got lesser sentences.

Challenging the death sentence awarded, Chinnasamy, Jegadeesan, Manikandan, Selvakumar, Kalai Tamilvaanan and Madan moved the appeal. The state also appealed to the High Court against the sentence awarded to the mother and other relatives.
Stefano Pontecorvo, a career Italian diplomat, is NATOs new Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan. In a recent interview with Radio Free Afghanistan, he indicated that long awaited peace negotiations between the Taliban and the representatives of the Islamic Republic, the current political system, will soon begin after negotiators recover from coronavirus infections.

Radio Free Afghanistan: As you know the intra-Afghan negotiations have been long overdue, will Afghans negotiations between the Taliban and representatives of Afghan government and society this year?

Stefano Pontecorvo: I am pretty confident that well see them not only in this year. But a lot sooner than the end of the year. Inshallah as they say, I remain confident that they will take place in the near future.

Radio Free Afghanistan: There is a peace deal in place between the U.S. and the Taliban but at the same time the fighting has been going on between the Afghan forces and the Taliban relentlessly. In your view why is that so?

Pontecorvo: First of all, its not a peace deal but a bilateral agreement. Technically the Taliban are keeping faith to that agreement. However, I agree with you that violence is unacceptably high because its on the Taliban side of course. Its creating a lot of difficulties on the republican side. The Taliban are refraining from attacking the coalition forces in the urban centers. That is the spirit, the letter of the agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban.

But the level of the violence that they are otherwise practicing is totally unacceptable. You asked why, Its probably because that Taliban believe -- but its a wrong belief on their behalf -- that they would go into the intra-Afghan negotiations from a position of strength by impinging on the morale of the ANDSF [Afghan National Defense Forces], which is, however, quite high. So, I think its a miscalculation.

However, I must stress that the level of violence is too high. It must go down and everybody is aware of it.

Radio Free Afghanistan: The Taliban had once provided sanctuary to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, are they still friends with Al-Qaida?

Pontecorvo: There is anecdotal evidence that there are still ties between Al-Qaida and the Taliban. I know for a fact that these are being investigated. And there is a lot of hard questions that the Taliban are going to have to answer to.

Radio Free Afghanistan: Have the Taliban met the conditions needed for going to zero international troops by May?

Pontecorvo: I will refer you back to what high-level American officials have said that the conditions are not there yet.

Radio Free Afghanistan: How can the COVID-19 pandemic impact the war and peace in Afghanistan in your view? Will it become a window of opportunity for peace between the Taliban and the Afghan government?

Pontecorvo: COVID-19 is impacting at all levels. Its impacting on the level of forces on both sides. Its impacting the leadership. A number of members of the negotiating team on both sides are reported to have gone down with COVID. I have personally reached out to a number of these negotiating teams on the [Islamic] Republic side and they are down with COVID. Its impacting already the composition of the teams, I dont think the teams will change, they will not change for COVID, I know that for example. The republic is quarantining the members of the negotiating team which has gone down with COVID. And they will reach Doha when they will test negative. On the other side, we dont know exactly whats going on anyway, this won't be the place in which to talk about it. It should be as you are referring to. It should be an occasion for peace and for a window of opportunity. Unfortunately, we see that on the Taliban side its not being considered as such.

Radio Free Afghanistan: Whats NATOs long-term commitment toward Afghanistan, especially with regard to human rights, women right and democratic values?

Pontecorvo: NATOs long-term commitment to Afghanistan has been reiterated many times and recently by the [NATO] secretary-general in his press conference following the NATO defense ministerial. During the defense ministerial all ministers have reiterated their long-standing and long-lasting commitment to Afghanistan. We are committed to supporting Afghanistan, the security forces, the police, and so on. We know that well have to negotiate the presence, if requested and if required. We are extremely willing to do so both from the training point of view, resources and funding, etc. Well have to negotiate all that with whatever governing entity comes out of the inter-Afghan negotiation.

We are very keen that that progress that has been made by Afghan society under the security umbrella provided by NATO and that would not have happened had not NATO provided that umbrella, we are keen that these are all safeguarded.

That said, we are also very aware that it is an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process. They are intra-Afghan negotiations, only Afghans will be in the room. Well abide by whatever the two Afghan sides decide is good for Afghanistan and for the Afghan people. Of course, then, once we see what comes out of the negotiations, donors and international organizations will make up their minds and evaluate if they like what they see and if it's worth keeping having to invest. That said today I tell you that the commitment by NATO towards Afghanistan is very firm and rock solid.

Radio Free Afghanistan: How do you assess the role of the regional and neighboring country with regard to the peace process in Afghanistan?

Pontecorvo: I think that probably everybody has a stake in seeing a stabilized Afghanistan. Weve recently witnessed the visit of Pakistani army chief to Kabul. He had high-level conversations; I know they went very well. Pakistan has been quite an actor in Afghanistan, and I wont go into that and I think that Pakistans assistance in getting here has been valuable and has been recognized by the U.S. and by the U.S. mediator.

The other regional actors, I think, all have an interest in having a stabilized Afghanistan. We see it from the political point of view, from the economic point of view. Afghanistan can be a hub for a number of regional infrastructure networks, I am thinking about CASA 1,000 -- the Central Asia and South Asia electric line, the TAPI or the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India pipeline, and the TAP Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan pipeline. These will be very good for Afghanistan, not only for the transit lines but because of the resources and development, economic development these will bring. There are a lot of stakeholders in these infrastructural projects.

Radio Free Afghanistan: And finally, how concerned are you personally about civilian casualties in Afghanistan?

Pontecorvo: I am extremely concerned. Gen. Scot Miller, the RSM [NATOs Resolute Support Mission] commander, is extremely concerned. Lets say it very clearly, the levels of violence are unacceptable -- are simply unacceptable. Enough is enough, I mean. Its more than 40 years that the civilians have suffered the consequences of at times an imposed war. I hope that there is enough statesmanship around here on all sides to understand that the Afghan people need peace, want peace, and will not forget and will not forgive those that stand in the way of peace.
A growing number of backbench Coalition MPs are urging the Morrison government to delay next year's scheduled increase to the superannuation guarantee, arguing lifting the rate from 9.5 to 12 per cent in the current economic climate would hinder job creation and wage rises.

The government's wide-ranging retirement income review, led by former Treasury official Mike Callaghan, is poised to hand down its findings on the merits of higher compulsory super  among other policy settings  on July 24, before the October budget.

But 10 MPs have told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald they believe small and medium-size businesses cannot afford next year's legislated rise and want it delayed  if not scrapped  as the economy attempts to recover from the deepest recession since the 1930s, with more than 1 million jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic.

Among those to call for the guarantee to be paused are first-term MPs Katie Allen and Dave Sharma, plus veteran Victorian MP Russell Broadbent and former employment minister Eric Abetz.
Mark Hamill arrives at the world premiere of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" on Monday, Dec. 16, 2019, in Los Angeles (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Thanks to The Mandalorian, Mark Hamill has now worked on every one of the Star Wars movies and spin-offs, bar the prequels.

The Luke Skywalker icon has revealed that he secretly voiced a character for showrunner Jon Favreaus Disney+ series.

Read more: Jon Favreau updates on The Mandalorian season two

It transpires that Hamill played EV-9D9, the droid bartender at the infamous Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine, in the fifth episode of the spin-off series.

Hamill was outed on Twitter as being the voice of the droid (which also originally appeared in Return of the Jedi).

At which point, the actor also revealed that he's also somewhere in Rogue One and Solo, as well as all of the sequel films.

Now that @themandalorian secret is out-might as well reveal I am vocally represented in ALL SW films except the Prequels. Thanks to @matthewood for using me in Rogue One, Solo & the Sequels, so I DO have lines in #EpVII. Hint: Look for parts played by Patrick Williams.#TrueStory https://t.co/kRQlo7uub8  Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) June 20, 2020

Hint: Look for parts played by Patrick Williams, he added, with IMDb indeed confirming that Hamill also played Boolio, the rebel collaborator who meets a tragic end in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Hamill has long built a career away from his Star Wars work as a voice artist.

Read more: What to expect from The Mandalorian S2

As well as being known for his role as the Joker in the long-running Batman animated series, he's also appeared on dozens of other shows, including Futurama, the Spider-Man animated series and Cartoon Network's Regular Show, in which he plays gruff groundskeeper Skips.

Meanwhile, the second series of The Mandalorian  hopefully with some input from Hamill hidden somewhere  is set to land on Disney+ in October.
Ex-top official of Krasnoyarsk Krai police gets 5-year suspended term for abuse of office

 pixabay. com

15:35 22/06/2020

MOSCOW, June 22 (RAPSI)  A former deputy chief of the Interior Ministrys Krasnoyarsk Region Main Directorate Alexander Kuznetsov has been given a 5-year suspended sentence in a case over abuse of power, RAPSI has learnt from the Investigative Committees press service.

According to the court ruling, in late 2012, Kuznetsov signed a work acceptance protocol on the construction of a detention facility in Norilsk. Based on the document, the defendant received over 200 million rubles (about $3 million). A contractor received the funds but failed to fulfill the works.

The detention centre has not been built yet. Damage caused to the Interior Ministrys Krasnoyarsk Region Main Directorate has not been reimbursed, the statement reads.




Advertisement

Several US states are still seeing troubling spikes in new COVID-19 cases as deaths appear to be declining across the country - but health experts warn the fatality rate often lags several weeks behind and could potentially shoot back up again.

Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are among the states that continue to have record spikes in daily coronavirus infections with the uptick in cases mostly occurring since mid-May as parts of the US pushed ahead with reopening.

The number of daily deaths, however, currently appears to be gradually declining in those states.

While President Donald Trump says the surge in new cases is down to increased testing, public health officials say it only accounts for some of the increases as people continue to relax social distancing measures and states slowly reopen.

Hospitalizations, which is a metric not linked to increased testing, are surging in states like California and Texas where infections are also increasing. Arizona's hospitals are nearing capacity with 85 percent of intensive care beds currently in use.

Across the United States, the most recent data shows that the number of new infections recorded in a day was just over 32,500. At the peak of the pandemic in mid-April, the US recorded 36,000 new infections on a single day.

Daily US deaths are now at 595, the latest data shows, which is down from the 2,500 recorded in mid-April. More than 120,000 Americans have now died of COVID-19 and 2.2 million have been infected.

Daily US deaths are now at 595, the latest data shows, which is down from the 2,500 recorded in mid-April. More than 119,000 Americans have now died of COVID-19 and 2.2 million have been infected

The most recent data shows that the number of new daily infections recorded across the US was just over 32,500. At the peak of the pandemic in mid-April, the US recorded 36,000 new infections on a single day

While the number of daily deaths is currently declining in states like Florida, Arizona and Texas, experts warn it could spike again because the death rate often lags several weeks behind infections.

Experts say the fact that younger people - who are less likely to be hospitalized - are now accounting for a large number of the new cases could also have an impact in several weeks.

Young people could currently be infecting their elderly relatives and other at-risk people, which could drive up hospitalizations and deaths.

Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions and one of the first to begin lifting them, reported 3,400 new cases, on Sunday - down from the record 4,000 cases on Saturday.

The state recorded 17 news deaths on Sunday compared to the record 84 in early May.

In Texas, more than 3,800 infections were recorded on Sunday - down from the record 4,400 on Saturday. Deaths were down to 17 on Sunday compared to the record 58 on May 15.

Hospitalizations are currently increasing in Texas with a record 3,400 patients admitted on Sunday.

Arizona saw 2,400 new infections on Sunday, which is down from a record 3,200 on Friday. The state recorded four new deaths on Sunday - compared to the record 67 deaths recorded on May 8.

Hospitalizations in Arizona appear to be declining but the intensive care bed usage in hospitals is increasing. Over the weekend, 85 percent of ICU beds were in use across the state.

TEXAS DEATHS: In Texas, deaths were down to 17 on Sunday compared to the record 58 on May 15

TEXAS: CASES: In Texas, more than 3,800 infections were recorded on Sunday - down from the record 4,400 on Saturday

TEXAS HOSPITALIZATIONS: Hospitalizations - a metric not linked to increased testing - are currently increasing in Texas with a record 3,400 patients admitted on Sunday

FLORIDA DEATHS: The state recorded 17 news deaths on Sunday compared to the record 84 in early May

FLORIDA CASES: Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions and one of the first to begin lifting them, reported 3,400 new cases, on Sunday - down from the record 4,000 cases on Saturday

California recorded a daily high of COVID-19 cases on Saturday with just over 4,500 infections. The number of people hospitalized in California reached record highs on Saturday with 3,500 people admitted with coronavirus.

Deaths on that day were at 71, according to the state's health department. The number of people dying from COVID-19 in California has spiked throughout the pandemic.

The highest number of deaths was on April 22 when 115 died. The death toll was at 105 on June 10.

Meanwhile experts say that expanded diagnostic testing accounts for some, but not all, of the troubling spikes in coronavirus cases in some states.

President Donald Trump said over the weekend that it may only look like the US has substantially more coronavirus cases than other countries because there is more testing.

His administration has said Trump was only joking when he suggested during a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday that the US should slow down testing because it only results in a high case count.

Trump doubled down in a late night tweet, saying: 'Our Coronavirus testing is so much greater (25 million tests) and so much more advanced, that it makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally, than other countries.

'My message on that is very clear!'

Health officials say the upward trends in testing positivity rates that several states are reporting is particularly alarming.

The World Health Organization considers positivity rates above 5% to be especially concerning.

ARIZONA DEATHS: The state recorded four new deaths on Sunday - compared to the record 67 deaths recorded on May 8

ARIZONA CASES: Arizona saw 2,400 new infections on Sunday, which is down from a record 3,200 on Friday

ARIZONA HOSPITALIZATIONS: Hospitalizations in Arizona appear to be declining but the intensive care bed usage in hospitals is increasing. Over the weekend, 85 percent of ICU beds (above) were in use across the state

CALIFORNIA: California recorded a daily high of COVID-19 cases on Saturday with just over 4,500 infections. Deaths on that day were at 71, according to the state's health department. The number of people dying from COVID-19 in California has spiked throughout the pandemic. The highest number of deaths was on April 22 when 115 died. The death toll was at 105 on June 10

CALIFORNIA HOSPITALIZATIONS: The number of people hospitalized in California reached record highs on Saturday with 3,500 people admitted with coronavirus

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows the average rates over the past week are exceeding that 5% level and are climbing in multiple states.

Florida, Texas, Arizona and South Carolina all have positive rates above 10 percent.

Officials say that if a positivity rate is too high it could indicate that the state is only testing the sickest patients and not casting a wide enough net to see how much the virus is spreading within communities.

A low rate of positivity in testing data could be a sign that a state has sufficient testing capacity for the size of their outbreak and testing enough of its population, according to John Hopkins researchers.

They say the positivity rate is key to making informed decisions about moving ahead with reopenings.

'The situation in Florida and Arizona is really concerning,' said William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University.

He said the spike in cases in those states was not just due to more testing but indicative of an 'underlying outbreak of unknown size'.

Health officials say the spikes in new cases is due, in part, to coronavirus now infecting more young people in their 20s and 30s in some states.

Even if the growth in confirmed cases partly reflects transmission among younger people less likely to be hospitalized, those people could infect the elderly and other vulnerable individuals with underlying health conditions.

'The more community transmission there is, the larger the risk that it infects somebody who is vulnerable. There are quite a lot of old people in Florida and in Arizona,' Hanage said.

The Mayor of Miami, which halted its reopening due to the influx of new cases, has blamed the lack of social distancing at recently opened restaurants for the spike.

'When we started opening up our restaurants, unfortunately I think society started to think that we were signaling the all clear,' Francis Suarez told reporters on Sunday. 'If we don't act now, if we are not disciplined, this could get out of control.'

SOUTH CAROLINA: Nine deaths were recorded in South Carolina on Sunday. There was a spike in deaths on Friday with 18 fatalities. Peak deaths in the state occurred on April 29 with 39 deaths and again on May 27 with 20 new deaths

SOUTH CAROLINA: New cases in South Carolina peaked on Saturday with a record 1,148 cases before dropping on Sunday to 905

GEORGIA DEATHS: Only one death was recorded in Georgia on Sunday compared to the record 78 on April 28

GEORGIA CASES: Cases in Georgia have been increasing with a record 1,800 record on Saturday. On Sunday, there were 892 cases recorded in the state

It comes as authorities in southern states warn of worrying signs of young people becoming more susceptible to coronavirus, amid suggestions that lax social distancing and the reopening of bars is to blame.

Health officials and lawmakers in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi are all reporting spikes in the number of people in their 20s and 30s getting infected.

From the beginning of the pandemic up through May 30, the median age of COVID-19 cases was 48, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, that age is dropping in several southern states.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis said on Friday that the median age was 37 for newly diagnosed coronavirus cases over the last week. In the state, 62 percent of new cases for the week of June 7 are under 45 years old.

Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, said last week that people under 30 made up a majority of new coronavirus cases in several counties. He said that increase in young infected people could be related to Memorial Day parties, visits to bars or other gatherings.

In South Carolina, health officials said Friday people under the age of 30 were increasingly testing positive for the virus. Now around 18 per cent of the state's total cases come from people between the ages of 21 and 30, CNN reported.

In California, 44 per cent of recent cases occurred in those under the age of 35, according to a study by George Lemp, director of the University of California's HIV/AIDS Research Program.

Health officials say the upward trends in testing positivity rates that several states are reporting is particularly alarming. The WHO considers positivity rates above 5% to be especially concerning. Data from Johns Hopkins University shows the average rates over the past week in Texas (left) and Florida (right) are above 10 percent
Donald Trump has denied John Bolton's claim that he backed China's Uighur Muslim detention camps in trade talks with President Xi Jinping.

Asked in an interview with Axios on Sunday whether the account was true, the president said: 'No, not at all.'

'We were in the middle of a major trade deal,' Trump said. 'And I made a great deal, $250 billion potentially worth of purchases.'

Bolton, a former national security adviser and the latest renegade to publish a tell-all memoir about the wild Trump White House, claims the president prostrated himself before Xi.

Donald Trump has denied John Bolton's claim that he backed China's Uighur Muslim detention camps in trade talks with President Xi Jinping

Bolton, a former national security adviser and the latest renegade to publish a tell-all memoir about the wild Trump White House, claims the president prostrated himself before Xi

'Make sure I win [the 2020 election]  Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win,' Bolton records Trump pleading with Xi in 2018.

Responding to Bolton's claim, Trump said: 'What I told everybody we deal with - not just President Xi - I want them to do business with this country. I want them to do a lot more business with this country.'

Bolton is promoting his new book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which details his 17 months as Trump's national security adviser

'What's good for the country is good for me... What's good for the country is also good for an election.'

Trump added: 'But I don't go around saying, "Oh, help me with my election." Why would I say that?'

'And remember, when I'm dealing with him, the whole room is loaded up with people... I wouldn't want to say a thing like that.'

Trump said that prior to the discussions he had already committed to punitive tariffs over China's incarcerations in Xinjiang, which Beijing calls 'educational centers' to combat Islamic extremism.

The president said: 'When you're in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on - we've done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of.'

The Trump administration has been criticized for being selective on punishing human rights abuses, though the president last week signed legislation that would authorize sanctions against officials involved in the Xinjiang detentions.

While Treasury sanctions could hit particularly hard by targeting assets, other US government departments including Commerce and State have imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China September 4, 2018

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton (left) defended his decision not to testify before Congress during impeachment proceedings, saying that the Democrats were 'almost as bad as and somewhat equivalent to' President Trump (right)

U.S. officials previously told Reuters that since late 2018 they had weighed sanctions against Chinese officials over Xinjiang but refrained because of trade and diplomatic considerations.

Under a Phase 1 trade deal negotiated in 2019 that took effect in February, China agreed to buy at least $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services over two years.

The United States since last year has placed import restrictions on some Chinese companies and visa bans on unnamed Chinese officials linked to Xinjiang but has not imposed harsher Treasury sanctions.

Trump signed legislation last Wednesday calling for sanctions over Xinjiang, drawing threats of retaliation from China. He insisted, however, he had discretion to decide any application of the measures.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy with periods of snow after midnight. Low 19F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 1 to 3 inches of snow expected..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of snow after midnight. Low 19F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 1 to 3 inches of snow expected.
While the industry has adapted quickly during these last few months, it is now time for property owners to examine the future transformations that will be required and will allow them to remain competitive."

Today, Zego (Powered by PayLease), the property technology company that powers better resident engagement & efficiency for multifamily and HOA communities, is announcing that CEO Dirk Wakeham will be a featured speaker at the Multifamily Operations Summit, a virtual event for Executives, Investors/Owners, Technology professionals, Onsite Property Managers, Leasing Professionals, and more.

The pandemic shined a light on critical changes required to propel the residential real estate industry into its next phase, said Wakeham. While the industry has adapted quickly during these last few months, it is now time for property owners to examine the future transformations that will be required and will allow them to remain competitive. Im honored to join the Multifamily Operations Summit as this esteemed group of experts helps the industry adjust and address whats necessary in our post-COVID world.

WHO: Multifamily professionals who are looking to get the tools, strategies, capabilities, and mindset for what is working today in Multifamily

WHAT: Two-day live virtual summit featuring seasoned experts from the multifamily industry on best practices for growing your business and adapting to the changing climate

WHEN: Friday, June 25, 2020 at 10:00am PT

WHERE: Join the free live broadcast from the Studio in Scottsdale, AZ

Zego provides a comprehensive resident engagement platform that unifies critical resident touch-pointsfrom online payments and utilities, to communication and smart devicesinto one app, and serves 6,000 residential real estate companies and over 12 million units nationwide.

About Zego

Zego (Powered by PayLease) is a property technology company that frees management companies and community associations to go above and beyond for their residents. Zegos mobile-first engagement platform for the residential real estate industry unifies the most critical resident touch-points into one app. From payments and utilities, to communications and smart devices, everything is seamlessly integrated into your back-end system. Zego delivers portfolio-wide efficiency, higher NOI, and more engaged residents. Learn more about how Zego drives community engagement and efficiency at gozego.com.


You are therefore advised not to give any support to any such committee or to monitor any such primaries. A new date for the primaries would be communicated to you soonest. We regret the inconvenience this might cause your commission.
Germany, France criticize Israel over West Bank annexation plans

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 21 June 2020 6:36 AM

Germany and France have called on Israel to halt its plans to annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank which Palestinians consider as part of their future independent state.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, urged the Tel Aviv regime to renounce its controversial plan.

After meeting with Maas in Berlin, Le Drian said, "Our goal is still to prevent any annexation in violation of international law in the first place."

The French foreign minister stressed that the annexation would increase "instability in the Middle East".

Maas said Israel's annexation plans were "of great concern" to him and Le Drian. The issue, he said, should be brought to the forefront once more.

The pair announced intensive talks between EU partners and neighboring countries such as Jordan.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a number of criminal indictments, has repeatedly said that he would commence cabinet-level discussions for annexing more areas in the West Bank on July 1, in accordance with US President Donald Trump's so-called deal of the century.

The American president officially unveiled his much-condemned Middle East plan in January at the White House with Netanyahu on his side, while Palestinian representatives were not invited.

Back in late 2017, Trump enraged Palestinians by recognizing the whole Jerusalem al-Quds, both its eastern and western parts, as Israel's "undivided capital," a highly-provocative move he took in the face of historic Palestinian demands that the city's eastern part serve as the capital of their future state.

The proposal, which has already been categorically rejected and condemned by Palestinians, largely gives in to Israel's demands while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders.

It enshrines the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital" and allows the regime to annex settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, which Israel occupied in 1967.

'Annex now, as world occupied with coronavirus'

According to the Israeli ministry of intelligence, now is the best time to implement the annexation plan, as Arab countries would not protest the move.

The daily Israel Hayom announced on Friday that it had obtained a copy of a position paper presented to Israeli intelligence minister Eli Cohen which cited the advantages of the annexation.

The annexation "improves the starting conditions of future negotiations with the Palestinians for Israel and crystallizes the cost of Palestinian rejection of peace talks, and therefore could spur [the Palestinians] back to the negotiation table in an effort to halt additional phases," the paper reportedly says.

"After a wave of diplomatic protests, mainly by governments, the annexation won't rouse the Arab street against the regimes. The absence of agitation in the streets will make it clear to Arab leaders that the Palestinian issue isn't a threat to them."

According to the document, the annexation would provide a platform for the Arab regimes to improve ties with Israel without waiting for an Israeli-Palestinian arrangement.

On Thursday, Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi unexpectedly visited the West Bank where he warned against the annexation plans.

"Annexation is unprecedented for the peace process, and it will kill the two-state solution and will destroy all the foundations of the peace process,'" Safadi said after meeting with his Palestinian counterpart in the city of Ramallah.

He said the plans would "deprive all peoples of the region of their right to live in security, peace and stability."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






A Deputy Chief of Staff at the Presidency, Francis Asenso-Boakye has been declared the winner of the NPP Parliamentary Primaries held in the Bantama constituency, Ashanti region after results showed that he claimed over 70% of the total votes.



Polls had earlier predicted his victory considering his experience in the party and several development interventions he has initiated within the constituency.



He defeated the incumbent, Hon. Daniel Okyem Aboagye who had come under heavy criticisms from a section of the delegates in the constituency for making some unsubstantiated allegations of votes buying against his opponent.



With ballots from all voting centers counted, Mr. Asenso-Boakye who was highly tipped to be victorious garnered 456 votes compared with 122 for Hon. Okyem Aboagye. The Electoral Commission said the election process was generally peaceful despite initial reports of controversies concerning the album.



Francis Asenso-Boakye is a former student activist of the NPP who played an instrumental role in the formation of the tertiary students wing of the party, the Tertiary Students Confederacy of the NPP (TESCON), and served as its Founding President while pursuing undergraduate studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).



Soon after he graduated from KNUST, Francis Asenso-Boakye worked at the Ghana Investment Promotion Center for his national service and later as planning officer for the Ghana Free Zones Board.



He is a product of the Michigan State University, Michigan, USA, where he read Master of Public Policy and Administration as a Rotary Scholar. He also holds a Certificate in Public Sector Management from Tulane University, Louisiana, USA.



While pursuing further studies in the United States, he continued his service to the party in several capacities including Youth Organizer for NPP-North America branch.



After his studies in the USA, Francis worked for Delta Acquisition and Development, a real estate company in Delaware.



On his return to Ghana, Francis worked for the then presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as Political Assistant, a position he has held on until today.



His ambition to represent the Bantama constituency in Parliament dates as far as 2008 when he first filed to contest in the Parliamentary primaries, but was pressed upon to rescind the decision by Hon. Cecilia Dapaah, which he considered. In the 2012 primaries, he contested against the then incumbent constituency chairman but suffered a narrow defeat.



Following the landslide victory of the NPP in the 2016 presidential elections, Francis Asenso-Boakye was appointed to the position of deputy Chief of Staff and Political Assistant to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a position he serves honorably and diligently.



He is married with three kids.





Source: Peacefmonline/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
ALBANY  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is "seriously considering" a quarantine for out-of-state travelers visiting New York, he said in a series of cable television interviews on Monday.

The governor doubled down on the suggestion he first brought up last week, contemplating an isolation period for visitors coming from states where coronavirus cases are on the rise, including Florida and Texas. Cuomo touted New York's turnaround from the state with the worst infection rate to one of the best in the country and worried aloud that an influx of travelers from other states could harm New York's progress.

He said he is in talks with Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Ned Lamont of Connecticut  where coronavirus cases have also declined in recent weeks  about possibly coordinating regional rules for out-of-state travelers.

"It's more effective if we act as a regional collaboration, and I'm talking to them about putting in guidelines so we don't have people coming from these other states," Cuomo said in a Monday morning interview on MSNBC.

Latest coronavirus-related cancellations, postponements

The latest coronavirus numbers in NY

Sign up for the Times Union coronavirus newsletter

Full coronavirus coverage

In a CNN interview minutes later, Cuomo clarified that he would not target specific states, but possibly a general group of those areas "with the highest transmission rate." The governor had previously criticized other states, including Florida and Rhode Island, that sought to quarantine New Yorkers who visited those states when the infection rate in New York was at its highest levels.

Nominate your favorite people and places now Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Nominate your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

In March, Florida began requiring New Yorkers to self-isolate for 14 days after arriving in the Sunshine State. The same month, Rhode Island also issued a 14-day quarantine order for New York travelers, enforced as authorities stopped cars to question drivers with New York license plates and knocked on doors in search of visitors.

The latter order had caused a massive clash with Cuomo's office, as the governor threatened to sue Rhode Island for singling out New York. It was later walked back.

"What they were talking about back then was Rhode Island targeting just New Yorkers," Cuomo said on CNN Monday. "They pull you over by your license plate, which I thought was absurd. Florida did put in a quarantine, which I think was more political than anything else, but now we have a very real problem."

New York's coronavirus cases have continued to decline, with just 10 deaths on Sunday  the lowest one-day total since March 21, Cuomo's office said in a Monday release. Less than 1 percent of diagnostic tests returned positive.
CARLINVILLE  Mark Biermann has been named the next president of Blackburn College, succeeding ProvostJohn McClusky, who has served as interim president since December.

Biermann will assume office Aug. 15, according to the colleges board of trustees.
Head of the Federation of Metallurgists of Ukraine (FMU) Serhiy Bilenky has said that the decision to cut port dues made by ex-infrastructure minister Volodymyr Omelyan was right, and respective accusations by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) are far-fetched.

The head of the FMU expressed support to the former minister of Ukraine and thanked him for such a decision on his page in the social network Facebook.

"I want to support ex-Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan. Mr. Volodymyr and I are not friends and saw each other only at meetings, but little bit of support wouldn't kill anybody. Reducing port charges is definitely not a crime against the state. They need to be further reduced to the level of country competitors. It is crime to silence the problem and do nothing. Far-fetched accusations of NABU, whose detectives we maintain from our taxes, are crime. Volodymyr, metallurgists, miners and other exporters are sincerely grateful for your initiative! I am sure that this suspicion has no judicial prospects. Hold on," Bilenky wrote.

As reported, the NABU and SAPO reported suspicion to former Ukrainian Minister Volodymyr Omelyan on June 19. The ex-minister is suspected of committing illegal actions, as a result of which the state budget has not received UAH 30.5 million. The actions of the ex-official are qualified according to Part 2 of Article 211 (publication by the official of a normative legal act, which reduces budget revenues contrary to the law, if the subject of such actions was budget funds in especially large amounts) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
21.06.2020 LISTEN

Executive secretary of Anchoring Democracy Advocacy Movement Ghana ADAM-GH, Mr. Azubila on his Facebook page said the group really sympathized with the 40 NPP incumbent MPs who lost in their internal Primaries.

According to him, ADAM-GH condemned the violence that was associated with the NPPinternal Primaries where the exchange of gunfire, beaten, open monetization, and vote-buying became the order of the day.

Our Democracy in this country should not be determined by the highest bidder.

ADAM-GH we believe it is never the fault of the defeated sitting MPs neither it's due to their non-performance as members of parliament whose party is in government, the NPP delegates punished them wrongly.

The delegates voted with anger against their sitting MPs because of non-performance at their constituencies but the problem is not coming from the MPs but the central government (President.).

It is unfortunate that the most loved candidates in 2016 who won convincingly can go through such humiliating defeat merely three years in government especially those who went to parliament 2016 for their first time.

There are no projects going on in most of the constituencies where these MPs can take credit by saying it's through their influence, hardship coupled with corruption, and big scandals are swallowing Ghanaians. This government is only performing on the media but the reality on the ground is a different story.

Nothing is happening in this country except propaganda. As members of parliament whose party is in government, they have no excuse to convince their constituents why their needs are not met but they find themselves in this tight corner.

When the center can no longer hold things fall apart and what happened in the NPP internal Primaries will not be different from what can happen in the December 7th General elections. Ghanaians are disappointed in this government and that has been exhibited by the delegates of the NPP.

---Thepressradio.com || Adwenpa-Hene
The Lord Mayor of Dublin has condemned an attack on the Tree Of Life sculpture in St Annes Park in Raheny.

The 200-year-old tree was re-designed as a 10-metre tall sculpture by award winning UK sculptor Tommy Craggs in 2018 and took three years to complete.

Tom Brabazon said it is not known precisely why or when this attack happened, but it appears to have been carried out in the early hours of Monday morning.

Mr Brabazon said an accelerant was used in the attack and gardai are investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

This is a beautiful sculpture enjoyed by adults and children alike, and I want to condemn this wanton act of vandalism in the strongest possible terms, said the Lord Mayor.

Its so sad to see something like this happen.

I would appeal to anyone with any information to contact the Gardai.

Very disappointing to see the Tree Sculpture at the corner of St.Annes Park has been vandalised in an arson attack.



Anyone with information should contact

Raheny Garda Station 01-666-4300

Clontarf Garda Station 01-666-4800 pic.twitter.com/p5bcPmHQed  Cathal Haughey (@Cathal_Haughey) June 22, 2020

Its intricate design is inspired by the wildlife in St Annes Park and Bull island and features different types of animals and plants.

The area around the tree has been cordoned off by Dublin City Council.

Local Councillor Daryl Barron said he was shocked at the damage and has asked the city council to repair the sculpture.

Im horrified and shocked at the damage done to the Peace Tree in Raheny overnight. I have reached out to Dublin City Council Area Management to try and repair the damage caused. Ive no words to describe what type of person would do this. pic.twitter.com/Dvbj5bJ5br  Cllr. Daryl Barron (@DarylBarron) June 22, 2020

He tweeted: Im horrified and shocked at the damage done to the Peace Tree in Raheny overnight.

I have reached out to Dublin City Council Area Management to try and repair the damage caused.

Ive no words to describe what type of person would do this.

Yesterday evening, Firefighters from Finglas extinguished a tree alight in Santry Demense.



Meanwhile at Saint Annes Park a tree sculpture was also set alight causing damage to the artwork commissioned by @DCCParks_Biodiv pic.twitter.com/HVkoqUilNN  Dublin Fire Brigade (@DubFireBrigade) June 22, 2020

Heartbreaking. If anyone has any information to help track down the delinquents behind this, please ring Clontarf or Raheny Garda 016664800 or 016664300 https://t.co/bRW2xcUVlx  LoveClontarf.ie (@loveclontarf_ie) June 22, 2020

Gardai said they are carrying out inquiries into the incident.
Uyghurs hold a rally in front of the White House in Washington, calling for sanctions on Chinese officials, June 21, 2020.

Members of the Uyghur diaspora in the U.S. and Canada have called on U.S. President Donald Trump to immediately enact sanctions against Chinese officials complicit in rights abuses in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) under legislation he signed last week.

A group of some 60 Uyghurs gathered in front of the White House on Sunday holding signs applauding Trumps June 17 enactment of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (UHRPA), which passed nearly unanimously through both houses of Congress last month.

The legislation highlights arbitrary incarceration, forced labor, and other abuses in the XUARhome to a three-year-old program of internment camps holding as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims.

In addition to condemning the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the camps, the new law requires regular monitoring of conditions by U.S. government bodies for the application of sanctions to top officials such as XUAR party chief Chen Quanguo. It also addresses Chinese government harassment of Uyghurs living in the United States.

The Uyghurs chanted slogans that included sanctions now and were joined in solidarity by nearly a dozen members of their ethnic group staging a similar rally in front of the U.S. Embassy in Toronto, Canada.

Speaking to RFAs Uyghur Service, Elfidar Hanim, the general secretary of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association (UAA) exile group, said that in addition to expressing their appreciation to the U.S. government for passing the act, Uyghurs at the rally are also requesting this legislation be implemented as soon as possible.

The common wish of Uyghurs in the U.S. and around the world is to sanction Uyghur Autonomous Region party secretary Chen Quanguo and deputy secretary Zhu Hailun, who launched the policy of internment camps against the Uyghur people, she said.

We definitely want to let the U.S. government know that this is part of our request during this Thank You Rally.

Delay questioned

Observers have questioned why Trump has yet to bring sanctions under the new law, particularly in light of allegations made public on the same day that he signed it by former national security adviser John Bolton.

Bolton said the president told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping he approved of Chinas construction of its camp network amidst negotiations on a trade agreement. According to Bolton, Trump pleaded with Xi to help ensure he was re-elected in 2020.

Trump later told the Wall Street Journal that signing the UHRPA proved that he would not back down to China and called Bolton a liar.

Under the UHRPA, Chinese officials such as Chen deemed responsible for persecution in the XUAR could see any assets in the U.S. frozen and be subjected to visa restrictions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, crafted initially to deal with rights abuses in Russia.

However, the act provides significant leeway for Trump to withhold sanctions if he believes doing so would run counter to U.S. interests. His administration already has the ability to sanction Chinese officials over rights abuses and has chosen not to do so, amidst fears that it could derail the implementation of a long-stalled U.S.-China trade deal.

In an Oval Office interview on Friday afternoon, Trump told Axios that he had held off on imposing Treasury sanctions against Chinese officials involved with the internment camps because doing so would have interfered with his trade deal with Beijing.

When you're in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions onwe've done a lot, he said, adding that he had put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of.

Trump also said he had not pursued sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act because nobodys asked me, but suggested he would take a look at it if someone did.

Reported by Kurban Niyaz for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
New Delhi:

Supreme Court asked the Karnataka government on Monday to inform it by Tuesday afternoon whether or not it has released Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu as directed by it on September 30.

The Centre also moved the apex court seeking modification of its earlier order asking it to constitute the Cauvery Water Management Board (CWMB) by Tuesday. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, told the court that the Centre should not have been asked to constitute the CWMB as the main civil appeal on the issue was still pending and the task of setting up the CWMB fell under the domain of the Executive.

A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan listed the interim plea of the Centre for hearing tomorrow. The apex court sought a report from Karnataka by 2 PM tomorrow on compliance of its order of September 30.

On September 30, SC had directed Karnataka to discharge 6,000 cusecs water from October 1-6, warning it that no one would know when the "wrath of the law" would fall on it. The apex court had also directed the Centre to establish the CWMB, saying once it was constituted, its team would visit the sites to take a prima facie view of the ground reality and submit a report.

On October 1, Karnataka had moved a review petition in the apex court against its three orders on Cauvery water release to Tamil Nadu and direction to the Centre to create the CWMB. In its review petition, Karnataka said "grave miscarriage of justice" has been caused to it pursuant to the three apex court orders of September 20, 27 and 30, by which it was directed to release 6000 cusecs of water till October 6 and the Centre was to constitute the Board by October 4.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer looks at a damaged police car after clashes in Stuttgart - Shutterstock

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country's top security official on Monday decried an outburst of violence at the weekend in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, where hundreds of people attacked stores, vehicles and police officers following a stop-and-search for drugs.

Authorities say 24 people were arrested over Saturday night's unrest and 19 police officers were injured.

Merkel's spokesman said the scenes "were abhorrent and must be strongly condemned."

"Anyone who takes part in such outbreaks of violence, brutally attacks police officers and destroys and plunders shops cannot in any way justify it," Steffen Seibert said Monday.

Seibert thanked police officers nationwide, saying they "should know that the German government and millions of people stand behind you."

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who called for "swift and tough" punishment of those responsible, said there had been a broader rise in violence against officers and rescue workers for some time. He complained of "disparagement of the police through words, and disparagement can be just as hurtful as physical violence."

Seehofer also suggested he might file a criminal complaint against a left-wing newspaper columnist who had written disparagingly about police recently, but his spokesman later said officials were still examining the legal implications of such a move. Opposition lawmakers warned that government intervention over a newspaper column could be seen as interference in press freedom.

The disturbances started after officers stopped a 17-year-old on suspicion of drug possession as several hundred people partied outside around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. Bystanders started throwing stones and bottles, and smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to police.

Police said 40 businesses were vandalized, nine of them were looted and 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers brought the situation under control.

Police have said the violence had no apparent political motivation. They said the suspect initially stopped was a white German citizen. Of the two dozen people arrested, half held German passports and half were citizens of other countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 15:39:57|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BISHKEK, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyzstan confirmed 205 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, raising the total number of infections in the country to 3,356.

A total of 2,289 laboratory tests were conducted in the country in the last 24 hours, which detected 205 new cases, Health Minister Sabirzhan Abdikarimov told a news briefing.

He said that of the newly confirmed cases, 26 are medical workers, bringing the total number of infected medical workers to 582, including 387 recoveries.

The minister explained that sometimes medical workers themselves violated sanitary standards.

"We will have to take tough measures and introduce restrictive measures taking into account the epidemiological situation if this situation continues," he said.

The minister also reported three new virus-related deaths, raising the total number of fatalities in the country to 40.

Abdikarimov said that a total of 2,021 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals, and that 571 people remain hospitalized, with 36 of them in serious condition and 11 patients in intensive care. Enditem
Police have launched an investigation after they were called to the scene of an apparent hanging to find a mannequin wearing a pig mask and cop uniform.

The dummy was hanging from an overpass on the I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday.

When officers arrived on the scene around 6am, they discovered that it wasn't a suicide as expected.

The mannequin was wearing an NYPD uniform, according to First Coast News.

Scroll down for video

The dummy was hanging from an overpass on the I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday

When officers arrived around 6am, they discovered that it wasn't a suicide as expected

It had 'KKK' scrawled on, KHQ reported.

Sheriff Mike Williams said 'the mock lynching' is 'extremely disturbing'.

'Both the tactics and props used were a deliberate attempt to exasperate an anti-police sentiment and drive a divide in our community,' the sheriff said.

'This incident was carried out by people wanting to undermine our dedicated efforts to keep our city safe.

'Too many good citizens are working with us to keep our community safe through active partnerships, and frank conversations about the challenges we all face.'

Williams added that this type of act will not be tolerated by his agency or the community, and said they will work together to hold those responsible accountable.

The mannequin reportedly was wearing an NYPD uniform and had 'KKK' written on it

A sergeant told KHQ that they were relieved it wasn't a real body.

Amid pressure for police to be held accountable for cases of brutality and calls for departments to be defunded, Sgt Bruce Baker emphasized the importance of keeping their officers safe.

'Our goal at this point is to identify persons of interest for, most importantly, the safety of the members of the community and for our officers' safety as well,' Sgt. Bruce Baker told KHQ.

'We are thankful this was not a real person. Anyone who has any information on who may be responsible for this is encouraged to call our partners at crimestoppers.'

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office at 904-630-0500 or email JSOCrimeTips@jaxsheriff.org.
Stars and Stripes kept our spirits up and kept us informed at some of the most difficult times, says Moulton, who served four tours of duty in Iraq. Just knowing they were out there doing their job  looking out for us by doggedly pursuing the truth  gave us more faith in our work and reinforced the values we were literally putting our lives on the line for. The papers publisher, Max Lederer, told me, You can give a service member the best gun in the world, but if his mind is elsewhere  if hes worried about things at home  then hes not going to be as good a soldier, and part of our role is to provide that information to give him a sense of comfort.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 16:10:27|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SEOUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export fell in single digits in the first 20 days of June owing to an economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak, customs office data showed Monday.

Export, which takes up around half of the export-driven economy, amounted to 25.0 billion U.S. dollars in the June 1-20 period, down 7.5 percent from a year earlier, according to Korea Customs Service.

The daily average export tumbled 16.2 percent in the cited period. The number of working days grew by 1.5 days in the 20-day period compared with a year earlier.

Import retreated 12.0 percent to 24.5 billion dollars for the first 20 days of this month, sending the trade surplus to 0.5 billion dollars.

Export for automobiles and consumer electronic products dived 36.7 percent and 14.9 percent each, and oil product shipment plunged 40.9 percent amid cheaper crude oil.

Shipment of telecommunication devices such as smartphone gained 10.9 percent, and semiconductor export added 2.6 percent in the cited period.

Export to the United States, the European Union (EU), Japan and the Middle East all declined in double figures.

Shipment to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, advanced 14.5 percent in the June 1-20 period compared to a year earlier. Enditem
The Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS) has endorsed the candidacy of the former Coordinating Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for the World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General elections.

The endorsement by the 15-member-state regional group is a boost to Mrs Okonjo-Iweala candidature in the race following last weeks decision by the African Union (AU) to reject her nomination.

The president of ECOWAS, Mahamadou Issoufou, who announced the endorsement in a statement dated June 19, 2020, said the decision was taken based on the authority of the Heads of State and Governments of its member-countries.

He urged other African countries as well as non-African countries to join in endorsing the candidature of the former World Banks Managing Director, considering the need to field a strong and formidable African representative in the elections.

The ECOWAS president said the endorsement was informed by the communication by the chairman of the General Council of the WTO announcing Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as one of the four candidates nominated by their countries to vie for the position.

In reaching its decision to endorse Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas nomination, Mr Issoufou said ECOWAS took into consideration the fact that since the creation of the WTO no African has assumed the position of DG.

WTO which was created on January 1, 1995, was preceded by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established on January 1, 1948.

Having acknowledged the strong academic and professional background of Dr. Okonjo-Iweala and her very large experience in national affairs as Nigerias Finance Minister (2003-2006) and Nigerias Foreign Affairs Minister briefly in 2006, the ECOWAS President said.

AU rejects

The AU had said its decision to reject Mrs Okonjo-Iweala was based on the legal opinion of the Office of the Legal Counsel of the organization on the legality of Mrs Okonjo-Iweala following a petition by the Egyptian government against her nomination.

On June 4, President Muhammadu Buhari announced Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as replacement for Nigerias previous nominee for the post, Yonov Frederick Agah.

Barely 24 hours after the announcement, the Egyptian government petitioned the AU Commission (Commissioner of Political Affairs/Office of Legal Counsel), and sought Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas disqualification from the race.

READ ALSO:

In its protest letter to the Permanent Missions of the WTO Member-States of the Ministerial Committee on Candidatures, the Egyptian government said the decision to withdraw Mr Agahs candidature meant Nigeria had forfeited its chance to participate in the race.

The Egyptian government said three African candidates had already emerged following their endorsement by the Executive Council of the AU to contest in the elections vide its decision EX.CL/December. 1090(XXXVI) of February 2020.

It listed the three candidates to include representatives of Benin Republic, Eloi Laourou, along with Abdulhameed Mamdouh of Egypt, and Nigerias Agah, who is currently one of the four Deputy DGs of the WTO.

On June 15, the AU in its response to the Egyptians governments petition, the AU said Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas candidacy violated the extant rules of the organization, which requires the African representative in the race to emerge through an AU sanctioned consensus process.

The AUs counsel said Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas nomination came after the November 30, 2019 deadline set by the ministerial committee on candidature for AU member-countries to present their nominees for the WTO DG race.

Nigeria rejects AUs decision

The Nigerian government has since reacted to the AUs decision, stoutly defending Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas candidate in the WTO DG race.

The response by the Nigerian Embassy and Permanent Mission to the AU on behalf of the Nigerian government on Thursday was contained in a Note verbale to members of the AU ministerial committee on candidature.

In the diplomatic communication, Nigeria totally rejected the opinion of the legal counsel on Mrs Okonjo-Iwealas nomination.

The Nigerian Government said the nomination did not contravene any laws as it was not a fresh nomination, but a replacement of its previously nominee, Yonov Agah.

The Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will not be a party to any propaganda and/or actions that supplant the vision and objectives of the African Union, by supporting a willful, obviously partisan and outlandish interpretation of rules and decisions.

It is obvious that the OLC (Office of the Legal Counsel) is stubbornly trapped to the unfounded notion that the candidature of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a fresh submission and cleverly refraining from recognizing it as a replacement for Ambassador Yonov Frederick Agah, an earlier submission, duly made in line with all known rules.

By the same token of illogic, does it then mean that a country whose candidate steps down as a result of natural causes, or acts of force majeure becomes ineligible to replacing such candidate according to OLC? Such a conclusion is not just patently wrong, but worrisome and grossly uninformed.

Advertisements



WTO accepts Okonjo-Iweala

Regardless, the WTO has already named Mrs Okonjo-Iweala among the three candidates whose nominations by their countries have so far been accepted to vie for the organizations DG position.

The WTOs General Council Chair, David Walker of New Zealand, who announced the shortlist of three candidates, said Mrs Okonjo-Iweala would be squaring up against the Mexican representative, Jesus Seade Kuri, and Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh of Egypt.

The announcement of the nominees is in line with the election schedule spelled out by the WTO.

Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is an economist and international development professional with over 30 years experience, having worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America.

She is currently the Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; a member of the Boards of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter Inc, and was recently appointed as African Union (AU) Special Envoy to mobilise International Financial Support in the fight against COVID-19, as well as Special Envoy for the World Health Organizations Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.

Twice Nigerias Finance Minister (2003-2006) and (2011-2015), Mrs Okonjo-Iweala also served briefly as Nigerias Foreign Minister in 2006, the first Nigerian woman to hold both positions.

She had a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the position of managing director (operations).
Featured stories

East Cleveland police investigating after 8-year-old girl reportedly shot (WJW Channel 8)

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine orders flags at half-staff for local U.S. Marine killed in training exercise (cleveland.com)

How has Ohio avoided a coronavirus spike while other states surge? Experts credit early closings, measured reopenings (cleveland.com)

Coronavirus in Ohio

2,700 Ohioans have died from the coronavirus: Sunday update (cleveland.com)

Ohio is halting unemployment benefits to employees who refuse to return to work, with exceptions (cleveland.com)

Many Ohio colleges are dropping ACT and SAT requirements for admissions this year due to coronavirus (cleveland.com)

Ohios unemployment rate improved in May but still remains near historic high (cleveland.com)

Crime

Short Ohio State Highway Patrol pursuit ends in fiery crash, seriously injuring two (cleveland.com)

Six men hurt in six separate shootings in 24 hours, Cleveland police say (cleveland.com)

Someone threw gas on a man and tried to set him on fire, Cleveland police say (cleveland.com)

Report: Stark County deputies arrest man accused of fatal stabbing (WEWS Channel 5)

Cleveland Heights police investigating shooting (WEWS Channel 5)

Cleveland / Cuyahoga County

9 Cleveland gets its own Black Lives Matter street mural, June 20, 2020

Confirmed coronavirus cases in Cleveland inch closer to 2,000; no new deaths reported: Sunday update (cleveland.com)

Cleveland gets its own Black Lives Matter street mural; local BLM organizers demands city do more (cleveland.com)

Mayor Frank Jackson picks former prosecutor as Clevelands new director of public safety (cleveland.com)

Cleveland planning commission gives OK to building near MetroHealth that will include affordable housing (cleveland.com)

Clevelands Feast of the Assumption canceled due to coronavirus, city and church leaders say (cleveland.com)

Kukui drive-in music festival tentatively moved from July 4th weekend to late August at request of city of Cleveland, organizers say (cleveland.com)

Amtrak will reduce long-distance service to three-times weekly, including trains through Cleveland (cleveland.com)

Northeast Ohio vehicle traffic, which can precede coronavirus spikes, down 20% (cleveland.com)

Tri-C students will return to campus this fall with up to 40% of classes in-person (cleveland.com)

Cleveland Municipal Court holds first in-person wedding since coronavirus shutdown (cleveland.com)

Local news West

Strongsville switches to four-day workweek, furloughs some employees, due to decline in income tax collections (cleveland.com)

Akron / Canton area

Springfield Township police, Summit County deputies sued by father of man in mental distress who died after altercation with officers (cleveland.com)

State

Five reasons why so many Ohio law-enforcement agencies havent yet adopted statewide police standards (cleveland.com)
T hirteen people have appeared in court charged in connection with an investigation into historical child sex offences.

All the offences are said to have happened in the West Midlands between 2008 and 2016.

The hearings at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Monday, were conducted in line with social distancing because of the number of defendants charged.

James Evans, 35, of Eyland Grove, Walsall, is accused of 27 charges in all, including several child rape allegations, inciting youngsters to sexual activity, and sexual assaults against children.

Natasha Webb, 34, of Tettenhall Road, Wolverhampton, is accused of 18 charges in all, including inciting a child to sexual activity and sexually assaulting children.

David Baker, 39, of Park Avenue, Willenhall, Walsall, is accused of 15 charges in all, including allegations he raped children under the age of 13.

Tracy Baker, 38, also of Park Avenue, Walsall, is accused of 11 charges in all, including sexual assaults against children and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Mark Smith, 32, of Bloxwich Road, Walsall, is facing 12 charges including allegations he raped a child under the age of 13.

Kirsty Webb, 33, also of Bloxwich Road, is facing 10 charges including multiple counts of inciting a boy under the age of 13 to sexual activity.

Pamela Howells, 65, of Saw Mill Close, Walsall, is charged with six offences, including three counts of inciting boys under 13 to sexual activity.

Stephen Webb, 62, of Whitmore Street, Walsall, who appeared in court in a wheelchair, is facing eight charges including sexual touching of a child under 13, and a count of child rape.

All eight also face additional charges of conspiring to incite victims, all under 13, to engage in sexual activity, conspiring to facilitate sexual activity with children and further conspiring, for their own sexual gratification, to have children watch themselves or others engage in sex acts.

Lee Webb, 38, also of Whitmore Street, is accused of seven offences including conspiring to incite children under 13 to sexual activity and conspiring, for sexual gratification, to cause the children to watch themselves or others engaging in sex acts.

Dean Webb, 31, also of Saw Mill Close, is accused of 14 offences, including multiple charges of raping children under the age of 13, conspiring to incite children to sexual activity and conspiring, for sexual gratification, to cause the children to watch themselves or others engaging in sex acts.

Ann Clare, 40, of Saw Mill Close, Walsall, is also accused of similar conspiracy offences, as well as three counts of inciting a child under 13 to sexual activity and sexual touching of a boy.

Luke Baker, 20, of School Street, Walsall, is accused of two counts of raping a boy under 13, and two further charges of inciting a boy under 13 to sexual activity.

Gemma Watts, 39, of Hughes Road, Wednesbury, West Midlands, is charged with sexual assault of a girl under 13, and conspiring to incite a boy under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

All were conditionally bailed by district judge David Robinson to appear at Wolverhampton Crown Court on July 13, when they are set to enter pleas.

Meanwhile, 13 more people charged in connection with the same West Midlands Police investigation are due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
Plugging old oil and gas wells may cost as much as ten times what the industry routinely estimates, according to a new report from Carbon Tracker. As oil and gas companies walk away from their stranded liabilities, the public may be left to pick up the tab.

When oil and gas companies are finished with old wells, they are supposed to close them and pay for the cleanup. However, often the wells are abandoned, or orphaned, left idled but not plugged up for good. In many cases, these wells are dumped onto local and state governments, leaving taxpayers to pay for the cleanup.

The problem is not new, however. Bonding for oil and gas wells have been around for many years, but the actual requirements are lax almost everywhere. Companies are not required to pay the full cleanup costs upfront, the logic often being that they will earn money as they go, better equipping them to pay for cleanup later on.

But when it comes time to pay, many years later, some companies do not have the money to meet their obligations. In fact, more than 200 North American oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy since 2015, a rate of failure that is only accelerating with the recent oil market meltdown.

Low bonding levels were an acceptable risk, as long as the vast majority of oil companies remained good credit risks, Carbon Tracker said in its report.

However, [s]tates have inadvertently created a moral hazard: its always in the operators financial interest to delay permanent abandonment of wells as long as possible, often by selling late-life and marginal assets to weaker companies, Carbon Tracker wrote. As a predictable result, inventories of largely self-bonded idle wells, some that have been nonoperational for more than 100 years, have ballooned.

With more and more drillers in financial distress, many more wells will wind up unplugged, leaving the public to deal with the mess. State and local governments may decide to foot the bill and pay for permanent closure, which translates into a significant subsidy for the oil and gas industry. If instead, they are not plugged, the price will be paid by landowners, citizens, and the environment, Carbon Tracker warned.

Story continues

Related: The U.S. Is Missing A Major Energy Opportunity

Tens of thousands of oil and gas wells were temporarily shut in following the sharp plunge in prices in March and April due to the coronavirus pandemic. Carbon Tracker says that not all of those wells will be reactivated. In a two-month time period, we went from zero orphan wells to almost 400, North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms recently said.

Canada, too, has tens of thousands of orphaned wells with no clear path forward.

There are enormous risks that stem from orphaned wells. A special report from Reuters found that 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells together emitted 281 kilotons of methane in 2018, equivalent to the emissions of 16 million barrels of oil, although that is likely a low estimate. More important to individual landowners living nearby, the wells can contaminate groundwater and soil, and emit toxic air emissions. There are also risks of explosions.

Looking out further, the prospect that a large portion of global oil reserves will be left in the ground as demand peaks and begins to decline means that the number of abandoned wells will not only increase, but will be brought forward in time. The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, according to some experts, may hasten this transition.

The number of non-operational orphaned wells could skyrocket at a time when the oil industry is in danger of entering structural decline. In short, the industry cannot afford to retire, Carbon Tracker said.

But thats not all. Carbon Tracker says that the actual cost of plugging old wells is way higher than is typically cited on company balance sheets. The industry routinely underestimates the cost of plugging old wells, and regulators tend to parrot those estimates.

Related: Oilfield Services May Not Recover Until 2023

The true costs of plugging shale wells may be one of industrys best kept secrets, Carbon Tracker said. Instead of the $20,000 to $40,000 per well that is often cited, closing hundreds of thousands of shale wells could actually be an order of magnitude higher  as much as $300,000 per well. In extreme cases, it may even cost $1 million per well. Shale wells are deeper than shallow conventional wells, so the costs are much steeper.

Who is going to pay for all of this? In many cases, it wont be the industry. North Dakota regulators are currently seeking federal money to pay for hundreds of newly orphaned wells.

So, just look at the number of operating and idle wells that are out there. The numbers are pretty staggering, Greg Rogers, Senior Adviser at Carbon Tracker, said in an interview with Drilled News. Texas has over 400,000 wells. California over 100,000 wells. Pennsylvania, over 100,000 wells. Kansas, over 90,000. Ohio, over 90,000. New Mexico, over 50,000. In North Dakota, over 25,000.

So, we're talking numbers that are in the billions. For some states theyre going to be in the tens of billions, he said.

Reuters estimates that at the current pace of spending to clean up abandoned wells, it would take several thousand years to work through the backlog.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Read this article on OilPrice.com
SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan's recent study, Analysis of the Global Airline IT Market, Forecast to 2025 , finds that the increasing expectations of passengers are compelling airlines to embrace digital enablers and propelling a digital transformation journey that will fundamentally change traditional airline information technology (IT) strategies. Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline IT market is estimated to generate a revenue of $20.74 billion by 2025, compared to $21.20 billion in 2019. As per the original forecast, by 2025, the market was estimated to reach $25.1 billion from $21.20 billion in 2019.

For further information on this analysis, please visit: http://frost.ly/46n

"Despite the adverse impact of COVID-19 on the industry, airlines are increasingly focusing on adopting next-generation digital solutions such as mobility, machine learning (ML), Big Data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify cost-saving and revenue-generating opportunities," said Abhilash Varkey Abraham, Aerospace & Defense Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Additionally, a few major airlines have already committed to migrating their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud over the next 3-5 years and this trend is likely to continue and grow, mainly among low-cost carriers."

Abraham added: "From a regional airline IT market perspective, North American airlines were the highest revenue contributor in 2019 and are expected to remain so during the forecast period. Further, APAC is expected to be the key growth engine over the medium and long terms."

With global airlines losing $25 billion due to disruptions in operations and with 50% of them addressable via digital solutions, a huge opportunity exists for IT suppliers to innovate and expand their portfolio. Market opportunities include:

Real-time data analytics with an interactive display/graphical user interfaces (GUI) will have higher penetration in the medium term, which will serve as a growth opportunity for suppliers.

with an interactive display/graphical user interfaces (GUI) will have higher penetration in the medium term, which will serve as a growth opportunity for suppliers. With airlines embracing the capabilities of next-gen technologies such as AI and ML , solution providers are encouraged to integrate these technologies into their solutions.

, solution providers are encouraged to integrate these technologies into their solutions. Vendors are encouraged to develop solutions to solve airlines' disruption pain points, especially in the areas of passenger re-accommodation and compensation .

. Adopting Big Data platforms can streamline the operations of airlines, reducing cost and time.

Analysis of the Global Airline IT Market, Forecast to 2025 is the latest addition to Frost & Sullivan's Aerospace & Defense research and analyses, available through the Frost & Sullivan Leadership Council, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future.

About Frost & Sullivan

For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Analysis of the Global Airline IT Market, Forecast to 2025

MDE1

Contact:

Francesca Valente

Corporate Communications

E: [email protected]

http://ww2.frost.com

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

www.frost.com


Two Alabama men are in an Oregon jail today charged with fatally shooting seven people at a home in Morgan County earlier this month.

Morgan County Sheriff Ron Puckett said at least some of the victims and the suspects were in a club of their own creation called the 7 Deadly Sins when suspects John Michael Legg and Frederic Ric Rogers basically decided to shut the club down early in June.

The two suspects were tracked to Salem, Oregon where one of them has a relative, Puckett said. After a warrant for their arrest was issued June 19, The Marion County Sheriffs Department in Oregon stopped a Silver/Grey Dodge Charger with the two men inside and held them at gunpoint until they were in custody. They are being held for extradition to Morgan County to face trial.

Puckett released little new information about the case in a press conference but praised the work of his investigators and the cooperation of the FBI and Oregon sheriffs department. He said investigators had worked tirelessly on the case until the suspects were identified and located.

The shootings took place June 5 at a home on the 500 block of Talucah Road in Valhermoso Springs close to Somerville at a little before 11:30 p.m., according to the Morgan County Sheriffs office. The scene is about 10-12 minutes from Huntsville city limits.

Upon arrival at the residence, deputies saw part of the home was on fire and later discovered seven bodies inside after the fire was extinguished. They said later that the fire was believed set to destroy evidence in the shootings.

The Morgan County Sheriffs Office later identified the victims as Tammy England Muzzey, age 45 of Valhermoso Springs; Emily Brooke Payne, age 21 of Valhermoso Springs; Roger Lee Jones Jr., age 19 of Decatur; Jeramy Wade Roberts, age 31 of Athens; William Zane Hodgin, age 18 of Somerville; and James Wayne Benford, age 22 of Decatur.

A 17-year-old female victim was also identified but her name was not released.

It is a horrific scene and to be able to process it will take some time, MCSOs public information officer Mike Swafford said at the time.

Swafford later told AL.com that investigators believe the suspect went to the residence with the intention of shooting everyone there. Some victims had multiple gunshot wounds, Swafford said. He called the crimes, Incredibly heinous... cold-blooded.

The director of the countys 911 service received two calls reporting gunfire at the residence came in around 11:30 p.m. One caller said a gun had been fired intermittently for an hour.

The Madison County Sheriffs Office and Somerville Police Department were brought in to assist with the crime scene. The FBIs Violent Crimes Task Force is also assisting.

The shooting came a little over a week after the county witnessed a triple homicide.
Property developer and socialite Matthew James Doyle, who imported $80million worth of cocaine into Australia, will learn his fate next week.

The 31-year-old businessman, who created an app known as the 'Uber of massages', was arrested in September for supplying 300kg of cocaine.

On Monday morning NSW Crime Commission lawyer Sankami Santhikumar told the Supreme Court Doyle's sentence hearing will be held on July 2.

Property developer and socialite Matthew James Doyle, 31, imported $80million worth of cocaine into Australia. Pictured with his wife Kelsea

Doyle faces life behind bars for his part of the international drug syndicates, which involved two other men. Pictured with his wife Kelsea

Doyle also pleaded guilty to dealing with $220,000 worth of proceeds of crime, The Daily Telegraph reported.

He did not appear in court on Monday for the civil listing hearing and application by the crime commission to seize his assets.

Doyle faces life behind bars for his part of the international drug syndicates, which involved two of his friends he went to private school with.

Jared 'Jazza' Hart, 30, and Raoul Kesby have both pleaded guilty to supplying 50kg of cocaine.

Police swooped on the trio at a Marrickville storage unit, where they allegedly tried to access a large cocaine shipment after the five-month operation.

According to court documents, Doyle supplied illegal drugs between April 23 and September 4, 2019.

Detectives had been listening in to Doyle as he planned to receive 300kg of cocaine worth about $80 million.

According to court documents, Doyle said he 'was not a gangster but a businessman and loved money and loved making money for people and making friends'.

Doyle has been remanded in custody since his arrest, while his publicist wife Kelsea and their child are living in their mansion in Burraneer, south of Sydney.

He and Kelsea - who used to work for high end fashion brand Camilla and Marc - enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle that included an impressive property portfolio.

Detectives had been listening in to Doyle as he planned to receive 300kg of cocaine worth about $80 million

Doyle had a penthouse in Cronulla, as well as properties in Caringbah South, Wollongong and Artarmon.

The father-of-one also had shares in 16 companies and a number of flash cars.

In December last year, Ms Doyle celebrated her 30th birthday in a lavish lunch surrounded by friends at Justin Hemmes' The Newport on Sydney's northern beaches.

The publicist was dressed in a $400 new season Christopher Esber jumpsuit for the occasion and was spotted posing and cuddling up to some female friends throughout the day.

The couple were well known among on the affluent eastern suburbs social scene and regularly brushed shoulders with Sydney's whos who.

Daily Mail Australia does not suggest Ms Doyle had any part in the alleged drug trafficking offences.
New Delhi, June 22 : Indian security agencies have issued a cyber alert following an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) regarding a potential "cyber offensive attack from the Chinese Army".

In the recent alarm, it is warned that Chinese cyber warriors could be carrying out a massive phishing attack in the guise of a free Covid-19 test, said sources.

Amid the growing threat, it is advised to watch out for IDs like "ncov2019@gov.in" and beware of malicious phishing emails, SMS, and messages on social media inciting individuals to provide personal and financial information.

A senior official in the security establishment has warned that the phishing campaign is expected to impersonate government agencies, departments and trade associations who have been tasked to oversee the disbursement of the government's fiscal aid.

He also cautioned about phishing emails with possible subject lines like "free Covid-19 testing for all residents of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad".

"The malicious group claims to have 2 million individual email addresses and the attack campaign is expected to start on June 21," the alert read.

As preventive measures, all the central security forces have been asked to direct their employees against opening or clicking on attachments in unsolicited e-mail, SMS or messages through social media.

It is instructed that the employees employed with these forces should be extra cautious when it comes to opening attachments, even if the sender appears to be known.

"Do not submit personal financial details on unfamiliar or unknown websites or links," warns the alert. "It also asks to beware of e-mails, links providing special offers like Covid-19 testing, aid, winning prize, rewards, cashback offers." It is suggested to consider using safe browsing tools, filtering tools (antivirus and content-based filtering) in antivirus, firewall, and filtering services, and update spam filters with latest spam mail contents.
Serbia's president led his party to a landslide victory in general elections boycotted by the opposition, securing a crushing majority in a country that's at the center of a struggle for influence among global powers.

Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party won 61.6% of Sunday's vote, according to partial official results with 71% of polling stations counted.

Boosted by the boycott from opposition leaders and turnout marred by fear of coronavirus, the result is enough for his party to change any law uncontested. It also eclipses the majorities held by ruling parties across Europe save those of Russia and Belarus.

"This is a historic moment," Vucic said after declaring victory. "We got enormous confidence from the people, the most ever in Serbia."

The win will allow him to tighten his political dominance over the former Yugoslav republic that began when he transformed himself from nationalist firebrand to a pro-European Union prime minister in 2014.

It also renews the government's mandate to tackle thorny issues ranging from trying to lead the economy into a post-virus recovery to mending ties with Kosovo and navigating the uncertain path toward EU membership.

In second place behind the Progressives was the Socialist Party of Vucic's foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, with 10.4%, followed by one moderate group that didn't want to boycott the ballot. Ethnic minorities secured combined 16 seats in the 250-seat assembly. Voter turnout was around 50%.

Buoyed by state media coverage of his government's efforts to quash Serbia's Covid-19 outbreak and engagements with leaders in the U.S., China and Russia, Vucic overcame weeks of protests against his government by tens of thousands of Serbs who took to their balconies during the virus lockdown.

His victory exceeds the most votes won by the late wartime strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a former boss to Vucic in the 1990s. The biggest opposition parties refused to field candidates, saying the Progressives denied them access to media and undermined conditions for a free-and-fair vote.

"This result is an election tsunami," said Slobodan Zecevic, an analyst at the Institute of European Studies. "I don't know anyone in Europe capable of such an election result."

Vucic's intense pre-election media presence has "blurred the line between his official duties and the election campaign," said Urszula Gacek, who represented election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Since switching to the job of president in 2017, Vucic has transformed the role from a largely ceremonial post into Serbia's main executive position.

During that time he has reined in public finances, attracted foreign investment, and raised wages. Still, living standards have languished virtually unchanged at about two-fifths of the EU average for the last decade, and Freedom House, a largely U.S.-government funded think tank that monitors democracy, ranks Serbia as only "partly free."

Vucic's biggest struggle has arguably been his effort to lead the country of 7 million into the EU. The main hurdle to that is Kosovo, which declared independence a decade after the two nations fought a war that ended when a NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serb troops out.

While Brussels has demanded that Serbia mend ties with its neighbor as a condition for entry, Vucic has spent years preventing Kosovo from gaining international recognition. He has vowed to never consider it a separate and independent entity, a position backed by Russia and China.

But pressure is building for a deal. President Donald Trump's envoy, Richard Grenell, has persuaded Vucic to head to the White House on June 27 to meet his Kosovo counterpart to discuss economic cooperation. Before that, he'll head to Russia to meet his ally Vladimir Putin.
A 55-year-old woman from Hyderabads old city area was declared dead due to Covid-19 on Sunday night, three days after her death at Osmania General Hospital (OGH), where she was first declared negative for the virus due to alleged mix up of test reports.

The body of Begum Jani, a widow from Sadatnagar in Yakutpura area, was shown to her family members on Monday, before it was laid to rest by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation authorities, who handle the last rites of Covid-19 patients.

Begums daughter Nishat told Hindustan Times that her mother had been suffering from inflammation in her jaw due to removal of a tooth. On the morning of June 18 she was admitted to the OGH where doctors said she had developed an infection. But by late in the night, we got a call from the hospital that she had passed away, Nishat said.

The family members were told that Begum Jani had tested negative for Covid-19 but when they went to the hospital the following morning, they were told that there was some mistake in the test report, as there was another patient of the same name in the hospital who got admitted June 17.

The hospital authorities told Begum Janis family members that the sample from her body was sent for testing again and till the receipt of the report, her body would be kept in the mortuary.

For the three days, we were made to run around the hospital for the test report and finally, on Sunday night, we were told she had tested positive. As such, the body would not be given to the family members but would be buried as per Covid-19 rules, Nishat said.

The issue was brought to light on Monday by Mohd Amjadullah Khan, president of Majlis-e-Bachao-Tehreek who tweeted about the mix up of reports in the OGH.

He said because of such mistakes there was every possibility that Covid-19 negative patients were disposed of by the GHMC authorities, while bodies Covid-19 positive patients were handed over to the relatives for last rites which was dangerous.

OGH superintendent Dr B Nagender said such incidents rarely happen due to miscommunication and were addressed as soon as they were brought to the notice of the hospital authorities.

We come across some patients with the same name, coming from the same area for testing. When test reports are obtained from the lab at Osmania Medical College, sometimes, test reports of one patient might have been given to the family members of another patient due to miscommunication as the names sound similar, he said.

Nagender, however, said enough care would be taken while handing over the bodies to the relatives, which would be done only after cross-checking the telephone numbers, Aadhar cards and other details.

He acknowledged that there was delay in obtaining test reports from the lab and attributed it to the growing number of cases in Hyderabad. We are making the best efforts to get the results as early as possible, the OGH superintendent said.

A similar mistake took place at the OGH on Sunday, too, when family members of a woman who was under treatment at the hospital were told that she had died due to Covid-19, though they were told a day before that she was recovering fast and was healthy.

When the family members reached the hospital, they saw that Meherunissa was present in her ward and they lodged a complaint with the police. During the inquiry, it was revealed that another patient by the same name died due to Covid-19 and the hospital staff called up the family members of the other patient who was recovering. The hospital authorities apologised to the family.
The time to move from the lab to the dealer showroom is here. Safety is not an option.

MADD commends the House Energy and Commerce Committee for its leadership in advancing legislation which has the potential to eliminate nearly all drunk driving deaths on our nations roads. More than 10,000 people are killed every year as a result of alcohol-impaired driving.

On behalf of hundreds of thousands of drunk driving victims nationwide, we thank Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (NJ), Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky (IL) and Representative Debbie Dingell (MI) for advancing groundbreaking legislation which calls for installation of advanced drunk driving prevention systems in all passenger vehicles, said MADD National President Helen Witty.

Wittys 16-year-old daughter, Helen Marie, was killed by a drunk and drugged driver in 2000.

The INVEST in America Act requires the beginning of a technology-neutral rulemaking process by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration within 18 months of enactment. A final rule would be issued within five years and implementation in vehicles would occur two years later.

Chair Schakowskys commitment to motor vehicle safety is evident in this legislation, Witty stated. She understands the role that government needs to play in pursuing a strong safety agenda.

Witty also recognized the drunk driving prevention leadership of Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a member of Chair Schakowskys Subcommittee.

The process leading to the technology provision in this measure began in January 2019, when Dingell proposed a measure to honor the five members of the Abbas family of Northville, Michigan. Days earlier, the Abbas family  parents Issam and Rima and their children Ali, Isabella and Giselle  were killed by a wrong-way drunk driver with a BAC almost four times the legal limit.

We would not be here today without Congresswoman Dingells sustained commitment to saving lives and preventing the kind of crash that tragically destroyed the Abbas family, Witty said.

Witty said the regulatory timetable in the measure is realistic, setting a schedule that would certainly appear to fit comfortably into the auto industrys product development and lead time cycles.

MADD reiterates our challenge to the auto industry to more aggressively develop and implement technology that either measures a drivers BAC level and prevents operation of the vehicle, monitors the drivers performance and takes action to control operation, or is some combination on those systems, and the bill provides this technology-neutral flexibility, Witty said.

We know that companies and suppliers have or are working on these technologies, and we hope they will embrace this legislation in a responsible and rational way to more seriously address drunk driving, the leading cause of highway deaths, she added. The time to move from the lab to the dealer showroom is here.

Safety is not an option, Witty added.

About Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Founded in 1980 by a mother whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is the nations largest nonprofit working to end drunk driving, help fight drugged driving, support the victims of these violent crimes and prevent underage drinking. MADD has helped to save more than 390,000 lives, reduce drunk driving deaths by more than 50 percent and promote designating a non-drinking driver. MADDs Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving calls for law enforcement support, ignition interlocks for all offenders and advanced vehicle technology. MADD has provided supportive services to nearly one million drunk and drugged driving victims and survivors at no charge through local victim advocates and the 24-Hour Victim Help Line 1-877-MADD-HELP. Visit http://www.madd.org or call 1-877-ASK-MADD.
Amritsar: The two staff members of the Indian high commission in Pakistan, who were abducted and tortured by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and framed in a case of road rage in the neighbouring country recently, returned to India via the Attari-Wagah border, 32 km from Amritsar, on Monday.

The two staff members, Paul Selvadhas and Dwimu Brahma, who were working as drivers in the Indian high commission in Pakistan, were accompanied by three Indian officials on their return.

Five members of the Indian high commission crossed over to India at 1pm, a senior Border Security Force (BSF) official said.

Selvadhas and Brahma were abducted by 15 armed men from a fuel station near the Indian high commission in Pakistan on June 15. They were kept in detention for 12 hours and beaten up with rods and lathis and made to drink dirty water.

According to sources, the three officials who accompanied Selvadhas and Brahma are on leave and will return to work.

According to officials at the Integrated Check Post (ICP), Attari, which facilitates Indias trade with Pakistan and Afghanistan and movement of passengers from India to Pakistan and vice-a-versa, injury marks were visible on Selvadhas and Brahma.

They were taken away in a separate vehicle from the ICP, which was escorted by a team of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), while the three other staff members left the ICP in another car.

Sources said the high commission of India had written to the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) in Islamabad for the movement of the five officials via Wagah on June 18. The MFA had granted permission on June 19.

The two staffers were interrogated regarding the role and function of all high commission officials.

Reports in the Pakistani media claimed that the Indian officials had been arrested after their car allegedly hit a pedestrian near the diplomatic enclave. The Indian officials had said that their kidnappers made multiple videos in which the two staffers were forced to confess under duress that they were involved in the accident.

The two men were handed back to the Indian high commission at 9pm on June 15. They were released after the Pakistani charge daffaires in New Delhi was summoned to the foreign ministry of India and a strong protest was lodged.

A first information report (FIR) by Islamabad police claimed fake Pakistani currency was found in the car in which the two were travelling. The Indian authorities refuted the charges.

The incident took place a fortnight after the Indian government expelled two officials of the Pakistan high commission who were apprehended on charges of spying on May 31. Both men were declared persona non grata for indulging in activities incompatible with their status as members of a diplomatic mission and asked to leave India within 24 hours.
Is this Gods super sign of the End Times?

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Author Jeff Kinley believes the Bible lays out some fascinating circumstances that will unfold as humanity marches toward the biblical "end times."

But there's one sign, in particular, that Kinley, author of the new book, Interview With the Antichrist, believes has already unfolded: the re-emergence of Israel.

READ ALSO: ARE SIGNS OF THE BIBLICAL END TIMES HAPPENING BEFORE OUR EYES?

He explained the development while telling "The Pure Flix Podcast" why he is so intrigued by eschatology (i.e. the study of the end times).

"Part of it is ... the sense of knowing that we are living in the last days, with Israel being reborn as a nation  that's really God's super sign," he said. "There's so many things that are happening almost daily around the world that it's almost like you ... have to be living under a rock not to notice it."

Listen to Kinley break down the ins and outs of end-times theology:

Kinley also addressed many of the social and political unrests unfolding across the globe, noting that many "people feel like the world's in peril."

Despite these feelings, end times theology is sometimes overlooked, ignored or downplayed even within Christian circles.

"We know that Jesus is coming back but no one is talking about what happens in between," he said. "God actually tells us what's going to happen and He tells us how to prepare for it."

READ ALSO: 11 CHRISTIAN MOVIES ABOUT THE END TIMES

But Kinley was pointed in his warning that Christians must be cautious when it comes to end-times theology, declining to make specific predictions, especially when it comes to timetables as the Bible notably tells Christians to avoid date-setting.

"We need to be reasoned, we need to be seasoned, we need to be biblical," Kinley said, urging people not to "make crazy claims."

The popular author also discussed the rapture  the biblical belief that Christians will be taken up to heaven and spared from the majority of end-times events.

The rapture typically sparks debate, as not everyone believes the rapture is seen in scripture. Kinley, who believes the rapture is indeed a biblical construct, said that the issue isn't a matter of salvation.

"It's not a salvation issue," the author said. "But it is an important issue."

WATCH: SEE THOUSANDS OF PURE FLIX MOVIES AND TV SHOWS WITH A FREE TRIAL

Toward the end of the interview, Kinley discussed the secular cultural changes that are afoot, and encouraged Christians to take a cue from the early Christian church. While the church was a small and unpopular cohort, the message grew and resonated.

"Go out there and be the light of Jesus Christ to the world," Kinley said.

If you're looking to understand the end times, consider downloading this theology guide, which explains the ins and outs of what the Bible says about the end of days.

This article was originally published on Pure Flix Insider. Visit Pure Flix for access to thousands of faith and family-friendly movies and TV shows. You can get a free trial here.

Billy Hallowell, author of "The Armageddon Code," has contributed to TheBlaze, the Washington Post, Human Events, the Daily Caller, Mediaite, and the Huffington Post, among other news sites. Through journalism, media, public speaking appearances, and the blogosphere, Hallowell has worked as a journalist and commentator for more than a decade.
The reports of Davinder Singh, an accused in the case related to aiding terrorists affiliated to Pakistan-backed outfit Hizbul Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir, being granted bail by a Delhi court in another terror-related case booked by the special cell of the Delhi police have every reason to unnerve those who believe in the rule of law in our country.

Singh, a suspended deputy superintendent of Jammu and Kashmir police, and another accused, got the relief in the case related to the planning and execution of terror attacks in Delhi and other parts of the country as the agency failed to file the chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days of their arrest.

While every citizen has a right to fair trial and bail is the rule and jail is the exception it is inexplicable that the Delhi police has shown an irredeemable lapse in attaching to the case the importance it demands, given its background.

The Delhi police and the Union ministry under which it functions must introspect into how such technical issues benefit the people accused of serious crimes.

It may be recalled that the same Delhi police and its arms were prompt in rounding up people who had protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, and sending them to jail; nothing stopped the agency from thinking that they were exercising their fundamental right to protest. It ensured that Safoora Zargar, a pregnant student, was arrested, sent to jail.

It must disturb all right thinking people that the court, which decided not to enlarge her, had suggested that she was paying the price for aligning with the cause though she was not directly related to the violence which erupted as part of it.

It will be dangerous for the future of democracy if law enforcement agencies are seen to be demonstrating double stands in the administration of criminal justice.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  The Bank of the Philippine Islands said it has suspended one of its assistant managers who may have been involved in the issuance of a fake document that vouched for the existence of a trust account of German firm Wirecard AG in the country.

Wirecard, which has been tagged for supposed fraud in 2019, announced last week that it has lost track of 1.9 billion euros (about 107 billion) worth of cash, as its external auditor Ernst & Young Germany could not find the trust accounts which were supposed to hold the money.

The Ayala-led lender told the local bourse Monday that it has rolled out its own investigation into the issue. It said the junior officer "who may have played a part in the preparation of the said document" has been suspended as the probe is ongoing.

BPI and BDO Unibank, Inc. both denied last week that they had a business relationship with the German payments company, adding they did not hold any of missing money. Both reported the incident to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Last week, BDO said it sacked a marketing officer for fabricating a bank certificate issued to EY Germany, which carried forged signatures of bank officers to assure the existence of Wirecard's supposed trust account. BPI also said a similar document presented to the bank by Wirecard's auditor was bogus.

Governor Benjamin Diokno said Sunday that the billions of cash never entered the Philippine financial system and the incident did not cause any losses to the two banks. The central bank is doing its own probe into the incident, but Diokno said it appears that BDO and BPI were only tagged in the incident as an attempt to "cover the perpetrators' track."

The amount is said to be worth one-fourth of the company's consolidated balance sheet. Failure to trace where the amounts are will allow about 2 billion euros worth of loans to Wirecard AG to be terminated.

On Monday, Wirecard said in a statement that there is a "prevailing likelihood" that the trust account balances do not exist. The company added it is exploring sustainable financing now that its loan contracts are in limbo.

Wirecard's long-time CEO Markus Braun resigned Friday amid the controversy, with Dr. James Freis, Jr. stepping in as interim CEO.

BPI shares rose by 0.55 percent to 73 apiece on Monday, the first trading day after the Wirecard scandal came to light. Meanwhile, BDO stocks went down 1 percent to 99 each.
Japan's National Security Council Will Reportedly Rethink Defence Strategy Next Week

Sputnik News

10:04 GMT 21.06.2020(updated 10:10 GMT 21.06.2020)

TOKYO (Sputnik) - The Japanese National Security Council may hold a meeting next week at which it is expected to explore new avenues to provide national security after scrapping plans to install land-based missile systems Aegis Ashore, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The suspension of the costly and controversial US-made defence system was announced suddenly earlier in the week, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intends to rethink the country's security strategy, the report says.

According to the broadcaster, Abe and relevant ministers and officials on the Council are likely to explore alternative missile systems and cooperation strategies before the September deadline to submit an annual defence budget.

Among the new defence approaches, the Council may explore acquiring the capability to attack enemy bases as a self-defence tactic, NHK reported.

Defence Minister Kono Taro is set to visit northern Akita Prefecture on Sunday, one of the two candidate sites for the Aegis Ashore system, NHK said. There he will explain the government's reasoning for scrapping the $1.8 billion project, which is designed to shoot down targets in the earth's stratosphere and above.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






United States Attorney Drew Wrigley announced that Robert Eugene

Johnson, age 72 of West Fargo, ND, has been sentenced to serve five months in Federal Prison for making a false statement about his criminal record during the Purchase of a Firearm.

Johnson pled guilty to the offense on June 22, 2020, and was sentenced the same day by United States District Court Chief Judge Peter D. Welte. Chief Judge Welte also sentenced Johnson to one year of supervised release and ordered him to pay a $100 a special assessment for the Crime Victims Fund. This is what we call a lie and try case, said U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, the defendant was a convicted felon who could not lawfully possess a firearm.

He lied, he tried, and the system worked to block a convicted felon from illegally getting his hands on a firearm. Johnson had been sentenced on March 16, 2020, to serve 4 months for a federal tax felony conviction. Just eight days later, on March 23, Johnson attempted to purchase a semi-automatic firearm by falsely claiming he had not been previously convicted of a felony.

During Johnsons attempted to purchase, store personnel conducted a query of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) which revealed Johnson was prohibited by law from possessing a firearm due to his recent tax evasion conviction. The sale was disallowed, and Johnson was later arrested.
(CNN)  Saudi Arabia will strictly limit the number of people who can take part in this year's Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca because of the coronavirus, according to state-run media.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Hajj and Umrah said the annual pilgrimage would be restricted to a very limited numbers of pilgrims of all nationalities who are already residing in the country, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

A statement from the ministry said that as Covid-19 cases continue to grow globally, and because of the risks of coronavirus spreading in crowded spaces and from other countries, the Hajj will "take place this year with a limited number of pilgrims from all nationalities residing in Saudi Arabia only, who are willing to perform Hajj."

"This decision is taken to ensure Hajj is safely performed while committing to all preventive measures to protect Muslims and adhere strictly to the teachings of Islam in preserving our health and safety," according to the statement.

The ministry statement cited the Saudi Ministry of Health as saying that the risks from coronavirus "are expected to grow further, but there is no vaccine available yet for those infected by the disease. Global health security needs to be preserved."

The ministry said it would be challenging to maintain a proper distance in crowded areas and prevent the spread of the virus.

Based on these concerns, the Hajj Ministry statement said, "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose top priority is to always provide care to enable Muslims to perform Hajj or Umrah rites safely and securely, has taken severe precautionary measures to protect pilgrims since the beginning of COVID-19."

Saudi Arabia has recorded more than 160,000 cases and 1,307 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

More than two million Muslims performed Hajj last year, and of those, more than 1.8 million pilgrims traveled to Saudi Arabia from abroad to take part.

In April, Saudi Arabia advised Muslims planning on attending the pilgrimage to put their plans on hold. Indonesia, which had planned to send 221,000 pilgrims to Mecca this year, announced June 2 it would not be sending anyone because of virus concerns.

Performing the Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and it is one of the biggest religious gatherings in the world. Hajj occurs two months and 10 days after Ramadan ends, during the Islamic month of Dhul-Hijjah.

The Hajj is scheduled this year to start at the end of July.

The height of Hajj corresponds with the major Islamic holy day Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son on Divine orders.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Saudi Arabia says Hajj pilgrimage is on  with limited numbers."
Imagine being given two minutes to grab your worldly possessions before a building inspector slaps a sign on your home of 32 years saying it is uninhabitable.

Barbara Fox-Cooper doesnt have to imagine. It happened to her Friday morning after a gas pipeline drilling mishap appears to have fractured the foundation of her home in a rural, bucolic stretch of Upper Freehold, Monmouth County.

They gave me two minutes to grab my belongings while they stood in the doorway to make sure my home didnt collapse, Fox-Cooper said Sunday. My heart is literally crushed.

She said she heard a cracking sound Friday morning and spotted water gushing up from the floor of her concrete basement.

It sounded like a cracker being crushed, she said.

A neighbor helped her figure out the foundation was crumbling and it appeared to have been caused by a hydraulic drilling operation for a gas pipeline about 100 feet from her property.

The incident occurred Friday at her home in Upper Freehold Township, where a crew was doing horizontal drilling for New Jersey Natural Gas Southern Reliability Link, an underground pipeline that would run for 30 miles through Monmouth, Ocean and Burlington counties, intended to provide an alternate delivery route for gas used by NJNG customers.

Fridays mishap involved what is known as an inadvertent return, or the unintended discharge of drilling mud to the surface through a natural crack or fissure in the bedrock being drilled, a company official said.

A New Jersey Natural Gas spokesman said Saturday that the drilling mud that leaked on Friday was a non-toxic mix of water and naturally occurring clay. The drilling was halted immediately, the Department of Environmental Protection was notified and responded to the scene, and the incident was under investigation, said Kevin Roberts, a NJNG spokesman.

The DEP did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday or Saturday.

I never imagined it could have destroyed my home, said Fox-Cooper, a 77-year-old widow.

She said she grabbed her laptop, prescription drugs, a few days change of clothes and a bag of toiletries in the two-minute mad dash through her home. She also grabbed important personal documents before running out of the house.

I didnt have much time to think  she said. Im just thankful it was a not fire. Fire doesnt give you any time to think.

She said she is staying at the home of a family friend and trying to come up with a game plan for Monday to have her insurance company and a structural engineer determine if her two-story colonial home can be salvaged.

Fox-Cooper said she had opposed the pipeline for years and said the accident that happened to her occurred even before gas started to flow through the line.

The $180 million project has been opposed by environmentalists, homeowners and some local governments, but has been approved by multiple agencies, including the Pinelands Commission, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the state Board of Public Utilities.

A lawsuit to overturn the approvals by the PBU and Pinelands Commission is now pending in the Appellate Division of State Superior Court after being filed jointly by the New Jersey Sierra Club, the Pinelands Preservation Alliance and the Burlington County townships of Bordentown and Chesterfield.

Barring further delays or a reversal by the courts, the 18-month project is expected to be completed by the end of 2021, Roberts said. Fridays mishap occurred near the end of first phase of the project, an approximately 22-mile stretch through Monmouth and Ocean counties, which will be followed by a stretch of about 9 miles through Burlington.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
The most immediate effect of vaccine nationalism is that it further disadvantages countries with fewer resources and bargaining power.

Hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine candidates are currently being developed. The way emerging vaccines will be distributed to those who need them is not yet clear. The United States has now twice indicated that it would like to secure priority access to doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Other countries, including India and Russia, have taken similar stances. This prioritization of domestic markets has become known as vaccine nationalism.

As a researcher at Saint Louis Universitys Center for Health Law Studies, I have been following the COVID-19 vaccine race. Vaccine nationalism is harmful for equitable access to vaccines  and, paradoxically, Ive concluded it is detrimental even for the US itself.

Vaccine nationalism during COVID-19

Vaccine nationalism occurs when a country manages to secure doses of vaccine for its own citizens or residents before they are made available in other countries. This is done through pre-purchase agreements between a government and a vaccine manufacturer.

In March, the White House met with representatives from CureVac, a German biotech company developing a COVID-19 vaccine. The US government is reported to have inquired about the possibility of securing exclusive rights over the vaccine. This prompted the German government to comment that Germany is not for sale. Angela Merkels chief of staff promptly stated that a vaccine developed in Germany had to be made available in Germany and the world.

On June 15, the German government announced it would be investing 300 million euros (nearly US$340 million) in CureVac for a 23 percent stake in the company.

In April, the CEO of Sanofi, a French company whose COVID-19 vaccine work has received partial funding from the U.S Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, announced that the US had the right to the largest pre-order of vaccine.

Following public outcry and pressure from the French government, Sanofi altered its stance and said that it would not negotiate priority rights with any country.

In India, the privately held Serum Institute is developing one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The Serum Institute signaled that, if development of the vaccine succeeds, most of the initial batches of vaccine will be distributed within India.

At the same time, India, alongside the US and Russia, chose not to join the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, which was launched by the World Health Organization to promote collaboration among countries in the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

Vaccine nationalism is not new

Vaccine nationalism is not new. During the early stages of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, some of the wealthiest countries entered into pre-purchase agreements with several pharmaceutical companies working on H1N1 vaccines.

At that time, it was estimated that, in the best-case scenario, the maximum number of vaccine doses that could be produced globally was 2 billion. The US alone negotiated and obtained the right to buy 600,000 doses. All the countries that negotiated pre-purchase orders were developed economies.

Only when the 2009 pandemic began to unwind and demand for a vaccine dropped did developed countries offer to donate vaccine doses to poorer economies.

The problems posed by nationalism

The most immediate effect of vaccine nationalism is that it further disadvantages countries with fewer resources and bargaining power. It deprives populations in the Global South from timely access to vital public health goods. Taken to its extreme, it allocates vaccines to moderately at-risk populations in wealthy countries over populations at higher risk in developing economies.

Vaccine nationalism also runs against the fundamental principles of vaccine development and global public health. Most vaccine development projects involve several parties from multiple countries.

With modern vaccines, there are very few instances in which a single country can claim to be the sole developer of a vaccine. And even if that were possible, global public health is borderless. As COVID-19 is illustrating, pathogens can travel the globe. Public health responses to outbreaks, which include the deployment of vaccines, have to acknowledge that reality.

How nationalism can backfire in the US

The US in notorious for its high drug prices. Does the US government deserve to obtain exclusive rights for a vaccine that may be priced too high? Such a price may mean that fewer US citizens and residents  especially those who are uninsured or underinsured  would have access to the vaccine. This phenomenon is a form of what economists call deadweight loss, as populations in need of a welfare-enhancing product are priced out. In public health, deadweight loss costs lives.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has told Congress that the government will not intervene to guarantee affordability of COVID-19 vaccines in the US.

Secretary Azar has said the US government wants the private sector to invest in vaccine development and manufacturing; if the US sets prices, companies may not make that investment because the vaccines wont be profitable. This view has been widely criticized. A commentator has called it bad public health policy, further pointing out that American taxpayers already fund a substantial amount of vaccine research and development in the US. Moreover, as legal scholars have pointed out, there are many regulatory perks and other incentives available exclusively to pharmaceutical companies.

If COVID-19 vaccines are not made available affordably to those who need them, the consequences will likely be disproportionately severe for poorer or otherwise vulnerable and marginalized populations. COVID-19 has already taken a higher toll on black and Latino populations. Without broad access to a vaccine, these populations will likely continue to suffer more than others, leading to unnecessary disease burden, continued economic problems and potential loss of life.

What needs to be done

Nationalism is at odds with global public health principles. Yet, there are no provisions in international laws that prevent pre-purchase agreements like the ones described above. There is nothing inherently wrong with pre-purchase agreements of pharmaceutical products. Vaccines typically do not generate as much in sales as other medical products. If used correctly, pre-purchase agreements can even be an incentive for companies to manufacture vaccines that otherwise would not commercialized. Institutions like Gavi, an international nonprofit based in Geneva, use similar mechanisms to guarantee vaccines for developing countries.

But I see vaccine nationalism as a misuse of these agreements.

Contracts should not trump equitable access to global public health goods. I believe that developed countries should pledge to refrain from reserving vaccines for their populations during public health crises. The WHOs Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator is a starting point for countries to test collaborative approaches during the current pandemic.

But more needs to be done. International institutions  including the WHO  should coordinate negotiations ahead of the next pandemic to produce a framework for equitable access to vaccines during public health crises. Equity entails both affordability of vaccines and access opportunities for populations across the world, irrespective of geography and geopolitics.

Insofar as the U.S. can be considered a leader in the global health arena, I believe it should stop engaging in overly nationalistic behaviors. Failure to do so harms patient populations across the globe. Ultimately, it may harm its own citizens and residents, and perpetuate structural inequalities in our health care system.



Ana Santos Rutschman, Assistant Professor of Law, Saint Louis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The report shows that even Google's robust ad business will take a significant hit as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage businesses. While U.S. ad revenue on YouTube will continue to grow, according to eMarketer, it won't make up for the 7.2% drop in U.S. net search ad revenue expected this year.

EMarketer forecasts that Google will earn $39.58 billion in U.S. advertising revenue this year, compared with $41.80 billion in 2019. The firm expects revenue to rebound by more than 20% in 2021 and to see 11.8% growth in 2022. Despite the decline, Google's ad revenues will still exceed the $36.48 billion earned in 2018, however.

Google will see a 5.3% drop in US advertising revenue in 2020, eMarketer predicted in a new report , marking the first decline in ad revenue growth since the research firm began modeling the business in 2008.

The report also signals that Google is continuing to cede advertising market share to Facebook and Amazon, which eMarketer expects will grow their businesses this year. Google has grown its U.S. ad revenue at a slower rate than the overall digital ad market since 2016, according to eMarketer principal analyst Nicole Perrin.

Google shares were up about 1%at midday, despite the analysis, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Marketing budgets are often some of the first expenses to be cut during economic upheaval. Google cut its marketing budgets by as much as half, according to internal documents previously viewed by CNBC, and management warned of a hiring freeze. In an April memo, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees, "Just like the 2008 financial crisis, the entire global economy is hurting, and Google and Alphabet are not immune to the effects of this global pandemic."

Perrin said that spending from the travel industry had an outsize impact on Google's advertising business compared with those of Facebook and Amazon. The travel industry has been among the hardest hit as the pandemic virtually ground travel to a halt over fears of spreading the virus.

In an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" in April, Expedia Group Chairman Barry Diller said the travel company would not even spend one-fifth of the $5 billion it usually pours into advertising. Expedia and its peer Booking Holdings typically spend heavily on Google, though both have complained of the company's tactics, including building its own travel search products that compete with their own.

By comparison, Facebook, will see its advertising revenue continue to grow this year, though at a much slower rate. The company reported $29.95 billion in advertising revenue in 2019, a 26.1% increase from the previous year. EMarketer expects Facebook to see ad revenue grow by 4.9% this year to $31.43 billion before seeing its growth reaccelerate next year.

Amazon will also grow its digital advertising business this year, eMarketer predicts. Though it holds a smaller portion of the pie, Amazon's ad business accounted for $10.32 billion in revenue last year and eMarketer expects it will grow to $12.75 billion in 2020.

Facebook and Amazon's growth during the pandemic will help them creep up on Google's No. 1 spot in the digital advertising market. Last year, Google held 31.6% of total digital advertising spending with Facebook and Amazon holding 22.7% and 7.8% respectively, according to eMarketer. This year, the firm expects Google to claim 29.4% of digital ad spending with Facebook and Amazon clawing 23.4% and 9.5%, respectively.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on financials outside of the company's earnings report. In its last quarter earnings presentation, Google CFO Ruth Porat told analysts the company saw a dip in revenue in March when the pandemic picked up in the U.S. But shares spiked after hours on the report as executives painted a more optimistic view of future spending than investors had previously feared.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

WATCH: How businesses are adapting their marketing strategies to survive lockdown
Sydney, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on the Caribbean outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Caribbean-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses

Given the relative lack of economic diversity within the Caribbean, the telecoms sector accounts for a higher proportion of GDP in most markets in the region than is common elsewhere. In the long-term the sector remains one of steady growth, particularly in the mobile telephony and data segments. However, such is the dependence on tourism for many of the islands states that lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, both within the Caribbean and among visitor countries, have had a dramatic effect on local economies. This has had a knock-on effect on consumer spending for telecom services and on operator revenue.

Although there are a number of smaller players operating, Digicel Group and Liberty Latin America are the dominant providers, with local business units spanning the region. Their fixed-line and mobile infrastructure assets have cemented their position as full-service providers. Competition between them has encouraged investments to expand the reach of fibre networks and LTE, while there is also goring interest in 5G infrastructure from Libertys mobile unit Flow.

Digicel has invested widely in fibre infrastructure, though at the expense of Group free-cash flow at a time when the Group has amassed considerable debt. As of mid-2020, the Groups survival rests on its success in renegotiating loans of about $4.3 billion due by the end of 2022.

There have been ongoing changes in telecoms regulations across the region, with national regulators focussed on efforts to improve competition and facilitate investment.

BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth.

Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report.

The report also covers the responses of the telecom operators as well as government agencies and regulators as they react to the crisis to ensure that citizens can continue to make optimum use of telecom services. This can be reflected in subsidy schemes and the promotion of tele-health and tele-education, among other solutions.

Key developments:

Digicel Group seeking to refinance debts;

Bahamas regulator imposes new wholesale broadband access regime on BTC and Cable Bahamas, issues revised National Spectrum Plan;

Bermudan regulator approves three new telecom licenses;

US government completes second subsea cable, linking Puerto Rico with Guantanamo Bay Naval Base;

Antigua government invests EC$80 million to improve state-owned telcos market competitiveness;

New telecom regulator formed for Cayman Islands;

Digicel Jamaica launches MyCash m-banking service;

Haiti sets up digital incubator to foster digital economy growth;

Report update includes regulators annual reports and market updates, operator data to Q1 2020, ITUs market data, Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector, recent market developments.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Cable & Wireless, LIME, Flow, Liberty Global, Digicel Group, Orange Caraibes, United Telecommunications Services (UTS), KeyTech, Puerto Rico Telephone Company, America Movil, AT&T, Liberty Cablevision; OneLink Communications; T-Mobile; Open Mobile; Sprint PCS; Choice Cable

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Caribbean-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Exports of mining industry products from Turkey to Azerbaijan grew by 16.39 percent from January through May 2020, compared to the same period in 2019, having surpassed $2.7 million, Turkeys Ministry of Trade told Trend

In May 2020, exports of mining products from Turkey to Azerbaijan rose by 7.67 percent compared to May 2019 and reached $795,000.

In the first 5 months of 2020, the export of mining products from Turkey to the world market dropped by 15.1 percent compared to the same period of 2019. In this period, Turkeys export of mining products made up 2.5 percent of the countrys total exports.

In May 2020, Turkey exported $272.7 million worth of mining products to the foreign markets, which is 40.5 percent less compared to the same month of last year. Thus, the countrys export of mining products accounted for 2.7 percent of its total exports in the reporting month.

According to the ministry, from May 2019 through May 2020, Turkey exported over $4 million worth of mining industry products to the international markets.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Plans to restart screening services are being finalised, with the phased restart due by the end of the summer.

Assistant general secretary at the Department of the Taoiseach Liz Canavan said that the restart of the services was "a priority" but that it had to be done safely.

Screening services were cancelled in March when the Covid-19 pandemic began, with experts saying that programmes which involved intimate examinations could not continue during the public health emergency because of the need for social distancing.

However, with more businesses opening, questions have been raised from both politicians and the public about the resumption of testing.

Ms Canavan said that people who were to be screened would receive invitations.

"The HSE is finalising plans to reestablish non-Covid health supports and services and expects to provide a further update in the coming days.

"The safe restart of screening is also a priority for the National Screening Service. The four screening programs are now finalising the plans for a phased reintroduction of screening.

Screening restart plans are currently being aligned with the wider health care system, and screening restart dates are expected to be announced by the end of June.

"We're expecting to begin a phased reintroduction of the national screening service programs by the end of the summer and screening invitations will be issued on a phased basis, according to clinical prioritisation."

Ms Canavan also said that over 125,000 people have returned to work having been on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment since Covid-19 restrictions began to be eased.

"Today, approximately 465,900 people who were unemployed last week will receive a weekly payment of 350 under the COVID-19 pandemic unemployment payment scheme.

"This is a reduction of 32,800 on the number of people paid last week. The overall value of the weekly payment is in the region of 163 million.

"Last week, approximately 23,900 people in receipt of pandemic unemployment payment closed their claim as they had returned to work. Since the start of reopening over 125,000 people have closed their claim, as they have returned to work."

Ms Canavan also said that 61,800 employers were now being supported by the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme, with 410,000 employees having received some 1.6 billion.
In the fight to unseat far-right Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, there are two very different leading candidates in the Democratic primary: Amy McGrath and Charles Booker. McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, is running as a centrist war hero, seemingly gift-wrapped with a shiny, blue bow. Propped up by establishment figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer, McGrath, who has never held political office, has raised $41 million, a huge financial advantage  although it is notable that the vast majority of these funds come from outside the state. From the progressive wing of the party, Booker is a 35-year-old state legislator who supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal; he has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While McGrath had an early lead in the race, in the past few weeks, Booker has gained a firestorm of momentum ahead of tomorrows primary, and is now polling 44% to McGraths 36%. A recent headline proclaims: Things Are Not Going Well For Amy McGrath.

The differences between the two candidates run deeper than just their progressive versus centrist platforms. Booker is the kind of candidate who inspires you to donate money, even if youre broke. He is running as himself rather than as a focus-group-filtered candidate. As a Black man who grew up in the poorest part of Kentucky, Bookers experience resonates deeply with many voters, particularly in this era of reckoning with racial injustice. So it is no wonder that in these last weeks before the primary, he has received some key endorsements, and that grassroots enthusiasm for him is soaring. McGrath, on the other hand, has made some missteps that have been called out by progressives, including her appeal to Trump supporters, in which she said McConnell hasnt made good on Trumps promises  implying that she would. Booker, who has been active in Black Lives Matter protests, criticized McGrath for not attending any and for not mentioning Kentucky EMT Breonna Taylor  whom police killed as she slept in her own bed  by name in a recent ad.

Story continues

Beating longtime Republican stalwart McConnell  in a state where Trump won by 30 points, no less  is a long shot, but there is no reason to think that the way to do so is by nominating a Democrat who seems more like a Republican. And Bookers recent surge in the polls is a sign that, even in conservative states, there is an increasing appetite for progressive policies and vision  and that this electoral strategy could be what it takes for Democrats to win in the future.

There are still quite a few primaries coming up, especially since some were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The enthusiasm around candidates like Booker shows that its incredibly important to show up for these races. Primaries help voters decide what their party will look like; for Democrats, that means deciding whether it will be full of progressive, diverse candidates running on their own experience, or electable candidates with watered-down messages  some of whom might as well be Republicans. Plus, for those who are unsatisfied with Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president, progressive primary wins offer voters chances to make their voices heard in congressional and down ballot races.

The 2018 midterm elections were a testing ground for progressive primary challengers to mainstream Democrats, with new organizers and groups like Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress popping up. That election gave us politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who ran on progressive issues and who are unafraid to take on fights for wealth inequality and racial justice, which their predecessors never did. Their elections transformed Congress and the political conversation, and, at least in some districts, they turned the idea of which Democrats can win on its head.

Primaries are paramount. They are the vehicle for choice for voters to set the stage of who they want to see on the ballot for the general elections, Zeynab Day, communications director for Brand New Congress, which helped elect AOC, told Refinery29. Here is where we can really make change. No single seat in Congress is guaranteed. There can exist an attitude that an incumbent should not be primaried because they are already in office. But, primaries are one of our vehicles as voters that we can use to hold our representatives accountable. If they arent doing the job, then they should be challenged.

For 2020, Brand New Congress is supporting a varied slate of progressive primary challengers: For U.S. Senate, Paula Jean Swearengin, who won her primary in West Virginia; Booker in Kentucky; and Betsy Sweet, who is challenging Sara Gideon in Maine, among others. For U.S. House, Lauren Ashcraft in NY-12 (challenging Carolyn Maloney), Jamaal Bowman in NY-16 (challenging Eliot Engel), Lindsey Boylan in NY-10 (challenging Jerry Nadler), Cori Bush in MO-1 (challenging William Lacy Clay), Kara Eastman in NE-2 (challenging Don Bacon), Mel Gagarin in NY-6 (challenging Grace Meng), and Alex Morse in MA-1 (challenging Richard Neal). These candidates are taking on longtime Democratic incumbents who are believed to have gotten too comfortable in their seats and who havent done enough to address the real issues of the community.

In 2018 Brand New Congress candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and others took up the call to challenge entrenched Democratic incumbents, Day said. Representatives who have been in office at times when the House, Senate, and presidency had the majority and still failed to make the change to a just system, economic equality, and legislation that could make a real difference like robust criminal justice reform, universal healthcare and actionable legislation to combat climate change.

So far, its been a year of mixed results for primary challengers, starting with Marie Newmans big March win in Illinois, when she beat Dan Lipinski  a Democrat in name only. But other progressive candidates, such as 26-year-old Jessica Cisneros in Texas, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, lost. It seems Cisneros district, which ended up backing longtime incumbent Henry Cuellar  a pro-NRA, anti-abortion Democrat  was not quite ready for her progressive politics, despite a long and spirited campaign, that saw money pouring in from progressive groups and voters all over the country.

Regardless of these notable wins and losses, there are undeniably more resources and enthusiasm being invested into progressive challengers than ever before, and the electorate, particularly young people, are increasingly excited about issues such as Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tuition-free college, and ending for-profit institutions like the prison and immigration detention systems. They are also increasingly talking about police abolition and defunding, issues which some mainstream Democrats are afraid to touch  Joe Biden recently said he does not support defunding the police. The Trump era has helped many see that voting blue no matter who is not enough, particularly now when some Democratic officials are not meeting the challenges of this moment, when many are questioning the power of police and officials handling of the pandemic.

The events of the past couple of weeks have made it even more clear that lukewarm politics wont do in this day and age, and some believe that the changes around racial justice and police violence will help galvanize more young voters around progressives. Booker, particularly, has lost family members to gun violence and is active in criminal justice issues and vocal about police violence. Cori Bush, whose Missouri primary is in August  shes running for the second time after a loss in 2018  is a Black Lives Matter activist who was on the front lines of the Ferguson protests, where she was tear gassed and had a gun held to her head.

What many of these candidates have in common is that they are meeting this moment of widespread social uprising  and, as Cliff Albright, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told Refinery29, they understand that its a movement. Three or four weeks ago, Booker was a long shot, Albright said. But as these issues that were seeing spilling into the streets have raised debates over defunding the police, that inevitably should lead more people to be engaged and involved in supporting his candidacy. Weve already seen some evidence that he is getting a bump and getting more attention. This issue can become the defining issue in some of these primaries. Albright said he is seeing increased excitement among young people who joined the protests, but may not have thought about voting in primaries.

For some voters, particularly in the South, Albright pointed out, the reality is the Democratic primary is the end-all be-all for a lot of races, especially at the local level, where Republicans are still expected to win. In these races, the primary becomes its own game  and its still incredibly important for voters to exercise their rights. There are communities that are fighting for literally some life or death issues in the primaries, and when they dont see support and investment in states, then it sends a message to them that those issues and those races arent important, and that all we see Black voters for is to come out in the general election  hoping well save the country, Albright said. These primaries are really important.

Throughout history, its the intraparty fights, rather than those between Democrats and Republicans, that have meaningfully changed the fabric of this country. And now, with the Democratic Party firmly in two wings, there is opportunity to make real change. In history, battles inside of a party have tended to have more policy impact than Democrats versus Republicans, Jen Ancona, vice president and cofounder of Way to Win, an organization that supports progressive candidates and policies, told Refinery29. For example, it was Southern Democrats who largely opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, helping contribute to the partys mid-century split. Many of them eventually joined the Republican Party, or supported local and statewide conservative Democrats while voting Republican for president. Those on the left side of the party, though, helped further progress on civil rights, voting rights, womens rights, and LGBTQ+ rights in the latter half of the 20th century.

Progressive primary candidates entering the race with bold, fresh ideas have an opportunity to transform the landscape of politics right now. In 2020, a New Deal might involve a reinvestment in BIPOC communities and new solutions to housing inequality, and the new civil rights movement will be focused on defunding the police and ongoing education inequality. Whatever the details might look like, whats certain is that primary candidates positions on these issues will help determine the Democratic Partys future.

At the end of the day, if you have been silent these past three-four weeks, if you havent been able to find the voice, if youve talked about these issues in a way thats tone-deaf and shows youre not listening to the pulse of the people If thats what youre doing now amid campaigning, theres no reason wed expect any more of you once youre in office, Albright said.

Dont forget to register to vote.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Why We Need To Start Voting In Local Elections

Why You Need To Register For Your Absentee Ballot

Trump's Attack On Mail-In Voting Helps No One
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 19:29:03|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

FRANKFURT, June 22 (Xinhua) -- German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Monday that there will soon be "a resolution without drama" to the recent German top court's ruling concerning the bond-buying program of the European Central Bank (ECB).

"This is not a drama without resolution, as we will soon see there will be a resolution without drama," Scholz said while giving a keynote speech to the Frankfurt Finance Summit via videolink from Berlin.

Scholz spoke about Germany's crisis support program, saying that the focus of economic policy is now shifting from damage control to recovery.

"We are now following up Germany's largest ever crisis support program with its largest stimulus program," he said.

"We will kick-start our economic recovery with a ka-boom," the finance minister added.

He also emphasized the importance of a strong European response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, EU countries have already agreed on an initial support package of 540 billion euros (606 billion U.S. dollars) in April. "You must now follow up this first step with a second step to push for economic recovery. We have to be ambitious and we have to act now," Scholz said. Enditem
Tennessee passes heartbeat abortion ban; ACLU, Planned Parenthood filing lawsuit

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Tennessees legislature passed a law that would ban most abortions done when a heartbeat is detected in an unborn baby, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

The Tennessee Senate passed Senate Bill 1236 last Friday, in a vote of 23-5. Earlier this year, the legislation had passed the state House of Representatives in a vote of 65-21, with 7 not voting.

The legislation also prohibits an abortion based on the sex, race, or disability status of an unborn child; both this and heartbeat ban include certain exceptions, namely if the mother has a major medical emergency.

Governor Bill Lee has expressed his intention to sign the bill, taking to his official Twitter account to profess his support for the strongest pro-life law in our states history.

One of the most important things we can do to be pro-family is to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our state, and there is none more vulnerable than the unborn, tweeted Lee last Friday.

Republican State Senator Dolores Gresham of Somerville, one of the sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement the legislation showed that Tennessee is a state that values life.

This comprehensive, life-affirming legislation prohibits abortion once a heartbeat has been detected. I am very pleased it has been passed to protect those who are unable to speak for themselves, said Gresham, as reported by lifenews.com.

I also appreciate the work done by our Senate Judiciary Committee in helping get the bill in the best shape possible to move forward.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, have sued to block the legislation even before Lee signs it into law.

Anjali Dalal, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement released Friday that she considered the bill blatantly unconstitutional and claimed that it disproportionately harms Black and Brown people.

 these politicians are more interested in furthering an anti-abortion agenda than in serving their constituents. The ability to get an abortion must not depend on where you live or how much money you make, stated Dalal.

Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood claimed that Tennessee was exploiting the fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic to push their cruel anti-abortion agenda.

This opportunistic attack on our reproductive rights, passed in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness, will disproportionately impact Black Tennesseans due to systemic oppression, she argued.

We wont stand for this, and we are going to do everything possible to fight back against this extremely harmful law.

Last year, multiple states, including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Ohio, passed laws that banned abortions when a fetal heartbeat was detected, with some medical exemptions.

These measures frequently have been legally challenged and have often lost in the courts, with judges blocking the measures from taking effect due to them being considered de facto abortion bans.
PepsiCo China said on Sunday that operations at one of its food processing plants in Beijing had been suspended after at least one employee tested positive for the coronavirus, in the latest outbreak of COVID-19 virus in the capital. Production at the factory in the Daxing district was halted as soon as the first coronavirus case was confirmed on June 15, PepsiCo China director of corporate affairs, Fan Zhimin, told a news conference, without saying how many cases were detected.

A senior official for the Beijing disease control authority, Pang Xinghuo, told the same news conference that eight people at the Daxing plant had tested positive. Lay's, which is owned by PepsiCo, said in a post on its micro-blog that the affected food-processing plant produced a small quantity of its potato chips. It said the chance of any virus surviving during food processing was very low.

Beijing reported its first case in the latest COVID-19 outbreak in the city on June 11. The resurgence, in which 227 people have been infected, has been linked to Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale food centre near Daxing district.

Also read: Coronavirus crisis: Tata Motors, JSW Steel & Hindalco put off capex amid uncertainty in economic recovery
In late May, disturbing videos recently emerged of a man named George Floyd being arrested by four police officers in Minneapolis. After an escape attempt, one arresting officer placed his knee on the side of Floyd's neck, weighing down on him for roughly eight minutes. Floyd begged for air, begged for his life, and begged for his mother before finally becoming unresponsive. Bystanders had gathered, taking videos of the incident and urging the officer to remove his knee. None of the officers assisting in the arrest objected to the arresting officers method of detainment, instead justifying themselves to onlookers citing that Floyd had refused to get in their car.

The four officers were swiftly fired, and after initially peaceful protests, the arresting officer was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Soon after, increasingly violent riots and looting began, conducted largely by the black nationalist organization Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the all-white socialist gang Antifa. The first nights of rioting saw the murder of black police officers, mass looting, and widespread arson. Allegedly, these riots are occurring as a response to racist police brutality, police corruption, and perceived systematic racism exhibited by American society.

Then again, BLM rioters in Minneapolis called for the release of Mohammed Noor, an incarcerated black police officer found guilty of 3rd degree murder and manslaughter of a white woman who had called the police to report an assault; Noor had pulled out his gun and shot the woman in her pajamas as she came out to greet the officer after he arrived on the scene.

The riots are yet the latest projection of Race Marxism (black is the new proletariat) onto an unrelated crime of police brutality. The arresting officers displayed typical police prejudice against uncooperative criminals but did not display racial prejudice. The four officers involved were Asian, black, and white, and security footage from a nearby restaurant shows an initially peaceful arrest until officers attempted to load Floyd into the squad car and were met with resistance. Floyd attempted to escape through the opposite door, claiming he could not breathe due to claustrophobia, a claim which is problematic in this context but does not justify illegal methods of detainment.

A proper response to systemic injustice is thoughtful discussion with the end goal of finding solutions, not rioting, murdering black officers, or looting black businesses (or those of any ethnicity). The real issues at stake are substituted for accusations of racism by negligent political actors and commentators scrambling for power and status at the cost of those bearing the brunt of the riots.

Our first problem is the priority of the police. Observe the present conduct of the police in the face of riots. Police across the country are being ordered to stand down by mob appeasers, a response going back to 2015 when the mayor of Baltimore ordered police to give rioters space to destroy. The priority of the police should not be to avoid further unrest, but to protect the rights of citizens and enforce the law, in that order.

Unfortunately, laws are so numerous that police departments do not have the resources to enforce them all; instead, they pick and choose what to enforce as directed by politicians. In 2002, Newark Mayor Sharpe James used the police to attack businesses which dared to put up banners supporting his rival Cory Booker. Dozens of businesses were shuttered due to a litany of infractions under rules that had gone unenforced in the city for years. Excess laws must be trimmed, and the selective enforcement of the law must be a legal defense available to the accused.

What if law enforcement threatens unrest? In principle, this is irrelevant. Unpopular laws may cause unrest when enforced, but if enforcement stops where unrest is threatened, we are back to police departments picking and choosing, creating a tiered system of justice.

What if protecting the safety of citizens threatens unrest? This is also irrelevant; innocent citizens are the top priority. It should not matter if BLM or Antifa can rally their communities and create widespread carnage. In the past, America rightfully committed itself to a civil war in order to bring justice and constitutional protection to an enslaved minority. If necessary, the country could do so again. No community gets to threaten the safety and stability of society in order to provide cover for the systemic abuse of even a single individual.

Working against us are the corrupt local powers with police departments under their thumb, subverting rule of law for political machinations. This is the present state of American politics. The looters, rioters, and murderers of BLM and Antifa run free in cities where politicians estimate a high degree of overlap between their voter base and these groups (such is the case in Minnesota, where the Attorney General is explicitly sympathetic to Antifa). The advantage of Americas federalism is that the federal government may step in with the National Guard to protect the victims ignored by local leaders, as it did in Little Rock during the Civil Rights era. Unfortunately, the transfer of authority from corrupt jurisdictions comes too late during riots. Shorter term solutions are needed until the cavalry arrives.

Citizen gun ownership has proven effective, but insufficient. Local leaders must be held liable for damages incurred if they become derelict in their duty. We have seen local leaders purposefully allowing space for rioters, failing to respond to school shootings (Sheriff Scott Israel at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School), and failing to respond to terror attacks (Las Vegas Police Department during the 2017 Mandalay Bay shooting). Politicians responsible cannot be locally tried, as the local political machinery saves them again and again; they must be held responsible at the federal level.

Individual police officers can be corrupt as well. Police will sometimes roughly detain criminals they despise, such as after the slaying of an officers partner. A criminal resisting arrest may require violence to be put down, but the violence should end when the criminal is incapacitated or handcuffed.

To address this problem, I propose an additional Miranda Right. When a compliant detainee asks for reasonable accommodation, the accommodation should be met if it does allow an escape or compromise the safety of the officer. However, if the basis of the accommodation later turns out to be a hoax or if violent resistance occurs, the detainee must be punished, the recipient of any fees being the arresting officer.

Police are worthy of protection too, especially in politically sensitive circumstances such as the George Floyd slaying. An officer is publicly defenseless when charges are filed and he is advised by his lawyers not to discuss the case outside of court. The government may even wish to burn an officer at the stake in order to quell unrest, independent of guilt. To protect the accused, juries should be sequestered immediately in cases of high publicity, the trial occurring outside the sphere of those interested in appeasing a mob.

Police are aware of the hostile political environment, causing a torrent mental health issues reflected in police suicide statistics. Police officers are estimated to commit suicide at a rate 30% higher than the general population. Officer suicides grew to 228 in 2019, significantly more than the number killed in the line of duty. During the same year, police fatally shot 1004 people, the overwhelming majority in response to armed and dangerous criminals. Meanwhile, police murders were in the single digits. Some object, declaring that officers operate in a systemically racist institution and are unlikely to be held responsible for murder. A single statistic refutes this charge. Officers are over 18 times more likely to be killed by black males than for an unarmed black male to be killed by a police officer.

By breaking up the undue influences that threaten to railroad officers, detainees, and the victims of crimes, we can address issues such as police brutality and put the priorities of police departments in order. Those who sidestep real issues and accept collectivist racial guilt only provide cover for the victimization of those denied police protection, obstruct real justice against criminal police officers, and fortify corrupt local power structures. Already the collectivist mob is attacking Western Civilization by proxy of defacing its monuments, smearing its institutions, and rewriting its history. Those genuinely interested in solving the problems of police brutality are left to clean up the mess.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain
UofSC Board of Trustees meets, takes action on university business

The University of South Carolina Board of Trustees met virtually on Friday, June 19. Heres a roundup of decisions they made during the teleconference.

Board unanimously passes resolution requesting renaming of Sims Hall

The Presidential Commission on University History unanimously passed a resolution that recommended the universitys Board of Trustees formally request permission from the General Assembly to remove the name J. Marion Sims from the womens residence hall on the Columbia campus. Learn more from President Caslens letter to the Carolina community.

University operating budget approved for fiscal year 2020-2021

The board was presented with the projected budget for 2020-2021, in which tuition remained flat and measures were included to mitigate the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more from President Caslens June 19 message.

Board approves variety of committee actions

In meetings throughout June, board committees recommended actions that were approved by the full board at the June 19 meeting. These actions included new programs and certificates across the university system, a new committee structure for the board, several 2019 meeting minutes approval and the following contractual agreements:

An agreement between EBSCO and University Libraries to acquire 13,950 journal titles and 50 databases for a one-year period

An agreement between the university and Central Midlands Regional Transportation Authority (the COMET) for transit services on the Columbia campus. COMET will operate the universitys shuttle buses for 3 consecutive one-year periods beginning Sept. 1, 2020

An agreement between the College of Social Works Institute for Families in Society and COTIVITI Inc. for two software license agreements, which are used to evaluate Medicaid and the efficiency of Medicaid delivery systems in South Carolina

Amendments to the food service agreements at USC Aiken, UofSC Columbia and USC Upstate to reflect changes in food service between March 22 and July 22 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic

An agreement between the School of Medicine Greenville and Pathology Consultants, Inc. to review, update and teach core pathology curriculum for first- and second-year medical students for a one-year period

An amendment to the master agreement between the university and Prisma Health, which reflects the transition from Palmetto Health to Prisma Health and extends the agreement, which expires in June

Approval issued for universitys strategic plan

In a process that began in October 2019, university President Bob Caslen presented the final version of the institutions strategic plan, which also included input from faculty and staff.

Share this Story! Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about
(Bloomberg) -- Some of Indias richest people and health-tech startups have created an alliance to try and transform Indias failing health-care system.

The loose alliance, whose backers include Infosys Ltd. co-founders Nandan Nilekani and Kris Gopalakrishnan as well as prominent startups from Practo to Policybazaar, will be formally unveiled as soon as this week in an attempt to salvage a decrepit system by digitizing everything from patient data and records to creating online platforms for hospital care and doctor consultations. Called Swasth -- meaning health in Hindi -- its 100-plus members have pledged to build new services and coordinate efforts to improve emergency responses.

Faced with an exploding health crisis as coronavirus infections look likely to surpass a million, the countrys digital health-care backbone -- the Bharat or National Health Stack -- has come into focus and will buttress Swasths efforts. Much like the digital payments system that today underpins e-commerce, the Stack is designed to wrench into the 21st century an industry whose deplorable conditions have become increasingly apparent as the pandemic broadens across the worlds second-most populous nation.

In India, where hospitals and clinics are rife with corruption, only a fraction of its 1.3 billion people have access to insurance and private health-care costs keep millions in poverty. Many rural health centers dont have electricity, running water or toilets, while public hospitals are often so filthy that coronavirus patients have fled the squalor. Many years in the making and sporting elements from a verified registry of doctors and portable personal health records (with patient consent), the Stack was conceived to improve access to affordable services and boost research.

Coronavirus has exposed glaring vulnerabilities, and technology can improve reach, quality and cost-effectiveness of health care and be the leveler in a country with a woeful shortage of hospital beds, doctors, nurses, medicines, Gopalakrishnan, a member of Swasths governing council, told Bloomberg News. Bharat Health Stack will form the backbone of a platform that aims to offer multiple services from hundreds of vendors and give individuals flexibility, said Gopalakrishnan, the billionaire co-founder and former chief executive officer of Infosys.

Story continues

Read more: New Virus Hotspots Are Emerging in Rural Villages Across India

Privacy advocates have raised concerns over the handling of sensitive information like medical history and test results. Those are likely to get linked to Indias ubiquitous biometric digital ID system, called Aadhaar, making it personally identifiable. Such leaked health data could compromise privacy and endanger a persons economic future. Swasths website says it is non-profit and its coronavirus initiative is non-commercial.

But some activists arent convinced. India needs to modernize the flow of health-care information but this move-fast-and-break-things, by outsourcing the entire health infrastructure to a coterie without any checks and balances, is undemocratic, said Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the New York-based Software Freedom Law Center.

Indias United Payments Interface offers a model of sorts. Just as a real-time financial technology platform impelled digital payments in just four years, the cloud-based digital health framework -- owned and operated by the government -- may spur speedy creation of health services by doctors and entrepreneurs.Shocking videos of coronavirus patients lying next to corpses in overrun hospitals and ambulances with critically-ill driving around in search of hospital beds have conferred fresh impetus to the task of rescuing Indian health care. Swasth draws together more than 100 health-care providers and startups like online insurer Policybazaar, e-pharmacy 1MG and telehealth provider Practo. Its influential backers also include venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Accel.

In addition, volunteers from dozens of companies, including online retailers Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.s Flipkart, are writing code or engaging with regional governments on information exchanges.This week, Swasth will begin offering a bucket of Covid-related services. Individuals can call a helpline to speak with a doctor for free or get information about the nearest testing center and hospitals. More than 1,000 doctors on the platform will offer free consultations, share advice on emotional wellness and dispense instant prescriptions by text. Those with mild symptoms can access monitoring services for home isolation or quarantine.

Read more: A $2 Billion Health Empire Run By Four Sisters Makes a ComebackWhile the coronavirus is the starting point, the coalitions larger goal is to devise protocols and mechanisms for testing and treatments for the masses, as part of the National Health Stack.Its working with iSpirt, a software think tank, to set health standards and build interoperability across players and segments. In the coming weeks, iSpirt is set to release open application interfaces for the Stack thatll allow information exchanges on once-closed areas like billing information for insurers or diagnostic lab results.India needs an open digital ecosystem to unlock innovative solutions to key societal challenges, said Roopa Kudva, managing director of Omidyar Network India. Such platforms have emerged in areas like financial services and education. Health care is a very relevant area, given the benefits an interoperable system can bring. Omidyar is among the donors to a 1 billion-rupee Action Covid Team fund, which is also backing the Swasth alliance. Kudva also sought to alleviate privacy concerns.In designing such a system, getting the rules of data exchange and safeguarding individual privacy are important, she said.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
The Arab League held on Monday an online meeting by the International Follow Up Committee on Libya (IFCL) to discuss the Libyan crisis.

The meeting was co-chaired by the Arab League, represented by Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki, and the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), represented by Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General Stephanie Williams.

The meeting was the IFCL's third since its establishment after the Berlin Conference in February. The committee was formed to tackle the implementation of commitments and goals stipulated in the conferences resolutions.

Participants reviewed the progress attained in the implementation of the conclusions of the Berlin Conference held in January, and the efforts of the IFCL in support of a comprehensive, durable and peaceful Libyan-led resolution of the conflict, under UN auspices, that preserves the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Libya.

They also welcomed the progress achieved by the four thematic technical working groups of the IFCL, addressing security, political, economic and international humanitarian law and human rights issues, in following-up and operating the conclusions of the Berlin Conference.

Members of the IFCL expressed their profound alarm at the serious, ongoing military escalation around Sirte, and renewed their call for an immediate de-escalation to resume negotiations between the Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Libyan National Army (LNA) within the intra-Libyan 5+5 Joint Military Commission (JMC) with a view of reaching a formal, comprehensive, and permanent cease-fire agreement under UN auspices.

According to a League statement, the participants slammed the continued multiple violations of the UN arms embargo and reiterated the need for all external actors to strictly adhere to their commitments to cease all forms of foreign military intervention in Libya and desist from any destabilising activities in the conflict.

They deplored all reports of widespread human rights violations, including the discovery of mass graves in and around Tarhouna.

Participants also exchanged views on the various initiatives aimed at resuming an inclusive political process and completing Libyas transition, including the initiative announced by Aguila Saleh, the Speaker of Libyan House of Representatives, the Cairo Declaration, Prime Minister Fayez Al-Serrajs proposal and emerging calls to prepare for national elections.

The Arab League said it will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday upon Egypts request to address the recently heightened tensions in Libya.

The scheduled meetings come a few days after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said that Cairo has a legitimate right to intervene in the war-torn neighbouring country to restore security and stability after receiving "direct threats" from "terrorist militias," stressing that Egypt has long been reluctant to make such a move.

El-Sisi said that any intervention in Libya by Egyptian forces would be led by the Libyan tribes, adding that the Libyan frontline of Sirte and Al-Jufra is a red line for Egyptian national security.

Earlier this month, President El-Sisi, Commander of the LNA Khalifa Haftar, and Saleh announced a peace initiative, dubbed the Cairo Declaration, to end the civil war in Libya through a ceasefire and an elected leadership council.

The oil-rich country is divided between two rival administrations in the east and west.

Egypt, the UAE and Russia are backing Haftar in the east, while Turkey supports the Tripoli-based GNA.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


In a stand-off with a belligerent Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) at four points in East Ladakh , India has increased technical drone surveillance of the area even as the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has inducted more battalions into the sector to support army along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC), government and military officials familiar with the matter said.

The decision to induct ITBP battalions in support of the army was taken on June 20 after Director General Military Operations, India, Lt General Paramjit Singh and Director General (ITBP and BSF) S S Deswal visted Leh to be briefed about the ground situation. The top security officials of Indian Government were briefed by the XIV Corps Commander Lt General Harinder Singh on the the stand off with PLA.

India has also deployed its specialised high-altitude forces along LAC to repel any transgression in the western, middle or eastern sectors, the officials added.

With the Narendra Modi government giving a clear mandate to the Indian Army to repel any PLA transgression along the LAC, the military and the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) have been asked to deploy more surveillance drones in the area so that the battle theatre becomes more transparent. While the army has been given clearance at the highest levels to acquire more drones, the Israeli Heron medium altitude long endurance drone currently being used by NTRO is providing technical surveillance of the area.

The Chinese PLA has the unproven armed drone Wing Loong in its inventory; India is also looking to acquire armed drones from either Israel or the US.

According to government officials familiar with the matter, the ITBP force accretion is being done to ensure that all 65 (some say 62) patrolling points along the 1547 km LAC in East Ladakh are fully patrolled , thereby not allowing PLA to expand the scope of its dispute with India by engaging in more areas. The ITBP operates under the Indian Army in the event of hostilities, and also undertakes joint patrols with the military in peacetime; it already has at least 7,000 men on ground. The joint briefing of DGMO, who has served as Corps Commander of Nagrota in J &K, and DG (BSF and ITBP) was done to ensure that the Indian forces are on the same page in case the red flag goes up.

Along with the ITBP, specialised forces, trained over the past decades to fight on the northern front, have now been pushed up to the frontier. Unlike the PLA, which moves in infantry combat vehicles that use paved metalled roads, the Indian mountain troops are trained in guerrilla warfare and in high-altitude combat, as demonstrated during the 1999 Kargil War.

The art of mountain fighting is the toughest, as the cost of human casualties is 10 to each troop of the adversary sitting on a height. The troops from Uttarakhand, Ladakh, Gorkha, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim have adapted to the rarefied heights over centuries and hence their capability of fighting is close-quarter combats is without match. The artillery and the missiles have to have pin-pointed accuracy or else they miss the mountain target by miles, said a former Indian Army chief.

The Tibetan plateau is flat on the Chinese side while the Indian side starts from K2 peak in Karakoram, to Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand, to Kanchenjunga in Sikkim, and Namche Barwa across Arunachal Pradesh border. In mountains, it is not only difficult to capture territory but more difficult to hold it, a China expert at South Block said.

The officials cited in the first instance said that India is willing to play the long game. Our battalions lined up with armoured personnel carriers and artillery. India will not instigate or precipitate any skirmish but will reply to any transgression. The days of LAC nibbling are over. This is a battle of nerves and India is prepared to wait, come snow come sunshine, said a senior minister who asked not to be named.

The officials added that the Modi government is unhappy that Chinese President Xi Jinping did not rein in PLA western theatre commander General Zhao Zongqi, who, according to China watchers, is keen on imposing the 1960 Eastern Ladakh map based on claims on Indian territory.

This map, in which China claims territory up to Kongka La, was unveiled by former Chinese premier Chou En Lai, who led the country during the 1962 conflict. Indian officials said that it was in an attempt to set aside historical baggage that Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated the Wuhan and Mamallapuram summits so that the two leaders could promote the bilateral relations after the 73-day Doklam face-off in 2017.

While both India and China are diplomatically engaged to de-escalate the situation, the instructions to the ground forces are to not to allow any transgression by the PLA at any cost.  PLA soldiers use vehicles to reach their posts; our troops are trained to climb and then fight . Thanks to adversaries on western and northern borders, Indian infantry has learnt the art of fighting at the highest heights be it Siachen, Karakoram, Lipulekh or Thag la, said a senior military commander who asked not to be named.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Laura Bonilla Cal (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States  Mon, June 22, 2020 09:00 579 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066092344 2 World US,politics,Donald-Trump,ally,abuse-of-power Free

America's top law enforcement official told a federal prosecutor known for probing allies of President Donald Trump that he was fired Saturday -- sparking uproar and triggering an inquiry by Democratic lawmakers.

Geoffrey Berman, head of the Southern District of New York attorney's office since 2018, discovered his job was in jeopardy via a press release late Friday from Attorney General Bill Barr saying the prosecutor was stepping down.

Berman responded that he had "no intention" of quitting, and that his office's "investigations will move forward without interruption."

But Barr sent him a letter Saturday saying Trump had agreed to fire the official "as of today."

The fast-intensifying crisis has pitted the government against much of Washington's legal community -- and has apparently set Barr against Trump, who denied any involvement in the case.

In his letter, circulated widely by US media, Barr accused Berman of having "chosen public spectacle over public service" through his defiance.

Berman -- who later confirmed in a statement he would be leaving "immediately" -- finds himself at the center of the latest controversy in what Democrats have characterized as the politicization of the Justice Department under Barr.

The veteran prosecutor had overseen the prosecution of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and probed advisor Rudy Giuliani's efforts to discredit the president's political opponents.

But Trump, speaking to reporters ahead of a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, denied sacking Berman -- further adding to the confused messaging coming from the administration.

"That's all up to the attorney general... He's working on that, that's his department, not my department," Trump said. "I'm not involved."

Berman, a Republican who held a position in Trump's transition team and was once a law partner of Giuliani, has pursued cases against tycoon sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell last year.

He has also investigated two associates of Giuliani accused of campaign finance violations and helping dig up dirt on Trump's election challenger Joe Biden as part of the Ukraine scandal over which Trump was impeached.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urged the Justice Department's inspector general to launch an investigation into "blatantly corrupt DOJ interference."

Meanwhile Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, accused Barr of repeatedly interfering in "criminal investigations on Trump's behalf."

The committee said in a statement it would "immediately open an investigation into this incident, as part of our broader investigation into Barr's unacceptable politicization of the Department of Justice."

Two whistleblowers are scheduled to testify Wednesday on "why Barr's attempt to fire Mr Berman is part of a larger, ongoing, and wholly unacceptable pattern of conduct," the statement added.

Berman testimony 'welcome'

The Trump administration has in recent months fired or demoted inspectors general for the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a senior health official who questioned Trump's promotion of unproven drug therapies for COVID-19.

State Department inspector general Steve Linick was removed last month after running a misconduct probe into Washington's top diplomat and steadfast Trump ally Mike Pompeo.

Meanwhile Barr has been accused of repeatedly acting as Trump's personal lawyer instead of in the interests of the public following the Justice Department's intervention in several cases involving Trump allies.

More than 1,000 former department officials signed a statement calling for Barr's resignation over his interference to get a lighter sentence for longtime Trump friend Roger Stone.

Since then Barr has been berated for his department's decision to drop the case against Trump's first national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying about his Russia contacts to the FBI.

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, argued however that Barr's move may have had nothing to do with investigations of Trump allies.

"Barr needs to be clear as to why he wanted to remove Berman and, most importantly, to guarantee that the underlying investigations will not be impacted by this change in leadership," Turley told AFP.
Bryan Cutler's rise comes as the state is grappling with how to best respond to a continuing public health crisis. Read more

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.

HARRISBURG  Pennsylvania lawmakers ushered in a new era of House leadership Monday, unanimously elevating Lancaster County Republican Bryan Cutler to the chambers top spot, and choosing a new slate of GOP leaders who will set the tone for policy priorities.

Cutlers rise comes as the state is grappling with how to best respond to a continuing public health crisis, a debate that in recent months has split the Republican-controlled legislature along ideological lines, and one that could get more divisive if coronavirus cases surge again.

The General Assembly will also be tasked with responding to the economic fallout from the crisis, which  without additional unrestricted aid from Washington  could lead to austerity measures and conflict with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

Additionally, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and widespread protests, lawmakers are under intense pressure to respond with meaningful police accountability reforms.

With those enormous tasks before him, Cutler  one of the youngest lawmakers ever to be chosen as House speaker  urged members to respect and listen to each other.

I see the faces from every corner of the commonwealth, representing the stories, the successes, and the struggles that brought each of us here, he said during a four-minute speech from the House floor. I can only imagine how proud William Penn would be.

Cutler, 45, a lawyer who previously worked as an X-ray technologist, most recently served as majority leader and will stay on as speaker until the end of the year, when the legislatures two-year session ends and another round of leadership elections will occur.

His ascension comes after the early retirement of former Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), who resigned June 15 to take a high-ranking position at a utility company run by a close friend and donor. The promotion also cleared the way for two of Cutlers colleagues to rise in the caucus ranks.

House Republicans elected State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff (R., Centre) to serve as majority leader, a position that offers power and clout, and State Rep. Donna Oberlander (R., Clarion) to be majority whip. Oberlander is the first woman to serve as a House majority whip since Mary Varallo, a Democrat from Philadelphia, was selected by her caucus for the spot in 1959.

Rank-and-file Republicans praised Cutler, who in recent months has been a vocal proponent of reopening the states economy faster than the timeline set out by the Wolf administration. As majority leader, he spoke forcefully in favor of a resolution to end Wolfs emergency disaster declaration, a dispute thats currently playing out in court.

Cutler is thoughtful, pragmatic, and keeps open his lines of communication to learn everything about an issue, State Rep. Todd Polinchock (R., Bucks) said. I find him to be of high moral character, and a model for holding such a prestigious and important position.

In a symbolic gesture seen during past speaker elections, Democrats nominated their own leader, State Rep. Frank Dermody of Allegheny County, for the position. The caucus later withdrew its support to give Cutler unanimous approval.

That doesnt mean there arent concerns. State Rep. Kevin Boyle (D., Phila.) said Democrats have worked well with Cutler in the past but expressed concerns about how he will lead as speaker.

Before he became majority leader, Rep. Cutler was recognized as someone who went to great lengths to work across the partisan aisle, Boyle said. Since he ascended to Republican leader, and more particularly since the COVID-19 shutdown, hes adopted a much more aggressively partisan approach.

Personally, I hope he reverts back to his old style as speaker.

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.
Jonathan Haynes, spokesperson for the group Anti-Racist Midland, is happy to see the steps that have unfolded since the group's petition for reform to Midland Public Schools was first released on June 6, and looks forward to continuing the momentum.

And MPS Superintendent Michael Sharrow sees common ground between the group's demands and the school district's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy.

Sharrow and Board of Education President Scott McFarland responded publicly to the petition in a Superintendent Communique on June 9.

Encouraged by this response from MPS, Anti-Racist Midland -- a team of seven young adults who've all graduated from MPS schools in the past five years -- emailed the petition, along with seven additional demands, to Sharrow and each of the seven school board members on June 15.

On June 16, the petitioners met with Sharrow and four other MPS administrators and staff members to discuss the petition and additional demands and what led them to write the petition.

The original petition consists of three demands, reading in part: "We write to respectfully insist that MPS: (i) craft a comprehensive Elementary, Middle and High School curricula plan inclusive of Black history and specifically addressing systemic racism and White privilege; (ii) require diversity and inclusion training for all staff; (iii) encourage its peer schools in the Greater Mid-Michigan area to do the same."

Haynes, who graduated from Midland High School, is African-American and was also one of the leaders of the June 7 Rally for Racial Justice in Midland that drew more than 1,200 people as one of many similar rallies around the country and the world following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

The other members of Anti-Racist Midland, a multi-racial group, are Josiah Greiner, Jared Hohman, Camryn McGee, Afua Ofori-Darko, Kofi Ofori-Darko and Connor Reed.

A total of 2,115 people -- most of whom identified themselves online as having a connection with MPS -- wrote their names at the bottom of the petition before it was sent to MPS.

Next, Anti-Racist Midland will formally present its petition and additional demands at the next MPS board meeting on June 29.

"Now we are looking to build a greater consensus on these 10 demands and the group is going to formally present the 10 demands to the school board at its June 29 meeting, even though we already have initial verbal support from the administration," Haynes said.

Haynes said that his group's June 16 meeting with Sharrow, Associate Superintendent Penny Miller-Nelson, DEI consultant Amy Beasley, and MPS teachers Carlos McGee and Johnny Chatman left him feeling optimistic about the prospect of bringing about change in the school system.

"The administration seemed very accepting and understanding of the progress that needs to be made, and they were more than willing to acknowledge that racism is a problem that exists in Midland Public Schools and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later," Haynes said in reference to the meeting.

" ... Overall, the meeting was quite powerful toward the end, (with our team) talking about our own experiences in MPS," Haynes continued. "And it felt like we really got through to the administrators as to why this stuff needs to be done and the importance of (meeting) these demands and (making) a cultural and mental shift from the administration down to the students in Midland Public Schools."

In their email on June 9, Sharrow and McFarland wrote, in part: "We are aware of the petition request circulating in our community for MPS to develop and include a more diverse curriculum with an emphasis on Black history. MPS has not officially received the petition as of this date, however, please know your MPS Board of Education and Administration acknowledges our community's passionate efforts and messages. MPS's response: Midland Public Schools hears you and agrees with your request."

A short time later, Anti-Racist Midland wrote seven additional demands it has for MPS, which include the following:

"1. Issue a district-wide statement declaring race as an issue within MPS

2. Ban the Confederate flag on district property

3. Make a public commitment to hire more teachers and administrators of color and supporting current faculty members of color

4. Create a centralized, public, local reporting system to track racial or otherwise prejudicial incidents of discrimination or harassment

5. Develop workshops and provide resources for at home education of both students and parents

6. Allocate funds for mental health counselors

7. Provide periodic public updates regarding progress towards outlined goals."

For his part, Sharrow said he agrees with a lot of what's stated in the petition and the additional demands, and he feels that MPS has made progress in that direction with its recent Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiative.

"When we looked at the petition, it was very easy to agree with what's in there," Sharrow said. "It's what we are attempting to do with the DEI plan. It lines up very well to the DEI plan that's been established and not yet fully implemented."

Sharrow said the fact that the members of Anti-Racist Midland are all MPS alumni lends credence to their petition.

"I think they were relating their demands with their experiences here, which we honor as well," he said. "I don't know if they were aware we had a DEI plan. Once we shared some of the things (in that plan), they could see where it aligned (with some of their demands) as well.

"We honor what they're saying here. Change is needed in our nation and schools," Sharrow added.

Sharrow said he's proud of the members of Anti-Racist Midland for bringing their concerns to MPS.

"This is an impressive young group of alumni from MPS," he said. "The other thing we walked away (from the meeting) with was we are producing some future leaders of society."

Haynes agrees that the fact that both the Anti-Racist Midland team and most of those who signed the online petition are connected to MPS in some way is very important.

"I think it's important to have all the stakeholders involved -- students, staff, parents, and alumni especially, because we are products of MPS and that's a name we are still associated with, so we still have a vested interest in maintaining a certain standard for the district," Haynes said.

The five key focus areas of the DEI strategy, as adopted by the school board in May, are:

Governance -- Institutionalize equity and inclusion in policies, guidelines and practices

Leadership -- Develop strong leaders who steward equitable and inclusive culture

Customers -- Ensure an outstanding customer experience

Community -- Cultivate engaged, productive partnerships

Reputation -- Establish best-in-class culture that enables academic excellence

Haynes said that DEI is a start but is not enough by itself.

"To be honest, it's a tentative step," he said. "Some of our demands directly address this, such as making staff training mandatory instead of voluntary. It's a positive step but frankly not enough. And that's nothing against Dr. (Amy) Beasley. But we're trying to give her and her team an extra push to make the necessary changes."

Sharrow feels that the demands of Anti-Racist Midland are generally compatible with DEI and the direction that MPS is moving, although he emphasized that the school board has yet to formally discuss the petition and the additional demands.

"I think they all fit within the plan in some capacity," Sharrow said. "I don't know that the way they word things (in the petition and the additional demands) would be how we want to do it. It hasn't been discussed at the board level, so the board has to discuss it.

"There are one or two items we need to get legal advice on," Sharrow continued. "The blanket ban of the Confederate flag symbol -- that is obviously a legal area. So we're not really ready to fully comment on each issue because of those things that have to be reassessed as we go forward."

Haynes, when asked about reaction he has received from the community about the petition, mentioned the Confederate flag as an issue of contention but is holding firm on that point.

"Everyone I've talked to supports the spirit of the petition in its entirety," Haynes said. "The only concern people have expressed is about banning the Confederate flag and the issues of freedom of speech.

"But people don't realize that many school districts across the country have been able to ban the Confederate flag, as well as government entities like the Navy have banned it as well," Haynes added.

In addition to seeking changes in MPS, Anti-Racist Midland plans to have conversations with other public entities in Midland about combating racism.

"We believe the first step is looking at the problem and acknowledging there is a problem that needs to be addressed. And this problem extends not only to Midland Public Schools, but we're also actively looking for ways we can push the Midland Police Department and Midland County Sheriiff's Office in a positive direction, as well as area business leaders and non-profits," Haynes said.
COLUMBUS, OhioA wind-energy developer hoping to build Icebreaker Wind, the nations first freshwater offshore wind farm, is asking state regulators to reconsider their ruling setting dozens of conditions that could kill the project.

The Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., or LEEDCo, the nonprofit company behind the six-turbine project several miles northwest of Cleveland, argues the Ohio Power Siting Boards decision last month was unjust and unlawful, as it overruled an agreement between the company and board staff last year.

On May 21, the board approved the Icebreaker Wind project, but only if it met 33 conditions -- including that the turbine blades cant move at night between March 1 and November 1, to limit risk to birds and bats. That makes the project financially infeasible, according to LEEDCo President Dave Karpinski.

Should the decision stand, the implication is that evidence can be ignored, technical staff and expert testimony can be disregarded  setting a dangerous precedent for any project going before this board that controls the energy fate of millions of Ohioans, Karpinski said in a statement.

The board now has 30 days to decide whether to accept the appeal and rehear the matter, though the board could extend that deadline if it wishes.

Karpinski also asked Gov. Mike DeWine to weigh in on LEEDCos behalf, though Karpinski said in an interview he wasnt sure exactly what the governor could do to change the boards decision.

DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney declined comment Monday on the grounds that it is a pending legal action.

Icebreaker Wind, a $126 million, 20.7-megawatt pilot project funded in part by a $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, has been in the works for more than a decade.

The U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a 180-page environmental assessment last year that found no significant environmental impact. The Ohio Environmental Council and Sierra Club are also backing the project.

But other groups, including the Lake Erie Marine Trades Association, the nonprofit Lake Erie Foundation and the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, have opposed Icebreaker Wind, arguing that a deeper environmental analysis is needed. Theyve expressed concern that the turbines would be both a hazard to birds and that it would open the door to turbines popping up elsewhere around Lake Erie.

Murray Energy Corp., a coal company, has also bankrolled other anti-Icebreaker consultants and lawyers.

Correction: An earlier version of this story contained a quote from Dan Tierney that, due to a misunderstanding, was given regarding a different issue. Regarding Icebreaker Wind, Tierney declined comment.

Read more Ohio politics and government stories:

Governor should use $4 million CARES Act discretionary funds to boost internet access for families, education leaders say

Ohio House and Senate districts by race: white, Black, other - Statistical Snapshot

Five reasons why so many Ohio law-enforcement agencies havent yet adopted statewide police standards

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine angry over Statehouse vandalism

Gov. Mike DeWine signs bills to provide coronavirus aid to locals, extend Medicaid services for pregnant women
(Natural News) An anti-hate non-profit group with direct links to the British government and senior members of the U.K. Labour Party has taken credit for having Google take action on conservative sites Zero Hedge and The Federalist.

According to NBC, a campaign by a British non-profit called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was the catalyst that caused Google to demonetize Zero Hedge on its advertising platform and threaten The Federalist with the same.

We found that lots of those companies are inadvertently funding through their advertising content that is outright racist in defense of white supremacism and contains conspiracy theories about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, stated CCDH CEO Imram Ahmed to NBC.

The CCDHs campaign, called Defund Racism, has targetted a number of other conservative-leaning sites such including Breitbart News, WorldNetDaily, The Gateway Pundit, American Thinker and American Greatness.

CCDH leaders have links to U.K.s government and Labour Party

Aside from being the CEO of the CCDH, Ahmed also sits on the steering committee of the British governments Commission for Countering Extremism. Created in response to the 2017 bombing of Manchester Arena, the agency was described by then Prime Minister Theresa May as a statutory body to help fight hatred and extremism in the same way as we have fought racism.

More recently, the commission stated that it would examine whether or not behavior that could lead to extremism and hatred could be criminalized.

Ahmed is far from the only person in the CCDH with an association with the British government. One of its board members, Kirsty Jean McNeill, served as a strategy director for former U.K. Labour party leader Gordon Brown. During Browns tenure as Prime Minister, McNeill also served as a special advisor to his office.

Meanwhile, a former director of the CCDH, Morgan James McSweeney, is now the chief of staff of Labour Party leader Kier Starmer. In addition, McSweeney also influences the party through his role as director of the group Labour Together.

The demonetizations show foreign influence on Google, but how do we address it?

That Google is considering reports from CCDH  which had clear ties to a foreign government and political party  when deciding who to demonetize from Google Ads raises questions of just how much foreign governments can influence discussion on the internet; more so, when considering that both Zero Hedge and The Federalist mostly covered American news and politics.

This is especially troubling when taken with the fact that other foreign governments, especially Chinas, have been using tech companies platforms to further their own agendas. At the same time, these tech companies continue to censor and fact-check posts from American leaders, including President Donald Trump. (Related: Twitter to add warning labels to misleading coronavirus tweets  but whos fact-checking Twitter?)

In the U.S., these actions have led many lawmakers to suggest changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects these companies from litigation if they try to censor any speech on their platforms.

Any changes to Section 230 would involve removing protections on the basis that the platforms are no longer being treated by the companies as open forums. This also now puts them at the same level as publishers  and would be treated as such.

Google Ads, however, is not pushed as an open forum and cant be classified as a publisher either. The platform does not actually host or publish the content  Google does not have the power to directly censor any content they disagree with on their advertising platform. All they can do with Google Ads is pull their ads from a site, preventing that site from making money off advertisements.

While the content remains online, being able to pull advertisements may be a more effective method of silencing a site as it directly threatens these sites ability to pay their bills. This can end up killing a site if it isnt able to find an alternate way of making money.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

NBCNews.com

ExtremismCommission.Blog.Gov.uk

FoxNews.com
The Governors of the North Central States of the federation are currently meeting with the Chief of Staff to the President at the State House, Abuja, over security challenges in their respective domains.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the governors had earlier met with the National Security Adviser to the President, Babagana Monguno, a retired major general, over a similar issue.

Mr Monguno had on June 18, after a security meeting with the president pledged to initiate a meeting with some state governors, including that of Niger, to find a lasting solution to security challenges in the country.

Mr Buhari, who met with security chiefs on the fateful day, had expressed serious concern over the activities of bandits and insurgents in parts of the country, saying that the efforts of the service chiefs toward addressing the menace were not good enough.

Mr Monguno also disclosed that the president frowned at the lack of synergy among the security agencies saddled with the responsibility of fighting insurgency and banditry in the country.

(NAN)
Tanaiste Simon Coveney has warned there will be huge political uncertainty if Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Green Party do not form a coalition government.

There is so much uncertainty in Ireland at present on the back of Covid-19 which makes it all the more important that the programme for government is agreed.

A coalition of all three parties can be balanced and strong and can help the country rebuild, he told RTE radios Morning Ireland.

Mr Coveney acknowledged that there were some within Fine Gael who were finding it difficult to consider going into coalition with Fianna Fail.

This is a new form of government, some people are uncertain with that.

The party needed to be defined by the future not the past, he added. Politicians had a responsibility to the electorate to get the economy back working again.

We will learn from the last time and do even better.

The programme for government represented a series of compromises thats how coalition works, he said. It was a progressive programme for government that had a very strong social net.

I believe this is absolutely worth supporting. Mr Coveney added that he would welcome the support of Independent TDs for the new coalition government, but it was important that any support be transparent.

He said he believed there were a number of Independent TDs who wanted to be constructive, but he could not rule out anything.

Earlier on Morning Ireland Green Party TD Marc O Cathasiagh said that support for the programme for government by the Green Party would be a close call, but he hoped there would be enough to get it across the line.
Natural disasters seem to be hitting various states across the country one after the other this year. It seems 2020 is not ready to take it easy on us humans yet. After cyclones Amphan and Nisarga there were the earthquakes in Gujarat and Delhi. More recently, Mizoram was hit by two earthquakes within 12 hours, claim reports.

The first earthquake reportedly hit on Sunday at 4 pm, the magnitude of which was was 5.1 on the Richter scale. The second one hit around 4 am on Monday. Its magnitude was was reported to be 5.3.The two earthquakes left considerable damage to houses and roads in their wake.



Two earthquakes rocked Mizoram within 12 hours. Damage assessment has been undertaken by concerned MLA & district administration. Fortunately, no casualties reported so far. Thanking PM & Home Minister for their assurance of support: Chief Minister of Mizoram, Zoramthanga pic.twitter.com/3eGtMjGUyC  ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2020

According to the National Centre for Seismology, the earthquake on June 21 was tracked at a depth of 35 km from the earth's surface at a place near Aizawl in Mizoram, while the one on June 22 morning occurred 27 km south-southwest of Champhai. The depth of the quake was 20 km while the coordinates of the epicentre were reported to be 23.22 (latitude) and 93.24 (longitude).

Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga took to his official Twitter handle and confirmed, Two earthquakes rocked Mizoram within 12 hours. Damage assessment has been undertaken by concerned MLA & district administration. Fortunately, no casualties reported so far. Thanking PM & Home Minister for their assurance of support.

Thank you Shri Narendra Modiji @narendramodi .

Risk assesment underway.

The people of #Mizoram are grateful for your assurance. https://t.co/1xRBr5jMAQ  Zoramthanga (@ZoramthangaCM) June 22, 2020

Tremors rocked several parts of the state including capital city Aizawl and Champhai district.

Images showing the destruction caused by the quakes are doing rounds on social media.



My thoughts & prayers with the People of Mizoram. Im sure big one is coming to shake India soon. Scientists says the vast majority of big earthquakes come soon after smaller ones. Series of frequent light earthquakes is sending a strong signal to humanity. Be prepared! pic.twitter.com/UTBl0l2Blw  Licypriya Kangujam (@LicypriyaK) June 22, 2020

The first ever building hit by earthquake in Mizoram i've known! pic.twitter.com/KEXAykoRP4  Lian Thangpuia (@LThangpuia) June 22, 2020

Two earthquakes rocked Mizoram within 12 hours. Damage assessment has been undertaken by concerned MLA & district administration. Fortunately, no casualties reported so far. Thanking PM & Home Minister for their assurance of support: Chief Minister of Mizoram, Zoramthanga (ANI) pic.twitter.com/4opRbjU1A7  Ayush Chaturvedi (@aayush_pndit) June 22, 2020

earthquake in #Mizoram



there are series of earthquake in India, is all this is a sign of big one to come?



retweet#earthquake #earhquakeinmizoram pic.twitter.com/Yh5Vjv8sxb  Gautam Gada (@GautamGada1) June 22, 2020

The complete extent of damage is yet to be ascertained, however, no casualties have been reported so far, reports ANI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah expressed concerns over the quakes in Mizoram and extended a helping hand to the state government. Let us hope, the extent of damage is limited.

Also read: Andaman And Nicobar Islands Earthquake Of 4.3 Magnitude
Chef Jonny Rhodes shook up the Houston culinary scene on Sunday evening when he took to Instagram to announce that his nationally acclaimed restaurant, Indigo, will permanently close in July 2021.

I write this with so many tears in my eyes, Rhodes said in the post. This all started with an idea and a dream of simply being free. I wanted to work in a kitchen and cook at a high level.

Rhodes said the path to success has come with a price.

... No one told me how lonely the road would become. In the nearly two years since weve been open, Ive lost countless relationships. People just dont know what I had to do to get it, or what it takes to keep it, he said. All of the success has never meant much, I once found joy in just cooking in my own space on my own time.

Rhodes will pivot his focus to a self-sustaining grocery store and farm called Food Fight Farms & Broham Fine Soul Food & Groceries. Broham currently operates out of Indigo. Rhodes has launched a crowdsourcing initiative to fund his new business.

Indigo will reopen for its final year of service on July 23, 2020, with a menu featuring a mix of new and favorite dishes. Reservations are now open via Resy.

The restaurant will shutter on July 24, 2021.

Indigo was named to Food & Wines "Best New Restaurants 2019 in May 2019 and was recognized by Time Magazine in August 2019 as one of 'The World's 100 Greatest Places."

The restaurant offers neo-soul food cuisine intended to provoke conversation about the history of black and indigenous people in America.

Example menu items include okra-seed coffee, a popular drink in the South during the Civil War, and a smoked-pastrami entree served with a short informative piece of writing on the different experiences of Italians and African Americans during the Great Migration.

Indigo opened at 517 Berry in 2018. It was Rhodes first brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Rhodes refined his skills at New York City's Gramercy Tavern before relocating to Houston and launching a series of pop-up events in 2016.
A crowd of activists carrying rifles and handguns gathered at the San Jacinto Monument Saturday to warn Gov. Greg Abbott that if police dont do more to protect the states historic sites from vandals, then armed volunteers will do the job for them.

Abbott, if you dont do it, then Texans are going to do it. And youre not going to like the way were going to handle things, said Brandon Burkhart, president of This Is Texas Freedom Force, a nonprofit group created to protect Texas history and Texans rights.

Openly carrying firearms is legal in Texas, and the groups members say theyve been standing watch at San Jacinto, the Alamo and other historic landmarks after the death of former Houston resident George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked outrage and widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.

The group blamed activists tied to Antifa, the Brown Berets and the Black Lives Matter movement for defacing a Christopher Columbus statue in Houston; a Confederate monument in Huntsville; a statue of Confederate leader Lawrence Sullivan Ross at Texas A&M University; and the Cenotaph at the Alamo, a memorial to the Alamo defenders who died in 1836 during the Texas Revolution.

More than 100 people crowded under a cluster of oak trees during a lightning storm at San Jacinto as rally speakers pledged to use force to defend themselves if thats what it takes to protect historical landmarks from being vandalized or destroyed. Thunder occasionally punctuated their words.

I want to remind you what General Patton said: Its not your job to die for your country, its to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his, said conservative radio host James Doc Greene, paraphrasing a quote by the World War II general George Patton.

Im not so interested in what youre willing to die for, my friends, Greene said. I am interested in what is so important to you that youre willing to kill for it.

David Amad, a speaker with Open Carry Texas, said armed volunteers will continue to guard the monuments. And if were attacked, were going to defend the hell out of ourselves, he said.

Authorities in San Antonio and at A&M said its unclear who damaged the Cenotaph and the statue of Ross. One leader of the civil rights protests said anyone could have been responsible.

There is zero proof that any of us have anything to do with those occurrences, said Kimiya Factory, a community activist who helped lead the recent protests in San Antonio.

Its necessary to acknowledge that the people are mad, right? Factory said. Not just people who identify with the Black Lives Matter movement, but also members of the public who arent black. Theyre upset, too. So it really could be anybody.

On May 29, red graffiti was found on the Cenotaph in San Antonio with the phrases white supremacy, profit over people and the ALAMO, with downward arrows painted before each phrase. Other messages were sprayed on the nearby wall of a building and on a sidewalk near Travis Park a few blocks away.

San Antonio police officers arrested Noah-Benjamin Escamilla, 25, who was seen spraying the letters ACAB  All Cops Are Bastards  in red graffiti on the sidewalk at Travis Park, according to a police report.

Escamilla faces a misdemeanor graffiti charge in connection with the sidewalk incident, but no one has been arrested for defacing the Cenotaph at the Alamo. Escamillas lawyer, Steven Gilmore, declined to discuss the case.

At a tense, May 30 protest in San Antonio, armed members of freedom force faced a crowd of civil rights activists in Alamo Plaza while San Antonio police stood between the two groups. The groups leaders said that protesters had threatened to burn the Alamo to the ground.

Thus far we have no confirmation if the taggings were associated with Antifa and if credible threats to burn the Alamo down were made, Officer Douglas Greene, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department, said in an email.

At Texas A&M, the letters BLM, ACAB and Racist were painted on the statue of Ross, a former Confederate general, Texas governor and president of the school that would later become A&M. A rainbow-colored wig was placed on the statues head.

We dont know about motives because we havent caught the guy yet, said Lt. Bobby Richardson, a spokesman for the university police department. But we did obtain the video footage. We know when it occurred, and we also know it was a white male who did it. Were working on trying to find out who that is.

Police in Huntsville and Houston didnt respond to questions about the vandalism incidents in those cities. At Bell Park in Houston on Friday, city workers quietly removed the defaced statue of Columbus, the Italian explorer who was widely credited with discovering the New World  but who also brutally enslaved the indigenous people he encountered.

At San Jacinto, This Is Texas Freedom Force took credit for saving the monument on May 30. The group said its volunteers had just finished guarding the landmark when deputies with the Harris County Sheriffs Office found several individuals in a van with seven cases of red spray paint nearby on Independence Parkway.

Once again, This Is Texas Freedom Force foiled another plan to damage our Texas Monuments, the group said in a news release.

Chris Florance, a spokesman for the Texas Historical Commission, which oversees the monument, said the agency has received no reports from any law enforcement agencies about such an incident.

Deputy Thomas Gilliland, a spokesman for the sheriffs office, said he was unable to find any record of arrests or traffic stops on Independence Parkway during that time frame.

I dont want to say the people you talked with embellished anything, Gilliland said. But Im not able to find the event that theyre talking about.

As the rain cleared and the rally ended, Burkhart said the armed volunteers had demonstrated remarkable restraint in San Antonio, and they would only resort to violence in self defense.

One of their members was punched in the face during the protest at the Alamo, according to a video of the altercation, but he didnt punch back. Instead, he smiled like it was nothing.

Three fourths of our membership are former veterans, and a lot have seen combat action, Burkhart said.

Factory said shes glad society is starting to question the wisdom of erecting monuments that are icons of genocide and colonization. But tagging statues with graffiti simply isnt the mission of the Black Lives Matter movement, she said. They have far more serious goals to focus on.

Fighting for change means more than tagging a monument, Factory said. Trust me.

john.tedesco@chron.com
Gandhinagar, June 23 : Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Monday announced that the state government has requested the Advocate General (AG) to seek permission from the Gujarat High Court to allow the Ahmedabad RathYatra to pass, similarly to the apex court's order on Jagannath Puri Yatra on Monday.

Talking to media persons, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said, "The Yatra has over a century old tradition and looking at the traditional procession, we have asked the Advocate General, Kamal Trivedi, to seek permission from the Gujarat High Court to allow the Ahmedabad Rath Yatra on the lines similar to the apex court's modified order on Odisha Jagannath Puri Yatra. The state government will abide by all the restrictions, the Gujarat High Court will impose, to allow the procession to be carried out." Meanwhile, the lord Jagannath temple in Ahmedabad had carried out all the preparations to hold the Yatra inside the temple premises. According to sources, if the HC allows the Yatra to be carried out in a restricted manner in the city, the chariots will be pulled by tractors instead of devotees.

According to sources, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be participating in the 'Mangla Aarti' at the temple at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Shah will be arriving at the Ahmedabad airport at around midnight with his family from Delhi.

Gujarat Chief Minister Rupani will also participate in the 143rd RathYatra and perform the ritual flagging off of the procession, 'Pahind Vidhi'.

The Gujarat High Court is expected to hear the petitions regarding the Yatra on an urgent hearing basis.
Syracuse, N.Y.  Like most gym owners, Joshua Kimball has been frustrated by the coronavirus. His business has come to a halt. There are few reliable places to get information. Its still unclear when gyms will open to the general public.

His frustration reached a new level just over a week ago when Kimball, the owner of North Syracuses Rev Fit gym, began to hear from customers that some of his competitors had opened.

A handful, he was told, opened as part of phase three despite the fact that state orders dictate gyms remain closed. Once some opened others followed, leaving a split among local fitness facilities.

Kimball has remained waiting patiently at the starting line. As he has, his phone has filled up with information about gyms that decided not to wait. Hes faced questions from customers about why he wont do the same and inquiries from those trying to help him get back to business.

Kimball said he doesnt believe hes lost customers yet. He suspects if this lingers for another two weeks, he will.

More importantly, he said, he worries about whether this is safe. Gyms that opened likely tried to develop comprehensive reopening plans. But none of those, Kimball notes, have been approved by state medical experts. Some medical experts believe gyms provide an atmosphere conducive toward spreading the virus.

Kimball said he doesnt want to assume the worst out of those in his industry. Hes reached out to ask gym owners how theyve managed to get permission or adjust their business to comply with current regulations. Hes spent time worrying hes missed information coming from the state or that he hasnt cozied up to the right politician.

Its tough to understand where the determination that theyre able to open is coming from, Kimball said. Some have said they submitted a plan and been approved. .... but I find it hard to believe gyms would be individually approved. Id think it would be a more universal approach.

Ultimately, there is no way for Kimball to know. Kimball and his business partner, Kyle Hierholzer, contacted Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and other county officials about the places that might be operating out of phase. They havent heard anything back.

Kimballs frustration is just the latest for gym owners in an industry that has endured a particularly frustrating experience with the coronavirus.

Central New York has not been impacted as severely as many places, and many gym owners believe they enhance public health by helping combat risk factors like obesity and diabetes. Many object to being forced to remain closed while businesses that cater to unhealthy habits, like liquor stores, remain open. Neither local, nor state officials have provided much information about businesses that have been subject to complaints or citations, creating questions about whether they have much interest in enforcing state mandates.

And the entire fitness industry has received scant guidance from the state throughout the past three months, leaving many gym owners preparing to open before dialing back and dealing with disappointment.

At one point, some gym owners believed theyd be able to open personal training services during phase two. Instead, guidance from the state seems to put nearly all indoor fitness activities in phase four.

But left to be their own judge, many gyms appear to have provided themselves friendly interpretations.

Some gyms have justified their return by saying that personal training and small group workouts are personal services and permitted to open as part of phase two. This doesnt appear accurate. Kimball focuses on personal training and small groups. When information on the fitness industry is plugged into the state website it says: Gyms, fitness centers, and exercise classes remain closed. CrossFit gyms and other forms of personal training remain closed. Remote instruction or streaming of classes from public or private schools or health/fitness centers is permitted, provided, however, that no other in-person indoor activities, including group classes or one-on-one personal training, are permitted.

The State of New York currently says group fitness and personal training is not permitted.

Some owners have opted to rely on the states guidance that low-risk outdoor activities are allowed. The state doesnt list fitness classes as a permitted outdoor activity. But it doesnt explicitly prohibit it, either.

The ability to interpret those rules helped Jamar Clarke, the owner of Flight Room Fitness in Syracuse, feel like hes permitted to open on a limited basis. He said he contacted the city of Syracuse and was told outdoor classes were permissible as long as he kept his numbers down and his customers spaced out appropriately.

In my conversations with the city and other gym owners, everything is so open-ended that its how you interpret things, Clarke said. I read the rule as saying that if you do personal training, and thats what we do in small groups, youre allowed to be open if you follow CDC regulations. I opened up the gym and the response was great.

Clarke has been public about his return, even posting a video of a workout to Instagram that showed individuals working out in his Syracuse facility. He talked of filling 47 of 48 spots last Saturday. Underneath it, his customers universally praised him for opening and the quality of the workout.

Prior to opening, Clarke said he sent a survey to his 150 customers, and 97% indicated they were ready to come back.

Clarke said that he ran three workouts last Saturday with a maximum of 16 people in each group. He utilized the gyms indoor area in five-minute increments before clearing the room. Customers in the video used rowing machines, performed up-downs and push-ups. As they worked out, Clarke said he kept a garage door attached to the facility open to ensure what he felt was appropriate air flow.

Its unclear if an open garage makes an outdoor activity, but Clarke said he interpreted the rules the best he could. He said he minimized the time spent inside to maximize safety.

We went for a run and came in for a maximum of five minutes, Clarke said. We had a five-minute clock inside the facility and then you had to go back out. We did that for 40 minutes. My wife is a physicians assistant and I have several members in the medical field that we talked to. No one shared equipment. Everyone stayed six feet apart. The best thing to do is get them outside.

Clarke acknowledged that if his interpretation is different than government officials he could get a slap on the wrist.

But he said he hoped his decision would inspire others to follow his interpretation and take initiative as long as they feel confident in their plans. Clarke said hes lost about 10% of his business during the pandemic. Hes worried about the potential of losing more.

I want to motivate other gym owners to not be scared, Clarke said. I think that people are actually ready to come back and continue their health routine. The unknown has been the hardest part. You try to budget but you dont know what you need and you dont know how long youll be down. I have to keep my members involved. Its important for me to get everyone back.

Unlike Clarke, a number of other gym owners appear to have tried to keep their reopenings under the radar, announcing their returns in private social media groups or solicitations to members.

Among the tips that Kimball and Hierholzer received about gyms opening was a screenshot of one fitness facility telling its customers that small group training is a personal service and eligible to reopen in phase two.

Another local gym informed individuals on social media that it had been in contact with the center for economic development. That is not the exact name of any government body currently operating in New York. The gym declined to provide further explanation to syracuse.com.

Kimball said theyve heard that some gyms have told customers that they have permission from local officials. With no way to know, Kimball said this has only added to his confusion and desire to see things enforced equally.

Justin Sayles, the spokesman for the Onondaga County Executive, said that enforcing rules is up to both county and local officials. Of the county, he noted, We certainly investigate when we have the ability and resources.

The county is not in charge of determining whether fitness facilities can operate against state orders and does not play a role in approval. Sayles said exemptions can only come only from New York State or Empire State Development.

We do not give exemptions, Sayles said.

Without a state exemption, businesses are expected to attest that they will follow state guidelines before returning to work. When Kimball and Hierholzer opened the massage portion of their businesses, it was suggested that massage therapists take coronavirus tests every two weeks. Its guidance they plan to abide by so they can say theyre doing everything they can to keep customers safe. Without any guidance, they dont believe fitness facilities currently operating can say the same.

I find it really hard to understand without having specific guidelines set out what theyre using to determine that theyre providing a safe, healthy, risk-free environment to their members, Kimball said. It boggles my mind a little bit.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Restarting NY: CNY could enter phase four soon, but thats not the end

Gov. Cuomo coronavirus update: Less than 1% positives; 15 deaths, lowest daily total of the pandemic

Update: Onondaga County has 16 new Covid-19 cases since Friday

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Chris Carlson anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1639
Indian and Chinese militaries on Monday held a second round of Lt General-level talks in an attempt to ease tensions between the two countries following the violent clashes in Galwan Valley that left 20 Indian Army personnel dead, even as country's top army leadership carried out a detailed review of the situation in eastern Ladakh.

The meeting began at around 11:30 am at Moldo on the Chinese side of Chushul sector in eastern Ladakh and continued till night. The focus of the deliberations was on finalising modalities for disengagement of troops in eastern Ladakh, people familiar with the issue said.

The first round of the Lt Gen talks was held on June 6 at the same venue during which both sides finalised an agreement to disengage gradually from all standoff points beginning with Galwan Valley. However, the situation along the border deteriorated following the violent clashes on June 15 as the two sides significantly bolstered their deployments in most areas along the 3,500-km de-facto border.

Though China has not revealed its casualty figure, there were reports that a commanding officer of the Chinese army was among those killed in the clashes. There is no official confirmation about it.

Separately, the top army commanders on Monday held a detailed deliberation on the eastern Ladakh standoff and on the overall situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China after the Galwan Valley clashes, official sources said.

On the first day of the two day conference, Army Chief Gen M M Naravane carried out a comprehensive review of India's security preparedness along the LAC with China in Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, they said.

The government has given "full freedom" to the armed forces, deployed along the 3,500-km de-facto border with China, to give a "befitting" response to any Chinese misadventure, government sources said after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh reviewed the situation in eastern Ladakh at a meeting with the top military brass on Sunday.

The Army has already sent thousands of additional troops to forward locations along the border in the last one week. The IAF has also moved a sizable number of its frontline Sukhoi 30 MKI, Jaguar, Mirage 2000 aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to several key air bases including Leh and Srinagar following the clashes.

The Indian delegation at the talks in Moldo was led by 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen Harinder Singh while the Chinese was headed by the Commander of the Tibet Military District.

Ahead of the meeting, sources said the Indian delegation would raise the Galwan Valley clashes, the most serious military confrontation between India and China in more than 50 years.

In a telephonic conversation with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Wednesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called the clashes a "premeditated" action by Chinese PLA and held it directly responsible for the incident.

The Chinese soldiers used stones, nail-studded sticks, iron rods and clubs in carrying out brutal attacks on Indian soldiers after they protested the erection of a surveillance post by China on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in Galwan. The sources said India would also seek restoration of status quo ante in all areas including the Pangong Tso where the two sides are on a standoff.

After the clashes, the two sides held at least three-rounds of Major-General level talks to explore ways to ease the situation between the two sides.

The two armies were engaged in a standoff in Galwan and several other areas of eastern Ladakh since May 5 when their troops clashed on the banks of the Pangong Tso.

The situation in eastern Ladakh deteriorated after around 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers were engaged in a violent face-off on May 5 and 6. The incident in Pangong Tso was followed by a similar incident in north Sikkim on May 9.

(With inputs from PTI)
Wayne County is creating a $50 million grant program for small businesses hurt by the COVID-19 crisis.

The County Commission is expected to clear the way for the Back to Work grant where local small businesses will be given access to $50 million to help with offsetting COVID-19 related expenses. The program was proposed by Wayne County Executive Warren Evans.

The Wayne County Back to Work: Small Business Readiness Grant is designed to provide small businesses with financial assistance to cover business-related expenses incurred during the pandemic. Funding for the program comes from the countys allotment from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, commonly referred to as the CARES Act.

Small businesses are the economic backbone of many Wayne County communities and restoring their economic health will be critical to restoring the health of Wayne County, Evans said. This program helps ensure that businesses are armed and ready to reopen safely and sufficiently. I would like to thank the County Commission and my Economic Development team for taking action to provide access to these funds for so many.

Wayne County Commission Chairwoman Alisha Bell (D-Detroit) said that in the three months since COVID-19 struck, the countys small businesses have been hit hard with loss of employees, wages and maneuvering new business processes and models.

We must provide assistance for them now to adhere to the reopening guidelines and move forward, Bell said.

At least 5,000 county small businesses could be eligible for the grants. Small businesses can use the funds for re-opening activities that include:

?Payroll costs for permanent employees.

?Contract labor.

?Supplier payments.

?Rent, lease or mortgage payment.

?Rent, lease or purchase payment for business equipment.

?New or expanded technology applications.

?Utility payments for business properties.

?Cost of critical business operations.

?Personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies.

?COVID-19 expenses: Interest on other business debt obligations incurred after March 2020.

Awards will be based on needs of the businesses and will not exceed $10,000. A business located in Wayne County that meets all the following requirements will be eligible for grant consideration:

?Business is identified as a small business, which is a business that employs less than 50 full-time employees.

?Business has been in existence for over one year according to tax documentation.

?Business is located in a brick and mortar commercial building and is unable to accommodate work from home.

?Business is in good standing with the State of Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA).

?It has total revenue that does not exceed $1 million.

Businesses that have not received other forms of grant funding will be prioritized for a grant award. Businesses that have been previously awarded may apply, but will be considered only after all new applicants have been accounted for.

Since COVID-19 hit, the county has provided support to small businesses through its partnership with TCF Bank, Michigan Economic Development Corporation and DEGC.

The TCF & Wayne County Small Business Relief Loan Fund has provided fast relief through low-interest microloans to 225 businesses equaling $4,383,000 in support. The Michigan Small Business Relief funded grants up to $10,000 to 196 businesses.

Bell authorized the creation of the Emergency Funding for Small Businesses and Non-Profit Agencies Task Force. Al Haidous (D-Wayne) serves as task force co-chair with Commissioner Ilona Varga (D-Lincoln Park).

The application period will be from June 29 through July 10.

The Wayne County Economic Development team will host two application tutorials and Q&A sessions to assist those intending to apply.

Interested businesses can log on to waynecounty.com/backtowork for applications and information on the grant.
Live theater, it would seem, lives on. Granted, the traditional traffic of the stage  with flesh-and-blood actors sharing a space with flesh-and-blood audiences  has almost entirely ceased in this age of social isolation. But to devoted lovers of dramas, comedies and musicals, star turns from as long ago as the mid-20th century continue to thrill in radiant recollection.

Such was the overwhelming evidence offered by responses to my essay on great acting remembered, which ran last month. Hundreds of readers wrote in to testify about performances that still burn brightly in their memories. Their selections span more than half a century, from Claudia McNeil in A Raisin in the Sun in 1959 to Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard more than 50 years later.

What follows is an edited sampling of excited, lovingly specific evocations of mythic performances  acting that still feels as fresh as last night.
Mumbai, June 22 : Several residents of the posh Shivaji Park area in Dadar here on Monday staged a silent protest and a vociferous one online against the cremation of a large number of bodies of Covid-19 victims and others at the local crematorium.

Many residents, carrying placards and wearing masks, staged a quiet protest, contending how the extraordinarily large number of cremations was affecting their health.

On an average, around one body is cremated every hour at this crematorium, emanating thick black smoke and stench which was becoming difficult to tolerate now, said one protestor.

The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Mumbai unit targeted the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

"Thackeray sarkar says no politics over Covid-19 issue. But now due to their carelessness, citizens have to come on road and protest," said city party chief M. P. Lodha in a tweet.

Incidentally, Shivaji Park with prominent citizens living there is located in G-North Ward of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation that spans Dadar, Dharavi and Mahim areas of south-central Mumbai.

It also has two of the biggest hospitals - the KEM Hospital and Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital - both having among the biggest Covid-19 treatment facilities, besides several big and small private hospitals.

Depending on the origins of the patients, a majority of the Covid-19 bodies, as well as others, are taken for the last rites at the Shivaji Park crematorium.

Besides this, there have been voices of protests from other non-electric crematoria in different parts of Mumbai as the numbers of cremations have gone up drastically, compared to the non-pandemic times before March.

The Opposition has also raised the issue of how so many deaths result in long queues outside crematoria and cemeteries, after which the civic authorities announced a 'token number' system to avoid huge delays.
Veterans such as Sentinel Butte native Kermit E. Shoen returned home to start a new life after the war, and in doing so planted the seeds of prosperity for U-Haul, a product of the peace for which they fought.

WWII-era Navy veteran L.S. "Sam" Shoen (Kermit's cousin) and his wife, Anna Mary Carty Shoen, conceived U-Haul in June 1945 when they recognized a basic need while moving up the West Coast, having left behind most of their belongings since one-way trailer rentals did not yet exist. From that idea, an industry was created and a new level of mobility became attainable for every American family.

New Display at Pearl Harbor

Today, U-Haul is committed to honoring veterans and supporting veteran causes. This is accomplished through recruiting veterans and giving them hiring preference; direct assistance to veteran groups; participation and sponsorship of Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades; and supporting Pearl Harbor tributes.

The Company's 75th anniversary tributes will peak triumphantly with the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum's dedication of the renovated Ford Island Control Tower on Aug. 29. U-Haul Pacific Theater veterans' bios and photos will be displayed in the tower lobby. Kermit will be among those memorialized on the lobby wall.

The tower will showcase a new elevator, gifted by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, providing public access to the observation deck where America's lone WWII aviation battlefield can be revered and our heroes remembered.

North Dakota Roots

Kermit was born in Sentinel Butte in 1917, the second of four sons born to Edward and Sadie Shoen, a Scottish-Irish couple who ran cattle and raised grain on a small ranch in the Badlands.

It was a hard life. At 17, Kermit worked as a ranch hand, bartender, cab driver and other odd jobs around Fargo to help his parents and younger brothers survive on the homestead. He was one of 17 students to graduate from Sentinel Butte High School in 1935.

Kermit joined the Army in April 1941. He was assigned to the same North Dakota National Guard unit as his brother Rodney  Company K, 164th Infantry Regiment, Dickinson. The unit trained at Camp Claiborne, La.

The "164th Marines"

Soon after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the 164th was dispatched to the South Pacific. They landed on Guadalcanal on Oct. 13, 1942, to relieve Marine forces pinned down by the Japanese. Kermit was awarded the Silver Star for bravery during the brutal jungle fighting of the second battle for Henderson Field, which is also known as the Battle of Coffin Corner. While issuing an order during the battle, Kermit was shot in the mouth. He survived, but would carry a piece of shrapnel in his cheek for the rest of his life.

The 164th became the first U.S. Army unit in WWII to engage the enemy offensively. For their actions at Guadalcanal, the unit earned a Navy Presidential Unit Citation, as well as the respect of its Marine cohorts. The unit was authorized to wear the 1st Marine Guadalcanal Patch on their uniforms and became known as the "Little Marines" and the "164th Marines."

Kermit fought in four major campaigns in the Pacific. For his service, he was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal (four bronze campaign stars for Guadalcanal, the Northern Solomons, Leyte, and Southern Philippines), the Philippine Liberation Medal (one bronze service star), the Navy Presidential Unit Citation, the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation (one star), the Silver Star and the Bronze Star medals.

Family Business

Following the war, Kermit joined U-Haul after meeting with his cousin, Sam, in May 1952. Sam was mapping the first major expansion of the U-Haul network.

"He didn't talk me into coming in with him. It was the way he talked me into it," Kermit recalled in a 1973 interview. "He didn't speak of making a lot of money. He talked of what we could do for the people  you know, society  that would make our lives worth the candle."

Kermit was a revered U-Haul leader for more than 29 years, working in many capacities. He constructed trailers, was an area field manager servicing neighborhood dealerships, rental company president, and regional vice president. He passed away in 1981.

Veteran Ties and Appreciation

The Shoens started U-Haul upon Sam's discharge with $4,000 of accumulated Navy pay and the courage formed by the cauldron of WWII. With the help of other veterans, the young couple forged their new enterprise from the freedom that victory produced.

Today, U-Haul serves all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces, helping millions of families move every year. Kermit is one of the many veterans who laid the foundation for the present prosperity U-Haul enjoys.

U-Haul is one of a myriad of companies built by these incredible veterans, who are to be saluted and remembered during this 75th anniversary celebration. Thank you, Kermit.

Find more veteran tributes in the History and Culture section of myuhaulstory.com.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of 22,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers and 43,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 697,000 rooms and 60.7 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry, and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. For information on moving safely and smartly with U-Haul during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reference https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8601451-u-haul-moving-season-covid-19-safety/.

Contact:

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul

Related Links

www.uhaul.com


Ivanhoe's Kamoa-Kakula Mine in DRC

Mining is capital intensive

On track for energy regulator

Local content important driver

The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) copper sector is not only controlled by but is also dependent on China", and there is a correlation between Chinas recovery from the pandemic and commodity prices recovery. DRCs economy has been badly affected, particularly its SMEs, but will not be hit as badly as Europe because of its mining sector that has a cushion role on the economy, said Simon Tuma Waku, deputy managing director of DRCs Tenke Fungurume Mining.Cyrille Mutombo, country manager, Kibali Goldmines, DRC said that the Kibali mine is doing well. We converted Ebola protocols to address the Covid-19 pandemic. He said the DRC economy was expected to retract by 2.4% this year and was heading into a recession. Gold is a safe haven again so you cant regard gold as a strategic mineral.The country's new mining code came up again in the discussion. Mutombo said: Certain issues are still quite blurred, loan repayments for instance. Mining is very capital intensive, you need lots of investment. And you need to provide miners with incentives to create all the infrastructure such as roads to be able to mine.When Covid struck there were many reasons to be negative. April was the worst month for automotive sales globally since 1998, said George Heppel, senior analyst base metals, CRU Group in the UK. We expect the automotive car market to decline by 20% in 2020. However, European electric vehicles sales have done surprisingly well with Q1 reporting the highest sales ever.Asked how the auto industry will mitigate the risk of its cobalt supplies he answered: in general, car manufacturers arent really concerned yet about their cobalt supply. It feels like they are pushing a lot of the responsibility up the chain to their battery manufacturers. There are two exceptions to this rule. Obviously there is BMW who have signed a cobalt supply agreement with mines in Morocco and in Australia and then theres Tesla who recently announced that they have entered a purchasing agreement with Glencore. According to Heppel many battery manufacturers seem to mitigate their long-term supply risk by going into joint ventures with refineries in China.The panel agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic would not be over anytime soon but that it would be handled and mitigated like any other crisis.Well have to learn to live with Covid-19 anyway. Copper and cobalt is still there and will continue to depend a lot on China. As it brings back projects the demand will be high. I dont see a crisis in the future," Waku said.The strongest message that emerged from the second discussion on power projects in the DRC was that the country needs a dedicated energy regulator to make it easier to develop generation projects, obtain financing and set tariffs.DRCs energy sector lacks regulation and security for licences and concessions for power projects," said Raphael Khalifa, CEO of Tembo Power based in Mauritius. Tembo Power runs 10 projects in Africa, all as IPPs in hydropower in the DRC, Kenya and Burundi, totalling half a billion dollars in investments. He added that the lack of a regulatory authority added to the risk and therefore also the cost of a project.Serge Nawej Tshitembu, main advisor for Geosolar in the DRC agreed: We are on track to establish an energy regulator which will make things a lot easier, creating more visibility and providing more stability to investors.He added that the majority of energy generated in DRC is renewable, mostly hydropower and that there was a lot of appetite from international investors, particularly the UK, for the DRC.Both agreed that the current estimated demand of energy in DRC is around 4,200MW.The last webinar session for the day focused on local content and capacity building after Covid-19.Local content is an important driver to allow the Congolese to benefit from their wealth" said Gety Mpanu Mpanu, deputy chief of staff of the head of state in charge of infrastructure, mineral resources, hydrocarbons, energy and PT-NTIC in the presidency. She added that the DRC must become a viable and profitable investment platform and as part of developing local content subcontracting must be reserved for companies with a majority of Congolese capital". Furthermore, she felt that "improving the performance of the mining crafts requires training the leaders of mining cooperatives"."The concept of local content is a very important one for our country and our mining sector, said Justin Kashala, human resources manager at DRCs Ivanhoe Mines. "There is an opportunity for vertical integration of the entire production chain on the economic level. Our training programmes need to be reviewed so we can train people who have the skills needed in the current mines in the DRC."Lorenzo Giacomin is the project director for Edukat, a Belgian development agency, which focuses on support for technical education and vocational training in Katanga province, both formal and non-formal. He was upbeat about their contribution to the region's employment or self-employment prospects. "Collaboration is the most important. We are in partnership with the government regarding the policies and orientations they have put in place with private companies. These are win-win partnerships. He added: the key word of our project is support. Training is not enough, you have to use skills and allow people to find jobs."Macaire Mulundu, Ruashi Minings HR manager pointed out that one of the unexpected results of the Covid-19 pandemic had been that it had created opportunities for local talent to show their metal. The pandemic has reduced mobility and expatriates cannot all be on the premises. Some positions are vacant and Congolese have been chosen to fill these positions, temporarily or permanently."
Kate Northrop Recipient of UWs Ellbogen Classroom Teaching Award

Kate Northrop

Since coming to the University of Wyoming in 2008, Kate Northrop has proved to be more than an instructor to those who know her. She changes the lives of those around her.

Alyson Hagy, a UW Department of Visual and Literary Arts professor, who was on the hiring committee reviewing Northrops application, points out that fact. Besides Northrops stellar professional background that featured published works, what struck Hagy the most were the written testimonials from those who recommended her for the UW position.

She was a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writing Workshop and had letters of reference from some high-flying American writers. But, curiously, it was the teaching evaluations from West Chester University that dazzled us most brightly, Hagy says. None of us had ever seen such detailed testimony, especially from students. And, the evaluations werent just from poetry students: They were from all quarters. It didnt seem to matter who Kate taught or under what circumstances: Those students were moved by the experience. And changed.

That high praise has earned Northrop, a Department of Visual and Literary Arts associate professor in the Creative Writing Program, the John P. Ellbogen Meritorious Classroom Teaching Award. She is among three recipients of the award, established in 1977 by businessman John P. Jack Ellbogen, to foster, encourage and reward excellence in classroom teaching at UW. Other Ellbogen winners are Michelle Chamberlin, an associate professor of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and Jim Ward, a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science.

Northrops personal teaching style reached two of her students this past year.

Caroline Miller asked Northrop to advise her in an independent study in poetry, since there were no graduate-level poetry workshops offered.

I was struck by not only her willingness to take on this extra workload, but the enthusiasm with which she agreed, Miller says. As I approach the end of my time in this program, this opportunity to work with Kate has crystallized as one of the most important and formative experiences I have had here. I find myself feeling more confident and enthusiastic about the creative process than I ever have, thanks, in large part, to the incredible guidance Kate has offered.

Student Jess Fahlsing was a creative writing minor and says the one course taught by Northrop changed the way that I think about writing and how it relates to my life.

I am struggling to find the words to convey how much taking a class from Kate meant to me and did for me. It is such an honor that I am afraid I will not be able to speak to Kates teaching in a way that does her justice, Fahlsing says. The simplest way that I could put this would be to say that Kate really sees each and every one of her students for who they are, and invests a huge amount of time in fostering their growth. Her teaching goes beyond the classroom.

Colleague Val Pexton, a senior lecturer in the Creative Writing Program, praises Northrop for her innovation within existing courses; creating new courses; and helping to develop better curriculum for writing students.

I can honestly say that she is the colleague we all want to work with and the one we aspire to be, Pexton adds.

Northrop received a bachelors degree in history of art (1991) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in creative writing/poetry (1995) from the University of Iowa.
A surge in coronavirus cases in the U.S. and Brazil, and further outbreaks in Germany  where the reproduction rate of the disease has risen substantially  are concerning global health experts, but international financial markets don't seem too worried.

The largest single-day increase in global coronavirus cases was recorded on Sunday, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), after more than 183,000 new cases were reported worldwide.

Brazil, with nearly 55,000 new infections, saw the largest number of cases reported, followed by the U.S., with more than 36,000 new cases reported Sunday. India, meanwhile, saw more than 15,000 new infections, the WHO said.

It should be noted that increases in the numbers of coronavirus cases could be down to increased and more widespread testing, and also anomalies in data collection. Brazil's large spike in cases on Sunday, for instance, was in part due to a lag in reporting from three states (Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo) compounding data from two days, WHO noted.

Nonetheless, the surge in cases does not appear to be a one off. In the U.S., more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases were reported on both Friday and Saturday, with infections rising in states across the South, West and Midwest.
[June 22, 2020] CYTTA Corp IGAN Incident Command System Utilized During Recent Texas Protests

Las Vegas , June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- -- Cytta Corp ( OTCPINK: CYCA) Cytta Corp was asked, by a group of North Texas police departments, to utilize its IGAN technology to provide increased video/audio connectivity as part of a coordinated response to major protests happening in a local community. This live operational utilization was a resounding success for the IGAN as well as for the first responders it served. Police departments across the United States are relying on video/audio communication tools to ensure that citizens, businesses, and buildings are protected during these volatile times. The IGAN ICS video/audio platform provides first responders a critical real-time perspective during emergencies, giving immediate actionable information to all first responders and their emergency operations center incident commanders. Texas Police Departments understand that in these difficult times, new technologies can drastically improve their ability to protect cities and their local citizens and communities, as well as provide ongoing safety, transparency, and accountability. Implementing the Cytta IGAN live-streaming video/audio communications platform allowed police to identify points of conflict that need attention when situations become overwhelming to officers with boots on the ground. The ability to live-stream video and audio feeds from phone cams, body cams, dash cams, and drones allows both police and their incident commanders to make better immediate decisions during emergencies. The IGAN communication platform was able to identify and monitor potential bad actors during a protest, allow the incident commanders to make immediate and informed decisions, and coordinate the information with their ground teams to ensure the safety of every protestor and first responder, says Gary Campbell, CEO of Cytta Corp. When first responders have accurate information at their fingertips, they can make beter decisions, faster, improving response times and ensuring the safety and security of all involved.



Texas Police Lieutenant Clay Regan, an integral part of the combined response team stated, In my 30+ years of Law Enforcement, and 26 years in the US Air Force, I have seldom witnessed an advancement in technology with this potential. At full capacity, and with all IGAN systems in play, this product has the capacity to rival any significant innovation for police, fire, emergency management, or public safety in general. Situational awareness is accomplished for first responders when drones, and all other video/audio data feeds are connected to incident commanders through IGAN. This provides real-time intelligence of a situation by de-escalating potential conflict before it results in the loss of life or damaged property.

About Us Cytta Corp ( OTCPINK: CYCA) brings technology from military to enterprise. Our proprietary SUPR Stream is the technology at the core of our products, designed specifically for streaming and storing HD, 4K, and higher resolution video. The IGAN Matrix seamlessly streams and stores all relevant video and audio during emergency situations. This creates real-time situational awareness for police, firefighters, first responders, military and their command centers.



Cytta Corp products work in size, weight, and power-constrained (SWaP) operating environments, and evolved through use in the military by meeting the need to stream multiple HD, 4K, and 4K+ video feeds with ultra-low latency, bandwidth, and power consumption. Cytta is taking this streaming, storage, and transfer technology to enterprises that would like to send more high-quality videos with fewer resources. Cytta manufactures all their products in the USA and is in compliance with recent DOD Blacklist Clause pronouncements. For more information, please visit Cytta.com and/or the Cytta Video Channel on YouTube Safe Harbor Statement / Forward-Looking Statements Statements included in this press release, which are not historical in nature, are forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements relating to the future performance of the Company are subject to many factors including, but not limited to, the customer acceptance of the products in the market, the introduction of competitive products and product development, the impact of any product liability or other adverse litigation, working capital and availability of capital, commercialization and technological difficulties, the impact of actions and events involving key customers, vendors, lenders, competitors, and other risks. Such statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the Company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, the terms "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "may", "objective", "plan", "possible", "potential", "project", "will", and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of future events, new information, or otherwise. Cytta Corp www.cytta.com Office (855) 511-4426 [email protected] Gary Campbell, CEO Direct (702) 900-7022 [email protected] Michael Chermak, Chief Administrative and Investment Officer Cell: (619) 977-7203 [email protected] Corporate Communications Contact: Complete Advisory Partners Office: (586) 228-2290 Cell: (586) 801-9002 Email: [email protected]

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
With uncertainty amidst the coronavirus pandemic and many people held up in their homes, people are ordering books online, especially the Good Book, according to some sources.

For many Christians in Ghana, this is no accident, as people often go to the Bible as a source of hope in times of crisis and uncertainty. People draw hope from the Scriptures because in it they see a God who is with them during difficult times. The Bible, as God's words to us, is a reminder that He doesn't leave us to walk through difficult times alone.

In Ghana, even amidst the suffering and financial hardship we've continued to see people engage with Methodist Book Depot by patronizing our shops purchasing Bibles as encouraging gifts for loved ones during these times, a shop attendant said. "We believe people are buying Bibles because theres a longing to connect with God, find meaning, and experience peace,'' she added.

According to (sales) information from top Christian publishers, a vast majority of Americans own Bibles, yet a large percentage say they never read it, but that could be changing. Alabaster Co., a small business in California that sells books of the Bible for the Instagram generation, saw an increase in sales of up to 143 percent compared to last year. In this life-altering and unprecedented pandemic, people are looking for hope and restoration,"- Brian Chung, co-founder and business director of Alabaster Co., told Fox News.

Many people in China are patronizing Bibles to read and meditate due to the fear of the pandemic. Most people have taken to social media platforms encouraging others to purchase the Bible and through that develop a personal relationship with God. Others are even anticipating the world will end soon hence the need to keep copies of the Bible.

Rev Ock Soo Park (Founder of Good News Mission and International Youth Fellowship) a renowned man of God from South Korea has said that what we keep in our heart and mind makes or unmakes us. According to him the more we read the Bible the more the mind of God gets formed in us hence he encourages all to read the Bible very often to be able to overcome the fear of COVID 19.

Some say that every misfortune has a fortune. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, it is envisaged that the world population shall develop increased levels of loneliness, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, and self-harm or suicidal behaviour. On the contrary publishers, wholesalers, retailers and online vendors of bibles are rather experiencing increase in revenue during the pandemic.
Click here to read the full article.

LONDON  Its no secret that the fashion industry has a systemic racism problem. People of Black, Asian and many ethnic backgrounds are rarely seen at c-level positions. And even though the industry is perceived to be LGBTQ-friendly, white, middle-aged straight men still dominate the business side of the fashion world.

Jamie Gill, 32, wants to challenge all that. Having worked in architecture, accountancy and venture capital, Gill now is the chief executive officer of Roksanda, and he wants to use his voice to help others who share similar experiences to break the glass ceiling in the industry.

Born to working-class British-Indian parents in the Midlands, his mother worked part-time for the police and his father ran a takeaway business. In Gills words, he had naturally quite a conservative upbringing, and homosexuality was something that was just kind of not spoken about in my household.

Growing up in the BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic] community, especially on the Indian side, being gay was a taboo. I found it extra challenging just growing up, concealing this big part about myself and not feeling comfortable with an environment to come through, he added.

Gill stayed in the closet until he joined Deloitte in 2010. Before that, with a bachelors degree in architecture at Nottingham University, he worked at several architecture practices in London.

I took a career turn in the midst of the recession, and I joined Deloitte. It was there I witnessed how many gay, lesbian and transgender partners were taking leading positions at this international firm, he recalled.

It gave me the real courage to be like, oh my gosh, you can do it. Stop concealing this, youre in London! Joining Deloitte was really soul-nourishing for me. That just gave me that boost as a 22-year-old, and thats when I came out and started living my authentic self from there, said Gill.

Story continues

He moved to India for a year and launched his own fashion start-up, targeting the lucrative Indian bridal market. Gill fell in love with his first boyfriend there, and got to witness Mumbas vibrant hidden gay scene.

It wasnt legal to be gay in India at that time [the Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality in 2018]. So that was really interesting to go to those parties in the darkrooms and backrooms in hotels, he said: Its such a hidden community, which is ironic, considering how flamboyant and camp Bollywood is and the Indian culture is.

Gill believes the British-Indian gay community needs more visibility.

I can name all of the Indian gays who I know who have a media presence here for a start, he said. Were still part of that transition accepting who we are. The Indian populations only been here for a few generations. The partition of India was 1947 and that was when we really only had an influx into the country.

The British-Indian community is not as progressive as it can be, but I want to champion that. I want to make it clear that I am gay, I am Indian and I am proud of who I am. Im doing these things and Im not wearing either my sexuality or my culture on my sleeve. But they do define part of me and I will take the best of both and be progressive with it all, he added.

Upon returning to London, Gill joined Indian private investor Eiesha Bharti Pasrichas fund as an investment director. The fund took a controlling stake in Roksanda in 2014 and helped the brands revenue grew from 3 million pounds to 10 million pounds in 2018, according to reports. The brand is known for voluminous dresses with an artistic touch.

He transitioned to Roksanda as ceo in March 2018, succeeding Carmela Acampora. Later that year, Bharti Pasricha hired Deloitte to conduct a strategic review on a potential sale of the brand, while Gill restructured the company along his inclusive approach. Around 25 percent of Roksandas 40 employees now come from inclusive backgrounds.

The fund concluded not to sell at that time, despite interest from potential buyers, and continues to look for opportunities to grow the business, including designing a show apartment for Kings Cross luxury development Gasholders, partnering with Lululemon on an ath-leisure capsule, and working with Farfetch to reach Chinese consumers amid COVID-19 disruptions.

During the pandemic, the company was put on pause, but Gill has been working on a sustainability manifesto and minimizing order cancellations by repurposing part of Roksandas fall 2020 collection as resort 2021. Diversified offerings of knitwear, separates and casual jersey also helped the brand tap into the work-from-home shopping trend.

Its going to be a smaller market share for everybody now, but I do feel that as soon as human confidence returns, so will consumer confidence and well all be ready to get back to life, he added.

The situation has also forced the brand to speed up the implementation of its own online business. We had it in the works for our transactional e-commerce and that was something that we were developing a lot more slowly, but I think its definitely forced us to expedite, which Im hoping can be transactional in the next months, he said.

The brand will be on London Fashion Weeks September digital schedule, but Gill and Roksanda Illincic, founder of the company, are still figuring out what the presentation will look like. For its fall collection, the brand collaborated with emerging British-Bangladeshi artist Rana Begum to decorate the courtyard at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office with tie-dyed fishnets strung across the ceiling.

On top of working at Roksanda, Gill is also a mentor for emerging designers through the British Fashion Councils Fashion Trust, supporting designers such as Eudon Choi, Rejina Pyo and Fyodor Gola on financial and merchandising strategies.

I want to use my journey and my platform foremost in a mentoring capacity, both in the industry and the wider society, he said: Pre-COVID-19, I went to a school that I was asked to speak at and it was an underprivileged school with a high BAME population in Slough, and they just wanted me to talk to the sixth-form students about my journey, and being gay was a big part of that.

In early June, BFC hosted a private conversation for people with diverse backgrounds working in the fashion industry in the U.K. Around 160 people attended the Zoom meeting. It wasnt until then that Gill realized how small the fashion BAME community is, and how much needs to be done, starting from within the organization, which currently only has two employees who are not white.

I followed up immediately with Caroline [Rush, the BFCs ceo] and I put myself forward to it. You have nobody from the BAME backgrounds or LGBTQ on the executive board at BFC. I would like to put myself forward to champion this thread, he said.

Gill also wants to be a role model within the LGBTQ community. To begin with, he encourages people who struggle with their identity to explore in real life  instead of only walking down the easy avenue of dating apps like Grindr.

We go online and we can be, to some extent, anonymous whilst were finding ourselves and finding out who we are, but that isnt the only avenue. What I did when I first came to London without knowing anybody whatsoever, I was actively looking for other groups that were socially LGBTQ-friendly.

My advice would be to make friends first, make friends in real life, from the community, of all different ages, LGBTQ and older and younger and meet them and build real authentic relationships through groups, through yoga groups, whatever we can start with. We start small, and then it grows and in time, weve got to build a real circle and I just feel from their acquaintances and circles you will meet someone, he said.

With the app, youre going into the big bad world, looking at some massive muscle guys and you think, oh I want to go for that, and he has spent 25 years in the gym building that body and he is looking at someone who doesnt have that. He rejects you and you take it personally. But just think about it more from a social context, how would you go about this in real life? he added.

Best of WWD

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Education leaders across the country are trying to determine whether and when they can safely reopen K-12 schools. What everyone needs to realize is that for students under 16 years of age schools never should have been closed. These students should return to their classrooms for summer school right away.

Older students also can return to school but need to observe the same precautions as adults under 65: washing hands, not touching their faces, and so forth.

Sweden never closed schools for those under 16 and public health authorities in neighboring Norway and Denmark now acknowledge that Sweden made the correct decision.

Globally, according to a research review published recently in The Lancet, a leading medical journal, the number of Covid-19 deaths prevented by school closings has been vanishingly small. The same cant be said about the closings educational effects, which have been devastating.

Regular public schools were not prepared to switch to distance learning. Teachers were not trained; equipment was not in place, and as UNESCO put it in a report on school closings adverse effects, parents were unprepared for distance and home schooling. This was especially true for parents with limited education and resources.

During the lockdown, only one-fifth of the school districts surveyed by the Center for Reinventing Public Educationincluding districts in many of Americas most populous citiesrequired their teachers to provide live online video lessons to students.

Validly measuring student performance was even more challenging. Scheduled tests, especially those serving as gateways to selective colleges or validating promotion to higher educational levels, were disrupted. Online exams risked being unfair to students without the needed computer technology and internet connectionsand may have made cheating all too easy. Giving pass/fail grades for online work encouraged lazy students not to do much of anything and punished hard-working students by not giving them letter-grades reflecting their accomplishments and efforts.

We know from both research and experience that students learn only if they spend enough high-quality time on task. They need to concentrate on what they need to know, within a well-designed curriculum. Their efforts need to be focused on studying that leads to their mastery of the subject-matter. Most children need a skilled and knowledgeable in-person teacher to accomplish this and, according to a study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, do not do as well in an all-virtual setting.

A survey of public-school students in Broward County, Florida on online learning during the lockdown found that 48% did not foresee completing their school work for the week, 45% had trouble focusing, 40% spent less than three hours per day on schoolwork, 81% joined video classes only a few days a week, and 52% didnt feel motivated enough to do schoolwork. And thats in a district with considerable experience with online learning.

Usually, as Fordham Institute president Michael J. Petrilli points out, only those who are high-achieving, self-motivated learners with considerable family support at home succeed in schooling that is online only. This is not to deny that a number of programs that blend online and classroom learning performed well pre-Covid-19. It is instead to emphasize that with the current state of the art there are drawbacks to education that is completely virtual.

The shutdown also has increased the existing achievement gap between children from well-educated families and those from less-educated families. We already have, under regular conditions, a slide in skills and knowledge after summer vacation. That summer slide hurts children from less well-educated households the most. We know from a Canadian study that prolonged teacher strikes (say, four weeks) can dramatically reduce student performance, particularly in math. The effects of the lockdown will be worse than the summer slide.

Because of the lockdown, a study from Brown Universitys Annenberg Institute shows, students will begin the 2020-21 school year with about 70% of what they should have learned in reading this year and with less than half of what they should have learned in math. The loss in math will be even worse in lower grades.

Those who are worried about re-opening shouldn't be panicked. Multiple studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of children under 16 are at low risk for contracting the virus. If K-12 students do get it, they typically have mild cases. The vast majority of U.S. teachers also are under the age where they are considered high risk for getting Covid-19, as has been pointed out by number-crunching historian Guy de la Bedoyere.

Children have been super-spreaders for some diseases (such as the flu), but not Covid-19, according to the Swiss health ministry and a report from Australia. Many countries in Europe and elsewhere already have re-opened their schools. This has not resulted in any notable increase in Covid-19 cases among students, parents or staff.

There is, however, a new, very rare childhood respiratory disease (multi-system inflammatory syndrome) that seems to be associated with coronavirus. The key is detecting these rare cases, not letting them divert us from re-opening.

The school lockdown has been a grievous error. We now must find ways to live with the consequences. Children should return to their classrooms now if their school has its protective practices worked out and attend make-up classes in brick and mortar buildings during the summer. They should be given tests to see where their learning needs to be re-started. Many may have to repeat this past years grade next fall.

Children have only one childhood in which to master skills and knowledge so they can fulfill their potential. Contrasting the tiny public-health risks with the devastating educational deprivation, it is imperative that public officials let Americas children return to school now.
A yoga and mediation retreat in Bali has come under fire after photos emerged of a mass gathering of tourists flouting social distancing rules.

The House of Om posted an open invitation on social media for a yogic chanting evening and 'celebration of bliss' last Thursday, which doubled as a fundraiser for the local village.

The retreat's founder has been forced to issue a public apology for its 'irresponsible actions' after photos from the event showed more than 100 attendees crammed into a treetop room sitting closely together and no face masks in sight.

More than 1,050 coronavirus cases have been recorded on the popular Indonesian island in the last three months, including nine deaths.

More than 100 Western foreigners breached social distancing rules at mass gathering held at The House of Om retreat in Bali last week

Photos from the mass gathering at the retreat in Ubad sparked widespread backlash online.

Most of the attendees pictured appear to be Western foreigners.

'From the photos. the number of people infected COVID-19 in Bali is increasing,' Indonesian screenwriter Jenny Jusuf tweeted.

She told Triple J Hack: 'Most of these foreigners are living in Bali on emergency stay permits from the Indonesian Government, yet they act like they own the island.

Other locals were just as outraged.

'It's crazy, it's still required to wear masks and keep the distance,' one woman commented.

House of Om founder Wissam Barakeh originally denied to Kumparan and to Hack the event was held, and claimed the photos were from last December, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Photos show event attendees sitting closely together and not wearing face masks

However he later backtracked on those claims to take full responsibility for last week's event and apologised to the whole Balinese community.

'It was a big and absurd mistake that happened in a difficult time like now,' he wrote on the House of Om's Instagram on Monday.

'We held an event on June 18, aiming to raise funds so that we can help as much as possible the people who need help.'

'I apologise for the amount because it poses a serious risk for our actions. We apologise to the entire Balinese community for our irresponsible actions.

Ms Jusuf has since described Mr Barakeh's apology as 'half-hearted'.

'I hope that the Bali government will firmly act on these types of foreigners. If everything ends with just a mere apology, they will not learn their lesson,' she wrote.

The House of Om founder originally claimed the photos were from last December before he backtracked on the claims and apologised for the June 18 event (pictured)

The event attended by more than 100 people doubled as a fundraiser for the local village

It's unclear whether the retreat will be sanctioned over the mass gathering.

'I have done my part. now it's up to the local government,' Ms Jusuf wrote.

The House of Om opened in Bali in 2017.

'The community is a resort and retreat center, co-living & co-working place, holistic school & charity foundation; it provides free workshops and events, affordable teacher trainings, budget communal accommodation, and employment opportunity,' it states on its website,
Jacinda Ardern has snapped back at a radio host who grilled her over New Zealand's quarantine bungle that saw nine returning travellers bring coronavirus into the country.

Two British tourists left their Auckland hotel without being tested to drive to Wellington last week but on arrival were found to have COVID-19.

Ms Ardern admitted the bungle was a 'process failure' and 'totally unacceptable,' before bringing in even stricter quarantine measures to prevent it from happening again.

Mike Hosking from Newstalk ZB asked the prime minister why New Zealand was still seeing new cases from travellers being quarantined but not being tested.

Ms Ardern said she couldn't put an exact number on how many people had left hotels without being screened.

Jacinda Ardern has snapped back at a radio host who grilled her over New Zealand's coronavirus quarantine bungle that saw nine new cases detected

Mike Hosking (pictured) from Newstalk ZB asked the prime minister why New Zealand was still seeing new cases from returning travellers being in quarantined but not being tested

Hosking slammed Ms Ardern as having a 'major credibility issue' surrounding the fiasco, just two weeks after the country relaxed all restrictions and declared itself virus-free.

'I am going to dispute that Mike,' she said on air on Monday.

'We are not the only country who are putting in place protocols like this. Many other countries, however, just allow people to self-isolate at home.'

Hosking hit back, saying that didn't mean anything.

'We have our own program to run. What you are telling us happens doesn't happen  we found that out last week,' he said.

Ms Ardern responded: 'Health will not argue that, I will not argue that'.

'It is why we have put in place someone completely new to oversee testing, the entire process and exit criteria  and that is Air Commodore Webb from the Defence Force.'

Ms Ardern then doubled down on her stance, and pointed out that out of the more than 20,000 people who had been through quarantine, no one had given COVID-19 to anyone outside.

Hosking said officials did not know that because people left hotels untested.

'I have made my point  you continue to make yours,' Ms Ardern hit back.

The two British women landed in New Zealand on June 7 and were given special permission to leave quarantine six days later, to grieve with another relative when the parent died.

They were tested in Wellington on June 15 'as part of their agreed self-isolation plan' - although one of them realised 'in retrospect' that she had experienced symptoms earlier.

Mike Hosking (left) slammed Jacinda Ardern (right) as having a 'major credibility issue' surrounding the fiasco

The positive results came back the following day, a week after New Zealand scrapped almost all its lockdown restrictions when the number of active cases dropped to zero.

Health officials announced two new cases on Monday, both of which detected within the country's isolation regime.

All identified cases are in isolation or quarantine, and the recent positive tests are seen as proof the system is working.

Under New Zealand's health-first elimination strategy, all arriving citizens and residents during the pandemic have been asked to quarantine for two weeks in hotels at the government's expense.
There's a story behind her cover shoot. (PA Images)

Alicia Keys seemingly make-up free cover shoot for InStyle couldve been shot by any number of photographers, but the truth is much cuter.

Keys had to enlist the help of her children, Egypt, 9, and Genesis, 5, to help her with the shoot because the coronavirus pandemic meant that she couldnt work with a photographer.

The children - who are clearly photographers in the making - shot the pictures with help from their father and Keys husband, Swizz Beatz.

The front cover of InStyle magazine simply reads, photographed by her family.

Keys wore a simple white tank top on the cover with a hint of neon pink bra strap adding a pop of colour to the otherwise serene looking shoot.

Read more: Lizzo shares stern message for body shamers

Genesis wasnt very happy with his equipment, though, he was like, I want the smaller camera, Keys shared with InStyle.

We cant imagine a big photoshoot camera is all that easy to carry for a five-year-old.

While the photoshoot was very much down to the children and Swizz Beatz, the fashion choices were picked by stylist, Jason Bolden.

The fresh, summer look - with was in-keeping with the theme of the magazine - included a a light blue jumpsuit from the Givenchy and a floaty Fendi maxi dress in orange.

Read more: Helen Flanagan vows to be a better role model to her daughters

The mini photographers-in-the-making arent the first celebrity family members to turn into professional shoot managers during lockdown.

Ashley Grahams husband, cinematographer Justin Ervin, shot a photo of her breastfeeding her son, Isaac, for a recent issue of Harpers Bazaar this month.

Drew Barrymores daughter, Olive, also tried her hand at photography for the actors Sunday Times Style cover earlier, too.

We wonder if in 20 years time well see a wealth of budding photographers making their way through the ranks?

Story continues

Speaking about the conversation she had with her daughter about the shoot, Barrymore wrote on Instagram: The following is a dialogue between me and my daughter... ME: Olive will you take pictures for the @theststyle photoshoot. Its for a magazine people work for years to shoot for!

OLIVE: Why are you asking me to shoot you mom? And who normally shoots you? ME: A photographer. But right now, the world is in a crazy place. Everything is an opportunity to do things differently! So what do you say? Do you want to be my photographer?OLIVE: Im honored [sic] to be your photographer. I like taking pictures, so thank you. ME: Do you promise not to shoot me from below? OLIVE: Yes. And then you wont look like you have a very big chin ME: Oh no, Im worried about looking like I have NO chin!

Were suitably impressed, celebrity children.
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

San Francisco, 22 June 2020: The Report Environment Health & Safety Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product, By End Use, By Application (Industrial Waste Management, Wastewater Management), And Segment Forecasts, 2020  2027

The global environment health & safety market size is expected to reach USD 88.39 billion by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is projected to witness a CAGR of 6.9% during the forecast period. Rising public awareness regarding environmental issues over the past few years has resulted in the development of environment protection laws which is expected to drive the market growth.

The EHS (environment health & safety) services and software aid companies to meet the standards established by environmental bodies such as Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Increasing pressure from society and the government on companies to operate in an environment-friendly manner owing to the rising awareness regarding the negative implications of pollution is likely to fuel the growth of the EHS market.

COVID-19 pandemic has caused slowdown in global construction industry, as it caused labor shortages, disrupted supply chains and severe financing pressure due to non-completion of projects. This has affected environmental health & safety market all over the world.

Pre COVID-19 Factors

Growing concern about working conditions and labor lives makes it important for the countries to draw up regulations. These regulations have been proved to be a boosting factor the growth of environmental health and safety market.

These regulations have been proved to be a boosting factor the growth of environmental health and safety market. Multiple benefits of these EHS services and software such as being a helping hand in streamlining waste management of these companies, along with making the workplace safe for workers and improving the efficiency of companies, plays a crucial role in growing the demand for the market.

such as being a helping hand in streamlining waste management of these companies, along with making the workplace safe for workers and improving the efficiency of companies, plays a crucial role in growing the demand for the market. EHS mobile applications are being developed in the market. This will play a crucial role in raising the demand in the market; also it will keep the growth ticking after the pandemic subsides.

Access Research Report of Environment Health & Safety Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/environmental-health-and-safety-market

Some recent Developments in Environment Health & Safety Market

In January 2020, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire CGE Risk Management Solutions B.V. (CGE), a leading provider of risk management software, including the industry-standard BowTieXP solution . The acquisition will extend Wolters Kluwers presence in the growing operational risk management software market.

announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire a leading provider of risk management software, including the industry-standard . The acquisition will extend Wolters Kluwers presence in the growing operational risk management software market. In 2018, eVision, which had $25 million in 2017 revenues, becomes part of the Enablon business unit. eVison is an operational risk management(ORM) software vendor. This makes it important for the growth of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory company.

eVison is an operational risk management(ORM) software vendor. This makes it important for the growth of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory company. On april 2020, AECOM and WSP Halt Talks to Create Megafirm.

COVID-199 becomes the apparent reason for the firms to take the step, as the pandemic is causing global slowdown and effects on the economies are huge and the firms require time to assess the situation, before culminating the acquisition.

In 2018, Enablon, a Wolters Kluwer business and a world leader in EHS and Operational Risk Management software, has been named as the Best Compliance Solution in the 2018 SIIA CODiE Awards. The prestigious award recognizes the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology.This is beneficial for the business and validation of the work done by the country, leading to greater demand.

Access Press Release of Environment Health & Safety Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-environmental-health-and-safety-market
Although the numbers of hospitalized and dying COVID-19 patients has stabilized, the need for PPE  the equipment that allows our first responders to safely interact with the public  continues. The N-95 mask is an important piece of personal protective equipment, often referred to as PPE, worn by medical staff. It helps protect both patient and doctor from cross-infection.

Hospital workers remain on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, and guidelines call for using one mask for each patient, meaning that one nurse or doctor can go through dozens of masks a day.

So this week's donation will help to ease the demand somewhat, and allow staff to breathe a little easier.

"Left Coast and Clique cannabis club of 6142 Walker Ave, Maywood, CA 90270 were delighted to be able to help our communities by supporting medical personnel with this gift," said Left Coast representative Coltin Barody. "Our business requires these masks, but our need is not as urgent as it is in our hospitals during this crisis."

Barody indicated that Left Coast increases their typical mask order with the intention of donating them to the hospital. "It seemed like an 'all hands on deck' sort of situation. We had a supplier, we saw a need," Barody shrugged. "It's just the right thing to do."

In April, Left Coast donated 3,000 masks to the first responders in the city of Oceanside, where the company is based.

US News lists San Diego's Kaiser Permanente as a high performing medical center for pulmonology and lung surgery. COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory illness, although there are a range of non-respiratory symptoms that can present in patients with the virus.

Media Contact: Coltin Barody, [email protected]

SOURCE Left Coast Extracts

Related Links

leftcoastextracts.info


On June 18, head of the Russian trade mission in Finland Sergei Sinelnikov had an online meeting with division heads of Business Finland Kimmo Kanto and Ulla Lainio.

The parties discussed the development of Russia-Finland economic cooperation in the Arctic region ahead of Russia's chairmanship in the Arctic Council from 2021 to 2023.

The Finnish business people pointed out several interesting areas of cooperation with Russian companies with a focus on the Arctic region, such as clean, information and space technologies as well as smart transport, including autonomous navigation in Arctic waters.

The parties also discussed options for financing and implementing joint infrastructure projects in the Arctic region, both on Russian and Finnish territory. Kimmo Kanto pointed out that several projects can be implemented within the existing Business Finland programs.

On the Russian side, Sergei Sinelnikov suggested that his Finnish partners consider the possibility of Finnish companies taking up residence in new Arctic priority development areas, taking into account the incentives offered by Russia and potential partnership with Russian anchor residents.

At the end of the meeting the parties stressed the importance of discussing cooperation areas in detail and further collaboration at the expert level.
OLD FORT, B.C.A resident of a small community on the banks of British Columbias Peace River says hes concerned that if he leaves, he wont be able to come home.

Karl Kirschbaum, 68, said hes watched the only road in and out of Old Fort, B.C., gradually slip down the side of a slope.

Its just moving toward the river, the whole road, Kirschbaum said in an interview.

The residents of Old Fort, just outside Fort St. John, have been on evacuation alert since Friday evening.

The same community was evacuated in 2018 because of a slow-moving landslide at that location.

Ground movement has again been detected near the subdivision, affecting the only road access in and out of the area, the Peace River Regional District says in the alert.

About 150 metres of the road is affected and the cracking extends 100 metres upslope, while creeping behaviour is moving down from the road and theres a ripple in the ground.

The slow-moving landslide has sped up to between 30 and 45 cm. per hour, it says.

Anyone not prepared to shelter in place was encouraged to consider leaving the area, as the situation could worsen.

The ground movement has created difficulty for the Ministry of Transportation to maintain the road in a safe and passable condition, and the likelihood, duration and speed of continued ground movement is unpredictable at this time, the alert says.

Its all familiar to Kirschbaum, who said hes trying to decide whether he should walk the road out of the subdivision so he can go to work on the other side or not.

When residents were forced to leave in 2018 because of a slow-moving slide at the same location, they couldnt return for weeks, he said.

His wife stayed home to look after the animals on their acreage that fall, he said. Supplies like bottled water were shipped in but those who left couldnt return, he said.

The community lost power during that slide but the power is still on this time, he said.

Norris Noble lives just above the slide so he said hes not affected by the road closure, but he said its a familiar scene.

Its just slowly creeping, its the same as last time, he said.

The regional district is asking residents to make an evacuation plan, including packing essential items and establishing meeting locations outside the community should the alert be upgraded to an order.

Residents should plan for a variety of situations and determine if their individual situations allow them to remain safely in place or not if road access is lost.

Emergency support services are only available to those who evacuate, it said in Fridays alert.

Old Fort Road was closed in both directions Sunday due to a washout and geotechnical assessment was ongoing, Drive BC said.

Read more about:
The Supreme Court is set to make its first landmark ruling on abortion rights in the era of Donald Trump as early as this week, with the deciding vote likely to be left down to one judge.

The court is set to vote on a constitutional challenge to a highly controversial Louisiana law allowing the regulation of abortion providers to come into effect, which could set a new precedent for the protection of abortion rights in the US.

The 2014 Louisiana law requires physicians who perform abortions to hold active admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their facility. Challengers have said it places obstacles in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion.

Defenders have argued the law benefits abortion patients by making abortion safer, even though the court found that a previous similar law offered no such benefit.

The law has been regarded as significantly similar to a case that was heard in 2016, namely Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt, that also required abortion providers to have similar admitting privileges.

A tie-breaking vote may rest with Chief Justice John Roberts, who has maintained an image dedicated to honouring prior Supreme Court opinions.

Roberts has as much if not more of an interest than anyone in the public face and integrity of the court, Professor Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago told The Hill.

Notably, the Louisiana case asks the justices to weigh their own past rulings on abortion.

In the 2016 case, Justice Roberts dissented on technical grounds from the majority, which ruled a 5-3 vote that the law was unconstitutional because its burden on a womans right to an abortion outweighed any medical benefit.

[Justice Roberts] is acutely aware that if the court were to take dramatic actions in the Louisiana case, like overturning Hellerstedt, it would widely be seen as a sheer political move, Prof Schwinn said.

This case is not a direct challenge to Roe v Wade, the landmark supreme court decision protecting a womans liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, but could be seen as a watershed moment in the change in precedent of abolition rights in the US under Mr Trump.

The district court said the law placed an undue burden on women seeking abortions in Louisiana, applying the Supreme Courts guidance in the previous case of Hellerstedt. However, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, prompting the appeal to the supreme court and the decision that lies ahead.

President Trump has been clear on his position on abortion clear and has promised to see Roe v Wade overturned since his 2016 presidential campaign.

The decision from the court on the Louisiana case could come as early as Monday, reports have said.
Citing regulatory concerns, Berlin-based security token startup Neufund has announced plans to freeze its fundraising campaigns and sideline future tokenized equity offerings.

Many European countries had aspirations to become a blockchain-friendly hub  [T]he authorities have stifled this plan, blocking the innovation in its tracks, the firm wrote in a blog post Monday.

Launched in 2016, Nefund helped allocate some $19 million in capital through novel equity and security token offerings (STOs), including a blockchain-based initial public offering in 2019. The firm claims to have some 11,000 investors across 123 countries.

Related: Stellar Proposes Changes Allowing Exchanges to Better Enforce Regulations

Read more: Neufund Gets Nod From Liechtenstein Regulator for Token Offerings

In a statement, Neufund CEO and co-founder Zoe Adamovicz said the security token project could not continue to operate in a regulatory grey area. No legal action was ever taken against the startup, yet requests for guidance were not answered due to fear of new technologies, she said.

The problem is that nobody wants to take the responsibility for neither letting innovation happen, nor for banning it, Adamovicz added in an email to CoinDesk, placing the blame squarely at the feet of Germanys Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). We were neither allowed, nor not allowed. BaFins default answer is to shy away from risk and responsibility.

BaFin did not respond to CoinDesks questions by press time.

Related: Mauritius Releases Guidance for Regulated Security Token Offerings

Read more: Openfinance Warns It Will Delist All Security Tokens Without New Funds

Adamovicz said the firm will transition to a yet-unannounced project. The current Neufund platform will be maintained including all equity tokens, wallets and post-investment activities, a blog states.

Kyle Sonlin, founder of Security Token Market, told CoinDesk that allocating capital with a token offering requires different financial players to act in sync. His firm has seen an upsurge in requests due to compliance requests, he said.

Story continues

To get an issuer to the finish line, it takes more cooperation than just providing one piece of the puzzle, Sonlin said.

Related Stories
Police arrested a man outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus during anti-racism protests on June 21.

A protester was arrested on Sunday after they threw a scooter at police officers, according to local reports.

In video posted to Facebook by Zachary Miller, other protesters can be heard yelling at police with one person saying get your knee off of him.

Ongoing anti-racism protests have been held in cities across the United States since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. Credit: Zachary Miller via Storyful
HONOLULU (AP)  A tourist from Oklahoma who was supposed to be obeying Hawaii's 14-day quarantine for travelers arriving to the state was pronounced dead after he was found unresponsive in the ocean near Diamond Head, east of Honolulu.

The Honolulu medical examiner's office identified him as Kristopher Michael Oliphant, 39, of Tulsa, Okla. A cause of death was pending Friday.

He arrived June 7 and should have stayed in quarantine until Sunday. However, he checked out of his hotel Wednesday, said Jessical Lani Rich, president of the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, which helps tourists in distress.

Rich told local TV station KITV that he was 10 days into his quarantine. "You know, it's difficult being in quarantine for a lot of people. I guess he wanted to go enjoy the ocean, and he did, but very sadly it cost him his life," she said. Her organization reached out to his family in Oklahoma.

A fisherman found an unresponsive man in the water just after 5 p.m. last Wednesday and called 911, according to Honolulu Emergency Services. Ocean Safety workers brought Oliphant into Maunalua Bay, where they pronounced him dead.

Arriving tourists and residents in quarantine arent allowed to leave hotel rooms or residences for anything except medical emergencies.

The Hawaii quarantine rule, which began in March as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the U.S., was recently extended through through July 31. Visitors arriving from out of state are required to sign a declaration at the airport acknowledging that they are aware of the quarantine order and agreeing to abide by it. They are also required to tell authorities where they will be staying, and to go there directly from the airport, not leaving their island accommodations for 14 days.

Quarantine violators are subject to large fines (up to $5,000) and possible jail time (up to one year). Anyone who plans to travel to Hawaii with the intention of violating the order should Google Hawaii quarantine arrests and theyll see a number of examples of just how seriously the state is taking the coronavirus threat. Since April 6, 115 quarantine-breakers have been arrested and sent home according to KITV.

The quarantine has effectively shut-down Hawaii's tourism-dependent economy, but it has helped the islands maintain relatively low infection rates compared to other parts of the U.S.

As of Monday, 803 people have tested positive for the virus in Hawaii and 17 people have died.

SFGATE senior travel correspondent Chris McGinnis contributed to this story.
Machete ordeal: Hazel Behan, who now lives in Co Westmeath, says she vomited when she noted similarities between the attack on her and a rape committed by Christian Bruckner

POTENTIAL DNA evidence from a rape linked to Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner was destroyed on the orders of Portuguese prosecutors.

Irish rape victim Hazel Behan waived her right to anonymity this month to say the masked man who targeted her in her Algarve apartment could have been the German sex offender.

She went public about the horrific 2004 attack after discovering Bruecker was convicted last year of the 2005 rape of an American OAP in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared in May 2007.

Mum-of-two Ms Behan said the Met Police told her they were taking her case very seriously and would be contacting their Portuguese counterparts after taking a statement.

Expand Close Still missing: The body of Madeleine McCann has never been found. Photo: PA Wire / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Still missing: The body of Madeleine McCann has never been found. Photo: PA Wire

Read More

However, it has now emerged that biological material from the crime scene was destroyed around two months before Madeleine's disappearance, meaning the chance of making any solid link between the two cases could be impossible.

The decision is laid bare in court papers relating to Ms Behan's rape in Praia da Rocha, a half-hour drive from Praia da Luz.

It followed the March 2007 mothballing of the court probe to try to catch the man who raped the former holiday rep in a five-hour attack after threatening her with a machete.

The decision to shelve the investigation was linked to the fact that identifying possible suspects was complicated by the rape happening during Euro 2004, when more people were in the area and it appeared to be a "one-off" attack.

Case files state Ms Behan described the rapist as an English speaker who could be "German, Belgian or Dutch".

Expand Close Suspect Christian Brueckner / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Suspect Christian Brueckner

Ms Behan's underwear was among clothes passed to experts for lab analysis, along with a broken nail.

Documents make it clear the biological material was obtained, but no DNA profile comparisons could be made because no suspects were identified.

Confirming the destruction of the potential evidence, the authorities said: "On March 15, 2007, when the judge decides to archive the investigation, the Public Ministry decide any biological material should be destroyed.

"As they are in a bad condition it is improbable that if this re-investigation was reopened the material could be subjected to counter-proof analysis."

The decision emerged days after the former head of Portugal's National Forensic Medicine Institute said evidence collected from the McCanns' holiday apartment and "kept in optimum conditions" could still prove valuable in unlocking the 13-year mystery.
For decades, some investors have been concerned about the mutual funds in their portfolio.

Not about the ups and downs of the investments, but about how environmental, diversity and other social issues are handled by the companies held within the mutual funds.

There is only one fund, an exchange-traded fund (ETF), that specifically focuses on investing in companies with strong racial and ethnic diversity policies, according to financial research firm Morningstar.

Impact Shares NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF (NACP) is designed to provide exposure to U.S. companies with strong racial and ethnic diversity policies in place, empowering employees irrespective of their race or nationality, the funds website says, noting the fund focuses on companies that fit the NAACPs vision of good corporate citizens.

The large company index fund tracks an index created by Morningstar called the Morningstar Minority Empowerment Index.

Any profits earned by Impact Shares, which is a nonprofit, are donated to the NAACP.

The NACP ETF is the first of its kind in that investors can allocate money to the companies that have a track record of supporting the NAACPs vision for corporate America and our constituents, Marvin Owens of the NAACP said when the fund was launched.

The president and founder of the fund, Ethan Powell, said it recognized that there was a need in the marketplace for companies to be more effectively engaged on how they might improve their business practices and culture relative to issues impacting people of color.

There were similar funds in the market addressing issues impacting women but none focused on people of color, Powell said. When evaluating social advocacy organizations, it became clear that the NAACP and their corporate engagement team were well positioned to assist corporate America to improve their corporate citizenship in this area.

For example, Powell said, the NAACP worked with Starbucks  one of the companies in the index  to respond to the 2018 incident where two Black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks. The men, who said they were waiting for a friend, were later released and they received apologies from the company, which instituted a new training program for employees.

HOW YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

In a blog post, Morningstars head of sustainability research Jon Hale said investors should not ignore the broader social impact their investments can make.

When a fund has a large stake in a company, it can form the basis of engagements between shareholders and companies that can result in changes in corporate policy and behavior. Proxy voting and shareholder resolutions provide additional paths for shareholder influence, Hale said.

Many of these funds have performed well over the past five years, including so far during this years recession, Hale said.

While Hale said NACP is the only fund that focuses exclusively on empowering minorities, there are nearly 200 broadly diversified sustainable investment stock funds that typically include the consideration of corporate diversity programs, discrimination policies, board diversity, freedom of association policies, and other relevant areas like supplier standards and worker health and safety.

Hale said most of these fund companies are expected to engage with companies about how they are addressing systemic racism.

Calvert Research and Management, for example, says it will ask companies to provide information on the racial diversity of their employees, disclose pay equity across race and gender, and publicly take a stand on what they are doing to combat racism in the criminal justice and education systems, Hale said.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com.
Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Just about a year ago, voters in Hong Kong sent a loud and clear message to Beijing: They would not lose the freedoms they enjoyed. In fact, pro-democracy forces there won 389 of 452 parliamentary seats in that election  more than 3 times their previous total. Even more, the results were seen as overwhelming support for the pro-democracy protesters that had been filling the streets of Hong Kong for weeks.

At the time, I wondered out loud how Xi Jinping and his Communist cadres would respond. I feared then, and even predicted, that Beijing would not sit idly by. Though distracted for a few months by the global pandemic they largely caused, its become clear that Eye of Sauron has turned its attention back to Hong Kong.

On Thursday, Chinas National Peoples Congress announced it will deliberate a new law for, and I quote, establishing and improving the legal system and enforcement mechanisms for Hong Kong in order to, and of course they would claim this, safeguard national security. What this means in plain English is that Communist dictator Xi Jinping has had enough of Hong Kongs trouble and has decided to put an end to their independence.

Unfortunately, there is little the rest of the world can do about it. At least, Beijing thinks so, and its hard to blame them. After all, it already dictates terms of surrender to global corporations like Apple and the NBA. It can apparently cow the European Union into changing its findings on COVID-19 so not to criticize China. Its able to silence any protest from Muslim nations about its cultural and physical genocide of millions of Chinese Uighurs. No wonder they expect to get away with this too.

To review how we got to this point, when the British handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, a unique one country, two systems regime was established that would make Hong Kong part of China, but also maintain its own local government, economic and social systems, etc. At the time, China and the U.K. agreed the arrangement would last for 50 years. Im no mathematician, but were not even halfway there yet. Its hard to imagine that anything short of an unprecedented global outcry will cause China to back off.

The natives of Hong Kong have no doubt about the seriousness of this threat. As Hong Kong lawmaker Tanya Chan told NBC News, I recall the time when I was young, and I believed in one country, two systems, and we were going to showcase to the world that Hong Kong people can rule Hong Kong. But now, Im not yet 50 years old and suddenly all is gone.

Despite this show of force and so much that we hear, China is a lot weaker than it appears. Economic growth there is at its slowest pace in nearly three decades of modern record-keeping. Throw in a sinking labor force and the added economic impact of COVID-19, and Chinas Communist Party has a big problem on its hands. Their only source of legitimacy has been economic growth. For the past 40 years, the Chinese people have been asked, over and over, to trade certain freedoms away for increasing prosperity. The fragile balance is sure to collapse if that prosperity goes away.

Its no coincidence that Xi Jinping doubled down on his own cult of personality and cracked down on religious freedom just as Chinas economy began to slow. The renewed call to Chinese nationalism from Beijing effectively distracted the population from growing economic worries and offered an effective pretext for cracking down on Hong Kong protestors, many of whom see their protesting as an outworking of their Christian faith and as something for which they are willing to die. Because so much of the Christian activity in China flows through Hong Kong, an assault on Hong Kong is rightly seen as part of the larger war on Chinese Christianity.

We must pray for Hong Kong, including the hundreds of thousands of Christians there. We must pray against the power of Beijing and Xi Jinping. We must pray that world leaders will show the backbone that has been sorely lacking when it comes to China relations over the past decade. There must not be business as usual with such a brutal regime.

This piece was originally published at BreakPoint
When the skies darkened suddenly over Michael Gatiba's 10-acre farm in Nakuru County, Kenya, what came pouring down stunned him: millions of desert locusts.

"It was like a storm," Gatiba, 45, said by telephone. "It was like hail. They covered everywhere. Even there was no sun."

That was three months ago. Although Gatiba said he was lucky that the damage from the insects was minimal, he fears that the outbreak that has plagued swaths of Africa, the Middle East and Asia for the past two years will return to ravage his maize and bean crops.

As the pests begin to migrate again in the second half of June, experts warn that, without continuous aid to mitigate the spread, the devastation could leave millions of people in at least 23 countries hungry by the end of the year.

"There is nothing we can do. They are not here, but they might come," Gatiba said. The loss of his crops could leave him, his wife and their four children struggling. "I'm very worried," he said.

Image: Locust control in Kenya (Luis Tato)

Desert locusts are a migratory pest from the grasshopper family. Even with a lifespan of only three months, they can, under the right conditions, multiply up to twentyfold in just one generation and mature to behave as a coherent unit, forming massive swarms that feast on green vegetation, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO.

A perfect storm of favorable weather, poor monitoring  particularly in conflict zones  and challenges in getting access to resources and regions because of the coronavirus pandemic has sparked the crisis, allowing locusts to reach a scale unseen in decades, experts said.

"Even my grandfather didn't see these things," Gatiba said.

The locusts that have been feasting and reproducing in Kenya  as well as in Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti  are expected to begin another move with the changing winds by the end of the month, with some bound for Sudan.

There are fears that the insects could move even farther into West Africa, threatening some of the poorest countries in the world, said Melissa Williams, a senior rural development specialist for the World Bank. Meanwhile, other swarms that in recent weeks have feasted in India and Pakistan  especially Punjab and Sindh provinces  could cycle through the region.

Story continues

"This is the worst transboundary pest in the world," Williams said. "They don't need passports, so they'll just keep going."

Download the NBC News app for breaking news and alerts

Still, international agencies and local governments have made significant progress.

"It's about 450 billion insects that we killed since the beginning of the year," Cyril Ferrand, head of the FAO's resilience team in East Africa, said of estimates that more than 1.1 million acres were brought under control by the FAO and the various governments.

The success is due to extensive on-the-ground monitoring of the insects. "Only when you have identified targets, you can send the plane to spray," he said.

Spraying pesticides is the most effective way to control desert locusts, and countries accustomed to them  such as Sudan and Eritrea  have strong programs to keep the populations at bay.

But monitoring and spraying weren't happening in remote areas of the Arabian Peninsula in 2018  notably in war-torn Yemen  following plentiful rain, including two cyclones from the Indian Ocean that created lush vegetation in which the locusts could grow and thrive.

"Normally, the first line of defense is Yemen," Williams said. But "the funds aren't there, and it's very difficult to access, because you're crossing lines of conflict, and so things got out of control."

Image: Locust control in Pakistan (Banaras Khan / AFP - Getty Images file)

Launching campaigns in peaceful jurisdictions wasn't instantaneous, either. Many countries now being hit by swarms of the pests haven't seen locusts in recent memory and don't have the expertise to deal with them, Ferrand said. The last outbreak in Kenya was 70 years ago, while Uganda last saw locusts 60 years ago.

"It's like in the U.S., in the South, nobody invests in snow removal equipment," Williams said, because most years it isn't needed.

While officials were scrambling to respond to the swarms, the coronavirus pandemic proved to be another barrier.

Experts and equipment were brought in just before borders closed, Ferrand said. The FAO also strategically procured resources, such as pesticide, in batches rather than in single mass orders in case shipments were disrupted.

Once lockdowns were imposed to prevent the spread of the virus, people involved in responding to the locusts were made exempt from the rules. "That's to the credit of governments, which elevated desert locusts to a national priority," Ferrand said. "So despite the curfew and the restriction of movement of people, all our field staff are able to move."

In addition to the immediate response, private companies and international agencies, including the World Bank, which announced $500 million in aid, are piloting technological solutions to react better to future outbreaks.

Drones to monitor and deploy small batches of pesticides are being tested in hard-to-reach areas of Kenya, Williams said. Satellite imagery of Ethiopia, captured by the European Space Agency, was used to track when locusts were detected compared with the destruction left behind and to determine whether such imagery can aid in monitoring future outbreaks.

"The issue is which technologies are going to be the most useful and most sustainable," Williams said.

In addition to focusing on mitigating the locusts, agencies and governments are racing to address the pressing concern of food availability. A 1-kilometer swarm can consume as much food as 35,000 people in a single day, according to the FAO.

Image: Desert locusts in Kenya (Sven Torfinn)

Cash transfers to individuals are providing immediate incentives for farmers to stay on their land, rather than turn to other jobs in desperation and risk abandoning their livelihoods, which their communities also benefit from, Ferrand said.

Farmers are also being trained on sustainable agriculture practices  programs already in place for adapting to the changing climate, extreme weather and other challenges  to ensure that they can thrive after the locust crisis. Pastoralists are also being provided feed for their cattle to compensate for lost grazing lands.

"We don't want more people to be dependent on food assistance. We want people to stay where they are. We want people to keep their productive assets," Ferrand said.

Still, the situation remains dire. More than 20 million people across the Horn of Africa already had insufficient access to food, according to the FAO. Worst-case projections could see 5 million more people experience hunger  and as of now, they're halfway there, Ferrand said.

In April, the World Food Program's head, David Beasley, warned the U.N. Security Council of a looming "hunger pandemic." The combination of crises from wars to the burgeoning locust plague could result in as many as 300,000 deaths a day from starvation by the end of the year, he said.

And funding for the agencies is running low. The World Food Program's operations supporting refugees in East Africa and the Horn of Africa faced a shortfall of $103 million, the organization said in a statement in May.

The FAO's operations can be supported only until the end of August, Ferrand said, while the swarms are expected to continue to reproduce and spread through the year's end. "We are winning, but we didn't win yet," he said. "There is a real risk here that all our efforts since January are in vain."

While the FAO renews its funding appeals to governments and the public worldwide to ensure that it can maintain its victory over the outbreak, farmers like Gatiba in Kenya watch the skies with concern. Losing a major harvest like maize due to be ripe in the next two months could spell disaster for paying his four children's school tuition, he said.

"There is nothing we can do, because if they destroy [crops], it's a very big loss," he said. "I would try to be helped by the government or anybody who is willing."
Chrystul Kizer is out of custody after a Chicago-based aid organization posted her $400,000 bond.

Kizer, 19, was released from Kenosha County Jail Monday afternoon. She has been in custody for two years, awaiting trial for the June 2018 shooting death of a man prosecutors admit had been sexually assaulting Kizer and other underage girls.

The man she killed, Randall Volar III, 34, was under investigation by Kenosha Police for child trafficking and possession of child pornography at the time of his death.

An organization called the Chicago Community Bond Fund posted Kizers bond Monday.

Sharlyn Grace, executive director of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, said Kizer was released Monday afternoon. Chrystul is looking forward to being with her family, she said.

Kizers case has received national attention, with advocates for trafficking victims pushing for charges against her to be dropped. Supporters have attended Kizers hearings, organized protests, circulated online petitions about her case and worked to raise money for her bond.

At her most recent court appearance, District Attorney Michael Graveley said there is no doubt that Volar was guilty of sexually assaulting Kizer, who was 16 when she met Volar, and other girls. Volar videotaped some of the assaults, those videos seized by police before he was killed. However, Graveley has argued there is evidence that Kizer planned Volars shooting death, and that her motive was to steal his BMW.

According to past statements in court, Volar paid for an Uber driver to bring Kizer to his home in Kenosha the night he died. She spent several hours with him, and the two shared a pizza before Kizer allegedly shot Volar in the head, then set his house on fire. She left in his BMW, which was later found in Milwaukee.

Graveley has said that there are text messages and social media posts that show Kizer planned to kill Volar.

Defense attorneys are pushing to use an affirmative defense available to trafficking victims at her trial. Their ability to use that defense is being considered by an appellate court.

Bond originally $1 million

Kizers bond was originally set at $1 million. In February, Judge David Wilk lowered the bond to $400,000.

At a hearing June 8, Wilk defense attorney Jennifer Bias asked the court to lower the bond again, this time to $15,000, with the hope that Kizer could be released to stay with her mother in the Milwaukee area so she could receive therapy to address the substantial trauma she has endured over the last several years.

Wilk denied that motion.

Grace said the Chicago Community Bond Fund has a history of working with defense committees and support groups for victims of trafficking and sexual abuse who have been further harmed by prosecution, having posted bond for eight women in similar circumstances in the past.

The state has failed to protect Chrystul and others who are disproportionately black women, Grace said.

She said holding people in jail awaiting prosecution is an ongoing form of punishment and another way the state is letting them down. They should be in the community and receiving care.

The $400,000 paid for Kizers bond exceeds the total annual amount spent toward bond for people freed from jail by the project in all but one year since it was launched in 2015. Grace said an influx of donations, mostly in small amounts, associated with the Black Lives Matter movement made it possible to post bond for Kizer.

We wanted to support Chrystul as an individual, she said. The connection to the Black Lives Matter movement is in the way that it illustrates that policing and prosecution are not a focus for safety in this community.

The prosecution of Kizer is essentially on hold as the appellate court considers the affirmative defense issue. Wisconsin law shields sex trafficking victims from prosecution for offenses that are a direct result of trafficking. At the circuit court level, Wilk limited use of that defense in the case. Defense attorneys appealed his ruling.

Kizer is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 11 for a status hearing.

Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Culture rape: Our forefathers condemned as immoral  by the worst lowlifes among us By Selwyn Duke

As statues again come down as our culture is further torn up, something goes unsaid and often unnoticed: Notable Western historical figures are being condemned as immoral  by the most immoral, decadent, degenerate people among us. The cultural revolutionaries attacking statues and what they represent, generally speaking: support prenatal infanticide, which claims one million babies yearly in the U.S. and 40 to 50 million worldwide;

are products of our Sexual Devolution, meaning theyre what we used to call people of easy virtue; in fact, theyre often downright depraved;

are vulgar as can be, violating the biblical injunction to rid themselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips;

support socialism, even though it now can be easily known that its a system causing death, destruction and misery. Moreover, consider the following list of virtues and ask yourself how many these revolutionaries embody as a group: charity, chastity, courage, diligence, kindness, faith, hope, honesty, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence, patience, forgiveness, humility, and love. Why, could even one of them define virtue? So I say to these civilization destroyers: Who the heck are you, you two-bit degenerates, to look down your noses morally at Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus or, for that matter, the Founding Fathers, whom youre also attacking? Youre not fit to shine their shoes. Also generally unasked is this: If everyone associated with slavery is to now be demeaned, discredited and dishonored, wholl make the cut? With slavery once having been ubiquitous in this world, how many prominent people of ages past were not participants in, enablers of or tolerant with respect to the practice? Famed ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, for example, both justified slavery. But historically speaking they werent outliers  they were the norm. So a wise person understands that a prerequisite for insight isnt infallibility, that throwing out the baby with the bathwater (which perhaps appeals to the abortion-crazed) leaves you with an empty past and unguided present. After all, what would be the result if we did this vis-a-vis technology, language and everything else and rejected all advancements/innovations birthed by people with checkered or racist pasts? Wed be left using sticks and stones while grunting. So is our cultural revolutionaries goal their own Year Zero, as the past is completely erased? Not exactly, and this brings us to the real prejudice here. While the rabble rousers claim to be so deeply offended by slavery, interestingly, they never complain about non-Western figures who embraced the practice. Consider Islams Mohammed, for example. He was not only a warlord, mass murderer, caravan raider and employer of torture who married a prepubescent girl, but also a slave owner and trader. Yet we never hear leftists rail against his exaltation or imply that his handiwork, the Koran, should be ignored. On the contrary, theyve often taught children Islam in schools. And no small number of black Americans have embraced that medieval slave owners faith. This double standard was also evident when cultural revolutionaries complained about Orange County, Californias airport being named after late actor John Wayne, whod made politically incorrect comments about race in a 1971 Playboy interview. Yet they were mum on Louisville, Kentuckys airport being renamed, just last year, after an individual who said in a 1975 Playboy interview, A black man should be killed if hes messing with a white woman. That individual was late boxer Muhammad Ali. If the leftists truly cared about slavery and prejudice, theyd actually applaud white people. Whites likely werent the first to practice slavery, after all. But they were the first to end it. Whites also arent the only ones whove exhibited prejudice, but they were the first to make taming it a priority. So whats really going on here? The most Machiavellian cultural revolutionaries, the puppeteers, arent driven by a desire for justice but power. And you attack those whose power you want for yourself. In balkanized Western nations this means characterizing the power structure as white and then attacking it on that basis. As for the useful-idiot miscreants in the street, theyre not driven by justice but prejudice. Consider that Philadelphia rioters recently defaced the statue of anti-slavery icon Matthias Baldwin, who dedicated much of his life before, during and after the Civil War to helping black Americans and championing racial equality, writes the Western Journal. Of course, the vandals had no idea who Baldwin was and didnt care. Hes a dead white male. Thats enough. Oh, by the way, such ignorance reflects the deadly sin of sloth, which includes intellectual laziness. So its yet another indicator of the cultural revolutionaries moral stature. In truth, though, its not uncommon for people to make moral judgments reflecting their time and place  and themselves. This brings us to our leftists moral blindness, to their lack of self-awareness, which relates to their unforgiving nature. There are two yardsticks available for making moral judgments: the eternal and the ephemeral. The problem with moderns today  especially the subspecies called leftists  is that being moral relativists blind to Truths existence, they make everything relative to themselves. When we recognize Truth (by definition universal, eternal, transcendent and correlative to Gods existence) and use it as a yardstick for making moral judgments and assessing others, yes, their flaws are revealed. Theyll pale in comparison to Truth. But so will we. For Truth is perfect, but we can never be. So when a Truth-(God) oriented person views the world, he sees people down low, morally, who can only strive for those heavens of virtue. But he also sees himself right beside them, a brother in brokenness. This breeds humility and a forgiving attitude. The blind to Truth cannot, obviously, use it to make moral judgments and thus must use another guide. This often is whats most real to them, what feels best to them, something whose existence they cant deny: their own emotion. Hence the modern credo, If it feels good, do it. The issue, however, is that deifying ones feelings by making them arbiters of right amounts to deification of oneself. For once your emotions become the yardstick for morality  your truth  you can begin to see yourself as perfect. After all, how can you be out of conformity with yourself? But others will never conform to your god-self perfectly. This engenders a perspective where you see yourself occupying the heavens, in Truths place, looking down on the flawed ants who may dare defy your will and foil your plans. This breeds arrogance and unforgiving wrath (ergo, the cancel cultists). As G.K. Chesterton put it, It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. Our cultural revolutionaries, with their corruption-catalyzed cocksureness, are the ultimate bigots. Yet in accordance with this, saner citizens must also see not only how they might have gone wrong, but how they actually have. Remember that the cultural revolution couldnt succeed if the wider society loved our culture as much as the miscreants hate it, if its righteous anger matched the mobs risible rage. Sadly, though, and reflecting the demoralization I wrote about last week, most today just dont have a strong enough emotional attachment to what once was our common culture. And to the purposeful and passionate go the victories. Eloi get subjugated by Morlocks every time. Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com. Home
Key highlights:

Government of India has sent almost two dozen emails to industry bodies like CII, FICCI and ASSOCHAM seeking details on import of items from China

Everything except APIs used in the manufacture of drugs is being considered for a hike in import duty

Emails have also gone from DGFT seeking details of imports from other South Asian countries where China may try to circumvent goods in future

China is the biggest importer for India with goods worth $65.26 billion in fiscal 2020. Another $16.9 billion came in from Hong Kong

The government is studying the possibility of hiking duties on almost all goods that are currently imported from China except active pharmaceutical ingredients that are needed for manufacture of medicines.

In the last week alone, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has sent around two dozen emails to industry bodies like CII, Ficci and Assocham seeking comments on a host of goods imported from China. India imported goods worth $474 billion in 2019-20, a decline of around 8 percent over 2018-19, of which imports from China accounted for $ 65.26 billion. It was by far the bigger importer for India, way ahead of US at $35.66 billion and UAE at 30.25 billion. An additional $16.9 billion worth of goods also came in from Hong Kong in 2019-20.

Electrical machinery and equipment forms the biggest commodity that is imported into India from China at $ 19.1 billion followed closely by nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical parts at $13.32 billion, organic chemicals at $7.9 billion, plastic goods at $2.7 billion and fertilisers at $1.8 billion. Another $8.7 billion worth of electrical machinery and equipment is also imported from Hong Kong.

"We have received numerous emails on a host of goods from electronic items to toys, organic and inorganic chemicals to commodities like steel and aluminium," said a trade expert working with one of the chambers. "The government wants to know if import duties should be raised on these items, how much of it can be produced in the country or easily sourced from any other destination and how dependent is the local industry on China for each of these items. The only exception being made is for APIs where we have not received any email yet but we have not heard the last from them either".

Import of pharmaceutical products from China was worth just $166.2 million in FY20 but was one of the few items to post a growth of 12 per cent. India, which has the third largest pharmaceutical industry in the world in terms of volume, is overly dependent on China for APIs. In February, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers D V Sadananda Gowda had said in the parliament that two-thirds of total import of bulk drugs or drug intermediaries come from China. APIs that are used to make antibiotic medicines are part of this. An estimated 90 percent of India's annual requirement of APIs is imported.

India's dependence on China on some of the other goods like solar panels, electrical parts and lithium ion batteries is also high but unlike APIs there is a lack of consensus among the industry associations on the path India ought to take on these products.

While some say India should desist from hiking duties immediately as it would harm the local industry at a time when the economy is anyway in doldrums, others say the time is ripe to encourage local manufacturing by sending a signal that China cannot hold India's economy to ransom.

"Our belief is that local manufacturing has not taken off only because duties for import are low so it is much easier for companies to import those components than manufacture them here. It is a question of scale and not capability," says a second trade expert at one of the industry bodies. "Our recommendation is to raise duties not very substantially but by a bit so that imported components become expensive enough for local production to take off. There maybe some short term pain but the days of half measures are over".

At the same time, emails have also gone out from the office of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) seeking details of goods imported from some other countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia where India should be cautious.

"It is just to plug any loophole once duties are raised on direct imports from China so that goods are not circumvented into India from these countries," said an industry insider. "It is a very common trick employed by China in the past and we should be wary of it without damaging our relations with these countries either".

Bilateral trade with mainland China registered a 6 per cent decline in FY20 to $81.86 billion. With Hong Kong trade stood at around $28 billion, over 10 percent lower than fiscal 2019.

Relations between India and China have deteriorated in the last few months, first due to the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic for which China is being widely blamed and then due to the heightened tension at the Galwan border in Ladakh where 20 Indian soldiers were killed in action on the night of July 15.

As a result, the clamour for boycott of Chinese goods in India is at an all time high with trader bodies like Confederation of All India traders (CAIT) upping the ante and vowing to not import or sell any goods from China any more. CAIT has prepared a list of 3,000 non essential Chinese products that it intends to boycott with an aim to reduce overall imports by Rs 100,000 crore ($ 13.3 billion) by December 2021.

Also read: 'India fighting two wars against China, at border and against virus,' says Arvind Kejriwal

Also read: India-China clash: Maharashtra govt puts three Chinese deals worth Rs 5,000 crore on hold
A wave of deadly shootings rocked several major U.S. cities this weekend in two days of bloodshed which saw at least 40 people killed.

Fourteen people, including five children, were killed as more than 100 people were shot in a wave of gunfire in Chicago over the Fathers Day weekend that produced the citys highest number of shooting victims in a single weekend this year.

In New York City shootings are up 360 per cent from this time last year - with 55 incidents compared to 12 in 2019 and more than 70 victims in past week, NBC reports.

And gunfire has also erupted in epicenters of the Black Lives Matter protests; in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed; in Seattle, where a 'cop free' occupied zone has been barricaded; and in Charlotte where two people were killed at a Juneteenth block party.

In California a man and woman were killed and a security guard was wounded in an exchange of gunfire after the two were asked to leave a Riverside nightclub early Monday, police said.

And in Phoenix, Arizona, police say a teenage boy is in custody after fatally shooting another teen.

At least 40 people - including a three-year-old boy in Chicago - were shot dead in these US cities over the past two days, with more fighting for their lives in hospital.

The harrowing killings come at a moment of reckoning for American policing, with growing calls to defund the service amid ugly clashes with cops.

But Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday that calls for defunding would result in 'getting rid' of younger, more diverse officers. She told The New York Times: 'Most of our diversity lies in the junior officers.'

Among the victims was 3-year-old Mekhi James, left, who police said was fatally shot Saturday as the boy was in a car with his father in the south Austin neighborhood. Amaria Jones, 13, right, was killed when a stray bullet hit her as she watched television

Police said Mekhis 27-year-old father was the intended target when someone fired shots at the vehicle, but he is not cooperating with detectives

Lightfoot added: 'Which means you are eliminating one of the few tools that the city has to create middle-class incomes for black and brown folks. Nobody talks about that in the discussion to defund the police.

'Im not saying that there isnt a reason to be angry at the police. There is. But when we force them to reckon with problems that are beyond their training, were setting the police up for failure.'

The aunt of one teen victim in Chicago said: 'I feel sad and hurt. I feel powerless, and I feel there should be more police on the street.'

Max Kapustin, senior research director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said: 'There is a large body of evidence that conclusively shows that more police resources and manpower does reduce crime, and that is an empirical fact we have to reckon with.

'But there is also evidence that shows that other social policies, like investments in education, health and targeted therapeutic intervention, also reduce crime."

Thomas Abt, a researcher and senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, told NBC: 'It's a weak argument to hold up any one day or weekend as an example of some broader point. It's better to compare longer periods of time against three- or five-year averages.'

CHICAGO

In Chicago at least 14 people were killed after 104 were shot during a burst of disorder.

The gun violence marked the most shootings over one weekend this year, The Chicago Sun Times reports.

Amaria's aunt, Takemia Jones, said: 'I feel sad and hurt. I feel powerless, and I feel there should be more police on the street'

Four of the victims who died were children, according to CBS Chicago, including a three-year-old boy Mekhi James who was reportedly struck by gunfire from a blue Honda while with his father.

Police said the childs 27-year-old father was the intended target when someone fired shots at the vehicle, but he is not cooperating with detectives. Community leaders are offering a $10,000 reward for any information in the boys killing.

Amaria Jones, 13, was killed when a stray bullet hit her as she watched television.

Police Supt. David Brown said: 'I put myself in that house, holding that little girl as she struggles to breathe. I put myself in that hospital, clutching that baby with a bullet hole.

'Tears are natural reactions to these tragic stories of violence, but we need to do more than just cry.

'Bullets don't just tear apart the things they strike. Bullets also tear apart families. Bullets destroy neighborhoods and they ruin any sense of safety in a community.'

Amaria's aunt, Takemia Jones, said: 'I feel sad and hurt. I feel powerless, and I feel there should be more police on the street.'

The violence comes nearly a month after Chicago had its deadliest Memorial Day weekend since 2015 as nine people were killed and another 27 wounded in shootings.

NEW YORK CITY

New York also saw a bloody weekend with a one-fatality-per-hour death rate on Saturday when 24 people were killed, according to the NYPD's breakdown.

It included a 35-year-old man who was shot in the neck at point blank range while crouching down to wash his car.

Unnerving footage shows the killer calmly approaching his victim before squeezing the trigger twice within seconds.

The shooting happened on 334 Milford Street at around 11am Saturday morning in Brooklyn's 75th precinct.

NEW YORK: A shooting happened on 334 Milford Street at around 11am Saturday morning in Brooklyn's 75th precinct

Addressing the violence Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday: 'We're not going back to the bad old days when there was so much violence in this city. Nor are we going back to the bad old days where policing was done the wrong way.'

The mayor pledged more officers will be on the ground in high risk areas.

He added: 'We're going to do whatever it takes to fight gun violence. But we're doing to do it in a way that emphasizes fairness.'

MINNEAPOLIS

Brutal violence once again flared up in Minneapolis, the Minnesota city where Mr Floyd was killed last month, during a shooting in the early hours of Sunday, although there is no suggestion it was linked to the BLM movement.

The shooting in a popular Minneapolis nightlife area early Sunday left one man dead and 11 people wounded in a chaotic scene that sent people ducking into restaurants and other businesses for cover.

Gunfire broke out shortly after midnight in the city's trendy Uptown neighborhood, a nightlife hub with bars, restaurants and retail including Apple and Fjallraven stores.

Grim photos showed bodies sprawled on the floor, a store window shattered and blood splattered on the pavement.

Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted: 'It breaks my heart to see another senseless act of violence in Minneapolis.

'Our city has been through so much, and we must promote peace by putting an end to gun violence.'

Dad-of-two Cody Pollard was named as the victim of the shooting.

Dad-of-two Cody Pollard was named as the victim of the shooting

MINNEAPOLIS: Photographs posted to social media showed windows at the Landmark's Uptown Theater and another storefront shot out. One man is dead and 11 people suffered non-life-threatening wounds in a shooting in Minneapolis, police said early Sunday

A police officer, far right, investigates the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis as a person stands nearby Sunday

Photographs posted to social media show windows at the Landmark's Uptown Theatre and another storefront shot out. Screams were audible on a live video posted to Facebook that showed the aftermath at the scene.

Police responded to at least two other shootings in south Minneapolis in the hour before the Uptown violence erupted. The Star Tribune reported that one was a man who may have shot himself near the site where Floyd died.

Another was a nonfatal double shooting. Police spokesman John Elder said that angry crowds at both scenes impeded officers.

Police later said a 17-year-old boy died in a shooting in north Minneapolis on Sunday evening.

Officers responded to reports of shots fired about 8pm and found the victim without a pulse. First responders were able to revive the teen, but he died after being taken to North Memorial Hospital.

KARE-TV reports police spokesman John Elder says there was a group of people driving around when the vehicle was hit by gunfire and the victim was struck.

Others in the car dumped the victim from the vehicle and drove away, Elder said. Investigators are still working to determine where the shooting actually happened.

Police vehicles block the road after a shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday evening

One man is dead and 11 people suffered non-life-threatening wounds in a shooting in Minneapolis, police there said early Sunday

SEATTLE

Seattle, which has also emerged as a hotbed for anti-police anger also grieved one death - a 19-year-old boy.

A double shooting on Saturday inside the CHAZ killed the teenager and left another critically injured.

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), also known as the Capitol Hill Organized protest (CHOP) has spiralled towards anarchy after demonstrators, which include many associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, denied police entry to the ring.

Seattle Police Department said its officers 'were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims'.

Two more shootings inside the zone were being investigated by the Seattle Police Department Monday morning.

One shooting happened late Sunday night.

As with a 2:30 a.m. shooting in the same park Saturday that left a 19-year-old man dead and a 33-year-old man critically injured, responding police and emergency medics staged at the edge of the protest zone before going in, police said.

And again, volunteer medics inside the zone brought the victim to the hospital in a private car rather than wait for the police and fire departments.

CHAZ residents are seen gathering in Cal Anderson Park, Seattle, following the shooting

The 17-year-old was treated and released and declined to speak with detectives, the department said.

In a statement Sunday night about the first shooting, Mayor Jenny Durkan noted that thousands continue to gather on Capitol Hill. Peacefulness prevails during the day, but at night the atmosphere changes, she said.

'It is the City's responsibility to maintain the safety in these circumstances in all parts of Seattle, including the more dangerous conditions on Capitol Hill in the evenings,' Durkan said. She said the city will continue to make changes on Capitol Hill in partnership with community organizations, business and residents.

'I believe together we can create a Capitol Hill environment that allows for peaceful demonstrations,' she said.

SEATTLE: Police are seen responding after a shooting in the CHAZ early on Saturday. Cops say they were met by a large hostile group as they tried to collect evidence

CHARLOTTE

Two people were shot dead and 12 others wounded at Juneteenth celebrations in North Carolina Sunday night.

Kelly Miller, 29, was fatally wounded in the middle of the street. Police have said Miller was pronounced dead at the scene while 28-year-old Christopher Antonio Gleaton was pronounced dead after being transported to the hospital.

Five of those injured were hit by cars while running from the gunfire, which scattered the large crowds around midnight at an 'impromptu block party' in Charlotte.

Police say multiple gunmen fired more than 100 bullets into a crowd of 400.

At least six of the 12 people hospitalized have life threatening injuries, The Charlotte Observer reports.

Police said there was evidence of multiple shooters, but no one was in custody as of Monday morning

One woman was pronounced dead at the scene, a second victim died later at the hospital

Cops say they arrived on Beatties Ford Road in northern Charlotte to find hundreds of people in the street. They described the incident as a 'mass casualty' and a 'very, very chaotic scene'.

In a statement law enforcement said: 'We're talking about 400 people in one spot, not one witness, not one.'

Police say they were first called to reports of a pedestrian hit by a car.

As over a dozen emergency services swooped on the scene, several shots were fired, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Johnny Jennings said.

Jennings said there was evidence of multiple shooters, but no one was in custody as of Monday morning.

The five people were hit by vehicles while running away and were taken to hospital along with the other seven injured.

CHARLOTTE: In North Carolina's biggest city, an impromptu block party spiralled into chaos when multiple shooters opened fire, killing two and leaving seven injured

Cops arrived at the scene on Beatties Ford Road in northern Charlotte to find hundreds of people in the street

Police said in a statement: 'Preliminary information gathered during the investigation indicates that several shooters discharged dozens of shots in to the crowd who had been gathered in the area.'

Shocking video from a witness shows party-goers running down the street after hearing gunfire.

As a police vehicle races to the scene with sirens blaring, a burst of pops ring out.

Screaming, the crowd sprints down the street while the gunfire persists. The witness dives into his car and says 'crazy'.

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA

A man and woman were killed and a security guard was wounded in an exchange of gunfire after the two were asked to leave a Southern California nightclub early Monday, police said.

The shooting occurred shortly after midnight at a nightspot called El Calentano in Riverside. The preliminary investigation found that club security asked the man and woman to leave and escorted them out to a vehicle, Riverside police Officer Ryan J. Railsback said.

The shooting occurred shortly after midnight at a nightspot called El Calentano in Riverside

The man got a gun, drove to the front of the nightclub and began shooting at the guards, he said. One guard was hit but returned fire and struck the man and woman in the car.

The vehicle sped out of the parking lot and crashed into a business across the street. Paramedics pronounced the man and woman dead at the scene.

The wounded security guard was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive, Railsback said. The names of those involved were not immediately released.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Phoenix police say a teenage boy is in custody after fatally shooting another teen.

Authorities say the shooting happened Sunday night at an apartment on the citys northwest side. According to officers, a 16-year-old boy was handling a firearm when it discharged.

The girl, also 16, was wounded.

She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Police have not said what charges the teen could face and who owned the gun.

The victims name has not been released. It was not immediately known how she and the suspect were connected.
The white iPhone with chipped paint that Moroccan journalist Omar Radi used to stay in contact with his sources also allowed his government to spy on him.

They could read every email, text and website visited; listen to every phone call and watch every video conference; download calendar entries, monitor GPS coordinates, and even turn on the camera and microphone to see and hear where the phone was at any moment.

Yet Radi was trained in encryption and cyber security. He hadnt clicked on any suspicious links and didnt have any missed calls on WhatsApp  both well-documented ways a cell phone can be hacked.

Instead, a report published Monday by Amnesty International shows Radi was targeted by a new and frighteningly stealthy technique. All he had to do was visit one website. Any website.

Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radis phone shows that it was infected by network injection, a fully automated method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a request to visit a website. In milliseconds, the web browser is diverted to a malicious site and spyware code is downloaded that allows remote access to everything on the phone. The browser then redirects to the intended website and the user is none the wiser.

While Amnesty could not definitively state that the Moroccan authorities were behind the attack, the group was able to use forensic evidence to conclude this was very likely the case.

The episode reveals not that authoritarian governments are actively listening to the calls, monitoring the web traffic and reading the emails of journalists and human rights activists  but that they can do so undetected.

I kind of suspected (I was hacked), said Radi on an encrypted video chat from Rabat. The Moroccan authorities are buying every possible and imaginable surveillance and espionage product. They want to know everything.

Radi is an investigative journalist who co-founded the local news site Le Desk, a partner with the Star in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He specializes in the connections between politicians and business people as well as social movements and human rights. In other words, hes a thorn in the governments side and a prime target for surveillance, hacking and harassment.

In 2017, he was arrested while reporting on a security crackdown in the Rif region, and again this past December after one of his tweets described a local judge as an executioner.

I was prosecuted for contempt of court, but thats just the official charge. In fact, I was punished for my entire body of work. They pile things up and then they look for a pretext to arrest, he told Forbidden Stories, an investigative journalism group that coordinated this report with the Star and 14 other outlets.

Radi spent a week in pretrial detention, was later convicted to four months and is currently out pending appeal.

Shortly after his release, he was approached by Amnesty International, which asked to look at his phone. The spyware they found  commonly known as Pegasus  can be traced back to the Israeli cyber surveillance company, NSO Group.

NSO Group, which was valued at $1 billion USD last year, sells surveillance software to governments and law enforcement agencies intended to combat terrorism. Over the last several years, however, reports from around the world have implicated NSO Groups spyware in the targeting of journalists and human rights activists.

Radi is the third prominent Moroccan human rights figure to have been targeted using the NSO groups network injection spyware. Last October, Amnesty International documented the cases of activist Maati Monjib and human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui. A recent report by The Citizen Lab at the University of Torontos Munk School identified 13 journalists, including a reporter for the New York Times, targeted by Pegasus software employed by the Mexican and Saudi Arabian governments.

But what makes Radis case unique is that he was infected last September, only three days after the Israeli company issued a policy that vowed the company would cut off clients if they were found to misuse the surveillance technology to target journalists and human rights activists.

We fully understand the potential for our products to be misused by our customers, thereby resulting in adverse human rights impacts. Therefore, as responsible corporate citizens, we have committed ourselves to high ethical business standards, seeking to ensure that only vetted and legitimate government agencies will use our products and that we take all reasonable steps to prevent and mitigate the risks of adverse impact on human rights from their misuse, the policy states.

We include obligations to respect and protect human rights in our contractual agreements with our business partners and customers...We have an escalating set of remedies culminating in the termination of use of our products after a substantiated case of severe misuse, material breach of commitments or a refusal to co-operate in an investigation.

Contacted for this story, NSO said due to client confidentiality it could not confirm if the Moroccan government was using its software.

In response to questions about what actions it took after learning that Monjib and El Bouchattaoui were targeted, NSO said it followed the steps outlined in its Human Rights Policy, which it described in a letter sent this month to UN Special Rapporteur On the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression David Kaye.

In recent instances in which NSO has received concerns or complaints regarding alleged misuse, it has immediately stopped the customers use of the system, it stated in the UN letter.

NSO has reinstated the system only after gaining comfort that the system was not misused.

Amnestys new report notes that the NSO server used to hack Monjib and El Bouchattaoui was shut down shortly after the previous report was made public. Shortly afterward, a new server that operated in the same manner was set up and used to hack Radis phone, the report said.

The NSO group said it was deeply troubled by the allegations in the new report.

We are reviewing the information therein and will initiate an investigation if warranted, the company said.

Bill Marczak, a research fellow at The Citizen Lab, says NSO has promoted its Human Rights Policy as groundbreaking but hasnt backed it up with examples of cracking down on misuse of its spyware.

There hasnt been a whole lot of public evidence that NSOs Human Rights Policy has helped human rights at all, he said. Were still waiting for that evidence.

Amnesty International found files and altered code on Radis phone that indicate he was hacked several times over the course of 2019 and most recently on January 29, 2020.

I started to think: what could I have said on the phone that was sensitive? Do I have sources that might be in trouble if the people listening to me find out who Im talking to? Radi asked.

This month, an article on the Moroccan news website Chouftv reported that Radi was part of a group of journalists organizing a support campaign for an imprisoned colleague. Radi says the article contained details taken from conversations he had on the encrypted apps Signal and WhatsApp, and he suspects government intelligence officers leaked the information gleaned from his phone.

Its a way of saying: You are being watched,  he said.

Radis sources have grown more reluctant to talk as it has become evident that journalists phones are being tapped.

I think the monitoring tool is working really well right now, he said.

Unlike previous hacking methods, network injection leaves virtually no trace, according to the Amnesty Report. There is no email with a malicious link. No missed call on WhatsApp. The malicious code even wipes crash logs, making it impossible to determine exactly what weaknesses were exploited to take over the phone, said Claudio Guarnieri, head of Amnesty Internationals Security Lab, in an interview.

The attackers took measures to eliminate traces that would reveal the vulnerability that they were using, which is useful to prevent (it) from being found and fixed, he said.

Guarnieri said it is reasonable to conclude that the Moroccan government is behind the attack.

The NSO, by their own admission, only sell to law enforcement and governments, he said. That coupled with the context...who would be interested in going after these individuals? he said.

And then, the way the network injection attacks are being conducted. They require some level of access to either the person itself  the ability to be in proximity in the case where the network injection is performed using tactical equipment. Think of (an ISMI catcher, also known as a Stingray) placed in a van that is parked in front of a house  or having access to the mobile operators themselves, said Guarnieri.

Stingrays mimic cell phone towers and any phone within a certain distance will connect to the device automatically. This will give the operator technical data about the phones, which can then be used to identify an individuals cell phone number and figure out who they are talking to.

Amnesty International says that it cannot be sure a Stingray was used to hack Radis phone, but the only other way the group says the spyware could have been remotely injected was with access to the mobile network infrastructure, something only the phone company would have (and the Moroccan government could commandeer).

Either way, the attacker identifies the phone being targeted and waits for that phone to connect to a website over the cellular data network. The website must use clear text which means the URL starts with http not https. When the phone makes a request to visit a clear text site, the attacker intercepts the demand and redirects the phone to another website, where the Pegasus spyware is downloaded before the phone proceeds to the requested website.

Amnesty asked me if there were URL redirects, if there were URLs that changed quickly and thats when it rang a bell. I realized that indeed, this had happened. But I didnt realize at the time that it was really an injection, said Radi. On the phone, there are a lot of things that can trigger a URL change or that kind of thing, so I didnt think that was it at first.

Normal people are unlikely to be targeted by NSO spyware, said The Citizen Labs Marczak, because its so expensive that states only use it to target a small number of people.

Its a niche tool that is used on people who the government is interested in, he said, adding that the more people are hacked, the greater the chance that the phones weakness will be found and fixed.

Then NSOs product is useless, he said.

The average user does not really need to worry, he said. But certainly journalists, dissidents, civil society organizations and lawyers, these are targets that typically repressive governments that buy the spyware are interested in.

Amnesty has advised Radi on what to do to avoid surveillance, including making sure everything on his phone is updated to the latest version and using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), but Radi says its a battle you can never win.

We change phones. We try to protect ourselves. Its David vs. Goliath. They still have a way of knowing whats going on in our phones, in our computers. The goal is not to protect ourselves 100 per cent but to avoid it, to make it difficult for them, and to learn certain reflexes.

He has started using friends phones and swapping SIM cards to change his number frequently. Amnesty says there is some evidence that turning off your phone and restarting it could sever the connection with the attacker.

Even if hes able to protect his sources, Radi fears the surveillance will be used to develop a smear campaign against him.

Thats how they operate. Its destroying peoples image, digging up things about them and making them public, he said.

Radi recounts the recent episode of journalist Hajar Raissouni, who was arrested on her way out of a gynecologists office with her fiance. Along with the doctor, they were imprisoned for having had an abortion, which is illegal in Morocco.

How did they know she was at her gynecologists office? Radi asked.

Radi says the government falsified documents to make it look like Raissouni had an abortion even though the medical expert hired by Raissouni reviewed her records and concluded it did not happen. Amid international outcry, she was pardoned in October.

But all the press insulted Hajar because she (supposedly) had an abortion in addition to having sex outside of marriage. So defamation and discredit has already been thrown at her.

Its gibberish that has no limits. There are no ethics, no morals. Its the height of immorality that governs the operation of these services, he said. Its a state that protects itself, that protects its interests by denouncing, by discrediting people who point the finger.
The coronavirus pandemic has created a perfect storm that largely cut off the supply of blood donors, causing a major blood shortage at central Pennsylvania hospitals.

Ive been in central Pennsylvania for 33 years and this is the worst I can ever remember, said Patrick Bradley, CEO of the Central Pennsylvania Blood Bank.

Much of the shortage stems from the fact that closed workplaces have cut off the blood drives that typically account for 75 percent of donations.

Moreover, the stay-at-home order has kept many people away from donation centers. Even when people do show up to donate, social distancing requirements are limiting the number that can donate at any given time, Bradley said.

The blood bank needs about 200 donors a day to meet local demand, which largely comes from hospitals using blood during operations and to replace blood lost by people who have been injured. The blood bank says its presently collecting only about half that.

Blood shortages have always occurred occasionally, triggered by things such as natural disasters or accidents where multiple people are injured. In such situations, blood banks can rely on help from blood banks in areas that arent impacted. But COVID-19 is hitting the entire country.

Its kind of a perfect storm nationwide  theres trouble across the whole country right now, Bradley said.

Early in the pandemic, the need for blood fell as the result of hospitals canceling most elective surgeries and factors such as people driving less, which resulted in fewer car accidents.

In central Pennsylvania, excess blood was shipped to New York which was far more severely impacted by the pandemic.

Still, because most blood components have a relatively short shelf life, blood couldnt have been stockpiled during the time of lower demand. Red blood cells last for 42 days and platelets last for five. Plasma, which gets frozen, can be stored for a year, according to Bradley.

Hospitals in the past month have resumed elective surgeries and are also dealing with backlogs of people who put off other medical needs because of COVID-19 fears.

Now they are extending hours for surgery and doing them on weekends to address the backlog, creating high demand for blood, Bradley said.

Asked about the severity of the shortage, Bradley said four mass transfusion protocols were declared in a single day last Friday at local hospitals. The protocol is used when someone is in danger of bleeding to death, such as when their entire blood volume needs to be replaced within 24 hours.

Bradley said the situation seriously taxed the local blood supply and worsened the deficit.

Blood donation centers have remained open throughout the pandemic.

Bradley noted that, during the stay-at-home order, some people viewed donating as a get out of the house for free ticket.

At one point, a federal official spoke of the shortage and urged people to donate during one of President Trumps news conferences focusing on the pandemic. That produced a bump in local donations that has since tailed off, Bradley said.

The blood bank, which provides blood for 23 hospitals in ten counties, is again putting out an urgent plea for donations.

Moreover, with the continuing order for businesses to allow employees to telework as much as possible, and the ban on large gatherings, Bradley expects it will be a while before the blood bank resumes regularly sending its five buses to workplace blood drives.

However, it has added a third van to send to smaller events and groups.

Thankfully, COVID-19 itself poses no major obstacles to donating blood or using donated blood. People are screened for symptoms, just as they are screened for things like the cold or flu. However, the temperature taking portion of the screening now comes first, with people with a fever being asked to leave. Donors and staff also wear masks.

Moreover, the scientific belief is that COVID-19 cant be transmitted by blood, meaning blood isnt being thrown away because of COVID-19, according to Bradley.

Thankfully, we got lucky on that one, he said.

The blood bank is asking people to call 1-800-771-0059 to schedule an appointment to donate. They can also email CentralPennBloodBank@cpbb.org or go to 717-giveblood.org.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
By PTI

PUNE: Eight trainee cadets of INS Shivaji Lonavala, which is one of the premier training establishments of the Indian Navy, have so far tested positive for novel coronavirus, a Pune district official said on Monday.

The first positive case was detected on June 16, he said, adding that the infected cadets are part of a batch of 150 trainees.

"Recently some trainee cadets came to INS Shivaji from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and other cities.

On June 16, a cadet was found positive, and subsequently seven others among his close contacts have also tested positive for the viral infection," said Madhusudan Barge, Tehsildar, Maval.

He said all the positive cadets have been admitted to the military hospitalat Wanowrie in Pune.

He said the naval institute has set up eight different isolation facilities.

"Upon receiving a new person on the (INS Shivaji) premises (in Lonavala in Pune district), they are checking the 'Aarogya Setu' app status. They are taking mandatory precautionsand instructing them (new visitors) to remain quarantinedfor 14 days," he said.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Monday issued an addendum to its circular dated March 23 for the management of airline crew during the COVID-19 crisis. The amendment was done after considering the opinion of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. As per the addendum, the risk assessment for the crew shall be done by the concerned airline doctor and the crew will be advised for COVID-19 testing according to the ICMR guidelines.

Based on the risk assessment, it will be determined whether the crew should be subjected to 14 days of home quarantine or not. However, home quarantine is mandatory for a crew member who comes in contact with a novel coronavirus case during flight operations. Such information will be shared with the Airport Health Organization for coordinating with the state government. Moreover, all crew members shall be advised to download the Aarogya Setu app for monitoring their health status.

Read: 173 Migrant Workers Stuck In Mumbai Return To Dehradun In AirAsia Flight

6084 Indians repatriated on June 21

While the domestic flight operations recommenced on May 25, international flight operations barring for repatriation flights remain suspended. On June 21, 6084 Indian nationals returned from abroad under the aegis of the Vande Bharat Mission. Flights from Lagos, Vancouver, Moscow, Kyiv, Stockholm, Auckland, Toronto, London, Chicago, San Fransisco, Frankfurt, Washington, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Narita, Bishkek, Sydney, and Dammam ferried back Indians to various parts of the country. Commenting on the possibility of resuming international air operations, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri stated that the domestic air traffic must reach about 50-60% and other countries should open up to international traffic without current conditionalities. He assured a calibrated decision would be taken when the situation evolved in that direction.

Read: Terminally-ill Ktk Bishop, 4 Infants Among 340 Leave For Hyderabad In Charted Flight

COVID-19 crisis in India

Currently, there are 4,25,282 confirmed novel coronavirus cases in India out of which 2,37,196 patients have recovered while 13,699 fatalities have been reported. As per the WHO Situation Report 153 dated June 21, 2020, India's cases per lakh population are 30.04 as against the global average of 114.67. 1,43,267 samples were tested were in the last 24 hours. So far, 69,50,493 samples have been tested for the novel coronavirus in 723 government labs and 262 private labs. With 9,440 patients recovering from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, India's recovery rate surged to 55.77%. At present, there are 1,74,387 active cases in the country.

Read: Coronavirus Live Updates: India's Cases Soar To 4.25 Lakh; Death Toll Stands At 13,699
Pyongyang Refuses to Reconsider Retaliatory Plan to Spread Information Leaflets  Reports

Sputnik News

01:28 GMT 21.06.2020(updated 01:29 GMT 21.06.2020)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - North Korean authorities will not reconsider a plan to spread leaflets as part of an information campaign against South Korea, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Seoul has called on Pyongyang to abandon the idea.

North Korea understands that the spread of leaflets is a violation of the inter-Korean agreement but it does not intend to change its plan at a time when relations between the North and the South are rapidly failing, according to KCNA, citing a Sunday comment by a spokesperson with the United Front Department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of North Korea.

On Saturday, KCNA reported that Pyongyang had begun preparing leaflets for an information campaign against South Korea. University students were reportedly ready to distribute the leaflets, as soon as the border area is opened and they can gain access to it. KCNA added that Pyongyang had again accused Seoul of failing to support the reconciliation process, adding that South Korean authorities would face horrible times, soon.

Seoul had promised to take urgent measures to ease tensions with Pyongyang and to stop South Korean activists from sending leaflets to North Korea.

Tensions in the region spiked after North Korea cut off communications with its southern neighbor and detonated the joint liaison office in the border town of Kaesong, in response to a long-time campaign by certain groups in South Korea that send leaflets across the border criticizing the policies of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

On Wednesday, North Korea's General Staff announced that it would redeploy troops to Kaesong and the Mount Kumgang joint tourist zone on the eastern coast, as well as restore guard posts in the demilitarized zone which had been removed after the inter-Korean summit in 2018.

A Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






A 12-year-old Bangladeshi boy was apprehended by a BSF patrol from an empty goods train along the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal, officials said on Monday. They said that this seems to be a case human trafficking. The incident was reported on Sunday evening when Border Security Force (BSF) troops from the 179th battalion were carrying out routine checks of the train that had returned from Bangladesh to the zero point near the integrated check post at Petrapole in the North 24 Parganas district, a senior BSF officer said.

The boy is a resident of Bangladesh's Begarhat district and as per interrogation done by the force, he was brought by a tout to Benapole across the border and an unknown lady made him sit in an empty rail wagon. The boy said "traffickers" had told him that he will get a job in Kolkata, BSF officials said. "The boy is not in possession of any item or currency and it seems that he has been trafficked for purpose of child labour in India," the senior officer said. He has been handed over to the railway police at Bongaon and further probe will be taken up in coordination with Bangaldeshi officials, the officials said.

(Image credits: PTI)
The minute Rafaela Matos heard gunshots and saw helicopters over her Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, she immediately dropped to her knees to pray. She asked God to protect her fourteen-year-old son, Joao Pedro.

Then she called the boys phone.

Be calm, Joao Pedro texted her, saying he was safe in his aunts house.

Just minutes later, Brazilian police burst through the door and fired their weapons. They shot the teenager in the stomach.

He did not survive the attack. But his parents would not learn that for many hours. Police did not even tell them where there son had been taken.

Joao Pedro Matos Pinto was among 600 people killed by police this year in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. That is almost double the number killed by U.S. police during the same period in America, which has twenty times more people.

Teenager after teenager

Like Joao Pedro, most of the 600 dead were black or mixed-race and lived in the citys poorest neighborhoods, called favelas.

The Rio de Janeiro State Public Prosecutors Office recently described the local police as the deadliest in Brazil even though the state, it noted, is not among the ten most violent states in the country."

As the Black Lives Matter movement brings hundreds of thousands to the streets worldwide, protestors angry about Joao Pedros death are organizing the largest gatherings against police violence in years on the streets of Rio.

Protester Joao Gabriel Moreira said, They kill teenager after teenager in their homes every day. Were here because we need to be.

Moreira made the comment at a June 10 protest. The 19-year-old civil engineering student added that he had never demonstrated about anything before this year.

Kill a young black man in a favela, its seen as normal  he must be a drug dealer, Moreira said. Racism has always been hidden in Brazil, he said. Thats why so few of us are here. If Brazil had racial consciousness, this street would be filled.

Rio police said they said they were involved in a joint search operation with military and federal police when they killed Joao Pedro on May eighteenth. A federal investigator on the case, Eduardo Benones, said no evidence of illegal activity was found at the site of the raid.

Police put Joao Pedro on a helicopter after the shooting. But, they never took him to a hospital. And officials gave no information to his parents about where he was or how badly he was hurt. A social media campaign quickly spread the message that Joao Pedro was missing. His body was found the next day  inside a police forensic center.

Neilton Pinto is the boys father. Good people live in the favela, people with families, he said.

Holding the state accountable

Im sure if this were in wealthy areas, police wouldnt act this way, breaking down the house of someone good.

Benones seeks to hold the Brazilian state responsible for the teenagers death. He said witness reports show that Joao Pedro was not a threat. Benones argues the boy died as a result of systemic racism in law enforcement.

You cant say its racism of that police officer, but a practice of police forces not taking care when dealing with the black population.

Both President Jair Bolsonaro and Rio state Governor Wilson were elected on a campaign of strong law and order. Both have said police should be widely protected from legal action when they use deadly force in the line of duty.

The Rio civil police department said that Joao Pedros death is under investigation and that three officers have been suspended in connection with the case. Rios military police did not answer several requests for comments.

On June 5, Brazils Supreme Court ruled in favor of a ban on police operations in favelas until the coronavirus crisis has ended.

Joao Pedro parents attended a demonstration for the first time June 7. His mother said hearing the protesters call out his name helped ease their pain a little.

Im Alice Bryant.

The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

___________________________________________

Words in This Story

knee - n. the joint that bends at the middle of your leg

aunt - n. the sister of your father or mother or the wife of your uncle

forensic - adj. relating to the use of scientific knowledge or methods in solving crimes

practice - n. something that is done often or regularly

teenager - n. someone who is between 13 and 19 years old

consciousness - n. knowledge that is shared by a group of people

prosecutor - n. a lawyer who represents the side in a court case that accuses a person of a crime and who tries to prove that the person is guilty
India: Fisheries can boost economy post-COVID19

June 22,2020 | Source: The Hitavada

Sunil Kedar, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister, asked the officials of Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University (MAFSU) to conduct a study on potential for fisheries in lakes having perennial availability of water and submit a report soon. For, he said, fisheries can provide a boost to economy in post COVID-19 scenario. Kedar was speaking in a meeting held at MAFSU on Thursday. A M Paturkar, Vice-Chancellor of MAFSU; A P Somkuwar, Dean; Chandrabhan Parate, Registrar; Prakash Lonare, President of Vidarbha Machchimar Sanghatana; and others were present in the meeting.



After taking stock of the situation, the minister asked MAFSU to create a Task Force and submit a report within a year regarding management of reproductive fish and enhancement in quality. He expressed satisfaction over mobile fish selling counter, which are to be made available on pilot basis to beneficiaries. As part of giving a boost to fisheries, Kedar said that fisheries would be included as a subject under skill development and enterpreneurship programme to create skilled workforce.



The urban and rural economies have taken a hit due to COVID-19. In the post COVID-19 scenario, fisheries can provide a boost to the economy, he said. Consumption of fish can boost immunity to fight infections and hence the farmers should also focus on fisheries, he said. Farmers should consider fisheries as a source of allied income, he added. Kedar also paid a visit to Bull Rearing Centre at Telangkhedi. K S Kumre, Joint Commissioner of Animal Husbandry; Dr Sanjay Thakre, Manager of the centre, were present. After taking a round, the minister directed the officials concerned to complete the work of protection wall around Bull Rearing Centre. Later, Kedar also visited Frozen Semen Laboratory along Amravati Road. Dr Ramesh Bhaisare, General Manager, briefed the minister about the laboratory. Kedar also inspected the laboratory and cattle of Gir, Sahiwal, and Jersey breeds. He asked the officials to increase the capacity of the laboratory to create 20 lakh units.
[June 22, 2020] UnionPay International, Keenu and Bank AL Habib Jointly Launch Contactless Payments Acceptance For The First Time In Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- UnionPay International, Wemsol Private Limited and Bank AL Habib jointly announce today the launch of UnionPay QuickPass (NFC/Contactless and HCE) acceptance on Keenu POS terminals in Pakistan, where consumers can make safe and quick payments by tapping their UnionPay cards at KEENU POS terminals at more than 7,000 merchant locations in Pakistan. This is the first time any payment scheme, Fintech and Bank has rolled out this service in the Pakistan market to bring more convenient and secure payment experience to customers. UnionPay QuickPass is an innovative contactless payment solution which is aiming to mainstream the use of tap&go payments. The solution is compatible with the EMV specifications, and is interoperable globally. It allows UnionPay cardholders to seamlessly transact via NFC-enabled cards, HCE-enabled mobile apps & smartphones at multitude of merchant locations, ranging from grocery stores, supermarkets, departmental stores, restaurants and many more. With Fintechs like Keenu, whose entire POS terminal network is contactless enabled, local customers in Pakistan as well as visitors will be able to enjoy UnionPay QuickPass service, which is likely to change how payments take place in Pakistan. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a shift in the paradigm of what was considered to be the norm, especially for how payments are being made. WHO has been advocating the use of cashless payments; and contactless payments globally have started to boom. According to the report issued by RTi Research, 30% of consumers have started using contactless payment methods since COVID-19 started, and 70% of those who are new to contactless payments report that they will continue to use this payment method after the pandemic has died down.[1] In response to this need for a safer payment solution, UnionPay has enabled the acceptance of its QuickPass/contactless payments in the Pakistan market together with its Fintech partner Keenu and its long-time partner Bank AL Habib as the safer alternative to conventional payments. This partnership not only allows customers to make cleaner, safer and quicker way of payments, but also help local merchants to enhance their service capability to customers. Han Wang, General Manager of UnionPay International Middle East Region, said, "As the bankcard scheme with the largest number of cards issued, we at UnionPay are committed to providing payment ease to our cardholders worldwide. We believe this partnership will bring more benefits to both customers, merchants and the payment ecosystem in Pakistan." Saad Niazi, COO of Wemsol said, "We are honoured and delighted that Keenu is the first merchant acquirer in Pakistan to roll out QuickPass. We strongly believe contactless payments will be instrumental in bringing true digital payments disruption in Pakistan." Syed Amir Raza from Bank AL Habib has mentioned that, bank has always strived to promote digital payment technologies & solutions, that not only bring convenience to customers, also enhance the customer experience specially in this Covid-19 pandemic. About UnionPay International UnionPay International (UPI) is a subsidiary of China UnionPay focused on the growth and support of UnionPay's global business. In partnership with more than 2000 institutions worldwide, UnionPay International has enabled card acceptance in 179 countries and regions with issuance in 61 countries and regions. UnionPay International provides high quality, cost effective and secure cross-border payment services to the world's largest cardholder base and ensures convenient local services to a growing number of global UnionPay cardholders and merchants. For more information, please visit: www.unionpayintl.com/en. About Keenu Keenu (Wemsol Private Limited), Fintech approved by State Bank of Pakistan to operate as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI), is already a household name with merchant acquiring network in more than 100 cities in Pakistan in partnership with Bank AL Habib. In a short span of four (4) years has created a name for itself in digital financial services deploying its POS machines to over 7,000+ merchants across Pakistan. With the EMI approval in place, Keenu is set to launch other innovative services such as Internet Payment Gateway and Mobile Wallet services in Pakistan.







[1] https://www.paymentsjournal.com/contactless-and-covid-19/

SOURCE UnionPay International

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
CHICAGO  "Prehistoric Road Trip," the new PBS series written and hosted by YouTube star Emily Graslie of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, wants you to wrap your head around the vastness of geologic time, to find joy in seeing the outline of a fish fossilized in rock, and to really, really dig digging for dinosaurs.

If you have an ounce of interest in the natural world, these aren't hard things to do. But it helps a lot to have Graslie, as unflappable as she is wide-eyed, as your interpreter.

She finds delight in conveying how much bigger a billion is than a million and also in wrapping sloppy plaster-drenched fabric around a rock containing dinosaur bones. In the first hourlong episode of three (Wednesdays, 8 p.m. MDT), she even gets a little giddy about separating maggots from the soil beneath a decaying skunk, the better to be able to understand just how it is that fossilization works.

Driving down an open road in her native northern Great Plains region, in the hills and valleys of which the series takes place, she says to the camera, "Those mountains took billions of years to be created. Bananas!"

"It would have been impossible at the start of this project to know what the world would have looked like by the time it came out," she said by telephone from her parents' place in South Dakota, where she was looking forward to a socially distanced preview party  at a local drive-in theater.

"You could never have predicted something like a global pandemic or the sort of social response that we've seen to systemic racism in the United States coming to a head at the same time that we're supposed to be celebrating a very joyful celebration of our natural world.

"So there's some conflicting emotions there. But ultimately it's a project that I've poured myself into for the last three years. It's a really personal journey about sort of rediscovering a landscape that I grew up in that I never really appreciated while I lived here. It's one of those stories where you have to leave to know what you left behind."

The series, executive produced by Graslie and Ally Gimbel and produced by Chicago's WTTW-Ch. 11, is a sort of extreme brand extension for Graslie. She was discovered by YouTube superstar Hank Green ("Crash Course") at the University of Montana's zoological museum, where Graslie, an art major, volunteered thinking she might find a career in scientific illustration.

Green, impressed by her passion for natural history as she toured him around the museum for a video he was shooting, suggested she try making web videos. Her YouTube series "The Brain Scoop," subtitled "Adventures in Taxidermy, Biology and Natural History," climbed quickly in popularity.

When the Field Museum, the Chicago natural history temple, invited her in to talk, she had 140,000 subscribers. And in 2013, when Graslie was 24, the museum brought her on staff as its first "Chief Curiostiy Correspondent." She's kept on making "Brain Scoops," although now they are mostly centered on the efforts of the Field and its vast collections and coterie of scientists. Current subscriber number: 556,000.

But she also, she said a few years back, wanted to develop as a presenter and as a maker of videos. She made some longer form scientific videos, and in a meeting with Field CEO Richard Lariviere and former WTTW chief content officer Dan Soles, she pitched the idea of returning to her home state to explore its fossil record.

She and WTTW brought the idea to national PBS in January, 2018. She talked about this documentary hour she had in mind, and the PBS executive responded, according to Graslie, "'We'd like you to think outside of one state, and we'd like you to do three hours.' So this is just the best problem to have, right?"

"Prehistoric Road Trip" was shot through most of last summer, in 4K resolution, in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska.

It starts, in episode one ("Welcome to Fossil Country"), with 2.5-billion-year-old bacteria that now look like beautifully patterned rocks but then helped create a planet where oxygen breathers could evolve.

"So this is how life started on earth! In the bacteria!" Graslie says.

Episode two is called "We Dig Dinosaurs," and it gets even deeper into the quest for everybody's favorite prehistoric creatures than the first one does. By the third episode we move toward the present day, visiting early North American mammals and learning about the impacts the craze for fossils has had on Native American land.

Much as in her YouTube series, Graslie serves not as expert but inquisitor and, when necessary, explainer. A range of experts passes through the show, and the host is there to dig alongside them or dig into what they know. She did more than 50 interviews, she said, while traveling with her crew some 6000 miles over eight weeks.

"The reason we wanted to talk with so many different people is to show that there's many different entry points into the field of paleontology," Graslie said. "You don't just have to be a scientist in order to make a meaningful contribution. So we talked with landowners. We talked with two different tribal communities. We talked with universities, community colleges, amateurs  just paleo nerds, illustrators, artists. We talked with anybody who we could find to ask them how paleontology and studying the fossil record had shaped them and their identity  because that's kind of what the show is about, how my identity has been shaped by my proximity to this part of the world."

Considering the weight of some of the topics, it's a quick watch, breezy and eager in tone. Graslie asked herself, she said, "What can we do to make this material as digestible and relatable and fun as possible? Because we didn't want it to be onerous or burdensome for the viewer. It needs to feel like the learning is effortless."

Where concepts get tougher, like in explaining how the "Rocky Mountain uplift" created the Rockies and, on the eastern end, South Dakota's Black Hills, elegant animation jumps in to illustrate, for instance, one continent sliding under another and bumping mountains into existence.

"I wanted the illustrations to look like they were created by someone who worked with us and opened up their sketchbook and just started doodling while we were talking," she said. "I was really glad we could partner with an illustrator I've wanted to work with for a really long time. His name is Franz Anthony, and he's in Indonesia."

Doing the illustrations across time zones was a little bit challenging, she said. But the big challenge came in March, as the pandemic hit, editing of the episodes was coming due and her native Field Museum closed, meaning the series was unable to shoot a whole bunch of scenes it had planned to do there.

She and Gimbel, who is also the director, scrambled to make up for it with existing Field footage she had, she said, and she came away "extremely proud" of the result. (Geoffrey Baer is the executive producer for WTTW.)

In addition to a companion website with more detail and background, the series is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

"I hope people watch this program and walk away with just a greater appreciation of how frickin' old our planet is and how resilient our planet is," she said. "This planet has been through so much in its four-and-a-half billion years of existence.

"And also to know something that we don't really say explicitly in the program, but it is this concept that 99% of all species that have ever lived on our planet are now extinct. So everything you see around you today is part of the surviving one percent. And there's a sense of responsibility that comes with that. We should feel a sense of responsibility as sentient beings who have inherited this Earth. What are we doing to help maintain this one% of biodiversity? One% doesn't seem like a lot, but that's everything."

You must be logged in to react.

Click any reaction to login. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0
The depth of acrimony between Donald Trump and two of his siblings toward their nephew Fred III and niece Mary is laid bare in a lawsuit against the trio who refused to pay for the medical care of their own flesh and blood.

Mary Trump, who is about to publish a book full of 'harrowing and salacious' details about the Trump family, has raised the ire of the president once again as he demands the book not be published.

Certainly the tell-all will include the bitter legal feud over family patriarch Fred Sr.'s will and the discontinuation of medical benefits for some members of the family.

DailyMail.com has obtained copies of the lawsuit, filed in 2000 by Mary and Fred Trump III, the children of Donald's deceased brother Fred Jr., for wrongful termination of medical benefits and coverage. After providing health insurance for decades, the Trump family 'unilaterally' canceled it 'maliciously and without excuse or justification', the suit claims.

In the legal papers Donald, his brother Robert and their sister Maryanne laid out their reasons for refusing to pay for the healthcare of their disabled infant nephew William - Fred Trump III's son.

The Trumps argued that siblings Mary and Fred Trump III had already received millions of dollars from them and should be thanking them for their generosity.

Rather than suing them a 'thank-you would be extremely appreciated', they wrote in their response to the suit.

The Trumps even claimed that baby William didn't actually need 24/7 care - which they dismissed as 'expensive baby sitting' - despite his frequent seizures.

Instead of hiring a nurse, Fred III should take a CPR course from the American Red Cross in case William has another cardiac arrest and resuscitate the boy himself, according to the Trumps.

Donald Trump, his brother Robert and sister Maryanne were hit with a lawsuit from their nephew Fred III and niece Mary in 2000. Those siblings, who are children of Donald's late brother Fred Jr., filed suit for wrongful termination of medical benefits and coverage

The Trump family had agreed to pay for their health insurance after their alcoholic father Fred Jr. died in 1982, according to the siblings. But they were suddenly cut off by the Trumps who acted in 'retaliation' for them challenging the will of family patriarch Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999. Pictured l-r: Robert, Elizabeth, Fred, Donald and Maryanne

The Trumps argued that siblings Mary (left) and Fred Trump III (right) had received millions of dollars from them and should be thanking them for their generosity. Rather than suing them a 'thank-you would be extremely appreciated', they wrote in response to the suit. The family dispute was put back into the public eye this week when it emerged that Mary is writing a tell-all about the Trump family, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. The blurb says that psychologist Mary, 55, will spill the beans on the 'dark history' of her family

TIMELINE OF FALLOUT BETWEEN TRUMP SIBLINGS AND THEIR NIECE AND NEPHEW For decades: Fred Sr agrees to pay Fred Trump Jr's family's medical bills. 1970: Fred Trump Jr and his wife Lisa Trump divorce. 1982: Fred Jr dies aged 42 after a lifetime of battling alcohol addiction. Fred Sr agrees to cover Linda's medical expenses, and those of her children, the lawsuit states September 18, 1991: Fred Sr changes his will - Mary and Fred III allege that he did so under the undue influence of Donald and the rest of the family. June 25, 1999: Fred Sr dies. Estate goes into probate. June 30, 1999: William Trump, Fred III's son, is born with severe disabilities and seizures which requires extensive medical treatment Early 2000: Mary and Fred III challenge Fred Sr's will because they claim he was manipulated into cutting them out. March 30, 2000: Trump family informed Fred III, his mother and his sister that their health insurance benefits which they had enjoyed all their lives would be terminated on May 1st that year. William's benefits would terminate on April 1, so two days later. April 27, 2000: Fred III, his wife, Mary and their mother sue Trump family, saying they are cutting their health insurance in retaliation for challenging the will. Later in 2000: Lawsuit settled, terms not disclosed. Advertisement

Fred III and Mary claimed the Trumps acted in 'retaliation' for them challenging the will of family patriarch Fred Trump Sr, who died in 1999.

Mary alleged that Fred Sr was suffering from 'significant mental impairment' and that Donald and his siblings manipulated him into nearly cutting out her and Fred III from the will.

In a scathing passage Mary claimed: 'For the defendants to threaten the health of a 10 month old infant in order to try and force a settlement and thereby cover up their own duplicitous conduct is obscene.

'They have lied in the probate proceeding and they are lying in this proceeding, attempting to paint themselves as kind, loving and concerned individuals when nothing could be farther from the truth'.

The family dispute was put back into the public eye this week when it emerged that Mary is writing a tell-all about the Trump family, titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

The blurb says that psychologist Mary, 55, will spill the beans on the 'dark history' of her family.

She will describe a 'nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse' that helped to make Donald Trump the man he is today.

The book is not out until next month but court papers seen by DailyMail.com reveal the depth of the rift between Mary and the President.

Mary Trump declined to comment on the lawsuit when contacted by DailyMail.com. The Trump Organization, that handles the president's family public relations, did not respond to our request for comment.

The documents were filed in April 2000 at the Nassau County court on Long Island, not far from where Donald grew up in Jamaica, Queens, in New York.

The civil complaint is on behalf of Mary and Fred III whose father Fred Trump Jr was the eldest brother of the President and died in 1982 aged 42 after a lifetime of battling alcohol addiction.

The other plaintiffs are Fred III's wife Lisa and Fred III and Mary's mother Linda.

The defendants are Donald Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal court judge, and Robert Trump, a former executive at The Trump Organization, the family real estate business.

All three were the executors of the estate of their father, Fred Trump Sr - their sister Elizabeth Trump Grau, a retired banker, is not named.

According to Mary and Fred III, Fred Sr had always promised that he would take care of their health insurance and for decades he had done so.

The complaint alleged that all changed when Fred Sr died.

Just a week after Mary and Fred III challenged Fred Sr's will, the Trumps informed them suddenly that their health insurance coverage would terminate on May 1, 2000.

The coverage for William would expire on April 1, so two days from when they received the notice.

The complaint claimed: 'The defendants, who regularly tout themselves in the media as great philanthropists are more than willing to turn their back on the tiniest member of their family in an attempt to bully his father into fading into the night'.

In an affidavit, Mary Trump pleads with the court to intervene and a judge granted a temporary stay while the case was resolved.

The civil complaint is on behalf of Mary and Fred III, the children of Fred Trump Jr, (pictured) the eldest brother of the President who died in 1982 aged 42 after a lifetime of battling alcohol addiction

According to Mary and Fred III, Fred Sr had always promised that he would take care of their health insurance and for decades he had done so. The complaint alleged that all changed when Fred Sr died. Just a week after Mary and Fred III challenged Fred Sr's will, the Trumps informed them suddenly that their health insurance coverage would terminate on May 1 2000. The coverage for William would expire on April 1, so two days from when they received the notice. Pictured: Donald and his father Fred Trump in 1987

She claimed: 'Unless prompt action is taken by this court, plaintiffs will be immediately and irreparably harmed by the actions defendants have taken in retaliation for seeking to protect my rights relating to my late grandfather's estate.'

She described William as being 'severely disabled' and requiring 'round the clock' nursing care.

Mary argued it would be 'virtually impossible' to find medical coverage for William because of his extensive pre-existing conditions.

She claimed: 'These nurses are critical because just recently William went into cardiac arrest during the night. Had a nurse not been there to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation he might not have survived'.

Mary claimed that subsequent to Fred Sr's death she discovered that in 1991 he rewrote his will so it 'virtually disinherited' her and her brother Fred III.

The new will divided the bulk of the inheritance among his living children, meaning Mary and Fred III only got $200,000 each because their father was dead.

In her affidavit, Mary claimed that 'blatant threats' were made by the Trump family to her lawyer that their health benefits would be ended.

She claimed: 'I believe these threats were made to force a settlement however they are particularly reprehensible since the defendants were well aware that William is seriously ill and that Fred III is dependent upon the benefits to cover William's extraordinary medical and nursing costs'.

Robert Trump fired back in unyielding terms and argued the suggestion that Mary and Fred III were broke is 'so completely far from the truth it is laughable'.

He claimed: 'Fred Sr and our mother, Mary Ann Trump, have made these children (Fred III and Mary) multi-millionaires over a period of time.

'My parents have furnished Fred III and Mary with annual gifts of $20,000 for each member of the respective families'.

Robert Trump fired back in unyielding terms and said the suggestion that Mary and Fred III were broke is 'so completely far from the truth it is laughable'. He claimed: 'Fred Sr and our mother, Mary Ann Trump, have made these children (Fred III and Mary) multi-millionaires over a period of time. 'My parents have furnished Fred III and Mary with annual gifts of $20,000 for each member of the respective families'. Pictured: Donald Trump at his wedding to Marla Maples with Fred Trump Sr and his mother Mary

Elizabeth Trump, a retired banker, with her brother Donald and their mother Mary in 1995

Fred III's wife got an additional $20,000 when he got married, Robert claimed.

Robert claimed: 'This is over and above the income they received from family ventures, corporate interests and ground leases.

'I have every reason to believe that if the amount does not exceed $200,000 a year in income from Trump operations they each receive reasonably close to $200,000 without either lifting one finger at any time'.

Robert argued that on top of all that Fred III and Mary had an inheritance from their father and capital distributions which between 1991 and 1999 alone were $3 million.

Robert alleged once William was out of the intensive care unit after his birth 'there was no longer a need for 24-hour-a-day care and, in actuality, for the consideration of administering one or two pills a day and for the possibility that he may have to be resuscitated, as we all know, the American Red Cross periodically trains parents, as well as others, about CPR and treatment'.

Robert claimed: 'The responsibility of the health, well-being and general welfare of William is not upon the uncles and the aunts, but is the responsibility of the parents

'...The thing that I find most surprising throughout this proceeding, and certainly from my experience with my nephew and my niece, is that they just don't know how to say ''thanks''.

'What we did after Williams' birth and the medical problems that he was enduring is that we absolutely took upon ourselves a kindness and a gratuitous act on our part to assist our nephew and his son.

'We did not sign a lifetime guarantee. We do not intend to be compelled to make lifetime gifts. A gift is intended to be a voluntary act, free of restraints and free of compulsion.

'Did we intend to vest a benefit to my nephew's family? The answer is yesbut not for a lifetime.

'A gift is not a contract where something is given for something else. No consideration is required, one was given.

'But a thank-you would be extremely appreciated.'

Donald Trump, left, with his brother, Fred Jr, brother Robert, sister Maryanne, and sister Elizabeth. Shortly after the picture was taken he was 'earning' $200,000 a year

Robert claimed that over the past six years the health plan has paid out: $12,000 for Linda, $9,000 for Mary and $16,000 for Fred III.

A total of $439,000 had been paid for William, of which $200,000 was outside the scope of the policy.

Using underlined text for emphasis, Robert repeats how wealthy his nephew and niece are.

He argued: 'They are wealthy individuals. They can provide for their own coverage. Apparently Mary Trump lives primarily off the Trump income. It is my understanding she is not gainfully employed.'

The Trump family lawyer Louis Laurino goes further and accused Fred III of 'taking advantage' of family members willing to assist with William's birth.

The claim that William 'requires extensive medical treatment and around the clock nursing care is absolutely misleading and untrue', Laurino argued.

He claimed: 'In fact people who are familiar with this case have referred to this as 'expensive baby sitting charges.

'It is unfortunate that the child is ill but it is unfortunate that the child's parents have not assumed the responsibility.

'Fred III and his wife hopefully have taken the initiative of going to the American Red Cross and qualifying for CPR training in view of the fact they contend that William does need cardiopulmonary resuscitation on occasion during the night and given two pills per day.

'This is the way to handle this, not with the kind of expense that has been incurred. There are thousands of children who have similar problems as William and they do not need 24 hour a day nursing care.

'The principal problem here is that the grandchildren, Mary Trump and Fred Trump III are not very grateful persons.'

Laurino argued that Mary and Fred III 'are not paupers' and estimated the trusts established for them by Fred Sr to be worth $750,000 each.

He mockingly argued that judging by their pleadings 'one would be left with the impression that they are candidates for homelessness and a handout by a charitable institution'.

The Trump family gathers for a photo at the opening of the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC in 2016

Mary and Fred III claimed that their father's separation agreement stated that he would 'pay directly all medical and dental expenses for their children'.

But Mr Laurino argued that the obligations 'were only intended to be obligations of their father during his lifetime'.

Nor is there any language that covers Linda Trump, Lisa Trump or William or any other of the other grandchildren.

In his statement to the court, Fred III said he has reviewed the Trump family's legal filings with a 'heavy heart'.

He claimed that his aunts and uncles never once visited William when he was in intensive care in hospital after being born 'despite the fact that the hospital was at most a short cab ride from their Manhattan residences'.

The extent of Robert's involvement was a phone call with Fred III the day after William was born when he had the first of many seizures.

Robert reassured Fred III that the medical bills would be paid, the lawsuit claims.

Maryanne 'called me once three weeks after William was born and has never called again', Fred III alleged in the suit.

He claimed: 'My uncle, Donald Trump, saw me in a restaurant one night (I had reluctantly left the hospital briefly at my aunt's insistence in order to visit with my grandmother's relatives from Scotland) and yelled across the tables that he had heard my child was sick.

'Again, no phone calls, no visits. True to form, my aunt and uncles never bothered to inquire as to William's condition or learn the extent of his illness'.

Fred III said William's care involves far more than just 'one or two pills a day' as Robert claimed.

He argued in the suit: 'I only wish his care were that simple. Although my wife and I are trained in CPR, we are not qualified to perform the other duties the nurses perform.

'It is easy for someone like my uncle, who is not a parent, to suggest resuscitating one's own child should be an easy matter. Any parent would know otherwise.'

A pediatric nurse at Mt Sinai with special training in critical care for infants and who cared for William, bristled at Robert's description of her as a 'highly paid babysitter' in her affidavit.

She said when William was born he was diagnosed with a seizure disorder known as 'Infantile Spasm', which requires regular injections and constant monitoring.

Mary has already extracted her revenge on Donald to some extent and was reportedly the main source for a New York Times investigation published in 2018. It revealed that rather than being a self made man as he claims, Donald received at least $413 million from his father

Mary wrote on Twitter that her uncle Donald's election was 'the worst night of my life' in a 3am tweet storm as the results came in

At the time of the suit, William was 11 months old but in terms of development, he was closer to five or six months of age.

He could not sit up, roll over, could not recognize what a bottle was and required a special chair to bathe himself.

The case was eventually settled and the terms are not in the court file.

Donald is reportedly considering suing Mary to stop the publication of her book and she supposedly signed an NDA not to talk about their family's affairs.

Her social media accounts give an indication of what is to come, describing Donald's 2016 election victory as the 'worst night of my life'.

The last time Mary spoke publicly about her family was 20 years ago in an article for the New York Daily News in which she said Donald and his siblings 'should be ashamed of themselves'.

Fred III joked that 'our family puts the ''fun'' in dysfunctional', adding: 'These are not warm and fuzzy people'.

In an interview in 2016 Donald said the dispute ended 'very amicably' but his comments in the 2000 article with the Daily News suggested otherwise.

He said: 'It's cold when someone sues my father. Had he come to see me, things could very possibly have been much different for them'.

Mary has already extracted her revenge on Donald to some extent and was reportedly the main source for a New York Times investigation published in 2018.

It revealed that rather than being a self made man as he claims, Donald received at least $413 million from his father.

Donald made losses of $1.1bn over a nine year period including $418 million in 1991 alone - one percent of all the losses the IRS recorded for individual taxpayers for that year.
"SAFE Credit Union is proud of this campaign. It captures the credit union movement. It is simple and clear, and we love that it includes the diversity of our region." Erica Dias, Vice President of Marketing, Community Banking, and Communications at SAFE Credit Union.

The message is simple, bold, yet inviting. The images reflect the diversity of the Greater Sacramento region. The campaign captures the very essence of what it means to be a credit union that puts people over profits.

And now, the SAFE Credit YOUnion campaign that got Sacramento residents talking has received accolades from the Credit Union National Association, a nationwide organization that promotes and advocates for the credit union movement.

SAFEs newest branding campaign received a coveted Diamond Award in the Multi-Dimensional category in CUNAs 2020 awards ceremony held remotely this June. SAFEs entry rose above entries from all over the country to earn this honor.

SAFE Credit Union is proud of this campaign, says Erica Dias, Vice President of Marketing, Community Banking, and Communications at SAFE Credit Union. It captures the credit union movement. It is simple and clear, and we love that it includes the diversity of our region. Weve loved it since the beginning, but its so affirming that it has been so supported in our community. Weve received good feedback from our members and Sacramento-area residents, and now we are so pleased to receive accolades from our own industry.

The campaigns messaging and imagery immediately speak to current and potential members by letting them know that SAFE Credit Union is all about YOU. Rather than focus on the nuts and bolts of the benefits of banking with a credit union, the campaign instead taps into peoples emotions, their need to feel part of a valued cooperative, and to be appreciated as a unique individual.

The campaign was launched in May 2019 with billboards, a television commercial, and social media promotions. SAFE worked with Sacramento ad agency un/common to create the branding campaign. SAFE quickly incorporated the campaign into its branches, its safecu.org website, and other marketing efforts. The entire organization adopted the spirit of the campaign. Employee Services renamed its internal training program to SAFE YOU. Stickers with plays on the YOU message were distributed at community events, including at the August 2019 groundbreaking for the SAFE Credit Union Convention and Performing Arts District. Member Appreciation Days at branches carried the YOU message in promotions, special activities, and giveaways. It is also used extensively in SAFEs financial education outreach through the Workplace Financial Wellness program now providing webinars for the entire community that provide insights to help members navigate the current challenging environment.

In early 2020, SAFE launched the second phase of the campaign that features images of SAFE staff members, reflecting the wide diversity of those who serve our members in branches and from our headquarters. That real person connection has been well received by our members and on audiences social media, as staff members friends and family cheer them on.

The SAFE Credit YOUnion campaign also serves as a strong complement to CUNAs nationwide awareness campaign, Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union. SAFE has invested into the Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union campaign to help fund outreach about why credit unions are a better choice than banks for consumers looking for local connection, better rates, and caring service. More information on the Open Your Eyes campaign can be found at yourmoneyfurther.com.

The SAFE Credit YOUnion campaign continues to evolve, but one aspect will remain constant: the focus on the credit union mission of serving our members as the valued individuals they are.

About SAFE

SAFE Credit Union has made members an integral part of its vision since 1940. Over the years the credit union has kept the focus on what really matters, putting members first, a formula that has seen SAFE grow into a leading financial institution in Northern California with more than $3 billion in assets and about 236,000 members. SAFE crafts every cutting-edge product and sterling service with members needs foremost in mind. In addition to banking services conveniently available through online, chat, mobile, or phone options, SAFE offers in-person care for members and small businesses at service centers across the Greater Sacramento region and a mortgage lending office serving Contra Costa and Alameda counties. SAFE is a not-for-profit, state-chartered credit union with membership open to businesses and individuals living or working in Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, El Dorado, Sutter, Butte, Nevada, Solano, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Yuba, Amador, and Alameda counties. Insured by NCUA. http://www.safecu.org


Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 04:36:59|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BUCHAREST, June 21 (Xinhua) -- As about 600 Romanian workers tested positive for COVID-19 in a slaughterhouse in northwest Germany, the Romanian authorities on Sunday requested German local authorities and the employer company to take measures to manage the situation.

The number of persons infected from a COVID-19 outbreak in the meat processing company Toennies in the district of Guetersloh in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) had risen to 1,331 as of Sunday afternoon, according to the press release of the district.

According to a release of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, the company representatives said that about 50 percent of the infection cases were Romanian citizens and approximately 7,000 people have been placed in quarantine.

The company decided to temporarily shut down the plant, and the authorities of Gutersloh district took measures to isolate the affected area.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said no requests for consular assistance have been received from Romanian citizens working for the respective company, adding that its Consulate General in Bonn has been notified that 17 Romanian citizens left the quarantine location, and local authorities have taken steps to identify them. Enditem
Entrepreneur Network

Ju Rhyu, co-founder of Hero Cosmetics, was a guest at the most recent Startup Story Live, an extension of the hit podcast The Startup Story that gives everyone in attendance direct access to founders. The two-day live stream event, which streamed to 77 different countries, allowed founders to share the tactics and strategies they have employed to stabilize their current businesses.

During her time at Startup Story Live, Rhyu explains how she discovered her pimple-care patch while working for Samsung in South Korea. From that discovery, Rhyu rebranded that product as the Mighty Patch and brought it to the United States in 2018 by way of Amazon.
Joe Biden's campaign and his Democratic Party are feeling an emotion they have not sensed in quite some time, and one that prompts more than a little fear: confidence.

Poll after poll has placed the presumptive Democratic nominee ahead of President Donald Trump, with comfortable national leads that in some cases have swollen to double digits. He is ahead by narrower but consistent margins in battleground states, and Biden himself has grown increasingly bullish on the idea that Democrats will win back the Senate majority, a possibility not even dreamed of until recently. Once an anemic fundraiser, he is now routinely drawing multimillion-dollar hauls.

Trump is presiding over a Depression-style economy, a global pandemic and boiling social unrest. His administration has lost several high-profile Supreme Court cases, his former National Security adviser's new book has painted a damning portrait, and he is now in perhaps the weakest position of his presidency with less than five months before the general election. The images of a half-empty arena for Trump's much-hyped rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday underscored the perception of a diminished incumbent, one who has long seen crowd size as a barometer of success.

But for Democrats, the very idea that they are doing well provokes an underlying skittishness. They worry about voting during the coronavirus crisis, amid restrictions that could make it harder to cast ballots. Some fear a coming misinformation campaign and say the party risks underestimating Trump's ability to turn the country against their nominee.

They also worry their party still does not fully understand what led voters to Trump in the first place, and they are terrified that overconfidence, like some of them had four years ago, will lead to complacency.

"It feels like 2016 all over," said Andrew Werthmann, a member of the city council in Eau Claire, Wis., who has been almost cringing as he watches Biden surge in the polling he cannot help but keep looking at.

"It's not a good energy to think you have a presidential election in the bag," he said. "Especially not in our state. Where exactly that happened last time."

Biden's campaign believes the pathway to the presidency runs through states in the industrial Midwest - such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the three usually Democratic states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. But they are also increasingly optimistic about once-unthinkable states such as Arizona, Texas and Georgia. They have twin goals of trying to motivate black voters in urban cores and college-educated voters in the suburbs to turn out in bigger numbers than Clinton drew.

"I've always had an expanded map in my head that includes Texas, maybe even South Carolina, maybe Georgia. We're not going to concede anything," said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., the co-chairman of Biden's campaign.

"You still run a race like you're behind. But the truth of the matter is we're not behind," he added. "Doesn't matter if it's two up, five up, or 10 up, the polls all show us increasing . . . the trend is good for us."

Still, while Biden at this point is faring better against Trump than Clinton did, the next few months hold challenges for him. He has failed so far to excite Latinos, a fast-growing electoral bloc, and some young black voters still view him skeptically.

Trump retains a solid base of supporters. Two weeks ago, an unexpectedly favorable employment report raised the specter of a boosted economy, one area where Trump continues to poll better than Biden.

But Biden also has been helped by factors outside his control: Trump, who unlike in 2016 has a record to be measured against, has not yet found a line of attack that has resonated with voters. And the president is facing not only Democrats in whom he inspires unprecedented anger but a revolt among Republicans, some of whom have formed anti-Trump networks that are airing ads against him.

On Thursday, Biden launched a $15 million advertising campaign targeting many of the swing states. Some of the ads will air on Fox News and during NASCAR races, aiming to win over former Obama voters who switched to Trump four years ago. English- and Spanish-language ads will air in key markets in Florida, where Trump's campaign is planning to hold rallies and parties as part of his nominating convention.

Democrats in several key states believe Trump will turn out his unshakable supporters. In their view, the key to a Biden victory rests in attracting Democratic voters who sat out of the 2016 election.

"He's got a very aggressive, loyal base. But that base on its own, I don't think, is enough," Brandon Dillon, a former Democratic Party chairman in Michigan, said of the president. "His path is complacency among Democratic voters and independents who despise him - that they think this is somehow in the bag. That's the biggest threat."

Biden's campaign is beginning to coordinate more closely with state Democratic parties and expects to have 600 field organizers working in the battleground states by the start of next month. This past week alone, the campaign held 39 organizing events in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin. They have a director of African American outreach in Michigan, a Latinx outreach director in Arizona and a full-time youth vote director in Wisconsin.

In Eau Claire, Wis., a city of 70,000 people, Biden supporters are hoping to harness the energy of thousands of people who have showed up for Black Lives Matter protests. A large batch of campaign signs are soon heading for rural Michigan, meant to combat the visibility that Trump has on farms and highways.

In Florida, the coordinated effort between the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee is adding 40 staffers to the roster of about 160 organizers the state party has had working over the past year. Florida Democrats are also seeing a surge in voters registering to vote by mail, a reversal of past trends.

"Republicans used to crush us on that. It was just the mentality of Democrats not trusting the postal system," said Juan Penalosa, the executive director of the Florida Democratic Party. "But now that Trump is telling Republicans not to do it, Democrats all want to do it. It's been the best thing for us. Everybody is flocking to it."

"In Florida we have a history of fumbling at the two-yard line. I don't think we're going to do that this year," he added.

Some Democrats continue to worry about Biden's relative lack of visibility or question whether his instinct to criticize the "defund the police" movement places him out of touch with the raw nerves on the streets.

But many other Democrats think it does not matter. Among more moderate voters particularly, they say, Biden has to do enough to show that he is a suitable alternative - or, as Biden himself often jokes, "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative."

"I'm not trying to convince people to like him. I'm trying to convince people to vote for him," said Khary Penebaker, a DNC committee member from Wisconsin. "There is no extra box. When you fill in that bubble or punch that box, it doesn't say, 'Are you excited?' All you got to do is vote."

"Even people who don't like Joe Biden are saying, 'I'll vote for a paper bag over Trump,' " he added.

In Iowa, a state Trump won by just under 10 points in 2016, a recent Des Moines Register poll had him up by one point. The same poll had Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, trailing her Democratic opponent Theresa Greenfield by three points. In Texas, a state Trump won by nine points, a Quinnipiac poll had Trump leading by one point. Eventually, the campaign will face hard decisions about where to spend its money, but for now, Biden is fanning the specter of winning in unforeseen places.

"Texas is an important battleground state for our campaign in 2020," Biden said during a virtual appearance for the Texas Democratic Party's convention two weeks ago. "I think we have a real chance to turn the state blue because of the work all of you have done."

Managing the optimism has created new challenges for the Biden campaign. Even as his team believes the past few weeks have moved the race in his favor, at least temporarily, they are trying to encourage supporters to disregard the recent good news.

"We are not up 15 in Michigan. We are not up 14," Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said on the most recent episode of "Campaign HQ," a podcast hosted by David Plouffe, referring to Biden's polling lead there.

O'Malley Dillon said she was making that point in part to avoid "the bedwetting that is to come when those numbers narrow." "This is going to be a very close race; everyone needs to understand that," she said.

Plouffe, who ran Obama's first campaign, also warned that Democrats should assume Trump will win back some support as the campaign progresses and voters start paying more attention.

"I am a little bit worried that people are getting super excited about these numbers," he said. "And you'd much rather have them than not. But when you look at how these votes ultimately come down on Election Day, it seems to me you're going to see some tightening."

Nancy Quarles, a commissioner in Oakland County, Mich., remains scarred by 2016, still baffled by the support Trump won in crucial counties that she never expected.

"I'm very nervous about the race. I see all the groundwork for the Democrats to win, however, I don't discount the current president. He's very motivated to win," she said.

Quarles, who is a DNC committeewoman, worries Biden is not doing enough to motivate voters who are on the fence or are not paying close attention to the presidential race.

"Even personal friends, I don't think they're going to vote for Trump," she said. "But they need more of an edge to know Biden is willing to roll up his sleeves and do what needs to be done."

The Biden campaign's efforts in key states are meant as a hedge against a repeat of Clinton's trajectory.

"One of the criticisms in 2016 was Hillary didn't physically come to Wisconsin," said David Bowen, a state lawmaker from Milwaukee. "You see a different strategy by the Biden campaign not to abandon Wisconsin, not to take resources meant for Wisconsin and divert them elsewhere to states that were really a crapshoot."

Will Buergey, the party chairman in Gogebic County, Mich., got a call about a week ago. The campaign wanted him to get to work in the rural area, where Obama won in 2008 and 2012 but where Trump beat Clinton by nearly 15 points. He said he is encouraged by the expected shipment of lawn signs; in 2016, the area felt neglected by Clinton as Trump's allies papered the area with symbols of their support.

"I like Joe Biden, I think he's a good candidate. But I think this election is going to turn more on people who see the real Donald Trump," he said. "I think a lot of people were hoodwinked by him in 2016. . . . I do feel better that the country as a whole - if they're not strongly pro-Biden, they're anti-Trump."

That is one reason Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is increasingly optimistic Biden will be the first Democrat to win his state since Bill Clinton carried it in 1996.

"Time's running out. This election doesn't end in November. It ends in early October, when early voting starts in many of these swing states," he said.

"If Trump somehow hasn't changed his campaign and himself by early October, he is in severe problems. He won in 2016. But it's possible, and more likely, that it was a fluke. And not a trend."
(Natural News) Cities across America are laying waste to all kinds of violence and destruction at the hands of Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is keeping itself busy going after conservatives who express opposition to the chaos online.

Once again highlighting the chasm that exists between the Trump administration, which recently declared Antifa to be a domestic terrorist organization, and the nations top law enforcement agencies, the FBI is apparently more concerned with policing the internet  presumably to get back at Trump for statements he has made in the past against the agency  than it is with policing and protecting Americas streets, which are under direct attack by raging leftist mobs.

Just the other day, the Department of Justice announced in a press release that FBI agents had apprehended a 42-year-old El Paso resident by the name of Manuel Flores for allegedly posting a threatening communication over the Internet. Flores is said to have written a few racial slurs on social media and dared BLM activists to stop him from exercising his Constitutional rights.

Rather than evaluate the context of Flores statements and consider the nature of his target, the FBI instead went after Flores himself after deeming him the threat. According to the FBI, Flores may have tried to commit violence, and thus needed to be taken into custody.

Our office will treat any threats of violence against protesters extremely seriously, wrote U.S. Attorney John Bash in a tweeted statement, indicating the agencys position on what constitutes a protester.

Since the beginning of this latest wave of Antifa and BLM rioting, the FBI has positioned itself as being on the side of the agitators rather than those they are agitating. In this case, the FBI would rather go after an internet troll than the violent individuals he was trolling.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about how Democrat-controlled cities, which is where a bulk of the Antifa and BLM violence is taking place, will eventually collapse under the weight of their own tolerance:

According to the FBI, Antifa has committed NO violence thus far

Since Antifa is apparently not a threat in the eyes of the FBI, just who, exactly, is committing all of that violence and looting in streets across America? According to the FBI, conservatives and right-wingers are to blame.

As for Antifa, the FBI says that it currently has no intelligence indicating any left-wing involvement in the burning down of buildings or violence committed against innocent people. And this is according to CHS [Confidential Human Source] canvassing, open source / social media partner engagement, and liaison, all of which supposedly absolve Antifa from any and all blame in committing crimes.

The FBI has even gone so far as to blame people like Flores for supposedly inciting violence on social media. Individuals like Flores have called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, according to the FBI, as well as use automatic weapons against protesters.

The DHS is likewise blaming far-right social media posts for inciting those who follow these posts to engage in violence and start the boogaloo'  boogaloo being a term used by some people to refer to agitators who might try to shoot into a crowd in order to ignite a second civil war.

The deep state clearly wants these riots to continue, as it may be their only chance to avoid the Trump administrations reprisal for their illegal Russian collusion witch hunt and various other criminal activities, writes Shane Trejo for Big League Politics.

For more of the latest news about Antifa terrorism, be sure to check out Chaos.news.

Sources for this article include:

BigLeaguePolitics.com

NaturalNews.com
T he Prince of Wales has said Britain owes the Windrush generation a debt of gratitude.

To mark Windrush Day, Prince Charles spoke of the "immeasurable difference" the generation of immigrants have made to public life, culture and the economy.

The day marks 72 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex, bearing around 500 people from Jamaica.

In a video message, Prince Charles said: Today offers an opportunity to express the debt of gratitude we owe to that first Windrush generation for accepting the invitation to come to Britain and, above all, to recognise the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren, have made to so many aspects of our public life, to our culture and to every sector of our economy.

In 2017, The Prince and The Duchess visited the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton to learn about African and Caribbean contribution during both World Wars and to meet with Windrush veterans / Clarence House

He went on to pay tribute to the doctors, nurses and others of African and Caribbean descent working on the front line.

The prince said: Now I hesitate to single out any area of this activity but, as coronavirus lockdown begins to ease, I did just want to say a particular word about our National Health Service, of which people of African and Caribbean descent have been an indispensable part since its very beginning.

Windrush generation arrive in Britain 1 /18 Windrush generation arrive in Britain Some of the pioneering Windrush generation arrive at Tilbury Docks, from Jamaica Getty Images The journey to the UK cost 28 Getty Images They arrived on June 22, 1948 Getty Images The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain SSPL via Getty Images The group were the first of the Windrush generation to emigrate to Britain Getty Images Arrivals scrutinise a map of the London Underground Getty Images The Windrush generation helped to rebuild post-war Britain Getty Images Members of the 55 Independent Squadron wait to board the Empire Windrush at Southampton, to fight in the Korean War Getty Images A black man walks past graffiti stating 'Powell For PM', referring to Enoch Powell who caused controversy with his outspoken attitude to black immigration and racial integration Getty Images Three Jamaicans (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury Docks Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images West Indian immigrants arriving in the United Kingdom, 19th May 1962 Mirrorpix/Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images 27th May 1956: Immigrants to Britain from the West Indies queuing up on arrival at Southampton holding documents Getty Images

"At the same time, I know that the black community has been hit particularly hard by this pernicious virus.

To those who have lost their loved ones in such heartbreaking circumstances, when it has been impossible for them to comfort their relatives in hospital, I can only convey my most profound sympathy

"And to everyone on the front line who has been put under such intense pressure over the last three months and risen heroically to the unprecedented challenge, I want to say on behalf of all of us how inordinately proud we are of them and the way they carry out their onerous duties.

Charles described Britains diversity as its greatest strength.

Today, as we honour the legacy of the Windrush generation, and the invaluable contribution of black people in Britain, I dearly hope that we can continue to listen to each others stories and to learn from one another, he said.

Loading....

The diversity of our society is its greatest strength and gives us so much to celebrate.
New Google technology reveals never before seen details of 'The Last Supper'

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

Through the use of Gigapixel digital camera technology, people can now get an up-close look at Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Supper."

Millions have traveled to Milan, Italy, to see the beloved painting which depicts Christ and His disciples at the Last Supper, which has been slowly deteriorating for years. The Last Supper is housed by the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

According to the U.K. Times, a Gigapixel camera from Google enables viewers to zoom in closer than ever before to see images of the world's greatest works of art. An "art camera" team from the tech giant spent hours making high-resolution images of the most highly regarded early copy of the famous painting, which was completed in 1498.

The copy of the original painting began fading within years of completion because Da Vinci used an experimental technique instead of the traditional fresco.

"Google Arts & Culture has spent the past year there creating Gigapixel images of 20 of its most renowned artworks including 'The Last Supper,' which is thought to have been created by Giampietrino or Boltraffio, who were pupils of Leonardo," the U.K. Times reported.

Now completed, viewers can see the smallest of details that are hard to see in the copies of the painting or have been lost from the original.

"You can really zoom into the finest level of detail like never before," said Luisella Mazza, head of global operations at Google Arts and Culture.

"It makes the invisible visible."

The feet of Jesus in the original mural were cut off when a door was put into the wall of the refectory on which Leonardo painted, where he applied paint onto dry plaster using egg tempera instead of painting on wet plaster.

Among other details that can be seen with the new camera that are all but missing from the original mural is the finger of Thomas, which is gesturing in way that points to his later doubts about Christ's resurrection. It also shows the hand of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, clasping a bag of money.

The new gigapixel art camera has been in use for the past decade at museums and galleries worldwide and is custom-made to create hundreds of high-resolution close-up images of paintings. The technology utilizes a laser and sonar to capture the most intricate details of paintings that are subsequently stitched together into a "billion-pixel" image.

Mazza said the close-up digital image of "The Last Supper" was only the beginning of future endeavors where other great works will also be examined using advanced technology.

"You can see brushstrokes, cracks in the painting. In real life it would be very hard to get close to the artwork for security reasons and even if you could get close enough, how long could you really stand in front of an artwork to examine all these fascinating details," she said.
Two teenagers have been arrested after a man and a woman were attacked in Portrush.

It happened in the Castle Erin Road area of Portrush on Sunday evening.

There were reports that there had been a stabbing, however, police said this was not the case.

Inspector David Burns said: We received a report at around 7pm on Sunday evening that a male and female had been assaulted.

It is reported that a woman in her 40s was assaulted, spat on and threatened by a male armed with a knife. He was described as being 6ft tall, slim with black hair and dressed in a black hooded jumper and tracksuit bottoms.

A man in his 50s was then assaulted when he attempted to assist the female victim, he was reported to have been hit on the head with a piece of wood.

"A 17-year-old male was arrested a short time later on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon. A 14-year-old male was arrested on suspicion of an article with a blade or a point in a public place and common assault. Both males remain in custody at this stage.

Enquiries are continuing and we would appeal to anyone who witnessed the incident is asked to contact police on 101, quoting reference number 1337 21/06/20.

A report can be made using the online reporting form via www.psni.police.uk/makeareport. Information can also be provided to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org.
Nigerian doctors suspended a nationwide strike to continue talks with the government over a lack of protective equipment needed to treat COVID-19 patients and other benefits.

The medical officers decided to return to work after an intervention from government officials, the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors said in emailed statement on Monday. The group will continue negotiations with stakeholders and progress made shall be reviewed in four weeks, they said.

Nigerias Minister of Information Lai Mohammed has called the action of the body a setback for the nations effort to fight COVID-19. He accused the group of betraying the nation and their professional oath by denying people medical care during a public health emergency.

This is not right and it clearly negates the Hippocratic Oath to which the doctors subscribe, Mohammed said in an emailed statement. This is an ill-timed and ill-considered strike,  there is no doubt that the strike has impacted negatively on public health, putting many lives at risk.

About 300 doctors have been infected with coronavirus in the line of duty and 10 have died, secretary general of the association, Bilqis Muhammad, said by phone.

Read more about:
She's spent the past few weeks relaxing with friends and her new boyfriend on board a luxury yacht in St Tropez.

And it was another day in paradise for Chloe Green on Monday, as she headed to a beach bar with her beau Manuele Thiella.

The daughter of Topshop mogul Sir Philip Green, flaunted her tan in ripped denim shorts and a bikini top layered under a shirt as she strolled across the sand with her boyfriend and a group of friends.

Beach with her beau: Chloe Green headed to a beach bar with her beau Manuele Thiella and a group of friends on Monday, during her holiday oin St-Tropez

Chloe put on a leggy display in her ripped denim shorts, accessorised with a studded belt.

She flashed a glimpse of her bikini top under a loose blue shirt unbuttoned to the waist.

Chloe walked barefoot across the sand with her pals, carrying a beach bag and flashing her designer watch.

Her beau Manuele kept close, walking alongside Chloe, dressed in colourful shorts and a white t-shirt.

To shore: The couple, who have been dating since last year, headed to shore from Chloe's dad Si Philip Green's luxury yacht

The couple and their pals were headed to Les Palmiers beach club, a regular haunt during their holiday in St-Tropez.

Chloe has been holidaying in St Tropez with friend and her Italian yacht broker boyfriend for a few weeks.

Chloe was pictured passionately kissing Manuele, 34, on board her father Sir Philip Green's 118 million yacht in the South of France earlier this month.

Beach look: The daughter of the Topshop mogul flaunted her tan in ripped denim shorts and a bikini top layered under a shirt

Double denim: Chloe looked gorgeous in her relaxed beach look, accessorising with a layered necklaces and shades

Romance: Her beau Manuele kept close, walking alongside Chloe, dressed in colourful shorts and a white t-shirt

But it won't have been Manuele's first voyage as he's the CEO of company Royal Yacht Brokers, which boasts celebrity clients such as Madonna, Chrissy Teigen and Alicia Vikander.

The businessman has been dating Chloe since 2019 with the pair even spending the festive period together alongside Chloe's mum Tina, 70, and other 'best friends and family.'

A source said: 'Chloe has known Manuele for months and they have always been very close friends.

Back on dry land: The couple and their pals were headed to Les Palmiers beach club, a regular haunt during their holiday in St-Tropez

All at sea: Chloe has been holidaying in St Tropez with friend and her Italian yacht broker boyfriend for a few weeks

Going public: Chloe was pictured passionately kissing Manuele, 34, on board her father Sir Philip Green's 118 million yacht in the South of France earlier this month

Shared interests: But it won't have been Manuele's first voyage as he's the CEO of company Royal Yacht Brokers

'They have a lot in common; they're both parents and are from similar worlds, Chloe is very happy with him. He's very much been accepted into her family.'

The couple celebrated Chloe's birthday together in March, with Manuele pictured smiling alongside the heiress and her brother Brandon, 27.

Chloe split from ex-fiance Jeremy Meeks, 36, nicknamed Hot Felon, in June 2019, following a two-year romance.

Pals: Chloe and her boyfriend have been joined by a large group of friends on board her yacht

Going well: The businessman has been dating Chloe since 2019 with the pair even spending the festive period together alongside Chloe's mum Tina, 70, and other 'best friends and family'

Happy: 'They have a lot in common; they're both parents and are from similar worlds, Chloe is very happy with him,' a friend said recently of the romance

The former Made in Chelsea star shares a two-year-old son, Jayden while Manuele has a daughter from a previous relationship with a former partner.

After her split from hot felon Jeremy, Chloe briefly dated Italian polo captain Rommy Gianni, who she was also spotted kissing on board her dad's super yacht.

Chloe was photographed in Sardina with Rommy last August  just two months after reports of her split from Jeremy.

MailOnline contacted Chloe Green for comment at the time.

This is the life! On Sunday Chloe was pictured on board the luxury yacht in St Tropez

Boat life: She flaunted her tan in the same pair of ripped denim shorts while roaming around the deck of the luxury yacht

Family: Chloe, who split from ex-Jeremy Meeks last year, celebrated her March birthday with boyfriend Manuele (pictured far right), as well as her brother Brandon Green (left)

It's over: She split from hot felon Jeremy Meeks, who she has a two-year-old son with, in June 2019 following two years of dating

Chloe also shared an important message on her Instagram on Sunday, posing in a t-shirt designed by her close friend Vas J Morgan, which read: 'I am anti racist.'

The t-shirt is part of ex TOWIE star Vas' initiative I Am Enough, which provides free mental health support to black communities.

Chloe posed in the t-shirt on board the yacht, writing alongside: 'No caption needed @iamenough couldnt be more proud of you @vasjmorgan '.

Message: Chloe also shared an important message on her Instagram on Sunday, posing in a t-shirt designed by her close friend Vas J Morgan, which read: 'I am anti racist'

Supporting her pal: The t-shirt is from ex TOWIE star Vas' initiative I Am Enough, which provides free mental health support to black communities

She also reposted a message from Vas' page in her Instagram Stories, in which he thanked his friend for her lifelong support.

'Chloe and I spent hours on the phone recently going back and forth searching for the best way she could help without being slaughtered by the public,' Vas explained.

'As she asked for a way to support me, her black best friend for over a decade, as she searched for a way she could support the black father of her child without being attacked for "not doing enough" or "doing too much" we both concluded that it's time to stop being concerned with public opinion and do what she feels is right.'

'Chloe purchased a t-shirt and made a sizable donation to I Am Enough. It's not about being a saviour, it's about being an ally. Chloe has been a vital part of my journey to self acceptance and has supported me before the BLM during the BLM and will continue to support me after.'
'Dehumanising and not funny' - That's how the director of the Irish Network Against Racism has described a resurfaced Facebook post from Offaly county councillor Ken Smollen.

Cllr Smollen posted an image of a Muslim woman and child next to two black bin bags in 2012 before he was an elected representative in the county. He captioned the post: "I think I recognise the one of the left." He further commented, "I think the two on the right are twins," referring to what appears to be a Muslim child in a burqa and a black bin bag.

PICTURED: The post as it appeared on Ken Smollen's Facebook page in 2012

Cllr Smollen was running a local food appeal for families living in poverty at the time and had a large following on social media. He continues to run the KS Food Appeal. He was elected to Offaly County Council in 2019. He failed to win a seat in the general election earlier this year in the Laois-Offaly constituency.

Asked by the Offaly Express why he posted the above image in 2012, Cllr Smollen said: "The post was certainly not meant to cause offence to anyone or to any race, religion or community. At the time of posting it, I simply found it amusing and nothing else. However, eight years is a long time ago and I wouldnt post it now because times have changed and what was once amusing is now seen as not being politically correct and may cause offence where there would be none intended."

He furthered that view when posting the screenshot of his original post to his Facebook page at the weekend, saying: "The attached image was posted by me in June 2012 as it appeared amusing at the time, just like funny images of Leprechauns being used when referring to Irish people or jokes about Paddies or Biffos."

"As time passes we all learn, grow and become more aware of what is or is not acceptable now, and if some people feel offended by the post, then I apologise as no offence was ever intended," he continued on the same forum.

Reacting to the 2012 post, the director of the Irish Network Against Racism, Shane O'Curry said: "These comments aren't funny and they aren't worthy of a public representative. The effect of this post is to dehumanise a group of people who already face marginalisation and discrimination.

"Mocking Muslims, and especially Muslim women, in this fashion leaves them open to more hostility than they already face. These actions create an atmosphere in which individuals may believe they have community backing for acts of open hatred and violence against minorities," he added.

"Our data shows that hostility and violence against Muslim women in Ireland are not uncommon, with devastating consequences for them, their children and families. It also undermines community relations by fostering divisions between people, something which runs contrary to the principles of our Republic which endeavours to cherish us all equally.

However I understand that these comments were made in 2012 and were taken down some years ago, prior to Cllr Smollen being elected, and prior to him signing our anti-racism election protocol.

In circumstances where someone were to make such comments using a public platform such as elected office, such comments would amount to Incitement to Hatred, which is prosecutable under the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act."

"We ask all political candidates to keep public and political discourse clean about minorities, by asking them to sign the anti-racism election protocol and undertake not to use racist language or in any other way denigrate minorities. We are also pushing for improvement in hate crime legislation and the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act," Mr O'Curry added.

When asked about the posting of such material online by the Offaly Express, Pippa Woolnough, Communications and Advocacy Manager of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, said: "Since its foundation 19 years ago, the Immigrant Council of Ireland has been aware that racism exists in Ireland and we know from our support services and community engagement work, too many people face the brunt of the abuse daily.

"While research has shown the Irish are a largely welcoming and tolerant society, a small minority focus on projecting hate and driving divide. Too often we see appalling abuse online, where it is easier to hide. But now is the time to take action and it is welcome to see the promise of effective hate crime legislation in the new Programme for Government.

"Recent events stemming from the Black Lives Matter movement have brought the issue of racism in Ireland to the fore and it is an opportunity for us to listen and really hear these difficult and often harrowing experiences and check ourselves and our behaviour - both in person and online. It is not enough to be quietly non-racist, to be effective allies and build the Ireland we want to live in, we must be actively anti-racist. Those who choose to be our elected representatives have a particular responsibility to educate themselves and ensure they do not spread hate." Ms Woolnouggh did not offer comment specifically on the material posted by Cllr Smollen.

Cllr Smollen explained to us that he deleted the post in question prior to running in the 2019 local elections but that a screenshot had been taken by one individual. "I actually deleted this post a few years ago when a member of my family brought my attention to it fearing that it could be used by others who might want to blacken my name when I entered the political world," Cllr Smollen admitted.

The image has since resurfaced on a number of occasions, including last weekend when it was brought to the attention of the Offaly Express.

"I was surprised when I discovered that a certain person had obviously trawled through my page and discovered that post from June 2012. Not only did he copy the post but hes been sharing it on his own Facebook page and on other public pages in order to smear my name," Cllr Smollen claimed.

"As I deleted the photo from my page, I have not given permission to anyone to share it." Cllr Smollen posted the image again publicly on his Facebook profile via a screenshot on Saturday, June 20, 2020.

"I have no idea why this person and a very small group of people have targeted me as I dont know any of them personally. Neither have I ever had dealings with any of them. Shamefully, in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign they have also been targeting members of my family and none of us know the reason why," he continued.

Cllr Smollen, who is the leader of the Irish Democratic Party, further defended himself by saying, "I fully believe that we are all created equal and my track record speaks for itself. For a number of years, I have been supporting families at the repossession courts not only in Tullamore and Portlaoise but in many locations throughout the country where families feel alone in what to almost all of them feels like a never-ending nightmare and a very uphill battle against the banks and their legal representatives in order to keep the roof over their heads.

"Many of the families Ive supported and got to know were non-native Irish families. I have no idea whether they are Muslim, Christian, Hindu or any other religion as it doesnt matter to me. All that does concern me is their physical and mental wellbeing and thats why I point them in the direction to where they can get help for free in their constant struggle against the banks that we were all forced to help bail out after the banking collapse of a decade ago.

"On many occasions after appearances in these repossession courts, I referred people of many nationalities to SOSAD, a suicide prevention and awareness charity in Tullamore which has now sadly closed its doors. Thankfully, we now have ACT (Accessible Counselling Tullamore) to fill the gap in mental health services."

He went on to say: "Since being elected as a County Councillor in Offaly in May 2019 I have engaged with the travelling community and am proud to say that I was successful in having a fresh water connection installed for them in an unauthorised site while they await being housed.

"Running water is something they didnt have there for about 20 years. I am still fighting to have electricity installed as many families with children reside in them. If we are to think of ourselves as decent people we cannot ignore the needs of travellers and their children and we cannot continue to ignore the inequalities that they suffer on a daily basis. Children deserve to have an education and without electricity or running water how can we expect them to achieve anything."

Cllr Smollen also said he has "fought for the rights of refugees through the fact that I was the only councillor that demanded access to The Marian Hostel Direct Provision Centre before they arrived. When that invitation was not forthcoming, I was again the only councillor that pursued the matter until we were allowed in to inspect the facilities and ensure they were of the highest standard."

Referring to his ongoing food appeal initiative, Cllr Smollen said: "Every day for the last few years I have been visiting families with food supplies in Offaly and all of our seven surrounding counties plus Co Longford. Some of these families are not of Irish origin and are of very many different races, religions and nationalities. I have received great support from hundreds of people and businesses in Offaly, Westmeath, Laois, Tipperary, Kildare and Longford and Im proud and grateful that Ive received a lot of help from organisations in the non-white community."

He went on to claim that "a small group of people are now involved in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign of intimidation and abuse" against him, his family and those who support and help him.

"Its obvious that they are intent on smearing my name and causing damage to my reputation," he said, adding that he also now believes some in local mainstream media outlets have also targeted him unfairly with "only two of them being in any way interested in helping to highlight the awful food poverty crisis that exists in Ireland. He claims one reporter called him 'Hitler' at a gathering after his election to the council in 2019.

Cllr Smollen even cited the recent #BeKind campaign in his statement: "Recently, we have had the #BeKind campaign but it does not apply if you have the temerity to voice an opinion that does not fall in line. I will continue to highlight injustice wherever and whenever it is brought to my attention  this being the reason that the people of the Tullamore Municipal District placed their trust in me by giving me their vote," he concluded.
T he Government has been heavily defeated in the Lords over demands to put environmental sustainability at the heart of post-Brexit fishing policy.

Peers backed a cross-party amendment to the Fisheries Bill aimed at making this the prime objective to prevent over-fishing and damage to the marine environment.

The Lords approved the amendment by 310 votes to 251, majority 59, in the report stage debate on the legislation and peers voted remotely and in Parliament.

The Bill enables the UK to become an independent coastal state post-Brexit, with foreign fishing boats barred from fishing in UK waters unless licensed to do so.

But independent crossbencher Lord Krebs said that, as currently drafted, it did not guarantee the protection of fish stocks and the wider marine environment.

Take back control: A fisherman protests against an earlier Brexit withdrawal agreement / PA

To be absolutely sure the Bill does what it claims to say on the tin, lets get the commitment to protecting the natural environment written into it, he said.

Lord Krebs, a former chairman of the Food Standards Agency, said whenever there was a trade-off between short-term economic and employment considerations and long-term environmental sustainability, short-term factors nearly always won.

This is what has led to over-fishing and long-term damage to the marine environment in many of the worlds fisheries.

He said this was Parliaments big chance to get the management of our fisheries on a genuinely sustainable footing and avoid the mistakes of the past.

Backing the move for the Opposition, Baroness Jones of Whitchurch said sustainability of Britains fishing stock must be the number one priority.

Lady Jones said: It leaves behind the deals and the compromises that were an inevitable part of the common fisheries policy and will put our fisheries on more long-term assured footing, with fish stocks to fish for generations to come.

The House of Lords / AP

But Environment, Food and Rural Affairs minister Lord Gardiner of Kimble warned the amendment would undermine the Bills carefully balanced approach to sustainability.

Lord Gardiner said peers were all seeking the same thing  a vibrant and sustainable fishing industry with a greatly improved marine environment.

The industry could only be viable if it was environmentally sustainable and this was why the Bill gave equal weight to environmental, social and economic considerations, he added.

He said the amendment would create a hierarchy of objectives and mean that in any circumstances short-term environmental considerations would need to override even critical economic and social needs.

Lord Gardiner warned the change could have a severe impact on parts of the UK fishing industry and could lead to the closure of mixed fisheries where most fish stocks were at a sustainable level but some were in recovery.
A popular musician and multiple award winning Nigerian artiste, Dapo Oyebanjo popularly called Dbanj, has been accused by a lady, Seyitan Babatayo, of rape. According to the victim, the rape occurred in 2018 at Glee Hotel Victoria Island Lagos.

According to the initial narrative by Benjamin Ese, friend to Seyitan, DBanj drove all the way from Eko hotel where he was lodged and came down to Glee hotel in Victoria Island at midnight 2.40 am and collected the spare key from the receptionist, got into my friends room and forcefully threatened he would walk her out of the room naked, kept his fingers in her vagina and repeatedly raped her.

Ese alleged that Dbanj had earlier offered to have sexual intercourse with the said lady at the cost of N200,000 but the victim refused, and after the music show, she retired to Glee Hotel before Dbanj forced himself into the place and had unauthorized carnal knowledge of her.

Dbanj-Seyitan-rape-allegation | PageOne

It should be noted that Babatayo probably never wanted an issue from the rape except that the culprit should apologize. Therefore, all these theories of the lady looking for Dbanjs money are another theory from hell fire. The victim never reported to the police, she needed just a remorseful apology to forget the ugly incidence and move on with her life, and what she got from Dbanj and the Nigerian police was harassment, detention, intimidation and lawsuit.

Babatayos solicitors, Ojoge, Omileye, and Partners, while demanding a public apology from Dbanj on behalf of the alleged victim said We need to state that our client is not concerned about the media in the pursuit of her justice. All she wanted is to heal from her hurt and live the normal life she was living before the unfortunate event of December 31, 2018,

Dbanj procured the services of controversial and foremost Senior Advocate of Nigeria to slam a libel suit of N100 million naira on the victim. Dbanjs solicitor, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), asked his accuser to make a payment of N100m within 48 hours or face legal action.

The letter reads in part, We have been instructed to demand and we so hereby demand from you the following: That your client makes an outright apology and a total retraction of each and every false allegation made against and concerning our client.

The said apology and retraction shall be published in four national dailies with wide circulation in Nigeria as well as on social media platforms and handles being used by your client and her hirelings. That your client makes a compensatory deposit of the sum of N100m only through this chambers in favour of our client to assuage his battered image.

In addition to the intimidating and spurious law suit, the matter took another turn on Wednesday, when Babatayo was reportedly arrested by policemen from Sodipo Command, Ikeja. Babatayo equally told a Nigerian actress and presenter, Dorcas Shola-Fapson, that she was detained for over 24 hours and kept in a cell with criminals.

She alleged that Dbanj told her that she paid Mike Ozhekome N25 million naira for the suit and that she has no chance against him. The victim was also forced to delete all her tweets with Dbanj and recant the rape allegation or she would be abandoned to criminals.

This is the height of irresponsible behavior of the police. This lady was forced to delete her tweets, and turn to advert executive for Dbanj new music which she was said to be promoting on her social handle. The police abandoned this lady in cell with criminals; she was probably slapped and maltreated by the criminals. The lesbian inmates in the cell might have molested her. She was abandoned for more than 24 hours without any bath, against the laws of the land, because a wealthy artist was throwing money around.

There is no rationale for Seyitan Babatayo to be arrested and detained in cell in the first instance. The police are trying to harass and intimidate her into submission. That is not the purpose hundreds of billions of naira is budgeted to the police annually, to harass and intimidate victims. There is no rationale for the lady to be forced at the police station to delete all her tweets, if not to cover up a crime.

A lot of rape cases have been reported in Nigeria in recent times. Within the space of two weeks two undergraduates aged 22 were raped and murdered in Benin and Ibadan respectively. Another student aged 18 was raped and killed at Ibadan. Till now, none of the culprits have been apprehended by the police.

Refreshing from a piece I wrote after the brutal church rape of Vera Uwaila at RCCG Church Benin titled Covid-19 Rape, Murder in RCCG Church: Disgrace to Christendom I warned that

A faithful church worker by name Uwaila Vera Omozuwa, 22- year-old and 100-level student of the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Benin, Edo state, Nigeria was murdered on Wednesday 27th May, 2020, inside the Ikpoba Hill branch of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Benin, Edo State. This is not a denominational problem; it is just a warning strike from the kingdom of darkness to the Nigerian church that they have arrived. Before the church receives more strikes, let them employ the services of all the spiritual resources at their disposal to ensure that the criminals, murderers and privies are apprehended.

Immediately after my post, my attention was drawn to the case of rape of a 4 year old girl raped by a 73-year-old retired army Captain, Bassey Ekanem in Calabar. Another 7 year old girl in Onitsha was raped by a 20-year old man named Chikwado Anijiofor . Rape is mountain everywhere in Nigeria. They are raping, filming and killing at the same time. Nigeria has entered into a Rape Pandemic. The kingdoms of darkness have started firing from all angles. The worst is that the police are now harassing and intimidating rape victims. It is not acceptable.

A Commissioner in Kogi State kidnapped and raped a blogger and online journalist by name Elizabeth Oyeniyi , in his house and the police is yet to intervene in the matter. The three murdered during rape cases mentioned above had not yielded any tangible arrest, conclusion or prosecution by the Nigerian police.

We are temporarily gladdened that the Inspector General of Police in Nigeria had asked the relevant department to investigate the Dbanj rape issue, after petitions from solicitors to the victim of alleged cover-up. We do hope that the police authorities will get to the root of the matter because the earlier orders by the police chief to fish out the murderers and rapists of Vera Uwaila and other victims is yet to yield fruit.

I want the relevant international agencies and nations especially the UN, US, UK to take note that there is attempt to cover rape cases in Nigeria because some top shots are involved. They should note that people are being raped everywhere in Nigeria and no meaningful prosecutions are taking place. We shall forward all the cases of recent rape and murder of minors, adult and the aged for them to note that wickedness is being covered up in Nigeria.

Dbanj had slammed a N100 million naira threat on an alleged rape victim. Let the law serve its purpose. Using the police again to detain and force the lady to delete evidences, in the midst of this national uproar, is an insult on our collective dignity, and that of all women. Let the police act responsible for once, and let the defenseless be defended. If at the end of the day, it was proven that the rape case was a set-up, let Babatayo face the music according to the statutes of the land.

Dbanj and the Nigerian police should act responsibly over this rape issue and save our psyche from further national insult.

Obinna Akukwe, Columnist, Activist, @obinnaakukwe

CC: Antonio Guterres ,Secretary-General of the United Nations
The Acting Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Hilliard Eta on Sunday said the party would not succumb to the nationwide c...





The Acting Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Hilliard Eta on Sunday said the party would not succumb to the nationwide clamour for it to convene an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.





Following the crisis rocking the ruling party, intensified by the suspension of Adams Oshiomhole as its National Chairman, there have been calls for the NEC meeting to resolve its myriad of challenges.





Deputy Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, had at the weekend cried out, urging President Buhari to act fast by at least calling for the partys emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting to address the leadership crisis rocking the party.





But addressing reporters in Abuja yesterday, Eta pointed out that if convened, a NEC meeting would violate the COVID-19 pandemic protocol prohibiting public gatherings, having over 120 members.





I do not believe there is anybody afraid or scared of convening NEC meeting. For those who want to build this party, who want this party to outlast this present government, they are such in number that there is no fear of convening NEC meeting, he said.





What has been militating against constituting NEC meeting in the recent past is, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic that has stopped everybody from gathering more than a certain number of persons.





As you are all aware, we have over 120 members of NEC and it would amount to breaking the COVID-19 protocol as established by the Nigerian authorities prohibiting gathering of more than 50 people at a time. It will take our breaking that protocol for us to have a NEC meeting, he said.





He, however, added that if it turns out that the party can have a waiver to convene the NEC, it could explore that, adding that nobody is afraid of having NEC meeting.





There is no way the ruling party will voluntarily disobey or break rules it is part of making, he insisted.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-23 05:14:20|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

GENEVA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN Human Rights Council on Monday adopted a China-sponsored resolution, calling upon all countries to uphold multilateralism and work together to promote mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of human rights.

The resolution, titled "Promoting mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of human rights," recognizes the importance of fostering international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and mutually beneficial cooperation, and of building a community of shared future for human beings in which human rights are enjoyed by all.

The resolution also calls upon all States and other stakeholders to undertake constructive and genuine dialogue and cooperation in the field of human rights, based on universality, impartiality, objectivity, indivisibility, non-selectivity, non-politicization, equality and mutual respect, with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, expanding common ground, narrowing differences and strengthening constructive cooperation.

Ambassador Chen Xu, head of the Chinese Mission to UN at Geneva, said while introducing the resolution that the epidemic of the novel coronavirus shows that in the face of global challenges, humanity is actually a community of shared future.

"We must strengthen international cooperation and practise multilateralism in order to overcome all kinds of global challenges and realize the well-being of all people," he said.

This is the second time that the UN rights body adopts a China-sponsored resolution on human rights cooperation. A similar resolution was adopted in 2018. Enditem
As coronavirus menace continues to spread in the National Capital, another incident of hostility towards policemen and volunteers rendering duties amid the COVID times was reported in the state. A group of people residing in the coronavirus containment zone in Delhi allegedly attacked policemen and civil volunteers on Sunday following an argument over barricades. The incident took place in a containment zone of Delhi's Naraina area in which some people suffered minor injuries, reports claim.

READ | Delhi's COVID-19 tally nears 60,000-mark; Authorities to strengthen containment strategy

According to reports, the police and the volunteers had gone to distribute food and supplies in the containment zone. During this time, some residents demanded to remove the barricades placed by the authorities to keep a check on the movement of the people in the zone and avoid the spread of coronavirus. The argument over the barricade removal issue soon turned into violence.

After reporting 10 Coronavirus cases in the WZ block of the area, the authorities declared it as a containment zone.

READ | Committee suggests quarantining contacts of COVID-19 cases, re-mapping of containment zones in Delhi

Many such incidents have been reported in the past where the essential service workers, doctors, police and health workers have faced hostilities from the masses while serving amid the pandemic. In March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned those harassing the essential service workers and COVID frontline warriors and said the culprits will face police action.

Meanwhile, the central government, earlier this month, announced several lockdown relaxations across the country in phase-wise manner which included the opening of malls, restaurants, and places of worship following precautionary rules. However, the lockdown in containment zones was not eased and the residents of these areas are not allowed outside their houses except for essential services or emergencies.

READ | Ensure verification of COVID cases within 24 hours: Delhi govt to DMs

Meeting held to tackle COVID situation in Delhi

In the latest development, to tackle the coronavirus situation in Delhi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah conducted a meeting with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal on Sunday. During the meeting, it was decided to conduct more robust contact tracing, revamp the entire containment zone strategy and strengthen medical services in areas most affected by the virus. A serological survey was also announced in the state for a two week period between June 27 and July 10 wherein more than 20,000 people will be tested for COVID-19.

COVID-19 situation in Delhi

Delhi has so far has reported 59,746 coronavirus cases and 2,175 death, is among the worst hit parts of the country, according to the latest Delhi health department bulletin.

READ | Central govt announces two week serological survey in New Delhi to redraw COVID strategy
This weekend, the Trump-presidency news cycle called back to its beginnings with a silly debate about crowd size, this time with 100-percent less Sean Spicer. On Saturday, Trump held a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his first since COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, suspended in-person campaigning. Ahead of time, Brad Parscale, Trumps campaign manager, said more than a million people had registered to attend. In the end, only around 6,000 supporters showed, per local fire officials; two thirds of the arenas capacity went unfilled, and Trump nixed plans to address an overflow space outside. Parscale blamed radical protestors and apocalyptic media coverage for scaring away would-be rally-goers. News organizations reported that users of the video app TikTok had inflated attendance expectations by registering for tickets they had no intention of using; online, there was debate around whether this constituted activism or a prank (as the New York Times and others called it), and the extent of the impact it had on the turnout (probably minimal). Whatever caused it, the emptiness echoed through coverage. The Washington Post ran the headline, Trump rallies in red-state Americaand faces a sea of empty blue seats. A photo by the Posts Jabin Botsford illustrated that point.

Even without the TikTok activism, the rally was a debacle from pre-start to post-finish. Many observersincluding health officials and the editorial board of the Tulsa Worldsaid it shouldnt have happened at all, due to the risks of COVID-19; in the hours before the rally, we learned that six staffers working on it had tested positive for the disease. Trump reportedly was furious that that news got out. The rally was initially scheduled for Friday, which meant it would have clashed with Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery in Texas; Trump changed the rally date (and tried to take credit for making Juneteenth very famous), but still faced criticism for holding it in Tulsa, the site of one of the worst acts of racist violence in US history. Trump didnt mention that context during the rally; nor did he mention George Floyd, whose recent killing by police in Minneapolis sparked massive protests nationwide. The president did disparage Rep. Ilhan Omar and the country from where she came, use a racist slur to describe the coronavirus, and say that he wanted testing to be slowed down because it illustrates viral spread. His aides later insisted the last remark was a joke. He also spent nearly 15 minutes lashing out at media coverage of his unsteady ramp-walking and water-drinking at West Point last weekend.

ICYMI: Why we capitalize Black (and not white)

Yesterday, all these details jostled for room in the news cycle amid other big Trump-related stories. One of them involved Geoffrey Berman, the top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. On Friday night (yes, again), William Barr, the attorney general, said Berman was resigning. Berman said he wasnt resigning, so on Saturday, Barr said Trump had fired Bermanbut Trump then said it was all Barrs doing. The reasons for the firing remain murky, but Bermans office had investigated Trump associates Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani. Another big story involved John Bolton, the former national security adviser, and his new book, The Room Where It Happened, in which Bolton claims, among other things, that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win reelection, and said that it was okay for Xi to put Muslims in detention camps. On Saturday, a judge rejected Trumps efforts to stall publication of the book, in part because the key details had already escaped. The judge also said that Bolton had gambled with national security, and violated an agreement with the White House by curtailing its prepublication review of the book. Bolton could now lose his book profits, or worse.

In short, it was another manic weekend. As the Trump presidency has advanced, a news cycle which, at any given moment, has felt impossibly saturated somehow continues to take on water at a quickening rate. Developments that previously dominated lengthy news cyclesTrump allegedly asking a foreign power for election help, Trump making racist remarks about a Congresswoman and her birthplace, Trump firing a prosecutor known to be probing too close to homeget compressed, or lost. The slew of facts can induce whiplash. So, too, can the ever-changing tone of what were watching. One moment were appalled by an apparent admission of massive presidential negligence in the handling of a deadly pandemic, the next were being told to lighten up. One moment Trump is being racist, the next hes proving he can drink water with one hand then tossing the glass triumphantly to the side. One moment the government is assaulting peaceful protesters, the next Trump is posing, awkwardly, with a Bible in front of a gaggle of bemused reporters. Rarely have such dark times felt so clownish.

How should news coverage account for the deluge, and its sudden temperature changes? The most useful coverage of the Trump era is that which has sought to observe the moment through a moral lens. That approach was visible over the weekenda number of journalists and outlets pointed out, for example, the gross symbolism of Trump choosing to rally in Tulsa, and that his testing joke wasnt funny (and likely wasnt even a joke). Consistency, however, remains an issue; as per usual, we also saw the weekends many outrages through the less useful lenses of campaign strategy and Beltway politicking. The recent protests and reckoning over racial injustice have caused many journalists to reassess the organizing principles of their coverage. Race is far from the only area where the view-from-nowhere approach has been proven deficient.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

The size of a crowd, in particular, can have moral dimensionsone need only look as far as the protests and the mechanisms by which COVID-19 spreads between bodies to see that. Some coverage assessed Trumps Tulsa crowd on the latter terms. Much of the crowd coverage, however, felt like a relic of the age of Spicer. Crowd size is not, in itself, a useful or reliable moral metric. Centering it risks dragging the conversation onto Trumps showman-style turf, even if the intention of doing so is to show him up. What the president says matters more.

Below, more on Trump:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: A new group devoted to transparency is exposing secrets Wikileaks chose to keep

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.
George Floyds tragic death at the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has sent shockwaves through an America understandably outraged and traumatized by the unnecessarily fatal episode. Public unrest has spurred political action. In Washington, both Democrats and Republicans have pulled together fast-track legislation aimed at police reform  the Justice in Policing Act and the JUSTICE Act (Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere Act), respectively.

The lead sponsor of the Republican bill, Senator Tim Scott (S.C.), is one of only two African-American men in the upper chamber (and the only black Republican). Hes done an admirable job on a short timeframe. His bill is a better approach overall than the Democratic alternative, a well-intentioned effort that nevertheless overreaches in some areas, with very real public-safety costs in the balance. The Republican bill is generally more modest  seeking data and transparency when solutions arent clear  but is still a significant effort aimed at addressing more clearly defined problems.

Still, the GOP bill could be improved. There are some ways in which the bill probably does not go far enough, and others in which it may go too far. And it omits an important area of focus, included in the Democrats bill, that Republicans should address.

Where could the Republican bill go further? It could do more to constrain no-knock warrants, which authorize police to enter a dwelling forcefully, and without notice, often in the late-night or early-morning hours. There is certainly a case for such tactics in at least some cases. Organized-crime hideouts, for example, are often heavily armed. The Democrats approach  a complete ban on no-knock raids in all drug cases  would unnecessarily risk officer safety.

No-knock warrants are probably overused  sometimes tragically, including in the case of Breonna Taylor, whose name is affixed to the corresponding section of Senator Scotts legislation. Consider also a 2014 raid in which police threw a flashbang grenade into the bedroom of Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh in Wisconsin. The grenade landed in the crib of their 18-month-old toddler, who took the brunt of the flashbangs blast, suffering a collapsed lung as well as severe burns to his face and chest; the child was in a medically induced coma for more than five weeks, and the family faced $1 million in medical bills. The target of their investigation did not live at the residence and was not there when police performed the raid.

Story continues

The Republicans JUSTICE Act uses Congresss spending powers to encourage police departments to meet various reporting requirements relating to no-knock warrants. Such data would be useful, but there is room for more here. Congress should also push police departments to require a high-level commanding officer to sign off on any no-knock warrant. Judges already must approve, as required by the federal Constitutions Fourth Amendment, but they may lack the capacity to weigh safety-risk tradeoffs and may give police undue latitude. Requiring a commanding officer to sign off  and assume public accountability in the event things go awry  would help deter overuse of no-knock warrants.

While the JUSTICE Act could go further on no-knock warrants, it may go too far on the controversial use of neck restraints  or chokeholds, as theyre more commonly known. Theres certainly no case for applying full body pressure on an unresisting suspects neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds  the indefensible use of force that killed George Floyd. But just as no-knock warrants probably have legitimate uses in at least some cases, neck restraints can be a way for a police officer to gain control of a resisting suspect, avoiding deadlier applications of force.

We dont have a lot of data here. We dont really know, for example, just how likely it is that temporary application of a neck restraint, for the purpose of securing a suspect, will result in serious injury or death. Its vital to gather more data.

We do know one thing, however: Shooting a suspect with a gun is much deadlier than using a neck restraint. The JUSTICE Act doesnt go as far as the Democrats bill, which would ban neck restraints in all cases; the JUSTICE Act limits such restraints to cases in which deadly force is required. But such deadly-force situations also would offer a complete defense to officers shooting a suspect. If officers options for securing a resisting suspect are limited, either the Democrats or the Republicans bill could unintentionally lead to more police shootings. The dramatic reduction of such shootings over time is an unappreciated success. In New York City, for example, the number of individuals wounded and the number of individuals killed by police using a firearm each fell 90 percent between 1971 and 2016. We dont want to see that trend reverse itself.

Conspicuously absent from the JUSTICE Act is any mention of qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that the Democrats bill would eliminate as applied to police. The Democrats bill may go too far, but the Republicans should nonetheless address the issue.

Qualified immunity shields police officers (and other government officials), under certain conditions, from lawsuits based on an 1871 federal law. The 1871 statute enables citizens to collect money damages from state and local government for violations of constitutional rights. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that government officials couldnt be sued for actions that were not known to be unconstitutional at the time: It wouldnt allow a lawsuit against police officers for acting in 1961 to enforce a law that was declared unconstitutional in court four years later.

Both critics and defenders of qualified-immunity doctrine tend to overstate its practical importance  at least with respect to police use of force. The doctrine does nothing to shield officers from criminal prosecution or disciplinary actions. Most lawsuits against police uses of force and other alleged misconduct dont involve the federal constitution. And even when they do, qualified immunity usually doesnt matter: In a 2017 article in the Yale Law Journal, professor Joanna Schwartz (a critic of the doctrine) found that qualified immunity was the basis for dismissal or summary judgment in less than 4 percent of the cases she sampled.

That qualified immunity isnt used often doesnt mean that it doesnt matter at all. It also doesnt mean that the Supreme Court got it right, or that Congress should avoid the issue. As mentioned, the underlying statute was enacted in 1871  decades before the modern Federal Rules of Civil Procedure made federal lawsuits much easier to file, imposing sizable discovery costs on defendants, win or lose. Congress should legislate a standard, rather than leave it up to unelected judges.

It makes little sense to hold government officials liable for actions based on changes in the law. When the Supreme Court announced, in the 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona, that police officers had to read criminal suspects their rights, it would have made little sense to allow lawsuits against officers who hadnt done so in 1965. Police departments arent Supreme Court seers, and they wont change their behavior based on unknown future changes in the law. Such lawsuits would act as little more than a tax on policing  one ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

In some cases, however, the doctrine of qualified immunity has been used to shield police from liability when the contours of the general legal concepts at issue are clear, but the specific factual circumstances are different. Judges have dismissed lawsuits based on trivial factual distinctions between an officers actions and earlier cases that established a clear legal principle. Congress might helpfully clarify that the qualified-immunity doctrine applies only to clear changes in legal rights  not idiosyncratic fact patterns.

Although we think the JUSTICE Act could be improved, we appreciate the effort Senator Scott has made to craft a thoughtful legislative reform proposal in such a short time. In a country of 330 million people, well never eliminate the possibility of police misconduct, any more than well be able to eliminate violent crime. That doesnt mean we cant do better.

James R. Copland is a senior fellow and the director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Rafael A. Mangual is a fellow and the deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

More from National Review
A teen was enjoying a day at the beach near North Carolina's Cape Hatteras when he was attacked by a shark just 25 feet from the shore.

Last Thursday, Nick Arthur, 16, and his sister were standing in the water jumping over waves when Nick began screaming. He recalled to local outlet WGHP: "I tried lifting my leg up out of the water, and I saw, 'Oh, my God, its a 5-foot-long shark attached to my leg.'"

"My hands were bleeding," Nick continued. "There was just lots of blood and sand all mixed together. I couldn't really see what was going on. My fingers were all scratched up because I was trying to pry its mouth open."

Nick Arthur, 16, was attacked by a shark last Thursday. (Tim Arthur)

His sister swam to get help, and his father returned. They tried hitting the shark repeatedly, but it only let go when Nick's father kicked it in the nose. Nick sustained 40 puncture wounds to his leg but no serious damage.

Nick Arthur did not sustain any

Nick's story comes just weeks after two fishermen saw a great white shark circling their boat near Ocean City, Maryland. And in May, Ben Kelly, a 26-year-old surfer from a beach community in Santa Cruz, California, died after a great white attacked him. Kelly was the first person to be killed by a shark in Northern California since 2004.

That said, NBC's Kerry Sanders said Monday that fewer shark attacks have been reported this year likely because of beach closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. There are usually around 80 shark attacks every year; so far, there have been 18 documented shark bites reported worldwide with at least seven in the U.S.

"The odds (of a shark attack), I always say, are really, really, really low," Joel Fodrie, an associate professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told TODAY.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't worry about sharks during your next beach day. One precaution you should always take is to be within range of someone who can assist you when you're in the water, Sanders reported.

As Nick explained it, "No one thinks it's gonna happen to them until it happens to them."
'Modi's finest political legacy ought to be a border settlement with Beijing,' asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist party of China, at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, July 27, 2018. Photograph: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

The controversy (external link) over Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's remarks at the all-party conference in New Delhi on June 19 regarding the border clashes with China will only have limited shelf life.

All this brouhaha becomes quintessentially an affair of the elites living in the Indian capital. Broadly, those who call into question Modi's remarks are largely limited to those who will criticise Modi anyway for anything and everything he does or speaks.

They belong to two categories -- the Congress party and the section of intellectuals who stand alienated due to the Bharatiya Janata Party government's ideology and its high-handed methods while in power and its divisive politics.

One may add to it certain fringe elements, namely, the virulently anti-China and pro-American lobbies (who often overlap) among ex-bureaucrats, retired army officers, media persons and our exotic clutch of 'think tankers'.

The all-party conference revealed that Sonia Gandhi cut a lone figure while prominent leaders like Mamata Bannerjee, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray were basically supportive of the government's stance.

But on the positive side, even Sonia Gandhi, while she resorted to sustained sniping at Modi, carefully refrained from advocating that the Indian military should 'strike back' at China.

This is important to note: The nation is not seeking a war with China.

Even our self-styled 'Socialists' from UP and Bihar, a vanishing breed who claim lineage from the late Ram Manohar Lohia -- who was weaned on blind anti-Communism and a pro-American mindset -- have not urged the government to proceed on a 'forward policy' or take 'police action' against the PLA.

This is a notable departure in comparison with the situation prevailing in India in the late 1950s and early 1960s and it has profound implications for the future trajectory of India-China relations.

The fact of the matter is that there is a strong awareness in our country that a war with China cannot be 'won', but could be catastrophic for India's future.

Second, China's 'soft power' has palpably increased, stemming out of the average Indian's growing exposure to that country's stunning economic success, plus, of course, the remarkable turnaround in Chinese attitudes in the recent decades that are no longer adversarial, but desiring intense business partnerships and people-to-people exchanges.

Having phenomenally outstripped India in development through the post-Cold War decades, China has no reason to regard India as a 'rival'.

Its focus is on getting a due place in the international system, which translates on the one hand as presenting itself as the principal driver of globalisation in the world and, on the other hand, negotiating an equal and predictable partnership with the West.

IMAGE: Modi and Xi at the Shore Temple in Mahabalipuram, October 11, 2019. Photograph: ANI Photo

The European Union's High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell was spot on when he recently underscored this after the EU-China Strategic Dialogue (external link) on June 9:

'I understand that for China, to be presented as a systemic rival, is something that looks a little bit controversial. We have to explain what we mean by that and try to express how complex our relationship is, on which things we are disappointed, on which points we need to improve our relations, mainly on the economic side and on the human rights side...

'I think that it is important also to show our common understanding on many things. For example, on the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, it is clear that there we have an important convergence of positions.

'On Afghanistan, we share the same interest of ensuring the stability of the country once the retreat of the American troops has taken effect and the negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban reach an end.

'On Africa, cooperation to fight coronavirus, debt relief and all efforts to increase cooperation. In order to fight against the pandemic, the world needs more cooperation and less confrontation...

'It is clear that we do not have the same political system. It is clear that China defends its political system as we do with ours. It is clear that China has a global ambition. But, at the same time, I do not think that China is playing a role that can threaten world peace.

'They committed once and again to the fact that they want to be present in the world and play a global role, but they do not have military ambitions and they do not want to use force and participate in military conflicts. What do we mean by "rivalry"?

'Well, let's go over this word. Sometimes, there are differences on interests and on values. That is a fact of life. It is also a fact of life that we have to cooperate, because you cannot imagine how we can solve the climate challenge without strong cooperation with China.

'You cannot build a multilateral world without China participating in it effectively, not in a "Chinese way", but in a way that can be accepted by everybody. I think these kind of explanations are good, because I can tell you that we have talked a lot about what it means to be a "systemic rival".'

My belief is that Modi belongs to the same school as Borrell -- or Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron -- on China.

Put differently, Modi certainly co-relates China's rise to India's political economy with realism and far more astutely than Nehru or any of his predecessors did.

However, the pursuit of such a practical, down-to-earth vision has not been easy through the past 6-year period, especially since various interest groups within the Indian establishment and the ultranationalist ideologues within the Sangh Parivar pose resistance -- and, to complicate matters further, these forces often coalesce.

For obvious reasons, it is too much to expect the Congress party to lend a hand to Modi to develop a middle ground regarding China.

Therefore, Modi's best bet today is that Indian capitalism has warmed up (external link)to the hidden charms of China's State capitalism.

As for the Indian majority of silent opinion, Modi's China policies would have acceptability, given his vast political capital personally, which is unlikely to be depleted anytime soon.

Suffice to say, the traumatic developments of the past few weeks in Ladakh (here and here) (external link) should give impetus to pull all stops to seek a durable resolution of the border problem with China.

Only Modi is capable of taking the bull by the horns.

It is unlikely that Indian politics will witness the emergence of such a towering figure in the foreseeable future who can take difficult decisions and, more importantly, get them accepted by the nation.

To my mind, Modi's finest political legacy ought to be a border settlement with Beijing, which will go a long way to facilitate India's transformation as a middle income country in a generation or two -- the point where China has reached today.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He is currently a member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.

Production: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
(ANSAmed) - PARIS, JUNE 22 - Ten children of French jihadists, all minors, arrived in France from Syria overnight Sunday, said the French foreign ministry. The children were in camps in northeast Syria under the control of the Kurds. They are orphans and are considered "humanitarian cases" and they will now be placed in the custody of the judicial authorities who will ensure they receive medical care and social services, as needed. Since the defeat of ISIS in March 2019, France has repatriated 28 children of jihadists from Syria. The government "thanked the semi-autonomous administration of the Kurds for their cooperation".(ANSAmed). (ANSA).
SpongeBob SquarePants fans are going to have to wait a lot longer to see the new movie in the kid-friendly franchise.

The animated feature had been due for release on May 22 but was pushed back to August 7 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, however, Paramount and Nickelodeon announced that The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run will not be released in theaters after all; instead, it will be made available for digital rental in early 2021 before streaming on subscription service CBS All Access.

Not coming soon: SpongeBob SquarePants fans are going to have to wait a lot longer to see the new movie in the kid-friendly franchise after its August 7 theatrical release was scrapped

Sponge on the Run features the voice talents of Keanu Reeves, Snoop Dogg and Awkwafina alongside the regular Spongebob crew of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass and Clancy Brown.

In the movie, Spongebob's beloved snail Gary is kidnapped and he and pal Patrick Star leave Bikini Bottom and head to the Lost City Of Atlantic City to try and rescue him.

It's the third film to be based on the hugely popular animated TV series that debuted on Nickelodeon in 1999.

It follows 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and 2015's The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Change: Paramount and Nickelodeon announced Monday SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run will be made available for digital rental in early 2021 before streaming on CBS All Access

Fun: Sponge on the Run features the voice talents of Keanu Reeves (pictured) alongside the regular Spongebob crew of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass and Clancy Brown

Animated adventure: In the movie, Spongebob's beloved snail Gary is kidnapped and he and pal Patrick Star leave Bikini Bottom and head to the Lost City Of Atlantic City to rescue him

CBS All Access has also acquired all of the TV seasons of the cartoon for streaming as part of a revamp announced last month.

The streaming service is rebranding and seeking to incorporate more films and programming from ViacomCBS' vast catalog which includes Paramount Pictures, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, Smithsonian and MTV channels.

A number of Hollywood movies, including Universal's Trolls World Tour, Warner Bros. animated adventure Scoob and Disney's Artemis Fowl, have headed to digital and skip a theatrical release after movie theatres across the U.S. were closed in March due to COVID-19.
OTTAWA, June 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Its a match one could say was made in heaven. The Native Womens Association of Canada (NWAC) is the national Indigenous organization that enhances, promotes, and fosters the social, economic, cultural, and political well-being of Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people. Small Town Artillery (STA) is a five-member rock band out of Vancouver, B.C., signed to JumpAttack! Records. Casey Koyczan is a Tlicho Dene interdisciplinary artist, actor, writer, filmmaker, and videographer from Yellowknife, NWT. Both STA and Casey are avid supporters of human rights, particularly Indigenous rights.

STA offered the use of its song Trauma Below  dedicated to all the mothers and family members who bear the burden of a missing or murdered daughter or an unresolved case, says lead vocalist Tom van Deursen  to NWAC. In turn, NWAC approached Casey to create a multi-media production to mark the summer solstice and National Indigenous Peoples Day on Sunday, June 21. A significant marker for Indigenous people and communities across Canada, the summer solstice symbolizes a time of renewal, of rejuvenation, and of growth.

Through virtual reality technology, the low-cost production captures the mountains and woodlands of B.C., as well as locations along the Highway of Tears, using virtual reality technology. The Highway of Tears, a 725-kilometre corridor of Highway 16 between B.C.s Prince George and Prince Rupert, which has been the location of many murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls beginning in 1970.

STAs song calls up memories of all the mothers, sisters, and grandmothers who have lost loved ones to violence:

Take her hand now in yours and

just be there

be the mountain, be the chief

I hope you never

know these

headwaters, heartaches

of a mothers grief



how many girls lost

on the highway

how many searchlights

that could not see

still is the water

hiding a secret

justice for Tina

we keep saying her name

Trauma Below is rendered even more poignant and raw by the fusing of images from the Highway of Tears with key facts about cultural genocide and violence facing Indigenous women and girls. Before colonization, assimilation, and discrimination, Indigenous women were revered in their societies, says NWAC President Lorraine Whitman. Our women face grotesquely disproportionate rates of murder, violence, and abuse. When we demand that this crisis ends, we are not only asking that our women stop being murdered but we also yearn for a time when we are treated as equal, valued members of society.

Is this the beginning of renewal for Indigenous women and girls in Canada? Perhaps the words in Trauma Below are a harbinger of a new road ahead:

so were pushing it

as far as it goes

it took a mother to show us the road

You can view the video at Trauma Below: A video honouring all missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
BEIRUT - The main al-Qaida-linked group in Syria on Monday detained one of its own former commanders who had defected and set up his own hard-line outfit earlier this year after coming out against a cease-fire, opposition activists said.

The activists said a big force from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, raided the house of Jamal Zeina, better known as Abu Malek al-Tali, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Idlib and detained him.

Al-Tali was behind major operations for the group that used to be known as Nusra Front, including the December 2013 kidnapping of 12 Orthodox nuns from Maaloula, a Christian village in Syria that insurgents controlled for few months during the countrys nine-year conflict. Nusra Front exchanged the nuns four months later with women held in Syrian government prisons.

In 2014, militants under al-Talis command briefly stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured more than two dozen Lebanese soldiers and policemen. Nusra Front exchanged the troops it was holding with prisoners held in Lebanon.

Al-Tali, a Syrian citizen, is known to be a hard-liner who is opposed to a truce reached in March between Russia and Turkey that stopped a Syrian government offensive on Idlib province, the last remaining rebel stronghold in the country. The three-month offensive under the cover of Russian airstrikes killed hundreds and sent a million people fleeing toward the Turkish border.

Al-Tali defected in April and set up his own group that became close to al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din group, Arabic for Guardians of Religion. Horas al-Din are hardcore al-Qaida elements who broke away from HTS.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al-Tali defected from HTS in April, adding that he had personally acquired large sums of money from the deal to release the nuns.

The Shaam Newtork, an activist collective, said al-Tali and other former HTS commanders have been opposed to recent policies adopted by the groups top commander, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has been taking cautious steps since Turkey sent thousands of soldiers into Idlib earlier this year.

Al-Talis son, Orwa, was shot dead in 2017 in an apparent internal feud between militants in northwest Syria.

Elsewhere in Syria on Monday, a senior Kurdish official said 10 French children of detained or deceased Islamic State fighters were handed over to a delegation representing the French Foreign Ministry. Abdulkarim Omar tweeted that the handover took place in the Qamishli region on Sunday.

Thousands of IS members and their families are in camps and detention centres in northern Syria, including more than 60,000 mostly women and children held at al-Hol camp in Hasakeh province. Although most of the women and children are from Iraq or Syria, there are about 8,000 from third countries.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed concern Monday over the plight of thousands of so-called third country nationals stranded in Syria.

She called for urgent action to be taken by their home countries in view of serious limitations on access to humanitarian aid, as well as risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

I very much welcome that some countries of origin have started repatriating their nationals  and are showing more openness to repatriating young children and orphans, Bachelet said. But the fact remains that thousands of people, mostly women and children, are unable to return to their own countries of nationality or origin.

She said states should assume responsibility for all of their nationals, in accordance with their obligations under international law.
How will COVID-19 end? Decisively, with a vaccine, or slowly, with herd immunity? Will it downshift to a recurring nuisance and a manageable condition? Or will we see an amalgam of endgames, varying by time and place?

Perhaps New Orleanians 150 years ago pondered similar questions about the dreaded pestilence of their era, yellow fever. Though it plagued the region repeatedly since the late 1700s, and elsewhere since the 1600s, the basic causes of the disease remained largely a mystery into the late 1800s.

Most researchers theorized at the time that moisture, heat and decaying organic matter gave rise to yellow fever, and that in New Orleans, such noxious miasmas emanated principally from swamps and marshes.

In 1834, seven physicians organized the Medical College of Louisiana to train young doctors in treating yellow fever, cholera, malaria, smallpox and other diseases. A success, the private college shifted to state control as the University of Louisiana in 1847, and soon developed an impressive campus on the present-day 900 block of Common Street.

That same summer, 2,600 people perished in the latest yellow fever epidemic, the worst to date.

That figure more than tripled during the summer of 1853, the worst in New Orleans history, when 7,849 died. Another 5,000 lost their lives over the two subsequent summers, followed by 4,855 in 1858, the second-worst in the citys history. Official figures were all likely undercounts of actual deaths, possibly by wide margins. By comparison, the coronavirus pandemic had claimed the lives of 511 New Orleanians as of Thursday, in a city population two to three times larger than it was in the 1850s.

Wave of study

The epidemics of the 1850s motivated a wave of new research from the doctors of the University of Louisiana and at the Board of Health, which had appointed a Sanitary Commission to study the 1853 outbreak. Those efforts, led by Dr. Edward Hall Barton, used more sophisticated statistical methods to tease out relationships among weather conditions, standing water, soil-disturbance events, and the chronology of yellow fever cases and deaths.

Their meticulous graphs and tables bear a haunting semblance to the sort of daily COVID-19 data reports weve all become accustomed to seeing since March.

Barton and his colleagues were clearly on to something about yellow fever  there was some sort of relationship to stagnant water and poor urban sanitation. But the doctors could not quite pinpoint the causative factor or the mechanism of spread. Was yellow fever contagious person to person? From environment to person? From the dead to the living?

Those basic questions remained unanswered 20 years later, when the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 killed as many as 20,000 people throughout the Mississippi Valley, including 5,000 in Memphis, 4,056 in New Orleans and 3,200 in Mississippi.

While the scourge appears to have spread domestically from New Orleans, it probably arrived here from Havana, Cuba, which over the centuries had endured relentless yellow fever plagues.

The disease being endemic to both cities, the U.S.-Havana Yellow Fever Commission decided in 1879 to unite researchers from New Orleans with their counterparts in the contested Spanish colony of Cuba. Getting the international experts in the same room would allow them to share experiences, compare notes, debate theories and possibly collaborate on a solution.

Chairing the commission was Dr. Stanford Emerson Chaille, a physiologist with the University of Louisiana School of Medicine, who brought along a medical student named Rudolph Matas, a Louisianian of Catalonian descent.

In Havana, the delegates met a commanding figure by the name of Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay, a 46-year-old Franco-Scot-Cuban scientist whom Matas later described as the model of exemplary wisdom, of the laborious worker wealthy in strength of knowledge, in rectitude of principles, in conscientiousness and intellectual integrity.

A new theory

Finlay had been studying yellow fever in Cuba since the early 1860s, and his more recent work seemed to subvert the conventional wisdom. Yes, urban sanitation was important, for various health reasons. But did urban filth and stagnant water actually cause yellow fever? Sanitary measures generally adopted to prevent the spread of yellow fever, wrote Dr. Juan A. Del Regato, himself a famed Cuban physician, actually were inconsistent with a number of observed facts.

From Chailles pioneering work in New Orleans in the use of microscopic methods, Finlay gleaned the idea to examine tissue and lesions from yellow fever victims. What Finlay found led him to doubt that insalubrious vapors or miasmas played any role.

Finlay thus surmised that some independent vector was at work, something affiliated with poor urban sanitation that could also tap human blood vessels  all of which conditions, Finlay later wrote, the mosquito satisfied most admirably through its bite.

In 1880, according to an article by Dr. Enrique Chaves-Carballo in the journal Military Medicine, Finlay began his scientific testing. He chose to start with the Culex species, which was known to lay eggs in puddles and flourish in dense urban environments.

Determining that it was the female that sucked blood, Finlay and his assistant, Dr. Claudio Delgado, carefully harvested their eggs, hatched and nurtured the larvae to maturity, and exposed them to a human infected with yellow fever to obtain blood meals.

Now came the experiment. Having secured necessary authorization from the Spanish military to recruit 20 volunteer soldiers for the study, Finlay designated 15 to serve as experimental controls and subjected the other five to the female Culex that had bitten the yellow fever victim.

The first experimental subject, wrote Chaves-Carballo, was Francisco Beronat, a 22-year-old Spanish soldier, who was inoculated on June 30, 1881. Nine days later, he developed fever, jaundice, and albuminuria. Beronat soon recovered, and Finlay came away sensing he had found the likely culprit.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

He wrote up his findings and, on Aug. 14, 1881, presented The Mosquito Hypothetically Considered as the Agent of Transmission of Yellow Fever to the prestigious Spanish Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences at its meeting in Havana.

The response to Finlays mosquito hypothesis was devastating. It was greeted with incredulity and ridicule from his peers, who wholly rejected it.

Disappointed but undaunted

The medical establishments in Cuba and the U.S. returned to their entrenched theories regarding sanitation and miasmas, and thousands more would perish to yellow fever in the years to come.

Finlay, disappointed but undaunted, continued with his research, refining his hypothesis. Two Southern doctors  Matas, of Louisiana, and William Gorgas, of Alabama  advocated for Finlays work, keeping his ideas circulating in the medical discourse.

By the late 1890s, the U.S. had more direct interests in the Caribbean basin. Tropical fruit firms increasingly invested in the region; imperialist strains within the U.S. government eyed possible island colonies; and there was talk of constructing a canal across the Central American isthmus.

In 1898, war broke out with Spain. More U.S. soldiers would die of tropical diseases in Cuba than in the ensuing battles.

In 1900, the U.S. Army Fourth Yellow Fever Commission launched under the leadership of Maj. Walter Reed, and once again, American doctors set off to meet with their peers in Cuba, now on the path to independence following Spains defeat in the Spanish-American War.

The commissioners first stop in Havana? 110 Aguacate St., home to Carlos Juan Finlay, now 67 and still busy with his mosquito experiments. Apparently his American advocates had succeeded in keeping his name and research alive, in the wake of that 1881 humiliation.

The right people were finally in the same room  literally. Finlay was elated, wrote Chaves-Carballo, and regaled the visitors with a detailed exposition of his ideas, reprints of his publications, experimental notes, and documents related to his work. Finlay also showed them the eggs of the Culex mosquito, which an entomologist on the team confirmed to be Culex fasciatus.

Now edified with Finlays findings, the commissioners got to work with their own experiments at Quemados, Cuba, where an epidemic had been breaking out.

Things got off a rough start. One team member became infected by a trial Culex and became severely ill; another got bitten by a wild Culex and later died.

But under Reeds guidance, the commissioners were able to conduct critical tests and take a host of tissue, blood and organ samples, which Reed analyzed with the latest methods, in Cuba and in his lab in Washington. Reed was able to prove scientifically that Culex fasciatus was indeed the vector of the virus that caused yellow fever.

On Oct. 23, 1900, Reed presented his findings at the American Public Health Associations annual meeting in Indianapolis. He shared authorship of the paper, The Etiology of Yellow Fever  a Preliminary Note, with his colleagues James Carroll, A. Agromonte and Jesse Lazear, pointing out that Lazear had died of the very disease he helped solve.

He acknowledged that the mosquito hypothesis had been first advanced and ingeniously discussed by Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, to whom the commission wished to express our sincere thanks for his critical research on yellow fever during the past nineteen years.

Reed also acknowledged the role of Italian researchers in their similar efforts to understand malaria; of U.S. Marine Hospital Service researchers in studying outbreaks in Mississippi; and of the work of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England.

Victory at last

Vaccines for yellow fever were later developed during the 1910s through 1940s through research spanning from Japan to Brazil to France  truly an international multidisciplinary collaboration.

Alas, for New Orleans, there would be one more epidemic, in 1905, which claimed the lives of over 400 people. Cities by this time were swiftly developing vector-control campaigns to spray mosquitoes, reduce breeding habitat and improve urban sanitation. The 1905 outbreak, centered around the lower French Quarter, would prove to be the last major yellow fever plague in the United States.

The heroes of this story live on through their accomplishments. Finlay is a national hero in Cuba today, known to every schoolchild. Reed has long been honored in the name of the U.S. Armys flagship hospital in Washington, D.C., and more recently in the U.S. Department of Defenses Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Chaille, chair of the 1879 U.S.-Havana Yellow Fever Commission, went on to become known as the father of hygiene and health education and dean of the University of Louisiana School of Medicine. In 1884, that institution became Tulane University of Louisiana, and its School of Medicine today is the proud home of the Rudolph Matas Library of Health Sciences. Gorgas, the Alabamian who with Matas kept Finlays work alive, went on to establish mosquito-control campaigns in Florida Cuba, and Panama, saving thousands of lives.

As for Culex fasciatus, that invasive mosquito species was later classified as Stegomyia fasciata, and is now known as Aedes aegypti. Its still rife in New Orleans today, the vector of Zika, and if youre reading this article anywhere in the southeastern U.S., youve probably been bitten by Aedes aegypti.

Yellow fever is still with us, too. The World Health Organization considers the disease to be endemic to certain African and Latin American countries, and while epidemics are now rare, some 200,000 cases and 30,000 deaths occur annually.

Amid the current pandemic, its worth remembering that resolving the yellow fever riddle took many years and many experts from various disciplines and countries working together. It saw centuries wasted on archaic theories, and another 19 years lost to a mistakenly rejected hypothesis.

Yellow fever did not end decisively, nor did it downgrade to a mere nuisance. To this day, it takes constant effort on many fronts  vector control, public sanitation, immunization and health care  to keep humanitys eventual victory over yellow fever from becoming any more costly.
At U-Md., Ray founded the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR), where he is executive director, with a mission to conduct research that will influence public policy. He and his LASSR colleagues have conducted 300 interviews with officers and 100 civilians in 10 police departments in the Washington region and elsewhere around the country. They have also worked with the Department of Homeland Security and the military.
Authorities in Mumbai and Delhi have drawn up new plans to contain the outbreak of the pandemic as the number of cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) have mounted in the past few days in the metros.

The case count in the national capital has risen to 59,746 and Mumbai has reported 66,488 infections so far. The infectious disease has killed 2,175 people in Delhi so far, with 31% of the total cases in the Capital being reported over the last week. In Mumbai, the death toll has gone up to 3,671.

Follow latest updates on coronavirus here

Union home minister Amit Shah has held several meetings with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, lieutenant governor Anil Baijal, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan and senior officials to discuss the action plan and augment the citys health care infrastructure amid the pandemic.

In Delhi, the emphasis will be on more effective containment and tracing efforts, widening the scope of detecting infections, intensifying social distancing and surveillance and inclusion of epidemiologists at the district level to augment the health care efforts.

Click here for complete coronavirus coverage

In Mumbai, the focus has shifted to the citys suburbs to check the rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in areas such as Mulund, Bhandup, Malad, Andheri, Borivli, Kandivli and Dahisar.

Here is how officials plan to contain the outbreak:

Delhi

* The Delhi government will revamp the way it decides containment zones in the Capital and sets their boundaries. The Union ministry of home affairs has said there should be 100% survey of all containment zones by June 30 and there should be an extensive survey of the entire Capital by July 6. As of Sunday night, there were 261 containment zones in Delhi.

* A decision has been taken to expand contact tracing beyond family members of an infected person and the faculty and third and fourth-year students of Delhi hospitals will be pressed into service to boost this.

* Rapid antibody tests, also referred to as serological surveillance as the diagnosis involves blood samples, will be conducted in the Capital at a wider scale from the middle of next week to find out the prevalence of the disease.

* To analyse the scale of the spread of Covid-19, serological surveys will be conducted between June 27 and July 10 and 20,000 samples will be collected.

* People not wearing masks and not following social distancing norms will be fined and this will be led by the Delhi Police commissioner.

Mumbai

* The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will launch a rapid action plan (RAP) in Mulund, Bhandup, Malad, Andheri, Borivli, Kandivli and Dahisar. It will rely on the four Ts of Tracing, Tracking, Testing and Treating as it did in Dharavi and Worli.

* Under RAP, the civic body to start mobile fever clinics in ambulances in these areas which will drive around through the day with a team of doctors, who will carry out door-to-door screening of residents, check for fever and other symptoms, co-morbidities, and collect swabs, if there is any suspected person.

* The teams will use a pulse oximeter in the suburbs and a thermal gun to screen patients. A team of doctors will go from door to door.

* This will be followed by quarantining suspects, tracing contacts and quarantining them at home or in institutions.

* Elected public representatives, citizens organisations, and non-government organisations (NGOs) will be asked to talk with residents of these areas to forge effective channels of communication.
Counting of the topological charge, called the Chern number (C). Strong spin-orbit coupling is induced by heavier elements as indicated by the deeper background color of the pictured elements. Stronger spin-orbit coupling leads to more obvious split Fermi arcs. This allows the number of states crossing the closed loop to be counted, which determines the Chern number. Credit: MPI CPfS

The concept of chirality is well-established in science: when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, both the object and its mirror image are called chiral. In the drug industry, for instance, more than 50% of the pharmaceutically active molecules used nowadays are chiral molecules. While one of the 'enantiomers' is life-saving, its counterpart with opposite handedness may be poisonous. Another concept which has found widespread interest in contemporary materials science is topology, as many so-called topological materials feature exotic properties. For example, topological materials can have protected edge states where electrons flow freely without resistance, as if a superconducting path of electrons were created at the edge of a material. Such unconventional properties are a manifestation of the quantum nature of matter. The topological materials can be classified by a special quantum number, called the topological charge or the Chern number.

Chiral topological materials have particularly unique properties which may be useful in future devices for quantum computers which could speed up computations considerably. An example for such a property is the long-sought large quantized photogalvanic current. Here a fixed dc current is generated in a chiral topological material once exposed to a circularly-polarized light, which is independent of the strength of incident radiation and its direction can be manipulated by the polarization of incident light. This phenomenon relies on the fact that the material possesses a high topological charge of 4, which is the maximum possible value in any material.

Solid-state chemists and physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (MPI CPfS), the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (IFW), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fuer Materialien und Energie (HZB) and the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei succeeded to realize this peculiar electronic state for the first time in the new chiral topological compound PtGa. Their results have been published in Nature Communications.

In the study, the researchers have used exceptionally strong spin-orbit coupling in PtGa as the key parameter to clearly resolve and count the number of special topological surface states, called the Fermi arcs, which determine the topological charge. "PtGa is the best compound existing in nature with chiral B20 structure to observe spin-split Fermi arcs and realize the maximal Chern number 4 as it has the strongest spin-orbit coupling." says Kaustuv Manna, one of the authors of the study who works as a scientist at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids Dresden.

Theoretical calculations performed by Yan Sun and his colleagues suggested that the compound PtGa is a highly promising candidate to observe the high topological charge which was experimentally verified by Mengyu Yao and his colleagues who performed detailed angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies. ARPES is a powerful tool to investigate the behavior of electrons in solids.

"The work by Yao et al. reveals that PtGa is a topological semimetal with a maximal chiral charge and has the strongest spin-orbital coupling among all chiral crystals identified up to date. This observation is significant and has great implications for its transport properties, such as magnetotransport." explains Ming Shi, a professor and senior scientist at Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.

The study is an example for an excellent collaboration between research groups covering different areas of expertise. Within the excellence cluster ct.qmat, scientists are cooperating to investigate fundamentally new states of matter. "We are focusing on novel materials whose observed properties and functions are driven by quantum mechanical interactions at the atomic level, with semimetals such as PtGa being one of the most exciting examples," says Jochen Wosnitza, Director of the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD) at HZDR, referring to one of the cluster's main research topics. Institutes participating in the cluster and collaborating on the current publication include the DRESDEN-concept partners MPI CPfS, IFW, and HZDR.

Explore further A spin on a topological insulator: Hybrid approach to magnetic topological states of matter

More information: Mengyu Yao et al, Observation of giant spin-split Fermi-arc with maximal Chern number in the chiral topological semimetal PtGa, Nature Communications (2020). Journal information: Nature Communications Mengyu Yao et al, Observation of giant spin-split Fermi-arc with maximal Chern number in the chiral topological semimetal PtGa,(2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15865-x
In a message posted on Facebook in early May, a startup company in San Diego tried to sell a big batch of futuristic hope to those infected by COVID-19.

Did you know that STEM CELLS can be administered intravenously and by inhalation through a nebulizer to treat lung damage caused by COVID-19 and other non-related lung conditions, said the post from Brexo Bio.

The company supported the claim with a short video saying the treatment had succeeded with 73 coronavirus patients in the United Arab Emirates. For those interested in learning how to get even better treatments than those foreign therapies, Brexo Bio provided its phone number.

Theres only one catch: So far, no proven therapies exist for COVID-19.

No proven therapies exist for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Stem cell treatments offer tantalizing hope for the future. But such lofty claims are not out of character in the world of stem cell marketing, where hundreds of U.S. businesses offer remedies for various ailments, virtually all unproven by American scientific standards.

Since March, enforcement against stem-cell-related firms has increased.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the safety and effectiveness of new medicine, has sent at least five of them letters involving questionable coronavirus-related claims. The Federal Trade Commission, charged with protecting consumers from misleading advertising, also has issued at least eight warning letters about unsubstantiated stem cell therapies for the virus.

One FTC letter went to Brexo Bio on May 27. In it, the agency accused the company of unlawfully advertising that its services and products prevent or treat COVID-19. Those claims since have been removed from the website, which continues to offer access to other stem cell treatments in Mexico, where there are fewer legal restrictions for stem cell injections.

Brexo Bio has been run by BJ Retuya, a former sales director for another San Diego stem cell company, StemGenex, that filed for bankruptcy last year after the FDA accused it of illegally marketing an unapproved product to treat incurable diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to rheumatoid arthritis.

Story continues

The financial motive is powerful. Before it went bust amid legal trouble, StemGenex took in $4.4 million in gross revenue in 2017 and charged $14,900 per treatment, according to court records.

Retuya didnt return messages seeking comment. In a YouTube video promoting Brexo Bio's other stem cell services in March, he says, were just trying to provide something else for the patient to give them hope and to give them better results."

Without more oversight, opportunity looms large

Stem cell businesses are trying to take advantage of coronavirus fear by marketing unproven treatments, according to a peer-reviewed article earlier this month.

Author Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, describes an anti-aging center near Los Angeles called Novus that was promoting "stem cell exosome" products it said might help with coronavirus pneumonia.

Novus CEO Stephanie Wolff, a physicians assistant, said in a YouTube video dated March 29 that a study in China supported the firm's claims.

To make it easy on the consumer, the product could be shipped to a clients home delivered on dry ice with a vaporizer.

It can only help, said Wolff's son, Austin, an actor who is also the firms director of research. He added a caveat: Theres a chance that it wont do anything for you.

Exosomes  extracellular vesicles released from cells  also have been marketed as treatments for various health concerns, although no exosome products have been approved by the FDA. But no FDA or FTC enforcement action could be found against Novus and neither agency would comment, saying they typically don't discuss possible enforcement cases.

An employee who answered the phone last week said the company still offers the product and that it is "around $10,000 because youre getting two vials of the stem cells."

The marketing of stem cell exosome treatments for COVID-19 also was a focus of a warning letter from the FDA to EUCYT Laboratories in Las Vegas this month.

On its website, EUCYT said its product harnesses the power of the immune system to augment the bodys natural response to invading pathogens such as severe acute respiratory distress coronavirus.

The company didnt return a message seeking comment and was still marketing the product as of Monday. After an email inquiry from USA TODAY that same day, the product disappeared from the company's website.

In April, the FDA put a New Jersey stem cell company on notice about questionable claims about cellular products on its Facebook page.

With COVID-19 dominating the headlines, preventative measures are essential to maintaining a healthy immune system, said the page of Regenerative Solutions of New Jersey. MSC Exosomes have been shown to modulate the immune system to protect against coronavirus and other viruses.

The Facebook post has been taken down from public view. A woman answering the phone at the company's listed number on said the business no longer exists.

Stem cell treatment: `A different world than taking a pill'

The recent spate of FDA warning letters may be the most ever in such a short period of time, according to biologist Paul Knoepfler  and just a fraction of the companies he believes are not complying with the law by marketing unapproved treatments.

Knoepfler tracks the stem cell industry and conducts stem cell research at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. He estimates there are about 1,000 stem cell clinics in the U.S., up from about 200 five years ago.

The FDA has not approved any stem-cell based products for use, except for cord-blood-derived blood-forming stem cells for certain indications, such as blood disorders.

This is a different world than taking a pill, because if you take a pill, you can stop taking a pill, Knoepfler told USA TODAY. But if someone injects you with a billion living cells, some of those cells are never going away, and you dont really have control over them."

Experts say the FDA has taken a light approach to the direct-to-consumer stem cell industry, using its discretion to go after firms perceived to pose the biggest risks to patients in a game of enforcement whack-a-mole.

Last year, for example, the FDA won a court injunction against a Florida firm, U.S. Stem Cell, some of whose clients went blind after receiving fat-derived stem cell injections in their eyes to treat macular degeneration.

But the FDA said it has stepped up its enforcement in this relatively young field as it exploded in growth. The agency also has signaled it will get tougher after November, the end of a three-year period to comply with guidance it issued in 2017. Even stem cells that come from a patients own body will continue to be regulated by the FDA as experimental drugs if they are more than minimally manipulated.

"Once the enforcement discretion period has ended, for those marketing or offering for sale (a cellular product) that requires but lacks pre-market approval, they will do so at their own risk," the FDA said in a statement. "In the meantime, the FDA will not shy away from taking action when we see bad actors taking advantage of patients, and putting them at risk, for their own financial profit."

'Easy to scam patients'

Stem cell business owners generally believe that the U.S. is too restrictive about experimental medicine that shows promise. They also often cite positive results, such as anecdotal examples of clients who believed the treatments worked.

Without more scientific testing  randomized, double-blind testing that controls for the placebo effect or other standards  nobody really knows how well they worked.

Turner, the bioethicist, said he doesnt believe U.S. regulatory standards are too high because businesses ought to have convincing evidence of safety and efficacy before they advertise and administer stem cell treatments.

Selling such products on the basis of anecdotes isnt enough, Turner said.

He noted that many diseases are simply difficult to treat, adding that stem cell treatments are a marketplace where its very easy to scam patients.

Clinical studies involving stem cell treatments are underway in the U.S. but likely are several years and millions of dollars away from approval.

To make money in the meantime, some U.S. firms have created business models that involve sending patients to clinics in other countries, including Mexico, where some of the more aggressive experimental injections are allowed.

Retuya, who is not a doctor or scientist, apparently started Brexo Bio with this in mind after departing StemGenex, which sold fat-derived stem cell injections for patients in the U.S. StemGenex still faces a class-action lawsuit from consumers who said the company made dubious marketing claims.

I felt that with this new business model (at Brexo Bio), we could remain a US based company but break free from the regulatory framework and restrictions here in the US, Retuya said in a post on Instagram.

In the YouTube video from March, he that he has seen hundreds of clients get results from these treatments but was careful to say they are not guaranteed or FDA-approved.

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stem cell companies selling hope with unproven treatments for COVID-19
While P Muralidhar Rao, BJP general secretary, says, 'Digital electioneering is here to stay until the elections in 2021,' the BJPs rallies in Bihar will not be confined to cyberspace. Its strategists have devised other ways of getting around the hygiene protocol that Covid-19 has entailed.

Radhika Ramaseshan reports.

IMAGE: Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah addresses the 'Bihar Jansamwad rally, through video conferencing, from New Delhi. Photograph: ANI Photo

Union Home Minister Amit Shahs Jan Samwad programme on June 7 for Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, office-bearers, elected representatives, and workers in Bihar marked a pivotal change in the partys campaigning style and approach.

Shah was not present in Patna or any other Bihar town when he spoke for nearly 40 minutes. He took the mic at the partys Delhi headquarters, appropriately masked, to signify the omnipresence of coronavirus. The Bihar contingent heard him out at the Patna office.

Although Shah maintained the public meeting had nothing to do with the Bihar elections -- scheduled to be held in November -- the thrust of his speech revealed his intent. He criticised the states dynasts, represented by Lalu Prasad and son Tejashwi Yadav, who currently leads the Rashtriya Janata Dal in his fathers absence, and talked up the Centres six-year achievements, elaborating the special package for migrants who travelled back home during the lockdown.

Digital electioneering is here to stay until the elections in 2021, said P Muralidhar Rao, BJP general secretary, adding, In a cadre-driven party like ours, its vital the top leadership constantly communicates with workers through the available means.

Sanjay Jaiswal, Bihar BJP president and West Champaran MP, was optimistic that the digital medium would be a hit in electioneering. Our feedback from WhatsApp was that Shahs speech reached 60,000 (of the 72,000) booths and registered 3.9 million views on Facebook and Twitter, he claimed.

The recent data ostensibly backed the BJPs belief that digitisation was set to catch up, if not outpace, the conventional modes of campaigning. With a young (between 18 and 23) population of 11.8 million, according to the Bihar governments Economic Survey of 2019-20, the BJP believes its online campaign was ripe to capture this voting group.

A study by Kantar IMRB, a market research firm, revealed in 2019 Bihar registered the highest growth in internet users across urban and rural areas, up 35 per cent since 2018.

The Bihar online samwad was a logical outcome of an exercise the BJP began during the lockdown. J P Nadda, party president, held his first virtual conference with general secretaries. We communicated as effectively as we did during a physical interaction, an office-bearer said.

The process was enlarged to touch base with state presidents and their teams across the country. It travelled down the organisational hierarchy to connect with district and block chiefs and their aides so that everyone -- from the president to booth managers -- was primed with how the leadership looked at the pandemic and how it proposed to ameliorate the crisis.

It helped that the BJP -- the first political entity to embrace digitisation before the 2014 elections -- has built a 250-million strong database to the booth level with nearly 2.5 million social media volunteers.

However, the BJPs rallies in Bihar will not be confined to cyberspace. Its strategists have devised other ways of getting around the hygiene protocol that Covid-19 entailed.

Beginning this week, two workers will approach each home in the 243 assembly constituencies, bearing the messages contained in Prime Minister Narendra Modis letter to the nation on completing the first year of his second term. The letter will be supplemented by a booklet that amplifies the record of the Centre, as well as the BJP-Janata Dal-United coalition government in Bihar.

Among the 21 points flagged in the 23-page booklet are the help extended by the Modi government to 5.2 million workers to reach their homes in Bihar in 3,840 Shramik trains in 25 days. The booklet also claims the March 22 timely lockdown helped contain the viruss spread by 60 per cent.

But sources conceded that Chief Minister Nitish Kumars perceived apathy towards returning migrants in the initial phase of their exodus had hurt the BJP.

Our party workers tried to make amends by taking our presidents call to feed migrants on the border and at the quarantine centres. We didnt advertise our work with BJP flags because by now the people of Bihar know that in a calamity, its our workers who are the most active on the ground, said a Bihar party source.

Indeed, even as the BJP is uncertain about how the present events will shape the Bihar elections, its confidence that the coalition will make it in the elections sprung from the state of the Opposition.

Migrants will be reminded that if any person is responsible for their plight, its Lalu Prasad. Tejashwi was missing in action through the lockdown and is only now issuing statements. If the Opposition meets, its only to discuss who their leader will be, a source said.

As the National Democratic Alliance is slated to begin talks over seat-sharing shortly, Shah iterated in his rally that the elections will be contested under Nitishs leadership. In the bargain, he capped the speculation triggered by a remark from Chirag Paswan, Lok Janshakti Party president, who said the BJP will decide who will lead or be the face of the alliance. The LJP is the third NDA constituent.
YEREVAN.  The meeting of the National Assembly (NA) Council took place this morning, from which we were informed that a special session was to be convened today at 1pm, during which the main law [the Constitution] of the country shall be amended. Edmon Marukyan, leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (BAP) and head of its parliamentary faction, stated this Monday during the traditional briefings in the NA.

He noted that it turns out that once this initiative is adopted in the first reading, it will not be sent to the Constitutional Court. "By and large, we [Bright Armenia] have nothing to say now because we have said what was to be said [about]. It is not ruled out that we will not participate in the sitting at all, the BAP leader added, in particular.

To note, the draft amendments to the Constitution propose that the powers of the Constitutional Court judges of who have been in office for more than 12 years, as well as the term of office of the serving president of the Constitutional Court be terminated, and the next president of the Constitutional Court shall be elected by a new procedure. There are currently three Constitutional Court judges who have been in office for more than 12 years, whereas the current president of the Constitutional Court, Hrayr Tovmasyan, has been in office in this capacity for only two years, and therefore he will remain a member of the Constitutional Court.
Whether youre a city dweller or a countryside aficionado, theres always a reason to take a moment out of your day to appreciate the beauty of nature. The azure tit is a prime example; a tiny songbird dressed in frost-blue feathers with the ability to catch the eye and melt the heart all at once.

The azure titLatin name Cyanistes cyanusis a white songbird with a black stripe across both cheeks, wings boasting patches of bright blue and white, a snowy, fluffy white breast, and a long dark-blue tail with white corners.

The little bird predominantly resides and breeds throughout Russia and Central Asia, according to Beauty of Birds.

The central Asian azure tits can be distinguished from their peers with a patch of bright yellow on the breast.

The azure tit, Cyanistes cyanus, pictured in western Mongolia (Jargal Lamjav/CC BY 2.0)

Measuring approximately 5 inches in length, the petite azure tit enjoys temperate mixed woodlands, scrubland, and wetlands. Most do not migrate beside seeking a change in altitude during their breeding season.

During the breeding season, the azure tit has a fiercely protective instinct. The bird will protect its brood of approximately 10 eggs, which it lays in a tree hole per season by hissing and biting if disturbed.

The frost-blue songbird has also been known to breed with blue tits. This breeding with its Eurasian counterpart has created a hybrid species that looks different from both. The hybrid Pleskes tit has a darker blue crown than the usual white one of the azure parent, and a more muted yellow chest than the blue parent.

According to eBird, the azure tit is elusive, preferring to forage for insects and seeds under cover of dense foliage. The little bird can often be identified from its song, which includes a high-pitched cheerful ditty characterized by chips, trills, and rattles.

Despite the fact that the population is decreasing, the azure tit is listed as of least concern on the IUCN Red List due to healthy numbers in the wild.

Over the years, the beloved bird has been immortalized in various illustrated forms, including being depicted on a Romanian postage stamp in the early 1990s. The bird was also rendered beautifully beside its cousin, the Eurasian blue tit, in world-famous ornithologist Johann Friedrich Naumanns Natural History of the Birds of Central Europe, published in 1905.

The enigmatic azure tit, unlike its more familiar cousin the blue tit, is coveted by bird watchers owing to its uniquely beautiful appearance. According to Bird Guides, the azure tit made moves to emigrate northwest into European Russia during the 1870s and 1880s but soon retreated for reasons that ornithologists have yet to fully understand.

Illustration of an azure tit from the book Naumann, Natural history of the birds of central Europe, published in 1905, revised by G. Berg et al., edited by Carl R. Hennicke. (Public Domain)

The azure tit has, however, been spotted in small numbers as far west as Finland. Notably, only 28 sightings have been recorded since 1992, but with European air travel becoming increasingly affordable, dedicated bird watchers have been tempted to make the trip to see the bird outside its usual geographic range.

For many bird lovers, the azure tit steals the show; the eye-catching combination of its fluffy white cuteness and the fierce streak of black across its cheeks makes the elusive little bird the stand-out member of this loveable family.

We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc
Washington: President Donald Trump will sign an executive order temporarily suspending work visas and barring hundreds of thousands of foreigners from entering to the United States, part of a broad effort by the administration to dramatically limit entry during the economic downturn.

US President Donald Trump has moved to clamp down on foreign workers. Credit:AP

A senior administration official said on Monday the move would help the economy, but business groups strongly oppose the measures.

Trump will block the entry on H-1B visas for foreign workers being transferred within a company through the end of the year, the official said. Trump will also block seasonal workers on H-2B visas, with an exception for workers in the food service industry.

Major tech companies and the US Chamber of Commerce have said the visa suspension will stifle the economic recovery after the damage done by the coronavirus pandemic.
KABUL -- A top Afghan government official has accused the Taliban of unleashing a wave of attacks ahead of potential talks between the warring sides, saying the insurgents had killed 291 local security personnel and wounded 550 others over the past week.

The past week was the deadliest in Afghanistan's 18-year war, Javid Faisal, spokesman for the National Security Council, tweeted on June 22, adding that the Taliban carried out 422 attacks in 32 provinces.

Taliban's commitment to reduce violence is meaningless, and their actions inconsistent with their rhetoric on peace, Faisal also wrote.



A Taliban spokesman rejected the latest government figures, saying the enemy aims to hurt the peace process and intra-Afghan talks by releasing such false reports."



The militant group launched some attacks last week, but they were mostly in defense," Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.



Violence in Afghanistan had dropped after the Taliban announced a three-day cease-fire that ended on May 26 to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, but officials have accused the militants of stepping up attacks in recent weeks.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting on June 22, President Ashraf Ghani said that the government sees the violence "as running against the spirit of commitment for peace."



In an attack on the outskirts of Kabul the same day, gunmen shot dead two prosecutors and three other employees of the Attorney General's Office.



The attackers opened fire on the car they were travelling in, the Interior Ministry said.



No one immediately claimed responsibility and the Taliban denied involvement.



A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office, Jamshed Rasooli, said the prosecutors were members of the team supervising the release of Taliban prisoners. He blamed the attack on the enemies of peace."



Kabul and the Taliban have signaled they were getting closer to launching much-delayed talks aimed at putting an end to the Afghan conflict.



Earlier this month, Ghani vowed to complete a Taliban prisoner release to pave the way for the negotiations.



The government said it had so far released 3,000 Taliban prisoners and vowed to free another 2,000.



The insurgents have released 500 prisoners they were holding.

With reporting by AFP and AP
Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia held a virtual meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah during which a report by VK Paul committee on the issue was presented, according to the Union Home Ministry.

New Delhi: The coronavirus cases in Delhi neared the 60,000-mark on Sunday with 3,000 more people testing positive, even as worried authorities were mulling steps to strengthen the containment strategy to arrest the spread of the infection in the National Capital.

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia held a virtual meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah during which a report by VK Paul committee on the issue was presented, according to the Union Home Ministry.

Mapping of all containment zones in Delhi again for better management of the COVID-19 situation and vigorous contact tracing of positive cases for quarantining are among the measures related to the containment strategy suggested by the high-level committee set up Shah.

It had also favoured strictly restricting activities in containment zones as well keeping a vigil on houses outside these areas. The home minister has advised the Delhi government to implement the recommendations of the committee, officials said.

The issue is also expected to come up at the crucial meet of Delhi Disaster Management Authority to be held on Monday, amid a rapid surge in COVID-19 cases in the National Capital.

It was the third day on the trot that over 3,000 fresh cases have been reported. On Saturday, Delhi had witnessed 3,630 cases, the highest single-day spike here. On Friday, the number was 3,137.

As many as 63 fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours. The death toll from the coronavirus now stands at 2,175 and the total number of cases at 59,746, according to the latest Delhi health department bulletin

The condition of Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain has improved and his fever has subsided, a day after he was administered plasma therapy at a private COVID-19 facility here.

Also, a team of senior doctors from a few government and private hospitals has been kept on standby to ensure the best medical care for Jain who is admitted in ICU of Max hospital, Saket, sources said. The condition of the 55-year-old minister is improving and he is being monitored by doctors, officials said.

"His fever has subsided and his oxygen saturation level (Spo2) has increased. He is likely to come out of the ICU by Monday," an official said.

On the meeting held by Shah, an official said that "a detailed discussion was held to make contact tracing robust in the city. All participants discussed the strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Delhi".

On Saturday, Lt Governor Anil Baijal amended his order on home isolation, saying "only those COVID positive cases which do not require hospitalisation on clinical assessment and do not have adequate facilities for home isolation would be required to undergo institutional isolation."

A Delhi government official said that the administration will have uphill task to get the clinical assessment of all new COVID-19 cases done every day.

"As Delhi is witnessing an alarming spike in cases daily, it will be a difficult task to get such a huge number of cases done. After the assessment, the decision will be taken on whether the infected person requires hospitalisation or he can get treatment in home isolation," the official said.

This issue is also likely to come up during a meeting of DDMA on Monday where officers concerned will make presentation to execute the LG's order.

Meanwhile, a 62-year-old inmate lodged in Mandoli Jail in Delhi has died of coronavirus, a first COVID-19 casualty in Delhi's prison, prompting authorities to test 28 other inmates who were sharing the barrack with the man, officials said on Sunday. Kanwar Singh passed away on June 15 and his COVID-19 test report came out positive on Saturday, they said. Singh was serving life sentence in a 2016 murder case. He was lodged in Central Jail number -14, Mandoli and was asymptomatic, the officials said.

Delhi Prison comprises Tihar, Rohini and Mandoli Jail. Till now, 23 inmates of Delhi Prison have been found positive for COVID-19, out of them 16 recovered from the disease and one has died.

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital has sought more time to convert five-star Taj Mansingh hotel into a coronavirus facility in order to augment beds for patients amid a spike in infections.

According to an order issued by the Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Chanakyapuri on 16 June, rooms in the luxury Taj Mansingh Hotel in Lutyens' Delhi were placed at the disposal of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) for using them as an attached COVID-19 facility.

According to sources at the hospital, a letter has been written to the SDM seeking more time to develop the hospital into a Covid facility. As the COVID-19 cases continue to rise, resident welfare associations in the city have started coming up with their own isolation facilities for infected patients.

An eight-bed isolation centre set up by the residents of Antariksh Apartment in sector 14 of Rohini was inaugurated on Sunday.

"The isolation centre has been set up using four rooms of a guest house of Antariksh Apartment. Each room has two beds and there are also facilities of oxygen support, medicines and medical care for corona patients," local municipal councillor Alok Sharma said.

Work on an isolation centre for the residents of the apartment complex began as asymptomatic COVID-19 patients and those with mild symptoms are being placed in home-isolation, he said.

The National Capital on Sunday celebrated the International Day of Yoga under the shadow of COVID-19, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal practising ''asanas'' at his residence, while several other Delhi leaders performed yoga in small groups.

The celebrations were muted this year in the city due to the coronavirus scare as compared to previous years when people in large numbers gathered at prominent places including India Gate lawns to participate in mass yoga sessions.
Seven popular journalists in Nigeria have died within the last seven days.



The journalists, who work with different media organizations in Nigeria, died of different ailments.



On the list are Dan Foster (Cool FM, Inspiration FM, City FM and Classic FM), Hugo Odiogor (former Editor at the Vanguard), Xavier Ndayongmong (Crime Editor at Daily Independent), Nkiruka Udoh (Crime and Defence Correspondent at AIT), Naomi Uzor (Business Desk at the Vanguard), Aramide Praise Oikelome (the Media Project and Independent Newspapers), and Azeez Ozi Sanni (Cartoonist at The Nation).



Dan Foster died on June 17. His wife Lovina confirmed to Channels TV that he was tested for COVID-19 and the result came back positive one day before his death.



Mr. Hugo Odiogor, is a popular foreign affairs analyst and ex-Chairman, Vanguard Editorial Board. Odiogor died on Saturday, June 20, after a protracted illness which had seen him travel to India.



Nkiruka Udoh, a Crime and Defence Correspondent at Africa Independent Television (AIT) was said to have died of complications from fibroid operation.



Naomi Uzor, a correspondent on the Business Desk at Vanguard Newspaper reportedly died from complications related to high blood pressure.



Azeez Sanni, who was a Cartoonist at The Nation Newspaper, died after battling with a liver problem.

















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
National Security Act (NSA) has been invoked against two persons arrested in connection with the murder of Hindu Samaj Party leader Kamlesh Tiwari, officials said on Monday.

District Magistrate Abhishek Prakash slapped NSA on two accused in the matter.

According to prison officials, the NSA notice was served to Yusuf Khan and Syed Asim Ali, both of whom are lodged in a Lucknow prison in the matter today.

Tiwari, who was shot in Naka area of Lucknow on October 18 last year, had succumbed to his injuries at a hospital during treatment.

Uttar Pradesh Police has already filed a charge sheet against 13 accused in connection with the murder case.
Abuja, Nigeria (PANA)  With palpable anger in Nigeria over the inability of the federal government to implement reciprocal or definitive measures over last Fridays demolition of buildings of the Nigerian High Commission, Accra, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, on Monday met Charge d' Affaires of the High Commission of Ghana in Nigeria, Ms Iva Denoo, to demand urgent explanations
This is the highest number of the past ten years, about one per cent of the world's population, twice as many as in 2010, when the total stood at 41 million. Wars, persecutions, famines, diseases and human rights violations are the main factors. For UNHCRS Filippo Grandi, the figures are [getting] higher.

Beirut (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Some 80 million people world-wide have been forced to flee their homes because of violence and persecution, many seeking asylum in their own country, the UN reported today. This is the highest level in ten years.

The annual Global Trends report by the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, shows a radical change in the forced movements of people. About 1 per cent of the worlds population (79.5 million), have been displaced, twice as many as in 2010, when it stood at 41 million.

The figure does not take into account people internally displaced by the crisis triggered this year by the novel coronavirus pandemic, which could displace even more people, both inside and outside countries.

According to the report, one human in 97 had been uprooted and displaced by the end of 2019. Wars, persecutions, famines, diseases and human rights violations are the main causal factors.

The cases include Syrias almost ten-year-old civil war, minority persecution in South Sudan and Myanmar, Venezuelans fleeing their country under President Nicolas Maduro, climate change in the Sahel, the war in Yemen and related epidemics, the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan.

More than two thirds (68 per cent) of people fleeing come from just five countries: Syria (6.6 million), Venezuela (3.7 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million) South Sudan (2.2 million) and Myanmar (1.1 million).

Most of them (85 per cent) have found shelter in developing countries; foremost Turkey, which has 3.6 million refugees, mostly from Syria; Colombia follows with 1.8 million displaced people from Venezuela, Germany (1.5 million) and Pakistan (1.4 million).

"One per cent of the world population cannot go back to their homes because there are wars, persecution, human rights violations, and other forms of violence," said UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi. This trend has been going on since 2012, and the figures are higher than the year before," Grandi added.

Displacements are more frequent and no longer short-term or temporary. Grandi notes that ten years ago, the number of displaced people around the global stood at around 40 million. "So it has basically doubled. And we don't see this trend diminishing," he explained.

Indeed, since last year, some 11 million people have become newly displaced, especially in a handful of conflict-torn countries and regions, like Syria where, after more than nine years of civil war, 13.2 million people have been displaced either inside or outside the country, a full sixth of the global total.
By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL, June 22 (Reuters) - Accounts by former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton of discussions between leaders of the United States and the two Koreas in his upcoming book are inaccurate and distorted, South Korea said on Monday.

Bolton gives details in the book of conversations before and after three meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, including how their second summit in Vietnam fell apart.

The book, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir", is scheduled for publication on Tuesday but media outlets have released excerpts.

Reports have cited Bolton as writing that Moon, who is keen to improve relations with North Korea, had raised unrealistic expectations with both Kim and Trump for his own "unification" agenda.

"It does not reflect accurate facts and substantially distorts facts," South Korea's national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said in a statement referring to Bolton's description of top-level consultations.

Chung did not elaborate on specific areas South Korea saw as inaccurate but said the publication set a "dangerous precedent".

"Unilaterally publishing consultations made based on mutual trust violates the basic principles of diplomacy and could severely damage future negotiations," he said.

Trump and Kim met for the first time in Singapore in June 2018, raising hope for efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

But their second summit, in Vietnam in early 2019, collapsed when Trump rejected an offer by Kim to give up North Korea's main nuclear facility in return for lifting some sanctions.

Bolton reportedly cites Chung as relaying Moon's response to the breakdown as, on the one hand, Trump was right to reject Kim's proposal but on the other, Kim's willingness to dismantle the Yongbyon facility was a "very meaningful first step" toward "irreversible" denuclearisation.

Bolton refers to Moon's position as "schizophrenic".

Asked about that reference by Bolton, a top official in Moon's office told reporters: "Perhaps he is in that condition." (Reporting by Hyonhee Shin Editing by Robert Birsel)
When President Donald Trump fired the powerful U.S. attorney in Manhattan over the weekend who had been leading investigations into some of his associates, it was the latest incident highlighting the presidents seeming willingness to subvert the traditional independence of the Justice Department when it serves his own interests.

Even for an Administration that is fluent in high-profile ousters, the circumstances of Geoffrey Bermans dismissal were dramatic: Attorney General William Barr tried to fire him Friday night, but Berman refused to step down, forcing Trump to fire him the following day. The result of Bermans removal is just as stark. The man who led the Southern District of New Yorks (SDNY) investigations into two of Trumps personal lawyers, as well as other probes that had rankled the President, has been removed from his position against his will. The move has raised acute concerns given both the nature of Bermans work at SDNY and Trumps own history of statements and actions eroding the independence of the DOJ  or at the very least, the appearance of it.

How we view Bermans removal should be informed by Trumps history, which involves firing (or attempting to fire) multiple DOJ and FBI officials in order to influence investigations of himself and his associates, says Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor now at Thompson Coburn. Even if Trump lacked that history, and if Barrs announcement were less bizarre, I would nonetheless be concerned if the head of a U.S. Attorneys office was removed by a president when the office was investigating the presidents personal lawyer and inaugural committee. But the present circumstances raise much more serious concerns.

The White House said Berman was removed because the Administration wanted to give the position to Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a June 22 press briefing that Clayton had expressed interest in returning to New York City, and that the White House wanted to keep him in government. It is unlikely, however, that Clayton will be confirmed by the Senate given the opposition by both New York senators, and deputy U.S. attorney Audrey Strauss has been named acting head in the meantime.

Story continues

When asked by TIME at Mondays briefing if Berman was fired because he oversaw investigations into Trumps close associates, including Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, McEnany said, No, he was not, and added: This will not disrupt the cases being handled by the district, which will proceed as normal.

Read More: Fearing Internal Dissent Ahead of the Election, Trump Expands His War on Washington

Berman had been U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2018. Over the course of his two years on the job, he oversaw multiple investigations into members of Trumps inner circle. He led the prosecution of Trumps former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for Cohens role in arranging hush money payments on behalf of Trump to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations and making false financial statements, and he implicated Trump in the scheme under oath. (Trump denies having an affair with Daniels and denies any wrongdoing associated with the payments.)

Bermans office has also been looking into the business dealings of Trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and issued a grand jury indictment last year against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two of Giulianis associates, for their alleged use of a shell company to make an illegal donation to a super PAC supporting Trumps reelection.

Separately, SDNY has reportedly been investigating possible financial impropriety in Trumps inaugural committee, which may be one of a number of investigations that Robert Mueller spun off from his special counsel investigation. The inauguration probe likely goes very far and wide, says Jed Shugerman, professor at Fordham University School of Law, and many of us have been wondering what has been going on for the last 15 months since Mueller wound his investigation down.

The key question in Bermans firing, Shugerman says, is Why now? He predicts the Southern District is getting ready to hand down indictments in the inaugural committee investigation or others before the usual time frame to make a splashy indictment this year would close, so as not to interfere with the presidential election. It would be stunning to me if the Southern District had not made enough progress on any of the number of scandals, Shugerman says, for the office not to be pushing to make an indictment now within the June-July window.

Whether or not Bermans office is nearing a new phase in any investigations into Trumps associates, Berman has angered Trump with other work that Trump promised to quash in order to curry favor with foreign leaders, according to a new book by Trumps former national security advisor John Bolton. Berman oversaw an investigation into Turkish bank Halkbank, a probe Bolton claims Trump promised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be fixed. According to Boltons book, during a side meeting at a summit in Buenos Aires late in 2018, Erdogan gave Trump a memo from the law firm that represented Halkbank that claimed the bank was innocent. Trump flipped through it, then said he believed Halkbank was totally innocent.

Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people, Bolton writes.

Given all of the concerns over Bermans firing, Congress has vowed to take action, and House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York, has said he will investigate the matter. Neither the President nor the Department of Justice have offered any explanation for Mr. Bermans purported dismissal, Nadler said in a statement. We know that the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York is engaged in investigations aimed at President Trumps inner circle. Nadler said he will hear from two whistleblowers this week about Bermans firing and hopes to secure Bermans testimony as well. Im sure he will testify, Nadler said on CNN on Sunday.

Jonathan Turley, professor at The George Washington University Law School, notes that in Barrs confirmation hearing, in which Turley testified on his behalf, Barr said he would not allow any move seeking to influence an investigation. That is the hill to die on for an Attorney General, Turley, who also testified against Trumps impeachment in the House last year, says. The measure is whether Barr was acting to undermine the investigations.

While Turley says he hasnt seen evidence of that intent in Bermans case, he acknowledges there are real questions raised by the firing given the prosecutors body of work over the past two years, and he entirely supports a congressional investigation.

There are legitimate concerns, Turley says, that should be addressed.

With reporting by John Walcott and Brian Bennett/Washington
Hong Kong clergy face arrest, extradition to China in new security laws

Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment

A blueprint for a controversial new national security law for Hong Kong, as proposed by China, has caused concerns that the semi-autonomous citys vocal clergy who have supported the democracy movement could be extradited to and tried in mainland China.

The Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress, Chinas rubber-stamp legislature, may formally approve the law, which broadens Beijings direct control over Hong Kong and erodes the citys human rights and freedoms, at a June 28-30 meeting, according to The Epoch Times.

Submitted last week for deliberation, the draft covers four categories of crimes: succession, subversion of state power, local terrorist activities and collaborating with foreign or external foreign forces to endanger national security, according to the U.S.-based Christian persecution watchdog International Christian Concern.

Under such laws, vocal Hong Kong clergy who have been supportive of Hong Kongs democracy movement, such as Cardinal Joseph Zen and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing, could be extradited to mainland China to be tried, since Beijing considers them to be threats to the regime, said ICC.

Other hundreds of protestant leaders or Christian organizations who have actively spoken out against the Hong Kong government might face the same fate, since Beijing has said it considers the mass protests that began last June as terrorist acts and any calls for Hong Kongs independence from China as acts of sedition."

In 1997, China had agreed for a one country, two systems arrangement to allow certain freedoms for Hong Kong when it received the city back from British control. The security law undercuts the promised autonomy.

This law fundamentally compromises one-country, two-systems, and breach of the handover agreement. The details emerging put human rights in jeopardy, the U.K.-based group Hong Kong Watch wrote on Twitter.

The European Parliament has voted to take China to the International Court of Justice in The Hague if the law is imposed.

The United States has also threatened to revoke Hong Kongs special trading relationship with it and impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials.

Chinas state-run Xinhua News Agency revealed an explanatory note summarizing the draft, which says Beijing will set up a dedicated central government office in Hong Kong to manage national security affairs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The office will be given the authority to assess Hong Kongs security, gather and analyze intelligence, advise and supervise local authorities on national security matters and also handle select criminal cases, according to the report, which added that the office would exercise jurisdiction over a very small number of cases.

The office would also be empowered to oversee education about national security in Hong Kong schools.

In case of any discrepancies between the new law and Hong Kongs Basic Law, the former would supersede, according to the explanatory note.

Hong Kong will not be a bridgehead for exterior forces that jeopardize [Chinas] national security, Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, wrote on Facebook, according to the Times.

ICC warned that Chinas notorious legal system and its lack of transparency can easily criminalize anybody and place them in jail. Many Chinese pastors and Christians, such as pastor Wang Yi, elder Qin Derfu, pastor John Cao, are now imprisoned for trumped-up charges, such as subversion of state power, illegal border crossing, and illegal business operation.

Responding to the law, Republican Sen. Rick Scott from Florida wrote on Twitter, Communist China continues their mission to destroy human rights and autonomy in #HongKong. Its plans to suffocate and intimidate those fighting for their basic rights is clear. The US continues to stand with the people of HK.
The COVID-19-induced lockdown brought tragically into the limelight two facts: one, gig workers have no social security whatsoever, and two, the terms of conditions of their relationship with the platforms were far from transparent

Hire and fire is a loaded word, the American system is employ at will, says Hari TN, head of HR, BigBasket, one of Indias largest online supermarkets. The distinction sort of escapes me. Here, we have an employment contract.

That was just the point, as we see the continuing and substantial shift in the job market to a contract-based system. Firms prefer to employ at will and they are trying to circumvent hiring and firing laws by having more workers on contract, says Vidhya Soundararajan, assistant professor, IIM Bangalore.

The context was a query on paper we are not a hire and fire economy but we seem to be heading there at a recent webinar entitled Formalising the Gig Economy. A segment that is only a few years old in India but is growing bigger by the day, as more and more services move to a platform-based model, and more and more workers sign up to them to gain market access and customers.

The nearly two-month COVID lockdown has brought tragically into the limelight two facts:

One, gig workers have no form of social security and hence were among the hardest hit as they overnight lost all income.

And two, that the terms of conditions of their relationship with the platform are far from transparent.

The platforms argued that they had no responsibility to help as they were not workers in the traditional legal sense but were partners or independent contractors.

What exactly do we mean by formalisation?

Here, the discussion threw up a whole host of questions which neither the existing laws nor the new draft laws in the making address. Questions such as what these gig workers are letting themselves in for, how their status should be defined, ensuring fair and transparent terms of engagement with the employer or platform.

That formalisation will involve a combination of legislation, regulation and responsible corporate governance is accepted. Also, there is little argument that these platforms are a huge convenience for both customers and the workers they engage.

These gig workers are micro entrepreneurs and these platforms are providing them an easy way of procuring business and there is a push automatically for them to upskill, says Hari.

All well and good in an earlier time. But going forward, the issue of who is a gig worker, how to ensure contracts are fair and transparent and creating a social security system for them assume greater significance.

Gig economy: New term, old problems

The gig economy is a new avatar of contract labour which has been there for the last 30 years, says professor Soundararajan. And there are a number of things we can pick from the contract laws.

Soundararajan points out, But before we go into social security, the fundamental question in formality is to know who the worker is. To create such a database is the first step to formalising. And it is easy to do since many of these workers are platform-based. The State should organise this.

One important issue that many gig workers face, especially taxi drivers who have signed up with aggregators such as Ola and Uber, is the lack of transparency in the terms and conditions of their engagement. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that there are significant variations in the kind of contracts workers sign.

There are indications that a sizable number of workers in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises may not get back their old jobs and the chances are high that they will enter the gig workforce. And as the trend towards new kinds of apps is likely to grow, ensuring fair contracts which workers clearly understand, which do not violate basic rights and which offer some protection against a unilateral change in working conditions and wages is an urgent need.

The ability to raise complaints about work is absolutely necessary and is a part of the formalisation process, adds Sarayu Natarajan, founder, Aapti Institute, a Bengaluru-based institute on research and technology.

Tanveer Pasha, president of Ola-Uber Drivers and Owners Association, best describes just how unfair and one-sided these contracts are.

They dont call us drivers as they dont want to come under the labour law. They say partners or use some other term. The pandemic has hit drivers hard and they are not getting any kind of help, says Pasha.

What do Ola and Uber drivers sign?

Are the contracts fair? With companies such as Ola and Uber, whose drivers I represent, we have not signed any contract. They have applied through the app, saying we agree to all terms and conditions. When we try to log in, a pop-up message appears saying click on agree to Terms and Conditions, explains Pasha.

Pasha says the companies are unethical. He claims they gave false assurances to capture the market. In the beginning they said invest in a vehicle and you can earn 1 lakh or 2 lakh a month. But after we bought the vehicle they said the plan has changed and now you can earn only Rs 50,000. He says they take 25 percent of the revenue as commission. If we complain, they say 'if you are happy, work, otherwise you can leave'.

The situation is quite bad for drivers, There is no guarantee on earnings. Even after working 20 hours we are unable to earn even Rs 200, Pasha says.

Are regulations the solution?

Calling workers partners or using another term to circumvent labour laws may not be unfair, says Hari, who, however, admits it is wrong of companies to raise false hopes with unsustainable offers.

Hari, however, cautions against rushing into any new legislation and regulation. Ultimately, it has to be a good compromise between protecting labour and allowing these platforms to survive. The requirement today is definitely not more regulation but to ensure what there is actually works on the ground.

That the gig worker needs protection for the present and the future, however, is amply obvious. Yet, to expect this to be done entirely by the State may be unrealistic, especially given some of the specific characteristics of gig work such as choosing different platforms, different kinds of work, volatility of wages and how contracts are renewed.

The thought that formalisation has to come only from the State needs a rethink, Natarajan points out. There are many aspects that can be brought out by corporations and platforms themselves. Evidence shows that complaints are mainly against the platform and not the State.

Natarajan cautions against viewing everything in terms of COVID-19 but agrees it does mark a shift in terms of the way we work and how we engage with society and of course the State and a lot of that is going to be mediated by technology.

The necessity to give businesses a level playing field, allowing more of them to enter the field and grow is accepted. But workers need a level playing field too and here laws and regulations are needed to deter unfair practices. Towards which a lot can and has to come from corporate governance. Transparency is the first step, states professor Soundararajan.

It is necessary to hold firms responsible to some extent, as part of corporate governance, for the welfare of their workforce, adds Natarajan. Specifically with regard to online contracts mentioned by Pasha, she says it resembles what is called a web trap contract. This resonates with our own empirical findings which show there is difficulty in accessing the terms. Also, the power differential while making these contracts cannot be ignored.

The holy grail of social security

And then there is social security, the most important aspect of formalisation as the economy recovers. Basically, enabling workers to protect themselves when there is loss of income. In the absence of any kind of unemployment allowance from the State, the only option is for companies to introduce some kind of contributory savings scheme outside of the government legislated schemes like provident fund.

Hari says let the worker decide how to save. Every business has a certain capacity to pay while remaining viable and sustainable. How you break it up between cash on hand and earnings for the future can be mutually determined."

Unfortunately, that is the ideal. But given the predominant view that corporate governance is lacking in these areas, there is unlikely to be any consensus on how to structure any contributory savings scheme that leaves out the State.

As we witness the ravages the pandemic has wreaked not only among gig workers but also the entire range of daily wage and contract workers, it is clear that such measures need to be considered by the State and by the corporations more urgently than ever.

Laws cannot prevent a new entrant from offering unsustainable wages and incentives which are then snatched away without notice, as Ola and Uber did. Workers rarely tend to think too far into the future and go for the immediate gain.

If some new company says they can earn Rs 5,000 a day, workers will take it, says Pasha. Workers need to ask companies to specify minimum earnings for a certain number of years.

And that is something the law can ensure companies build into their business plan with the right kind of regulation and enforcement.

Gender issues get short shrift

The last important aspect is gender issues in the work place, especially the pay gap which is very real and protection from sexual harassment and abuse. The problem: with an office or factory, the workplace is well defined. With gig work, there is no fixed workplace and the task component is very different.

These women experience threats and insecurity as their work is done in personal and intimate spaces, says Natarajan. We have heard some horror stories. Formalisation will have to address how women experience platform work.

And we come full circle. For as with the drivers and other categories of gig workers, when it comes to addressing their issues, employees, men and women, have no recourse from the platform. So, maybe the real question is how to make platform management into responsible corporate citizens.

This article was first published in Citizen Matters, a civic media website and is republished here with permission. (c) Oorvani Foundation/Open Media Initiative.
NEW YORK, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hiscox, the international specialist insurer, revealed businesses are enhancing levels of spending and activity to minimize their vulnerability to cyber incidents and breaches. The annual Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020, which gauges businesses' preparedness to combat cyber incidents and breaches, surveyed 5,569 professionals from the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland who are responsible for their company's cyber security, between December 24, 2019, and February 3, 2020.

Key findings specific to the more than 1,000 US professionals surveyed include:

A leader in cyber spending: The US shared the top spot for cyber spending, alongside Ireland . US businesses increased their average cyber security spending within their IT budgets by 61% to $2.4 million .

More financial damage caused by fewer attacks: A battle has emerged between cyber criminals and businesses. In the US, only 41% of respondents reported that their organization experienced at least one cyber incident or breach compared to 53% last year, though the median cost of all cyber incidents in the US rose from $10,000 last year to $50,000 this year. Therefore, cyber criminals have been doing more damage in fewer, albeit more sophisticated, attacks.

Businesses are taking action: Meanwhile, businesses are building up their defenses. While 39% of US organizations reported they did not take action after a security incident last year, this figure fell dramatically to 3% in this year's report. Actions taken include regularly evaluating and discussing security and privacy, increasing spending on employee training and cultural change and creating additional security and audit requirements.

Improvement in cyber readiness, but potential blind spots remain: The number of ranked cyber experts more than doubled to 24% this year, while cyber novices fell to 58% compared to 73% last year. Despite this positive trend in cyber readiness, nearly half (48%) of all respondents agreed their organization remains at risk of having a cyber incident.

Reputational impacts have increased: Fifteen percent of respondents that experienced a cyber incident or breach reported bad publicity or impact on their brand or reputation as a result, compared to 3% last year. Businesses also experienced greater difficulty in attracting new customers following an incident or breach, with 17% reporting challenges compared to 3% saying the same the year prior.

US businesses are more likely to pay a ransom: Alongside France , the US led the way with businesses most likely to pay a cyber ransom, with nearly one in five (18%) of those US companies who suffered a ransomware infection reporting it had been paid.

Small businesses remain vulnerable to risk: Nearly one-third (32%) of US small businesses, those with under 250 employees, experienced at least one cyber incident or breach in the past year. Of these, only one in five (21%) small businesses purchased or enhanced their cyber insurance policy for protection against threats.

Mitigating the risk: Sixty-four percent of US businesses said they had cyber insurance coverage, while 16% said they were planning to purchase coverage in the next twelve months. Additionally, more than half (54%) of respondents with cyber insurance reported they planned to use "employee training" that's offered by their insurance providers in addition to their cyber policy.

"The financial threat cyber attacks pose to a company's bottom line is a risk that's here to stay, and one that grows, learns and adapts to the ever-changing world around us. Businesses are all vulnerable at their weakest moments, and a holistic cyber strategy can help identify those weaknesses before being forced into a real-time stress test," said Meghan Hannes, Cyber Product Head for Hiscox in the US. "Businesses have been pushed into an unforgiving new world in 2020, and cyber criminals won't offer any form of relief. COVID-19 has created new, lucrative opportunities for cyber attacks, and businesses must evolve their cyber strategies to remain shielded."

Related Materials

The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020

About the Study

The countries covered (Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the US) have been extended this year to include Ireland. The number of respondents has increased from just under 5,400 companies to 5,569, reinforcing the position that the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report is based on one of the broadest surveys of its kind.

There has been a rebalancing towards smaller companies, lifting the proportion with fewer than 250 employees from 56% to 60%. Firms with up to nine employees now account for 29% of the study group, compared with 20% the previous year. Sole traders make up 10% of the total, up from 5%. Large (with between 250 and 999 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000-plus) continue to make up a combined 40% of the study group.

Given the variation in the underlying figures between the smallest and largest companies, we have adopted median rather than mean figures for numbers of incidents, breaches and costs this year and restated prior-year figures in the same terms.

About The Hiscox Group

Hiscox is a global specialist insurer, headquartered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: HSX). Our ambition is to be a respected specialist insurer with a diverse portfolio by product and geography. We believe that building balance between catastrophe-exposed business and less volatile local specialty business gives us opportunities for profitable growth throughout the insurance cycle.

The Hiscox Group employs over 3,100 people in 14 countries, and has customers worldwide. Through the retail businesses in the UK, Europe, Asia and the USA, we offer a range of specialist insurance for professionals and business customers as well as homeowners. Internationally traded, bigger ticket business and reinsurance is underwritten through Hiscox London Market and Hiscox Re & ILS. In the US, Hiscox small business Insurance is underwritten by Hiscox Insurance Company Inc., a Chicago-based insurance company.

Our values define our business, with a focus on people, courage, ownership and integrity. We pride ourselves on being true to our word and our award-winning claims service is testament to that. For more information, visit www.hiscoxgroup.com.

The content provided above is provided for general informational purposes and is not intended, nor shall it be deemed, to be a solicitation of insurance with regard to any particular or specific person or entity.

Media Contacts

Lou Casale

Hiscox USA

+1 646 442 8341

[email protected]

Lucy Baines

Hiscox USA

+1 646 560 9399

[email protected]

SOURCE Hiscox

Related Links

https://www.hiscox.com


Three months ago, Michael Gatiba's 10-acre farm in Nakuru County in Kenya saw a stunning storm-like attack from millions of desert locusts. Gatiba described the attack like hail, as the insects have covered the sky, and the sun was no longer seen.

But Gatiba says he was still lucky that the damage the insects caused was only minimal. He fears that the outbreak that has plagued different countries, including Africa, the Middle East, and Asia for two years, will come back to ravage his corn and bean crops.

As the locusts begin to migrate again during the second half of June, scientists warn that the damage could leave millions of people in at least 23 countries hungry by the end of 2020, if there is no continuous aid to stop its spread.

The Worst Transboundary Pest in the World

Desert locusts are from the grasshopper family, a migratory pest, and have a lifespan of three months, which can multiply for up to twentyfold under the right conditions. They mature to behave as a coherent unit, creating large swarms that attack on green vegetation, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO.

According to experts, locusts reached a scale like no other have seen before in decades because of the perfect storm of favorable weather, inadequate monitoring, and challenges in getting access to resources and regions.

The locusts have been feasting and reproducing in Kenya, as well as in countries of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Djibouti. The insects are expected to begin another move because of the changing winds by the end of June, with some of them are bound for Sudan.

Melissa Williams, a senior rural development specialist for the World Bank, is also concerned that the locusts could move even further into West Africa, threatening some of the world's poorest countries.

Meanwhile, locusts have already feasted in Pakistan and India in recent weeks, especially in Punjab and Sindh provinces, and experts believe that they could cycle through the region.

"This is the worst transboundary pest in the world," Williams said. "They don't need passports, so they'll just keep going."

Still, international groups and local governments have made significant progress in addressing the locust surge in Africa. As of present, FAO reported that they have already killed about 450 million insects at the beginning of the year.

Read Also: [VIDEO] Bees-Friend: Guinness World Record Title Holder Lets 60,000 Bees Cover His Entire Face

Spraying pesticides can help control desert locusts

Spraying pesticides remains the most effective way of controlling the population of the desert locusts. Countries accustomed to them, such as Sudan and Eritrea, have strong programs to keep the locust populations at bay.

However, some remote areas of the Arabian Peninsula in 2018 were not implementing monitoring and spraying, notably in Yemen, following full-year rain, including two cyclones from the Indian Ocean that created lush vegetation in which locusts could grow and thrive.

Moreover, launching campaigns in peaceful jurisdiction was not instantaneous. Many countries now being hit by swarms of locusts do not have the expertise to deal with them since they have not seen anything like this.

As officials are scrambling to respond to the swarms, the coronavirus pandemic proves to be another barrier that they must overcome. Luckily, experts and equipment were brought in just before borders are closed. Plus, FAO has strategically procured resources in batches in case shipments are delayed.

Furthermore, aside from the immediate response, private companies and international agencies have announced to give financial aid, and are piloting technological solutions to react better to future outbreaks.

Read More: [Video] US Engineers Are Building Tiny Insect-size Robot Swarms to Replace Rovers in Exploring Other Planets
The Maharashtra government and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai have come in praise from the Centre for the steep decline in the number of COVID-19 cases in Asia's largest slum Dharavi. Dharavi's doubling rate of cases has improved from 18 in April to 78 in June.

The Additional Municipal Commissioner of the region, Kiran Dighavkar, credited effective screening and a proactive approach for the feat.

"Instead of waiting for people to come to us, we went to them. Timely screening and isolation have worked. In a place like Dharavi, where the density of population is one of the highest in the world, we have been able to implement lockdown and social distancing," Dighavkar said.

"Several states have implemented these containment strategies and produced effective outcomes. The efforts of the Maharashtra government and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have shown encouraging results. As part of these efforts, they have actively chased the virus and aggressively conducted targeted tracing of COVID-19 suspects."

"Being densely populated (2,27,136 persons/ sq. km), Dharavi had 491 cases in April 2020 with a 12% growth rate and a case doubling period of 18 days. The proactive measures adopted by BMC reduced the COVID-19 growth rate to 4.3% in May 2020 and further to 1.02% in June. These measures also ensured an improved case doubling time to 43 days in May 2020 and 78 days in June 2020," a note issued by the Centre said.

Talking of the several challenges faced by the municipal corporation there, the Centre noted that 80 per cent population used community toilets.

"About 8-10 people live in households/hutment which measures about 10ft x 10ft coupled with existence of narrow lanes with 2-3 storied houses where often the ground floor is a house and other floors are used as factories. Hence, there were severe limitations of physical distancing with no possibility of effective Home Quarantine," the note further said.

Lauding the government's approach of tracing, tracking, testing and treating, the Centre noted that over 4.75 lakh people were screened by the municipal body.

"To tackle the issue of manpower to carry out proactive screening in high risk zones, BMC forged strategic public private partnerships in containment measures and all available private practitioners were mobilised. BMC provided the private doctors with PPE Kits, thermal scanners, pulse oxymeters, masks and gloves and started door-to-door screening in high risk zones and all suspects were identified. BMC encouraged all practitioners to open their clinics to attend to the patients and communicate to BMC in case any COVID1-9 suspects were found. BMC sanitised the clinics of the private practitioners and provided them all necessary support. To augment health infrastructure in the city, all private hospitals were brought onboard and acquired for treatment," read the note.
RICHMOND - It was an explosive question, delivered by text message, and Rita Davis was ready for it: Could the governor simply take down Richmond's divisive statue of Robert E. Lee?

As legal counsel to Gov. Ralph Northam, Davis had been researching that very topic for a year. Now it was being posed by her colleague, Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran, who had just watched a crowd angry about police violence against African Americans gather outside a state office building as Northam (D) held a news conference inside.

Moran was thinking of Charlottesville in 2017, when white supremacists rallied around a statue of Lee and a young counterprotester was killed. Richmond's even bigger monument was now the focal point of demonstrations. What if alt-right groups confronted them? It could be a disaster.

So Moran asked Davis and chief of staff Clark Mercer whether Northam could remove it. And Davis was unequivocal: Yes. The law was on his side.

Two days later, Northam announced the statue would come down, triggering a fusillade of lawsuits and intensifying the spotlight on the monument amid a national reckoning over racial injustice.

At the heart of the issue in Richmond is Davis, who sees her whole career as building toward this moment.

No woman had served as counsel to a Virginia governor before she got the job in 2018. Davis, 48, knew the reverence attached to Lee, because she had walked by his tomb every day as a student at Washington and Lee University. She had been a patrol officer in conservative Lynchburg and believed in law and order.

And she was black and felt deeply the need for change. All those elements, she believed, were coming together in one unexpected event.

"It does seem like it is fortuitous, that maybe somehow my experience . . . will contribute to this landscape of change in Virginia history," she said in an interview.

It won't be easy. On Thursday, Richmond Circuit Judge Bradley Cavedo extended an injunction that bars the statue's removal, giving opponents more time to save it and making clear that he took a dim view of Northam's action.

Davis won't publicly discuss Northam's legal strategy for the upcoming court showdown, and it's up to the state attorney general's office to argue the case. But she is adamant, after her year of research, that the law gives the governor authority to act.

"When you get to the issue of public art, it is public speech," Davis said, adding that communities and their elected leaders should be the ones who answer the question: "Who are we going to say we revere, and for what?"

The administration is so confident in her position that it attempted to take down the statue quietly, before Northam announced it. But they couldn't find a Virginia-based crane company willing to take on the flash point, Mercer said.

"It was pretty disappointing. We got a lot of colorful comments," he said, adding that at one company, the younger generation was willing, but the older owners threatened to disown them if they went ahead, he said.

Instead, Northam told the world on June 4 that the statue would come down.

Once the lawsuits hit, the governor pledged to fight. He asked Davis - the great-great granddaughter of enslaved people - to explain his position at a news conference. Her voice broke with emotion as she said the statue was designed to "minimize a devastating evil" and that removing it "takes us a step closer to reclaiming the truth of Virginia's history . . . for all Virginians."

Even in a diverse administration, she stood out at the news conference, with her gold pendant that says "Boss" and glittery shoes decorated with comic book graphics and the word "POW!"

The image is a long way from her days as an undergraduate. Raised in rural Bedford County - her mother was a seamstress, her father a mechanic - Davis chose Washington and Lee because it looked like the beautiful ideal of a college campus. A scholarship enabled her to be the first in her family to attend college, and she went without knowing that the school was Lee's final resting place. He had served as its president during the last years of his life after the Civil War.

One of only a handful of black students there in the early 1990s, Davis recalls sitting meekly in the dining hall as fraternity brothers paraded through in Confederate uniforms. It didn't occur to her to speak up.

After graduating with an English degree, Davis wanted real-world work experience before going to law school. Her father had dreamed of being a police officer but grew up in a time when blacks in rural Virginia had few such opportunities. She decided to give it a try - especially after her father told her she wasn't tough enough.

Davis got a job with the police department in Lynchburg, a city of 82,000 best known as the home of the late evangelist Jerry Falwell and his Liberty University.

Quiet and studious, she pushed herself into uncomfortable areas - working undercover, posing as a drug dealer and a prostitute.

"I think she may have been the only female and perhaps the only African American on the unit at that point," said K. Todd Swisher, who worked with Davis on the vice squad and now is Lynchburg's circuit court clerk. "But she handled it all very well."

Davis said she was tempted to stay, but left after three and a half years for a rapid climb up a traditional ladder: law degree from the University of Richmond, then 15 years at a prestigious firm in the capital. Eventually, she joined the state attorney general's office to head the Civil Litigation Division.

When Northam took office in 2018, he hired her as his legal counsel. She and her deputy and assistant became the first all-female legal team to advise a Virginia governor.

They craft language for executive orders and review every bill that comes from the General Assembly for his signature - looking for pitfalls, suggesting fixes. Where Northam is laid back and likes to listen, Davis is more hard driving and outspoken.

Married, with two children, she said she continually marvels at her position.

"The whole idea that I am sitting here today, not that far removed from people who were held in bondage because of the color of their skin, is amazing," she said. "It is not lost on me, the significance of all the opportunities I have had and how far we have come as Virginians in a relatively short period of time."

During Northam's race-related crisis last year, when a photo surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook page showing one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan robes, Davis never wavered in her support. Insiders say she was an early defender.

"It was painful for everybody," Davis said. But "we all signed on to this administration because we believed in the governor. . . . This crisis that happened was an opportunity for us and him to sit down and talk about, what more could we be doing?"

Northam rejected calls to resign, instead proclaiming that he would devote his term to addressing racial inequity. All department heads were asked to come up with projects. Davis said she already had pondered the question of the Lee statue but then began to "drill down" on it.

She knew the full power of Lee as a symbol. The revered gentleman from her college days, who in life had never wanted to be memorialized in a statue, was also the totem for white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville.

At the time, Virginia law prohibited localities from removing war memorials on their own property (though the General Assembly removed that prohibition this year). But Lee is on state land. As Davis and her deputies researched Northam's authority to take it down, they used a code name for the incendiary topic: "Project Traveller," after Lee's horse, which is also buried at Washington and Lee.

"We came up with the plan and then just sort of sat on it to wait for the right time," she said.

That turned out to be early this month, when police brutality against blacks touched off protests around the country.

Some legal scholars say the state's case is uncertain. The lawsuit that led to the injunction cites the 1890 deed conveying the site to the state, which stipulates that the statue must be "affectionately" preserved. Other court cases have reached a variety of conclusions on such language, said Alex M. Johnson Jr., a professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in real estate and race issues.

"There is no prevailing legal norm that would say, 'Oh yeah, this is a slam dunk,' " Johnson said. He added, though, that the issue could wind up moot if the state invokes eminent domain and simply seizes the statue in the public interest.

Davis said she is happy to wait for the case to play out. In some ways, she said, it's better for the legal system to reach what she says is an inevitable conclusion than for the statue to simply disappear overnight.

"I want this statue to come down," she said, "but I want it to come down because there is a consensus in Virginia saying that that's not who we are anymore."

---

The Washington Post's Christine Condon contributed to this report.
A former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, and other top members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have welcomed the Deputy Governor of Ondo State, Agboola Ajayi, to their fold.

Mr Ajayi resigned his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), on Sunday. He, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that he would not resign from the administration of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.

In his message shared on Twitter, Mr Abubakar said PDP is able to accommodate democrats desirous of people-oriented change.

I welcome Ondo State Deputy Governor, Agboola Ajayi, to our great party @OfficialPDPNig. Our repositioned partys umbrella is big and sturdy enough to accommodate democrats desirous of an indeed peoples oriented change.

I welcome Ondo State Deputy Governor, Agboola Ajayi, to our great party @OfficialPDPNig. Our repositioned party's umbrella is big and sturdy enough to accommodate democrats desirous of an indeed people's oriented change.  Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) June 21, 2020

He also condemned the actions of security agents, who hindered Mr Ajayi from leaving the state government house with an official vehicle on Saturday.

Meanwhile, security agents should not be encouraged to clampdown or intimidate citizens on account of their political party preferences.

Meanwhile, security agents should not be encouraged to clampdown or intimidate citizens on account of their political party preferences. -AA  Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) June 21, 2020

In the same vein, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP National Publicity Secretary said: He is welcome to the PDP. Our party is democratic and open to all lovers of good governance and democracy. So, he is welcome

One of the PDP aspirants for the Ondo governorship position, Olusola Ebiseni, in his reaction, said he was not disturbed by the coming of Mr Ajayi

The PDP has an umbrella big for all. He is welcomed like other bigwigs of other parties willing to pitch their tents with the PDP winning team.

Ajayis Defection

On Saturday, Mr Ajayi was prevented from leaving the government house in Akure in an official vehicle by the states commissioner of police, Bolaji Salami.

Mr Salami said he recently caught wind of Mr Ajayis moves to defect from the APC to PDP, an action he said should render him unqualified for some official benefits.

In response, Mr Ajayi argued that he ought to enjoy the perks of office as an incumbent deputy governor. He said he used his personal funds to buy the Toyota Hilux truck from which he was being denied access.

The deputy governor had been at loggerheads with his party over the coming governorship election in the state before finally leaving the party on Sunday.

He, however, said he would not resign as deputy governor because he was elected on a joint ticket and would love to serve his people.

There is freedom of association and this is not the first time the deputy will leave his boss.

READ ALSO:

It happened during Obasanjo and Atikus time. The court rules that there is freedom of association. It is a joint ticket and that was why the deputy governors irregularities affected (the) APC candidate in Bayelsa. So, resigning from (the) government is not in the radar.

Mr Akeredolu, in a statement signed by his spokesperson, Segun Ajiboye, earlier on Sunday, said reports linking him to the incident were false. He said he did not ask the commissioner of police to restrain his deputy from leaving the government house.

But the Senior Special Assistant to Governor on Special Duties and Strategy, Doyin Odebowale, said Mr Ajayi on Saturday tried moving out some furniture, DSTV Decoders, TV sets, among others when he was stopped by security operatives.

Ajayi moves property

Meanwhile, following his resignation from the All Progressives Congress (APC) and defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Ajayi has reportedly evacuated his personal belongings from the state government house.

He has also stopped sleeping at his official residence since Saturday, when he travelled to his hometown in Apoi, Ese Odo Local Government Area.

Sources in the government house told PREMIUM TIMES that he has not returned since he left on Saturday night and this was confirmed by Mr Ajayis spokesperson, Tope Okeowo, who said his principal is running for his life.

Advertisements



Mr Okeowo while confirming the development to PREMIUM TIMES on Monday afternoon said: It is true that the deputy governor has packed his personal belongings out of the government house.

He is not feeling secure in the government house. So, he has to leave there because he doesnt want to be attacked. He is no longer passing the night at the government house. If he can be denied movement with all his immunity, then, he can be killed if he stays there and we dont want that.

Mr Ajayi, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, will be formally welcomed to the PDP on Monday.
How seriously is she being considered? Not too seriously. Raimondo, 49, has had some contact with the Biden team but she does not seem to be as far along in the process as others.
Spain reopened its borders to British tourists on Sunday in a bid to kickstart its economy while Brazil and South Africa struggled with rising levels of coronavirus infections.

US President Donald Trump said he told his government to reduce testing for the virus, an apparent attempt to avoid unflattering statistics.

The head of the World Health Organisation has warned that the viruss global spread is accelerating after a daily high of 150,000 new cases was reported last week.

At a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, Mr Trump said he has told his administration to slow down virus testing. He said the US has tested 25 million people but the bad part is that it found more cases.

When you do testing to that extent, youre going to find more people, youre going to find more cases, Trump said. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down, please.

(PA Graphics)

The outbreak has infected 2.2 million people in the United States, killing nearly 120,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The campaign of Joe Biden, Trumps Democratic rival in Novembers presidential election, accused Mr Trump of putting politics ahead of the safety and economic well-being of the American people.

As European governments eased more lockdown restrictions, virus case numbers are rising in South Africa, Brazil, the US and other countries.

Brazils Health Ministry said on Saturday the total number of cases had risen by more than 50,000 from the previous day.

President Jair Bolsonaro has been downplaying the risks despite nearly 50,000 fatalities in three months, the second-highest death toll in the world after the US.

Bride Jazmin Sanabria and her groom Joel Adorno walk down the aisle in Virgen del Rosario church in Luque, Paraguay (Jorge Saenz/AP/PA)

South Africa reported a one-day high of 4,966 new cases on Saturday and 46 deaths. Despite the increase, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a further loosening of one of the worlds strictest lockdowns. Casinos, beauty salons and sit-down restaurant service will be allowed to reopen.

Story continues

In Europe, Germany reported 687 new cases, its highest one-day toll in a month, after earlier managing the outbreak better than other large European nations. Over 1,000 cases have been found at one meatpacking plant alone.

Spain dropped a 14-day quarantine requirement for British visitors effective from Sunday. British travellers make up a large part of Spains vital tourism sector, which has been especially hard-hit.

In Asia, China and South Korea reported new coronavirus cases on Sunday in outbreaks that threatened to set back their recoveries.

Chinese authorities reported 25 new confirmed cases  22 in Beijing and three in neighboring Hebei province.

In South Korea, authorities reported 48 new cases. Half were in the capital, Seoul. Ten were in the central city of Daejong, suggesting the virus was spreading more widely as lockdown measures are relaxed.
3 People Killed in Britain Stabbing Attack

By VOA News June 21, 2020

Three people were killed, and three others were seriously injured in a stabbing incident in the British town of Reading on Saturday.

Local police said the attack is being treated as a terrorism-related and that the counter-terrorism police are taking over the investigation.

Police have not yet released the names of the victims.

Thames Valley Police said a 25-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, adding that they were not looking for anyone else.

Officials said that the suspect's motive was "far from certain".

In a video message posted on social media, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "appalled and sickened" by the attack.

Matt Rodda, the member of parliament for Reading East said the attack was shocking and happened in "a busy park in a beautiful historic part of the town" close to "the ruins of Reading Abbey and Reading jail," both of which are historic buildings.

The incident came hours after a Black Lives Matter demonstration at the park, according to police sources, but they said there was "no indication" that the attack was linked to the protest.

Stabbing attacks in Britain in recent years have frequently been linked to Islamic State violence.

In February, London police shot dead Sudesh Amman, 20, who wore a fake explosive device and stabbed two people on a busy street in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






President Donald Trump has reiterated that it may only look like the United States has substantially more coronavirus cases than other countries because there is more testing.

Trump's trade adviser had earlier insisted the president was only joking when he urged his administration to slow down on the testing during a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday.

But on Sunday, Trump appeared to defend the fact that the US rate of COVID-19 the country reached 2,279,879 infections and 119,969 deaths.

'Our Coronavirus testing is so much greater (25 million tests) and so much more advanced, that it makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally, than other countries,' Trump tweeted just before 1am on Monday. 'My message on that is very clear!'

President Trump on Sunday doubled down on why coronavirus cases are highest in the US

Trump tweeted defending the high number and said his previous message was 'very clear'

It was after reported COVID-19 cases in the country reached 2,279,879 on Sunday evening

Trump tweeted that is made the country stand out 'especially proportionally' to other countries, as the number of COVID-related deaths reached 119,969

The above graph shows how coronavirus has escalated over time since the first US cases

Trump tweeted to his millions of followers after it emerged that Florida reported 4,049 new cases of COVID-19 Friday - the highest daily total yet in a state that has now seen a consistent resurgence since reopening.

The coronavirus outbreak continued its fevered escalation in Florida on Saturday, as Gov. Ron DeSantis again tried to calm fears over another record-breaking spike in infections since reopening restaurants, bars, gyms and other public places.

And in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Arizona - states that loosened their stay-at-home restrictions early - daily deaths have been quietly rising since early June.

When announcing his Tulsa rally, Trump said he would also host more rallies soon in swing states of Florida, Arizona and North Carolina - states where there have been spikes in new infections.

Across the United States there were 32,540 new infections on Sunday. But amid protests over racial injustice and his handling of coronavirus pandemic, Trump has focused on economic growth.

Again on Sunday he shifted attention to the reopened economy as he shared commentary from Fox News.

He tweeted a quote from Tammy Bruce and Steven Hilton saying: 'His (President Trump's) policies set a foundation that allowed us to survive the pandemic'. He then added: 'True, we built something so strong that we are now setting economic growth records again - Jobs & Growth!!!'

On Sunday he shifted attention to the reopened economy as he shared commentary from Fox News

Donald Trump told the crowd at his comeback rally on Saturday night that he told his administration to slow down testing so the number of confirmed cases would be lowered

Peter Navarro said earlier Sunday that Donald Trump was being 'tongue-in-cheek' when he claimed during his rally that he told his administration to cut down on coronavirus testing so the U.S. infection rate would appear to be lower.

During an interview with CNN's State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Navarro about the moment the president said during his rally Saturday night: 'I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'

'C'mon now, Jake, that was tongue-in-cheek,' the White House trade adviser repeatedly told Tapper.

'I don't know that it was tongue-in-cheek at all,' the host pushed back. 'He has said similar things for months.'

Navarro, who claimed talking about coronavirus is 'not in my lane,' insisted that Tapper instead ask him about 'serious issues.'

'I think testing is a very serious issue. I'm not the one making jokes about it,' Tapper asserted.

'Come on. It was a light moment,' Navarro shot back.

Tapper countered: 'I'm not sure that a deadly pandemic, where almost 120,000 Americans died, is really a good subject for a 'light moment.''

But Navarro asserted the president is taking those deaths 'absolutely seriously.'

Trump told a cheering crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma during his comeback rally Saturday night that he directed his administration to slow down testing for coronavirus.

He claimed the success in testing capabilities and availability is a 'double-edged sword' that has led to more cases being discovered than any other country is reporting.

White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro claimed Sunday morning that Donald Trump was being 'tongue-in-cheek' when he claimed he told his people to 'slow down' testing to artificially lower U.S. coronavirus numbers

During the rally, Trump said the U.S. has now tested 25 million people  far more than other countries.

The 'bad part,' Trump said, is that widespread testing leads to logging more cases of the virus.

'When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please,' the president said.

Trump also ignited outrage by calling COVID-19 the 'kung flu', a racist term referencing its origins in China.

So far, more than 119,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 and more than 2.1 million have been infected. The image above shows Kim Desmond (left) getting swabbed for coronavirus at a testing site in Denver on Saturday

Trump opted to hold his first rally in 110 days despite concerns from local health officials that it could lead to further spread of the virus in Tulsa.

Most of those in attendance declined to wear a mask.

Rising case numbers in the U.S. can partially be explained by the wider availability of testing  especially compared to other countries. Mild cases, previously undetected because of limits on who could be tested, are now showing up in the numbers.

The campaign of Trump's Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, released a statement on Saturday blasting the president for saying his administration slowed testing.

'In an outrageous moment that will be remembered long after tonight's debacle of a rally, President Trump just admitted that he's putting politics ahead of the safety and economic well-being of the American people - even as we just recorded the highest number of new COVID-19 cases in almost two months and 20 million workers remain out of work,' campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said.

'Trump's catastrophic mismanagement of our nation's response to the worst public health crisis in over 100 years began with ignoring countless warnings from his own officials and selling us out to the Chinese government for a hollow trade deal  and that mismanagement continues to this day as he continues to put his own political interests first while many states see spikes in deadly infections.'

She added: 'To hear him say tonight that he has ordered testing slowed - a transparent attempt to make the numbers look better - is appalling.'
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 22)  The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday said it will help decide on the amount of monetary compensation for Filipino fishermen whose boat was sunk by a Chinese vessel last year.

The 22 crewmen aboard the Philippine fishing boat Gem-Ver have not been recompensed by the owner of the Chinese vessel which rammed their boat on the night of June 9, 2019, leaving them struggling to stay afloat in the cold sea for hours.

Instead of coming to their aid, the Filipino fishermen said the Chinese crew simply turned off their vessels lights and abandoned them in the open sea. They were only brought to safety by the crew of a Vietnamese fishing boat.

The incident happened in the vicinity of the Reed Bank, also called Recto Bank, an underwater feature in the West Philippine Sea being claimed by China.

According to Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., both Manila and Beijing have arrived at the same conclusion that the Chinese vessel was at fault.

Now, the question is the compensation. The compensation is going to be determined by our Department of Justice, Locsin said in an interview with ANC on Monday.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra later said he wasnt aware of his departments responsibility in setting the amount but would be very happy to help the Department of Foreign Affairs.

I dont remember that the DOJ was tasked before to determine the amount of compensatory or other civil damages, Guevarra said. But since Secretary Locsin mentioned it, well be very happy to help.

Through Usec. Adrian Sugay, I have already given instructions to the provincial prosecutors office nearest the place of residence of the fishermen concerned to gather the necessary information, he added.

Locsin said he has tremendous confidence in the Justice secretary, saying hes certain Guevarra will determine the amount of compensatory damages very soon.

The Foreign Affairs Secretary also pointed out that the Chinese government was not at fault, as it was a private Chinese vessel that committed the damage. The owner of the Chinese vessel had issued an apology nearly three months after the marine incident, but called the hitting and sinking of the fishing boat an "accidental collision."
New Zealand police have seized NZ$ 140 million (~US$90 million) from Alexander Vinnik, the alleged operator of the now-defunct crypto exchange BTC-e, and his company Canton Business Corporation (the managing shell company of BTC-e).

The police said it is the largest seizure in its history. Vinnik was arrested on money laundering allegations in Greece in 2017, and earlier this year was extradited to France, where he remains in custody.

It is alleged that Vinnik operated BTC-e without anti-money laundering controls and policies, which resulted in criminals laundering proceeds derived from illegal activities via the exchange.



New Zealand police commissioner Andrew Coster said the seized funds are "likely to reflect the profit gained from the victimisation of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people globally as a result of cyber-crime and organised crime."

Coster added that the police worked closely with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to address this "very serious offending."

The police plan to file an application to the High Court seeking forfeiture of the seized funds. It is not clear whether the funds are in the form of fiat or cryptocurrency. When reached, the police declined to comment to The Block.

The case is still ongoing. Once it is completed in France, Vinnik is said to extradite to Greece, then the U.S. and later to his native Russia.





 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
(CNN)  When India launched its coronavirus tracing app Aarogya Setu in April, it came with a mandatory download order for public sector workers.

That order soon spread to private sector workers and then to people living in designated Covid-19 containment zones  including Rajeev Ghosh, a 50-year old chemist who resides in Noida, a city east of the capital New Delhi.

Back in May, he risked a six-month prison sentence or $15 fine for refusing to download the app. Ghosh didn't care: He had bigger concerns about the future use of his data.

"I am not sure how the government will use my data. If they want, they can do surveillance on me forever through location-tracking on the app," said Ghosh.

Ghosh is not alone in his concerns. In Noida, privacy activists mounted a legal challenge to the mandatory download order, and by the end of May it was lifted. They argued that it breached personal liberties protected by a landmark Supreme Court ruling about the right to privacy in 2017.

The Indian government maintains that most personal and location data of users is ultimately deleted, but critics say India's lack of data protection laws exposes millions of people to potential privacy breaches. They also fear that personal information could be sold by the government to private companies, or even used for surveillance beyond Covid-19 concerns.

Millions of users

The Aarogya Setu app was developed by the National Informatics Centre, an ICT and e-governance body under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in collaboration with voluntary technical experts from private industry and academia.

By the beginning of June, it had been downloaded over 120 million times.

Unlike many other countries' contact tracing apps, Aarogya Setu uses Bluetooth and GPS location data to monitor the app users' movement and proximity to other people.

Users are asked to input their name, phone number, age, gender, profession and the countries they have visited in the past 30 days, as well as prior health conditions and a self-assessment about any Covid-19-related symptoms.

A unique digital ID (DiD) is generated for each user, which is used for all future app-related transactions. Through GPS, the app records each users' location every 15 minutes.

When two registered users come within Bluetooth range of each other, their apps automatically exchange DiDs and record the time and location. If one of the users tests positive for Covid-19, the information is uploaded from their phone onto the Indian government's server and used for contact tracing.

In an analysis of 25 apps, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gave Aarogya Setu just two out of five stars, largely because it collects far more data than it needs. For comparison, Singapore's TraceTogether app earned 5 stars and uses Bluetooth alone.

As of June 1st, Aarogya Setu had identified 200,000 at-risk people and 3,500 Covid-19 hotspots, according to lead developer Lalitesh Katragadda, the founder of Indihood, a private firm that builds crowdsourcing population-scale platforms, and one of the private industry volunteers who worked with government agencies on the app.

"We have a 24% efficacy rate, that is, 24% of all the people estimated to have Covid-19 because of the app have tested positive," said Katragadda. This means that only about 1 in 4 people advised by the app to get a test actually tests positive.

Subhashis Bannerjee, professor of computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, said the combination of Bluetooth and GPS location would likely return a higher rate of false positives and false negatives. For example, GPS is often unavailable or unreliable indoors, and Bluetooth overestimates the risks in large open spaces, across walls and floors, which radio waves can penetrate but the virus cannot.

"There seems to be a leap of faith from GPS colocation and Bluetooth radio proximity to estimating a risk score for infection transmission," he wrote in a report for the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a non-governmental organization that advocates for digital rights, which has mounted a legal challenge against the mandatory download order in Kerala High Court.

Government safeguards

The Indian government states that enough privacy and protection parameters have been built in to ensure permanent deletion of the app's data.

"All contact tracing and location data on the phone is deleted on a rolling 30-day cycle. The same data on the server is deleted 45 days from the upload unless you test positive. In which case all contact tracing and location information is deleted after 60 days after being declared cured," said Abhishek Singh, CEO of MyGov at India's IT ministry.

However, the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol states that de-identified (anonymous) data can be shared with any government ministry or institution, as long as it's for the purpose of tackling Covid-19. Any data received should be permanently deleted after 180 days, the protocol says. But privacy campaigners say there's no way of knowing if that's happened.

"There is no way to check and verify whether the complete destruction of data has taken place and if any third parties with whom the data is shared has also destroyed it," said Apar Gupta, a lawyer and executive director of the IFF.

In response to calls for more transparency, the Indian government opened up the app's source code on May 27 and announced a bug bounty program to incentivize software experts to find security vulnerabilities in the app, to rectify lapses, if any.

"This is a step in the right direction but to know the full picture of who has access to the data, we need the server code also," said Robert Baptiste, an ethical hacker who goes by the alias of Elliot Alderson and exposed security flaws in the app soon after its launch. An open server code would enable experts to see what citizen data is stored in the government server and how the data is shared.

On June 1, Singh of MyGov, said the government planned to release the server code in a few weeks.

However, Katragadda said that even with the server code, access to information on data sharing would be restricted.

"It will never be possible to see exactly with whom the data is shared because for that we will have to open source the entire government," he said.

No data protection laws

One of the main concerns that activists have is that India does not have a data protection law, though a bill is currently being reviewed by a joint select committee and could be passed later this year.

The Personal Data Protection Bill imposes limits on how residents' personal data is used, processed and stored. If passed, the bill would also establish a new regulatory body  the Data Protection Authority (DPA)  to monitor compliance. Critics say the bill is flawed for a number of reasons, including that it allows the government to exempt its departments from the legislation on the basis of national security.

But right now, there are few safeguards for data in India.

"No legislative framework means no official level of accountability. So, if any data mishap happens, there will be no penalty, there will be no safeguards," said Gupta.

There's also a financial incentive for the government to share information. The National Economic Survey of India 2018-19 openly states that the Indian government will monetize citizens' data and sell it to private companies to generate revenue.

"India has made a strategy to sell citizen data and is thus making it a commodity by claiming ownership over Indians' personal data, which is against Indians' fundamental right to privacy," said Kodali, the public interest technologist.

Last year, the Modi government sold citizens' vehicular registration and driving license data to 87 private companies for 65 crore rupees (approximately $8.7 million) without citizens' consent. This caused a backlash with the opposition party questioning the motives of the government and the price of the sale in parliament.

Despite the government's assurances that all Aarogya Setu data will be deleted, Katragadda told CNN Business that some information from the app will be automatically transferred to the National Health Stack (NHS). The NHS is a cloud-based health registry, currently under development, that will include citizens' medical history, insurance coverage and claims.

"Any residual data from the Aarogya Setu app will automatically move into the National Health Stack within the consent architecture, as soon as the health stack comes into effect," said Katragadda.

Residual data means any data that's still on the govt server at the time the NHS becomes active. That includes location, health and personal data that has been downloaded to the server but hasn't yet been deleted in the timeframes laid out by the government, Katragadda said.

No date has been set for the release of the NHS, but Gupta of IFF worries, again, that there's no legal framework to protect the data.

"Even though it is repeatedly stated that consent will be the basis of the information sharing, it's important to note that in both the Aarogya Setu app and NHS, consent is baked into the architecture which is a technical framework rather than a clear source of legal authority."

Ticket to move

Like other countries that have introduced a contact tracing app, India says the technology is vital to stop the virus from spreading. As of June 22, the country had confirmed more than 410,000 cases and 13,254 deaths.

Air passengers are encouraged to download the app before flights, rail passengers need it for train travel, and some workers have been told they need it to do their jobs.

But digital rights activists say the app carries more risks than it's worth, especially in a country where fewer than 35% of people have the cellphones able to support it.

Citizens and activists also fear function creep of the app, meaning that information obtained through the app could be linked to other services.

"In the past we have seen that technology interventions by this government such as the Aadhar program, which was initially built to ensure that everyone has a digital identity, became a pervasive system, said Gupta.

"Initially built for the purposes of accessing government benefits and subsidies, it was soon mandated for opening bank accounts, availing mobile numbers and going about your business."

Gupta is referring to Aadhaar, a biometric database introduced in 2009, initially as a voluntary program to prevent benefit fraud. Now, it contains the fingerprints and iris scans of more than one billion Indians. Users receive a 12-digit identity number that is used to access welfare payments and other government-controlled services.

However, in 2018 a journalist discovered a security breach which disclosed citizens' personal details. The government introduced new security measures, but the scandal eroded trust in its ability to keep data safe.

Before easing off its compulsory download order, India was the only democratic country that made it mandatory for millions of citizens to download the app. The only other countries to impose a similar order were Turkey and China. Campaigners say that alone is cause for concern.

"When it comes to technology and public use, the world's largest democracy is drawing from China's playbook  using national security or a public health crisis to build a digital model of data-gathering, oversight and surveillance," said Vidushi Marda, a lawyer working on emerging technology and human rights.

China's Covid-19 app, initially designed for contact-tracing during the pandemic, is now being stitched into a social credit system in some places, where the app is used to track an individual's exercise, alcohol and smoking intake, and sleep hours.

"I would say these kinds of complex technical architectures are not happening in a collective fashion in India, but there is a danger they will be built in through platforms like the National Health Stack," said Gupta.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Many Indian citizens believe their government is trying to steal and sell their data. Here's why."
It looks like Natalie Barr is set for a big payday.

On Sunday, it was announced that Sunrise host Sam Armytage, 43, would reduce her on-air duties and opt for a four-day week.

As a result, Natalie, 52, will be stepping up to host the Seven breakfast program two days a week - with a salary increase to boot.

Scroll down for video

Stepping up: Sunrise newsreader Natalie Barr (pictured) is reportedly getting a pay rise after being promoted to host two days a week

Sam will no longer work Mondays, and co-anchor David 'Kochie' Koch, 64, hasn't worked Fridays for some time.

Consequently, Natalie will host with Kochie on Mondays and with Sam on Fridays.

Due to her increased workload, it has been reported by TV Tonight that the newsreader is receiving a pay rise.

Book-ending the week: Sam Armytage (centre left) will no longer work Mondays, and co-anchor David 'Kochie' Koch (centre right) hasn't work Fridays for some time. Natalie (left) will take the helm on these days. Pictured right: sports reporter Mark Beretta

It comes after Natalie covered for Sam for six weeks earlier this year when her colleague was suffering from a respiratory infection.

Sam will reportedly forfeit one fifth of her salary in exchange for stepping back to four days a week.

Sam's reduced workload comes after she faced widespread backlash when a 'racist' Sunrise segment resurfaced on Twitter.

Practice makes perfect: Natalie (pictured with Kochie) covered for Sam for six weeks earlier this year when her colleague was suffering from a respiratory infection

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, the 2015 segment became widely circulated on Twitter and was re-published by international news websites.

However, Seven insists that her reduced workload has nothing to do with the fresh wave of criticism.

'Sam's doing a great job,' Seven's news director Craig McPherson told the The Daily Telegraph over the weekend.

Controversy: Sam's reduced workload comes after she faced backlash when a 'racist' Sunrise segment resurfaced on Twitter amid the Black Lives Matter movement

'Were happy. The ensemble is doing fantastically. There is no suggestion we want her anywhere but here.'

Sam had apparently requested a four-day week from her employer, despite saying earlier in the year she had no plans to step back.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Seven for comment.
Canadian authorities have launched an investigation after dozens of caged puppies died and hundreds more fell violently sick on a passenger flight from Kiev.

Around 500 French Bulldogs were discovered crammed in boxes aboard a Ukraine International Airlines plane which landed at Toronto airport on Saturday.

Thirty-eight of the dogs were dead on arrival and the surviving animals were discovered suffering dehydration, weakness and vomiting.

Abby Lorenzen, a dog handler who was picking up a friend's pet from the airport, told Global News: 'You could just smell death and kind of faeces, urine.'

Around 500 French Bulldogs were discovered crammed in boxes aboard a Ukraine International Airlines plane which landed at Toronto airport on Saturday

French Bulldogs are a popular breed of fog in Canada and fetch up to $4,000 on the lucrative puppy market (file photo)

Another picture shows rows of the cages trapping the dogs stacked up

Photos on her social media show two supposedly dead dogs piled on top of each other in a single claustrophobic container.

Another picture shows rows of the cages trapping the dogs stacked up beside the plane's hold.

Ms Lorenzen added: 'Those animals didnt need to suffer like that. That airline should of never taken on so [many] live animals to begin with.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency 'will determine the next steps once the investigation is complete'.

Ukrainian Airlines said: 'Everyone at UIA offers its condolences for the tragic loss of animal life on our flight.

'UIA is working with local authorities to determine what happened and to make any changes necessary to prevent such a situation from occurring again.'

Photos on her social media show two supposedly dead dogs piled on top of each other in a single claustrophobic container

French Bulldogs are a popular breed of fog in Canada and fetch up to $4,000 on the lucrative puppy market.

Scott Weese of the University of Guelph told CBC that most buyers believe the animals are bred in Canada.

But he said 'we have no idea how many dogs come in, where they go, where they come from,' adding that there was 'potentially some organized crime component.'

'You mentioned 500 French bulldogs. If those are going for sale at $3,000 to $4,000 a dog, that's a massive amount of money,' he told the broadcaster.
For many businesses, the two-pronged threat of a pandemic and recession is enough of a reason to be conservative on spending. But for China's cash-rich tech giants, the current environment has given rise to a number of lucrative investment opportunities that could see them take a firmer grip of overseas markets.

Last week, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant worth more than $US580 billion ($851 billion), announced that it was readying a hiring spree of up to 5000 engineers for its global cloud computing business. The beefing up of the division, which has data centres spanning London, Kuala Lumpur and Frankfurt, follows a commitment from the company in April to invest $US28 billion in cloud infrastructure, in anticipation of a shift of services to the internet. In China, that has meant accommodating for online classes while schools have been shut, for example. However, internationally, it is offering support to businesses preparing to make flexible working a long-term reality.

Alibaba chief Daniel Zhang has been splashing out on investments during the pandemic. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

"The cloud investment reflects the strengths that Alibaba and other dominant digital players globally are experiencing with the shift of many activities online during the pandemic," says Duncan Clark, founder of business advisory firm BDA China.

It's not just Alibaba on the move. ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of video-sharing app TikTok, is eyeing opportunities abroad, as is gaming specialist Tencent. So how are these firms able to invest at a time of crisis?
Gov. Ned Lamont is working with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on a regional requirement that out-of-state visitors, particularly those from states with rising infection rates in the coronavirus pandemic, self-quarantine for 14 days after arriving here.

Short of a mandatory 14-day quarantine for visitors, Lamont indicated that the regions governors are thinking of allowing visitors to freely move about if they present documents indicating negative results of recent COVID-19 tests.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, while early epicenters of COVID-19 infections, in recent weeks have succeeded in sharply reducing the spread of the pandemic and have taken steps toward reopening  even as many other states, including Texas, Arizona and Florida, have seen increases in COVID-19.

We are talking about some sort of a regional quarantine, Lamont said Monday during his daily news briefing in the state Capitol. If folks want to come to the New York metropolitan area, the Boston metropolitan area, perhaps they should show that theyve been tested in the very recent past, or they should quarantine.

Lamont didnt say what rules the three states would use or give other details. Were going to have some guidance on that very, very soon, he said.

The issue of quarantines for travelers among states has a politically fraught and confusing history during the coronavirus crisis. On March 28, President Donald Trump told reporters he was considering a two-week quarantine of the Metro New York area, including parts of Connecticut.

It was not clear what Trump meant by the quarantine other than that it would be a partial travel ban. After eight tense hours in which the three governors spoke with White House officials, Trump tweeted that the plan was off.

More than a dozen states have some kind of quarantine requirements, including Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, according to Forbes magazine and travelpulse.com.

I think you tie it to the higher positivity numbers, Lamont said. I dont think you pick on a state. Obviously youre at some risk if there are planes coming in from Miami or Phoenix or Austin, where you have a very high positivity rate even among younger people who may be asymptomatic.

Asked how he would enforce the quarantine, Lamont said many travelers come to the region via the major airports in New York City, New Jersey, Boston and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks. I think the idea of self-quaratining for two weeks maybe is tough, especially if they are coming up for a shorter period of time, Lamont said, adding that he talked with Cuomo on Monday.

Its more effective if we act as a regional collaboration, and Im talking to them about putting in guidelines so we dont have people coming from these other states, Cuomo said in an interview on MSNBC as reported by Times-Union newspaper in Albany.

Paul Mounds, Lamonts chief of staff, who has been the states liaison to the neighboring governors regional efforts, said many other states are seeing large increases in COVID-19 infections even as Connecticuts cases are dropping.

We want to make sure that our infection rate stays down based upon the great work we have been doing here, Mounds said.

Lamont on Monday announced three new fatalities in the coronavirus pandemic, bringing the total to 4,263 since the first death on March 17. He said a net reduction of nine patients brings the hospitalization total statewide to 140, the fewest since around March 26.

Travel and quarantine rules have varied by state and have led to some friction between states.

Earlier in the pandemic, Rhode Island state police stopped vehicles heading into that state, questioned drivers on their destinations and ordered them to self-quarantine if they were remaining. That was initially aimed at travelers from New York, but later broadened.

But by the end of May and the beginning of June, the requirements were dropped by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, except for those travelers coming from states with active stay-at-home orders.

Alaska requires a negative COVID test 72 hours before a flight. Arkansas, Florida and Oklahoma order visitors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to self-quarantine for 14 days. Massachusetts still requires all visitors to quarantine for two weeks, as does New Hampshire. Starting June 26, Maine will demand 14-day quarantines or proof of negative COVID tests.

Anyone flying into Hawaii, or New Mexicos airports must also quarantine for 14 days.

Lamont said that since the states gradual reopening on May 20, public health indicators are still trending in a positive direction with declining hospitalizations and deaths.

Since last Wednesday, when Phase 2 allowed other personal services such as limited indoor dining, gyms and nail salons to reopen, there have been positive signs, although a bar in New Havens Westville neighborhood was closed after 1,000 people crowded in Saturday night and the ownership of the facility apparently ignored social distancing rules over the weekend.

I dont think our reopening has contributed at all to any type of a flareup that I have seen, Lamont said. In fact, just the opposite. The metrics keep going in the right direction.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
Author and activist, Reno Omokri shared his thoughts on the concept of church wedding saying it isnt biblical.

The former media aide to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, in series of posts which he shared on his Facebook page, Reno Omokri said the concept of church wedding isnt backed up by the scriptures.

According to Reno, Jesus in the bible attended a wedding held at home and not a church. Reno said all that is needed for a wedding ceremony to take place, is a man, his wife and their family members, not a church, pastor or priest.

He added that God simplified marriage, but Africans in copying the whites have complicated it.

Read what he wrote below;

He wrote : Someone said church wedding is necessary because pastors are Gods representatives on Earth. To that man, my question is this: What are your parents? Devils representative? No blessing on Earth is greater than parents blessing.

After God, parents. Read Christs parables regarding marriage-Luke 14:8-10. It does not involve a priest or pastor. My dear people, these European ideas about church wedding are doctrines of men, there is nothing divine or holy about it. Holy matrimony only involves the couple and their parents. That is why the only commandment amongst the Ten Commandments with a blessing attached to it is Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you-Exodus 20:12
Smiling and comfortable together, the young couple looked smitten in photos of their budding romance.

Jordan Brodie Miller, 20, and Emerald Wardle, 18, hadn't been dating long, but she had already moved in with him and professed her love on Instagram.

But by Saturday she was dead, found strangled in Miller's parents' home in Maitland, north of Sydney, where the young man was arrested yelling about demons.

Hauled before Newcastle Bail Court on Sunday he repeatedly yelled he was a 'murderer' despite pleas from his lawyer to stop talking.

Emerald Wardle, 18, (left) was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Jordan Brodie Miller, 20, at his parent's home

By Saturday morning Ms Wardle was dead, found strangled in Miller's parents' home in Maitland, north of Sydney

'I am a murderer,' Miller repeatedly said into his microphone, The Daily Telegraph reported.

'I wrapped my hands around Emerald Wardle's throat.'

He later told the court Emerald was lying down in bed in the moments before her death, before adding that he had stolen her car on the Thursday night prior.

His legal aid solicitor Gillian Jewison repeatedly asked her client to remain silent.

Miller reportedly again asked the court if he had a legal right to continue talking and wanted to say more.

Registrar Steve Mannell eventually asked the court to end the video stream with Miller.

The couple hadn't been dating long, but she had already moved in with him and professed her love on Instagram

Ms Jewison applied for a suppression order, and said her client's right to a fair trial could be compromised if his in court outbursts were made public.

The court also heard there were concerns about Miller's mental health.

When emergency services arrived at the scene on Saturday morning, neighbours claimed to have heard a man screaming about 'demons'.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the pair had not been dating long but it is understood both Miller and Ms Wardle lived at the property.

Police arrived at the property about 1.30am where they allegedly saw Miller standing outside and unarmed.

An altercation allegedly ensued between Miller and police before he was arrested.

Following his arrest, police entered the home where they found Ms Wardle's dead body.

Homicide detectives are investigating Ms Wardle's (pictured) horrific death and believe she may have been strangled

Ms Wardle is the 32nd Australian woman tragically lost to murder or manslaughter in 2020.

Ms Wardle's friend Cassidy Baker remembered her as a 'kind, fun and loving' person.

'To come home last night and hear what happened to her really, really hurt me,' Ms Baker told Nine News.

'Unfortunately things went a bit too far for my friend Emmy, and it's okay to be able to speak up if you need to talk about anything.

'She'd always make sure that you're okay and check up on you.'

Ms Wardle was found dead at Miller's parent's house (pictured) in Maitland, NSW

Her friends took to social media expressing their heartache upon hearing the news of her horrific death.

'You didn't deserve this baby girl, your life had only just started and it was taken... I treasure you, I treasure our memories and I'll forever love you Emmy,' one person wrote.

'RIP sweetie you didn't deserve this at all no matter what,' another commented.

'I'm devastated she was a lovely girl and she would wave and say hi. She is one house from me in a very small loving quiet neighbourhood we are all shocked and very sad rip beautiful girl,' someone else wrote.

Anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000.
Amid strong opposition objections, the Armenian parliament approved on Monday constitutional changes calling for the immediate dismissal of three of the nine members of the countrys Constitutional Court.

The amendments drafted by the ruling My Step bloc would also require the court to elect a new chairman. Hrayr Tovmasian, the current chairman who has been at loggerheads with the Armenian government for the past year, would not have to resign from the court altogether.

Tovmasian and six other judges have been under strong government pressure to step down, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accusing them of maintaining close ties to the countrys former government and impeding judicial reforms. Tovmasian and opposition figures have dismissed these claims, saying that Pashinian is simply seeking to gain control over the Constitutional Court.

With all seven judges refusing to quit, the ruling political team decided in February to hold a referendum on its bid to oust them. The referendum slated for April 5 was subsequently postponed and then cancelled altogether because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In May, Pashinians administration opted for a less radical solution to the constitutional crisis which would bar all high court judges from serving for more than 12 years.

Such term limits were already set by amendments to the Armenian constitution which took effect in April 2018. However, the countrys former leadership made sure that they do not apply to those judges who were installed prior to that. A clause in the amended constitution allowed them to retain their positions until reaching retirement age.

The changes approved by the government-controlled parliament would eliminate this clause. This would lead to the immediate resignation of three judges who had taken the bench in the mid-1990s. Two other Constitutional Court members would have to resign in 2022. Tovmasian would have to quit as court chairman but would remain one of the nine justices.

Also in May, the government asked the Venice Commission for an advisory opinion on this solution.

In its opinion publicized on Monday, the Venice Commission largely backed the proposed formula. Still, it also called for a transitional period which would allow for a gradual change in the composition of the Court in order to avoid any abrupt and immediate change endangering the independence of this institution.

The commission said the Armenian authorities should also not rush to have Tovmasian replaced by another court chairman.

The draft constitutional amendments unveiled by Pashinians bloc on Friday do not envisage any transitional periods. The Venice Commission said it regrets this fact and believes that it is not in line with the recommendations in this Opinion.

Justice Minister Rustam Badasian and senior pro-government lawmakers downplayed the commissions objections as the National Assembly swiftly passed the amendments in both the first and second readings.

They said that the Strasbourg-based body agreed with the main thrust of the constitutional changes planned by the Armenian authorities. One of those lawmakers, Vahagn Hovakimian, insisted that the changes will eventually result in a Constitutional Court enjoying the publics trust.

The amendments were backed by 89 members of the 132-seat National Assembly. Virtually all of those deputies are affiliated with My Step.

The Venice Commission also noted that under Armenian law the court has to review and validate constitutional changes before they are passed in the second and final reading.

Backed by the government, the parliaments pro-government majority decided not to seek such judgment. I think there is a conflict of interest, Badasian said, referring to the Constitutional Court judges affected by the amendments.

Hovakimian likewise claimed that the court cannot objectively determine the amendments conformity with other articles of the constitution for that reason.

The two opposition parties represented in the parliament boycotted the votes and short debates that preceded them. One of them, the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), condemned the amendments as unconstitutional. It said that the parliamentary majoritys decision to bypass the Constitutional Court is also illegal.

Accordingly, the BHK said it will try to challenge the amendments in the Constitutional Court before they can take effect. It urged the other parliamentary opposition party, Bright Armenia (LHK), to join it in appealing to the court and thus preventing the overthrow of the constitutional order.

The BHK needs the LHKs backing in order to be able to lodge such an appeal. The LHK did not immediately respond to the initiative.
Protests continued Monday in Portland, marking the citys 26th consecutive day of demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism.

Rose City Justice, which has organized rallies drawing thousands of protesters, again hosted a demonstration that started at Jefferson High School and marched through North Portland. Protesters also gathered outside the downtown Multnomah County Justice Center.

At 10 p.m., Portland police used Twitter to warn protesters outside the Justice Center that if they blocked traffic on Southwest Second or Third avenues, you may be subject to arrest and use of force. Live videos on social media showed hundreds of demonstrators marched down Second Avenue after police issued the Twitter warning. Eventually, the group returned to the Justice Center.

The video showed that police moved in around 11:35 p.m. to stop protesters from blocking vehicle traffic in front of the Justice Center. Officers and their vehicles then blocked traffic on Third Avenue while protesters gathered in the park across the street. Police used a loudspeaker to tell people to leave the nearby Lownsdale and Chapman parks by midnight, when parks close by city rule.

At midnight, police announced that people must clear out of the parks or be subject to the use of force. Most people left, walking west and north.

Two people were arrested on suspicion of interfering with an officer, according to police, and the group mostly dispersed about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The protests, which started in late May, have regularly shut down Portland streets and parks. The protests come amid global calls for change after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died nearly a month ago after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

Mondays protests followed the arrests of 19 adults in connection with the previous days demonstrations in downtown Portland. A couple hundred protesters gathered Sunday night outside the Justice Center, according to police. The crowd size decreased to no more than 100 people by early Monday morning, police said, and most people dispersed by about 1:40 a.m.

Police said during the demonstrations, some people blocked traffic and some tampered with doors to the buildings Portland Police Bureau Central Precinct.

Police said most of the people arrested were accused of one or two misdemeanors, namely the broadly defined charge of interfering with a police officer. Multnomah County District Attorney-Elect Mike Schmidt has said he may choose not to prosecute protesters on that charge.

One person, a 23-year-old woman, was arrested on suspicion of a felony. In addition to two misdemeanor charges, shes accused of assaulting a police officer, a low-level felony.

Another person, a 31-year-old man, was arrested early Monday morning after he received hospital treatment for an alleged medical issue, police said. Videos posted on social media showed a man who appeared to be unconscious placed on a stretcher by police and emergency responders during the demonstrations. The man was later booked into jail on two misdemeanor charges, as well as for an active warrant from Marion County.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Despite a small number of commuters at the Staten Island Ferry making their way into Manhattan, some said they expect more residents will be traveling as New York City begins the second phase of reopening on Monday.

Two commuters traveling on the Staten Island Ferry on Monday told the Advance/SILive.com they expected to see more travelers and traffic during their morning and evening commutes. Hundreds of thousands were expected to return to public transportation in Phase 2 -- in addition to the thousands already taking mass transit as essential workers and when the first phase began earlier this month.

A commuter told the Advance/SILive.com that she expects the ferry to be busier than usual. She has been taking the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan since May 1, as she works in a medical office as an essential worker.

Another commuter, who previously took the Staten Island Ferry into work daily, has been driving himself into Manhattan instead of taking mass transit. On Monday, he decided to return to his regular commute on the ferry.

It should be more busy today, he said. I figured let me take the ferry and see what its like.

Ridership has been slowly creeping back up at the Staten Island Ferry, but it still felt like a ghost town last week -- more than a week into Phase 1. Similar light travel conditions were observed by the Advance when the city officially entered Phase 1 on June 8.

On Monday, commuters continued to protect themselves against the coronavirus (COVID-19) -- wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing. Red Xs were marked on the floor to assist with distancing guidelines.

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

Commuters taking public transportation on MTA buses and subways and the Staten Island Ferry are still required to wear a face covering.

Ferries are running every 20 minutes during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Service every 20 minutes is being offered weekdays, in the morning from 6 to 9 a.m., and in the afternoon from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Thirty-minute service will continue on weekdays, in the morning from 5:30 to 6 a.m., and in the evening from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Lower-level boarding at the St. George Terminal remains closed to all except cyclists and people with disabilities. Staten Island Ferry terminals restrooms will continue to close nightly due to incidences of vandalism and to allow for more thorough cleanings of the facilities.

The St. George restrooms will be closed from 5 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., with the Whitehall restrooms closed from 8:30 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Regular service on MTA buses and subways returned June 8.

TIPS TO STAY SAFE

For those making their return to mass transit, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has provided various tips to help you stay safe.

Riders are advised to avoid touching frequently-touched surfaces such as kiosks, digital interfaces, ticket machines, turnstiles, handrails, restroom surfaces, elevator buttons and benches as much as possible.

Should you have to touch one of these surfaces, you are advised to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water or use hand sanitizer.

Riders should use contactless payment, like the MTAs OMNY system, whenever possible.

Commuters should attempt to maintain safe social distance whenever possible by avoiding crowded platforms, skipping seats and using rear door entry on buses.

Workers with flexible hours should consider traveling during off-peak times to avoid large crowds.

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.
Jersey Citys announcement Thursday that it would put $1 million into de-escalation training for every police officer  from rookie to chief  is a good idea when it comes to working toward solutions to the undeniable, horrific and systemic oppression of Black people, the poor and minority communities nationwide.

But either Mayor Fulop and Public Safety Director James Shea should withdraw their recommendation for two consultant contracts or the City Council should reject them at this weeks meeting.

While there is an urgency to address the issue, the administration is rushing through contracts to two traditional law enforcement consultants who bring no diversity to the table at a time when they should be seeking out fresh ideas, Black voices and new perspectives.

Retired New York City police hostage negotiator Jack Cambria (known as Gentleman Jack,' according to his website) and Tomahawk Strategic Solutions (founded by Seal Team 6 members) may be well-respected trainers, but are they the right people for this job?

Beyond that, its troubling that Fulop and Shea made the decision on which consultants to hire without much  if any  consultation with others, a pattern that makes people think the publicity associated with being first is more important to the administration than getting it right.

Look at the response from members of the Black community earlier this month when Fulop announced he was working with Shea and Police Chief Kelly on reforms.

The community and the leaders who have been fighting for years for justice must be at the table and involved at every stage of decision making, Pamela Johnson, founder and executive director of the Jersey City Anti-Violence Coalition, said at the time. We are tired of being informed of decisions after the fact.'

And last week, teacher and youth advocate Janine Brown (a former Jersey Journal teen columnist and intern) resigned from the citys Public Safety Advisory Board, calling it a facade.

When is the mayor going to get the message?

The de-escalation issue is far too important to make decisions on in a silo. Opinions must be sought out. State Attorney General Gurbir Grewals advice should also be sought as consistency in training statewide  and nationwide  would be helpful when officers move from department to department.

It has become all too clear that the growing militarization of police departments and the focus on effective'' law enforcement techniques have gone too far, leading to overblown responses with fatal results, particularly against Black men, to what should be simple calls for assistance.

Surely, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Rayshard Brooks, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and so many others would be alive today if the officers responding to the 911 calls in their cases had acted differently. Philando Castile and others stopped in traffic incidents would also be alive. Breonna Taylor and others in no-knock searches would be with us still.

In our own area, we have questioned, among other Jersey City incidents, the high-speed, six-mile chase in 2017 that included cops shooting at a Black drivers vehicle. In the fiery crash that ended the chase, an innocent bystander was seriously burned  and kicked by the cops.

Just last month, three weeks before Floyds murder reignited outrage and the national conversation, Jersey City police responded to an afternoon call of a street fight in a Black neighborhood with multiple officers who wound up using pepper spray and batons on the crowd. In the process of running after mostly juveniles, the cops knocked a woman who had just been sitting on a chair in front of a home to the ground so they could pummel a young man.

In Bayonne, there was the incident of a Hispanic man who called 911 when his car caught fire and he wound up being pepper sprayed by cops; another in which a Black man trying unsuccessfully to break up a fight in a hallway was hit with cops pepper spray and later died; and the case of cops serving a warrant busting into a home and pepper spraying everyone inside, including children. That final case resulted in a more than $1 million settlement in federal court.

Yes, police officers have to sometimes make split-second, life-or-death decisions. But were any of these cases truly life or death?

Especially when dealing with unarmed members of the community and the mentally ill or impaired, any officers who have learned, either through training or their departments culture, to react with violence need to be reschooled. And any officers whose temperament cant be controlled shouldnt be on the job at all.

Might doesnt equal right.

De-escalation training efforts are vital, and they must be done right. They should be undertaken by every law enforcement department in the county.

Send letters to the editor and guest columns for The Jersey Journal to jjletters@jjournal.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 12:28:02|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

WELLINGTON, June 22 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total active cases in the country to nine, all linked to overseas travel, according to the Ministry of Health.

The two cases were a female teenager who travelled to New Zealand from Pakistan, and a man in his 30s who arrived here from India. None are receiving hospital-level care, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a press conference.

Monday's two cases were both in managed isolation, Bloomfield said.

The combined number of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand is 1,511, according to the ministry.

The number of COVID-19 related deaths in New Zealand was 22. The number of recovered cases was 1,482, the health ministry said. Enditem
Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (135) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (348) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (442) Jan 2014 (547) Feb 2014 (476) Mar 2014 (526) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (469) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (443) Oct 2014 (472) Nov 2014 (497) Dec 2014 (536) Jan 2015 (539) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (582) Apr 2015 (658) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (924) Nov 2015 (802) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (866) May 2016 (947) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (967) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (879) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (896) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (850) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (809) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (851) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (935) Jul 2019 (950) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (941) Feb 2020 (849) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (789) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (812) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (824) Jul 2021 (830) Aug 2021 (832) Sep 2021 (791) Oct 2021 (754) Nov 2021 (683) Dec 2021 (693) Jan 2022 (498)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 22:59:44|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

DOHA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Qatar's Health Ministry on Monday announced 1,034 new infections of COVID-19, increasing the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 88,403.

"Some 1,637 people recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 69,956, while another died, increasing the fatalities to 99," the official Qatar News Agency quoted a statement by the ministry as saying.

It revealed that the infections had doubled because of people's gatherings and visits, and ignoring of preventive measures recommended by the government, the most important of which is staying at home and maintaining social distancing.

A total of 324,570 people in Qatar have undergone lab tests for COVID-19 so far, it added.

China and Qatar have offered mutual help during the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

On Feb. 21, five Qatar Airways cargo freighters flew to China carrying approximately 300 tons of medical supplies donated by the airline. Enditem
It has been simmering for a while now but the latest round of tensions between the Indian and Chinese military over the past few weeks, coupled with the narrative around Indias economic situation, has again given rise to widespread sentiments around boycotting Chinese products. It isn't new, because we have been here before. Yet, the focus on Make in India now comes with renewed vigor. With Indias smartphone market being one of the most attractive in the world, it certainly takes the spotlight.

The smartphone manufacturers had responded positively to Prime Minister Narendra Modis Make in India call in September 2014, to unveil local manufacturing plans. Pretty much every popular smartphone brand now makes phones in India. However, as India stands at a critical economic and political juncture, completely removing Chinas influence in the heavily valued segment still seems like a tall task, even though numerous brands have claimed otherwise.

Almost all the major components for manufacturing a smartphone are sourced from China, and are only assembled in India

The Difference Between Making And Assembling

India has graduated from a SKD (Semi Knocked-Down)-type manufacturing, to CKD (Completely Knocked-Down). However, all the major components (for manufacturing a smartphone) are sourced from China, and are only assembled in India. The three most important components of manufacturing a phone are chipset, memory and display, of which the first two require high-end technology, uninterrupted water and electricity supply, and very skilled manpower to run the automated machines in a closed and vacuumed environment, says Upasana Joshi, lead analyst for mobile phones, India and South Asia at IDC.

It is this that acts as a critical roadblock for Indias local manufacturing ambitions. As Joshi adds, Dependency for these key components remains, and shall remain on Taiwan, Korea or China for at least the next few years. Currently, only parts like batteries, chargers, packaging materials etc are locally sourced.

Make in India, circa 2014

If India still remains so largely dependent on China for its smartphones, then what has our Make in India initiatives achievements been, till date? Data from IDC states that over the past six years, local production of phones has evolved from 40 percent of SKD units, to about 95 percent assembling of CKD units. For reference, SKD refers to units that were fully assembled in an outside market, then taken apart and imported as parts, only to be put back together at a local plant. CKD, on the other hand, is a more local process where the components are sourced from outside, following which a host of local operations are undertaken to produce the final, working product.

To understand what this implies, think of how local assembling plants of foreign automobile giants such as BMW operate in India  while the engine and the chassis frame are imported as whole, everything is put together here, locally. This allows a brand to save significantly on heavy import duties, which comes into effect if a product is imported as a completely built unit (CBU). This is something that Apples iPhones have been largely exposed to.

It is this that has been the biggest impact of Indias local manufacturing push. Samsung, the second largest smartphone OEM in India by quarterly shipments, in 2018 unveiled the worlds largest mobile manufacturing factory in Noida, India. By the end of 2020, Samsung aims to assemble as many as 120 million units every year, eventually meeting targets to export units from India to Samsungs other markets.

Xiaomi, which overtook Samsung to take the top spot in Indian smartphone shipments in January 2018, claims to now have seven manufacturing facilities in the country. In November 2019, Muralikrishnan B, chief operating officer of Xiaomi India, claimed that 99 percent of the phones that Xiaomi sells in the country are locally built, according to a report by Business Standard. He further stated that Xiaomi has also begun exporting devices to Bangladesh and Nepal, albeit in limited quantities.

Samsung, the second largest smartphone OEM in India by quarterly shipments, in 2018 unveiled the worlds largest mobile manufacturing factory in Noida

Taking note

India, hence, is a smartphone assembly hub for its own devices today, which harks back to Joshis insight that for sourcing of essential components, India remains dependent on nations such as China. Given the nature of these components, this dependence is likely to continue for at least the immediate future. The government has taken cognisance of this matter, as well.

Earlier this month, India unveiled a Rs 50,000 crore package targeting the five largest global smartphone makers operating in the country, with performance-linked incentives (PLI) that involve cash benefits depending on meeting local sourcing, manufacturing and sales targets. This, as Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for electronics, IT and communications projected, could help India produce smartphones and components worth 10 trillion rupees ($133 billion) by 2025, as stated in a previous News18 report.

Focusing on this, IDCs Joshi says that while the road ahead is long, the benefits are there to see. As she says, Locally sourced parts for manufacturing devices would require huge investments by ecosystem players, but the benefits will be multifold as well  saving upfront import duty cost (which varies from 15-22 percent depending on the type of imports), exporting locally-manufactured devices to other parts of the world, earning through export subsidies and evolving as independent entities are some.

However, Joshi also highlights the real problem at hand here. We are still very far away from replacing China as a manufacturing hub, owing to multiple fundamental challenges faced  scarcity of essential resources like water and electricity, logistics, long term investments with dedicated arena for R&D, skilled manpower and hubs to promote production with sharing of resources are a few, she adds.

With this in sight, can we actually ban Chinas influence on products sold in India, in the entirety? Right now, the challenge seems tall, for it would require all-round and intensive investments to develop an advanced manufacturing industry, the likes of which do not exist in our country right now. For the immediate future, assembling in India is what seems to be the way forward.
Amid a tug-of-war between the Centre and Chhattisgarh government over a fresh case registered by the state police last month in connection with the Jheerum valley ambush by Maoists in 2013, the ruling Congress party in the state asked why the BJP was afraid of an SIT probe into the attack.

It also alleged a nexus between the opposition BJP and left wing extremists and asked why the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is trying to take over the probe into a fresh FIR lodged last month by Jitendra Mudliyar, son of Uday Mudliyar who was killed in the Jheerum attack.

In one of the biggest hits on politicians, Maoists had attacked a convoy of Congress leaders during the partys Parivartan Rally in Jheerum valley on May 25, 2013, killing 27 people. Among the victims were the then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former leader of opposition Mahendra Karma and former union minister Vidya Charan Shukla who died of injuries a few days later.

Several incidents have come to light in the past that indicate BJP had been working hand-in-glove with the Maoists, states Agriculture Minister Ravindra Choubey and Forest Minister Mohammad Akbar alleged in a joint press conference.

Recently a BJP leader was arrested in Dantewada on charges of helping Maoists, Choubey said citing other similar instances.

The ministers asked why the BJP was scared of a probe into a conspiracy angle into the Jhiram incident.

The BJP does not want the conspiracy angle into the Jhiram attack to be probed. After the NIA took over the probe, they declared Maoist leaders Ganpati and Ramanna as absconders in March 2014 and released information about confiscating their properties in the media. But surprisingly, the names of the two leaders were not mentioned in the charge sheet filed by the NIA in September that year. The NIA investigation into the case derailed after the NDA government came to power in 2014, they claimed.

The conspiracy angle was not even in the terms of reference of the probe Commission set up by the previous BJP government into the incident. The previous government in the state also ignored the demand for a CBI enquiry into the incident, the ministers claimed.

After the Congress came to power, it constituted a special investigation team to probe the incident and sought the final report of the case from the NIA so that conspiracy angle can be investigated. But the NIA refused to share any documents with the SIT claiming that the probe was incomplete even as the status of the case on its website showed the probe was completed, Akbar said.

Last month, Jitendra Mudliyar lodged a fresh case at Darbha police station seeking to probe the conspiracy angle into the incident. Subsequently, the NIA which works under the Union government, filed an application before the special court (Jagdalpur) on June 16 seeking to take over the probe into the fresh case, he said.

The two ministers alleged that the Jheerum attack was a contract killing and asked why the NIA is trying to take over the probe into the new case.

Leader of Opposition Dharamlal Kaushik rubbished the allegations and asked the Congress to submit any evidence it had.

When the Jhiram valley incident had taken place, UPA was in power at the Centre. NIA conducted its investigation according to the points of investigation fixed by the then UPA rule. Hence, the Congress should have faith on the investigation conducted by the NIA, Kahusik said.

He asked the Congress to be patient and have faith in the investigation.
Liu Zhijun (R) and Li Cuiye play with their daughter by the Yellow River in Xingxian County, north China's Shanxi Province, June 20, 2020. [Xinhua/Cao Yang]

Liu Zhijun and Li Cuiye are a couple who work at the agricultural machinery administration and the government affairs service center respectively in Lyuliang City. In July 2015, Liu and Li volunteered to serve as the first secretaries to Jingyubao Village in Lanxian County and Nantong Village in Xingxian County respectively, both under the jurisdiction of Lyuliang. Though it only takes two-hour-drive from Jingyubao to Nantong, their busy work on poverty alleviation have kept the couple from seeing each other very often. Jingyubao and Nantong were both severely impoverished villages. Local villagers used to work outside as migrant workers due to the barren land and lack of resources there. Liu and village cadres of Jingyubao have put efforts into the infrastructure construction and guided local villagers to plant crops with relatively high economic value. Agricultural machineries have also been introduced to improve the efficiency, as a way to improve locals' incomes. Local authorities of Nantong Village, where Li Cuiye works, have taken many measures, including employment transfer, relocation of impoverished residents and ecological poverty alleviation, to help poverty-stricken people shake off poverty. Jingyubao and Nantong have shaken off poverty in the year of 2016 and 2017 respectively. "Due to our busy work, it's hard to meet our daughter Duoduo often. We both feel sorry for her. But she gradually realizes the difficulties we faced and often cheers us up. It's easy for us to understand each other as we serve the same position," the couple said.

Combo photo shows Liu Zhijun, first secretary to Jingyubao Village, talking with a breeder in Jingyubao Village of Lanxian County (L, taken on June 11, 2020 by Cao Yang) and Li Cuiye, first secretary to Nantong Village, talking with a breeder in Nantong Village of Xingxian County (taken on June 2, 2020 by Liu Liangliang) in north China's Shanxi Province. [Xinhua]

Li Cuiye (L), first secretary to Nantong Village, talks with a villager as her daughter takes an online lesson in Nantong Village of Xingxian County, north China's Shanxi Province, May 22, 2020. [Xinhua/Liu Liangliang]

Combo photo shows Liu Zhijun, first secretary to Jingyubao Village, checking the growing condition of crops in Jingyubao Village of Lanxian County (L, taken on June 10, 2020 by Cao Yang) and Li Cuiye, first secretary to Nantong Village, checking the growing condition of crops in Nantong Village of Xingxian County (taken on June 3, 2020 by Liu Liangliang) in north China's Shanxi Province. [Xinhua]

Combo photo shows Liu Zhijun, first secretary to Jingyubao Village, helping a member of poverty alleviation work group climb a hillside in Jingyubao Village of Lanxian County (L, taken on June 10, 2020 by Cao Yang) and Li Cuiye, first secretary to Nantong Village, climbing a hillside under the help of a member of poverty alleviation work group in Nantong Village of Xingxian County (taken on June 3, 2020 by Liu Liangliang) in north China's Shanxi Province. [Xinhua]

Combo photo shows Liu Zhijun, first secretary to Jingyubao Village, making lunch in Jingyubao Village of Lanxian County (L, taken on June 10, 2020 by Cao Yang) and Li Cuiye, first secretary to Nantong Village, making lunch with her daughter in Nantong Village of Xingxian County (taken on May 22, 2020 by Liu Liangliang) in north China's Shanxi Province. [Xinhua]

(Source: Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-06-22 11:54:26|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

SHANGHAI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai reported three new imported COVID-19 cases and no increase in locally transmitted cases on Sunday, the municipal health commission said Monday.

The imported cases included one with the U.S. nationality and two Indians. The American departed from the United States on June 18 and arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on June 20, showing symptoms during the isolated observation period and was confirmed as a COVID-19 patient.

The two people from India arrived in Shanghai on June 20, and later confirmed as COVID-19 patients after showing symptoms during the isolated observation period.

The patients have been receiving treatment in designated hospitals. A total of 47 close contacts on the flights have been put under quarantine.

As of Sunday, Shanghai had reported a total of 360 confirmed imported cases and 341 locally transmitted cases. Enditem
(Alliance News) - SIMEC Atlantis Energy Ltd on Monday said it has obtained prefecture approval for the transfer of the lease to develop a 12 megawatt tidal power project in Raz Blanchard to Normandie Hydroliennes from Engie SA.

Shares in SIMEC were up 11% at 11.67 pence in London in morning trading.

Prefecture de la Manche in Normandy, France has approved the transfer. Normandie Hydroliennes is a marine energy development company set up among Atlantis, the Development Agency for Normandy, the regional agency for economic development in Normandy, the regional investment fund Normandie Participations and local industrial group EFINOR."

Normandie Hydroliennes has been working for the past 12 months with the French Environmental & Energy Management Agency as well as relevant government ministries in order to get the approvals needed to transfer the first stage of the possible "multi-hundred-megawatt project marine energy project" to be built in Raz Blanchard.

Raz Blanchard in lower Normandy is the strongest tidal current in France and accounts for 50% of national tidal power potential. As 49% owner of the joint venture, SIMEC Atlantis it the main shareholder and plans to expand the collaboration to create a larger tidal project in the territorial waters around Normandy and Alderney.

The long-term goals for Normandie Hydroliennes is to harness as much as 2 gigawatts of power from the Alderney Race - an eight-mile strait running between Alderney, part of the Channel Islands, and La Hague in France. It also plans to harness over a gigawatt of resource from nearby concessions under control of the states of Alderney.

By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Evidence of a thriving working-class Chinese community with eateries, pubs, saddlery, leather shops, grocers and cheap accommodation from the 1870s and 1880s have been unearthed beneath Albert Street in Brisbane's CBD.

Archaeologist Kevin Rains said the site, which Brisbane historians call Frog's Hollow, was Brisbane's original Chinatown, 70-odd years before Chinatown in Fortitude Valley and more than a century before Brisbane's modern Chinatown at Sunnybank.

Frog's Hollow was the boggy, low-lying area that ran from the bottom of Albert Street near the Botanic Gardens towards Elizabeth Street and stretching two or three blocks either side of Albert Street.

The 9 Holes section of Brisbane's Albert Street with Mary Street in the mid-background. Credit:State Library of Queensland

Dr Rains, who works for Niche Environment, said the "significant archaeological finds" were "absolutely invaluable" to learn about Brisbane's earliest days.
[June 22, 2020] Dell Technologies Brings IT Infrastructure and Cloud Capabilities to Edge Environments

ROUND ROCK, Texas, June 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- News summary Ruggedized VxRail systems with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors create powerful IT capabilities for harshest edge environments

VxRail introduces AMD EPYC TM processor support with compact models for space-constrained data centers and edge environments

processor support with compact models for space-constrained data centers and edge environments The only jointly engineered HCI system with VMware, VxRail delivers a hybrid cloud approach no matter where data and applications reside

VxRail HCI System Software enhancements further automate operations and management

New Intel Optane persistent memory and NVIDIA GPU options support data-intensive applications Full story

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL), the leader in hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)1, announces two new VxRail systemsincluding the first ruggedized VxRail model and introduction of AMD EPYC processorsbringing the power and simplicity of HCI to the most challenging and space-constrained edge environments. "More data is being created at the edge, and more companies are moving their data management infrastructure closer to where data is created. But sometimes the edge is a 100-degree rooftop, not a temperature-controlled traditional data center," said Tom Burns, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies Integrated Products & Solutions. "With the new ruggedized VxRail systems, location and conditions don't matter." Smallest, toughest VxRail takes HCI to harsh edge environments

The new ruggedized VxRail D Series brings VxRail's simplicity and lifecycle management capabilities to a compact and durable form factor, designed to withstand remote and harsh environments. The system, featuring 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, is 20 inches deepthe smallest VxRail yet2and can withstand extreme temperatures, sustain up to 40G of operational shock and operate at up to 15,000 feet. It brings IT support to edge locations where resilient infrastructure is critical, such as the implementation of a data center at remote sites, onboard ships at sea or equipped in aircrafts. The VxRail D Series is an ideal solution for manufacturing, industrial, and oil and gas environments where conditions create a technical challenge or space is at a premium. VxRail brings AMD EPYC processors to edge ready, single-socket system

For the first time on VxRail, 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors are now available in a new, efficient E Series platform. The VxRail E Series with AMD EPYC processors offers customers a new option, with up to 64 high performance cores and support for PCIe 4, that can be deployed at the edge or in data centers. Coupled with high-efficiency power supply, these compact 1U systems are an ideal option for customers that need high-performance computing power, in a single socket platform for edge environments. The new VxRail E665 systemavailable in NVMe, all-flash, or hybrid storage configurationsoffers high performance in a single-socket model and is an ideal option for database, unstructured data, virtual desktop infrastructure and HPC workloads. VxRail software updates support latest VMware releases and streamline upgrades

As the only jointly engineered HCI system with VMware, VxRail delivers a hybrid clud approach that is simple to deploy and manage, no matter where data and applications reside.



As recently announced, Dell Technologies Cloud Platformoffering VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRailnow supports configurations with as few as four compute nodes, enabling customers to start small and grow. Customers, such as Atlantis, The Palm, now can explore their hybrid cloud journey at up to 47% lower cost3, with a smaller footprint, and scale their infrastructure over time. "With VxRail at the core of our operations, we're able to run critical applications in every corner of our properties, from check-in services to our many amenities, with the reliability our customers and team expect," said Anthony Lynsdale, vice president of information technology, Atlantis, The Palm. "It's also given us the ability to scale our infrastructure to meet the growing demands of our business and expand our IT strategy to the public cloud, all on VxRail."

The latest version of VxRail HCI System Software helps streamline updates with the ability to run pre-upgrade health checks on demand and cloud-based management and orchestration, enabling every VxRail cluster to be maintained throughout its lifecycle, regardless of location. Intel Optane persistent memory and NVIDIA GPU options support data-intensive applications

With the introduction of new platform enhancements, VxRail can support even more power-demanding applications, such as in-memory databases like SAP HANA and artificial intelligence/machine learning applications. VxRail will now support: Intel Optane Persistent Memory , which maintains improved data integrity with 90% lower latency 4 . With this addition, VxRail is the first fully integrated VMware-based HCI system to support the full range of Intel Optane technologies for the data center including 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Optane persistent memory and Intel Optane SSDs.

, which maintains improved data integrity with 90% lower latency . With this addition, VxRail is the first fully integrated VMware-based HCI system to support the full range of Intel Optane technologies for the data center including 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Optane persistent memory and Intel Optane SSDs. NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs, which combine with NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software to bring the power of accelerated rendering, AI, advanced graphics and compute to the data center for a wide range of workflows. With Quadro RTX and NVIDIA vGPU software, customers can deploy VxRail solutions that help end users be more productive and data centers run efficiently. Availability VxRail D Series with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are available globally on June 23, 2020 .

. VxRail E Series with 2 nd Gen AMD EPYC processors are available globally on June 23, 2020 .

Gen processors are available globally on . VxRail HCI System Software latest update is now globally available.

NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs and Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory options are now globally available. Supporting quotes Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD

"Performance, efficiency and memory bandwidth are critical to driving digital transformation for the modern data center, and AMD EPYC processors deliver on all three. We are pleased to extend our longstanding collaboration with Dell Technologies by powering the VxRail E Series system with the EPYC processor's fantastic performance and outstanding TCO for customers." Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

"For organizations looking to simplify operations and keep their infrastructure in check while driving towards their digital transformation goals, automating lifecycle management is vital to lightening the load for IT teams. This allows them to focus more on revenue generating or transformational opportunities. VxRail and the latest updates to the VxRail HCI System Software give IT teams the automated tools they need to become more efficient, reduce downtime and operational costs, and deliver real value to the business." Additional resources Blog: Taking HCI to Extremes

Connect with Dell via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn About Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry's broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the data era. Copyright  2020 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC and Dell EMC are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, EPYC and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Optane are trademarks of Intel Corporation of its subsidiaries. 1 IDC WW Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, Q1 2020, June 2020, Hyperconverged Systems Revenue Share 2 Based on internal Dell Technologies testing (May 2020) comparing VxRail D560 to VxRail E560 dimensions. 3 Based on internal analysis of DTCP with subscription comparing the price of 8 node standard architecture to the new 4 node consolidated architecture. Actual saving may vary depending on configuration. 4 Based on internal Dell Technologies testing (May 2020) comparing OLTP 4k workload on four VxRail P570F systems with Intel Optane persistent memory in app direct mode vs. VxRail all NVMe. Actual results will vary. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-technologies-brings-it-infrastructure-and-cloud-capabilities-to-edge-environments-301080817.html SOURCE Dell Technologies

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]